do that, which was most comfortable. for example, we avoid movement. we are wired to be lazy. when we have access to food, we have incentives to over eat it on and on and on. we avoid risk, but in our past environments, they are actually kind of dangerous. they no longer are. and so now that we've tipped into this world of comfort in a lot of ways, if you think about things that most influence your daily lives are all new within about 100 years old. and they're all designed to make you more comfortable. so we have this easy access to calorie dense fluids. we've engineered movement to movement out of our days. we don't experience temperature swings. we don't have to put effort into why it's things are easy and this is great. don't get me wrong. we're living longer or more people on earth, but when all we do is follow that drive, we have to be comfortable all the time it backfires. now you keep using that. we. 2 you know, we have to address, we really are at this point because when i was reading your book, i thought it was

a very honest this waiter against the western and particularly the american lifestyle. because it parents, it's idealized image of comfort with enormous costs in the form of depression ability and overall last listeners you didn't intended as a social critique, did you? i don't know if i did, and i agree with you that when i say we, when i'm talking about western cultures, you know, i tend to think about a lot of the problems that i talk about in a book there. first world problems. this is where you like, you know, there's that kind of funny saying we use, but i do think that, you know, as the world is generally improving, you're seeing these problems creep into parts of the developing world. i mean obesity rates aren't really falling anywhere in the world. people aren't really moving more every day anywhere. right?

so i think as, as we continue to improve the world, i think these problems are, have a tendency to grow. not frank. now you mentioned a laziness in build evolutionary mechanism to help us save energy and abortion at most effectively. but both individual bodies and human societies as a whole are self regulating systems. historically, they adapted pretty indefinitely to all sorts of changes. why do you think these particular time presents such a challenge? again, looking at the ability and depression rate, it's clearly seems like i missed the taishan. yeah, so if you look at the research, it suggests that our ancestors, before we really industrialized, they moved about 14 times more and we did per day. now they were not exercising. they were living life wise. white used to force us to have to move as much and so

they wouldn't move when they didn't have to because it would just burn up extra energy that was hard to come by. so we still have that drive and now you look at today when they do research on what percent of people take the stairs when there's also an escalator, only 2 percent. so that really shows you how deeply ingrained this is and life no longer presents us with need to move. it's, you know, we've really shifted from life that is based around physical effort. whether that was hunting and gathering or farming to a lot of work is now being done behind a screen. even the few farming jobs that are around in the developed world. there are some behind computer screens there right there. like in these gigantic machines that are doing all the work for them. so the number of jobs that really require physical effort are slowly falling over time. you know, my go, i used to fully subscribe to these evolutionary argument for extreme discomfort,

but them, if you look at kids, regardless of where they are in the world, they have no problem being uncomfortable. in fact, you know, real authentic fun almost always includes. some degree of discomfort, it includes moment, it includes being dirty, sweat, a smelly exhaust, that oftentimes hungry, sometimes bruised or scratched. and i know many dolls who managed to carry these after she had throughout life. i wonder if you figured out what prompts people to trade this bull embodied leaving for you know, this comforting anesthesia that you so vividly describe in your book. i think you're right about kids. it's like we inherently know. we need to do these things and kids just in our adult lives, we can kind of just get pickled into our routine where you know, it's easier to not do that kind of stuff. i think that sometimes people need to hit

a moment where they realize that change needs to happen. you said a lot in you know, people who lose a significant amount of weight, or maybe it's a health scare. and i think that often compels people who are formally not doing much movement to do movement. i also believe that there are some people who they just are wire till to want to move right and are kind of like the rare people. but so i worked at a magazine called mental for a lot of years. it's a, it's a really big man's mental magazine. and you know, we always said, is there any time like if you do a work out, do you ever regret it? like no. right. but actually going and doing that work out, you never want to do it at 1st because of these drives. it's not that i want to pick up an argument with you, but i think there is sort of a biological argument to be made because many of those activities they involve endorphins. so whether you do fasting, or whether you do a ron or, you know,

subject yourself to all sorts of this conference, you are actually have a burst of endorphins. have helping you to, to deal with it. so. 2 as we're thinking about your main advise of sort of accepting discomfort as a way through a live or a way of getting out of this malays. i wonder if it really has to be discomforting . because at the end of the day, you get a lot of pleasure out of doing that. actually the nature of both, all those ways of helping you leave life without that much discomfort than pretty challenging physically challenging lives. yeah, i mean i, i think that that sort of the lesson of the book as like, things will be uncomfortable at 1st, but there are rewards to this on the other side. people have a problem dealing with the discomfort that is the inherent bias. so if you look at

