MICHAEL EASTER | The Comfort Crisis (Ep. 285)

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1:00 [Music]

1:18 This is Undaunted Life of Man's Podcast, I'm your host Kyle Thompson.

1:23 Let's get into it.

1:24 Hi guys, today I have a very special guest on the podcast.

1:26 His name is Michael Easter.

1:27 So Michael is a professor in the journalism department at UNLV,

1:31 and he also co-founded and co-directs the Public Communications Institute,

1:34 which is a think tank at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas.

1:37 And he's also the author of the best-selling book, The Comfort Crisis.

1:41 Embrace discomfort to reclaim your wild, happy, healthy self.

1:44 So this book was absolutely fantastic.

1:47 I just read it here recently, even though it's been out for a little bit.

1:49 But in this book, the things he was learning about comfort and why he's comfortable,

1:54 why he's drawn to comfort, and a life of comfort, and why all of us as Americans,

1:57 and really all of us in modernity are drawn towards comfort,

2:00 and how that's really not a good thing for us.

2:02 And this all kind of led him to do a 33-day caribou hunt in the Alaskan backcountry.

2:08 And in the book, he goes into all the detail and in this interview,

2:11 we go into a ton of detail on that.

2:12 But the interesting thing about this book is it's very similar to another book,

2:15 which I absolutely love, which is called Professor in the Cage.

2:18 And so that's a book where this college professor decides he wants to try MMA,

2:21 and then he eventually wants to do a fight.

2:23 And that by itself would have been just good enough, a cool story.

2:26 But he goes into all these other different areas of research in terms of why we like fighting,

2:32 and why we fight ourselves, and all those interesting things,

2:35 and all the health stuff that goes into that.

2:37 Michael did the same thing with this book, because if it was just a hunting memoir,

2:42 or this great hunting story, that's cool enough.

2:44 A lot of us would listen to that, we would read that, those types of things.

2:47 But he gets into a lot of ideas about nutrition.

2:50 He talks about this Japanese concept of a Misogi,

2:52 which is kind of this extreme thing that you do to help bust yourself out of this comfort.

2:57 Some of the issues we're having physiologically and socially

3:00 with our inability to fill discomfort and modernity.

3:03 So we get into all of that here in this interview.

3:06 And also that book even caught the attention of a guy named Joe Rogan.

3:09 I don't know if you've heard of this guy, he's kind of been in the news here recently.

3:12 But Michael appeared on the Joe Rogan experience episode 1649 back in May of 2021.

3:17 I'll put that in the show notes.

3:18 But it's just a really awesome concept that this guy was able to uncover

3:22 that a lot of people haven't really thought of.

3:23 And it's really led to some really cool things that he could do.

3:26 He's spoken to or consulted for various top tier universities and medical schools,

3:30 Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and some of the country's largest nonprofits.

3:35 But his work has also appeared in a ton of magazines.

3:37 So Men's Health, and he's actually a contributing editor there.

3:40 Outside magazine, Men's Journal, Cosmo, Vice, Esquire, Scientific American,

3:44 even women's health, even though this is a man's podcast.

3:47 But this guy's work has appeared everywhere because I think he's uncovered something

3:50 that a lot of people didn't want to deal with, which is, hey,

3:52 this modern, you know, pole towards being comfortable is not the greatest thing for.

3:56 So guys, awesome interview.

3:57 I really, really enjoyed it.

3:58 I think you will as well.

3:59 But without further ado, let's get into it.

4:01 Michael Easter, welcome to Undaunted Life of Man's podcast.

4:05 Hey, thanks for having me.

4:07 Hey, I've been anxious for this interview because I just got through reading your book

4:10 not that long ago.

4:11 And it had been on my list for a while.

4:13 So I'm glad I finally took it down.

4:14 But before we really dig into the book, you wrote an entire book about the benefits of

4:19 kind of spurning comfort and instead embracing discomfort, right?

4:24 So I guess that's the best, most basic way to describe it.

4:27 And much, much more on that here in a bit.

4:29 But by means of introduction, give us an idea of what you and your life was like prior to

4:34 your journey of fighting against comfort.

4:36 And there was a quote from your book that I felt like maybe encapsulates what your life

4:40 might be like, and it was this, "Most of my mental energy was spent toggling back and

4:44 forth between being drunk and obsessing over the next drink."

4:48 So give us a sense of who Michael was before we get into the journey that you talk about in the book.

4:53 Yeah, totally.

4:54 So I'm a health journalist by trade.

4:57 And I was at the time working for Men's Health Magazine, which obviously everyone's heard of.

5:03 But sort of my bigger back story is that I come from this long line of men that are just

5:08 hell on wheels when they drink.

5:10 So like the Easter name is well known in the Idaho jail and prison system.

5:15 You know, like, there's just way too many crazy family stories.

5:18 One of the best ones I was at, my cousin gets thrown into the drunk tank and he wakes up

5:25 and he's there with my uncle.

5:27 And this was unplanned.

5:28 This is like an impromptu family reunion.

5:30 They're both in there together like, "Oh, hey!"

5:32 So I was sort of walking that same line.

5:36 Basically, I like to drink.

5:39 And when I started to drink, I drank more.

5:41 It's like I always like to say my most favorite drink was the next one, you know?

5:47 And that worked for a while.

5:50 I think what drinking did for me is that it just made me comfortable no matter what was going on.

5:55 It relieves stress, makes you more comfortable around people.

5:59 It's just like kind of like a pressure release valve, you know?

6:05 And but once you keep doing that, especially when you drink the way I do,

6:08 your life starts to just like fall apart, you know?

6:11 And I tried to quit drinking tons and tons of times.

6:15 But one day for whatever reason, things eventually just got bad enough.

6:21 And I kind of had this moment where I could see that if I kept doing this comfortable thing,

6:27 even though it was ruining my life, it was going to be the path I knew.

6:30 It's more comfortable.

6:31 I could keep drinking.

6:32 But it was eventually going to kill me.

6:34 Now, as I write in the book, I didn't know that if I was going to die at like 35, 55, 75,

6:42 I had no idea.

6:42 I just knew that it was going to end me early, right?

6:45 Or I could take this more uncomfortable path, which I realized, you know,

6:49 try and get sober.

6:51 I had no clue what that would entail.

6:52 I had no clue if I could even do it.

6:54 I knew it was going to be terrible in every single way.

6:57 But that's the path I took.

7:00 And by getting sober and going through that crazy discomfort, not just like physically,

7:06 as your body starts to like get rid of stuff, but also psychologically, because like,

7:10 that's the main thing.

7:10 It's like you've had this thing that has worked and sort of your life has revolved around forever,

7:16 and then you just remove that.

7:17 So now you've got to relearn life and how to live it, right?

7:19 That's pretty uncomfortable.

7:20 But by going through that, my life got better like in every single way.

7:24 Yeah.

7:25 And I think that's the thing that people don't really understand is when they go through

7:28 something hard and I was even just listening to a podcast today that was talking about people

7:31 that were trying to come off opioids or people trying to come off alcohol.

7:34 It's not just this cold turkey thing, depending upon how much you're abusing those substances.

7:38 But really all that ties nicely into the book, which is called the comfort crisis,

7:42 embrace discomfort to reclaim your wild, happy, healthy self.

7:46 And so, you know, we're very, very comfortable in modernity, right?

7:49 And we've worked really, really hard so that we can be this fat and this comfortable and more

7:54 about fatties here in just a minute.

7:55 Sorry if I've offended anybody right from the beginning.

7:57 I'm doing that so people don't get mad at you for anything you say.

8:00 So I'm doing your solid here.

8:01 I guess for us as humans, and you can flow on this in whatever direction you want,

8:05 we're very, very comfortable.

8:06 We like the idea of being comfortable, but it's a problem for us that we seek comfort.

8:11 So why is it such a problem for humans to seek comfort?

8:15 It seems like it should be a positive thing, right?

8:17 Yeah.

8:18 And I don't even, I don't know if it's a problem.

8:21 It's, I think it's what's happened is that it's a problem today.

8:23 So you need to start, okay, well, why do we always want to be comfortable?

8:27 Why do we want to do the next easiest thing?

8:29 And this is because as humans evolved, we lived in these uncomfortable, harsh, rough landscapes,

8:36 right?

8:36 There was like never enough food.

8:38 It was always too hot or too cold.

8:40 We had to find shelter.

8:41 We were up against like wild animals.

8:43 So doing the next most comfortable thing gave us a survival advantage, right?

8:47 It told us to overeat when we had the opportunity.

8:49 It told us to avoid risk at all costs, avoid failure at all costs, hunker down, sit around,

8:55 be lazy, on and on and on.

8:57 This made sense for millions of years, right?

9:01 But today we have, and it's a good thing, we've come up with all this technology and innovations

9:08 that have essentially removed discomfort from our lives.

9:11 And again, that's great.

9:12 People are living longer than ever.

9:14 We have all these great things.

9:16 But at the same time, we still have this drive to always be comfortable and a really comfortable

9:20 world.

9:20 So we're still, we still have this drive to be lazy when we can be lazy and we don't

9:24 have to work for our food anymore, right?

9:26 We avoid all risk when risk today isn't like going into the wild to earn your dinner.

9:31 It's like, ah, should I make this business decision or whatever, right?

9:34 And so this backfires and you can tie a lot of like the, not only the big physical problems we

9:41 now have, stuff like obesity, the diseases that come from it, but also a lot of psychological

9:47 problems that we now have because we don't, because we don't have any real risk in our

9:51 life, we're never really shown what we're capable of.

