Transcript for #1649 - Michael Easter

Thanks for having me on that.

Is it really a crisis? I argue that it is a crisis. One, I don't have a problem with comfort. I do have a problem with always being comfortable, always landing into comfort, which is what we're doing now. Yeah. All right. So if you think of the average person's daily life, they wake up in the soft bed, temperature-controlled home. They shuffle over to the microwave, microwave of breakfast burrito, right? That came in from who knows where and is made with who knows what. And then it's like, I go to work. I drive to work. I sit behind this screen all day. I don't have to move at all. I put any effort into this day and then it's back to bed in front of the TV. And you just rinse and repeat that. At no point in daily life, I would argue our people really challenged or really uncomfortable anymore. Like we were in our past.

Yes, David Goggins has done it right now. And so he's like the type of person, you see what happens when you start to push against that, right? When you kind of have this moment where you go, maybe I'm a little too comfortable and you start to sort of investigate, okay, what is it with this comfort? How can I get into some discomfort and what can that do for me? And then if the extreme end of that is, is Goggins. Yeah.

Well, I mean, the answer is not to totally overhaul your lifestyle, right? I mean, we have amazing lives right now. The fact that we don't have to go out and hunt for food or put physical effort into every day is great. But at the same time, I think, and I argue in the book, the comfort crisis, that we need these moments that push back at us, and we need to sort of investigate these discomforts that we used to face in our evolutionary past. So, for example, Two, that's the percent of people who take the stairs when there's the choice. Two percent. Two percent. People who take the stairs when there's the choice of an escalator. 70 percent of people, more than 70 percent now, are overweight or obese. 20, only 20 percent of hunger. Sorry, only 20 percent of eating is actually driven by physiological hunger. 80 percent of it is just unbored. It's noon, I guess I'll eat, or I'm stressed out. We exercise more, we exercise 14 times less than our ancestors nowadays.

Exactly. That was life to them. They just were trying to get by. Yeah, and we spend 95% of our time indoors as well. And we know that there's benefits to getting out and moving more. We know there's benefits to being outside. We also know that there's benefits to truly being challenged in life. It's like, like I said before, you can basically never be challenged as you go through life in a real sort of fundamental way. And you'll probably have a decent life. But you know, if you think about potential and human potential, let's say that human potential is this big circle around us, right? Now, most of us live in the sort of dinner plate-sized place. We never go out and explore the edges of our potential by trying to get uncomfortable and doing things that are maybe a little outside of our comfort zone. We can just kind of exist in this sort of soft space that we've created for ourselves right now. And, of course, there are people who get out and, you know, into that those edges, like the goggins of the world, like the camhains of the world, But I think most people don't really go out and see what they're capable of.

I think that exercise, the study show, that it grows the Hempel campus, which is an area that tends to be shrunken in people who have depression. So this is why the APA now advocates that psychiatrists recommend exercise to a lot of their patients. But I think to get back to your question, am I going to have any questions?

That's an M.I. staying within my comfort zone by having this argument. So the way that I reported this book is I spent more than the month hunting with Donnie Vinson in the Arctic backcountry.

Yeah.

Uh, for V. Yeah. handsome rugged bastard for people who don't know him he's a backcountry bow hunter and filmmaker he goes out into you know super extreme off the grid area yeah he's uh we were saying he's controversial but not for any real reason he's controversial because he doesn't wear camo and uh he wears like a lot of wool Hey, looks good in the wild.

Like it's like it's walking out of a Philson catalog. He does right there. Completely. Good dude. Good dude.

I would imagine it kills everything. I had a friend who worked there and he said like every 20 minutes. We have to do like 20 sprays or some like very specific number.

There were the ones that would put the shirtless dudes out on at their store in New York, right? Axel shirtless dudes would be on the street. You know, when they were crumbing jeans, yeah. Oh, it was done. I was just looking at those.

It's probably like January too, right?

Yeah. Outerware, kind of that old school cool stuff, a lot of canvas. Like do wax.

Why don't they put those guys out and Manhattan on the street? I would much rather buy from them because people would go, go back to Texas.

Yeah, I think, but it's like, do we really know how to get back into discomfort and like, in the book, I argue that there are a handful of fundamental discomforts that we lost over time as a world become became more comfortable. Okay. So a few of the important ones are that We don't take on these big epic challenges in nature, like what you used to. So for example, traditional rights of passage, all totally gone. You know, in the past, we would send young people out to do some trial. And the idea was that like, hey, you're at stage one of life right now, but we need you to get to stage two so you can be a better contributor to the tribe. And so you can almost become a new, more confident, capable person. And in order to do that, we're going to send you out in the wild to do any number of things that depends on what the culture was. So for example, the Messiah, they would send young warriors out to hunt lions with a spear. And if you kill the lion, then you would officially transition into a warrior. And in that space, that trying middle ground, that's where you learn a lot about yourself and your potential. And by going through something like that, you come out on the other side and improve person. We've totally lost that and there's all kinds of different rights of passage throughout time. They're essentially what Joseph Campbell called the heroes journey. There's this typical archetype of, you know, leave comfort of home, go into this, trying, challenging, uncomfortable middle ground, come out the other end and you've learned something about yourself and evolved. That's gone. And you think about young people the day, like how often are they challenged? You start to see helicopter parenting come in and about 1990 is when it started because there was all this media around kidnappings. So parents wouldn't let their kids outside go to the playground.

It was a bunch of a bunch of media around kidnapping, which kidnapping was not a big phenomenon right, but it just got exploded because it's

Yeah, it definitely happens. But if you look at it, it comes a story. Exactly. If you look at this statistics, like your kid is more likely to get hurt in a lot of other different ways than that. But so that blows up. Kids start to get helicopter-parented. Challenge gets removed out of their lives. Now we've kind of moved on to snow-plow parenting, right? We're snow-plow parenting. It's even worse. You just push all the challenge out of your kids' lives. So this a good example of this would be the parents who paid to get their kids into those challenges. So now you start to see kids who were born after 1990 have much higher rates of mental health problems, like anxiety and depression because they essentially have no armor. Like you've never really been challenged. So when you get into a classroom or whatever it is and someone challenges your idea, you have no idea how to deal with that. That becomes really anxiety inducing. And there's obviously a lot of different reasons why these rates of anxiety have risen. There's also You know, a lot of time on smartphones, but that kind of goes back into that. It's like, if I don't get enough likes on this Instagram page, it's like, that is a major shot, you know?

It was like Here's this emo band I like, listen to that.

Yeah, it is terrible. And so this is another thing that I point out in the book is that we're never bored anymore. So as we evolved, boredom is this evolutionary discomfort that basically told us whatever you're spending your time on right now it's not an efficient use of your time so go find something else now in the past this would be like let's say you're picking berries from a bush you've picked the easiest to pick ones well if we didn't have the skew of boredom we'd be like reaching into the very back for the berries that are hard to pick but it they become successfully harder to pick because we've picked all these different ones right boredom would kick on and be like hey your return on your time invested has worn thin move on to another bush right but nowadays with this influx of media we have people spend eleven hours a day engaging with digital media is a real yeah eleven and that's the average so what you want to hear an even crazier thing yeah Okay, so I'm a professor at University of Nevada Las Vegas and one of the classes I teach is an intro class. So it's got about 150 students and some media class I teach in the journalism department. First day of class, I'll talk about how just how things have changed with media. It's like we live 2.5 million years with no media in our lives, and now it's become our lives. And then I will ask, all right, I want everyone to pull out your phone right now. I want you to look at your screen time, tell me how much you have, who thinks they have the highest? And we'll start to go through people. I've had people, seven hours, 45 minutes, eight hours, 50 minutes, nine hours, 16 minutes. It's like, that's your entire day. all on that cell phone, right? So nowadays, when we have this discomfort of boredom kick in, we have a super easy escape from it, right? We're not forced to be like, okay, what am I doing with my time? Is there something better I could be doing? We just pull out our phone. And you see this, right? Anytime people have one moment of solitude or inactivity, it's like, oh, my is I'll just check my phone.

Yeah. Go, wow. People at dinner.

Totally. And what's interesting about boredom is when oftentimes when boredom would kick on, we would go inward, sort of mind-wonder. And mind-wondering, it gives you your brains in time to reset and revive. Whereas any time you focus on the outside world, your brain is actively processing information. So this is kind of like, in the book, I compare it to lifting away when you're having your conversation, looking at your phone, watching a screen, whatever you're doing. If you're focusing on the outside world, your brain is working and it's lifting. When you go inward, your brain goes into this default mode network, which is like a rest period. So now, because every time we're bored, we just pull out that screen and focus more, our brains are just constantly being worked and overworked and overworked. And this is associated with just burnout, anxiety, etc.

Yeah, and there's actually research behind this. They've done studies where they'll have They'll have people watch something really boring, like a video of people folding laundry, just like they bore the shit out of these participants. And then they have them come up with, take these different creativity tests that scientists use and the people who are bored come up with more better solutions and responses than the people who had been stimulated the whole time. And you think about this, I mean, just in terms of anecdotes from creators, it's like, You need time to just sit and be with yourself and have these weird ideas bubble to the surface. If you never have that, you're not letting the weird stuff come out, you know? Like do you experience this when you're trying to think of stuff in your own work.

