Joe Rogan Experience #1649 - Michael Easter

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast,…

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:00

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

   2. MEMichael Easter0:04

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music plays) Hello, Michael.

   4. MEMichael Easter0:15

      Hello, Joe.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:15

      We're rolling. What's going on, buddy? Good to see you.

   6. MEMichael Easter0:18

      Good to see you as well.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:19

      Thanks for coming down here.

   8. MEMichael Easter0:20

      Hey, thanks for having me on, then.

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:21

      What made you decide to write about comfort? Isn't comfort a good thing, Michael? What is going on?

   10. MEMichael Easter0:26

       Well-

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:26

       You have a problem with comfort?

   12. MEMichael Easter0:27

       (laughs)

   13. JRJoe Rogan0:27

       The comfort crisis? Is it really a crisis?

   14. MEMichael Easter0:30

       I argue that it is a crisis. One, I don't have a problem with comfort. Uh, I do have a problem with always being comfortable, always leaning into comfort, which is what we're doing now.

   15. JRJoe Rogan0:41

       Yeah.

   16. MEMichael Easter0:41

       Right? So, if you think of the average person's daily life, they wake up in the soft bed, temperature-controlled home. They shuffle over to the microwave, microwave a breakfast burrito, right, that came in from who knows where and is made with who knows what. And then it's like, I go to work, I drive to work, I sit behind this screen all day. I don't have to move at all or put any effort into this day. And then it's back to bed, in front of the TV, and you just rinse and repeat that. At no point in daily life, I would argue, are people really challenged or really uncomfortable anymore, like we were in our past.

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:15

       Some people, of course.

   18. MEMichael Easter1:16

       Some people.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:16

       Right? There's, David Goggins is still alive and well.

   20. MEMichael Easter1:18

       Yes, David Goggins is still alive.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:19

       He's running right now.

   22. MEMichael Easter1:21

       And so he's like the type of person, you see what happens when you start to push against that, right? When you kind of have this moment where you go, "Maybe I'm a little too comfortable," and you start to sort of investigate, okay, what is it with discomfort?

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:32

       Yeah.

   24. MEMichael Easter1:32

       How can I get into some discomfort, and what can that do for me? And then at the extreme end of that is, is Goggins, who-

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:38

       Yeah. Well, uh, it's, for folks that just, like say if you work in an office and this is how you make a living and you have to do that commute and there's no other options and this is what you do, like f- for them to hear this, they're like, "Yeah, yeah. Okay, so what? What, what now?"

   26. MEMichael Easter1:57

       Well, I mean, the answer is not to totally overhaul your lifestyle, right? I mean, we have amazing lives right now. The fact that we don't have to go out and hunt for food or put physical effort into every day is great. But at the same time, w- I think and I argue in the book, The Comfort Crisis, that we need these moments that push back at us, and we need to sort of investigate these discomforts that we used to face in our evolutionary past. So for example, two, that's the percent of people who take the stairs when there's the choice of-

   27. JRJoe Rogan2:28

       2%?

   28. MEMichael Easter2:28

       2%, people who take the stairs when there's a choice of an escalator. 70% of people, more than 70% now, are overweight or obese. 20, only 20% of hunt- hunger, uh, sorry, only 20% of eating is actually driven by physiological hunger. 80% of it is just, "I'm bored. Uh, it's noon, I guess I'll eat." Or, "I'm stressed out." Right? We exercise more, uh, we exercise 14 times less than our ancestors nowadays. So-

   29. JRJoe Rogan2:59

       Our ancestors, just, just by virtue of trying to survive, you mean?

   30. MEMichael Easter3:04

       Yeah, exactly.
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Is that real? …

   1. MEMichael Easter15:00

      of media we have, people spend 11 hours a day engaging with digital media.

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:06

      Is that real?

   3. MEMichael Easter15:06

      Yeah. 11, and that's the average. So-

   4. JRJoe Rogan15:09

      What?

   5. MEMichael Easter15:09

      You wanna hear an even crazier thing?

