Latest / Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson / Ep 15: Craig Foster - My Octopus Teacher & Amphibious Soul

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Ep 15: Craig Foster - My Octopus Teacher & Amphibious Soul · Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson

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  Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Live Free Ride Free, where we talk to people who
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  have lived self-actualized lives on their own terms, and find out how they
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  got there, what they do, how we can get there, what we can learn from them.
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  How to live our best lives, find our own definition of success,
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  and most importantly, find joy.
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  I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson.
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  New York Times bestselling author of the Horse Boy.
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  Founder of New Trails Learning Systems and long ride home.com.
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  You can find details of all our programs and shows on Rupert isaacson.com.
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  Welcome back to Live Free Ride Free.
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  I've got possibly the one of the most, without a doubt, one of the
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  most interesting people I've ever met.
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  It's Craig Foster.
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  If you haven't watched the movie My Octopus Teacher, then you're
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  lucky because you have a great, great treat in store for you.
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  He's a filmmaker.
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  He's an author.
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  He's an activist.
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  He's an activist on behalf of nature.
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  And.
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  really the planet and our own species.
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  He's made numerous films.
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  worked with indigenous cultures all over the world, won thousands of awards,
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  blah, blah, blah, all that stuff.
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  Sure.
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  And he's also just written a book and it's a really good book.
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  And I'm going to let him talk about this book and what it
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  means for us as a species.
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  But it's a book you've got to read.
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  I just read it.
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  So Craig Foster, hello.
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  Tell us who you are and tell us about this book.
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  Craig Foster: Wonderful to be with you, Rupert.
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  So great to be talking to you and we've known each other for a long time.
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  So it's just great to be with you again.
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  Thanks for the wonderful introduction.
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  My book is called Amphibious Soul, Finding the Wild in a Tame World.
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  And I, I spent the last 12 years diving every day in the great African sea forest.
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  And I've been privileged enough to build these relationships
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  with a lot of different animals.
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  And after many years with them.
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  I, they started to teach me and change me.
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  And I had this really strong sense that as humans, we were living these double lives.
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  And I called the one life or almost, I can almost sense that
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  inside of each of us, there's this wild person and this tame person.
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  And the tame person I see as related to all the wonderful comforts
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  and technology that we all enjoy.
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  And I certainly indulge in a lot of those and enjoy them.
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  And then this incredible wild person that remembers.
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  3 million years of extraordinary wild memories of our genus on this
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  planet, and then more recently, 300, 000 years living as Homo sapiens, 98
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  percent of that time fully wild in a very sophisticated, powerful way.
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  And I sensed that the balance between the wild and the tame person was way off.
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  We said a smothering, this beautiful wild person in all of us with the tame.
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  So I was interested in exploring that and learning from these incredible
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  animals, learning from my indigenous teachers learning from science and human
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  origins, and try to put a story together that, you know, could be made a case
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  for getting this beautiful wild person to, to come out more in, in many of us,
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  Rupert Isaacson: you know, obviously you're preaching to the converted here.
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  I.
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  am a great believer in the need for the rewilding of the human soul.
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  I feel that that's at the root of the despair, which I think has
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  overtaken our culture, but also it's the light that can lead us out of it.
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  What's interesting about the title of your book though, amphibious, amphibious
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  soul, not just wild soul, just rewilding, not, you know, getting in touch with
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  the ancestor or hunter gatherer.
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  Amphibious.
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  It's very specific.
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  Why?
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  Craig Foster: Yeah.
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  That's a great question.
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  I mean, I,
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  I literally from the first day I was born, I went into the ocean.
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  My parents took me in on the very first day I was born and we lived in the half
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  the house was in the intertidal zone.
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  So my whole life has been one of ocean.
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  And even my mom.
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  You know, when I was, she was pregnant, would go in diving three or four
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  times a week while I was in her belly.
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  So, diving in the ocean and water is a big part of my life and that's
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  where I've found true wildness.
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  So that's what I use, but it doesn't mean that, you know,
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  Other people have to do that.
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  So I was interested in this amphibious nature that we have.
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  So many people are drawn to water and we are in crit.
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  I mean, compared to most animals on land, we pretty useless, we slow, we
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  weak, but in the water, we actually surprisingly good, we can outdive.
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  Almost every land animal and outswim them.
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  So we have this incredible amphibious nature as humans.
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  And I've, you know, I'm just,
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  I've felt that pull to the water so strongly.
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  And I know many people who've had that and it's a push as well.
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  It's a, it's a pull and there's fear associated with this as well.
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  Rupert Isaacson: You know, you're from South Africa and the ocean for those
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  listeners who don't know that part of the world, the ocean that Craig is talking
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  about is the down right at the bottom of the Cape of Good Hope on the Atlantic
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  side or which really divides actually the Atlantic from the Indian Ocean
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  because it's wild, it's cold water, it's mountains to the sea, it's rough it's
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  not necessarily an inviting ocean when you look at it from the outside and my
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  family's also partly from down that way and so I've spent bits of time along that
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  coast and I'm intimidated, you know, and I know that there's quite great whites off.
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  In fact, I had a cousin who was taken by one.
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  And so I'm always intrigued when I see people, there's obviously a big surfing
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  culture there, but when I see people able to commit their frail bodies to this.
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  On the face of it, quite hostile looking ocean.
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  It's not the calm Mediterranean.
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  It's, it's, it's scary.
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  I would, you know, I would be scared to go in.
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  Tell us about that.
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  Why
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  does that sea with those rough ways breaking on the rocks and why do you not
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  feel I will be broken upon those rocks?
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  What makes you feel, yeah, I can go in there?
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  And I can thrive and actually make this my home
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  and how much I mean, I do that.
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  Craig Foster: I mean, as you, you're right in that it is the Cape of storms.
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  I think they're more shipwrecks here than in, than in most places.
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  And it's very much about getting to know the ocean.
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  And you know, know her moods, you know, on, when there's a big Atlantic swell
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  coming in, you know, you're not going to choose that part that's just, you know,
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  directly open to that, unless you into big wave surfing or something like that.
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  Or unless you want a really wild swim, which we sometimes do, but by watching
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  very closely, I mean, a lot of the places I'm choosing are in protected bays.
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  I'm watching the swell, I'm watching the tides sometimes even
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  diving on, you know, extreme days in very shallow protected water.
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  Sometimes I do like, you know, swimming between those, those rocks and then
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  these giant waves are crashing against the rocks and like literally, you know,
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  breaking over the rocks over my head.
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  And, but I know the little areas so well that there are these big ones.
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  Pockets of safety.
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  And that only comes from going many, many, many times.
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  So I could take you there and you'd probably depending on your level of
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  comfort in the water and your ability to relax, probably be, be fine.
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  As soon as you tense or Get scared.
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  Then it's a different story.
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  And I've almost lost a few people like that.
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  It's amazing how it can change.
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  So I have, you know, I can go with my son who's been diving with me since, you know,
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  very, very young and we can swim in these, what looks like an impossible ocean.
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  And it's perfectly safe, but then the ocean can look quite similar,
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  but it's changed and then it's incredibly dangerous for us.
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  So you have to know the difference and sometimes it can be quite subtle.
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  So, and I don't always get it right, but most, most of the time.
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  Mostly now I can read it and know when it's safe and when it's not and it depends
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  on someone like say if you if you're not used to it, then you start in the tidal
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  pools, you get your strength up, you swim, you get used to going down, you used
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  to holding your breath, you get used to water in your mouth, swallowing water in
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  your nose, you just get used to all that.
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  And you slowly venture out, you go out on the calm days.
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  Then you go out on the medium days, then you practice body surfing and
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  dealing with waves and you just slowly, you know, get to know her.
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  Rupert Isaacson: I do believe that we have an amphibious
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  soul for evolutionary reasons.
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  You're living there on the Cape of Good Hope.
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  It's one of the earliest places of human settlement that we know of.
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  You know, there are, there are archeological, pre
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  archeological sites there.
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  Going back hundreds of thousands of years, it always seems to be, you know, a bit of
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  a rivalry going on between Southern Africa and East Africa about which is the cradle
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  of mankind, but we know it's, it's there.
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  And it seems that all the earliest settlement sites, Our coastal and to
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  me that would make sense because well, that's where the most food is, right?
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  You've got food from the land food from the water.
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  There's a beach You've got a long sight line perhaps may be more difficult for
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  predators to creep up on you I don't know But if there's more abundance does
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  that give you more time for culture more time for nature more time to create art
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  To have conversation and to sort of do the things that we think of as civilized
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  which we know that hunter gatherer people do as well Do you think that we have?
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  You That our soul is amphibious because we've actually evolved next in this
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  margin of land and water and perhaps then gone up from Africa into the rest of the
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  world, following the coast, following the rivers, following the water courses.
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  So are we in fact an amphibious ape, you know, or, or certainly have been
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  for hundreds of thousands of years.
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  And at what point do you think we became amphibious?
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  Craig Foster: I mean, I think you could I agree with you that, I mean,
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  there are a lot of incredible coastal sites a few of which I've been able
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  to, you know, study thanks to the amazing scientists that I've worked with
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  but there also are equivalent sites.
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  But certainly, I mean, if you just take this idea, you are now living on the coast
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  and, you know, one of the big things, as you know, a hunter gatherers need is
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  protein and they need, especially fat.
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  So you're walking along the coast and the, you know, the common thing for a whale
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  to be washed up, that's 20 tons of fat.
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  Delivered to you with no energy.
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  I mean, it's just 20 tons of meat, 20 tons of fat.
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  I mean, it's just incredible feast.
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  And then you've got all the carbohydrates on the land.
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  You've got all your shellfish, you've got all your other fish, you've got your You
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  know, all the terrestrial food as well.
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  So absolutely.
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  And we see in the archeological remains a tremendous amount of shellfish.
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  And you see evidence of the whales, actually the barnacles that grow on the
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  whales you see in the archaeological sites so you can determine the
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  exact species they've been eating because only certain barnacles
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  grow on certain species of whales.
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  But you can go back a lot further.
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  I mean, it, it appears that Homo erectus was highly amphibious and actually did
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  some pretty massive ocean crossings.
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  There is some evidence to suggest that.
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  So, you know, if you are moving as a nomadic hunter gatherer, which we've
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  done for a very, very long time, even before Homo sapiens came into being,
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  you're walking along a coast or any area and there's suddenly a river.
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  It's so much easier to cross that river than to now, you know, walk miles and
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  miles up to find somewhere where you can.
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  If you're gathering food by the ocean and you can't swim, and a
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  wave takes you out, you're dead.
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  It's such a survival advantage to be able to swim.
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  We would have seen other animals swimming, and we have very curious species.
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  We would have certainly I think, learned to swim and dive.
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  We've got quite a good evidence for Neanderthals diving 90, 000 years ago.
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  What we're seeing in the caves here suggests strongly that people were
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  diving, were probably diving and probably swimming more than 100, 000 years ago.
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  And I think this aquatic nature, this amphibious part of our being probably
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  extends way back into Homo erectus and the early parts of our evolution.
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  Rupert Isaacson: But those people who aren't non, the non divers.
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  Paleontologists amongst us, can you give us a date on Homo erectus?
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  When would we be talking?
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  Craig Foster: Two million years ago.
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  Rupert Isaacson: And when you say ocean crossings, how would they be doing that?
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  How are they?
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  Are they building at that point?
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  Surely not.
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  So how are they?
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  Craig Foster: Yeah, probably going getting, you know, big
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  logs, big pieces of wood.
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  Somehow you know, I must've had some knowledge of currents, wind at it's, yeah,
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  I was stunned when I read about this.
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  You know
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  Rupert Isaacson: where they were doing this, that they've, where, where
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  have they found evidence of this?
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  Craig Foster: I'm trying to, I can't remember the exact spot.
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  I'd have to look it up again.
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  It's a while since I've seen it, but it's seemed to be you know, that they couldn't
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  have got across at that time period.
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  We know these massive fluctuations in the coastline and it, it appears
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  that they, they, they crossed.
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  I can't remember how long ago, I mean, Homo erectus came into
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  existence 2 million years ago.
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  And then I think.
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  A few hundred years, a thousand years ago you know, became extinct.
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  So it was somewhere during that time, maybe 800, 000
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  years ago, I can't remember.
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  It's funny, actually, I'm
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  Rupert Isaacson: just doing a quick Google on it because I'm, I'm intrigued by this.
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  Um, because I think I, like a lot of people have, have assumed, right, that
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  we would have been the first navigators.
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  And you're, you're, look, you're right.
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  I've, I've found here in, Thing on the Guardian.
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  Um, Homo erectus may have been a sailor.
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  Um, and I had no idea.
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  Fossil Homo erectus have turned up not only in Southern Europe, but as
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  far afield as China and Indonesia.
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  Craig Foster: I could have been Indonesia at that.
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  Yeah.
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  Oceans, oceans,
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  Rupert Isaacson: says it oceans were never a barrier to the travels of erectus.
