Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: With a big padded sole. You are literally taken away from feeling the earth.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: And I think when you feel the earth and connect to the earth, you're in a different mindset to when you are taken away from the earth.
[00:00:15] Speaker C: Hello, I'm Annabel Hesseltine, I'm a journalist and broadcaster and you're very welcome to Hope Springs, brought to you by the Resurgence Trust. Today I. I'm talking to Galahad Clark, a cobbler by birth and by trade who is on a mission to change the way we connect with the earth through a shoe inspired by the sand bushmen of the Kalahari Desert. I'll be talking to the co founder of Vivobarefoot about the lessons he learned from indigenous people, conscious business, his Quaker roots, and why we would all be.
[00:00:50] Speaker D: Healthier if we let our toes spread.
[00:00:53] Speaker C: Out a bit more.
[00:00:56] Speaker E: Welcome, Galahad. Thank you very much for coming onto Hope Springs. It's lovely to see you again in the new year. But before we go into Viva Barefoot and talk about your background in clocks, I've just got to ask you, Galahad, and your father was called Lancelot. Tell me, was there, is there an Arthurian theme going on? Is there a connection with Quakerism? What is it?
[00:01:17] Speaker B: Happy New Year and wonderful to be here with you. I think the last time we saw each other was a five hour car ride together. So, anyway, I come from Somerset and.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: I grew up in the eastern gate.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: Of Avalon, literally Glastonbury and those beautiful.
[00:01:33] Speaker A: Marshes out the back of Glastonbury. But I now live on the southern gate of Avalon.
[00:01:38] Speaker B: So for sure, the whole Arthurian legend is practiced very heavily in Glastonbury today.
And, you know, there's lots of priests and priestesses downloading the Arthurian code to all kinds of people.
[00:01:52] Speaker A: So it's a legend that's very alive.
[00:01:54] Speaker B: From where I come from and now where I've, you know, been on my heroic journey and come back to the beginning again.
But my parents were not necessarily deep Arthurian mythicists. But yeah, there's no question that Lancelot was not happy with the name my.
[00:02:12] Speaker A: Mum had down for me.
[00:02:13] Speaker B: She was Austrian, she wanted to call me Wolfgang. And so the day after I was born, he stumbled upon Galahad, son of Lancelot, and quickly changed my name at the last minute.
[00:02:26] Speaker E: Well, it's a fantastic name and completely unforgettable. But let's just draw the picture because your surname is Clark and Clark's. Well, most of us have grown up and they're still around Clark's shoes. And they were the Classic children's shoes. So what was it like being a Clark?
[00:02:43] Speaker B: So, yeah, you know, my forefathers were sheep farmers and the first ever Clark's.
[00:02:50] Speaker A: Shoe was a sheepskin slipper made in.
[00:02:53] Speaker B: 1825 called the Brown Peter. And they went on to build, obviously an incredible business. And it was one of quite a few Quaker businesses built in the 19th century. Quakers refused to swear any oaths. They were sort of a rebellion to the High Church, to the monarchy. They refused to participate and so therefore.
[00:03:15] Speaker A: They weren't allowed to go to university.
And as a result, they had to.
[00:03:19] Speaker B: Kind of educate themselves in, you know, quite sort of rebellious communities, aren't they? I mean, they super pacifist, didn't sign up to any of the big wars or. And along with Cadbury's, the Roundtrees, Frys, Barclays bank, the Frys, Lloyds, all Quaker.
[00:03:38] Speaker A: Businesses of the 19th century.
[00:03:40] Speaker E: So what was going on? That there was these businesses that felt that they wanted to break away from the conventional because it feels that the ethos of Quakerism has come through into Vivobarefoot now. So it's sort of an evolution, isn't it?
[00:03:53] Speaker A: I think I'm super inspired by it.
[00:03:56] Speaker B: And they were.
Because they weren't allowed to go to university, they kind of had to set.
[00:04:01] Speaker A: Up their own shops.
[00:04:03] Speaker B: And because they had this kind of pretty watertight philosophy of live life very.
[00:04:07] Speaker A: Simply, but live it adventurously.
[00:04:09] Speaker B: So they were great innovators. They put a lot of money back into the communities. They had to make the communities around them work because, you know, the businesses.
[00:04:19] Speaker A: Depended on them and they were kind.
[00:04:20] Speaker B: Of up against the rest of society in some ways. So these amazing business communities formed and they were, you know, many ways, like the ultimate. I call them Q Corpse, but it makes the B Corps of today, or social enterprises of today look rather pale in comparison. These businesses were really like exploring the.
[00:04:40] Speaker A: Intersection between business and social justice.
[00:04:43] Speaker B: And a lot of the profits were put back into the community and used.
[00:04:47] Speaker A: To fight the social justice causes of the day.
[00:04:49] Speaker B: So going back to the Corn Laws or the abolition of slavery, or the suffragette movement, the early environmental movement, apartheid, and then of course, there were pacifists.
[00:05:01] Speaker A: In the war as well.
[00:05:02] Speaker B: So they helped with the ambulance units and helped a lot with getting Jews out of Europe. It was very much business communities.
[00:05:10] Speaker A: And so they created wealth, but then.
[00:05:12] Speaker B: Used that wealth for a higher purpose.
[00:05:15] Speaker E: That's amazing. I hadn't sort of heard you talk about Quakerism quite like that. So I have heard you say that when you were about 11 Clark started to run into trouble and obviously you were surrounded by it. So what was that like for you as a child?
[00:05:32] Speaker B: My aunt's theory is that the beginning of the end of Clark's as we know it, or as it was then, the beginning of the end of Clark's as a Quaker business with a very tight knit sort of higher purpose was.
[00:05:45] Speaker A: When my grandfather was the first generation that was allowed to go to university.
[00:05:49] Speaker B: And the distraction of, you know, sort.
[00:05:52] Speaker A: Of wine, women and song and internationalism.
[00:05:55] Speaker B: And things started to break those Quakers.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: Bindings that held that whole thing together.
