Joe Rogan Experience #1649 — Michael Easter Transcript

Transcript

0:00 The Joe Rogan Experience. Hey, thanks for having me on, man. I argue that it is a crisis. it's like, I go to work, I drive to work, I sit behind this screen all day. I don't have to move And then at the extreme end of that is Goggins. The fact that we don't have to go out and hunt for food or put physical effort into every day is great. It's noon. That was life to them.

3:36 if you think about potential and human potential, let's say that human potential is this big circle against this book. You don't? No, I don't. Which brings, it creates kind of a dilemma for you. physically exert yourself it actually calms the mind and i think there's probably a direct So the way that I reported this book is I spent more than a month hunting with Donnie Vincent in the

6:17 out there wandering around would be like an amber crombie and fitch which i didn't know used to be Yeah, he's looking. Good dude. Love that guy. It kills everything. Oh yeah. I was just looking it up, though. Even when it was So these guys were, like, wandering around New York City with no shirts on? That one. Yeah. Look at the guy on the far right. Bro,? The one that you just showed. The guys out there. No, the other one.

8:16 So what was the purpose of this? like what they sold they sold like canoes and shit, I think. Yeah, look at this. We don't need guns around here. Yeah, I think. But it's like, do we really know how to get back into discomfort? And like, And, you know, in that space, that trying middle ground, that's where you learn a lot and you've learned something about yourself and evolved. That's gone. And you think about young

11:39 blows up. Kids start to get helicopter parented. Challenge gets removed out of their lives. their kids into those challenging schools, you know? So now you start to see kids who were born after 1990 have much higher rates of mental health problems, like anxiety and depression, because It's more than that, I think. I've seen like teenage girls go after other teenage girls.

13:20 up exactly with the iPhone. through MySpace. That's how he became. That's cool. So as we evolved, influx of media we have, people spend 11 hours a day engaging with digital media. And one of the classes I teach is an intro class. you know, seven hours, 45 minutes, eight hours, 50 minutes, nine hours, 16 minutes. It's like, Totally. And, um, what's interesting about boredom is when oftentimes when boredom would kick on, we would go inward, sort of mind wander.

17:04 looking at your phone, watching a screen, whatever you're doing, if you're focusing on the outside world, Yeah, and there's actually research behind this. They've done studies where they'll have people watch something really boring, like a video of people folding laundry, Like, do you experience this when you're trying to think of that's what's supposed to happen. Yeah. That's how it works, man. You're supposed to fucking

19:23 just pops into your head throughout the day. And he basically says, he talks about the muse as if the muse is a real thing. are a thousand different ways to use your phone less. Yes, that is important. But the problem is a lot of times when people go, okay, I'm going to use my phone less. and what did you do while you're up there uh so we were hunting caribou

21:49 Yeah, we saw some grizzlies. So we get in the sort of So that's what's interesting, right? Yeah. Did you have a rifle? can get into this but donnie's like yeah fucking bears or whatever you know that is too comfortable you know, sort of as time went on, it's like, actually, this is kind of interesting to be totally removed from society because now all of a sudden it's like, we have all these social

24:13 As they should. Interesting. So he made this cabin. Pull up some of the his door. I mean, so he made this cabin. I mean, look, he's got a gold pan out there in the front was pretty extraordinary we got a little uh what is that like probably a shed Okay, just play the video because this is the one I've seen. And then eventually, you know, he lived the last days of his life, I think, in Washington

27:27 And talked about the tremendous satisfaction he got from just being allowed to live this Life Below Zero. with new content and new distractions. They pull you. But figuring out, like, how do we balance this all and have these moments where we have, you know, solitude, go more inward and aren't as stimulated. So one thing that, you know, after I'm standing out there in solitude,

29:32 circuits and they don't do well when they're alone at all. This is part of the reason we have such a encourages you to be constantly connected. And the more it can get you connected, the more it can extract revenue from you. But I don't think she's doing well. I'm like, all right, this lady might have went crazy. Like they find you camping. What are you doing eating moss, you crazy bitch?

31:55 We just thought, I mean, Donnie was just like, hey, I'm going up for more than a month. I'll tell you that much. we'll move it when the wind shift in a couple of days. Well, the wind shift overnight, I wake up and there's just like Yeah, the teepee. gonna have to do takedown you know get all your shit ready get it in your bag and it's just like So the basketballs are these things called tundra tussocks, which are these big, dense pieces of grass.

34:46 Oh, man. No. And so we're kind of chasing them more or less. And we ended up, you know, seven-ish miles from camp and decided we needed to, you know, head back to the teepee now. This was a ways into it. I don't know, maybe like 15, something like that. So we would have stayed out there. What is Chad Mendes' company called? But it's really healthy stuff.

