The Art of Manliness - Episode #56： The Paleo Manifesto With John Durant

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00:00:58.780 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Well, if you

00:01:04.380 haven't been living under a rock these past few years, you probably have heard of the

00:01:08.480 paleo lifestyle, which is this idea that we should look to evolution and specifically our

00:01:13.880 hunter-gatherer past to inform our health decisions. So we should look to how our caveman

00:01:19.680 ancestors ate, how they exercised and how they moved, how they slept. And then by doing those

00:01:26.120 things, we'll have optimal health. Very popular idea. Lots of books, blogs about how to live

00:01:34.440 paleo and the arguments on why it's beneficial. And our guest today is one of the figures who

00:01:40.400 have, uh, who's done a lot to popularize and, uh, bring this out to the mainstream. His name's

00:01:46.440 John Durant. Uh, he blog blogs at huntergatherer.com. Uh, a few years ago, the New York times did a piece

00:01:52.920 on him and other New Yorkers who are living the paleo lifestyle in the middle of New York city.

00:01:58.800 Uh, Stephen Colbert, the Colbert bear report had him on his show interviewing about how he's living

00:02:04.240 like a modern day caveman in the 21st century. Anyways, John has come out with a book called the

00:02:09.520 paleo manifesto, ancient wisdom for lifelong health, where he makes a case for the, the paleo

00:02:15.600 lifestyle. And what I find interesting about John's book is he doesn't just focus on our hunter

00:02:20.560 gatherer past. Uh, he also makes the argument. There's things we can learn about how to have

00:02:24.960 optimal health, um, from other stages of human development. Um, for example, when we went through

00:02:30.960 the agriculture, agricultural revolution, there were, he makes the argument, there were cultural

00:02:35.480 adaptations that can help us have better health, um, from that time period. And he also makes the

00:02:41.380 argument. There's things from the industrial revolution and the information age that we can

00:02:44.640 take to have lifelong health. So it's just a fascinating reading. It doesn't just focus on

00:02:48.780 how to eat like a caveman. He focuses on sort of a holistic view of, uh, the paleo lifestyle or just,

00:02:56.100 you know, using evolution to inform how to make healthy decisions, um, for ourselves.

00:03:02.320 So it's an interesting podcast. I think you, if you are familiar with the paleo lifestyle,

00:03:07.740 you're going to find some new insights that you might not have heard of. If you're sort of new to

00:03:12.240 it, never heard of it. I think you'll, it's a great introduction to, to it and a great starting

00:03:16.800 point. So stay tuned. All right, John Durant, welcome to the show. Thanks. Good to be here.

00:03:23.220 All right. So, um, paleo manifesto is your book. Uh, you publish this book in a time when like the

00:03:30.760 market is just saturated with paleo stuff. There's like paleo blogs, there's paleo books,

00:03:35.640 there's like businesses helping you live paleo lifestyle. Like you'll learn how to eat like a

00:03:39.840 caveman, exercise like a caveman. I think I've even seen an article, like how to poop like a caveman.

00:03:45.400 Um, with all the saturation, how did you differentiate the paleo manifesto from all

00:03:51.200 the stuff that's out there about the paleo lifestyle?

00:03:53.480 Well, first it's not a diet book. And a lot of the books out there are either diet books and

00:03:58.280 cookbooks. And those are great for what, for, uh, for, for what they are. But I, when I sat down

00:04:05.860 with my agent and was talking to some publishers, um, a few of them wanted me to write a diet book.

00:04:11.080 And I said, I, I, I don't, I can't even read a diet book, so I can't spend a year writing one.

00:04:16.280 So, but, but really, what really makes it different is I, I downplay the paleolithic actually,

00:04:21.280 even though it's in the title, the paleo manifesto. Um, I, I spend a lot of time talking

00:04:28.740 about what we can learn from, uh, other eras of human history, both before the paleolithic

00:04:34.560 and after it. Um, and there's a historical element there that I think is missing from,

00:04:41.400 from a lot of other paleo books. Um, yeah, that's what we're going to talk about that more

00:04:46.360 about the different, how you break down the different age stages of human development.

00:04:49.500 Um, one of the things I loved about the paleo manifesto, right? Like you said, it's not

00:04:54.160 a diet book and you did a great job, um, navigating and answering a lot of the criticisms levied

00:05:01.280 at, you know, the paleo lifestyle. And, you know, one of them that I've heard a lot is

00:05:06.480 that, uh, you know, the paleo manifesto or not the paleo manifesto, but the paleo lifestyle

00:05:10.740 is like, it rests on this logical fallacy of argumentum ad naturum, right? You know, whatever's

00:05:17.380 natural is good. Um, which isn't true, you know, like cancer is natural, but like, we

00:05:22.160 don't want cancer. Um, so, and I think you address that in your book a little bit like

00:05:27.180 that, that criticism.

00:05:28.600 There's, there's the naturalistic fallacy that if something's natural, it's healthy or

00:05:33.480 good or moral. There's also a flip side to that called the moralistic fallacy, which

00:05:38.700 is just because something is moral or desirable, doesn't make it true. Doesn't make it so.

00:05:43.660 So really what, what I tried to do was, um, look at it through a lens of biological realism

00:05:53.740 saying, we are trying to understand human nature, uh, how it came to be, what's relatively fixed

00:06:01.020 about it and what's relatively flexible, flexible. Cause there's, there's some parts of our lifestyle

00:06:05.740 that we can change a lot and it's not going to have a huge impact on our health, um, or

00:06:11.340 on, on the rest of our life. But if we're talking about, uh, sugar intake, well, yeah, human nature

00:06:17.540 basically means you can't eat tons of refined sugar and, and expect not to have health problems.

