 Those people who are out there fighting just to make a living, just to pay their bills, we need to offer them products that are gonna make them feel also better inside. With that, that they have to spend all this time researching, how do we do it? What's the transfer? What's the distribution? They don't have time for that. What they need is people like us to change the system. For the industries to say, okay, I mean, great, Friday's future, go out, scream so that industries make a shift. All of us are doing our part and we're doing it together to simply reform the system. Eva Keretic is my guest on this episode of Inside Ideas, brought to you by 1.5 Media and Innovators Magazine. If there's one thing that Eva has mastered in the half century of her life, it is to embrace experience and create stories. Whether it be song or speech or trying to save the planet, she is a master in storytelling. She was at her first meeting with politicians, managing directors and hoping to finance an innovative vertical farm facility run on 100% renewable energy and they started off with a normal introduction round. In this introduction round, there were long and impressive things being said, education, degrees, political things in this meeting and Eva was panicking. She was like, how do I introduce myself around all these superstars, politicians and degrees? And then she decided to go with the best plan of action to tell her true self and her true story because she is a power Frau, a power woman. She has numerous long background of successful experiences throughout the world. She produced and performed six of her own albums, all of original music and she's always followed her desires to express her life and stories with music and sharing them with the world. What most of you might not know is that Eva is my best friend. She probably doesn't even know that she's my best friend. Since I moved to Hamburg, Germany, Eva and I got introduced by one of our mutual friends, Harold Knighthart. And from that moment on, it was we hit it off and we've had a great friendship and journey that's been unbelievable. We're gonna touch on some of those journeys during our discussion, talk about some of those experiences, but I mean, true deep journeys and experiences that we've had. Some extremely funny, some extremely sad, I guess, or eye-opening and we're still on the journey. We're having a lot of experiences and I'm excited because honestly, this is the best podcast. I probably will ever do that I've ever done because it's with my best friend, Eva. Just to give you a couple, tiny more little accolades about this wonderful woman. She is a member of the Humber Chamber of Commerce Committee for Innovation and Research, newly appointed in 2020 to 2021 and she is doing the Food Works Initiative and we're gonna talk about that as well. She's an ambassador for the Farm Food Climate Challenge for Project Together, also fairly new. It's part of the Open Social Innovation Hub of Germany. She is a successful TEDx speaker, also very new, 2020 in October in Castle, Germany. She is still, even though she listed that she's not the creative director for Aloha's Eco Center. It's a fully sustainable food eco center and beverage production facility. She's a climate reality leader from Al Gore and a mentor for Al Gore's Climate Reality Project and he is, as I mentioned before, a singer, a songwriter, composer, producer, released six albums, all written her original music songs and they are all fabulous. One of, I'll tell you a couple of her albums, Imported, Bitter Sweet Sessions, Sky, White Open, The 70s, 50-50, A-DZ through Germany. So I could go on and on, oh, one more thing, the Jam Plan Agency, which is, she works with wonderful clients like Auto Group, Mondolees, Adida, Milka, on and on to do these, not only team building, but show them the power of coming together, composing, writing, singing, performing songs that not only are just team building, there's a lot more experience and things that go behind that for people to reach moonshots, to be innovative, to think differently, to see diversity and organizations much different. It's a very powerful tool. Ava, welcome to the show. Let's start by clanging. It's so good. I'm not to meet this person, sounds cool. You are cool, you're my bestie. I'm so glad that we could have this discussion and that you came on the show because we have a lot to talk about. So first of all, I wanna catch my listeners up to speed a little bit, how we know each other and some of the journeys we've taken. We were at Seeds and Chips in Milan, Italy and saw Barack President, Barack Obama, who we're both a big fan of. And not only was that cool in and of itself, but we met all sorts of other cool people. We partied together and had one very hilarious, for you, hilarious. For me, it wasn't very hilarious. We went to one of these after celebration parties at Carrefour, which was one of the sponsors of Seeds and Chips. And they obviously had a full open bar and doing this. And Ava knows I'm not a drinker. And she's like, you gotta try these mosque on mules. They're just fabulous. And we might get into that story later, but there was a whole humorous thing. We went to Montenegro together to put Gorica to, and this is also very funny. It's a nudist resort. It was all inclusive nudist resort. Thank goodness. I don't know if you saw anybody running around naked. I didn't, but we had a whole crazy experience there, getting there, getting back, planes, tickets, luggage, all sorts of crazy experience. Were you performed and did a jam plan in Montenegro? That was fun. Yeah, it was fun. It was unbelievable. We've met with political leaders. We've met in Regent Highton and discussed with political leaders. We've had Tesla at meetings with political leaders, leaders talking about the Aloha's Eco Center. And on and on, but we have dinners together. We drink a lot of coffees together. We have had super wonderful discussions and experiences together. And I wanna share a few of those and some of these journeys that we've taken together, especially some journeys that you've had where I haven't had the fortunate ability to always be there, but that have been some pretty big learning lessons for you as well. And your development and growth, you're still doing amazing things. I wanna bring all those out. One last thing, Ava is, I'm not bullshitting you. She is one of my good friends. This is one of the gifts she gave me on my birthday. It was a book that she did with pictures of our journeys. This is at Season Chips with nice words. This is at the Al Gore's Climate Reality Leadership Training in Berlin, where Ava and I were both doing mentorship. This is in Montenegro at the Jam Plan. I'm crazy looking like a Yeti and on and on. And then one of my favorite gifts that she's ever given me is this beautiful terrarium that I have in my house. I look at it every day and it reminds me of her. And so hopefully I've portrayed not only what a wonderful person I have here in front of me and what a good friend she is, but also some of the stories and the adventures that we've had together. And so enough taking the time from your podcast episode, but I wanna really set the stage. People need to know who this wonderful person is. We can start with the story about how we met because it's such a cool story. Would you tell that? Okay, so all right. It's gonna get a little bit of a backup story, okay? Me, Empty Nest, what am I gonna do with the rest of my life? Oh my God. And then I saw this movie. I can't find the name of this movie, but it was a movie that was before the Syrian refugee crisis happened. It was a documentary how this woman followed five men in Germany and their journey in trying to find a way to figure out how to work and live in a different culture. And at the time I thought, oh, it is so difficult. And I mean, the journey for me having to live in a different culture by living in Germany, leaving my family behind, leaving what I knew behind was kind of, I just felt so much with these men that I thought we need to create a future for them. Like you go through these different phases when you're living in a different culture where you just don't know, you're not familiar with the pathway that you can necessarily go down. And so I thought we need to create a vertical farm in Hamburg where we can offer jobs and futures for them where they don't have to learn German perfectly because German is a really hard language. It was kind of like, oh, I have so many friends that I've been living here for years and really to master German, even if you're a lawyer and you wanna work as a lawyer in German, it's a whole different level. So I thought vertical farming, do my research vertical farming and then Harold introduced me to you and there you are. He's like, oh, you need to talk about Mark. Yeah, I need to talk to Mark about vertical farming. And so I went up to you, I'll never forget it. I was like, hi, my name's Eva, I'm looking into vertical farming. And you just go, and you