Joe Rogan Experience #1649 - Michael Easter

[Music] Hello Michael. Hello! What's going on buddy? Good to see you. Good to see you as well! Thanks for coming down here.

Hey, thanks for having me on, man. What made you decide to write about comfort? Isn't comfort a good thing?

Michael, what is going on?

Well, you have a problem with comfort? The comfort crisis— is it really a crisis?

I argue that it is a crisis. One, I don't have a problem with comfort. I do have a problem with always being comfortable, always leaning into comfort, which is what we're doing now.

Yeah, right. So if you think of the average person's daily life, they wake up in the soft bed, temperature-controlled home, they shuffle over to the microwave, microwave a breakfast burrito, right? That came in from who knows where, and is made with who knows what. And then it's like, I go to work, I drive to work, I sit behind this screen all day, I don't have to move at all or put any effort into this day. And then it's back to bed in front of the TV, and you just rinse and repeat that. At no point in daily life, I would argue, are people really challenged or really uncomfortable anymore, like we were in our past. Some people, of course, sound right.

There's David Goggins, who's still alive and well.

Yes! David Goggins is running right now. And so he's like the type of person you see what happens when you start to push against that, right? When you kind of have this moment where you go, "Maybe I'm a little too comfortable," and you start to sort of investigate. Okay, what is it with discomfort? How can I get into some discomfort? And what can that do for me?

And then at the extreme end of that is Goggins.

Yeah. Well, for folks that just, like say if you work in an office and this is how you make a living and you have to do that commute and there's no other options, and this is what you do, like for them to hear this, they're like, "Yeah, yeah, okay. So what? What now?"

Well, I mean the answer is not to totally overhaul your lifestyle, right? I mean we have amazing lives right now. The fact that we don't have to go out and hunt for food or put physical effort into every day is great. But at the same time, I think, and I argue in the book "The Comfort Crisis," that we need these moments that push back at us, and we need to sort of investigate these discomforts that we used to face in our evolutionary past.

So for example, two percent of people who take the stairs when there's the choice, two percent! Two percent of people who take the stairs when there's a choice of an escalator. Seventy percent of people, more than seventy percent now, are overweight or obese. Only twenty percent of hunger—sorry, only twenty percent of eating is actually driven by physiological hunger. Eighty percent of it is just, "I'm bored; it's noon; I guess I'll eat," or "I'm stressed out." Right, we exercise more; we exercise fourteen times less than our ancestors nowadays.

So our ancestors, just by virtue of trying to survive.

You mean, yeah, exactly. So they didn't exercise, right? Like our hunter-gatherer—

Yeah, they never did chin-ups.

Exactly. That was life to them.

Yeah. Yeah, we're trying to get by.

And we spend ninety-five percent of our time indoors as well. And we know that there are benefits to getting out and moving more. We know there are benefits to being outside. We also know that there are benefits to truly being challenged in life.

It's like, like I said before, you can basically never be challenged as you go through life in a real sort of fundamental way, and you'll probably have a decent life. But you know, if you think about potential and human potential, let's say that human potential is this big circle around us right now. Most of us live in this sort of dinner plate-sized place. We never go out and explore the edges of our potential by trying to get uncomfortable and doing things that are maybe a little outside of our comfort zone.

We can just kind of exist in this sort of soft space that we've created for ourselves right now. And of course, there are people who get out and, you know, into that those edges—like the Goggins of the world, like the campaigners of the world. But I think most people don't really go out and see what they're capable of.

Now, I don't think anybody's going to push back against this book, you know?

No, I don't. Which creates a kind of a dilemma for you: Is there comfort in just writing about discomfort? Right? Is there a debate here? Because I don't think there is. I mean, I think what you're saying is like irrefutable. I don't think anybody can say, "Well, there's nothing wrong with being sedentary and having your body turn into Jell-O." Well, there's nothing wrong with living a boring life with no stress at all—

And well-stressed, but mental stress—

No actual physical adversity to overcome, which stresses out the body but actually relaxes the mind, which is—

That's what people are missing, right? That's the—when you actually physically exert yourself, it actually calms the mind. And I think there's probably a direct correlation—although I haven't done any studies, I would imagine there's a direct correlation between physical inactivity and mental depression.

I would have to imagine that there's at least some crossover there.

Yeah, there absolutely is. I think that exercise—the studies show—it grows the hippocampus, which is an area that tends to be shrunken in people who have depression. So this is why the APA now advocates that psychiatrists recommend exercise to a lot of their patients. But I think to get back to your question of am I going to have any place, right? Is there any pushback? That's—and am I staying within my comfort zone by having this argument?

So the way that I reported this book is I spent more than a month hunting with Donny Vincent in the Arctic backcountry.

Shout out to Donny Vincent, you handsome bastard.

Yeah, we were talking about you earlier. For video—handsome rugged bastard. For people who don’t know him, he's a backcountry bow hunter and filmmaker. He goes out into, you know, super extreme off-the-grid areas.

Yeah, we were saying he's controversial but not for any real reason. He's controversial because he doesn't wear camo, and he wears a lot of wool. He looks good in the wild.

He does! Yeah, he looks like he's [ __ ] model for some J. Crew catalog out there, wandering around.

What would be like an Abercrombie and Fitch? Which I didn't know used to be like a— a little offside here—was a company that sold like fly fishing and outdoor stuff. Now it's like these weird young models.

Really young?

Yeah, there is. There's Donny Vincent. Look at that rugged handsome bastard!

Yeah, look at him! He looks like he's walking out of a Filson catalogue.

He does, right there! A good dude. Good dude. Love that guy! Very good. Very good guy.

Abercrombie and Fitch—like now when you go there, they spray that [ __ ] horrible scent in the place.

You know they still do that? COVID-wise, maybe it's bad for—

COVID kills COVID!

I would imagine it kills it! Yeah, it kills everything! I had a friend who worked there, and she said like every twenty minutes, we have to do like twenty sprays—there's some like very specific number.

It stinks in there. But that used to be a company that made outdoor stuff for like people who wanted to go fly fishing.

Yeah, and now it's like these—a bunch of—look like they're like 18 models in the poses. They're all like real slender, and they look like real slinky, you know? Yeah.

Could pull up a photo of like Abercrombie and Fitch models—they were the ones that would put the shirtless dudes out on the street in their store in New York, right?

Right! Actual shirtless dudes!

Actual shirtless dudes would be on the street, you know, in their Abercrombie jeans.

Yeah, I was just looking at even when it was a hunting company back in nineteen-hundred, it started in Manhattan, so there you go. I mean, but it was—yeah, but nineteen-hundred in Manhattan, like everybody hunted back then.

You would go up to the Poconos and [ __ ] and people would—they would leave. So these guys were wandering around New York City with no shirts on.

Yeah, looking good.

Boys, go back to that photo.

Which one?

The one you just showed—the guys out there, no—the other one, that one! Yeah, look at the guy on the far right, bro.

You're about to show your [ __ ]! This is ridiculous!

It's all dick root, right?

Show them the dick root!

So what was the purpose of this? Like to get people wearing flip-flops too? Flip-flops, jeans, no shirt, an open jacket. It's probably like January, too, right?

