Date: 10 September 2013
Transcribed by Aajonus.net & Rawmeatgang
C = Carl Lanore, R = Randy Roach, J = Jim Ellingson
C: Welcome back. As the show takes a little bit more of a somber tone, as we pay homage to the passing of really a nutritional pioneer, before Paleo, before all of this popular foodism hit the markets and became a marketing opportunity, Aajonus Vonderplanitz was traveling around the globe to teach people what he had discovered firsthand about the power of eating raw foods. And many people were repulsed, many people thought it was absurd, but those who were at the precipice of disease, who had no other choices but to try something, that tried it, found out that they regained vitality, regained their lives, and reversed disease. And slowly, this wave of people started to grow, and they started to talk about this man, Aajonus Vonderplanitz, and that he had saved a life and saved this life, and slowly that grassroots momentum picked up until Aajonus Vonderplanitz was a visible activist in the agenda of nutritious food and disease. I'm joined now by a good friend of the show, a man who has mentored me in many ways, Randy Roach. How are you doing, Randy?
R: Very good today, Carl.
C: And then, of course, Jim Ellingson is joining us. How are you doing, Jim?
J: Just fine, Carl. Thanks.
C: Now, I want to let people know who you are first, Jim, because Randy has been on the show before, and we've even talked about Aajonus, and Aajonus has been on the show numerous times as well. How did you come to know Aajonus Vonderplanitz?
J: I first heard of the diet in about 2001 when two people actually called my home the same day raving about his book, and I thought, I'd better get the book. But long story short, after I read the book, I said to myself, man, this guy has got it right. And in 2004, I approached him, I went to him in person, saying, you know, you're fantastic, you've got it right, how can I support you, can I build a website for you, and he said yes. So ever since then, we've been kind of joined at the hip.
C: We have some background noise, it sounds like music or something. Is that coming from anybody's side, by any chance?
R: No, I have my phone.
C: Okay. All right, anyway. Okay, so you basically started to work with Aajonus, you developed his website, it sounds like?
J: Yeah, yeah, I put it together piece by piece, not knowing anything about websites or anything like that, but I just knew how great Agenis was, so I just kept working at it.
C: Okay, and so clearly, you became very close with him, because you worked with him on a day-to-day basis, I would imagine.
J: Well, it was more like I knew what he was doing, and he knew what I was doing. We didn't have to talk every day or anything like that, but on important matters, we certainly did. And over the years, I got to see him in a lot of different kinds of circumstances, including a whole lot of question-and-answer sessions, which are very enlightening, and gained a knowledge of his views and all that sort of thing, besides seeing him socially a little bit here and there. But it wasn't really every day.
C: Okay. Now, Randy, tell the audience how you became to know Aajonus Vonderplanitz. A lot of people may not have heard some of the earlier shows about the challenges with your site and all that sort of stuff.
R: I was actually introduced to Aajonus through Dr. Ron Schmidt. Dr. Ron has actually wrote Native Nutrition, and Aajonus actually has him in his reference or bibliography of his first book. It was Dr. Ron who introduced me to raw food eating. I think maybe 12 years ago. I was trying to think over the past little while when exactly he met up with Aajonus and met him, and then he introduced me to Aajonus. I'm thinking around 2002. That's when I first talked with Aajonus.
C: You actually started using Aajonus' nutritional approach to keep a lot of your faculties from getting worse. I mean, your vision had gotten really bad, but when you switched to raw food eating, you actually saw some mitigation of the progress of this disease, right?
R: I felt benefits in other places. I can't say for my eyesight because my eyesight is worse now than it was back then.
C: But it's a progressive disease. It's not like it's going to reverse.
R: Yeah.
C: But if you would have stayed on the atropine drops and stayed on a traditional diet, I have to believe it would have just progressed much faster.
R: Oh yeah. Well, I pulled myself from the medications back in the mid-90s just out of sheer fear because of what I saw it do to other people, but yeah, I started incorporating raw food eating. I started probably in 1999-2000 with raw milk, and taking the step to raw meat was a much bigger step. Like I said, Dr. Ron Schmidt gave me the nudge there, and then I got Aajonus' book, his book at that time, We Want to Live, and read that, and I was like, this guy's bizarre. His whole life is like, it's a movie, right? But it just resonated. I thought, you know, it makes sense, because I had to accept it, because I was already acknowledging my earlier mistakes with fat phobia, because I got suckered into that in the early 80s, that fat and cholesterol would kill you, and it led me into being a vegan, and I like the fact that Aajonus went through veganism as well, and by the early mid-90s, I was coming to realize through a fellow named Jay Robb and then Mario DePasquale that this is not true, fats are not going to kill you. So I'm thinking, that's when I started thinking, geez, what can you believe anymore, what that's written. And so when I was reading about eating raw chicken and raw beef, I'm thinking, you know what, why not?
