February 21, 2022 • 39 mins
In our chaotic, noisy world, how does one find silence? Not only quiet surroundings, but inner silence. The second part of our conversation with explorer, author, art collector and publisher Erling Kagge.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Today's episode of Ephemeral features the track Deathless by musician
Nathaniel Kraus. Here the full piece at Nathaniel Krauss dot
band camp, dot com, links and more on our website
Ephemeral dot show. Ephemeral is production of my Heart three
(00:25):
D audio for fell Exposure. Listen with that phones. This
is our second episode based on my conversation with explorer
and author Arling Cogan. If you miss it, Part one
will give you more backstory about earls life as an explorer.
I've just done a lot of interviews. Are like, I
(00:46):
feel like you've done probably a tremendous amount of interviews
in your life. I have never counted. Ah, yeah, you
know when silence came out, and also walking came out
and philosophy for polar explorers. So I did honor something
too is probably, but recently not so many. I guess
I'm late to the party that that I happened. Congratulations.
(01:07):
Earling spent his young adulthood engaged in record setting expeditions,
sailing around the world, climbing on everest, hiking to the
North and South Poles on foot the ladder completely alone.
Then I kind of changed my life and became a
family man. I'm still a family man, but I think
it's a season of every thing. And I keep on
(01:28):
doing old doors and keep on doing expeditions, but with
a lower profile, and I really enjoy writing books. In
After we put out the episode Sounds of Silence, on
the work of composer John Cage, a friend gave me
a copy of EARLINGOK Silence in the Age of Noise.
(01:49):
This is probably the trickiest question I give you all day,
But what what is silence? Silence is to me more
like an idea in the sense that before I start
to write about silence, and also before I walked alone
to the self pole, almost in total silence, I thought
about silence as the opposite to sounds. But of course
(02:13):
sounds you can measure in decibels, while silence you can't
really measure. So to me, silence is kind of the
opposite of noise. And then I think about noise. Obviously
it sounds, but it's also all kinds of distractions you
have through today, that the telephone is beeping, a car
is passing, a radio is running, and of course also
(02:35):
you're like man made lights. During the nights, you can't
see the starry night and all this is noise to me,
and silence is about yourself. It's about your inner core.
It's about getting to know yourself. And this silence, inner
silence is there all the time waiting for you to
(02:58):
explore it. We're living in the age of noise. So
much is about noise. So much is about forgetting yourself,
and about living through other people, living through your telephone,
living through a TV series, living through games, etcetera. You
keep on telling yourself all this kind of small day
to day lives and half truths. Silence is about the opposite,
(03:23):
is about getting to know of yourself, and of course
to get to know yourself. That has been said for
thousands of years. That's one of the most important things
you can do to live a rich life. And I
think every idea that has survived for more than one
thousand years you should take seriously. In the book, Earling
(03:44):
sides a lot of great sources on silence, including artists, philosophers, scientists,
and poets, but maybe the most important research came from
personal experience. You know, my best background is that I
walked by myself to the South Pole for fifty days
and nights with no radio contact in total silence into
(04:07):
this huge last white nothingness which is Antarctica to the
South Pole. As the first doing it Solow. That expedition
taught my great lesson of silence, because you know, when
they walked down there and you don't talk to anyone,
and you kind of stopped thinking. Because as soon as
you start to think too much, you think about the
(04:29):
past or the future. That's kind of noise too. So
it's starting to experiencing the world. Experiencing yourself is getting
to noviorself better. When I started out, I felt that
everything was white and everything was flat all the way
to the horizon. But as the hours and days and
weeks passed by and you kind of start to see
that it wasn't totally white after all. It was a
(04:50):
little bit bluish, reddish, greenish, even pinkish in the snow
and the eyes. And it wasn't flat either. It was
kind of different structures on the ice. So then I
start to wonder if Antarctic I was changing, But of
course Antarctica remained the same. I was the one who
had changed. That experience really taught me a great lesson
(05:13):
on silence. And as the pulvert Emi, the Dickinson wrote
the brain is wider than the sky, and by that
expedition I very well understood what she meant. And then
I became a father of three girls, and I had
to start to get a proper job, and my life
(05:36):
became all about noise afterwards. So this combination about doing
outdoors and living a busy life, like most of the
people maybe really feel for writing on silence. And also
then I sat on to read great philosophers on silence,
and also some you know, some great authors who have
(05:56):
already written about silence. But the problem with the philosopher
is that you know, hardly any philosophers actually write about silence.
One of the first things you read learn at college
studying philosophy is that nothing comes from nothing. Ex and
he'll he'll fit. You know, it's easy to think about
silence as nothing, and then nothing comes from nothing. I
(06:19):
was just surprised to see how few philosophers actually had
bordered thinking about silence. Why do human brains up for chaos?
Why does it seem like all of us are just
our brains are just destined for chaos sometimes, you know,
to me, it was a surprise because when I sat
down to write about silence. You know, I thought about
(06:41):
myself and everybody else that in the mind that you
didn't have too much chaloes. But starting to think further
about it, I think we all have these chales in
our head almost all the time. The importance of silence
is sometimes to get order or all these chaos being
present in our own life, to experience not to think
(07:02):
too much. Also, in the scilence, you're kind of seeking opportunities,
So silence is also kind of opposite all these chaos
that goes on in our minds all the time. Demo
technology is certainly a great disturber, but I think it's
important to think about in a time before all this technology.
(07:23):
Three fifty years ago, seventy years ago, this French philosopher
Blessed Pascal wrote this book where he claimed that no
man is able to sit by himself for fifteen minutes
in silence doing nothing. Of course, when he wrote this
(07:43):
in the six and fourties, it was already a big
problem that we have chaos in our minds. Of course,
today with the smartphone and all this other technology, the
problem has become so much more massive. So back to
Pascal again, instead of doing nothing, we start to do something,
(08:03):
and I think that's the origin of course not all,
but most other problems. If I managed to kind of
sometimes just be quiet, be still listening to ourselves, not
exploring yourself in the world while looking into a screen,
but kind of look up, I think we can find
(08:25):
much more peace, and you can find much more low
I think, and you will live a more meaningful life.
So it's not about being anti technology. It's more like
learning how to relate to technology, because you know, it's
almost insane if you think about the way we're living
(08:46):
relating to technology. When they walk the streets and they
see grown men grabbing the telephones to the air like
there should be teddy bears and totally focused on that telephone.
To me, it's absolutely insane. I don't know what kind
of vertically I love to use in the program for
the kind of you know, you mind get absolutely fucked up.
You see home, you're googling something, you find what is
(09:08):
searching for Twenty minutes later, half novelater, you're still googling.
Some of the brightest people on Earth, working day and night,
extremely well paid to get too addicted to all this absolution.
But you know, in many ways it is absolutely terrible.
One of the things that I really appreciate about your
(09:30):
writing is that you insert yourself so much into it,
Like you talk about those things as being problematic, but
also like participating yourself in them, like as just like
another member of you know, of the human race in
this modern era. And that's how I feel, man. I mean, like,
you know, I'm big on the mindfulness and disconnecting and
getting out in the silence, but I also am doing this.
