The Evolution Gap: ReWilding, Vulnerability, and Transformative Experiences

Hard times make for tough good people. And tough good people, they make for easy times. And then easy times make for weak people, and weak people make for really hard times.

Welcome to Back to the Future podcast. My name is Victor Sadia and I talk with brilliant minds and hearts of people who want to uproot and transform the current health and wellness paradigm. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Today we have Eric Edmidz. In this episode we spoke about the epidemic of chronic disease and the lack of attention it gets from the media while being the single biggest global crisis in terms of social cost and economic devastation. We also talked about his experiences with one of the last hunter gatherer tribes in Africa in what he terms the evolution gap, A gap that shows the difference between the physiology of the human body and the environment where that physiology lives and interacts. Hence our growing need to rewild ourselves and to generate communities that support vulnerable individuals that want radical presence and transformation. Eric Edmeads is a successful businessman, serial entrepreneur and professional speaker. He's best known for his motivational speaking and his transformative programs based on food anthropology and behavior change dynamics. He's the founder of WildFit, Speaker Nation and Business Freedom. Eric, thank you so much for being here.

Glad to be here. Good to see you again.

So what makes a good podcast interview?

You know, I, I really believe that if you take two people with similar interests and maybe some opposing views or opposing curiosities and manage to encourage them to have a genuine conversation as if nobody's listening, and then you listen in, that's. That to me makes the best podcasts.

Okay, we'll try to do that. Just that. So you and I are interested in chronic disease in general, and sometimes I think that no one is really listening to the statistics. You know, they're so huge and you know, cardiovascular cancer, diabetes disease, those numbers are, you know, very, very big. It seems like a big problem. What's your take on, on us not really paying attention to those numbers?

You know, I, I think that there are a number of factors that get in the way. The one is that the numbers are just so big that they're difficult for humans. I mean, if you consider early humans, there was never any need for them to understand the concept of exponential. They didn't have that. You know, they, they, it sure a forest is exponential growth, but that takes like, you know, many, many generations and nobody sees it happening. Or even the rate of extinction that say, our early answers caused. They didn't see it. It was happening so slowly. So I think that's One of the problems, like, one of my favorite things to do with people is when they, you know, when they don't understand the number billion, you know, it's like I always like to help them break down the word billion. And it's like, because they're always like, oh, the millionaires and the billionaires, they're the problem. Well, first of all, the average person has more in common with a millionaire than a millionaire does with a billionaire. And, and one way to think of that is, is that you can easily spend a million dollars by spending $83,000 a month, and then you've spent a million dollars. Now, I'm not saying that, that, you know, that that would be an easy thing to do, but relatively, it could be a quite easy thing to do. But to spend a billion dollars, you would have to spend that same $83,333.33. You'd have to spend it every single month for a thousand years. So a million and a billion isn't even close. So when we say that diabetes, as an example, is going to cost the American people over $300 billion a year, they can't, they can't relate to that. It's, it's, it doesn't, it doesn't mean anything more than 300 million or even, for that matter, 300,000. It's just gone beyond what they're, you know, what, what the mind easily can comprehend. Then on top of that, we have forces that want to distract us from those numbers anyway. I mean, how that's not on the front page of every major newspaper in America, for example, is amazing to me. It's like the single biggest crisis, both in terms of social costs and in terms of economic devastation that we've really ever faced. And nobody's talking about it. And that's because, well, frankly, most of the media companies are either directly owned or financially influenced by the various interests that aren't that don't benefit from us knowing these things, including, you know, the food industry and the, and the pharmaceutical industries. So, you know, a, it's hard for us to comprehend, and B, there are people distracting us. They're doing, you know, sleight of hand. Using their own media companies.

Yes, in a sense, it sometimes feels like if the pharmaceutical industries is like a parasite, like, in a sense, it thrives when, when these diseases are going up. And yes, how do you think we should address these systemic causes of chronic diseases instead of just blaming the victim? Because at the end of the day, blaming diabetes and obesity on individuals who are very lazy or eat too much is just very simplistic and also counterproductive in terms of the health of the planet.

Victor. It's not that it's simply simplistic. It is sinister. It is sinister, and it is outright evil. And I want to describe the way I believe this came about, and that is that, first of all, let's go back to the 1960s and 70s when people were smoking all over the place. Now, the tobacco companies had really worked hard to get people smoke. I mean, they were good at it. In fact, as an example, it was not so difficult to get men to smoke, but it was very difficult to get women to smoke. And until they took a look at basically mass psychology, crowd psychology, using very similar principles to the Nazi party. They, they. What they did is they took a look at what was going on in female psyche. And of course, at that point, the suffrage movement, you know, all early rise of feminism and all that stuff's going on. And so they started creating ad campaigns that attached their product to what women wanted. And Virginia Slims famously came out with their slogan. They've got the woman, she's wearing like a white work shirt and work jeans, and she's got grease on her face. Now, this is a very important aspect of that commercial, because women typically, at that point, and I think, still, I think it's fair to say, as long as we're not being overly stereotypical, I think women generally aren't as tolerant of dirty as men are. And so putting that grease on her face was a clear signal. And then giving her a cigarette in her hand, and then the slogan says, you've come a long way, baby. And, you know, next thing you know, women are smoking all over the place. So then, you know, next, as we approach the 60s and 70s, we start becoming aware of how devastating smoking is. And the tobacco companies at this point realize they're going to start facing product liability claims, and they're going to start facing them, and they got to start dealing with it. Now, there's two ways you can do jury tampering. And, you know, this is a big accusation I'm going to make, but there's two ways you can do jury tampering. One is find out who the actual jury is and try to find members of the jury and tamper and interfere, bribe, blackmail, whatever you want. But there's another way of doing jury tampering, and that is to simply understand that the entire population of the country is your jury pool. And then to indoctrinate those people through very Powerful marketing campaigns to get them to think a certain way. And so they coined the term lifestyle disease. And so once they coined the term lifestyle disease, that meant that every single person heading out onto a jury was thinking, well, you're an idiot if you have lung cancer. We all knew that this was bad for us. Never mind that only two decades before they were saying doctors recommend smoking and what have you. So we're all forgetting that because now we're calling it a lifestyle disease. And once we call it a lifestyle disease, well, it's that person's fault and the jury finds against them. And that happened for many, many years. Most of the people who tried to sue the tobacco companies in the early days lost because the juries went against them. And I was, even as a child, this is insane. But then the tide started to shift. The tide started to shift and juries started awarding, they started awarding very, very big numbers to plaintiffs and the families of plaintiffs that suffered through and died from cancers related to smoking. But then what did tobacco industry do? They started buying food manufacturers. They started divesting and buying food manufacturers. And so now you've got that same ethics, which is the worst kind of ethics. There are the same morals, the worst kind of morals there are that are governing the way we sell food and the way we lobby for, you know, that we lobby for, for protections against product liability. The pharmaceutical companies done these same things. And so we're, none of these people are on our side. You've got a food industry that has no interest in providing you nourishment. They just care about profit. And they have a pharmaceutical industry that has no interest in cure. They just want to manage symptomology. And so all of those people, all of those, let's not say people, because it's not one individually evil person. It's, it's. All of those entities are profit seeking entities and they are distracting us from the problem to continue to drive the profits. And it's, it's, it's difficult.

