Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 419: Why Discomfort (and Hunting) Makes Us Healthier and Happier, with Michael Easter

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Ep. 419: Why Discomfort (and Hunting) Makes Us Healthier and Happier, with Michael Easter · Wired To Hunt Podcast

0:02
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for
0:06
Speaker 1: deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host,
0:11
Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast. I'm
0:16
Speaker 1: your host, Mark Kenyan, and this is episode number four nineteen,
0:20
Speaker 1: and today I'm joined by Michael Easter to discuss his
0:23
Speaker 1: fascinating new book, The Comfort Crisis, and his surprise and
0:27
Speaker 1: case for getting uncomfortable and not coincidentally, how perfectly hunting
0:32
Speaker 1: fits into this way of living. All right, welcome to
0:39
Speaker 1: the Wired to Hunt Podcast, brought to you by First Like. Today,
0:43
Speaker 1: we've got a really interesting show and a little bit
0:46
Speaker 1: different than our usual ones. Were not specifically talking about
0:50
Speaker 1: white tail deer or deer hunting, but we're talking about
0:54
Speaker 1: a book that I recently read that I mean, the
0:57
Speaker 1: whole time I read it, I just kept thinking myself,
1:01
Speaker 1: this is why hunt, this is why I hunt. So
1:04
Speaker 1: much of what's covering this book is is like a
1:07
Speaker 1: master class or or I don't know, a thesis on
1:11
Speaker 1: why folks should pick up hunting. Now. This book is
1:15
Speaker 1: called The Comfort Crisis Embrace Discomfort to reclaim your wild, happy,
1:21
Speaker 1: healthy self. And Michael Easter, the author of that book,
1:24
Speaker 1: and the guy who we're gonna be talking to on
1:26
Speaker 1: the show, went in and just took a fascinating journey
1:30
Speaker 1: across the world examining how we as modern Americans and
1:36
Speaker 1: people across the globe have gotten kind of soft. We've
1:39
Speaker 1: gotten too comfortable, and it's taken us away from those
1:42
Speaker 1: core things that made us human, that made us who
1:44
Speaker 1: we are. And a big part of that is all
1:47
Speaker 1: this stuff that's wrapped into hunting. And it's just it's
1:49
Speaker 1: so relevant to what we do that I had to
1:51
Speaker 1: dive in this one, so we cover all sorts of
1:53
Speaker 1: topics related to shoot. I don't know the value of
1:57
Speaker 1: being bored, the value of taking on horror challenges, pushing yourself,
2:01
Speaker 1: getting uh not only uncomfortable, but getting bored, getting physically challenged, uh,
2:08
Speaker 1: getting hungry. I mean, as I say all these different things,
2:11
Speaker 1: I'm sure you're thinking, Yep, done that, Yep, done that, Yep,
2:14
Speaker 1: done that. We as hunters are fortunate that we're actually
2:16
Speaker 1: getting to uh live a lot of the stuff that
2:19
Speaker 1: he touched on here in the book. But it's really
2:21
Speaker 1: particularly interesting is he not only kind of talked about
2:24
Speaker 1: the common sense stuff that I think a lot of
2:26
Speaker 1: us think intuitively, but He's actually found research and science
2:31
Speaker 1: and and really solid numbers and data to back up
2:34
Speaker 1: a lot of things I think a lot of us believe.
2:37
Speaker 1: Now we can point to a lot of stuff that
2:39
Speaker 1: backs all that up. So I think it's I think
2:42
Speaker 1: I should just stop rambling. I think we should get
2:44
Speaker 1: into it. Really interesting conversation. I thoroughly enjoy what Michael
2:48
Speaker 1: had to share with this today, and I highly recommend
2:50
Speaker 1: this book. This has been one of the better books
2:51
Speaker 1: I've read yet this year. Highly recommend The Comfort Crisis.
2:54
Speaker 1: And I think anyone out there who enjoys the outdoors,
2:57
Speaker 1: who enjoys the hunt, who's into this kind of stuff,
2:59
Speaker 1: I think you will really enjoy this book. It's going
3:01
Speaker 1: to give you a great reason to keep doing what
3:04
Speaker 1: you're doing and to encourage others to try it out too. So,
3:07
Speaker 1: without any further ado, let's get into my conversation with
3:11
Speaker 1: Michael Easter. All right, I am excited to have on
3:16
Speaker 1: the line here with me, Michael Easter. Michael, welcome the show.
3:21
Speaker 1: All right, Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, I
3:24
Speaker 1: I appreciate you being here. I'm looking forward to this
3:27
Speaker 1: one because it is you know, I mentioned this to
3:31
Speaker 1: you just a second ago before we started recording your book,
3:35
Speaker 1: The Comfort Crisis puts puts evidence in science and a
3:41
Speaker 1: framework behind a lot of things that I have intuitively
3:45
Speaker 1: believed for a long time. Uh, and that I would
3:48
Speaker 1: tell my wife about, or i'd tell people that I
3:50
Speaker 1: used to work with or something. And now I can
3:53
Speaker 1: just say, hey, read this book and you'll get it.
3:55
Speaker 1: And UM, that's a very handy tool I think that
3:58
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have now and for a lot people, because
4:01
Speaker 1: you know that the subtitle of your book here has
4:03
Speaker 1: embraced discomfort to reclaim your wild, happy, healthy self, and
4:08
Speaker 1: and so much of what you talk about in this book,
4:11
Speaker 1: UM just kind of puts words to how I've tried
4:17
Speaker 1: to to live my life in a lot of ways.
4:19
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of folks listening to this
4:21
Speaker 1: podcast have as well. So after I read it, I
4:24
Speaker 1: knew my listeners would be really into this one. And
4:28
Speaker 1: that's a long window way of saying, Michael, thanks for
4:30
Speaker 1: being here. And UM, I guess to start before we
4:35
Speaker 1: even get to know you, what's your what's your argument
4:39
Speaker 1: with this book? Like, what why did you write this?
4:41
Speaker 1: What's the thesis here? What does the world need to
4:45
Speaker 1: know that you're giving them with this book. Yeah, well,
4:49
Speaker 1: first of all, I'm glad you liked it. I'm glad
4:51
Speaker 1: I've given you a tool and uh put some science
4:54
Speaker 1: behind these ideas that you know you've had. And I
4:57
Speaker 1: think we all sort of intuitively had, um but kind
5:00
Speaker 1: of in a unique position to look into some of
5:03
Speaker 1: the stuff in the book as my background as a
5:06
Speaker 1: health and science journalists. So I'll give you the short
5:09
Speaker 1: answer in the long answer the book. The short answer
5:11
Speaker 1: is that in The Comfort Crisis, I investigate basically how
5:14
Speaker 1: our modern day comforts and conveniences are linked to a
5:18
Speaker 1: lot of our most pressing problems today, So things like obesity,
5:21
Speaker 1: chronic disease, depression, even feeling sort of a lack of
5:26
Speaker 1: meaning like why am I here? Um? And how by
5:29
Speaker 1: stepping outside of our comfort zones in a variety of
5:31
Speaker 1: different ways, we can dramatically improve our overall mental, physical,
5:35
Speaker 1: and even spiritual well being. So to investigate this idea,
5:41
Speaker 1: I traveled about thirty thousand miles around the world. I
5:45
Speaker 1: met with experts ranging from Harvard researchers and Icelandic geneticist
5:50
Speaker 1: to Buddhist lamas and Special Forces soldiers. And what I
5:54
Speaker 1: think will be interesting to your audiences that I spent
5:57
Speaker 1: thirty three days in the Alaskan back country up in
6:00
Speaker 1: the Arctic on a caribou hunt, and that hunt serves
6:04
Speaker 1: as the overarching narrative of the book that kind of
6:08
Speaker 1: gets me into each of these discomforts that we've essentially
6:11
Speaker 1: removed from our lives that are important for us as
6:16
Speaker 1: human beings in a variety of ways. Yeah. Yeah, and
6:19
Speaker 1: that that through that through line, that narrative of that
6:23
Speaker 1: caribou hunt was was fascinating, partly because I think almost
6:30
Speaker 1: anyone who loves wild places loves a good story up
6:32
Speaker 1: in Alaska, right, that's the dream, the final front tire
6:35
Speaker 1: for so many of us that want to be uh
6:38
Speaker 1: people want to be in those places. And it also
6:40
Speaker 1: took me back to some experiences I had up in
6:42
Speaker 1: Alaska chasing, chasing cariboo as well. You just got it
6:46
Speaker 1: for a much longer period of time, So I was
6:48
Speaker 1: was jealous of the full month plus you got to
6:51
Speaker 1: spend out there, and with a really interesting guy too.
6:53
Speaker 1: You you got to spend time with Donnie Vincent, who
6:56
Speaker 1: has been on this podcast a handful of times and
6:58
Speaker 1: is well known of than our community, and a great
7:01
Speaker 1: representative of our committees. So you've got a great introduction
7:04
Speaker 1: to it. I did, yeah, And so the kind of
7:07
Speaker 1: let people know how it all came together, I guess
7:10
Speaker 1: is that My background is that I'm a journalist who
7:12
Speaker 1: writes about the science of human health and performance. I
7:15
Speaker 1: have my entire career, so I've worked in I'm a
7:18
Speaker 1: professor at un LV right now, and before that, I
7:22
Speaker 1: worked at Men's Health Magazine. I've written for Outside Magazine,
7:26
Speaker 1: Scientific American, all these kind of places. So background has
7:28
Speaker 1: kind of an investigative journalist. And early on in my
7:32
Speaker 1: career I've sort of noticed that anything that improves us
7:35
Speaker 1: usually requires going through some form of discomfort. So for example,
7:40
Speaker 1: exercise weight loss. You know, going out in nature is uncomfortable,
7:44
Speaker 1: but we know nature is good for us. And as
7:47
Speaker 1: a writer, I'm always sort of drawn to people who
7:50
Speaker 1: live on the edges. And through this work I've done
7:53
Speaker 1: meeting all these different characters working for magazines, I became
7:56
Speaker 1: good friends with Donnie, So all your readers are sorry
8:00
Speaker 1: at readers, I'm so used to saying that. Because I'm
8:01
Speaker 1: a writer, all your listeners will know Donnie. And he
8:06
Speaker 1: invited me to come up on this thirty three day
8:09
Speaker 1: hunt in the Arctic with him, and you know, I
8:13
Speaker 1: had never hunted before. I mean, I've been drug along
8:15
Speaker 1: on some hunts when I was a kid, but it
8:17
Speaker 1: was mostly just guys tipping back whiskey. And you know,
8:20
Speaker 1: I've done some outdoor things, but not really anything this
8:23
Speaker 1: you know, long or or epic, or really embedded myself
8:27
Speaker 1: in a place that long. And I get up there
8:31
Speaker 1: and it was this completely new experience for me. You know,
8:35
Speaker 1: because of my background, I thought I sort of knew
8:38
Speaker 1: h everything about health and hardship, and you know, I
8:43
Speaker 1: embedded myself and some of the world's most extreme gym's
8:47
Speaker 1: and kind of done some crazy endurance events and talked
8:49
Speaker 1: to all the gurus and researchers, and I got up
8:52
Speaker 1: there and it's just unlike anything I'd ever experienced because
8:55
Speaker 1: I was out of my comfort zone in a variety
8:58
Speaker 1: of ways the entire time. So it's like, you know,
9:02
Speaker 1: these discomforts I faced that things like constantly hungry because
9:06
Speaker 1: you know, we're not packing in a ton of food
9:08
Speaker 1: and we're moving all day. We're carrying everything we need
9:12
Speaker 1: on our backs, you know, so it's everything requires effort.
9:16
Speaker 1: It's freezing cold up there. So I'm from I live
9:18
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas. Going from Vegas to the Arctic was like,
9:22
Speaker 1: oh my god, Like I was just freezing um exposure
9:26
Speaker 1: to the weather, even things like being in this insane silence.
9:32
Speaker 1: It's just so different than the world we live in today.
9:37
Speaker 1: And you know, there's also everything is challenging, Like we
9:39
Speaker 1: got put in positions where failure could have meant i
9:43
Speaker 1: mean true, true danger, and all this stuff kind of
9:46
Speaker 1: amplified over time. You know. It's like the longer you're
9:48
Speaker 1: out there, the more intense this kind of gets. And
9:52
Speaker 1: but anyways, we make it out. It was it was
9:55
Speaker 1: an amazing time. But when I get back to my modern,
9:59
Speaker 1: comfortable life, I'm I mean, I'm totally transformed after going
10:02
Speaker 1: through all these discomforts, I'm like ten pounds lighter, I'm
10:05
Speaker 1: fitter than I've ever been, you know. But I think
10:08
Speaker 1: more importantly, it just felt like just the dial on
10:11
Speaker 1: my physical, mental, i mean, even spiritual health and how
10:15
Speaker 1: I saw the world had kind of been moved ten notches.
10:18
Speaker 1: It's kind of like this reset on my life, you know.
10:22
Speaker 1: And and having written about health for more than a
10:26
Speaker 1: decade and all these topics like this is the thing
10:28
Speaker 1: that moved things the most for me. And it was like,
10:32
Speaker 1: what the hell happened up there, you know? And I
10:36
Speaker 1: kind of realized I thought back to that observation I
10:38
Speaker 1: made about discomfort, and then I kind of saw my
10:43
Speaker 1: modern life since I've been out in the Arctic where
10:47
Speaker 1: things that are hard and everything requires work and effort,
10:50
Speaker 1: and then I look at my life in Vegas and
10:53
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, my god, Like humans are so unbelievably
10:57
Speaker 1: comfortable in every single way now, Like we've engineered literally
11:00
Speaker 1: everything in modern life to be easy, to be effortless,
11:03
Speaker 1: and to be comfortable. So that goes I mean, think
11:06
Speaker 1: about your daily life now. It's like we live in
11:08
Speaker 1: buildings and that our climate control, and we have easy
11:12
Speaker 1: access to food. Food is always there. We don't really
11:15
Speaker 1: have to move or work at all to make a living. Um,
11:18
Speaker 1: all these things are great, but they've also taken something
11:21
Speaker 1: away from us, right, So I wanted to know, you know,
11:25
Speaker 1: are there any downsides to all this comfort we live
11:27
Speaker 1: in and are there any legitimate science back benefits to
11:32
Speaker 1: pushing against comfort and sort of seeking out discomfort. So
11:36
Speaker 1: that started this big investigation into the science and I
11:41
Speaker 1: traveled around the world to meet all kinds of difference,
11:45
Speaker 1: interesting characters who are sort of living on the edges
11:48
Speaker 1: and and investigating this idea all in their own unique way.
11:52
Speaker 1: So I went to UH, I met researchers at Harvard,
11:55
Speaker 1: I met some doctors at the Mayo Clinic, special Forces
11:58
Speaker 1: soldiers like I'm mentioned, Buddhist leaders and Bhutan I mean, neuroscientists,
12:03
Speaker 1: just people all across the board. And I came to
12:06
Speaker 1: the conclusion that I stated before that you know, there
12:10
Speaker 1: are definite downsides to all the comforts that we live
12:13
Speaker 1: in and having to never be challenged in a variety
12:16
Speaker 1: of ways. And by getting out our our comfort zones
12:20
Speaker 1: in a handful of ways, we can move the dial
12:23
Speaker 1: on things for ourselves and sort of exploring our edges,
12:27
Speaker 1: we grow. And you know, some of these ways that
12:30
Speaker 1: you can insert discomfort back into your life or relatively easy,
12:34
Speaker 1: and some you have to you have to do something
12:36
Speaker 1: a little more epic, you know, you have to go
12:38
Speaker 1: out and really really push against your edges. So that's
12:41
Speaker 1: kind of how I ended up investigating this. That's interesting.
12:46
Speaker 1: I was going to ask you whether you had gone
12:50
Speaker 1: into that hunt knowing you were writing this book already
12:52
Speaker 1: and you were looking at that as this great place
12:55
Speaker 1: to test things or if that hunt, you know, inspired
12:58
Speaker 1: you to dive in, so it's interest didn't get that backstory. Um,
13:02
Speaker 1: it's funny. So much of of how I talk about
13:07
Speaker 1: hunting with you know, my non hunting friends or family
13:10
Speaker 1: revolves around some similar things to that which you just described.
13:14
Speaker 1: You know, I've I've always thought that hunting is one
13:17
Speaker 1: of those most human activities. It presses these buttons that
13:21
Speaker 1: are hardwired deep into the essence of of who we
13:25
Speaker 1: are and what we are. And you made the point
13:27
Speaker 1: in the beginning of your book that, you know, the
13:30
Speaker 1: modern conveniences that we enjoy today, all that stuff you
13:33
Speaker 1: describe that makes our life so relatively easy in a
13:36
Speaker 1: lot of ways, that's only been around a hundred years
13:39
Speaker 1: or so. But the species that we are, Homo sapiens,
13:42
Speaker 1: we've been around for two hundred to three hundred thousand years.
13:45
Speaker 1: So that means this modern comfort thing we're experiencing now
13:49
Speaker 1: is point zero three percent of our time on Earth.
13:52
Speaker 1: That's how long we've had to adapt to this new
13:55
Speaker 1: world we're in. The rest of our process of become
14:00
Speaker 1: the humans was living a very, very very different lifestyle,
14:04
Speaker 1: which is what our bodies are biologically built to do
14:07
Speaker 1: and our minds are built to do. We're not doing
14:09
Speaker 1: a lot of that stuff anymore. So it makes sense
14:11
Speaker 1: that that could you know, lead to challenges, lead to issues,
14:16
Speaker 1: and lead to some of us having these desires to
14:21
Speaker 1: connect back to that stuff that made us who we are.
14:23
Speaker 1: So for me, that that's hunting, and you you point
14:27
Speaker 1: out a lot of different ways that you can be
14:29
Speaker 1: doing that across the board. Um, But let's talk about
14:33
Speaker 1: the downfalls of comforts. This is something that you discussed
14:37
Speaker 1: quite a bit too. You know, this radical, um left
14:42
Speaker 1: turn away from what humans were kind of built to do,
14:45
Speaker 1: all this stuff that we now have that's made life
14:48
Speaker 1: so much easier, uh so less physically stressful in certain ways, etcetera, etcetera.
