Ep 260: How Modern Building Materials Trigger Chronic Illnesses | Lauren Riddei

0:00I actually and literally got sick from my job sites. I was a conventional interior designer at the time, and all of a sudden I would go to my job sites, and I would get these intense migraines and headaches, my stomach would start hurting. There's a lot of toxic chemicals in modern building materials. These materials contain carcinogenic, mutagenic chemicals that are immune sensitizers. If you drive by any apartment complex today, how big are the windows that you're seeing? They're relatively small. And few, and far between, there's a huge gap with daylight and circadian rhythm health. A lot of our modern construction is just trying to put a bunch of disposable products in our homes. Instead of a permaculture principle of repairing, it's like the fast fashion of design and construction. Lauren, thank you for being here. Hey Alan, I'm so excited to be here. I kind of jumped the gun. You're still taking the justice. You got to have garden so just in my skirt. I'm not trying to flash the people. Hey Lauren, thanks for being here.

1:02No sincerely, thank you for being here. I think I met you at Confluence, the third one, right? The third edition, in 2025. Yeah, and I could tell you we're a super rad human. I had a few people come up to me saying you need to have Lauren on to do a podcast. She's incredibly knowledgeable on alternative and air quotes, building techniques and what's the problems with our modern building techniques and construction and building biology and that stuff that I'm incredibly fascinated with. Anyway, so yeah, when multiple people that are a part of my audience recommend someone to me, that's usually a really good sign. Like Dr. Richard Massey was a recommendation by a lot of people and that turned out to be one of my favorite episodes. So I'm sure this is going to be an epic chapter. That episode may be crying by the way. I mean, I cried like five times on that episode. There's actually a moment that was cut out where I was like, bawling had to push the microphone away and my editors cut it out unfortunately. I mean, or fortunately, I don't know how it might have been weird. My goal is to be like 30 seconds of

2:02nothing. It's because I'm just crying, but my goal is to get you to cry in this podcast. I'm not sure how we're going to do it. Talking about conventional construction and alternative construction, but we're going to figure it out. We're going to get you to cry today. Okay. You cry laughing. I don't know. Okay, let's start by having you introduce yourself, though. And then you can go ahead and run right into your background. You're joining what led you to building biology and understanding the problems with construction. Okay. So I'm a health and wellness interior designer and a triple certified building biologist. Oh, triple certified. Triple certified. Sounds very fancy and we'll get into it. Okay. But I wanted to say that my story really started when I got into this world in 2021. I had the perfect storm of health scares. And it kind of came out of left field for me, but I actually and literally got sick from my job sites. I was a conventional interior designer at the time. And all the set in, I would go

3:05to my job sites. And I would get these intense migraines and headaches. My stomach would start hurting. I got joint pain, muscle pain, tons of inflammation. And simply going to one of my job sites, I would end up having to be in bed just for a couple days to recover from whatever the heck that was. Yeah. And I was really scary. And I didn't quite know what was going on with me. But I kind of thought something was seriously wrong. Like you know those moments when you're on your health journey, you're like something might be wrong with my brain, something might be wrong with my liver, like something seriously might be in my stomach. You know, we've all had those really scary thoughts, especially a lot of people in this space like we've had actual healing journeys where they went through a really bad health scare to get to the position they are now. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. And it really scared me. And so this this put me on a journey to see all of these doctors, Eastern and Western to try to figure out what in the world was going wrong with me. And I

4:05became sensitive to everything, light, sound, fragrance. It would just like put me over the top. And I would just have to like lay horizontal Alex for a couple days to just recover from whatever these exposures were. It was the weirdest thing. So it was fatigue that was probably really coming on. It was chronic fatigue, physical pain. And my brain just essentially it felt like it went offline. Okay. And I was not able to think clearly and critically. And I kind of thought it was a mix of things. Like maybe it's a brain thing. Maybe it's something that you know, something else that people try to scare us with. Who knows? But I didn't quite piece together. What was really making me sick? Because I'll tell you here in a second. That's not the whole story. Okay. So I'm going to doctor, after doctor, healer, after healer, and trying to find answers. Nobody could really tell me what was wrong. And I had a lot of unanswered questions. I also spent a lot of money, which I know people

5:07in this space. We spend so much money trying to figure out how do we get well? How do we get our vital life force back? And a lot of time. It was my full time job to try to get well. So eventually on this journey, I saw a naturopathic doctor who, and by the way, I've been in the crunchy space for a while. At that point, I had been turning my wifi off for years. I had been eating organic. This is not like this was a new thing for me. Okay. So I was in the space like most of your listeners. And this naturopathic doctor ran a few tests. She did a live blooded allisist. She did some, we did bio field testing. We did some blood work. And after gathering all those tests, she asked me, she said, Lauren, like, where are you living? She's like, Lauren, where are you working? And I was like, that's a weird question. Like, I've seen all of these doctors. And nobody has asked me where I'm living. Or where I'm working. And so I flippantly told her that I'm an professional interior designer. I'm on job sides, I'm measuring things. I'm in dusty antique stores. Like, what does this have to do with

6:10why I don't feel good? And she was like, well, I really think that that's contributing to your toxic burden. And you're not able to recover from what you're going through. And so I'm going to encourage you to reduce all of those exposures immediately. And I was like, wait, immediately, as in like, probably pretty challenging. Yeah, challenging. And the fact that this is my job, Alec, this is my passion. This is, this is what I thought I was supposed to contribute to the world, right? And here's this naturopathic doctor suggesting that my live work and play environments could be making me sick. Well, here's the thing. I eventually, this was, so I ended up taking her advice seriously. So I removed myself from my job sites. I had to stop working. And I did start to get better. But on the way, Alec, I learn about the rain barrel effect. Are you familiar with that by Dr. William Ray? So he talks about how basically we all have a rain barrel in our bodies.

7:12And different things can contribute to it, whether it's trauma, whether it's grief, whether it's physical injury, I know you've had several physical injuries. So you know what I'm talking about. Yeah. It could be pollutants. It could be pesticides. And it fills our rain barrel. And then eventually, what happens is we can reach a critical mass. Got it. And so the rain barrel overflows. Yes, it overflows. So you know that. And Dr. William Ray was in the environmental world. So basically, I reached a critical mass. And my overflow event was the job sites. But what I did not tell you is that in 2021 and 2022, I had experienced a really serious low back in pelvic injury, where I was not able to sit down for like two years. That I'm sitting down today as a miracle. I was playing spikeball on the beach with some friends. And I just did I just took a serious dive. And I just twisted my spine. And it was one of those injuries that I knew would change my life forever. Yeah. And I've had a lot of injuries too, Alec. And you're an athlete, right? You were a swimmer.

8:14Swimmer. And I played field hockey. Okay. Yeah. And I surf. Oh, okay. Cool. Yeah. But it was one of those injuries that I knew would change everything about my life. And I just kind of saw like my life flash because I was so much pain. So what I didn't tell you was that I had a serious low back in pelvic injury. I was dealing with I also had unexpressed grief for my dad dying when I was 20. I also had constant anxiety and depression running in the background. I also had a lot of trauma dealing with being an alcoholic at an early age. And then at the same season, Alec, I was trying to wrestle with whether or not I was going to leave the religious community that I had grown up in. That's a lot. And if I was going to leave this community, I would lose everything. So when I say I got sick from my job sites, I literally got sick from my job sites. And also, I don't believe that it's ever just one thing getting us sick. Totally agree with that. So I'm painting a picture for you. Very rarely. I can't like I can't it's hard to think of like anything that goes against that. But

9:17yeah, very rarely is it ever one thing that's getting us sick. Yeah. Yeah. So I say that so that you understand there's a fuller picture here. Yeah. But quite literally, I was getting sick from the materials and the fumes and the off-gassing. And that's what woke me up to this world because I I just would never have suspected that our modern building materials and methods could exacerbate illness. So I had all this stuff going on in the background and it essentially pushed me right over the top. And I had not reacted to my job sites at all. I had been fine. I would go check the paint. I would go, you know, measure for tile. I'd be in the fumes. I'd be in the with the drywall guys. And I had no issues. But it wasn't until what I believe my burden was so high that I reached a critical mass. So it would be like to go back to that analogy, your rain barrel was almost at the tippy top. You'd go back to the job site and it was overflowing. You leave the job site and it would still be at the tippy top. So each time you'd go to the job sites, it would

10:22fill up again. Would you experience the same thing at home or was it primarily when you would go to the job sites? It was primarily at my job sites. Okay. What do you think that is? Okay. Well, there was there's an overload of toxic chemicals. Because you're more crunchy in your house. So you're not using synthetics and I mean, I had been turning off my Wi-Fi using linen sheets. We got rid of the chemicals. And of course, you know, as I will share here in a little bit about building biology, I was really mindful about what new building materials I brought into my environment when we were doing renovations. So basically, when I realized that, oh my gosh, like, I just need to reduce my exposure so that one, the injury can heal. Because I was kind of on this rat race, if not healing, and not feeling better. And once I was able to reduce the exposures, clean up kind of what was in my life, but not just physically. This is emotionally. This is mentally, this is spiritually because I believe and I've learned anything on the outside of

11:25our life is actually a mirror of what's going on in the inside. So the fact that I got sick from home actually just represents that I was far from home here. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So that required then that you did all of the work internally in order to start feeling better. But I'd imagine given what we're going to talk about today and what you do now, that also led to you researching all the problems with modern construction and all the ways to sort of counteract that or to build differently. Is that a correct assessment? Okay. So let's get into first then, what steps you took to clean up yourself. Because that's a huge piece of your journey. Yeah, totally. Well, let me just say before we talk about what things we did to clean up. So when I'm researching, trying to figure out how to clean up my life, clean up things in my home, I start getting all these downloads. And you know when you've gone through a dark night of the soul and you start to come on the other side and you're like, I think I'm going to turn this

12:29pain into purpose. Yeah. And these ideas start coming in and you think they're these really cool and creative ideas. And then you learn that actually a lot of people are doing this. It's kind of cool though. It's like, whoa, like I didn't, I wasn't exposed this from a tick talker, like a real or anything like that. It just like it came to me and then you look into it. I mean, that's what led me discovering the law of one. I admittedly was on shrooms. I was on shrooms by myself in Colorado looking out this picturesque window and looking at all the points of light on the hill. And there wasn't a lot of light pollution. So I could see the stars in the sky. And all of the lights had intersecting like converging geometric lines between them. And then I could look down and see how those converging lines would reach me. And I had this thought just popping in my head that I'd never even considered before. And it was all as one. Oh my god, all as one. So I then started obsessively researching all as one. So totally understand. Yeah. So you get this idea that is sincere. And so this idea that was sincere that came into my spirit was Lauren, you got sick from home,

13:34help people with their home. And so I thought, oh, I could help people with air quality and water quality. And I could bring in clean materials. And then your law of one story start researching. And you're like, oh, hey, people have been doing this since the 60s. This is a full blown industry. But it was so cool because I realized that I'm essentially just just stepping onto the shoulders of giants and joining this mission has been here for a very long time. And that's when I learned about the building biology institute. Okay. And my eyes were just open to this whole new training to teach people how to fix up their own homes, what to bring in, what not to bring in. But then it also teaches people how to actually be home consultants and to help people in the journey. Amazing. And whether that's that's EMR, electromagnetic radiation with electrical pollution or whether that's material health or helping people with assessments. So it's a gamut of training. And this training is what really rocked my bow. And I was like, oh, my gosh, I'm so inspired

14:38by this. And I have my conventional interior design training. But nowhere in my conventional practice did they mention anything about material health. Yeah. At all. The closest we maybe got to something being good for people was, hey, Alec, why don't you paint your studio green? Because green means growth. Yeah. Like we're just coated. I'm not, I'm not saying that's not good. But like when we're really being honest and being serious, there are huge issues in the construction industry. So the building biology institute is incredible training to get people knowing how to read safety data sheets with materials, getting people to understand that the wall wiring in our homes is actually affecting us negatively. I mean, that is EMF. It's not just radio frequency technology. There's so many things in our home environment that people don't quite realize. Can we talk about that first? Yeah. If that's okay, just like get into all the problems. We can

15:41like do the scary stuff up front. Let me just say like I'm happy to scare people. But I'm just kidding. But I want to give solutions. Yeah. And of course, I know you have them too. And that's the whole point. But I would like to cover the context of like what's wrong with our modern building materials. And I want to preface this by saying that I think for many of us in the terrain based health space, we understand that it's our environment that leads to health or sickness in a lot of ways. And it's not exclusively our environment. And of course, the body's much more resilient than we've been led to believe. There's a lot of emotional components too in malnutrition, things like that. But a big piece of it is our environment on a day to day basis. And yet, it was so weird with that the overwhelming majority of us to note no fault of our own, I would say, especially if we're not trained in building biology, are living in places that are still using a lot of toxic materials that really are not good for our health that are detrimental to our health.

16:41And again, we're resilient. We're adaptable for the most part, et cetera, et cetera. But it's still a problem. And I think it's an overlooked problem. Like we understand the things that we're putting on our body and things like this. But a lot more people are starting to understand the problems with drywall and the glues that are using our home and central AC and things like this dirty electricity and the walls and the floors. But I think there's not enough importance that is placed upon that. Would you agree? Yeah, well, I will tell you in our confluence community, any time that we've had a conversation with a stranger and people are like, what do you do? Which is not really a question we ask each other, by the way. It's like the last question. We're so rad that it's not the question that we ask each other. Really, when I say that, it's the last question. We're like leaving on the shovel to go home and they're like, by the way, what do you do for a lady? Yeah. And I tell people what I do. And they're like, dude, I have been in the crunchy holistic world. I don't know forever.