[00:06:02] Speaker B: Then I think 1980s capitalism came along and Thatcherism and Friedman and monetary, you know, and yuppigam.
[00:06:10] Speaker E: I mean, that whole thing of money.
[00:06:12] Speaker B: And I remember sort of, you know, posh kind of financiers coming down from London to Somerset and you'd see, sort of see them walking around starting to talk about how to refinance and organize clerks in the modern world and forget about all this social justice stuff. And, you know, the thing to do is make lots and lots of money.
[00:06:32] Speaker A: And then give it all away.
[00:06:33] Speaker B: This notion of sort of doing well and then doing good rather than doing good while you're doing well was an anathema to that. And Clark's got into trouble because it had 28 factories in the UK and.
[00:06:46] Speaker A: It found it harder and harder to.
[00:06:48] Speaker B: Compete with what was the beginning of Asian imports and cheap Chinese shoes flooding the market, etc. And to cut a long story short, I witnessed basically Clarks nearly go bankrupt. There was a hostile takeover attempt, the family just saw it off 50 and a half percent to 49.5%. But the deal was right. New management's going to come in, you've got to close all the factories. And these were four or five generations of workers in a lot of those factories.
[00:07:17] Speaker E: Huge trauma for those communities broken up around them. I think the whole idea of when industries change or close down, and I don't think one can underestimate that for the people that are living there. But you were how old at this stage?
[00:07:33] Speaker B: So I was in my early teenage years and it was super traumatic, you know, for everybody involved and especially my father. And they fought like hell to, you know. And I remember my father saying to me, I'd never let this business go through my hands in my generation without a fight, as it were.
And they did fight, but it was.
[00:07:53] Speaker A: Ultimately a losing fight.
[00:07:54] Speaker B: And it was super sad to see that business, you know, see what ultimately were mercenary managers come in and run it for short term profit. Do Away with all the Quaker values.
[00:08:06] Speaker E: And then your mother got ill when you were 20.
[00:08:10] Speaker B: That's right, yeah. In my late teenage years. I went to university in America and she.
She got ill and died around that time. And I came back. I'd actually moved to work in Asia, and I came back to be with her. And, you know, those last six months.
[00:08:30] Speaker E: She died very rapidly after a brain tuber, didn't she?
[00:08:33] Speaker B: That's right, yeah.
[00:08:33] Speaker E: Helga.
[00:08:34] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:08:34] Speaker E: Helga, that must have been, I mean, a real rocky time for you while.
[00:08:40] Speaker B: All that was going on.
[00:08:41] Speaker A: I was looking for something to do.
[00:08:43] Speaker B: And I went to America in the.
[00:08:45] Speaker A: First place and then went to Asia.
[00:08:46] Speaker B: To sort of avoid the whole Clark's stuff and get away from. Because. Because that whole place I grew up.
[00:08:54] Speaker A: In was completely surrounded and immersed with all of that.
[00:08:57] Speaker B: And funnily enough, coming back to be with her while I was then looking.
[00:09:01] Speaker A: For something to do while I was.
[00:09:02] Speaker B: Just in England, like, obviously my contacts.
[00:09:05] Speaker A: Were in the shoe industries and there.
[00:09:06] Speaker B: Was a funny little shoe business called Terra Plana. And so in some ways, you know, I wouldn't be in the shoe business now if it wasn't for all that, because once I started, I sort of.
[00:09:16] Speaker A: Found I couldn't stop.
[00:09:18] Speaker E: And you had a friend, a school friend, who came to you with an idea.
[00:09:22] Speaker B: So as you said, a childhood friend.
[00:09:23] Speaker A: Of mine who also grew up in street.
Nothing to do with Clarks actually, but.
[00:09:28] Speaker B: He basically stumbled upon the wisdom of barefoot shoes.
[00:09:33] Speaker A: And I instinctively loved the idea, without.
[00:09:35] Speaker B: Fully appreciating the depth of it at the time, that the basic idea was to make shoes as close to barefoot.
[00:09:42] Speaker A: As possible, to make a second skin for your feet effectively.
[00:09:45] Speaker E: Can you tell me a bit more about, you know, what that means for your feet? You know, they. I mean, I was a girl who was sort of brought up wearing high heat Wellingtons, and I now wear vivo bare feet. And I. I'm sort of getting addicted to them. I don't know what it is about them, but the more I wear them, the less likely I am to want to take them off. So will you give me the sort of the ergonomics behind it and explain to me what it is about Viva barefoot that is so good for you and why.
[00:10:12] Speaker B: And you know, I don't want to under undermine vivo barefoot and the. What some people call the magic of vivo barefoot, because there is no magic in vivo.
[00:10:20] Speaker A: Why it's so good is why is.
[00:10:22] Speaker B: Because of how bad normal shoes are.
[00:10:25] Speaker A: As we know them.
[00:10:25] Speaker B: And your.
[00:10:26] Speaker A: Your heeled Wellingtons with Their pointy toes.
[00:10:29] Speaker E: Yes, they really were.
[00:10:31] Speaker B: And basically all shoes were pointy and healed because. And the brief history of it is that humans made perfect barefoot shoes for 99,000 years.
[00:10:43] Speaker A: And we started making pointy heeled shoes.
[00:10:46] Speaker B: With the advent of saddles and horse riding and using horses in battle because you wanted a pointy toe to quickly.
[00:10:55] Speaker A: Get your feet into the stirrups and a heel to hold it there while you were firing your bow and arrow.
[00:10:59] Speaker B: Or your pistols or whatever.
And then it was a high status.
[00:11:03] Speaker A: Thing to have a horse.
[00:11:04] Speaker B: So to have horse riding shoes was by definition then also a high status thing. So your heeled wellies were effectively, you know, exactly the same shape as what.
[00:11:16] Speaker A: An aristocratic middle aged European person would.
[00:11:20] Speaker B: Have been wearing as their horse riding shoes. And a cowboy today, and a cowboy and Persian army warriors, etc, and Mongolian fighters and yada yada.
[00:11:32] Speaker A: And so all that vivo is doing.
