Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #464 Dr Fred Provenza on life's lessons, his 50th anniversary, regeneration, and the intelligence in Nature

Episode Date: July 9, 2026

Dr. Fred Provenza is a professor emeritus of Behavioral Ecology at Utah State University and a pioneering researcher in livestock behavior, foraging ecology, and nutritional wisdom. Raised in Salida, Colorado, he worked on ranches before earning degrees in wildlife biology and range science. Over 35 years at Utah State, he led influential research showing how animals learn to select foods, self-regulate nutrition, and adapt to landscapes, linking soil, plants, herbivores, and human health. He is the author of Nourishment and has published widely on regenerative agriculture, animal behavior, and the deep intelligence of ecological systems.  Get Nourishment here- https://www.amazon.com/Nourishment-Animals-Rediscovering-Nutritional-Wisdom/dp/1603588027/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.mA11FJuDLXdBsceGZQGquyvw4Z_ZcbNnj2TsjkWyGJG87QuHboaPngHCqkuBVBzfaWVLrjKYw5F9L8ZtOrcjxQ.5unabZNOsNn2z6Pqom55hwq0djFbNsvNLRBHXYiJK90&qid=1783607809&sr=8-1     Brain Supreme is the best microdosing company on Earth- the Genius and the Athlete are my favorite products but all of them work incredibly well for a variety of purposes. Get 15% off everything in the store by using code "KKP" at checkout.  https://brainsupreme.co/collections/all I just launched my new community The Kingdom Within on Skool- sign up now for a free 7 day trial. This community is for people who are dedicated to learning and making positive changes in their lives. Read here for more... https://www.skool.com/the-kingdom-within-5541/about

Dr. Fred Preventza, welcome to the podcast. It's been such an honor to follow you, to learn about you. I wasn't always into, I didn't even know what regenerative agriculture was or any of that stuff until I heard Paul Check talking about the soil health and things I got years ago, maybe 20 years before I had heard, you know, you were already steeped in it. But, you know, from a fitness perspective, from a health and wellness perspective, tying the health of our animals to the health of the soil to the health of us was a unique concept to me. And Paul talked about that and his, it was on VHS.

Flatten your abs forever. I thought I was going to watch it to try to get shredded. It was all in the microbiome and the health of the soil and how well the quality of life that you take from, whether it's plants or animals. So I just loved that. And then food ink came along maybe 20, 25 years ago and Joel Salatin was in it. And that was such a, such a beautiful visual expression of what it meant to see things living in harmony. You know, and then what's the opposite of that? is what we see mostly everywhere.

So lots to talk about here. I've also loved your recent essays on, you know, talking about the full length of your life and what it means to be in your, you know, in your place and this part of your life and where you're going next. So I can't wait to dive in all that. But please tell us, what was life like growing up for you? What shaped you as a person and got you into the education that you wanted to dive into so deeply? Okay, we'll do, Kyle.

First, let me just thank you for the opportunity to spend, some time with you here today. It's a wonderful, and what you just covered is the essence of how we're changing our views of health, huh? I think how when I look back over my lifetime. So to answer your question, you know, from when I was a young child, as young as I can remember, if it was alive, it interested me, from insects and and birds, polywogs, frogs, whatever it was. I just, I had just an intense interest in it, an amazement to look at it, to see it, to want to capture it actually, to want, whether it was bees or moths and butterflies

and polywogs wanted to catch them and keep them. And I often think now, where does that come from? You know, where does that come from? And I honestly don't know. My father wasn't so much an outdoors person, you know. terms of hunting and fishing. For me, growing up, there were only three seasons, hunting, fishing, and skiing. That was it. I survived the end of one season because the next season was coming around. I was so into it, and it used to amaze me to think, why do I love to hunt and fish so much?

Why do I? And I often wonder, you know, we were all indigenous not that long ago, right? We were all indigenous peoples and different roles that people played and tried. and stuff. And at different ages, different roles that you played. And I thought, you know, I would have been perfect in my younger years as hunter, hunting and fishing. And I didn't really know about plants in those days. And the vital role that plants can play in the health, well, that they do play in

the health of the entire system, that came a little bit later. They weren't moving so much. I kind of appreciated their beauty. But one other thought on that. You know, it wasn't until I took plant taxonomy as a sophomore in college that I came to realize this whole world of plants. I just absolutely fell in love with it. I was just absolutely blown away.

And I thought then, and I think more now, you know, here's this whole universe that I've been around it my whole life hunting and fishing, but I'd never seen it. And I often wonder how many universes are right there in front of us. And we simply don't see them, or haven't had the opportunity for that to awaken in us. So anyway, you know, that was kind of growing up. That was for me, hunting, fishing, skiing, and just an intense, intense love of the outdoors.

That's awesome. Yeah, I think so many, it's funny because, I don't know, like the world's changing so rapidly and so quickly. And I grew up in the city in Silicon Valley, and that's changed rapidly since my birth until now by a long shot. But we still be to Northern California, we were close to Lake Tahoe. My buddies would work at North Star, and I'd come up for a couple weeks and stay there and go snowboarding. And Lake Tahoe in the summertime was absolutely pristine and beautiful. So we'd get mountains, altitude, you know, get out on the lakes and water ski, things like that, go to Santa Cruz to the beach.

there was just so much there and so many places to hike. And I always loved that. I'd go hunting with my dad and my uncles since I was a little kid up in Oregon, in northeastern Oregon and Washington. I've never got to go for anything. I was always the little guy. You know, I'd stay back at camp and help, you know, eat the backstrap if we got lucky, that kind of thing.

But I was always interested in it. And the type of life you're describing, though, to me is something that I'm trying to carve back. a piece of for my kids because I feel like more than ever with more and more people moving to cities and that that's just something that most kids don't even know exists. You know, and that's a sad thing to think about it that way because I imagine, you know, your level of connection to nature was just, it just was. It wasn't something you had to think about. You know, it's like does the fish recognize it's in water or not?

Like you were just immersed in the thing. And so many kids now, you know, they can't. detach from city life in the screen to get out there, they would be, you know, a stranger in a strange land if you took them to the woods. Oh, I do. I do, Kyle. Absolutely. What you're saying so resonates with me.

And I'm old now. You know, so I often think, well, is it just because I'm getting old? You know, I'm here. But I think that we truly lose our humanity when we lose our community when we lose our contact with the natural world, both physically and spiritually. And you're right when you said, you know, it wasn't something you were thinking about or anything. It was just an immersion. It had nothing to do with the cognitive, rational, analytical that we tend to just work to death. It was just at the heart level, just connections. Another part of that, too, that I think about

all the time now as I reflect, I was literally being linked epigenetically in form, function, and behavior as compared to being linked epigenetically and functionally with this thing, right, with the phone. I was being linked. Genes are being expressed. I was being intimately linked with those landscapes. And I look back now and my wife and I both, our hearts have never left those mountains, which we know so intimately.

We know what's over the next ridge. What's here? What's there? Where we shot out? Where we hunted deer? where we fish, what fly to use in this season. And there's a beauty to that. Beyond that, though, what I realize is, you know, we were raised in a tiny little house,

1,100 square feet. And there were seven of us, my four sisters and I, our parents. And you know what? We didn't feel abused or, you know, there was love in that house. There was love, love for one another. and discipline for certain. But, you know, I mean, and but nowadays, 1100 square feet, that's a tiny house, right?

I mean, two people living in 2,000, 3,000 square foot. And to me, that's insane. But beyond that, I think, so we had the love and nurturing of our parents and then grandparents, aunts, great aunts, cousins. And then beyond that, everybody in this little town of Salida knew everybody else, for better or worse, actually, when you become a teenager and stuff right?

I mean, but what I see now was just the love and support of a community, of family, extended family, and community. And I honestly don't think there's any way to overstate the importance of that in terms, well, there's studies that show too. The health of young people is hugely enhanced by having old. older people like the grandparents as a part of their lives, you know. And I think that my parents were flat out. My mom was stayed at home and, you know, was a mother to us and cooked and did all the

things, the important things that mothers do. My father worked like crazy. So they're flat out. And sometimes, you know, the pressure of just trying to raise a family, right? five kids and job and everything. But you could go to your grandmother's house, and she was always just so chilled out, so calm, so loving.

And it's like, I get that. You know, that having different levels of family involved in your life, from the grandparents to the parents, to the cousins, to so forth, there's a real value in all of that that I think we've lost. you know, they told us from our growing up, look, there's no future for you here in Salida. And you're going to, you know, you need to leave. So that was kind of embedded in us, right? That you can't, there's enough.

And really, unless you had a ranch and were involved in agriculture, which we weren't, my family, or unless you wanted to work at the mines, there was a maledom of mind climax, a big malignant of mine that people, went back and forth to each day. Other than that, there really wasn't much for young people, you know. And so we did all. We moved helter-skelter all over the place. I think as a nation, we've done that quite a lot too. And maybe then not realized what was lost.