00:06:22.840 All right. Um, so let's talk, uh, you know, a little bit more about the, the, the stages

00:06:27.800 of human development, because yeah, the book's called the paleo manifesto, but you talk about

00:06:32.500 the different eras of, uh, of human evolution. And I guess you, it'd be better to call your books

00:06:37.140 more about and setting, you know, finding inspiration from our ancestors, like ancestral

00:06:40.540 health, uh, is, would be, I think I've heard that term thrown around. Um, so let's go into

00:06:46.260 there. Let's talk about the different stages of, uh, you know, human development and why

00:06:51.920 is it so important not just to look at the paleolithic era when you're trying to figure

00:06:56.260 out how to optimize your health and your psychology?

00:07:00.920 Yeah. So when, when you say stages of human development, just for the listeners, um, I

00:07:07.120 start chronologically, um, even before the paleolithic, what I call the animal age, and

00:07:12.360 it sort of represents our time from the Cambrian explosion. When you start to see, um, lots of

00:07:18.120 different types of animal forms enter the fossil record, uh, to the beginning of the paleolithic

00:07:23.120 about 2.6 million years ago. Um, and, and, and, and, and what that era represents is really

00:07:31.520 our commonality with all these other species and other primates and things like that. You can

00:07:35.720 learn a lot about human health, not even by looking at humans, just by looking at, at other

00:07:40.800 species. And so I go on a trip to the Cleveland zoo to learn how to keep gorillas healthy in

00:07:45.120 captivity. And that introduces an evolutionary approach to say, let's look at the natural

00:07:49.600 habitat of a species and then combine it with modern medical technology. Then you get the

00:07:54.640 paleolithic age, the agricultural age, the industrial age, and the information age. And each one of

00:08:00.720 those chapters has, uh, lessons that I draw from our ancestors and the health challenges that they

00:08:06.700 faced. So what are some like lessons you can take from say the paleolithic age?

00:08:16.380 Eating frequency, any health issue you want. It could be sun exposure, temperature, eating frequency,

00:08:22.020 movement, uh, anything in biology you want. The, the best way to understand it is to put aside humans

00:08:28.020 for a moment and just understand it among a variety of different animals and animal species.

00:08:33.360 So if it's eating frequency, you can see, oh, well, gorillas eat all day long. Uh, lions eat

00:08:39.540 sporadically every three to four days where omnivores were in the middle. Then you, then you go to the

00:08:43.880 paleolithic and you say, how did eating frequency evolve in human beings and in our, in our, in hominins,

00:08:50.720 you know, pre-human hominins. Okay. Well, we were omnivores and we ate probably a couple,

00:08:57.980 few times a day, but not three square meals a day. Well, then you go into the agricultural age

00:09:03.440 and things change. Then people became farmers, they settled down, but it was more recent. It was

00:09:08.680 within the last 10,000 years. And this is where you sort of modify your understanding of human nature

00:09:13.780 based on our cultural experience and, and possibly recent genetic adaptation. So in, if it's eating

00:09:20.940 frequency, then, uh, you start to see fasting traditions emerge where you sort of have purposeful

00:09:27.740 appetite loss. Um, and then in the industrial age, that's where things really go wrong for a lot of

00:09:34.520 folks. We, we change our habitats and how we live in our lifestyle so much that we don't have time to

00:09:41.720 adapt either culturally or genetically. This could be eating all day long and having food on demand

00:09:47.480 and you get tons of obesity. And then when you think about the information age, where we are now,

00:09:53.800 we have the ability to redesign how we live. And, and so the challenge in the information age is,

00:10:00.740 is to say, okay, given who I am and the life I have today, how do I construct a habitat and an eating

00:10:08.080 frequency based on all this other information that works for me? So that it's a little bit

00:10:12.940 long-winded, but that's how I try to incorporate, um, all, all the different evolutionary history that,

00:10:20.040 that goes into each one of us. Yeah. I thought that was fascinating. You mentioned fasting, uh,

00:10:25.140 sort of an agricultural age adaptation, right? So we had during the agricultural revolution,

00:10:30.400 suddenly humans had food available at all times before in the paleolithic, it was a little more

00:10:36.480 random. You ate, you know, you had that big score with hunting and then you may have gathered a few

00:10:41.900 nuts and berries, right? Um, so the culture adapted to that new environment we found ourselves in.

00:10:49.260 And, but you also talk about, um, other cultural responses that happened during the agricultural

00:10:55.820 revolution, um, that pretty much like prevented infectious diseases. And you, you use the examples

00:11:02.080 of the, uh, ancient Hebrews. Can you talk a little about that? Cause I think it's just complete,

00:11:05.420 it's just utterly fascinating. Yeah. It's, it's, it's actually my favorite chapter in the book.

00:11:09.980 It's called Moses, the microbiologist and the greatest health challenge that early farmers,

00:11:15.720 um, early agriculturalists faced was infectious disease. You had large numbers of people

00:11:20.880 and domesticated animals living in close proximity for the first time in early cities.

00:11:25.820 No knowledge of hygiene, um, primitive hygienic technology and infectious disease explodes.