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  Sorry, that's my, my infantile humor just comes out there.
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  Oceans were never a barrier to the travels of Erectus.
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  He traveled all over the world, traveled to the island of Flores.
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  Well, right.
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  So if they are pre human humanoids doing this, then yeah,
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  then we must be amphibious.
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  And it's interesting too, to me that you know, if you take pretty
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  much, Anyone, I'd say it's the vast majority of the population.
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  And so where do you want to go on vacation when you want to go and relax?
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  You want to feel like you're most authentic?
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  Where's your happy place?
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  Most people will say the beach.
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  Most people will gravitate to a beach holiday, and as soon as they take
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  their shoes off and their bare feet are in the sand, let alone before they
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  get in the water, that seems to be the nervous system reset, doesn't it?
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  The kind of, ah, moment, the exhalation.
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  So, but it's, you, you, to my knowledge, are the first person who's written a
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  book drawing our attention to this.
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  What do you think it does to us?
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  To then be removed from this amphibious life.
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  Craig Foster: I mean, I think that
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  where I see it, I see it like this Rupert, is that, you know, for this
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  incredibly long time period, we've had these, deep relationships with
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  so many animals, with so many plants.
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  Rupert Isaacson: So
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  Craig Foster: even even as you know, you know, you've worked with a sign
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  fairly young child starts to develop quite strong relationships with the
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  wild and with all these animals.
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  As a person gets older, there are these threads going out into the wild
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  and these incredible bonds build.
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  And these get passed down from generation to generation.
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  So you've got this amazing network going out from your being to
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  these animals, to these plants.
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  Now it's almost, I can always imagine a huge pair of shears just
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  coming in and cutting that off.
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  What does that do to the psyche?
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  I mean, and, and what do we replace that with is her relationship
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  with a cell phone and a computer.
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  Yeah.
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  And of course, those people have an amazing, you know, social network.
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  They in the wild having these amazing experience with their, with their group.
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  And often people today don't have that.
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  They have maybe some friends in that, but they're not having
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  these powerful experiences in a wild landscape with those people.
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  Rupert Isaacson: So
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  Craig Foster: it, it, it.
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  It has a massive traumatic effect on the psyche, in my mind, this is what
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  every person who's born is expecting.
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  And we haven't had a chance to change yet, expecting a wild existence, expecting
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  a relationship with masses of different creatures and all sorts of other things.
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  And then that doesn't materialize.
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  It is.
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  Unconsciously very disturbing and I think as you mentioned earlier, it, I think
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  it's definitely connected to this pandemic of mental health that we're seeing now.
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  Rupert Isaacson: I would agree.
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  I sort of feel, honestly, it's not possible in our culture
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  to not be mentally ill.
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  I mean, I think I'm mentally ill.
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  I think most people I know are mentally ill.
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  And what I mean by that is they're not lacking in any way.
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  They're not.
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  I don't know.
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  There's no deficit other than nature deficit that I think, I think that
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  we're all suffering from a, the trauma of being like zoo animals, just not
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  living in the environment that our organism, as you said, is expecting
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  or needs or is designed for, but yet, which we have cleverly constructed
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  for ourselves a very nice cage with, you know, Alexa to tell us what to do.
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  But it seems to make us desperately unhappy.
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  And then if we are coming out of, you know, generation upon generation upon
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  generation of immediate ancestors who were also cut off from nature, we can't
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  even know what it is that ails us.
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  We can't even know what it is we need.
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  Not everyone can live in the intertidal zone on the Cape of Good Hope.
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  Obviously, a lot of people live in not that.
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  How do you think People can basically rewild themselves while still having
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  to, you know, maintain the livelihoods and living conditions that they're in.
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  How can they, how can they begin?
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  And maybe they don't even have access to the ocean.
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  How can, how can they begin?
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  Craig Foster: So, I'm glad you asked that question because now recently, you
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  know, I've had this privileged experience of, as I said, you know, living this
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  life here and for the last 12 years, literally every day going in the water.
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  But in the last while I spent a month traveling to speak about my
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  book in America to all the, a lot of the big cities and to England.
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  So I actually tried to test out and see if I could access the same state
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  of mind in New York and in London.
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  And what I tried to do is what I've developed is the
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  system of underwater tracking.
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  I was inspired by the song in the Kalahari, they Taught me the
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  essence of tracking, you know, had these incredible master trackers.
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  So I taught myself to track underwater and that's, I got to know a lot
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  of the animals in the kelp forest.
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  So what I tried to do was like, okay, can I actually do this in these cities?
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  And I purposely, I didn't go to central park or to a nice park in London.
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  I went to the harshest places where those terrifying tall buildings are.
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  And at first I was like.
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  It was just nothing.
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  I felt that it was impossible.
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  And I was, you know, um,
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  yeah, felt I felt not good at all.
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  And then I just started to try and get into that same
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  mode and really concentrate.
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  And I was lucky in New York, I had a little bit of help.
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  It had been raining.
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  And there were puddles and this cold concrete, and they started to,
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  people started to, people and dogs and animals were walking everywhere,
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  and they were actually leaving these incredibly clear tracks on the concrete.
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  So that really got me excited, and I could see how people were moving, I
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  could see from their soles of their shoes, I got a sense of how fast they
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  were moving, but also How wealthy they were, how much their shoes had worn
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  down how strong they were, the dogs.
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  It was very interesting to see where the dogs were moving.
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  They were very interested in the smells all along the edge.
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  I then started tracking some rats.
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  I started tracking the, the birds.
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  And I even started tracking the, the chewing gum where people
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  had dropped the chewing gum.
• 23:50
  These wear patterns, there were some fascinating tracks that I had no
• 23:54
  idea what they were at first and took quite a while to, to figure them out.
• 23:58
  They actually turned out to be baby strollers, a very
• 24:01
  strange track that they leave.
• 24:04
  And after about an hour, I got into, I was suddenly.
• 24:09
  looked up almost expecting to see the kelp canopy above me.
• 24:13
  I was in the same mode, that deep nature detective mode that comes with tracking.
• 24:19
  And I'd, I'd seen some, I was obviously largely tracking
• 24:23
  humans, but we are an animal.
• 24:25
  And I was quite fascinated by the rats and how the birds were
• 24:29
  alarm calling for the rats.
• 24:31
  And this was just an hour.
• 24:32
  I knew that if I stayed there, I could uncover a lot of
• 24:36
  incredible probably wild animals.
• 24:39
  Or domesticated semi domesticated wild animals surviving in that environment.
• 24:44
  And I could most importantly replicate that oldest language on earth, that
• 24:50
  feeling of pattern recognition that you get with tracking in London.
• 24:56
  It was far more radical that cause it's an old city.
• 24:59
  I was looking at the tooth marks of animals all over the sidewalks.
• 25:03
  They turned out to be slugs, fascinating shapes created by their, their.
• 25:08
  Rupert Isaacson: What does the slug tooth mark look like?
• 25:10
  How do you know what it is?
• 25:12
  Craig Foster: That, so every mollusk has a radula, which is a toothed tongue.
• 25:18
  So I could recognize the tracks instantly because they were the same type of tracks
• 25:23
  as the limpets, which is also a mollusk, leave on the kelp in the kelp forest.
• 25:28
  So these slugs were feeding on the microalgae that grows along the pavements
• 25:35
  and leaving these magnificent patterns of their toothed tongues and now
• 25:39
  followed this little silvery trails.
• 25:41
  That's, that's
• 25:42
  Rupert Isaacson: what the trail of goo is.
• 25:45
  It's from the toothed tongue.
• 25:47
  Craig Foster: No.
• 25:47
  No.
• 25:47
  Okay.
• 25:47
  So the the body leaves the, the trail of goo.
• 25:50
  Okay.
• 25:51
  And the, and the, if you look more closely, you'll
• 25:53
  see these incredible shapes.
• 25:56
  I can send you a picture.
• 25:57
  I'd love that.
• 25:57
  That the, that the, the, the teeth leave and as soon as you
• 26:02
  notice it, it's just incredible.
• 26:04
  And I was doing this, yeah, I'm sorry.
• 26:06
  I'm, I'm,
• 26:06
  Rupert Isaacson: I'm, I'm, I'm suddenly obsessing on this.
• 26:08
  A slug can leave a tooth mark on concrete.
• 26:13
  Craig Foster: Absolutely.
• 26:13
  Because it, the concrete has a thin layer of micro algae that's green on it.
• 26:20
  Rupert Isaacson: And when
• 26:20
  Craig Foster: it scrapes it off, especially if it's painted, there's
• 26:23
  a perfect clear track of the teeth.
• 26:27
  And it, you basically go into the world of these mollusks in the inner city
• 26:31
  and you can see the young feeding.
• 26:33
  You can see the adults, you can see the patterns of the feeding.
• 26:37
  We started tracking squirrels.
• 26:38
  We found where they were, had their, their young.
• 26:41
  We started tracking trees and how they were self cleaning in London.
• 26:45
  And then all the Victorian engravings on the curb stones were fascinating.
• 26:49
  So it, and I can go on and on and on.
• 26:52
  So I could replicate the sense of this oldest language and this connection.
• 26:57
  And of course you can see through the animals, how they're reacting in
• 27:03
  the city, and they're obviously more nervous and so on than they could be.
• 27:09
  It was very interesting to be able to do this.
• 27:12
  And I took other people because and I took certain people who were good
• 27:15
  trackers and people who weren't people who knew nature very well.
• 27:20
  And they were totally blown away.
• 27:21
  They'd never bothered to look in a city like this.
• 27:25
  And they had the same feeling I did.
• 27:27
  So it's apps and they were like.
• 27:29
  You know, I think Jackie Higgins is a very accomplished natural history
• 27:35
  writer, naturalist, and natural history filmmaker said who could, something's
• 27:41
  amazing said here, like I went into this world of nature on a grubby curbstone.
• 27:47
  I couldn't believe it.
• 27:48
  It was that kind of thing.
• 27:49
  And, and it was all the more fascinating because it was
• 27:53
  quite, A challenge to access.
• 27:57
  And that was only, you know, one day in London or one and a half days.
• 28:01
  If you had more time, of course, there are foxes there, many in London, as you
• 28:04
  know, living, you could, it's amazing what you could actually get into and replicate
• 28:10
  this feeling it's about replicating a primal sense of belonging because.
• 28:16
  Tracking is world making, it basically creates your world.
• 28:20
  You put together all these clues like a detective and you
• 28:23
  construct this fascinating world.
• 28:26
  So we walked past, I'll give you an idea, we walked past a cathedral, a thousand
• 28:30
  year old cathedral in London and the entire surface was covered in flintstone.
• 28:36
  Thousands of these pieces and every piece had been napped by a stonemason.
• 28:42
  So of course, you know, for me that was fascinating because
• 28:46
  Flint is made of the spicules of sponges from the ancient ocean.
• 28:51
  And then I had this, you know, the whole flint knapping you know, thing that
• 28:55
  goes back 3 million years in evolution.
• 28:57
  So, you know, you're starting to see all these incredible
• 29:00
  connections inside a major city.
• 29:03
  It, it, it Westminster Cathedral is made
• 29:06
  Rupert Isaacson: from old sea sponges.
• 29:08
  Craig Foster: It was I'm trying, it was what in Westminster I can't
• 29:11
  remember the name of the cathedral.
• 29:14
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 29:14
  I know, I know a very old one, St.
• 29:17
  Bartholomew's church, which is basically made of flint.
• 29:20
  I didn't know that was, and that's about a thousand years old.
• 29:23
  I didn't know that flint was old sea sponges.
• 29:26
  Craig Foster: Yeah.
• 29:26
  Yeah.
• 29:27
  Rupert Isaacson: Thank you.
• 29:28
  I'll look at it completely differently next time.
• 29:32
  It seems what you're saying, tracking, tracking is the original human activity.
• 29:38
  Okay.
• 29:40
  Therefore tracking is story, right?
• 29:44
  And what are we if not the storytelling ape, right?
• 29:46
  We have the larynx, we, we, you know, other animals sort of vocalize
• 29:51
  and sometimes in very complex ways.
• 29:54
  But I haven't yet read a play written by another mammal.
• 30:00
  I might at one point as we learn to maybe read what whales do better.
• 30:04
  But it seems that that's down to us.
• 30:06
  But yet so many animals do track.
• 30:09
  So, is tracking, is tracking, does tracking help reconnect us with
• 30:15
  ourselves because it is story and we're the storytelling, and also
• 30:20
  it connects us with the wild, because what else is there to track?
• 30:27
  The environment around us.
• 30:29
  Is that, is that what tracking does?
• 30:31
  Is it that dual purpose of reconnecting us both with nature?
• 30:36
  What is outside of ourselves and what and and ourselves at the same time is it?
• 30:40
  Craig Foster: Yes, I think you think you've got it.
• 30:41
  So the the key word here is I think is belonging,
• 30:46
  Rupert Isaacson: right?
• 30:46
  Craig Foster: So what it does is it attunes you and connects
• 30:51
  you to the subtle things?
