All right, welcome to the Ocean Water Podcast. I have my good friend with me today, Jake Ribzic. Did I get it right, brother? Got it. That's it. Good, good, good. So Jake just finished being the student body president at Saddleback College, and he has now transferred to Cal State Fullerton to keep working on his schooling there. They got a good online program for you so you can keep on trucking while society is in a bit of an upheaval, and so I'm glad you can continue that.
And also Jake, at 18 years old, ran for San Clemente City Council, one of the youngest people to ever run for that position, got a little over 7% of the vote. There were so many candidates that he only lost a seat by 3%. So I love talking to you, dude. You're so smart, and I'm just honored that you're on here today, dude. Thank you, Ryan. I'm happy to be here. You've definitely been an important person in my life, and I'm happy to sit down with you and have a discussion. It's awesome, man.
I love you, dude, and I've known Jake for a few years, and Jake has been dating our good friend Sam. They've been together for a while. It's been great to watch, and so enjoying our time together today, dude. So when you're at home these days and you do get a chance to go out to eat, where do you go and what do you get? I've worked at a lot of restaurants in San Clemente, in my hometown, so I'm going to be honest with you, there are so many places that I go to that are so high on my list.
So I'll just name a few places. Most of these places I've worked, but I work at places that I really agree with and that I kind of vibe with. So Casano's Pizza, that's for me the number one pizza restaurant in our town. I love it there. I love La Galette. That's a restaurant at our local pier. That's amazing, best, just amazing French crepes, great community, great family that's working there. And then I'll throw in a coffee shop. We both like coffee. That's something we'll do.
I would say Zebra House, which I'm currently working at and I think for a craft coffee shop to have the drive-through action going and to have the expansion going that they're working on, I actually think it's a great community there. But all coffee shops in San Clemente are solid. We have a great community going of coffee. Dude man, awesome brother, awesome. So what are you doing these days, Jake? And how did you get into it? What are you up to?
Right now I'm just trying to get that degree, man. I really want to be a teacher. That's something that since I was little, I've really admired my teachers. And you kind of, I feel like a lot of people get that passion for what they want to do. Maybe not this specific job, but if they want to be an orator, if they want to work with their hands, if they want to do more physical work, I feel like you can start identifying a lot of that early on.
And teachers are some are people who've always mentored me and they're people who I've always just had crazy amounts of respect for. So right now I'm at, as you mentioned, I'm at Fullerton. I'm getting my degree in political science. I would love to just get involved in teaching, become a teacher, do community service. And yeah, I currently, as I mentioned before, I'm just at a coffee shop right now, right?
I'm just making people coffee, making people smile, doing everything one day at a time, really into local politics. So yeah, my future definitely is going to be involved with teaching, with politics, and just with making people smile, making people feel good. Local community, I'm all about Team San Clemente. So yeah. I love it. And making people think. You have so much to offer. And you have a lot of thoughts about a lot of subjects, which I love.
And you're one of those guys I can sit down and talk about 25 different things with. It's great. It's awesome. So I remember chatting with you when you ran for city council. And one of the things that was eye opening for you was actually how mean people my age were being to you. Right. And I was able to help you, give you some advice a little bit about how to handle that. And you're in a bare knuckle sport for sure.
So what are some of the things that you've learned in the last couple of years that were just new for you? What are things you need to jump out at? That's a great question. Obviously, I ran for city council at 18. So I was exposed to a lot of things that a lot of 18-year-olds aren't exposed to. I'm not going to say all 18-year-olds, but I definitely was exposed to, as you kind of mentioned, just some people are mean. They verbally are mean. Online, there's like an online sport to be a bully.
It's almost something people, I want to say they really get satisfied by being, I don't know if they think they're being aggressive, but a lot of people are really aggressive online as we see that. So locally, I wasn't expecting to get any of that type of heat. I mean, I bump into you at the grocery store. So if you're saying something mean about me online, the chances of us interacting are slightly high.
So for sure, some things that I learned were to take criticism lightly and to understand that when people are telling you something, they're projecting often. So they're either projecting their own internalized feelings, they're projecting their lack of understanding. So I feel like when people were aggressive to me, they just had a lack of thoughtfulness, a lack to hear the other side. So I definitely learned to take comments with a grain of salt.
But I've also learned through that experience to listen to people. If you're upset with me, if you're upset with one of my point of views, the best thing I can do before attempting to engage in a conversation with you is hear you all the way through. Hear out why you feel that way, why it is that you feel like you need to be aggressive. Because a lot of the heat that I got was a little aggressive. So a little aggressive. So I definitely just learned to understand that everybody has a backstory.