37:45 And nothing's wrong with Mountain House if you're hungry. Well, that's a problem anyway when you're shitting on a tussock. like, oh yeah, I guess we've, we now sit on these nice porcelain toilets. And you have to make sure live outside and do a lot of things outside, they tend to have a lot better gut health than we do. Meanwhile, in the West, these are increasing problems, especially for younger people.

40:26 My friend David Cho, he's an artist. And he's worth like $100 million or more, some crazy number, right? Yeah, and so he went there, and they were like hunting baboons. They'll allow you to come with them. Turn it on hot. one when I was just telling you, we had to go back out across, uh, back through the tundra to amazing, amazing, but the service is not quite there. And before I get to Alaska, like I would

44:03 You guys do what you need to do. And so it makes you so much more appreciative, you know? And we did it for, I guess it was six or seven That's good planning. I never got out of there. Fucking any soap would have been fine at that time. No, but we got a caribou. that caribou was the best meal I've ever had in my life in that teepee It was tough. It's like this open, I don't know if you'd call it tundra, but whatever it is.

48:25 No. moss stuff too, right? with it but you're just sitting there and like i guess i'll eat this it's not too bad um did you It's cellophane. I think. up this valley and there's a saddle. Donnie's like, okay, if they keep moving and go over that And I'm looking through the scope, and Donnie has binoculars, you know. He's limping on his back leg so it's like that's the

53:01 down and in that moment I was like holy shit what have you done like there And as I'm sitting there, it was super interesting. and, um, those guys get back and then we start to, you know, field dress the animal. And, um, because I kind of better understand where it comes from and what has to go into it. is to think about their death at least once every day.

56:10 It's part of the Buddhist tradition that they follow. They've just sort of leaned into that And one of these, it was pretty wild. to this guy's shack. And, you know, he has someone there who's helped him with stuff. And she makes incense and on the right there's this um there's like a big statue of the Buddha and like photos I'm going to die, you're going to die, we're all going to die eventually. You take that into your life, it changes your behavior because you start to realize like there's going to be an end to all

59:56 They have better lives. It's really interesting. And I mean, it's something I do in my own life. Versus what you feel after you've been hunting for 33 days and actually killed an animal. But when I did go hunting, the moment I shot that animal, the moment it was down, like there, Yeah. martial arts competition or standup comedy or anything. I've, I've, I gravitate towards things

1:03:25 It was heavy. my food before I've caught fish before and eating fish it's great but there's The hierarchy of dead animals on social media. these bears because their population in Alberta, where my friends John and Jen run a hunting is larger bigger bears, grizzlies. So but people for whatever reason have not connected bears with food for a long time. Right. In terms of the history of

1:06:13 ronell calls them uh charismatic megafauna put them in this category of animals that you should it completely changed my idea I get a giant amount of my meat elk meat in particular, that dark red You can't. You know, I think this is a selfish proclamation. I feel like that with yoga. going to get them to exercise you're not going to get them to do it i'm not here for everybody

1:09:31 or doing anything that's hard. I mean, especially in the public eye, you face a lot of criticism. They just want comfort. Saved you from effort that just burned up calories that were hard to find. There was never a moment in history, unless you were like one of those really rich, overweight Yeah. It's a full whole bird that's soaked in brandy, and it's a small bird.

1:12:05 No, it's in- Yeah, that's right. But it's a very small bird. French chef Michael Girard told the paper in 2014, Do you know that word? The birds are then thrown alive into a vat of, how's that word? So this was like the thing to eat if you were one of those fat fucks in a painting. Of course you were, you cunts, to revive a culinary tradition dating back to Roman times.

1:14:39 It's like a capture so I can drown it in brandy in a week. In 2008, Esquire writer Michael Paternity attended one such French dinner that served ordelon. tiny cute little bird like i would They would grill lamb's brains, like the whole head of the lamb. No, we have words to describe it that, you know, that it's not from an animal. Like cows, a cow is a female animal.

1:17:42 Yeah. If someone says, did you go hunting? Like, what is that? We just eat them. We don't have to come up with a name. that it's a word but it's like but bison meat is just bison yeah you know which is it's interesting Well, there's a real issue with that in British Columbia because British Columbia has outlawed grizzly bear hunting. motherfuckers have no fear of people yeah they're just doing whatever they're doing whatever they're

1:20:19 And it was coming into his cabin. yeah but luckily for the puppy it has a rifle yeah it was a 30 at six that's really the and there's all these salmon that they'd been eating because the salmon run had happened and trimming the caribou in camp to you know because we're gonna have. And he's just chucking the trimmings in the bushes going, I don't know.