9:53 And this seems to be related to a lot of the anxieties that you have in modern society today.

9:58 I mean, anxiety is the highest it's ever been, human history and depression, right?

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10:31 Well, it's, it's incredibly high and most people don't know why.

10:35 And for, for some people, they would say, oh, well, there's a God shaped hole or we,

10:38 we have too much stimuli.

10:38 There's too many things.

10:39 There's too many buzzing.

10:40 But I mean, you brought this up, but in the book, you talk about sarcopenia.

10:43 I think it's how you say it, but it's this condition that's kind of this modern thing

10:47 where there's loss of muscle mass and function.

10:49 And humans now in modernity are being known for our fatness and lack of fitness when I could

10:54 literally go on my phone right now and get almost any workout program and any diet program

11:00 for free.

11:00 And yet people just don't want to do it.

11:02 But there's something else.

11:04 There's another phenomenon here that I thought was really interesting that you brought up in

11:06 the book. You talk about the work of David Lavari.

11:09 And he made, you made this point in the book.

11:10 The Lavari called this prevalence induced concept change, essentially problem creep.

11:16 It explains that, that as we experience fewer problems, we don't become more satisfied.

11:21 We just lower our threshold for what we consider a problem.

11:24 We end up with the same number of troubles, except our new problems are progressively

11:29 more hollow.

11:31 So as soon as I read that section, the first things that came to mind, Michael, were

11:35 microaggressions, canceling people for things that they said or did before we were even

11:40 born. People that have been dead for decades or centuries, people calling things racist that

11:45 clearly aren't racist. Like our bar for things that are offensive is so incredibly low.

11:51 That's how I took it. I don't know if that's the point that you were making, but it seems

11:54 like that's connected, no?

11:55 Oh, it's totally connected. I mean, I think it extends to a lot of different domains,

11:59 like exactly what you're talking about, you're totally correct.

12:01 But it explains first world problems, basically. As your problems become, your brain is still

12:08 seeking problems all the time. But our world is continuously getting better and better and better.

12:13 I mean, I think we can all agree that over the last 100, 200, 300 years, the world is clearly better.

12:21 Right. The last 20 years, I mean, it's so easy.

12:24 Yeah, totally. I mean, again, we're less likely to die at any given moment. We have

12:31 way more food than we need. Most people now have a house, live in climate control. People

12:37 have access to vehicles. We don't have to walk places. The world is clearly better.

12:41 But the human brain doesn't really look back at these longer timescales, right? We just kind of

12:46 look at like whatever problem we perceive in the moment. And so when you pull people, for example,

12:53 only 6% of Americans think that the world is improving. 6%. And that's because of this feature

12:58 that we're talking about in our brain. So what this does is this just gives us a lack of perspective

13:02 about how good we have it in the grand scheme of time and space, which we do. And if you can

13:08 understand that, it almost becomes hilarious. Just like how spoiled we are today. And yet,

13:13 what do we do, right? We [inaudible] about microaggressions. We [inaudible] about the fact that like there was

13:18 traffic on our way to like getting coffee or like we had to wait five extra minutes at a restaurant.

13:23 And it's just it's just absurd. It's like makes people completely insufferable. And I'm not at all

13:28 saying that like, I don't have my own moments of insufferability. Like surely I do. But when I can

13:34 remember this, right, that just like changes the game. Like it totally changes the game and just

13:40 like, oh yeah, this is hilarious. Like I'm at a restaurant. I'm about to eat like 2000 calories

13:45 and whatever it's warm in here. There's water, right? I'm not having to worry about like some

13:50 wild animal attacking me as I'm trying to get my food. Like it's absurd how amazing things are

13:55 today. And yet here we are just all complaining. Well, Michael, the funny thing about it is, you

13:59 know, you've played 20 questions with somebody. It's like, Hey, which favorite color if you can,

14:03 you know, live anywhere in the world? Where would you live? But when people are like,

14:05 if you could go back and live at any point in history, what time would you want to go to?

14:09 And some people are like, I would want to experience ancient Greece or ancient Rome or the roaring

14:14 20s. And I'm like, I would want to be yesterday, like yesterday or today. That's where exactly

14:19 what I would want to be. Because you know what I don't want to get surgery in the roaring 20s or

14:23 dental work or any of those types of things like, are you out of your mind? I would want to visit.

14:28 I'd like to pop into ancient Rome, walk around the Colosseum and then, you know, kind of come back.

14:32 But you wouldn't want to stay there. And I think that's an interesting point that you bring up in

14:36 the book as well. But go ahead. Well, the hilarious thing is that when people like, let's say you

14:40 throw out ancient Rome or the Greeks, right? What they're picturing is that they are going to be the

14:46 like 0.001% of the population that was the ruler, right? And not the 99.99% of the population that

14:55 had to toil in the fields for like a piece of bread or two a day and died at like 25 years old.

15:02 Right. So it's just like, there's just complete misconception about what a person's life was like

15:07 in the past. Right. Well, I don't even know anyone now because it would be ridiculous for

15:13 someone to not name their child once they were born. There are some people that wait until they

15:17 see the kid because they're like, I don't want to name the kid Michael. What if it doesn't look like

15:20 a Michael, you know, that type of a thing? Back in Roman times that, you know, in the first two or

15:24 three years of a child's life, they wouldn't even give it a name a lot of times because they were

15:28 almost certain the kid was likely going to die. And so it's like, you don't name something that

15:33 you're going to assume is not going to be with you for very long. So yeah, I'm right there with you.

15:38 But I do want to get into right now, the concept or really, we'll get into the concept of Misso Guy

15:43 here in just a second or Misogi, whatever it's pronounced as you'll correct me here in a second.

15:47 But it seems like your life changed forever in 2017 when you met some crazy dude named Donnie

15:53 Vincent. Okay. So just briefly introduce our audience to him if they're not aware of who Donnie is.

15:59 And Donnie is the guy that actually took you in your first real outdoorsy hunting trip, right?

16:04 Yeah. Okay. So who's Donnie? So Donnie is this his name is Donnie Vincent. He is a backcountry

16:10 bow hunter and filmmaker. And to sort of understand him, you need to understand that like he's not

16:16 making the type of hunting documentaries that you would see on the outdoor channel. He's making

16:22 these documentaries that are more like planet Earth, but they also have hunting in them, right? So

16:27 it's like they're just like beautiful and amazing. And I think he's telling a lot different story

16:31 about hunting. So he will go into the world's most remote, dangerous places for like months at

16:36 a time to hunt a single animal, right? And he's really thinking about hunting in a different way,

16:42 sort of, you know, thinking deeply about hunting, I guess I would say. And it's almost like,

16:47 you know, he's like part locavore, part ultra endurance athlete, part naturalist, like he was a

16:52 wildlife biologist for a long time. He's got like this long hair. So he's kind of like this like hippie,

16:58 right? You know, super fascinating dude. So mental health commissions me to write a story

17:06 about him. I came across him until I pitched it, pitched it. And they said, yeah. And so I go hunting

17:12 with him in Nevada, up in the mountains in sort of the middle of the state. And we were off the grid

17:19 for not that long. He was up there for maybe like three weeks, but I just joined in for five days

17:24 because I have the job, you know, right? And yeah, it was, I mean, it was fascinating because at the

17:30 time, so this is after I had gotten sober or whatever, and I had started to begin thinking about how,

17:36 okay, if you want anything positive in life, like you got to embrace discomfort and go through

17:42 that discomfort, because that's how you're going to improve. But when we go up in the mountains in

17:47 Nevada, and again, it's only there for five days, all of a sudden I'm reintroduced to all these

17:53 forms of discomfort that our ancestors faced every single day that we just don't face anymore,

17:59 right? So it's like, I'm hungry the whole time, because we could only pack in so much food.

18:02 I'm bored as hell, because hunting mostly is boring. You're just like sitting glassing for these

18:08 for these elk and don't get me wrong. It's beautiful. But nature becomes a little bit boring after

18:14 about 20 minutes of looking at it, right? And your cell phone doesn't work. And I'm not bringing a

18:17 computer or a book. So it's like, Oh, well, this is interesting. If we want to water, you know,

18:22 it's a pretty much high desert. I have to hike my ass down 1000s and 1000s of feet to this one

18:29 like stream and get it and then hike back, you know, and so there's like all these things that are

18:35 sort of removed from our lives now. And so it got me thinking about this topic as a whole,

18:39 and then just sort of jump into the, might be getting a little ahead of your questioning here,

18:45 but to jump into the Alaska trip, what ends up happening is the story comes out. It's in

18:50 mental health. It's a big hit. Got a ton of traffic, which was kind of unexpected for a story about

18:55 hunting. I mean, mental health had literally probably never used the word hunting in the magazine. And

18:59 yeah, it's it's 35 year history ever. And gets a ton of traffic. And Donnie and I stay in touch.