C: Yeah, because you felt like everything else that you had been told was a lie, so why would you shun this new idea, it's just a new idea. And clearly, we have to realize that at some point in our evolution, we were eating raw because we didn't have the control of fire and we survived.
R: Exactly, the book made you think for once, right? I used to think, well, technology knows everything, we're really so advanced. And by this time, I'm starting to begin to think, no, we're not. And what he was writing made sense that, yeah, we were eating raw, and we're the only species on the planet that cooks their food anyway.
C: Now, Aajonus, I have to say, he was always so nice to do the show, and I always got the feeling that so many people pulled at him day in and day out, because whenever I spoke to Aajonus before a show or during the show, to me, he always sounded somehow emotionally drained and exhausted. Jim, do you think that Aajonus was, in fact, in that kind of state of mind most of the time? Because so many people needed him. So many people... Because don't forget, the people who needed him were at death's door quite often. It was always an emergency. Was he sometimes emotionally, spiritually, mentally exhausted?
J: Well, yes and no. During the earlier years when I knew him, he was definitely working very hard and on constant call for people. You know, people would have a crisis, just like you say, and they would call him. So that was a lot of work. But he somehow, and this gains my highest respect, he just needed, you know, four hours sleep or less a night and boom, he'd be right back at his computer or at his phone or with a consult. And he was quite strong, but something happened here, and we'll get into this later in the show, and during the last few years, he really has been wearing out.
C: And I have to believe that, and I have to believe that, and I have to tell you something. No one, no one, and I say this unabashedly, no one is designed to survive and thrive on four hours of sleep a night. You may drive yourself to do that because you are a driven person, but you will hit the wall eventually. With that being said, with that being said, Randy, do you think that Aajonus was ever, his life was ever in threat of harm because of his vocal opposition to what has happened to nutrition in the United States? He had a big audience. He had a grassroots audience, much bigger than most people realize. Do you think that he was ever, did he ever feel threatened about that?
R: Well, Jim can maybe better answer that question. I like to comment with one thing about Aajonus. Anytime he did a show or he was interviewed on TV or anything, he was always being attacked. So every time, very seldom did Aajonus get to get in a public forum where he could be comfortable and know that he is with allies and stuff. He's always being, why this? Why that? How come this? Why that? It's constant. So after 20, 30 years, it would also begin to start to wear on you. It's like, okay people, how many times, just open your minds, open your minds.
C: Yeah, because he challenged people's ideas.
R: And it threatened them. People were threatened by it, in a sense. Why do we have to eat like that, Aajonus? Because I want to cook my food. I want my elegant way of cooking things and eating things. And he was saying, he was much, as he said, primal. And people were always, had their ire up and their backs up. And I think after a long, long time, that will start to worry you, too. Now, regarding your question, Aajonus obviously was peeing in the soup of a lot of people that did not like what he was having to say. As I've always said, Aajonus promotes a diet that is contingent or, say, sans, with a regional or local fresh food supply. And that flies right in the face of the globalization process, because everybody knows now, it's no secret, that the food supply has, over the past 30, 40 years, moved more and more into the hands of less and less people. And Aajonus' diet did not fit into this. And then he's fighting and winning the right to drink raw milk for Los Angeles back in 2001. Jim knows much more about what his political battles were in the more recent years. But yeah, he was a thorn in a lot of people's side as to whether they would take, what steps they would take. Aajonus, I do believe, has stated that he had been attacked in many ways, and I don't know what happened in Thailand.
C: Yeah, we're going to get into that when we come back, but here's what I want to do. I want to take a break, and then I want to give Jim Ellingson a chance to answer this, because it could have been that maybe during a phone call, Jim, Aajonus may have intimated to you that he thinks that some organization is out to get him or something. I want to talk about that, and when we come back, we'll let you guys plug websites and stuff like that. You're listening to Superhuman Radio. We're talking about the passing of Aajonus Vonderplanitz, truly an activist, a pioneer in nutrition and savior for a lot of people, I know a lot, a lot of people who were at death's door until they started to follow Aajonus' approach to primal nutrition. That means something, folks. It means something. Stay tuned. We'll be right back.