00:11:33.620 Um, the problem is that germs are invisible and infectious disease is hard to understand how it

00:11:41.660 works because germs can spread in so many different ways. So it's around this time when you start to

00:11:48.260 see these early, some early religions like Judaism, Zoroastrianism, where hygiene and purity become

00:11:54.840 very important parts of ritual practice. Um, the notion of cleanliness and sinfulness were pretty much

00:12:02.880 one in the same, um, in, in traditional Judaism. And, and when you actually, you know, a lot of people

00:12:10.440 talk about the Bible, but haven't, or the Torah, but haven't actually read it. Um, I went back and read

00:12:17.440 the first five books of, of, of the Bible, um, the Torah, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, uh, numbers and

00:12:25.180 Deuteronomy. And it's incredible how much disgust plays a role in these purity codes. Uh, um, staying

00:12:35.140 away from bodily fluids, concern with any type of sex, pretty much making you unclean, uh, staying away from

00:12:43.100 corpses, uh, staying away from insects and vermin, um, and all these different rules that in retrospect,

00:12:51.200 um, look like an intuitive understanding of the germ theory of disease. And, and so then I found all

00:12:57.920 these papers showing that in the 19th and early 20th century, uh, Jewish folks tended to have a five

00:13:05.740 to 10 year life expectancy advantage relative to neighboring Gentiles, primarily due to a lower

00:13:10.840 infectious disease burden. So there's this, the whole chapter is about how, when infectious disease

00:13:17.800 was our, was our greatest emerges, our greatest health threat, you had these cultural codes that 0.87

00:13:24.540 emerged in response to help people stay clean, like washing their hands. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it was,

00:13:31.960 it was completely just fascinating. And, um, you thought, I think you mentioned how Christianity in some

00:13:38.760 ways took us back a little bit in terms of health, because Christianity got rid of that idea. Those

00:13:45.720 the, it's the old law, right? It's the dead law. You know, what goes into the body is not, doesn't

00:13:54.720 defile. Defile. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Jesus, it's in three gospels. He said, uh, defilement, uh, doesn't

00:14:01.480 come from without, it comes from within. Yeah. So he was saying defilement was a, was a spiritual,

00:14:06.080 moral, um, uh, state, not a physical state with actual conduct. And one of the, one of the biggest

00:14:15.420 disagreements he had with the Pharisees was over hand washing. He and his father, Jesus and his

00:14:21.280 followers did not wash their hands before eating something by the way, that pretty much every modern

00:14:27.100 Christian in, in, in the developer world at least does, or at least we hope, we hope we all do. Um,

00:14:34.720 and, and Jesus was saying, you all are so obsessed with these rituals, but it's getting in the way of

00:14:44.520 loving your neighbor. And, and so basically, um, all, all of these hygiene rules, there are hundreds of

00:14:51.460 them. They're complicated. You have to memorize them all. You have to follow them getting circumcised,

00:14:57.080 um, not using cookware and dishes that belong to a Gentile, um, uh, contact with other things that 0.93

00:15:07.520 are unclean. It makes it very hard to go out and interact with people who don't believe the same

00:15:13.960 thing you do. So basically Jesus's great innovation was he got rid of the purity code and kept some of

00:15:19.900 the moral beliefs and universalized them. But basically this sends Christianity into a direction

00:15:26.560 where hygiene and hygienic practices aren't as emphasized. And it, and then eventually you get

00:15:32.180 the, you get the black death where you have Christians dying in large numbers, uh, throughout

00:15:37.260 Western Europe, um, and people all throughout the world. But, um, but then Jews were observed to be 1.00

00:15:43.820 dying at a lower rate and were persecuted for this, but observant Jews would have been washing their 0.98

00:15:51.680 hands, uh, staying away from insects and vermin. And the black death was spread by fleas on rats,

00:15:58.960 um, protecting their water supply, bathing, washing their clothes and avoiding corpses.

00:16:04.180 So if you went back in time and had to advise people during the black death on what to do, 0.90

00:16:09.760 it would look a lot like Orthodox Judaism.

00:16:12.200 Yeah. Very, very interesting. And so I want to take this to the modern day. Um, cause you,

00:16:18.440 you talk about this a little bit in your book as well. Um, so one of the criticism, I've levied

00:16:24.700 this criticism towards like the paleo people and like CrossFitters is that like, they're almost,

00:16:29.160 they're like, they're like a religion, right? They're very cult-like they got their, their,

00:16:32.660 their, you know, their uniform, their ritual clothing to put on their compression socks. Um,

00:16:37.720 you know, they, they talk about their box as sort of like this temple. Um, they're very,

00:16:42.360 you know, fastidious about what they eat. All right. And like the goal is to out paleo

00:16:46.840 the other guy, sort of like how Orthodox Jews, the way you gave status in that community is being

00:16:51.360 more Orthodox than the next guy. Um, and they get, I mean, that's one of the reasons like they're easy 1.00

00:16:57.320 targets. Like, man, you guys are sort of cultish. Um, but you kind of, um, argue that's not,

00:17:03.580 that's not a bad thing. And maybe this is a cultural response, a cultural adaptation.

