Get UNCOMFORTABLE And RECLAIM Your Wild, Happy, and Healthy Self | Michael Easter

Everybody, welcome to another episode of Conversations with Tom. I am here with journalist and author of The Comfort Crisis, Michael Easter. Michael, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, man. Dude, I'm super excited about this. This is an idea that I've really become obsessed with. This notion that and I'm going to use words that you may not actually find comfortable, and so push back if ever I go somewhere that you're like, "I actually don't see it that way." All right. that people are getting super soft Mhm. and that there are consequences to that and a lot of sort of the what I'll call the mania of the culture wars is really about the fact that people aren't chased by a lion anymore. And if you could just encapsulate for people what The Comfort Crisis is and then we can dive into why I find it so interesting. Yeah, I think you're onto something. I don't use that language in the book, but it's yeah, same thing. We're we're on the same page here. So, in The Comfort Crisis, I basically investigate how as the world has begot become more and more comfortable in a variety of ways. So, think of your average day. It's like air-conditioned, your food is there, you don't have to chase down your food, you don't have to put any physical effort into your days. Uh we've lost a lot of the things that make us healthy, not only physically, but also mentally because to your point with the culture wars, it's like if your problem is that you got stuck in traffic or someone challenged your idea instead of you got chased by a lion, that's that can do some stuff to your brain that seems to um we seem to get a little bit out of whack. So, I look at that and to basically investigate that, I spent 30 some odd days in the Arctic and traveled the globe, met with uh all these different researchers, uh kind of looking at this idea and how it's affecting people today. The book is very interesting and what you went through is really daunting. I have no desire to do That's actually not true. I have a There is some part of my brain that's like, "Come on, Wes. Like, you really should do something that hardcore." but I really don't want to do it. So, it's this bizarre sort of conflict in my brain about recognizing that this would probably be good. Not only that it would be good, but that on the other side of it, I would be so glad I did it. Yes. So, before we dive into like rites of passage is really what I want to talk about. Like, I'm [ __ ] fascinated by that. Yeah. But before we get to that, like give people some of the Why is it so hard? Like when you say, "Oh, we spent the time in the Arctic." it doesn't sound scary until you read the book and then you're like, "Fuck me." That does not sound Not only does it not sound fun, it doesn't sound safe. There were moments of peril. Okay, so first of all, I'll tell you I'll kind of walk people through uh what it was like from the beginning. So, to get to where we went, I had to take five planes. So, you go from, you know, jumbo jet to slightly smaller jets. I go from Vegas to Seattle to Anchorage. From Anchorage in kind of a smaller jet up to this town called Kotzebue. Kotzebue is like a 3,000 person little hamlet on the ocean above the Arctic Circle. Uh from there, we get in a four-seater plane. This takes us 100 miles out onto the tundra. Right? And this plane is of year is this? This is September. So, that's our time to be hunting season, which we'll get into. And uh this four-seater plane is I mean, it's just this rickety old thing. It's this old Cessna, right? And the pilot is like 20-something years old and just, you know, you can tell he just, you know, doesn't He's on his phone texting as he's flying. It's just horrifying. Uh they drop us out off out on the tundra. Another plane that's even smaller comes and gets us, right? Has to take us individually and ferry us out to a place even further out in the middle of the nowhere. This is a plane that only seats two people. Mhm. So then we're left there. All right, we are out in the middle literal middle of nowhere. Um, and even in September, I mean, the temperatures are consistently below freezing. Carried everything we needed to survive on our backs, so that, you know, food, shelter. We're like hiking all day, our packs are 80 some odd pounds. Uh, we're up there hunting, you know. Did you know what you were getting into? Like when you signed up for this, did you know, I am doing this because it is hard? I thought that there was something there that I could learn from. I didn't know what that was. Were you doing this as a journalist at the time? Because I think one thing for context for people that'll be pretty important to understand as you go into all the crazy [ __ ] that you guys do. Um, and I don't know what words you use to describe yourself, but certainly had a problem with alcohol. Yes. Do you consider yourself a recovering alcoholic? I do, yeah. Okay, so recovering alcoholic, is this are you wearing a journalism hat at this point or recovering alcoholic hat? I think I'm always wearing both. All the time, right? I mean, so part of recovering from alcohol for me at least is realizing that it's it's doing push-ups in the parking lot, right? Like I always have to be conscious of that. mean? It means it's uh it's always it's always in me, right? That you have the desire to drink. Yeah, and obviously it fades a lot over time, but like in the parking lot are a distraction or is that a metaphor? Push-ups in the parking lot are a metaphor for what the disease is doing. It's always there, right? It's sort of like it's not like it just fades away. It's ready to come get me, you know. Um, and then in terms of the journalism hat, I think as a career journalist, I'm always observing, thinking, looking for stories. So, I would say that I am wearing both. But, specifically, I went up there with the idea that there's probably a story up there. And, you know, I knew it was going to be physically hard. But, I also thought that I'm probably going to learn some pretty deep things about myself as well. And maybe as a journalist, I can take what I learned and tell other people about that. The idea of learning something about yourself is really interesting. What Have you thought at all about like how things are hidden from us? Like how in our own selves there are things that we don't see and understand. Oh, totally. I mean, I think a big thing for me was um you know, when you get sober, you have to ask yourself some hard questions about why did you drink the way you drank, you know? And I think that I think that for me, I think part of it is genetic. You look at my family line and, you know, the men in my family we got jail and prison records a mile long, you know? And it's just always been that way. So, I think that there is something genetic. Um but I also think that, you know, that gene doesn't necessarily bloom unless you give it enough alcohol. So, you know, having to ask those uh ask those hard questions. And I think that uh going through the process of getting sober, it's sort of I compare it to like unpeeling an onion about yourself. It's like more will be revealed, you know? But, you have to kind of go out and do different things that challenge you, that challenge your worldview um in a lot of different ways because you by never putting yourself in a position where you are uncomfortable, whether that is physically or mentally or with, you know, what you think to be true you're not going to you're you're going to learn anything about yourself, right? And I think that in today's age it's a lot easier to never be forced out of your comfort zone. Now, physically that's very obvious, right? I mean, you could take a thousand steps a day and live today, right? Like which I know what you mean when you say that, but we've gotten so sort of comfortable that people won't even understand that you mean that as a little. Yeah. Like that won't register as like, oh yeah, that's an astonishingly small amount of steps. Yeah, so what our ancestors, I think the average person um takes about 4,000 steps a day. In modern society or In modern society. So you look at how our ancestors lived, they exercised, they had to do 14 times more physical activity than us just to live. Pre-COVID. Yeah. Pre-COVID. Now we're probably even less. Um so obviously there's the physical element, right? Um but also I think psychologically increasing with what you talked about with the culture wars So if you look at um young people today, especially, so people born after 1990 you see this rise in helicopter parenting cuz there was these like media stories about kidnappings. Uh really high-profile stuff. Now, kidnappings weren't even increasing as a whole but there was just high-profile ones, right? So all of a sudden parents are like, I can't let my kids go outside into the woods or at a park. But by doing that and having that time alone where you sort of challenge yourself as a kid, right? I mean, think about your own experience at the playground or in the woods, like I learned a lot out there. Dude, when I think about what my parents let me do in compared to today, like back then I was pissed at how little they would let me do, but it was basically like they would just give you a couple rule sets, like I had to walk facing traffic, I don't know if that's smart or not, but can't ride your bike on main roads, you have to walk it and you have to walk facing traffic, but beyond that, man, we would we would take our bikes miles away from my house. Miles away from my house. No super No adults. No expectation. And by the way, we were going miles away to a bike track so that we could like do tricks and [ __ ] Yes. And it's like, meh. 100%. It's crazy. 100%. And same with me. And um yeah, my mom was basically like, "Yeah, come down by sundown." You know, she wouldn't know what I was doing. It was just I was out doing stuff. Um that stops happening for kids. And so this like idea of of challenge in a lot of different ways gets removed cuz not only are you physically challenged, right, when you are going out doing stuff in the woods, but also like your your worldview gets challenged. Think about interactions on the playground. I got punched in the face on the playground a lot. I probably deserved it sometimes, and I learned something from that. may say something about you. Um when that goes away, all of a sudden kids don't have challenges. And so now you have this generation where because they have not been challenged, um what they consider a challenge is something like, you know, I'm a professor at UNLV. So if they say something, you know, have a point and I push back on that. Well, all of a sudden that's kind of scary cuz you've never been punched in the face on the playground, right? So that becomes scary. Like in my classes, I'll bring up stuff and no one wants to say anything because oh well, what if, you know, what if someone challenges me or like there's um there people younger people especially, I think, um are a little more sensitive to a lot of a lot of the stuff we're talking about here. And um as a result of that, you see levels of anxiety and depression they're higher in the generations born after 1990 than any other generations that came before them. Like significantly. They're up like 30 and 50%. Jesus. Yeah. It's crazy. Uh back in college I had a professor make fun of my haircut. And this was a huge class. I'm talking probably 300 people in the class. Yeah. And he made fun of my hair in front of everybody. And I just thought the guy was gangster cuz my hair was ridiculous. Patently like, there's just no way to deny that. Yeah. Yeah, I thought that was fun. But thinking about it today, like that [ __ ] wouldn't fly. Yeah. Like people would have a stroke. What are things that you've brought up in class? And we will get back to we land and the really small plane and all of that. But um what are things that you'd be afraid to bring up now in school? Oh, I'm not afraid to bring up anything. But it's Really? Have you never been reported for anything? No. I mean, but I will try to bring things up and just no one engages. So, it's like what where do I go with this? So, for example, if if I say the way? Uh I teach journalism. So, I have I have classes going from that are 150 kids to some that are 20, 10, you know, whatever it is. Um I call it the T-word. So, if I were to say anything about Trump in class, be like, "What do you think about this?" No one will touch it. Which I realize, you know, he's very controversial. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be able to have a good class. Yeah, we shouldn't be able to have a conversation about it. The only person who's ever really been willing to talk about it was 45 years old, you know? That tells you something. Yeah. Wow, that's really interesting. And not at all surprising. Like, and I do think about you know, originally I never wanted to touch the culture wars. Like, I wanted I didn't even want to think about it, to be honest. I didn't find it interesting. And then it just kept like encroaching, encroaching, encroaching until finally I was like, "Oh, I actually now feel like a coward for not being able to talk about this stuff." Because So, one thing that I'm really conflicted about is, you know, Impact Theory is a brand. And so, even though the brand is my wife and I, and so there's no like sort of external partners, I still think about like if we're really trying to build the next Disney and I want people to be able to watch shows that we make for kids, it's like you got to be a little bit thoughtful about how people perceive the brand and because right now basically Lisa and I are the brand and so it's like the things we talk about so I was like oh god. So I don't love that but I hated even more coming sort of full circle back to why you're out in the middle of the Arctic, I didn't like the way avoiding it was making me feel about myself. And because I really believe and and I'll say this as a PSA that at the end of the day the only thing that matters is how you feel about yourself. And everybody else can think you're amazing if you think you're a piece of [ __ ] then it's just done. Nothing else matters. And so a lot of my life has been about okay, what do I have to do in order to feel good about myself. So whether it's cold exposure, whether it's getting good at business, whether it's pushing myself in the gym, like there have been a lot of things, many of them physical which is super intriguing to me because I think that there's just a subconscious process that evolution had to plant to make sure that you would go out and hunt and do risky [ __ ] so that you and you know your tribe could survive. So that's running in the background and so finding ways to tap into that I think are really really important. So on that note, so we land, we're like in [ __ ] bush country, we've got both the journalism hat on and the uh recovering alcoholic hat on and now what is what's your thinking at this point? Like I'm excited, I'm nervous, like I want to lean into the challenge. I think it's both. Did you train for this? Yeah, but how do you how do you train for more than a month in the Arctic, right? I mean because there's so many factors that you can't train for. So for example, one of the first things I learned when we get there is the ground is absolute hell to walk on in the tundra. It's like this I I it as like a mattress that's covered in partially inflated basketballs. It's like soft, the mattress area soft, but then there's all these tundra tussocks or these balls of um densely wound grass. And so where do you where do you step? You can either step on this mattress area that each of your feet sink in each of your steps you sink in, sap your energy, or you can try and like balance on this ball of grass and maybe roll an ankle. So, you know, I could how do you mimic that like in a gym type setting, you know? So, from there, you know, we set up camp and then it's like we're hunting for 30 some odd days and it gets uh it gets pretty uncomfortable pretty quick, you know, because you learn even if every single thing we do takes effort, I mean, first of all. So, you want water? Well, you got to hike down to that stream to get it. And by the way, that's also where the grizzlies hang out because they want to be around water and they also know that uh other animals come down there to drink, so they'll they'll ambush them. So, you have to be really careful. So, there's the physical stress of the hike down, getting water, and then having to hike the heavy bag back up to camp, and also the psychological stress of like, "Oh my god, this is where the grizzlies hang out, you know." Um so, everything and it's it's freezing cold. We're above the Arctic Circle, right? Um the weather isn't and I was coming from Las Vegas in like August, so I'd been like it would it'd been like 110 the day I left. I get up there and it's just my body was not ready for that. I'd had every single layer on like right as we got out of that flying machine. this, you're a pretty skinny dude. That actually hurt I I think in retrospect I would have put on more weight in the form of fat cuz I got up there I'm 6 1. I was probably a buck 70 when I got up there. And um by the time I left I was like 160. I weighed in. Yeah, I weighed myself I'm actually surprised you didn't lose more weight after hearing all the crazy hiking that you guys did. Yeah, hiking doesn't capture the difficulty, I don't think. Yeah, um again, I mean the ground is so terrible and we had time like after we after we hunted, you have to pack the caribou out and then your bag is 110 whatever pounds and you've got to hike it all the way back to camp. I mean, you know, my background is that I worked at Men's Health for a lot of years and it was a good gig. I was the guy that they would throw into these like crazy, you know, gyms and go profile crazy people and I would always have to be working out. But that was by far the hardest thing I've ever done. Like easily. Um because not only again is there the physical stress, but also the psychological stress and the weather, the ground, and so bringing it back to sort of the overall idea of the book, it's like think of how much our environments have changed, right? What I was doing out there was essentially daily life for essentially all of humanity, all of the time of humans. Dude, that's when I hear your book and I hear that statement and I think that people argue whether life has gotten better and people are actually saying no, it hasn't gotten better. I'm just like yo, I don't I actually don't understand how people can computationally come to that sort of conclusion. I get if you say that there are tradeoffs, it's a tradeoff. Like forest bathing and getting back into the wilderness and the three-day effect, which I'm sure we'll talk about. Like all those things seem very, very real to me, but in terms of like safety and access to resources and not having to worry, like people the the thing you have to think about in terms of your survival, just I'm talking statistics, man. So argue with the math, not with me is overeating. Yes. Like that's going to be the problem certainly in the developed nation. Oh, yeah. Um Yeah, heart disease and stroke are the number one killer of humans. And yeah, so they do polls. And I think it's either 6% or 12% of people polled in the United States think that the world is getting better. Think back even 100 years. Mhm. Kids were dying before five like all the time. Think back a thousand years, 10,000 years. You gave a stat on Iceland, uh the death rate of infants in Iceland. Do you remember the number? It's around 650 per thousand live births would die. That's the highest ever recorded. That's crazy. Yeah, so there's this idea I talk about in the book and um it's called prevalence-induced concept change, which is a really dorky way of saying problem creep. So there's these two professors at Harvard and they're traveling to a conference, right? And they're in line for TSA. They're looking at TSA. What does TSA do? Beepers go off and they're like, you know, they think that this banana that you've packed in your bag is a Beretta. So they're going to tear that damn thing apart. They, you know, they frisk some old woman who can't see or walk because there's like a half-filled bottle of water. They're just always looking for problems. And so they wonder if all of a sudden like the scanners never went off, ever. Everyone just obeyed the TSA rules 100%. What would they do? Would people just sail through without problems? And they didn't think so. Because the TSA's job is to find problems. They thought they would start searching for problems even when the problems don't exist. So they do a study because they're these Harvard psychologists. They got a question, right? So now it's time to do a study. They get a bunch of people and they show them 800 different faces. And the people have one job, and that is to determine whether the faces they are looking at are threatening or non-threatening. Seemingly very black or white, right? So, they start showing them these faces, you know, so you go, threatening, non-threatening, threatening. Ooh, threatening, non-threatening. But after about the 200th face, they start showing people fewer and fewer threatening faces. They did a similar thing, and it was they would have them read research proposals, and they would say, you know, is this ethical or unethical what these researchers are proposing? Same deal. After about the 50th or 100th proposal, they started giving them fewer and fewer unethical proposals. So, you would think that, you know, if we really saw black and white, this is like a clear judgment of like, does this person make me feel threatened, or does this research proposal cross this like moral line in the sand that I have drawn and I am firm on? Then they would start saying threatening less times. They would start saying, uh, ethical more times, right? As the thing went on. That didn't actually happen. The, uh, the ratio stayed the exact same. So, they So, they basically started saying that faces that were seemingly non-threatening were threatening, and that research proposals that they would have deemed, uh, ethical were unethical. So, this basically showed that as humans face fewer and fewer problems in our lives, we don't actually experience fewer problems. We just redefine what a problem is. And it's because the as the world has gotten better, so think back even in 100 years, we've got climate control now. We've got cars. We've got cell phones. We've got All the streets are paved. How many people listening to this podcast work on a farm work on a farm for a living and go out there and till it all day? Not many, right? You probably sit behind a desk. You're pretty safe, right? The world has clearly gotten better, but we don't actually see that cuz we our brain has this low-level mechanism that's always running to find the next problem. And this made sense in our past because if you're a hunter-gatherer and you don't know where your food is coming from, you're not quite sure about shelter tonight, um life is actually dangerous. If you can just focus on problems all the time, that's going to give you a survival advantage. But in today's world, where arguably uh there's still problems in the world, don't get me wrong, but I think that overall things are pretty good. We don't actually see that. Yeah. Yeah, this is the problem with societal-level experimentation is one, it's a bit like steering a boat, so you do something and there's a real delay before the boat starts moving. So then you're like, wait, was it this thing or this thing? There's a lot of confusion. Like, for instance, part of the reason that I don't have kids is for the like kidnap effect, right? Look, it's a bazillion reasons so people don't have to think that was the only reason, but like I have all the empathy in the known universe for that parent whose kid did get kidnapped and all the stats about the world is getting better in the world, they don't help. Like the devastation that that would bring in your life. And so for any one person to make the rational decision of the cost-benefit analysis is so high on letting my kid go out. Like what could happen is so devastating potentially that it's just better just, you know, let let's just keep them safe because I don't I certainly am not smart enough to have predicted that it would create this comfort crisis problem. It's not something that I would have seen coming. And By the way, I don't consider myself sort of above any of the comfort crisis issues. This is not me passing judgment on other people. This is me going, "Yo, I want to live an optimal life for myself." And at a societal level, I want to make sure that people are set up to thrive. And I'm perfectly willing to look at my own behavior and say, "Ooh, there are some problems here." Like my life has been a journey of toughening up. So, I was not tough growing up um despite getting uh into not like big fights, but I got I you know, punched in the head or uh one kid twisted my arm and dropped me to my knees when I thought I was like king [ __ ] And that was like a real cool, like eye-opening like, "Oh, wait a second. There are people that are way [ __ ] tougher than me." Uh and even now, like that happened in grade school. And that really left an indelible mark. And so, you begin to like navigate the world and you sort of find your lane. And so, I found a lane of comedy. I was able to make people laugh. And then as I got older and realized all of my comedy is at my expense. It was all self-deprecating humor. And I got to the point where I wanted to take myself more seriously. So, anyway, to get good at business, I've I had to realize, "Whoa, like I am not resilient. I am not tough. I shy away from criticism because it hurts and it will send me into a multi-day spiral." Yeah. But I had these grand ambitions. And so, finally, you know, through a long process, get to the point where I realized for me to actually achieve my goals, I have to get really good at self-soothing. Like I have to get back to sort of emotionally neutral as quickly as I can. And the gym was a huge factor in that. To realize how much suffering you can endure and that when you do that, you actually get stronger. And there's something about physical endeavors. And And I do I don't think I would have had success in business had I not taken control of my body. So, had I not decided to get very serious in the gym, very serious about my diet. So, you're sitting there, there's food in the fridge, there's food in the cupboards, your favorite foods. And I remember getting in an argument with my wife because I had a really bad headache when I was trying to go low carb. And I was like, if I just eat a cookie right now, I will feel better. And she was like, then eat the [ __ ] cookie. Like, stop complaining about it. Either eat the cookie or stop complaining. Yeah. And I was like, all right, I'm not going to eat the cookie. And you do that kind of stuff and you start to build that resilience. You lift the weights and you literally build calluses. You injure yourself and you build back from that and you realize, oh, okay, like Yeah. there are I can do things that make me stronger. And that then led me to go, well, if this works for my body, how much does it work for my mind? And can I get tougher in business? And it was nothing short of life-changing. Yeah. So, talk to me now about rites of passage, which is so I have empathy for people that were raised with the best of intentions but not the best of results. How do they get out of it? Well, I think that um people, just like yourself, everyone does well when we're challenged. Now, we've removed challenge from our life in a lot of different ways, right? So, I think when you look back at sort of past societies, ancient cultures, tribes, they all had a rite of passage for young people, right? So, the idea and it's all the same basic framework. Uh we have a young person. This person is