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C: Welcome back. You know Randy Roach. He's been on the show numerous times. He is the author of Muscle, Smoke, and Mirrors, both Volume 1 and Volume 2. You can get these two amazing books, and soon to be a third, at randyroach.ca. I have to tell you, if you've never read Muscle, Smoke, and Mirrors, you're really missing out on an opportunity to truly understand the nutritional origins that were created through the physical culture movement. Also, Jim Ellingson, you want people to know that they can still get the book, right, that Aajonus was famous for writing?
J: Yes, indeed. Well, he wrote two books, one, The We Want to Live Book, which really started it all in 1997, and then in 2002, The Recipe for Living Without Disease, which is a companion work and really important.
C: You know what's really funny about this? So when my mother passed away, I had to go and liquidate her assets and empty her town home out. I found a copy of Aajonus' book there. My mother had it, the recipe book, and it was amazing. I have it. I took it home with me, because apparently she must have gone to a lecture because Aajonus signed the inside of it for her. So she must have... She lived in Phoenix, Arizona, and he must have come there to speak at one time.
R: You could probably put together another book just with his unique newsletters from the past three years.
J: Well, yeah, that's for sure. He started the newsletters in 2006, and they are password protected on the site, because as Randy was pointing out, Aajonus had a way of making good friends and making really powerful enemies.
C: Well, let's talk about that. So I posed that question to Randy. Did Aajonus ever intimate to you that he had feelings that this organization, that organization may have had it in for him?
J: Well, he asked for it, man. He came out so outspoken in a few different things. First of all, not only did he kind of cut across the mass food production concept, but in his recipe book, he explains why most supplements are really not beneficial or what is harmful about them. He opposes, you know, doctors, procedures, you know, to him going to a hospital is kind of a, you know, an end of life activity. And he just opposed so many people that he really got them aggravated. And then he came out really outspoken against vaccines as being, you know, a conspiracy practically.
C: Well, one of the most popular shows that I have ever done was done with Aajonus Vonderplanitz. To this day, this individual show continues to get downloads. This individual show is well over 600,000 downloads now. I think we did the show in 2009. It was on the heels of the swine flu epidemic.
J: Yeah. Yeah.
C: And the show was so popular that it made it onto this guy, David Icke, David Icke, do you know who I'm talking about?
J: Oh, yeah.
R: Yeah, David Icke.
C: Yeah, he published the show on his website. That's one of the reasons why it got so many downloads. The show even, some people even took the content of the show, excerpted my question and Aajonus' answer and put it to music and it's on YouTube. I mean, that's how crazy it was.
J: Yeah.
C: And I have to say, there are a lot of things that I agreed with Aajonus about, but I had a handful of things that I disagreed with them. And so, you know, and in a scientific environment, you have to respect decorum, you have to respect opinions. People can have opinions, you just disagree. You don't have to have it in for them or, you know, somehow it threatens your position because they don't agree with you. Which I think was really the problem, there were some people out there who felt that because Agnes didn't agree with them, didn't side with them, they were somehow threatened. They were threatened.
J: Yeah, I hear you. He had a way, you know, he had a kind of a rough upbringing and he had some mannerisms where he would just, if he saw something wrong, he would say, that's wrong. You know, just out, bam, and not cushion it or anything like that, but he wouldn't also carry a grudge. He would move right on. You know, I worked with him, we shot some videos and stuff like that and at one point I think I had the camera too far away or aimed wrong or something like that and he just said, you aimed the camera wrong, you know, and then, you know, that could lead to like a lot of, you know, bristly response and all that kind of thing, but when you understand him, you just say, this guy has to tell the truth and he'll tell it and there's no emotion behind it. He just tells it like he sees it.
C: Yeah, there was no buffer. He had no buffer between what he thought and what he said.
R: Not a great diplomat.
C: Yeah, and in fact, wasn't that really what happened between him and the folks from Rawesome? I mean, wasn't it just because he felt like he had been lied to that he, you know...
J: I'll tell you about that one.
C: Okay. Good.