[00:11:34] Speaker B: Is saying, you know, there are 28.
[00:11:37] Speaker A: Bones in every foot.
And what a heeled pointy shoe does is come along and undermine every single one of those systems. So it takes your big toe, your.
[00:11:46] Speaker B: Skeletal system, and shoves it up in the air and squeezes it together with the other toes. But your big toe, of course, is designed to be your body's pivot and anchor, whereas any pointy shoe renders it.
[00:11:58] Speaker A: Redundant from the job it's supposed to do.
[00:12:01] Speaker B: So the muscles get weak and it shows.
[00:12:04] Speaker A: It gets 60% weaker from just wearing any normal shoe compared to just walking.
[00:12:09] Speaker B: Around barefoot in six months. And most importantly, by putting any kind of thick sole that's more than 10 millimeters thick under your foot, it undermines the information your brain gets from your feet, because those hundreds of thousands of.
[00:12:24] Speaker A: Nerve endings are there for a reason.
[00:12:27] Speaker B: And there to sort of allow the.
[00:12:29] Speaker A: Brain to move correctly.
All that's happening when you're taking that welly off and wearing a barefoot shoe.
[00:12:36] Speaker B: Is all three of those systems are.
[00:12:37] Speaker A: Going, ah, thank you so much. And they show when the nerves in.
[00:12:42] Speaker B: The feet are activated, all the nerves up the thoracic spine activate more. Your brain is more vital, your whole.
[00:12:50] Speaker A: Bodily systems are all working better.
[00:12:53] Speaker B: You know, everything works better thanks to.
[00:12:55] Speaker A: The feet working well, because you ran.
[00:12:58] Speaker E: A marathon barefoot, didn't you? I mean, not, not in the shoes, but basically to prove that we need the connection between the land and I know that with the shoe you're advised to sort of take it slowly, that you can't just sort of expect to go out and walk sort of six, maybe 12 miles immediately, that you have to actually get your foot used to going back to being connected and it is very, very thin that you can feel the ground underneath you. You can feel every sort of nuance.
[00:13:27] Speaker A: That's like having your arm in a splint. If you, if you, you know, if.
[00:13:30] Speaker B: You, if you have your arm in a plaster cast that you wouldn't go.
[00:13:32] Speaker A: And play tennis the next day.
[00:13:34] Speaker B: Your arm is weak and slightly deformed from being splintered. You want to see perfect movement.
[00:13:40] Speaker A: You look at a four or five.
[00:13:41] Speaker B: Year old child running barefoot, they never.
[00:13:42] Speaker A: Get injured, but at age 5, they're put in a school desk, told to.
[00:13:47] Speaker B: Sit down, shut up, they're put in.
[00:13:49] Speaker A: Little pointy heeled shoes. Their feet start deforming, literally and getting weaker. It's a public health scandal, what we.
[00:13:57] Speaker B: Do to children's feet and dare I say even my family's shoe business, make.
[00:14:03] Speaker A: Pointy heeled children's shoes. They didn't used to. So the average Westerner arrives in adulthood with really weak, deformed feet. And it just takes a bit of time to regain that natural base layer.
[00:14:14] Speaker B: I mean, the elite athletes, like every.
[00:14:17] Speaker A: Distance world record above the 800 meters are held by mostly East Africans that.
[00:14:24] Speaker B: Grew up 95% of their lives running barefoot.
[00:14:27] Speaker E: So can I talk, we could, can we talk about shoe spiracy? So you set up shoespiracy to sort of.
[00:14:34] Speaker A: It's a little film. It's a little film.
[00:14:35] Speaker E: Tell me about it.
[00:14:37] Speaker B: Well, the shoe spiracy is that big.
[00:14:39] Speaker A: Shoe, along with Big agriculture and Big Pharma are literally disconnecting us from our natural state.
[00:14:48] Speaker B: Big Ag is disconnecting us from our.
[00:14:50] Speaker A: Food systems and our natural food. And Big Pharma is disconnecting us from our natural health and being able to.
[00:14:57] Speaker B: Have sovereignty over our bodies and the way we are. And Big Shoe is literally disconnecting us from the earth with a big padded soul.
[00:15:09] Speaker A: You are literally taken away from feeling the earth.
[00:15:12] Speaker E: I am always reminded of that moment in Pretty Woman, which is a film that I think probably everybody has seen with Richard Gere when he's, you know, he's this completely cut off, huge corporate successful financier. And then he takes off his shoes and he walks around in the grass and the look of wonderment comes on his face and it kind of sums it up. I mean, it was a picture pivotal moment of the 80s. You might not have been around for that.
[00:15:34] Speaker B: I was around. But everybody knows it. They go to the beach, they take off their shoes and they walk barefoot.
[00:15:40] Speaker A: Down to the beach.
[00:15:40] Speaker B: And everyone feels Wonderful. And everybody, you know, there's very few people that don't.
[00:15:47] Speaker E: So can we talk a bit about Nike and what actually happened? Because everybody moved into trainers in a big way. But trainers are not viva barefoot.
[00:15:59] Speaker B: It's an interesting story.
[00:16:01] Speaker A: So the original Nikes and Bill Bowerman.
[00:16:03] Speaker B: Who was the sort of biomechanical brains behind Nike, believed in barefoot running.
[00:16:08] Speaker A: And if you see the first Nike.
[00:16:10] Speaker B: Shoes, there's no padding, they're very thin soled and they're actually quite wide. And Bill Baum really believed in that.
[00:16:17] Speaker A: But as they started to make popularized jogging in America and he famously wrote a book called Jogging and he got.
[00:16:24] Speaker B: People jogging but they noticed people were.
[00:16:25] Speaker A: Getting injured all the time.
[00:16:26] Speaker B: So they famously got in a group.
[00:16:28] Speaker A: Of 10 doctors and said what is going on? We're getting people moving but they're getting injured. And they said, well the problem is they're wearing these pointy high heeled shoes.
[00:16:36] Speaker B: In their everyday lives and you're putting.
