Speaker 1hello and welcome back my beauties how the hell are you doing man it's been a while right as i said before i will be making these podcasts weekly again really soon i am literally two chapters away from finishing my new book and as soon as that bad boy is finished i will be cracking back on with the weekly podcasts as well as new material with james kennedy and the underdogs it's all going to be happening baby i'll be switching gears and picking back up where i left off after trying to squeeze the writing of a book into six months when i was actually given a year by the publisher but as you know i've had this weird long covid slash grief slash ptsd weird thing which kind of made me ill for six months so i was unable to do anything at all so i've had to squeeze in in some kind of writing frenzy the entire writing of the second book into like me a few months so i appreciate your patience in me putting the podcast on hold i have been dribbling out a few bonus episodes along the way which i hope you've enjoyed and like i said normal business will resume in the new year so if you haven't yet subscribed to the james kennedy podcast get on it come on what are you doing with your life we're on spotify apple cast box stitcher acast youtube we're fucking everywhere man you know what i mean i make it easy for you all you gotta do is hit the subscribe or the follow button and you will get delicious pearls of wisdom notified into your platform of choice without you having to do anything so what's not to love get on it the book is going well the man i will say you know i'm i'm proud of how it's come together it's a different book to what i thought it was going to be when i started the thing tons and tons and tons of research have gone into it i hope it's going to be a uh a valid and worthy addition to your bookshelf so stay tuned on that and as well as the frenzy of writing i've also been uh you know hitting it hard with james kennedy and the underdogs we did an awesome gig at the cardiff globe theater just a few weeks ago where we premiered what will be a new song coming soon which i'm not going to tell you anything more about because i just want it to be like an awesome surprise when it drops and i got a chance to like you know wave the old palestinian flag and shoot confetti everywhere and all that sort of stuff good fun was had by all i think so that's been me man what have you guys been up to i mean you know as we rattle towards the end of the year there is pretty much one thing and one thing only which is dominating all of our lives right now so i probably won't have much else to report and there may be one or two other podcast episodes dropping before the year is out but as a general rule i'm pretty much on the wind down now you know glad to see the back of the wheel and i'm in all honesty i mean i've been ill for half of it it's not been an easy year for me but if i can reach the end of the year with the new book done my health back in shape i come running out of the gates in 2024 with both fists swinging then i'll be happy but let's get down to business man because i have got an awesome awesome one for you guys today you're gonna love this episode today's guest has got an insane life story what a journey they've had and what a beacon of insight and wisdom they are as a result of it i know i'm gonna learn a lot that's gonna help me on my 2024 journey and i think it'll help you too so how about i stop blabbering and let's get them on where does one start when introducing today's guest multi new york times best-selling author founder of the i quit sugar movement international keynote speaker a philosopher a teacher an explorer host of the excellent wild podcast and one of the top 200 most influential authors in the world not to mention her former career as editor-in-chief of the i quit sugar movement editor of cosmopolitan magazine australia and host of the first season of australia's master chef which is the most watched tv series show in the country's history wow what a resume what a human what an honor it is to have them with us today i'm talking of course about the one the only the unstoppable and the brilliant sarah wilson sarah thanks so much for doing this man how you
Speaker 2doing thank you for that kind intro james i'm great um i always feel really old when people do my intro because i just realize you know god that's it's a fair bit of stuff right but it's
Speaker 1simply because i've been around a while it's a lot of stuff i don't think it's because you've been around a while we've all been around a while i'm not that many years behind you i'm hot on your heels and like i i'm nowhere near that level dude so you're clearly made of different stuff and uh you've had a hell of a life man i mean when you hear all of that do you feel a sense of achievement or are you like me and that no matter what you do as soon as it's done you're
Speaker 2immediately looking at the top of the next mountain oh totally the latter i'm very much like that i um yeah i actually get it gets pointed out to me every now and then like oh wow did you celebrate whatever it is that i might have done and i'm like no no no i can't be bothered like as soon as i've finished something i i'm really on to the next thing right um so yeah it's always been i mean i don't know that i am overly ambitious it's just that i've got lots of that i need to attend to in this lifetime you know and um and the achievements or the you know whatever it is the awards whatever that you get along they don't really um they don't really matter to me i i very rarely pause on them i very rarely turn up to the award nights or whatever it might be um because i i kind of it's the doing of the things that i enjoy doing if that makes sense rather than the getting there yeah
Speaker 1100 yeah yeah i'm exactly the same i just follow my curiosity that's all i've ever done when i look back really you know with the music and uh you know writing the books and now the podcast you know the podcast makes me no money and takes a lot of time as i'm sure you're aware but i mean just by following my curiosity i get to have fucking awesome conversations with people like sarah wilson you know on a wednesday morning what else am i going to be doing on a wednesday morning so yeah i mean that that makes a lot of sense to me i guess i've always kind of done the same follow my interest of my curiosity and it's led me down some um interesting roads you know
