My good friend Dan Doty and I went deer hunting and it did not go the way we thought it would go. We had a lot of fun chasing deer, but it just didn't work out. I'll tell you why it didn t work out, and why it's a good thing we don't have to go deer hunting anymore. Also, I picked up a new microphone and it's pretty cool, and I think you'll like it too. If you like hunting, you should definitely check out Dan's show Meat Eater on Sportsman's Channel. It's an excellent hunting show and I'm sure you'll agree it's great to be off the grid for a while. I hope you enjoy this episode, and don't forget to check out the Meat Eater show on the Sportsmen's Channel, where I'll be talking about hunting with your friends. I'll see you soon. -Joe Rogan Experience, Episode 65 - Meat Eater, Season 2, Episode 3 - Season 4 - Season 5 - Season 6 - Season 7 - Season 8 - Season 9 - Season 10 - Season 11 - Season 13 - Season 2 - Season finale - Season 14 - Season 1 - Season 3 Season 2 Season 3 - Episode 4 - Episode 5 - Episode 6 - Episode 7 - Episode 8 - Episode 9 - Episode 10 - Episode 11 - Episode 12 - Episode 13 - Episode 14 - Episode 15 - Episode 16 - Episode 17 - Episode 19 - Episode 1 - Episode 20 - Episode 2 - Episode 21 - Episode 3 - Episode Subscribe to the show and listen to it on your favorite streaming platform. Subscribe on Anchor.fm and Anchor Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about your ad choices and become a supporter of the show, rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, Podcharts, and leave us a review on iTunes and Podcoin or wherever else you get your favorite podcatcher is listening to the podcast on the pod is available. Thanks for listening and reviewing it! and share it on Podcoin? Send us your thoughts on your podcasting experience! and we'll be listening to us on social media and sharing it on the podcast and other podcasting links on the Podcoin. and other links to our social media platforms! Thank you for listening to our podcast and we're listening to your thoughts and reviewing our podcast on your stories and reviews on your feed in the podcast! Timestamps: 5 stars!
00:01:10.000Dan has worked for Meat Eater for 65 episodes?
00:01:14.000Yeah, this is my 65th episode shooting the show.
00:01:18.000And Dan's been on the podcast before with Remy Warren back when he and Remy were releasing that Apex Predator show, which is an excellent show that I guess they're not doing anymore.
00:01:29.000If you hear noise, because we're driving, we're on the road right now, and we're passing through some fucking strange shit.
00:01:38.000We're about 150 miles or so outside of Reno, I think 170, outside of Reno, Nevada.
00:03:17.000So we were about five hours outside of Reno in this incredibly beautiful, desolate landscape, chasing these deer that have these ears that...
00:03:35.000They're as big as Kim Kardashian's ass.
00:03:57.000Yeah, I got so close that it could have happened once.
00:04:01.000One time it legitimately could have happened.
00:04:03.000The other time, we got kind of close a few times, but one time, I got inside of 30 yards, and as I was crawling towards them in the bushes, I made too much noise, and they got up and bolted.
00:06:57.000I used to hit it hard for like an hour.
00:07:00.000Check the news, check all the bullshit, check my Twitter feed, check all the links people post me, check what I'm supposed to be doing, check this, check that.
00:09:26.000We watch one video on Bigfoot, and the next thing you know, it's four hours later, and you're like, what the fuck just happened?
00:09:35.000You know, you've watched several people get eaten by crocodiles, and I watched this thing, the top crocodile attacks of 2016, and I'm like, what the fuck is wrong with me?
00:10:43.000I do a lot of meditation, and in the lineage of meditation that I do, there's a lot of solo practice, or basically solo retreat, where you go either in a cabin or out in the woods or whatever you want to do, and you're just there by yourself doing your thing.
00:10:58.000I have not had a chance to do that recently.
00:11:00.000I also used to, when I used to be a wilderness guide and would run programs for people, they would always do a solo at the end of their wilderness experiences.
00:11:08.000Sit out in the woods, all alone, by themselves, four days, six days, whatever it was.
00:12:12.000You don't want to be alone with your thoughts.
00:12:14.000You want to know how you really feel about things and explore whether or not you're right about things or wrong or whether or not you have a bias or whether or not you have some sort of preconceived notion.