14:54
Speaker 1: What are the what are the symptoms of that that
14:56
Speaker 1: we're seeing now, um, that you found as you started
14:59
Speaker 1: research in this? Oh man, I mean there are so
15:02
Speaker 1: many and it's I kind of frame it like this,
15:07
Speaker 1: and I sort of hinted at this when I was
15:09
Speaker 1: talking initially about the book. But it's like, just stop
15:11
Speaker 1: and look, like, look at everything around you. Everything around
15:15
Speaker 1: you right now is all it's all been invented within
15:18
Speaker 1: a hundred years. Like the stuff that is most influencing
15:20
Speaker 1: your life every single day, it's all brand new. So
15:24
Speaker 1: even I mean you're probably like sitting and listening to
15:27
Speaker 1: this right now, Like chairs aren't that old, or like
15:31
Speaker 1: we invented them a couple a few hundred years ago,
15:33
Speaker 1: you know, climate control, even the shoes on your feet, transportation,
15:38
Speaker 1: how we have it now, the food we eat and
15:40
Speaker 1: it's availability, your constant distractions, like media, I mean, media
15:44
Speaker 1: is only digital media is only about a hundred years old,
15:47
Speaker 1: you know. And we involved We evolved in these really
15:50
Speaker 1: rough and tumble environments where we didn't have all these
15:53
Speaker 1: things that made our lives easier, so we developed these
15:57
Speaker 1: drives always be comfortable. So this is why, this is
16:02
Speaker 1: why we get hungry, right Hunger sucks, and it's basically
16:05
Speaker 1: telling you. It's your body telling you, hey, you need
16:07
Speaker 1: to go out and get food, and I'm gonna make
16:09
Speaker 1: you feel really bad right now, so that when you
16:12
Speaker 1: do get food, you'll feel better and then you'll know, hey,
16:15
Speaker 1: I need to eat more. Um everything, I mean, movement,
16:18
Speaker 1: like having to exercise. The reason that exercise is so
16:22
Speaker 1: uncomfortable is because in our past environments there just weren't
16:25
Speaker 1: enough resources where it would it never made sense to
16:28
Speaker 1: do any sort of extra effort, right because there's just
16:31
Speaker 1: not enough food around to burn those extra calories. So
16:35
Speaker 1: your body, just our bodies evolved to not want to
16:38
Speaker 1: do any extra effort. And now in today's society, where
16:43
Speaker 1: there's food everywhere, our body is still telling us, hey,
16:46
Speaker 1: you should eat more because that keeps you safe, and hey,
16:49
Speaker 1: why would just sit around? That's so much better for us,
16:52
Speaker 1: you know, But that's not the case anymore. So anthropologists
16:56
Speaker 1: call this an evolutionary mismatch. Is essentially when we develop
17:00
Speaker 1: up developed traits that in one environment are advantageous and
17:04
Speaker 1: help us survive and procreate, and then we move into
17:08
Speaker 1: a different environment, they can backfire more or less. And
17:11
Speaker 1: I love what you said to about there being something
17:16
Speaker 1: I think inherently human about hunting. Now going into this,
17:23
Speaker 1: I've never hunted before, and I could see that I
17:26
Speaker 1: could see that would be the case, but having to
17:29
Speaker 1: experience it, I think was a it was a really
17:32
Speaker 1: new interesting experience for me across the board. And I
17:37
Speaker 1: think you're right, like hunting, we're so removed from the
17:42
Speaker 1: modern environment when we're hunting. And I'm saying this as
17:45
Speaker 1: a person who's only been a few times so um,
17:49
Speaker 1: but it's just radically different than even you know, climbing
17:52
Speaker 1: a mountain or doing any other random outdoor activities that
17:56
Speaker 1: a lot of people do today. Where we're on this
17:57
Speaker 1: sort of trail and we don't veer off the trail
18:01
Speaker 1: um and hunting. We're really embedding ourselves in the wild,
18:04
Speaker 1: and there are scientific benefits to that for our brains
18:08
Speaker 1: and bodies and having to engage with the life cycle too.
18:11
Speaker 1: I mean that was a huge leap for me as well. Right,
18:13
Speaker 1: It's like before this, it was like, oh, yeah, meat
18:16
Speaker 1: just magically appears at the grocery store, just go down
18:18
Speaker 1: and buy it. I never thought about meat, you know.
18:21
Speaker 1: It's just like you grow up eating meat and whatever.
18:24
Speaker 1: That's what you do. Yeah, exactly, And there's no problem.
18:30
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not criticizing that at all, because it's
18:33
Speaker 1: just I mean, it's amazing that we have such a
18:36
Speaker 1: great food system that can keep us all alive. But there,
18:39
Speaker 1: but I think there are tangible benefits to having to
18:43
Speaker 1: think about where your meat comes from and where your
18:45
Speaker 1: food comes from and go through these periods where you know,
18:48
Speaker 1: maybe you experience a little hunger. Yeah, you you point
18:53
Speaker 1: out five kind of overarching themes, five categories of discomfort
18:58
Speaker 1: in some way that you explore the you know how
19:02
Speaker 1: we've kind of how we've moved away from them and
19:05
Speaker 1: learned as a society to avoid them. And then you
19:08
Speaker 1: know what the contrarian position, actually embracing these different discomforts
19:14
Speaker 1: can can lead to in a positive way. And and
19:17
Speaker 1: I want to walk through each one of these. I'll
19:20
Speaker 1: I will simplify and over generalize a title for each
19:23
Speaker 1: one and kind of set us up. Basically, the first
19:25
Speaker 1: one is doing hardship, the second one is being bored,
19:28
Speaker 1: the third one is getting really hungry, the fourth one
19:31
Speaker 1: is getting comfortable with mortality. And the fifth one was,
19:35
Speaker 1: like you said, exercise work in your body. And and
19:39
Speaker 1: like I mentioned at the top, this is basically um
19:43
Speaker 1: like a thesis that proves why people should hunt. I mean,
19:47
Speaker 1: all five of those things are discomforts you have to
19:51
Speaker 1: learn to embrace within the hunting experience. And that when
19:57
Speaker 1: I explain to people like why I do this, I
19:59
Speaker 1: could basically walk you through those five things and how
20:01
Speaker 1: I've been pushed in these different five categories to learn
20:05
Speaker 1: more about myself, or learn more about the natural world,
20:08
Speaker 1: or learn more about our connection to these things and
20:10
Speaker 1: animals and life and each other and and all this stuff.
20:14
Speaker 1: I mean, this is why, this, this one specific experience
20:18
Speaker 1: that I'm involved in has helped me grow and and
20:21
Speaker 1: I think you make the point in in your book
20:23
Speaker 1: that there's a lot of other ways that you can
20:25
Speaker 1: do that, but it's it's nice that I had this
20:29
Speaker 1: one example that it just so perfectly lined up with it.
20:33
Speaker 1: As I read through all these is like yes, yes, yes,
20:36
Speaker 1: um more please I get it. Um. So let's let's
20:40
Speaker 1: examine that first one, which is something that I feel
20:44
Speaker 1: like deep down in my bones so often when I
20:47
Speaker 1: feel that I'm experiencing the lack of it. So, you know,
20:51
Speaker 1: do hard stuff, and I think you're one of your
20:54
Speaker 1: title chapters that do hard stuff. Um, outside as much
20:58
Speaker 1: as possible something like that. Um. Can you talk a
21:01
Speaker 1: little bit about just that kind of introductory theme that
21:05
Speaker 1: you explain in here and how everything you know, we
21:08
Speaker 1: are getting soft in a lot of ways, we're not
21:10
Speaker 1: challenging ourselves in certain ways. UM. I love the missagi
21:14
Speaker 1: concept that you talked about in there, too. So can
21:16
Speaker 1: you kind of introduce the set up there on on
21:19
Speaker 1: that one and that I'd love to, you know, explore
21:21
Speaker 1: some of the different ways you found people adding new
21:25
Speaker 1: challenges to their life and what that gives them totally.
21:28
Speaker 1: So the idea is basically this, if you look at
21:31
Speaker 1: our past lifestyles, I mean, we did epic challenges in
21:35
Speaker 1: nature all the time, and this was all without safety nets,
21:38
Speaker 1: and this was just a part of life. So this
21:40
Speaker 1: could be something like having to hunt, going on an
21:45
Speaker 1: epic hunt. Uh, this could be we have to move
21:48
Speaker 1: down to our summarine grounds and we have to to
21:51
Speaker 1: you know, go over this pass and the weather is
21:54
Speaker 1: coming in, and there's all these things we did that
21:56
Speaker 1: we're challenging. And each time we would complete one of
21:59
Speaker 1: these challenges, we'd sort of go outside of our comfort zone.
22:03
Speaker 1: We'd get put in a position where failure could be
22:06
Speaker 1: very dangerous, but we'd have to dig deep and we'd
22:08
Speaker 1: make it through, and then we learned something about ourselves
22:11
Speaker 1: and we would expand our potential. Right. We know that
22:14
Speaker 1: when people do hard things and come out the other side,
22:17
Speaker 1: they are improved from that. But in modern life, we
22:20
Speaker 1: don't have real challenges like today. You can live a
22:25
Speaker 1: normal life and literally never be challenged at any time,
22:28
Speaker 1: and that isn't that isn't okay life. Um. But by
22:32
Speaker 1: never exploring the edges of your potential, you never really
22:35
Speaker 1: know what you're capable of. Today, we have an outsize
22:40
Speaker 1: fear of failure because nowadays, what is failure for the
22:44
Speaker 1: average American? It's like, oh, I was presenting to my
22:50
Speaker 1: office and I messed up a slide and my boss
22:53
Speaker 1: gave me a bad look, and oh my god, that
22:55
Speaker 1: was that was just terrible. Everybody saw the finale of
22:58
Speaker 1: Game of Thrones and I missed it. Yeah, that's exactly it.
23:02
Speaker 1: Or it's like I didn't get enough likes on this Instagram.
23:05
Speaker 1: Oh my god, my life is falling apart. Right. So,
23:09
Speaker 1: because we never challenge ourselves with these real things that
23:12
Speaker 1: are dangerous, we now we now view these very minuscule
23:18
Speaker 1: quote unquote failures in our lives with this outsized fear,
23:22
Speaker 1: and we have an outsized reaction to them. So this
23:25
Speaker 1: is why they think why a lot of researchers think
23:27
Speaker 1: that depression and anxiety are so high, particularly among young people.
23:32
Speaker 1: If you look at how um the generations have unfolded
23:36
Speaker 1: like there was this, there's this spike in anxiety and
23:38
Speaker 1: depression among kids born after and that is when helicopter
23:43
Speaker 1: parenting became a thing. When you know, kids couldn't go
23:46
Speaker 1: outside anymore. Because there was a lot of reasons this happened,
23:50
Speaker 1: but mostly there was like media fears around kidnapping. So
23:53
Speaker 1: it's like kids couldn't go outside. Uh, you know, playgrounds
23:57
Speaker 1: became all plastics, so you couldn't bump your head that
24:01
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Um. So the idea that I lay
24:05
Speaker 1: out in the book is this concept called missaggi. And
24:08
Speaker 1: now I learned this from a guy whose name is
24:12
Speaker 1: Marcus Elliott, and his background is he's a Harvard trained
24:16
Speaker 1: m d. He uh is sort of a pioneer in
24:21
Speaker 1: sports science. I mean, he's one of the leading sports
24:23
Speaker 1: scientists in the country. He his first job as he
24:26
Speaker 1: worked for the Patriots, he reduced their injury rates too,
24:30
Speaker 1: from I think it was like twenty one hamstring injuries
24:32
Speaker 1: a year down to three. Helped them win some Super Bowls.
24:36
Speaker 1: And he was like the performance director of Major League Baseball.
24:39
Speaker 1: And now he opened his own facility and he has
24:42
Speaker 1: a partnership with the NBA and NBA players come through
24:45
Speaker 1: there and he does all this really fascinating science around
24:48
Speaker 1: movement and injury risk and training. So I told you
24:51
Speaker 1: all that to basically tell you that he's a smart
24:53
Speaker 1: guy who's super into all this numbers and data and figures,
24:58
Speaker 1: but being this guy whose job is to basic make
25:01
Speaker 1: people perform better. He also told me, like a lot
25:05
Speaker 1: of this stuff can't be measured, and there are certain
25:07
Speaker 1: things that you can do to improve performance. So he
25:11
Speaker 1: calls this thing he does uh massouga. He started doing
25:14
Speaker 1: this when he was in grad school at Harvard, and
25:20
Speaker 1: once a year he picks one really epic task in
25:24
Speaker 1: nature and the rule is is that it has to
25:28
Speaker 1: be really hard, which he defines by saying it has
25:31
Speaker 1: to you have to have a fifty percent chance failing it.
25:34
Speaker 1: And then rule number two is that you can't die.
25:37
Speaker 1: So yeah, exactly, he makes up these wacky challenges like
25:44
Speaker 1: he's him and athletes will go out and his friends
25:48
Speaker 1: and for example, one of them, they got this eight
25:51
Speaker 1: five pound boulder and they walked it five miles under
25:57
Speaker 1: water under the ocean off the coast of Santa Barbara.
26:00
Speaker 1: Took them like five six hours. They had no idea.
26:02
Speaker 1: I mean, they don't train for any of these things.
26:04
Speaker 1: It's just like we're gonna do something crazy in nature,
26:08
Speaker 1: and there's going to be all these moments where we
26:10
Speaker 1: want to quit. Um, we're only gonna have a half
26:13
Speaker 1: a chance of actually finishing this thing. But along the way,
26:16
Speaker 1: we're gonna like learn something about ourselves and what we're
26:18
Speaker 1: truly capable of and face these you know, sort of
26:21
Speaker 1: real challenges and face down our fears. And by coming
26:24
Speaker 1: out the other side of that, it's like you can
26:26
Speaker 1: bring those tools back into your normal life to really
26:30
Speaker 1: move the dit you know. Yeah, man, there's there's so
26:36
Speaker 1: that idea resonates with me so much, and it's it's
26:40
Speaker 1: it's kind of funny. There's I've been reading a lot
26:43
Speaker 1: about a very separate, well maybe not entirely separate idea
26:47
Speaker 1: around evolution and extinction and how a lot of extinction events,
26:53
Speaker 1: you know, this being kind of the opposite of evolution happens.
26:56
Speaker 1: You know, it's a long, slow trickle of these things happening,
26:59
Speaker 1: and then there's these punctuations of massive change that you know,
27:04
Speaker 1: are are where the real change happens. You know, environmental
27:07
Speaker 1: conditions warp dramatically, forcing immediate adaptation or extinction. Um. And
27:13
Speaker 1: so you have these events that these these staccato events, um,
27:17
Speaker 1: that define life or the lack thereof. And if you
27:23
Speaker 1: so that's like on the macro scale, if you zoom
27:25
Speaker 1: that into the micro scale of individual lives, I think
27:28
Speaker 1: you make a case that the exact same thing is true.
27:31
Speaker 1: You know, like so much of our life is just
27:33
Speaker 1: it's just day by day doing the same kind of thing,
27:36
Speaker 1: Groundhog's day, YadA, YadA, YadA. And then we have these events,
27:40
Speaker 1: we have these challenges, whether it's you know, uh self induced,
27:44
Speaker 1: we've we've taken it upon ourselves to do and to
27:47
Speaker 1: have a challenge, or something comes out of the blue
27:50
Speaker 1: hits you over the head and changes your life for you.
27:53
Speaker 1: But I think so much of your life is colored
27:57
Speaker 1: by these tough things. Um. Sometimes it can be fun,
28:01
Speaker 1: sometimes not so much. But in this case, like this
28:04
Speaker 1: is a way to steer positive change in your life
28:08
Speaker 1: by creating those tough, challenging events. UM. And I love it.
28:14
Speaker 1: It's something that I've tried to do and always want
28:15
Speaker 1: to do more of. I crave you know, challenges, goals,
28:21
Speaker 1: testing yourself. UM. I don't know if you've ever heard
28:24
Speaker 1: a lot of folks, I think it's I think it
28:26
Speaker 1: was first popularized within the climbing world. But there's this
28:29
Speaker 1: concept of type one, two and three fun. Are you
28:32
Speaker 1: familiar with that? So so I love this idea. Type
28:38
Speaker 1: one fun is like you're gonna go play basketball your buddies,
28:42
Speaker 1: you're gonna go watch a movie, or you go and
28:44
Speaker 1: take a roller coaster ride or something like. It's it's
28:47
Speaker 1: simple fun. That's fun at the moment, but it's the
28:50
Speaker 1: kind of fun that you know, it's it's great right
28:52
Speaker 1: now and then, but a day or two from now,
28:54
Speaker 1: right it's kind of slipped away. It's nothing that substantial.
28:57
Speaker 1: Type too fun is the kind of fun where I
29:00
Speaker 1: think a Massagi falls into this category where you're doing
29:05
Speaker 1: something in the moment. Man, it is tough, it is challenging.
29:09
Speaker 1: You might look at your buddy you're climbing a mountain
29:11
Speaker 1: and you look at your friend like, man, this is stupid,
29:14
Speaker 1: ship like we are, this is miserable, this is crazy,
29:18
Speaker 1: But you do it. You get through it, and the
29:20
Speaker 1: next day you're you know, you're beaming like, man, that
29:24
Speaker 1: was incredible, that was amazing. I can't believe we did that.
29:27
Speaker 1: And and a year later you're telling the story and
29:30
Speaker 1: five years later, when your buddies get back together and
29:32
Speaker 1: you're having a beer, you're telling the story again. Those
29:34
Speaker 1: are the things that I live for. I live for
29:37
Speaker 1: like that type two stuff, and then type three is
29:40
Speaker 1: this stuff like where you just about die and it's
29:45
Speaker 1: scary as hell and maybe it's not fun at all,
29:47
Speaker 1: but it makes her a great story. So usually sweet
29:49
Speaker 1: spots the type two fun um. But I feel like
29:53
Speaker 1: this concept that you've been writing about, you know, it
29:55
Speaker 1: fits into that a lot. I mean, whether it's planning
30:00
Speaker 1: a week on backpacking trip or a crazy day like
30:03
Speaker 1: what you're describing Elliott was doing, or people you know
30:07
Speaker 1: that sign up for one of these hundred mile ultramarathons.
30:12
Speaker 1: I mean, anything like that that just like pushes you
30:14
Speaker 1: to go beyond what you think is possible and make
30:17
Speaker 1: you do something crazy and forces you to to to
30:21
Speaker 1: to just like dig in um, there's just I mean,
30:25
Speaker 1: there just seems to be so much, so much positive
30:28
Speaker 1: that comes out of it and you and you, I
30:30
Speaker 1: mean the science backs that up right. I Mean there's
30:32
Speaker 1: a lot of things that come from those. Yeah, well
30:34
Speaker 1: think of um, think of the work of Joseph Campbell,
30:37
Speaker 1: who's the guy I mean he's this Uh. He came
30:39
Speaker 1: up with this idea of the hero's journey because he
30:41
Speaker 1: investigated all these different cultures around the world and he
30:45
Speaker 1: found that most of their stories of myths they have
30:49
Speaker 1: the same key elements, and it's that the hero leaves
30:53
Speaker 1: the comfort of their normal life. They go out into
30:57
Speaker 1: this trying, uncomfortable middle ground. They really you know, battle
31:01
Speaker 1: and they're up against it. They're uncomfortable, they're not sure
31:03
Speaker 1: if they're going to make it to the other side,
31:05
Speaker 1: but they do, they succeed, and then they come back
31:08
Speaker 1: into their normal life and they are better for it,
31:10
Speaker 1: and they have evolved as a person. So this is
31:13
Speaker 1: the same concept of like a right of passage, which
31:16
Speaker 1: is another thing that young people don't have, you know. Um.
