August 22, 2024 • 43 mins
---------- Originally Aired on the Good Foods Podcast ----------
Have you heard of re-wilding? Have you ever had a desire to immerse yourself in nature and tried to conceive of a way to move out closer to nature and create your forever home in the woods? Well then you need to listen to Jessica Carew Kraft’s story.
She is the author of Why We Need to Be Wild: One Woman’s Quest for Ancient Human Answers to 21st-Century Questions (Sourcebooks, 2023). Jessica is an independent journalist trained in anthropology, she has written on health, culture, tech, and education for many national and local publications. In mid-life, she learned ancestral skills, became a naturalist, and started wild food foraging.
Formerly residing in the Bay area, she now lives with her two daughters and like-minded neighbors of various species in the forest of the Sierra Foothills.
Website ➡️ https://www.jessicacarewkraft.com/
IG ➡️ https://www.instagram.com/whyweneedtobewild/
Buy the Book ➡️ https://www.jessicacarewkraft.com/book
The Good Foods podcast was created and hosted by Shardan Sandoval in March of 2023 and was active until September of 2024.
Have you heard of re-wilding? Have you ever had a desire to immerse yourself in nature and tried to conceive of a way to move out closer to nature and create your forever home in the woods? Well then you need to listen to Jessica Carew Kraft’s story.
She is the author of Why We Need to Be Wild: One Woman’s Quest for Ancient Human Answers to 21st-Century Questions (Sourcebooks, 2023). Jessica is an independent journalist trained in anthropology, she has written on health, culture, tech, and education for many national and local publications. In mid-life, she learned ancestral skills, became a naturalist, and started wild food foraging.
Formerly residing in the Bay area, she now lives with her two daughters and like-minded neighbors of various species in the forest of the Sierra Foothills.
Website ➡️ https://www.jessicacarewkraft.com/
IG ➡️ https://www.instagram.com/whyweneedtobewild/
Buy the Book ➡️ https://www.jessicacarewkraft.com/book
The Good Foods podcast was created and hosted by Shardan Sandoval in March of 2023 and was active until September of 2024.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello. I'm Jessica three Kraft, independent journalists, cultural anthropologist, mother
and author of Why We Need to Be Wild, And
this is the Good Foods Podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
All of us are on a journey towards better health
and we're grateful that you've allowed us to join you
on your quest in this episode.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
All you can do is have that fate that you
will find it you keep pursuing it and if you
keep you staying the xt opportunities inviting people in your life,
you know, doing your best every day. So I think
it would be an encouraging conversation where I'd say you
will find it, you know, but just don't give up
and don't stop.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
This is the Good Foods Podcast and now here's your host,
show Dan.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Jessica. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Thank you so much for inviting me. This is really exciting.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
So how are things in Jessica's world so far.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
So far over the last four decades? Pretty good? I'm
still here, feel unhealthy, happy, Things are good.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
When did you start to feel or think that things
were off kilter? What was your life like before you
decided to shift your focus and path as it were?
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Yeah, well, I have to say that the book gramatizes
my story, because the truth is that I've always been
a cultural critic. I can remember being a sixteen year
old English student and writing an essay about, you know,
why the suburbs were terrible for human development and you know,
developing of our human spirit and creativity that was very
(01:37):
much against conformity and consumer culture. I would say probably
my entire rebility is adolescence. So I had that strain
in me from the beginning. But for various reasons, I
had to you know, the way our society write the script,
you have to be mature and the common adult and
get all the things mortgage, the children and the marriage,
the endless responsibilities and apps, et cetera. That's how we
(01:59):
think of our selves as you know, being human these days.
But since I had this inner rebellious strain in me,
when I started working for tech companies, there was always
the suspicion that, like, everything we're developing here is crap
and it's not good for us, and it's really just
to serve capital, to serve the growth of this economic
(02:19):
progress dream that is someday going to come crashing down
on it. So I worked for several years in that
an industry, right, just accumulating more and more data about
why this was unhealthy for us, until I had my
own sort of crisis with my family and my own
health issues, nothing too serious, but you know, noticing the
kind of common malaise that we all think is normal
(02:41):
now to feel anxious and underslept, gain weight, and not
have enough time to family or friends. And I just
sort of hit a wall where I was like, I've
got to get out. This tech thing is terrible for me,
terrible for society, and I have to sound some kind
of alarm bell for people who are also thinking about that.
So I suspecting that possibly this is not the best
way for humans to live.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
So you were that child. What you're saying, Yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Gave my parents a ride.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
So why does your journey circle back to the paleo
the thick period? How did you make that connection?
Speaker 1 (03:14):
So at the time, I mean, it's really interesting. Silicon
Valley has been the epicenter of the Palaeo diet and
a lot of these innovations in human optimization because I think,
you know, tech realizes that a lot of the sitting
and screens and being indoors and losing your hand strike
because you're tapping and pressing on the phone. There is
(03:35):
a general sense that that needs to be combated in
the tech community, right, But the way they approach it
is mostly like can we hack our way to health
and happiness. It's not can we completely refigure how we're
living and you know, go back to nature. It's rather,
what are the little tiny steps we can take in
terms of nutrition and exercise and gadgets and racking that
(03:57):
will give it to that optimal health. And so I was,
you know, exposed to the ideas of the paleo diet
and you know, things like barefoot running and you know,
getting more healthy fats and that sort of thing. So
but I knew that that was a deeper world because
I had studied anthropology, and I knew that milio diet
compan in higher cultural contexts and an entire history of
(04:19):
you know, up to millions of years of human evolution
and three hundred thousand years of human evolution as our speaking,
that we are today home of sapiens. And so I
was interested in, you know, not just how can we
get the healthy fats, how can we eat as our
ancestors kate, but how can we socialize like them? How
can we sleep like them, How can we get exposure
(04:41):
to outdoor elements like they did? How can we kind
of mimic as much as possible the hunter gatherer lifestyle?
So I found people who were doing that and decided
to study and spend time with them. And that's you know,
my findings are in the book.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
How were those first family meetings and discussions and you
wanted to make this shift? Take us back there please?
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Okay, Well the kids are kind of young, so they
were alone for the ride. There wasn't a lot of like,
let we go to this permitive field gathering. I was like,
we're gonna do this. It's going to be fun, and
you're gonna learn, you know, lots of new skills that
you've never been exposed to. You know, my entry into
this wilder world was really true becoming a naturalists, which
(05:25):
I think is a very palatable thing for modern culture.
You know, it's good to get out. Everybody acknowledges it's
good to get outside and get to know your local
ecosystem and learn some of the edible plants. So I
sort of had this so pretty mild introduction into where
I was living. The local water system, the watershed all
of the fauna and flora around us. Between a certified naturalist,
(05:48):
which I don't think is necessary for everybody. You could
just go outside and start learning about what's around you.
But through that nature immersion, then I got a little
bit deeper into what does it mean to actually live
as a human in nature as we evolved to do.
And that's when I started going to these primitive skills
gatherings and learning how to make fire, and teaching my
(06:09):
kids how to create a core flower, you know, doing archery,
making our own sandals, really trying to use our hands
and our minds and our bodies and local materials to subsist.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
When you were growing up, were you exposed to like
camping or roughing it or being outdoors? Was this a
new thing to you or yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
I would say it was pretty new. My exposure to
nature was really from a boardwalk path in the woods.
It was like, Okay, stay on this trail, do not
interfere with nature. Nature's beautiful. You can appreciate it esthetically.
You can learn about some of the birds to identify.
But I was never really one of those outdoor kids.
We were not a Stamilee that went skiing or river rafting.
(06:48):
You know, nature was kind of to be from the path.
So when I got deep into this, I sort of
leap frogs over all of the RII supply, you know,
learning how to use a cook stove, and I just
sort of went full on primitive. So I think maybe
that enabled my journey a little bit because I wasn't
biased by the contemporary ways that people go out into
(07:10):
the woods and all the stuff that they bring, right,
I could just feel like I'm ditching it all, that
We're going to start with a knife and a blanket
and go out into the wilderness.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
So you grew up with like nature is beautiful, but
keep your distance.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Yes, And also the idea that I think it's so
prevalent now that humans are dangerous to the environment, right.
We pollute it, we drop our trash, we over harvest.
Humans have done nothing good for nature on the last
one hundred and fifty one hundred and eighty years since
the industrial revolution, And that is definitely the message that
we get all the time from our media and from
(07:44):
even consumer organizations. So I think there's you know, a
lot of work to be done for people to realize
that our natural state as colon sapiens is to be
completely integrated harmoniously, you know, without toxicity, without the dangers
the ills that we bring into the woods these days, right,
and we can learn to do that again. And lots
(08:05):
of you know, native groups or spearheading that effort, and
they always lived in a way that was not destructive.
And in fact, we're tending the wild and making sure
that there were giant forest fires and that there was
abundant food in the environment without directly tilling it and
enforcing monoculture and agriculture the way that our society does.
I think if anybody takes one thing from the book,
(08:27):
it's that humans are not essentially destructive to the environments.
In fact, what we are benefit if we can live
in a way that we evolved to live.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
When you were fully immersed in it, what were those
early days like where and how are you living and
making it ends meet?