19:07 We become good friends. And one day he just calls me up and he's like, Hey, man, I'm going up to

19:13 the Arctic for more than a month. You want to come along with me? And you know, before I can say no,

19:20 hell no, he gets in on this sales pitch, right? He's like, dude, it's going to be the most

19:27 epic adventure a human could ever be on. He's like, we're gonna, we're gonna time it to this great

19:32 caribou migration. We'll hunt caribou. We're gonna see grizzly bears. We're gonna cross ancient

19:37 mountain ranges. We're gonna have to forward through these glacial rivers and, and on and on and on,

19:42 like he's selling it, right? And I'm at home in Las Vegas. I'm like in my air conditioned house

19:47 sitting on the freaking soft couch. And I'm just like picturing myself as the main character in this

19:52 Jack London novel or something. And I'm like, yeah, that's me. You know, right? So I saw, I'm like,

19:59 yeah, dude, let's do it. And I, I, right afterwards, I'm like, okay, so I get my gear, like I start

20:06 training, like I'm all in on this thing. And one of the funnier things, which I write about in the

20:10 book is we eventually meet up to kind of go over stuff before the trip. And he's, he sits me down,

20:16 he's like, you realize that this is going to be a lot more extreme and dangerous than the Nevada

20:21 trip, right? I'm like, yeah, of course, like how much more extreme and dangerous? He looks at me

20:27 and he goes 20 times. And I'm like, Oh, 20 times? Yeah, I can handle that. I thought you were gonna

20:34 say like 50. Yeah. And he goes, well, it could be 50. Could be 70. You know, it could actually be 90.

20:43 But I was like, in at that point, right? Tickets are bought. I've been training. I have all this

20:48 money invested in this like outdoor [inaudible] that's so extreme. Yeah. And then we went on the trip.

20:53 Yeah. And we'll just go and dig into the trip. And we'll get back into some of the other concepts

20:58 from the book a little bit later. So you're preparing for this trip. So obviously you're

21:01 trying to prepare with the gear, you're trying to get yourself in shape, you're trying to get

21:04 your mind right, because he's straight up telling you there's going to be some sketchy flights.

21:07 There will be grizzly bears that will likely be wolves. It'll be cold. It'll be exhausting.

21:11 It'll be all these things. It's like, yeah, yeah, sign on the dotted line. But the trip essentially

21:15 consists of you, Donnie and Donnie's longtime cinematographer, a guy named William Altman.

21:20 Yeah. There was something that happened very, very early in the trip that I found incredibly

21:24 interesting. So I want to get your a little bit more feedback on it. So you're the way I understand

21:28 or remember it, your pilot, Brian, needed to kind of leave you behind and take Donnie and

21:34 William and the gear to kind of the final destination. And like, maybe they couldn't take all of you

21:38 and all the gear at all at the same time. So they kind of had to leave you behind for a little

21:42 bit. So they left you alone in the middle of the Alaskan backcountry. You're not armed.

21:48 Like you basically don't have anything and you're the only human being for miles in any direction.

21:54 So I guess I have a multipart question. Number one, why didn't those [inaudible] leave you with a gun

21:58 or a knife or something, a stick or something that you could defend yourselves with?

22:04 But also you talk about this extremely unique feeling of aloneness, not loneliness,

22:11 but aloneness. So can you take us through that in kind of that early part of the trip?

22:15 Yeah. So the answer to your first question is, it's just that it's because they're [inaudible].

22:20 Yeah. Now we only had one rifle and to transport it, it's like they ended up with it. They were

22:26 going to a new place and the place where I was there's, I mean, there's grizzly [inaudible] everywhere,

22:31 but there's grizzly [inaudible] everywhere in the Arctic. So I was like, all right, I'll just stand in

22:35 a place that's visible and hope for the best. Because, you know, like the reality is, is people

22:42 really, really freak out about grizzly bears up there. And like when I talk about that, people

22:47 are like, Oh my God. The reality is it's the plane flights and the weather that'll kill people.

22:52 Like the grizzly bear, like that, your odds of getting attacked are pretty low. If you do get

22:57 attacked, you're going to be really messed up. You're probably going to die because it's going to

23:02 take way too long for any rescue to come get you. And then you're in a hospital in a 3000 person

23:07 town in the Arctic. Like, yeah, so it's bad. But it's just so rare that really we sort of get an

23:13 outside sphere of that happening when in reality, it's the plane flights. But the second part is,

23:19 yeah, so I find myself a lot, right? And I think what's interesting is that, and I really kind of

23:25 make a difference in the book between feelings of loneliness and feelings of solitude. So we know

23:34 that feeling lonely is associated with all kinds of bad health outcomes. Right? It's like a higher

23:41 risk of heart disease, higher risk of cancer. They run all the data and feeling lonely is the

23:46 equivalent of, I think, smoking like 15 cigarettes a day when they do studies takes like six years

23:51 off your life. But I think that there's a big difference between loneliness and solitude.

23:58 So loneliness is, I want to hang out with people, but I just, I don't know anyone, right? Solitude

24:05 is like, I'm taking time for myself to be alone and using this for good. And if you think about it

24:12 today, I make the argument that we are rarely like alone and in solitude, because even if we're

24:17 like, hey, I'm going to go to my room for some alone time, it's like, what do we do? We're usually

24:21 like on our phone, on Twitter, right? We're watching TV, we're texting with people, like we're always

24:27 with other people, even if it's in the form of media. So when I'm out in the Arctic, it's like,

24:33 I don't have any of that. Right? I am totally alone, no one around me for miles and miles and miles.

24:39 And it just got me thinking about this difference. And I think what's interesting is that I kind of

24:43 have this moment where you go, you know, a lot of how we figure out who we are and shape our

24:50 personality. It's all based on reactions to other people. You know, it's like, oh, this person's that,

24:55 so I'm going to differentiate myself with this. It's like, we do a lot of different things and

25:00 compare ourselves and contrast ourselves. And when you're completely in solitude, you're just like,

25:05 oh, that's kind of a bunch of [inaudible]. I just like made up, you know? So I think my takeaway

25:11 from that is that we as people just need more time in solitude. And it's also time in solitude

25:17 is also associated with like increases in creativity, better mental health. And just like this one

25:23 scientist I talked to was like, honestly, just like getting to know yourself better,

25:26 just not having to constantly think about others and react to other people. So I make the case that

25:30 I think we need more of that time just like completely removed from from everything.

25:34 Right. Like forced boredom, I guess is another way that you can try to describe as well,

25:39 because you talk a lot in the book. And guys, this is a good time to kind of say, we can't get into

25:42 half of the stuff from the book. So there's a lot of detail in there that you're gonna have to get

25:46 it for yourself. It's in the show notes. You can check it out. But you were reading labels on

25:51 your on your jackets and on, you know, you knew everything about your, you know, your cliff bars

25:55 that you guys were eating because you were sitting there reading the labels. But it was that forced

25:58 boredom and that forced solitude that allowed you to have some introspection. And one thing I'm

26:02 actually curious about and I'm here, I'm all over the place. Now I'm going to just be jumping

26:05 all over in this interview. One thing that I was curious about, because I can't remember if you

26:08 said in the book, but I'm pretty sure that you didn't, you, you were in these moments of solitude.

26:13 You were kind of thinking internally, like you were thinking about yourself, you know,

26:17 you're kind of thinking about your place in the world, you were thinking about, you know,

26:19 things that would take your mind off of how cold and bored you were. One thing I was curious about

26:24 as you were going through that, did you have any reflection on the world outside of you? And I

26:28 don't mean just like America or North America or something like that. I mean, like the spiritual

26:33 realm, because there are people that are like so distracted from life in any particular setting.

26:37 And again, like I told you off air, this is mainly a Christian audience. So I know guys that don't

26:41 ever hear from God using air quotes to anybody that, that, you know, makes feel funny until they

26:46 go out into solitude. And then they feel like they're completely away from all the distractions.

26:51 And that they're almost being communicated to by this all seeing all being, you know, all knowing

26:56 all loving God, right? For you, it was that something that you experienced out there was like almost

27:01 this tug or long air. I'm just curious. Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, so after you're out in nature,

27:07 when things are really tuned down, and you're not having as much stimulation, like the world

27:13 slows down. And this is actually a certifiable scientific phenomenon. It's called the three-day

27:18 effect. Basically, what happens is when people are in nature for at least three days without

27:24 their cell phones, without all this outside stimulation, your brain starts to ride what are

27:30 called alpha waves. So normally, in everyday life, when our, you know, sort of modern built

27:36 environment, the brain rides what are called beta waves. These are sort of frenetic go-go-go

27:41 waves. They're associated with, you know, distractions, stress, burnout, all that kind of stuff. Now,

27:46 alpha waves, the one you hit on the third day, those are the same waves that are found in really

27:51 experienced meditators. And they're like these, you know, associated with calm and just like

27:58 feelings of spirituality, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, which is a long way of saying like,

28:03 totally, you're just like, you're just having these like spiritual moments all the time up there,

28:09 for sure. And it kind of like, you know, I mean, one of my takeaways too is that like,

28:14 when you think about people who are like against the idea of there being something

28:20 bigger or greater than themselves out there, call it whatever you want to, right?

28:25 You don't find that they spend a lot of time out in nature that often. They tend to live in cities.

28:32 And I'll tell you what, you look at the research on cities. Cities make people cynical. They make

28:36 people depressed. They make people anxious in general. And so it's like, yeah, I would probably

28:41 think there wasn't anything greater than myself too. If I was in an apartment in Brooklyn just on

28:46 Twitter all day, no kidding. It's like, you're the center of your universe, you know what I mean?

28:52 Right. Well, I remember this because you mentioned, I forget what the stat was, but there was some

28:56 study where they looked at the major cities around the world. And they, I think they ranked them in

29:00 terms of like happiness or, you know, satisfaction with life. And New York City was dead last,

29:04 which is surprising to no one that's ever lived in New York City. You know, because I

29:08 lived in New York City. And one thing that was interesting, Michael, while I lived there, you

29:11 know, again, as a Christian, you know, I'm a fast paced guy. So the pace didn't really bother me

29:15 or anything like that. But it seemed like an incredibly spiritually depraved place. Like,

29:20 because everybody was worshiping at the altar of money and fame and busyness and importance. And,

29:26 you know, whatever their thing is as to why they, you know, transmitted themselves to New York or

29:30 transplanting themselves and went there. But that's the thing that I feel like a lot of those people,

29:34 they don't have a grounding in anything other than some random ideology. So it could be Black Lives

29:40 Matter. It could be their favorite conservative talk show host. It could be, you know, money,

29:44 Wall Street or something like that. But there was no grounding for any of that spirituality. Is that

29:49 something that you feel like you've seen a notice as well? Yeah, I lived there for a few years too.