• 30:54
  That are going on it in your environment and you can also it's almost like
• 30:59
  magic because you can go Into the past.
• 31:02
  So I could see the tracks of those slugs and I knew that they had been
• 31:05
  feeding that night and I could see the paths and everywhere they were, and I
• 31:09
  could predict that they would be back.
• 31:12
  You know, when there was a lot of moisture and that does that algae would grow again,
• 31:17
  so you could look into the past and the future but it connects you to their lives.
• 31:21
  So the act of forcing your mind and pushing your mind into the
• 31:25
  track creates an enormous amount of empathy for that animal.
• 31:30
  You sense the young coming, those little slugs coming out, the young,
• 31:33
  you know, coming out to feed for some of their first days on the planet.
• 31:37
  You see, you know, the, the adults near them, you, you, you, you start
• 31:42
  this incredible act of empathy, but you are creating your whole
• 31:47
  world from these, these signs.
• 31:50
  And that is such an ancient practice.
• 31:53
  It goes to the.
• 31:55
  the heart of the origin of our species and how we managed to survive,
• 32:01
  but also how we built our world.
• 32:04
  So when you replicate that, the ancient being, the wild person in you remembers
• 32:10
  who you are, and it remembers that this is the way of belonging, and this is
• 32:15
  the way of survival, and you feel good.
• 32:18
  You feel good when you connect the dots and you tell the stories of the
• 32:22
  animals that are there laid out for you on the ground in this cryptic way.
• 32:30
  Rupert Isaacson: It seems that what you're talking about here
• 32:32
  is actually a really effective therapeutic practice for mental health.
• 32:45
  You, you know, I could see how learning to do this in an urban environment,
• 32:54
  transform oneself from the inside.
• 32:58
  What one's one's neurology.
• 33:02
  And I could see how that would absolutely be
• 33:09
  an amelioration for say depression or something.
• 33:12
  Craig Foster: Can I just just before I forget this thought, sorry, Rupert,
• 33:15
  you've reminded me of something.
• 33:17
  So normally if I'm in a big city like that, and I haven't remember,
• 33:21
  I'm not used to that at all.
• 33:22
  So, you know, admittedly, I'm not very Used to it, but say in a place
• 33:27
  like New York in the middle of the city there with normally within half
• 33:31
  an hour, I'm absolutely exhausted
• 33:34
  Rupert Isaacson: and
• 33:35
  Craig Foster: my nervous system is a bit shattered after two hours
• 33:39
  of doing the tracking, I felt good
• 33:41
  Rupert Isaacson: and
• 33:43
  Craig Foster: the same with London and it's almost like I got hyper
• 33:47
  focused and the, the, the sounds and everything that normally be kind of
• 33:52
  like an acoustic torture for me, kind of quiet and, and I was able to, it.
• 33:58
  Being a completely different mindset in that space, it
• 34:00
  would normally debilitate me.
• 34:05
  Rupert Isaacson: Really, we should be teaching tracking to
• 34:09
  at risk youth, shouldn't we?
• 34:11
  Well, to anyone.
• 34:12
  It ought to be taught to us in schools.
• 34:19
  Okay, so you mentioned belonging, and you mentioned empathy,
• 34:24
  and story through tracking.
• 34:26
  Tracking builds a world, you said.
• 34:29
  And I remember, for those people listening, if you have not seen
• 34:34
  Craig and his brother Damon's movie, it's a documentary from 20 years
• 34:38
  ago or so, called The Great Dance.
• 34:41
  You got it.
• 34:41
  You have to watch it.
• 34:42
  There with three son, Bushman, Khoisan master tracker,
• 34:47
  hunter gatherers in Botswana.
• 34:49
  And I remember you, you filmed a particular hunter, a man called Karawa.
• 34:57
  Running down over hours and hours an animal that he shouldn't really
• 35:02
  have been able to keep up with.
• 35:04
  A kudu, running as fast as a horse and going for all day, and yet he could.
• 35:10
  And I remember in your film when you interviewed him, he said at
• 35:13
  a certain point, you must become the animal, you must become kudu.
• 35:18
  And then at a certain point, you go inside its mind.
• 35:21
  And you're no longer yourself.
• 35:23
  And of course, what is that but shape shifting?
• 35:28
  Craig Foster: And extreme empathy.
• 35:30
  Rupert Isaacson: Extreme empathy.
• 35:31
  Is shape shifting empathy?
• 35:36
  Craig Foster: I think it would be I would prefer, yeah, maybe the idea of empathy.
• 35:42
  But you, you, and it's a lifetime, you know, he's done this for his whole life.
• 35:47
  So he knows that animal, he knows its ways through the tracks, through
• 35:50
  tracking that animal for years.
• 35:53
  He knows it so intimately and he's continually, you know, from
• 35:58
  a young age, putting his mind into the tracks, into that animal.
• 36:02
  What is it thinking?
• 36:03
  Where is it going?
• 36:05
  And then one day he just steps into it.
• 36:07
  It's a natural thing.
• 36:09
  And I think in a many, in many ways, that's the origin of.
• 36:12
  Of altered states of trance and continual throwing your mind into the track and
• 36:18
  then one day you find yourself inside that animal sounds quite esoteric, but
• 36:23
  I think if, if you look at it in a, in that, in that way, that practice
• 36:29
  again and again and again, I think I could see it as being quite possible.
• 36:33
  Well,
• 36:33
  Rupert Isaacson: for sure.
• 36:33
  And, you know, as you know, There are no psychotropic plants really that grow
• 36:37
  in the Kalahari area, so yes, you can find an altered state of consciousness
• 36:42
  through a mushroom or through a plant like ayahuasca or something
• 36:46
  that has dimethyltryptamine in it.
• 36:48
  And of course there are shamanic cultures that use those, but the people that you
• 36:52
  were filming had no access to anything like that, so they could only go in.
• 36:56
  Through the method that you described
• 37:02
  Craig Foster: and well then they, although in the transplants, they're
• 37:04
  using breathing, right, hyper ventilation, you know, and the, they're using
• 37:09
  Rupert Isaacson: the drug, right?
• 37:10
  They, they're, they're only exactly their physiology.
• 37:12
  And,
• 37:13
  Craig Foster: and how does that start?
• 37:15
  You know, you don't, you're not, how does, how does that whole thing start?
• 37:17
  And I think the origin of, of trance could well be tracking
• 37:22
  this original form of putting your mind into the mind of another.
• 37:26
  So if you track,
• 37:28
  Rupert Isaacson: are you de facto a more empathetic person?
• 37:35
  Craig Foster: I guess everybody's affected differently, but I think it
• 37:38
  would definitely increase empathy.
• 37:40
  And I think we also, there are quite a few studies that show that, you know,
• 37:44
  a lot of deep nature connection sensing or in nature creates empathy for others.
• 37:51
  You know, that amazing professor at Berkeley, Ducker Keltner has done
• 37:55
  amazing work on this and they've shown how this has actually occurred.
• 38:01
  Rupert Isaacson: Tell us the name of this professor again, just so that
• 38:03
  we can write it down more slowly.
• 38:05
  Craig Foster: Ducker, that's D A C H E R, Keltner, K E L T N E R.
• 38:11
  I had a fascinating conversation with him recently.
• 38:14
  He's a Berkeley professor who studies the effect of awe in nature
• 38:19
  on people, or awe in, in general.
• 38:22
  But he, he's very connected to these nature experiences, and they've
• 38:25
  actually tracked the brain chemistry and the shift in cognition of
• 38:31
  people experiencing these things.
• 38:33
  And one of the things he says is it creates this, this care for others,
• 38:37
  this empathy and less focus on the self.
• 38:43
  Rupert Isaacson: It makes perfect sense.
• 38:45
  And of course, if one is divorced from environments that provide that sense
• 38:48
  of awe, not, not, not confusing awe with fear or stress but actual awe,
• 38:55
  yes, that standing in the presence of something awe inspiring, it's very
• 38:59
  hard to have that outside of nature.
• 39:02
  Craig Foster: And of course, what we were talking about earlier, you
• 39:04
  know, the, the less you have that, the less you're connected with all
• 39:07
  these other creatures, the less you doing these ancient practices,
• 39:13
  the more it throws you on yourself.
• 39:16
  And then, you know, you're fighting those demons of the underworld
• 39:22
  that we spoke about earlier.
• 39:23
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 39:24
  Yeah.
• 39:25
  We all, we all do our time in the underworld.
• 39:31
  Sometimes the company can be quite good though.
• 39:33
  Craig Foster: Rupert and Craig said, clutching the
• 39:35
  wooden desk in front of them.
• 39:37
  That's right.
• 39:38
  Rupert Isaacson: As I reach for my wine glass but okay.
• 39:40
  So on this business tracking and empathy the altered state of consciousness and
• 39:46
  Yeah, I guess one could argue that.
• 39:50
  When you feel great empathy for somebody else, it, it is an altered
• 39:55
  state of consciousness and it just might be in ones that we have familiar,
• 39:58
  but they always feel miraculous.
• 40:00
  Like, for example, when we fall in love, right?
• 40:03
  Or when we feel deep friendship and connection with someone, is that not in
• 40:07
  itself an altered state of consciousness?
• 40:09
  And are we then beginning to track that person?
• 40:12
  The acute observation that the deep, Listening, the desire to
• 40:18
  understand that person, you know,
• 40:21
  Craig Foster: I love that idea.
• 40:22
  That's a great idea.
• 40:23
  Yeah.
• 40:24
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 40:25
  That, that person, perhaps that person become nature, you know,
• 40:30
  those of us who spent a lot of time, I'm sure a lot of listeners have
• 40:34
  experienced these states of all and
• 40:39
  felt transcendent altered your book.
• 40:45
  So amphibious soul, you're there in the African sea forest, as you call it, which
• 40:51
  is a beautiful name that this kelp forest.
• 40:54
  On this wild coast, can you take us into there and can you take us into
• 40:59
  there when you, the first time you can remember feeling that you stepped
• 41:08
  into this state of auto consciousness?
• 41:11
  What went on?
• 41:14
  What brought you in?
• 41:15
  How did you access it?
• 41:16
  Had you been diving and swimming in there for a long time before that happened?
• 41:22
  Or has that actually been happening to you since you were a child?
• 41:24
  But if so, can you, can you bring us in there a little bit?
• 41:29
  Craig Foster: Yeah, that's great.
• 41:30
  , I think that, I mean, I definitely noticed as a very young child, I was
• 41:36
  very shy sometimes overly shy child that there was something about that
• 41:40
  cold water that made me feel good, but it just didn't have any idea of what it
• 41:44
  was or why, or, you know, a child you don't think like that funny enough, I
• 41:50
  mean, what I just on Friday, it's now.
• 41:55
  Um, Wednesday, just on this last Friday I had a very powerful transcendent
• 42:02
  experience and it was, and I tried to really track it and look at it.
• 42:08
  And I wouldn't mind just telling you a little bit about that.
• 42:10
  So, and I, I almost sensed the ingredients of, of what made it occur.
• 42:17
  So it was just a, a winter's day here.
• 42:20
  It was a very nice, calm day.
• 42:21
  I was with my.
• 42:23
  Tracking friends, my close friends.
• 42:25
  And we know when you're with close friends, a little bit like we had
• 42:29
  earlier, you could have teased, start teasing each other, you're laughing
• 42:32
  at each other, there's a, there's a great openness and there's a lot of
• 42:35
  laughter, and then we started, we went to this little piece of coast.
• 42:39
  We know well, and we did some very.
• 42:42
  In depth tracking, really looking at the micro tiny little amphipods
• 42:47
  making little holes and the tiny little amazing intricate tracks they
• 42:51
  were leaving even a person who'd picked up a shell and dropped it.
• 42:57
  And the, the, we analyzed the, the drops and what height the person dropped it
• 43:01
  from and everything was quite fascinating.
• 43:04
  And then we entered the water.
• 43:07
  We did some underwater tracking and found some really interesting
• 43:10
  stuff with cat sharks and crabs.
• 43:13
  And then we did a long swim and it was particularly clear water.
• 43:20
  And then we, we got out after about 45 minutes and then
• 43:23
  walked back along the coast.
• 43:25
  And then we lay on this hot rock in the sun.
• 43:29
  And suddenly, I felt my whole nervous system just dropping right down.
• 43:37
  And I could feel that massive altered state.
• 43:40
  Obviously my, my body was flooded with, with dopamine and
• 43:44
  noradrenaline from the cold.
• 43:45
  So we died without wetsuits.
• 43:48
  And it was extraordinary powerful feeling of what happened was all
• 43:57
  sense of wanting to do anything, be anywhere went away completely.
• 44:04
  All, all sense of purpose went away.
• 44:08
  All kind of niggling things that I have to do this and that entirely vanished in that
• 44:14
  and what I had a strong, strong sense of.
• 44:19
  Of is what it was like to live 10, 000, 50, 000 years ago, when, and I just
• 44:26
  imagine, imagine having a life where you've never done a single email and never
• 44:31
  done a payment, never had tax to do, never had appointment, never had a meeting.