J: See, Aajonus' first Primal Daya newsletter. He lays out all the different vendors of chicken and he, by brand name, tells to what degree a chicken is poisoned with arsenic and with, I don't even remember, another metal kind of poisoning. And he lists out the particles per billion or something like that, you know, way beyond my technical perspective. And that's the kind of integrity he had and maintained. People would call something Aajonus grade. You could go to the farmer's market and ask for raw honey, but then when you ask for Aajonus grade, they know exactly what you're talking about. And so to him, it is a big deal that you deliver exactly what you promised, particularly regarding chickens and eggs. That's where Rawesome fell short because the person running it, and I don't want to get into, you know, names and whatever, but the commercial eggs were being sold as Aajonus grade, and Aajonus went in politely a couple times to say, you know, you can't do this, and he didn't get anywhere with it. So then he went to government aid to stop this, because he couldn't seem to do it on his own. And that was a gigantic mistake from my point of view, because there's so much animosity to the whole operation of raw food and raw milk and all that stuff.
C: Yeah, you don't give the government any ammunition. That's what you don't do.
J: Yeah, well, it was a mistake, I would say. And I tried to remain neutral, out of this thing. I never bought chickens or eggs at that time from Rawesome. I would get them elsewhere, you know, just, I mean, without anybody telling me. I could just tell these are not what they're claimed to be, and they charged quite a bit for them.
C: Right, right. Yeah, so, and that obviously was the beef there. What was Aajonus' interest in Thailand? Why did he go there in the first place? I know that he's had a residence there for quite some time, right?
J: Yes. He went there in the first place, to my understanding, because he had a vision, and he sat down on my couch one day, unfolded his blueprint of what this clinic or spa or health center or whatever you want to call it, would look like. You know, they're basically the plans for the building. And it was a very strong vision at the beginning. And he went there, and then he had trouble, you know, buying enough land because he wanted to grow all his own food, have people able to do mud baths in the river, you know, real natural vision. And somehow, that just was slow and a battle and didn't happen. And then I started getting feedback from... See, people call me. My name is on the website. My phone number is on the website. My email is on the website. People call me and ask or say or whatever, and I started getting the picture from somebody just recently, actually from Omaha, that he told them he was going to Thailand as a retreat to get away from it all, get somewhere where it's quiet, you know, can be away and live his own life for a while. So I think he changed a little bit over the years on that. His vision got kind of failed. It didn't happen.
R: It was kind of like a plan B, because I think I also got the feeling that it was kind of a plan B in case everything got shut down in California, because we both know that the government is doing everything it can to take away the right to get raw milk and to farm the way we want to. It's very difficult. So I always got the feeling, because I know other people who want to do the same thing, even though they live in the states, that they want a second place to go.
C: Yeah, just in case. Listen, I've never in my life thought seriously about leaving the United States. It wasn't even in a thought, and now all of a sudden it's something I contemplate from time to time. I think, you know, maybe I should see where there's someplace better, where my health freedoms are not a part of the financial agenda of the government, you know?
R: A lot of people are thinking that now, Canada and the United States.
C: So we have to take a break and get back on clock here. I've got lots of questions. Randy, and I also want to give you a chance...
J: Let me say one thing real quick.
C: Please, please.
J: It's come up twice. Aajonus' milk report that he wrote, to start with, to stand up to the L.A. County Board of Supervisors and get raw milk accepted here in the county of Los Angeles, but then in 2006, and he and some friends went to Washington, D.C. for six weeks and they handed it to each congressperson individually and personally. And I put that report on my website. It's basically free for the rest of the month for anybody that's listening to the show or gets clued in or whatever. You know, it's a $15 report, and this has been updated. It's not the original 2001. He's updated it a couple of times, so it's pretty downright and dirty information.
C: What's the website, Jim?
J: Wewant2live.com.
C: Okay, wewant2live.com. Let's do this. Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll be right back with more Randy Roach and Jim Ellingson. We're talking about Aajonus Vonderplanitz.
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C: Welcome back to Superhuman Radio. Aajonus Vonderplanitz passed away on the 28th of August, and quite frankly, with his passing, I was a little worried. I was worried because I thought that this would be an indictment of his way of life, but then I came to find out how he passed away, which in and of itself seems to beg some suspicion. First of all, Jim, is there any truth that Aajonus, over the past few years, I think you mentioned a moment ago about his distrust of hospitals, and quite frankly, I wouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. I understand the importance of ancestral diets, primal nutrition, all that sort of stuff, but I wouldn't not go to the hospital if my appendix burst. But Aajonus was very headstrong that way. Had he suffered any injuries in the past few years that he did not get attention for, but they lingered for a long time, that caused him a lot of pain?
