The Joe Rogan Experience - #834 - Dan Doty

Episode Date: August 18, 2016

This episode was recorded on location and is only available as audio. Dan Doty is a writer, producer, and cameraman for MeatEater TV.

The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. There are two Austins. One of them is a drug-addled shithole. The other one's in Texas. We're about ten miles outside of Austin, Nevada. I'm with my good friend, Dan Doty. Hello.

Hello. Say hello, Dan. Hello. And we just got back from, are we allowed to say unsuccessful until it hits the air? Yeah, I think so. We can say that. Sure. Well, successful in memories and fun.

We had a wonderful time chasing unsuspecting undulates with sharp pointy sticks. It did not work out. That means we were bow hunting for deer. It did not work out. Dan Doty is, uh, you are a fucking renaissance man, my friend. You're, uh, an undercover hippie

on a hunting show. You're a man of a great, vast, wide range of experiences. And Dan has worked for Meat Eater for 65 episodes? Yeah, this is my 65th

episode shooting the show. And Dan's been on the podcast before with Remy Warren back when he and Remy were releasing that Apex Predator show, which is an excellent show. I guess they're not doing it anymore. If you hear noise, because we're driving. We're on the road right now.

And we're passing through some fucking strange shit. We're about 150 miles or so outside of Reno. I think 170 outside of Reno, Nevada. And we just saw so much strangeness today. This is lonely country, man. Lonely country with a lot of, what do you call them, desert rats? Desert rats. All these people, no offense if you're one of them listening to this podcast right now.

I'm sure you're wonderful people. Lots of four-wheelers, lots of side-by-sides, lots of long, weird haircuts. Weird haircuts. Like, they just, it gets to a certain point, oh, man, I've got to cut the ends. They just, Reno is, Reno is fucking metropolis compared to this.

And I've always thought of Reno as being one of those weird places I really don't want to go to. But no offense if you're from Reno and you're listening to this. And I've always thought of Reno as being one of those weird places I really don't want to go to. But no offense if you're from Reno and you're listening to this. Nevada is a bigger state than I thought and it's as empty as anything. You know what gain means. What does gain mean?

Does that mean the... So, yeah, it's like how much it's amplifying the sound that's coming. Oh, so if I crank it up way high, it's probably too high. Yeah, it's making a red. It's like, bitch, what are you doing? There's a clipping. Yeah, is it going red? That means it's too too high. Yeah, it's making a red. It's like, bitch, what are you doing? There's a clipping?

Yeah. Is it going red? That means it's too much. All right, I'll leave it right there. So Jamie can handle this. Jamie knows how to do it. This is a new thing I picked up. It's called an Apogee microphone.

Some people were complaining about the sound quality of my iPod or iPhone recorded podcast. Someone from my message board recommended this. It's pretty dope. I like how it hooks up. It just hooks up right to the base of your iPhone, and this might be the future. This is really your first time? Yeah, this is our first time. Dan Doty, you're the one that's breaking it in.

Sounds good, man. So we were about five hours outside of Reno in this incredibly beautiful, desolate landscape, chasing these deer that have these ears that are as big as Kim Kardashian's ass. And they fucking hear everything. These animals hear everything and dan and i dan was behind me with the camera and i was uh being the clumsy sneaky fuck trying to sneak up on these things and it just didn't work out but god damn it was fun trying yeah we got close we got some good stuff yeah i got so close that it could have happened once one time it legitimately could have happened, the other time we got kind of close a few times, but one time I got inside of 30 yards, and as I was crawling towards them in the bushes,

I made too much noise, and they got up and bolted, but, um, there's two deer that were in, well, this is too many, too many details, you catch it on the show. It's called Meat Eater. It's on the Sportsman's channel. It's an excellent show. But this fucking trip has been really interesting. First of all, it's nice to be off the grid for seven days. I haven't done that in a while. God damn, that feels good. When was the last time you did that? Probably the last time I hunted with you guys. Yeah. Probably Prince of Wales. That was not quite a year ago, huh? Yeah. That was miserable.

Was this less or more miserable than that one? Oh, this was way more fun. Yeah. Way better. I mean, this is just hot, but I don't mind heat. Heat doesn't really bug me. As long as we have water, we had plenty of water. I mean, you can just keep your skin covered so you don't burst into flames.

Plenty of water. And you just keep your skin covered so you don't burst into flames. Yeah, I've done a lot of these meat eaters, but I haven't been doing them lately the last year. And this is the first time I've been off grid in, I don't know, a good long time, too. And it felt amazing. The first three days just felt like a vacation. Yeah. Well, it made me realize, like, we're so addicted to taking in information.

At least I am. I shouldn't say we. I'm so addicted to checking the news and finding out what's going on in the world. And just, it's, a lot of times, it doesn't give you a chance to use your brain and think about what you actually feel about things. Like, you don't get a chance. and think about what you actually feel about things. Like, you don't get a chance. You're just so wrapped up in paying attention to all the news and all the information and all the stuff that's being fed to you constantly through the media, through social media networks,

through, you know, all the, just everything. It's just too much. I try to keep my phone off for four hours at a time during the days, even if I'm working. That's nice. I just try to shut it. I put it on airplane mode. Put it away. Just step away from it as much as I can.

Well, my friend Ari got it right. I can't do what he did, but what he did was he switched to a flip phone. That's smart. Yeah. That's super smart. He said enough. He said enough. I can't do it.

I need it. I like having a phone, first of all. If I had a flip phone, I wouldn't be recording a podcast right now. Because I need a fucking iPhone for that. Is it the first thing you do in the morning? Do you wake up and check your phone? Sometimes. Shouldn't.

But sometimes I do. It is for me, usually, man. I can't help it. I try not to. What I've been trying to do lately, I check my phone to make sure nothing important is going on. Like, I'll look at my text messages. Make sure that they're okay. Nothing's crazy.

No 911 calls or something. And then I just try to start my day. But I used to. I used to do it. I used to hit it hard for like an hour. Check the news. Check all the bullshit. Check my Twitter feed.

Check all the links people post me, check what I'm supposed to be doing, check this, check that. I don't, I try not to do that anymore. Yeah, I've spent a fair amount of time off the grid and disconnected like that through, you know, the past 10 years. It's a weird kind of addiction because it's,

I think that's what I felt. So when we got out here, it had been a long time since I'd been off-grid, but we got out here and it was like, holy shit, this is great. This feels good. It's quiet. Yeah, I think we're doing something weird to ourselves by constantly being connected to everything and everyone.

And everyone's terrified to be disconnected, terrified to take a week off of just nothing coming in but your own thoughts, just the world, the actual world that you see in front of your face, which is not what we get a lot of times. I've been talking about that a lot, is that there's a real problem with getting all the bummer news from 7 billion people all over the world. Because you get a distorted perception of what's going on in the world. Because you're connected to everything that's happening all the time, 24-7. Anytime anything fucked up goes down, you hear about it instantly.

And it just gives you this feeling that the world's just falling apart. But meanwhile, most of the time nothing is happening where most people are. See, pre-iPhones or pre-these kind of phones, I really did disconnect from news. I wouldn't watch news. I didn't have a TV. I didn't do all that. But there's no way I can claim that anymore. And there's no way that I don't know how I would extract myself from that stream of information now because it's just, it is everywhere. I mean, you can't, you can't

open one web browser or anything without seeing anything. So I, I don't know. I have a hard time with it. I really do. I don't, I don't like to know. Yeah. And now I actually lately I feel responsible. Lately I feel more responsible that I do need to know. I don't know. I think it's about managing it, man. I think that's the big thing, is managing it. You don't have to completely disconnect yourself from the world, but disconnect sometimes. And know when you're getting too much.

Like, I'll go down those, you ever go down one of those YouTube rabbit holes? Oh, yeah. Where you watch one video on Bigfoot, and the next thing you know, it's four hours later. And you're like, what the fuck just happened? You know, you've watched several people get eaten by crocodiles. And I watched this thing, the top crocodile attacks of 2016. And I'm like, what the fuck is wrong with me why am i watching this they're good ones oh man really good ones it's awful this is awful it's poor assholes

no it's a noisy it's a noisy life it's a busy life and to me it's almost it's the busyness that i get sick of more than anything else. It's the constant pushing into everything. That's going on to the, whether it's for a hunt or for whatever reason of getting disconnected, that is the part that I, I don't know, that lights me up.

It makes me happy just to fucking settle down and not have things to do always and always be going somewhere, always doing something. And I try to live a pretty relaxed life anyway, but that even seems too busy sometimes. Well, you were taken to a whole other level this weekend. You were talking about one day wanting to go to the mountain by yourself for 40 days. I would.