listen to my story, like what I wanted and I'll never forget. When you said, we can do it, we can create the jobs, we can do it, but we're gonna have to do it without a carbon footprint when then you started going on with all of the different, the solar and the wind and then the waste and the water and the reverse osmosis and great water recycling. I just sat there looking at you going like, okay, okay, let's do it, let's do it, let's do it, Mark. Yeah, I remember that day very well. That was at the Inhumburg at the future city campus, Harold's campus, it's a container campus full of art projects. And they even at one time had a little bit of some farming things going on there, but it's about new mobility, art and just kind of future thinking and different innovations and small startup type of a maker lab environment. And since then, really our friendship has just gotten stronger. Sean, you invited Harold and I over to dinner with your family. And that's when I first met Damir and both of your daughters, Barry and Lissy. And it's just, I don't know, I hate to say it's been a love story ever since. I cannot get enough of you guys and the journey and the good coffees and dinners and meals and things that we've done and experienced together. And it's still going on. Obviously the pandemic has kind of slowed down our role in some respects, but in many respects, for me and you both, a lot of the things that I mentioned in your bio, they happened in 2020, right in the middle of the pandemic. Yeah. And it's crazy. But even before we met, you were doing these albums, you were doing songs, you were doing Jam Plant, you had performed with Richard Marks and many Vonda Shepard, Marius Miller, Vesterhagen and on and on anyway, you've really had some super performances. But when we were in Montenegro and this, before I get into the first question, there was some drunk Russians who were probably from the nudist area that came over. And they were like, play some other person, some celebrity song or whatever. And you're like, no, this is my concert. I'm playing my songs. These are all original. I wrote them myself. And I love that. You are such a power woman. And you're saying, I don't need to sing other people's songs. My songs are fabulous enough. And they truly are because I have. Out of mine is I can't. I can't sing other people's songs. I'm just not good at it. Yeah. And I don't even think. So I've been to many of your concerts that I kind of become your stagehand crew members, stage crew, try to help with whatever I can and support you because not only am I passionate about your music and love what you do in your songs. But I've seen, I think you sing one or two other people's songs. That's nice. But your songs are so much better and have so much meaning and depth and substance in them. But what my question really where I'm going is, so before you've created all these things, you've got into climate activism and a lot into food to really see the systemic problems in food. And then we were hit with this craziness. Not only even before in 2016, I believe it was when this Oompa Loompa, this orange guy became president, you and I were on the phone like, what in the heck is going on with our world? What's happening? We were already in turmoil then. And then the inauguration and Black Lives Matter, now the pandemic locked down. We're like, what's the world coming to? And how do we deal and cope? And what I learned, and this is leading to the question is, I was talking about all these things, prepare, have some resilience about food and climate environment, what's coming? We need to start making some changes in our operating models, our operating systems around the world. And then the pandemic hit and my phone, my emails were just off the hook. People say, can you help us get back to work? Can you help us change our models? We didn't listen to you before. Can you help us fix this and get out of this into a better future, one that continues to move forward but in the other direction, kind of a future proof model. So my question to you is, in all this crazy time with all that experience and the things that you were learning, I see that you also got busier but what did you see an experience? How have you weathered this craziness and what's happened from then to now? Oh, this craziness. It's super special. But I think that what it does is sort of uncovers different layers of society and then it starts to uncover different layers of yourself. So you're dished out, whatever it is that you're dished out in life, what are you gonna make out of that? And I think that sort of in my journey and my midlife journey and trying to figure out who I was and where I wanted to go with who I had become, I started this journey with you and trying to sort of spread the awareness about food reform and sustainable practices and soaking in everything that you were teaching me that I was learning along the way with everybody else. And I just feel that you get these, what do you call it? You sort of just keep collecting things along the way and then you decide, well, what am I gonna do with these things? So every day you wake up and you are faced with a choice. I can take these things that I've learned and go back to sleep and cry. I can read the news and follow the orange guy and scream, you know? Or I can take what the minutes and the hours I have in a day and I can sort of focus on something that I believe in that's good. You know, that I feel that if I don't wake up the next day, I spent this day investing in this good and I call it, it's kind of stupid but I call it green energy because I feel like the people that I've met along the way or the people I've been fortunate enough to meet along the way through you are a part of this green energy. Yeah, like if you're looking down at us in a Patriot dish and we're all swimming around in the Patriot dish, you know, it's my favorite stupid Patriot dish thing but like there are different sections of the Patriot dish, okay? And the Patriot dish, let it be even the planet. Like I wanna swim, move and keep this green energy green and I call the whole Trump and the whole whatever doubt, fake, whatever this old method, that's like my poop part, you know? That's brown, it's ugly. Who wants that? Nobody likes that color, nobody likes that energy. I'm not swimming there, I'm swimming in the green and that's just, that's what I do. So I'm super busy. I love it, I love it. I know you're absolutely super busy during this time. I have trouble to get ahold of it anymore. I mean, but also we're in a severe lockdown so we're technically not supposed to be hanging out together especially in Humbert's new lockdown. I've been marching right now. Yeah. It never fails. So that's beautiful because it shows me that not only before you've had some resilience but you've also had some big learning lessons on, you know, it's even more present over the time. We were like, these old systems are not working for us anymore. They're all very siloed or linear and we need to get into some new systems. I mentioned some of the new ones that you're getting into, some of the new projects. The biggest one is, you know, Project Together and the Future Farm Campus. Future Food Campus, Humbert. Future Food Campus, Humbert. The whole world. Tell us about that. Oh, okay, so yeah, it gets a little bit confusing because there are a bunch of different players but you planted the seed in me, obviously, way back when I was looking into vertical farming and when you said, yeah, if we do this, you know, and there were the benefits of why vertical farming, the 30 harvest a year, the water resources, the fact that, you know, all of these technologies that we have today, if we combine them, we can produce food without a carbon footprint. And I thought, geez, that sounds amazing. And then, you know, at these different conferences where we were, we met people. I mean, I remember you saying you met Kimball Muskin. You're like, well, wait a minute, like you're doing the vertical farming but why aren't you using solar energy? And so for me, so much of what you were saying back then and the work that you were doing made so much more sense than what was actually happening in the food reform. And so I just jumped on that bandwagon. And then because climate reality and the whole Al Gore, I'll never forget when I was in Philadelphia and he was talking up there, super impressive by the way, I didn't realize Al Gore was such an impressive person until I was at the Climate Reality Project. And I thought like, sorry, I have to say this about him. I thought he was gonna come out and be like, hello, hello, nice to meet you. And then leave and there'd be other people but he was out there on the stage. He was for hours standing, he gave a two hour, his two hour presentation, 450 slides. The first hour of that presentation was the most depressing, horrible reality of climate reality and climate change. And then he shifted to positive. And then he said, you need to take what you've learned from