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Well? Yeah, And I don't want to exaggerate my involvement
because it came at this as sort of an objective
journalism project, right, So I had this background in writing
and journalism, and once I left the tech world and
decided I wanted to write a book about this emerging
culture of prim and rewilding and folks who are trying
to live off the land in an almost stone age fashion.
(09:06):
I did not imagine that it would affect me so much, right,
I wanted to create a portrait for folks to read
about and be exposed to these ideas, to maybe take
on aspects of it. But I did not anticipate that
it would completely change my worldview and that I would,
you know, all of a sudden find myself being very
skeptical of civilization in general and of all of these
(09:27):
institutions that surround us, and the academies and corporations that had,
you know, given me my life or how I had
grown up and gotten educated and found employment. I got
really deep. It was one of these kind of surprise
rabbit holes that Alice in Wonderland that I fell down.
And so the way I was living was very experimental
(09:49):
in terms of like taking weekends off or weeks away,
which was very difficult because I was the mother of
young children at the time, so I didn't have that
much leeway and you know kind of lenience see and
space and time to explore this lifestyle. It was very
much targeted experiences that I had with folks who had
the skills to survive with just a knik and blanket
(10:09):
in the woods that you knew how to harvest animals
and tan hides and you know, collect water from stream
and purify it using just natural materials. So I, then,
you know, tried to replace a lot of my habits
and industrial objects and wings of eating and consuming. I
tried to replace parts of that with wilder materials, and
(10:31):
that was an experiment that kind of, you know, to
this day continues, right. But you know, I don't want
to blame it on being a member of a family,
but it's really hard to completely rewild and you know,
lead the trappings of contemporary life while you have children.
You're trying to raise them, You're trying to give them
the best opportunities in life.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Right.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
So I have kind of, you know, a compromised position
where I'm now living in the Sierra Nevada foothills and
have a much wide elder lifestyle than I did when
I was in the Bay Area, which is really you know,
it's a huge step for me. And I have lots
of leaders and inspiring figures in my life from this
rewilding movement that I see, Oh they're doing this and
(11:13):
I can do that one day. A lot of people
see the book and they think, oh, she must be
Lady Beast, she must be just this wild creature let
me out the way. Then you know, that's aspirational for me,
But at the moment it's just not possible.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
So this is one step. The next step is going
to be the big step, probably when the girls leave,
right yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Well, and also taking the targeted weekends and weeks when
I can away to practice my skill and be in
community that folks have learn from them. I mean, I'm
still doing that.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
So was it like being in OZ and you pull
the curtain back when you were.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Like, yeah, oh yeat really? And like I said, I'd
always had this suspicion. But I think when you kind
of grow up in a liberal community or reform minded
community and you're an activist and you believe that change
is possible in the system, you know, we blame a
lot of problem on isolated parts of that system. Oh
(12:04):
it's the food, that's the big agriculture, it's big pharma
that's really you know the problem. And everybody's on opiates
because of these corporations pushing painkillers. But then when you
you know, kind of look at the entire system and
connect all the dots. It's like, well, when did this
corrosion of human life and the separation from nature start?
(12:26):
And you know, going back teny twelve thousand years to
when other gatherers kind of settled and became people of
cities and settlements and started building institutions and hierarchical structures. Right,
that's really what you know, this crowd, these rewilders, people
who are inspired by the Paleolithic era, that's what they
(12:47):
point to you is kind of the origin of all
of our problems in civilization today. So it's not just
big pharma, it's not just you know, our state run
education system. It's not just the fast food and gobcity epidemic.
It's the fact that we stopped hunting and gathering, right,
And that's a real blowing kind of epiphany to have
those being like what and then your conception of history
(13:10):
and what humans have been doing for centuries really, you know,
it expands and you're like, well, actually, we've spent ninety
six percent of our time on this planet as home
of thinking. We spent that hunting and gathering, living in
small nomadic groups, not causing toxic harm to each other,
not causing destruction to the environment, and so to kind
(13:30):
of pull back the lens and look at our species
in terms of that long, long period of time instead
of like, oh, it's just been the last one hundred
and fifty years that we've gone off course. That really
shifts how new view everything, and it shifts how you
think things can be reformed and changed. I don't believe
that it's going to happen through a political adjustment or
putting the blue guy in instead of the red woman, right.
(13:52):
I think we all need to really get back to
our origin as a species, which is those all self
reliant groups embedded in nature. And I know, you know
that sounds ridiculous now that we've been in civilization for
thousands of years, so we can't imagine having a lifestyle
that it's similar to how we evolved because we're also domesticated.
(14:13):
But there are folks who are trying it out, and
there are still extant hunter gatherer groups that are living
as they've been living for possibly fifty thousand years, you know,
not very much changed. So we have a lot of inspiration.
We know that that is the most sustainable lifestyle on
the earth right, and so I think we need to
really pay attention to what we can learn from the
(14:33):
Paleolithic era.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
When you took this on as like an assignment or
research or whatever, do you remember when that shift happened
within you? Do you remember what was happening, like the
day before you were one way and then it happened,
and then you were like, I cannot undo this. Do
you remember that episode that did.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
I take the pip? Oh?
Speaker 3 (14:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
I didn't want to be so forward and say when
did you really swallow that bill?
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Yeah? Well, I mean it's a boring story. Honestly. It's
just like you're reading some books and one of the
you know, I don't completely endores this author, Noah Harari,
who wrote the book Sabian, but I would sort of
look to his work as one of those moments of
swallowing the pill, like what he goes into exactly what
I just talked about, our long history is meant to
(15:19):
gathers how everything that we've created in civilization is basically
a fiction. Right, Like the legal state only exists if
we believe in it. We can bang our taxes. It's
not an entity that can survive without the human imagination
and human institutions running it that nature is always there.
Nature is always doing its process. It's always replenishing recources
(15:41):
and cycling nutrients. So to realize, like all these things
that I've grown up with as a religional, right, like
we believe in the government, we believe in educational institutions,
we believe in those corporations and Hollywood, right, But these
are all fictions. They're all fakes humans have created. So
from his book, learning that there was no going back
after that. And I was a susceptible to the message, right,
(16:04):
And I know that if you come from a religious background,
or you know you've had a skepticism of clience or evolution,
it's going to be harder to kind of realize that
these institutionals humans have created will only exist as long
as we keep believing in them, right, But the thing
that will always exist in nature. So I realized I
was sort of a privileged educated position to be able
(16:25):
to understand that and then kind of orient my life
around that new truth.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Are you still journaling? And is that how the book
began as a journal intrigue or did that segue into that?
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Well? Sure, as a writer, you want to have that
external memory bank, right, So I think part of my
certain intellectual compulsion is to write about my life. I'm
always doing that, and who knows, you know, there may
be a next book and so I like to have
the theater material for that. And you know, memories are precious,
and if our iPhone photos disappear, I like to have
(16:59):
words to come write what's happened in my family or
my friendships, et cetera. So, yeah, that's always going to
be a part of my life as long as they're
writing and slob and speak.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
About well, and I'm sure your daughters will appreciate it
years from now reading those entries and like, no, it.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Is really good to kind of take notes on your
kids as they're growing up. Everybody knows them. A very
few people actually do it, because then you can kind
of go back and say, do you remember when you
asked God if you like broccoli? It's funny little anas
I can say, yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
How happy did you think you were before this live
shift versus how happy you are now?
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Yeah, well, I was definitely not happy, and I go
into detail about that in the book. I mean, im
part of that was just a little bit of a
dysfunctional marital relationship. But the bigger piece was that I
find my happiness when I'm in nature worse, you know.
So I try to make the practice of going out
every day at leaks an hour, maybe two hours, meeting,
four hours, six hours, whatever I can get, and that
(17:53):
is my therapy. It's me tonic, it's the thing that
restores me. So having found that and knowing that that
is what keeps me centered, I would say, I'm so
much happier now, And you know, having gone through that
sort of you know, hero's journey, right, Joseph Campbell said
that every story is the hero's journey, and I definitely
feel like mine. And let's gender correct that a heroin's journey,
(18:16):
which is a bit different. There have been writers who
have talked about this male bias and mythical hero's journey,
but women can have it as well, you know, if
people love literature about that, you know, like Cheryl Strade's
Wild she goes on her epic adventure and Laplatch and
Trail and Eat Pray Love a little bit of Gilbert
is experimenting and finding herself. So I definitely bodeled the
(18:37):
book on that sort of transformational journey. Yeah, I am
much happier having kind of concluded that journey is come
back home with a new vision and a new way
to live that you then implement on the day to day.
And it's not like, oh, it just worls little in
rainbows now, But having a fundamental understanding of my own
(18:57):
connection to nature and that I want to help others
developed that the good of humanity right and for the
good of all of our relationships and our health really
gives me that driving force to get up every day.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
How has this new life affected your daughters and their
outlook on their own future?
Speaker 1 (19:13):
So, you know, they were I guess it was a
five years ago at the kind of heart of the
books activities, when I was dragging them around all these
gatherings and allowing them the opportunity to really engage with
the mud and the dirt play and all these orange
food and you know, drying seaweed in our kitchen and
then making them eat it and soup and making dinner
(19:35):
around the fire and then not having any dishes to
clean up back towards. So it was kind of the
feral immersion to the kids, and they really enjoyed it.