17:42I have never heard anybody talk about the holistic home side. Yeah. And I don't know, Alec, but there is a gap there. And that gap is so severe, but it's so obvious once the veil is lifted. And you start to question like, okay, why? Why is it not so obvious? But I will say, so there's a lot of toxic chemicals in modern building materials. And they're in every day, every day materials, whether it's your paints and blues and flooring and everything. It's everything. But these materials contain carcinogenic, mutagenic chemicals that are immune sensitizers. I mean, they're incredibly problematic for our immune systems, our respiratory systems. And then of course, if you drive by any apartment complex today, how big are the windows that you're seeing? They're relatively small. And few and far between. So there's a lack of daylight. And from my understanding, most of them nowadays

18:42for energy saving purposes filter out a lot of the bandwidth of light from the sun that we need for our hormonal production. Correct. And so much more. Not just in the name of energy efficiency, for sure. So the windows, they're getting smaller, they're getting fewer. So there's a huge gap there with daylight and circadian rhythm health. Then what happens is we're bringing in all this furniture. And the furniture contains composites and foams. It's containing materials that are synthetic, but that have been sprayed with toxic chemicals to make sure that they're a water resistant or staying resistant. And I mean, just one chair alone contains so many concerns as far as pollutants for the indoor environment. So you're bringing all this material in, you're bringing all this furniture in. And then what has happened with our homes over the years? Well, they've gotten tighter and tighter and tighter. So in a way, they're less breathable. Although breathability is not

19:43really the correct term, the homes have essentially become less vapor permeable. So they're getting tighter, yes. And actually code is making it really difficult to do things the same way that we used to. So they're not actually allowing us to do the things that we want to do. Really? Yeah. So what is the stated intention behind the codes getting more restrictive in energy efficiency? Which is good. Okay. It's good. And we all want to say, yeah, we want to save energy. Well, I just relative to the electric bill that my neighbors have, we're like, we've compared. We haven't directly compared with our neighbors is that someone solicited and was trying to sell a solar panels, which happens all the time. And we were, she was just looking at our energy bill. She was like, oh my god, yours is way higher than the rest of your neighbors. And it's because we use incandescent lights and like throughout our entire home. So I'd imagine that that's why ours is so much higher. Yeah. It makes it makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. And I will add to that, like windows are

20:46a good example with building building code too. So for example, so I had these windows that were replaced three years ago. And we had replaced 1970s windows that had never had any issue. But we put new hurricane proof, argon filled. I mean, literally these windows were expensive and tough. But in less than three years, basically they cracked and they filled with, it kind of looked like this purple haze on two windows that we replaced, but they're brand new windows. Shouldn't they last longer than three years? Right. Well, that's part of the issue is that anything that is touted as maintenance free, it's usually a disposable product. So we're putting a lot of disposable products into our modern homes. Because when you compare the new windows today that that meet certain codes that meet energy efficiency, well, compare that to a hundred year old window, which we just bought in 1942 home.

21:47So it's eight years old. But these are the historic windows. They're made from old growth wood. They're made with the old five weight pulley system. Oh, cool. And those windows were made for repair. They weren't made for replacement. And so that that in and of itself is a lot of our modern construction is just trying to put a bunch of disposable products in our homes. Instead of the culture, the permaculture principle too, of repairing versus just replacing. So their cheap products, they're it's like the fast fashion, essentially of design and construction. Most health care today operates on an outdated mechanistic model, treating the body like a battlefield rather than a self healing system. You wait months for an appointment only to receive a rush diagnosis that labels you rather than truly understanding your unique health. Even in holistic health, many practitioners rely on endless lab tests and supplement protocols, addressing symptoms instead of the root cause. And the result, another prescription or supplement regimen that merely suppresses or masks symptoms rather than facilitating true healing, whether the imbalance

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23:56you can book a one-time appointment, sign up for an enrichment-only membership for the healing modalities alone, or schedule a free connection session with one of the care team members to see how the new biology clinic can help in your specific situation. This isn't about keeping you dependent on doctors, it's about making you sovereign over your health. Head to newbiologyclinic.com and use code the way forward and that spelled the way F-O-R-W-A-R-D for $50 off account activation, or just head to the show notes for more info. If you're a member of the way forward, email helloatthewaveford.com for $150 off. Your body already knows how to heal, and new biology clinic helps you remember. Do you think that this problem is primarily, I guess, is it primarily in the US because I've spent a lot of time in Europe and I've been to Serbia as an example three times over the last three years. And I just noticed that the quality of things seems to be much higher, like the quality of windows, the quality of door locks. I

24:58haven't looked and measured with some light sensitivity device to see what amount of light is filtering through the windows and things like this. But from what I've been able to ascertain, it seems that Europe is a lot better about having more natural high-quality materials and less concerned with, I guess, cutting corners and saving money in the sense that they're using toxic materials because with that being said, as I'm saying that, I know that they're massive on energy efficiency there, like, really massive on energy efficiency. So I could be speaking against myself there. But I don't know, is it primarily a problem in the US from what you've gathered? It's a problem everywhere. However, I think that it is a huge problem here because of how we build. So the primary method of building here is light frame stick construction. In Europe, they're mostly working with mass wall systems. So mass wall systems are earthen construction.

25:59Oh, okay. It's your stone. It's your adobe. It's your rammed earth. It's cob. It's hemp. So usually mass wall systems are quite wide. So they're naturally going to be more energy efficient. They're going to act like a thermal battery. They're going to release cool air when needed. They're going to absorb heat when needed. But with what? Why don't we use that as much here? Well, I think that there is a craft that has been lost. So it really is a wisdom that we've lost over the years. But that's part of vernacular construction, which you've talked about this before in your podcast. So when you go to different parts of the, well, you didn't use the word vernacular, but you said the other day on your podcast, how, why does that person have a beach sign when they live in the middle of the desert? They're nowhere near the beach. Okay. Yeah. So that's the opposite of vernacular construction. So when you go to

26:59different parts of the country, like the Southwest, you'll see a lot more adobe construction. And that's because that material, clay, sand, aggregate, water works for that region. Yeah, it makes sense. It's the most energy efficient material for that space. Whereas where I live, the coastal plain in Mertel Beach, South Carolina, our homes are going to be on stilts for flooding purposes. But what's happened is that that's really it's a wisdom that's gotten lost because now we're building the same type of home everywhere. So you drive anywhere in the United States. And this is true. Some of my international friends have told me this is true as well. All the homes look the exact same. I can't stand that shape. I know. I see that as someone who currently lives in a neighborhood that has a lot of that like cookie cutter style home. Again, there's some variants between them. So I am a little bit grateful for that. But the last neighborhood we lived in before that one, it was like every other home was exactly the same. There's like three different types you could choose from. And it's fucking dystopian. There's no art behind it. It's like it's an eye sore. I feel like America,

28:05especially is like suburban neighborhood two miles strip mall strip mall two miles suburban neighborhood. It's not walkable. It's an eye sore. It doesn't invoke a sense of wonder awe and beauty. It sure doesn't look healthy. It doesn't feel healthy. In most cases, you can decorate it. I'm sure there's some mitigation strategies that you will share during this. But it's just like yeah, it sucks, especially when you compare that to like what we know about like the possibility of Christ Millennial rain, Tartarian, like just the Greco-Roman style sort of architectural style that is so beautiful. I know. Using stone masonry and marble and it just super ornate and resonant. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to shit on it because I also love my house, you know? Totally. And I will just say though that there is this lack of sense of place though with most modern construction. I call it the white farmhouse with black window phenomenon. It's everywhere. But it is lacking one a sense of

29:09place, meaning that a lot of times what we do here is we just charge into the land and we go, I'm going to build this house, even though it's not vernacularly appropriate for the region. Yeah. Because the white farmhouse with black trim is vernacular. It is vernacular in certain parts of the country. The south, possibly. Especially the south. Yeah. That is classic. Okay. But I find it really interesting that that style white and black has taken the nation by storm. I'm going to ask you this. Why do you think that that particular style of the white exterior facade and the black trim, why has it taken the nation by storm? I'm just curious. What do you think? Or could be some of the reasons? I'd say especially like the farmhouse style that it invokes a sense of like, oh, this is what families live in together. Maybe. I don't know if that's the answer that you're getting at. But that's what comes up for me. And then maybe some level of energy efficiency, especially with the white. Like I know that it is not absorbing heat as much. So in hot

30:15summer months, it's not going to get as hot. I don't know. I don't know the answer though. Yeah. And I don't have, there's not necessarily a right answer because both of those are correct. I'll just throw in a few more. I mean, this trend really amplified post 2020 when there is this push for sanitation. Oh. So this kind of cleanliness. Okay. So I think the white house is really interesting and symbolic that there is been this push to get things really clean. Yeah. Wow. But then you have the juxtaposition of the the stark black. So it's almost like people are wanting to be bold in their choices, but they're not quite, they don't have enough courage to do it yet. So there's this, oh, well, if I pick black against white, I am being bold, but safe at the same time. Yeah. Okay. So it's people wanting to express themselves, but they're not quite feeling comfortable enough with being out there with color. So they're able to do that. And then of course, resell value, or I would say in the United States, compared to Europe, people in Europe stay in their homes.

31:20Yeah. They do not look at property as an investment in the same way we do. That's why we are seen so, you know, our families don't hold on to our properties. When we visited Ryan's family in Italy, his uncle was living the third generation in their house. It's so cool. I don't think the real estate tree is booming there, but, you know, like we just don't treat houses as as a generational treasure. Well, you also treat them disposable as disposable. Like it's a common sentiment that once you're finally done paying off your 30 year mortgage, your house is probably going to need to have so many repairs that it's going to basically cost you the same that you were paying for your mortgage. Exactly. That's insane. Exactly. Yeah. So that really is, I think, disposable is the best word. And that's why there is all these cheap ingredients being used. That's why it is fast in production. I mean, it's crazy how fast homes are going up, especially when we look at historic homes. They took a lot longer to build because they were using real materials. And they were using wisdom

32:24to build. And so it's really a variety of reasons. Why were we are seeing this phenomenon of the white farmhouse with black trend? I do think, though, that eventually, I hope people will become more comfortable with themselves that they're willing to use yellow and they're willing to use pink. Because in other parts of the world and other cultures, homes represented their whole spirit. And all their homes, especially in Bali, looking incredibly different from one another. And that was actually, it's part of their residents coming out, but we don't see it that way here. No, absolutely not. But we do see this trend towards having a whimsical home. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I'm so rad. I think it's super rad where people are like, I don't care about having a specific style. I'm sick of all the beige. I'm just going to throw this purple couch here with that foot lamp there and just the most random things. And it's like, oh, this has character to it now. Yeah. You know, and like I say that as someone where

33:28we're increasingly moving away from it, but like you look at our living room, we liked it at the time, but it's like a white L-shaped couch with a beige colored rug with black accent things. And it's just like, God, dude, this is so lame. Like it seemed cool for some time. And I'm sick of it now. And I've done the same thing. Yeah. You know, as an interior designer, I'm saying I've designed plenty of white houses with black trim for clients. So I'm not saying that it's a bad thing, but I'm just saying philosophically, it's an interesting observation because I'm in the industry and I see it. Yeah. And I just see that people are making choices and we're kind of talking aesthetically here for a second, but people are making choices based on what they think somebody else would want. Yeah, it's true. Versus tapping into home base and going, oh, but if I really do want a purple sofa, Alec might not like it, but like I love it. Right. So what would it look like to live in homes one day where we are actually creating co-creating our environments truly from an authentic place? And not everybody's going to like it. I think it starts, though, too,

34:33with even aside from the interior design, it's like what we're offered, speaking to most people these days who, you know, most people can't even afford to buy a home to start with. So whether they're renting or buying in most cases, they're not able to actually choose the building materials that go into the the bill, right? Or if you again, if they're leasing, they're coming into a home that's already been built in the in the overlong majority of cases that's using dry walls, using the formaldehyde in the paint, like all the same problems that we talked about earlier. I'll just share like interesting anecdote with this, but I know this is a common problem now, it's talking to your husband Ryan off camera before he started. Who's sitting right off set here, we try to get him to come on, but maybe next time, but I was sharing that we bought our house as it was being built. We bought it when it was literally just a foundation, right? And we tried to ask the general contractor to use wool insulation rather than spray foam and he was like, I don't even know how to do that. It's like, what is wool insulation? Yeah, it was,

35:37that kind of response. I'm like, explaining to him, well, it's a lot less toxic than the spray foam and all the reasons and he's like, I have no idea how to get that. I'm like, okay, we'll pay extra for you to find a way and he's wasn't interested. We found a way and he was like, oh, it's not going to happen. We have to move on to the insulation like next week. And then it was the same thing with the smart meter is it just there's so many barriers to this. First of all, we have again, the houses that are already there or you're buying a house. And if you have the worth all to understand some of the things we're talking about here, you go to your general contractor and they're like, no, dude, sorry. Yeah. And it feels like the barrier to this is so great that it's only the people who like are are acting as the GC for their own home or are, you know, multi-millionaire that has the ability to sort of force the hand of the general contractor for their custom build on their own land. You know what I mean? It just seems like there's a lot of barriers to this. What are your thoughts on that? Okay, you asked me like three questions. I did. I did. I think that's a question. But it's such a good point. And so I think we need to break this down

36:40a little bit. I'll take the first part. You're actually interrupting the general contractors monoculture approach. Yeah. By you asking for changes, you were interrupting the production. Yeah. All right. So that's not really welcome. Unless it's in the contract from the very beginning. And if it's not in the contract, it will not happen. Even if you try to manifest your destiny, it will not happen. Okay. We're trying to change one tile. And like we knew that they had some stock of the other tile. Sorry. Yeah. It's just it's not going to work. Yeah. Especially when they start seeing that it could cause problems for their end product. And it makes sense. Like they know what they're doing. They're on a production timeline. But this is this is the root of the problem, Alec in so many ways that this monoculture approach to construction is the opposite of nature. What is nature? Nature's diverse. It has all sorts of colors. It has

37:47all sorts of materials. It has all sorts of the right energy for the person that is in that home. So when you're in this production line, which is housing in 2026 today, the way that we really want to design, which is close to nature, isn't really fitting into that model. No. It doesn't fit. It doesn't work. And you're going to get frustrated because that's not the language. So when I say the interior design school, we learn nothing about environmental health or mental or mental health material health. There was nothing because it's not part of the world. All right. Now I'd actually like to I'd like to read something if that's. Yeah. That's totally fun. This will kind of paint a picture. Yeah. For why we have moved away from you'd have to sing it though. This is a lot to sing. By the way, I will say so this is this is a book by my mentor Paula Baker Laporte and her co-author John Banta is called prescriptions for a healthy home. She is a

38:49well-known architect for natural buildings, particularly Adobe, Timberframe, Light Shaw Clay, and she's taught with the billion biology institute for I think two or three decades. She's incredible. Quickest side is that available online? Amazon. Yes. Yes. But I tried to gift for the listeners. I tried to gift I liked a gallon of mineral paint that was it's like the push of mineral paint. He would have loved it. He would have loved it, but it didn't work out. So I got him a book instead. And so you're going to be a guest on his podcast. Bring him a book. He needs more books. I have a pile of books just off. I just haven't brought him home yet. And so then I was like, all right, all right, I'll just get him a book. He needs a book. Yeah. So I got him a book. Now you will like excited about that. You will like this, but because once I read this, I'll tell you a little bit more about it. Okay. But this will paint a picture for for kind of how we ended up from a construction a hundred plus years ago to where we are now. Well, Lincoln in the show knows by the way too. So for anyone who's interested is there. All right. Okay. So this is a case study by Dr. Erica Elliott. It's called the EPA takes a stand on the carpet controversy. In October 1987, the EPA installed

