Interview Transcript Jacob Jones

 

Walker: [00:00:00] so, um, I guess I'll introduce myself. I mean, most people know me, like they've been listening to the podcast as one of the usual co-hosts, um, Lucas isn't with us today, but, um, it's kind of a secret. I don't usually, um, do my full name on the podcast. Cause sometimes it's a little edgy, but my name is Walker and I am a Hampshire student like Lucas and like, well I'm a Hampshire alum or dropout, like, uh, Lucas and Jacob, um, and Jacob who is joining me today.

[00:01:06] Um, and, uh, I've gone over my story on the past episodes of the podcast, basically, most of the story, although there's a little bit of a gap as we last recorded basically in the summer. And I've had a lot of healths in path the last summer, and I've had a lot of health substance, but I've gone over most of my story, but just like, there's going to be people that will listen to this, just, um, maybe to hear Jacob's story and not know my background.

[00:01:38] So I'll just go over it like really quick and how I know Jacob, um, I have like a number of illnesses, uh, that I've like, uh, Racked up, um, that all kind of relate to each other, ME/CFS, um, like chronic fatigue syndrome; uh, I have connective tissue problems; craniocervical instability; what they call mast cell activation syndrome.

[00:02:05] -and that's one we'll be talking about a little bit extra today- and, um, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. But basically I've been really sick for awhile. And a lot of it has had to do with environmental stuff, even if not, all of it is. Um, and, uh, it, and it also, some of it has had to do with infection, but, um, a lot of it has had to do with environmental stuff and it's a very underlooked area of illness, uh, of illness, causation and etiology.

[00:02:38] And I know Jacob from way before I was sick really, um, from Hampshire college, uh, and it's a small liberal arts college and I was studying music and photography. And, uh, Jacob, uh, you were studying film, right?

[00:03:04] Jacob: [00:03:04] Yeah. I guess mainly filming. I was cause Hampshire doesn't have, uh, you create your own major. I was tying in other, other things into it, but I would say, yeah, the video art, uh, experimental film was the main thing

[00:03:20] Walker: [00:03:20] And we go so far back, we were literally on the same, well, not so far back, but like we're literally so close. We're on the same dorm hall of the first year before you were allowed to live in, uh, mods, which is like more cool, like apartment buildings on campus, but we're literally on the same dorm hall, right?

[00:03:42] Jacob: [00:03:42] Yeah, yeah, exactly. H-3 in, uh, 2013, it would have been. Yeah. And the years ago. Yeah.

[00:03:52] Walker: [00:03:52] And we like, literally it would be like, like sometime like, uh, we'd all go hang out in Jacob's room sometimes just like, uh, before doing something before going out to like a concert or before, um, going to the dining commons or whatever, we'd all go hang out in Jacob's room, cause he had speakers and stuff. And also like sometimes I'd go to Jacob's room late at night. I don't think this happened more than twice to be fair. But I remember when I was like, when I smoked too much weed and was like freaking out because that was something I really couldn't handle. Um, and they would, I'm just saying this because, uh, Jacob you've said that I've helped you with like some health problems, but you helped me, uh, then with those minor crises, um, you know, you were like, you know, get some blood sugar in, you know, calm down. It's not laced, et cetera.

[00:04:57] Jacob: [00:04:57] Sounds like Hampshire college. Yep.

[00:04:59] Walker: [00:04:59] Yeah man. Yeah. I never really liked weed and I could go on for awhile about that because like it never even worked for me for like chronic pain. Uh, I still had the same problem and just, but yeah, that's beside the point. The point is we knew each other from Hampshire and um, I stayed at Hampshire for longer. I stayed, but I actually, we both had to drop out essentially for health reasons, um, in different ways. I stayed there until like literally, like I was a semester away from finishing my Div Three I stayed there until 2017. Jacob, you stayed there till...

[00:05:39] Jacob: [00:05:39] Um, until-- let's see like the end of 2014, so 2015. So pretty much, yeah, a year and a half.

[00:05:49] Walker: [00:05:49] Right. For me, it was like, I had, like, I had the beginning stages of CFS after like a lyme infection and just like a ton of cognitive issues, brain fog, and insomnia. Um, and could you talk more about like why you dropped out or yeah.

[00:06:10] Jacob: [00:06:10] Well, I guess what's, what's interesting is now both of us in hindsight, I think realized maybe you were aware at the time that there might've been some relationship to Hampshire and getting sick.

[00:06:24] Um, for me, I moved into, like Walker mentioned, the new apartments, uh, on campus and ended up just essentially just kind of having extreme anxiety, um, and depression, which had never, I think I experienced some bouts of depressiveness  um, but never to such an extreme degree that frankly just made, uh, yeah, I wasn't able to keep studying, um, at that point and decided I needed to drop out.

[00:07:06] Um, in hindsight, what I realized and that we're going to go into a little bit more is the apartment that I moved into had a pretty well-known mold problem. Um, and as I've realized, for whatever reason, it seemed like, uh, I have developed an extreme sensitivity to mold. So now many years later, I definitely attribute the mental effects, not even just physiological, but the mental effects, uh, leading me to drop out, was because essentially from mold and mycotoxins in that new dorm.

[00:07:52] Walker: [00:07:52] Yeah. And it's an underlooked-- um, I will say like everyone knew that Greenwich, which is the, the mod that you're talking about had an especially bad mold problem. Um, but like mold doesn't sound like that big a deal when you hear about it.

[00:08:11] And we can go into why it's, because it's like mold is a natural thing. It's just like in fungus like, how bad can it be? You know, it's like the stuff that's on bread. Like it doesn't like I had no inkling that it causes debilitating illness. I mean, there's stuff about like Greenwich having bad mold, then it still was like, I, who cares?

[00:08:34] But I will say that like, besides you, I know, like I know someone who is, who has not had the same level of health problems as you or me, but does have recollections of Greenwich triggering like really bad asthma to the extent that he, he said, um, I don't know if this might be quasi joking, like in terms of exaggerating, but just like thinking about Greenwich mold and the air hunger gave him like PTSD.

[00:09:03] Like, it was just so awful. And this is someone who's a body builder. And I think of as very like vitalistic and strong person or full of vitality. Um, I don't, yeah.

[00:09:18] Jacob: [00:09:18] Yeah. That's, it's it's freaky. And I would, I never would've thought, I remember hearing that Greenwich was bad, uh, with had mold in it and I was like, yeah? So what? Like, what's that going to do? And, uh, many years later after I'm sure what you're going to get into, um, uh, years of unresolved, uh, weird health things that. I think  were going on even before going to Hampshire and during even the first year, um, about a year and a half ago, realizing that they all stemmed essentially from, I guess you could call it toxic mold poisoning or sensitivity. So I was, I think we were all wrong to think that mold couldn't do that much moving into Greenwich into those dorms at Hampshire.

[00:10:16] Walker: [00:10:16] So yeah, I wasn't in Greenwich to be clear, but I do think all of the dorms had mold problems. I also think that the outdoor air had problems and we're going to get into that later because that's something like almost no mold doctors talk about and almost no, definitely no conventional doctors talk about, I mean, I don't, I'm not talking about normal particulate pollution. I'm talking about a certain outward toxins that are important in mold illness, but, um, to get to your story and like how it started, like, obviously you didn't realize right away, you know, when you left Hampshire, um, you, you did a lot of traveling after you left Hampshire. Um, and without like, because we both have recollections, uh, I think we can say where we can look back in hindsight and say why I felt better there. Well, I felt better there. I mean, I had no idea Hampshire had any role in making me sick. And um, so I'd like to, to have you just kind of talk briefly about what you did after Hampshire. Um, before we started talking again about like health issues before you realize the mold problems, um, without like saying necessarily like all the things that you later learned and recollected about this place felt better. Just kind of talk about your travels.

[00:11:44] Jacob: [00:11:44] Um, sure. So I left, I left Hampshire and that would have been, let's say like the beginning of 2015. And so I'm covering the time period between 2015 and it would be mid 2019, uh, mid 2019, probably. Um, in terms of health wise, since I think we're trying to, I think we're both trying to get across that, this thing that I was very skeptical, that Walker told me about. I know he was sick. Meanwhile, I was having like, I think pretty negligent health and just trying to put my health to the back of my mind and not take too seriously persisting issues. Uh, I think we're both trying to get across that this is something that's kind of overlooked and at least for me, it's been just massively life-changing, uh, to understand that just weird shit that gone on for most of my life kind of comes back to this.

[00:12:51] So health-wise timeline from 2015 to 2019, it was not like linear line down, but it was definitely kind of an oscillating line down to. Probably the worst, probably the worst I've been like really hitting rock bottom and that's mentally and physiologically.

[00:13:20] Walker: [00:13:20] Right. But I meant also like, um, where, where in the world were you, like, what were you doing also? Like just not every detail, but in general, like, I don't know. Cause...

[00:13:32] Jacob: [00:13:32] so I wouldn't, uh, briefly I moved back to New York, which is where I'm from. Um, And then I did quite a bit of working and traveling and trying to explore some of the things I was hoping to explore at Hampshire. Um, so I ended up going to Myanmar for four months in 2015, which was during the election, um, which has now been nullified came back.

[00:14:09] Um, I spent time then in China, um, as well, uh, I spent time also kind of in between just living in New York and trying to finish school, um, before finally just dropping out and, uh, and giving up on studies, uh, whether or not that's temporary or the rest of my life. I'm not sure, but that would have been the end of 2017.

[00:14:43] And then I went back to Asia for about nine months where I initially was going to do some meditation and, um, especially wanting to meet some acquaintances that I had met before and be in parts of the world that are not so touched by modernity and are a lot more like how things used to be maybe even a hundred years ago.

[00:15:19] Um, and that lasted, that was about nine months of that before coming back, um, staying in New York...

[00:15:29] Walker: [00:15:29] and LA at one point. Right?

[00:15:31]Jacob: [00:15:31] Mhmm, So I came back from Asia, um, in part due to just, yeah. Also health, health things. And then I moved to LA for about, uh, four or five months about, um, and then that brings us to 2019 and I went back to my parent's house at that point.

[00:15:58] Walker: [00:15:58] Right. Okay. So for our overlapping timelines, um, I, you know, I got took in initially in 2016. I only made it a year of school after I initially got sick. And the very obvious trigger was like a very obvious Lyme disease case. There's a lot of cases where, you know, it's, it's kind of sketchy or it's unclear when, or why you got infected.

[00:16:21] To me, it was obvious bull's eye rash, classic fever, and like diagnosed by not a specialist just my regular family doctor and treated, but still having lingering symptoms. But there are there's relationships between like infections and environmental things. In retrospect, my house was really awfully moldy and I'll get into that too.

[00:16:46] But just for the timeline overlapping by the time it was 2019 where Jacob was talking about, I was, um, yeah, by the time was 2019, I was bedridden. I was experiencing, I was, I think maybe, um, almost diagnosed with craniocervical instability, like having major connective tissue and brain, uh, issues. Um...

[00:17:14]Jacob: [00:17:14] You couldn't even like, listen, I remember you talking about in your room and like the rustle of curtains and the sound of it being so painful, which, I mean, I think for most people, even me right now, it's almost incomprehensible, but the pain of just that rustle was like excruciating. So a musician, that being you, you couldn't listen to music or podcasts, right? Yeah. Yeah. Like crazy...

[00:17:44] Walker: [00:17:44] Holly did that since like, there are ways to treat it with, um, medications, like the sound sensitivity. But to me that has been one of the worst symptoms. And, um, since it's caused by like brainstem compression and inflammation, there's not that much you can do besides how you do it without addressing the root cause; there's not like, like people for other, for sound sensitivity with other causes like inner ear or other things, there's like desensitization protocols, but for this you cannot like just push. Yeah. But yeah, so, um, I was really sick and I talked to Jacob. Um, and, um, I do think, I remember, um, I mean, Jacob's one of my best friends.

[00:18:35] I would like, wasn't taking much offense at this or anything, but I don't think Jacob was like, quite understanding it or like, um, just which I think is interesting because later you got sick with not the same severity necessarily, but totally similar causes and stuff. And also probably similar in terms of people not understanding it.

[00:18:59] Jacob: [00:18:59] Right. Yeah. Yep. I think what's, yeah, the kind of the point to get across is I was, I was super skeptical. I was listening to like my best friend, just, you know, for a couple years before I understood it, just be like suffering, like literally just taken out of my life and taken out of all of our lives and like young person, 20 years old, like Walker the most, probably the most intelligent human being I've ever met.

[00:19:33] And if not the most gifted musician, neurotic musician would come to my door at three in the morning and make me listen to weird avant-garde shit that I didn't always understand was like just stuck in bed. Couldn't even listen to music or like talk on the phone and took you a moment to realize why it was that you were so sick.

[00:19:59] And I remember getting these messages as you were going through this illness, putting things together, which you are like exceptional, like beyond any kind of human, uh, beyond inhuman ability to persist through such extreme, uh, malaise, pain, um, disease, lack of ease and, and living. And there was a day, uh, since we were talking about mold here and cause it was the thing that seemed to, you know, for you and myself, it seemed to be the, the real shit that was going on.

[00:20:45] And there was a day you texted me or you said something like, dude, I think it's that my house is moldy. And I'm like, "what?" I was, I didn't, I don't think I knew what to make of it, but, um...

[00:20:56] Walker: [00:20:56] right...

[00:20:56] Jacob: [00:20:56] and that progressed to being like, if I leave my window open, I feel better. And then that progressed to like, Jacob, I need to like me and my sister are going to drive, all of Vermont is good, but it's not that good. I need to drive to, you know, the Western us that has less toxic, um, air indoor and outdoor, less chemical, less, um, areas that have this, uh, yeah, gnarly mold that was messing you up and messing me up and messing other people up...

[00:21:37] Walker: [00:21:37] yeah...

[00:21:37] Jacob: [00:21:37] And then next thing I know is like, you're listening to music or you send me like a song over text. And I haven't had that for years that you've sent me like any piece of music to listen to. Yeah. And that's when I knew I'm like, "Oh shit. Okay."

[00:21:56] Right.

[00:21:56] There's something interesting.

[00:21:57] Walker: [00:21:57] You know what? I think that I didn't get like ever a hundred percent of the time, even in pristine air that, um, I didn't get a hundred percent like a return to non-sense sensitivity, but certainly I, you know, I've told my story in the past.

[00:22:15] I mean, we didn't actually even first go to the West. We went to, cause they had just thought, why not try places make East that are known to be better. And you know, it's not all about humidity for any listeners. It's about like wilderness areas, biomes, like outdoor microbiomes, things, we don't really understand why, but some places are just like have more pristine air.

[00:22:39] I don't know. Like, and you know, Vermont, you would think is good, right? Like that's probably part of the skepticism is like me being like, we need to leave all of Vermont. To be  fair. I'm sure there are some like small areas in Vermont that are good. We actually found like one spot. It was really like a small area on top of this Hill, like way 30 minutes away from my house.

[00:23:03] But like, it, it's hard to believe that like big swaths of outdoor areas are like bad, especially when they're like rural areas. Like I bet like, you know, people that vacation in Vermont, I don't know, like.

[00:23:36] Jacob: [00:23:36] Do you want to just like address this very nebulous topic and just say kind of pointedly, like what we're both talking about?

[00:23:47] Walker: [00:23:47] So I learned this through talking to people, um, uh, like Eric Johnson, who I've talked about in previous episodes that he's a survivor of the Lake Tahoe, um, CFS outbreak that kind of coined the term CFS.

[00:24:02] And he pioneered all of this quote unquote, extreme mold avoidance, and it's called that, but I don't think it's very extreme. So I'll talk about the terms. So when I talk about outdoor toxins, I'm not necessarily talking about conventional air quality index pollution. Um, and I think that's, this is why it's hard for some people to grasp, because we essentially say there's a hypothesis that there are these outdoor things, which we can't yet measure, but we can sense really well once we learn to sense them and they have a major effect on health.

[00:24:37] And that sounds kind of out there to people. I mean, right?

[00:24:42] Jacob: [00:24:42] Yeah. I mean, it, I feel like it's, it's usually frightening to bring any of this up, cause it's all sounds like a hokey conspiracy. Like you're saying there's chem trails like creeping out of the sewer every day and they're coming to like make you just tired as fuck and...