[00:16:38] Speaker A: Them in these flat soft shoes. You need to start making your trainers.
[00:16:43] Speaker B: Like their pointy heels so they could.
[00:16:45] Speaker E: Transition between the morning and the day.
[00:16:47] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:16:47] Speaker B: And so, you know, if you look.
[00:16:49] Speaker A: At Nikes now they are literally pointy.
[00:16:51] Speaker B: And heeled and they started then coming up with all the airbags and all the gizmos underfoot and they're very pointing.
[00:16:59] Speaker A: The arch support and the pronation control.
[00:17:02] Speaker B: And all these things that effectively continue.
[00:17:05] Speaker A: To splint the foot and make it no difference between the pointy heeled work.
[00:17:10] Speaker B: Shoes and the pointy heeled running shoes.
[00:17:12] Speaker E: So that whole thing about wearing sort of pronatal sort of step steps insteps is not a good idea. You should be.
[00:17:18] Speaker B: It's the matrix that's the shoe spirit.
[00:17:21] Speaker A: And all the technology in footwear is there to solve for problems caused by footwear. And round and round it goes.
[00:17:30] Speaker B: The same with big agriculture, the same with big pharma.
And I would call pronation control and.
[00:17:38] Speaker A: Arches basically the equivalent of synthetic toxic.
[00:17:41] Speaker B: Drugs that we're all sort of trapped in and time to break free and.
[00:17:47] Speaker A: Find our natural selves again.
[00:17:49] Speaker E: So how are people responding to Vivobevo? The industry has been around. Well, you're the leader in the industry, were the first to, to, to go for these different kind of shoes and that was like 12, 13 years ago, I think.
[00:18:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean there, there have been variations of barefoot shoes since time immemorial. So I, I hate to say we were the first barefoot shoe. Definitely not.
[00:18:11] Speaker E: Okay, okay, I take your point. But so we've got 24 billion pairs of shoes are being sold every year.
[00:18:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:20] Speaker E: Viva barefoot is selling 2 million.
[00:18:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:24] Speaker A: Less than 2 million.
[00:18:25] Speaker E: Less than 2 million. But three years ago, they were selling 773,000, at least. That's a statistic that I found.
[00:18:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:33] Speaker E: So that suggests that in the last two years, you have doubled your sales.
[00:18:38] Speaker B: It's really interesting in the last three or four years. And there's no coincidence, I think, linked to Covid and people suddenly starting to question healthcare systems, their lifestyles, where they live, how they live. And we've seen a sort of growth in what we call the natural health movement, I think, and we failed completely. When you go around any shoe shop, people are wearing fatter, more maximalist shoes.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: Than ever before on many levels.
[00:19:12] Speaker B: So, you know, in terms of persuading.
[00:19:15] Speaker E: Like sort of 4 or 5 inches.
[00:19:16] Speaker B: I mean, in terms of persuading the general population to put their feet back on the earth and feel the earth, we failed terribly. This is still a very underground, rebellious kind of movement. So these kind of natural systems and.
[00:19:31] Speaker A: Natural ways are still totally niche.
[00:19:34] Speaker B: But barefoot shoes and people putting their.
[00:19:36] Speaker A: Feet back on the ground and rediscovering.
[00:19:38] Speaker B: Their natural movement has started to grow.
[00:19:42] Speaker A: And since COVID the category of barefoot shoes has started to grow much faster than us. We've seen 25 new Barefoot brands launch.
[00:19:51] Speaker B: In Europe in the last two or three years alone. And so it is coming.
[00:19:57] Speaker E: Well, we've talked about tipping points before, but we'll go back to that. But I was really interested by something that you said to me once, which was that you could chart the movement of a certain kind of person, because through the sales of Vivo and that they had been sort of on the west coast of America and now they've moved away from the coast and they're more along that line of the Rockies, sort of Montana. Colorado. What do you think's going on there? You've just gone back from the Trump inauguration, and I'd love to know how that is.
[00:20:29] Speaker B: First of all, I like to think.
[00:20:31] Speaker A: I didn't go to the Trump inauguration.
[00:20:33] Speaker B: I went to the launch party of the Maha movement, the Make America Healthy Again movement, led by rfk.
[00:20:41] Speaker E: Yeah. But do you want to tell me a bit about that? That's very new, isn't it?
[00:20:45] Speaker B: So it's kind of the movement behind rfk, and obviously his presidential platform that started a few years ago was.
[00:20:53] Speaker A: Was mainly around what we've just been.
[00:20:54] Speaker B: Talking about, which is effectively trying to.
[00:20:57] Speaker A: Get toxins and synthetic drugs out of.
[00:21:00] Speaker B: The food systems and out of the health systems in America, which I, you.
[00:21:05] Speaker A: Know, I think I totally support.
[00:21:07] Speaker B: And interestingly, at the MAHA party that we were just at, and obviously Trump has brought him into his administration and I think the Senate is going to.
[00:21:18] Speaker E: Is that a good thing? I mean, what does that say with what Trump's doing? Is he at all interested in the environment?
[00:21:25] Speaker B: I mean, I've heard that Elon Musk is interested in it through his mother.
[00:21:30] Speaker A: And his brother, are involved in food.
[00:21:32] Speaker B: Businesses and are particularly interested in this.
[00:21:36] Speaker A: Sort of detoxifying of the food and health systems.
[00:21:39] Speaker B: And what was interesting about this party we were at, I think if you were to, there was a lot of.
[00:21:43] Speaker A: People that had transitioned with RFG to the Republican Party.
[00:21:47] Speaker B: But I think if you were to poll the 500 or so people at this party who they voted for five years ago, I think probably most of them had voted Democrat. There has been, you know, so you could say whether that was what Trump.
[00:22:00] Speaker A: Himself personally believes in, I don't entirely know.
[00:22:02] Speaker B: But he's definitely made a very smart political move to bring and give oxygen to that movement.
[00:22:09] Speaker E: We've talked about this sort of unarticulated movement. This sort of. It's quietly happening. It's bubbling away.