Yes, I think that's a great example. And it's still, after 60, 70 years, you know, smoking still normal in a sense. Like. Yeah, you still see there what, you know, what do you believe it will happen? Not what you want to happen. What do you believe it will happen in 50 years regarding the, the amount of junk food that we're eating and getting also advertised all over the place.

You know, Victor, you know, it's, it's a funny thing at this point. There was a time when you could look ahead into the future and think that you might have some idea of what 50 years was going to look like, but that that ship sailed a long time ago. I think that if you consider that, you know, when did the wright Brothers fly? 1890 something or other. On the day that they flew for the first time, there were babies that had been born and those babies then approached their teens. And by that point in time there were already commercial flights and planes being used in warfare. And by the time those same children got to World War II, planes were being heavily used in warfare and the emergence of the jet was just around the corner. And then by the time those same children entered into their 60s, we were flying the Concorde. In fact, some of those children may even have been on the Concorde and they were born before the first flight. And meanwhile we then landed some people on the moon. So how do you predict even from 1890 what the next 50 years is going to look like? Now? I would say that the rate of acceleration in our social change, technological change is so fast at this point that it's difficult now to even predict what's going to happen. Well, five months from now. And I mean that, you know, all this AI stuff that's come out over the last, you know, whatever, six months or so, I mean obviously some of it even before that, but the big explosion with the large language models and so forth, you know, I think we used to be able to say look, I can look at the next three, four, five years and I have some idea. Now we have no idea. And I'll give you an idea practically of how that's impacted me. I have two children, one of, one of whom is 26 and a third of the way through his law degree and you know, self sufficient out there running the world, very proud of him, he's doing a Great job. My 6 year old on the other hand is facing a world of such turmoil and such a high rate of innovation that I don't know what to prepare her for. My old policy used to be I'm fortunate financially and I've done well in my life. My old policy used to be I will never leave my children enough money to make them lazy. I just won't do it. I've watched it ruin too many of my friends, lives that grew up with trust funds that kicked in. And my policy is there be money there and make sure they can go to school if they want, start a business if they want, take on social projects if they want, and then there might be some kind of balloon payment later in their life that come as A surprise to them that didn't even know was coming. And that's it. My new policy is leave enough money, that little girl will never have to work again because God knows what the world is going to look like. So let's take it back to what your question was really about. And that is how's it going to look relative to say, food manufacturing, medical response to that pharmaceutical and that kind of stuff? I am hoping that one of the things that will get born out of these large language models in AI is that will speed up the rate of realization. It will allow people to become deeper, more critical thinkers, because they can now. Now, assuming that these AIs are not in the future as biased as they currently are. But, but what will happen is people will actually begin to understand what $300 billion worth of damage does to the country. They'll actually be able to do the research. Like they'll, they'll actually be able to find out that one of the companies, I mean, you know, we wouldn't necessarily want to name any particular Pfizer, but, but one company, you know, has, has paid out more money in, in criminal fines and judgments than any other company. Like they are quite literally. And I don't like when people use the word literally. You know, my head literally exploded. No, no, it bloody didn't. I'm looking at it right now. But they, this, that organization is literally one of the largest criminal organizations in the world by definition. And I think that as people wake up to that, then, then the, the best way we can't change it at the government level. They own our governments. There's nothing we can do about that. The only way that we're maybe going to be able to change it is that grassroots revolution. And I'm not Talking pitchforks and AK47s, I'm talking spending. If you stop buying Coca Cola, they'll stop making it. If you stop buying junk food, they'll stop making it. And, and consequently, if you stop buying disastrous chronic medications, like medications, for example, to manage a disease like diabetes, which can be reversed in six, eight, nine weeks in many cases, if you decide to reverse it instead of buying that medication, they'll stop making it. And if it stops being profitable, they'll stop having the money to buy our government. They'll stop having money to lobby with and to legislate with and to educate education with. So that's where it really has to begin, and that's where I've placed my focus. I was encouraged years ago to enter government. I was very fortunate to be awarded a medal by the Canadian government some years ago. And I got to know one of the senators and some of the other politicians there, and one of them in particular has pushed me for a long time. She's like, we need people like you in government. And I'm like, the pace of change there is so unbelievably slow. You know, they still haven't figured out legislation for the Internet, let alone AI. How are they going to deal with it? Whereas if I get out into the world and I change one person's buying patterns today, then I've put a dent in the problem and that's, that's my focus.

