Latest / Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson / Tracking as the Language of Belonging: A Journey with Craig Foster | Ep 20 Live Free Ride Free

Transcript

Tracking as the Language of Belonging: A Journey with Craig Foster | Ep 20 Live Free Ride Free · Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson

• 0:00
  Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Live Free Ride Free, where we talk to people who
• 0:04
  have lived self-actualized lives on their own terms, and find out how they
• 0:09
  got there, what they do, how we can get there, what we can learn from them.
• 0:14
  How to live our best lives, find our own definition of success,
• 0:19
  and most importantly, find joy.
• 0:22
  I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson.
• 0:24
  New York Times bestselling author of the Horse Boy.
• 0:27
  Founder of New Trails Learning Systems and long ride home.com.
• 0:31
  You can find details of all our programs and shows on Rupert isaacson.com.
• 0:37
  Hey, I'm back with Craig Foster.
• 0:40
  Those of you who listened to the previous podcast with him know that
• 0:44
  we went fairly deep into the idea of how human beings are trackers.
• 0:51
  And how important this kind of is for our well being and our happiness in the
• 0:58
  fact that it connects us with the world and the universe, our habitat as an
• 1:05
  organism, we are organisms around us, but those of you who haven't listened
• 1:11
  to that, please go and listen to it, those of you who know Craig Foster's
• 1:15
  work, Then he needs no introduction.
• 1:18
  But those of you who don't, your homework immediately is to go and
• 1:21
  watch the film My Octopus Teacher.
• 1:24
  And if you can also watch a film called the great dance and his book amphibious
• 1:31
  soul But now I want to dive in because I want to pick the conversation up
• 1:36
  from where we left it before welcome back craig Thank you for coming on.
• 1:42
  Can you Tell us what you've been thinking of since the last time around this
• 1:49
  idea Of tracking and the human soul.
• 1:54
  Craig Foster: Thanks, Rupert.
• 1:55
  Good to be chatting to you again.
• 1:57
  I guess there's such a deep desire in me to
• 2:04
  feel that wildness and I have been traveling a lot this year.
• 2:07
  Unusually.
• 2:08
  So, so, it, it's When I'm not practicing that tracking every
• 2:12
  day, I can feel the difference.
• 2:15
  I can feel the, you know, my mind wanting to hold onto those connections.
• 2:23
  And the only way of doing that is by being in the wild and doing that.
• 2:28
  So I've, I've missed that.
• 2:30
  That old way, I've missed those, that reciprocity with the wild, I've missed
• 2:36
  practicing that oldest language on earth.
• 2:38
  I mean, I do it in the cities, I do it inside, I'm always looking for
• 2:44
  little marks that people have left, or little scuff marks, or dust particles.
• 2:49
  I'm looking for Sign, I'm looking for patterns everywhere because it satisfies
• 2:53
  my psyche, but I've kind of thought, well, this year I really want to get back into
• 2:59
  some serious communication with these wild creatures and it's an amazing way
• 3:04
  of doing it because, I mean, I had a on Friday, I had this, you know, full day
• 3:12
  in the wild with my tracking friends and we were just picking up the subtlest of
• 3:17
  things, but the amount of information that I got, you know, took me three or
• 3:22
  four days just to process and figure out and I'm going to give you an example,
• 3:27
  I found this piece of an ant's nest.
• 3:31
  I found a tiny bit of a baboon scat and a couple of very faded baboon prints.
• 3:38
  And from that came this This incredible, interesting, possible story of these
• 3:47
  baboons raiding this cocktail ant's nest.
• 3:51
  And the, they have these amazing commensals these little larvae of
• 3:57
  animals that they protect in the nest.
• 3:59
  And then they feed.
• 4:01
  nectar to the ants.
• 4:03
  And I think that maybe the baboons were after these, these larvae.
• 4:07
  And that they opened the nest.
• 4:09
  But of course, through the baboons, through this, these little signs, I
• 4:12
  learned all about these cocktail ants and their incredible lives and how they
• 4:17
  have these battles against other ant colonies and how they protect their
• 4:21
  Species that they harbor in the nest and then allied to that was how these
• 4:28
  lizards get attracted to the Baboon feces because it's attracts flies and
• 4:33
  they're catching the flies around it And it's just the story just gets bigger
• 4:37
  and bigger and more complex Suddenly in the world of baboons in the world of
• 4:42
  ants and you part of this wild system And, but you wouldn't even imagine that
• 4:51
  if you weren't tracking, if you weren't open to these little tiny signs that 99.
• 4:57
  9 percent of people are passing.
• 5:00
  So there's, there are these incredible stories and these
• 5:03
  teachings just right there.
• 5:06
  So I want to, my main thought is now is to get back to that because I've
• 5:10
  never felt better When I'm tracking as often as possible and it's probably
• 5:18
  Rupert Isaacson: listening to you just recount that first question is
• 5:22
  what's a cocktail and so I'm going to ask you to tell us what a cocktail
• 5:26
  and is, but I felt, as you were describing that, an intrinsic sense
• 5:30
  of satisfaction simply hearing the report of your tracking discovery.
• 5:38
  And it occurs to me more and more as I age that quality of life, quality
• 5:47
  of mental health seems to be quite dependent on us behaving as our species
• 5:58
  wants us to, which is as trackers.
• 6:02
  And I, I, I make the distinction between tracking and hunting there.
• 6:06
  Because I think when we use the word hunting, people mistakenly
• 6:10
  assume one's always talking about trying to kill something.
• 6:13
  Whereas tracking can involve hunting, but tracking is reading, as you, No,
• 6:18
  the ecosystem in a much broader way, and as you say, our interaction with it.
• 6:24
  And you also said something at the very beginning there, that tracking
• 6:28
  is the oldest language in the world.
• 6:32
  So, can you, first tell us what a cocktail ant is, because I'm curious,
• 6:36
  and then be, elaborate on this oldest language in the world thing, please.
• 6:41
  Craig Foster: So the, the cocktail ant, which I've only kind of, you
• 6:45
  know, recently understood through thanks to the baboons, are these
• 6:49
  fascinating ants that build, that chew plant material and they build these
• 6:54
  amazing nests where their, their saliva and the material glue together in
• 6:58
  these incredible nests inside bushes.
• 7:03
  And they're called cocktail ants because the back of the ant, when they get
• 7:06
  aggressive, turns upwards like that.
• 7:08
  So the little tail is cocked, and they, you know, they, they, they
• 7:13
  protect and feed these other about five different forms of lava.
• 7:18
  And then they on harvest nectar from the lava and the lava
• 7:22
  get the amazing protection.
• 7:25
  Lava of
• 7:26
  Rupert Isaacson: other species, not lava.
• 7:27
  Of totally, totally different species.
• 7:29
  So it's like they're farming.
• 7:30
  The lava of other insects.
• 7:33
  Craig Foster: Yes, yes.
• 7:34
  But they kind of, that lava, those lava know that they're protected there.
• 7:38
  The Ansel protect them and in exchange they hand out the nectar.
• 7:42
  Yeah.
• 7:43
  And yeah.
• 7:43
  So, in terms of the oldest language, you know,
• 7:50
  it is a whole language.
• 7:51
  So you, you're looking for patterns, you're looking for sign, you're looking
• 7:55
  for spu, you're looking for hundreds of these little patterns that then link up.
• 8:02
  and make sense and allow you to survive if you were living fully wild.
• 8:07
  But from, I don't hunt in any way, but it allows me to psychologically survive
• 8:13
  because I need to understand and know and feel I belong in the ecosystem I'm in.
• 8:19
  And I mean, just to give you an idea, that's just, I mean, there
• 8:22
  are like, 10 stories like that from Friday but they're very subtle.
• 8:27
  You just get a flash of something and then this, because you know the
• 8:31
  ecosystem, then you're putting together all these possibilities that then suddenly
• 8:38
  click into place and you, ah, the puff adder's hunting right next to the sea.
• 8:43
  in the kelp, the dried kelp, because the little rodents live in there
• 8:47
  and eat the amphipods, and then you just feel this whole language.
• 8:52
  Nature's speaking to you, and you're speaking back, and there's an incredible
• 8:56
  dialogue that you're having with the wild, and you can feel that old
• 8:59
  language moving your body, moving your mind, and you just feel alive.
• 9:05
  Invigorated and in touch with that old way, that design
• 9:12
  that you're talking about.
• 9:12
  And that makes you feel that you're doing something worthwhile.
• 9:17
  Rupert Isaacson: I'm going to just describe for listeners a little bit
• 9:19
  what I know of your life in Cape Town.
• 9:21
  So although although Craig lives near, close to a large city those of you
• 9:28
  who know Cape Town know that it's.
• 9:31
  Bordered by large protected areas of that are very, very wild.
• 9:35
  A large proportion of which is coastline and okay.
• 9:39
  Craig is lucky enough to live on that coastline and to go down to the beach
• 9:45
  and into the sea every day and track.
• 9:49
  And he's also part of protecting that ecosystem through his organization,
• 9:54
  Sea Change which is protecting the kelp forest, which is a
• 9:57
  vitally important ecosystem there.
• 10:01
  You mentioned basically that tracking for you is psychological survival.
• 10:08
  I think most people obviously don't live your life and they don't live
• 10:12
  my life either with the horses.
• 10:16
  And I think most people are suffering, including those of us who
• 10:21
  live with the horses and those of us who, like you, can go down and
• 10:25
  track at least some of the time.
• 10:30
  Why is this oldest language in the world tracking?
• 10:34
  integral to psychological survival?
• 10:40
  Craig Foster: Yeah, I think there are many ways of answering that.
• 10:42
  And ironically, the closer you get to nature, the closer you get to
• 10:47
  animals, and the more you understand the massive environmental threats.
• 10:52
  potentially more your mental health could be affected negatively.
• 10:58
  So that's an interesting thing to talk about, how to get close to the wild,
• 11:02
  fall in love with biodiversity and our, our big mother, and then realize, Oh
• 11:07
  my goodness, she's, you know, we, we are killing her at a terrifying rate.
• 11:14
  How do you, how do you deal with that and not lose hope?
• 11:17
  That's another interesting thing to look at.
• 11:20
  But no, sorry, I've just forgotten the, the, yeah, why, why is this
• 11:24
  Rupert Isaacson: why, so we're talking about you, you, you, you,
• 11:27
  you had this phrase, psychological survival, and I think this is,
• 11:31
  we've, we've hit the knob here.
• 11:33
  In fact, that's why I'm going to title this podcast tracking a
• 11:38
  psychological survival, mental health.
• 11:42
  It's a pandemic.
• 11:44
  It probably always has been, but I think we're just putting
• 11:47
  our attention on it now.
• 11:48
  But as you say, things have become very acute because we, we feel many of us
• 11:53
  that we're in a state of slight despair with the way we're treating the planet.
• 11:59
  As you say, No sooner does one fall in love with nature than one
• 12:05
  begins to see that become, you know,
• 12:10
  alarmed understatement by the damage we're doing to it.
• 12:16
  But you said tracking as psychological survival.
• 12:20
  And I just want you to elaborate on that because I think that's useful for
• 12:25
  people when they're If we're going to then start talking about well, what
• 12:31
  strategies or mechanisms could we use, particularly if we're not going down to
• 12:35
  the beach in Cape Town every day, or not going out to the horses or living on a
• 12:38
  farm every day, and we're just living the normal suburban or urban life.
• 12:42
  So, can you just, yeah, elaborate around why it is psychological survival tracking,
• 12:49
  and then we can go into some solutions.
• 12:52
  Craig Foster: I think, I mean, one of the reasons would be that There's this
• 12:57
  tremendous sense of not belonging.
• 13:00
  We get this, it's, a lot of people feel they're kind of alone, they don't belong.
• 13:07
  And what happens when you start tracking and observing, details of animals.
• 13:14
  It forces you to really start to understand the world that you're in and to
• 13:21
  know these little incredible secret lives and all these thousands of signs that
• 13:26
  are around you that are speaking to you and have been, you know, spoken to people
• 13:32
  at a very deep level for a long time.
• 13:35
  So while people are absolutely fluent in this language, they
• 13:38
  don't even have to think.
• 13:40
  So What that eventually does, it forces you to feel part of the wild, integrated
• 13:50
  into it, woven into it, so you feel part of nature, part of this world,
• 13:56
  you totally belong, you're another one of these wild animals that are moving
• 14:02
  on the landscape or in the water.
• 14:05
  And if you then learn enough from the animals and move accordingly,
• 14:10
  they allow you into their space.
• 14:15
  occasionally even come and physically interact with you on their terms.
• 14:21
  And then that makes you feel integrated into the wild.
• 14:25
  And that is a feeling that, You know, every child would have had since
• 14:31
  the beginning of time up till, you know, the beginning of the industrial
• 14:35
  revolution or whenever it started to all change, even the agricultural
• 14:39
  revolution changed us fundamentally.
• 14:41
  So, you, you just feel part of this incredible kinship of all these
• 14:49
  species and that's very affirming.
• 14:52
  Is tracking the cure for loneliness?
• 15:00
  I think you can't you know, just expect to be a kind of lone ranger,
• 15:05
  solitary person, and then get all your sustenance from nature.
• 15:11
  You will get a lot from her, but we are social beings.
• 15:15
  So the ideal thing, and I found the most Powerful and invigorating is to
• 15:22
  have a close group of friends, which I do have, and we go out tracking
• 15:27
  together and then, you know, the, the five minds is so powerful because
• 15:35
  you're getting all these inputs and you're thinking, ah, okay, that's it.
• 15:41
  This is what's happening here.
• 15:42
  And the, the feeling of moving in that group on that landscape.
• 15:47
  and being taught by these wild creatures.
• 15:51
  It's unbelievable how it bonds you.
• 15:54
  So you, you, you have kinds of friendships that are for me,
• 15:58
  impossible to get in other ways.
• 16:01
  It's, it's so ancient and old and primal that it just completely like
• 16:08
  connects your minds in that wild.
• 16:10
  And it's, what's interesting is some of the young people who've,
• 16:14
  you know, come with us, they 20, 30 years younger than me, I would.
• 16:18
  battle to be friends with them, but because of this shared awe and
• 16:24
  wonder of tracking it in the wild, you actually have so much in common.
• 16:30
  So it's, it's cross generational.
• 16:32
  And then of course, it's a lovely feeling to be passing that on to a
• 16:36
  younger person and their mind is often working really well, better than mine.
• 16:41
  So they learn very fast and they can add a lot to the, you know, the thinking part.
• 16:48
  Rupert Isaacson: So tracking is the cure for loneliness if we behave as our still
• 16:53
  living ancestors, because there's lots of hunter gatherers still on the planet.
• 16:57
  If we behave as they do, i.
• 16:59
  e.
• 17:00
  going out into nature to track in cooperative groups, right?
• 17:03
  Because that's the nature of our species.
• 17:06
  Craig Foster: It doesn't get more connected in a way.
• 17:10
  And yeah, and it does, there's something about those relationships
• 17:15
  that are very, very powerful.
