Episode #56： The Paleo Manifesto With John Durant
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode of the Art of Manliness podcast, Brett sits down with John Durant to discuss his new book, "The Paleo Manifesto: Ancient Wisdom for Lifelong Health," and the benefits of living like a modern day caveman.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Well, if you
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haven't been living under a rock these past few years, you probably have heard of the
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paleo lifestyle, which is this idea that we should look to evolution and specifically our
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hunter-gatherer past to inform our health decisions. So we should look to how our caveman
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ancestors ate, how they exercised and how they moved, how they slept. And then by doing those
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things, we'll have optimal health. Very popular idea. Lots of books, blogs about how to live
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paleo and the arguments on why it's beneficial. And our guest today is one of the figures who
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have, uh, who's done a lot to popularize and, uh, bring this out to the mainstream. His name's
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John Durant. Uh, he blog blogs at huntergatherer.com. Uh, a few years ago, the New York times did a piece
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on him and other New Yorkers who are living the paleo lifestyle in the middle of New York city.
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Uh, Stephen Colbert, the Colbert bear report had him on his show interviewing about how he's living
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like a modern day caveman in the 21st century. Anyways, John has come out with a book called the
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paleo manifesto, ancient wisdom for lifelong health, where he makes a case for the, the paleo
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lifestyle. And what I find interesting about John's book is he doesn't just focus on our hunter
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gatherer past. Uh, he also makes the argument. There's things we can learn about how to have
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optimal health, um, from other stages of human development. Um, for example, when we went through
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the agriculture, agricultural revolution, there were, he makes the argument, there were cultural
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adaptations that can help us have better health, um, from that time period. And he also makes the
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argument. There's things from the industrial revolution and the information age that we can
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take to have lifelong health. So it's just a fascinating reading. It doesn't just focus on
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how to eat like a caveman. He focuses on sort of a holistic view of, uh, the paleo lifestyle or just,
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you know, using evolution to inform how to make healthy decisions, um, for ourselves.
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So it's an interesting podcast. I think you, if you are familiar with the paleo lifestyle,
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you're going to find some new insights that you might not have heard of. If you're sort of new to
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it, never heard of it. I think you'll, it's a great introduction to, to it and a great starting
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point. So stay tuned. All right, John Durant, welcome to the show. Thanks. Good to be here.
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All right. So, um, paleo manifesto is your book. Uh, you publish this book in a time when like the
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market is just saturated with paleo stuff. There's like paleo blogs, there's paleo books,
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there's like businesses helping you live paleo lifestyle. Like you'll learn how to eat like a
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caveman, exercise like a caveman. I think I've even seen an article, like how to poop like a caveman.
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Um, with all the saturation, how did you differentiate the paleo manifesto from all
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the stuff that's out there about the paleo lifestyle?
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Well, first it's not a diet book. And a lot of the books out there are either diet books and
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cookbooks. And those are great for what, for, uh, for, for what they are. But I, when I sat down
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with my agent and was talking to some publishers, um, a few of them wanted me to write a diet book.
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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.
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So, but, but really, what really makes it different is I, I downplay the paleolithic actually,
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even though it's in the title, the paleo manifesto. Um, I, I spend a lot of time talking
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about what we can learn from, uh, other eras of human history, both before the paleolithic
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and after it. Um, and there's a historical element there that I think is missing from,
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from a lot of other paleo books. Um, yeah, that's what we're going to talk about that more
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about the different, how you break down the different age stages of human development.
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Um, one of the things I loved about the paleo manifesto, right? Like you said, it's not
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a diet book and you did a great job, um, navigating and answering a lot of the criticisms levied
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at, you know, the paleo lifestyle. And, you know, one of them that I've heard a lot is
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that, uh, you know, the paleo manifesto or not the paleo manifesto, but the paleo lifestyle
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is like, it rests on this logical fallacy of argumentum ad naturum, right? You know, whatever's
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natural is good. Um, which isn't true, you know, like cancer is natural, but like, we
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don't want cancer. Um, so, and I think you address that in your book a little bit like
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There's, there's the naturalistic fallacy that if something's natural, it's healthy or
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good or moral. There's also a flip side to that called the moralistic fallacy, which
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is just because something is moral or desirable, doesn't make it true. Doesn't make it so.
