Latest / Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson / When Nature Heals: Depression, Imagination & the Stories That Save Us with Jarod Anderson | Ep 40

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When Nature Heals: Depression, Imagination & the Stories That Save Us with Jarod Anderson | Ep 40 · Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson

• 0:00
  Rupert Isaacson: Thanks for joining us.
• 0:01
  Welcome to Live Free, Ride Free.
• 0:03
  I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson, New York Times bestselling author of
• 0:06
  The Horseboy and The Long Ride Home.
• 0:08
  Before I jump in with today's guest, I want to say a huge thank you to you, our
• 0:13
  audience, for helping to make this happen.
• 0:15
  I have a request.
• 0:16
  If you like what we do here, please give it a thumbs up,
• 0:19
  like, subscribe, tell a friend.
• 0:22
  It really, really helps us to make the pro.
• 0:24
  To find out about our certification courses, online video libraries,
• 0:29
  books, and other courses, please go to rupertisaacson.com.
• 0:34
  So now let's jump in.
• 0:40
  Welcome back to Re Ride Free.
• 0:41
  I've got Jared Anderson, the author with me today, and lots of people have
• 0:47
  been asking me to get him on the show.
• 0:49
  Why?
• 0:50
  Because he writes amazing nature with the imagination.
• 0:55
  Stuff you like cryptids, you like if you dunno what crypts are, you kind of
• 1:00
  will by the end of this you like real nature, but mixed with your imagination.
• 1:05
  You maybe are stuck somewhere feeling you can't get into nature, but how
• 1:09
  does one ima one's imagination?
• 1:11
  Take one in there.
• 1:12
  How do you enter your own private Narnia?
• 1:15
  I think we've got the bloke here who's got some decent roadmaps to that.
• 1:22
  And he's been successful at it.
• 1:24
  So he's someone who has also been able to self-actualize, if you like, through
• 1:28
  his imagination, and I think there's a lot we can all learn from him in terms
• 1:32
  of our own attempts to do the same.
• 1:35
  So, Jared, thank you so much for coming on.
• 1:38
  Please tell us who you are, what you do, why you do it, and how you got there.
• 1:43
  Jarod Anderson: Thanks Ru.
• 1:43
  Good to be here.
• 1:45
  Yeah.
• 1:45
  So where to begin?
• 1:46
  So right now I'm a, I'm a full-time writer.
• 1:49
  I out of sort of a small town in Ohio in the us.
• 1:53
  And how I got here was, was a bit of a winding, a winding trek.
• 1:57
  I've always loved writing and words and imagination.
• 2:01
  I have a vivid memory of being 10 years old and I had a very
• 2:06
  influential teacher named Miss Willard.
• 2:09
  Used to take all of us 10 year olds and hurt us out behind the school
• 2:13
  and let us go into the woods.
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  There was a huge hill beside this school that we called the Land Lab,
• 2:19
  and she would read Mary Oliver poetry to us and then give us notebooks and
• 2:23
  then say, Hey, just go find a place to sit and write about what you see.
• 2:28
  And I was hooked.
• 2:29
  So I've written nature, poetry and, and dabbled in nature writing ever since ever
• 2:35
  since I understood the value of sitting still and letting my imagination meet
• 2:41
  what I found out in the, out in the world.
• 2:45
  But flash forward from that experience as a 10-year-old, and I was a
• 2:51
  person who did and still do struggle with chronic major depression.
• 2:59
  I grew up in an environment where we really were not
• 3:02
  encouraged to talk about it.
• 3:04
  So it was a silent and unacknowledged presence in my life.
• 3:08
  Where was that for a very long time?
• 3:10
  Was that, what's that?
• 3:10
  Rupert Isaacson: Where was that where you were growing up?
• 3:12
  Jarod Anderson: Rural Ohio.
• 3:13
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 3:13
  Jarod Anderson: So kind of small town.
• 3:15
  Rupert Isaacson: Stoic wasps.
• 3:16
  Yeah.
• 3:17
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 3:17
  You bet.
• 3:17
  Yeah.
• 3:18
  And especially, especially the men folk were not encouraged to
• 3:22
  have feelings or talk about them.
• 3:23
  Rupert Isaacson: No.
• 3:24
  You're supposed to go and quietly end your life with a shotgun behind the barn.
• 3:26
  Yeah.
• 3:26
  Jarod Anderson: Yes.
• 3:27
  Yeah.
• 3:27
  Not
• 3:27
  Rupert Isaacson: complain about it.
• 3:28
  Yeah.
• 3:28
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 3:29
  I mean, feelings, you know, you can have like anger that would be okay.
• 3:32
  That's true as true a feeling.
• 3:33
  But
• 3:33
  Rupert Isaacson: Provided you kick someone's ass.
• 3:35
  Jarod Anderson: Yes.
• 3:35
  Or,
• 3:35
  Rupert Isaacson: or silently fme.
• 3:37
  Yeah.
• 3:37
  Yeah,
• 3:37
  Jarod Anderson: yeah.
• 3:38
  Absolutely.
• 3:39
  So it got a little awkward for me here and there as somebody who once missed football
• 3:45
  practice because I won a poetry contest and got to the awards, awards ceremony.
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  So I think I was always confusing to people 'cause I didn't fit
• 3:54
  into one camp necessarily.
• 3:56
  Mm-hmm.
• 3:57
  So, you know, because of the mental health issues, because I, I sort of
• 4:01
  never learned the skills of addressing them or acknowledging them, which
• 4:05
  would be the first step to opening the door to getting more help.
• 4:08
  I really kind of stuffed it down where it could simmer quietly.
• 4:13
  Sometimes it was more intrusive and sometimes it was less.
• 4:16
  And I kind of faked my way through building a career.
• 4:20
  I did a, a bachelor's in literature and then a master's, and I taught
• 4:24
  English for a little while.
• 4:25
  Rupert Isaacson: So you always knew you wanted to write?
• 4:27
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah, I mean, as soon as I really understood what it was.
• 4:31
  And, and then when I paired that understanding with me as a little kid
• 4:35
  in the eighties with like a big tape deck, and I would rent these, these
• 4:41
  puffy book on tape books from the library I remember those, you know, I'd
• 4:46
  borrow 'em and especially The Hobbit.
• 4:49
  So it was, you know, under the covers after everybody was asleep.
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  I've always had insomnia and so I would just be listening to,
• 4:56
  to these fantastical stories.
• 4:58
  And and then when I realized it was a craft, it wasn't just this, this thing
• 5:04
  where I could open a portal and see into another world, it was, it was a
• 5:07
  craft that I could, I could actually bring that to other people and to myself
• 5:12
  that was intoxicating from the start.
• 5:15
  So, it, it took a little while for me to think of it as a possible profession.
• 5:21
  'cause I, I had no real role models near me.
• 5:24
  Rupert Isaacson: Sure.
• 5:24
  And breaking into writing successfully is not an easy thing.
• 5:28
  Jarod Anderson: I mean, it's, it's really, I can't even say it was ever a plan.
• 5:32
  You know, we'll get to it, but I'm, I'm excited to be there now, but
• 5:34
  I'm always a little bit surprised,
• 5:36
  Rupert Isaacson: right.
• 5:37
  Jarod Anderson: But
• 5:38
  Were
• 5:38
  Rupert Isaacson: you doing everything else along the way, working, construction,
• 5:40
  doing all that kind of thing that one does as a writer to become a writer?
• 5:44
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 5:44
  And, and at first I didn't like school.
• 5:46
  My parents didn't go to college.
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  I tried to go when I was 18 and basically failed out, was put on probation.
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  And looking back on it, it's because I had no idea why I was there.
• 5:56
  It was that I had other friends that were going and it seemed like the thing
• 6:00
  to do, but I got there and, you know, I didn't want to go to class and I didn't
• 6:05
  want to get up early, and I didn't want to do anything that felt arbitrary, which
• 6:09
  doesn't play well with academia, you know?
• 6:12
  And so I, I left, I, I did take jobs in construction and real
• 6:18
  estate and all over the place.
• 6:20
  Mm.
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  I worked at a factory making rakes once
• 6:23
  Rupert Isaacson: And always Did you get to tread on one and bang your nose?
• 6:25
  Jarod Anderson: What's that?
• 6:25
  No.
• 6:25
  Rupert Isaacson: Did
• 6:25
  Jarod Anderson: you get to
• 6:26
  Rupert Isaacson: tread and one and bang your nose?
• 6:27
  Jarod Anderson: No, these were like the plastic, the big lawn rakes.
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  So it was getting the plastic heads out of the press and they were hot and you had
• 6:35
  to like, trim the, the excess fun stuff.
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  But then years later sort of in my mid twenties, I went back and then
• 6:43
  was a good student because I had some understanding of myself and what I wanted.
• 6:49
  And I had started dabbling with little night classes at, at a local college
• 6:55
  and realized, oh, okay, if I can do this in a way where what I'm doing is
• 6:59
  talking about books and stories and writing and find a community centered
• 7:04
  around that, that was what I needed.
• 7:07
  And so then I really lit up with it.
• 7:09
  But I, again, I think going off movies and tv, thought to myself, okay, I
• 7:17
  need to be a literature professor.
• 7:19
  That's the respectable gig I can get where I'm allowed to just think about
• 7:25
  words and stories and books all day
• 7:27
  Rupert Isaacson: and actually pay the rent.
• 7:28
  Yeah,
• 7:28
  Jarod Anderson: yeah.
• 7:29
  But after doing the masters and teaching for a few years, I started to understand
• 7:34
  that like, the job was to teach, you know, a hundred students a semester
• 7:41
  and then you go home and you have these piles of, of a hundred essays written by
• 7:45
  people who did not want to write them.
• 7:48
  And I found it.
• 7:50
  That when I did that as my day job, I did not wanna write in the evening.
• 7:54
  Right.
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  I was so sick of words
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  Rupert Isaacson: that would make you allergic.
• 7:57
  I could see that.
• 7:57
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 7:58
  Yeah.
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  The the last thing I, I would wanna do after finishing my obligation
• 8:02
  was to sit back down at a, at a computer or, or, you know, open
• 8:06
  the journal and, and try to write.
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  So I left academia and did the thing that people who leave academia in,
• 8:14
  in English often do, which is, I went to marketing and nonprofit work.
• 8:19
  And I actually ended up on the other side of the desk as an administrator
• 8:24
  at Ohio University, working as my, my title was Director of External Relations.
• 8:29
  So it was marketing and fundraising and pr.
• 8:34
  It was the which does
• 8:35
  Rupert Isaacson: involve telling stories.
• 8:36
  Yeah,
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  Jarod Anderson: yeah, yeah.
• 8:37
  It was sort of the business side mm-hmm.
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  Of being a, a words guy, a storyteller.
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  But during that time, my, my mental health issues really came
• 8:47
  to a head and really got bad.
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  Partly because, you know, I had a director title, which was like, I
• 8:53
  had climbed the ladder to sort of the logical end point, and I thought I was
• 8:59
  sort of staring down the barrel of the next 40 years and thinking, this is it.
• 9:04
  Huh.
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  My, my job was meetings about other meetings.
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  Theoretically there was a storytelling component, but that wasn't the day to day.
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  And all of this is happening under the umbrella of this major depression that
• 9:21
  I just had never done anything about.
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  Mostly because of shame.
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  You know, some part of me understood that there were experts in medical
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  professionals, people who dedicated their lives to support for the sort
• 9:37
  of mental health issues I was having.
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  But no part of me wanted to talk to those people.
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  And so I blamed it all on the work.
• 9:46
  And then I, I found myself in this, this place of intense privilege where my
• 9:51
  wife Leslie knowing my struggles, just sort of said, Hey, quit, you know, we
• 9:57
  have health insurance through my job.
• 9:59
  Like, we'll be fine.
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  Quit.
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  Like, what does
• 10:01
  Rupert Isaacson: she do?
• 10:02
  Jarod Anderson: She was also a marketing director.
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  She writes horror novels.
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  And, and I met her she was doing a master's in poetry.
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  I met her in grad school.
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  So she, she gets it in terms of writing and my relationship with it.
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  And yeah, she just, you know, it was scary.
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  It's not as if we were well off, but she, she just sort of said, this is.
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  She could see the, the weight on me from those, those months and years and, and
• 10:34
  just she had to talk me into it really.
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  But I did, I quit.
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  And that really began this process of reconnecting with things I, I knew
• 10:45
  when I was younger, like prioritizing time in nature, prioritizing
• 10:51
  creativity, taking it seriously.
• 10:54
  And then the scary new stuff, which was I started to talk to
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  people about suicidal ideation.
• 11:02
  I started to talk about depression.
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  I, I, I went to a doctor.
• 11:05
  I eventually started going to a counselor.
• 11:08
  And, you know, that, that has made all of the difference for me.
• 11:12
  But this, this strange thing happened 'cause I really focused
• 11:15
  on the mental health aspect first.
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  And, you know, I, I found a medication that kind of helped take the edge off.
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  I found a counselor who I felt like got me.
• 11:25
  He was this, this dude with a big gray beard who always disappeared to
• 11:29
  the Smoky Mountains for vacations.
• 11:31
  And, you know, I could talk to him about he, he had the same feeling as
• 11:34
  I did about being out in the woods, but he kinda got me to understand
• 11:40
  that all of the stuff I was doing for depression, was geared toward bringing
• 11:46
  me back to neutral, bringing me back to sort of a level playing field.
• 11:50
  And that's not the same as happiness or contentment as a skill.
• 11:56
  And there was this odd moment in trying to troubleshoot my own brain, my own point of
• 12:02
  connection with reality, where I thought, you know, what does make me happy?
• 12:07
  Where does contentment lie?
• 12:09
  You know, if the disease is under control, then what?
• 12:11
  Or so what?
• 12:13
  And I started to go back to the woods in an intentional way.
• 12:17
  I grew up with a mother who would take me on nature walks most days,
• 12:21
  and we were never religious, but she called the woods, her church.
• 12:25
  And we would go and see what was blooming or we would go gather mushrooms or
• 12:30
  find an interesting skull or, you know, it was just sort of a daily thing.
• 12:34
  And, and yet when I was career focused and when I was dealing with all these mental
• 12:39
  health issues, I started to think of that stuff as juvenile or that it was like
• 12:45
  locked in a glass case labeled childhood.
• 12:49
  And there was this awkward period of reconnection where I would go to the
• 12:54
  woods and think, I, I'm doing this wrong.
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  I don't know the names of what I'm looking at.
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  I'm gonna fail the quiz when I get back to the parking lot.
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  And somebody asked me what species I saw.
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  You know, I don't know what it was.
• 13:07
  But it was this fear of doing it wrong.
• 13:10
  It was the kind of capitalist pressure to always be productive that would tell me
• 13:17
  that there was no, no way to justify just going to the woods to connect with nature.
• 13:25
  But I did.
• 13:26
  I did.
• 13:26
  And I started to do this little podcast called the the Crypto
• 13:31
  Naturalist, which was me thinking, all right, I wanna reconnect with
• 13:35
  my creativity in a serious way.
• 13:39
  What, what would I do if I was just playful and did exactly what I wanted?
• 13:42
  And I thought, all right.
• 13:44
  I love nature.
• 13:46
  I love these single voice nature shows.
• 13:49
  I grew up with there's Marty Stauffers, wild America and David Attenborough.
• 13:55
  You know, there were so many certainly Steve Irwin and I was like, I'm
• 14:01
  gonna do that, but I'm gonna leave facts out of the room entirely.
• 14:05
  I'm gonna do a love letter to nature and these nature shows,
• 14:09
  but I'm gonna invent everything.
• 14:11
  I'm gonna bring in that fantasy aspect.
• 14:13
  I love from listening to The Hobbit under the covers.
• 14:17
  So the crypto naturalist was this guy who loved nature, but it was cryptids.
• 14:23
  So things like Bigfoot, the Loch Next Monster.
• 14:25
  But I never did any established cryptids.
• 14:28
  I wanted each episode to introduce people to something entirely new
• 14:33
  so that they could always have that, that moment of surprise.
• 14:36
  Something that you had
• 14:36
  Rupert Isaacson: invented or a, a really obscure crypted from another culture
• 14:39
  that they might not have heard of
• 14:41
  Jarod Anderson: it.
• 14:41
  It was almost always something I invented entirely.
• 14:44
  Like I didn't want to be beholden to any source material.
• 14:48
  Rupert Isaacson: Give us some examples, please.
• 14:50
  Jarod Anderson: Oh, geez.
• 14:51
  There was one that was the orbital King Fisher.
• 14:55
  Is this or
• 14:55
  Rupert Isaacson: the kingfisher?
• 14:56
  Tell
• 14:56
  Jarod Anderson: us about that.
• 14:56
  Yeah, so like, if you can picture a, a kingfisher sort of a, a diving bird
• 15:01
  that, that hovers above ponds and lakes and then dives in to grab a fish.
• 15:05
  Okay.
• 15:06
  This was that, but it was in lower orbit.
• 15:09
  It was this huge bird that was kind of shimmering and, and looked like it made
• 15:13
  of, of fractal pieces like a prism.
• 15:16
  And it hovered above the earth and it would dive down into these mountain lakes.
• 15:20
  And then what it would come up with was sort of an Eldridge horror, you
• 15:25
  know, it would come up with these things that were mostly mouth and the
• 15:28
  person seeing it didn't understand how that could work in physical space.
• 15:33
  So I like these creatures who mirror something in real nature.
• 15:40
  Are also totally outside it.
• 15:42
  Rupert Isaacson: Just tell me again, what, what, what did
• 15:43
  it come outta the lake with?