00:12:26.000You know, one of the things that I've found That a lot of people do is they have an opinion on something, and then when confronted with new evidence, they do their damnest to try to defend that original opinion.
00:12:48.000So the idea of going out to a mountain and being there, to me it's about, I think there's a disconnect in our culture from the actual experience and however you want to say that, your actual physical experience that you're having in the moment, the actual emotional experience or even mental experience.
00:13:07.000I think that there's so much controlling experience Us.
00:13:12.000You know, we control ourselves and other things.
00:13:14.000Other forces control us, but the actual sitting in what's actually happening is, to me, the most compelling part of being alive.
00:13:23.000And I think there's a lot of ways that people go about doing that.
00:13:28.000But it is challenging, and it's not something that...
00:13:40.000When you actually have to confront what life is, when nothing else...
00:13:44.000You know, when you're really just thinking, alone by yourself, nothing else is occupying your thoughts, not a television show, not an album.
00:13:52.000And those things are great too, but to be alone with your thoughts...
00:14:20.000So yeah, the practice of doing it yourself, I think, is one thing.
00:14:24.000And then, I think an even more challenging thing is that sort of rawness or simplicity or even connection with somebody else present is even fucking harder.
00:14:36.000So I actually think it opens up a way of living life that is...
00:14:42.000I don't know, fascinating and really exciting.
00:14:45.000Yeah, that's an important point about being alone, too, because when you're around other people, other people influence your thoughts.
00:14:51.000They influence the way you feel, they influence the way you react to things.
00:14:55.000And to be alone, and then on top of that, to be alone in nature, that's what's, that's really interesting.
00:15:02.000That's, that's really interesting to me, because look at that, there's a tornado out there.
00:16:34.000We were above 9,000 feet, and there's these rock slides everywhere where, like, the side of the mountain's eroding, and we had to climb up that shit.
00:16:44.000It's all these, like, chunks of rock, and especially problematic when you're trying to sneak up on these fucking...
00:16:51.000Awesome hearing mule deer because everything's like clank clank.
00:16:56.000It's like like you're stepping on broken pottery everywhere.
00:17:36.000I think it is beautiful, but it just looks like it needs a bath, man.
00:17:42.000But it's interesting, too, because it's so perfect for these deer.
00:17:45.000The deer are everywhere up there, and they're fucking big and fat and healthy, and all they're doing is eating these sage bushes and then taking naps and running from mountain lions and shit.
00:17:57.000Because we found some big, thick ropes of shit that are filled with hair that is either...
00:19:15.000You may not know this because most people don't and I didn't until I started hunting but We the people of the United States of America own massive chunks of land.
00:19:37.000And it's rare because most countries don't have what we have.
00:19:42.000We have these giant chunks of forest that you can hunt in.
00:19:46.000And you can fish in, and you can hike in, you can camp in, you can do all these different things, but to hunt in them, One thing that people don't know, especially people that are down on hunting, is that hunting is closely regulated by wildlife agencies that's manned by biologists that are working on science and data for that particular area.
00:20:09.000So in the area where we were at, it's not that easy to get a tag.
00:20:13.000So Steve Rinella had to use his points to get me in there as well.
00:20:17.000And what points are is you put in for a tag...
00:20:20.000You have to put in every year, and it takes like a few years.
00:20:24.000So if you can hunt in this place, you could probably only hunt here like every three years.
00:20:29.000But there's other places like the Nevada Strip, which is on the Utah-Nevada border that is so awesome.
00:22:04.000Maybe it's a big empty place but maybe everybody I joke around about that place being a drug-addled shithole, but I've met a lot of really nice people from Nevada.
00:22:13.000I mean, it has a bad reputation because Vegas is linked to organized crime and gambling and all the other sordid shit that comes with that.
00:22:24.000People think of it as this horrible, sinful place.
00:22:28.000But that's just a small area of Nevada.
00:22:31.000Most of my friends that I know that live around Vegas, that are involved in the MMA business, they're fucking the nicest people in the world.
00:22:38.000And they'll tell you, Nevada is what's outside of the Strip.
00:24:21.000Yeah, that's one of the harshest places I've been.
00:24:25.000I don't know, it's weird though because that one's like heaven and hell.
00:24:28.000Like the sun comes out and you don't want to be anywhere else, but then most of the year when it is raining, because it does rain most of the year, it's just, it's fucking miserable.