39:56carpet at its headquarters in the Waterside Mall in Washington, DC. A total of 1,141 complaints were received regarding adverse health effects related to the brand new carpet. These complaints included decreased short-term memory loss, loss of concentration, confusion, anxiety, headaches, rashes, digestive disorders, reproductive abnormalities. That's a hard one to say. Asma, insomnia, chronic fatigue, and multiple chemical sensitivities. Dozens of workers remain permanently disabled. After the EPA investigated these carpet complaints from its own headquarters, by the way, it published reports showing a positive correlation between the EPA worker complaints and the brand new carpet. Despite the result of its own study, this is where it gets really sad, really fast. So it did its own study and the removal of their own carpet, 2,700 square yards of carpet from the headquarters building in 1989. The EPA published a public information brochure that stated

40:58limited research to date has found no links between adverse health effects and the levels of chemicals emitted by the new carpet. Well, the EPA's director of health and safety ended up going online until the Washington Times that the freshly manufactured carpet actually clearly caused the initial illness. Within a few weeks of making that statement, Alex, how long you had had this job? What? Well, he was removed from his job immediately because he made that statement. Of course. And the EPA management later came out and expressed concern that the testing and regulation of carpet emissions could potentially cost the carpet industry billions of dollars. That was their main sticking point with it. How much it would cost the carpet industry. There's big carpet, too. There's not only big farm others. Big carpet. Dang it, dude. That's just one example, though. That's just carpet in homes. Are we using the same types of carpet,

41:59the same materials as was used in that situation that EPA headquarters? Yes. We're still using synthetic. It's mostly plastic, carpet, and then there's a styrene beauty dean rubber, then there's glues, then there's adhesives. I mean, if you've ever walked into a freshly carpeted space, you will agree. Like you can get a headache, your stomach will start turning. I mean, it's insane. And so the fact that this happened at the EPA headquarters, it's insane. And so anyway, this is just a little snippet for this book. But I just want to say, like that is one piece of the pie carpet. So when you're coming in now, like in your interrupting that production, like it doesn't fit because if this is the carpet industry and they're trying to protect billions of dollars, that's one piece of the pie. You've got tile, you've got wood, you've got lights, you've got sinks, you've got plumbing, you've got furniture. That is one piece of the pie. Yeah. So I think in so many ways, this conversation about a healthy home or

43:02making our homes holistic has been hidden from us. 100%. Yeah. So I have a question. Is there, be honest? Is there any redeeming qualities in terms of the materials that are used about our modern homes? Because I'm thinking like just racking my brand, I'm like, okay, plumbing, that's all plastic. Okay, the drywall that has a variety of toxic chemicals in it. Okay, the way that they do electric, they typically have acid just because they're trying to get it done really quickly. And it's producing dirty electricity. I can't think of one thing off the top of my head that is conducive to health in our modern homes. Is there any? Yes, I'm going to change your mind on that. Okay. Yes. There's tons of swaps. There's tons of options out there that are the same application that your woodworker knows, that your drywall guide knows. And it's simply just swapping

44:02what might have less formaldehyde because formaldehyde is the biggest one. I mean, that really, like I can walk into a room and really just start getting ahead, just from the formaldehyde. Really? That's sensitive to it. Are you still sensitive now? Well, I had a, I just actually two days ago, I had an old client who I worked with about six years ago. I did a new construction home for her. And she called me like two months ago and said, hey, Lauren, I'm downsizing. And I would love for you to help me with the design. I said, oh my gosh, you're so good to see you or hear from you. I haven't touched base with you in a long time. I said, I'd love to help you, but like, I've totally changed my the way I design and my method. So I'm only using natural materials now and that sort of thing. She's like, that's so cool. So anyway, I had forgotten that her husband had worked for a big box paint store that they were loyally tied to. And I didn't quite realize that they were going to choose the acrylic like text paint, no matter what mineral paint clay paint I might suggest. That's just what the client want to do, okay? But I don't typically work with any conventional

45:06clients unless, you know, because they're going to choose the worst choices. They don't know. They don't know the other options and all the options are out there. So anyway, to answer your question, I go to her home two days ago to meet with a window treatment installer. She's like, by the way, the painters are here actively painting. And I know you like are sensitive to acrylic paint. I hope you're going to be okay. I'm like, oh, I'm like, I'm fine. Like I've recovered. I'm so much stronger. I believe that, you know, we really create a reality with that. And my body's a diabolous alien. I'm resilient. I was like, I didn't say all this, but I'm thinking that. I was like, my burden is so much lower. I can totally handle it. And I've been able to handle things so much better. So I go in there and you're just like hit with like a fume ball of the volatile organic compounds that are used in acrylic synthetic paint. And I'm like, that smells terrible. First of all, it's like, you really are walking into a room of acetone, which by the way,

46:08when these paint companies are using low VOC or no VOC, no, no, no or low VOC volatile organic compounds, I actually think that's the natural flavors of the construction world. Really? Because they're still legally using acetone, but they're putting it under another name in the same way that BPA did. Wow. So it's a bit of a greenwash gimmick to make people feel better. Yeah. So anyway, I walk into the space and I'm just hit with like, it smells the odor strong. And I'm like, but I'm okay. I'm strong. I'm resilient. I'm fine. I'm going to be on Alex podcast. I'm going to have good memory recall. You know, no problem. The question is so far. Yeah. And an hour in, Alex, I start to get that same feeling that I had on my job sites where the brain, the brain kind of feels like it's turning off. This fog came over and it just feels like it's coming over your, I don't know, it just feels like you're thinking capacity goes completely offline. My stomach started hurting. And I was like, I think it's the paint. Like, I know I'm resilient, but I also think that this is,

47:09I'm in a 3,000 square foot home that has walls, ceilings, trim, the painters are actively here, actively here painting the cabinets. That's also a very real thing. And so I believe that I was like really feeling that. So I had to go home after that appointment and go outside and decompress and walk and sweat. And I was fine. But it was just a reminder too that like, godly, like these conventional materials are just going to aggravate our systems. Totally. Because it's too much for us. You know what, what occurs to me is I think of a guy that I interviewed named Dean Hall who had lymphoma, I believe twice. I don't remember exactly what type of cancer I'm pretty sure is lymphoma. And he forced bed in order to resolve the cancer. And it's just, it's wild to consider that the way we've built our homes these days have become so discordant and so like an inversion of what, what is natural. To wear an order to heal. We have to leave the premises of our houses for extended periods of times, not for everyone but in some cases,

48:14and it's just like what we could be doing is making our homes an extension of that coherence that we get from being in the natural world, where it's just we feel justice coherent inside our homes, maybe with a little bit less sunlight, then we do outside. We feel the same. And it's the complete opposite nowadays. But you're talking about the swaps that people can make though. And that's how we're going to enter coherence with our modern environments. We are going to want to bring more of nature back inside in the same way that our historic building stock naturally did. Yeah. That was the way of construction. You used old growth wood and you used a natural finish. You didn't put a poly finish on wood. Yeah. Because they knew that wood is this ancient technology that can expand and contract. And it can absorb humidity. It can release moisture. It naturally buffers humidity. It's incredible. But over the years, the wisdom of using linseed oil,

49:16which is comes from a flax plant, the wisdom of that or beeswax was lost. And instead, we put a plastic coating on top of the wood that was supposed to buffer humidity. Yeah. So I hope you see that there is this wisdom that needs to return back so that we can relearn how to connect our built environment back to nature. And the only way to really thrive as humanity is if our built environment is in coherence completely with nature. But we are so far from that. However, there is a huge army of people in this world. So when I went back to school for building biology, I also met all of these people doing incredible things all over the world to elevate the built environment, to make it healthier, to make it safe, to use natural materials. So I do feel like a lot of what I do, Alec, is showing people swaps. Okay. Like, share some more if you don't mind. Yeah, of course. So you have the mineral paint instead of the,

50:17and you mentioned the low VOC, no VOC. That's like the green wash version. It's kind of like the natural flavors of the construction industry. So it's really you're looking for mineral-based paints as the alternative. And I want you to smell it. Okay. So this is the, I'm sniffing paint on my podcast right now. This is mineral paint. Okay. What minerals are in this? So it's potassium silicate. Smells like minerals. Yep. Does not smell like paint. Wow. It's almost neutral, right? Yeah. Yeah. And so what's really cool? You put that in your water. You probably like, you know, like, you're just gonna be able to do something. Yeah. I mean, what is the saying like, don't put anything on your skin that you wouldn't eat? Yeah. I mean, it's like, don't put anything in your house that you wouldn't eat. Right. Although I will say, you know, sometimes there is, there can be an off-gassing, even with anything natural. Of course. But an orange when you peel it, off-gases VOCs. So, but anyway, so mineral paint is so cool. So what it will do is it will actually, there's a

51:19process called silification. And it will bind to whatever substrate you put it on, whether it's masonry or drywall. It will essentially become the law of one with your building. Whereas acrylic latex paint is just forming a surface layer. So it's not actually solidifying with whatever substrate you're applying it to. Got it. And so mineral paint and clay paint, it's incredible. It really, there's so many pros about it. So one of the biggest things is that it is hydroscop it. So it will absorb moisture. So if you paint your bathroom with clay paint or mineral paint, it will absorb the water and then release it later. When it's like, huh, the temperature change, I need to make this less humid or more humid. It will also help with sound absorption. So your next studio, if you ever want to use more natural materials, mineral paint or plaster or clay is incredible because it helps with a

52:20sound attenuation. And then it also is naturally antimicrobial. There's so many benefits. It's beautiful. It's got some mica in it sometimes. So it will shimmer in ways that latex paint is just dull and flat. So it actually feels diverse. It feels like you're looking at something that changes. Like art. Exactly. Exactly. And you can interface with this immediately. So unlike my story that I shared earlier, when I was interfacing with the acrylic paint, I mean, I had headache, you know, you, there's no problem with this. That's amazing. It's really amazing. What is your opinion because I've seen this trend and some people who are more wellness oriented share about this lime washing. Yeah. So it's very, it's mineral paint. Okay. Cine. It's essentially the application. Oh, okay. Yeah. So it's using lime, but it's really how you're applying it with the brushstrokes. Got it. Yeah. Okay. But it is using some sort of mineral clay based paint. Totally. And it's awesome.

53:21Okay. Yes. Okay. That's good. No. Yep. It's just how you're applying it. Okay. Yeah. I've got a, I've got a healthy materials headingsoo over here. Let's keep going. That term was going by David Arkin. There's another natural building architect. Okay. So this is, I wanted to show you this is linseed oil finish. Okay. And I want you to feel it. So what do you notice about the finish? I mean, it feels natural. It feels like you can actually like feel the grooves in the wood. What else do I notice? It's closing his eyes. Oh, yeah. I gotta like really get a feel for what I'm feeling. I mean, I'm noticing that I like feel the different like textures of the grain of the wood. I'm not feeling like a, like it doesn't feel like a basketball court. You know what I mean? You're not feeling a coating. And this is, yeah, you're not feeling the coating at all. So this is literally a finished piece of wood right here. Yeah. Well, so that's wood that was then finished with a linseed oil. Yeah. So it's finished. It is. Yeah. That's amazing. That's amazing. That's amazing. Right. Yeah. So linseed oil is awesome. You can use it for wood floors. Right for cabinets. So if you have cabinetry finish it with a linseed oil, instead of coating it

54:26with something that is not vapor permeable or breathable. So those two terms can kind of get swapped in the health. How important are minerals when it comes to how our body actually functions on a day to day basis. And how do we even begin approaching mineral sufficiency in the modern world? And our mineral supplements really the best approach to take when it comes to remineralizing. I recently sat down with Caroline Allen, the CEO and co-founder of Beam Minerals. For a conversation about the importance of proper mineralization and the role that humic and full Vic mineral complexes play in supporting overall health. Caroline has spent years studying minerals in human health and how modern food production, agricultural practices and lifestyle factors have influenced mineral intake over time. Beam minerals was created to provide a concentrated source of plant-based humic and full Vic mineral complexes designed to support the body's natural functions. I'd love for you to hear from Caroline so she can share about beam minerals and why humic and full Vic mineral complexes are so vitally important for our health. Here's a clip from that episode.

55:30The ratio of minerals that you need in your cells is the same as the ratio that are needed in a tree, in a little plant, in a cow, at a cellular level we all work the same. I met my business partner Dan Howard and he introduced me to these plant-based minerals. We need to bring these humic and full Vic molecules to the world because this is how we reconnect humanity with Earth. When they're in your body they enhance so many things. They're meant to be in your body. So if you're interested in checking out Beam Minerals just head over to beamminerals.com and use code TWF20 at checkout for 20% off your order or just head to the show notes. And if you'd like to go a little bit deeper on beam minerals, humic and full Vic mineral complexes and the importance that they play in our health and all the things related to that check out episode 246 of the Way Forward Podcast where I had the chance to sit down with Caroline. What about staining, though, because I could see where people with kids they're a little bit worried of that like picking up stains

56:33much easier than wood that's finished in the traditional way. Yeah, okay. So linseed oil is incredible because it is actually naturally water repellent. Oh, yeah. So you could put water on there and it'll start to beat up. Okay, that's cool. That's really cool. These wax is another great option to Alec like if you wanted to refinish cabinets or flooring. Yeah. These wax then there's the Danish lie which is the soap finish. There's all these these you know historic techniques that we just don't use anymore. Oh yeah. I know because it's we've been kind of convinced that plastic is our best friend. I mean, it's been this whole agenda. Totally. Have you ever looked up the map of synthetic? No, what's that? Oh my gosh. You'll have to put this in your show notes in 1950s. The 1950s, Fortune magazine came out with this map called map of synthetic. It's basically a map of the the world but all the different countries are like cellulose and lyosel like different plastic names. Yeah. And they are trying to convince people that plastic is going to change the world. And it has,

57:34it has changed the world. And I'm not saying that all plastic is bad because there's incredible technology that we use to help with water management or homes but plastic is in everything. And that's the difference with like green building and then truly building in coherence with nature. That's the difference with building biology. So green building and energy efficiency is going to say, okay, like we're going to recycle the plastic. We're going to put it back in our homes. And then building biology is like, um, but like plastic was never good for us. Yeah. So why are we recycling it back to our homes? So there's a little bit of a difference there. I want to get to building biology to actually after that. Yeah, healthy materials. You want to pet some more things. I was like to pet some more things. Yeah. All right, here you can pet this. What is this? So this is this is k-pop fiber. Okay. This would be a great alternative swap for pillow stuffing.