29:54 And I mean, I'm definitely, I'm glad I lived there when I did. But I agree. There's something

30:00 that's definitely like people psychologically don't do well there. And there's, I think there's a lot

30:04 of reasons for that. I think some of the stuff you mentioned for sure. We also know that, you know,

30:10 humans evolved in these groups of like 150 people max. Right. And that's basically the number of

30:18 people that you can remember all their names and faces and also remember like the relationships

30:24 that they have with each other. So it's sort of like, you know, don't put Janet and Karen at the

30:28 same table type of thing, right? And once we move into these really densely populated areas,

30:37 it goes beyond that. And our brain has a hard time like putting like just dealing with so many

30:42 people. Right. So you look at population density. And New York is the most population dense

30:49 city in the country. So it's kind of like not surprising that it ranked dead last.

30:54 Right. Well, and when you have people living on top of you, there's constant pressure. So I

30:58 trained you, too. And so like I'm used to being claustrophobic and kind of getting smooshed and

31:03 smashing in these uncomfortable positions. But I couldn't live that way, right? I couldn't live

31:08 with some sweaty person like smashing my face into a direction that I don't want it to go into.

31:14 That's kind of what it's like living in New York. And so in reminding me where you grew up,

31:17 did you grow up on the East Coast? No, I grew up in Northern Utah.

31:20 Okay, in Utah. Okay. So curious about your upbringing as well, and then we'll kind of

31:24 get back into the book and into the hunting trip. You know, here I am going on another diet drive.

31:28 But I'm wondering about living, you know, obviously, Utah, that that's a Mormon country,

31:31 and there's a lot of that type of thing. But obviously there are Christians out there as well.

31:35 Did you grow up in any type of like spiritual environment? Did you have like thoughts on who

31:39 Jesus was was God kind of a part? Because like I didn't like I didn't grow up in church. I didn't

31:43 grow up like I was born in Oklahoma. So I was a Christian, right? Like that's kind of like my

31:47 upbringing. But what was kind of your upbringing in like specific spiritual things, not just,

31:51 you know, spiritualism in general? Yeah, that's so most of my family is Mormon.

31:56 They like came over at the hand carts, settled the state type of thing.

32:02 Now my mom is interesting because she was the oldest of four. And she was raised Mormon,

32:08 and then in the 60s, she moved to Hawaii, and she was kind of like this counterculture. I mean,

32:15 she at one point was getting tailed by the FBI because she was dating this guy who was this

32:20 leader of this massive Vietnam resistance movement. She, you know, moved back to move to Idaho and

32:29 did a lot of partying, that kind of stuff. But she's always kind of been a bit of a seeker. So

32:33 long story short is that she was not more. Okay. Everyone in my town was most of my family was.

32:39 But I wasn't raised Mormon. So what she did is that she she introduced us to a church that kind of

32:46 like it was the Unitarian Universalist church, which is kind of like, yeah, just believe whatever.

32:52 Whatever spirituality. So I remember I'd be in these like that, you know, the kids classes or

32:58 whatever were like, you would spend a year studying different religions, which is actually kind of

33:03 useful, you know, like this year, when you're eight years old, you're studying Buddhism. When

33:08 you're nine years old, you're studying, you know, whatever. So I think for me, like it kind of

33:14 turned me into a little bit of a seeker, but you know, I would say I was spiritual and that I was

33:20 interested in that and that I had a concept that there was probably something bigger than myself

33:25 out there, but I hadn't really thought of it, you know, and then probably once I got into my like

33:32 twenties, I would say I just was kind of like, yeah, whatever, whatever, like, you know, and even at

33:40 certain points was just like, I don't know, I think it, I think it's all just, you know, sort of made

33:45 up so people can feel like they have purpose to their lives. But then when I got sober, it was like,

33:52 it was just kind of a shifting, because like, I still can't explain what like I tried to quit

33:59 drinking a hundred times, come up with all kinds of crazy things. And it's like, why is it one morning,

34:04 it was just like, yeah, here's this path, dude, just like, whoa, you know, it's just one of those

34:10 moments, it was, you know, William James talks about the vital religious experience. I mean, that was

34:15 it, a vital spiritual experience, whatever his language he uses is, that was it. And, you know,

34:21 from then on, it was like, maybe I should look into this. And, you know, for me, it's kind of been an

34:26 evolving thing. I, my own definition of, you know, God or whatever it is, is that I don't necessarily

34:35 know exactly what I think it is. I just know there's something out there that is bigger than myself.

34:40 And if I just turn myself over to that thing, every single day, my life gets better. So I'm

34:47 going to go with that route. Right. So I really appreciate you getting into that detail. And I'll

34:51 give you a couple of things to kind of think about resources and then we'll kind of get back in.

34:55 So I already suggested a book off air, you know, professor in the cage, but there's another one

34:59 by Tim Keller named, and it's called reason for God. So this is a guy who was a New York City pastor.

35:05 And so after he would give his sermons on Sundays, he would constantly interact with these people

35:10 that as you mentioned earlier, very, very cynical about anything religious about any like structural

35:14 anything and oh, what about the church and what about the things? What about the crusades? And he

35:18 would constantly engage with these people and engage with their arguments about how it's not

35:21 reasonable to believe that God could possibly exist. And so this book is it's not, you know,

35:26 really like a, you know, Bible study as much as it is a philosophical argument as to why it is

35:32 reasonable to believe in a creator God. And specifically, obviously, he's a Christian pastor.

35:37 So he's going to kind of lead you to the person of Christ, which in our world, like that's the only

35:41 way to salvation to get even closer to that deity that you're describing earlier is through the

35:46 person of Jesus. So that would be something that I could kind of dig into because even if you think

35:50 the Bible is like, if you think this is just a complete nonsense book, everything's just completely

35:54 made up. It's all fables. This book really doesn't lean on that it leans on and some people have

35:59 issues with that in the Christian circles, but it leans on reason. So that would be something that

36:02 I would potentially be interesting for your journey. But getting back, yeah, getting back into the

36:07 story and you know, we're going to, we're going to get into the hunt here in just a second because

36:09 all my hunters are like, Kyle, what was he shooting? Like, what did they get anything? I want to talk

36:14 about the calorie deficit. Oh, he has one thing that you described, Michael, in preparation for this

36:18 is you lost some weight, because you got in really, really good shape. And so you kind of trimmed down

36:22 a little bit. And that kind of worked to your disadvantage when you got out there because as you

36:26 describe in the book, you were at roughly a 4000 calorie deficit each day. And you know, in the book,

36:32 you also get into a lot of stuff about diets and nutrition science, you know, you talk about the

36:36 work of Trevor Cashie, you know, you can go anywhere with this prompt. I just want you to talk to

36:41 us a little bit about the nutrition component for you on the trip and kind of the the starving

36:46 component, but also some things that you learned about nutrition in the work that you put into this

36:50 book. Yeah, so I mean, to get into the nutrition part of the trip, we, I mean, we could only pack

36:56 in maybe 2000 calories a day, because food is heavy. We're not going to be, we're not going to be

37:02 carrying around like all the food we needed, which we're probably burning between 4000 and 6000 a

37:08 day, given how much hiking and carrying and all that stuff we did. So I basically found myself

37:16 hungry again, right, in this crazy deficit, because we're being able to eat like 2000 calories,

37:21 which puts us at a at a burn rate of either 2000 to 4000 a day. And I started dumping weight

37:28 pretty quick. And as you kind of alluded to, I went into the trip pretty lean, just because I'd

37:33 been training hard to prepare for it. And yeah, I dumped weight pretty fast. And what was interesting

37:40 though is just finding myself in this state of extended extreme hunger, right? It's like how,

37:48 how often does that happen anymore in the US? Not often. No, right. And it just got me thinking

37:57 about hunger and how we think about food. And if you look at the research, about 80% of eating

38:07 is driven by reasons other than physiological hunger. Okay. So 80% of the time we eat, it's

38:13 because it's a certain, the clock says we should, right? It's a certain time, it's breakfast time,

38:16 it's lunch time, it's dinner time. Could be driven by stress. Could be driven by, we just

38:22 don't have anything to do. Could be driven by, oh, like our family's coming over and yeah,

38:27 they always bring food. So we just eat it, you know. And so to bring this to sort of how people

38:34 currently view nutrition and weight loss, it's like how many diets out there are like the average

38:41 bad diet set up is like, vilify one type of food, and then just like push you into another one,

38:49 right? It's like low fat, carbs are the enemy. So you should, or fat, you know, whatever, fat is

38:56 the enemy, eat less fat, low carb, carbs are the enemy, eat fewer carbs, Mediterranean diet,

39:01 foods that are not from the Mediterranean diet, those are the enemy, those are what I'm making

39:04 you fat. So eat foods that are from the Mediterranean, keto diet, carbs, terrible,

39:10 steed off that on and on and on, you get point. When you look at the research, it's like,

39:14 people can lose weight on any diet ever, right? The point is that you have to follow the diet.