And I can go into infinite digress, Kyle. So you can cut me off or delete. I love this. Is that, you know, bouncing around and seeing that there was no like real future per se with with the way that you were living is that what what made you want to pursue academia and go into college well you know what happened actually was and this is true when i was finishing up with high school i was actually ready to leave so light it's like okay been here done that and uh you know had enough of the high school thing and uh i didn't really

know what i was what what what i wanted to do but i knew what i loved i knew what i loved i knew what was in my heart. And I thought, well, I'll just go to school at Colorado State and wildlife biology. I know I love creatures and the outdoors and all that stuff. And so it wasn't, again, a cognitive rational kind of choice. It was following my heart. You know, it's just like, I love that. And I don't know where the hell it's going to lead if it's going to lead anywhere. And in fact, when we went up there, I went up with my parents to do the kind of the introduction to the place. And I remember that traveling around. And I remember who was leading the tour, the Wildlife Biology Prof. Decker, Eugene Decker.

And he was telling us, he said, look, there's no jobs in wildlife. So we ought to have a think about that. He was trying to discourage us, actually. from going into wildlife. And being honest, there aren't any jobs in wildlife. Everybody wants to be in wildlife. There's no jobs. But it didn't matter to me.

You know, I was like, well, this is what I love. I'm going to just, I'm going to be going to wild life. I don't know where it'll lead. And interestingly enough, you know, I love the courses I was taking and what I was learning about, learning about people too, not per se in the classes, but people like Aldo Leopold in the San County Almanac and his writings and just think, oh, wow, this is what I'm about. This is what I love. But when I finished at Colorado State University, I knew I didn't want a job in wildlife.

I knew there weren't any job, but I didn't even want a job in wildlife. That sounds strange, doesn't I? I'm sure it does. It's like, well, and what I knew, I said, well, you know, I think I've had, I've loved the four years at Colorado State University, but I think I've had enough formal education for this lifetime. You know, I've had it with that. But as you know, when I was a senior in high school, I started working on a ranch, started hauling hay. I'd worked in a greenhouse from when I was a freshman in high school. And when I was a senior, I had a friend who was also going to go to

Colorado State University. He said, you want to earn some extra money? in the evenings and on the weekends said we can haul hay out at Henry DeLucaus, eight cents of bail, four cents a piece, it sounds good to me. And, you know, you're young and strong and being outdoors hauling hay, it was like, wow, I love this. I love this kind of stuff. And Henry, like most ranchers, needed some help. And so I don't remember, I wish I did the conversation for say but he so you know come and work for me in the summers sounded great to me so i i worked at on that ranch four months a year summers and sometimes on the on the breaks too um throughout college and then winding us back around to finishing up at csu i knew i wasn't going to be

wildlife policy but i didn't know what i didn't know you know i did and so i thought well i'll just go back to the ranch you watch somebody to run it full time, I'll just go back there and do that. And so I went back there, my wife of 50-some years now, 52, been together 55 years, and I got married when I was out during that time that we were working on the ranch full time. And she used to haul hay with me to all the, all the, it was, you know, it was, it was cute, two kids, basically. And, uh, But the strangest thing happened to me, Kyle, out there related to where you want to go with this, I started missing learning about things and just all that had been in the academic environment.

And when someone from NRCS would come out, somebody that had that technical kind of knowledge, boy, I would just, I would bend their ears to no way, just talking to. And I came to realize, I really do miss that learn, that, and not that the ranch wasn't a learning, environment. That's had the most profound influence on my life of anything I did. And that personal experiential learning that was taking place on the ranch. So I thought, well, and I saw some of the old friends I had who were then in their late 60s saying they worked on ranches their whole lives. And as Henry used to say, they didn't have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out. And that didn't matter to me so much, but I would tell Sue, you know, well, that'll be us if I just work for people on these ranches around here my whole life.

And then I saw people who had worked in other jobs and had retirements. And I thought, well, maybe I had to try to go back to school, which was so ironic to me. So I looked around and ended up in grad school. And much to my surprise, I found I just, I absolutely loved research. I absolutely loved doing studies. Was it just caught up in that. And so what we thought would be a two-year stint to get a master's degree, much to my wife's delusion ended up to get that.

And, yeah, leave that. But I ended up working on a PhD. and just learning so much. And it was a beautiful extension of what I'd been learning on the ranch, you know, learning about animals and their behavior and looking at their relationship with plants. And so I ended up on this study. I'll try to make this quick.

Like I said, I could go to infinite digress, but it illustrates a point. So in my mind, for a master's degree, What I would have loved to do is to follow mountain goats around up at 13,000, 14,000 feet elevation, watching what they were eating, right? Becoming a member of their group, which you can do, too. They'll habituate to you and just see what they ate. That was my interest. That was my huge interest.

Nothing beyond that. Just what do they do? So I end up with these goats in southern Utah and a monoculture of a plant called Blackbrush. and it's just a shrub that's about as hostile looking as can be. There are a few other plants there, but mainly blackbrush. And, you know, I didn't begrudge that, but it was like, well, this is going to be pretty boring, you know. I mean, I wasn't saying that per se, but it's like, how interesting can this be? Well, it turned out I learned so much from the plant and those goats, from spending time,

with them doing what I wanted to do with the mountain goats. But Blackbrush is just not a good quality plan. And so my wife and I, in fact, I asked her, I said, do you remember where we were on July 4th of 1976? And she said, no. We were driving to St. George to build two miles of fence in 110 degree temperatures for the rest of the summer. That's what we did when our country celebrated.

200th anniversary we were driving down there so we built this two miles of fence six pastures we put the goats on there and in one of the pastures all this in retrospect in one of the pastures the goats started to eat wood rat houses woodrats build these houses at the base of juniper trees and their vegetation with different rooms in them tightly packed and then they've got bark on the outside and these wood rat houses and then you realize one of those rooms is the bathroom and it's vegetation soaked in urine that urine is a non-protein nitrogen source for those goats so it's like ah shoot this whole idea that animals don't have nutritional wisdom maybe that's not right you know i mean that was kind of starting to to to to percolate but the other thing the goats and the other five

pastures never did that it's like wow this is interesting and when we were weighing the animals like the goats that are eating these wood rat houses are performing better than the goats that are. So you start thinking, I'm using terms I use now, it wasn't even terms, but you start thinking that maybe there's a wisdom of the body of these animals. What's going on with that? And then how do animals innovate? How in their environments do they actually figure out new things? And how does that become a part as we came to learn later of culture, the culture of animals, extended families they live in? So that was one thing.

The other thing, why were we had the goats? We had the goats down there pruning black brush in the winter because that stimulates new growth. Like when you prune a prune a plant, it causes it to grow. And that's what was happening. And this new growth we knew was higher in energy and protein and minerals. It was a better food. But here was the second surprise. The goats didn't want to eat that new growth.

They strongly, most of them, 80 percent, 80 percent. to 90% preferred the old woody growth to the new growth. So it's like whole world's opened up to me. And you can't do that if you don't have personal experience out there with plants and animals. Do you know what I'm trying to say? Like the technology that's taking over. And I'm going to sound like an old person again. But when I think back to those days on the ranch, we did most everything by hand.

We irrigated by hand, not with pivots. We moved cattle on horseback from pasture to pasture as we went from the home place seasonally, starting in the early spring to BLM, BLM administered, then up to Forest Service, and moving those animals around the landscape. So all that was done by horseback, not with virtual fencing. So we were up there paying attention to where they are, what they're doing, and all in their little groups. We knew them, we knew them in the landscape. We hauled hay by hand. We did, you know, the machines weren't so they were a bit of a part, but not so much apart.

And we still, you know, we grew gardens. We went and we collected mushrooms. We were intimately involved with the landscapes that were on. And so we were, in a sense, nurturing them, and they were nourishing us. And I've often thought, you can't love what you don't know intimately. And we had intimate relationships with water. We knew the value of water and how do you efficiently use water and the value of soil, the value of plants and animals. And that was contributing to our health.

I don't think anybody was thinking then about that, you know, if animals, quote, eat a phytochemically diverse diet, a bunch of jargon out there, but that as came to have great meaning, that that not only improves their health, but that can possibly, likely improve our health as well. You know, we weren't thinking. But we did know that. when we slaughtered animals that had been eating diverse diets, the flavor of their meat was wonderful. When we grew our own plants and animals, fruits and vegetables,

that was fabulous. And we knew what was happening in the stores related to the lack of flavor of any of those things. So that was a knowledge, right? I mean, it was just, yes, an experiential knowledge as opposed to, and I'm not against science, obviously. spent my whole career doing that, but this cognitive, rational, analytical that path, that science and so forth moves down can in a way separate you from the non-cognitive, intuitive, synthetic grounding of our being, how that that's so, so vital and maybe make that,

well, if it hasn't been shown scientifically, it doesn't exist, well, not really, you know, I'll give you one other example here that I just want to make this point. So I was taking all these classes at CSU, and in my sophomore year I took a class in genetics in animal science, and they were talking about the value of heterosis and crossbreeding and all those kinds of things. And so when I went back to the ranch, I talked to Henry, who was in his 70s, well into his 70s, and I said, Henry, I know you always keep your own replacement heifers.