00:17:07.720 To our, a new environment that we live in. Well, here's how I see it. The, we live in the

00:17:13.820 most sedentary and obese era in all of human history. And, and so we, we need more fitness

00:17:21.140 cults. It doesn't just have to be CrossFit and it doesn't just have to be paleo, but boy,

00:17:26.100 we could use a lot more fitness cults because I don't know if you've walked around outside lately,

00:17:30.600 but the country needs it. We all need it. I need it. And, um, but you, it's a, it's a really

00:17:37.680 interesting comparison and, and it speaks to the power of ritual and, and habit making

00:17:43.400 and, and that ritual having a functional health benefit. I mean, you, again, you go back to

00:17:48.900 Judaism or other, or early Christianity, and there were a set of actions that you were supposed

00:17:55.880 to take that would have functional benefits in your life. Um, in Christianity, this is often referred

00:18:02.220 to as a prosperity gospel in Judaism, the notion of everyday actions and cleanliness, which we just

00:18:08.140 talked about would have, would have provided a huge health benefit. Um, and different times call

00:18:14.540 for different measures. And now the challenge is, uh, motivating people on a regular basis to move

00:18:21.480 and to eat relatively healthy. And, and, you know, so, so ritual community, um, are really important

00:18:31.460 aspects of that. And geez, that sounds a heck of a lot like religion. Yeah, it really does. And it's

00:18:37.400 because like, it's, you know, you form your identity around it, right? Right. Like people, you know,

00:18:42.260 it's not just CrossFit or, uh, you know, paleo, but like vegetarianism, which you talk about, that's,

00:18:49.800 that's like a new identity. Right. And they treat it like a religion almost like, or like, not almost.

00:18:54.400 Yeah. And we'll talk about that. Or like, you know, the whole, um, whole food, right? Like you're

00:19:00.320 supposed to like, like, what's it called? Bio bio. There's like a word for it. I forgot. I can't

00:19:05.020 remember. You just like get like, yeah. Or like raw food. Right. You're not supposed to like cook your

00:19:09.120 food. Um, and it's, yeah, it's like, I look at that. It's like food and like your fitness is like the

00:19:13.680 new religion in our kind of secular age. Um, but maybe that's, maybe that's not a bad thing.

00:19:19.800 It's, uh, you have to be careful that you don't head off in a goofy direction and that you, you

00:19:26.020 don't, you know, you, you don't enter the paleo echo echo chamber or the paleo bubble or the vegan

00:19:32.320 bubble. Um, and you still have sort of some feedback with people who disagree with you.

00:19:36.960 Yeah. Um, but yeah, I, I think the similarities are, are right there. And, and in terms of identity,

00:19:44.280 I sort of think of identity as, um, if there aren't people getting a tattoo of, of it, it's not

00:19:53.380 meaningful to a lot of people like nobody. I, I dare you to show me a picture of, of one person

00:20:00.740 who has a South beach diet tattoo on their body. Probably not. Right. But vegans, you'll see vegan

00:20:07.320 tattoos. There are CrossFit tattoos. There are even some paleo tattoos. I'm not recommending people go

00:20:13.980 out and get any one of those tattoos. But when you start to see the tattoos cropping up, you're like,

00:20:18.940 Oh, people identify with this because they want to tell the world. It's so important to them that

00:20:23.380 they'll permanently put it on their skin to broadcast it to the world that, that it matters to them.

00:20:28.300 All right. Um, let's go off into a direction because you, you touch on this in the book,

00:20:33.780 um, but people often are either wary of talking about it, um, or they're just not interested in

00:20:40.220 it. Um, I've known from your reading your blog, hunter gatherer, um, you talk about masculinity

00:20:47.880 and like, you know, incorporating how, how is our ancestral past affected gender and how can we

00:20:54.460 incorporate those things into today's world? Um, so the first thing I want to talk about

00:20:58.740 is violence. Okay. It's a very masculine thing, right? Um, studies show that men tend to be more

00:21:05.160 violent, uh, than women. And it's funny when you read like the paleo blogs or the paleo books, 1.00

00:21:10.780 like they always fail to mention violence because, and the thing is that was a big part of human

00:21:15.660 history in the paleolithic, the agricultural, the industrial, like, yeah, I mean, you're more likely

00:21:20.460 to be murdered, uh, than die, you know, a peaceful death. Right. Um, so what role do you think should

00:21:28.180 violence play in a paleo lifestyle or should it even, is that one of those things maybe like it's

00:21:33.480 natural, but it's not good. Um, are there ways to incorporate violence into a paleo lifestyle, 0.89

00:21:39.060 a modern paleo lifestyle? It's a great question. There, there actually was a presentation on this

00:21:44.400 topic by, by Tucker Max actually at a conference, uh, a few years ago. Um, and, and one of the points

00:21:52.600 he made is that with the rise of mixed martial arts, um, and MMA, they've, they've, for example,

00:22:00.460 found that police officers who are trained in a martial art are less likely to, uh, misfire their

00:22:07.740 weapon or, or, uh, have, have something escalate to gunfire, um, than when they're not. So basically

00:22:16.940 somebody who feels confident in their own ability to defend themselves just simply through physical

00:22:23.340 combat is, feels less, uh, need to resort to say using a gun or something like that. So I, I actually

00:22:33.480 think there are a lot of instances where learning a martial art can be incredibly beneficial. The, the,

00:22:39.420 the, the theme, if you look at all the, a lot of the great movies of in martial arts, there's a very

00:22:45.660 simple theme to a lot of them, which is you have a young male boy, a young man who has lots of raw

00:22:52.780 talent, um, physical strength, natural ability, but his problem is that he doesn't know how to control

00:23:00.000 his own strength and he lets his emotions, he's hotheaded. He lets his emotions, you know, take a

00:23:05.340 hold of him. And the teaching of the wise old sensei is, uh, discipline and self-control. And

00:23:12.620 that's what a lot of people don't realize about martial arts and, and other forms of sort of ritualized

00:23:18.200 violence or practice violence is ultimately it teaches you how to control yourself better. Um,

00:23:24.620 not to be a wild shoot from the hip type. Um, so I, I think that's very beneficial,

00:23:31.900 but even just look at the rise of, um, just like, I mean, sports is most men's exposure to ritualized

00:23:41.280 warfare, tribal warfare. One side wears red, one side wears blue face paints, and they pretend to kill

00:23:49.920 each other. Um, and, and, and so I, you know, I do think the rise of CrossFit has benefited from

00:23:56.760 basically creating a sport like atmosphere in, in the gym, in the boxes, as they call it. Um, so I,

00:24:03.820 I think it's incredibly important for men to lift heavy stuff, learn martial arts, get into physicals,

00:24:11.840 you know, some sort of grappling or wrestling. Um, and, and that actually makes you more in control

00:24:19.000 of yourself rather than less. We're going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsors.