• 17:19
  Rupert Isaacson: When you, when you described what was going on with the
• 17:23
  baboons and the cocktail ants, and then the lizards, and then being attracted to
• 17:28
  the insects on the baboon feces, and that
• 17:33
  despite the fact that there was.
• 17:35
  Faeces involved, or perhaps because of it, because obviously I'm a toilet
• 17:39
  humor guy, but there was obviously something very poetic about that.
• 17:42
  Is poetry,
• 17:46
  is true poetry, tracking the environment in which we live?
• 17:55
  And interacting with it in this way.
• 17:58
  Is that why it's so deeply satisfying because it's
• 18:01
  effectively living inside poetry?
• 18:04
  Is that the nature of poetry?
• 18:07
  Craig Foster: When you say that, I think of
• 18:12
  like the elegance of the natural system itself feels deeply poetic.
• 18:19
  You know, when we, when we, When we just what pops into my mind, when we
• 18:23
  started to decimate the great whale populations, you know, you would think
• 18:28
  that the krill that they feed on would, you know, expand in numbers dramatically,
• 18:33
  but their numbers drop dramatically.
• 18:35
  And it's quite funny because they rely on the whale poop and the whale poop
• 18:41
  makes all the phytoplankton bloom.
• 18:43
  And that's what feeds the krill.
• 18:45
  So, I mean, there's this, this, this extraordinary.
• 18:49
  Poetry in that, that system that is, I mean, it's mind blowing that you could
• 18:56
  have so much biodiversity, so many animals and plants kind of, and there's
• 19:01
  a lot of predation yet there's this unbelievable life that springs from that.
• 19:08
  It's, it, you know, it's pure poetry in many ways.
• 19:13
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 19:14
  So if the soul of poetry Is rooted in our interaction with the
• 19:20
  natural world, which it has to be right because we're an organism.
• 19:23
  What else can we interact with?
• 19:26
  Even when we're interacting with each other, even when we're intellectualizing
• 19:29
  things, we're still operating within the frame of an organism.
• 19:33
  Just, we're limiting the number of organisms, i.
• 19:35
  e.
• 19:35
  human to human.
• 19:37
  But there it is, it's still there, that natural thing.
• 19:42
  This brings up the question which, before we hit record, You were posing, which I
• 19:48
  think would be very good for listeners to think on too, which is what happens
• 19:57
  to the mind when we become literate?
• 20:00
  So, to frame that question, 300,
• 20:05
  000 years, more or less, of species, as far as we know, sapiens sapiens,
• 20:10
  and certainly about 290 something, four years of it not literate.
• 20:18
  And then about 6, 000 years ago, we seem to have the first cuneiform scripts.
• 20:22
  The archaeological thing is being rewritten all the time.
• 20:25
  Maybe, who knows, maybe we've been literate in previous iterations
• 20:29
  before, but not for as long as We've not been literate.
• 20:33
  And we use that word illiteracy as a pejorative.
• 20:37
  We definitely, if, oh, illiterate, that's a bad thing.
• 20:43
  But you made the point that the master trackers, and listeners, what we mean
• 20:49
  by master trackers is if you go into places like the Kalahari in southern
• 20:53
  Africa, where there are Sun Bushman Hunters trackers, who can read the
• 21:00
  land in a way that makes Craig's previous description sound illiterate.
• 21:07
  incredibly simplistic, because they're just on a meta level with this.
• 21:12
  That the vast majority of them are not literate.
• 21:15
  And that the trackers that are within their communities that are
• 21:20
  literate don't seem to be able to reach that same deep level.
• 21:26
  So what happens to the mind when we become literate?
• 21:29
  And then, The question that you posed, Craig, was does literacy
• 21:34
  compromise deep cognition?
• 21:39
  Can you give us your thoughts on that?
• 21:42
  Craig Foster: So I'm certainly no expert on this, but it is
• 21:44
  something that's fascinating me.
• 21:50
  Very young children seem to be just incredibly bright.
• 21:54
  They can learn a language without even trying.
• 21:58
  As soon as they start this whole education system I think it's quite
• 22:03
  well known that their brains get sort of fairly heavily compromised
• 22:07
  and the cognition drops radically.
• 22:11
  And it is interesting that quite a large percentage of master trackers, and it's,
• 22:18
  it's, it's, it's, it's an incredible thing to witness don't seem to have
• 22:23
  the literacy and the people in those communities who are literate cannot do
• 22:29
  this incredible master tracking techniques and ideas and, and, but, you know,
• 22:35
  Admittedly, it takes 20 years to learn.
• 22:37
  So,
• 22:40
  and as you say, you know, for 95 percent of our time on this
• 22:44
  planet, we have not been literate.
• 22:46
  So suddenly introducing this enormous amount of energy that's
• 22:50
  required for our reading and writing.
• 22:54
  What does that do?
• 22:56
  to our deeper thinking?
• 22:59
  What does it do to radical pattern recognition, etc?
• 23:02
  I don't know the answers, but I'd be very interested to try
• 23:06
  and find out more about that.
• 23:09
  And some indigenous writing that I've recently read, an amazing book called
• 23:13
  Sand Talk, hints at a similar thing that
• 23:21
  Intrinsically, we know so much, and no one's saying that people
• 23:27
  shouldn't learn to read and write.
• 23:30
  It's absolutely critical for survival in our culture today.
• 23:34
  But it is very interesting to think about what is actually doing to
• 23:41
  this incredible, wild human being.
• 23:44
  brain that has been forged in this crucible of nature for so long.
• 23:50
  What is it doing?
• 23:52
  All these really strange inputs.
• 23:54
  I mean, we know what the technology is doing.
• 23:56
  It's messing us up properly.
• 23:58
  But what is all the other stuff doing as well?
• 24:01
  And it's certainly, as I go, Deeper into these spaces.
• 24:05
  I get a very strong sense that we have to be very, very careful,
• 24:09
  especially in the education system.
• 24:11
  How we bring all this so called knowledge to young people.
• 24:17
  Rupert Isaacson: I think we need to bring some neuroscientists into this
• 24:20
  conversation because as you were talking, I just grabbed my phone and I started
• 24:25
  I just typed the question into Google, you know, does education compromise.
• 24:31
  And of course everything pops up saying, no education, you know, is vital for
• 24:36
  cognition, you know, across the entire adult range individuals with more
• 24:40
  education show higher levels of cognitive function than individuals with less.
• 24:44
  Education and this, you know, coming from, of course, the government website
• 24:48
  in the UK, but I think we need to define here what we mean by cognition, because
• 24:53
  I think this is a really interesting point, as you say, we can't get by in our
• 24:57
  culture now without interaction with the cash economy, without literacy digital
• 25:03
  literacy, we have to have it, even the son that I know who I still interact with a
• 25:09
  lot in the Kalahari, they, they use cell phones, they, you know, I mean, they're,
• 25:14
  they, they have to, or they get overrun by people that have that kind of technology.
• 25:18
  So, when you say cognition, given that Any sort of educational psychologist
• 25:25
  probably would say no, you've got to have literacy for cognition.
• 25:32
  Why are you posing something that's a little, what do you mean by
• 25:36
  cognition that might be different to what they mean by cognition?
• 25:41
  Craig Foster: No, as you say, how they're measuring that, you know, the level of
• 25:48
  thinking and understanding it takes to be able to look at.
• 25:54
  You know, very, very faint marks in the earth and put together this
• 26:01
  unbelievably complex story and then follow animals that are unseen is
• 26:07
  one of the hardest things it takes.
• 26:10
  I mean, it's.
• 26:11
  a thousand times easier to fly a jumbo jet or be an astronaut or anything like that.
• 26:17
  Anybody can eventually learn to do that.
• 26:19
  This is not something that's, this is something that's very,
• 26:22
  very difficult and the variables are massive and it's so subtle.
• 26:29
  So it's one of the most remarkable things I've ever seen in my whole life.
• 26:36
  This ability to figure out these incredibly complex secrets of nature.
• 26:44
  It is absolutely remarkable.
• 26:46
  I mean, you have witnessed it.
• 26:48
  It's, it's mind blowing.
• 26:50
  And I've tried, I mean, I've tried for, you know, decades and I can get by now.
• 26:56
  I can do some fairly good tracking.
• 26:59
  I've taught myself to track underwater, but I'm nowhere near as good after
• 27:04
  15 years of doing it every day and my entire childhood doing it, I'm nowhere
• 27:09
  near as good as a master tracker.
• 27:11
  It's, it's something that is.
• 27:13
  Requires the brain to be working at a extremely high level.
• 27:19
  So whatever that is, or whatever the terms are, I, I'm, as I said,
• 27:24
  I'm absolutely no expert on any of this neuroscience or how it works,
• 27:30
  but I have a, a, a strong hunch that
• 27:35
  the Our brains are being rewired when we learn to read and write.
• 27:44
  And when we learn to track other neural pathways are opening up and you can,
• 27:51
  I mean, after this now intensive 15 years of tracking I've done now, I
• 27:55
  noticed my My thinking is way better and especially in things like storytelling
• 28:03
  And writing funnily enough but in the story structure side of things, so, and
• 28:10
  I've noticed people like my friend John Young have taken young people out who say
• 28:15
  struggling in school with math or science.
• 28:18
  And after three months of tracking, without doing any extra math or science,
• 28:24
  those kids are suddenly fine with that.
• 28:26
  Who is John Young?
• 28:27
  Tell us about John Young.
• 28:29
  John Young is an incredible tracker, storyteller you know, written
• 28:34
  many books on bird language.
• 28:37
  Where's he from?
• 28:38
  He is from he's from America.
• 28:41
  He now lives in California, but he was from the Pine Barrens.
• 28:45
  I can't remember exactly where that is, but on the East coast, New Jersey.
• 28:49
  That's right.
• 28:50
  So, and he spent his whole life tracking from nine years old.
• 28:54
  Okay.
• 28:55
  In very interesting childhood.
• 28:57
  And so there are these hints everywhere that there is something,
• 29:02
  there's something extraordinary here.
• 29:04
  You know, so much of, I think the way forward, the future of our relationship
• 29:13
  with the planet our way of telling the story of who we are and how we
• 29:18
  should interact with the planet.
• 29:20
  I think so much knowledge is bound up in the indigenous peoples of this planet.
• 29:27
  Yeah,
• 29:27
  Rupert Isaacson: where else can it be?
• 29:28
  Yeah,
• 29:29
  Craig Foster: exactly.
• 29:30
  So, and this tracking is this fundamental base for our whole relationship.
• 29:38
  with ourselves, with our minds, with our environment, with
• 29:42
  animals, with all the kinship.
• 29:45
  It is the, the binding language that takes us back to the
• 29:50
  beginning and pre human as well.
• 29:53
  I mean, definitely Homo erectus and these early hominids we're tracking.
• 29:57
  So it's part of our deep Way of thinking and interacting, right?
• 30:02
  And it must
• 30:03
  Rupert Isaacson: be true of every organism, right?
• 30:05
  Because every organism has to track, right?
• 30:06
  Every organism either predates or is prey has to read the environment
• 30:11
  around them all the time.
• 30:13
  Otherwise, they don't survive
• 30:15
  Craig Foster: exactly.
• 30:16
  And they've got these incredible sensory systems.
• 30:19
  But we've developed this incredible system because our senses are
• 30:24
  not normally often that good.
• 30:26
  But we've got this unbelievable system of tracking that has kind of, you know,
• 30:33
  made us as good as animals in many ways.
• 30:37
  And we've used our big brain to do that.
• 30:42
  Well,
• 30:44
  Rupert Isaacson: some neuroscience comes into my mind actually with this, which is
• 30:46
  that this we're still in 2024 as we make this podcast just a university study from,
• 30:55
  I think University of Shanghai came out that seems to prove a theory, an older one
• 31:01
  from the eighties and early nineties by a guy called Roger Penrose, that the brain
• 31:07
  is a quantum, human is a quantum computer and that we're capable of storing.
• 31:15
  Thought as energy in different parts, like throughout the brain.
• 31:20
  I'm paraphrasing, I'm trying to make sure I get this right.
• 31:23
  And I'll, I'll, I'll get on Google in a moment and give a link for the study.
• 31:30
  And that where, so we store as potential or this potential
• 31:35
  thought on any particular thought.
• 31:37
  And it's only when we bring our attention onto a particular thought that it
• 31:41
  becomes, if you like, a photon rather than a wave no longer in potential,
• 31:45
  but then it can go back to potential.
• 31:47
  And that we store this energy in our myelin.
• 31:52
  The wrapping that goes around the neural pathways that connect the fatty tissue
• 31:58
  that ends up making them into a secure insulated cable similar to a plastic cable
• 32:03
  around an electrical wire, that's myelin.
• 32:05
  Myelination is when we produce that and we have to take pauses, downtime,
• 32:11
  naps, daydreaming for our brain to have the chance to have this myelin.
• 32:17
  And apparently within this myelin, there are these microtubules.
• 32:21
  And it's being posited that within these microtubules in the myelin, which is
• 32:29
  insulating every neural pathway we have in our brain, that it's here, that
• 32:33
  we store this quantum potentiality.
• 32:36
  And it seems that they've kind of proved this now.
• 32:40
  And I'm wondering if that's what you're talking about.
• 32:45
  I'm wondering if when you are in a, if you like a pure state, as
• 32:50
  you say, early childhood, before you learn to read and write.
• 32:54
  Your
• 32:57
  access to that potentiality and thought is unhindered.
• 33:02
  And then, of course, as we learn to read and write, we learn to
• 33:04
  follow and track, because it is still tracking, I think, reading
• 33:07
  and writing, one particular animal.
• 33:09
  It's like saying we're only now going to track kudu, or horse, or something.
• 33:15
  Or maybe we do it in several languages, so we can do seven species.
• 33:20
  But what we then lose the capa and then we think, oh, everything is in the written
• 33:25
  word, and I'm guilty of this because I'm a writer, and you're a writer too,
• 33:29
  so the written word is, is, is to some degree everything to us, and a lot of my
• 33:33
  greatest joy is in reading and writing.
• 33:36
  However, listening to you, I can now begin to see how limiting that can be.
• 33:42
  Because If I could read and write in every language in the world, well,
• 33:49
  okay, but I can't, I can really do it well in one language, middling
• 33:54
  in another one and at kindergarten level and a third and that's it.
• 34:00
  Is a master tracker in the indigenous sense of a human being, i.
• 34:05
  e.
• 34:05
  an original sense, an authentic sense of a human being, is a master tracker
• 34:10
  effectively somebody who can read and write in every language in the world
• 34:15
  because There you are interacting.
• 34:17
  How many species are you interacting with?
• 34:19
  If you're a master tracker, I mean take a guess.
• 34:21
  What do you think?
• 34:24
  Craig Foster: Over a thousand and sure so that's what you I think you need.
• 34:29
  I think John worked it out I think you need at least a working knowledge of sort
• 34:32
  of 400 species To be able to obviously depends on the environment but if you you
• 34:38
  have to have a sense of all the phylum to be able to you Put together these stories.