Yeah, probably cold as [ __ ].

And they're all flexing constantly! Look at them!

Yeah, tough work if you can get it!

Well, you know, you're dealing from a very small sample size to be able to be that guy. I mean, these guys all have like seven percent body fat.

But it used to be an outdoor company that was like what they sold. They sold like canoes and [ __ ]. I think—to be sure!

Yeah, it's like an old catalog, right? Yeah, like fly fishing gear and stuff.

Yeah! Outwear, kind of that old-school cool stuff—a lot of canvas.

Yeah, look at this Abercrombie and Fitch.

Yeah! Canoe guys shooting ducks out of a canoe.

Why don't they put those guys out in Manhattan on the street? I would much rather buy from them!

Because people would go, "Go back to Texas! Get out of here! We don't need guns around here!"

But they do! Meanwhile, there was a mass shooting in Times Square yesterday.

Oh, yeah! Jeez!

Anyway, back to this pushback against your book.

You're writing about something that pretty much most people agree.

Yeah, I think so!

But it's like do we really know how to get back into discomfort? And like in the book, I argue that there are a handful of fundamental discomforts that we lost over time as the world became more comfortable. Okay, so a few of the important ones are that we don't take on these big epic challenges in nature like we used to.

So for example, traditional rites of passage—totally gone!

Yeah, you know, in the past we would send young people out to do some trial and the idea was that like, "Hey, you're at stage one of life right now, but we need you to get to stage two so you can be a better contributor to the tribe, and so you can almost become a new, more confident, capable person."

And in order to do that we're gonna send you out in the wild to do any number of things. It depends on you know what the culture was. So for example, the Maasai, they would send young warriors out to hunt lions with a spear—and if you kill the lion then you would officially transition into a warrior.

And you know, in that space, that trying middle ground, that's where you learn a lot about yourself and your potential. And by going through something like that you come out on the other side an improved person.

We've totally lost that, and there's all kinds of different rites of passage throughout time. They're essentially what Joseph Campbell called the hero's journey. There's this you know typical archetype of you know leave comfort of home, go into this trying challenging uncomfortable middle ground, come out the other end and you've learned something about yourself and evolved.

That's gone! And you think about young people today—like how often are they challenged?

Right? You start to see helicopter parenting come in about 1990 is when it started because there was all this media around kidnappings. So parents wouldn't let their kids outside, go to the playground.

Oh, is that really what caused that stuff?

It was a bunch—a bunch of media around kidnapping! Which kidnapping was not a big phenomenon, right? But it just got exploded because it—

Well, it's a big phenomenon if someone kidnaps your kid!

Yeah! And it did happen!

Yeah, that definitely happens!

But if you look—it becomes a story.

Exactly! If you look at the statistics, like your kid is more likely to get hurt in a lot of other different ways than that.

But so that blows up, kids start to get helicopter-parented; challenge gets removed out of their lives. Now we've kind of moved on to snowplow parenting, right? With snowplow parenting, it's even worse.

So like a good helicopter, you just push all the challenge out of your kid's life. So this is a good example of this would be the parents who paid to get their kids into those challenging schools, you know?

Yeah, so now you start to see kids who were born after 1990 have much higher rates of mental health problems like anxiety and depression, because they essentially have no armor. Like, you've never really been challenged.

So when you get into a classroom or whatever it is and someone challenges your idea, you have no idea how to deal with that.

That becomes really anxiety-inducing.

And there's obviously a lot of different reasons why these rates of anxiety have risen.

There's also, you know, a lot of time on smartphones—but that kind of goes back into that! It's like if I don't get enough likes on this Instagram page, it's like that is a major shot!

You know? Yeah, it's more than that! I think Jonathan Haidt points to bullying particularly for girls. It seems to be for girls that social media is like—

But Jordan Peterson talked about this, that men are more aggressive physically, but women are more aggressive in terms of reputation destruction.

Yeah, and they attack other girls on social media.

I've seen it—it is [ __ ] ruthless! I've seen like teenage girls go after other teenage girls. It's so awful, because the things they say to each other are so awful.

And it leads to way higher rates of suicide, depression, self-harm, and there's a direct spike that it lines up exactly with the iPhone.

It's really crazy!

Yeah, it's like the iPhone and having social media on your phone! You know, because like in the MySpace days, people were using computers, right?

Like, yeah! MySpace was just like when people were using that—they were just posting things. They weren't necessarily attacking each other.

They didn't realize how to attack each other until it was on their phone.

It was like, "Here's this emo band I like! Listen!"

Yeah! That's what MySpace was all about! It was about—comedians, a lot of comedians used it to promote, like, Dane Cook became famous through MySpace—

That's how he became cool!

Yeah! They use it to promote themselves! But something about it being on the phone, and then something about like Facebook, right? Like, you know, you could post pictures—"Look at this stupid [ __ ], and she did this! You know she stole my boyfriend! She's a [ __ ]!"

And then all the other girls pile on!

And it's just devastating for these kids! It's like horrific!

Yeah, it is terrible! And that—so this is another thing that I point out in the book, is that we're never bored anymore.

So as we evolved, boredom is this evolutionary discomfort that basically told us whatever you're spending your time on right now, it's not an efficient use of your time, so go find something else.

Now, in the past, this would be like—let's say you're picking berries from a bush—you've picked the easiest to pick ones. Well, if we didn't have the skew of boredom, we'd be like reaching into the very back for the berries that are hard to pick.

But they become successfully harder to pick because we've picked all these different ones, right?

Boredom would kick on and be like, "Hey, your return on your time invested has worn thin. Move on to another bush!"

Right? But nowadays, with this influx of media we have, people spend eleven hours a day engaging with digital media.

Is that real?

Yeah, 11! And that's the average!

So what? You want to hear an even crazier thing?

Yeah, okay!

So I'm a professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and one of the classes I teach is an intro class—so it's got about 150 students—some media class I teach in the journalism department.

First day of class, I’ll talk about how just how things have changed with media. You know, it's like we lived 2.5 million years with no media in our lives, and now it's become our lives.

And then I will ask, "Alright, I want everyone to pull out your phone right now. I want you to look at your screen time, tell me how much you have! Who thinks they have the highest?"

And we’ll start to go through people. I’ve had people, you know, seven hours, forty-five minutes, eight hours, fifty minutes, nine hours, sixteen minutes.

It’s like that’s your entire day, all on that cell phone!

Right? So nowadays, when we have this discomfort of boredom kick in, we have a super easy escape from it, right?

We're not forced to be like, "Okay, what am I doing with my time? Is there something better I could be doing?"

We just pull out our phone! And you see this right? Anytime people have one moment of solitude or inactivity, it's like, "Oh, might as well just check my phone."

It's brutal when you see people on dates; they're not even talking to each other—they're just looking at each other's phones!

Yeah! Go! Wow! People at dinner, it's like, yeah, it's like you're in front of an actual person!

Yeah! And you prefer to communicate in digital with someone who's not even there!

Totally! And what's interesting about boredom is when oftentimes when boredom would kick on, we would go inward, sort of mind wander, and mind wandering gives your brain some time to like reset and revive.