31:19
Speaker 1: In traditional cultures, a right of passage was usually this
31:22
Speaker 1: sort of epic nature based physical challenge. Like the Massi
31:26
Speaker 1: tribe they would send their young out to hunt a
31:29
Speaker 1: lion with a spear. Um there's I mean, the the
31:34
Speaker 1: Inuit would send young people out to hunt caribou and
31:39
Speaker 1: narwhall and those sort of things out in the you know,
31:42
Speaker 1: challenging environment, and then they come back and they're better
31:44
Speaker 1: for that and we don't have that, And I mean,
31:46
Speaker 1: I even think of in your book, there's the scene
31:50
Speaker 1: where you and your buddy are headed into the Bob
31:53
Speaker 1: Marshall Wilderness and you've got these pack graphs, right, and
31:57
Speaker 1: you're like going to get across this, uh, this lake
32:01
Speaker 1: or this pond, and the weather is just hammering you
32:04
Speaker 1: and it's very clearly dangerous and and like your mind
32:08
Speaker 1: is what the hell are we doing out here? And
32:10
Speaker 1: then you guys just look at each other and you
32:13
Speaker 1: and you just smile eventually because you're like, this is
32:16
Speaker 1: this is so stupid, but it is so awesome and
32:18
Speaker 1: that's something something, Yeah, that's something you're never going to
32:22
Speaker 1: forget the rest of your life. And you mentioned before
32:25
Speaker 1: it's our days can get very routine. And there is
32:28
Speaker 1: a very good scientific reason for that. It's because we
32:31
Speaker 1: evolved in these harsh, trying, uncomfortable landscapes. If we could
32:36
Speaker 1: predict something that kept us safe. So our brain wants
32:39
Speaker 1: to keep us in a predictable cycle because that used
32:42
Speaker 1: to help our survival, and those genes were passed on.
32:45
Speaker 1: But nowadays we're living in these worlds where it's so
32:49
Speaker 1: predictable and so survival well, I mean it's hard to
32:52
Speaker 1: die now, right, that it's keeping us within these sort
32:55
Speaker 1: of safety nets that lead us to live these lives
32:58
Speaker 1: that when we look back, know when we're older, we're
33:02
Speaker 1: not gonna have many memories of sitting around watching you know,
33:05
Speaker 1: the tenth season of Top Chef. Uh, you know that
33:08
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. Yeah. No, I'm trying to remember from
33:13
Speaker 1: the reading, were there any specific best practices other than
33:17
Speaker 1: making it hard and not dying? Um? As far as
33:21
Speaker 1: like things to think about if someone's wanting to add
33:24
Speaker 1: this kind of challenge or some kind of event to
33:26
Speaker 1: their life. Um, were there any mad big things I
33:29
Speaker 1: think about there? Yeah? So think, I mean think truly challenging, um,
33:33
Speaker 1: to kind of give them a little more detail on
33:35
Speaker 1: what constitutes hard. So if you, let's say you decide
33:39
Speaker 1: you're going to do some crazy outdoor run. Um, if
33:43
Speaker 1: you've if you're training for that by you know, running
33:46
Speaker 1: ten miles one day, fifteen miles, and you've got this
33:49
Speaker 1: whole training program, and you decide you're gonna run fifty
33:52
Speaker 1: miles and you do like these training runs up to miles,
33:56
Speaker 1: that's not hard enough because you've you've trained yourself into
33:59
Speaker 1: the fact that you're not going to fail. Now, if
34:01
Speaker 1: you decided you were going to run fifty miles and
34:03
Speaker 1: you'd never run say thirty before, and but you thought
34:07
Speaker 1: maybe you could do it now, forty seemed like a
34:09
Speaker 1: pretty big stretch, but maybe you could do it. But
34:12
Speaker 1: fifty you're like, shit, I really don't know. If I
34:14
Speaker 1: could do fifty, well, then that would be hard enough.
34:18
Speaker 1: Like you need to have a real sense that like
34:20
Speaker 1: I may not I may not be able to finish
34:22
Speaker 1: this thing. Rule too, don't die, So that means you know,
34:26
Speaker 1: be safe about this. Take your damn cell phone in
34:29
Speaker 1: case you're like, okay, I need someone to come pick
34:31
Speaker 1: me up or whatever. Um. And then the other ones
34:34
Speaker 1: are that you don't want to do something that is
34:38
Speaker 1: very comparable to You're not doing this, uh to compare
34:42
Speaker 1: yourself to others. So for example, you don't want to
34:45
Speaker 1: be like, oh, well I don't know, Um, this guy
34:49
Speaker 1: ran a marathon and he did it in this time,
34:52
Speaker 1: so I'm just gonna try and do it in a
34:54
Speaker 1: shorter time so I can beat him. So it's like,
34:57
Speaker 1: you want to do this for yourself, and you don't
34:58
Speaker 1: want to share this out on social media because this
35:01
Speaker 1: is really just for you, and it's this one thing
35:04
Speaker 1: where you can think back on and just be like,
35:06
Speaker 1: oh man, I did this weird, quirky thing that I
35:09
Speaker 1: can't compare to anyone else, Like you want to make
35:11
Speaker 1: this for you and your own growth and epic stories,
35:15
Speaker 1: and I mean bring friends along too, right now? Were
35:19
Speaker 1: there any tangible like like what was it Mark Elliot
35:24
Speaker 1: or Matt Elliott, Mark Marcus Marcus Elliott. So when he's
35:28
Speaker 1: pitching this to the athletes, he works with our different
35:31
Speaker 1: things like that, like what's the what's the what what's
35:36
Speaker 1: the take home? Like if you do this, He's not
35:39
Speaker 1: telling me You're just gonna get a good story. He's
35:40
Speaker 1: not telling them you're just gonna be better for it. Um,
35:43
Speaker 1: was he able to was he able to prove any
35:45
Speaker 1: kind of performance improvement or mental health improvement or anything
35:50
Speaker 1: in a quantifiable way? Or are we or are we
35:53
Speaker 1: basically saying, hey, trust me, you're gonna feel like a
35:55
Speaker 1: new person after having tackle the challenge like this. Yeah,
35:58
Speaker 1: it's hard to measure, right, but you know, he says,
36:00
Speaker 1: And it could be it could be a chicken and
36:03
Speaker 1: egg thing where it's like the guys who decided to
36:04
Speaker 1: do this are already ones who are acquired a certain
36:07
Speaker 1: way you don't know, um, but like the guys that
36:10
Speaker 1: he has do it. And you know, he named some
36:13
Speaker 1: names for me and said, don't share them because a
36:16
Speaker 1: lot of these athletes don't want their names out with
36:18
Speaker 1: all this different stuff. But I mean, there's some of
36:19
Speaker 1: the best in the game, and a lot of them
36:21
Speaker 1: are known for these clutch performances, and so it's like
36:26
Speaker 1: they sort of get this inner sense of confidence because
36:30
Speaker 1: it's like, if you've done these really rad, cool, crazy
36:34
Speaker 1: things that you didn't think you could do, but you
36:36
Speaker 1: came out on the other side of that and did it,
36:38
Speaker 1: I can give you a new gear. You're gonna find
36:40
Speaker 1: out a lot about yourself when you're out on those edges,
36:43
Speaker 1: sort of exploring what your edges of tolerance are. Yeah,
36:47
Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense. Another another one of these
36:52
Speaker 1: big discomforts that we've lost in today's day and age
36:58
Speaker 1: is boredom. And man, as I was reading that about
37:03
Speaker 1: this this uh phenomena, I certainly started catching myself doing
37:08
Speaker 1: things so much more often, and I realized how few
37:12
Speaker 1: quiet moments are left in life because we've filled them
37:16
Speaker 1: with with so much distraction. Can you talk a little
37:18
Speaker 1: bit about this, just the epidemic of distraction and lack
37:22
Speaker 1: of boredom and why that's not such a good thing. Yeah.
37:25
Speaker 1: So I started thinking about this because we're in the Arctic,
37:28
Speaker 1: and you know, we're sitting on hills glassing for caribou
37:32
Speaker 1: all day, and I mean it took us, took us
37:35
Speaker 1: a while to find I mean, for any caribou to
37:38
Speaker 1: run through. We're trying to catch and during this migration, right,
37:41
Speaker 1: And so we'd sit on these hills with like glass
37:43
Speaker 1: and scopes. Nothing is happening, and my cell phone doesn't
37:46
Speaker 1: work up there. It's not like I brought a book
37:48
Speaker 1: or a magazine to kill the time. I'm just sitting
37:51
Speaker 1: there doing nothing. Right, So let's start like reading the
37:54
Speaker 1: labels on my energy bars. I'd start reading the tags
37:58
Speaker 1: on my gear, you know, going oh, okay, this is
38:02
Speaker 1: down and wow polyester. Yeah. And but then eventually, you know,
38:09
Speaker 1: you start your mind starts to wander and go to
38:11
Speaker 1: these different places. And so I get home and I
38:15
Speaker 1: start to look into this h and it's so different
38:19
Speaker 1: than life at home, right, Whereas like now when we're board,
38:22
Speaker 1: we just pull out our cell phone. Like how often
38:23
Speaker 1: do you pull out your cell phone, or turn on
38:25
Speaker 1: the TV or whatever, turn on a song or something.
38:29
Speaker 1: Boredom is this boredom is uncomfortable, and there's a good
38:32
Speaker 1: reason for that. It's an evolutionary discomfort that we evolved
38:35
Speaker 1: to have that basically tells us that we are using
38:40
Speaker 1: our time in an inefficient manner. So as we evolved,
38:42
Speaker 1: it would basically kick on any time that we are
38:45
Speaker 1: sitting around because we always needed to be working somehow
38:48
Speaker 1: to gather resources to get ready for the next you know,
38:51
Speaker 1: storm or whatever it was. It would kick on and
38:53
Speaker 1: be like, hey, you can be you should be doing
38:55
Speaker 1: something right now, and we'd go out and do something.
38:58
Speaker 1: But now our escape from boredom. It's, like I said,
39:00
Speaker 1: it's just your cell phone or whatever it is, so
39:02
Speaker 1: we're not We're not using it for productive time anymore.
39:05
Speaker 1: We spend eleven hours and six minutes a day on
39:09
Speaker 1: average engaging with digital media, so that's a few hours
39:14
Speaker 1: from our cell phones. We spend like five hours on
39:17
Speaker 1: average watching TV, and then there's you know, music and
39:20
Speaker 1: all that other stuff. I mean, all this media is
39:23
Speaker 1: not even a hundred years old, Like the radio was invented,
39:26
Speaker 1: I think in the twenties. So we had like we
39:28
Speaker 1: went from this period of life through all the time
39:32
Speaker 1: we evolved, where we would experience these moments of downtime
39:36
Speaker 1: and boredom, and it would often compel us to go
39:38
Speaker 1: do something or think creatively or come up with some
39:41
Speaker 1: new way to improve our lives. Then we invent media,
39:45
Speaker 1: and now it's like when boredom kicks in, it's like
39:47
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna go on YouTube and watch some video.
39:50
Speaker 1: You know, that's not that's not really improving our lives.
39:53
Speaker 1: And the other thing that's interesting about boredom is a
39:56
Speaker 1: lot of times it will force our mind to go inward.
40:00
Speaker 1: We'll start thinking of ideas about how we can improve
40:02
Speaker 1: our lives. We'll come up with plans, will come up
40:05
Speaker 1: with maybe creative ideas. It's like when I was up
40:08
Speaker 1: there in the Arctic, you know, I'd look at nature,
40:11
Speaker 1: I'd noticed things that was interesting, and I think, oh,
40:15
Speaker 1: you know, I just came up with an idea for
40:16
Speaker 1: us for a magazine article. I came up with a
40:18
Speaker 1: bunch of different ideas. I wrote some of the book.
40:20
Speaker 1: I did all these different things that were a little
40:22
Speaker 1: more creative. Um and that's restorative for our brains, whereas
40:27
Speaker 1: a lot of the media that we used to today
40:29
Speaker 1: we're having to look. We're having to focus outwardly, and
40:33
Speaker 1: when your brain is focusing on the outward world, it's
40:35
Speaker 1: actually working very hard. But when we're thinking inwardly, it
40:39
Speaker 1: gives our brain these periods of downtime. It's like these
40:42
Speaker 1: two different modes that scientists talk about. So now that
40:47
Speaker 1: we're on media so much, it's like one, we're just
40:49
Speaker 1: consuming this stuff that isn't really helping our lives a lot.
40:53
Speaker 1: I mean, unfortunately most people don't go, you know, I'm bored.
40:57
Speaker 1: I think I'm gonna open up the encyclopedia and learn
40:59
Speaker 1: something great, like most people are just like Instagram, Twitter, YouTube,
41:04
Speaker 1: whatever it is. And then too, because we're focused outwardly
41:07
Speaker 1: so often, it's really burning out our brains, and this
41:10
Speaker 1: is leaving to leading to burnout. We have a lower
41:14
Speaker 1: ability to focus, our creativity is dropping, we have higher
41:19
Speaker 1: rates of anxiety, like our brains are just burned out.
41:21
Speaker 1: And so by putting ourselves in positions where we can
41:25
Speaker 1: become board, which is another reason hunting is great, because
41:28
Speaker 1: your cell phone often doesn't work out there and you
41:30
Speaker 1: kind of have to just sit with yourself and be
41:32
Speaker 1: with your thoughts. Um, we cannot only sort of begin
41:36
Speaker 1: to think on a different wavelength and think about things
41:39
Speaker 1: that would maybe improve our lives, come up with ideas
41:42
Speaker 1: and all these different things. But we're also just reviving
41:44
Speaker 1: our brains, giving giving ourselves some downtime. Yeah, so what's
41:49
Speaker 1: the prescription other than going hunting more and making sure
41:54
Speaker 1: your phone's off? Yeah? Well, I mean there's so everyone
41:58
Speaker 1: thinks phone and the reason is, I mean, there's good
42:00
Speaker 1: reasons for that. It's because phones are new, and phones
42:03
Speaker 1: are always on us and they actively steal our attention.
42:05
Speaker 1: But so you see all these articles that are like
42:09
Speaker 1: how to break up with your phone, why you need
42:11
Speaker 1: to use your phone less? But I really think about
42:14
Speaker 1: it is you just need more boredom in your life
42:16
Speaker 1: because a lot of people will still put down their phone,
42:18
Speaker 1: but then they'll just flip on the TV. It's like
42:20
Speaker 1: your brand doesn't know the damn difference between the two, right,
42:23
Speaker 1: You're still you're basically doing the same thing. It's just
42:25
Speaker 1: a bigger screen. So I tend to think about it
42:28
Speaker 1: as we need more boredom, And for me, very simple ways,
42:32
Speaker 1: I'm not suggesting that you need to be bored for
42:34
Speaker 1: hours a day. But for me, really simple ways is
42:37
Speaker 1: like go for an afternoon stroll without your cell phone
42:41
Speaker 1: and don't bring your ear pods. Have these have this
42:44
Speaker 1: time where you're just not stimulated by media. A big
42:49
Speaker 1: year long hunt can be good to where you're not
42:51
Speaker 1: bringing your phone to right and just finding ways where
42:54
Speaker 1: you're not going to have that easy, easy access to
42:58
Speaker 1: kill your boredom with a form of digital media or another.
43:01
Speaker 1: I mean, I'll when I go out and do errands,
43:03
Speaker 1: a lot of times I'll just leave my phone at home.
43:05
Speaker 1: It's like people freak out about that. Now, It's like
43:09
Speaker 1: we didn't even have cell phones ten years ago. We're
43:11
Speaker 1: gonna be fine, you know, just having these times where
43:13
Speaker 1: you're not stimulated and you're put in a position to
43:16
Speaker 1: be inside your own head. Yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy
43:19
Speaker 1: that this is one of those things that, at least
43:22
Speaker 1: for me, you don't even realize it. But while I
43:25
Speaker 1: was reading this, it gave me a new sense of
43:28
Speaker 1: self awareness, and I started realizing that I have filled
43:32
Speaker 1: every nook and cranny of my day with some kind
43:35
Speaker 1: of information intake. If I'm not chasing my kids in
43:39
Speaker 1: or working, if I'm not doing those two things that
43:42
Speaker 1: take up a huge part of my life. All the
43:44
Speaker 1: rest of the time, I'm consuming something like when I'm showering,
43:47
Speaker 1: I put on a podcast. When I'm going for a run,
43:50
Speaker 1: I'm listening to an audiobooker podcast. When I drive to
43:53
Speaker 1: the store, I've got something playing ship. Even now, when
43:56
Speaker 1: I go to the grocery store, I put your buds
43:59
Speaker 1: on and I list and this stuff when I'm in
44:00
Speaker 1: the grocery store. Uh. And I realized, Wow, like I'm
44:05
Speaker 1: leaving no gaps at all to just think about stuff,
44:08
Speaker 1: to just let my mind wander. And and like you said,
44:12
Speaker 1: the science is showing that you need that empty space
44:18
Speaker 1: to to to be creative, to be to do so
44:22
Speaker 1: many things. I mean, it's uh, it was. It was
44:24
Speaker 1: an eye opener for me. And so I've actively been trying.
44:27
Speaker 1: And I still have this tendency because I'm just I'm
44:30
Speaker 1: a voracious learner. I just want to learn, learn and learn.
44:32
Speaker 1: I want to know more about that. I want to
44:34
Speaker 1: know arnot that. So I'm constantly trying to consume stuff,
44:36
Speaker 1: but I have to like check myself. So some mornings
44:40
Speaker 1: when I go for my run, I'll be like I
44:42
Speaker 1: can't find a podcast I want. I don't like this one,
44:44
Speaker 1: only this one, and then I'll catch it and I'll
44:45
Speaker 1: be oh, that's a great sign. You don't need to
44:47
Speaker 1: listen to anything, just just run and think and uh
44:50
Speaker 1: and that's been a good thing. I think. Yeah, I'm
44:53
Speaker 1: I'm totally the same way. It's a battle. I mean,
44:55
Speaker 1: what we need to realize is we have these evolutionary
44:58
Speaker 1: impulses one but number two. I mean, there are entire
45:02
Speaker 1: billion dollar companies where people with PhDs sit around all
45:07
Speaker 1: day and think, how can I make this cell phone
45:09
Speaker 1: app more addictive to people? How can I get people
45:12
Speaker 1: to engage with it more time, a more time of
45:15
Speaker 1: their day. And it's like, you know, I know for myself,
45:18
Speaker 1: morons like me, it is a battle to fight against
45:21
Speaker 1: these amazingly engineered apps. But it's you know, it's one
45:25
Speaker 1: we got to fight because I think, like I said,
45:27
Speaker 1: when you look at the data and how it's affecting people,
45:31
Speaker 1: we need those periods of downtime. So it's that's why
45:33
Speaker 1: I do That's why I do the force thing. It's
45:35
Speaker 1: like I don't even want my cell phone on me
45:36
Speaker 1: because I know that my brain is just gonna default
45:38
Speaker 1: to grabbing it if it's just nowhere, and if I
45:41
Speaker 1: can put myself out of the house where there's not
45:43
Speaker 1: screens and stuff, it's like I'm forced into boredom. Yes,
45:48
Speaker 1: so much of this, so much of this is is
45:52
Speaker 1: preempting the impulse. So when you're when your mental state
45:58
Speaker 1: is strong, it's like the same was trying to eat healthy.