Speaker 2yeah yeah i i'm sure you're the same james you could ask you know and so how did you plan your career and i've never planned a single a single thing i've never used a resume i've just sort of started on the thing and then it becomes the thing you know a lot of my early journalism jobs were because i just happened to be the annoying work experience kid that was there at the time saying i'll do it and it's literally how my first gig in journalism um started and and and that's that's kind of how it just continued i just happened to be there doing something as an extra gig on the side and then they went oh well we might as well get you to do it you know um and i think it's not a bad way to live really um i i've actually looked into this a little bit the theory on it and the science on it and i interviewed um this this dude called um i don't know if you've heard of him marcus buckingham he's an american psychologist demographer and um he talks about this idea of tilting um and it actually started off with him looking at what it was that made the happiest women in the world happy because there'd been this big study that came out that showed that the unhappiest women in the world or happiest unhappiest people in the world were women in their early 40s who are lawyers and i'm sorry to anyone listening who fixed that profile um but he and go well you know what are the happy women doing what are they getting right and what he found was that they tilt which is to say they just move in the direction of the thing that makes most urgent and i guess you could say joyous sense in any given moment rather than trying to go well i should be doing this and i should be doing spending this amount of time on my own personal time this amount of time with my kids and this amount of time um you know my career because you know we've all got this kind of weird sense that we've got it all wrong we've got the ratios all wrong he's like you know quit that just basically tilt towards the thing that matters that's most important that uh i guess is calling you because you are the person that's best to do it uh and i and i try to live that way
Speaker 1that's really interesting man you see you're already dropping pearls of wisdom which is exactly why i invited you on today because i know you've got a lot of you know you've done a hell of a lot you've lived a lot you've learned a lot you've traveled a lot and you've shared a lot and you've condensed a lot of that stuff into your which we're going to come on to and talk about in just a bit because it's been out about two years now i think but it was recently published just this year by the awesome and lovely folks at ibooks who also published that seminal work noise damage gotta get a plug in um and we are going to talk about the book but first i want to tap into some of those other pearls of knowledge that i like i said you've got a whole catalog of and i figured a good place to start would be where are we at right now and then work our way backwards towards what we can do about it so i'm going to tell you a little bit about where do you see humanity being right now as we head towards a new year in 2024 where is humanity and where is the world that we live in right now and what are
Speaker 2our main problems how did we get there oh bloody hell that's a big one um okay so but i'm very i'm very happy to answer it because it's sort of what i'm working on at the moment um i think where are we at we are in a space i think a profound polarization uncertainty and confusion i don't um i think we're in a time of uh well environmental or ecological collapse um that's happening all around us um we can't deny that that is happening we are in it now that the thing that we were always talking about that we were trying to prevent we were working towards it's happening now um i just saw a news report today saying that we've hit uh the two degrees above pre-industrial temperatures now um and um you know it's we're sort of seeing the implications of it in australia um i'm in based in paris now but in back in australia the fires started way earlier um it's going to be a hellish summer i suspect um and and so on and so forth but we're also seeing this kind of i guess disintegration of the old world happening with the middle east crisis with the ukraine but also i think you've got an election coming up in the u.s um and you know next year uh and i think we're seeing some some real shifts happening in the world but what i think is the more important thing or actually probably just the closer to home thing that we can all be focusing on as humans living a human experience is our reaction to it the overwhelm the fear that we're all feeling and what we're seeing is that we're not handling it really well right we've had we've all grown up everyone listening to this anyone old enough to understand the language that we're speaking and watching enough to be able to you know have an iphone or whatever um we've all grown up in a time of growth and opulence right there's been ups and downs but in in the main it has been a time of growth and improvement and that's all we've known we assume that that's how life goes but it doesn't throughout history every civilization has gone through you know a sort of a growth period a sort of a brief period of stabilization before some sort of collapse and we just don't we're not used to it and so the challenge that i think we're all in at the moment wherever we are in the world is finding ways to cope with it and you know the shit fight on social media is very indicative of of how we're not coping right we polarize when we face threat and uncertainty we go into a sort of a tribal mindset where there's us and then an enemy out there and that's why people like trump do so well right because they create an enemy where there's i mean the enemy is us the enemy is the system the enemy is our over consumption and our ridiculous belief that infinite growth and consumption on a finite planet could somehow stack up right um and that's all really sad but um yeah we we don't need to be creating extra enemies and so we've got to keep a watch on that and we've got to get way better at it because this isn't going to go away we're not going to suddenly go back to normal that ain't going to happen we've just got to get better at how we do life so that's that's the state of the planet um through my eyes
Speaker 1agree yeah and that that was a big question you fucking nailed it in one fell swoop so um yeah brilliantly put man i totally agree with you because yeah i i i do feel myself that when we look at the state of the world what we're seeing on the outside when we look at the world you know environmental degradation waste inequality a health crisis the climate crisis it's almost like a reflection of what we're feeling on the inside isn't it you know a sense of disconnect of isolation and individualism a hopelessness almost you know um and the growth period that you mentioned is almost kind of polluted our values you know we've now got this kind of value system of every man for himself you know reliance on quick fixes and quick relief um and as you say in your new book when you start pulling apart all of these issues the inner and the outer layer by layer ultimately all roads end up leading back to capitalism i absolutely agree with that but
