Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 997: Rewilding Your Life with Michael Easter

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Ep. 997: Rewilding Your Life with Michael Easter · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast, your guide to
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: the White Tail Woods, presented by First Light, creating proven
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast. This week on
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: the show, I'm joined by Michael Easter. He is the
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: author of The Comfort Crisis and Scarcity Brain, and we're
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: discussing tangible ways we can add wildness back into our
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: lives and the real impact that can have on our happiness,
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: our outdoor pursuits, and our sense of satisfaction across all things.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: All right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast,
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: brought to you by First Light, and Happy New Year.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: A new Year's upon us. I can't believe that's the case.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: We're two weeks in now, I suppose, and it's always
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: shocking how quickly these things sneak up on us. But
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty six is here, and we're gonna be kicking
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: off the new year.
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: Last week we discussed some of the top conservation issues
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: to be thinking about and looking forward to today, and
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: then again in a couple of weeks we're going to
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: do a couple outside the box episodes, some episodes where
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: we explore topics that are a little bit beyond strictly
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: deer hunting, beyond strictly how to, and we're gonna zoom
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: out a bit and explore some different ideas and philosophies
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: or concepts things that can help you become a better
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: deer hunter, but also help you become a better angler
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: outdoors men or woman, a student, businessman or woman, dad, mom, son, daughter,
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: person in general. We're gonna get outside of the usual
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: and talk about some higher level things that impact our
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: daily lives but definitely have a significant influence on who
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: we are as hunters or anglers. Some of these will
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: be discussing, you know, how to perform better, how to excel,
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: how to be excellent at something like hunting or fishing
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: or hiking or backpacking. But we're also going to discuss
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: how to, you know, think about success, how to set
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: better goals, how to be more productive or happier or
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: enjoy the pursuits that you are chasing, whatever that might be.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: That's kind of what we're going to explore a couple
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: times here to set ourselves up to hopefully have maybe
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: our best year ever, and today's guest is I think
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: the perfect person to help us do that. As I
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: mentioned in the introduction, this is Michael Easter. He is
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: a journalist and an author of two really great books
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: that I've enjoyed in the past. The Comfort Crisis, which
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: explores the many different ways that our increasingly comfortable world
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: is impacting us in possibly negative ways. Great book. It
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: uses a really exciting Alaskan backcountry hunt as the spine
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: of that story with Donnie Vincent, who's a past guest
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: of this podcast too, so highly recommend that. His book,
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: Scarcity Brain explores how kind of the evolutionary history of
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: humanity has led us to have this constant desire for
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: more and more and more, and how all sorts of
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: things out there in the world kind of spike these
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: habits or addictive behaviors that make us crave more food,
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: or more social media, or more status or more many
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: different things. So very interesting read. And then here in
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: the next couple weeks, I believe he has another book
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: coming out called Walking with Weight, and that's all about
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: the very specific physical practice of rucking hiking around with
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: a big, heavy backpack. That book's got a lot of
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: very relevant stuff for hunters or outdoors. People who get
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: outside carry heavy things. So that's the background he brings
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: to this. He also has the two Percent sub Stack,
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: which is a terrific website, a newsletter that he sends
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: out and that is on a quote here that explores simple,
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: actionable strategies to improve your physical health, mental resilience, performance,
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: and purpose. And I think that sums up his work
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: very well. But I would add one additional qualifier, and
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: this is something that came up in my conversation with Michael.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: This idea that kind of bubbled up for me that
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: much of what he talks about, much of what he prescribes,
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: is all about rewilding our lives. It's inserting stuff back
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: into our lives that used to be just what regular
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: wild humans used to do. Even humans one hundred years
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: ago used to do this stuff all the time. But
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: modern day life, cities, technology, all of that has kind
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: of stripped it away in many ways. It's stripped discomfort,
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: it's stripped challenge, it's stripped community or structure out of
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: our lives. And Michael has explored unique ideas for bringing
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: that back. And so that's what we discussed to we
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: discuss how to rewild our lives in this new year.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: How that can make you a better hunter, How that
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: can make you a better outdoors men or woman, and
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: a happier, more satisfied, productive, successful, healthy person in whatever
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: pursuit it is you want to apply it to. So
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: some very specific things we discuss include New Year's resolutions,
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: the science behind them, if they work or not, ideas
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: for setting goals for the new year, the possible risks
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: of setting goals around your recreational pursuits and your hobbies
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: like hunting or fishing. We think discussed some different things
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: around how modern high tech life today is changing our experiences,
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: changing what it means to be human. It's changing our happiness,
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: our satisfaction, even how we experience hunts or fishing trips
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: or camping trips. How all that's kind of infiltrating our
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: outdoor pursuits. We talk about social media. We talk about
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: how that's kind of hijacked our minds and how we
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: might be able to reclaim control over that, which is
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: certainly relevant to us as hunters and outdoors people who
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: you know, we of course engage in social media. But
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: then there's this whole other comparison culture thing that is
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: happening within our community and influencing how we, you know,
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: judge success, how we feel about our you know, whether
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: it be an animal that we tagged, or the goals
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: we set for the year, or anything like that. So
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: there's a lot to unpack there. We discuss different ways
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: to set big outdoor challenges and ways to explore our
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: edges and exploring you know, how to do things outside
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: of our comfort zone and why that's important, how to
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: best do that. Some cool ideas around that. We get
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: into some physical training, some simple ways that we can
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: become healthier, more capable backcountry hunters or mobile deer hunters
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: or whatever it might be. There's some simple but useful
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: ideas here that we discussed with Michael. So there's a lot.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: This is a great conversation.
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: Really enjoyed it.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: I highly recommend picking up those books I mentioned earlier.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: If you're into the rocking idea, this kind of backpacking
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: for physical fitness, check out his newest book, Walking with Weight.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: And I will just say again, this is a conversation
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: that is really relevant to you as a deer hunter
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: or outdoors person. But I think you're going to see
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: a lot here that can be applied across the rest
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: of your life too. So I hope you enjoy it
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: as much as I did. And thanks for being here
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: all right now with me on the line is Michael Easter.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: Welcome back to the show. Michael.
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: Thanks for having me back.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: Man, I appreciate it.
• 7:40
  Speaker 5: I'm looking forward to chatting again. It's always funny to you.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: I agree. I enjoyed our last podcast, which felt like
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: it wasn't that long ago. But when I went back
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: to kind of double check that, I realized it was
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: five years ago, which is nuts. How fast this is
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: all going.
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: I know.
• 7:56
  Speaker 5: I told my wife was like, what are you doing?
• 8:00
  Speaker 5: So I'm gone on podcasts? You said, oh, what is it?
• 8:02
  Speaker 5: And I told her it was yours. She goes, have
• 8:03
  Speaker 5: you ever been on that? And I said yeah, and
• 8:04
  Speaker 5: she goes, oh, when was that same deal? I was like,
• 8:07
  Speaker 5: I want to say it was like a year ago,
• 8:09
  Speaker 5: but if I actually look, it's like half a decade ago.
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: Man.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, It's it's pretty wild. How all the cliche things
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: that are that our parents and teachers and everyone said
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: about how fast life goes, It's it's all very true. Yes,
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: So here we are twenty I was about to say
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty five. It's twenty twenty six now New Year,
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: and as I think, you know a lot of people
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: do at this time of year, there's all this focus
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: on New Year's resolutions, new year, new you, setting new goals,
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: setting new plans, all of that. And I am one
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: of those nerds who gets into that. I'm very into that.
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: My wife and I literally had a sit down like
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: annual review last night, talking through our plan for the
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: new year and our goals and some things like that.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: But what's your take on that, What's what's your personal
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: take on, you know, this kind of new year, new
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: youth thing. And then what does the you know, I'm
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: not sure if you've looked in this specifically, but do
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: you have any sense of what the literature says or
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: what the you know, the the research points to as
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: far as the effectiveness of setting your year kind of
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: on this kind of annual calendar type of reset.
• 9:23
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, look, look, man, I think it's I
• 9:25
  Speaker 5: think it's good. Like people can change any time they want, right,
• 9:30
  Speaker 5: it's like to begin begin, but the new year gives
• 9:33
  Speaker 5: us an impetus to change. I think that set this
• 9:39
  Speaker 5: is the bad news when you look at their research,
• 9:42
  Speaker 5: most people fail, so like ninety five percent of New
• 9:44
  Speaker 5: Year's resolutions fail. Yeah, and there's a variety of reasons
• 9:49
  Speaker 5: for that, which I think we can get into in this,
• 9:51
  Speaker 5: But first I would actually like to hear how'd you
• 9:52
  Speaker 5: fair in your uh in your annual review? Tell me
• 9:57
  Speaker 5: all about that?
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, without getting into too many of the gory details.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: Twenty twenty five passed. I had a passing grade as
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: far as both my personal goals and what my wife
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: was hoping for from me. There's always a little bit
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: of that, you know, friction, not friction, but just you know,
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: you're married, you know how it is with a marriage.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: It's trying to bring together two totally different world views
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: and perspectives and lives to then say like are we
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: heading to the right direction? And are we going there
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: in the right ways? And so fortunately it's a great marriage.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: I have a great wife, and so we're mostly on
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: the same page. But then there's always you know, you know, well,
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: she'll say things like can't you just be normal? And
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: I guess I don't know how to be normal. I
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: am what I am, so overall good, but with a
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: typical marriage fund, So what's exciting year for us.
• 10:48
  Speaker 5: What I like about that though, is that there was
• 10:50
  Speaker 5: some sort of analysis that happened. So I think one
• 10:55
  Speaker 5: problem that people run into and why these things often fail,
• 10:59
  Speaker 5: these resolutions, if you'll call them, is that there's no
• 11:04
  Speaker 5: analysis of well, where have I gone wrong?
• 11:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: Right? We don't look.
