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Welcome to Live Free Ride Free, where we talk to people who have lived self-actualized lives on their own terms, and find out how they got there, what they do, how we can get there, what we can learn from them. How to live our best lives, find our own definition of success, and most importantly, find joy.
Your Host is New York Times bestselling author Rupert Isaacson. Long time human rights activist, Rupert helped a group of Bushmen in the Kalahari fight for their ancestral lands. He's probably best known for his autism advocacy work following the publication of his bestselling book "The Horse Boy" and "The Long Ride Home" where he tells the story of finding healing for his autistic son. Subsequently he founded New Trails Learning Systems an approach for addressing neuro-psychiatric conditions through horses, movement and nature. The methods are now used around the world in therapeutic riding program, therapy offices and schools for special needs and neuro-typical children.
You can find details of all our programs and shows on www.RupertIsaacson.com
Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Live Free
Ride Free, where we talk to people who
have lived self-actualized lives on
their own terms, and find out how they
got there, what they do, how we can
get there, what we can learn from them.
How to live our best lives, find
our own definition of success,
and most importantly, find joy.
I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson.
New York Times bestselling
author of the Horse Boy.
Founder of New Trails Learning
Systems and long ride home.com.
You can find details of all our programs
and shows on Rupert isaacson.com.
Welcome back to Live Free Ride Free.
I've got possibly the one of the
most, without a doubt, one of the
most interesting people I've ever met.
It's Craig Foster.
If you haven't watched the movie
My Octopus Teacher, then you're
lucky because you have a great,
great treat in store for you.
He's a filmmaker.
He's an author.
He's an activist.
He's an activist on behalf of nature.
And.
really the planet and our own species.
He's made numerous films.
worked with indigenous cultures all
over the world, won thousands of awards,
blah, blah, blah, all that stuff.
Sure.
And he's also just written a
book and it's a really good book.
And I'm going to let him talk
about this book and what it
means for us as a species.
But it's a book you've got to read.
I just read it.
So Craig Foster, hello.
Tell us who you are and
tell us about this book.
Craig Foster: Wonderful
to be with you, Rupert.
So great to be talking to you and
we've known each other for a long time.
So it's just great to be with you again.
Thanks for the wonderful introduction.
My book is called Amphibious Soul,
Finding the Wild in a Tame World.
And I, I spent the last 12 years diving
every day in the great African sea forest.
And I've been privileged enough
to build these relationships
with a lot of different animals.
And after many years with them.
I, they started to teach me and change me.
And I had this really strong sense that as
humans, we were living these double lives.
And I called the one life or
almost, I can almost sense that
inside of each of us, there's this
wild person and this tame person.
And the tame person I see as related
to all the wonderful comforts
and technology that we all enjoy.
And I certainly indulge in a
lot of those and enjoy them.
And then this incredible
wild person that remembers.
3 million years of extraordinary
wild memories of our genus on this
planet, and then more recently, 300,
000 years living as Homo sapiens, 98
percent of that time fully wild in
a very sophisticated, powerful way.
And I sensed that the balance between
the wild and the tame person was way off.
We said a smothering, this beautiful
wild person in all of us with the tame.
So I was interested in exploring that
and learning from these incredible
animals, learning from my indigenous
teachers learning from science and human
origins, and try to put a story together
that, you know, could be made a case
for getting this beautiful wild person
to, to come out more in, in many of us,
Rupert Isaacson: you know, obviously
you're preaching to the converted here.
I.
am a great believer in the need for
the rewilding of the human soul.
I feel that that's at the root
of the despair, which I think has
overtaken our culture, but also it's
the light that can lead us out of it.
What's interesting about the title of
your book though, amphibious, amphibious
soul, not just wild soul, just rewilding,
not, you know, getting in touch with
the ancestor or hunter gatherer.
Amphibious.
It's very specific.
Why?
Craig Foster: Yeah.
That's a great question.