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So really what, what I tried to do was, um, look at it through a lens of biological realism
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saying, we are trying to understand human nature, uh, how it came to be, what's relatively fixed
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about it and what's relatively flexible, flexible. Cause there's, there's some parts of our lifestyle
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that we can change a lot and it's not going to have a huge impact on our health, um, or
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on, on the rest of our life. But if we're talking about, uh, sugar intake, well, yeah, human nature
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basically means you can't eat tons of refined sugar and, and expect not to have health problems.
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All right. Um, so let's talk, uh, you know, a little bit more about the, the, the stages
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of human development, because yeah, the book's called the paleo manifesto, but you talk about
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the different eras of, uh, of human evolution. And I guess you, it'd be better to call your books
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more about and setting, you know, finding inspiration from our ancestors, like ancestral
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health, uh, is, would be, I think I've heard that term thrown around. Um, so let's go into
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there. Let's talk about the different stages of, uh, you know, human development and why
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is it so important not just to look at the paleolithic era when you're trying to figure
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out how to optimize your health and your psychology?
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Yeah. So when, when you say stages of human development, just for the listeners, um, I
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start chronologically, um, even before the paleolithic, what I call the animal age, and
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it sort of represents our time from the Cambrian explosion. When you start to see, um, lots of
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different types of animal forms enter the fossil record, uh, to the beginning of the paleolithic
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about 2.6 million years ago. Um, and, and, and, and, and what that era represents is really
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our commonality with all these other species and other primates and things like that. You can
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learn a lot about human health, not even by looking at humans, just by looking at, at other
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species. And so I go on a trip to the Cleveland zoo to learn how to keep gorillas healthy in
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captivity. And that introduces an evolutionary approach to say, let's look at the natural
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habitat of a species and then combine it with modern medical technology. Then you get the
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paleolithic age, the agricultural age, the industrial age, and the information age. And each one of
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those chapters has, uh, lessons that I draw from our ancestors and the health challenges that they
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faced. So what are some like lessons you can take from say the paleolithic age?
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Eating frequency, any health issue you want. It could be sun exposure, temperature, eating frequency,
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movement, uh, anything in biology you want. The, the best way to understand it is to put aside humans
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for a moment and just understand it among a variety of different animals and animal species.
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So if it's eating frequency, you can see, oh, well, gorillas eat all day long. Uh, lions eat
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sporadically every three to four days where omnivores were in the middle. Then you, then you go to the
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paleolithic and you say, how did eating frequency evolve in human beings and in our, in our, in hominins,
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you know, pre-human hominins. Okay. Well, we were omnivores and we ate probably a couple,
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few times a day, but not three square meals a day. Well, then you go into the agricultural age
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and things change. Then people became farmers, they settled down, but it was more recent. It was
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within the last 10,000 years. And this is where you sort of modify your understanding of human nature
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based on our cultural experience and, and possibly recent genetic adaptation. So in, if it's eating
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frequency, then, uh, you start to see fasting traditions emerge where you sort of have purposeful
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appetite loss. Um, and then in the industrial age, that's where things really go wrong for a lot of
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folks. We, we change our habitats and how we live in our lifestyle so much that we don't have time to
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adapt either culturally or genetically. This could be eating all day long and having food on demand
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and you get tons of obesity. And then when you think about the information age, where we are now,
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we have the ability to redesign how we live. And, and so the challenge in the information age is,
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is to say, okay, given who I am and the life I have today, how do I construct a habitat and an eating
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frequency based on all this other information that works for me? So that it's a little bit
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long-winded, but that's how I try to incorporate, um, all, all the different evolutionary history that,
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that goes into each one of us. Yeah. I thought that was fascinating. You mentioned fasting, uh,
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sort of an agricultural age adaptation, right? So we had during the agricultural revolution,
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suddenly humans had food available at all times before in the paleolithic, it was a little more
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random. You ate, you know, you had that big score with hunting and then you may have gathered a few
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nuts and berries, right? Um, so the culture adapted to that new environment we found ourselves in.
