Interview #22 Cydian Kauffman - Day Zero & Navigating the Water Scarcity Challenge

Transcript, Sep. 4, 2025     

Rick Barron (00:00)

Hi everyone, I'm Rick Barron, your host, and welcome to my podcast, That's Life, I Swear. 

Today we're talking about the most essential element of life, water, and what happens when it's no longer safe, or even worse, no longer available. 

My guest today is Cydian Kauffman, CEO of Pure Water Northwest, a company at the forefront of exploring the intersection between clean water, climate change, and community resilience. 

Now, Cydian lives by a very powerful motto, test, don't trust, a simple yet urgent reminder in a world where water contamination is more common than most people realize. 

Being identified as a pioneer in the top 100 innovators and Entrepreneurs Magazine, Cydian is an expert in water safety, filtration technology, and the sustainable practices we need now more than ever. 

One topic we'll be covering deals with the growing reality of what is called Day Zero. What does that mean? That's the point at which cities are running out of water. 

We'll explore regions that are at risk and why this crisis demands global attention. 

Now, another topic that I think feeds into this is dear to Cydian, and that is the purity of the water you drink, and how we can secure safe water for future generations. 

Please join me as I have my conversation with Cydian. 

Cydian, welcome to the show.

Cydian Kauffman (01:47)

Thank you so much for having me on. I’m happy to be here.

Rick Barron (01:50)

I've been looking forward to this very much. Could you provide maybe a quick overview of who you are, where you've been, where you are today in your life here?

Cydian Kauffman (02:00)

Yeah, so I'm basically the owner of Pure Water Northwest, one of the owners. And what we do is we do water treatment and water science. We focus a lot on how to take water from whatever state it's in, whether it looks bad, smells bad, or looks perfect, but happens to have a ton of arsenic in it, or E. coli, or bacteria, or whatever. 

How to take that source of water and turn it into good drinking water. And whether or not we're talking about a local town that has a municipality or whether it's a private well or whether it's a community well built for one of those Day Zero small areas in one of those Day Zero situations, that is a situation where we can come in and help with the actual quality of the water or at least speak to the effects of not treating the water.

Rick Barron (03:02)

I see. So, I want to get back to that point because again, as I called out, I know that's very dear to your heart, but I want to cover a topic that I shared with you when you were asking me what would be something that I would like to cover in terms of water itself. you know, over time I've come across numerous articles that deal with climate, but more so the one that really popped into my head was this term Day Zero. 

And I thought, what the heck is Day Zero? So, as I started probing and researching, I came across that, you know, there are some places in the world that are literally running out of water. And I thought, how does a town or even a city run out of water? I mean, places in South Africa, India, even the places, were some places in Japan. 

So, it was really taken aback by just understanding that this is happening. So, I guess the overall question I like to throw at you is how does this happen? I how do these people get in or these cities get into this predicament?

Cydian Kauffman (04:16)

Yeah, yeah. So, it happens for so many reasons. Let's just talk about power first, because water needs power. Power needs water, right? In any municipality, they are intricately linked. So, a lot of these places, they might actually run out of they might be power cycling or running out of power. A lot of times in those situations where that's happening, the water supply will keep flowing, but sometimes the water supply won't be being treated quite as well as it was before. Some of those places then run out of clean water before they run out of water. So, this doesn't happen in the same way in every place.

Another example of how you could hit a Day Zero, Day Zero of course just being the first time when a whole wide area runs out of water and what happens after that. It's called Day Zero ominously because if people run out of water panic sets in the very next day, if not that same day. And that's because obviously without, other than air, which we die from within, you know, one to ten minutes. 

Water, water we die from within one to three days, right? I mean, some people can go a little longer, but it's a very short time period. You can go weeks without food in some cases, but you can only go days without water. So, Day Zero is like, okay, we have three days until people are, dying, have two days until people are pulling out guns and shooting people for water. 

We've got a serious, serious situation here. So, whether it's because of power problems, whether it's because of aging infrastructure, whether it's because of the most common source is full groundwater depletion, that is how that happens.

