All language subtitles for Pistachio.Wars.2024.720p.WEBRip.x264.AAC-[YTS.GG - YTS.BZ]

Downloaded from
YTS.BZ

Official YIFY movies site:
YTS.BZ

[light buzzing]

[traffic humming]

[Yasha] Should we,
like, ring the doorbell?

[intercom ringing]

-[staff member] Hello?
-Yeah. Hi.

My name is Yasha Levine.

I'm a co-director of a documentary
about water in California.

[staff member] Uh-huh.

I'm wondering if I can get in touch

with Lynda Resnick in some capacity here

to ask her about the water and the drought

and some of her work in Lost Hills.

I've been trying to get in touch with her

through her company,
but I've had no success there,

so I'm just...

[staff member] Okay.
Hold on for a moment.

Sure.

[intercom ringing]

Hello.

How's it going?

-How are you?
-[security speaking indistinctly]

Sorry, I can't hear you.

Can you ask him just to stop filming?

He wants you to stop filming.

Um, I was trying to...

I was talking to a young lady
that keeps cutting out.

So I was trying to ask her
how I can get in touch with Lynda Resnick,

because we're making a documentary
about water in California.

I was trying to get in touch with her.

The best person to talk to
is corporate offices.

-Okay.
-If you have a number,

I can give you the...

[Yasha] Behind these gates
is one of the biggest mansions

in Beverly Hills.

The people who live here
aren't movie stars

or Hollywood moguls.

They're farmers.
The biggest in California.

They're the ones
who make those crazy pistachio ads.

[cracking]

Pistachio.

[tense sting]

[Yasha] What am I doing here
outside their house?

That's a long story. So let me back up.

-[audio winding]
-[lively music]

My name's Yasha Levine.

I was born in the Soviet Union,
in Leningrad.

[lively music]

My parents always hated the Soviet system.

They wanted to get us out
any way they could.

[lively music]

After spending time
in refugee camps in Europe,

we ended up in San Francisco.

[lively music]

Arriving here as an immigrant kid
after living in Russia,

what I remember most
was a sense of abundance.

[lively music]

I grew up thinking
California was a paradise.

[mellow music]

It wasn't until years later
when I started working as a journalist

that my ideas about this place
started to change.

[ominous music]

In 2009, I was chasing down a story

that took me
to the edge of California.

Victorville, a suburb way out
in the middle of nowhere

in the Mojave Desert.

During the real estate boom years,

Victorville was one of the
fastest-growing cities in America,

a desolate, endless sprawl
of some of the cheapest homes

that money could buy.

[ominous music]

It was right after
the 2008 Wall Street crash.

It felt like a zombie apocalypse
had swept through town.

[ominous music]

I had moved there to investigate
the housing bubble,

but I stumbled in another strange story.

Victorville had expanded
so fast during the boom

that it ran out of water.

[ominous music]

To keep feeding the growth,

the city turned
to a shadowy private market.

It was buying water from a wealthy farmer

who lived hundreds of miles away,

all the way north in Silicon Valley.

The deals were worth millions

and they were being funneled through
a privately owned water bank.

As I dug into the details,

I realized that this was much bigger
than just Victorville.

It turned out that a small group
of powerful families

had seized control
of California's water supply.

Even weirder was that
the whole thing was being driven

by a pair of high-society
billionaires from Beverly Hills.

-[people chattering]
-[camera shutters clicking]

They made their money off pistachios.

-[bag pops]
-[mellow music]

But what really made them stand out

was that they owned more water
than anyone else on the planet.

[mellow music]

Maybe it's because I moved here as a kid,

but I still had an idealized view
of California.

This wasn't supposed to be
the kind of place

where a pair of billionaires
could buy up the water supply.

♪ I love you, California ♪

[Yasha] So I roped in a filmmaker friend

and we set out to tell their story.

[ominous music]

[ominous music]

When we started filming,

California was in the middle
of its worst drought in history.

There were fires in the Hollywood Hills.

It hadn't been this dry
in over a thousand years.

We figured the best way to tell this story
was to take a road trip.

So we packed up the car
and headed north out of Los Angeles.

[tense music]

When you think about wealth in California,

you think Silicon Valley and Hollywood.

No one thinks about the Central Valley.

A flat and desolate landscape,

carved up into never-ending farms
and feed lots.

[ominous music]

It's a part of California
no one wants to visit,

much less pay any real attention to,

and that suits the people
who own everything out here just fine.

[ominous music]

[ominous music continues]

After about two hours on the road,

we pulled off the main highway

and headed for the west side
of the Valley.

[tense music]

From the road,
this place looks like nothing,

but we're actually driving through
the largest farm in America.

[ominous music]

Even with a drone,
you can only capture small sections of it.

It covers an area
10 times the size of Manhattan,

mostly with almonds and pistachios.

And the whole thing
belongs to just two people.

Stewart and Lynda Resnick.

If you see them out in public,

it's probably gonna be
on the red carpet in LA.

There's a whole wing with their name on it
at the city's art museum.

[tense music]

They're billionaires many times over.

They live in the biggest, ritziest mansion
on Sunset Boulevard,

famous for its celebrity parties.

-[upbeat music]
-[people chattering]

Driving around this dusty backwater,

you have to wonder,
how did two Beverly Hills types

end up out here
as America's biggest farmers?

Well, it's actually a love story
that goes back 50 years.

[mellow music]

Stewart came to California
from New Jersey.

He says he grew up poor.

That's the way I worked
my way through college,

was cleaning windows
in park La Brea Towers.

[Yasha] He managed to flip a janitorial
business he started in college

for millions of dollars.

Then he opened up a private security firm

and quickly built it
into the largest in LA.

He had 3,000 armed agents

and a former chief of police
on his payroll.

-[engine roaring]
-[tense music]

In the 1970s,

his company was running security
at LA's main airport.

It was all going great

right up until his guards got busted
smuggling blocks of pure heroin.

[tense music]

The FBI said the company
was linked to organized crime.

[tense music]

None of the charges ever stuck to Stewart,

but he has hinted in interviews
that he grew up around the Mob.

Lynda was born in Philly,
but she grew up in Hollywood.

Her father was a movie producer,

famous for making a 1950s cult hit

The Blob.

[announcer] Every one of you
watching this screen, look out.

The most horrifying monster menace
ever conceived

will be oozing into this theater.

-[tense music]
-[group screaming]

On our fifth date, I confessed to Stewart

that I once xeroxed
some top-secret papers.

He didn't believe me.

But he did believe me months later

when the FBI came to the house
armed with a subpoena

to appear before the grand jury
the next morning.

[Yasha] In the '60s,
Lynda hung out in radical circles.

