1KHO 552: Why Sick Soil Means Sick People (And How to Fix Both) | David Montgomery and Anne Bikle, What Your Food Ate

The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast

Ginny Yurich

Parenting, Kids & Family

4.9 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 19 August 2025

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What if the key to reclaiming our health isn’t in a pill bottle, but beneath our feet? In this thought-provoking conversation, Ginny Yurich sits down with David Montgomery and Anne Biklé—renowned authors of The Hidden Half of Nature and What Your Food Ate—to uncover the forgotten connection between soil, farming, and human well-being. Together they reveal why most farmland is “sick,” why pesticides often create more pests instead of fewer, and how earthworms, microbiomes, and even flavor itself hold the blueprint for restoring vitality to our food and our bodies. This episode isn’t just about farming—it’s about us. From the hidden costs of hydroponics to the way ultra-processed foods hijack our natural “body wisdom,” Montgomery and Biklé show how what we eat is inseparably tied to how it was grown. Their message is both sobering and hopeful: if we change the way we treat the land, we can change the way we feel. Packed with science, story, and practical solutions, this conversation will change the way you see every bite of food—and remind you that giving nature even half a chance changes everything. Get your copy of What Your Food Ate here Get your copy of The Hidden Half of Nature here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast.
0:02.3	My name is Ginny Urich.
0:03.2	I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside.
0:04.9	And I have really, really, really been looking forward to this interview.
0:08.7	I am a huge fan of David Montgomery and Ann Bicklay.
0:12.2	They have written some phenomenal books.
0:14.0	They are married and written these books together, which I wonder if that's, is that really hard to do?
0:19.3	Yes and no.
0:21.9	What would be a top challenge?
0:26.0	It's not spelling.
0:27.7	It would be just like anything, Jenny.
0:32.7	You don't have to be married to somebody to go, that idea sucks or that idea is the best thing I have ever heard.
0:40.1	I wish I had come up with it. Yeah, the secret really is, I think, like with a lot of things in
0:45.1	marriage where if one of you thinks something is wrong, it needs to change and get better.
0:50.2	But what a thing. What a thing that you have done this. And I would imagine it's pretty bonding to have these really cool books out in the world.
0:57.0	So we've talked about the hidden half of nature, which is a phenomenal book.
1:01.2	The way it's written and the relating between the soil but also our microbiome, you learn so much.
1:08.9	It's one of my favorite books I've ever read. The hidden half of nature, The Microbial Roots of Life and Health. We're going to be talking about
1:14.8	today is your newest book as of now, but you have a new book coming out next year about
1:18.9	regenerative agriculture. This is called What Your Food ate, How to Heal Our Land, and Reclaim
1:25.1	Our Health. Just another home run. It's a phenomenal writing. Could you
1:28.9	get people just a little bit of a background so they would know like, how did this married couple
	...

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