I would love to do that, yeah. And I'm sure I will do it. I do a lot of meditation, and in the lineage of meditation that I do, there's a lot of solo practice or basically solo retreat where you go either in a cabin or out in the woods or whatever you want to do, and you're just there by yourself doing your thing. I have not had a chance to do that recently. When I used to be a wilderness guide and would run programs for people, they would always do a solo at the end of their wilderness experience and sit out in the

woods all alone by themselves, four days, six days, whatever it was. And, uh, yeah, man, it's, it's a weird thing. It's not something I think that most people are drawn to. I don't think it's a type of thing that, that, um, you know, I think it is a weird thing for people in our culture, but I think there's something massively valuable to be gained by that. Just self-knowledge, you know, self-experience. Just reflection. Oh, yeah. Yeah, well, reflection, but then also exploration, I think, you know. Of your own thoughts.

Yeah, man. And, like, what's actually there? Like, what's really inside you? What really, you know, disconnected from all the input of information and the need to go do stuff and the need to say stuff. But just to, like, fucking be there with what's going on. Yeah. You know, I'm a big fan of the isolation tank, and you and I have talked about that. But one of the things that's weird is when I tell people about it they I've had many people say this to me oh I don't want to be alone

with my thoughts yeah like what oh no yeah you don't want to be alone with your thoughts you want to know how you really feel about things and explore whether or not you're right about things or wrong or whether or not you have a bias or whether or not you have some sort of preconceived notion. You know, one of the things that I've found that a lot of people do is they have an opinion on something and then when confronted with new evidence, they do their damnedest to try to defend that original opinion. Dig in. Yeah, they dig in and they fuck themselves.

You've got to be able to be flexible with your your ideas are not you yeah man totally and i so yeah so the idea of like going out to a mountain and being there to me it's about i think there's a disconnect in our culture from the actual experience and however you want to say that your actual physical experience that you're having in the moment the actual emotional experience or even mental experience. I think that there's so much controlling us. You know, we control ourselves and other things, other forces control us, but the actual sitting

in what's actually happening is, to me, the most compelling part of being alive. And I think there's a lot of ways that people go about doing that, but it is challenging, and it's not something that, yeah, you're right, it scares the shit out of people. You know why? Because it is scary. I think it's intense. Life's intense. Well, you actually have to confront what life is when nothing else, you know, when you're really just thinking alone by yourself. Nothing else is occupying your thoughts. It's not a television show, not an album.

And those things are great too. But to be alone with your thoughts. Totally. And I think it extends to being with other people too. Like if, I think there is something to be practicing, being able to be present in the experience that's happening, right? I think that different spiritual traditions are searching for that thing. All kinds of different things that people do to try to feel better and do better at life. So yeah, the practice of doing it yourself I think is one thing.

And so, yeah, the practice of doing it yourself, I think, is one thing. And then I think an even more challenging thing is sort of that sort of rawness or simplicity or even connection with somebody else present is even fucking harder. So I actually think it opens up like a way of living life that is, I don't know, fascinating and really exciting. Yeah, that's an important point about being alone, too, because when you're around other people, other people influence your thoughts. They influence the way you feel. They influence the way you react to things. And to be alone, and then on top of that, to be alone in nature, that's really interesting. That's really interesting to me because look at that.

Is that a tornado out there? Yeah, it's like a... A dust twister? A dust bin? What would they call it? What do they call those things? It's a goddamn tornado. We better run for the hills.

I think that's what hit us. Like, you know, before we came into Austin, we got swiped by a wind. I think it was one of those. We got hit by this huge Austin, Nevada, by the way. Not Austin, Texas. I thought you liked Austin. I do. I like Austin, Texas.

I don't even hate Austin, Nevada. I'm just fucking around, folks. But the place where we are at is a particularly unusual kind of nature because it's desert, but it's got these sage plants everywhere, which really smell awesome when you step on them and break them. They have this cool, you know, sage has got a great smell to it. So you have these sage plants all over the place and these very small shrubs, occasional trees, not that many, but mostly like these six-foot-high at most shrubs. And there's a few of those trees.

Yeah, there's cedars and there's mountain mahogany. So it's high desert, so high elevation desert. These big, massive basins, flat basins with pretty sharp and tall mountains. I mean, each of these basins is a valley and up to what what was it 12 500 or 13 000 feet yeah just above where we were hunting we were really high up there we were above 9 000 feet and there's these rock slides everywhere where like the the side of the mountains eroding and we had to climb up that shit. It's all these, like, chunks of rock, and especially problematically trying to sneak up on these fucking awesome-hearing mule deer, because everything's like clank, clank.

It's like you're stepping on broken pottery everywhere. It's just weird. It almost looks like somebody made it, you know, when you see all that. It's like somebody decided to make, like, a giant runway filled with broken chips of rock. It's just really, really cool. But just like an alien landscape. I've never been to the high country, the desert up there before. So for me, it was a first.

And it was also... It's beautiful, but you don't want to live there, but it's cool to visit. You know, it's like one of those things. I don't like how dry it is. That's why I only beef with it. I think it is beautiful, but it just looks like it needs a bath, man. But it's interesting, too, because it's so perfect for these deer.

The deer are everywhere up there, and they're fucking big and fat and healthy, and all they're doing is eating these sage bushes and then taking naps and running from mountain lions and shit. Because we found some big, thick ropes of shit that were filled with hair that is either a giant fucking coyote or most likely a mountain lion or maybe bears. That one seemed way too big to be coyotes. That was a mountain lion shit, right? Probably. Yeah, I woke up one morning by a pack of coyotes around us. That was pretty cool. Yeah, they were fucking screaming. They sounded so awesome. They were screaming. It's interesting, we only saw deer and we saw a

couple of coyotes when we were scanning the horizon, but the landscape for people is death. If you lived out there, you'd be fucked. First of all, you'd never catch one of these deer. If you had a rifle, you have a really good chance. Because for some reason, they know you're bow hunting. So they stay at like 160, 170 yards. They just fucking stare at you. But anything you get inside of that, they're like, fuck this. How many deer did we get within 100 yards of? Like maybe two groups?

Two groups. The first day, we got inside of 30. And I could have had a shot if it wasn't for it. We only had a tag for a buck. I should probably explain what a tag is. We're hunting on public land. You may not know this because most people don't, and I didn't until I started hunting. But we the people of the United States of America own massive chunks of land. It is your land.

It is my land. It's like that song, this land is your land. But it really is that. It's not just in theory. It's public land. And it's rare because most countries don't have what we have. We have these giant chunks of forest that you can hunt in, and you can fish in, and you can hike in, you can camp in, you can do all these different things.

But to hunt in them, one thing that people don't know, especially people that are like down on hunting, is that hunting is closely regulated by wildlife agencies that's manned by biologists that are working on science and data for that particular area so in the area where we were at it's not that easy to get a tag so steve ranella had to use his points to get me in there as well and what points are is you put in for a tag you have to put in every year and it takes like a few years so if you can hunt in this place you could probably only hunt here like every three years but there's other places like the nevada strip which is on the utah nevada border that is so awesome arizona strip i say nevada sorry arizona strip which is on the border of arizona and utah which is the most cherished

place for mule deer where you can only hunt there, like, once in your life, like, literally, it takes, like, 20 plus years to get a tag, like, area, I think it's, uh, 13B, yeah, so it's supposed to be the shed, so these places, um, it's not, there's not a lot of people there, like, we were, like, We saw a few people while we were there that were also hunting. Shout out to James Kawasaki who gave us some great tips. We met a really cool dude from Hawaii, James Kawasaki. We found him hunting up there, and he gave us some good tips about where to go. He's such a fucking good dude.

It's cool when you meet someone like that who's doing the same thing that you're doing and he was leaving when we were coming. And he was super generous. He wasn't a guy who was like not going to give you information. Which happens. Yes. Yeah, you get people that want to hoard their honey holes. But he gave us all this

information. So it still didn't help. That's probably why he gave us the information. He's like, bitch, you ain't going to kill kill anything so far this trip nevada folk have been incredibly generous he was generous and we're uh we're right behind a truck pulling a trailer but that belongs to ramey warren and his family and they just hooked us up with stuff a trailer two trucks it's really uh incredibly generous maybe that's the thing about nev. Maybe it's a big empty place but maybe everybody's really... I joke around about that place being a drug-addled shithole but I've met a lot of really nice people from Nevada.

I mean, it has a bad reputation because Vegas is linked to organized crime and gambling and all the other sordid shit that comes with that. People think of it as this horrible, sinful place. But that's just a small area of Nevada. Most of my friends that I know that live around Vegas, that are involved in the MMA business,

they're fucking the nicest people in the world. And they'll tell you, Nevada is, what's outside of the strip, it's a great town. Henderson? Henderson's a great town. Like, Henderson? Henderson's a great town. Yeah. It's a really nice place to live.

It's real safe. So there's a lot of good spots in Nevada. But, anyway, point being, we're out here in a, you know, it's just a really fascinating, interesting landscape to spend seven days. But bring a lot of fucking water that's for sure. I'm impressed that you haven't been in a landscape like this before. To me this is what the majority of the

American West looks like. It's brown and it's flat with bumpy mountains all over the place. Well, the first place that we hunted in Montana was a little like this. We were in the Missouri Breaks, which is right on the banks of the Missouri River, and that's how I got hooked.