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And, but you also talk about, um, other cultural responses that happened during the agricultural
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revolution, um, that pretty much like prevented infectious diseases. And you, you use the examples
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of the, uh, ancient Hebrews. Can you talk a little about that? Cause I think it's just complete,
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it's just utterly fascinating. Yeah. It's, it's, it's actually my favorite chapter in the book.
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It's called Moses, the microbiologist and the greatest health challenge that early farmers,
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um, early agriculturalists faced was infectious disease. You had large numbers of people
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and domesticated animals living in close proximity for the first time in early cities.
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No knowledge of hygiene, um, primitive hygienic technology and infectious disease explodes.
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Um, the problem is that germs are invisible and infectious disease is hard to understand how it
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works because germs can spread in so many different ways. So it's around this time when you start to
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see these early, some early religions like Judaism, Zoroastrianism, where hygiene and purity become
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very important parts of ritual practice. Um, the notion of cleanliness and sinfulness were pretty much
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one in the same, um, in, in traditional Judaism. And, and when you actually, you know, a lot of people
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talk about the Bible, but haven't, or the Torah, but haven't actually read it. Um, I went back and read
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the first five books of, of, of the Bible, um, the Torah, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, uh, numbers and
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Deuteronomy. And it's incredible how much disgust plays a role in these purity codes. Uh, um, staying
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away from bodily fluids, concern with any type of sex, pretty much making you unclean, uh, staying away from
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corpses, uh, staying away from insects and vermin, um, and all these different rules that in retrospect,
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um, look like an intuitive understanding of the germ theory of disease. And, and so then I found all
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these papers showing that in the 19th and early 20th century, uh, Jewish folks tended to have a five
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to 10 year life expectancy advantage relative to neighboring Gentiles, primarily due to a lower
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infectious disease burden. So there's this, the whole chapter is about how, when infectious disease
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was our, was our greatest emerges, our greatest health threat, you had these cultural codes that
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emerged in response to help people stay clean, like washing their hands. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it was,
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it was completely just fascinating. And, um, you thought, I think you mentioned how Christianity in some
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ways took us back a little bit in terms of health, because Christianity got rid of that idea. Those
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the, it's the old law, right? It's the dead law. You know, what goes into the body is not, doesn't
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defile. Defile. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Jesus, it's in three gospels. He said, uh, defilement, uh, doesn't
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come from without, it comes from within. Yeah. So he was saying defilement was a, was a spiritual,
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moral, um, uh, state, not a physical state with actual conduct. And one of the, one of the biggest
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disagreements he had with the Pharisees was over hand washing. He and his father, Jesus and his
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followers did not wash their hands before eating something by the way, that pretty much every modern
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Christian in, in, in the developer world at least does, or at least we hope, we hope we all do. Um,
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and, and Jesus was saying, you all are so obsessed with these rituals, but it's getting in the way of
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loving your neighbor. And, and so basically, um, all, all of these hygiene rules, there are hundreds of
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them. They're complicated. You have to memorize them all. You have to follow them getting circumcised,
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um, not using cookware and dishes that belong to a Gentile, um, uh, contact with other things that
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are unclean. It makes it very hard to go out and interact with people who don't believe the same
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thing you do. So basically Jesus's great innovation was he got rid of the purity code and kept some of
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the moral beliefs and universalized them. But basically this sends Christianity into a direction
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where hygiene and hygienic practices aren't as emphasized. And it, and then eventually you get
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the, you get the black death where you have Christians dying in large numbers, uh, throughout
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Western Europe, um, and people all throughout the world. But, um, but then Jews were observed to be
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dying at a lower rate and were persecuted for this, but observant Jews would have been washing their
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hands, uh, staying away from insects and vermin. And the black death was spread by fleas on rats,
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um, protecting their water supply, bathing, washing their clothes and avoiding corpses.