Did you come away feeling excited by that? Did you feel.
[00:22:19] Speaker B: I did. I came away feeling really excited by it. And I think, you know, it's amazing how suddenly this detoxification of, you know, and frankly, the unraveling of the chokehold that big toxic agriculture and synthetic drug.
[00:22:37] Speaker A: Pharmaceutical has on society.
[00:22:39] Speaker B: And you see it obviously in America.
[00:22:42] Speaker E: Happened over the last sort of 200 years of the 19th century. There was this connection and then we had this madness of a whole century which was. Which more or less aligns with the Industrial revolution and post industrial revolution. But perhaps you'd like to talk a bit more about that.
[00:22:58] Speaker B: No, no, no. I think, you know, I think, you know, you can trace it back to Rockefeller and the beginning of big oil and the start of man being so.
[00:23:09] Speaker A: Technologically dazzled in the 20th century and disconnecting themselves from natural systems and natural ways.
[00:23:16] Speaker E: I love the term emancipated from nature that I've heard you use.
[00:23:20] Speaker B: And I feel like the job in the 21st century for businesses and companies and everybody is to help humans reconnect.
[00:23:29] Speaker A: Back to nature, back to natural systems.
[00:23:32] Speaker B: And whatever area you're involved in. And, you know, the fact that our.
[00:23:37] Speaker A: Generation is going to live less long.
[00:23:40] Speaker B: It'S going to be the first generation.
[00:23:41] Speaker A: To live less long than the previous generation. Autoimmune conditions are going through the roof. We don't eat natural food anymore and.
[00:23:49] Speaker B: We can only afford terribly processed food.
[00:23:53] Speaker A: So on and so forth.
[00:23:54] Speaker B: You know, there's a rebalancing that is.
[00:23:57] Speaker A: The job in the 21st century, ironically, alongside the most fearful technology you can ever imagine.
[00:24:04] Speaker B: And hopefully we can use that technology to.
[00:24:08] Speaker E: So before we go on to how Viva Barefoot wants to use that technology, which we will get there, I promise you. But I'd like to go back because you haven't just sort of worked with it in England, you've been to South Africa, you've been to the Samia. Would you like to tell me about some of these communities that you learned from in your process of understanding the zoo?
[00:24:29] Speaker A: Thank you so much for saving me.
[00:24:31] Speaker B: From my political soapbox, because I'm not, you know, I'm a cobbler fundamentally. And one of the most exciting things.
[00:24:38] Speaker A: I'm most excited about alongside the Maha.
[00:24:41] Speaker B: Movement is an, an event we're helping.
[00:24:44] Speaker A: Support in South Africa in May called the Cobbleration.
[00:24:48] Speaker B: And we are getting a group of cobblers from around the world.
And you know, I don't like the terminology necessarily, but indigenous cobalt cobblers from the Hopi nation, from Canada, from Sami, the Arctic Circle, couple of groups from India, and of course some groups from Africa who are still making shoes the way they were made. This is the sand bushman, Sam Bushman still making the eland skin hunting sandals.
[00:25:17] Speaker A: That were probably the first tools ever.
[00:25:20] Speaker B: Made by humans that enabled the running, hunting, that enabled the increase in the.
[00:25:27] Speaker A: Meat and calories in our diets, enabled.
[00:25:29] Speaker B: The brain expansion which made us all.
[00:25:32] Speaker A: Think we need to run around them.
[00:25:33] Speaker B: All over the world in our sand.
[00:25:36] Speaker A: We made shoes wherever we went.
[00:25:37] Speaker B: And when we, when we got all.
[00:25:39] Speaker A: The way to the Arctic, we made beautiful reindeer moccasins.
[00:25:41] Speaker B: And the first peoples of America made beautiful bison moccasins. And you know, people living in the jungles made beautiful woven shoes out of various plants. So the sort of innovation using local.
[00:25:57] Speaker A: Materials of foot shoemaking and cobbling all over the world is awesome.
[00:26:02] Speaker B: And a lot of these things are in danger of dying out. One of my favorite stories is, you know, the Sami people who live in.
[00:26:09] Speaker A: The Arctic wear reindeer moccasins. And they spend eight hours a day.
[00:26:12] Speaker B: In minus 40 degree temperature bare feet with a little bit of hay for insulation, with single layer reindeer moccasins that they make. You know, you see them with the.
[00:26:23] Speaker A: Pointy toes, they're amazing. Some of the most sophisticated shoes in the world. Perfectly happy all day long. In this like.
[00:26:31] Speaker B: But of course, being in Scandinavia, they.
[00:26:33] Speaker A: Get tremendously funded and lots of money and ski dos and posh western boots sent up to them. And there's a lovely old wives tale.
[00:26:43] Speaker B: That'S developed in this area to say.
[00:26:45] Speaker A: Look, if your knees and your back.
[00:26:47] Speaker B: Are hurting, go back to wearing your.
[00:26:49] Speaker A: Traditional reindeer moccasins and you'll find yourself, you feel better again.
[00:26:53] Speaker B: And you know, I'm not saying we all need to go back to living.
[00:26:56] Speaker A: In caves and we live in a.
[00:26:58] Speaker B: In a new world that has lots of wonderful benefits, but it's sort of.
[00:27:01] Speaker E: Moving forward to connect with the past, isn't it?
[00:27:04] Speaker B: There you go.
[00:27:04] Speaker E: And how. So I know that you've got some interesting ideas about how to use incredibly modern technology with 3D printing, et cetera, to emulate something that was done in the past. Would you like to tell me a bit more about that?
[00:27:18] Speaker B: So the way the Sami people and all these indigenous cobblers made shoes since the dawn of bipedal movement was person.
[00:27:28] Speaker A: By person, foot by foot, from the local sustainable materials.
[00:27:32] Speaker B: You would go to your local cobbler in the village and you put your foot on whatever the local, whether it.
[00:27:39] Speaker A: Was a plant or an animal skin, and you draw around your foot and.
[00:27:42] Speaker B: You'D make a perfect pair of shoes.