I owned an A12 copier

that Daniel Ellsberg used
to copy the Pentagon Papers.

[sparse applause]

[Yasha] She likes to talk up
her counterculture cred,

but really, she was always
more of a marketing person.

She started her own agency
at the age of 19, Lynda Limited.

That's how she and Stewart
first got together.

Well, we met because
I had an advertising agency

and I was pitching his account,
so to speak.

He didn't give me the account,
but he sure gave me the business.

[audience laughing]

[mellow music]

[Yasha] After they got married,
with Stewart's money,

they started buying up companies.

The sorts of places Lynda could juice up
with her marketing skills,

mostly trinkets and tacky gifts.

[ominous music]

They got into farming almost by accident,

first buying up land as a hedge
against inflation in the 1970s.

As they were picking up land,

they also picked up another company,
Paramount Farms.

And just like that,
they were in the agriculture business.

[tense music]

[narrator] The wagons
came in a rush then

as the lure of gold drew them

with promise of great and sudden wealth.

[Yasha] Farming in California
goes right back to the Gold Rush.

It was a land grab and a free-for-all.

[ominous music]

California's first big cattle baron,
Henry Miller,

built an empire
the length of the state.

In large part
by using corrupt courts and fraud.

[ominous music]

Even a century ago,

farm families had mansions
in San Francisco and Oakland.

They lived like a new aristocracy,

socializing among themselves
and intermarrying.

Farmers owned banks and railroads.

They sat on the boards
of major corporations.

It's always been a conservative

and almost exclusively Anglo world.

For generations, these farmers
had mostly kept to themselves,

operating in the background.

That is until the Resnicks arrived.

[suspenseful music]

[Lynda] "Rubies in the Orchard"
will show you

how to discover the intrinsic rubies

in your metaphorical orchard,
in your business, your cause,

and even if the brand is you.

[suspenseful music]

[Yasha] The thing
that set the Resnicks apart

was Lynda's background in marketing.

They took whatever crops
were growing on their land

and turned them into high-end products.

Stewart was very much
into this pomegranate idea.

I wrote these letters on a piece of paper

and I said,
"Here's the name of your product."

And that was like divine intervention.

[Yasha] Their first big hit
was a pomegranate juice.

They used their LA connections
to get celebrity endorsements,

and the product took off.

-Pomtini.
-Yes.

So we fill our...
One and a half ounces of vodka.

Yeah.

[Yasha] They hit upon a formula
that was actually pretty simple.

Take a dull snack food and launch it
with a huge ad campaign.

["Gangnam Style" by PSY]

♪ Gangnam style ♪

♪ Crack, crack, crack, crack ♪

♪ Cracking Gangnam style ♪

♪ Eh-eh-eh, eh-eh-eh ♪

♪ Gangnam style ♪

[Yasha] Before the Resnicks,

people barely ate these things in America.

♪ Eh-eh-eh, eh-eh-eh ♪

[thud]

[Yasha] Now they're
in every supermarket.

Folks, evidently, sales of pistachios
have not skyrocketed

in the last 30 seconds
due to a lack of branding.

Well, let's take care of that.

Pistachio, pistachio, wait for it.

[cracking]

Pistachio.

[tense sting]

[ominous music]

[Yasha] The marketing was such a hit,
it triggered a boom.

Farmers all over the Valley
followed their lead

and planted pistachios.

You know, it's just luck and privilege

that I'm able to do this.

[Yasha] As they went
from multimillionaires to billionaires,

the Resnicks climbed the social ladder.

So I realized that that is my obligation

as a human being on this planet,
to give back as much as I can.

[audience applauding]

[Yasha] They brought all
their products under one brand

and called it The Wonderful Company.

We believe that we can do well
by doing good.

[Yasha] They started to market
their company and themselves

as a new way of doing business.

[lively music]

We started in a little town
called Lost Hills,

2,500 people, 41% of the households
work for our company,

one of our companies
out there in the Valley and...

[Yasha] They like to highlight
their work in Lost Hills,

a small, impoverished town populated
mostly by the company's own workers.

[man] I was contacted by Lynda.

You could tell at the beginning
of the phone call,

she was ready to change
the Central Valley.

She wanted to change
the quality of life in Lost Hills.

[Lynda] I had reached a moment in my life

where I had to give back
in a meaningful way.

[lively music]

I did not name the town. [chuckling]

But I couldn't have picked
a more cinematic name

than Lost Hills
because it's so much fun to say

that Lost Hills has been found.

[children chattering]

[ominous music]

[Yasha] The town is way out
on the western edge of the Valley,

north of the company's fields.

Besides a truck stop off the highway,

it's miles away from anywhere.

[ominous music]

As you drive in from the south,
the place doesn't look so bad.

There's a nicely renovated promenade

leading up
to a park in the center of town.

-[water pattering]
-[children chattering]

We were meeting a local health worker

who had agreed to show us around.

-There were spec monitors.
-Yeah, and you can

almost even see it on the map now.

It wasn't long before someone
from the company turned up,

wanting to know what was going on.

I'm Dr. Rosanna Esparza. Who are you?

I'm [speaks faintly].

-Oh, nice to meet you.
-Nice to meet you.

We have community meetings
here all the time.

She was here for a number of years.

Do you mind if we not film this?

Do you have permission...

'Cause this is a commercial
documentary you're making.

Do you have permission
from the county to be out here?

-[Rosanna] Mm-hmm.
-Do you mind

-if I see the permits?
-[Rosanna] Do you have a card?

[Yasha] If you take a deeper look
around this town,

it's clear why the company gets nervous
about people with cameras.

Once you get off the main drag,

the place looks nothing
like their corporate PR.

There's no infrastructure here,
so there's no bank,

there's no libraries,

there's no pharmacy.

I could go on and on
and list everything that is not.

[Yasha] Rosanna grew up
out here in California.

After she got her PhD,

she came back to work in the community.

Hello.

[Yasha] Do people know you around here?

Oh, not really.
I mean, I come to do the health surveys

and I come and I ask people
to participate in our monthly meetings,

trying to familiarize them with me.

Do you drink the water here
out of the faucet?

Yeah, and you don't think
it tastes funny or anything?

-I drink soda.
-[Yasha] You drink soda only?

What's your favorite soda?

[child] Dr. Pepper.

[Rosanna] You drink water too?

[Yasha] The Central Valley is one
of the poorest places in America

and Lost Hills is poor,

even by the standards
of the Central Valley.

There really is nothing here.

The town center is just the intersection
of two busy highways.

[ominous music]

If you drive past
the spruced-up promenade,

you hit an oil field and a refinery.