me and you need to shape it into your own story. And so what I took out of it was to leave the depressing part behind because nobody wants to be yelled at and nobody wants to be told what to do, especially old people. And so I just decided, no, we need to focus on innovations, on solutions. What do we have? How do we combine them? How do we make something out of that? So when we look back, we go, wow, look what we did instead of, oh, geez, we should have done something. And so that's kind of what I did. And yeah, so by taking those, the knowledge that I learned about vertical farming, the knowledge that I learned about this sort of systems thinking, closed loop, circular economy systems, and then getting to meet all these really cool startups that were doing things in the way of precision fermentation and cultivated meat, which I found, I just found, I don't know why but I find science so exciting and so positive and so sexy. And I know that scientists aren't necessarily the sexiest when they talk because they're like, well, we have to improve on the hypothesis. And it goes, it's maybe a little bit long-winded but I find it so fascinating and I just decided I'm gonna take that knowledge from those people, from those sciences and I'm gonna try to support them the best I can. How best to do it, creating a future food campus, creating a place like a co-op where we can house them and it's not necessarily about, and you love this, what we produce, it's how we produce it. And that is the mission. So if we can, you see these startups they're all sort of struggling with these new, oh, where am I gonna scale up and where are the bioreactors, the actual machinery? And well, I wanna do it sustainably, like with your mission, we're like, I can't produce sustainably. So we need to offer all of these new up and coming young people who wanna produce things, they wanna produce it sustainably, we need to offer them a place. And that's what we're hoping with the future food campus. It's incredibly complex, but on top of it, along the way, found out about regenerative farming which I have to say, had to come also on board. So normally these technology worlds, they swim over here and it's like, okay, we're gonna develop something with technology. And then there's the natural side of things, like, oh, we're gonna support our biodiversity and we're gonna farm regeneratively. But my hope is to combine it because we need not only both, we need all of it. Regenerative organic farming outside of the city, supporting those people, those pioneers inside the city, open up a world to these new technologies and offering up transparency, consumer awareness. People can come in and they can go, wait, I can try mozzarella from that was made and it's vegan, it's made in a bio reactor with precious fermentation, I'm going. And then I can also buy products from my favorite farmer guy out on the field. Oh my gosh, I'm buying that package. And then I can try like cultivated meat, I can eat meat, because maybe I like meat. I can eat meat, but Betsy the cow, she's out there outside of the city, grazing around and doing her thing, and it's all good and it's all an ecosystem. And so this is the dream, this is the vision, Mark, yay. I love it, I love how you tell it. And I'm lucky to have been along on the journey with you and you keep referring to me, but it has nothing to do with me. It's all you and it's the connections that it's because I mean, I think I'd given you my presentation probably four or five times, it wasn't till about the fourth or fifth time you're like, the light went on, you're like, oh, I get it. I understand there's all this connection it's this systems view of life, this ecosystem where everything's really tied together. And in the beginning it is for people, it's overwhelming, it's this complexity science and it's too much information. Oh my gosh, my head's gonna explode. I just don't, but really everything that we do in our life has made up of complexity and many systems and we're dealing with it every day. It's too much that we've been dumbed down, we've been given the short versions that without systems thinking or even the dumbed down version, the short version, the elevator pitch, the quick pitch, those will never solve human suffering in our global grand challenges because they're really so complex and part of our journey in 2018, really the whole world shifted to the systems view of life, systems thinking approach to solving grand challenges. So we're really sit at the cusp of this change in movement because even though it's an old way of thinking, from 1972, Donnella Meadows and the limits to growth, but it really wasn't accepted, people didn't understand it. We were kind of more trying to give me the quick silver bullet, the short version until 2018, that shift really started to occur. I wanna go a little bit deeper into what you're working on, but also give some more insight because you're skipping over some things that I think are very vital. So there's always this question and you had it when you were getting ready to present at the embassy, can you tell us again that was the German Italian embassy or what was it? Yeah, the Italian embassy, right. Yeah, I don't know if everybody's aware about that. When you participate in the climate reality project, you get all these learnings, you have all these slides and all this information and what they ask of you is then to give speeches, to go out there and just share it with small groups, with bigger groups and I can tell you, I've been on the stage in front of 30,000 people playing my songs and I've been on the stage. Stage is not my worry, but there I was at the Italian embassy and I'm there, again, I'm in this room with experts, with scientists, with professors at universities who've been in this field for a really long time. I came in from the side and it's not as if, I mean, I offer maybe something else, but it definitely, I was incredibly nervous about being on this stage. But the thing that I realized about what I do or who I am and why it's important that I continue doing this is because there aren't as many people who are as enthusiastic as me about it. There aren't that many people that are like, did you know? You have to, and then just sort of I learn and then I share, but I get people sort of like awake and again, not in the mean yelling at them kind of way, but in the, oh, if I could do that, then that would be great, you know? So I transform my speech into like real solutions. Everybody, this is what you probably already do, great for you, this is what you also could do, like super simple. If you did, like, I mean, this is the one fact of, I mean, the resources that it takes for meat, okay? Simple fact, did you know? We need 15,000 liters of water for one kilogram of meat. So that's equal to, did you know? Six months of showers. When you tell people that, it kind of clicks and they're like, oh, I had no idea. Well, why they don't drink that much water, you know? And then you just say, no, it's the food that we have to feed the cow for them to grow. And in order for you to have that sake on your plate, it's just think about the system. Think about where your food came from, think about where your food is going, and then realize that we're all part of the system. We're all living creatures on this planet, a part of a system. And in a kind of a nice way, sort of open up their minds to those thoughts, you know? And so yeah, at the Italian embassy, it was great. And then I met Iko Elf. They were doing a presentation there too, and even though that's kind of, it's about fast fashion and they were that great company, one of the first companies that started taking plastics out of the ocean and tires and fishing nets out of the oceans and making beautiful products out of that. And from there, I also supported them and wrote a song because I was very inspired, you know? Give me a little inspiration, I'll write a song. You know. That's a fabulous journey. I kind of want to go even more and then we're going to back up just a minute. So there's this feeling and it doesn't just occur in you. It's occurred in me. It's occurred in others. You're like in this room of experts, politicians, people that you've somehow put in on a different pedestal or you think, okay, well, there it's them and us or they're different or why am I here? I don't know if there's just one term for it, but you're like, well, what makes me able to speak about this? And I kind of want to bring a little bit of that out. What your journey there has been about thinking that and because you, like you said before, you sang in front of concerts, a big audiences. So that's not the problem. It's about something else. Why wouldn't you at those meetings feel like, yeah, no, that's fine. I could talk about food. I can talk about the climate. How did that transition happen? Or what aha moments did you have there that maybe could help the listeners to say, oh, I haven't gone to climate reality training or I haven't done this. And