• 11:08
  Speaker 5: Back and try and take measurements of what are my
• 11:11
  Speaker 5: weak points, what are my failures so I can improve
• 11:15
  Speaker 5: upon those weak points. Instead, people often say I'm going
• 11:18
  Speaker 5: to create this new big goal and I'm just going
• 11:21
  Speaker 5: to work towards that. But if you haven't fixed what
• 11:26
  Speaker 5: your biggest problems are, this is like trying to give
• 11:30
  Speaker 5: gas to these big new habits as you have your
• 11:33
  Speaker 5: foot on the break. So in my opinion, and I
• 11:37
  Speaker 5: think the research backs this, is that it is our
• 11:40
  Speaker 5: worst habits that really hold us back. Like if you
• 11:45
  Speaker 5: don't fix your worst habits, you're not going to go
• 11:48
  Speaker 5: forward at all. So I say that because I like
• 11:51
  Speaker 5: how you did that analysis, and I think that a
• 11:53
  Speaker 5: lot of people would benefit in the new year instead
• 11:57
  Speaker 5: of picking some random goal and saying, no, I'm going
• 12:00
  Speaker 5: to do this big thing, it's going to change my life.
• 12:02
  Speaker 5: To look back and go, Okay, well, what do I
• 12:05
  Speaker 5: think is actually holding me back? And what can I
• 12:10
  Speaker 5: do to sort of alleviate that whatever whatever it might be.
• 12:14
  Speaker 5: Oftentimes you don't have to set a big new goal.
• 12:16
  Speaker 5: If you just take your foot off that break, all
• 12:18
  Speaker 5: of a sudden, everything else will start changing. I mean,
• 12:20
  Speaker 5: I think the extreme kit to just give an extreme case,
• 12:22
  Speaker 5: because I think people like examples.
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: For me at least it helps them stick.
• 12:26
  Speaker 5: Is if you think about someone who's let's say an alcoholic, right,
• 12:30
  Speaker 5: people who are in the grips of drinking will often go,
• 12:32
  Speaker 5: I just need to exercise more. I just need to
• 12:34
  Speaker 5: eat a healthy diet. My life will improve. I just
• 12:36
  Speaker 5: need to do X y Z. It's like, but if
• 12:38
  Speaker 5: this person, if your fundamental problem is that, like you
• 12:40
  Speaker 5: have this terrible habit of drinking too much, it doesn't
• 12:43
  Speaker 5: matter all the good stuff you do, like, you're still
• 12:45
  Speaker 5: going to be held back in life. So it's like,
• 12:46
  Speaker 5: how can you just pull your foot off the break
• 12:48
  Speaker 5: of that bad thing? And then oftentimes everything will sort
• 12:52
  Speaker 5: itself out afterwards.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: So I got to believe that most of your work
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: around this for people, or I think why many people
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: come to you really is how do they you know,
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: build better habits, change their lifestyle, build better frameworks and
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: systems to have a healthier, more satisfying life, et cetera.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: But on this topic of goals and and you know,
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: developing some sense of direction of where you want to
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: take things, whether it's eliminating a bad habit or adding
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: a better habit, or setting some kind of stretch goal
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: or taking on something challenging. What happens when you apply
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: that to a recreational pursuit? You know? I mean, there's
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: there's the thought around, like hunters and anglers, we do
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: this thing that brings us joy, that that brings us peace.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: But then there's also the desire to set goals within that. Right,
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: Increasingly people want to get the next big buck or
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: a bigger buck, or they want to get three bucks,
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: or they want to do this big new fishing trip
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: or achieve this grand slam thing. Fish x y Z states,
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: there's all these different ways that we gamify recreation in
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: our pursuits and passions. What's the impact of that? Is that?
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: Is there a.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: Danger in that? Is that a healthy thing to do?
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: Does that risk our enjoyment or help it?
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 14:13
  Speaker 5: I'm going to answer that multiple ways, because I feel
• 14:15
  Speaker 5: like there's kind of a layering of questions in there,
• 14:18
  Speaker 5: which I like. So on one hand, it's good to
• 14:22
  Speaker 5: have a big goal, right it inspires you, maybe starts
• 14:26
  Speaker 5: you to get acting. But the problem often is that
• 14:30
  Speaker 5: if the goal is way too big, you start to fail,
• 14:35
  Speaker 5: and when you start to get the negative feedback towards failure,
• 14:39
  Speaker 5: people often quit. And it's also asking for a lot
• 14:42
  Speaker 5: of change at once. So I think sometimes it's better
• 14:47
  Speaker 5: to break things up into manageable sections and to think, Okay,
• 14:53
  Speaker 5: my goal is to complete this Grand Slam or whatever,
• 14:57
  Speaker 5: but what are the ten things I'm going to have
• 15:00
  Speaker 5: to do in order to actually reach that? And so
• 15:04
  Speaker 5: the goal becomes the first step of that because that's
• 15:08
  Speaker 5: a lot more easy to reach. And so once you've
• 15:11
  Speaker 5: hit that, you get some momentum, you get this positive feedback,
• 15:14
  Speaker 5: and you can start to build on that positive feedback.
• 15:16
  Speaker 5: So I wouldn't you know, I'm not the type of
• 15:18
  Speaker 5: person to say, like, oh, just just pick the easiest
• 15:20
  Speaker 5: goal and go for that, because I think that can
• 15:21
  Speaker 5: be limiting to people. Keep your big goal, but how
• 15:25
  Speaker 5: can you chop it up into much more manageable steps.
• 15:29
  Speaker 5: I mean, like A big part of my so might
• 15:31
  Speaker 5: substack newsletter is called the two percent newsletter, and it's
• 15:36
  Speaker 5: the name comes from a study that found that only
• 15:38
  Speaker 5: two percent of people take the stairs when there's an
• 15:40
  Speaker 5: escalator available. Now, to me, one hundred percent of people
• 15:44
  Speaker 5: know that taking the stairs is going to be better
• 15:45
  Speaker 5: for their health, well being, their mental health, all these
• 15:48
  Speaker 5: different things, and yet ninety percent of people just default
• 15:51
  Speaker 5: to the easy, effortless thing where if you can just
• 15:55
  Speaker 5: start with the stairs, one set of stairs is not
• 15:58
  Speaker 5: going to change your life. But if you take the
• 16:02
  Speaker 5: next setistairs, the next setistairs, and then you go, oh,
• 16:05
  Speaker 5: you know what, by going through that little bit of discomfort,
• 16:08
  Speaker 5: I sort of improved. And where else can I apply
• 16:11
  Speaker 5: that two percent mindset across the board to different things?
• 16:15
  Speaker 5: Now I'm parking in the farthest spot of the parking lot,
• 16:18
  Speaker 5: Now I'm going you know what, I'm not going to
• 16:20
  Speaker 5: eat those oreos before I go to bed or whatever.
• 16:23
  Speaker 5: It might be just like finding these little wins, and
• 16:25
  Speaker 5: I think those wins can stack up and that can
• 16:27
  Speaker 5: be applied to these larger goals too, of like, Okay,
• 16:30
  Speaker 5: what's the next small win I can do?
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: What can I do?
• 16:33
  Speaker 5: Today to sort of get me there, and you sort
• 16:35
  Speaker 5: of keep doing that and then you find yourself going,
• 16:38
  Speaker 5: oh my god, I just I just complained to this
• 16:40
  Speaker 5: grand slam.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I like the way that James Clear puts it.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: He says something something along the lines of, you know,
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: every action you take is a vote for the kind
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: of person you want to be.
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: I thought about that a lot. It's like, Okay, this
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: is this is something that signals my end state that
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: I want to be at it. This is the kind
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: of thing that that kind of person would do, and
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: so I'm gonna start to do that kind of thing,
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: take the stairs, or drink the water or whatever it
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: might be. It's those little things that, to your point,
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: they stack up. And I don't know if you meant
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: this with your you know, or at least when I
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: first saw you the title for your newsletter. The two
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: percent thought that I had was not only is two
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: percent representative of the small minority of people who will
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: do the harder thing, but I also think that also
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: if you think about doing the harder thing, it's getting
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: like two percent better every day or every week. That's
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: how we get better at anything. That's how we grow
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: that's how we build satisfaction or accomplishment or whatever. It's
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: by like stacking up these little one percents here, two
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: percents here, week after week, year after year. That's something
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: we talk about in the hunting world all the time.
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: It's it's stacking all these tiny little variables, getting a
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: little better in all these different little ways over time,
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: and that compounds, and so that mindset, I think, you
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: know there's a lot to it.
• 17:53
  Speaker 5: Yeah, And you know it's not two percent of people
• 17:55
  Speaker 5: climb everest, it's two percent of people take a freaking
• 17:58
  Speaker 5: staircase right at Sometimes the most obvious wins in life,
• 18:02
  Speaker 5: we just neglect them. I think a lot of this
• 18:04
  Speaker 5: goes back to like our evolutionary wiring of we're effectively
• 18:07
  Speaker 5: wired to do the next easiest, most comfortable thing, because
• 18:10
  Speaker 5: that always kept us alive in these harsh environments. But
• 18:15
  Speaker 5: now we've engineered our world for comfort and ease, we
• 18:18
  Speaker 5: still have that sort of wiring that pushed us to
• 18:20
  Speaker 5: do the easy thing, even though it doesn't help us
• 18:22
  Speaker 5: in the long run. So it's sort of overcoming that
• 18:25
  Speaker 5: in different ways all the time. And then to sort
• 18:28
  Speaker 5: of continue answering the question that you asked a bit ago,
• 18:31
  Speaker 5: and you you basically asked about gamifying habits.
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: Okay, to me, that's a double edged sword.
• 18:42
  Speaker 5: On one hand, having gamification and numbers can incentivize people
• 18:49
  Speaker 5: because it allows us to measure and see our improvements.
• 18:55
  Speaker 5: The downside, though, is that the way that we gamify
• 19:00
  Speaker 5: things narrows the goal to a set of numbers, and
• 19:05
  Speaker 5: we get fixated on those numbers, whereas if we look
• 19:08
  Speaker 5: at the actual big thing we're trying to accomplish, it's
• 19:13
  Speaker 5: often not to just get a number. I'll use the
• 19:17
  Speaker 5: example of like fitness trackers and step counts, so people
• 19:23
  Speaker 5: will get a step counter. So we're gonna quantify our activity.
• 19:27
  Speaker 5: We're gonna tell ourselves I need to get twelve thousand
• 19:29
  Speaker 5: steps a day. So you start to like, okay, twelve
• 19:33
  Speaker 5: thousand's my number, right, goal, go twelve thousand. I got
• 19:38
  Speaker 5: to get this twelve thousand every day, and you get
• 19:40
  Speaker 5: fixated on that number.
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: But if you pull back, what is the point? What
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: is the overall point?