39:21 Now the question becomes, because the country is only getting heavier and heavier, yet we do

39:27 more diets every year, like an insane amount of people jump on a diet, like 90% of them fail. So

39:34 then the question is, well, why the hell aren't you following the diet? Sure. And I argue that the

39:39 point is the reason that we stop following diets is because we get hungry, and that makes this

39:44 uncomfortable. And we can't deal with the discomfort of hunger. So if you look at how the human body,

39:49 the human body reacts in a calorie deficit, what happens is that like, as we start to dump weight,

39:53 it takes a minute for our body to catch up. And once we realize like, oh, I'm dumping weight,

39:58 our body jacks up its hunger signals, and it also pushes down our ability to control our eating.

40:07 So what ends up happening is we feel more hungry. And also when we start eating,

40:11 we're going to feel less full on the same amount of calories. So really, that's what it is. It's a

40:15 psychological thing. It's being able to deal with the discomfort of hunger. So I met this dude,

40:20 who's an old time friend who I've just known for a while, and he's basically I describe him as a

40:26 super genius. He graduated college at like 16. He got his PhD at 22, which is something you're

40:33 supposed to get at like 30 in biochemistry. I mean, it wasn't in like, you know, dance,

40:38 like the hardest thing. Yeah, he's like, he was doing research at this crazy genetic lab when he

40:46 was like 16. And but he sort of took his talents to nutrition and performance. And I just have a

40:53 lot of different lessons from him in the book and my time with him. And a lot of it is that like,

40:58 getting back to the idea of like, you can really eat anything and lose weight. You just, you just

41:02 can't eat too much of it. You know, so we need to, we need to talk about how do we get you to adhere

41:07 with whatever method of eating you want to use to lose weight or increase your performance or do

41:13 whatever. Because when you look at the research, it's like, first of all, people have no idea how

41:17 much they eat. Right, no clue. And the heavier you are, the more likely you are to have no idea.

41:24 So, you know, the average person, if someone is of a quote unquote normal weight, healthy weight,

41:30 they usually misjudge the amount of calories they eat every day by about 500. If someone is obese,

41:36 it can be anywhere from 1000 to 2000. Right. So part of it is building awareness and all these

41:41 other things. And he's just a fascinating, fascinating dude. His name is Trevor Kashi. And

41:46 yeah, he's helped people collectively lose like more than 200,000 pounds. And it's just wild.

41:51 Yeah, he's such an awesome dude. I'd love to have him on the show someday to kind of like,

41:54 really dig into that because that's one thing that I get asked about a lot, you know, because

41:57 people kind of see you and they see the workouts that you do and they see things and they're like,

42:00 I want to be able to do that. And they just assume that they can get on a really short program.

42:03 That's another thing that people don't understand with a lot of these fad diets is you starve yourself

42:07 in a lot of ways for, you know, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days. And then your body, whenever you start

42:12 eating the Cheetos again and start eating the ice cream again, your body's like, Oh, this was a

42:16 famine period. I need to store up as much of this stuff as possible now that we're taking in these

42:21 calories so that if this ever happens again, we have more reserves. And so people end up getting

42:26 fatter after their diet. And that's the thing with most people is like, keto is not a sustainable

42:30 diet for the rest of your life for almost everybody on the planet. Like I know of one person that I

42:35 went on Joe Rogan experience that had been doing it without cheats for like three years. But then

42:39 like if that person ate a cupcake, they'd all of a sudden fall out of ketosis. You know what I mean?

42:42 It's like one of those weird deals that you just had to find something that you can really depend on.

42:47 But I love how you talked about the component where you're out there. You're in the back country.

42:52 You're tired. You're cold. You're hungry. But now you're hunting. Okay. That's a whole reason

42:58 that you're out there. But it seemed like, you know, at some point in the trip, you made a decision

43:02 that you would potentially take down an older caribou, you know, kill an animal if you had the

43:09 opportunity to that you would take off your journalist hat, your observation hat and put on

43:13 your hunter hat. But it seemed like you were not very comfortable with that idea. And it wasn't

43:18 like you were being pressured into it. You were essentially long for the ride on a hunt. But you

43:22 made a decision that you were going to really go that direction. But that didn't seem like a very

43:26 seamless decision for you. Was it? Yeah, no, I mean, so when Donnie asked me to come along,

43:31 he was like, yeah, you should hunt. And my first answer was, uh, no, I don't think so. And you know,

43:37 I was like, I'm a journalist. I just I'm here to observe and watch and, you know, you do the hunting.

43:43 And he, you know, he looked at me and he's like, I think you really understand why we came out here

43:46 come out here and do what we do if you were to hunt. And so I trusted him. But still had reservations

43:53 about hunting about the killing part, right? I was kind of uncomfortable and apprehensive to cross

44:00 what I sort of knew was going to be a pretty heavy emotional barrier. But like two, yeah, about two

44:07 weeks in, we'd been looking for an older caribou for a long time and we'd been sconked a couple

44:13 times. And finally, we just got in a position where I had a chance at one and these and we had like,

44:20 there was these herd of caribou eating on a hill and we figured they're going to kind of eat down

44:25 the hill and then they're going to come up this like, no, if we can be on the other side of that

44:28 no, we're going to be in pretty good position. And so we sort of trucked it over there and they

44:34 didn't see us and, you know, we're down on the ground and it's like, even at that moment,

44:39 right? I had bought a pretty expensive hunting tag in Alaska. If you're not if you don't live in

44:45 the state, I mean, it's not cheap. I'm carrying a gun around for two weeks, a rifle, and still at

44:52 that time, like, well, I don't have to do this, you know, but this herd, they come over the hill and,

44:59 you know, we have them sort of in the scope, we're just kind of checking them out. And there's one

45:03 that is clearly a lot older than the rest. And he's limping on his back leg. And like, to me,

45:10 that was just like, all right, felt okay with that, you know, because shooting an older animal is

45:16 going to generally help the health of the herd while shooting a younger one is not, not to mention

45:22 this guy is limping. So how much longer does he have? And would you rather die by a 30 out six bullet

45:31 or being savaged by a pack of wolves or drowning or freezing to death or starving to death, right?

45:39 So anyway, yeah, I got him on my sides and it took a while because they go in and out of the herd,

45:46 right? It's like, oh, man, where'd he go? And sort of as they were, they had come in and I mean,

45:52 we had him at like 150 yards and like they'd kind of gone past that point. And finally, the herd kind

45:58 of opened up and it was just there like perfect position and pulled the trigger, pulled the trigger

46:05 again. And he went down and it was like, after that, I mean, my initial reaction was, oh my God,

46:12 what have you done? Like, this is the worst thing you've ever done in your life. How could you do

46:17 this? There's no coming back from this. And we sort of waited a minute and we like walked up on him

46:24 and still the same. I'm like, dude, why'd you do this? This is ridiculous, you know.

46:30 But then we started breaking him down for meat, right? Field dressing him. And as we started to do

46:40 that, it's like you Donnie remembers me saying, oh, it's just like meat. Yeah. And my mind totally

46:47 shifted because you have this moment where it's like, dude, you eat meat like every single freaking

46:54 day. I never once have you thought about it or had an emotional reaction to it. But here you are

47:00 like a complete mess over this meat, right? And so it's like hypocritical. And what it did is it

47:07 gave me a huge appreciation not only for that meat, but also like all the meat I eat and this like

47:13 amazing food system we have. Right. And it's also like by inserting yourself into the life cycle,

47:20 I found it gives you greater appreciation for that. And it also raises the fact that like

47:26 one for one creature to live on another has to die. And we are not removed from that equation.

47:33 Yeah. And I think that you brought up an important quote from Jimmy Carter in your book or I'll

47:38 just basically summarizing it where it's like, you know, if you're going to participate in this

47:43 food system, like, you know, most people do it very insulated. They're they're not seeing the

47:47 meat. They're not seeing the blood. It just comes to them fully cooked and they're all good with it.

47:51 But I remember I didn't grow up hunting either. And the first time I killed a deer when I was

47:56 in my mid 20s, mid 20s, I remember the reverence I felt for that animal and how thankful I was.

48:03 And I remember being like a little bit upset, like a little teary eyed, not because I was sad

48:07 at what I had done. Like, Oh my gosh, what have I done to this animal? But it was that same feeling

48:11 like this animal is going to feed me and my family. Like this, this is an animal that, you know,

48:17 would have had one of those other outcomes being eaten alive or starving to death or any of those

48:21 other horrible outcomes. And the quickest way for that animal to die was a well placed bullet by

48:26 me, right? And that's such an awe inspiring moment. But I do also remember in the book where

48:31 even after killing the caribou, you know, you're breaking it down and you're seeing that, Hey,

48:35 it's just meat. I'm pretty sure you hadn't even eaten any of it yet. I don't think y'all had gotten

48:39 it back to camp. You really haven't hunted out at that point. But Donnie asked you if you would hunt

48:44 again. And your response to him was, I don't know. And so like, I don't really remember from the

48:49 book, if you really kind of gave me the rest of your philosophy on that. So where are you at currently

48:54 with your relationship with hunting? I've hunted again. Yeah, I didn't elk hunt in Utah this year,

49:02 and it went well. And yeah, that's, that's where I'm out with it. It's like, you know, I'm not, I don't

49:07 need to hunt all the time. I'm going to hunt. So I have a freezer full of food that I can eat. And

49:12 that's mainly, that's why I'm hunting is for meat. You know, it's tricky because I think sometimes

49:20 when we talk about hunting, there can be among hunters, I've noticed almost sort of an arrogance,

49:25 like, Oh, I get all my food from hunted meat. It's like, you need to do the same. The reality is,

49:30 is that hunting, there's a really big barrier to cross to get into hunting. You need a lot of time,

49:35 you need to learn all these different skills. You need to have certain financial assets. It is

49:41 not a cheap sport. But I do think that if you have the ability and you do have interest, I think

49:46 there's, I think it's really useful. But I also think that like, we shouldn't judge people if

49:51 they're eating meat and not hunters. I do think that we should judge them if they eat meat and

49:57 are anti hunters. Right. Exactly. So yeah, that's where I'm out with it. I got a freezer full of

50:03 elk right now. I had an elk roast last night for dinner and I'm going to continue try every year.