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00:25:21.360 to the show. So one thing you talk about as well that we've known from the historical record is that

00:25:26.500 there's, there was a, there's been a division of labor, right? Amongst men and women. In the

00:25:31.300 Paleolithic era, men were the hunters and women primarily gathered. And you talked about your first

00:25:40.080 hunt in the book. Besides, you know, getting a lean source of wild game or protein, was there a

00:25:50.340 psychological benefit to your hunt? Oh, sure. Absolutely. And, and I'm not the first person

00:25:56.560 to write about this, so I don't want to oversell my own experience. Sure. But I, I learned, I learned

00:26:04.020 some guns, I had shot guns before, but I took a gun safety course and, um, and learned, was

00:26:11.700 participated in a demonstration of, of how to field dress a deer. And then I, I joined the, the, the

00:26:18.500 biggest challenge is finding other hunters to go with. Cause it's real hard if it's your first time

00:26:23.720 to just go out into the woods and know what to do. Yeah. I've been, I've been trying to like go

00:26:27.120 hunting like for the past three years and it's hard cause like no one does it anymore. Right. Um, so yeah.

00:26:32.840 And it's an informal tradition. Yeah. Typically passed down from man to man. Exactly. And an

00:26:39.020 extended family. And, and if, if you don't, you know, my father and neither of my grandfathers

00:26:45.080 were hunters. Um, and so I, I never learned it, even though I'm from Michigan and tons of people

00:26:50.180 hunt in Michigan. So I, I basically found some surrogate uncles and, uh, cousins and things like

00:26:57.060 that. And a family friend invited me to go off to a place called deer camp. And it was about 15

00:27:02.460 guys that had been getting together for, for decades. And, and I joined in their tradition

00:27:07.320 and they just, you know, informally taught me everything I need to know. I shot a deer. Uh,

00:27:13.160 it was not a, not a trophy. Um, it was a, it was a male yearling. So I basically shot Bambi.

00:27:22.280 Um, I see all the guys teased me when I, when I got Bambi back to the barn and, uh, and we were, 0.65

00:27:29.960 we were, uh, butchering it, you know, Oh, that's a nice dog you shot there. But what I thought is

00:27:36.520 actual natural predators target the, the sickly, the young and the sickly. So I was just being a

00:27:44.700 natural predator. Yeah. You're harnessing your inner, your inner caveman. Right. That's right.

00:27:48.320 So it's, it, when you, when you kill something yourself, this sounds a little morbid to say, but

00:27:54.100 if, if people grow food themselves, if you grow herbs yourself, the food just tastes better. If

00:28:00.380 you cook it yourself, it just tastes better. It sounds morbid, but if you kill something yourself, 0.93

00:28:05.160 it tastes better. It's a more meaningful meal. And with, with hunting, when you kill something that

00:28:11.980 big, most people are not going to just stick it all in their freezer and just eat it themselves.

00:28:16.520 You share it with other people. And that is a great feeling, particularly if there's a woman there

00:28:21.500 that you like. And you're like, here's some meat. And she's like, hubba hubba. Yeah.

00:28:28.940 The strong provider. It, it, it, it will never go out of style. Never will. Um, so you talk about,

00:28:36.460 kind of related to hunting. So you talk about vegetarianism and why more women typically are 1.00

00:28:43.820 vegetarians. Can you talk a little bit about that? And generally men like to eat meat. I know that's not

00:28:48.480 the case for everybody. So before people like say, Oh, I'm a man and I eat meat or I'm a woman and I

00:28:52.500 eat meat. Generally, uh, women tend to be more women tend to be vegetarians than men. Why is that?

00:28:58.480 So I think it has to do with three things. Um, first is women do tend to have more empathy for

00:29:06.660 other, other living things. And this is just an overwhelming effect when you look at survey data

00:29:12.880 and things like that. Um, and, and, and so when it comes to things like whether we should use

00:29:18.400 animals for medical testing, men are pretty gung ho on it and women tend to tend not so much. So 0.82

00:29:24.940 they tend to be more empathetic. The second thing that plays a big role, which I think is underappreciated

00:29:30.980 is that women tend to have a more sensitive disgust reflex than men do. Um, usually this has been 1.00

00:29:36.940 described as having a quote, weak stomach, which is an inaccurate way to describe it. Um, it's more

00:29:44.020 like a discriminating taste. Our disgust reflex evolved as an intuitive microbiology to keep us

00:29:50.740 away from potential sources of infection, bodily fluids, rotting flesh, corpses, um, things that smell

00:29:58.240 bad, which are usually rotting. Um, and women in the past either would have been pregnant or nursing

00:30:05.220 or carrying a small child for most of, for most of their adult life. Um, and, and so it would have

00:30:12.960 been of paramount importance to avoid infection because pregnant women and small children are 0.61

00:30:19.660 particularly prone to infection. So, um, so women from an evolutionary standpoint, it, it made a lot of 1.00

00:30:26.980 sense for them to get essentially get grossed out easily. So, so you, you're more likely to have a

00:30:34.060 woman be empathetic towards say Bambi. And then, um, somebody sees a video of what actually goes on