• 15:46
  Jarod Anderson: Something that was like, looked like mostly shadow and it
• 15:49
  was covered with mouths and so it, and
• 15:52
  Rupert Isaacson: that was its prey?
• 15:52
  Jarod Anderson: Yes.
• 15:53
  So it And what was the name of other strange
• 15:55
  Rupert Isaacson: that it was after?
• 15:55
  What was the name of?
• 15:57
  Jarod Anderson: Didn't have a name.
• 15:58
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 15:58
  Jarod Anderson: You know, it hunted other things.
• 16:00
  Yeah.
• 16:01
  Yeah.
• 16:02
  It, it hunted other like
• 16:03
  Rupert Isaacson: instable things.
• 16:04
  What think non shadow represents is that like, do you think in your
• 16:07
  subconscious, you were thinking about, for example, a almost like a sort
• 16:15
  of divinity that can take the shit side of human experience out of earth
• 16:25
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 16:25
  Rupert Isaacson: Happens to be buried in that these lakes.
• 16:27
  And is that sort of the metaphor for what's going on?
• 16:29
  And wouldn't it be nice if these divinities came and took these
• 16:32
  shit sides of our shadow pollution?
• 16:35
  Yeah, we might,
• 16:36
  Jarod Anderson: yeah.
• 16:36
  I'll tell, I'll tell you them.
• 16:37
  Rupert Isaacson: Something like that is, is that what's going on with,
• 16:39
  Jarod Anderson: so in this case there is sort of like a meta narrative where
• 16:42
  I have these species that are kind of, guardians of Earth in different
• 16:47
  ecosystems, these singular creatures.
• 16:50
  And so they will hunt things that are, are kind of, an invasive
• 16:54
  species from outside our reality.
• 16:57
  And so the whole thing to me is sort of a metaphor for the way
• 17:01
  nature seeks balance and adapts and sort of, takes care of itself.
• 17:06
  Rupert Isaacson: Nature, including the human psyche, right?
• 17:08
  Jarod Anderson: Oh, absolutely.
• 17:08
  The balance.
• 17:09
  Yeah.
• 17:09
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah,
• 17:10
  Jarod Anderson: yeah.
• 17:10
  And so, you know, in the, the cosmology, the, the world of, of
• 17:15
  that, that podcast, there are these guardian creatures that own sort
• 17:20
  of specific regions and ecosystems.
• 17:22
  Like there's one for the Appalachian Mountains.
• 17:24
  Tell me
• 17:25
  Rupert Isaacson: about the Appalachian one.
• 17:26
  Jarod Anderson: Ah, well that one is is the horned wolf,
• 17:29
  is what I, what I call him.
• 17:31
  And I can't tell you too much about him because he's he's a
• 17:36
  major subject of the, the novel I have coming out in, in February.
• 17:40
  Okay.
• 17:40
  Which is just, which is just false.
• 17:41
  What
• 17:42
  Rupert Isaacson: is, what is the name of this novel that's coming out?
• 17:44
  Jarod Anderson: Strange Animals.
• 17:45
  Rupert Isaacson: Strange Animals.
• 17:46
  Jarod Anderson: And that's coming from Valentine books
• 17:49
  Rupert Isaacson: As two reading lists immediately.
• 17:51
  Yes.
• 17:52
  Says man, who spends lots of time on planes.
• 17:54
  Yeah, yeah.
• 17:55
  Jarod Anderson: Well, it's, it's, that story is about, it's kind of the
• 17:58
  backstory of the main character, the
• 18:00
  Rupert Isaacson: podcast.
• 18:00
  Okay.
• 18:00
  But why did you come up with the horned wolf?
• 18:02
  What, what basically does the horned wolf do without, you know, we'll
• 18:06
  still buy your book, but come on.
• 18:07
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 18:08
  He does the same thing that the orbital Kingfisher does, but he
• 18:11
  does it beneath the mountains.
• 18:13
  The Catskill Mountains.
• 18:14
  The Appalachian mountains.
• 18:15
  He goes
• 18:15
  Rupert Isaacson: under the earth.
• 18:17
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 18:18
  He's he essentially looks like the skeleton, like a, a, a grizzly bear sized
• 18:24
  skeleton of a timber wolf, except that he has flesh that is like, coalesced shadow,
• 18:31
  but there's never quite enough of it.
• 18:33
  So sometimes he will have the face of a wolf with the ears of a wolf.
• 18:38
  Sometimes that flesh will roll back and it will be a bear wolf skull.
• 18:43
  Rupert Isaacson: Why does he never quite have enough shadow flesh?
• 18:47
  Where's the scarcity there?
• 18:48
  Why, why?
• 18:49
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 18:49
  Yeah.
• 18:50
  I think, I think what I'm playing with there is if you look at.
• 18:55
  What the mountains are, the Appalachian mountains that are older than the moon.
• 18:59
  Mm-hmm.
• 18:59
  You know, they're, the Appalachian range is in Scotland and it's in the US You
• 19:04
  Rupert Isaacson: said they're older than the moon?
• 19:06
  Jarod Anderson: Mm-hmm.
• 19:07
  Yeah.
• 19:08
  Yeah.
• 19:08
  There we
• 19:09
  Rupert Isaacson: have to return to that in a minute.
• 19:10
  Okay.
• 19:11
  Jarod Anderson: Keep going.
• 19:12
  The Appalachians were around on Pangaea, you know, when there was one continent
• 19:16
  and so you can trace where those mountains are in Scotland and in the US because,
• 19:22
  Rupert Isaacson: but people assume, I think that the moon has always been here
• 19:24
  as a planet, as an offshoot of our planet.
• 19:26
  So you're gonna have to come back to why the moon is not as hard.
• 19:30
  Alright.
• 19:31
  Yeah.
• 19:31
  But not, but I'm just gonna hold you to that.
• 19:33
  I've also got questions about Mary Oliver that we want to go
• 19:35
  back to, but, alright, good.
• 19:36
  So the Appalachian mountains older than the moon.
• 19:40
  All right.
• 19:41
  But why has this creature not quite got enough flesh?
• 19:46
  Jarod Anderson: If I think of what the mountains are, I think
• 19:49
  of all of the sort of inert rock.
• 19:53
  Mm-hmm.
• 19:54
  And yet my nature loving brain sees a kind of life in stone that
• 20:01
  isn't the same as biological life.
• 20:04
  But there's still some sort of essential wholeness to the universe that feels
• 20:10
  like life and, and sort of spirituality to me, in the rocks in the same way
• 20:14
  that I might sense in a pine tree.
• 20:17
  I guess I was pointing out with the horned wolf that, that, that rigidity, like I
• 20:22
  wanted to always see the skeleton, like the scaffolding beneath, because if I'm
• 20:28
  thinking of a creature that is of the mountains I like that there's always
• 20:33
  like the rigid curve of a, of a pelvis or a spine or a skull showing, right?
• 20:38
  Rupert Isaacson: Like the shoulder of the rock showing under the moss or the
• 20:40
  Jarod Anderson: Yes.
• 20:42
  Yeah.
• 20:42
  So that, that shadow, like it is a creature flesh.
• 20:46
  It does, it does represent and protect the living things, but
• 20:50
  it's also of the mountains in a way, way that, and what does it
• 20:53
  Rupert Isaacson: hunt?
• 20:53
  What does it need?
• 20:55
  Jarod Anderson: Oh, so many things.
• 20:56
  The premise is that much like in the real world, we struggle with
• 21:01
  invasive species sending ecosystems out of balance in a metaphysical way.
• 21:07
  I wanted there to be invasive species that were always kind of
• 21:10
  knocking on the door of reality.
• 21:13
  And because the Appalachians are so old, I thought like that there's
• 21:17
  a rich pantheon of, of things from the outside trying to get in.
• 21:21
  And I'll often talk about it in you know, sort of an essential otherness
• 21:26
  to the creatures that are from outside reality and nature that, that this
• 21:30
  wolf is, is always hunting and eating.
• 21:35
  Rupert Isaacson: So again, he's trying to, he's trying to or
• 21:37
  she is trying to secure harmony.
• 21:41
  Jarod Anderson: Mm-hmm.
• 21:41
  Rupert Isaacson: Because harmony is always being so restoring balance.
• 21:44
  'cause balance is always being lost and it's, it's that,
• 21:47
  Jarod Anderson: It's balance is always being lost, regained, reimagined.
• 21:51
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
• 21:51
  Jarod Anderson: But, you know, balance is struck by, you know, opposing forces.
• 21:57
  And so if I'm gonna create a fictional world in which there are really serious
• 22:02
  threats from the outside, then you know, I need a, a very serious predator
• 22:07
  guardian pushing back against that force.
• 22:10
  Rupert Isaacson: Got it.
• 22:10
  Jarod Anderson: And, and all of that, you know, it all arose from that
• 22:14
  first decision to, to do exactly what I wanted, which I often find is the
• 22:19
  most successful creative path of, of trying to get out of the way of my own
• 22:24
  enthusiasm and, and not interrogate it.
• 22:28
  You know, too much of like, why am I doing this?
• 22:30
  What's the point?
• 22:31
  But just thinking, all right.
• 22:34
  I feel enthusiastic about these nature shows.
• 22:37
  I feel enthusiastic about mingling the fantastic with the sense
• 22:44
  of fantastic in the nature.
• 22:46
  I, I know and love and observe every day.
• 22:50
  I was
• 22:50
  Rupert Isaacson: There, there is, as you know, a, a a a a sort of philosophy
• 22:54
  within the philosophy of manifestation to say that, you know, you must always
• 22:57
  follow when they say follow your passion.
• 23:00
  It's really follow your excitement.
• 23:01
  What makes you feel excited, what makes you feel joyful.
• 23:04
  If you follow that, you'll probably get there because you will keep going.
• 23:10
  And if you don't, you probably won't 'cause you'll get pissed off and stop.
• 23:14
  Jarod Anderson: Oh yeah, that's, that's so true.
• 23:16
  You know, I, I've definitely started novels I didn't finish and usually
• 23:22
  it's because the kernel of the idea wasn't as exciting as I thought it was.
• 23:28
  Rupert Isaacson: Luckily, they sometimes get recycled into
• 23:30
  the later novel that comes.
• 23:31
  But no, I agree with you.
• 23:33
  And just for those of you, by the way, who are busy giving up on
• 23:35
  your novels, don't worry lads.
• 23:38
  We understand.
• 23:40
  Yes.
• 23:40
  But don't assume that's wasted writing at all.
• 23:43
  It will, it will bear fruit in your next thing.
• 23:46
  I just want to talk about this moon being older than the Appalachian things
• 23:49
  I, 'cause I had to quickly get on Google while you're talking, and of
• 23:52
  course it says the moon here is 4.5
• 23:54
  billion years old and it says the Appalachians are approximately
• 23:57
  480 million years old now.
• 23:59
  Course this is just what I just pulled up on Google, so it doesn't mean
• 24:02
  it's true, but when you say the moon is older than the, the app or the
• 24:06
  Appalachians are older than the moon.
• 24:09
  What do you mean?
• 24:10
  Or is that almost more an an imaginary construct?
• 24:13
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah, maybe I'm, maybe I'm misremembering.
• 24:15
  I, I know that at one point I wrote a little, little essay about
• 24:18
  the Appalachians and I remember them being older than, than
• 24:22
  Bones and older than warm blood.
• 24:25
  And I thought the moon was in there too, because yeah, at some point
• 24:28
  the Earth is what, six, six point something billion and at some point
• 24:32
  there was like a, a huge impact.
• 24:35
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, and there's some people who say that the moon
• 24:36
  is just an, a hollow space station for various types of aliens who
• 24:40
  the, the lizard people or whoever.
• 24:42
  And if you throw rocks, love that it, it resonates and rings
• 24:45
  'cause it's hollow on the inside.
• 24:47
  And people say all sorts of things about the moon.
• 24:49
  Right?
• 24:49
  So I don't see wine in one's imagination.
• 24:53
  Two, one couldn't have a mountain range that's older
• 24:57
  than that, older than the moon.
• 24:58
  But,
• 24:59
  Jarod Anderson: It's, it's, it's funny, I I sometimes love those age comparisons.
• 25:02
  Yeah.
• 25:02
  You know, like, like, sharks being older than trees was one that I latched onto
• 25:07
  for a while, or, you know, in Halloween I would, I would post something like,
• 25:11
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 25:11
  Jarod Anderson: You know, tentacles are older than, than leaves.
• 25:15
  So, you know, sweet dreams
• 25:16
  Rupert Isaacson: it seems, and what I'm pulling up on Google now is, is
• 25:19
  ev it seems to be telling me that the earth and the moon are about 4.5
• 25:23
  billion years old.
• 25:25
  And that the Appalachians are 400, but 480 million, it's still pretty old.
• 25:29
  I mean, it's, it's older than.
• 25:32
  If the Cretaceous period of the dinosaurs is what, 60 million, you
• 25:36
  know, and then you're going back, you're going back, you're going back.
• 25:38
  And what's interesting too is I think that it, there comes a point where these
• 25:41
  things are almost moot because in our experience, like from my mind, if, if
• 25:45
  one believes that the moon is a God or a goddess, or if the moon is an alien space
• 25:52
  station, or the moon is you know, younger than a mountain range, or these things are
• 26:03
  I think we're allowed to have mythologies and mm.
• 26:06
  You know, I, it it'd be very interesting, wouldn't it, if we, if
• 26:10
  I was interviewing now somebody who was, you know, from a culture that
• 26:13
  believed that the moon was a goddess.
• 26:16
  And I said, well, that's rubbish.
• 26:18
  'cause it's like someone might say, well, Rupert, you're racist.
• 26:20
  You know, because that's, that's their belief.
• 26:21
  Mm.
• 26:22
  So I, I totally actually get that the, that belief systems are really important.
• 26:28
  And that they're also true.
• 26:29
  I think they're all true to a certain degree.
• 26:30
  And I think, I think that's the important thing about, about writing
• 26:35
  like yours, you know, if someone say, well, it's fantasy about cryptids.
• 26:39
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 26:39
  Rupert Isaacson: And you can say yes, yes.
• 26:41
  And at the same time, this is a product of the modern human brain.
• 26:44
  Reinterpreting a mythology of nature as well.
• 26:48
  And it's also, you know, a metaphor on mental health.
• 26:51
  And it's also a metaphor on where we are in our relationship with nature right now.
• 26:56
  And in finding ourselves precariously balanced.
• 26:59
  And, and, and, and, and why can't it not be all of these things at once?
• 27:02
  Why, why, why does it have to always be a hard and fast dry sort
• 27:06
  of allopathic, you know, thing?
• 27:09
  'Cause I don't believe that's the way the world works, you know?
• 27:12
  You know what I mean?
• 27:13
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 27:13
  You know, I'm, I'm, I'm so often looking for points of unity and it's zooming
• 27:19
  in and zooming out is a thing that I like to do in kind of my own, my own
• 27:23
  practice in both imagination and mental health of like, you know, if we zoom
• 27:27
  out further about me misremembering even the Appalachian Mountain thing, right?
• 27:32
  It's like, all right, but the rocks of the Appalachian are older than the moon,
• 27:38
  but the moon is also of those rocks.
• 27:40
  Indeed.
• 27:40
  Like how far back do we wanna go about,
• 27:42
  Rupert Isaacson: about the arrangements?
• 27:43
  Well, I mean, that's the thing that the moon and the earth are the same.
• 27:45
  And the, and the moon was a bit of earth that broke off or something.
• 27:50
  Well then it is of those mountains.
• 27:52
  And those mountains are of it.
• 27:54
  Jarod Anderson: Which I love, you know, I love, I love yeah.
• 27:56
  Kind of looking up at the moon and thinking of it as distant and
• 27:59
  disconnected and then, and then taking a moment to think, well, not really.
• 28:03
  But then you can sort of do that with any aspect of the universe
• 28:06
  is, is the way I, I often view it.
• 28:09
  Rupert Isaacson: Hmm.
• 28:09
  Jarod Anderson: Because connectedness has become something of my, my spirituality
• 28:14
  in general that has developed in concert with the mental health practices
• 28:19
  we're, we were talking about the novel, but, you know, the first writing that
• 28:23
  really, that really found me an audience was I would write nature, poetry and
• 28:27
  poetry about, about mental health.
• 28:29
  And that built up a surprising social media following for me.
• 28:35
  And then a lot of people would reach out to me and wanna talk about their
• 28:39
  own, their own mental health struggles.
• 28:41
  And that led to me writing a book called Something in the Woods.
• 28:45
  Loves You.
• 28:46
  Rupert Isaacson: That was what I was next gonna ask you about.
• 28:48
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 28:49
  So that really arose out of those conversations where I was getting a lot of
• 28:54
  these messages from people who, and, and sometimes especially men sent me a, a kind
• 29:00
  of message that I, I recognized myself in as the sort of hesitance to talk about it.
• 29:06
  And the idea that I was talking about it I think they, they were either directly
• 29:11
  or indirectly asking me how I got there.
• 29:14
  But I said to my wife, like, messages on Instagram were not the
• 29:20
  best context for this conversation.
• 29:22
  Like I, I, I needed to take these people on a camping trip, like we needed to
• 29:26
  talk about it for, for days and days.
• 29:29
  Rupert Isaacson: Hmm.
• 29:30
  Jarod Anderson: And so I started to talk about it as the long talk.
• 29:32
  And, and Leslie, my, my wife, said like, all right, well,
• 29:36
  you know what this is then.
• 29:37
  This is a book.
• 29:38
  And I just had a, a fortuitous moment where the publisher, timber Press,
• 29:45
  who, who does Nature Books of all Stripes, reached out to me and said,
• 29:49
  Hey, we, we really like your poetry.