Yeah, I was going to, to go there. That in a sense, it's, it's, it's like mindset medicine. You know, it's like, like rewiring who we are in the identity and the narrative we self create and it end up creating us. You've developed over the years a friendship with the Hadza people in Africa. So first of all, tell us who are the Hadza people? And also how does it look like for a white person to approach them and form a. A friendship and then translate that knowledge into, into a way of being in a sense. I. I feel you have so many things from them that you apply in your business, in your life, that it's. It's really interesting.

You know, I think it's. It's safe to say that it started with the movie the Gods Must be crazy. This is my favorite little human right here.

Hi, Zoe.

Okay, I'm interview. Can you guys go hang out and I'll be out there? Yeah. No, no, no. I'll be out in a bit. Sorry, Victor. We have the rule in this house that they. The doors never fully close to them. So to the children. So that's how that works.

I love that.

So anyway, many years ago, let's actually. It doesn't actually start with the gods wants you crazy. It starts when I was 12 years old and I'm standing in the National Museum in Bloemfontein and they hand me a skull. And it's my grandfather's skull. Not literally. It's his skull that he discovered. And it was one of the earliest Homo sapien skulls ever found. And at that moment, something shifted in me. I became deeply curious about the life of that person, that particular person, that one fluorospad man, woman, we don't even know. It had two bite marks in it that roughly the size of probably hyena or leopard. We don't know if they were perimortem or cause of death, we don't know. And so, so that's where it starts. And then some years later, I saw the movie the Gods Must be Crazy. And I don't know if you've seen Is Victor. It's one of the greatest independent films ever made. It is witty and irreverent and sweet and cute. And it involves a genuine family of the Khoisan Bushmen in the sor of southern African area. And I was fascinated by these people and, and the premise of the movie is cute. A pilot throws a Coke bottle out the window, it lands in the sand. And the Bushmen find this thing and it's so useful. It can open melons, it can grind grains, it can make music. But for the first time in their lives, they have only one of something. And so they start fighting over it. And so the Bushman chief decides, well, the gods must be crazy, we have to give this back to them. And it's all about his trek to throw the bottle off the end of the world and give it back to the gods. So it's super charming. And ever since seeing that movie, I thought, oh my God, I would I ever be able to meet people like that? And so years later, I'd been running a leadership program where I would take executives and high performance people and I take them up Kilimanjaro as part of a mental toughness and leadership training. And I did that a number, I did that, I did that trip seven times. It's quite a, quite, quite a mountain to climb. And at one point during one of those trips, my logistics manager said, my logistics company in Tanzania said, well, would you like to, would you like to go visit the Hadza? And I'm like, well, who are the Hadza? And he says, the Hadza are one of the last truly nomadic hunter gatherer families like you know, in the world. There's maybe six or 800 of them left and they live in the, in this particular area. And they're very much like the Khoisan in many ways, although not apparently genetically closely genetically related. And of course we grabbed machetes and Land Rovers and we, you know, we started driving through the bush and it took a long time. And, and this is, this is over 15 years ago now. It's like, now you've got, you know, you've got the carnivore guys just popping out for a visit with them and popularizing their, their anthropological background. But 15 years ago it was actually quite a wild experience to go and see them. And I've now been back. And I've been back visiting with them for pretty much every year for the last 15 years. And it has been one of the most rewarding and thought provoking and interesting things I've ever undertaken. They are fascinating people. The chief and I have formed what can best be described as a good friendship, despite our language differences. You know, they named me, which I thought was super cute. I have my own Hadza name. And, and the last time I was there, it was, you know, I think had been just over 10 years. And he. So he gave me a hunting boat, like his actual hunting bow, which I have here in my house. So it's been, it's been. Yeah, rewarding.

How different are the ways of seeing life between. Between you and them in terms of health, disease, wellness and what we're here for?

You know, Victor, it's a tough thing. I think that there's a, there's a. There's a very strong human tendency to romanticize situations. You know, James Cameron has done a phenomenal job of romanticizing what we might think of as, quote, indigenous people. And I say quote, indigenous not out of any sense of disrespect, but just out of scientific accuracy that in order for a species of any kind to be indigenous, it has to be natively from that place. And so, of course, the only place that humans are actually indigenous is Africa. And, and so, you know, there we now have Avatar that romanticizes this idea that the indigenous people can have like a balanced relationship with nature. And if we simply tuned into their balanced idea of nature, maybe we could rectify the right. The wrongs that we've. You know, I, I mean, it's just, you know, it's, it's just, you know, speaking of the Hadza, I was out hunting with Nona, the chief. It's actually pronounced, but I can't quite. I'm not as good at the clicks as they are. But anyway, Nona, he. We're hunting and we stumble upon a big baobab tree. And I don't know if you. I'm sure you saw the Lion King.

Yeah, the baobab. Yeah.