I haven't read that book.

So in the book, too, I talk about You hear all this stuff that's like, break up with your phone, last time on your phone, hear a thousand different ways to use your phone less. Yes, that is important. But the problem is there's a lot of times when people go, okay, I mean, use my phone less. So they put their phone and, you know, say for whatever weird habit they've developed, but then they go watch Netflix. It's like your brain doesn't know the damn difference between the screen on your phone and the screen on your TV. The brain is that you need to remove yourself from this outside media that's totally just weaved its way into your life, like stimulating you with nothing. Yeah. Yeah. The switch from phone to Netflix is like going, I'm quitting smoking, but I'm going to go buy some red man and just pack that in real hard. No. Yeah. Same thing.

Uh, so we're hunting Caribou. Um, yeah. We're on a Caribou hunt. That's a dangerous hunt. It's the Arctic is an extreme place.

Did you get flowplained in there? Not well, it was a plane. Yeah, bushplained, tiny plane, picked you up. We got ferried, so me, it was me, Donnie, and his cameraman William Altman, who's a great dude satellite phone. Uh, Donnie had a GPS thing to in order to talk to the pilot. Yeah, thanks boy. Yeah. That breaks your fuck. That breaks you are indeed fucked, my man.

Yeah, we saw some grizzlies on. Yeah, big, big animal. So at one point. We we leave caught to be first. Being William are in this plane that's like a three-seater.

Just two. So we get in the the sort of small plane. It drops me and William off. Then the smaller plane comes along.

From Las Vegas. Yeah. The middle of nowhere. Yeah.

Successively smaller. So that's what's interesting. Yeah, it's like if you want to leave the built environment. Yeah, you're getting on big plane to medium plane to little plane to really little plane to why the fuck am I in this size plane to how much do you weigh?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, wait our gear. So I get left out there. All right, because the the super small plane comes and picks up one at a time. Yeah, one at a time. Did you have a rifle? No, I'm standing there. And there is there's clods of Grizzly poop surrounding me. And I'm just like, I'm just like, oh my god. Well, here's the thing. And we can get into this. But Donnie's like, yeah, I fucking bears or whatever. You know, these two comfortable. Oh, yeah. But it was also interesting because I'm standing out there. And it's like, I have never been this alone in my entire life. Oh yeah, it's real long. So think about there's no one around me for miles and miles. My cell phone doesn't work because today we're increasingly even when we think we're alone we're with people through our cell phones through text messages through through whatever and that there's just like nothing and you start to kind of get a look at first I'm like man this is dangerous like I don't like I did not like it at all but then you know a sort of as time went on It's like, actually, this is kind of interesting to be totally removed from society because now all of a sudden it's like, we have all these social narratives of like, how do we act? What do we do? What do we do is humans and they're totally removed. And it's just like, wow.

Probably two, three hours, four hours probably.

Yeah, totally can't be alone for three hours as they should.

Yes. Oh, watching those videos.

I remember seeing the documentaries and like he made this like little key latch on his door. I mean, so he made this cabinet. He makes this cabinet of just stuff that he finds out in the wild, right? But like he had almost fashioned like a normal home from the 50s and you're like, how did you figure out all this shit, man?

I mean, it's amazing, right? It's amazing that I can pull the podcast and listen to almost whoever I want. They're thoughts and get these new ideas, but at the same time it's like, if that's all you're spending your time doing, there's some downsides. We need to offset it. I don't necessarily think the answer is to go live in the woods in Alaska for the rest of your life all of that would be pretty cool if you did more power to you but figuring out like how do we how do we balance this all and have these moments where we have you know solitude go more inward and aren't as stimulated so one thing that you know after I I'm standing out there in solitude when I get home, I start researching, you know, what are the benefits of solitude? Because we know that the data shows that being lonely isn't good for us, but there's the difference between loneliness and solitude. Like solitude is a electing to be by yourself and using that time for sort of introspection. And the scientists that I talked to, they said, yeah, you really need this because a lot of times people are more conductor circuits and they don't do well when they're alone at all. This is part of the reason we have such a lonelyness problem. But if you can like build this, build this capacity to be alone, they call it like that can serve you well in the long time. And it also Breed steeper thinking creativity. I mean, it's like there's a reason that thousands of years of religious tradition, they have people who go and spend this time alone out of nature. I mean, Jesus was in the desert for 40 days. The Buddha exited the palace gates, you know, and spent a bunch of time alone and in solitude. Even Abraham Lincoln, you solitude, and for all his, a lot of his writing and stuff like that. And I feel like people don't have that as much anymore.

And we often frame it as a negative, I mean like think of what we do with kids who miss behavior, we put them in time out, think of what we do to prisoners who miss behavior. So we framed it as a negative, but it isn't necessarily.

Yeah. Reason for that. Uh, we just thought, I mean, Donnie was just like, I am going out for more than a month. You want to come along? I'm like, yeah. Why was he going further that long? It's just what he does for work. You know, he embeds himself in these places for long periods of time and does these films. So he's a good person to go with. He knows what he's doing up there and he's he's one of those dudes who's kind of unflappable in situations like that but like for example we had this was our think our first or second night we had had we had this kafaru tp you know and we're very very intelligent people I want you to know this first of all We pitch this thing on this kind of knob because the winds are coming in from a direction where like, oh, it's going to be protected and then we'll move it when the wind shift in a couple days. While the wind shift overnight, I wake up and there's just like this pop pop pop pop pop the fabric, you know. And the winds just keep coming get faster and faster overnight and eventually by morning. I mean, they're like 70 mile an hour guss and I'm just like holy shit. We're gonna lose this thing and then like what do we do after that? Like it's just crazy and it's freezing, you know, and you don't bring a tent.

Yeah, that tarpy. But yeah, the T.P. That was it.

Well, if we needed one, we had like, you know, emergency blankets and that stuff and Donnie could have message to the pilot to try and bring us something. But yeah, and he's just like, okay, we're gonna have to do it. He's like, this is bad. We're gonna have to do take down, you know, get all your shit ready, get it in your back. And it's just like, he just knows exactly what to do.

Yeah. So it's, uh, it's these mountains that are, they're not super jagged. They're very old. So they've kind of been worn by time. And the Tundra is the absolute worst thing to walk on in the world. So I describe it as think of like a doctor's suits book. I kind of picture it like that where it's like this big mattress that's covered in these in basketballs. I like to think about it like that. So the basketballs are these things called Tundra Tusses. which are these big, thin, dense pieces of grass. It's like wound up grass and then the mattress in between them is kind of like muck and shale and frozen ground. So walking on this, you're like, do I step on this super soft stuff? That's hard to, you know, get your bearings on. It's kind of like almost beat sand, same idea. Or do I like step on these tusks that are super awkward? It's like having to walk anywhere. I mean, like one mile out there is like five anywhere else, you know? It's just such a bitch to walk on.

Man, I never really had to go back before. Yeah, I would go back and just... Did you ask Donnie what he does? I can't remember if I did. I don't know if he would have known either because he was looking like an idiot when he was walking as well.

No. Yeah, occasionally you'll find some game trails and those can be good. They're kind of, you know, a little bit more worn. Oftentimes are a long mountain faces though. And, you know, the animals on four legs are a bit more sure-footed than we are on our shitty two legs. So all of a sudden you're slipping because of shale.

Some days we would probably do probably our longest day was maybe 15 total in the day. Yeah, and we had one day. We had seen this herd. And so we're kind of chasing them more or less. And we ended up, you know, seven-ish miles from camp. And decided we needed to, you know, head back to the teepee now. And it was so freaking cold. It was like, you know, zero out and we've got this long march across the Tundra and part of what we had to go through then was like this sort of frozen swamp, you know. So sometimes your foot would break through into this sort of moving water and it was one of those and I'm like this. Why are the hell am I out here? What am I doing? Like this is stupid, you know. What day was this? Uh, this is a ways into it. I don't know. Maybe like 15.

Um, then we wouldn't have been so damn hungry.

Yeah, we're going to stay out there no matter what. Yeah, because I mean, you know, Donnie, he wants footage and I signed on because I wanted to experience that, you know, so we would have stayed out there.

We're mostly living off our back. Yeah.

Yeah. Every backpack. Quite heavy filled with mountain house. Yeah. You probably had that. Yeah. Delicious, delicious girl.

Well, that looks good. I could have used that.

Right. So that, I mean, we think about all the ways that we've removed activity from our lives. And I mean, even think about that, just to be that like, if you needed to shit, you're going to have to hold a squat for a minute there, buddy. Right. And having to go out and do that, it was like, oh, man, like it was just kind of like, oh, yeah, I guess we've we nested on these nice, personal and toilets.

You have to do that.