J: I wouldn't say injuries. Randy is going to have to help me out on this one a little bit. I have a hard time with it, but in 2009, he put in one of his primal diet newsletters, and you have to understand, just like Randy was saying, you know, Arjunas never really felt safe in a foreign because no matter where he went, whatever, he'd get attacked. Well, in the primal diet newsletters, he was really writing to his friends and to the people that were on the diet and knew the value of it and all that. So he did feel safe. He let his hair down, and he would tell things in there that are nowhere else stated. And one of those has to do with the vaccine thing that you're talking about. There was kind of a peak, I think, with your radio show, and at that particular time in Aajonus' life, he was standing bold, standing forward, being bigger than life and in a very dangerous position, and that's what he relates in this newsletter, basically abduction and injection. He was attacked when he was sleeping in a hotel room, and you can take it or leave it. Some people believe it. Some people don't or whatever. But in some following newsletters, he took pictures of his leg and his foot on that side of his body as the poisons were coming out through his skin, and believe me, it was a heavy dose. It wasn't just like a little knockout drop, and his life hasn't been the same since, to tell you the honest truth, and that is my observation. That's my personal observation. Someone I know saw him when he came back to the States that year, and he was doing his round of primal diet workshops like he normally does, but they knew this guy already. They knew Aajonus, and they looked at him and said, my God, what happened? You know what I mean? They could tell something big had happened, and Aajonus does not want to go bringing his personal pains into other people's worlds. You know what I mean? He's used to putting all of that aside. When he takes care of somebody, that person is in front of him. There's nothing else that matters except their health. You know what I mean?
C: What do you think, Randy? It sounds like that maybe Aajonus was at a point in his life where he was emotionally beat down. His body maybe was suffering from some issues here.
R: Aajonus kind of reminds me of Robert Atkins. The whole nutritional community, orthodox community, really wanted Atkins to die of a heart attack.
C: Yeah, right.
R: They were just praying for him to die of a heart attack, but he fell and hit his head at 72 and he died.
C: The SOBs had to come back and say that he had some problems that didn't kill him, but they were lurking.
R: Yeah, it was ridiculous what they did. With Aajonus, they really would have loved for Aajonus to die of cancer or heart disease, something of that nature. Well, they would have loved food poisoning. That would have been the best.
C: Yeah, right, right.
R: But it wasn't happening. Aajonus did suffer a really bad motorcycle injury. This one would defy a lot of people. You know Richard Tucker. He's over in New Zealand.
C: Sure.
R: He even thought this was fascinating. Agonists tore his ligaments clean off in his leg. I don't know whether it was collateral or medial collateral ligaments. But he was in agony and he's a tough guy. He would not take anything. I think, was this in Thailand as well, Jim, that that motorcycle accident happened?
J: Yes. Yeah.
R: And they were concerned for him, the doctors, but he would not take anything. And Aajonus even wrote that he was in tears several times with the pain. But he wanted to do it his way. He said the ligaments reattached and healed themselves. I think it took about a year. But he was walking. He was running on the beach again.
C: Really?
R: But he did it his way. Yeah. It's in one of the newsletters. And I shook my head. I thought, you know what? I never took Aajonus as a liar. You know what? Even when I was reading We Want to Live and some of the stories, it is a fascinating read, I thought...
C: Well, the very first story of his life where he's dying in the desert and a coyote comes and drops a rabbit next to him and he eats it. That's like something out of an LSD trip for me. You know what I mean?
R: That's what I mean. I always, you know what? When I heard of his death, I wasn't surprised because I wrote to Richard Tucker and I said, for some reason, I just didn't feel Aajonus was long for this world. Not that he was going to die of disease or anything, but just the way he had seemed to have one battle after another, one battle after another, whether it was political or the serious injuries or this attack that probably happened in Thailand, and he had his vehicle overturned last year, I believe, as well.
C: And he claimed that the car was sabotaged, that there was evidence of sabotage, that somebody was trying to kill him.