   6. JRJoe Rogan15:11

      Yeah.

   7. MEMichael Easter15:12

      Okay. So I'm a, I'm a professor at University of Nevada Las Vegas, and one of the classes I teach is an intro class, so it's got about 150 students, and it's a media class I teach in that journalism department. First day of class, I'll talk about how, just how things have changed with media. You know, it's like we lived 2.5 million years with no media in our lives, and now it's become our lives. And then I will ask, "All right, I want everyone to pull out your phone right now. I want you to look at your screen time, tell me how much you have. Who thinks they have the highest?" And we'll start to go through people. I've had people, you know, seven hours 45 minutes, eight hours 50 minutes, nine hours 16 minutes. It's like, "That's your entire day all on that cellphone," right? So nowadays, when we have this discomfort of boredom kick in, we have a super easy escape from it.

   8. JRJoe Rogan16:04

      Right.

   9. MEMichael Easter16:05

      Right? We're not forced to be like, "Okay, what am I doing with my time? Is there something better I could be doing?" We just pull out our phone. And you see this, right? Any time people have one moment of solitude or inactivity, it's like, "Oh, might as well just check my phone," where-

   10. JRJoe Rogan16:19

       It's brutal when you see people on dates.

   11. MEMichael Easter16:21

       Oh, yeah. (laughs)

   12. JRJoe Rogan16:21

       And they're not even talking to each other, they're just looking at each other's phones.

   13. MEMichael Easter16:24

       Yeah, go-

   14. JRJoe Rogan16:25

       So, wow.

   15. MEMichael Easter16:25

       People at dinner, it's like-

   16. JRJoe Rogan16:27

       Yeah. It's like, "You're in front of an actual person-

   17. MEMichael Easter16:29

       Yeah.

   18. JRJoe Rogan16:30

       ... and you prefer to communicate in digital with someone who's not even there."

   19. MEMichael Easter16:35

       Totally. And, um, what's interesting about boredom is when oftentimes when boredom would kick on, we would go, uh, inward, sort of mind wander. And mind wandering, it gives you- s- your brain some time to, like, reset and revive. Whereas anytime you're focused on the outside world, your brain is actively processing information. So this is kind of like, in the book, I compare it to lifting a weight. When you're having a conversation, looking at your phone, watching a screen, whatever you're doing, if you're focusing on the outside world, your brain is working, and it's lifting. When you go inward, your brain goes into this default mode network, which is like a rest period, right?

   20. JRJoe Rogan17:16

       Mm-hmm.

   21. MEMichael Easter17:16

       So now, because every time we're bored, we just pull out that screen and focus more, our brains are just constantly being worked and overworked and overworked. And this is, uh, associated with just burnout, uh, anxiety, et cetera.

   22. JRJoe Rogan17:31

       Yeah. It's ... There's some real benefits to boredom in terms of creativity as well. Like-

   23. MEMichael Easter17:37

       Oh. Totally.

   24. JRJoe Rogan17:38

       Boredom is really good for coming up with new ideas.

   25. MEMichael Easter17:40

       Yeah. And there's actually research behind this. They've done studies where they'll have, they'll have people watch something really boring, like a video of people folding laundry, just like they bore the shit out of these participants (laughs) , and then they have them, uh, come up with, uh, take these different creativity tests that scientists use. And the people who were bored come up with more, better, uh, solutions and responses than the people who had been stimulated the whole time. And you think about this, I mean, just in terms of anecdotes from creators, it's like, you need time to just sit and be with yourself and have these weird ideas bubble to the surface. If you never have that, you're not letting that w- the weird stuff come out, you know?

   26. JRJoe Rogan18:21

       Yeah.

   27. MEMichael Easter18:21

       I mean, I'm s- have, like, do you experience this when you're trying to think of ...... stuff in your own work?

   28. JRJoe Rogan18:27

       Yeah. You have to have discomfort. The worst thing that could ever happen to me if I'm writing is to just open the browser-

   29. MEMichael Easter18:33

       Yeah.