Nothing. Yeah, no. Which is interesting coming from a world of, so I, I was there pretty COVID. So it was interesting coming from a world of Purell and shower two a day and now it's even more so. For good reason, you know, but there's also There's benefits to being dirty, especially if it's outside dirtiness, not like indoor dirtiness, like, you know, raw chicken and other people's germs, but what's the benefits? So when you look at cultures who live outside and do a lot of things outside, they tend to have a lot better gut health than we do. So one of the hunter-gather tribes that spend study is the Hada in Tanzania and they did this one study where they compared poop because that's how you figure out gut health from Westerners and the Hada tribe and the Hada have way more different types of gut bacteria and they also have these ones that we don't have so they have more of it and they have more variety of it now they don't get stomach issues basically they don't get colon cancer that don't get rectal cancer, and they don't get things like crones and colitis. Meanwhile, in the West, these are increasing problems, especially for younger people, and they think this is because we've completely sanitized our lives, more or less. We never get dirty and we spend less time outside. So when we figured out that germs are bad and can cause disease, it's like yes, but the amount of germs that cause disease relative to all the germs out there It's a very small percentage, but we kind of just went ahead and killed all the germs we cut. And so this has given us less of the defense and given us less variety in our guts that can improve our gut health.

Oh, we totally take so many things for granted. I mean, when when we got back, first thing we did is we're in this airport in Cautibu and the airport is like a shed, a big shed more or less, right? But it has running heated water until I go in the night, you know, IP and I get to the faucet and I'm like, it hits me. It's like, holy shit. This is running water. Turn it on hot and it's just like, I mean, I had the biggest shitty and grand on my face from that hot water. It was like, oh my God, this is unbelievable because out there, anytime we need to water, it's like, we got to hike down to a stream, fill up these water bags, hike them back up to camp, you know, and it's everything is effortful. So having these moments where you get out of that, you know, sort of comfort zone that we're used to. It helps you become a lot more appreciative of everything that we have. I mean, we had another one when I was just telling you we had to go back out across, uh, back through the Tundra to get back to the T.P. that one night. I mean, that was one of those where, you know, it hit me if we would have quit, like you can't quit. You know, you have to just keep going because if you stay out there overnight, I mean, that's a lot more dangerous than just putting one foot in front of the other and making it back. And, you know, before I went up to Alaska, like, For example, my wife and I would go to this restaurant all the time. And the food is amazing. Amazing. But the service is not quite there. And before I get to Alaska, I would just sit there as we're waiting me and like, oh, God, this place is so mismanaged, like what the fuck is wrong with these people. Just can you get your shit together? Can you just refill that person's water like move people out in a normal way? All of these complaints are going through my mind, right? So then I get back and we go to that restaurant. And I think back to getting back to that TP after that long haul and having like shitty mountain house dinner and being freezing cold. And I can stand there and be like, man, this isn't bad at all. You guys do what you need to do. I'm about to eat 2,000 calories and I'm warm and I'm happy. And this is awesome.

Yes, exactly.

And so it makes you so much more appreciative, you know? And it also sort of makes me maybe less of an asshole, because once you're appreciative, you're slightly less of a nitpicky person, which, you know, imagine if we could put 5% less of a asshole. at scale for everyone.

Except there was everything nice about it.

I love that. I was so happy. That was me too, except I didn't have a custom made awesome self. I wish I would have done that.

Oh, I smelled like a salmon run. Mixed with a garbage dump.

Yeah, sure. No. You did get a carrot. You did get a carrot.

Mountain house, bars, yeah. And then we had, and then we had carrot, but when that carrot grew, came in, it was just like, honestly, That Karibu was the best meal I've ever had in my life in that TV because food is like, it's a culmination of how hungry are you. Who are you with? What is the experience? It honestly was so unbelievably good. At that moment.

We found a little bit. It was most of it and it was tough. It was tough.

We had a little jet boils.

Yeah. Except when, so we were there during the migration and there were none. until they were literally everywhere. I mean, it was like a war film where all the soldiers come over to the hill, all at once, and they're like man's on an aunt hill. It was just like, holy shit.

Like, like, like in. Like, yes. It's just all kinds of little. Yeah.

Yeah, it tastes useless. No, it tastes a little bit like green beans. Does it? Yeah. Oh, you guys had it? Yeah, it's not to, I mean, it's not like we're making a salad with it, but you're just sitting there and like, yeah, I guess I'll leave this.

Yeah, I had a tag. So I had never, I had never hunted before. I mean, I'd been hunting, but I hadn't actually been the one who was the hunter. So that was new too. That's a form of discomfort that I talk about in the book that we are very removed from the life cycle now. So this goes from how we deal with funerals. Think of modern funeral. It's like we dress the dead person up to look as alive as possible. We look at them for an hour and then they go into the ground and we're told to You know, keep your mind off it. Don't think about it, you know, stay busy. To our food system, it's like the meat we have in our grocery store is all perfectly manicured, it's cellophane, it's like design almost so it doesn't look like it came from a living animal, right? So I definitely had some reservations going into it. It's not that I was against hunting at all. It's just like, I don't know if I want to cross this barrier that I assume is going to be emotionally heavy. You know, and Donnie was basically like, look, man, If you don't want to hunt, you don't have to hunt. But I think you'll understand why we come out here more if you do hunt. So I was like, OK, I think I'll do it. I think I wasn't entirely sure, honestly, the whole time. And we saw you had a tag, but you weren't sure if you're going to use it. Yeah. And we, you know, at one point we are on this hill, glassing, and we've been watching this herd who was on the southern hill far away, there's kind of a valley between us. And they start moving. up this valley and there's a saddle. Donnie's like, okay, if they keep moving and go over the saddle and we can get to the other side of it before, we're gonna be a pretty good position. So it's like, you know, soldiers at the sound of a mortar were like just cranking across this hill. We get over the saddle and once we get to the other side, we're just cranking it, you know, what we think is gonna be about 300 yards. We like get into the dirt and we army crawl. And I've got that, you know, meanwhile I have the rifle. And Army Crawl, a couple hundred yards, pop up, can't see anything, another hundred yards. And I'm looking through the scope and Donnie has binoculars, you know, and all the sudden that the apex of the saddle just like appear these antlers, right? And then more antlers. And there's about 30 of them in this herd. And we'd already identified at least two that we thought were older and bigger. and they come over this the saddle and down like exactly as we'd hoped and you know they're 300 yards 200 yards and still at this point I'm like are you sure you're gonna do this man you know I mean it's it's heavy and they get within about 150 yards and there's this one that had come over that we could see as he was walking, he's limping on his back leg. So it's like, that's the one. You know, he's old, really, really interesting or an eight antlers, just old dude who'd clearly been injured somehow, who knows. They get within 150 yards and it's like, this is the point where I want to shoot, but keep going in and out of the herd, you know, like I couldn't get him in the scope and And Donny sort of leans over to me and he's like, hey man, if you don't want it shoot, you don't have to shoot. But if you're gonna shoot, you need to do it soon. And so I look down the scope and there are now their 160, 170, they pass the point where they're kind of going away from us and I'm like shit, what do I do? And all of a sudden they part and he's right there, you know? And it was like, Big deep breath, pull the trigger, pull the trigger again, and it's like he's down. And in that moment, I was like, holy shit, what have you done? Like there is no coming back from this, right? Like it hit me pretty heavy. And so we walk out and it's, you know, down on the tundra, almost like it had been placed perfectly. There's the only sign that it is dead is there's like this tiniest trickle blood coming down its main. And I was like, dude, what have you done? Like, look at this majestic thing and that's on you, you know? And Donnie's a good person to go with because him and William were like, hey, we're going to go get our stuff because we've left our packs back there. So we gave me a minute with it. And as I'm sitting there, it was super interesting. I'd like to hear what you think about what your experience has been. But hit me like, it was the most depressed and alive I've ever felt at the same time. Unbelievable feeling. I don't know how to describe it. Just thankful. You know, a lot of gratuity. And, um, but at the same time, I'm like, I don't know if I'd ever do this again, you know, but, and, um, those guys get back and then we start to, you know, feel dress the animal. And, um, in that moment, my mind started to shift, because I went from Okay, you just killed this majestic creature to now I'm seeing it as meat and therefore a giver of life or less. And I think to myself, dude, you eat meat all the time at home and never wants to feel and I owe to of emotion, but you do here. And so it made me a lot more appreciative of not only like that animal in the place where it came from, but also all meet that I now right it like it totally woke me up to like what goes into eating me and so now it's interesting paradoxically you would think when someone starts hunting they would eat a lot more meat it's like no I actually less meat now because I kind of better understand where it comes from and what has to go into it and sort of this idea of of death and being more aware of it After I got back from the Arctic, I traveled to Bhutan. I wanted to know more about this and what can become more aware of our death due for us. Bhutan is interesting because it's one of the least developed countries on earth. But paradoxically, it's one of the happiest. And one thing that people are instructed to do in Bhutan is to think about their death, at least once every day. And this is part of like, it's woven into the culture. That idea and also the idea of death itself. So like a lot of their art and traditions centered around death, they have, there's these little things called Sasas. And they're basically these tiny clay pyramids. And it's clay mixed with ashes of the dead. And they are everywhere all over the country. So you can kind of think about it's like a very death-aware country.