(09:52):
I do the same thing. I get in on the phone.
I feel like I talked on the phone for eight
hours yesterday or something. You probably did. You know, I
wouldn't like to write a book and give everybody advice
about how to live and look at me because I'm
such a great person, because you know, I'm also getting
hooked on this technology. And that's also why I thought
(10:13):
I had that message to tell, because I lived through it.
I always had my phone with me somehow, or I
tempted to have my phone with me all the time.
Maybe the biggest mistake of doing the world today is
to avoid nature, to think that we're kind of above nature,
that we don't need nature, that we don't need to
listen to nature. I think that's the main reason for
(10:37):
people feeling restless, why they feel insulated, why they feel lonely,
quite also why people feel depressed, because we avoid nature
almost happens. I've always been a walking species. We have
always been exploring the world by walking, by feeling, by touching,
(10:57):
by smellling, listening, see in and that has defined us
as a species. While today we're the first generation who
just sit on over arsis and exploring the world looking
down into a screen. And of course this is doing
something to our mental health. I just read in the
paper somewhere that people like average spent four hours every
(11:21):
day on social media, and other people, of course spent
four hours every day on looking at TV on what
don't you do both? But let's say you spend four
hours every day doing this kind of media, that adds
up to a hundred and twenty thousand hours of your life,
about thirteen years day and night plus minus. When you
(11:43):
are as well as me, you start to go to
six eighty ninety birthdays. In more ways, and Sweden we
have this problem which goes all this so comic in
the shunty at shall believe it. All these days amounts
and years that passed by, came and went I didn't
(12:05):
really understand that was life. Do you know? It's a
little bit sad because somehow people start to fair, not
on the death, but maybe even more to start to
fair late in life that I'll kind of missed alt
on this huge opportunity to have a great life. But
(12:25):
do not despair. How does one find silence in the noise?
Maybe try taking a walk? What does it mean to
live in the present moment? I think it's an idea
that we're all familiar with, but like, what does that
look like? Like? How how does one achieve such a thing?
(12:48):
You can achieve it by almost any means. First of all,
I think in general the present hurts, just like Pascal
I mentioned earlier on the present hurts, and that's why
we try to avoid it. And the opposite to the presence.
Of course, it's the future on the past, and every
time you think, as I said, you're thinking about the
(13:09):
future on the past. The present has to be about
experiencing the moment there and then I can do it
in nature. But you know, it's also about shutting out
the world and experiencing your own silence or you're inner silence.
Whenever you run, could food, have sex, study, chat work,
(13:32):
think of the idea, read or dance, and you know,
I love it. That's when you can be really in
the present moment. And of course if you make low
and you're not in the present moment, of course you
all experienced that, but it's not so interesting to make
low if you're not in the present moment. I think
it's different in early published walking one step at a time.
(14:01):
I think walking is quite often about silence. Of course,
you can walk with people and talk, or you know,
use your phone or listening to music. But sometimes I
would try to walk without holding anything in my hands
and not having anything in my ears, and then it
is very much about silence. You have it in the
(14:23):
English language, just like you have it in the Norwegian
language and in sun script. That when you move you're
being moved motion, emotion. So this is something you find
in almost any language, at least as I know about.
So this walking is doing something to your mind. The
(14:47):
reason Socrates was walking all the time was not because
you wanted to become fit. It was because you want
to meet people and they want to think better, like
a Steve Jobs. Definitely a huge and very important innovator
and businessman, and of course he walked all the time too.
And also, of course I think a great thing with
(15:08):
walking is that get all to the house, to get
away from a family, get away from your friends. You
can have a break and you can decide your own
speed and hopefully you can see the starry night or
the sunrise, or you can listen to the birds, are
listening to a river, or you're just footsteps, and all
(15:30):
this is about getting closer to yourself. I think it's
definitely plaform of meditation, and I think meditation in general,
and yoga and mindfulness, all these are to me great ideas.
But one of the reasons I wrote those two books
was because I felt you can definitely experience great meditation
(15:50):
and also deeper in a silence without using any techniques,
for instance, just by walking. That's cheap and it's always
availble bull like I flew from all Slaughter Sri Lanka
to be on this retreat. It was either there that
it was a vegan, it was your goa all the time.
(16:11):
It was quite silent, peaceful, and it was great. And
when I came home after twelve days or something to Norway,
I was very happy. But then I started to wonder,
did that we all have to travel half the world
to experience this kind of emotion. Um uh yeah, I
haven't come back to Sri Lanka. I kind of very
(16:34):
interesting when you mentioned that you personally maybe use working
as one of your primary modes of meditation. Maybe that's
a little culturally determined, right, Like if you had been
born somewhere else, grown up somewhere else, that maybe it
would be a different approach. Absolutely, it's interesting to see
in theres of walking. It's like I grew up in Norway,
(16:55):
they close to nature. We didn't have a car. My
father insisted that cars and TV and motor boats and
a few other things very diseases in the world. So
we walked quite a bit, so of course I was
kind of ingrained in my life. One of the most
difficult cool questions I had as a father was my daughters,
(17:18):
all three daughters. They always asked me, why do you
have to walk when it's faster to drive? And I fact,
that's a very good question. And that's also another reason
I wrote the book, because you know, some of the
best and obvious things in life are not that easier
to explain. When I wrote about walking, I just studied
walking cultures in different places, and interestingly, like in Bombay
(17:42):
in India, you see poor people walking all the time.
Rich people they are having cars and even helicopters to
get around, And of course in a norn Europe you
see that it's the opposite. It's quite often the privilege
of walking because they have the time and all. So
you can quite often the live in nicer neighborhoods, so
(18:02):
closer to the forest, so it's kind of more natural
to walk. But walking is something also deeply democratic because
everybody can do it. When you read about the big
revolutions in history or the world, at least the ones
I've read about, they have usually started by people walking
(18:23):
the streets. And of course this is something politicians quite
often are kind of worried about, because if sufficient of
people walking the streets, they become very, very powerful. And
also walking is a bit an artistic in the sense
that as long as you're driving, you will kind of
get from a to B in a particular speed and
(18:45):
you will follow the rules. Or you take the metro,
or you take the channel, you take the bus, and
it's all kind of regulated by the government. But then
by walking, you can walk very we like you don't
have to follow the tracks of the form all the
trump and you can have your own speed, you can
do details, and you can stop whenever you please. You
(19:09):
mentioned politicians, right, like, certainly here in the US, I
think of it at least like a certain national out
of politicians, Like they come up in black cars, they're
surrounded by people, they're sort of swooping out of place,
and then they leave out. You don't really see your
representatives walking around with the people, And I guess it's
different in doorway. Yeah, I think that's a very valid
point because you know, one problem is, of course that
(19:32):
you never see your own politicians. Good afternoon, everybody, quiet weekend.