58:34Oh, okay. What is this made of? So this comes from the k-pop trees. These are these. This is from a tree. This is from a tree from a nut pod. What? Whoa, you could tell this would be super comfortable to lay on too. Or like is a mattress topper or just a mattress topper. Hello, seat cushion. What makes this different than cotton in terms of its like structure? Obviously, it's a different plan. This is more buoyant. Okay. They actually used to use k-pop fiber in the military's life jackets. Interesting. And then they started putting them in everyday life jackets because it's so it's so floaty. Yeah. Okay. But this would be a great alternative instead of the synthetic foams, instead of you know, typically like chemical filled. I love that. I know it's almost feels like a type of fur in a way too. So here's the thing too. Like when you think about furniture, there's so many components in it that are affecting the air quality. Just us sitting down on a

59:38chair is actually putting out particular matter into the air that we're breathing. And then who becomes the filter in our homes? We do. We are the filter unfortunately. And so that's why it's really important to think about everything that comes into your home, treat your front door like a filter. Yeah. Do you want to breathe it? Could you eat it? Like can you put it next to your baby? If the answer is no, then don't bring it in. Right. Yeah. So tough. What is your opinion just because this is in my home and it's in a lot of modern homes now on vinyl flooring. Yeah. Is it toxic too? Pretty bad. Well, what do you think vinyl flooring is plastic? It's plastic. Yeah. Yeah. And so there's the concern of of microplastics, but the bigger concern is the off-gassing. Yeah. It's the off-gassing from the glues, which is not great, but but that's okay. Like here's the thing. Like we don't know what we don't know. Of course. And what's cool about this is I think we've all been on this journey in the holistic world where we learn about Big Pharma, we learn about Big Food,

1:00:41and then you learn about Big Carpet, right? And then you go, oh my gosh, like my whole life is a lie. It's got to relearn everything. This world is overwhelming for people because it's not been a subject that's been addressed really. And it's in it's everywhere. And it's everything. It's where we sleep on a day-to-day basis, where we live, it's where we raise a family. It's like, yeah. That's why I asked that question regarding the redeeming qualities. And I understand we're going to get into some more swaps too, but it's like without the swaps, it's like it's hard to come to a peaceful position within yourself when you learn about the amount of toxicity that is in modern homes. And that's where I really appreciate that I do a lot of other things in order to counteract the negative effects of that, like the way that we eat, how much time we spend outside, et cetera, et cetera. And it's like the deeper understanding that there's awareness of a thing versus perpetual fear associated with a thing. And understanding that the body is incredibly resilient.

1:01:43So it's understanding that we need to be aware of these things and we need to make a push in order to change things, but we don't need to be so fearful of these things. It's a both sort of situation. And everyone's on a different journey with it because I remember when I was really sick, I was afraid of a lot of things, Alec, but I do think that that made everything much worse. Yeah. And so now I'm not afraid. And so I'm able to, like you said, interface with things and not be worried that I can't unplug things to cut down an electrical pollution. I can't remove things. And, but you're right, it really is a sense of knowing that you're safe and that you can handle these things, but it is, it can be, it can be one of those things where it's like, oh, no, like our home is toxic to. No. And so I don't want to add to that noise. I truly am wanting people to recognize that I'm just wanting people to see that they can start to connect their built environment back to nature with their next simple choice. And so the next house,

1:02:47instead of LVP, like what would it look like to choose cork instead? Right. You know, now that you know these things, like we don't know what we don't know. And as Maya Angelou says, once you know better, you do better. And it can be a little scary, it can be a little overwhelming, especially since it's so many pieces of the pie that make up the home. But we all went through that, learning about food. I know. Yeah. It's just another subject. Yep, it is. But again, it's like a subject that not is not enough people are talking about in my opinion. So I'm very grateful for you. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. I keep taking us off the rails. Let me show you the core. So what were this before? So you can use cork in a lot of different applications. You can use it as you can put on the walls in your studio because it helps absorb sound. Yeah. It can attenuate sound. You can use it for flooring tiles. So instead of LVP, you could choose cork. Yep. So people use cork for flooring too. They've been using cork actually for a long time. It was very popular in the 70s. Really? Yeah. And it's beautiful. There's so many cool options you can do with cork.

1:03:52And it is. Can you make like a faux wood sort of look on cork? I mean, you can write it like planks just like this. You can do squares. Yeah. There's tons of different applications for it. But the cork tree isn't incredibly sustainable. So I think let's see, every cork tree can live up to 250 years and it can get harvested about 25 times. So and they simply will just cut the bark off the cork tree and make the product. So the tree doesn't die. It gets to keep producing a product which is super cool. And a big thing about building biology is considering the entire life cycle analysis. Not just thinking, what do I need? It's like, well, let's think about who and what is giving us the product. Right. And let's think about how we're replenishing the product. Yeah. Not just taking, taking, taking for mind, mind, mind. Yeah. Getting out of the consumerism mindset and getting into like understanding the interdependence that we are existing with nature and all right. So this one, what is this? That, well, any guesses? This is fun.

1:04:59Sometimes the phone might have no idea. Yeah. You got it. For a mattress or for a couch cushion or something like that. What is this? It's natural latex rubber that comes from the rubber tree. And it's simply attached like maple syrup. That's how they obtain rubber. Natural latex. Yeah. And it's incredible. This has no formaldehyde. This is very low. Any input. No pesticides. A lot of our cushions are really soaked with neutral, right? Yeah. You know, it doesn't smell. It's just pretty neutral. Yeah. So instead of choosing something that has a lot of chemicals in it, you, there's options. Like these are options that are on the table now. People just need to know that they exist. Is it hard to process this? Is it, it would be hard to do this at scale? What do you mean? Like how ubiquitous are the trees that produce this? Well, they're they're pretty much everywhere.

1:06:01Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So it wouldn't really be that hard for people to transition. So then my question is, how many, well, let's, let's get to the other things that you have first. And then I'll ask the the questions that I have related to these things. I'm going to toss it back to you. Good catch. Absolutely. Yep. Okay. So this is just natural pigments. Okay. Now there are 10,000 synthetic dyes that are used in home furnishings and the building world. And what's used is, most often is called azo dyes. Now when I did some of my bio field testing with my natural pathic doctor, she saw that I tested high in azo styes. Now that could come from clothing. That could come from a poultry that we sit on that could come from our bedding. But we really need to realize that dyes are pretty significant cause, cause of things in our life. They've even done a study where they weren't able to filter the synthetic dyes coming into our water systems. They can't filter it

1:07:03out. Whoa. Yeah. And there's a lot of leftover water dye in the water still when they are dyeing products. So we really want to be aware of finding azo free dyes in our in our home furnishings, our fabrics, and our clothes. Okay. So this is a really cool product. This is actually got stopped at the airport for this. Yeah. I was like, Oh, no. Was it the paint? Was it the pigments? No, it was the hint wood. Only because it showed up as like a dark block in TSA. And I was like, why did you stop me? They're like, we didn't know what that dark square was. That's funny. That just shows how dense this product is. Whoa. Yeah. It is super dense. So they've heard so many good things about building with him. Yeah. So the owner of this company has such a sustainable mindset where he can grow a hint plant and in four months, he can essentially take that plant and turn it into a building material that is actually more dense than a cherry tree. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is already like super. I mean, I literally got stopped at TSA because that's how this is.

1:08:07This is heavier than you think it would be when you're just looking at it. Yeah, but you can use that for flooring applications. I've seen really cool tables made out of that. Yeah. And again, it looks cool too. Yeah. It's super cool. It's beautiful. Is this just the natural finish of the hemp block? It's hemp that's been crushed and mixed with a soy protein. Okay. Interesting. A soy protein binder. And I've heard that hemp is really fire resistant as well. Is that true? Yes. Yes. It is. And it is also resistant to termites. So then here is hemp insulation. What is your opinion on wool insulation? Yeah. I love it. Okay. I love it. I love it. I will mineral wool, hemp wool. Oh, wow. This is hemp insulation. It's so interesting how many different applications there are for hemp? Like both. It's incredible. Clothing and hats too. Clothing hats. Healing. I interviewed Danny Fontaine who uses hemp for healing a variety of things. Gosh. That's so cool. Well, so a good

1:09:11swap for insulation. So sometimes people say, oh, well, it's more expensive. And yes, right now, it is more expensive insulation, which we can talk about. I'd like to later talk about price. Yeah. Because that's a big question that comes up. Okay. But so for example, that's that's hemp insulation, which is probably on the top tier of price right now until it becomes more mainstream. But the simple swap would be to choose mineral wool insulation, which is volcanic ash slag. Okay. Essentially, that's where we're using in our renovation, by the way. So if you want to see what we're doing and what we're swapping for, go find me on Instagram. Are you documenting the process? Yeah. We're documenting it. Epic. Yeah. We bought this 1942 cottage. Is that your house holistic's Instagram? Yes. Okay. So we'll have that in the show now. Yep. And I'm just walking through the entire process. What I'm doing with EMF, what we're doing with materials, what we're doing with the trades, things that I'm doing and not doing. And it's been really, really fun to

1:10:13document. But so anyway, we're using mineral wool insulation. So okay, mineral insulation is not that much more. I mean, it is a little bit more than fiberglass bats, but like maybe 50 cents to 80 cents more. So you know, a little under maybe. Yeah. 50 cents per what though. I would say it's less than double. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. But what about relative to the spray foam though? Well, spray foam, I would never, I wouldn't recommend it. No, I know that. That is very affordable. I know that. I'm of course not. I'm saying that like, what is the price relative to a spray foam? It's comparable to anything else that like fiberglass. Yeah. So, but it's, it's easy to use and it, they claim that it helps with energy efficiency because really, truly, if you think about it, they couldn't get into all those cracks with bats. Yeah. So it makes sense. But that really does though. Like, yeah, the reality, I know it's incredibly toxic, but on the energy efficiency side. And that's where like we can speculate

1:11:17all day on the intention behind things. Of course, I believe in many cases, there is a legitimate nefarious agenda behind things. But I also think that people, that that contractors that big multinational corporations in a variety of industries have picked things that save them money over things that actually help us become healthy and whole. And when I go up into my attic, though, that is literally just saturated with spray foam. It's wild like, because I'm standing in my garage. It's like fucking a hundred and five degrees outside in the summer in Texas. My garage is horribly hot. Feels like a sauna. Go up into the attic and it's perfectly cool. Yeah. It does work. It does work on that. And, but I know it's toxic too. And the thing is, is like, their builders, as a designer, I didn't know that I was specifying materials that could potentially harm somebody. You know, so nobody is intentionally wanting to do that. No. Like, the builders are truly

1:12:18wanting to give people a good product production builders. But it's not it's, you know, most people don't know that there is these things aren't good for us. And so one of the problems with spray foam is that if there was ever a roof leak or if there was ever any sort of water damage and one of the big components about building biology is creating a home that mitigates potential for water intrusion that could then lead to mold that could then break down your other building materials. We want to prevent that from the get go, right? In the same way that we look at ourselves holistically with what we're eating and wearing, I'm looking at the home holistically. So we want to consider all the parts to make it a solid structure. But with spray foam, you wouldn't really know if there's a leak because of the water the moisture can get trapped because it's not able to move out. And when you look at our historic building stock, if there was typically a leak, the moisture in the

1:13:18vapor would be able to move out of the wall assembly real easily. So it's not, it's not able to do that. Now it's trapping it in. It's trapping it in, which is why we are having a phenomenon of building failures because we are using materials to get better energy emissions to tighten everything up. But we're not really realizing, oh my gosh, we're not able to have homes that are able to skirt around some of the issues that can come from everyday home ownership or where you live. You want to build in case there's a water leak. There's probably going to be a water leak. Right. You just have to assume that in the same way, we have to assume we might get sick in the future. That's normal. It's not bad. It's just normal. So how resilient are we leading up to that in order to make sure we're able to maintain and move through that easily? Yeah. Exactly. So I have a question related to electricity because obviously you're not able to bring like electrical rods or whatever swap you could bring sitting on my couch. But yeah, what is your

1:14:21opinion on like alternative approaches to that swaps to that? Because I know that's a big problem as well. Yeah, it's a great question. So in our house that we're doing, we are what I did, because you brought this up earlier with a smart meter. So this is a house that was already built, right? So you're renovating. We're renovating. We're taking it down to the studs. It's down to the studs. We've already moved through plumbing and electrical right now. Copper plumbing. Chaching. I know a little bit. Okay. Chaching. Yes, I would have loved to do copper. But but the budget is a real thing. Oh, your thing, Chaching. On the money, you're saying too much. That was saying I thought you're like on the money. You got it. You went too much money. I felt so good. I was like, wow, yeah, I got true. Chaching. That's what you wanted to do, though. I thought this chaching was like, you got it. Yes. You did it, though. Yes. You did it. That's what you've been a different chaching. Okay. Okay. We didn't anticipate having to put on a new

1:15:24roof and new roof decking. We weren't anticipating on replacing the plumbing. Whoa, new roof. Why? And new roof decking. Well, there were multiple leaks in this house. Oh, okay. I can show you to a mold problem in the home. Okay. So it wasn't necessarily that the plumbing itself was too expensive. It's that relative to the other things you had to do. That became too expensive. Okay. So a budget, it doesn't matter if you have a budget, you know, you're building a tiny home or you're doing your budget or you're building a 11,000 square foot home. Everybody has a budget. That's a realistic thing for sure. So yeah, so that was not going to work because we needed all the other things. But what was really important to me was removing the smart meter off the home. Yeah. That where we live, which where we live, they don't allow an analog swap out. Most places do still. Like you can call your power company and somebody can come in and swap your smart meter. I'm freaking tried that when they were. Do they not allow that here? They said they didn't know how they were like, we don't know how to do that. We have someone to ask that. And I'm like,

1:16:26yeah, to keep calling. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I need to press. I need to keep pressing the issue till you speak with whoever is in charge of, I guess it would be one of the code guys that could come in the head department. So yeah. And they they've just aren't going to give you hard time for it because it because they then have to send somebody out once a month to read the meter. And it usually costs you a fee. Yeah. Which is fine. We're fine. Right. Also, I've heard with smart meters that they don't even they're not even tapping into your individual meter. They're doing some sort of thing where they do an average of the homes in an area and then just assume that that's how much electricity you're using in charge of you for that. I don't know if you've seen that before. I haven't seen people post that on social media. I haven't. Which is why I like that. True. Yeah. It's sketchy. And then this individual ended up calling their their energy company and calling them on it and then the energy company went back retroactively and looked at their individual meter and found that what they were saying was true.