If people are really anti me, they're really charged against me, oftentimes it's not the person they're charged against. It's more or less the idea of what that represents. So my political views, they don't like that idea. It's not particularly me. They don't like the fact that I lack the experience that they view important to be on a city council. So I've just learned to really understand that everybody has a point of view. Everybody has a valid point of view.
Even people who are face value, like racist. I feel like if you're a racist, that's not a good feeling to have. That's not something you should be doing. But there is a perspective on why that individual is racist. And I think what's something I really learned throughout my time running for city council is to listen. And listen, why is that individual feeling this way? Why is that person so charged about, you know, about an individual's race or an individual's political ideas?
So I definitely learned to take everything with a grain of salt, listen to people, and just be respectful to others. I think respect goes a long way. I've been super respectful to my political opponents, right, who weren't respectful to me. And now we're able to have an adult conversation, which I appreciate, and we're able to get past our differences and just talk about what matters, which in terms of my city council run, what mattered to us was our city and our people. You know?
Yeah, I think that's right. I think that there's a lot of discourse. I guess you could say now, discourse seems to be at an all time high. Civil discourse is at an all time low. And so what happens now is people attach their personhood to their ideas. And what we lose in that is that you're supposed to respect, love, and be kind to others. Be kind to all people. But you understand that our ideas are fluid and they change, and they change because we're constantly learning.
So as we learn, our ideas adjust and they change and they evolve. And so that's part of being human, is that we can consider new information, we can consider new data, we can consider new experiences, and we add that into the algorithm that's gotten us to where we are. And so that's a beautiful thing when we're able to be kind and loving and respectful to people, even as you understand that our ideas about life are always changing.
Right, I think being open minded is one of the best things you can do. Because right now we're coming up on the next election, right after my election. So it's a new election season and it's only been two years and I'm telling you, Ryan, there are things that I've changed my mind about within these two years, going from an 18 year old to a 20 year old.
And I'm 100% confident that I didn't, you know, if I could basically debate myself from the past on some of like the issues that I was talking about. So being open minded, right? So being open minded is like key to being to being a good resident of a city, right? There's so many different point of views in a resident of a city. I think being open minded is really important as an individual, because we all have personal interactions where, oh, you do that.
That's, you know, that's not something I do. So I think having that open minded perspective is super important. And it's something that I learned running from city council, running for city council, rather. It's something that I'm learning as I get older. And it's something that I really cherish the ability to be open minded and the ability to have just to listen, you know, full stop to listen. I love that. And you know, you bring up a good point about being open minded.
And part of that, part of the reason why we evolve, we change is because we're curious. One of my favorite questions to ask people is, you know, what are you curious about these days? So what are you curious about these days, Jake? And what are you interested in? Wow, there's so much Ryan, there's so much to be curious about every day. There is, you know, just in terms of our immediate life, you know, COVID-19 is something that is constantly it's a theme throughout our lives.
And every single day, there's a new vaccine developed. There's a new this developed. I think there's so much conversation going around. I feel like there are certain themes that we can be really curious about through our whole lives, or we can really focus on. And I think one of those things is how people live, right? I'm super curious about that. I am. I'm from Colorado, Boulder, Colorado. It's where I have lived 13 years of my life there. I was born in Colorado.
I was so used to living a certain way, and being around a certain group of people. So then moving out here, I kind of had a few out here in San Clemente, I had a few years of not depression, but just being repressed, not being myself, not being not exploring my environment around me, but fully coming to understanding of how beautiful San Clemente is, how different it is from where I'm from has been an eye opening experience for me.
And I think one of the most important things I've learned is just to observe the environment around you to get involved and to kind of push yourself in an area that you've never been. I'll bring you up for example, I didn't grow up in a religious household by any means. I never attended church at all. It wasn't at all an active decision by my family. It was just something that we've always avoided, right?
But coming out here to San Clemente and kind of part of my story of coming out of my shell was attending church for the first time and just kind of being in an environment that I was totally uncomfortable in and learning to adapt and learning to enjoy adapting was really something that brought me out of my shell from a 13 year old who moved from Colorado, who never would go outside and enjoy the beach to now somebody who I can't stand to be inside.
And I think just taking that risk to go to a place that you've never been like a church and the willingness to listen and open has been super important in my life. And it's why I got to the point where within five years of living here, I felt like I could do something like run for city council, where if you ask the 13 year old, you know, Jake, who just moved from Colorado, I could, you know, I couldn't even stand going to the beach.
