Terry invites Jim Lauria, the VP of sales for Mazzei Injector Company, onto the podcast. Jim hosts a podcast called "Water we talking about?" Jim caught our attention with an article about how Leonardo Da Vinci's fascination with water. Jim has a passion for telling water's story, and so do we.
00:00 - Introduction
01:52 - Jim Lauria and Mazzei
07:53 - Leonardo da Vinci and water
11:46 - Podcast: Water We Talking About?
15:14 - The Blue Mind - Wallace J. Nichols
20:13 - Water must be coaxed.
23:10 - Closing
166. Stories of Water (w/ Jim Lauria and Terry Arko)
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[00:00:00] Eric Knight: Hey everybody and welcome back to the Rule Your Pool podcast. Today we have a special guest for you, And I've got to credit Terry Arko for getting this because I don't know our guest. Terry, would you like to introduce who is with us today?
[00:00:12] Terry Arko: Yeah, today we have Jim Lauria. He's with Mazzei, is the company. And we'll talk more about that as we go along. But I actually came into contact with Jim because I, I read articles that he puts up online. He has a blog which is To know water is to love water. You can ask him about that more.
[00:00:33] And he's just written a lot of great stories and informational articles. Dealing with water overall. And one in particular, he recently wrote about Leonardo da Vinci caught my attention. It was fantastic. And I really wanted to talk to him more about that. So that's what led to us having Jim on Rule Your Pool podcast for this episode.
[00:00:55] Eric Knight: Right on. Well, Jim, welcome to the 166th episode of the Rule Your Pool podcast.
[00:01:03] Jim Lauria: Thanks, Eric. I really appreciate it. I'm looking forward to this. And Terry, thanks so much for introducing me to Eric and getting me on the podcast. I'm looking forward to the conversation.
[00:01:12] Eric Knight: We're going to try to break 300 listeners with this one because this is going to come out just after Christmas. And our goal, well, we kind of joke about the 300, but our goal is to grow this podcast and get more perspectives on water out there and teach what water wants. So without further ado, this is episode 166. Let's go.
[00:01:31]
Jim Lauria and Mazzei
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[00:01:52] Eric Knight: Okay, Terry, I'm going to start with you. You've been on the show several times and quite frankly, more people ask for you to come back than they ever asked me to come back, kind of like Jared. So I'm the third most popular host of this show now. Thanks for that. What attracted you to the latest article that Jim wrote?
[00:02:12] Terry Arko: Sure. Well, as you know, and as anybody, I guess, who's listened to this podcast knows, I have worked with water for the last 40 plus years of my life in the area of recreational water. Primarily with swimming pools. And I've spent a lot of time of my life has been in teaching water chemistry, basic water chemistry, teaching techs and professionals about how to manage water and swimming pools and to have better water quality.
[00:02:43] So I have always had a fascination with water. One thing I liked about our guest, Jim, is he describes himself as a storyteller. And I have been the same way. I've always tried to teach from the standpoint of being a storyteller. Going beyond the pool. So when I read this article about Leonardo da Vinci, and Leonardo da Vinci's connection, to water and how he contributed so much to what we know about the uses of water today. And was way ahead of his time. And he had quotes in there and things that just, they just made me sit up and, and I was like, man, I'm loving this. And I really want to talk to this guy more so that's what did it. I was just excited about his storytelling abilities and water.
[00:03:29] Eric Knight: Yeah. I'm going to agree with you. I read it too. I'm like, who's this guy? Jim, I'm so glad to have you on the show because a lot of the themes that we teach on this podcast is just telling chemistry from water's perspective. And when I read that article, I thought, man, this guy gets it. He really does. And it's on LinkedIn and I don't know where else it is, but I'm going to turn it over to you. Tell us a little bit about you, your background and your company. And then let's get into what you were talking about in this article.