1:17:26So scary. Yeah. Well, it is sketchy and I wanted the meter off the house. Yeah. So they don't have a analog swap out meter. So you can remove the meter and put it on a pedestal. In our case, there happened to be a shed right behind the house. And it was the city's idea, which was brilliant. They pulled up our house on aerial view. And so they were able to see. And they in the city inspector said, Oh, well, why don't you just put the meter on the back shed as your pedestal? I said, You are on my team. I like it. That's good. So we removed it off the kitchen, which is a big win. And then the other aspect was we hardware are home right now. So hardwiring the home for Ethernet for Ethernet. Yeah. Right now we have a pile of courts everywhere. Ryan loves it. Super organized. So we're, you know, we're now going to be putting it into the stud walls because we've taken it down to the studs. Yeah. And then my friend Mike with Hazel Solutions is going to come help me make sure it's run properly. And then I also want to do kill switches on the two bedrooms

1:18:32we have to be able to turn off the electricity to that room. Right. Yeah. That's a big one. It's tough because the only thing we have is the panel in our garage, which is fine. You can do that. You will not wear the panel out if you do that every day. Really? No. Okay. I've heard otherwise that you would have to. Okay. Okay. So that's good enough. So we can do that then. Yeah. You can, you can simply just turn it off every day. Okay. Okay. That's good to know. With respect to electricity other than like the Wi-Fi piece of things and having the kill switch is what do modern homes typically get wrong? Because they're following the safety standards, but like why is so much dirty electricity being produced? Is that just a natural consequence of just having that much electricity running through the walls and the floors? Yeah. Actually, I mean, what's interesting is with this house, we were going to install a electric tankless water heater because I didn't want gas run to the house. Okay. Because I hope to one day when we're not living there, I'd like somebody that's environmentally sensitive

1:19:36to live there and feel good. Okay. So you went away from gas even like on your stove and everything like that. Yeah. And that's a personal choice. And I'm not saying that's the right choice. Okay. A lot of this, Alex, just so you know, is not prescriptive. Yeah. Okay. Because we're so unique, because we're so individual, you might thrive with cork flooring and I might not. Right. Because I may be sensitive to something about that. Totally. So gas for a electric is a big conversation in the healthy home space. And so I just made an active choice. I don't want to do any gas. All right. Which is fine. But then the concern with the EMF from the electric, especially with the appliances, it's just it's a it's a give or take. It's just part of the space. Yeah. There's no right or wrong necessarily. So I chose to remove all the gas. However, the amperage to this house is only 200 amps because it's an older home. And so the electrician and the plumber, they called us this morning actually and said, Hey, like your electric tankless water heater isn't going to pull enough amps. It's actually going to, you know, cut a breaker if you turn on this and turn on that. And I like,

1:20:40well, why don't you do gas? I'm like, well, it's, you know, it's kind of a little bit too late for us to do that. And they're not always going to understand why you want to do something either. So but that's thing. Our homes are pulling so much amperage. And so there's so many things that are plugged in now. When we gutted this house, there were very few outlets. There were very few. There was only a ceiling light. There's no recess cans everywhere. Right. So all of that is pulling amperage and all of that is more wires in your home that is producing potentially more wiring errors as well. So there's so much more input that's coming into our homes. That makes sense. I mean, we used to use gas lanterns. Right. There's there's so much less back then. So on the lighting side of things, what is what is the solution? Obviously like in-can-dessence to think, what are you going beyond that in any sort of way? No, you're teaching. Not you're correct this time. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You're good. I mean, in-can-dessence, halogen bulbs, people

1:21:40like halogen, I, I, I, I, state personally try to stay with from LEDs. And like in our house, I'm not doing any recess cans. I just want to center light and some sconces. Cool. Because I, I think, why were you going for what vibe? Yeah. Given that the home's older too. Yeah. I think for naturally. Yeah. I like to honor whatever the year the home is instead of trying to push something on a home that it isn't. Yeah, me sense. So this is 1942. So I'm going to go for your grandma's Christmas morning. Is Ryan going to start talking like the 1940s like baseball commentators? I mean, we're old souls. We probably will start do. I mean, we already, I hope you do. We already do so many old people things. I love that. I love that so much. So raw optics came out with a light bulb that has no flicker that can change color based on the appropriate circadian biology needs at that

1:22:41time. We have that on our pendants above our island, our kitchen. We really like that. I know you're mentioning off camera though that you haven't done anything on on Lumios, which is raw optics, brands. For anyone who's interested in those, those will be in the show notes. I personally highly recommend them. And with that being said, you've shared that you, your friends have tested some of the other brands who've also came out with circadian friendly light bulbs. And there are some problems with them with respect to EMF. Yeah. It's kind of like dimmer switches because it's always hot. It's always on waiting command. It's kind of like our phones with Siri. Yeah. So it's kind of like that with a light bulb. So I'd be curious to get this light bulb in some of my very EMF nerdy friends who love testing all that stuff. Yeah. But that would be really interesting to do. But yeah, just the concern when you're switching it, you're toggling it back to the next level. It's essentially kind of waiting command and it can produce higher levels of dirty electricity. Okay. But yeah, I mean, I think with dimmers, we chose not to do dimmers on this renovation we're doing because of that same

1:23:46problem. It's always a waiting command. So it's always on. It's always hot. And so I told my electrician like we are doing an analog house. You haven't done a house like this ever because you're 30. But like we don't want any cans. We don't want any dimmers. Yes, we are running ethernet. I mean, it's a dumb house, but it's going to be the smartest one on the block. I remember when in our previous house, they did hardwire it for ethernet. Yeah. But the internet company didn't know what we meant. We were like, we don't want a router. We just want ethernet and they're like, I don't know what that means. Like it is wild to me that they don't even know what that means. Like what? That's what you do. Like I know what that means. I know. It's so strange to me. But you're mentioning something about the lighting in your house. And it's funny. I do a little bit of like health coaching on the side. And this this lady that I work with was struggling to get pregnant for some time for about a year was actually struggling to get pregnant. And just by tweaking a few things about her light environment and then also working on some some mindset related stuff. She had some some just some

1:24:52unhealthy internal dialogue related to working out and stuff like that that we that we worked on. But one of the big pieces that we worked on was her light environment. And from from my understanding what I've gathered is that human beings were only exposed to three sources of light at night. And that was stars moonlight sometimes and fire. Those were the only three things that we were exposed to. So after the sun goes down, it is biologically appropriate to only have lights on that are eye level and only if they're warm colors mimicking fire or something like that. Is that kind of how you're designing your spaces now? Totally. And I help clients understand that. You know, so you have I have to educate them on circadian rhythm friendly lighting as well because it's kind of if people aren't used to it, they don't really know. So it's such a big piece too because like aside from that mindset thing, this is the only thing we changed with this client of mine. And she got pregnant within six to eight weeks, which is like incredible. No, literally was struggling to get pregnant for a

1:25:53year. The mindset the mindset piece was huge. It was huge or her perception. But then it's literally just changing her light environment. So I think especially for women, I'm not saying exclusively for women, but especially for women because your hormonal cycles are a little bit more fluctuating on a more regular basis than men. Having the appropriate light signaling is so important for hormonal production. And with so many people, even in the holistic health space, recommend like or completely miss that, let's say. Yeah. And a little like a little hack is just to create the lighting in your interior environment to mimic the sun's pattern. So you start off with the ceiling lights in the morning, you turn that off come afternoon, you switch to your, do your sconces and have wall washing. And then you just go to lamps like an evening or very few. I mean, our house is pretty dark at night or a mix of red light, but it's really going to totally interrupt somebody circadian rhythm. If they have a blue light LED ceiling fixture above their head when they're trying to get ready to sleep,

1:26:57I think that's becoming such a common thing that people are realizing that. But at the same time, modern builders now, they're not even just putting cans in where you can change out the light bulb yourself. At least around here in central Texas, so many different friends of ours who have some of this newer construction, there are cans that are just like fixed, meaning that there's a permanent sort of LED light bulb in there that you can't change out. I mean, that's a huge problem. We never turn our ceiling lights on literally. Yeah, I know. And so if you're in the process of renovating or building for anyone listening, just nicks cans all together, that's kind of a little hack that I've learned because I think even aesthetically they look like little bugs in the ceiling to me, so they don't look good. No, I don't. And then they also aren't good for us because they are, you can, in some of the LED ones, you can change the Kelvin from whether it's 7,500 and you can take it back down to 2400. So you can change that and some people don't realize they might have cans that are changeable. Yeah, the other piece with light, and I know we brought this up already earlier,

1:27:57is the Windows piece? Is there any swaps that you know for Windows? I'm specifically speaking to Windows now are made to filter out certain bandwidths of UV light and other things like this. And I obviously think that's incredibly problematic. We want to be receiving all the full spectrum of light from the sun. Do you know of anything? Yeah, so there are certain brands that you can kind of customize your glass panes because you can get your glass panes more tinted. You can block out more light less light. So if you're working with a certain window company, you can request like, hey, I want simple glass. I want dumb glass. Show me the simplest option you have. So you can tweak the actual glass panes. Now I am really big on historic preservation. I think there's so much ancient wisdom there, so much ancient knowledge. And I know this isn't for everyone, but Ryan and I Ryan's really excited about this. Not really, but I'm wanting to restore our historic windows.

1:29:00And that's going to, that's because it's literally just a pane of glass. Yeah. And so like I mentioned earlier, I mean, you're able to get the spectrums coming in through a simple pane of glass. And that's how it was back in the day without having to put all of this extra layer in this tent. Because it's it's hugely problematic. You think you're getting the sunlight in the morning, but you're you're actually not. You're not. So I have this bracelet that's called a UV sense. I think that's what it's called. It's made by a dear friend of mine, Danny Hamilton. Yeah, I heard of that. Yeah, it's cool. It shows you whether you're being exposed to a UVA and UVB. And when I'm inside, it very faintly lights up. So a little bit filtering through, but very, you know, a very small amount relative to what should be. So you essentially have to open your windows. Yep. You essentially have to open your windows and it's hot as hell in Texas. So, but on that note, related to just like temperature, heat, moisture, I'd just love to hear your thoughts on how modern building design and the materials that are used is not conducive to healthy environment

1:30:07in the context of mold being built up. And I want to preface this by saying, my podcast episode was act bush and in a few other episodes that I've done, I add some context to it's not necessarily mold that is the problem. It's just that mold is an aggressive bioremediator. And in an environment where there's stagnant airflow and sort of water sitting and pulling up in places, mold is going to present itself to bioremediate that situation. And unfortunately, because our homes are basically consumed, swimming in all these toxic substances through the bioremediation process, it'll leach those chemicals and the environment and those are ultimately what's causing people's issues because same type of mold, you could come across that out nature in Washington state and other human environments and you're not going to have any problems with it. It's the context of what the mold is bioremediating that is the problem. But again, in modern environments, mold itself is indicative of like, okay, there could be some health implications to this

1:31:11situation. So, I just love to hear your thoughts on that and mold mitigation. I'm sure that'll lead us into building biology as well. Yeah, so mold is actually so cool showing itself in our modern build environment right now. And I don't mean cool as in the fact that people are feeling like they're sick from it. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying the fact that it is showing up in a way that I would say even talking to builders that have been building for a long time that don't know about the stuff. They're like, yeah, like where did all this mold talk come from in home environments? Interesting. What's going on? This is weird. I mean, mold is really a way shower for us right now. It is showing us that something is wrong with how we are building homes. And it's interesting because it's visible. So we see it and therefore we are scared of it because we see it. You know, we don't see VOCs. We don't see from out ahead. We don't see fire retardants. Those are certainly there. But we see mold and that's fascinating to me.

1:32:14As the mainstream system continues to tighten its grips on average men and women with inflation running rampant and cost of living skyrocketing, it's becoming increasingly challenging for most people to make ends meet and to really maintain and expand financial abundance. And that's where I think it's incredibly important that we adopt and really start looking into alternative financial strategies, alternative ways to structure. And then some of these technologies that exist that help us expand and grow outside of these very extractive, exploitative mainstream systems. So I'm sitting here with my dear friend Otto Gomes from crypto-freedom academy who would like to share a little bit about crypto-freedom academy and all of its offerings and what he teaches inside the academy. Yeah, the academy, the main reason I created it is to create community. And I think that's the most important thing right now. You know, the currency of the future is relationships and the technologies that we have are only as good as those relationships. And so any academy I try to instill in every one a sense of empowerment to know their current relationship

1:33:15to the energy of exchange so that we can attract more of the medium. I hope you guys utilize the technologies that are available to us like blockchain, trust and contract law and how to do that privately. So if you're interested in learning more about crypto-freedom academy and all the things that Otto offers and his depth and wealth of knowledge on the topic of crypto and financial structuring and passive income, check out episode 241 of the WayFord podcast with Otto or just head to the WayFord.com and that's the way fwrd.com, forward slash crypto-freedom or just head to the show notes and you'll find the link there. That's such an interesting thing that you're pointing to like it really is because a subset of the holistic health space is so obsessed with like mold in my home is causing illness and it's like are you not considering this whole host of other things and the possibility that mold is just the solution to those problems, you know. Well let me juxtapose that. One day, two days ago when I said I walked into my client's home that was painted with

1:34:18acrylic latex paint and I had a stomach ache and a migraine an hour after I'm going into antique stores. There's clearly mold on the wall. I'm not getting that same reaction. So I would say that there are so many hidden toxins and chemicals that are so much worse for us, but we don't see them in the same way we don't see electromagnetic radiation, we don't see it. So it's not as easy to blame, but we know mold is pliomorphically breaking down what doesn't serve it, right? So it's breaking down materials that are no longer serving it and it's irritated, it wants to get out, it wants to move, it wants to breathe, it wants to grow, it can't, it's frustrated. So I sympathize with molding away because it's trying to grow, but I really, really believe it's a way shower for us right now. And I think we are reaching a climax point with mold in the built environment, even in the holistic health space to show us a new way forward. So I'm going to stay in my lane now like and I'm not going to speak to like, there's mold,

1:35:18gauze, illness or disease, that's on my lane, okay? But my lane is to show people a new way to build, yeah, to show people new construction methods, to show people new materials that are actually old materials. We've just forgotten our way. And so we need to get back on the path and relearn traditional building methods, preservation methods and to and we can merge new technology with it as needed. Absolutely, I think it's a blend, but it is not the villain in the sense that the community, the health community, especially is making it. And I'm only speaking about that from the stance of it is revealing to us what we have gotten wrong. 100%. So well said, mic drop moment on that one, that was good. That was great. Building biology, that appropriate. Yeah, let's talk about building biology. Cool. So building biology, it hails from Germany. And I will say with building biology, if you love permaculture, if you love regenerative agriculture, if you love biology on the tree,

1:36:25and you love German new medicine, I think you're going to love building biology. Okay. Sounds like I love all those things. Because the heart of building biology is going back to nature in our built environment. And it's taking cues from nature. It's learning from nature to know how to do better building methods and techniques. And there's no other system in the world that I know of that teaches this better than building biology. So it actually, it comes from Germany in the 1960s. People were getting really sick from their newly built government housing. And this is these were homes that were made with synthetic materials, petroleum based chemicals. And this was the first time that humans were living in structures like this ever. And people were like, what's wrong? Why aren't people getting sick? Like this really concerned a group of people. So some doctors, some building industry professionals basically gathered together to study what was going on. And