You don't bring in any animals from the outside. You keep your own animals. Why do you do that? I was learning about this, all these other things. And he said, you know, I did that. I've done that in the past. But so let me tell you some stories. He said, you know how we move cattle throughout the seasons?

And when we go in on this massive mountain, Chavinaw, massive, massive landscape, and all these different pastures, the Forest Service was using restoration in those days. And so you'd move from pasture to pasture to pasture. And the animals didn't stay in one big herd. You know, you'd put them up there and they'd break into small groups and they'd go all over the place. I was reminded of that a couple years ago when I was in Southern Colorado looking at cattle there and thinking, how in the hell would I ever know to find the cattle in all on this massive landscape. And then I thought back,

that's how you know, is if you have spent your whole lifetime with those cattle, you know where the cows go. You know where you've got to go check Canyon Creek, or you've got to go check here or there. And you know that about all the places. And so Henry was saying, you know how, he said,

now if you bring cattle in from the outside that don't know, you don't know if you're going to find them, you don't know where you're going to find them, and they're not going to be bread. And over and over again, In the behavior literature, people talk about that, put animals in a new place. They're working the fences, and it was interpreted as they're exploring. And they are, but there's another interpretation.

I don't know where the hell I am. I don't like it here. I don't know what's going on. I want out of here. And in Iceland, where they don't have fences, they never put them to a new place because they'll leave. And you don't know where you'll find them. They're attempting it back to where they know, right? They're born and raised.

Animals are learning machines. They're not little genetic, pre-programmed machines. They're learning, learning, learning. And what they're learning is starting in utero and early in life is how to survive in a place, huh? What and what not to eat? Flavors of foods mother eat gets in the amniotic fluid starting, you know, the last trimester of gestation. They're already starting to experience the environment. And as we showed over and over again, not only in utero but early in life, watching mom,

paying attention to her, what to eat, what to eat, and so forth. And so they're learning, you know, what and what not to eat, where and where not to go. What's a predator? What's not a predator? When you hear a call of a particular bird, what's, I mean, that's being linked intimately to a landscape. And I think we've lost it in ourselves. And so why would you ever appreciate it in an animal? So, Henry, I'm getting long.

But Henry summed it all up by saying the basic problem is the animals just don't know the range. And what I think of all research we did over 40 years, that's what it was about in one way or another. What does it mean to have intimate relationship with a landscape, to know that landscape, and to have your being expressed in that landscape, starting in the womb, epigenetically expressed to be, and I won't go into all the studies we did with that, but it was showing, you know, in terms of the organs, the development of their organ systems, the physiology of how those organ systems function,

all that's being fine-tuned to an environment. It's a beautiful thing. And then you get to the idea that if you let cattle, sheep, and goats go feral, they end up in extended families, like we were talking about for human beings. That's a natural way that men. Wildlife species do. They end up in families, and they're a support, a social and physical support for one another. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing. But we don't even pay much attention to that in our own lives, right? So why would we ever think about that or think of the value of that? Now, there's a lady in Tasmania, Nan Bray, who was a marine biologist by training, Ph.D. Marine Biologist worked for CSIR. or a very high-level position.

But she always wanted to get back. She was from Idaho originally, and she always wanted to get back to the ranching part of things. And so she bought a place in Tasmania, and she's got fine wool sheet that she sells wool to Italy, to New York, to the high-end things, but she raises them in families. She works on plant diversity and this wisdom of the body. So, you know, I appreciate, I think, I don't know, those are things I think we've lost, Kyle.

I think we've lost that appreciation, that deep appreciation of what does it mean for us to know the range too, huh? And that what you were saying earlier that you'd like to do with your children, have them raised an environment where they get that experience. for the value that that has to, like I've often said, when I was on the ranch, I never felt so grounded and centered in my life physically and spiritually. It was just like this deep, deep, deep connection. And it wasn't just physical. It was spiritual as well, you know. And books are being written on that of what happens when you grow up living in this.

and I just saw an interview with a Harvard fellow who's been studying those things. He's talking about children nowadays that here in the U.S., the scores on reading and math have really plummeted. He said that started in 2012, about the time the phones came out, and kids started reading in those versus. Have you seen the science on frequent AI users, like people who now get all their information from chat, GPT? they're doing like fMRI studies of brain scans and people who rely or you know and it doesn't matter what their age set is but because I've met like you know 19 20 year olds that are like they just talk to chat chat draw me up this program so I can pitch this online or chat here's an ad that I'm

going to run on Instagram here's what I want it to look like and they literally just read off the script right but however you use it if you depend on that thing the amount of centers of the brain that get lit up when you have to think through a problem, diminish rapidly. Like, I mean, in an insane way where you're like, is this person on drugs? This is wild to see what AI does to the brain if you depend upon it heavily for all thought processes. So you talked about math and reading and things like that. You know, when you employ a calculator, I always used to argue with my teachers, like,

why do I need to learn long division? Why do I need to learn how to a multiplications table? You know, like now I get it. It's like, oh, shit, like, yeah, what if I don't have access to that? What about hunting and I need to figure out something and I don't have a calculator? Like there's an importance to those skills, but also just for the brain itself, right? Absolutely the case, Kyle. Such a great example that you're giving it.

It's use it or lose it, right? I'm 75 now and my wife and I try to keep so involved mentally and physically, hiking, skiing, whatever, you know, because it is lose it or use it. And that's just being exemplified by your example there, right? You're not using it anymore. And yeah, yeah. All right, guys, quick break to tell you about brain supreme.com. Brain Supreme is the very best mushroom company ever.

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I had envisioned myself, you know, kind of doing some type of homesteading in retirement. And then 2020 happened and I was like, I think we need to do that now. You know, we need to figure out a way to get to grow our own food right away. Preferably, you know, we could have a space where we can invite people out for events and things like that because we were big doing event spaces and coaching and bringing communities together for, you know, breathwork, ecstatic dance, different types of coaching and things. And that was amazing. So COVID really lit a fire in my ass to like get that going.

And so we've got a 118 acre farm out in Lockhart about 30 minutes south of Austin. And, you know, we've, but right when I first got into it, I was like, oh, my goodness, like this is going to be real. I've learned about regenerative agriculture. I've learned about, you know, permaculture, you know, different things to that line. But like I have, you know, the people that do this, they've lived it their whole lives. Like you live this your whole life. And I was like, who can I, who can I learn from? And I remember just kind of this download coming through.

I was in a ceremony. And, you know, it was that there's no six degrees of separation, right? If we're all one, and then it's a one-to-one relationship with any single person out there that if I need to know somebody, just remember that the power of one. There's no six degrees deal. And right when I started to accept that truth, then we got connected to some amazing people. I got connected to Chad Johnson, who was an understudy of Seth Holzer. and traveled the world with him.

And then we got connected to our buddy Daniel Firth Griffith, who's such an awesome and amazing human and was one of Alan Savory's main students for many years. And of course, Daniels continued his education rapidly with indigenous culture and all sorts of things and he has expanded and continued to ask questions that people in regenerative agriculture don't even want to look at. That's right.

Including mother and extended family in all that business, right? Yeah. Just, I mean, incredible. You know, so he's been an amazing teacher and helper for us. So, yeah, we've been, we've tried, we've tried a bunch of different things. We've learned and failed. Something that I appreciate about, you know, like Paul Check used the example. Like if you have like a, you know, some like game where you're growing something like a simulation

game on your phone and you don't feed the plant and it withers, nothing actually dies. You know, if you forget to water your plant. But if you put something in the ground and you forget to water it and make sure it's nourished, that's a real thing that's going to die. If you get a pet and you forget to feed it or not care for it, even a goldfish or something, if you don't clean that fish bowl, it's going to die. And so there's a real life consequence.

And I think one of the things we get disconnected from that Food Inc did such a good job of showing us is like, hey, you know, when you go get a, you know, you go to the grocery store, you see ground beef and it's got that cellophane wrapper on it. And, you know, you just get it. From a young age, if that's the only connection you have, that's what you assume beef is. you might not even equate that to cattle. You just say, it's hamburger, right?

And it goes in my hamburger helper or it goes into a patty and I eat it like a burger. But that's what it is. It's its own thing. You might not even realize that steak in it, you know, potentially or from the same animal. But that disconnection is such a real thing. And hunting brought me back to that in a very visceral way. Then beyond that, you know, caring for so many animals on the land, you make a mistake. Like we brought in cows and sheep and, you know, we had, cows did fine.

You know, they were all horned like southern Spanish cows. You know, I forget the exact name of them. Daniel was the one that turned us on to them. But we got some really cool crossbreed of sheep that do well in this area. And we had nothing to protect them. I assumed our game fence, you know, we have a game fence around this whole thing so we can keep some exotic animals, black buck and red deer. and I just assumed like, well, that'll keep the coyotes out.