46:00
Speaker 1: At least for me, if I just have like junk
46:03
Speaker 1: food around the house, then it's gonna catch me at
46:06
Speaker 1: moments when I'm vulnerable and it's there and I'm gonna
46:09
Speaker 1: eat it because I had a bad day of work
46:11
Speaker 1: or something happened whatever, and then that will make me
46:14
Speaker 1: feel really good in the moment and then to eat it.
46:15
Speaker 1: But if you can be strong in those moments of
46:19
Speaker 1: strength and say, you know what, I want to be
46:20
Speaker 1: a healthier person, I know that it's gonna be hard
46:24
Speaker 1: for me in moments of vulnerability. So instead of just
46:26
Speaker 1: having this stuff around when you go to the grocery store,
46:29
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna buy any junk food. I'm not going
46:31
Speaker 1: to keep this stuff in the house. If my grandma
46:33
Speaker 1: comes by and brings a dozen cookies, don't tell her,
46:36
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna throw them in the trash afterwards, because
46:38
Speaker 1: I know that I'll eat them if I let them
46:40
Speaker 1: stay here. It's like those types of things have to
46:43
Speaker 1: be applied to, you know, preserving pockets of boredom so
46:48
Speaker 1: or pockets of focus. You know, there's this idea of
46:50
Speaker 1: deep work, Um, that the same things that are challenging
46:55
Speaker 1: that you're describing here also make it really hard to
46:57
Speaker 1: do good work because we're constantly our phones are constantly
47:01
Speaker 1: checking email. So I've had to you know, I'm sure
47:05
Speaker 1: you had this when you're writing this book. Um. To
47:08
Speaker 1: get my book done, to get any of the work
47:10
Speaker 1: that I need to get deep into it, I have
47:12
Speaker 1: to put my phone literally on the other side of
47:14
Speaker 1: the room. I have to shut down the browser window.
47:17
Speaker 1: I sometimes will set a time around my phone and say,
47:20
Speaker 1: all right, for the next thirty minutes, no nothing, like
47:24
Speaker 1: every time you have this impulse to be like, oh
47:26
Speaker 1: this is hard, I wanted to look at ESPN, or
47:28
Speaker 1: that this sucks. Why don't I just see what's on
47:30
Speaker 1: my phone? Like instead of that, I cannot do anything
47:33
Speaker 1: but focus for the next thirty minutes. And then that
47:35
Speaker 1: alarm goes off and I'm like, okay, I can feel
47:38
Speaker 1: like I got solid thirty minutes done. Now I can
47:41
Speaker 1: take a break. Um. It's like those weird little things
47:44
Speaker 1: that you need to create. And maybe this isn't for everybody.
47:47
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm just weird, but I need to create. Um.
47:51
Speaker 1: I don't know frames to to work within to make
47:54
Speaker 1: myself effective. And I think the same applies to to
47:57
Speaker 1: staying board, keep your phone away, keep the notifications off.
48:00
Speaker 1: Maybe you don't need the Facebook app on your phone.
48:02
Speaker 1: Maybe you don't need to take you know, your phone
48:05
Speaker 1: with you on the hike. Um, maybe you don't need
48:07
Speaker 1: to take it on your hunt. That's that's something in
48:10
Speaker 1: the hunting world where lots of times you don't have service.
48:14
Speaker 1: But if you live in a place with service, you
48:15
Speaker 1: have the same temptation. You're sitting out there and you
48:18
Speaker 1: should be enjoying nature and watching what's around you and
48:20
Speaker 1: paying attention. But if there's nothing actually happening at that moment,
48:24
Speaker 1: I've certainly been guilty of yanking it out too. So
48:28
Speaker 1: ye you you talk about something that again a lot
48:38
Speaker 1: of us would just say like, oh, yeah, I've experienced this,
48:41
Speaker 1: But now the science is backing it up in a
48:43
Speaker 1: really substantial way. It's pretty cool, and that is the
48:46
Speaker 1: value of being outside. UM. I think gosh over after
48:51
Speaker 1: the last year, after COVID, people are really starting to
48:54
Speaker 1: see this then maybe previously hadn't. UM. Can you talk
48:58
Speaker 1: about this new um wave of studies and science that's
49:03
Speaker 1: pointing to actual quantifiable benefits of being outside and quote
49:07
Speaker 1: unquote forest bathing and stuff like that. Yes, for sure.
49:11
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you what also, maybe sort of really
49:14
Speaker 1: realized this we UM when we're in the Arctic. We
49:17
Speaker 1: had seen this herd of cariboo and there was there's
49:20
Speaker 1: an old bowl in there, so we you know, stock
49:23
Speaker 1: it out for like five ten miles or something, and anyways,
49:28
Speaker 1: it scomps us and we have this walk home, so
49:31
Speaker 1: we you know, hike back across the tundra to our
49:35
Speaker 1: campsite where we have this caparo TV or whatever, and
49:39
Speaker 1: that comes into sight and there's a herd like literally
49:42
Speaker 1: in our camp and we kind of look at it
49:46
Speaker 1: and you know, there's it's all um, it's all younger caribou.
49:50
Speaker 1: Until we're like, okay, whatever. And I'm there with Donnie
49:54
Speaker 1: Vincent and his cameraman William Altman, who's a who's a
49:57
Speaker 1: great dude too, and so Williams like, Okay, I'm gonna
50:01
Speaker 1: go get some footage of this, you know, because Donnie,
50:03
Speaker 1: if you guys have seen his films, it's not just hunting.
50:06
Speaker 1: I mean it's almost like a it's a nature documentary
50:09
Speaker 1: like Planet Earth that happens to have some hunting in it,
50:11
Speaker 1: you know. So William goes out and um, he's crawling
50:15
Speaker 1: across the ground and getting these shots, and he rises
50:18
Speaker 1: and he ends up spoking this herd, and Donnie and
50:21
Speaker 1: I are just laying on the tun to just sort
50:23
Speaker 1: of observing from afar, and this herd gets spoked i
50:25
Speaker 1: mean directly at us, towards us. So they start charging
50:30
Speaker 1: in and it's like, oh my god, Like they're headed
50:33
Speaker 1: right at us, and we're just laying on the ground.
50:34
Speaker 1: You know, they have no idea where there. And you know,
50:37
Speaker 1: I would say before this trip, like I was, I'm
50:39
Speaker 1: an outdoorsy person. I always have been. I'm an eagle scout,
50:43
Speaker 1: but I'm also you know, and in my thirties, like
50:46
Speaker 1: this is a key period for work and stuff, Like
50:48
Speaker 1: it's hard to get out in nature a ton and
50:51
Speaker 1: I never really embedded myself deeply in nature for that long,
50:56
Speaker 1: And you know, I don't think that I'm that different
50:58
Speaker 1: than anyone else. I know when you look at the
51:00
Speaker 1: data now, it's people spend of their time indoors. We're
51:05
Speaker 1: chained to our desk um. I love there. There's a
51:08
Speaker 1: statu that you had in your book that Yellowstone visitors
51:12
Speaker 1: never leaves out of a road at estimate. You know,
51:15
Speaker 1: so we just don't spend that much time in nature.
51:19
Speaker 1: And I think part of it it's because nature is
51:22
Speaker 1: uncomfortable and it's unpredictable, and so anyways, we're laying there
51:29
Speaker 1: and this herd keeps closing in. I mean they get
51:31
Speaker 1: close enough that the ground starts to rumble, and Donnie
51:34
Speaker 1: and I are just locked on them. And then they
51:35
Speaker 1: get close enough that you know they're seventy five yards
51:38
Speaker 1: you can start to smell them, see their hooves kicking
51:40
Speaker 1: up the earth and and um. You know, at a
51:43
Speaker 1: certain point it occurs to me and they're like fifty
51:46
Speaker 1: yards out, like, wait, they are they going to trample
51:48
Speaker 1: us right now? You know? And probably thirty yards out
51:53
Speaker 1: they like the kareem left and like the earth shakes
51:56
Speaker 1: as they go by, and they go up to this
51:57
Speaker 1: like pinnacle of this hill and you can just see
52:00
Speaker 1: them that are like black against this you know, golden sunset.
52:04
Speaker 1: And it was one of those moments where you're just
52:05
Speaker 1: like holy sh it, Like it was the most unbelievable
52:10
Speaker 1: moments in the book. I describe it as like wild
52:12
Speaker 1: as a religious experience where you know, if you kind
52:15
Speaker 1: of feel like you're part of something bigger in times
52:18
Speaker 1: like that, And you know, it got me thinking about
52:22
Speaker 1: how we don't have moments like that anymore, and people
52:26
Speaker 1: spent so little time in nature, and we're all anxious.
52:32
Speaker 1: We have you know, depression and anxiety or through the roof,
52:35
Speaker 1: people are are burned out. You look at the data
52:37
Speaker 1: and it's like we're the most anxious people who've ever
52:41
Speaker 1: walked the earth. But when I after having been up
52:44
Speaker 1: in Alaska for so long, like you would think with
52:47
Speaker 1: all this discomfort I was going through with you know,
52:49
Speaker 1: encountering grizzly bears, having to everything required effort um crossing
52:54
Speaker 1: you know, these rivers and being freezing the whole time,
52:57
Speaker 1: you'd think I'd be like stressed out and just totally
52:59
Speaker 1: on edge. The opposite was true. It was like the
53:02
Speaker 1: most zen I've ever felt in my entire life, Just
53:05
Speaker 1: super calm, supercentered, super focused, and so I wanted to know,
53:11
Speaker 1: you know, what what is going on with that. I
53:13
Speaker 1: get home and I start looking at the research. And
53:18
Speaker 1: a while ago there's a biologist, famous biologist named EO. Wilson,
53:23
Speaker 1: and he had this theory called the biophilia hypothesis that
53:26
Speaker 1: basically states, you know, humans evolved in nature, and therefore
53:30
Speaker 1: nature is this thing we need to be happy and healthy,
53:34
Speaker 1: like it's it's part of our lives. We we are
53:36
Speaker 1: part of it, but we've removed ourselves and by going
53:38
Speaker 1: back out into nature we can experience these benefits, especially
53:43
Speaker 1: mental health benefits. And when he proposed this, most people
53:48
Speaker 1: at the time, other scientists I thought it was just
53:52
Speaker 1: a crock of ship. Basically, they were like, any benefits
53:56
Speaker 1: that people get from nature are probably just because they're
53:58
Speaker 1: hiking out in nature or they're you know, going on
54:01
Speaker 1: a run or something in nature. And then the Japanese
54:05
Speaker 1: started studying this, so the government created this a bunch
54:09
Speaker 1: of parks around the country and started promoting this idea
54:13
Speaker 1: that they called forest bathing, which is sort of hilarious,
54:16
Speaker 1: but it's basically just the idea of like, spend time
54:18
Speaker 1: in nature, hang out there you'll see some benefits. So
54:22
Speaker 1: a bunch of Japanese scientists started to see if this program,
54:25
Speaker 1: which was funded by taxes, had any real benefits for people,
54:28
Speaker 1: and they found that people who spend more time in
54:32
Speaker 1: nature their calmer. They generally have better health markers. And
54:36
Speaker 1: if you put people in nature even for just like five, ten,
54:39
Speaker 1: twenty minutes, they emerge better off, like there are a
54:43
Speaker 1: lot they are calmer, less stress, anxiety levels go down,
54:46
Speaker 1: cortisol levels go down. So they really established this as
54:50
Speaker 1: like a thing worth chasing, and you know, we had
54:54
Speaker 1: we sort of intuitively know this, but they gave us data,
54:57
Speaker 1: and the data has only been growing since they're The
55:00
Speaker 1: was like in the eighties. So to learn more about this,
55:03
Speaker 1: I go to Boston. Flying to Boston, I meet with
55:07
Speaker 1: this girl who's a nature scientist and she's helped develop
55:11
Speaker 1: this idea that's called the nature pyramid. So this is
55:14
Speaker 1: very much like the food pyramid, but instead of saying,
55:18
Speaker 1: you know, eat this many servings of broccoli and eat
55:20
Speaker 1: this many servings of meat every day, it basically tells
55:24
Speaker 1: you how long you should spend in what type of nature,
55:28
Speaker 1: how often. So at the bottom of the pyramid, um
55:32
Speaker 1: the research shows you should spend about twenty minutes a
55:35
Speaker 1: week in just everyday nature like you could find in
55:39
Speaker 1: a park like a city park, three times three times
55:42
Speaker 1: a week, twenty minutes. And it helps with your calmness,
55:46
Speaker 1: It helps people um mental acuity and sharpness. It also
55:50
Speaker 1: boost creativity and lower stress levels. UM. So that's the
55:53
Speaker 1: bottom of the pyramid they found. And then the second
55:57
Speaker 1: level of the pyramid is five hours month in wilder nature.
56:01
Speaker 1: So this is the type of stuff you might find
56:03
Speaker 1: in a state park. This is, you know, stuff that
56:06
Speaker 1: you might have to drive for. Um. It's not as
56:08
Speaker 1: manicured as a city park, but it's also not super
56:12
Speaker 1: far to get there. You probably still have have cell service.
56:16
Speaker 1: And we know this is the ideal amount of time
56:18
Speaker 1: from a bunch of research that has been conducted in
56:21
Speaker 1: UH Finland. So people in Finland go outside of ton
56:24
Speaker 1: and they surveyed a bunch of people in the country
56:26
Speaker 1: and the people who were least likely to be depressed
56:29
Speaker 1: and also reported the lowest levels of chronic stress spent
56:33
Speaker 1: h five or more hours a week in this type
56:36
Speaker 1: of sort of country nature. I call it in the
56:38
Speaker 1: book UM the very top of the pyramid, and this
56:41
Speaker 1: is I think, what's what's most fascinating to me and
56:44
Speaker 1: will be most fascinating to people who spend who do
56:47
Speaker 1: you know, overnight and extended hunts and do you know
56:50
Speaker 1: any sort of backpacking trips. Is the top is three
56:54
Speaker 1: days a year you should spend in the back country.
56:57
Speaker 1: So this leads to pretty crazy brain changes where people's
57:03
Speaker 1: brains start producing what are called alpha waves. Now these
57:07
Speaker 1: are the same brain waves that are found in experienced
57:10
Speaker 1: meditators like the Yogis who live in the caves, you know. Um,
57:15
Speaker 1: So spending these three days or more out in very
57:18
Speaker 1: off the grid nature where your phone doesn't work, there's
57:21
Speaker 1: you know, no road you have to hike in. It's
57:24
Speaker 1: kind of like a meditation retreat, except you know, you
57:27
Speaker 1: can talk to other people and there's no costs and
57:29
Speaker 1: there's no gurus telling you what to do. And um
57:33
Speaker 1: it's also associated with just crazy boost and creativity UM
57:38
Speaker 1: PTSD levels. They've done studies where they've taken vets into
57:41
Speaker 1: nature for this amount of time and their PTSD levels
57:43
Speaker 1: drop and they stay low for a very long time.
57:47
Speaker 1: UM just sort of resets and revives your thinking and
57:50
Speaker 1: just makes us a lot more calmer and think on
57:52
Speaker 1: a different wavelength. And I think this is the most
57:56
Speaker 1: lady I meet in Boston. I mean she sees, she
57:58
Speaker 1: really sees tie these different amounts of time and nature
58:01
Speaker 1: as a way to combat the modern condition where we're
58:05
Speaker 1: just like overstressed, overworked, over worried about everyday bs and cheap,
58:13
Speaker 1: easy and free. Right. And there's probably a lot of
58:17
Speaker 1: reasons that nature has this effect. I mean the fact
58:19
Speaker 1: that we're that we are away from our desk. Um.
58:23
Speaker 1: There's different sounds that seem to benefit us in nature.
58:26
Speaker 1: There's this idea of biophilia like I talked about before.
58:29
Speaker 1: There's also fewer people that seems to help. There's also fractals,
58:34
Speaker 1: which are these repeating patterns that you see over and
58:36
Speaker 1: over in the universe that you don't get in man
58:40
Speaker 1: made structures. Those seem to like speak to us at
58:42
Speaker 1: this core level. And so I think I think that's
58:45
Speaker 1: why hunting is so great too, because you are really
58:48
Speaker 1: really removed. I mean most people aren't hunting right on
58:50
Speaker 1: a trail, right, It's like you you've got to go
58:52
Speaker 1: deep in the woods to uh, to get something. So
58:56
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's a it's fascinating research. And I
58:58
Speaker 1: worked that into my own life. I I live just
59:02
Speaker 1: outside the desert, so I'll go run in the desert
59:04
Speaker 1: at least a couple of times a week. Yeah. Yeah, man,
59:07
Speaker 1: it's um it it really is interesting to see the
59:12
Speaker 1: science backing up you know, those types of those types
59:15
Speaker 1: of experiences, and and it just helps put words and
59:19
Speaker 1: numbers to a feeling that I think a lot of
59:22
Speaker 1: us have had and and for some reason, seeing that verified, uh,
59:27
Speaker 1: just makes it seem you know, that much more satisfying
59:31
Speaker 1: to know, like, Okay, yeah, you know these things I've
59:33
Speaker 1: been doing, these trips I've been planning, um, these excursions
59:37
Speaker 1: that I'm telling my boss that I need some time
59:41
Speaker 1: to go do, Like, it's it's worth it, It's it's
59:43
Speaker 1: it's really helping. It makes a difference. Um. And you
59:47
Speaker 1: mentioned there that the top of the pyramid those you know,
59:50
Speaker 1: at least three days once a year. You talk about
59:53
Speaker 1: something called the three day effect in the book and
59:56
Speaker 1: how after that three day level, something unique happens that
1:00:00
Speaker 1: maybe day one day does doesn't. Um. I've definitely felt
1:00:04
Speaker 1: this too. Can you can you talk about that? Yeah?
1:00:07
Speaker 1: So that three day effect, it was a it has
1:00:10
Speaker 1: an interesting history. So there's this uh fascinating rare bookstore
1:00:15
Speaker 1: in Salt Lake City owned by this guy named Ken Sanders,
1:00:18
Speaker 1: and he's sort of this icon in Salt Lake City.