• 44:36
  Of course your life is hard and harsh and you see death all around and you
• 44:40
  haven't got a pharmacy or hospital or you've never had a cup of coffee, you've
• 44:44
  never had watched a a wonderful film, you know, all the luxuries we have.
• 44:48
  You've slept cold many nights.
• 44:51
  But you've also got that enormous freedom of being in that present state.
• 44:56
  And you've got nowhere to be, all you have to do, especially in this environment is
• 45:01
  survive and have enough food for that day.
• 45:03
  And that only takes about two hours.
• 45:06
  So we come out of this place of incredible freedom and transcendence.
• 45:11
  And I'm sure you've heard of this term wilderness rapture or primal joy.
• 45:16
  And this has been a lot of, you know, people who've spent a lot of time with
• 45:19
  indigenous people have come across.
• 45:23
  People who have this in immense joy that bubbles out of them for no good reason.
• 45:28
  And we sat there in the rock as our tracking team, just laughing
• 45:32
  for no good reason, just from the sheer joy of existence.
• 45:36
  It's not like we have that every time, you know, these are moments
• 45:39
  of grace, but that's what it's like.
• 45:42
  When you reconnect with the wild with the right people in the right space.
• 45:46
  And I can go on and on, but I don't want to
• 45:48
  Rupert Isaacson: like, like doing murmurations.
• 45:53
  Sometimes seemingly just from the pure joy of moving in the currents.
• 45:59
  Hmm.
• 46:00
  What's interesting, these, these ideas of connection, because we are mid
• 46:06
  level weak, mid level predators that if we don't connect with each other
• 46:11
  and strategize, hyenas tend to eat us.
• 46:14
  Is there also in us a great sense of safety?
• 46:18
  Like the brain is always asking this question.
• 46:20
  Am I safe?
• 46:22
  And, you know, if I.
• 46:24
  Looked at your ocean and went I'd look at it and go, no, I'm fucking not safe.
• 46:28
  Not no, no, no fucking way am I safe.
• 46:30
  You would look at that ocean and say In this context, in this ocean, because
• 46:34
  I'm intimate with this ocean, I am safe.
• 46:37
  Because I've spent the time to develop that relationship.
• 46:40
  You can then make me safe.
• 46:45
  Does tracking and the competence that it gives one, the intimacy that it
• 46:52
  gives one, with the environment and the inhabitants of that environment, does
• 46:59
  that say to our brain, you're safe?
• 47:04
  And therefore allow us
• 47:08
  to feel safe together, because there's some of the parts of our
• 47:12
  Group competence makes us safer.
• 47:15
  Craig Foster: I think you've hit on a very
• 47:16
  Rupert Isaacson: core of social wellbeing.
• 47:19
  Craig Foster: I think you've hit on a very important point is that when you
• 47:23
  know your environment and you know, you can survive off that environment,
• 47:29
  that is a primal indicator of safety.
• 47:33
  But another big factor here is I think we have a way of measuring biodiversity.
• 47:41
  in our being.
• 47:42
  We, we listen to what bird activity, we, we, we smelling a whole lot of things.
• 47:48
  All our senses can determine very, very quickly what levels of biodiversity
• 47:55
  we are that are surrounding us.
• 47:57
  And I've had the privilege of spending some time in these
• 47:59
  near pristine environments.
• 48:02
  And the effect that has on the psyche is unbelievable because you feel extreme
• 48:06
  safety because you know, if everything's taken away, you can easily survive.
• 48:11
  So it's a, it's, I think it's a combination of being able to track.
• 48:17
  Knowing the physicalities of how to survive, who's, what animals, what plants
• 48:22
  are moving around growing, whatever, and then the levels of biodiversity,
• 48:27
  because biodiversity is that,
• 48:31
  you know, life force that animates us, but also allows us to survive
• 48:37
  even today, no matter where you live.
• 48:39
  Rupert Isaacson: It's the, it's the diverse investment portfolio, isn't it?
• 48:41
  It's like looking at your bank accounts and saying, Oh, I've got lots of bank
• 48:45
  accounts in these different places, drawing money from these different things.
• 48:49
  That's replacing is that replacing biodiversity in the way a hunter
• 48:53
  gatherer would look at the landscape and say, I have such a plenitude of
• 48:57
  food here that is at my fingertips.
• 49:00
  I could go to this cash, this cash withdrawal machine.
• 49:03
  That cash withdraw, this cash withdrawal machine is living
• 49:05
  on, has limpets on this rock.
• 49:07
  That cash withdrawal machine is moving in a herd across the hill there.
• 49:11
  And there's another one swimming past me in the shallows.
• 49:14
  Therefore, I feel security, therefore.
• 49:18
  Craig Foster: I think, I think you're absolutely right.
• 49:20
  But the fascinating and interesting and, you know, scary thing is that we
• 49:26
  think we, you know, we think we can live independent of nature and you're
• 49:30
  absolutely right that, that, you know, money has replaced biodiversity and,
• 49:35
  and, and skills in many ways, but, or hunting or tracking skills, but what we've
• 49:41
  forgotten, Rupert, is that, and I'm sure you know this well, The foundation of
• 49:47
  all our economics, all our politics, all our bank accounts is biodiverse nature.
• 49:56
  If we have biodiversity collapse, you can have as many bank accounts
• 50:02
  as you like, and as many millions of dollars as you like, and they
• 50:06
  will be worth zero, nothing.
• 50:07
  Less
• 50:08
  Rupert Isaacson: than a limpet.
• 50:10
  Craig Foster: Less than a limpet because you won't be able to breathe.
• 50:13
  You won't be able to eat.
• 50:15
  You will die very quickly.
• 50:16
  That
• 50:17
  Rupert Isaacson: should be, that should be our new website.
• 50:18
  Less than a limpet dot com.
• 50:21
  You can't eat the fucker.
• 50:24
  Craig Foster: Less than a limpet's tooth tongue.
• 50:26
  So the, that's why, um, what we talking about and this, this,
• 50:35
  this, The, the collection of plants and animals and their amazing
• 50:39
  interrelationships, that is the most precious thing we ever will come across.
• 50:44
  That's what's allowing every person on this planet to breathe and to
• 50:48
  eat and that's what we've forgotten.
• 50:50
  I mean, that's what allows
• 50:51
  Rupert Isaacson: the creation of symbol of money in the first place, as you say.
• 50:56
  Craig Foster: Yes, everything is, everything is, is allowed by that.
• 50:59
  And that's why we have to desperately look after that if we want to continue
• 51:04
  as a species living on the planet.
• 51:08
  Rupert Isaacson: This brings me to thinking about symbology, symbols
• 51:14
  because tracking, when one sees tracks, they appear as symbols, right?
• 51:20
  We know that this three toed symbol is this type of bird.
• 51:25
  And we know that this The other one in this cluster with these
• 51:29
  dots and these little pointy bits on the end is that kind of mammal.
• 51:34
  And then we can take those things and make images of them.
• 51:38
  And, you know, we see this in rock art.
• 51:42
  We've also seen this in our alphabet, right?
• 51:44
  We, we've created writing.
• 51:47
  We're also the storytelling, eh?
• 51:49
  If storytelling also comes from tracking.
• 51:51
  And then we created art and symbology from the tracking.
• 51:55
  And then we've created.
• 51:57
  Writing from that and then writing it
• 52:04
  allows us to storytell and track in other ways.
• 52:08
  Is, is, is that, is that what, is that the best thing of our
• 52:15
  civilization that we've taken the
• 52:21
  symbology of tracking through biodiversity and turned it into
• 52:28
  a whole world of symbolism?
• 52:31
  Craig Foster: That is such an interesting idea that tracking
• 52:35
  and, and, and as you say, pattern recognition could have in some way
• 52:42
  inspired the first art or symbol making.
• 52:45
  I have not.
• 52:46
  Thought too much about that, but I love that idea very much.
• 52:49
  I'll have to look at that in more detail, but it's a fascinating idea.
• 52:54
  I mean, what I, what I'm working with, I'm working with these amazing
• 52:59
  group of scientists headed up by professor Christopher Henshelwood.
• 53:04
  There's a, a friend of mine and he's discovered in Lombos cave along
• 53:10
  the, just along the coast here.
• 53:12
  The oldest collection of engravings on earth together with
• 53:16
  a whole lot of other interesting things like the oldest drawing.
• 53:22
  What is interesting is this is the oldest out
• 53:24
  Rupert Isaacson: of interest, everyone will want to know.
• 53:26
  Craig Foster: Yeah, sorry.
• 53:26
  Yeah.
• 53:27
  So the one of the oldest is gravings is 100, 000 years and they're 14 of them and
• 53:33
  the youngest ones about 75, 000 years.
• 53:36
  And there's a whole lot of other fascinating corroborating
• 53:38
  evidence that goes with this.
• 53:40
  But to talk to your point.
• 53:45
  At some point, someone had to think and make a huge jump in cognition to have an
• 53:52
  idea inside their brain and to be able to put it onto a physical object and
• 53:57
  engrave it onto that piece of red ochre.
• 54:00
  That's a massive jump in cognition.
• 54:04
  And To actually create a symbol in the real world.
• 54:09
  It's one thing looking at symbols and interpreting them, making them is massive.
• 54:13
  And that is probably one of the greatest changes in our entire history as a
• 54:18
  species, because once you've got a symbol, then you can communicate at
• 54:23
  a very profound level across time.
• 54:26
  And.
• 54:28
  Those, those engravings at that hundred thousand years are really the first proto
• 54:34
  books and the first proto computers.
• 54:36
  So what you're saying is absolutely true about, you know, that that's how we have
• 54:41
  the sophisticated, you know, storytelling.
• 54:43
  We've got all our technology is based on that.
• 54:45
  You can't build a car unless those people in Africa had done that a hundred thousand
• 54:49
  years ago, but whether that It's still a mystery as far as I know is how that
• 54:55
  person first thought that African person thought to do that momentous thing.
• 55:00
  But I love this idea that it could have been through this, you know, long
• 55:06
  period of patent recognition that you could, that maybe that inspired that.
• 55:11
  It's, it's been an interesting thing to question to throw at the
• 55:14
  archaeologists and anthropologists.
• 55:16
  Rupert Isaacson: And as you're talking, of course, it makes one
• 55:18
  think of mathematics as well.
• 55:20
  Because, you know, what is that but measurement?
• 55:22
  What else can you measure?
• 55:23
  But the stuff around you, you know, that you see, what is that the product of
• 55:27
  biodiversity, whether it's in the stars you're seeing above you or the sand that's
• 55:32
  under your feet or the distance you have to throw the spear or, or there's no way
• 55:41
  when one looks at it that way that any of this cannot have come from tracking.
• 55:47
  Now you though, and you talk about this really well in your
• 55:49
  book, you were not always.
• 55:53
  Diving to track.
• 55:55
  A certain point came when you did.
• 55:59
  Can you tell us that story?
• 56:02
  When and why did that happen?
• 56:05
  And then how did that open up this African seaforest to you and your perception?
• 56:11
  That's quite
• 56:12
  Craig Foster: a fundamental thing.
• 56:13
  So, I mean, I don't know if this ever happened to you Rupert, when you spent
• 56:18
  your time in the Kalahari, but when I was first there in the late 90s.
• 56:25
  It was both enthralling and terrifying because I had spent
• 56:30
  so much of my life in nature.
• 56:32
  I thought I was connected to nature.
• 56:33
  And when I met Karawa, as you pointed out, Kwasi and Ngate, and I saw what they
• 56:40
  could do and how they could understand the wild, I felt pretty useless.
• 56:44
  And I felt Outside of nature, and it bothered me for a long time.
• 56:51
  So when I started diving again every day after a few years, I wanted to
• 56:56
  get deeper and I remembered this incredible time in the Kalahari.
• 57:00
  And then I thought there must be a way of tracking underwater.
• 57:04
  There must be a way.
• 57:04
  Cause I knew that tracking was the way of getting into deep water.
• 57:07
  Nature.
• 57:09
  And I saw these first tracks of the whelk, the whelks left on the rock
• 57:14
  where they leave the slime trails and the tiny particles of sand
• 57:16
  collect, and I was, oh, so excited.
• 57:19
  And then from that moment, I just started seeing more and more tracks.
• 57:22
  And now I've got, you know, thousands of underwater tracks in
• 57:25
  my head and I can, every time I dive, unless it's very, very rough.
• 57:30
  I, you know, I'm just looking at them and they, they're telling me so much about
• 57:35
  what's going on and on the land as well.
• 57:37
  It's like a, a secret key, this golden key you're given to
• 57:41
  unlock the door of wild nature.
• 57:44
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, what's interesting too, is you've used it
• 57:45
  to unlock the, the key of nature.
• 57:49
  What appears to be non nature too, in that I love that your first tracking experience
• 57:55
  with the seaforest was the whelk.
• 57:57
  And then you just talked about your first tracking experience in London of the slug.