at point A in their life and we need to get them to point B cuz point B is where they can really help the tribe. Can you define point A and point B? Point A is sort of um seen as like youthful childhood. You're still kind of clinging to your parents, you're not quite as confident and competent as you could be. Point B is like you are officially transitioned into adulthood, more or less. You're able to go out on your own and really provide, take on a family, whatever it may be. Have you looked at this closely enough to know if it's your clinging to your parents or your clinging to your mother? It's usually mother. Yes. Yeah, it's usually mother. mean there's some really interesting [ __ ] there, but keep going. We'll we'll circle back to that. For sure. So, what these uh what these uh societies would do is usually send the young person out into the wild to do something really hard. So, for example, the Maasai had a lion hunt where a young warrior would be given a shield and a spear. So, all right, go get a lion for us. By themselves? By themselves. Yes. And Were some of them eaten? Yes. Uh so, the Maasai cultural website has this hilarious line that says "Many young warriors have been lost to lions over the years." It's just like so understated. You're like, "Oh my god." Um the Nez Perce Indians would uh send uh young men out onto the Columbia River Plateau. They would wouldn't give them food or water and they would just sort of like pray and fast for, you know, a week, around a week. Um the Aboriginal tribe, they would uh send young men out on walkabout. So, the idea is that you are exiting the comfort of home, right? You are going into this trying a realm of discomfort, essentially. quite frankly. Discomfort, danger. You're going to get put in a position where you want to quit, you think you're going to fail. You're going to have these real challenges. they were doing this? Uh anywhere from like 12 to 18, typically. So, there's no like set number. Like, oh, what it for whatever reason they converge on 14 years old. It's not like that. Yeah, no, it's all kinds of different um And by going out there and, you know, really having to rough it, they often learn something about themselves that they are more capable than they thought because they hadn't got put in a position before where man, I'm facing some true peril. I don't know if I can make this, but by coming out the other side, they go, oh, I actually am capable of more than I thought. I might have sold myself short on some things. Then they can return back to the tribe and they have this new found confidence and competence and they've sort of transitioned into that point B that we want them at. So, this may be the thing I'm most fascinated by in life, quite literally. So, I read Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth and it changed my life forever. Yeah. So, I'm reading this book. I'm probably, I don't know, 21, 22, something like that and I can never remember cuz I haven't gone back to reread it. I can't remember how much of this is me sort of putting words in his mouth and what he actually said. So, uh if I attribute this to him and he didn't actually say it, forgive me, but what I took away from the book was, hey, people have gotten soft. There are no rights of passage anymore and part of the reason that so many marriages fail is there's no transition from youth to adult, unmarried to married. Mhm. And so, at the time I'm reading, I think I'm already I'm either already dating my now wife or we may have already been engaged. But so, I'm reading this and I'm like, ooh, there's no like coming of age rituals anymore and he talks about how the the marriage rituals have sort of gotten like sort of a little too easy. I thought, this is really interesting. So, I want to get married once and be married forever and I'm taking this whole till death do us part thing very seriously and I completely understand sexual attraction and that, you know, I will have an impulse forever to have sex with as many women as humanly possible and so, kind of like the push-ups in the parking lot, like that pull is going to be there forever for me. So, what do I do to overcome that to make sure that the commitment is more interesting to me than that. And so, I decide I'm going to go through a ritualistic scarification as a part of getting married, so that I am literally a different person the day before I get married and the day after. Yeah. Now, today we would call that a tattoo. But, I never wanted a tattoo that truly at the time, beyond getting lost at sea, which remains my biggest fear, my second biggest fear was needles. And so, I was like, "Okay, I'm going to get a tattoo. It's going to hurt. It's something that scares the life out of me. I really do not want to do this." Yeah. And it will make sure that I go through some sort of ritual. And so, I design the tattoo, I get the tattoo. To this day, despite my wife who [ __ ] loves tattoos on guys and desperately wants me to get more, I'm like, "Nope, that was like this really meaningful thing to me that made a statement about my commitment to you and all that." Um So, utterly fascinated by that. And there's one story that I want to write. So, for anybody that um doesn't know, we're trying to build the next Disney. So, I actually think more about storytelling probably than anything else. Um other than business. And there's one story I I am desperate to write, and I cannot find if this is actually true or not. But, I either have created a memory from my youth or I really did read this, that there were these juvenile delinquents. So, I grew up in Tacoma, Washington, and Native American um stuff there is really sort of a part of everyday culture. Um and I remember hearing the story about these juvenile delinquents that had gotten into the court system, and the courts wanted to put the one to try them as adults, cuz if I remember right, they were 16 or 17. And the tribe said, "No, let us take them out into the wilderness, if I remember right, for a year, and they will be on their own. And if they survive, we will welcome them back into society. And if they don't, then they don't." I mean, to your point about the the lion hunting. And I probably read that when I was a teenager and it just stuck with me, this idea of like, we're dropping these [ __ ] in the woods and like, good luck. And going back to the Masai, which I find really, really interesting. What do you think about that? Like, that they actually get eaten by lions. Is Is it Is the juice worth the squeeze? Well, look, here's how I think about it. I think that we I mean, that seems rather extreme to me. Might not have been extreme given the environment that they lived in at the time and came up from, right? Nowadays, does seem a little extreme to me. Does someone have to die on these? No. But I'm asking, okay, well, what can we learn from that? So, in my book, I talk about um I talk about the idea that we need to essentially introduce these metaphorical lions back into our life. And how do we do that? So, I met this guy whose name's Marcus Elliott and he is a uh Harvard-trained doctor. He decided he doesn't want to be, you know, like a practicing physician. He wants to revolutionize sports science. Big, grand idea. And he basically does it. So, he he takes this job with the Patriots first off and they had this uh they were terrible when he took the job. They had like 26 hamstring injuries a year. He drops it down to three the next season. And uh they end up winning some Super Bowls. Then he becomes the MLB's first performance director. Now he owns this place called P3. Uh they have a location in Atlanta, one in Santa Barbara, contracts with the NBA, contracts with bunch of different leagues. Like, all the players have to go through there. And what he's doing is he wanted to apply sort of deep data and more science to uh athletic training cuz at the time it was basically like tweak your reps and sets and exercises and weights, right? So, he does uh all this machine learning stuff with movement. So, he can basically scan a player, they put all these like reflective dots and video camera, and then they can get a model that basically says, "Oh, the way that your knee comes in when you land on this jump, you have a 60% chance of tearing an ACL next season, you know?" So, it's super uh precise and really interesting. A lot of numbers, data, figures, AI, big flashy things. But, here's the thing. He also realizes that what improves uh not only the performance and potential of these pro athletes he works with, but also everyday humans can always be measured. So, this is where something like a rite of passage comes in. Now, the way that he approaches this is with this idea that I talk about in the book called Misogi. And the idea is that once a year, I'm going to go out and I'm going to do something really hard. Okay, well, what's really hard? Something that I think I truly have a 50/50 shot of accomplishing. True 50% shot. And I'm not going to train super hard for it. I'm just going to have to go out and do it. Uh rule number two, back to the question about the Misogi. Rule number two is don't die. So, don't be dumb about it, right? Um so, things that he's done with um friends, uh athletes, etc. is one year, for example, they get an 85-lb boulder and they walk it uh underneath the Santa Barbara Channel for 5 mi. So, one guy dives down, picks up the boulder, walks it 10-20 ft, comes back up, next guy goes down, on and on and on until this boulder is at point B. They've also done simple stuff like, "Hey, there's that mountain way in the distance. Think we could make it there in a day?" I don't know. Maybe 50/50? All right, let's try. Along the way, you're going to get to this point, right? Where you're like, "Man, I have reached my limit. There's no way I can finish this. Like I I can't keep putting one foot in front of the other. I can't do this. But you're going to keep going either way. And then you're going to look back and be like, wait a minute. There's back there was where I thought my limit was, but I'm right here now. And if I'm selling myself short here, like where else in life am I selling myself short? Now, the idea is that we are mimicking these challenges that our environment used to naturally show us in the past. So, in the past, yes, we had rites of passages, right? But we also had to do hard stuff all the time. This could be like a hunt. If you're out of food and you need to hunt, man, you need to you need to do that thing. This is real challenge. You might have to move from your summering and wintering grounds and a storm comes in. And each time we would do one of those things, we would learn something about ourselves, what our potential was, and we would grow as humans. We'd become more confident, more competent. We would get like spiritual satisfaction from that even, right? And now we've completely wiped not only rites of passage, but even physical challenges out of our days. So, we're not ever really shown what our true potential is. So, for example, when you told me the Arctic, I don't know if I could do that, man. Like that terrifies me. And [ __ ] I love you, man, but that is a bunch of [ __ ] And I'm going to tell you why. Because you have the luxury now of being born in this time and age where that seems pretty tricky. Now, if you were born 10,000 years ago, you would just call that life, right? So, I think we've become uh it's amazing all these comforts we have. There's nothing wrong with them. I think we're I think they're great. Like absolutely. Full stop. But if we never put ourselves in a position of true challenge, then we don't really learn something about ourselves and come out and be like hell yeah, I could do that. Because when you have that attitude, all of a sudden the stuff that comes at us in modern life, it's just like you know, like I got stuck in traffic. I have to give this presentation in front of people. Well, I survived a, you know, a hurricane in the Arctic like a year ago. So, I think this will be manageable, right? And so, I think we're just so removed from those environments that when that we think about having to go back into that, it can be scary, you know? Like I wasn't exactly thinking that I could do it when I first went out there, but I did. And now I've come out on the other side and it's like [ __ ] man. You're a lot cooler than I thought you were, you know? It's actually a really interesting idea. So, you've got um the problem creep and then you've got comfort creep where it's so spending 30 plus days in the Arctic does not sound like my idea of a good time. Um I once got invited to do uh free diving, Okay. which is literally my nightmare. You've ever seen the movie um Sounds nightmarish to me as well. Open Sea or something. I can't remember the the exact name of it, but it's a true story about these people that end up getting They go on a diving trip and they miscount when people come back up on the boat and these two people get left out in the middle Okay. of the ocean and by the time they realize it's just too late, they're gone. Sounds horrifying. Oh my god. want to watch it. No, it literally was watching it. I was like, "A, they did an amazing job." It's two people bobbing up and down in the water and they keep it interesting for an hour and a half. And uh that that is my nightmare. But, um when I think about comfort creep and I think about things in my own life, so I work an average of 93 hours a week every week year round, year after year after year. And I know there are people that are like, "That's crazy. Like that would be just an atrocity." And but for me it's life. Mhm. And it's the life that I've built and want. And when I think about So, first of all, what I was explaining to people is I The reason it's 93 and not 94 is 93 are joyful. The 94th would not be. And so, I don't work the 94th hour, right? So, some of it is just that I I don't want to step away from my life. Mhm. Which is probably not smart. Like as I think about it and some of the key takeaways from your book, it's