Ep 35: Daniel Vitalis on Connecting with Nature through Food

Welcome to the Rewild Gear Podcast. Modern life, society, and responsibilities have domesticated us, but now it's time to rediscover your adventurous side. Whether that's camping, hiking, hunting, fishing, or just spending time in the great outdoors, this is the podcast for you. Join us as we get back to the wilderness and rewild. Welcome to the Adventure Welcome to the Self Made Podcast. I'm your host, Seth Spears, and I'm here today with Daniel Vitalis. I am really looking forward to this interview because Daniel is a successful entrepreneur, public speaker, podcaster, writer, lifestyle pioneer, hunting guide, and ancestral living advocate. For over 10 years, he lectured around North America and abroad, offering workshops that help others lead healthier, more natural, and more nature-integrated lives. I can't read today. He is passionate about helping people reconnect with the wilderness both inside and outside of themselves, and his Wild Fed podcast and TV show are some of my personal favorite listens and Daniel lives in the Great Lakes— in the Lakes region of Maine with his wife Ivani and their Plott Hound, Ellie. Plott Hound? Did I say that right?

Plott Hound, yep.

Plott Hound. Super. I'm not familiar with that breed. Daniel, welcome to the show. Really happy to have you here today.

Thanks, Seth, man. I'm happy to be here.

Super. Well, I'm really excited about this interview because, you know, having been in the natural health space for many, many years, I'm familiar with your work and a lot of the things that you've done. I know you've kind of run the gamut as far as your philosophy surrounding health and living and diet and all those things. So I'd love to kind of just hear your origin story and kind of how it started and to where you are today before we get into some of the things that you're doing now. Okay, great.

Well, I just want to say hi to everybody. Thanks for having me today, Seth. And yeah, my origin story, I kind of had a bit of an alternative upbringing. I was raised in New England and my family wasn't a real stable one. And, I kind of went to some private schools as a kid and it ended up where I didn't really grow up sort of the way most people do with the regular holidays and the regular sort of, I don't know, lifestyle stuff, the sort of going out to dinner and all the kind of things that families do. My family was pretty broken and I had a lot of time to myself and a lot of time to think to myself and spent a lot of time out in the woods by myself as well as a result and developed a lot of my own ideas and kind of took An alternative path. As I got older, I worked with children a lot in the foster care system. I worked as a lifeguard for many, many years. I did some work as an EMT, things like that. I was always interested— personal training. I was really interested in health and fitness. But, this was at a time when there wasn't nearly as much information available as there is today. And, as the internet came on, I was able to start accessing more and more interesting information. And that led me on some pretty alternative dietary paths. I did a raw food vegan, uh, lifestyle for many, many years.

Mm-hmm.

Um, trying to chase down the most natural human diet I could. And that thread of really asking myself, what's a natural diet for people? And this kind of all goes back to how I grew up because I didn't have really good parenting. So as sort of somebody who self-parented, I was always asking the questions like, what's the right thing for me to do? How do I take care of myself? And so food was always this thing I'd look around and I'd see that people didn't really seem to know what they should be eating. People seemed to feel guilty about what they were eating, but didn't really seem to know what they should be eating. And, you know, for people listening who remember 25, 30 years ago, it was a really different era when it comes to food. It wasn't like you just went down to Whole Foods and picked up some grass-fed food. I mean, there was nothing around for the longest time. So, we weren't in this food renaissance we're in today. So, you know, slowly trying to figure out how to feed myself. Like I said, I got on this vegan raw food diet. I had been really convinced that this was the appropriate way for people to eat for a long time. And eventually came across across a book called Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston Price. And, that was an exploration of natural diets looking at indigenous people around the world and their health, particularly the health of their teeth and dentition. And, that just really changed my perspective radically. And, I realized that human beings are hunter-gatherers, not just gatherers. I was doing this sort of gatherer thing.

Hmm.

And, that led me on a very long journey which kind of culminates today where I am hunting, fishing, foraging on a TV show. Teaching people about wild foods. I mean, that was a pretty long process for me to get to that place. And, I had to learn quite a lot of skills during that time. But also, during that time, I had the opportunity to public speak all around North America. I got to do some speaking in South America and Europe, all over Canada and the States. And so, got to interact with a lot of people, see what was working, see wasn't working. And yeah, today I get to teach people about wild foods.

Awesome.

In particular, how the connection to those foods can really, you know, change your life.

Yeah, no, that's a fascinating origin story, and you really run the gamut there, going from the vegan side to— I'm not gonna say carnivore side, but, you know, from one extreme to the other in a sense. And I've heard you speak before about how both of those are such polar extremes of— in nature, no one would ever be just straight-up vegetarian or vegan, and the same as no one would ever just be straight-up carnivore and just eating nothing but meat and protein. Can you touch on that a little bit?

Yeah, I think it's really interesting for folks who have seen the show Alone. I'm sure you've watched it.

Oh, yeah.

On History Channel. I think of it sort of like something between the Olympics of bushcraft and The Hunger Games. And, imagine you're on that show and they tell you, well, in addition to sort of all the other things, you can only eat plants or you can only eat animals. You could see— now, that's not a very realistic scenario for most of us because human beings aren't sort of solo livers. We live communally in nature, but, um, in a tribal structure, but it really kind of gives you a view into what it takes to survive on a landscape when you don't have access to agricultural foods. So if you think about modern humans being 300,000 years old and, um, our, you know, genus Homo being much older in the millions of years, uh, when we look back historically, we see that we are classic omnivores. We, we, we don't just eat like a bear is a really great example of an omnivore. With a similar digestive tract. And so, you watch them eat, you look at a bear and you think, oh, that's a carnivore. But, in reality, they're eating a lot more plant calories than people realize and a lot less animals than people would think. Well, in modern humans, we're pretty similar. We are omnivores. We not just eat a little bit of everything, we'll eat anything that can be turned into food in our environment. So, when people say things like, well, we should be eating this or we shouldn't be eating that with reference to natural foods, like for instance, you'll hear— On the carnivore side, well, we should only be eating animal food. And then, of course, the vegans, like, we should only be eating plant food. We just don't see that borne out anywhere. So, we can look around the world and try to find examples of that and we'll see that they just aren't there. So, for instance, you might look to the people of the Arctic and you'd think, well, they must be primarily carnivores. But, it does turn out that people like the Inuit and the Inupiat eat quite a bit of plants. You keep Keeping in mind that they have a very long day period of daylight in their growing season. So, in their summers, they're eating a lot of berries, they're eating a lot of lichens, they're eating non-animal food quite a bit, probably more species than the average American's eating in a year of plants. If you go down to a place like the equator where you have lots of plant species and lots of opportunity to gather carbohydrate, we see that the people aren't just plant eaters. In fact, nowhere in the world do we find any civilization of plant eaters or any civilization of carnivores. Um, the carnivore thing tends to, in my opinion, tends to be a little tainted by archaeological stuff. So, you know, the archaeological record doesn't preserve the plants that people are eating the way it preserves the bones of the animals they were butchering.

Sure.

So, you know, it was really easy to be like, well, our Paleolithic ancestors were just eating animals. It's just patently not true. Um, and then on the vegan side, there's actually just no historical record of this taking place anywhere. And when we look at indigenous groups and why indigenous groups are helpful to look at is cuz they can be a good representation of what people are like in the absence of agriculture when they're hunting and gathering, we just see that meat is the most prized of all foods. And so, human beings have always hunted and gathered, and these 2 dietary extremes are basically fads of our modern culture. And, to me, they represent our kind of dietary amnesia as we've forgotten what to eat. And, it's because we're not really in our natural environment anymore. We're in a built environment now. And, more and more a virtual environment. And, those 2 environments are very different from the one that we're from. And so, it'd be like if you woke up one day in the mall and the mall was your new biodome and you only had access to what was in the mall and you were going to live out the rest of your life in that mall and I asked you what you were supposed to eat, it'd be really confusing because you'd have to pick from the things in the food court and the things in the convenience stores. And, you'd be like, I don't know, I think I'm supposed to eat this, and it's because you wouldn't actually see what was in the natural environment. You'd be in a built environment. Well, it's really hard for us because we go into the supermarket and almost nothing in there really derives from the wild world. And so, it gives us a skewed idea of what exists, what options we have, and it's just very confusing to know what's right when we live in such an artificial world.

Yeah, that's a great point. And, I'd like for you to expand on that a little bit when it comes to eating locally. And, this is something that I've been really fascinated in over the years. About 15 years ago or so, I got into brewing a whole lot of beer, homemade beer, homebrewing and all that. And one of the things that I found was in traveling through Europe a lot, quite a bit when I was younger, was seeing all these local breweries. And most of them, they were pulling hops from their local region, you know, the grains and things like that. And so it made me think, why do we not do that in the US? Started off just thinking about beer and then led to other foods and other alcohols and things like that. And so I've always been fascinated by this concept of eating locally for where you are. And we don't see that very much today, but I'm just— because we have the ability to ship and preserve foods from other areas. Coconut oil would be the first very big example, which, you know, you're not gonna see that in Maine very much, you know.

We don't have much coconut oil.

Right, yeah. So I'd love to get your take on that as far as eating locally, and do you feel like that is a healthier option for most people?

Well, it— yeah, in some ways, but let's parse it a little bit because We might have a local Twinkie factory and that wouldn't be fair. You know what I mean? Like, we could have a local CAFO farm and those cows would probably not be good to eat. Or, even better example is there's some GMO corn fields not far from me. That's local, but I wouldn't want to eat it. So, local in and of itself doesn't necessarily mean something's healthy if we're talking about unhealthy options. But, I think that the part that Because I think you could eat food from far away, and if it's good food, you could have a very healthy life. But psychologically, you're removed from your foodshed, and I think that part's actually maybe more hazardous than the health component. Not like your psychological and your physical health are really separate, but if we were going to kind of break it down like that, psychologically, I think it's important to be connected to the foods where you are. And, everybody knows this now because we all just went through this COVID experience. Yeah.

