Building Whole Foods — John Mackey on Health, Spirituality, and Capitalism

What you’ll hear in this episode:

- John Mackey’s journey from founding Whole Foods to championing conscious capitalism

- How Whole Foods’ values shaped its culture, growth, and long-term success

- A deep dive on spirituality and A Course in Miracles

- Why capitalism isn’t inherently good or bad

- How a stakeholder mindset differs from chasing short-term profits

- Entrepreneurship as a path for personal and spiritual growth

- Why improving food systems might be one of the most powerful ways to help people thrive

- The role incentives play in shaping behavior across business, government, and society

- How technology and AI can either amplify fear or unlock abundance

- What choosing love over fear looks like in leadership and life

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About Love Conquers Fear:

In an era of exponentially evolving AI and robotics, one question looms: Will humanity make it? Love Conquers Fear is where leadership meets love, technology serves humanity, and vision becomes action. Host, Brett Alexander Hurt, tech entrepreneur and investor, sits down with some of the world’s most influential people to ask: Will we unite to create the Age of Abundance for All? These conversations are calls to action, awakening leaders everywhere to rise and help humanity choose the Light.

Watch on:

YouTube: http://tiny.cc/LCF-YT

Spotify: http://tiny.cc/LCF-Spotify

Listen on:

Apple Podcasts: http://tiny.cc/LCF-Apple

Amazon Music: https://tinyurl.com/LCF-Amazon

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About John Mackey:

John Mackey is the co-founder and former CEO of Whole Foods Market, which he grew from a single natural foods store in Austin, Texas into the world’s largest natural and organic grocery company. Inspired early on by natural health, nutrition, and personal freedom, John has spent decades exploring how business can be a force for good. He is a leading advocate of conscious capitalism — emphasizing purpose, stakeholder value, and ethical leadership alongside profit. Today, John serves as co-founder and CEO of Love.Life, an integrated health and wellness company focused on prevention, lifestyle medicine, and whole-person care.

Timestamps:

00:00 Episode preview

01:16 Love vs. fear as the two core emotional states

01:53 Introducing John Mackey

02:06 Spiritual practice and A Course in Miracles

03:56 Forgiveness as a foundational discipline

09:48 Speaking from the heart in entrepreneurship

11:52 The historic flood that almost put Whole Foods out of business

13:49 Community response and collective love

15:51 How crisis reshaped John’s view of business

17:56 Choosing responsibility and rebuilding

19:53 Awakening, fear, and returning to love

20:07 Near-death experiences and redefining reality

23:44 Psychedelic experience and altered perception

23:50 Fear, courage, and launching Whole Foods

27:50 Forgiveness as an ongoing practice

43:50 A Course in Miracles and The Disappearance of the Universe

45:24 Perennial philosophy and the shared core of religions

47:52 Stillness, quieting the mind, and inner listening

51:54 Timeless spiritual texts: The Bhagavad Gita and the Tao Te Ching

56:02 Capitalism, socialism, and real-world outcomes

59:54 Systems that fail vs. systems that evolve

01:07:52 Steve Jobs, intuition, and creating without research

01:23:50 AI as savior vs. AI as threat

01:28:58 Post Whole Foods: John’s new venture, Love.Life

Books mentioned in this episode:

- The Creative Act — Rick Rubin

- Love Is Letting Go of Fear — Gerald G. Jampolsky

- A Course in Miracles — Helen Schucman

- The Celestine Prophecy — James Redfield

- Proof of Heaven — Eben Alexander

- The Whole Story — John Mackey

- LSD and the Mind of the Universe — Christopher M. Bache

- Journey of Souls — Michael Newton

- The Perennial Philosophy — Aldous Huxley

- The Disappearance of the Universe — Gary Renard

- Enlightenment Now — Steven Pinker

- The Rational Optimist — Matt Ridley

- The Capitalist Manifesto — Johan Norberg

- Superabundance — Marian L. Tupy & Gale L. Pooley

- Many Lives, Many Masters — Brian Weiss