And the truth about what happens and the cause of it is as complex as you can get and as unique and individualized as you can get. Some places may only partly run out of water, but they might consider it or call it a Day Zero. Some places then will have access to groundwater individually and people who know the person nearby who has a borehole is suddenly being asked to pull up their water for all their neighbors. So that three days to complete collapse may be protracted, may be, you know, that might be expanded, but it's definitely an emergency if that makes sense.

Rick Barron (07:16)

Absolutely. I would imagine to some other factors that I found that are contributing factors would be such things as living in an area where there's a severe drought, where the climate is just not cooperating in the sense of, you know, getting a good dose of rain during a certain part of the year. But then the other the flip side of that coin, though, is also I've read where population growth just gets out of hand. It kind of puts a damper on the infrastructure, if you will, that also makes it happen.

Cydian Kauffman (07:58)

Yep, that's right. I think what happened in Cape Town actually a few years ago was that Day Zero for them was, right, water's not gonna run out of your taps anymore, but we do have places that you can come get water from. So, it didn't become the full like social collapse that it would have become had they not given them another source. Almost all of these are, if they're large enough, will have other sources, but the ones you don't hear about are the small, small communities of like, you know, 30, 40, 50 people who all share one well or borehole and that borehole runs dry because of a drought.

Those situations are where things get really dark, potentially.

Rick Barron (08:55)

I've even heard of people predicting that situations like this could maybe lead to having a war over water itself. And that's a little terrifying when you think about that.

Cydian Kauffman (09:13)

Yeah, yeah. To take it on a more positive spin, the world is mostly water. It is about 1%, a little under 1 % drinkable water on all the water on the planet. A little under 1 % is actually potable at any given time.

That 1 % is actually an astronomical amount. And it is definitely enough that if it were distributed right, it would be plenty of water for everyone. So, there are solutions that are possible. But yeah, the geography of an area can definitely affect whether people have access to water. And that can dramatically affect people's lives. 

It can affect gender equality can affect the socioeconomic structure of an area can affect whether or not warlords rule small areas or not. Water can have a major effect, but when you get on the scale where wars are going to happen, usually people in that size of an area, a majority of people will be able to have some access to water because of the way the planet still currently is. That's not true everywhere, but it is almost, it is true almost all the places that where we'd be talking about the size of like large-scale wars happening.

Rick Barron (10:43)

Right. Yeah, now maybe you call this out as you were describing your knowledge on this, but on the flip side of this coin, what, how can such situations be preventable? Like is there a proactive stance that people can take to say, look, we're at this point where if we don't do something within the next, even next year, we're going to be in trouble. What do they do? Who do they go to? Any idea?

Cydian Kauffman (11:19)

Yeah, so it's different from for every area. Some places don't really have infrastructure where they have people in charge they can go to. For the people who do, they need to take water reports to those people. 

They need to actually do testing because I'll tell you what I've heard over and over and over again and what I've read is that municipalities that are struggling, those governments that are running those municipalities that are struggling, if those governments are struggling, the last thing they have bandwidth for, sadly and ironically, is listening to people complain about things. They are facing near impossible situations all around, and so coming to them with a complaint is going to get pretty standard rejection.

Coming to them with water tests though that prove that the water is really bad that actually can get some results in some areas. There's that. Smaller areas where people are already trekking, you know, four hours a day to get water for their family and then trekking back, which happens a lot. Those places are already suffering from kind of social or economic problems and those areas are if they run out of water or they run out of their source of water, the entire town is probably moving somewhere. 

They're probably going somewhere. So those areas have those issues where that's their solution. On scales the size of cities like Seattle or New York or anything like that, they're usually not going to have major water problems. They're going to have quiet water problems. 

Rick Barron (13:26)

So, when you say quiet, what do you mean by quiet?

Cydian Kauffman (13:29)

I mean like PFAS levels or forever chemical levels that are technically within a legal framework that are allowed to be in the water because it has to be put on the back burner because it's not legally required yet and in order to not be fined or shut down, they have to meet with all their legal requirements first. So, the EPA sets a legal standard and a health standard for drinking water.

And there's only a few hundred contaminants that they're really even talking about. There are thousands of potential contaminants in water, and many of them have not been fully tested for or identified. Luckily, the treatment methodologies that are used are very catch-all. So, they do tend to catch a lot, but they don't catch everything. 