00:30:41.900 in a factory farm or reads a book like skinny bitch, which is filled with, uh, triggers of disgust 0.99

00:30:48.060 things like feces or infection or bacteria or blood or corpses. And it triggers the disgust reflex. 0.99

00:30:57.760 And, and, and this can make meat meat rots faster than plants. And so our disgust reflex can, can get

00:31:05.440 triggered by meat. Um, and, and so that makes, can be harnessed to make all meat viscerally

00:31:11.740 revolting. And this is why, for example, um, a lot of vegans and vegetarians, for example, don't eat

00:31:20.960 oysters, even though oysters, uh, don't have much of a nervous system to speak of and are environmentally

00:31:29.920 friendly. Um, you know, they're, and, and very nutritious, they are slimy and gross. They resemble

00:31:37.840 meat too much. And so even though it makes sense on sort of like a, like a logical level, the disgust,

00:31:45.540 it can't get past the disgust reflex very easily. Very interesting. And then real briefly, the,

00:31:51.460 the sort of the third step in the process is our disgust reflex is very closely tied to ideology

00:31:59.220 and morality, probably through a lot of the religious stuff I described around the agricultural

00:32:04.900 age in, in that it, it was, um, avoiding infection, um, outsiders, people with novel pathogens,

00:32:13.480 certain types of sexual behaviors, things like that, um, were closely tied to religious and

00:32:19.120 ideological beliefs. So you start to see eating meat as this black and white sort of yes or no

00:32:26.440 type thing where there's not a lot of shades of gray. So empathy, disgust, ideology, and you end up

00:32:34.660 with, um, a lot of vegetarians and a high proportion of them who are women.

00:32:39.760 Fascinating stuff. Um, let's talk about, I think this is an interesting point you made. So in,

00:32:46.060 in hunter gatherer society, men did the hunting, women did the, um, the gathering, right. Right. Um,

00:32:53.440 and then the agricultural, and for the most part, yeah, there was a hierarchy. Men were sort of the

00:32:57.220 leaders, but you know, some people would argue that it was, there really wasn't a patriarchy,

00:33:01.560 right. So to speak of as we know today, or as people would argue we have today. Um, but then the

00:33:07.640 agricultural revolution happened and we had this surplus of food and we can, we had, you know,

00:33:15.500 we didn't have to worry about hunting anymore. Um, how did that affect gender?

00:33:21.780 So it's, it's complicated. It is complicated. We don't know, particularly for the earliest parts

00:33:29.020 of the paleolithic, it's not exactly clear. Sure. The, the sexual dynamics were, um, since we,

00:33:36.560 you know, we can only compare to other primates and the remains don't tell us too much. So, um,

00:33:42.640 what we basically know is that, um, agricultural societies became very hierarchical. The, the people

00:33:50.700 at the top were men, uh, almost, almost exclusively. And, uh, there were a lot of restrictions on female

00:33:57.920 sexuality, a lot of restrictions on female, on sexuality overall, both men and women, but

00:34:04.120 definitely more on female sexuality and, and women having, you know, fewer rights than men. The, um, 0.91

00:34:12.260 the, what, what I would point out here though, is that even in agricultural society, there were a lot

00:34:18.560 of men on the bottom. There were a lot of, uh, men without women who were, you know, drafted into

00:34:25.460 mil conscripted into militaries forced to fight, you know, and if, if they fled, they would be killed

00:34:31.880 by their superior officers dying of disease, um, in, in military camps going, you know, marching,

00:34:39.820 fighting land wars in Asia. That's not fun. Yeah. Men are disposable. That's right. You only need one 0.99

00:34:46.680 man to impregnate, you know, a whole bunch of women. Thank you, Genghis Khan. Yeah. So do you 0.71

00:34:52.460 know, I, I heard this, uh, question the other day. Um, we know that, uh, one man can impregnate far,

00:35:00.600 far more women, um, than any woman can, can bear children. But do you know which woman, um, and, 1.00

00:35:07.000 and Genghis Khan is, is, is the top of that, but which woman, um, has just as many descendants

00:35:12.560 as Genghis Khan? I have no idea. His mother. That, that, that's a good right there. It's a

00:35:22.240 good, like, bar question. I'm sure she was very proud of it. Oh yeah. I'm sure she was. Um, yeah,

00:35:27.740 that, that's a great point that, uh, men for most of human history have been at the bottom. Um, and

00:35:33.960 it's a select, there's a select few of men who actually enjoy the, who enjoyed the fruits of

00:35:39.480 whatever hierarchy they had. Right. And, and, you know, everybody always looks up at the guys who

00:35:47.080 had the best. And there's no question that the man at the top had it, had the best and their

00:35:51.840 relatives and the landed interests and the nobles and things like that. But, you know, it, when,

00:35:57.820 when you have a pyramid structure, you have a huge, huge base of people at the bottom, both men and

00:36:02.900 women, but men would, would have, you know, be conscripted into militaries and treated as 0.98

00:36:10.400 disposable. And, um, you know, being out, being out farming, um, is, is backbreaking labor and it's,

00:36:21.020 it's not fun at all. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting too. Um, you know, I remember, I forgot what book I

00:36:26.420 was reading this in. It was about a, you know, a modern day hunter gatherer society, right? That's,

00:36:30.680 those still exist. And it's interesting to see the difference between a hunter gatherer society

00:36:35.500 and a, an agricultural society. And like the hunter gatherers, like farming was like women's work. 1.00

00:36:42.100 Like they would just hunt and they, they, when you told them that, Oh yeah, in our country, in our