Right.

And saw the fragility of our globalized systems and what it was like to have shortages. And I think that's just, in my opinion, you know, in my crystal ball, which is foggy admittedly, I think that what we just saw was there'll be many aftershocks of that, or this might have even been an early tremor because there's still a lot of dominoes to fall, you know, on the global scale. And I think people are gonna get more and more accustomed to those kind of shortages, and that's gonna drive people towards locally produced goods again. So, I was just listening to Jocko Willink talk about he's opened textile factories here in Maine and they're producing boots and jeans and stuff right here in Maine because we were a textile producer. In fact, we had a lot of the best woolen mills here, but those have all shut down and now we get our stuff from overseas. But oops, now that stuff's not as available, the prices are being driven up, and the quality of those things has gone down. And, I think what Jocko is doing is just an example of where going to see a lot of people doing in food, but also in hard goods as well, which is shifting back to a local model because, you know, we're going to understand the importance of being connected to the actual resources that we use. So, that's one part of it. I think that sort of having foods that come from different places, it's kind of lonely to me because, you know, when I pick up an avocado, which admittedly love to eat, but I pick it up and I have almost no connection to it versus if I go down to my freezer and I pull out a piece of venison, wow, that venison triggers the memory of sitting in my tree stand and watching that deer come in, harvesting it, my wife coming out to see that deer. And, we bring it home and we clean it and we butcher it and put it into the freezer. And then, that meal— It's like comes off of our backyard, comes off our landscape. So, we have a deep connection to it. And, this is the first time that humans have really ever had such an opportunity to experiment with this kind of anonymity to our food, if you will, where we don't have any connection, we don't know it. Of course, there's been things like the spice trade throughout history, so people had access to some things from far away. But, probably 99% of what they ate came from within that 100-mile radius around them. So, I think that there's this estrangement from our food and where it comes from that leaves us a little psychologically bereft. And, I have a feeling that deep down inside, it creates a sense of instability because we know somewhere deep inside that we aren't connected to where things are coming from and that puts us in a very weak position. So, I think part of what's really powerful about local is that we keep our resources, our money, our energy in our local community as much as possible. So, somebody doing permaculture who wants to keep water on their landscape as long as possible before it leaves their landscape, similarly, it's hard to watch money funnel out of your community because every time I go into a Walmart and I spend money there, I know that money funnels its way up to their corporate headquarters, which isn't here where I live. So, similarly with food, it's sad to see our resources go far away. You get to keep that in your community longer and let the resource circulate longer. You keep nutrients in your community longer and they circulate in your community longer. You get more oversight of the quality of things and get to make sure that things are being produced in the way you want because you get to actually see it. So, I think eating locally is not necessarily about health. As I said, I mean, you could eat really bad stuff locally or really good stuff from far away, but it's more about the strength of your communities. It's more about your mind and knowing Knowing that you have firm roots in your area where you are.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Do you think that it's even possible to get back to that more localized way of producing our food and, you know, like garments like you were talking about? Just because on the world economy, when you're looking at the economics of some of these things, it often doesn't make sense to produce or make those locally just because of economies of scale and everything else.

But we used to, we used to do it locally. So that's one component, which means it can be done.

That was also before we were as interconnected and like pre-internet where everything is just— so we're so much smaller on a global scale.

Correct. Yeah, I agree. Now, interestingly though, most of the goods we're talking about, I mean, if we're being real, they're coming mostly from China.

Yep.

And looking at the political trajectory of the United States and Canada as just, you know, 2 world powers, I'd say one on the rise and one on the decline, unfortunately. It's unrealistic to me that this trade relationship will last, you know, in perpetuity.

Yeah, agreed.

So that will have to shift. And I do think there's gonna be a resurgence of American ingenuity around production. So I think there will be a lot of revitalization of our local industry. Now, it's obviously not gonna be everything, but we're probably gonna start making, you know, semiconductor chips here again.

Let's hope so.

And hopefully textiles and things like that as well. Certainly, we've done it with food. I guess I want to just speak to what you said about sort of asking, hey, is this possible or impossible? Again, going back to what I was saying before, and I think back to when I was a teenager and I was getting into nutrition, there was a health food store in the town where I lived. probably 250 square feet. They sold some carrots and potatoes. They had chopped dates covered in oat flour and textured soy protein. That was the whole inventory of the store. That was called a health food store at the time. That was the only thing. Organic wasn't even a certification yet.

Yeah.

So, I'm 43, so just in my adult years, I've watched it go from that to farmers markets on every corner on the weekend, Whole Foods in every major town, competing health food stores that have gotten bigger and bigger and become basically small department stores, regular people off the street, normies eating organic food. Everything is farm-to-table, a resurgence in American food. I mean, we had no American food culture really to speak of. We just had—

Sure.

Microwave food. Now, we have one of the most vibrant food cultures in the world. This is This has all happened in, I guess, maybe less than 30 years.

That's a great point.

Yeah. So, an incredible revivification of food culture here. So, could we have that? Will this young hipster generation who's really into local, who's really into organic, who's really into clean products, and who has access to tools that nobody's ever had access to? I wouldn't be surprised to see a major and dramatic shift in that. I think the global thing The idea of globalization has met its match in biosecurity. So, um, yeah, I think we could see some major shifts in that.

Got it. I hope you're right. Um, I just look at just some of the things— I look at just some of the issues that we've gone through just for Rewild Gear as far as the manufacturing process and supply chain. And, you know, the goal was to have every one of our products manufactured in the US, but the economic reality of it is that it just isn't feasible for some of our products. Like our knives are made in Michigan, which I was adamant about, those have to be made in the US. But some of our items like our bellows, we ended up going with stainless steel instead of titanium for those. And the reason was because, first of all, no one in the US actually had the tooling where they could make them, for one. And second, even if they could create it, the cost that we were looking at was about $65 per unit. Per unit, as opposed to, you know, a few bucks coming from Asia. So, and the retail price, you know, is going to be like $15. So, I mean, maybe if it's titanium, you can push it up to $35, maybe. So those numbers just don't make sense. And so I think there's a lot of changes that will have to happen both on the manufacturing front in order where, where the numbers will make sense and that people will buy it, but also the, the worker wages and things like that as well. So there's a lot of variables. Within all that, I, I really—

first of all, I really agree with you. Um, this is a really complex thing because we're talking about economics, which means we're talking about the value of our currency. And, uh, that's something that's— yeah, in flux right now. We're talking about currency itself, which is a thing that's in flux right now. And in 5 years, we won't even recognize the economic landscape, particularly with the Fed coins and things like that coming on board. Um, so there's going to be a complete revolution in our economic system anyway.

Yeah.

Where we— where these are— there's a lot there. And I understand, man, I have a supplement company and I have some products, particularly packaging. It's become very hard to source.

Oh yeah.

But anytime you have a problem like that, you have people working on that problem. So it's gonna be exciting to see what comes out of all of this because we are in a major crisis, which I suspect will last throughout the 2020s. And— but I do think on the other side, you know, after a crisis, you typically have like a little golden age. So it'll be exciting to see what that looks like and what's possible Yeah, I agree.

That's good advice for sure. Daniel, what is your definition of ancestral living? When I think of that term, there's a few people that I look at as far as like kind of living that yourself. Arthur Haynes, who I've had on the podcast, I know you're good friends with as well, but how would you define that?

Well, you know, I think that there's a lot of room in there and for people to live very different lifestyles, but all be tapping into that same kind of thread of idea. So, for me, ancestral living, I've decided to go after one portion of that, which is the hunting and gathering portion. Somebody else might live ancestrally by going deep down the bushcraft culture or somebody else might do it by getting deep into tracking. One of the things that's come up on my podcast a lot as I talk to people into the world of tracking is that most of them don't hunt. It's so strange to think, wow, you have this incredible hunting skill. But, the pursuit of that one skill, maybe that's like saying, hey, you're a jiu-jitsu black belt but you don't go out and get in fights. You know what I mean? It's not why they do it, right?

Yeah.

So, they pursue it for a different reason. Somebody else might be just really into doing primitive fires. Somebody else might want to homestead. So, there's all these different ways to tap into ancestral living. But, I think bigger picture, I'll just talk about what it means for me because it means so many things to so many people. But, when I look at what is happening in the world right now, which is the rise of transhumanism and this movement of humanity away from the biosphere and into the noosphere or away from the biosphere and into the, I guess, maybe the metaverse, let's say, just as an example.

Sure.

That sort of direction, For me, it's not that I think we'd be better off 3.5 million years ago. I mean, I really respect the hardship that people used to live with. If you've ever read any stories of just like maybe what pioneers experienced when they arrived in North America, the hardship that people went through prior to electricity and prior to the modern food system and prior to modern medicine, life was very, very difficult.

Yeah.

People were up to it then. The challenge is now we're not up to that anymore. We are many generations into very soft living. So, for me, ancestral living now, if you would ask me 10 years ago, I was a much more radical person with a lot more radical ideas. I think you get tempered by age a little bit too.

Indeed.

So, how I saw it then is different, but how I see it now is that it's important for lots of us to hold on to some thread that connects us back not to the past for the sake of antiquity or to be anachronistic or something, but because many of those things could become useful again and they should not go away. I'm a real firm believer that there should be a contingent of people that maintain the skill sets that allowed us to get here just for the sake of those skill sets.

Mm-hmm.

In the same way that we put things in a museum, it's like, hey, we don't need any of those Egyptian artifacts anymore, but we keep them because they're important just for the legacy. How much more important is the ability to make a fire from friction or to build a debris hut, some things that we actually need for our basic survival? I think those things need to be kept alive. And, I think that there needs to be a contingent of people who explore them. But, the thing about natural humans, as you probably know, is we live in fairly small groups. That are connected to larger groups that are connected to larger groups. And, let's say your minimum group is 25 people or something, a couple of families. That's your natural sort of foraging group size that humans would live in. And, they would share all these responsibilities together, what it takes to survive. But also, it wasn't like the show Alone. They didn't get dropped off somewhere and have to start from scratch.

