From Cowspiracy to Holistic Health: Kip Andersen’s Next Chapter

Hi, I'm Dr. Scott Stoll and welcome to a regenerative life podcast where science becomes hope, food becomes a catalyst for healing and every conversation explores the profound connections between personal health, human flourishing and the earth and future that we will share together.

But more importantly, we'll explore one of the most important questions of our time. What happens when we actually begin living in alignment with the way we were designed?

I'm really glad that you're here, Kip, and, you know, your films have really had a ripple effect across the world in so many ways. But I think what I'd like to do is just first understand, like, who you are and how you ended up becoming a filmmaker.

And were you always a storyteller growing up, or what did that start for you when you were young? Sometimes I thinks the Hans Christian Andersen lineage all the way back.

I remember going to Denmark one time and like huh, But I've always been just a film fanatic. I love filming. Growing up, I don't even know if it was possible, but it's always a dream.

But then I didn't want it to be like, this is what I'm going to do and hang my hat on it. So another passion was mine is entrepreneurism. And so I went to Cal Poly and majored in that.

Didn't wanna be a starving filmmaker, But that was always my dream, starting with art, to become a filmmaker. So I saved up money for a long time. I went to film school on the side, did film classes, and then with Netflix and things coming around, I always did like vision boards, imagining a thumbnail up there.

And then what really triggered it was when I want vegan, because I was always working on a couple other films that are never really, really happening.

But when i found out about the environmental impacts, the ethical impacts all these things that you see in all my films, that's when like, oh, my passion of filmmaking, now my passions of being, you know, kind of in a way an animal activist.

That's when it really said, okay, I really want to do this. And so, yeah, didn't make Cowspiracy until I was 40 years old. That was my first film. So it was like, oh, you know, haven't made it in my head and make first films.

It's never too late, but dreams are sometimes take a while to mature. What were you doing before that? So entrepreneurs starting businesses, I had a company that was running, that saved money enough, it took about seven years to save up.

Keegan and I, because he's an incredible filmmaker, we made that entire film for $40,000. And that's it? Yeah. It was $40000? Wow. I can't do it, but again, you really have the talents that some of the people are going to force you to work with.

Dan and Allie and Cam were so multi-talented, that makes it possible. So that is incredible. Yeah. And so I'm just curious, like, when did you wake up and say, I am going to make the documentary, Cowspiracy?

Cow-spiracy, and that took six years. Six years? I was very passionate. When I went vegan, it was like I found out, there was ethics that hit me. I saw a video.

It was an ethical one, because I didn't know. At that time, was pescatarian, not even know that was bad. But I saw what the dairy industry was, the egg industry, was.

And I was eating a cheese pizza at the time when I watched the video through it across the room. It's had a visceral response. Oh, it was insane. it's called Meet Your Meat.

There's only 12 minutes narrated by Alec Baldwin. I thought if anyone saw that, you would for sure go vegan. and I already wanted to make movies. Then about two weeks later, finding vegan restaurants, I found Loving Hut.

They still do, but they share the book. And if you look at that book, do you remember there's like, because a lot of kind of propaganda, but as you have the truth about what the industry does, and it was a book on animal agriculture industry, does the environment.

So a of you see conspiracy was birthed from that Book of Loving Hut. And I finally got to meet her as Supreme Master. I can't remember her name, So at that time, I'm like, OK, this has to be a film.

And then it took years to find different people to work with. Then finally, once I got aligned with myself, and did a lot of inner work, then I met Keegan.

Ten months later, we were finished. So I was working on it for about six years from then. And I'm just curious, I love the personal story. What was the inner work that you were doing and how did that change?

Yeah, it's a big thing is why did you come to that as something that was important for you? Because just being on the path, you know, even being a play-based vegan, talking about the six pillars, and just seeing that and looking those up again.

So much of where I'm at is if you align with who you are in all ways. And so people who are eating animals, when you talk to them enough, they love animals.

They would never kill an animal. Did it, you know, these different pillars? What part that resonates with you? Most of the time it does, but they're eating the animals it doesn't.

So now they are out of alignment. I feel it's harder to actualize your dream, your mission in life. And so at that time, even though I was on the path of that, there were just certain things else in life that I knew I wanted to do something, but I didn't have the centerpiece to it, the, you know, kind of almost like the biofield, all aligned, clarity.

And so I was doing yoga teacher trainings, not to be a yoga teachers, more to just kind of center myself and figure out how to, I didn't know a way, like tuning a car.

And that was good. Then the next one that really did it is I did Kundalini yoga training, flew all the way to India. the 23 days of kundalini yoga from 4.30 in the morning to 7 at night in an ashram.

And that's what did it. Ten days after I got back I met Keegan after working six years. That's the definition of lying. You do kunderlini that much particularly.