1:00:20
Speaker 1: And he used to hang out with Edward Abbey and
1:00:23
Speaker 1: go on trips with Abby, which I'm sure a lot
1:00:25
Speaker 1: of your listeners would be familiar with. And he just
1:00:30
Speaker 1: noticed that on the third day that he would spend
1:00:32
Speaker 1: out in the wild, um, he would start to feel
1:00:35
Speaker 1: a lot calmer, just start to feel a lot different,
1:00:38
Speaker 1: more at ease, more like, you know, like he's he
1:00:42
Speaker 1: feels good about himself, you know. And he mentions this
1:00:46
Speaker 1: to a guy whose name is David Strayer, who is
1:00:49
Speaker 1: a neuroscientist at the University of Utah. And Strayer is
1:00:54
Speaker 1: probably the world's foremost expert on how cell phones affect
1:00:58
Speaker 1: the brain and our attention. And he's also a hard
1:01:01
Speaker 1: core nature junkie, Like he'll go and spend a long
1:01:04
Speaker 1: time out in the wild. And he was like, oh, yeah,
1:01:07
Speaker 1: I feel that too, And he'd had conversations with people
1:01:10
Speaker 1: who also said the same thing. And these are conversations
1:01:13
Speaker 1: with colleagues who are you know, these PhD wielding people
1:01:17
Speaker 1: who love data numbers and figures. They're saying like, yeah,
1:01:20
Speaker 1: there's no date on it, but I don't know. I
1:01:22
Speaker 1: just feel different and straighter starts investigating it with the
1:01:26
Speaker 1: girl that I met in Boston. And this is where
1:01:29
Speaker 1: they would take people down to to sort of figure
1:01:32
Speaker 1: out what was going on. They would take people down
1:01:34
Speaker 1: to this campground. It was actually a class, so these
1:01:37
Speaker 1: are like twenty year old college students to this campground
1:01:40
Speaker 1: in southern Utah that's super remote, no cell phone service
1:01:44
Speaker 1: or any of that, and this is where they learned that.
1:01:46
Speaker 1: The reason is probably because your brain starts to ride
1:01:49
Speaker 1: these alpha waves, which are a lot um slower, more
1:01:53
Speaker 1: meditative and introspective compared to beta waves, which are the
1:01:58
Speaker 1: waves that we tend to ride in our day of
1:02:00
Speaker 1: the life that are like frenetic, go go go, really scattered.
1:02:03
Speaker 1: So it's that transition. For some reason, on day three,
1:02:07
Speaker 1: your brain just starts to change and shift and you
1:02:10
Speaker 1: get these awesome waves that are that are very good
1:02:14
Speaker 1: for us. And it just takes enough, you know, completely
1:02:20
Speaker 1: enough time removed from those distractions that it takes that
1:02:23
Speaker 1: much time for our for our internal selves to to
1:02:26
Speaker 1: settle into that place. Sounds like, yeah, so they you know,
1:02:31
Speaker 1: when your first you think about it, when you go
1:02:33
Speaker 1: out into go camping for a handful of days, it's
1:02:36
Speaker 1: like the first day, you're going, did I leave the
1:02:39
Speaker 1: garage open um ship? Am I going to have too
1:02:42
Speaker 1: many emails? When I get home up? All the stress
1:02:45
Speaker 1: of getting ready, getting settled in figuring out what you're
1:02:48
Speaker 1: doing totally second day you're a little bit calmer, but
1:02:52
Speaker 1: you're still there. But then by the third day something
1:02:54
Speaker 1: clicks where you're just a lot calmer. Now. One of
1:02:56
Speaker 1: the most fascinating things about all this nature search, and
1:03:00
Speaker 1: this goes from the bottom of the pyramid twenty minutes
1:03:03
Speaker 1: a day, three days a week to the very top,
1:03:06
Speaker 1: is if you use your cell phone, it cancels a
1:03:09
Speaker 1: lot of these benefits because you are dragging yourself back
1:03:12
Speaker 1: into you're dragging yourself out of the ability to get
1:03:16
Speaker 1: into those alpha waves that I mentioned, and you're also
1:03:18
Speaker 1: just putting yourself back in this this grind of home. Right,
1:03:21
Speaker 1: you're not folks, You're not looking at the nature around you.
1:03:24
Speaker 1: You're staring at a screen. And you could look at
1:03:26
Speaker 1: a screen any damn place in the country at any time.
1:03:29
Speaker 1: It's like if you're gonna be a nature enjoy the nature, man,
1:03:31
Speaker 1: put your phone down. Yeah, that's it. That's the one
1:03:38
Speaker 1: that throughout all these things, that's that's always my hardest
1:03:41
Speaker 1: one that I'm just trying to trying to find the
1:03:45
Speaker 1: ways to to make my stupid monkey brain cooperate with
1:03:49
Speaker 1: what I know what's right. Yeah, And it's it's like
1:03:52
Speaker 1: in your book you talk about all the people who
1:03:55
Speaker 1: have you know, helped us preserve nature in the US.
1:03:59
Speaker 1: It's like, all these people really knew this to the court, right,
1:04:03
Speaker 1: they knew this, and so they acted on it. And
1:04:05
Speaker 1: only now a hundred years later, whatever it is, are
1:04:08
Speaker 1: we having the data to back this up? Like, damn,
1:04:11
Speaker 1: come your thorough William Pull, Bob Marshall, all these guys
1:04:15
Speaker 1: they knew in advance what was going on, and they
1:04:17
Speaker 1: acted on this without having all needing all this data.
1:04:20
Speaker 1: And man, we're lucky for it, right, Yeah, thank goodness.
1:04:24
Speaker 1: And you would think that now that we do have
1:04:26
Speaker 1: all this data, it should make it should make our
1:04:29
Speaker 1: our work to keep these places around that much easier.
1:04:33
Speaker 1: Folks should listen because there's quantifiable benefits to it. But
1:04:37
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes that doesn't hold up as much as
1:04:39
Speaker 1: you like. But I do think, I do think that
1:04:41
Speaker 1: this wave of new research around it is going to
1:04:45
Speaker 1: is going to lead to, you know, just another feather
1:04:50
Speaker 1: in the cap of the importance of having wild, open places,
1:04:53
Speaker 1: having parks, having public lands, having green spaces and cities.
1:04:58
Speaker 1: I think, you know, we we live in a civilization
1:05:01
Speaker 1: and a capitalistic society that thrives off data. We want
1:05:05
Speaker 1: data to prove everything, and and so now we've got
1:05:08
Speaker 1: it on this front, and I'm glad it is in
1:05:10
Speaker 1: line with what I have felt, felt and wanted, right Yeah,
1:05:14
Speaker 1: and then yeah, so what about the next one, which
1:05:16
Speaker 1: is hunger? This is one that that I wouldn't have
1:05:21
Speaker 1: if I was looking at the title of this book
1:05:23
Speaker 1: and I could have predicted a few of these, I
1:05:26
Speaker 1: think hunger wasn't one of the wasn't one of the
1:05:28
Speaker 1: topics that I would have jumped on right away. Um,
1:05:31
Speaker 1: what what did you learn on that front? Why do
1:05:33
Speaker 1: we need to embrace hunger a little bit more than
1:05:35
Speaker 1: maybe we have historically? Sure, so when we were out
1:05:40
Speaker 1: in the Arctic, I mean, we packed in maybe two
1:05:43
Speaker 1: thousand calories a day, and you know, garbage, mountain house
1:05:46
Speaker 1: meals and snickers and that kind of crap. Um. But
1:05:50
Speaker 1: because we're carrying these heavy packs on our back and
1:05:53
Speaker 1: walking through the tundra, which is the worst thing you
1:05:57
Speaker 1: could ever walk on. I mean, it just so harsh
1:06:00
Speaker 1: to walk on. Um, we're burning way more than that,
1:06:04
Speaker 1: I mean, probably four to six thousand calories a day,
1:06:06
Speaker 1: so every single day we're starting to tap into our
1:06:10
Speaker 1: reserves and starting to lose weight. I mean I started
1:06:12
Speaker 1: to pull notches on my belt after you know, about
1:06:15
Speaker 1: a week. And it was interesting because in the modern world,
1:06:22
Speaker 1: we're not like I hadn't experienced that type of hunger ever,
1:06:25
Speaker 1: which is a good which is a good thing. I'm
1:06:27
Speaker 1: not saying it's bad, but it was just this new
1:06:30
Speaker 1: new sensation. I was like, man, like, I've never really
1:06:33
Speaker 1: I never really felt this. So I get home and
1:06:36
Speaker 1: look at the data, and it shows that of the
1:06:39
Speaker 1: times that we eat nowadays are not driven by real
1:06:42
Speaker 1: physiological hunger. It's usually we just eat because it's you know, morning,
1:06:47
Speaker 1: and this is when we breakfast, or this is when
1:06:49
Speaker 1: we launched dinner, or because we're stressed, or because we're sad,
1:06:53
Speaker 1: or because we're just bored, and it's like, okay, I'll
1:06:55
Speaker 1: eat something. So in a lot of ways because of
1:06:58
Speaker 1: our success as species that we have food everywhere. We're
1:07:01
Speaker 1: now using food as sort of a widget, and there
1:07:04
Speaker 1: are there are neurological reasons for that. You know, as
1:07:07
Speaker 1: we evolved, our bodies evolved to essentially reward us for
1:07:10
Speaker 1: any and all kind of eating, and it also rewarded
1:07:13
Speaker 1: us for eating too much, because back when resources were scarce,
1:07:17
Speaker 1: if you could eat too much and you could put
1:07:20
Speaker 1: on fat, well, next time a famine came around, which
1:07:23
Speaker 1: was often back then, you would have enough resource resources
1:07:27
Speaker 1: on your body to draw from and you would be
1:07:31
Speaker 1: able to survive. So we are internally incentivized to eat
1:07:34
Speaker 1: too much too often, and now we're surrounded in this
1:07:39
Speaker 1: sea of food that's all you know, formulated, ultra processed,
1:07:43
Speaker 1: and we tend to think that, you know, hunger is
1:07:46
Speaker 1: bad in the modern world. It's like people panic around hunger.
1:07:50
Speaker 1: And all of this comes together and can explain why
1:07:55
Speaker 1: our country is either overweight or obese. It's that we
1:07:59
Speaker 1: have the internal drives to eat all the time and
1:08:01
Speaker 1: eat too much, and now we're surrounding ourselves in food,
1:08:06
Speaker 1: and you know, millions to combat this. It's like millions
1:08:10
Speaker 1: of people try to diet each year, And there's all
1:08:12
Speaker 1: kinds of diets out there that sort of tell you,
1:08:14
Speaker 1: you know, eat this, not that, or it's like sugar
1:08:18
Speaker 1: is the reason you're fat. Stop eating sugar. Fat is
1:08:21
Speaker 1: the reason you're fat. Stop eating fat. No, it's actually
1:08:23
Speaker 1: carves is the reason you're fats. Stop as your fat,
1:08:26
Speaker 1: stop eating carves. You know. Um, And most of these
1:08:29
Speaker 1: diets fail. You look at diets, I think only I
1:08:32
Speaker 1: think people who lose any weight in a year, they
1:08:36
Speaker 1: gain it back, which is which is unfortunate. And in
1:08:39
Speaker 1: a lot of these diets, it's like a key claim
1:08:41
Speaker 1: is is no hunger. So I'm thinking about this, and
1:08:44
Speaker 1: when I get back from Alaska, I'm ten pounds lighter. Um.
1:08:48
Speaker 1: And I'm also eating like all the foods that the
1:08:50
Speaker 1: diets tell you never to eat. I mean, this stuff
1:08:52
Speaker 1: is like ultra processed garbage. I mean it is just
1:08:56
Speaker 1: horseship food. No, no dietitian is pers grabbing mountain house
1:09:00
Speaker 1: meals for their clients, That's for sure. God, I hope
1:09:04
Speaker 1: not um two millions assault Yeah, yeah, enough salt to
1:09:09
Speaker 1: uh to like petrify someone from the inside out. So
1:09:13
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm ten pounds lighter. And you know through
1:09:16
Speaker 1: my work, I had uh met this kid whose name
1:09:20
Speaker 1: is Trevor Cashy. And to say that Trevor is smart
1:09:24
Speaker 1: is a lot like saying Lebron James is pretty good
1:09:27
Speaker 1: at basketball. Um, this kid is like a super genius.
1:09:30
Speaker 1: I think he's twenty seven or twenty eight now. He
1:09:33
Speaker 1: graduated college at eighteen. He got his PhD at twenty three.
1:09:37
Speaker 1: He studied chemical biology. So this is like the this
1:09:41
Speaker 1: provides a foundation for understanding human metabolism. And he's sort
1:09:45
Speaker 1: of got into he sort of stumbled into working with
1:09:48
Speaker 1: people to help them lose weight. Now he's worked with athletes,
1:09:53
Speaker 1: gold medal winning athletes, UFC fighters, ultra marathoners, all these
1:09:58
Speaker 1: different people, and he approaches it really differently than I
1:10:02
Speaker 1: think you see a lot in the diet world approach it.
1:10:06
Speaker 1: And he sort of starts with hunger. So you look
1:10:09
Speaker 1: back at that figure I told you of the time
1:10:12
Speaker 1: we eat. It's not because we're actually hungry, it's just
1:10:14
Speaker 1: because we're using food is a mechanism for for something
1:10:17
Speaker 1: else to deal with something else. So he doesn't actually
1:10:20
Speaker 1: care why you eat, or sorry, I misstated that he
1:10:23
Speaker 1: doesn't care what you eat. He cares why you eat,
1:10:27
Speaker 1: so a lot of his method is building awareness about
1:10:30
Speaker 1: why people are eating, whether it's true physiological hunger or
1:10:33
Speaker 1: they're just using food as something else. And a lot
1:10:36
Speaker 1: of it is increasing awareness of just how much people eat,
1:10:39
Speaker 1: because we have these past past drives that are telling us, hey,
1:10:44
Speaker 1: eat a little more, eat too much, but we eat
1:10:46
Speaker 1: more than we actually need to in order to be healthy.
1:10:50
Speaker 1: So part of what he does is he has people
1:10:53
Speaker 1: like very closely track exactly what they're eating. And now
1:10:56
Speaker 1: this sounds strange, but at the same time, when you
1:11:00
Speaker 1: look at the research, people totally underestimate the amount they
1:11:05
Speaker 1: eat every day. So when they pull people it's like
1:11:07
Speaker 1: how many colores did you think you? You know, people
1:11:08
Speaker 1: will be like they have eaten like three thousand and
1:11:14
Speaker 1: over time, this compounds and this is this can kind
1:11:18
Speaker 1: of explain why we are so out of shape now.
1:11:24
Speaker 1: And this is uh, I mean, this is kind of
1:11:26
Speaker 1: one of the main drivers of a lot of chronic disease,
1:11:28
Speaker 1: just the fact that so many people in the country
1:11:31
Speaker 1: are overweight now. So sort of by figuring out why
1:11:36
Speaker 1: you're eating, whether that is real hungry hunger, and then
1:11:39
Speaker 1: engaging with hunger, realizing that it sucks, but it's not
1:11:43
Speaker 1: going to kill you, and it's actually a necessary part
1:11:46
Speaker 1: of being healthy. You're gonna be able to maintain a
1:11:49
Speaker 1: weight that's going to keep you healthy, and you're just
1:11:52
Speaker 1: gonna be healthier overall across your lifespan. So if you're
1:11:56
Speaker 1: if you're a guy or girl out there who's listening
1:11:58
Speaker 1: and your wanting to live a healthier lifestyle, which which
1:12:02
Speaker 1: a lot of people in our community, I think, are
1:12:04
Speaker 1: you know, wanting to do that, especially if hunting in
1:12:07
Speaker 1: the outdoors is a big part of their life, if
1:12:09
Speaker 1: they're not already in you know, great physical shape. It's
1:12:13
Speaker 1: something that a lot of folks want to work towards
1:12:15
Speaker 1: because that helps you a lot in all these endeavors. Um.
1:12:18
Speaker 1: So what's like your big what's one of your big
1:12:21
Speaker 1: takeaways from your deep dive into this world? You know
1:12:25
Speaker 1: when I get that feeling like, oh, I'm feeling hungry?
1:12:29
Speaker 1: Um And you're saying we should embrace it a little
1:12:31
Speaker 1: bit more Like, what's what's an action item we should
1:12:33
Speaker 1: be thinking about that's gonna help us a little bit
1:12:35
Speaker 1: more on that front? Sure? Well, I think I think
1:12:38
Speaker 1: one thing is thinking about what foods we eat? Now,
1:12:41
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, being in a healthy
1:12:43
Speaker 1: way is all driven by are you eating enough energy
1:12:46
Speaker 1: to fuel your body and what you want to do,
1:12:48
Speaker 1: but not vastly overheating that amount. You know, it's essentially
1:12:52
Speaker 1: it's physics, it's calories and calories out. Despite what all
1:12:55
Speaker 1: these diet books tell you about, you know, they're being
1:12:58
Speaker 1: a super villain among foods. Um. But that said, certain
1:13:04
Speaker 1: foods will help you feel fuller longer and fend off hunger.
1:13:07
Speaker 1: And those foods just so happened to be the foods
1:13:10
Speaker 1: that man evolved to eat. These are you know, meat, potatoes,
1:13:16
Speaker 1: grains that we have to cook beforehand. These are all
1:13:20
Speaker 1: things that help people stay fuller longer. And this is
1:13:23
Speaker 1: not a diet that's you know, high carb or low carb,
1:13:26
Speaker 1: or high fat or low fat or high protein. It's
1:13:28
Speaker 1: just like the food that you're great great grandparents eight.
1:13:32
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a reason why no one in the
1:13:34
Speaker 1: generations before I think the obesity rate in the year
1:13:37
Speaker 1: ND was like one or two percent, and now it's
1:13:41
Speaker 1: thirty three. And it's because people are eating just basic
1:13:43
Speaker 1: foods and not over eating them. They help curb hunger.
1:13:47
Speaker 1: But in terms of re engaging with hunger. I mean,
1:13:49
Speaker 1: I think something that people can do is even try like,
1:13:54
Speaker 1: are you actually hungry when you wake up and eat breakfast?
1:13:57
Speaker 1: Can you extend that what happens? Does that feel like?
1:14:01
Speaker 1: You know, sort of just putting these just experimenting with like, well,
1:14:04
Speaker 1: well why am I eating? And noticing? You know you
1:14:07
Speaker 1: mentioned before. It's like when your grandma brings over those cookies,
1:14:10
Speaker 1: it's like, you're just gonna eat them because they're there,
1:14:13
Speaker 1: you know, So if that's a temptation for you removing them.
1:14:17
Speaker 1: That's not saying that's not to say you can't eat
1:14:19
Speaker 1: those foods. It's totally fine, but maybe have one or
1:14:22
Speaker 1: two and then throw them away if that's a trigger,
1:14:25
Speaker 1: you know. And this is this is hard. If this
1:14:27
Speaker 1: ship were easy, people wouldn't be overweight. But it's it's necessary, right.