Yeah.

They were utilizing resources that had been found and tools that had been built and industries that had been developed by their forebears and their forebears and their forebears all the way back. So, you were born into a culture that already had all that stuff that you'd have to make from scratch if you suddenly found yourself in nature, right? So, for the idea that somebody today is going to go off and just be a master of all these things, it's not possible. So, we all have to kind of pick something that we're going to really focus on. For me, that's been the pursuit of the food component. That's what's most interesting to me. That's my calling. But, if somebody else's calling is tracking or somebody else's calling is bushcraft stuff, they're probably not going to have as much time to do all the food processing that I do. I can't imagine how anybody could do it all. And again, if you watch that show Alone, I keep bringing it up, it's just interesting because you see that trying to do all these things alone just breaks people down psychologically. So, for me, again, by hunting and gathering, I maintain a thread of connectivity, not just to the past because, again, it's not the past for the past's sake. It's almost timeless. So, it's not really about when, it's about what. And, that what is a connection to the natural world. And, I think that is, to come back to how I began this, Little, little rant here is that that's important because human beings are being one by one plucked out of the natural world and could conceivably in our lifetime begin spending entire lifetimes in built and virtual worlds without any real knowledge of the natural world. That to me is like, to say like, oh, that kind of freaks me out is like, that's an understatement. It's way bigger than that. It drives me out of bed in the morning. It's It's like, that's one of the biggest things for me. When I look out at the world, it's like the idea that a film like The Matrix could become a reality in our lifetime, that's pretty startling.

Yeah.

And so, I don't think the answer is we go out and march in the streets or we go and tear things down. I think the answer is that we individually begin to immerse ourselves in the natural world and we take on whatever skill. What's the book, Fahrenheit 454?

Yeah.

Do I have the numbers right? Kind of future dystopia, all the books have been burned, and individuals memorize one book so that the books can be kept, right? Because all the books have been burned. So, similarly, if each one of us kind of takes on a skill set, who's interested in this stuff, Then collectively, we keep that stuff alive. And at some point, we might want it to restart something a little more sane when this project of insustainability has finally come to its conclusion.

Sure. And, you know, this also brings up a point. I think this analogy could be used in business as well. You know, as a business owner yourself with Sir Thrival and all the other avenues that you've done, you know, when you first start, you're learning a lot of different skills. You're becoming kind of a master of none but a jack of all. But then in order to really grow and succeed, you've really got to focus on the thing that either you're best at or you enjoy the most or what have you. And, I think that's kind of what you're getting at here is having a broad understanding of all these things but then really focusing in on whatever your calling is there.

Yeah, exactly. And, putting in that 10,000 hours of time. I mean, butchering animals is a lot of work, right? So, if I bring home a deer, I've got many, many hours of work and it's not all going to happen at once. It's like I got to hunt the deer, deer. That's going to take some time. Then, I got to drag that deer out. I got to field dress that deer. I got to hang that deer later. Days later, I'm going to butcher that deer. So, that's just hours and hours that I can't be spending on other skills that I'm interested in, but also, I just can't fit in. And, in addition to that, despite all the things I've said before, I have to have a foot in the virtual world and I have to have a foot in the— in many ways, my life in the built environment is more real in a sense. I spend more time in the built and virtual world probably collectively than I get to spend in the natural world even though I spend more time in nature than most people. And, that's true of most people. I do know those occasional characters who you meet those bushcraft-type people who really are living it out there but often at the expense of something.

Sure.

And, that is at the expense of their social or romantic kind of life. And, I don't think those are things we want to compromise either. So, I think to be a really well-rounded survivalist today, you need to be good in the virtual world, you need to be good in the built world, and you need to be good in the natural world. And, all 3 of those need to be developed, but that means time spent in all those places. So, we all only have so much time.

Yeah, it really is a balancing act. And, I've said for years that we are only one natural disaster away from complete anarchy. And, we saw a little bit of that You know, last year with COVID and with the riots and lockdowns and so many things, you know, just with people running out of toilet paper amongst other things and stuff. So having some basic skill sets when it comes to living off the land or hunting or gathering, I think that is really important no matter where you are in life, and especially if you're in a major city, probably because everyone else is not going to have that skill set either.

Well, yeah. And, the skill set I think you're talking about is interesting too because it's not like you need to know how to knap flint or necessarily even make a friction fire. You look at a lot of the bushcraft skills, the idea that you'll ever be in a place, for the average person, you'd ever be in a place where you wouldn't be able to find man metal or wire or whatever debris, that's not going to happen for thousands. That couldn't happen for thousands of years even if industry stopped right now.

Yeah.

Stuff everywhere, right? So, unless you're specifically brought out to somewhere very deep in the bush, the chances of anybody listening to this ever actually needing that extreme of a skill set is probably pretty remote. But, the thing about that skill set is it teaches you what it takes to maintain a human body and keep it thriving. And, that's the stuff people need to know. So, for instance, let's say you're really into backcountry camping and you learn like, okay, my body loses heat 5 different ways, right? So, it can be I can conduct it out, I can radiate it out, convection can take it. What else is there? I can perspire, evaporate it off. There's one other one. I can respirate it out. Okay, there's 5 ways I lose heat. Now, let's say that it's 3 winters from now and there's a computer virus that shuts down the power grid, you have no heat. Or maybe it's last year and you're in Texas and you have no heat and it's cold. But now, you know, oh, these are the 5 ways I lose heat. So, you can figure out, okay, I'm not camping, but I'm kind of camping in my house. What have I learned from spending some days in the backcountry that I can apply here in my cold apartment to stay warm because neighbors are literally dying? That stuff where the skills translate over. So I don't think many people in Texas had to do friction fires in their living rooms. That probably isn't realistic, but it's the it's the transfer of those skills. It's learning those basics of what it takes to sustain a human body because I'm sure you encounter this all the time. You meet a lot of people like prepping for disaster, and then you look at how they're doing, and it's like really silly stuff they're doing. You know, where you're like, oh man, you got a long road ahead.

A lot of romanticization around that, I think.

Yeah, very romantic and dystopic, you know.

Yeah.

And as far as anarchy goes, man, I don't think anarchy can really last that long. I just think human beings are— I like to romanticize the idea of that for sure. But, but I think realistically, people create order together very rapidly. So my analysis is after disasters, you might have 3, 4 days where people are sort of at odds with each other, but then very quickly communities start to form and people start to take leadership positions, and then we do get things back together. So I don't think like a real Mad Max thing is possible. I'm actually much more concerned about other types of dystopias, but not necessarily an anarchy one as much as I am— I mean, to be honest, to me, the biggest threats we face are the Orwellian dystopia, or are the Huxleyan dystopia, or a combination of those two seem more realistic to me than a full-on Mad Max, everybody pitted against everybody kind of world. But, you know, all that stuff's on people's minds because what you just mentioned, we just watched absolute chaos. Now, in fairness, that chaos seems to have been— it's the word— there's provoked in many regards, but which Which is even scarier, to be honest, right? In some ways.

Yeah, exactly. That can happen at any time. One, an example that I just thought of, I grew up in Kentucky, and as a kid in the winter, sometimes we would get these ice storms. And so it was basically like freezing rain, and you get enough of that and it takes the power lines down and everything. And so we'd lose power, and it's, you know, 10 degrees outside, lose power for a couple days. So as a kid, I remember Cooking on like a Coleman stove and, you know, sleeping in sleeping bags. And it's almost like, like everybody camping out in the living room with my siblings and stuff. And there was an element of fun to it because it was like, it was like you're camping, but you're indoors, but you're doing something different. And I think just from a skill perspective or getting comfortable with the uncomfortable as parents, that's something that we can teach our kids just to accept some of those things and make a game out of it. And whether that just happens naturally or you're forcing Forcing yourself to do that by taking them into challenging experiences, whether that's camping or traveling or what have you.

Yeah, I agree. I think it's important to cultivate a sense of playfulness and excitement around hardship. People who do, I see, have better outcomes in their lives and handle stress better too. And, we have a lot of opportunity for that right now. And, I just really think we're going to have a lot of opportunity for it in the future. I think realistically, one of the things we need to get really honest with ourselves about is we're going to have major disruptions probably to our energy grid over the coming decade from both infrastructure problems, cyberattack and cybersecurity issues, resource allotment, general breakdown that we're experiencing right now. So, energy is one of those areas where Yeah. Where people probably should do some planning, people probably should learn some basic skills. And, that thing you just mentioned for families is learning to cultivate an air of excitement around it. And also, there's this really— I'm sure especially doing Rewild Gear, you know exactly what I'm talking about here. There's a real balance between gear and the actual doing of things, right?

Yeah.

A lot of people think by buying the gear, they're doing the thing, and that's incorrect. But then, you also have folks who think the gear part's not important and you see them suffer from lack of quality equipment. Because when you look back ancestrally at people, one of the most exciting and interesting things that I've ever encountered in my life is the story of Ötzi the Iceman. I just get so lit up by that guy, right? So, we're talking about that 5,000 5,000-year-old mummy found in the Alps between— was it Italy and what was the other country? France?

I think it was France.

I think he was found in Italy. So anyway, his body is found with all of his equipment and it's an extensive packout that he had, right? This is 5,000 years ago, so the most modern piece of equipment he had was a copper hat But, he had a pack frame and a pack. He had boots made out of multiple materials and these incredible pants and this awesome shirt. And then, he had this big sort of grass-based poncho. He had his bow and his quiver of arrows and just his knife and all of this equipment. And, you're like, human beings are different than every other animal in this regard. We have shed a whole bunch of the things that animals use to survive. The tools that they have at the end of their fingers and toes, we don't have those really anymore. The tools in their mouth, we don't really have those anymore. The fur coat, we got rid of that. We walk upright exposing our internal organs to the world. We are a delicate creature that needs a lot of equipment. We're tool users. We need all these tools, right? So, if you don't have the right stuff, you also suffer. The idea you could just go out without tools and live out in nature, it's not realistic. So, there's some balance between the equipment piece and the actual doing of things. And sometimes, the equipment can get people excited to go do a thing. And, I bring that up because a lot of times, especially in the primitive skills world, in the bushcraft world, in many of these kind of cultures, alternative cultures look very disdainfully at equipment. They'll kind of shame you if you like good stuff.