But then we all know what happened COVID, right, And
we were living in a city in a state that
was incredibly restrictive, and they ended up spending a lot
of time indoors, and even California, they put hazard tape
(19:58):
around our local playground that was all like ridiculous, And
at the time I also thought, this is silly to
be the only places we should be hanging out in
that are healthy and safe for us, But yet they
were closed. So, you know, having gone through that shut
down experience getting a teat in the wild initially, right,
they still have it within them. They're able to identify plants,
(20:19):
they love being outside, love going on heights. But I
think that what I call the dam panic, the pandemic,
really you know, shaped their life towards this tiny little
box and towards the screen and towards mediated entertainment because
social community wasn't available. So we're still emerging out of that.
And you know, and I don't want to be such
(20:40):
the purest in such a dogmatic mother where I'm limiting
what my kids are actually interested in. So actually I
rite a little. And my older daughter's actually writing her
own book at age fourteen, and she's writing it about
old Hollywood movies. So I'm pretty prone of her that
she's taken that focus and that independent drive and that
sense of wat me right, which I think is also
(21:01):
part of the rewilding experience. I can do and I
want to do, and I don't have to conform to
the scripts that culture gives me. So they're doing that
in their own ways. And what I'm very pleased about
is just that they don't have a basis in the
ecosystem that they live in, and I'm not worried for
their future should they ever be lost in the woods.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
Right, if the present Jessica went back in time to
talk to the Jessica right before this change and tell
her what was to come, what would that conversation sound like.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
I think I would be really encouraging myself, because there
definitely are doubt right when you start out on that
epic quest to find something. You and I were discussing
this earlier, you know, like when you're not in a
good state, you feel like something in drastically off with
your life. We all you can do is have that
fay that you will find it. You can keep pursuing it,
(21:54):
and if you keep, you know, saying yes to opportunities,
inviting people in your life, you know, doing your best
every day. So I think it would be an encouraging
conversation where I'd say you will find it, you know,
but just don't give up and don't stop because that
restless sense that something is off in your life that
is not something you should acclimate to. It is definitely
(22:17):
pointing you in the direction that your soul, your spirit
and body in your mind you need and that discomfort
is there to inform you that you know, things would
be a lot better and they will be better. Continually
listen to.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
It, would Jessica two point, I would say to you
have patience, that have faith, yeah, and just.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Keep going and don't you know when you have your
down days, get yourself up as fast as you can,
like learn those resilient skills and that things will be hard.
So I have to say techniques of mindfulness and being
present have also enriched my life. And you know, the
way I connect this back to the unique kind of
(22:54):
scholarship in my book is that when we look at
the consciousness of a hunter gatherer, of a wild human
is very much in the presence. It is not about oh,
I'll store up these goods and I'll get this mutual
fund and I'll be okay in the future. They're not
kind of regretting and wondering what they said to somebody
in the past. You know, it's all about now, what
(23:16):
are my opportunities now? Can I socialize? Can I recreate?
Should I be gathering food? And then there isn't an
incessant need be productive in the original human societies, right.
This is something that we've developed in civilization of the
Protestant work ethics. This idea of orting and accumulating goods
for the future not essential to how humans survive on
(23:37):
the planet. So when I, you know, pressure myself to
get back into that original state of consciousness, that presentness,
that also brings a lot of peace, right And there
we know that the Eastern religious and spiritual traditions and
even the kind of contemporary rondous lot of mindfulness, this
is offering the same wisdom. It's just rarely connected back
to you know, maybe indigenous consciousness or how under gatherers
(24:01):
relate to one another in the present moment. It's more
sort of mystified as a missed technology. But I think
it's so much more more ancient, right, and it's kind
of embedded in our DNA to have the same way
of processing information as the deer does, as the bobcat does,
as the bird does. Just today, now, what can I do? Well?
Speaker 3 (24:23):
If you had a failure, what was one of your
biggest failures that you turned into one of your biggest assets?
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Ily kidness, What a tough question?
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Maybe what obstacle came in your way and you thought,
I don't know if I'm going to be able to
get around this, and then you turned it around to
your advantage.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
So becoming an independent female, right, so no longer attached
to a job or an institution or a marriage, right
and not having a partnership where I can rely on
somebody else consistently. And then putting that in the context
of the COVID lockdown, I you know, had to make
(25:02):
a lot of it is in terms of changing my life,
Like I moved to the city to the country, I
was able to, you know, kind of snatch up this
property where I could do the land and having to
do that all myself, right, there are many breakdowns like
oh can I do this? You know, even down to
a detail like okay, I can't even get a couch
(25:24):
or a bed into this new house I've bought, which
is I can't carry it myself, and then nobody's willing
to help me because it's the November twenty twenty thirgs.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Right.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
So then realizing that I can make adjustments in my life.
I can get a bean back and I can get
the mattress, that I can carry myself. This idea that
I can self reliant was what got me through a
lot of challenges and still does to this day. Like
I'm always I'm very minimal, don't want to consume, don't
(25:54):
want to buy it. There's a problem I have and
there's a solution to it. I really like to be
able to th alve that myself and not have to
call Hinder the sixy guy, or you know, buy something
from amazonon and have it delivered to by door the
next day. Like that just feels really terrible to me.
So I spend a lot of time working on my
own kind of handmade solutions. It's aly living issues and
(26:17):
not that that should negate this idea that we need
each other, that we need social support, that we need community.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Right.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
What I don't like that I don't think we need
dependence on the global industrial machine. Right. So the more
I can create flup alliance and myself encourage that in
my close community around me, I think, the better off
we will be, and the closer we are to how
we originally live.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
What's the house like, what are the meals like? Take
me through Jessica's world.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
Well, yeah, I'm really an advocate of whole googs. One
of the things that started me on my quest was
understanding this dentist from the nineteen twenties named Western a Price.
You're familiar with.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
Them, I am very familiar with him.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Yes, yeah, So this guy went around the world and
he looked at traditional cultures everywhere with his eventful lenses
and saying like, why aren't they getting cavities, Why are
their teep not crowded? You know, why are they keeping
their teeth until they're seventy five years old? Which is
so extraordinary giving how our culture, you know, with our
massive consumption of sugar and carbs and our sort of
(27:17):
soft predigested food that we eat, and especially from a
young age. He came to the conclusion that like, oh,
we need to be eating more traditional diets, right, because
every kind of advance that we've made in the Western
diet has created you know, small jaws, crowded heat, more cavities.
People now are dependent on the dentist in order to
(27:38):
keep eating right and being healthy people. So I'm really
acquired by the Western price insights and really try to
eat a lot of traditional foods, including you know, like
fermented and cabbage, the saur kraut meat that every day. Really,
you know, I'm not a nutrition's were a scientists, but
from my studies and looking into things, liver is really
one of the most nutrient dents as you can buy.
(28:01):
So Triana gets the liver in there whatever palatable way
you possibly can. And then looking at micro nutrients, right,
you can get your macro trants, your carbs, your bats,
your protein, but what about you know, those trace elements.
And so having kind of a sea based dish or
adding sprinklings and seaweat on something making sure that I'm
eating fish for omega threes, right, I'm really focused on
(28:24):
that traditional yet easing the science that we know now
about nutrition to create meals. And then you know, I
have picking eaters. So I find that my kitchen is
just an experimental zone of you know, palatability and nutrition, right,
they're kind of battling each other every day. But I'm
really lucky that I get to have my kids, you know,
(28:45):
about seventy five percent of the time, and making three
meals a day for them, trying not to eat out
very much at all, and really just making our home
about food because that is what human life is about.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
Yeah, I wish then A Price was very impressed with
how straight their teeth were and how white their teeth were.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Yes, not eating those staining material is the coffee, the.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Wine, without any toothbrushes, without any toothpaste.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Right, and then you know, being able to heal if
they did have dental cavities. It was like he discovered
that they can actually kind of disappear if they're eating
the right kind of SATs and watching the amount of
sugar that's going in.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
So now I know you're doing I guess maybe a
hybrid version of what you may be ideally see in
your brain at some point or in your mind of
doing it. But do you miss anything from your previous life?
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Nope? Well, see I'm not a person who has a
lot of regrets. No, and I don't mean to not
be self critical is also important as well, But nope.
I feel having a present focus, you know, doing my
best every day, that's all I can do. So no,
I don't. I don't want to say.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
Think when people meet you, Jessica outside and of where
you live and thrive, what do they think about how
you're living your life?
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Well, I think many people are yearning for a life
that's closers in nature, right, And I know that a
lot of my city trends yearn to have that release,
like oh, I can't even hear any sirens, I can't
hear the highway, I can't hear I say, leaf blowers
that are always going on in my neighborhood or wherever
I am. They want that kind of peace and retreat.
(30:22):
So the fact that I've kind of established that for
myself a prioritizing in my life is inspiring to folks.
And I have visitors coming through here. A lot love
to give people that gift of like let's go on
a hike and I'll show you this wonderful creek. I
think people want that and more. Since the pandemic, a
lot of people have been trying to seek that exodus
(30:43):
from the insanity of urban life. That's going to be
a channe that continues.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
What changes do you feel anyone can and should make
in their life to try to capture what you did
in the beginning if they're not ready to make the
leap of faith that you did. I think that.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Everybody need more outdoor time, and it's really not that difficult.