So, it's this, when I say quiet, mean, not spoken about, not studied, not fully known, not fully understood. Because as soon as it's fully studied and understood, then you have to acknowledge something. So, this is not doom and gloom on these parts completely. mean, people have been drinking this water for ages and they're doing okay. So, I mean, the proof is in the pudding, so to speak, for a lot of these places. 

But where the problem occurs is this is this like point where emerging contaminants and lack of testing or identification meet. And that point is where some areas have had problems. And then failing infrastructure can lead to problems as well. So, the two main things are the unknown unknowns and then the failing infrastructure that can cause sudden surprising problems like what happened in Flint Michigan or the Red Hills problem in Hawaii or other things like that.

Rick Barron (15:32)

Wow. So, I mean, let's go back to Flint, Michigan. I'm trying to recall what happened there, but I think if I remember right, it was the piping system that got completely infected and to the point where people just flat out could not use anything out of the tap. People were just buying bottles and bottles of water. Now that, that ever get resolved? I mean, is it, are they're going through a major infrastructure rebuilding?

Cydian Kauffman (15:47)

Rick Barron (16:02)

I mean, excuse my ignorance, but I never really went back to find out in my research what happened to that town.

Cydian Kauffman (16:10)

Yeah, no, so it's fine. A lot of people don't know. And I actually frequently have to remind myself of the exact numbers. The overshot is a lot of people were affected. I guess about 100,000 people were affected by lead in old, old pipes. And they had actually been affected by it for very long time actually and they were noticing declining IQs and people in an area having behavioral problems and so finally it came out what was happening and what came after that was quite a bit of apathy you know a bit of apathy that's for lack of a better word which was like the government saying, know, we'll get on this we'll do something about it, but they didn't really act super-fast. 

I Mean if it were I've said this before another podcast if it were me I would you know call up China and ask them for 30,000 40,000 reverse osmosis units they can get that made sense within you know, a few weeks to a month. That'd be, you know, less than a million dollars. It'd be 500 grand probably to get that. And then you'd, some people would put it in themselves. Otherwise, you'd create a coupon program for local plumbers to put it in where the government reimburses plumbers for doing that work. I mean, people would have had the problem pretty much resolved within about two months, maybe three osmosis units.

Rick Barron (18:08)

Osmosis units what is that? I never heard that term before.

Cydian Kauffman (18:10)

Yeah, sure. Reverse osmosis is kind of a technology. The primary use used to be making it so that the military can float on the water, pull up seawater and turn it into drinking water. It's an impressive technology. Well, the concept of osmosis is that two bodies of water that are separated by a membrane they will tend to equalize over time. 

Reverse osmosis is literally reversing that equalization by creating a membrane that has pretty specific sizing of the holes in the membrane, allowing water to permeate its contaminants one direction through pressure, while leaving the other side having clean water. 

You can push all the salts, all the waste, all the contaminants of almost everything, not everything, to one side, throw that down a drain as waste and then drink the other side. So reverse osmosis technology is, it has downsides of requiring time. It can only move slowly and a lot of companies that are selling fast ROs are actually just sacrificing quality to do it. So, it can really only move somewhat slowly and it requires pressure and it requires waste. As long as you're okay with those three things, you can get amazing water from almost any contamination.

Rick Barron (19:57)

That is amazing. You mentioned China. Why China? Why not get it here in the United States?

Cydian Kauffman (20:03)

Just because they would be able to do it cheaply and quickly and that's just the reality of Chinese manufacturing I mean we maybe they could have I only happen to know that that's true It's possible that the people who you know were in charge of Flint could have found a local person a Local manufacturing company to put it together for them as well in which case they should have done that but I only mention China because it is in fact, we actually try not to source anything from China in our company because it is, the quality is certainly not guaranteed, especially on water treatment media. We've seen a ton of bad media from there, but for an emergency situation like that, it would probably be one of the better ways to go.

Rick Barron (20:55)

Yeah, when you talk about Flint, mean, I would imagine there are probably other Flint cities throughout the United States that are probably going to be facing the same issue because of the old infrastructure. And I have

Cydian Kauffman (21:11)

Or disasters or like the Ohio Trink crash problem that happened. For example, yeah.

Rick Barron (21:16)

Right. But it's, you know, things like that, that you begin to wonder, you know, kind of going back to the Day Zero, did you ever have an opportunity to lack of a better word, opportunity to visit places where they were encountering a situation like Day Zero?