Nope. We had 27 holes dug around our 118 acre perimeter, 27 when we counted it. We lost seven sheep the first night that we left them out there unprotected. And I was like, I mean, we come out to like a blood bath. I'm just like, oh, my goodness, oh, my goodness. That day, you know, I drove up with my buddy Eric, who was the GM of the land. We drove up that day to Dallas three and a half hours and grabbed some great pyrenees, came back down.

You know, we're watching them each night. you know, just sleeping in the field with them, that kind of thing, camping with them. And then as soon as we left, we lost another six. And I was like, dang, we were the only, we need more dogs. So then we went and got some older dogs and haven't really lost any due to coyotes since. But, you know, those are, that's like a hard education quick that you got to come up into contact with. And then, you know, life happens too. You could plant 10 trees and it doesn't matter how well you nourish them.

Some of them are going to die just because they weren't as strong as the other trees, right? And seasonally too, you know, like we have, we probably lose an exotic animal or a sheet in you every winter, every summer, because we got really hot summers and really cold winters, you know, and we just see it. You know, and it's like, oh, that's a part of the process. It's a part of, you know, this is external environment stressors that come in. And the ones who survive are stronger for it, but there are some that can't, you know. And so it's been a really beautiful process to reconnect us to everything in a way that they're just, it just, you don't really have that. I mean, I think before we got the farm, it's something I tell people, it's not everyone listening to this is going to have a farm. But like, if you hunt if you can, right, and do it in a, in a, with respect and reverence, learn from people that hold that.

And then go to, you know, go to a field harvest at your local farm. So, like, we went to Rome Ranch in Fredericksburg. They've got a 1,500 acre bison, regenerative bison farm. They learn from savory, too. They're great guys. They do force of nature products. And, you know, like twice a year, they would have a bison harvest. And so when my son was four years old, he came out and sat on my lap.

And we did a seven directions prayer and prayed for this female who was a little ornery. She had hooked the ranch hand twice and sent him flying in the air. They're like, we got to take her down now. We can't wait to fatten her up. And I was like, I'll be right there. And so we came out. we made the prayer and then out of the herd of 80 at 100 yards she walked right towards us and

stopped broadside 20 yards and just like it was like she had heard the prayer you know the connection was there because she separated herself from everyone else and just presented herself and so i had him on my lap and the rancher took her out and we walked over to her warm body and put tobacco on the ground and prayed for and you know that went into my my wife while she was building their little girl and that went into my son and me and like even without having a farm like that was such a powerful potent experience of connection but every time we ate that i knew her right i got to i got to feel her essence when you go to macdonald's there's up to 80 different cows in one paddy that's how many thousands of pounds of burger are getting mixed together at the same time and those animals didn't

live well those animals you know did not have they were not spiritually elevated and high vibrance and high vitality. And that, you know, just understanding that difference, like, oh, it's one burger. No, you're talking about like up to 80 different beings that had a terrible life that you're now bringing in amongst other problems, right? But, you know, having that opposite end of that spectrum, getting to participate in the death cycle of an animal and to hold it in love and to know that, you know, it didn't have to leave the farm and go get stuck, you know, in the next to things that's, you know,

other animals that's never met before in the darkness for three days. And then, you know, cattle prodded through a shoot and get the no country for old men zap in the back of the head. Like, even the best meat still goes out that way, right, if you're not doing it yourself. So I think there is something really potent. And, you know, last conversation I had with Daniel was about that one of the, you know, if you can't fix the system, how do you work around that legally? And that's one of the ways is you go meet your local guy and you say, I'd like to participate in the harvest of my own animal. and then you get to part even if you don't want to take the shot witness it be a part of that you know and have that connection and reverence and i think that's a that's a really awesome way you know that

me me uh getting into hunting and getting into farming has been a true gift you know beyond what i thought it would be yeah absolutely huh i can i can hear it in everything you're saying and and you do learn from the school of hard knocks right that's when i think of henry he they never went to school at all, but what he had was a lifetime of experience, a lifetime of learning, and that's incredibly valuable. And it hurts sometimes, like you're saying, out of school of hard knocks. Like they say, well, that's the way you learn. It gets you really thinking deeply about your place in this case and how to work on the place and how to work with animals on the place and so forth and so on.

And so it's a wonderful thing. And then the connection you say, like when you grow your own food and you harvest the plants or when you slaughter the animals, that too puts you in connection with the mystery and the wonder of life. And the cycles.

of life, huh? And in a way with your own mortality, Sue and I often talk, you know, we really don't want for either one of us to be kept alive by crazy means nowadays. When the time comes, we're ready. When you read of these near-death experiences of people and what comes next, it's like, you know, it's a wonderful thing. It's a wonderful thing. It's not something to...

But I would like to die out there in the woods and let the coyotes eat me. I really would. You know, I don't know if you've seen this, but when we used to hunt, you know, so you shoot an animal and you... The things that you say, you say your prayers, however you want to do that,

I'm thinking now, it doesn't matter. and elk, but, you know, and then you shoot it and got it and all that stuff. And you come back the next day, the guts are all gone, right? I mean, the couts have cleaned them up. There's nothing left. And I think that's what I would like to become part of the plants and the animals in the communities that, you know, this carcass that I've had the opportunity to inhabit for a while. there let it go right back.

The last thing I want is to be embalmed and stuck in a casket actually, you know? I'd like the creatures to eat me just as a part of what happens in the natural world, huh? Yeah, you get to give yourself back to the earth there. Absolutely. And then consciousness, rejoins consciousness for them and for us, and let the carcass go back to nurture the creatures that are still here on the planet. It takes about four hours when we put, we've got a little corner of the land where we bring,

you know, after we feel dressed, we'll bring out everything, the leftovers out there and, you know, the bucket for, for the guts and whatnot. And we bring that out to the corner. And the bones included about four hours for vultures, Kara, Kara, the Mexican Eagle, and the animals to pick that thing clean to where like, there's barely even a scent. Yeah. You walk by and you're like, wow, like the bone is just pristine. There's still some ants working in the skull and things like that.

But, I mean, it's pretty, it goes quick. And it's like such an efficient way of when you think about that, like now these birds are going to fly around and spread that poop and urine everywhere. And just continue to feed back into itself in a way that's so much more rapid than pumping a body full of chemicals and trying to preserve it in a wooden box. That's just insane to me. I can understand how people start on things. I never try to judge in any sense. But it is interesting to reflect on that of how we've gone down different paths as peoples. And that being one of the paths, it is amazing to me too, how quickly, as you were saying,

how quickly birds of prey and coyotes and so forth, find a carcass, huh? It's, it's totally impressive. I love any more, my wife and I are kind of retiring inward into the quiet with our black lab, Henry. And I love to sit and watch, just to sit and watch. And the birds are something that just amazes me. Of course, we've all seen birds. But do you remember when you were a little kid and everything was new to you? And it was just, at least for me, it was like fascinating. Well, it was just like you're here for a visit and you're just kind of waking up to all this stuff. And it's amazing.

I can sit and watch birds that way now and just think they are so graceful and so elegant what they can do and how they can land on a little thing like this out of full flight right down. It's just and the grace and elegance. And we've got three red tails that have been circling around. here, I don't know for sure why. Close. Maybe they see Sue and I out there and think this is pretty close to me yet, but it's close. But it is amazing, you know. And I think that's when you get so busy, busy, busy, and into the, let's say the city kind of life and world, you know, you don't have, you don't have the opportunity to simply. relax into that and to appreciate the beauty, the mysteries, the wonders of this planet and of life

on this planet and of what makes. And then to maybe reflect and realize that we're members of nature's communities. We may not realize that like you're using the example of the hamburger, which is a great one. Where does hamburger come from the store? Where does milk come from the store? but to realize that we're members of nature's communities. What we do to them, ultimately we're doing to ourselves. And only by nurturing them can we end up nurturing and nourishing ourselves.

And I often like to say we do that by declaring love, not war, on one another in the landscapes that we inhabit. But that's maybe a tough lesson. but we've become so, so distanced from the natural world, I think, and from the personal experience of that. I think it's one thing, and it's a good thing, since COVID, the number of people visiting national parks and so forth, just skyrocketed. And, you know, I appreciate that.

And that's a one level of kind of experience to get there and see. And then when you do what you're doing, huh? of raising some animals and so forth, that becomes a whole other level of intimacy with the whole business. And if you're having young animals born, watching the birth through the cycle to the death, and so soon I aren't doing that anymore.

You know, I mean, we aren't on a ranch. We have an acre and a half here in Innes, Montana. And when we bought this, it was newt. I mean, it's a rock pile. It's an old, you know, glacial till rock pile. But it was new. There was just a lot of just bare ground with nothing on it. But there was remnants of perennial plants, the native perennial plants.

And we thought, what are we going to do? We're going to encourage them. We're going to get them all throughout the place. We're going to take seeds of ones that are here. We're going to plant it. And if you were to see it now, Kyle, I'm not bragging in any way. I'm bragging on nature and the ability of nature to do what it does. It's just beautiful.