• 19:46
  Speaker 5: The overall point is not to get twelve thousand steps
• 19:48
  Speaker 5: a day. The overall point is to become a more
• 19:50
  Speaker 5: active person. Why do we want to become a more
• 19:53
  Speaker 5: active person, so we can get healthier, maybe our mindset
• 19:56
  Speaker 5: will improve, maybe will be less stressed, all these other
• 19:59
  Speaker 5: thing But when we start to fixate on the number,
• 20:02
  Speaker 5: we often lose sight of those bigger, larger goals, and
• 20:05
  Speaker 5: that can sometimes steer us wrong. So it's again, it's
• 20:08
  Speaker 5: one of those double edged swords, and you have to
• 20:10
  Speaker 5: kind of realize, how is the gamification helping push me
• 20:15
  Speaker 5: towards this larger like this larger goal I'm going for,
• 20:19
  Speaker 5: But you also have to avoid getting sucked into just
• 20:22
  Speaker 5: the goal of this number for the sake of the number.
• 20:24
  Speaker 5: If that makes sense.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: It does. And here's another kind of double edged sword
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: issue within this that I've wrestled with a lot, is
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: like this tendency that many of us have to want
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: to be achievement oriented, to want to grow, to want
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: to get better at something, and how that impacts something
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: that is a passion, a recreational pursuit. Again going back
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: to this core example of like hunting or fishing, right,
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: for a lot of people, they come to that as
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: just like a thing for fun. And you write about
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: in the Comfort Crisis about the importance of you know,
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: having space and peace and boredom and quiet time and
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: all of that. And you experience that in the Arctic
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: when hunting with Downey, and I think many other people
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: do when they're deer hunting or fishing or anything like that. Right,
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: that's a place for you know, it's not necessarily boredom,
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: but it's it's space and quiet and indifferent than normal
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: everyday life. But then so many times this thing all
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: of a sudden like builds momentum, and all of a
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: sudden it's like, well, now I want to get more
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: or I want to get better, I want to do this,
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: and so you start attaching goals to this thing where
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden, what was just a fun, peaceful
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: joy experience transitions to this achievement experience, and all the
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: things that you just talked about there where all of
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: a sudden it's like I need to get ten fish,
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: I need to kill you know, one hundred and seventy
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: five inch buck, or I need to do whatever the
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: thing is. And then all of a sudden, there's not
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: only the you know, there's not only kind of this like
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: reinforcing effect of chasing, you know, losing sight of the
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: forest for the trees kind of thing, but then you're
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: also attaching pressures to it, and I don't know. I mean,
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: there's there's these two things that there's the value of
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: doing hard things that you talk about so often it
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: makes a lot of sense, But then there's also this
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: value to sometimes just having experiences or just joy for
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: the sake of that too, like being a human. How
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: do you reconcile that?
• 22:28
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I think your example of Antler scores is that
• 22:33
  Speaker 5: the correct terminology. Yeah, that's a perfect example. Yeah, where
• 22:37
  Speaker 5: it's like, why'd you start hunting in the first place?
• 22:40
  Speaker 5: Probably day one, it wasn't oh I want to get
• 22:42
  Speaker 5: one hundred and seventy five, Like it's just it's such
• 22:45
  Speaker 5: an arbitrary y exactly, But once you get deeper into it,
• 22:49
  Speaker 5: that becomes the goal and like not really the goal
• 22:52
  Speaker 5: of hunting is like you're going to get outside, You're
• 22:54
  Speaker 5: going to move around, You're going to engage in this
• 22:57
  Speaker 5: practice that humans have engaged in ever since we started
• 23:01
  Speaker 5: walking on two feet, and even before then when we
• 23:03
  Speaker 5: weren't even humans.
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: Right. So for me.
• 23:08
  Speaker 5: To answer your question about how do I sort of
• 23:10
  Speaker 5: balance those things, I just try and not pay attention
• 23:15
  Speaker 5: to the numbers. I try and always ask myself why
• 23:18
  Speaker 5: am I doing this thing in the first place? I
• 23:22
  Speaker 5: could apply that to like, I don't know weekly run mileages.
• 23:28
  Speaker 5: I've never really gotten into antler size and hunting, and
• 23:30
  Speaker 5: I don't hunt all that often, maybe like once a
• 23:33
  Speaker 5: year about the past couple of years.
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: Haven't made it out at all. I just like, I
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: don't know.
• 23:38
  Speaker 5: I'm just very cognizant of the fact that, Okay, why, I'm.
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: Always going back to the why, the deeper why? What's that?
• 23:45
  Speaker 5: Like a istn't there's some practice in Toyota. The guy
• 23:49
  Speaker 5: who found a Toyota was like, you got to ask
• 23:51
  Speaker 5: why six times?
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: Interesting?
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: So you go, okay, well why are we doing this?
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: But why? Let's the answer to that. But why?
• 23:58
  Speaker 5: And then once you get down to the sixth time,
• 24:00
  Speaker 5: you're like that, that's what we're after right there. So
• 24:03
  Speaker 5: I think if people can do that, you can sort
• 24:07
  Speaker 5: of get back to the original joy and purpose of
• 24:10
  Speaker 5: an activity you're doing. M and I will I will
• 24:17
  Speaker 5: admit this is like very philosophical, right I. Unfortunately with
• 24:21
  Speaker 5: a question like this, I can't give you, Well, here's
• 24:23
  Speaker 5: my three step framework. Just do exactly this and your
• 24:25
  Speaker 5: life will change immediately. It's like, well, life is actually
• 24:28
  Speaker 5: a lot more complicated than that. Yeah, which is probably why,
• 24:32
  Speaker 5: which is probably why I don't know my sub stack
• 24:35
  Speaker 5: couldn't be as good if I could, couldn't have as
• 24:37
  Speaker 5: many subscribers. If I would just say, here's a secret
• 24:39
  Speaker 5: to life, two steps to do it, pay me my
• 24:41
  Speaker 5: seven dollars month, we'll move on.
• 24:42
  Speaker 4: Uh huh.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: Well, well to your point that life is not black
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: and white and simple. It is complex, and your work
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: I think ties in very well and is a part
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: of a growing collection of thinkers and writers and other
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: people exploring something that I think is succinctly I mean,
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: you call it the comfort crisis. Another way of describing
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: that I saw with the title of book is like
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: the extinction of experience, that being kind of this losing,
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: this losing connection to like, our humanity because of all
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: of these different forces of the modern day kind of
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: bearing in on us. Whether that be more and more
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: people living in cities and all the chaos that comes
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: with that, whether it be the addiction to screen time
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: you've written about that of course, whether it be the
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: way that corporations are hijacking our psychology to get us
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: to go deeper and deeper into all those things. Now
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: you have AI, which is infiltrating our lives in all
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: these different places, and now you know whether it's filling
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: all media with a bunch of AI slop, whether it
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: be distorting what we can believe is true or not,
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: or whether it be actually like creating intermediaries where we
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: are now interfacing with machine intelligences instead of real people
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: when we have relationship problems, or when we need advice,
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: or when we look for answers to questions. There's all
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: of these things that are pulling us further and further
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: away from being I think what we what a fundamentally
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: means to be a human. And I feel like hunters
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: and anglers, like outdoors people are fortunate and that we've
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: maybe stumbled into one of the potential antidotes to much
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: of this. But even within this community, I know from
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: myself experiencing it and from talking to many other people
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: like we're feeling it too. We're still experiencing many of
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: these other things. So you wrote The Comfort Crisis five
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: years ago, You've you've done similar We've explored this overarching
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: top I've talked about in the Scarcity of Brain. I'm
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: sure in your new book you're working on. I know
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: in your newsletter, what is your prognosis of where we
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: are today five years after the Comfort Crisis was published?
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: Now that AI is overwhelming, We're in a different world
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: than we were five six years ago when you worked
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: on that first major piece. What's your sense of where
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: we are right now? And are the things that you
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: started writing about then more important now less important? Do
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: you have a different perspective in any kind of way?
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: I think they're more important.
• 27:35
  Speaker 5: I will say that there are signs that people are
• 27:38
  Speaker 5: starting to realize this, probably because I mean, you know,
• 27:43
  Speaker 5: like you said, there's people writing, but a lot of
• 27:45
  Speaker 5: people are noticing this and writing about it and thinking
• 27:47
  Speaker 5: about it and thinking what can we do about it?
• 27:49
  Speaker 5: Like I read an article in the New York Times
• 27:51
  Speaker 5: the other day about a group of high school kids
• 27:53
  Speaker 5: who went back to flipflons just started hanging out in person.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: That's great, yea.
• 27:58
  Speaker 5: At the same time, these are rare instances. I think
• 28:02
  Speaker 5: technology the point of technology is to make life easier,
• 28:06
  Speaker 5: more thoughtless, more effortless, more nice, comfortable.
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: Whatever.
• 28:13
  Speaker 5: The problem is is that humans don't grow and learn
• 28:15
  Speaker 5: through everything being effortless and comfortable. I think a lot
• 28:20
  Speaker 5: of the thing. There's fundamental problems with the technology, but
• 28:24
  Speaker 5: I think one of the biggest problems is that it
• 28:26
  Speaker 5: takes us out of the experiences that we need to
• 28:29
  Speaker 5: have in order to be healthy, happy.
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: And well. So, what are you doing when you are
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: sitting at home on your phone watching the seventy ninth
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: Instagram reel of the last you know? Five minutes you're indoors.
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: You're not outside.
• 28:50
  Speaker 5: The temperature is perfect, right, it's exactly dial to your specification,
• 28:54
  Speaker 5: so you're not getting any sort of outside friction from
• 28:57
  Speaker 5: the weather and temperature changes. You're also not moving right,
• 29:02
  Speaker 5: You're not moving your body. You're not with other people
• 29:05
  Speaker 5: because you're sucked into this device. There could be your
• 29:09
  Speaker 5: wife or your kid could be sitting right next to you,
• 29:11
  Speaker 5: but you're not with them at all. And so I
• 29:14
  Speaker 5: think that fundamentally technology is taking us out of these
• 29:18
  Speaker 5: things that are really important for us. Whereas if you
• 29:20
  Speaker 5: go out on a hunt with your friend or your
• 29:24
  Speaker 5: son or daughter, what happens all of a sudden you're outside.
• 29:28
  Speaker 5: There's a million reasons why being outside is good for us.
• 29:32
  Speaker 5: Some of them we don't fully understand. We just know
• 29:34
  Speaker 5: that all the data says that being outside is really
• 29:36
  Speaker 5: good for us too.