   30. JRJoe Rogan18:33

       ... and start, "Let me just Google this real quick and see. Oh, uh..." It's like I'll play little games with myself. Like, I'll be in the middle of writing, I'm like, "What does that mean really?" And then I'll Google it, and like, shut the fuck up and get, get back to work.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   D- very little. And…

   1. MEMichael Easter30:00

      gates, you know, and spent a bunch of time alone and in solitude. Um, even Abraham Lincoln used solitude and for all his, a lot of his writing and stuff like that. And I feel like people don't have that as much anymore.

   2. JRJoe Rogan30:12

      D- very little. And society discourages this kind of solitude.

   3. MEMichael Easter30:16

      Yeah.

   4. JRJoe Rogan30:16

      Society encourages you to be constantly connected. And the more it can...... get you connected, the more it can extract revenue from you.

   5. MEMichael Easter30:26

      Yeah.

   6. JRJoe Rogan30:26

      It's getting-

   7. MEMichael Easter30:27

      And we often frame it as a negative. I mean, like, think of what we do with kids who misbehave. We put them in timeout. Think of what we do to prisoners who misbehave.

   8. JRJoe Rogan30:34

      Yeah.

   9. MEMichael Easter30:35

      Solitary confinement. So we framed it as a negative, but it isn't necessarily a negative.

   10. JRJoe Rogan30:39

       Yeah, it's a different kind of solitude, though, obviously, right? You heard about this Utah lady who was just eating grass and moss?

   11. MEMichael Easter30:44

       Mm-hmm.

   12. JRJoe Rogan30:45

       She disappeared for five months, and they thought she was dead, and they found her camping.

   13. MEMichael Easter30:49

       Oh, wow.

   14. JRJoe Rogan30:49

       But I don't think she's doing well. I don't think that's a good example.

   15. MEMichael Easter30:52

       No, okay.

   16. JRJoe Rogan30:52

       I think this lady's kind of crazy. I just saw the, that, that headline and was- Yeah. ... you guys are saying these words. But yeah, like, solitude. Yeah, meanwhile, I'm talking shit out of an over- a headline I read too. Yeah. 'Cause it was like, there were, the headline I said, she was surviving off moss and grass. I'm like, "All right, this lady might have went crazy." Well, this says she was released from the hospital.

   17. MEMichael Easter31:11

       Hmm.

   18. JRJoe Rogan31:11

       So, I don't know.

   19. MEMichael Easter31:12

       She's out?

   20. JRJoe Rogan31:12

       Mental health hospital? Mm, I think so. Okay. They took her in for evaluation is what I read, but people... I wish, she just wanted to be alone. Isn't that funny, like, they find you camping, they're like, "Hmm, we don't... This is not good." Yeah. "What the hell is wrong with you?" "We need to check you, make sure that you're okay mentally." Yeah. "Why aren't you in an apartment where you can hear people scream?" (laughs)

   21. MEMichael Easter31:30

       Yeah, exactly.

   22. JRJoe Rogan31:32

       Why aren't you eating fast food? What are you doing eating moss?"

   23. MEMichael Easter31:36

       (laughs) Yeah.

   24. JRJoe Rogan31:36

       "You crazy bitch."

   25. MEMichael Easter31:38

       Totally.

   26. JRJoe Rogan31:38

       Yeah, um, or you're living in Austin and you're just camping on Cesar Chavez.

   27. MEMichael Easter31:42

       Yeah.

   28. JRJoe Rogan31:43

       Yeah.

   29. MEMichael Easter31:43

       Could be that as well.

   30. JRJoe Rogan31:44

       Um, when you guys were up there, what was, uh, did you have a set amount of time? Did 33 days? What, was that what you agreed upon before you went out there?
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Wow. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan45:00

      the woods with him for, like, weeks and weeks at a time.

   2. MEMichael Easter45:02

      Wow.