And we planted probably 100 trees on this acre and a half from junipers, which are native, all native things around here. And the amount of life that comes into this place, we've got a chicken coop. I built a chicken coop, a cove at a little palace. We've got chickens and our daughter's got a couple of ducks and we've got a greenhouse. And that gets you in touch, though. Those kind of things get. And so we have deep beds, since we don't have soil, I created deep beds all over.

We plant vegetables and all that you don't have to own a ranch or a farm necessarily. You can think about if it. if you have the time and it's meaningful to you of how you can can put yourself, I think, in touch, even if you don't have the ability. But it does take time, right? And I often wonder that for people, young couples trying to make a living and if raising kids, I don't know. I don't know if there's, we did it all the time, Sue and I, we, from,

the ranch days on. We always did that kind of thing. And fortunately, in some places, we were able to raise deer and lambs and enormous gardens. And so we've always done that. We, we, it was a priority to us to be able to have that as a part of our life. But I'm just trying to say that's a possibility for people, right? A possibility to start to reconnect with life and the, nurturing of life and then seeing how that can nourish, nourish you. And the flavors of those things that you grow yourself are incredible, right? You know that from the gardens that you're growing and so forth.

So that's, I throw that out as something for people to ponder. If any of this resonates, you know, that you can get, I was talking with the young lady yesterday and she was wanting to get more. It's a lifestyle thing for me. She says, it's a lifestyle. I want a different lifestyle. I want to be able to connect in that way because I love all those things. And right now, what I'm doing, I can't do that, you know.

So she's trying to think about how to get in a position where she could do a little bit, move out of this little tiny apartment she's living in and get into that. But those are all opportunities to reconnect, I think, with the natural world. world and the beauties and wonders and nourishment that the natural world can provide. And then you can get further into things in terms of growing herbs. And there's a lady in the UK has a book that's about to come out, Carolyn Ingram. It's a marvelous, marvelous book on innate self-medication. And that lady has spent her entire lifetime studying all kinds of creatures and often.

them choices of different medicines and looking at what they do under different conditions. And it's a distillation of her life's work. And it's a fabulous, you know, it gets you thinking, well, there's a pharmacist that I've been good friends with ever since the ranch day. She's the daughter of Henry DeLuca. And so we used to move cattle together. I met her the first summer I was out there. She and her husband.

Her husband's dead now. She's not long for the world about 91 now. but we just became dear, dear, dear friends with them. She was a pharmacist. And so we used to talk about that, where pharmacy is gone. And she said, you know, when I was taking classes, we had to learn about plants. And we had to learn about the medicinal value of plants. She said, that's gone now.

And we talked about where all that had gone. And we were in the UK together or in Ireland. And we were going to castles. And I remember we got to one, and they had their medicinal garden there. And boy, Mary and I never got beyond that. We were just there looking at all those plants and talking about that and then talking about, you know, the tremendous diversity of compounds that are in different plants and what that can mean for health, for livestock, certainly, not just therapeutically, not just when they get sick. And we studied that a bunch. We don't need to go into that.

but we studied that a lot, that they can do that, not just therapeutically, but then you start to think prophylactically. All these things can have health benefits in small doses. And when animals are, you know, we used to, we did so many studies of food selection by animals. And, you know, if they were on diverse landscape that had 100 plant species or more, you know, you could end up with 50, 60, 70 plants. in the diet and you'd have to try to identify all that stuff through the market. It was labor intensive.

Let me just say that. It wasn't, it was interesting, but it was, and during those years, back in the 70s, say, and the 80s, paper after paper was being published on the botanical and chemical composition of the diet of Animal X under Condition Y and Season Z, if that makes sense, you know, I mean, There's just a lot of, but we would, you know, three to five plants may be the bulk of any one meal, and that can change from meal to meal. But then there'd be this whole, you know, 40, 50, 60 other species in there, and we never paid much attention to that. But as we went along more and more and realizing, okay, what they're doing is they're introducing all these compounds into the body, those get into the capillaries. If cell X needs a particular compound, how's it going to get it?

That's how, is if there's this diversity to forage from, right? If you think of a cell as foraging and having opportunities, what's in the capillaries is what they're able to select from, right? So this whole idea of diversity, and I like to say this, and so I'll wear it out one more time, but that there's such an important emphasis nowadays on soil health, which I, you know, that's, it's so valuable to see that. But what I like to say is plants transform dirt into soil.

And diverse mixtures of plants transform soil into homes, grocery stores, and pharmacies for all life on the planet. And then you can go into an incredible detail as we did throughout our career and published 300 papers on that stuff. but that's what it is, you know. And I think we don't even, for the most part, realize that. Your example of where does hamburger, where's meat come from? The grocery store. Where's milk come from? And we've lost that connection.

And I would love to see, I would love to see us somehow. And I think movies that people are doing, I think of my friend John Chester and the biggest little farm. Yeah, great one. Oh, man, that one just like, our whole family loved it. I tried both times I've seen it. It's been incredible. And, you know, let's watch that with people who have no connection to, you know, I mean,

no connection like we're talking about it. And it really gets them at the heart level. I think those kind of things are so valuable, how, to get people to get people thinking and reconnecting. And Peter Bix doing those things and other folks. But that that's really a good way to do it. And then all the other social media ways that people that I'm not connected with, but that I, you know, when I talk to people, I realize that, you know,

those are how people are ingesting content nowadays, so to speak. All right, y'all, quick break to tell you about my brand new community, The Kingdom Within. It is launched on school right now. if you join, you get a free one-week trial. You'll have access to any videos we've recorded in the past. We call them days at school. So first day of school, second day of school, all this stuff is available.

Like I said, we just launched. The community is small, which is absolutely great, because if you join now, you will have all your questions answered. I mean, there's just no competition. So the community is about body. It's about mind. It's about connection. It's about family, nature, psychedelics.

Everything is on the table. And right now, I'm just walking. people through some of the most important things, I think, in the key takeaways from the books that I've read and the people I've befriended and learned under guys like Paul Check, Mark Sisson, and so many others. And I've broken it down into very easy to use practical steps on how to optimize the body. And with that, lay the foundations for a successful life, for better productivity, for better emotional intelligence with your kids, with your wife, with your girlfriend, for better connection, which is really what it's all about. And then how do I connect to myself?

what does that internal relationship look like? How do I connect to nature? I get it. Not all you're going to have a farm. Most people listen to this don't. That's fine. How do I reconnect to nature? How do I build out my eco field in my own little backyard?

If I got an apartment, what are the plants that I bring in? How do I respect nature and make communion with it? And then how do I do that with God? There are so many paths that lead us up the mountain. And I've spent, you know, the last 20 years of my life, really researching, digesting, and breaking this down. So I am so excited to be able to share this with you guys. I love the back and forth.

It's something I just don't get on the podcast. I don't get to hear from you guys and get to go back and forth with you and learn about what's going on in your lives. I do in the community on school. It's called The Kingdom Within. And you can go click on it in the show notes and it'll take you right to the about page. And like I said, we cover all the bases. So it's really hard to kind of say like, this is my niche.

This is what we're doing. Optimization, all this other. Just join, join us for one of the school days and see what. what it's like. I guarantee you it will change your life for the better. All right, guys, back to the podcast. You brought up a really, really important point. One of my teachers was a guy named Dr. Will Tagle. He passed away maybe a couple years ago right after his wife passed away. They were both in their early 80s. And he wrote eight books, was a PhD in psychology and a PhD in physics. So he kind of, you know, took these two different, wildly different backgrounds and brought

on together. But he had, you know, a lot of influence from indigenous communities. And so one of my favorite books, the book called Walking with Bears, where he speaks about, you know, his relationship with his mentor, Bearheart Williams. And I was telling him, I remember how, you know, we'd go for, you know, these little nature walks at his place in Wimberley. And I remember telling him how much I really wanted to manifest and make something like this a reality.

And we had at the time we were living in a house in Austin, you know, not in the heart of the city, but in southeast Austin, kind of near the airport, and we had a tenth of an acre for a backyard. I mean, like, you could just, you know, the houses, they're all two-story, like, anybody can see in the backyard. You have this tiny little, just joke of a backyard. And he told me, he said, each of us is our own eco-field. You know, you think about this through like heart-math institute studying, you know, the heart, how that far that stretches out. But we're all our own eco-field. We're all electromagnetic beings and this toroid exists. And as we increase our vital, that increases the depth and the quality of that field, right?

And when we're around other people, now those fields intermix and they create their own eco field, right? And so, you know, he's like, we know this about, you know, not many people know this, but it's true of us. It's true of our environment as well. And I remember, you know, I kind of laughed because I had done a microdosa acid one time in New York City.

And I was walking, we were trying to walk to, to Central Park. And I was just like, I could feel, you know, all my chakras are. I could feel everybody, the buzz of the city. I'm like, oh, man, this was a bad decision. This was a bad decision. And, you know, with my podcast producer, I'm looking at, I'm like, hang in there, buddy.