1:37:30that is how building biology was formed because they studied this and created solutions. Well, instead of doing that, we probably should do this because people weren't sick before they started living in these petroleum based synthetic housing units. And so the grassroots of building biology is so cool because it came from a group of people that were concerned and then wanted to find solutions at the end of the day to fix the modern problems. And so then in 1987, the very precise, as you know, German coursework, very detailed. Our German friends are. I'm not coming on that real quick just because it's fresh on my mind. I agree. Yeah. But what the hell did you Germans do with the Frankfurt Airport? It is the worst airport in the world. It is so inefficient. I've always shared on your behalf how efficient Germans are. How incredible they are in precision. Okay. I get off my plane. This is coming back home from Serbia. So I had a layover in Frankfurt. I get off my plane. There's a bus there to pick us up, which is fine. There's not a jet bridge. Okay. That's totally fine. I understand I had that

1:38:34phenomenon on other airports. So we get on the bus. That takes forever to finally get us to the terminal, right? Going into the terminal, we are told that our next gate is Z50 or whatever it is, right? And there is no signage on that Z50 has this secondary check and you have to get on another bus to even go to Z50. So we're like, oh, we have like an hour for a teller next flight. Let's go get some food and we're like, oh, no, maybe we should go check first. There's no signage. There's nothing that says like, hey, if you're going to this gate, you have to get on another bus to get there. We finally go check. There's this long ass line. We're like, oh, my God, we get on again on another bus now. And we're like, okay, we get on the bus. And then when we get there, there's a bunch of people waiting in line to go through their Europe now has this EES system, which is like the biometrics thumb prints and stuff like that. There's no one that tells us that, hey, if you're going to these specific Z gates, you don't have to do that. So we just start waiting in line. We're like, fuck, why I thought I was going to do this biometric stuff. Serbia doesn't do it. And then finally, we hear someone saying, yeah, I asked someone and they said,

1:39:38you don't have to do it if you're going to those gates. But no one was saying that. Like, there's no one there like waving their hand like, hey, if you're going to these gates. So we've been waiting in line for no reason. We finally get out of line, go to the gate, go through, don't have to be a ESS. That's what it felt like. I'm with my son. He's tired. He had to wake up at like one 15 the morning earlier that day. Anyway, finally get to our gate. And we do have to do a passport check, which they didn't advertise either. Do a passport check before getting to these 10 gates. And then we get on another bus to finally go to our plane just like it's ridiculous. Anyway, sorry. That was a complete tangent. I agree. Except for the Frankfurt Airport, they messed that one up. Yeah, people take notes. Take notes. We have a airport. We love Germany. I do love Germany. I live there for some time. So I do love Germany. You live there. I haven't visited it yet, but I would love to go. Germany is cool. Germany is super cool. I lived near Düsseldorf in Kallon. It was awesome. When you were in the military, right? Yeah, but I was playing handball. So I wasn't okay. Yeah. So it's a weird thing because most people that are in the military are obviously like stationed

1:40:41at the American bases that are there. That wasn't my experience. I was living amongst German people in a small town in Germany called Dormagan and just playing handball. That was my job. This rad. That's so cool. Yeah, that's cool. You've had to know about Billy and Volga at the time. I know. To team. I know. To team. Okay, so 1987, the founder of the United States Building Biology Helmet Sea, he had this really profound moment. He was an architect and resident engineer in North Africa in the 80s. And he noticed that the locals were also had been given produced homes by the government to live in. But they had all abandoned those homes because they were made with concrete and they abandoned them to go back to living in tents. Really? And he thought that was really strange. He's like, here, like they've get they were given a free house basically and yet they're going back to their tents and their homes made out of clay and sand. Like, that's really weird. Well, he's an architect. So he was always thinking about materiality and he

1:41:41was always thinking about how materials are moving vapor and water and that sort of thing. And so that really struck him. And so he wanted to learn more about that and learn more about natural materials when it comes to the bill environment. So he found the building biology institute in his hometown. He studied under Dr. Anton Schneider, one of the professors there. And he never went back to his conventional architecture practice when he learned about the 25 principles of building biology. Oh, 25. Yes. He then translated all of the principles, all the coursework and brought it back to the United States in 1987. And he is the founder of the United States Building Biology Institute. And I just think that's really profound that he made a stance. So like, once I once you know this stuff, it's like you cannot go back to doing conventional methods because you know too much. And so I share that same sentiment. You know, so it pains me when I see people know that there are other options out there that that can be price comparable to. But anyway, but there are 25 principles and I

1:42:44brought you a copy. Okay. I'd love to hear them though. You think it's relevant to bring up your early five. Some of them at least. Okay. Yeah. That's a lot. Okay. But you want to read it. Read a few. Okay. Well, so it's divided into different sections. So PDF that we can put in the show notes. Yeah. Of course. Of course. So there's different categories. So the first four principles are site and community design. So that's working with the actual site. It's it's asking the land what it wants to be versus coming in and trying to make it our own. It's it's working with nature in the sense of, okay, well, we want to make sure that our homes are not going on geopathic stress lines. We want to make sure that it's free of human health hazards that could be underground or in the air. They're not by airports. We want to make sure that our homes are in a safe place environmentally. And that that also talks about like where we place our dwellings so that the occupants are free of noise pollution and light pollution. I mean, there's

1:43:46so much that goes into its way beyond just materials. Right. Like that is materials is just one category of all these principles. And then the second one is electromagnetic radiation health. And so building biology is one of the only building philosophies that really addresses this. They were the OGs. Now building science is addressing it and some green building is addressing it. But BBI was the OG of of saying, hey, like we've got to really look at our wall wiring. Yeah. And the radio frequency that's in our homes and do something about it. And we don't want to be building our homes next to high-tension power lines. Like in Europe, there are standards with that. In America, there are no standards. You can't build a new construction home right next to high-tension power lines. We're trying to put one up near our like across some of the counties that were near. And people went absolutely good. Even even even non-holistic people were like absolutely not. This is not going up near here. Yeah. I mean, it has some serious health concerns. And then the next category would be indoor air quality and water quality, which that does address

1:44:50making sure like we need to prepare our buildings if there's any sort of water damage. We need to make sure that we are addressing that. And then ample ventilation. This addresses the building materials and then obviously drinking water, shower water. It's addressing that as well. So building biology, how it differs is we do love and advocate mass wall systems. And mass wall systems are the earthen construction systems. And I think over the years they have recognized that that is not always the most budget friendly or appropriate for a region. So they have learned to make light-frame stick construction as healthy as possible. Oh, wow. That's good. That's good. Yeah. So you don't need to go live in an Adobe home to get a healthy home. All of this can be applied to light-frame stick construction. No problem. On that note though, just from your perspective, not necessarily BBI is perspective or maybe include some of that if it is relevant. Do you think that

1:45:50living in for lack of a better term a box is the best thing for human beings? Like because so many of our modern homes are literally boxy like the room that we're in right now. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, personally, my thoughts, I think we need both. Okay. Yeah, I think we need. I've heard that from a, I interviewed Dan Yella. She's a fung shui expert. Okay. Yeah. And she said the same. Essentially. Well, so I will say, I mean, I, when we go into a, a cob home that is made from hand and it's all curvy walls, there's no rectangular angles. I mean, it feels like you're in a womb. It feels so relaxing and you can breathe and feel calm and regulated. I don't know how much production I'm getting done in that space. That's exactly what she said. Yeah. Like she said, I forget, she used an analogy. She was like, it's like you're on a clock that's forever spinning in year. There's no. I love that structure. I love that. I love that. And

1:46:52and I just from personal like sleeping in a room like that, I love it. I would love to sleep in a round room, a curvilinear room. But then I wonder if we know we need a balance. I can see that because nature has both. Yeah. Nature has both. So I don't know. I don't think it's enough to say we just need one or the other. I'm always a little hesitant when someone's like, oh, we only need this. We only need that. I totally get that. I mean, Chris Winters who I just interviewed recently, he brought up how like the idea that there are no straight lines in nature. If you actually like get down to the microscopic level and look at our supposed straight lines that we've constructed, there's not they're not actually straight lines. There's so much variance. Yeah. The supposed straight lines. I mean, even in the home or renovating, there's not straight lines when we go to put in the mill work on the baseboards. That's not actually straight. It looks straight to our eyes, but we Ryan, we got to make sure that we get the framing all straight because, you know, unless you're installing it, you know, we're going to have to really figure out how to get it straight. So even in straight world, we're not straight. Yeah, exactly.

1:47:55Okay. So okay. So anyway, occupant Wellbeing is the next one. And this one, this one is is talking about indoor air humidity and sound attenuation and keeping a healthy ion balance with hydroskospicity and using solvent materials and finishes that can breathe that that are vapor permeable that don't basically like keep all of that vapor and water from getting just stopped at this point. And then that also talks about using psychology in your space. So that would maybe be bringing biogeometry in as well because biogeometry is all about harmonization. Yeah. Yeah. Are you training that formally? No, I'm not formally training biogeometry, but I fully recommend anybody to collaborate with a biogiometrist and a billion biologist on their project. That's like the dream team throwing a permaculture designer dream team. Yeah. For those who aren't, let's say they don't have the means to do some swaps or as many of the swaps as you would recommend ideally. Is there any building biology practices that that you can implement or or just principles that you

1:48:57can implement to make your home more harmonious? Yes. Okay. Holy so the sleeping area is the most important. Okay. That's where you're spending eight, nine hours a day. So if you just had one room in your home, focus on that. Okay. Go to your bedroom and consider. Okay. Like what synthetic things should I remove? Especially if it's going to be off-cassing all night. Do I need to address the lighting environment? Should I be unplugging lamps next to my bed to not contribute to the electrical pollution? There are so many little things like that. Completely cutting off the breaker to that room. Cut off the breaker. That's what I did when I was really sick. Obviously. Did you notice a difference? Yeah. Well, yeah. I feel like you can't be. Yeah. I wonder if ground can get, I don't know if ground can go through vinyl. But like I'm talking about like being able to like actually ground with your feet. But I know turning off the dirty electricity at the least is going to expose you to the earth's ground a little bit better, I'd imagine. So this book right

1:49:58here. Yeah. Paula has actually done an earth and floor that has been grounded. Whoa. It's incredible. You should you should how does she build it? Well, her earth and floor. Yeah. I think she used sand. Just sand like compressing. Yeah. And maybe had a little straw in it. And a little bit of water. It's concrete pretty problematic. Well, it's not as permeable as maybe some people say. And then there's some problems with fly ash. Okay. Portland cement. So there's some chemical output there. Yeah. And I think it depends on your region. Yeah. Like in the same way that Helmazee realized that it concrete wasn't great in North Africa at that time. Like it doesn't it doesn't just prescriptively work for every context. Yeah. I think context matters a lot. Make sense. Yeah. So um. Try and jump in all over the place. There's so much to talk about. That's the thing. Like this is such a fun topic. And I'm glad you're as nerdy and geeky about it as I am. So

1:50:59this is great. Um, but one of the biggest things that I want to talk about was building biology advocates for passive systems. Okay. And you would love this Alex. So passive mechanical systems. Passive ventilation systems as much as possible. I mean, we still literally open our windows. Like not me. But like our culture used to be a practice of that. Now we rely on all these mechanical ventilation systems. And so we have lessened our relationship with our home. Yeah. Because we're not in partnership with it anymore. Totally. Everything's automated. And we just assume that it's doing its job. Yeah. So when we use mass wall systems, yeah. That is passively heating and cooling for you. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. Because explain that a little bit more because I think I get what you're saying. Cause like the the the in the hot months, big clay wall will keep the environment cool relative to the outside. But then also relative to the cool months, it'll keep it a little bit warmer. Maybe if you have like some sort of minor heat source inside, it's going to keep it warm. Yeah. Exactly. And if you had the right

1:52:02roof overhangs that we're allowing to block. I mean, these are permaculture principles too. If you had the right roof hangs and then the right trees that were able to block the hot sunshine during the day, you're able to kind of moderately temperate what the sun, the solar gain that's coming in. Yeah. And then you have to change up your principles in the winter time too. So it shifts. You're constantly in this relationship with your home, making sure that you are balancing the temperature. But like if you were to have a a a doby home, you could have a radiant stove that that stove would turn on with logs and not turn on, but you would use logs and fire. And it would heat up the whole wall. And so that mass wall is carrying that heat throughout the hole. So it's a passive way of heating and cooling that used to be our normal. What about ventilation those such from just like opening your windows? Yeah. Okay. So part of the historic window conversation, have you ever wondered why there's two sashes? Okay. So those two sashes, the sash of the

1:53:02top would come down to allow hot air to escape at the top. And then that bottom sash would come up to allow cool air in. Okay. That little simple technique of opening the top sash and the bottom sash allowed for passive ventilation. Have you seen any of the window frames that are customary in Europe that are? Yes. The tilts. Yes. Incredible. That they can tilt this way and then also fully open this way. Yes. It's a great solution. It's incredible. I mean, we are. Why don't we have a new one? I know. I know. It's like common place there. It's common place. It's luxury construction here, but it's common place. It's common place there. It's not luxury construction at all. I know. The little apartment that I was living in in Dormog and Germany with two of my teammates. That's what we had in the apartment. And then I've stayed in multiple areas. It's so cool. Yeah, it's so cool. It's so cool. Yeah. Yeah. But it's crazy because you know how like when we look at the health and wellness space and we realize that all of the best things are actually the most affordable, like homeopathics and herbs. A lot of it is free. Yeah. If not very affordable. And

1:54:08those are the best solutions. Thirt, clay, straw, oils. Like these things are actually in, you know, abundance. Yeah. We just need to relearn the methods again. Are there any builders in the US who are actively using these things? Oh my gosh. Tons. Okay. Yes. Tons. Really? Then why is it so hard to find them? Well, it's, it is, it is niche. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is niche. But I think, I think we're here, Alec. Yeah. And we're like about, well, we're going up towards this momentum of the healthy home space. There are so many people realizing this and catching onto this and realizing, oh my gosh, like builders and designers and engineers wanting to create better products. And I mean, I'm part of many communities of, of healthy home building industry professionals. One that I'm a part of is called the healthy building alliance. And it's a bunch of building

1:55:09industry professionals that meet together regularly to talk about what are the alternative systems out there? How can we make our homes more intelligent, but also more aligned with nature? Yeah. There are so many people doing incredible things in this space. I guess it's obviously it's not mainstream, but I do think that like even lows, the big box companies, they're catching on. Really? They're catching on. You're seeing more mineral paint. So I think we're going to slowly start to get there. But it is one thing at a time. So I mean, it makes sense because it really is trending in that direction, like the direction of wellness, if you will. It is true. And every space. No, for sure. I mean, that's why McDonald's invested $200 million into regenerative agriculture. It's because. Yeah. Well, well, here's my thoughts on that. It's because they're getting ahead of the curve. They see that this is a train that isn't stopping. Yeah. You know what I mean? So they want to get ahead of it and like make sure that they look a little bit better. And they might try to co-op the space. And but the point is they're putting their investments into this thing.