Cydian Kauffman (21:38)

No, no, and honestly these are not super common today. For me to encounter that I would have had to seek it out. And they don't want people like me during a Day Zero situation because people like me are trying to make the water that does exist be drinkable and healthy and safe. in those situations, they're like any water is okay or acceptable. And that is not always the case. They probably should have someone like myself at least there for the most remedial stuff. E. coli or other forms of bacteria can create a worse situation than no water at all. But in almost every situation, if you have a choice between really bad water zero water you would choose really bad water because otherwise, you're going to die.

Rick Barron (22:38)

Wow. So that's amazing. I would think those who are empowered would want to listen to someone like you to understand. I get it. Water is better than no water at all. But why not take it a step further to help those even yourself? You know, it's going to impact you as well. I don't get why somebody would just put their hand up and say no, thank you.

Cydian Kauffman (22:53)

Yeah, it's true though. I've offered, I mean, if you think about it, if I come in and tell people that, you know, you can drink this water, but it's got, you know, three parts per million of arsenic in it, and you will have people have organ failure from drinking it in the next four to five years. They're going to say, cool, I wish I hadn't been told that. You know what I'm saying?

Rick Barron (23:10)

I mean is it…

Cydian Kauffman (23:38)

They're going to hope that they're not going to want that information at that point during an emergency. not going to want the, I even tell people about this? They're not going to want that burden.

Rick Barron (23:52)

Yeah, well, I guess I think of it as not being a burden, but I get your point. But I think overall, you know, it's like, why, deny what's coming at you when you could proactively right now solve this problem? may, it could be long-term. I get that. It could be costly. I get that. But…

Cydian Kauffman (23:59)

Yeah, I agree.

Rick Barron (24:19)

How do you put a dollar value on someone's life? Even a child? That to me, I just can't put any logic behind that. Now you, as I called out, I know when we first talked, you expressed how you’re a real love for the purity of water, how you test it. And a lot of things you were sharing with me kind of blew me over. I've to be honest with you.

So, after words, I went to that website you called out and I went looking and looking at the possible outcomes of what the water could cause. As I went down the list, it was cancer, cancer, cancer. And I feel like, okay, is there anything that could be done to even prevent that from happening?

And again, I guess that would be extreme cost to try to dive deep into that to solve that problem. But if you would, could you walk us through what you have learned over time? Because you obviously you have a wealth of knowledge here sitting on how you test the purity of water, why it's so essential and why people need to understand. Say what you will, but here's why it's a benefit. Here's what to look for.

Cydian Kauffman (25:42)

Yeah, I will. And I just ask people to wait till the end because I'm going to certainly end on a positive note. I just want to start by saying anything can be in water. On a well, the groundwater is collecting runoff that is running over the ground and falling through the air. It's going to capture VOCs, it's going to capture pharmaceuticals, factory chemicals, pesticides. 

Just about every single thing you can imagine can be captured in a well. What it's filtered through, the bedrock it's filtered through is not always the same. Sometimes it's underground rivers, sometimes it's large underground aquifers that are pulling directly from sources with almost no filtration. 

Sometimes there's layers and layers of thick bedrock that act as natural filtration. It can be anything. We have seen well water that has cyanide in it, which was crazy because cyanide's not on the periodic table of elements, it? That would only be able to happen from some sort of very unusual degradation of plant matter. 

We've found wells that have arsenic that is so high that it would cause cancer very fast. found cryptosporidium and kind of the worst parasites you can imagine. we found just about anything in well water. Municipal water is going to have less of most things in it because they oxidize that. They add chlorine. 

Chlorine itself has its own potential problems for people, but they add chlorine, which is much better than them not adding chlorine because Oxidizing elements shifts most things into a bound form that is not in solution, meaning it's not getting into your body through the binding to the water molecule. Instead, it's coming in a form that's much easier for your body to clear. So municipal water, ironically, does tend to be better, but even that can have a wide variety of things in it.

So, what we do, what we want to do is we want to test. We want to just really identify what is in that water. And we want to make sure that whatever is in the water is known and then treated to the level that you find acceptable. Now, so that's the scary bit. That's the, for all I know, I've been drinking arsenic for 20 years. Yes, that's true.