• 34:45
  So you, you, you need to know insect language.
• 34:47
  You need to know antelope language.
• 34:49
  You need to know bird language.
• 34:50
  You need to know you know, bone language.
• 34:54
  You know, you find one little piece of bone.
• 34:56
  You have to have a sense of what animal it's from.
• 34:58
  Or you need to know scat language.
• 35:00
  You need to know all of these things to be able to put together the complex pictures.
• 35:06
  And the smallest thing can give you the whole, you know,
• 35:09
  a whole lot of information.
• 35:11
  So it's a nice way of looking at it.
• 35:13
  You need to No, a lot about a lot of your wild kin.
• 35:18
  And the more, you know, the more interesting the dialogue becomes with
• 35:22
  the wild but it's hard to emphasize how satisfying and powerful it is.
• 35:28
  And there's nothing better for me than a day out doing that.
• 35:31
  There's just, it's, it's, it's impossible to beat with, with anything that I.
• 35:37
  And of
• 35:37
  Rupert Isaacson: course, you're not just talking about animal species.
• 35:39
  We're talking about plant species, fungal species, and then the interact,
• 35:43
  the interactions from one plant species to another or through a fungal network
• 35:47
  or through an animal to another plant.
• 35:50
  Craig Foster: And wind, I mean, we see wind tracks everywhere here.
• 35:54
  You know, the wind is cutting the plants in an amazing way.
• 35:58
  It's cutting the rocks.
• 35:59
  So you get a, you know, a million, five million year old wind track on a rock.
• 36:04
  You get a A wind track on plants that's maybe, you know, 20, 30 years old.
• 36:10
  This everywhere, it's just speaking to you in this beautiful way.
• 36:17
  Rupert Isaacson: So, if, if back to your point about John Young taking kids who are
• 36:22
  struggling, say, with math and science out into, tracking and then Them coming back
• 36:30
  and without having had to take any extra tutorials in math and science suddenly
• 36:33
  They're better at math and science.
• 36:35
  What you're really saying is that one type of if you go to deep
• 36:40
  cognition It's going to help all the slightly less deep cognitions
• 36:44
  that we call our education system.
• 36:48
  And that's in line with what they do in Finland.
• 36:50
  So Finland, as you know, has the highest math and science scores
• 36:56
  of any school system in the world.
• 36:58
  And they achieve this by cutting two thirds of their classroom time
• 37:03
  and upping two thirds of their
• 37:05
  Craig Foster: nature.
• 37:05
  That's great.
• 37:06
  Isn't it?
• 37:07
  I didn't know.
• 37:07
  I didn't know that.
• 37:08
  Yeah,
• 37:09
  Rupert Isaacson: they're the world leaders and nobody follows them.
• 37:11
  Because everyone's terrified that anything but the devil they know you know, we're
• 37:15
  afraid of what's unfamiliar, but for some odd reason, the Finns were able
• 37:18
  to take that leap because they, it's a culture that's relatively close to nature.
• 37:22
  If that type of tracking can affect our learning cognition so
• 37:28
  well, what about mental health?
• 37:33
  Craig Foster: That's probably where it could be, you know, in,
• 37:36
  in my thinking, the most profound it gives you this strange sense.
• 37:41
  of purpose.
• 37:43
  You know, if you really think about it, life feels pretty purposeless.
• 37:48
  But for some reason, doing such a primal activity it just feels right.
• 37:54
  I mean, and, and what I like to do, I say, go out to a day of tracking and then, then
• 38:01
  there's all these questions that come up.
• 38:03
  The animals start to teach you, you start asking hundreds of questions
• 38:07
  and then you can do some research.
• 38:10
  So, and then you can, you know, somehow quantify that.
• 38:17
  These stories that come out and it's, it's so satisfying and then reshare them
• 38:23
  and dialogue with your fellow trackers.
• 38:25
  Oh, I wonder about that.
• 38:26
  What did you think of, you know, we saw this the same Friday we saw the tracks
• 38:32
  of some of the first tracks I've ever seen of isopods solidified in salt.
• 38:38
  So these are small creatures that live in their billions in the
• 38:43
  intertidal, they're fascinating.
• 38:44
  What is an isopod
• 38:45
  Rupert Isaacson: for those of us that don't know?
• 38:46
  It's
• 38:46
  Craig Foster: a, it's a crustacean, a small flat looking crustacean
• 38:51
  with ten legs and little antennae.
• 38:54
  That lives in the intertidal, feeds on kelp, and they migrate in their millions.
• 39:01
  And we were walking along the coast, and we just looked up, and there was
• 39:04
  this river of creatures coming from the water, or near the water, across
• 39:10
  the rocks as the tide was rising.
• 39:12
  I'm talking about, you know, 500, 000 animals.
• 39:18
  And it was just incredible.
• 39:19
  The whole rock.
• 39:20
  felt like it was moving.
• 39:21
  And I actually lay underneath one of the rocks and started
• 39:24
  photographing them and the river started running over my whole body.
• 39:29
  I had a thousand animals on my body and they were just moving.
• 39:33
  And but what was so fascinating is these, they had obviously moved
• 39:41
  across this little area on their journey down to the shore through
• 39:45
  a saturated solution of salt water.
• 39:49
  Because these animals are so light, they weigh a few grams,
• 39:52
  they don't really leave tracks.
• 39:54
  But they had altered the structure of the salt, and then when it
• 39:58
  had solidified and crystallized, there was a perfect solution.
• 40:02
  Tracks of these animals, but they were different and You could see they were
• 40:08
  both made by isopods But they were two of them coming next to each other were
• 40:13
  very different and that made us think about how these animals Moving some of
• 40:19
  them almost dragging themselves some are walking and that was like a three day
• 40:23
  Discussion with our tracking group and but it forces you to think about these
• 40:29
  and the next time we're going to go back We're going to watch exactly how they're
• 40:33
  moving you And try and figure out how that once in a, in a million track occurred.
• 40:40
  I've never seen it before.
• 40:41
  So it's these, it's like these crazy details that force you
• 40:46
  into the lives of these animals.
• 40:49
  And you become intimate with them.
• 40:51
  You, you.
• 40:52
  And of course you fall in love with them.
• 40:53
  It might be a strange thing to, to think, but I really love these isopods.
• 40:59
  I mean, most people would probably find them, you know, disgusting.
• 41:02
  They kind of feel like tiny cockroaches, but they, these animals,
• 41:09
  without them, we'd basically die.
• 41:11
  I mean, this, these small creatures are keeping us alive.
• 41:14
  This is a reason.
• 41:16
  Rupert Isaacson: Why, why would we die without them?
• 41:18
  Craig Foster: So biodiversity, which is the complexity of all animals and plants.
• 41:24
  Is the, the basically makes the oxygen that we breathe and makes all the, the
• 41:33
  food and water purifies everything.
• 41:35
  So it's our, it's our living biological life support system.
• 41:40
  So if you start taking out a fundamental animal like this, that provides food
• 41:45
  for all the other creatures, birds eat them, fish eat these animals,
• 41:49
  otters eat them, everything eats them.
• 41:52
  You will have a, a, a, a trophic cascade, you'll have a large
• 41:56
  amount of animals dying, and fairly quickly we will not be able to live.
• 42:01
  There will be no life support system left on this planet.
• 42:04
  So, it's a fundamental thing we've forgotten, that biodiversity, this
• 42:09
  mother, of, of, of all the creatures and plants together is literally
• 42:15
  keeping us alive from second to second.
• 42:18
  And when you feel that, and you look at this river of creatures,
• 42:21
  I mean, in large parts of the world, there, there are none left.
• 42:25
  You just think, Oh my God, I can actually, During this apocalypse, I'm lying and
• 42:32
  this river of these animals, thousands of legs are moving across my body.
• 42:38
  Isn't that a privilege?
• 42:40
  Isn't that a something to celebrate?
• 42:44
  And you know, as I get up, I'm so careful not to squash one or whatever, you know,
• 42:49
  and just gently knock them off my shirt and try and, you know, get them out of
• 42:53
  the socks and everything so that none are injured, even though they're millions.
• 42:56
  They're just so precious.
• 42:58
  Each one is this.
• 43:00
  is a part of our life support system.
• 43:02
  So it forces you to, to feel deep empathy.
• 43:08
  This is what tracking does.
• 43:09
  It forces you into these other, Into the other's lives and makes
• 43:16
  you appreciate them at such a deep level that you feel uplifted.
• 43:22
  You feel that this is a good thing to be doing you know, for no
• 43:29
  particular end, you know, just in doing it for itself and nothing else.
• 43:34
  And everybody in the group feels it, you know, it's like,
• 43:37
  Rupert Isaacson: was it Confucius who said to for happiness, practice
• 43:43
  the arts, basically not with the.
• 43:47
  intention of being a master artist or selling your work, just
• 43:51
  the sheer joy of the practice.
• 43:53
  Is, is, is that what we're talking about here with the mental health?
• 43:57
  It's the sheer joy of the practice, the empathy.
• 44:01
  Craig Foster: Yeah, so you don't, you, what it does, it forces you into
• 44:05
  the present because if you've got a goal, you're always thinking, Ooh,
• 44:09
  I'm now going to be, I don't know, making an artwork from these tracks
• 44:14
  or writing a book or something.
• 44:16
  Then you're going to be living in that future space, but you,
• 44:20
  what it does, it's incredible how it forces you into the present.
• 44:24
  There's no cell phones, there's nothing.
• 44:26
  We're just out in the wild.
• 44:28
  We're trying to figure out what.
• 44:31
  The land what the animals are saying and you absolutely present
• 44:37
  and that makes you feel and you get a very distorted sense of time.
• 44:42
  We go in and you're in that world of say the isopods and you pop out and it's three
• 44:47
  hours later and it feels like 15 minutes.
• 44:51
  If so it forces you to be so present and that is deeply healing and of
• 44:58
  course you you know All the sounds of the wild are there everything's making
• 45:05
  you feel lowering your nervous system.
• 45:07
  Put it that way.
• 45:08
  Your whole nervous system feels, just seems to come down and feel,
• 45:15
  Rupert Isaacson: you know, you talked about the sense of belonging.
• 45:18
  Which of course we all long for because we're social animals and you know, it's
• 45:23
  it's a well known but true cliche that you can be surrounded by Thousands or
• 45:28
  millions of people but feel very lonely because you're not connected and we
• 45:33
  are supposed to live in these hunter gatherer groups Where we're very connected
• 45:38
  so is is tracking like this so good for the mental health because It's actually
• 45:45
  good for our physical bodies, right?
• 45:46
  So our mental health is still an extension of our physicality.
• 45:51
  But also is it linked with survival in some way in that if I can read the
• 45:56
  environment to that degree, then I know that I have a kind of security.
• 46:02
  Because I just, I don't need to worry, right?
• 46:05
  Craig Foster: Yeah, you're absolutely right.
• 46:06
  And what's so interesting, I've noticed, if I'm in a place of very
• 46:11
  high biodiversity, I feel really good.
• 46:17
  And I think it's the case, because my primal being, who doesn't know I can
• 46:23
  go to the shop and buy food and that, knows that, ooh, this is an easy place
• 46:28
  to survive, I don't need to worry.
• 46:30
  I can actually, you know, I can, I can survive and I've been to places
• 46:37
  had the privilege of working in near pristine islands where almost
• 46:40
  all the biodiversity is intact.
• 46:43
  And I have been absolutely shocked at how that affected my mental health.
• 46:48
  I've never felt better in my life.
• 46:50
  And so many of the other people around me had the same feeling.
• 46:54
  It's like, deeply, deeply healing to be in a place where the
• 46:57
  biodiversity is fully intact.
• 46:59
  And I think that's because this wild creature inside us, the primal
• 47:04
  mind absolutely knows that it knows.
• 47:09
  I've even had the feeling here in the kelp forest swimming and across a reef
• 47:15
  where there's much more biodiversity for a whole lot of reasons and you just
• 47:19
  suddenly feel this amazing feeling and you don't quite know where it's coming from.
• 47:25
  But I think our whole mental health, our whole levels of anxiety, our
• 47:30
  nervous system is all woven into the biodiversity of our planet.
• 47:37
  It, it just makes total sense that it would be.
• 47:41
  And we would gravitate in, in, in most of our time on this planet
• 47:46
  towards places of higher biodiversity.
• 47:49
  And we'd, we, we, I mean, as you know, we're very nomadic by nature.
• 47:53
  We'd be moving continually towards places and staying in places of higher
• 47:58
  biodiversity and then moving to another place as that diminished, we follow the
• 48:03
  rains, we follow the herds, we follow the rains, we follow the biodiversity.
• 48:08
  That's, that's our whole way our psyche is structured.
• 48:11
  So it's tied in, in the most magnificent way, our life support system, our mother,
• 48:19
  our big mother, and our wellbeing, our mental health, it's all inseparable.
• 48:26
  Rupert Isaacson: It's interesting that our brains, you know, they're so
• 48:29
  efficient and they're so inefficient.
• 48:30
  So, you know, they we've we've come up with these Shortcuts now, you know, so
• 48:34
  we invented writing then we invented money and we invented agriculture
• 48:38
  and we invented all these things to
• 48:41
  take out variables To make survival efficient and then it seems that we've
• 48:46
  done this at the cost of our mental health I'm just thinking that you
• 48:50
  know, we follow the rains we follow the herds now we follow the money We
• 48:54
  have to we have to follow the money.
• 48:55
  Craig Foster: Yeah,
• 48:56
  Rupert Isaacson: I have to I have to and at the same time it's One thing to follow.
• 49:03
  Interestingly, you know, I have, like you, parallel careers.
• 49:08
  I've got a career in horses, a career in mental health, a career in writing
• 49:12
  and creative stuff, da da da, education.
• 49:16
  You have a career in, you know, filmmaking, storytelling.
• 49:20
  Conservation, biodiversity, tracking, and other things too.
• 49:25
  I am never at my happiest and when I've got several parallel projects going on
• 49:30
  that seem to me to be working towards
• 49:35
  fruition, not as in the goal, but just as in developing nicely.
• 49:42
  Because that, I suppose, from what you're saying, that kind
• 49:45
  of reflects biodiversity.
• 49:46
  That sort of reflects me as a wild person saying, Oh, look, you know,
• 49:50
  the wild plums are coming out and I see that the red deer are coming
• 49:55
  down from the hills into the valley.
• 49:57
  That's going to make life easier.
• 49:59
  And oh gosh, that look at the medicinal herbs.
• 50:01
  They're coming up well over there and blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 50:04
  And.
• 50:05
  So in a weird way, it's exactly the same process, isn't it?
• 50:08
  But we've made it abstract.
• 50:10
  We've intellectualized it and that by doing that, we then get into this big,
• 50:14
  amazing brain that you talked about.
• 50:17
  That's allowed us to develop this amazing tracking thing.
• 50:20
  What's gone wrong?
• 50:21
  Where did we diverge from our brain working in our favor to make us almost as
• 50:30
  good as these animals that are stronger and more resilient than we are in many
• 50:36
  ways through this tracking ability.
