← Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee
Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee
Silence as Medicine: How Moments of Stillness Transform Your Brain, Body & Emotional Health with Erling Kagge #551
01:59:15
This week, I'm joined by the remarkable Erling Kagge, Norwegian adventurer, philosopher and acclaimed writer. Erling is the first person to complete the "Three Poles Challenge" - reaching the North Pole, the South Pole, and the summit of Mount Everest on foot.
Loading summary
Transcript328 lines
- [00:01]
Erling Kagge
Most humans are underestimating themselves. This goes through from childhood, teenage years into adult life. And all this, you know, kind of negativity shapes you. So somehow you have to break free of it. Somehow you have to be a little bit brutal to yourself. It's easy to say. It's difficult to do, but is it worth it? Yes.
- [00:29]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Hey guys, how you doing? Hope you're having a good week so far. My name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee and this is my podcast, Feel Better Live More this week my guest is the Norwegian adventurer and philosopher Erling Kagger. Erling is a remarkable and inspirational human being who I have been wanting to speak to on my podcast for years. At the age of 29, he spent 50 days walking to the South Pole by himself in complete silence. And he's the first person to complete the three Poles Challenge, reaching the North Pole, the South Pole and the summit of Mount Everest on foot. He's also the author of multiple best selling books including Silence in the Age of Noise, Walking One Step at a Time and his very latest, the North Pole the History of an Obsession. In our conversation, we discuss why his expeditions, even though they start off being physical journeys, end up as being something far more profound. Journeys inward into himself. Erling believes that silence is where all the world's secrets are hidden and and that finding quiet moments in our day to day lives can help us get to know ourselves better and appreciate others more. We also discuss how our experience of boredom has completely changed in modern times. From being bored because nothing is happening, to feeling bored because too many things now are happening at once. We explore the importance of making our lives more difficult, why Erling felt no fear when coming face to face with a bear, and the three simple things that Erling found renewed appreciation for during his epic expeditions. Feeling warm after being cold, feeling full after being hungry, and resting after true physical exhaustion. Erling believes that most of us do not truly realize what we're capable of. In his words, finding fulfillment is about finding your own North Pole. A journey that asks us to be brave enough to face ourselves in silence. I want to start off by talking about silence. Okay, you have said that silence is where the world's secrets are hidden. So how can someone who's just stumbled across this conversation, who is constantly surrounded by noise, start to cultivate that inner silence? And what are the benefits of them doing so?
- [03:32]
Erling Kagge
The benefits are so many, but one, of course, is to get to know yourself better and to be satisfied in your own company. And I think one of the ways to discover the Silence is this inner silence is to be aware that noise and not only sounds but also distractions from your phone or distractions for whatever in your life could also be light, it could be sounds, it could be smells, it could be of course your telephone buzzing etc, Etc. All this noise is about other people. All this noise is about running away from yourself, running away from who you are, forgetting yourself, living through other people, other dev. While silence, inner silence is about you, it's about who you are and if you going to be able to live a rich life, a fairly happy life, you get to know yourself. Of course the easiest solution in life is to go for noise and relate to noise. And the more difficult option is to listen to yourself, listen to your own inner silence. And that's of course why people quite often choose Nice.
- [04:49]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Now when I hear you talk about silence and the benefits of silence, I think it has an extra resonance for me because you are this world famous explorer, okay, You've been to the top of Mount Everest, you've been to the North Pole, you've been to the South Pole. And I want to talk about a lot of these adventures and what you learned about the world, about time, about yourself through those explorations and those expeditions. But relating this to silence, when you went to the South Pole, my understanding is that you did that with no radio, with no one surrounding you. So you had an entire 50 days in silence, first of all, is that correct? And if it is, can you paint a picture for us, what is that like? Because I think today some people struggle to get even five minutes of silence, yet you had 54 days.
- [05:55]
Erling Kagge
It was a superb experience because for the first couple days you get restless, you're missing the noise, you're missing people, you're a bit worried because it's 1300 kilometers to go just by yourself. But then you, you calm down and you adapt to the circumstances. You're starting to look into nature, you're starting to listen to yourself and fairly soon you don't miss other people's company that much. Kind of the only thing I missed walking to the South Pole was skin contact, kind of hugging another person. And I think that was about it for me. Of course it was a journey and expedition towards the South Pole, but it ended up being a more important journey into myself, into my own soul. And I learned a great lesson on silence. But then later in life I got three daughters and eventually they became teenage daughters. And my life was very much about noise. And I understood my kids, they didn't really know what silence is. And they said silence is nothing like. Also most philosophers say that silence is nothing and nothing comes from nothing. And then I understood I have to sit down and write a book about silence. What silence is, where it is and why it's important. It was my expedition to the South Pole who really taught me the importance of silence and being able to be silent. And to be silence is not about turning you back to the world. It's not about living a more egocentric life. It's about the opposite. It's about seeing the earth from a different perspective. It's about respecting other people to a greater degree. It's about appreciating yourself and your own company more. And it's about loving life even more.
- [07:55]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
It's interesting that you went on this individual journey, yet you're saying that the silence, the, that you manage to experience and I guess cultivate within yourself through that journey has helped you appreciate the world around you more, it's helped you appreciate other people more. And I want to ask you then, is there a contradiction in some ways where we say that humans are social beings? Right. You know, there's parts of our physiology and our brains that are. We think about connecting with others, yet at the same time, you said something really, really fascinating for me, that when you are, or when you were going to the South Pole after a few days, you didn't want other people around you. Is that a contradiction?
- [08:47]
Erling Kagge
No, it's not a contradiction, I think, because I think a good start to be able to appreciate other people and also respect other people is to be content with yourself and be able to be enjoying your own company. And I think that's one of the reasons why you have so much unhappiness in society, because people have, you know, to a great degree forgotten themselves and forgotten how to be in their own company and always living through other people, always living through other devices. And then it's, in my experience, it's getting difficult to appreciate other people in that way.
- [09:27]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
How old were you when you went to the South Pole?
- [09:30]
Erling Kagge
29.
- [09:32]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
What year was that?
- [09:34]
Erling Kagge
92. 93. Yep.
- [09:36]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Okay. A different world back then. Pre Internet, pre smartphone, pre social media. It's easy for someone like me, or frankly anyone these days to look back on the 90s or the 80s with rose tinted glasses and go, oh, you know, we all had solitude then. We all had silence back then. But that's not true, is it?
- [09:57]
Erling Kagge
No, no, no. I think those years were quite similar to the lives we're living now.
- [10:02]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Really?
- [10:02]
Erling Kagge
Yeah, I think so in many ways. But One huge difference, of course, is the smartphone, that we are available at all times and we want to be available at all times. And this whole idea about being entertained all the time has been growing. And also that we're being bored in a different way today. Like when I grew up, we were bored because nothing was happening. And I remember my mother said to me, eileen, it's healthy to be bored every now and then. And I thought almost she was joking. Today I understand she was right. And today people are bored because too many things are happening, too many alternatives. I mean, it's always some action on your screen. So then you have kind of a different existential boredom. But I think, you know, it's kind of the same kind of feeling, but you're still very. People are really bored, I think.
- [10:58]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
When you went to the South Pole, was there an option of having a radio?
- [11:03]
Erling Kagge
Yes, it was an option. I was actually forced to bring a radio by the airplane company who flew me out to the northern edge of.
- [11:12]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
For safety.
- [11:13]
Erling Kagge
For safety, yeah. But my goal was to be the first to walk along to the South Pole. And I also wanted to do it in solitude. So I threw away the batteries of the radio in the garbage bin of the plane. Oh, hold on.
- [11:28]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
So you took the radio to comply with legal, and then you thought, screw.
- [11:33]
Erling Kagge
It, because you know, you need to choose your battles. And I couldn't take that battle with the airplane company because we're not going to fly you unless you bring a radio. So I took the radio emptied with the batteries, and when I was standing on the ice seeing the plane taking off, and it was between 1300 and 1400 kilometers to the south Pole, I was totally by myself. I had a kind of a beeper who could send messages out, not receiving anything if it was emergency. But of course, if you fall into a crevasse, no one is going to hear that signal. So I was pretty much by myself. And that was the goal, to be by myself for 50 or 60 or 65 days. But, you know, it's a kind of a. It's kind of the Norwegian dream to be able to ski all day, sleep well at night and ski next day again. But also what I experience is this silence. And you move, you're being moved. It's in our language. You have motion, emotion. So it was in that respect, it was kind of one long kind of meditation. You kind of get self hypnotized because life becomes so simple. You get up in the morning at the same time, you do two things at the same time. Cook breakfast Maintain your gear, repair your gear, prepare lunch. Then you take down your tent to get going. You have fixed routines for when to have breaks, eat the same food every day. It doesn't taste that well when you start on the expedition, but after getting more and more exhausted, it tasted better and better and better. And you go to sleep the same time every evening. So in that respect, it's kind of also a very comfortable life. And you live in the present that you tend to forget the past, you tend to stop thinking about the future, because all those thoughts are also noise in your life, that you're thinking too much, but suddenly you gradually, or gradually you become present in your own life.
- [13:40]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. You know, when I was rereading Silence, one of your earlier books, which came out a few years ago now, it really struck me that or certainly came to me. Something I've been saying for many years now is, I think for most people, I can't say for everyone, because we're all different, we all live different lives.
- [14:03]
Erling Kagge
We can never say for everyone.
- [14:05]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Exactly. But I would imagine for most people that the single most important daily practice they can do in the modern world in 2025 is having a daily practice of solitudes. I really believe that more than. More than I ever have done. But I imagine that when people hear that, one of the things they're going to say is, I don't have time for that. Right.
- [14:30]
Erling Kagge
That's usual comment.
- [14:32]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Okay, what's your take on that?
- [14:35]
Erling Kagge
I think in general, people are underestimating themselves. I have traveled to more than 100 countries, talked to thousands of people, and in general, people are underestimating the possibilities they have in life. And, you know, 10 minutes of solitude is better than no solitude. And I also think I'd respect that, you know, some phases of life with small kids, etcetera, it's more difficult. But in general, I think people are wrong when they say they're not having time for such. And I think, you know, what is said is so true, that solitude, of course, it can be something negative, just like with silence. It could be something negative, of course, one minute of silence, silence in the church and a funeral silence when you're sitting, when you're heartbroken could be negative, but it's also very enriching. And solitude is certainly needed. And people today, they have too much noise and just too little solitude.