If you decide to place one indoor activity, just move
it outside somehow. Even if you're living in the Tallet
department building in Manhattan or Singapore, you can still live
in an outdoor cafe and take an entire meal there,
or you can, you know, go on your walk while
you're doing your phone calls outside. There are so many
(31:22):
things we can do, and there's incredible benefits to being
outside that you know, you may not be completely conscious of.
In your fronts are low, but by getting the you know,
the wind and the exposure to move the elements, the
sunshine for the bag and deeproduction. Even microbes and the
soil have been shown to have an antidepressant effect on us.
So I think anybody anywhere can spend more time outside
(31:45):
and should. There's also ways to bring nature inside, right,
so I think the huge span of houseplants and also
growing some of your own culinary herbs inside. Whatever you
can do to have a direct relationship with plants and
animals I think is also extremely important. You know, people
can decide whatever they're interested in. Picking on a hobby
(32:05):
that isn't screen based, I think is also another really
beneficial thing. Doing an activity with your hands, whether they're
dating woodworking, or giving up your food process or just
to spend a little more time topping and preparing your food, right,
that has benefit. It's been amazing to me. I've been
doing a lot of workshops teaching them how to make
various crafts or food, you know, preparation from natural materials,
(32:30):
from foraged goods. And I'm always amazed that people have
lost a lot of hand strength, right, and we're not
even given these challenges anymore. But think about like a
lighter wand you know you're trying to light a fire,
or you're trying to melt some wax or do something
with a flame. Many people do not have the hand
strength anymore to press them the button on this lighter
(32:52):
wand right, or even like a BG. So I think
anything you can do to improve your hand strength as
well for survival, readon, like you never know you're going
to need to, you know, escape a vehicle or climb
a tree or do something with your hands, and you
won't have the strength there. So the sort of bathic
things and then rewilding can get extremely complicated and you know,
(33:14):
very intense in terms of your engagement, like wanting to
build a shelter and go live in it in the
woods for a couple of weeks, find your own fings,
going plunting, fishing, tanning hides, making things out of fish skin,
like you can take it as far as you want.
That I think the healthiest thing to new it is
supposed to be outside more.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
Can you tell us the story of the Red Fox?
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Sure? Yeah, Well my first initiation into the world of
wild skills was to attend a creative skills gathering outside
of Sarah Barbara called the Acorn Gathering. This was back
in twenty eighteen. It's pretty shocking, but also wonderfully familiar
and comforting to be among people. And we were sort
of like this I don't know, hunter gatherer village where
(33:56):
everywhere you look to people were doing crafts and activities
with natural materials, enjoying the sunshine, being outside, kids running free,
climbing trees, kids you know, around fires, nobody cautioning them
because they trust the autonomy of the child to know
what is dangerous, which is not something our culture is
good at. Who I was in this rented camper van
(34:17):
I had with my kids, and I had just seen
a bunch of people processing roadkill, right, so making use
of this horrific waste material that we have in our society.
One million animals are killed every day on American road sides,
just you know, when you stop and think about that,
it's a horrible holocaust of life. So I was really pleased,
(34:41):
yet also a little bit disgusted to see how their
bodies and skins would be turned into useful items for folks.
And on this drive back home, I started a roadkill.
I spotted this red fox must like her road and
something just took over me, and I was like, I
got to get that box, and I have to try
to red with life, and I've got to learn to
skid it, and I got to, you know, figure out
(35:03):
what to do with this body that's just been gifted
on the roadside. So that's how my book begins, is
what did I do with this fox? And how I
initially sort of mangled my processing of it, which just
demonstrated that I had so much more to learn, and
that we have lost our culture of elders, we have
lost our culture of skills, and so everything has to
(35:25):
be learned kind of painfully, step by step, really engaging
and staying committed to rewilding. So the Fox culture represents
sort of the challenge ahead for me, and also the
tragedy of civilization and this wasted life that our culture
has created.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
Well, speaking of rewilding, are more and more people doing
this under the radar, as it were, and not broadcasting
it from the mountaintops.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Well, I wouldn't know then, But I have to say, ironically,
one of my biggest sources for finding contact, interview and
even knowing about sort of small press books that were
anti civilization was social media. Right. So there's a lot
of folks, especially in the millennial generation, who, you know,
(36:10):
maybe their lifestyle is just that they're tanning hides, but
they're putting it up. They're putting up these beautiful pictures
and tutorial on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and you know, I
see that as a good thing. And yes, of course
it is a huge contradiction. But when you think about
the fact that Our primary human need, after food, water, shelter,
(36:31):
health care, is social support, is that social life be involved,
to be social creatures. And right now, in this moment
twenty twenty four, the easiest way to be social is
through that medium, right is through using the digital technology.
So again and again I would hear people say, you know,
like this is my only vice, rewilders folks who are
(36:53):
super back to nature, but they're on Facebook, right, because
we cannot deny our human need for that social contact.
And I think it's really kind of a false critique
to bludging people who are saying they want to live
a life that's closer to nature, and yet they're putting
it on Instagram, because what else are we supposing to
connect at this point?
Speaker 3 (37:12):
Yeah, I always fight it amusing that you see these
YouTube videos and they're you know, all these people were
off the grid. Yeah, you're not really off the grid.
If you have a YouTube page, you can't be off
the grid. There is no off the grid. Yeah, do
your best and utilize it, have it as a tool
and yes, and have it as a connection to many.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Right, and realize that without that human need, you know,
a lot of us would see can die isolation. Is
like smoking a packa day of cigarettes. So yeah, it's
lamentable that these corporations have kind of dolen our meet,
your sociolity and folded back to us. But you know,
this is where we're at, and I think a lot
of people are learning and opening up sinuays of life
(37:51):
because of the connections on Facebook, Instagram, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
TikTok. What was one of the most scariest moments so
far in your new place? Was it August twenty one?
Speaker 1 (38:00):
Yeah, and you're acting about when I got evacuated to
the Caldor fire. Stumbling was a scary moment in which
tested my sort of newfound minimalism, where it was like
imagining over and over flames coming over my land and
consuming my house right everything that I had and had builtzeba.
So I would say that was scary, and also it
(38:22):
was easy to leap. It was like, Nope, I've spent
a lot of years trying not to be attached, trying
to rely on myself to know that I'm going to
be okay and my family is still to be okay
if we you know, if we can support each other
and if we can take the right action. So when
we were evacuated. I worked with neighbors, you know, we
made sure that animals got out to safety and that
(38:45):
everybody in the neighborhood had a plan for how they
were going to leave. And luckily the fire did not
touch us, although it did burn, you know, possibly two
hundred thousand acres crossed thirty miles in the Eldorado National Forest.
It was a huge, tragic wildfire. Sure of things to
come right, but we've survived and we can strengthen ourselves
through that.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
What's one of the biggest things that you've learned so
far about yourself, Jessica, I think.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
It was that much of my life was fear based,
and so much of my personal motivation and the things
that I wanted to do and accomplish were out of fear.
What if I don't have money, what if I can't
find a partner, what if you know, I get sick,
as my mother was sick my entire childhood, right, So
a lot of fear and anxiety motivating everything I did,
(39:31):
and then looking around me, the flashpoint of COVID with
that kind of fear and anxiety running or on everybody
and getting inflicting information from different sources, that really made
me realize that what I wanted most in my life
was to have less fear in credit, eradicate it whenever
it showed up in my nervousness, right, and to try
(39:52):
to use more constructive and less fear based motivation tactics
for myself, and also to think about, Okay, I go
for a fire cup, so my house is burnt, Then
what what do I do? Well, I can't be afraid
of that. I just I can spare as much as possible.
That's all you can do. And fear doesn't serve a purpose.
Right in our culture, we have gotten way. Let's beyond
(40:15):
the initial kind of biological evolutionary purpose of fear, which
is to escape a threat in the moment, Right that
my scare elevates your sympathetic nervous system. You fight, you fight,
were you free? That's what our fear is post itching
for us. But these days the fear is lingering, it's long,
(40:36):
it's chronic, it's causing all sorts of ailments, stress related illnesses,
et cetera. So for me to get away from that
fear is the healthiest, most exciting thing I can do
in my life.
Speaker 3 (40:47):
And finally, how do you see us moving forward as
a society. Do you think more and more people, even
if they haven't discovered you or read your book, you
think more people are going to have this yearning to
either rewild or get into nature as much as possible.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
Night. I really hope so, and I do see signs
that that's happening, although there is absolutely the counteracting prend
What do you think about I don't know. Ninety percent
of children born in Singapore will need glasses speacause of
myopia being implied being on screens. You know, in the
next few years, we're really fighting a huge cultural force
(41:24):
with artificial intelligence, even kind of the drive towards green technology,
which I think will never succeed. You know, the people
kind of trumpeting progress and technology and developments, their voices
are always going to be louder than the people saying
come back to where we came from, let's go back
to nature. But there will will be folks who kind
of speak through the screens the smoke to reconnect themselves
(41:47):
and to feel the personal satisfaction, the helpful lifestyle that
comes through being in nature. And I think, you know,
we have limited tonight, right, We're running out of resources
there's global climate change. Now we're seeing the effects of
it and how it's checks are not distributed evenly around
the globe, and we're going to see mass migrations, We're
(42:08):
going to see fights over water, we're going to see
global conflicts etholate. But we are freaking the biggest challenges
of our civilization. And I do hope that the people
who are yearning for a more nature connection will find
the resources they need to get that.