It's part of the Buddhist tradition that they follow. They've just sort of leaned into that more than other countries. And so I wanted to know, like, how does this idea of death and their intimacy with it contribute to their happiness? Because by all metrics, they should be miserable if we're looking at it from an economic perspective, right? But here they are, they're in the top 20 happiness rankings. And so I met with one of their economists, who studies happiness in the country. But I also met with two Buddhist leaders. And one of these, it was pretty wild. So in Bhutan, the law states that you have to have a driver everywhere you go. It's the tourism is very heavily regulated. So I have this driver, and I'm going to meet this guy who is a Kempo, which is really high up in Buddhism. And he lives right by this monastery called the Carpo. And it's on this cliff, right? And my driver has, what is essentially a smart car with the back seat? And we have to go up this mountain road, cliffside mountain road that's totally redded out. I'm like, are you able to make this? And he's just like, I mean, we're like four wheel on the smart car thing and it was just unbelievable. And after 45 minutes, you know, he pulls over and I have to hike for maybe 10 minutes along this trail and get to this guy's shack and, you know, he has someone there who helps him with stuff and she makes me do this like cleansing ritual with like smoke and, you know, some water and I go into this guy's shack. It's like the first room there's nothing in it. second room it's a kitchen very basic like a cooktop or whatever the third room has this silk sort of drape in it and I pull that drape back and I like I'm immediately hit with the smell of burning incense and on the right there's this there's like a big statue of the Buddha and like photos and different little you know trinkets Buddhist trinkets and and then I look over and the light is like catching this incense smoke and behind it there's this guy's face and he just looks over at me and he's in the lotus position on this platform he's in his full like Buddhist robes and everything and he just as looks at me goes welcome and it was like Dr. Strange shit dude. It was like I mean if you want to talk about like cliche in terms of you know the gangly western writer has come to see the guru That was fucking it dude Wow and so I talked to him for a few hours about You know death and like how do we how do they view at the air versus us and He talks about it in terms of when you think about the fact that, you know, I'm going to die. You're going to die. We're all going to die eventually. You take that into your life. It changes your behavior because you start to realize like, there's going to be an end to all this, right? And things that maybe were, you know, finicky in your life or these like little minute things that really work you up. That all starts to fade. And you start to really center on that, which is going to make you actually happy in the end. And it's interesting because Western research by scientists has actually backed us up. So they've done studies where they have people think about their own death. Those people end up report that they're happier, that they're like more on track in their life. They've done this in people who are dying as well, where they like think about the end and accept it, sort of take it into their life. They have better lives. It's really interesting. And I mean, it's something I do in my own life and I can tell that I can tell you that I think it actually works.

Yeah, I agree. Now the question is like how do we put that at scale for everyone? You can't. Yeah.

I do I mean, I do think there's almost an argument though that maybe maybe an elementary school. We need to take kids to a slaughterhouse or junior high like that needs to be a field trip to understand. Yeah, we need to understand where things come from and like what goes into this, you know, I think this is a selfish proclamation.

Yeah, well, it's, you know, when you choose the opposite path, you're fighting against millions of years of evolution, because back in our past environments, everything took effort, everything was uncomfortable. To do the thing that made you most comfortable back then, saved your life. Yeah. You kept you out of crazy, inclement weather, saved you from effort that just burned up calories that were hard to find. It helped you avoid risk. And so it was great. Right. Tell nearly about a hundred years ago, right? After the Industrial Revolution.

Oh, yeah. For sure.

I will hunt it. Yeah. It's like a capture so I can drown it in brand candy in a week.

Wow.

So is that what we're decadents going to go out and have for lunch after this. I don't get it here in Texas.

It's a strange world like food can be, right? Yeah, it is.

Yeah, totally. Well, it's interesting, too, what you said about fish that people didn't react to fish on your Instagram feed. You see that? You see that? Did you see that mimic in the grocery store, right? Yep. Like fish. They have the whole thing out there. No one cares. Can you imagine if you just put a full dead cow like in the meat section? People will lose their mind.

Okay.

Yeah, that's interesting.

No, we have words to describe it that it's not from an animal. Yeah, right? Like beef. Like certain cuts, you know, the cuts names. We don't say, oh, yeah, this is, you know, back muscle, or this is his, you know,

Yeah. And if he's euphemisms or anything like that.

Yeah. Could be a certain type of person buys that. It's more woke to the fact that they're, you know, eating meat from an animal.

Yeah, and it's interesting because when they do polls about who is foreign against mediating, it tends the people who are most against mediating tend to live in cities and be most removed from the food system. Always when they poll people who live in more rural areas. They're okay with it because they have the most interactions with the animals. So it's like that the loudest voices against it tend to be people who have no clue, no intimacy or connection with it.

Yeah. They're just doing whatever.

What did he, what did he have to do after? Was that, do you have to call it in and like, this is actually, this was actually before it was illegal.

Yeah. Because he's under the dome. Yeah. No fear. I can get food in here. But they had in it.

Yeah, that's the 30th sex.

They're huge. They're like what do they get up to 1500 pounds probably when they're by the coast and just really filled up with salmon yeah i think i can definitely get up that big boy when you were up there what was your encounters you had you'd seen some yeah we see we saw some from a distance we saw we had one that was going through areas that we had been hiking through and then at one point we're on this like island in this river and a sack river and we show up on this bank and it's like there's just these massive paws and grizzly shit everywhere and there's all these salmon that they've been eating because the salmon run it happened and And you know, Donnie's like, well, we're definitely getting bears tonight boys. You know, he's just like, whatever about it. I think he's got some gene that just takes away his fear or something like that. I'm like, why are we camping here?

Yeah, that's it. That's it.

Yeah, and we didn't see any there luckily we saw the bears that we think were there from a spotting scope moving out of the area like a day later. We didn't have any encounters. Oh, that's true. And it's it was hilarious because we had gotten the care boot at that point and so we're donning it one point is like trimming the care boot in camp to you know because we're going to have dinner and he's just chucking the trimmings in the in the bushes going yeah definitely fucking getting bears tonight boys like just whatever going Good, hell.

He might have been. I don't know. I don't know. If he was, Donnie, if you're listening to this. Fuck you, Donnie. Fuck you.

Just one swat.

So I had a, when I was in high school, I had a math teacher who would go up summers in Alaska. And if we all turned our homework in on time, he tells bear stories, right? And he had this one story. I don't know if it's true or not, but basically it goes like this. There's a, there's a tourist like fishing boat or whatever. And they sent one of the deck cans out to pick berries off of this bush, right? And so this kid is picking these fresh berries for this tourists. Well, couldn't find out there's a grizzly on the other side of this big bush, also picking berries. And they slowly converge. They're trying to yell out and like, hey, you know, there's a There's a grizzly there. They converge and see each other. The bear gets up on two feet, pulls back his paw and freaks and slaps the kids head off. I mean, that's the story. Slaps his head off. Like a little ligger hitting a baseball off a tee. It's like holy shit.

But they're strong enough. I know it's one of the I told dining he goes and it sounds kind of bullshit to me, but at the same time I'm like, I don't want I'm not gonna find out on that one. They're so big. They're so strong too.

It's interesting that people get so turned off that thing.

Yeah, or the chicken. They say that while eating beef or chicken, it's like it's all needed at the end of the day. It's like we put different value on different things. And I don't think we necessarily stop and thing. Why?

Yeah. Well, I was talking to one of the guides when we were up there in Alaska. And this guy's like, I would never be bare me. Just smells bad. I don't want to be around it. You know, the bears are filthy. They smell bad. I'm like, Well, do you eat cow? Why don't you go take a look? Take a walk through a slaughterhouse.

It sounds awesome.

Do you get birth control? Things will get totally out of whack. I mean, because you know, you could argue it's like, well, you guys are trying to play God, but at the same time it's like we've had such an impact on the wild that If we don't do anything, I mean, things are going to get a little weird. I mean, we could let it go. Yeah. But like, okay, see what happens. You know, and I don't know.

Yeah.

