NO TOX

What do you do when the law moves slower than the chemicals entering our food, water, homes, and bodies? Ken Cook has spent more than 30 years answering that question. A soil scientist and agricultural policy analyst by training, he helped shape the conservation provisions of the 1985 Farm Bill before co-founding the Environmental Working Group in 1993. Ken entered the fight believing that if you wrote the right law, passed it, and enforced it, the problem would move. Then, as he tells it, regulation slowed, industry resistance hardened, and the distance between what was legal and what was safe stayed open. Ken and the EWG team built their own path. EWG took science and government data out of Washington and put it into tools families could use in the produce aisle, under the kitchen sink, and at the tap. The Dirty Dozen, Skin Deep, the Tap Water Database, and EWG Verified gave people practical choices and gave companies a market reason to make cleaner products. This is not a victory lap. Ken tells the truth about what he got wrong, from missing the power of consumer choice to backing away from early PFAS testing. He takes the criticism of the Dirty Dozen seriously, explains what MAHA gets right and wrong, and shows how to reduce daily exposure without fear, shame, or throwing away everything in your house. WHAT WE GET INTO • Why successful environmental laws triggered a powerful industry response • The insight that changed the pesticide debate: children are not small adults • What companies knew about PFAS before the public did • Why “fragrance” can conceal hundreds of chemicals behind one word • Why Ken argues that legal does not always mean safe • How to make cleaner choices when time and money are limited Ken’s practical advice is simple: focus on the exposures that happen every day, replace products as they run out, and give yourself enough grace to keep going. CHAPTERS 00:00:00 Products Start as Thoughts 00:03:44 Environmentalism Gets Personal 00:05:49 Farm Bill and Backlash 00:08:59 The Problem Was It Worked 00:14:24 From Policy to Products 00:17:03 Founding EWG 00:22:24 Building Dirty Dozen 00:30:59 Green Companies Called 00:34:29 Fragrance and PFAS 00:38:25 PFAS in Tap Water 00:43:11 PFAS Regret 00:46:57 The Market Moved First 00:52:29 Legal Is Not Safe 00:59:29 MAHA and Its Critics 01:07:40 EWG Answers Critics 01:11:36 Nobody Studies Mixtures 01:14:11 Start Under Your Sink 01:17:29 Relaxed Resolve RESOURCES Ken Cook at Environmental Working Group: https://www.ewg.org/who-we-are/our-team/ken-cook Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen: https://www.ewg.org/foodnews/ Skin Deep Cosmetics Database: https://www.ewg.org/skindeep/ EWG Tap Water Database: https://www.ewg.org/tapwater/ PFAS Contamination Map and Current Data: https://www.ewg.org/interactive-maps/pfas_contamination/ NO TOX Website: https://notox.tv/ If this episode changed the way you think about what is legal and what is safe, send it to one person who needs to hear it.

John Roulac sold a billion dollars of organic food. Then he started testing what was in it. Seventy percent of the imported organic lots his company tested came back hot with banned pesticides. He rejected them. Those same lots went straight to his competitors and onto shelves with a USDA Organic seal on the front. When he told retailers, they said it wasn't their job. That's the guy I have on this week. John founded Nutiva in 1999 with 500 hemp seed bars sold out of his car. He built it to nearly a billion in retail sales and 30,000 stores. He put the first thirty thousand dollars into Kiss the Ground, the Netflix film that made regenerative agriculture a household phrase. He's founded seven nonprofits. He now runs Coco Clean, a plastic free detergent company he spent 32 months formulating because nobody else would. He got here because at 21 a radio DJ said a truck driver dumped nuclear waste nine miles from his house. What we get into: The two tier organic system. US lots go untested. European lots get tested and pass. Guess which ones end up in your cart Why organic acreage is shrinking while organic sales climb, and why electing a different president won't fix it The real reason seed oils took over America. It wasn't health. It was a byproduct problem the industry needed to unload Fourth generation chemical exposure, and what happens when each generation passes the load to the next through the umbilical cord and breast milk Millennials have half the testosterone John had at the same age. Boron is part of that story and almost nobody talks about it Selenium, boron, copper. The three minerals missing from the conversation and the foods that actually contain them Ninety five percent of detergents sold today contain a synthetic dye that serves no function except marketing How he got GMOs pulled from Cheerios and Hershey with a comment campaign Food forests in Guatemala, Kenya, and Malawi, where a nitrogen fixing tree planted every two meters replaced the fertilizer that isn't coming anymore Why he hired a 20 year old from Taco Bell who couldn't afford college, and what she was running four years later The biggest lie in the food system, and the bigger lie inside the movement fighting it John doesn't get invited to the cocktail parties anymore. He'll tell you why on air. If you switched to organic and figured you were covered, this one's going to be slightly uncomfortable. Good! That's the point. Connect with John Roulac Website: https://johnroulac.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnroulac Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/johnroulac Substack: https://substack.com/@johnroulac Coco Clean: https://www.cococlean.com

Everything in your life started as a thought. When the world shows up toxic, that didn't start at the factory. It started upstream. This is NO TOX. My first guest is Meghan Swidler. Cornell summa cum laude, tech startup life in San Francisco and New York, and a VC job offer in 2021 that looked like the dream on paper. Underneath it, she was disconnected, anxious, and dealing with cystic acne, gut issues, and a hormonal mess doctors kept dismissing. She quit that VC job the day after she started it. Today Meghan is a Functional Health and Detox Practitioner based in Venice, California, specializing in deep cellular cleansing and detoxification: colon, liver, lymphatic, parasite, mold, and heavy metal detox. She works with founders, entrepreneurs, and high performers who've already tried conventional and functional medicine and still can't shake gut issues, hormone imbalances, thyroid dysfunction, or chronic inflammation. Meghan is all in on the root cause, not symptom management. In this conversation, we talk about: The Mirena IUD that quietly destroyed her hormones for five years, and the doctor visit where she refused to leave until it came out Why healing is about outputs, not inputs The correct biological sequence for detox: colon, drainage, gut rebuild, liver, then advanced protocols like parasite and heavy metal detox Why skipping ahead before your drainage pathways are open makes you feel worse, not better Forty plus liver and gallbladder flushes, and what actually comes out of the body The one question she asks clients to spot their own misalignment: does this create expansion, or contraction Losing her dog Tommy, a breakup, and a move to LA, and why she now sees it as the universe clearing space for her EMFs as the next invisible toxin nobody's talking about What makes her walk away as an angel investor in health tech, including Function Health and BeSound Health This is for the high achiever who did everything right on paper and still feels off. For anyone who's tried every protocol and still isn't better. For the guy who thinks detox is a woman's thing even though his sleep, drive, and energy tell him otherwise. Meghan is the author of From Within and From Deep Within, both on Amazon, and creator of The Cleanses, her guided digital detox program. Connect with Meghan Swidler Linktree: https://linktr.ee/meghanswidler Website: https://meghanswidler.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meghanswidler LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meghanswidler Substack: https://meghanswidler.substack.com Free Detox Quiz: https://meghanswidler.typeform.com/detoxphasequiz Books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Meghan-Swidler/author/B0D66SYTWX