[00:27:44] Speaker A: For you, fit perfectly, they'd be perfect.
[00:27:47] Speaker B: Barefoot shoes allow your foot to fully function and when they were broken or.
[00:27:52] Speaker A: You get them repaired or fixed until.
[00:27:54] Speaker B: You need a new pair and they'd be fully biodegradable and etc.
[00:27:58] Speaker A: Etc.
[00:27:58] Speaker B: That's probably not the reality for most people now in the world going forward.
[00:28:06] Speaker A: But with the funny little computers we.
[00:28:09] Speaker B: Carry around in our pockets, they can.
[00:28:11] Speaker A: 3D scan our feet, they have lidar.
[00:28:15] Speaker B: Scanning technology in them.
[00:28:16] Speaker A: And with additive manufacturing technologies, 3D printing.
[00:28:20] Speaker B: Basically can make shoes from local sustainable materials.
[00:28:25] Speaker A: We use bioplastics that are ultimately biodegradable specifically for you in a perfectly local circular loop.
[00:28:34] Speaker E: So it's about one level. There's the connection that you want each human to have with the land. But then there's also this thing about changing attitudes to consumption. So if you have your own handmade, or in this case 3D printed shoe that literally is yours, it's personally fitted to you.
You know, the idea that you might, if you take that average of 24 billion shoes a year being bought, that's on average, what, three pairs, but actually doesn't work out like that, it's probably seven in America and it's, it's a little bit less in Europe, but So it's also about changing the mindset, isn't it? We don't need to have the sort of 20, 30, 40 pairs of shoes.
[00:29:13] Speaker B: Yeah. So it's about recreating emotional durability of products and the notion that, you know, the things that we wear and the relationship with fashion is, is, is, is then once again also a relationship with nature and your local surroundings. And you have a completely different emotional.
[00:29:33] Speaker A: Engagement with something that is uniquely yours.
[00:29:36] Speaker B: Than you do with something that's come off a shelf and, you know, you sort of discard it without a second thought.
And the big challenge on this whole circular consumerism is, are the systems, the take back systems. And the footwear industry, the clothing industry.
[00:29:52] Speaker A: In general has been very slow to.
[00:29:54] Speaker B: Put in place any kind of real legislation around that. And that is all starting to come now.
[00:29:59] Speaker A: And the European Union are about to.
[00:30:00] Speaker B: Put in place whole bunch of legislation around digital passports. So every product needs to effectively be able to open up a digital record.
[00:30:10] Speaker A: All the way up the supply chain, sort of almost back to the name of the cow that the leather came.
[00:30:15] Speaker B: From or the cotton farm that the canvas came from.
[00:30:19] Speaker E: And how do you, I know that you've said that you get a demand from vegans who don't want you to use leather. How do you square that one?
[00:30:28] Speaker B: Well, I mean, we respect humans that don't want to participate in the death of animals as much as possible, of course, and we make shoes that don't use animal products, but we do make shoes that use leather and we try as much as possible to use leather.
[00:30:46] Speaker A: That comes from wild hide. And so we can trace it back to the farm.
[00:30:49] Speaker B: And we know that whatever animal has.
[00:30:51] Speaker A: Lived a relatively wild existence and lived out in the sun and had space.
[00:30:55] Speaker B: To move around and has participated in a relatively regenerative agricultural supply chain, but the other side of the coin is a lot of vegan footwear made out.
[00:31:08] Speaker A: Of plastic basically that come directly from the oil industry.
[00:31:13] Speaker B: And you could argue the biodiversity loss.
[00:31:16] Speaker A: Caused by the creation of that plastic.
[00:31:19] Speaker B: Is far worse than a sensitively procured animal in a regenerative agricultural supply chain.
[00:31:27] Speaker E: There is a whole discussion, isn't there, about the natural cycle of life. I mean, animals kill animals, they live off them.
[00:31:34] Speaker B: You've had very, very smart people on your podcast who are able to articulate much better than me about the rebalancing of agriculture and animal husbandry. And, you know, there's no question a lot of rebalancing needs to happen there. And you know, I went to a restaurant the other day was found, you know, there were. All the main courses were plant based.
[00:31:55] Speaker A: And they had side dishes of meat.
[00:31:58] Speaker E: So they reversed the scenario.
[00:32:00] Speaker B: And I think that's probably a pretty good, you know, where we should be eating mostly plants.
[00:32:05] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:32:06] Speaker B: And eating animals should be a very small part of our diet, a precious part of our diet, probably an expensive part of our diet.
But yeah, I think like you say, it feels more disconnected from nature to just not eat any animals and not participate in those food chains.
But the food chains need to change.
[00:32:26] Speaker E: Yes. And so do we. So where is this sweet spot, this tipping point, at which point there will be more people that will embrace this sort of idea that we should be more connected. You've talked about this sixth extinction and if we're to survive it, how do you think we're going to manage that?
[00:32:45] Speaker B: I definitely don't want to get back.
[00:32:47] Speaker A: On a political soapbox in that level.
[00:32:49] Speaker B: But I do, you know, as a little shoe business. And I think as much as possible, if we can help the transition away from subtractive supply chains, if we can show that you can make footwear person.
[00:33:01] Speaker A: By person, foot by foot again, made.
[00:33:03] Speaker B: From local sustainable materials and circular, genuinely circular supply chains, then we, alongside hundreds.
[00:33:13] Speaker A: Of other businesses need to show that.
[00:33:14] Speaker B: Can be done again. And there's just not enough businesses that are scaling in the same way Patagonia has, that have kept nature at the.
[00:33:25] Speaker A: Top of the hierarchy, stayed independent.
[00:33:28] Speaker B: And so in my world, can we get more businesses to scale outside the clutches of impatient capital? Merry go Rounds.
[00:33:36] Speaker E: You've described yourself as a patient capitalist, which has its sort of consequences. And I think, you know, it probably makes it more difficult to be at the top to be the CEO of Viva Barefoot. Is it lonely there and how do your family support you? Your wife and your sister in law are both from Siberia and they both work in the business with you. And I wonder with where they've come from, how that's influenced or has it influenced you?