• 50:39
  And Where did it go wrong that, that it began to work against us and that mental
• 50:44
  health now is even a, a discussion?
• 50:47
  What's your theory on that?
• 50:50
  Craig Foster: I just want to come back to that thing before I answer that, that,
• 50:54
  it's so powerful what you said, you know, we followed the reins for so long, and
• 51:02
  now we follow the money, and then, but how much have we sacrificed for that?
• 51:09
  And that's, I think the fundamental question.
• 51:14
  You know, we actually thrive on certain levels of hardship as well.
• 51:20
  I mean, you know, the cold, the exposure to the wild, the, the intense
• 51:27
  exercise of resilience of resilience of following we, we, we, we actually derive
• 51:33
  tremendous pleasure from that through delayed dopamine release and so on.
• 51:40
  Rupert Isaacson: Oh yeah.
• 51:41
  Craig Foster: So, so that's.
• 51:43
  When you make things so easy and everything's just, just one example
• 51:50
  would be, you know, temperature control.
• 51:55
  We love as a species being cold and then making a little fire
• 52:00
  and feeling warm and so on.
• 52:03
  But.
• 52:04
  If you've got a temperature controlled house and you never feel that, your whole
• 52:08
  hormonal system starts to be compromised.
• 52:11
  Your dopamine release is far less, etc, etc.
• 52:15
  So the, this, in my book, what I've talked about, this whole tame existence
• 52:22
  it's wonderful in some ways, and a beautiful cup of coffee and an amazing
• 52:26
  book and whatever can be great, but it takes so much away from that wild spirit.
• 52:34
  That if it's become so imbalanced like we have now and that you just have
• 52:39
  this, all this technology everywhere, it is so frightening for that wild
• 52:44
  psyche, that wild psyche is desperate to get back to these primal activities.
• 52:52
  But at some.
• 52:53
  It's going so far down this sort of tame road that it's very
• 52:57
  difficult in many cases to do that.
• 53:01
  I don't know if that's answered much of your question, but it certainly I
• 53:05
  mean, where did that all start changing?
• 53:08
  I mean, I think we know very well that as soon as we move to agriculture, there's
• 53:12
  a massive change in the whole psyche.
• 53:15
  And you start to lose this connection with the wild, you stop being nomadic.
• 53:19
  The whole.
• 53:21
  You know, 300, 000 years of, of living takes a huge knock and that, that is
• 53:26
  pretty traumatic for the wild psyche.
• 53:29
  Then we kind of get used to that and then all this other stuff thrown at us.
• 53:33
  And now we've, you know, can't think straight because our lives
• 53:37
  are ruled by you know, a little cell phone hand grenade in our hands.
• 53:40
  So it's it's a very strange world that way.
• 53:43
  And so we've become the aliens.
• 53:46
  In our own world, and the tracking and these primal activities basically
• 53:55
  reconnects us with who we are and we stop feeling like aliens and we
• 54:01
  start feeling like we actually belong.
• 54:03
  And that makes you, it's, it's, it's mentally very challenging to feel
• 54:09
  like an alien on your own planet.
• 54:11
  And that's what's happened.
• 54:12
  It's not a good feeling.
• 54:18
  Rupert Isaacson: Before we go there, because obviously that
• 54:22
  brings up.
• 54:24
  For me, the question of people on the spectrum like my oldest son, Rowan,
• 54:30
  who would say can feel like being an alien, being in the neurotypical world.
• 54:37
  But even we neurotypicals feel alienated.
• 54:41
  Something that came up in what you just said, And again, on the
• 54:44
  subject of mental health and why is tracking so good for mental health?
• 54:47
  It strikes me, from what you're saying, that tracking is intrinsically playful.
• 54:53
  In that, when you said, well, there's no specific purpose, if you look at
• 54:57
  the way kids play, before they get told that they've got to play win or lose a
• 55:04
  game, But when they're playing like tag or trying to hit that rock out there
• 55:11
  in the pond with this other rock Which is of course, these are all hunting and
• 55:16
  tracking preparatory games that kids play
• 55:24
  Tracking seems to be like that and that therefore the hunter
• 55:27
  gatherer life And I've noticed this with the hunter gatherers.
• 55:33
  I've been privileged to spend time with there's an intrinsic
• 55:36
  light heartedness That's
• 55:38
  Craig Foster: very, very observant.
• 55:40
  And that's exactly the whole, as we start to go tracking.
• 55:45
  I don't know what it is, but the, the whole, we become childlike in a
• 55:49
  way, there's this jokes, there's this teasing, there's this, this, it just
• 55:55
  has such a, so much laughter, you know, sometimes rolling on the floor laughter.
• 56:01
  And strangely enough, during the tracking, we always take some time to play frisbee.
• 56:08
  And it's, it's something about the throwing, you know, you're
• 56:11
  throwing a, like throwing a boomerang, throwing a spear.
• 56:13
  It's like that.
• 56:14
  Yeah.
• 56:16
  And it's, there's no, there's no just chucking it back and forth.
• 56:20
  There's no purpose, but it's playful and it goes into that fun laughter.
• 56:26
  I mean, it's so much laughter.
• 56:28
  On each one of those days, and often, especially if we have rain or we
• 56:33
  get all wet or we, it's a bit, you know, tough for the water's freezing
• 56:37
  and everyone's cold, we always make a little fire at the end of the day
• 56:41
  and huddle around it and make a meal.
• 56:43
  It's, you know, just these basic primal activities are just priceless.
• 56:49
  And it's often a, you know, it's a privilege in a way, you know, so
• 56:52
  many people, it's such a sad thing.
• 56:54
  It's very, very hard for them to get to a place.
• 56:58
  With enough biodiversity to do this.
• 57:00
  And certainly most people on the planet will never see a
• 57:04
  near pristine environment.
• 57:05
  It's deeply saddening for me.
• 57:07
  Yet every person before a few thousand years ago would have seen a fully
• 57:13
  intact world with all that, you know, that immensity, a boiling ocean, a
• 57:21
  sky darkened by the bird life, you know, literally blocking out the sun.
• 57:26
  the whole earth shaking with antelope hooves.
• 57:29
  This is the, this was the norm.
• 57:32
  So it's a, it's quite a, a change, but I'd almost like to touch on that.
• 57:37
  Well, how do you now?
• 57:41
  With what we are facing, how do you keep that hope and playfulness
• 57:45
  and that, you know, yeah.
• 57:47
  Now that mental toll in place.
• 57:50
  So I've thought about it a bit and instead of, there is a desire when you
• 57:56
  start to fall in love with the wild, there's a big desire to say, okay,
• 57:59
  now I'm gonna try and save this planet
• 58:03
  And it's, it's a giant impossible task, especially with everything going on to, to
• 58:09
  even consider, but you can certainly, if there are enough islands of biodiversity,
• 58:17
  enough islands of hope, enough islands of people, and there are many incredible
• 58:22
  people and groups of people around this world, and especially indigenous people
• 58:26
  who, as you know, are protecting, I think, 80 percent of the biodiversity
• 58:30
  on this planet, even though they only make up 5 percent of human beings.
• 58:34
  There's enough of those islands and this growing.
• 58:37
  Understanding of how crucial this is that whole communal psyche can shift, but we
• 58:45
  have to change the story, the story of, of great extraction and capitalism and
• 58:51
  increased growth is that has to change to a story of reciprocity and, and living
• 58:56
  with the wild and regenerating the wild, but for the mental health side of it, I
• 59:03
  think what's very powerful is to celebrate the Each interaction with each creature
• 59:10
  or plant you come in contact with, instead of focusing on, Oh my goodness, you know,
• 59:16
  90 percent of the big fish are gone.
• 59:18
  And every time you go in the water, you feel downtrodden, but every time
• 59:23
  you see a fish, or at least when I do, it feels like a miracle to me
• 59:28
  that I'm swimming with a big fish or a big shark in during the apocalypse.
• 59:34
  It's like, oh my god, this is a miracle.
• 59:37
  Like when I had those isopods moving over my body, it's a miracle.
• 59:41
  that this is still ongoing and this place is so resist, you know, resilient that we
• 59:48
  have these islands of biodiversity still, despite this unrelenting extraction.
• 59:54
  It's a miracle.
• 59:56
  And that of course it will all come back.
• 59:59
  We are knocking it down at a rate that's never been seen on this planet.
• 1:00:04
  None of our ancestors will ever, ever had to go through the
• 1:00:10
  kind of climate change we will.
• 1:00:14
  It's more volatile now in the near future than it's ever been
• 1:00:19
  in our 300, 000 year old history.
• 1:00:21
  And it's never changed as far.
• 1:00:23
  So we are up against serious stuff.
• 1:00:27
  But we have to remain and keep that hope and keep that love
• 1:00:33
  there because that's what we have.
• 1:00:36
  That's the, the only.
• 1:00:39
  thing we have.
• 1:00:40
  And it is, it is a miracle that we're living in.
• 1:00:44
  It is literally a miracle and to see that, but you cannot allow
• 1:00:48
  oneself to be taken down that, you know, the loss of so many things.
• 1:00:53
  It's not easy.
• 1:00:54
  That's the, the thing.
• 1:00:56
  So it's a, it's a strange balance that one has to find, but it does
• 1:01:02
  help a lot, of course, to be seeing these, It's magnificent things.
• 1:01:06
  Some parts of the world, unfortunately, you know, it's so compromised,
• 1:01:10
  especially in the Northern Hemisphere, the insects are gone.
• 1:01:14
  It is tough.
• 1:01:15
  That is a tough scenario.
• 1:01:17
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, it's interesting.
• 1:01:18
  I mean, so obviously, yeah, you're, you're able to go and do these things
• 1:01:21
  because you live, despite the fact that you live near a large city, there's
• 1:01:24
  a, you, you live on the edge of a.
• 1:01:26
  Very large protected area.
• 1:01:28
  You are in one of those islands of biodiversity.
• 1:01:31
  I'm just thinking, as you were talking, I'm sitting here in the
• 1:01:34
  northern hemisphere in Germany.
• 1:01:35
  It's very, very cold and I'm looking out at what we call a hoarfrost, which is,
• 1:01:39
  you know, the entire, everything is white.
• 1:01:41
  All the trees are white, everything is white.
• 1:01:43
  And as we've been talking, I think I've counted 20 species
• 1:01:47
  of birds outside the window.
• 1:01:49
  And while you were talking about, you know, swimming with a giant fish,
• 1:01:55
  you know, I was watching a large blue heron fly across the window.
• 1:01:59
  My window, but down below my garden here, there's a main road.
• 1:02:03
  And if I were to go another, Oh, kilometer in that direction, I would
• 1:02:10
  hit a highway, like a proper one that goes, you know, but in between are
• 1:02:15
  all these islands of biodiversity.
• 1:02:17
  So the reason why there's this 20 species of birds outside my window is because
• 1:02:22
  Despite the fact that there's houses here, there's also some water meadows
• 1:02:26
  between the main road and the motorway.
• 1:02:30
  And then there's forest as well.
• 1:02:32
  And
• 1:02:35
  I could look outside at that and say, oh, that's a peri urban landscape.
• 1:02:40
  Or I could look out at that and say, how wonderful that in this peri urban
• 1:02:44
  landscape, there's all this biodiversity.
• 1:02:47
  It's up to how I see it.
• 1:02:49
  And I do feel that back to this idea of playfulness and belonging and the feeling
• 1:02:55
  of security that the wild mind has.
• 1:03:00
  One of the difficulties with agriculture, which of course has come over into the
• 1:03:06
  industrial world and capitalism, and so on, is it's not just capitalism.
• 1:03:10
  It's anything post agriculture is that it's, it's all about toil.
• 1:03:13
  It's all about repetitive.
• 1:03:18
  Unpleasant work that one does for money that makes people, makes the soul angry.
• 1:03:28
  We know that warfare, for example, begins with agriculture
• 1:03:31
  and then it creates scarcity.
• 1:03:32
  So that creates warfare, creates overpopulation, which creates warfare.
• 1:03:36
  Okay, we understand these things.
• 1:03:38
  But it means that I could then be in this landscape, which actually is very nice.
• 1:03:44
  large village, small town that I live on the edge of in Germany.
• 1:03:48
  It's very beautiful.
• 1:03:50
  But I could be looking at it as, oh, the nature's gone.
• 1:03:55
  Or I could be looking at it as, wow, there's so much nature here.
• 1:03:58
  Depending on what my outlook is, I would posit that I was taught, I
• 1:04:03
  have a certain inherent optimism.
• 1:04:05
  It's part of my nature.
• 1:04:07
  But I would posit that I got really taught it by the years that I
• 1:04:11
  was lucky enough to spend in and around the Kalahari with the sun.
• 1:04:17
  Bushman, who really showed me how important this light heartedness and
• 1:04:22
  looking for the glass half full type Optimism of the tracker the hunter
• 1:04:29
  Assuming a good outcome because if you go out pessimistic, you're
• 1:04:32
  probably gonna miss opportunities
• 1:04:35
  But if one's mind is trained to not be wild then it seems that perhaps we're
• 1:04:40
  training ourselves into pessimism and pessimism Can go to despair and despair.
• 1:04:45
  Well, we know that leads to So, okay, you are there in Cape Town.
• 1:04:51
  I'm up here in the Northern Hemisphere, but I'm still looking
• 1:04:55
  at a pretty nice place outside.
• 1:04:58
  If we are living in a place like, and you can be in the, in the Southern hemisphere.
• 1:05:03
  If I'm in the middle of urban Johannesburg or if I'm in the middle of urban
• 1:05:09
  Queens or London, what am I gonna do?
• 1:05:13
  How can I rewild?
• 1:05:16
  How can I track?
• 1:05:18
  How can I begin to have these experiences?
• 1:05:20
  And I know you wrote about this in your book, Amphibious Soul.
• 1:05:22
  So I'd like you to take us through some of those specifics that you noticed when
• 1:05:27
  you found you were out there having to walk around in New York and London and
• 1:05:31
  find a way to do this, but maybe we could then with that take it further.
• 1:05:36
  What are the strategies?
• 1:05:38
  that we can use to rewild the brain in the non wild settings.
• 1:05:46
  Craig Foster: Yeah, that's a, that's a, obviously a large percentage of the
• 1:05:49
  human population lives in these cities.
• 1:05:52
  Yeah.
• 1:05:52
  So it's quite critical.
• 1:05:54
  And I was pretty worried because I'd spent, years outside the city, years
• 1:06:00
  in, I spent 10 years every single day in the, in the great African
• 1:06:03
  sea forest, in the kelp forest.
• 1:06:06
  And I was pretty skeptical to see if it was even possible to access
• 1:06:12
  or any of this in a, in a city.
• 1:06:14
  And I was very pleasantly surprised in the middle of London.
• 1:06:19
  To be able to actually do some pretty amazing tracking and there's something
• 1:06:24
  weirdly more satisfying About being able to find things in the middle
• 1:06:30
  of a city because you expect Yeah, yeah, of course, you're going to find
• 1:06:33
  it, down here in the kalahari and it tracks everywhere It's pretty obvious,
• 1:06:38
  but in the city you're thinking.