And so just one of those, you have that along with a mission and a vision, and you're doing work like that, daily meditations, clearing things out. And I'm a big believer ever since that.

My life's kind of been taking off with actualizing things. I owe a lot of it to things in a work, like secretly yoga, going to a lotta workshops for me, something that helped a lots, listening.

It's kinda controversial, I don't know why, a landmark forum, For some people, that's a cult when it gets three days. It was very powerful for me. And so a mixture of that made things, how to collaborate with people.

How to work, be in alignment, do things a lot more efficiently. Which really probably helped your relationship with Keegan when you finally met him. So you guys were able to effectively create that film.

Yeah, have the vision, communicate. Even though I was a little too clarity, he thought I as FBI. He really thought it was the FBI because he was hardcore at the time and an activist.

He really thought I was an undercover. Central trading is what I thought was trying to set him up. But finally he told me, after we were almost finished the film, he was like, I have to tell you something.

He's like I really think you're not. I'm like oh, that's good. That's interesting. And, you know, with Cowspiracy and even the other films, when you put it out there, did you narrow the impact that it would have?

Did you anticipate some of the controversy, the pushback, or even like the global reach that the film would? It's kind of those, we're in the flow moment.

The Calspirancy, I was so passionate that, yeah, sometimes you get jaded to the information, but I could not believe it. So I play a character in the film, and I was 60 years later, I'm like, oh wow, you know, can't believe this.

When I am interviewing them I really know. But I didn't at the beginning. And I felt that in a correct way that it would create quite a stir. I envisioned it being Netflix, but I did not know if that was possible.

Keegan always reminded me, he's like no you are very confident this would be seen by millions. Like really? Oh yeah, like I wasn't sure. But so, and I think that was important.

It was a determined this will get done, this we'll get seen. I was kind of very, very passionate about that information. And at that time, it's as important that Cowspiracy was actually Cow-spiracy, what the health and if anyone's seen Christ's Spiritsy, all in one film.

So it wasn't just the environmental. it was the ethical side of the equation as well as the Health. as a personal health. It was all of that in one film.

And then where we did test screenings, it was done. We squeezed all that into one show. People said it's too much. You should do three films. I'm like, oh my gosh.

So thankfully it happened. Just took a long time. That fortunately led to Sea Spirit Sea, which is huge for obvious reasons. How many people have watched each of your movies?

Do you know general numbers? No. I mean, I would say as far as views, because a lot of people cross over, over a billion views we estimate. We try to estimate that for the last film we're doing.

It's really hard. Netflix is starting to release numbers, but even they don't. Usually when you watch a movie, either with your family, Or, you know, that's two, three, four, who knows, five, six people.

You're with friends, so they have view count, but that is just one computer or one TV in total. And then it got ripped off on Russia, where they ripped your film off, got it ripped of on YouTube.

I mean, I would say close to a billion maybe, and then also all the little shorts and stuff. But yeah, massive impact as far as conversation, that leading conversation over a billion, I'd say, because even if you hadn't watched the film, each of those were so viral because they're so, you know, controversial, so argumentative on one side or the other.

That's beyond just watching a nine minute film. Almost everyone knew about those, a lot of impact. And with Cowspiracy, what were the most potent things that you found in that film that impacted people?

Well, around you say that because I haven't thought about this for a while, because working on a new film, the first thing that came up, and it's funny, I hadn't even thought of this in a row.

Well it was two things. One was the horses, if you remember the Horses. And Keegan, when I met him, he was working undercover on these massive lands of thousands of acres.

And it's a pretty cool job because you're living in your van and you are filming these incredible wild horses. I didn't even know there were wild horse in America and there's hundreds of thousands of them.

But then it gets really sad because what happens is you see the helicopters come and then they start rounding these wild forces up and slowly it takes for hours.

And so like it is this long thing that you know it can happen and your like please escape. And they don't, and then they get paroled into this, you know, in this tiny thing and they then get broken and most of them get killed.

And that's all for free-range, organic, grass-fed, not factory farm. That's for the best of the, best. So that's why, if you watch Cowspiracy, people say, oh, I watch cowspiracies.

I don't even factory farm meat. You know, like, well, you didn't really watch the film because that was mostly, we talk about the organic and the the of best, so the bi-kill aspect of it.

But I didn' realize the bio-killing. The animals, but the bears, the coyotes, The horses, that, was just, ah, That was really sad for me. And then also learning more about the dairy industry that we really wanted to find the best of the Best of The Dairy Industry, because I knew about The Worst, so the one we found was Clover and Petaluma, and they gave us their best farm.

And I thought it was gonna be kind of nice. Like, I don't know if this is gonna make it in the film. And when we go there, it's a lot of land, but you could immediately feel, you know, we can now test magnetic bio-shields of the heart.