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: You're having to move your body.
• 29:40
  Speaker 5: That's very good for us. Best thing you can do
• 29:42
  Speaker 5: long term for your health, and longevy is moving. You're
• 29:48
  Speaker 5: also with the other person, right, and you're not just
• 29:51
  Speaker 5: with them b yesing, you're on a quest together that's
• 29:55
  Speaker 5: really important. The quest is to this like goal of
• 30:01
  Speaker 5: finding a buck, right. Humans are most happy and engaged
• 30:06
  Speaker 5: when we have a goal or a mission to accomplish.
• 30:09
  Speaker 5: Even if you don't get along with the person, if
• 30:12
  Speaker 5: you put two people on a mission together, that'll repair
• 30:16
  Speaker 5: relationship really best. And there's actually data that suggests this
• 30:20
  Speaker 5: insert like twenty to thirty other really good things that
• 30:24
  Speaker 5: are happening in that environment. So I think the fundamental
• 30:26
  Speaker 5: issue as technology is taken over, which don't get me wrong,
• 30:30
  Speaker 5: it's had a ton of upsides, but is that it's
• 30:34
  Speaker 5: removed us from the things that make us most well.
• 30:37
  Speaker 5: So then the question I think for me and everyone
• 30:41
  Speaker 5: else becomes, Okay, how can I get back to those
• 30:45
  Speaker 5: rhythms that humans you still live and exist in for
• 30:48
  Speaker 5: all of time? But also I'm not telling people to go,
• 30:52
  Speaker 5: you know, build a yurt and hunting fish for all
• 30:56
  Speaker 5: of their food. But it is like, how do you
• 30:59
  Speaker 5: how do you find small ways to weave that into
• 31:01
  Speaker 5: your daily life every single day, whether it's just like
• 31:04
  Speaker 5: a walk on the trail by your house with your
• 31:07
  Speaker 5: kid or your spouse, and then also in bigger things
• 31:12
  Speaker 5: like your you know, your annual hunt, your insert whatever
• 31:15
  Speaker 5: it might be.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like a lot of a lot of
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: this for me echoes an idea within conservation. There's this
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: idea of rewilding, and so in many places across the world,
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: we've lost wildlife species that used to exist in that region,
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: and there's a growing movement now rather than just trying
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: to stop the bleeding where species are disappearing, they're actually
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: trying to rewild areas, so bring back these native species
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: that used to exist on the landscape. And I feel
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: like a lot of what you've prescribed, and a lot
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: of what some of these other people have talked about
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: is almost like rewilding our lives. I've thought a lot about,
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: like my general philosophy of this, and much of what
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: I've taken from the Comfort Crisis, from your other writing
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: is like ways to bring back our wild past, our
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: evolutionary history. What it means to be human if you
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: want to keep it a little simpler and bring that
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: back into us, make us wild again, make us human again.
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: I think that's a big part of why hunters and
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: anglers love doing this and being a part of this
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: and having that lifestyle. And I think, you know, many
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: of these other things that can help us deal with
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: modernity in general all kind of tie back to that
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: kind of rewilding idea. But one thing I've noticed is
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: that even when doing the right things, like you talked about,
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: you've written about the importance of nature, the many different
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: benefits of being outside. Right, there's all sorts of studies
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: that you've referenced about, you know, the ways that sounds
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: and smells and fractals and all these different things give
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: us real physiological benefits, right, And hunters and anglers have
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: stumbled on this, and we have, accidentally, you know, in
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: many ways, built a life around being outside. And that's great,
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: and we're all benefiting from it. But even those of
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: us who do this stuff, we're still bringing in this
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: outside world. And I remember reading that there's this idea,
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: the three day effect that you talked about, which is like,
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: after three days in the back country, it's like a
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: mental re there's something really special that happens after three
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: days in the wild in the back country, right, both
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: of us have experienced that. But then a very important
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: qualifier was including that, which is that if you have
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: your phone, it negates that. And I'm curious if you
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: can expand on that a little bit because I feel
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: like there's an epidemic of phone use by hunters too.
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: And I've like there's memes that go around. There's like,
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: you know, people saying, like what hunting was, and you know,
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: the year nineteen fifty was somebody actually out there hunting.
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: What hunting is in twenty twenty five is a guy
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: sitting in a tree looking at you know, Instagram reels
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: for four hours. So how does introducing our phones and
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: in time to our outdoor pursuits maybe changing the benefits,
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: changing the experience, pulling away from what's actually supposed to be.
• 34:10
  Speaker 5: Yeah, big picture is that you're not actually hunting, you're
• 34:14
  Speaker 5: on your phone.
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 34:17
  Speaker 5: So there's some interesting studies and they there's a lot
• 34:21
  Speaker 5: of these. A short term one was at the University
• 34:24
  Speaker 5: of Utah. They took people to this outdoor area outside
• 34:28
  Speaker 5: of Salt Lake City and they had one group do
• 34:31
  Speaker 5: a hike, they couldn't use their phone at all. They
• 34:35
  Speaker 5: had another group take the hike, but they could use
• 34:38
  Speaker 5: their phone. They could call people, they could look at it,
• 34:40
  Speaker 5: whatever the hell they wanted to do. And when they
• 34:42
  Speaker 5: got back, they measured stress levels attention levels of the
• 34:45
  Speaker 5: two groups, and the people who were on their phone
• 34:49
  Speaker 5: saw no benefits, whereas the people who weren't on their
• 34:54
  Speaker 5: phone couldn't use their phone, their stress levels had gone
• 34:57
  Speaker 5: down significantly, their attention levels had been restored.
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: Focus was much better.
• 35:02
  Speaker 5: All these different markers improved, and then the longer term studies,
• 35:05
  Speaker 5: like the three day effect, same thing happens. If a
• 35:09
  Speaker 5: person is using their phone for a lot of the
• 35:12
  Speaker 5: time outdoors, it just sort of negates all the benefits
• 35:16
  Speaker 5: that you get from that, and it goes back to attention.
• 35:19
  Speaker 5: So if I'm in the wilderness and I'm paying attention,
• 35:23
  Speaker 5: i don't have my phone, your brain goes into this
• 35:27
  Speaker 5: mode that researchers call and this is a terrible name.
• 35:30
  Speaker 5: It should never allow scientists to come up with names.
• 35:33
  Speaker 5: It's called soft fascination. And what you can think about
• 35:37
  Speaker 5: it is it's sort of like sort of like a
• 35:39
  Speaker 5: form of meditation, but with meditation, you're kind of going inward.
• 35:44
  Speaker 5: It's almost an outward meditation where you're sort of lightly
• 35:47
  Speaker 5: focusing on all this stuff around, this natural stuff, and
• 35:52
  Speaker 5: that does really good things for the brain. Once you
• 35:55
  Speaker 5: insert a phone, not only are you taking yourself out
• 35:57
  Speaker 5: of that, but what are you looking at on your phone?
• 35:59
  Speaker 5: If you're on Instagram reels, you're like, Okay, here's a
• 36:03
  Speaker 5: fight video that's going to stress me out. Here's some
• 36:06
  Speaker 5: political video that's going to stress me out. Here's some
• 36:09
  Speaker 5: news about all the terrible things happening in the world
• 36:12
  Speaker 5: that's going to stress me out. And so you're just
• 36:15
  Speaker 5: adding this outside stressor and while not getting all the benefits. Now,
• 36:20
  Speaker 5: I think that there's a balance to be found. So,
• 36:23
  Speaker 5: for example, I did this. It's about eight hundred and
• 36:27
  Speaker 5: fifty mile route in southern Utah in the spring last year.
• 36:33
  Speaker 5: It takes about forty five days. Now, I could have
• 36:36
  Speaker 5: carried in all these topo maps right, but now I'm
• 36:41
  Speaker 5: not going to do that, like so many damn maps,
• 36:44
  Speaker 5: so heavy.
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: So I brought my.
• 36:46
  Speaker 5: Phone and I used a GPS mapping application for that.
• 36:52
  Speaker 5: So I had to be on my phone occasionally out there,
• 36:55
  Speaker 5: but I didn't have service. I didn't download anything. I
• 36:59
  Speaker 5: didn't download pods, even yours.
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: I'm sorry.
• 37:03
  Speaker 5: I didn't download a bunch of music and stuff. I
• 37:06
  Speaker 5: only use my phone when I really needed to use it,
• 37:09
  Speaker 5: and I also asked myself, do I really need to
• 37:11
  Speaker 5: use this phone? So, for example, when you navigate, you
• 37:14
  Speaker 5: can do it two ways. You can stare down at
• 37:17
  Speaker 5: the thing and look at the blue dot and follow
• 37:20
  Speaker 5: the line the whole time, or you can actually pull
• 37:23
  Speaker 5: back and read the map and go, Okay, here's where
• 37:25
  Speaker 5: I am situated in this landscape.
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: If I look, oh, I can see a bluff over there.
• 37:29
  Speaker 5: Looks like I just kind of need to walk toward
• 37:32
  Speaker 5: that bluff, and it might be five miles. I don't
• 37:34
  Speaker 5: need to look at my phone. I just know I
• 37:36
  Speaker 5: generally need to go in that direction, and so that
• 37:38
  Speaker 5: way I can pay attention. So I think there's a
• 37:40
  Speaker 5: good balance to be found with technology because it can
• 37:45
  Speaker 5: absolutely help us. I know, like apps like on x
• 37:49
  Speaker 5: really help a lot of hunters. But the question is
• 37:52
  Speaker 5: how reliant are you going to be on that? How
• 37:56
  Speaker 5: much of your attention are you focusing on that? And
• 37:58
  Speaker 5: can you sort of just use it to the minimum
• 38:00
  Speaker 5: effective dose that you need to users as a use
• 38:03
  Speaker 5: it as a tool rather than it sort of using you.
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: So on that line of thinking of the technology using you,
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: I feel like the best example that might be social media. Right,
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: can you expand a little bit on just how and
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: why social media can be still particularly dangerous or toxic
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: slash addicting? Spell that out a little bit for us.
• 38:32
  Speaker 5: I'll give you a surprising answer for the same exact
• 38:34
  Speaker 5: reason hunting is addicting. So social media works on random rewards.