[00:25:00] Walker: [00:25:00] Right...

[00:25:02] Jacob: [00:25:02] ...and shit. Um, the main thing is that you realize that in your house there was mold, there's mycotoxins, uh, especially drywall. And that this may be, because of Lyme disease, led you to have an extreme, like auto-immune inflammation response due to even the most minute amount of mycotoxins. And what I've realized is for whatever reason I am the same way. Um, and addressing the outdoor and just general biome is-- there's a, there is quite a bit of research about the mycotoxins and that it's not just affecting those with, who have developed a severe sensitivity, but more perhaps only Walker is a Canary in the coal mine sensing something that for someone that is, um, not mold effective or not mold sensitive, it could lead to heart disease or Alzheimer's, cancer, uh, there's a big list. And then, and understanding this, you came to realize, okay, this is what's, this is why I'm so sick. And it's not just about going outside because outside, even in an entire state there's mold that are breaking down things that are generally human-made and toxic and...

[00:26:40] Walker: [00:26:40] yeah...

[00:26:40] Jacob: [00:26:40] Cannot let your body go into essentially. Yeah.

[00:26:45] Walker: [00:26:45] Although let's kind of take it one step at a time and try to explain things, sequentially, both my experience. Cause there's two things there's theory and experience and people told me theory and some of it I believed or took seriously, especially when it was coming from Eric who is very science minded and very intelligent and like I'm a skeptic kind of person.

[00:27:07] So I had the hear it, like I had to hear the science, like the scientific theory, but also I wouldn't have done all of that just for a theory. Like there was experience that validated. It was like, It was like, Holy shit. Like I have air hunger and all these symptoms. And I mean, and I had like visible allergy, like symptoms too, like, like, um, rashes and stuff inside that didn't happen outside and like flushing. Um, but also like air hunger.

[00:27:40] Jacob: [00:27:40] And can you describe that air hunger, Walker?

[00:27:44] Walker: [00:27:44] Well I meant-- I do-- that's one, I think that is like a common symptom, even in other diseases. It just feels like you, it feels like you can't, um, breathe properly, even when you're getting oxygen. It just feels like uncomfortable. I know that it's, you know, a symptom of many diseases, you just, yeah.

[00:28:06] And, and that was like, there were a couple of times, even before 2019 before I was really, really sick where I experienced that in my house. And I just kind of was like, huh, I like have that inside. Then I go outside and I feel better. And later I would learn that outside my house wasn't even good enough to heal, but I'm saying there is still a difference.

[00:28:29] And that feeling that difference allowed me to kind of have an experiential data point where I thought where it wasn't just based on theory that I left my house. It was based on some experience. And we did do some mold tests and stuff, and they showed like off the charts levels of a number of molds.

[00:28:50] But I also don't know how much I believe or trust those test sites. I did, to some extent, they were like to validate and convince family members that we're dealing with something serious. You know, I just trust my sense. It's more than anything and that's what I want to learn to do. And now I was going to go into defining terms about like sabbatical and all of this to people.

[00:29:18] Uh, It in the mold avoidance community, we have this term sabbatical and um and this term unmasking and they're related and a sabbatical is this idea that to test for yourself if mold is a problem for you, um, you know, you don't have to like just, you know, throw away all your stuff and just start all this without any kind of data point showing it matters. To test if it is a problem for you, you go for usually two weeks to a known pristine place. It could be the desert. It could be like, you know, a beach in the Caribbean, but like a known pristine place. Usually the other people reported is good and there's lots of reports. Um, or maybe it just needs to be different enough than your home environment and better enough, it doesn't even have to be perfect with none of your possessions because your possessions can have clinging mycotoxins- toxins and mold spores.

[00:30:22] And then you spend like two weeks there and you go back to your home environment and what's supposed to happen in those two weeks is called unmasking. Um, which is kind of like if you, someone has described it as you know, um, this is done and like diet stuff. If you don't know whether you have a gluten allergy or uh celiac, you might stop eating, uh, anything with gluten in it for like two weeks and then re-introduce it.

[00:30:57] And you should have a more dramatic reaction and be able to pinpoint it. It's a similar principle, but with inhaled toxins, you go back to your home and you see if it slams you. Now, I didn't really do that because I had had a couple of mini sabbaticals where like what people call accidental sabbaticals, where you just leave and come back and you notice the difference.

[00:31:20] And at that point I was like, I'm like, I just intuitively knew it was a problem. And so I didn't feel like I needed to spend time proving to myself it was a problem. But some people who are less sure might want to do a sabbatical, but anyway, so unmasking, it is still part of the experience, even if you're not doing a sabbatical, and going back to your home environment and went to, um, uh, you know, Virginia, uh, to Shenandoah national park, which was great.

[00:31:51] And I went to parts of West Virginia in the mountains, which are great. And, and then I went out West and I started healing a lot. And I, um, and I'm speeding up that because this episode is not about me. It's more about Jacob and I, I'm just telling that part of this story to, to get to the point where I'm out there doing this and healing and, and then telling Jacob about it.

[00:32:15] And, um, so, you know, at some point I started to like, not just be like, I, you know, I feel a little better outside my house, or I think my house has mold. I started to be like, this effect is really real. I'm in the West, I'm, you know, uh, I'm healing. And I would, uh, communicate to Jacob about that from wherever I was, whether it was Shenandoah national park or Virginia, or the ancient bristlecone pine forest or areas near Las Vegas and the desert.

[00:32:46] But I would communicate this to Jacob over text or whatever. And, um, uh, what would you say like, is the timeline of, from when I started talking about that to you, to when you started to like really delve into it? Um, I know that you talked to doctor I recommended.

[00:33:08]Jacob: [00:33:08] I-- I think I started, I started wondering if there was a correlation between how I felt and the environment, uh, sooner, sooner than I realized, but I just didn't want to totally bring it to the forefront because I knew how big of a journey and expense and everything it was for you.

[00:33:37] So it was daunting. Um, but I started before even seeing a doctor, I started realizing um going different places that I, I definitely felt pretty different. Uh, and this was, I think, especially in Los Angeles where I was aware of this. Um, and during that time, I, I really tanked. Um, and the day that I left the apartment that I was living in, I, I was scrubbing in these, I was scrubbing something in the bathroom and I, and I saw just an immense amount of black mold. Um, and of course at that point, I'd known about what Walker was saying, and I think at that point, something kind of clicked. I was like, you know what, I gotta, I gotta check this out more. Um...

[00:34:37] Walker: [00:34:37] and can you go more into like, symptom? Cause like we, like we covered earlier, like your physical journey and then we covered like some of your general symptoms, but you didn't get into detail as much. Like, could you go into your symptoms around this period? Like 2019 when like things were getting really bad.

[00:34:58] Jacob: [00:34:58] So 2019, right before working with that same doctor that you had recommended to me, I... I was not sleeping, which I had extreme insomnia going back to, um, the beginning of high school getting progressively worse probably each year, um, where that would be sometimes one to two nights a week of no sleep, irregularly getting between, you know, two to six hours of sleep. Um, pretty constant anxiety, uh, which is not, not so much fun, uh, pretty extreme depression, uh, quite a lot of hair loss.

[00:35:52] Uh, also gastrointestinal, uh, problems, pretty majorly, um, to where I almost say every single meal that I ate, I was in pretty excruciating pain after, after doing so, um, that was, and that was crazy. Um, and I was also working like generally about 10 hours a day, uh, out there. And so trying to manage all these different symptoms and also trying to like keep a straight face at work was, was, uh, it got too much to handle, um, for me.

[00:36:40] So that was kind of where I was at. And that was all of that getting exasperated to such an extreme point was where I reached a breaking point and started to delve into that there may be a link between the environment and these symptoms that I had been having for so long.

[00:37:07]Walker: [00:37:07] Okay. And at some point you also like went back home though, to, um, it's to an area near the, your home is near the Bronx and Westchester. Right? How long? Um, I mentioned this just because I wanted to like briefly later go over like, you know, micro areas because I'm actually in the New York city area for some other stuff and parts of it aren't terrible. But I, uh, I haven't been to Palo. I imagined just by Jacob's description that it's not amazing outdoor air.

[00:37:47] Jacob: [00:37:47] I think so. I have a feeling it's all mystery. And, uh, I went back, you're right, I, I went back home because I hit the wall. Um, and it was too much on my plate with the health stuff and paying rent, et cetera. And yeah, I was back home and I I'd probably felt worse than I felt in LA, but I didn't have to, uh, wake up and, you know, drink exorbitant amounts of caffeine and stuff to keep going.

[00:38:22] So at least, at least I didn't have to do that at that time. Uh, yeah, it was, it wasn't for me. It wasn't so great. There was, I can only speculate though. It's it's been a little while.

[00:38:35] Walker: [00:38:35] Yeah. Well, I w-- I think it's funny, and this is just like a real quick side note that like I left school and went home when I got too sick to continue at the school and you left your work and place in LA and went home and you got too sick to continue, like the grind of work.

[00:38:56] And it's funny because we're both like leaving the grind and then going home to kind of seek healing and refuge. But those places because of their literal toxicity turned out to not be healing refuges.

[00:39:11] Jacob: [00:39:11] Yeah, exactly.

[00:39:13] Walker: [00:39:13] It's like an irony there. And it's like, cause like what we're really seeking now and always is yeah, like a really healing refuge. And that's what a home is supposed to be a like sort of built environment or wherever we find our home is supposed to be. But like with these toxicity issues, it isn't necessarily, um, yeah, but go on about like what, what happened from that point and the doctor and finding a doctor and starting to experiment with this.

[00:39:49] Jacob: [00:39:49] So from that point, um, I think the thing that's the hardest to link and took me still a long time was that there's something visible that I'm not seeing that could be making me feel such a way. And especially the mental part of it was really difficult, to link those two, but I, I think I got back home and I was so sick that I, I frankly was suicidal.

[00:40:22] I didn't really, I felt so terrible just continually that, and I had done so many blood tests and all kinds of things only to show like, uh, marginal, marginally, low levels of certain minerals that I all I can you kind of do is be like, you know what, maybe there's something to this and that doctor, uh, who I'd been working with and still am, his specialty is environmental illness.

[00:40:56] And he kind of helped me go back and look at a timeline and be like, "Oh shit, Hampshire. Damn, I got messed up when I was there." I mean, it was a cool, it was a great experience, but my health really tanked and there was definitely, it was a bad environment for mycotoxins. And mycotoxins which so hard to understand. They... mycotoxins are a mold, a toxin that's released from the living uh decay cycle of mold.

[00:41:32] And it can be found in old houses, new houses, anything water damaged houses are of course the most common. My childhood  home is basically on a underground water or I guess the river essentially. Um, so the yard our backyard is extremely wet and there's definitely quite a bit of flooding growing up in it. Um, yeah. And there's times I would, oh, go ahead, Walker.

[00:42:07] Walker: [00:42:07] I was just going to make a point about mycotoxins. Um, like one of the things that people don't get is, uh, they're just like get an air purifier or whatever, you know, um, get an air purifier or wear a mask or whatever, like scrub the spores, scrub the mold. But mycotoxins, not the mold spores necessarily themselves, which are bigger, mycotoxins there's small molecules that pass through like HEPA filters, uh, a HEPA air purifier is not maybe to shit about a mycotoxin. Um, so there are these small molecules that are hard to filter and also are, um, eh, they're like sticky in terms of molecularly... uh, I don't, I don't know exactly the molecular charge. Eric talks a lot about this, but they will stick to things. And I, in fact, I have-- Theo Theoharides, a very prominent Mast Cell Activation Syndrome doctor and so we're talking about a guy who, you know, eh has some mainstream credibility for mast cell activation is from, he's not some like alternative medicine doctor, but he says, you know, your mast cells react to mycotoxins and they react to mycotoxins that stick-- like he talks about how the mycotoxins stick to clothes and, porous items and things. So people not only have to leave their house sometimes to get better from these mast cell reactions to mega toxins, they have to like leave behind their stuff.

[00:43:48] Jacob: [00:43:48] Yeah. Uh, the they're tricky and it-- and it doesn't even come down to just remediation of mold. Um, and a lot of that's due to the sticky nature of those mycotoxins, which are, um, which essentially they, they will stick to everything. Um, which fairly --S-- you or myself, um, leads to kind of all the symptomology that we've both been talking about, but, um, how may have mold remediated, but everything that's unfortunately inside of that environment and that home, or wherever, after years of having mycotoxins kind of just coating the whole place and being absorbed and to walls and to computers, furniture, everything, essentially plastic items, uh, kitchen, where most of that stuff, um, that's hard to remediate.

[00:45:21] Walker: [00:45:21] I wanted to touch on something you really like, unless you're uncomfortable with it. I mean, we wanted to go into like, detail about like how brutal the difficulty is and how like much of a change there is with avoidance. You were talking about like suicidally depressed when you were in New York.

[00:45:43] Jacob: [00:45:43] Yeah. I mean, I was, I was probably multiple years of feeling suicidal, be depressed.

[00:45:48] Walker: [00:45:48] Right. But you were saying like, you really felt like in danger, even though you're doing all the right things, which is like seeing a psychiatrist. Right. And seeing a psychologist.

[00:45:58] Jacob: [00:45:58] Yeah.

[00:46:00] Walker: [00:46:00] Okay. Yeah. I didn't want to dwell on that necessarily, but just to talk about like, yeah. It, these things, cause I mean, for me, they cause intense physical illness, the causes of neuropsychiatric symptoms.

[00:46:12] Those aren't -- those aren't like at odds with each other. I mean, the brain is an organ, it's physical, but sometimes people don't see the physical causes like this, like mold illness, uh, neuro psychiatric symptoms as it, they don't like jump to that as a first thought of what might be causing it all.

[00:46:33] Jacob: [00:46:33] Oh yeah, I see what you're saying. Yeah.

[00:46:37] Walker: [00:46:37] Yeah. So that's important to talk about. And even though I like got really my like biggest symptoms, I was trying to treat through mold avoidance were like intense physical illness and um, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome and being like bed-bound with fatigue. We also an [exercise and supplies?].

[00:46:57] I was also, you know, one of the subtle and most immediately changeable things in a good or bad environment for me is neuropsychiatric symptoms. I think almost everyone with this illness has neuropsychiatric symptoms that change with exposures. And it's like one of the first signs. Um, I think of it as like a warning alarm when I'm really depressed in a spot that I might be in a bad plume of air.

[00:47:28] Jacob: [00:47:28] Yeah, totally. Yeah. Um, and I guess to preface that there's, and there's different Facebook groups, um, people online who, uh, I honestly, I don't know how people figure it out. The only way I understood this was from you, but, um, people who have realized that there's a connection, correlation between their environment, especially related to mold and how they feel.

[00:47:57] It seems like they like use groups on Facebook, people talk all the time about, um, now being aware of this and being in a place. And they're just like ridiculously depressed or like, so anxious, uh, have horrible insomnia and all of a sudden and they realize, okay, well this is I'm in a, I'm in a place that has bad air. I'm reacting to something here.

[00:48:25] Walker: [00:48:25] Yeah. People talk about sense of doom too. I want to be clear for a second. Like, we don't really sound like bio-reductionist and like every bad feeling everyone has ever had is caused by mold or toxins around that the toxins, but there's a difference between like depression and grief, like grief is something that any healthy person is gonna feel.

[00:48:51] Depression is an illness and, and even, you know, mainstream medicine would agree with that. They just disagree with what we're talking about, about what causes it. It's, it's a, well, it's a symptom it's or it's an illness, but it's not, it's not just necessarily like a normal thing. Um, so yeah, that's the difference.

[00:49:13] We're not saying every feeling or emotion and you know, when you break up with someone and you feel like sad and that's caused by mold, we're talking about intense depression, anxiety, things that are, um, essentially like psychiatric illnesses as well as physical ones. But yeah, the psychiatric one is what we're...

[00:49:38] Okay. I, that brings me to segueing, I was going to say, so you realized some of this stuff while you're in New York and you talked to a doctor I recommended about it, but you also the same similar time I remember, I don't know the exact timeline you did, what we kind of call an accidental sabbatical, which is where go somewhere for a different reason than mold avoidance, but you come back and you're you go there and come back and the difference between that environment and your home environment is like huge. And I think it was Jackson Hole. Can you talk about that?