00:24:37.000It rained every fucking day we were there.
00:27:59.000So you were telling me about these wilderness trips that you take people on, like wilderness therapy.
00:28:06.000Yeah, so my first job out of college, I'd been living in Panama with my ex-girlfriend.
00:28:12.000We were moving to Utah, and I just needed a job, and I didn't know what I was going to do.
00:28:18.000So I went on Craigslist and we looked at the area around Salt Lake City and there was a job advertisement for a wilderness guide or wilderness instructor, they called it.
00:28:28.000I didn't know this shit existed at that point.
00:28:30.000So yeah, there's a huge industry, and most of it's in the western United States, but they're therapeutic.
00:28:37.000Wilderness programs which are tied to a bunch of therapeutic boarding schools.
00:28:41.000So, in the most basic sense, there's kids from generally pretty wealthy families across the country that are having trouble, their parents don't know what to do, and they'll send them away, you know, as an intervention.
00:28:55.000And usually, the intention is to have these kids go to a boarding school where there's a therapeutic presence also.
00:29:02.000In order to get into those schools, those schools require a wilderness stay.
00:29:07.000So I worked for a program and went out there and just kind of, it was a The type of program where everything was made by hand.
00:29:17.000So you got out there, you were given a half of an elk hide, you were given a knife, and then you were taught some of the basic skills.
00:29:24.000So we had to make our own backpacks out of sticks and elk hide.
00:29:27.000We would sew our own moccasins, we would do all that kind of stuff.
00:29:30.000And then all the fire that we made, we had to Make by hand, you know, with a bow drill.
00:29:35.000So yeah, so it was this amazing, it was really life-changing for me because I, you know, I love the outdoors, I love the wilderness and all that kind of stuff, and I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, but got out to this place where there's, um...
00:30:05.000And here's the part that I still very much don't agree with and I don't like is that these programs would literally kidnap you out of your bed.
00:30:19.000You can be kind of a heavy or a tough guy that literally goes for an intervention, flies to a family's home, takes the kid out of their bed, and flies them and drops them in the middle of the wilderness.
00:30:30.000And it's, as you can imagine, it's traumatic, man.
00:30:45.000Maybe I should say 14 to 18. That's an adult too.
00:30:49.000Yeah, so they have ways to sort of override the age system at times.
00:30:55.000Yeah, so these programs are meant to sort of give the kid a chance to look at their lives, how they've been behaving, and an opportunity, just kind of like we were talking about, but reflect and sort of explore and learn.
00:31:11.000And there's a lot of good that happens.
00:31:18.000And, in my opinion, there's a lot of bad to you.
00:31:20.000I don't think you can ever imagine that you could literally kidnap a kid out of your house and not fuck up the trust you have with your parents, you know?
00:31:46.000But it was basically an alternative to a 60-day juvie sentence.
00:31:51.000So basically, you steal a car, you can either go, the judge can either send you a juvie for 60 days or send them to me, and then we'd go on a badass, like, you know, 200 mile hiking trip or something.
00:32:07.000For obvious reasons, but then the other reasons too is that these programs are generally run by really grounded good people that treat people well.
00:32:19.000I work for programs with really exemplary leadership.
00:32:25.000I think what these kids could learn in those programs as opposed to going to Juvie and Yeah, I would imagine that's a way, way better option, but just the kidnapping part is crazy.
00:32:44.000They've given up on disciplining their kids so much.
00:32:48.000That they just say, alright, I fucked up raising this kid, it's time to just electroshock therapy, jolt them with wilderness.
00:33:22.000Yeah, yeah, like a wilderness halfway house.
00:33:25.000Like a base camp, you know, where you learn how to do some of the skills and maybe you start...
00:33:31.000So the other thing is there's relationships with a therapist at these programs, and that's how it works.
00:33:37.000So the people that work with the kids directly are like what I did as an instructor, so usually there'd be two of us, two adults, with a group of ten kids.
00:33:47.000And it was all, boy, usually segregated into male and female.
00:33:52.000So I pretty much just worked with dudes.
00:35:09.000I stay in contact with a ton of the kids that I work with just because, you know, we got to know each other really well and respected each other and became friends.
00:35:17.000And I know, I've seen the benefit almost across the board.
00:35:24.000Like, good things learned, a lot of growing up happened.