1:14:31
Speaker 1: It's like when you when you look at how we're
1:14:33
Speaker 1: trending and and they do forecasts on this and they
1:14:37
Speaker 1: think that, um, I think the CDC thinks that overweighting
1:14:39
Speaker 1: obcd RAG is going to be in the eighties. B
1:14:43
Speaker 1: So man, it's something we got to tackle. I mean,
1:14:46
Speaker 1: and I think we've really this is really hit home
1:14:50
Speaker 1: during the pandemic. It's you know, you look at the
1:14:53
Speaker 1: research and it's like the people who had who got
1:14:55
Speaker 1: COVID and had some of the worst symptoms being being
1:15:00
Speaker 1: obese was a major risk factor for complications. And you
1:15:03
Speaker 1: know through my other work, Like I had a conversation
1:15:05
Speaker 1: with someone at the CDC about a month ago, and
1:15:08
Speaker 1: usually they're pretty hands out, like they don't want to
1:15:10
Speaker 1: tell people, hey, you gotta get in shape because you know,
1:15:13
Speaker 1: people don't like hearing that, so they've never really said
1:15:16
Speaker 1: anything like that to me. But this time the lady
1:15:17
Speaker 1: was like, people need to go to the gym. I
1:15:20
Speaker 1: was like, wow, coming from the government, so interesting. Yeah,
1:15:25
Speaker 1: it's um. It definitely was a little bit of self
1:15:32
Speaker 1: perpetuating cycle too with the whole COVID deal, and that
1:15:35
Speaker 1: probably not in a larger scale, but as you I
1:15:38
Speaker 1: think you mentioned in your book, and I think a
1:15:39
Speaker 1: lot of of us experienced it. There was like the
1:15:41
Speaker 1: COVID fifteen. A lot of folks, you know, I certainly
1:15:44
Speaker 1: experienced that when we first had the lockdown start and
1:15:47
Speaker 1: everything shuts down and your life changes and couldn't do anything,
1:15:51
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, it was like, well, what
1:15:53
Speaker 1: are we gonna do. That's exciting this weekend. Let's make
1:15:56
Speaker 1: chocolate mug cakes. And it was that kind of stuff
1:15:59
Speaker 1: that I'm sure a lot of people packed on some
1:16:02
Speaker 1: extra weight because they were, you know, just in this weird,
1:16:05
Speaker 1: weird situation. So and also, food gets used a lot
1:16:09
Speaker 1: to deal with stress, and because of all these other
1:16:12
Speaker 1: things we've talked about, I think people have more stress
1:16:15
Speaker 1: than we have in the past for a lot of reasons,
1:16:17
Speaker 1: and food is just an easy way to deal with that.
1:16:18
Speaker 1: It's kind of like cheap, always available as annex and
1:16:22
Speaker 1: so yeah, and then that that would explain it, because
1:16:25
Speaker 1: the pandemic was freaking stressful. Yeah. Yeah, So so let's
1:16:30
Speaker 1: let's skip to We're gonna change a little order of
1:16:33
Speaker 1: your book here. But it's the natural I think. Next question,
1:16:36
Speaker 1: when we're talking about health, at least we've talked about
1:16:39
Speaker 1: the food we eat. But then, of course, you know,
1:16:42
Speaker 1: just exercise. You mentioned exercise is uncomfortable. Physical activity in
1:16:46
Speaker 1: a lot of ways can be uncomfortable. You know, long
1:16:49
Speaker 1: endurance events, things that push you are uncomfortable. Um. But
1:16:54
Speaker 1: as has been the case of all these things, these
1:16:56
Speaker 1: discomforts do have benefits to um. What about on on
1:17:01
Speaker 1: this front, did you find most interesting and most eye opening,
1:17:03
Speaker 1: because a lot of this stuff I think is like, yeah,
1:17:06
Speaker 1: we know this stuff, but I think you uncover some
1:17:09
Speaker 1: interesting things here. Yeah, I would say most interesting to
1:17:12
Speaker 1: not you know, we all know that exercise is good
1:17:15
Speaker 1: for us. Um, the data is I mean, the data
1:17:18
Speaker 1: is really fascinating. And it could just be because I'm
1:17:20
Speaker 1: a freaking nerd, but you look at it and fitnesses
1:17:24
Speaker 1: like the number one way to avoid the top killers
1:17:27
Speaker 1: of humans now I mean full stop, um. But I
1:17:31
Speaker 1: think what I found personally most interesting when I was
1:17:35
Speaker 1: up in Alaska, It's like everything takes effort, right, It's
1:17:38
Speaker 1: like every single thing you do takes some sort of effort.
1:17:41
Speaker 1: You go back into the modern world and you're like,
1:17:43
Speaker 1: oh my god, nothing takes effort. I mean when we're
1:17:46
Speaker 1: in the Arctic, it's like even getting water, we have
1:17:49
Speaker 1: to hike down to the freaking river, which is you know,
1:17:52
Speaker 1: we saw grizzly there earlier in the day, so you're
1:17:54
Speaker 1: on edge and then you have to hike this you know,
1:17:57
Speaker 1: bag of water back up that's thirty forty pounds whatever. Ways,
1:18:01
Speaker 1: that's just for water. I mean, even like going out
1:18:03
Speaker 1: to the bathroom. You know that takes effort um But
1:18:07
Speaker 1: I would say the absolute hardest thing that I did
1:18:13
Speaker 1: in Alaska was the pack out of the animal. And
1:18:18
Speaker 1: it was a hundred pounds or so on our on
1:18:21
Speaker 1: my pack and we had five miles to go all uphill.
1:18:27
Speaker 1: Sort of karma right there back to camp. And you know,
1:18:32
Speaker 1: my background being at Men's Health and outside like i've been,
1:18:36
Speaker 1: my my job has forced me to do a lot
1:18:38
Speaker 1: of physical things. Now I'm not saying that I'm like
1:18:42
Speaker 1: the world's best athlete at the end of the day,
1:18:44
Speaker 1: I'm a gangly writer who sits at the desk most
1:18:46
Speaker 1: of the day, the choir right here, But like, I've
1:18:51
Speaker 1: done some stuff, you know, and it was just the
1:18:55
Speaker 1: hardest thing I've ever done. And what's so interesting is,
1:18:59
Speaker 1: I mean that was life for our ancestors a couple
1:19:03
Speaker 1: hundred years ago, three hundred years ago. What I mean
1:19:05
Speaker 1: for all of time. Right you look at you look
1:19:08
Speaker 1: at uh cultures who are still hunter gatherers. They are
1:19:11
Speaker 1: fourteen times more physically active than us. We've engineered activity
1:19:15
Speaker 1: out of our life in every way. What I thought
1:19:19
Speaker 1: was interesting, though, is I traveled to Harvard to talk
1:19:22
Speaker 1: to a guy whose name is Daniel Lieberman, and he's
1:19:25
Speaker 1: an anthropologist there, and he in two thousand four he
1:19:29
Speaker 1: did this study where he basically found that the reason
1:19:32
Speaker 1: the human body is built the way it is so
1:19:36
Speaker 1: we could hunt. We would run animals down for miles
1:19:40
Speaker 1: and miles at a time and spear them. And essentially,
1:19:45
Speaker 1: we are really good at long slow endurance events. We're
1:19:50
Speaker 1: terrible athletes in terms of like moving fast, like sprinting
1:19:54
Speaker 1: and lifting heavy things, but we're really good at running long,
1:19:59
Speaker 1: slow distances the heat, and so that's how we would hunt.
1:20:01
Speaker 1: We would do a thing called persistence hunting. Most animals
1:20:04
Speaker 1: are really inefficient at cooling themselves because they pant to
1:20:07
Speaker 1: release heat. So we would run these animals down, say
1:20:11
Speaker 1: a mile, it would sprint and whatever, get farther away
1:20:16
Speaker 1: from us than we track it, and we bump it again,
1:20:18
Speaker 1: and eventually, after doing this over ten miles, the animal
1:20:24
Speaker 1: would finally just overheat and we would spare it. And
1:20:27
Speaker 1: then what we would do next, though, is carry it
1:20:31
Speaker 1: back to camp. And that's something that his paper didn't
1:20:34
Speaker 1: talk about, and so that's what I wanted to talk
1:20:37
Speaker 1: to him about, and I went up to his lab
1:20:39
Speaker 1: and we talked a bit about how we evolved to run.
1:20:42
Speaker 1: I mean, it explains why we have these long legs
1:20:46
Speaker 1: and why we sweat where we don't have a lot
1:20:48
Speaker 1: of fur on our bodies. But then I asked him
1:20:51
Speaker 1: about carrying, because once we kill an animal, it's like
1:20:53
Speaker 1: you've got to carry it back to camp, or if
1:20:55
Speaker 1: the animal is just too heavy to carry, you gotta
1:20:58
Speaker 1: carry camp to the animal. And he was studying that
1:21:03
Speaker 1: right at that moment. He was like, Oh, it's funny
1:21:05
Speaker 1: you say that. I just started researching this, you know, like, oh, man, crazy,
1:21:10
Speaker 1: And carrying explains why we have really strong hands relative
1:21:15
Speaker 1: to the rest of our bodies, why our torsos are
1:21:17
Speaker 1: generally short, and we are the only animals that can
1:21:21
Speaker 1: carry efficiently. There's no other animals that can carry stuff
1:21:24
Speaker 1: and move it from point A to point B. So uh,
1:21:28
Speaker 1: I argue, and Lieberman would also argue that the acts
1:21:32
Speaker 1: of running and carrying are very unique to humans. It's
1:21:36
Speaker 1: what we evolved to be physically good at, and they
1:21:40
Speaker 1: are sort of uniquely beneficial for us from an exercise standpoint. Now,
1:21:45
Speaker 1: everyone a lot of people run, right, It's like we
1:21:48
Speaker 1: see runners on the street all the time. But how
1:21:50
Speaker 1: often do you see people just like carrying heavy ship
1:21:53
Speaker 1: for the act of exercise to improve themselves. You know,
1:21:57
Speaker 1: not too often, not too often unless you happened to
1:22:00
Speaker 1: be a hunter. And in that if you live in
1:22:02
Speaker 1: my neighborhood, you've seen a weird dude at five thirty
1:22:05
Speaker 1: in the morning doing it with a headlamp. But otherwise, yeah, exactly.
1:22:10
Speaker 1: So in the book, I investigate caring and how it's
1:22:14
Speaker 1: this this physical act that really was lost to time
1:22:19
Speaker 1: that we haven't flowed back in our days like we
1:22:21
Speaker 1: have running, and how it is uniquely good for us.
1:22:23
Speaker 1: So there's only one real group who has uh who's
1:22:29
Speaker 1: floated back into how they train and it's helped them
1:22:32
Speaker 1: become the fittest people on earth, and that is Special
1:22:35
Speaker 1: Forces soldiers. So they call it roucking. Basically, a weighted
1:22:39
Speaker 1: backpack um Marching with a weighted backpack is like the
1:22:43
Speaker 1: main form of training in the military. Military guys are
1:22:47
Speaker 1: always carrying a weighted pack with you know, AMMO supplies
1:22:50
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff. And I know a guy. I
1:22:54
Speaker 1: met a guy named whose name is Jason McCarthy, and
1:22:56
Speaker 1: he owns a company called Go Ruck, and they are
1:22:59
Speaker 1: trying to bring they've made um sort of military spec
1:23:03
Speaker 1: backpacks that can hold a lot of weight, and they're
1:23:06
Speaker 1: trying to bring this idea of of rucking or hiking
1:23:10
Speaker 1: with a weighted pack to the masses. And they've actually
1:23:13
Speaker 1: teamed up with this, these two researchers at the Mayo
1:23:16
Speaker 1: Clinic who are starting to flow this in with their patients.
1:23:20
Speaker 1: When patients come in with heart problems, they don't tell
1:23:23
Speaker 1: them to you know, start lifting weights or to start running.
1:23:27
Speaker 1: They say, hey, walk when that feels good, I want
1:23:30
Speaker 1: you to add a weighted backpack because it has you're
1:23:34
Speaker 1: not only working your endurance, but you're also working your strength,
1:23:37
Speaker 1: and each of those two components are essential for physical
1:23:41
Speaker 1: health but also from a performance standpoint, especially when it
1:23:45
Speaker 1: comes to hunting. I mean that is the foundation of hunting, right.
1:23:48
Speaker 1: It's like you have to hike into these areas with
1:23:51
Speaker 1: heavy stuff on your back, and if you're successful in
1:23:53
Speaker 1: your hunt, you're gonna be hiking with a lot of
1:23:56
Speaker 1: meat back. And so I think it's really interesting that
1:23:58
Speaker 1: modern hunting it's the one thing that brings back this
1:24:04
Speaker 1: you know, sort of primal form of exercise that we've
1:24:06
Speaker 1: really lost. Yeah, and and it's funny. It's it is
1:24:10
Speaker 1: if you if you were to pull the majority of
1:24:16
Speaker 1: folks that are pretty serious in the back country hunting
1:24:19
Speaker 1: world and do this stuff frequently, like that's that's the thing.
1:24:22
Speaker 1: There's always the temptation, just like anything else in physical fitness,
1:24:25
Speaker 1: where people want to, you know, do the glamour exercises
1:24:28
Speaker 1: and make those great big pecks and biceps and all
1:24:31
Speaker 1: that stuff. But you talk to the folks that that
1:24:33
Speaker 1: really do this stuff, it's man hike with a heavy
1:24:36
Speaker 1: pack and do it a lot, and do it at elevation,
1:24:39
Speaker 1: and like that's it's not sexy, it's not fancy. Uh,
1:24:43
Speaker 1: it's not gonna get you on the cover of a
1:24:44
Speaker 1: magazine maybe, but it just does the trick. It's it's
1:24:48
Speaker 1: it's what you need for this activity. And it's really
1:24:51
Speaker 1: interesting that what you've found is that it's not only
1:24:53
Speaker 1: what you need to be a good back country hunter,
1:24:56
Speaker 1: it's what you need to just be a healthy, fully
1:24:58
Speaker 1: actualized human being because of how we evolved. That that
1:25:02
Speaker 1: is fascinating. Yeah, and so there's a lot of military
1:25:07
Speaker 1: The military is obviously invested in knowing about carrying loads
1:25:11
Speaker 1: because it's what their soldiers do and they want to
1:25:13
Speaker 1: reduce injury rates, and they've basically found that any load
1:25:17
Speaker 1: up to about fifty pounds, it's pretty safe. Once you
1:25:20
Speaker 1: start going over fifty in training, you can it increases
1:25:24
Speaker 1: your risk of injury enough that you might want to
1:25:27
Speaker 1: dial back. So in the book, I talked about like,
1:25:29
Speaker 1: you know, probably for the average guy, it's like between
1:25:32
Speaker 1: thirty and fifty pounds is a sweet spot. Um, if
1:25:35
Speaker 1: you're smaller, if you're a female, probably between like twenty
1:25:39
Speaker 1: and thirty is probably a sweet spot. But man, you
1:25:42
Speaker 1: get so many benefits off of that. And to your
1:25:45
Speaker 1: point about, you know, show muscles. I was talking to
1:25:48
Speaker 1: a guide when I was up in Alaska, and he
1:25:50
Speaker 1: talked about he's had clients, you know, send him photos
1:25:54
Speaker 1: from the gym and their you know, bodybuilding and they
1:25:56
Speaker 1: just look amazing. And they'll text and be like, hey,
1:25:57
Speaker 1: you know, I have been more days to the haunt.
1:26:01
Speaker 1: I'm getting ready, And those guys will get out there
1:26:05
Speaker 1: and get a heavy pack on and they're just like,
1:26:07
Speaker 1: oh my god, like I can't do this, and no
1:26:09
Speaker 1: quit because it's the training hasn't been right, you know.
1:26:13
Speaker 1: It's like a lot of times in my mind I
1:26:16
Speaker 1: think that a lot of what we do in the gym.
1:26:18
Speaker 1: It is obviously good for us and that it helps
1:26:20
Speaker 1: our heart and that it has these benefits, but I
1:26:23
Speaker 1: don't think it's optimal more or less. Uh So, since
1:26:27
Speaker 1: you do a lot of this, UM, at least, I
1:26:31
Speaker 1: think you have looked into some of these things when
1:26:33
Speaker 1: it comes to optimizing your physical fitness plans and regiments,
1:26:39
Speaker 1: and through this research you've done. Talk to me a
1:26:42
Speaker 1: little bit about and this is selfish because I'm trying
1:26:45
Speaker 1: to figure this out for myself right now, UM balancing
1:26:49
Speaker 1: these physical endurance and exercise type periods with rest. So yeah,
1:26:55
Speaker 1: you know, I've gotten to a sweet spot where I
1:26:57
Speaker 1: do a daily run every morning. I start my day
1:26:59
Speaker 1: with a run, and I feels great. I get that
1:27:00
Speaker 1: runners high, and it might be miserable in the moment sometimes,
1:27:03
Speaker 1: but I'm always glad I did it. UM. But I'm
1:27:06
Speaker 1: trying to rant that up more and more and and
1:27:08
Speaker 1: now realizing the need like to have rest periods, and
1:27:12
Speaker 1: I think, I think, gosh, what's his name? Another writer
1:27:15
Speaker 1: for Outside UM has talked to He wrote peak Performance.
1:27:19
Speaker 1: Uh they talked about this is the formula for growth
1:27:24
Speaker 1: is stress plus rest. So you have to apply a
1:27:27
Speaker 1: stress to get growth, but then you need that rest
1:27:30
Speaker 1: period to allow the growth to happen. And this this
1:27:33
Speaker 1: could apply to mental growth or in this case physical
1:27:36
Speaker 1: UM fitness. So you need the stress of that run
1:27:39
Speaker 1: or that rocking or whatever, but you also need some
1:27:42
Speaker 1: kind of rest period to allow your body to regenerate. Um.
1:27:46
Speaker 1: Could you balance something like a long distance running and
1:27:50
Speaker 1: rucking every other day that kind of thing? Is that
1:27:53
Speaker 1: getting you rest because you're changing the type of stress?
1:27:56
Speaker 1: Or do you think that you really need you know,
1:27:59
Speaker 1: for no questions asked, rest where you do nothing or
1:28:04
Speaker 1: you switch to a totally different type of exercise. Um.
1:28:09
Speaker 1: That might be outside this conversation, but just popped in
1:28:11
Speaker 1: my head. No, No, And I think there's I mean
1:28:14
Speaker 1: a lot of there's a lot of different ways to
1:28:16
Speaker 1: view this, and different people would might view it differently.
1:28:19
Speaker 1: But I think generally from my work, I've noticed that
1:28:23
Speaker 1: most people will recommend at least one day of dedicated
1:28:26
Speaker 1: rest a week. And I don't mean like sit on
1:28:29
Speaker 1: the couch and smash funions all day, but like, you
1:28:32
Speaker 1: know you're you're not working out that day, you go
1:28:34
Speaker 1: for a walk. That's totally fine. Walks can be restorative.
1:28:38
Speaker 1: I do think it's good to mix up um day
1:28:42
Speaker 1: to day the type of exercise you're doing. So you know,
1:28:45
Speaker 1: if you were to go for a long run on Monday,
1:28:48
Speaker 1: maybe don't go for a long run on Tuesday, or
1:28:50
Speaker 1: make it shorter or throw in strength work. I mean
1:28:53
Speaker 1: we know that as humans, of all they were doing.
1:28:57
Speaker 1: UM endurance is what we I think really of all
1:29:00
Speaker 1: for most anthropologists would argue, so it's sort of uniquely
1:29:03
Speaker 1: good for us. UM, we didn't evolve to be that strong.