R: Now for him to have broken his back, to be in agony in a hospital, for him, if Jim can verify if this is true or not, if he had to concede to take morphine for Aajonus, that would be a psychological or emotional blow for him to have to take that. And nobody begrudges him to take that, nobody wants to be in agony.
C: But if you know the kind of guy, this is a guy who waited for his leg to heal on its own and he didn't turn to any painkillers, so you're thinking to yourself, gee, this doesn't sound like him. So Jim, what do you think? I mean, it sounds very suspicious.
J: I'll tell you what I think. I've had nearly two weeks to come to grips with this thing here, and I get phone calls, I get e-mails, two questions, one, was there foul play, two, what do we do now? And regarding the foul play, I say yes, but not in the present. In other words, when he went out on that balcony, whether there were nails pulled loose or there was a setup for him to fall or whatever, that's way late in the picture, the way it now looks to me, having had a little chance to view this thing. The real crux of the time was in 2009, and he never recovered fully from that. I got to tell you, a real personal thing, I don't know how you managed to draw this out of me. I would have probably only told maybe five close friends. But in July, late July or early August, he actually came to me to say goodbye.
C: Really?
J: And I couldn't handle it at the time. I immediately said, okay, look, the next time you are back here, we are going to do something about this and just hang in there. I had an idea of what we could do about it and I kind of ignored it. He didn't get my feedback. He didn't say, okay, I will see you next summer or something like that. It was like he had made a statement and he was gone.
C: He said to you, I am not coming back to the United States, or did he say, I am saying good-bye?
J: This was like a vision or whatever you want to call it, a premonition. I have had a lot of stuff in my life like that. I am a little bit aware when people have intentions towards me, it just comes through like a radio or something. It is just clear to me what it is. This was one of those, and so as things progressed, see, boy, I got to tell you, he was affected not only physically but actually mentally by this thing, because his part of the deal on the newsletters is that he writes newsletters, because nobody is going to write them for him. He is the only guy who does his research to the depth and the originality that he is capable of, and he had been very nonproductive. He just had a very hard time writing. He told me he couldn't concentrate anymore for more than at least a couple of hours at the most, and he told me once and another friend of his that his right arm on the side where he got the inoculations, he couldn't even type sometimes. He couldn't even move his hand to type on his computer. So I agree with Randy one hundred percent, it's going to come from somewhere somehow. Something is going to end off his life, and I'm not sure where or how. The guys from L.A. that went over to Thailand to see what's going on haven't come back yet. They'll be back in another day or two. So they may have some more to say about how the poor construction of the balcony or whatever, but that to me, by that time it was nails in the coffin.
C: So let me ask you a question, do you think that Aajonus would have been capable, that he was so depressed, so sad, that he was capable of taking his own life? Do you think that what we really are looking at here is an attempt to throw himself from the balcony that went bad, it didn't kill him, it just crippled him. And then he finished himself off with the morphine?
J: No, first of all morphine is not fatal, morphine is a way to end life without agony. So that killing him, I do not go for that, he's not around to ask this question to, so nobody's really going to know. My view is that he did not, he did not throw himself over the balcony purposely, and I'll tell you the vision that I had late July or early August or whenever it was that I kind of didn't take as a serious goodbye at the time, he had come to a point of peace in his life already. He had done that before, he had had a rough early childhood, a lot of things to complain about, and he made peace with it, he made friends with everybody involved, and he went to see his relatives every year, spent a week with them, in other words, he really was over it.
C: It's almost like he wrapped up all the loose ends.
J: Close, not all, he has a couple of trusts that are still functioning, my website is still functioning and I am very much revitalized to carry forward his trust by just grabbing everything I can, you know, audio transcripts of Primal Diet workshops four or five hours long, question and answer sessions that my friend Fred has recorded dutifully for the last 10 or 12 years, and they're two hours a shot, a couple of years, so there is a ton of information there, people asking questions and he answers them, bang, bang, bang, bang, and I am just going to pack the site, the way we go from here part is basically...
C: Wait, wait, wait, I don't want to talk about that yet, I want to take a commercial break because this is a traditional radio show, so you can't give that away yet, but I do want to talk about, is there someone out there that is ready to pick up the baton? I have to believe that there is, and we want to talk about that when we come back. Stay tuned, you're listening to Superhuman Radio.
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C: Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back. Okay, so here's really the important question, because did Aajonus make any plans, did he have anyone that he was mentoring that potentially could now step in and carry on? Jim, do you know of anybody?