Yeah. So, well, there's a, the bird in the Lion King, Zazu. He's called a hornbill. And hornbills have an interesting nesting policy. What they do is they find a hole, typically in a baobab tree, and then they, they put the, the mother in there. And then. And the, the, the, the, the. The male muds it over. He muds the hole over and leaves Just a tiny little hole traps her in there. And now she lays the eggs and he feeds her insects and things through the hole. And then eventually the eggs hatch. And when they're big enough to fly, they break open the mud and they get out. Well, we saw one of these holes. And so, you know, Nona jumps up into the tree, breaks open the mud. Because the mud was never there to defend against sapiens, it was there to defend against snakes. And so, you know, he breaks open though, and he grabs the, the, the mother breaks her neck, grabs down, and the next thing you know, we're having pretty boiler soup, you know, on the fire and. Which is really difficult to watch with our sense of values. Right? You know, so I'm kind of like, okay, but I'm here when in Rome or when in Tanzania. And I said, I said to him at one point, does it ever occur to you to like, leave the nest? Like leave the birds in the nest? Because that way the eggs could hatch and make more birds who could have more eggs. And he looked at me like what I had suggested was just insane. Why would I do that? I'm hungry. And also if, and then he actually said this, he goes, no, if I left them, then somebody else would take them. And by somebody else, he means other humans. He means mongoose, he means snakes. Like, he's basically saying, this is nature and you take what you can when you get there. Now that's not evil, right? That's not evil. It's just human. And so I think one of the challenges we have is that as long as we, you know, romanticize the, the, the indigenous balance with the land, and we don't realize that it's actually human nature to simply, it's like, you know, the farmer doesn't want all the land, he just wants to land next to his or whatever. It's that kind of a thing. So the same thing happens here is that I, I see people going and visit. It's now become quite popular to go visit the Hadza. I've seen a couple people on Joe Rogan. They spent four hours with the Hadza and now they're an anthropologist. And I, I find that, you know, fascinating. But they, they, the, the thing is, is that what a lot of times people do is they'll go down there and they'll visit with them and then they'll make det. History based on a four hour visit with them and romanticize them as a like, for, like representation of our ancestry. And I don't, I don't think that's fair and I don't think it's accurate. And, and, and in fact, I, I took a couple of guys to down there to visit. I took Paul Saladino, I think he, I think his book was called the Carnivore Code. And I took Anthony Gustine, who, you know, the founder of Perfect Keto. And we had a great time down there. And then afterward, every now and again they would write something and I'd write to them and go, guys, like, like this is one thing we observed. Let's, let's, let's reel it in a little. Like I, you know, it's not that you can't make a rule based on your, you know, based on their altered behavior while we were there for four hours. Right. You know, but having done extended stays with them as I have, I mean I've done multiple extended long term stays with them, unsupported. Where I go there, my support team leaves, they leave a Land Rover in case I've got a serious problem. But they, they leave and I've got, you know, I, I bring water because I'm not an idiot, but I don't take any food and I'm just there with them. And what I have found is that after a little while they do settle into their normal routines. And what I would say is this. We should not romanticize them as iconic representations of our ancestry, but we can, I think fairly accept them as the closest representation to our ancestry that we have on the planet today alongside, say, the Coruscant. And so being with them has really shown me some fascinating things. Like, you know, if you consider the neurotransmitters that exist in your body, they evolved for that environment. They involved for that environment. They did not involve for red and blue lights flashing in your rearview mirror because you were going too fast, which is now why you pump a bunch of adrenaline. When that happens. They, your neurotransmitters did not evolve for you to receive a legal demand summons or a bill you were afraid of paying. But what, what's crazy is, is that those neurotransmitters which did evolve for attacks, wild animals, harsh weather conditions, I mean, survival. The trouble is, is that the chemicals that we produce at that time are perfect for those conditions. As an example, we produce say, adrenaline, noradrenaline, cortisol. Well, what's really fascinating is that soup of things does a variety of different things. Like for example, I was shocked to find this out. But if you are about to suffer injury, like believes you're about to suffer injury you will start producing blood coagulants before you hit the ground. Like your blood is already preparing to, not to try and prevent you from bleeding out already. It's incredible. In the meantime, now your blood's a little thicker, so now you need your heart to pump a little harder. So now you've got your heart going to try to oxygenate you and then you've got adrenaline that's giving you all this extra strength in your muscles and you're ready. Fight, flight, freeze. You're ready. You're ready, ready. And then you get a legal summons in the mail. And. And so one of the things that I have found most fascinating about being with them is looking at human beings that are living in an environment that is a direct match for their evolved neurology and their evolved physiology. And it is fascinating. They are in my opinion, the most contented humans I've ever met anywhere as a population.

I think this topic gives us a lot of insights or at least questions. And I love the way you, you try to romanticize, but also not doing that much with this helicopter anthropology that we're used to do. So, so how, how can we reconciliate this fast paced change technology, the, the urban environment that has really gotten us very sick in all, in all ways, you know, mental, physical, social, environmental, and create a narrative of probably more understanding that we are destroying ourselves in a sense, without being pessimistic or even just alarmistic.