• 29:51
  Have you ever thought about nonfiction?
• 29:53
  And I, I could say, well, here's an outline and here's the first six chapters.
• 29:59
  So I was just in this, this position to accept their, their offer to take a look.
• 30:05
  And that book is really my thoughts on, on my journey of, of
• 30:10
  getting a handle on mental health.
• 30:12
  But it is focused on my relationship with nature locally.
• 30:18
  The book's divided into four seasons, and then each of the seasons has five
• 30:23
  chapters titled After a Planter Animal That, that I have a, a relationship with.
• 30:30
  And so each one weaves metaphor between nature and, and the self
• 30:38
  and my struggles with mental health.
• 30:41
  And you know, I, I was nervous writing that book because I didn't wanna
• 30:46
  tell people I had it all figured out.
• 30:48
  That sort of wasn't the point.
• 30:49
  I didn't want to universalize my experience and say,
• 30:52
  this is the way to do it.
• 30:54
  I, I, I had one review I really liked that said the book was a
• 30:57
  me too, not a how to that Okay.
• 31:00
  That I really appreciated.
• 31:02
  And it still felt so important to me because I felt so alone and isolated and
• 31:07
  in my own struggles I didn't talk about.
• 31:08
  So I really wanted to be open and vulnerable and, and
• 31:12
  put it out into the world.
• 31:13
  Rupert Isaacson: Some, someone who is becoming a nature writer, who's,
• 31:16
  who's a good friend of mine and has also has a social media following.
• 31:20
  She's called Jane Pike, who's New Zealand.
• 31:21
  Yes.
• 31:22
  She often talks about how when you're going through the landscape and
• 31:27
  observing the landscape or admiring the landscape, what if the landscape
• 31:32
  is observing and admiring you?
• 31:35
  And, you know, I think many people, we, you know, awe is something that's been
• 31:40
  talked about a lot now and the healing power of being in that state of awe where,
• 31:46
  you know, one's own problems melt away in the face of, you know, the oneness
• 31:50
  of the universe, blah, blah, blah.
• 31:52
  The.
• 31:54
  Idea though of feeling small and sometimes perhaps a bit threatened by
• 31:58
  being not the top of the food chain or, you know, potential potentially,
• 32:03
  you know, washed away by that wave or fall off that cliff or whatever.
• 32:07
  Which leads to that or I don't think many of us get the message
• 32:12
  very often that the landscape is really benignly relating to us.
• 32:19
  But the reality, and she's pointed this out and I think she's right, this is
• 32:22
  where I was very interested in your writing and your perspective, was that
• 32:26
  well, actually no, most of the time what nature is trying to do is keep us alive.
• 32:32
  Mostly it's trying to provide us with foods, it's providing us with medicines,
• 32:37
  it's providing us with warmth and shelter.
• 32:40
  It's providing us with what we need.
• 32:42
  Mm-hmm.
• 32:43
  And whether that's our gut biome or whether that's the mountain
• 32:49
  that's sort of what it's doing.
• 32:51
  And it does mean that, yeah, sure.
• 32:53
  Sooner or later you're gonna return to the mountain and give your bits to the
• 32:57
  mountain back, and then the mountain's gonna re, you know, reinvent you as an
• 33:00
  earthworm or a tree or Jared Anderson.
• 33:03
  But I liked this idea.
• 33:07
  That's something in the words, love you.
• 33:08
  And the person who turned me on to you, let me tell you about her.
• 33:12
  So she's this really interesting person who's I think going to emerge as a
• 33:17
  writer soonish called Leanna Tank.
• 33:20
  And she works within, she's an occupational therapist.
• 33:23
  She works within the criminal justice system in, in Michigan with people who've
• 33:29
  committed some gnarly crimes and they can't be allowed back into society.
• 33:33
  But they committed these things in moments of psychosis.
• 33:36
  So they're actually acquitted but they just can't be allowed,
• 33:40
  you know, properly back in.
• 33:41
  And she exists as an interface between those people and, and she uses nature.
• 33:47
  And she turned me on, said there's, there's this bloke, Jared Anderson,
• 33:51
  who I find his writings very useful in the work that I do.
• 33:55
  So you should know, Jared, that I can, I can report directly to you that at least
• 34:00
  one person I know is using stuff from something in the woods loves you for Thank
• 34:06
  you, you for that, that sort of work.
• 34:08
  So it's clearly doing what it needs, the job it needs to do.
• 34:13
  I would be grateful if you would read something.
• 34:15
  I was trying to find on my cell phone just now what she had sent to me, but then I
• 34:19
  thought, Sodi actually, you know, Jared should pull up what he wants to read.
• 34:23
  So could you read us a bit?
• 34:25
  Jarod Anderson: Sure,
• 34:26
  Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
• 34:27
  Jarod Anderson: Let's see.
• 34:30
  I'll give you a choice.
• 34:32
  Well, no, you're, I I have a, I have a thought.
• 34:37
  This is a, a thing I sometimes reflect on about this book, where the fear
• 34:42
  going into it was that as somebody who struggled with depression, I just really
• 34:47
  didn't wanna write, go touch a tree and you'll feel better at the same time.
• 34:52
  Even though
• 34:53
  Rupert Isaacson: one often does actually.
• 34:53
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 34:54
  Right.
• 34:54
  At the same time, I often touch a tree and feel better.
• 34:56
  So that's sort of the, the joke here is that this is a little section about
• 35:00
  me touching a tree and feeling better.
• 35:03
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 35:08
  Jarod Anderson: Pardon me while I find it here.
• 35:11
  Alright.
• 35:11
  Right.
• 35:13
  So this is from something in the woods, loves You.
• 35:16
  It was a chilly wet 11:00 AM on a weekday.
• 35:19
  In October, there was nobody at the park.
• 35:23
  Why would there be other people have real jobs?
• 35:26
  Depression always has a comment.
• 35:29
  I didn't wanna be there, but I was committed to running a small experiment.
• 35:33
  I wanted to see if it was possible to have a miserable, successful day.
• 35:37
  Whether I like it or not, all my versions of success require effort.
• 35:42
  It's one of my old beliefs, and I can bend it, but not break it.
• 35:45
  Human worth is innate.
• 35:47
  Success means overcoming resistance.
• 35:50
  It means work.
• 35:51
  The air was crisp and misty.
• 35:54
  I trudged through squelching mud, churning red and gold leaves
• 35:57
  down into the hungry Earth.
• 35:59
  On that walk, I didn't feel happy with either my beliefs about success
• 36:03
  or the day's experiment, but I asked my legs to move and they did.
• 36:07
  One more commonplace, miracle, moment by moment, stubborn, step by stubborn
• 36:12
  step, I reached the shag bark hickory.
• 36:15
  I reached out to the rough bark, the cold, wet, depressed, and contrary.
• 36:20
  Part of my mind wanted to be cynical about the tree and dismissive of its presence.
• 36:26
  I wanted to mock myself as a cliche, a crunchy, new age fake.
• 36:31
  I wanted to call the day a waste, but that part of me fell
• 36:35
  silent when my fingers met.
• 36:37
  The tree here was 80 feet of hickory.
• 36:41
  Over a century of life, turning dirt and pale Ohio sunlight into food.
• 36:46
  I could eat straight from the ground into the oxygen.
• 36:49
  I'd been breathing since before I knew what breathing was.
• 36:53
  There was no ignoring it.
• 36:55
  I could feel it there, really feel it alive.
• 36:58
  Electric beneath my aching fingers, an ancient creature, silent and grand
• 37:03
  beside a crooked little footpath family.
• 37:07
  That Hickory stood tall over me.
• 37:10
  And for a moment, it was the only tree in the woods, the only tree in the world.
• 37:14
  The first tree, the last tree, the concept of a tree.
• 37:19
  I tried to calculate its value, and in that moment I saw how
• 37:23
  absurdly useless the word value is.
• 37:26
  When applied to nature, like trying to pin a price tag on rain or sunlight or
• 37:31
  gravity, I tried to imagine the tree as a human technology, and suddenly
• 37:36
  I was standing in the presence of an impossible work of science fiction, a
• 37:41
  solar powered self-replicating carbon, fixing automaton, producing oxygen, and
• 37:47
  building materials on a planetary scale.
• 37:50
  I tried to shift genres, fantasy and magic, and I found I was a small,
• 37:56
  fleeting pilgrim who walked in the shadow of giants living off of their size.
• 38:02
  How much of my own form and evolution was quietly shaped by trees, an opposable
• 38:07
  limb for climbing posable thumb, for climbing shelter and refuge from
• 38:12
  predators, fuel for cooking, unlocking more nutrients to build larger brains.
• 38:18
  I know touching a tree does not cure depression.
• 38:22
  Of course, I know that.
• 38:24
  I also know that on that October day, the hickory didn't need to cure my depression
• 38:30
  in order to take away its power.
• 38:36
  Rupert Isaacson: That's good writing.
• 38:38
  Jarod Anderson: Thanks.
• 38:39
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah,
• 38:40
  Jarod Anderson: I've practiced.
• 38:43
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, that's some good shit.
• 38:44
  Okay.
• 38:46
  What I like very much there too, apart from the fact it's just really
• 38:50
  good writing, is I like this idea that you don't have to cure things.
• 38:57
  So I don't know if you've probably haven't read any books that I've written, but
• 39:03
  the book that I am sort of known for is a book called The Horse Boy, which
• 39:06
  follows a journey which I did with my autistic son when he was five, across
• 39:12
  a chunk of Mongolia on horseback.
• 39:14
  And I've lived a lot of my life with hunting and gathering people, so I have
• 39:19
  engaged in a lot of shamanistic stuff because that is what goes on if you spend
• 39:25
  time with hunting and gathering people.
• 39:26
  And so it was very natural for me to go look for that, but I never had in
• 39:31
  my mind that I was looking for a cure.
• 39:32
  Mm-hmm.
• 39:33
  That to my mind, the autism was who my son was and is.
• 39:37
  And that there were enormous gifts with that.
• 39:41
  And that's like saying, I, I, Jared, I want you to stop being an American
• 39:44
  man, or Jared, I want you to.
• 39:47
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 39:47
  Rupert Isaacson: I don't know.
• 39:48
  Be, be something else, but No, you're gonna be Jared, you know, so you
• 39:52
  don't want to, you're not trying to take someone's personality away, but
• 39:55
  let's say I'm your friend or your dad and I see that you're suffering.
• 40:00
  Mm-hmm.
• 40:00
  Through some aspect or other, then yeah, I would, I would like to see if I can
• 40:04
  help ameliorate or assuage that somehow.
• 40:07
  And so the journey that we were on was about healing amelioration,
• 40:12
  assuage, not about cure.
• 40:15
  Yeah, of course.
• 40:15
  What happened was that every single person who interviewed me about that book I would
• 40:20
  explain that and say, I'm not looking for a cure and I do not believe you should
• 40:24
  have a cure for autism and dah, dah, dah.
• 40:26
  And of course it would always be titled he went to Mongolia to look
• 40:31
  for a cure for his son's autism.
• 40:32
  And then everyone would shit on me, you know, for saying, you can't say that like,
• 40:36
  well I never said that, but journalists will say whatever they wanna say.
• 40:39
  I know that 'cause I'm a journalist.
• 40:40
  And one just accepts that that is the case.
• 40:42
  But the fact is there is this difference between healing and cure.
• 40:47
  And I think it's a really good one to talk about for a moment there.
• 40:52
  'cause you've touched on it twice.
• 40:54
  Once with this.
• 40:55
  And the other thing with your cryptids, that the cryptids are not,
• 41:00
  I think from what you've described, it's not, it's as if they know.
• 41:04
  That like everything in nature, that there's an always a falling outta balance
• 41:09
  and a coming back to balance and a falling outta balance and a coming back to balance
• 41:12
  and the falling outta balance is as necessary as the coming back to balance.
• 41:17
  The, the horned wolf could not survive if it didn't have prey, right?
• 41:20
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 41:20
  Rupert Isaacson: If unless there were your, your orbital
• 41:22
  kingfisher, unless there was this many mouth shadow would die out.
• 41:26
  Right.
• 41:26
  Because that's, its, that's its food.
• 41:28
  So we might say, well thank God for the orbital kingfisher because
• 41:31
  it's taking away this shit thing.
• 41:33
  And the orbital kingfisher will say, thank God for the shit thing,
• 41:36
  otherwise I wouldn't be able to survive.
• 41:38
  And both are true.
• 41:39
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 41:39
  This, this book I structured it starts in winter where I was really going
• 41:44
  into a rough time with depression, but, but I end in autumn and part
• 41:48
  of the point I am making is that depression is not a thing I cure.
• 41:52
  It's a thing that I understand has cycles and seasons that my own mind is a part
• 41:57
  of nature and has cycles and seasons.
• 42:00
  But reaching for nature metaphors helped me get past my
• 42:03
  main hurdle, which was shame.
• 42:05
  The idea that I needed to be cured or fixed.
• 42:09
  Rupert Isaacson: As you know, if you followed any of my work, I'm
• 42:12
  an autism dad and we have a whole career before this podcast in helping
• 42:19
  people with neurodivergence, either who are professionals in the field.
• 42:24
  Are you a therapist?
• 42:25
  Are you a caregiver?
• 42:27
  Are you a parent?
• 42:28
  Or are you somebody with neurodivergence?
• 42:32
  When my son, Rowan, was diagnosed with autism in 2004,
• 42:37
  I really didn't know what to do.
• 42:39
  So I reached out for mentorship, and I found it through an amazing adult
• 42:44
  autistic woman who's very famous, Dr.
• 42:47
  Temple Grandin.
• 42:48
  And she told me what to do.
• 42:50
  And it's been working so amazingly for the last 20 years.
• 42:54
  That not only is my son basically independent, but we've helped
• 42:59
  countless, countless thousands of others reach the same goal.
• 43:03
  Working in schools, working at home, working in therapy settings.
• 43:08
  If you would like to learn this cutting edge, neuroscience backed
• 43:13
  approach, it's called Movement Method.
• 43:15
  You can learn it online, you can learn it very, very simply.
• 43:19
  It's almost laughably simple.
• 43:22
  The important thing is to begin.
• 43:25
  Let yourself be mentored as I was by Dr.
• 43:29
  Grandin and see what results can follow.
• 43:33
  Go to this website, newtrailslearning.
• 43:38
  com Sign up as a gold member.
• 43:41
  Take the online movement method course.
• 43:44
  It's in 40 countries.
• 43:46
  Let us know how it goes for you.
• 43:49
  We really want to know.
• 43:49
  We really want to help people like me, people like you, out there
• 43:54
  live their best life, to live free, ride free, see what happens.
• 43:59
  Jarod Anderson: And I mean, we could get into the idea that a lot of mental
• 44:03
  issues have more to do with arbitrary and unwelcoming context we create for people
• 44:08
  indeed, as much as the issue themselves.
• 44:11
  But the metaphor that I got to through reconnecting with nature
• 44:16
  I mean, it sort of goes like this.
• 44:17
  I instinctually and easily love nature, and so I do not easily and
• 44:25
  instinctually love myself in finding the connection between these two
• 44:30
  things is a way for me to understand that I can turn that instinctual
• 44:36
  love for what nature is on myself.
• 44:40
  And I did that with the shame hurdle too.
• 44:43
  And I'm a, I'm a poet.
• 44:44
  I'm a writer, so I work in metaphor and, and the metaphor
• 44:47
  I landed on, it goes like this.
• 44:50
  If I planned a picnic and it was canceled by a thunderstorm, I could be
• 44:55
  disappointed, but I wouldn't be ashamed.
• 44:59
  Why?
• 45:00
  All right.
• 45:00
  Well, the thunderstorm is a known natural thing.
• 45:04
  We know that I don't steer the clouds.
• 45:06
  I didn't invite a thunderstorm.
• 45:08
  So why would I be ashamed if a thunderstorm arrived?
• 45:12
  Okay.
• 45:13
  Depression's no different.
• 45:15
  It's a known natural thing.
• 45:17
  Nobody invites it.
• 45:18
  I don't steer those clouds.
• 45:21
  So with my day is derailed by depression, disappointment perhaps, but not shame.
• 45:29
  And I, I tie that to this Nordic saying I love, which is there is no bad weather.
• 45:36
  There is just bad clothes.
• 45:38
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 45:38
  Jarod Anderson: And so if I think of my own emotions, my, my struggles
• 45:43
  as brain weather, all right, maybe I can't steer the clouds, but I
• 45:47
  can change what hard weather gear I have hanging beside the door.
• 45:52
  I can improve my shelters.
• 45:54
  So, so no, I'm not vanishing depression from my mind.
• 46:00
  I can't.
• 46:01
  But what I can see it as is, is brain weather as part of the same push
• 46:07
  pull, natural cycles that I see in love and recognize the importance
• 46:11
  of out in the natural world.
• 46:14
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 46:14
  Well, I, one thing I've often thought about that as, as people's moods, emotions
• 46:18
  as weather or similar to weather, and we even use those metaphors, right?
• 46:21
  You know?
• 46:21
  Mm-hmm.
• 46:22
  He's got a dark cloud over them or something, or he is a sunny person.
• 46:25
  Makes complete sense that our endocrine system, which creates our moods, would
• 46:30
  reflect the nutrition and the ecosystem that creates the endocrine system
• 46:35
  that creates us in the first place.
• 46:37
  Why would it not reflect the thing that creates it?
• 46:42
  And something which I have been fortunate to discover in the course of spending a
• 46:50
  lot of time in nature with hunting and gathering people, is that what sits, I
• 46:54
  talked about the shamanic, what sits at the center of any community like that is.