Goddamn Steve Rinella. He was a little crack dealer with this hunting stuff. He gave me the first dose for free and then he got me but it's the same sort of feeling uh in the missouri breaks is that feeling of massiveness and also that you are completely insignificant invisible yeah the universe or the world the the natural world around you really doesn't give a fuck you could fall and and smash your head open on a rock, and those mule deer will bounce on by you like nothing happened. Yeah. It's just, it's amazing.

It's amazing like that. I think the place that sunk that in the most was probably Prince of Wales. So uninviting. Yeah. When we did that last guy. One of the harshest places I've been. I don't know, it's weird though because that one's like heaven and hell. Like the sun comes out and you don't want to be anywhere else but then most of the year when it is raining because it does

rain most of the year, it's just, it's fucking miserable. It rained every fucking day we were there. All day. And Dan Doty was warning us before we went. Dan was like, fuck that place. I don't want to go back to that place. And we went. Dan was like, fuck that place. I don't want to go back to that place. And Steve Rinell was like, why do you say that? I love that place. The place is awesome. I swore twice in my life I would not go back, and I broke that promise.

It is also just amazing. As far as the animals, both under the water and above the water, it's just a rich, rich environment. Well, and it's also super unusual, too. Like, the way it looks, it's a rainforest. It is a rainforest. Well, it's close. I don't think it's quite. Maybe parts of the island are.

I'd have to look that up. But it is a shit ton of water. Well, what is really cool about it, there's a lake at the top that's so high up that beavers don't go there so you can drink right out of the lake so we would take our water bottles and we just dip it in the lake and just drink right out of the lake so this place is almost the exact opposite of that whereas that place is all just rain and and lush greenery and the occasional sunshine pops through and you're like wow look at this place it shines like a green what an emerald yeah yeah there you go so would you rather get dropped off naked here or there

have to survive naked there there you'd probably make it better you wouldn't make it here naked your skin would peel off yeah you know there you could you would be cold as fuck until you figured out how to start a fire

or how to kill something and wear it's skin kill a bear yeah it'd have to be a large thing right yeah you'd have to kill

a bunch of squirrels and sew them together make a dick holster it's not a it's not not a lot of shit you can but and then again if you're just naked that means you don't even have a gun or a bow and arrow and that's not good none of those things are good but i think that prince of wales was like the most

profound of all the that experience like i felt it at the missouri breaks that that feeling of like just complete det not detachment but like it doesn't give a fuck that the landscape does not give a fuck it is just completely oblivious to your presence and it has existed in this form for thousands and thousands and thousands of years did you get that feeling here too yeah yeah yeah definitely i was curious because both of those hunts both missouri breaks and the alaska one were we're uh non-motorized you know so like missouri breaks we dropped the cars off and we voted and we're truly you know you call that a true wilderness experience and same thing with prince of wales that we got dropped off by a plane and if we needed to get out there and get a pinch you know, or get out of there in a pinch, it would have been.

So I was wondering if that was a little bit of the feeling you got. Yeah. Because there's a little bit more of an ominous set of situations. Yeah, here we had a truck that we would drive to the top of this hill and then from the top of the hill we walked. And fuck did we walk. Dan Doty and I walked up hills at 9,000 foot elevation, some steep fucking hills too. Hours and hours every day, dude, I was hurting. But it was great cardio

though. Awesome workout. Yeah, nothing like it, man. So you were telling me about these wilderness trips that you take people on, like wilderness therapy. Yeah, so my first job out of college, I'd been living in Panama with my ex-girlfriend. We were moving to Utah, and I just needed a job, and I didn't know what I was going to do. So I went on Craigslist, and we looked at the area around Salt Lake City, and there was a job advertisement for a wilderness guide or wilderness instructor, they called it. I didn't know this shit existed at that point. So, yeah, there's a huge industry, and most of it's in the western United States, but they're therapeutic wilderness programs which are tied to a bunch of therapeutic boarding schools.

bunch of therapeutic boarding schools. So in the most basic sense, there's kids from generally pretty wealthy families across the country that are having trouble. Their parents don't know what to do and they'll send them away, you know, as an intervention. And usually the intention is to have these kids go to a boarding school where there's a therapeutic presence also. But in order to get into those schools, those schools require a wilderness stay. So I worked for a program and went out there and just kind of, it was the type of program where everything was made by hand. So you got out there, you were given a half of an elk hide, you were given a knife, and then you were taught some of the basic skills.

So we had to make our own backpacks out of sticks and elk hide we would sew our own moccasins we would do all that kind of stuff and then we all the fire that we made we had to make by hand you know with a bow drill whoa so yeah so it was it was this amazing it was really life-changing for me because i you know i loved the outdoors i love the wilderness and all that kind of stuff, and I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, but got out to this place where there's, literally walked out into the, actually it looks a lot like this where I work, so just these massive brown, dry wilderness areas, and got out there in these groups of kids, some of these kids would stay in these programs for 90 to 120 days. So literally, and here's the part that I still very much don't agree with and I don't like, is that these programs would literally kidnap you out of your bed.

There's companies. Really? Yeah, man. Yeah. So there's like, you can do that for a job. You can be kind of a heavy or a tough guy that literally goes for an intervention, flies to a family's home, or a tough guy that literally goes for an intervention, flies to a family's home, takes the kid out of their bed and flies them and drops them in the middle of the wilderness. And it's, it's, uh, as you can imagine, it's traumatic, man.

It's, it's not like, you know, how old are these kids? Usually 14 to 19. Whoa. 19. That's an adult. Yeah. Well, that's where it gets sketchy as far. So that's sketchy. Maybe I should say 14 to 18. That's an adult. Yeah, well that's where it gets sketchy as far as That's sketchy as fuck.

Maybe I should say 14 to 18. That's an adult too. So they have ways to sort of override the age system at times. So these programs are meant to sort of give the kid a chance to

look at their lives, how they've been behaving, and an opportunity, just kind of like we were talking about, but reflect and sort of explore and learn. And there's a lot of good that happens. Like, it really does help people. And in my opinion, there's a lot of bad, too. I don't think you can ever imagine that you could literally kidnap a kid out of your house and not fuck up the trust you have with your parents. It's messed up. Yeah, but that's, so I did that for, I started there and then I started working in

more state run sort of correctional programs. So for a long time I led trips in Minnesota that were, it was a 21-day sentence, but it was basically an alternative to a 60-day juvie sentence. So basically, you steal a car, you can either go, the judge can either send you to juvie for 60 days or send them to me, and then we'd go on a badass, like, you know, 200-mile hiking trip or something. Wow, definitely take that over juvie. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, for obvious reasons, but then the other reasons, too, is that, you know,

these programs are generally run by really, like, grounded, good people that treat people well, at least the ones I always work for. I worked for programs with really, like, exemplary leadership. And, you know, I think what these kids could learn in those programs, as opposed to going to juvie and being in the shitholes that those are, it was a really much better option. Yeah, I would imagine that's a way, way better option, but just the kidnapping part is crazy.

They've given up on disciplining their kids so much that they just say, all right, I fucked up raising this kid. It's time to just electroshock therapy, jolt them with wilderness. Totally. Totally, man. And it's a long, slow, uncomfortable shock, man.

Like 120 days in the desert like this is oh my god so when you get these kids so like if they're kidnapped how many days into this kidnapping do you meet them well day one i mean they'll usually yeah so a lot of programs have kind of like a an in-between camp so you come in and maybe the first two weeks like a halfway house yeah yeah like a wilderness halfway house. Like a base camp, you know, where you learn how to do some of the skills and maybe you start. So the other thing is there's relationships

with a therapist at these programs, and that's how it works. So the people that work with the kids directly are like what I did as an instructor. So usually there'd be two of us, two adults, with a group of 10 kids. And it was all, all boys, usually segregated into, into male and female. So I pretty much just worked with dudes, um, for a long, long, long, long time. So it's the instructors would lead the days and you'd usually hike or float or whatever you're doing, you know, most of the day. And then you would run, you call them circles,

or like processing things where everybody would. Really, a lot of it came down to learning how to communicate and communicating honestly and openly. It's really good. Actually, I learned a lot by being there and doing it. But then once a week or twice a week, a therapist would drop in somehow magically and have therapy sessions with everybody.

Huh. So a therapist they didn't even know. Well, they developed a relationship with them, you know, and they'd work with them for, you know, three to four months that they were there. So they became a pretty, you know, usually they became pretty close with the therapist, too. So did that, did it stick with many of these kids? I have so many questions. Did it stick with them? I mean, how many of them, like, that experience actually changed their life?