You know, I think that one of the things we can take a look at is we can take a scientific process called rewilding, which is a reference to taking an ecologically impoverished area and attempting to rewild it to the condition it was in prior to the devastation it faced. So for example, in the steppes of Russia, they're now cultivating a lot of the Pleistocene era animals there and basically creating say a Pleistocene park to try to recreate things before the mass extinctions. And there's even discussion about cloning mammoths and releasing them into that same area to truly rewild it. There are some great examples of rewilding in Exmoors in England. I lived in England for many years and visited Exmoor routine. Beautiful, beautiful place. And they released beavers back in there. And of course beavers had been hunted into extinction for hats a long, long time ago. And as soon as they brought these new beavers in, of course the beavers started creating dams and the dams messed up the waterways. But in the meantime, what did it do? Well, it created deeper pools of water for new, for for, for species of fish that were struggling to replenish and survive and repopulate. New birds got brought to the area. New kingfishers that hadn't been seen there for decades were sud back. It's, you know, we've seen that happen. The, the, the wolves in Yellowstone park are one of the most magnificent things. I mean when they, you know, the first wolves that came back to Yellowstone park actually wandered there by accident, as I understand it. They, they, one of them was tagged, it was from Canada. I don't know if you know the geography very well. That's not an easy walk. But it's not like you just go, I'll just go south for a minute. No, that's quite a trek. And these wolves, so once there were some wolves there, they, they then start reintroducing some wolves there. Well, you know, you know, sometimes in the movies it's better if you tell the end of the story before you tell the whole story. The shape of the rivers changed when they put wolves back in the park. The shape of the river. So of course, what happened? Well, the wolves changed a bunch of hunting patterns. People were very concerned that the wolves would threaten the coyotes. They, they would cause all kinds of harm to the coyotes. Well, actually it turned out that something very different happened and that is that because wolves will take down say a bison or a caribou or an elk or something and they'll take it down and they won't eat the who whole thing, which means they leave food for the coyotes, which are very much like African jackals. So suddenly the coyote populations are healthier than they've ever been before. Then at the same time, before these, all these big herbivores would go down onto the river's edge because, you know, that's where the water is. And they would eat all the plants there, which would cause river, would cause more river erosion. But of course, no animal wants to be by the river when there's big predators around because the predators are smart and they use the rivers to hunt. So now all these animals have learned, hey man, we can't go hang out by the river anymore, anymore. So guess what? The river plants start shoring up. In the meantime, the river plants start shoring up. So the river banks are start, start, are, are stronger and they can withhold. And next thing you know, you've got changed river patterns. Rewilding is a fascinating, fascinating process. And so far you might be confused as to how this relates to your question. What I'm suggesting is that we rewild ourselves as best we can. Now, I'm not suggesting you got to do like, you know, you got to like, like, sell up everything you got and like Harrison Ford and the mosquito and the Mosquito coast and move off to the coast of Africa and just disappear into the wilderness. If you have the resources to do that and you've got the tenacity and strength, I think it might be fantastic. But in more, in more real terms, how about we just observe some things? Like, we know scientifically, we know that if you are in sight of water, your cortisol levels go down and your stress reduces. If you're in sight of water, if you live by the coast, I live by the coast, always. In fact, I live on the beach. And then the other thing we can take a look at is we can recognize that the, the, you know, living in tremendous EMF and light pollution all the time is probably a little different than the way things were in nature. So make sure that you live somewhere or that you visit places that are different than that. Then take a look at your sleeping patterns and, and, and rewild those to some degree. Your room should be like, naturally cool with fresh air and, and, and it should be dark. It should actually be dark. It's, you know, there. If we take a look at all those core principles and we start to bring them back to our, our lives and then what we're actually doing is proper biohacking, you know, and I'm not against, you know, this sort of newfangled biohacking thing. It's just that mostly what I see is a bunch of people trying to take shortcuts. And what I would suggest is that if you first, the first foundation of biohacking should be a full appreciation of evolutionary biology and doing the best you can to close the evolution gap relative to your biology. And if you do that, then that's the ultimate biohack. If you being near water is the ultimate biohack. Walking through a forest with trees. Like, how about this? This. When you hear birds, Victor, you're gonna love this. When you're in the forest and you hear birds, you probably have, oh, they're sweet. You know, they're nice birds. But what you don't realize is your DNA is saying, oh, as long as those birds are cheeping, I know there are no predators around. Like, it's because in. You're in sub Saharan Africa and all the birds go quiet, you're in bloody danger. And so when you walk into a forest and you hear all those birds and you wonder, why do I feel good like that. Why? Because your DNA knows you're sa. And so the more we pay attention to those wilder principles and rewild them into our existence, then the easier life starts to be. Now, sorry, Victor, one more thing. I know.

No, I'm. Please go ahead.

Podcast answers are supposed to be shorter, but I got to say this, too.

Please go ahead.

Another part of it is, and this is devastating by the way, life is too easy now. It is entirely too easy. And so, you know. And you know the old expression, you know, hard times make for tough good people, and. And tough, good people, they make for easy times, and then easy times make for weak people, and weak people make for really hard times. Well, right now we're in a place where the majority of people, in my opinion, in many of the governments around the world are those very weak people that were created by protectionist, weak university campuses that decided to coddle them and decided to create safe spaces for them and trauma warnings and so forth. And so here. Here's the. The danger of that type of thinking is that that if you protect your child from all harm, if you protect your child from all harm, then the tiniest thing comes along and fully engages their harm chemicals. So my stepdaughter comes down here to the Dominican Republic to stay with us the first time when she's 15, and she starts going out and meeting people and going to parties and stuff. And, you know, the first thing is I'm like, who's. Who's. Whose party is this? I remember the first time. I remember distinctly first time. She goes, I want to go to this party. Who is it? This guy. Okay. Okay. How old is he? I don't know. He's 20 something. You're 16? Yeah. It's not like that. It's not like that. He's just driving. Is he sober? Yeah. Okay, I'll go out and meet him. So I walk over to the. To the. To the place where they're meeting for the party. I walk up to him and I go, what's going on here with this party? He tells me about the party. I go, how old are you? He says, I'm 23. I go, you understand that she's 16 years old, right? He goes, I understand. I said, you understand what that means? Yes, I understand what that means. I go, are you drinking? No. Are you planning on drinking? No. And I go, all right. What time do you think she should be home? Home? He says, I think 11 would be good. I go, yeah, I think 1045 or 11 would be good. I said, now do you understand that I would be prepared to do you bodily harm if something were to happen to her? You know, so. So he's like, yes, yes. By the way, I bump into him on the beach all the time now. He always gives me a high five. But what's crazy is, is that her mom's response was, I hope. I'm thinking about all her physical threats and all that kind of stuff, which she is, too. But then her mom says, I hope she doesn't go out there to these parties and get her heart broken. And my response without missing a beat was, I hope she does. I hope she's privileged enough to have a teenage crush that breaks her heart a little, and then that'll make her tougher for the next one. And see, the trouble is that our nature is to coddle our children and prevent them. We're going to give them a trophy no matter what. We're going to make sure that they never feel bad. And as a consequence, now you have these grown men and women who are throwing temper tantrums in the Starbucks because they don't have the syrup they wanted. And I think what that says to me is that what we can do as individuals is put ourselves in physically challenging, emotionally challenging, and even dangerous situations to recalibrate our adrenal glands, to recalibrate our sense of fear. And then we can also do the same thing for our children. You know, I took my daughter, I kiteboard, I'm a kite surfer. So I put my daughter on. I offered her, she said, yeah, she jumps on my back and I kite out into the water with her. Now listen, I did in a very controlled environment. It was very shallow water, all her family's on the beach, like, there's no danger at all. But I'll tell you what, her adrenaline fires from that and she gets tougher, by the way. At three years old, she goes and joins the circus. Here she's doing trapeze at three years old, she's fearless. Now, you know, you want to balance fearless against, you know, a healthy level of caution. But right now we are so far in the other balance that we have a bunch of coddled children that have grown up and they're running our countries and. Well, without getting too controversial, let's say that they may have overreacted to some of the events of the recent years.