   3. JRJoe Rogan45:03

      He, he takes them on these camping trips. And Dan was one of the producers of, uh, this show called Meat Eater, which, uh, that was the first show that I ever had a, a hunting experience on. And, uh, the hunting experience was in Montana-

   4. MEMichael Easter45:18

      Mm-hmm.

   5. JRJoe Rogan45:18

      ... in the Missouri Breaks, and it was, you know, nine degrees outside, and we're camping. And we did it for, uh, I guess it was six or seven days. And, and we were successful. We got fortunate and came back with deer. And, and then, uh, we went to this place, I think, I believe it was Billings. We went to this, uh, just ratchet fucking motel that we stayed in and took a hot shower, and it was phenomenal. It was like, one of the best experiences of my life. Like, so pleasurable-

   6. MEMichael Easter45:50

      Yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan45:50

      ... to be in this ratchet-ass, fake wood paneling.

   8. MEMichael Easter45:54

      (laughs)

   9. JRJoe Rogan45:54

      You know what I mean? Like, the whole deal.

   10. MEMichael Easter45:56

       Yeah.

   11. JRJoe Rogan45:56

       Like, there, there was, there was nothing nice about this motel room.

   12. MEMichael Easter46:00

       Except there was everything nice about it in that moment, right?

   13. JRJoe Rogan46:03

       Oh, my God. The fucking shower was glorious. You know?

   14. MEMichael Easter46:07

       Yeah.

   15. JRJoe Rogan46:07

       And I had brought my own soap, you know?

   16. MEMichael Easter46:09

       Oh, wow.

   17. JRJoe Rogan46:09

       'Cause I, I travel with, uh-

   18. MEMichael Easter46:11

       That's a good planning.

   19. JRJoe Rogan46:12

       This is soap that I use called D-fend Soap, and it's got, uh, it's mostly, it was developed for, uh, grapplers. But it's all, um, to, to protect your skin from, like, skin issues, like, uh, ringworm and stuff like that. But my friend, Guy Sacco, created it for wrestlers, and it's all, like, tea tree oil and eucalyptus oil, so it's really good for you. So, I'm in this shower. I got this, like, legit soap, and I'm lathering up. And the w- the water's so hot. I must've took a 40-minute shower, man. I never got out of there. I was in there forever.

   20. MEMichael Easter46:44

       I love that.

   21. JRJoe Rogan46:44

       I was so happy.

   22. MEMichael Easter46:45

       That was me too, except I didn't have a custom-made awesome soap. I wish I would've.

   23. JRJoe Rogan46:50

       (laughs)

   24. MEMichael Easter46:50

       Damn, that was a miss.

   25. JRJoe Rogan46:51

       Fucking any soap would've been fine at that time.

   26. MEMichael Easter46:53

       Yeah.

   27. JRJoe Rogan46:54

       For just the, the smell, too. God, you fucking stink so bad after a week of no shower, and you went 33 days.

   28. MEMichael Easter47:02

       Oh, I smelled like a salmon run-

   29. JRJoe Rogan47:04

       (laughs)

   30. MEMichael Easter47:04

       ... mixed with a garbage dump.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00

   Yeah, being aware of…

   1. MEMichael Easter1:00:00

      And, um, I mean, it's something I do in my own life, and I can tell that, I can tell you that I think it actually works.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:00:06

      Yeah, being aware of where this ride ends-

   3. MEMichael Easter1:00:10

      Right.

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:00:11

      ... is probably very important in terms of what you need to enjoy the ride. Like if you just think it's gonna go on forever-

   5. MEMichael Easter1:00:19

      Exactly.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:00:19

      It's like you were saying about kind of being impatient about the waitstaff at that restaurant, and thinking what a inconvenience it is that they're so slow to re- get you water-

   7. MEMichael Easter1:00:33

      Yeah.

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:00:33

      ... versus what you feel after you've been hunting for 33 days and actually killed an animal.