something like exercise or you look at the u. s. exercise guidelines says you should do 150 minutes a week of physical activity. you should start tre twice a week. the guidelines are not that hard to hit. we're talking things like gardening, challenge, only 20 percent of americans hit them. a lot of other countries have similar numbers. so i think that what people really have problem with is bridging that gap and sort of going through that discomforts because that's a little too scary. but once they do, yeah, there's a lot of benefits there. now, i don't want to get you political, but i have to ask you how much all of that is a result of this so called free capitalism with its incessant paddling of consumption and the ever present comparisons with the, with the jones's and the many points of advertising and so on and so forth. is that to some extent, a function of the economic system that in times people to,

to be miserable in a way. yeah. i mean, i do think that the system is set up in such a way that people unconsciously just feel like they need to work more. right. there's a really great then con, i love and, and basically the message is kind of ask them, why do we do the things we do? why do you go to college? why do you get a job right after college? why do you buy a car? why do you buy a house? there's all this stuff in the american dream, right. and like we never stop and wonder why. and by chasing that, we often get locked into a system that incentivizes work that is more intellectual. so we're not forced to work. and we're not forced to think about some of the bigger questions that might force us to do things where there is more meaning. i think you mentioned some of the why. and i think what one me why we all have to ask is why do we eat? because in the book you sign an amazing speaker that only 20 percent of our meeting

is driven by your logical hunger. you go on to say that, well, most of us leave in the dinner, played size place and what i hear, and that is many of the lives and worlds reaches and treasures gets traded for. i've been now act of eating that is not even satisfying or nourishing at the end of the day. am i taking too far? no, i don't think so. so if you think about the environment that we evolved in, we developed these incentives, the form of opening to when we had food to eat too much of it and to really prefer a calorie dance for. now this is to make sense one, so it was out of premium which store that food on our, on our body is fat and it would help us live on if we ever couldn't find it. well now days there's food everywhere and it is ultra process and really designed to sort of hijack these evolutionary don't mean mechanisms we have and open me makes

us feel good. so you find that a lot of people will often be for reasons other than real hunger. right. and one of the big ones is that food is a really effortless, easy escape from stress. you know, if you're feeling a little bit down and you're feeling anxious, you've got too much work. while hand of eminem's makes you feel a little bit better, but it's only a short term for a long time. yeah. so this has consequences over the long term. so i argue in the book, you know, when we think about weight loss, at least in the us, i know a lot of other countries. there's so many kind of wacky diets that i'll tell you that one type of food is evil and the other is good. at the end of the day, i mean, most of the research suggest that has to do with the fact way gain is just eating too many calories. and why are people eating too many calories will often because they're eating for reasons other than true hunger. a moment ago, michael, you mentioned the consequences of aging too much, and i think there is also an applicant dimensions here of google proportions

because of the food production industry is the biggest polluter of this planet. even if we take the garbage problem out of the equation, isn't the biggest and the most practical thing, all of us could do for raining in climate change to simply a plas, i think so. yeah, i mean we, we know that a lot of the developed world just eats too much. i mean, we're very good people. you look at 100 gathers these people way like 110120 pounds . and so i think that, you know, our nutrition is great. now it's given us a lot of you know, we're living longer living better. we are diseases are no longer a lack of nutrition. our diseases are fueled often by over nutrition. and i think that we eat a lot of meat too, and we know that there are consequences to really have a me, consumption environmentally. i think in the book, you know,

i argue that one of the most owing foods is potatoes and potatoes are one of the most sustainable foods. you know, nowadays in diet culture sort of a weight loss culture. you see a lot of traditional staple crops, they're vilified as like, oh this is why you're overweight. it's like, no. the problem is that we take our staple crops, we process the heck out of them. we add sugar salt and that to them and they come out in the form of a twinkie. that's why we're over way if we would eat foods in their single ingredient source, right? plain potatoes, plain beans, things like that. those are very, very sustainable. they're very sewing and they're very healthy, but we don't want to do that right, because it's not quite as delicious as a 20 years. let's take a very short break right now. we'll be back to the discussion in just a few moments for me or

you got to do is identify the threats that we have. it's crazy from station let it be an arms race is on often very dramatic development. only personally, i'm going to resist. i don't see how that strategy will be successful, very critical of time. time to sit down and talk the know what was, what was the and you can measure can while we're on by now i was and i know i should know moment the new york on mon deals on miles like the one and then that will allow you

to go for have an initiation and with much i should be better off the sorry, be in the news. give me a shout and i will send one out on my team. my name is the the the me or i welcome back to world,