Speaker 2could you elaborate on what you mean by that yeah it's funny when i first wrote that part of the book um it was actually it was just before covid started so this book um is a covid baby because i started writing it and was very tentative about putting these ideas forth and then covid happened and i think we all kind of had a moment to sit back we kind of were sent to our bedroom you know to go and have a good hard look at ourselves that's how i see covid in many ways um it was a time to kind of go oh shit have we got this right but then as a result of it i actually felt a little bit bolshie and i felt like i could um kind of go pretty hard on this capitalism piece in the book and it proved to be a really popular chapter in the book people went oh my god i had never seen it that way yeah um capitalism was a system is a system that did serve humanity for quite some time you know it did lead to progress um it enhanced democracies around the world for quite some time um and i think in its original form it it kind of it kind of worked and then we then got this next chapter in the 19 sort of 80s neoliberalism and that was sort of thatcher and reagan coming in and going let's add this up a bit and what we're going to do is we're going to get rid of the structures that keep an eye on the market 100 we're going to actually downgrade government intervention community groups social uh social groups trade unions all of this kind of thing we're going to sort of dial them down so that the market reigns and that's where things started to get really really wobbly and um it's really hard for people um who've only known capitalism haven't seen it in any other framing um to see that it's it's actually just a construct and it's not a construct that worked uh throughout you know it's not something we've had as part of the human experience from the beginning and um and constructs can be great and then they no longer service and we've got to move on and that's something that i think a lot of people do find really hard to fathom because well oh gosh you know without growth what are we and without the market system that you know um corrects itself you know what you're talking about in a communist system sarah you know you're talking socialism and of course i'm not um although i think both communism and socialism have benefits to them and um you know there's
Speaker 1always nice happy grown they're both completely different systems as well aren't they i mean there's this linguistic uh dissonance i think in america where they think socialism is communism and they're very very very different things yeah that's right that's
Speaker 2right and there's elements of um socialism that can be very very well incorporated into capitalism and in fact they were in the original days but look in the book i line up the definition of a cult um as per wikipedia and i i run down the definition of you know the official definition of a cult and i basically line up capitalism next to each entry and honestly it is a match for match you know the mindset of a cult um is really very similar to the mindset of capitalism where we think that there's no other system beyond it we think that any other framing must be uh problematic um and so on you know and once you actually see it through that lens you can then start to be critical of it in a way that's productive and where you can you can actually go well which parts of this can serve me you know i remember somebody once said um it's a quote from a metam metamodernist thinker who said look all systems and theories are um you know are wrong like are not you know completely true we've got problems however we you know some of them can be useful right and and that's what capitalism should be we should be basically using the bits that are useful now the thing is you know i mentioned this before this equation that capitalism works to infinite growth on a finite planet that is insanity it doesn't stack up and we now know this we have entered overshoot which is basically where we are using the resources um faster than they can be reproduced by nature and that's been happening since the 1970s we are now in massive overshoot we um have hit planetary boundaries and there are nine planetary boundaries we just earlier this year it was announced by this the stockholm resilience institute that we have hit the sixth or you know surpassed the sixth of the ninth of the nine planetary boundaries and the and another two are about to go we've then um we've also hit the limits to growth which was a report that was done in 1972 and they predicted that it would happen around about now the early 2020s and sure enough we have so everything that was predicted about this you know ridiculous equation has come to light and that's where we are today and capitalism no longer serves us is the is the conclusion that i draw love it yeah i totally agree i mean your assessment
Speaker 1of capitalism and its journey is one that i share i had a guy on a podcast called professor richard wilkinson who wrote an amazing book called the spirit level and he and his partner studied countries from all around the world and their relative levels of inequality and equality and how that then correlates with the social ills that they have such as you know drug addiction unemployment homelessness crime violence and in every single case and in every single country countries that have higher rates of inequality have higher rates of all of those negative metrics whereas the opposite is also true more equal countries have none of those negative metrics so it's kind of indisputable that an equal society is better for everybody and that's why we need things like socialism as dirty a word as that is in order to contain some of the excesses of unrestrained capitalism because until the 80s you know we had things like powerful unionism and then we had things like power struggle and then we had things unions and nationalized core industries you know like transport and education and health and things like that and it was only when thatcherism and reaganism came along that that was over and now we've just got complete unrestrained cancerous capitalism which is just eating everything on the planet and it's just completely unsustainable you know yeah i think sports metaphors are always
Speaker 2really useful and i refer to those kind of you know the trade unions and so on as the moral umpires on the footy field of life right right right love it football is a boring game if there are no no rules and no umpires. If it's just a free-for-all, you know, there's not the same fun, right? We go and watch it for the mechanics of the boundaries. Humans need to be bound. Like, you know, we developed religions for a good reason because we don't have the capacity to go into life and have to make the moral decisions for every single move that we make in a day. We've got to put food on the table, you know, a roof over our head and what to go about being able to know how to morally, you know, deal with things. So we create boundaries and rules and things like that so it can guide us, you know, and they remain open to discussion until they don't, and that's when religions become problematic. But that is the point of rules and moral umpires and community groups that keep these checks and balances going. And I think it's actually created a world where, yeah, it is a free-for-all, where you have open AI being able to determine, you know, what information that we're going to have access to. You have these cowboys out there like Elon Musk just making up rules that suit them, you know. And, you know, you've got social media where it is an absolute free-for-all. And the upshot is in incredible amounts of despair and suicides and, you know, a younger generation that are really suffering. That's what you get when you remove the moral umpires from the footy field.