1:29:06
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean that strength training isn't good for
1:29:09
Speaker 1: us and can't actually help us be better at our
1:29:12
Speaker 1: endurance work and also be more I guess I would
1:29:15
Speaker 1: say resistant to injury when we're out in the field. Also,
1:29:20
Speaker 1: a movement is important. Nowadays we sit in chairs on
1:29:25
Speaker 1: desks all day, were slumped over keyboards, and our movement
1:29:27
Speaker 1: patterns are not what they used to be. I mean,
1:29:30
Speaker 1: you go to countries that are a little more uncomfortable,
1:29:33
Speaker 1: and it's like everyone can perfectly sit in the squat
1:29:36
Speaker 1: for as long as they want. It's like you test
1:29:38
Speaker 1: the average American. The average American can't squad because we've
1:29:41
Speaker 1: just were so adapted to chairs. So thinking, so I
1:29:44
Speaker 1: sort of see the three pillars as endurance, strength, and
1:29:48
Speaker 1: the ability to move. I mean I can tell you
1:29:50
Speaker 1: in my own UM, training for this kind of stuff
1:29:54
Speaker 1: all maybe lift weights and not like bodybuilding style, more
1:29:58
Speaker 1: more working the pattern, and that the body was built
1:30:01
Speaker 1: to do things like uh squats, you know, overhead presses,
1:30:07
Speaker 1: um planks, carrying heavyweights. You know. Two times a week, UM,
1:30:12
Speaker 1: I'll do an endurance we I'll maybe go for two runs,
1:30:15
Speaker 1: one pretty long, and then I'll usually rock a day
1:30:19
Speaker 1: or two, and then I'll have a day that's just
1:30:21
Speaker 1: dedicated to movement, and before every workout, I'll just make
1:30:24
Speaker 1: sure that I'm moving in the right way by doing
1:30:26
Speaker 1: a handful of different stretches. And so I think thinking
1:30:29
Speaker 1: about your yourself in terms of like how can I
1:30:31
Speaker 1: have as much exercise variability where I'm doing a lot
1:30:36
Speaker 1: of different things is going to help you be more
1:30:39
Speaker 1: robust instead of just focusing on on one thing when
1:30:43
Speaker 1: you go down one rabbit hole. Um, you can obviously
1:30:45
Speaker 1: get very good at that. You look at professional runners,
1:30:48
Speaker 1: I mean, like a marathon runner. All they do is run,
1:30:50
Speaker 1: but they're going for that. But that's not necessarily healthy
1:30:52
Speaker 1: or good for the average person right there, basically giving
1:30:56
Speaker 1: up health in order to be a sort of freak
1:30:58
Speaker 1: at this one end of the spectrum. Interesting. Yeah, that
1:31:01
Speaker 1: makes sense. It makes a lot of sense. I guess
1:31:04
Speaker 1: that brings us to the final themes in your book,
1:31:08
Speaker 1: which is, um, again right in line with something that
1:31:13
Speaker 1: I think every hunter has had to confront, which is
1:31:16
Speaker 1: getting comfortable with with mortality, with death. Um, whether that
1:31:22
Speaker 1: be your own or otherwise. UM, what was your journey
1:31:26
Speaker 1: like when it comes to that. Yeah, so we had
1:31:31
Speaker 1: been up there for too maybe we can have two
1:31:35
Speaker 1: weeks and we've been scounked to time, and we've seen
1:31:37
Speaker 1: some caribou been scunked a bunch, and it's interesting. When
1:31:41
Speaker 1: Donnie invited me on the hunt, he was like, you
1:31:43
Speaker 1: can hunt, and I my first answer was no, I'm
1:31:46
Speaker 1: a journalist, like, I don't want to get too involved
1:31:48
Speaker 1: in the story, and he was and he replied, okay, man,
1:31:52
Speaker 1: but you know, I think you'd really understand what we
1:31:54
Speaker 1: come up here for a lot more if you were
1:31:57
Speaker 1: to hunt. And you know, I trusted them on that,
1:32:00
Speaker 1: and I decided I was going to do it, but
1:32:03
Speaker 1: I still had a lot of reservations. I was like, okay,
1:32:05
Speaker 1: I think I will, but you know, we'll see. So
1:32:08
Speaker 1: we've been sitting on this hill glassing for so long,
1:32:11
Speaker 1: and finally we get in a position where we see
1:32:16
Speaker 1: these caribou on this opposite hill and there's two old
1:32:20
Speaker 1: bulls in there, and they start kind of moving down
1:32:23
Speaker 1: this valley towards this saddle that drops down into another valley,
1:32:27
Speaker 1: and you know, Donnie was like, hey, if we knuke
1:32:32
Speaker 1: along this hill, go get to that saddle before them
1:32:35
Speaker 1: and then sort of cut over, we might be in
1:32:36
Speaker 1: a good position. So here we go, and you know,
1:32:41
Speaker 1: I'm up there to hunt, but I'm I'm reticent about
1:32:45
Speaker 1: hunting the whole time because I'm carrying this, you know,
1:32:47
Speaker 1: the rifle across the time draw. I'm just like, oh, man,
1:32:50
Speaker 1: I might actually have to use this thing, like yeah, um,
1:32:55
Speaker 1: I've always eaten meat of Americans? Do I think? Is
1:32:59
Speaker 1: this the a stick? But I didn't really I don't
1:33:01
Speaker 1: know if I wanted to cross that sort of what
1:33:04
Speaker 1: I assumed would be this you know, emotional barrier, and um,
1:33:09
Speaker 1: I just wasn't sure if I wanted to go there.
1:33:12
Speaker 1: But we make it across the saddle, we hit the
1:33:16
Speaker 1: ground on the tundra and we start, um, you know,
1:33:20
Speaker 1: belly crawling into where we think these caribou we're gonna
1:33:24
Speaker 1: gonna come. And we get two hundred yards we stopped.
1:33:27
Speaker 1: Donnie pops up with the with the binoculars. Nothing hit
1:33:33
Speaker 1: the tundra again. Another hundred yards and I'm looking through
1:33:37
Speaker 1: the rifle scope. He's looking through the binoculars. We see
1:33:40
Speaker 1: these antlers appear on the apex of the saddle and
1:33:45
Speaker 1: here they come, and um, there's a herd of I
1:33:48
Speaker 1: think it was about thirty and we're kind of surveying them.
1:33:52
Speaker 1: I'm trying to see, you know, which are which are
1:33:54
Speaker 1: the two old bulls and we see this one where
1:33:59
Speaker 1: his aunt is. They're sort of like shifting as he walks,
1:34:02
Speaker 1: and um, he's limping. And it was like Donnie immediately
1:34:06
Speaker 1: we saw it at the same time, and Donnie just
1:34:08
Speaker 1: goes that your bowl. That's your bowl. The one that's limping,
1:34:10
Speaker 1: Like that's it, you know. I'm like, okay. So we're
1:34:14
Speaker 1: they start you know, walking out, and they get within
1:34:18
Speaker 1: you know, a hundred fifty yards and then maybe like
1:34:21
Speaker 1: a hundred and this old bull keeps going in and
1:34:24
Speaker 1: out of the herd. So I can't get a clean shot.
1:34:27
Speaker 1: And the whole time I'm I'm like, I'm still not
1:34:29
Speaker 1: a percent sure if I'm gonna pull the trigger. And
1:34:33
Speaker 1: they start. They get past the closest point and they
1:34:35
Speaker 1: keep walking and Donnie's like he can see him a
1:34:39
Speaker 1: little hesitant, you know, and he goes, hey, man, if
1:34:42
Speaker 1: you don't want to take the shot, you do not
1:34:44
Speaker 1: have to take the shot. But if you're gonna take
1:34:47
Speaker 1: the shot, you need to take it now. And sort
1:34:50
Speaker 1: of right after he says that, there's like kind of
1:34:54
Speaker 1: this clearing and it opens up and that bold it
1:34:58
Speaker 1: was limping was there, and he just kind of looks
1:35:00
Speaker 1: up and I pull the trigger. Um, we think it
1:35:05
Speaker 1: hits him. He's like, shoot again, shoot again, So pull
1:35:09
Speaker 1: it again. And right after that, I mean the herd
1:35:13
Speaker 1: spooks right. Caribou to that shot. You know, he hits
1:35:17
Speaker 1: the ground and I'm thinking, oh my god, there is
1:35:21
Speaker 1: no coming back from this. What have you done? You know,
1:35:26
Speaker 1: I mean, it hit me pretty heavy. So we walk
1:35:30
Speaker 1: out there and I start I start seeing the the
1:35:35
Speaker 1: caribou starts kind of having those spastic leg movements, you know,
1:35:38
Speaker 1: because the energy is spilling from his body. And I'm
1:35:40
Speaker 1: thinking he's still alive. I'm like, man, I need to
1:35:42
Speaker 1: run and like shoot this thing because he's suffering. And
1:35:44
Speaker 1: Donnie's like, whoa dude, you know, he's it's fine, that's natural.
1:35:49
Speaker 1: We get there and he's down, and I mean, I
1:35:51
Speaker 1: gotta give massive props to Donnie. He is the perfect
1:35:54
Speaker 1: person to go hunting with your first time, because he just,
1:35:58
Speaker 1: you know, looks at me and goes, hey, we're gonna
1:36:01
Speaker 1: go get your stuff. We'll be back, and he leaves
1:36:02
Speaker 1: me there, and I just kind of sat there and
1:36:05
Speaker 1: was like very strange feeling of being feeling about as
1:36:09
Speaker 1: depressed as I've ever felt, but also about as alive
1:36:12
Speaker 1: as I've ever felt. You know. It was a very heavy,
1:36:15
Speaker 1: strange new feeling to me. And I think ultimately at
1:36:20
Speaker 1: that point, I was like, I'm never gonna hunt again,
1:36:23
Speaker 1: Like I'm just I'm just not gonna do it. And
1:36:25
Speaker 1: because I'm looking at this herd that he was with
1:36:28
Speaker 1: on the hill, just thinking, oh, man, you know, I'm
1:36:31
Speaker 1: just I just created a bandy up there or something.
1:36:34
Speaker 1: And Donnie gets back and William and we start breaking
1:36:40
Speaker 1: this cariboo down and that's when my mind started to
1:36:44
Speaker 1: change because I could see that this ultimately was meat.
1:36:48
Speaker 1: It was going to feed me and my family, and
1:36:50
Speaker 1: also you know, I was going to go to Donnie
1:36:52
Speaker 1: and William and their families. And seeing the meat, like
1:36:56
Speaker 1: something just shifted for me. I'm like, dude, you eat
1:36:59
Speaker 1: me eat like every single day and never once do
1:37:03
Speaker 1: you feel any ounce of regret or sadness or you
1:37:06
Speaker 1: don't even think about it at all. But like here
1:37:11
Speaker 1: you are with this meat, feeling this way. And it
1:37:15
Speaker 1: made me realize that, like, by hunting, we're inserting ourselves
1:37:20
Speaker 1: in the life cycle in a way that is very
1:37:22
Speaker 1: enlightening for us. And you know, for me personally it
1:37:26
Speaker 1: was it was very rewarding. And then it also taught
1:37:31
Speaker 1: me a lot about the meat I eat just at
1:37:34
Speaker 1: home every day. It made it forced me to think
1:37:36
Speaker 1: about the choices I make, um with what food is
1:37:40
Speaker 1: on my plate and where it came from, and it
1:37:43
Speaker 1: just made me more cognizant of that. And um, I
1:37:47
Speaker 1: mean I can say um. Paradoxically, you would think that
1:37:50
Speaker 1: once a person begins hunting, they would eat a lot
1:37:51
Speaker 1: more meat. The opposite has been true for me. I'm
1:37:55
Speaker 1: a lot more. I mean I still eat meat. I
1:37:57
Speaker 1: am by no means of vegetarian. I probably eat meat,
1:38:00
Speaker 1: um every other day or so, but like I've reduced
1:38:02
Speaker 1: my meat consumption because I'm like, I don't do I
1:38:05
Speaker 1: need to eat meat right now? I don't know, you know, um.
1:38:10
Speaker 1: But it also made me realize how removed we are
1:38:14
Speaker 1: in the modern world from the life cycle and what
1:38:17
Speaker 1: effect is that had on us. So to sort of
1:38:21
Speaker 1: chase down that idea, I ended up traveling to uh Bhutan,
1:38:27
Speaker 1: which is this country in Asia that's by Nepal. And
1:38:33
Speaker 1: in Bhutan, people are thought to think about death at
1:38:36
Speaker 1: least once each day. Now, paradoxically, you would think that
1:38:40
Speaker 1: would really bomb a country out, and Bhutan is not
1:38:43
Speaker 1: that developed, but they're also the half one of the
1:38:47
Speaker 1: happiest countries on Earth, and a lot of the research
1:38:50
Speaker 1: suggests it's because they think about death. So it's just
1:38:54
Speaker 1: it's it's very fascinating that, you know, in America we
1:38:59
Speaker 1: remove ourselves from not only with what we eat, but
1:39:02
Speaker 1: also with how we deal with funerals, um, how we
1:39:07
Speaker 1: plan our lives. Like people don't tend to people tend
1:39:10
Speaker 1: to think they're just gonna like live forever, right, Um,
1:39:13
Speaker 1: we just don't face it. And by facing it um,
1:39:16
Speaker 1: whether through hunting or thinking about, you know, your own mortality,
1:39:21
Speaker 1: that can change a lot of things for people. And
1:39:23
Speaker 1: they've followed this up with research that does show that
1:39:27
Speaker 1: people who think about their death and sort of understand
1:39:31
Speaker 1: that they're going to die one day, it makes them
1:39:34
Speaker 1: live in a way that makes them happier, because all
1:39:36
Speaker 1: of a sudden, you know, your everyday bullshit just starts
1:39:40
Speaker 1: to fade. Like if I realized that, hey, one day,
1:39:42
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna be here, Like I'm probably not going
1:39:45
Speaker 1: to be as much of an asshole in traffic, right like,
1:39:47
Speaker 1: just like whatever, Like you know, we have all these
1:39:50
Speaker 1: petty little squabbles we get into every day. That stuff
1:39:53
Speaker 1: you just sort of don't care as much about it,
1:39:55
Speaker 1: and you really focus on what you think is going
1:39:57
Speaker 1: to move the dial for you and what matters in
1:40:00
Speaker 1: your life. It's the same thing when you've got a
1:40:03
Speaker 1: family friend who's you know, someone dies tragically in a
1:40:08
Speaker 1: car accident or something. When that stuff hits close to
1:40:11
Speaker 1: home and you you know, it hits you viscerally like that,
1:40:14
Speaker 1: you all of a sudden get a little Unfortunately usually
1:40:17
Speaker 1: it's a short window, but a window of clarity where
1:40:20
Speaker 1: you you know, take a step back and take perspective
1:40:24
Speaker 1: of things and have that reminder the jeez, this stupid
1:40:28
Speaker 1: thing at work, or this stupid squabble with my wife
1:40:30
Speaker 1: or this thing or that think, gosh, it doesn't matter
1:40:32
Speaker 1: in the big scheme of things. Helps you appreciate things again,
1:40:35
Speaker 1: it helps recenter you on like you said, what's what's
1:40:38
Speaker 1: most important? Um, it's it's It's something that I know
1:40:43
Speaker 1: has talked a lot about within UM kind of the
1:40:47
Speaker 1: stoic philosophy world too, where you know, this this idea
1:40:52
Speaker 1: of reflecting on your mortality is is a key foundation
1:40:55
Speaker 1: as well. Just just always kind of remembering this could
1:40:58
Speaker 1: all end tomorrow. So you have people what you've done,
1:41:00
Speaker 1: you're happy with what you're planning on doing today. You're
1:41:03
Speaker 1: making the right decisions because nothing's guaranteed. UH talked about
1:41:08
Speaker 1: talk about palate cleanser for a lot of And one
1:41:12
Speaker 1: of the I mean, one of the craziest things is
1:41:14
Speaker 1: so I go to Bhutan and it is it's a
1:41:17
Speaker 1: fascinating country. It's the only capital city in the world
1:41:21
Speaker 1: that does not have a stop light. I mean, it's very,
1:41:23
Speaker 1: very underdeveloped. But again they're one of the twenties had
1:41:27
Speaker 1: twentiest happy twenty happiest countries in the world. Took me
1:41:31
Speaker 1: a minute to say that, right, Um, but they're they're
1:41:34
Speaker 1: one of the least developed. And one of the things
1:41:37
Speaker 1: I did to understand this is there is a guy
1:41:39
Speaker 1: who's an economist at Oxford that really runs all this data,
1:41:43
Speaker 1: who was interesting to talk to talk to you about this.
1:41:46
Speaker 1: But then I went and visited a guy who is
1:41:49
Speaker 1: sort of a leader in the Buddhist faith. There it's um,
1:41:53
Speaker 1: you know, it's a it's a Buddhist nation, and take
1:41:56
Speaker 1: it up to meet with this guy. His title as
1:41:58
Speaker 1: a Kempo, so he's a unk and he lives in
1:42:02
Speaker 1: this shock that is outside this monastery that's up on
1:42:06
Speaker 1: a cliff. Now, to visit Bhutan, because of government regulations,
1:42:10
Speaker 1: you have to hire a driver to take you everywhere.
1:42:14
Speaker 1: My driver's got this like smart car basically, I mean,
1:42:16
Speaker 1: it's this tiny little thing and we gotta go up
1:42:20
Speaker 1: this you know, four by four road to get up
1:42:23
Speaker 1: to this uh monastery to meet this dude in his shock.
1:42:26
Speaker 1: And it's like, I mean, this this driver is just
1:42:30
Speaker 1: he could win the Baja one thousand. I'll tell you
1:42:34
Speaker 1: that man like that drive up there was just like,
1:42:37
Speaker 1: I mean, just amazing, and you know, he parks. I
1:42:41
Speaker 1: hike along this ridge, go see this guy in his shack.
1:42:45
Speaker 1: Get in there. First room, there's nothing in there. Um
1:42:49
Speaker 1: second room is a very basic kitchen with you know,
1:42:51
Speaker 1: cooked top and sink. And the third I like, I
1:42:55
Speaker 1: have to pull this drape open and the first thing
1:42:59
Speaker 1: I see is a massive statue of the Buddha and
1:43:02
Speaker 1: it's flanked by like candles and smaller statues and photos
1:43:06
Speaker 1: of of you know, Buddhist leaders, and uh. Then I
1:43:10
Speaker 1: look left and there's you know, there's incense smoke in
1:43:13
Speaker 1: the air, and the sun is shining through this window
1:43:16
Speaker 1: and it's just like catching the smoke. And beyond the smoke,
1:43:20
Speaker 1: I can see this face and it's like I hear
1:43:24
Speaker 1: this voice. It's welcome, you know, and it's this Buddhist
1:43:28
Speaker 1: monk and he's on this platform in the lotus position
1:43:31
Speaker 1: and his full orange robes, shaved head. I mean, it
1:43:35
Speaker 1: was just like if you're picturing, like, what's the most
1:43:38
Speaker 1: cliche thing you could think about in terms of like
1:43:41
Speaker 1: this Western journalists going to meet you know, the monk
1:43:44
Speaker 1: and Bhutan. I mean, this was it, dude. This was totally.