- [15:43]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. What's interesting is when you were describing the start of that South Pole journey to me, you said for the first two days you're a bit restless. Right. And I think this is a really key point for us to just emphasize here, right, this idea that if you're used to constant stimulation and noise, if that's your norm, you know, 10 minutes of silence may well feel quite threatening, right? If you came from the city, you got the plane out to the South Pole, and you're about to embark on this journey, for the first two days, you almost need to let the thoughts burn themselves out, right, so that you can access the silence that's actually there within us. Right. Back in October last year, so 2024, I was involved with a Channel 4 documentary about smartphones and children. And we went to a school and we did this experiment. So for 21 days, year 8. So this is kids who are about 12 years old or so, gave up all technology, smartphones, gaming devices and their laptops, right? And we were measuring with the University of York what happens. And what you said in this sort of macro view of going to the South Pole happened in the micro. When we went to the school rides, the first two to three days, it was like they were withdrawing from a drug, really restless. They were kind of missing it. Like, am I going to do right? Just reminded me, when I've had patients before, you know, coming off sugar or alcohol, whatever it might be, I was like, wow, this is really interesting. And then they all pretty much dropped in to this greater feeling of calm, right? And we studied this, and anxiety went down, depression went down. The kids felt more socially connected, right? They were worried beforehand, they thought they were gonna feel less. They felt more socially connected without these devices, and they were sleeping more. But you had to go through two to three days of discomfort. And so bringing it back to how someone watching this video or listening to this podcast right now can find silence in their lives. Have you got any advice for us in terms of this idea that actually, if you're used to noise, silence is going to feel uncomfortable at first, but you've almost got to get through that to get the peace.
- [18:16]
Erling Kagge
It is uncomfortable to search for silence. And of course, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people actually working day and night to make us addicted to different apps to get us addicted to the screens. So, of course, many of these people are super clever and doing a good job. So it is difficult to search for silence and experience silence, as I said, for a while. And I think, you know, your experiment is really interesting, and I would find it, like, maybe next time, you know, also combine it with having the same people doing some outdoors. Because, of course, young people today, they hardly spend any time in nature.
- [19:05]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- [19:06]
Erling Kagge
And they hardly walk, they hardly move. Like just here in England. When I wrote my book on walking, I saw this research that, you know, who's spending the least time doing being outside of a building in uk? I thought it would be prisoners. Like they have routinely have one hour outside the cell every day, walking back and forth, whatever they do. But 40% of kids in UK spend less than an hour outside every day. 25% of the kids, they're not outside at all. Of course, they go back and forth to school, whatever, but that's it. So, you know, the possibility to have a good life if you're not outside. I don't think anything is impossible, at least not philosophically in life. But it's almost impossible to have a good life. So of course that experiment combined with being a little bit in nature, you know, I think miracles will happening. And of course miracles are happening every day. We don't just don't see them. But this will be a huge miracle.
- [20:14]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. Interestingly enough, although we didn't prescribe what they would do, a lot of the kids actually ended up outside more.
- [20:21]
Erling Kagge
Exactly.
- [20:21]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Right. And they were playing more and they were starting to invent games with twigs and that kind of boredom stuff.
- [20:27]
Erling Kagge
Right.
- [20:27]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Which we would have done in the past. But I do think this is one of the most alarming things in the modern world and how we've eroded silence away from our lives. It kind of doesn't exist for many people in your book on silence. And actually this is even a theme, I would say, in your latest book, the North Pole, the History of an Obsession, which is just another phenomenal book which has really captured my attention. There's this theme of silence. I think, throughout all your work, at least all the work that I've read of yours. Right. And one of the things that you write about that comes across is this idea that silence is not emptiness, but it's a gateway to self discovery.
- [21:08]
Erling Kagge
Yeah. And you know, the most important discovery in the world is to discover who you are. And we have this tendency in life to always choose the easiest option, which I think is a huge mistake. I think we actively need to make our lives more difficult than they have to be. It's not for everyone, but let's say most people, they should actively make their life a little bit more difficult.
- [21:40]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- [21:42]
Erling Kagge
That's the only way to find meaning in life, to make it more difficult.
- [21:49]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
In my last book, I put forward this hypothesis that I've had for a number of years about certain patients that I'd seen. Okay. And it really relates to what you have just said and I'd love to get your take on it. A lot of patients over the years I have seen have this almost low grade anxiety and I've had this strong feeling for a period of time that this comes from not regularly testing themselves. Okay. So I believe on a core deep level, we all know that life could get tough at some point. Right?
- [22:33]
Erling Kagge
Life is a struggle.
- [22:34]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- [22:35]
Erling Kagge
It has to be a struggle. This whole idea that to have as little resistance as possible in life, it's just a huge misunderstanding.
- [22:43]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. But here's the thing, and I think this relates to your point, right, that if you are not regularly doing things that test you, that are a bit uncomfortable, you actually become weak. Physically weak, yes. But also mentally weak. Right. And I don't say that in a judgmental way, just to be clear. I'm just saying that you have this kind of fragile sense of who you are. You know that if life was to get tough, which it could do, you can't cope because you haven't regularly tested yourself. Right. So people talk about the benefits of physical activity. Right. And they look at your hormones and what it does for your muscles and. Sure, I've seen all the research and I agree. At the same time, I think one of the key benefits of physical activity, depending on how you do it, is that you teach yourself resilience. You show yourself that I'm a capable human being who can cope. If you never have silence or solitude or adventure or you do anything uncomfortable, you're not showing yourself with any real world evidence that you can cope.
- [23:46]
Erling Kagge
No, it's dramatic for everyone who's in that situation. It's a major problem in society.
- [23:58]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Same in Norway.
- [24:00]
Erling Kagge
Yes, it is. But Norwegians are closer to nature than people in UK and people in most places.
- [24:07]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
When you say closer to nature, what do you mean? Do you mean it's easier to access nature for Norwegians?
- [24:12]
Erling Kagge
Easier to access nature, but also spending more time in nature in general. I mean, Norwegians should improve. I think they're also hooked on social media and blah, blah, blah, and also sit to prefer to sit down in a chair looking into a screen to see what's going on in the world and getting to know themselves and have a good life. But then again, compared to UK and most countries, Norwegians spend more time in nature. It's more integrated in their lives. So it's a little bit better, but it's moving the wrong direction.
- [24:47]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. Do you meditate?
- [24:50]
Erling Kagge
I meditate in the sense that I do a lot of Walking, I love walking. And for me that's a kind of meditation with a walk without holding your phone in your hand for 10 minutes or for two hours or for more. For me, that's meditation. And in addition, I do self hypnosis. So I try to self hypnotize myself every late afternoon because then quite often a little bit tired from a long day. And then I get into my subconsciousness for 20 minutes and I feel totally refreshed the rest of the evening.
- [25:29]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
So you do self hypnosis in the afternoons? Is that something you had to learn?
- [25:34]
Erling Kagge
It's something you can learn, but it's very easy to learn. It's a friend of mine, I met her in UK in 95 when I was reading philosophy. He said to me, you have been self hypnotized yourself throughout your life on expeditions, et cetera, without knowing it. So you should learn the technique to get to know yourself better. So he taught me in one day, which I think, you know, everyone can learn how to hypnotize myself.
- [26:06]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
And you said you have energy afterwards. What are some of the other benefits you get from self hypnosis?
- [26:12]
Erling Kagge
Certainly energy. I still need to sleep the same amount of hours, but energy. And also I believe I'm kind of manipulating my subconsciousness a little bit. But of course the subconscious is either with you or against you. So I think, you know, it's getting on my side. And sometimes I'm hypnotized, just go into this silence and everything's disappearing. And other occasions I try to follow an idea into subconsciousness and chase that idea while I'm subconscious.
- [26:48]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. Wow. And thoughts about self hypnosis.
- [26:52]
Erling Kagge
But it's, you know, it's under 20 minutes and for me it's like, you know, it's not super important, but it's, it is important and it makes my life more, more comfortable.
- [27:03]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. Let's talk about time. Right. Because whether it's in what you just said or some of the powerful ideas I've been reading about in your, in your book the North Pole. Right. I've been thinking a lot about time and how clock time.
- [27:20]
Erling Kagge
Yeah.
- [27:20]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
I point, I don't have a watch on. Right. I don't wear a watch for that reason.
- [27:24]
Erling Kagge
I think that's, you know, a good idea.
- [27:26]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
I, it's funny, I used to be obsessed with watches as a kid. I'd always want to know the time. And about, I don't know, four or five years ago, I thought, I'm not interested.
- [27:34]
Erling Kagge
I will, I will think about that actually.
- [27:36]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Because wearing A watch. And I guess if you have a smartphone, then you're going to constantly see the time on that thing anyway. So that's one reason why, I guess people don't need to wear watches in the way that they may have done in the past. And I also accept that you may have a certain job where you need to look at the time and be on that clock time regularly. But time really is a human construct, totally right. And you think that, oh, that time has moved on in a linear fashion, but that doesn't account for your experience of time. Right. One hour with your best friend having a deep conversation is still one hour of clock time. But one hour of watching paint dry may have a completely different experience, but we still measure it in the same way. Right. And so going back to this idea that people will say, I don't have time for solitude, I bet for most people that 20 minutes of solitude you take each day because of how it will change the way you see yourself, view the world, you'll probably process certain ideas. You will actually get that time back throughout the day. So that 20 minute investment probably gives you two hours in the day, but you don't realize it. What's your take on that? Because you've got a really interesting relationship with time. I mean, I'll talk to you about the bits about the North Pole which really resonated with me, but how do you see time? Today's episode is sponsored by vivobarefoot. So if you've been listening to my podcast for a while, you will know that I am a huge fan of barefoot shoes and believe that everyone at some point in their life should try wearing them. I myself have been wearing Vivo barefoot shoes exclusively now for over 11 years, well before they started supporting my podcast. So why do I think you should give them a go? Well, not only are they really comfortable, many people also find that when they start wearing them, all kinds of niggles like back pain, knee pain, hip pain, even neck pain, can sometimes get better. We also know from research that wearing barefoot shoes regularly helps to strengthen your foot muscles. Now, this is really important. People think about strengthening their arms in the gym or other body parts. But your feet muscles are some of the most important muscles in your body. They help you walk, interact with the ground and balance. So now that spring is finally here and many of you will be trying to get outside more and move your bodies, why not give vivobarefoot shoes a try? One of my all time favorites is the Primus Trail, which come in a variety of different colors. For men and women. And although I've been wearing them for many years now, I do think that the Primus Trail are a great shoe to start off with if you're new to barefoot shoes. So why not make 2025 the year you give them a go? And don't forget it is completely risk free to do so because VEVO offer a 100 day trial for new customers. So if you're not happy you can just send them back for a full refund. If you go to vevobarefoot.com livemore they are giving 20% off as a one time code to all of my podcast listeners. Terms and conditions apply. To get your 20% off codes all you have to do is go to vivobarefoot.com forward/live. More this episode is brought to you by Airbnb. My family and I have enjoyed some wonderful trips over the years using Airbnb from Greece to Egypt. And recently we went to the Swiss Alps and stayed in the most amazing Airbnb. And when I got back I caught up with one of my old schoolmates and he mentioned that he and his family host their place on Airbnb whenever they go away on holiday. He tells me it's really easy and completely flexible. They decide when they want to host and how long for. Plus the extra money they earn helps cover future trips away, meals out, activities with the kids, and even every day household expenses. Which got me thinking, when we're next away as a family and our house sits empty, perhaps we could also host our place on Airbnb and make some extra money too. And if you have a trip coming up and want to make the most of your space, maybe you could do the same. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much@airbnb.co.uk forward/host.