• 38:42
  Speaker 5: Random rewards capture the attention of every single animal, always have. Now,
• 38:47
  Speaker 5: the difference is social media is able to really tweak
• 38:53
  Speaker 5: that random reward schedule to get it to the perfect,
• 38:57
  Speaker 5: perfect amount of random rewards that keep us coming back.
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: And it's also very accessible.
• 39:02
  Speaker 5: So in my book Scarcity Debrain, I talk about this
• 39:04
  Speaker 5: thing called the scarcity loop, and it's the ultimate vehicle
• 39:09
  Speaker 5: for capturing human attention. And so I'm going to unpack
• 39:12
  Speaker 5: it's a little bit complicated, but bear with me. It's
• 39:14
  Speaker 5: got three parts. It's got opportunity, unpredictable rewards, and quick,
• 39:18
  Speaker 5: quick repeatability. So opportunity, you have an opportunity to get
• 39:22
  Speaker 5: something of value, unpredictable rewards. You know you'll get that
• 39:26
  Speaker 5: thing at some point, but you don't know when. You
• 39:28
  Speaker 5: don't know how valuable it'll be. And quick repeatability you
• 39:31
  Speaker 5: can immediately do the thing again to try and get
• 39:34
  Speaker 5: that thing of value. So with social media, if you
• 39:37
  Speaker 5: unpack that, it's opportunity. I might see a hilarious reel
• 39:43
  Speaker 5: or a reel that makes me pissed off about politics,
• 39:45
  Speaker 5: or I might get a like or a DM, but
• 39:50
  Speaker 5: it's unpredictable. You don't know when that's going to happen, right,
• 39:55
  Speaker 5: Could happen in half a second, could happen in thirty seconds.
• 39:58
  Speaker 5: You don't know how valuable it's going to be. Is
• 40:00
  Speaker 5: it like a DM that's from someone I don't really
• 40:03
  Speaker 5: know this person, that's a random request I don't like it.
• 40:05
  Speaker 3: Or is it like a.
• 40:06
  Speaker 5: DM being like, hey, come on my podcast and blah
• 40:08
  Speaker 5: blah blah, and then you can recheck and recheck and recheck.
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: So it just points you into this book.
• 40:14
  Speaker 5: Right, And it's because it's on your person all the time. Now,
• 40:18
  Speaker 5: hunting works on the exact same schedule. Yeah, opportunity. You
• 40:23
  Speaker 5: have an opportunity to kill a giant buck, but it's unpredictable.
• 40:29
  Speaker 5: You don't know where the hell it is. You don't
• 40:31
  Speaker 5: know when you're going to see it. You don't know
• 40:33
  Speaker 5: if that oh I might have seen a buck, I
• 40:35
  Speaker 5: don't know if it's a was it actually dough or.
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: Was it that giant buck I got on my camera?
• 40:41
  Speaker 5: And then you just repeat that. Right, you're out there
• 40:43
  Speaker 5: and you're searching and searching for that buck. It's the
• 40:45
  Speaker 5: exact same schedule that makes both of those activities so addicting.
• 40:53
  Speaker 5: But what's happening in the meantime When you're hunting, you're outside,
• 40:56
  Speaker 5: you're moving around, you're often with friends, Like all these
• 40:58
  Speaker 5: good things are happening as you're in aged in that
• 41:01
  Speaker 5: three part game, as it were, Whereas with social you're
• 41:05
  Speaker 5: sitting at home, you're not doing anything. The stuff that's
• 41:08
  Speaker 5: coming into you is often making you ramped up, anxious,
• 41:12
  Speaker 5: anxietiss and you're not doing all these things that make
• 41:15
  Speaker 5: you better as a person. So the big question is,
• 41:19
  Speaker 5: you know, with these sort of games that we get
• 41:22
  Speaker 5: pulled into and they're everywhere, Like basically I can tell
• 41:25
  Speaker 5: you if listeners open their phone and look at the
• 41:29
  Speaker 5: apps they spend the most time on, I will guarantee
• 41:32
  Speaker 5: that they fall into that scarcity loop, whether it's email,
• 41:36
  Speaker 5: whether it's sports betting, whether it's of course social media,
• 41:41
  Speaker 5: whether it's even finance apps, the exact same thing. But
• 41:47
  Speaker 5: the question is I lost my train of thought a
• 41:48
  Speaker 5: little bit. But the question is, is that three part game,
• 41:55
  Speaker 5: that scarcity loop doing things that are helping you in
• 41:58
  Speaker 5: the meantime rather than hurting you?
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: And I wonder, you know, given that, you know, what
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: do you you know in the case that there's positive
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: scarcity loops and there's negative scarcity loops like you mentioned,
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: and so in these ones, you know, like social media,
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: that seems so you know, so clear to so many
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: of us that there's these obvious negatives to it. But
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: for most of us, we kind of just fell into it.
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: We started using social media fifteen years ago or twenty
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: years ago or whatever, when everybody got a Facebook account,
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: and then the next thing was like, oh well, you
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: got to get an Instagram account, and then oh yeah,
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: you got to be on Twitter, and then oh yeah,
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: you got to get on TikTok, and you're just kind
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: of doing it and using it, and then all of
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: a sudden, you said this earlier, it starts to use
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: you and we don't even realize it. But it becomes
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: a compulsion. It becomes this thing that you're doing, and
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: you don't know why you're doing it. It doesn't bring
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: you all that much value. And then to your point,
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden, all this time goes by and
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: you have nothing to show for it, and you write
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: about this and scarcity brain, the fact that there's Yeah,
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: this isn't happening by chance. This is not random. This
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: is highly engineered by people using very you know, seriously
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: researched practices to take advantage of our psychology to do this,
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: to hijack our brains to do this. So we're up
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: against like a serious challenge here. It's not just that
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: we are like weak minded people. It's also that people
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: are using very sophisticated like weaponizing of this stuff that
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: we think is like a fun little thing for us
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: to look at. But instead there's people on the other
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: side who are really gearing this to suck us in.
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: How do you break out of that? How do we
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: reclaim some kind of control.
• 43:43
  Speaker 5: Yeah, so that just for context, why we fall into
• 43:47
  Speaker 5: this this system, the reason we're attracted to it is
• 43:50
  Speaker 5: evolved out of hunting and hunting and gathering in our ancestors.
• 43:54
  Speaker 5: Like I said, hunting is hunting and gathering. It is
• 43:58
  Speaker 5: fundamentally a random awards game, and if humans weren't inherently
• 44:01
  Speaker 5: attracted to that and willing to keep playing it all day.
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: We would have all died off today.
• 44:08
  Speaker 5: Though it gets put into like you said, all these
• 44:11
  Speaker 5: different technologies, and in the book, I actually talk about
• 44:14
  Speaker 5: how we really started to figure out how to tweak
• 44:17
  Speaker 5: it perfectly for the desires of corporations in Las Vegas
• 44:20
  Speaker 5: in the eighties. It's crazy story, But how do you
• 44:23
  Speaker 5: get out of it? Like I said, there's three parts,
• 44:29
  Speaker 5: and if you just remove or change any of the
• 44:32
  Speaker 5: three parts, you can fix it. So for me, the
• 44:36
  Speaker 5: biggest part that's relatively easy to tweak is that quick repeatability.
• 44:41
  Speaker 5: So the faster you can do a behavior, the more
• 44:45
  Speaker 5: likely you are to do a behavior. If we had
• 44:50
  Speaker 5: to say, run a mile to check our Instagram, no
• 44:53
  Speaker 5: one would check their damn Instagram like ever, So I
• 44:57
  Speaker 5: think the question is how do you add friction into
• 45:00
  Speaker 5: getting into Instagram or your apps, or turning on Netflix
• 45:05
  Speaker 5: or whatever it might be that's hurting you. How do
• 45:07
  Speaker 5: you how can you slow down that process? So on
• 45:10
  Speaker 5: cell phones, and I realized it's ironic to tell people
• 45:13
  Speaker 5: to download an app so they can use other apps less.
• 45:16
  Speaker 5: There's a great app that's helped a lot of people.
• 45:18
  Speaker 5: It's called clear Space, and what it does is you
• 45:21
  Speaker 5: pick the apps that you want to limit. Let's say
• 45:25
  Speaker 5: you pick Twitter. When you go to open Twitter, clear
• 45:30
  Speaker 5: space makes you pause, take a breath in, take a
• 45:33
  Speaker 5: breath out. Then it asks you, do you actually want
• 45:35
  Speaker 5: to use this app? Because a lot of times we
• 45:38
  Speaker 5: just pull out our phone like reflexively to check whatever
• 45:40
  Speaker 5: app it is we're addicted to. And then once you
• 45:45
  Speaker 5: say yes, I would actually like to check Twitter, it
• 45:48
  Speaker 5: asks you how long do you actually want to stay
• 45:50
  Speaker 5: in Twitter?
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: And it gives you options.
• 45:52
  Speaker 5: You can you know, you can set up for five minutes,
• 45:54
  Speaker 5: ten minutes, twenty minutes, so you pick ten minutes. Because
• 45:57
  Speaker 5: the problem is we'll often go open Twitter to go, oh,
• 46:01
  Speaker 5: I need to respond to that direct message, or I
• 46:04
  Speaker 5: want to see what Mark Kenyon has tweeted about this
• 46:09
  Speaker 5: season's hunting, and then we often just start scrolling into
• 46:13
  Speaker 5: all this southern nonsense. In an hour has gone by.
• 46:16
  Speaker 5: So by limiting the time, you're forced to kind of
• 46:19
  Speaker 5: do what you actually want to do. So I think
• 46:20
  Speaker 5: that's a good use for bones. But also, I mean,
• 46:26
  Speaker 5: people get like the scarcity loop isn't shopping. One of
• 46:30
  Speaker 5: the reasons people buy so much crap now is because
• 46:33
  Speaker 5: it's so easy and fast to buy stuff. So if
• 46:36
  Speaker 5: you can even tell yourself, all right, this thing I
• 46:39
  Speaker 5: think I want, I'm going to put it in my cart,
• 46:42
  Speaker 5: my online shopping cart, and I'm going to wait seventy
• 46:44
  Speaker 5: two hours, I'm going to slow this down.
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: You'll buy way less.
• 46:48
  Speaker 5: Stuff, like so much less stuff because so much is
• 46:50
  Speaker 5: this stuff is just on board. I was online, Oh
• 46:52
  Speaker 5: I saw this, Yeah, I'll buy it. You insert a
• 46:55
  Speaker 5: little bit of time and friction, purchasing tends to go down.