00:36:47.140 culture, men do the farming. And they'd think like, that is the most ridiculous, that is the most 0.97

00:36:52.500 unmanly thing in the world. Um, and it's funny that that, like, basically for Kate, if you went back

00:36:58.900 to hunter gatherers, like the best life. And I think you mentioned in the book would be like,

00:37:01.760 just kind of hanging out all day, hunting every now and then, and like letting the women do most of 0.99

00:37:06.680 most of the work. Yeah. It's, uh, it's, it's, it's sort of funny. I mean, for in, if, if you can say

00:37:15.980 there's a typical hunter gatherer, paleolithic lifestyle, um, the man spends his day, uh, making

00:37:23.520 weapons, eating, napping, barbecuing ribs, hunting big game, having sex and raiding other villages,

00:37:32.360 which sounds pretty fun to me. I don't know about you, but ribs and hunting and sex and 0.91

00:37:41.580 violence. Uh, no, but I mean, I'm joking a little bit. The, uh, but you know, but some of these,

00:37:50.540 some of these hunter gatherer tribes, from what we can tell from anthropologists, they're not,

00:37:54.240 they're, they're not these idyllic places where the sexes are perfectly equal. You still tend to 1.00

00:38:00.380 see, uh, the top men dominate women and dominate everybody else in these tribes, but they, they do

00:38:06.240 tend to be more egalitarian, um, and where more possessions are shared and there isn't as much

00:38:12.580 hierarchy. Um, so yeah, just fascinating, fascinating stuff. Um, here's a question I have now. I know this

00:38:18.280 is kind of going into dark waters and it's a place where people, you know, it's a lot of hand

00:38:22.880 bringing. So just, okay. And, you know, looking from an ancestral health point of view, how does

00:38:28.060 that affect relations between the sexes? Um, because I know there's a lot of guys in the, like

00:38:32.760 the pickup artist community who, you know, they love to use evolutionary psychology, um, as, you know,

00:38:39.080 to support their, you know, techniques on seducing and picking up women. Um, should we use our 0.98

00:38:46.080 ancestral past to guide our romantic relationships? Well, if evolution can inform any aspect of our

00:38:55.480 lives, so forget the pickup artist community, we can learn a lot about, uh, digestion and sexuality 0.96

00:39:03.320 from looking at human evolution. You just have to do a good job of it. Um, the, you know, when,

00:39:11.400 when, when, if you think about women in dating, they, they do take advantage of a lot of tips

00:39:19.020 essentially from our evolutionary past. It could be, um, using different types of, of, of makeup

00:39:25.600 or eyeshadow to, um, indicate youth or a pushup bra, uh, to indicate youth or high heels to accentuate

00:39:36.040 the, you know, the, the butt and, and the breasts and, and the shape of, of the body. Um, so I, I think

00:39:43.760 both sexes have, have been in sort of intuitively doing this for a long time. The thing with men is

00:39:50.160 that, um, if female sexual, male sexuality is fairly, particularly for short-term hookups is fairly

00:39:59.240 straightforward. Men can get turned on, not, not even just by nudity, but by an expansive ankle,

00:40:06.040 you know, like, Oh, right. I'm ready to go. Like you show me the right woman's ankle and I am,

00:40:11.460 you know, steam ahead. Right. And, um, some women sometimes are like that in the right circumstances, 1.00

00:40:20.340 but a lot require sort of more, um, more displays of status or intelligence or humor or resources or

00:40:31.280 physical strength or kindness or, you know, this, a broader suite of traits that are a little bit

00:40:38.000 more complicated and a little bit more difficult to, to just sort of figure out if you're the average

00:40:45.320 guy. So, so what I do think can be beneficial about some of the pickup stuff is you basically,

00:40:50.320 have a bunch of guys out there who are experimenting on themselves, trying to figure out what

00:40:57.960 attracts women where, where I think you can get off the rails a little bit is when it only focuses 1.00

00:41:04.000 on short-term stuff in clubs. You know, like I don't, I rarely go to clubs. I occasionally end up

00:41:10.780 there, but I'm not like gunning to like get some lines for the girls at the clubs, but, you know, I've, 0.98

00:41:17.960 I've learned some things like here's something that's so simple, but, but it took me until my

00:41:23.740 twenties to realize it. Prior to this, I was not unsuccessful with women. I was successful with 1.00

00:41:30.380 women, but even in New York, something as simple as, okay, if, if you've gotten someone's number and 0.97

00:41:36.860 you're going to go out to drinks or have dinner or something, it's, it's okay for the guy to just

00:41:42.180 pick a place and say, here's a place, here's a time, does this work? And, and just assert it and

00:41:48.860 then confirm that it's okay. I used to spend back and forth on the phone and over email, what type of

00:41:56.100 cuisine and what neighborhood and what price range, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, basically looking to

00:42:01.980 her for affirmation about what the choice should be. And it, and it never ended. It just kept going

00:42:07.560 back and forth and back and forth. And once I basically said, Oh, wait a second. Uh, a lot of

00:42:12.720 women prefer assertiveness and men. And so I would assert something, but women are adults, right? And

00:42:19.780 adults. If, if I choose a place that is inconvenient or an incorrect time, or she's allergic to everything

00:42:25.060 in the restaurant, she's an adult. She can say, actually, that doesn't work. How about this?

00:42:29.560 Yeah. So I think there are things like that where, where it can be totally helpful and healthy.

00:42:34.500 Yeah. So just, yeah, just don't go out, you know, get inspiration or not inspiration,

00:42:39.200 I guess, learn from our ancestral past, learn from evolution, but like, don't go bonkers with it.