But I think it's a even bigger problem that politicians
never see you. I'm not commenting, so they kind of
absolutely separated from their own citizens. And of course, you
know this makes sense due to security and blah blah blah,
but also think it's kind of lacking willingness to meet
(19:54):
people because it's quite comfortable to move around and not
having to relate to the people. Today, it has become
a democratic problem in many parts of the world that
the people who are supposed to help you to sort
of two problems and support you and be your best
representative in the government. Then no, the true statistics and
(20:16):
by reading and studying and advisors, but they are absolutely
no cue who you are as you said in Norway.
Fortunately it's better. It's not perfect hair either, but here
you can actually see the Prime Minister shopping milk in
the evening on the way back home from her office.
It's it's quite sweet. And of course with five point
five in the people, it's much much easier. But I
(20:39):
think it's very important for everybody to walk the streets
and get to know your fellow citizens and see what
it looked like. It's important to keep in mind that
it was not we who invented the possibility to walk
on two legs. It was the possibility to walk onto
legs who invented manity. And then eventually, due to evolution,
(21:04):
we can walk on two legs. We're able to move
much longer distances, able to hunt fish, move around covering
huge distances. Then, all the time that we went off
from Eastern Africa, it has always been about walking, about
doing something physical to survive and to prosper for over civilization.
(21:30):
Of course, the developmental languages has been very important, Farming
has been very important, and walking has been very important
to make us into who they are today. So many
people talk all the time about the search in the hurry.
It's there has so much to do, blah blah blah
blah blah. But of course, if you're going to watch
(21:50):
a lot of TV and social media, it feels like
you have a lot to do, but you know you
really have time to spend fire ten minutes extra walking.
In general, it's a huge misunderstanding like this that you
have to drive all the time to save time. Time
is extended when you move slowly, and opposite, if you
drive quickly from A to B, you don't hardly experience anything,
(22:15):
either in a chunnel or on the surface, but still
have to watch the light. You have to be careful,
and although it goes quicker, nothing is happening, and then
it feels like time moves really quickly. However, when you
move slowly from A to B and suddenly you start
to see people, you start to see how people addressed.
(22:39):
If in a city you start to see shops, what
the houses are looking like, you start to get the smells,
you hear all the sounds, and then because so many
small things are happening, time is expanding and you feel
that you have experienced something, and life get richer than
(23:00):
kind of a ten second can feel like internity, I
can have the kind of also the same experience in
my own living room if we're reading a great book
or thinking of listening to music, and they had this
kind of feeling that like time is just expanding. But
then again, if you're kind of doing the same things
every day, harder and a variety, you hardly see anything
(23:23):
one day that you didn't see the day before or
experienced more less exacted same things, then time moves very quickly.
Um Like people said to me like, oh, you know,
in years ago, time so quickly. And also I'm sixty.
You can hard to tell them that, you know, I
feel that life is long. Time moves slowly. I don't
(23:49):
want to move in the slower You've got a great quote.
I think this is one of yours. You call lots
of billion people obviously to this one. Letting your body
travel at the same speed as your soul. Yeah, it's
a quote from me, but the idea is not original.
(24:09):
I think many people have felt the same and talked
about the same. If you move too quickly, your spirit,
your soul is just lagging behind you. That's also what
I mean, like you're not experiencing so much, you're not
diggesting your what you're seeing, what you're kind of going through,
because you've gone too fast. Another big misunderstanding today is
(24:31):
like things are just going to happen quickly. You're going
to have a quick fix, You're going to go from
one mood to another fast. While I'll find it when
I'm out in a nature that I'm just becoming a
part of everything which is surrounding me. Every now and
then when the wind is blowing, you kind of feel
(24:52):
is a part of you. You know, if you see
a bird which somehow you know has a broken leg
going or whatever kind of painful for you too. We
need to respect nature, and we need to learn from nature,
and we need to listen to nature, because nature has
a lot to tell us about where we come from,
where we are, and also quite a bit about what's
(25:15):
going to happen next. And of course when you walk
in the cities or do an over hike in the force,
part of every something fantastic is happening, but like small
details are going on all the time. I have kind
of fun or found interesting sometimes to look at people
how they walk. Quite often by looking how they move forward,
(25:43):
you can tell if you're in good mood, bad mood,
if they're depressed, if they are optimistic, Like if you're
really sad, you kind of crumbling in, almost shrinking, and
you're dragging your feet after you. You kind of lower
your head, love your neck even, you know, briefing in
a different way, and you're much more tense in your
(26:06):
whole body. And opposite, if someone is super happy, just
got a great message, they walked offly. Differently, if a
couple walk together, if they're in low you know, you
can just tell by the baldy language. And opposite, two
people walk together and they have fed up at their shold,
you can also tell by your body language. And also
(26:29):
if one is fed up and the other one is
still in love, we can also tell. You can also
quite often tell I couldn't say accurately, but what kind
of profession they have. One of my neighbors is former
army officer, and it still walks like an armory of officer,
although his retired. You can spot a lawyer or an
(26:49):
auditor that kind of a little bit similar, and the
priests will work differently. Again, how long has it been
since you're last confession. I'm not saying it's kind of
one to one. You can just say that's guy is
a priest, that guy is a football player. But it's
just fun to try to guess. In general life, I
think curiosity, curiosity also about people, is super important. I
(27:12):
love curiosity, and I think you know it's stop being
super curious and you become a very old man. Are
there moments in your day. There's certainly moments in my
day where it's like, Okay, I need to just stop
what I'm doing, I need to hit pause on the
rest of my life and just walk for like twenty minutes. Yeah,
(27:36):
in my life too, And I think twenty minutes is
a good number because it doesn't have to be long.
Twenty minutes is great, I think, but even less can
change your dramatically. As you know you asked earlier on
about meditation. We just walk for fifteen twenty minutes and
without talking on the phone or checking your phone and
maybe not talking to anyone, just kind of having a
(27:58):
break to me can re energize me. You still need
as much sleep, at least I do, but my whole
attitude and also the way I move it totally changes.
I think this is something like people have been doing
to every generation for thousands or years. But interestingly, now
you can see, like you know, quite often universities are
(28:21):
starting to study kind of what everybody knows, and I
think it's University's, Stanford, University of Virginia, something together that
have kind of proven that just while walking fifteen minutes,
your creativity goes dramatically up and your mood goes up,
and you know it makes a wonder for you. Of course,
(28:42):
two and a half thousand years ago, hippocratist the father
and modern medicine, he said, the best medicine in the
world is to do a walk. And if you come
back from a walk and you're still in a bad mood,
you should go for one more walk. And his third
advice was just make sure the doctor is not giving
(29:02):
you the wrong medicine. So I think it's three great advices.
Also in one it's wild to me because I feel
like we all know that that walking is good for
your health, your spirit, your mood, your heart, your soul.
Like I think we all intrinsically know that, and yet
(29:23):
sometimes it feels, i don't know, like hard advice to take,
like to just take a break. Yeah, it's quite often
when I read articles is about educating people, like telling
them what's best for them and blah blah blah. And
this should be done by you know, of course schools, college,
(29:44):
the government, private businesses to should kind of tell you
what's good for you, which quite often that's a good reason.