So, yeah, good question. And I don't think anybody has the actual heart numbers on that. Maybe some people are looking to get that. They call that recidivism, right? Like, if you end up back in where you are. they call that recidivism right like if you end up back in where you are um i know for a fact that i i stay in contact with a ton of the kids that i worked with just because you know we got to know each other really well and respected each other and became friends and um i know i've seen the benefit almost across the board. Like good things learned,

a lot of growing up happened. It's kind of like a forced rite of passage in a sense. A forced rite. A forced rite of passage, which I don't agree with the forced part. I know a bunch of those kids. I could point to

12 right now that I know just kind of turned around. maybe went to college or didn't go to college but ended up having good relationships with their family uh are feeling good about life but then there's probably far far I know there's far more where that didn't necessarily happen I don't necessarily think it was a bad deal for them to go through that experience. But it's not a cure-all. But what it does, I think it self-selects for people who really do kind of want to figure shit out because it gives you a break and time to do that. But, yeah, no, I wish I had more numbers on it.

How much resistance did you experience? Like, when these kids would get kidnapped and all of a sudden they would come to you. Like, how many of them were like, fuck this, get me home, where's my mom? Many. I mean, yeah, I don't know, 30, 40, 50% of just, like, either shutting down completely and not complying with anything. Or, you know, direct sort of resistance or anger or things like that. Did most of those come around? What's that?

Did they come around? Oh, totally. Yeah. There's not, I, there's only a couple folks or a couple of dudes I ever knew that kept it up, you know, that kind of had the, had the stamina to keep that up. At some point it was, you know, it's just sort of like accepting the fact that you were there, you know? I mean, cause fuck man, you get, you get literally dropped in the middle of a desert,

and you're told you're going to be there for three months or four months. At some point, you either have to accept it. Well, not either. I think you just kind of got to face reality. Well, for someone who's on a fucked-up path, You kind of got to, you know, face reality. Well, for someone who's on a fucked up path, it really might be one of the only ways to correct it, to give yourself that chance. Like we were talking about being out there in the desert, in the high country, and you get kind of like a little bit of a reset. Like, you get to relax and be alone with your thoughts and just experience a completely different set of input, set of data than you're used to.

We're used to, like, certain kinds of data and input. And for a lot of these kids, they're used to hanging around with fuck-ups and being around their asshole friends and doing stupid shit together. And they get stuck in these patterns these grooves get cut deep and the momentum of their life and their past is incredibly difficult to escape so that's why i was really excited to hear about this when you're telling me about i was like oh that that might work like for some people right well and then you asked, so how many does it work for? One of the, um, the tougher things is that even if it does work, so say you're yanked out of your home and, uh, like you just said, so your, your home and your friends and your community has so much to do with, with how you end up interacting and what you do. So even if you

get sent away for four months or even years to these programs, and then you may change. Well, not even me. You will change, or a kid will. Someone will change. But then no matter how much you change, and you go back to that situation that you came from, the house, your family, just the culture that you're in,

God, is it hard to not slip back into old patterns, but then also even just to fit in. That's what I've been working with kids lately on, is that they go away and have these big experiences, and then they go home and mom and dad are still exactly how they were. As I try to be impartial, i don't think i'm good at being impartial but i tried looking and getting to know these kids and all the things that they went through it's so fucking hard not to point every finger at the family and the parents and you know what's hard is that the parents were raised by equally fucked up people so it's almost not even their fault no the the

line of blame if you want to do that can go back a really long to the monkeys from the trees if you believe in that yeah so that's the thing about a wilderness like a long intervention like that i think that's what i meant about self-selecting is it's possible for somebody who really wants to change stuff you know to change to change the momentum you know, to change the momentum of your family, to change the momentum of your past. It takes a lot of energy to do it. It takes, like, a lot of dedication, a lot of letting go of a bunch of stuff. But it really is a pretty amazing thing to be a part of it.

And that kind of experience does facilitate that sort of thing if one wants to. But then, like I said, once you get home, it's not like it gets easier. But you certainly can grow a lot and you can change a lot. It's almost like we need that for parents too. Yeah, man. Yeah, totally. I agree. I mean, parenting is very bizarre.

It's sort of incredibly complicated complicated very difficult to do and it's an unbelievably huge responsibility to be in charge of the really the future of a life and all the people that life is going to touch so if you're used your son is going to grow up and all the things that you teach him and all the people that life is going to touch. So if your son is going to grow up and all the things that you teach him and all the experiences that he has with you will reflect on how he interacts with other people and that ripple effect carries on

to thousands and millions of people potentially. It's incredibly... It's so much responsibility. And it's incredibly difficult to do correctly. And there's no fucking... There's requirements anybody could do it i mean it's like one of the most important things in the world is to raise a person that's going to affect other people in a positive way and it's so fucking hard to do so hard to do and yet so easy to be in that position. All you have to do is fuck. Yeah, man. And everybody fucks. No, I can't stop thinking about it. My, you know, my boy was born two

months ago, my first kid. And I feel all of a sudden saddled with this responsibility. Not, it actually just goes, it's going beyond him. I feel like, yeah, I just like, I feel so much less of a narcissist than I ever have, man, just that it's not about me, and I need to clean my shit up, I need to, you know, get my act together to give him as good of an example as I possibly can, you know? Yeah. I think that, and I don't know, you know, I'm a very new dad. I don't know this, but I think one of the best things that we could do as a people, as a culture, is for, yeah, for parents who are put in that position with all that responsibility

to somehow look at themselves real hard and take that time to, I don't know the best way to put it, but just improve themselves rather than trying to figure out don't know the best way to put it, but just improve themselves. Rather than trying to figure out how to parent a certain way or parent better, I really think the best thing we can do is just be better people, be better humans ourselves. That's a very good point. That's a very good point. Lead by example. You know, that was when I used to teach Taekwondo, one of the things that they would call you, the term that the Koreans use is sabumnim. And it was one who leads by example. That was the idea behind it, behind being an instructor.

And to be a parent that leads by example, I mean how or sometimes some people learn a lot from parents being a fuck-up totally like i know a lot of people's parents were fucking losers and they're just go get them so they just get shit done and they hustle because their parents were drug addicts or alcoholics or jailbirds or whatever the fuck it was and they just felt the pain of their their family being awful totally but that's not a good bet well i mean that's learning from experience or learning by example too you know i think you can either accept and love with what your parents do or reject it or you know something in the middle i don't know but so i that's what i learned so i worked with with young guys between the ages of 14 and then toward the end of when i did that work i would

i do more specialty work so i do like one-on-ones so one time i did a 55 day wilderness trip with one kid just him and i that was the entire thing but what i learned was that like 55 days with one kid so he was amazing so it was fucking fantastic it was amazing he loved to work out so um he was he was a good kid man he was like 19 or 20 and just not sure about college not sure what to do did they kidnap him he knew he was coming because he was an adult he was legally an adult right um and the first day he showed up and i remember he said you know what i'm gonna pretend like i'm gonna be here until i die he had this really interesting perspective he's like i he's like i know this is gonna be long it's gonna suck so i'm just gonna sort of you know just not count days i'm not gonna like

count my time or whatever. Um, but he was awesome. So he was really into lifting weights and stuff. And I was at the time. And so we would do pushups. One day we did, I think we hiked like 14 miles and did 1400 pushups or something like that. Like we would do sets of 15. Trying to blow shoulders out? It was so fun. Well, I was going to say is that what I learned from working with kids so much is that example thing. There's nothing to compare to that as far as what people or kids or guys especially will respond to is that example.

Right. You can tell them, I mean, kids, they catch bullshit the fucking second it comes out of your mouth. catch bullshit the fucking second it comes out of your mouth. You know, if you're saying one thing, but you're not living it, if you're not being honest, if you're not being real about yourself, it doesn't, it doesn't work. So, I mean, I think that that was a real, you know, and I did this for five or six years and I spent probably six, 700 days out doing this. And, um, I came back from that experience just seeing this huge gap in our culture about role models and mentors and just regular relationships that seem pretty natural and pretty normal. I would get into a group of these kids and there would be something there. They would recognize something in me and i'd recognize something in them and it's just a really cool thing to be a part of

you know um what did you guys do for 55 days in the woods other than so we would hike a lot most of the day right we would hike probably 8 to 15 camping yeah yeah backpacking wow backpacking up on the shores of lake superior so there's, it's called the Superior Hiking Trail, it's a 200 plus mile footpath that goes in the hills and mountains, like over Lake Superior. So yeah, man, we would hike, we'd swim in the lake. At that point in time, I had this idea that I was going to ask my girlfriend to marry her, so I was looking for, there's agates, these little jewels, stones, in all the rivers. So we'd spend a lot of time looking for stones and I don't know, man, just hanging out, you know, really. And pushups. And pushups.