50:10 I'm not sure if I'm going to do, you know, I have a bow, Donnie hooked me up with a bow.

50:13 I also have a rifle. I don't know if I'm going to get into archery or not. I don't know if I'm

50:19 as committed, time-wise as I need to be to feel comfortable archery hunting. Like the

50:27 hunt I went on in Utah, I mean, there were guys there that they shoot an hour a day.

50:31 And we lost like three bulls, you know, to archery. And I was using a rifle, there was a couple

50:38 other people like the rifle hunters. We don't lose any bulls. You know, that doesn't mean I'm

50:43 going to be taking 900 yard shots because I think that that's that crosses an ethical line for me,

50:48 not judging anyone who does. I'm going to take shots within pretty as short of a distance as I can.

50:54 But I don't know if I'm going to get into bow hunting. I don't know. It just depends on the level of

50:59 time and commitment I have. So like this year, for example, I'm working on another book. It's like,

51:02 I just don't have time to shoot as much as I need to. But maybe in the future, I will.

51:08 Yeah, that's something that I've thought about as well, since I didn't grow up hunting. It's

51:10 almost like, you know, you grow up learning how to shoot a rifle and eventually that just gets too

51:14 easy. So you kind of want to make it more difficult. I'm just not there yet. You know, I enjoy rifle

51:18 hunting. And again, for me, I've wounded an animal before and we didn't find it. And I think about

51:22 that animal often, and I wounded it with a rifle. I rushed a shot. You know, I tried to, you know,

51:28 I was getting getting a little fancy. And I wounded this animal. We never found it. I have no idea

51:31 what happened to it. And I couldn't imagine doing that, you know, with a well, you know, non well-placed

51:37 arrow. And it's kind of the same thing. We're about to have our second kid. And it's kind of like,

51:41 what are we going to do? Like, I can't spend 45 minutes an hour a day out in the back,

51:45 back porch, like shooting a fake deer and all those types of things. It's not really something

51:48 I can really do. But it's an important thing for people to understand. It's an important thing for

51:53 them to learn how to do. I wanted to learn how to do it myself so that I could pass it down to my

51:57 sons. I thought that was a very, very important thing because I didn't want them to go without

52:01 in that type of an aspect. But, you know, we've go through the rest of the book. Obviously,

52:05 you hump out the caribou. You know, you make it out alive. You didn't get attacked by grislies and

52:08 all that. So, you know, all that's in the book. And you can get into those details when you guys read

52:13 it. But I'm curious about how you are different after your trip. Okay. So we're going to get back

52:18 into the missogi and all that kind of stuff here in a second. But when you came back in your book,

52:22 you talk about how you were different. You talk about here wife perceived you to be different. So

52:26 give our audience an idea of what changed. Yeah, I would go back to that idea that we talked about

52:31 with those, the David LaBari, the psychologist and that idea of prevalence induced concept change

52:37 or problem creep. So for example, and I've talked about this before, but it's like when I go up to

52:44 the Arctic, I have to take five different flights, right? My first flight is from Las Vegas to Seattle,

52:49 next one's from Seattle to Anchorage. And they're on these big 757s or whatever. And now I hate

52:58 flying. I hate everything about it. It just [inaudible] me off. It's like the seats are cramped

53:03 and uncomfortable. The plane is too hot. The entertainment in the plane on the screen in front

53:07 of you sucks. Bathrooms are cramped. Coffee sucks. The snacks suck. The people next to you, they all

53:14 suck. Yeah, right. Everything about flying is awful. And then I go spend a month in the Arctic,

53:19 right? It's like, if I want water or anything to drink, I got to go down to a stream and I got

53:24 to get it. Grizzly's hangout by streams. If I want to go to the bathroom, I got to walk out on the

53:28 tundra and squat and I got to bring the rifle again, because of grizzlies. If I'm hungry,

53:33 I'm not a tough [inaudible]. We only brought in so much food. Right. If I want to get warm,

53:38 tough [inaudible], you're in the Arctic. If I want XYZ, tough [inaudible]. So when I get back on that plane,

53:45 that goes from Anchorage to Seattle, then Seattle to Las Vegas, it's like, what do you think my

53:50 headspace and that plane was like, right? Right. Oh, this is so great. Look at all this luxury.

53:54 This is amazing. Yeah. This is the greatest thing that's ever happened to me, right? It's

53:58 like that seat. I sat in a padded chair and more than a month. That seat was the most comfortable

54:02 thing of my life. The movies that it played. Like, Oh my God, these are amazing. You know,

54:08 I'm watching like fast and furious, like 79 or whatever number we're on now. And I'm just like,

54:13 Oh my God, how does this not have 10 20 Oscars? Well, I need to go to the bathroom. It's like,

54:20 I don't have to take the rifle. I can sit, right? And then when I get up, it's like hit this little

54:26 button in the hot running water, which is something I hadn't experienced for more than the month.

54:30 Comes out of this plane at 30,000 feet. And like, when that water hits my hands, it's just like,

54:35 Oh my God, this is the greatest thing ever. So that's a long way of saying, basically, I came back

54:41 into quote unquote normal life and was just like, at least for a week and complete shock and awe

54:48 about just how amazing modern life is. I would never have had that had I not put myself through

54:53 that discomfort of the Arctic, never have that realization. And it is hung on, I think since then

54:58 to varying degrees, but it's like, you just, you're just so grateful for how amazing we have it now.

55:03 And you're like, Oh my God, like, even when I I'm not saying that people don't have problems and I

55:07 don't still have problems, but it gives me perspective, right? Even with something like we've been

55:13 going through now with like COVID, it's like, we're forced inside, we got to do X, Y, Z, there's

55:18 bubble, bubble, blah, it's like, imagine if it was 1918, that pandemic, it's like, yes, there is a

55:25 pandemic. And yes, it's killing millions of people, but please return to your factory job and stand

55:30 next to the person, you know, two feet away from you who is currently dying and have fun, you're

55:34 going to be next, right? It's like, even in the face of problems, our problems are going to be

55:39 better. So it's just one of those where the change has been like, I'm less flustered by stuff. I'm

55:45 just like, and because of this, and being more grateful, I'm just like, I think better in a lot

55:50 of ways. It's like, I'm a better husband, I'm a better professor when I deal with students,

55:55 I'm less like, you know, just like, why are you asking me this [inaudible] question?

55:58 Well, the thing that it made me think of as I was reading through your book, Michael, is when you,

56:03 you know, when missionaries go to Africa, you know, come back or to other places in South America,

56:09 where there's a lot of poverty, they always come back and say generally a lot of the same things.

56:13 Oh, it was great. It was amazing. A great experience. The people are so happy there. And

56:17 they're always a little bit shocked by that because they don't have iPhones. They don't have Mercedes

56:22 Benzas. They don't they don't have the, you know, major league baseball that they can just turn on

56:26 and watch. They're living in what we would consider to be here, abject poverty. And yet they're happy.

56:32 And that's what I think most people, it's like when you tear everything else, all these luxuries

56:35 away, when you find a luxury, that's why when you hand a kid a Snickers bar over there,

56:40 it's one of the most incredible moments of their life. And that's, that doesn't mean you're better

56:44 than them. It just means that they have a different mindset when it comes to things that they should

56:47 be happy about things that they should feel like as a blessing. And we've teed this up a few times,

56:52 Michael. So we got to get to it. And I got to know how this word is said, but you were introduced

56:56 after you met Donnie to the Japanese concept of is it Misogi or Misogai? Misogi. Misogi. All right,

57:03 so we'll go with Misogi. So I want you to get into what that is, but you were studying Misogi

57:08 and that led you to Dr. Marcus Elliott. He's a very interesting character that you guys can

57:12 get in the book. But this guy has a couple of rules for what a Misogi is, which you'll tell

57:16 us here in a second, but it's like, it has to be really hard. And you can't die, right? And I

57:21 thought that was great. He had a great quote in there. It was because I can tell you that

57:25 nothing great in life comes with complete assurance of success, right? So like, when you play your

57:30 kid and one on one basketball, and they're two years old, that's not going to be one of the biggest

57:33 moments of your life, whenever you beat them 21, nothing, right? But go ahead and give us an idea

57:37 of what Misogai is or Misogi. Sorry, I'm saying it wrong again. What Misogi is and what you learned

57:43 about it as you were researching the book. Yeah, so I meet this guy named Marcus Elliott and

57:48 probably two things you need to know about him. The first is that he's kind of a seeker. So he lived

57:53 out of a VW van for a while. He got himself through college by counting cards. He would go to Burning

57:59 Man like way back in the day when it was just this weird little thing in the desert. I guess

58:04 now it's just like a big weird thing in the desert. So you get the point. Number two is that he's

58:10 brilliant. So he got his MD from Harvard Medical School, but he decides I'm not going to be a doctor.

58:16 I want to revolutionize sports science, which is sort of like one of those declarations that

58:23 is so big that it borders on almost arrogance. We're just like, who the hell is this guy, right?

