Get Uncomfortable: The Brutal Truth About Comfort, Challenge & Becoming a Real Man | Michael Easter (Fan Fav)

Summary

Impact Theory Podcast: Get Uncomfortable – The Brutal Truth About Comfort, Challenge & Becoming a Real Man

Guest: Michael Easter | Host: Tom Bilyeu

Episode Date: December 20, 2025

---

Episode Overview

This episode features Tom Bilyeu in conversation with journalist and author Michael Easter, known for his book The Comfort Crisis. The core theme is an exploration of modern comfort, how it impacts psychological and physical health, and why deliberately seeking discomfort is crucial for growth, resilience, and true satisfaction. Michael shares personal stories from his experiences in the Arctic and discusses rites of passage, boredom, death, digital culture, and how challenging ourselves impacts happiness and fulfillment.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The “Comfort Crisis”: Origins and Consequences

• Modern Comfort vs. Ancestral Challenges (01:14–03:22)

  • Tom introduces his obsession with the idea that society is getting "soft." Michael describes the premise of his book: as life gets more comfortable, society loses much of what makes us physically and mentally healthy.
  • Michael’s 30+ days in the Arctic became a deep investigation into discomfort and its role in personal growth.

• Quote:

  “If your problem is getting stuck in traffic or someone challenged your idea, instead of being chased by a lion, that can do some stuff to your brain that seems to…get a little bit out of whack.” – Michael Easter (01:52)

---

2. Michael's Arctic Expedition: Seeking Growth Through Discomfort

• Experiencing Extreme Hardship (03:49–06:04)

  • Michael narrates his perilous journey: multiple plane rides to a remote Arctic tundra, facing freezing weather, self-sufficiency, heavy packs, and the ever-present threat of grizzlies.
  • Tom probes whether Michael undertook this to challenge himself or as a journalist; Michael explains these roles overlap, especially as a recovering alcoholic, always vigilant of internal struggles.

• Notable Moment:

  “Push-ups in the parking lot are a metaphor for what the disease is doing. It's always there, like, ready to come get me.” – Michael Easter (06:30)

---

3. Self-Discovery and Hidden Gaps

• Why Challenge is Essential for Self-Understanding (07:17–12:35)

  • Societal comfort removes the need to ask hard questions or face personal limits.
  • Historical perspective: Ancestral humans faced 14 times more physical activity than us. Loss of unstructured, unsupervised challenge for kids corresponds with higher rates of anxiety and depression in recent generations.
  • Tom and Michael share stories about unsupervised childhood adventures, emphasizing resilience and learning through trial and error.

• Quote:

  “Because by never putting yourself in a position where you are uncomfortable…you're not gonna learn anything about yourself.” – Michael Easter (08:27)

---

4. The Societal Impact of Comfort: Culture Wars & Mental Health

• Culture and Education (13:20–15:46)

  • Michael, now a university professor, comments on students’ reluctance to engage in challenging discussions (like politics), linking it to avoidance of discomfort and increased sensitivity.

• Tom’s Reflection:

  “At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is how you feel about yourself. Everybody else can think you're amazing. If you think you're a piece of shit, then it's just done. Nothing else matters.” (15:46)

---

5. Physical and Psychological Adaptation: Training for Hardship

• Arctic Lessons and Modern Life (16:46–21:29)

  • Michael details the difficulties of Arctic trekking (“like a mattress…covered in partially inflated basketballs”), and how even basic survival tasks become Herculean and dangerous due to exposure.
  • He lost about 10 pounds and had to constantly manage risk.

• Quote:

  “What I was doing out there was essentially daily life for essentially all of humanity, all of the time.” – Michael Easter (20:15)

• Societal Blind Spots

  • Tom and Michael discuss how despite statistical evidence that life is safer and easier, our brains still interpret and search for problems ("problem creep" / "prevalence induced concept change").

---

6. Evolution of Challenge: Rites of Passage and Myth

• Why Past Societies Used Rites of Passage (29:34–36:43)

  • Michael explains tribal rites that mark transition to adulthood (Maasai lion hunt, Nez Perce fasting, Aboriginal walkabout). These rituals create a deliberate challenge, fostering competence and adult confidence.
  • Tom relates this to Joseph Campbell and his own marriage as a "ritualistic scarification" (getting a tattoo) to signify life change.

• Quote:

  “By putting yourself in true challenge, you learn something about yourself…When you have that attitude, all of a sudden, the stuff that comes at us in modern life…it's just like, I got stuck in traffic? I survived a hurricane in the Arctic.” – Michael Easter (42:12)

---

7. Masogi: Modern Metaphorical Lions

• Creating Artificial Challenge in Modern Life (36:43–42:48)

  • Michael discusses Dr. Marcus Elliot’s “Masogi” concept: annually attempting something you truly think you have a 50/50 shot of finishing (e.g., walking an 85-lb boulder underwater for miles, summiting visible distant peaks).
  • The message is to reintroduce metaphorical lions—real, non-lethal hardship—into our comfortable routines for growth.

• Rule:

  “Rule number two is: don’t die. Don’t be dumb about it, right?” – Michael Easter (39:48)

---

8. Autopilot & Routine: The Cost of Predictability

• Routine and Presence (45:30–49:27)

  • Human brains crave routine for safety. But excessive predictability dulls present-moment awareness (“You ever drive and 20 minutes go by, and you don’t even know what just happened?”).
  • Shaking up routines, learning new things, and introducing discomfort restores focus and vitality.

• Story:

  “A guy told me after reading my book, he left his phone behind on his daily walk, saw ants moving in a perfect line—and he’ll remember that for the rest of his life. But he wouldn’t even remember what he’d listened to if he’d brought his phone.” (47:50)

---

9. Boredom as a Tool for Creativity and Growth

• Neuroscience of Boredom & Creativity (49:27–56:01)

  • Technology gives us “junk food for the mind” (phones, TV, etc.), eliminating natural moments of boredom.
  • Boredom is critical: it gives the brain rest, enhances creativity, and allows for internal reflection.

• Quote:

  “In the book, I’m arguing it’s not about less phone, it’s about more boredom. We need times where we’re totally disconnected from outside stimulation.” – Michael Easter (50:22)

• Supporting Science:

  • Bored groups in studies consistently outperform the “phone” groups on creativity tests.
  • Michael uses 20-min daily walks, phone-free, to access these benefits.

---

10. Rucking and the Power of Carrying Weight

• Persistence Hunting and Human Evolution (61:18–72:18)

  • Humans are uniquely designed for endurance and carrying. Our ancient advantage was persistence hunting—running prey to exhaustion, then carrying heavy loads home.
  • Modern rucking (walking with weight) mirrors this ancestral movement: combines cardio and strength, is lower-injury vs. running, foundational in military training.

• Practical Tips:

  • Max recommended: 50 lbs. weight for most people, but adapt to size and ability.
  • Even daily routines can be an opportunity (e.g., wearing a pack while doing chores).

• Quote:

  “We're also, I argue in the book, maybe even more so, born to carry.” – Michael Easter (65:26)

---

11. Death, Bhutan, and the Power of Memento Mori

• Becoming Intimate with Mortality (72:59–86:28)

  • Killing his first caribou led Michael to reflect deeply on death: “For one thing to live, another thing has to die.”
  • Bhutanese culture intentionally reminds inhabitants of mortality (clay urns made of the dead’s ashes, encouraged daily reflection).
  • Embracing impermanence (mitakba) helps people prioritize what matters, reduces trivial worries, and increases happiness, all backed by behavioral studies.

• Quote:

  “When you realize that you're going to die... you start to focus on that which actually matters to you… and that changes your behavior in a way that tends to make you happier.” – Michael Easter (79:29)

---

12. Philosophizing Immortality: Would You Live Forever?

• Exploring Mortality, Meaning & Modern Angst (86:29–101:07)

  • Tom and Michael debate if they'd choose immortality, discussing logistical, emotional, and existential aspects.
  • Michael argues that death and impermanence enhance presence and gratitude; Tom pushes back, suggesting meaning is constructed and could still exist in an immortal context.
  • Both agree on the subjectivity of meaning and the importance of conscious choice in creating it.

• Quote:

  “Meaning is a decision people make... Just be in on the trick.” – Tom Bilyeu (98:23)

---

13. Rites of Passage, the Military, and Generation Softness

• Modern Substitutes for Ancient Rituals (101:11–113:00)

  • Tom and Michael examine institutionalized rites in modern society (e.g., military boot camp) as a way to mark transition from youth to adulthood.
  • Michael reflects on his university students, noting increased mental health issues often linked to social media/comfort.
  • “Comparison is the thief of joy.” (Tom, 106:34)

• Gratitude, Problem Creep, and Perspective Reset

  • Michael shares how a month of Arctic discomfort made even basic comforts (hot water on a plane) seem magical, emphasizing the need for gratitude and perspective.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

| Timestamp | Quote | Speaker | |-----------|-------|---------| | 01:52 | “If your problem is...someone challenged your idea instead of being chased by a lion, that can do some stuff to your brain that seems to…get a little bit out of whack.” | Michael Easter | | 06:30 | “Push-ups in the parking lot are a metaphor for what the disease is doing. It's always there, like, ready to come get me.” | Michael Easter | | 13:40 | “People would have a stroke. What are things that you've brought up in class?” | Tom Bilyeu | | 29:34 | “People just like yourself, everyone does well when we're challenged. Now, we've removed challenge from our life...” | Michael Easter | | 42:12 | “By putting yourself in true challenge, you learn something about yourself… When you have that attitude, all of a sudden, the stuff that comes at us in modern life…it's just like, I got stuck in traffic? I survived a hurricane in the Arctic.” | Michael Easter | | 50:22 | “In the book, I’m arguing it’s not about less phone, it’s about more boredom. We need times where we’re totally disconnected from outside stimulation.” | Michael Easter | | 79:29 | “When you realize that you're going to die... you start to focus on that which actually matters to you… and that changes your behavior in a way that tends to make you happier.” | Michael Easter | | 98:23 | “Meaning is a decision people make... Just be in on the trick.” | Tom Bilyeu |

---

Important Timestamps and Segments

• 01:14–07:17 – Introduction, comfort crisis explained, journey to the Arctic begins
• 16:46–21:29 – Physical and psychological stress of Arctic expedition
• 29:34–42:48 – Rites of passage and the value of artificial challenge (Masogi)
• 49:27–56:01 – Boredom, brain rest, and creativity
• 61:18–72:18 – Human evolution: rucking, carrying weight, persistence hunting
• 72:59–86:28 – Reflections on death, Bhutan’s culture, and meditation practices on mortality
• 86:29–101:07 – Debate on immortality, meaning, and psychological adaptation
• 101:11–113:00 – Rites of passage, military as modern substitute, gratitude through discomfort

---

Conclusion & Resources

Michael Easter argues powerfully for the necessity of embracing discomfort—physically, psychologically, and existentially—to foster growth, confidence, gratitude, and meaning. The episode weaves science, anthropology, personal narrative, and practical strategies for listeners to reintroduce challenge and thereby enrich their lives.

Where to find Michael:

• eastermichael.com
• Instagram: @michael_easter
• Book: The Comfort Crisis (available at major retailers)

---

Listen if you want:

• A blueprint for reclaiming challenge in a “too easy” world
• Insights into modern malaise and how to counter it
• Tools for building resilience, presence, and meaning through discomfort

---

Transcript

[Grainger Commercial Voice]

When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery, so you can keep your facility stocked, safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.

If you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Grainger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need all in one place, from H VAC and plumbing supplies to lighting and more. And all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock. So your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-GRAINGER visit grainger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Everybody, welcome to another episode of Conversations with Tom. I am here with journalist and author of the Comfort Crisis, Michael Easter. Michael, welcome to the show.

[Michael Easter]

Thanks for having me, man.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Dude, I'm super excited about this. This is an idea that I've really been become obsessed with this notion that. And I'm going to use words that you may not actually find comfortable and so push back if ever I go somewhere that you're like. I actually don't see it that way.

[Michael Easter]

All right.

[Tom Bilyeu]

That people are getting super soft and that there are consequences to that. And a lot of sort of the, what I'll call the mania of the culture wars is really about the fact that people aren't chased by a lion anymore. And if you could just encapsulate for people what the comfort crisis is and then we can dive into why I find it so interesting.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah, I think you're onto something. I don't use that language in the book, but it's. Yeah, same thing. We're on the same page here. So in the comfort crisis, I basically investigate how as the world has become more and more comfortable in a variety of ways. So think of your average day. It's like air conditioned. Your food is there. You don't have to chase down your food. You don't have to put any physical effort into your days. We've lost a lot of the things that make us healthy, not only physically but also mentally. Because to your point, with the culture wars, it's like if your problem is that you got stuck in traffic or someone challenged your idea instead of you got chased by a lion, that's that can do some stuff to your brain that seems to. We seem to get a little bit out of whack. So I look at that and to basically investigate that, I spent 30 some odd days in the Arctic and traveled the globe, met with all these different researchers kind of looking at this idea and how it's affecting people today.