Whereas anytime you're focused on the outside world, your brain is actively processing information.

So this is kind of like in the book, I compare it to lifting weights. When you're having a conversation, looking at your phone, watching a screen, whatever you're doing, if you're focusing on the outside world, your brain is working and it's lifting.

When you go inward, your brain goes into this default mode network, which is like a rest period.

Right? So now because every time we're bored, we just pull out that screen and focus more, our brains are just constantly being worked and overworked and overworked.

This is associated with just burnout, anxiety, etc.

Yeah, there's some real benefits to boredom in terms of creativity as well!

Oh, totally! Boredom is really good for coming up with new ideas!

Yeah, and there's actually research behind this. They've done studies where they'll have participants watch something really boring, like a video of people folding laundry—just like they bore the [ __ ] out of these participants, and then they have them come up with, take these different creativity tests that scientists use.

And the people who were bored come up with better solutions and responses than the people who had been stimulated the whole time.

And you think about this, I mean, just in terms of anecdotes from creators, it's like you need time to just sit and be with yourself and have these weird ideas bubble to the surface.

If you never have that, you're not letting the weird stuff come out!

You know, I mean, like, do you experience this when you're trying to think of stuff in your own work?

Yeah! You have to have discomfort! The worst thing that could ever happen to me from writing is to just open the browser.

"Let me just Google this real quick and see..."

It's like I play little games with myself like I'll be in the middle of writing, and I'm like, "What does that mean, really?" And then I'll Google it and be like, "Shut the [ __ ] up! Get back to work!"

Yeah! Because like I'm just being distracted! I'm just distracting myself!

And sometimes I'm allow myself a couple of minutes of distraction before I get mad, but really I shouldn't allow myself any! I should just keep working it!

And sometimes people say, "I can't write! I just stare at the screen and nothing comes down!" I'm like, "Yeah, that's what's supposed to happen!"

Yeah! That's how it works, man! You're supposed to [ __ ] stare at the screen!

Yeah! And then you just write some nonsense, and eventually something good will come out of that!

But if you just bail because you don't like the staring at the screen part, and nothing's coming out, guess what? You're never going to write anything.

Congratulations!

So then you'll be at the whim of whatever random spontaneous creativity just pops into your head throughout the day!

Yeah! And sometimes you'll get some, and sometimes you won't!

Yeah! But Pressfield talks about that in "The War of Art." Have you read that book?

I haven't read that book, really. I've heard it's a very small book, but it's really good!

It's great for writers! He's basically says he talks about the muse as if the muse is a real thing.

And he's like treat it like it's a real thing. Treat it like you're a professional and you're there to summon the muse.

And if you just show up every day and do that work, it will come!

It will come to you, and it will bestow upon you these creative ideas! But if you don't do that, if you don't sit down and be discomforted, to be uncomfortable rather, it won't happen!

And in this day and age, like you said, we're so accustomed to having any boredom alleviated by our phone.

Yeah! So in the book too, I talk about, you hear all this stuff that's like breakup with your phone, less time on your phone, here are a thousand different ways to use your phone less.

Yes, that is important! But the problem is, is a lot of times when people go, "Okay, I'm going to use my phone less!" So they put their phone in, you know, safes or whatever weird habit they've developed.

But then they go watch Netflix. It's like your brain doesn't know the damn difference between the screen on your phone and the screen on your TV!

The point is that you need to remove yourself from this outside media that's totally just weaved its way into your life. Like stimulating you with nothing!

Yeah! The switch from phone to Netflix is like going, "I'm quitting smoking, but I'm gonna go buy some Red Man and just pack that in real hard!"

You know? Yeah! Same thing!

When you went with Donnie, you guys went to the Arctic.

We did!

33 days. What did you get up there and what did you do while you were up there?

So we were hunting caribou, and yeah, we were on a caribou hunt.

That's a dangerous hunt!

It's the Arctic—it's an extreme place! It's dangerous in that you get dropped off right—

Did you get float-planed in there?

No, well it was a plane, push plane.

Yeah, bush plane—tiny plane picks you up.

We got ferried. So me, it was me Donnie and his cameraman, William Altman, who's a great dude. Satellite phone—Donnie had a GPS thing to in order to talk to the pilot.

Yeah, texting boy!

Yeah! If that breaks, you're [ __ ] my man!

And there's grizzlies out there too!

Yeah, we saw some grizzlies!

Fun!

Yeah! Yeah, big, big animals! So at one point we leave Kotzebue—first me and William are in this plane that's like a three-seater.

How many flights did it take to get out there?

Two.

Just two?

So we get in the sort of small plane; it drops me and William off. Then the smaller plane comes along; it picks up—you gotta take us a small plane to get there too, though, right?

Like how many planes did it take you to get to where you were going from Las Vegas?

Yeah, the middle of nowhere!

Yeah! Five!

Five altogether?

Successively smaller.

So that's what's interesting, right? It's like if you want to leave the built environment, you're getting on big plane to medium plane to little plane to really little plane to, "Why the [ __ ] am I in this size plane?"

How much do you weigh? How much do your shoes weigh?

Yeah, totally! You gotta weigh your gear!

Yeah! So I get left out there, right? Because the super small plane comes and picks up one at a time!

Did you have a rifle?

No, I'm standing there, and there's clods of grizzly poop surrounding me and I'm just like with a rifle—I'm just like, "Oh my God!"

Well here's the thing, and we can get into this, but Donnie's like, "Yeah, [ __ ] bears or whatever."

That is too comfortable!

Oh, yeah!

But it was also interesting because I'm standing out there, and it's like I've never been this alone in my entire life!

Oh yeah!

So think about—there's no one around me for miles and miles; my cell phone doesn't work because today we're increasingly—even when we think we're alone, we're with people through our cell phones, through text messages, through whatever.

And there's just like nothing! And you start to kind of get a little—at first I'm like, "Man, this is dangerous!" Like, "I don't like—" I did not like it at all!

But then, you know, sort of as time went on, it's like actually this is kind of interesting to be totally removed from society because now all of a sudden it's like we have all these social narratives of like how do we act, what do we do?

What do we do as humans? And they're totally removed, and it's just like, "Wow!"

How long were you out there?

Just you probably two, three hours—four hours?

Probably!

See, a real mountain man is laughing at you right now!

Yeah, this [ __ ] [ __ ] can't be alone for three hours!

As they should!

Do you know who Dick Preneke is?

Yes! You're watching those videos?

Total badass! Amazing videos! Unbelievable! Like, his life was really—I want to say he was like a machinist or something like that—like he had a normal life!

I believe that's what it was. I think he was a machinist and he got injured, and I think he lost some of his vision in one of his eyes because of this injury!

And I think—I hope I'm not [ __ ] this up—is one of the things that motivated him to decide to move to the woods and build a cabin and film and document it all completely by himself!

Yeah! And it's really interesting to me. I remember seeing the documentaries and like he made this like little key latch on his door.

I mean, he's so—he made videos on Dick.

He makes his cabin out of just stuff that he finds out in the wild, right?

But like he had it almost fashioned like a normal home from the 50s, and you're like, "How did you figure out all this [ __ ] man?"