• 46:58
  Speaker 5: And so the question is, with any behavior you have
• 47:01
  Speaker 5: that is something you're compulsively doing that's hurting you, how
• 47:06
  Speaker 5: can I slow it down?
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: So I want to circle back to to I guess
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: a little bit more of One of the best ways
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: to slow things down is to get outside. Is to
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: insert this big pause in normal life, everyday life, by
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: experiencing nature, which again I know a lot of people
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: that's like a big thing for them to go out
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: and do anything right. Getting there twenty minutes. You know,
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: three times a week is like a stretch goal. You know,
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: asking someone to go out in the back country for
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: three days a month or a year is like a
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: big deal for some people. For folks listening to this podcast,
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: it's not that big of the deal. It's what we
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: want to do. But you have recommended something that's even
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: beyond that, which I loved when we talked about last time,
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: and I've thought about it since and then kind of
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: forgot about. And then when I reread your book recently,
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: was reminded of And that's the Massagi idea, this idea
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: of pushing you know, we talked earlier about pushing yourself,
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: having goals and everything, and is that a good thing
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: or can that sometimes get you out of focus of
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: why you love something? But there does seem to be
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: this benefit to kind of pushing the edges of the possible.
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: And I'm curious over the last five years or so
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: since you I think I think you can be widely
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: credited with popularizing that idea. It's really caught on. Where's
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: your head on this? I guess for people who aren't familiar,
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: what is it? Number two? Where are you now? Five
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: years into this as it's grown, and as people have
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: been increasingly coming to you to talk about this, and
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: you've been talking about it, and I guess where what
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: are your best practices now, five years after you first
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: brought this idea out to the world, give us that.
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: I guess yeah.
• 48:52
  Speaker 5: So a masogi easiest way to think about it is
• 48:56
  Speaker 5: it a big epic challenge that you take on once
• 49:01
  Speaker 5: a year for the sake of growth. There's two rules.
• 49:05
  Speaker 5: Make it really hard, don't die. So the second rule,
• 49:08
  Speaker 5: it is kind of tongue in cheek, just be safe.
• 49:10
  Speaker 5: But the first rule we define by saying you should
• 49:12
  Speaker 5: have a fifty to fifty shot of accomplishing whatever your
• 49:14
  Speaker 5: masogi task is. So the fifty to fifty shot that
• 49:18
  Speaker 5: means two things. One is that everyone's fifty to fifty
• 49:24
  Speaker 5: is going to be different.
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 49:26
  Speaker 5: Let's say that my masogi is I'm going to run
• 49:28
  Speaker 5: fifty miles. Well, the lady down the street from me,
• 49:31
  Speaker 5: who's you know, sixty seven years old, first might be
• 49:35
  Speaker 5: to run ten miles. But we're still going to do
• 49:38
  Speaker 5: something that we think we only have a fifty percent
• 49:40
  Speaker 5: shot of doing. And the fifty percent shot part second
• 49:45
  Speaker 5: part of this is that it's really important because it
• 49:48
  Speaker 5: means you have a really high chance of failure. And today,
• 49:52
  Speaker 5: when we take on challenges, we often pick things that
• 49:55
  Speaker 5: are well within the range of possibilities, like ninety percent.
• 49:58
  Speaker 5: Sure we're going to acomplish this thing. But the problem
• 50:02
  Speaker 5: is is we don't ever get pushed out to our edge.
• 50:06
  Speaker 5: So whether you actually accomplish this thing or not is irrelevant.
• 50:10
  Speaker 5: The point is that you want to meet this point
• 50:14
  Speaker 5: where you think you are going to fail this. You're like,
• 50:17
  Speaker 5: I'm done, I can't go any further. But if you
• 50:20
  Speaker 5: can just push a little bit past that, just keep pushing,
• 50:25
  Speaker 5: you get this second moment where you realize, well, wait
• 50:28
  Speaker 5: a minute, I'm past what I thought was my limit
• 50:31
  Speaker 5: back there. So I've sold myself short here, and then
• 50:35
  Speaker 5: the important question becomes where else in my life could
• 50:39
  Speaker 5: I be selling myself short? So I'm a firm believer
• 50:42
  Speaker 5: that humans don't learn through sitting around thinking all the time.
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 50:47
  Speaker 5: We can intellectually understand a lot of concepts in our brain,
• 50:50
  Speaker 5: but they don't actually stick until we get out in
• 50:52
  Speaker 5: the world and we actually experience them. And the massogi
• 50:56
  Speaker 5: teaches you through experience, you're probably a lot more capable
• 51:00
  Speaker 5: then you think, and that changes your worldview afterwards. So
• 51:05
  Speaker 5: then to follow up on the second part of your
• 51:08
  Speaker 5: question is how has my thinking evolved on this? Yeah,
• 51:13
  Speaker 5: I think a couple things. I think when I first
• 51:15
  Speaker 5: wrote about it, like the book really focused on physical things.
• 51:20
  Speaker 5: I don't think masogis always have to be physical. So
• 51:25
  Speaker 5: let's say you took a I don't know someone who's
• 51:28
  Speaker 5: into ultra ultra marathon running right, A tendency for that
• 51:32
  Speaker 5: person would would be, Okay, I'm gonna my masogi is
• 51:35
  Speaker 5: a fifty miler. Oh, I completed that. Now I'm going
• 51:37
  Speaker 5: to do one hundred miles. Completed that, Now I'm going
• 51:40
  Speaker 5: to do two hundred miles. And it just becomes this
• 51:41
  Speaker 5: arms race. It's like you kind of know you're going
• 51:43
  Speaker 5: to do it, and it sounds to me like you're
• 51:45
  Speaker 5: actually pretty good at running. That's a strong spot for you.
• 51:48
  Speaker 5: So for me, what if that person your masogis you
• 51:52
  Speaker 5: have to go do a meditation retreat for twenty four
• 51:55
  Speaker 5: hours because a lot of times these endurance types they
• 51:58
  Speaker 5: just can't sit still. I always got to be moving.
• 52:02
  Speaker 5: So it's like the question becomes what is the thing
• 52:04
  Speaker 5: that really scares me that I'm not doing and how
• 52:07
  Speaker 5: can I try that, because I'll tend to peel away
• 52:12
  Speaker 5: new layers of the onion that you haven't explored. And again,
• 52:17
  Speaker 5: I mean, this could really be anything. I was given
• 52:19
  Speaker 5: a talk one time and I talked about this masogi
• 52:22
  Speaker 5: idea of my talk, and this woman came up to
• 52:24
  Speaker 5: me afterwards and she said, hey, I read your book
• 52:26
  Speaker 5: and I did a masogi.
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: I was like, oh, great, what was it?
• 52:29
  Speaker 4: Was?
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: My masogi? I was trying sushi.
• 52:32
  Speaker 5: I was like, really, tell me about that, you know,
• 52:36
  Speaker 5: and she goes all my life I had all like
• 52:40
  Speaker 5: a fear of different foods, especially sushi, just like, oh,
• 52:44
  Speaker 5: I can't do that. I'm just you know, because I
• 52:47
  Speaker 5: tried it, because I didn't love it, but also didn't
• 52:51
  Speaker 5: hate it.
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: It was totally fine.
• 52:54
  Speaker 5: And it made me realize that I had all these
• 52:57
  Speaker 5: irrational fears that I'd never tested, and that opened the
• 53:01
  Speaker 5: door for me to start questioning, Okay, what are this
• 53:04
  Speaker 5: other laundry list of heres?
• 53:06
  Speaker 3: Is this rational?
• 53:06
  Speaker 5: Is this? We're trying and experiencing and seeing what I think,
• 53:09
  Speaker 5: and that is what we're after that big opening of
• 53:12
  Speaker 5: the door of our thoughts, how we see ourselves how
• 53:15
  Speaker 5: we think about the world.
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: That's really what we're going for.
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: What's been the most impactful masogi you've experienced yourself.
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: Oh, that's a good question.
• 53:38
  Speaker 5: I mean, I think probably my Arctic trip qualifies as
• 53:42
  Speaker 5: one that was really I hadn't been hunting. I'd never
• 53:47
  Speaker 5: killed an animal with a weapon besides my Nissan Ultimate
• 53:52
  Speaker 5: in high school in an unfortunate accident, and that really
• 53:57
  Speaker 5: sort of changed my thinking around the food system. I
• 53:59
  Speaker 5: think that happens for a lot of hunters, so that
• 54:03
  Speaker 5: one had a lot of these moments that just changed
• 54:05
  Speaker 5: my thinking about things and affected my behavior moving forward.
• 54:11
  Speaker 5: And I think too, probably more recently, as that hike
• 54:14
  Speaker 5: I just did. I mean, I didn't enter it thinking
• 54:15
  Speaker 5: it was a masogi, But the reality is is probably
• 54:18
  Speaker 5: wasn't masogi. Because I didn't, I probably had a ten
• 54:21
  Speaker 5: percent chance of finishing it. I won't tell you if
• 54:23
  Speaker 5: I finished it or not. You can learn that in
• 54:25
  Speaker 5: the book when it comes out, and whoever the hell
• 54:27
  Speaker 5: knows how long. But I think it changed a lot
• 54:31
  Speaker 5: of my thinking around what I was capable of, and
• 54:35
  Speaker 5: also how we should think about living in the modern world,
• 54:40
  Speaker 5: and also friendship. I did it with a friend and
• 54:43
  Speaker 5: I've always been one of those people who, you know,
• 54:45
  Speaker 5: I like people, but only in smallish and fleeting clusters
• 54:49
  Speaker 5: more or less. And that was like, you know what, dude, Like,
• 54:52
  Speaker 5: maybe you need to go go out and hang out
• 54:55
  Speaker 5: with people more time. Like you really got a lot
• 54:57
  Speaker 5: out of this, and I think that just changed my
• 54:59
  Speaker 5: perspetition perception about some of the social stuff in my life.
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: Have you figured out how to harness or how do
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: you take something like that? How do you have an experience?
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: And for so many of us, we have these things,
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: We have these transcendent experiences, oftentimes in wild and then
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: wild places right awe is something that seems to be
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: really important to humans. It's something that comes in spades
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: in the wild world. It often, you know, doing hard
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: things often inspires like you just said, reflection and self
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: kind of understanding. How do you carry that forward? Like,
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: how do you take that and not just let it
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: slip away over the next week or two, but instead
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: somehow bottle that up and use it for the rest
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: of your life. Have you figured that out? Do you
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: have any idea?