[Tom Bilyeu]

The book is very interesting and what you went through is really daunting. I have no desire to do. That's actually not true. I have a. There is some part of my brain that's like, come on, Wes, like, you really should do something that hardcore. But I really don't want to do it. So it's this bizarre sort of conflict in my brain about recognizing that this would probably be good. Not only that it would be good, but that on the other side of it, I would be so glad I did it.

[Michael Easter]

Yes.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So before we dive into like rites of passage is really what I want to talk about. Like, I'm fucking fascinated by that.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

But, but before we get to that, like, give people some of the. Why is it so hard? Like when you say, oh, we spent the time in the Arctic, it doesn't sound scary until you read the book and then you're like, fuck me. That does not sound. Not only does it not sound fun, it doesn't sound safe.

[Michael Easter]

There were moments of peril. Okay, so first of all, I'll tell you, I'll kind of walk people through what it was like from the beginning. So to get to where we went, I had to take five planes. So you go from, you know, jumbo jet to slightly smaller jets. I go from Vegas to Seattle to Anchorage. From Anchorage and kind of a smaller jet up to this town called Kotzebue. Kotzebue is like a 3,000 person little hamlet on the ocean above the Arctic Circle. From there we get in a four seater plane. This takes us 100 miles out onto the tundra, right? And this plane, what time of year is this? This is September. So that's we're time to be hunting season, which we'll get into. And this four seater plane is. I mean, it's just this rickety old things, this old Cessna, right? And the pilot is like 20 something years old and just, you know, you can tell he just, you know, doesn't. He's on its phone texting as he's flying. It's just horrifying. They drop us out off out on the tundra. Another plane that's even smaller comes and gets us, right? Has to take us individually and ferry us out to a place even further out in the middle of nowhere. This is a plane that only seats two people. So then we're left there, right? We are out in the middle, literal middle of nowhere. And even in September, I mean, the temperatures are consistently below freezing. Carried everything we needed to survive on our backs so that, you know, food, shelter. We're like hiking all day. Our packs are 80 some odd pounds. We were up there hunting, you know.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Did you know what you were getting into? Like when you signed up for this? Did you know? I am doing this because it is hard.

[Michael Easter]

I thought that there was something there that I could learn from. I didn't know what that was.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Were you doing this as a journalist at the time? Because I think one thing for context for people that'll be pretty important to understand as you go into all the crazy shit that you guys do and I don't know what words you use to describe yourself, but certainly at a problem with alcohol.

[Michael Easter]

Yes.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Do you consider yourself a recovering alcoholic?

[Michael Easter]

I do, yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay, so recovering alcoholic. Is this. Are you wearing a journalism hat at this point or a recovering alcoholic hat?

[Michael Easter]

I think I'm always wearing both all the time. Right. I mean, so part of recovering from alcohol for me at least is realizing that it's. It's doing push ups in the parking lot. Right. Like, I always have to be conscious of that.

[Tom Bilyeu]

What does that mean?

[Michael Easter]

It means it's. It's always. It's always in me. Right.

[Tom Bilyeu]

That you have the desire to drink.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah. And obviously it fades a lot over time.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Push ups in the parking lot are a distraction. Or is that a metaphor?

[Michael Easter]

Push ups in the parking lot are a metaphor for what the disease is doing. It's always there, Right. Sort of like it's not like it just fades away, it's ready to come get me, you know. And then in terms of the journalism hat, I think as a career journalist, I'm always observing, thinking, looking for stories. So I would say that I am wearing both. But specifically I went up there with the idea that there's probably a story up there. And you know, I knew it was going to be physically hard, but I also thought that I'm probably going to learn some pretty deep things about myself as well. And maybe as a journalist I can take what I learned and tell other people about that.

[Tom Bilyeu]

The idea of learning something about yourself is really interesting. Have you thought at all about, like, how things are hidden from us? Like how in our own selves there are things that we don't see and understand?

[Michael Easter]

Oh, totally. I mean, I think a big thing for me was, you know, when you get sober, you have to ask yourself some hard questions about why did you drink the way you drank, you know, And I think that. I think that for me, I think part of it is genetic. You look at my family line and, you know, the men in my family, we got jail and prison records a mile long, you know, and it's just always been that way. So I think that there is something genetic. But I also think that, you know, that gene doesn't necessarily bloom unless you give it enough alcohol. So, you know, having to ask those. Ask those hard questions. And I think that going through the process of getting sober, it's sort of. I compare it to like unpeeling an onion about yourself. It's like more will be revealed, you know, but you have to kind of go out and do different things that challenge you, that challenge your worldview in a lot of different ways, because you. By never putting yourself in a position where you are uncomfortable, whether that is physically or mentally or with, you know, what you think to be true, you're not gonna. You're not gonna learn anything about yourself. Right? And I think that in today's age, it's a lot easier to never be forced out of your comfort zone. Now, physically, that's very obvious, right? I mean, you could take a thousand steps a day and live today, Right?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Which I know what you mean when you say that, but we've gotten so sort of comfortable that people won't even understand that. You mean that as a little. Yeah, like, that won't register as like. Oh, yeah, that's an astonishingly small amount of steps.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah. So our ancestors, I think the average person takes about 4,000 steps a day in modern society or in modern society. So you look at how our ancestors lived, they exercised. They had to do 14 times more physical activity than us just to live pre Covid. Yeah, Pre Covid. Now we're probably even less. So obviously there's the physical element, right. But also, I think psychologically increasing with what you talked about, with the culture wars. So if you look at young people today, especially so people born after 1990, you see this rise in helicopter parenting because there was these, like, media stories about kidnappings, really high profile stuff. Now, kidnappings weren't even increasing as a whole, but there was just high profile ones. Right. So all of a sudden, parents are like, I can't let my kids go outside into the woods or at a park. But by doing that and having that time alone where you sort of challenge yourself As a kid, right? I mean, think about your own experience at the playground or in the woods. Like, I learned a lot out there, dude.

[Tom Bilyeu]

When I think about what my parents let me do compared to today, like, back then I was pissed at how little they would let me do, but it was basically like they would just give you a couple of rule sets. Like, I had to walk facing traffic. I don't know if that's smart or not, but can't ride your bike on main roads. You have to walk it and you have to walk facing traffic. But beyond that, man, we would. We would take our bikes miles away from my house. Miles away from my house. No super. No adults, no expectation. And by the way, we were going miles away to a bike track so that we could like do tricks and shit.

[Michael Easter]

Yes.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And it's like, man, hundred percent.

[Michael Easter]

It's crazy. 100%. And same with me. And yeah, my mom was basically like, yeah, come down by sundown, you know, she wouldn't know what I was doing. It was just I was out doing stuff that stops happening for kids. And so this like, idea of challenge in a lot of different ways gets removed. Because not only are you physically challenged, right, when you are going out doing stuff in the woods, but also, like, your worldview gets challenged. Think about interactions on the playground. I got punched in the face on the playground a lot. I probably deserved it sometimes. And I learned something from that, Michael,

[Tom Bilyeu]

that may say something about you

[Michael Easter]

when that goes away. All of a sudden kids don't have challenges. And so now you have this generation where, because they have not been challenged, what they consider a challenge is something like, you know, I'm a professor at unlv, so if they say something, you know, have a point and I push back on that, well, all of a sudden that's kind of scary because you've never been punched in the face on the playground, right? So that becomes scary. Like in my classes, I'll bring up stuff and no one wants to say anything because, well, what if, you know, what if someone challenges me? Or like, there's there people, younger people especially, I think, are a little more sensitive to a lot of the stuff we're talking about here. And as a result of that, you see levels of anxiety and depression. They're higher in the generations born after 1990 than any other generations that came before them. Like, significantly, they're up like 30 and 50%. Jesus. Yeah.

[Grainger Commercial Voice]

With Vrbo's last minute deals, you can save over $50 on your spring getaway. So whether it's a Mountain escape, City break or a week at the beach. There's still time to get great discounts. Book your next day now. $72 select homes only.

If you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook, your arena is always ready for tip off. And Granger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need all in one place, from H Vac and plumbing supplies to lighting and more. And all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock. So your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-GRAINGER visit grainger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.

[Tom Bilyeu]

It's crazy. Back in college, I had a professor make fun of my haircut. And this was a huge class. I'm talking probably 300 people in the class.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And he made fun of my hair in front of everybody. And I just thought the guy was a gangster because my hair was ridiculous. Patently. Like, there's just no way to deny that.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah. I thought that was fun. But thinking about it today, like, that shit wouldn't fly.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Like, people would have a stroke. What are things that you've brought up in class? And we will get back to we land on the really small plane and all of that, but what are things that you'd be afraid to bring up now in school?

[Michael Easter]

Oh, I'm not afraid to bring up anything.

[Tom Bilyeu]

But really, have you never been reported for anything?

[Michael Easter]

No. I mean, but I will try to bring things up and just no one engages. So it's like, what. Where do I go with this? So, for example, if you teach, by the way, I teach journalism. So I have. I have classes going from that are 150 kids to some that are 2010, whatever it is. I call it the T word. So. So if I were to say anything about Trump in class, be like, what do you think about this? No one will touch it. Which I realize, you know, he's very controversial. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be

[Tom Bilyeu]

able to have a good journalism class.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah, we shouldn't be able to have a conversation about it. The only person who's ever really been willing to talk about it was 45 years old. You know, that tells you something.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah. Wow, that's really interesting and not at all surprising. Like, and I do think about, you know, originally, I never wanted to touch the culture wars. Like, I wanted. I didn't even want to think about it, to be honest. I didn't find it interesting. And then it just kept, like, encroaching. Encroaching encroaching, until finally I was like, oh, I actually now feel like a coward for not being able to talk about this stuff, because so one thing that I'm really conflicted about is, you know, impact theory is a brand. And so even though the brand is my wife and I, and so there's no, like, sort of external partners, I still think about, like, if we're really trying to build the next Disney, and I want people to be able to watch shows that we make for kids, it's like, you know, you gotta be a little bit thoughtful about how people perceive the brand, because right now, basically, Lisa and I are the brand. And so it's like the things that we talk about. So I was like, oh, God. So I don't love that. But I hated even more coming sort of full circle back to why you're out in the middle of the Arctic. I didn't like the way avoiding it was making me feel about myself. And because I really believe, and I'll say this as a psa, that at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is how you feel about yourself.

[Michael Easter]

Mm.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And everybody else can think you're amazing. If you think you're a piece of shit, then it's just done. Nothing else matters.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And so a lot of my life has been about, okay, what do I have to do in order to feel good about myself? So whether it's cold exposure, whether it's getting good at business, whether it's pushing myself in the gym, like, there have been a lot of things, many of them physical, which is super intriguing to me, because I think that there's just a subconscious process that evolution had to plant to make sure that you would go out and hunt and do risky shit so that you and, you know, your tribe could survive. So that's running in the background. And so finding ways to tap into that, I think are really, really important. So on that note, so we land. We're, like, in bush country. We've got both the journalism hat on and the recovering alcoholic hat on. And now what is. What. What's your thinking at this point? Like, I'm excited. I'm nervous. Like, I want to lean into the challenge.

[Michael Easter]

I think it's both.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Did you train for this?

[Michael Easter]

Yeah, but how do you. How do you train for more than a month in the Arctic? Right. I mean, because there's so many factors that you can't train for. So, for example, one of the first things I learned when we get there is the ground is absolute hell to walk on. In the tundra, it's like this. I describe it as like a mattress that's covered in partially inflated basketballs. It's, like, soft. The mattress area is soft, but then there's all these tundra tussocks or the balls of densely wound grass. And so where do you step? You can either step on this mattress area that each of your feet sink in. Each of your steps you sink in saps your energy. Or you can try and, like, balance on this ball of grass and maybe roll an ankle. So, you know, I could. How do you mimic that? Like, in a gym type setting, you know? So from there, you know, we set up camp, and then it's like we're hunting for 30 some odd days. And it gets. It gets pretty uncomfortable pretty quick, you know, because you learn. Even if every single thing we do takes effort. I mean, first of all. So you want water? Well, you got to hike down to that stream to get it. And by the way, that's also where the grizzlies hang out, because they want to be around water. And they also know that other animals come down there to drink, so they'll. They'll ambush them. So you have to be really careful. So there's the physical stress of the hike down, getting water, and then having to hike the heavy bag back up to camp, and also the psychological stress of like, oh, my God, this is where the grizzlies hang out. You know, so everything. And it's freezing cold. We're above the Arctic Circle, Right. The weather is. And I was coming from Las Vegas in, like, August, man. So I'd been like. It'd been like 110 the day I left. I get up there, and it's just. My body was not ready for that. I'd had every single layer on, like, right as we got out of that. And for people listening to this, you're

[Tom Bilyeu]

a pretty skinny dude.