Yeah!

This is his place is beautiful too! It's such a sweet-looking little cabin! I mean, look! He's got a gold pan out there in the front!

And he's got snowshoes hanging from the side of it! I mean, it's like super cool!

Yeah! And he built all that himself! He built everything! I mean, he even built his own tools!

He brought part of the tools with him, like whatever he would need, like for sure!

But the videos are pretty crazy! Like you see him out there and it's just—again, this is like I don't remember what year it says—1977?

One man's Alaska—1977.

So he filmed all this and made these videos?

Yeah! You could see how he's—he'd made tools and all sorts of different things!

Super cool!

Yeah! He made his own like canoes and [ __ ]!

But he filmed all this because he knew that what he was doing was pretty extraordinary!

Look how little! What is that—like probably a shed where he keeps his food or something like that?

And went out there—I believe—and then just decided that that was where he was going to live and was out there with no contact with people at all for long periods of time!

Go to that last one that we were looking at, Jamie!

Yeah!

There's a documentary! The second one right—the second one down!

Yeah! That one! Right there!

Okay, just play the video because this is the one I've seen, one of the ones I've seen! But it goes into great depth about how he built his cabin and like what his history was, and that he just became obsessed with the idea of being in nature and how much—how much he loved it!

And he lived there until he was in his 80s and then went to stay with his brother!

Yeah!

Because his health was failing! And then eventually you know he lived the last days of his life, I think, in Washington State!

But here it shows him making various tools.

So he's got like a wood auger to make a hammer with and makes a wooden mallet and did the whole deal!

Like he made everything!

Look at that!

But he got just this tremendous satisfaction and talked about the tremendous satisfaction he got from just being allowed to live this subsistence life!

Yeah, you know, have you seen these videos on YouTube? Their people are doing this similar thing where they'll show themselves make an entire log cabin?

Yeah! I have seen some of them!

Yeah! Like dig a hole and make a pool underwater, you know?

Well that was the whole appeal of that show, "Life Below Zero." It's like those folks that would live up there and live that subsistence life!

But it's like we're all aware that there's this immense gravity that comes from the digital world! It's immense!

It's just constantly pulling you in with new content and new distractions! And this is one of them.

This [ __ ] thing that you and I are on—it's ironic! This is—we're talking [ __ ] about what we actually are doing right now!

But, you know, they pull you! They pull you!

And we all know that it's probably not the best way to live!

But it’s so hard to break the addiction!

I mean it's amazing, right? It's amazing that I can pull up a podcast and listen to almost whoever I want, their thoughts and get these new ideas!

But at the same time, it's like if that's all you're spending your time doing, there's some downsides!

We need to offset it.

That, you know, I don't necessarily think the answer is to go live in the woods in Alaska for the rest of your life!

Although that would be pretty cool if you did! More power to you!

But figuring out like how do we balance this all and have these moments where we have solitude, go more inward, and aren't as stimulated!

So one thing that, you know, after I’m standing out there in solitude, when I get home, I start researching, you know, what are the benefits of solitude? Because we know that the data shows that being lonely isn't good for us!

But there's the difference between loneliness and solitude!

Like solitude is electing to be by yourself and using that time for sort of introspection. And the scientists that I talked to said, "Yeah, you really need this!"

Because a lot of times people are more conductive circuits and they don't do well when they're alone at all!

This is part of the reason we have such a loneliness problem!

But if you can like build this capacity to be alone, they call it like that, it can serve you well in the long time!

And it also breeds deeper thinking, creativity.

I mean it's like there's a reason that thousands of years of religious tradition they have people who go and spend this time alone out of nature!

I mean, Jesus was in the desert for forty days—the Buddha exited the palace gates, you know, and spent a bunch of time alone in solitude.

Even Abraham Lincoln used solitude in all his—a lot of his writing and stuff like that!

And I feel like people don't have that as much anymore—very little!

And society discourages this kind of solitude! Society encourages you to be constantly connected!

And the more it can get you connected, the more it can extract revenue from you!

Yeah! And we often frame it as a negative!

I mean, like think of what we do with kids who misbehave; we put them in timeout!

Think of what we do to prisoners who misbehave—solitary confinement!

So we've framed it as a negative, but it isn't necessarily!

Yeah, it's a different kind of solitude, though, obviously!

You heard about this Utah lady, she was just eating grass and moss!

She disappeared for five months and they thought she was dead, and they found her camping!

Oh wow!

But I don't think she's doing well. I don't think this is a good example!

I just saw that headline!

That was—yeah, you guys were saying these words!

Yeah! Meanwhile, I'm just talking [ __ ] out of a headline I've read too!

Yeah, because it was like the headline I said she was surviving off moss and grass!

I'm like, “Alright, this lady might have won!”

This issue is released from the hospital!

So I don't know, mental health hospital?

I think so!

I took room for evaluation is what I read!

But people, I wish just wanted to be alone!

Isn't that funny? Like they find you camping!

They're like, "Hmm, we don't—this is not good!"

Yeah!

What the hell does it? Check you! Make sure that you're okay mentally!

Why aren't you in an apartment where you could hear people scream?

Yeah, exactly!

Why aren't you eating fast food? What are you doing eating moss?

Yeah, you crazy [ __ ]! Totally!

Yeah!

Or you're living in Austin! You're just camping on Cesar Chavez!

Yeah!

Could be that as well!

When you guys were up there, what was—did you have a set amount of time? Did thirty-three days—was that what you agreed upon before you went out there?

There's a reason for that!

We just thought—I mean Donnie was just like, "I'm going up for more than a month! You want to come along?" I'm like, "Yeah!"

Why was he going for that long?

It's just what he does for work! You know, he embeds himself in these places for long periods of time and does these films! So he’s a good person to go with!

Oh yeah!

He knows what he's doing up there! And he's, uh, I don't know!

He's just he's one of those dudes who's kind of unflappable in situations like that!

Like for example, we had—this was our, I think, our first or second night—we had this Kifaru teepee, you know?

And we’re very, very intelligent people!

I want you to know this first of all!

And we pitched this thing on this like kind of knob because the winds are coming in from a direction, we're like, "Oh, it's going to be protected!"

And then we’ll move it when the winds shift in a couple of days!

While the winds shift overnight!

And I wake up, and there's just like this pop pop pop—the fabric, you know?

And the winds just keep coming, get faster and faster overnight!

And eventually, by morning, I mean they're like seventy-mile-an-hour gusts!

And I'm just like, "Holy [ __ ], we're gonna lose this thing!"

And then like, "What do we do after that?"

Like it's just crazy!

And it's freezing, you know?

And you didn't bring a tent, you just brought one of those little—

Yeah, that tarp!

Yeah!

That was it!

Yeah!

How come you guys didn't bring an actual tent?

Well, if we needed one, we could—we had like, you know, emergency blankets and that stuff, and Donnie could have messaged the pilot to try and bring us something!

But, yeah! And he's just like, "Okay, we're gonna have to do—"

He's like, "This is bad! We're gonna have to do takedown!"

Yo! Get all your [ __ ] ready! Get it in your bag!

And it's just like—he just knows exactly what to do!