• 47:00
  Are the healers.
• 47:02
  And it's really interesting.
• 47:04
  Why are they there?
• 47:05
  Because the human in the natural wild state is not top predator, right?
• 47:12
  So we are halfway up the food chain, but we have this superpower.
• 47:18
  You know, people talk about us being homo sapien sapiens, but that's actually
• 47:22
  not descriptive of us because the thinking ape anything with a brain
• 47:27
  thinks, and lots of things have brains.
• 47:29
  In fact, some things have many brains.
• 47:31
  So, but what is this, this atoms apple that I've got here that you've
• 47:34
  got, which is this enlarged larynx through testosterone, the larynx with a
• 47:39
  speaking ape, with a storytelling ape.
• 47:41
  That's our thing.
• 47:42
  So with a strategizing ape, and of course when we get together in a group and we
• 47:46
  strategize, we are sort of unbeatable to the point that we're victims of
• 47:51
  our own success destroying the planet.
• 47:53
  But when one sees that at work, what one realizes in that halfway up the food
• 47:58
  chain existence, which is the reality of say, living hunter gather existence
• 48:02
  in Africa or something, there's lots of predators out there that will eat you.
• 48:05
  That if there's fragmentation within the group, everybody
• 48:10
  will get eaten by the hyenas.
• 48:12
  So if conflict internal or external gets beyond a certain
• 48:16
  point, then we're all at risk.
• 48:19
  So therefore, all of the healing stuff is about conflict resolution.
• 48:24
  And that is naturally who we are, which means that there must
• 48:29
  always be a conflict to resolve.
• 48:30
  And indeed when one is with those cultures, it's about every 10 days
• 48:36
  there's some sort of healing ceremony.
• 48:38
  It doesn't need to be because I fell down and broke my leg, or you
• 48:43
  got bitten by a snake or something.
• 48:44
  It could be for that, but it could also be just to wash the psychic dirty
• 48:49
  laundry of the group to kind of keep us all cool, to make sure we don't
• 48:52
  all fragment and get eaten by her us.
• 48:54
  'cause we're funky monkeys with funky brains that are quite
• 48:58
  brilliant, but also fragile.
• 49:02
  So that mechanism which is there in our most natural state is inbuilt.
• 49:07
  And in our culture, we don't have it.
• 49:09
  And we, we've gone from the predator never being your fellow
• 49:14
  human because there's so much out there that you gotta band together.
• 49:19
  I guess to now in our society, having wiped out all those
• 49:23
  predators, the predator is always and only your fellow human.
• 49:27
  And that I think, drives us insane.
• 49:29
  So I think, you know, when one is, you know, in a position where one says, well,
• 49:32
  you know, I have, I have depression, or I have a tendency to psychosis, or I have
• 49:39
  one of these things, I think there's never been a human that hasn't had those things.
• 49:44
  But now we're in a, in a, in a state of living where those things
• 49:48
  are no longer able to be addressed.
• 49:51
  In the natural way, and now we have to flounder around.
• 49:55
  But that's why I think that kind of writing that you're doing is very good,
• 50:00
  because it takes the place to some degree of the shaman and the healer.
• 50:05
  Jarod Anderson: That's, I mean, that's part of the hope, right?
• 50:07
  Is that that's strategizing a part of you know, I, I love to
• 50:12
  think of writing as a magic, as a magic that connects mine to mind.
• 50:16
  Sometimes I, if I'm struggling to write, I'll go sit in a library where
• 50:20
  I can see, I can see sort of this temple to words where people come for,
• 50:26
  for real reasons to have real impact.
• 50:30
  And so, you know, that that was a huge part of why I
• 50:32
  wanted to, to tell the story.
• 50:35
  And I love writing as entertainment, but I do think that, like the brain
• 50:41
  weather metaphor, if I can explain that.
• 50:44
  Well, I, I've had speaking engagements where somebody had come up to me
• 50:48
  afterwards and said that they wrote it down and just kept staring at
• 50:52
  it and thought like, okay, I feel lighter every time I read this.
• 50:57
  And it's like, all right, well that can be the power of that storytelling.
• 51:02
  Hey but only if, you know.
• 51:05
  I actually bother to, to write it down.
• 51:07
  And to get it out there.
• 51:08
  I'm sure you've gotten the same sorts of comments on, on your story.
• 51:13
  And, you know, it's, it was so scary leaving that academic job, but, but
• 51:20
  this, this just feels like such an amazing calling and an ama amazing
• 51:24
  privilege to, to get to do this.
• 51:26
  Rupert Isaacson: How long ago did you leave the academic job?
• 51:29
  Jarod Anderson: Geez.
• 51:29
  I feel like it's been like seven years now.
• 51:31
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 51:32
  Jarod Anderson: Right
• 51:32
  Rupert Isaacson: around there.
• 51:33
  And that's not, that's not that long.
• 51:34
  And the reason I ask is for someone with depression, I know very much as
• 51:40
  a professional writer, it's a scary puff because you are only as good
• 51:48
  as the last book that you wrote.
• 51:50
  It takes, I was
• 51:51
  Jarod Anderson: just talking about this.
• 51:52
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 51:53
  You know, just the fact, you know, and maybe your last book was
• 51:56
  successful doesn't mean your next book is, and doesn't mean that your
• 51:59
  publishers or your agent necessarily think your next book will be.
• 52:03
  Doesn't mean that they'll, it's,
• 52:05
  Jarod Anderson: I was just talking about this in terms of like, things
• 52:08
  are going well right now, but as you said, I have no control over, over the
• 52:12
  market or the next book, or I don't know, supply and demand that stuff.
• 52:17
  And so.
• 52:19
  I, I, I'm constantly thinking about hedging my bets and part of that is, is
• 52:24
  sort of a, a mental health thing where, because I feel good right now, that's
• 52:29
  the time to build support systems.
• 52:31
  Mm-hmm.
• 52:33
  You know, I'm like, who will value these, these publishing accomplishments?
• 52:37
  And it makes me think like, do I need to get an MFA so that I
• 52:40
  could teach creative writing?
• 52:42
  Do I need one?
• 52:43
  Like I, I, I'm, I'm constantly looking at these other paths and it's
• 52:47
  Rupert Isaacson: never a bad idea to add some skills to your hunting kit.
• 52:50
  Right?
• 52:50
  Yeah.
• 52:51
  I mean, as a hunter or gatherer,
• 52:53
  Jarod Anderson: well, that words, that was the thought with like the M FFA
• 52:56
  or teaching creative writing is that there's synergy there because it's not
• 52:59
  as if I'm going to stop writing ever.
• 53:01
  Right.
• 53:02
  So Neat.
• 53:04
  It would be fun to be in a, a, a creative writing degree program.
• 53:08
  Because I would be doing what I would be doing anyway.
• 53:10
  Rupert Isaacson: So think you then have those stacks of essays to mark of the
• 53:13
  people who didn't wanna write them.
• 53:14
  Jarod Anderson: That's the thing.
• 53:15
  Right.
• 53:15
  It's like, why would I go back there?
• 53:17
  Paying
• 53:17
  Rupert Isaacson: the rent is, is a little bit more
• 53:19
  Jarod Anderson: less.
• 53:20
  Well, yeah.
• 53:21
  My, my, my wife kind of teases me about it because she's
• 53:24
  like, everything's going well.
• 53:26
  Like, you're, you're kind of living the dream right now.
• 53:28
  It's like, yeah, but this, this isn't a dream that comes with a, a pension.
• 53:33
  Exactly.
• 53:34
  So it's, it is.
• 53:36
  It, it always is tub
• 53:37
  Rupert Isaacson: me at the back of my mind.
• 53:38
  Yeah.
• 53:38
  How do you, because, you know, I, I, I also like everyone have my ups
• 53:41
  and downs mentally and emotionally, and I've definitely gone through
• 53:45
  times where you know, the fear.
• 53:47
  Jarod Anderson: Mm-hmm.
• 53:48
  Rupert Isaacson: And also, you know, as you know, having had a book
• 53:50
  that has been successful I had a book that was successful and that,
• 53:53
  but leading up to that had lots of books that were not so successful.
• 53:57
  And there is that thing of when you finally do get something that's
• 54:03
  successful, and it could be anything, I think anyone who's listening
• 54:06
  to this or watching this Yeah.
• 54:07
  You know, can, can put their own professional life into
• 54:12
  this doesn't have to be a book.
• 54:13
  It could be whatever, but when suddenly people are giving you
• 54:18
  validation in a big way, it's very, very hard not to get attached to that.
• 54:25
  And in fact, I think you're going to, you, you, you can't not you're only human.
• 54:31
  And then of course life goes on and it might go from strength to strength,
• 54:37
  but it's more likely to have cycles and, you know, troughs and, and, and
• 54:41
  crests and waves like anyone else's.
• 54:43
  So this is a particularly challenging field to be in if you're someone who
• 54:49
  struggles with self-concept, with mental health, with so forth and so forth.
• 54:53
  You know, this the ups and of the downs.
• 54:55
  So tell us, tell me how you navigate that.
• 54:59
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah, I have, I have a few answers for this.
• 55:02
  Kind of the, the meta stuff and then the day-to-day stuff.
• 55:05
  It took, it took me over a decade to break in and get an agent,
• 55:10
  like in fiction, for example.
• 55:12
  And
• 55:12
  Rupert Isaacson: by the way, lad's listening, it really does, it takes
• 55:14
  a while before someone was back here.
• 55:17
  Yeah, yeah.
• 55:18
  Jarod Anderson: And so, Leslie, my wife, she was in the same boat.
• 55:22
  We, we were both sending novels out to different agents.
• 55:25
  And, and so the thing we would say to each other when we got really
• 55:27
  frustrated, the kind of running joke was, what are you gonna do?
• 55:30
  Stop.
• 55:32
  Because we'd always loved telling stories.
• 55:35
  And so my, my advice to writers who feel like they're banging their head
• 55:40
  against it right now and the thing that worked for me as somebody with
• 55:44
  depression was, was process goals over outcome goals, which can feel a little
• 55:50
  fuzzy, but I mean it in this way.
• 55:52
  Like, I never controlled if an agent liked a query or if I sold
• 55:57
  a story or a poem or whatever.
• 55:59
  I didn't control that.
• 56:00
  So that would be an outcome goal, process goal.
• 56:03
  I could control.
• 56:04
  I'm gonna do six queries this month, or I'm gonna send out this many stories or
• 56:08
  poems, or, or I'm gonna write this many words, you know, a week process goals.
• 56:15
  Keeping in mind that I like this, I know it gives me energy.
• 56:19
  Focusing on that and the process and then letting all that other stuff be on the
• 56:24
  back burner was really helpful to me for that long span where I couldn't find an
• 56:31
  audience and I couldn't get a foothold in any kind of traditional publishing.
• 56:37
  And then as somebody who has serious ups and downs with depression, then the
• 56:41
  challenge is how do you write a book?
• 56:44
  You're not gonna write a book because you have a good week.
• 56:47
  It's, you know, it's a, it's a marathon.
• 56:50
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 56:50
  And often your best writing actually doesn't come in those times.
• 56:53
  Jarod Anderson: No, no.
• 56:54
  Rupert Isaacson: Comes at your times of most vulnerability often.
• 56:56
  Jarod Anderson: I, I also firmly believe that, like, I can't tell,
• 56:59
  I can't tell until much later.
• 57:01
  What's the good and what's, what's the bad like for me?
• 57:04
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 57:05
  Jarod Anderson: But what I do know is that if I'm not consistent,
• 57:07
  I lose hold of the pacing.
• 57:09
  I'll lose, I lose hold of the story I'm telling.
• 57:11
  And so even on the bad days, I have a sliding scale for that process goal.
• 57:18
  Like if, if I'm in a book, I, I try to do at least 500 words a day, but I do have
• 57:25
  an out where I can also do a half hour.
• 57:29
  Where if I'm, if I'm in the chair sort of rereading and planning and writing
• 57:33
  notes, if nothing comes I can still call a half hour of victory because
• 57:38
  I'm still attached to the narrative.
• 57:40
  I'm still squirming in the chair.
• 57:44
  And I have to do that because of the way my brain works, where if
• 57:48
  I say 2000 words a day or nothing I know where that leads for me.
• 57:53
  Yeah.
• 57:53
  That means like writing becomes touching a hot stove and Yeah.
• 57:57
  I, I am not a rules guy.
• 58:00
  Like that was a, has been a problem for me in the past.
• 58:04
  Like, I, I, I am not motivated by, by rules, external or internal.
• 58:10
  So like, I have to find ways to celebrate victories, to stay friends with writing.
• 58:15
  So I really do kind of move the goalposts on what counts as a win.
• 58:19
  Rupert Isaacson: That's, that's very, that's very clever.
• 58:20
  I think.
• 58:20
  'cause you know, I struggle with that too.
• 58:21
  And, and sometimes I go through times when I, I won't write.
• 58:25
  And I'm asking myself, why, why aren't you writing?
• 58:27
  And well, we know the answers 'cause I'm scared.
• 58:30
  But the,
• 58:35
  I haven't cracked it, I think even this far into my career to always get to the.
• 58:42
  Computer daily.
• 58:43
  And I distract myself 'cause I have other thick ways that I make a living
• 58:47
  and other very pressing things that I do.
• 58:50
  So particularly, you know, work with autism and things like that.
• 58:53
  So, you know, I can definitely kid myself that I'm doing such a necessary
• 59:01
  work over here and it is necessary that I can kind of ignore yeah.
• 59:08
  The call to write and then I know that if I do that for long enough, it will
• 59:15
  punish me.
• 59:16
  Yeah.
• 59:17
  Emotionally, mentally, and so on.
• 59:19
  So it's amazing if you can bend the rules like that, but do you ever actually
• 59:25
  fuck up to the point where you look up and you say, actually fuck, you know,
• 59:29
  two, two months just went by there.
• 59:31
  Three months just went by there and I didn't actually do anything.
• 59:34
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah, absolutely.
• 59:36
  Rupert Isaacson: Good.
• 59:37
  I'm reassured
• 59:37
  Jarod Anderson: at, at, at, at this age.
• 59:40
  Like, you know, now sort of deep into my forties here.
• 59:43
  Now, at least what I have though is the track record of thinking
• 59:47
  Yeah, this happens, you know?
• 59:49
  Right.
• 59:49
  I come back to it like,
• 59:50
  Rupert Isaacson: and I probably will get there.
• 59:53
  Jarod Anderson: It, it's also, you know, there comes a point where
• 59:55
  it's, it's, it's part of the, the furniture, it's part of the identity.
• 1:00:01
  Where I think that's part of why it feels so bad when it's not happening
• 1:00:06
  or when you have a, a bad month or two or three, is it's like, all
• 1:00:10
  right, well, you know, writing is who I am and I'm letting who I am down.
• 1:00:15
  Yeah.
• 1:00:15
  In, in some way that's more painful than, than not folding the laundry.
• 1:00:20
  But again, like I, I, I try to come back to the, like, seasons and cycles thing
• 1:00:26
  that I firmly believe, but I don't wanna lie to you and say that I always feel it,
• 1:00:31
  you know, it's funny having written this book, sometimes I have to crack it open
• 1:00:36
  and remember my own viewpoint on things.
• 1:00:40
  You know what I mean?
• 1:00:40
  That's interesting.
• 1:00:41
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:00:41
  I
• 1:00:41
  Jarod Anderson: do be because
• 1:00:44
  into what?
• 1:00:45
  Because one also forgets what one writes.
• 1:00:46
  Yes.
• 1:00:47
  And, and, and baked into being a human being is knowing things and
• 1:00:50
  forgetting them and relearning them, and knowing a thing and failing anyway.
• 1:00:54
  Or having good advice for yourself and not taking it.
• 1:00:56
  I mean, the best thing I can say about it is it's all just such a
• 1:00:59
  natural and inevitable part of the process that, that you try to shrug
• 1:01:04
  at it a little bit, even though, even though it's painful sometimes,
• 1:01:08
  Rupert Isaacson: what, let's go now to the other side of the scale.
• 1:01:11
  So when you are on that successful wave and
• 1:01:18
  one self-concept gets tied up with, I'm now a successful author.
• 1:01:21
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:01:21
  You know, and therefore, you know.
• 1:01:24
  It's like a football game.
• 1:01:25
  You know, I've, I've scored a touchdown, you know, now I've
• 1:01:28
  gotta keep scoring touchdowns.
• 1:01:30
  And you know, that inevitably, you know, you may or you may not, but
• 1:01:34
  you, you may well score quite a few more touchdowns, but you will also
• 1:01:38
  not score quite a few more touchdowns.
• 1:01:40
  And anyone looking from the outside says, well, that's perfectly fine.
• 1:01:43
  That's just normal.
• 1:01:44
  That's just, but of course, from the inside it's, it's, it's much trickier.
• 1:01:48
  Now that you've become successful, how do you navigate that?
• 1:01:52
  Because that's another tricky one for mental health.
• 1:01:56
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah, I was listened to writer v Schwab's podcast, I
• 1:02:00
  think it's called Know Right Way.
• 1:02:02
  And they were having a conversation about this and the conversation was, if your
• 1:02:06
  book does well, you need another book.
• 1:02:09
  And if your book doesn't do well, you need another book.
• 1:02:13
  Like, ugh.
• 1:02:14
  True.
• 1:02:15
  That's so true.
• 1:02:16
  True.
• 1:02:16
  But how, how brutal to hear it said that way.
• 1:02:18
  That is
• 1:02:18
  Rupert Isaacson: brutal.