like I spend so much time thinking about making sure that I optimize I optimize my life for joy. That's like my I'll call it fulfillment. That's probably a better way to think about it. But you need to be joyful in your pursuit of fulfillment. Um I'm so focused on optimizing my life for joy, but I'm also hyper aware that you shift in and out of these time periods in your life and things are different from one moment to the next. And so, you don't want to be oblivious to the fact that this period of your life won't last forever. And so, you don't want to get to the next phase of your life and just be like from this new frame of reference, my entire life seems like a mistake. So, you know, I try to be very, very thoughtful about that. Um but yeah, the idea of comfort creep that you need to be very careful about what There on both sides that you can sink into whether it's drinking or something else and you're enduring something that's just like you're creating problems for yourself. Mhm. And then in the other side where you're just allowing yourself to be too comfortable. Yeah, I think so. And look, it's The human brain loves routine, right? We evolved to want to get in a routine because in the past that used to keep us safe. If I could know where a good food source was and go to it every day, if I knew where the lions were lurking, that would keep me safe. If I could predict something about the weather, that would keep me safe. So, our brain really likes to default to do predictable things. This is great in the past, but today, it can often cause us to sort of zone out. So, there's some interesting research out of I think Oxford, might have been Cambridge, where the researchers basically said that when you've done the same thing over and over, your brain kind of goes on this autopilot mode, cuz it can predict everything. So, it's like why be present and focused and in the moment when you can just kind of be lost, right? Going through your routine. So, we sort of miss a lot of life, right? This is So, an example that I like to give around this is like, you ever drive on your commute somewhere and it's a drive you've done before and all of a sudden you look up and like 20 minutes have gone by and you're like, holy crap, like I I don't even know what just happened the last 20 minutes. You've just been and you don't even know where you were. You were just lost inside your head. Well, we can go through life like that. So, I think the idea of trying to do new things, learn new things that totally shake up a routine is interesting because now all of a sudden I can't predict the future. And I've got to learn some new stuff and I've got to do some new stuff and this is forcing you into presence and focus. Right? Cuz oh, I can't predict stuff anymore. And I think there's benefits to that. I mean, this is ultimately what, you know, meditation and mindfulness is so popular right now and there's, you know, some I think really good arguments for it. But I also think that not everyone is keen on sitting down and, you know, focusing on their breath for 20 minutes a day. That's just how people are. So, if you can learn and do new things, I think that you're going to get some of those benefits that mindfulness is partially chasing just by making you focus and aware of like what you're doing. It's like when I was in the Arctic, like I can I remember every single detail because that was unlike anything I've ever done before. I couldn't tell you what the hell I did 2 days ago. Right? We get back into our normal lives and things can just sort of go over and over. So, it's like the idea of um doing something new and challenging, you're going to remember that. Like I've talked to people You know, in the book I talk a lot about some of the benefits of uh boredom and just detaching from electronics of of all type. And I talked to a guy who had read it and he was like, you know, I used to go on the He lived in Costa Rica. He goes, I used to go on this walk all the time. And I would always uh take my phone and I would listen to, you know, radio, podcast, whatever. And I do the same walk every day. He's like, and I read your book and I was like, okay, I'm going to like brave this like, you know, boredom. I'm just going to go for a walk. And he's like, and I'm walking and I see this trail of ants and it's like this perfect formation through the jungle and it weaves up this thing. He's like, and it's one of the most unbelievable, amazing things I've ever seen. I'm like, you're going to remember those ants for the rest of your life, my man. You probably wouldn't even be able to tell me like what you listened to 3 days ago had you taken your your phone, you know. So, I think that having these moments that force us into presence is good. Now, it's uncomfortable because we want to default to the routine and to be constantly stimulated all the time, right? But this no longer serves us and I think that's the main message of the book, you know, I interpret in the book discomfort in a lot of different ways. It's not just physical. It's psychological. It's being in like even being in silence. People can't stand silence anymore. Why not? Makes us uncomfortable. Because we have thoughts we don't like? Because we have to be with ourselves. Yes, we have thoughts we don't like. Um we tend to default towards being stimulated rather than not being stimulated, right? All of a sudden you become bored. That's difficult. It's hard to deal with. You know, boredom um to get a little bit into boredom, boredom is this evolutionary discomfort that basically told us, "Whatever you are doing with your time right now, the return on your time invested has worn thin." So, in the book I use the analogy of think of picking berries from a bush. As you pick the really easy to reach berries, it's fun, it's engaging. It's like, "Oh my god, there's a big one and there's a bigger one. We're getting so many." But as you pick more and more, all of a sudden the berries become harder to find, they're way back in the bush. So, now you're the return on your time invested isn't as high. So, you get bored. And that discomfort tells you go do something else with your time. So, you do. You go to the next bush and you do that, right? Um but nowadays we have very easy escapes from that discomfort of boredom. So, there's one neuroscientist I talked to who put it great. He goes, "Yeah, but nowadays like our our escape from boredom is essentially junk food for the mind a lot of time." What do people do the second they feel bored? They pull out their phone. What do we do when we realize that our screen time is 5 hours a day and I might have a problem with this thing and I'm going to try and use it less. We go, "Oh, [ __ ] I can't use my phone. Netflix, computer screen, uh radio, whatever it might be, right? So, we have this constant uh digital stimulation. So, average person spends more than 11 hours a day engaged with digital media. Just from all different forms that we have now. You know, a lot of focus gets put on phones, but for the average American they watch more TV. So, in the book I'm arguing it's not about less phone, it's about more boredom. We need times where we're totally dis- disconnected from this outside stimulation. That's the punchline. What do you get from boredom? One. Okay, there's a couple things that happen. Uh first of all, when you are focusing on the outside world, your uh your brain is focused, right? It's working. It's This is a work mode that is taxing to your brain. I I compare it in the book to sort of like lifting a weight. So, your brain has to focus, has to process information. When you're bored, your brain actually goes inward. Starts to sort of ruminate. It you sort of have these different thoughts that are more inward-focused. This happens to be a rest state. Turns on the default mode network, which gives your brain a bit of a rest. So, when your brain is constantly overworked and overworked, it's associated with a lot of problems like anxiety and just feeling like wound up, burnt out. Essentially, the conditions that so many workers feel today, right? Number two, and I think this is most interesting, especially for anyone who creates anything, is that having times of boredom is associated with a lot more creativity. Because when I look at my phone, when I go on Instagram and I look at whatever it might be, I'm giving my attention over to someone else's ideas they've come up with, right? Now, if I'm forced to go inward, I'm probably going to think of some weird stuff. Don't get me wrong. I'm probably going to be like, I wonder if I turned the the gas range off before I left home. I wonder, you know, but I'm also going to think of I'm also going to notice things. I'm going to have some thoughts about something I'm working on, and I might come up with a lot of new ideas. I started thinking about this in the Arctic because my cell phone didn't I I mean, there wasn't a bar to be had within a 100 mile radius, right? I didn't bring a book, I didn't bring a magazine. And because we're hunting, we're sitting on this hill, we are waiting for this herd of caribou to move through a valley. Now, they weren't wanting to do that, so we basically just sat and waited for days and days. And it was like, "Oh my god, I haven't been bored like this for a long time." guys chatting at all? We're chatting, but like you going to talk for 12 hours straight, you know, eventually kind of people just quiet down and you know, so what do I do? I'm like spend a little bit of time just doing nonsense. I read the labels on my pre- protein bars. I am so bored, I am reading the tags on my outdoor gear going "Hey guys, you can't dry clean this." You know, just stupid stuff. Uh but then all of a sudden I think "Hm, I should write some of my book." So, I start to write a lot of my book. I start to come up with different ideas of the magazines I write for. I come up with like 17 ideas and they were all good cuz I just had this time of just like pure inward thought. Right? And I argue we don't have that a lot. Even when we have these moments where we're thinking things we're getting we have a screen in front of us, we're getting like pinged and we need like these moments of boredom. So, the way that I practice this in my life today is I try to take a 20-minute walk outside totally disconnected every single day. And I just use this for to think on ideas, to chip away at stuff. And I can tell you like it totally helps. Totally helps. And they've done research on this. There's really hilarious studies where they'll take one group and they just say like yeah, you can just do whatever on your phone. They'll take another group and they will bore the hell out of them. They make them watch a video of two guys folding laundry for like 10 minutes. So, you can stand it for about 1 minute and then you just totally go inward and you know, you're like uh for the other 9 minutes. And then they give them creativity tests. The groups that were bored always crush the people who had just come out of being on their phone. weird. Yeah. That's so weird. So, do you have a hypothesis on why you're more creative when you've been bored? Is it just that you've been thinking? I think it's I think it's the rest period that your brain gets as part of it. And I think also you are coming up with your own ideas. You have like this time where your brain is kind of in this gear of like I'm thinking about different stuff. It's all inward, and then you can use that outward. So, boredom is really neither good nor bad. It basically just tells us, "Hey, do something." Mhm. Now, the something today is more and more giving your ideas over or your thoughts over to, you know, someone else's ideas on a screen, which is great cuz I think there's amazing stuff out there. But, I also think we need a little bit more time where we are just sort of with ourselves and our own ideas. You know, I've often thought about So, we have this um what do they call the naturalistic fallacy? It's like because that's how our ancestors were, it must have been good. It must have been better. And I often thought like, "Mhm, could they really be like hunting and gathering enough that like that just takes up the whole day?" It just seemed like what do they do with the spare time? Like one thing, look, I get that it can be dangerous and people can waste their time and spiral just scrolling, scrolling, the doom scroll or whatever they call it on Instagram and Twitter. But, I also do some really cool [ __ ] with my time. Like things that I'm like I would not want to give this up for anything. I mean, this is like I have handcrafted my life to be the most like sort of spiritually nutrient dense, you know, per minute of time. And the thought of like backtracking So, you know, I look at civilization and I think this seems inevitable. So, it's like, "Well, I don't want to have to walk down to get the water every time, and I don't want to have to brave the bears." And so, it's like you start like doing things starts with spears and then fire and then you're like, "Hey, maybe if we move the teepees together." And you know what I mean? So, you start moving sort of I will say inextricably towards where we are. I become obsessed with this idea and and my honest is going to get real tired of hearing me say this, but I think it's so powerful. There's pathology on both sides. So, you can and I I want to be careful to differentiate between boredom and isolation, but that mechanism by which the brain is searching for some sort of like intellectual echo location of I send an idea out into the world and it comes back to me, right? I need that return, which is why you're reading labels and like you're trying to get some sort of two-way feedback. Right. And without that, you can actually break an adult human psyche by just isolating them for too long. You can actually kill a child by just not loving them, ignoring them. They It's what's called failure to thrive. Mhm. So, it's like this really interesting like the mind needs some of this engagement. It needs the