It's got to be a bow drill to make a fire.

Right. And, the thing is, is that if I get a new Rewild Gear knife, and thanks for the knife, by the way, if I get a new knife and that knife inspires me to want to go spend a day out in the woods doing things, that's kind of awesome actually. So, sometimes getting your kids excited about this stuff is getting them a new sleeping bag or getting them a new whatever whatever the thing is that's going to get them excited about it. So, don't be afraid to use that lever because it can be very useful at times.

Yes.

And, having that kind of equipment on hand, I hope that we don't have any of these dystopia things unfold that we're talking about, but I think everybody should be— this isn't just because of what we're facing in the world. I sort of have this view anyway. I feel like every person Should how do you say this? I'm I'm pretty involved in the tactical shooting world, and one thing that's developed over the last probably I'd say five or six years is something that came out of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is the idea that everybody carries an individual first aid kit. So it gone are the days if somebody gets blown up and you are yelling for the medic because there's no medic. Yeah, right now every guy's got on his body. A trauma kit. And, I don't use my trauma kit on you, I use your trauma kit on you. So, I come over, you're injured, I pull off your tourniquet, I pull off your gauze, I pull off your nasopharyngeal or whatever we need and I use it on you. So, now let's expand that concept out broader. To me, I'm always kind of blown away when I go off with somebody to do something and they don't have something they need. It's like, how do you not have the sleeping bags you need? How do you not have the sleeping pads you need? How do you not have a thermos? How do you not have a knife? There's all these things that whether you're Ötzi the Iceman 5,000 years ago, you're a Cro-Magnon human 300,000 years ago, or you're a modern stockbroker today, there's certain things that you should have in your kit and access to that are for your individual survival if they're ever needed in the same way that people expect you to have health insurance or home insurance or a fire extinguisher in your house or seatbelt in your car. It's like the idea that you would live in an environment where it can get cold in the winter but you don't have equipment to deal with that if your power's out or if your heat's gone is, to me, is a crazy way to live. So I just sort of believe everybody should have their own stuff. And so to your point earlier, building out that kit for your kids is one way to get them excited about doing Yeah.

And I think what you're really harping on here is personal responsibility. And that's something that we've lost a lot of just societally, where somebody else is going to take care of us, or even the concept of, okay, if I'm traveling and I don't have it, I'll just buy it Amazon Prime, or I'll go to the store or whatever. And that's great until something disrupts the supply chain or the stores or what have you. So I think having that element of personal responsibility for yourself and your loved ones, is important for sure.

As you know, and I bet you have these skills, it's like, it's also another level because knowledge can trump gear, right? So, so having the ability to procure what you need in a non-permissive environment or to build what you need in a woodland environment, like those are important too. But, but for most people today, it's like, you know, rather than have to go build your own knife, get a good knife, like Every human needs to own that. It's so bizarre. You would never go back 20,000 years ago and find somebody who didn't have a knife. That just would not exist. You had to have that to stay alive. But, of course, today with— I mean, you look at how things are built so that we have everything has a pop-top or a screw-top or everything can be peeled back. You could almost get through life without Mm-hmm. Um, many cases, or you're gonna be like people who, who are in some struggle, and then a guy like you or me walks over with a pocketknife for them because they can't get into whatever they're trying to get into. But, but, you know, you could almost get through life like that right now, but I just don't think this is gonna be life forever, at least not for everyone.

Yeah, for sure. That reminds me, I was listening to the Joe Rogan podcast a couple weeks ago, and he was interviewing the singer Jewel. An amazing interview. And she was talking about— she grew up in Alaska and then had gone to a boarding school near Chicago. And the first day of school school, um, she had her knife on her because growing up in Alaska in a very much a homesteading environment, which is what she did. And then like the headmaster was like, you can't do that, you can't have that here. She's like, why not? That's just what you do. You always have it for everything. And so that, that kind of brought it home for me as far as just, uh, you know, it's, it's just a necessary tool.

And that's one of those things, there's been a lot of change. I mean, I have many friends around me that brought shotguns to school and put them in their locker in the morning because they would hunt on the way to school and then hunt on the way home. And we're not talking about that long ago.

Yeah, definitely not.

You know, 40 years ago, you could do that. You know, people would bring guns to school. It just wasn't a big deal. I mean, I went to a school when I was a kid, they used to spank me with a paddle if I was bad. Can you imagine that today? So that's, you know, back to your point before, like about could we get back to local systems again? You look at how rapidly things can change. I think the bigger thing than the infrastructure changing is the mind state changing because that's what drives the changes in infrastructure. So, yeah, I mean, or whatever socially acceptable. But yeah, the idea of living without tools, basic tools is so odd to me. I'm constantly giving knives and more and more, I constantly give away multi-tools to people because—

Oh, yeah.

Some people who don't perceive themselves as somebody who would carry a knife will carry a Leatherman. You know, it's less— it feels less like a weapon and more like a tool to them. Um, so, you know, I'm always giving things to people, but, you know, inevitably they lose them.

So I want to get into, um, WildFed and how that got started. But before we do, you had a podcast called the Rewild Yourself Podcast, which— and I love the name. And I discovered that after we had, um, gone on to the creation of Rewild Gear. And, you know, that name was very intentional for us anyway, just because the mission is to help people to get back into nature and spend more time and reconnect with family and friends and to, you know, rewild themselves. So I love the name that you had for the podcast. Can you talk a little bit about that and what rewilding yourself means? And I think we've already kind of touched on that a little bit, but maybe go into a little bit more details there and about that and how that led into the creation of Wild Fed.

Sure. Well, if you look at the way the word rewilding is coming into the modern lexicon. Man, it's funny. I'm really divided on this because it's very exciting to see. For instance, when not long ago David Attenborough had a documentary come out on Netflix, he looks right at the camera and says, we need to rewild the world. And, it's like, wow, this is exciting because I agree.

Yeah.

And therefore, it lights me up. And you're seeing this idea of rewilding landscapes becoming much more popular from small scale like your backyard to large scale, you know, whole ecosystems. There's an awareness that essentially we've not only excessively farmed the world but essentially harvested off the cream from the planet for so long that we're losing both diversity and biomass at too rapid a rate. And so, even at the highest levels of hyper-domesticated government, we're realizing that we need to rewild the world. But, my concern is that this is often at the expense of individuals getting to experience wildness. And, what I mean is there are There's a sort of effort to rewild the world while pushing people into more and more packed cities, to push them out of the rural environment, get them onto sort of highway corridors that connect these smart cities, and to get people to go into this digital and virtual environment while the world gets rewilded. In other words, people aren't really accessing it. They're living in the most hyper-virtual, hyper-domesticated world while the rest of the world gets built back up. And, I don't think that that's wise or sustainable because people are part of nature. And, in fact, I think we might have one of the most important roles in nature, which is why by disregarding that role or by walking away from that important job, we've done such tremendous damage. So, when I think about people, it kind of makes me think about beavers. So, if you think about the role that beavers have, the idea if somebody's like, well, humans shouldn't change the landscape, it's like, well, should beavers change the landscape? Because they do. They do dramatically. They raise water levels by damming. People shouldn't dam rivers. Well, beavers do it. I mean, I don't like the way we dam rivers, but I'm just saying they do large-scale landscape management, but it creates more habitat and that creates more space for more wildlife. And, they actually have a net positive even though they're environmental engineers. Well, humans are like that. When you read the Bible or even the Torah, it talks about basically kind of paints this picture that the first people's job was essentially to be gardeners of nature. And, that's the role that I think that we really should have. Now, by living how we would naturally live on the landscape, just by removing firewood from a landscape, you think about a tribe moving through an area on their annual migration route, just the burning of firewood, think about how much wood is cleared out of forests for that.

Yeah.

Right? We're talking about people without metal tools. So, this is gathered deadwood. This is stuff broken off. They would eventually have to move camp. A lot of people thought, oh, because they're following the animals, but more and more, it's like, well, they're also running out of firewood. So, we move from area to area doing that, right?

Yeah.

And, we burn a lot. And, we're beginning to understand that this sort of firestick agricultural approach or a fire management tool that was used by indigenous groups around the world was incredibly productive to So anyway, my point is when humans stay out of landscapes, those landscapes tend to degrade. Humans are net— have a net positive impact on habitat when we live our natural lifestyle. So the idea that we're just going to pull out and leave everything like national forests, I think what you end up with is a clogged up natural environment that lacks the diversity that it could have and lacks the habitat complexity that could have. We need people in landscapes. So, Rewild Yourself was me looking at like, what does that even look like? What does a person who goes from domesticated to approaching some kind of their own wildness, what does that look like? And, I explored a lot in there, not just food stuff and not just lifestyle stuff like sex, death, birth, all those kind of things. So, that show was a big exploration of that. I eventually stepped away from that language because It's gotten very—it's become very complex, and I think rewilding might become a cultural buzzword for nature but not for people. So hence the rewild yourself component of it, because I think that yeah, that's the part David Attenborough doesn't bring up, and many people similar way of looking at it. I think they'd be happier if humans weren't interacting with landscapes anymore, and that's the most unfortunate thing. It's that belief that humans. are inherently bad, that leads us to these transhuman ideas that misanthropy does. And so, that really bothers me. So, I've focused the last 10 years of my career on helping people make peace with that and then realize that they're part of wildness.