Yes, yes. And you know what? Also what really brings stress, post traumatic growth, in a sense, is talking about how tough trauma or whatever we've had and we've grown as A society just posturing and walking around as if we don't have feelings. In a sense. You run a lot of group sessions, and you talk about trauma and feelings and very difficult things. That really puts you in a fight or flight mode. But at the end of the day, I would always. I would. I would. I'm asking you, you know, I think whenever you put yourself in that position and you're open to be vulnerable, you always end up growing. How can we harness this? Not only harness the power. We know. We know the power of group sessions, but legitimize the need of group sessions so that it doesn't feel like alcoholics Anonymous, you know, and go beyond that simple idea that we are a society. We are. We are the same. We're just mirrors. And let's talk about important stuff.

Yeah, I think. I think that's. That is a tough thing. And then, you know, the stigma attached to going somewhere to get worked on or what have you. One of the reasons that I created my kilimanjaro program, we called it see you at the top, sort of a hat tip to the original book by Zig Ziglar, and. But of course, it was also a literal title because we were on our way to the top of Kilimanjaro. And one of the reasons we did that was that. That on one level, it now wasn't a group session. It was an adventure. Right. It no longer felt like an AA meeting. It was like, you know, you were on an adventure, and that helped a great deal. But then the other issue was, is that it. It. It would truly push people. So I. I had been as a kid. I. I'm a big. You know, Tony Robbins has been a massive, massive influence on my life, both as a young man, and he invited me to tour with him. I got to spend a lot of time with him, and he's had a huge, huge impact on me. And I remember in the early days going to his workshops, and he did things like board breaking and firewalking, which, by the way, I think are fascinating. I think that they are fascinating, and they have a place. But then I went to other workshops, and they had similar things like bar bending and arrow breaking, you know, where you put the arrow in your neck and that kind of stuff. And I. You know, what I quickly began to realize is that those challenges were optimized for time. Time, not for impact. Now, a firewalk is pretty good for impact, but it's still a very narrow lesson about a very specific state of mind. You can't use Firewalk mentality for a job interview. And you can't use firewalk mentality for a fight you're having with your husband or wife or parenting. You can't. It's not, that's not what it's for. Firewalk physiology might be for starting a business or walking up and asking a girl out on a date. You know, it might be something you use to overcome fear in a moment. But what I really wanted to do is say, well, wait a second now, what is similar to that, but that is more metaphorically representative of life? And of course, many years before, I had climbed Kilimanjaro with some friends, and I suddenly realized that climbing Kilimanjaro myself without guidance, without, without a coach there was probably one of the most significant personal development exercises I had done in my life. And I thought, what if I wrapped. What if I wrapped a structure around that that would have people really observe themselves. And you know what I found is that it, in the week or so of climbing that mountain, and then of course, another week of, of unpacking and fireside chats and safari and so forth to really make it special, what I found is that in the space of that week, you will experience the full human emotional spectrum of a year. But in say, six days and, and you know, every up, every down, every doubt, every exhilaration, every celebration, every admonishment, every doubt, all of it, it just, you're gonna, you're gonna be in pain, you're gonna be in pleasure, you're gonna have the whole thing. But by, by creating that petri dish of a single week to experience those things, you now can experience a year's worth of growth in a week. And I would say it's not just a year's worth of growth, because of course, when all those experiences are scattered out over a year and distracted by your day to day living, you actually aren't that conscious of the lessons you could be getting from it. Whereas in a guided process like that, that we were able to unpack it. I'll never forget one of the guys, a French guy, was on the, on the, on the trip. And at the end, we were going through a process of unpacking what we called the dark side. Like the, the parts of our soul that we don't really like to talk about or admit that happen, you know, the, the thoughts we have that are a little darker and what have you. And so I challenged everybody to say, listen, you're all here telling your stories about how you overcame the odds and how you, you know there was moments where you're going to give up, but you talked yourself out of it and how you helped each other. You're all telling all the light sides that stuff, but I, I haven't heard one of you admitting to any dark side stuff, so let's talk about that. And boy, there was silence around the fire like nothing, just silence. Like nobody. And I said, by the way, this exercise is open. What that means is that if you don't bring up your own dark side behavior, we can. Because we saw it. I saw it, so you better. And all of a sudden there was this energy shift around the fire, like, oh, my dark side might get called out better if I do it myself. And so this one guy, he says, says, okay, okay, I can tell you, he says, he goes, on that mountain, I hated you. Oh, this is, this exercise is going a little off the rails here. He goes, I hated you. I, I'm climbing this mountain. I'm thinking, you made me do it, and I don't know why I'm here, and I'm cold and my feet are sore and I cannot breathe. And it's. I fucking hated you. And you too. And he points at this woman, she was only about like one apple, taller than a Smurf. She's a schoolteacher that came on his train. Etc. And he goes, you with all your fearful singing and stuff, I hated you too. And over you with the whistling. And he's, and he's going around the circle and he hated everybody. And he goes, but then I saw it. And he says, this is what I do. I blame people. He says, I go into business with somebody and if it fails, I hate them. And he goes, I've been doing this my whole life and I only saw it today day, life altering. And so I think one of the ways to, to really make group exercises work is to, is to really make them challenging to, to really test people. Of course, these days people are too wimpy for that kind of thing often.