[ominous music]

It was the site of one
of the biggest well blowouts in history.

A giant gas fire
that took two weeks to put out.

[indistinct radio chatter]

The fumes from the oil refinery
add to air quality problems here.

Number three, this one,
we're getting a lot of benzene,

benzene and ethyl benzene.

[Rosanna in Spanish] These young men
are making a movie.

[in English] Forty years she's lived here.

[in Spanish] At first, I worked
15 years in the pistachio fields.

[Rosanna in Spanish] Was it at Paramount
pistachios and almonds? Or...

Yes, it was almonds and pistachios.

But because I'm living here, I get asthma.

They say that it's the soil,
that there's something in the air.

Did you ever have problems
with your "thyoritis"?

Thyroids?

They removed it because I had a growth.

[Rosanna in English]
We have someone else joining us.

[woman in Spanish] Come in!

[Rosanna in Spanish]
We are here with our friends.

-[Rosanna] Asthma?
-Headaches. Always the headaches.

[Rosanna in English] Always a headache.

[Yasha in English] What, do they spray
from an airplane or...?

[in Spanish] Sometimes from a plane.

It depends on what kind of spray
they want to use.

Well, yeah. I have all
the diseases in the world.

[group chuckling]

[Yasha] As we talked to more people,

we found that the other big issue here

is that the tap water is undrinkable.

[in Spanish] Yes, well, it seems like
they put a lot of chemicals in it

so you can't just drink the water easily,

unless it's an emergency.

That's why we don't drink it.

Is there anyone in the bathroom, Martha?

They're in new condition... from here.

But see what the water is doing, look.

The faucet is rotten.

[Yasha] People said
it rotted their pipes

and gave their children skin problems.

Anything the water touched built up
a weird chemical residue.

[rooster crowing]

[in Spanish] This one,
the motor just stopped working.

Look, it got all tangled up.

Look at how it's already building up,
all that... all that stuff.

Like I was saying, here it's already
beginning to expel this... this thing.

It's this, look.

If they could examine this,
they would notice that like over there

it turned to salt.

[chickens clucking]

[Rosanna] Did this happen
to any of your other children?

[man] He's been scratching it,
and the more he scratches it...

I think this problem
is because of the water.

It starts off with a little speck,
and he keeps scratching it.

But we put...
and we took him to the doctor.

[Yasha] The problem
began a few years back

when the town started using a new system

to treat unsafe levels of arsenic
in the water.

[Yasha] Do you remember
when you were younger,

that people drank from the tap?

Yeah, I used to drink
from the tap water.

When did it change?

-When?
-Yeah.

Probably about,
maybe like five years ago.

I mean, people still do it,

but it's just their choice, you know?

[Yasha] The day we came through,

Rosanna was helping residents
take their complaints

to the local water board.

Give you a breakdown of it.
It's your responsibility.

No, but you just came in

-and told us.
-I did.

And it disagrees with what
our people are telling us.

-Of course it disagrees with you.
-It's not of course.

-Of course it disagrees with you.
-We would like to see if it does.

This is your report.

We're looking to see if you're accurate
in your reading of it.

I am telling you,
you cannot have disinfect--

He's telling you just the opposite.

You cannot have disinfectants
in your water

without there being some type of buildup.

Well, any disinfectant in our water,

the government is requiring us
to put it in.

And why is that?

The government is telling us to do that.

Why are your disinfectant levels
as high as they are?

Apparently, they're not.

Apparently, they are,

because that's
what's causing your overall problem.

[man] I don't think
you can make that statement.

But thank you very much.
We're gonna look into that.

We'll pull that report out

and see if it's accurate,
what you're saying.

[Yasha] The meetings
were being run from the floor

by an out-of-town lawyer.

No one wanted to acknowledge
there was a problem,

but you could see it in
The Wonderful Company's park.

Even the playground
they built right across the road

got taken out by the corrosive water.

[ominous music]

All the cosmetic improvements in Lost
Hills made for great PR,

but for the underlying problems,
nothing really changed.

If anything, Lost Hills was run more like
an old company town.

[ominous music]

Farms in the area were making billions
for The Wonderful Company,

but there was no real local wealth.

All the money was sucked out
to Beverly Hills.

[suspenseful music]

To add to the cruel irony,

when you leave town,
you drive over an aqueduct full of water,

fresh from the mountains.

But it's not piped in
for towns like Lost Hills.

[tranquil music]

[narrator]Often called the Golden State,

the real gold of California

is not the yellow metal out of the earth.

Infinitely more valuable is the clean,
fresh water that falls from the sky,

for fresh water is the white gold
of the great Central Valley.

[Yasha] In California, most of the water
comes from the north.

It falls as snow in the mountains.

[suspenseful music]

In spring, the snow melts,
swelling the rivers.

[suspenseful music]

Under the natural pattern,
for much of the year,

the Valley was a floodplain
teeming with life.

[suspenseful music]

But by summer, it was bone dry.

[suspenseful music]

Early farmers built dams and levees,

but the technology for managing
water was relatively simple.

Unless you owned land near a river,

there was no year-round supply.

[lively music]

The invention of the centrifugal
pump changed all that.

[mellow music]

Farmers spread out
into the driest parts of the state.

For the first time, California
became the bread basket of America.

[mellow music]

[narrator] However, continued pumping

without replenishment
of the underground reservoir

is known as mining water.

[suspenseful music]

[Yasha] The water they were pumping

had been collecting underground
for thousands of years.

They drained it
within a matter of decades.

[reporter] Millions of acres
and a million people in this valley

depend on a supply of fresh water.

[suspenseful music]

[Yasha] California's big farmers

needed a new source of water
to keep expanding.

Lucky for them, the government
came in to bail them out.

[mellow music]

Under the New Deal,

a massive public program
of dam building began.

[reporter] A colossal dam will be built,

rising higher
than the Washington Monument,

the highest overflow
type of dam in the world.

Plenty of water falls and flows,

but in the wrong places.

[Yasha] Within just a few decades,

every major and minor river was dammed

with water diverted into concrete canals

that crisscrossed the state.

[reporter] Precise water control is vital

in operating an aqueduct.

[suspenseful music]

[Yasha] California's rivers were turned
into a technological system.

A computer-controlled environment

where water could be turned on or off

moved hundreds of miles
at the push of a button.

[suspenseful music]

It was the biggest network
of aqueducts in the world.

[reporter] History will bear out

how we fulfilled our obligations
to the future.

Not an easy task in a world
strained by many things.

[lively music]

The population of this arid land

has doubled since 1950,
and now shows signs of tripling.