• 55:49
  Speaker 5: That's the great question. I mean, Joseph Campbell wrote about this.
• 55:52
  Speaker 5: You had a quote, It's like you get up to
• 55:54
  Speaker 5: a height and then your question becomes do I stay
• 55:58
  Speaker 5: with that or do I return and back to normal life.
• 56:01
  Speaker 5: So in the Hero's Journey, there's typically I assume people
• 56:05
  Speaker 5: are somewhat familiar with the Hero's Journey, but it's basically
• 56:08
  Speaker 5: someone goes out into this really trying environment, encounters these
• 56:12
  Speaker 5: challenges like a big adventure, and it fundamentally changes their
• 56:15
  Speaker 5: self concept and they have these you know, peak experiences,
• 56:19
  Speaker 5: and there's always there's two paths. It's like the hero
• 56:22
  Speaker 5: either stays out in this wild world or they have
• 56:26
  Speaker 5: to return back to their normal life and figure out, Okay,
• 56:30
  Speaker 5: how do I stay with this thing? And it's not easy,
• 56:34
  Speaker 5: and I think most of us are going to be
• 56:35
  Speaker 5: returning back.
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: To the normal world. So for me, I think it's.
• 56:43
  Speaker 5: I think when you first get back from something, whether
• 56:45
  Speaker 5: it's like a big hunt or whatever it might be,
• 56:47
  Speaker 5: that changes you. The lessons and the feelings are really
• 56:52
  Speaker 5: kind of intense, but they fade over time naturally the
• 56:55
  Speaker 5: longer you stay in normal life. And for me, it's
• 57:00
  Speaker 5: always trying to bring to mind what did I learn
• 57:03
  Speaker 5: on that, and then making sure I have new things
• 57:06
  Speaker 5: on the horizon, you know, It's like you can re
• 57:09
  Speaker 5: up that every year if you go out and you
• 57:11
  Speaker 5: do something interesting that changes you and finding new things
• 57:15
  Speaker 5: to do. I think the big takeaway is how can
• 57:19
  Speaker 5: I add adventure back into my life, both big and small?
• 57:26
  Speaker 5: What am I doing yearly? But what am I doing weekly?
• 57:30
  Speaker 5: You know, there's a lot of ways to spend a weekend.
• 57:33
  Speaker 5: You can hang around and watch Netflix, so you can
• 57:35
  Speaker 5: be like, hey, family, get in the truck. I saw
• 57:38
  Speaker 5: this place on the map. Looks kind of interesting. I
• 57:42
  Speaker 5: don't know anything about it, but that's the point.
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: Let's go.
• 57:46
  Speaker 5: And so it's having to constantly do something. I think
• 57:50
  Speaker 5: it's easy in modern life to get kind of caught
• 57:52
  Speaker 5: in the exact same routine and people start to have
• 57:55
  Speaker 5: these kind of feelings of restlessness discontent. Okay, what's the point.
• 58:01
  Speaker 5: But you can sort of break that up by getting
• 58:05
  Speaker 5: out of your routine and doing something new and interesting
• 58:08
  Speaker 5: and adventurous and continuing that over time. That's helped me anyways.
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, there's this guy's names I I of
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: get his last name wrong, Jesse Eisler. I think or
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: Ike's like, you know, you know, Jesse. He's all over
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: the place and he has this rule that he got
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: from some friend of his, where he basically says, I'm
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: going to get the specifics run. But I think every
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: single year he does one thing basically a masogi every year,
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: like one thing that he never thought would be possible,
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: some crazy, big adventure of some kind. And then once
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: every other month he tries to do something that he
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: never would have thought he would do, just like something
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: out of the ordinary, something outside of his comfort zone.
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: And basically what the idea is like, Hey, if you
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: live a life like that where once every year you
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: do some really big adventure and then every other month
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: you're doing something outside of your comfort zone, one of
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: those things will stand out. You know, when we go
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: outside of the normal, those are the memories that stick
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: with us. Those are the experiences that form a life.
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: It's typically not just sitting and watching Netflix. Right, So
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: if you do that, you build a very full, rich life,
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: which I think is which I think falls right in
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: line with a lot of what you're saying here now
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: with that goal, I guess out there, I've recognized one
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: challenge in my own life in trying to live this way,
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: which is my daily life. Like you, in many ways
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: of sitting in a computer and writing right taping on
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: the keyboard, or recording podcasts or doing stuff in an office,
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: which increasingly more and more of us are. So we're
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: very sedentary for large parts of our lives. And then
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: ever once in a while, whether it be every weekend
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: doing a smaller thing, or a handful times a year
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: doing some big back country trip like ILL have. Like
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: maybe I'm lucky I get to do more than most.
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: I might have three or four or five or six
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: like big, very intense backpacking trips or big hunts or
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: something like that where you're carrying a lot of weight
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: and you're doing really strenuous things. It's it's intense. So
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: my life goes from like very sedentary to very intense.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: And I've gotten very good at having a consistent cardio base,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: but not as well with my strength base for that,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: and I have had, you know, injuries because of that.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: I have had problems where I've jumped from you know, thinking, yeah,
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: I'm in pretty good shape. I run a ton and
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: do a lot of this stuff, and I go and
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: do this big, intense thing and I'm not quite ready
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: for that. You have popularized another idea that I think
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: addresses this for a lot of people, which is the
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: very simple but seemingly powerful idea of walking with weight.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: It seems like that might be a solution to what
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: many people today, especially hunters and anglers, are dealing with,
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: and that they're probably working some kind of office job,
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: relatively sedentary, and then all of a sudden they want
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: to go out for their weekend, or they're once a
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: month or once a year big adventure hunting or fishing,
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: going somewhere and maybe aren't quite ready for Tell me
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: about how walking with weight might be a solution for
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: that kind of lifestyle. Why that's so powerful?
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I think the short answer and I'll say, in
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 5: the comfort crisis, I use the word rocking. It's basically
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 5: walking with a weighted backpack. I've started to shift to
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 5: the term walking with weight because when I would tell
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 5: women about rocking and that they should do it, rocking
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 5: is a military term, so when they'd google it, they'd
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 5: see these special forces dudes with these giant backpacks and go, yeah.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: That is not for me.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 5: But the reality is is that humans are built to
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 5: carry weight over distance. We are the only mammal that
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 5: can do that. We are uniquely good at carrying weight
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 5: for distance, and it totally shaped us into who we
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 5: are today, allowed us to take over the world, but
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 5: we often don't do it anymore. And I think the
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 5: reason it's so particularly good for backcountry hunters and anglers
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 5: is you're building strength while also getting cardio. So if
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 5: you are too skinny, it'll help put some muscle on
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 5: your fame. If you're too if you have too much fat,
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 5: you have too much muscle, it'll lean you out because
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 5: you actually don't want too much muscle when you're covering
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 5: a lot of ground.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 3: Because it's just extra weight you have to carry.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 5: So it's kind of this dual activity that hits both
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 5: strength and cardio at the same time. And of course
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 5: it's very applicable to the pack out right. That is
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 5: exactly what you're doing when you have to pack out
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 5: an animal. And I think too, it's nice because it's
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 5: very approachable. A lot of people run, it's great. A
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 5: lot of people also get injured by running. So the
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 5: data on this is everywhere, but anywhere from I think
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 5: twenty to I think seventy five percent of runners get
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 5: injured every single year. It's a lot of people, a
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 5: lot of injuries but when you walk with weight, the
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 5: injury rate is basically like that of walking, rises as
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 5: you add more weight. But I think if you're walking
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 5: with anywhere from ten to say, thirty percent of your
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 5: body weight, like you're probably not going to get injured,
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 5: and you're going to build a really good base of
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 5: strength that's going to apply to the mountains and the
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 5: streams wherever you might be. That's gonna make you a
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 5: lot more physically prepared for the activities of backcentry hunting.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: So one of the pushbacks I've internally had to it
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: has been like an ROI on my time. If I
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: have an hour that I can devote to some kind
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: of exercise, I could run. I don't know, in an hour,
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: I'm going to run five miles or something like that.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: I feel like that I'm going to get a really
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: good workout and fire you know, five miles in or
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: six miles in or whatever it is in that hour
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: that feels like something. I'll really feel it afterwards, I'll
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: work up a good sweat, et cetera. But with an
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: hour hike, you know, I'm only going to go two
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: and a half miles or three miles or something. It
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: doesn't seem like I'm going as far, it doesn't seem
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: as high output. Maybe do you have a sense in
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: your new book, I know you've charted out some of this.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: Could you speak to you know, how does like a
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: run stack up to a ruck or walking with weight
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: and how much weight do we need to get the
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: same ROI out of that hour if we're walking with
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: weight versus going for a trail run or something. Can
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: you is there some way to kind of compare apples
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: to oranges?
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 4: There?
