We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Neal Barnard. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Neal below.

Neal, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

When my brother was perhaps three or four years old, my mother tucked him into bed with a poem: “Nighty night, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.” And the poor boy couldn’t sleep a wink, imagining insects hovering over his bed. I began to think about how we put lots of creepy images into children’s minds: “She cut off their tails with a carving knife,” “When the bough breaks, the cradle crashes to the ground.” “Jack and Jill went up the hill, and Jack suffered a traumatic brain injury.”

Ditto for French songs: The innocent sounding Alouette, gentille alouette, describes to a lark how she will be plucked. Another popular nursery rhyme says, trempez la souris verte dans l’huile et dans l’eau, meaning, “dip the green mouse in oil and in water.”

As the Covid-19 pandemic arrived, children were suddenly pulled out of school, thousands of people were dying daily, and there was good reason for anxiety. So I wrote a song to provide images that might help children a bit,, and my band CarbonWorks released it .The lyrics do not promise that things will be great forever. It simply says, for tonight, everything will be all right. We recorded it in French, as “Tout Ira Bien”” and in English, as “Everything’s All Right.” Both are beautiful. The video is posted on CarbonWorks’ YouTube channel. One of the viewer comments touched me very much:

“Love this so much! Watching this has become part of our four year old son’s bedtime routine. We watch the English version and the French version and he loves them both. Thank you so much for creating such an awesome lullaby for kids!!! He always wants to watch the video to the very end, and repeats the names of all of the musicians. He loves the part where Dr. Barnard blows out the candle :)”

Reading that viewer comment made my life worthwhile.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I lead the band CarbonWorks, which has released two albums of innovative international music, and whose music videos can be viewed on YouTube’s CarbonWorks channel. My previous bands were Pop Maru and Verdun. I am also a physician, head of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (pcrm.org) and the Barnard Medical Center (BarnardMedical.org), Adjunct Professor of Medicine at the George Washington University School of Medicine, and fellow of the American College of Cardiology. Our focus is on good nutrition, especially healthy vegan diets, and we help people to overcome weight problems, diabetes, and other chronic conditions. I have written 20 books, available on Amazon and elsewhere.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

Our goal is to make the world a better place for all who live in it. In 2003, NIH gave our research team a grant to come up with a better approach to type 2 diabetes. In a randomized clinical trial, we found that a low-fat vegan diet was dramatically more effective than a conventional diet. The results were published by the American Diabetes Association in Diabetes Care in 2006. However, this diet is not just great for diabetes. It also lowers cholesterol and trims body weight. In addition, it is kind to animals and to the environment. People who follow this approach often find it life-changing.

In its own way, music plays a role, too. We can create music videos that touch the heart, particularly when it comes to the treatment of animals. When compassion leads one to change the diet, all the other benefits arrive as well.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The creative process has to be its own reward. It is important to actually want to hear the music that one creates, as opposed to trying to fit a genre. Apart from that collaboration is fun, both with other musicians and with an audience.

Contact Info:

• Website: CarbonWorksMusic.com; pcrm.org; BarnardMedical.org
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@carbonworks1770

Image Credits
Music photograph: Tim Barker Medical photograph: Elliott O’Donovan