[Michael Easter]

That actually hurt. I think in retrospect, I would have put on more weight in the form of fat, because I got up there. I'm six one. I was probably a buck seventy when I got. And by the time I left, I was like 160. I weighed it. Yeah, I weighed my.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I'm actually surprised you didn't lose more weight after hearing all the crazy hiking that you guys did. Yeah, hiking doesn't capture the difficulty, I don't think.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah, again, I mean, the ground is so terrible. And we had time, like, after we. After we hunted. You have to pack the caribou out, and then your bag is 110/ whatever pounds, and you've got to hike it all the way back to camp. I mean, you know, my background is that I worked at Men's Health for a lot of years and it was a good gig. I was the guy that they would throw into these like, crazy, you know, gyms and go profile crazy people, and I would always have to be working out. But that was by far the hardest thing I've ever done, like, easily. Because not only again is there the physical stress, but also the psychological stress and the weather, the ground. And so bringing it back to sort of the overall idea of the book, it's like, think of how much our environments have changed. Right. What I was doing out there was essentially daily life for essentially all of humanity, all of the time. Of humans.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Dude. That's when I hear your book and I hear that statement and I think that people argue whether life has gotten better and people are actually saying, no, it hasn't gotten better. I'm just like, yo, I don't. I actually don't understand how people can computationally come to that sort of conclusion. I get if you say that there are trade offs, it's a trade off, like forest bathing and getting back into the wilderness and the three day effect, which I'm sure we'll talk about. Like, all those things seem very, very real to me. But in terms of like, safety and access to resources and not having to worry, like people, the. The thing you have to think about in terms of your survival, just I'm statistics man. So argue with the math, not with me. Is overeating.

[Michael Easter]

Yes.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Like that's going to be the problem certainly in the developed nation.

[Michael Easter]

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Heart disease and stroke are the number one killer of humans. And yeah. So they do polls and I think it's either 6 or 12% of people polled in the United States think that the world is getting better. Think back even 100 years. Kids were dying before 5, like all the time. Think back a thousand years, 10,000 years.

[Tom Bilyeu]

You gave a stat in Iceland, the death rate of infants in Iceland. Do you remember the number?

[Michael Easter]

It's around 650 per thousand live births would die. That's the highest ever recorded. That's crazy. Yeah. So there's this idea I talk about in the book, and it's called prevalence induced concept change, which is a really dorky way of saying problem creep. So there's these two professors at Harvard and they're traveling to a conference, right? And they're in line for tsa. They're looking at tsa. What does TSA do the beepers go off and they're like, you know, they think that this banana that you've packed in your bag is a Beretta, so they're going to tear that damn thing apart. They, you know, they frisk some old woman who can't see or walk because there's like a half filled bottle of water. They're just always looking for problems. And so they wonder if all of a sudden, like the scanners never went off ever, everyone just obeyed The TSA rules 100%, what would they do? Would people just sail through without problems? And they didn't think so, because the TSA's job is to find problems. They thought they would start searching for problems even when the problems don't exist. So they do a study because they're these Harvard psychologists. They got a question, right? So now it's time to do a study. They get a bunch of people and they show them 800 different faces. And the people have one job, and that is to determine whether the faces they are looking at are threatening or non threatening. Seemingly very black or white, right? So they start showing them these faces, you know, so you go threatening, non threatening, threatening, Ooh, threatening, non threatening. But after about the 200th face, they start showing people fewer and fewer threatening faces. They did a similar thing, and it was, they would have them read research proposals and they would say, you know, is this ethical or unethical what these researchers are proposing? Same deal. After about the 50th or 100th proposal, they started giving them fewer and fewer unethical proposals. So you would think that if we really saw black and white, this is like a clear judgment of like, does this person make me feel threatened? Or does this research proposal cross this, like, moral line in the sand that I have drawn and I am firm on? Then they would start saying threatening less times. They would start saying ethical more times, right? As the thing went on that didn't actually happen, the ratio stayed the exact same. So they basically started saying that faces that were seemingly non threatening were threatening and that research proposals that they would have deemed ethical were unethical. This basically showed that as humans face fewer and fewer problems in our lives, we don't actually experience fewer problems. We just redefine what a problem is. And it's because as the world has gotten better, so think back, even in 100 years, we've got climate control now, we've got cars, we've got cell phones, we've got all the streets are paved. How many people listening to this Podcast, work in a farm, work on a farm for a living and go out there and till it all day. Not many, right? Probably sit behind a desk. You're pretty safe, right? The world has clearly gotten better, but we don't actually see that because we, our brain has this low level mechanism that's always running to find the next problem. And this made sense in our past because if you're a hunter gatherer and you don't know where your food is coming from, you're not quite sure about shelter. Tonight, life is actually dangerous. If you can just focus on problems all the time, that's going to give you a survival advantage. But in today's world, where arguably there's still problems in the world, don't get me wrong, but I think that overall things are pretty good. We don't actually see that.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah, this is the problem with societal level. Experimentation is one. It's a bit like steering a boat. So you do something and there's a real delay before the boat starts moving. So then you're like, wait, was it this thing or this thing? There's a lot of confusion. Like, for instance, part of the reason that I don't have kids is for the like, kidnap effect, right? Look, it's a bazillion reasons, so people don't have to think that was the only reason. But like, I have all the empathy in the known universe for that parent whose kid did get kidnapped. And all the stats about the world is getting better in the world. They don't help, like the devastation that that would bring in your life. And so for any one person to make the rational decision of the cost benefit analysis is so high on letting my kid go out, like, what could happen is so devastating potentially that it's just better just, you know, let's just keep them safe. Because I don't, I certainly am not smart enough to have predicted that it would create this comfort crisis problem. Not something that I would have seen coming. And by the way, I don't consider myself sort of a above any of the comfort crisis issues. This is not me passing judgment on other people. This is me going, yo, I want to live an optimal life for myself. And at a societal level, I want to make sure that people are set up to thrive. And I'm perfectly willing to look at my own behavior and say, ooh, there are some problems here. Like, my life has been a journey of toughening up. So I was not tough growing up, despite getting into, not like big fights. But I got, you know, punched in the head or One kid twisted my arm and dropped me to my knees when I thought I was like king shit. And that was like a real cool like eye opening, like, oh, wait a second, there are people that are way fucking tougher than me. And even now, like that happened in grade school and that really left an indelible mark. And so you begin to like navigate the world and you sort of find your lane. And so I found a lane of comedy. I was able to make people laugh. And then as I got older and realized all of my comedy is at my expense, it was all self deprecating humor. And I got to the point where I wanted to take myself more seriously. So anyway, to get good at business, I had to realize, whoa, like I am not resilient, I am not tough. I shy away from criticism because it hurts and it will send me into a multi day spiral. But I had these grand ambitions. And so finally, you know, through a long process, get to the point where I realize for me to actually achieve my goals, I have to get really good at self soothing. Like I have to get back to sort of emotionally neutral as quickly as I can. And the gym was a huge factor in that, to realize how much suffering you can endure and that when you do that you actually get stronger. And there's something about physical endeavors and, and I do, I don't think I would have had success in business had I not taken control of my body. So had I not decided to get very serious in the gym, very serious about my diet. So you're sitting there, there's food in the fridge, there's food in the cupboards, your favorite foods. And I remember getting in an argument with my wife because I had a really bad headache when I was trying to go low carb. And I was like, if I just eat a cookie right now, I will feel better. And she was like, then eat the fucking cookie. Like stop complaining about it. Either eat the cookie or stop complaining. Yeah. And I was like, all right, I'm not going to eat the cookie. And you do that kind of stuff and you start to build that resilience. You lift the weights and you literally build calluses. You injure yourself and you build back from that and you realize, okay, like there are, I can do things that make me stronger. And that then led me to go, well, if this works for my body, how much does it work for my mind and can I get tougher in business? And it was nothing short of life changing.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So talk to me now about rites of passage, which is so I have Empathy for people that were raised with the best of intentions but not the best of results. How do they get out of it?

[Michael Easter]

Well, I think that people just like yourself, everyone does well, when we're challenged now, we've removed challenge from our life in a lot of different ways. Right. So I think when you look back at sort of past societies, ancient cultures, tribes, they all had a rite of passage for young people. Right. So the idea, and it's all the same basic framework. We have a young person, this person is at point A in their life, and we need to get them to point B because point B is where they can really help the tribe.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Can you define point A and point B?

[Michael Easter]

Point A is sort of seen as like youthful childhood. You're still kind of clinging to your parents. You're not quite as confident and competent as you could be. Point B is like you are officially transitioned into adulthood, more or less. You're able to go out on your own and really provide, take on a family, whatever.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Have you looked at this closely enough to know if it's you're clinging to your parents or you're clinging to your mother?

[Michael Easter]

It's usually mother. Yes. Yeah, it's usually mother.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I mean, there's some really interesting there, but keep going. We'll circle back to that for sure.

[Michael Easter]

So what these. What these societies would do is usually send the young person out into the wild to do something really hard. So, for example, the Maasai had a lion hunt where a young warrior would be given a shield and a spear, said, all right, go get a lion for us.

[Tom Bilyeu]

By themselves?

[Michael Easter]

By themselves, yes.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And were some of them eaten?

[Michael Easter]

Yes. So the Maasai cultural website has this hilarious line that says many young warriors have been lost to lions over the years. It's just, like, so understated. You're like, oh, my God. The Nez Perce Indians would send young men out onto the Columbia River Plateau. They would. Wouldn't give them food or water, and they would just sort of like, pray and fast for, you know, a week. Around a week, the Aboriginal tribe, they would send young men out on walkabout. So the idea is that you are exiting the comfort of home, right? You are going into this trying a realm of discomfort and danger, quite frankly. Discomfort, danger. You're going to get put in a position where you want to quit. You think you're going to fail. You're going to have these real people when they were doing this, anywhere from like 12 to 18, typically.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So there's no, like, set number. Like, oh, what for Whatever reason they converge on 14 years old, it's not

[Michael Easter]

like, yeah, no, it's all kinds of different. And by going out there and, you know, really having to rough it, they often learn something about themselves that they are more capable than they thought because they hadn't got put in a position before where, man, I'm facing some true peril. I don't know if I can make this. But by coming out the other side, they go, oh, I actually am capable of more than I thought. I might have sold myself short on some things. Then they can return back to the tribe and they have this newfound confidence and competence and they've sort of transitioned into that point B that we want them at.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So this may be the thing I am most fascinated by in life, quite literally. So I read Joseph Campbell's the Power of Myth and it changed my life forever. Yeah, so I'm reading this book, I'm probably, I don't know, 21, 22, something like that. And I can never remember because I haven't gone back to reread it. I can't remember how much of this is me sort of putting words in his mouth and what he actually said. So if I attribute this to him and he didn't actually say it, forgive me, but what I took away from the book was, hey, people have gotten soft. There are no rites of passage anymore. And part of the reason that so many marriages fail is there's no transition from youth to adult, unmarried to married. And so at the time I'm reading, I think I'm already, I'm either already dating my now wife or we may have already been engaged. But so I'm reading this and I'm like, ooh, there's no like coming of age rituals anymore. And he talks about how the, the marriage rituals have sort of gotten like, sort of a little too easy. I thought, this is really interesting. So I want to get married once and be married forever. And I'm taking this whole till death do us part thing very seriously. And I completely understand sexual attraction and that, you know, I will have an impulse forever to have sex with as many women as humanly possible. And so kind of like the push ups in the parking lot, like that pole is going to be there forever for me. So what do I do to overcome that, to make sure that the commitment is more interesting to me than that? And so I decide I'm going to go through a ritualistic scarification as a part of getting married so that I am literally a different person the day before I get Married. And the day after.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Now, today we would call that a tattoo. But I never wanted a tattoo that truly at the time, beyond getting lost at sea, which remains my biggest fear. My second biggest fear was needles. And so I was like, okay, I'm going to get a tattoo. It's going to hurt. It's something that scares the life out of me. I really do not want to do this.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And it will make sure that I go through some sort of ritual. And so I design the tattoo. I get the tattoo to this day, despite my wife, who fucking loves tattoos on guys and desperately wants me to get more. I'm like, nope. That was, like, this really meaningful thing to me that made a statement about my commitment to you and all that. So utterly fascinated by that. And there's one story that I want to write, so for anybody that doesn't know, we're trying to build the next Disney. So I actually think more about storytelling, probably, than anything else other than business. And there's one story I am desperate to write, and I cannot find if this is actually true or not. But I either have created a memory from my youth or I really did read this, that there were these juvenile delinquents. So I grew up in Tacoma, Washington, and Native American stuff there is really sort of a part of everyday culture. And I remember hearing this story about these juvenile delinquents that had gotten into the court system and the courts wanted to put the. Want to try them as adults, because if I remember right, they were 16 or 17, and the tribe said, no, let us take them out into the wilderness, if I remember right, for a year, and they will be on their own. And if they survive, we will welcome them back into society. And if they don't, then they don't. I mean, to your point about the. The lion hunting, and I probably read that when I was a teenager, and it just stuck with me, this idea of, like, we're dropping these in the woods. Totally. Like, good luck and going back to the Maasai, which I find really, really interesting. What do you think about that? Like, that they actually get eaten by lions. Is the juice worth the squeeze?