Rick Barron (28:18)

Scary bit that's the okay for all I know I've been drinking

Cydian Kauffman (28:25)

That is absolutely true and you're not dead yet and that is positive and that's because on the positive side your body is the filter if you don't have a filter but your body is a good filter. It's very good at its job. It is a homeostasis engine. Its work is to constantly find homeostasis which is a balance in your cellular level at your cellular level.

And the byproduct of that action is some inflammation and inflammation is cleared through exercise and sleep and nutrients. so interestingly, despite all these stuffs being potentially in water, a lot of this stuff is ameliorated by exercise diet being generally healthy and your body doing its job.

Rick Barron (29:08)

Interesting.

Cydian Kauffman (29:22)

When it catches up to you is where it has a problem. And yes, that can cause cancer. It can cause ovarian failures. It can cause inflammation that led to other neurological problems. It can cause direct neurological problems. All these things are possible. But usually, you only get that when things hit really high levels or go for a really, really long time without being cleared by your body. water treatment is sometimes life-saving. 

Every once in a while, we are hitting an emergency and we're saving somebody's life. Usually, it's quality of life-saving and it is life-elongating. So usually, water treatment makes you have less inflammation. It makes you generally have less skin issues. It makes you generally have, as long as you're treating your shower water as well, it makes you have less overall work that your body needs to do to find homeostasis, which creates less inflammation and creates less work for your body, leaving more room for your body to clear and do other things, help with other free radicals. 

So, water treatment is, like I say, sometimes lifesaving, usually only quality of life saving and life elongating potentially. So that's kind of why we do water treatment is, and that's why I kind of love it.

It can be scary, but it's really not something that almost anyone needs to urgently do really fast. You can take your time, you can study, you can make sure you're making the right choice for you. And I know that's funny for a company that sells water treatment to say, but I don't want anyone out there to feel like they get a salesperson showing up to their house and they have to suddenly make an emergency decision because the salesperson tells you that yes, you have been drinking arsenic. 

You've probably been drinking arsenic, but don't make a rash decision. Your body's been doing its job thus far. Give it a little time. Make the right choice. But I would make a choice.

Rick Barron (31:23)

Wow. Is the testing ⁓ of water kind of a broad overview? Is it, is there a set standard that goes across the United States or does each state kind of do its own thing? You know,

Cydian Kauffman (31:51)

So, okay, there's an EPA standard, meaning that every municipality over a certain size, well, the EPA stands for Environmental Protection Agency. It's a federal agency and it sets a standard. Then the EPA standard is adopted by all local counties and states Department of Health. 

They're like, all of them basically say, we're going to follow the EPA standard and maybe we're also adding on these standards on top of it. So, every state has their local standards, but they are all minimally the EPA standards. The EPA standards are legal levels. 

So, they say right on the EPA website, these standards are as close as we can get to the health level being usually much lower than the legal level. say it's as close as we can get to the health level taking cost and other factors into consideration. Meaning they allow a little bit of arsenic through because it would be way too costly to completely get rid of arsenic. And that's just true. The health level for arsenic zero. 

Every municipality, every lab that I've run into just thinks of the legal level as the health level because it is so complex for people to hold two different standards in their head. So, for whatever reason, like I get people calling me on the phone all the time saying, yeah, I'm within the healthy level and they're showing me stuff that's above the health level. And I'm like, where'd you hear that? And they said, yeah, the lab told me that I'm safe.

And I'm like, cool, labs should be sticking to what is actually legally permissible to say because they're within the legal level. whatever, this is actually happening in 100 % of the scenarios I've run into at labs. It is just what they all say and how they all talk. 

We've got a scenario where there are a lot of people who think their water is fully healthy and it is just mostly healthy. And we've already talked about why that might be okay, but we've also talked about why that might not be okay. So, for some people, they might want to do more and do their own research, I guess, is what I'm saying.

Rick Barron (34:34)

No, good point. Now you talk about the testing of water on one end but what could the household do on their end to enhance the purity of the water that they drink because I think we have to work together, so to speak. mean, what comes to mind if you had to tell someone, if you really want to try to have the best water possible, here are some recommendations. What might you say to them?