• 1:06:40
  Oh my goodness.
• 1:06:41
  This is just going to be a disaster And I was amazed at how much information I
• 1:06:47
  could get about animals, about humans.
• 1:06:52
  And I was able to, I don't do well in cities normally feel very, very tired,
• 1:06:57
  but when I went into this tracking mode, I was given a lot of energy.
• 1:07:03
  And I think we spoke about this before, but if we found, I found these amazing
• 1:07:07
  tracks of slugs in London, the teeth marks all over the algae, absolutely beautiful.
• 1:07:14
  Markings,
• 1:07:15
  Rupert Isaacson: where did you find them?
• 1:07:16
  How did you find them?
• 1:07:17
  How did you know they were teeth marks and how did you know slugs had teeth?
• 1:07:22
  Craig Foster: Okay.
• 1:07:22
  That's a cool, cool question.
• 1:07:24
  So, you know, I don't know too much about slugs and I'm
• 1:07:29
  certainly not tracking them here.
• 1:07:31
  But.
• 1:07:32
  They're in the mollusk family and so slugs are very similar to our sea
• 1:07:39
  snails and I'm very very familiar with all the little teeth marks that
• 1:07:44
  the different sea snails leave on the kelp and the algae and whatever.
• 1:07:48
  So as I was in the middle of London in I think it was Bloomsbury or wherever
• 1:07:53
  it was the heart of London they told me and on this kind of edge of the sidewalk
• 1:07:58
  there'd been some water running and it was covered in this very fine mossy
• 1:08:05
  algae, and there, Clara's Day, were these tracks of the teeth of a mollusk.
• 1:08:13
  I mean, I knew it immediately, because I know them like, I know that
• 1:08:16
  language so well in the kelp forest.
• 1:08:18
  So, it had to be some kind of mollusk.
• 1:08:22
  I knew the size as well because I know the, the teeth.
• 1:08:25
  The size of the teeth.
• 1:08:26
  They're called a radula.
• 1:08:27
  It's a tooth.
• 1:08:27
  I'm just looking it
• 1:08:28
  Rupert Isaacson: up right now on Google.
• 1:08:30
  Craig Foster: So every snail, every snail has a radula.
• 1:08:32
  Every sea snail has a radula tooth.
• 1:08:34
  Flexible
• 1:08:35
  Rupert Isaacson: band of thousands of microscopic teeth called a radula.
• 1:08:38
  Yeah,
• 1:08:39
  Craig Foster: exactly.
• 1:08:40
  So, and you know, even even an octopus has it.
• 1:08:44
  Because it's a mollusk.
• 1:08:45
  So it had to be some kind of mollusk.
• 1:08:48
  Then I saw the little silvery slime trails, and I saw the tiny little
• 1:08:55
  holes that they were going in.
• 1:08:57
  There couldn't be a shell fitting in that hole, so it had to be Basically,
• 1:09:01
  it had to be a slug but I can't tell you how beautiful these tracks are.
• 1:09:04
  I mean, they're like absolute artworks.
• 1:09:06
  They're like these incredible ancient braille that have been laid down by the
• 1:09:12
  teeth, and it's in this beautiful bright green algae, so they'd look magnificent.
• 1:09:17
  And there were thousands of them, and I could see the, the youngsters
• 1:09:20
  feeding next to the adults, and you know, all happening at night, but
• 1:09:24
  I was seeing it during the day, and then they retreat, and it's awesome.
• 1:09:28
  And literally, I mean, nobody except the old slug scientists
• 1:09:33
  would be noticing that.
• 1:09:34
  But there were thousands of other tracks as well.
• 1:09:37
  Even dog and fox tracks left in the concrete permanently or semi permanently.
• 1:09:44
  Amazing.
• 1:09:46
  ancient signs carved on the old sidewalks that apparently represented
• 1:09:51
  the old churches and places.
• 1:09:53
  Beautiful crosses and other symbols, many different symbols.
• 1:09:57
  So ancient human tracks, almost like rock art, on the actual pavements.
• 1:10:03
  When it was wet and there were puddles, there were incredible tracks of rats
• 1:10:08
  and squirrels moving and leaving temporary And I followed some of them
• 1:10:15
  and found their little holes and layers.
• 1:10:18
  Strange tracks of like that looked but weren't obviously big snakes moving
• 1:10:23
  and they were turned out to be baby strollers because when those things turn
• 1:10:26
  a corner they leave the weirdest tracks.
• 1:10:28
  Took me about an hour to figure that out.
• 1:10:30
  You could tell I was fascinated by the chewing gum that had been thrown down
• 1:10:36
  on the sidewalks because you could tell where people had stopped to eat.
• 1:10:41
  Or places that they would the gum would accumulate before they
• 1:10:45
  entered a building or whatever.
• 1:10:47
  You could tell a lot about, and certain areas had been cleaned where that
• 1:10:51
  was like, the gum wasn't accepted.
• 1:10:54
  So there was sort of more highfalutin areas.
• 1:10:56
  So, I mean, it was, it was so much.
• 1:11:00
  And this was only a day.
• 1:11:02
  two days of tracking.
• 1:11:04
  So in an unfamiliar environment, I would be able to accumulate an
• 1:11:08
  enormous amount of information if I spent a few months there.
• 1:11:12
  So, you know, a small bird living in a city like that can
• 1:11:18
  teach you an enormous amount.
• 1:11:19
  That animal is a master of survival, especially in a
• 1:11:22
  cold environment like yours.
• 1:11:23
  How the hell is it keeping alive?
• 1:11:26
  You know, just to know how that works would teach you an enormous amount
• 1:11:30
  about birds, but also about yourself.
• 1:11:32
  And you'd appreciate that animal at a deep level.
• 1:11:35
  I mean, every, you know, bird you see is a kind of master of survival and with all
• 1:11:40
  the predators and everything going on.
• 1:11:42
  So I think it could even be more satisfying because You just looking
• 1:11:51
  at this fragments of life in these, you know, deeply urban areas.
• 1:11:56
  Right.
• 1:11:56
  And it,
• 1:11:57
  Rupert Isaacson: go ahead.
• 1:11:57
  Sorry, please finish.
• 1:12:00
  Craig Foster: And, and I mean, people don't like rats, but and they cause,
• 1:12:03
  can cause a lot of havoc, but I mean, those guys are masters of survival.
• 1:12:06
  You could learn so much from them all living in the underground salaries.
• 1:12:09
  Bats.
• 1:12:10
  I don't
• 1:12:12
  know.
• 1:12:12
  I mean, you could just.
• 1:12:14
  It would be fast.
• 1:12:15
  The lichens growing on buildings.
• 1:12:17
  It's just endless what you could do,
• 1:12:19
  Rupert Isaacson: right?
• 1:12:20
  It's like somebody has to open one's eyes to it.
• 1:12:21
  When I was a kid, I was my parents lived and still live in central London.
• 1:12:27
  But that area, Islington, which is not far from where you were, there's
• 1:12:30
  a lot of green, a lot of nature that snakes in to those areas.
• 1:12:37
  There's the areas along the railway.
• 1:12:39
  There's the areas along the canal.
• 1:12:41
  I would be drawn to those.
• 1:12:43
  The squares with the large trees, and the thousands of starlings that would come
• 1:12:49
  and roost at night, that sort of thing.
• 1:12:52
  But even those environments, you could argue, those older city environments
• 1:12:58
  are relatively natural in certain ways.
• 1:13:02
  Let's go one stage deeper.
• 1:13:04
  So you, you've been traveling a lot lately, which means you've been
• 1:13:07
  spending a lot of time in airports.
• 1:13:09
  I spend a lot of time in airports.
• 1:13:13
  Let's take that environment.
• 1:13:15
  Okay.
• 1:13:15
  You are in the airport in Dubai.
• 1:13:18
  You're in the, in Frankfurt airport, right?
• 1:13:21
  Now, how are you going to track?
• 1:13:22
  Now, how are you going to satisfy this part of your brain?
• 1:13:26
  And let's say your office building with its cubicle or your, most
• 1:13:32
  kids have no choice in the environments that they're put into.
• 1:13:37
  Let's take a shitty school.
• 1:13:39
  Concrete for my microplastic, okay, so airport office school,
• 1:13:45
  not walking around Bloomsbury, not walking the canals in Islington.
• 1:13:49
  Now how are we tracking?
• 1:13:52
  Craig Foster: So now we almost have to, I mean, I was last in the this
• 1:13:57
  airport, I don't know where it was, and I was fascinated, I was looking around
• 1:14:01
  me and I could not see a single thing that a wild person would recognize.
• 1:14:08
  Not one.
• 1:14:13
  But the sounds were, were pretty interesting and the
• 1:14:19
  smells were pretty interesting.
• 1:14:22
  So they would, they would recognize the, obviously the sounds of children.
• 1:14:26
  They didn't recognize the sounds of feet.
• 1:14:30
  So, What you'd be looking, you'd be mostly be tracking animals.
• 1:14:36
  I mean, I mean, human animals.
• 1:14:38
  So, I mean, there's almost no, you get the odd dog that someone's carrying in
• 1:14:42
  a crate or whatever, but it's amazing almost to appreciate the tremendous
• 1:14:48
  lack of biodiversity and wildness.
• 1:14:50
  I mean, it is startling and scary and.
• 1:14:55
  Kind of horrific, but it's also fascinating.
• 1:14:57
  And I mean, there really are.
• 1:14:59
  And you just think about that as an environment that you've created.
• 1:15:03
  It's kind of madness.
• 1:15:05
  It really is.
• 1:15:06
  Why would you want to do that?
• 1:15:08
  But you of course can track There's a lot of wear marks in the these airports.
• 1:15:15
  There's a lot of places where people drop money, like tracks,
• 1:15:18
  money tracks, in certain places.
• 1:15:21
  There's stains.
• 1:15:22
  You can, there are you can see a lot of little things where
• 1:15:29
  people are touching doors, where, what places they're touching.
• 1:15:33
  Why?
• 1:15:35
  The various smells that different types of shoes people are wearing will tell them
• 1:15:40
  a lot, tell you a lot about who they are.
• 1:15:42
  Just look and then observe and trying to see, you know, types of luggage
• 1:15:49
  will tell you about a person's personality or what they're doing
• 1:15:52
  or, you know, so much about cultures.
• 1:15:54
  I mean, there's endless things to be,
• 1:16:01
  to be looking at.
• 1:16:02
  But it is basically
• 1:16:02
  Rupert Isaacson: down to one species that you're, you're, you're down to the human.
• 1:16:05
  Craig Foster: Yes, I mean some airports have got birds, but it's pretty limited
• 1:16:09
  you basically down to you know, basically
• 1:16:17
  There's still a lot of creatures, of course, they're just microscopic.
• 1:16:21
  Yeah on our bodies inside our bodies I mean with thousands of Different creatures
• 1:16:27
  that are actually keeping us alive as well in our biome and on our skins everywhere.
• 1:16:33
  And I guess you could try and tap into it.
• 1:16:35
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, it's interesting.
• 1:16:36
  You bring that one up.
• 1:16:37
  So Smells.
• 1:16:40
  The smells of other humans.
• 1:16:42
  When we are pressed together in close proximity, airplane is one
• 1:16:48
  of them, and busy airport, the full bathroom, smells of shit.
• 1:16:56
  And people sometimes smell good and sometimes don't smell good.
• 1:16:59
  I'm not talking about the scents, the artificial scents
• 1:17:01
  they put on, I'm just talking.
• 1:17:03
  And then I became fascinated, well, why am I reacting well
• 1:17:06
  to the scent of that person and not to the scent of that person?
• 1:17:09
  Why do I find that person's breath or sweat?
• 1:17:14
  Repugnant, why don't I get curious about that?
• 1:17:18
  Why?
• 1:17:20
  Or if I'm waiting in the bathroom and I go, Oh God, it smells of shit in here.
• 1:17:23
  It's like, well, yes, of course, because that's where we're all shitting,
• 1:17:25
  but each shit smells different.
• 1:17:27
  Why does it smell different?
• 1:17:29
  And what's it telling me?
• 1:17:30
  And I became fascinated with this.
• 1:17:33
  And then of course I wrote, it's all about gut flora.
• 1:17:36
  And then I realized that there's, that gut flora not only produce, of course,
• 1:17:40
  all these different sulfury, nitrogeny chemicals, which stink like poo, but.
• 1:17:46
  They send out more subtle signs so that, for example, they can tell you if
• 1:17:50
  you think someone is ill or not, which can have an effect on one's emotional
• 1:17:56
  reaction to them, and this is happening on a subconscious level, or that they're
• 1:18:01
  very healthy, or that perhaps their gut biome is is complementary to your
• 1:18:06
  gut biome and therefore it smells good to you and therefore you're attracted.
• 1:18:11
  And it, the last six months or so of my travel, I've been kind of trying
• 1:18:16
  to look through that olfactory lens a little bit in these step, quote unquote,
• 1:18:21
  sterile environments, partly as a way to just find them more interesting.
• 1:18:26
  And I found that my curiosity was indeed satiated because it led me
• 1:18:32
  into an area of science that I knew a bit about, because I work with
• 1:18:36
  autism, so gut brain is important.
• 1:18:38
  Dietary, but I was looking at that much more from a, how, how good is this type
• 1:18:44
  of diet for your neurons or not, you know.
• 1:18:47
  This went sort of deeper, but I would, I was forced to do that,
• 1:18:52
  because I was forced to look for things to be interested in.
• 1:18:57
  I, however, like you, have been taught how, I've been mentored in curiosity.
• 1:19:03
  I've been mentored in how to find curiosity in places
• 1:19:06
  where it's not obvious.
• 1:19:08
  How do we help people who are suffering with the sense of alienation that
• 1:19:13
  you talked about, the sense of non belonging that you talked about who
• 1:19:17
  have not been mentored in this rewilding process, this curiosity process.
• 1:19:24
  What's your, if you were to write a basic one, two, three, Curiosity, tracking
• 1:19:30
  for dummies, curiosity for dummies, rewilding for dummies to like hand out
• 1:19:35
  as a user manual to people in this.
• 1:19:37
  What would be like the three to five things that you would say?
• 1:19:42
  Here's the, this leads to this, this leads to this, this leads to this,
• 1:19:45
  and this leads to that, and therefore you will find happiness and belonging.
• 1:19:49
  What do you reckon?
• 1:19:50
  What would you do just as a mental exercise here?
• 1:19:55
  Craig Foster: I would maybe challenge him a little bit to say, you know,
• 1:19:58
  can they name even 10 species of wild animals in their backyard?
• 1:20:05
  And then most people almost can't do that.
• 1:20:10
  Maybe they're not, not necessarily interested.
• 1:20:12
  Well that's the question.
• 1:20:13
  I
• 1:20:15
  Rupert Isaacson: don't care about animals in my backyard.
• 1:20:17
  Craig Foster: They suck.
• 1:20:19
  How do we get past that?