Speaker 1I love that analogy. Yeah, it works so well. It's so simple and just sums it up perfectly. Do you feel then that even though all of us can make, you know, changes in our personal lives, and we should, of course, you know, with regards to waste and our consumption habits and our lifestyles, do you feel, though, that real change, the kind of change that we need urgently, is not actually going to be possible without global systems? Do you feel that it's going to be a systemic change? Do you think that's possible? If so, how do we get there? Because it does feel at the moment like it's a little bit unattainable, doesn't it?
Speaker 2It does. And, look, I have to be honest. I am not sure we're going to attain it. We're not going to see an entire... We're not going to be able to orchestrate an entire systemic overhaul. However, that is not to say that it won't happen. It may be thrust upon us. And I suspect that that's... That's how things are starting to go. I think there are institutions that are being disintegrated and called into question without our real input. It's just that they're crumbling, you know? Democracy is having a complete reset and reshuffle, and it's not necessarily for the good. But there are other reshufflings that I think are happening. So, you're right. For a long time in the... In the climate movement, there was this idea of the carbon footprint, that each individual could make a difference by recycling and switching to renewables and turning off their light switches and blah, blah, blah. And there is certainly a lot of worth to that. However, it should be pointed out that that whole notion of the carbon footprint was invented by British Petroleum, you know, one of the major fossil fuel companies. And it was invented to basically put the blame onto consumers. And it was invented to basically put the blame onto consumers. And it was invented to basically put the blame onto consumers. And I came across this with my, you know, I quit sugar work 10 years ago. I realized that what the sugar companies, and in this case, it was Coca-Cola, did this particular campaign. They did this campaign when I was still running the business, where they came out with this calories in, calories out kind of concept, right? So, you can go and drink as much Coke as you want, you know, eat as much sugar as you like. You just got to burn it off, right? Right. So, it... Put the onus back onto the individual, right?
Speaker 1Got it, yeah.
Speaker 2The problem isn't sugar. It's the fact that you're not burning off.
Speaker 1It's you. Enough of it.
Speaker 2Yeah, you're not exercising. And so, they brought out all these doctors and we all... We bought into that slogan, right? It's a completely made-up slogan with no science behind it. But I bought into it for a long time. We all did. And so, this is what these major companies do. They... When they want to avoid responsibility, they turn it onto the individual. And my God, do we lap it up because we do guilt and shame so wonderfully as humans. And then we go, oh my God, we're bound to fix this and I'm just going to do it and I've got to get all my neighbors to do it. I'm going to yell at them and get angry with them. And of course, that creates more polarization and, you know, dot, dot, dot, the world that we live in now. So, on the one hand, yes, it's a problem that this carbon footprint theory is out there. But what I... But on the other hand, and... And yes, systemic change at a government level, at a corporate level is what needs to happen. It puts us in a bit of a bind, though, because what can we do? Well, we can shift our money to better banks. We can divest. We can put pressure on governments. We can vote for governments that will, you know, put in climate policies, which is what we did in Australia. And I worked on that campaign for a year and a half and we got in a left-leaning government, a bit of an anomaly in the world today. And they came in with a bunch of climate policies, climate promises. And unfortunately, they haven't fully lived up to it. They're better than the other option. But, yeah, there's been a couple of fossil fuel projects that have been approved under this new government. So, it's imperfect. It's slow. It's not going to happen in time. However, we've still got to do the recycling.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 2We've still got to do, be engaged, because that is what the human spirit is about, James. Like, if we don't have that, then who are we? And, you know, this has come up recently with the Middle East stuff. You know, there's a lot of debate whether the ceasefire is what we need to be doing. Well, my argument is we need to call for a ceasefire, even if it's naive, even if it's not, you know, perfectly achievable. We, as everyday citizens, must call for it. And then it's up to our governments to then tell us why they're having to make compromises and backwards and forwards treaties and discussions with Israel. But we, as humans, need to call for these fundamental, morally important things, which is exactly why we should also fight for the climate and we should be living in congruence. And that's the really important bit. I talk about that in the book, this notion of being in attunement with life. So much of what we're doing is out of attunement with the flow and the rhythms of life. And what that does is it creates this horrible, horrible, um, dissonance in our being. We are not living kind of in the patterns and so of life. And so we feel this incredible disconnect and loneliness. And the loneliness piece is massive. You know, the UK, I think, is one of the loneliest places. Well, when the UK was part of the European Union in the EU. And, you know, I think there's a loneliness minister in Britain that's trying to attend to this issue. Our loneliness is, not just our loneliness from other people, our loneliness is from our relationship with life, you know, with the rhythms of life. And if we want to be in the rhythm of life, it's, we want to be saving it, not wasting it and exploiting it and abusing it.