[Michael Easter]

Well, look, here's how I think about it. I think that we. I mean, that seems rather extreme to me. Might not have been extreme given the environment that they lived in at the time and came up from. Right. Nowadays does seem a little extreme to me. Does someone have to die on these? No. But I'm asking, okay, well, what can we learn from that? So in my book, I talk about I talk about the idea that we need to essentially introduce these metaphorical lions back into our life and how do we do that? So I met this guy whose name's Marcus Elliot and he is a Harvard trained doctor. He decided he doesn't want to be, you know, like a practicing physician. He wants to revolutionize sports science. Big grand idea and he basically does it. So he, he takes this job with the Patriots first off and they had this, they were terrible when he took the job, they had like 26 hamstring injuries a year. He drops it down to three the next season and they end up winning some Super Bowls. Then he becomes the MLB's first performance director. Now he owns this place called P3. They have a location in Atlanta, one in Santa Barbara, contracts with the NBA, contracts with a bunch of different leagues, like all the players have to go through there. And what he's doing is he wanted to apply sort of deep data and more science to athletic training because at the time it was basically like tweak your reps and sets and exercises and weights, right? So he does all this machine learning stuff with movement so he can basically scan a player. They put all these like reflective dots and video camera and then they can get a model that basically says, oh, the way that your knee comes in when you land on this jump, you have a 60% chance of tearing an ACL next season. You know, so it's super precise and really interesting. A lot of numbers, data, figures, AI, big flashy things. But here's the thing. He also realizes that what improves not only the performance and potential of these pro athletes he works with, but also everyday humans can always be measured. So this is where something like a rite of passage comes in. Now the way that he approaches this is with this idea that I talk about in the book called Masogi. And the idea is that once a year I'm going to go out and I can do something really hard. Okay, well what's really hard? Something that I think I truly have a 50, 50 shot of accomplishing. True 50% shot. And I'm not going to train super hard for it. I'm just going to have to go out and do it. Rule number two, back to the question about the Maasai Rule number two is don't die. So don't be dumb about it, right? So things that he's done with friends, athletes, etc. Is one year, for example, they get an 85 pound boulder and they walk it underneath the Santa Barbara channel for five miles. So one guy dives down, picks up the Boulder, walks at 10, 20ft, comes back up. Next guy goes down on and on and on until this boulder is at point B. They've also done simple stuff like, hey, there's that mountain way in the distance. Think we could make it there in a day? I don't know. Maybe 50. 50. All right, let's try. Along the way, you're gonna get to this point, right, where you're like, man, I have reached my limit. There's no way I can finish this. Like, I can't keep putting one foot in front of the other. I can't do this. But you're gonna keep going either way. And then you're gonna look back and be like, wait a minute. There's. Back there was where I thought my limit was, but I'm right here now. And if I'm selling myself short here, like, where else in life am I selling myself short? Now, the idea is that we are mimicking these challenges that our environment used to naturally show us in the past. So in the past, yes, we had rite of passages, right? But we also had to do hard stuff all the time. This could be like a hunt. If you're out of food and you need to hunt, man, you need to do that thing. This is real challenge. You might have to move from your summer into wintering grounds, and a storm comes in. And each time we would do one of those things, we would learn something about ourselves, what our potential was, and we would grow as humans. We would become more confident, more competent. We would get, like, spiritual satisfaction from that even, right? And now we've completely wiped not only rites of passage, but even physical challenges out of our days. So we're not ever really shown what our true potential is. So, for example, when you told me the Arctic, I don't know if I could do that, man. Like, that terrifies me. Bullshit. I love you, man, but that is a bunch of bullshit. And I'm gonna tell you why. Because you have the luxury now of being born in this time and age where that seems pretty tricky. Now, if you were born 10,000 years ago, you would just call that life, right? So I think we've become. It's amazing all these comforts we have. There's nothing wrong with them. I think we're. I think they're great. Like, absolutely, full stop. But if we never put ourselves in the position of true challenge, then we don't really learn something about ourselves and come out and be like, hell, yeah, I could do that. Because when you have that attitude, all of A sudden, the stuff that comes at us in modern life, it's just like, you know, like, I got stuck in traffic. I have to give this presentation in front of people. Well, I survived a, you know, a hurricane in the Arctic, like, a year ago, so I think this will be manageable. Right. And so I think we're just so removed from those environments that when we think about having to go back into that, it can be scary, you know, Like, I wasn't exactly thinking that I could do it when I first went out there, but I did. And now I've come out on the other side, and it's like. Like, man, you're a lot cooler than I thought you were.

[Tom Bilyeu]

You know, it's actually a really interesting idea. So you've got the problem creep, and then you've got comfort creep, where it's. So spending 30 plus days in the Arctic does not sound like my idea of a good time.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I once got invited to do free diving.

[Michael Easter]

Okay.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Which is literally my nightmare, if you've ever seen the movie.

[Michael Easter]

Sounds nightmarish to me as well.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Open sea or something. I can't remember the exact name of it, but it's a true story about these people that end up getting. They go on a diving trip and they miscount when people come back up on the boat, and these two people get left out in the middle of the ocean, and by the time they realize it's just too late, they're gone.

[Michael Easter]

Sounds horrifying.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Oh, my God.

[Michael Easter]

I don't want to watch it.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Nope. It literally was watching it. I was like a. They did an amazing job. It is two people bobbing up and down in the water, and they keep it interesting for an hour and a half. And that. That is my nightmare. But when I think about comfort creep and I think about things in my own life. So I work an average of 93 hours a week, every week, year round, year after year after year. And I know there are people that are like, that's crazy. Like, that would be just an atrocity. But for me, it's life, and it's the life that I've built and want. And when I think about. So, first of all, what I was explaining to people is I. The reason it's 93 and not 94 is 93 are joyful. The 94th would not be. And so I don't work the 94th hour. Right. So some of it is just that I. I don't want to step away from my life, which is probably not smart. Like, as I think about it and some of the key takeaways from your book. It's like, I spend so much time thinking about making sure that I optimize. I optimize my life for joy. That's like my. I'll call it fulfillment. That's probably a better way to think about it. But you need to be joyful in your pursuit of fulfillment. I'm so focused on optimizing my life for joy, but I'm also hyper aware that you shift in and out of these time periods in your life and things are different from one moment to the next. And so you don't want to be oblivious to the fact that this period of your life won't last forever. And so you don't want to get to the next phase of your life and just be like, from this new frame of reference, my entire life seems like a mistake. So, you know, I try to be very, very thoughtful about that. But yeah, the idea of comfort creep, that you need to be very careful about what they're on both sides that you can sink into, whether it's drinking or something else, and you're enduring something that's just like, you're creating problems for yourself and then on the other side where you're just allowing yourself to be too comfortable.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah, I think so. And look, it's. The human brain loves routine, right? We evolved to want to get into routine because in the past that used to keep us safe. If I could know where a good food source was and go to it every day, if I knew where the lions were lurking, that would keep me safe. If I could predict something about the weather, that would keep me safe. So our brain really likes to default to do predictable things. This is great in the past, but today it can often cause us to sort of zone out. So there's some interesting research out of, I think Oxford might have been Cambridge, where the researchers basically said that when you've done the same thing over and over, your brain kind of goes on this autopilot mode because it can predict everything. So it's like, why be present and focused and in the moment when you can just kind of be bossed, right, Going through your routine? So we sort of miss a lot of life, right? This is so an example that I like to give around. This is like, you ever drive on your commute somewhere and it's a drive you've done before, and all of a sudden you look up and like 20 minutes have gone by and you're like, holy crap. Like, I don't even know what just happened. The last 20 minutes, you just been. And you don't even know where you were. You were just lost inside your head. Well, we can go through life like that. So I think the idea of trying to do new things, learn new things that totally shake up a routine is interesting because now, all of a sudden, I can't predict the future, and I've got to learn some new stuff, and I've got to do some new stuff. And this is forcing you into presence and focus, right? Because, oh, I can't predict stuff anymore. And I think there's benefits to that. I mean, this is ultimately what. You know, meditation and mindfulness is so popular right now. And there's, you know, some, I think, really good arguments for it. But I also think that not everyone is keen on sitting down and, you know, focusing on their breath for 20 minutes a day. That's just how people are. So if you can learn and do new things, I think that you're going to get some of those benefits that mindfulness is partially chasing just by making you focus and aware of, like, what you're doing. It's like when I was in the Arctic, like, I can. I remember every single detail because that was unlike anything I've ever done before. I couldn't tell you what the hell I did two days ago, right? We get back into our normal lives, and things can just sort of go over and over. So it's like the idea of doing something new and challenging, you're gonna remember that. Like, I've talked to people, you know, in the book, I talk a lot about some of the benefits of boredom and just detaching from electronics of all type. And I talked to a guy who had read it, and he was like, you know, I used to go on. He lived in Costa Rica. He goes, I used to go on this walk all the time. And I would always take my phone and I would listen to, you know, radio, podcasts, whatever. I do the same walk every day. He's like, and I read your book. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna, like, brave this, like, you know, boredom. I'm just gonna go for a walk. And he's like, and I'm walking, and I see this trail of ants. And it's like this perfect formation through the jungle, and it weaves up the thing. And he's like, and it's one of the most unbelievable, amazing things I've ever seen. I'm like, you're going to remember those ants for the rest of your life, my man. You probably wouldn't Even be able to tell me, like, what you listened to three days ago, had you taken your phone, you know, So I think that having these moments that force us into presence, Good. Now it's uncomfortable because we want to default to the routine and to be constantly stimulated all the time. Right. But this no longer serves us. And I think that's the main message of the book. You know, I interpret in the book discomfort in a lot of different ways. It's not just physical, it's psychological. It's being in, like, even being in silence. People can't stand silence anymore.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Why not? Makes us uncomfortable because we have thoughts we don't like.

[Michael Easter]

Because we have to be with ourselves. Yes. We have thoughts we don't like. We tend to default towards being stimulated rather than not being stimulated. Right. All of a sudden, you become bored. That's difficult. It's hard to deal with, you know, boredom, to get a little bit into boredom. Boredom is this evolutionary discomfort that basically told us, whatever you are doing with your time right now, the return on your time invested has worn thin. So in the book, I use the analogy of think of picking berries from a bush. As you pick the really easy to reach berries, it's fun, it's engaging. It's like, oh, my God, there's a big one and there's a big one. We're getting so many. But as you pick more and more, all of a sudden the berries become harder to find. They're way back in the bush. So now you're. The return on your time invested isn't as high. So you get bored, and that discomfort tells you go do something else with your time. So you do. You go to the next bush and you do that. Right? But nowadays we have very easy escapes from that discomfort of boredom. So there's one neuroscientist I talked to who put it great. He goes, yeah, but nowadays, like our. Our escape from boredom is essentially junk food for the mind. A lot of time. What do people do the second they feel bored? They pull out their phone. What do we do when we realize that our screen time is five hours a day and I might have a problem with this thing and I'm going to try and use it less? We go, oh, shit, I can't use my phone. Netflix, computer, screen, radio, whatever it might be, right? So we have this constant digital stimulation. So the average person spends more than 11 hours a day engaged with digital media, which is from all different forms that we have now. You know, a lot of focus gets put on phones. But for the average American, they watch more tv. So in the book, I'm arguing it's not about less phone, it's about more boredom. We need times where we're totally disconnected from this outside stimulation.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I realized the punchline, what do you get from boredom?