so how could I start advocating for the environment or be an activist? I can tell you everybody, if people see me on stage, okay, I always love this because of my friends will be able to go to a concert. And then after they're like, oh my gosh, it's great. It's great. I love to succeed. And then I crash, okay. I crash after every single concert, every single, every time because it's not that I'm nervous. I'm just my adrenaline. I wanna be the best I can be. I wanna be as truly authentically me as I can be. And I make mistakes. I am a master of making mistakes and I am a summation of my mistakes. But the fact is those are sort of the things, the mistakes and the risks and all of those things that were sort of hard for me are the things where I grew the most, you know? And even though from the outside, it may look easy to put yourself out there, it's never easy to put yourself out there. There are always those voices in your head saying, why are you doing this? I mean, it's a perfect example through my ABC. I assure you. I don't know, you don't want me to tell that story, but... I do, I do. That I think also at this time, when I turned 50, I had this big concert and we had a really, I had worked on an album that was called 50 50 because I had done, half of the album was really rocky and sort of heavy music and the other half was really slow. And normally you're not allowed to put that kind of music together on an album, but Fontaine Burnett, who's my guy, he's like, why? Just do what we want to do. And so we did this, we worked on this whole album and then we did the concert and it was this great concert. And I thought, now what? I've done all these albums. They all had concepts. They've all been stories out of my life, whatever growth period, whatever it is I was going through, whatever my friends were going through, I turned all of those stories into songs, you know? But there's so much more involved with being a performer, as you know with what you do. It's literally, it's coming up with the concepts for the album, coming up with the songs for the album, producing the songs for the album, getting the bands together for the, getting the events, inviting the people, doing the press, doing the photos, you know? And then you, I'm literally doing my website, doing videos, doing social media. I mean, I cannot even tell you how much work, literally 95% goes into something besides songwriting. And the best thing that I can do is write a song. That's just that I know that whatever, I'm gonna be freaking 55. I can tell you right now, the thing that I do best is writing songs. So then I thought, okay, this is what I'm gonna do. I'm just gonna go play my songs. I'm gonna do something that's gonna take myself out of my comfort zone. Why? Because I don't want every day to be predictable. The thing that I loved about life or the thing that I love most about life, I don't know if everybody's like this, but it's not known what's gonna happen in a day, okay? So by the end of the day, we're like, wow, that was really cool, what happened today? Like just because I just don't know. And so I thought, well, how can I do something really unpredictable? How can I take myself out of my comfort zone? It's not making another album. It's not doing the same process, you know? That's not gonna take me out of my comfort zone. That's what I do. So I thought, I'll play on the streets by myself because generally I'm pretty shitty guitarist and I use it to write my songs, but I'm not like, you know, Pat Matheny. And I have my band usually to like support me. They've always got my back. But I said, okay, do this. And how we do, go to places you've never been. So then I thought, whew, I'll go to cities I've never been, but how there's so many. I'll go alphabetically, A to Z. And I tell you, I'm driving into, and I know I've told this story before, but I'm serious, I'm driving into Asherbag. It's my first, my A city. And the voices in my head are screaming, Ava, why? Why are you doing this? Go have a coffee, stop, you know? But then I just like, no, no. You have to like fight through this. You can do this, found a place, played and felt like such an idiot. Nobody wanted me being there. Nobody knows my songs. And so every city was kind of that sort of situation until these moments of human kindness started to crop up, you know? Like people would come up to me, these kids, they would look and they would just be like, and then, or it's, you know, in Emshorn, when refugees came up to me and this one man said, I'm sorry, I don't speak German, but I have to say that when you started to sing, it went straight to my heart. And then an older man came with gloves from the one Euro shop and handed them over to me and said, it was freezing. Cause I decided to do this one. It started getting really cold outside. So he said, if you cut the fingertips off, maybe you'll be a little bit warmer. And then it's a ho, I'm standing on the street and there's a guy looking at me without typical, like I'm ready for him to like come over and sign a ticket for me playing there. You know what I mean? He was really giving me the evil look. And then he's given me the evil look from this side too. And I'm like, if you don't like the music, just leave, like stop giving me the mean look. But then when I finished one song, he came over to me and he goes, I didn't know if you joined coffee. So I bought you a raspberry tea. I assure you, I have so many great stories from this A to Z. And I have so many moments of where I pushed myself outside of, you know, outside of the comfort zone. You know, really. So raspberry tea, comfort zone, they're all songs. And you from the A to Z, you created new songs. Not only did you already have songs, but it's a fabulous journey. It's an experience, but you really left the comfort zone to do that. And when you did, you realized that you put on your pants just like everybody else. You can connect in a human ways with other people that you're just trying to come together to find a better operating system, find a little bit more humanity with the world. I actually even wanted to go deeper because there's this almost, and please forgive me, I'm not sure if this is the right, there's this imposter syndrome or feeling that some people have when they're talking around politicians or scientists or whatever, they're like, what gives me the right to, everybody has a right to speak about the basic needs of humanity, food, water, air, security of body, security of where you live. And those are basic human rights. And there is no instruction manual when we're born. And there is no certification course when we're born to be able to speak about those things. Those were all made by some human, some man, some woman somewhere to give instruction or give someone a degree. We do it every single day. We deal with these things every single day and it's just part of life. And there's this, I guess there is a rule, probably one of the oldest historical rules in our world and it's the golden rule, treat people and planet how you would like to be treated. And if you do it with that good Samaritan, that good intent in mind, there's very little you can do wrong. You may not have received a degree in food or in climate or in environment and not be a scientist, but you do have experience. You went to Urban Crop Solutions and spent almost a week, a couple of days there getting training on vertical farming, on closed environmental agriculture, on different methods and types. I want you to tell me if that was an eye opener what you learned, what that experience was like and where it was. And if you had an adventure there as well, I want to hear about it. Oh my gosh, it's a small town in Belgium, right? It's a UNESCO historical site in Belgium, matter of fact. Like I don't retain all information. I very seldomly retain places I've been, but I've been to a lot of places. I mean, even Montenegro now that I was thinking about it, I was like, oh my gosh, I really love Montenegro, that was so fun. Anyway, I think that the great thing about the training at Urban Crop Solutions was actually, I mean, being hands-on and seeing the technology and learning really on a deeper level. I mean, I've read a million things about vertical farming. I've been following AeroFarm since the beginning, and all of the players actually. I mean, we were down in Austria at the Vertical Farm Conference. Sky berries. Yeah, the sky berries. And I just, I feel that Urban Crop Solutions really was a deeper eye-opener into the actual process itself, but also in the fact that they are more interested in being the state-of-the-art vertical farming. That means like, say the Mercedes, so they're really going through longevity and resilience. And they're also doing a lot of research into the R&D section of it, of what other plants and crops we can grow. And I think that that, it's incredibly exciting. I mean, even now the whole front with berries, that we're going beyond the solids. And even, I mean, when we talk about vertical