of course with michael is to offer all of the conference crisis, embrace discomfort to reclaim your while happy and healthy out. michael before the break, we were talking about eating and how some people trade. most of a lot of great treasures for the simple and banal act of eating. and i'm not preaching here because i used to be in that position myself until i discovered fasting in the many, the grading things that come with it. and one of them was learning how to leave through fear. this is also something that you are right about in the book contending with the fear of death. what did it give you? so as part of the overarching narrative, this book i spent more than a month in the article on a country hunt. and, you know, i was hunting, and i think as part of the modern develop world, at least in america, in particular, we don't think about dest ever. and this goes from our food system to the fact that

neat just sort of magically appears at the grocery store. and it's design, you know, made to look in such a way that didn't come from something wedding to our funeral system as well. you know, we draw people out after they die to look there's life like as possible. we have a viewing that's a half an hour and then we put them in the ground and we're told to take our mind off. i don't think about it. but through hunting, i sort of had this realization that life requires that for one thing to live on, another thing has to die, whether it's an animal or a plant, right. and i'm wondering about thinking about my own mortality and to learn more about this. i travel to baton, which is a in terms of development metrics, it's ranks very low on the un development scale, but they consistently rank really high unhappiness scores, which is interesting. so there's this kind of what's going on there, and there's

a lot of reasons for this, but one of them they think is that their death is woven into the culture. their citizens are instructed to think about their data at least once a day. a lot of cultural celebrations and traditions focus around death or even all around the country. there's these clay pyramids that are clay mixed with ashes of the dad. they're everywhere. and you know, i spoke to some of their economists as well as buddhist leaders and to take away and essentially that, you know, by realizing and taking into your mind that one day you are going to die. this changes your behavior because i feel like least in america, people tend to like i mentioned before, we have this list of things we need to do, right? and when you think about death, change your behavior in such a way that you realize maybe what's more important to you. and that leads you to behave in a way that can make you happier. now, whether we like it or not, the current and dynamic of covet 19 bring death back into the public consciousness

. do you think it's going to make things better or worse? thank you. so 2 things happened with cobra, and i think that most people maybe 6070 percent it just personal to set more to be at home more to eat more so you saw things like drinking smoking. so consumption tv watching all that stuff rose among most people. but then there was this other group where it almost acted as a sort of wake up call. you know, a spend a lot more time outside. so in the us of more people spent more time inside. there was this, there was also this run to the outdoors and you couldn't get your hands on outdoor activity like that outdoor gear. the national parks were packed with people. and so i think there's been 2 reactions. and i think that in terms of work, we're going to see a lot more going in word and we're moving even more movement my days,

even more time behind screens. but i'm hoping that at least one lesson of this will be that we need to do hard things. occasionally we need activity. we need to rethink our how we each, we need to rethink a lot of these things that set us up for a pandemic. that is probably worse than it could have been, had we been taking better care of ourselves over the last 100 years into something i think covered. and i can give you a bill on your previous life, at least when it comes to your house. it's, you said, could you top on people who i used to put in comfort above the help and i think even on some level it makes many of your recommendations or your advice which a you provide on a voluntary basis. it makes it pretty, a non negotiable because if they want to survive this ever imitating virus,

we will have to toughen up a little bit. don't you think? so? yeah, i think so. i mean, when you look at the data, people who, you know, are inactive or maybe obese. they had a lot more risk factors when it came in effect or come down to co come down with coal, that they were more likely to end up in the hospital on ventilators. and you know, this of course is just a general trend there, of course, very seemingly healthy people who does not also hop into, but i think as a whole, living a certain way that perhaps we know isn't healthy lead. you put you in are risk factors that were more likely to house severe consequences should you get covered? this is where coughing agent gets a bit mystical for me because it's really a disease that he's hard, the metabolic functions that it's an a generating function. and indeed, it's much harsher on people who are carrying a lot of stored energy in their bodies. i'm talking about that. it also leaves a lot of people with chronic weakness or life less nasty,

which you write about regardless by the way of how much they eat. so it's really messed up with your ability all but transform, you know, energy into your life force. and in a way, i mean i almost feel like it was waiting to happen given how. 0 absolutely, a wasteful we are with energy around us. don't you think that sooner or later some something like that evolutionary would happen. isn't that in nature's way of in a way of teaching a lesson? yeah, i mean, i think that you see these bugs come around. right, i mean there's happens often, there is the flow of 1918. these things are gonna happen. and we tend to have a really short term memory. so the way that we've been living, we sort of set ourselves up for when the inevitable happened to be in a relatively poor position to face that. so that is one thing that i hope we can