Speaker 3 (42:21):
Jessica carew Craft, thank you so much for all your
stories and for sharing your wisdom with us today.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
Thank you so much. It's been great talking to you,
and I love your show. What you're doing is fantastic
giving people information about health and new ideas and things
they might not hear on from the extream media. So
kudos to you.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
Thank you so much, and thanks for saying.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
That the Good Foods podcast is that entertainment purposes only.
The claims, comments, opinions, or information heard should never be
used in place of your medical provider's advice or your
doctor's direction. Thank you for listening, follow us on social
media and wherever you get your podcasts. Good Health through
(43:04):
Good Food, Good Foods, Grocery
Hello. I'm Jessica three Kraft, independent journalists, cultural anthropologist, mother
and author of Why We Need to Be Wild, And
this is the Good Foods Podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
All of us are on a journey towards better health
and we're grateful that you've allowed us to join you
on your quest in this episode.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
All you can do is have that fate that you
will find it you keep pursuing it and if you
keep you staying the xt opportunities inviting people in your life,
you know, doing your best every day. So I think
it would be an encouraging conversation where I'd say you
will find it, you know, but just don't give up
and don't stop.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
This is the Good Foods Podcast and now here's your host,
show Dan.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Jessica. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Thank you so much for inviting me. This is really exciting.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
So how are things in Jessica's world so far.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
So far over the last four decades? Pretty good? I'm
still here, feel unhealthy, happy, Things are good.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
When did you start to feel or think that things
were off kilter? What was your life like before you
decided to shift your focus and path as it were?
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Yeah, well, I have to say that the book gramatizes
my story, because the truth is that I've always been
a cultural critic. I can remember being a sixteen year
old English student and writing an essay about, you know,
why the suburbs were terrible for human development and you know,
developing of our human spirit and creativity that was very
(01:37):
much against conformity and consumer culture. I would say probably
my entire rebility is adolescence. So I had that strain
in me from the beginning. But for various reasons, I
had to you know, the way our society write the script,
you have to be mature and the common adult and
get all the things mortgage, the children and the marriage,
the endless responsibilities and apps, et cetera. That's how we
(01:59):
think of our selves as you know, being human these days.
But since I had this inner rebellious strain in me,
when I started working for tech companies, there was always
the suspicion that, like, everything we're developing here is crap
and it's not good for us, and it's really just
to serve capital, to serve the growth of this economic
(02:19):
progress dream that is someday going to come crashing down
on it. So I worked for several years in that
an industry, right, just accumulating more and more data about
why this was unhealthy for us, until I had my
own sort of crisis with my family and my own
health issues, nothing too serious, but you know, noticing the
kind of common malaise that we all think is normal
(02:41):
now to feel anxious and underslept, gain weight, and not
have enough time to family or friends. And I just
sort of hit a wall where I was like, I've
got to get out. This tech thing is terrible for me,
terrible for society, and I have to sound some kind
of alarm bell for people who are also thinking about that.
So I suspecting that possibly this is not the best
way for humans to live.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
So you were that child. What you're saying, Yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Gave my parents a ride.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
So why does your journey circle back to the paleo
the thick period? How did you make that connection?
Speaker 1 (03:14):
So at the time, I mean, it's really interesting. Silicon
Valley has been the epicenter of the Palaeo diet and
a lot of these innovations in human optimization because I think,
you know, tech realizes that a lot of the sitting
and screens and being indoors and losing your hand strike
because you're tapping and pressing on the phone. There is
(03:35):
a general sense that that needs to be combated in
the tech community, right, But the way they approach it
is mostly like can we hack our way to health
and happiness. It's not can we completely refigure how we're
living and you know, go back to nature. It's rather,
what are the little tiny steps we can take in
terms of nutrition and exercise and gadgets and racking that
(03:57):
will give it to that optimal health. And so I was,
you know, exposed to the ideas of the paleo diet
and you know, things like barefoot running and you know,
getting more healthy fats and that sort of thing. So
but I knew that that was a deeper world because
I had studied anthropology, and I knew that milio diet
compan in higher cultural contexts and an entire history of
(04:19):
you know, up to millions of years of human evolution
and three hundred thousand years of human evolution as our speaking,
that we are today home of sapiens. And so I
was interested in, you know, not just how can we
get the healthy fats, how can we eat as our
ancestors kate, but how can we socialize like them? How
can we sleep like them, How can we get exposure
(04:41):
to outdoor elements like they did? How can we kind
of mimic as much as possible the hunter gatherer lifestyle?
So I found people who were doing that and decided
to study and spend time with them. And that's you know,
my findings are in the book.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
How were those first family meetings and discussions and you
wanted to make this shift? Take us back there please?
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Okay, Well the kids are kind of young, so they
were alone for the ride. There wasn't a lot of like,
let we go to this permitive field gathering. I was like,
we're gonna do this. It's going to be fun, and
you're gonna learn, you know, lots of new skills that
you've never been exposed to. You know, my entry into
this wilder world was really true becoming a naturalists, which
(05:25):
I think is a very palatable thing for modern culture.
You know, it's good to get out. Everybody acknowledges it's
good to get outside and get to know your local
ecosystem and learn some of the edible plants. So I
sort of had this so pretty mild introduction into where
I was living. The local water system, the watershed all
of the fauna and flora around us. Between a certified naturalist,
(05:48):
which I don't think is necessary for everybody. You could
just go outside and start learning about what's around you.
But through that nature immersion, then I got a little
bit deeper into what does it mean to actually live
as a human in nature as we evolved to do.
And that's when I started going to these primitive skills
gatherings and learning how to make fire, and teaching my
(06:09):
kids how to create a core flower, you know, doing archery,
making our own sandals, really trying to use our hands
and our minds and our bodies and local materials to subsist.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
When you were growing up, were you exposed to like
camping or roughing it or being outdoors? Was this a
new thing to you or yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
I would say it was pretty new. My exposure to
nature was really from a boardwalk path in the woods.
It was like, Okay, stay on this trail, do not
interfere with nature. Nature's beautiful. You can appreciate it esthetically.
You can learn about some of the birds to identify.
But I was never really one of those outdoor kids.
We were not a Stamilee that went skiing or river rafting.
(06:48):
You know, nature was kind of to be from the path.
So when I got deep into this, I sort of
leap frogs over all of the RII supply, you know,
learning how to use a cook stove, and I just
sort of went full on primitive. So I think maybe
that enabled my journey a little bit because I wasn't
biased by the contemporary ways that people go out into
(07:10):
the woods and all the stuff that they bring, right,
I could just feel like I'm ditching it all, that
We're going to start with a knife and a blanket
and go out into the wilderness.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
So you grew up with like nature is beautiful, but
keep your distance.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Yes, And also the idea that I think it's so
prevalent now that humans are dangerous to the environment, right.
We pollute it, we drop our trash, we over harvest.
Humans have done nothing good for nature on the last
one hundred and fifty one hundred and eighty years since
the industrial revolution, And that is definitely the message that
we get all the time from our media and from
(07:44):
even consumer organizations. So I think there's you know, a
lot of work to be done for people to realize
that our natural state as colon sapiens is to be
completely integrated harmoniously, you know, without toxicity, without the dangers
the ills that we bring into the woods these days, right,
and we can learn to do that again. And lots
(08:05):
of you know, native groups or spearheading that effort, and
they always lived in a way that was not destructive.
And in fact, we're tending the wild and making sure
that there were giant forest fires and that there was
abundant food in the environment without directly tilling it and
enforcing monoculture and agriculture the way that our society does.
I think if anybody takes one thing from the book,
(08:27):
it's that humans are not essentially destructive to the environments.
In fact, what we are benefit if we can live
in a way that we evolved to live.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
When you were fully immersed in it, what were those
early days like where and how are you living and
making it ends meet?
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Well? Yeah, And I don't want to exaggerate my involvement
because it came at this as sort of an objective
journalism project, right, So I had this background in writing
and journalism, and once I left the tech world and
decided I wanted to write a book about this emerging
culture of prim and rewilding and folks who are trying
to live off the land in an almost stone age fashion.
(09:06):
I did not imagine that it would affect me so much, right,
I wanted to create a portrait for folks to read
about and be exposed to these ideas, to maybe take
on aspects of it. But I did not anticipate that
it would completely change my worldview and that I would,
you know, all of a sudden find myself being very
skeptical of civilization in general and of all of these
(09:27):
institutions that surround us, and the academies and corporations that had,
you know, given me my life or how I had
grown up and gotten educated and found employment. I got
really deep. It was one of these kind of surprise
rabbit holes that Alice in Wonderland that I fell down.