Speaker 1Amen. Yeah, 100% agree with you, man. I'm beautifully put as well.
Speaker 2I don't know if I answered the question there. I can't remember what the question was. I kind of got a bit carried away.
Speaker 1It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. The answer was brilliant. The answer was brilliant. Fuck the question. Well, you've kind of segued nicely there into the next portion of the conversation where I wanted to talk to you about what can we do about all of this? What can we do to reclaim our sense of humanity and our sense of self and live this one wild and precious life to its full potential? Because through your personal journey, you know, both literal and figurative, I mean, you know, you've traveled the world and you've spoken with, you know, many of the world's heavy hitters in the world of science and philosophy and spirituality. Kind of in pursuit of answers to these existential questions. I'd like to ask you through all of that and everything that you've learned and everything that you've experienced and overcome yourself and the conversations you've had. Do you feel that there are universal and eternal truths to the human experience? Because I feel like since the dawn of time, we've been trying to answer these questions, whether it's through religion or spirituality or paganism or, you know, now through science. I think it's much the same thing. I think. We're looking out at nature. We're looking inwards to ourselves and we're trying to answer the questions, you know, about meaning. What do I mean? What does it all mean? You know, life and death, happiness, good health, how to live the best life. Is there a right way to live, you know, morality? I feel like humanity has been searching for an answer to these questions since the dawn of time. And I'd just love to ask, I know it's a big question, but do you feel through everything that you've experienced and all the conversations you've had and all of your personal journey and exploration, do you feel that there are universal, eternal human truths and if so, what are they?
Speaker 2That's an awesome question. I mean, I could answer it from all different angles, but maybe I should answer it with sort of a way that I almost answer it in a book. So, you know, as you know, I hike around the world with this, you know, 15 kilo backpack in the footsteps of different philosophers, etc. to almost answer that very question. Like, what is it we're here to do? You know, and what I, find myself asking, and I quote a wonderful quote, poet he's an irish uh english poet called david white and he sort of says there's always more beautiful questions to be asked and one of the more beautiful questions that i ask in the book is from a wonderful philosopher called eric from and he he once asked and it's buried in one of these books and i pulled it out and then i now use it you know all the time in my podcasts and And the question is this, what is left if we lose it all? And it's amazing how many people don't quite get the question and then other people who know it straight away. But basically, if we are stripped of all the things that we have got attached to in this life, you know, I don't know, our identity, our things, our attachment to our job, our career, our reputation and so on. If we were to lose all those things, as well as, you know, maybe losing the security of a stable planet and so on, what is left at the end of the day? What is it that will sustain us? And I answer it actually with Eric Fromm's answer, which is he has boiled it down to making his life a study in work and love. And he gives wonderful reasons as to why. Those two things are what matter. And I tend to agree. And, you know, I sort of say in the book that for me, you know, attending to my work, that is this vigilant going down deeper and deeper into what I can do to be of service in this lifetime is something that, you know, I've really enjoyed doing. And I've had the wonderful, wonderful privilege of being able to do it as a day-to-day thing. Some people do it on the side, you know, their day job. And then on their side, they do. They do their sort of service work. And then I sort of am honest about it. For me, I struggle with the idea of love. That will always be the thing that I have to study, you know. And so I think those two elements are really fundamental. And I do come across it in all different ways, in different traditions. We have to contribute. To be of service is 100% important. And, you know, I start off actually in my other... In my other book, First We Make the Beast Beautiful, which is about my journey with anxiety and a reframing of it into a sort of more of a philosophical and spiritual framing. I start off that book with, you know, a quote, a question I put to His Holiness the Dalai Lama. And where I basically say, you know, how do we stop our minds from chattering? He says, don't bother. Don't bother. And I'm like, what the hell? The Dalai Lama is going, don't bother. He's like, there's more important things to do. And he basically says, altruism. Basically, being of service to others is a better use of your time. And it's that parable, James, of the monk who goes up in the mountain and the cave and meditates for two years and, you know, gets all zen and everything. And then wakes up one day and goes, oh, my God, I've got to go back down the mountain to the village and actually impart this wisdom and this stillness and this peace. There's no point being up in the mountain doing all this meditative stuff. We have to be of service. So, yeah, that's something I think that's really core. At the end of the day, it's love and being of service. That's what defines our humanity.