• 58:03
  Yeah.
• 58:04
  But you wouldn't have been able to do the slug without the whelk, right?
• 58:06
  The whelk.
• 58:07
  Exactly.
• 58:08
  Slug.
• 58:09
  Craig Foster: Exactly.
• 58:10
  Rupert Isaacson: What do you do when you can't track?
• 58:13
  What do you do when the ground is too hard to show us a sign,
• 58:20
  when the water is too murky?
• 58:23
  How do you then track?
• 58:25
  Craig Foster: So then what you do is you use your knowledge.
• 58:29
  of animals and their behaviors to try and interpret where they may be.
• 58:36
  So, you know, if there's a certain wind blowing on land, then you
• 58:40
  know that they will be using that.
• 58:44
  They will be going normally, if they're hungry, towards where their prey animals
• 58:49
  are likely to be or to where shelter is.
• 58:52
  In the water depending on what animal you're tracking, if it's really rough,
• 58:57
  for instance, you know, a lot of the animals will either be going into
• 59:00
  their cave shelters or they'll be going into the deeper water, where
• 59:04
  it's, there's less movement they will be following certain smells, they'll
• 59:09
  be following so many different things.
• 59:11
  So you can then make predictions based upon what you know about their behaviors.
• 59:21
  Rupert Isaacson: You describe,
• 59:24
  you know, you're, you're, you're a beautiful nature writer and you
• 59:27
  describe some encounters with.
• 59:32
  animals, not just the ones we would have expected with, for example,
• 59:37
  the octopus that you had your relationship with, with the film, but
• 59:41
  you, you, you talk about some really profound moments with other animals.
• 59:46
  I remember you, you wrote, About an early dive, I think you said you
• 59:50
  were 15 where an octopus took you.
• 59:55
  And you had to react to that in a certain way.
• 1:00:03
  You were always observing, you were always, as you said, you know, you
• 1:00:06
  were put into the water as a baby.
• 1:00:07
  Your parents dove, you dove.
• 1:00:11
  At what point, I would like you to tell us that first story with the octopus
• 1:00:19
  that could have drowned you.
• 1:00:21
  And then how
• 1:00:25
  did that transform into the later encounters with not just the octopus,
• 1:00:34
  but the other creatures that in this more intimate way, I know you might
• 1:00:38
  say, well, I learned to track Rupert and then I became more observant, but
• 1:00:42
  it's not just that something internal.
• 1:00:46
  Must have driven you to not just to want to make that change in
• 1:00:52
  relationship, but to be able
• 1:00:59
  to be ready somehow to cross that threshold.
• 1:01:02
  Could you just tell us that first octopus story and then just however
• 1:01:08
  it comes to you, how did that transform into the relationships
• 1:01:12
  with animals that you have now?
• 1:01:16
  Craig Foster: Sure.
• 1:01:16
  I was, yeah, 15 or 16 we were in a a very sort of.
• 1:01:22
  volatile estuary way up the coast.
• 1:01:26
  It was a calm day.
• 1:01:29
  And I slipped into the water.
• 1:01:30
  It wasn't too deep and went down and saw the by far the
• 1:01:34
  biggest octopus I'd ever seen.
• 1:01:36
  It was quite a lot bigger than myself.
• 1:01:39
  It was probably a Southern giant octopus, which is a species
• 1:01:42
  one very rarely sees here.
• 1:01:45
  And I was just completely mesmerized by it and went a bit too close and
• 1:01:49
  I think the animal got a little bit perturbed and it grabbed hold of me and
• 1:01:55
  pulled it in pulled me into its den.
• 1:01:58
  And the strength of this animal was just unbelievable.
• 1:02:01
  I mean, it was, I don't know, five times my strength easily.
• 1:02:04
  And I remember all the skin being scraped off my arms as it pulled me in.
• 1:02:09
  And I couldn't, I could hardly move.
• 1:02:12
  It was so powerful.
• 1:02:14
  And instinctively I knew to relax.
• 1:02:16
  If I tried to fight and I wouldn't have been able to, and we'd certainly be dead.
• 1:02:21
  So I was pretty fit and used to diving.
• 1:02:25
  So I could hold my breath for quite a long time.
• 1:02:28
  So I just had no choice, but to totally relax.
• 1:02:32
  And then probably within about 30 or 40 seconds.
• 1:02:35
  Maybe a little longer.
• 1:02:37
  This, this very powerful animal let me go and I was able to go to the surface.
• 1:02:43
  And strangely, I was not in any way traumatized, never
• 1:02:47
  had a bad dream about it.
• 1:02:49
  It just was, you know, Fine.
• 1:02:52
  And then, you know, lesson learned, don't go, you know, too
• 1:02:57
  close to a massive cephalopod.
• 1:02:59
  So that, how that connected to the other question I'm not totally sure.
• 1:03:05
  What did pop into my mind was, strangely enough, when you were asking the question
• 1:03:10
  was, you know, how do you track an otter?
• 1:03:14
  And that took me a long time to figure out because they're extremely cryptic animals.
• 1:03:21
  And I eventually realized that I could watch the birds very closely
• 1:03:26
  and see where they were flying and see where they were looking.
• 1:03:29
  And then I would just follow their, their eyes and use them
• 1:03:32
  like you would use a drone.
• 1:03:35
  And then I could follow an otter through the kelp forest.
• 1:03:38
  And then when I got close, I could follow the bubble trails that are
• 1:03:42
  coming out of the otter's fur and eventually find that animal, very
• 1:03:48
  cryptic animal, and I was able to observe some of the secret hunting behavior.
• 1:03:54
  I think the desire.
• 1:03:56
  The big driver, what you're asking for, I just had a enormous desire to be able
• 1:04:02
  to speak this oldest language on earth.
• 1:04:05
  I couldn't even articulate that.
• 1:04:07
  I just, it was a deep yearning to be able to somehow connect
• 1:04:12
  with that wild person inside me.
• 1:04:15
  And I knew eventually that this tracking and this Repetition of being in the,
• 1:04:22
  in nature was the key and it was enormously, um, hugely relieving, a
• 1:04:29
  massive relief to be able to do that.
• 1:04:32
  And I'm still, you know, like to go a lot further and get a lot better at this.
• 1:04:37
  I still feel I'm learning a lot and nowhere near the skill of.
• 1:04:43
  You know, some of those master trackers that I were my mentors.
• 1:04:47
  Um, but it's very, very gratifying.
• 1:04:51
  And, you know, I've learned so much through it that.
• 1:04:55
  Um, it's a lifelong passion to be able to do this and to be able to pass it
• 1:05:01
  on to people who are serious about it.
• 1:05:02
  It's not something that you can learn too quickly, but you can actually
• 1:05:06
  accomplish quite a lot in a very short time and be very satisfied in a very short
• 1:05:11
  time, but to master takes a long time.
• 1:05:14
  Rupert Isaacson: To your reaction to the, that first octopus that grabbed
• 1:05:18
  you reminds me of a question which I wanted to ask a little way back.
• 1:05:21
  You talked about awe.
• 1:05:23
  And how awe and empathy seem to be connected through this
• 1:05:28
  work that's been done at the University of California, Berkeley.
• 1:05:31
  Is that correct?
• 1:05:32
  Craig Foster: Correct.
• 1:05:33
  Yes.
• 1:05:33
  Rupert Isaacson: You know, what's interesting to me is that
• 1:05:38
  by the time you get into Greek civilization, a new word creeps
• 1:05:45
  in, and that word is panic.
• 1:05:48
  And the God Pan, you know, the God of nature panic is,
• 1:05:53
  originates in a feeling of panic.
• 1:05:56
  irrational fear of being the hunted prey, almost a madness that can come upon you.
• 1:06:06
  In the wild panic, but it's interesting to me that that word is
• 1:06:15
  coined in a one of the first big civilizations that was actively
• 1:06:20
  trying to remove itself from nature.
• 1:06:25
  They were certainly more connected to nature than we were the ancient Greeks,
• 1:06:27
  but they were definitely creating all the technologies and city states and
• 1:06:32
  so forth and so forth that, you know, have led us to the path we're on today.
• 1:06:37
  It's you did not panic.
• 1:06:41
  It seems that when the octopus took you, you actually accessed a state of awe,
• 1:06:51
  a certain, I don't know.
• 1:06:54
  Craig Foster: I was pretty frightened, but I knew that I it was a pure
• 1:06:58
  survival instinct of knowing that I really needed to relax.
• 1:07:03
  And I've had, I've been in situations like that again, but not with an animal.
• 1:07:08
  being stuck underwater.
• 1:07:09
  And what saved me was just relaxing and waiting for that swell to pop me back
• 1:07:15
  out because I was stuck underwater.
• 1:07:17
  So I think there's a, you have to be, I think it's hard not to panic underwater
• 1:07:24
  if you don't spend a lot of time there.
• 1:07:26
  But if you spend a lot of time, I think one realizes, okay this is what you need
• 1:07:30
  to do because you also know that, of course, as soon as you start panicking,
• 1:07:34
  your consumption of oxygen goes up so radically that you minimize your time.
• 1:07:40
  You know that very clearly.
• 1:07:42
  So you don't really have a choice.
• 1:07:44
  I, I don't think I was feeling necessarily or in the, I was feeling
• 1:07:52
  quite a lot of fear, but I had to just suppress that and physically relax my
• 1:07:56
  whole body and try and just, you know.
• 1:08:00
  Not move a muscle.
• 1:08:03
  Rupert Isaacson: It it's,
• 1:08:06
  Craig Foster: but what, what, what, what, what I did think about when you
• 1:08:08
  said that was, you know, the irony of this sort of scenario is as we
• 1:08:13
  try to control mother, big mother,
• 1:08:17
  Rupert Isaacson: you
• 1:08:18
  Craig Foster: know, nature, all this biodiversity, as we, as we
• 1:08:21
  try to control her ironically.
• 1:08:24
  We put her more and more in control, and that's what we're feeling today.
• 1:08:30
  We're feeling you know, the, the, the implications of that as she just
• 1:08:36
  starts to exert her force upon us.
• 1:08:41
  And we see that even in the climate now in so many ways.
• 1:08:45
  Rupert Isaacson: Oh, that's just what the political liberals are saying.
• 1:08:47
  You know, if you were a true Republican, Craig, you'd see
• 1:08:49
  through all that climate stuff.
• 1:08:56
  Craig Foster: Good luck with that.
• 1:08:59
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, I think a lot of the people sadly who, who, who feel
• 1:09:01
  that won't be around to see the the changes that are coming or in place.
• 1:09:08
  Yeah, well, that's, that's actually where I wanted to go next.
• 1:09:10
  Obviously we should preserve all biodiversity because we just can't
• 1:09:15
  survive without it, you know, just for purely selfish reasons.
• 1:09:18
  We should preserve it for the, for the reasons of connection,
• 1:09:23
  happiness, and awe, and just justice.
• 1:09:25
  We should preserve it as well.
• 1:09:28
  But, Everyone has a part of the planet.
• 1:09:32
  Everyone has a,
• 1:09:36
  an environment that's dear to them.
• 1:09:37
  And I know that the sea forest is dear to you.
• 1:09:41
  Can you, just as, I, I, I know that you will need to go fairly soon.
• 1:09:47
  And I want to make this just the first of two more, because there's, there's so much
• 1:09:53
  more I want to ask you on these topics.
• 1:09:56
  Um, we, we haven't discussed them.
• 1:09:58
  the ancestors and that spirit world and so on and so on.
• 1:10:02
  Um, let alone the altered state of the cold water and what that does.
• 1:10:08
  But, and I want to do that why should we give a shit about some seaweed off
• 1:10:15
  the coast of a little spit sticking off a bit of rocky land over there?
• 1:10:23
  Why should we give a fuck about that?
• 1:10:26
  Surely it could use a nice big McDonald's, you know, overlooking
• 1:10:29
  the, we could clear that those rocks.
• 1:10:32
  The beach, obviously we keep for obvious reasons, but, you know,
• 1:10:36
  why, why, why should we give a shit about this patch of seaweed?
• 1:10:42
  Craig Foster: I think first of all so I'm just laughing because the way
• 1:10:45
  you said it was so funny, but it is what we have here is one of the great
• 1:10:50
  biodiversity hotspots in the world.
• 1:10:53
  And these hotspots are where there's an enormous amount of biodiversity and they
• 1:11:00
  are really these places of Extreme hope, because if we can, what we desperately
• 1:11:06
  need to do, if we want to survive as a species into the future, we need to allow
• 1:11:13
  this incredible biological intelligence and this biodiversity to regenerate and
• 1:11:19
  the best places to allow the biodiversity regenerate are from these hotspots.
• 1:11:24
  And just remember that 65 percent plus of the oxygen that all of us are
• 1:11:31
  breathing is coming from the ocean, coming from the phytoplankton in the ocean.
• 1:11:37
  You can be living in the, you know, deepest city in the world and you'll
• 1:11:43
  still be breathing oxygen created by phytoplankton plants that live in the
• 1:11:48
  ocean on the surface of the ocean.
