In this episode of the Evolution of Medicine podcast, James Maskell welcomes James Chinchiolo, a fourth-generation cherry farmer and walnut farmer.
Their conversation delves into the transformative journey from chemical to biological farming, describing the role of soil health and its direct impact on the taste of food. This relationship is described by the guest as both mystical and critical to optimal health.
James shares his personal experiences and challenges in the farming industry, emphasizing the long-term negative effects of chemical farming on productivity. The discussion also explores the profound connection between gut health and soil health, underscoring the importance of listening to one’s body for overall wellbeing.
Tune in to this compelling conversation about:
- Food flavor’s direct link to soil health.
- How regenerative farming practices can enhance both profitability and sustainability.
- The complex and gradual journey from chemical to biological farming.
- Community support has a vital role in personal growth.
- Innovative farming techniques can revolutionize the industry.
- Ethics in farming as paramount for future generations.
- And much more!
Tune in to learn more about the innovations in agriculture that can lead to a more sustainable future and the ethical considerations of organic versus regenerative farming practices.
Episode resources:
Chinchiolo Farming Co, Inc
James Chinchiolo:
So, there’s something that it almost sends like shiver, shivers up my spine, and it’s relative to the taste of food. Now, when I think about the gut biome to brain interaction, well, if we think about the soil biome and the nutrient load and capacity for plants to absorb and leverage nutrients in the ground, that there’s a direct correlation into the seed or the nut or the fruit that particular plant is producing and the taste. So humans, as I understand it, and as I’ve been educated, humans interpret a nutrient-dense piece of food, natural food, we interpret it better, we like it better. So if we’re able to transfer more nutrients into the ground by way of regenerative oriented farming, biological farming that gets transferred through to the plant, humans consume it. We like it better, and it’s also better for us. And that connection to me is just super cool.
James Maskell:
Hello and welcome to the podcast. This week we have something really special for you. You’ve probably heard me talk about my men’s group, and I have someone from my men’s group here this week who is a farmer. And what you’ll hear today is interplay of our men’s group, how it’s affected James Chin Cholo, my friend, and what some of our interactions in the men’s group have meant for his life and for his farm and for the future of agriculture in America. This is a really special podcast for me, for myself as a person, as a human. James is going to be speaking in my upcoming event on April 5th called Healthy El Dorado, which is a vision for a county-by-county transformation. I wrote about it earlier in the year in the blog about the evolution of the functional forum meetup groups. So I hope that you can join us, and I hope you enjoy this conversation.
Welcome to the show for the first time. James Chinchiolo. Welcome.
James Chinchiolo:
Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it, James.
James Maskell:
Alright, so I’m super excited for today’s podcast because if you’ve been listening to the podcast for the last five years, the degree to which my men’s group has played a role in me, one, living a better, healthier life all round. But second, it’s an extension of The Community Cure, the book that I wrote, and really seeing the power of a men’s work in action. And one of the things that you have never experienced, what you’ve probably experienced is like James, stop talking about your man’s group, but you’re going to get in a moment today where we’re going to actually speak to another man who’s in my group, which hopefully should give you a little round out to what’s happening and some of the possibilities that exist within this framework. So it’s my real pleasure to welcome James. You might think it’s weird that there are two Jameses, but at one point we actually had four Jameses. I guess Jameses are just in a time of their life where they want to do men’s work, but now we’re down to three. But James Chinchiolo is an incredible farmer and has been a friend for the last five years. So James, why don’t you just give a little bit of background on yourself and your farm and your family and your participation in men’s work.
James Chinchiolo:
Yeah, no, thank you very much. I appreciate it and I appreciate any sort of time to be able to talk about what we’re doing. So I’m a fourth-generation cherry and walnut farmer in San Joaquin Valley. My family immigrated from Sicily and through Ellis Island and originally started out as fruit dealers in Boston and were importing grapes from California to Boston for winemaking. And over time the family decided to become more vertically integrated and started farming in California, exporting and then importing it to the family members there in Boston. There’s this story that my grandfather tells me, and I always telling this story because there’s a little bit of mysticism to it, is that sometime in the forties, some very well dressed Italian man came in and talked to our family and basically told us that we were done in the cherry industry and excuse me, in the grape industry. And then at that point, I don’t think they used the term then, but we pivoted into cherries and became a pretty dominant player in the cherry industry. And at this point I’m growing in the direction of direct to consumer and also making sure to allow for people to come into our orchards and kind of developing an experiential type of subset into our farming operation as well.