Yeah, definitely, definitely. And, and that's why I believe that the only way of doing this is one is telling stories that, like the one you just told. That's obvious, but, oh, but also being just vulnerable and being raw, that, that, that really shows people that, yeah, you took a leap in a sense, and, and at some point you might do it too. So I want to ask you about your own process. Like, I see that you are a person who's, who's, who's done a lot of things in different areas of life in the different Geographies. But you, you, you, and you learned a lot, but you have this sense of self awareness and self learning process that I really admire. How does, how, how does that happen in your life? Being very self critical and also putting that information out there as a pedagogy on all the courses and all the institutions you have created in academies to, to teach what you've learned in your, in your voyages.

You know, I, I think that part of it comes down to, it comes down to, you know, basically having, say, a rough childhood. Like, you know, and, and it's, it's a crazy thing. I, I think one of the worst things that maybe could happen to a child is having just the perfect, perfect childhood, you know, like, like nothing ever goes wrong. And you know, their parents had the perfect marriage and everything was perfect and school was perfect for them and they were captain of the football team and they won everything. And I think that would be pretty rough because that's going to make, you know, like my expression for that is great high school experience, terrible life experience. You know, it's like, and, and so of course things weren't perfect for me in that sense, ranging from, you know, alcoholism to divorce to, you know, bullying in school and a bunch of the different things that I went through. And, and, and I think also being a big brother kind of helped because it meant that some of these threats that I faced was not simply like me that I had to think about. It was that I've got, you know, I've got this little brother that I have to think of in between bullying him myself, for that matter. And you know, so I think it, it really did kind of start there. My, my, like, I didn't grow up with entrepreneurial parents. My parents were both academics. But that didn't stop me from setting up like lemonade stands in front of my house and shoveling snow from my neighbors and raking leaves in the fall. So I think to some degree it started with this understanding that I could change my own environment by adding value, you know, by, how do I, how do I do that? How do I go out and do stuff for other people because then I can create a better economic reality for myself. And so I think it started a very selfish thing, and maybe it continues to be a selfish thing because the truth is I've set my life up that the work that I do is fundamentally rewarding to me, even if it is creating significant benefit for other people. But that baseline selfishness of saying, hey, I want to change my environment, I think that's really, what, what started it? And then, and then, you know, something else. And I can't, I can't say exactly when this started, but it's kind of like emotions are often divided by people up into good and bad categories. Like there are good emotions and bad emotions. And I would relabel that. I would say that there are comfortable emotions, rewarding emotions, and then there are uncomfortable emotions or correcting emotions. And there came a point in my life where I saw that and I started to become conscious of it, that if shame came up, that I shouldn't neutralize it, I shouldn't drug it away with food or television, that I should actually, like, dive into it deeper and find out why I'm feeling that way, and that way I won't have to feel it again. And I think it kind of started with that. Like, I just, if I felt guilty about doing something, something in me said, no, I, I want to go make amends about this. I want to, I want to figure that out. And, you know, it's interesting. Recently, and I say recently, about four or five years ago, I was getting ready to speak at a conference that I'd spoken at a number of times. And, and, and you know, at the last conference, they'd said, oh, yeah, I see you next year. And as you know, you know, it's not that typical to get invited back to the same conference as a speaker. And, you know, know, I'm still campaigning for another, another go at Festival of Ideas, but, but, you know, I, I, it's not the most common thing in the world to have that happen, but I've been privileged in my life. It's happened to me a lot. And, and so, you know, they said, see you next year, because I'd already done several. And next year came along and, and then about six weeks before, they called me and said, listen, we've gone a different direction. We'd love to have you back another time, but we don't need you this time. In the meantime, I'd like planned my schedule around it. I was like, I'd assumed it even though we hadn't done the contracts. And so I fired back an email. And the email's like, what the hell? You know, we talked about this there, and I've already planned my schedule around blah, blah. And I, I suddenly had this overwhelming feeling of shame wash over my body. And I was like, oh, I, I can't believe I hit send on that. I cannot. Embarrassment, shame. I felt terrible guilt. And no kidding, even with all my work with food psychology, the first thing I wanted to do is go to the fridge and get some food.

And.

And then I was like, oh, I can't. I can't break this. This. I should go watch something on Netflix. I can't break myself out of this. I'm feeling so yucky. And then I was like, oh, let's go in. Why I feel yucky about this because I don't want to feel like this again. And so, you know, I sat there at my computer and I read the email again, and I cringed with every word. And then I opened up another email and I wrote to them, and I said, you guys, do me a favor. Don't read that. That.

And.