But quite often, as you say, we know what's good
for us, nobody needs to tell you you should exercise,
you should walk, you should move around, you should not
sit in a share all day. This almost everybody knows.
(30:08):
Quite often, it's not a lack of knowledge, it's just
lack of like, you know, a little bit of guts
to get going. Yeah, when you were read in the book,
I mean what you might have known someone this already.
But like health wise, physical, bodily, health wise, it seems
like walking can be incredibly good just for your well being.
It is, as a Hypocritus said two and a half
thousand years ago, as you know it's quoted, it is
(30:29):
the best medicine. You know, It's an open question today.
Should be careful saying it, but you know, it's kind
of open question today if doctors throughout history has saved
more people than they have killed, at least if you
look before you got antibiotics, I think that maybe not killed,
but you know, maybe even you know, conditions even worse.
But of course the antibiotics, it was radical that help
(30:52):
a lot of people. But prior to let's say nothing,
fourth to whenever fort five, it's not easy to figure
out how much help it was with dr or sexually.
But one thing which is absolutely shortness that people who
walks a lot, they're less sick, they are more flexible,
they are not on the living longer life than other people.
(31:15):
They also live richer, more meaningful lives than other people.
But still, you know, even the Norway could just tell
in many parts that even an old slowed capital of Norwa,
it's six d people still kind of you know, huge
neighborhoods where very few people are walking, they spend much
more time smoking, watching TV being inside. Average in those
(31:39):
parts of the city lives nine years less than they are.
Rich and other parts of the city. This is quite dramatic.
That's super sad. No I don't have a follow up
on that. I'm just going to change the subject. Do
you have any advice, practical advice for somebody that might
be listening and like wants to find some silence in
(32:02):
their lives and peace and some purpose. But it's maybe struggling.
I think everybody almost is struggling with it. So that's
a good start at list if you feel that you
are unique because it's struggling with it. It's like, as
you quoted Pascal the philosophers said, well this is a
universal problem or challenge to get to know of yourself,
(32:25):
and silence is you know very much about experiencing yourself.
So first of all, it is difficult. As you said,
the president is hurting, so I think that's a good
start to accept that. But then again, the silence we're
talking about now, this inner silence is within you at
(32:45):
all times, just waiting for you to explore it. So
it's no focus, focus, and I don't think you need
any formula. You need to just past this chresshold that
we talked about that for a few seconds of some minutes,
it is uncomfortable to sit or walk and doing nothing
(33:05):
and try to get into your inner PC in and
experience your own silence. It is uncomfortable sometimes, it takes
a lot of energy sometimes, and it can feel to
start with as a waste of time sometimes, but of
course it's not. It's what you know partly makes life meaningful.
(33:26):
The most important question you should ask yourself is how
should I live my life? You need silence, and your
silence is different from my silence. That's also why in
my book I'm not giving that many advices because we
have to accept. Like you know, everybody got their own silence.
And the reason is because silence is about who we are,
(33:47):
is about over personalities, about all our experiences. That's why
your silence will always be different from my silence. That's
really lovely. Thank you. Um. I wanted to at least
add just if you could tell me a little bit
about your your publishing company and why you started in
the kind of in the kind of work that you
(34:08):
do there. You know, you do whatever you do, you
do it for more than one reason. But a few
of the reasons I started publishing was because my girlfriend
was pregnant. So I want to have a job. I
want to an interesting job. I like publishing because you
both have to be commercial but you also have to
think about intellectual matters all the time, so kind of
(34:29):
you need to think about both, which fitted me and
I have always read this since I was ten years old.
I learned how to read late. I read lots of books.
I was kind of familiar literature, so I felt I
had something to contribute, and I want to earn enough
moneys i could buy a house for my family. So
that's kind of why I started book publishing. And I
(34:51):
did it for a few years and I liked it
a lot, so I've done it for twenty five years.
It's a it's a great job. I don't know if
I'm going to do it the rest of my life,
but at least it is a great job to published books.
So today we are Norway's biggest on nonfiction and we
also publish children's books, a little bit, philosophy, sound fiction,
and I have turned two four colleagues and it's great,
(35:15):
it's meaningful. The world is getting a little bit better
because you published great books, just like you with your podcast.
The world is getting a little bit better, and I
think that's very important because everybody can change the world,
but you know, you need to do it in tiny
persons at the time, you've written six books eight sorry,
(35:35):
you've written April books now. First I wrote about walking
North Pole and to the South Call. Then I book
on the Three Poles and some old expeditions. And then
I wrote a book I call Philosophy for polar Explorers,
kind of what I didn't teach me at school kind
of book. And then I wrote a book about crossing
New York City. I wrote a book about art collecting,
(35:57):
and then I wrote a book on Silence and the
Woman Walking. This is also a really cool on the bookshelf,
like I want to get more and more of your
of your books that are they are this size. But
one of the things I really like about the way
that you've structured is it almost reads like a series
of Cohens and Mando's, Like do these sort of individuals
(36:17):
sometimes like parable kind of stories sometimes sort of always
gonna ask you. Did you write the book in no regionally?
Did you write it in English? In the first place,
I've wrote it in the Norwegian I have to, but
then I worked really hard to get the English. As
you say, that is kind of more like a meditation,
like I wanted to read or to be almost a
(36:38):
little bit apotized while reading. And also, like you know
you said, esthetics I think is really important because I
think especially book on Silence, but also walking, it has
to somehow reflect the content of the book. And I
think you know, books should be beautiful and great to
have around you. If not, you know, you could just
(36:59):
have e book or listen to no streaming, which is
good too, but that's a different story. Yeah, well it's
it's uh, both of those things that I mean, specifically
on on the On the writing, it's very effective. I
mean hypnotizing is a great word for it. Um. The
English prose is beautiful and it's so poetic and so
(37:19):
excellent job. I mean, I know this is your business,
but from from from my humble opinion, good job. Thank
you know it's more than the business, because you know
it's I don't think it hardly anyone sits down to
write a book because that would like to earn money.
I think you know the reason to write a book
is uh, and these are no both of us all
(37:40):
for us publisher. You know that has to come really
from your heart. So I wouldn't spend a year and
a half to write you know. That's finn book and Silence.
If I didn't really feel that I had something really
important to say, well, Early, thank you so much for
the time that you gave me today. My my pleasure,
you know, I I feel privileged, would be invited to
(38:01):
be able to talk about things that are really close
to my heart, so thank you, or us to say
Norwegian to some touch. This episode of Ephemeral was written
(38:22):
and assembled by Alex Williams, with producers Max Williams and
Trevor Young and editing by rima Il Kali. Special thanks
to Nitro Sound in Oslo, Norway, and to Andrew Howard
for gifting me a copy of Silence in the Age
of Normals, which, along with Walking One Step at a Time,
are the books by Arling Cockay on which this conversation
(38:44):
was based. Find them wherever books are sold, and find
us on the worldwide Web at Ephemeral Show. For more
podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio
in Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite show.