So something I've really learned is just to just to try things, right? I mean, I'll try but I feel like we can all do a better job of trying more and doing more to get out of, you know, your comfort zone. I love it, man. Yeah. So what is what's something that you you have failed at? That you like to talk about? I mean, I don't want to talk about the tests I failed, right? I don't want to talk about. I mean, it's just a theme.
I mean, I definitely I like the word failure, because I think it represents one side of a coin, right? Because although there is a failure, there is always something born out of that. So I'll just kind of pivot directly back to my city council run, right? That on its face was a failure in the sense that I didn't achieve the goal that I set out to achieve. That goal was to be on the city council. Right. But I failed, if you will, at that.
But in turn, I've met incredible, incredible local legends, right? I've met people who have taught me more than I could have have ever learned online. Right. I gained friendships and different relationships with business owners and people in our community that I didn't ever thought like I never thought that would be possible. So I failed at running for city council. But I gained so much, right? So much through that experience where it almost feels like it's not a failure. Right.
I've run the people who were voting for me, but at the same rate, I feel like we all kind of expressed ourselves in a way that a lot of us weren't comfortable doing. Right. Like the kind of campaign I ran, a lot of people in San Clemente weren't willing to express some of their feelings for a new leadership or for ideas which are not traditional in San Clemente. So to bring those people out was like something that really touched me to have those relationships really touched me.
That's something I failed at. But at the same rate, I feel like it was such a success that it's only the other side of the coin. Right. I feel like with every failure, there is a success. So yeah, city council is something that I almost am hesitant to call it a failure, my race, because I gained so much more. And the people that I was running against, I now have extremely close relationships with two years later.
So I think failure is one of those tricky words where are you ever really just failing or is there that opportunity in the failure? You understand? Yeah, totally understand. I didn't view it that way. It's funny how when the way we view ourselves and the way other people might view this, I certainly did.
And I was really, really proud of you for making a point about in our town, you can go to you can go to Camp Pendleton and you can sign up to put your life on the line for the country that you live in. And so it would only make logical sense that at the same age, you should be able to offer your perspective on the other side of things about how to present policies and ideas that make it a better place to live.
Right. And I feel like I don't think it's wise to tell people that you can you can put your life on your line for the place that you live, but you're not allowed to bring your ideas to the table that might make it a more appealing place for people to live. That makes total sense. And I mean, I think wisdom is something that we definitely have to we have to understand there is power and wisdom. Okay, like knowledge and being wise and, you know, having years on you.
There's definitely something that is important about that. And there we do need that aspect in our society, you know, to kind of level the playing field of the new ideas mixed with, you know, the tried and true what works, what hasn't worked. I feel like that's a good balance. So going into the space of politics at such a young age, I'm surrounded by people who are so much more wise than me.
But what they lack in wisdom is understanding the growing up in the society that they have built and understanding what, you know, life is like for a person of my age. So I definitely I definitely wanted to get involved in something like city politics. And I'm I still want to get involved in the city, not even in terms of politics, but just in these day to day interactions with businesses and local leaders, because I think there's so much to learn from everybody, no matter your age.
And I feel like you can't even put wisdom to an age. We all have different aspects of wisdom. And you always hear people be referred to as like an old soul, right, like younger people being referred to as an old soul. But they just, you know, we all have aspects of that within ourselves. And it's just that that wisdom that we have from our individual experiences, which kind of allow us to to spread that wisdom. So running for city council was something that I definitely was worried about.
Do I have, you know, deep down, I was wondering, do I have these knowledge, the knowledge and skills that a traditional city council member has? And then I quickly learned that I'm bringing more to the table because I have a different set of skills, a different set of being wise. Yeah. And then and then you realize that there isn't age doesn't equal wisdom. Right. Because there are people that have been 21 years old for 21 years straight and they're 42.
But they've really just been 21 for 21 years straight. And then conversely, there's there's people that are 20 that are that have immersed themselves in. And so all those all those ideas and algorithms, I think, go right out the window. And I think that, you know, a wise person when you meet one. Right. I believe I believe that people are a lot smarter than we give them credit for. And I think people are able to to distinguish the wise ones.
And so that's where we just we just hope and pray that God will help us be one. Right. Right. And everything is not so linear. Right. Like we can always be a better person, be a wise person, gain that knowledge. You know, life is really what we make of it. So I feel like we all have the capability to to work at just knowledge. You know, knowledge is something that there's so many different fields. To me, it's one of the keys to just doing what doing what you're meant to do. Right.