[00:03:56] Jim Lauria: Yeah sure. So I, I've got a degree in chemical engineering from Manhattan College. That's where my career started. I always was interested in process and worked my way through the corporate realm
[00:04:08] Eric Knight: Well, hold on right out of the gate. You're the most qualified host we have on here. So
[00:04:12] Jim Lauria: Yeah, so, so, but always liked to write, always liked to be interested and, and, and developed a real interest in water over my career. I was an environmental manager, process engineer coming out of school. And then, as I said, worked my way up the corporate ladder into sales and marketing. I was a CEO of a mining company, and I'd say about 20, 25 years ago, I really decided to dedicate myself to the water industry.
[00:04:44] And over that period of time, I've worked as a VP of sales and marketing for several water treatment companies. I have been involved quite a bit in the recreational water market with a number of companies. Mazzei is involved in a wide range of water treatment applications, including pools and spas, hot tubs. Almost every hot tub that has a ozone generator in it has amazing injector to inject the ozone efficiently into the pool water. So
[00:05:17] Eric Knight: Oh hold on, hold on. For the audience, you said Mazzei. That's your company name. But most people listening to this, if you've heard of this injector, probably call it a 'Mozzie' injector. But it's the same company. It's actually pronounced Mazzei, correct?
[00:05:31] Jim Lauria: That's correct. Yeah, that's correct. In fact, before I joined the company, I called it Mozzie. But the name is Mazzei, and the company was started by Angelo Mazzei in his garage 46 years ago in 1978. We had a Christmas party on Thursday and we were talking about that.
[00:05:48] Started the company in his garage and it was mostly started for injecting fertilizer and nutrients into irrigation water. And then slowly but surely Angelo developed new ideas, new applications, new materials of construction, and started using it for gas injection, ozone, pure oxygen, air, into a wide range of municipal and industrial applications.
[00:06:13] Eric Knight: How about CO2?
[00:06:14] Jim Lauria: We don't do too much CO2. CO2 is pretty easy to put in water. Oxygen species is more difficult. We do CO2, but there's other ways to do CO2 that's a lot easier and cheaper.
[00:06:27] Eric Knight: Okay,
[00:06:28] Jim Lauria: Oxygen is much more difficult to put into oxygen species, ozone, oxygen and air. So,
[00:06:34] Eric Knight: Interesting. Okay. I didn't mean cut but you'll find out that i'm going to do that quite a bit because you say a lot of fascinating stuff.
[00:06:40] Terry Arko: Well and I just want to interject here too. Jim, for those who are out there listening who might not be familiar with Mozzie or Mazzei as a name. But they might be familiar with a Venturi. Would that be the same thing?
[00:06:54] Jim Lauria: Yes yes yes, it's a venturi injector. The philosophy, the concept behind the company is using the motor force of water through this Venturi injector, where you've got the restriction, you create the velocity that at that restriction level. And what that does is creates a pressure drop right at the throat of the injector. And that's what allows it to pull in either liquid or gas into the water. And a venturi is good because not only does it create that suction at that throat, but it also creates some mixing. And so you've got the combination, the motive force of the water creates a suction and a mixing action, which allows whatever you're trying to inject into the water more efficiently mixed downstream.
[00:07:45] Eric Knight: Interesting. I did not know they were the same thing. I've heard of Mozzie injectors or Mazzei injectors. I did not know that was the same thing as a venturi. So thank you for that, Terry.
Leonardo da Vinci and water
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[00:07:53] Eric Knight: Cool. So you wrote this article. You talked about Leonardo da Vinci and how he compared water through the system of the body. Tell us more about that.
[00:08:04] Jim Lauria: Yeah, that's a very interesting concept, Eric. So I wrote a lot of articles about it. I just reintroduced the idea around this because of Ken Burns' documentary. But back in 2018, I wrote a article on LinkedIn. what Leonardo da Vinci can teach us about water. Because he was very involved in water. He said water is nature.
[00:08:24] He was very attuned to the hydrological cycle. And what he did was he saw the earth as a macrocosm and the human body as a microcosm. The way blood flowed through the body, the way water flowed through the earth's surfaces. As I mentioned, the hydrological cycle. And so what I started doing was looking at the idea of what he was saying. He did a lot of anatomy experiments. He dissected human cadavers. He understood how a heart could pump. He looked at the veins, the arteries, like I said.