1:43:47
Speaker 1: It just like just like the movie. And so I
1:43:52
Speaker 1: sit down there and we talked for a couple hours
1:43:57
Speaker 1: just about death and especially how the West sees death
1:44:02
Speaker 1: versus how they see it in Bhutan. And you know,
1:44:04
Speaker 1: he talked about in the West, we see life is
1:44:06
Speaker 1: like trying to accomplish a checklist. It's like I'm gonna
1:44:11
Speaker 1: graduate college, then I'm gonna buy a car, then I'm
1:44:13
Speaker 1: gonna get a job, then I'm gonna get married, and
1:44:15
Speaker 1: they're gonna have kids, and I'm gonna do this, and
1:44:16
Speaker 1: the I'm gonna do that, and we're always looking ahead
1:44:18
Speaker 1: to the next thing. You know, we're not quite satisfied.
1:44:21
Speaker 1: And he really thinks about it, like if we can
1:44:24
Speaker 1: if we can learn to accept that we are going
1:44:27
Speaker 1: to die one day and really try and live in
1:44:29
Speaker 1: this moment, and we never know when we're gonna die,
1:44:31
Speaker 1: it's a thing like death could come at any time,
1:44:33
Speaker 1: you know. Um, we can start to make decisions that
1:44:37
Speaker 1: maybe aren't just so automatic. Not saying that any of
1:44:39
Speaker 1: those things that I laid out are bad in any way,
1:44:42
Speaker 1: but we often don't stop and question why we're doing
1:44:44
Speaker 1: the things we do, and that can lead us to
1:44:46
Speaker 1: maybe live a little bit truer than ourselves. And one
1:44:50
Speaker 1: of the final things this guy says to me is, hey,
1:44:55
Speaker 1: just remember death can come at any time. A couple
1:44:58
Speaker 1: of days later, I'm going to visit this Uh. It
1:45:02
Speaker 1: was like it was a non work day. It was like,
1:45:04
Speaker 1: I'll do a tourist thing day. Um, I go to
1:45:06
Speaker 1: visit this really famous monastery that is like built into
1:45:11
Speaker 1: the side of a cliff. Um. You have to hike
1:45:15
Speaker 1: to get up there. It's like a five mile hike,
1:45:17
Speaker 1: pretty gnarly high because it's um it's in the foothills
1:45:20
Speaker 1: of the Himalayas, so the altitude really starts to get you.
1:45:23
Speaker 1: And so me and this driver we hike up there.
1:45:26
Speaker 1: We go see it, and there's all this interesting death
1:45:28
Speaker 1: imagery and um, just really fascinating place. And we're leaving
1:45:32
Speaker 1: and the drivers like, hey, uh, he's started. He's like hey, someone,
1:45:36
Speaker 1: someone's sick. And he starts running over to this group
1:45:38
Speaker 1: of people and this Buddhist monk was like on the ground,
1:45:44
Speaker 1: had had some sort of incident and he's on these
1:45:47
Speaker 1: like really steep steps kind of on a cliff. So
1:45:49
Speaker 1: we all decide like we need to get this guy
1:45:52
Speaker 1: down and no, I'm the only person that speaks English.
1:45:54
Speaker 1: Everyone else is spooking speaking boutanee. So my drivers kind
1:45:57
Speaker 1: of happened to be this like middleman sort of like,
1:45:59
Speaker 1: hey need to get him off the steps, give him down,
1:46:01
Speaker 1: you know. And I'm the only person that knows CPR,
1:46:05
Speaker 1: which I learned from my venture into the Alaskan wild,
1:46:11
Speaker 1: and I started doing CPR on this guy. He's I mean,
1:46:14
Speaker 1: he's a monk bald head. He's in his Alt monks
1:46:16
Speaker 1: robes and and um did CPR on this dude for
1:46:20
Speaker 1: like twenty minutes and he didn't make it. And it
1:46:24
Speaker 1: was just like I came here to learn about death
1:46:26
Speaker 1: and we have this situation where there's this guy, Like
1:46:29
Speaker 1: there was another tourist around me who was like I
1:46:31
Speaker 1: literally talked to that guy and we laughed together at
1:46:35
Speaker 1: the bottom of the hike and he was totally fine.
1:46:38
Speaker 1: And then for the guy was probably like sixty and
1:46:41
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, he had some incident and it was
1:46:43
Speaker 1: like what he just couldn't you know. We tried to
1:46:46
Speaker 1: call for a helicopter, but it was too cliffy, nothing
1:46:49
Speaker 1: could come in. It was just like, man, I mean
1:46:52
Speaker 1: it like it was intense, but It also cemented this
1:46:55
Speaker 1: idea that's like death cam come at any time, Like
1:46:59
Speaker 1: we can't. We can't predict anything, whether it's like you said,
1:47:01
Speaker 1: a car accident, or whether we have some weird genetic
1:47:05
Speaker 1: thing or you know, you have a heart attack unexpectedly.
1:47:08
Speaker 1: I mean, man, that'll that definitely made me start thinking about,
1:47:13
Speaker 1: you know, how am I spending my time? Where is
1:47:16
Speaker 1: my attention going? Am I doing the things that really
1:47:20
Speaker 1: truly fulfill me? I mean that that that sort of thing.
1:47:24
Speaker 1: Will you know that self corrects once you get yourself
1:47:26
Speaker 1: in a position like that. So yeah, yeah, So, I
1:47:33
Speaker 1: mean that's that's a a heck of a personal experience
1:47:37
Speaker 1: to really illustrate and entie a bow on a concept.
1:47:41
Speaker 1: You're trying to learn more about that, for sure, But
1:47:44
Speaker 1: I gotta believe this entire journey has has been has
1:47:50
Speaker 1: been something like that in its own way for you. So,
1:47:54
Speaker 1: now that it's done, you've chased this rabbit trying to
1:47:58
Speaker 1: learn about these different things. You've you've had all these experiences,
1:48:02
Speaker 1: you spend a month plus in the Arctic wilderness, You've
1:48:06
Speaker 1: confronted death and a number of different ways. Now you've
1:48:10
Speaker 1: explored how discomfort may actually really lead to much better
1:48:16
Speaker 1: things in our lives. I know this book. I'm sure
1:48:19
Speaker 1: you're hoping this book will change people in some kind
1:48:22
Speaker 1: of way, But how has this book changed you? What's
1:48:25
Speaker 1: changed in your life now after this journey for yourself? Yeah,
1:48:29
Speaker 1: I think it's a lot of it is just awareness
1:48:32
Speaker 1: of how freaking lucky we have it today. I mean,
1:48:36
Speaker 1: I don't want the message of this book to be
1:48:38
Speaker 1: that comfort is bad. Comfort is awesome. It is amazing
1:48:43
Speaker 1: that we can you and I can have this conversation
1:48:46
Speaker 1: right now over the internet, and then it could go
1:48:49
Speaker 1: out to people and you know, benefit people. Um, it's
1:48:53
Speaker 1: amazing that, you know, I can drive through McDonald's and
1:48:56
Speaker 1: get a quarter pounder that tastes the list, Like all
1:48:58
Speaker 1: these things are amazing. There's a reason where so successful
1:49:00
Speaker 1: as a species. But we have these internal drives that
1:49:03
Speaker 1: have us always default to that which is most comfortable.
1:49:06
Speaker 1: And if we don't push against that, I think we
1:49:09
Speaker 1: lose a lot of our understanding of what it means
1:49:13
Speaker 1: to truly, you know, feel alive, and we lose the
1:49:16
Speaker 1: perspective to realize just how damn lucky we have it now.
1:49:20
Speaker 1: It's like when I got when I got out of
1:49:22
Speaker 1: the Arctic. We were in this you know, little shock
1:49:26
Speaker 1: of an airport and contubue, Alaska, and I used the
1:49:32
Speaker 1: restroom and I go wash my hands in the water's warm,
1:49:35
Speaker 1: and it's like the biggest shit eating grin of my
1:49:37
Speaker 1: life went across my face. I was like, oh my god,
1:49:40
Speaker 1: warm water. Yeah, and that and that happened every time
1:49:46
Speaker 1: I'd use warm water for like weeks after. And you
1:49:49
Speaker 1: also just start to realize like, oh man, like we
1:49:52
Speaker 1: have it so good now, and that gives you a
1:49:55
Speaker 1: lot of gratitude and like it just changes your every
1:49:59
Speaker 1: h I think it colors having these moments, you know,
1:50:02
Speaker 1: whether it's like a hunt where you had to face
1:50:05
Speaker 1: down some sort of discomfort and it was challenging, or
1:50:08
Speaker 1: you do one of those Missoggi things I talked about,
1:50:11
Speaker 1: or really anything that can change your perspective and realize
1:50:15
Speaker 1: help you realize how lucky you are to be alive.
1:50:19
Speaker 1: I think is is very worthwhile. Like my wife and
1:50:23
Speaker 1: I this is a stupid story, but my wife and
1:50:25
Speaker 1: I always go to this one restaurant by our house
1:50:27
Speaker 1: and it's there's always a wait. It's always very inefficient
1:50:32
Speaker 1: in terms of like how it's managed but the food
1:50:34
Speaker 1: is worth it, you know. But when we sit and wait,
1:50:38
Speaker 1: when we're standing there waiting, I mean, I would always
1:50:41
Speaker 1: just get so frustrated. Before I went to last I'm like, like,
1:50:44
Speaker 1: damn it, if they would just do this and this
1:50:46
Speaker 1: and this, they could move more people through. And I
1:50:49
Speaker 1: can't believe they're wasting my time because I am apparently
1:50:52
Speaker 1: just so damn important. You know. Well, when I get
1:50:56
Speaker 1: back from Alaska, it's like the first time we go
1:50:58
Speaker 1: in there, I'm just standing there and like I just think, man,
1:51:03
Speaker 1: it's so nice to be in this warm building. Oh man,
1:51:06
Speaker 1: I can't wait to eat this food. Like I'm still underweight.
1:51:09
Speaker 1: This is gonna be so good. And I just realized, like,
1:51:12
Speaker 1: how can you bitch about having to wait five minutes
1:51:14
Speaker 1: in a restaurant that is either heated or air conditioned.
1:51:18
Speaker 1: You're about to eat like more calories in one sitting
1:51:22
Speaker 1: than our ancestors used to be able to eat in
1:51:24
Speaker 1: in a single day. And it's like, well prepared me.
1:51:27
Speaker 1: You're gonna sit doing it the whole time, and you
1:51:29
Speaker 1: didn't have to work one single amount of calories worth
1:51:32
Speaker 1: to do it. I mean, it's just like we have
1:51:34
Speaker 1: it so amazing now, and we sometimes forget that, and
1:51:38
Speaker 1: so we need moments that sort of push up against
1:51:40
Speaker 1: that comfort and just say, hey, snap out of it.
1:51:44
Speaker 1: This is freaking awesome to live right now, and you
1:51:46
Speaker 1: better recognize that. Yeah, that's a great point. So there's
1:51:51
Speaker 1: there's a lot of different things that folks could take
1:51:54
Speaker 1: out of this. There's a lot of different action items
1:51:57
Speaker 1: that someone could latch onto and and run down to
1:52:00
Speaker 1: apply in their own life. But if you had to
1:52:03
Speaker 1: pick one single change or one single idea that you
1:52:11
Speaker 1: could propose to to our audience, to say, man, try
1:52:14
Speaker 1: this one thing of all the things we talked about,
1:52:17
Speaker 1: what would that one thing be? And maybe it could
1:52:20
Speaker 1: be because you think it's the most impactful. Maybe you
1:52:23
Speaker 1: think it's the most contrary to popular popularity or popular opinion.
1:52:29
Speaker 1: Maybe I don't know, But what's one thing if you
1:52:31
Speaker 1: had a narrow down one action at them, what's that
1:52:35
Speaker 1: I would probably this is this is probably cheating. I
1:52:39
Speaker 1: would probably go back to that idea of do some
1:52:42
Speaker 1: big epic thing outside because it's gonna force you to
1:52:45
Speaker 1: face all these things that I just talked about, like
1:52:47
Speaker 1: you're gonna have a real challenge. You're probably gonna be
1:52:51
Speaker 1: out there long enough that you're like, oh man, I'm
1:52:53
Speaker 1: I'm starving right now. I didn't pack it enough food.
1:52:55
Speaker 1: You're gonna be out in nature for an extended period
1:52:57
Speaker 1: of time, You're gonna have to put your body through
1:53:00
Speaker 1: physical things that it probably hasn't gone through again. So
1:53:02
Speaker 1: it really just ticks all these little things things in
1:53:06
Speaker 1: its own way. I mean, that's like we've kind of
1:53:08
Speaker 1: been circling around this whole time, is I mean, that's
1:53:11
Speaker 1: why hunting is amazing. Is it hits all these things
1:53:14
Speaker 1: that we've just been talking about and really teaches us
1:53:18
Speaker 1: a lot about ourselves process. That's the only complaint I
1:53:21
Speaker 1: think I have about your book is that you didn't
1:53:23
Speaker 1: have like the last page being all right, and the
1:53:26
Speaker 1: whole purpose of this book was to explain to you
1:53:28
Speaker 1: why you should take up hunting, and uh, I kid,
1:53:33
Speaker 1: But but really the book is great. I I really
1:53:35
Speaker 1: enjoyed it. Yeah it was. It was a great read. Interesting,
1:53:40
Speaker 1: And I guess my last thing I'm curious about is
1:53:43
Speaker 1: are you going to do it again? You're gonna hunt again? Yes,
1:53:47
Speaker 1: I am, I've had I'm definitely gonna hunt again. Um,
1:53:49
Speaker 1: I had someone asked me so are you a hunter now?
1:53:52
Speaker 1: And I had to think about that one, and I don't.
1:53:54
Speaker 1: I don't know if I would classify myself as a
1:53:57
Speaker 1: hunter yet. Maybe it's I feel like I haven't earned it,
1:53:59
Speaker 1: or maybe it's I feel like, um, because I'm primarily,
1:54:03
Speaker 1: first and foremost a writer, that if I if I
1:54:06
Speaker 1: start to identify with you know, I'm a hunter or
1:54:08
Speaker 1: whatever it is, and then maybe I couldn't criticize it
1:54:11
Speaker 1: if I needed to in my writing. M Yeah, but
1:54:16
Speaker 1: I'm definitely gonna hunt again. I mean, I've talked to Donni. Um,
1:54:20
Speaker 1: Donnie setting me up with the bow and so I've
1:54:24
Speaker 1: started shooting that and we're gonna we're gonna get some
1:54:27
Speaker 1: stuff going soon. Yeah, I've put in for tags too.
1:54:29
Speaker 1: But the other thing that makes that I think is
1:54:32
Speaker 1: really interesting with hunting, going back to that, the Soga
1:54:34
Speaker 1: idea is it is damn hard, like you're probably gonna fail,
1:54:38
Speaker 1: especially when you're new. I mean I put in for
1:54:41
Speaker 1: all these tags right when I got back, and it
1:54:42
Speaker 1: was just like strike, strike, strike now, and it's just
1:54:47
Speaker 1: so hard to get. So it's the idea that you
1:54:50
Speaker 1: actually have to work and dedicate yourself to get into
1:54:54
Speaker 1: this game is makes it that much more rewarding. And
1:54:59
Speaker 1: also because the stakes are so much higher than like,
1:55:02
Speaker 1: I don't know, golf thing, you know, very very true.
1:55:05
Speaker 1: It's it's it's a as serious as anything can get.
1:55:09
Speaker 1: So forces forces, a lot of these a lot of
1:55:13
Speaker 1: these perspective shifting things that you've talked about all come
1:55:17
Speaker 1: into play when it comes to Hunting for for so
1:55:19
Speaker 1: many reasons. So it's a really interesting interplay. And I'm
1:55:21
Speaker 1: I'm glad that you know, people could write this book
1:55:24
Speaker 1: with a lot of different you know, adventures being the
1:55:27
Speaker 1: theme of their story, and I thought it was really
1:55:30
Speaker 1: interesting that hunting ended up being the one that that
1:55:33
Speaker 1: worked with this story, and I think it was a
1:55:35
Speaker 1: perfect illustration. So for folks that want to pick up
1:55:39
Speaker 1: a copy of the book, where do you want them
1:55:41
Speaker 1: to look for it? When is it out? What do
1:55:44
Speaker 1: they need to know? Uh, it is out May eleven,
1:55:49
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure when you're airing this, but it
1:55:50
Speaker 1: could be out now if you're at May eleven, and
1:55:54
Speaker 1: you can find out wherever books are sold. I mean,
1:55:56
Speaker 1: you know, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, all that stuff. There's
1:55:58
Speaker 1: a bookstore here in my hometown of Las Vegas that
1:56:01
Speaker 1: I partnered up with, and I did that because they
1:56:05
Speaker 1: do a lot of their funding goes to writing programs
1:56:08
Speaker 1: for any inner city kids, and it's called the Writer's Block.
1:56:12
Speaker 1: So if you go to the Writer's Block dot org
1:56:15
Speaker 1: slash Easter, you can get it there. I'll sign it.
1:56:18
Speaker 1: Some of the money goes to these programs, So that's
1:56:20
Speaker 1: kind of a cool way to do it because it
1:56:21
Speaker 1: also supports that independent bookstore. And then I don't know,
1:56:25
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about me, I got
1:56:27
Speaker 1: a website. It's Easter Michael dot com and um, yeah,
1:56:31
Speaker 1: you can hit me up on Instagram, whatever, email me.
1:56:33
Speaker 1: I'm happy to chat answer questions, all that kind of stuff. Awesome, Well,
1:56:38
Speaker 1: well done with a book, Michael. This is a really
1:56:40
Speaker 1: good one. I'm excited to recommend it to people. I
1:56:43
Speaker 1: absolutely recommended to people listening, and uh, I hope it
1:56:46
Speaker 1: does just swimmingly well. I hope it's a New York
1:56:50
Speaker 1: Times bestseller and a lot of people pick it up
1:56:52
Speaker 1: and I think a lot of people's lives will be
1:56:55
Speaker 1: positively changed because of it. So so bravo on that,
1:56:59
Speaker 1: and thanks for chatting. Awesome. Well, Hey, thanks a lot
1:57:01
Speaker 1: for having me Man I really appreciate um the kind
1:57:04
Speaker 1: words coming from you. I mean, I loved that wild
1:57:06
Speaker 1: country and I think we definitely see a lot of
1:57:09
Speaker 1: things um the same way, but kind of coming at
1:57:12
Speaker 1: it from slightly different angles, which is is really cool
1:57:15
Speaker 1: to see that overlapped and it was awesome to talk
1:57:16
Speaker 1: to you. Yeah, I agree. I think we should do
1:57:19
Speaker 1: it again for sure. And that's a wrap. Thank you
1:57:24
Speaker 1: for joining us. As I mentioned, highly recommend this book.
1:57:27
Speaker 1: Head on over to Amazon or wherever it is we
1:57:29
Speaker 1: going to pick up your books and check out The
1:57:31
Speaker 1: Comfort Crisis. Really enjoyed this one. I hope you did too.
1:57:35
Speaker 1: Thanks for tuning in, and until next time, stay wired,
1:57:39
Speaker 1: Tell