And so the way I was living was very experimental
(09:49):
in terms of like taking weekends off or weeks away,
which was very difficult because I was the mother of
young children at the time, so I didn't have that
much leeway and you know kind of lenience see and
space and time to explore this lifestyle. It was very
much targeted experiences that I had with folks who had
the skills to survive with just a knik and blanket
(10:09):
in the woods that you knew how to harvest animals
and tan hides and you know, collect water from stream
and purify it using just natural materials. So I, then,
you know, tried to replace a lot of my habits
and industrial objects and wings of eating and consuming. I
tried to replace parts of that with wilder materials, and
(10:31):
that was an experiment that kind of, you know, to
this day continues, right. But you know, I don't want
to blame it on being a member of a family,
but it's really hard to completely rewild and you know,
lead the trappings of contemporary life while you have children.
You're trying to raise them, You're trying to give them
the best opportunities in life.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Right.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
So I have kind of, you know, a compromised position
where I'm now living in the Sierra Nevada foothills and
have a much wide elder lifestyle than I did when
I was in the Bay Area, which is really you know,
it's a huge step for me. And I have lots
of leaders and inspiring figures in my life from this
rewilding movement that I see, Oh they're doing this and
(11:13):
I can do that one day. A lot of people
see the book and they think, oh, she must be
Lady Beast, she must be just this wild creature let
me out the way. Then you know, that's aspirational for me,
But at the moment it's just not possible.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
So this is one step. The next step is going
to be the big step, probably when the girls leave,
right yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Well, and also taking the targeted weekends and weeks when
I can away to practice my skill and be in
community that folks have learn from them. I mean, I'm
still doing that.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
So was it like being in OZ and you pull
the curtain back when you were.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Like, yeah, oh yeat really? And like I said, I'd
always had this suspicion. But I think when you kind
of grow up in a liberal community or reform minded
community and you're an activist and you believe that change
is possible in the system, you know, we blame a
lot of problem on isolated parts of that system. Oh
(12:04):
it's the food, that's the big agriculture, it's big pharma
that's really you know the problem. And everybody's on opiates
because of these corporations pushing painkillers. But then when you
you know, kind of look at the entire system and
connect all the dots. It's like, well, when did this
corrosion of human life and the separation from nature start?
(12:26):
And you know, going back teny twelve thousand years to
when other gatherers kind of settled and became people of
cities and settlements and started building institutions and hierarchical structures. Right,
that's really what you know, this crowd, these rewilders, people
who are inspired by the Paleolithic era, that's what they
(12:47):
point to you is kind of the origin of all
of our problems in civilization today. So it's not just
big pharma, it's not just you know, our state run
education system. It's not just the fast food and gobcity epidemic.
It's the fact that we stopped hunting and gathering, right,
And that's a real blowing kind of epiphany to have
those being like what and then your conception of history
(13:10):
and what humans have been doing for centuries really, you know,
it expands and you're like, well, actually, we've spent ninety
six percent of our time on this planet as home
of thinking. We spent that hunting and gathering, living in
small nomadic groups, not causing toxic harm to each other,
not causing destruction to the environment, and so to kind
(13:30):
of pull back the lens and look at our species
in terms of that long, long period of time instead
of like, oh, it's just been the last one hundred
and fifty years that we've gone off course. That really
shifts how new view everything, and it shifts how you
think things can be reformed and changed. I don't believe
that it's going to happen through a political adjustment or
putting the blue guy in instead of the red woman, right.
(13:52):
I think we all need to really get back to
our origin as a species, which is those all self
reliant groups embedded in nature. And I know, you know
that sounds ridiculous now that we've been in civilization for
thousands of years, so we can't imagine having a lifestyle
that it's similar to how we evolved because we're also domesticated.
(14:13):
But there are folks who are trying it out, and
there are still extant hunter gatherer groups that are living
as they've been living for possibly fifty thousand years, you know,
not very much changed. So we have a lot of inspiration.
We know that that is the most sustainable lifestyle on
the earth right, and so I think we need to
really pay attention to what we can learn from the
(14:33):
Paleolithic era.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
When you took this on as like an assignment or
research or whatever, do you remember when that shift happened
within you? Do you remember what was happening, like the
day before you were one way and then it happened,
and then you were like, I cannot undo this. Do
you remember that episode that did.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
I take the pip? Oh?
Speaker 3 (14:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
I didn't want to be so forward and say when
did you really swallow that bill?
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Yeah? Well, I mean it's a boring story. Honestly. It's
just like you're reading some books and one of the
you know, I don't completely endores this author, Noah Harari,
who wrote the book Sabian, but I would sort of
look to his work as one of those moments of
swallowing the pill, like what he goes into exactly what
I just talked about, our long history is meant to
(15:19):
gathers how everything that we've created in civilization is basically
a fiction. Right, Like the legal state only exists if
we believe in it. We can bang our taxes. It's
not an entity that can survive without the human imagination
and human institutions running it that nature is always there.
Nature is always doing its process. It's always replenishing recources
(15:41):
and cycling nutrients. So to realize, like all these things
that I've grown up with as a religional, right, like
we believe in the government, we believe in educational institutions,
we believe in those corporations and Hollywood, right, But these
are all fictions. They're all fakes humans have created. So
from his book, learning that there was no going back
after that. And I was a susceptible to the message, right,
(16:04):
And I know that if you come from a religious background,
or you know you've had a skepticism of clience or evolution,
it's going to be harder to kind of realize that
these institutionals humans have created will only exist as long
as we keep believing in them, right, But the thing
that will always exist in nature. So I realized I
was sort of a privileged educated position to be able
(16:25):
to understand that and then kind of orient my life
around that new truth.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Are you still journaling? And is that how the book
began as a journal intrigue or did that segue into that?
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Well? Sure, as a writer, you want to have that
external memory bank, right, So I think part of my
certain intellectual compulsion is to write about my life. I'm
always doing that, and who knows, you know, there may
be a next book and so I like to have
the theater material for that. And you know, memories are precious,
and if our iPhone photos disappear, I like to have
(16:59):
words to come write what's happened in my family or
my friendships, et cetera. So, yeah, that's always going to
be a part of my life as long as they're
writing and slob and speak.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
About well, and I'm sure your daughters will appreciate it
years from now reading those entries and like, no, it.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Is really good to kind of take notes on your
kids as they're growing up. Everybody knows them. A very
few people actually do it, because then you can kind
of go back and say, do you remember when you
asked God if you like broccoli? It's funny little anas
I can say, yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
How happy did you think you were before this live
shift versus how happy you are now?
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Yeah, well, I was definitely not happy, and I go
into detail about that in the book. I mean, im
part of that was just a little bit of a
dysfunctional marital relationship. But the bigger piece was that I
find my happiness when I'm in nature worse, you know.
So I try to make the practice of going out
every day at leaks an hour, maybe two hours, meeting,
four hours, six hours, whatever I can get, and that
(17:53):
is my therapy. It's me tonic, it's the thing that
restores me. So having found that and knowing that that
is what keeps me centered, I would say, I'm so
much happier now, And you know, having gone through that
sort of you know, hero's journey, right, Joseph Campbell said
that every story is the hero's journey, and I definitely
feel like mine. And let's gender correct that a heroin's journey,
(18:16):
which is a bit different. There have been writers who
have talked about this male bias and mythical hero's journey,
but women can have it as well, you know, if
people love literature about that, you know, like Cheryl Strade's
Wild she goes on her epic adventure and Laplatch and
Trail and Eat Pray Love a little bit of Gilbert
is experimenting and finding herself. So I definitely bodeled the
(18:37):
book on that sort of transformational journey. Yeah, I am
much happier having kind of concluded that journey is come
back home with a new vision and a new way
to live that you then implement on the day to day.
And it's not like, oh, it just worls little in
rainbows now, But having a fundamental understanding of my own
(18:57):
connection to nature and that I want to help others
developed that the good of humanity right and for the
good of all of our relationships and our health really
gives me that driving force to get up every day.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
How has this new life affected your daughters and their
outlook on their own future?
Speaker 1 (19:13):
So, you know, they were I guess it was a
five years ago at the kind of heart of the
books activities, when I was dragging them around all these
gatherings and allowing them the opportunity to really engage with
the mud and the dirt play and all these orange
food and you know, drying seaweed in our kitchen and
then making them eat it and soup and making dinner
(19:35):
around the fire and then not having any dishes to
clean up back towards. So it was kind of the
feral immersion to the kids, and they really enjoyed it.
But then we all know what happened COVID, right, And
we were living in a city in a state that
was incredibly restrictive, and they ended up spending a lot
of time indoors, and even California, they put hazard tape
(19:58):
around our local playground that was all like ridiculous, And
at the time I also thought, this is silly to
be the only places we should be hanging out in
that are healthy and safe for us, But yet they
were closed. So, you know, having gone through that shut
down experience getting a teat in the wild initially, right,
they still have it within them. They're able to identify plants,
(20:19):
they love being outside, love going on heights. But I
think that what I call the dam panic, the pandemic,
really you know, shaped their life towards this tiny little
box and towards the screen and towards mediated entertainment because
social community wasn't available. So we're still emerging out of that.