I mean, I,
I literally from the first day I
was born, I went into the ocean.
My parents took me in on the very first
day I was born and we lived in the half
the house was in the intertidal zone.
So my whole life has been one of ocean.
And even my mom.
You know, when I was, she was pregnant,
would go in diving three or four
times a week while I was in her belly.
So, diving in the ocean and water
is a big part of my life and that's
where I've found true wildness.
So that's what I use, but it
doesn't mean that, you know,
Other people have to do that.
So I was interested in this
amphibious nature that we have.
So many people are drawn to
water and we are in crit.
I mean, compared to most animals on
land, we pretty useless, we slow, we
weak, but in the water, we actually
surprisingly good, we can outdive.
Almost every land animal and outswim them.
So we have this incredible
amphibious nature as humans.
And I've, you know, I'm just,
I've felt that pull to
the water so strongly.
And I know many people who've
had that and it's a push as well.
It's a, it's a pull and there's
fear associated with this as well.
Rupert Isaacson: You know, you're from
South Africa and the ocean for those
listeners who don't know that part of the
world, the ocean that Craig is talking
about is the down right at the bottom
of the Cape of Good Hope on the Atlantic
side or which really divides actually
the Atlantic from the Indian Ocean
because it's wild, it's cold water, it's
mountains to the sea, it's rough it's
not necessarily an inviting ocean when
you look at it from the outside and my
family's also partly from down that way
and so I've spent bits of time along that
coast and I'm intimidated, you know, and I
know that there's quite great whites off.
In fact, I had a cousin
who was taken by one.
And so I'm always intrigued when I see
people, there's obviously a big surfing
culture there, but when I see people able
to commit their frail bodies to this.
On the face of it, quite
hostile looking ocean.
It's not the calm Mediterranean.
It's, it's, it's scary.
I would, you know, I
would be scared to go in.
Tell us about that.
Why
does that sea with those rough ways
breaking on the rocks and why do you not
feel I will be broken upon those rocks?
What makes you feel,
yeah, I can go in there?
And I can thrive and
actually make this my home
and how much I mean, I do that.
Craig Foster: I mean, as you, you're
right in that it is the Cape of storms.
I think they're more shipwrecks
here than in, than in most places.
And it's very much about
getting to know the ocean.
And you know, know her moods, you know,
on, when there's a big Atlantic swell
coming in, you know, you're not going to
choose that part that's just, you know,
directly open to that, unless you into
big wave surfing or something like that.
Or unless you want a really wild swim,
which we sometimes do, but by watching
very closely, I mean, a lot of the places
I'm choosing are in protected bays.
I'm watching the swell, I'm
watching the tides sometimes even
diving on, you know, extreme days
in very shallow protected water.
Sometimes I do like, you know, swimming
between those, those rocks and then
these giant waves are crashing against
the rocks and like literally, you know,
breaking over the rocks over my head.
And, but I know the little areas so
well that there are these big ones.
Pockets of safety.
And that only comes from
going many, many, many times.
So I could take you there and you'd
probably depending on your level of
comfort in the water and your ability
to relax, probably be, be fine.
As soon as you tense or Get scared.
Then it's a different story.
And I've almost lost a
few people like that.
It's amazing how it can change.
So I have, you know, I can go with my son
who's been diving with me since, you know,
very, very young and we can swim in these,
what looks like an impossible ocean.
And it's perfectly safe, but then
the ocean can look quite similar,
but it's changed and then it's
incredibly dangerous for us.
So you have to know the difference
and sometimes it can be quite subtle.
So, and I don't always get it
right, but most, most of the time.
Mostly now I can read it and know when
it's safe and when it's not and it depends
on someone like say if you if you're not
used to it, then you start in the tidal
pools, you get your strength up, you
swim, you get used to going down, you used
to holding your breath, you get used to
water in your mouth, swallowing water in
your nose, you just get used to all that.
And you slowly venture out,
you go out on the calm days.