1:22:51 He was chasing the moose and swatted the moose in the back and broke its back. kid is picking these fresh berries for this tourist. Well, come to find out there's a grizzly out on that one they're so big they're so strong too cameron haynes has a photo on his Instagram from a couple of days ago of a grizzly that he shot and then also ate. Look at the size of that thing.

1:25:01 It's like we put different value on different things, He's like, it's some of the best meat. I'm like, well, do you eat cow? But my friends John and Jen that I was telling you about up in Alberta, You just want to kill it because you're a monster. Yeah. Yeah, I think it is too. Like they know what they're doing and they know that certain populations of animals get out of hand.

1:28:03 of wolves and now the reintroduction of wolves. And now the reintroduction of wolves, although it lowered the amount of elk, The elk actually down. And that there's a real balance that needs to be achieved. And part of it is how we've They have to really work together as a team hope it you know slows down footage and he ends up spooking them and donnie

1:31:10 Unbelievable. anxiety-ridden fool it was the complete opposite of course we had moments where there'd be spikes There's this idea called the nature pyramid. You have to go a little bit more out there to get it. People are riding what are called alpha waves. talks about i love the energy of the city like but that's fucking madness man like the energy of that city is madness yeah like what

1:35:20 Exactly. us. So nature, it tends to be made up of what are called fractals. So these are these repeating made up of fractals. So if you think about it, how he does his paintings. Really? Yeah, yeah. Pine cones and all the different things that fit into the Fibonacci sequence. That is how we evolved. strange year for counting on our so-called leaders to guide us in terms of what's the best course of

1:38:21 More than 70, I think it was 78% of people Like, get the fuck out of here, man. Whereas in the past, it's like, yeah, good luck. Our food system, it's like we have so many foods that are designed to Watch or a whoop strap? God, I don't So it would show you how much stress you've – and it was just because, you know, I've done some fitness stuff. Wow.

1:41:27 and I just kind of looked at them like, okay, good to see you. If you had a tag, there's not a chance in hell they would be that close. class and someone's like motivating you yeah come on keep pushing let's go yeah totally and the beat Yeah. Yeah. They're hard people, you know, like real kickboxers. How old were these guys? 70s. Old. Were they fit? No. No? No. No, dude. so like one of the things that these old guys like to do is going to spin

1:44:45 Because Jefferson Airplane was first. And in it, it talked about how he was really in a great slick when she was performing in So are you a Thompson junkie? For excess substance abuse. you very rarely get to be yourself is, especially in the open mic days, anybody because there's all these comedians that wanted to talk like David tell okay they would

1:47:41 Yeah, but doing acid and going to the Kentucky Derby, it's been done, bro. Well, there's so much energy to his writing, you know? But it's 6 a.m. in the hot tub with champagne was the end of the day for Hunter. Chivas. And he would become ready to write at like midnight. With morning papers. That weird walk. he would go on these talk shows like he would go on uh conan in particular and he was, you could not decipher

1:50:54 deteriorated in a way that i don't think i don't think he was aware no you know i don't think he Like, he's become this guy where he doesn't know what they want when he shows up. Kinnison said that. died he was not old no he wasn't that old in like, you know, there's people that are 70 right now that are very lucid. Just stop and think of that. basic maintenance

1:53:01 that's crazy He's doing some of the best journalism in America right now. And there's a good reason for that. Exactly. Interesting. It's hard to say. Yeah. That's an amazing line. So I don't know. Did you learn anything about yourself, about your own relationship with comfort? And so for me, it was like, I had to go through that in order to see that. And from that,

1:57:27 and sort of hang on. But then we go out and it's like we face all these different things and like you just keep So I think a lot of fears fade when we reintroduce Yeah. It's like, oh my God. Or you didn't get enough likes. It's like, that is failure. bitch, I got this. Yeah. I think, um, I've definitely found that personally that, uh, comes back yeah you have to experience difficult shit yeah i don't i think we're designed that way

2:00:33 and he didn't want to be a doctor. sports medicine because I think I can revolutionize the field with by bringing more data and science is players come in and he attaches all these reflective markers all over their body, and he So this can also tell you You are off the charts at decelerating or slowing down. So another thing he does with his friends and players that are interested

2:03:43 And then there's two guidelines beyond that. And then number two is that you don't really brag and boast about it and share whatever you do on social media. hell you know um but by doing it you get on the other side and you're like man i really learned which is defined by a 50-50 shot of finishing it. That would be pretty tough, but I think. And the nice thing is, like, you don't have to over-prepare.