[00:08:58] And so I started coming up with the idea, if you think about it, in any water system, you've got a similar application to the human body. You've got the pump, that's the heart, right? You've got the pipes that are the arteries and the veins. You've got filters that act like kidneys. You've got disinfection systems that act like the immune system to fight any bacteria.
[00:09:21] Eric Knight: Terry, this sounds exactly like Commercial Academy. Doesn't it?
[00:09:25] Terry Arko: Yeah. Not to interrupt there Jim, but when I have taught trainees, I had a pool business in Southern California and we would bring in new trainees in the summer to service swimming pools. I used to think what's the best way for me to describe the system of a swimming pool to somebody who's just totally new and doesn't understand? That's exactly what I thought about was the human body. And in a pool system, the heart is the pump, the kidneys are the filter, the immune system is the disinfection, everything that you've said, and it's such a great analogy.
[00:10:01] And yeah, so from there, but yeah,
[00:10:05] Eric Knight: That's a recurring theme in Commercial Academy. Those of you listening who have taken Orenda Academy. We released our fourth one earlier this year for commercial pools. And it's an ongoing theme that a pool system is just like the human body. So it's ironic that da Vinci came up with that.
[00:10:22] And I mean, it just makes perfect sense. It's the best analogy that I know of. And we go a step further where we say the chemical controller is the brain. But
[00:10:30] Jim Lauria: yeah.
[00:10:30] Eric Knight: going. This is fascinating.
[00:10:33] Jim Lauria: Yeah, that's one of the big points I like to make is that that's probably the weakest part of the system right now, right? So you've got the brain, right? And, you know, it's the control logic, but it's also around the sensors, right? The real time monitoring. so If you think about it, you know, you've got optical sensors that can see turbidity. You've got pH sensors that can kind of taste acidity. . You've got acoustic sensors that can hear leaks.
[00:11:01] So as time goes on, The brain is going to be the most important part of controlling all these different aspects. Filtration cycles, the pH, the what the level of disinfection sanitizing is. So as time goes on that, that's really where the most important part of the system is going to be faced with.
[00:11:23] Eric Knight: Fascinating. Yeah.
[00:11:25] Terry Arko: Absolutely agree with that. That's the direction that the pool industry is heading. Definitely.
[00:11:30] Eric Knight: Yeah, and so you're, you have a podcast, 'Water Talking About?' Which I love puns, if you know me , the worse the pun, the more favorable it is in my opinion. A pretty good one. So this podcast, I presume you talk about these kinds of things.
Podcast: Water we talking about?
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[00:11:46] Jim Lauria: Well, the big part of the podcast, Eric, is as we talked about is I do it as a co host with Adam Tank. And there's a lot of podcasts on and we didn't want to be just another podcast talking about water. So we wanted to bring on the best storytellers. How could we learn? How could our audience learn from how to tell the best stories around water?
[00:12:06] Because a lot of the water professionals, the people that are selling equipment and and services like to talk how great their equipment is, what it does. It's got this pump curve, we always pick on the pump manufacturers. This pump curve is better than that pump curve. And this material construction is better than that.
[00:12:26] And we didn't want to get into that stuff. We wanted to actually find out from the best water storytellers how they were telling their stories. And we always like to think that, okay, you want to talk to their brain, but you also want to talk to their heart, right? So it's an emotional connection to a story that really gets people enthused. And I've learned so much from our guests. We've done about 60, 70 shows so far. So hopefully some of that's coming through in, in what I'm writing about and how I'm telling my stories.
[00:12:58] Terry Arko: Yeah, it's definitely coming through, Jim. Yeah. Your articles are amazing. And I'm a writer myself. I write articles for a lot of the technical trades in the pool industry. And that's always been my desire too. I didn't want to just be the academic. I didn't want to just come from the ivory tower standpoint, but I wanted to make it, as you said, I really loved what you just said about connecting to the brain and connecting to the heart. And I think if you can do that, then your message is really going to resonate with your audience.