• 1:02:19
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:02:19
  Rupert Isaacson: And the problem with books is you gotta write the bastards.
• 1:02:22
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:02:22
  It takes a long time.
• 1:02:24
  Rupert Isaacson: Oh, it takes forever.
• 1:02:26
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:02:26
  I, I find that I have to do this serious compartmentalization, right?
• 1:02:30
  We're like, I've, I'm very interested and here's one compartment and I'm very
• 1:02:34
  deeply interested in this book I'm doing and this idea, and it's my whole world.
• 1:02:39
  But.
• 1:02:40
  I have to keep it in its compartment because maybe
• 1:02:44
  it'll do well, maybe it won't.
• 1:02:46
  I'm gonna read brutal one star reviews for it.
• 1:02:50
  I'm gonna read five star reviews for it.
• 1:02:52
  But I'm, those aren't the ones that I'm gonna remember exactly.
• 1:02:55
  You know, and so it's like, all right here's this thing that
• 1:03:00
  was, my whole world still is in a way, it's in this compartment.
• 1:03:04
  And I have to say to myself, in some level, the reception
• 1:03:08
  of it is none of my business.
• 1:03:10
  Rupert Isaacson: Yes,
• 1:03:11
  Jarod Anderson: because like, I believe that art is a funny thing where like,
• 1:03:16
  I've done my part and now whatever art is happens in this space between the thing
• 1:03:21
  itself and the person interpreting it.
• 1:03:24
  And, and somewhere in that interaction, that space between those two, those two
• 1:03:28
  molecules, the, the electrical bond, like that's, that's where the art is happening.
• 1:03:33
  And all I can do is provide my one molecule.
• 1:03:38
  And then, you know, I've done what I can, and I try to say to myself, if
• 1:03:42
  the book has found its people at all mission accomplished maybe the book
• 1:03:48
  let somebody write a a mean review.
• 1:03:52
  And, and they really enjoyed that.
• 1:03:54
  You know, like I try to, I try to be shruggy about it.
• 1:03:57
  Yeah.
• 1:03:57
  But again, as we've been talking about, then there's the financial
• 1:04:01
  component and the career component
• 1:04:03
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:04:03
  Jarod Anderson: And all that
• 1:04:04
  Rupert Isaacson: feeding your kid component.
• 1:04:05
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:04:05
  All that stuff's terrifying.
• 1:04:07
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:04:07
  Jarod Anderson: And the only thing I can do there is think of it as
• 1:04:11
  terrifying in the same way getting hit by a meteor is terrifying.
• 1:04:14
  Like, nah.
• 1:04:15
  I, it's so far outside my control.
• 1:04:18
  I try to say to that fear like mm-hmm Well I'm gonna do the part I can do.
• 1:04:24
  Yeah.
• 1:04:24
  And that's it.
• 1:04:25
  Yeah.
• 1:04:25
  You know?
• 1:04:27
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:04:28
  No, good advice.
• 1:04:29
  Alright.
• 1:04:30
  You said that you had ended that book with autumn coming into winter.
• 1:04:34
  So now you've teased us.
• 1:04:35
  Now we've gotta hear it.
• 1:04:36
  Can you read that bit, please?
• 1:04:38
  Jarod Anderson: Oh, sure.
• 1:04:38
  I can read some of that.
• 1:04:42
  Let me find a good spot.
• 1:04:44
  I I'll tell you, a lot of these chapters have to do with learning
• 1:04:48
  something from an animal, right?
• 1:04:51
  Yeah.
• 1:04:51
  Or, or a tree.
• 1:04:52
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 1:04:53
  Jarod Anderson: And much like the art thing I just said, that meaning is
• 1:04:56
  happening between me and the animal.
• 1:04:58
  The animal isn't the meaning.
• 1:05:01
  It's, it's this idea that I, that that fact and, and truth
• 1:05:06
  are sisters, they're not twins.
• 1:05:08
  It's like there's the fact, here's a raccoon and then the meaning, the
• 1:05:12
  truth behind it is something else.
• 1:05:15
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:05:15
  It's related.
• 1:05:15
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:05:16
  But, but I have, I have a, a, a part to play.
• 1:05:21
  And so.
• 1:05:23
  As I am making peace with the idea that depression isn't gonna be gone forever.
• 1:05:29
  The animal I reached for was the raccoon,
• 1:05:35
  Rupert Isaacson: big fan of raccoons.
• 1:05:36
  Jarod Anderson: Me too.
• 1:05:38
  I I run into them a fair amount.
• 1:05:40
  I around
• 1:05:41
  Rupert Isaacson: here.
• 1:05:41
  Yeah.
• 1:05:41
  In, in, I just have, I've been living in Germany for a long time and raccoons were
• 1:05:47
  released into Hesen, which is the part of Germany we're in and about a hundred
• 1:05:52
  years ago now, there's raccoons around.
• 1:05:54
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:05:54
  And I get a kick out of the fact that there's raccoons in Germany just being
• 1:05:58
  a little bit anarchic there in the woods and people Oh yeah, they're invasive.
• 1:06:02
  Dunno.
• 1:06:02
  Well, maybe, but they're there and I'm certainly en as entertained by
• 1:06:06
  them there as I am in North America.
• 1:06:10
  Jarod Anderson: Okay.
• 1:06:11
  I think this is a part that's relevant to what we're talking about.
• 1:06:13
  Let's try this.
• 1:06:16
  I once growled at a raccoon that was approaching my campfire and he just
• 1:06:21
  stood on his hind feet as if to say, if you're feeling froggy, then jump.
• 1:06:26
  Big guy.
• 1:06:27
  I laughed and shared my sandwich.
• 1:06:30
  The primary thing raccoons seem to do is thrive.
• 1:06:35
  They thrive in human spaces and wild spaces.
• 1:06:38
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 1:06:39
  Jarod Anderson: They're versatile, intelligent, and exude an
• 1:06:42
  air of crafty stubbornness.
• 1:06:45
  It can be romantic to glean life lessons from herons and hawks and
• 1:06:50
  deer leaping through thickets.
• 1:06:53
  But there are many seasons in my life when what I really need
• 1:06:56
  is the teachings of raccoons.
• 1:06:59
  The fall the fall we retreated from Seattle was one such season.
• 1:07:05
  The fall when my recent successes in fighting depression seemed to
• 1:07:09
  be slipping away was another one.
• 1:07:13
  I imagine these two disappointing autumns transposed one on top of another.
• 1:07:18
  I saw the raccoon pawing at the apartment door in Washington state.
• 1:07:23
  I saw the raccoon peering out of my dumpster in Ohio.
• 1:07:27
  Both creatures spoke with one mouth asking an essential question, who
• 1:07:33
  says survival has to be pretty?
• 1:07:36
  I didn't want to hear it.
• 1:07:38
  I had spent months working with my counselor Mark toward a stable
• 1:07:42
  mind, and I felt it slipping away.
• 1:07:45
  It hurt.
• 1:07:46
  I hurt.
• 1:07:48
  It was the old hurt.
• 1:07:49
  Winter's hurt the kind of depression that sits on your chest until
• 1:07:53
  your ribs ache and your lungs burn until you just want out.
• 1:07:59
  And I go on a little later in this section to picture that raccoon
• 1:08:04
  sitting on my kitchen counter, you know, eating Doritos with orange
• 1:08:08
  dust all over his face and, and.
• 1:08:12
  Restating that like you're not in a beauty contest, like you're
• 1:08:16
  struggling with mental illness.
• 1:08:17
  You need to change your definition of what success is.
• 1:08:20
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:08:21
  Jarod Anderson: Because, you know, I just had this, this swell of confidence
• 1:08:25
  in my ability to control my own sadness.
• 1:08:28
  And when it came back, as it inevitably does, I felt crushed that, oh no, I
• 1:08:35
  have not solved this once in forever.
• 1:08:38
  Of course I haven't.
• 1:08:39
  And it went back to the way I started that shag bark hickory section
• 1:08:44
  of learning to have sad, hard, successful day and understanding that
• 1:08:53
  success is completely subjective.
• 1:08:57
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
• 1:08:57
  Jarod Anderson: In terms of judging my own life circumstances.
• 1:09:01
  So yeah, I could catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and realize that I hadn't
• 1:09:07
  changed out of sweatpants for 24 hours.
• 1:09:11
  But, you know, is that a huge failure?
• 1:09:14
  Who says, you know, and feeling like I have never cured depression,
• 1:09:20
  but wow, I have gotten some great techniques for rejecting shame.
• 1:09:26
  And that has taught me that shame was such a big component in the old
• 1:09:31
  suffering that I didn't recognize.
• 1:09:33
  Because if I can leave aside shame, then suddenly I get to be on my own side.
• 1:09:39
  Before it was depression seemed against me and I was also against me because I
• 1:09:45
  was judging myself for having depression.
• 1:09:48
  So there, there didn't seem to be a lot of people in my corner inside my own skull.
• 1:09:54
  So finding a way past that shame and understanding that there were
• 1:09:59
  seasons when I need the raccoon is, was really a big, a big help to me.
• 1:10:07
  Rupert Isaacson: Interestingly, you know, shame when I have talked
• 1:10:11
  to, again, hunters and gatherers who are not saints, by the way.
• 1:10:18
  Jarod Anderson: Sure.
• 1:10:18
  Rupert Isaacson: They don't deal in shame.
• 1:10:21
  It's so interesting.
• 1:10:23
  And it's not that it, the emotion doesn't come up.
• 1:10:25
  It's not like we've invented the emotion of shame since agriculture, but
• 1:10:31
  their mechanisms for dealing with it are so useful in that what they sort
• 1:10:38
  of say is , it's almost like they, they would almost use, I think, a
• 1:10:41
  metaphor like you would for with your orbital kingfisher or your horned wolf.
• 1:10:45
  That the, the that the shaming exists almost like a demon shadow side of
• 1:10:49
  ourselves that has a function to a degree, which is to basically show us
• 1:10:54
  where we don't wanna be but shouldn't be allowed to get beyond a certain point.
• 1:11:01
  And then you bring in your ancestors or your shamanic help meet your horned
• 1:11:06
  wolf, your orbital kingfish, or whatever.
• 1:11:10
  However, if one wants to get people to do what you want to do.
• 1:11:14
  And of course, in hunter gatherer culture, nobody does that.
• 1:11:18
  Jarod Anderson: Mm.
• 1:11:18
  Rupert Isaacson: It's not built into the economy.
• 1:11:20
  There's no need for it.
• 1:11:21
  In fact, it's counterproductive because it leads to conflict, which
• 1:11:25
  leads to fragmentation, which leads to everyone getting eaten by hyenas.
• 1:11:29
  But when agriculture comes into the picture and toil
• 1:11:33
  and going out there and just.
• 1:11:37
  To plant the crop and to pull that crop out of the, you know, and to deal with
• 1:11:42
  the fact that the crop might fail and actually now you need slaves because
• 1:11:45
  it's, it's so, to which means you need war and you need that and well
• 1:11:49
  then shame is a very useful thing.
• 1:11:51
  Oh, it's so useful,
• 1:11:51
  Jarod Anderson: yeah.
• 1:11:52
  Rupert Isaacson: To get those people to go out and do what they don't
• 1:11:54
  want to do for their entire lives.
• 1:11:58
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:11:58
  Rupert Isaacson: You need shame.
• 1:11:59
  Otherwise no one would do it.
• 1:12:01
  So here we come along 10,000 years plus ish after that inheritors
• 1:12:09
  of that, especially, you know, if you're in Ohio, why do people go
• 1:12:12
  to Ohio to be agriculturalists?
• 1:12:14
  You know?
• 1:12:14
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:12:14
  And so you're gonna get, you know, huge reinforcement of that.
• 1:12:20
  Not surprising that in the absence then of a good medicine man
• 1:12:27
  who would've been there at one point, but isn't there anymore.
• 1:12:30
  But there is the shag bark hickory under which the medicine man would have
• 1:12:34
  operated and that that medicine man or woman would have drawn resources from.
• 1:12:40
  And we are still the same species as that hunter.
• 1:12:42
  God.
• 1:12:43
  So there's still this innate rebel part of us that knows that shame
• 1:12:48
  is a mofo and wants to absolutely look it in the eye and reject it as
• 1:12:53
  the demon, as sauron as you know.
• 1:12:56
  How does Sauron get.
• 1:12:58
  You to put the ring on.
• 1:13:00
  What does, you know, what's putting the ring on all about?
• 1:13:04
  It's about doing the wrong thing.
• 1:13:05
  It's about shame, right?
• 1:13:06
  And being seduced into doing the wrong thing until you eventually
• 1:13:09
  become a shadow of yourself.
• 1:13:10
  And then you become the nasal who are, you know, consumed, consumed by shame.
• 1:13:14
  They do actually get to ride around on cool dinosaurs as well and live forever.
• 1:13:17
  But apart from that, yeah.
• 1:13:19
  Jarod Anderson: It's How many
• 1:13:19
  Rupert Isaacson: cool
• 1:13:20
  Jarod Anderson: noise?
• 1:13:20
  Lemme lemme just say that like the stubbornness I, I I I locked in on that
• 1:13:24
  word when you said it too, because I think that that was part of what helped
• 1:13:27
  me in understanding that, that shame has most of its power when we think
• 1:13:34
  we have to keep up this silent facade that we are perfect and unquestionable
• 1:13:40
  and publicly or beyond reproach.
• 1:13:42
  And so, like stubbornness and rebellion, like me sharing it all
• 1:13:47
  publicly, continually is a little bit for me rebellion of, of, of
• 1:13:54
  saying, you know, of given, given the middle finger to like that impulse
• 1:13:58
  I had for years to stay quiet.
• 1:14:00
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:14:01
  Jarod Anderson: And then moving past that fear over and over again, I felt
• 1:14:03
  like I get stronger and stronger because I am so open and honest and vulnerable.
• 1:14:09
  And then I have people telling me, oh, me too.
• 1:14:13
  So then the isolation starts to melt away, right?
• 1:14:17
  Rupert Isaacson: Community comes.
• 1:14:18
  Yeah.
• 1:14:18
  Yeah,
• 1:14:19
  Jarod Anderson: yeah.
• 1:14:19
  Because all of a sudden I don't have some uniquely detestable thing.
• 1:14:24
  I have an issue that lots and lots and lots of people have, and as soon
• 1:14:28
  as we start talking about it openly
• 1:14:31
  Rupert Isaacson: Common humanity
• 1:14:32
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:14:32
  Then what role does shame have?
• 1:14:35
  Rupert Isaacson: If you made it this far into the podcast, then I'm
• 1:14:39
  guessing you're somebody that, like me, loves to read books about not
• 1:14:44
  just how people have achieved self actualization, but particularly
• 1:14:47
  about the relationship with nature.
• 1:14:52
  Spirituality, life, the universe, and everything.
• 1:14:56
  And I'd like to draw your attention to my books.
• 1:14:58
  If you would like to read the story of how we even arrived here, perhaps
• 1:15:03
  you'd like to check out the two New York Times bestsellers, The Horseboy
• 1:15:08
  and The Long Ride Home, and come on an adventure with us and see what engendered,
• 1:15:13
  what started Live Free Ride Free.
• 1:15:16
  And before we go back to the podcast, also check out The Healing
• 1:15:19
  Land, which tells the story of.
• 1:15:22
  My years spent in the Kalahari with the Sun, Bushmen, hunter gatherer people
• 1:15:28
  there, and all that they taught me, and mentored me in, and all that I learned.
• 1:15:32
  Come on that adventure with me.
• 1:15:34
  Yeah.
• 1:15:34
  Well, shame gets you to pay your tithe to the church is what it does.
• 1:15:36
  Jarod Anderson: Oh, that too.
• 1:15:37
  Yeah.
• 1:15:38
  Yeah,
• 1:15:38
  Rupert Isaacson: yeah,
• 1:15:38
  Jarod Anderson: too.
• 1:15:39
  Rupert Isaacson: Interestingly, I have a raccoon kitchen
• 1:15:41
  story, a really cool, real one.
• 1:15:43
  I lived in Texas for a long time.
• 1:15:46
  We had a cat door for years and years and years.
• 1:15:48
  The cat door was not exploited by raccoons until one day when it was.
• 1:15:51
  And you always know when the raccoon has come in because it lands with
• 1:15:54
  a particularly heavy thump on the floor that it's, that's thump enough
• 1:15:58
  to wake you up in the bedroom.
• 1:15:59
  Wow.
• 1:16:00
  That is away from the kitchen.
• 1:16:02
  And I remember waking up going, I bet that's a raccoon.
• 1:16:06
  And going in and finding the raccoon in my kitchen and like looking at him
• 1:16:10
  and like I'm standing there stark us and thinking, oh, you know, I really
• 1:16:15
  wanna, I really don't corner this animal.
• 1:16:18
  Yeah.
• 1:16:18
  Without a suit of armor on, you know?
• 1:16:20
  And sort of suggesting to him a little bit with the broomstick look, dude.
• 1:16:24
  Yeah.
• 1:16:25
  And having him kind of go, no bummer.
• 1:16:27
  All right, fine.
• 1:16:28
  But it's not like he ran and this went on and this went on.
• 1:16:30
  'cause he was after the cat food.
• 1:16:32
  And no matter where I put the cat food or whatever, he always found the cat
• 1:16:35
  food or she always found the cat food.
• 1:16:37
  And so finally we came up with the idea one day of buying
• 1:16:39
  like this really super duper.
• 1:16:43
  Difficult complex Tupperware thing with this big complex Tupperware thing,
• 1:16:48
  lock thing on it with the cat food.