• 1:20:20
  So we get past that I think by saying, well, you know, if you're perfectly happy
• 1:20:25
  and you feel content you know, spending enormous amounts of time on your cell
• 1:20:29
  phone and, you know, watching TV, that's great, but it's, you, you'd be in the 0.
• 1:20:35
  001 percentile.
• 1:20:37
  So we know that this this technology and this lifestyle most of the time
• 1:20:46
  produces a human being that is going to be struggling with mental health.
• 1:20:51
  It's just, I mean, it's hard to argue against that.
• 1:20:54
  Would you agree?
• 1:20:55
  Rupert Isaacson: No, a hundred percent.
• 1:20:56
  I think that one of the things about being in depression, I've been in depression.
• 1:21:01
  I know you've been in depression is one isn't always aware of it, right?
• 1:21:06
  And then you also want to stick with the devil, you know, and your
• 1:21:11
  fear of change gets even greater.
• 1:21:13
  So yes, you could point out to me Yeah, well Rupert look you're not happy.
• 1:21:18
  I might react.
• 1:21:19
  Well, yes, I am actually or I might say well fuck off That's none of your
• 1:21:24
  business or some sort of defensive reaction where I justify staying here
• 1:21:31
  So yes, you've drawn my attention to these species in the backyard or
• 1:21:37
  in the park or outside the window.
• 1:21:39
  I've then reacted predictably with resistance.
• 1:21:44
  Now what?
• 1:21:44
  And then you've responded with logic.
• 1:21:48
  Yes, but look, mental health is suffering.
• 1:21:49
  Bum, bum, bum.
• 1:21:51
  I then give you some more resistance.
• 1:21:53
  What's the next phase to help me through that?
• 1:21:56
  Do you think out into the wild?
• 1:21:59
  Craig Foster: I mean, you're pushing me beyond my, but I would say that
• 1:22:05
  one could gently, quite an interesting thing would be to You know, cause
• 1:22:11
  you got to sort of just change the brain chemistry a little bit.
• 1:22:15
  Okay.
• 1:22:16
  And what I found is very useful is, okay, we're going to just challenge
• 1:22:22
  ourselves a little bit and we're going to go and get a little bit cold.
• 1:22:26
  Ah, and we're going to do something strange and you might
• 1:22:31
  be out of your comfort zone.
• 1:22:34
  But why don't you just try it?
• 1:22:35
  Because Guarantee you 100 percent you will feel markedly better afterwards
• 1:22:42
  and that gets their curiosity.
• 1:22:44
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:22:45
  Craig Foster: Because to go straight into like trying to track or do animal behavior
• 1:22:49
  is quite difficult for some people.
• 1:22:51
  So just say, okay, let's just find a body of water, easier in a colder
• 1:22:56
  climate and let's just get water.
• 1:22:59
  Pretty cold for a short while, you don't want to push their immune system too much.
• 1:23:04
  And what happens when you get into that discomfort and you get in the cold and
• 1:23:08
  you, you kind of guide people through it.
• 1:23:10
  And the first two, two or three minutes is pretty tough.
• 1:23:13
  And then finally you feel okay for a while.
• 1:23:15
  They get out the water and then there's a 250 percent increase in dopamine.
• 1:23:19
  Suddenly they feel.
• 1:23:21
  Rupert Isaacson: Give us that stat again.
• 1:23:22
  You said that very fast.
• 1:23:23
  250
• 1:23:24
  Craig Foster: percent increase in dopamine.
• 1:23:27
  Rupert Isaacson: From going from very cold to warming up?
• 1:23:29
  Craig Foster: No, from going from nice and warm to the cold.
• 1:23:35
  To the cold
• 1:23:35
  Rupert Isaacson: gives you the dopamine?
• 1:23:37
  Craig Foster: Yeah, so when you get into the cold, it releases
• 1:23:39
  not only dopamine, but masses of noradrenaline and adrenaline.
• 1:23:43
  You just suddenly feel far more alive.
• 1:23:47
  So then you've changed the whole brain chemistry.
• 1:23:50
  It's in an incredibly powerful, quick way.
• 1:23:54
  And then when they're in that altered state.
• 1:23:57
  You'd say, oh, look at that little bird.
• 1:23:59
  Amazing, that guy's surviving without any clothes out in the cold all night.
• 1:24:05
  I wonder what that animal could teach us.
• 1:24:09
  And they're in that heightened state, so there might be some interest.
• 1:24:13
  And that's how you, it's a whole body scenario.
• 1:24:17
  It's not just about just tracking an animal.
• 1:24:21
  And you suddenly, you start to paint a picture of what
• 1:24:26
  it was like, how we designed.
• 1:24:28
  And if we do these little primal activities, Just how much better we feel
• 1:24:34
  and how we'll get to know ourselves.
• 1:24:36
  And then you start maybe a little bit of tracking in after that experience
• 1:24:41
  and the brain chemistry shifted, and you'd have to slowly repeat that.
• 1:24:46
  And then you'd see a few marks and you'd ask that person what you think that could
• 1:24:53
  be, and then they would normally have no idea, and then you could interpret the
• 1:24:57
  tracks and slowly build up a repertoire.
• 1:25:02
  And an interest.
• 1:25:03
  And if someone will suddenly, they will suddenly get it like, Oh my goodness,
• 1:25:07
  this feels really good, but to do it in a playful way, like you were talking
• 1:25:12
  about a fun, playful, non serious, almost joking way where you just get uplifted.
• 1:25:20
  And it's like this purposeless endeavor, but it's actually.
• 1:25:25
  You know, deeply serious in many ways, because you can
• 1:25:28
  find your way back to yourself.
• 1:25:30
  You know, we, we, we have got totally lost.
• 1:25:33
  We've forgotten who we are and we need this oldest language on earth
• 1:25:39
  to bring us back to ourselves.
• 1:25:43
  Rupert Isaacson: What you've hit on, of course, is the
• 1:25:45
  altered state of consciousness.
• 1:25:48
  which is an authentically human thing.
• 1:25:55
  The wild human seeks out altered states of consciousness, right?
• 1:26:01
  So there's the shaman or the healer in the middle of the community who might
• 1:26:08
  use as in the Kalahari strenuous dance to enter an altered state of consciousness
• 1:26:16
  for healing, or in the Amazon, they might use a plant with the same effect.
• 1:26:21
  Dimethyltryptamine in it to affect the brain in that way, but either
• 1:26:23
  way this pursuit of the altered state of consciousness is as old as
• 1:26:27
  humanity, hence alcohol, hence drugs.
• 1:26:30
  If I'm in that environment where I'm feeling depressed, I
• 1:26:34
  will turn to alcohol and drugs.
• 1:26:36
  I mean, alcohol is drugs, right?
• 1:26:37
  So I will turn to drugs.
• 1:26:39
  You could argue that so did my ancestors, but perhaps in a way to
• 1:26:43
  celebrate life rather than in a way to
• 1:26:48
  deal with despair.
• 1:26:51
  So I would say that a lot of people in those non ideal environments
• 1:26:57
  do actually turn to that quest for an altered state of consciousness.
• 1:27:01
  But what I hadn't put two and two together was, is that you saying, yes,
• 1:27:06
  look, if you can change the state of consciousness through the sensory World
• 1:27:11
  ie let's go get cold or let's go get sweaty or let's go run up something So
• 1:27:19
  we pant a little bit and so whatever happens we're going to put our bodies
• 1:27:22
  through a type of a stress that releases dopamine Then we're going to alter in
• 1:27:29
  that particular way Then we're going to begin that altered state of consciousness
• 1:27:32
  and adrenaline and things as well that give us a chance to change our perception
• 1:27:40
  And then you can begin to introduce.
• 1:27:42
  So you said that I was pushing you outside your comfort zone.
• 1:27:45
  I think you answered that absolutely brilliantly, practically, which.
• 1:27:50
  leads me to the next question, which is therefore should tracking, I think should
• 1:28:00
  tracking be part of school curriculum?
• 1:28:03
  I think we could answer that one, but should it be part also of like,
• 1:28:11
  let's say I'm running a company.
• 1:28:14
  What if I had tracking days?
• 1:28:17
  For my employees, would they be better employees and would they be more
• 1:28:22
  productive employees because they would they be more holistic thinkers
• 1:28:26
  and would they be happier in their bodies and minds and would they be
• 1:28:31
  there for better able to also track solutions in the business world?
• 1:28:39
  What do you think?
• 1:28:41
  Craig Foster: I think it would radically.
• 1:28:43
  Change their way of thinking.
• 1:28:45
  It does seem to rewire neural networks in a very positive way.
• 1:28:51
  And it does, to me, seem to improve thinking radically.
• 1:28:55
  So if, if you could introduce that into schools or businesses I think
• 1:29:00
  it would make a massive difference, but of course one would have to put
• 1:29:04
  that to the test and one would have to do it in quite a creative way
• 1:29:07
  that it was fun for people as well.
• 1:29:10
  Cause that makes such a difference.
• 1:29:12
  So, you know, it's just like the story we're told in Sweden or whatever,
• 1:29:17
  I think wherever people have been exposed to nature In a deep way, we
• 1:29:23
  see massive increases in well being.
• 1:29:28
  We see increases in energy.
• 1:29:31
  We see, we see massive positivity.
• 1:29:33
  I mean, it's not surprising when we are designed to be wild creatures and
• 1:29:39
  we're given a bit of our primal food.
• 1:29:41
  Of course, we're going to react well.
• 1:29:43
  So why aren't we doing more of that?
• 1:29:45
  I mean, that is what we've given up for what we've gained is, is a joke.
• 1:29:51
  I mean, let's face it, you think we've got all this, you know, all these
• 1:29:55
  trinkets, but what we've given up is this absolute awe and magnificence
• 1:30:00
  and wonder and all this diversity.
• 1:30:03
  I mean, it's just, it's ridiculous to think what we've done.
• 1:30:07
  You know, you go into the middle of a you know, I was recently in, at Climate Week
• 1:30:12
  in, New York, busiest time of year, in the middle of the busiest part of the city.
• 1:30:18
  I'd just come in from, you know, diving in the great African sea
• 1:30:21
  forest, and I looked around, and it was like, I could not actually
• 1:30:26
  believe what I was seeing and hearing.
• 1:30:29
  It was so shocking, I cannot tell you.
• 1:30:32
  And we've given up, you know, this, and the, if you plonked yourself in
• 1:30:38
  the middle of that city, and then you plonked yourself in a place
• 1:30:42
  of near pristine biodiversity, and just notice the difference.
• 1:30:46
  It is.
• 1:30:46
  I mean, it's like, it's not even night and day.
• 1:30:50
  It's more than that.
• 1:30:51
  Rupert Isaacson: It's happiness to unhappiness.
• 1:30:53
  Yeah.
• 1:30:53
  Craig Foster: It's, it's, it's, it's, it's like torture to the primal joy.
• 1:31:01
  Yes.
• 1:31:01
  Now I would agree.
• 1:31:02
  It's absurd.
• 1:31:03
  It's absurd.
• 1:31:04
  What we've given up.
• 1:31:05
  What's
• 1:31:06
  Rupert Isaacson: interesting too is our tolerance, you know, because
• 1:31:07
  as you say, you know, we're able to tolerate extremes, right?
• 1:31:12
  So.
• 1:31:13
  Tolerating extreme cold can be quite good for us, or tolerating extreme
• 1:31:16
  heat can be quite good for us.
• 1:31:17
  If it goes beyond a certain level, obviously it's not good for us.
• 1:31:20
  But, we do crave it to some degree, but it seems like we've almost taken this.
• 1:31:24
  To an extreme of living inside the amygdala, living inside stress, living
• 1:31:30
  inside cortisol to a degree where I'm astonished by our resilience.
• 1:31:38
  I mean, as you say, you could look around there in New York and go, wow, it's awful.
• 1:31:43
  Or you could look around and go, wow, it's kind of amazing that
• 1:31:46
  our species can tolerate this.
• 1:31:48
  But what are we tolerating?
• 1:31:49
  Noise pollution.
• 1:31:50
  Craig Foster: Yeah.
• 1:31:51
  That's the, that's the.
• 1:31:54
  The thing, the, the, the reward doesn't in any way match the sacrifice.
• 1:32:04
  Rupert Isaacson: So people listening might be thinking, all right, I'm sold.
• 1:32:12
  But I'm living not close to an area of great biodiversity, but I do
• 1:32:20
  hear about learning how to change my nervous system a bit, put my nervous
• 1:32:25
  system in slightly unfamiliar.
• 1:32:28
  And things that will change my brain a bit, which will help my curiosity.
• 1:32:31
  And I will start looking for species and tracking the wind or tracking
• 1:32:37
  people or tracking people's stink or what, you know, all of these things.
• 1:32:41
  Okay.
• 1:32:45
  Like it or not, Craig, you are becoming a guru in this field.
• 1:32:51
  You are a mentor, so mentor us.
• 1:32:56
  I'm now listening to this podcast, I'm driving my car,
• 1:32:59
  perhaps I'm sitting in traffic.
• 1:33:03
  I might think, what is the basic minimum that you as Craig Foster
• 1:33:11
  know that you need on a given day to tip the balance towards happiness?
• 1:33:18
  Because you're a sensitive dude, you can be tipped into unhappiness pretty quickly.
• 1:33:23
  So, you're quite a good measure of this.
• 1:33:27
  How, what's the ba, the basic minimum of tracking type activity that you
• 1:33:34
  would say for you in the course of a day tips the balance to the positive?
• 1:33:43
  Craig Foster: Well, for me, I do need a lot and I crave a lot, so I want
• 1:33:47
  to put as many hours of the day into that, but other people might not need
• 1:33:51
  as much, but what I would say is that if you could just, it feels very.
• 1:33:57
  Difficult at first and vast and open just take one creature I mean this morning
• 1:34:04
  before the podcast I was watching some dragonflies eco pool I have and the female
• 1:34:10
  was laying eggs on the surface and the male was doing this guarding behavior and
• 1:34:16
  they basically fly and hover to make sure that other males don't come in while this
• 1:34:20
  activity is going on and protect the area.
• 1:34:24
  And I shot a bit of it in slow motion on my little cell phone and just watched
• 1:34:28
  it and the amount of joy that brought.
• 1:34:30
  And then of course.
• 1:34:32
  Say you've got a dragonfly in your backyard, the amount of fascination
• 1:34:38
  that that animal can bring to you.
• 1:34:41
  Observe it, photograph it, draw it, read up on it.
• 1:34:45
  Just become obsessed with dragonflies for three months.
• 1:34:52
  Find out, I mean, they, they, you know, this triphobus animal that
• 1:34:57
  can both fly, swim, and walk.
• 1:35:00
  It's a pretty incredible creature and you will be amazed if you start
• 1:35:05
  to read up on them and know them and observe them, you, you will
• 1:35:09
  start to see insane animal behavior.
• 1:35:12
  Aerial fights, you'll see unbelievable predations they make on other insects.
• 1:35:19
  You will be blown away.