[Michael Easter]

1. Okay, there's a couple things that happen. First of all, when you are focusing on the outside world, your brain is focused, right? It's working. This is a work mode that is taxing to your brain compared in the book to sort of like lifting a weight. So your brain has to focus, has to process information. When you're bored, your brain actually goes inward, starts to sort of ruminate it. You sort of have these different thoughts that are more inward focused. This happens to be a rest state, turns on the default mode network, which gives your brain a bit of a rest. So when your brain is constantly overworked and overworked, it's associated with a lot of problems like anxiety and just feeling like, wound up, burnt out. Essentially the conditions that so many workers feel today. Right. Number two, and I think this is most interesting, especially for anyone who creates anything, is that having times of boredom is associated with a lot more creativity. Because when I look at my phone, when I go on Instagram and I look at whatever it might be, I'm giving my attention over to someone else's ideas that they've come up with. Right now, if I'm forced to go inward, I'm probably going to think of some weird stuff. Don't get me wrong, I'm probably going to be like, I wonder if I turned the gas range off before I left home. I wonder, you know. But I'm also going to think of, I'm also going to notice things. I'm going to have some thoughts about something I'm working on and I might come up with a lot of new ideas. I started thinking about this in the Arctic because my cell phone didn't. I mean, there wasn't a bar to be had within 100 mile radius. I didn't bring a book, I didn't bring a magazine. And because we're hunting, we're sitting on this hill, we are waiting for this herd of caribou to move through a valley. Now, they weren't wanting to do that. So we basically just sat and waited for days and days. And it was like, oh, my God, I haven't been bored like this for a long time.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Are you guys chatting at all?

[Michael Easter]

We're chatting, but like, you gonna talk for 12 hours straight? You know, eventually kind of, people just quiet down. And you know, so what do I do? I'm like, spend a little bit of time just doing nonsense. I read the labels on my protein bars. I am so bored. I am reading the tags on my outdoor gear going, hey guys, you can't dry clean this. You know, just stupid stuff. But then all of a sudden I think I should write some of my book. So I start to write a lot of my book. I start to come up with different ideas for a lot of the magazines I write for. I come up with like 17 ideas. And they were all good because I just had this time of just like pure inward thought, right. And I argue we don't have that a lot. Even when we have these moments where we're thinking of things, we're getting, we have a screen in front of us, we're getting like pinged and we need like these moments of boredom. So the way that I practice this in my life today is I try to take a 20 minute walk outside, totally disconnected every single day. And I just use this for, to think on ideas, to chip away at stuff. And I can tell you, like, it totally helps. Totally helps. And they've done research on this. There's really hilarious studies where they'll take one group and they just are like, yeah, you can just do whatever on your phone. We'll take another group and they will bore the hell out of them. They make them watch a video of two guys folding laundry for like 10 minutes. So you can stand it for about one minute. And then you just totally go inward and, you know, you're like for the other nine minutes. And then they give them creativity tests. The groups that were bored always crush the people who had just come out of being on their phone. So weird. Yeah, that's so weird.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So do you have a hypothesis on why you're more creative when you've been bored? Is it just that you've been thinking?

[Michael Easter]

I think it's. I think it's the rest period that your brain gets as part of it. And I think also you are, you're coming up with your own ideas. You have like this time where your brain is kind of in this gear of like, I'm thinking about different stuff all inward, and then you can use that outward. So boredom is really neither good nor bad. It basically just tells us, hey, do something. Now. The something today is more and more giving your ideas over or your thoughts over to, you know, someone else's ideas on a screen. Which is great because I think there's amazing stuff out there. But I also think we need a little bit more time where we are just sort of with ourselves and our own ideas.

[Tom Bilyeu]

You know, I've often thought about. So we have this, what do they call it, the naturalistic fallacy. It's like, because that's how our ancestors were. It must have been good. It must have been better.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And I often thought like, could they really be like hunting and gathering enough that like, that just takes up the whole day? It just seemed like, what do they do with the spare time? Like one thing. Look, I get that it can be dangerous and people can waste their time and spiral, just scrolling, scrolling the doom scroll or whatever they call it on Instagram and Twitter. But I also do some really cool shit with my time. Like things that I'm like, I would not want to give this up for anything. I mean this is like, I have handcrafted my life to be the most like sort of spiritually nutrient dense, you know, perfect minute of time.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And the thought of like backtracking. So, you know, I look at civilization and I think this seems inevitable. So it's like, well, I don't want to have to walk down to get the water every time and I don't want to have to brave the bears. And so it's like you start like doing that starts with spears and then fire and then you're like, hey, maybe if we move the teepees together. And you know what I mean? So you start moving sort of, I will say inextricably towards where we are. I become obsessed with this idea and my audience is going to get real tired of hearing me say this. But I think it's so powerful. There's pathology on both sides. So you can, and I want to be careful to differentiate between boredom and isolation. But that mechanism by which the brain is searching for some sort of intellectual echolocation of I send an idea out into the world and it comes back to me. I need that return. Which is why you're reading labels and you're trying to get some sort of two way feedback, right? And without that, you can actually break an adult human psyche by just isolating them for too long. You can actually kill a child by just not loving them, ignoring them. They. It's what's called failure to thrive. So it's like this really interesting, like the mind needs some of this engagement. It needs the. I mean, like you said, there's a reason that you have a boredom sensation and that it is unpleasant and that it pushes you away from that thing.

[Michael Easter]

Right.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And so, but then on the Other side you can hyper stimulate and now it becomes a problem. In fact that really begs an interesting question to me. How do you construct your life as somebody who has done misogy, who's gone out into the wilderness, who has this constant pull towards drinking and knows that that's not the life you want to live. So you're sort of the perfect candidate for. You have all the incentive in the universe to figure out sort of the ideal life. How do you construct your days?

[Michael Easter]

It's a good question. I mean I. So I'm first and foremost a writer, I'm a journalist. So I tend to wake up really early. And that's partially because I have a 90 pound German short hair pointer who decides it's 4:30 and we should get up.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So you don't set an alarm?

[Michael Easter]

No, now I have a 90 pound alarm that eats a lot of food. And then I usually write because I have this alone time. It's time that I'm completely unstimulated. The world is not coming at me yet. So usually from like 4:30 to maybe about 7:30 is when stuff starts to come in. So I got three hours a day where I can just do my outlet. Right. And I'll usually, if it's not way too hot already, I'll usually go outside. I live on, I live in Vegas. Yeah. So I'll usually go out on my back patio so I have like some trees and stuff around me and I'll just do that for like three hours. That's the most important part. I think of my day and I do that 365 days.

[Tom Bilyeu]

What are you doing out there?

[Michael Easter]

Just writing.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So that, is that the same as the morning writing?

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah, yeah. So this is the morning and then from there it's like, you know, I'm not arguing the book that we should all just like put our phones away and never use them again or you know, and then I live a relatively normal life. I mean I use, I train usually every day. I got a gym in my garage. I do a lot of rucking out in the desert and running out in the desert, which is something I talk about in the book, the rucking element. I usually meditate looking for people that

[Tom Bilyeu]

don't know heavy pack, carry that shit around. Yeah, you go into a whole hypothesis in the book about our ancestors probably got pretty strong by being able to carry shit. Yes, that might have been one of our advantages.

[Michael Easter]

Yes, we should talk about that when we're done with this. But yeah, and then you know, like I don't overthink it. I just live a sort of normal life, and I don't try and micromanage all of my time. I would say I kind of let things come and go. But I really do want that three hours where I can write and think and be totally alone and sort of unstimulated. And when I'm doing that writing, I'm only using the browser if it's to aid the writing because I do nonfiction. So I'm not just sitting around coming up with ideas, but I'd have to do a lot of research.

[Tom Bilyeu]

All right, so maybe now is the right time before we forget to get into rucking. And I really am interested in this idea of us as the. You give it a real name. I'm going to call it Endurance Hunting. There's a better name.

[Michael Easter]

Persistent Hunting.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Persistence.

[Michael Easter]

Thank you.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So I didn't watch the video, which I probably should have. Who we are, where we Come from. Dan something.

[Michael Easter]

Oh, yeah. Who we are. Donnie's.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah, Donnie. Thank you. So what's the punchline of that? I'm assuming it's us from an ancestral point of view.

[Michael Easter]

He. In that video, he basically just talks about why he hunts. And it's more just about how, you know, we're removed from the life cycle. And by inserting ourselves back into that, he finds that it sort of moves the dial for him personally.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Emotionally.

[Michael Easter]

Emotionally, yeah, spiritually. So I think for Donnie, at least, who is. Who I went hunting with up there, and he's this backcountry bow hunter filmmaker, makes amazing. I mean, it's more like planet Earth, but with hunting. And you should watch this mini documentary he made on YouTube called who We Are. Sort of explains what he's all about, but he's. He's a fascinating guy, but to. To the point of wrecking. So after a while, I eventually hunt and I successfully kill this caribou, which was, you know, that was another discomfort I had to face out there. Is.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Was that the most important part of the trip for you?

[Michael Easter]

I think, yeah, that was probably the most important part of the.

[Tom Bilyeu]

More than seeing what you could physically endure.

[Michael Easter]

I don't know. It all kind of becomes one thing to me, you know, because there's really. They're really interlinked. Parsing them out, I think Mrs. Like, this greater point that a lot of work went in, physical work went in before crossing that really heavy emotional barrier of killing my own food. So it's like, if I hadn't have put all that work in, I don't think that emotional Thing would have been as heavy. So it really is kind of like they're weaving in and out, so it's kind of hard to parse them out. But so I kill a caribou, now we have to pack it out. So my pack was maybe 120 pounds of meat. 100. And somewhere between 100 and 120, you know, that's what we're estimating based on how much we know that caribou weighs. And packing it out was the hardest thing I've ever done because it was five miles back to camp. It was all uphill. It was across the tundra. So like, five tundra miles are like five normal miles or one tundra miles? Like five normal miles. You know, it's. It's so hard to walk on. And it got me thinking, right? So there's this idea that humans evolved to run. We evolved to run so we could hunt. So when you look at how humans are built, we are terrible athletes. We're bad compared to all other animals. We are not fast. The freaking pink poodle in Paris Hilton's purse. It could probably outrun Usain Bolt. Right? We're also terrible at, like, moving quick side to side, like, try and chase down a dog. Good luck. Right. We're also not that strong. There's a lot of other animals that are way stronger than us. But what we are uniquely good at is running really long distances, relatively slowly in the heat. And the heat is the key thing there. So we sweat most. Four legged animals do not sweat. We also have big butt muscles. We have complicated ways of cooling air before it hits our lungs. So we're just really good at going far in the heat. And we would use this to our advantage on hot days when we would hunt. So we would do this thing called persistence hunting. We would see an animal, we would start to slowly but surely run it down. We'd bump it, it would sprint. It would get really hot and overheated because other animals aren't good at cooling themselves. And then we catch up to it, bump it again. And eventually after, say, 10, 15, even 20 miles, the animal would get so hot that it would topple over from heat exhaustion. So then we'd get that spear. Wow. We're done. Almost. This brings me to the second thing we're good at, is once you kill an animal and you need to get back to camp, what do you have to do? You have to carry it back to camp. That's the second thing we're good at. Other animals.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So we just chase this fucking thing. Forever.

[Michael Easter]

Forever. Forever.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And now we're only halfway done.

[Michael Easter]

Yes, now we're only halfway have to carry it back. You have to carry it back. And that's the other thing that humans are uniquely good at. Other animals can't carry. They have to like grab something in their jaw and they can only go not appreciable distance before they fatigue. So then we would carry this heavy weight back to camp. So a lot has been written about, you know, barefoot running and how we evolved to run. And this is important and it is. But the missing part is that we were also, and I argue in book, even more so, born to Carry because we'd have to carry this meat all the way back to camp. And it was heavy. And when you look at gathering, gathering doesn't involve running, but what it does involve is carrying all the stuff you've gathered back to camp. We carry women, carry babies, right? We would even do things like there's evidence that we would carry rocks really far distances to make structures. So I go to Harvard and I meet the guy who did the original Born to Run study, which was in 2004, that found all the stuff about running. I talked about and talked to him about caring and yeah, it turns out it's really good for us, something that we evolved to do. And so he argues that basically doing the things that humans evolved to do that we evolved to do and are good at seems to be uniquely good for us. All exercise is good, but cardiovascular exercise seems to be great. We know we need a certain amount of strength. You know, as we evolve. We weren't strong like today's people in the gym. Like we just weren't. We needed enough to live. And you think about it, a lot of people have added running back into their lives for exercise, right? Like running is obviously a thing that people do, but how many people for a workout go, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to pick up some really heavy shit and I'm going to move it from point A to point B.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Does it need to be on the back?