- [32:45]
Erling Kagge
First of all, you know when as I said earlier on, of course, you know, sometimes you simply short on time because you have small kids or whatever like you know, blah blah blah. But in general when people say they're short on time, I don't say it straight to them because it could be upsetting. But you know, in general it's bullshit because we have a lot of time and life is long if you live your life in a way that you have some variety. But of course, if you spend three or four hours every day on social media, many people of course spend a lot more. That's around 13 years night and day of your life and no wonder you feel short on time. So you just need to change that habit, 99% or 50% or whatever, and you will certainly have time. So that's one take. But then how to experience time? Of course, if you go to Japan, stay for two days, you feel like you've been there for two or four weeks because everything is different. But if you sit at home looking to a screen, most of the time, you feel like two days have been. Like it could have been two hours or whatever. And then people tend. When you're getting as old as me, 62 years old, you go to the 60th, 70th, 80th, even 90th birthdays. And people usually give these speeches and they say all these days and weeks and years pass by, and I didn't really understand that this was life. And the guests feel like, you know, this is really deep, sensitive, you know, speaking. But to me, it's just a sad story because we had this huge possibility to have a rich life and we're wasting it.
- [34:48]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- [34:49]
Erling Kagge
But also another apropos of time is talking about spending time in nature. But if you travel from A to B and you take a car and it takes you 20 minutes to drive, you go on the highway and you get to be in 20 minutes, you feel that you have saved time. But if you happen to walk the same distance, maybe it takes you three hours, and you walk on some narrow roads or through a forest or over a field, mathematically you have spent a lot more time walking than actually driving the distance. But that's also only part that in reality, I don't find it to be the case, because when you drive that distance, you don't experience anything, you don't see anything, you don't smell anything, you don't hear anything, you hardly have time to think about anything. But if you happen to walk instead, and let's say you're walking towards a mountain, you hear the sounds of some water, you hear the sounds of the wind, you see the colors. You, you know, you experience the different smells, you experience the wind coming to you on your skin, and you have time to think. And somehow the world, space is expanding and time is expanding, while when you drive the same distance, time is narrowing in space or the world is narrowing in. And eventually when you get to the mountain, it's like, you know, is almost like you reaching a good friend.
- [36:25]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, it's really interesting, the idea that we. We think we're saving time by taking the car. But are we right? Are we really?
- [36:38]
Erling Kagge
I don't think so. Sometimes, yes, but, you know, quite often not. And also, I should Add, you know, quite often when you get to be in a rush, you know, you don't have that much to do. At point B, you sit down and look into your phone again. So it is actually, I don't think, you know, hardly anything in life's 100% meaningless, but it's almost 100% meaningless.
- [37:10]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. This idea of time is interesting and how walking changes our perception of time. I heard you say something yesterday in an interview which really got me to pause and think. Last time you were in LA or something, one of the times you were in Los Angeles, you walked.
- [37:28]
Erling Kagge
Yeah.
- [37:28]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
But you walked a long distance. Now for people who've never been to la, I was there a few months ago doing all my book promo. Right. It's a very large city. It's not easy to walk. Most people don't walk. It's a very car driven city. So can you just share your experience? Because it was really quite fascinating for me to hear this.
- [37:50]
Erling Kagge
Yeah. Together with two friends, Norwegian friends, Peter, Skavlon and Pederlun, we have this project about walking through cities. And we decided to walk from eastern la, kind of gangland Caesar Chavez Avenue way east, walk down Cesar Chavez into Sunset Boulevard and walk all the way sunset to the ocean.
- [38:13]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Can you give us an idea what that sort of distance is?
- [38:15]
Erling Kagge
It's only like 45, 50 kilometers maybe.
- [38:19]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Okay, hold on a minute. I just love the fact that you get it's only 50km. Right. Because your perception, having been to the extremes of the world, is different from most people. Okay.
- [38:29]
Erling Kagge
But we spent three or four days, so it's like, you know, it was physically easy. But what was interesting that you see LA is we're kind of seeing everything everyone else is seeing, but it's seeing from a different angle because you see it from the curb of the road and we see it in slow motion because almost everyone is driving and everyone is kind of looking into the next car in the queue all the time. But when you're slowly walking through the city, you see everything in a different way. And our idea was to not leave those two avenues, stick to the avenues and do whatever ever we could on, you know, on the trek. So we went to the Church of Cytology at the beginning of Sunset Boulevard. We applied for membership. We had 45 minutes interviews each. We had four to five minutes introduction course to Scientology. Just for fun, just for something to do, just so you know, just. We did whatever we could do by following those two streets. And way east in la, you know, we were stopped by the police, not because we looked like we're going to commit any crime, but because they were just suspicious that, you know, G guys were walking with a tiny backpack each through that part of the city.
- [39:59]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
So, hold on, you got stopped by police because walking is so rare in L. A that they thought, this is weird.
- [40:06]
Erling Kagge
There's two guys here walking, especially that part. It's all over la. It's kind of walking long distances. Very exotic. But that part of LA is, you know, lots of crime going on.
- [40:16]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
What did you say to the police?
- [40:17]
Erling Kagge
We told them, like, told them the truth, that we're three Norwegians that want to explore LA in slow motion. What did they say to that? Eventually one of the police guys said, would you like to take a photo with me? Which we did. So no. But it's interesting to see a city in that way. And another time, together with a guy called Steve Duncan, an American urban explorer, we went. We crisscrossed New York City through the sewage train, water and subway tunnels. We started at 242nd street in Bronx and moved towards the Atlantic Ocean, Jamaica Bay, through the tunnels, sleeping on the ground, getting above ground quite a few times to change tunnels, and sometimes took the metro, sometimes took a taxi. But for five days, just moving slowly through the city alpine style with a little madras, we could sleep on the ground a little quicker. So that was another great way to see a city from the inside out and what New York would look like if you turned it upside down. And of course, everything happens below ground is somehow reflected above ground.
- [41:37]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. I want to move on to your North Pole expedition in just a moment. But there's two things about what you've said so far about when you walk to the South Pole that I can't get out of my head. Okay. The first thing, this idea that life was actually in some ways quite monotonous when you were walking to the South Pole, but it didn't matter. You shared with me that you actually had some whiskey bottles with you, but you never actually touch them. Can you explain that? Because I think it relates to what you said before about this boredom, Right? So you were saying when you were a kid, you were bored because there was nothing to do. Now people have got this kind of existential boredom because we're just having this kind of low grade stimulation all the time on our screens and we don't realize. We think it's nourishing us, but on a deep level, it's actually starving us, Right?
- [42:35]
Erling Kagge
Starving us for meaning.
- [42:37]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Starving us for meaning.
- [42:39]
Erling Kagge
It's brutal. I mean, when you Starve something for meanings or meanings in life. Not the meaning of life, but you're starving them for meanings in life. That's super brutal.
- [42:52]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
But we are in a meaning crisis at the moment.
- [42:54]
Erling Kagge
Absolutely. And you know, it's increasing meaning crisis.
- [43:00]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
But I think the only way you get to meaning is through solitude.
- [43:08]
Erling Kagge
I think that's a very good observation.
- [43:10]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
You have to have it.
- [43:12]
Erling Kagge
It's brutal, but it's true.
- [43:15]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. And I worry about kids these days who are being conditioned from a young age to not have any time alone with their thoughts. I purposely fight in my house to keep it a low tech house. I don't want high tech in the house. I say to my wife, I want it to be an analog house, as little digital as possible. Because I think that's who we are. We're analog beings trying to live unsuccessfully in an increasingly digital world.
- [43:46]
Erling Kagge
I think it's a very good idea. I think as a father, of course, I've done many mistakes, but maybe the biggest mistake I did as a father was not to enforce the kids to leave the telephones in the kitchen before they went to bed. Or like, you know, one hour before they went to bed. That's like, you know, that was just stupid. But you know, they're doing really well now. They're old, in the 20s. So I mean, it's not a catastrophe, but it's like, you know, that was a huge mistake by me.
- [44:15]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Can you just explain what that sort of simple, almost monotonous life was like and why you never chose to open those whiskey bottles? So first of all, why did you take the whiskey bottles and why did you never end up opening them?
- [44:33]
Erling Kagge
I thought to bring this kind of super small, these miniature bottles. I think I had three or four with malt whiskey. I should celebrate when I was halfway, I should celebrate on Christmas Eve, which is a great day in Norway for Christmas. I should celebrate on New Year's Eve with a little whiskey because I thought that would give me satisfaction, which it usually does. But as I said, after a few days, total solitude, no possibility to communicate with the outside world. You have the same written during the day. You put one leg in front of the other. Technical wise, it's easy. You just have to be willing to do it. And of course, the greater challenge every day is to get up in the morning at the right time. That has been the same challenge in polar exploration for hundreds of years.
- [45:25]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Why is that such a challenge?
- [45:26]
Erling Kagge
Because you're a bit exhausted. It could be cold. The North Pole, super cold, maybe minus 45 minutes minus 50 in the 10th.
- [45:34]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Hold on, let's just clarify. Centigrade.
- [45:36]
Erling Kagge
Yeah, centigrade there. So that's like 60 fahrenheit or something. Down to 60 fahrenheit.
- [45:41]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
So just let me be clear. I got that right. It can be as cold as minus 50 degrees centigrade.
- [45:48]
Erling Kagge
Yeah. To the North Pole, South Pole warmer, But still the ultimate challenge, I think, also back home, but, you know, still is much easier, is to get up in the morning at the right time every day, and then you do routines. You start walking one leg in front of the other, hours, hours, hours. And you nature, you feel like, you know, when you're by yourself, it's getting even stronger, that you becoming a part of nature, that your body doesn't stop by your fingertips or by your skin, but is extended into nature around you. And you send some ideas out and you got all the thoughts back again. So you have a kind of a communication with nature, not necessarily with words, but more like just emotions experiencing experiences coming back and forth, and you feel really, really enriched. And for other people, when you see it from long distance, you will think you're kind of scared or feel fear a lot, but because it's so much a part of the environment, you don't feel that fear very much. And then again, because life becomes so rich and you're not living through the past, you're not living through the future, but you more or less, not all the time, but most of the time you're present in the moment and quite often not thinking at all, which is a beautiful experience. And then, as I said, the food is getting better and better every day because you're getting exhausted.
- [47:28]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
But it's the same food, same food.
- [47:29]
Erling Kagge
Every day, which is.
- [47:30]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
What were you eating?
- [47:33]
Erling Kagge
I eat a lot of oat in the morning that you mix with water you get from melting ice and snow. And then formula milk, not orner dry milk, but formula milk. It gives more energy per gram. It's all about saving weight. And during the day, oat fat, formula milk, and maybe some bacon, maybe some chocolate. And the evening, a little bit more of carbohydrates and.