James Maskell:
Beautiful. And I’ve experienced coming to the orchard, picking cherries being part of it. I’ve eaten a lot of the cherries too. Before we get into the sort of main topic of today, I wanted to also share that you’re also a keen have a lot of interest in health. And I remember one of the first things that we did, I think in December, 2019 as we went to, or we both went to an event that was held at CrossFit HQ, which is like three hours away. It’s where they were doing CrossFit health and it was the first sort of push by Greg Glassman into ideas of educating doctors and taking the fact that there were doctors that did CrossFit and starting to talk about metabolic health. And maybe this is something that I know that you share an interest in. Where did that interest come from and how’s that developed in you?
James Chinchiolo:
Yeah, no, I appreciate that question. So I started playing a water polo at the age of 14 and I observed my body transform into something that I really liked and I started to really pay attention to my energy levels. It was an incredible amount of training. Oftentimes it was five hours a day we’d get up, start training at 5:30 in the morning before school, jump in the pool afterwards and then train for couple more hours after school. And it really tuned me into listening to my body and understanding it. After high school, I then played division one water polo and took the level of fitness to a level that I didn’t know was even possible for myself and have just continued that on throughout my entire life. There’s some things now recently that I’ve noticed is just how connected my physical health really does seem to have a direct correlation to my mental health and mental capacity as well. And that transfers to farming and I’m sure we’re going to get into that. And so there’s just been this keen interest to really listen to my body, understand it, push it and train it and keep it in fighting shape is kind of like what I like to think about.
James Maskell:
Yeah. Alright. Well yeah, it’s good. And we share that and I think over the last few months I think we’ve had text message back and forth where you feel like our worlds are starting to collide and that is coming up in this podcast right now. Before we get to the event that I want to speak about, I remember in our early conversations, so let’s say October, November 2019 asking you about organic farming because ultimately I’m interested in that. And I also know I would talk to my friends who are in my weird functional medicine world and I say, Hey, this guy, I’m friends with this guy, he is a farmer, he has amazing cherries, let’s go down. They were like, is it organic? And I’m like, no. And I remember having early conversations with you and me being focused on that and you being focused really on the calories that you provide. And then the metric by which you live and die is the calories that you provide. And maybe just as a starting point where that came from in you and back in 2019 way ahead, was that with it?
James Chinchiolo:
Yeah, sure, sure. Well, there was a lot that I certainly didn’t understand, and I’m certain that I’m at a point now, if I look back 10 years and then look back to this point, I’m still very much in a learning phase. So where I was at that point was in this kind of input, in input out. And so I correlated it basically with energy. So there was a certain amount of energy, primarily petroleum based, whether it was diesel and or the chemical orientation that we would input into our farming operation. And then I’d look at that equation and say, okay, if I’m putting X amount of energy out, then I expect X amount of energy, excuse me, X amount of energy in, then I expect X amount of energy out. And it was just a clean cut way for me to think about the business. And I realized that there was just so much more of the dynamics of farming that I didn’t understand at that point.
James Maskell:
Yeah. Well cool. Well, look, I want to tell a story now and I want to share with the audience, and I’ve been sort of hoping for the last few years that I would get to tell this story that it would be meaningful enough to tell in a podcast. But as part of our men’s group, so I joined in 2019 and obviously in March, 2020 the world shut down, so we weren’t able to sit in our room in the church. And for a while we did Zoom, and then I would say in the fall of 2020, we decided that we were going to go and do these events, but we were going to sit outside. And so in our men’s group, one of the traditions is that there’s no leader. Each week one of the men in turn becomes the leader and decide what the group is going to be.
And normally that revolves around what’s going to happen in the room at the church where we do it, but at this point it was decided that we were going to sort of move it all around. And so James invited us all down to his farm to do a session in the orchard or down there. So we all drove down. James drives the furthest of all of us, so we go down and we’re in London and we’re all sort of getting ready for the event. And I can’t remember exactly the series of questions, but you made an offhand comment that nothing really lives here, that nothing lives. I think someone had asked, “Hey, are there going to be animals out in the field, anything we need to watch out for?” And you said, “Nothing really lives here.” And I heard it and I listened to it. And then a bit later in the group, there’s different rounds that we go through.