[Michael Easter]

It can be any but on the back is efficient. So that got me thinking to lead into that, like who, like who has done, like who does carry for a workout? Turns out Special forces soldiers, soldiers in general. So they do this in the form of rucking. Rucking is the foundation of special forces training. So when you watch documentaries about Hell Week on the Discovery Channel, they show people getting, you know, doing push ups in the surf. That's like a couple hours of like a two Week thing most of it is you load a heavy pack with weight and we're gonna have to land, navigate from point A to point B. And so I go and I meet with these guys in Jacksonville. There's this group of special forces soldiers who started this company called Goruk. The guy who started his name is Jason McCarthy and he was a green Beret. And they make these backpacks that are up to military specifications, but they look good in a city, basically. They don't look too like tactical dude, you know, and he's really trying to grow rucking as a form of exercise because the benefit of rucking is that it gives you the cardiovascular benefits of running, but you also have a strength element. So he describes it as running cardio for people who hate to run and lifting for people who hate the gym. And its injury rate is way lower than running. Like running. I think the yearly injury rate is anywhere from 20 to 70%. That's just because of the way we now live. And we're generally really heavy people compared to what we were in the past. But rucking is essentially has the injury rate of walking, you know, just barely higher than that.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Is there like a percentage to body weight kind of thing or just in

[Michael Easter]

terms of how much weight you should use? Yeah. So the military has studied this a ton because you look back at the past and you know, ancient warfare going way back in time, they all carried stuff into battle. You know, this would be spears, shields, sacks with what they needed. This usually would max out at about £30. But once we start getting good at war, these weights start creeping heavier and heavier and heavier. So I think by the Iraq war, the average soldiers carrying 100 pounds, but in Vietnam it was like 80, you know, and so they start find finding that this isn't really good for us. This is too much weight. So they do a bunch of studies. There were some conducted in the 50s, there have been some that were conducted in the 2000s. And they all come to the conclusion essentially that £50 is the maximum for soldiers. That keeps the injury rate low, improves fitness, but also allows soldiers to move quickly to fight war. Well. So I think so in the book I talk about, £50 is probably the

[Tom Bilyeu]

heaviest you should go, regardless of how

[Michael Easter]

big you are generally. I mean, obviously it's a little more complicated than that. If you're like a 250 pound guy, you're probably going to be okay with 60 versus if you're like 100 pound person. Like 50. 50 is pretty heavy.

[Tom Bilyeu]

That's no joke.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah, so generally though, 50 is the highest you should go. Some people also use a third body weight. But I also think that especially when people start to get into £250, a lot of that is probably going to be from fat, which isn't necessarily doing a lot for you. So just stick to 50 max anyways. I mean, when I do it, I don't. I'm. If I'm going out in the desert rucking, I use like 35. It's just a weight where I'm like, I feel like I'm doing some extra strength work, but I can still move quickly enough to get that cardio element. So.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And do you think that. So weighted vests logically to me seem better because you're distributing the weight some in front and some in back. Is there a reason that putting it all on your back is better?

[Michael Easter]

So there is. What do most people do for work nowadays? We're like sis, right? We're slumped over a desk and this tends to give us back problems, especially if you're an active person because your body sort of gets used to that posture and then you lift stuff and you're in that sort of slumped over back. And it can easily result in a bulge disc. And when you put the weight on your back, it sort of pulls you into a naturally safer position. And it turns out that your spine sort of likes to that light sort of moving back and forth with the weight on your back. It's good for it. I learned that from Stu McGill, who's like the world's foremost back guy. And he thinks it's a pretty great exercise for the back.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Very interesting in the.

[Michael Easter]

Wait. I was going to say, though, weighted vest still great though. You know, I've gotten a lot of outreach from people, you know, like, should I never use a weighted vest? And it's like one. Any physical activity is good at all. Yeah, do the one that you like to do. I think rucking is great. You know, don't overthink it too much. If you really one of those people who wants to optimize it, like, yeah, back, but like, just get out and move more, you know?

[Tom Bilyeu]

If you were at a standup desk, would you wear a weighted vest or a rucksack, Sorry. For that matter.

[Michael Easter]

I'll tell you what I have done is that as I was getting ready for the Arctic, knowing that I had to have a pack on my back all day, when I would do stupid stuff around the house, like I got a vacuum or oh, I got to like, I'm cooking dinner. I'M going to be moving around. I would totally wear a backpack. I look like an idiot.

[Tom Bilyeu]

But, no, that makes sense to me, especially because the way that I live my life, there isn't a lot of hiking that I do.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So even just moving around the house to have a chance to, you know, schlep it around.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Efficiency is something that I'm definitely way into.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

In the book, you get really into death. Was it the killing of the caribou that put that so top of mind? Because I'd love to hear more about your trip to Bataan.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah. Yeah, I think it was. So Donnie invites me up to the Arctic, and I'm like, okay, I'll go. You know, there's something there. I don't want to go. Right. Kind of like. I was like, your reaction. I'm like, I don't know, man. But that sort of 50. 50, right. That's a sign that there's maybe something there for me. So I go. And I was initially planning on not hunting because I really just, you know, my excuse to Donnie was like, well, I'm a journalist. Like, I'm there to just observe and not participate. You know, that's what I do. And he's just like, well, I think you'd really understand why we come up here a lot more if you were to hunt. And I decided to trust him on that. I was like, okay, so, you know, I buy a hunting tag. I'm even carrying the rifle around the whole time. But I'm still.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Did you get good at shooting?

[Michael Easter]

I took. Well, I've been around guns a lot in my life in terms of rifle shooting. I met with a guy who's a federal agent who's also a competitive shooter and just worked with him for a while to get pretty proficient. And so we finally see caribou herd, right? It's like, all right, if they're. They're gonna come through this valley, they're gonna go over this saddle, and if we can be on the other side of the saddle, we're gonna be in a position that we want to be in. And even then, I mean, I got the rifle in my hand. I'm like, am I really gonna do this, you know, and make it over the saddle? And long story short, it works out how we think it should. So we had the crawl, you know, army crawl, like 300 yards in, they cross the saddle. You just see these antlers appear at the apex. And it was one of those moments where you're like. Like, I'm never going to Forget that. Like, you see the antlers first, and it's like, oh, my God. And then they come over. And so I end up shooting this caribou that was old, because that was one of the things how we were hunting, is that we wanted to hunt the older species. That generally helps the health of the herd, whereas if you were to kill a younger one, it doesn't. And the particular caribou that I shot had a limp. I mean, he was old. It was, like, probably 10, 12 years old, which is, like, the end of life for them. And. But even, you know, before I pulled the trigger, I'm like, man, I don't know if I'm gonna do this. Once I did, it was like, there's no coming back from this. Like, I was a mess. A lot of regret, really.

[Tom Bilyeu]

You regretted it? I don't remember you saying that in the book. I remember you saying that you were a mess and emotional.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah, I regretted it initially.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Because you ended a life.

[Michael Easter]

Yes, ended a life. And I sat with it for a while, but my mind shifted because once you start to feel dressed, the animal, you cut it open, you start to take the meat off, and all of a sudden that meat. That meat looks exactly like the meat that I eat at home. And don't ever think twice about. Never have I once felt an emotion just eating meat from the grocery store. Right. So I realized that it sort of made me more aware of the fact that life, for one thing to live on, another thing has to die. Right. You get inserted in the life cycle. And it definitely changed my view about how I made me more conscious of it. It's not like all of a sudden I became a vegan or anything. Like, no, that didn't happen. Right. But it made me think about it more.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And you get pushback online from people that think this is just super barbaric.

[Michael Easter]

I'll tell you what, oddly enough, I've gotten a few messages, and they are from vegetarians and vegans who have read the book. And they say, you know, I didn't think I was going to like it. But the way that you handled that chapter, like, a lot of respect, man. Like, I can. It made me think about hunter hunting differently the way some people are doing it, which has been cool because I did worry about that. So this idea of after I kill this caribou, that idea of, oh, for one thing, to live, another has to die, well, that applies to you. It applies to me. And it got me thinking about my own mortality. And to chase this idea down, I think Part of the reason why I didn't want to kill the caribou is how we generally view death in the United States, which, yes, death is a very uncomfortable thing. Right. So we don't want to be intimate with it at all. You know, this goes from our food system how meat just sort of like appears. It's really shiny. There's not really a lot of sense that it came from something living down to our funeral system, where after someone passes away, we make them look as alive as possible for a viewing and then they're put in the ground and then we are told, you know, don't think about. Take your mind off it. Go to something. Take your mind off it. Right. But this is different in Bhutan, which is a country that is. Or by India and Nepal. So in Bhutan, like, death is very much woven into the country and the culture. So people are told to think about their death every day. There are reminders of death everywhere. So there's these.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And what's the point? To make sure that you live.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's the idea of remembering that you are going to die one day. Right. So there's these little clay things that are made and they're everywhere. They're made of clay and ashes of the dead and they're all over the country. And even their arts is a Buddhist tradition country. Yeah, it's a Buddhist country. And they've really leaned into this idea of death and Buddhism. So the idea is that. And what's interesting before I get there is that Bhutan is generally ranked as one of the happiest countries on earth. Like, they're consistently in the top 20 rankings. But this is surprising because they're one of the least developed nations on earth. There's not a single fast food place in there. There's not a stoplight in the entire country. Whoa, the entire country.

[Tom Bilyeu]

How many people live there?

[Michael Easter]

I think it is about 300,000 total. So it's pretty small.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah, but 300,000 people and zero stoplights. I mean, I guess it depends on the land mass that those 300,000 are spread out across, but still.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Do they have cars?

[Michael Easter]

They do have cars, yeah. No, so it's, you look at their, you know, UN development ranking, super low, yet they're super happy. So it's like, what's going on here? Because we tend to think like, oh, if we can just get our country high, high enough on this development ranking, we'll be a lot happier. I mean, that's the ultimate goal of, of most things. Right. Of business, of chasing Money. This type of thing is like, oh, if I have this, then I can do these things that make me happy. And to a certain extent, that does work, but not always, right? So in Bhutan, I meet with this Buddhist lama, and to get to him, he lives in this shack like this in the shadow of this monastery. And it's like this dirt, cliffy road. We have to drive up there in this Smart Car. And my driver is like, Baja 500 and this, like, Smart Car. It's like, I'm like, man, I might have to replace this guy's car by the time we're done here. But I get. I get to this guy's shack, and I mean, it is full on like the Western gangly writer meets the guru scene. I mean, he's like, you know, sitting in the lotus, looking at this big Buddha statue, and I open this drape, and it's like incense in the room. And he just sees me and is like, welcome, you know? But we talk about death and, like, what is thinking about death? This idea that they have in their country, what does it do for them? And he basically says that when you realize that you're going to die, this is inevitable. You take this into your mind. Yes, it is uncomfortable, but it also happens to typically change people's behavior. Because all of a sudden, when you realize that this thing is going to stop, and in the grand scheme of time, it's going to stop really soon, all of a sudden, you don't get caught up in the little things that used to. You used to, like, really bother you and get you all worked up, right? All of a sudden you start to focus on that which actually matters to you, whatever that might be. Building a business with a greater mission, more time with family, more time with kids, et cetera, et cetera. And that changes your behavior in a way that tends to make you happier. And they've done studies on this in the US Too, which I think is interesting. So it's like, yeah, there's an element of mysticism here, but there's also some statistics to back it up where they've had people think about death in studies and another group just think about whatever the people who have thought about their death, you would think they would come out on the other side being like, that was terrible. And like, yeah, they're like, it was terrible. You know, it was uncomfortable. But, like, I'm actually kind of happier now because I'm kind of seeing things a little bit differently. They've done studies at Stanford on people who are dying and, like, when they take into their mind that they are going to die, it changes how they experience the end of their life and how others around them even perceive how that person has experienced the end of their life.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Have you thought about what you'd be like if you knew you were dying? Let's say in a week or a month?

[Michael Easter]

I mean, I do think about death every day and I do think that

[Tom Bilyeu]

it has moved the dial very specific, like procedural way like that. You. You do it on purpose?

[Michael Easter]

Yes, usually at the end of. Sometimes in the morning, sometimes at the end of night as I'm falling asleep. Usually as I'm falling asleep.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Do you just imagine the dying process?

[Michael Easter]

I just imagine dead. I just imagine that the ride is going to end. And what does that mean? Like, when you get that in your mind and deep level, that can be pretty terrifying. But again, what about it terrifies you? Okay, think of this. This is something that someone told me in sobriety. And this was like an aha moment for me. This guy goes, you know, I'm just not that damn important. That had never occurred to me up to that point. And so I think we hear that and we're like, what does that mean? What was your great great grandfather's name?

[Tom Bilyeu]

I actually don't know my great great grandfather. No idea.

[Michael Easter]

Great, great, great.

[Tom Bilyeu]

No idea.

[Michael Easter]

Great, great, great, great.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Really? No idea.

[Michael Easter]

Right.

[Tom Bilyeu]

But why is that terrifying? That's what I want to say.