- [48:00]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
But something as bland, potentially as oats with water. Right, right. You're saying that day by day, that becomes tastier.
- [48:10]
Erling Kagge
Yeah, much tastier.
- [48:11]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Why?
- [48:12]
Erling Kagge
Because you get tired, you get exhausted, and you're craving food, you're craving energy, you're craving healthy food, and you get healthy food.
- [48:22]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
It's real hunger.
- [48:23]
Erling Kagge
It's real hunger.
- [48:24]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
You've earned.
- [48:26]
Erling Kagge
Exactly. Which I think, you know, it really was interesting when I sat down to write the North Pole. And then you have to find the words for your ideas and your experiences. And I put it nicely in writing. But then you get down to the origins of gratefulness on an expedition, because the origins of gratefulness is to become warm after you have been cold. You get full after having been starving and you're having rest after you have been exhausted by, you know, moving physically. And those three are something like in other part of the world most people have forgotten. And I think, you know, gratefulness to be able to feel gratefulness is the key to have a good, good life.
- [49:19]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, it's. That is those three things, right. That is incredible. Because warmth after you've been cold, food after you've been starving, rest after you're exhausted. Right. If you just look at the modern Western world, at the very least, as you say, these are three things that a lot of people are never really experiencing. Right.
- [49:43]
Erling Kagge
And then back to your question, then you don't need a dash of whiskey to get satisfaction or feel. Well.
- [49:51]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- [49:51]
Erling Kagge
So it's a distraction to drink any whiskey to get any kind of, you know, get intoxicated in any way when you feeling. Experiencing what you're talking about now. So I end up when I get home to Norway, I still had bottles and gave them away as presents.
- [50:08]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
There's something so profound in what you just said, right. I felt for many years. Why are we so. Well, let me talk about personal example. I'm very happy eating the same food every day. I have literally no problem with it. In fact, I. They quite like it. It simplifies life. You don't have to think. My wife has quite a different perspective on that. And I'm not saying anyone's right or wrong. She like, well, we had that yesterday. I want something different tonight. I get that. And again, it could be related to, you know, men and women are different. We have different taste buds. We have a different experience with foods. But I think there's something about the simple life and real simplicity that you must frankly have when you're on these expeditions. Because life is just boiled down to the absolute essence of what it means to be alive. Right. Is part of the reason we're struggling with all these addictions. And we need a beautifully tasty meal every single day that's different from the day before. Because our life is in some way a little bit tedious, you know, because of maybe all this constant stimulation. Like, we're not getting that deep nourishment. So we need that from somewhere so we think we're gonna get it from the latest Deliveroo, right? You know, that's how comfortable life can be for humans now, where you can literally sit in your pajamas, in your bed, do some work. If you have a job that enables you to do that. And you don't even have to go and hunt food, gather food. You don't even need to go to the supermarket anymore. You can literally, on your app, have someone deliver a tasty meal that they've cooked for you. You know, on one level, you could say, how incredible are humans that we've created a world where this is possible? But it's coming at a huge cost, isn't it?
- [51:57]
Erling Kagge
It's a progress, really. Not really. But I kept on eating porridge made of oat in the morning. But for dinner, I have variations. And I like to cook because.
- [52:11]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Of.
- [52:11]
Erling Kagge
Course, it's tastier when you cook and it's fresh on the plate. But for me, even more important is that that's kind of one of the times during the day when I actually have to put everything else aside. I get. You know, I buy the raw material, I make an effort that it's as good as possible. Then I cook. Maybe it takes me 20 minutes. Maybe it takes me 45 minutes, an hour. But then I can only think about the cooking. And even when I'm by myself, because now my kids are moved out, I usually make food for myself because it's a break. It's a meditation. You also got meditation. It's kind of a meditation to cook. And maybe I just spent 20 minutes eating the food afterwards. But then, like, kind of the whole process is good for the soul.
- [52:58]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
You're by yourself this entire time, right?
- [53:02]
Erling Kagge
Yeah.
- [53:02]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
When you go to the South Pole, what's the terrain? Like, are you doing what you did with the North Pole, which is. Are you on skis and you're pulling something behind you?
- [53:10]
Erling Kagge
Yeah. So it's to the North Pole. I went with a friend, Berge Oslan, to the South Pole. The goal was to be the first in the world doing it alone.
- [53:19]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
And you did that.
- [53:20]
Erling Kagge
I did that, yeah.
- [53:21]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Are you in the Guinness World Book of Records?
- [53:23]
Erling Kagge
Yeah.
- [53:24]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
I'm gonna have to tell my son. He's the love that. He'll be so excited. He's been obsessed with that book since he was a kid, like, each year, wanting to see who's in it. I don't think I asked you this before. Why did you throw the batteries out on the plane? Right. Is it because you didn't trust yourself? You thought, if the batteries are in, I'll use the radio.
- [53:44]
Erling Kagge
Yeah. I want to be not able to talk on the radio. Because of course, if you keep in mind all the time that I have a possibility to turn on the radio, even if I'm, you know, I would have been disciplined on this expedition, in hindsight, I'm 100% sure or 99% sure.
- [54:03]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
But you'd still be tempted.
- [54:04]
Erling Kagge
Exactly. And you have it in back of your head. It's a possibility.
- [54:07]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Well, it's really interesting that because there's been lots of studies which show that even if your smartphone, it's on the table there, you don't have it in your hands. Some studies have shown that you are using cognitive willpower to not pick that phone up.
- [54:22]
Erling Kagge
Exactly.
- [54:23]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
So having it there is not neutral. Right. You're constantly, your brain is going, no, I'm not picking it up, I'm not picking it up. Right. Which is why for many people, the best thing to do in the evening for sleep is charge your phone in a different room. Because if it's in that room, even if you don't pick it up, you're using up energy to not.
- [54:41]
Erling Kagge
Absolutely. Absolutely.
- [54:43]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
So I love that. The other thing I wanted to ask about the South Pole in particular, after 50 days of complete silence, you mentioned it took a couple of days to get in, but once you were in, you didn't want to talk to anyone. Do you remember the first conversation you had with another human once you'd finished? Just taking a quick break to give a shout out to AG1, one of the sponsors of today's show. Nutrition can often seem really complicated. We get confused about what exact diets we should be following and which supplements we might benefit from taking. And that's one of the many reasons that I love AG1 and have been taking it for over six years. AG1 makes it simple to be the best version of you. Over 70 ingredients, one scoop once a day for less than a cup of coffee. It's a science driven daily health drink which supports your energy focus and immune system. It also helps support your gut's health. For example, it contains calcium, which contributes to the normal function of digestive enzymes and biotin to maintain your own intestinal mucous membrane. Now, the scientific team behind AG1 includes experts from a broad range of fields including longevity, preventive medicine, genetics and biochemistry. And I talk to them regularly and am really impressed with their commitment to making a top quality product. In fact, AG1 has gone through 53 versions as they continue to iterate in line with the latest research. And the best thing, of course, is that all this goodness comes in one convenient daily serving that makes it really easy to fit into your life. So if you want to Support your health seven mornings a week, you can start with AG1. Subscribe now and get a free bottle of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription. All you have to do is go to drink ag1.comlivemore to unlock this exclusive offer and get started on your journey to better health today. Ever have one of those days when everything seems to go wrong and before you know it, you've slipped back into those habits you're trying so hard to avoid? Like sugar doom scrolling and wine. When it comes to making changes in our lives that actually last, most people think the solution is to try harder. But this is simply not the case. In my new book, Make Change that Lasts, I reveal how exactly you can break free from the habits that hold you back. What many of us don't realize is that our behaviors follow our beliefs. So when you change your beliefs, and my book will show you how to do that, you'll spend less time having to think about your habits because they'll happen automatically. Make Change that Lasts, the number one Sunday Times bestseller is available to buy now all over the world as a paperback ebook and as an audiobook, which I am narrating. And if you've not got your copy yet, what are you waiting for?
- [58:20]
Erling Kagge
I remember it really well actually, because unfortunately I wrote it down because, you know, memory is a tricky thing. So I, I got to the South Pole. The Americans had built a base at the South Pole and of course no one expected me.
- [58:37]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Why not?
- [58:38]
Erling Kagge
Because, you know, they knew I was walking towards the north, the Pole, but they didn't know where I was or what kind of progress I had and, and, or if I was going to make it. So I walked in, I saw the base at the distance, walked towards the point where this is kind of marked, this is the real South Pole. And some Americans came out to the base and they said, just like, if I should have met them in Central park, how are you? And I said, like a pig and shit. And they were kind of, you know, they didn't. You laughed at this kind of, what's this? And of course I had had the same underwear on for 50 days, 50 days and 50 nights without taking it off once. So I was like a pig in that.
- [59:31]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Those words from you said there were some Americans there. So it wasn't just one person, it.
- [59:35]
Erling Kagge
Was several People of scientists or, you know, people walking, working on the base, coming out. Okay, Very nice people.
- [59:42]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
What I'm trying to really understand is when you've had all this silence and all you've heard is nature. Were there animals around?
- [59:49]
Erling Kagge
No animals.
- [59:50]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
No animals. Because it's that cold.
- [59:52]
Erling Kagge
Yeah. It's also like animals on the coast, but as soon as you're off the coast, there's no animals.
- [59:59]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Okay, so you, when we say you were alone, you really were alone. Right.
- [60:05]
Erling Kagge
I didn't see any life at all.
- [60:07]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
So.
- [60:07]
Erling Kagge
Okay, not even a bird.
- [60:09]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
So let's say someone's done a prolonged fast, like a 40 hour fast. Whatever reason they might choose to do that from foods, we know that you've got to, you can't just suddenly have a full meal. Right. You have to slowly introduce food. Right. It sounds like you didn't have that slow introduction. It sounded like you had two very excited Americans to see you. I guess I'm trying to understand what was that like? Was it quite abrasive to your ears because you had all that silence?
- [60:38]
Erling Kagge
Yeah, it's. It took my while to adapt actually. The people, the Americans at the base were super nice. They offered me a bunk to sleep. I think I, maybe I slept a little bit, but I kept, I pitched my tent outside the base and also, you know, spent time in my tent because to get back to civilization was brutal. And because in reality, you know, as I said earlier on, I didn't really miss that much being alone. And I consider myself to be a social person, more social after expedition and prior to expedition, but also think it's super healthy, as you talked about, to spend time in solitude. Not that you have to spend 50 days and nights in solitude, but somehow you have to find your own North Pole or your own South Pole. And when I suddenly met people, they invited me for a drink, they offered me meals, they asked me to do a, a little talk about my expedition to people. You know, staying at the base, all this was very, very strange and also frustrating. I remember I had some really severe pain in my stomach. Really painful in my stomach. And that was of course, because I was frustrated. I found it, you know, difficult to relate to all these people.
- [61:58]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Wow.