00:35:28.000You know, it's kind of like a forced rite of passage in a sense, you know, the idea that...
00:35:33.000A forced rite of passage, which I, you know, don't agree with the forced part.
00:35:38.000A lot of, I know a bunch of those kids, I could point to 12 right now that I know just kind of turned around, maybe went to college or didn't go to college, but ended up having good relationships with their family, are feeling good about life.
00:35:53.000But then there's probably far, far, I know there's far more where that didn't necessarily happen.
00:35:59.000I don't necessarily think it was a bad deal for them to go through that experience.
00:36:07.000But what it does, I think it self-selects for people who really do kind of want to figure shit out because it gives you a break and time to do that.
00:36:19.000But, yeah, no, I wish I had more numbers on it.
00:36:21.000How much resistance did you experience, like, when these kids would get kidnapped and all of a sudden they would come to you?
00:36:27.000Like, how many of them were like, fuck this, get me home, where's my mom?
00:36:32.000I mean, yeah, I don't know, 30%, 40%, 50% of just, like, either shutting down completely and not complying with anything or, you know, direct sort of resistance or anger or things like that.
00:37:19.000Well, for someone who's on a fucked up path, it really might be one of the only ways To correct it, to give yourself that chance.
00:37:32.000Like we were talking about being out there in the desert, in the high country, and you get kind of like a little bit of a reset.
00:37:40.000Like you get to relax and be alone with your thoughts and just experience a completely different set of input, a set of data.
00:37:51.000We're used to certain kinds of data and input.
00:37:54.000And for a lot of these kids, they're used to hanging around with fuck-ups and being around their asshole friends and doing stupid shit together.
00:38:51.000You will change, or a kid will, someone will change.
00:38:54.000But then, no matter how much you change, and you go back to that situation that you came from, the house, your family, just the culture that you're in, God, is it hard to...
00:39:07.000Well, to not slip back into old patterns, but then also even just to fit in.
00:39:10.000That's what I've been working with kids lately on, is that they go away and have these big experiences, and then they go home and mom and dad are still exactly how they were.
00:39:25.000I don't think I'm good at being impartial, but I try.
00:39:28.000Looking and getting to know these kids and all the things that they went through, It's so fucking hard not to point every finger at the family and the parents.
00:39:45.000The line of blame, if you want to do that, can go back a really long time.
00:39:48.000To the monkeys from the trees, if you believe in that.
00:39:52.000So that's the thing about a wilderness, like a long intervention like that, I think that's what I meant about self-selecting, is it's possible for somebody who really wants to change stuff, you know, to change the momentum of your family, to change the momentum of your past.
00:40:44.000It's incredibly complicated, very difficult to do, and it's an unbelievably huge responsibility to be in charge of really the future of a life and all the people that life is going to touch.
00:41:02.000So if your son is going to grow up and all the things that you teach him and all the experiences that he has with you will reflect on how he interacts with other people and that ripple effect carries on to thousands and millions of people potentially.
00:41:28.000I mean, it's like one of the most important things in the world is to raise a person that's going to affect other people in a positive way.
00:42:14.000To give him as good of an example as I possibly can, you know?
00:42:18.000I think that, and I don't know, you know, I'm a very new dad, I don't know this, but I think one of the best things that we could do as a people, as a culture, is for, yeah, for parents who are put in that position with all that responsibility,
00:42:35.000To somehow look at themselves real hard and take that time to, I don't know the best way to put it, but just improve themselves.
00:42:46.000Rather than trying to figure out how to parent a certain way or parent better, I really think the best thing we can do is just be better people, be better humans ourselves.
00:43:33.000They just get shit done, and they hustle, because their parents were drug addicts, or alcoholics, or jailbirds, or whatever the fuck it was, and they just felt the pain of their family being awful.
00:45:19.000What I was going to say is that what I learned from working with kids so much is that example thing.
00:45:25.000There's nothing to compare to that as far as...
00:45:30.000What people or kids or guys especially will respond to is that example.
00:45:36.000You can tell them I mean, kids, they catch bullshit the fucking second it comes out of your mouth.
00:45:43.000You know, if you're saying one thing, but you're not living it, if you're not being honest, if you're not being real about yourself, it doesn't work.
00:45:50.000So, I mean, I think that that was a real...
00:45:53.000You know, and I did this for five or six years, and I spent probably six, seven hundred days out doing this, and I came back from my experience just seeing this huge gap...