[00:50:14]Jacob: [00:50:14] Yeah. You, you kind of summed it up. Um, so I was getting cued into all of this and working with the environmental doctor who soon helped massively and you and et cetera.

[00:50:29] And my sister was living in Jackson Hole and working there in the summer. And so I went out to visit her for probably a week and a half or so-- about the recommended time for sabbatical. And that was when it became kind of clear as night and-- night and days, I was like, Oh my God, I feel I feel like bananas out here, this is great. I felt really good. And...

[00:51:00] Walker: [00:51:00] Yeah, yeah... Well, I was almost a little jealous. I mean, I've been to some amazing places in the Southwest, but you know, Jackson Hole Wyoming. I that's, it. I still haven't been to Wyoming, it sounds  amazing.

[00:51:11] Jacob: [00:51:11] Yeah, it was, yeah. It's, it's beautiful. I mean, what is it like the least populated state in the U S, um...

[00:51:18] Walker: [00:51:18] Least densely populated, maybe besides Alaska, but definitely for the lower 48. Yeah.

[00:51:24] Jacob: [00:51:24] That's true.

[00:51:25] Walker: [00:51:25] ...densely populated.

[00:51:27] Jacob: [00:51:27] So exactly. As you said, that was when I realized that, okay, there's something going on here.

[00:51:35] Walker: [00:51:35] So there's the feeling amazing out there. Right? And I don't know-- do you notice, like there's neuropsychiatric changes, I'm sure that was probably the first thing. But did you notice like energy changes, changes in your gut at all?

[00:51:49] Jacob: [00:51:49] Yeah, actually, actually, no, I forgot about that. Um, and I'll go into some of that later on, cause this is, it's definitely a positive story, I think we're telling. Um, I noticed on that trip, um, that aside from pretty major psychiatric things changing, um, that I had-- I don't know, how, what the elevation was, but I had no trouble, I had a lot of energy to go and, uh, do some pretty, pretty big hikes. Um, and I definitely generally always loved being active. So that was awesome to feel that way. And food-wise, I remember actually like really noting on that trip. I'm like, Oh shit, all of these things that I like had trouble in the past eating, or I would have, like, I had like food PTSD where I'd be afraid to eat a meal, cause I know I was gonna feel so awful afterwards, um, that I wasn't having that anymore. Um, or at least definitely less. It wasn't an immediate change. So yeah, more than just...

[00:53:01]Walker: [00:53:01] And I don't think, I don't think what you described before was necessarily like full-blown CFS necessarily. It's hard to tell, like there's some nuances, but you definitely weren't that energetic at home, right? Like the hike-- you weren't like hiking it on around the Bronx or wherever.

[00:53:24] Jacob: [00:53:24] No, I think as it progressed until that turning point that year, I would say just in general, um, energy levels were going down and whatever sort of activity I was doing was coming from a place of probably like adrenal fatigue, like really just, um, fight or flight kind of energy, not, not actual, um, not like a real energy.

[00:53:53] Walker: [00:53:53] Okay. So yeah. And then the other part of an accidental sabbatical or a purposeful sabbatical is the going home part. So what did you notice, like on the way, like from you're in Wyoming, you're feeling amazing and then you go home?

[00:54:10] Jacob: [00:54:10] I think what was weird and we've talked about this was, I felt, I definitely felt a lot worse going back home. I even noticed it in the airplane and there was a certain, somewhere probably over New Jersey going into the airport in New York, I noticed kind of all these feelings come back. So brain fog, something shifted in my body, which, which was pretty weird to be aware of that. And then I got home and I was aware that, yeah, I think this place is making me sick.

[00:54:49] Um, and what's weird about mold is being in a place that's not so good. And I can say this in hindsight now is it's almost like the mycotoxins kind of control your brain. Cause I'd be like, Oh no, I'm not this isn't making me sick. And I would delay, uh, leaving, just made it a lot harder to leave, even though I, I knew that there was a clear correlation. I dunno if that's just like brain fog doing that, or I'm just not able to connect A and B. But that happened after.

[00:55:29] Walker: [00:55:29] Erik talked about that a lot and he says, it's kind of like the reason he was able to get out or whatever so quickly is like he, he was in, um, the army and studied like, um, whatever bio warfare protocols would say when you get hit by nerve gas, a lot of people aren't -- are going to be like in denial because of the nature of it being like almost paralyzing, not fully paralyzed,  but almost paralyzing, I think just make like people be in denial, not want to like move and get out of the way for like more attacks. Anyway. But one of the things is that for sure it makes it harder to leave. It also makes everything seem like from the perspective of this chemically induced, like, um, kind of intense depression, it makes everything seemed like, like totally like doomed and awful.

[00:56:27] Like you, you, when you, when you're like reading about mold avoidance or whatever. Yeah. Uh, that's the best word we'd have for it, but I'll get into why it's more complex than mold later. But when you're reading about mold avoidance and you're in a moldy home and sick and depressed from the toxins, you like, you're like, this sounds so awful, even though the truth of it is like, you get to go to like, like amazing places like Jackson Hole or whatever.

[00:56:58] I mean, it's a hard life not balancing that, but it's not such an awful thing, but when you're reading about it, it sounds so like, Oh my God, like I'll have to spend so much money. And I have to like, uh, you know, leave all my prized possessions or my things that I love and have sentimental attachment behind and I have to like...

[00:57:21] it just sounds overwhelming and awful. And part of that chemically induced, like kind of depression, I would say, right. I mean, it's not fun to read about mold avoidance or whatever, when you're at home, it makes it seem a lot more daunting at worse when you're in toxins and having a chemically induced depression.

[00:57:43] Jacob: [00:57:43] Oh yeah. And completely. And I just, that phenomenon alone kept me from leaving for so long when, and which is ridiculous, but it's, uh, if I just listened to that and got out of there I would have felt so much better. And I, I feel like I see this happen to a lot of people as well, where it's the same thing: they're aware of this going on, it just sounds too daunting and so you get stuck, uh, in a place that's moldy or not good.

[00:58:19] Walker: [00:58:19] Yeah. And I remember talking to you when this is happening in, and it was to the extent  that you wouldn't believe your own senses, wouldn't believe your own efforts, like, I was like, man, there you go. He went to Jackson, you felt amazing. You went back, you felt awful. Like...

[00:58:37] Jacob: [00:58:37] yeah, Walker, you definitely you've done a lot of I think needed cajoling of me. Cause I'm Oh, I would be stubborn like that for sure, throughout a lot of this. And you were like, "dude, you need to listen. Like I heard you, you sounded really good, uh, and you need to do this for you." And unfortunately, or fortunately you were totally right about it.

[00:59:02] Walker: [00:59:02] Yeah. Well it wasn't that easy for me either. I mean, yeah. Uh, getting out, but. Uh, I mean, a lot of people run into that problem, but I'm not saying that to be down on you. It's just like funny how, how much... okay. So you have like a category of illnesses where a lot of people don't believe the sick people. Right? A lot of greater society, healthy people don't believe us sick people, but what gets even crazier is people not believing themselves. Like not believing their own symptoms because it's just like--

[00:59:36] Jacob: [00:59:36] yeah, totally--

[00:59:38] Walker: [00:59:38] ...and that's what I'm talking about with like, yeah. But at some point around that time or past that time you started doing avoidance for real, because you had enough evidence and you finally got out of your house and you went to the Southwest and, um, in your car.

[00:59:57] Uh, so I want to hear about that journey, um...

[01:00:03] Jacob: [01:00:03] so eventually I, exactly, had enough evidence and I packed up, um, packed up the car, which isn't always the greatest thing to use, um, to bring any of your stuff or even bring a vehicle from a place where you're sick...

[01:00:28] Walker: [01:00:28] right, just, um, butt in for a second, the principle is that you don't want to let the, he don't want to be the enemy of the good, like you want to get out and not be paralyzed by analysis paralysis.

[01:00:48] I mean, like for a sabbatical, it's really not ideal when you're doing a test to have any of your stuff with you. And it's not ideal in general, but you had enough evidence. And so like going, even with contaminated stuff to a better place is better than not going at all. Which a lot of people end up not going because they get paralyzed by thinking about it or like, I can't get a new car, whatever.

[01:01:14] Jacob: [01:01:14] Yeah. No. Okay. Totally. Um, very good point Walker and that's, that is, that's a big one to like hammer in there because like, just like, just do it. So yeah, I left, I left for the Southwest. Um, wait.

[01:01:31] Walker: [01:01:31] Oh, you actually stopped in West Virginia like I told you to, right?

[01:01:34] Jacob: [01:01:34] Exactly. And I noticed, and I always like another big point where I was like, okay, yeah, no, this is, this is real.

[01:01:41] I stopped in West Virginia at a point that Walker said was good. I think it's the highest, I don't know if it was the highest point in the East coast?

[01:01:48] Walker: [01:01:48] Yes, it is Spruce Knob, um, in Monongahela National Forest.

[Correction: Spruce Knob is the highest point in West Virginia, but not in the east coast]

[01:01:53] Jacob: [01:01:53] And I felt amazing. Like I felt, I feel like I felt like ecstatic. I remember being up there and be like, Oh my God, this, this is real. This is way cool. So yeah, I made that stop and then I kept going, uh, out West. I had the plan to settle somewhere so I could keep healing, um, becoming unmasked, um, learning about how to perceive whether or not a location is good or bad. Uh, but obviously ultimately it's just to, to get better. That's the whole point of learning about this and becoming aware of it is to get my health back, which as you said on the phone yesterday is you have to, sometimes you have to lose your health to realize that it's your wealth.

[01:02:51] And I really, yeah. I feel like that's really true. So I watched things like I couldn't digest gluten. I couldn't eat dairy. I couldn't eat nuts like, um, peanuts, seeds, anything like that. So these are all GI issues. Um, all of that started to change even, even pretty quick. Um, things that I thought would be long term and...

[01:03:25] Walker: [01:03:25] right. It was like a predominant part of your symptoms has always been GI like and neuropsychiatric, but also GI.

[01:03:34] Jacob: [01:03:34] Yeah, I think the GI probably started actually in Hampshire. Um, especially getting especially bad. Um, so yeah, and I eventually ended up in New Mexico. Um, I went to Taos New Mexico first and had, uh, that was pretty incredible.

[01:03:59] It's a place I wanted to see, and that was beautiful. I spent, I ended up going back there, but initially I was there, it was cold, so I couldn't camp. So I kept going to try different places. I, went from, I think Taos went south, I want to say into Arizona eventually. And during all this time, I'm learning my lessons because I'm still stubborn and still not believing my body and how it reacts.

[01:04:39] Um, I went to Tucson, Arizona, which is, uh, I love cacti. A lot!

[01:04:50] Walker: [01:04:50] They're really cool.

[01:04:53] Jacob: [01:04:53] Cactus is like my favorite thing, ever, so I went to Tucson because they've got a lot of cacti and I was Tucson also has, um, some of the worst contamination from something called Penitrem A, which is, uh...

[01:05:11]Walker: [01:05:11] that's speculation to be fair, we-- it's something we haven't studied. It's just that we all talk about, uh, we have anecdotal, I would say it's anecdotal, but well organized and well thought out theories on like a few various outdoor toxins that, cause biotoxins that cause specific sets of symptoms. And the theory is that one of them that caught is the most, uh, is like, let's see we're in talks and that causes some of the worst stuff. And some people call it mystery toxin, um, or just the bad stuff or the sewer stuff, um, is Penitrem A. That's a theory. It's not something that's studied and proven yet because we have no studies for this, but sorry to interrupt. I just want to make that clear.

[01:06:00]Jacob: [01:06:00] No, no, that that's good. And I think it's...

[01:06:02] Walker: [01:06:02] So you ran into what we call mystery toxin, we ran into like, yeah, describe some of that. I don't know.

[01:06:08] Yeah. So I ran into that in Tucson cause I was like, I was like, Oh, it's warm here. I like the warmth. Um, another thing that changes with, with mold illness and then avoidance is I couldn't stand the cold at all. I had, I had a really difficult time in cold weather.

[01:06:29] So Taos was too cold. Um, that also has changed. Uh, the cold doesn't bother me, but in Tucson was warm. Um, What I realized...

[01:06:39] Just compare how's just like cold for like even the healthy people, man, Taos, like people think of like the Southwest, like it's all warm, but like Taos is a very high plateau near Colorado with like surrounded by mountains and like wind swept and like maybe full snow and cold air at night, but yeah.

[01:07:02] Jacob: [01:07:02] Um, yeah, Tucson and so it was intense. Yeah. And I was texting you and being like "Walker, this place is cool". And you're like, "dude, it's not a good idea." And then I went out in a thunderstorm to get some food from where I was camping, uh, and desert nearby. Um, and there's just a small note is I really think that learning about this should be as available to people as many people as possible. So there's a lot of free camping. There's a lot of ways to do this on a very small budget. Um, so I went in a thunderstorm, which, barometric pressure drops, um, cause as you release of mycotoxins spores into an environment, and I remember going into Tucson and into the grocery store and it felt like I was drunk. Like my vision was blurry. I couldn't coordinate anything. And it felt like everyone else around me was like that. Everyone was angry and...

[01:08:11] Walker: [01:08:11] like a bad trip!

[01:08:12] Jacob: [01:08:12] It honestly, it kind of feels like a bad trip. Like it's almost psychedelic, it's that crazy. And in the past, I don't know what I would have thought of that it would have just blamed it on probably something I ate or I don't know who knows what.

[01:08:29] Um, and so then I crossed Tucson off the list. Um, And I think I went, you liked Las Vegas, Nevada quite a bit. So I checked that out...

[01:08:44] Walker: [01:08:44] I liked the area. Yeah. And we didn't see the city as like perfectly pristine, but like reasonable. Yeah.

[01:08:51] Jacob: [01:08:51] Yeah. And I, I think I, I like the area surrounding as well, and I felt good out there. Um, the desert is pretty incredible, especially the red rocks. Um, yeah. Um, I also had an interesting experience in Las Vegas of, uh, going into a casino and going from, I think it was like the biggest gradient shift I'd ever experienced was going, uh, from red rocks, uh, which most people considered to be really healing, good air to the like center of Las Vegas and to a casino and essentially having maybe more extreme version of what happened in Tucson, where it was like, I couldn't see straight.

[01:09:58] I don't know. Like I was drunk. Um, yeah. Within the span of like an hour.

[01:10:05] Walker: [01:10:05] Right. You're right. Because there, there's a really like big contrast there. And then I wouldn't say that there's probably a shift even along the drive. It's might be hard to tell if your car is bad enough to distract you, but there's like Red Rock Canyon conservation area, I wouldn't say it's almost always. And I've been there a lot. Yeah. A lot of time. Really pristine or really healing. I love it. And it's beautiful. Uh, uh, and like, yeah, lots of like red sandstone, uh, Aztecs sandstone, um, boulders that people climb on. There's even a, always is part that, well, I won't get into that it's but it's like amazing air.

[01:10:55] And then you drive, the cool thing about red rock Canyon and all of that Vegas, Vegas area doesn't sprawl that much like, like Los Angeles. Like if you want to go to the desert from Los Angeles you're talking like maybe, and I mean, technically it's all desert, but what I mean is like, like, uh, like Joshua tree, it's like a two hour drive at least, but like for Vegas, Summerlin, which is the Western suburb, and, um, I also considered to be one of the better parts of the Vegas area air wise, maybe just because it's on the edge of the desert from Summerlin, which is technically part of Vegas to red rock Canyon is 15 minute drive. It's just like right there. Um, so that's one of the cool parts of it. And then, so you're going from red rock Canyon probably to Summerlin, which is like, not as pristine, maybe in, especially in storm days or certain parts of it, there's going to be a little bit of empty or mystery toxin or outdoor toxin, and then to the strip, which is just worse than all of the above.

[01:12:06] And then probably inside a casino that has indoor mold. So you have, like you said, a gradient shift,, that's like a good experiment, a good deal. Yeah.

[01:12:15] Jacob: [01:12:15] And EMFs, which, yeah. Yeah. Which is probably super heavy in Las Vegas and EMFs or electromagnetic frequencies. So that's, um, some people are sensitive to that.