Would be such an
Today's episode of Ephemeral features the track Deathless by musician
Nathaniel Kraus. Here the full piece at Nathaniel Krauss dot
band camp, dot com, links and more on our website
Ephemeral dot show. Ephemeral is production of my Heart three
(00:25):
D audio for fell Exposure. Listen with that phones. This
is our second episode based on my conversation with explorer
and author Arling Cogan. If you miss it, Part one
will give you more backstory about earls life as an explorer.
I've just done a lot of interviews. Are like, I
(00:46):
feel like you've done probably a tremendous amount of interviews
in your life. I have never counted. Ah, yeah, you
know when silence came out, and also walking came out
and philosophy for polar explorers. So I did honor something
too is probably, but recently not so many. I guess
I'm late to the party that that I happened. Congratulations.
(01:07):
Earling spent his young adulthood engaged in record setting expeditions,
sailing around the world, climbing on everest, hiking to the
North and South Poles on foot the ladder completely alone.
Then I kind of changed my life and became a
family man. I'm still a family man, but I think
it's a season of every thing. And I keep on
(01:28):
doing old doors and keep on doing expeditions, but with
a lower profile, and I really enjoy writing books. In
After we put out the episode Sounds of Silence, on
the work of composer John Cage, a friend gave me
a copy of EARLINGOK Silence in the Age of Noise.
(01:49):
This is probably the trickiest question I give you all day,
But what what is silence? Silence is to me more
like an idea in the sense that before I start
to write about silence, and also before I walked alone
to the self pole, almost in total silence, I thought
about silence as the opposite to sounds. But of course
(02:13):
sounds you can measure in decibels, while silence you can't
really measure. So to me, silence is kind of the
opposite of noise. And then I think about noise. Obviously
it sounds, but it's also all kinds of distractions you
have through today, that the telephone is beeping, a car
is passing, a radio is running, and of course also
(02:35):
you're like man made lights. During the nights, you can't
see the starry night and all this is noise to me,
and silence is about yourself. It's about your inner core.
It's about getting to know yourself. And this silence, inner
silence is there all the time waiting for you to
(02:58):
explore it. We're living in the age of noise. So
much is about noise. So much is about forgetting yourself,
and about living through other people, living through your telephone,
living through a TV series, living through games, etcetera. You
keep on telling yourself all this kind of small day
to day lives and half truths. Silence is about the opposite,
(03:23):
is about getting to know of yourself, and of course
to get to know yourself. That has been said for
thousands of years. That's one of the most important things
you can do to live a rich life. And I
think every idea that has survived for more than one
thousand years you should take seriously. In the book, Earling
(03:44):
sides a lot of great sources on silence, including artists, philosophers, scientists,
and poets, but maybe the most important research came from
personal experience. You know, my best background is that I
walked by myself to the South Pole for fifty days
and nights with no radio contact in total silence into
(04:07):
this huge last white nothingness which is Antarctica to the
South Pole. As the first doing it Solow. That expedition
taught my great lesson of silence, because you know, when
they walked down there and you don't talk to anyone,
and you kind of stopped thinking. Because as soon as
you start to think too much, you think about the
(04:29):
past or the future. That's kind of noise too. So
it's starting to experiencing the world. Experiencing yourself is getting
to noviorself better. When I started out, I felt that
everything was white and everything was flat all the way
to the horizon. But as the hours and days and
weeks passed by and you kind of start to see
that it wasn't totally white after all. It was a
(04:50):
little bit bluish, reddish, greenish, even pinkish in the snow
and the eyes. And it wasn't flat either. It was
kind of different structures on the ice. So then I
start to wonder if Antarctic I was changing, But of
course Antarctica remained the same. I was the one who
had changed. That experience really taught me a great lesson
(05:13):
on silence. And as the pulvert Emi, the Dickinson wrote
the brain is wider than the sky, and by that
expedition I very well understood what she meant. And then
I became a father of three girls, and I had
to start to get a proper job, and my life
(05:36):
became all about noise afterwards. So this combination about doing
outdoors and living a busy life, like most of the
people maybe really feel for writing on silence. And also
then I sat on to read great philosophers on silence,
and also some you know, some great authors who have
(05:56):
already written about silence. But the problem with the philosopher
is that you know, hardly any philosophers actually write about silence.
One of the first things you read learn at college
studying philosophy is that nothing comes from nothing. Ex and
he'll he'll fit. You know, it's easy to think about
silence as nothing, and then nothing comes from nothing. I
(06:19):
was just surprised to see how few philosophers actually had
bordered thinking about silence. Why do human brains up for chaos?
Why does it seem like all of us are just
our brains are just destined for chaos sometimes, you know,
to me, it was a surprise because when I sat
down to write about silence. You know, I thought about
(06:41):
myself and everybody else that in the mind that you
didn't have too much chaloes. But starting to think further
about it, I think we all have these chales in
our head almost all the time. The importance of silence
is sometimes to get order or all these chaos being
present in our own life, to experience not to think
(07:02):
too much. Also, in the scilence, you're kind of seeking opportunities,
So silence is also kind of opposite all these chaos
that goes on in our minds all the time. Demo
technology is certainly a great disturber, but I think it's
important to think about in a time before all this technology.
(07:23):
Three fifty years ago, seventy years ago, this French philosopher
Blessed Pascal wrote this book where he claimed that no
man is able to sit by himself for fifteen minutes
in silence doing nothing. Of course, when he wrote this
(07:43):
in the six and fourties, it was already a big
problem that we have chaos in our minds. Of course,
today with the smartphone and all this other technology, the
problem has become so much more massive. So back to
Pascal again, instead of doing nothing, we start to do something,
(08:03):
and I think that's the origin of course not all,
but most other problems. If I managed to kind of
sometimes just be quiet, be still listening to ourselves, not
exploring yourself in the world while looking into a screen,
but kind of look up, I think we can find
(08:25):
much more peace, and you can find much more low
I think, and you will live a more meaningful life.
So it's not about being anti technology. It's more like
learning how to relate to technology, because you know, it's
almost insane if you think about the way we're living
(08:46):
relating to technology. When they walk the streets and they
see grown men grabbing the telephones to the air like
there should be teddy bears and totally focused on that telephone.
To me, it's absolutely insane. I don't know what kind
of vertically I love to use in the program for
the kind of you know, you mind get absolutely fucked up.
You see home, you're googling something, you find what is
(09:08):
searching for Twenty minutes later, half novelater, you're still googling.
Some of the brightest people on Earth, working day and night,
extremely well paid to get too addicted to all this absolution.
But you know, in many ways it is absolutely terrible.
One of the things that I really appreciate about your
(09:30):
writing is that you insert yourself so much into it,
Like you talk about those things as being problematic, but
also like participating yourself in them, like as just like
another member of you know, of the human race in
this modern era. And that's how I feel, man. I mean, like,
you know, I'm big on the mindfulness and disconnecting and
getting out in the silence, but I also am doing this.
(09:52):
I do the same thing. I get in on the phone.