We're going to make it. And, you know, it just felt like, like just wild and chaotic. And the second we make it to Central Park, we just planted our ass right underneath one of these giant trees. And it was like, oh, we're safe. We're home. And it was just pure peace and equanimity, right? And so even in the madness of New York City, Central Park has its own eco field. right and it's curated and it's grown and it's going together and he's like you don't have to have a farm

to have you know to participate in the in the broadening expansion of that eco field he's like deck that 10 year 10 you know 10th of an acre out you know go all in on that and not just the grass plant your favorite trees so we planted you know bunch bamboo that went up 30 feet tall and block the neighbors from looking in we put in apple trees and plum trees and uh you know ice cream bananas that grew 15 feet tall you know know, it just felt, you know, by the end of it, just like our own little tropical oasis, you know, it was just like any time I was, if I was feeling anxiety or the weight of work or, you know, financial insecurity, anything, I could just walk out into that backyard and all of a sudden peace would just be, you know, it would just like, all right, I access it now. You know, and I thought of how powerful that was. And, you know, we didn't do it all at once. We did little by

little over the years we were there. And by the end, though, it was just really a special, a special little place, you know, that we had enhanced. And so I always think about that eco field, you know, in that eco field that we created, he said, would resonate out, you know, to the neighbors and beyond. And so sure enough, as we're doing this, our next door neighbors start putting in a bunch of different plants. And one even got chickens against the HOA. And one was the neighbor, you know, he started doing his own bees in the backyard against the HR. I was like, this is amazing. And so it really did have that effect. I'm not saying we were the reason, but those ecofields started to connect the people and the people then had it in them, I want to do

that with my backyard. And so that whole little community, you know, a little suburb, actually started to really put an effort into their backyards and their front yards, not just, you know, spraying the lung, glyphosate and crap like that, but actually, you know, putting in wildflowers and bringing the bees to it and different types of fruit trees that they liked. So it was a, it was a special place. I'm excited that I had that experience. priority on this experience. What a marvelous example. What a marvelous example of that.

It comes to mind something that Joseph Campbell said along the way. He said, the world's a mess. He said, the world is perfect. It's a mess. It's always been a mess. It's always going to be a mess. You're not going to change that.

If you want to change something, change yourself. A vitalizing life, what you're talking, you know, the heart field and vitalizes, right? It does, it goes out. It does. And the way you, it talked about what you did and what the influence that has, it's a marvelous example of that. And we can all be doing that all the time.

You know, when we were, we had for 10 years a program called Behave, where we were working with the most innovative people we knew across the country. farmers, ranchers, land managers, and working together with them. What are your challenges? And we'd gone over at the beginning of this, what we've been learning for the last 25 years, about the behavior of animals and how understanding the behavior of animals can really improve the health, the profitability, the whole works for a landscape. So we're working with all these people. And it was such a marvelous opportunity.

to do the kind of things that you were talking about across landscapes, you know? And I used to, what we focused on in our work was principles and processes, not practices. So we really tried to avoid saying, well, Kyle, I think you should do this and this and this and that, you know. To me, I never felt comfortable with that. And it can be a little bit, depending how it's done, condescending. But it can also be dogmatic, right? then everybody starts to do this is the way you need to do it. This is what, and we do that all the time.

We do that all the time. What we used to say is here's, here's what we've understood as best we can, and we know, we don't know everything about principles and processes of behavior and how it works and how animals locally adapt and what that means for cutting the costs and ranch operations, so forth. And then we'd say, well, here's how Bob Budd used it. Here's how Ray Bannister used it. used it. Here's how such and such used it. Now, you've got your canvas. You painted how you are. You're different from anybody that's ever been on the planet and from anybody who will ever be.

That's an amazing thing to realize that no two individuals have ever been alike on any species on this planet. So use your own creativity. That's what we used to try to encourage. Think about, you know, try to understand what, how the world works. And then think about the canvas you want to paint, just like you did in your 10, your little tiny backyard or whatever it is. Or on your place there. That's the beauty. That's the creativity that can flow from that. It doesn't mean you don't learn from other people.

But you figure, well, what is it that we would like to do? and how would we like to do it? And I see that in Daniel a lot. Yeah, that's manifest in Daniel. I get a, and in Nan Bray, this Nan that I was talking about. You know, she came and took the two-week short course that we taught back in about 2010. And she just, she decided what kind of how she wanted to paint her canvas. And it's been a marvelous adventure for her, like for Daniel and like for you,

too, huh? And that's part, and are you going to make mistakes? Of course, you're going to make mistakes, huh? And the thing I worry about nowadays a lot, though, and it's in an article that I read in, I can't remember the title, I can send it to you, but it was about what's happened with farm sizes in the last 150 years, probably, you know, with farms and ranches, what's happened with size of ranches and more ranches make there. And, you know, the mid-sized ranches and farms are virtually all gone now. It's either gone to little tiny things or to enormous ones. And a key point they were making is that for most of the small ones, that used to be the backbone

of rural communities, like when I was growing up, ranching was still a part, you know, an integral part of the economy of those rural communities. that's not the case anymore. Nowadays, most, virtually all of those small farms and ranches, four out of every $5 they make comes from working in town, not from the ranch. So in order to survive, they have to have a vibrant rural community. Does that make sense what I'm saying?

The rolls have reversed. It's a very, very interesting paper. And they have some very nice graphs and figures that just show from the 1800s through to today, what are the numbers and what's happened. And then they end the paper by saying, you know, well, what can be done to try to shore up for these farms and ranches to try to help them to do better? You know, when I was on the ranch, 55, 60 years ago, whatever it was, I remember Henry used to say, and this shocked me at first, like I said, I thought those ranchers were rich. I honestly did. I thought they're all rich, you know. I didn't hear it. But working out there, I realized, no, they're not rich. The only reason Henry Deluca and all these in that part of the country, I'm going to send you a picture of these. I'm going to send you a picture of these. old-timers that homesteaded. They came from Italy. It's a classic. It's hilarious. The Skangas, the postereros, the DeLukas. The only reason they were able to make it is when they

homestead it. They didn't have to buy that land. You can't even touch it now. You couldn't even start to touch it. So they homestead it and they were frugal. They were darn hard workers and they were frugal as can be. But he used to say there's never been any money in ranching. There is no money in ranching. And then we used to talk about how insane is that something that's so fundamental to the health of a society that there's no money in that for the people who are doing that and for the people who are trying to really to produce vegetables and fruits and let's say meat that's of high quality that there's no money for those people and it's like insane when you when you think of that when you think of what's happening

You think there was an article that I read. It's short. I can share it with you. But it was written by a guy and by Botswana, like a Henry guy, been born and raised in that. And he's talking about, he has a refrain as he goes along. Do you remember that old yellow fat? Do you remember that old yellow fat? So he's talking about finishing animals on Rangelands, right?

And evidently from this friend of Botswano, they have just incredible flavors to their meat. And I know when I've been over there and I've eaten wild game from there, it's true. The flavor of that means is off this. So then you think, well, what's the mix of plants? Then he wants to study that. Anyway, I'm digressing. But you think about what's happened then. And in this little article where the refaigne is, do you remember that old yellow fat?

He's talking about how ranchers there went from price makers to price takers. And that happened as the feedlot industry and the big conglomerates took over. And now if you want to sell, you sell to them and you sell at the price they're going to give you. You can't go and say, well, I'm going to see what Kyle would give me or I'm going to see what coal would give me or this one or that one. You don't have choice anymore where it gives you some ability to do. get a better price. It's a very interesting, there's a guy in Botswana, Richard Finn, that I've written papers with and we're working on one right now that talks a lot about this related to feedlots and to forage finishing and all the rest of that stuff. And there again, you know,

I mean, things evolve. So I don't like to, I sound like the critic. I don't criticize anybody for anything. I mean, we all are the way we are, right? And there's an infinite number of factors. that influence who you actually become. So I don't want to judge in that sense. And you can understand how the feedlot industry evolved and how that's come to take over. But it's time to have a think about that. And some of the things you were mentioning earlier, right?

So compared to an animal, it's born and raised, with its mother and peers, foraging across a landscape and finished on that versus an animal that sold then feedlot. Ends up with a ton of strangers it doesn't know, incredibly high stress levels. It's walking in its own muck. It's fed a total mixed ration that's high in grain. And we know from studies we did, and we weren't trying to.

It makes animals sick. You put them on an anti-emetic drug, which that's what blocks nausea and humans, when you're on chemotherapy or riding down the canyon or whatever it is. And we were doing studies. Well, you know, if we put animals on anti-emetic drugs, do they avoid toxic plants? No, they eat more of them. If you put them on antimetic drugs, do they eat more grain in a feedlot? Yeah, they eat more grain.