So we have a check-in where we check in about what’s happened in the last week that we need to get off of our chest in order to be really present. We do a process of arriving at the event and connecting to each other. There’s the first round, the round is sort of based around Jung and psychology. So the first round is called the lover round, where you’re just checking within with how you’re feeling now. And the next round is called the Warrior Round, and it’s about accountability with each other. And it took a lot of courage and it took a lot of, I didn’t really know you that well at that point, and I didn’t really know the group processes at that point, but when it came to the round of accountability, I decided that I was going to create a clearing with you. And that’s one of the processes that we do where you essentially acknowledge a trigger that has happened within you for something and share it out and communicate it.
And essentially the trigger that I shared was that you are the custodian of the land. You have been the custodian, your family have been the custodian of this for a few generations, four generations. At one point this would’ve been living land, and now this land is dead. And yes, it produces a lot of cherries or walnuts, but ultimately this has happened on your watch and try to frame it in a way that was as helpful as possible to really understand that that was a fact. And if you’ve never been in this sort of experience, you either can understand that there’s some tension, right? There’s people that are watching and you don’t really know how it’s going to go. I felt like at that point, I had earned enough of your friendship, trust, and respect to bring that up. And that’s really what the container is designed for, is to have conversations and hold men accountable to their higher self. And I had heard you on a camping trip, share your desire to really lead beyond just leading your family farm, but lead the industry. And I see you stepping into that in so many ways. And so we had that conversation, and I guess I just want to feed it back to you right now to share what happened and what happened from there and what happened that night, and then what happened in the time moving forward and hear it from your perspective.
James Chinchiolo:
Yeah, sure. No, where I’m speaking from right now is roughly about 15 feet from where that interaction happened. So it’s very real to me, and I can bring that back into my memory, very clear. And when I first heard it, there was a certain level of defensiveness. There was a certain level of me wanting to justify the farming practices and justify, and by a way of saying that, well, this is the only way that we can maintain being profitable. If we change, then the slim margins that we operate on are going to vanish and we’re not going to be able to continue farming and continue to be successful at what we’re doing. So that was the first thing. But then over time, I noticed myself replaying that event when a decision would come to play, like, huh, and you challenged me to really be, to take my capacity.
That in large part, I believe a I’ve learned in men’s group and apply that to stretching my thinking in terms of our farming practices. And oftentimes when I’m driving around thinking about like, oh, what’s my next step? That conversation comes into play like the clearing. And when you held me accountable, you questioned, I suppose my prior decision-making, and it certainly has expanded my thinking a lot. And I think that the men’s group provided the spark plug and that interaction specifically provided the spark plug into what I now consider a beautiful journey. Here we are 2025, so roughly six years if I’m thinking about it and if we’re putting the right date markers on. And yeah, there’s just been a beautiful, beautiful journey, and I wish we could right now just walk into the orchard and I could show you in just this abundance of life and also just this realization that what I’m doing is actually probably going to be more profitable and better for the ground, better for us as humans, and allow for me to potentially hand this off to the next generation, the fifth generation. That’s one of my biggest fears is to lose the operation. I remember starting, took over from my dad in 2017. I was like, just this huge, what if I mess it up? What if I’m the last generation? Yeah.
James Maskell:
Yeah. Well, why don’t you take us through some of the journey. One of the things that you said to me recently that really hit was you feel like you’ve been moving from the topic of chemistry to biology.
James Chinchiolo:
Yeah.
James Maskell:
The reason why I wanted, the reason why that signaled to me to want to have you on the podcast is on the Evolution of Medicine podcast. It’s the same journey. It’s chemistry to biology. Doctors are trained in chemistry, and they’re trained on using single use things to achieve something from a very complex system. And over time, they realize if they really honor the complexity of the system that they’re working on, that there are different types of interventions that have a different timeframe and take a different course, but ultimately end up with a healthy human. And when you said that, I was like, I want to hear it out of your mouth. I want to hear what you’re learning. Where have you gone to for this education? How long has it taken? And what steps have you taken to move from chemical-based farming to biological based farming?
James Chinchiolo:
Yeah, sure. And I think what I’ve also been exposed to is just kind of the history and how chemical farming has come to be. There’s this saying that the ancient stole our best ideas. And what I mean by that to kind of shortcut that, if you will, is I’m relearning how my great-grandfather farmed before he had the tools that ultimately came out of as a byproduct of World War I and World War II. A lot of the chemical farming is from the advances in chemical warfare, and it was applied into farming here in the United States. Farmers observed instant reward, and I believe the chemical farming became entrenched into what would in our family be the second and third generation. So my grandfather, that’s all he knew, my father, that’s all he knew.