00:46:07.000In our culture about role models and mentors and just regular relationships that seem pretty natural and pretty normal.
00:46:17.000I would get into a group of these kids and there would be something there.
00:46:23.000They would recognize something in me and I'd recognize something in them.
00:46:27.000It's just a really cool thing to be a part of.
00:46:31.000What did you guys do for 55 days in the woods?
00:46:34.000So we would hike most of the day, right?
00:46:37.000We would hike probably 8 to 15 miles a day.
00:48:25.000They kind of broke, you know, into categories.
00:48:29.000But honestly, the thing is, the cool thing about spending that much time with people is that, you know, like, it doesn't take long to see through those behaviors to really seeing a good kid.
00:48:45.000I've worked with hundreds if not thousands of kids and Maybe one.
00:49:50.000It's a really cool school in the southeast Bronx for a couple years.
00:49:54.000And, you know, just that was the most challenging and probably rewarding thing that I've ever done.
00:50:06.000So first I worked with mostly wealthy kids and some of these private pay wilderness programs and then I did a lot of stuff for correctional stuff.
00:50:14.000So that was rural poor, you know, that was a lot of kids from reservations and just sort of No offense, but white trash type kids.
00:50:26.000And then I moved to the inner city and worked there.
00:50:29.000So I got a good spectrum on working with different kids.
00:50:33.000It really just ended up that I kind of liked them all.
00:50:48.000It's almost everything in terms of your future, you know?
00:50:51.000And so many people don't realize that.
00:50:54.000A lot of times the really fortunate ones don't realize it because they just think that everybody's got it like this or they just think that, well, my life's hard too.
00:51:03.000You know, my life was only challenging in that we moved around a lot.
00:51:08.000Like, my mom and my stepdad were really nice people.
00:51:18.000They didn't, you know, they didn't beat me and torture me.
00:51:21.000You just hear such horrible, horrible stories of what parents do to their children.
00:51:28.000And, you know, you gotta wonder what their parents did to them that started this whole path, this almost, like, unstoppable force of momentum.
00:51:39.000But some of the things you were telling me about the poor kids that you worked with.
00:51:43.000Like, yeah, so one of the kids that, just this amazing, light-filled kid, you know, comes, I don't remember how it happened, I think he came into school one morning, and, you know,
00:51:59.000his dad had bashed his skull in with a baseball bat.
00:52:03.000I think he got drunk and got angry and just beat the fuck out of him.
00:52:08.000I remember that morning feeling just so hopeless and just like, you know, nothing I could do to protect this kid.
00:52:17.000Like, I could be the best teacher, I could be the best role model and friend of this guy that I ever could be, but every night he has to go back into this just unimaginable, horrible place, you know?
00:53:38.000And they kind of worked on everything at all times.
00:53:43.000So, you know, they were my students for two entire years, and the amount of time we spent together was just really intense, and we got very close.
00:54:29.000Like there's nice people out there like Dan Doty that are going to help you out and he recognizes that there's people out there that need help.
00:55:06.000And so there's immediately this odd dynamic for me to go and teach in a location like that that there is a racial dynamic present no matter what.
00:55:18.000My kids would tease me about how white I was all the time.
00:56:55.000He was just, in his mind, everything was out to get him.
00:57:00.000Yeah, I mean, and I can't officially say this because I haven't studied it officially, but I think that there are, you know, versions, if you call it PTSD, or just stuck in the state of hypervigilance, whatever it is,
00:57:15.000it's just coming from a place that's not safe, a place that's fucked up, and to be expected to be able to overcome that without any real...
00:57:27.000Time or assistance to working is really unreasonable, I think.
00:58:06.000And it was all the way to Australia, so it was a long ass time.
00:58:10.000And he and I were talking about work that he's been doing with some young kids that come from troubled houses and troubled backgrounds as well.
00:58:19.000And he was telling me that when a child is in the womb, And the mother is experiencing intense stress from violence, from crime, bad neighborhoods, that kind of shit, domestic abuse, that kind of thing.
00:58:33.000That the child grows up with more of a propensity for violence.
00:58:39.000That violence becomes almost in their DNA as a response to any perceived threat.
00:59:22.000My God, is it more complicated than that.
00:59:25.000It is, man, but here's the interesting thing.