And part of it is is how we've structured the lower 48, right? Like there's roads everywhere. So these animals can get sort of caged in and wolves are a lot more successful whereas like in the Arctic, it's all open space. Yeah. And the Caribou can see a wolf coming. that more way more often than not like wolves don't have a chance they have to really work together as a team to converge and find a carabou that's injured or you know younger or whatever but most of the time carabou are getting away so they're not as successful right to see him coming along with exactly and carabou are fascinating because they are They're fast at shit. I mean, they top out at like 50, I think. Really. And when they're just moving in their normal truck, they're going like 12 miles an hour. You know, so when we would we would see a herd and we'd think, okay, I hope it, you know, slows down and starts to eat its way up this hill. We're going to try and swing around. Fat caught our scent. It was just like, see you later dude. Good luck. You know, we had one time this was super fascinating. We had, we got in scunked, had this old old bowl that was like the size of a Buick that just got away. So we're coming back to camp and you know, we got our asses kicked in. We get inside of the teepee that night and there's a herd like literally in our camp, you know, and so we like how God of course it works out that way. So William kind of sneaks in to get a view of these guys get some footage and he ends up spooking him and dawning our line on the tundra and this herd sprints, but they're sprinting like. Right at us. I mean, they don't see us so they get within you know 300 yards 200 yards 100 yards at 100 yards you start to really hear their who's just smashing the tundra You know at 70 yards it's like you can start to smell them Wow 50 it's like the ground is vibrating it was like one of those moments where I'm just like like a Zen Monk just totally looking at this herd and just like totally in the moment and maybe like 30 yards out one of them sees us peels up and they all follow they all react as a group in sync you know so they go up the top of this hill and dining and I just look at each other like holy shit man unbelievable and it's uh... i mean it's like uh... It's kind of like wild as religious experience to be honest. Like you get in those positions like that where you're out there and you have things like that happen to you. I mean, that shit changes you.

Yeah. It's not like a zoo. Exactly. And we're out there for You know, we're out there encountering all these risky sketchy things. You know, so you would think that I would be on edge the entire time. It's so damn cold. We've got this weather. There's Grizzlies. You'd think that unlike just a nerve shaken anxiety ridden full. It was a complete opposite. Of course, we had moments where there'd be spikes in nervousness, but like overall, I was way calmer than I'd ever been in my life and like just super chill.

I think that has something to do with it, but not everything because So I get back and I follow up on this idea like what the hell's going on out there. You know, and I meet this woman whose name is Rachel Hotman. She's a neuroscientist and she's basically studying what happens to the human brain after different doses and time in nature. So she's got this thing. There's this idea called the nature pyramid and you can think about it a lot like the food pyramid except saying like eat this many servings of grain and this many of meat it basically tells us how long we should spend in what type of nature so at the base of this pyramid the research says that if you spend at least 20 minutes a day three times a week that's associated with less burnout and less stress and just kind of overall more well-being. And that's the type of nature that you could find like in a city park. Nothing too crazy. At the next step of this pyramid is five hours a month in a little bit more out there nature. So this is type of stuff that you might find like in a state park. You have to go a little bit more out there to get it. And this is associated with a lot less depression. better while being. And then the very top, there's this thing called the three day effect. And it basically says that after three days in nature, it leads to these brain changes in the waves that you're your brain rides. So generally in this sort of modern, frantic world we live in, people ride these waves that are called data waves. And they're associated with like stress, just kind of go, go, go, go, go, go. You know? On the third day in nature, people's brains when they do scans out there, they have this shit they have to take on the wild and put these caps on people's heads. People are riding what are called alpha waves. And those are waves that are found in experience meditators. And people start to report like, man, I just feel so much calmer and more collected and more like at peace and in tune with my surroundings. It's almost like

Yeah, exactly. So that's one of the, so there's a lot of reasons why researchers think that this time in nature is good for us. That's one of them. That 150 number and more closely mimics when we're outside, especially after three days, we're usually not with as many people. So we're out of these people packed cities that just seem to like stress us out. There's also the physical thing that you talked about, usually when people are out in nature, they're moving, doing stuff. But also the sites in nature seem to be calming for us, so nature tends to be made up of what are called fractals. So these are these repeating patterns that sort of make up the universe. So if you think about a tree. It's like tree goes into a branch, goes into a leaf. It sees repeating patterns or like a river system, right? It's like small river to medium river to big river. And those seem to be calming for people. This is this is pretty interesting. One of the reasons that Jackson Pollux paintings, they think are so popular and really speak to us is that they're made up of fractals. So if you think about it, how he does this paintings. Really?

Well, they're designed much like fractals where it's like these, you kind of have these big splatters that go into these smaller ones and they all kind of fade in and out. So we see those patterns in nature and in the wild, but you don't get them in cities because cities are just a bunch of right angles and concrete. So when we get out of nature, we are embedded in those flowers.

Yeah, exactly. And even the smells of nature are associated with, you know, better well-being and columnists. So it's like this cascade of things that happen when we go out and spend time outdoors.

And we lost a lot of that with been locked indoors and the COVID, I mean, unfortunately.

Yeah.

Yeah, and if you look at the numbers, I mean, that was one of the biggest records. Biggest real marketing factor. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know. It's projected to get even worse. Like the overweight of the season rate is supposed to go up into the 80s by 2030, the CDC projects. So yeah, Mom, not surprised. And it's, I mean, there's a lot of reasons for this, right? It's that we don't our environments. We don't have to move as much. Like you could literally today, take like 1,000 steps every day and be totally fine.

It's like, yeah, good luck. Our food system. It's like we have so many foods that are designed to tap into these, this evolutionary reward system that we have, you know, with like dopamine spikes, sugars, sugar, sugar, salt, fat.

Well, I don't know where I would have charged it, but I would have loved that.

God, I don't know. Well, I think that I would have had to tweak the algorithm because were they normal steps or were they getting Arctic steps on these tundra tussets where you're just like, Someone killed me out here, please?

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I can tell you the hardest thing. After I killed the care, it was packing it out. Yeah, because on the tusks. On the tusks and the tangerine, we're about five miles from camp and it was, um, Just because, you know, karma's a bitch, it was all uphill on the way back. So I've got like, you know, hundred pounds or whatever. And my background is, I worked at mental for a lot of years. And you know, I'm kind of into that door as I've done some fitness stuff. It's like, look, at the end of the day, I'm a gangly ass writer. But like, my work has forced me to go into some interesting physical situation. So it's like, you know, whatever, done some stuff. That was a hardest thing I've ever done.

Five hours. Wow. Yeah, so we're going about a mile an hour. One foot in front of the next.

Oh, yeah. Oh, unbelievable. Like at one point we, uh, We run into these two doll sheep just amazing animals and I just kind of looked at them like Good to see it. I just need to keep moving like I'm just going I don't give a shit. I just want this far away. We're there pretty close. I would say Maybe 50 yards. Wow. Yeah. There we go. There we go. There we go.

Yeah. But it was interesting because then, you know, I get back and it kind of made me think about how we approach exercise, even in the modern world. Like you could argue we even try to make that comfortable too, right?

Because we do it in this air condition gym and we get on a treadmill and we zone out to, you know, dog the bounty hunter or whatever that hell. We want to watch.

I don't know, man. It sounds like you have. That was pretty good. I did. I tell you the truth.

It's cool. Yeah. All right, and I didn't I might dabble. It was good.

It was a little bit of a comfort zone.

Yeah, they're trying to kick something in real life.

Yeah. So I've been to one spin class and it was for a story when I was on staff at Men's Health. They thought it'd be really funny if they had me exercise with a bunch of old guys for like a week because I was like kind of hard charging, you know? They're like, you're gonna have to exercise with this group of old guys for a week. How old are these guys? 70s? Old. Were they fit? No. No. No. Not dude. So like one of the things that these old guys like to do is go into spin class and I'm in there and there's this one in front of me that like was in this group and you know he had before we got there he'd been like telling me like yeah I'm really into you know rare Jefferson airplane recordings or whatever this spin class starts and I like realizing I'm just looking at this old dudes about the entire hour spinning Well, let's tell you what I thought about. All the joy within you dies, man. I'm just like, holy hell. That was an interesting story.

Yeah. Sorry to your Thompson, Junkie.

Yeah. I mean as well. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's why I got I think two things got me into writing one of them is Thompson. The kid I grew up in Utah so you can imagine this kid who grew up in Mormon country. I wasn't raised Mormon, but oh really? And then I read you know the great shark hunt knows like holy shit. What is this? And it was just like it was on, you know.

Well, that and even as I think of him as one of the best things that ever happened to writing. and one of the worst things that ever happened to writers because there's a lot of people who try and mimic that and they just can't you know I have I have students who that's what they want to do and they'll they'll like get messed up before they go out and report a story and I'm just like pump the brakes, bud.

That makes sense. That's funny.

Yeah. So it could take a little bit from everyone, and that's how you become you.

Yeah, I want to do that.

Oh, yeah. Talks about getting off the plane and going meeting that dude at the bar just the way just the dialogue is just unbelievable.

You know, it's like, what does he say? He's like, oh, the margarita. He's like, Oh hell no you won't have a bourbon on ice and he's saying okay whatever yeah just like I'd love that.

Yeah. Yeah. I think so too. Yeah. I know. People look side of it.

Right. He becomes a character so he has to like every single day. It's like, well, I can't, I can't not do this crazy routine. Yeah. This is this character and I have to put on this show for. Yeah.

Yeah, it's so bad. I don't know.

Yeah, that's great. Fuck. Couldn't walk, couldn't talk. Yeah. He was gone. Well, that shows you what. Yeah. Basic maintenance will do for you. Yeah. I'm working out eating well. Yeah.