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 5: Yeah, so the way you would compare it if you
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 5: just want to think about it as energy burned i e.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 3: Calories.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 5: So when you add weight to your walk, you start
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 5: to burn anywhere from twenty to as much as say,
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 5: two times more calories per mile when you add weight.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 5: Out of course, that number change is based on the
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 5: amount of weight you have, So effectively, the more weight
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 5: that you add, and I do tell people keep it
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 5: under thirty percent of your body weight. That's usually kind
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 5: of the cut off point where some bad things can
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 5: start to happen if you go over thirty percent. But
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 5: you're not going to be burning that much less calories
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 5: by walking with weight. And the important thing is too
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 5: you've just told me, Yeah, my endurance is good, but
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 5: I'm sucky at strength. It's like, okay, well, so you're
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 5: gonna go do more endurance and do less strength work,
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 5: like if you want to balance this out. So I
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 5: would never tell people, hey, don't ever run, no matter
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 5: who you are, if you're a hunter, no matter you know,
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 5: whatever thing you're into. But I do think adding some
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 5: walking with weight in can't help round out a lot
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 5: of your fitness. I said, caring weight is a fundamental
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 5: human movement pattern that we don't do now, and once
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 5: we start to do it, it tends to fix a
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 5: lot of the issues that modern people tend to have
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 5: just because of desk work. Not to mention, you can
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 5: just throw in a backpack whenever you're doing everyday stuff
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 5: if you have to, Like if I have to take
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 5: my dogs for a walk, I'm going to toss on
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 5: a backpack and throw out a thirty pound backpack and
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 5: take them for a walk. So now I've taken that
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 5: walk from something pretty low level relaxing to now it's
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 5: actually kind of in the workout zone. I would have
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 5: to walk my dogs no matter what. So if I
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 5: just toss on that pack, now I'm getting a lot
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 5: more out of it. Or if you take a nightly
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 5: walk with your wife. My friend John Deloney, who also
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 5: has a pot podcast, does this. He was like, you know,
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 5: my wife and I would always have these great conversations
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 5: on our walks, but I always felt like I was
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 5: taking time away from my workouts. You know, He's like, man,
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 5: I just start throwing on a pack and now I'm like, Okay,
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 5: I'm solid. I'm getting some work from this. And I
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 5: would also say probably, you know, I'm not one of
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 5: those people who's going to sit here and tell you
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 5: that rocking walking with weight is the only thing you
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 5: should do. I don't believe that at all. Humans are
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 5: extremely versatile. I think you should run. I think you
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 5: should rock. I think you should.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 3: Lift things, carry things.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 5: I think you should basically do everything because that's what
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 5: the mountains ultimately demand of you. You're having to hike
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 5: some sketchy terrain, you often have a pack on. You're
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 5: taxing your cardio system, you're taxing your strength system. You're
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 5: going to have to pick up some stuff and carry it.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 5: So you want to be doing everything if the mountains
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 5: are demanding everything from you.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So for people specifically looking to train for a
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: backcountry hunt. You know, walking with weight is the prescription
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: for a lot of people. Right. There's a lot of different,
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: you know, training plans that have been built out there.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of best practices that people expert hunters
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 2: have have pitched and talked about and gyms promote. But
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: I don't think any of these people have written an
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: entire book all about the science and research behind walking
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: with weight. You have which is coming out soon for
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: somebody who is who is not just rucking to establish
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: a fitness but is specifically walking with weight to train
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: for a backcountry elk hunting trip or mule deer trip
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: or caribou hunting trip or something like that. Excuse me,
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: what is your what's your what are your best practices
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: or recommended you know, ways to build out a plan
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: to actually practice for that. So that's like, hey, I
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: need to be ready to pack out one hundred pounds
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: and it might be ten miles over and over or
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: whatever might be. You've experienced it, what would you prescribe
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: for that person in that situation.
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 5: It's a great question. My first word is if a
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 5: person had never rucked before, never walked with weight thrown
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 5: weight in their pack is to start lighter than you think.
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 5: Especially with guys, we tend to just low the thing
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 5: up and then we get out We're like, this sucks,
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 5: I hate this, my shoulders hurt, I'm never doing this again,
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 5: and then we don't ever do it again. Yeah, So
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 5: I tell people to on ramp slowly, start with say pounds,
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 5: work your way up from there, and then find a
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 5: weight eventually through trial and air that feels uncomfortable and
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 5: challenging but also not soul crushing. You want to find
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 5: a weight where you feel like you could just go
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 5: for miles and miles and miles. Yes, it's hard, but
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 5: you're gonna be able to accomplish it. So for me,
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 5: like my go to is thirty pounds thirty five about
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 5: and I feel like you can also push that every
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 5: now and then, So sometimes I'll do say sixty something,
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 5: because I know, okay, I might have to have a
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 5: really heavy pack out if you just structure this across
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 5: a week, if I was leading into a hunt season,
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 5: I would probably want to do three days of rucking
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 5: each week per se. I don't know an hour each time.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 5: And granted this goes back to the dog walking thing.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 5: It's like I have to walk my dogs anyway. I'm
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 5: just throw my damn pack on. It's not even really lot.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 5: I've done an extra workout. Do three days of rocking
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 5: with week. You might want one day where you're a
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 5: little bit heavier to kind of get used to those
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 5: heavier loads. Don't go above a thirtyier body weight. I
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 5: don't think it's really worth it. You're not going to
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 5: gain anymore when you go do that much heavier pack out.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 5: You'll help avoid injuries. Three days of rucking do say
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 5: one day. If it were me, I would maybe do
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 5: one day of long slow run, like really slow. You'd
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 5: also do a bike something like that, and then I
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 5: would want to do two days of strength training a week,
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 5: really focusing on lower body because in the mountains the
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 5: legs feed the wolf. The mountains don't give a shit
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 5: how big your biceps are. They really don't. So you
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 5: want to do some heavy squats. You definitely want to
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 5: be doing a lot of weighted carries like farmers walks,
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 5: suitcase carries, things like that.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 3: Upper body stuff that uses a lot of your body.
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 5: So for example, a bench press, you're just lying on
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 5: this thing you don't have to engage your core as much.
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 5: You just sort of press, but a push up like
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 5: you actually have to engage your core, and it's more
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 5: realistic for like, oh I fell on the mountains, now
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 5: I need to like get up using my entire body.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 5: So really just trying to mimic, like what are the
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 5: exercises that I'm going to be doing in the mountains.
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 5: That's very vague. It's hard to like lay out an
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 5: entire week of fitness, but I do think probably two
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 5: days of strength training a week, three days are rucking,
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 5: and then another day of some other type of cardio.
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 2: Makes sense. You are in a you're in an interesting
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: line of work, and I can relate to it, and
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 2: that you have attacked a single problem or idea in
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: book form, and I know that takes years and years
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: before it finally comes out. So I'm sure you've worked
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 2: on the comfort crisis for years behind the scenes, and
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: then finally it came out in twenty twenty one or
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: whatever it was, and then you talked about a bunch,
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: but it had been like three or four years or
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 2: however long of that kind of marinating in your subconscious
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: And then same thing with Scarcy of bring you. You
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: went off into the dark, and you work for years,
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: and then you finally came out into the world with it,
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: and then everybody wants to talk to you about that
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: set of ideas. But you've already been working on for
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 2: three years now. You're doing that with Walking with Weight.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: But oftentimes the thing that you just published is something
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: that you're almost tired of already thinking about because you've
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: been writing about it for so many years, right, yes, exactly.
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 2: Even though nobody else realized that you've been thinking about
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: this entire time, you have, and so you're almost sick
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: of it. So you do this newsletter where you're talking
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 2: about kind of this intersection of fitness and mental health
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 2: and mindset and nutrition and all these different things. And
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: you've written these books about kind of the intersection of
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: all these different things. What right now are you actually
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 2: not sick of talking talking about, not exhausted by, but
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: genuinely most excited and fascinated about when it comes to
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 2: the world that you were working What's this is? This
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 2: is my last question for it. What's the one thing
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: that you are the most full of, bestination by and
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: excited about and that we could kind of leave off
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: with one set of ideas around.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 5: That's a great question, and my answer will be somewhat
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 5: unsatisfying because it's this next book I'm working on about
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 5: that long hike I did and the book. I'll kind
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 5: of give you a preview without giving too much away.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 5: And I also don't want to talk too much because
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 5: I'll say something that will get cut out of the
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 5: book entirely.
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 4: I know it is.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 3: So the book really looks at.
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 5: I think we can all agree that the world has
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 5: never been better if you look at it in the
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 5: grand scheme of time and space. We're living twice as long,
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 5: we have roofs over our head, vast majority of people
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 5: have ample food, we have climate can We have modern
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 5: medicine that would make the gods jealous. We have instant
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 5: entertainment at our fingertips all the time. Things should be perfect,
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 5: But when you look at mental health, things have never
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 5: been worse than slow down trend despite things being perfect.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 5: And so why is that? And that's what the book
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 5: gets into, and I think I think it goes back
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 5: to some of what we've been talking about in this conversation,
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 5: is that the world no longer forces our hand in
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 5: a way and what actually makes people healthy and happy
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 5: and feel alive is having your hand get forced and
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 5: having a mission and having to figure shit out and
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 5: being pressed up against and it can be hard in
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 5: the short term, but you get through that and it
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 5: teaches you something fundamental about being a person where you
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 5: stand in the world, and about what it means to
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 5: be alive. And as the world got better and more comfortable, yeah,
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 5: it's been great because I can watch a thousand dog
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 5: reels if I want, and modern medicine is amazing and
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 5: all these things. It really is amazing what we have
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 5: in the process lost these really fundamental things that make
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 5: us happy and satisfied. And so to me, the answer,
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 5: to sort of re quote myself from before, it's not, oh,
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 5: I'm just going to go live in the woods like
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 5: hell no, But it's what can I do in my
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 5: day to day life that pushes back against that so
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 5: I can get the best of both worlds. So that's
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 5: kind of what the book covers. And that's the I
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 5: as I know you're down a rabbit hole with your
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 5: book as well, that's the rabbit hole I've been down.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 2: Well, it sounds like a fascinating one, and it you know,
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 2: it's almost back to the idea of like rewilding your life.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: I feel like is kind of part of the answer
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: to many of those questions and many of the questions
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: that a lot of us are asking. So I can't
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 2: wait to see the new book when that one comes out.
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: I've enjoyed every single one of the things you've written
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 2: to this point. For those people who have not yet
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 2: picked up the books, and obviously the one that's going
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 2: to be releasing here shortly, could you plug a quick
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 2: description of what those are, where they can find them,
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 2: how they can connect with you and your substack and
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: all that.
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 5: Yeah, Probably the best place to find me is on
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 5: my substack. It's called two percent. It's at two pct
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 5: dot com. There's links to all the books there, and
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 5: that's kind of where I publish about three times a week.
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 5: It's a lot of writing, but it allows me to
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 5: think and get my ideas out, and that's probably the
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 5: best place to find me.
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 2: Perfect. I appreciate this time, Michael, I enjoyed it. I
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: you know, as I've mentioned already, really appreciate your work
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: and what you're bringing into the world. So keep it up. Yeah,
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: try to stay sane in the midst of this book project,
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: and I can't wait to circle back.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah you two likewise man, all right, and.
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: That's going to do it for our episode today. Thanks
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: for being a part of this community, were tuning in
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: today here. I hope this is a useful way to
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: kick off the new year, giving you some ideas that can,
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 2: you know, come with you throughout twenty twenty six, help
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 2: you as you start planning your next hunting season, or
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 2: your next fishing trip or outdoor adventure, or maybe just
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 2: your next regular day of life, because those sometimes need
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 2: some pick me ups too, and some new ideas as well. So,
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 2: without any more from me, thanks for being here, and
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 2: until next time, stay Wired to Hunt.