00:59:27.000I do think that I actually agree with that in a different way.
00:59:32.000I think that you can never expect anybody else to do anything like that.
00:59:37.000The way it is, you're born and raised in the way you are, and then at some point, you fully have to take responsibility for that.
00:59:46.000No matter how shitty or great your childhood was, no matter what you're dealing with, I think that there is no one else that's going to do it for you.
00:59:54.000So I really do think that there is a piece of truth in what they're saying.
01:00:14.000They're conveniently ignorant about the circumstances that are involved in creating a child that grows up and has been in juvenile detention since they were a little kid and has been in and out of all sorts of Police custody and been in crime situations from the time they were young.
01:00:37.000To say that you need to straighten your act up, they don't have any examples.
01:00:42.000The examples that they see on TV might as well be them watching Iron Man.
01:00:49.000No, and that's an issue I have with that whole debate or political discussion or however you want to put it, is that to me it's only they're talking about a situation and never is the actual conversation being had.
01:01:02.000Conversation between people who it actually affects is rarely brought out and it's just a bunch of people looking at things from the outside and commenting and talking about it, not Actually digging into it.
01:01:24.000It's very dismissive of other people's misfortune and not really appreciating or understanding your fortune.
01:01:32.000You know, we're all born into totally different circumstances for the most part.
01:01:37.000And most of us here in America, we were talking about this yesterday, that people that are in this country are so much more fortunate than someone who's born in some...
01:01:49.000You know, terrible third world situation, like we were talking about Liberia, the reality of Liberia, which is a former slave colony.
01:02:01.000What they did was they took American slaves that were released and they shipped them back to Africa, literally, and created this horrible, horrible environment through, you know, A bunch of different factors, but Civil War being a big one of them.
01:02:19.000And Vice has this really insightful and amazing piece on Liberia.
01:02:46.000And then, looking at that person, the child who was born in Cleveland, I'm sure there's a lot of kids that are born there that wish, fuck, why couldn't I have been born in New York City?
01:04:37.000Well, you have some answers, and I think you've got some great ideas, but I think one of the things that we talked about yesterday was...
01:04:45.000The amount of children that you had communicated with, that you had taught that found themselves in these horrific situations that you had a kind of experience with them.
01:05:41.000I've spent a lot of time thinking about and reading about and studying both rites of passage in different parts of the world, but then also just this really simple concept of mentoring or mentorship or role models.
01:05:57.000Not only did I have a good family and good parents, amazing parents, I have this string of role models that I had from little kids.
01:06:06.000We've talked about this briefly before, but my first one was my Taekwondo instructor when I was a kid, Master Mike.
01:06:11.000I was super shy, super very soft as a kid, and then this dude in a sports car drove into Drake, North Dakota, and I started taking Taekwondo with him, and he was just this...
01:06:30.000I attribute a lot of the good qualities I value by myself, both to him and to Taekwondo itself, because I think it teaches great things to kids.
01:06:42.000So he was a mentor, and then in high school I had this farmer.
01:07:12.000I've spent a lot of time thinking about it and I really, I just really wish that for people or want that for people, you know, because you can't rely on your parents to give you everything you need in this life.
01:07:23.000It's just, it's too much pressure for Well, also I think, as we were talking about earlier, their parents didn't know what the fuck they were doing, and their parents' parents didn't know what the fuck they were doing, and for a lot of us, that's, you know, that's the reality that we find ourselves being born into.
01:07:43.000With doing some of the things that you've done and also with the amount of data and information that's available today, I think we have a chance of affecting our society and our culture and the way we communicate with each other and just who we are as a species.
01:08:03.000This crazy, weird, super organism of human beings.
01:08:07.000We're in a better position to change that than ever before.
01:08:12.000Like, my grandparents came over from Italy and Ireland on a fucking boat.
01:08:16.000Nobody knew what the hell was going on.
01:08:17.000Their parents didn't know shit when they brought them over here.
01:08:19.000They just heard there was a better chance.
01:08:28.000And they took a chance and they came over here.
01:08:30.000The difference between them And the kind of experience and the kind of access to information that your children are going to have or my children are going to have is fucking profound.
01:08:43.000And I think we're a part of something that's really interesting right now in that the human race is becoming hyper-aware of all the variables that are fucking it up.
01:08:55.000And one of the big ones, of course, is the abuse and mishandling and misraising of children.