And there’s also, there’s a huge incentive imbalance with respect to the way my great-grandfather farmed. In other words, there’s industry built up to supply us with every type of chemical solution possible. So if we have an issue with a particular type of weed, well, it’s this chemical, or if you have an issue with this type of insect, it’s this chemical. And they work. There’s no doubt about it. They work, they’re effective, they allow for a mass abundance of calories going back to calories of food. And it’s one of these things though, there’s this feedback loop that becomes created, and it’s almost like a drug dealer, if you will, where the man who’s selling us these chemicals becomes our friend, and then he’s always providing us a solution, and we’re growing all this volume and we’re making money. But then what I realized coming into fourth generation, and this is after replacing four of our orchards, is that I was finding that the productivity of our orchards that we’re replacing was going down.
We were losing ground, we weren’t advancing. And a large part of it is I was starting to observe the consequences of chemical farming and realizing that this bit of sustainability wasn’t there. And I’ll give a brief example. The home ranch of which I’m at right now, I took that, it was in walnuts, I took it out of walnuts, and I did everything that was prescribed to me in traditional commercial farming. I ripped the ground to six feet. I injected lon, which is a fumigant that basically eradicates all sort of microbial activity in the soil. And then we replanted, and we did that within a 12-month cycle. The trees that I replanted, they grew beautifully for three years. And then what happened was I noticed a steady decline in tree health and went to our chemical supplier, and there was all sorts of different solutions that we could apply to the ground.
But ultimately what had happened is that because we eradicated everything in the ground, the first thing that came back was what’s called a root legion nematode. And there was this huge imbalance where this root legion nematode took over the ground and it feasts on walnut roots. And so that was the reason, I mean, basically the capacity for the tree to absorb nutrients from the ground was eradicated by this imbalance of this root lesion. Nematode in an approach that’s a little bit slower, and which I’m incorporating now, is by no means am I going in with Telon to fumigate the ground or sterilize the ground, but trying to make sure that I develop a balance in the soil ahead of time, place the tree in it, and then the tree can survive and thrive in a well-balanced soil, very similar to what I think of as gut biome. Whereas maybe one could come in and completely clean the slate with respect to gut biome eradicate a particular problem. But then when the, I’m just guessing here, but I can imagine this could be the case where certain components of the biome within the gut come back and there’s this huge imbalance and all of a sudden it’s like, oh, man. As opposed to taking a little bit slower approach, a biological approach to solve the problem.
James Maskell:
Well, I know you’re not guessing. I know that you listened to the Huberman podcast and all, what’s up? Yeah, I do. Perfect analogy. It’s a perfect, perfect analogy. It’s like short-term win, long-term, not sure or medium-term win and medium term and long-term success. And ultimately, are you creating an environment that is in alignment with life or are you not? And that’s ultimately, I think, the balance or the understanding that needs to come next.
James Chinchiolo:
Well, here’s the other thing. The way that I look at this as well, I live here in the orchard, and this last summer I was out checking the irrigation, something that we do very regularly just to make sure that none of the sprinklers are leaking or broken, or sometimes they get plugged up. And I was out there and I had my flip flops on. It was a beautiful Saturday morning, and I thought, well, wait a minute. We just weed sprayed a couple days ago. This is really bad for me. The weed spray has the possibility absorbed through my skin. And I just kept thinking deeper about this and deeper about this and deeper about this. I’m like, wait a minute. I’m not even safe in my own orchard. Something’s just wrong with this, that whole picture. And I’m also kind of leading from that perspective as well. It’s like this is a place that I want to feel comfortable in that I can walk out and my own orchard barefoot, not have a concern of my own health. So that’s another big part of it as well.
James Maskell:
Well, I really appreciate that. Well, look, tell us a little bit about this educational journey you’ve gone on, because I know what that’s ended up with is you have chickens now and the chickens are running around on the orchard, but I know you’ve gone back to school in a certain way to try and understand what it takes to build healthy soil. So what education journey have you taken and who are some of the inspirations and where do you see going from here?