start to think about. now, you know, i'm certain governments around the world will be thinking about how do we stop or control the next damage. and i'm hoping that people will, you know, governments will give equal weight to thinking about how can we improve the health of our citizens. michael, with all due respect, government, can i tell you what your kind of get put into your mouth or how you're going to spend your day? i mean, they can come up with a max seen, they can introduce low downs, but at the end of the day with a disease that is so metabolic rand depend. 3 3 you know, some on us should be on the, on the people to, i mean it's 100 percent. yeah. i think so. i think so. i mean, they can do things like incentivized, healthy, eating, incentivize movement. there's different programs. people are thinking about, especially with the rise of wearables, there could be some interesting things and, and, and insures, as well in the private sector. it's a risk factor. if you have someone who's, you know it's, it's going to cost you more money as an ensure if you have someone who is doing

poor lifestyle habits. so i think there's some incentives there that may be people be thinking about, but i 100 percent agree that at the end of the day, individual behavior trumps everything and the research backs up. it's also a philosophical question. to me here is because many world religions have the victim of not taking more than you can give to their world and in a way times well with the main thesis of your book. if you're taking too much comfort, you're down one way or another psychologically, physiologically environmentally, etc. but i guess the hardest thing here is to disband your own measure or find your own golden middle. how did you go about it? my own. so i mentioned that i'll give you sort of an anecdote. i mentioned that i spent more than a month up in the alaskan arctic. and when i got back, i had just totally reframed how great we now have it in modern life. so before i go

up there, it's like i use hot running water every day. never thought about how great that is, dr. carver, they never saw that was don't have to go out and walk 5 miles down hill the stream and bring it back up to get my water right. but after alaska, like i had to do all those things. and so when i get back into my water, my modern world and i turn on the faucet and hot running water comes out and hits my hands like, oh my god, this is unbelievable. this is the most amazing thing that i've ever had happened to me in my life. and for 34 years of my life, i had never once thought about how great that is. so i think that sometimes putting yourself in a position where you are remote from some be amazing us the modern life helps you become more grateful for that. and that can also, i think change your behavior. i know my behavior change afterwards. you know, so yeah, you know, there are many discomforting thoughts in your book,

but one of them gave me a lot of comfort and that is learning that big, but muscles is in nature gift to allows walk along distances and carry way. then i'm sure it, it may give, it may take some weight off people's shoulders, but you're actually arguing that it should be put back on. right? yes. yeah. so the human body of the reason that it is built the way it is, it's basically for 2 reasons. to run long distances in the heat route rather slowly compared to other animals, we would slowly but surely chase animals down. it would eventually topple over from heat exhaustion and we spare him and have dinner, and then we have to carry the animal home. so that's the 2nd thing that were adapted for is caring wait over long distances. and we are the only animal that can do that. and so in the book, you know, i argue a lot of people job, a lot of people do the 1st thing. they run long distances, but how many people for exercise carry heavy stuff? well, it turns out that's probably a better form of exercise because you're getting the cardiovascular benefits. and

you're also getting strength benefits. and most people today, the number of people who strain train is really low, but we know that strain training is just as important for your overall health, as is endurance exercise. so i make a case that people should start doing what is called rocking. and this is the foundation of military training where you just simply get a backpack put some way to go for a walk, burns 2 to 3 times, calories of walking to a lot. lot better for you than running cars running can have some risks. it has rather high injury race and gives you that element of strength. i think your book is ultimately about the downsides of progress and, and the great costs that are always associated with it. i want to be working on it, change your belief system in any way because to some extent you are arguing for a conservative not a political conservatism, but the sort of lifestyle conservatism or some sort of ask it isn't. yeah,

i did. i mean, i'll go back to that, the experience really made me think differently about how good we haven't today go back to our gratitude elements so that definitely change me. but i agree. it also made me realize how important it is to not be complacent. you know, i think it's easy today to whether you are gaining weight, whether you feel like you know, things id or you are depressed. the answer is often not doing the super easy thing . you look at the research and people need to be challenged. we need to move more, we need more time in nature. we need all these things and discover that we used to feel every day as we evolve. and those can often solve a lot of our most pressing problems. so i'm not saying they're going to solve everything by any means, but does a lot. and i think that people need to sort of lean into this comfort while michael

this is all we have time for, but thank you very much for sharing your thoughts. thank you. thank you for watching hope to see you again. next week on the far as me in the me ah, join me every thursday on the alex salmon show and i'll be speaking to guess in the world, the politic sport business. i'm show business. i'll see you then me

i believe we need to kind of off the field puzzle to you through that actually use them shape which is to build me up with your budget that i would continue to play with each famous from a credit issued by the book in the the,

the the in the story shape the week italy temporarily exam the citizens of neighboring some marino has been given russia's sputnik we've seen from needing cobra passports. the shot is still not recognized by the despite proving its effectiveness and the small european nation on numerous independence that are t spoke exclusively to the concrete health minister. we have some day, some guarantee of the efficiency. we are closer to 100 percent of the few cmc so thank you. ations homes burned to the ground apocalyptic scenes. devastating wildfires raged throughout the world from turkey.