[00:34:04] Speaker B: They come from a very, what you'd.
[00:34:06] Speaker A: Call an indigenous community.
[00:34:08] Speaker B: It's called Buryatia. It's on the Mongolian border and they're basically a long lost tribe from Mongolia on the eastern shores of Lake Baikal.
And you know, obviously we engage with.
[00:34:21] Speaker A: Indigenous cobblers around the world and talk.
[00:34:23] Speaker B: About these kind of, you know, ancient.
[00:34:27] Speaker A: Nature wisdoms and things a lot.
[00:34:28] Speaker B: And we obviously having a mutual friend, someone like Guy of the pilgrimage trust of the pilgrimage trust and communities of people that are guiding people literally back to ancient nature wisdoms and connection and you know, I've been privileged to meet the chief Druid in the UK in the last couple of years and the.
[00:34:51] Speaker A: Leaders of those movements, as it were, are amazingly inspirational people.
[00:34:55] Speaker B: But we had an amazing moment when we were sitting at the top of Pendle Hill, which is incidentally the birthplace.
[00:35:02] Speaker A: Of Quakerism, up in the Yorkshire Dales.
[00:35:05] Speaker B: Near Broughton Hall, Broughton Sanctuary.
[00:35:08] Speaker A: And my wife and sister in law.
[00:35:11] Speaker B: Kind of, you know, always sort of slightly scoffed at, you know, we're obviously not, we can't possibly be indigenous people as sort of slightly posh.
[00:35:20] Speaker E: Not them English people.
[00:35:21] Speaker A: Us.
[00:35:21] Speaker B: Yeah, sorry, from England. And they had this lovely realization that, you know, actually, you know, we're all on the same human journey and yearning to be part and the fact that we're a little bit far further removed from that baseline than they are is okay. And we just need a little bit more help to get back there.
[00:35:42] Speaker E: Yes, exactly. I mean, it's a capitalism that's removed us from it, I think, isn't it? So now we are seeking the wisdom of indigenous people to get back there. But those indigenous people who are the ones that have remained connected, but there is a growing business movement, there's the B Corp, other companies who are doing and trying to connect again. And I know you've said, you know, we want to be part of this business movement, we want more people and they are out there. So I just wondered, you've mentioned Patagonia, which other companies are inspiring ones that we should be looking at or indeed that have inspired you?
[00:36:17] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I mean, Patagonia is an obvious example in my, my world of making clobber for people and they continue to inspire me. And you know, the founder of Patagonia recently said, if I can't prove that we can create truly regenerative clothing supply chains, then we need to get out of the clothing business and just do agriculture. And he's actually steered his business to.
[00:36:41] Speaker A: Include a regenerative agricultural arm and they've.
[00:36:45] Speaker B: Obviously come up with a new terminology of regenerative organic agriculture. But one of the people that's been inspiring me a lot recently is Helena Norberg Hodge and interestingly was I think.
[00:37:00] Speaker A: In many ways instrumental in my whole.
[00:37:02] Speaker B: Thinking to how I approach most things in my life. Was reading her book Ancient Futures when I was at university many, many moons ago.
And it's been a real privilege to.
[00:37:15] Speaker A: Get to know her in the last.
[00:37:17] Speaker B: Couple of years, actually quite recently, and her local Futures organization and this sort of bravery she has as a lifelong activist to try to bring awareness to These global economic systems that even though I operate within them, you know, become a bit activist about, you know, we don't like the system we're operating in. And I do think this global free.
[00:37:42] Speaker A: Trade system that we're all in needs to be rethought.
[00:37:46] Speaker B: And I know there's lots of business.
[00:37:48] Speaker A: Leaders and businesses that think this way.
[00:37:51] Speaker B: But how do we create spheres of influence to the systems? And funnily enough, I think it's kind of almost happening despite this now anyway, where we're going to be forced to set up local businesses again, local supply chains again. And, you know, these, the 30 Clarks factories that were shut down in the UK in the early 90s, that caused all that trauma for all those families and all those generations.
You know, funnily enough, 50 years later, they're probably going to reappear again and we're going to be making shoes in the UK again from local agricultural supply chains enabled by technology.
[00:38:29] Speaker A: And that's the deep wish and wisdom.
[00:38:32] Speaker B: That we hope to get back to.
[00:38:34] Speaker E: So you talk about John Arenfeld's and sustained ability and how it's also about its system changes, isn't it? But it's also changing one's philosophy and the way one actually works within the company. So it's micro and macro. Would you agree with that?
[00:38:53] Speaker B: So John Ehrenfeld says, you know, the primary responsibility for any business or filling the world up with any more stuff is, well, first of all, you know, the definition of sustainability is to help.
[00:39:04] Speaker A: Humans and all life flourish on Earth.
[00:39:07] Speaker B: And then the only excuse for filling.
[00:39:09] Speaker A: The world up with more stuff is.
[00:39:10] Speaker B: To create things that either help us connect more to nature, help us feel more human, and then help answer important.
[00:39:17] Speaker A: Environmental or ethical questions.
[00:39:19] Speaker B: We realized that barefoot shoes were the only thing that did that.
[00:39:23] Speaker A: And then to layer on top of.
[00:39:25] Speaker B: That, as we kind of got into regenerative leadership and regenerative organizational thinking, we started to think of the inner and the outer.
[00:39:33] Speaker A: And so the outer being, what service are we offering to society?
[00:39:36] Speaker B: So we thought it's very important not.
[00:39:39] Speaker A: Just to create stuff for society, but we set up an online education business.
[00:39:46] Speaker B: What we call Revivo, which is repair, recycle, and also this business to figure out local supply chains and bespoke shoemaking.
[00:39:56] Speaker E: Outside of traditional antithesis of the throwaway society.
[00:40:03] Speaker B: And yet we still make.
[00:40:04] Speaker A: Most of our.
[00:40:05] Speaker B: Most of our business is still, you.