- [61:59]
Erling Kagge
And then, you know, today when people walk alone in nature, usually they will have a phone. And then it's easy to believe. It's easier with the phone than without the phone. My experience is the opposite because if you have the phone and you talk every evening before you go to sleep, you talk. If you have a wife or boyfriend or Husband, whatever. You talk to your partner every evening. You have to listen to your partner saying, I love you, I miss you. And if the person doesn't say it, you get suspicious and you have to say, I love you, I'm missing you every evening. And then after three weeks, your partner will say something like, you know, the washing machine broke down today. And then you might as well just go home. Because what you want to experience on a certain expedition is the solitude is to have to face yourself, which is difficult. You had to look yourself somehow, not literally, but like, you know, we had to look, face yourself into the eyes like, you know, who am I? What am I doing? Why am I doing this? You know, what are the, as I said, what are the meanings in life? Not that you get into kind of any, the kind of, you know, heavy duty conclusions, but, you know, you have to live it through, you have to think it through. And if you disturb every day by the outside world, to me, you know, parts of the meaning or parts of the meanings are. Some of the meanings are gone. So I think in that sense, I think, you know, it's easy for me in the old days to do it in solitude, in silence, than many people doing today.
- [63:50]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Did you have kids when you went on these expeditions?
- [63:51]
Erling Kagge
I didn't have kids at that time, no.
- [63:53]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
For both those expeditions, yeah, I got.
- [63:56]
Erling Kagge
Kids later, but I still have done some expeditions after I got kids, but less risk.
- [64:03]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Less risk, less risk. So your attitude to risk changed after becoming a father?
- [64:10]
Erling Kagge
Yes.
- [64:12]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Also, I'm fascinated by solitude and silence. And something I've always wanted to do is one of these one week silent retreats. You do these silent meditations where you don't talk right. And then I tell you where my head goes, my head goes. I've still got young kids. Should I do that? Can I just, you know, is it selfish to do that and for my children to not see me or hear from me for seven days? Now, I think you can argue this a whole variety of different ways, but I'd love your perspective on this. Is it selfish to go away and find yourself in silence when you've got dependence?
- [64:56]
Erling Kagge
Not at all. It's egocentric for sure, but not selfish. I find selfish to be a very negative word. But you know, for your kids and in your case, your wife, maybe it's really good for them that you're away for a week. You know, they get a little bit rest from you. Maybe you can contribute a little bit before and after and you will come back not as a different person, but A little bit different person. You'll probably come back as a nicer person, a more caring person, a little bit wiser person. So I think it's a good idea.
- [65:36]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
You said it's egocentric, but. But is it egocentric, right, if, like, you know, you're making the case. Right. So these some of the ideas I've written down, right. That you've written about in all your books. Silence is not emptiness, but a gateway to self discovery. True adventure happens within solitude builds resilience and inner strength. Stillness and patience reveal what truly matters. Your best ideas emerge in solitude. The world disappears when you immerse yourself in the present. These are things that I've written down from your books, right? So let's go back to that idea that it's egocentric. I wanna challenge that and go, well, hold on a minute. If going away for a week gives you all these things, if, you know, there's a phrase that absence makes the heart grow fonder, right. One of the things people struggle with in.
- [66:31]
Erling Kagge
It should.
- [66:32]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
It should do. But one of the things people struggle with in the COVID lockdowns was that they were with their partners all the time. Right? There wasn't any absence there. And it was getting frustrating for many people, of course. Right. But I guess I'm trying to make the case to you, and you're someone who's done this, that it's not egocentric. That actually the selfish thing is sometimes the most selfless thing. If you come back as a better human being, who's calmer, who's more present, who has a greater appreciation of your wife, of your children, of what truly matters, is it really egocentric the way you put it?
- [67:12]
Erling Kagge
No. But then again, you know, your wife or anyone's partner has to have a kind of a generous attitude to think it's a good idea their partner goes away to be by themselves and nurture their own soul and enrich their lives. So you need some generosity there and you need to come back as a different, in a positive way, person. But then again, I think, you know, for most people, you know, that one party goes away for a week, do this, no problem at all. Again, we're underestimating ourselves. And I think, you know, it's. You should be. I think, you know, almost every relationship, partnership would be much better if they, you know, allow that kind of space for the, for the other party. And I, you know, for me, I, you know, I. I wanted my partner to be away for a week or two weeks or four weeks to experience what we're talking about because I want her back again as a, you know, even greater person.
- [68:19]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
You know, last November, just to be clear, I didn't do any meditation retreats or I didn't hike to anywhere exciting. I went to for two weeks to America, 10 days in LA, three, four days in Austin to do interviews around my last book. Right. So I was quite busy and exploring those ideas on microphones, on different shows. But even that, when I came home, I had a newfound appreciation for my life. I really had a newfound appreciation for my wife, for my children, for the house in which I live. And so I think there is something quite powerful here, even if you're not doing some wild hike and going to the ends of the earth.
- [69:01]
Erling Kagge
Absolutely.
- [69:02]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Right. So let's just land this silence plane for people before we move on to the North Pole, right? You don't need to go to the North Pole to find silence.
- [69:12]
Erling Kagge
Absolutely not.
- [69:13]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
So how can someone who's listening to this, who considers themselves very busy, who says, I don't have time, Erling, how can I get silence in my everyday life? What do you say to them?
- [69:25]
Erling Kagge
First of all, you're wrong. You have time. Maybe not much time, but everyone has five or 15 minutes for silence. And keep in mind that the most important silence is within. I think we can be standing at the busiest crossroad in the uk, Piccadilly Circus in London, and you can still find and discover and rediscover your own inner silence. It's there all the time waiting for you to explore it. So, and then it's a cliche, but, you know, you need to leave your phone somehow. You need to relax. You can walk, you can sit down and you can stand in the shower, you can do walk the stairs instead of taking the lift, you can walk to three stations or the metro instead of taking the metro. And you will discover in the silence. And as I said earlier on, to begin with, it's quite often uncomfortable. That's why people avoid it.
- [70:27]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. There's something quite interesting about this external silence versus the internal silence. Right. So as you said, that you can be in a busy place but still connect with that inner silence that's always there. At the same time, we can contrast that with you on these expeditions where there is silence all around you, but for the first two to three days, you have no inner silence. Right. There's all this noise. Right. So I think that's quite a beautiful concept for us to think about external silence versus inner silence. And yeah, I completely agree. I mean, I think, you know, Walking is one of those interesting ones where through the motion of movement, although it's not still because you're moving, you can become still on the inside, can't you? Through the movements.
- [71:16]
Erling Kagge
Absolutely, absolutely. So, you know, that's, I think, really important to keep in mind. The silence is there all the time.
- [71:24]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- [71:25]
Erling Kagge
And also important to keep in mind that your silence is different from my silence. We all have our own silences and the reason, because of course, silence is you. So it has to be, has to be different and. Yeah, and also like, you know, walking, it's like Hippocrates, the founder of modern medicine, you know, his advice was. Advice number one was to have a healthy life was walk, take a walk. And of course, at that time it was healthier for your body, but also healthier for your soul. You were in silence. And if you don't feel better after one walk, advice number two was take another walk. And his third advice was, whatever you do, make sure the doctor doesn't give you the wrong medicines.
- [72:15]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- [72:16]
Erling Kagge
And it holds up after more than 2,000 years.
- [72:18]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, he knew what he was talking about for sure.
- [72:20]
Erling Kagge
Yeah. I think all wisdom that had lasted for more than a thousand years, you should take it really seriously.
- [72:27]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Now, you've also said something in this conversation that I'm going to challenge. Okay, that's good, in a good way.
- [72:32]
Erling Kagge
Right.
- [72:33]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
You said, you know, when we go silence, we learn things, things about ourself, but nothing that profound. And I thought, wait a minute. Right, wait a minute. You know, you're an explorer, but I would argue you're a deep thinker, you're a philosopher. Because the wisdom in these books is really quite profound. So you sent me your very latest book last week. Right. Not only has it got this gorgeous cover. That's you, isn't it?
- [72:59]
Erling Kagge
That's me taking a photo of my partner Berga, walking towards the North Pole.
- [73:03]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. What's interesting when you look at this cover, it looks for me, I thought, oh, wait a minute, I thought he was skiing. I thought this looks like it's water and an ocean. But then I thought, oh, this is ice.
- [73:12]
Erling Kagge
It's ice floating on the ocean.
- [73:15]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, it's a pretty incredible photo, first of all. But the forward to the book is like, I don't know, I mean, you maybe can't say it about yourself. I'm going to say it for you. It is just wisdom. Every single word is just almost like this deep, deep wisdom that you compressed into a forward. Right. So this is what I'm going to challenge you on, right. You have discovered some quite profound things, you say? Oh, no, you know, you learned a few things about yourself. No, I think you've. I think you've learned the secret to life. Right. And you finished the forward with this. Do you mind if I read it to you?
- [73:54]
Erling Kagge
Please do.
- [73:55]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Okay. I've underlined the last time. I'm going to read the whole last paragraph. Okay. I have walked, skied, climbed and sailed in many parts of the world. I've been able to compare all the mountains, plateaus, forests, plains and oceans I have seen with somewhere else. But I have only experienced one place that is unlike anywhere else. The North Pole. Because when I finally got there, I realized there was no there there. I mean, come on, Ellie, if that isn't the secret to life, what is? It's that the destination doesn't exist. Success doesn't exist. It's all this. It's like. Can you just elaborate what you mean by that? When you got there, you realize there was no there. What does that mean?
- [74:50]
Erling Kagge
It means, you know, it means many things. It means the, you know, the banal thing is. But of course, if you take the banal seriously, it's not banal anymore, but the banal is. I had this huge obsession. Of course, being explorer, you need to be obsessed. I had this huge obsession to get with Berger and many other people to get to the North Pole, to walk all the way to the North Pole. And of course, we're all born explorers, so every baby is an explorer in their mind. If you look at the baby, first thing a baby will do is to stretch out the arms, stretch off the legs in four different directions and shriek for space and air. And then after a year, the same baby will leave the house and start to wonder what's between he or she and the horizon. So that's kind of how we were born. That spirit never goes away. It can be somewhere between 0.1 and 99.9. It's all degrees. So it's like, you know, as long as you're alive, you have this spirit of exploration. But for me, of course, it was super strong. And we had this dream. We prepared for years to get to the North Pole. We walked for fif. Days. Days and suffering a lot, starving, being exhausted, frostbites. And it was my whole life. It was like a true love story. I was totally in love with the idea of getting to the North Pole. And when we eventually got there, it was nothing there. Snow there, there. And it was just floating ice. The Arctic Ocean is the fifth biggest ocean in the world covered by ice, mostly some open leads. The colors are variations of gray, white and blue. And then the horizon. And it's almost exactly the same what you see at the North Pole as you see a couple hundred kilometers away. So it's just an idea. I mean, stand at the Pole a few hours later because the ice is moving all the time, you are somewhere else. But what's special with the North Pole is many things. It's on top of the globe. The wind comes from the south, it's blowing towards the south. All the longitudes come together at the top of the world. So it doesn't really have a position. It has latitudes, but doesn't have a position because it doesn't have a longitude. The sun has the same angle above the horizon for 24 hours. It neither goes up or down above the horizon. And you have, of course, one day and one night in one year. So you have six months of sun, six months of darkness at the North Pole. So it is a place of mystery. It has always been a place of mystery, all the way from prehistoric times. When people start to speculate about the North Pole, it was mysterious. But still today, later today, if you check Google Maps, Google World Map, you will see that the North Pole is not on the map because they're not able to. The algorithms and engineers at Google, they're not able to get the North Pole on the map.