58:29 But turns out he actually does it. So he owns these facilities called P3 and he is the first guy to

58:36 sort of integrate quantification and AI and big data into human movement. And this can

58:44 help him find sort of hidden assets in athletes games. It can also help him identify injury risk

58:51 and put numbers on injury risk. So he totally changes the game. And he's got contracts with the

58:55 NBA, every single NBA player who goes into the draft has to go through his system. He's got

59:02 contracts with the NFL, et cetera, et cetera. So he's all about numbers and data and figure and

59:07 what that can do to improve performance. But he also understands that what really improves

59:12 performance, it can't always be measured, right? They're immeasurable. So it's like,

59:17 why is there certain athletes where like, you just know you need to give them the ball at the end

59:21 of the game, right? It's a gear that certain people has and it's psychological. And it's like,

59:26 well, how do you get to that? So to get to that, he does this thing called Musogi. And it's basically

59:31 you go out in nature and you do something really, really hard once a year. So the rules that you

59:36 kind of alluded to are make it really hard, which he defines by saying you should have a 50/50 shot

59:41 of finishing whatever the task is. Number two, don't die. And that's just like a tongue-in-cheek

59:47 way of saying, don't be an idiot. Be safe. So they've done things like taking an 85-pound

59:53 boulder and walked it underneath the Santa Barbara channel for five miles. So like one guy will go

59:58 down, pick up the boulder, walk 10 yards, drop it, come up, the next guy will go down on and on.

1:00:04 They've done things like, oh, I see a mountain peak, you know, whatever distance away. Let's see

1:00:10 if we can get there in a day. All kinds of just weird, quirky stuff. Now the idea is that what he's

1:00:16 trying to get at. So if you think about in our past, humans used to have to do challenging,

1:00:22 really hard physical tasks in nature all the time. It's part of living, right? This could be from

1:00:27 like some epic hunt we had to go on when we needed food. It could be from migrating to like our

1:00:33 summering to wintering grounds. It could be from a tiger lurking in the bushes. And every time

1:00:38 we would do this kind of stuff, we would learn something about ourselves. We would learn what

1:00:43 our potential was and what we were capable of. But think about modern life. We don't have those

1:00:49 sort of challenges anymore, right? You can survive and never really be challenged. And you could have

1:00:55 a halfway decent life. You have a decent job. You got a family to come home to on and on and on.

1:01:00 But the problem is, is you never have these moments that really show you what you're capable of

1:01:08 that push you out of your comfort zone. And it's only by getting pushed out of your comfort

1:01:12 zone. And for lack of a better term, having to figure your [inaudible] out, that you grow your potential,

1:01:19 see what you're capable of. So on something like a Musogi, a couple of things are going to happen.

1:01:23 You're going to hit this moment because it's a 50/50 shot. Very little of what we do nowadays.

1:01:29 Do we truly have a risk of failure? We consistently pick and choose to do things that are well within

1:01:35 our capabilities. Think about how people approach marathons. It's not, I don't know if I can finish

1:01:39 this. It's, I don't know if I can finish this in insert a time goal, right? So what happens is that

1:01:46 you get out there and you will inevitably face a wall where you think you need to quit. You can't

1:01:52 go any further. You know, I've reached my edge. But if you can keep putting one foot in front of the

1:01:57 other, whatever it is, you can look back and then see, hey, I thought my edge was back there, but

1:02:03 here I am past it. So I've sold myself short here. The point is that you can then take that and go

1:02:09 where else am I selling myself short in? In life. And then the second part is that it's good at

1:02:15 helping people reframe fear because failure in our past used to mean death. So we are wired to

1:02:22 avoid failure at any cost and really fear it. But nowadays failure doesn't necessarily mean death,

1:02:28 right? Rarely does it mean death. It's like I messed up a slideshow and a PowerPoint or I misspoke

1:02:33 or I like spelled my boss's name wrong and an email or something like that. Yet we still fear

1:02:38 stuff like that. So what it can do is that it like by dancing on the edge of like a true failure,

1:02:44 you start to realize that like, yeah, failure is not that big of a deal. And then you can take that

1:02:48 attitude back into your normal life. It can help reframe things for you. I think it's an

1:02:52 important concept as well. But the really the concept of the fact that failure should be a part

1:02:56 of it that automatically extends people out beyond what they thought they could do, right? So it's

1:03:00 not like, oh, I'm going to run a five K. It's like, no, we're going to try to run a five K in under,

1:03:05 you know, 16 minutes or it's something like that. You said put a time component on it. But what's

1:03:09 funny about the concept in the book is as soon as you brought that up, I was thinking about things

1:03:14 that I could try and do. But then because, you know, I do this media thing and I have this podcast,

1:03:18 I was automatically thinking, man, that would be a really cool Instagram post or I bet my people

1:03:23 that, you know, like us and follows on Facebook would really, really like that. But that's something

1:03:27 that Dr. Elliott talks about as well that a Misogi shouldn't be advertised that there should be no

1:03:31 social media, no hub up surrounding it. And this was a quote, this may be one of my favorite quotes

1:03:36 from the book that wasn't, you know, from you, but this is from Dr. Elliott. And here's the quote,

1:03:40 a big part of the value proposition is that I'm going to do something that's really uncomfortable.

1:03:44 I'm going to want to quit. And it's going to be hard not to quit because no one is watching.

1:03:50 But I'm not going to quit because I'm watching. And I love that quote because a lot of people,

1:03:56 when they go on a run early in the morning, no one's around to see that they took a break and

1:04:01 walked a half mile as opposed to running, like when you're out running wind sprints or doing

1:04:05 something like that and you intended to run 10 and you're exhausted at number six, no one's going

1:04:09 to know that you took those last three or four reps off. Except you, you're going to know,

1:04:14 you're going to know that you avoided jujitsu class because you just didn't feel great that

1:04:18 day. Like, you know, whatever the situation is. So why do you think it's important? Because I'm

1:04:22 sure some people would disagree with that. Like, how are you going to get more people to do it if

1:04:25 you're not advertising and talking about it and blah, blah. And here you are talking about it in

1:04:29 your book. Like, are you breaking the rules? But I tend to agree with this. But why is that so

1:04:33 important to not make it a big deal for other people? Well, I think so much of what we do nowadays

1:04:40 is determined by how it makes us look in relation to other people. It's like, we do things. It's like,

1:04:46 we decide, okay, I want to run a ultra marathon in like 10 hours because my neighbor did it in

1:04:53 10 hours and 15 minutes, right? It's like we're always making these random comparisons. So by taking

1:04:59 other people out of the equation, you can really get down to the heart of your abilities and also

1:05:04 find that you can go a lot further because you're not setting these artificial markers. Right? And

1:05:09 also, it's like, a lot of the stuff we do too is like for the Instagram. Yeah, right? It's like,

1:05:15 it's just like a [inaudible] way to go through life, like learning to do things for yourself for something

1:05:22 bigger is so much more powerful and can help push you that much further. So one of the, one of the

1:05:29 sort of guidelines of misogies one, as you said, it's like, you don't, you don't share it. You

1:05:34 don't advertise it on social. Like, yeah, you can talk about it or whatever. Like, people will DM

1:05:40 me and be like, Hey, dude, here's what I just did. Great. Because that's you and I having a

1:05:43 conversation. But it's not about like, I'm going to blast this out to my followers and be like,

1:05:48 a bad ass or whatever. The second part is that whatever you do should kind of be weird and quirky.

1:05:56 Like, you know, a marathon is great. If you want to do that, if you really think you have a 50 50

1:06:02 shot, but like, wouldn't it be more interesting to just like make up some weird thing? Because now

1:06:07 you take off these artificial markers of like, what is good and what is bad? Right? Once you remove

1:06:13 these artificial things we have of good or bad, you can, you find that you can go a lot further.

1:06:18 So I'm not interested in doing a marathon as a misogie because I'm like, I'm comparing myself

1:06:24 to others. It's like, Oh, I know three hours is a good goal or whatever, four hours. I'm more

1:06:28 interested in going. I wonder if I can get from my house to this town that I think is maybe whatever

1:06:35 miles over, but through the desert, and I don't know what I'm going to encounter, I just know it's

1:06:40 going to be freaking gnarly dude. Right? Because now I don't care about, Oh, did I finish it in

1:06:45 X time or Y time? I just want to know that I'm able to do that. Yeah. And that's the thing. Again,

1:06:51 focus on that second rule. You can't die. So there's a difference between difficult and

1:06:55 too sketchy to even attempt. So it's like, guys, don't try to swim across a Pacific Ocean. That's

1:06:59 a terrible idea. But it is kind of a good good thing to kind of keep in mind that, man, this

1:07:04 should be something that I have a really good idea or really good chance of failing. But obviously,

1:07:08 here's a quick example for that. Like, so when they did the one that I talked about with the

1:07:12 Boulder, I'm going to the Santa Barbara channel, they brought a safety boat with like a trained

1:07:17 whatever guy, right? So there's four of the people and they had one guy there who was just there to

1:07:21 ensure that they were safe. Right? If I'm doing, if I'm doing something similar and I'm going to be

1:07:26 out in the desert or whatever, like I'm bringing my cell phone, I'm bringing a Garmin emergency GPS,

1:07:31 I'm bringing enough water, like I'm not going to be dumb about this, right? It's that's not the

1:07:35 point. Don't die. Don't break that rule. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's great. The third rule,

1:07:40 the silent rules don't be done. That's a great way to kind of say that. But Michael, this book

1:07:44 has had a tremendous impact. Like it's opened up a lot of doors for you for speaking engagements

1:07:49 and working on other projects and everything like that. But your book also caught the attention

1:07:52 of the biggest podcast host on the planet, Joe Rogan. And so you appeared on the Joe Rogan

1:07:57 experience in the middle of last year in May of 2021. That's episode 1649. I put it in the show

1:08:02 note so you guys can check that out. You got to check it out on Spotify because whatever.