And you know, and I don't want to be such
(20:40):
the purest in such a dogmatic mother where I'm limiting
what my kids are actually interested in. So actually I
rite a little. And my older daughter's actually writing her
own book at age fourteen, and she's writing it about
old Hollywood movies. So I'm pretty prone of her that
she's taken that focus and that independent drive and that
sense of wat me right, which I think is also
(21:01):
part of the rewilding experience. I can do and I
want to do, and I don't have to conform to
the scripts that culture gives me. So they're doing that
in their own ways. And what I'm very pleased about
is just that they don't have a basis in the
ecosystem that they live in, and I'm not worried for
their future should they ever be lost in the woods.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
Right, if the present Jessica went back in time to
talk to the Jessica right before this change and tell
her what was to come, what would that conversation sound like.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
I think I would be really encouraging myself, because there
definitely are doubt right when you start out on that
epic quest to find something. You and I were discussing
this earlier, you know, like when you're not in a
good state, you feel like something in drastically off with
your life. We all you can do is have that
fay that you will find it. You can keep pursuing it,
(21:54):
and if you keep, you know, saying yes to opportunities,
inviting people in your life, you know, doing your best
every day. So I think it would be an encouraging
conversation where I'd say you will find it, you know,
but just don't give up and don't stop because that
restless sense that something is off in your life that
is not something you should acclimate to. It is definitely
(22:17):
pointing you in the direction that your soul, your spirit
and body in your mind you need and that discomfort
is there to inform you that you know, things would
be a lot better and they will be better. Continually
listen to.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
It, would Jessica two point, I would say to you
have patience, that have faith, yeah, and just.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Keep going and don't you know when you have your
down days, get yourself up as fast as you can,
like learn those resilient skills and that things will be hard.
So I have to say techniques of mindfulness and being
present have also enriched my life. And you know, the
way I connect this back to the unique kind of
(22:54):
scholarship in my book is that when we look at
the consciousness of a hunter gatherer, of a wild human
is very much in the presence. It is not about oh,
I'll store up these goods and I'll get this mutual
fund and I'll be okay in the future. They're not
kind of regretting and wondering what they said to somebody
in the past. You know, it's all about now, what
(23:16):
are my opportunities now? Can I socialize? Can I recreate?
Should I be gathering food? And then there isn't an
incessant need be productive in the original human societies, right.
This is something that we've developed in civilization of the
Protestant work ethics. This idea of orting and accumulating goods
for the future not essential to how humans survive on
(23:37):
the planet. So when I, you know, pressure myself to
get back into that original state of consciousness, that presentness,
that also brings a lot of peace, right And there
we know that the Eastern religious and spiritual traditions and
even the kind of contemporary rondous lot of mindfulness, this
is offering the same wisdom. It's just rarely connected back
to you know, maybe indigenous consciousness or how under gatherers
(24:01):
relate to one another in the present moment. It's more
sort of mystified as a missed technology. But I think
it's so much more more ancient, right, and it's kind
of embedded in our DNA to have the same way
of processing information as the deer does, as the bobcat does,
as the bird does. Just today, now, what can I do? Well?
Speaker 3 (24:23):
If you had a failure, what was one of your
biggest failures that you turned into one of your biggest assets?
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Ily kidness, What a tough question?
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Maybe what obstacle came in your way and you thought,
I don't know if I'm going to be able to
get around this, and then you turned it around to
your advantage.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
So becoming an independent female, right, so no longer attached
to a job or an institution or a marriage, right
and not having a partnership where I can rely on
somebody else consistently. And then putting that in the context
of the COVID lockdown, I you know, had to make
(25:02):
a lot of it is in terms of changing my life,
Like I moved to the city to the country, I
was able to, you know, kind of snatch up this
property where I could do the land and having to
do that all myself, right, there are many breakdowns like
oh can I do this? You know, even down to
a detail like okay, I can't even get a couch
(25:24):
or a bed into this new house I've bought, which
is I can't carry it myself, and then nobody's willing
to help me because it's the November twenty twenty thirgs.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Right.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
So then realizing that I can make adjustments in my life.
I can get a bean back and I can get
the mattress, that I can carry myself. This idea that
I can self reliant was what got me through a
lot of challenges and still does to this day. Like
I'm always I'm very minimal, don't want to consume, don't
(25:54):
want to buy it. There's a problem I have and
there's a solution to it. I really like to be
able to th alve that myself and not have to
call Hinder the sixy guy, or you know, buy something
from amazonon and have it delivered to by door the
next day. Like that just feels really terrible to me.
So I spend a lot of time working on my
own kind of handmade solutions. It's aly living issues and
(26:17):
not that that should negate this idea that we need
each other, that we need social support, that we need community.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Right.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
What I don't like that I don't think we need
dependence on the global industrial machine. Right. So the more
I can create flup alliance and myself encourage that in
my close community around me, I think, the better off
we will be, and the closer we are to how
we originally live.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
What's the house like, what are the meals like? Take
me through Jessica's world.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
Well, yeah, I'm really an advocate of whole googs. One
of the things that started me on my quest was
understanding this dentist from the nineteen twenties named Western a Price.
You're familiar with.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
Them, I am very familiar with him.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Yes, yeah, So this guy went around the world and
he looked at traditional cultures everywhere with his eventful lenses
and saying like, why aren't they getting cavities, Why are
their teep not crowded? You know, why are they keeping
their teeth until they're seventy five years old? Which is
so extraordinary giving how our culture, you know, with our
massive consumption of sugar and carbs and our sort of
(27:17):
soft predigested food that we eat, and especially from a
young age. He came to the conclusion that like, oh,
we need to be eating more traditional diets, right, because
every kind of advance that we've made in the Western
diet has created you know, small jaws, crowded heat, more cavities.
People now are dependent on the dentist in order to
(27:38):
keep eating right and being healthy people. So I'm really
acquired by the Western price insights and really try to
eat a lot of traditional foods, including you know, like
fermented and cabbage, the saur kraut meat that every day. Really,
you know, I'm not a nutrition's were a scientists, but
from my studies and looking into things, liver is really
one of the most nutrient dents as you can buy.
(28:01):
So Triana gets the liver in there whatever palatable way
you possibly can. And then looking at micro nutrients, right,
you can get your macro trants, your carbs, your bats,
your protein, but what about you know, those trace elements.
And so having kind of a sea based dish or
adding sprinklings and seaweat on something making sure that I'm
eating fish for omega threes, right, I'm really focused on
(28:24):
that traditional yet easing the science that we know now
about nutrition to create meals. And then you know, I
have picking eaters. So I find that my kitchen is
just an experimental zone of you know, palatability and nutrition, right,
they're kind of battling each other every day. But I'm
really lucky that I get to have my kids, you know,
(28:45):
about seventy five percent of the time, and making three
meals a day for them, trying not to eat out
very much at all, and really just making our home
about food because that is what human life is about.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
Yeah, I wish then A Price was very impressed with
how straight their teeth were and how white their teeth were.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Yes, not eating those staining material is the coffee, the.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Wine, without any toothbrushes, without any toothpaste.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Right, and then you know, being able to heal if
they did have dental cavities. It was like he discovered
that they can actually kind of disappear if they're eating
the right kind of SATs and watching the amount of
sugar that's going in.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
So now I know you're doing I guess maybe a
hybrid version of what you may be ideally see in
your brain at some point or in your mind of
doing it. But do you miss anything from your previous life?
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Nope? Well, see I'm not a person who has a
lot of regrets. No, and I don't mean to not
be self critical is also important as well, But nope.
I feel having a present focus, you know, doing my
best every day, that's all I can do. So no,
I don't. I don't want to say.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
Think when people meet you, Jessica outside and of where
you live and thrive, what do they think about how
you're living your life?
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Well, I think many people are yearning for a life
that's closers in nature, right, And I know that a
lot of my city trends yearn to have that release,
like oh, I can't even hear any sirens, I can't
hear the highway, I can't hear I say, leaf blowers
that are always going on in my neighborhood or wherever
I am. They want that kind of peace and retreat.
(30:22):
So the fact that I've kind of established that for
myself a prioritizing in my life is inspiring to folks.
And I have visitors coming through here. A lot love
to give people that gift of like let's go on
a hike and I'll show you this wonderful creek. I
think people want that and more. Since the pandemic, a
lot of people have been trying to seek that exodus
(30:43):
from the insanity of urban life. That's going to be
a channe that continues.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
What changes do you feel anyone can and should make
in their life to try to capture what you did
in the beginning if they're not ready to make the
leap of faith that you did. I think that.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Everybody need more outdoor time, and it's really not that difficult.
If you decide to place one indoor activity, just move
it outside somehow. Even if you're living in the Tallet
department building in Manhattan or Singapore, you can still live
in an outdoor cafe and take an entire meal there,
or you can, you know, go on your walk while
you're doing your phone calls outside. There are so many
(31:22):
things we can do, and there's incredible benefits to being
outside that you know, you may not be completely conscious of.
In your fronts are low, but by getting the you know,
the wind and the exposure to move the elements, the
sunshine for the bag and deeproduction. Even microbes and the
soil have been shown to have an antidepressant effect on us.