And if you did read it, forget it, because it's. It's not who I am, and it's not how I think of our relationship. And it's just. The truth is, I love you guys so much, and I love your event so much that I was just disappointed. And in my disappointment, I wrote you guys a guilt trippy email, and I'm bloody sorry about it. And I really. I. I'm. And immediately it was to two people, and immediately one of them wrote back to me and said, I read it, and I knew that that was what was going on for you. And I never judge you for moments. Moment. But this letter here, this is why we keep working with you.

Beautiful. Let me ask you a question, and thank you for sharing that story.

Who.

Who taught you or who gave you the potential idea that sitting with your uncomfortable emotions was worthwhile? Like, I think that that's the mindset shift that the minority of people get. Like, sit with it, you know, because once you experience it, you know, it works, but it's. It's counterintuitive.

I. I don't. I don't know the genesis of it. I don't know where it really started for me, but I'm thinking about it a lot as a parent, you know. So as a parent, the inclination that I think parents very often have is to anesthetize their children or distract them from their discomfort, physical or emotional. So, you know, you see a child running along, skin their knee, and you know it. You know the game, right? The child skins their knee and looks around, and if they can't find their parent, they just keep playing. But if they make eye contact with their parent, then the waterworks begin and the crying and so on. And then the parent empathetically connects with that pain, and the parent wishes they could take the pain into their own body. And the next thing you Know, the parents buying them a Coke or a cookie or an ice cream or something to distract them from the pain. The kid, meantime, is learning two really important lessons. One is not so subtle, and that simply is that when I'm in pain, these things will anesthetize my pain, and I get love from my parent. The more subtle thing that they learn is if I trip and fall, I might get a Coke. And so they start becoming clumsier and clumsier and, you know, we create these behaviors. Now instead, what I would suggest is that when a child goes through a physical bump like that, or particularly an emotional bump like that, what we really should be doing is talking it out and explaining what's going on and describing the healing process physically or emotionally and, and, and empathetically connecting without trying to distract away from it, but instead exploring it. And, you know, so, so I had a, I had a situation with my little girl where, you know, she was with one of her friends, and her friend wanted to play with her with one of her, like, you know, more precious toys, and she didn't want to share it and stuff. And so she was feeling really hurt, and the friend had picked it up and played with it. And we're talking about this now. I mean, what, I could go over there and demand that her friend give the thing back. Back, right? But what am I going to do? I'm going to create a little girl who makes appeals to authority for the rest of her life. Oh, I have a problem. I call a lawyer. That, that's, that's what happens to people like that, by the way, is that, you know, if you go to a school now, it's like, see something, say something. Yeah, you should do that. But not every damn thing, you know, not everything. Yes, you gotta, you gotta fight some of your own battles here. And so, so the problem is, if you have this safe culture and it see something, you know, say something for everything, then the minute there's the inkling of any kind of bullying, the child goes and appeals to authority. That child will call lawyers for the rest of their lives and they'll be litigious, unpleasant people. And we're again seeing a lot of that happening right at this moment. Instead, what I would suggest is having a deep conversation about what really happened, exploring the emotions and showing that by going into the emotions, you can come out the other side. Too often, I think people regard unpleasant emotional states as cul de sacs. You know what I mean? I, I, I, It's a French expression.

Yes, yes, yes.

Yeah. Dead end road.

A dead end, yeah.

And I want to suggest that emotional emotions are simply tunnels or bridges. And, and, and so what you have to do is, yeah, it's dark in there, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. And so if you're feeling that shame or that hurt or that pain or that guilt or that jealousy or whatever that is, you dive down into it. Like, jealousy is a really. Victor jealousy. There's a fascinating one. Most people feel jealousy come up and of course, because of the intensity, because they've not practiced with it and they don't understand how it works, they immediately become almost violent about it and they will do anything they can to prevent it. And so now you've got, let's say, and by the way, this is no judgment on men or women. Men can be just as jealous, if not more sometimes than women. But in this case, you've got a woman walking on the sidewalk with her husband or boyfriend and he sees an attractive woman. And, you know, I, I mean, I know this is an unpopular thing to say, but our eyes are trained to look. And, you know, so you don't mean it, but you look. And by the way, that person probably dressed that way to make you look. So, you know, now the woman, so afraid of her own jealousy, elbows him in the ribs and says, don't do that. You're disrespecting me. Right. She's so afraid of her own jealousy. So now the problem is twofold. One is she's not dealing with her own jealousy because she's trying to remove any triggers. Don't push my buttons. If you have buttons, you built them yourself is my feeling. And you built them to be pushed. And, and so then on top of that, what is she also doing? She's training her boyfriend or her husband not to feel attraction in her presence. On the other hand, a really smart partner might be. And you know, my, my girlfriend, she's like this. We're walking along and she sees somebody like, say, that's quite sexy and, well, you know, nicely dressed or a little alluring or what have you. And if I miss that person, she'll go check that out. Out. Because what she's found and what I have found is that, and I, I think we've all seen this to some degree, is that a little jealousy is a healthy thing. Because if you've gone through it and explored it and you actually realize you feel secure with that person, then the jealousy you are feeling is actually just reminding you to step up into your full self and don't get lazy, you know, like there are other people out there. You better, you better be the woman or be the man that you really supposed to be. That's what jealousy is. But for most of us, we're so afraid of jealousy that we just try to like, oh, I don't even want to experience.

Yeah, love that example. Thank you for sharing. So many, so many examples. And it looks, and we know that you know when you talk about these things, you have experienced them. If not, they wouldn't really resonate. So let's go to the last question. If you have a few more minutes, just two minutes. So you are a very sort out speaker. You've been in events all over the world and you and I have discussed how will these events look in 10, 20 years time. I know it's a long question, but what are your main ideas of bringing this. I think human understanding of ourselves with all the conversation that we've had so far into two, three, four day experiences where we mimic what we want to the transformation, we want to leave the audience so that they feel empowered.