• 1:16:50
  And sure enough, I hear thump and then I hear the door, and then I
• 1:16:55
  hear the stuff comes out of the cupboard and blah, blah, blah.
• 1:16:58
  I'm like, I wonder if you've got to open that cat food.
• 1:17:01
  Yeah.
• 1:17:02
  I've got a know.
• 1:17:02
  Right?
• 1:17:02
  So, so I go in and there was this bonding moment between me and the racoon.
• 1:17:06
  The racoon.
• 1:17:07
  He's like there and he's trying to figure it out.
• 1:17:10
  And you can see, he's like, I've got a thumb out.
• 1:17:12
  And his tongue out and his, and he looks up at me.
• 1:17:15
  And in that moment it's like he's got any ideas.
• 1:17:18
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:17:18
  Right.
• 1:17:19
  Rupert Isaacson: And I'm like,
• 1:17:20
  Jarod Anderson: don't just stand there.
• 1:17:21
  Pitch in.
• 1:17:22
  Yeah.
• 1:17:23
  Rupert Isaacson: The reason I bought that Tupperware was to protect that
• 1:17:26
  cat food, but hats off for, and then you could seem like a bummer.
• 1:17:32
  Yeah.
• 1:17:32
  And then he just kind of moves out of the
• 1:17:34
  Jarod Anderson: Around here.
• 1:17:35
  Rupert Isaacson: What I
• 1:17:35
  Jarod Anderson: often, yeah.
• 1:17:37
  Rupert Isaacson: It was a, a bonding moment.
• 1:17:38
  And there was this part of me that really actually thought rather,
• 1:17:41
  like you saying, well actually then I just shared my sandwich.
• 1:17:43
  You know?
• 1:17:44
  Jarod Anderson: I have, that was a real story.
• 1:17:45
  Yeah.
• 1:17:46
  I mean, a raccoon came right up to me at, at the fire and I, I thought to myself
• 1:17:49
  like, should I run this raccoon off?
• 1:17:52
  And I'm like, I'm gonna give him half of my sandwich.
• 1:17:53
  And he took it like with hands.
• 1:17:55
  It was such a strange moment.
• 1:17:57
  And more than once.
• 1:17:58
  Now around here, I've, I've rescued them from my, my dumpster outside.
• 1:18:02
  'cause they crawl in to look through the trash and then have a moment of, oops.
• 1:18:06
  They can't get out.
• 1:18:07
  Rupert Isaacson: Isn't it interesting how, particularly in our culture,
• 1:18:10
  there is this real kind of, you're not supposed to like raccoons,
• 1:18:13
  you're not supposed to tolerate them.
• 1:18:15
  Yeah.
• 1:18:16
  You're supposed to wag the finger at them, but they're so charming.
• 1:18:19
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:18:20
  Yeah.
• 1:18:21
  Rupert Isaacson: And as you say, also, I think they are a real
• 1:18:24
  metaphor for thriving, not just surviving, like anywhere they can be.
• 1:18:28
  Anywhere you'll find raccoons.
• 1:18:30
  And one things I also love about raccoons is that you can be in the
• 1:18:33
  really shy urban environment in the US well in Canada too, and actually
• 1:18:40
  Mexico, and you'll always find a raccoon.
• 1:18:44
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:18:44
  Rupert Isaacson: And that raccoon will always be doing well.
• 1:18:46
  In the uk we have a very similar thing with foxes.
• 1:18:49
  Urban foxes, urban red foxes are a real thing.
• 1:18:52
  And you get these people like, oh, I'm like, no, they're
• 1:18:57
  reminding us of the wild.
• 1:18:59
  Yeah.
• 1:18:59
  Like how amazing that you could have that
• 1:19:03
  Jarod Anderson: We have urban coyotes on an uptick too.
• 1:19:06
  Indeed.
• 1:19:06
  Around here now.
• 1:19:06
  Indeed.
• 1:19:07
  Indeed.
• 1:19:07
  I indeed.
• 1:19:08
  Talking about shame and what animals are, we're allowed to like I have a chapter
• 1:19:13
  about gray squirrels and the whole metaphor there is, you know, I went to a.
• 1:19:17
  Store that sells bird feeders.
• 1:19:19
  And they had half the stuff there was aimed at how to keep gray squirrels away.
• 1:19:24
  And you know, I have this moment of like, wait, why I love gray?
• 1:19:29
  Squirrels are great.
• 1:19:29
  I I love seeing them.
• 1:19:31
  You know, there's all this bird seed laced with cayenne and all these baffles
• 1:19:35
  and I, I reached for that as the metaphor of of society arbitrarily making any
• 1:19:42
  kind of neurodivergent unwelcome.
• 1:19:44
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, it's the, it's the, it's right.
• 1:19:46
  It's the wild animals that can thrive in our controlled environments Yeah.
• 1:19:51
  That we detest the most because they, we fear them.
• 1:19:55
  I think because they remind us that the wild is just as you can pave over
• 1:20:00
  nature, but then cracks will appear and that forest is gonna come back
• 1:20:04
  up and that we cannot control things.
• 1:20:07
  Jarod Anderson: I'm writing a short book about dandelions right now
• 1:20:09
  for the same publisher that did something in the woods loves you.
• 1:20:12
  And it's the same kind of thing of suddenly there's this billion
• 1:20:16
  dollar industry of herbicides trying to get rid of dandelions.
• 1:20:20
  And why, you know, why, why do we hate dandelions and one of
• 1:20:23
  Rupert Isaacson: the most nutritious plants on the planet?
• 1:20:25
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:20:26
  And health
• 1:20:26
  Rupert Isaacson: giving
• 1:20:27
  Jarod Anderson: great for pollinate.
• 1:20:28
  I mean, you know, the deep tap roots area of the soil on and on and on
• 1:20:32
  about the values of dandelions.
• 1:20:33
  But all of a sudden because of lawns and this weird 18th century European.
• 1:20:40
  Aris, you know, aristocracy, landscaping trend.
• 1:20:44
  Like now we, we don't want dandelions, like monoculture lawns are, are terrible.
• 1:20:49
  They're, they're really broken landscapes.
• 1:20:52
  Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
• 1:20:52
  Jarod Anderson: Absolutely.
• 1:20:53
  But I, I also think we distrust things that are free and
• 1:20:56
  things that are, are abundant.
• 1:20:58
  Like yeah, dandelions are more nutritious than spinach and kale, but like, but
• 1:21:03
  they're growing along the roadside and you don't have to pay for them.
• 1:21:06
  So we just trust that.
• 1:21:08
  I
• 1:21:08
  Rupert Isaacson: think we attach value to them.
• 1:21:09
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:21:10
  We better shame them so that and they were too, too common, nor were the red screw or
• 1:21:14
  nor were the raccoon, nor were the coyote.
• 1:21:16
  It's, it's interesting.
• 1:21:17
  I, I've got a, a great squirrel story, so then I want to hear yours.
• 1:21:22
  So I, I have a couple of stories that are I live in Texas moments.
• 1:21:26
  Jarod Anderson: Mm-hmm.
• 1:21:26
  Rupert Isaacson: And one of them was shortly after I moved into rural Texas.
• 1:21:30
  I let the battery of my truck run down accidentally.
• 1:21:33
  And so I had to try to wave down someone to jumpstart my truck.
• 1:21:37
  And I waved down a truck at the bottom of the driveway and it's this old
• 1:21:41
  black dude with his granddaughter who must be about 21 or so, two loaded
• 1:21:48
  shotguns pointing out of the window.
• 1:21:50
  They're both drinking beer and as they pull out and I'm about
• 1:21:55
  to say thank you for stopping.
• 1:21:57
  I've got jumpstart before I can open my mouth.
• 1:22:01
  Bloke says, garnish squirrel.
• 1:22:04
  And I'm like, garish squirrel.
• 1:22:05
  Garish squirrel.
• 1:22:06
  What does that mean?
• 1:22:07
  Oh, do I have any squirrels?
• 1:22:10
  I'm like, well, yeah.
• 1:22:12
  I mean, the woods behind the house.
• 1:22:15
  I see them.
• 1:22:15
  I mean, but I wouldn't say I have one.
• 1:22:19
  But anyway, here, here's the problem I've got.
• 1:22:21
  And I go, ah.
• 1:22:21
  So he comes up and he looks at my engine and he criticizes it and he says, oh, your
• 1:22:25
  engine is, you know, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:22:27
  And he says, where are you from?
• 1:22:28
  And I'm like, well, I'm British.
• 1:22:29
  And he goes, well, that's in Europe.
• 1:22:30
  Yeah.
• 1:22:30
  And then because he turns out he was stationed in Europe,
• 1:22:33
  you know, during the war.
• 1:22:33
  And he, you know, he's actually traveled a lot and blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:22:37
  And he's right.
• 1:22:38
  My engine is a bit of a shame.
• 1:22:40
  And he, but he jump starts me and wishes me Good day.
• 1:22:45
  And then he and his granddaughter drive off sipping beer and I watch him
• 1:22:50
  go outta the driveway and then I see them put the brakes on like that, the
• 1:22:54
  two shotguns come outta the window.
• 1:22:55
  Boom, boom.
• 1:22:56
  As they're shooting at the squirrels in my trees below on the road there.
• 1:23:00
  And then they drive off.
• 1:23:01
  And that's an, I live in Texas moment.
• 1:23:03
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah, that's pretty Texas.
• 1:23:04
  Yeah.
• 1:23:05
  Nice.
• 1:23:06
  Rupert Isaacson: Could you read us your gray squirrel?
• 1:23:10
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:23:11
  Can do that.
• 1:23:14
  Rupert Isaacson: Another will not be shamed animal.
• 1:23:16
  I love it.
• 1:23:18
  Jarod Anderson: Let me find it.
• 1:23:20
  You'd think I'd have ency encyclopedic knowledge of where
• 1:23:23
  things are in this book, but
• 1:23:24
  Rupert Isaacson: I can't remember anything that I write about.
• 1:23:26
  That's
• 1:23:26
  Jarod Anderson: just not how my brain works, you know?
• 1:23:29
  Rupert Isaacson: Also, I love to think about long, long format
• 1:23:32
  podcast is, it doesn't matter.
• 1:23:33
  You could take 10 minutes to find it.
• 1:23:34
  We weed, you know?
• 1:23:35
  Jarod Anderson: Oh, I love it.
• 1:23:36
  Yeah.
• 1:23:36
  I yeah, this is, this is my, my strange squirrel story here.
• 1:23:42
  I went to school for, for my master's in Athens, Ohio, which is this hilly town.
• 1:23:49
  It's in Appalachia, Ohio's interesting.
• 1:23:52
  Two thirds of it, flat corn fields, and that's where the
• 1:23:55
  glacier came down and stopped.
• 1:23:57
  But where the glacier stopped, that's where what is officially
• 1:24:00
  Appalachia and the US begins.
• 1:24:03
  And so a third sort of southern eastern counties of woods of
• 1:24:08
  Ohio are steep hills and woods.
• 1:24:11
  And that's not what people picture for Ohio.
• 1:24:13
  And
• 1:24:13
  Rupert Isaacson: stunningly beautiful, by the way.
• 1:24:14
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:24:15
  Oh, I love it.
• 1:24:15
  Yeah.
• 1:24:15
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:24:16
  Jarod Anderson: And so that's where I went.
• 1:24:17
  I went to, to university I, my memories of Athens, Ohio, the brick
• 1:24:22
  streets are always wet with rain.
• 1:24:25
  It's an unseasonably warm winter day that smells like overripe autumn.
• 1:24:29
  The sycamore is gleam like bleached bones, jutting from the hilltops, bright and
• 1:24:35
  distinct among the sober university halls re tan, bronze, and weathered concrete.
• 1:24:43
  On one such day, the one endless day of my Athens memories, I was walking to my
• 1:24:48
  English department office in Ellis Hall when I noticed a line of halted traffic.
• 1:24:54
  I couldn't see why they had stopped until I reached the front car.
• 1:24:59
  I made eye contact with the driver.
• 1:25:02
  She looked to the road and I followed her gaze.
• 1:25:05
  There on the wet bricks was a gray squirrel tailed down, limbs
• 1:25:09
  tucked inward, seemingly awake and aware, but stoned still.
• 1:25:15
  The driver gave me a micro shrug and continued to wait for the
• 1:25:19
  squirrel to do whatever it would do.
• 1:25:22
  Somewhere down the line of cars, a horn blasted, an angry
• 1:25:26
  voice rose and fell on impulse.
• 1:25:30
  I did something foolish.
• 1:25:31
  I walked up to the squirrel.
• 1:25:34
  She didn't move.
• 1:25:36
  I reached down and laid a hand on the squirrel's back.
• 1:25:40
  She was warm and her heartbeat drummed against my fingertips.
• 1:25:44
  She still didn't move.
• 1:25:46
  I scooped her up with two hands and carried her out of the street.
• 1:25:51
  And the years since that day, I have been acquainted with wildlife rehabber
• 1:25:55
  who have puckered scars from squirrel bites, but I had no such experience.
• 1:26:00
  Then behind me, I heard the traffic resume, tires muttering on slick brick.
• 1:26:07
  The squirrel was a soft furnace vibrating like a tiny engine.
• 1:26:12
  I considered what I knew about tending to injured wildlife,
• 1:26:16
  which was nothing at all.
• 1:26:18
  The Road University Terrace was cut into the hilltop, hemmed in
• 1:26:22
  by sidewalks and a low stone wall beyond which was a vast lawn.
• 1:26:27
  I don't recall anyone commenting on my actions, but Athens is an odd
• 1:26:31
  place, a small Appalachian college town where a man carrying a squirrel
• 1:26:36
  might not rate a second look.
• 1:26:39
  I placed the squirrel carefully in the grass and expected to spend the
• 1:26:43
  next few minutes as an uncomfortable witness to the small creature's final
• 1:26:47
  moments, standing sentinel as whatever injury that had stilled her body.
• 1:26:52
  Finished taking hold.
• 1:26:56
  I withdrew my hands and stood the moment.
• 1:26:59
  I did.
• 1:26:59
  The squirrel rose and raced off toward the nearest tree, a sprint and a leap.
• 1:27:05
  Her plane of motion shifting from horizontal to vertical as
• 1:27:09
  she skidded up the trunk, then vanished behind thick bows.
• 1:27:13
  I wondered at her experience of events, imagining her perspective, the fear
• 1:27:18
  in the road, the inscrutable cars, the touch of human skin, the return
• 1:27:24
  to grass into a frantic moment of escape, a rush, an arc through the
• 1:27:29
  air, the flat winter sparse horizon, transitioning to a branching highway,
• 1:27:34
  stretching up toward a limitless sky.
• 1:27:38
  I don't know if the squirrel had fallen and was momentarily stunned.
• 1:27:42
  I don't know if she visited the road to lick salt and lost consciousness
• 1:27:46
  due to some unguessable malady.
• 1:27:49
  All I know is that the change in position brick to grass, a return to
• 1:27:54
  a familiar context, unlocked whatever mechanism had held the creature.
• 1:27:59
  Motionless.
• 1:28:01
  We understand the world through stories, the stories we hear of others,
• 1:28:07
  role models and cautionary tales.
• 1:28:09
  The stories we tell about ourselves to ourselves, the constantly
• 1:28:14
  unfolding saga of identity.
• 1:28:17
  But what of the squirrels, they clearly function just fine.
• 1:28:21
  In a world without human narrative.
• 1:28:23
  Is it possible for us to step outside our own stories and imagine their worldview?
• 1:28:31
  So that story and placing it in the grass, unlocking it is kind of the
• 1:28:37
  beginning of me getting to the metaphor of sometimes the context is really what is
• 1:28:44
  important, and it can often be invisible.
• 1:28:48
  This idea that our identities are built of stories, our understanding
• 1:28:51
  of the world is built of stories.
• 1:28:54
  And at a very young age, we're handed a lot of stories that we
• 1:28:58
  internalize and those become.
• 1:29:01
  Our fundamental building blocks of reality.
• 1:29:04
  And so seeing those stories and understanding that as storytellers we have
• 1:29:08
  a role to play in shaping and reshaping them is such a key part of, of what I
• 1:29:15
  wanna tell people about mental illness.
• 1:29:19
  Rupert Isaacson: It's really interesting when one encounters these things
• 1:29:22
  in nature that seem to go against the physics of what should happen.
• 1:29:29
  Like when a squirrel not only sits their motionless and lets you pick it up, but
• 1:29:35
  then also doesn't panic and bite you.
• 1:29:37
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:29:37
  Rupert Isaacson: But then seems to return to its immediate health and go,
• 1:29:41
  you know, what on earth is going on?
• 1:29:43
  And you have to walk away and say, I just don't know.
• 1:29:46
  Jarod Anderson: Mm-hmm.
• 1:29:46
  Rupert Isaacson: But I'm so grateful I had that experience.
• 1:29:52
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:29:52
  Rupert Isaacson: And I think experiences like that in nature,
• 1:29:54
  those kinds of ordinary miracles, but nonetheless, when you tell anyone that
• 1:30:00
  story, they're like, whoa, no way.
• 1:30:02
  Because all of our understanding, all of our story around squirrels is not,
• 1:30:05
  that means that somehow something went on that allowed you to have that
• 1:30:13
  experience and then relate that experience
• 1:30:18
  in healing context.
• 1:30:19
  As you say, the context is always invisible, is often invisible.
• 1:30:22
  I like that.
• 1:30:23
  That I think in.
• 1:30:25
  A lot of things happen for healing.
• 1:30:28
  And I, I, I, we can't see it frequently at the time.