James Chinchiolo:
Yeah, yeah. There’s a farming family in Delano, California, and they’ve been in the world of regenerative farming for a few years now, and they host seminars. There’s a seminar put on by an Australian man by the name of Greame Sait. It’s two-day course. And what came out of that was a roadmap, a guide, and an ability to understand the steps that are necessary to wean myself off of chemical farming and move towards biological farming. So to have that framework for me is incredibly important. It also during that time, there were a lot of thoughts that were confirmed, and going back to the incentive structure, we talked about it or not, but Greame spoke about it time and time again that if a solution was presented to some of the problems that we have in agriculture at a really, really low cost, that one would think that those solutions would just permeate throughout the entire industry.
And one of the reasons why they’re not is because there often isn’t a financial benefit to the people that are outside serving the farming industry. And I know this to be true as well with healthcare and in the world in which you work as well. So I’m realizing that I need to be responsible and I need to understand at core level what I need to do for my operation and not be as dependent on the folks from the outside that support our industry. And by no means, I do not want to demonize the agriculture industry, the commercial or the industrial agriculture industry. It is paramount that we grow this food and grow these calories. And at the same time, I think that there’s a revolution at play right now, and it’s being fueled, I believe, in large part by consumers and also what’s going on politically. That’s beautiful. I think there’s a crescendo that’s taking place at this moment to kind of suss out some of these incentive structures that are running the agriculture industry, in my judgment, down a road that is a dead end.
James Maskell:
Yeah, I agree with that and I’m grateful that you see that and are fully participating it. When you went to those trainings, were there any moments where you heard something came out of this regenerative farmer’s mouth and you were like, could feel, I can imagine you feeling your great-granddad telling it to you.
James Chinchiolo:
Oh yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And if I could telecommunicate or however you say that backwards and understand, oh gosh. I mean, I think I would just be able to leapfrog forward into regenerative farming or biological farming so much quicker because the art has been in so many ways lost. When I asked my dad, he’s 74, I’m like, Hey, dad, what do you think about integrating sheep of which we’re going to do this year? Integrating sheep into the orchard shrugs, the solars has no idea, has no idea how to integrate livestock into our orchards. Our livestock is teaming with all kinds of beautiful vegetation for sheep, just teaming with it. And that by bringing ’em in, reduces our inputs significantly. And what I mean by that is we’re not mowing. We’re not weed spraying. We’re bringing in sheep, automated mowers. Everybody’s talking about automation. Well shoot, that was the original automated mower right there is sheep. But it makes me sad and also excited at the same time that I’m embarking on something, but it, it’s taking me away from what my dad taught me and how my dad taught me how to farm. And I know he’s excited for me, but it’s, there’s this sad little divergence that I’m feeling as well at the same time.
James Maskell:
Yeah. Well look, I’m really excited for that. Tell us a little bit about the chickens. Obviously we have an egg shortage right now, and now you’re in the egg business. Give us a rundown of all the different products and services that you guys have now and the roadmap that you see from here.
James Chinchiolo:
Yeah, sure. Sure. So first and foremost, cherries, I’m very proud to say that we are national with respect to our direct to consumer cherry shipping. And I’m moving that particular orchard into a regenerative format. I’m giving myself five years and every one of these orchards I’ve given myself five years. I always find that I can achieve my goal quicker if I make a very reasonable timeline and not put undue pressure on myself. So that’s happening there direct to consumer walnuts as well. And in terms of the egg production, another component that I see is layering the possibility of income on the same land. So in other words, in our walnut orchards, in our sherry orchards, why not integrate chickens into ’em? They’re fantastic for fertilizer. We call these orchard-laid eggs. They’re eating all the bugs that are in the ground, good and bad. They’re keeping this balance in place. And we’re going to be able to produce, and this will happen here in about a month, we have the chickens in what are called chicken tractors, and we pull these tractors through the orchard, and that’s where the chickens live. They’re safe. It’s like Fort Knox. We have electrical fencing around them and all kinds of predator protection, and we gently pull these tractors through the orchard at about a half mile an hour, and the quality of the eggs is going to be fantastic, far, far above regular commercial eggs.
James Maskell:
Beautiful. I just want to not over what you said, which is that what I’ve witnessed in the last five years is you actually really innovate in an industry, which is to have cherries that go from the orchard to people’s homes all over the country in 48 hours. No one ever did that before. That’s right. I’ve talked, I’ve seen you basically invent pieces of machinery that are needed to execute on that.