Gotcha. I want to get into the WildFed side in just a second, but just to play devil's advocate for a second or maybe not even devil's advocate. And, this is something that I've been wrestling with internally as far as trying to encourage more people to get in nature and spend more time. And, we're seeing a lot of this already with everything with COVID where people are leaving the cities and want a more rural existence and living off the land and worried about some of these issues that we've talked about. However, that does come at a cost as urban sprawl happens, and then we're losing a lot of those wild spaces and wild places that— and so we're losing some of those native species, whether that's insects or animals or what have you. So where is that balance and how do we strike that balance? So not so everyone is just cooped up in major cities and not so everyone is trying to live a rural existence, then as humans, we tend to try to domesticate things and make it into more comfort creatures and livability and things like that. So, I don't know where that balance is. I'm really curious to hear your thoughts there.

Yeah. Well, first, I don't think— well, I live in Maine, which our slogan is Vacationland, which is it's hard to live in a place called Vacationland because that means that there's a lot of people who come to vacation. And, when you're in Maine, those people tend to come from Boston, You know, they come from New York City. They come from all the metropolitan areas to our south and to our west, and and they come here loving how rural it is. But then they quickly start to build the institutions and do the behaviors that they do in the city. So here I am driving on a rural road, being pushed off the road by some driver from the city who feels like I'm going too slow because they don't know how to drive in a rural environment, and they think they want it to be Maine, but they actually. want it to be Massachusetts. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

I deal with this stuff regularly. That said, the area where I live, I'm a gentrifier. I came into an area that I'm not from. I bought a house, and there's people who live near me who are from here, and I see what they've gone through having people like me move in. So, we're all— I mean, this is a complex thing. But anyway, to your point, I don't think that this renewed interest in nature has had any negative impacts. I haven't seen any. Hunter numbers are down. Fishing numbers are down from the past. Nature participation is not like— there are no issues right now that I've seen that come from this renewed interest in people rewilding or people getting interested in nature. So there are really good systems in place for management of wildlife and wild places that most of the people getting involved in this stuff are fitting into the those preexisting structures in a way into that management plan very nicely. So if you talk to folks at DNR or you talk to folks at, you know, Fish and Wildlife or whatever the departments in your state are called, um, they are still trying to recruit. In other words, they aren't seeing enough numbers yet, even with all that's been happening. Um, I think COVID caused a spike, but a lot of those people are starting to go back now to their old Right. They didn't sustain it. So, yeah, I just don't think we're at any risk for that. When you're talking about losing species and losing habitat, that's not from people recreating. That's from new developments. That's from new department stores. That's from factories. That's from lots of things that don't really have anything to do with people recreating. Um, and also, as far as like people doing the exodus from the cities, I think it's, you know, yet to be seen whether there's been significant of a— enough of a migration out of the cities to even really have an impact. I don't suspect that there's been much of one yet. Um, certainly, you know, some new houses are being built and all that, but probably not at a rate that exceeds what was already happening. So I just don't think, um, that's our biggest concern. I think much bigger concerns are industry and commercialization and economics driving the exploitation of natural places and natural things, not people who want to interact. I just, you know, I think that actually it would be exciting if more people got on board right now. We actually need more people to value these places and these things. So yeah, we'll see if that becomes an issue.

Yeah.

But I don't think it's one right now. And I think you can feel really good about encouraging people to get out Because, you know, even people who live the lifestyle that you and I live, you know, here we are both in our houses on computers right now. We're not out there right now. So, you know what I mean? Even though we love to do that, how much do you really get to do it? Probably not as— probably only a fraction of how much you want to, you know?

Yeah, exactly. No, that's a great point. And I think that puts it in perspective. So thank you for that. So I would love to dig into about, you know, your WildFed TV show and podcast. And it's one of my very favorites because I feel like you and Steve Rinella from Meat Eater do such an amazing job of balancing it compared to other hunting shows. So many of them out there is just all about the trophy, the hunt, but the focus is more on the food side and, you know, using all the animal and showing, telling stories, which are so much better than just like, let's go shoot them and put as much camo on as you can. So I really appreciate what you're doing and how you are bringing a much more thoughtful and integrated approach to hunting. And, uh, bringing it to a mass market. So can you talk a little bit about that?

Well, first of all, thank you. And, um, it's, it's pretty wild for me to be talked about in the same sentence as Steve Rinella. Um, he's a much more, um, experienced hunter than I'll probably ever get to be in my lifetime. Um, and, uh, his show has changed the landscape of, um, hunting television, as you know. I think they're in their 10th season. Yeah, and but we are airing on the Outdoor Channel Monday nights in the same block as them, which is really exciting and amazing. It's become the most watched block on Outdoor Channel, and Outdoor Channel and the Sportsman's Group—you know, this is Sportsman Channel Group. There, that's that's the holdout for outdoor TV. I mean, there isn't really any other channels that are dealing with this stuff, and so they are. That's where hunting, fishing. And that kind of outdoor recreation is actually being you know watched. So to get to be part of that with characters like him, it's just incredible to me and very exciting. What I think we do differently is because Steve's show focuses largely on they're they're sort they do some generalist hunting stuff, but typically they're I say they specialize in western backcountry yeah big game hunting and packing out stuff. I mean, it's just so when I watch that, I could be watching the rover on Mars. It's so foreign to me because here in the Northeast, it's just a completely different world of thick, dense forest. If I can see 100 yards, that's a really long open area. Yeah. You know, versus these guys are looking over miles. And then, you know, you go down to Kentopia or Kentucky. I like to call it Kentopia because of your extremely liberal hunting and fishing laws and weapon laws. When you go down there, it's a whole other world, you know. So, there's a lot of room in the space because there's a lot of different types of environments and we get to specialize in different things. But, I think what really sets us apart at WildFed is that we forage in our show considerably every episode and try to give as much attention to plants and fungi and algae as we do to animals. And, we're trying to show a more— rather than being a hunting show, we're more of a wild food show. I'd say Meat Eater is a wild food show to a degree as well, but it's sort We really like to bring in both the hunting and the gathering component. I made the show initially on my own dime and produced it myself for the internet and was really lucky to have it licensed and eventually sold to Outdoor Channel. And, we're in production for our second season right now. The first season, by the way, people can see on My Outdoor TV. That's their streaming app. That's up there now, 10 episodes. And, our next 10 will start February of 2022. So, really excited about that filming for it.

Sweet.

But, yeah, man, I feel very lucky and blessed to get to be bringing wild foods to the mainstream. I'm a very alternative character, as you know, and my approach is pretty alternative. And, even though I think of myself as much more tempered, my tempered version of myself is probably still really radical to a lot of people. So, the idea that I get this opportunity to be on cable TV is kind of really amazing and stunning to me. And the interest that we've received and the support we've received has blown my mind. I think another thing that makes our show a little different, most of these shows follow people who are extremely experienced at these things. They've done it their whole life and now they're showing it. I've approached this as somebody who's learned in the last 10 years to do these things. I mean, I'm a beginner in a lot of senses and the show is more or less Yeah. Watching me learn and learning with me. And, I think that's going to— my hope is I think Steve's show really speaks to people who— it reaches a lot of people, of course, but I think it speaks a lot to people who were raised hunting and fishing and maybe continued to do it as adults or started to fall away from it and that show reinspired them and they got reactivated into it. I think What what my show Wild Fed is doing is it's recruiting a younger generation. You know, I keep saying to my friends because you know when you hunt it's like you spend time with a pretty diverse cast of characters, but a lot of them from a generation kind of older than mine. And I keep saying to these guys because they've been so welcoming to me, even though I have long hair and I have tattoos and all this kind of stuff that you know for them is sort of maybe a little bit strange. I keep saying to them. Them, are you ready for new hunters coming in with face tattoos and diamond grills? Because that's who the next generation is. You know what I mean? In order for this to continue on, the human legacy of gathering wild food means we have to get the next generation in. And, I pray that I'm positioned well to speak to that generation, that those alternative aspects of myself will speak to those kids so that the kid with the diamond tooth and the face tattoo who's wanting to get more interested in nature sees me and goes, well, okay, if that guy can do it, I can do it. And, I hope I can speak to, yeah, a younger generation because to me, if we don't do that, kind of all is lost.

Yeah.

Because those kids are destined for that metaverse, not for nature if they continue on the trajectory that culture has sort of set Yeah, great point.

Daniel, what's the biggest life lesson that nature and the outdoors has taught you?

Man, where do you begin? It's by almost dying, I'd say. I have had several different things happen to me over the years that come to mind. Once, I was in the White Mountains Not far from me where I am now in New Hampshire. It was the day after Christmas. And, I'm with my lifeguard crew at the time. We're young testosterone-fueled guys doing stupid things. And, we broke through a fence that had blocked off roads access to the trailhead we wanted to go to and sort of reclosed that behind us. So, we were in an area where nobody knew we would be. We hiked a mountain. And, when we got to the summit, I decided I would go off to Mount Washington. That's our tallest mountain out here and leave the guys and I'd meet them in about 15 hours back at the car. And, I set off running because I was in really good shape climbing mountains every weekend. And, I started running the traverse from one summit to the next thinking it'd be about 8 hours before I got to that Mm-hmm. I'm carrying an ultralight loadout. The snow is to the top of the trees and I set off running. I hit some ice. I hear a very loud snapping sound.

Oh.

Come to on the ground, stand up, and tell myself, hey, walk it off. Walk it off. No, I don't even know what's happened. And, as I'm walking, my body swivels around my foot. My foot turns around 180 degrees backwards. I realize I've rotationally broken broken my tibia and my fibula.

Oh.

And now, I'm alone in the mountains, in the snow with almost no gear and no one expecting me for 15 hours and nobody knows we're in this part of the mountain range. And, that was pretty scary. And, long story short, we were lifeguards. I had my whistle, saved my life. And, by the time they found me, I had tried to cannibalize my pack to try to create some kind of a splint. The whole ass had been ripped out of the tights that I was wearing. I was getting cold exposed. And, it took a day to get me off the mountain. And, I learned a lot there. First, that nature's really indifferent to you. That's important to understand because there's this aspect of nature. It's like Hindu philosophy, right? There's this aspect of the feminine feminine that's the divine mother, but there's this aspect of the feminine that's like Kali that dances on your dead corpse after cutting your head off. You know what I mean? There's the benevolent king in masculinity and there's the tyrant.

