Welcome to the Commune Podcast. My name is Jeff Krasno.

As we enter our sixth year of the Commune podcast, we are re-releasing some of our most popular interviews with teachers who now have full-length courses

on the commune course platform. So this interview from 2021 was the first in a series of

conversations I had with Dr. Zach Bush. And this, of course, was right in the shadow of the

pandemic. But Zach is trained as a physician specializing in internal medicine, endocrinology, and hospice care.

But his passions and interests really cover a wide array of interrelated topics.

He is an influential and respected educator on the microbiome and its relationship to health,

disease, and food systems.

Zach is also an expert on soil, ecology, and water systems, and their connection to genomics,

immunity, and brain health.

And he is steeped in the systemic shortcomings of industrial agriculture and the pharmaceutical

industry.

So there are a lot of disease specialists and functional medicine doctors out there with

expertise in gut health or intestinal permeability.

There are skilled nutritionists and diet experts.

There are immunologists and endocrinologists.

There are brilliant ecologists and regenerative farming advocates and authorities.

But Zach is unique in that he weaves all of these connected yet disparate fields

into an integrated understanding and vision for human and environmental well-being.

As you will soon hear, he both zooms in and zooms out, and in so doing, opens the aperture

of how we may live spiritually rich healthy lives in regenerative harmony with nature.

Zach sometimes has controversial ideas.

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