I feel like I talked on the phone for eight
hours yesterday or something. You probably did. You know, I
wouldn't like to write a book and give everybody advice
about how to live and look at me because I'm
such a great person, because you know, I'm also getting
hooked on this technology. And that's also why I thought
(10:13):
I had that message to tell, because I lived through it.
I always had my phone with me somehow, or I
tempted to have my phone with me all the time.
Maybe the biggest mistake of doing the world today is
to avoid nature, to think that we're kind of above nature,
that we don't need nature, that we don't need to
listen to nature. I think that's the main reason for
(10:37):
people feeling restless, why they feel insulated, why they feel lonely,
quite also why people feel depressed, because we avoid nature
almost happens. I've always been a walking species. We have
always been exploring the world by walking, by feeling, by touching,
(10:57):
by smellling, listening, see in and that has defined us
as a species. While today we're the first generation who
just sit on over arsis and exploring the world looking
down into a screen. And of course this is doing
something to our mental health. I just read in the
paper somewhere that people like average spent four hours every
(11:21):
day on social media, and other people, of course spent
four hours every day on looking at TV on what
don't you do both? But let's say you spend four
hours every day doing this kind of media, that adds
up to a hundred and twenty thousand hours of your life,
about thirteen years day and night plus minus. When you
(11:43):
are as well as me, you start to go to
six eighty ninety birthdays. In more ways, and Sweden we
have this problem which goes all this so comic in
the shunty at shall believe it. All these days amounts
and years that passed by, came and went I didn't
(12:05):
really understand that was life. Do you know? It's a
little bit sad because somehow people start to fair, not
on the death, but maybe even more to start to
fair late in life that I'll kind of missed alt
on this huge opportunity to have a great life. But
(12:25):
do not despair. How does one find silence in the noise?
Maybe try taking a walk? What does it mean to
live in the present moment? I think it's an idea
that we're all familiar with, but like, what does that
look like? Like? How how does one achieve such a thing?
(12:48):
You can achieve it by almost any means. First of all,
I think in general the present hurts, just like Pascal
I mentioned earlier on the present hurts, and that's why
we try to avoid it. And the opposite to the presence.
Of course, it's the future on the past, and every
time you think, as I said, you're thinking about the
(13:09):
future on the past. The present has to be about
experiencing the moment there and then I can do it
in nature. But you know, it's also about shutting out
the world and experiencing your own silence or you're inner silence.
Whenever you run, could food, have sex, study, chat work,
(13:32):
think of the idea, read or dance, and you know,
I love it. That's when you can be really in
the present moment. And of course if you make low
and you're not in the present moment, of course you
all experienced that, but it's not so interesting to make
low if you're not in the present moment. I think
it's different in early published walking one step at a time.
(14:01):
I think walking is quite often about silence. Of course,
you can walk with people and talk, or you know,
use your phone or listening to music. But sometimes I
would try to walk without holding anything in my hands
and not having anything in my ears, and then it
is very much about silence. You have it in the
(14:23):
English language, just like you have it in the Norwegian
language and in sun script. That when you move you're
being moved motion, emotion. So this is something you find
in almost any language, at least as I know about.
So this walking is doing something to your mind. The
(14:47):
reason Socrates was walking all the time was not because
you wanted to become fit. It was because you want
to meet people and they want to think better, like
a Steve Jobs. Definitely a huge and very important innovator
and businessman, and of course he walked all the time too.
And also, of course I think a great thing with
(15:08):
walking is that get all to the house, to get
away from a family, get away from your friends. You
can have a break and you can decide your own
speed and hopefully you can see the starry night or
the sunrise, or you can listen to the birds, are
listening to a river, or you're just footsteps, and all
(15:30):
this is about getting closer to yourself. I think it's
definitely plaform of meditation, and I think meditation in general,
and yoga and mindfulness, all these are to me great ideas.
But one of the reasons I wrote those two books
was because I felt you can definitely experience great meditation
(15:50):
and also deeper in a silence without using any techniques,
for instance, just by walking. That's cheap and it's always
availble bull like I flew from all Slaughter Sri Lanka
to be on this retreat. It was either there that
it was a vegan, it was your goa all the time.
(16:11):
It was quite silent, peaceful, and it was great. And
when I came home after twelve days or something to Norway,
I was very happy. But then I started to wonder,
did that we all have to travel half the world
to experience this kind of emotion. Um uh yeah, I
haven't come back to Sri Lanka. I kind of very
(16:34):
interesting when you mentioned that you personally maybe use working
as one of your primary modes of meditation. Maybe that's
a little culturally determined, right, Like if you had been
born somewhere else, grown up somewhere else, that maybe it
would be a different approach. Absolutely, it's interesting to see
in theres of walking. It's like I grew up in Norway,
(16:55):
they close to nature. We didn't have a car. My
father insisted that cars and TV and motor boats and
a few other things very diseases in the world. So
we walked quite a bit, so of course I was
kind of ingrained in my life. One of the most
difficult cool questions I had as a father was my daughters,
(17:18):
all three daughters. They always asked me, why do you
have to walk when it's faster to drive? And I fact,
that's a very good question. And that's also another reason
I wrote the book, because you know, some of the
best and obvious things in life are not that easier
to explain. When I wrote about walking, I just studied
walking cultures in different places, and interestingly, like in Bombay
(17:42):
in India, you see poor people walking all the time.
Rich people they are having cars and even helicopters to
get around, And of course in a norn Europe you
see that it's the opposite. It's quite often the privilege
of walking because they have the time and all. So
you can quite often the live in nicer neighborhoods, so
(18:02):
closer to the forest, so it's kind of more natural
to walk. But walking is something also deeply democratic because
everybody can do it. When you read about the big
revolutions in history or the world, at least the ones
I've read about, they have usually started by people walking
(18:23):
the streets. And of course this is something politicians quite
often are kind of worried about, because if sufficient of
people walking the streets, they become very, very powerful. And
also walking is a bit an artistic in the sense
that as long as you're driving, you will kind of
get from a to B in a particular speed and
(18:45):
you will follow the rules. Or you take the metro,
or you take the channel, you take the bus, and
it's all kind of regulated by the government. But then
by walking, you can walk very we like you don't
have to follow the tracks of the form all the
trump and you can have your own speed, you can
do details, and you can stop whenever you please. You
(19:09):
mentioned politicians, right, like, certainly here in the US, I
think of it at least like a certain national out
of politicians, Like they come up in black cars, they're
surrounded by people, they're sort of swooping out of place,
and then they leave out. You don't really see your
representatives walking around with the people, And I guess it's
different in doorway. Yeah, I think that's a very valid
point because you know, one problem is, of course that
(19:32):
you never see your own politicians. Good afternoon, everybody, quiet weekend.
But I think it's a even bigger problem that politicians
never see you. I'm not commenting, so they kind of
absolutely separated from their own citizens. And of course, you
know this makes sense due to security and blah blah blah,
but also think it's kind of lacking willingness to meet
(19:54):
people because it's quite comfortable to move around and not
having to relate to the people. Today, it has become
a democratic problem in many parts of the world that
the people who are supposed to help you to sort
of two problems and support you and be your best
representative in the government. Then no, the true statistics and
(20:16):
by reading and studying and advisors, but they are absolutely
no cue who you are as you said in Norway.