I mean, like you said, there's a reason that you have a boredom sensation and that it is unpleasant and that it pushes you away from that thing. Right. And so, but then on the other side, you can hyper stimulate and now it becomes a problem. In fact, that really begs an interesting question to me. How do you construct your life? As somebody who has done Misogi, who's gone out into the wilderness, who has this constant pull towards drinking and knows that that's not the life you want to live. So, you're sort of the perfect candidate for you have all the incentive in the universe to figure out sort of the ideal life. How do you construct your days? It's a good question. Um I mean, I so I'm first and foremost a writer, right? I'm a journalist. So, I tend to wake up really early and that's partially because I have a 90-lb German Shorthair Pointer who decides it's 4:30 and we should get up. So, you don't set an alarm. No. Um no, I have a 90-lb alarm that eats a lot of food. And uh then I usually write because I have this alone time. It's time that I'm completely unstimulated. The world is not coming at me yet. So, usually from like 4:30 to maybe about 7:30 is when stuff starts to come in. So, I got 3 hours a day where I can just do my outlet, right? And I'll usually if it's not way too hot already, I'll usually go outside. I live on I live in Vegas, yeah. So, I'll usually go out on my back patio. So, I have like some trees and stuff around me and I'll just do that for like 3 hours. That's the most important part, I think, of my day. And I do that 365 days a year. doing out there? Just writing. So, that is that the same as the morning writing? Yeah. Okay. Got it. so this is the morning. And then from there, it's like, you know, I'm not arguing the book that we should all just like put our phones away and never use them again or you know, and then I live a relatively normal life. I mean, I use I train usually every day. Um I got a gym in my garage. I do a lot of rucking out in the desert and running out in the desert, which is something I talk about in the book, the rucking element. Um I usually meditate Rucking for people that don't know, heavy pack, carry that [ __ ] around. Yeah. You go into a whole hypothesis in the book about our ancestors probably got pretty strong by being able to carry [ __ ] and that might have been one of our advantages. Yes. We should talk about that when we're done with this, but yeah, and then, you know, like I don't overthink it. I just live a sort of normal life and I don't try and micromanage all of my time, I would say. I kind of let things come and go, but I really do want that 3 hours where I can write and think and be totally alone and sort of unstimulated. And when I'm doing that writing, I'm only using the browser if it's to aid the writing cuz I do nonfiction. So, I'm not just sitting around coming up with ideas, but I do have to do a lot of research, so. All right, so maybe now is the right time before we forget to get into rucking. And I really am interested in this idea of us as the You give it a real name. I'm going to call it endurance hunting. There's a better name Persistent hunting. Persistent, thank you. So, um, I didn't watch the video which I probably should have, who we are, where we come from, Dan something. Oh, yeah, who we are, Donnie's. Yeah, Donnie, thank you. So, what's the punchline of that? I'm assuming it's us from an ancestral point of view. He in that video he basically just talks about why he hunts. Um, and it's more just about how, you know, we're removed from the life cycle and um, by inserting ourselves back into that he finds that it sort of moves the dial for him personally. I don't emotionally emotionally. Yeah, spiritually. Um, so I think for Donnie at least who um, is who I went hunting with up there and he's this backcountry bow hunter, filmmaker, makes amazing, I mean, it's more like Planet Earth but with hunting and you should watch this mini documentary he made on YouTube called Who We Are. Sort of explains what he's all about but he's yeah, he's a fascinating guy. But to to the point of rocking, so after a while I eventually hunt and I successfully kill this caribou which was, you know, that was another discomfort I had to face out there is uh Was that the most important part of the trip for you? I think yeah, that was probably the most important part of the the arc More than seeing what you could physically endure? I don't know, it all kind of becomes one thing to me, you know, because there's really they're really interlinked. Parsing them out um I think misses like this greater point that a lot of work went in, physical work went in before crossing that really heavy emotional barrier of killing my own food. So, it's like if I hadn't have put all that work in, I don't think that emotional thing would have been as heavy. So, it really is kind of like they're weaving in and out. So, it's kind of hard to parse them out. Um But, so um I kill a caribou. Now, we have to pack it out. So, my pack was maybe 120 lb of meat. 100 Somewhere between 100 and 120. You know, that's what we're estimating based on how much we know that caribou weighs. And packing it out was the hardest thing I've ever done because it was 5 mi back to camp. Uh it was all uphill. It was across the tundra. So, like 5 tundra miles are like 5 normal miles. Or if 1 tundra mile is like 5 normal miles, you know, it's it's so hard to walk on. And it got me thinking, right? So, there's this idea that humans evolved to run. We evolved to run so we could hunt. So, when you look at how humans are built, um we are terrible athletes. We're bad compared to all other animals. We are not fast. The freaking pink poodle in Paris Hilton's purse, it could probably outrun Usain Bolt, right? Uh we're also terrible at like moving quick side to side. Like, try and chase down a dog. Good luck, right? Uh we're also not that strong. There's a lot of other animals that are way stronger than us. But, what we are uniquely good at is running really long distances relatively slowly in the heat. And the heat is the key thing there. So, um we sweat. Most four-legged animals do not sweat. Um we also have big butt muscles. Uh we have complicated ways of cooling air before it hits our lungs. So, we're just really good at going far in the heat. And we would use this to our advantage on hot days when we would hunt. So, we would do this thing called persistence hunting. We would see an animal. We would start to slowly but surely run it down. We'd bump it. It would sprint. We'd get really hot and overheated cuz other animals aren't good at cooling themselves. And then we catch up to it, bump it again, and eventually after say 10, 15, even 20 mi, the animal would get so hot that it would topple over from heat exhaustion. So, then we'd get that spear, whap, we're done. Almost. This brings me to the second thing we're good at. Cuz once you kill an animal and you need to get it back to camp, what do you have to do? You have to carry it back to camp. [ __ ] That's the second thing we're good at. Other animals just chased this [ __ ] thing forever. Forever. Forever. And now we're only halfway done. Yes, now we're only halfway done. it back. You have to carry it back. And that's the other thing that humans are uniquely good at. Other animals can't carry. They have to like grab something in their jaw and they can only go not appreciable distance before they fatigue. So, then we would carry this heavy weight back to camp. So, a lot has been written about, you know, barefoot running and how we evolved to run and this is important. And it is. But the missing part is that we were also, and I argue in book even more so, born to carry. Cuz we'd have to carry this meat all the way back to camp and it was heavy. And when you look at gathering, gathering doesn't involve running, but what it does involve is carrying all the stuff you've gathered back to camp. We carry uh women carry babies, right? We would even do things like there's evidence that we would carry rocks really far distances to make structures. So, I go to Harvard and I meet the guy who has who did the original uh Born to Run study, which was in 2004 that found all the stuff about running I talked about. And talked to him about carrying and yeah, it turns out it's uh it's really good for us, something that we evolved to do. And so, he argues that basically doing the things that humans evolved to do, that we evolved to do and are good at, seems to be uniquely good for us. All exercise is good. But cardiovascular exercise seems to be great. We know we need a certain amount of strength, you know. As we evolved, we weren't strong like today's people in the gym. Like we just weren't. We needed enough to live. And you think about it, a lot of people have added running back into their lives for exercise, right? Like, running is obviously a thing that people do. But, how many people for a workout go, "You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to pick up some really heavy [ __ ] and I'm going to move it from point A to point B." Like, does it need to be on the back? It can be any, but on the back is efficient. So, that got me thinking to lead into that, like who like who has that like who does carry for a workout? Turns out, special forces soldiers. Soldiers in general. So, they do this in the form of rocking. Rocking is the foundation of special forces training. So, when you watch documentaries about Hell Week on the Discovery Channel, they show people getting, you know, doing push-ups in the surf, that's like a couple hours of like a 2-week thing. Most of it is you load a heavy pack with weight, and we're going to have to land navigate from point A to point B. And so, I go out and I meet with these guys in Jacksonville. There's this group of special forces soldiers who started this company called GoRuck. The guy who started it, his name is Jason McCarthy, and he was a Green Beret. And they make these backpacks that are up to military specifications, but they look good in a in a sit in a city, basically. They don't look too like tactical, dude, you know? Uh and he's really trying to grow rocking as a form of exercise. Because the benefit of rocking is that it gives you the cardiovascular benefits of running, but you also have a strength element. So, he describes it as running cardio for people who hate to run, and lifting for people who hate the gym. And its injury rate is way lower than running. Like, running, I think the yearly injury rate is anywhere from 20 to 70%. That's just because of the way we now live, and we're generally really heavy people compared to what we were in the past, but rucking is essentially has the injury rate of walking, you know? Just barely higher than that. Is there like a percentage to body weight kind of thing, or does of how much weight you should use? Yeah, so the military studied this a ton, because you look back at the past and you know, ancient warfare going way back in time, they all carried stuff into battle, you know? This would be spears, shields, um sacks with what they needed. This usually would max out at about 30 lb, but once we start getting good at war, these weights start creeping heavier and heavier and heavier. So, I think by the Iraq War the average uh soldier's carrying 100 lb, but in Vietnam it was like 80, you know? And so, they start find finding that this isn't really good for us. This is too much weight. So, they do a bunch of studies. There were some conducted in the '50s. There've been some that were conducted in the 2000s, and they all come to the conclusion essentially that 50 lb is the maximum for soldiers that keeps the injury rate low, um improves fitness, but also allows uh soldiers to move quickly to fight war well. So, I think So, in the book I talk about 50 lb is probably the heaviest you should go. Regardless of how big you are. Generally, uh I mean, obviously it's a little more complicated than that. If you're like a 250-lb guy, you're probably going to be okay with 60 versus if you're like a 100-lb person. Mhm. 50 50's pretty heavy. That's no joke. Yeah. So, generally though, 50's the highest you should go. Um some people also use a third body weight, uh but I also think that especially when people start to get into 250 lb, a lot of that is probably going to be from fat, which isn't necessarily doing a lot for you. So, just stick to 50 max anyways. I mean, when I do it, I don't I'm if I'm going out in the desert rucking, I use like 35. I It's just a weight where I'm like I feel like I'm doing some extra strength work, but I can still move quickly enough to get that cardio element. So. And do you think that so weighted vests logically to me seem better cuz you're distributing the weight some in front and some in back. Is there a reason that putting it all on your back is better? So, there is. Uh what do most people do for work nowadays? Sit. All right. They're slumped over a desk. And this tends to give us back problems, especially if you're an active person because your body sort of gets used to that posture and then you lift stuff and you're in that sort of slumped over back and it can easily result in a bulged disc. And when you put the weight on your back, it sort of pulls you into a naturally safer position and it turns out that your spine sort of likes that light sort of moving back and forth with the weight on your back. It's good for it. And I learned that from Stu McGill, who's like the world's foremost back guy. Um and he thinks it's a pretty great exercise for the back. Very interesting. In the Go ahead. Wait, I was going to say though, weighted vests still great though. You know, I I've gotten a lot of outreach from people, you know, like should I never use a weighted vest? Well, and it's like one, any physical activity is good at all. Yeah, do the one that you like to do. I think rocking is great, you know. Don't overthink it too much. If you really one of those people who wants to optimize it, like yeah, back, but like just get out and move more, you know. If