Yes.

Well, nature's got this benevolent Mother Nature thing going on and we've all felt that. She also has this other side that I had, in my romanticism, not really thought about. I could have died that day and I carry injuries now from that that haven't ever healed really and completely, I should say. So, I'm constantly reminded of that. That was a big life lesson. And, one of the lessons was actually about gear. I did not have enough gear to even deal with my medical issue, let alone stay alive up there. One time, I was in the Amazon in the Madre de Dios River floating with some folks back to our camp just floating down the river wearing life jackets. and our sort of feet up, feet first, just sort of floating down the river, a little fun trip. And, I hit some kind of hydraulic and just got sucked underwater.

Oh.

And, I was frozen there with my arms and legs extended, probably about maybe 6 feet underwater. I saw everybody floating on past me. I could not move.

Oh.

I was just held in place with a life jacket on too, mind you. And, I came to terms with drowning and then got spit back out. And, I came up to the surface and kind of caught up to everybody and no one even knew it had happened. I had this moment by myself with probably 15 people where I thought for sure I was going to die. And so, we got back to the banks and everybody's like, are you okay? And, it's like, how do you even explain to people? They didn't see any of it. I had another experience where I didn't want to use a sleeping pad and I went in my sleeping bag out into the woods, laid down on the ground in the Cool. And, with no insulation to the ground, I woke up extremely cold and blind, actually blind. And, I could not see. I thankfully was able to get out of the woods and eventually make my way home, but my vision didn't return for probably 20 minutes. And again, I could have died. So, I've learned a very healthy respect for the natural world and also what those core human skill sets are that a domesticated person isn't raised with that actually everybody used to understand and know. Those things have been— I could tell you so many cool glory stories or things that I've seen animals do that are so interesting or all the beautiful stories of stumbling upon some sacred spring and imbibing those waters. I mean, I have a million stories like that. But the near-death stuff is a real wake-up call and it reminds you about what's important. And there's that skill side of it and that equipment side of it, but there's also remembering what you actually care about. And that at the end of the day, if I'm really honest, I probably would choose my wife over nature because ultimately, it's like when you see people— again, look at that show Alone. Everybody who goes home, what is it? It's like, I need to see my wife and kids.

Yeah, they miss community and family.

Yeah, that those things are more important to us than almost anything. And so, you see people who love the natural world realize that they actually care more about their wives and kids. And so, I think those near-death experiences really remind us how important it is for us to feel like we have a place of belonging with others. And, I just think you almost just wish everybody could have near-death experiences just You know what I mean? To have some of that taste of that.

Yeah, it gives you a much healthier respect for sure. Daniel, how can we live more closely in a harmonious— or how can we have a more harmonious and symbiotic relationship with nature just from all of your experiences and all the work that you do?

Well, it's such a cool question because you could get 1,000 answers and they could all be right. So, my way has been through a food. And, I mentioned it earlier, if I'm eating a squirrel or I'm eating a deer or I'm eating a tuna or a bear or a bison or I'm eating chokecherries or feral apples or acorns or whatever wild food, that to me reminds me that I'm part of a species that's one species in a community of non-human persons that all share this planet together and that strangely eat each other to stay alive. I don't see any animosity there. It's just that we all have to stay alive and we do that by eating other things that are alive. And, when you step outside of sort of speciesist ideas that some life forms are more sentient than other life forms or whatever, you kind of get out of all that sort of biased thinking. You just realize like, hey, no life form really necessarily wants to be eaten, but that's That's just, hey, welcome to Earth.

The nature of it.

Yeah, it's the nature of it. It really does help me to feel connected to the natural world and to my ancestors because I didn't grow up with a family where I'm connected back to my lineage. So, anybody who's listening who knows who their great-grandparents are, congratulations, that's awesome because not everybody has that. And so, there can be a sense of sort of being orphaned in the world and that's a little bit hard. And so, I don't have a direct connection to my ancestors through that, but I have it through hunting and gathering. It connects me to all people. That, to me, really settles my soul quite a bit.

Mm-hmm.

So, that's how I found it. But, I think people could find it through having a garden or people could find it through camping on the weekends or going canoeing or whatever the thing is for you. It's more important, I think, to follow your own path through this And, follow the thread of things that light you up rather than being like, well, Daniel said I have to go do it, because I don't know what works for somebody else. And, as I said before, I think everybody's supposed to carry a different piece. That's how collectively we carry on knowledge. But, for me, it's been through hunting and gathering and I just don't personally get as much out of— my wife and I love to paddle our canoe together. And, she was a competitive paddler in her past. So, for her, paddling as an end is very satisfying. But, for me, paddling is a means of conveyance.

Yes.

So, I am trying to get to somewhere to do something. So, I used to find satisfaction out of hiking a mountain just to get to the top. Now, I'd rather hike the mountain with a rifle, come down down with it. Like, that's for me, right?

Yep.

Um, but like I said, if, if somebody paddles and that for them is, is the end, then they don't need to go through all of this other stuff that I need to go through because that's just my path. So I sort of see it like everybody follows their peace. And what's really cool, you know, is when you can share that. Like, for her to paddle is so satisfying. She paddles me. You know, dudes are always like, you're wife on the boat. It's like, yeah, well, if you had my wife, you'd want her to paddle the boat too. And, I get to have a rifle up in the front. So, we get to team up and both leave with that kind of nature. And obviously, there's a ton of overlap there. She loves to come hunting with me. I love to go paddling with her. But together, we're finding that we both can get what we're looking for out of the experience together in a shared way. So, it just depends. I have friends who have tremendous nature through gardening. And gardening for me just doesn't really get me excited. I just, I like wild foods too much. I just, I don't, I don't have that fire inside me to do it, but I'll see these food forest projects or these permaculture projects that people get involved in and man, do they have a strong nature connection. So it's like whatever it is, man, if your thing is dog sledding, it doesn't really matter to me what it is, but, uh, it has to happen in the natural world. And the biggest part is is at this point, I feel like we're in a bit of triage where it's almost like it's just important to do something in nature that isn't mediated through a phone or a computer or some kind of augmented reality device.

Yeah.

That's even more important. There's this piece of like, we need to save the planet, we need to save ecology, global warming, all those kind of things. It's like, yeah, all that, but this is triage. Okay, yeah, that guy needs an eye surgery, but this dude's bleeding out and we need to get a tourniquet on that before we go do eye surgery on that dude. You know what I'm saying? Triage. And so, triage is like, hey, it's more important to just put your freaking phone down right now than it is to be thinking about even nature connection. Yeah, for sure. I think nature connection ultimately is the antidote. to a lot of these things. But, I think that humanity's at a really, really strange crossroads and we have no map for how to deal with this except looking to the past because the future just seems to be— I mean, what are you hearing now? The messaging is like, well, the machines are going to be so intelligent that we're going to need to actually integrate with them in order to survive. It's like, I'm sorry, I'm just not with that message. That's a problem. That's like That's like Gandalf goes to see that wizard and he's like, Sauron's become too powerful. We must join with him. It's like, wait, what? We have to join with machines? No. How about I'm going to put my phone down and I'm going to take a walk outside?

Yeah.

So, I mean, even if your thing is like, let's say your grandmother's listening to this and she's not going to go hunt squirrels, but maybe she'll go take a walk through a little forest project trail somewhere close by. That's whatever it takes, some sun on your face even, whatever it is for people. I just think follow what feels right to you. I don't like to say follow what feels good because boy, that can sure get taken wrong.

Yeah.

It feels good to inject heroin. I mean, I don't know what to tell you. That's not the path. But, following what you feel inside most excited about in nature is the thing that will work Yeah, that makes sense.

You mentioned earlier at the beginning about having a very challenging childhood and kind of a broken family structure and then not knowing your grandparents. So I'm curious about that. And obviously it sounds like there's trauma and things that you had to work through to become the person you are today. How did nature play into that and what are some of the things that, that you learned from that and has shaped who you are now?

Yeah, it's a very complex question. Thanks for asking it. Yeah, I would say not only trauma that I've worked through, but to be honest, trauma I'm working through. And yeah, it's important that people understand. I'm sure most people get this, but it's like just because somebody's been successful or because somebody's got a TV show, it doesn't mean that they've worked through all their trauma, right? It's like most of us—

It might be because of it.

Yeah, exactly. Most of us are pretty deep in it. So, it's an ongoing thing that I think I'll always be working through that trauma. But, the thing about the natural world for me, so the world of people, we are so hurt people hurt other people.

Yup.

Wounded people wound other people. And, there's an equity in nature that you don't have in the natural world. I mean, that you don't have in the human-constructed world. You go into nature and it's It's like, man, is it fair to everybody in a sense? You know what I mean? Because you could take George Soros or Bill Gates or one of these guys, right? You could take the Amazon guy there and you put him out in nature with a kid off the streets of Somalia and somebody from the Chinese CCP, right?

Yeah.

Just random group of people from all these different stratas of society. They're all just going to deal with the same hardships: finding food, staying warm, staying hydrated. Like it's so fair. And so you go into that world and all of those—I don't know—for me, it's been this place of solace because all of those issues are lifted, and now I'm dealing with real human issues, not these constructed human issues. So for me, that's been the most beautiful thing. Another part is a sense of belonging. That's been one of the big. biggest pieces for me. So, I have this metaphor. If you've heard my show, you probably heard me talking about it. But, for your listeners, I'll say if you moved to a new town and you didn't know anybody and you were standing out on the street and you're just watching people go by and you know no one and no one knows you, that would feel pretty lonely.

Yeah.