1:56:12So that they can reap the benefits of it because they know this is a trend that's not slowing down. I'm not saying McDonald's has good intentions. Totally. But you just reminded me of something that I think is worth sharing for listeners because if they're they're hearing this stuff and they're like, okay, is this for like luxury homes, you know, for people that have big budgets? And I just want to say I actually interviewed Molly on my podcast like a year ago. And I asked her a question, or I made a comment like, hey, Molly, there were some people at Confluence that said, oh, this food is really expensive. And I was like, do you what do you say about that? And Molly's like, well, people are used to spending McDonald's prices on food. And I thought that was such a brilliant answer. We have been skewed for what we think the value is. And the same is true of creating a home. Here's the thing though, I think we're building we too big. We have more space than we've ever had. We don't need it. Even our house is like, what, like, 3000 square feet and we have three kids and a

1:57:17dog. And like, we're like, this is ridiculous. Like the next house we live in, we want to downsize. This is stupid. So how much square footage do you think you're not using so much? Like a lot. I can't say for sure exactly how much, but a lot. Like 1000 square feet maybe. Okay. All right. So if you were to realize that actually your family unit lives and thrives better in 2000 square feet, then you can go to a builder and say, actually, we realized we didn't need 1000 square feet. And you take that budget that you are going to spend on three, you lessen what you think you need. And you can put that towards better materials. For now, the materials, some of them are comparable in price. Some of them are 5% more, some of them are 15% more. But until we get to a point that they are totally mainstream, we are so used to spending as little as possible on the worst materials. Because that is industry

1:58:17standard. Okay. But we have to realize that the same is true for every industry. They are going to give us the worst things that are going to cost the least. So let me put it this way. In the 1970s, the biggest house that was being built was like 1800 square feet. All right. That was like big average. The average home now in the 2000s is 2500 square feet. But yet the household sizes have decreased. So people are living with more square footage than they've ever lived with ever. And the space has just wasted. There's actually a study done in New Zealand about how people live in their homes. And they found that people spent 75% of their time in the kitchen, obviously, the living rooms and in the bedrooms. And about 10% of the spaces just were not touched. Yep. Okay. And we all know that the home certain homes of our friends and families like that rooms never used. That was never used. I had a room growing up that just no one ever went in it.

1:59:22But it was a solid like 800 square feet. It would have been much better if it was like an outdoor space. Right. Right. So we're building we're building too big. Yeah. And at the end of the day, we really need to look at nature and see how nature is living and how nature is building. And my mentor, Paula Baker Laporte, she based her whole practice around just observing the birds. And it's true when we observe the birds and we realize, wait a second, like the birds, they're not building mic mansions. They're not building like a triple story mess so that like they're, you know, everybody in their family can come in like they're building as much as they need. As much as they need. And that's all they need. And then the birds also like my birds in South Carolina, they're not flying out to California to get their lumber. No. Like they're going two miles down the street to pick up their sticks. So they're shopping regionally. They're shopping locally. They're shopping regeneratively. And they're using non toxic nurturing methods. So like really if we were

2:00:24to mimic nature truly in our homes, the conversation of well, is this whole thing expensive? We've got it backwards. We aren't building like the birds. And if we were, we would use less. We'd have less systems. Yep. We'd have less bills. And maybe on a neighborhood level, there'd be more communal spaces where like if you're going to build any bigger structures, it's like this is a space where we all gather together in a neighborhood. Because that, that's the other thing that pisses me off so much. Sorry, I get heated on this because I brought this up to Kylie so many times. And even to my neighbors and they're just like, yeah, I guess I'll have these conversations. Some of my neighbors are like, yeah, that is a good idea. And other ones are like, yeah, okay. But what I'm going to say is like living in a neighborhood in, I'll say in American culture, because that's all I can speak to for sure relative to my experience in Europe. The way the towns are designed, the way the cities are designed is, is, is atrocious. Like, Europe, everything's walkable. And of course, there's like public transit where you can take a train if you can't walk it. But for the most part, everyone's walking in like, they don't have commercial

2:01:27spaces versus residential spaces. They have them all intermixed in most cases. Yeah. Yeah. So like, like your neighborhood, there's a coffee shop there and then an auto mechanic down the street. Like it's, you just walk to everything. You can walk, everything's walkable and you get to know each other too. Whereas the way they're designed, I'm needed to belabor the point. But the other big thing that could change that, because it's already sort of set up that way in the US, unfortunately, where you have the strip malls and then two miles and then the neighborhood and then another neighborhood, another subdivision is just putting communal spaces into the neighborhood designs. And like, I'm talking more than a pool in a pool house, just like a small cafe or a restaurant that's open to not only the people in the neighborhood, maybe it's funded by the HOA, but also open to the public. So like, people can come in and then that's the place where you guys can gather together. Just something as simple as that. And like, I don't understand how builders have not thought to put something like that in neighborhoods. Even just something as simple as that. It's so frustrating to me just because Kylie and I are people who try to get to know our

2:02:28neighbors and we are acquaintances with a few of our neighbors, friends with one of them. But we haven't gotten to know anyone else because they just keep to themselves inside their homes. And there's no place for us to go in our neighborhood and all gather together. Or just come across your neighbor frequently. You're interrupting the monoculture, Alex. What if there are dozens, if not hundreds of people around you who get it, but you've simply had no way to locate each other? You know the people I'm talking about. People are in the natural health who are skeptical of big pharma, who reject the two party political illusion and are ready to seek solutions outside of it. I put out a poll recently and 95% of respondents said they're struggling to find health and freedom community where they live. And that right there is a huge problem. More and more of us are seeing through the illusion of mainstream health, government control, and corporate food systems. Yet most of us still feel isolated and surrounded by people who don't think or live the same way that we do. And because of that, we turn back to our devices for a sense of validation and

2:03:30community. We find great information online. We find people who think like we do, but it's not real face-to-face connection. It doesn't help us build real community on the ground, which is what we desperately need. And it keeps us stuck in the same loop of living behind screens instead of building parallel systems that make the current system obsolete. In my opinion, if we're going to use the digital environment and these devices, we need to use them to get out of the digital environment and off of these devices and back in person. And if you're sick of online communities, we are too, which is why we decided to do something completely different. The WayFore.com is a fully independent private membership platform that is designed for one purpose to help health and freedom minded men and women find each other in real life. It's built custom owned by us and operated entirely outside of mainstream networks. No data harvesting, no profiling, no algorithms, just genuine connection grounded in privacy and sovereignty. On the platform, you'll find a familiar social space with groups, posts, private messaging, but that isn't the heart of our platform. The heart of

2:04:30our platform is our interactive maps. With our member map, you can search by location to find people near you who actually get it. People who want to live honestly, think independently, are skeptical, big, pharma, are in the natural health and want to take responsibility for their lives. You'll also have access to our business directory, which features holistic practitioners, regenerative farms, alternative schools, healthy restaurants, and conscious businesses of all kinds. And the important piece is that this works anywhere in the world, wherever you are. Rural, urban, overseas, traveling, you can find your local people. This platform is for those who are done waiting for systems to change and are ready to build new ones locally and together. Head to the way forward.com and click join or just click or comment below. If you've been craving real community around you with people who actually get it, this is your invitation. It's just frustrating though, because like you take one lot in a neighborhood and do that. Are there profit margins like that big of a concern to them where it's like, no, actually, yes, we have to put this

2:05:34cookie cutter 3500 square foot, 3000 square foot. This model home here can't don't have any space to put a little cafe like that. I hate that. It's greed and speed. I can't stand it though. It's so stupid. I know. I know Ryan and I talk about this all the time. There's this newly built neighborhood in the last five years and it's a gated neighborhood and we drive by it every day to get to our place and the gate has to go up to let cars in. Literally, they built a house directly in front of like a three-force in front of the gate. Oh my god. Three-force. So this person is getting their morning coffee and looking at it every day. It's greed and speed. That's really all that most conventional people do care about. They really are trying to squeeze everything out of this system. So when you come across builders that care about something different, that care about

2:06:35people and planet, that care about this in a different way, like work with those people. Because it's a different mindset and a totally different world that we're going to have to end up creating. Have you tried to educate any like traditional general contractors on this and have they shown any interest? Have any of them been like, oh, this sounds like pretty cool or? Yeah. I had a builder call me last fall and he said, hey, you came highly recommended as an interior designer. I'd love for you to come meet my client. It's a $10 million budget. It's on the ocean and he said all the things. And I said, okay, cool. Is your client interested in healthy materials? He was like, what are you talking about? I was like, well, is your client interested in using cleaner materials that have less toxins that are good for occupants safety? And I'm kind of like trying to see if he was picking up what I was putting down. He's like, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't think so. I was like, okay, well, you know, we're probably not going to be a good fit then. And so when I have talked to builders and contractors for the most part, the conventional ones,

2:07:44there's a blank stare. They really have not heard of that end or they've done it for 30 years. So their cognitive bias would really get sticky yikki if they realized that they've been building a certain way that has actually been harmful. So this is actually a significant conversation, Alec, because the only way we're going to change the needle is to help building industry professionals learn how to make this transition that doesn't feel like a lot of shame. Yeah. And that's something that I dealt with as a conventional interior designer that woke up to this. I dealt with a lot of shame. Internal shame. Yeah, that I had. It's like a pediatrician. It's just like a pediatrician. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How did you deal with that, though? You just like had to forgive yourself for not knowing what you know now. Yeah. And I had to and I had to really wrestle with the reality of do like I don't want to go back to conventional practices that because

2:08:47it's harm people. I harmed myself too. And I don't want to do that anymore. And then you think about all of the abusive work conditions that come from the factories and then the ecosystems that are suffering are land are air. And even when a factory that is producing LVP, yes, LVP is harmful to the occupants, but people that are living near near LVP factories, final production factories, they've been told to move because the air is so toxic. God, man. So you know, you start to look at this holistically and go, wait a second, I can't keep contributing to this nonsense. And so I don't care about the money. I don't care if your budget is $10 million. I don't care. Like, I'm not interested because it's more than just what what meets the eye. Now with that being said, there are so many builders and designers and architects that are like, this is the coolest thing I've ever done in my career. And I've got to change everything I'm doing. I mean, this is why I'm teaching a training through the building budget instance to I'm teaching it the new wave of

2:09:50interior designers and architects. How to build buildings that are in coherence to nature. Because more and more people are like myself have woken up and realize, we've got to do something about this. And I and I will say artists will change the future because artists are the ones that are putting the products in front of culture. And designers are artists. And if we want to change culture, we must tap into our artists and our designers. Because that is how we will shift paradigms. It's the same thing with any type of art, whether that's a musician style artist or like an artist in terms of like creating structures, painting, whatever fashion, music. That's what changes the culture. 100%. So if you had all the funds in the world to, well, it doesn't have to be a money thing. If you could build a house to the perfect standards based on what you know, how would you build it? What materials would you use? Let's start from the base level. Round up.

2:10:50Okay, well, first I would consider where I live. Okay, where would you live? Well, like where I live, the house might not work where you live. I know, but where would you live? Okay. I live South Carolina. I love a hot humid climate. What about you, Ryan? Where would you live? Low country South Carolina. South Carolina. South Carolina. South Carolina. South Carolina. South Carolina. South Carolina. South Carolina. Okay. Yeah. The Mars is just great. Okay. We're both lizards. Okay. Are you guys going to lizard people? I did see you change a little bit. Like your eyes. Yeah. Yeah. I've got to watch off for that. We love hot humid weather. So we would say, yeah, that's exact opposite of me. And that's why Texas is very hard for me in the summer. Yeah. Where would you live? I would live in the mountains in Colorado for sure. Okay. Okay. Not man. Got you. Yeah. I'm a mountain man. Okay. Yeah. I got my wife is the exact opposite. Where would she live? I mean, here, she would do better in a tropical climate near the ocean. Yeah. But she does okay in hot humid environments. Okay. Very good. All right. Well, it's going to depend. Like my dream house is going to

2:11:51be different from the dream house you're going to build. But I think I would really like to use a mass wall system. Yep. So an earthen structure, 100% the wall assembly is going to be a passive system. So I would like to reduce as many mechanical systems as possible. So the one that I would toggle between would be hempcrete or cob. Now, a lot of people say cob, which is, which is straw, it's sand, and clay, they say it's not great for the south, although we've been to several cob houses in the south in North Carolina and they've been phenomenal. So I think it does really depend to making sure that your foundation is strong and your roof is strong. I call it like a good pair of boots and a strong hat. And so I think hempcrete or cob is really would be really great. And then what about aircrete? Aircrete? Yeah, that's, I mean, it's good too. But obviously, what is aircrete? Right. Yeah. So yeah. So there's still problems with it. Well, I mean, yeah, I think it just depends

2:12:54on your values and your goals. That's what it mean. Okay. But they also make different block systems that are made from wood chips and binders that operate just like concrete blocks, insulated concrete blocks. So that could be another option. Then I would, I would do what I'm doing now with our house renovation. I would make sure that there are kill switches and bedrooms. I might even do metalclad cable for the electrical wiring. So I wouldn't have to worry about anything. And I don't have to cut anything off. So it's a conduit that basically it's a standard and commercial. So they run everything in in metalclad cable, which is interesting, but it's way more expensive. So if people don't have the budget for, they might just do it in the bedroom. So instead of the kill switch, it's run in metalclad. So it holds in the electric fields and the magnetic fields. Got it. Okay. That's essentially possibly doing the work for you. Got it. That's bougie. You know, that's not an everybody's budget. But then I would be really particular about my lighting design plan.