Following that purpose of serving, you know, God, for instance, like I really feel like if you're able to open your mind to the different levels of knowledge that are available to you, you're going to be able to succeed quicker towards those goals and become a wiser person more than if you were just, you know, not participating in the outside world or not opening up your eyes or having conversations, which sometimes might get deep or uncomfortable. I think that's all a part of wisdom. Right.
Is having that lived experience of actively becoming wiser. You know, it's great, man. Good. I know you have a lot. You got a lot in you, dude. I know you stuff. Let's let's hang up. Let's hang a bit of a right and let's talk about water for a moment. A lot of times when I put this this virtual background on here, people think that's a cute, cute photo or this is actually a very personal photo. And for two reasons. One is the place.
The photo that I have for my background is is Palmercito El Salvador. And the guy inside of that way in a nice little tube is my friend Sopapo. And he has was born in this place where this photo was taken right in front of his home. And this is a place where we've sent 130 people in the last since 2015 to help us some water projects there. And but Jay, kind of give me your understanding, if you will, just like the world of water. What are what are your thoughts on that?
I mean, I understand this. I mean, I understand like here I'll talk about my lived experience. So here in the United States, right, I think water is something that I take for granted every day. All right. I have plenty of plants that I, you know, just feed feed. I give them tons of water. I myself have access to crazy amounts of water to the point where I'm not even actively thinking about it. Right. I don't want to take a shower longer than 10 minutes or, you know, I don't leave my faucet on.
But I really am not ever thinking about where my water is coming from. I don't know if that's a good or bad thing. I try to filter out my water. I try to avoid water bottles, you know, like the plastic pre done water bottle, because I just don't I don't understand the reasoning behind it other than just convenience. And I feel like I have a hydro flask. I much more prefer that.
I know what kind of water I'm putting in it, and I'm not producing as much waste as I would be if I had a plastic water bottle worldwide. I just I understand. Like I was talking about Syria, where right now they have a civil war. A huge aspect of that civil war is the lack of drinking water and the lack of water for farming.
So this is a desert in the Middle East and an area where there are already groups like, you know, ISIS and, you know, there's a war happening in a lot of aspects of this of this region. But when you take away something as vital as water, you see how things escalate so quickly. So water is definitely something that I for sure take for granted. But it's something that, you know, I love. I mean, to put it straight, like I need water. We all need water.
It's something that I don't know what I would do if I was in that position where, you know, you're telling me to limit how much water I can put on my plants, which they've done in plenty of areas of the United States. Or take it a step further. You're telling me that I can't even drink water or that I have to go to a well far away to access that water. Maybe it's not even clean. That's something that I my perspective is not aware of. I haven't had that lived perspective.
So I definitely take water for granted. That's for sure. Well, you know, we all have plenty of plenty of that here. It's really interesting. I became exposed to kind of what I call like the world of water back in 2010. I had gone on a bicycle ride and I traveled for a year on my bicycle. I rode across Canada and the United States and down in South America, down into Columbia actually. I spent a year, I rode 10,000 miles through 10 countries.
And on that, I slept in a hammock and actually wrote a little a little book about it. And on that journey that I called Ride for Water, I learned all about water. What I discovered was that one in eight people in the world have a water problem, meaning that they have a quality problem where they can't access it. Right. And on top of that, the people that can't access it or have poor quality also pay the most for it. Right. So there's access inequality and there's actually a cost inequality.
And then as I was doing my doctorate in public health, I discovered that really, we have the technology to turn small amounts of ocean water into drinking water for people. And so that led me into the work that I'm doing now, which is actually called ocean water. And one of the reasons why I love having these conversations with people like you is one, you're really interesting, fun to talk to. But also every good thing that's happened in my life has always happened through a conversation.
Somebody that, you know, kind of maybe said something that a lot of times when you're talking to people, you think like, you can't even remember what you said, but then it'll click, like something will click with something that you talked about, like a sentence or a word or something that you read somewhere. And it always changed for me, always started with a nice conversation. And that's how I stumbled into the work that I'm doing now is that it's really been a 10 year journey.
And now we've identified rural and small coastal areas around the world where we could put them in these systems and they'll turn about 300 gallons a day of ocean water into drinking water using solar, which is very interesting. And that's exciting because it gives people who are bearing the highest economic cost for this fundamental human right. And so we're able to solve a few problems. And it's really, really satisfying, really, really satisfying when you're able to help people that way.