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So if you went back in time and had to advise people during the black death on what to do,
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Yeah. Very, very interesting. And so I want to take this to the modern day. Um, cause you,
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you talk about this a little bit in your book as well. Um, so one of the criticism, I've levied
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this criticism towards like the paleo people and like CrossFitters is that like, they're almost,
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they're like, they're like a religion, right? They're very cult-like they got their, their,
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their, you know, their uniform, their ritual clothing to put on their compression socks. Um,
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you know, they, they talk about their box as sort of like this temple. Um, they're very,
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you know, fastidious about what they eat. All right. And like the goal is to out paleo
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the other guy, sort of like how Orthodox Jews, the way you gave status in that community is being
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more Orthodox than the next guy. Um, and they get, I mean, that's one of the reasons like they're easy
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targets. Like, man, you guys are sort of cultish. Um, but you kind of, um, argue that's not,
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that's not a bad thing. And maybe this is a cultural response, a cultural adaptation.
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To our, a new environment that we live in. Well, here's how I see it. The, we live in the
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most sedentary and obese era in all of human history. And, and so we, we need more fitness
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cults. It doesn't just have to be CrossFit and it doesn't just have to be paleo, but boy,
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we could use a lot more fitness cults because I don't know if you've walked around outside lately,
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but the country needs it. We all need it. I need it. And, um, but you, it's a, it's a really
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interesting comparison and, and it speaks to the power of ritual and, and habit making
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and, and that ritual having a functional health benefit. I mean, you, again, you go back to
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Judaism or other, or early Christianity, and there were a set of actions that you were supposed
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to take that would have functional benefits in your life. Um, in Christianity, this is often referred
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to as a prosperity gospel in Judaism, the notion of everyday actions and cleanliness, which we just
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talked about would have, would have provided a huge health benefit. Um, and different times call
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for different measures. And now the challenge is, uh, motivating people on a regular basis to move
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and to eat relatively healthy. And, and, you know, so, so ritual community, um, are really important
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aspects of that. And geez, that sounds a heck of a lot like religion. Yeah, it really does. And it's
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because like, it's, you know, you form your identity around it, right? Right. Like people, you know,
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it's not just CrossFit or, uh, you know, paleo, but like vegetarianism, which you talk about, that's,
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that's like a new identity. Right. And they treat it like a religion almost like, or like, not almost.
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Yeah. And we'll talk about that. Or like, you know, the whole, um, whole food, right? Like you're
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supposed to like, like, what's it called? Bio bio. There's like a word for it. I forgot. I can't
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remember. You just like get like, yeah. Or like raw food. Right. You're not supposed to like cook your
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food. Um, and it's, yeah, it's like, I look at that. It's like food and like your fitness is like the
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new religion in our kind of secular age. Um, but maybe that's, maybe that's not a bad thing.
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It's, uh, you have to be careful that you don't head off in a goofy direction and that you, you
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don't, you know, you, you don't enter the paleo echo echo chamber or the paleo bubble or the vegan
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bubble. Um, and you still have sort of some feedback with people who disagree with you.