Yeah, heart math. Heart math, which I'm working with Petra in my new show. It's like 10 times of a horse for a human. So we get there and there's about 250, 500 cows.

Right when you get up there like, oh, and this sadness just comes over me. Like, what is that? Like what's going on? And you look up, just thousands, it seems like hundreds of thousand acres, and they had all their crates of their calves.

They faced them the other way. And twice a day, they bring the horses, milk them at like four in the morning. Right when they're done, They go up there.

they go as close as they can to these crutes that are still about a hundred meters away from them, with just enough to hear their cries. So if they hear the cries, their going to still lactate.

And so they're completely depressed. And then they are coming back, and so, they keep lactating as long as they hear their babies. Like, oh my God, this is the most horrific thing.

This is best of the best, of best. That was really sad. So that's why I say it's interesting for health reasons. dairy is hands down the worst, because the domino effect, you have leather, this, that, but then you also have the spiritual level of that.

You're drinking the milk of a depressed massive mammal of some other milk that's supposed to go to her baby. There's a lot of sadness in that fluid, and then of course it affects all these different ways.

So that was a long answer, those two earlier I was ready for making that phone. Yeah, I can feel that heaviness. Mm. Wow. So what inspired you then to move to the oceans, or Sea Spirits?

Well, that was Ali. I mean, Cal Spirse came out. He was only 21 at the time. Yeah, he was 20. And he did this 12-minute thing that Keegan saw called Sea Spirit on YouTube.

It was really, really well done. I think it was 12 minutes as well. 12 Minutes just on the ocean, no story behind it. Just boom, boom boom. Like all these crazy facts.

And you could tell he was a talented editor. We needed help with editing, so we flew him over to help and said, we can help you do a film, make it out.

But he had no idea how to make a story, like a whole story. So my vision with that was always, We're going to make this into the cove, you know, the word coves.

That with Raiders of the Lost Ark. You're gonna go around the world to find every crazy big thing, because we can't just have 90 minutes of, earthlings I love, but I think the visuals just do that because it's so powerful.

People don't want to watch that, that you kind of have to. And he'd always make fun of you because he's always said, yeah, you're such an American storyteller.

It's like there's a reason why Hollywood's Hollywood now. That's not because story is everything. But Allie was really the reason of that. And then the collaboration worked really, really well of the storytelling.

incredible filmmaking and storytelling. I mean, he's all around. He's amazing. Were there things that shocked you that you didn't know before? I was shocked watching Seaspiracy, things I didn' even imagine could be a part of that industry.

It was. Since you said to do for this talk, I hadn't thought about this for a while, Seaspiracy. Because it's always like, what's the next project? So diving deep in this, and you'll see a lot of the talk where I think you saw the slideshow.

going to the parasites and remembering the Scottish farm, because Ali's always checking in with it. And I remember when he was there, he's like, oh, my lord, you are not going believe this.

At that time, there are some videos out of showing fish that are sick and worms coming out them. The word sick doesn't even come justice. But when I saw that, and I thought that's the norm for farm fish, and then learning about parasites and chlamydia, these sexual diseases in there and on and, on, and how beyond horrific that is.

And then one single farm puts out the equivalent waste of 20,000 people in a village. That's how much waste it did. So that was really shocking. If you see that and you're going to still eat fish, like, wow, you are daring.

And then learning, and I was around that time learning about the color code, the colored palette that you get to choose. I want the Color Palette of the Pantomes of this one.

No, let's go with that one for this fish. They do this super toxic coloring that's also bad. So that was bad. But then the slavery labor, I didn't know.

And that comes into, you're talking about the power of the plate, the holistic, like what is true health? What's on your plate? There's also a lot of times human oppression, or human abuse, human deaths involved.

And for the fishing industry, 350,000 lives were lost in just the last 15 years on the fishery industry. And that's only ones that are reported. Right.

In China, there's slave labor, but the fish and boats, supposedly, they're just no comparison. It's the worst of the worse of And that was new to me as well.

I'm very shocking and very, very sad. Very, dangerous. And the last answer on that one is how mafia like and how like drug cartels that wouldn't, you know, oh, people compare things like, Oh, the shipping industry is like the drug Cartels, like oh come on.

and it's like wow, if you look at the whole picture of it, it is actually a lot worse. because the drug cartel doesn't necessarily affect the entire climate.

You know, 93% of the carbon is stored in the ocean. And so this cartels is like ripping out like every single thing you possibly do in one single industry.

So diving from the puns, diving back into seaspiracy and this talk, really opened my eyes again, like, wow, we just need to keep talking about this, you know.

Everyone was talking bout it for a few years, and it seems like the last few year we haven't been, so forth. Yeah, in what ways have you seen that these industries try to shape public opinion, engineer cultural ideas, shape policy?