Versus if you were in your hometown, especially for people coming from a small town will understand this, you go downtown, it's like You see just people you know. You went to high school with them or junior high with them. Oh, that's so-and-so's mom or dad or brother or cousin. You know all these people, and there's this sense of, even if you don't necessarily like all those people, you belong. You know where the stores are. You know where the resources are. If you need to go to the post office, you know where it is. You're connected to the place. Okay. So, when people go into nature very often, what I see is that there's this sense of that I've moved to a new town. I don't know any of these non-human persons. I don't know what that tree is or that tree is or that plant. plant, that forb, that grass, that animal, people feel like they're in an unknown place.

Mm-hmm.

But, as you get to know the species around you, and for me, that's, like I said, I've done that through hunting and gathering, but somebody might do it through becoming an amateur naturalist or studying a little botany or doing mushroom walks or birding or whatever it is. As you get to know the species around you, for me through eating them, I've gotten to know a lot of them. Now, when I go into the natural world, I'm in my hometown. It's like I know all of these species around me. Not that I know all the species around me, but I know many species around me and what they can offer me and what I can offer them. And, there's this sense of like, ah, I'm connected again in a way that I don't always feel in the human world. And so, for me, when I see a maple tree, it's like, man, that's where I get my sugar, or birch tree, that's where I get my sugar. And, that's the primary Um, you know, tinder that I use for the fireplace here in my house. Or, you know, an oak, it's like, man, I can make food out of those acorns and that wood is so high quality, or whatever. I could go on and on and on, species after species. The connections to those things make me feel like I have a place in it and I belong to something. And so growing up, I never really had that sense of belonging, but I certainly have it in nature. So, you know, even though I had those stories earlier, like about how easily Nature can also take you out of the equation and doesn't really care about that. There's that other component, which is that benevolent side of nature. And, connection that I feel there moves me to my core in a way that little else does. So yeah, for me, it's an important part of that recovery too. When you have trauma, you essentially have to be in recovery from that trauma. And, um, you know, there's whatever, we could cite so many studies now that show just walking in the forest is like improves your health outlook. So as you—

Forest bathing.

Right. Yeah, exactly. Um, or even just the colors of the blue sky and the green of the plant life. So, you know, that stuff's very soothing to you anyway. So it's good for that, but, um, it goes so much deeper, right? So when we're actually interacting with eating those species, got our hands on those species Man, I mean, you really become a part of something way bigger than you. Because you look at people when they're at the end of their life and there's this thing that they often want to do, which is leave— connect to something bigger than themselves, right?

Mm-hmm.

It's very important to us to feel like our lives have meaning, and connecting with something bigger is really important. Religion does that for us in a huge way, but so does that nature connection. Because the more time you spend in nature, the more you realize you're dealing with an intelligence greater than your own. That, by the way, is one of the most important parts to me because when I look around right now, what I see is just this tremendous human hubris because we've been told that we're the most intelligent thing that's ever existed and that the human brain is the most complex thing in the universe. Well, first, I don't agree with those statements, but that empowers us into stupidity.

Yeah.

It empowers us stupid hubris because we become so proud that we start to disregard everything. Well, you start to spend time in nature, you realize this is an intelligence much vaster and more complex than your own and that you know almost nothing even with all you know, right? I know a lot of things and I go in nature and I'm like, man, most of it's useless or good party facts, but it's like you realize this is a greater intelligence in me, therefore, I'm humbled, and that through that humbling, I become a better person.

Hmm.

That makes sense. And so, to me, this might not be something that applied ancestrally because this is just where people were. They were in nature. They already had this. But, for those of us who grew up without that, getting some of that humbling again and realizing that humans are not the center of the universe and that our ideas come and go, but there's some things that are constant and you find those things out there. Boy, that humbling, I think, is something that a lot of people could really, really use.

Yeah, for sure. I think it's also interesting, a lot of the studies that are coming out as far as for dealing with trauma and past issues coming from plant-based medicine and how that seems to bring a greater understanding of nature and living harmoniously and thinking differently insofar as how we connect with each other and with nature and the effects that that's having all Thank God, because, you know, you try to tell somebody about those kind of experiences and as you know, um, there's just no language to do so. Yep.

It's almost impossible. You know, you try to, the more you try to explain it, the like, the more you're like, this isn't coming out right. Uh, so having studies that can show outcome, because also it's not, it's not fair to go to your friends and, and try to describe those outcomes cuz it sounds arrogant, you know, like, ever since doing this, I've become so much better of a person, happier, blah, blah, blah. But, uh, when you see the research, you know, into, let's say, psilocybe, you know, psilocybe mushroom, psilocybin, um, you know, it's just incredible. I mean, people reporting it as one of the most powerful experiences in their entire lifetime, huge reductions in anxiety, you know, ability to basically create neuroplasticity to rewire your brain. brain. I mean, this is important stuff.

Yeah.

And, it's not just plant medicines, right? It's plant medicines. In some cases, it's animal-based medicines like 5-MeO-DMT from the Bufo Code. It could be synthetic ones like MDMA created by Shulgin, which is incredible medicine for people who are looking to overcome childhood trauma. This whole area of research is going to be really important for humans moving forward, but interestingly was a big part of our In many cultures at least too. I think what we have to be careful of is the recreational use of those things can be very detrimental, but structured use of them can be incredibly powerful. And yeah, I think they're a really important part of the healing process. And, it's most interesting how, to me, how those medicines often inform you about the importance of nature and the complexity of nature too. It's almost like there's— you ask yourself sort of— you look at the molecule and you're like, okay, it's not the molecule. There's no way all the information learned in one of those experiences comes out of that molecule. That doesn't make sense. So, is that information in me already and it's brought to the surface through this or is that information out there and that molecule is like an antenna that helps me receive it? I don't— I have no idea how this works, but, but I know it's more than just the— what the mushroom is made out of.

Yes, I definitely agree with that. And the other thing that I find fascinating when it comes to some of those medicines and substances is that it tends to make us want to get into nature or experience that within nature. So there definitely is some type of magnetic attraction when it comes to that. I don't understand it myself, but I do find it fascinating.

Well, one thing that might be worth pointing out is when we say get into nature, this is the first time in history that anybody would ever have to say that, right? Because all that— yeah, nature. So, is it that they want us to get into nature, those medicines? They make us want to get into nature or is it that they want us to— they make us see how unhealthy our built-in virtual environment is? You know what I mean? It might actually reverse.

Yeah. No, that's a Great point. Tanner, just a couple more questions here. This has been such a fascinating and amazing conversation we've had, but just a couple quick questions to wrap up here. What outdoor gear equipment do you consider essential when you're spending time in the great outdoors?

Oh, man. Well, we talked about a knife before. I mean, I just can't imagine going into the woods without a knife or anywhere without a knife. But, it's hard for me to say a specific piece of gear. I believe in a lot of this stuff is important. I'll say it like this. I sort of see it in tiers. So, it's like I have my EDC, the gear that I just carry on my body every day. And, I carry quite a bit of really important to me, very important equipment. I carry a knife every day. I carry a knife that's for cutting tissue every day, but I also carry a knife that's for cutting boxes and stuff. And, they're different knives. So, I carry a Leatherman tool for my day-to-day tool stuff, box open, jobs, whatever. But, I carry a knife that's also for cutting plants or mushrooms or animals as well. Those are separate. I often carry a weapon. I carry a tourniquet everywhere I go. That's another important piece to me. On my keychain, I have a little ferro rod. I think that's just a smart thing to have with you. The ability to produce fire is really, really important. So, I have all the stuff that just goes in my Pockets every day, and that so for me, even I see my clothes as equipment. It's like the pants that I wear have to accommodate all of this stuff, and the belt that I wear has to be able to hold all that stuff up. That's a lot of stuff. You know, my my EDC weighs a lot, and over the years I've carved it down, and I figured out, you know, there's a lot of stuff that's like, oh, that would be cool to carry, and turns out to be dumb. You know, so over time I've carved it down, but you know, stuff's heavy. So there's the stuff that I carry on my. And then, I carry a pack with me that I often don't have on my shoulders but is my workstation. It's where all my stuff is kept that I might access it before I go into the woods to pull a couple things out of it. And, some of the stuff that I think about always having in there are gloves, hat, neck gaiter. I have found myself cold in summer nights and Mm-hmm. You know what I mean? So, I always have that insulation. That's like really crucial to me. Some backup food, always have that with me. Water or the ability to procure water, so crucial. I mean, you know, I'm not saying anything you don't know. I'm just really big into having all those kind of basics with me. Comms, I think communications are really important today. They didn't, you know, there's a time when they weren't, but now it's pretty important you're able to reach people, reach help. So, I'm not somebody who believes I need to be in the woods in buckskins and leave all that stuff at home. It's stuff I want to have access to. So, that stuff's really important to me as well. Quality footwear. I mean, it's all the basics to me.

Mm-hmm.

There's not any gadgetry that I think is really important. It's those basic things, man. But, you get yourself into some hairy situations over time. I'm really big on first Yeah. So, like I said, I'll carry a tourniquet in my pocket, but I also carry a trauma kit and a boo-boo kit in my pack all the time. I just always have that because it's like I found myself needing those things so often. So, I'm big on that too. But, I'd say none of that stuff's as important as the knowledge in my head because you could hand a trauma kit to somebody and they'll have no idea what to do with it if they They don't have the training. So, you know, it's a combination of what's in my head and what's on my body. But if I had to, you know, if you were doing the like, what's the one thing you're gonna bring? It's a knife. Because I can make everything with that, you know, but if I have that, I'm relying on rocks. And that's a challenge.

Totally. And then follow-up question to that. What outdoor brands do you think are doing a great job as far as their product quality or their sustainability efforts or I've been finding it fairly disappointing, to be honest with you, in many regards.