J: There's no Aajonus B team. There are trusts that he carefully established. You see, he plays a lot of roles. Part of his trust is under the Right To Choose Healthy Food trust. And that is all the legal work involved in protecting Amish farmers, protecting co-ops, keeping it all running by the cow share kind of agreement. And that's all laid out so somebody can carry that forward. That's one of his hats. But in terms of the way he could sit down with the person, take a picture of their eyes, and just casually astound them just as he did me the first time I went there with someone. They were being examined and he took a picture of the eyes and then he said this, that, that, that, that. Nobody told him. And he was exactly right. And he just did that time after time. There's nobody in the wings that can do that. I'm sorry to say people are calling me, crying, jumping up and down, saying, you know, what do I do now? And I have my answer to it, but it isn't another Aajonus. We don't have another Aajonus right now.
C: Rand, do you think there's anybody out there that's in the wings that maybe they are not in the forefront yet, but they've heard that agonist has passed and they could step up and fill this void?
R: It's a big world. Anything can happen. From a nutritional perspective, the information, Aajonus has made his mark. The information's here. We have all the information in terms of raw food eating, but where agonists will be missed is where I thought the package, like everything wrapped up in this one guy with his knowledge of nutrition and his iridology, but the more so how he is such a crusader and what he's been doing to try to secure, and not just procure, but secure the proper foods is this one guy doing everything, right? There are other organizations out there, the Western Price Foundation, they've been working for a long time to secure the rights for raw milk and things like that, so there'll always be somebody that maybe isn't in the limelight now will come around, but there's a lot of people out there with a lot of amazing abilities, it's just a matter of time before that person surfaces again.
J: I'll tell you what Aajonus himself said. At one point, I think it was early 2007, I arranged a room at the UCLA campus where Aajonus came in and he gave a one-day, full-day, Primal Diet workshop. Seven hours he was standing up there talking perfectly organized, good information, but one thing he said right at the beginning, and I was pretty scattered at that time. I was kind of watching the door and this and that, but I heard him say that his purpose is to give us information so we can understand our bodies and how they work and not be afraid and we could make the right choices, and his whole presentation of information has been along that line. So my feeling is that the torch I personally have to carry is to make the information available and to put it all in one place, which was another one of the plans that he and I were working on together, and make it available to people who want it, have it passed or protected so it's not going to be scattered all over everywhere, but people who really want it and sincerely are looking to increase their own ability to take care of themselves, that they'll find it in that site, and in the books. And also, he said a couple times in the most recent potluck in Los Angeles in the question and answer, he said you already got all the data in the books, and it's true. People look at the books and they find things they never saw before, so there's a lot to what he's saying.
C: You know, and he gave rise to a whole separate industry, I say industry, he gave rise to a whole separate segment of people who were using raw food than he ever anticipated, because even through a lot of the interviews that I did with him, whenever we talked about raw foods, muscle building, performance benefit effects, you know, I always got the feeling that he looked at that as some novelty, like, you know, I'm working on diseases here. This is not about, you know, bigger biceps and shoulders, but Randy, I have to say that I kind of feel like you and Josh Trentine have taken that segment and really explored it to a greater degree. Would you agree with that?
R: Yes, of course, to some degree. We've done three shows with you on it, and just ironically, the past several months I've taken a break from Muscle Smoke and Mirrors and been writing the Romnivore Guide for bodybuilding. And like I said, as Jim has said, the information is there in terms of how to eat properly and get a better rapport with our food and in a natural state. But yeah, like Aajonus wasn't really interested in bodybuilding.
C: I know.
R: I talked to him a couple of times, you know, and he was telling me some of the stuff that he had done in the previous years, but he had no interest in that. It was actually Ron Schmidt told me, Randy, you got to meet this guy. He's got the clearest blue eyes I've ever seen. Remember, this was 10, 12 years ago, 11 years ago. And he said he looks like a bodybuilder and he doesn't work out. And that's why I liked Aajonus and what he had to say and compared him to Urban Johnson, aka Real Blair, back in the 50s, because they both were doing the same thing. They would have people come off, Urban would take people off the waist, feed them whole natural foods, raw milk if he could get it, and watch them fill out. Aajonus told me that, number one, there was public knowledge that he had gained like 30 pounds of muscle just by going to raw meat. But he said his clavicles, his shoulder width grew like 2 or 3 inches at the age of 28, and when he finally got the right food in a raw state that his body was looking for. That fascinated me because I was correlating it to what Urban Johnson was saying back at that time, about 50 years before him even. It's the same information about the power of food, right? That's what fascinates me.