I’ve seen your cherries available in the local major supermarkets in the Sacramento area and new deals that you’ve been able to struck. So I’ve seen the innovation and I just want to acknowledge that and just acknowledge, I guess the full circle moment was a few months ago where we stood in circle again and I decided to do another clearing. And just to acknowledge that I see what you’ve done and what you’re doing, and I’m super proud to be your friend. I’m super proud that I played some sort of role in this and that ultimately you are delivering the medicine that this world needs right now. That’s all I can say is that yes, there are political efforts behind it and there’s consumer focus, but whether you look at industrial farming or holistic dentistry or holistic pediatrics, all three of those have in common that at certain point you have to kind of admit that you might have been poisoning people or poisoning yourself in your flip flops, right?
A little bit. And you have to take responsibility for seeing the big picture, and you have to take responsibility for your life and for your lineage and for being part of the more beautiful world your hearts know is possible. And I just see that you’ve done that and you are doing that. And it’s part of the reason why I wanted to do this podcast is because I really want to share this story far and wide because I know that I know people personally who have been in the business of funding the transformation to regenerative agriculture. And there’s a number of blockages in that flow, some of which you’ve talked about, some of which you haven’t. And ultimately, we need to unleash that because all of the intuition you have about profitability and sustainability, I believe is right on. But also there is, you’re dealing with decades of just doing things a certain way, and this is the revival that is needed. And I feel like you are the leader for those times, and I’m proud to support you and support your journey and for you to share on this podcast as a starting point at the Healthy El Dorado Expo on April 5th as the next starting point. And I hope that it can just go gangbusters from there.
James Chinchiolo:
Yeah, no, absolutely. And there’s a couple other points that I’d like to make, James. There’s the word and term and the efforts behind organic. There’s also this movement, regenerative, and many people within the industry, me included, notice that these organic and regenerative specifically take on a marketing persona, and they become a powerhouse with respect to consumer demand and capacity to provide agricultural products at a higher profit level and organic specifically, I think that there’s this thought or this thinking that organic isn’t, there aren’t pesticides being used, and that is this beautiful utopia of farming. And that’s not the case. That’s not the case at all. I mean, organics is, in my opinion, very, very much a marketing term. And it’s diverged in a lot of ways from I think where it was meant to sit within our society. And I see that regenerative agriculture can also do that and may also be on that road as well.
So what it really comes down to me is a very, very grassroots level decision-making at the farmer level. It really comes down to the ethics of the farmer. I can sign myself up as being an organic farmer. I can sign myself up as a regenerative farmer, but there are so many little things that I could still do within our operation that I know core to myself are not right. And I would still be fine. I would still be certified organic. I, matter of fact, I am certified organic for our packing operation, cherry packing that is. And as I move into regenerative and become certified there, I know that there are certain gray areas that I could ride and still choose to make decisions that aren’t best for the ground, best for our society, and best ultimately all around for the future. So I can say I think it really comes down to the ethics and the leadership of each individual farmer making the decisions.
And to your point also of having this gut level feel of like, I’m not doing something that’s right here. And it’s so obvious that sometimes when we apply these materials that we basically have to put a hazmat suit on and ride in a filtered cab tractor, that’s an obvious indicator that we’re doing something a little bit sketch. So I think waking up to those very clear indicators is important for us as farmers as well. And it’s tough. This isn’t going to be a very, very tough road for me. I’m very much in a transitional phase right now from a full on commercial, traditional, I would say chemical farmer to a biological farmer. I’m not going to do this overnight. There is a transition period that I believe is very fundamental to this process as well.
James Maskell:
Beautiful. Well, I think you’ve described very clearly the journey for your farm and for your profession. If you’re open to it, I’d love for you to share your experience at men’s work because shared my experience and you’re just another guy in my group. And one of the things I want to share is that part of what I’m doing at the Healthy El Dorado Expo that’s coming up on April 5th is actually putting men’s work at the front. So the first keynote, Elra Jackson as a man that I’ve met, I’ve actually been on the board of his organization Inside Circle for a couple of years. He has gone from being in New Folsom Prison for 25 to life, to now leading a movement to actually solve decades long gang violence and solve recidivism from prison in a super elegant, beautiful way. And the reason why I’m kicking it off with him is one, because of conversations like this is that it’s going to take up tough conversations to create the world that we want, but also because we are in division right now where there is seemingly unity around the desire to make America healthy again.
But even that phrase is very off-putting to a certain part of the population. And it’s not been easy at all to get unity around this moment, even though I believe that we have profound unity around this topic at this moment. And so I want Elra to come in and create a structure whereby everyone can see how crazy it is that we’re not unified on this moment. So we’ll see. That’s where we’re going. But I would love to just for you to share from your experience what this has meant to you. Who were you in 2019 and who are you today, and what sort of transformation is realistic for men and for families and for communities?