- [78:14]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Why?
- [78:15]
Erling Kagge
Because the globe, of course, is three dimensional and the map is an abstraction of the world. It's flat, it's only two dimensional. And then they're not able to, you know, figure out so far. Maybe one day they will, how to, you know, how to put the point of the Earth or the two points of the Earth, the North Pole, the South Pole, where all the longitudes come together. So it just remains very elusive. And that's also why, you know, I wrote this in the foreword when I got there, we, Berg and I, we kind of rediscovered the North Pole. It was nothing there, there.
- [78:57]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
No, it seems to be a metaphor for many different things. Like, we know this classic story of hedonic adaptation with humans where we think that getting the promotion is going to make us feel good. Then you work hard, you work hard, you work hard, you get the promotion. And then it's like, oh, it feels.
- [79:18]
Erling Kagge
Good for a while though. For a few minutes or hours or days.
- [79:21]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. But not for a few weeks or a few months usually for most people, for most things. And that's why I think that final word of the forward is just so Profound. When I finally got there, I realized there was no there there. It's that whole ancient philosophical idea of journey over destination, process over outcome. Right. Everywhere you go. But I never thought about it through the lens of the North Pole. Right. So for the last few mornings at breakfast, I've been relaying something from this book to my children. I'm like, guys, you'll never believe what I read last night. Okay, so I'll tell you this morning what I was relaying to them is the bits that you just mentioned about these, all the lines of longitude meet there, which I never really thought about. So this idea that you're at the North Pole and you can literally walk around following the sun and you are literally traveling through time, I was saying to them, he can just walk a.
- [80:23]
Erling Kagge
Few half a minute to travel the world and a 24 hours time zone.
- [80:30]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. So he can go into yesterday.
- [80:33]
Erling Kagge
Exactly. And he can go forward in the same minute.
- [80:36]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Right. But then that plays into what we were talking about before. Right. About time. Right. Time calendar, time clock. Time is a human construct because of course you're a human being at this point in Earth and you're just walking. But we're saying it's time travel because you're walking through different lines of longitudes that we as humans have specified. But it's not real, it's a human.
- [81:08]
Erling Kagge
Construct and it's counter to how you know what we experience.
- [81:14]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. And it goes back to walking. Walking changes your perception of time and the environment around you. Right. And I mean, it's really quite something, isn't it? I mean, what you said in the kitchen, you said we assume these things, we say these things. The sun always rises in the east. And you're saying that's not true.
- [81:33]
Erling Kagge
It's just not true. Because now it's. People have this kind of idea that what has happened so far, every day or every week or every hour in my life will keep on happening. And the most common example is the sun will always rise in the east. But when you're at the North Pole, close to the North Pole or the South Pole, as I said, the sun neither rises or sets or does it once a year. So it's not true. It doesn't rise every morning from the east. And if you're in space, you can have 16 sunrises in 24 hours. So it's this thing with time is being linear. It's a good idea for every country's gross national product that people have a watch and appear at the office or wherever you work every Day at the right time. So I'm not negative to it. But then again, I think, you know, just to be aware of what you're saying, that time is not linear. Yeah, it's really important.
- [82:42]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
There's no clocks in the studio. No, that's all done intentionally, you know, and I didn't think about it through the lens of the North Pole and what you write about, but that whole thing about solitude and silence and how when you go to the South Pole, it's going to take two or three days for the noise to switch off in your mind before you can access the inner silence. Those kids with the smartphones, the first two to three days without them and their laptops, they're a bit tense before they can feel the calm. I kind of feel that's how I see this podcast in many ways. That's why I believe long form conversation is so important. Right. Because I think what happens at the start, let's say we talk for two hours. I would say for the first 20 minutes, we're both aware there's a mic on.
- [83:32]
Erling Kagge
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [83:33]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
And we're recording.
- [83:34]
Erling Kagge
And I'm a little bit nervous. Not nervous, but like, you know, but at some point you're listening up.
- [83:40]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
We just forgot. And we're just chatting as if we're just having coffee together. Right. It's the same principle. And I saw this tweet yesterday on X about it was about books saying, what's the point in books? Just get AI to give you a summary. Right. So you know the key points. But the tweet was brilliant because the guy was saying that. Yeah, but that's. If you believe that the only thing that's important about a book is the information that it gives you, which it isn't. It's the experience. Right. It's the journey you go on as you acquire that information. And so through the lens of this podcast, it's not about the information you get directly. Someone out at the moment is out on a long run or a walk listening to this conversation. And I think the power is the insights that they get about their life through us having a conversation, rather than me delivering or you delivering direct, actionable insights. It's the journey they go on. Do you know what I mean?
- [84:46]
Erling Kagge
Absolutely. And this is, again, you know, what we talked about a little bit before today is about making life a little bit more difficult because you can have a novel, you're curious about the novel. Maybe at school you have to do something. You're going to a dinner party, you want to talk About a book or book club, whatever, reading circle, and you get to extract through AI or Wikipedia, whatever, that's the easy one. But if you actually have to sit down and spend five evenings reading the same book, then you really benefit from reading the book. Yeah, so it's a little bit more difficult, time consuming, but you know, it's the only meaningful way to go.
- [85:27]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
I want to talk about polar bears and fear. Okay, so this is another story I've been talking to the kids about. So when you were relaying your expedition to the South Pole earlier on today, you said something which you wrote about on the North Pole as well, which I found just profound. This idea that after a few days there's no separation anymore between you and the environment, you become the environment. And of course, many of us never experienced that. I'm sure a lot of ultra runners, you know. You know, long distance running is growing in popularity and I'm sure one of the reasons why is you start to escape life a little bit and you start to connect with parts of yourself that you just don't get to connect with in your day to day life. But of course that can be a long walk or whatever it might be. Right. But you also said that you don't feel fear because you're part of the environment or something to that effect. I found that really interesting, much less.
- [86:31]
Erling Kagge
Fair because like climbing Everest, kind of almost pulling off a cliff, but it's just still a part of you. So you kind of, you know, you just kind of, it's kind of organic, the whole thing, you and the nature. You know, it's like if my mother had seen me walking to the North Pole, crossing a huge open lead in the ice.
- [86:55]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
What's an open lead?
- [86:56]
Erling Kagge
Open lead like the ice is breaking apart and then you have water, open water between two ice floes.
- [87:02]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Oh, wow.
- [87:03]
Erling Kagge
And the ocean stream, 12 meters deep. So if you fall into the water with a sled, you're in deep shit. And then, you know, you just, I. E dead. At least it's, you know, it's really dangerous. But then because you're part of the ice, you're part of the snow, you're part of the wind, you're part of the water. You kind of feel comfortable. But if my mother had seen me, you know, almost falling off a cliff at Everest or crossing this open water towards the North Pole, she would be scared like shit. But when you're there, you calm and it's important that polar explorers not going to the North Pole because they don't have fear. They're doing it despite the fear. Of course, everyone has fear about this kind of environment, but then the fear kind of slowly disappears.
- [87:58]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
I love talking to people like you or monks or people who've gone to these sort of so called extremes of life because I think that's where we learn the real truth about what it is to be a human being. Right. So I've spoken to many monks on this podcast over the years. I love chatting to monks.
- [88:13]
Erling Kagge
I've realized, you know, we should, we should, you know, maybe, you know, maybe not become monks, but it's something really.
- [88:18]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
But when they go away, they, when they leave the kind of routine and hecticness of day to day life and sit in silence. Right. With their routine scenes and rituals, I think they discover things that we can learn without needing to go to a monastery. Right. And I think through your journey we can learn things that we can apply in our life without needing to go to the North Pole or the South Pole. Right. But this idea that we can be at one with our environment is something that spiritual teachers will talk about, that we are one, we're not separate. Right. But I've never heard an explorer talk about it like that, so that's really interesting to me. And then relaying that to a polar bear. I'd love you to tell us about your experience with a polar bear and shooting a polar bear. But also you write later on in the book about other explorers. I think it was a pair who went and they reported shooting a polar bear who was attacked, which was primed to attack them. And you actually talk about this description when you're reading about the other explorers, that it sounds as though they were really calm. It's almost unbelievable. But you said, I actually believe them. I think they could have been this calm because they were at one with their environment. So can you talk to me about polar bears and fear and how that all plays together?
- [89:42]
Erling Kagge
Yeah. Berge and I, very close to the north pole, like 200 km south of the pole, Sunda heard Berge shouting Hoi. And I never heard him shout that before. So I looked up and saw this polar bear at 20, 22, 24 meters away. And it was coming towards us, stopped. And we were well prepared. We knew how polar bears could act when they suddenly saw some people and that's like, or something could possibly chase and eat. And so the bear stopped and then started to walk a little bit back and forth, which we expected to do. So we dived into the sledges, found our Magnum 44s, his handguns with really short barrels because we had to save weight. It's all about saving weight because you're bringing all everything you need for a couple of months on the sled. Food, everything, fuel, you know, tent, sleeping bag, madras. And then. So it was too far away for us to fire, but we knew it was going to charge because this far north is nothing to eat but polar explorers. So it was kind of no doubt for us. But then Berger figured out he was thinking National Geographic today. That sounds silly, but at the time we read National Geographic because in the old days that was the only information we got in Norway, most places on Earth, about expeditions, different places in caves in the mountains, to the poles, etc.
- [91:25]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Pre Internet, right?
- [91:25]
Erling Kagge
Exactly, exactly. So that was huge every month to get that magazine. So he thought, this is my chance to get my photos published in National Geographic. While the bear was standing there around 20 meters away. So he grabbed his camera. He did have a film in the camera. This was the time he had to put a film in the camera, dropped his gun, got a film into the camera.
- [91:48]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
But you had a gun at the time?
- [91:50]
Erling Kagge
Yeah, I had a gun and he had a gun, but he dropped a gun. And then he talked me into standing between himself and the bear, waving, waving with a gun.
- [91:59]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Are you scared at this point?
- [92:02]
Erling Kagge
You know, it's. I don't feel any fear at all. Wow, you're totally calm. Take the gun. But of course I said to him, we need to, you know, we need to shoot the bear first. And he said, no, no, no, take a photo like this. So I stand up like this for a few seconds, take it. And he take the photo with the bear in the background. And then the bear stops turning towards us, you know, start to dig his forefeet into the snow, lower his head. And we knew it was going to charge.
- [92:29]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
And of course that's what they do. They lower the head, start digging.