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Yeah. Um, but yeah, I, I think the similarities are, are right there. And, and in terms of identity,
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I sort of think of identity as, um, if there aren't people getting a tattoo of, of it, it's not
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meaningful to a lot of people like nobody. I, I dare you to show me a picture of, of one person
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who has a South beach diet tattoo on their body. Probably not. Right. But vegans, you'll see vegan
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tattoos. There are CrossFit tattoos. There are even some paleo tattoos. I'm not recommending people go
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out and get any one of those tattoos. But when you start to see the tattoos cropping up, you're like,
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Oh, people identify with this because they want to tell the world. It's so important to them that
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they'll permanently put it on their skin to broadcast it to the world that, that it matters to them.
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All right. Um, let's go off into a direction because you, you touch on this in the book,
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um, but people often are either wary of talking about it, um, or they're just not interested in
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it. Um, I've known from your reading your blog, hunter gatherer, um, you talk about masculinity
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and like, you know, incorporating how, how is our ancestral past affected gender and how can we
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incorporate those things into today's world? Um, so the first thing I want to talk about
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is violence. Okay. It's a very masculine thing, right? Um, studies show that men tend to be more
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violent, uh, than women. And it's funny when you read like the paleo blogs or the paleo books,
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like they always fail to mention violence because, and the thing is that was a big part of human
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history in the paleolithic, the agricultural, the industrial, like, yeah, I mean, you're more likely
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to be murdered, uh, than die, you know, a peaceful death. Right. Um, so what role do you think should
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violence play in a paleo lifestyle or should it even, is that one of those things maybe like it's
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natural, but it's not good. Um, are there ways to incorporate violence into a paleo lifestyle,
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a modern paleo lifestyle? It's a great question. There, there actually was a presentation on this
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topic by, by Tucker Max actually at a conference, uh, a few years ago. Um, and, and one of the points
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he made is that with the rise of mixed martial arts, um, and MMA, they've, they've, for example,
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found that police officers who are trained in a martial art are less likely to, uh, misfire their
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weapon or, or, uh, have, have something escalate to gunfire, um, than when they're not. So basically
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somebody who feels confident in their own ability to defend themselves just simply through physical
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combat is, feels less, uh, need to resort to say using a gun or something like that. So I, I actually
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think there are a lot of instances where learning a martial art can be incredibly beneficial. The, the,
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the, the theme, if you look at all the, a lot of the great movies of in martial arts, there's a very
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simple theme to a lot of them, which is you have a young male boy, a young man who has lots of raw
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talent, um, physical strength, natural ability, but his problem is that he doesn't know how to control
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his own strength and he lets his emotions, he's hotheaded. He lets his emotions, you know, take a
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hold of him. And the teaching of the wise old sensei is, uh, discipline and self-control. And
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that's what a lot of people don't realize about martial arts and, and other forms of sort of ritualized
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violence or practice violence is ultimately it teaches you how to control yourself better. Um,
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not to be a wild shoot from the hip type. Um, so I, I think that's very beneficial,
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but even just look at the rise of, um, just like, I mean, sports is most men's exposure to ritualized
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warfare, tribal warfare. One side wears red, one side wears blue face paints, and they pretend to kill
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each other. Um, and, and, and so I, you know, I do think the rise of CrossFit has benefited from
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basically creating a sport like atmosphere in, in the gym, in the boxes, as they call it. Um, so I,
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I think it's incredibly important for men to lift heavy stuff, learn martial arts, get into physicals,
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you know, some sort of grappling or wrestling. Um, and, and that actually makes you more in control
00:24:19.000
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time purchasing, use code ART15 at checkout to save 15% off on your first purchase. And now back
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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,
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,
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
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
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
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
00:30:19.660
particularly prone to infection. So, um, so women from an evolutionary standpoint, it, it made a lot of
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
00:30:48.060
things like feces or infection or bacteria or blood or corpses. And it triggers the disgust reflex.
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,
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
00:34:46.680
man to impregnate, you know, a whole bunch of women. Thank you, Genghis Khan. Yeah. So do you
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,
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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,
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
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,
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
00:41:30.380
women, but even in New York, something as simple as, okay, if, if you've gotten someone's number and
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,
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,
00:43:44.020
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.