2:06:45 And I mean, I'm, you know, trained as a science journalist. So I'm breaking a guideline here, but I'll talk about it. So for example, So I'm like, hey, let's go find out. it was like, okay, we're going to, we're going to make a go at the fourth one, just whatever. So, I mean, look, that's the 50-50 thing. Was it that your body had just accepted the fact that this is just what we're doing?

2:10:06 it, if we would have evolved to just have this outsized idea of what we're capable of, we'd be more capable than they. That's how your genes pass on. Yeah. What do you, do you think there's a mechanism that happens in the mind or in the body where the body realizes like, no matter what Yeah. You know, it doesn't know. me up with a really sweet bow um but i got it right before covid so i was like trying to take

2:12:47 Thank you very much. It's one thing to pull the trigger on a target when there's no pressure. I'm pretty sure. archers and then there's target panner but he goes into the psychology of it like what actually which is like swinging a baseball bat. the idea is that you're in control the entire process you're not allowing With a rifle, you could have sticks, like shooting sticks,

2:16:19 and you're doing – you're holding everything. and I'm concentrating on making sure the bubble's in place. I become the arrow. That's interesting. August, September, I'm doing it every day. well i would imagine that's why it's so rewarding right like you're every single day you're putting Yeah. We're good at two things. It's why we don't have much fur and why

2:20:31 and carry it back to camp, right? Now you think about exercise today, sort of turned those guys into some of the fittest people in the world. You can argue, right? sitting a lot. But you put a weighted backpack on a person, Yeah. plates on it yeah I have a pack what the fuck is it called again I have one too Wow. And you can have serious weight on your back.

2:24:35 Yeah. maybe 24 inches or so to get into the place. Completely slimmed down. Hello, honey. my neighborhood and there's a gate that leads to this whole trail network so I'll go out there and rock all the time and it's awesome is the number one thing you can do to avoid death. It's like, you go down the list of things that Don't you think that what happens when people get involved whether it's weight lifting or running they get really

2:28:19 Yeah, hit some random time. What are you, rock climbing, bro? Lifting weights is hard. they're not necessarily healthy. not just to document all these issues that people are having with comfort, like a box that's like, okay, here are the steps to do this. But it's all inherent and you leave Let's figure out why you're eating in the first place. what the hell are you talking about, man? You know, like we're just, we can do a lot more than

2:32:29 less food and stay warm? I would never like to eat less food. Never. But you're a thin guy. Like, graduated college he's He's mega genius. And it pisses me off because I'm older than him, obviously. So now he has this nutrition company he calls Trevor Cashy Nutrition. to try and keep you at a you know, this sort of, I guess, in the book book I call it real hunger versus reward hunger.

2:36:13 it looked at overweight people who said that they just could, and eat more, right? More food has always made sense throughout all of time. So if you can get kind of all over the board most interesting though this doesn't have anything to do with food is when Oh, my God. math so he didn't actually cook it but he would meet with them and be like here's the problem

2:38:56 That's your problem. That's rare. there's got to be a little bit of trial and error there. Like a lot of people take Adderall. That's what I'm trying to say. I'm like, damn, I fucking could eat right now. Suplee? to stay alive so if you're addicted to food like fuck that is such a mind game you're playing all Yeah. he also realized he was just way too fat and out of shape and he was just so unhealthy. And he

2:42:26 Yeah. I feel like, I mean, I, I feel like our food system is set up in such a way in our lives But foods that are healthy, whether it's salads or grass-fed meat, you don't gorge on those. So your body gets that. To get that, you have to climb up a tree and get in a big-ass fight with some bees. Is it the allergy thing? I don't know if it's legit. in clinical studies.

2:45:26 They think that when humans ate a lot of psychedelic mushrooms and they wanted to preserve them, Well, there's also a very specific type of honey that is a psychedelic drug. Okay. Man. Yeah. I was thinking, what if the bears get into that thing, man? Yeah. Oh, God. You can buy mad honey. I don't know. and you used to be able to buy it in head shops.

2:48:30 through to get it and then bring it back up. So it became this overall like life-changing thing, Am I an adult now? You'd become a new thing. It's like, it's not getting your driver's license driver's license not graduating college because then you're in debt Yeah, I think, look at Joseph Campbell. we don't go out and do these things like for others at all. It's like, this is 100% you

2:50:52 Even then, I'd want to hear it from the guy. mozart and he just goes hold up he He goes, it's Mozart. Yeah. Oh, yeah. you can get it on audio thank you very much