Cydian Kauffman (34:53)

Well, all this is going to cost money, so I need to find out how deep they want to get into this. If   anyone is at home and they don't have a lot of money and they're just really worried about this, a very safe way to handle this is just get an under counter reverse osmosis. And if you have the ability to install it yourself, you can end up spending a couple hundred dollars.

Those cheaper ROs tend to leak. I highly recommend you get a rubberized mat and a leak alarm. But it'll be good and keep up on the filter changes and you'll be much, much better than you were. 

If you're worried about this and you don't have a lot of money, then just do that. Otherwise, if you have some money to spend on this, I highly recommend you do test or you at least look up the CCRs, the local test results, look up the environmental working group, tap water database, collect the results together and then talk to somebody like myself who is in water science, has water quality association certification and has a real deep understanding of these things and understands the difference between the legal level and the health level then tell those people what you want to accomplish. 

Say, I want to get to the health level or I want to get close to the health level or whatever you want. And then that person should be able to help you get there. I frequently put in whole home systems. Our systems tend to cost between, you know, $4,000 to $8,000, depending on what kind of treatment is needed. Our under counter reverse osmosis systems are generally about $1,500 installed. So, we tend to have pretty affordable, pretty approachable solutions. But that depends on the person. 

And if it's not affordable, then definitely do something like a reverse osmosis system, because that's a catch-all. It doesn't catch everything. It is not 100 % but it catches a great majority, in systems where it's already treated with chlorine. The other side of the coin is people have private wells. 

I would never ever not test a private well with a full spectrum test. And I mean at least 50 different contaminants, and I recommend closer to 100 or 200 different potential contaminants. So, you can capture VOCs, pesticides, and factory chemicals and the like. But that is on a well, you can literally have anything and if there's one thing you can do, it's do a complete, a very, very complete test on a well. It is worth spending the money on. TapScore does them for not very much money and it's just a really good idea.

Rick Barron (38:18)

Wow. You know, sitting here listening to what you're saying, it's just overwhelming what you know and expanding upon, you know, the earlier topic about, you know, Day Zero scenarios. Have you, I'm guessing you've gone around the country giving presentations about this topic. 

And that said, what do you hear most from the audience in terms of the purity of the safety of water, know, just things in general as to what they need to know or be aware of, especially if you're having dealing with people who are running a city, you know, and taking care of that water system.

Cydian Kauffman (39:05)

Yeah, people are people and I have had, I tried to do my very best when I'm talking to rooms full of people or zoom calls with people in them. I, I try to do my best to be balanced. I, I try to ameliorate the stuff that sounds scary with some positives so that, so that I give people room to have thoughts because what I find happens if I'm not very careful is a person will act with a fear response and deny or reject everything I'm saying. Or they will have so many questions and, you know, go off in every direction with a fear response that's like, my God, I need to do something about this right now. 

I don't know what to do and it can be paralyzing. So, the questions I get are usually like, okay, some denial like, okay, is it really this bad? Like, you know, it sounds like I used to drink out of a garden hose. I'm not dead yet. Responses like that. Or I get the other side of like, okay, so can you look at my water? Can you tell me exactly what's in my water? 

Because I've been drinking it, I have kids, that kind of thing. I talked to a family recently, three days ago, who they have little kids, they've lived in their house for 10 years. And 10 years ago, they had a well company and well companies should not be doing water treatment. don't, they're fantastic at drilling wells. They should not be doing water treatment unless they have somebody trained and certified on their staff.

This well company put in this small arsenic unit for someone who had arsenic that was two and a half times the legal level, very, very high amounts of arsenic. So, way above the health level, above the legal level, at a level that it could be dangerous. They put in a very insufficient system. They put in a filter that was about this tall that would at their level of arsenic go bad usually in about three days, I mean not three days, three months. 

It would start declining in three days. They did an under counter reverse osmosis which for arsenic is potentially only 40 % effective depending on the kind of arsenic they have and the effectiveness of the membranes. On municipal water it tends to be higher effectiveness just as a side note because it's oxidized by chlorine, but that's not the case on a well. And so, these people were staring at me while I was telling them this and I had to break the news to them that for 10 years, they and their kids have been drinking an unknown and fluctuating amount of arsenic. 