Speaker 1Wow. Love it. Man, that was amazing. Yeah. I mean, you got answers for everything, man. I love it.
Speaker 2They're kind of not my answers. I mean, I've made a career, I suppose, out of, like, going around the world and meeting up with people way wiser and smarter and older than me and going, so, what's the answer to this? And then I curate it. I mean, that's what I do. I'm a conduit. I can take complex information and then I try to break it down into a way that everyday people who are, you know, bogged down with kids and the whole thing in a way that they can go, oh, I get it. You know, that's my mission in life anyway.
Speaker 1Love it. Well, that's exactly why I got you on the podcast. You know, I was like, well, who's going to be able to clear up all my existential turmoil, you know, clear up my angst for me? I know just the person. Well, look, we've talked about the problems. You've explained. You've explained very articulately, you know, where we're at and what we're dealing with and where we're headed. So, what can we do? I know you've done a lot of work on this, you know, with regards to health and happiness and mental health and spirituality and meaning and all that good stuff. So, let's dive both feet into that. Yeah. What can we do to turn this around, to live our one wild and precious life to its full potential and save the planet and our future in the process? Tell us.
Speaker 2Yeah. Well, there's some fundamentals and I like fundamentals that tick off. There are about five different. There are about five different goals at the same time. They're the ones that keep me really satisfied and make my A-type personality kind of go, yep, this is good. This is the right answer. So, look, one of them is meditation. Meditation is non-negotiable. I kind of, yeah, and look, do as I say, not as I do because I go through slabs of time where I just can't face it and that's cool, right? You do it as you can. The best idea is just to give it a go and there's all different ways to go about that. But it really does work and you can be terribly. Bad at it as I am, it still does its job in a similar vein, walking in nature. So I call it hiking, whatever you want to call it. It just works. There are about 42,000 studies that have been done around the world on the benefits of walking in nature and so much so that in Japan and South Korea, the health programs, the health policies incorporate what's called forest bathing. And it's also been incorporated in different parts of Scandinavia. In California, because the science is so conclusive. And there's all different studies that show that the chemicals that trees release have a big part to play in rebalancing our anxiety. There's, you know, even, I mean, I've got a bunch of different favorite studies. One of them is like the observation that we became humans on two feet. So we emerged from being on all fours onto two feet. And as we learn to walk. Part of the brain that controls discerning thought and creative thought is the part of the brain that grew. So our brains got bigger because we stood on two feet. We're able to reach more nutritious food. We, our hands were freed up to do different things. That's how we became top of the food chain species. And what that means is that when we walk, we actually best access discerning thought. So walking at a moderate pace through nature is what actually. Brings about our best thinking. And that's why there was that big phase. And I think it continues the walking meetings, you know, psychiatrists. I know in New York took to doing their, their sessions with patients walking through Central Park. We can actually access, you know, incredibly awesome thinking by walking in nature. The other thing, just to bring it back to that congruence and attunement that we were talking about earlier. So there's fractals in our arms. And in nature. So fractals are repeated patterns. So if you think of the petals of a flower or the rings of a tree trunk or tidal pools, they're patterns that repeat out. Our retinas in our eyes are also made up of fractals. And when our eyes connect with these patternings in nature, there's this kind of, you know, sucking in connection point. And, you know, anyone who's got, sorry, this is not an ad for Apple Mac computers, but you know that. They're old power chords where you, they'd sort of, you had a magnetizing thing and sort of just suck itself in. Right. It was just like nice snug. It's kind of, I always think of that, you know, when I think of attunement, we kind of click in, you know, in this beautiful snug way into the flow of life when we walk in nature, because these fractal patternings bring us back to a sense of belonging and like this idea that, ah, this makes sense. You know, we're meant to be part of this. And look, there's countless other studies. They show that this process of walking in nature, it just does its job. And a lot of people go, well, how do I do it? I'm like, don't worry about it. 20 minutes will generally kind of work, but longer is better. And you can even just walk in sort of, you know, suburban parks. It will also do its job. And studies have shown that that's the case. So just start walking. You don't have to do anything else and you'll get home and the job will be done on you. So to that end, the other thing that you can do to make one of the biggest difference to the planet is to get rid of your car. Get rid of a car in your life. It forces you to walk. You then connect more with your community. You then have the benefits of, you know, all those walking studies. You also just, I say in the book, walking or riding a bike sticks up two fingers to the whole capitalist concept of cars and, you know, moving fast from one place to another. And like I say, it ticks off a bunch of boxes. So there's some of the practical things you can do if you're really wanting to cut down on carbon emissions at an individual level. One of the best things you can do, and it's a surprising one to many, but the project Drawdown Project, which kind of has been following this for many, many years. It was a massive bestseller around