A lot of pushups. Wow. And so a lot of conversations about the future, about life, about how to change your path. Yeah. Yeah. Some of that. Um, and then a lot of times, a lot of silence too, man, you know, we weren't going to talk 60 hours a day at all. Right. You know, it'd just be too much. But yeah, he, he ended up doing great, man. I think, I think he's off kind of killing it in life right now. Wow. But that's an extreme, you know, that's an extreme you know that's an extreme example so now how is this organized as his parents were like hey fuck up time to put you in the woods yeah yeah wow and so they had heard about it and they they just felt like that would

be a chance for him to break his pattern sure exactly yeah it's interesting like there's there was a generally uh like different categories of kids who would come to these places. So you'd have your drug abuser, sort of out of control kid. You'd have your internet addicted, slightly softer guy that was socially awkward. Sometimes we had emotional outbreaks. They kind of broke, you know, into categories. But honestly, the thing is, the cool thing about spending that much time with people is that, you know, like, it doesn't take long to see through those behaviors to really seeing a good kid. I've worked with

hundreds if not thousands of kids and maybe one, one, I can only think of one that I don't think was like somebody I would go have a beer with or hang out with today, you know. Like they're good kids. They're really good. They're great human beings. They're just either in shitty circumstances or made a lot of bad decisions or just were confused. I mean, whatever, you know. I think I could have ended up there easy if I would have gotten busted in high school for a bunch of drinking and partying. Well, especially if you were born into the household that they were born into. Yeah.

One of the big things, obviously, about life is that you can't pick your parents. No. And you can't pick your neighborhood that you grew up in. You don't have a say until you're an adult. Yeah, that's what we were talking about yesterday. So after I did the wilderness stuff, I went and I became a high school teacher in the Bronx. I was part of the New York City Teaching Fellowship Program. So basically they give you a free master's if you teach for a couple years in, you know, high-need areas.

So I was an English teacher at this really cool school in the southeast Bronx for a couple years. And, you know, just that was the most challenging and probably rewarding thing that I've ever done. And really, so a lot of the, so first I worked with mostly wealthy kids at some of these private pay wilderness programs. And then I did a lot of stuff for correctional stuff. So that was rural poor, you know, that was a lot of kids from reservations and just sort of, no offense, but white trash type kids. And then I moved to the inner city and worked there. So I got a good spectrum on working with different kids.

And it really just ended up that I kind of liked them all, you know. They're just fucking people, good human beings. But what you're saying, yeah, you can't pick where you're from, man. And you can't argue how big of a difference that makes. It's giant. It's almost everything in terms of your future, you know. And so many people don't realize that. A lot of times the really fortunate ones don't realize it

because they just think that everybody's got it like this or they just think that, well, my life's hard too. You know, my life was only challenging in that we moved around a lot. Like, my mom and my stepdad were really nice people. Got lucky, you know. They weren't fuck-ups. They weren't assholes. They didn't, you know, they didn't beat me and torture me. You just hear such such horrible horrible stories of what parents do to their children and you know you got to wonder what their parents did to them that started this whole path this almost like unstoppable force momentum yeah but some of the things you were telling me

about the the poor kids that you worked with like Like, yeah, so one of the kids that, just this amazing, light-filled kid, you know, comes, I don't remember how it happened, I think he came into school one morning, and, you know, his dad had bashed his skull in with a baseball bat. Just, I think he got drunk and got angry and just beat the fuck out of him. I remember that morning feeling just so hopeless and just like, you know, nothing I could do to protect this kid.

Like, I could be the best teacher, I could be the best role model and friend of this guy that I ever could be, but every night he has to go back into this just unimaginable, horrible place, you know? And it's insidious. There's a lot of weird ways it comes out to. Another student of mine, a girl, her mom would basically tell her that she was always sick. There's a name for this. There's like a condition, I don't remember, but where a parent needs their kids to be around so much for their own well-being somehow. They turn them into a hypochondriac?

Yeah, yeah. Have you heard of this? No. Yeah, there's a name for it. I can't remember it right now. Weird shit, man. Just weird stuff, and you know, I think there's so many people that are working so hard to do good things for, for people in, in harder circumstances,

and it's, it's like an overwhelming force, it's, it's so hard, and I, but here's the thing, I've seen it, like, I've seen a bunch of those kids that I, that I taught, and so I taught in a school where I was their only teacher. It's kind of almost like a kindergarten model for high school, right? And all the learning was based on projects they did and they had internships. So they didn't go from math to English to science and all that. We just worked one-on-one and they tried, you know, kind of worked on everything at all times. And, uh, so, you know, they were my students for two entire years, and the amount of time we spent together was just really intense, and we got very close.

I'm losing my train of thought, but yeah, so there's a lot of people trying to do good things, but it is that home life or that cultural pull trajectory, I don't know. I don't know what the... I don't know how to combat it. Well, one of those programs, like the one that you were involved in, might be one of the only ways to do it, or a program like that.

Something that's going to give them individualized attention and let them know, hey, there might be a light at the end of this tunnel. There might be a way out of this. There's nice people out there like Dan Doty that are going to help you out. He recognizes that there's people out there that need help. But they're filled with that shit every day too, man.

They're told that by people. It is interesting because I was born in North Dakota and I'm about as white as you could ever be and my my students who act so i mean just for facts so like the school um i worked at the bronx completely segregated and was completely black and latino uh with you know mexican and dominican and puerto rican and black and not a single white kid in the entire school. Like, it's just not that way.

And so there's immediately this odd dynamic for me to go and teach in a location like that, that there is a racial dynamic present, no matter what. Like, my kids would tease me about how white I was all the time. And, you know, it was great. And we got past any racial barriers, or at least most racial time and you know it was great and we we got past any racial barriers or at least most racial barriers you know we were able just to see each other as human beings and work together

that way but so there is a lot of they get what you just said they get a lot of people telling them that all the time that there's a light at the end of the tunnel there's there's options you know you can you can take a hold of this life but but that's just words sometimes to kids yeah just lip service you know yeah and they hear that before like you got to get good grades or you got to go to college to get a good job they hear all these things that don't seem to resonate no because it's disconnected from the experience of life right so i can go in there and say that and i went to college and i had a good safe childhood and in a safe place and i can see that but it doesn't fucking mean anything because they go home and it's not safe it's just not and i think that's what it comes down to more than anything it's

people are in a state of fight or flight constantly because it's it's really is a safety thing it's yeah yeah i mean it's like remember when r Rinello was talking about those deer today? He was like, the deer, a jackrabbit runs in front of the deer and the deer leaps up like someone hit it with an electric shock. Yeah. Like, they're constantly on, they're constantly on guard. And that happens also with children. Yeah. And, you know, I, I've talked about this before, I had a feral cat.

And that fucking cat was wild to the day he died. I had him when he was a baby. I got him when he was a kitten. He was only a couple months old. But it was already too late. He was fucking wild. He was just, in his mind, everything was out to get him. Yeah, I mean, and I can't officially say this because i haven't studied it officially but i think that there are you know versions if you call it psp i'm sorry ptsd or just stuck in the

state of hypervigilance whatever it is it's just coming from a place that's not safe a place that's fucked up and to be expected to to be able to overcome that without any real time or assistance at work is really unreasonable, I think. It's just really not like, you can't just decide. Right. Because it's your body, it's somatic, you know? It's like it's in you, maybe it's your mind, maybe it's your body, maybe it's both. But it's not like you can just say, okay, I don't want to do this anymore. It's far more deep than that. It's far more complicated than that. Yeah, it's a battleship that's moving 100 miles an hour

and you're expected to turn on a dime. It's not going to, there's a lot of weight and momentum behind that past. I was talking to Michael Irvin once. I was on a flight with him, just randomly, and it was all the way to Australia once. I was on a flight with him, just randomly. And it was all the way to Australia, so it was a long ass time. And he and I were talking about work that he's been doing with some young kids that come from troubled houses and troubled backgrounds as well. And he was telling me that when a child is in the womb and the mother is experiencing intense stress from violence, from crime, bad neighborhoods, that kind of shit, uh, domestic abuse, that kind of thing, that the child grows up with more of a propensity for violence. Like that,

that violence becomes like almost in their DNA as a response to any perceived threat, whether it's real or not. And we have to understand that these children, they're being wired for violence. They're wired to deal with bad neighborhoods, bad situations, crime. And it's literally a part of their genetics. It's in them.