[00:40:07] Speaker A: Know, shoes made on traditional shoe supply chains.
[00:40:09] Speaker B: But we're sort of trying to, you know, we need to put the effort in the outer to make the Existing.
[00:40:17] Speaker A: Subtractive degenerate business systems defunct.
[00:40:22] Speaker B: And then on the inner. Obviously, you know, we talk a lot about helping everybody in the organization go on those transformative, what are ultimately natural.
[00:40:31] Speaker A: Health journeys and reconnection to nature.
[00:40:33] Speaker E: Because you're about to announce your nine.
[00:40:35] Speaker B: Pillar protocol, which is again, not really our protocol. And we're in partnership with this on a guy, with a guy called Jeff Krasno, who has a wonderful online education platform called Commune.
[00:40:48] Speaker A: And he's packaged it up under good stress.
[00:40:51] Speaker E: Good stress.
[00:40:52] Speaker A: Good stress. And so the body needs stress to be healthy, basically.
[00:40:57] Speaker B: And whether it's exercise or fasting or cold water, you need stress to de stress. And it's comfort that's killing us and it's comfortable shoes. Comfortable shoes as we know them is what's killing us. What's undermining the pain of when you.
[00:41:12] Speaker A: Misstep or overstep is an important stress for the system. So by having these overly comfortable shoes.
[00:41:18] Speaker B: We'Re able to then over stride and by.
[00:41:21] Speaker A: And over striding is such a good.
[00:41:23] Speaker B: Metaphor for everything we're doing wrong in life anyway.
[00:41:25] Speaker A: That's leaning forward and aggressively sort of.
[00:41:28] Speaker B: Over striding rather than the little kid.
[00:41:31] Speaker A: That'S sort of taking lots of little steps and smiling and bouncing.
[00:41:34] Speaker E: Yes. So what are the little steps for Viva Barefoot? In the next year or so, we're.
[00:41:40] Speaker A: Taking little steps to support and connect with the indigenous shoemaking.
[00:41:44] Speaker B: We're taking little steps in natural material innovation. We're taking little steps and figuring out poly circular shoemaking. Little steps in opening up one or two more little shoe shops. I like to think when people start.
[00:42:00] Speaker A: Putting their feet on the ground and feeling the ground and whether it's our.
[00:42:03] Speaker B: Barefoot shoes or another company's barefoot shoes.
[00:42:06] Speaker A: They start taking littler steps and they.
[00:42:08] Speaker B: Start to, you know, think on behalf.
[00:42:10] Speaker A: Of the earth a little bit more because they're feeling her every day.
[00:42:14] Speaker B: And when you feel her and connect to her, you act a little bit more humanely, as it were.
[00:42:19] Speaker A: Right.
[00:42:20] Speaker E: Can I ask you one question before I ask you my last question? So my last question, which I'll come to in a minute, is I ask everybody what is their hope for the future. But I want to ask one question that's a bit selfish, but I'm doing a 2,000 kilometer walk in Saudi Arabia later in the year, and we were wondering about beaver barefoot. And because you can feel the ground, I wondered how the feet would hold up, whether it was better to have something a bit more cushioned or whether it's better to Maybe work it in and how it protects you from the ground, because obviously the shop, it's desert, and it's also rough ground and there's thorns and things like that. So does vivobarefoot work for that?
[00:43:07] Speaker A: So guess what the best type of leather for walking through the desert is?
[00:43:14] Speaker E: Camels.
[00:43:14] Speaker A: Camels.
[00:43:16] Speaker B: So we have a little thing where we have what we call the ESC collection, which is the ecological survival collection. So we make shoes for, like, you know, each biome. So the Arctic, the tundra, based on mukluks, the jungle boot, the forest boot.
And just coming out, I think next month, maybe the month after, maybe March.
[00:43:40] Speaker A: Is our desert boot made from camel leather.
[00:43:43] Speaker E: I love it. Okay, I should be signing up. So, Galahad Clarke, what is your hope for the future?
[00:43:52] Speaker B: Well, I'm gonna. I steal this from Anthony Gormley, like, a lot. And he's definitely one of my great heroes. And he's had a beautifully poetic little thing on Channel 4 or something like that, where he just said if the.
[00:44:04] Speaker A: Whole world took off their shoes and.
[00:44:06] Speaker B: Spent a few days completely barefoot, that.
[00:44:09] Speaker A: The impact that would have on the.
[00:44:11] Speaker B: Collective consciousness would just sort of trigger us into a great humanity, leveling and reconnecting to Mother Earth moment.
So my great hope is, if that happens in my lifetime, that we all just stop and realize that we are all one people standing on one earth.
[00:44:33] Speaker A: Connected by two feet.
[00:44:35] Speaker B: And through our feet, we can really feel each other and feel the earth we're standing on.
[00:44:41] Speaker E: Galahad, thank you so much.
[00:44:43] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:44:44] Speaker B: So lovely.
[00:44:49] Speaker D: This interview with Galahad brings me to the close of our first season of Hope Springs. It's been quite a journey, learning from incredibly inspiring people about how they have taken their personal grief and turned it into a force for nature. Rewilding, regenerating the soil, saving trees, saving fish and rivers, and supporting other people doing the same.
In a time when bad news flashes from our phones with alarming regularity, their uplifting stories have given me so much hope, and I hope that they have to you too.
If you have enjoyed these episodes, please leave reviews, subscribe and tell your friends. It really helps to spread the word even further. And if you have any recommendations of people who have inspired you, please do feel free to recommend them to me through my website, annabelleheseltine.com I'll be back with a new season of Hope Springs in a couple of months with a no less inspiring chat with Craig Foster, whose unlikely friendship with an octopus taught us all to look at the South African Cape's kelp forests. In a very different way.
This episode was produced by Pete Norton and brought to you by the Resurgence Trust, a movement, a magazine and a manifesto for Hope. To find out more about their work, click the link in the show notes of this episode. I'm Annabelle Heseltine and thank you for listening to Hope Springs.
[00:46:38] Speaker A: SA.