And luckily, they change their filters every year and they get a period of time free of arsenic. And that means they have a time for their body to help clean their body. And metals are hard for the body to clean sometimes. it is the saving grace that they had any treatment at all, for sure, for them.

Rick Barron (42:34)

It is the saving grace that they have any treatment at all.

Well, so two questions come to mind. One is why do you, what's your sense of why people are such deniers about what they hear about the safety of water? What seems to come to mind? 

Cydian Kauffman (42:57)

Yeah, I've thought about this a lot. Yeah, it's the ostrich effect. If you have been drinking, if you have to drink water, if you know, if you're hearing somebody talk about water and you know, I'm going to be drinking water an hour from now because I'm going to be thirsty. I'm going to drink water today for sure. And I don't have any clue whether the water I'm drinking is safe or not.

That is too much. That is honestly an unfair burden to put on somebody if you think about it. It's really not nice. And so I feel bad a lot when I'm telling people about their water. I feel bad a lot because I know that I'm giving them a burden they can't do anything about. I didn't bring a way with me that they can just like in the meantime have good water. 

They're gonna have to go to the store and get bottled water which has microplastics in it. But it's better than the arsenic, like for these people it would be better than the arsenic water that they're drinking.

And so, it becomes this like, ugh, I can't deal with this. I'm just gonna drink water and forget everything that guy said. And that's, I can't blame him.

Rick Barron (44:24)

Yeah, it's almost like saying, well, we're going to die eventually. So, what the heck? And my other question was, and I'm, I'm, I'm wanting to pay a compliment to you because again, what you have been presenting has been, extremely of high interest to me and hopefully to the audience, but have you ever done a Ted talk?

Cydian Kauffman (44:28)

Right. Exactly. No, I've never done a Ted... Well, I think it's hard to get on TED Talks. don't...

Rick Barron (44:48)

Why not?

A friend of mine who just recently did a Ted talk down here at Stanford University. She tried and I'm guessing  think it was like over a year and she was being, you know, always. Turned down, but eventually she was able to get it and then. My wife and I went to go see her presentation. And then I say hey, you know, congratulations. Great speech.

And she said, well, I still have to wait if it's accepted by the Ted talk community as seriously. So, you go through all that and you still have to wait because there was like, think 10 people who presented and they only picked the top three. Yeah. So, you talk about hard.

Cydian Kauffman (45:36)

Yeah. mean, honestly, I don't know. I don't have a lot of time for it. I'm very busy. Maybe that's in my future though. I mean, I definitely could fill an hour with this stuff, so yeah.

Rick Barron (45:56)

I'm sure you can. I mean, you have a lot of knowledge, but I can just tell you have a real passion for this and I think that's admirable.

Cydian Kauffman (46:09)

I appreciate that. it's a hard industry because there's so much bad science, so many weird ideas, so much denial, but it is also one of the most important. The only thing more important is air.

Rick Barron (46:28)

Right. Now I think that, um, you know, there are people out there sitting in who appreciate what you explain about the purity of water, how things can sometimes get to a point of like a Day Zero and understand the, the implications of what could stem from that. 

You know, like you think of a, of a town that was doing quite well, say in Pakistan, all of a sudden, hey, out of water. We got to get out of town, so to speak, and there's a massive migration. And one thing leads to another. I think people don't understand that unless we take proactive steps. Sometimes the problems that come about are the creation of something, well, had you just done this, we could have avoided all this.

Cydian Kauffman (47:11)

Yeah.

For sure, there is definitely a negative effect of that ostrich effect. You're absolutely right that a lot of things that do happen could have been prevented by properly confronting things in the first place. You're absolutely right about that.

Rick Barron (47:39)

So, if there was one glowing point you'd want to leave the audience about what we've talked about, what might that be?

Cydian Kauffman (47:46)

My glowing point would be to don't be an ostrich. Test.

Don't ever feel like you're in emergency. Just test and then find somebody to help you interpret the test and then take some time and make a good decision for yourself on whether or not you're happy with it as is or whether or not you want to make a change. And then if you want to make a change, save up for it and make the change because water is something you're going to be drinking for such a long time. 

Doing this early will help you in the long run for sure. It'll help your overall inflammation. It'll help your future health and it can help with actual medical things sometimes, actual real genuine cancer related or organ failure related things in some cases. So that can happen and you'll never guess that it was the water that was the cause. 