[suspenseful music]

[Yasha] The development
of these dams and aqueducts

was always sold as being necessary

for California's growing population.

[suspenseful music]

But in reality,

only a fraction of the water
ever made it to the cities.

Most of it went to a small
clique of corporate farmers

who grew crops for export.

[suspenseful music]

[ominous music]

Over the course of the century,

the Central Valley was converted
from a lush natural habitat

into a high-tech agricultural wasteland.

These days, it's a dumping
ground for all the things

that the rest of the state
would rather keep out of sight.

The place is littered with oil wells,

prisons, and garbage pits.

It's an inhospitable dead zone.

[ominous music]

Driving around, it feels more like one

of Elon Musk's Mars colonies
than any sort of farm.

It's not really what
you imagine when you think

of California with its green image
and organic produce.

[ominous music]

We were following Rosanna

as she did environmental work
around the Valley.

She set up a small event
overlooking an oil field

to raise awareness about water pollution.

We're not trying to shut anybody down.

We're trying to bring awareness
and education to the community.

[Yasha] We arrived just
as she was being swamped

by oil industry people.

-Would you like some information?
-I'm okay.

-I got it.
-Oh, okay.

California has decided that fracking

-can be done safely, okay?
-[Rosanna] The CCST Report,

-sir, did not say that.
-Very clear about that.

It's very clear about that.
So let's just be clear.

[man] It's been done safely for 60 years.

-That's right.
-Show me the dead bodies, lady.

Show me the dead bodies.
Put a name on it.

[Rosanna]
Would you like some information,

so you can be more clear in your facts?

Nothing I like better
than reading drivel and lies.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Thanks for coming out too. Appreciate it.

[Rosanna] You guys, don't be so upset.

When anybody like you
wants to run my life,

-I get upset.
-You are being aggressive

-in your language.
-Nobody's running your life.

-You're trying to.
-If you'd like to work

in the oil industry,
that's your right.

I have a right to be an environmentalist.

Yeah, you can be as stupid as you want.

And you have that privilege.

If you could move out of the way
and let us have an opportunity.

We didn't get in your guys' way,
so that'd be great.

Thank you.

Columbia and Venezuela,
we're talking about countries

that we fight billion-dollar
cocaine wars with, okay?

We're talking about countries
that suppress women and gays

and every time you stop
an oil project here,

you are supporting that.

I know that you don't believe that,

but that is exactly what is happening.

[people chattering]

[ominous music]

[Yasha] Oil is the other
big industry out here.

In most places, it's been around
longer than farming.

When the Resnicks
were first buying up land,

a lot of it came from oil companies,

Mobil and Chevron.

Their farms sit right
on top of an active oil field.

[whirring]

You can see oil derricks everywhere,

some of them
right in the middle of orchards.

[derrick whirring]

All this drilled-out land was
going cheap back in the 1970s.

Now it's where The Wonderful Company
grows its healthy snacks.

What I'm checking here,

I always check these almonds right here,

because here
they had the big drilling pit.

And when these almonds get a little bigger

and their roots go a little deeper,

they're gonna be in this waste
from drilling these wells,

which is buried right here.

-But I'm waiting to see.
-[Yasha] Are you telling me that

he grew carrots and potatoes
right in the...

-Yeah, right here.
-...waste earth

that they were dugging up
from the oil well?

They were dumping
everything into these pits,

'cause nobody's watching.

That's all buried right here.

They were caught doing that
'cause I took a video of them.

[Yasha] This is Tom Frantz,
a local almond farmer.

He's showing us where he caught

a company dumping fracking waste

in the middle of an orchard.

There was no cleanup order.

Every one of these wells
you see had a pit like that

where that stuff is buried
now just under the surface.

[Yasha] Tom's a rare character
for these parts.

There aren't many people here

who speak out about the oil industry.

They drain it down into
this first pond right here.

And there's a lot of oil in there still.

So then they take water from
underneath, the oil's on top.

When it rains up in here,

that gully is like a flash flood,

and all this contamination
gets washed

all the way down to Poso Creek.

We don't know what toxic chemicals

might be in this wastewater.

We know it's very salty.
We know there's still oil in it.

[Yasha] Oil companies
dump their wastewater

in isolated spots all over the Valley.

It mostly just sits there,
leaching into the ground.

It's expensive to get rid of it.

It's always been a problem
for the industry.

[ominous music]

Tom took us to a larger set
of pools run by Chevron.

As we drove up,

we could smell the petroleum
wafting in the air.

[ominous music]

These pits didn't look quite as foul

as some of the smaller ones.

That's because Chevron was
preparing the water for farm use.

The filtration we understand
is some walnut shells,

about 8 to 10 miles upstream of here,

where the water's coming by a pipeline.

You see the crud floating.

It's several hundred
thousand gallons per minute.

Letting it flow like this
by gravity to some farmers

who are desperate for water

is really a money-saving
enterprise for Chevron.

[Yasha] For the last 20 years,

Chevron has been dumping its wastewater
into irrigation canals

and bizarrely marketing
the whole thing as a recycling initiative.

[man 1] Most oil fields produce water

as a byproduct or a waste product.

Chevron in the Kern River field
takes that water, conditions it,

and brings it into agricultural use.

[man 2] I've always felt
that we could feed the world

if they would allow us enough water.

They do care.
Chevron has stepped up to the plate,

not just with words, but with actions.

And we're really happy that they're here.

[mellow music]

[Yasha] We wanted to see
who was using this water,

so we traced the canal all the way down
to a pumping station.

[ominous music]

All around us were orchards
owned by The Wonderful Company.

Not only were their farms
right on top of an oil field,

it turned out they were using
oil wastewater

to irrigate their crops.

[suspenseful music]

News about this got out
just as we were filming

and it blew up as a minor scandal.

[protesters] Don't pollute our fruit!

[protesters clapping]

Don't pollute our fruit!

[Yasha] People protested
at the company's headquarters,

but they brushed it off
and insisted it was all perfectly safe.

[protesters] Don't pollute our fruit!

[Yasha] The story eventually disappeared

into the news cycle.

[ominous music]

Once you know how things work out here,

it's not that surprising that farmers

would be irrigating with oil waste.

You can see the promise of this place.

It's a vast, expansive land,
perfect for farming.

The only thing holding back business

is access
to a steady supply of water.

No one's paying attention
to what you do out here,

so you grow with whatever you can get.

-[engine roaring]
-[leaves rustling]

The thing about pistachios,

it takes a lot of water to grow them.

By the time they make it to harvest,

every pound of pistachios
has used over a thousand gallons.

And the trees need a constant
supply of water to survive.

If you hit a dry year,

you have to rip out
your orchard and start again.