you were at a stand-up desk, would you wear a weighted vest? Or a rucksack, sorry, for that matter. Um I'll tell you what I have done is that as I was getting ready for the Arctic knowing that I had to have a pack on my back all day, when I would do stupid stuff around the house like oh, I got a vacuum or oh, I got to like I'm cooking dinner. I'm going to be moving around. I would totally wear a backpack. I look like an idiot, but No, that makes sense to me, especially because of the way that I live my life, there isn't a lot of hiking that I do. Yeah. Um so, even just moving around the house to have a chance to, you know, schlep it around. Yeah. Uh efficiency is something that I'm definitely way into. Yeah. Um in the book, you get really into death. Was it the um killing of the caribou that put that so top of mind? Cuz I'd love to hear more about your trip to Baffin Island. Yeah. Yeah, I think it was. So, Donnie invites me up to the Arctic. And I'm like, okay, I'll go. You know, there's something there. I don't want to go, right? Kind of like you I was like your reaction. I'm like, I don't know, man. Um but that's sort of 50/50, right? That's a sign that there was maybe something there for me. So, I go, and I was initially planning on not hunting, cuz I really just, you know, my my excuse to Donnie was was like, well, I'm a journalist, like I'm there to just observe and not participate, you know, that's what I do. And he's just like, well, I think you'd really understand why we come up here a lot more if you were to hunt. And I decided to trust him on that. I was like, okay. So, you know, I buy a hunting tag. I'm even carrying the rifle around the whole time, but I'm still like good at shooting? Uh I took Well, I've been around guns uh a lot in my life. In terms of rifle shooting, uh I met with a guy who's a federal agent who's competitive shooter, and just worked with him for a while to get pretty proficient. And um So, we finally see a caribou herd, right? And it's like, all right, if they're they're going to come through this valley, they're going to go over this saddle, and if we can be on the other side of the saddle, we're going to be in a position that we want to be in. And even then, I mean, I got the rifle in my hand. I'm like, am I really going to do this, you know? And make it over the saddle and long story short, it works out how we think it should. So, we had to crawl about, you know, army crawl like 300 yards in, they cross the saddle, you just see these antlers appear at the apex and it was one of those moments where you're like, like I'm never going to forget that. Like you see the antlers first and it's like, oh my god, and then they come over. And um so I end up shooting this caribou that was old because that was one of the things um how we were hunting is that we wanted to hunt the older species. That generally helps the health of the herd, whereas if you were to kill a younger one, it doesn't. And the particular caribou that I shot uh had a limp. I mean, he was old. He was like probably 10, 12 years old, which is like the end of life for them. And but even, you know, before I pulled the trigger, I'm like, oh man, I don't know if I'm going to do this. Once I did, it was like there's no coming back from this. Like I was a mess. A lot of regret. Really regretted it. I don't remember you saying that in the book. I remember you saying that you were a mess and emotional. Yeah. I regretted it initially. Yeah. Because you ended a life. Yes. Ended a life. And um sat with it for a while, but my mind shifted because once you start to field dress the animal, you know, you cut it open, you start to take the meat off. And all of a sudden that meat, that meat looks exactly like the meat that I eat at home and don't ever think twice about. Never have I once felt an emotion just eating meat from the grocery store, right? So, I realized that um it sort of made me more aware of the fact that life, for one thing to live on, another thing has to die, right? You get inserted in the life cycle and it definitely changed my view about um how I made me more conscious of it. It's not like all of a sudden I became a vegan or anything. Like, no, that didn't happen. But, it made me think about it more Do you get pushback online from people that think this is just super barbaric? I'll tell you what, oddly enough I've gotten a few messages and they are from vegetarians and vegans who have read the book and they say you know, I didn't think I was going to like it, but the way that you handled that chapter, like a lot of respect, man. Like, I can it made me think about hunter hunting differently, the way some people are doing it. Um which has been cool, you know, cuz I did worry about that. But, so this idea of, you know, after I killed this caribou caribou, that idea of like, oh, for one thing to live, another has to die. Well, that applies to you, it applies to me, right? And it got me thinking about my own mortality. And to chase this idea down, you know, I think part of the reason why I didn't want to kill the caribou is how we generally view death in the United States. Which, yes, death is a very uncomfortable thing, right? So, we don't want to be intimate with it at all, you know, this goes from our food system, how meat just sort of like appears, it's really shiny, there's not really a lot of sense that it came from something living down to our funeral system, where after someone passes away we make them look as alive as possible for a viewing and then they're put in the ground and then we are told you know, don't think about take your mind off it. Go do something take your mind off it, right? Uh but, this is different in Bhutan, which is a country that is um nearby India and Nepal. So, in Bhutan, like death is very much woven into the the country and the culture. So, people are told to think about their death every day. Um there are reminders of death everywhere. So, there's these And what's the point to make sure that you live? Yeah. Yeah. Well, um it's the idea of remembering that you are going to die one day, right? So, there's these little clay things that are made and they're everywhere. They're made of um clay and ashes of the dead. And they're all over the country. And even the art tradition country? Yeah, it's a Buddhist country and they've really leaned into this idea of um death in Buddhism. So, the idea is that um and what's interesting before I get there is that uh Bhutan is generally ranked as one of the happiest countries on Earth. Like, they're consistently in the top 20 rankings. But, this is surprising cuz they're one of the least developed nations on Earth. There's not a single fast food place in there. There's not a stoplight in the entire country. Wow. country. people live there? Uh I think it is about 300,000 total. So, it's pretty small. Wha- Yeah, but 300,000 people and zero stoplights. I mean, I guess it depends on the landmass that those 300,000 are spread out across, but still. Yeah. Um Do they have cars? They do have cars, yeah. Um so, it's uh you look at their you know, UN development ranking, super low. Yet, they're super happy. Mhm. So, it's like, what's going on here? Because we tend to think like, oh, if we can just get our country high en- high enough on this development ranking, we'll be a lot happier. I mean, that's the ultimate goal of of most things, right? Of of business, of of chasing of chasing money, this type of thing is like, oh, if I have this, then I can do these things that make me happy. And to a certain extent, that does work. But, not always, right? So, in Bhutan, I meet with this uh Buddhist lama. And to get to him, he lives in this shack, like this in the shadow of this monastery. And it's like this dirt cliffy road. We have to drive up there in this smart car. And my driver is like Baja 500 in this like smart car. It's like I'm like, man, I might have to replace this guy's car by the time we're done here. But, I get to uh I get to this guy's shack and I mean it is full-on like the Western gangly writer meets the guru scene. I mean he's like, you know, sitting in the lotus, looking at this big Buddha statue, and I open this drape, and it's like incense in the room, and he just sees me and he's like, "Welcome." You know. And but we talk about death and like what is thinking about death, this idea that they have in their country. What does it do for them? And he basically says that when you realize that you're going to die, this is inevitable, you take this into your mind, yes, it is uncomfortable, but it also happens to typically change people's behavior. Because all of a sudden, when you realize that this thing is going to stop, and in the grand scheme of time, it's going to stop really soon, all of a sudden you don't get caught up in the little things that used to you used to like really bother you and get you all worked up, right? All of a sudden you start to focus on that which actually matters to you, whatever that might be. Building a business with a greater mission, more time with family, more time with kids, etc., etc. And that changes your behavior in a way that tends to make you happier. And they've done studies on this in the US, too, which I think is interesting. So it's like, yeah, there's an element of mysticism here, but there's also some statistics to back it up, where they've had people think about um death in studies and another group just think about, you know, whatever. The people who thought about their death, you would think they would come out on the other side being like, "That was terrible." And like, yeah, they're like, "It was, you know, it was uncomfortable, but like I'm actually kind of happier now because I'm kind of seeing things a little bit differently." They've done studies at Stanford on people who are dying and like when they take into their mind that they are going to die, it changes how they experience the end of their life and how others around them even perceive how that person has experienced the end of their life. about what you'd be like if you knew you were dying, let's say in a week or a month? I mean, I do think about death every day, and I do think that it has moved the dial some. specific like procedural way? Like that you you do it on purpose? Yes. Usually at the end of Sometimes in the morning, sometimes at the end of night as I'm falling asleep. Usually as I'm falling asleep. Do you just imagine the dying process? I just imagine that I just imagine that the ride is going to end. And what does that mean? Like when you get that in your mind in deep level, that can be pretty terrifying. But again, What about it terrifies you? Okay, I think of this. This is something that someone told me in sobriety. He said, and this was like an aha moment for me. This guy goes, "You know, I'm just not that damn important." I thought that had never occurred to me up to that point. And so, I think we hear that, and we're like, "Oh, what does that mean?" What was your great great grandfather's name? Um I actually don't know my great great grandfather. No idea. Great great great? No idea. Great great great great? Really no idea. Right? It's like But why is that terrifying? That's what I want to understand. sucked into this idea that like I don't think we fully comprehend that like this thing is going to end. And like what does that mean? What does that mean to like not exist? And when you realize like no one's going to remember you, eventually the human race is probably going to end at some point, right? Unless to, right? Yeah, unless Elon Musk has a great idea that he's going to share with I think you talk about this in the book, that eventually, even if it's just like the heat death of the universe, like there is no escape on a long enough timeline. Yeah, there's no escape. And so, I think that, you know, once you for me at least, I think that other people have said this to me, too, have done this, like, this is kind of terrifying cuz you go like, "Oh my god, what does that really mean?" Right? Cuz we don't ever like think about that. We just think that "Oh yeah, this thing's going to last forever and I can put stuff off. You know, I'll do that when I retire. I'll do that X Y Z." Is it a fear of not having done the one ride you have well, or is it a fear of the pain of dying? Is it a fear of I don't know what comes after this? For me, it's um it's definitely not the pain thing. It's more just the uncertainty. I think humans inherently don't like uncertainty. Back to that idea that we like what we can predict. Death is the ultimate form of uncertainty. We just have no idea, right? What goes beyond that. We just know that this thing ends right here. If you knew, guaranteed, I'm not going to tell you when, Yeah. knew, guaranteed, you die peacefully in your sleep. You go to bed one night and you just never wake up. Would you still fear death? Yeah, because it's the uncertainty. I'm not worried about the You got one I I mean, and and here's the thing is that my mind has really shifted on this because of this process. You know, when I first started doing it, it was terrifying. But now I just use it as a tool where I go, "This thing's going to end. Are you using your time in a way like it's impermanent? So, the the word that they use in Bhutan and in Buddhism is mitakpa. And it is impermanence. And it's the idea that everything is impermanent in life. And that's not only a lesson for like this life. This is a lesson moment to moment, you know? Like, this too shall pass. Yeah, this too shall pass. Enjoy things uh as they are right now cuz they could always get worse and they could always get better, too, right? That's what I love about the Buddhist idea of this too shall pass is it is both the warning that, "Hey, you're not going to last forever. You are as impermanent as anything else." And hey, don't worry. This feeling, this hardship, this whatever, this too shall pass. Yeah. Nothing lasts. Not beauty, not pain, not joy, not suffering. I find that yeah, that that is is a really um This too shall pass is a very