[01:12:29] Walker: [01:12:29] Not everyone with mold illness necessarily is... but for sure. Uh, it's a part of a lot of people's illness and it's something that yeah, is, I wouldn't say that, I also think that even though we're focusing on mold illness, I do think that we should apply the precautionary principle to stuff like, um, 5G and, you know, even if you don't have evidence showing it's unsafe, we need to prove all of that stuff.

[01:13:01] Say for so many, we have, you know, there's no reason we need it. I mean, no one needs like to like download porn at like, you know, 8,000 terabytes per second or whatever, like we already have, you know?

[01:13:19] Jacob: [01:13:19] And how did that beam from like outer space, have the 5G beamed over there.

[01:13:24] Walker: [01:13:24] Right. We should weigh the like possible risk of anything novel like that, that causes anecdotally problems then. Yeah. That's, that's a side note. So you went to Vegas. And I think you also, and you went to Tucson and the, I think I remember you, uh, yeah, so some of these places are places that I haven't been, some you're just exploring. Um, by the way, since you're talking about wanting to see cacti, I do think that it's possible.

[01:13:54] There's some pristine areas with like the Sonoran I was like, I don't know, I haven't been, but some of the, like, uh, the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge in the Sonoran and like on the near the border of Arizona is not in the city of Tucson and that it has some good reports. So in the future, if you want to go into like part of the Sonoran desert, that isn't Tucson, that doesn't necessarily have as much toxin that might be better, but uh...

[01:14:21] Jacob: [01:14:21] Organ Pipe National Park, for, if anyone's listening, that's also supposed to be warm in the winter and be good air quality too.

[01:14:32] Walker: [01:14:32] Yeah. And so I think after that you went to Southern New Mexico. Right? I think I during part of that, I mean, I remember you talking about City of Rocks.

[01:14:41] Jacob: [01:14:41] Oh yeah that's right, I went to silver city, um, which felt good. I was hoping it would be warmer than it was because I really didn't like cold at that time. And it was, uh, it was pretty cool. It was still chilly. It didn't feel like exceptionally good air and definitely was not like, uh, how Taos felt um...

[01:15:09] Walker: [01:15:09] it's probably better than Tucson that, right?

[01:15:11] Jacob: [01:15:11] Oh yeah, no, it's, I would definitely say it's, it's pretty good. And I think the surrounding areas, uh, there is, there's a couple of different mines but the surrounding areas, uh, I felt, I felt pretty, pretty dang good in there.

[01:15:27] Walker: [01:15:27] It's near the Gila National Forest and Leopold Mountains. It's called I think like the gateway to the Gila national forest. So there's a lot of like, uh, well, I won't say pristine because I haven't checked that myself, but there's a lot of remote, like wilderness areas and mountains, right near silver city, like outside of it, it's like an old Western town kind of with that backdrop mountains and wilderness.

[01:15:53] So I could imagine that even like a little bit outside of town there's some really nice areas.

[01:16:00] Jacob: [01:16:00] Exactly. I guess a point that both of us should make in this is a lot of times things, um, a lot of this can be confusing and things don't always, uh, work the way you would expect them to like a dry area still may make you feel, um, Pretty sick if you're someone that's especially sensitive to mold, or even if you're someone that is not, um, like overtly sensitive, but maybe has long-term health issues or immigration issues. Um, just going to like the desert outside of Phoenix, you might not, you still might be not feeling so good and not always knowing why this is some of what you said before is there's different, um, sewer molds and they grow there's a, the whole penicillin family of mold, um, can emit some pretty crazy mycotoxins, especially in combination with human, uh, like chemicals.

[01:17:04] Walker: [01:17:04] Yeah. You want to get into the science of that later, but certainly I think the point is like, a lot of people are like, okay, well, I'll try this out and guess kind of begrudgingly maybe, or they don't know. And they go to like, they go to like a city in the desert and it's like, that's not, we're talking about wilderness, desert, deserted wilderness.

[01:17:28] Jacob: [01:17:28] I mean, I mean, we're talking about that, but also feeling, learning how to detect for yourself.

[01:17:33] Walker: [01:17:33] Right, yeah. So you don't just go to Tucson and say, this didn't work, cause I feel awful, well it's a city. I mean, I mean, even some of these cities in the West are net-- might be dry, but are also even known to have conventionally, conventional particulate pollution problems, like salt Lake city, the inversion season and they call it is famous for the air pressure in the winter traps, like tons of particulate pollution air.

[01:17:59] Um, yeah. And like Denver is known to have some pollution problems. I mean, yeah. Edward Abbey  was writing about this and. Oh, in, in, um, the Monkey Wrench Gang, which I haven't read all of, but he is it favorite writer of, mine for nature, uh, for like eco defense stuff and stuff about, um, uh, nature, the sublime, um, the West and like the wilderness noise.

[01:18:24] He's talking about how the Western cities are starting to get there, um, sadly starting to get their pollution quotas up to the level of the Eastern ones and this is probably in the seventies. Um, and it's true. Um, even regular pollution, like particulate pollution, um, but also the reverse side of that is that not all areas that are like wet or are in the East or not in the West are necessarily bad.

[01:18:53] Like I, that's why I told you to go to that area in West Virginia. Um, there are probably areas of New England, my sister, who is also somewhat sensitive to this and I'll get into that later, family's genetics, et cetera. She went to Acadia national park in Maine recently and felt really good. Um, there, so a lot of the reason I think people pick the West is not just because of the dryness although that might help at least help with buildings and to help with keeping your RV free, but, uh, of molding growth.

[01:19:27] But it's that a lot of the West is not arable agricultural land. If you look at the like pesticide map, there's like nothing. And we think that industrial toxins combined and agricultural toxins combined with the outdoor microbiome in ways that change it. And there's just like a lot of the West that is still the only part of America that has huge tracts of old growth forest and wilderness stuff.

[01:19:57] It's not that it's dry necessarily.

[01:20:02] Jacob: [01:20:02] Yeah, exactly. And that was. Even like, it's not a new thing though. See, uh, that was, I forget they would send people that were like malaise  exactly. Yeah. Again, TB. They send me like Arizona or something when you met too.

[01:20:22] Walker: [01:20:22] There's the sanatoriums in Albuquerque yeah.

[01:20:24] Jacob: [01:20:24] Yeah. There you go.

[01:20:27] Walker: [01:20:27] Right? Yeah. Yeah. Actually, my mom said that they used to send people with asthma sometimes to the Bronx, because it was a little bit higher up, but I don't know if that's such a good idea anymore. I don't know. Um, but yeah, uh, it, so yeah, they would send people to the West so this, I would say that the there's a couple of different concepts floating around the concept of going out West to get air, to heal or going to the mountains.

[01:20:56] Like if you're in a different part of the world or, or the seaside, just remote pristine areas with various healing properties, like the Alps or the countryside, um, that's not a new phenomenon. We want to be clear on that. In fact, we have a lot of the national park system actually because Teddy Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt was personally felt indebted to the wilderness for helping his asthma and his fatigue intensely.

[01:21:28] So he was like, um, it helped him so much that he thought we have to protect this. And I mean, that's a really rational impulse, to have a personal experience where you get healed by the environment and think we need to defend this because that's how I feel. I mean, I, before getting sick and realized that there's an environmental component, of course I wasn't in favor of destroying the environment, but was it something that I thought I can fight this battle or I need to be fighting this battle?

[01:22:02] Not necessarily. It wasn't like my highest priority. And now I do think of it as like eco defense as self-defense.

[01:22:09] Jacob: [01:22:09] Yeah, exactly. Eco restoration. I mean, it's already been, the defense was put down with the first waves of like smallpox introduced here and now it's like overgrazing, uh, bad farming practices.

[01:22:25] Now it's like, gotta do what you can for the places that have been, uh, desertified are superfund sites to help them to heal. Right. Yeah.

[01:22:36] Walker: [01:22:36] But there's still, there's still like in the West, there are a lot of, there's a lot of public land not that all public land mean, uh, like, you know, public land can still, depending on the type of public land be, um, used for industrial purposes or, um, uh, uh, ranching or, um, uh, timber harvesting and, uh, logging.

[01:23:01] Um, but to be fair that there is, there is still something to defend, especially in the West. In the East, there's like a lot more like, uh, there's a lot less left in terms of wilderness. I would say like parts of Appalachia are certainly an exception, you know, parts of Maine for sure. But there's a little, there's definitely less of a percentage that is like public land.

[01:23:30] Um, um, certainly less old growth forest and whatnot. Um, So in the West, there's certainly a lot to defend and it under attack all the time. Um, but yeah, uh, I, we kind of went on a little digression there about how this works, um, and why it's not just, um, about drivers to sweat and, and that also there's some science that'll go into... We want to intersperse this. There's some science I'll go into that speculative about the combination of industrial chemicals and microbes and the microbiome and molds. But, um, I want to get back to your story because your story's not over in this portion. We're still where you're explaining silver city and city of rocks and Southern New Mexico.

[01:24:22] And you're, I think, sleeping in your car and mostly car camping, um, at this point. Right?

[01:24:28] Jacob: [01:24:28] Exactly. Yeah. And no, I was, I was still looking around and I was still learning to perceive, like what felt good, what didn't feel so good. And I really feel like that, like also during this whole time I was still skeptical.

[01:24:49] Like I was still like, ah, you know, is this real? Am I actually affected by this? But I was, I would get places and I would feel so good that I was like, okay, you know what? There's something to this. And it's, and it's like profound, profoundly good. Like, wow. I haven't felt this way since I was a little kid kind of thing.

[01:25:07] Walker: [01:25:07] Um, yeah, yeah, yeah. Again, playful and happy. I mean, yeah.

[01:25:12]Jacob: [01:25:12] Yeah, exactly. And, uh, it was definitely not easy, but, uh, throughout that period of time, I was becoming less skeptical and also learning, okay, this place is good. This place is not good. My brain likes this here, but my body doesn't like it. So I think it was, especially a lot of just kind of listening, learning how to listen to my body and eventually, um, eventually ending up, uh, settling in New Mexico, um, into house right into at first. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[01:25:53] Walker: [01:25:53] You've been through a couple of different places, but you've, you found a housing situation and has, um Hm.

[01:26:01] Jacob: [01:26:01] That was clean. There was no mold...

[01:26:04] Walker: [01:26:04] and you were working and that it like, so you had put working before. I imagine even like with some level of healing, it wasn't easy to do that, but kind of says something that you were able to go back to work. And also that, you know, you're making this work with while still like, you know, trying to stay in clean air as much as possible.

[01:26:33] Jacob: [01:26:33] Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Unfortunately, the place I worked was was, uh, uh, it was making me, it was, it was pretty gnarly environment, but, um,

[01:26:46] Walker: [01:26:46] in terms of toxins?

[01:26:47]Jacob: [01:26:47] In terms of, I think mold, I mean, you could even smell it in, in the kitchen where I was, but, uh, you are correct about that, Walker. Yeah.

[01:26:57] Walker: [01:26:57] But you balance that, talk about how you balance that because people call it "balancing the books" in the mold avoidance community if you have to spend time in a place that's bad.

[01:27:06] Jacob: [01:27:06] So if you have to spend time in a place that's bad, uh, balancing the books would be, um, I mean, it was quite literally for me, it was just going after work to walk by, uh, the Rio Grande river runs through Taos and it's, uh, really nice over there. So I'd walk there and feel amazing, or even just walk through some parks in town pretty much every day after working.

[01:27:39] And that would help balance the books without a doubt. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:27:44] Walker: [01:27:44] Yeah. And if I just, if I may say this, like we've been talking a lot about toxins. I also want to talk a little bit about the beauty of the Southwest has, um, yeah. ...place. It's terrific. It's huge. There's a huge Mesa. It's, it's very, very beautiful.

[01:28:04] Uh, we love, we love our Mesas folks, but seriously, um, Taos, um, uh, when we're talking at the Taos we're talking like the area of town, there's a number of unincorporated communities in Taos County. I mean, there's the town, but I think where you were working was actually on the Mesa and then there's the Rio Grande Gorge bridge.

[01:28:27] And, um, uh, just this huge Mesa West and Northwest of town that, um, there are a number of communities on, but there's also people living off grid a lot. It's famous for off grid living because of some zoning particularities. But, um, the Rio Grande Gorge is just this huge rift that's like, um, I think sort of like related, like it's not the continental divide in that it's not the Rockies it's called the continental rift or something.

[01:28:57] I may be wrong. It's a huge rift in the middle of New Mexico and in Taos it's so dramatic. And so sublime, like you stand on the Gorge bridge, it is one of the highest, um, Gorge bridges in the world. And, um, or in America, at least I know the new river bridge in West Virginia, an area in looking after avoidance possibly is higher, but the Taos one is very high.

[01:29:25] Um, and. It's in a way, even though I've been to the Grand Canyon and I'm there for avoidance reasons. Um, but also it's cool place in a way that Taos Gorge, um, is almost more dramatic because it's, it's on a scale where it's like a smaller scale. So it's a little bit more, it's less like your brain just gets overloaded by the size.

[01:29:50] It's like, um, it is very big, but it's also a scale that you can comprehend. And it's just this huge rift in a Sage brush and, um, black rock, volcanic rock Mesa. And, uh, it goes down into the, um, in the kind of Canyon gorge, uh, where, um, the sides are covered in that Sage and black volcanic rocks. And it goes down into like a small river way at the bottom.

[01:30:22] And if he's in and the, if you, I, I love it in winter with like the snow covering the whole Mesa, uh, snow capped mountains in the background. And it just almost reminds me of the Himalayas a little bit, because you have this high steppe environment that's just really like flat and wide and huge in all directions with a really big sky and then mountains in the background.

[01:30:54] But yeah. Um, that's the area just like to give listeners kind of picture of Taos and the area. A lot of people think of New Mexico and are like, literally surprised that you hear that there's snow and cold, but New Mexico yeah is very much, a lot of the state is mountains. A lot of it's snow and cold. Yeah.

[01:31:19] Jacob: [01:31:19] Even Albuquerque is, um, I want to say it's between like, 5,000 feet up to 6,500 feet or 6,200 feet. So, I mean, that's, that's kind of on par with Denver, so that kind of helps get the picture.

[01:31:36] Walker: [01:31:36] Um, so yeah, Albuquerque is further south than Denver, so it is warmer, but it is basically the same, um, height. And then there are the East mountains and neighborhoods that are up in the Sandias, um, but you, so you lived at the house for awhile, um, and it was healing, but you had to work at that job.

[01:31:59] That's difficult. I want to put in a word for, uh, talking about that, this problem, like, um, I wasn't, I was so sad when we have been invited to that. I wasn't able to work at all and I've been on disability. Um, it might sound like, you know, from it's diff it's difficult to like convey illness over a picture or over listening to someone speak, but you know, I have to take lots of palliative meds, even do a podcast, um, and avoid crashing, like talking is not always easy for me, even when I'm very sick.

[01:32:39] But when you get, when you're in a, when you don't have disability money, even when you do, it's not a lot of money, but when you go on disability money and you're balancing healing and working, especially if work involves being in a bad environment, um, that can be tough. So, um, speak on that struggle a little bit. And then after that, I want to hear about your move to Albuquerque and just like the different places you've been in New Mexico a little bit.

[01:33:13] Jacob: [01:33:13] Walker, you-- you like to live vicariously through the mentioned, um, yeah. Working as you said working is tough. Um, when you're in a work environment, that's, um, not good.

[01:33:30] I mean, working even, uh, I mean, I hate to say it, but yeah, working, working through this and through that healing is, it is difficult. Um, and then I think I've also come to realize how much in the past I've really been in extreme, extreme, extreme burnout from pushing myself to just pay rent and bills and everything on time.

[01:33:58] Um, and not taking care of my body or my health. There's a lot of parts of detoxing as well when your body is in a good environment and you start to let go of past toxins, maybe that had been stored for a couple of years, maybe like a lifetime. Um, and I mean, it's, it can be really intense how, without a doubt.

[01:34:25] So working through that is difficult. And if you're in that position, I think it's important to really see if you can find, uh, something that's conducive to your healing. So whether that's being outside, whether it's like parks and rec department or something, where that you can work on your computer as well, uh, that could be really helpful as long as your computer is, uh, you feel okay using your computer.