So I think anybody anywhere can spend more time outside
(31:45):
and should. There's also ways to bring nature inside, right,
so I think the huge span of houseplants and also
growing some of your own culinary herbs inside. Whatever you
can do to have a direct relationship with plants and
animals I think is also extremely important. You know, people
can decide whatever they're interested in. Picking on a hobby
(32:05):
that isn't screen based, I think is also another really
beneficial thing. Doing an activity with your hands, whether they're
dating woodworking, or giving up your food process or just
to spend a little more time topping and preparing your food, right,
that has benefit. It's been amazing to me. I've been
doing a lot of workshops teaching them how to make
various crafts or food, you know, preparation from natural materials,
(32:30):
from foraged goods. And I'm always amazed that people have
lost a lot of hand strength, right, and we're not
even given these challenges anymore. But think about like a
lighter wand you know you're trying to light a fire,
or you're trying to melt some wax or do something
with a flame. Many people do not have the hand
strength anymore to press them the button on this lighter
(32:52):
wand right, or even like a BG. So I think
anything you can do to improve your hand strength as
well for survival, readon, like you never know you're going
to need to, you know, escape a vehicle or climb
a tree or do something with your hands, and you
won't have the strength there. So the sort of bathic
things and then rewilding can get extremely complicated and you know,
(33:14):
very intense in terms of your engagement, like wanting to
build a shelter and go live in it in the
woods for a couple of weeks, find your own fings,
going plunting, fishing, tanning hides, making things out of fish skin,
like you can take it as far as you want.
That I think the healthiest thing to new it is
supposed to be outside more.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
Can you tell us the story of the Red Fox?
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Sure? Yeah, Well my first initiation into the world of
wild skills was to attend a creative skills gathering outside
of Sarah Barbara called the Acorn Gathering. This was back
in twenty eighteen. It's pretty shocking, but also wonderfully familiar
and comforting to be among people. And we were sort
of like this I don't know, hunter gatherer village where
(33:56):
everywhere you look to people were doing crafts and activities
with natural materials, enjoying the sunshine, being outside, kids running free,
climbing trees, kids you know, around fires, nobody cautioning them
because they trust the autonomy of the child to know
what is dangerous, which is not something our culture is
good at. Who I was in this rented camper van
(34:17):
I had with my kids, and I had just seen
a bunch of people processing roadkill, right, so making use
of this horrific waste material that we have in our society.
One million animals are killed every day on American road sides,
just you know, when you stop and think about that,
it's a horrible holocaust of life. So I was really pleased,
(34:41):
yet also a little bit disgusted to see how their
bodies and skins would be turned into useful items for folks.
And on this drive back home, I started a roadkill.
I spotted this red fox must like her road and
something just took over me, and I was like, I
got to get that box, and I have to try
to red with life, and I've got to learn to
skid it, and I got to, you know, figure out
(35:03):
what to do with this body that's just been gifted
on the roadside. So that's how my book begins, is
what did I do with this fox? And how I
initially sort of mangled my processing of it, which just
demonstrated that I had so much more to learn, and
that we have lost our culture of elders, we have
lost our culture of skills, and so everything has to
(35:25):
be learned kind of painfully, step by step, really engaging
and staying committed to rewilding. So the Fox culture represents
sort of the challenge ahead for me, and also the
tragedy of civilization and this wasted life that our culture
has created.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
Well, speaking of rewilding, are more and more people doing
this under the radar, as it were, and not broadcasting
it from the mountaintops.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Well, I wouldn't know then, But I have to say, ironically,
one of my biggest sources for finding contact, interview and
even knowing about sort of small press books that were
anti civilization was social media. Right. So there's a lot
of folks, especially in the millennial generation, who, you know,
(36:10):
maybe their lifestyle is just that they're tanning hides, but
they're putting it up. They're putting up these beautiful pictures
and tutorial on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and you know, I
see that as a good thing. And yes, of course
it is a huge contradiction. But when you think about
the fact that Our primary human need, after food, water, shelter,
(36:31):
health care, is social support, is that social life be involved,
to be social creatures. And right now, in this moment
twenty twenty four, the easiest way to be social is
through that medium, right is through using the digital technology.
So again and again I would hear people say, you know,
like this is my only vice, rewilders folks who are
(36:53):
super back to nature, but they're on Facebook, right, because
we cannot deny our human need for that social contact.
And I think it's really kind of a false critique
to bludging people who are saying they want to live
a life that's closer to nature, and yet they're putting
it on Instagram, because what else are we supposing to
connect at this point?
Speaker 3 (37:12):
Yeah, I always fight it amusing that you see these
YouTube videos and they're you know, all these people were
off the grid. Yeah, you're not really off the grid.
If you have a YouTube page, you can't be off
the grid. There is no off the grid. Yeah, do
your best and utilize it, have it as a tool
and yes, and have it as a connection to many.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Right, and realize that without that human need, you know,
a lot of us would see can die isolation. Is
like smoking a packa day of cigarettes. So yeah, it's
lamentable that these corporations have kind of dolen our meet,
your sociolity and folded back to us. But you know,
this is where we're at, and I think a lot
of people are learning and opening up sinuays of life
(37:51):
because of the connections on Facebook, Instagram, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
TikTok. What was one of the most scariest moments so
far in your new place? Was it August twenty one?
Speaker 1 (38:00):
Yeah, and you're acting about when I got evacuated to
the Caldor fire. Stumbling was a scary moment in which
tested my sort of newfound minimalism, where it was like
imagining over and over flames coming over my land and
consuming my house right everything that I had and had builtzeba.
So I would say that was scary, and also it
(38:22):
was easy to leap. It was like, Nope, I've spent
a lot of years trying not to be attached, trying
to rely on myself to know that I'm going to
be okay and my family is still to be okay
if we you know, if we can support each other
and if we can take the right action. So when
we were evacuated. I worked with neighbors, you know, we
made sure that animals got out to safety and that
(38:45):
everybody in the neighborhood had a plan for how they
were going to leave. And luckily the fire did not
touch us, although it did burn, you know, possibly two
hundred thousand acres crossed thirty miles in the Eldorado National Forest.
It was a huge, tragic wildfire. Sure of things to
come right, but we've survived and we can strengthen ourselves
through that.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
What's one of the biggest things that you've learned so
far about yourself, Jessica, I think.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
It was that much of my life was fear based,
and so much of my personal motivation and the things
that I wanted to do and accomplish were out of fear.
What if I don't have money, what if I can't
find a partner, what if you know, I get sick,
as my mother was sick my entire childhood, right, So
a lot of fear and anxiety motivating everything I did,
(39:31):
and then looking around me, the flashpoint of COVID with
that kind of fear and anxiety running or on everybody
and getting inflicting information from different sources, that really made
me realize that what I wanted most in my life
was to have less fear in credit, eradicate it whenever
it showed up in my nervousness, right, and to try
(39:52):
to use more constructive and less fear based motivation tactics
for myself, and also to think about, Okay, I go
for a fire cup, so my house is burnt, Then
what what do I do? Well, I can't be afraid
of that. I just I can spare as much as possible.
That's all you can do. And fear doesn't serve a purpose.
Right in our culture, we have gotten way. Let's beyond
(40:15):
the initial kind of biological evolutionary purpose of fear, which
is to escape a threat in the moment, Right that
my scare elevates your sympathetic nervous system. You fight, you fight,
were you free? That's what our fear is post itching
for us. But these days the fear is lingering, it's long,
(40:36):
it's chronic, it's causing all sorts of ailments, stress related illnesses,
et cetera. So for me to get away from that
fear is the healthiest, most exciting thing I can do
in my life.
Speaker 3 (40:47):
And finally, how do you see us moving forward as
a society. Do you think more and more people, even
if they haven't discovered you or read your book, you
think more people are going to have this yearning to
either rewild or get into nature as much as possible.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
Night. I really hope so, and I do see signs
that that's happening, although there is absolutely the counteracting prend
What do you think about I don't know. Ninety percent
of children born in Singapore will need glasses speacause of
myopia being implied being on screens. You know, in the
next few years, we're really fighting a huge cultural force
(41:24):
with artificial intelligence, even kind of the drive towards green technology,
which I think will never succeed. You know, the people
kind of trumpeting progress and technology and developments, their voices
are always going to be louder than the people saying
come back to where we came from, let's go back
to nature. But there will will be folks who kind
of speak through the screens the smoke to reconnect themselves
(41:47):
and to feel the personal satisfaction, the helpful lifestyle that
comes through being in nature. And I think, you know,
we have limited tonight, right, We're running out of resources
there's global climate change. Now we're seeing the effects of
it and how it's checks are not distributed evenly around
the globe, and we're going to see mass migrations, We're
(42:08):
going to see fights over water, we're going to see
global conflicts etholate. But we are freaking the biggest challenges
of our civilization. And I do hope that the people
who are yearning for a more nature connection will find
the resources they need to get that.
Speaker 3 (42:21):
Jessica carew Craft, thank you so much for all your
stories and for sharing your wisdom with us today.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
Thank you so much. It's been great talking to you,
and I love your show. What you're doing is fantastic
giving people information about health and new ideas and things
they might not hear on from the extream media. So
kudos to you.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
Thank you so much, and thanks for saying.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
That the Good Foods podcast is that entertainment purposes only.
The claims, comments, opinions, or information heard should never be
used in place of your medical provider's advice or your
doctor's direction. Thank you for listening, follow us on social
media and wherever you get your podcasts. Good Health through
(43:04):
Good Food, Good Foods, Grocery
Popular 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!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.