comforting idea for me. Mhm. I have tremendous fear around the a prolonged death of suffering. So, I watched my cousin die slowly. Mhm. And that was really discomforting for me. Mhm. And it was super discomforting because like I'm captain like be hardcore like you push to the end like there's nothing you can't face and like keep going if you're going through hell, keep going. All of that. That resonates with me in a way it it is almost like orgasmic for me that idea of like we can [ __ ] push through anything. Yeah. And so I so get off on that and then I watched him gasping for air and the only times he was at peace was when he was asleep and I thought all of the sudden I don't know what he's fighting for. Yeah. And when the end like when there is a oh, keep going and you get to go home and you'll be fine, there was none of that. This was just like how many gulps of air can you fight for and your only reward is that you get to fight for another gulp of air. There's no more quality time with your family or anything like that. And that was really I mean, eye-opening I guess is the right phrase, but that was um It was interesting to see that it didn't diminish my sense of like I want to fight for everything when there is a potential win to be had, but it really made me go, "Hmm, if I had euthanasia button that I could press, I would probably press it." And sort of post that realization, then somebody else in my life ended up dying of cancer and both of them. And when they died of cancer, they had the euthanasia tablet. Like they had actually been given, "If it gets to the point and you just want to tap out." And when he went to the hospital, he didn't know that that that was going to be the last time. And so he didn't even bring it with him. And I remember thinking, "Man, like I guess it was pretty gnarly for him at the end. I wasn't there." And I said, "Like why didn't he take it?" And they were like it was just wasn't even a thought. Like it just happened so quickly. The decline went from like all is well to like you know, we're we're at the very end. And I just That to me, I would be lying if I said that process, whether it's a day, a week, or whatever, where it's like your body is shutting down and this is goodbye, I find that deeply unnerving. But the thought of just not waking up one day does not cause me an ounce of stress. That's interesting. So the transition freaks me out, but the um the this too shall pass, this is all impermanent. Um I don't know, I don't struggle with that. May It's interesting. I don't have kids and some people see that as their path to mortal immortality. And I legitimately want to live forever. Like if you had a button I could press that was the exact opposite of euthanasia and I could just live forever, I would press the [ __ ] out of that button. a lot of people would. That I have literally have I met more than five people that would press it? I don't think so. Most people are like, "No, I don't want to live forever." Interesting. So it's Would you? No, I don't think so. Yeah, see, what the [ __ ] I don't understand you. I went from like every word out of your mouth, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." to now you sound crazy to me. Why wouldn't you want to live forever? Well, for what? If I live forever, like what do I do with my time? I mean, it's like I think that thing you're doing with your time now. Yeah, I guess you could. have an impulse now where you're like, oh god, is this really worth it? No. Neither do I. So, I don't understand why somebody wants to make sure that this ride that they've never once wanted to tap out of has an end. It's a good I mean, maybe I'd be like, uh I guess maybe 200 years would be good, but that's also just an abstract uh thing I don't know. like Think about Think about the the um caribou that you hunted 10 years, 12 years was a lot for it. Yes. You've already done that three times over. Yes. So, for that thing it's like, Jesus, 300, like come on, that's ridiculous. But, to us the frame of reference is such that it just why would you want the ride to end? It's a good question. Um I think that well, would this theoretical thing be available to everyone? Yes. And then can people just start having kids cuz then we're going to have more kids, and then what happens to the Let's just for the thought experiment, and I'm well aware that there are realities to be faced, and I don't want people to think I'm blind to that, but I've done my part cuz I don't have children. Uh Me too. So, we're in the same boat. Do you ever plan to have kids? Probably not. Okay. So, let's just imagine that we're a multi-planetary species, and there's just abundance for all, and you know, we found ways to make meat out of cells, and so we don't animals don't even have to die for us to live on, which I know creates a problem within the greater context of this conversation, but just for this question, let's say none of that is a concern, anybody that wants it can have it. Now, the question is only, do you want it? So, the world is perfect. Ish. No. Every every sort of emotional struggle is real. It's going to be ups and downs, there's no utopias. It just you aren't going to run into a too many people problem. Okay. I don't know. Maybe I would. If everyone around would If everyone around would and what would what would aging look like though? Uh let's say that you sort of stall out at like 60. So, you're still highly functional if you've taken care of yourself, you got plenty of, you know, pep, get up and go. You're not 20, but So, you're permanent like 60 basically say. I'm going to really have to use the Rogaine then. I would I'd like to keep this hair. If Rogaine is available, then maybe I would. that it is, yeah. Your hair is still looking on point forever. Good. Uh maybe I would. I don't know. I think as things are now, if you were like, do you want to live forever right now? Probably not. Really? What is it about the right now that trips you up? Well, I mean because if you say, um the only way that I mean, so what am I going to live on for forever? Like there's all these There's all these questions. I don't buy that. So, as much as you said it's [ __ ] that I don't want to go out or I couldn't go out into the woods or whatever, it's too scary. I'm going to say you would find something. What's Well, right, you have to introduce all these artifices that make it worthwhile. Does the human Does my human body Does my human body just like stop aging at this point? Like am I just forever 34? reached health escape velocity. So, for every year that you live, we add a year to your lifespan through better surgeries, growing organs, that kind of thing. And this is only available to me? No, well, so it gets more interesting if it's available to you. This is what I was going to ask. So, let's say it's available to everybody, but some of the people in your life choose to tap out. So, now they could have lived forever, and so all the emotional distress of you're unable to convince them that life is worth living. And so now, oh god, watching somebody make that choice Yeah. is [ __ ] heartbreaking. It's tantamount to suicide. I mean, it's literally suicide in a world where everybody lives forever. So, now you've got, let's say 50% of the people that you know and love, you never know, they just they there is some mechanism in half of the world's brains where they just can't make it make sense. And so, they commit suicide. And you have to live in that world. So, the the there's still loss, there's still heartache. Over enough time, it's like all the people in your life have turned over. This is a good question. I think I would have to think of other ways. Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know. I don't know. There's so many thought jumps I have to make to be able to make this work. And I think that's the trouble that I have with it, right? and you're talking logistically, like the realities of this. Yes. Cuz I think where you were going is that getting back into the death cycle of but for me to accept the end of my life, I free up space for somebody else. And that you feel good about being a part of that cycle. I feel like I can accept it. I feel like by accepting it rather than ignoring it, which I think is what can happen naturally, right? We want to kind of just like go on to the next thing. Not pay attention to the present. I think it forces me to be more present and use the time that I have a lot better. So, for example, back to that idea of autopilot, if all all of a sudden I have like 500 years, I'm just like, "Ah, I'll do that whenever." You know? Have you read the book Einstein's Dreams? Is that Alan Lightman? I think it is. I think I read it but a long time ago. but I'm almost certain that you're correct. Yeah, I think I a while ago. Check it out again. There's in that, cuz they're all little short stories about time. There's one of them where in the world everybody lives forever. And there's two kinds of people. Type one never do anything because there's always time to do it tomorrow. And type two do everything right now because they can do everything they've ever wanted to do. Yeah, interesting. And so, I think people fall into one of those two two I would probably I'd probably do everything. What you just said made me think you would fall into the camp of do nothing cuz I've got 500 years, so meh. Well, I'm making generalities about people Yeah, I don't know. This one is one where there's so many things that need to be Okay, well, this is the scenario. This is the scenario. This is the scenario. I'd like to see this in a full contract. That is amazing. I need to read the fine print on this one. Yeah, I'd like to read the fine print. I don't want to get caught up in some, you know, deal like with a cable provider where if I cancel There's no way out. Even death doesn't release you from this. and I'd rather just be dead than have to renegotiate my life contract. It's like That is amazing. It's interesting. This is Yeah, I don't know. This is the one question to me where I assumed everybody felt the same as I did. And then you start talking to people and you realize, "Oh my god, like I'm actually in the minority. How's that possible?" Just seems so strange to me. I think that if all of a sudden all the the scenario you just set up were to occur, I think that a lot of people would actually just live forever. I think I could probably see myself being Because it's like Well, if everyone else is doing it. I think they probably would as a default, but I think there would be a lot of emotional like machinations about like, "Oh, but my life doesn't have meaning cuz there's no end." It It's It is interesting to me the suffering that people create for themselves. Somebody, I think on my team, it may have actually been somebody just in my community created this meme, uh, which I am super I love that they put me in it and it's from Scooby-Doo. They put my head on, uh, I guess it would have been Who's the main sailor-looking guy? Whoever that guy is. Sailor-looking guy. I forget. There It's not Shaggy, the other dude. And they put my head on it and it's It goes like, um, they're about to unmask him and it's like, "Who's the cause of all of my problems?" and you unmask him and it's you again. Yeah. And uh, it's like, damn. And the amount of problems that people create for themselves, like the fact that people go through their normal life and they do it for, I mean, 80 to 100 years, pretty magically delicious long period of time. Yeah. Never get weird about that, but suddenly when you change their frame of reference, it oh, well, then that would destroy all the meaning and what would I do with my time and all the same [ __ ] thing you're doing now. Like whatever the meaning is you have now. Okay, so I have a question because in this scenario, I mean, the world is obviously improved if we have all this medicine, all this technology, where do we get meaning? Because then there's a problem with What was that? Well, tell me, there's a problem with I where what do you get meaning from? The same place you get it now. People think that meaning is handed to you, it's not. Meaning is a decision, people make it. The problem is most people, their parents tell them what is meaningful or Buddhism tells them what's meaningful or religion tells them what's meaningful. Right. And they mistake that for objective truth, not realizing, "Hey, you're just embedded in a cultural context." So now I'm just saying, "Recognize that it's a cultural context and was still able to give you this thing that you said, 'Ooh, this thing has meaning, I'm going to grab onto it.'" Now just be in on the trick. So to me, just like you will send yourself out into these absurdly dangerous scenarios, even though you could live in the comfort of your known world, you're saying, "But I get the way the brain works." Forget the mind for a second. I get the way the brain works and I need to be out here moving, doing all this hard [ __ ] You bought into what they were telling you that you should probably do a little bit of hunting, you'll get this insight. And so you did it and there was the insight. I'm just saying things like religion work even when you know it's a trick of evolution. Even when you know that there is essentially Yeah. a god neuron, right? That there is this thing in your brain that allows you to feel this transcendent nature. So if people can get meaning from dropping acid or psilocybin or whatever, I'm telling you, like you just have to get a hold of this is a mechanism. It's a process, right? I'm obsessed with getting people to understand desire is a process, love is a process, meaning is a process. Like, for instance, there was almost a decade of my life where if you had woken me up in the middle of the night, punched me in the head so I was dazed and confused, and you said, "What is the mission in your life?" I would have said to end metabolic disease. But I don't even think about that. Not that I don't think about it now, but it is way deprioritized. Now, what I'm completely focused on, I have given my life to, I'm betting my fortune on, everything is that I can make sure that nobody makes makes it to the age of 15 without encountering a growth mindset. And I literally, it was a conscious decision, I'm going to now walk the process of building that in such that I believe in it so much I get a neurochemical response to it when I tell people that's what I'm about. But of course, in the beginning I didn't get a neurochemical response. It was all just an intellectual exercise. Yeah. But it works. Like, if you know the process to reinforce an idea in your mind, it will actually take neurophysiological hold of you, and you will get a very strong visceral emotional response. But only if you go through that process. Yeah. I could see that. I could see I mean, we would have to have everything would have to be upended, right? Education, everything. we should upend education. Yes. Not to completely derail this conversation. Yeah. I mean, everything would have to That's why again, the fine print. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. Um Oh man, there was some other element to that that I really wanted to go into that I'm blanking on now. So, let's go back to something that is um been on my mind since we brought it up. So, this idea of rituals Mhm. and you're being torn away from most of the time you said the mother. I'd be curious to know if it's all the time the mother and you were just leaving yourself a little bit of wiggle room or if you actually know of some cultures where it really was the father. I think it's I can't remember off the top of my head. I think that mostly like in the Campbell really talks about the mother, right? But in um in rights of passage Van Gennep, I think there's a little bit of father as well, but I can't remember the exact specifics on that. So. Yeah, that's something for me I would really like to do some more research into. Um I don't know if you've read Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom. Okay. But holy hell, that was so interesting cuz he's a modern person who lived a tribal life and was, if memory serves correctly, they do this ritualistic where the men come in, take you physically away from the women, so away from your mother, and I forget what sort of weird hard thing they had to do cuz I think there were two parts of it, but the part that I remember extraordinarily well, they strip you down bucket ass naked Yeah. of the entire tribe, they sit you down spread eagle, and a guy with a really sharp [ __ ] rock grabs a hold of your foreskin and cuts it off. Yeah. And no anesthetic, you just [ __ ] get the slice and then you have to yell the warrior's statement, whatever it is. And there's whatever four or five of these 14-year-old boys lined up and they all get the slice and they all have to yell. And he had like this moment of shame because it hurt so bad that he hesitated before he yelled the thing and he was like, "Oh [ __ ] like you know, I had my one chance and you know, and I didn't yell it." And I just thought, "Oh my god, like I really grew up pampered." Because I so admire him and the fact that he 27 years in prison, like that's pretty extraordinary and to not come out and be the most bitter human on the face of planet Earth, which I fear would have been my response. And I just thought, God, is there really something to like just that where a culture says, from this moment to the next, you're moving into a different place and a different phase, you are a different person, then it'd be really interesting to cuz I know virtually nothing about rites of passage for women. Mhm. There Well, one thing that came up in my mind as we're talking is I think that the the only place that has put um rites of passage at scale, more traditional rites of passage at scale for people, is the military. That's interesting. think about um think about Hell Week. What is that? Or boot camp. Right? You come in, you're like not that not that tough. You're a little soft. Not great at following directions. We're going to put you through a week of hell with all these tests and trials, and you may not make it through. We might drop you. But if you make it out the other side, you're a new person. And how do we signify that? We give you a green beret. We give you the Ranger tab. We have a symbol that shows that you are a new person. So, I think, you know, in some cultures uh and countries, they make military service um you have to be in the military for a year. You know, when you're 18 18 to 19, everyone joins the military for 1 year. And I think that is there's something interesting about that. Not necessarily advocating for it, but I wonder if there is something there that leaves us younger people a little better off than I think you advocate for it? You know, just the logistics of this damn country. You You've got like a real thing with the fine print. Respect. Oh yeah, I overthink everything. Um I mean, you could do it if everyone jump on board. And I think it'd probably be good for American kids, to be honest. I mean, in my you know, having dealt with I say dealt with like it's a burden. I really like my job as a professor, but you know, increasingly I think kids are more to use your language at the first of the this kind of soft. And I think there's a lot of reasons for this and I think that the reasons are increasing. One it's that this lack of challenge in life. Two it's this digital sphere that they live in and really put so much weight on. Right? Um like for example, I teach a health journalism class. I'll usually have 30 kids in it and their very last stories they have to write about um they have to do this long feature about like a any anything. Just has to be kind of related to health. Probably about a half of every uh half of the women in the class and maybe like a third of the men they're all writing about the the mental health impacts of social media. Like they could come up with any idea in health ever. Right. And this is what they're all coming up with because they're all affected by it and they see it and they're all none of them are saying man, this has made me feel so great about myself. I can't believe this. Mhm. They're all saying like this isn't good for me. Comparison is the thief of joy. Yes, totally. It's crazy. I've been successful in my life, but even I can get [ __ ] up by going on Instagram and being like, yo, he's got better abs than I have or you know what I mean, whatever. Like you just so fast go, man, I'm I'm popping off in this one area of my life, but I'm ultra [ __ ] in 999 other areas and so it's so easy to get emotionally befuddled by going on and seeing and of course it's everybody's highlight reel and all of that stuff. So yeah, it is um Back to interesting thing. Back to problem creep. We don't focus on Yeah, [ __ ] We focus on the one thing, right? And that eats away at our brain. I'll tell you a story that's I don't know if it's related. You You can tell me after. So, when I have to take all those planes to get up there, right? So, when I'm on these like, whatever they are, 747s from Vegas to Seattle, Seattle to Anchorage. I hate flying. Like, I just I hate flying, right? It's like the seats are too small. Um the coffee on the plane is is garbage. Total garbage. And the you know, the screen in front of you, it's got movies. They're like the shittiest movies ever, right? They're like C-rate movies. They're terrible. Um it's usually way too hot on the plane. Uh if you want to go to the bathroom, like you're like this as you go, you know? It's just terrible. So, I go up there and I spend a month in the Arctic and I'm freezing cold the entire time. I never have enough food cuz we pack in like 2,000 calories a day and we're burning like four to six, maybe. Uh everything I do takes effort. Even going to the bathroom. I got to like walk out and then, you know, hold a squat for a while and also keep and bring the gun cuz grizzly bears. Um crazy weather. Crazy weather. Everything is hard. So, when we get back and I'm on that plane back to Vegas it was heaven. It was heaven. I hadn't sat in a soft chair for a month, right? I had been bored out of my ever-loving mind for a month. I'd gotten some benefits from that, but still, a month away from stimulation is a long time. And you know, that C-rate movie damn, that was a really That was a really good movie. When I had to go to the bathroom I go, I didn't have to have a gun with me, right? Uh uh when I wanted water to wash my hands, I hit this button and this hot water hot water came out. And when that hot water hit my hands, it was like, "Oh my god. This is unbelievable." Just this shitty little grin. When I wanted food, just bing. "Hey, can I have like 19 more bags of pretzels, ma'am?" You know? Coffee was great. So, the point I'm trying to make is this. It's like we don't realize how freaking amazing daily life is. Like it is unbelievable. Just all this [ __ ] that we take for granted in our life every single day. We become unsatisfied with it. We look for the problems. Like, "Ah, this sucks. This sucks." When in reality, it's amazing to be alive today. Like holy [ __ ] Hot water coming out of a faucet at 30,000 ft in this like tube of metal that's going to take me 3,000 mi in like 4 hours. Oh. Why do I have like why do I have problems in my life? Everything is freaking perfect right now. Like it really is. And I'm not saying that like we don't have larger societal problems that are worth discussing. Right? But the reality is is the average person is very very few people are going hungry in the United States. Now, it's like it's one of those where I'm like we have so much food. People are overweight and they're like, "Yeah, but food insecurity." Like, "Okay, show me all those people who died of famine in the US." Like Right. They're just not there, you know? And I realize that's controversial. Maybe it's insensitive. But those people are just not there. There's a lot of ways to get food today. And our problem is that we have too much food rather than too little food on a grand scale. I don't have to put in effort to go get my water, to get hot water, to do all these things. My job, I don't have to go toil in a field. I don't have to run down my food. I don't have to do all these things that in the past were very hard and challenging. Like, it is amazing to be alive today and what I think we just miss that. And so for me coming back from Alaska when I all of a sudden the fact that you can just boil water on a stove and you have access to like hot water and food like anything you want you become a lot more grateful for all of that stuff. And when you become grateful for everything you have in your life like I would argue even people who are below the poverty level in the US now, they really have it good. I mean, most people how you look at the data, most people who are below the poverty level have air conditioning, they have cars um a lot of them have assets in different forms, uh access to food. Like even that, you look at we are the 99% for the world, you know, even our poorest people are among the top 1%ers, you know, when in a grand scheme of things in the world. And so I think when we miss that, we miss out on an opportunity to be grateful for stuff that just I mean, that makes your life a lot better. Yeah, I totally agree with that. And my thing is, you know, if you want to make change, which is amazing, making it from a place of recognizing sort of what we have and how far we've come and that of course we can always eke out more gains and make things better, but getting people to understand that you're going to see what you look for. And if you see all the problems, you're going to you're going to or if you look for all the problems, you're going to see all the problems. Mhm. But if you look for the things that are joyful and good and wonderful, then you're going to see that. And that frame of reference will color how you approach change. And if you're looking for ways to elevate humanity and help people and you really want good things and you know, you're looking at just how incredible what we've created is, then you'll approach the problem-solving from one direction. If you're only looking at all the things that have gone wrong and all the slides and all that, then you're just coming at it from a different place. Um, so, you know, I don't I know you don't intend any of your words to be misconstrued as there of course is human suffering and that the vast majority of human suffering though, especially in a modern context, is psychological. And helping people through that of knowing how you could be in way worse conditions and thrive emotionally, you know, people can be in the conditions that they're in now and thrive emotionally. It's not easy. I'm well aware of that, but once we identify the real problem to solve, then we can actually make progress. So, going back to Bhutan, it's like they don't have it better than people below the poverty line here in America by the sort of objective standards of assets and things that they own and all of that stuff. It is really a question of they've done work at a cultural level that's allowed people to thrive emotionally. And when we wrap our heads around that that's probably where we have to focus, I think we might actually start making more progress. Yeah. So. Yeah, I think so, too. 100%. Michael, thank you so much for coming on, dude. Your book was amazing. I think it's really important right now. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. Where can people find you, follow your crazy adventures, ideas, all that good stuff? Yeah, I got a website, eastermichael.com. I'm on Instagram, michael_easter, and then the book is The Comfort Crisis. It's available, what you know, wherever books are sold. There it is. super fun, man. Liked chatting. Thank you. So much fun. Guys, check this guy out, man. I think his ideas are utterly transformational. You won't regret a second of it. And speaking of things you won't regret, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace. Mhm.