[01:35:01] Um, but then you can essentially create your environment, your home environment and work environment. So, yeah, there's, that's kind of my recommendation, but yeah,

[01:35:12] Walker: [01:35:12] But even then it can be tough because like some people are sick enough that they basically like can't tolerate most buildings and they might need to be camping and camping can be like a full time job. Just like setting up camp.

[01:35:28] Jacob: [01:35:28] Um, yeah, I mean, there's no pretty way to say it. I mean, it's, it's really not ideal to be, it feel it's a little bit like you got to choose one or the other. Um, yeah, I've lucked out a little bit with some farm work, even that though it could be, that could be really hard. Cause there's a lot of times where, um, the thing with this is like, when you feel fatigued or tired, it's usually just not a, it's not a good idea to, to try and overwork yourself or push through it.

[01:36:02] Walker: [01:36:02] Um, right.

[01:36:04] Jacob: [01:36:04] It's, that's pretty bad idea. So that's, that's definitely hard. So yeah, it feels a little bit like one or the other.

[01:36:14] Walker: [01:36:14] Um, we're not saying this to be like, um, if you, you know how to make money and work and you also have to have health issues, don't do mold avoidance or whatever. The point is more reach out for any kind of financial support you can. I mean, like, I think there's no shame in doing like fundraisers. A lot of people started their mold avoidance journey. Yeah, I can. I know, I know someone that I think I'm thinking of a couple people at least, but at least one person I know is a really successful, really great mold avoider who I believe started with like a gofundme in their maybe church community, I'm not sure, their community in general really like filled that, not everyone that has a good support network. And it's not ideal to have to do that, but that's the reality. I mean, disability takes a while to fight for, for some of these illnesses, you don't always get it. I was lucky to get it, but even what I get is like pennies on the dollar compared to like a lot of expenses.

[01:37:17] Um, so that, that's the reality. It's not, I'm not bringing this up to say all these daunting things to not, to not leave your environment and not try this. It's just sometimes difficult. Although some people made remote work work, especially when they improve a lot from, um, avoidance. But I'm just saying, talking about the struggle to make it clear that like, um, if you see someone fundraising for this and you're like, why can't they work?

[01:37:47] I mean, like camping is difficult and camping off-grid, especially, which is often the best place to be. You don't necessarily want to be near a bunch of RVs and toilets, um, is, is a, is a job. Um, yeah. And, and this is something that this is a reason for homelessness, for one thing. Um, a lot of people won't even think of themselves as homeless, even as they're like homeless doing this because maybe they have come from, they don't think of, uh, the illness is a valid reason for houselessness and homelessness. But like, I mean, if you are not able to tolerate many homes and you're like living out of your car or whatever, even in the cold, then all of that, like you're homeless, I don't know. Or at least you're houseless, it's, you know, it's a real thing. And it's a phenomenon that I would say is like more widespread than most people realize.

[01:38:52] Jacob: [01:38:52] Yeah, definitely. Definitely agree with that.

[01:38:55] Walker: [01:38:55] Like a lot of free housing things like public housing are known to be, have really bad toxic mold, uh, problems.

[01:39:05] Jacob: [01:39:05] Yeah. That's, that's something that, that's something that's really good to, I think, bring up more about this and also to emphasize and like try and make guidelines on how to do this with when you're, when you don't have any financial support.

[01:39:23] Walker: [01:39:23] Um, yeah. It's really tough.

[01:39:26] Jacob: [01:39:26] It's tough, but it's possible. I think it's just, I think it's learning and I think the, the ways to do it, aren't, you can't just look it up. You can't say, okay, here's a RV and an RV site. It might be emailing, um, or getting, trying to contact, a lot of people don't even have computers or internet access unless you go to a library.

[01:39:48] But if you're able to email people that have, uh, like Workaways or Woofing, uh, visitor-volunteer type things, some of them are paid. Um, some of them might let you stay there for free. So there's ways. I don't think it's clear. It's not clear yet how to, how to do that.

[01:40:12]Walker: [01:40:12] Right. Well, yeah, it's very true. It's tough. I'm not saying it's not doable or not good. I'm bringing that up. Just like show the struggle because there are, there are a lot of people that I think of as very skilled mold avoiders who struggled a lot, just because it's intrinsically a difficult thing to do. Is regardless of money, those people often some of them had fairly good, um, situations that made it easier financially to count their skills and struggled.

[01:40:48] Because even if you have that, it's not easy. I mean, it's difficult emotionally to leave your house in like communities behind. Um, but for people that don't have that at all, they don't have a house to sell. They don't have assets to sell, they're asset poor and cash poor, um, it can be really difficult, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try it.

[01:41:14] I mean, there's like, there's so many levels and ways to do this...

[01:41:18] Jacob: [01:41:18] and you shouldn't try and it especially means that you should, like, I don't know, just try and talk to people and reach out. Like, don't be quiet.

[01:41:27] Walker: [01:41:27] Yeah, for sure. Find ways to do it. Find support, find a support system. I mean, ask for what you need. Um, uh, yeah.

[01:41:36] Uh, I wanted to get, so you, at some point you moved from Taos to Albuquerque, um, like, uh, yeah. I wanted to get back to your journey cause you're digressing a little bit, but talk about that.

[01:41:49] Jacob: [01:41:49] Sure. So I eventually made the move...

[01:41:53] Walker: [01:41:53] To the East Mountains first, which is near Albuquerque.

[01:41:57] Jacob: [01:41:57] Right. And this probably, I'm telling you most people aren't going to be too familiar with this, but it could be helpful if you decided to come to New Mexico.

[01:42:09] Um, since, um, New Mexico can be a little bit cheaper to live, especially than New York. I don't know about Vermont. Um, and outside of Albuquerque by 30 minutes, there's, uh, what's called the East mountains and it's a mountain range, uh, essentially running North of Albuquerque. Uh, I dunno how many miles, but it's, for me it was healing.

[01:42:42] I definitely did a lot of healing and felt really good there. Um, it's cheaper to live up there as well, so that's helpful. And I eventually, uh, moved to Albuquerque, which as far as the city goes is honestly, it's pretty, it's pretty good. It's pretty, relatively clean. And it's pretty cheap. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:43:08] Walker: [01:43:08] Compared to like our, Oh my God man, compared to like Los Angeles or New York or San Francisco rents, Albuquerque is insanely cheap. Uhm, but I don't know, personally, I haven't checked out like any apartments there I've stayed in hotels in Albuquerque. And I know a little bit of that or less than you for sure. Um, right. It is, it is pretty reasonable of a city in terms of outdoor air.

[01:43:38] Jacob: [01:43:38] Yeah, it definitely is. It definitely, it depends where you are.

[01:43:43] Walker: [01:43:43] Right. Every city has micro areas, which is something we're gonna talk about like, like plumes, areas that are veterans within the city, even in a simple grid city, like Albuquerque, I would say to me, I think of. I think you sent me a Trailhead that's like on the Northeast Heights area of Albuquerque, which is very near, like just the suburbs in the Northeast, uh, and just the city and the desert near the foothills of Sandias. And, uh, I felt pretty good there even in winter, which is not the best season for air.

[01:44:23] Jacob: [01:44:23] Yeah, no, it's, it's, it is. I think it's pretty good for a city. Um, it's actually far better, I've found in Santa Fe, um, which you wouldn't, you know, again, that's not something you'd expect because there's lots of industry, there's pollution, et cetera. In Albuquerque. I don't think horrible amounts.

[01:44:45]Walker: [01:44:45] Santa Fe has this reputation, people have even called the new healing vortex, has this new age healing reputation. And, um, I think it's important to like, not to be mean, but to like bust myths a little bit, it isn't really tough city in terms of air I, it is and the whole area.

[01:45:05] Um, uh, and I do not, maybe it was healing, honestly, I can totally believe that it was healing. Like maybe in the seventies when this reputation started, places change over time, but I don't know. Yeah. I could talk a little bit more about, you know, um, just, just for fun, just because this is an example, and I'm going to talk about, um, some of the idea of micro areas and plumes, and also talk about the scientific part of the outdoor toxins, but just talk about your experience, um, in terms of Albuquerque, not just like that it's pretty good for a city, but just like, I don't know when you like drive around and noticed plumes in different areas, you know, the city better there than me. You can talk about like, Just give as an example, like of a city break it down, like, and, and I would include the East mountains because they're like kind of suburbs of Albuquerque. Just break down, like what, what it's like in terms of the goods zones, the bad zones in between and what the seasonal changes are. Just go into it.

[01:46:20] Jacob: [01:46:20] Okay. Um, I want to be as helpful as I can, so I'll try and be concise. Bad zones I've found are by the river, the Rio Grande, which is the agricultural part of the city. Some of it's also protected, so you can walk and bike there. It's really beautiful. Um, I don't, unfortunately I usually don't I feel not so good there. Um, there's a lot of micro-climates I would say in Albuquerque and a lot of places you can go down one street and feel, and I'll feel good. And the next street over, even down the block, um, you know, I'm not feeling good and, uh, that is unfortunately the nature of the city. And that's like, it's not a bad place to start or come back to once you're less sensitive.

[01:47:20] Um, but I wouldn't, I still don't think it's ideal, uh, to, to live here, but it's not, it's easy to find, um, a place to live, I guess I would say. Um, although so much of the housing is still, is still not good. Um, sorry. I'll get back to your point. So a lot of stuff by the river is, I find, is not so good. It's not always that way.

[01:47:56] Rain storms. Cloudy days. Um, I don't feel good going up different parts of the city use-- usually higher elevation is good and that's not always true. Um, I live kind of surrounded by like concrete and it's kind of a little weird, honestly, it's not anywhere I'd choose to live if I didn't have to be so careful.

[01:48:22] Um, but actually right here, which is kind of in the middle of the city. There's uh, the air is good. Um...

[01:48:31] Walker: [01:48:31] interesting so downtown, like old town?

[01:48:33] Jacob: [01:48:33] No, no definitely not that, not that far down. It's it is still higher elevation and than the true than like the Valley of Albuquerque.

[01:48:43] Walker: [01:48:43] Okay. So like North, Northeast urn, North?

[01:48:48]Jacob: [01:48:48] More Southeast actually.

[01:48:50] Walker: [01:48:50] Um, okay. Okay.

[01:48:52] Jacob: [01:48:52] So then going up into the mountains, there is progressively better. There is some, uh, fire forest, fire retardant that's been used, um, which Walker can go into, there's also agriculture. Um, so the East mountains, depends where you are there some places I feel like, Oh yeah, this is good. Some places I'm like, yeah. I'm like, I'm like jamming out. Cause I feel so good.

[01:49:25] Walker: [01:49:25] Yeah. Well, I'm not as familiar with it as you, you gave a nice overview. I will say that Albuquerque. Yes. In general. I've just found it to be less noxious than Santa Fe and it's the place we go where like, when I'm, even though it's like inconveniently far from some of the parts of Northern New Mexico that I really want to be, like Taos or whatever, it's a place you can go like, say we're camping, but it's too cold to camp and then we have to stay in a hotel in Albuquerque, like stay in a new hotel in a, not that bad city or there's wild Paris, which is a thing.

[01:50:03] And, you know, unfortunately when you're camping, uh, you can't necessarily have an air purifier and that sometimes happens. So Albuquerque would be like the place that I can convince a medium, decent place to, um, go. And then, and then while I'm there, if I wanted to get to a slightly better place, I might go to like, I have a spot in secret.

[01:50:30] Well, yeah, I'm not going to tell the listeners a secret because you should all find your own spots if you're working on this, but I have a spot in the Sandias, um, uh, that well within Cibola national forest that I really like, um, that's like just a little picnic area up in the Sandias, uh, probably like a couple thousand feet higher than the city, um, in the woods.

[01:50:56] And it's really, um, better air than the city. Um, and it's really pretty good. Um, so, and it's not that far of a drive. It must be like 20, 30 minutes max, um, see from, from like downtown. So that's, that's part of the thing with cities is if you do have to spend time in a city, um, you want like to find a place right outside of it or not that far to like go and get good air.

[01:51:24] I was going to bring in my recent experience. Um, I have issues beyond environmental sensitivities just that are things that have to be dealt with surgically, for example. So I've had a lot of medical appointments, which has brought me to New York city. And the crazy thing is, and you can really, this goes to what a lot of experienced avoiders said, you cannot exactly predict you cannot like go by theory and think this place would be good.

[01:51:51] This place would be bad. New York city is not that terrible of a city. I know I said that after Jacob, talked about his experiences, but we're talking about micro-areas and he was not living in Manhattan. Correct. Um, so I have not found Manhattan to be that bad. Um, I've not found Queens to be that bad although I have not spent a lot of time there.

[01:52:17] I found long Island, at least the part I've been in, which is not the far end. It's not that like really nice Hampton Sound, but it's a big Island. I've found the long Island to be pretty bad. Um, but Queens and Manhattan so far, it's not been that bad, especially like Midtown and uptown, central park. Um, I did--

[01:52:40] and this speaks to what you said about the micro-areas, like one streets bad, one streets good, run to just a really nasty cloud of pretty nasty pod of empty. That really like I was, and it immediately just like extensive doom and hopeless feeling in, uh, Thompson Square park actually in, uh, I forget whether that's the village it's near the village, at least lower east side - village.

[01:53:09] Um, yeah, that felt bad. And then parts of Northern New Jersey, I'm not talking Newark, which I've heard to avoid, but just a lot of Northern, um, New Jersey. The rural and suburban parts aren't-- isn't that horrible air wise. Um, so, um, uh, that's been part of the surviving being out here for like medical stuff. Um, but yeah, I wanted to, so we talked about our respective experiences, um, but I wanted to get a little bit to science because we're bringing up a lot of terms like mystery toxin and, uh, sewer toxins, outdoor toxins, fire retardant, talked about, but without talking about science.

[01:53:59] And so there's going to be a lot of skepticism, even though we're talking about experiences that are pretty, um, dramatic. I had-- what initially even got me to try this was talking to a guy named Eric Johnson who had scientific theories about what causes this increase in mold toxicity and pathogenicity. I mean, and he was talking about the combination of mold and industrial chemicals in some way, making each other worse, uh, and making the mold worse and more pathogenic.

[01:54:35] Um, and, uh, the specific science behind that I can go into briefly, we can be, we'd have to do a whole other episode, get into detail, but I just, I want to bring it in a little bit so that people are not so skeptical. And so they understand why, you know, this stuff, mold that is just this natural stuff that grows on bread or whatever.

[01:55:00] And it's not like we don't think of it as like something that causes brutal, severe illness, does cause brutal severe illness in certain circumstances. And, um, one of the theories is that mold and I actually have a paper on this, um, that I've found. It sounded like I meant coauthored, but no, a paper that I've found in the journal PFAS.

[01:55:26] Uh, I believe it's a pretty good journal and it talks about mold spores, um, attracting nanoparticles of industrial material to the surface of the spore. And then it changing the spore's pathogenicity and they studied this in, in mice. And, uh, this mold spores that had nanoparticles on them on the surface, um, uh, were causing more inflammatory changes in mice, um, more inflammatory set of pens and they both did this in the lab.

[01:56:09] And then they also sampled mold spores from construction sites and found that they attracted nanoparticles of industrial materials to them. So that's one theory is that mold, uh, combined with nanoparticles, which we know-- nanoparticles, um, uh, pollution we know of is a problem on its own. But combined with mold it, you know, it causes the spores to have a different charge.

[01:56:37] It causes you to have a different kind of surface energy. It causes them to interact with the body differently. Um, we also, um, just, yeah, so when we talk about conventional air pollution, um, air quality index, et cetera, um, you're talking about PM 2.5, that's 2,500 nanometers, I believe. So we're talking about all of this stuff that we study in terms of air pollution.

[01:57:09] Almost all of it is way bigger than nano particles. So we don't even consider nanoparticles in that in terms of health effects. Even though we know they're emitted by various activities in military high heat explosion is that, you know, create um, very, very small particles to certain types of car exhausts, um, and just lots of stuff creates nanoparticles.