farming forever, these plant recipes, the fact that you know, I have a tiny little vertical farm in my closet. And just this, the fact that I'm having it and the connection that I have to, there's a seed, there's cocopeat, there's water, and there's light. So it's getting its nutrients, it has this recipe, and there it just starts to grow. And I can watch this growing process and I'm sorry, every single time I'm fascinated and every single time I'm excited about it. And I think that the world should be excited about that. I think that we need to get this into schools. I mean, we had, we were talking about this idea of having a container traveling from school to school through different life cycles. Why? Because it's exciting. Because children will be excited about it and they can take their crops home to their parents who'll be like, wow, that's so great. It's beyond organic, it's super nutritional. And it was grown without less impact to the environment because we have to combine these systems. We don't have enough land. We can't be just using all of our land only for farming. We have to come up with different ways to do it in an urban agricultural way, right, Mark? Exactly. I mean, I'm gonna release some of your secrets. So you actually started with a, you were pretty excited when Ikea came out with their little kind of home vertical farm type of thing. And then you're like, it's so hard to put together. It doesn't really work. It's not a closed system. And then the one that you were talking about was the clicking grope and you've had that. But you've also had some lessons to learn from clicking grope, some fungus issues, some bug issues, so what they call fungal gnats and even maybe fruit flies from some of the growth. So there's been some learning lessons, but overall your experience, your knowledge on how you see those living beings and how they grow, how it can be hydroponic with a difference between soil-based and full hydroponic is along this journey, not only did you learn on the commercial scale from urban crop solutions on kind of both systems and that, you've also looked and heard about aquaponics and many different types of processes where you've taken that journey and made yourself aware of what's in the market and follow those. And earlier you mentioned Kimball musk and most people might not get that Kimball musk because Elon Musk brother, he's big in farm. He does also a container solution for growing plants and it's not a closed system, but it's in a container and as that, but there's no use of non-finite resources, renewable energy and HVAC cells kind of intensive on how that works, but it's a new system and it works pretty good for urban situations, but we're always asking ourselves, why isn't this a hundred percent? And just this year and last year it was beginning to emerge, but because of the pandemic, there's been some fabulous things that have happened in this area. So one, the USDA is certified hydroponics as being able to be qualified as organics, which was before a no-no. So if it wasn't grown in soil, you couldn't call it organic. And so we used to say it's actually beyond organic. The minerals, vitamins and nutrients are actually a little bit better. If you have a closed system, there's no pests, no pesticides, no chemicals, there's different things. So that's a huge milestone or achievement that was made in the U.S. But the other thing is urban crop solutions who you went and received that training and experience from, they're getting ready to roll out through our contact there is Brechtuba, who you like I think as our buddy. But he and urban crops signed a partnership with Ikea and they did a bunch of tests and with Ikea on some of their systems, on some of their containers. And now Ikea is getting ready to roll out and all their stores this big, huge offering of multiple containers, complete solutions for city growth, for home growth, for different options. Around producing food. And I guess, I don't know if you've learned this or not but growing your own food is like printing your own money. It's a form of resilience, it's a form of stability and not only that connection but you don't have that panic and angst. Where am I gonna get my toilet paper from? Where am I gonna get my food from? Because you're like, oh, I can just grow it myself. I grow my own food here at the house as well. I do sprouting, but I also got lemon trees, I got lime trees, got clementines, I've got, and before we really got into the deep dive like I showed at the beginning, you gave me this as a gift but you had these in your home already. So you already were thinking closed systems, systems thinking this is the closed system of producing and very little inputs but yet it still thrives, it still survives, it's beautiful. And I just love these journeys and I think you're verging on the form of being either pretty darn good urban farmer or you're getting close to the farmer. There's no doubt about it, I think I'm really bad but I have so much respect for them. I think that's what you gain by actually growing your own things because you see how hard it is. I mean, even with your own plants in your own house and also these lessons along the way, just nature itself, like the secret life of trees, the idea of, and I'm sorry, but I'm like one of the biggest fan of fungi in my ceilium because like once you start going down underground and starting to understand how the whole systems work, how the sort of a network of communication going on with nature and mushrooms and all living things in the forest, you can never ever walk by a tree in the city and not think about how amazing it is once you've, when you sort of peek behind those doors and I think that's what it's about. It's, we can't necessarily all be farmers but what we can do is respect farmers. I mean, through my journey, I have to say respect for teachers is so high on my list. Teachers, the job that they're doing is, I only have respect. And then now with this new era of these pioneer farmers who are out there trying to change the systems because they understand and they actually wanna do good for nature, but they're stuck in an old system because of political subsidies and they don't really know how to break out and yet there are these crazy other pioneering people like soul food, forest farms that are like, hey, we'll come, we'll help you, we'll consult, we'll do one hectare of your land and then you're gonna give back to the biodiversity, we're gonna study everything that's going on in the soil, around the soil, the microbes. You just, there's so much we don't see, there's so much we don't understand. And so the more we research and look into it, the more amazing we can, the more amazed we can be, not, you know, I'm amazed. I'm not even... Yeah, I am too. And I mean, just as we talk, I mean, more things are like, boy, we've had some amazing journeys, we've had some amazing experiences. Probably one of the last big ones we had is we were both in Madrid at the COP25, COP25 in Madrid for the Conference of the Parties, which is the UNFCCCC's United Nations Climate Conference. We kind of go as tag team partners where we're trying to divide and conquer. We spoke, we both spoke at Equal, which you also mentioned. We had in the COP on the floor and in the pavilions, different meetings, different events, just wonderful experiences, although there was also some frustration and craziness involved in that. And when you're in the throes of things, it's like, oh my goodness, are we ever gonna make it? This is frustrating. But we've truly had some great experiences and that kind of reminds me as well. Last year, the UN Secretary General Antonio Gatera says, you know, we're going to do the United Nations Food Systems Summit. It's gonna be in June and in Rome, Italy as a pre-summit and then again in New York in September. And then we're gonna go to Glasgow and have a pavilion of booth and kind of talk more about that. David Naberro, the event you just did was FSS. What's the acronym, FFA? FFA, the Farm for the Future of Agriculture with FAO and people from the UN. It's all about, it's amazing, but we just had this journey and you're kind of getting the big complexity on a global level now. You're seeing all these things. And I've always been in our business plans for the Loha Seco Center and things. I'll always kind of try to throw the SDGs in there and show this. And that really brings me to I guess the hardest question I have for you, not only those experiences is, in my life, I always like, what's the meaning of life? What's the purpose? What's the goal? Where's the plan? Where are we going with this? And for me, I think you know, I have a pretty strong dogma and a vision of the future, but I believe that the sustainable development goals are a roadmap and a plan, the first ever global moonshot for the future is kind of a really great ambition to get us there and some targets and indicators of money. The question is, the burning question, WTF, what's the future? Although we said the