Well, you're blocking the part of the nervous system, the emetic system of the midbrain and brain stem. So they don't experience that anymore. Do you want to do that? Well, it's not really a good idea, right? There's something more fundamental that's going on there. And so, you know, they're on these total mixed rations that are very high in grain. No two individuals are alike, as we said, and they don't, we did studies with sheep and cattle both, where if you offered them a choice of ingredients that are in the total

mixtration in separate bins versus a total mixed ration, it was amazing to see what they did. No two individuals selected the same combination of foods from day to day. No individual selected the same foods from day to day. They all selected a diet, though, that met their needs and at less cost because they ate less food than the animals on the TMR. On the TMR, they're over-ingesting. We hypothesize in order to meet their needs for protein. because you know it's set for the average individual but there is no average so when we looked at protein that they were ingesting and protein energy ratios some were below the average line somewhere above they were all over the place but none was on the line if you averaged them all together though they were on the line So individuality matters. It's important.

A choice and ability to choose enables individuality. And so it's just, I think it's worth, and this paper we're working on, it's worth, it's worth really having a rethink about how we do all that stuff. But then, you know, the challenge, and I don't know about this, I don't live in this world. but the corporate influences are incredibly powerful, right? I mean, that's, I'm not even an ant compared to any of this stuff, you know. But somehow having a think about that, and that's where I think things like what John Chester did. And what's happening nowadays, though, I think there's a growing awareness, right, of what has happened with the quality of our food and what has happened with the health and well-being of animals. And K-FOS, I mean, there is really, when you look at those chickens and pigs and all those corner things.

And then when you look at all the data that people like Stefan Von Bleet at Utah State University are just pouring out nowadays, comparing the phytochemical richness of meat that's coming from animals from diverse landscapes versus feedlots, I mean, there's huge differences there. and the studies that are being done, that it'll be good to have always more data, of course, but they clearly show how that benefits the health of the animals themselves. There's really a lot of nice data on that, and there's some evidence that it's important for us as well,

reviews that we've written and papers that are coming out on them. So that's long-winded, But it's worth having a rethink, right? We go down certain paths. And to me, it's not to criticize, but to say, well, you know, is that what we really want to be doing nowadays? And can we do it in ways that maybe help to create more community and more local and more connections with one another? And start to learn where our food actually comes from and support one another. And it's encouraging to see what's happening in that nowadays, right?

When I was growing up, it was all feedlot stuff, on grain-fed beef, that's the best thing you can eat. And, you know, I was raised on that. It's interesting to see how things become culturally inflected, right, in time and space. Change the time and space and the inflections change on everything from politics to religion to what you eat and all the rest of that stuff. But they become culturally inflected as a function of what you're born and raised with, right? Yeah. I remember that Omaha Steaks bragged about having Nebraska corn-fed beef. Right. It's like it's corn-fed. It's the best you can get.

When I was talking to Daniel last, he talked about a, I think it was a paper that either you had done or that you had maybe shown to him that brought up the fact that, you know, when we pay extra for marvellized fat through a steak, what we're actually looking at is a disease state animal. You know, and so much that I've learned from, you know, in my health journey as a fighter and beyond, is now pointing towards metabolic flexibility and metabolic health, right? And how, you know, auto warbur, cancer as a metabolic dysfunction, pre-diabetic states, you know, inflammation in the body, heart disease, stroke, you know, all these things are a matter of inefficient metabolism. But we now know, too, like you don't want visceral fat, you know, so you want your fat, you know, fat you know fat's a healthy thing it's an organ at the right dose and it should be all together kind of you know in its own place but when you look at that in an animal like you for sure that animal

if it's marbleized it's it's dying and it's not processing food well at all and we think that oh it's it's a healthier thing it's a tastier thing because i got all this fat spread out it's going to be more tender like that's an animal that was sedentary it wasn't allowed to move and it and it is in a disease state right before it gets put down you know it couldn't it couldn't survive in that much longer and they know that so they're getting that thing as sick as possible as fat as possible and then they get it rid of it before it actually you know shows disease state that's that's a crazy crazy mind flip to understand that i was like wow that makes total sense oh that's absolutely the absolutely the case and then like my friend pablo gregorini who's doing the amazing work on all this

stuff says and then we eat that oh that's papers that we wrote the research that's you know stephen was a dude before he really launched into all, we got him launched into all this stuff. And he was studying muscle and muscle biology and health and stuff. And he says when you look at the muscles from an animal, the meat and muscles from an animal that's in a feed-off, it's like a human with metabolic syndrome, basically what it is. You know, as you're saying so well, it's a sick animal.

Compared with this animal, it's out foraging with its mother on Rangeland. And, you know, we did a lot of stuff. study, Ted Turner has bison, has more bison than any bison on ranches across the west. We worked a lot with Ted Turner and his managers of those landscapes. And one of the things that we really did a lot of work on with them years ago was that they really were not having good results with putting bison in feedlots under tight confinement, A double whammy, right? No room to move, plus they're in a feedlock.

And we were talking about all these kind of things. And so we're saying, you know, choice and ability to choose, getting them, okay, if you want some grain in there, but give them choice of a bunch of other things too, of roughages and so forth. And so they totally changed the way that they finished bison back in those days based on that. And we were, you know, so we were studying those things. And we were looking at cortisol levels, levels of stress and bison under tight-carriage. confinement under loose confinement and out on range lands and they were as you would expect right highest stress type confinement and less in loose where they've got some room less on range lands but we were also looking at the economics of it and you could finish bison sooner if you put them in more of a feedlot situation but when you looked at the cost the cost to finish them the least costly way to do it least costly least stressful or to allow them to stay out there with their mothers on range lines.

That was the least costly way to do it. So there you're starting to tie ecological health, animal health, and economics together, in a way that that may be different from what people would think. Just like that study, I was telling you, when we offered cattle or sheep a choice of the ingredients in the total mixed ration versus put them on the TMR, it cost us less to finish them, they ate less food. I remember I was in Yergoa once talking with some people down there, and they were showing me there was young and old, and this young researcher was their PhD. And I said, that's really interesting stuff that you guys are doing. We've got that out to producers.

And he said, well, I haven't, I forget, I haven't really taken it up or something. And then he said, how about your work with the feedlot at him? I laugh. Well, no, we really didn't change the feedlot industry. I can tell you that. But, you know, those are big ships. But I've always been a bottom-upor as opposed to a top-downer. So I think if you could get the general public voting with their dollars and thinking about those things, maybe change comes about.

And I think we are seeing some really encouraging, interesting, neat kind of things when you get to a local level. And here in Montana, I think of, and this isn't the only one, so I shouldn't say, but like the old salt and the old salt co-op. That's exactly what they're trying to do, you know, is to get things more local, get more butchers,

get opportunities for people to buy locally. And then, you know, if you get people understanding, like the biggest little farm can get people thinking about things, then they, if they're able to, they can buy into that, right? Yeah. Yeah, we support this.

And this is what we understand why we're supporting this. Yeah, your point is one of the best points they make in Food Inc. at the end is like you vote with your dollar. That's everything. And even a mega store like Walmart started carrying organic yogurt just as a tester. Will anybody buy, you know, more expensive yogurt? And it flew off the shelves. And now they have whole organic sections at places like this.

You know, but like to the core. quality of life of an animal in the meat. Like that's now becoming more of an understood thing. And I had Jake Mews who runs Maui Nui. They do all their, it's the only wild game that's allowed to be sold nationally because all the Axis deer that have been brought to Maui and, you know, Lanai and different Hawaiian islands,

they've overtaken the area because there's no natural predators and there's no harsh winter and no super hard summer. So they just can, and they can reproduce, Axis can reproduce twice a year. So they've been allowed to hunt with night vision goggles out of helicopters and just headshot, headshot, headshot, headshot. So these animals are in their families, they're outdoors, their free range, their whole life, and they get to die in their sleep effectively or just laying down. They're completely, they don't understand what's happening. And so, you know, real quick to lights out.

And so they're beating a number of different ways that we do this, right? whether that's even if it's, you know, USDA regulated kind of thing. It's like, yeah, even the best raised regenerative meat, if you bought it at the grocery store, he still was killed in the way that's not ideal and still was highly stressed before it was put down. So anyways, Jake, Jake was saying that he's got a buddy, and you might already know, I forget his name,

but they're studying, as you mentioned, nutrient quality, and they're going to give numbers to that. So they're pushing now to actually get that on labels so they can have a score of, you know, zero to 100 of what the nutrient value is in that, not just from a, you know, vitamins and minerals standpoint and macros, but also from like, you know, the health of that animal judged on several different factors, you know, where, how it was slaughtered, all those things.

And they'll have that score. And I think, you know, we're so into gamification and understanding things with a rational mind. But if people see a sticker like that on their stake, that will influence them heavily to know, like, well, this one's $2 less, but it's only a 50. And this one's a 99, you know, a nutrient quality. I'm going to spend the extra $2 per pound and actually get something that's going to be more nutrient dense and good for me. And if I understand that full circle, that animal is better for the environment.