[01:57:39] And so it's a case of size matters in terms of pathogenicity and they combine with mold, then there's another theory which, um, I wanted to get into a little bit. Like another theory of like the mold industrial toxins. And this is one that is not studied a lot, at least in these specific illnesses or with mold, but it's this idea of extending in theory of the microbiome beyond just talking about the gut microbiome to talking about the outdoor microbiome, the indoor microbiome, cause microbiome just means, um, like microbial, uh, environment or microbial biome.

[01:58:23] It doesn't necessarily mean gut microbiome, but we almost always just hear it in terms of the gut microbiome or commensal like microbes that inhabit our gut, but the microbes also inhabit the world outside of us and they have health effects in that, in that, um, role. I am really big on this idea that the chemicals we use change the outdoor and indoor microbiomes and, um, You know the way, uh, you know, any medical professional listening to this or someone who maybe has had an unfortunate experience with this is familiar with, if you have like a really bad course of antibiotics or nasty course of antibiotics overused.

[01:59:10] You could develop C. diff it's like a bad infection because you're white-- you know, microbial diversity, you know, allowing nastier pathogens to take over or candida. That I am of the opinion and it's supported by some evidence, not enough study yet that, that happens in the outdoor microbiome, that if you wipe out microbial diversity in the outdoor microbiome, that nastier molds nastier pathogens will take over.

[01:59:42] And also that if you take away a diversity of like forests and flora, um, that the same thing will happen because those things have filtering roles, trees have filtering roles. Um, and there are studies proving this. There are studies showing that, for example, when you use Round-Up like to say as pesticide really extensively important fields that, uh, Oh yeah, it's an herbicide that, um, fusarium mold grows like in big amounts, um, that didn't normally grow in the wake of Round-Up.

[02:00:22] So, um, there's some study on that, but not enough study. Um, I was looking at a study recently called, um, uh, something like the built environment is a microbial, um, wasteland. That was the title. And that there's some interesting stuff to get into these studies, but we can't cover all the science. I just wanted to kind of bring up the science.

[02:00:50] I know my theory is as compact. Because Jacob, um, you're interested in remediation and then this idea in permaculture and this idea that that's connected to how we can heal some of these outdoor environments.

[02:01:11] Jacob: [02:01:11] Yeah, exactly. Many people even do these things. Talk about the, as above, so below effect where you're working on healing, the environment, and they're seeing themselves also be healed while they're doing that.

[02:01:31] Walker: [02:01:31] Okay. Yeah. And you, your kind of ultimate dreams or plan is to have like, uh, a kind of permaculture area that is also  a safe Haven for, um, people with environmental sensitivities.

[02:01:49] Jacob: [02:01:49] Yeah, I'd say so. I mean, I was thinking about tying that in before with like the economic difficulty of doing avoidance is like, I think you and I both realized that it's like, if there, if only there was a place somewhere pretty clean that we could go to that we know that we knew the outdoor air was good,

[02:02:12] we knew the indoor air would be good. It would even just have to be like a canvas wall tent, for example, that would have helped like, so just immensely in getting better. Um, yeah.

[02:02:30] Walker: [02:02:30] I want to talk to people, also, you're talking about permaculture and I and sure you bring some of this stuff up, like the environment on this with permaculture people, but I also want to talk more to people that are like.

[02:02:48] Especially like young and progressive forest rangers and park Rangers about stuff like this, because I, you know, recently had a lot of conversations with a forest ranger or someone who works in the national forest in West Virginia, um, who, you know, is drawing out ideas of like where I could stay and talk to them about how it was so interesting to hear from someone who does this for health, not just for the views and the Instagram, but, um, Oh yeah.

[02:03:21] What was I going to bring up? We mentioned in passing. So now that I like, you know, brought up some of the scientific reasoning, I wanted to briefly go over some of the more anecdotal terms that as a community, we have for some toxins, because yeah. Some of this is, might be interesting for people that are sick and know about indoor mold, but don't know about the, we--we touched on mystery toxin, or sewer toxin, what Jacob says, maybe Penitrem A, um, also connected to like solvent use in super fun sites in places like the Bay area, but quite a few different cities, I guess I'd it's known to be like the most prevalent in Houston, Dallas, um, Pacific Northwest cities, um, San Francisco, but even more so like Silicon Valley area in Palo Alto, um, and Tucson and Phoenix, maybe to a lesser extent Phoenix, I would say probably prevalent in almost every city.

[02:04:28] We're, I'm just naming the ones where it's like really, really prevalent, you know, it's still prevalent a bit in, uh, Las Vegas, especially in a winter and in the downtown area. Yeah. But there's that toxin and that's a toxin we associate with sewers and to some extent tech development and stuff. Um, it's even prevalent in some smaller cities and towns like, um. And then I was going to, then there is, um, building mold, um, and there's cyanotoxins, which can be a problem both in, um, um, in, uh, cyano-bacteria toxins, which can be a problem in both waterways, but also desert soil in certain areas.

[02:05:16] And in fact, that's something that's less anecdotal, just anecdotal and scientifically we recognized because there were these cyano toxins in the desert in Kuwait that they think are responsible for the high rates of ALS in Gulf war veterans, they produce BMAA neurotoxin. And, um, I think the, um, final, main one unless I'm...

[02:05:45] Yep. Well, there is a couple of ones. There's one people call Hell Toxin and that's a little more controversial, involves like intense cross-contamination. People think it's related to graphene nano particles, and there's a lot of theories about that one, but the one that I am personally a bit irked by the existence of, because it's not just outgoing civilization, it's something that makes even national parks and wilderness and forests a problem is, um, fire retardant associated toxin. Um, and that is a bummer to me because it's, I have experienced it a little bit and not as reactive to it nor have I had as much experience in places where it's really heavy as many people, but I have had some, and it's basically hypothesized to be a microbe that grows in the wake of heavy fire retardant usage of...

[02:06:45] Um, stuff like FOSS check these newer fire retardants, the red foam that you see being pumped everywhere. And, um, it is really a bummer that this exists. If things keep going poorly, we can see the West not being as much of a refuge as it has been for environmentally ill people in the future. The bummer, the real bummer is that it's not necessary because I mean, none of these toxins are necessary, but especially like fire suppression is-- the way we do it is not a rational strategy to control fire.

[02:07:23] A lot of the West is supposed to burn periodically, and yet we focus excessively on, uh, fire suppression at the expense of at healthy forest, especially in places like California, where there's lots of wealthy homeowners who vote in kind of policies like this. I mean, look at like Malibu, we subsidize, uh, heavy fire suppression to save these mansions and in a place that really should be burning like every year.

[02:07:57] Okay. So, yeah. Um, that was basically my spiel on that, Oh yeah. And I realized I wanted to bring in one more thing scientifically, um, is that, um, we had talked a lot about just our sensitivities, but there are some formal diagnoses for environmental sensitivities. One of them is, um, mast cell activation syndrome.

[02:08:23] And this is not like, might be a little bit controversial, but it is recognized by mainstream medicine. And it's where your mast cells, which are the type of innate immune, cell white blood cell involved in allergy and immune response, um, are said to overreact to various environmental triggers. Um, I was diagnosed with this before I ever did mold avoidance based on the high levels of tryptase and histamine in my blood, but also just clinically diagnosed, like based on my symptoms.

[02:08:57] Um, and then recently my sister who has also has similar reactions to mold and outdoor toxins to me was diagnosed with it. Um, and so I just wanted to point that out is just like, um, yeah, I've had that formal diagnosis, but also I took a lot of the meds for it. And while that was somewhat helpful, it wasn't anywhere near enough until I did avoidance.

[02:09:24] Um, and uh, going to pristine areas was more help, more important to me than just staying in a bad area and taking meds to suppress my immune response. uhm...

[02:09:37] Jacob: [02:09:37] What are some of the symptoms of that?

[02:09:41] Walker: [02:09:41] Well, um, Hmm. Cause, uh, I can talk about my symptoms, but they're, they're so varied because it's just basically a syndrome that means that you have a type of almost allergy based, but it can be more neurological than a classic allergy response to like a number of, uh...

[02:10:05]Jacob: [02:10:05] it's a histamine--a histamine response, right?

[02:10:08] Walker: [02:10:08] So basically anything like, um, I would say, I mean, for me, I had skin flushing and rashes, hives, just like whenever I was inside the house. I also had a lot of food intolerances that are less so, um, in good air, my sister and I joke that like, well, it's not really a joke so much. It's just like a funny thing that we've noticed.

[02:10:34] It's just like, it's better to be eating like fast food, like In-n-Out, which is so one of the best parts of the Southwest in the desert than to be eating like whole foods in an awful house. Um, so yeah, if you wanna heal enough to have food intolerance go away and eat In-n-Out in red rock Canyon, that's something to maybe look forward to.

[02:10:59] Um, but yeah, uh, so hives and flushing, skin reactions are part of mast cell activation syndrome. Food intolerances, um, and all of what goes with that. Um, but also brain fog, um, and fatigue. So there's a lot of overlap between the ME/CFS and chronic fatigue syndrome symptoms and heart racing. And then some people have some he-- some people go all the way up to having full blown, idiopathic anaphylaxis, where they have anaphylaxis, even to things that on an allergy test they're not allergic to.

[02:11:36] So you don't even have any predictability over where you'll, what you'll have anaphylaxis too.

[02:11:43] Jacob: [02:11:43] Wow.

[02:11:43] Walker: [02:11:43] Um, yeah, like I think, um, Simka, talked about that, right? He he's someone, um, for the listeners in our mold avoidance communities, he's been talking about having, yeah, like idiopathic, just going into anaphylaxis a lot of the time to random triggers. Um, yeah.

[02:12:07] Jacob: [02:12:07] Yeah. That's interesting. I would also, I would imagine it causes a pretty strong inflammatory response, like staying in it, like if you kept doing that, is your body kind of in a constant state of inflammation from the histamines?

[02:12:25] Walker: [02:12:25] Yeah. It's histamine, but it's not just histamine, which is why it's not just the classic allergy response. It has like...

[02:12:31] Jacob: [02:12:31] ah, interesting.

[02:12:32] Walker: [02:12:32] You can almost have like flu-like, uh, feeling because you have. Um, you have, uh, cytokines, which are like, uh, things that make they're the things released by the innate immune system that are inflammatory that make you, they're the things that when you feel like shit, when you have the flu that's cytokines, um,

[02:12:56] Jacob: [02:12:56] and it's not autoimmune?

[02:12:57] Walker: [02:12:57] ...things. Yeah. Yeah. And it is essentially a type of auto-immune

[02:13:03] Jacob: [02:13:03] ...interesting...

[02:13:03] Walker: [02:13:03] um, illness. But, um, a lot of that went away when doing avoidance. Um, I still take mast cell stabilizers and meds, but, you know, they didn't do shit when I was in off-- like a really awful, they didn't do shit when I was in a really awful environment.

[02:13:23] You can't just expect to stay in an awful environment and necessarily be able to medicate it away, which, um, unfortunately is sometimes the mainstream. Uh,...mast cell activation syndrome... Some doctors are a little more woke and will tell people to get out their environment.

[02:14:03] I want to end on to two notes. One of them was to, um, talk about how, you know, people, family members that don't understand will often see this as like, especially if you're fundraising for it, it's like a vacation, is you're going to pretty places like we agreed Taos is gorgeous. Right. And when people hear Taos, they also think of the ski resort, not the like, you know, homeless people in impoverished areas.

[02:14:36] And. Um, or even like the off-grid living or all that. They think of like ski resort Taos, right? Like I'm sure you've experienced that, right? Yeah. If you've brought that up to people, but especially from the East coast, um, that don't know Taos very well, but it's not a vacation it's really difficult, the benefits vastly outweigh the costs, but that doesn't mean there aren't costs, you know, leave...

[02:15:08] I, I'm sure you have had to, I've slept in the car in freezing temperatures. Um, because a hotel was bad or because I couldn't afford a hotel at that time. Um, things like that. Um, and you know, uh, luckily I haven't been stung by a scorpion yet, but I've been all around them. Yeah. There's lots of fun stuff and difficult stuff,

[02:15:34] um, living in wilderness spaces and, um, and, living without solid housing and stability and, um, and it's not a vacation. And then I also want to say, it's interesting, and I'd like to hear your thoughts on this too, to think back to like, um, the environments that you get a lot of hindsight wisdom and retrospect about environments that may have been better or worse for you even before you were totally doing mold avoidance and unmasked. And maybe even before you were very ill, just insights about the Western Mass area that we both know. Um, mostly that it's just mostly bad, although I especially just think of, um, uh, I actually think it's better in the winter months when the ground is frozen.

[02:16:33] I especially think of, um, Yeah. And walking by a lot of the corn or farm just farms in Hadley when in the spring and summer, and especially in spring when the ground is just becoming like, um, like muck and just like awful, um, symptoms that at the time I did not associate with my environment at all, but, um, just, um, there were emotional symptoms and like sense of doom and depression, but they're also like heavy brain fog and also a symptom like my brain was on fire.

[02:17:12] That's hard to put into words, but yeah. Uh, so beyond the Hampshire norms, we've established are probably pretty nasty. There's the outdoor air in that area, which I think is like pretty much bad for everyone. I actually, and again, the, the friend I'd talked about that had the asthma issues in Greenwich, um, lived in Western Mass for a bit and then moved to New York city, felt better in New York city, which people, again don't think of is like, it's a big city, but he went from rural Western mass to New York city and felt a lot better once back in Manhattan. Um, yeah. Do you have any thoughts about that area in hindsight?

[02:17:58] Jacob: [02:17:58] Well, if you want to move to New York city, that's going to be a lot more expensive for multiple reasons than camping.

[02:18:05] Walker: [02:18:05] Oh yeah, for sure, I mean about the Western Mass area. Yeah.

[02:18:09] Jacob: [02:18:09] Um, yeah. I, I don't, I don't know, honestly, like even hearing you say that now, I'm skeptical, I'm like really, how could it all be bad? But every time I'm skeptical of something like that and people seem to say, or you, and, um, it almost always turns out to be correct, but I like to, I generally have to go and like see for myself.

[02:18:38] Walker: [02:18:38] Uh, I don't think it's all bad. And when I sau Western mass, I'm kind of referring to just the Pioneer Valley. Cause then there's the Berkshire's, which a lot of people have said might be good. I don't think a lot of mold avoiders have been there, but there are mountains. I'm just referring to, like, I think especially like the flat farmland areas, like Hadley and South Amherst, I think of as especially not a city.

[02:19:05] And like I said, it's seasonal. I don't know. If I was to go back. I would try, I would try areas up on the Hill and North Hampton more like up, or maybe parts of Greenfield. I remember there's a permaculture farm I worked on in the greater Pioneer Valley area, but I don't remember where, and that was pretty hilly and I think it may have been better, but I also think the Hampshire woods, as weird as it sounds, because they're very, it's a very small area, um, was better air than the campus in general and yeah.

[02:19:42] Jacob: [02:19:42] Yeah, that kind of, yeah, I agree. I don't know, man. I, I feel like I just didn't know for so much of that and I just could look back in hindsight and be like, uh, yeah. Wow. Okay. I think that whole, that whole area probably didn't maybe feel not so good. And um, just, uh, I remember being at Hampshire and I had really bad insomnia, like extreme, coupled with, I'd say pretty extreme anxiety too, even before, uh, that, the second year where I left, uh, social anxiety and, and all these things that I thought were just, it's just, I have to deal with it or talk to a psychologist and I  remember feeling that all the time. And of course that's extremely uncomfortable for anyone who's dealt with, uh, any of those things. Uh, and in hindsight, it's like, I think what we need to touch on is like deposited. Um, is that just all of that has gone away for me as I've gotten better and getting better as meant getting out of some of these places like Hampshire, Western mass, uh, where I'm from New York or even just to moldy house in Los Angeles, um, like all these things I never would have, that I taught or just permanently there for me, they go, they go away and that's, that's, what's crazy. So I don't know, maybe Western mass, uh, it never felt amazing, I would say. Yeah.

[02:21:38] Walker: [02:21:38] Well, I mean, the fact that, you know, I've talked to that, I mean, I haven't bad. I think it's important to trust your intuitions in avoidance. And especially if they're not fear-based and it's not like a fear-based thing where one is panicking and just being like, Oh, I just got to get out of all of the Massachusetts, but I just do have a strong intuition that lot of that area, especially like the swampy, um, farm fields and stuff, and Hadley are bad.