   9. MEMichael Easter1:00:39

      Yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:00:39

       And, and, yet w- we're so spoiled in terms of our, uh, attachment to food. I, uh, decided about nine years ago that I was either going to become a vegan or I was gonna become a hunter. I was like, "There's no-"... there's no middle ground. I was like, "I'm, I'm gonna have to figure out what, what it means to eat." 'Cause I was, eh, oh, I was probably... I would probably go on vegetarian because I think I would always eat eggs, 'cause it's a pretty... especially if you have your own chickens, it's a pretty karma-free exchange. Yeah. You give them food and they give you eggs. Yeah. It's like... And their eggs are super healthy. Uh, but when I did go hunting, the moment I shot that animal, the moment it was down, like they're... you could actually watch it. There's a video, um, that's available online of, uh... I had to shoot it twice. I shot it and dropped it at 200 yards, and then as we were getting up to the animal, it was still alive, and then I had to put it out. Mm-hmm. And they, like, closed in on my face when I'm taking all this in. And then I shot it, and then I'm... it expired instantly. Yeah. And then I'm sitting there, (exhales) just breathing in and just trying to take in, like, "Okay. I just killed an animal that I'm going to eat, and I've never done this before, and I'm 40." Yeah. You know? So here we are. What was going through your head? Mm. (smacks lips) It would be hard for me to explain with just words because it's such a... there's a... it's a strange emotion. First of all, I didn't fully gra-... like you were saying, like, once you start cutting it up and then it becomes meat. Like, when it was down, it was like, "Okay, I've done this thing." I've done a lot of things in my life that make me nervous. And I think, um... I, I've al- I always gravitate towards things that I think are difficult to... that are scary. Whether it's martial arts competition or stand-up comedy or anything, I, I've al-... I gravitate towards things that I think are difficult, 'cause I, I'm, I'm con-... I'm attracted to these challenges. This was a, uh, this was a challenge 'cause it was a new thing, and it was like, you know, you're doing this rugged thing. We went, um... we took a... we floated down th- the river, like, 40 miles, and then we- Oh, that's cool. ... carried all of our supplies and tents and set up on the banks of the Missouri and it was, it was heavy. It was heavy. And so dropping this animal... but then once we cooked... we were eating it over the fire. Uh, that night we ate the liver, and I think we ate... I think we ate the heart too- Mm-hmm. ... over the fire. And I remember thinking, "This is what I'm gonna do for the rest of my life." Yeah. "This is what I'm gonna eat." Like, this is, this is so much better than any other... I've never felt meat that tasted this good before. I've never felt connected to my food before. I've caught fish before and eaten fish, and it's great. Yeah. But there's something... there was so much more intense about this. I guess because it's a mammal, there's some weird connection where your DNA is letting you know that, like, this, this is way closer to you than a fish. Like... Yeah. People... you could take a fish, uh, out of an ocean and take a photograph of it online. Nobody gives a shit. I had a, um, thing I did on social media for a while. Mm-hmm. Or I did a while back, rather. Uh, the hierarchy of dead animals on social media. And I had, uh... number one was a fish, and that was, like, a dead fish. Nobody gives a shit. Like, you could take a fish, "Look, I caught a bass." Mm-hmm. Everybody's like, "Hey, good job." Uh, next was a turkey. I had a dead turkey that I shot. People were like, "Hmm." Hmm. "I don't know what's a dead turkey." Um, then I had bear meat. (laughs) It just said- How'd that go? ... bear meat. There was... nobody said anything. They didn't know what to say because it was just meat. Mmm. But there's photos of me with a dead bear and it is the w- most hate I've ever gotten for any- Sure. ... photograph online. Even though I ate that bear, and even though you have to eat... well, you have to shoot these bears because their population in Alberta, where my friends John and Jen run a hunting camp up there- Mm-hmm. ... they're out of control. Yeah. And they need to control the population 'cause they decimate the moose population, they decimate the deer population, they cannibalize each other. It's very unhealthy for them to not have predators. The only predators they have is larger, bigger bears. Yeah. Grizzlies. So... but people, for whatever reason, have not connected bears with food for a long time. Right. In terms of, uh, the history of the United States, um, Daniel Boone was famous for, uh, being a bear hunter and, and, and selling, commercially selling bear meat. And they would smoke bear hides, uh, or smoke bear, uh, hams rather. And bear meat was actually preferred over deer meat for whatever reason. Mm-hmm. And deer were hunted for their pelts, and bear were hunted for their meat. And we have decided that they're teddy bears. Yeah. And that it's Yogi- Exactly. ... Yogi and Blue, and those are our buddies. And it's, it's a weird... we've just made this weird decision somewhere along the line t- put... is my friend Steve Rinella calls them, uh, charismatic megafauna, put them in this category of animals that you should, you should not eat or hunt. Yeah. And meanwhile, the weird thing is they're the most dangerous. They're the ones that you really should hunt because they'll eat your kids. (laughs) Yeah. Like, a deer is not gonna eat your kids. No. But a fucking bear will, for sure. You leave a baby in the backyard, a bear will 100% eat it. Oh, yeah. Not a question in the world. Totally. Where a deer will just look at your baby and not care at all. Like, we don't... we have a weird arrangement. Yeah. Um, but, uh, but eating that animal and, and hunting that animal ch-... it completely changed my idea of what, what food is. Completely. And from then on, I've had a completely different idea of what food is. And I've gone on to hunt-... I've hunted every year since. And s- it's something I look forward to. I get a giant amount of my meat from it. I give it to a lot of friends.