- [92:32]
Erling Kagge
At least, at least, you know, that's a sure sign it's going to attack. Kind of, kind of ready to attack. Speed up towards you. And Berg, of course, dropped the camera. We jumped a little bit aside to frustrate the bears with not staying too close to each other. And we had to wait until the bear was really close.
- [92:50]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Why did you have to wait?
- [92:51]
Erling Kagge
Because if not, we were not able. With that short barrel and almost with a handgun, it's super difficult to hit the bear. Is it really 20 meters away? Almost impossible, because the bullet goes off like, you know, in circles and then not the right direction. So you had to wait this really close and the bear can run up to 40 miles an hour, 60 kilometers an hour. So can I just pause you there?
- [93:14]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Right. This is. Is mind blowingly interesting for me. Right, so first of all, you're saying you're feeling no fear, right? Because you've acclimatized, you're part of the environment, you are one with everything around you. Then you see this bear, you know, and then you can see that the bear is ready to attack and harm you.
- [93:34]
Erling Kagge
And maybe not harm us, kill us and eat us.
- [93:38]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Kill you and eat you.
- [93:39]
Erling Kagge
No doubt about that. Both of us. Yeah.
- [93:42]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
And so you have to wait until they're nearby because you've only bought a magnum with you, not a rifle, because you need to save weight, so you can't risk shooting when it's far away. Are you still feeling no fear as they're charging towards you or. A little bit. Or you just. Would you. Would you describe it as. I'm just aware of the environment and I'm focused.
- [94:05]
Erling Kagge
It's Birger and me. We were suppressing the fear because as soon as you feel fear, you start to get irrational. So you had to be super rational if a bear is going to kill you and eat you. So I didn't feel any fear. Birger didn't feel any fear. I mean, he want to take a photo, etc. So we were pretty cool. The bear came towards us around 8 meters away. We both fired 8 meters and then, you know, 35, 40 kilometers, maybe an hour coming towards you. So it's just, you know, you have one shot each.
- [94:46]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Why have you only got one? Because if you miss, the bear's got you.
- [94:49]
Erling Kagge
Yeah, yeah. I mean, at least you have to be really quick with the trigger if you're going to have a second shot.
- [94:58]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
And you hit the bear and what, the bear just falls?
- [95:01]
Erling Kagge
Yeah, after a few seconds I felt. But then you feel the fear, the fear you had the whole time. Because we were super afraid. You kind of suppressed all those feelings.
- [95:16]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
So you can get the job done. You do what needs to be done.
- [95:19]
Erling Kagge
Also because we part of everything around us. So it kind of felt just normal. But then afterwards, then I understood I had been super afraid the whole time. So then we were shaking for half a minute, something I got in maybe a minute and then, you know, shaking the flight. This was not just like, you know, just shaking our heads because. And then we checked that properly that the bear was dead. And then we took photos of the bear from all angles. Because most people who claim to have killed a polar Bear in self defense. Hit it in the back, hit it in the arse. And of course then it's not really self defense because the bear is turning away from you. So we want to prove beyond any doubt that we hit it only in.
- [96:14]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
The chest as an act of self defense.
- [96:17]
Erling Kagge
Yeah, self defense.
- [96:18]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
And I think it's important to make that point, and you make that in the book, that you're not a fan of killing animals.
- [96:23]
Erling Kagge
Not at all. I don't like to kill anything.
- [96:25]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. In the book you, you write very respectfully. I'm in their environments. The only. So you're saying that the only reason you guys killed that bear is because if not they would have. It would have killed you. Yeah.
- [96:36]
Erling Kagge
So.
- [96:36]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
So, so self defense.
- [96:38]
Erling Kagge
Yeah. So I would never ever killed. I don't even like to, you know, kill birds. Groves and you know, can I just.
- [96:44]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Ask, you know, you took these photos to prove.
- [96:46]
Erling Kagge
Yeah.
- [96:47]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
That actually it wasn't self defense.
- [96:49]
Erling Kagge
Yeah.
- [96:50]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
You're in the middle of nowhere. Right. Do you need photos to prove. What I'm saying is if you just moved on and continued on your expedition, would anyone have ever known?
- [97:02]
Erling Kagge
No. No.
- [97:03]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
So why did you then need to get evidence?
- [97:07]
Erling Kagge
It's. It's a protected animal and in case.
- [97:13]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Anyone found the dead later, no one will find it.
- [97:16]
Erling Kagge
Dead animal, you know, it's way out on the ice. That was, you know, super unlikely. But you know, it's. It's. You kill a protected animal, you want.
- [97:25]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
To see the right thing.
- [97:26]
Erling Kagge
Yeah. And you wanted to be absolutely no doubt. It was a matter about who's having who for dinner. And even Gandhi wrote that, you know, if a lion attacks you or your family, you should kill the an. You should kill the lion.
- [97:40]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- [97:41]
Erling Kagge
So I think we're, you know, totally correct. Like, you know, so of course, I've always been. Some people who think, you know, we should, you know, let the bear live on.
- [97:50]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
But hold on, this goes back. Wait, this. I think it's a really interesting point. Right. About the disconnection we have from our environment and even our food supply. Right.
- [98:01]
Erling Kagge
Yeah.
- [98:02]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
And I really, I've been thinking about this for years, but I really noticed it last summer. I've spoken about this before when I was in Kenya with my family and we went on a safari.
- [98:13]
Erling Kagge
That's great, huh? That's the best. That's one of the best vacations I ever had with my kids.
- [98:18]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Just. I was scared before going to be clear. But it was life changing and just to see the wild and the circle of life and how it actually occurs in nature. I don't know, it was, I guess to someone who's grown up with herself, they might find it quite obvious. To me, it really was quite profound to go, oh, I kind of get it, you know, and. And you're saying you're in that rhyme or that you. It's who's eating who for dinner. But okay, so you take photos to prove, should anyone ask you that this was in self defense. And then it was quite interesting that. Because you guys are really hungry all the time. Right. But you didn't. So tell me about your decision to not eat straight away.
- [99:00]
Erling Kagge
Yeah, you know, we had 6,000 calories per day to eat, but we're still starving and we're getting thinner and thinner and eventually, you know, the body fat is gone and you also start to, you know, burn off muscle mass, which is unhealthy and also not a good idea if you're going to ski all day. So we really kind of down when it got close to the Pole, but we want to do it unsupported, which meant like no depots, no dogs, no air supply, like, you know, just dragging everything.
- [99:32]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
You did the South Pole first, right?
- [99:33]
Erling Kagge
No, first South Pole. After the North Pole.
- [99:35]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Okay, so let's. So this is. How old were you when you did the North Pole?
- [99:38]
Erling Kagge
27.
- [99:40]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Wow. Think back to what I was doing in my 20s, I think. Wow. I wasn't doing north and South Pole, but okay. At 27. So you're with your buddy. You want to be the first pair to go to the North Pole unsupported.
- [99:54]
Erling Kagge
Exactly.
- [99:54]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
And are you in the Guinness Book of Records for that?
- [99:57]
Erling Kagge
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I am, yeah.
- [99:59]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Great. I love how you're not even related to that, you know. So there is no destination. There is no there.
- [100:03]
Erling Kagge
Right. I think I checked when I wrote the book actually that, you know, it's. That we are actually in the Guinness of.
- [100:08]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Okay, so. And this word unsupported is key.
- [100:11]
Erling Kagge
Yeah. For us it was key because. Because at that time, National Geographic again, in three years before, four years before this, French explorer Jean dewitt Etienne, he walked us key to the North Pole with supplies. And he said, maybe one day it will be possible for some, someone to reach the Pole without all the supplies I had. And that's when we want to do it. Some Canadians want to do it, some Koreans want to do it, some Russians want to do it, and Sir Ronald Fiennes from United Kingdom wanted to do it. So it became a kind of race to be the first to do this and ran, as we call him. He told us beforehand that but like of course the rules are kind of unclear. So he said if you kill an animal and eat the animal, that's a kind of support. I disagreed. But you know, we want to be no doubt that we have stick to like, you know, not done anything.
- [101:14]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Oh, so you didn't want to risk it.
- [101:15]
Erling Kagge
Exactly.
- [101:16]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
So you had, you had fresh meat that would have nourished your starving body and your, your muscles that are starting to disintegrate because you're not feeding your body enough.
- [101:26]
Erling Kagge
Yeah.
- [101:27]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
But because you wanted there to be no doubt that you got there unsupported, you chose not to eat it.
- [101:33]
Erling Kagge
Yeah, but we took a few steaks with us and when it got to the Pole, we eat those steaks.
- [101:39]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Oh, so you did it unsupported.
- [101:41]
Erling Kagge
Yeah, but at the Pole they celebrated the bear steaks.
- [101:45]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Wow. But it didn't taste that good, did it?
- [101:47]
Erling Kagge
No, no, because it's polar bears, they can, you know, they can have this tricktins, this kind of parasites in the meat and it's hard to see them. And you know, we were unsure so we had to, we boiled the meat and we fried the meat. But at that time we were so super hungry, starving. So we ate the meat and afterwards all the oil that came out of the meat when we cooked it, we just drank it as water, kind of 100% fat. But what was interesting again back to you know what we talked about, about time him that when we were at the Pole and when we going to eat this kind of great meal, I want to just dig in and eat it all right away. Berge my partner, he said no, let us just wait 10 seconds, let us count to 10 slowly and then eat. And of course then it tasted even better.
- [102:49]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Wow.
- [102:51]
Erling Kagge
But I should also add like because I mentioned Randall finds we were competing to the South Pole, to the North Pole and we became kind of very unfriendly terms. Unfriendly, unfriendly because we're competing. But then that's a beautiful life. Years passed by and, and then we become friends and I think it's important all this grudge, all this kind of whatever you have from early in life kind of negativity to a person, get rid of it. So with ran to now he's not well anymore. He's a legend. And when I asked him to blur my book the North Pole, he replies within a minute, I'd love to do it.
- [103:41]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Wow, that's so lovely to hear.
- [103:43]
Erling Kagge
Yeah, exactly. So you know, you have to, you know, know, it's all wisdom again, you have to get on with your life. You have to move on.
- [103:50]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
You sometimes hear this with athletes who were super competitive in their careers and then once they've retired from competing, they become the best of friends.
- [103:59]
Erling Kagge
Exactly.
- [104:00]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Which.
- [104:01]
Erling Kagge
It's great. It's great.
- [104:02]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. So while they're competing, they can't be or they perceive that they can't be and later they can. There's another bit in the forward that really got me thinking. Okay. And again, if you don't mind, I want to read a part of it to you.
- [104:21]
Erling Kagge
You know, it's always strange for an author, you may be experienced yourself too as an author to hear someone else is reading what you have written.
- [104:29]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- [104:30]
Erling Kagge
Because I think, you know, when you write something, at least for me to make it into, you know, good literature or great literature, you're kind of escaping yourself. So sometimes when I hear something you have written, maybe not this, you have to, you know, have to listen first. I'm surprised that I actually written this.