Fortunately it's better. It's not perfect hair either, but here
you can actually see the Prime Minister shopping milk in
the evening on the way back home from her office.
It's it's quite sweet. And of course with five point
five in the people, it's much much easier. But I
(20:39):
think it's very important for everybody to walk the streets
and get to know your fellow citizens and see what
it looked like. It's important to keep in mind that
it was not we who invented the possibility to walk
on two legs. It was the possibility to walk onto
legs who invented manity. And then eventually, due to evolution,
(21:04):
we can walk on two legs. We're able to move
much longer distances, able to hunt fish, move around covering
huge distances. Then, all the time that we went off
from Eastern Africa, it has always been about walking, about
doing something physical to survive and to prosper for over civilization.
(21:30):
Of course, the developmental languages has been very important, Farming
has been very important, and walking has been very important
to make us into who they are today. So many
people talk all the time about the search in the hurry.
It's there has so much to do, blah blah blah
blah blah. But of course, if you're going to watch
(21:50):
a lot of TV and social media, it feels like
you have a lot to do, but you know you
really have time to spend fire ten minutes extra walking.
In general, it's a huge misunderstanding like this that you
have to drive all the time to save time. Time
is extended when you move slowly, and opposite, if you
drive quickly from A to B, you don't hardly experience anything,
(22:15):
either in a chunnel or on the surface, but still
have to watch the light. You have to be careful,
and although it goes quicker, nothing is happening, and then
it feels like time moves really quickly. However, when you
move slowly from A to B and suddenly you start
to see people, you start to see how people addressed.
(22:39):
If in a city you start to see shops, what
the houses are looking like, you start to get the smells,
you hear all the sounds, and then because so many
small things are happening, time is expanding and you feel
that you have experienced something, and life get richer than
(23:00):
kind of a ten second can feel like internity, I
can have the kind of also the same experience in
my own living room if we're reading a great book
or thinking of listening to music, and they had this
kind of feeling that like time is just expanding. But
then again, if you're kind of doing the same things
every day, harder and a variety, you hardly see anything
(23:23):
one day that you didn't see the day before or
experienced more less exacted same things, then time moves very quickly.
Um Like people said to me like, oh, you know,
in years ago, time so quickly. And also I'm sixty.
You can hard to tell them that, you know, I
feel that life is long. Time moves slowly. I don't
(23:49):
want to move in the slower You've got a great quote.
I think this is one of yours. You call lots
of billion people obviously to this one. Letting your body
travel at the same speed as your soul. Yeah, it's
a quote from me, but the idea is not original.
(24:09):
I think many people have felt the same and talked
about the same. If you move too quickly, your spirit,
your soul is just lagging behind you. That's also what
I mean, like you're not experiencing so much, you're not
diggesting your what you're seeing, what you're kind of going through,
because you've gone too fast. Another big misunderstanding today is
(24:31):
like things are just going to happen quickly. You're going
to have a quick fix, You're going to go from
one mood to another fast. While I'll find it when
I'm out in a nature that I'm just becoming a
part of everything which is surrounding me. Every now and
then when the wind is blowing, you kind of feel
(24:52):
is a part of you. You know, if you see
a bird which somehow you know has a broken leg
going or whatever kind of painful for you too. We
need to respect nature, and we need to learn from nature,
and we need to listen to nature, because nature has
a lot to tell us about where we come from,
where we are, and also quite a bit about what's
(25:15):
going to happen next. And of course when you walk
in the cities or do an over hike in the force,
part of every something fantastic is happening, but like small
details are going on all the time. I have kind
of fun or found interesting sometimes to look at people
how they walk. Quite often by looking how they move forward,
(25:43):
you can tell if you're in good mood, bad mood,
if they're depressed, if they are optimistic, Like if you're
really sad, you kind of crumbling in, almost shrinking, and
you're dragging your feet after you. You kind of lower
your head, love your neck even, you know, briefing in
a different way, and you're much more tense in your
(26:06):
whole body. And opposite, if someone is super happy, just
got a great message, they walked offly. Differently, if a
couple walk together, if they're in low you know, you
can just tell by the baldy language. And opposite, two
people walk together and they have fed up at their shold,
you can also tell by your body language. And also
(26:29):
if one is fed up and the other one is
still in love, we can also tell. You can also
quite often tell I couldn't say accurately, but what kind
of profession they have. One of my neighbors is former
army officer, and it still walks like an armory of officer,
although his retired. You can spot a lawyer or an
(26:49):
auditor that kind of a little bit similar, and the
priests will work differently. Again, how long has it been
since you're last confession. I'm not saying it's kind of
one to one. You can just say that's guy is
a priest, that guy is a football player. But it's
just fun to try to guess. In general life, I
think curiosity, curiosity also about people, is super important. I
(27:12):
love curiosity, and I think you know it's stop being
super curious and you become a very old man. Are
there moments in your day. There's certainly moments in my
day where it's like, Okay, I need to just stop
what I'm doing, I need to hit pause on the
rest of my life and just walk for like twenty minutes. Yeah,
(27:36):
in my life too, And I think twenty minutes is
a good number because it doesn't have to be long.
Twenty minutes is great, I think, but even less can
change your dramatically. As you know you asked earlier on
about meditation. We just walk for fifteen twenty minutes and
without talking on the phone or checking your phone and
maybe not talking to anyone, just kind of having a
(27:58):
break to me can re energize me. You still need
as much sleep, at least I do, but my whole
attitude and also the way I move it totally changes.
I think this is something like people have been doing
to every generation for thousands or years. But interestingly, now
you can see, like you know, quite often universities are
(28:21):
starting to study kind of what everybody knows, and I
think it's University's, Stanford, University of Virginia, something together that
have kind of proven that just while walking fifteen minutes,
your creativity goes dramatically up and your mood goes up,
and you know it makes a wonder for you. Of course,
(28:42):
two and a half thousand years ago, hippocratist the father
and modern medicine, he said, the best medicine in the
world is to do a walk. And if you come
back from a walk and you're still in a bad mood,
you should go for one more walk. And his third
advice was just make sure the doctor is not giving
(29:02):
you the wrong medicine. So I think it's three great advices.
Also in one it's wild to me because I feel
like we all know that that walking is good for
your health, your spirit, your mood, your heart, your soul.
Like I think we all intrinsically know that, and yet
(29:23):
sometimes it feels, i don't know, like hard advice to take,
like to just take a break. Yeah, it's quite often
when I read articles is about educating people, like telling
them what's best for them and blah blah blah. And
this should be done by you know, of course schools, college,
(29:44):
the government, private businesses to should kind of tell you
what's good for you, which quite often that's a good reason.
But quite often, as you say, we know what's good
for us, nobody needs to tell you you should exercise,
you should walk, you should move around, you should not
sit in a share all day. This almost everybody knows.