Whereas I'm like, "Oh my God!"

And we should probably explain to people the terrain.

Yeah!

So it's kind of—it’s these mountains that are—they're not super jagged; they're very old, so they've kind of been worn by time!

And the tundra is the absolute worst thing to walk on in the world!

So I describe it as think of like a Dr. Seuss book!

I kind of picture it like that, where it's like this big mattress that's covered in these basketballs!

I like to think about it like that!

So the basketballs are these things called tundra tussocks, which are these big, dense pieces of grass.

It's like wound-up grass! And then the mattress in between them is kind of like muck and shale and frozen ground!

So walking on this, you're like, "Do I step on this super soft stuff that’s hard to, you know, get your bearings on? It's kind of like almost beach sand, same idea! Or do I step on these tussocks that are super awkward?"

It's like having to walk anywhere!

I mean like one mile out there is like five anywhere else! You know? It's just such a [ __ ] to watch!

Which did you choose? The soft stuff or the tussocks?

Oh man! I never really—to go back and forth!

Yeah!

Did you ask Donnie what he does?

Oh, I can't remember if I did!

I don't know if he would have known either, because he was looking like an idiot when he was walking as well! So there's not much you can do to be comfortable as you're walking!

No!

Yeah, occasionally you’ll find some game trails, and those can be good!

They're kind of, you know, a little bit more worn!

Oftentimes, they’re long mountain faces though, and you know, the animals on four legs are a bit more sure-footed than we are on our shitty two legs!

So all of a sudden you're slipping because of shale!

So, yeah!

And so how many miles did you have to traverse on this stuff?

Some days we would probably do—probably our longest day was maybe fifteen total in a day!

Yeah!

And we had one day we had seen this herd, and so we're kind of chasing them more or less, and we ended up, you know, seven-ish miles from camp, and decided we needed to, you know, head back to the teepee now!

And it was so freaking cold!

It was like, you know, zero out!

And we've got this long march across the tundra, and part of what we had to go through then was like this sort of frozen swamp, you know?

So sometimes your foot would break through into this sort of moving water, and it was one of those—I’m like, "This—why the hell am I out here? What am I doing?"

Like, "This is stupid!"

You know?

What day was this?

This was a ways into it. I don’t know, maybe like fifteen?

No, what if you guys had been successful early?

Like what if you ran into a herd like on the second or third day?

Um, then we wouldn't have been so damn hungry!

But you were going to stay out there no matter what?

Yeah! We were going to stay out there no matter what!

Yeah, because I mean, you know, Donnie wants footage and I signed on because I wanted to experience that, you know?

So we would have stayed out there!

Now, did you guys have a lot of supplies in terms of food, or were you living off your back?

We were mostly living off our back!

Yeah!

So you had a large backpack?

Yeah!

Heavy backpack?

Quite heavy! Filled with mountain house!

Yeah, you've probably had that!

Yeah!

Delicious! Delicious gruel!

Well, there's actually some companies that make good versions of that now!

Yeah! Yeah, what is Chad Mendez's company called? Is it Peak?

Peak Fitness? Or Peak Fuel?

Is that what it's called?

My friend Chad Mendez, he's a former UFC fighter who's a hunter as well!

Okay, he's got a really good company that can make refuel. Peak refuel! His stuff is excellent!

But it's really healthy stuff!

Like their companies are making it now where, you know, they're making it with like much more healthy ingredients—no trans fats, no [ __ ] and preservatives!

They're just dehydrating everything!

Yeah!

Well that looks good!

I could have used that!

Yeah, there's other companies—and nothing's wrong with mountain house if you're hungry!

Yeah!

It's okay! But my God, the gas!

Yeah, the gas is outstanding! And there's no fiber in that!

So over time, that starts to become an issue!

Present a problem!

Well, that's a problem anyway when you're [ __ ] on a tussock!

Yeah! Because you have to just squat and drop!

Right!

So that—I mean, we think about all the ways that we've removed activity from our lives! I mean even think about that! It used to be that like if you needed to [ __ ] you're going to have to hold a squat for a minute there, buddy!

Right?

And having to go out and do that, it was like, "Oh man!"

Like, it was just kind of like, "Oh yeah, I guess we've now sit on these nice porcelain toilets!"

And you have to make sure you don't [ __ ] into your pants.

You have to do that! That is helpful.

Did you shower? I mean bathe rather? Did you get in a stream? Like how did you clean yourself?

No, just nothing!

Yeah!

Which is interesting coming from a world of—I was there pre-COVID, so it was interesting coming from a world of Purell and shower to a day.

And now it's even more so, for good reason, you know?

But there's also—there's benefits to being dirty, especially if it's outside dirtiness—

Not like indoor dirtiness!

Like, you know, raw chicken and other people's germs!

What's the benefits?

So when you look at cultures who live outside and do a lot of things outside, they tend to have a lot better gut health than we do!

So one of the hunter-gatherer tribes that's been studied is the Hadza in Tanzania, and they did this one study where they compared poop!

Because that's how you figure out gut health—from Westerners and the Hadza tribe!

And the Hadza have way more different types of gut bacteria, and they also have these ones that we don't have!

So they have more of it, and they have more variety of it!

Now they don't get stomach issues! Basically, they don't get colon cancer; they don't get rectal cancer; they don't get things like Crohn's and colitis!

Meanwhile, in the West, these are increasing problems, especially for younger people!

And they think this is because we've completely sanitized our lives, more or less!

We never get dirty and we spend less time outside!

So when we figured out that germs are bad and can cause disease, it's like, "Yes, but the amount of germs that cause disease relative to all the germs out there is a very small percentage!"

But we kind of just went ahead and killed all the germs we could, you know?

And so this has given us less of the defense and given us less variety in our guts that can improve our gut health!

Yeah, my friend David Cho, he's an artist. He went—he's a very famous artist!

He got really rich was it Google that he painted their lobby? Facebook!

He painted their lobby, yeah! And they gave him shares of the company back when it was nothing and he's worth like 100 million dollars or more—some crazy number, right? Like, it's preposterous amounts of cash!

Yeah, that's a good gig!

And he just does whatever he wants! Mostly he does art, does a lot of painting and a lot of weird creative endeavors!

But he decided to live with the Hadza for a while!

Did he really?

Yeah! And so he went there, and they were like hunting baboons!

Yeah! You know, they eat a lot of baboons, apparently!

Which is wild!

And he explained, you know, what it was like being out there!

What’d he say about it?

Just it was really intense! You know, he has some pretty amazing photographs from the experience!

But, you know, it's just a real reality check of what it means to be alive and what it means to try to thrive and survive in a subsistence lifestyle in a, you know, a camp filled with people who have been doing this their entire life!

And they allow you in and they do that occasionally with Westerners! They'll allow you to come with them!

And he was just like, "God, it was like you realized how out of shape he was, how soft he was in comparison to them, and how difficult their life is!"

And just, it puts into perspective how many things you take for granted!

Oh, we totally take so many things for granted! I mean, when we got back, first thing we did is we're in this airport in Kotzebue!

And the airport is like a shed—a big shed, more or less! Right?