It's their DNA almost almost or it is you know so this the republican you know white conservative idea that people need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps which is you know the cliche right they need to get their shit together my god is it more complicated than that? It is, man. But so here's the, here's the interesting thing is I, I do think that I actually agree with that in a different way. I think that you could never expect anybody else to do any of that. Like the way it is, you're born and raised in the way you are. And then at some point you fully have to take responsibility for that. You know, no matter how shitty or great your childhood was, no matter what you're dealing with,

I think that there is no one else that's going to do it for you. So I really do think that there is a piece of truth in what they're saying. I just don't think that that general mindset is nuanced or understanding enough of what people are working with that they're unrealistic about yeah yeah they might just be like well what's conveniently aloof you know they're conveniently ignorant about the circumstances that are involved in creating a child that grows up and has been in juvenile detention since they were a little kid and has been in and out of all sorts of police custody

and been in crime situations from the time they were young. To say that you need to just straighten your act up, like, they don't have any examples. The examples that they see on TV might as well be them watching Iron Man. You know, it doesn't seem real. It's not real. No, and that's an issue I have with that whole debate or political discussion or however you want to put it. Is that, to me, it's only they're talking about a situation and never is the actual conversation being had. You know, conversation between people who it actually affects is rarely brought out,

and it's just a bunch of people looking at things from the outside and commenting and talking about it, not actually digging into it. And it just doesn't really serve anybody. I don't feel like it serves anybody. Yeah, and it's also very dismissive. It's very dismissive of other people's misfortune and not really appreciating or understanding your fortune you know we're all born into totally different circumstances for the most part and most of us

here in america we were talking about this yesterday that people that are in this country are so much more fortunate than someone who's born in some, you know, terrible third world situation. Like we were talking about Liberia. Yeah. The reality of Liberia, which is a former prison, not prison colony, slave colony. What they did was they took American slaves that were released and they shipped them back to Africa, literally, and created this horrible, horrible environment through a bunch of different factors,

but civil war being a big one of them. And Vice has this really insightful and amazing piece on Liberia. I think it's Vice Guide to Travel. Oh, my God, is it awful. But you can't say that being born to a blue-collar, white family in Cleveland is anything remotely as bad as being a child born in Liberia. You just can't. And then looking at that person, the child who was born in Cleveland,

I'm sure there's a lot of kids that are born there that wish, fuck, why couldn't I have been born in New York City? Or fuck, why couldn't I have been, you know. It's just, again, it comes back to what you were saying about being a dad. And the responsibility of being a good person and being a better person. Is that making and developing human beings and creating a community together with these human beings is so incredibly difficult. And we're handed this responsibility with no instruction manual no that's the thing no good leadership no instructions no you're right man well i think

some good leadership guys like you or some other folks out there that are doing similar things that you can find you know but man if you don't find them fuck yeah once one thing i think it's really important that you're kind of hitting out there or saying is there's like a big leap to go from the place of blaming others and just feeling like oh my shitty

look what I was hitting it was really shitty it's a big leap to go beyond that and accept it first of all no matter what it is that you got going on in your life. And then, even a bigger leap, I think, to start taking responsibility for both yourself and other people, you know?

I think that's what is, not that it's missing because it's out there, but I just think it could be, like, we got time in our lives, you know? Like, we're doing okay in general in this country. I think we could take more time for each other in that way, just across the board. Whether that's in our schools or whatever it is, I don't know. I don't have the answers, but. Well, you have some answers, and I think you've got some great ideas. great ideas, but I think one of the things that we talked about yesterday was the amount of children that you had communicated with, that you had taught, that found themselves

in these horrific situations that you had a kind of experience with them. And I think that human beings today, at some point in time, we have to realize that we are some sort of a super organism. We are all connected. And if this kid who grows up in this horrible environment and is just abused and subject to all sorts of violence, that kid's going to go perpetuate more of the same if no one steps in. If no one offers some solid example that you can do better. Like, some sort of,

just some pathway through the bullshit. And bullshit's not a strong enough word. Yeah, and for me, like, so I've spent a lot of time thinking about and reading about and studying sort of both rites of passage in different parts of the world, but then also just this really simple concept of mentoring or mentorship or role models. And I think I got real lucky. Like, not only did I have a good family and good parents, like amazing parents, I had this, like like string of role models that I had from little

kids. So we've talked about this briefly before, but my first one was my Taekwondo instructor when I was a kid, Master Mike, you know, like he was just, I was super shy, super like very soft as a kid. And then this dude in a sports car drove into Drayton, North Dakota, and I started taking Taekwondo with him and, and he was just this, you know, badass, brash, strong, confident guy, and man, I looked up to him, like I attribute a lot of my, the quality, the good qualities I value about myself, both to him and to Taekwondo itself, because it teaches, I think it teaches great things to kids, and so he was a mentor, and then in high school, I had this farmer.

I worked on a pig farm. His name is John Wiersma. And he didn't talk about shit. He didn't fill me full of wisdom. What we did was just work together. We worked side by side. We shoveled pig shit and dumped it on the field over and over and over. And I went to college.

I had this great mentor who sort of non you know, nonchalantly took me under his wing and kind of on and on throughout my life, man. And I don't know. I've spent a lot of time thinking about it and I really, I just really wish that for people or want that for people, you know, because you can't rely on your parents to give you everything you need in this life. It's just, it's too much pressure. Well, also, I think, well, as we were talking about earlier, their parents didn't know what the fuck they were doing, and their parents' parents didn't know what the fuck they were doing. And for a lot of us, that's the reality that we find ourselves being born into.

But I think with doing some of the things that you've done and you know also with the amount of data and information that's available today i think we have a chance of affecting our society and our culture and the way we communicate with each other and just just who who we are as a as a species crazy, weird superorganism of human beings. We're in a better position to change that than ever before. Like, my grandparents came over from Italy and Ireland on a fucking boat. Nobody knew what the hell was going on. Their parents didn't know shit when they brought them over here.

They just heard there was a better chance. There was an opportunity. I mean, they might have saw a photo of what New York looked like, you know? They might have. And they took a chance and they came over here. The difference between them and the kind of experience and the kind of

access to information that your children are going to have, or my children are going to have, is fucking profound. Yeah, man. I think we're a part of something that's really interesting right now, in that the human race is becoming hyper-aware of all the variables that are fucking it up. And one of the big ones, of course, is the abuse and mishandling and misraising of children. Yeah, man.

So, yeah, to that point, there's this thing that I've been paying attention to that I think is happening. So as we have more information and as things happen faster, as all of this compounds and things go faster, faster, faster, I think that the impact of slowing down becomes very, very valuable very, very quickly. So, you know, we're talking about all these wilderness experiences. I also bring up, like, meditation or any of these things. I think that as other things speed up, I think that these things, like,

have the power to just smack you across your face and, like, change things fast, you know? And I don't know if this has just just been observation for 10 years or so but i think that uh you know 150 years ago or whatever in the west united states if we had slow lives i don't think we would have had a huge impact by going and camping for a week but today when you're pulled out of your crazy digital electronic life and you go back and you feel that human simplicity for a little bit of time i think the combination of the two offers a really powerful place a really crazy because if you can get that awareness and sort of that the impact of slowing down yeah compounded with all of the information and the power and everything that we have

i think it's i think so i think we're on the verge or a very ripe place. I think it's a, it's a time where, um, you know, people can, can really change themselves a lot quicker or maybe even a lot more than they think is. That's another thing I would love for people just to think or believe that things could be different, that they could change, you know, because I, I mean, that's what I've been involved in for so long and it's just, they could change, you know. Because, I mean, that's what I've been involved in for so long, and it's just, it is possible, you know. Well, I think also any kind of a trip, whether it's a meditative trip or even just a camping trip or something where you have that opportunity

to sort of reset and reassess, it gives you sovereignty. It gives you personal sovereignty. Instead of just being caught up in the momentum. A buddy of mine, my friend Ari Shafir, again, bringing him up again, was with another buddy of mine, Big Jay Oakerson. And they were watching this couple make out through a window. They were doing a podcast. And they were on the roof, and they were watching this couple through the window.

This couple were making out. And then in the middle of making out, they start checking their phones. I mean, this is what's going on today. That's kind of sad. It's kind of sad, but maybe have the ability to decide what you take in and what you don't take in. I think that's the... We're passing the wildlife viewing area. Doesn't look too wild.

I think they're talking about the humans that live here. In the middle of nowhere. Yeah, I think it's kind of a supercharged time for that, man. And it's cool to see people literally change their lives. One other thing I'm involved in is I started a men's group in Bozeman, where I live in Montana, and I've been a part of men's groups for a while, probably six or seven years. I think it's something that's really not understood or really not even known about,

but really all it is is a group of guys who get together to really practice being completely real. And really clear all the bullshit out of the way. And it's been incredibly helpful for me. Where was I going with that? Oh yeah, but just that I've been party or privy to so many people. Just sort of like just changing like you know being a lot more fucking happy and a lot more productive and i think it's easy to get stuck in thinking that things just are how they are and the sovereignty is huge man that's the biggest thing like owning what you feel owning what you want owning who you

are all of that well it's also a lot of times people, they get out of high school. They go into college. They get out of college. They get a job. They get a job. They start their career. They push forth in their career. And before they know it, they're fucking 40 years old.

And they can't stop the momentum of their life. And they're not enjoying it. No, they're desperate, dude. They're quiet. They're quietly desperate. Yeah, wasn't that Thoreau? Yeah. Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.

Exactly. It's such a great fucking quote. So why aren't we teaching every 17-year-old kid who's coming out of high school, like, hey, that's probably your future, you know, once you get on top of this. Well, you know how you teach people that? Like this. Yeah. They listen to podcasts. Yeah. They listen to podcasts.