(30:08):
Quite often, it's not a lack of knowledge, it's just
lack of like, you know, a little bit of guts
to get going. Yeah, when you were read in the book,
I mean what you might have known someone this already.
But like health wise, physical, bodily, health wise, it seems
like walking can be incredibly good just for your well being.
It is, as a Hypocritus said two and a half
thousand years ago, as you know it's quoted, it is
(30:29):
the best medicine. You know, It's an open question today.
Should be careful saying it, but you know, it's kind
of open question today if doctors throughout history has saved
more people than they have killed, at least if you
look before you got antibiotics, I think that maybe not killed,
but you know, maybe even you know, conditions even worse.
But of course the antibiotics, it was radical that help
(30:52):
a lot of people. But prior to let's say nothing,
fourth to whenever fort five, it's not easy to figure
out how much help it was with dr or sexually.
But one thing which is absolutely shortness that people who
walks a lot, they're less sick, they are more flexible,
they are not on the living longer life than other people.
(31:15):
They also live richer, more meaningful lives than other people.
But still, you know, even the Norway could just tell
in many parts that even an old slowed capital of Norwa,
it's six d people still kind of you know, huge
neighborhoods where very few people are walking, they spend much
more time smoking, watching TV being inside. Average in those
(31:39):
parts of the city lives nine years less than they are.
Rich and other parts of the city. This is quite dramatic.
That's super sad. No I don't have a follow up
on that. I'm just going to change the subject. Do
you have any advice, practical advice for somebody that might
be listening and like wants to find some silence in
(32:02):
their lives and peace and some purpose. But it's maybe struggling.
I think everybody almost is struggling with it. So that's
a good start at list if you feel that you
are unique because it's struggling with it. It's like, as
you quoted Pascal the philosophers said, well this is a
universal problem or challenge to get to know of yourself,
(32:25):
and silence is you know very much about experiencing yourself.
So first of all, it is difficult. As you said,
the president is hurting, so I think that's a good
start to accept that. But then again, the silence we're
talking about now, this inner silence is within you at
(32:45):
all times, just waiting for you to explore it. So
it's no focus, focus, and I don't think you need
any formula. You need to just past this chresshold that
we talked about that for a few seconds of some minutes,
it is uncomfortable to sit or walk and doing nothing
(33:05):
and try to get into your inner PC in and
experience your own silence. It is uncomfortable sometimes, it takes
a lot of energy sometimes, and it can feel to
start with as a waste of time sometimes, but of
course it's not. It's what you know partly makes life meaningful.
(33:26):
The most important question you should ask yourself is how
should I live my life? You need silence, and your
silence is different from my silence. That's also why in
my book I'm not giving that many advices because we
have to accept. Like you know, everybody got their own silence.
And the reason is because silence is about who we are,
(33:47):
is about over personalities, about all our experiences. That's why
your silence will always be different from my silence. That's
really lovely. Thank you. Um. I wanted to at least
add just if you could tell me a little bit
about your your publishing company and why you started in
the kind of in the kind of work that you
(34:08):
do there. You know, you do whatever you do, you
do it for more than one reason. But a few
of the reasons I started publishing was because my girlfriend
was pregnant. So I want to have a job. I
want to an interesting job. I like publishing because you
both have to be commercial but you also have to
think about intellectual matters all the time, so kind of
(34:29):
you need to think about both, which fitted me and
I have always read this since I was ten years old.
I learned how to read late. I read lots of books.
I was kind of familiar literature, so I felt I
had something to contribute, and I want to earn enough
moneys i could buy a house for my family. So
that's kind of why I started book publishing. And I
(34:51):
did it for a few years and I liked it
a lot, so I've done it for twenty five years.
It's a it's a great job. I don't know if
I'm going to do it the rest of my life,
but at least it is a great job to published books.
So today we are Norway's biggest on nonfiction and we
also publish children's books, a little bit, philosophy, sound fiction,
and I have turned two four colleagues and it's great,
(35:15):
it's meaningful. The world is getting a little bit better
because you published great books, just like you with your podcast.
The world is getting a little bit better, and I
think that's very important because everybody can change the world,
but you know, you need to do it in tiny
persons at the time, you've written six books eight sorry,
(35:35):
you've written April books now. First I wrote about walking
North Pole and to the South Call. Then I book
on the Three Poles and some old expeditions. And then
I wrote a book I call Philosophy for polar Explorers,
kind of what I didn't teach me at school kind
of book. And then I wrote a book about crossing
New York City. I wrote a book about art collecting,
(35:57):
and then I wrote a book on Silence and the
Woman Walking. This is also a really cool on the bookshelf,
like I want to get more and more of your
of your books that are they are this size. But
one of the things I really like about the way
that you've structured is it almost reads like a series
of Cohens and Mando's, Like do these sort of individuals
(36:17):
sometimes like parable kind of stories sometimes sort of always
gonna ask you. Did you write the book in no regionally?
Did you write it in English? In the first place,
I've wrote it in the Norwegian I have to, but
then I worked really hard to get the English. As
you say, that is kind of more like a meditation,
like I wanted to read or to be almost a
(36:38):
little bit apotized while reading. And also, like you know
you said, esthetics I think is really important because I
think especially book on Silence, but also walking, it has
to somehow reflect the content of the book. And I
think you know, books should be beautiful and great to
have around you. If not, you know, you could just
(36:59):
have e book or listen to no streaming, which is
good too, but that's a different story. Yeah, well it's
it's uh, both of those things that I mean, specifically
on on the On the writing, it's very effective. I
mean hypnotizing is a great word for it. Um. The
English prose is beautiful and it's so poetic and so
(37:19):
excellent job. I mean, I know this is your business,
but from from from my humble opinion, good job. Thank
you know it's more than the business, because you know
it's I don't think it hardly anyone sits down to
write a book because that would like to earn money.
I think you know the reason to write a book
is uh, and these are no both of us all
(37:40):
for us publisher. You know that has to come really
from your heart. So I wouldn't spend a year and
a half to write you know. That's finn book and Silence.
If I didn't really feel that I had something really
important to say, well, Early, thank you so much for
the time that you gave me today. My my pleasure,
you know, I I feel privileged, would be invited to
(38:01):
be able to talk about things that are really close
to my heart, so thank you, or us to say
Norwegian to some touch. This episode of Ephemeral was written
(38:22):
and assembled by Alex Williams, with producers Max Williams and
Trevor Young and editing by rima Il Kali. Special thanks
to Nitro Sound in Oslo, Norway, and to Andrew Howard
for gifting me a copy of Silence in the Age
of Normals, which, along with Walking One Step at a Time,
are the books by Arling Cockay on which this conversation
(38:44):
was based. Find them wherever books are sold, and find
us on the worldwide Web at Ephemeral Show. For more
podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio
in Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite show.
Would be such an
Ephemeral News
Host
Alex Williams
Show Links
AboutPopular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Ridiculous History
History is beautiful, brutal and, often, ridiculous. Join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown as they dive into some of the weirdest stories from across the span of human civilization in Ridiculous History, a podcast by iHeartRadio.