That animal will help the environment. That, you know, in a regenerative system, everything's benefiting. Everything's benefiting in that way. And in a feedlot system, we're destroying the soil. We're destroying the whole thing, right? We're not helping anything there in that, not the animal, not us, not the land itself. So. And that's where I think what you said is so critical, Kyle, trying to,

understand the whole system. So if you go down the feedlot path, what's happening there in terms of soil, plants, monocultu, monstrous monocultures, and so forth and so on. And then how animals, you know, what happens in the feedlot as we've been discussing versus the other, trying to make that picture come alive, huh? To come alive in a John Chester biggest little farmway, right? Where it's not, what we're doing in this paper is just a lot of the cognitive, of rationality, you know, I mean, you're writing like a scientific paper for nature to try to lay all this out. But to make it come alive, you need this other thing, right, that just illustrates it. This is what it means.

And all this stuff on climate, this is what it means, too, that doesn't get talked about. So a paper like we're writing can provide good grist for the mill for someone like a John Chester to take and run with that and make it come alive. here's a bunch of information related to that. But you have to make it come alive for the public, right? I mean, put it in a scientific journal, handful of people read it. Half of them hate the idea of what you're talking about because they don't believe it all in any of that stuff. We're totally on board, and that's just, we're in duality here when we're on the planet.

That's the way it is. But to try to make it come alive for the public. And then to try to not game the system. if you're a producer, but to try to have honesty and integrity. And it comes back to this is, this, I think, is an important point to recognize. And it really puts the onus on you and each person that's producing. What do you get from those 80 cows that all end up in a McDonald's burger? You get uniformity.

If you have, you know, like this Dave Pratt that used to run own ranching for profit, I did a fabulous job with that over his life and his wife, Kathy. The economics, ecological, the whole system. But he said the one thing about a McDonald's, you know what you're going to get, right? You know what you're going to get. It's uniform. When you start raising animals on different landscapes, you're into diversity now, and you're into diversity of different plant species and the different flavors that that's going to get.

But that's not necessarily a bad thing, right? think of Terois over in France and those things, right? So what that gets you thinking is what diversity means, and then what kind of diversity on my place is going to contribute to incredible flavor in animals, and it's going to vary from place to place, right? I mean, it's just a function of you've got different plant species with incredibly complex, different kind of chemistries. But that's where I think terroa becomes a very, very important part of that.

And then it puts the onus on the person that's producing the animals to think about their, you know, what do we have? How can I use that? And so on and so forth. But it's just that point that diversity of plant species leads to diversity of diversity of flavors. in food and that's not necessarily a bad thing. But, you know, I spent what French shepherds do over there in France, it's amazing with their different meal courses and you go, you know, appetizer, main course, booster stage, dessert, their knowledge, and they've learned a lot of that from the animals themselves,

from trial and error and working with the animals and just seeing, you know, what works best. It's stunning. They're intimate level of knowledge of that. But so I've spent time over there with my dear friend Michelle Merey and traveling all around to see goats and sheep and cows and dairies and making cheese and all the rest of that stuff. And they totally appreciate that. And when they, you know, go to the local market, they're known. You know, each one is known. And they may say, well, I really kind of prefer Michelle's flavor to Gascon or whatever.

But there's enough diversity of peoples and that. that they're all doing okay, but they're appreciating the influence of their landscape on the, on the flavors in the milk and the meat of their animals. It's a wonderful thing. It's, it's, yeah, I love that. We have a couple of really good raw milk farms near us. And one of them, you know, I've been out to them both. One's a Golden Guernsey farm.

And the other one is a Jersey cow. You know, and the Jersey cow farm is, I've been out, brought my kids out there, you know, rolling 350 acres. They've got rainwater collection where they'll flood irrigate back to keep the grasses year around. And it's incredible. These are the happiest cows that come right up to me and, you know, they want you to rub their head. So they're just rushing against your rear end. You've got to, like, brace yourself, you know, because they're just working you. Yeah, how cool.

So cool. So happy. Just giant. The calves look like a cross between Bambi and a cow. Like they're just like they're goofy. They're funny. They got the ears. They got a tongue like a giant, like a cow, you know, was mixed with a cat, you know,

just like that grippy, you know, kind of lottery tongue. They're so sweet. And, you know, the milk is incredible. But the cheese is too, like thinking about seasonal. I was like, why is this cheese so yellow? And they're like, oh, that's a spring cheese. And then here's a summer cheese. You know, it was more white.

And I was like, interesting. So like that, the carotenoids in that milk directly affect. And when they're concentrated, now you can see. that gold comes through. I mean, the cheese is bright yell. I was like, did you guys, did dye this with a nod or anything? Like, nope, just seasonal difference. And I was like, wow.

Yeah, isn't that cool? And that's their knowledge. It makes me think I was in, my wife and I were in Ireland with this couple I mentioned earlier, Mary and Jim. And we were going on a tour in one of the little towns with the guy. And he was, it was before the tour, and he was just talking. And he was talking about the lady up on the hill that owned the land. and he was talking about just this stuff

and I thought, oh my gosh, how can this be happening that he's talking about this? But he was saying, she used to say, you know, when I really want to impress guess with the milk and with the cheese, I put them on this pasture here because I know that the flavor is, that's intimate knowledge. Well, that's just experience too.

It's experiential, right? You're out there, you're involved. And you know, hey, boy, when they're eating this mix of plants, man, oh man, the flavor of the milk. And so if she really wanted to impress the guest, that's where they were. And it was just, it was so funny because so much what we had been involved in and what we were really launching into was Stefan Von Vleck. And then here's this guy telling this story. It's like, that's, that's just, that's, that's such an amazing coincidence.

It couldn't have been better. It was just like illustrating so much that, and the point that you just made, right? season differences in season differences within seasons within pastures and yeah yeah that's it's a wonderful thing an amazing amazing amazing it fascinates me and i think the more people you know get connected into whether you know i think a lot of roads lead back to this whether it's it's health and wellness you know how do i get the healthiest i can be oh it turns out you know what i put on my body is a great contributor to that and the life of those things is a great contributor to that and the life that's underneath all of that that's feeding it's and

it is also a great contributor. And then it goes to the oneness, right? Yeah, exactly. No six degrees of separation, no separation at all, that in the end, it's one thing. And we're a part of that. And what we do, heart level or what we do is influencing by participating, we're co-creators in all of that.

It's a one thing. When you read these people that die and have these near-due. death experiences, boy, does that ever come across that it's not, there's nothing that say, it's one thing, it is one thing. And we are part of that, of the transcendent, huh? And here it's manifest on earth, but to realize that then, huh, to realize that in your own life, and to realize that we are all one and a part of that, huh? Do not not see ourselves as separate at all, but that's what I think the connection with nature can link you back, huh?

Maybe you can start to appreciate, appreciate that, that no, we really are connected. And then the more you get into that, the more at the heart level you start to appreciate that, right? Beautiful. This is a perfect place to end on. Would you leave us with your prayer that you told with Paul Check? I don't know if you've got it memorized or not, but I'd love it. I absolutely loved it on that podcast.

I was like, I would love for you to share that with my listeners as well. Yes, and I would say one other thought in follow your heart, find what it is that moves you. There's something in you that knows, knows when you're on the beam and knows when you're off the beam. And if you get off the beam for this thing or that thing or money or whatever it is, is follow your heart. Find what it is that's in your heart and follow your heart. Follow your heart. And it'll lead you to places you never imagined, huh?

My wife and I tell you one more story and then I'll tell you the prayer. So a couple of years ago, we celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary. And we were on the ranch and we got married. So there's no time or money to go on a honeymoon. There was not possible. So we went, we backpacked into the head of, of, of, a place called Greens Creek between these two beautiful mountains, Uray, who was an Indian, an indigenous chief, and his wife, Chepeda. So we hiked into there and we spent the night camp. Well, we hadn't been back in 50 years.

We hadn't been back to that place. And we thought on September 14th, we're going in there. We're going to hike into there. It was amazing, Kyle, to do that and to think, you know, we were such kids then in a nice sense. such young kids. And we did not have a clue of what was going to unfold, the mystery and the wonder. And how beautiful, you know, we could have never even imagined it. And how wonderful that was, you know, how wonderful that was.

And so I will end with that. So that prayer, in awe with humility, I give thanks for my moment on earth with all its beauties, horrors, wonders, deep mysteries. I'm so grateful for family and friends who accompanied me on the journey. I give thanks to the plants and animals who grace this planet, who daily gave their lives to sustain my life through meals prepared with love. Bless us in this planet for the greater good, whatever that may be, however limited our ability to fathom that. Amen. Amen.

Thank you so much, Dr. Fred. It's been incredible, finally getting you on. Yeah, it's been wonderful to see you to, and just to see that big smile. And you're being fit. It's incredible. It's wonderful to me. And it's wonderful to hear what you guys are up to, really, you know? Fun adventure, for sure.

Thank you so much for all the work that you've done. And seriously, congratulate my wife and I just were 15 years this year. 50 years is freaking exceptional. That's so cool. That's like lifetime goals. I love that. Yeah, well, it goes in a flash, Kyle. I don't even know where the years went, you know.

And 15, that's wonderful for you guys too. You know, congratulations on that, huh? Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. Okay, Kyle. Well, listen, great to meet you. Hope to stay in touch at least a little bit. You'll be in my heart anyway.

You know, you won't meet my heart.