Yeah. They hear people talk. They realize that their parents didn't have any fucking awesome information. You know, and look, a lot of parents, they mean the right thing when they tell them, get a good job. Don't take any chances. You know, well, y'all, you got a dream, huh? Yeah, well, the dreams don't pay the bills.

Right. They don't, they're not doing that because they're assholes for the most part. They're doing that because that's been their experience and their life and they don't want their kid to be a fucking idiot. Yeah. And they don't, they don't understand. They don't, they don't know. Yeah, so listen up, fuckers. Like, look around.

Look around. listen up fuckers like look around look around and notice how many adults either have shitty lives they don't like or are like going through massive amounts of self-help or therapy or all these things at old ages and not you know what do you think antidepressants come from yeah do that many people have broken brains or is there i'm not denying that there's most certainly quite a few people that have natural chemical imbalances and pharmaceutical drugs can benefit them. That's true, absolutely, no doubt about it. But I know for a fact there's a lot of people who get medicated because they fucking hate their lives.

Instead of picking a life that you enjoy or working towards developing your life into something that you'd enjoy. You know, and one of the, some of the most satisfying email and Twitter tweets, tweeters, tweet messages and Facebook things that I've ever gotten is people that have listened to this podcast and said, you know what? I realized I am 36 and I, I've always wanted to do this and I'm going to quit my fucking job and I'm going to figure out how to do that. Yeah. I'm going to work towards that. I'm going to save up some money And I'm going to quit my fucking job, and I'm going to figure out how to do that. Yeah.

I'm going to work towards that. I'm going to save up some money. I'm going to fucking, whatever it is, I'm going to make pottery. I'm going to start fucking selling my paintings. Whatever the fuck it is, everybody's got a thing. And if you don't have a thing, find a fucking thing. But you can't think that that whole, like, work, get a good job, get your benefits, and don't do anything stupid because you don't want to get fired. That life is bullshit.

That is a bullshit life. Totally. If you've got a good job that you enjoy, that's a great life. And then your job doesn't feel like a job. I mean, even though it can be challenging and difficult, if you can find something you actually enjoy doing, your life will be immeasurably better than if you're just grinding it out, waiting for that 5 o'clock fucking buzzer to come. Right.

The way I like to talk about it, though, that I think is a really important difference, is to be descriptive rather than prescriptive. Because if you try to force yourself into, if you're trying to be descriptive rather than prescriptive because if you try to force yourself into if you're trying to be joe rogan or if you're trying to be anybody else out there or you want that life like like good luck with that in the long run like i feel like you have to sink into yourself and just actually fucking be who you are like that it's hard to find though right it is hard to find who you are it totally is but that's hard to find who you are. It totally is. But I think that's your job. Until you are who you are, that's your job.

And along the way, don't be embarrassed if you're pretending to be somebody else. Because I think we all did that. When you're trying to find yourself. Totally. I mean, I most certainly have been massively influenced by a lot of people that I respected and listened to them or watched them or saw their work or whatever it is, that's okay. You know, as long as you eventually figure out who you are. And it'll kind of happen to you before you even know it.

Like, when I was young, man, I always, I never felt very secure. And I always was like, God, I wish I could fucking be someone like all these people that I admire. I wish I could figure out how to be me instead of wishing I was all these other people. And somewhere along the line, it's just kind of, if you pursue what you actually enjoy, it kind of happens. Totally. But it's not an easy process. And it's a process of self-reflection and you've got to be honest. And that's where these moments that you're talking about, like meditative moments or moments where you can go to the mountains and be by yourself

those moments are huge because they give you this opportunity to maybe examine your ideas a little more closely instead of just constantly being just inundated with other people's opinions about what you should have your own experiences man you got do. You've got to have your own experiences, man. You've just got to live and you've got to experience as much. That's what I think. You've got to experience as much as you can, whether that's a trip around the world or traveling or to a different place or a hallucinogenic experience done in a safe way or whatever it is.

I just feel like you've got to, yeah, to find yourself, you've got to test the waters. You gotta you gotta test the waters you gotta test the waters all over the place and if you're born in this fucking town that we're driving through good luck in and out cash payday loans man i grew up in a place way smaller and shittier than this really look at you dan dodie you made it through 600 people 600 how many of them you fucked uh we left we left when I was in sixth grade, so unfortunately zero. You didn't fuck any of them, huh? No, unfortunately not. Probably better off that way. Once you fuck people, they think you owe them something. Jesus,

can't you just leave me alone? Whoa, buddy. Whoa, dude. You got to let shit out of here. I got super lucky, man. So yeah, I grew up in a tiny little place 10 miles from the Canadian border in North Dakota. Just like nothing going on, you know? Look at this place. Gasoline Alley Speedway Casino. There's a casino in there. That's a casino and a 24-hour gas station.

Fuck. You're going to hit it big there. Yeah. Cash loans on car titles. That's the fucking title of the goddamn store. Cash loans on car titles. How many people have given up their cars here for a loan? Is this Fallon? I don't know. Let's not even say what it is. Oh, okay. Poor bastards. Wherever this is. Look at this. Stockman's Casino. Spin and Win Saturdays.

Come play. Yeah. A lot of people here. Cigarette smoking going on there. A lot of cigarette smoking. A lot of people here can describe what a gun tastes like in your mouth. I bet it doesn't taste good. It doesn't taste good.

But it seems like if you know that that's a possibility. What a strange place this is. There's a lot of these places that we drove through. Like, how about that one wild west town that was established in 1865? I don't remember the name of it. But they had the old buildings there that were there from 1865 that were in ruins in various state of disarray and decay. Surrounded by these more new modern ruins that people were living in. Yeah, the old ones look nicer than the new ones.

Yeah, they did. Because they got something. There's some glass. Yeah, they did, because they got something. There's some glass. That's weird about, like, mobile homes and, like, really shitty aluminum siding and stuff. You know no one's ever going to be pumped to find that someday. No.

You mean like 100 years from now or 1,000 years from now? Like, if you find an old barn, like that old barn that we were passing, that little shack or whatever the fuck it was, that cool old cabin of distressed wood. You look at that and you go, wow, that's kind of badass. No one's going to look at some shitty old aluminum-sided, fucked-up house. So what you're saying is quality spans time. That American flag is a little too big for my liking, and it's at half-mast. Did somebody die while we were in the woods? I'm sure a lot of people die while we were in the woods? Some shit go down?

I'm sure a lot of people died when we were in the woods. But when a flag's at half mast, that's what it means, right? Yeah, something must have happened. We missed something. We probably don't know a lot of fucking things that went down for seven days. That's gotta be a good thing. We know that two Olympic swimmers got robbed at gunpoint in Brazil.

Way to go. Do you feel better knowing that, though? No. No. No. I feel like, I feel better that I was in the woods and I wasn't in a cab in Brazil with a gun pointed at my head. Poor bastards.

But, no, I mean, there's a lot of, we have to, look, we should know that that's possible and that people can get robbed. Like, when you hear about terrible things in the world, the good news or the good fact about that is now you know those things without having, it's not like you live your life in some sort of a Mormon missionary factory and then they send you out there to the awful parts of the world and all of a sudden, you know, you're in some third world country and you don't realize it's being run by a brutal dictator, and what's a dictator? Like, you know, North Korea? What is it? Like, it's good to know that North Korea is out there. There are some Kim Jong-un type dudes in the world.

Have you ever been robbed? Yes, when I was little, when I was a kid. Not a long time, and definitely not at gunpoint. I got in the wrong cab once on the border of Ecuador and Peru, and got stuck up. Got like, they call it soft kidnap, where this other dude got in the back of the taxi, and they started driving out in the jungle. Oh, shit. Asking me questions about politics and my family and all this stuff. Oh, my God.

I didn't really know. I was down there learning Spanish. I didn't know it very well yet. And I basically said, listen, guys, I fucking got nothing. I had like 40 bucks. Right. So they drove me to an ATM. And I think I got like 80 bucks more out of them.

Or out, and they gave it to them and then ran. Like fucking just took off. Wow. It was pretty sketchy. That's another thing that happened in brazil recently a brazilian jiu-jitsu student from australia i believe was out there he got kidnapped by these cops cops took him to two atm machines and made him withdraw money yeah yeah cops cops yeah fuck man you want to trust him but you know what man it's like again what the fuck happened to them what happened what happened to these people that are robbing these people something bad something it's not necessarily 100 their fault that that's who they've become

i'm not taking away ownership of their own actions, but you've got to think about the development of their ideas, how it happened. I had this friend of mine on the podcast recently, and he was talking about, he grew up in, his name is Byron Bowers, and he grew up in a really poor area of Georgia, And a lot of crime where he was. It was just a lot of, like, really fucked up family environments. And he was saying that when we thought about, like, robbing something, like going to a store and stealing something, we didn't think it was a bad thing.