01:09:03.000So yeah, to that point, there's this thing that I've been paying attention to that I think is happening.
01:09:09.000So as we have more information, as things happen faster, as all of this compounds and things go faster, faster, faster, I think that the impact of slowing down becomes...
01:09:24.000So, you know, we're talking about all these wilderness experiences.
01:09:26.000I also bring up like meditation or any of these things.
01:09:30.000I think that as other things speed up, I think that These things, like, have the power to just smack you across your face and, like, change things fast, you know?
01:09:43.000And I don't know, this has just been observation for 10 years or so, but I think that, you know, 150 years ago or whatever, in the western United States, if we had slow lives, I don't think we would have had a huge impact by going and camping for a week.
01:09:57.000But today, when you're pulled out of your crazy digital electronic life and you go back and you feel that human simplicity for a little bit of time, I think the combination of the two offers a really powerful place, a really crazy impression.
01:10:12.000Because if you can get that awareness and sort of the impact of slowing down, compounded with all of the information and the power and everything that we have, So I think we're on the verge of a very ripe place.
01:10:26.000I think it's a time where You know, people can really change themselves a lot quicker or maybe even a lot more than they think is.
01:11:33.000It's kind of sad, but maybe they both suck in bed for the better.
01:11:37.000But, you know, you've got to not just have all this access to data, but also have the ability to decide what you take in and what you don't take in.
01:13:03.000Well, it's also a lot of times people, they get out of high school, they go into college, they get out of college, they get a job, they get a job, they start their career, they push forth in their career, and before they know it, they're fucking 40 years old, and they can't stop!
01:14:22.000Look around and notice how many adults either have shitty lives they don't like or are, like, going through massive amounts of self-help or therapy or all these things at old ages and not, you know...
01:14:35.000Where do you think antidepressants come from?
01:14:37.000Do that many people have broken brains?
01:14:42.000I'm not denying that there's most certainly quite a few people that have natural chemical imbalances and pharmaceutical drugs can benefit them.
01:14:52.000But I know for a fact there's a lot of people who get medicated Because they fucking hate their lives.
01:14:58.000Instead of picking a life that you enjoy or working towards developing your life into something that you'd enjoy.
01:15:07.000Some of the most satisfying email and tweet messages and Facebook things that I've ever gotten is people that have listened to this podcast and said, you know what, I realize I am 36 and I've always wanted to do this and I'm going to quit my fucking job and I'm going to figure out how to do that.
01:15:37.000And if you don't have a thing, find a fucking thing.
01:15:40.000But you can't think that that whole, like, work, get a good job, get your benefits, and don't do anything stupid because you don't want to get fired.
01:15:56.000If you've got a good job that you enjoy, that's a great life.
01:16:00.000And then your job doesn't feel like a job.
01:16:02.000I mean, even though it can be challenging and difficult, if you can find something you actually enjoy doing, your life will be immeasurably better than if you're just grinding it out, waiting for that 5 o'clock fucking buzzer to come.
01:16:16.000And the way I like to talk about it, though, that I think is a really important difference, is to be Descriptive rather than prescriptive.
01:16:24.000Because if you try to force yourself into...
01:16:26.000If you're trying to be Joe Rogan or if you're trying to be anybody else out there or you want that life, good luck with that in the long run.
01:16:34.000I feel like you have to sink into yourself and just actually fucking be who you are.
01:16:55.000I mean, I most certainly have been massively influenced by a lot of people that I respected and listened to them or watched them or saw their work or whatever it is.
01:17:38.000It's a process of self-reflection and you've got to be honest.
01:17:43.000That's where these moments that you're talking about, like meditative moments or moments where you can go to the mountains and be by yourself, those moments are huge because they give you this Opportunity to maybe examine your ideas a little more closely instead of just constantly being inundated with other people's opinions about what you should do.
01:18:05.000You've got to have your own experiences, man.
01:18:06.000You've just got to live and you've got to experience as much as you can, whether that's A trip around the world or traveling or to a different place or a hallucinogenic experience done in a safe way or whatever it is.
01:18:19.000I just feel like you gotta, yeah, to find yourself, you gotta test the waters.
01:20:01.000It doesn't taste good, but it seems like if you know that that's a possibility What a strange place this is.