The Resnicks learned this
the hard way back in the 1980s.

California was hit by a major drought

and the state simply cut off their supply.

[ominous music]

This happened just as their
new ag business was taking off.

They realized how dependent they were

on government-supplied water.

[ominous music]

By the 1970s,

California's water system
was so heavily built out,

the states started running out
of rivers to dam,

so they looked for other ways
to store water.

South of the Resnick's fields,

just off the highway,
you can find one of those projects.

It's a giant natural aquifer
developed into a water bank.

In wet years, water from
the aqueducts and local rivers

is pumped here and stored underground.

It can hold enough water to supply
Los Angeles for a year.

[ominous music]

It was intended to protect cities
in the event of a drought,

but for the Resnicks,
the bank was a prime target.

In the '90s, they lobbied to privatize it.

[ominous music]

It all happened in a backroom deal

and they got it for basically nothing.

At the same time, they rewrote the rules
for water in California,

allowing it to be sold on open markets
like any other commodity.

That water deal
that I came across in Victorville,

the one that got me started
on this whole story,

it came from here.

[eerie music]

Controlling the bank

allowed them to expand
their orchards on a massive scale.

As they expanded,

the amount of water
they controlled also grew.

Today, their farms use more water

than California's biggest cities.

In a single year,

enough to supply
San Francisco for a decade.

[ominous music]

These days, the Resnicks' stake
in the water bank alone

is worth around a billion dollars.

[suspenseful music]

From the water bank,
we drove up north.

After a few hours, we arrived
at a place known as the Delta.

It's where California's
biggest rivers meet

before they flow out into
the San Francisco Bay.

[suspenseful music]

Compared to the South,
it's green and full of life,

a patchwork of rivers and small farms.

[mellow music]

All the water that feeds
California's aqueducts

is pumped out of here.

What used to be
a free-flowing river estuary

is now a heavily managed
network of canals.

[reporter] The salmon
and steelhead come on their way

to ancestral spawning grounds.

The migrants, guided by
a rack that blocks the river,

ascend the fish ladder,
which leads to a holding pond.

[Yasha] As they modified the rivers,

all sorts of high-tech systems
were put in place to help the fish,

but it doesn't take a genius

to see they were doomed to fail.

[reporter] In specially refrigerated
and aerated trucks,

the fingerlings are hauled downstream

and released a safe distance
from the intake.

[Yasha] Since the aqueducts
were built in the 1970s,

fish populations
have dropped to near zero.

[ominous music]

The whole area is on the verge
of a mass extinction.

[ominous music]

[birds chirping]

Even in parts of the Delta
that have been preserved,

there's an eerie calm.

[engine rumbling]

Just a generation ago, people
talked about flocks of birds

that blacked out the sky.

It used to be one of the best
fishing spots in the country.

Now it's basically a dead zone.

[ominous music]

In spite of all the problems,

there's a longstanding plan
to expand the aqueducts.

Two giant tunnels that would grab one
of the rivers feeding the Delta

and funnel it directly south.

[ominous music]

Environmental groups here
said the Resnicks

were behind a new effort
to push the tunnels through.

Stewart Resnick,
through Paramount Farms,

created a group called
Californians for Water Security.

They are the marketing umbrella

for the Delta Tunnels project
to the rest of the state.

Basically, what they did was
they put together a coalition

of special money interests
to do focus group messaging

on how to sell the tunnels to people.

[Yasha] As well as a big PR campaign,

the Resnicks called in
favors from a senator

to try and bury reports on the project's
environmental impacts.

-[rattling]
-[actor whistles]

The thing is,

the less fresh water
you have flowing through the Delta,

the more ocean water creeps in.

The whole area gets turned into
a dead salty marsh.

Trying to get you some really
good ones here in the shade.

[Yasha] Jerry's family
has been farming here for generations.

When we were younger,
we used to carry a salt shaker

around with us in our pickup all the time.

You get hungry,
just stop and get a couple.

But we're in a struggle now
for a commodity that's short,

and it's water.

And either they win and we go broke

or we win and they have to contract
the size of these operations.

Trouble is, they take
our water away, we're done,

'cause they're still gonna
get what little water

or as much water as they can,

they'll still be able to grow with it.

But if we end up with water
that's 10 times saltier

than it is now, we can't grow
this kind of crop down here.

When somebody's down there

who can call up the senator on the phone

and say, "We need more water down here."

And then the senator calls up the bureau

and says, "What can you do to
get more water down there?"

"Send me four tickets to your
$25,000-a-plate fundraiser."

[John] That's true.

[Yasha] You've never been invited?

No. Not yet.

You know, those guys,

you're talking about
Paramount Farms and Resnick.

Paramount Farms sound like farmers,

but those people aren't farmers.

They're in it for the scalping
what they can now

and two or three generations from now,
they could care less.

You know, that's the way it is.

This is pretty much family farming
up here in Northern California.

[eerie music]

[Yasha] It's not the first time
in California's history

that a small farming region
got screwed over for its water.

The whole story is a straight rerun

of California's most infamous water heist.

[ominous music]

[ominous music continues]

If you drive up into the
Sierra Nevada mountains

and follow the river down,
you'll find the Owens Valley.

[ominous music]

At the turn of the last century,

there was a big pristine lake here.

[ominous music]

Today, it's completely drained,

a toxic stain on the landscape.

[ominous music]

In the early 1900s,

the population of Los Angeles
was exploding,

doubling every couple of years.

[lively music]

There was plenty of land,
but the developers needed water.

They set their sights on the Owens Valley

and lobbied to fund
construction of the LA Aqueduct.

[lively music]

[lively music]

Today the Owens River winds
through barren, abandoned farmland.

Its water owned by suburbs
hundreds of miles away.

[ominous music]

[ominous music continues]

[ominous music continues]

The Owens Valley was drained
to feed LA's suburban sprawl.

Now The Wonderful Company

is trying to destroy
the biggest river estuary

on the West Coast of America,

all to feed a snack food bubble.

[ominous music]

We wanted to get the Resnicks,

or at least someone from the company

on camera to answer some questions.

Yeah. Hi, how's it going?

My name is Yasha Levine.

I'm the co-director of a documentary
about water in California.

I've been trying to get
in touch with someone

from The Wonderful Company.

We had been putting out
calls and emails for months.

Just got redirected.

Since we were back in LA,

we decided to try just turning up
at their office.

Ready?

[people chattering]

Hey, how's it going?

Who's this guy?

Oh, he's just the operator.

We're making a documentary
about water in California

and so just trying to get in touch
with The Wonderful Company.

What I suggest is you go online

and get the information
for the person you need to talk to.