• 1:35:22
  You'll suddenly think, Oh my God, I'm inside National Geographic
• 1:35:25
  in my backyard and a dragonfly.
• 1:35:28
  It's a small insect, will blow your mind completely, and will change
• 1:35:33
  the way you're looking at nature.
• 1:35:34
  So just start with one creature that's easy for you to access.
• 1:35:41
  Even a fly is mind blowing, that that thing can, can operate, I mean, on
• 1:35:48
  that amount of, small amount of energy and do the kind of aerial acrobatics
• 1:35:52
  and how wind and gravity affect it.
• 1:35:55
  I mean, it's just totally mind blowing.
• 1:35:57
  So just focus on one thing.
• 1:36:00
  And also then what will force you to do is you'll, say you took dragonflies,
• 1:36:04
  you'll understand their prey, you'll understand their predators, you'll
• 1:36:08
  understand the ecosystem they need, you'll understand Be forced to understand
• 1:36:15
  a lot of other things, but just focus on the one thing that helps a lot And
• 1:36:20
  then you might want to I don't know move on to frogs or whatever it is It's
• 1:36:25
  interacting in the same environment
• 1:36:28
  Rupert Isaacson: as you were talking.
• 1:36:29
  I was getting curious about dragonflies So it occurred to me that dragonflies
• 1:36:37
  fly vertically and can make the kinds of turns at speed And That normally most
• 1:36:47
  things in flight can't do without breaking up, like, that's, you know, when you get
• 1:36:53
  to sort of UFOs and unidentified aerial phenomenon and all that stuff, and they
• 1:36:58
  describe things moving in ways that defy the laws of physics as we know them.
• 1:37:04
  Because they shouldn't be able to stop or move or turn that fast given how
• 1:37:08
  fast they're going blah and apparently dragonflies do this And apparently they
• 1:37:12
  do this By creating vibration inside the body inside these tubules back to
• 1:37:17
  tubules again inside the wing That create lift in a way that the people who think
• 1:37:23
  that perhaps the pyramids were built by creating sound vibration things that
• 1:37:28
  lifted objects which you can actually levitate, you can look it up on YouTube,
• 1:37:31
  there's people levitating stuff with sound waves right there in front of you.
• 1:37:35
  But apparently this is how dragonflies actually fly.
• 1:37:39
  And so one could go into a hundred different mythological or scientific
• 1:37:43
  places from how does a dragonfly fly?
• 1:37:46
  Craig Foster: Exactly.
• 1:37:47
  But you see, you've been trained in curiosity and that's what you
• 1:37:50
  need to have with the training.
• 1:37:52
  You need to be having that curiosity and just starting to
• 1:37:56
  ask yourself questions like that.
• 1:37:59
  And you can take yourself down these fantastic roads
• 1:38:02
  and it's deeply satisfying.
• 1:38:05
  And then of course, and of course connect with people who.
• 1:38:08
  You know, do it a lot.
• 1:38:10
  But there's something about doing it yourself for a while and then doing that.
• 1:38:14
  You could join a group of people who like to do this or whatever, and then you would
• 1:38:19
  learn fast, but it is very satisfying to know about animals in your environment.
• 1:38:25
  It will change you fundamentally.
• 1:38:29
  There's no question, but you have to have the deep curiosity.
• 1:38:32
  It can't just be, okay.
• 1:38:33
  You know, I know one or two simple facts.
• 1:38:35
  You've got to step into that animal's world.
• 1:38:38
  Right.
• 1:38:39
  And then feel your own psyche changing in that process.
• 1:38:43
  Feel your own psyche
• 1:38:44
  Rupert Isaacson: changing, I love that.
• 1:38:45
  Craig Foster: So we have done this from the beginning of time.
• 1:38:49
  We have had these incredible relationships with wild creatures and
• 1:38:53
  plants from the beginning of time.
• 1:38:55
  We're expecting that, every wild child is expecting that.
• 1:38:59
  Now you take that away, there's some weird level of trauma.
• 1:39:02
  When you start to make those connections again and re establish that kinship
• 1:39:08
  with these creatures, with these plants, something happens in the
• 1:39:12
  psyche that makes you feel much better.
• 1:39:15
  Some of that's mysterious, some of it's kind of obvious.
• 1:39:19
  And it's just a fundamental.
• 1:39:21
  So it's a, it's a, it's a powerful thing to do.
• 1:39:26
  Rupert Isaacson: As you say, curiosity is something which requires training.
• 1:39:29
  I think of it like a muscle.
• 1:39:31
  That one has to, it's just like one's body, one, one has to train it.
• 1:39:37
  One of the nice things about, you know, we, we've talked
• 1:39:40
  about the ills of technology.
• 1:39:42
  Okay.
• 1:39:42
  But you and I are able to use this technology of the zoom.
• 1:39:46
  You're sitting down there in Cape town.
• 1:39:47
  I'm sitting up here in Germany.
• 1:39:50
  We couldn't do that.
• 1:39:51
  We couldn't produce this podcast without that technology.
• 1:39:53
  And of course, as you were talking about the dragon
• 1:39:55
  flight, I got out my cell phone.
• 1:39:57
  For the about the fourth time in this conversation and started looking up
• 1:40:00
  stuff around what you were talking about that cell phone Has basically
• 1:40:04
  all of human knowledge at my fingertips if I want it I could also use it for
• 1:40:08
  really inane things and that's also alright sometimes But I think we often
• 1:40:14
  forget now we have access to so much more curiosity fodder than we ever
• 1:40:19
  had, if we can use it in the right way.
• 1:40:20
  But we still have to ally it to the organism.
• 1:40:25
  So I love what you were saying about get curious about one
• 1:40:28
  thing that you can observe.
• 1:40:30
  outside of your window or in your immediate environment that will change.
• 1:40:35
  Craig Foster: And the critical thing is, sorry to just, we mustn't forget this, is
• 1:40:39
  it's the regular observing of the animal that's so critical, because that gives you
• 1:40:45
  access to, you know, It's secret world.
• 1:40:49
  So, so for instance, if you had a million dollars and you went on the best safari
• 1:40:54
  in the world and saw the big five and everything for two weeks, that would
• 1:40:58
  have a way less effect than observing a dragon fly for six months, way, way less.
• 1:41:06
  All those millions of dollars spent doing that.
• 1:41:08
  It's the intimacy.
• 1:41:10
  And I made that mistake a bit.
• 1:41:12
  Intimacy.
• 1:41:13
  Good word.
• 1:41:14
  So I made that mistake when I was younger, I went off and wanted these wild
• 1:41:18
  adventures, went diving with crocodiles, great white sharks, the whole thing.
• 1:41:22
  But I, you can't do that.
• 1:41:24
  every day.
• 1:41:25
  It's very difficult.
• 1:41:27
  Ironically, my relationship with limpets, which are little creatures,
• 1:41:31
  molluscs that live in the intertidal, I can visit them every day.
• 1:41:34
  They're always there and watch them every day.
• 1:41:37
  They seem to not be moving, but their lives are absolutely fascinating.
• 1:41:42
  And they changed my whole understanding of the intertidal zone.
• 1:41:46
  They've changed my whole mind.
• 1:41:49
  So it's that kind of thing that you need to do.
• 1:41:51
  It's the regular connection With these wild creatures and going deep and
• 1:41:57
  you will think, Oh, there's nothing, there's nothing, there's nothing.
• 1:41:59
  And if you just keep, you've got to get bored as well.
• 1:42:02
  Got to sit there.
• 1:42:03
  Don't go to the cell phone for the entertainment, get bored, watch, watch.
• 1:42:08
  And then suddenly, boom, I'm into deeper world, deeper,
• 1:42:12
  deeper into their secret lives.
• 1:42:14
  Oh, there's nothing going on for a couple of weeks.
• 1:42:16
  And suddenly you drop in and you're just completely blown away.
• 1:42:20
  By what they're teaching you and that is Incredibly satisfying
• 1:42:25
  Rupert Isaacson: you you hit on something very good there that you have to be
• 1:42:28
  prepared Yes to be bored and to go a couple of weeks without it seeming, you
• 1:42:32
  know in our netflix, Cell phone worlds.
• 1:42:36
  We're used to immediate Constant dopamine stimulation and this is a tricky thing
• 1:42:41
  to get around we have a relationship at where I keep my horses with a with
• 1:42:46
  the local crows You So they started interacting with us in an interesting way
• 1:42:51
  because they were looking for obviously little bits of grain in the horse poo.
• 1:42:56
  And as we move the horse poo into the pick it up off the field and put it
• 1:42:59
  on the muck heap, they begin to follow because they know we'll break it up.
• 1:43:04
  And they can find things in there, this become became fun.
• 1:43:07
  So we started playing with them and leaving little peanuts out for them
• 1:43:09
  to see what they do with those.
• 1:43:11
  Now we're getting to the point where we're wondering, will they
• 1:43:15
  start to bring stuff back to us?
• 1:43:18
  But we've also observed that they now interesting hierarchies within their
• 1:43:26
  own group about who gets to show up to be with us where and when, and
• 1:43:32
  then how they are territorial with other birds in the area, ba ba bum.
• 1:43:39
  But we are out there looking for this kind of thing.
• 1:43:41
  I I I love Your idea of looking for a slug or a dragonfly keeping
• 1:43:47
  it to the insect world at first
• 1:43:49
  Craig Foster: What's cool about sorry the corvids?
• 1:43:52
  I mean, is they are so intelligent so intelligent I I recently met
• 1:43:56
  amazing guy George Buman who actually speaks Raven language.
• 1:44:00
  Tell us the name again George Buman How do I spell his his I think
• 1:44:05
  it's B U M A N N B B U M A N N Yes.
• 1:44:11
  And he's written a fantastic book on a lot of what we're talking about, but he
• 1:44:15
  has taken the time to actually understand these calls of the ravens in his area.
• 1:44:21
  And they tell him about the deer, they tell him about the coyotes,
• 1:44:25
  they tell him about the bears.
• 1:44:27
  And he can actually mimic.
• 1:44:31
  These sounds and communicate with them.
• 1:44:32
  It's absolutely fascinating, very inspiring.
• 1:44:36
  So you can take it, but it's taken many years and that's the thing.
• 1:44:40
  This is a complexity that's hard to imagine, and that's
• 1:44:43
  what makes it so exciting.
• 1:44:45
  You're not going to.
• 1:44:46
  You know, if you're learning a lot of things in our society today, after a
• 1:44:50
  few years, it's like, okay, that's it.
• 1:44:52
  But this is a deep complexity that will keep you entertained for your whole life.
• 1:44:58
  And you can go further and further.
• 1:44:59
  I mean, as you know, the crows are, they make tools they fish for lava with hooks.
• 1:45:05
  They make, I mean, it's just incredible what they can do.
• 1:45:08
  So.
• 1:45:09
  Yeah, I think that there's this whole world out there that most people aren't
• 1:45:15
  accessing that is deeply enriching.
• 1:45:23
  Rupert Isaacson: I think we have taken this conversation to where
• 1:45:28
  I was hoping to take it, which is
• 1:45:33
  why does tracking enrich?
• 1:45:36
  You just use that word enrich our lives.
• 1:45:42
  How do we achieve?
• 1:45:44
  I like the fact that you use this word intimacy.
• 1:45:47
  That it's this intimate contact with nature that's so deeply satisfying.
• 1:45:53
  More so than, okay, the initial excitement of going on safari and seeing
• 1:45:56
  Big Five, yes, of course, of course.
• 1:45:59
  But, as you say, it's, even when you're on those big safaris, it's often the
• 1:46:05
  small things that people point out to you that are the real takeaway memories.
• 1:46:11
  Something about the spiders, something about the bats,
• 1:46:12
  something about the beetles.
• 1:46:18
  I want to just recap for the, for the listener, that what Craig took us
• 1:46:29
  through on that process, even though he said he couldn't do it, he actually
• 1:46:33
  did do it was this idea of challenging oneself when one's in a non active state.
• 1:46:40
  ideal natural environment for one's mental health.
• 1:46:44
  To change one's sensory environment, right?
• 1:46:49
  So you were saying get a little cold, get a little hot, get a little tired.
• 1:46:55
  Go through that type of stress that creates that bigger dopamine
• 1:46:59
  release that will cause a change in your brain chemistry.
• 1:47:03
  And if at the same time you can look for some very small insect life, would you say
• 1:47:10
  that and then as you're beginning to track that over, say, three months, that make
• 1:47:19
  that partly a solo process, but then also begin to look for a small group of people.
• 1:47:25
  I could also be online where you get together to discuss
• 1:47:29
  what could be going on and that.
• 1:47:32
  First step of the sensory change, plus the observation tracking change, with
• 1:47:38
  the third stage of the social group.
• 1:47:41
  Getting together around that tracking.
• 1:47:43
  I think, Craig, you might have cracked the secret of human happiness right now.
• 1:47:49
  I think you might have.
• 1:47:50
  Craig Foster: And what's critical is to have a tracking journal.
• 1:47:53
  A tracking journal.
• 1:47:54
  Okay.
• 1:47:55
  So to have a tracking journal where you Writing down these
• 1:47:58
  observations and growing them and looking back and collecting
• 1:48:03
  photographs, sketching, and you, you build, you're building a language.
• 1:48:07
  You're basically, you, you're relearning the oldest language on earth.
• 1:48:12
  And I guarantee you, when you start to speak that language,
• 1:48:15
  it's going to take a few years.
• 1:48:17
  It will fundamentally change your life.
• 1:48:19
  There's no question, but you need to work at it.
• 1:48:22
  Like any language, you need to work at it.
• 1:48:24
  Like any relationship.
• 1:48:26
  Exactly.
• 1:48:27
  Exactly.
• 1:48:28
  You need to work at it and you will, that little tracking journal that
• 1:48:31
  becomes thicker and thicker will be your, you know, your, your deep
• 1:48:35
  inspiration and you keep growing it.
• 1:48:38
  And, and, you know, might eventually have many of them.
• 1:48:41
  Did somebody
• 1:48:42
  Rupert Isaacson: tell you to create a tracking journal or was that
• 1:48:44
  something that you evolved yourself?
• 1:48:46
  Craig Foster: Pretty much.
• 1:48:47
  Yeah, I was doing it intuitively.
• 1:48:49
  And I was using the camera and the photographs and the notes and
• 1:48:52
  everything to, to teach myself that that's how the animals taught me.
• 1:48:57
  But you know, your memory is not good enough to hold it all in.
• 1:49:00
  So you need the journal to keep the kind of the master trackers.
• 1:49:03
  That's what's so amazing.
• 1:49:05
  They've got these unbelievable photographic memories.
• 1:49:09
  They can help, but it's also practicing every day, every day.
• 1:49:12
  And then at night you're talking about the stories and that's, what's so cool
• 1:49:16
  is you, you You know, to talk about the tracking mysteries, that's the oldest
• 1:49:23
  storytelling on earth, you know, the, the, the, the stories of the track of the hunt.
• 1:49:29
  It's it's so satisfying.