[Michael Easter]

We get sucked into this idea that like, I don't think we fully compreh this thing is gonna end. And like, what does that mean? What does that mean to like, not exist? And when you realize, like, no one's gonna remember you eventually, the human race is probably gonna end at some point, right?

[Tom Bilyeu]

It has to, right?

[Michael Easter]

Yeah. Unless Elon Musk has a great idea that he's.

[Tom Bilyeu]

But even if he does, you. I think you talk about this in the book, that eventually, even if it's just like the heat death of the universe.

[Michael Easter]

Yes.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Like there is no escape. On a long enough time, there's no escape.

[Michael Easter]

And so I think that, you know, once you. For me at least I think that other people have said this to me too, done this. Like, this is kind of terrifying because you go like, oh my God, what does that really mean? Right? Because we don't ever, like, think about that. We just think that, oh yeah, this thing's going to last forever. And I can put stuff off, you know, I'll do that when I retire. I'll do that. Xyz.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Is it a fear of not Having done the one ride you have left. Well, or is it a fear of the pain of dying? Is it a fear of. I don't know what comes after this?

[Michael Easter]

For me, it's definitely not the pain thing. It's more just the uncertainty. I think humans inherently don't like uncertainty. Back to that idea that we like what we can predict. Death is the ultimate form of uncertainty. We just have no idea. Right. What goes beyond that. We just know that this thing ends right here.

[Tom Bilyeu]

If you knew, guaranteed, I'm not going to tell you when, but you knew, guaranteed, you die peacefully in your sleep. You go to bed one night and you just never wake up, would you still fear death?

[Michael Easter]

Yeah, because it's the uncertainty. I'm not worried about the you go one. I mean, and here's the thing, is that my mind has really shifted on this because of this process. You know, when I first started doing it, it was terrifying, but now I just use it as a tool where I go, this thing's going to end. Are you using your time in a way? Like, it's impermanent? So the, the word that they use in Bhutan and in Buddhism is Mitakba. It is impermanence. And it's the idea that everything is impermanent in life. And that's not only a lesson for, like, this life, this is a lesson moment to moment, you know, like, this things are constant. Yeah. This too shall pass. Enjoy things as they are right now because they could always get worse and they could always get better too. Right.

[Tom Bilyeu]

That's what I love about the Buddhist idea of this too shall pass is it is both the warning that, hey, you're not going to last forever. You are as impermanent as anything else. And, hey, don't worry. This feeling, this hardship, this whatever, this too shall pass.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Nothing lasts. Not beauty, not pain, not joy, not suffering. I find that, yeah, that. That is a really. This too shall pass is a very comforting idea for me. I have tremendous fear around the. A prolonged death of suffering. So I watched my cousin die slowly. And that was really discomforting for me. And it was super discomforting because, like, I'm captain, like, be hardcore. Like, you push to the end, like there's nothing you can't face. And like, keep going. If you're going through hell, keep going. All of that, that resonates with me in a way. It is almost like orgasmic for me. That idea of, like, we can push through anything.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And so I. So get off on that. And then I watched him gasping for air and the only times he was at peace was when he was asleep. And I thought, all of a sudden, I don't know what he's fighting for.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And when the end, like, when there is a, oh, keep going and you get to go home and you'll be fine. There was none of that. This was just like, how many gulps of air can you fight for? And your only reward is that you get to fight for another gulp of air. There's no more quality time with your family or anything like that. And that was really. I mean, eye opening, I guess is the right phrase. But that was. It was interesting to see that it didn't diminish my sense of, like, I want to fight for everything when there is a potential win to be had. But it really made me go, hmm, if I had euthanasia button that I could press, I would probably press it and sort of post that realization. Then somebody else in my life ended up dying of cancer. And both of them. And when they died of cancer, they had the euthanasia tablet like they had actually been given. If it gets to the point and you just want to tap out. And when he went to the hospital, he. He didn't know that that was going to be the last time. And so he didn't even bring it with him. And I remember thinking, man, like, I guess it was pretty gnarly for him. At the end, I wasn't there and I said, like, why didn't he take it? And they were like, there was just. Wasn't even a thought. Like, it just happened so quickly. The decline went from like, all is well to like, you know, we're at the very end. And I just. That to me, I would be lying if I said that process, whether it's a day, a week or whatever, where it's like, your body is shutting down and this is goodbye, I find that deeply unnerving. But the thought of just not waking up one day does not cause me an ounce of stress.

[Michael Easter]

That's interesting.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So the transition freaks me out, but the. This too shall pass. This is all impermanent. I don't know. I don't struggle with that. May. It's interesting. I don't have kids, and some people see that as their path to mortality. Immortality.

[Michael Easter]

Right.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And I legitimately want to live forever. Like, if you had a button I could press that was the exact opposite of euthanasia and I could just live forever. I would press the shit out of that.

[Michael Easter]

But I think a lot of people would.

[Tom Bilyeu]

That I have literally have. I met More than five people. That would press it. I don't think so. Most people, like, no, I don't want to live forever. So it's interesting. Would you.

[Michael Easter]

No, I don't think so.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah, see. What the fuck? I don't understand you. I went from like every word out of your mouth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. To now you sound crazy to me. Why wouldn't you want to live forever?

[Michael Easter]

Well, for what? If I live forever, like, what do I do with my time? I mean, it's like, I think, same

[Tom Bilyeu]

thing you're doing with your time now.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah, I guess you could.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Do you have an impulse now where you're like, oh, God, is this really worth it?

[Michael Easter]

No.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Neither do I. So I don't understand why somebody wants to make sure that this ride that they've never once wanted to tap out of has an end.

[Michael Easter]

It's a good. I mean, maybe I'd be like, yeah, I guess maybe 200 years would be good. But that's also just an abstract.

[Tom Bilyeu]

You're gonna feel like, think about. Think about the. The caribou that you hunted. 10 years, 12 years was a lot for it.

[Michael Easter]

Yes.

[Tom Bilyeu]

You've already done that three times over.

[Michael Easter]

Yes.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So for that thing, it's like, Jesus, 300. Like, come on, that's ridiculous. But to us, the frame of reference is such that it just. Why would you want the ride to end?

[Michael Easter]

It's a good question. I think that. Well, would this theoretical thing be available to everyone?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yes.

[Michael Easter]

And then can people just start having kids? Because then we're gonna have more kids and then what happens to the.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Let's just. For the thought experiment. And I'm well aware that there are realities to be faced, and I don't want people to think I'm blind to that, but I've done my part because I don't have children.

[Michael Easter]

Me too. So we're in the same boat.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Do you ever plan to have kids?

[Michael Easter]

Probably not.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay, so let's just imagine that we're a multi planetary species and there's just abundance for all. And we found ways to make meat out of cells. And so we don't. Animals don't even have to die for us to live on. Which I know creates a problem within the greater context of this conversation. But just for this question, let's say none of that is a concern. Anybody that wants it can have it. Now the question is only, do you

[Michael Easter]

want it so the world is perfect?

[Tom Bilyeu]

No. Every. Every sort of emotional struggle is real. It's going to be ups and downs. There's no Utopias. It just. You aren't going to run into a too many people problem.

[Michael Easter]

Okay. I don't know. Maybe I would if everyone around. If everyone around would. Now, what would aging look like, though?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Let's say that you sort of stall out at, like, 60, so you're still highly functional. If you've taken care of yourself, you got plenty of, you know, pep. Get up and go.

[Michael Easter]

You're not 20, but so you're permanent, like 60, basically. Let's say all the time. I'm going to really have to use the Rogaine, then. I'd like to keep this hair. If Rogaine is available, then maybe I

[Tom Bilyeu]

say that it is.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Your hair is still looking on point forever.

[Michael Easter]

Good. Maybe I would. I don't know. I think as things are now, if you were like, do you want to live forever right now? Probably not.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Really? What is it about the right now that trips you up?

[Michael Easter]

Well, I mean, because if you say the only way that I mean, so what am I gonna live on for forever? Like, there's all these. There's all these questions.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I don't buy that. So as much as you said it's bullshit, that I don't want to go out, or I couldn't go out into the woods or whatever. It's too scary. I'm gonna say. You would find something.

[Michael Easter]

What? Well, right. You have to introduce all these artifices that make it worthwhile. Does the human. Does my human. Does my human body just, like, stop aging at this point? Like, am I just forever?

[Tom Bilyeu]

We have reached health escape velocity. So for every year that you live, we add a year to your lifespan through better surgeries, growing organs, that kind of thing.

[Michael Easter]

And this is only available to me.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Well, so it gets more interesting. If it's available to you. This is what I was going to ask. So let's say it's available to everybody. But some of the people in your life choose to tap out. So now they could have lived forever. And so all the emotional distress of. You're unable to convince them that life is worth living. And so now.

[Michael Easter]

Oh, God.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Watching somebody make that choice is heartbreaking. It's tantamount to suicide. I mean, it's literally suicide in a world where everybody lives forever. So now you've got, let's say, 50 of the people that you know and love. You never know. They just. They. There is some mechanism in half of the world's brains where they just can't make it make sense. And so they commit suicide and you have to live in that world. So the. The. There's still loss. There's still heartache over enough time. It's like all the people in your life have turned over.

[Michael Easter]

This is a good question. I think I would have to think of other ways. Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know. I don't know. There's so many thought jumps I have to make to be able to make this work. And I think that's the trouble that I have with. Right.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And you're talking logistically, like, the realities of this. Yes, because I think where you were going is that getting back into the death cycle of. But for me to accept the end of my life, I free up space for somebody else. And that you feel good about being a part of that cycle.

[Michael Easter]

I feel like I can accept it. I feel like by accepting it rather than ignoring it, which I think is what can happen naturally. Right. We want to kind of just, like, go on to the next thing, not pay attention to the present. I think it forces me to be more present and use the time that I have a lot better. So, for example, back to that idea of autopilot. If I'll. All of a sudden, I have, like, 500 years. I'm just like. I'll do that whenever, you know.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Have you read the book Einstein's Dreams?

[Michael Easter]

Is that Alan Lightman?

[Tom Bilyeu]

I think it is.

[Michael Easter]

I think I read it.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I never would have remembered. But I'm almost certain that you're correct.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah. A while ago.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Check it out again. There's in that. Because they're all little short stories about time. There's one of them where in the world everybody lives forever. And there's two kinds of people. Type 1, never do anything because there's always time to do it tomorrow.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And type two, do everything right now because they can do everything they've ever wanted to do.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah. Interesting.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And so I think people fall into one of those two camps.

[Michael Easter]

I would probably. I'd probably do everything.

[Tom Bilyeu]

What you just said made me think you would fall into the camp of do nothing. Because I've got 500 years, so. Meh.

[Michael Easter]

Well, I'm making generalities about people. Yeah. I don't know. This one is one where there's so many things that need to be. Okay, well, this is the scenario. This is the scenario. This is the scenario. I'd like to see this in a full contract. That is amazing.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I need to read the fine print on this one.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah, I'd like to read the fine print. I don't want to get caught up in Some, you know, deal like, with a cable provider where if I cancel,

[Tom Bilyeu]

there's no way out.

[Michael Easter]

Even death, there's no way out. Yeah. And I'd rather just be dead than have to renegotiate my life contract. It's.

[Tom Bilyeu]

That is amazing. It's interesting.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah. I don't know.

[Tom Bilyeu]

This is the one question to me where I assumed everybody felt the same as I did. And then you start talking to people and you realize, oh, my God, like, I'm actually in the minority. How's that possible? Just seems so strange to me.

[Michael Easter]

I think that if all of a sudden all the. The scenario you just set up were to occur, I think that a lot of people would actually just live forever. I think I could probably see myself doing because it's like, well, if everyone else is doing it, I think they

[Tom Bilyeu]

probably would as a default. But I think there would be a lot of emotional, like, machinations about, like, oh, but my life doesn't have meaning because there's no end. It's. It is interesting to me, the suffering that people create for themselves. Somebody, I think on my team, it may have actually been somebody just in my community, created this meme, which I am super. I love that they put me in it. And it's from Scooby Doo. They put my head on. I guess it would have been, who's the main sailor looking guy? Whoever that guy is. I forget. Not Shaggy, the other dude. And they put my head on it and it's.

[Michael Easter]

Oh, yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

It goes like, they're about to unmask him, and it's like, who's the cause of all of my problems? And you unmask him and it's you again.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And. Damn. And the amount of problems that people create for themselves, like the fact that people go through their normal life and they do it for, I mean, 80 to 100 years. Pretty magically delicious. Long period of time. Never get weird about that. But suddenly when you change their frame of reference, it, oh, well, then that would destroy all the meaning and what would I do with my time and all the same fucking thing you're doing now. Like, whatever the meaning is you have now.