Yep.

And make an appointment,
and then they would see you.

Unfortunately, I've been trying
to do that for the past couple weeks.

It's pretty much impossible
to get in touch with them.

That's the process.
We can't do anything for you.

-But this is their building, right?
-Yeah. This is the building.

Yeah, and so you nothing you can...

No one you can call down from...

You have a card
I can pass information on?

[Yasha] Short of trying to get arrested
in some kind of stunt,

we weren't gonna get any closer than this.

[ominous music]

The reality is that unless
you're doing a puff piece,

there's no way to get to these people.

[intercom ringing]

Hello, I'm Lynda Resnick,

and today we're talking
about making a difference.

[Yasha] There's endless interviews

where they talk about their marketing

and their philanthropy.

My passion today is giving back

and I think the thing
that excites me the most

is the philanthropy that we do.

[Yasha] But no one ever
gets to ask them about

how they managed to grab enough water
to supply this whole city.

[ominous music]

It's hard to fully grasp
what private control

of California's water supply really means.

But when we traveled to a small town

hit hard by the drought,

we found a version
of the bigger story playing out

on a local level.

[suspenseful music]

East Porterville is a small town
on the east side of the Valley

in the foothills
of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

As the drought peaked
all over town, the wells went dry.

People were living off makeshift tanks
for bathing and cleaning.

[ominous music]

We met up with Donna,
a local who was organizing deliveries

of donated bottled water.

It was a miserable situation.

A lot of people barely had any support.

So this is the water
that you have to work with.

This is the house water?

-Mm-hmm.
-Instead of the tap?

I don't wanna do nothing
because I don't have water.

And, yes, I wanna live.
I don't wanna clean...

How can I clean my house? How?

-Yeah.
-Just with this water or...

-[bird cooing]
-[ominous music]

-[woman] Juana?
-Hmm?

Do you have a knife or something
that you get the thing open?

Open this. Do you have
something to stick over?

I know I have to have
a knife to open ours.

-These are heavy.
-Can I help you out?

[water burbling]

Let's get a couple more in there.

As we did the rounds with Donna,

we saw how many people were affected.

Over a thousand homes
had lost access to running water.

[Donna] Like I said,
she's the oldest member

-of our Out of Water Club.
-She has been my angel.

I swear to God.

She... I don't know
what I would've done without her.

[Yasha] Yeah. When
did you run out of water?

Well, I was real upset

because I've never been alone, you know,

without anything like that.

And it was hard, you know?

But she came right in

and did it.

Most of all, taking a bath every night,

I miss that terribly, so.

And then having to wash
my hair once a week.

I watched her struggle so much.

She was always so sweet

and she kept trying to keep all her trees

and her plants alive
and then a lot of them died.

And one day, I came with a reporter.

Oh, my God, she was crying.

She said she was watching
everything she had die and...

We were all kind of going
through it at that time.

Hi, you big mean boy.

Hi.

[Yasha] All sorts of people
had been cut off.

For a while, the story
was all over the news.

[ominous music]

It was covered like a natural disaster.

Like the only reason for the shortage
of water was the drought.

[suspenseful music]

But after we spent a few weeks
hanging around town,

a whole other side to the story emerged.

So are you talking about the dam
of Lake Success?

No, no, no, no.

[Yasha] Which dam are you talking about?

It's a dam that when
you cross the river below the park,

below the park, there is a bridge.

And as soon as you cross the bridge,

you can see the water right there
running through the river.

But about 600 or 800 feet below,

there is a company

that established themselves
as, I don't know.

Water belongs to everybody.

[Yasha] What does the company do?

They dam the water and they pump it,

and they pump it up to the fields,
up to the south.

[Yasha] I see. So it's for agriculture?

[resident] It's for agriculture. Yes.

[Yasha] Upstream, the river
that fed the town's wells was running.

There you have it.
What do you think it is?

[Yasha] But the water disappeared

after it passed through some private land.

Why does no one talk about it?

Why? Because they are afraid.

-Money.
-Money, money.

Hmm, that's what it is.

-They don't wanna reveal a scam.
-They don't wanna,

and they don't wanna
put themselves in danger.

Actually, if they kill me,
they do me a favor.

I'm dying already. So, what the heck?

You know, this is totally wrong.

This is totally wrong.

[Yasha] Sure enough,
just a mile downstream,

everything was bone dry.

[resident speaking in Spanish]

[Yasha] As we filmed,
another local showed up.

He wanted to blow the whistle
on his ex-boss.

But I'm getting tired
of seeing this theft

and I've been wanting
to see somebody with a camera.

I saw you when I was driving,
I turned around, and came back.

[Yasha] Rod Hudson, right?

-Yes, sir.
-Rod Hudson.

I was the oversight for
Rosedale Water Company all the way

up till June of 2015.

They just voted me out.

He's got a pond back there.

He put a pump on the river in 1998

and started pulling water
out of that river

and putting it into his pond

to supply these guys with water.

[Yasha] The whole story
was mixed up in a divorce

and a local feud.

But Rod said he could show us
the secret dam on the river.

I can take you down there.

-Uh-huh, is that gonna--
-And I have share,

I'm a shareholder with the company,

so I have a right to go down there,

but I can't be around my wife

'cause we're going through
a divorce over all this.

-I see.
-Because of Mitch Brown.

So I'ma drive down here
with you and show you this.

[Yasha] Okay, but, yeah, be careful.

You know, we don't want you to violate

-your restraining order.
-It's all good.

[tense music]

This company here is
Rosedale Water Company,

which Mitch Brown's the vice president of.

[engine roaring]

And they're pumping 800 gallons a minute

right here on this site.

Plus, there's a pump line
right over there.

It goes across the river
in those three pumps over there,

and they're pumping 300 gallons a minute.

They're only allowed 675 gallons a minute

out of all four of those pumps.

So they're illegally pumping water.

You see the dam, it's all overgrown,
but he built a dam.

Step over there, and you
can get a real good picture

from that way, that way.

He's built a dam and made
the water go over that way

to where it gets closer to his property.

[Yasha] So the illegal pumping
that you're saying,

-is it directly affecting the wells?
-Yes.

So why is that not being talked about?

Because money.

American greed, thank you.

[Yasha] From the air, you could see
that orchards and a rock plant

were pulling water from the river,

hoarding it in a giant pond.

As we asked around,
other locals backed up the story.

He gave me a donation.

[Yasha] Okay, that's nice of him.

Yeah, that's what I thought too.

[Yasha] There's some people that say
he's diverting water from the river.

[Yasha chuckles]

According to Rod, there was a sort
of old boys network in town.

The newspaper, the cops,
Mitch, they were all buddies.