• 1:11:50
  So these biodiversity hotspots are where, you know, this phytoplankton
• 1:11:55
  is blooming at a very high level.
• 1:11:57
  So it's literally, you give a shit if you want to.
• 1:12:02
  survive as a species, or if you care in any way about any young people and their
• 1:12:08
  survival and their quality of life, that would be another major important factor.
• 1:12:16
  And also if you care about these incredible animals, These, this,
• 1:12:22
  these wild kin that we've lived with from the beginning of time,
• 1:12:26
  they literally are our family.
• 1:12:27
  They are our ancestors.
• 1:12:30
  We come from them and we only survive and live because they exist.
• 1:12:36
  Um, so there are, you know, And just because of the magnificence of the
• 1:12:45
  system, this extraordinary, mysterious thing that's happened where in 13.
• 1:12:54
  7 billion years, galaxies and giant cosmic clouds of the Dust and brimstone
• 1:13:01
  have turned into millions upon millions,
• 1:13:08
  millions of these incredible creatures and plants that keep us alive.
• 1:13:13
  I mean, it's literally, we're living in a miracle.
• 1:13:16
  Why would you want to destroy that miracle and us in the process?
• 1:13:21
  There's no, what's the logic of that to have, you know, another
• 1:13:24
  car or a bigger bank account that there's no, there's no good reason.
• 1:13:29
  Rupert Isaacson: When you're in the forest there, what does it look like?
• 1:13:33
  What does it feel like?
• 1:13:35
  Craig Foster: It's a three dimensional underwater space.
• 1:13:39
  So you imagine being in an underwater forest where there's reverse gravity.
• 1:13:45
  So you can dive down and then just push gently and off the
• 1:13:49
  bottom and fly into the canopy.
• 1:13:53
  Um, there are creatures moving around in that three dimensional space.
• 1:13:57
  They live in all parts of the three dimensions.
• 1:14:00
  It's not like a coral reef.
• 1:14:01
  It's two dimensional in comparison.
• 1:14:04
  Some of the kelp is You know, 45 feet deep.
• 1:14:08
  So, you know, three dimensional 45 foot space.
• 1:14:12
  The light is even in the middle of the day is being cut into.
• 1:14:18
  Beams by the leaves of the, and the canopy and there's coming down in these beams
• 1:14:23
  and as the water moves, the beams flash.
• 1:14:27
  So it's very powerful lighting in this kind of cathedral like, experience.
• 1:14:34
  Um, you know, the the, the water is generally quite cold.
• 1:14:41
  So you've got all the.
• 1:14:43
  The amazing brain chemicals rushing through you that, that occur in the
• 1:14:47
  cold, you get quite used to it after a while and these amazing creatures with
• 1:14:52
  extraordinary sensory systems living in this space that are watching you.
• 1:14:57
  And they are measuring your heartbeat, they're measuring your muscle tension,
• 1:15:02
  and they are reacting based upon your body language and the way you are moving.
• 1:15:11
  Rupert Isaacson: You've written about the need to, and you've talked here
• 1:15:14
  about the need to learn relaxation.
• 1:15:18
  This is difficult.
• 1:15:20
  in cold.
• 1:15:22
  So the first thing, and then first thing is how do you learn
• 1:15:25
  to relax in cold like that?
• 1:15:26
  And I don't just mean ice baths because I know lots of people who take ice
• 1:15:31
  baths and I've watched them do it and I wouldn't say they're necessarily
• 1:15:34
  terribly relaxed when they do it.
• 1:15:36
  Some seem to learn how to do it, but you're talking about a very different,
• 1:15:40
  it's a type of relaxation that can let an octopus let go of you or allow
• 1:15:44
  yourself to not panic when wedged.
• 1:15:47
  Underwater.
• 1:15:49
  How do you survive in this cold without bracing?
• 1:15:52
  That's the question number one.
• 1:15:54
  The second question is,
• 1:16:00
  can you describe some interactions
• 1:16:07
  beyond, say, the escape from that octopus, that have allowed
• 1:16:13
  you to use that relaxation
• 1:16:18
  to enter the world of the creatures in this forest?
• 1:16:25
  And what, what have they shown you?
• 1:16:27
  So how do you relax?
• 1:16:28
  How do you learn to relax in that cold water?
• 1:16:30
  And then when you have this relaxation, where does it bring you?
• 1:16:37
  Craig Foster: So, I mean,
• 1:16:41
  of course you have to get your body used to the water.
• 1:16:44
  So ideally you start in summer, you go in for short periods of time.
• 1:16:49
  You don't want to put too much cold stress on the system.
• 1:16:53
  So you adapt your body slowly to that environment.
• 1:16:58
  What I do is I visualize, I don't try to push the cold away, I, I imagine
• 1:17:04
  the cold actually going through inside my body and flowing through
• 1:17:09
  it and activating a kind of heat, and that's kind of what is happening.
• 1:17:14
  They are brown fat adipose tissue.
• 1:17:18
  That develops when you expose yourself to cold and that acts like a internal heating
• 1:17:23
  system and it actually heats your body up.
• 1:17:26
  And this is something that all early people would have had.
• 1:17:29
  If you, if you living indoors a lot and you're not exposed to cold,
• 1:17:33
  these, this, this brown fat dwindles.
• 1:17:37
  So the body is totally adapt, you know, it's ready for this process.
• 1:17:42
  And then you can visualize this just flowing through you and you
• 1:17:45
  just have to actively just calm oneself and not tense the body.
• 1:17:51
  You just, just relax every limb.
• 1:17:55
  If people aren't used to it, they'll hold themselves and they'll tense their arms.
• 1:18:00
  One's got to do the opposite because you don't want that
• 1:18:02
  cortisol to flood the system.
• 1:18:04
  That's not great for you.
• 1:18:06
  You want that dopamine and the noradrenaline and so
• 1:18:09
  on to, to be going there.
• 1:18:11
  So I've had amazing experiences with say a cap clawless otters numerous
• 1:18:18
  occasions they have approached me.
• 1:18:20
  And this is a very, normally a very, very shy animal.
• 1:18:24
  And then if you keep still enough and your body's relaxed enough
• 1:18:28
  very, very occasionally they will then make physical contact.
• 1:18:32
  And when an animal like that makes physical contact, and then even you
• 1:18:37
  know, one of the Most profound times is when an animal started touching
• 1:18:41
  my feet and then moved up my body and then looked in my eyes and started to
• 1:18:47
  touch my face with its amazing little dexterous hands, their clawless hands.
• 1:18:53
  It does affect one quite radically.
• 1:18:55
  And if that animal then,
• 1:19:00
  feels that you aren't a threat, it will allow you to hunt with it.
• 1:19:05
  And that's when the real teaching and learning happens, because then you can
• 1:19:08
  see how these animals are hunting, how incredibly powerful they are, how clever
• 1:19:15
  they are, and all these amazing techniques they use to catch different animals and
• 1:19:20
  how clever the prey is in avoiding them.
• 1:19:22
  And I mean, the otters took me years to figure out that there were these species
• 1:19:28
  of fish that were hiding themselves upside down in the caves in the algae and they
• 1:19:34
  turn upside down so that their eyes can look out of the algae to see the otters
• 1:19:40
  as they're coming through the cave.
• 1:19:41
  So you learn about not just the animal that has trusted you, but of course
• 1:19:46
  about all their prey and their predators.
• 1:19:49
  And you just, these animals teach you about all the animals
• 1:19:53
  that they interact with.
• 1:19:54
  So if you're just getting to know an otter or an octopus or a limpet.
• 1:20:00
  They will naturally, if you just chose only those three, you would
• 1:20:05
  learn about the lives of hundreds of these animals because they're the web
• 1:20:10
  of life is connected in every way.
• 1:20:12
  There's no thread that's not connected.
• 1:20:15
  And that's why if we pull on one thread, we pull on everything.
• 1:20:19
  And that's what we've got to be so much more careful of as humans.
• 1:20:22
  We've been pulling on all the wrong threads for too long.
• 1:20:27
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:20:27
  We've been like, like.
• 1:20:31
  Somebody anxious and fidgety in a wool jumper pulling at the threads
• 1:20:35
  of the garment that keeps us warm and unraveling it as we wear it.
• 1:20:40
  When you, when you, an animal shows you how it hunts and you can stay with it,
• 1:20:44
  then they begin to move athletically.
• 1:20:46
  How do you, how do you stay with them with that same relaxation
• 1:20:50
  without pulsating your body?
• 1:20:53
  in ways that will spook the animal.
• 1:20:55
  How do you keep that relaxation going even when there's a need to move strongly or
• 1:21:03
  at least to stay close to this animal?
• 1:21:05
  Craig Foster: See, what you've got to try and do is not they're quite
• 1:21:08
  they're very sensitive to pressure waves and to sound so you don't ever want
• 1:21:14
  to slap a hand on top of the water.
• 1:21:17
  You are very careful how you put your hand into the water and pull.
• 1:21:22
  You're very careful to never slap a fin on top of the water.
• 1:21:27
  You, each thrust is long and slow and gentle.
• 1:21:31
  You're often pulling yourself along.
• 1:21:33
  So what's nice about the kelp forest is it's, you know, it's, you've
• 1:21:38
  got, you know, Reverse gravity.
• 1:21:40
  So you can pull yourself along.
• 1:21:42
  I'm making myself neutrally buoyant with a weight belt.
• 1:21:46
  And then you can pull yourself along from strand to strand from,
• 1:21:50
  from stipe to stipe as well.
• 1:21:51
  So you, you're trying to reduce all the pressure waves, reduce all
• 1:21:55
  the sounds and try not to have too much muscle tension, especially the
• 1:22:00
  sharks can feel the muscle tension.
• 1:22:02
  Some of the other animals, less so.
• 1:22:08
  Rupert Isaacson: Sharks.
• 1:22:10
  There's a lot of them on your coast, including some pretty big gnarly ones.
• 1:22:16
  You have great whites there.
• 1:22:18
  How do you interact and stay safe with them?
• 1:22:22
  and relax around.
• 1:22:27
  Craig Foster: So I mean, a thing with sharks is it's quite important
• 1:22:31
  to make a visual contact with them.
• 1:22:34
  So as soon as you've made visual contact, then they generally, it's pretty
• 1:22:39
  safe, no matter what species they are.
• 1:22:42
  Why is that?
• 1:22:44
  Because they're a predator, and they know that you're looking at them,
• 1:22:48
  you know that you've seen them, and they rely often on sneak attacks.
• 1:22:53
  But you're quite safe, luckily, as a human with sharks, because their
• 1:22:58
  search image, when they look at you with all their sensory system, you're
• 1:23:02
  not generally coming up as prey.
• 1:23:06
  You're a strange thing.
• 1:23:08
  You're moving wrongly.
• 1:23:10
  You don't look right.
• 1:23:11
  You don't smell right.
• 1:23:12
  You've got a strange electrical signature.
• 1:23:15
  They generally don't come up as prey.
• 1:23:17
  But, You want to be often upright in the water that, that makes them, you
• 1:23:24
  look even less like a prey and you want to be generally keeping quite still.
• 1:23:30
  You don't want to be moving fast away from them, you know, like a, a cat,
• 1:23:34
  you know, if you pull a string and it wants to go for it just keeping.
• 1:23:39
  Your heart rate down, keeping your breathing down cause they
• 1:23:42
  can sense a lot of these things.
• 1:23:43
  And as I say, keeping your muscles relaxed, then they will see you not,
• 1:23:50
  not as prey and they'll see you also not as necessarily maybe another predator
• 1:23:56
  there, but you don't want to push them or intimidate them too much as well.
• 1:24:00
  You'd want to be kind of neutral in that space.
• 1:24:03
  And eye contact
• 1:24:04
  Rupert Isaacson: doesn't trigger them.
• 1:24:05
  Like it might other types of predator.
• 1:24:08
  Craig Foster: No, I mean, it's good to have eye contact because then they
• 1:24:11
  know you've seen them, they know you there it's when you're not looking
• 1:24:15
  that they'll be, they'll come closer.
• 1:24:18
  Um, and sometimes, you know, we've been say trying to film these bigger animals
• 1:24:24
  and you actually have to try and make your body small and not very intimidating
• 1:24:28
  to try and get closer to them.
• 1:24:30
  They, they, they quite wary.
• 1:24:31
  It's not sharks are not you know, how they've been, you
• 1:24:35
  know, depicted on television.
• 1:24:36
  That's not, they're not like that.
• 1:24:38
  Rupert Isaacson: You describe in the book a, an episode where you're, I believe it
• 1:24:46
  is Great Whites, and you're close to them.
• 1:24:49
  And again, this theme of relaxation seems to come in.
• 1:24:53
  But then you say at a certain point, they, open their mouth, they gape as a
• 1:24:57
  way of saying, okay, that's enough now.
• 1:25:00
  Or
• 1:25:03
  what made you feel that that was a safe situation to put yourself in?