[02:22:10] Not necessarily every single inch of Western mass, but yeah, I do remember, you know, when I was at school, hindsight is really interesting, that I thought, um, like my insomnia and stuff, and I was starting to become ill, and before I had more specific diagnoses. It was caused by the stress of being on campus.

[02:22:31] So sometimes I slept in in a home. It may have been less moldy, I'm sure, than the mods and something to home off campus, like in North Hampton up on the Hill, like I'm saying, I thought maybe up in the Hills better, um, Northampton's a little Hillier than Hadley I think, um,

[02:22:53] Jacob: [02:22:53] Even just the bottom line is just you're, you're, you were testing your environment without knowing what you were doing.

[02:22:59] Walker: [02:22:59] Yeah. Yeah. Regardless of like the characteristics of the other environment  I was going away and, and I thought it was just do the, being away from the stress of campus. You're taught, we're taught to not view, especially like psychological things, but basically many illnesses, we're taught not to think of them first as like, from our environmental toxins, like are so many causes we can go first, like, um, lifestyle, diet, et cetera. Maybe because it disturbs people to think that the environment is not just causing like long-term illness, like cancer, that thought deal with Bader, but causing them to be sick and functioning worse.

[02:23:44] Right. This second, I've never had a thought and you're listening to this, probably like, don't be freaked out, but think like, how is your environment affecting it? Like, even if you're not like, um, you know, even if you're not dramatically ill, the way I got, um, like, you know, for example, I've, um, like I said, a family member who got diagnosed with Mast Cell Activation Syndrome who I learned, they were reactive um, just via doing caregiving for me because I was too sick to mold avoidance on my own. And then they came with me to the pristine places, notice improvement and notice feeling bad, and a lot of the same places, I felt bad and I feel very bad for them that they have to deal with that. Although it's good that they're learning about it earlier than I did, like, you know, way more functional way less sick than I am, um, and good that they have a formal diagnosis, Mast Activation Syndrome, and treat that way before I did so.

[02:24:48] Yeah. I think the lesson here is just like, I dunno pay attention to your environment and that you need a lot more scientific study of effects of environmental toxins on, um, physical and mental health. Um, um,

[02:25:06] Jacob: [02:25:06] I really just, cause it amazes me every day. Like I'm not fully healed. Um, but, um, I'm astounded, I think every day from how much stuff I think, as I said to you, just how many sufferings I've had for most of my life.

[02:25:24] Uh, I realize I have gone away from, um, becoming aware of this. And I don't know if I should say that or try and emphasize that again. Cause I feel like that might be like, people hear that and like, huh, okay. Yeah. You know what, maybe, maybe I don't have to live with this like painful thing. Like maybe this isn't my reality. Uh, and do experiments.

[02:25:52] Walker: [02:25:52] People take a lot of bad things for granted, like it's normal to be, um, depressed all the time or like, I mean like, uh, I think a lot of that is due to like, I don't know, an industrial capitalist ideology that it's just, yeah. They're like kind of subtly brainwashing you into it. Just like, um, this hegemonic idea that we've been, we've always been depressed.

[02:26:19] We've always, it's just a normal thing. Normal part of life. Maybe that's not true. Maybe people in you know that lived in times where the air was cleaner all over and not just in mountains in Taos or whatever. Maybe people used to be more like full of vitality and energy. And part of like this disenchantment and modernity, isn't just like a social disenchantment, but it's like, we no longer are as connected to like the vital energy that you get from like a clean environment.

[02:27:01] Jacob: [02:27:01] Totally, totally. Yeah.

[02:27:04] Walker: [02:27:04] I think a lot of like sites of spiritual power, places that people think as like a form to be, or like have found them and located them and said, this is like a place, um, of spiritual power and like be worship here. Um, where maybe because those were like super pristine or there was some kind of, um, aspect that was pretty healing.

[02:27:34] Jacob: [02:27:34] that would be like chicken before the egg. Yeah. I feel like that's, I feel like that's, I don't think it's chicken before the egg, for those kinds of places that feel like there's something deeper to that. Like it's not just that they're cleaning, there's also something magical there and maybe that keeps it clean.

[02:27:52] Walker: [02:27:52] Well, we don't have to be reductive here. You could say it's both or it's, I'm just saying it's something to think about, but I guess on that, um, yeah. Do you have any closing thoughts?

[02:28:04] Jacob: [02:28:04] Yeah. I think if you're like, don't accept your sufferings as reality. I did that for so long in my life and just experimenting, like listening to kind of intuitively or like what my mind kept desiring and craving, which was honestly to be in the wilderness.

[02:28:30] And it turns out that that's right. And things that, you know, horrible things that like just have sucked to deal with in my mental health and physical health since being like a little kid have all gone away and it blows my fucking mind all the time. Who knows if it's, it could be anything for anyone listening, but yeah. Just keep experimenting.

[02:28:59] Walker: [02:28:59] Right. Okay. Yeah. I would basically just  second that and say, yeah, like there's like, um, there's a difference between the ideology that you may have imbibed and like, and your thoughts and your intuition. And a lot of people are stuck with an ideological thing, telling them that this is not scientific or whatever, and or this is like, it couldn't possibly be environmental toxins causing my illness.

[02:29:29] And then it often just is, um, and I wish I'd gotten out of it, the toxic mold, how it says living in sooner, but also just the general toxic region. Um, but I mean, uh, yeah, so for anyone listening, I guess that I would like them to take that away. Don't um, just like stay stuck if you're having problems, experiment with this. Just even if you don't believe it all the way. Treat it like a-- like a biohacking thing, like a fun biohack, you can try changing your environment drastically

[02:30:40] where we left off was a basically ending on a lot of stuff about your personal, um, mold avoidance journey to, um, to Taos and then Albuquerque and well TRS and Albuquerque. But, um, then I realized that we didn't talk about something that's really germane to, um, uh, all of this, um, you know, with all the talk about the microbiome and the science of this and Eric's theories, uh, which is, um, PR permaculture and your interest in permaculture and your thought that maybe permaculture could remediate some of these problems, um, et cetera.

[02:31:25] Um, so I kind of want to let you just, um, start with explaining to a layperson what permaculture is, um, versus maybe regular agriculture.

[02:31:40] Jacob: [02:31:40] Sure, so, um, Okay. So I'll explain first permaculture of your city, regular agriculture. Um, essentially there's a couple of tiers let's say of growing food. Um, if you we want to categorize, then there's conventional ag, which is using pesticides, fertilizers, uh, all those things that are pretty nasty and, uh, are essentially wartime chemicals turned into things to combat diseases that plants can get in that can deplete soil.

[02:32:18] Then there's organic farming, which is basically the same as conventional, except that any of those aggregates that they're using are, uh, they're not chemical based. They're something that is organic, uh, in nature. And like, quite literally it is the USDA, it's like, it just has to be something organic. So there's, you know, there's some things that are kind of crazy that slip in even into organic ag. Um, it's still involves tilling the earth for the most part which releases, uh, more carbon dioxide than any form of pollution. Um, and then permaculture is also a broad term, but it's a combination of permanent and agriculture. So it's usually does not involve monocropping and involves companion planting, where you're planting things that like to coexist with each other.

[02:33:23] Um, and it's essentially location specific unique in that you try to use the water resources, the, what you have handy to you. Um, and. It's it's also broad, uh, there's an, it can involve, you know, some more, uh, invasive forms of kind of altering within then. There's I think what I'm probably the most interested in is natural farming, which is, uh, where permaculture, the word kinda came from and natural farming is essentially, it's nothing new.

[02:34:11] It's kind of how let's say indigenous people have been farming and growing food for, you know, let's say pre-industrial revolution. Um, and it's usually is aimed at no till, um, except for events where you really need to, but aiming at no till. And this is really just to build up the soil microbiome.

[02:34:37] Walker: [02:34:37] Right. And I, the microbiome is really important to us as mold avoiders, there-- I see a lot of, uh, we have a lot of amateur and I say that not in a bad way, like, um, you know, cause we don't have the funds to study it, but I think these are pretty sure theories, amature theories that it's all about the microbiome, like the outdoor microbiome like that.

[02:35:02] Uh, we're not a mold avoidance. Isn't about sterility and just avoiding a single toxin. It's about being in a rich microbiome. And um, I think earlier I may have touched on the analogy of like the outdoor or indoor microbiome, but outside of the body, to the commensal or gut microbiome or the inside the body microbiome in that, um, if you do...

[02:35:35] is certain things to the microbiome inside the body. Like if you use certain, um, really broad and deep, um, biocides and killed tons of bacteria over long periods of time and make it kind of less resilient and diverse, then certain really nasty things take over the niches. Um, after you get rid of a lot of the good bacteria stuff like, um, C diff and, um, I don't know, Candide, uh, um, that's known to happen with antibiotic overuse inside of humans.

[02:36:11] So it's kind of a, you know, interesting to think about, uh, scaling that out and thinking about the outdoor microbiome. Um, but yeah, so you initially ended up in New Mexico, not necessarily because of permaculture. Um, but then you found permaculture work and you found, um, uh, permaculture communities there. So I'm curious about how that went from doing mold avoidance being there because it felt good to, uh, working on this there.

[02:36:58] Jacob: [02:36:58] I think, I think what I'm kind of realizing is, um, I feel like I've noticed in myself some of my desires, like let's say to go different places or do different things. It seems like some of those seem to be influenced by what my body is needing to do or wanting to do to heal.

[02:37:19] So. I think in a way, all of these things, it's, it's a part of a broad system and it's a whole picture that I went to-- when I was in Asia-- I experienced what it was, life was like, uh, like very, I dunno if you want to call it agrarian but people were subsistent farming, growing their own food. Um, and it was without a doubt, probably the happiest I've ever been.

[02:37:50] And to me, I see this, which people there and already in America, that they see that as you know, old and backwards and modernity is the answer, but I don't see any, I don't essentially see really any way that even electricity and most things about our modern world and consumer culture, um, is sustainable for the earth or for our population.

[02:38:20] So I also, the interest in permaculture was definitely like my kind of internal, uh, realizing what I believed in and how I wanted to live in what I felt like was necessary for the earth. I think I started to realize later on, as I learned more about mold avoidance and that many like Adobe homes or naturally built homes, they might have mold in them, but it's not a mold that, uh, causes you to get sick or something that you react to.

[02:38:56] And then I also started realizing just how twisted our food system is, um, the whole just consumerist food system and the lack of localization and it, and just all these things are connected to our health and that the healthiest food is when it's directly picked when you're in the soil. So I came out to New Mexico also knowing that I had a vision of living, um, more wanting to create some, something that was, I didn't want to call it farming, but just growing food.

[02:39:43] So you could eat what was natural, what made sense with the location and living a much, I think just more natural way, um, that kind of aligned with myself and, and also community not, not trying to be like pioneer homesteader and just be alone. I think community's really important. And then this all connects to the mold avoidance, since I think that lifestyle, I think that draw is also what my body, maybe a lot of people's bodies or soul or mind is craving to heal.

[02:40:25] Um, and then just doing some research in New Mexico and, uh, just meeting different people that are doing that. And it's really interesting to learn about growing somewhere where there's not much water.

[02:40:42] Walker: [02:40:42] Right, right. And. I think, um, one of the things that's really interesting to me is that we have a lot of these really speculative theories.

[02:40:53] And again, not saying that in a negative way, they're speculative, not because they're so crazy, but because we just don't have almost any funding to study these diseases. So we don't have like any studies on this, but we have a lot of these speculative theories on, um, kind of certain specific microbial, um, and industrial chemical toxins, um, that create outdoor super toxins that are the main drivers in this disease.

[02:41:32] And some of them have to do with agricultural chemicals, like, um, the use of glyphosate then causing fusarium mold, that's one of them, some of them have to do with the use of fire retardants, um, that is not directly related agriculture. That's related to how we shape the environment. Um, but what I was going to try and circle back to is, um, I've never, I've thought that, you know, since I have done mold avoidance, I've thought we are, have become a lot more radicalized on environmental issues, to the extent that I think that we are absolutely, um, in the midst of environmental collapse already, it's not this thing that's going to happen in the future.

[02:42:24] It's not this dramatic sea levels rise. That's part of it, but we're already making people sick, like we're casualties of that we're canaries in the coal mine. Um, it's already happening and it's really bad. But one thing is, is wondering if people, um, can have civilization and technology at any level. I mean, where do you stop?

[02:42:51] And for me, um, part of it is, um, kind of wondering about the difference, where that comes into agriculture's learning about the difference between, um, domestication, um, kind of top-down technologies, um, monoculture versus some kind of idea of wildcrafting where you are engineering your environment, but you're also letting your environment engineer you, there's some kind of more of a feedback loop, which is missing in industrial, um, agriculture.

[02:43:30] Jacob: [02:43:30] Yeah. That's I guess there's one word that people were referred to as a food forest, which none of these words is your new, I mean it's and I think to your point, it's, uh, I think maybe to you and me are, I think a lot of people are pretty aware that our world is kind of built on this. I don't even know what you'd call it.

[02:43:53] I mean, it, from colonialism, it might go back even to like when someone first tilled the ground, but essentially thinking that you, man is greater than other species is greater than nature and therefore can control it and use it as a resource. And I think what you're talking about, like that feedback loop of a food forest, something you cultivate that feeds you and then you feed it, is kind of realizing like, Oh shit, we're part of this. We're not, we are this earth and air and tree and all these things. So that's kinda my take on that.

[02:44:37] Walker: [02:44:37] Okay. Yeah. Um, I wanted to briefly ask you, um, before I get into some of the science just. Curious about maybe where in New Mexico, you've done permaculture both in terms of, um, you work on other people's farms or your own, um, farms or gardens.

[02:45:00] And also I, you know, what the permanent culture, garden or farm environments feel like to you compared to wilderness, um, if at all different or compared to agriculture. I would note that I've, um, gotten slammed at conventional small farms and even, I think organic, small farms, you know, maybe that's not necessarily a really awful toxin, but it's something there that was being digested, um, in the compost.

[02:45:42] Jacob: [02:45:42] Yeah. Now that I think about that too, actually, and, um, I would agree with you it's, it's mixed, um, which is a little bit unfortunate sometimes. Um, there's a lot of agricultural areas I'd say along the Rio Grande, which runs through New Mexico and those are not organic. I don't, I feel pretty, I don't feel well there, it doesn't feel healing.

[02:46:12] Wilderness air to me still feels better. Um, I don't think that means it's not possible for there to be healing air and a let's say, especially like natural or naturalistic, uh, food growing area, farm, food forest, but I'm kind with you it's it depends on the place. And wilderness generally still feels up a par in terms of its ability for healing, uh, CFS or just this sensitivity.

[02:46:52] Walker: [02:46:52] Right. Okay. Well, I would like to speak on something. Yeah. I've, um, actually stayed on, uh, a farm that was an Airbnb, in, um, Trampas that was really good. And, um, although to be fair, it was in, um, uh, winter, so everything was frozen. So, but I mean, I think it says something that just like the air in general in that location was so good.

[02:47:25] And I'll be going back there to check it out at some point. Um, but, uh, I wanted to, I remember you said some really fascinating things about, and I find this to be really important, like, uh, hunches and intuition are really important in mold avoidance. So is, um, theory and empirical evidence. But I, I see them as all part of the same thing when people have really powerful hunches, which a lot of people don't, um, have the luck to have that.

[02:47:59] Um, even if they're not, you know, say quote unquote mold avoiders,  um, I listened to that. And you said that your permaculture teacher had some hunches about certain places in New Mexico, um, certain environments that were different, um, in some way, or it's a part, could you, uh, relay those or refresh me on those?

[02:48:26] Jacob: [02:48:26] Yeah. Then my, bring us into the realm of some kind of esoteric, ethereal stuff, but, um,

[02:48:35] Walker: [02:48:35] That's fine. That's good.

[02:48:38] Jacob: [02:48:38] Well, you and I, you introduced me at one point to the idea of a place, uh, having the love and peace frequency and what essentially, I think people, I don't know if that's 432 Herz, um, but it's basically the idea of some places people can do different, um, testing.