the world. And I actually just interviewed Paul Hawken, who put that together. He's one of the OG climate activists. He's, I think. I think in his 70s, potentially 80s now. And he's still an absolute legend. One of the heroes for the climate. global climate movement but the number one thing you can do is to cut food waste so um it was ranked as number three it's number two number one now in terms of um out of a hundred different ways that you can cut carbon emissions and um this is something that people kind of can't quite believe but if food waste was a nation it would be uh the third biggest carbon emitter after the u.s and china um and and the biggest food wasters are us consumers not the supermarkets not restaurants not the farmers us um so if we were to even have the amount of food that we threw throughout and this is not just food that you know is going off in the fridge it's also like unnecessarily peeling things cutting off fat that we should be eating from foods all that kind of thing if we were to have that there'd be enough food on the planet to feed the world um and that just gives an indication of just how much food we're wasting so yeah there's some practical things you can all do and do them now oh and the other thing is don't go to the shops just stop buying it's as simple as that like recycling does not work um you know like it is high it burns more carbon than if you know then then many people are prepared to accept um only seven to nine percent of plastic which is sort of one of the more readily available recyclable items is in fact recycled um all those clothes that you think you're taking to you know thrift stores and charity stores only five percent of it gets sold the rest goes into landfill don't kid yourself recycling does not work um not consuming is the only thing that works um and so i just encourage people to then not go to the shops because buying begets buying you go to a shopping mall you go to a shopping mall you go to a shopping mall to go i don't know buy a vegetable peeler and you come home with towel sets you know a whole heap of shit you just don't need like um i mean as you might know james you know like i can go for a year 18 months at a time buy nothing other than groceries you know absolute staples so um i think there was a there was a times magazine article just last weekend i don't know when this was all about the fact that i own three pairs of knickers um i saw that yeah i don't know but it seems to uh uh fascinate people but i have lived out of you know between one backpack you know carry-on backpack and two suitcases of things for the last 15 years
Speaker 1i love it man i love your whole like the fact you're doing it as well and and all of these things make total sense and that is a real bombshell about recycling i mean that's actually the first i'd heard of that you know i feel like it's a real bombshell i mean it's a real bombshell i'm doing my bit it kind of absolves my guilt you know to put my recycling out you know thoroughly um that's something i'll definitely be taking a deep dive into because that's mental man
Speaker 2yeah yeah and it's again you know the the plastics industry they're going to be dialing up the recycling message and you'll probably notice on supermarket products they're all putting big you know made out of you know recyclable and all this kind of thing it's recyclable but it's not being recycled um and the cost of breaking down the polymers and putting them back up again and look that doesn't even bring into play um the transport costs of things right you know like if you buy a bottle of water and especially one that's come from some south pacific nation where by the way like they are suffering from lack of fresh water and i'm talking about fuji water here um that water costs a bomb to cart around the world right so leaving aside the plastic um there's all those considerations as well fucking insanity man well i'll be
Speaker 1doing a deep dive on that on an episode of the podcast coming shortly stay tuned for that listeners um right well we've got to talk about the amazing new book this one wild and precious life by sarah
Speaker 2wilson give us the lowdown on the book tell us all about it yeah um well it was my or is my um attempt my noble attempt to get people engaged in in the climate issue um and my specialty james is making things people don't want to do sexy you know it's my years at cosmo adding pink sparkle dusk to everything um that sort of you know equips me for this but um yeah people didn't want to quit sugar so i tried to make it as fun and cool and sparkly and lots of fun foods as i could um with this topic i hiked around the world like i mentioned before for three years with you know 15 kilo bag i followed in the footsteps of wordsworth in the lake district and i actually hiked with the poet david white wow um and i i went on the hunt for the world expert on forest bathing in japan and and hiked for four days up along this pilgrimage trail to meet up with this you know famous monk i got there it's hilarious i got there and i mentioned the word to him in japanese he was like what's that like i'm not joking four days i hiked to get to him um and we just burst out laughing i said you realize you're the world expert on this you are quoted everywhere and he's like oh am i um i you know i i'm not going to hike um through the jordanian desert with a bedman shepherd oh my god um i do a bunch of things um and i yeah i basically am trying to find a path through the climate crisis that we get that's actually got a spiritual philosophical element that makes sense and at the same time i parallel the journey with my journey with motherhood i was told that i could never have a number of times and there's this kind of journey through losing sort of babies and and and that kind of thing that sort of parallels the journey um and then let me see what else uh that's pretty much it i come out the other end with a very very calm happiness i basically come out the happiest i've ever been in my life and one of the conclusions that i make is that um you know the best antidote for despair and fear is action and so becoming engaged an activist if you want to call it in in saving this one wild and precious life that we have is actually the the thing that's what it's all about that's what we're here to do and um i live you know i live it i breathe it i um i don't do it because i'm you know wanting to self-flagellate um i actually do it because it's more fun than the status quo like it's this is a better way to live even if it wasn't about saving the planet this is a better way to live it's simple you know coming back to you know people saying oh you know why are you a minimalist and i often have to reply because i'm lazy i've worked out that shopping and storing the shit and then having buyers regret and all that kind of thing it makes me miserable and i've just eliminated it from the equation of my life um so yeah that's