So, I don't have a lot of companies that I'd recommend. I've been working with WeatherWool. I'm a huge believer in wool. And so, I have garments from Boreal Mountain. I have garments from Pendleton. I have garments from King of the Mountain, all those. I'll go to an event and I'll look around. I'll be like, oh, all the major woolen mills are represented here by my friends. But, WeatherWool, my friend Ralph down in Jersey is producing the finest wool garments I've ever encountered.

Cool.

I would say his website, I don't think it does complete justice to the garments, but man, they are on another level and they are truly 100% wool. A lot of the other brands are 10% cotton because they basically don't want to change out the looms, it's too expensive. He's developed the softest wool I've ever felt. So, I really love his You know, I mentioned before that I carry a pack with me everywhere and that pack is a GORUCK pack. And, I have tried a lot. I have a shelf in my basement of probably 25 packs. I don't like a pack that has anything that hinders me getting into it. So, I don't like when those side straps block the zipper and I have to undo buckles to get the zipper down. So, I love the GORUCK pack. And, their events, if anyone's ever done one where you carry, I don't remember how many pounds of bricks, I think it's 4 bricks in your pack for a night. You learn pretty quick that those packs hold up. So, I'm a big believer in those as well. A lot of the brands that I like are sort of obscure. So, it's not like the major brands. I wish in the hunting world, for instance, I wish that there was more American-made stuff and I wish there was a lot less synthetics. I'm very excited. I mentioned Jocko Willink's company earlier, Origin. And I know they're coming out with a hunt line all made in the USA. I'm very excited. Oh, cool. That'll be really cool. Yeah. But yeah, you know, it's almost like you'd have to ask me what category because man, I got gear in every category. But yeah, I gotta say, I really liked that knife you guys produced. You know, thank you. I wouldn't say— I'm not saying I wouldn't tweak it here or there. But boy, overall, like the one of the most useful blade geometries. That I can, you know, if you were like, hey, draw like your sort of most useful knife for general bushcraft and hunting, your blade shape, man, I don't think I'd come up with something too much different than that. So I really, really liked that.

That was the goal. Thank you.

Also, that ferro rod notch. Thank you. It's crazy how you buy bushcraft knives that you can't even scrape a spark off a ferro rod without using the blade edge, you know.

And you don't want to do that. That was very intentional. I didn't want to have a straight 90-degree angle on the back because that gets sharp and you can cut yourself, especially if you're trying to choke up and do fine work. But having the notch in there just makes total sense.

I first looked at it, I was like, is this like my thumb? What is this? And then I was like, ah, it like clicked eventually.

So I'm curious, you said there might be a couple tweaks that you would make to it. Love to hear what those are. Oh yeah, really?

Publicly like this? Of course, we're transparent. Small stuff. Um, I don't— the pommel, I'm neither here nor there about. Um, I never put a Yeah, I almost like if just that's— I like that it's hammerable. But I might almost bring the— it's not micarta. What's this material?

It's called TeraTuff. It is similar to micarta, but it's a less toxic substance to work with. And it gets tackier when wet, how most micarta gets slick.

Yeah, micarta does get slick. So that, and then I like a choil on a knife. Okay, can't quite choke up as high as I want on this knife. But that's just a personal thing. Otherwise, man, I don't have anything else to say. I do need to carry a second knife, like a bird and trout type knife for some of the jobs that I do. Because there's belly in this, obviously not a super acute point at the tip of this because of the belly. But I also need, in addition to the bird and trout, I can't skin with, it's too acute. So I believe in the principle, you know, back to gear, like, I believe in that like Daisho set thing that, you know, you see from the samurai in Japan where it's like, it's not once— it's a katana, a wakizashi, and a tanto.

Yep.

You know, people always want the one thing. It's like, you usually need 2 to 3.

Yeah.

So it's like, you know, if you're gonna hunt, it's like, well, yes, you want a shotgun, but you also want a, you know, a big game rifle, and you want a small game rifle. You need 3, you know, and you can make one work, but not well for every job. So, um, to me, this is like a really good, um, Skinner hunter slash bushcraft And I like the size of it. I love that you shipped it with an FDA— FDE Kydex. Big believer in Kydex. Kind of wish those scales were FDE. That's it. That's my only other thing. No major things, man. I mean, it's pretty close to perfect.

Thank you. One thing I'll say about the pommel, so it was very intentional the way that's designed. So it's somewhat pointed, so it can be a glass breaker in a survival situation. And then Yep, it will work. And then the, the other edge of the pommel is flat. And that's actually a nutcracker. So if you're out in the woods and you find some nuts and you want to crack those, just get around. Yeah, yeah. And we tested that out quite a bit. Works really well.

Well, it's nice because like I said, I often don't like it when the pommel sticks out, but it's, it's not uncomfortable to the hand at all. So yeah, man, I really like this knife a lot. I mean, it's kind of becoming one of my most I've got 100 knives, but it's becoming one of my favorites.

Thank you. Really appreciate that. Daniel, is there a book or books that had just a huge impact on you over the years?

Well, I mentioned before Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. I just wish that book was given to people in school so they could understand the connection between nutrition, ancestry, genetics, and physical health because nutrition is a really difficult world to navigate because it's so full of fraud and so full of bad. So, that's been probably one of the most important books to me. And, another one I'll say, this is probably not going to be what you're expecting, but Dune by Frank Herbert I think is one of the best ways for somebody to start thinking deeper about everything from ecology to politics to religion to mysticism to sexuality. One of the themes dominant throughout the book is this idea of a Planets in this Imperium have a planetary ecologist. And, when you think about the idea of a planetary ecologist, it's really powerful thinking about the totality of ecosystems on a planet. It's bigger thinking than most people are used to. And, I don't know, that guy's in a weird way like a type of prophet. And, the book is— I think a person gets more intelligent reading it. So, of course, I got 1,000 books in my Sure. Like if we were talking about specific topics, but those are 2 books that I come back to again and again.

Great. I'll add those in the shownotes for sure. And, other than your own, do you have a favorite podcast?

Yeah. I don't listen to too many, but I guess it's kind of cliché to say this. It's probably the most popular one in the world, but I really like the diversity of people on Joe Rogan. So, I don't listen to many shows, but I like that I can And, I like the extremely high-level conversations that happen there with very, very prominent people. And, I like the fact that I can hear a philosopher one day and a hunter the next. So, it continues to be one of my favorite shows surprisingly because it's so popular and typically things that are popular aren't that great.

And, that's a common theme with many of the guests that have been on the show when I ask that So many have said that they love Rogan.

Yeah. I really appreciate the way he thinks and approaches. And, one of the things I want to say about him too is that over the course of his career in the public eye as a podcaster, he's been such an awesome example of personal growth. I've watched him learn, him change, him mature, and the impact of all that education because a lot of people just endlessly gorge on information, but it doesn't change them or affect them in any positive way. And, it's cool to watch somebody be an example to others of what it looks like to set some ego aside, not all of it obviously, but some, and be incorrect or learn. I think he's been a great example for a lot of people and probably we don't realize quite the historic impact he's going to have long-term.

Oh, yeah, for sure. Definitely a tributor in some senses. Daniel, what is one piece of advice you would give to our audience in closing here?

Hmm. Think about it for a moment. Well, I would say that, you know, you get this one opportunity at life. And because a lot of the people listening to this show have probably a strong passion for nature, I want to go back to what I was saying before about balance. You could spend your whole life in nature, which is awesome, but you could use it to avoid dealing with a lot of personal issues. You could use it to avoid dealing with trauma or repetitive bad patterning or things like that. You could do it out of balance so that your relationship life isn't good or your scholastic life isn't good or your financial life isn't good. And, I teach about nature. That's my public presence, but that's one pie slice of my life, and I'm a pie chart with a lot of other slices. And I want all of you know, and that can be confusing to people because you know you you watch somebody. Let's say it's Steve Ranella who we were talking about before, and we're like, "Wow! All he cares about is big game hunting." It's like probably not. Probably cares about making sure his you know car insurance is paid and that his family's you know. loved and that he sees his mom or whatever it is. There's all these other parts of our lives. And, I think it's most beautiful to me to watch a person who's got everything in balance and then they keep getting better and refining and refining. So, the nature piece is just what I teach about. But man, I could have been like, you know what, I've got other things that I'm really passionate about. I could have gone into that and made that my public thing too. To me, this is what's most important from that transhuman perspective. But man, I want to make sure that I'm not regretting anything at the end of my life. And, one of the big ones, again, I bring up that show Alone because I think it applies to the listeners here a lot because of that desire. We all have that probably. Most of us listening are like, we wish we could go off and be alone for a couple months in the woods and test ourselves. But, it's really interesting to watch what drives people home is the realization they need to have a better relationship with their family. So don't let the things you think are important get in the way of the things that are actually more important. And love trumps skills, in my opinion.

That's great advice. Thank you. Daniel Vitalis, thank you so much for this interview. This has been an amazing and fascinating conversation, and it's definitely been one of my very favorites to date. And, I think our audience is going to really enjoy this. Where can our audience find out more about you online?

Sure. wild-fed.com is the website. And, they can find me, like I said, Monday nights on Outdoor Channel during their evening block or we rerun multiple times through the week. If you don't have cable, Friendly TV is an app that runs Outdoor Channel live and you can get that free trial. It's $7 a month or My Outdoor TV. If you want to watch all the Wild Fed all 10 episodes, go get a 1-week free trial membership at MyOutdoorTV. You just binge out all the shows and then you've seen them. The podcast comes out every Tuesday. You can find that everywhere there's podcasts. And, I'm probably most active on Instagram. So, if somebody wants to leave me a comment or DM there, that's probably the best way to get the real me.

Super. And, what's your Instagram handle?

@DanielVitalis.

Perfect. Daniel, thank you so much. And, for the rest of you listening, until Until next time, stay wild.

Thanks for listening to the Rewild Gear Podcast. You can check out the show notes for today's episode at rewildgearpodcast.com. If you're ready to spend more time in the wild, our line of high-quality, minimalistic outdoor gear can help you do just that. Check us out at rewildgear.com. Trump.