But it has running, heated water! And so I go in and I, you know, I pee and I get to the faucet and I'm like, it hits me!

It's like, "Holy [ __ ]! This is running water!"

Turn it on hot, and it's just like—I mean, I had the biggest shit-eating grin on my face from that hot water!

It was like, "Oh my God! This is unbelievable!"

Because out there, anytime we need water, it's like we've gotta hike down to a stream, fill up these water bags, hike them back up to camp!

You know? And it's everything is effortful!

So having these moments where you get out of that, you know, sort of comfort zone that we're used to, it helps you become a lot more appreciative of everything that we have!

I mean, we had another one when I was just telling you we had to go back out across back through the tundra to get back to the teepee that one night!

I mean, that was one of those where, you know, it hit me! If we would have quit, like you can't quit!

You know? You have to just keep going! Because if you stay out there overnight, I mean, that's a lot more dangerous than just putting one foot in front of the other and making it back!

And, you know, before I went up to Alaska, like for example, my wife and I, we go to this restaurant all the time, and the food is amazing—amazing!

But the service is not quite there!

And before I get to Alaska, like I would just sit there as we're waiting being like, "Oh God, this place is so mismanaged!"

Like, "What the [ __ ] is wrong with these people? Just can't you get your [ __ ] together? Can't you just refill that person's water? Move people out in a normal way?"

You know, all these complaints are going through my mind!

Right?

So then I get back, and we go to that restaurant, and I think back to getting back to that teepee after that long haul and having like a shitty mountain house dinner and being freezing cold!

And I can stand there and be like, "Man, this isn't bad at all! You guys do what you need to do, I'm about to eat 2,000 calories, and I’m warm, and I'm happy, and this is awesome!"

All you have to do is point at the thing on the menu that you'd like!

Yes! Exactly! And they come and bring it!

Totally!

And so it makes you so much more appreciative!

You know, and it also sort of made me, made me less of an [ __ ] because once you're appreciative, you're slightly less of a nitpicky—

Yeah, person!

Which, you know, imagine if we could put five percent less of an [ __ ] at scale for everyone!

My friend Dan Dodie actually does that with young troubled men!

He takes them on these experiences in the woods!

They sort of rites of passage type deal!

Like a lot of like young guys particularly, ones from affluent households who really don't have any challenges in their life!

And he takes them and has them like live in the woods with them for like weeks and weeks at a time!

Wow!

You take some of these camping trips and Dan was one of the producers of this show called Meat Eater, which that was the first show that I ever had a hunting experience on!

And the hunting experience was in Montana in the Missouri Breaks!

And it was, you know, nine degrees outside and we were camping!

And we did it for—I guess it was six or seven days, and we were successful!

We got fortunate and came back with deer!

And then we went to this place, I believe it was Billings—we went to this just ratchet [ __ ] motel that we stayed in, and took a hot shower!

And it was phenomenal!

It was like one of the best experiences of my life!

Like, so pleasurable to be in this ratchet-ass fake wood paneling!

You know what I mean?

Like the whole deal!

Yeah!

There was nothing nice about this motel room—except there was everything nice about it!

Oh my God! The [ __ ] shower was glorious!

You know?

And I had brought my own soap, you know?

Because I travel with good plants!

This is soap that I use called Defense Soap, and it's got—it's mostly—it was developed for grapplers!

But it's all to protect your skin from like skin issues like ringworm and stuff like that!

But my friend Guy Sako created it for wrestlers, and it's all like tea tree oil and eucalyptus oil!

So it's really good for you!

So I'm in this shower, I got this like legit soap, and I'm lathering up, and the water's so hot!

I must take a forty-minute shower, man! I never got out of there!

I love that!

I was so happy! That was me too!

Except I didn't have a custom-made awesome soap! I wish I would have!

Damn [ __ ]!

Any soap would have been fine at that time!

Yeah!

For just the smell too! God, you [ __ ] stink so bad after a week of no shower, and you went thirty-three days!

Oh, I smelled like a salmon run mixed with a garbage dump!

Now how long into your hunt did you get food? Did you catch—did you?

Yeah! We were a couple of fish or no—but we got a caribou!

You did get a caribou!

Oh, so it's two weeks in?

Yeah!

So you're mountain house for two weeks!

Mountain house bars! Yeah! And then we had—and then we had caribou!

And when that caribou came in, it was just like—honestly that caribou was the best meal I've ever had in my life in that teepee!

Because food is like, it's a culmination of how hungry are you, who are you with, what is the experience!

It honestly was so unbelievably good in that moment!

Were you guys in a place that actually had dry wood?

We found a little bit! It was most—it was tough!

So how did you cook?

We had a little jet boil!

Yeah, a jet boil thing!

Wow!

Yeah!

That's the thing about Alaska, particularly that area, it's a lot of—it is just tundra!

It's like this open—I don't know if you'd call it tundra, but whatever it is, just long, long stretches of grass and—

Yeah, yeah!

Not that many animals either! That's what's weird, right?

You would imagine, yeah, the real wild—

Yeah! You'd imagine, "Ah! There're animals all over the place just [ __ ] jacking each other!"

No!

Yeah!

Except when—so we were there during the migration, and there were none until they were literally everywhere!

I mean, it was like, uh, it was—it's almost like a war film where like all the soldiers come over the hill all at once, and they're like ants on an ant hill! It was just like, "Holy [ __ ]!"

It's unbelievable!

And they're eating that weird moss stuff too, right? What’s that [ __ ] called—like lichen?

Yeah!

There's just all kinds of little—

Yeah!

I guess you can eat that too! Like humans can eat that, like—and stuff!

Yeah!

It tastes tasteless!

No, it tastes a little bit like green beans!

Does it?

Yeah!

Oh, you guys had it?

Yeah!

It's not too—I mean, it's not like we're making a salad with it, but you're just sitting there like, "I guess I'll eat this!"

It's not too bad!

Did you have a tag as well, or did only—

Yeah, I had a tag!

So I had never—I had never hunted before!

I mean I'd ban hunting, but I hadn't actually been the one who was the hunter!

So that was new too!

That's a form of discomfort that I talk about in the book that we are very removed from the life cycle now!

All right, so this goes from how we deal with funerals—think of modern funeral; it's like we dress the dead person up to look as alive as possible!

We look at them for an hour, and then they go into the ground and we're told to, you know, keep your mind off it!

Don't think about it! You know, stay busy!

To our food system, it's like the meat we have in our grocery store is all perfectly manicured!

It's cellophaned, it's like designed almost so it doesn't look like it came from a living animal!

So I definitely had some reservations going into it!

It's not that I was against hunting at all! It's just like I don’t know if I want to cross this barrier that I assume is going to be emotionally heavy!

And Donnie was basically like, "Look man, if you don't wanna hunt, you don't have to hunt, but I think you'll understand why we come out here more if you do hunt!"

So I was like, "Okay!"

I think I’ll do it!

I think—I wasn’t entirely sure, honestly, the whole time!

And we—so you had a tag, but you weren't sure if you're going to use it or—

Yeah!

And we'd, you know, at one point we are on this hill glassing and we've been watching this herd who was on the southern hill far away!