I mean, a hundred percent, because even in, if I'll interrupt real quickly, like even in the United States, we have Flint, Michigan, which is infamous for having lead in their drinking water. So if you're able to almost reverse engineer it to a simple solar conversion, I mean, you can really be avoiding like a lot of problems. Like water is just one of the most important things. So you'd even think in a, in a first world country, if you will, like the United States, there isn't any water issues.
Like there still are water issues. It's funny you brought that up because a good friend of mine, Jason Matthews, he actually asked me to look into some research for Flint, Michigan. I said, of course. And him and I are talking about what I'm kind of in a discussion with him that's evolving about what, you know, what, what can we do? That's a different problem because there's been so much industrial waste pollution there that that the water table has essentially been contaminated. I understand.
It's, it, yeah, it's, it's a very complex issue. It's not as simple as fixing infrastructure. Even if you fix the infrastructure is a massive problem, but it, it's almost like each home there needs a specific system installed in it that removes lead and arsenic from the entire water system for the house. That's, that's an expensive proposition when you're looking at a problem that affects the a hundred thousand people more in the area, more than that. So yeah, it's, you're right.
You know, we, we have so much and there's so much work to do. There's so many people to try to try and help and it's good to keep the conversation going. I know, I know in El Salvador, for example, we, we, we've started, we've, we've installed a system there, but then also there was, there was a family that, so the system we've installed in El Salvador services 38 families.
And there's also a family that had a storm recently in the midst of all this COVID, they were on lockdown, like we were here in the United States and they, there was a family that lost a home. And so now we're in discussion about, yeah, we've, we've provided water. And in addition, we've also fed those 38 families. This guy in this way right here is him and his family have taken responsibility, full responsibility for feeding all 38 of those families and providing water for them.
And we're now in discussions about how to build that family that lost their home, how to rebuild their home in April on a trip that we're going to take down their own spring break. Pretty cool. Oh, wow. Yeah, no, that's excellent. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Really fun. Yeah. I mean, you're helping, I mean, it just shows that we're a global community, right? And that like, there is no border that can, you know, stop a human from helping another human. You know, it's like we have this innate thing.
I feel like a lot of us do to just, you know, I don't know if it's a natural thing. I don't know what it is, but just to help people. And oftentimes the people we're not helping, I feel it's just because we don't understand and we don't hear enough about these types of people. So you know, once again, like water is something that we have such crazy access to here in the United States.
I don't hear enough stories about areas where they're not able to get water, areas where, you know, their infrastructure is down to the point where it's going to take till April to be able to, you know, start to reconstruct that life. Where here in San Clemente, I feel like it would be pretty quick, you know, if something happened to us, we would be pretty quick to get things fixing up again. So that's crazy.
But that's really awesome that, you know, you're involved in that and that, you know, that community is even able to like luckily at this moment get clean water, right? Even which is just such a basic thing. Yeah, I taught my granddaughter Aubrey, if you go up by San Clemente summit, you'll notice that there's a giant water storage up by San Clemente summit. And that's because one of the first things you do if you go into a hilly area and you have the means to do it, you store water.
Because if something happens, some sort of catastrophe, the gravity can be used to distribute it. And so it's a little little little kind of a side little factor that I've been teaching peanut. That's crazy, though. Yeah, yeah, it's super interesting. Right. But dude, I have just I've been having so much fun just watching you do well. Thank you. Yeah, it's just fun to watch your life. You and Sam are killing it. And you're like had a rad time in Saddleback. Now you're over Fullerton.
And it's just awesome. Yeah, it's good to be in your life, dude. And what I would like to end with this, what what do we what do we need to hear from Jake today, dude? What do you got to close this out? What do you want to say? This is what I gotta say. Today is a beautiful day. And I'm not just talking about San Clemente. I'm talking about wherever you are in the world right now, tuning in, watching this. Maybe it's tomorrow you're watching it.
But the day that you're watching this, there is potential to do great things. So just get out there. You know, this might be a little ironic because we're on a screen right now. But tune out the screen. Look at the people around you communicate to the people around you. You know, if you're being hit by COVID-19, do it out of, you know, the the right way. But for sure, my advice is this.
Get up, do something, enjoy, enjoy the physical world because there's so much beautiful things that we have to offer in this world. Protect it for sure. Love it, dude. Jake Rizvik, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you, brother. Love you, man. Thank you, Ryan. Yeah. Thanks for coming on, dude. Talk to you soon. Yep. See ya. All right. Thank you, Ryan.