other one, what's the future? And kind of what's your plan or what's your vision of the future? Where are we going? What do we need to do from your point? I don't wanna know anyone else's point. I mean, if we go back to this, you know, the COP25 where we had some great experiences, I think again, you know, there's so many, there's so many really important turning points in everyone's life, you know? And it was another one for me there with the food systems dialogues with David Nabara. Again, it was another table where I thought, what am I doing here? But then because they were actually looking for solutions, it wasn't just a room where he was gonna talk about things. He was like, you're gonna get together with these different groups and you're gonna make notes and within this half an hour, your group is gonna come up with solutions. And the people that were in my group were so amazing. The woman that, you know, we just started this discussion and I realized actually already after only being involved in this for a couple of years that I had a lot of input and I had a lot of visions of what we could possibly do and I'm incredibly enthusiastic about it. So I feel that as awful as the pandemic has been and as awful as this last, you know, the history of sort of fake news and people turning on each other and not trying to understand each other, I still feel within this green energy movement there's so much going on. And I feel that there are so many more people who are willing to join the green energy movement and that they're really looking for solutions. You've noticed it yourself, you're getting a million calls from a million big players, big industry where we've been trying to help industry and start up sort of connect. Like how can we bring what we know in the sustainability world together with what already exists without trying to be disruptive and but to slowly make changes. And I think that there are people really working on making this happen. I saw it again in this FFA forum that I was in listening to the people talk there maybe the same players and David Navarro on the WWF and all these great guys but we're making real strides and the rest of the world is kind of a little more open to listening to those things whereas before they just, no, I've got my own problems, whatever, I'm working hard, I'm going on my vacation, I can't deal with it. Everyone's somehow now open and ready. I mean, even again with my, joining the Chamber of Commerce in Hamburg, I went in and here I am again in a room of like, Dr. PhD, I am the CEO. And I'm like, I'm the last person to introduce myself in this group of like amazing people, I'm thinking, oh no, but I assure you, I just came straight out with, hey, we're not talking enough about sustainability. We need Hamburg needs to become a lighthouse project with some great innovative ideas because Germans are so ridiculously brilliant. We have engineers, we have technologies, we have research institutes, we have everything we have here. We can already do this in our city and we can share with other cities and why aren't we doing it? I just don't, I don't go for like, oh, well, it's a lot of work and Hamburg isn't really known for that. Forget that, that's the way it was. We have new models, we have new doors and we have new highways. And I'm telling you, I have the most amazing team. I really do. I have such amazing people on this team with me and I annoy them all the time. They thought it was gonna be like, oh, she's just American. She's just gonna say something and then she's gonna be done, ha, ha, funny, ha, no. We're really, we're doing great things. Yeah, you are. And it is a fabulous team and it's still developing but I see some bright hope. The big thing that many people have a trouble grasping is one, the system's thinking, but the bigness of this, the true sheer size. So even from the Hamburg point of view and what you're trying to do and get going here in Hamburg, what a lot of people struggle with is they realize even if we were to do the Hamburg system here, we're still only kind of tickling the surface of the problem of where we need to go in the future. And that really, if we did multiple of these around, then we would start to make a dent and that's this progress. Please go ahead. This is the thing. The coolest part about what it is is that together with my, you know, I've been working with Project Together and they are this open social innovation hub. They have the farm food climate challenge and I just jumped in there and I'm like, okay, people and who are you and what do you have in initiatives? And all of the great energy with them and I have some other people also in Berlin, the idea that we're doing here for Hamburg, we're actually doing for all of Germany. And that's why this connection to Project Together because they have connected politically and they have a hundred mayors all over Germany that are looking for ideas for ways to change the systems, for ways to do urban agriculture in their cities and also again with this farming outside of the city. So what we're doing, even though I'm trying to say, okay, I'm here, I have this team here, we're actually doing this for all of Germany, all of Europe and really beyond the borders because we have the technology and the education and the people here to do it, but the idea is to share this with everybody outside of the world, even those places that are gonna have real problems with their water resources a lot sooner than we are. We need to develop this concept here so that they know what to do. They don't have to put the time and effort in, we're sharing, it's open. You know? Yeah, and I love that and I see that where I was, and I hope that it will spread to the mayors. I have a lot of optimism that it will. But I guess kind of where I was going was, and you heard me speak about this at Sky Berries when we were, Sky Berries was an Austrian, that's a big event for all sorts of vertical farm, aquaponics, hydroponics, line of thinking. So new forms of urban culture, urban agriculture. And all the, at that time, there was probably around 1200 to 1400 different vertical farms and aquaponics and hydroponics facilities around the world. And really, if you know the population of the world, you know what market they can address, they're only not even really tickling the surface of the problem to be part of the solution to become to address that facet of the system and that problem, we could actually have 100,000 or a million such setups around the world. And then we would start to make a dent and help support the complex food systems with a new alternative that is future proof, that is resilient, that is not based on different type of fuels, different type of energy use, one that is much more regenerative, much more longer term. And so that's a, initially when we speak to people about these projects, like, oh, this is big, this is complex, it's really not. It's about the size of, you know, one metro grocery store for us here in Europe, you know, kind of a shopping cash and carry location. It's about the size of, you know, in the United States, a Costco type of a thing, you do a setup like that. And there's only, even if you were producing 24 seven in such a system, there's only so much market you can reach in order to be a true solution, we need hundreds of thousands of such solutions. And so really the thing we deal with this for people to see that scale, the grandeur of what it could really do to change our food systems and the infrastructure for better ways of doing things are another tool for the toolbox that really is supportive and helpful. And that's kind of where I was going and what I meant with that. I kind of think that it's grown beyond vertical farming for tools in the toolbox now, because now that we've really, we're starting to understand our industrial, you know, agriculture, the farming animals and what kind of, that we simply cannot continue to have a meat production system to feed our growing population. It's absolutely not possible. And this, the cultivated meat future and how we can actually, I mean, just the scope of the fact that with a bioreactor in 40 days, we can produce enough meat, okay, for a city that would be equivalent to taking something like 30, no, 28 to 30 months. Do you know the numbers of this? Of like two years of cows growing for us to get the same amount of meat within 40 days in a city, okay? You, the future of meat, our meat concept is gonna change. The fact that we've got these plant-based meat alternatives that also are out there. The fact that we have this precision fermentation, what we're doing with mycelium, you know, we're gonna have new products, we're gonna have new foods, alternative proteins, also this great thing with fish. Literally we cannot fish our oceans the way or anymore. We have the possibility of making cultivated fish. It's gonna be out by the end of the year, you know? So we have fish products for our, where we don't have to, you know, completely deplete our oceans of