• 1:25:08
  And how do you know to navigate it?
• 1:25:12
  Craig Foster: So with the white sharks and I've had, you know, help
• 1:25:17
  from people who spent many years just concentrating on that species.
• 1:25:23
  And this applies to quite a few sharks as well.
• 1:25:27
  If the water is clear, it's much safer.
• 1:25:31
  And especially with white sharks, if you can see the bottom where you're
• 1:25:35
  diving, it's much safer because they can like to come underneath.
• 1:25:40
  So if you, if the water's clear, it's calm, the animals are relaxed.
• 1:25:46
  You know, it's not I believe overly dangerous if you're used to being in
• 1:25:50
  the water and you're not overly fearful.
• 1:25:53
  To dive with a great white shark.
• 1:25:55
  It's not overly dangerous.
• 1:25:58
  But you also have to know the signs.
• 1:25:59
  And as you say, this, this gaping, this, this fairly subtle opening of
• 1:26:04
  the mouth is a very clear indication that they don't want you there anymore.
• 1:26:08
  And then you have to slowly slowly and very gently move out of their space.
• 1:26:13
  But, you know, I've, I've dived with so many different species
• 1:26:17
  of shark, big sharks, great whites, tiger sharks, bull sharks.
• 1:26:23
  And I've never been threatened by one of those animals or, you
• 1:26:27
  know, in any way aggression shown to me in fact, quite the opposite.
• 1:26:32
  And many people who've dived with sharks will tell you the same story.
• 1:26:36
  It's the absolute aberration.
• 1:26:39
  You know, when someone gets attacked and it's often, you know,
• 1:26:43
  curiosity or a shark that's maybe highly compromised or blind or.
• 1:26:49
  Starving or something.
• 1:26:51
  It's very, very, it's a very rare thing.
• 1:26:53
  These sharks are not, we're not on their prey list.
• 1:26:57
  So it's it's far more dangerous driving down to the beach than
• 1:27:00
  to be diving with these animals.
• 1:27:03
  Rupert Isaacson: There is of course, a waterborne predator that we know does
• 1:27:07
  take people pretty regularly in Africa.
• 1:27:10
  I myself was attacked by one when I was seven.
• 1:27:13
  Oh, only got.
• 1:27:16
  Away.
• 1:27:17
  We were in Zimbabwe which where my dad's from.
• 1:27:20
  And a biologist had penned some, including a big 14 footer,
• 1:27:29
  and they took us into the pen.
• 1:27:30
  They were observing them for us.
• 1:27:32
  I can't remember what they were studying.
• 1:27:34
  Because what happened next obliterated everything else from my mind.
• 1:27:36
  And we're supposed to keep our distance.
• 1:27:38
  And for some reason I didn't for some reason, I, I walked too close and
• 1:27:42
  I remember the rush of the water.
• 1:27:44
  luckily the biologists had run up behind me and grabbed me by the
• 1:27:48
  collar, pulled me up the back.
• 1:27:50
  This, of course, we're talking is a crocodile, the Nile
• 1:27:52
  crocodile, immensely dangerous.
• 1:27:54
  You open your book with a
• 1:27:59
  very exciting passage in which you are going into the water to
• 1:28:05
  film one of these in the water.
• 1:28:09
  You've been warned by the guide who's taking you in, who knows them
• 1:28:14
  quite well, that It's possible that you might not survive the dive.
• 1:28:19
  And again, it seems to me that this theme of relaxation comes in here.
• 1:28:27
  Can you just describe
• 1:28:31
  what, what happened there?
• 1:28:34
  What you did?
• 1:28:35
  Sure.
• 1:28:36
  Sure.
• 1:28:36
  Craig Foster: I mean, you, you're right.
• 1:28:38
  Crocodiles are very, very different to shark.
• 1:28:41
  This is an animal that does see humans very much as prey.
• 1:28:45
  We're the perfect size.
• 1:28:46
  We're nice and slow.
• 1:28:48
  You know, it's, they're perfect.
• 1:28:49
  So, and I certainly would never dive with crocodiles again.
• 1:28:55
  Um, this was a time earlier in my life where I don't think I was as
• 1:29:00
  sensible as I am now, but we were still using a lot of knowledge of,
• 1:29:06
  of animals we were doing a film.
• 1:29:10
  With my brother Damon Roger Horrocks, who's a great close
• 1:29:14
  friend, and Didier Noureau.
• 1:29:16
  And we were in the Okavango Delta and the idea in the film was to see if we could
• 1:29:23
  get inside what we call the dragon's lair where these crocodiles drag their prey.
• 1:29:28
  And it seemed to be a pretty interesting idea.
• 1:29:29
  nine impossible thing and then this one extraordinary animal we encountered
• 1:29:35
  and we thought it might be possible and we followed this animal down this long
• 1:29:40
  tunnel into the back of its lair and it was very powerful interesting experience
• 1:29:46
  and this animal allowed us to be in that place but it was absolutely terrifying.
• 1:29:52
  Um, and certainly Roger and Didier and to some extent my brother were
• 1:29:57
  sort of doing more of the diving.
• 1:29:59
  I did several dives with these crocodiles, but it was I think what is happening,
• 1:30:04
  Rupert, is I was, I was desperate to find this wildness that I was, I'd
• 1:30:10
  be, we've been talking about, and I felt that maybe I could find it there.
• 1:30:15
  And the great irony was it was lying in those little limpet shells, right
• 1:30:20
  where I, on the coast where I, where I'd left, you know, the, the real connection
• 1:30:25
  to deep nature comes not from extreme experiences that you have very seldom.
• 1:30:31
  It's from repeated experiences with animals.
• 1:30:34
  You get to know better and better in environments that are easy to access.
• 1:30:39
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 1:30:39
  I think for the young male, there is this rite of passage thing,
• 1:30:43
  this desire to test oneself.
• 1:30:46
  That's also part of the hunter gatherer thing, I suppose.
• 1:30:49
  It must be.
• 1:30:50
  You know, there you are, at a certain point you have to
• 1:30:52
  take your spear and now go.
• 1:30:54
  But is that what was going on with you at that point?
• 1:30:57
  Was it, was it part of almost seeking initiation somehow to
• 1:31:02
  put yourself consciously at risk?
• 1:31:08
  Understand more to connect more.
• 1:31:11
  Craig Foster: I mean, it was partly as our job was wildlife filmmaking
• 1:31:15
  and human animal interaction.
• 1:31:17
  So it was part of the job in some ways.
• 1:31:20
  I, I think the young ego is certainly looking for affirmation.
• 1:31:28
  But I think that.
• 1:31:33
  That ego can often be, like we talked about earlier, can be
• 1:31:40
  imbalanced by the strange world that we find ourselves in.
• 1:31:45
  You know, this is the most, this is the strangest environment that any
• 1:31:50
  human has ever tried to live in.
• 1:31:52
  This is utterly foreign to us.
• 1:31:54
  So what is that psyche?
• 1:31:56
  What does that ego try to do in this very strange world?
• 1:31:59
  It tries to reconnect with the wild and sometimes it might do very
• 1:32:03
  stupid things to try and do that.
• 1:32:06
  It's not just about initiation, because I had had quite a
• 1:32:10
  few initiations before that.
• 1:32:12
  So I think it's it's about not knowing where to turn in many ways, and
• 1:32:17
  certainly a big sense of adventure.
• 1:32:19
  And luckily, you know, no one was hurt, but it could have, it could have been,
• 1:32:24
  I don't think it's in a It's certainly something I wouldn't try again so,
• 1:32:29
  we were fortunate and we did take as many precautions as we could, but it,
• 1:32:33
  you know, there's not much you can do.
• 1:32:35
  Why did this particular crocodile
• 1:32:36
  Rupert Isaacson: let you into its den and why didn't it attack you?
• 1:32:41
  Craig Foster: It's partly mysterious and it's partly because I think we
• 1:32:47
  look very strange to that animal, you know, you, you're on scuba, you're
• 1:32:51
  breathing bubbles you've got this, you know, strange equipment, there's
• 1:32:55
  a strange sound coming off you.
• 1:32:58
  This animal is probably thinking, what is this thing?
• 1:33:02
  It doesn't know what you are.
• 1:33:04
  It doesn't know if you're dangerous.
• 1:33:05
  You're not, you're not running away from it.
• 1:33:07
  Almost everything runs away from a giant crocodile.
• 1:33:11
  So if we're not running away from it, when it approaches, we're not backing away
• 1:33:15
  because that's asking for big trouble.
• 1:33:18
  So it's thinking, well, maybe this thing is dangerous, but this particular animal
• 1:33:23
  is something was special about it.
• 1:33:24
  It was hard to say exactly.
• 1:33:27
  But we had encounters with many of the other crocs and some of them were
• 1:33:32
  you know, a bit more, I wouldn't say aggressive, but just came really close,
• 1:33:37
  but many of them were quite submissive.
• 1:33:39
  And I think it was because, and we had lights as well.
• 1:33:42
  And these cameras, there's a very strange thing to, for them to be seeing underwater
• 1:33:46
  unfamiliar and not backing away.
• 1:33:49
  Yeah.
• 1:33:49
  Rupert Isaacson: But like aliens coming down.
• 1:33:52
  Craig Foster: Yeah.
• 1:33:53
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:33:54
  It does make one wonder though I mean, I know from knowing you, but also
• 1:34:00
  seeing the work that you've done and the place you've done it, that you
• 1:34:03
  seem to have been allowed to experience
• 1:34:10
  the shamanic at work through animals, whether it, and nature in general, just
• 1:34:17
  Numerous times in a way that defies rational logic, whether it's that
• 1:34:25
  sharing space with a crocodile in the den, whether it's being able
• 1:34:29
  to witness Karoa doing that running hunt, which really one ought not to
• 1:34:34
  be able to film or capture on film.
• 1:34:36
  And somehow it happened for you guys to be able to witness that, that,
• 1:34:42
  and I'm sure many other things.
• 1:34:44
  Just to conclude here, because I want to pick this up again.
• 1:34:47
  The next time we talk, you, you also describe a very particular combination of
• 1:34:54
  the indigenous African world with the sea.
• 1:35:03
  You'd mentioned Otters and it was in that you were having a relationship with
• 1:35:11
  a lady called Charmaine, I believe, and who happened to be also Zulu and Ganga.
• 1:35:21
  Can we, I know we're running down on time here.
• 1:35:24
  Can we leave this part of the conversation?
• 1:35:27
  Can you tell us?
• 1:35:29
  what happened there and why you think.
• 1:35:34
  You were able to witness something like that and what
• 1:35:37
  did it, what did it teach you?
• 1:35:43
  Craig Foster: I think, yeah, this is a tough one to try and explain.
• 1:35:50
  Maybe describe is better than explain.
• 1:35:51
  You left the hard one to last.
• 1:35:53
  So, Edouard spent um, incredible three years with Charmaine Joseph Guaza, who
• 1:36:03
  was a, as you say, a traditional healer.
• 1:36:06
  Um, and I repeatedly witnessed
• 1:36:14
  quite a few things that were
• 1:36:18
  not explainable by my Western sort of scientific upbringing.
• 1:36:26
  It was impossible to understand or explain them through that window of reference.
• 1:36:35
  And today, still today, many of these things remain extremely mysterious.
• 1:36:43
  I think it's worth noting that
• 1:36:48
  even as accomplished and extraordinary as science is, science still only understands
• 1:36:57
  quite a small part of our world.
• 1:37:00
  Recently, you know, scientists have discovered dark matter and dark
• 1:37:04
  energy that apparently make up.
• 1:37:07
  I think 95 or more percent of.
• 1:37:11
  our world.
• 1:37:12
  And this, they see that there's this invisible world that has gravity, it
• 1:37:16
  has mass, it's there, but they can't even they can't, they can't see it.
• 1:37:20
  They can't measure it very easily.
• 1:37:22
  They can't even capture a few grams of it.
• 1:37:26
  So
• 1:37:29
  I think what we,
• 1:37:34
  We can easily get lulled into thinking that we understand reality and we
• 1:37:38
  understand the nature of our existence.
• 1:37:43
  The more one looks into it and the more one spends time with indigenous people,
• 1:37:49
  and especially in my case, indigenous people in Africa, you realize that the
• 1:37:55
  less and less one knows, and that the mysterious grows bigger and bigger, and
• 1:38:01
  that many of the things that one witnesses are not easily fitted into the world of
• 1:38:09
  science, but I'm quite fascinated in I think what is is called two eyed seeing,
• 1:38:17
  where you combine science and indigenous wisdom to try to figure out our reality.
• 1:38:25
  That becomes so interesting and so much more you can see
• 1:38:29
  a bigger picture of reality.
• 1:38:31
  And I'm not saying that all indigenous knowledge is mysterious.
• 1:38:35
  Of course it isn't.
• 1:38:36
  But I think there's so much to learn from people who are deeply connected.
• 1:38:44
  To the wild, to the ancestors, to the sacred that.