James Chinchiolo:
Yeah, and thank you, James. There’s a lot there that I can talk about and all. I’ll provide this in a condensed framework so that it’s easy to track. I read a book called No More Mr. Nice Guy. And during reading that I realized that I was inflicted by Nice Guy syndrome, whereas my mode of operandi in the way in which I made decisions was based on what other people thought and making sure that I was not going to ruffle feathers and that I was able to please others. And I realized by reading this book that that format for me was causing a whole bunch of havoc. And one of the recommendations within that book was to source a men’s group to support in the journey of becoming a recovering nice guy as opposed to a full on nice guy. And in that journey, coming into the men’s group and raising my hand and saying, “Hey, I feel this within myself that I have made decisions that haven’t been in alignment with a specific mission, a specific direction for my life, and I’ve been kind of just floating around and floundering based on appeasing and making sure to make others happy around me.”
And I made that proclamation and I looked around the room and there were several other men that rose their hands. And when we raise our hand in our group, it’s kind of confirmation that not kind of, it’s exactly confirmation that the other men share that same experience or have shared that same experience. And I realized, oh, this is the right place for me because I can talk to somebody about this. I can understand and bring certain challenges into this group, get direct feedback and also accountability. And to the point of the accountability of the farming, I was, if I really think about it deeply, I was probably trying to appease and make the chemical salesman happy. He would call up and it was a joyous conversation, and I’d hang up and I’d feel good like, man, I made that guy happy. As opposed to going like, you know what? Wait a minute here. I need to think deeply about what’s important for me and take that on and not feel bad about that. Not feel bad about being selfish, selfish in a healthy way. I think there’s selfish, certainly in a very unhealthy way, but selfish in a healthy way. And so it allowed me to exit out of a relationship with a woman that it was a good relationship, but it wasn’t the right relationship for me at the time under the context of becoming a real guy as opposed to a nice guy. And I’ve entered into a beautiful relationship right now that’s much more in alignment with who I really want to be as a man and who I am as a man. And yeah, the men’s group really allows for this nurturing of mission-centric men. And I think that for me is super important.
James Maskell:
Beautiful. Well-said. And again, I’ll just honor our path together and the transformation that I’ve seen in you. And I’m really grateful for our relationship and our connection and really excited to see what comes out of this. My hope is that at this event coming up on April 5th, your story will resonate. And there’s a lot of action trying to happen right now around regenerative agriculture and how that can happen. And there’s a lot of political will for it, but there’s also some issues with all of the friction points that we’ve identified. And ultimately, it’s very similar to what’s happening in medicine. It’s obvious that there’s a better way. It’s obvious that health is created through biology and not through chemistry, but ultimately friction exists to create that new, more beautiful world. Our hearts know as possible, and we’re all on that journey together. So I hope that this has been inspiring.
If you’ve been listening to it, you can see that this one comes right from the heart, comes right from my real experience. I’ve been looking forward to doing something like this on the podcast for as long as we’ve had a relationship, and I’m super excited to see what comes next. So thanks so much for being here. Check out, you can buy it everywhere when the year comes around in like April May. If you check out Bloom’s cherries, you’ll get some ads on your meta and your Instagram because that’s how he rolls. And we’ll remind you that it’s cherry season and it’s trying to get some cherries. And this year the cherries will have a slight taste of sheep and a little bit of chicken cherries, and on a pathway to a regeneration. And if you feel called to support James in his journey, then you should because valiant and valuable, and it is the path that we’re going on.
So this has been the Evolution of Medicine podcast. We’ve been talking about the evolution of farming, and really grateful to have my friend James Chinchiolo here. Thanks everyone for tuning in. Please share this with a farmer. Please share this with a friend. Please share this with someone who you think could benefit from this conversation. It’s been an honor. Thanks so much for tuning in, and we’ll see you next time.
Thanks for listening to the Evolution of Medicine podcast. Please share this with colleagues who need to hear it. Thanks so much to our sponsors, the Lifestyle Matrix Resource Center. This podcast is really possible because of them. Please visit goevomed.com/lmrc to find out more about their clinical tools, like the Group Visit Toolkit. That’s goevomed.com/lmrc. Thanks so much for listening, and we’ll see you next time.
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