• 1:30:32
  Serendipity, I think, you know, comes into that.
• 1:30:35
  I'm often intrigued by why do animals and plants and rocks seem
• 1:30:43
  to sometimes see what we need and generously offer it across species.
• 1:30:51
  Why do you think that is?
• 1:30:56
  Jarod Anderson: I think, I think honestly the question is, is the thing that we
• 1:31:00
  have to interrogate because that idea that we internalize all these early
• 1:31:06
  stories, I think one of the big ones is this idea that we're visitors to
• 1:31:12
  nature, that we're like aliens coming and, and visiting and tending and
• 1:31:18
  controlling which is, you know, nonsense.
• 1:31:21
  It's manifestly untrue.
• 1:31:23
  Like every, every breath we take is a call and response with phytoplankton
• 1:31:27
  and the nations of forest.
• 1:31:29
  It's, we're only alive because we are fundamentally
• 1:31:33
  intrinsically part of nature.
• 1:31:35
  So why shouldn't it be there as, as family for us?
• 1:31:41
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:31:42
  And, and be reaching toward us anytime we reach for it.
• 1:31:46
  I mean, sometimes I, I find that just the intention of going to
• 1:31:53
  nature, and that could be the woods.
• 1:31:56
  You know, it could be, it could be looking into the sky.
• 1:32:00
  It could be finding a patch of like, and on a sidewalk, but going with
• 1:32:03
  the intent of connecting with the broader world and sort of the, the
• 1:32:08
  wholeness of, of the life around us.
• 1:32:11
  And, and that's part of our story and part of us just that intent
• 1:32:16
  is, I think where you find that nature is reaching back to help.
• 1:32:20
  Right.
• 1:32:20
  Give us what we need.
• 1:32:21
  Rupert Isaacson: We have to do the outreach.
• 1:32:22
  If
• 1:32:22
  Jarod Anderson: yes,
• 1:32:23
  Rupert Isaacson: yes, if we reach out it, we'll reach back.
• 1:32:25
  Jarod Anderson: And it can be imagination, you know, it can be
• 1:32:28
  physically going to nature, nature.
• 1:32:30
  Often it's both for me.
• 1:32:32
  Rupert Isaacson: Hmm.
• 1:32:32
  Jarod Anderson: But I find I do different kinds of reaching for different days.
• 1:32:35
  Like, there are days where I need movement and I will go and I will, I will do
• 1:32:41
  three miles in the woods pretty fast.
• 1:32:44
  And the movement and the trees and scanning my environment
• 1:32:48
  is what feels healing to me.
• 1:32:50
  And there are other days where I go, I walk until I can't see a, a
• 1:32:55
  parking lot or a car or, you know, I, I can't see anything but trees.
• 1:32:58
  And I just sit, I sit at the base of an oak tree very still and
• 1:33:04
  just let the scene unfold and.
• 1:33:09
  There's nothing stagnant or stationary about it.
• 1:33:12
  You know, as I sit all sorts of different animals come and
• 1:33:15
  visit, I see different things.
• 1:33:16
  I hear different things.
• 1:33:18
  It's a completely different experience than when I'm
• 1:33:20
  trying to put miles behind me.
• 1:33:23
  And it can be the same location, but those are very different experiences
• 1:33:29
  that fill different needs for me.
• 1:33:31
  So what we take with us is, what I'm saying is, is so important.
• 1:33:35
  Rupert Isaacson: I I also like the fact that you say it's all right to go
• 1:33:37
  into nature in these different moods.
• 1:33:38
  You know, frequently we're told we must go in there to be still, or we must go
• 1:33:43
  in there to forage, or we must go in.
• 1:33:44
  And, and, and the truth is we must go in there to do all these things.
• 1:33:47
  And, and no, no one is better than the other.
• 1:33:49
  'cause nature is where we live.
• 1:33:51
  It's planet Earth.
• 1:33:52
  We might have forgotten that, but outside the walls of the apartment
• 1:33:56
  that we are living in, actually it's, it's the same as it ever was.
• 1:33:59
  It, these ideas, these kind, you know, storytelling can be as negative as it's
• 1:34:05
  positive as you know, shame is a story.
• 1:34:08
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:34:09
  So your orbital kingfisher hunting out.
• 1:34:13
  The shame perhaps, and, and, and I'm projecting my own story
• 1:34:16
  onto your orbital king Fisher.
• 1:34:18
  'cause I'm deciding that I like the fact that it's hunting out shame.
• 1:34:22
  'cause that makes me feel healed in some way.
• 1:34:25
  It may at all not be what your idea of it was, but that's a
• 1:34:28
  lovely thing about stories.
• 1:34:29
  We can project ourselves, you know, into and through story.
• 1:34:32
  But the fact is it is a story.
• 1:34:34
  And you know, animals presumably must be living their own stories too, and
• 1:34:39
  having stories and trees must be having stories because we cannot be, if,
• 1:34:44
  if, if things are, if it's, if it's a conscious universe, if it's, if it's if
• 1:34:47
  interlocking fields, if, if the quantum state of reality is what physicists are
• 1:34:53
  now beginning to agree upon then how can we be the only storytellers out there?
• 1:34:58
  We can't.
• 1:34:59
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:34:59
  Rupert Isaacson: It's just that, you know, so did your squirrel have a story?
• 1:35:02
  And the other thing I like about your squirrel story is that what
• 1:35:07
  really stands out to me naturally, of course, is the squirrel's
• 1:35:10
  behavior and, and the enigma of that.
• 1:35:13
  But also the lady in the car who was willing to stop and wait, knowing
• 1:35:21
  that all those people behind her.
• 1:35:23
  Eventually someone will probably get out and probably give her a hard time.
• 1:35:28
  But she was going to.
• 1:35:31
  Not run over that squirrel.
• 1:35:33
  And she also wasn't gonna get out of her car and try to chase the squirrel off.
• 1:35:37
  There was something in her that was saying, it's worth instinctively
• 1:35:42
  in this moment to give this squirrel the space, even though
• 1:35:47
  I'm going to be shamed by the Yeah.
• 1:35:49
  People behind me.
• 1:35:50
  And then also something that instinctively, and you
• 1:35:53
  said, this is the moment to
• 1:35:58
  take that story to its next chapter,
• 1:36:03
  that lady stopping the car.
• 1:36:06
  You picking the squirrel up, the squirrel not biting you.
• 1:36:12
  Again, just makes me think about how loving nature is this idea that it, you,
• 1:36:18
  you say something in the woods loves you.
• 1:36:21
  And we are the same.
• 1:36:21
  We are a very loving species.
• 1:36:24
  You know, not everyone automatically tries to run the squirrel over or chase it off.
• 1:36:29
  Not everybody instinctively thinks, well I, I can't pick that squirrel up because
• 1:36:36
  it might mess me up and, and it might.
• 1:36:39
  Jarod Anderson: Mm-hmm.
• 1:36:39
  Rupert Isaacson: But maybe your gut in that moment for whatever, you know,
• 1:36:42
  so they're the animals living this, there's nature living it's stories
• 1:36:46
  in, in relation to us, and there's.
• 1:36:50
  Th those three, you, the squirrel, the lady are all
• 1:36:56
  behaving in a very loving manner.
• 1:36:58
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:36:59
  Rupert Isaacson: And that, that seems to me the basic energy
• 1:37:01
  of nature is that it is love
• 1:37:04
  Jarod Anderson: to, to go on a complete tangent here, but it's related my mind.
• 1:37:08
  That's, that's a thing I'm often thinking about in terms
• 1:37:11
  of modernity and social media.
• 1:37:13
  That worries me.
• 1:37:15
  Because I mean, what's the opposite of the idea that there's sort of
• 1:37:20
  internal loving mindset to reality?
• 1:37:23
  Well, social media and a lot of people seem to be living inside
• 1:37:29
  these virtual non-space as if it's their real environment these days.
• 1:37:34
  And
• 1:37:38
  I don't think everyone really understands the fact that it's
• 1:37:43
  not a natural environment.
• 1:37:44
  Like the algorithms we have science that show that it steers you toward posts,
• 1:37:51
  engagements meant to trigger kind of fear, anxiety, anger, because those capture
• 1:37:56
  your attention and keep you scrolling.
• 1:37:59
  And so we have these evolved brains that, you know, walk,
• 1:38:04
  walk the path, scan for threats.
• 1:38:07
  And then we have these, these marketing engineers who have
• 1:38:11
  found a way to kind of hack that.
• 1:38:14
  All right.
• 1:38:14
  We'll give you a thread, every three steps and then, you know, give
• 1:38:18
  Rupert Isaacson: your attention.
• 1:38:19
  Yeah,
• 1:38:19
  Jarod Anderson: yeah.
• 1:38:19
  And we find ourselves living in this, this space, and I feel like it's really
• 1:38:24
  doing some damage to the idea you were saying that nature is loving, that the
• 1:38:30
  world is loving, that there's something intrinsically loving to the universe.
• 1:38:35
  Well, there are a lot of people who are living through their screens and
• 1:38:38
  thinking that it's a window, it's not a window, it's not showing you reality.
• 1:38:43
  It's showing you a very specifically crafted kind of experience that is
• 1:38:48
  telling you that you live in a world of threat and, and danger and outrage.
• 1:38:55
  And that's not to say that, you know, a, a lot of the issues aren't
• 1:38:58
  real, are manufactured, but it's the concentration and intensity of
• 1:39:03
  the way you get them presented when you're living through, through screens
• 1:39:08
  instead of walking a landscape.
• 1:39:11
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 1:39:12
  Jarod Anderson: And it really worries me kind of about, about the general
• 1:39:15
  outlook I see in the zeitgeist about what nature is, what the world
• 1:39:19
  is, what our role is in nature.
• 1:39:22
  I yeah, go, go ahead.
• 1:39:24
  Rupert Isaacson: No, you go ahead.
• 1:39:25
  Jarod Anderson: Well, I, I got a, I've gotten messages before from people who
• 1:39:29
  just see humanity as a cancer and that it's a mistake and that, you know,
• 1:39:36
  we are, we're a but you'd be behaving
• 1:39:38
  Rupert Isaacson: like that that way a bit.
• 1:39:39
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:39:39
  And, and certainly, you know, the, the threats and the harms are real.
• 1:39:43
  But the idea that there is no positive interaction between human beings
• 1:39:47
  and nature, that the best thing you can do is stay away or not exist.
• 1:39:51
  And, you know, that's, that's kind of heartbreaking as someone who
• 1:39:54
  feels like, you know, we're intrinsic parts of nature that we're, we're
• 1:40:00
  animals on the, on this planet.
• 1:40:02
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, also somebody who, who's, you know, you're wearing
• 1:40:05
  the mental health, you know, thing on your sleeve that, you know, it's,
• 1:40:08
  that's letting the, the shame story win.
• 1:40:10
  Right.
• 1:40:10
  You know, and you don't have shame.
• 1:40:12
  You
• 1:40:12
  Jarod Anderson: are shame.
• 1:40:13
  Yeah.
• 1:40:14
  Rupert Isaacson: That's, that's brutal.
• 1:40:15
  Indeed.
• 1:40:15
  Indeed.
• 1:40:16
  We are shame all of us.
• 1:40:17
  Yeah.
• 1:40:17
  But the, what I would say to that, 'cause I'm an eternal optimist, is while
• 1:40:26
  it is true that people have replaced sex cells with fear cells, with anger
• 1:40:31
  cells, and that is kind of been the progression of the social media evolution.
• 1:40:37
  What is also true in those algorithms is people are going to find your book and
• 1:40:41
  they're going to find this conversation through an algorithm, and they're going
• 1:40:45
  to find a conversation about why shame is actually a construct through an algorithm.
• 1:40:52
  And they're going to find a conversation about why we are a loving species.
• 1:40:58
  And nature is essentially.
• 1:41:00
  Benign, I think, through an algorithm.
• 1:41:02
  So no matter how much social media tries to do that, or the architects
• 1:41:08
  who are perhaps not such great actors who are controlling it,
• 1:41:15
  Jarod Anderson: yeah.
• 1:41:15
  Rupert Isaacson: Even they can't control the natural mycelium type
• 1:41:20
  growth of the whole thing to say.
• 1:41:23
  Yeah.
• 1:41:23
  But, you know, Ru and Jared are gonna kind of come together through Ru's
• 1:41:27
  mate Liana, who's doing this work for the, in the, you know, penitentiaries
• 1:41:31
  or whatever, the Lockdowns in Michigan and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.
• 1:41:34
  And, you know, well that's gonna come through an algorithm too,
• 1:41:39
  so I wouldn't have found you.
• 1:41:41
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:41:41
  Rupert Isaacson: It's,
• 1:41:42
  Jarod Anderson: it's a
• 1:41:42
  Rupert Isaacson: good point.
• 1:41:42
  I, yeah,
• 1:41:43
  Jarod Anderson: I live on a little one way street next to a, a cemetery
• 1:41:46
  in a town that isn't very big.
• 1:41:48
  So Yeah, I'm, I'm having a lovely conversation with a writer in Spain right
• 1:41:52
  now, and that's, there's no reason that would be happening if not for Right.
• 1:41:55
  We're the technology
• 1:41:56
  Rupert Isaacson: because this will go through YouTube and
• 1:41:58
  Yeah.
• 1:41:58
  Rupert Isaacson: Apple or something or other, and all those other portals
• 1:42:01
  that people find these conversations.
• 1:42:03
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:42:04
  The connection is real.
• 1:42:05
  I just sometimes worry about, about you know, in terms of intentionality,
• 1:42:09
  ly context, a couple of old
• 1:42:10
  Rupert Isaacson: buggers, but Yeah.
• 1:42:11
  Jarod Anderson: Well, yeah, but the, the intentionality and context
• 1:42:15
  and just kind of being aware of.
• 1:42:18
  Storytelling animals.
• 1:42:20
  We understand the world and our place and through stories, but there are so many
• 1:42:23
  people there ready to hand you a pre-made story and without your participation.
• 1:42:30
  And just being a little bit aware of that and what impact it has
• 1:42:34
  on you is, is, is a huge just a vital, a vital task for all of us.
• 1:42:41
  Because a lot of people will hand you stories that, that have nothing to do
• 1:42:44
  with serving you or, or your happiness.
• 1:42:47
  Rupert Isaacson: Certainly.
• 1:42:48
  Certainly.
• 1:42:49
  And we've had that since we've had, you know, cautionary fairytales and scaring
• 1:42:53
  each other around the fires at night.
• 1:42:55
  Jarod Anderson: Homilies
• 1:42:56
  Rupert Isaacson: right now, some of those things are actually
• 1:42:58
  designed to keep you alive.
• 1:42:59
  But also you can just tell 'em 'cause they're scary just for the sake of scare.
• 1:43:04
  Yeah.
• 1:43:04
  The thing about, you know, one could say, well, all you need to
• 1:43:08
  do in order to rebel against that is go for a walk in the woods.
• 1:43:12
  And then I thought, yeah, but what if you can't reach the woods?
• 1:43:15
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:43:16
  And I had this writing student who was a little girl from South Korea who
• 1:43:24
  came to us in Germany to our stable.
• 1:43:27
  And she was.
• 1:43:29
  Passionate about horses, had her between the ages of eight and 10, and she was one
• 1:43:34
  of the sweetest human beings I've ever come across to the point that people in
• 1:43:36
  my team, we'd almost fight for who got, who got to go with Suji that day, we'd
• 1:43:40
  be like, no, no, you had her last week.
• 1:43:42
  Because just being in her presence was really healing.
• 1:43:44
  She was just one of those people that carried that light.
• 1:43:47
  And she knew she was gonna have to go back to Seoul, and that when she got
• 1:43:52
  back to Seoul, there would be no horses and there would be no German forest.
• 1:43:57
  And when the week came approaching her having to go back, I was
• 1:44:04
  thinking, what, what can I do?
• 1:44:05
  What can I do?
• 1:44:06
  And I thought what I need to do is implant this experience of riding in the German
• 1:44:11
  forest in her psyche in a way that she feels she can call upon it anytime.
• 1:44:17
  So we made these rides, meditations into imagining herself in an apartment
• 1:44:25
  in Seoul, imagining this ride, and then imagining where the ride would lead
• 1:44:29
  and watching herself grow up and making money, and then being able to buy horses
• 1:44:35
  and then being able to buy a place in the forest and being able to find
• 1:44:40
  a partner that liked horses and live that life and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.
• 1:44:43
  And she then really ran with this and began to construct
• 1:44:47
  her own stories as we rode.
• 1:44:49
  And that occasionally she, of course, she did go back to Saul and
• 1:44:53
  exactly what she feared happened.
• 1:44:56
  Would happen, would happen, happened.
• 1:44:59
  But she does write me from time to time and say, I follow those stories and
• 1:45:04
  I know that those stories will lead me to back to a horse in a forest.
• 1:45:10
  I think the work that you are doing where you say, okay, let's say you
• 1:45:15
  can't get into nature, but you can imagine it and maybe you don't know
• 1:45:21
  maybe you're not a actress, you're not a budding David Attenberg.
• 1:45:23
  So you dunno what tree it is or what bird it is and okay, then there's
• 1:45:27
  the shame of not, or you can imagine something completely different like you
• 1:45:32
  horned wolf or your orbital kingfisher.
• 1:45:35
  And if I've been at the trance fires with the sun Bushman healers and they
• 1:45:39
  describe to me the entities that they encounter when they're in the spirit
• 1:45:43
  world, many of them are not dissimilar from the orbital kingfisher and the many
• 1:45:48
  miles shadow and the, and the horned wolf.