[02:49:05] Um, and we won't go into, but some esoteric kind of testing, uh, about places that seem to resonate with the feeling, the vibrational feeling of peace and love. And you told me about a forest, um, up in the mountains in a certain place in Northern New Mexico. And you said, Oh, like, cause you needed a place to heal after surgery.

[02:49:34] Something about you intuitively really called you to this area. Um, remote. And I think you told me that and I'm like, Oh, that's, that's funny. And you said, Oh, and you know, apparently this area resonates with, you know, the love frequency. And I was like, Oh, that's funny. I was, this teacher of mine also said, every time he goes for a walk and this is specific area, this forest, it, it just to him, he really made a point not knowing any of this stuff we spoke and had spoken about that, it just feels like love. Like there's something intrinsically, you know, there's something just different about that.

[02:50:17] Walker: [02:50:17] Um, right. So I think we're talking about like the El Valle, um, Area, which is near the Pecos Wilderness bordering on that and near, um, to Santa Barbara Campground and that whole kind of area. Um, yeah, and I felt that feeling in a lot of forests, I almost prefer that as an environment to the desert, although, um, there's so many environments that are good if they're, um, free of toxins and rich.

[02:50:53] Um, but you know, I felt that feeling in forests and mountains in West Virginia that seemed especially, um, biodiverse, but just like inexplicably, really euphoric and healing, um, or, uh, in the ancient bristlecone pine forest, um, in the Sierra Nevadas, um, in California. Um, so I've gotten that diverse, um, places, but the thing they had in common was that they were all, um, pretty untouched for awhile.

[02:51:29] Not all of them were old growth. Uh, the, um, West Virginia ones I actually researched and they're mostly second growth, which was surprising because of how rich and diverse and thriving they were, but they're old for second growth for us. And they're very well-protected and I think that explains a lot of why they feel so good.

[02:51:55] Um, yeah. Um, briefly, uh, read this, um, I was just looking at a study that says. The built environment is a microbial wasteland. Um, and the abstract says humanity's transitioned from the outdoor environment to the built environment has reduced our exposure to microbial diversity, the relative importance of factors that contribute to the composition of human dominated, IE microbial communities remains largely unknown. In their article in this issue, Chase and colleagues present an office building study in which they controlled for environmental factors, geography, surface, material, sampling, location, and human interaction type. They found that surface location and geography were the strongest factors contributing the microbial community. Structural surface material had little effect.

[02:52:53] Even the absence of direct human interaction built environment surfaces were composed of 25 to 30% human skin associated toxins. The authors just demonstrate how technical variation across sequencing runs is a major issue, especially in BE work, or the biomass is often low and the potential for PCR contaminants is high. But overall, the authors conclude the built environment surfaces are desert- like environments where microbes passively accumulate and, uh, by desert I don't think they mean, uh, in the like positive way of wilderness that we tend to use it metaphorically, but deserted. Um, so it's just, uh, essentially saying that, I mean, while we might think of these environments that are hostile to our, uh, needs, uh, our sensitivities like a drywall, et cetera, it's standard office building, we might think of them as having a toxic presences, um, In scientific terms, they are like uh, basically microbial wastelands, and have very little microbial biomass compared to, um, natural environments.

[02:54:17] So I think that kind of fits in with what I was saying, where if you destroy the diversity, what fills the remaining niches is, um, a lot nastier.

[02:54:30] Jacob: [02:54:30] Yeah, totally. I think that's, I've been looking at some of that stuff. For me, it feels like, uh, they went from, I think before getting sick, wanting to be in film, video editing, especially for you editing, editing, you're on your computer inside a lot.

[02:54:51] And I have some desire for that, but not really much anymore. And I just want to be outside and reading that. It's kind of like, Oh, maybe my body's made me, my body knows it wants that kind of microbial diversity that comes from living like that.

[02:55:12] Walker: [02:55:12] Yeah. It's funny you say that. Yeah. The other article I had pulled up is just, uh, about how your gut microbiome is responsible for cravings for nature.

[02:55:25] Um, which I think probably you've experienced that and I've experienced that and it's may be strange to a lot of people. Um, but just like actually craving being in a forest or, uh, like really rich forest or desert or something, but I've been in a lot of these places. It's like, um, even though a lot of the time have been, not quite well enough to walk all the way in it's just like something is calling me deeper into the wilderness. Um, but I want to bring up like one or two possible problems with, um, so I, I liked the idea of using permaculture to essentially remediate toxins. Um, in fact, I think in college, I did an extremely amateur, um, study about mycoremediation of lead and PCB contaminated environments.

[02:56:27] But I, um, the, like, I guess one problem I see with the idea, it's not really a problem with the idea of remediation, but it's, uh, um, is that we are dumping so much bad stuff and so many toxins that simply, um, we can't get to the point of remediation until we just cut the flow of toxins or stopped dumping them.

[02:56:56] I mean, remediation is something that we should be doing, but it seems like an overwhelming challenge to deal with. You know, like if we just took fire retardant for an example, and, um, a lot of people react to microbes in the wake of fire retardant um, uh, there's no sign that we're gonna stop dumping that, you know, we'll see next fire season and a bunch of this, like red foam dumped all across California, Arizona, Colorado, um, et cetera.

[02:57:31] Um, like what do you see the role of permaculture in that? Do you think that we can remediate large areas? Do you think that it's like primarily defensive or offensive or what that's, it's just kind of the one thing that comes up, um, to me as a possible counter problem,with permaculture.

[02:57:58] Jacob: [02:57:58] Yeah, I think we can. Um, I think lately I've been saying, because as you know, um, I'm really drawn to the desert and I've been curious about how, which a lot of the desert, New Mexico used to be a lush kind of Buffalo grass grew up high and, and from a Spanish colonial, American colonialism, essentially the ecosystem has been majorly desertified and altered.

[02:58:32] And the regenerative, I would say permaculture farming is really looking at how you can build that up. And there's also large scale projects, but this is different, let's say, from the chemical, from the standpoint of like chemical usage/ I think there's definitely a lot. I think also nature can take care of a lot when it's, and, uh, when it's not in dysbiosis, when it's healthy. And, even a CFS researcher, mold disease researcher talked about how after about five or six years, uh, the flame retardant, uh, mycotoxin microbes that, um, are nasty stuff from after six years after going back to this forest and it hadn't been sprayed with that, or dumped from airplanes helicopters that like it had recovered.

[02:59:32] So I personally, I don't feel hopeless. I think humans also, you know, we've created these problems. I think. We, those of us who are kind of connecting with plants, like, uh, I don't know, Paul Stamets using mushrooms and mycoremediation for oil spills or massive uranium, uh, super contaminated radioactive areas that, I think, mushrooms and maybe the bacteria can, uh, essentially be turn non-radioactive and I want to say it's like a couple of weeks really quick, so yeah. I there's hope for sure. Yeah.

[03:00:22] Walker: [03:00:22] Oh, I absolutely wasn't trying to say there's no hope. I guess I was just saying like, it makes me wonder, like what's, uh, that maybe there should be a two pronged strategy, like one prong to stop dumping this stuff, you know, because it's kind of, I do think that, uh, nature is resilient. Um, but there's limits to that and we push that.

[03:00:49] Jacob: [03:00:49] Um, yeah, I mean the Sahara Desert is an example place that didn't use to be all sand and that's like, we pushed it maybe past this point, point of resiliency and it's like Fertile Crescent too.

[03:01:05] Walker: [03:01:05] Uh, wait, could you, um, which the San Joaquin Valley or?

[03:01:11] Jacob: [03:01:11] No, no, the Sahara or the Fertile Crescent of like Mesopotamia,

[03:01:15] Walker: [03:01:15] Oh, did it not use to be desert?

[03:01:19] Jacob: [03:01:19] It didn't no.

[03:01:21] Walker: [03:01:21] Oh, my, I didn't. I had no idea. So it used to be some kind of steppe like grass, environment.

[03:01:29] Jacob: [03:01:29] Yeah. Almost all of the Middle East. And so, I mean, there's, you are right. There's, nature might be resilient, but there's a certain tipping point. It seems where the recovery rate may be a much, much, much longer period of time.

[03:01:48] Walker: [03:01:48] Right. And my point is not to be, to get anyone into doom kind of mindset, but that we want to not just make sure the planet survives, which it will, you know, but make sure that, um, we make it, um, the people who are especially sensitive and reactive, um, to the byproducts of this kind of battle between the built environment and, um, toxins.

[03:02:21] But I was gonna, yeah, that makes me think, you know, that we've always been shaping our environments and there's no hard line between nature and, um, the unnatural and mankind and technology. Um, but just in terms of there are huge cultural differences in terms of the impacts, like technologies that have had an in terms of like alienation, like, uh, it seems like a major problem, um, as a, in modernity has started with agriculture and this idea that, um, we see the earth is something that, um, doesn't just give us, um, like fruits in and of itself that has to be aggressively modified, um, and extracted like an extractive, um, idea of agriculture. And it's like a kind of goes back to the Bible and like a fall and being forced to be tillers of the soil. It's almost like a curse.

[03:03:30] Jacob: [03:03:30] Um, uh, I think it goes back to, uh, eating that Apple.

[03:03:37] Walker: [03:03:37] Right. It's an interesting mythology. And the guy who wrote Ishmael, Daniel Quinn was, um, a deep ecologist. Who, uh, who, uh, talked about that, um, mythology in terms of, um, the relevant, um, cultures of nomadic herds people versus, um, uh, tillers of the soil that were exterminating them and not just, uh, committing some kind of ecocide but also starting to become genocidal towards their neighbors like that, the people who wrote that myth saw that as connected and also wrote the Abel and Cain myth. um, I wanted to bring up a quote and see how you react to it. Um, that I think has relevance in microbiome, but doesn't even include the word it's from an essay called "the case for letting Malibu burn" and it's about fire ecology, um, quote, "total fire suppression, the official policy in the Southern California mountains since 1919 has been a tragic error because it creates enormous stockpiles of fuel. The extreme fires that eventually occur can transform the chemical structure of the soil itself. The volatilization of certain plant chemicals creates a water repellent layer in the opera soil, and this layer by preventing percolation dramatically accelerate subsequent flooding and erosion monomaniacal obsession with managing ignition rather than chaparral accumulation simply makes doomsday like fire storms and the great floods that follow them virtually inevitable."

[03:05:27] I guess, um, to me it's interesting because the, the received wisdom is just that, uh, a war on fire is a good thing. That's just what we do. Like even in, I mean, in California, it's probably the most insidious where they're trying to protect these wealthy homes in a place that is meant to burn yearly, Malibu. But even in, I don't know, New Mexico or everywhere, it's not, we don't see it as a bad thing for, um, firefighters to be putting out fires, but it's like, fire ecology is a real thing.

[03:06:06] And there are certain plants that only flourished under fire. I imagined probably same thing's true for microbes. Um, um, and I wasn't thinking about that, cause there's any literal relation to permaculture, but just because of, um, this idea, I think of like trying to tame fire is really related to the pathology culturally that we're talking about in terms of trying to, uh, tame the earth.

[03:06:41] Jacob: [03:06:41] Yeah, I agree.

[03:06:45] Walker: [03:06:45] So I'm just going to end on asking me what would your utopia, um, be like what's, if you don't have any monetary obstacles, um, at all, just, uh, put those all out of your mind, what would it look like, um, to make, um, some kind of permaculture, um, community that also has integrated mold avoidance principles or vice versa or both?

[03:07:20] Jacob: [03:07:20] Sure. With that article about Malibu, I was going to bring that too. I think something both of us have realized in dealing with, um, getting, you know, pretty paralyzingly sick and then realizing it's it mostly all seems to stem from an environmental problem is, um, that the mold illness kind of ties into I think what I see is a utopia always sounds so far off, but I think it's more like necessity and I don't think it's new.

[03:08:01] Cause utopia sounds like, uh, you know, it's part of the always forward progressive thinking mindset that we've been indoctrinated with, you know, continual progress versus just what our roots are as being humans and, you know, being semi agrarian, semi, um, possibly nomadic, semi foraging, wildcrafting kind of people. That doesn't, that doesn't really make for a life where CFS and mold sensitivity seems like it would crop up or stem from at all. And, um, I think that's also, to me that seems like the lifestyle that would be the most beneficial to live as someone struggling with any kind of onset symptoms from mold and mycotoxins, um, or chemical sensitivities as well, EMF.

[03:09:04] So I think I, I see it, I guess you could call it utopia, but I think it's necessary to live in a way that's harmonious. To me, that's building homes with things that are, uh, natural, like living in an environment where you can harmoniously use water to grow, or hunt and gather things, um, and bathe and drink, uh, building homes with what is local, what's there to the eye and is not going to be extractive and community.

[03:09:43] I think raising each other's family like the non-nuclear family, um, is definitely part of it. And just like the idea of a village region raises like a kid or a person is kind of how I see us humans as existing with the earth and, you know, continuing to be as my permaculture teacher, uh, Jesse Boudreaux from, uh, Zia energetics says is like being gardeners of the earth. So planning things that are beneficial to the earth and to ourselves, maybe a fruit tree, um, eating it, pooping, composting, all that good stuff.

[03:10:37] Walker: [03:10:37] So if I just said, like, just get a tiny bit more specific, cause in New Mexico, like I want to hear like your blueprint, you know, what's local what's, you know, would you use volcanic rock to make a house? Um, would, uh, what plants would you use locally for medicine? Um, and what would you use to remediate that's local?

[03:11:05] Jacob: [03:11:05] Well, okay. So that's a lot of good questions and definitely...

[03:11:08]Walker: [03:11:08] you can just answer some of them. I don't know.

[03:11:12] Jacob: [03:11:12] Um, if anyone's interested, definitely reach out because I'm, I'm hoping to do this and even here, it would depend on the location. Um, of course, Adobe is good if you're in a place with Adobe, if you know the teepee, um, timber for building. Um, it seems like a lot of places in New Mexico, it's easy to reach, uh, the right clay and sand mixture to make Adobe homes. So I think that's something that's, um, that's a pretty good one. And in doing so you might create, uh, I won't go into that, but there's an abundance of medicinal plants.

[03:11:55] Um, and we just need to learn from them and, and, you know, keep that interest up. Um, I think the food also depends. It's dryer for the most part, so crops that do well and you don't need a well, you can use rainwater to grow them. Seems like it would make sense interspersed possibly with, uh, maybe some herd animals or gathering different local things that might be around you, foods.

[03:12:35] Walker: [03:12:35] Right? Yeah. And to be clear, when I said utopia, that was a little bit tongue in cheek, but I kind of just meant like a refuge. I mean, you'd hope, it means a lot of different things, but I guess to wrap up my thoughts on what you're saying, someone who's thought about the microbiome thought about my own illness, uh, thought about the biology and the theology is that there's a big problem to solve here, but the, to not get bogged down in semantics, there's a lot of, you know, modern skeptic type people that don't, that aren't really thinking scientifically that are inherently critical toward anything that makes the case for the natural or the organic, because they have a semantic argument against that, you know, um, you know, nature isn't different from people and they're right nature isn't different from people.

[03:13:34] And we've always been changing our environment, but I guess what the problems that we're dealing with illness wise are probably due to a plethora of really, really, um, novelty and like risk gone wild in terms of novel chemicals that are unregulated and then lack of diversity and resilience and the environment that we help shape.

[03:14:03] So, um, it's not about buzzwords like natural or organic. It's about the fact that we have created like, uh, in that study, I said phrased it amazingly in the title earlier. Um, we have created a microbial wasteland and wasteland in so many ways and, um, we probably, if you want our health back, can't just wait for nature to just, um, catch up.

[03:14:36] But we will work with nature and work with, um, kind of tradition. Um, in that sense, what you're talking about is that there's, uh, there are things that are way older touchstones in terms of how to build healthily, how to live healthily, um, and that we've totally forgotten. Um, and this is even within human history, not, um, just like saying that other animals did this, but humans used to do this and now we're not, and now we're getting sick.

[03:15:13] So I think I'll probably end it on that. That seems like a good place, good stopping point.

[03:15:21] Jacob: [03:15:21] Thank you, Walker.

[03:15:23]Walker: [03:15:23] Alright. Well goodnight and yeah. Good luck.

[03:15:29] Jacob: [03:15:29] Thanks mate. You too. .