all the fish. We can't continue with, you know, what do you call it, business as usual. There is no way. So there are many tools for this toolbox. And we just have to, we have to get the box going, right? I agree. That's so beautiful. Normally in the beginning I ask the question, are you a global citizen and how would you feel about a world without nations and borders and humanity divided one from another? I believe I know. So you're from Long Island, New York. You've lived in Germany most of your life and because of your fabulous husband, Demir and many other good reasons to raise your kids at international schools and who have now gone on to be very successful, beautiful adults. But I wanna kind of get your views and opinions because you've worked around the world. You've sang in Namibia with the kids and you've done different projects but I wanna hear how you feel about this. The global citizen thing. You know my favorite thing, people get so annoyed with me but I'm like basically we're all just parasites. Like I always love this vision from above, God looking down and we're all these tiny little things moving around like, oh, what are we doing? Like, we think we're so super important but there are millions of things like dancing around. I have been fortunate enough to have bopped around in different places in the world which yeah, it's been a luxury I have to say. And even though I was at the beginning when I was living in Germany, I had a really hard time because mostly because I love my family and I just miss them so much. I didn't really wanna have a life so far away from them but in hindsight, I've learned it's better to accept your situation than to spend your time thinking about why you would rather be somewhere else. This grass is greener type thing. I spent a lot of years thinking, oh, I would much rather have Sunday dinner with my parents and it was just a waste of time. I was having Sunday to do here, I wanna invest here. And even with the pandemic, like, oh, well, yeah, I sure would love to go out to a restaurant with my friends. Well, okay, so I'm just walking around the Alster with my friends. I think that it's how you look at the glass, half empty, glass half full really. And basically I got about like 7,000, maybe 8,000 days to go, maybe more because my grandmother made it to 101. I don't know, but that's it. What am I gonna do with those days? Sit there and go, oh, well, I wish I could go out of my house. No, I'm in my house so I can read. I can write a song. That's a John P. Streliki purpose for existing PFE and big five for life. He also talks about those days that we have on this earth and what are you doing with those days? So I love that. I was kind of more getting, do you believe that our regional civilization frameworks are working for us all? And maybe do we need a global new operating system? A new, you know, I caveatted it with the best views a little bit further back. I do think that there will be a shift. And I mean, I feel that we are, I feel that so many people are not on board with that idea and so many people are grasping for their own cultures and what they know and not sort of opening themselves up to others. Since I have been through my life experience lived in different cultures. I lived in Italy. I lived in Paris. I have Croatian family. My father's Hungary, I have, you know what I mean. And I've lived in Germany. So I've really actually experienced other cultures and there are differences. I think that when we met, it was again, we just, we have this link. We have this link in foods that we like to eat. We have this link in music that we like to hear and also in this insane optimism and energy into wanting to make changes, you know? We don't sit there and go, yeah, Abba, you know? We don't sit there like, well, this might not work. We're like, how is this gonna work? Wait, let's find the resources. Let's find the tools, you know? And I think it has something to do with where we came from and the way, you know, the culture that we were in. And so I believe and I hope that there will be global citizens and because I'm accepting, I hope, even though, like you think like, am I accepting of everybody? I don't know, the killers and the rapists, I don't fix pedophiles, not such friends of mine. But, you know, I still believe in a global world, absolutely in a global system. Look at the, you know, look at the earth from above, really. How can you know that? We got disconnected somehow with one another on, we're all distant cousins. We're all star stuff or all stardust. We all crawled out of the primordial soup. Yeah, I was born from my mother's womb and kind of crawled out of Mother Earth in that respect. But we're all related to each other. We're distant cousins, but yeah, there's, you know, not only Black Lives Matter but so many other cultural, racial issues going on at this time. We, you know, I always, I love Joan Lennon, go back to a song Imagine and how we can come together. I think that because our world with technology, because the ease of travel, you know, when we're not in pandemics, that it's a much smaller, more connected world that we can get information around the world, but that we need to figure out a way to operate. I have a different operating system or operate together a little bit better. And that's why I wanted to kind of get your views on that. And we've had many discussions like this over the past because it's all, no matter where we talk about what we do, there's always people who are at a different level and they're not, they're our cousins. They're related to us. We're close to them, but there's a different point that we have to pick them up from that level and get them to another or take them on a journey. And some might not be ready or might not be there. When, you know, 20 plus years ago, I wasn't ready. I was an overweight, crazy guy. I was desensitized. I was numb. I couldn't feel the world. If you were to talk to me about sustainability or whatever, I couldn't hear it. I couldn't feel it because I was in a different situation. And so there's, no matter what, we've talked about stories and journeys and experiences. It's a transition that we all need to make as some of us are there and ready. And those are the calls that we've been receiving this year. But others of us, we don't wanna forget them or cast them aside, we need to figure out how to reach them whether it's an emotional or it's a visual or it's audible or somehow to help them. And one thing that I have learned, which has been, well, a couple of things that I've learned over the times that it's real, for me, almost hard learning lessons is that it takes about four to five times of some people hearing the same message over and over again before they can even hear it or understand it because of their life situation of wherever they're at. And the other one is that we're all at different levels of evolution and we need to pick up people where they're at and give them the tools of empowerment to get to a better place. Because in general, what we're talking about is only a better system, a future proof system, a better operating model for us to get much further along generationally into the future to more resilient, desirable, regenerative futures. And that's really the big hope. I mean, I don't know if I or you will see a lot of this, but I really want to create this better world, this better operating system for people where they can be hopeful and optimistic. The thing that I feel is that, first of all, there's so much information out there, okay? But since I focus really in this one world, okay, that has opened itself up to me and I still don't even, I can't even begin to fathom all of the complexity of our food system when it comes to production, transport, distribution, waste, all of this, it is so complex, but I just keep putting my time and energy into trying to understand it and seeing what's out there. And then sharing that knowledge with other people because I've invested more time than just read one article, okay, a lot of people just say, get their news and then they shut it off and that's just what they think. And the thing is, so many of those people are out there working so hard. I mean, even in some research that I did, the thought when I go into Aldi and I see in a can that there's a Shrine Hacksaw whole meal for one Euro 50 and you think about where did that come from? You know, the entire production system behind that, but the person who bought that doesn't have time to think, oh, well, this might not be good for the environment. They've worked all day, they're exhausted, they have kids to feed, they just wanna get to bed and so they take this can. Now the thing that I feel that what we need to do to make a change is to offer them a better product so that when they go in and they can feel better about themselves, the fact that people are going to unfortunately have to pay a little bit more money for a certain type of food because there has to be a price on what it does to the