2:13:55I mean, I would like it to be more off-griddy. And I would like to use more passive ventilation systems. I'd wanted to feel like camping all the time. Okay. Yeah. And then I would hire a permaculture designer. I would hire a biogiometrist practitioner to come in. Make sure it's going in the right place. Make sure that the land is working with the vision that we're working with the land. And I'd hire a fung shui practitioner, a building biologist. I mean, I would just hire as many practitioners as possible and make sure that there's that relationship with the land and the property. And also make sure we're doing it on appropriate dates. So let's throw in biodynamics. That's good. Let's throw it all in. You said dream, right? Do I say dream? Did you say dream budget? I did. I was indicating that. Okay. You're indicating that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Then I would get a regenerative farm out there. Heck yeah. So what do you do like a natural swimming pond? Oh yeah,

2:15:00definitely would do a natural swimming pond. Yeah. That's what we want eventually when we have a program. Yes. Yes. Yes. It's so cool. It's super cool. Okay. One other like this is an abrupt change in topic. But I wrote it down because I wanted to talk about it was moon wood. Yes. What do you know about that? And what is it? And how can people source it if they want it? Okay. Well, so I don't know how people can source it. But there is this documentary called moon wood. And if people haven't watched it, they really should. And it talks about harvesting wood in a certain time period where the moon is. And when they harvest it at that time, there's less decay. There's less ability for termites to get the wood. In fact, you saw that documentary, right? I didn't see the documentary. Oh my gosh. You have to go. I learned about moon wood through Dr. Cown. You have to watch the moon wood documentary. Okay. Because how it got started was the gentleman who really took moon wood to the next level. He had these violinists who were searching for moon wood. And they basically like knocked on his on his door and said, Hey, like, can we harvest some of

2:16:04these trees for our violin? He's like, why do you want these trees? And they said, Well, it's it's moon wood. Like it has these special properties. And we can make the most expensive violins with this. And he was a builder at the time. And he was fascinated by that. And he went down this whole rabbit hole of building homes out of moon wood. Oh, I forget his company's name, but I'll send it to you. Okay. Yeah. It's in the documentary. Yes. It's a documentary. It's an old, old documentary, though. So if you're into like the old BBC classics, I like that. You would love it. British guy. Is it a British guy? I don't know. I don't remember. If a British guy is narrating, then I'm in. If not, I'm not going to watch it. I feel like any documentary that is from like the 80s, somebody has an accent. Yeah. It could just be poor quality. Well, it's also like the mass. See, like Americans in the 1940s spoke completely differently. Right? I don't know. I thought about that so much. I don't know. I have no idea why they really did them. Like you just audibly hear it. Like is that from the 60s? And it's like it doesn't even have

2:17:08to be the sound quality. It's just like how Americans talked back. It's funny. Yes. Okay. Is there anything else you want to discuss related to building biology or anything? Anything at all? Yeah. Totally. I know it's a massive topic and we try to condense. And we're kind of distracting the surface here. Yeah. And so I would say if somebody's listening and they're like, oh, well, I want to learn more about how to make my environment healthier and safer for not as their family. But the next generation, I think this is wisdom that we all need in our life to be able to pass it down. Yeah. Because once we know it, we know it and we can share it. So I would really encourage people to get training through the actual institute itself. And there's different tracks. So they could learn just the EMR side. They could learn how to go into people's homes and help them. They could learn new construction. And then I co-created and co-developed a whole new track that's specifically for interior designers and architects. Oh, cool. Yeah. So we had our first cohort this past June. It was a week long in-person training. And it was a five-day training.

2:18:142027 dates haven't been announced yet. But if there's an artist or creative that's like, I want to learn. It was a course that we created. So that's cool. Yeah. I'm very, I'm very much believe that we have to get people this information so that we can change. So I'd imagine your knowledge based on this extends into furniture. I know you write all sorts of materials to furniture. Yeah. You can't really talk about furniture. Yes. Is there any brands top of mind that you recommend? And so medley home is a great furniture brand that and they are really big. Medley home. Medley home. Okay. They're really big components about the sustainability side but also then the toxicity side. Cool. So they offer different type of natural rubber foams. This is actually their fabric. So organic cotton, organic hemp cotton blend. Nice. So they offer like top notch options. Sweet. And then they also offer different finishes like linseed oil or beeswax. That's cool.

2:19:17Yeah. And there's so many great from window treatments to simple decor. There's a lot of people catching onto this which is fabulous. That's epic. And these couches on the back of this little and they're not like, there's a thing you don't people think, oh, if I'm going to use natural materials, like it's going to look like a hippie commune. But that's not true. It's aesthetic, it's sharp, it's on trend. It's cool. Yeah. It's really cool. And in this book, so I can't recommend this enough because any subject that you are thinking about, if you're going to work on a renovation or if you're going to bring something new in your house, that subject is pretty much covered in here. So if you're like, huh, like what sort of like roof situation should I consider? Or what sort of exterior facade? Or huh, like, are there healthy grouts? Like what about mortars? Mortar beds, that sort of thing. Everything is covered in this book. That's awesome.

2:20:18And but but the thing is, I don't know how they pull this off because this is their fourth edition, though. So the market keeps changing. So they keep having to like realize, wait, that's not in market anymore. That doesn't work or that's shifted. So kudos to them for putting all this information together. So they're kind of like staying up today on regulations and stuff like that too of like what's permissible in buildings and like new talks against that are in homes and stuff. Like now, like there's different companies coming out and saying, hey, we're actually from out of high free now. So buy us. Yeah. So they're adding things as they go. So that's cool. Yeah. So if anyone wants to work with you directly, are you available for that? Yeah. So I'm pretty particular about only taking on a few projects a year because I don't want to burn out like I did. But I do offer consulting. Cool. So if people are like, hey, I don't know where to start. I do, I do offer that. And then my biggest passion is training is teaching people how to do this themselves. So

2:21:19run. Yes. Super rad. Brian, you're sitting here next time we talk. I know you have a lot of knowledge in that brain of yours too. I mean, it would be really cool to talk about deconstructions with him. Do you want to talk about that real quick? Do you want to just jump on? No, no, you're, do you look at me, man? Look what he's wearing. He's perfectly dressed. Yeah. You're wearing it the way forward shirt. Let him take your place for just a second. Perfect. I love it. Yes. We got it. All right. Deconstruction. Tell me about it. Oh, man. Deconstruction. It's fun. It's hard work. It's something I never thought I would see myself doing. And long story short, I had this opportunity to leave a career that I've been in for 18 years. What were you doing before? I was working for UPS. I started UPS after I graduated high school, took a break from college, went back. Had a knee injury, put me out for a year and a half,

2:22:20realized how much life I was missing. Yeah. Working on that brown truck, working for the man for a corporate. Yep. And there's a, when I went back after I was healed up after a year and a half, there was this opportunity for me to leave. And the same day, April 26, my last day was the first day that I had opportunity just presented to me. So literally on the day you're leaving this job, you had an opportunity to present to you that way. Yes. That was like the starting date for this new chapter for this learning process. This guy, Alan Todd, who's a professor at Coastal Carolina, where I graduated from in South Carolina, he's like, hey man, like I think you're a perfect fit for what we do. I want to train you in deconstruction. So what is deconstruction? Deconstruction is taking a part, a home of building, whatever it may be, literally like board by board piece by piece. This

2:23:23structure we took apart was built in 1910, which was used resources like the wood was repurposed from an old plain tape. So that's the definition of it, right? Yeah. So the wood is repurposed and it keeps all the trash and everything out of the landfill because I think so far on this project, we're about to wrap it up Oliver's lodge in Merle's in South Carolina. I mean, it was, I could be speaking wrong, but it's, it's tons. It's like 70 tons, 80 tons, maybe 100 tons of wood that's still good, that's better than you can buy in any big, in any home depot, lows. It's better than that wood tenfold because it's old growth wood that just isn't, it doesn't exist anymore unless you're buying it from a deconstructed home. And the reason that's important, correct me if I'm wrong on this, because the modern studs that are used and just wood in general that is used in modern homes, they literally have like wood farms for this where it's trees that are two, three, maybe four years old.

2:24:24So the rings on those studs aren't, it's not as structurally sound, it's not as thick. Exactly. It lasts as long versus older construction. These materials have so many rings in them, so they're super thick, they're going to last much longer. But what happens in non-deconstruction projects is that all of that wood, which is incredible, wood is just taken to a dump, a landfill somewhere. So what you're doing is taking this really good material and repurposing it. Exactly. Repurposing it, going back to the community locally, people are using it for art to sell. So they're making money from the wood that was repurposed. It's just creating that, it's kind of circular economy. But then also they donate some of these proceeds to people that maybe can't afford it. And volunteers come in and it's just such a pretty picture to see all this kind of happen. And the guy that I'm helping with this, he is just so passionate about it. He wants,

2:25:26it's, there's other big cities too that are doing this as well. I mean, not Merle Beach is not a big city. But it's catching on because, I mean, our landfills are filling up. Yeah, it's, I don't know, I can't speak to it here, but where Lauren and I live in Orie County, they're trying to expand the landfill by like, I can't remember how many acres. But the majority of the acres they were expanding on is wetlands. Oh, no. And we already have a problem with flooding because of all these houses they're building. And I mean, I think that's a whole another podcast and topic of just over developing. Yeah. Filling in wetlands, building retention ponds and mitigation banks. What is a mitigation bank? So mitigation bank is, so, Alec, you want to build your developer, you want to build 100 track homes on this property over here. But you know, there's wetlands, right? You can't build on wetlands. So maybe if you just donate

2:26:30a bunch of money to me, we will invest it into this mitigation bank to make this a healthier care for this wetland area over here. So it's like a loophole in order to be able to just like not be environmentally friendly. Exactly. So you're helping the cause over here while you're destroying the wetlands over here. Yeah, that's ridiculous. So is that pretty common practice from what I understand? Yes. Nice thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, we got to build houses, you know, I guess, I guess. I got to build small houses. I mean, for people don't have to own 10 homes. Yeah. That's dude. Dude, you're speaking my language is someone who goes to a ski town in Colorado where like the overwhelming majority of houses there, people aren't actively living in. It's just they use it as their second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth home. And it prices out the people who actually like help maintain the

2:27:32economy and the environment there. It's it's yeah, it's it's tough. Yeah. And I mean, yes, kind of same thing mindset that we have. And that's where along with this building biology and some of the people that Lauren and I have met on the way, dude, the communal living kind of like what you were talking about. Yeah. Previously. So small footprint house, but you might share outdoor kitchen. Yeah. Um, just aspects like that could really change the dynamics of I think that's what a lot of people want to, man, especially like the people in our space, the type of person that goes to Confluence. Like that sounds like a dream. That'd be incredible. That'd be amazing. So I think both of you are doing the work and your own respects to help lead us towards that. Trying to, I mean, I'm so new to this. I feel like just this year, I've really got plugged in since I've been able to leave like that corporate own job. I'm I'm my own boss now and, you know, crackles ain't got no

2:28:35boss. I guess that's a saying here in Austin. I never heard that before. There's on a t shirt. You also were texting me about bats in Austin. I'm like, I literally don't know about that. That's under South Congress bridge. They said there can be like maybe a million. I don't know that bats and at dusk, they fly out every night. I did not know that. Yeah. I had no idea. You're educating me on my local environment. Yeah. But yeah, it's been good to kind of embrace this and come alongside Lauren. And, you know, I think the deconstruction is just a start because our country isn't that old yet. Right. And I don't know to put some of that stuff back, like put some of the materials back in. And if we're running out of landfill space already, that's insane. It's crazy. And Lauren spoke on this earlier, my family in Italy, their generation, living in their house, their streets, you know, were built with lime and rock. And they still exist 2000 years later.

2:29:35Made to last. Yes. That's the issue. I think a lot of people want to build generational wealth in the context of a home like I want my kids to be able to take over this home, their kids kids, et cetera, et cetera. But then with the current building conditions and materials that are used, they again are disposable. That's what they're treated as. And they don't last after you are your, you know, done paying off your 30 year mortgage by the time that happens. It's the house is falling apart completely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Land upsless and such a good term for it. So yeah. Man, thank you for hopping. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's coming off guards. I wasn't prepared. But you did great. You did great. You did great. I can kind of talk in circles sometimes too. No, you do. You did great, especially from you catching off guard. I don't do. I'm sorry. I got the good shirt on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's all good. You can prepare it. He was like, what shirt should I wear the the roar? What is the honeybee one? No. Like a gold. It's just like bees on a flower. I love that one. Either way, he'll be

2:30:36sure. Way forward shirt. It's good. All right. Yeah. Thank you both. Yeah. Lauren, you already hopped off. Thank you so much. This was an awesome conversation. I appreciate you both so much. Yeah. For sure. Thanks for having us. Yep. But no, you don't have a mic. You can just sit there. It's safe. Very well. Is there anything else you want to share as we're wrapping up? Just lean into the mic. No, you have a speech. I have a speech. Okay. You have to land, Ryan. Just a good. I mean, I don't really have a speech. No, but I did want to end with this quote by Stephen R. Keller. He wrote the book Biofilia in the Bill environment. And you'd probably really like this book. He followed E.O. Wilson, who was a biofuelic researcher. And they both recognized that the bill environment was so important to our health and well-being. And Stephen R. Keller said, the modern assumption that humans no longer need to affiliate with nature is revealed in the widespread practice of placing people in sensory deprived and artificial settings, such as office buildings, hospitals, schools, shopping centers, with little if any contact with

2:31:39natural forces and stimuli. Much of today's bill environment is designed lacking adequate natural light, natural ventilation, natural materials, vegetation, views, environmental shapes, and forms, and other evolved affinities for the natural world. In many ways, these structures remind us of the barren sensory deprived cages of the old-style zoo. Now, ironically banned as inhumane. We are just beginning to find that these environmentally impoverished habitats foster fatigue, symptoms of disease, and impaired performance, and the simple introduction of natural lighting outside views and vegetation can result in enhanced health and productivity. And I would just add to that that the natural lighting outside views and vegetation, but the understanding of the 25 principles of building biology could really change the future generation of home. So thank you for having me on to talk about this. Of course. I knew you would love this. You already love it. And this is so awkward laying on you like this. Does this look terrible? I'm so sorry.

2:32:44I think it looks great. Okay. Well, so anyway, I just want to say before we... You look like a married couple. Yeah. And you are. So that's good. But I just want to say, Alec, like I, in 2020 and 2021, when I was so alone, I was looking for online voices to encourage me, and you were one of those online voices. And I just... I just never thought I would meet you, honestly, and find confidence, the community that you've co-created that has changed my life. Thank you. And like you've really just touched my life in so many ways. And then obviously I touched Ryan too indirectly. And I'm just so flippin' grateful for you. Thank you, I appreciate that. And grateful that you are leading people. Even when you're tired, even when you want to be off, like you're still leading people. And I just respect you so much. And I'm just really grateful for you. Thank you. I really appreciate that. Thank you for giving me boldness when I didn't feel bold. And you were so bold. So I feel like because of you, I'm able to be bold today. I appreciate that. Thank you for being bold in what you do.

2:33:46Yes. And she's not just saying that on the show because she literally said something very similar to some of our friends the other day because... I appreciate it. So it's genuine. I really appreciate that Lauren. Thank you so much. Thank you both so much. You're both too really rad human beings. So thank you for doing what you do. And being who you are.