• 1:49:33
  Rupert Isaacson: I would be very interested to know what's the
• 1:49:35
  rate of dementia in this, these populations of master trackers.
• 1:49:42
  Is this type of intimate.
• 1:49:45
  tracking constantly and then the interpretation of it with your peer group.
• 1:49:51
  Is this what the brain needs to stay young in the same way that it needs
• 1:49:56
  the physical tracking in order to, for the body to stay sort of young?
• 1:50:02
  Is this what we need as, as we age more and more?
• 1:50:08
  Craig Foster: Yeah, I mean, I would, I would be, I would so love to have
• 1:50:11
  that, that data, that science, but I don't know if anyone's done that.
• 1:50:16
  Rupert Isaacson: I'm, well, I happen to know some people that are studying it, so
• 1:50:19
  I'm going to, Go off and talk to them and see if we could, because now I'm thinking,
• 1:50:25
  well, what if you had this kind of, okay, we talked about schools and offices.
• 1:50:29
  What about old people's homes?
• 1:50:31
  You know, we put people, old people in old people parking now.
• 1:50:35
  Crazy, right?
• 1:50:36
  Those are our tribal elders.
• 1:50:37
  They're the people with all the knowledge, they've lived through everything before.
• 1:50:42
  And what do we do?
• 1:50:43
  Do we consult with them?
• 1:50:44
  No, we isolate them.
• 1:50:49
  And then it seems that they don't move.
• 1:50:52
  They're sitting.
• 1:50:53
  So the brain dies.
• 1:50:55
  And then we lose out, right?
• 1:50:56
  Because we don't have the tribal elder to guide us.
• 1:51:03
  Should that be?
• 1:51:06
  built into like, you know, some people have started, there's a couple of
• 1:51:10
  projects which have worked really well about putting kindergartens into
• 1:51:14
  old people's homes, which causes all this movement and problem solving
• 1:51:17
  and keeps, keeps the brain young.
• 1:51:21
  But yeah, yeah.
• 1:51:24
  I'm wondering those of us who are listening, who are 50 and up and
• 1:51:28
  approaching 60 and all that, you know, is it even more acute for us to
• 1:51:32
  start thinking along these lines to keep our brains fluid and flexible?
• 1:51:38
  And I'd posit it.
• 1:51:41
  How could it not be?
• 1:51:44
  Craig Foster: I mean, I think the, the, the few real elders I work with
• 1:51:50
  who are biologists or naturalists.
• 1:51:55
  I mean, it's incredible how agile they are, how full of energy they
• 1:52:00
  are and how much knowledge they have.
• 1:52:02
  We actually, you know.
• 1:52:06
  We go to them for all the, the deep questions, you know, so, they, they
• 1:52:12
  absolutely invaluable because it takes a lifetime to know a lot of these
• 1:52:15
  things, actually multiple lifetimes of information passed down as it
• 1:52:20
  happened in, you know, wild people and that's what you actually need.
• 1:52:27
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:52:30
  So now I think we have an idea about how to rewild the brain.
• 1:52:35
  First, we've got to start with the nervous system.
• 1:52:39
  We have to change the environment a bit.
• 1:52:41
  We have to change our nervous system's way of being.
• 1:52:46
  A little stress is not a bad thing, physically.
• 1:52:50
  And then we need to observe something.
• 1:52:54
  Insects are good.
• 1:52:56
  Then we need to, together with groups of people, who are also observing, but as
• 1:53:02
  you say, we need to create the journal.
• 1:53:06
  I have not done this.
• 1:53:07
  You know, I've written books, but I haven't journaled.
• 1:53:11
  I'm going to now.
• 1:53:12
  I'm going to do a controlled experiment.
• 1:53:18
  What it does seem to me is that you've given us an actual step by
• 1:53:24
  step formula for happiness here.
• 1:53:28
  We now need to put it to the test.
• 1:53:29
  I think we know what the results will be, but I think it'd be very
• 1:53:32
  interesting to put it to the test.
• 1:53:34
  And there's a challenge for listeners.
• 1:53:37
  I want a few of you to do this.
• 1:53:39
  Do exactly what Craig said.
• 1:53:42
  I'll do it with you.
• 1:53:42
  I'm going to do it.
• 1:53:43
  So maybe we'll get a little group, maybe, which of us listening,
• 1:53:47
  who's listening now, who wants to join with me to create that group?
• 1:53:51
  We can do it virtually.
• 1:53:53
  We'll have to because let's, let's use the technology to our benefit.
• 1:53:57
  That doesn't mean we can't get together sometimes physically but let's do this
• 1:54:00
  stuff in journaling and see what happens.
• 1:54:05
  Craig Foster: Such a great idea, Rupert, and thank you so much for kind of guiding
• 1:54:09
  this through in such an interesting way.
• 1:54:13
  Well, thank you for guiding us, you know, this is it strikes me the last
• 1:54:19
  chapter in my book amphibious soul does try and lay out What to do?
• 1:54:24
  Mm hmm in a more detailed way and obviously got to think about it a bit and
• 1:54:29
  there is a Example of the tracking journal a few pages in the middle of the book.
• 1:54:34
  That is true.
• 1:54:36
  And then I Also created a 27 part short film series that goes with
• 1:54:42
  the book and my, my, my way of, and this is a very interesting thing.
• 1:54:46
  And I think you might like this.
• 1:54:48
  So what I try and do, if I've got enough energy after every tracking session with.
• 1:54:53
  My friends and team.
• 1:54:56
  I create a little tracking report, so if I've got a lot of energy I quickly
• 1:55:00
  edit the still pictures and then I put a voice on that and I put the stories
• 1:55:06
  down and as you do that what happens is curiosity questions everything
• 1:55:12
  come up from the subconscious and then you think oh what about that what
• 1:55:16
  about that and the whole thing grows.
• 1:55:19
  And then after a few years of doing it with them, I challenged them to
• 1:55:24
  start doing the tracking reports.
• 1:55:26
  And the two or three guys who did it, their tracking improved radically.
• 1:55:32
  Because as soon as you do the report, you're, you have to think about it
• 1:55:37
  in a much more sort of profound way.
• 1:55:40
  And that is such a fun thing.
• 1:55:42
  And then you've always got that tracking report to refer back to 10 years later
• 1:55:47
  when you've forgotten a lot of that.
• 1:55:50
  So you can do it in any way you like.
• 1:55:52
  The sort of lazy way is just a string of still pictures and then a voice.
• 1:55:57
  Or you can write it out in a journal.
• 1:56:01
  You can do it, you can put the two together.
• 1:56:03
  Some of them are even putting music on them and making fancy graphics.
• 1:56:07
  And we had a lot of fun with that.
• 1:56:09
  But the ma They immediately got it, like it was this language
• 1:56:14
  that could be translated.
• 1:56:17
  And it was, yeah, it's a pretty satisfying thing to actually do.
• 1:56:21
  But it's amazing how much you learn when you actually do the tracking report
• 1:56:26
  and try to also make a story of it.
• 1:56:29
  You know, there's often this story that is coming from the wild, so the
• 1:56:32
  story of the day might be, you know, One about reciprocity, or survival,
• 1:56:39
  or mutualism, or whatever it is.
• 1:56:43
  Rupert Isaacson: I'm making notes as we go.
• 1:56:46
  I'm going to do it.
• 1:56:51
  And I'm going to do it for,
• 1:56:54
  I want to do it for say, I think the minimum period would be like three
• 1:56:58
  months, because that's the season.
• 1:57:02
  So we're heading into about midwinter, so I could do midwinter
• 1:57:07
  into spring, going to do that.
• 1:57:10
  And the snow
• 1:57:11
  Craig Foster: is awfully great for the tracks, if you have frost or snow.
• 1:57:16
  Rupert Isaacson: And as you say, how the hell do those birds that I was looking
• 1:57:19
  at outside my window stay alive in this supposedly, so now I know a little bit
• 1:57:24
  about what they're eating, but there'll be a lot more that I don't know.
• 1:57:28
  And how do
• 1:57:29
  Craig Foster: they thermoregulate at night, you know, all that kind of stuff.
• 1:57:32
  It's really interesting.
• 1:57:37
  Rupert Isaacson: And it's funny, even as you ask these questions, I'm taken out
• 1:57:39
  of myself, I'm taken out of my own head.
• 1:57:44
  One feels immediately better.
• 1:57:45
  Craig Foster: Interesting.
• 1:57:46
  Yeah, exactly.
• 1:57:47
  Empathy is tremendous when one builds up with these creatures.
• 1:57:51
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, and that's sort of true empathy, really.
• 1:57:53
  I think we often think about empathy as being something that's specifically
• 1:57:56
  human to human, and although that is a great thing, it's left out, I think,
• 1:58:03
  of that psychological conversation, the empathy with the world around us.
• 1:58:11
  Craig Foster: Sorry to interrupt, I can't remember if we spoke about this
• 1:58:14
  before, but this act of tracking, of throwing the mind into the tracks is
• 1:58:19
  tremendously empathic because you're throwing your mind into the mind of that
• 1:58:24
  animal and what it might be thinking.
• 1:58:26
  Eventually, I think that's what started the first, you know,
• 1:58:31
  trance or out-of-body experience.
• 1:58:33
  You keep doing that enough times and suddenly you are inside that.
• 1:58:37
  So it's this, this activity of tracking is the fundamentals of so many of the major
• 1:58:43
  cultural activities that we undergo today.
• 1:58:46
  It's a, it's a really, it's a origin of so much of our, our being, our
• 1:58:51
  thinking and our our deep activities.
• 1:58:57
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 1:58:58
  And what's in it for us?
• 1:59:01
  Happiness, mental health.
• 1:59:04
  Craig Foster: Yeah.
• 1:59:05
  Tremendous belonging to just, that's the key.
• 1:59:07
  It's like, okay, I belong in this place.
• 1:59:10
  I feel like I'm part of this.
• 1:59:14
  Exactly.
• 1:59:15
  Tremendous sense of belonging, security, and oneness.
• 1:59:26
  Rupert Isaacson: Brilliant.
• 1:59:26
  All right.
• 1:59:28
  As always, I'm going to ask you in about three months, will you come back on?
• 1:59:33
  Because I want to go through this journal, which I'm going to do, and I
• 1:59:37
  want to track the mental health, but also I want to pick up this conversation
• 1:59:41
  about empathy and take it further.
• 1:59:44
  Craig Foster: Thanks so much, Rupert.
• 1:59:45
  Such a joy talking to you.
• 1:59:46
  Rupert Isaacson: Always.
• 1:59:47
  Always.
• 1:59:48
  Always.
• 1:59:48
  Here's a question to leave it with.
• 1:59:52
  We empathize.
• 1:59:53
  If we can learn to empathize with, through tracking with.
• 1:59:59
  The world around us
• 2:00:02
  for this mental health benefit, which is in our modern age.
• 2:00:06
  So necessary.
• 2:00:08
  I think we can assume that our empathetic skills with our
• 2:00:11
  fellow humans will be better.
• 2:00:13
  But, and perhaps our care for our environment, maybe.
• 2:00:18
  But we empathize out
• 2:00:24
  if we do that and we don't have to answer this question.
• 2:00:27
  I want to pose this question for.
• 2:00:29
  The next conversation.
• 2:00:31
  But listeners, I want you to think about this.
• 2:00:33
  If we throw our psyche into the tracks, as Craig said, to the
• 2:00:40
  tracks, does the natural world throw its psyche back into us?
• 2:00:46
  Are we being observed by the landscape?
• 2:00:49
  And by the animals?
• 2:00:50
  Obviously, the animals observe us, but is even the landscape
• 2:00:52
  is the wind of the trees?
• 2:00:54
  Are we being observed as we walk through the landscape and
• 2:00:56
  track through the landscape?
• 2:00:57
  Are we being tracked at the same time?
• 2:01:01
  If that's true, how might the Our act of empathy create an act of empathy back.
• 2:01:10
  And what does that do?
• 2:01:12
  Beautiful.
• 2:01:14
  Beautiful.
• 2:01:16
  Craig.
• 2:01:17
  An honor.
• 2:01:18
  Always.
• 2:01:21
  Craig Foster: It was a fascinating conversation.
• 2:01:24
  Rupert Isaacson: I'm so lucky to have you as a friend.
• 2:01:26
  Really.
• 2:01:26
  Seriously.
• 2:01:28
  Who gets to have these conversations?
• 2:01:29
  It's incredible.
• 2:01:30
  It's such a delight.
• 2:01:34
  Craig Foster: Yeah.
• 2:01:35
  And I love the way you're thinking about it.
• 2:01:37
  And it would be really great if some of the people take it up.
• 2:01:42
  You know, I think this is what we need to actually do, actually start something
• 2:01:46
  like this and see what stories come back.
• 2:01:49
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, I've got to do it myself to lead from the front, right?
• 2:01:53
  But, but as you know, we have all these places around the world that are doing
• 2:01:57
  what's called movement method, which is to do with movement in the brain and nature.
• 2:02:02
  And I'm always looking for what, how do we make it better?
• 2:02:04
  How can we, you know, what more can we learn?
• 2:02:06
  I think you've just given me.
• 2:02:08
  An amazing thing to bring into the program.
• 2:02:12
  And I would love to be able to begin to develop this a little bit down in South
• 2:02:15
  Africa with you down in the kelp forest.
• 2:02:18
  You know, we did not talk, Oh, this is what we need to get back to you.
• 2:02:21
  You talked about before we switched on record.
• 2:02:25
  It seems that certain people on the spectrum.
• 2:02:28
  The autism spectrum can hack past these barriers with
• 2:02:33
  literacy and the tamed brain.
• 2:02:36
  And we got sidetracked and we didn't go there.
• 2:02:39
  And, of course, that's the exact population I'm mostly working with.
• 2:02:42
  And, as you know, when you're in, say, the Kalahari and you're with
• 2:02:46
  Healers, almost always they're exhibiting these neuro psychiatric
• 2:02:50
  symptoms of, say, autism and so on.
• 2:02:54
  So can we pick that up a little bit next time as well?
• 2:02:58
  Brilliant.
• 2:02:59
  Brilliant.
• 2:02:59
  Okay.
• 2:03:01
  Look forward to that.
• 2:03:02
  Me too.
• 2:03:03
  All right.
• 2:03:03
  Thank you for joining us.
• 2:03:04
  We hope you enjoyed today's podcast.
• 2:03:07
  Join our website, new trails learning.com,
• 2:03:10
  to check out our online courses and live workshops in Horse Boy
• 2:03:14
  Method, movement Method, and Athena.
• 2:03:17
  These evidence-based programs have helped children, veterans, and people
• 2:03:22
  dealing with trauma around the world.
• 2:03:24
  We also offer a horse training program and self-care program
• 2:03:28
  for riders on long ride home.com.
• 2:03:32
  These include easy to do online courses and tutorials that
• 2:03:36
  bring you and your horse joy.
• 2:03:38
  For an overview of all shows and programs, go to rupert isaacson.com.
• 2:03:43
  See you on the next show.
• 2:03:44
  And please remember to press, subscribe and share.