[Michael Easter]

Okay, so I have a question, because in this scenario, I mean, the world is obviously improved. If we have all this medicine, all this technology, where do we get meaning? Because then there's a problem. What was that?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Well, tell me. There's a problem with

[Michael Easter]

what do you

[Tom Bilyeu]

get meaning from the same place you get it now? People think that meaning is handed to you. It's not. Meaning is a Decision people make it. The problem is most people, their parents tell them what is meaningful, or Buddhism tells them what's meaningful, or religion tells them what's meaningful, and they mistake that for objective truth. Not realizing, hey, you're just embedded in a cultural context. So now I'm just saying, recognize that it's a cultural context and was still able to give you this thing that you said, ooh, this thing has meaning. I'm going to grab onto it now, just be in on the trick. So to me, just like you will send yourself out into these absurdly dangerous scenarios, even though you could live in the comfort of your known world. You're saying, but I get the way the brain works. Forget the mind for a second. I get the way the brain works. And I need to be out here moving, doing all this hard shit. You bought into what they were telling you that you should probably do a little bit of hunting. You'll get this insight. And so you did it and there was a. The insight. I'm just saying things like religion work even when you know it's a trick of evolution. Even when you know that there is essentially a God neuron. Right. That there is this thing in your brain that allows you to feel this transcendent nature.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So if people can get meaning from dropping acid or psilocybin or whatever, I'm telling you, like you just have to get a hold of. This is a mechanism, it's a process. Right. I'm obsessed with getting people to understand. Desire is a process. Love is a process. Meaning is a process. Like, for instance, there was almost a decade of my life where if you had woken me up in the middle of the night, punched me in the head, so I was dazed and confused. And you said, what is the mission in your life? I would have said to end metabolic disease. But I don't even think about that. Not that I don't think about it now, but it is way de. Prioritized. Now what I'm completely focused on, I've given my life to, I'm betting my fortune on everything, is that I can make sure that nobody makes makes it to the age of 15 without encountering a growth mindset. And I literally, it was a conscious decision. I'm going to now walk the process of building that in such that I believe in it so much, I get a neurochemical response to it when I tell people that's what I'm about. But of course, in the beginning, I didn't get a neurochemical response. It was all just an Intellectual exercise.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

But it works like if you know the process to reinforce an idea in your mind, it will actually take neurophysiological hold of you and you will get a very strong visceral emotional response, but only if you go through that process.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah, I could see that. I could see. I mean, we would have to have. Everything would have to be upended. Right. Education. Everything.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I think we should upend education.

[Michael Easter]

Yes.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Not to completely derail this conversation.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah. I mean, everything would have to. That's why, again, the fine print. Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah. It's interesting.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Oh, man. There was some other element to that that I really wanted to go into that. I'm blanking on now, so let's go back to something that is been on my mind since we brought it up. So this idea of rituals and you're being torn away from most of the time. You said the mother. I'd be curious to know if it's all the time the mother and you were just leaving yourself a little bit of wiggle room or if you actually know of some cultures where it really was the father.

[Michael Easter]

I think it's. I can't remember off the top of my head. I think that mostly like in the. Campbell really talks about the mother. Right. But in Rites of Passage. Van Gennep. I think there's a little bit of father as well, but I can't remember the exact specifics on that.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So that's something for me. I would really like to do some more research into. I don't know if you've read Nelson Mandela's Long Walk Freedom.

[Michael Easter]

Okay.

[Tom Bilyeu]

But holy hell, that was so interesting because he's a modern person.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Who lived a tribal life and was, if memory serves correctly, they do this ritualistic where the men come and take you physically away from the women, so away from your mother. And I forget what sort of weird, hard thing they had to do because I think there were two parts of it. But the part that I remember extraordinarily well, they strip you down bucket ass naked in front of the entire tribe. They sit you down spread eagle and a guy with a really sharp rock grabs a hold of your foreskin and cuts it off.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And no anesthetic. You just get the slice and then you have to yell the warrior's statement, whatever it is. And there's whatever four or five of these 14 year old boys lined up and they all get the slice and they all have to yell. And he had like this moment of shame because it hurt so bad that he hesitated before he yelled the Thing. And he was like, oh, fuck. Like, you know, I had my one chance and, you know, and I didn't yell it. And I just thought, oh, my God. Like, I really grew up pampered because I so admire him. And the fact that he. 27 years in prison. Yeah, like, that's pretty extraordinary. And to not come out and be the most bitter human on the face of planet Earth, which I fear would have been my response. And I just thought, God, is there really something, too, like just that where a culture says, from this moment to the next, you're moving into a different place and a different phase, you are a different person. Then it'd be really interesting to. Because I know virtually nothing about rites of passage for women

[Michael Easter]

there. Well, one thing that came up in my mind as we were talking is I think that the. The only place that has put rites of passage at scale, more traditional rites of passage at scale for people, is the military. So you think about. Think about Hell week. What is that? Or boot camp, right? You come in, you're like, not that. Not that tough. You're a little soft. Not great at following directions. We're going to put you through a week of hell with all these tests and trials, and you may not make it through. We might drop you, but if you make it out the other side, you're a new person. And how do we signify that? We give you a Green Beret. We give you the ranger tab. We have a symbol that shows that you are a new person. So I think, you know, in some cultures and countries, they make military service. You have to be in the military for a year. You know, when you're 18, 18 to 19, everyone joins the military for one year. And I think that is. There's something interesting about that. Not necessarily advocating for it, but I wonder if there is something there that leaves younger people a little better off than I think. Why don't you advocate for it? Just the logistics of this damn country.

[Tom Bilyeu]

You've got, like, a real thing with the fine print. Respect.

[Michael Easter]

Oh, yeah. I overthink everything. I mean, you could do it if everyone jump on board. And I think it'd probably be good for American kids, to be honest. I mean, in my. You know, having dealt with. I say dealt with like it's a burden. I really like my job as a professor, but, you know, increasingly, I think kids are more, to use your language at the first of the. This kind of soft. And I think there's a lot of reasons for this, and I think that the reasons are increasing. 1 it's that this lack of challenge in life 2. It's this digital sphere that they live in and really put so much weight on, right? Like, for example, I teach a health journalism class. I'll usually have 30 kids in it. And their very last story is they have to write about. They have to do this long feature about like any. Anything just has to be kind of related to health. Probably about a half of every half of the women in the class and maybe like a third of the men, they're all writing about the, the mental health impacts of social media. Like they could come up with any idea in health ever, right? And this is what they're all coming up with because they're all affected by it and they see it and they're all. None of them are saying, man, this has made me feel so great about myself. I can't believe this. They're all saying, like, this isn't good for me.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Comparison is the thief of joy.

[Michael Easter]

Yes, totally.

[Tom Bilyeu]

It's crazy. I've been successful in my life, but even I can get fucked up by going on Instagram being like, yo, he's got better abs than I have, or, you know what I mean? Whatever. Like, you just so fast go, man, I'm. I'm popping off in this one area of my life, but I'm ultra shit in 999 other areas. And so it's so easy to get emotionally befuddled by going on and seeing. And of course, it's everybody's highlight reel and all of that stuff. So yeah, it is back to a really interesting thing.

[Michael Easter]

Back to problem creep. We don't focus on. We focus on the one thing, right? And that eats away at our brain. I'll tell you a story that's. I don't know if it's related. You can tell me after. So when I have to take all those planes to get up there, right? So when I'm on these, like, whatever, they are seven 47s from Vegas to Seattle, Seattle to Anchorage. I hate flying. Like, I just. I hate flying, right? It's like the seats are too small. The coffee on the plane is. Is garbage. It's total garbage. And the, you know, the screen in front of you, it's got movies. They're like the shittiest movies ever, right? They're like C rate movies. They're terrible. It's usually way too hot on the plane if you want to go to the bathroom. Like, you're like this as you go, you know, it's just terrible. So I go up there And I spend a month in the Arctic and I'm freezing cold the entire time. I never have enough food because we pack in like 2,000 calories a day and we're burning like four to six maybe. Everything I do takes effort. Even going to the bathroom. I gotta like walk out and then, you know, hold a squat for a while. And also keeping bring the gun. Because grizzly bears, crazy weather, crazy weather, everything is hard. So when we get back and I'm on that plane back to Vegas, it was heaven. It was heaven. I hadn't sat in a soft chair for a month, right? I had been bored out of my ever loving mind for a month. I'd gotten some benefits from that. But still, a month away from stimulation is a long time. And you know that C rate movie, Damn, that was a really. That was a really good movie. When I had to go to the bathroom. Oh, I didn't have to have a gun with me, right? When I wanted water to wash my hands, I hit this button and this hot water, hot water came out. And when that hot water hit my hands, it was like, oh, my God, this is unbelievable. Just this shitting and grin. When I wanted food, just bing. Hey, could I have like 19 more bags of pretzels, ma'? Am? You know, coffee was great. So the point I'm trying to make is this. It's like we don't realize how freaking amazing daily life is. Like, it is unbelievable. Just all this shit that we take for granted in our life every single day, we become unsatisfied with it. We look for the problems like, ah, this sucks. This sucks. When in reality, it's amazing to be alive today. Like, holy shit. Hot water coming out of a faucet at 30,000ft in this, like, tube of metal that's going to take me 3,000 miles in like four hours. Why do I have problems? Like, why do I have problems in my life? Everything is freaking perfect right now. Like, it really is. And I'm not saying that, like, we don't have larger societal problems that are worth discussing, right? But the reality is, is the average person is very, very few people are going hungry in the United States now. It's like, it's one of those where I'm like, we have so much food, People are overweight and are like, yeah, but food insecurity, like, okay, show me all those people who died of famine in the U.S. like, they're just not there, you know? And I realize that's controversial, maybe it's insensitive, but those people are Just not there. There's a lot of ways to get food today. And our problem is that we have too much food rather than too little food. On a grand scale. I don't have to put in effort to go get my water, to get hot water, to do all these things. My job. I don't have to go toil in a field. I don't have to run down my food. I don't have to do all these things that in the past were very hard and challenging. Like, it is amazing to be alive today. And I think we just miss that. And so for me, coming back from Alaska, when I all of a sudden, the fact that you can just boil water on a stove and you have access to, like, hot water and food, like anything you want, you become a lot more grateful for all of that stuff. And when you become grateful for everything you have in your life, like I would argue, even people who are below the poverty level in the U.S. now, they really have it good. I mean, most people, you look at the data, most people who are below the poverty level have air conditioning, they have cars. A lot of them have assets in different forms, access to food, even that you look at, we are the 99% for the world. You know, even our poorest people are among the top 1 percenters, you know, in a grand scheme of things in the world. And so I think when we miss that, we miss out on an opportunity to be grateful for stuff that just, I mean, that makes your life a lot better.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah, I totally agree with that. And my thing is, you know, if you want to make change, which is amazing, making it from a place of recognizing sort of what we have and how far we've come, and that of course we can always eke out more gains and make things better. But getting people to understand that, you're going to see what you look for. And if you see all the problems you're going to, you're going to. Or if you look for all the problems, you're going to see all the problems. But if you look for the things that are joyful and good and wonderful, then you're going to see that. And that frame of reference will color how you approach change. And if you're looking for ways to elevate humanity and help people, and you really want good things, and, you know, you're looking at just how incredible what we've created is, then you'll approach the problem solving from one direction. If you're only looking at all the things that have gone wrong and all the slides and all that, then you're just coming at it from a different place.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So, you know, I don't. I know you don't intend any of your words to be misconstrued as. There, of course, is human suffering and that the vast majority of human suffering, though, especially in a modern context, is psychological. And helping people through that of knowing how you could be in way worse conditions and thrive emotionally. You know, people can be in the conditions that they're in now and thrive emotionally. It's not easy. I'm well aware of that. But once we identify the real problem to solve, then we can actually make progress. So going back to Bhutan, it's like they don't have it better than people below the poverty line here in America by the sort of objective standards of assets and things that they own and all of that stuff. It is really a question of they've done work at a cultural level that's allowed people to thrive emotionally. And when we wrap our heads around that, that's probably where we have to focus. I think we might actually start making more progress.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah. So. Yeah, I think so too. 100%.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Michael, thank you so much for coming on. Dude, your book was amazing. I think it's really important right now. I think. Thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. Where can people find you? Follow your crazy adventures, ideas, all that good stuff.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah, I got a website, eastermichael.com I'm on Instagram. Michael, underscore Easter. And then the book is the Comfort Crisis. It's available, you know, wherever books are sold. It was super fun, man. I like chatting.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Thank you so much. Fun. Guys, check this guy out, man. I think his ideas are utterly transformational. You won't regret a second of it. And speaking of things you won't regret, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care.

[Michael Easter]

Peace.