C: Tell me about what's Romnivore. What's that?
R: Well, like I said, it's kind of a mangling of the taxonomical classifications of, you know, it's so lightly associated with, you know, herbivore, omnivore.
C: No, but I mean, so you're working on, are you working on, is this because...
R: Oh, I thought you made a twist on the Romnivore.
C: No, no, no. No, no, no.
R: It's a book on bodybuilding.
C: Eating raw for bodybuilding. Excellent.
R: Yeah, well, I got templates in terms of how we would structure raw food eating with some other things involved in, and just some basic nutrition and how to get in if you want to be serious in the raw foods and bodybuilding.
C: I'm looking at the top 10 shows of all time on Superhuman Radio, and one of them is Raw Food as Anabolic as Steroids, and that's a show that we did with Josh Trentine and you, and a lot of people changed the way they ate within the bodybuilding community after they heard that show, and bodybuilders are a great group of people because if you tell a bodybuilder you can add 10 pounds of muscle more than you would normally if you just started eating your meat raw. They'll eat it raw. They don't think about it. They're not gonna go like, well, I don't know if I, it's like, because their mission is to add more muscle.
R: Yeah. This is a powerful statement. I've got to say this. Sorry. Sorry to cut you off, Carl.
C: No, no. No, go ahead.
R: You can, I have seen this firsthand. I have seen people go to their deaths with cancer and even tell me they would sooner die before they eat raw meat, but they tell a bodybuilder you can, if you want to build muscle, eat raw meat, okay. I'll do it.
C: You talk about a group of people who only operate on mission-critical steps, you know what I mean? It's like, it doesn't matter to a bodybuilder that he's got to eat raw meat if it's going to add more muscle to him. He's not going to be squeamish about it. He's just going to say, how frequently do I have to do it and let me get busy with it. So I think, yeah, so it's really interesting. Anyway, let's do this. We're coming to the end of the interview. It's very, very sad, but luckily people like Jim Ellingson are out there who will keep Aajonus' work alive so that people out there can still benefit from his message, and we have to hope. I guess we have to hope. I know that there will never be another Aajonus on the planet because the guy was probably one of the most unique human beings on so many different levels that I've ever had the pleasure of knowing from the radio show, but we have to hope that there's somebody who can take from what he has done and springboard even further. But whether or not that's going to happen anytime soon remains to be seen. I don't even know that somebody wants that because the poor guy was besieged constantly because of his opinions about food, and a lot of people don't have the heart and the soul to put up with that kind of stuff.
J: Let me say that his trust still exists, and the people named and signed in them do exist, and they are carrying forward the torch in their own ways. It's the Right To Choose Healthy Food and the Optimal Ways Of Living, two trusts that he established and are still carrying the torch as well. Okay, so the website for Aajonus Vonderplanitz is WeWant2Live.com, so people can go there, and if this is the first time you're ever hearing about Aajonus Vonderplanitz, you have to get there. Great information there. And then, of course, Randy Roach is working, well, you're not working on Volume 3 right this second, but Volume 1 and Volume 2 are up there. Two fantastic books. Whether you're interested in physical culture or not, Volume 1 is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how we got where we are today with nutrition. Amazing book. Go to randyroach.ca to get copies of that. Guys, thanks so much for coming on the show and doing this today.
R: All right.
J: Thanks for having us, Carl. It's great.
C: Take care, guys.
J: All right.
C: All right. And also, thanks to Rob Regish for the first hour performing the Blueprint Power Hour. Don't forget, Steve from AgeForce said you can get the weight loss fat burner patch at 50% off by using the coupon code WL50. Make sure that's right. Hold on a second. Because he just sent it to me in the email, and I didn't have a chance to really read it over. Come on. Anyway, yes. WL50. You can use that to save 50% off the weight loss fat burner patch that Rob Regish said made him lose five pounds without trying. So you can check that out. Go to superhumanradio.com. Click one of the H-Force banner ads to get there. And also, if you're in the newsletter, if you have signed up for the Superhuman Radio newsletter, we're going to send out this information for the fat burner patch later on today or first thing tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening to Superhuman Radio. We'll see you tomorrow.