That is the thing. Tests don't guess. ⁓ Tests don't assume. That's exactly what I would leave everyone with if I was going leave them with one thing.

Rick Barron (48:59)

Good point. So, I always like to end the show on something spontaneous. So, I gave you a few speed round questions. So, I'm going to start off with the first one. 

What's the best live concert you ever attended?

Cydian Kauffman (49:14)

That's fine. They Might Be Giants in Seattle.

Rick Barron (49:21)

Interesting. What did you like about it?

Cydian Kauffman (49:26)

I just like their energy. It's funny, my friend hates them because he thinks that they're like all their music sounds like they're singing inside a tiny little box. And I guess he might be right about that, but I really think they're very clever and fun. Yeah.

Rick Barron (49:43)

That's great. 

What would you like to have more time to do?

Cydian Kauffman (49:48)

I, well that's, I want more time with my kids. I have kids, I love them, I don't have a lot of time. I mean, it's not like fully people are singing, like gonna be singing Cats in the Cradle later, but it is, I do want more time.

Rick Barron (49:54)

That's good. I like that thought. What was your first paying job?

Cydian Kauffman (50:14)

Burger King.

Rick Barron (50:15)

Burger King. Mine was McDonald's.

Cydian Kauffman (50:17)

My second paying job though was a system administrator ⁓ for a web development company. So I went from fast food to tech. It's funny. But yeah. What was yours? Yours was McDonald's? Yeah. kind of, yeah.

Rick Barron (50:34)

Okay, McDonald's, yeah.

So, here's a question. I you brought up the fact that you have kids. If your kids wrote a book about you, what would the title be?

Cydian Kauffman (50:47)

My dad always works, but he taught me a lot.

Rick Barron (50:50)

Good one, I like that. 

Okay, final question. What would you attempt to do if you knew you couldn't fail?

Cydian Kauffman (51:03)

Oh, okay. If knew I couldn't fail, I would get a more say this, more evasive, like everywhere out there, communication about water with a, with kind of an engine, like an AI interface that would help people to, for free, evaluate their water, take the steps needed to go through and figure out what's in their water, evaluate it for themselves and come up with a treatment system for themselves. 

And that would be for, I would want it to be accessible by people who were sitting in a city or people who were in a third world country who like bicycle to an internet shop and pull this up and help solve their problems with water. And it would also have interfaces for, or modalities for helping with ways to turn sources of water into food like algae farms and things like that as well. 

Because that is a side thing that access to water can also do. Algae farms can simultaneously clean water and create food if it's done the right way. And it's kind of a... It’s tricky, but an AI could definitely help people figure it out. So I think if I didn't know I could fail, I would want that. I want that to be ubiquitous, accessible to anyone, and like high quality.

Rick Barron (52:52)

That doesn't sound like a crazy idea. Seriously, you might want to whiteboard that. No, give that some thought. I mean, I'm sure there are people out there that if you threw that concept. ⁓ Yeah, let's do some coding here. I think you might have something there.

Cydian Kauffman (52:58)

Yeah, okay. I mean, I like what you're saying and maybe you're right. And I truly don't know enough about AI to know that it's limitations. But what I know is it can't make a mistake on this. And AI can sometimes make mistakes, you know? So I don't know how to make it error-proof. And what I'm worried about is creating this thing and having 1 % of people put in a system that makes things worse. That's the only thing I'd be worried about, but...

Rick Barron (53:46)

No, I see your point because sometimes they will make may give you an answer that they called an hallucination. Yeah, then it's not correct. But anyway, sitting, I really want to thank you very much. mean, this conversation has been very enlightening. I've been looking forward to speaking with you. I'm glad you reached out to me because I think you hit on a topic that's very dear to my heart. And obviously it's dear to your heart.

Cydian Kauffman (53:54)

Yeah, hallucination, yeah.

Rick Barron (54:16)

I want to thank you and I also want to thank the audience for tuning in and listening to sitting in because I think we all got a lot out of what we thought we knew about water, but I think we got more insight into what sitting had to explain to us today. 

So, to that end, I think sitting in and to the audience, we'll talk to you another time and take care.