[00:13:29] Eric Knight: Think of the product we all deal with. Water is the lifeblood of that product, but we're really selling joy and laughter and happiness. And people around water generally are happy. That's why prices next to the beach or a lake are so much higher than places of homes that don't have the view of water.
[00:13:50] Pools are effective in that sense because it gives us a sense of looking at something that can be calming. But as we just learned, I talked about it in a previous episode water can also be absolutely devastating. Thank you. So it's this dichotomy of, you know I don't know, as Jordan Peterson would say, it's right on the razor's edge. It's, it's going between chaos and darkness and, and light on the other side.
[00:14:12] Jim Lauria: And Da Vinci, Da Vinci spoke a lot about that, Eric. So he recognized the power of water, the benefits of water, but he also recognized the problems with floods and hurricanes. In fact, at the end of his life, he did a series of drawings called the deluge drawings that were all about the turbulence of water.
[00:14:33] And maybe it was because he recognized he was facing death and that was kind of, you know, how he saw it. He felt he had so much more to accomplish that he did these drawings because mostly the drawings throughout his life of water were pretty peaceful. He did a lot of rivers.
[00:14:47] Terry Arko: Well, he witnessed the flooding of Florence when he was a young child, so I'm sure that stuck with him.
[00:14:53] Jim Lauria: Right, right, right. And, you know, if you look at a lot of his paintings, even like the Mona Lisa, which is the most famous. In the background, most people don't recognize, they look at a smile, but in the background is the Trevio River. His earliest painting was painting of the Ono River, the Ono Valley. So his paintings reflected a lot of his interest in water as well.
The Blue Mind - Wallace J. Nichols
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[00:15:14] Eric Knight: So you said you're writing. Oh yeah, go ahead, Terry.
[00:15:17] Terry Arko: Oh, I, you just brought up something that I would like us to delve into a little bit. Because Jim, on your blog site, which I believe is 'To know water is to love water,' you have lots of great information on there about all the different types of quotes about water.
[00:15:31] Funny quotes and so forth. But you also list books. And what Eric was just stating about us being around water, the calming effects of water and so forth, Your recent article that you just wrote was about the book, The Blue Mind written by Wallace Nichols I believe.
[00:15:49] Jim Lauria: J. Nichols. He went by J. Unfortunately, he's recently passed. He passed away in June.
[00:15:53] Terry Arko: Yes, wasn't he a neurosurgeon? Or he was involved in brain surgery?
[00:15:58] Jim Lauria: He was a marine biologist.
[00:16:00] Terry Arko: but he, but he did research with, with neurosurgeons, I
[00:16:03] Jim Lauria: yeah, he did. Neurobiological research,
[00:16:06] Terry Arko: Yeah. Tell us about that a little bit. Tell us about Blue Mind, about your connection with Blue Mind, and Nichols and
[00:16:13] Jim Lauria: Yeah, so I just wrote in fact that it was yesterday I published it. Water is recreation slash recreation. Right? If you look at the word recreation, recreation, right? It's all about that. And he wrote a lot about water and its effect on our minds. The fact that the brain floats in water, and that we feel so much better around water.
[00:16:35] And he always asked the question, what is your water? And if you think about it, you know, some of the most awe inspiring things I've ever seen is like Niagara Falls. Some people's water is is their bathtub. There, there's so much wonder and joy, as you said, Eric, around water. It's just a special place for most people. wrote all about that connection. He said the Blue Mind is the calm mind. The red mind is the frenetic pace that, you know, is typical in our everyday life. To get into that blue mind state, the best way to do it is to be around some water that you really love.
[00:17:12] Whatever that might be. And obviously a swimming pool, people always have joy around that. Kids laughing, splashing, you know, the fun around having this recreational activity around water.
[00:17:24] Eric Knight: Yeah, I would say my childhood in the summer times anyway, we went to the pool almost every day. It was a great way for my parents to exhaust the three boys. I'm the middle of three boys. You can imagine. Oh, let's just go to the pool. Yeah, that'll do it. And it did.
[00:17:40] Terry Arko: And that's, that's where my fascination with water began too. I grew up in Southern California. We weren't close to the beach, but we we sure packed up the car a lot and headed down to the beach as much as possible. So we spent a lot of time by the ocean. I was fortunate that my family had a cabin in the San Bernardino Mountains, which was near a very beautiful lake.