   11. MEMichael Easter1:07:09

       Mm-hmm.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:07:09

       I, I keep two commercial freezers here at the studio. You know, that's what I do now, I hunt meat.

   13. MEMichael Easter1:07:15

       Yeah.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:07:15

       And I'm, I'm healthier because of it.

   15. MEMichael Easter1:07:18

       Yeah.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:07:18

       You know? I, I really do believe that elk meat, in particular, that dark red wild animal that's running around the mountains, like you're getting s- it's so nutrient-dense.

   17. MEMichael Easter1:07:28

       Super.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:07:29

       It's so much more filled with protein than domestic beef. And it's just better for you.

   19. MEMichael Easter1:07:35

       Yeah. I agree. Now the question is like how do we put that at scale for everyone?

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:07:39

       You can't.

   21. MEMichael Easter1:07:40

       Yeah, well-

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:07:40

       That's the thing, though. It's like you're, you're not going to.

   23. MEMichael Easter1:07:44

       No. I do, I mean, I do think there's almost an argument, though, that maybe, maybe in elementary school, we need to take kids to a slaughterhouse, or junior high. Like that needs to be a field trip to understand where things-

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:07:56

       You're gonna make a lot of vegetarians.

   25. MEMichael Easter1:07:57

       Yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:07:57

       Yeah.

   27. MEMichael Easter1:07:57

       We need to understand where things come from and, like w- what goes into this, you know?

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:08:02

       I think, um, uh, this is a selfish pr- proclamation. I, I realized this going in. I think the idea of doing things at scale is, uh, is lost. Let it g- you gotta let it go.

   29. MEMichael Easter1:08:14

       Let it go.

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:08:14

       You're not gonna save everybody. I feel like that with exercise. I feel like that with meditation. I feel like that with yoga. I feel like that with hunting. I feel like that with just trying to be the best person you can be. You're only gonna reach the people that wanna hear the message. And for the people that wanna hear the message, that's, those are the people that you're reaching to. But the idea of scale, the idea of like how do you fe- Like I've heard that argument from vegetarians or vegans that you shouldn't hunt because when you say you should hunt for your food, you know, how is, how are we gonna do that with the entire population? We're not. You know what else we're not gonna do with the entire population? Get them to read, you know? You're not gonna get them to exercise.
6. 1:15:00 – 1:15:03

   Section 6

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:15:00

      or the price of an ounce of coveted white truffles."

Episode duration: 2:52:53