- [104:53]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. It's also before I read this, it also reminds me of what a lot of artists say is that when they write a song and then they release the song, the song is no longer theirs. Right. So they had an idea in mind when they wrote that song and recorded it. But a lot of artists who I follow and I've always been fascinated by music and listening to interviews with artists, it's not mine anymore. I realize that everyone interprets that song differently and I kind of feel I'm gonna read something to you now, but maybe it wasn't the way you intended it. But this is my interpretation. Right. So here it is. My hope was to be respected by the person I respected most and to learn more about him. To deepen our bonds by freezing, starving, struggling and experiencing great danger. My father's dark shadow loomed over my expedition. Though I never told him this and find it hard to admit even to myself, our journey. So your journey to the North Pole was an iteration of the oldest story in the world? The son who wants to know his father and be loved by him.
- [106:11]
Erling Kagge
Yeah, that's true.
- [106:13]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
What does that mean? Why does your desire to be loved by your father lead you to going on a life threatening expedition to the North Pole?
- [106:27]
Erling Kagge
I grew up in a home when was very much very masculine values. So for my two brothers and me, the huge thing, the way to get respect in the weekends and the evenings in the week was to ski far, walk far, being in nature, pushing yourself, maybe Putting up a record that was kind of how to get respect at home. And of course, every son, almost every son, I don't know anyone who doesn't have, you know, has been struggling with the father. Like the father and son relationship is the most. Probably most complicated in the world. And of course, also the father is struggling with his son or his sons. And this is like, you know, it was certainly the case in my household, in our household. But when you look back in history with the Old Testament, with the Bible, it wouldn't have been much to read in the Bible if fathers and sons had a good relationship. I mean, it's a kind of one clear red line through the Old Testament and the New Testament father and son issues. And. And when you read, like, I had a difficult time learning how to read and write because I was heavily dyslectic. So my mother and father, they read books for me when I was a kid, and my mother read Homer's Odysseus, and she read it for me. And of course, the first four parts of that book is not about. It's about the son, Telemachus, who, the first 20 years of his life, he has not seen his father. Or maybe it's not just after he was born, like a few months, but then for 20 years, he has not known his father. And for every kid, the biggest mystery in life, one of the biggest mysteries in life is who their parents were before they were born. And for Telemachus is also after he was born. So he leaves his home and sails the oceans to learn about his father, to see if the father is alive, to see what experience, what the father has been experiencing, and maybe also, you know, to get to know his father. So that's one of the oldest stories ever. And that to me, that's kind of the original written history on exploration. And to my great surprise, when I. When I did research on my book, I also discovered that almost every North Pole explorer had a difficult relationship to their father or their father disappeared. Like with Ran, his father died as a soldier while Ran was still in the womb of his mother. And I talked to Ran about this many, many, many years ago. And the way I remember the conversation was that he said he would never, ever have become an explorer if it wasn't for the loss of his father. And he had to compensate and like, you know, live a life to kind of match his father, live up to his father's ideals. So that was also the case for me. I had a very complicated relationship to my father. But fortunately, and, you know, Of a fun thing today. Maybe not, not at the time. When I got home from the North Pole, Berg and I, we succeeded. We got to the poll was a huge success. People are impressed because of course one of the many reasons you walk into the North Pole is to get recognition you want to impress. It's maybe not sympathetic. I don't think it's unsympathetic. But some people find it unsympathetic. But anyway, that's one of the reasons people doing this. But I met my father, he said, I think it's ridiculous to walk to the North Pole. And by the way, your brother is more fit than you. So he should have done it. But then today or you know, some years later, I forgave my father everything. He forgave me everything. And we became great friends. Unfortunately, today he's become old man. But fortunately he managed to read the North Pole before he got too old. And he really like, you know, I was wondering what he would say, you know, to read my version of this story. But fortunately he appreciated it because of course he also found me to be a difficult person.
- [111:18]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. Wonder what it was like for him to read that paragraph that I just read to you.
- [111:23]
Erling Kagge
But I think he felt it enriching because like life kind of his life and my life came together because my verse is not that he was bad and I was good. I mean we were two complicated persons in a family and kind of was. History was of course unique, but it's very similar to millions and millions of other stories. So I think in general, I think if wives or girlfriends or fiance's, whatever use a little effort to understand this father and son relationship, they would have a better relationship quite often to their partner.
- [112:07]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
That is so profound. I mean there's a couple of things about that story about the father son relationship which I think are interesting for me. One is I. I kind of feel that society very much has tried to make men and women the same. And it was only when I became a parent that I really deeply understood that we're different. You know, we play a different role, let's say with our children. You know, certain things the kids want their mother for the certain things the kids want their father for. I also recognize that every family is different. There's different dynamics. Okay, so these are broad generalizations. But this thing of the father son story, the reason why I really paused on this because I thought our journey was an iteration. The oldest story in the world. The son who wants to know his father and be loved by him. So I'M questioning myself, Gertrude. So does this apply to my son? And of course I'm not him, right? So I can't tell you what he's thinking. But I think I've got a pretty awesome relationship with him. But it just made me think as a dad, you know, if it had.
- [113:21]
Erling Kagge
Gone on for such a long time, it's not going to be away in modern generation. But of course over generation. Much closer to our kids than our parents generation.
- [113:31]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Oh, you mean things are changing in silencing.
- [113:32]
Erling Kagge
Yeah, for the better. Like my father was not, you know, he was not welcome to be present when my mother gave birth to her three sons or his three sons. Whenever he went to some doctor or you know, nurse going to check his sons when they were kids, babies, he was looked upon as almost like, you know, a stranger because it was a man doing it. So you were estranged for your kids kid the first couple years of the kids lives. So it was, you know, it was difficult at that time. Much more difficult that time to relate to a kid. So I think, you know, we are very fortunate as fathers that we can be closer to the mother, closer to the kids early on and also taking responsibility for the kids early on. But then again, you know, it's as a generalization, it's like the mother usually loves her kids anyway. I know my mother will love me. Even if I became a murderer. Whatever I would do, my mother would love me. And it's also this. Maybe I quoted wrong, but this poem by a wicked Kipling. Mother of mine, mother of mine. I know his love would follow me still even if I. If I was hanged from the highest hill. But of course with your father. You're not that certain today I'm certain my father loves me. But for many years not so clear.
- [115:01]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Wow, Erling. So much to think about. You're an explorer, writer, philosopher. Giving some pretty good parenting advice as well. There is just so much wisdom in these books. I've been wanting to talk to you since I met you in Oslo a few years ago. When we didn't have a static meeting, you insisted we go for a walk. You took me around Oslo. We then stopped for coffee. It was wonderful.
- [115:25]
Erling Kagge
We had a great coffee, remember?
- [115:26]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
We did.
- [115:27]
Erling Kagge
Tim Wendelborg was one of the best. Best places on earth actually to have a coffee.
- [115:31]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Well, and we were chatting before about. You invited me to always go on an adventure with you, which I'm going to try and take you up on later this year, if I can, you know.
- [115:39]
Erling Kagge
You're back to your question again. You can?
- [115:42]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, of course.
- [115:46]
Erling Kagge
And it's not even selfish.
- [115:48]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
It's not even selfish. As we just interrogated. Exactly. There are other things I wanted to talk about, but people can read about them in your books. Movement being the antidote to overthinking. Pain and struggle create meaning. The present moment is the exit from negative thoughts. Meaning is not something waiting to be discovered, but something we build through our choices and our mindset. Lots of powerful ideas penetrate all of these books. I'd highly encourage people to pick them up. I think they're brilliant. The new one, of course, is the North Pole. The history of an obsession where you detail your obsession. Some of the things we've been talking about, what the journey was like, the whole history, the fact that there are four North Poles, not just one, which I found really, really interesting. But to finish off this conversation, Erling, there's a lot of people who listen to my podcast because they feel stuck in life. They feel a bit lost, as if their lives don't have meaning, they're lacking purpose, and they don't know where to go. With all of your wisdom, with all of these expeditions that you've been on, for someone who's struggling right now in their life, what would you say to them?
- [117:04]
Erling Kagge
It's a tough one because, as I said earlier on, you know, our lives are quite alike and our problems are quite similar, but still, it's unique. So, you know, to give general advice is difficult because as you also have, I have deep respect for every human, also every human who's struggling. But what I said earlier on, I think most humans are underestimating themselves from early on in life. Like, you know, we told you can't draw and you believe you can't draw rest of your life. You love, surrender, you believe, etc. And this goes through from childhood, teenage years into adult life. And all this, you know, kind of negativity shapes you. So somehow you have to break free of it. Not all of it, but parts of it. And I think, you know, like to move, to walk, being moved, as we talked about. It's, you know, to get up in the morning to try to get into nature. And, you know, here in uk, it's kind of you maybe have to travel far to get into nature, but at least get into some parks and try to have some variations in your life because if you happen to do kind of the same things every day, which, for instance, could be spend hours every day looking into a screen and believe, you're going to learn about yourself, learn about the world, and find meanings in life. It's a huge mistake. So somehow you have to. You have to be a little bit brutal to yourself. It's easy to say, it's difficult to do, but is it worth it? Yes. So it's kind of, you know, it's about finding your own North Pole eventually.
- [119:10]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Erling, it's been such a joy talking to you. Thank you for writing all these wonderful books and thank you for making the journey to the sea come to Norway. That's it.
- [119:19]
Erling Kagge
We'll do it.
- [119:20]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Thanks man.
- [119:21]
Erling Kagge
Thank you.
- [119:26]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Really hope you enjoyed that conversation. Do think about one thing that you can take away and apply into your own life. And also have a think about one thing from this conversation that you can teach to somebody else. Remember, when you teach someone, it not only helps them, it also helps you learn and retain Contain the information now before you go, just wanted to let you know about Friday 5. It's my free weekly email containing five simple ideas to improve your health and happiness. In that email I share exclusive insights that I do not share anywhere else, including health advice, how to manage your time better, interesting articles or videos that I've been consuming, and quotes that have caused me to stop and reflect. And I have to say, in a world of endless emails, it really is delightful that many of you tell me it is one of the only weekly emails that you actively look forward to receiving. So if that sounds like something you would like to receive each and every Friday, you can sign up for free@drchatterjeet.com Friday 5 Now if you are new to my podcast, you may be interested to know that I have brought written five books that have been bestsellers all over the world covering all kinds of different topics. Happiness, food, stress, sleep, behavior change and movement, weight loss, and so much more. So please do take a moment to check them out. They are all available as paperbacks, ebooks and as audiobooks which I am narrating. If you enjoyed today's episode, it is always appreciated. If you consider take a moment to share the podcast with your friends and family or leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful week. And please note that if you want to listen to this show without any adverts at all, that option is now available for a small monthly fee on Apple and on Android. All you have to do is click the link in the Episode notes in your podcast app and always, always remember you are the architect of your own health. Making lifestyle change is always worth it because when you feel better, you live more.