01:20:11.000There's a lot of these places that we drove through, like how about that one wild west town that was established in 1865, I don't remember the name of it, but they had the old buildings there that were there from 1865 that were in ruins in various state of disarray and decay,
01:20:29.000surrounded by these more new modern ruins.
01:20:56.000You mean like a hundred years from now or a thousand years from now?
01:20:59.000Like if you find an old barn, like that old barn that we were passing, that little shack or whatever the fuck it was, that cool old cabin of distressed wood, you look at that and you go, wow, that's kind of badass.
01:21:10.000No one's going to look at some shitty old...
01:22:00.000Look, we should know that that's possible and that people can get robbed.
01:22:04.000Like, when you hear about terrible things in the world, the good news or the good fact about that is now you know those things without having...
01:22:13.000It's not like you live your life in some sort of a Mormon missionary factory and then they send you out there to the awful parts of the world...
01:22:21.000And all of a sudden, you know, you're in some third world country and you don't realize it's being run by a brutal dictator.
01:24:25.000Just a lot of, like, really fucked up family environments.
01:24:30.000And he was saying that when we thought about, like, robbing something, like going to a store and stealing something, we didn't think it was a bad thing.
01:24:42.000And that it was just, that's what you grew up with.
01:24:45.000Now, he's a successful comedian, he's doing well, and he can step back and have the hindsight vision of his current state and realize, oh, that was why I thought that way.
01:25:01.000And I'm sure these guys have robbed you.
01:25:04.000I mean, they didn't have a fucking pretty upbringing.
01:25:07.000It's not like they went from a gated community to robbing people in Peru.
01:25:10.000No, it's not like they were doing it because they were just morally poor people, you know?
01:25:50.000I'm sure you're going to do a great job, but for people whose parents are going to do a shitty job, I wonder if they're going to come up with technology one day, and I think they will, that will be able to install better memories and a better pattern of behavior into a person's brain.
01:26:06.000Almost like they're going to be able to defrag your hard drive.
01:27:27.000There's a lot of recent research and study that has happened specifically with PTSD and in that realm that shows how memories and our experiences when we're young and older,
01:27:44.000how they truly are stored in our body and that there are It's not psychology in the sense of just talk therapy or just figuring things out or analyzing anything.
01:29:12.000I don't feel like that's an accepted viewpoint at this point.
01:29:16.000Well, I think it's being more and more accepted and I think people are understanding now more and more that there's a method that the human mind has sort of undergone in order to take these memories in in the first place.
01:29:29.000And if there's a way to re-examine those initial ideas and form new ideas based on better data and a better understanding of how your mind works.
01:29:42.000Very few people know how their mind works.
01:29:44.000They just know that I get mad when this happens or this pisses me off.
01:29:50.000One thing that's a beautiful idea that has been going around is Look at something when it happens and decide how to make that a positive for you and decide how to give that thing meaning because nothing truly has any meaning other than the meaning that you give it and the meaning that What I might have to something might be very different than you would have for the exact same experience.
01:30:19.000And we don't even know who's right or wrong until you look at where that path takes you.
01:30:24.000And I might look at it and go, you know what?
01:31:00.000I think one of the best tools to begin that entire process is simple mindfulness practices.
01:31:06.000So what that means is that when something fucked up happens and you're going to immediately have that knee-jerk reaction, all it is is that you give it a little fucking space.
01:32:22.000I like what you said about, you know, taking things as learning opportunities, you know, in general, that just anything in life that happens to you, whether it's good or bad, is an opportunity you can capitalize on.
01:32:34.000Just because you can learn from it, you know?
01:33:10.000Because it'll make a little incremental change in a certain direction.
01:33:14.000And then over time, that could be a gigantic factor in determining your happiness or your unhappiness, depending on, like, how you choose to behave and think.
01:33:40.000Because all of that self-help, what the fuck, spiritual type stuff that's made fun of, made fun of for good reasons, but there's some things in there that...
01:33:55.000That aren't all that weird and are just incredibly helpful.
01:34:42.000But I think your life experiences and what you're trying to do is very noble, dude.
01:34:47.000And I think what you're trying to do and what you have done is very exceptional.
01:34:52.000And that's one of the reasons why I wanted to do this with you.
01:34:55.000Because the stories that you were telling me over this past week and all the other times that we've hung out together over the past few years, since I met you in 2012, was that a cop?