Yeah. He's got that tone, rhythm and pacing and style, but yeah, I don't think he's a 100% there. Yeah.

Yeah, agree.

Yeah, totally. It has been and look I don't drink anymore. And there's a good reason for that. And at one point I had to be like, I used to idolize like Thompson and Hemingway and all these people and it's like, oh, if you want to be good at riding, I guess you got a drink. And then I occurred to me, wait a minute. Those guys put a gun in their mouth and they're like 60s. Like maybe that's, maybe that's not a good path to go down.

You know, it's one of those questions where you go, the people just have this gear and that gear also happens to come with. Substance abuse problems whereas like had they never picked up a drink or drugs like they would have been that damn good regardless and like this just kind there's like a gene that like these two go Step together.

I think there's probably, there's probably this sweet spot, right? But you can, if you keep going after it, you're never going to hold that and just keep chasing and you're going to come to that. So he's going to be rolling back. The wave doesn't say it like him. It's like the wave doesn't roll back and then spontaneously go back up.

I think so. I think the biggest thing for me and this kind of goes back to that story I told you about the restaurant is like we don't realize just how different our lifestyles are now. then they were in our recent past even a hundred years ago, but like we have all of these uncomfortable environments and we have tipped the balance so far into everything being easy and effortless and challenge free that we take so much for granted, you know, and so for me it was like I had to go through that in order to see that and from that I found a lot more gratitude. When I was out there and things really sucked, I just thought to myself, I just was filled oddly with gratitude. It's like I appreciated it. I appreciated my wife, my mom, I appreciated everything that I had at home. It was a deep, deep sense that I haven't ever felt in my life. But also I think that the other thing is I think that people are capable of way more than we think, you know, so going into the Arctic, I'm like, man, I don't know, and be able to do this and sort of hang on. I mean, I was, you know, sketched out about it. It's like when I got that plane for the first time, like shooting my pants on the runway and like you want me to get in that little thing. You know, like I don't like flying on a 737 much less this plane that's the size of a Snickers bar. You know, but then we go out and it's like we face all these different things and like you just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Each situation is hard, but it's like you get through it. When that plane comes and picks me up, month later, Fuck it. I'll get in it. Fuck it. Yeah. So I think a lot of fears fade when we reintroduce challenges into our lives. So this is a concept I talk about in the book. You know, it's like As we evolved, we did hard shit all the time. This could be from a hunt. This could be from trying to migrate across the past, you know, in a storm hit. This could be from tigers lurking in the bushes. And this was often without safety nets, right? But in modern life, we don't, we don't face any of these challenges anymore. So we have an outsized fear of failing. And we have it, I mean, nowadays it's like, You slip up, giving your presentation at work. You say they're on the word. You want to kill yourself. Yeah, it's like, oh my God, or you didn't get enough likes. It's like that. It's failure. Yeah. And these failures are often in our head, whereas in the past, it was like there was real consequences to failure. So I think trying to figure out ways where how can I insert these moments where I'm facing these sort of evolutionary challenges can show us that we have way more potential than we thought. It's like we get out to that edge of our comfort zone. and all of a sudden it expands, and it expands, and we learn something about ourselves. We learn that we're capable of more, and then we come back into our modern life. It's like, bitch, I got this.

Yeah. They're calm. I think, yeah, I think people are different, but I think most of us benefit from that. It's like, you know, we need to reintroduce these metaphorical tigers back into our life in the righty ways.

Yeah, it's like I met this guy afterwards, his name's Marcus Elliott, and he's a Harvard MD. And he didn't want to be a doctor. He wanted to get into sports science. Because he thought he could really move the dial on it. This was like the early 2000s. He's also kind of a far out character like he would always go to Burning Man back in the day and he got himself through college by counting cards. And so I'm telling you this, you know, he's kind of a seeker a little bit, you know. So he decides, I don't want to be an actual doctor. I want to get into sports medicine because I think I can revolutionize the field with by bringing more data and science into it. So the first job he gets is with the New England Patriots. And when you took the job, they at the time had about 26 hamstring injuries a year. I mean, they weren't good. They were racked with injuries. He came in and added more science, basically, did a lot of testing, came up with these like individualized programs. He dropped the hamstring injury rate to like three a year. Ended up winning a couple super bowls with the team. Went on to become the MLD's first performance director. And then now he does his own thing. He has a facility called P3 and they have a contract with the NBA. So what they do and a few other leagues do what they do is players come in and he attaches all these reflective markers all over their body and he has them run through all the movements they would in a game meanwhile there's cameras capturing these movements and then that gets fed into an algorithm so they can see how the player moves and compare it to other players and basically be like look the way that you jump, the way you're whatever knee caves in, that's putting you at a 60% risk of having an injury this year. So he also, this can also tell you what's interesting. Some of the promises in your game. So for example, I don't know if you're into basketball at all, but Luke at Donchitch, guy for the Mavericks rookie of the year NBA All Star, he started coming to P3 when he was, I think, 15. He was a decent player then. They did all this stuff and they go, Luca, we have bad news for you. You can't jump to save your life. But we also have some good news. You are off the charts at decelerating or slowing down, like you're very, very fast at slowing down. So we want you to develop your game around sprinting, stop, defend or Korean's forward because you can slow down faster than shoot. So he developed his game around that and now he's sort of the future of the NBA. I told you all that to basically tell you that. This Marcus Elliott dude, he's obviously into this big data and how can that use, how can we use that to improve ourselves and improve our performance. But he also understands that not everything that improves an athlete that improves a human can be measured. All right, so another thing he does with a lot of, with his friends and players that are interested is this idea called, that he calls Masogi. So this is, he's named after an ancient Japanese myth. And the basic idea is that once a year, I'm going to do something really hard. And the way that he defines hard is I have to have a 50-50 shot of finishing it. So that's real one. Must be really hard. Rule two, don't die. And then there's two guidelines beyond that. The first guideline is that it has to be something cookie. So something you just make up. And the reason for that is because so much of what we do today is especially athletically is comparison shopping. It's like, oh, this person ran this distance in this time. I got to do it better than them. So if you just make some weird shit up, it's like it's only you against you, right? And the number two is that you don't really brag and boast about it and share whatever you do on social media because again, it's you for you. It's not so you can get a bunch of pets on the back. So some things that he's done with people is one year they got a 85 pound rock. and they walked it five miles underneath the Santa Barbara channel. So one, you know, the rock was at the bottom of the ocean. They had sort of dive down, you know, 10, 20 feet, whatever it was. Walk 10 yards or 20 yards. Guy would come up next guy would come down and after five hours. It's like the rock is at point B. So it kind of goes back to that idea of these challenges where you separate, you go through this trying middle ground, you're like, I'm not going to be able to do this with the hell. But by doing it, you get on the other side and you're like, man, I really learned something about myself. So he's done all kinds of different strange weird cookie challenges with different people. And a lot of them are athletes who are really clutch performers in the playoffs. It's like the guys that go through this because once they've gone through that, it's like, Now all of a sudden the stress of that playoff game is perhaps not as heavy because you've had these times where you're like, man, this is really, really crazy and trying against me, you know? So you come out on the other end of that and prove. So I think that doing something like that can be a good thing for the average person because going back to that rule one is that it has to be hard, which is defined by a 50, 50 shot of finishing it. It's like, my 50% is different, then your 50% is different, then your 50% is different, then your 50%. So if you're the type of person who, I don't do shit, I'm super lazy. The farthest I've ever run is three miles. We could ask yourself, okay, could I run three miles again? Well, probably. Could I do six? That would be pretty tough, but, yeah, I think. What about nine? Ooh, I don't know about nine. Go find out if you can, man. By going through that, finishing it, you're going to learn that you maybe had a gear that you didn't realize was there, and that'll help you sort of move on. And the nice thing is like, you don't have to over-prepare. It doesn't have to be a massive production. It's just like they do it once a year. And again, it's one of those things that like he's like, look, I can't measure this until they have a time where they do it.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I've started doing this in my own life. Since I got back to the Arctic and that, and I, I mean, I'm, you know, trained as a science journalist. I read a shitload of studies. I read probably a thousand studies going into this book. Talk to researchers all the time who are You know, nerds at the NIH and that type of thing. And doing this, I can tell you, man, there are certain things about being a human that you just can't measure. And it's like a feeling you get when you go out and you do these hard things, like that'll teach you a lot about yourself. And that goes a long way. What have you done since these? So I'm breaking a guideline here, but I'll talk about it. So for example, this was about a month ago. So the farthest I'd ever run in my life was 16 miles. And I'm like, okay, I'm going to do some sort of outdoor trail run. How far should I go? Like, hmm, could I do double that 32 miles? And I'm like, I think I probably could. If I got, you know, I think I probably could. What about triple that? I don't know if I could do triple that. So I'm like, okay, let's go find out. So I went out to Red Rock Canyon in Las Vegas and there's a trail that's 12 miles that's called the Grand Circle Trail. And there's quite a bit of elevation change. And I ran that thing four times. First two laps were like, okay, I got this third lap. I was, I had a freaking breakdown. I'm like, fuck this. I'm not gonna be able to do this. I just can't do this. We're just gonna call it quits after. And I got back on that third lap and I was like, okay, we're gonna, we're gonna make it go at the fourth one, just whatever. And on that fourth one on the way up, like I literally had this moment where I'm like running over this. I mean, the trail's unbelievable because you go through all this red rock and just beautiful, beautiful country and especially because you're changing elevation, so like that. The environment is changing as you do it. I had one of those moments where literally, like, I started giggling and laughing and just being like, holy shit, I am thankful to be alive. Like, this is unbelievable. And I get done with that and it's like, it's like, 48 miles, dude. The farther you've ever run is like, 16. It's like, how many hours? Took me 10 hours. Wow. Yeah, the total elevation change was 13,000 feet. So, I mean, look. That's the 50-50 thing. It's like, if it was like cam-hanging to be like 48, you little bitch, you know? But for me, it's like, I don't know I could do that.