We just think that's how you get it. That's how you get things. You got to go get it. You got to go steal. And that it was just, that's what you grew up. Now, he's a successful comedian. He's doing well. And it's like, he can step back and have the

hindsight vision of his current state and, like, realize, like, oh, that was why I thought that way. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm sure these guys that robbed you, I mean, they didn't have a fucking pretty upbringing. There was nothing.

It's not like they went from a gated community to robbing people in Peru. No, it's not like they were doing it because they were just morally poor people, you know? Right. I mean, I don't think so. Maybe they were, but what made them that way? Yeah, sure. I mean, think about your own little boy. He's two months old.

I mean, you get to shape what that boy becomes as he becomes a man. And someone did that to the guy who robbed you in Peru. That's how it goes. It really sort of highlights the bizarre nature of humans raising humans. We should really be raised by robots. We should? Yeah, someone should come along and just make the perfect human raiser.

No, obviously not. I'm sure you're going to do a great job, but for people whose parents are going to do a shitty job, I wonder if they're going to come up with technology one day, and I think they will, that will be able to install better memories and a better pattern

of behavior into a person's brain like almost like they're going to be able to defrag your hard drive sure you mean just like with a click of a switch yeah like hook you up to me like say if somebody gave you a computer right but it has a virus on it's all fucked up every time you check your email it sends you dick pictures and takes you to russian escort sites you're like motherfuckers, what'd you do to my phone? Your, your, your computer, your computer's fucked, right? It's doomed. But if you bring it down to the computer store, the guy can go, Oh, you got a virus. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to, we're going to wipe your hard drive clean, reinstall your operating system, and then I'll back up your crucial files and add them later.

Yeah, sure. That's, that got to be the future of human beings. I think you're totally right, but I think that there's some things that are acting in that way already. One of them is participate in your child's life, even if it's uncomfortable. That's it, man. What the fuck is that? They're sharing the message. No, they're sharing the message.

I know, but what is that? If it's uncomfortable, even if it's uncomfortable, that's a billboard here in the middle of nowhere. Participate in your child's life, even if it's uncomfortable, that's a billboard here in the middle of nowhere. Participate in your child's life even if it's uncomfortable. Who the fuck sees that billboard and goes, you know what? I'm going to stop ignoring my kids and doing meth. I'm going to participate even if it's uncomfortable because I need my meth. Well, fuck, man. If that sign makes it happen for one fucking kid, then thanks for that.

You're right. So I was saying, there's a lot of recent research and study that has happened specifically with PTSD and in that realm that shows how memories and our experiences when we're young and older, how they truly are

stored in our body and that there are techniques available now that truly can unlock and free those. And it's not psychology in the sense of just talk therapy or just figuring things out or analyzing anything. It's much more uh body body based so the idea is that if there's an experience that happens the natural human range is to if it's overwhelming right you fight you run or flight or you freeze and it's the freezing that these people will argue that things literally get like locked and etched into your bodies,

either your cells or your musculature, I don't know, wherever it is. But that through processes of awareness and relaxation and being able to go into that, you really can open and release a lot of that. So it's not an automatic hit a button, defrag the entire thing. But there are things that people do that truly work in that way and in that direction. And it's not mainstream at all. I think it will be one day. I actually really think it will be.

But I think that there's proof now that things are more malleable. Our memories are more malleable. Our sort of set patterns, although they're very firm, can be shifted. I think there's a lot of hope in that. I think it's really cool. I don't feel like that's an accepted viewpoint at this point. Well, I think it's being more and more accepted, and I think people are understanding now more and more that there's a method that the human mind has sort of undergone in order to take these memories in in the first place.

And if there's a way to re-examine those initial ideas and form new ideas based on better data and a better understanding of how your actual, your mind works. Very few people know how their mind works. They just know that I get mad when this happens. Sure. Or this pisses me off. of how your actual your mind works very few people know how their mind works they just know that i get mad when this happens sure this pisses me off and you know what one thing that's a a beautiful idea that has been going around is look at something when it happens and decide how to make that a positive for you and decide how to give that a positive for you and decide how to give that thing meaning.

Because nothing truly has any meaning other than the meaning that you give it. And the meaning that I might have to something might be very different than you would have for the exact same experience. And we don't even know who's right or wrong until you look at where that path takes you. And I might look and go, you know what? Dan Doty was right. I should have just let that brush off my shoulders.

Look, he did, and now he's doing great. Me, I'm still carrying around that one fucked up experience. I mean, there's people that are still repeating arguments that they had in the ninth grade while they're in their car. They're sitting there going, this motherfucker thinks he can get away with that? I'll kick his ass. I'm going to go fucking fucking find him right now did you say that to my girl yeah you know there's a lot of a lot of stuff that we carry around in our brains and we don't know why it's even there it's just bouncing around and you got to do a cleanup like a defrag yeah i think one of the best like tools to begin that entire process is simple mindfulness practices.

So what that means is that when something fucked up happens and you're going to immediately have that knee-jerk reaction, all it is is that you give it a little fucking space. And you let it be there. And then you can decide to freak out or do whatever you want. Give it a lot of space. Give it a lot of space and think about it. Don't let the momentum of every event run your life. Because you'll just be bouncing from one catastrophe to the next.

And mindfulness is like a term that gets really bandied about a lot lately. But I think the way you're describing it is very important. Examine these things. Yeah, it is. Well, it's an overused term and it's a misunderstood term but i think in it's in a very simple practical way it's just being able just being aware of what's happening you know and being in the moment exactly being in the moment don't live in the past thinking about the argument that you got in the ninth

grade don't think about your future only. Think about this moment right now, because this is what you have. Look, you and I are in this car, driving down this godforsaken shithole highway. We could get hit in the head with a fucking meteor before this podcast even makes it to the internet. We don't know. We're assuming right now, as we're speaking,

that eventually this is going to get out. But it might not. It might not. I like what you said about, you know, taking things as learning opportunities, you know, in general. That just anything in life that happens to you, whether it's good or bad, is an opportunity you can capitalize on. Just because you can learn from it, you know. You can.

It's hard to break free of the patterns that you used to have. That's where I really advocate self-help books. You know, even though a lot of people think self-help books. You know, even though like a lot of people think self-help books are bullshit, you know why they're bullshit? Because most people don't really listen. Yeah. They don't really, they don't do anything to try to change the pattern of behavior that they're stuck in. They just read the book and go, Oh, they don't do anything. You got to do something about it. But being inspired, you know, even sometimes a fucking really good movie can change your life. Because it'll make a little incremental change in a certain direction.

And then over time, that could be a gigantic factor in determining your happiness or your unhappiness, depending on how you choose to behave and think. Yeah. I think there's a big stigma, too, against self-help. And I think for guys especially, but probably for everybody, that we just got to get over that shit. Yeah, we got to get over that. It's got to be okay.

I don't know. Because all of that self-help, what the fuck, spiritual-type stuff that's, you know, made fun of, and made fun of for good reasons, but there's some things in there that aren't all that weird and are just incredibly helpful. Giannis Putellis calling us. Let me get it.

Let me get it. Nah. Fuck you. I'm hanging up. Nah. I was... Fuck you. I'm hanging up on him. I was gonna talk to him and say something silly, but we're in a podcast, Yanni.

I hope you understand. 60 miles outside of Reno, wherever the fuck we are. Yeah, we might leave. We're headed to the metropolis of Reno, Nevada. Woo-wee-woo! Andrew Dice Clay was here

the day before we left. The day we were leaving, Nevada. Andrew Dice Clay was here the day before we left. The day we were leaving, yeah. I was going to call him and say hi. Stop on it, but we had to drive five hours to the middle of nowhere. So, let's wrap this thing up. Let's bring it on back home. But I think your life experiences and what you're trying to do is very noble, dude.

And I think what you're trying to do and what you have done is very exceptional. And that's one of the reasons why I wanted to do this with you. Because the stories that you were telling me over this past week and all the other times that we've hung out together over the past few years. Since I met you in 2012. Is that a cop? You hit the brakes with the cops? The fuzz, baby. Is that a cop? Nope. Nope. Looks like a... Those stories, they're powerful, man. I think it's nice for people to know there's people like you out there. Thanks, man. I appreciate i appreciate that so anything else you'd like to

say to the world because it's not i used to say america then people in europe got mad at me i don't think so no that's it dan dodie has spoken you fucks so dan is most likely going to start his own podcast someday and i know people are like god damn it rogan you're always trying to get people to start podcasts it's not even my idea, you fucking assholes. It's Dan Toney's idea. He wants to do a podcast, and I think if he did one, it would be awesome. So hopefully you will do that, and I'll have you on again when you're launching that, and we'll let everybody know about that.

Thanks, man. Appreciate it. All right, my brother, thank you so much, and thank you, everybody, for listening. And that's it. We're done. See ya. Bye-bye. Mwah.