We tried to get ahold of Mitch,

but figured we'd have about
as much luck

getting him on camera
as we had with the Resnicks.

He's out of town today?

We're... It's an independent documentary

about water in California
and the drought in California.

It's an independent documentary,

so we're not making it
for any TV news station

or anything like that.

[line ringing]

To our surprise,
after a couple of days of calling,

someone got back to us
with a direct number.

Hello?

Hello, this is Mitch.

Hey, Mitch. How's it going?

-This is Yasha Levine.
-[Mitch] Hey, how are you?

-Hey, thanks.-Is it Yash?

It's, yeah, I mean,
Yash, you can go Yash.

I mean, Yasha is the full name.

-Yash.
-It's a Russian name.

Yeah, I was born in Russia.

Mitch said he was happy
to give us his side of the story.

As well as the rock plant,

he had orchards, a ranch,
and was a major local landlord.

He even had his fingers
in the waste management business.

[ominous music]

We arranged to meet him
as he started to work

for the day at the crack of dawn.

[staff member] Nelson, Stevo.

[Yasha] How are you, guys?
What are these logos on your shirt?

Does that have to do with the...

Oh, this is a team-roping shirt I got.

It's one of the ones
I won in Reno roping up

up in Reno here a few years back.

This is an '09 shirt, just...

-Roping cattle?
-Rope, yeah, team roping.

You know, we'll probably get in trouble

for not wearing my hard hat in the plant.
You know, don't show this part.

-[group chuckling]
-[engine rattling]

And you can see
all the water that funnels down

to the two sand screws.

That goes back out the back,

and we'll head back over to the silt pond

and show you where that
water circulates from,

and show you how we keep it
in a closed-loop system here.

[Yasha] As he told it,

the plant had a sort of recycling system

for the water it used.

[Mitch] We have several wells.

I think that we probably
replenish our own wells

just because it's such
a sand and gravel area.

And our wells are very shallow here.

We keep a lot of people busy,
and so we need water to do that.

And without the water,

we're gonna send 50, 60
people home without a job.

I even forget what they call these,

but these are old trees

that my grandfather probably
planted here in the 1930s.

These trees are probably
60 years old, some of these.

But that is a good...

-Yeah. Oh, these are...
-These are great,

-so, eat.
-Thank you.

There's your orange juice
for the morning.

-Exactly.
-That'll keep you nice and strong.

[both chuckling]

Thank you. All right.

We own all of this country over here.

We own from there about three miles,

I own clear over to the
backside of the lake.

-Wow.
-I own...

So my mom and dad,
when I was a kid, we own...

I planted... I helped my grandfather

and my dad plant every one of these trees.

[Yasha] According to Mitch,

Rod was an old friend
who had gone off the rails.

[Mitch] What can I tell you?

I've known him
ever since we've been kids.

And in the last five years,

he has chosen the path of drugs

and alcohol and gotten
away from the church.

He's gotten away from everything
that has any value in life.

Family, everything,
he's gotten away from that.

The board took his...

His position away from him
and gave it to his wife

because the wife could manage that,

and Sandy still manages it.

And she is a great gal, does her job,

but with Rod's addiction,

and he just has gone off the deep end.

We've had a couple of
people say that, you know,

there's like a dam up here,

like a secret dam that's being
sort of used to hold the water back,

and that's why
it's not reaching the lower parts

of the river and recharging the aquifers.

That is incorrect, for sure.

'Cause I border most of
the river all the way down.

I probably own

you know, half a mile's
worth of river frontage

down through here and there's--

-So there's no secret dam?
-No, there's no secret dam.

[Yasha] When we came back later

to shoot more footage of the dam,

the whole area had been dug out

and the water was flowing again.

When we phoned Mitch about it,

he spun a story
about a digger stolen from his plant

and warned us about Rod,
saying he was a wife-beater.

But trying to pin down
who really had rights

to this river water and how much
was no easy task.

Upstream from all this,

there's a much bigger dam for the town.

And as far as the people
running it were concerned,

this water was almost entirely
owned by private companies.

Mitch had explained the same thing to us.

When people, you know, built the dam,

there were people
that paid to build the dam.

Because of the expense
that they had to forego,

they got to, in fact, store water

and they could use it when they needed it,

but the first water users are, you know,

obviously upstream,
and then it flows downstream

to the lesser shares.

[ominous music]

[Yasha] As far as local
businesses were concerned,

the river was more like
an irrigation ditch

for transferring water
to different owners.

If some of that water was trickling down
into residential wells,

well, those people were lucky,

but they had no real legal claim to it.

[ominous music]

The people who run this system
are good at making it sound

like it's all totally above board.

It's all about who's upriver

and who developed their claim first.

We saw that there was
a Native American tribe

further upstream from the dam,

so we drove up to ask them
about their water rights.

They stole it. They didn't buy nothing.

They stole it just like...

Just like if you left
a thousand dollars sitting

on your seat of your car, and it was...

I walked out there and your car
wasn't locked, and I seen it,

and I took that money.

-Yeah.
-Straight up stole it.

That's what I'm talking about.

[Yasha] Back in the 1930s,
an official who said

they were acting on the tribe's behalf

signed away all their rights
to the river.

They've been fighting
to get them back ever since.

[ominous music]

The people in East
Porterville never questioned

who had rights to the river
before their wells went dry.

But as soon as there was a shortage,

it became clear who really had control.

The big farmers and landowners
here took what they needed,

even if that meant cutting off
water to thousands of people.

[ominous music]

You could see this all over the Valley.

As the drought raged

and people in cities
had to cut back on water,

farmers were putting in new plantings

of almonds and pistachios.

Everywhere you looked,
there were new trees going in.

Thousands and thousands of acres.

[ominous music]

Drought or no drought, some
farmers had plenty of water,

and they were always expanding.

[ominous music]

[ominous music]

The last stop on our trip

was the American Pistachio
Growers Convention

down in Palm Springs.

[lively music]

♪ Every time it rains
It rains ♪

♪ Pennies from heaven ♪

♪ Don't you know each cloud contains ♪

♪ Pennies from heaven ♪

♪ You find your fortune ♪

[audience applauding]

The funny thing is, I see an awful
lot of water around here.

[audience laughing]

And I'd really like to know
what their deal is.

-[audience laughing]
-[man speaks indistinctly]

Huh? [chuckles]

[Yasha] We didn't really know
what to expect here,

but along with water, to our surprise,

they started talking about
the industry's rivalry with Iran.

The Iranian packaging that we've seen,

do we think it's more
sophisticated than ours?

And my answer to that
would be no, not at all,

based on my observation.