environment. You cannot just be producing and treating animals this way. It just cannot continue with the way that we've had up until now, but those people who are out there fighting just to make a living, just to pay their bills, we need to offer them products that are gonna make them feel also better inside. With that, that they have to spend all this time researching, how do we do it? What's the transfer? What's the distribution? They don't have time for that. What they need is people like us to change the system for the industries to say, okay, I mean, great, Friday's future, go out, scream so that industries make a shift. All of us are doing our part and we're doing it together to simply reform the system. We have to. Yeah, so you touched upon two things and you also touched upon it earlier. One, it's really the true cost, the total environmental cost, the natural capital, the resources and that, we need to start paying that. We're in a deficit, we're taking more than we can use in a year that can be regenerated. And then the second one that you mentioned earlier, and we need to repeat it because I'm not sure, a lot of people get it right in the beginning as it's not about the products of the future, it's about how we produce and that occurs and from the farm to the production methods, how we produce that product, that when it gets to the stores, when it gets to the consumers, that those who don't have, who've just got off a 12 hour shift or an eight hour shift and have kids to feed or are trying to make ends meet because the bigger system of life, wherever they live, they're not making enough wages or whatever it is, they don't have time to read the labels, they're just hungry, they just wanna eat, they wanna get to sleep, to eat and get to sleep or veg out, so to say, so that they can start the whole process over again tomorrow and they're not gonna look at the label, they're gonna look at, can I afford that? Will it feed my family and get us to tomorrow? And that's where we need to change the way we produce, the way we put those inputs and that it doesn't harm human health and our environment in the process. And that's that bigger picture that you said it, but I wanna emphasize it, because it's so vital, it's so vital. I don't know if you wanna get into some of my other deeper questions, you know. Whatever, we have so much fun talking. We could talk forever. Actually, I think we cover some really hot topics and before I ask you my final last three questions, which are really for my listeners, kind of things that can help and improve them, I wanna ask you, is there anything that we didn't get to talk about that's vital, that people who are listening, that they know that you're frustrated that I didn't bring out or mention? Oh, I don't know, I don't know. We talked about a lot of good things, I don't know. Okay, great. So the last three questions are, if there was one message you could apart to my listeners that as a sustainable takeaway for them to apply into their lives, that has the power to change their life, what would it be, your message? Oh, I think my message is hopefully by way of inspiration and enthusiasm to leave the comfort zone, just whatever it might be, whatever that thing in your life that you think I would love to do it, do it because it's just, yeah, it's definitely worth it, whatever it is. It's another twist as well as on like Bernay Brown, the vulnerability as you leave that comfort zone as you're vulnerable, as you do those things. It's actually, many respects turns into superpower. There's so many amazing things that occur from that. I love that, that's the fabulous. What should young singer, songwriters, innovators in your area now merging into food and that be thinking about or looking for ways to make real impact to start where they're at but to have some impact? Okay, it's kind of two different worlds. Whenever I, obviously, as you said, I have two kids and my two children are very different personalities to each other, but what I tell them and their friends and anybody else that I come along, it's you have to be who that authentic voice is inside of yourself even, and you sort of shut off the doubt guy and just go with like what your heart is saying and follow that bliss. I mean, it's the most rewarding and the most frustrating, you know? In hindsight, I always sort of went off the beaten path and I definitely didn't realize that going off the beaten path was gonna be the most fulfilling. So just believe in that. I mean, I have millions of songs about this too. It's kind of like a whisper, but if you listen, then that's gonna be the thing that's gonna fill up your heart the most in this short life that you have, you know? I love it. What have you experienced or learned so far in your journey that you would have loved to know from the start? I would have, hmm. I definitely, it's that thing about accepting your fate. I think that that I wish I just didn't fight so much. I wish I didn't fight so much about the fact that while I'm living in a different country in a different culture, I can't speak the language and just went more with it, you know? I think that comes with age. Definitely not the fighting and everything being so, you know, it's where you put your focus, you know? I love it. Ava, you're my bestie. I love you and I'm so glad we... Mark, are we gonna save the world today? Of course, we're gonna save the world every day. Every day we get up and try to have some good impact. Live kind of like the Steve Jobs that live every day as if it were your last in some respects. I truly believe we do that. And I'm so glad that we're friends and that we will continue this and that we were able to have this discussion and give some insight to my listeners. And by the way, Ava's the one who's created the thumbnails and helped even though it's transformed and I've mutated them a little bit more with more craziness, but she's always helping me. She's such a creative in many different directions. We didn't even get to talk that you've actually written two songs for me. I need to use them. I need to apply them more. So I have a lot more learnings and experiences together that we'll make. But thank you so much for being on the podcast and we were gonna do this again. Wait, I have to thank you. Can I? Can I thank you? Go ahead. I have to thank you for opening up the doorways and the pathways and the roads and the rainbows and the sunshine that I've been able to travel down with you and all that I've been able to learn. It's given my life also such a deeper meaning. And again, forget pushing me out of the comfort zone. It's inspired me. I've been inspired to do so much on presentations and websites and basically trying to get the message out in the way that I can. It sort of goes through me and then comes out and hopefully we just together reach more people in a good positive light, you know? The green energy mark. And also thank you for doing this podcast and speaking to people and all that you do with your books and all that you do with your speaking engagements and the fact that you never stop. The fact that you are like a sponge and I call you like I say, oh, Mark, I need a little bit more into, I need this information. And then you just start shooting out millions of connections for me. I just, there's so many ways I can thank you for what you do, but. I do it because I love you and I believe in it and thank you for thanking me, but you're so welcome. It's been a shared pleasure and I always try to share my crazy brain and thoughts in whatever way I can help with you. And anyway, I mean, just that alone opened up so many things. I remember we had coffee where you're like, should I do the climate reality leadership training? What is it like? And then you went and it was a good experience and then you came back and there was this time where you're like, how do I make it mine? How do I, because that's a great thing about Al Gore. He empowers you. He says, don't give my talk word for word. Make it. I give you all the tools I empower you. You make it your own. Delete slides, add new ones. Make it personal. And you jumped on that out of all the people who receive his training. There's a small percentage who actually do that and then actually give the presentations and you did that and then you went on to be a mentor. But the last thing is as I close is after that you did your own climate conferences. Just through that journey, you've reached thousands of people speaking to them online, offline, doing your own climate conferences, climate events in Berlin at the Brandenburg tour all over the world, not just Montenegro, and it's amazing because it adds this, whoops, that's a ripple effect that happens in our world. When you help and empower others, when you get this bug of passion that you've got to spread it on, you've got to pass it on and it just, I love what you've done and I know you're not done, you're still going strong. But thank you. Work today. Thank you. Thanks Eva, take care, bye-bye. All right. Bye.