Well, they have the money to do it. You know, back in the industry, the tobacco industry had the. To do these campaigns, you know the Joe Camel to. Got milk, so they.

that kind of had a glimpse into, you know, they would hire the best marketers. And so that's what they do. They're telling stories, powerful ones. they're twisting things, or taking certain things out.

I was just watching what Kim Williams talked this morning. You know one little study, a hundred come out negative and one that probably funded by the egg industry or whatever.

Oh, let's jump on that. Let's create a story. Then that turns into butter. oh, butter's back. Between that and then oppression, if anyone watched my last film, Christ Spirits, he showed that after, right when What the Health came out, I was followed with a drone outside my window.

I didn't know at the time, but I thought I'd been paranoid for months. And then when I went to the premiere, it was What The Health in New York, and I got ransacked.

So there's scaring techniques and to try to press the information. That along with spinning new tales and new stories and trying to vilify something that divert the attention.

Any doubts all all the things, you know, that's how it do it But I feel now luckily with the internet and AI AI For whatever the negative AI I show a big blessing in the next few years that you're not going to be able to PS things You know before And again, it's even, this question, you know, I don't want to go there, but I just feel the truth is coming out more and more on all these ways.

So thanks to these events, what you're doing, and especially the new chapter of Power of the Plate. I love that so much. Thank you. That's where I feel that things were in a silo before.

It's kind of like my movies were individual. Now that they're all out there. Okay, now let's talk about this whole. And so it is great. Thank you. What's the next, what's in the creative mind of Kip Anderson now?

What is coming? Yeah, Kira kind of unwraps one. I'm done with the Spiritsy series, and I am more into, I not into kind, because I already did, they're doing it wrong, or all the different organizations, kind-of burning bridges, honestly.

And I more in to inspiring and solutions. and because I feel those those yeah and it's kind of like what more needs to be done like and then at this point too with AI and social media you have your activists it kind have already has been out there who's covered up who has to been covered out now it is like okay what do we do so right now I'm working on a project that stay tuned for exactly what it it but it looking at all the toxins from food to our water to hair to clothing to negative thought patterns in this, like all that even toxic relationships, stuff like that, and how to essentially cleanse them without looking at why things are covered up, more look at how can we cleanse each of these.

So food is going to be a big part of it, but not like my other films. It's going be more holistic, talking about meditation and journaling. Ah, that sounds exciting.

I love that. Yeah, holistic. The polar colors. That's right. It's an inspiring view of life, right? Puts the pieces together for people. that's who we are.

We are holistic beings. Yeah, realistic beings, yeah. Like in what true health is, I show body, mind, and spirit in just covering one thing. And that is a harmonization of all the piece of our life.

Right? Yeah. Yeah, and how we interact not only with ourselves, but with others as well. So that's something I've been working on for the last few years, going through this process, so I feel I'm getting more holistically healthy aswell.

I can't wait to see the film. Where can people follow you, learn more about your work, where can they find the films that you've done? Add Cowspiracy or C-spiracy, or what the hell, what health is WTH?

Film, I think. And then add Christspiry or WWJD. Then mine is at Kip Anderson at A-A-N-D-E-R-S-I-EN, at kipanderson. Stay tuned because later in the year we'll be having some exciting stuff.

It's so great. I look forward to that. That's exciting. Last quick question, Khip. Just from a personal standpoint, What inspires you every day when you get up?

When you wake up in And you extend yourself to move into the day to be not only productive, but impactful and loving and empathic. What's the core there that allows you to moving into your day like that?

I just saw a lot of times I don't socialize. I was calling you the other day, I'm sick. A lot times, and I feel great right when I wake up. But every morning before I even get out of bed, I sit up and I do around a 10-minute meditation, and most of it is a gratitude.

And one of my biggest gratitudes is for my family and people I work with, my friends in this. One of them is, for the animals I can serve, and for the beings I see or don't see, I feel the honor and the gratitude of service.

And I fell so grateful that in some way I felt that's helped me out without doing it because of that, but just being grateful I'm allowed to, able to serve.

So let's do it today. I am excited. Then tapping into, especially now for a while I've been into my new projects I have been to. grateful for that, but again, owing that grace, the grace and the gratitude to others that have graced me with finding that purpose and that joy of doing it.

That's beautiful. Thank you. Well, thanks for being with me today, Kip. I really look forward to working together. Yeah, likewise. It's anything I can do to help you, and we've got lots of good work to do.

We're both still relatively young. Got a lot of energy. and a world that needs a lot of help. Just begun, yeah. Speaking of gratitude, I'm grateful for being able to work with people like you, so thank you for what you're doing.

Yeah, thank your kids. Thank you. Blessings to you and your family. I appreciate being here. Thanks a lots. Please visit PlantritionProject.org or Dr.

Scott Stoll for more information.