I think it's a combination. I think a lot of things are going on. I think some... You know, again, can't be measured. I think some innate evolutionary machinery gets triggered when we go out and we do challenging things in nature and we can just do them. And I also think that I also think that humans probably evolved to believe they could do a lot less than they're actually capable of because if you think about it, If we would have evolved to just have this outsized idea of what we're capable of, we'd be like, yeah, I could definitely do that. Hold my beer, watch this. You die. Where is like, if we're like, oh, no, I don't want to do that. I'm afraid of doing that. I think it's a little bit too risky. But then when we got put in those real positions of risk, which would have happened, if we could outdo that, we have a better chance of survival over time.

Yeah. Dorfins get released. I think some stuff just turns on. I mean, because I don't know if your body necessarily Really knows, like, oh, we're doing this, you know, 10 miles or 15, 20 miles from the Las Vegas strip. You know, it doesn't know. It just thinks, oh, we're running really fucking far. Something's wrong.

We got to keep on going here, you know? So, yeah, I don't know, man, but powerful.

I don't know. I'll probably do some on my own. I got it on Donnie's a nice dude. He set me up with a really sweet bow, but I got it right before COVID. So I was like trying to take lessons and then all of a sudden it was like shut down.

Have you practiced at all? A little bit, but I've also heard everyone be like, you're gonna develop really bad habits dude. So I'm kind of on the fence. What do you think?

Look at that. Dude, that's a monster.

That's cool. Yeah. What is like, what's the main thing you walk away with?

That's interesting.

Well, I would imagine that's why it's so rewarding, right? Like you're every single day, you're putting work in and then when you actually get out into The wild, like you're putting a lot of physical work in. I mean, hunting is challenging, man.

Yeah, that's cool. One of the things that that I found really interesting is like after packing that carabou out, I started thinking about like I was telling you about exercise. And when you look at humans, we're actually pretty damn athletically pathetic. And that's not my language. I still got from a Harvard anthropologist who studies physical activity. You compare us to other animals. We're very slow. We're not that strong. We're good at two things. We're good at running long distances in the heat and caring. We're the only animals who can carry. Most other animals, they got to grab something with their mouth and they can't drag it far because that's inefficient. So these Harvard scientists I talked to, I mean, they think that doing the activities that we evolved to do that were uniquely built to do, can have a lot of benefits. So I started looking into this idea of carrying and it really shaped what we became. This is why we have really strong grips. It's why we have sort of relatively shorter torsos that are really strong, longer legs. It's why we don't have much fur and why we sweat to cool ourselves. So you probably have heard the idea that we're born to run. But we're actually I argue in the book probably more so born to carry we did it a lot more any time I mean we evolved to run so we could run down Animal slowly but surely in the heat called persistent hunting so we would chase an animal for 10 miles 20 miles we'd sort of slowly run We'd bump it and it would sprint and then pant and eventually the animal would topple over from heat exhaustion because we're really good at cooling ourselves. So then we'd have to cut it up, carry it all the way back to camp. And as gathers, we evolved to just walk out in our environment, find stuff to eat, and carry it back to camp, right? Now you think about exercise today. It's like everyone, not everyone, but a lot of people run. running as a relatively common physical activity. Probably the most common physical activity. But how many people carry for a workout? Very very very very few people of their rocking. Yes, exactly. So I followed up on on this and I went down to Jacksonville, Florida. So there's guys who were special forces soldiers. I mean, they're the only people who have really reintroduced carrying back into their days, right? The military, the fundamental of military fitness is rocking. It's their main form of fitness. And it's really sort of torn those guys into. some of the fittest people in the world. And you can argue, right? So in Jacksonville, I meet with this guy who's a green beret, and he started this company called Go Rock, and they make these really beautiful backpacks, but that are up to military specs. So they can basically carry more weight than you could ever really carry yourself. And he's teamed up with some researchers at the Mayo Clinic who are advocating for rucking for a lot of their patients, because when people start walking, like walking is great, but it's not really that hard. Running is good, but at the same time, the injury rate of running is really high, especially for people who are out of shape and who have been sitting a lot. But you put a weighted backpack on a person, it adds an element of strength, and it also increases the cardiovascular demands on the person, but the injury risk is really low. So there's all these amazing benefits to rocking that people just, you know, they don't really think of and they don't really know. It's like this fundamental activity that we can do that's super beneficial. And like I said, injury rates low and it doesn't matter, you can basically modulate it based on where you're at physically. So I could go rucking with my mom, right? She could take five, 10 pounds, and I could take 50. We'd go the same pace, have a conversation, and we're getting the same effect. Yeah. Yeah. So I've added that definitely into my routine. And I think it's helpful, and especially, you know, for hunting. It's like that's the foundation of getting from point A to point B, like you're always caring stuff.

Yeah, yeah, it makes sense that the go-rock guys, they sell plates that are specifically fitted to their packs. I don't know, it's a great, it's a great, well, having to essentially rock across the Arctic for a month, we get back to the the quote unquote airport, which is a shed where the bush planes come in. And I took my pack off and I had to like step up. I don't know, maybe 24 inches or sell like to get into the place. And dude, it was like I levitated up. You know, it's like I was so. My legs were so damn strong, which is 30 days. I was in the best shape of my life, and I hadn't been into a gym. I hadn't run. I hadn't done all my normal stuff, and I'm like, I'd also lost weight, because we're not eating that much, and we're just moving all day. Once I got to the hotel, I went to shower, took my clothes off, and shit. I look like Connor McGregor, to weigh in right now. Yeah, I just shredded and just like super, just way better than I've ever been. It was fascinating.

Well, how, you know.

Yeah. Hello, honey. I'm moving to the Arctic. I've bought us a shed and caught to view.

No, I still do rock a lot to be honest. It is all throughout a plate in a pack. And I'll just go on to the desert. So I live on the edge of town. West by Red Rock Canyon so I can walk like three minutes through my neighborhood and there's a gate that leads to this whole trail network so I'll go out there and rock all the time and it's awesome because the like I said it's just feel solid you just feel you're getting You're getting cardio and strength. The SF guy talked to us like, yeah, it's essentially cardio for people who hate running and lifting for people who hate the gym. And we know that there are health benefits to doing both cardio and strength. It's like I feel like we kind of live in this world where the runners are like, oh, lifting you don't need a lift, lifting's overrated and the lifters are like, ah, running socks, running's overrated. It's like, no, you need, but you look at the data. It's like having a good level of fitness is the number one thing you can do to avoid that. It's like you go down the list of things that kill Americans, fitness fans off all of them. It's like number one is heart disease. people who are fit or even increasing your running speed from five to six miles an hour, you'll be 30% less likely to die. So the fitter you are, the farther you are from, having heart disease, fends off some cancers, then there's accidents. If you are fit, even getting in a car accident, you're more likely to survive. It just helps with everything. And we've engineered our world to be completely effortless, like we're so damn at a shape now.

Yeah, hit some random time. Yeah, and we get tribal about. It's like everything. Super tribal. Super tribal. It's like, and then all of a sudden, yeah, this way is the only way. I think that's, that's one thing we see, you know, pick anything in life where there's two different ways to do it. The people on the left side are like, oh, the other things socks and vice versa, you know, it's just, we're tribal creatures, man.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, if you're shooting for like, if you're shooting only for performance, That's not health. You know, like people who run a two hour marathon, they're not necessarily healthy. Right. Like they're healthier than someone who's 600 pounds don't give me wrong, but you're not going for health.