There's kind of a valley between us! And they start moving up this valley, and there's a saddle!

Donnie's like, "Okay, if they keep moving and go over that saddle and we can get to the other side of it before, we're going to be in a pretty good position!"

So it's like, you know, soldiers at the sound of a mortar!

We're like just cranking across this hill, and we get over the saddle!

And once we get to the other side, we're just cranking it!

You know what we think is going to be about 300 yards?

We like get into the dirt and we army crawl!

And I've got the—you know, meanwhile, I have the rifle and army crawl a couple hundred yards pop up can’t see anything—another hundred yards!

And I'm looking through the scope and Donnie has binoculars, you know?

And all of a sudden, at the apex of the saddle, just like a pier, these antlers!

Right? And then more antlers!

There's about thirty of them in this herd!

And we'd already identified at least two that we thought were older and bigger!

Um, and they come over this saddle and down like exactly as we'd hoped!

And you know they’re 300 yards, 200 yards, and still at this point, I'm like, "Are you sure you're gonna do this, man?"

You know?

I mean, it's—it's heavy!

And they get within about 150 yards, and there's this one that had come over that we could see as he was walking—he's limping on his back leg!

So it’s like, "That's the one!"

You know, he's old—really, really interesting ornate antlers, just old dude who'd clearly been injured somehow!

Who knows?

They get within 150 yards and it's like, "This is the point where I want to shoot," but it kept going in and out of the herd!

You know, like I couldn't get him in the scope!

And Donnie sort of leans over to me, and he's like, "Hey man, if you don't want to shoot, you don't have to shoot!

But if you're going to shoot, you need to do it soon!"

And so I looked down the scope and they're now—they're 160, 170!

They pass the point where they're kind of going away from us and I'm like, "[ __ ]! What do I do?"

And all of a sudden, they part, and he's right there!

You know, and it was like big deep breath, pull the trigger!

Pull the trigger again, and it's like he's down!

And in that moment I was like, "Holy [ __ ], what have you done?"

Like there is no coming back from this!

Right? Like it hit me pretty heavy!

And so we walk out, and it's, you know, down on the tundra almost like it had been placed perfectly!

There's the only sign that it is dead is there's like this tiniest trickle of blood coming down its mane!

And I was like, "Dude, what have you done?"

Like look at this majestic thing!

And you—that's on you, you know?

And Donnie's a good person to go with because him and William were like, "Hey, we're gonna go get our stuff," because we left our packs back there!

So he gave me a minute with it!

And as I'm sitting there, it was super interesting!

I'd like to hear what you think about what your experience has been, but it hit me like it was the most depressed and alive I've ever felt at the same time!

Like unbelievable feeling!

I don't know how to describe it—just thankful!

Yeah!

A lot of gratuity!

And, um, but at the same time I'm like, "I don't know if I'd ever do this again!"

You know?

But—and those guys get back, and then we start to, you know, field dress the animal!

And in that moment, my mind started to shift because I went from, "Okay, you just killed this majestic creature," to now I'm seeing it as meat and therefore a giver of life or less!

And I think to myself, "Dude, you eat meat all the time at home, and never once do you feel an iota of emotion!"

But you do hear!

And so it made me a lot more appreciative of not only like that animal and the place where it came from, but also all meat that I eat now!

Right?

Like it totally woke me up to like what goes into eating meat!

And so now it's interesting, paradoxically, you would think when someone starts hunting they would eat a lot more meat, it’s like, "No! I actually eat less meat now!"

Because I kind of better understand where it comes from and what has to go into it and sort of this idea of death and being more aware of it!

After I got back from the Arctic, I traveled to Bhutan!

I wanted to know more about this and like what can becoming more aware of our death do for us?

So Bhutan is interesting because it's one of the least developed countries on earth!

But paradoxically, it's one of the happiest!

And one thing that people are instructed to do in Bhutan is to think about their death at least once every day!

And this is part of like it's woven into the culture!

That idea and also the idea of death itself!

So like a lot of their art and traditions center around death!

They have—there's these little things called sassa.

And they're basically these tiny clay pyramids!

And it’s clay mixed with ashes of the dead!

And they are everywhere, all over the country!

So you can kind of think about it—it’s like a very death-aware country!

Hmm!

Why?

Why are they so death-aware?

It’s part of the Buddhist tradition that they follow!

They've just sort of leaned into that more than other countries!

And so I wanted to know, like, how can this idea of—how does this idea of death and their intimacy with it contribute to their happiness?

Because like by all metrics, they should be miserable if we're looking at it from an economic perspective, right?

But here they are! They're in the top 20 happiness rankings!

And so I met with one of their economists who studies debt—who studies happiness in the country!

But I also met with two Buddhist leaders!

And one of these—it's pretty wild!

So in Bhutan, the law states that you have to have a driver everywhere you go!

The tourism is very heavily regulated!

So I have this driver, and I'm going to meet this guy who's a kenpo, which is essentially really high up in Buddhism!

And he lives right by this monastery called the Carpo and it's on this cliff, right?

And my driver has what is essentially a smart car with the back seat!

And we have to go up this mountain road, cliffside mountain road that’s totally rutted out!

I’m like, "Are you gonna be able to make this?"

And he’s just like—I mean we’re—like four-wheeling the smart car thing!

It was just—unbelievable!

And after 45 minutes, you know, he pulls over!

And I have to hike for maybe ten minutes along this trail and get to this guy’s shack!

And you know, he has someone there who helps him with stuff and she makes me do this like cleansing ritual with smoke and, you know, some water!

And I go into this sky shack; it’s like the first room there’s nothing in it!

Second room, it's a kitchen! Very basic, like cooktop or whatever!

And the third room has this silk sort of drape in it!

And I pull that drape back, and I'm like, I'm immediately hit with the smell of burning incense!

And on the right, there’s this big statue of the Buddha!

And like photos and different little, you know, trinkets—Buddhist trinkets.

And then I look over and the light is like catching this incense smoke and behind it there’s this guy’s face, and he just looks over at me!

And he's in the lotus position on this platform!

He's in his full Buddhist robes and everything!

And he just looks at me and goes, "Welcome!"

And I was like, "Doctor Strange [ __ ]!"

Oh dude, it was like—I mean if you want to talk about like cliché in terms of, you know, the gangly Western writer has come to see the guru—that was [ __ ] it, dude!

Wow!

And so I talked to him for a few hours about, you know, death and like how do we—how do they view it there versus us?

And he talks about it in terms of when you think about the fact that, you know, I'm going to die, you're going to die, we're all going to die eventually, you take that into your life—it changes your behavior because you start to realize like there’s going to be an end to all this!

Right? And things that maybe were, you know, finicky in your life or these like little minute things that really work you up, that all starts to fade and you start to really center on that which is going to make you actually happy in the end!

And it's interesting because Western research by scientists has actually backed this up!

So they've done studies where they have people think about their own death and those people end up reporting that they're happier, that they're like more on track in their life!

They've done this in people who are dying as well, where they like think about the end and accept it, sort of take it into their life.

They have better lives!

It's really interesting!

And I mean, it's something I do in my own life and I can tell—I can tell you that I think it actually works!