1:08:05 But I'm curious for you, like, how did that process of appearing on a show happen? Like,

1:08:10 did he just DM you out of the blue? Was it, you know, did he call you on the phone? And then I guess

1:08:15 take us through the whole experience of what it was like going down there and being on a show?

1:08:18 Yeah, I think, I mean, I think it happened just because the probably because the book resonated

1:08:24 with some of his interests. And we have some friends in common, like Donnie Vincent,

1:08:28 Donnie was on his show a few years ago, you know. And so my publisher handles most of the press,

1:08:34 though. So they sort of hooked it up, but it just probably had the right things that he was

1:08:38 interested in. And then in terms of how it all worked out, it was cool, flew down to Austin,

1:08:44 state of night in a hotel or whatever. And, you know, someone came and got me, took me to a studio.

1:08:49 And, you know, once we got there, because we're in the era of COVID, they did a quick 15-minute

1:08:54 test or whatever on both everyone in there. And then just go back and, you know, start recording.

1:09:00 And it's just, it's literally just like having a conversation. And the studio is super small,

1:09:06 but it's really cool. And he's a great dude, like fun to talk to, really interesting. He's got an

1:09:11 unbelievable memory of just random facts. Like he can just pull random facts from wherever. And

1:09:19 I like him because he's not, he's very smart, but he's not pretentious. So working at a university,

1:09:25 yeah, I work with a lot of smart people, but who are pretentious?

1:09:29 Why this dude just like, yeah, I got a brain on me, but I'm just at the end of the day, I'm just a

1:09:32 freaking dude, you know, that's awesome. And I've talked to several people that have been on his

1:09:36 show. And that's kind of the same thing they say. It's like he is what you would expect him to be,

1:09:40 like a really nice guy, a very generous guy, honestly curious and inquisitive person as well.

1:09:45 And you mentioned this a little bit earlier, I wasn't aware that you were working on a new book.

1:09:49 So are you at a point where you could like describe the new book or tell us about it or give us an

1:09:53 idea what it's going to come out? Yeah, so it's kind of an extension of this one we're talking

1:09:57 about here. And it is about how humans generally evolved in these landscapes of scarcity, where

1:10:03 there was never enough of all kinds of different things. Food, stuff, information, the number of

1:10:10 people we could influence, the amount of happiness we could even have in our lives. And we now have

1:10:16 an abundance of all that kind of stuff. And like for happiness, like we get pitched a million

1:10:21 different ways to be happy, right? And so it looks at like, what is that doing to us through a lot

1:10:26 of different lenses? And it's involved some kind of similar to Alaska, some crazy travel

1:10:31 into remote sort of dangerous places to meet with interesting people. So it's been good so far.

1:10:39 Okay, so do we are you're in the process of writing it? Do we have an idea of when it's going

1:10:43 to hit the shelves? Yeah, I'm in the process now. Hopefully it'll be out May 2023. So it's a

1:10:48 long process. Okay, well, if we don't talk to you before, then we'll certainly have to have you on

1:10:53 next spring so that you can chat about that book. But Michael, as we kind of bring things to a

1:10:57 close here, there's something that I like to do towards the end of my shows. It's a segment called

1:11:00 What Would You Say To Someone That Said? And so basically, I'm going to say that and then I'm

1:11:05 going to fill in the blank with a statement. But this is lightning round, you have 30 seconds maximum

1:11:10 regardless of the topic to give me just the nuts and bolts, you know, me and potatoes answer. Okay,

1:11:15 so are you up for it? All right, oh, I'm in. Yeah, let's do it. Okay, all right, let's hit the first

1:11:18 one. See how you do. What would you say to someone that said, I have no idea what to do about my

1:11:22 personal nutrition? Get a food scale, weigh the food that you eat to figure out how much you're

1:11:30 eating and then go from there. Okay, next one here, what would you say? Do it for like two weeks,

1:11:35 you don't have to do it for life. Two weeks and we'll figure it out. I've done that before and

1:11:39 it is actually astonishing how much how much you eat. All right, what would you say to someone that

1:11:43 said, I'm fat. That's just the way it is. Get a food scale. Two weeks, two weeks ago. Yeah, no,

1:11:52 I think, you know, I think that the obesity crisis is largely fueled by people using food

1:11:59 other than fuel and simply having an awareness of how you're eating and why is very important.

1:12:06 Absolutely. What would you say to someone that said, I don't like sweating?

1:12:09 You should like sweating. Look, look, look, we know that like, I've actually had people

1:12:19 telling me that is that's the reason why they don't work out is they don't like sweating.

1:12:21 Hey, that's a real thing I've heard someone say. I would just tell them that you're by

1:12:27 not sweating that you are setting yourself up for like literally every chronic disease ever.

1:12:32 Increasing your fitness level is the best thing you can do for long-term health. It's

1:12:37 associated with all with decreasing all the stuff that kills people today. So

1:12:41 learn to like sweating. Yeah, you went into great detail in the book and I really appreciated that.

1:12:46 All right, let's keep it going. What would you say to someone that said,

1:12:48 back country, back country. Back country hunters are gluttons for punishment.

1:12:53 Maybe it's true. I don't know. No, I think that there. No, there's something a lot deeper to it.

1:13:02 You know, I spoke to some philosophers and psychologists and you know,

1:13:05 it's very possible that back country hunting because that's literally what we did for

1:13:09 millions of years to survive really taps into something deep inside humans.

1:13:13 Absolutely. What would you say to someone that said killing an animal is immoral?

1:13:18 If you eat meat and you think that, I think you're a hypocrite. If you were a vegan and you think

1:13:24 that, all right, it's your opinion, man. Hey, but as we've seen a lot before and as a

1:13:29 Papa Ted Nugent pointed out, there are a lot of animals that have to die in order for you to get

1:13:32 your vegan salad. So there is that for people to consider. All right, just a few more here.

1:13:37 What would you say to someone that said, I could never do a misogie. I'm too old.

1:13:41 50 50 shot is important. I got an email from a lady. I think her name was Deb and I don't know

1:13:48 this person. She emailed me and she just said, Hi, my name is Deb. I am 79 years old.

1:13:52 I am about to do a misogie. It will be hard and I won't die signed off dead. So be like Deb. All right.

1:13:59 Next one here. What would you say to someone that said, I could never do a misogie. I'm too soft.

1:14:03 50 50 shot. That's right, guys. If you haven't, if you haven't, if you don't think you can run a

1:14:09 mile, go try and run a mile. What's the worst? It's going to happen. You're not going to die.

1:14:13 Well, hey, a 50 50 shot for Cam Haines running 200 miles or something like that is different

1:14:18 than you who hasn't ran since high school or something like that. So you can obviously scale

1:14:23 this a little bit. But Michael, here we are. Last question of the day, what would you say to someone

1:14:27 that said, I like being comfortable? Well, of course you do. We all like being comfortable.

1:14:33 I like being comfortable too. But if you're only being comfortable and only tipping into comfort,

1:14:38 you are going to have some problems in your life. Your body's going to go to [inaudible]. It's not going to

1:14:42 be good for your mind. It's not going to be good for your outlook. So maybe you should try and dabble

1:14:46 in a little bit of discomfort to what happens. You might have a better life afterwards.

1:14:51 Absolutely. Well, Michael, I really appreciate all the time. I appreciate you give us a little bit

1:14:54 extra time to get into some extra questions. But that is all for me. Is there anything else you

1:14:57 want to get off your chest? No, I really appreciate you having me on, man. That was really fun.

1:15:01 All right, Michael, Lisa, thank you for coming on on Daunted Life, a man's podcast.

1:15:04 There you go, guys. I hope you enjoyed my time with Michael Easter. But before we let you go,

1:15:08 we are going to do a quick resilience boost at a Daunted Life. Our mission is equipping

1:15:12 men to push back darkness with content that for just spiritual, mental and physical resilience.

1:15:16 So here are the links I've got for you today. I've got a link to Michael's website.

1:15:19 So that is where you can buy the book. You can find him on social media, all the stuff about his

1:15:22 story, his upcoming book. That is a great center point for you guys to be able to go and check that

1:15:26 out. And then also I've got a link to the Joe Rogan Experience Episode 1649, where he appeared

1:15:31 on that episode back last May. All right, guys, thanks so much for listening to the show. We do

1:15:34 appreciate it wherever you're listening to this. Please subscribe, rate and leave us a positive five

1:15:38 star view. If you want to come speak live at your event or on your podcast, shoot me an email to

1:15:42 info@undontadotlife. That's just iNFO@undontadotlife. You can follow us on Instagram and tip talk and

1:15:48 like us on Facebook and check out our website for everything else, including how to donate to

1:15:51 keep more content like this coming your way. Just go to www.undontadotlife. And we also want to thank

1:15:56 the band August Burns read for allowing us to use their music for our content. The music on this

1:16:00 podcast is our song cutting the tides, which is off their 10th anniversary re recording of their

1:16:04 album leveler. The links are in the description. I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep pushing

1:16:10 back darkness. Keep forging spiritual, mental and physical resilience. Keep seeking the lion of Judah.

1:16:40 [Music]