• 1:38:50
  Yeah, I mean, it's just a much richer world for that.
• 1:38:54
  And I also find it fascinating that, you know, 80 percent of the
• 1:38:59
  biodiversity on this planet is protected by indigenous people.
• 1:39:02
  So they, they, they know what is valuable.
• 1:39:08
  In the deepest, deepest sense.
• 1:39:09
  So we got so much to learn from that.
• 1:39:12
  And I think a lot of the hope, you know, it's easy to just look through the world
• 1:39:16
  of science and see this environmental crisis and be absolutely devastated by it.
• 1:39:20
  But I think a lot of the hope that certainly I draw from is from this
• 1:39:25
  wilder self from this indigenous wisdom that I've been privileged enough to,
• 1:39:32
  you know, be, be, be given access to.
• 1:39:37
  That there is this mystery that's out there that actually makes up quite a
• 1:39:43
  large part of our, our reality and that we're not sure what's going to happen.
• 1:39:48
  And certainly I think,
• 1:39:53
  There are a lot of forces at play that we have no idea what's going on.
• 1:39:57
  Yeah.
• 1:39:57
  I don't know if that skirts your question or answers it.
• 1:39:59
  Rupert Isaacson: I'm going to nail you down.
• 1:40:01
  I've seen obviously too, a lot of things which I can't compute from a,
• 1:40:06
  from a, you know, from a Western point of view, for example, I I've seen.
• 1:40:12
  A Cuckoo Yalanji Aboriginal shaman on my son, just with his fingers going up and
• 1:40:18
  down the spine, up and down the spine, up and down the spine, and the man wearing
• 1:40:21
  no shirt, so he couldn't hide anything, you know, and he was flicking his fingers
• 1:40:26
  into a ceramic cup, a chipped teacup, and as he was doing it, you know, I couldn't
• 1:40:34
  help but want to have a look inside, so I look in there, so does my ex Kristen,
• 1:40:39
  and what we see is, The cup is slowly filling with viscous, with little bloody
• 1:40:47
  filaments in it, like he snot, you know.
• 1:40:51
  And it's visibly before our eyes
• 1:40:57
  as he flicks his fingers from my son's spine into there.
• 1:41:01
  And at a certain point he chucks it into the fire, and Rowan gets
• 1:41:10
  up and says, my son, and says, I feel better, I feel clear headed.
• 1:41:14
  Which for him at that time to say something like that in his level of autism
• 1:41:18
  was, Not, you know, jaw dropping enough.
• 1:41:21
  We came back two successive days.
• 1:41:25
  And second day, less in the cup, the third day, almost none.
• 1:41:30
  And then he said, okay, it's fine.
• 1:41:31
  You know, he'll be, he'll be right.
• 1:41:35
  And then we had tea and toast cause as you know, with these mysterious
• 1:41:38
  things, it always comes to the mundane because there's no separation.
• 1:41:41
  That's the wonderful thing I love about indigenous culture.
• 1:41:44
  So I saw that I can't explain it.
• 1:41:46
  But there it was.
• 1:41:47
  And I also didn't just observe it happening, but I observed
• 1:41:50
  its ameliorative effect.
• 1:41:52
  That's obviously, and so many of us have spent any time.
• 1:41:55
  You know, I've been lucky enough to spend time with people who are less
• 1:41:59
  out of touch with their wild souls.
• 1:42:01
  have these stories.
• 1:42:04
  Tell us what happened on the beach that
• 1:42:06
  Craig Foster: day with Charmaine.
• 1:42:08
  So I think what you're referring to, cause there are a number of these occasions,
• 1:42:13
  but it was very early in the morning.
• 1:42:15
  It was kind of misty.
• 1:42:16
  We went down to a remote part of the, the coast And
• 1:42:23
  she asked me to be part of this ritual where essentially we were, we were
• 1:42:28
  supposed to be calling what she called them Dao, which is the water spirit, which
• 1:42:32
  is a an entity or a force that she'd been working with for a long time and was part
• 1:42:38
  of her culture and part of her training.
• 1:42:41
  Um, and I was still pretty skeptical in some ways of all these things, even though
• 1:42:49
  I'd seen some pretty strange things, but I was happy to go along with it.
• 1:42:54
  And I was very interested in the culture and what it meant.
• 1:42:57
  And I was had to have some of her blood in my one hand and
• 1:43:01
  a scorpion in the other hand.
• 1:43:02
  And I was went into the water.
• 1:43:06
  Rupert Isaacson: How do you hold a scorpion in your hand?
• 1:43:09
  Lisa.
• 1:43:09
  Oh, I just had a scorpion in my hand.
• 1:43:11
  Well, you pulled it out of your trousers.
• 1:43:12
  Craig Foster: That's so funny.
• 1:43:14
  So it was, I knew the scorpions in the area quite well, and there's a, a species
• 1:43:18
  that doesn't you know, sting very easily.
• 1:43:20
  And if you're calm with them, they, they, they're pretty chilled.
• 1:43:24
  So there was one there and then she just advised me what to do.
• 1:43:28
  So very carefully held that didn't in any way hurt it, went
• 1:43:33
  into the water up to my chest.
• 1:43:36
  She was intoning her the prayers behind and I was asked to, to connect to this
• 1:43:42
  water spirit in the best way I could.
• 1:43:44
  And then I came out thinking nothing was going to happen.
• 1:43:47
  Let the scorpion go.
• 1:43:49
  Very gently and we were walking back and the next minute I heard
• 1:43:53
  the splashing behind me and I looked around and there was a Cape Clawless
• 1:43:57
  otter right in the shallows staring straight at us and splashing water
• 1:44:03
  everywhere, which was very strange.
• 1:44:05
  And then Charmaine said, okay, let's go down to the water.
• 1:44:09
  And we walked and I thought the otter was just going to leave which it didn't.
• 1:44:13
  And we sat right next to it and this otter just flung water all over our bodies.
• 1:44:20
  And it appeared to be, strangely enough, the otter appeared to be quite frightened.
• 1:44:26
  It was, I've never seen anything like it before or since.
• 1:44:30
  It seemed to be being held in that space and it didn't want to be there.
• 1:44:35
  And it was splashing around in a very small area.
• 1:44:39
  And then Charmaine did some more prayers and suddenly this animal kind of,
• 1:44:45
  I don't know realized it could leave and it just shot away.
• 1:44:49
  And we were absolutely covered in water and I was just absolutely terrified.
• 1:44:53
  gobsmacked and know what was going on.
• 1:44:56
  Germaine was not in any way surprised.
• 1:44:59
  It was just like a normal day at the office for her.
• 1:45:02
  And you know, she just gently gave thanks and I was like, didn't know what the
• 1:45:07
  hell was going on and was fascinated.
• 1:45:09
  And then we, you know, left the area.
• 1:45:12
  Rupert Isaacson: Did she say what the purpose of the ritual was?
• 1:45:15
  Craig Foster: Yes, it was to basically give thanks and acknowledge this
• 1:45:20
  water spirit, this Mdao that she'd been working with for a long time.
• 1:45:24
  And she interpreted this otter as Being connected or being
• 1:45:29
  brought in by this, this force.
• 1:45:32
  It was very hard to understand and to interpret in any way.
• 1:45:36
  But it was, it was very powerful experience and I can't deny
• 1:45:41
  that that's what happened.
• 1:45:42
  It sounds, you know, I've seen artists before and they've been,
• 1:45:46
  you know, I've been close to them, but never an animal in that state.
• 1:45:50
  And it was completely different to anything I'd seen before.
• 1:45:53
  Rupert Isaacson: Was the splashing of the water over your bodies significant to her?
• 1:46:00
  Craig Foster: It was quite a long time ago, so it's hard to remember.
• 1:46:03
  It sounds almost like
• 1:46:04
  Rupert Isaacson: baptism or benediction.
• 1:46:06
  Yeah.
• 1:46:07
  Craig Foster: Yeah.
• 1:46:07
  And they do use, I mean, she used to use water a lot in that way.
• 1:46:11
  So it does, it did feel, it did feel like that.
• 1:46:14
  Rupert Isaacson: And ultimately is she, was she connecting with
• 1:46:17
  that water spirit for healing?
• 1:46:19
  Craig Foster: Yes,
• 1:46:20
  Rupert Isaacson: exactly.
• 1:46:20
  Why scorpion?
• 1:46:21
  Why not a sea creature or water I think it
• 1:46:26
  Craig Foster: was what, you know, sometimes spontaneously what was
• 1:46:31
  happening in the moment I think it was as part of it, she observed
• 1:46:35
  Rupert Isaacson: that that was there and yes, okay.
• 1:46:38
  It wasn't that this is a ritual that always involves a scorpion.
• 1:46:41
  Craig Foster: No, I don't think so.
• 1:46:42
  You hadn't
• 1:46:43
  Rupert Isaacson: been scouring
• 1:46:44
  Craig Foster: the
• 1:46:44
  Rupert Isaacson: pet shop.
• 1:46:45
  No, no, no, no.
• 1:46:46
  It was
• 1:46:47
  Craig Foster: a wild, a wild scorpion that was just there.
• 1:46:50
  Yeah.
• 1:46:50
  Rupert Isaacson: Interesting.
• 1:46:52
  Yeah.
• 1:46:53
  It's funny when, when you, there, there is a similar story I'll share on when
• 1:47:00
  we next talk, which happened to me with a fox that was not a million miles
• 1:47:06
  from that and had, was tied up with my son's autism in an interesting way.
• 1:47:12
  and a Navajo healer.
• 1:47:13
  So when I read that in your book, it resonated very deeply with me.
• 1:47:19
  Times of transformation, you know, messages that way.
• 1:47:23
  Well, I've kept you for A long time, and I know that you have to
• 1:47:27
  get up early to make your dive.
• 1:47:29
  So, can I get you back on?
• 1:47:34
  Craig Foster: Wonderful, yeah.
• 1:47:36
  Rupert Isaacson: A deeper dive, I had to say that, didn't I?
• 1:47:38
  There's a lot more I want to ask.
• 1:47:40
  For those of you listening, the book is Amphibious Soul.
• 1:47:45
  It's Craig Foster.
• 1:47:46
  You also need to see his film, My Octopus Teacher.
• 1:47:50
  You may well have already.
• 1:47:52
  You certainly also need to see his film, The Great Dance.
• 1:47:56
  Um, just give us where they can find you online and all of that.,
• 1:47:59
  Craig Foster: I, I personally don't use social media to, for lots of
• 1:48:05
  reasons, but I our NGO Sea Change Project are very active and we use
• 1:48:12
  that for conservation and everything.
• 1:48:13
  So it's seachangeproject.
• 1:48:15
  com and it's also worth noting that.
• 1:48:20
  I don't know if you were able to access this or if you did Rupert, but when
• 1:48:24
  you read the book, there's a QR code in the book that connects you to 27
• 1:48:30
  short films I made that show you some of the crocodile diving and some of
• 1:48:35
  these interactions with these animals.
• 1:48:38
  And each chapter has about three of the films and They're connected
• 1:48:42
  to certain pages in the book.
• 1:48:43
  And I, my son, Tom did all the sound for that.
• 1:48:46
  And so it was a really fun process to do.
• 1:48:49
  It's just there's no extra cost.
• 1:48:51
  It's just like a passion part of the whole project of trying to
• 1:48:54
  immerse people through the book and through these these short films.
• 1:49:00
  Rupert Isaacson: There's also in, in the book, an amazing color section
• 1:49:02
  of a tracking photo images from one of your tracking doc from your
• 1:49:08
  tracking diaries over the years with.
• 1:49:11
  Some fairly pretty extraordinary moments.
• 1:49:13
  I don't want to spoil them for people but showing how tracking and animals
• 1:49:17
  and the sea forest come together We also have not in this conversation
• 1:49:23
  really touched on the work of sea change at all So I want to talk about that.
• 1:49:28
  I want to talk about what's actually being done with this story.
• 1:49:31
  Story is healing healing is story This is The healing work of the story,
• 1:49:37
  the sea change project and helping to not just to preserve the coast of the
• 1:49:43
  forest itself, but to bring people into touch with it for their own healing.
• 1:49:48
  So I'd like to talk about that
• 1:49:52
  Craig Foster: next time if we can.
• 1:49:54
  Wonderful.
• 1:49:54
  Thank you so much, Rupert.
• 1:49:56
  Really great reconnecting with you and I love your work and so appreciate your
• 1:50:02
  fabulous intellect and creative ideas.
• 1:50:05
  Thank you.
• 1:50:06
  Rupert Isaacson: It's I'm, I'm, I'm glad you labor under the illusion that
• 1:50:09
  I have an intellect, but I can certainly introduce it to the people who can put
• 1:50:14
  you on right on that one, but thank you.
• 1:50:16
  No, I mean, you.
• 1:50:18
  It's just always such a brilliant pleasure just to be in your company.
• 1:50:23
  Thank you for joining us.
• 1:50:24
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• 1:50:26
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• 1:50:31
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