00:42:43.720 Well, and, and same with food. It just, just, I'm not trying to go live in the wild. I'm not trying

00:42:49.740 to go mimic everything about how they used to be. And I don't even know how everything used to be.

00:42:54.780 Um, what I do know is that I can borrow, um, you know, certain key tips and tricks and integrate it

00:43:01.120 into my life today with my modern goal. And I do that with, with the female stuff too. It's like, 0.94

00:43:06.060 okay, you know, for, for a lot of guys, it boils down to, uh, first and foremost, be confident

00:43:14.620 or live a life where you have reason to be confident and are confident. Um, be physically fit,

00:43:21.960 uh, be, uh, you know, productive and excel in whatever you do and, you know, live a life where

00:43:30.460 you have interesting stories and, and tell them in humorous and charismatic ways and have good,

00:43:37.780 good friendships with, you know, with other people who are doing the same thing. I, you know,

00:43:42.320 sometimes I think people overcomplicate it.

00:43:44.020 Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, I think they, they overcomplicate, you know, not only the,

00:43:48.380 like the relationship thing, but like paleo, they, you know, overcomplicate it. And I think,

00:43:54.040 yeah, it's just be some, you know, just take it easy. Right. I think that's the best philosophy to

00:43:58.800 go. Um, let's talk about this. How has, you know, how long have you been doing this whole paleo thing?

00:44:03.440 Cause I remember, I remember watching you on the Colbert report a while back ago. So how long has it

00:44:08.140 been since you've been doing this? So I actually started going paleo in September of 2006. So it's been a

00:44:14.900 little over seven years. And I mean, that's a while I, uh, and I've done it with varying degrees

00:44:23.540 of quote strictness and different regimens and, you know, things, you know, 80%, a hundred percent,

00:44:29.600 75%. Um, so there's been some variation, but yeah, about seven years. And how has it made you a better

00:44:36.520 man overall? Well, the, the, the first thing is that, um, a lot of it was mood and confidence level.

00:44:46.240 I would spike and crash a lot, uh, at my first desk job. And even before that, I went through a

00:44:52.300 breakup in college where my mood was all over the place. And if I got too little sleep, um,

00:44:59.500 and had been drinking heavily the night before, it was like the world was coming to an end.

00:45:03.740 And if, if I got enough sleep and exercise, it wasn't such a big deal. And it just blew my mind

00:45:11.640 that my outlook on a relationship could be so influenced by what I had for lunch or whether

00:45:17.200 I was physically healthy or not. So a large part of it was, um, basically by, by making my body healthy,

00:45:26.340 I became a, my mind became, my confidence became more even and higher. Um, and, and basically I

00:45:34.420 sort of evened out and became more solid. I think. That's awesome. Um, our, our time is coming to an

00:45:41.520 end. I mean, we could talk, I mean, there's so much to talk about. Um, but, uh, last question,

00:45:46.400 uh, I always like to leave off with, uh, some sort of like practical stuff that guys can do right now.

00:45:51.940 Um, is, so what, in your opinion, what are like two or three things that a guy can do today? Who's

00:45:58.300 listening to this podcast that they can do today to start incorporating a paleo lifestyle that'll

00:46:02.800 have the most payoff? Well, with, um, in terms of diet, the, the, the big thing is, uh, trying to

00:46:12.600 avoid grains for a period of time. So take a month, uh, dairy, a lot of people remove dairy. Some people

00:46:19.240 add it back in, there's more disagreement, but, um, if you want to try it, try it for a month,

00:46:24.960 see how you do. Um, intermittent fasting is another great thing to try. It also raises your

00:46:30.580 testosterone levels. Um, and, and, and so going periods of 18 to 24 hours every week or two,

00:46:38.680 and just have some water or some tea or something like that, um, is really beneficial. Lifting heavy,

00:46:44.660 you know, no surprise there, but lifting heavy is good for testosterone and makes you feel strong

00:46:50.420 and confident afterwards. Um, I love cold exposure. Initially I hated it. And the idea of a cold shower

00:46:59.180 jumping, you know, into the ocean in the winter or a cold pool or something like that was completely

00:47:05.120 off putting. Um, but I love alternating between a sauna or a steam room and doing some cold exposure

00:47:10.860 that also raises your testosterone. Um, so, so really starting to get in touch with the wild animal

00:47:20.120 inside of you. Right. Um, just, uh, men in particular, I mean, we have evolved to move and we have evolved

00:47:31.420 to fight and we have evolved to rough house, you know, as boys, and we have to respect that. We don't have

00:47:39.020 to let it become violence in the way that it did before, but sitting on the couch is not a solution,

00:47:46.860 uh, with our, you know, with our hands tied behind our back, uh, growing fat and obese. So, um,

00:47:53.740 getting, get in touch with your inner animal. I love it. Well, John Durant, thank you so much for your

00:47:58.880 time. Fascinating discussion. Thanks, Brett. I had, I had fun. Our guest today was John Durant. John is

00:48:04.660 the author of the paleo manifesto ancient wisdom for lifelong health. And you can find that on

00:48:09.660 amazon.com. And you can also follow John at hunter gatherer.com where he blogs about the paleo

00:48:15.460 lifestyle. Interesting, interesting stuff. Recommend you check it out. Well, that wraps up another

00:48:24.440 edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice. Make sure to check out the

00:48:29.080 art of manliness website at art of manliness.com. And until next time, stay man.

The Art of Manliness - April 04, 2014

Episode #56： The Paleo Manifesto With John Durant

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