As a result of the negotiation
on the Iran nuclear deal,

Iranian pistachios
will now be allowed into the U.S.

[Yasha] One of the most bizarre things
about California's pistachio industry

is that it was born
out of America's meddling

in the Middle East.

I wanna go all the way back to 1979

when Iranian students
took our embassy officials hostage.

[Yasha] After the Iranian revolution,

the U.S.-backed monarch was thrown out.

[crowd cheering]

American hostages were taken

and the U.S. retaliated
by blocking trade with Iran.

Historically, Iran has always been

the world's biggest
exporter of pistachios,

but the embargo allowed
California's tiny industry

to get a global foothold.

And after several decades
of continued hostility and sanctions,

the U.S. industry grew
from being almost non-existent

to number one in the world.

A lot of pistachio farmers
we had met on our trip

were familiar with the history.

Okay, back in the days
when the Shah was still there

and we had open trade
with Iran for pistachios,

all of our pistachios came from there.

I don't even know if we grew any here.

When the Shah was kicked out
and we broke relations

and stopped importing
pistachios from there,

we kind of took on the
challenge of growing pistachios.

[Yasha] Even to this day,

farmers are aware
that improving relations with Iran

would be bad for business.

The Iran embargo was,

they can't sell their fruit to
anybody else but Iran, okay?

And they can't go over to
the Saudis or anybody else

because we put the embargoes on them

and that was hurting them.

But now with this new,
this president that we got now,

[scoffs] jeez-o-pete,
he's just screwing the pooch.

We have Arabs that live around here.

We have Arabs that take care of--
That own pistachio orchards.

Well, how do you feel?

You know, does the Muslim bother you?

[Yasha] Seeing the reactions
of these small-time farmers,

we couldn't help but wonder
what the Resnicks were doing.

Their company alone was bigger
than the rest of the industry combined,

and they've been very open about
their competition with Iran.

[ominous music]

When we dug into some records,

we found that they were giving millions

to all sorts of lobby groups,

slush funds that channeled money
into pushing for sanctions

and pumping out anti-Iran propaganda.

They also made big donations
to California Republicans

who were hawkish on Iran.

What is Iran doing around the world?

Well, they're funding terrorism.

The Iranian state is the
largest funding mechanism,

as a nation state,
of terrorism around the globe.

[Yasha] More surprisingly,
they were on the board

of several major think tanks,

including the Washington
Institute for Near East Policy.

They've been on the board
for over a decade.

It's an organization that
badly wants war with Iran.

I frankly think that crisis
initiation is really tough

and it's very hard for me to see

how the United States President

can get us to war with Iran.

One can combine other means
of pressure with sanctions.

I mentioned that explosion on August 17th.

We could step up the pressure.

I mean, look, people,

Iranian submarines periodically go down.

Someday one of them might not
come up. Who would know why.

[Yasha] When you look through

the Washington Institute's members,

it's like a Who's Who
of familiar faces from the Iraq War.

All of us do know
each other rather well,

and I see some good friends
in the audience.

I'm proud to say your former
deputy director, John Hanna,

is now my assistant
for national security affairs

and you can't have him back yet.

[Colbert] Thank you. Please sit down.

Please, please, please.

I'm sorry, I just...
I'm sorry, I wasn't prepared.

I was just... [chuckling]

You caught me in the middle of flipping
through my Iraq War scrapbook.

[audience laughing]

Many of us are convinced
that Saddam Hussein

will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon.

There is no doubt that he is amassing them

to use against our friends,
against our allies,

and against us.

When the speech was over,

there was not a dry eye in the house,

nor an un-crapped pair
of pants in America.

[Yasha] It's kind of weird
watching these old Colbert clips now.

Stephen. Isn't he brilliant?

[audience laughing]

You think I'm kidding. Anyway. [chuckles]

I follow her everywhere with that.

-[laughing]
-[audience laughing]

I have no pride.

Anyway, Stephen's fantastic,

and I guess it takes a nut to
sell a nut, what do you think?

[Yasha] The whole time,
the Resnicks had Stephen Colbert

as their brand mascot.

They've been in bed
with the neoconservative crowd

lobbying for war.

The secret to world peace is pistachios.

[clicks]

[announcer] Dennis Rodman
does it because he's nuts.

Wonderful Pistachios.
Get crackin'.

[Yasha] In a long line
of wealthy farmers

to plunder the Central Valley,

the Resnicks aren't anything new.

The liberal social politics,
the flashy marketing,

they're just a modern flavor of something
as old as America itself.

[ominous music]

Farming here isn't so different

from the historic booms in gold and oil.

It's an extraction industry.

But the resource that's being
mined to depletion is water.

It might make sense
if the food they were growing

was necessary for survival,

but it's mostly crops for export,

nuts where the entire demand
was created by marketing.

These companies don't care

if they suck the rivers completely dry

or if they're lobbying for war.

Nothing matters
but the quest for endless growth.

-[group screaming]
-[tense music]

It's like the blob mindlessly expanding,

swallowing everything in its path.

[people screaming]

Looking at this bizarre,

bleak landscape in the Central Valley,

it's what the planet would
look like if it was terraformed

to meet the needs of billionaires.

All of nature turned into a commodity,

optimized for wealth extraction.

A dystopian future
right in front of our eyes.

♪ It is home sweet home to me ♪

[Yasha] My family fled the Soviet Union

right as the whole thing
was crashing down.

My story should've been about a young man

being saved from a grim fate.

But here too,
even if you try to ignore it all,

the cracks are showing.

I realized that my family
escaped one failed system

only for us to arrive in another.

And this time, there isn't any alternative

or another place to run.

[ominous music]

[coyote howling]

-[ominous music]
-[coyote howling]

It's times like these that make
what we do even more important.

Many of you have asked from time to time

why Stewart and I do what we do.

Why do we care so much about giving back?

Let me show you my recent
art project to help explain.

I took a virtual class in memento mori.

It was an art class where you make things,

mementos to remind you that
eventually you're going to die.

-[ominous music]
-[coyote howling]

There are pistachios and bottles of wine,

halos and little FIJI Water bottles
and tiny pomegranates,

all the things that have
helped make my life,

our lives truly wonderful.

-[soothing music]
-[coyotes howling]

The important part
is what's written at the bottom.

"Hearses don't have luggage racks."

But in these times
of social unrest and agitation,

there is more need than ever.

And I believe if you can do more
for the common good

and you don't, you're committing a sin.

[soothing music]

[soothing music continues]

[coyotes howling]

[soothing music continues]

[soothing music continues]

[soothing music continues]

[music fades out]

-[crickets chirping]
-[coyotes howling]