Yeah!

Being aware of where this ride ends, right? It's probably very important in terms of what you need to enjoy the ride.

If you just think it's going to go on forever!

It's like you’re saying about kind of being impatient about the wait staff at that restaurant and thinking what an inconvenience it is that they're so slow to get you water!

Yeah!

Versus what you feel after you've been hunting for thirty-three days and actually killed an animal!

And, yeah, we're so spoiled in terms of our attachment to food!

I decided about nine years ago that I was either going to become a vegan or I was gonna become a hunter.

I was like, there's no middle ground!

I was like I’m gonna have to figure out what it means to eat!

Because I was probably—I would probably have gone vegetarian because I think I would always eat eggs, because it's pretty—especially if you have your own chickens!

It's a pretty karma-free exchange!

You give them food and they give you eggs!

It's like—and the eggs are super healthy!

But when I did go hunting, the moment I shot that animal, the moment it was down, like, you could actually watch it.

There's a video that's available online of—I had to shoot it twice.

I shot it and dropped it at two hundred yards, and then as we were getting up to the animal, it was still alive, and then I had to put it out.

And they like closed in on my face when I'm taking all this in, and I shot it, and then it expired instantly.

And I'm sitting there just breathing in and just trying to take in like, "Okay, I just killed an animal that I’m gonna eat, and I've never done this before, and I'm forty!"

Yeah!

You know?

So here we are!

What was going through your head?

It would be hard for me to explain with just words, because it's such an—there's a—it's a strange emotion.

First of all, I didn't fully—a lot of—like you were saying like once you start cutting it up and then it becomes meat.

Like when it was down, it was like, "Okay, I've done this thing!"

I've done a lot of things in my life that make me nervous, and I think I've always gravitated towards things that I think are difficult!

They're scary!

Whether it's martial arts competition or stand-up comedy or anything!

I gravitate towards things that I think are difficult because I'm attracted to these challenges!

This was a challenge because it was a new thing, and it was like, you know, you're doing this rugged thing!

We went— um, we took—we floated down the river like forty miles, and carried all of our supplies and tents, and set up on the banks of the Missouri!

And it was heavy!

It was heavy!

And so dropping this animal, but then, once we cooked, we were eating it over the fire!

That night, we ate the liver, and I think we ate the heart too, over the fire!

And I remember thinking, "This is what I'm gonna do for the rest of my life!"

Yeah!

Cause I'm gonna eat—this is so much better than any other—I've never felt meat that tasted this good before!

I've never felt connected to my food before!

I've caught fish before and eaten fish; it's great, but there's something that was so much more intense about this!

I guess because it's a mammal.

There's some weird connection where your DNA is letting you know that like this is way closer to you than a fish!

Like people—you could take a fish out of an ocean and take a photograph of it online, and nobody gives a [ __ ]!

I had a thing I did on social media for a while—I did a while back, rather—the hierarchy of dead animals on social media.

And I had number one was a fish, and I was like a dead fish. Nobody gives a [ __ ]!

Like you take a fish, "Look, I caught a bass!" Everybody's like, "Hey, good job!"

Next was a turkey!

I had a dead turkey that I shot; people were like, "Hmm, I don't know, what's dead turkey?"

Then I had bear meat—it just said there was nobody said anything!

They didn't know what to say because it was just meat!

But there's photos of me with a dead bear, and it is the most hate I've ever gotten for any photograph online!

Even though I ate that bear!

And even though you have to eat—well, you have to shoot these bears because their population in Alberta, where my friends John and Jen run a honey camp up there, they're out of control!

And they need to control the population because they decimate the moose population, they decimate the deer population, they cannibalize each other!

It's very unhealthy for them to not have predators!

The only predators they have is larger, bigger bears—grizzlies!

So but people, for whatever reason, have not connected bears with food for a long time!

Right?

In terms of the history of the United States, Daniel Boone was famous for being a bear hunter!

And selling—commercially selling bear meat!

And they would smoke bear hides or smoke bear hams rather!

And bear meat was actually preferred over deer meat for whatever reason!

And deer were hunted for their pelts!

And bear were hunted for their meat!

And we've decided that they're teddy bears!

Yeah!

And then it's Yogi and Boo-Boo, and those are our buddies!

And it's a weird—we've just made this weird decision somewhere along the line!

But as my friend Steve Rinella calls them—charismatic megafauna!

Put them in this category of animals that you should not eat or hunt!

Yeah!

And meanwhile, the weird thing is, they're the most dangerous!

They're the ones that you really should hunt because they'll eat your kids!

Yeah!

Like a deer is not going to eat your kids!

No, but a [ __ ] bear will!

For sure!

You leave a baby in a backyard, a bear will 100% eat it!

Oh yeah!

Not a question in the world!

Totally!

Where a deer will just look at your baby and not care at all!

Like we don't—we have a weird arrangement!

Yeah!

But eating that animal and hunting that animal, it completely changed my idea of what food is! Completely!

And from then on, I've had a completely different idea of what food is!

And I've gone on to hunt!

I've hunted every year since!

It's something I look forward to!

I get a giant amount of my meat from it!

I give it to a lot of friends!

I keep two commercial freezers here at the studio!

You know, that's what I do now!

I hunt meat!

Yeah!

And I'm healthier because of it!

Yeah!

You know, I really do believe that elk meat in particular, that dark red wild animal that's running around the mountains—you’re getting so—it’s so nutrient-dense!

Super! So much more filled with protein than domestic beef, and it's just better for you!

Yeah, I agree!

Now the question is like how do we put that at scale for everyone?

You can't!

Yeah!

Well that's the thing, though! It's like you're not going to—no!

I do—I mean I do think there's almost an argument, though, that maybe—maybe in elementary school we need to take kids to a slaughterhouse or junior high!

Like that needs to be a field trip to understand a lot of things!

Yeah! We need to understand where things come from and like what goes into this!

You know, I think—this is a selfish proclamation, I realize! It's going in!

I think the idea of doing things at scale is lost!

Like you gotta let it go!

You're not going to save everybody!

I feel like that with exercise; I feel like that with meditation; I feel like that with yoga; I feel like that with hunting!

I feel like that with just trying to be the best person you could be!

You're only going to reach the people that want to hear the message!

And for the people that want to hear the message, those are the people that you're reaching to!

But the idea of scale—the idea of like, how do you feel like—I've heard that argument from vegetarians or vegans that you shouldn't hunt, because when you say, "You should hunt for your food," you know, how is—how are we gonna do that with the entire population?

We're not!

You know?

What else? We're not going to do with the entire population!?

Get them to read!

You know, you're not going to get them to learn to exercise!

They're not going to get him to do it!

I'm not here for everybody!

I'm here for anybody who wants to listen!

I'll tell you what I've done and what's changed me, and what I think could maybe change you if you're so inclined to pursue it!

But this idea of reaching the masses—Jesus Christ—you gotta go back to when they’re a baby!

You gotta start from scratch!

You gotta put somehow or another put incentive in front of them!

You gotta give them motivation!

You gotta show them that there's a real reward in pursuing risk and then in doing difficult things, and challenging themselves, even though it's hard!

And