The way that the book is written is I tell this story of this hunt that I did in the Arctic and that's the overarching narrative. And as I'm facing these specific discomforts we use to face as we evolved, then I sort of peel off and then I investigate each one in different sections and I talk about different on the ground reporting that I did. And at the end, there's always some takeaway. Now, it's not like explicit advice and like a box that's like, okay, here are the steps to do this. But it's all inherent and you leave knowing, okay, here's how I can weave this back into my life. And I think going back to that idea that our environments have changed so much, You know, it's not like just doing any one of these is gonna solve all your problems. Like yes, it'll be helpful. But it's like we really need to think about how are these different ways that I can weave this stuff throughout my days, weeks, months, and years. Some of this stuff is relatively easy to work in. For example, like even the data on keeping your house colder is really interesting in terms of weight loss and overall calorie burn and even just things like people are never hungry anymore. Like let's figure out why you're eating in the first place and then by reintroducing hunger back into your life like you're probably gonna lose some weight if you can determine oh I'm eating because I'm stressed or bored versus on physiologically hungry Then some of them are a little bit more challenging. Like, we need things that really push back against us. That's something like the Masogi idea I talked about. We're like, dude, do something epic. Like, you may not think that you can do it. Like, you can do it. It's like freaking humans. We're 100 gathers for 2.5 million years. And now people are like, well, I couldn't go outside for three hours. It's like, what the hell are you talking about, man? You know, like, we're just, we can do a lot more than I think we

Yeah, exactly. So when you get cold, your internal furnace cranks on, uses calories, and it's a small effect, but over time, can have decent results. So one study and scientists I talked to said 64 degrees is a sweet spot. So my wife loves it. I found this stat, right? Because now our house is 64 all the time. She's like, I'm freezing my ass off.

I would never like to eat less food.

More or less, I've been helping you ever see saw. Probably the sound like a buck 70. Probably for a while though, I was 185. And so I was within, you know, what's considered healthy, but I'm still at the higher end of the healthy BMI and like, just from running my hips would hurt afterwards. And I started working with this dude who's in the book and his name is Trevor Kashi. He's, I think he's 28 now. But he graduated college, I think when he was 17 or 18, God is PhD when he was 22. I believe. He was 17 when he graduated college. He's, he's mega genius. Like, the way I described is like, you know, to say that Trevor Smart is to say that LeBron James is pretty good at basketball. You know, like, I mean, and look for my work, like I talked to people at Harvard people at the N.I.H. like scientists everywhere like this guy is below your mind smart can just unpack arguments and you're going to your high school problem and he's graduated from college and you're making the same age. Yeah, and it pisses me off because I'm older than him, obviously, and I'm just like, man, you're just so much smarter than me with sucks. So anyway, what did he... He's interesting because when he was in college, he started working with a lot of athletes, and just like everyday people helping him lose weight. Like he was in a lab doing cancer research, but found that he just was really into uh... strength sports so he has like a couple national strength records and was working with people like uh... ultramarathoners other strongman and was just really damn good at it so now he has this uh... nutrition company he calls to ever cashy nutrition and his approach is really interesting because he doesn't really give them what you eat he cares why you eat really because most people he says like look you can eat a lot of different ways you could pick any random diet and if you follow that diet You're going to lose weight, but the question is, well, why the hell don't people follow diets? That comes down to the why. As we often eat because we can't mitigate stress, because we're bored, and your body also as it lose weight, it loses weight. It starts to pull all these little tricks to try and keep you at a higher weight, because back in the past, it's like your body losing weight was a threat. right so things like it'll increase your hunger signaling it'll slow down your metabolism so this is when people this is why around five weeks people usually hop off diets and fall back into their normal patterns because they can't deal with that discomfort of hunger and they often fall into intense cravings that aren't really physiological cravings it's just your mind being like snickers snickers you know So he works with people to help and figure out how do I discern the difference between, you know, this sort of, I guess, in the book I call it real hunger versus reward hunger. And then how can I become aware of what I eat? Because people don't know how much they eat. You look at research and people like miscalculate their daily intake by hundreds, sometimes even thousands of calories.

Exactly. Exactly. So there's this one famous study that found It looked at overweight people who said that they just could, they could not lose weight despite eating just 1,000 calories a day. Well, they went in and they did precise measurements and tracking. And the people were eating 2,000 calories, right? So this is like saying, well, oops, I had a half of pizza and I totally forgot. I didn't realize it. But this even happens with everyday people. So on average, people who are at a normal BMI, they tend to miscalculate by three to 400 calories a day. People who are overweight, they tend to miscalculate by about seven to 800. So people just don't know how much they eat. And we are wired to overcompensate and eat more. More food has always made sense throughout all of time. So if you can get people aware of what is an actual portion, How much food do I actually need? How do I just become more aware of not only what I'm eating, but also all my other habits. That seems to move the dial for people. I can't remember the exact number, but it's something like he's helped people lose like 200,000 something pounds. I mean, it's crazy. He works with everyone from You know, people who's, this is their last stop on the quote unquote diet train. The next thing is going to be bariatric surgery to, he's work with strong men who've been, you know, champions and ultra runners and stuff like that. So he worked for, I can't remember one of the Eastern countries Olympic team for a while to and help them win some medals. So he's kind of all over the board most interesting now. This doesn't have anything to do with food is when he was in college. He's a super genius. I told you. That was everything about chemistry. He got recruited by the hell's angels to help them make math more or less. Like this is one of the ways he helped himself get through college, which is like totally wacky. What? Yeah, man. Like he's like a real life Eisenberg. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. How much do you make selling math? Um, I don't know enough to get through college. I didn't ask him for the exact figure, but

Yeah, they had sort of a falling out, I guess. And what do you want? Yeah. He's cooking this fucking amazing math. So he didn't actually cook it, but he would meet with them and be like, here's the problem. Here's exactly how you have to do it. Here's the problem. Here's how you have to make this steps more efficient. You have too many steps in the chemical process by removing it. You're going to like whatever. So we'd meet up with these guys like it.

Yeah, and then it then it didn't go. Well, at one point accused him of ripping them off or giving them bad information. And he goes, no, you just didn't follow it. That's your problem. And he's interesting because he grew up kind of in a somewhat broken home. So as a team, he had some issues with depression. And he's like, dude, I just didn't even really care. Like, all right, kill me, whatever. You know, like, fuck off. And eventually they just left him alone.

Yeah.

No, just use a chemist.

It's not that far off from meth. No. No, it's really not. He's a meth head. Your friends and meth head. That's what I'm trying to say.

I had not about that. So what did they do to? I mean, how do they mitigate that?

Every day. I feel like our food system is set up in such a way and our lives overall that it's a wonder that not more than 70% of people are overweight. It's like food that we have now being so ultra-processed and calorie dance. It sort of praise on these internal mechanisms we have where it's like you get a shot of dopamine from eating this ultra-process stuff and it doesn't fill you up. It's so calorie dance. I think this is where thinking about the type of food you're eating and like how do you control hunger? You know it's like having foods at our last process we know is you're going to be more filled up on fewer calories and that seems to help people. It's like there's a reason why people didn't become overweight or obese until about 100 years ago.

What is it honey? Oh to get that you have to climb up train getting a big asphalt with some bees But honey also has like some medicinal properties to it.

Yeah, I've heard that too. I've heard that too. I don't know if it's legit or not. I don't know if it's legit. But yeah, so the, the Hada, I mean, the honey is like their price for the right, because it's calorie dance, and so when you eat that, You get this nice shot of dopamine because it's so calorie-dancing. Nowadays we're like just swimming in foods that are more calorie-dancing than honey.

Oh, wow. Yeah. That's fascinating. Interesting.

Thank God it's on a cliff. I think you know what if the bears get into that thing man.

Wow. Yeah, what's interesting is like going back to this idea of challenges, like even Native American tribes, when they would go get the payote, it was often like there was a physical ceremony that went into that. It was a long hike to go down to that area that it grew and it became like a ritual. Like almost a religious practice, right? So it was like this physical trial that go through to get it and then bring it back up. So it became this overall life-changing thing, you know? It was like marrying the physical with the mental and having to like get through things.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. We don't have that. I mean, what? I don't know what the closest thing to compare it to that we do today. You know, it's like, it's not getting your driver's license.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, I think, look at Joseph Campbell. I'm going to mess up this quote, but it is here with a thousand faces. He's got this line that's like, when we go out and think we're slaying another, we're actually slaying ourselves, when we go out into discomfort, we're actually coming into the center of our own existence. So it's like, we don't go out and do these things like for others at all. It's like, this is 100% you becoming this different, more capable, confident person.

Yeah. Even then, I wanted to hear it from the guy. It was more, well, one, it was more challenging than I thought. And two, the producer was hilarious because apparently I have certain words and phrases that are, you know, the generations of whatever it is, Easter generations from the sticks and Idaho. And I'd say them wrong and he'd be like, Hold up. Like at one point, I'm reading words. You want to hear an embarrassing one? Yeah. Do you say it, especially? No, wasn't that. I think it might actually be worse. I'm going through and I have a reference to Mozart in the book, but I'm going through and I just see it. M.O. Z. A.R.T. And so I'm like, you know, blah, blah, Mozart. And he just goes, hold up. It's, it's moat, it's art.

Yeah, Mozart.

Yeah, and then I got the studio the next day. He goes, you know, did you listen to some chopping when you got home? Uh, what a dick. Oh, yeah, he was, he was a good, he was funny dude though. Yeah. It was an interesting experience for sure.

Yeah, man.

Thank you very much. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Enjoy it.