[00:18:03] And so a majority of my life growing up, I spent swimming in a mountain lake through most of the summer. Being around pools, of course, a lot. And that's actually what led me to the pool industry. One of the things that was enticing for me was , wow, I get to be around water all day long. That was one of the most enticing things for me. That made it something I wanted to do.
[00:18:27] Eric Knight: Well, I've said in previous episodes that the people that listen to this podcast deal with domesticated samples of water. And water is one of earth's most powerful elements, but it's also one of the most relaxing. Like the sound of rain on a roof can make you sleep or sound of waves. These sound machines, a lot of them have to do with water, even like sprinklers going off. It's amazing that that's what soothes us and makes us relax. While at the same time it can destroy entire towns and wash out valleys and everything else.
[00:19:00] What is it about it that makes people want to invest six figures in their backyard just to have some of it so they can look at it and enjoy it? What do you think, Jim? I mean, is it neurological? Is it emotional? Is it societal? Or is there something deeper within our own biology that attracts us to want to be in and around water?
[00:19:22] Jim Lauria: Yeah, I think it's all of those that you mentioned, Eric. I think it's the emotional connection, you know, obviously you had such fun with your family in the pool growing up. So anytime you run a pool, you probably reconnect with those experiences. Right?
[00:19:37] The fun of swimming, the freedom from gravity in some respects, right? Every time you get a pool you know, there's a lot of things. The sound of water, as you brought up. The crashing waves, the, the, the power of water. And look, we're almost 70 percent made up of water, right? The human body. So there's got to be that connection. And as, yeah. As Jay Nichols says, our brains float in water.
[00:20:03] So I think it's all those things combined that really have that strong connection for us with water. uh, and as da Vinci said, it's the lifeblood of the planet.
Water must be coaxed.
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[00:20:13] Eric Knight: Awesome. Terry, anything you'd like to add?
[00:20:16] Terry Arko: Let's bring it full circle back to Leonardo. I think on your blog site, I saw where you had quotes. A lot of different quotes from Leonardo da Vinci on water. And so I was going to ask you, what's one of your favorite quotes?
[00:20:30] Jim Lauria: My favorite is 'water is nature'. so all encompassing. And that's how he felt about it. That was his main quote. He had a lot of quotes on it. But that that's the one that really resonates with me.
[00:20:44] Terry Arko: I have one in particular that was in the article that you just wrote. And Eric, you're going to really love this because I think it fits in with everything that you teach for sure. And I know what I teach. And that is the quote, 'water must be coaxed.'
[00:20:58] Eric Knight: Ooh.
[00:21:00] Terry Arko: And I'm going to, I'm going to use that. In my water chemistry classes, I'd always say you have to manage water. Well, I'm not going to say that anymore. I'm going to say your water needs to be coaxed.
[00:21:09] Eric Knight: Yeah. You to treat it.
[00:21:11] Jim Lauria: I've got one from a couple of years ago where I got like the top 15 Leonardo da Vinci quotes. And that wasn't one of them, but I picked that one up just recently on this Ken Burns documentary, which was really interesting. The other place that I've gotten a lot of information and I really enjoyed the book was Walter Isaacson's study of,
[00:21:32] Terry Arko: Yes.
[00:21:33] Jim Lauria: of Leonardo. And then there's one more book that I always recommend about Leonardo da Vinci by Michael Gelb. He's a business consultant, and he uses da Vinci's work, but he has a book, How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci. And those are the two books I really recommend. Anybody that's really interested in Leonardo da Vinci should read those two books.
[00:21:55] Terry Arko: Eric, you'll love this too. On his blog, I think, Jim, you have over 50 songs that are related to water.
[00:22:04] Jim Lauria: Oh, yeah. So, so for a while back, maybe five years ago, every day I would put a quote about water and on Sundays I would do a song that had a quote about water. And so that was a little fun project. And then what I did was on my Linkedin newsletter, I started putting all the quotes by the different categories. Like water quotes by U. S. presidents, by comedians, by scientists. And so that's a collection that I really enjoyed putting together.