Speaker 1the book oh man if that doesn't sell a few copies of the damn thing i don't know what will absolutely absolutely amazing this one wild and precious life by sarah wilson is out now on paper book ebook and audio book available everywhere published in the uk by our friends over at ibooks christmas is coming get yourself a copy it's going to change your life it's going to set you up for 2024 also buy a shitload of copies for christmas presents that takes care of that knowledge and health and happiness is the best gift you can give anybody so get a copy to give to people for their christmas stocking sarah wilson you gotta go and follow her on all of her socials so let me give a shout out it's underscore sarah wilson underscore on instagram she's also at sarahwilson.com she's got an awesome sub stack you should go and subscribe to and check out and her amazing podcast wild is also available everywhere sarah thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today and share all of your incredible insight and wisdom with us all i hope you know what great work you're doing and long may you continue to do it i'm off out now to go and polish and dust off my push bike and hit the road so thanks for inspiring me and i'll see you next you're an example to us all i wish you nothing but success health and happiness my friend and i
Speaker 2look forward to whatever you do next oh james you are very generous and i really um i really appreciate the care you put into chatting with me um thank you thank you very much anytime and the
Speaker 1pleasure is all mine seriously thank you for doing this i'll let you go and enjoy whatever adventures await you and hopefully we'll cross paths again best wishes with everything coming up and i'll see you again soon thank you sarah take care bye-bye you too see ya bye bye sarah legend she is literally living my dream she is clearly following the same curiosities and seeking the same answers that i've been doing my entire life you know all this all that stuff i'm that's my bag i'm well interested in all that stuff the existential the spiritual the scientific you know the the political the global the personal i love all that shit and the way that they intersect and the way that she curates it all into one kind of digestible nugget of wisdom i just think it's amazing man you know and she lives in paris she travels the world you know she's got three pairs of knickers and lives out of one fucking suitcase she's living the dream dude she's living the fucking dream so as i said if you want to follow her continued adventures and insights and wisdom go and check her out i think instagram is probably her most active social at underscore sarah wilson underscore do check her out sarah wilson.com as well for links to everything else and her sub stack is is fucking brilliant as well she's constantly updating the sub stack so subscribe to that And also check out the podcast Wild for loads of great, interesting stories. conversations with some real great minds and great thinkers also if you listen to the audiobook version of this one wild and precious life the first dude you're going to hear is me because i do the intro on the audiobook and the outro as well so just just giving you a little warning there you know what i mean if you think who the fuck is this guy it's just the intro just skip the intro and then you can get straight back into the dulcet tones of miss sarah wilson herself before i sound off and leave you to go and walk in nature burn your shopping list and get meditating i got one favor to ask for you and you know what it is because i ask you every fucking week click the subscribe button click the follow button it doesn't cost you anything it takes two seconds and it helps me out massively to keep me doing this thing if you can leave a review on apple or amazon or wherever you get your podcast if you can leave a rating on spotify or if you want to get involved in the conversation i put these things on youtube specifically for that reason even though there's audio only at the moment i put every episode on youtube as well so that you can get involved in the comments and discuss between yourselves what you think about these things and share your ideas and your thoughts and your links and insights so get involved man share the podcast and if you're new to the podcast do check out the previous episodes because we've got a lot of stuff on here now from mental health politics the music industry activism philosophy social change the climate health loads of stuff so go and have a little nose around and uh feed your mind thanks so much for listening as i said business will resume as normal in january with the weekly podcast so i can't wait to get into that i've got some fucking brilliant guests lined up already super excited to share those those conversations with you so stay tuned i shall see you next week with another episode another bonus episode i think i've done about 10 bonus episodes now they're not really bonus anymore at this point but whatever you're doing between now and then take care of yourselves take care of each other i love you loads thanks for all the support stay awesome i'll see you next week love you Thank you.
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