• 1:45:51
  You know, we are love it the species that we are, we're going to come up
• 1:45:53
  with these metaphors, you know, no matter where we are 'cause nature's
• 1:45:57
  in us and we are nature and so on.
• 1:45:58
  But one of the things I love about your work is that for people who are
• 1:46:03
  in that situation, whether they're like my friendly Anna's people who
• 1:46:06
  are perhaps not able to access nature despite living in the middle of Michigan,
• 1:46:12
  unless she takes them out in it or it's.
• 1:46:15
  My friend Suji there in Seoul, or even just someone who is in nature, but
• 1:46:20
  just so locked in their head through depression that they can't feel they
• 1:46:25
  can access the loving side of it.
• 1:46:26
  I think that those works of imagination bring imagination and nature together,
• 1:46:31
  which is a shamanic experience as old as humanity itself, but must be reinvented
• 1:46:38
  and reinterpreted for every generation.
• 1:46:41
  You're doing that work.
• 1:46:44
  Jarod Anderson: Oh, thank you.
• 1:46:44
  I think it's you.
• 1:46:45
  Rupert Isaacson: You are doing healing work.
• 1:46:46
  Yeah.
• 1:46:47
  Jarod Anderson: Can I read a poem or two?
• 1:46:49
  Rupert Isaacson: I
• 1:46:49
  was
• 1:46:49
  Jarod Anderson: reading into this topic.
• 1:46:50
  Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
• 1:46:51
  Jarod Anderson: All right.
• 1:46:52
  You're you, you made me think of a poem here that this is a poem called
• 1:46:55
  Orcas, which I do not have in Ohio.
• 1:46:59
  Somewhere.
• 1:47:00
  There are orcas.
• 1:47:02
  I'm in my little gray house in Ohio surrounded by the stale air of winter
• 1:47:07
  indoors, but somewhere there are orcas.
• 1:47:11
  It's an easy fact to forget.
• 1:47:14
  It's easy to shrink your world to what you can see, but thankfully
• 1:47:19
  somewhere there are orcas.
• 1:47:22
  Sometimes my world is all sun faded, plastic scrolled along the roadside
• 1:47:28
  and a scribble of petty meanness.
• 1:47:31
  But somewhere there are orcas.
• 1:47:34
  We all know facts that are as inert as chalk dust, but
• 1:47:39
  some knowledge is medicine.
• 1:47:46
  So I, I never see orcas, but they can still be medicine for me.
• 1:47:51
  And sometimes I reach for the fantastical in imagination, and
• 1:47:54
  sometimes I reach for just literal facts.
• 1:47:58
  And sometimes it's animals and sometimes it's a concept.
• 1:48:00
  Let me, let me drop one short poem on you, that it's a concept
• 1:48:04
  in nature poem that, that I love.
• 1:48:06
  This one's called Naming the River.
• 1:48:09
  The water in your body is just visiting.
• 1:48:13
  It was a thunderstorm a week ago.
• 1:48:16
  It will be an ocean.
• 1:48:17
  Soon enough, most of your cells come and go like, morning due.
• 1:48:23
  We are more weather pattern than stone monument.
• 1:48:26
  Sunlight on mist.
• 1:48:28
  Summer lightning.
• 1:48:30
  Your choices outweigh your substance.
• 1:48:34
  Like I, I'm constantly ruminating on what just the bare facts of my physical reality
• 1:48:41
  are, and then taking those and running them through a filter or a lens of, of
• 1:48:48
  my imagination, taking my sense of wonder and connection, and then letting that
• 1:48:55
  interpret these, these bare facts for me.
• 1:48:59
  And even when I can't get out of the house sometimes that's all I need too.
• 1:49:06
  To feel that connection to nature.
• 1:49:09
  Which is funny because sometimes it feels like a leap of faith.
• 1:49:12
  And, and other times I think to myself, well, all I'm doing is looking at sort
• 1:49:19
  of bare uncontestable facts, like, like the water cycle or orcas exist.
• 1:49:25
  And I have a 6-year-old son who, who sometimes reminds me of this process
• 1:49:31
  just, just through his questions.
• 1:49:33
  I mean, he, he came up to me once and asked me if electric eels were real.
• 1:49:38
  And I thought, wow, what a reasonable question and, and what
• 1:49:41
  a bizarre answer I have for you.
• 1:49:44
  Yes.
• 1:49:45
  And I've seen him
• 1:49:46
  Rupert Isaacson: and thank heavens that my answer is the bizarre one.
• 1:49:49
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:49:50
  But I mean, so much of our, of the bare facts of our world are bizarre.
• 1:49:54
  It's just that it can fade from, from your mind and from your
• 1:49:58
  awareness through familiarity.
• 1:50:01
  But I've seen my son shake with excitement about a bumblebee, you know?
• 1:50:06
  Yeah.
• 1:50:06
  And, and if you think you'd been, let's use our imaginations and think
• 1:50:11
  we've been traveling through space for a thousand years, and you're in
• 1:50:16
  a vacuum, and you're in, you're in a, a clean, white lined spaceship.
• 1:50:21
  Traveling, traveling, traveling.
• 1:50:23
  And you encounter a bumblebee.
• 1:50:26
  What a singular, fascinating alien, amazing mind blowing thing.
• 1:50:32
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:50:34
  Jarod Anderson: And, you know, we, we can take for granted that,
• 1:50:36
  that I see 'em bouncing around the forest floor in, in May.
• 1:50:40
  But, but I try not to let that familiarity rob me.
• 1:50:46
  I mean, I said lichen on a sidewalk earlier.
• 1:50:49
  If you don't know, look into what lichen is like.
• 1:50:52
  Lichen is two animals living together.
• 1:50:55
  It's a garden and it's a gardener.
• 1:50:56
  It's a shepherd.
• 1:50:57
  And it's, it's a, it's a herd and it's hard to tell which is which when
• 1:51:03
  you're looking at the photosynthesizing organism and the fungi and like
• 1:51:08
  lichen is fascinating and I kind of defy you to show me a place where you
• 1:51:13
  can't find it outside of, you know, the permafrost, you can find lichen.
• 1:51:18
  It's just reaching for the wonder.
• 1:51:21
  If you really reach sincerely for wonder and, and you come to it as a student,
• 1:51:27
  I think you will find it reaching back.
• 1:51:30
  Rupert Isaacson: If you reach for wonder and you come at it as a student,
• 1:51:33
  you will find it reaching back.
• 1:51:35
  Have you written that down?
• 1:51:36
  Jarod Anderson: No,
• 1:51:37
  Rupert Isaacson: I think you should.
• 1:51:38
  I should.
• 1:51:38
  Huh?
• 1:51:38
  Should that down?
• 1:51:39
  Jarod Anderson: I have,
• 1:51:41
  Rupert Isaacson: I want 50%.
• 1:51:42
  No, I mean 80.
• 1:51:43
  Sorry.
• 1:51:43
  As you're,
• 1:51:44
  Jarod Anderson: thank you for your writer brain pointing out that I should
• 1:51:46
  Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
• 1:51:47
  Write it down quickly.
• 1:51:48
  That is very good.
• 1:51:50
  Jarod Anderson: I mean, the student part is important, right?
• 1:51:52
  It's, I think
• 1:51:53
  Rupert Isaacson: because it's humility.
• 1:51:54
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:51:55
  And, and the times I have felt most stuck and trapped and stagnant in my life is
• 1:51:59
  when I, I let my ego get out in front.
• 1:52:03
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:52:04
  Jarod Anderson: And like, I've figured it all out and it sucks, you know?
• 1:52:10
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, because figuring stuff out, figuring it all out would suck.
• 1:52:14
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:52:15
  Rupert Isaacson: Isn't that
• 1:52:15
  Jarod Anderson: and is impossible.
• 1:52:16
  Like I, I sometimes look out my, my window here and, you know, I
• 1:52:19
  can see a blue spruce tree and if I dedicated my entire life to just
• 1:52:25
  being a student of that one tree.
• 1:52:27
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:52:27
  I
• 1:52:27
  Jarod Anderson: don't, I don't know that I ever stopped being a neophyte,
• 1:52:30
  a newcomer into what that tree is and does and feels and how it's
• 1:52:34
  connected with a host of microorganisms in the soil and on and on and on.
• 1:52:38
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 1:52:39
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:52:39
  Jarod Anderson: And that's just one tree I can see.
• 1:52:41
  Like, the world is amazing and full of limitless opportunities to be amazed.
• 1:52:46
  Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
• 1:52:47
  Jarod Anderson: But she's not gonna kick down your door, you know,
• 1:52:50
  you do have to, you do have to go.
• 1:52:53
  Or just open yourself up and invite it in.
• 1:52:57
  Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
• 1:53:00
  Listen, we are at the two hour mark.
• 1:53:07
  I would like you to come back on this show.
• 1:53:10
  Jarod Anderson: Great.
• 1:53:11
  Rupert Isaacson: And talk about some specific things about some of the,
• 1:53:14
  the themes that we've touched on particularly somewhere there at Orcus.
• 1:53:20
  Jarod Anderson: Hmm.
• 1:53:21
  Rupert Isaacson: Because yeah, this idea that
• 1:53:25
  the fact that it exists beyond your site can give you fact.
• 1:53:28
  Like, you know, people say, well, prove to me that God
• 1:53:30
  exists 'cause you can't see him.
• 1:53:33
  That's a really nice analogy.
• 1:53:34
  It's like, well, I can't see orcas.
• 1:53:36
  Jarod Anderson: Hmm.
• 1:53:37
  Rupert Isaacson: But I know they're there.
• 1:53:39
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:53:39
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:53:39
  I haven't seen a documentary with David Ner about God with pictures of
• 1:53:43
  God, you know, ju leaping through the Arctic Ocean, unless the orcas are God.
• 1:53:48
  And then I,
• 1:53:49
  Jarod Anderson: I think I'd rather have Steve Irwin on that one.
• 1:53:50
  I know.
• 1:53:53
  Rupert Isaacson: So I think people are gonna, you know,
• 1:53:56
  find you have a website, right?
• 1:53:58
  Tell us the website.
• 1:53:59
  Jarod Anderson: I do.
• 1:54:00
  I do.
• 1:54:00
  It's, it's jared k anderson.com
• 1:54:02
  or you can find me anywhere on social media as Jared k Anderson
• 1:54:06
  or the Crypto naturalist.
• 1:54:08
  Rupert Isaacson: And the, is the crypto naturalist still going?
• 1:54:10
  The podcast?
• 1:54:11
  Jarod Anderson: It's on hiatus, but there are, I think, 70 episodes up.
• 1:54:15
  And you can kind of start anywhere
• 1:54:17
  Rupert Isaacson: to get their teeth into that.
• 1:54:18
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:54:19
  And now this, the book I have coming out in February is sort of
• 1:54:21
  a, a capstone to that whole series.
• 1:54:24
  So
• 1:54:24
  Rupert Isaacson: tell us again the, the, the name of the the book,
• 1:54:27
  Jarod Anderson: It's called Strange Animals, and it comes out February 10th.
• 1:54:31
  Rupert Isaacson: Ballantine books.
• 1:54:33
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:54:33
  Which, which I was really warmed by them buying it because I, my copy
• 1:54:38
  of The Hobbit was from Ballantine.
• 1:54:40
  They're, they're sort of an old classic fantasy publisher.
• 1:54:43
  So there were, there were maybe a few tiers when, when they
• 1:54:46
  decided to, to publish that novel.
• 1:54:49
  Rupert Isaacson: I'm gonna ask you to leave us with one more poem.
• 1:54:52
  Jarod Anderson: Absolutely.
• 1:54:54
  Hmm.
• 1:54:54
  Choices.
• 1:54:58
  All right.
• 1:54:58
  I think I have an appropriate one for us here.
• 1:55:03
  This one's called Woodland U.
• 1:55:07
  It's easy to look at the contours of a forest and feel
• 1:55:11
  a bone deep love for nature.
• 1:55:14
  It's less easy to remember that the contours of your own body represent the
• 1:55:18
  exact same nature, the pathways of your mind, your dreams, dark and strange as
• 1:55:25
  sprouts curling beneath a flat rock.
• 1:55:28
  Your regret bitter as the citrus rock of old cut grass.
• 1:55:33
  It's the same as the nature.
• 1:55:34
  You make time to love that you practice loving the forest, the
• 1:55:39
  meadow, the sweeping arm of a galaxy.
• 1:55:43
  You are as natural as any postcard landscape, and deserve the same love.
• 1:55:57
  Rupert Isaacson: I'm very glad that my friend Leanna turned me onto you,
• 1:55:59
  and I'm very glad that, thank you.
• 1:56:00
  Other listeners asked me to have you on.
• 1:56:03
  I would come
• 1:56:04
  Jarod Anderson: back.
• 1:56:04
  Thank you.
• 1:56:05
  I'd love to.
• 1:56:05
  Yeah, I would love to.
• 1:56:07
  I you might, you might have gotten a sense I could talk about these things forever,
• 1:56:10
  so I I had no idea that was two hours.
• 1:56:14
  If you
• 1:56:14
  Rupert Isaacson: hadn't, we enjoy it.
• 1:56:15
  Well, that's the lovely thing about these long format.
• 1:56:17
  I, I, I love the fact that one has the freedom to explore.
• 1:56:21
  Like this is, you know, I I, it was always something which I always
• 1:56:24
  found, you know, rather stressful.
• 1:56:26
  You know, when people interview you and you know, you've gotta be interviewed
• 1:56:29
  and plug the book, blah, blah, blah, and they, you know, you know, you've got 15
• 1:56:33
  minutes or you've got eight minutes, or you've got three minutes, or you've got
• 1:56:36
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:56:37
  Rupert Isaacson: That's what I love about podcasts and maybe this is one of the,
• 1:56:40
  the nice things about social media now
• 1:56:42
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:56:42
  Rupert Isaacson: Is actually, you know, you can just let, let it unfold
• 1:56:46
  naturally because, you know, people are just gonna listen to it in chunks.
• 1:56:50
  Yeah.
• 1:56:50
  Jarod Anderson: I've never, I never like a podcast and wish it was shorter.
• 1:56:53
  I don't, I don't understand the mindset of No
• 1:56:55
  Rupert Isaacson: un unless it just happens to be a great
• 1:56:57
  short conversation, then Sure.
• 1:56:59
  Brilliant.
• 1:56:59
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:57:00
  Rupert Isaacson: But yes to say, well this is a 20 minute format.
• 1:57:04
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah, it's, it, it's me thinking of, of, of shows.
• 1:57:06
  I know where they cut the interview off because they're reaching the,
• 1:57:10
  the 30 minute mark or something.
• 1:57:11
  It's like, why?
• 1:57:12
  It's a podcast.
• 1:57:13
  It's not like you're, you're in the way of the next show.
• 1:57:16
  Like, just keep going.
• 1:57:16
  Right.
• 1:57:17
  You know?
• 1:57:17
  Rupert Isaacson: It's because the podcaster has to go change the
• 1:57:19
  nappy on his kid or something.
• 1:57:20
  Jarod Anderson: Well, that, yeah, that could be, that could be right.
• 1:57:22
  Yeah.
• 1:57:23
  Well, thank you so much.
• 1:57:24
  This, this has been so lovely and yeah, yeah.
• 1:57:26
  Really nice.
• 1:57:26
  Excited to talk, talk to you again.
• 1:57:28
  Rupert Isaacson: I'm, I'm really grateful for this.
• 1:57:30
  It was, it was brilliant.
• 1:57:31
  I'm gonna go feed ponies.
• 1:57:33
  Jarod Anderson: All right.
• 1:57:34
  I'm gonna try to get some words written.
• 1:57:36
  Wish me luck.
• 1:57:37
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, now I'm feeling shamed, so I, I better go.
• 1:57:40
  It's not your fault.
• 1:57:41
  But it's, no, it's inspiration.
• 1:57:43
  I need to, I need to work a bit more on that.
• 1:57:44
  Jarod Anderson: I'm, I'm up against a the dandelion book is due in, in January.
• 1:57:49
  So,
• 1:57:50
  Rupert Isaacson: but we love a good deadline.
• 1:57:51
  It's, it's, it's, I love a good deadline.
• 1:57:54
  Jarod Anderson: We do.
• 1:57:54
  I, I, I both hate them and recognize their value, and so we need
• 1:57:58
  ' Rupert Isaacson: em.
• 1:57:59
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:57:59
  I, I, I keep jumping into them because I know it's, it's how I get things
• 1:58:03
  Rupert Isaacson: done.
• 1:58:03
  It's nature.
• 1:58:03
  Again, you're not gonna go hunt and lay down the meat for winter and the
• 1:58:07
  firewood unless, you know winter's coming.
• 1:58:10
  Jarod Anderson: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:58:11
  Yeah.
• 1:58:12
  Jarod Anderson: It's one of the one grateful things I am too, about being
• 1:58:15
  in traditional publishing because I self-publish the poetry collections
• 1:58:18
  and the traditional gives me deadlines.
• 1:58:20
  So
• 1:58:20
  Rupert Isaacson: indeed, you
• 1:58:21
  Jarod Anderson: know,
• 1:58:22
  Rupert Isaacson: and
• 1:58:22
  Jarod Anderson: All right.
• 1:58:23
  Thank you, Ru.
• 1:58:24
  Rupert Isaacson: We'll see you next time.
• 1:58:25
  Jarod Anderson: Bye.
• 1:58:26
  Rupert Isaacson: Cheers, man.
• 1:58:26
  Bye-bye.
• 1:58:27
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• 1:58:31
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• 1:58:39
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• 1:58:45
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• 1:59:31
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• 1:59:36
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• 1:59:40
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