[00:22:36] Terry Arko: Well, I want to commend you because you had three of my favorites on there. You had Watching the River Flow, by Bob Dylan,
[00:22:44] Jim Lauria: Great one.
[00:22:45] Terry Arko: Don't Cross the River, by America, and Rock Me on the Water by Jackson Browne.
[00:22:50] Jim Lauria: Oh boy. Yeah. One of my favorites as well.
[00:22:53] Terry Arko: Yeah, I would add one in there. It's by the Beach Boys, and it's called Don't Go Near the Water.
[00:23:00] Eric Knight: I was going to say, Have you Ever Seen the Rain, by CCR.
[00:23:03] Terry Arko: That's
[00:23:03] Jim Lauria: Absolutely. One of my favorites.
[00:23:06] Terry Arko: Yeah. Don't Go Near the Water. That's a good one by the Beach Boys. I think you'll like that, Jim.
Closing
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[00:23:10] Eric Knight: Well, this has been a very different episode for us. Because normally we get into the science and the practical application of how you can treat water. This is kind of a nice break from that. It's a different way of thinking. Yeah, it's, it's let's take a step back and just appreciate what we work with.
[00:23:26] We're in an industry where we get to work with something that makes people happy when it's treated right. And it can be a pain in the neck when it isn't. When it's dirty, and algae filled, and all these other things, we get very frustrated probably because we really want it to be clean. Because we know that clean water makes us happy.
[00:23:45] So I'd like to wrap this up and thank you for taking the time to look at water from this perspective, because honestly, I never have. You know, I was a competitive swimmer. Water to me was just part of my daily routine. And to be honest with you, the hardest part of swimming, ask anybody who was a competitive swimmer or is, is jumping in.
[00:24:05] It's, you know, it's going to be cold, even if the water's warm. It's just that initial shock of getting in the pool. Nobody likes that. But once you're in, you feel great. It's just that initial shock. And Oh gosh, I'll, I'll never forget that. Maybe that's my story of how reluctant and every day you had to overcome that reluctance to get in that pool.
[00:24:24] That's 80 degrees compared to your 98. 6 degree body. Oh, it no, it still gives me the chills now. But, you know, like I said, once you're in and you warm up, it's fine. But that's my memory of water. It was never it was never like deeply emotional to me. It was just an essential part of my day. I spent a lot of hours in water.
[00:24:44] Terry Arko: Well, that's why I wanted Jim on this podcast. Again, just from the storytelling aspect, from all of his expertise, his great writings and so forth. I just wanted to get that expounded out there. So
[00:24:57] Jim Lauria: thanks Terry. I really appreciate that.
[00:24:58] Terry Arko: Thank you, Jim. Appreciate
[00:25:00] Jim Lauria: I write for you guys, right? I, I write because people like you, Terry read my stuff. They listen. So appreciate that and I'll keep writing as long as people are reading. So,
[00:25:10] Eric Knight: Well, I appreciate you being here, both of you. I know you're both very busy. This has been episode 166 of the Rule Your Pool podcast. A little bit different this time, but refreshing to me. I like this.
[00:25:21] Terry Arko: Like water. Refreshing.
[00:25:22] Eric Knight: Oh yeah, there you go.
[00:25:24] Jim Lauria: Yeah, there you go. You got to coax it,
[00:25:26] Terry Arko: You got to coax it.
[00:25:27] Jim Lauria: Thanks, Eric. Eric, A pleasure.
[00:25:29] Eric Knight: yeah, Thank you.
[00:25:30] If you have ideas for the podcast, my email is podcast@orendatech.Com. You probably already know that if you've been listening. And I'm not sure what we're going to cover next time, but we'll probably get back to pool chemistry. So this has been a nice break from that, Jim, thank you again, Terry, thanks for finding him.
[00:25:47] Terry Arko: You bet.
[00:25:48] Eric Knight: All right. Take care, everybody. Thanks.
[00:25:50] Terry Arko: Thanks.