Then you go out on the medium days,
then you practice body surfing and
dealing with waves and you just
slowly, you know, get to know her.
Rupert Isaacson: I do believe
that we have an amphibious
soul for evolutionary reasons.
You're living there on
the Cape of Good Hope.
It's one of the earliest places of
human settlement that we know of.
You know, there are, there
are archeological, pre
archeological sites there.
Going back hundreds of thousands of years,
it always seems to be, you know, a bit of
a rivalry going on between Southern Africa
and East Africa about which is the cradle
of mankind, but we know it's, it's there.
And it seems that all the earliest
settlement sites, Our coastal and to
me that would make sense because well,
that's where the most food is, right?
You've got food from the
land food from the water.
There's a beach You've got a long sight
line perhaps may be more difficult for
predators to creep up on you I don't
know But if there's more abundance does
that give you more time for culture more
time for nature more time to create art
To have conversation and to sort of do
the things that we think of as civilized
which we know that hunter gatherer people
do as well Do you think that we have?
You That our soul is amphibious because
we've actually evolved next in this
margin of land and water and perhaps then
gone up from Africa into the rest of the
world, following the coast, following
the rivers, following the water courses.
So are we in fact an amphibious ape,
you know, or, or certainly have been
for hundreds of thousands of years.
And at what point do you
think we became amphibious?
Craig Foster: I mean, I think you
could I agree with you that, I mean,
there are a lot of incredible coastal
sites a few of which I've been able
to, you know, study thanks to the
amazing scientists that I've worked with
but there also are equivalent sites.
But certainly, I mean, if you just take
this idea, you are now living on the coast
and, you know, one of the big things,
as you know, a hunter gatherers need is
protein and they need, especially fat.
So you're walking along the coast and the,
you know, the common thing for a whale
to be washed up, that's 20 tons of fat.
Delivered to you with no energy.
I mean, it's just 20 tons
of meat, 20 tons of fat.
I mean, it's just incredible feast.
And then you've got all the
carbohydrates on the land.
You've got all your shellfish, you've got
all your other fish, you've got your You
know, all the terrestrial food as well.
So absolutely.
And we see in the archeological remains
a tremendous amount of shellfish.
And you see evidence of the whales,
actually the barnacles that grow on the
whales you see in the archaeological
sites so you can determine the
exact species they've been eating
because only certain barnacles
grow on certain species of whales.
But you can go back a lot further.
I mean, it, it appears that Homo erectus
was highly amphibious and actually did
some pretty massive ocean crossings.
There is some evidence to suggest that.
So, you know, if you are moving as a
nomadic hunter gatherer, which we've
done for a very, very long time, even
before Homo sapiens came into being,
you're walking along a coast or any
area and there's suddenly a river.
It's so much easier to cross that river
than to now, you know, walk miles and
miles up to find somewhere where you can.
If you're gathering food by the
ocean and you can't swim, and a
wave takes you out, you're dead.
It's such a survival
advantage to be able to swim.
We would have seen other animals swimming,
and we have very curious species.
We would have certainly I
think, learned to swim and dive.
We've got quite a good evidence for
Neanderthals diving 90, 000 years ago.
What we're seeing in the caves here
suggests strongly that people were
diving, were probably diving and probably
swimming more than 100, 000 years ago.
And I think this aquatic nature, this
amphibious part of our being probably
extends way back into Homo erectus
and the early parts of our evolution.
Rupert Isaacson: But those people
who aren't non, the non divers.
Paleontologists amongst us, can
you give us a date on Homo erectus?
When would we be talking?
Craig Foster: Two million years ago.
Rupert Isaacson: And when you say ocean
crossings, how would they be doing that?
How are they?
Are they building at that point?
Surely not.
So how are they?
Craig Foster: Yeah, probably
going getting, you know, big
logs, big pieces of wood.
Somehow you know, I must've had some
knowledge of currents, wind at it's, yeah,
I was stunned when I read about this.
You know
Rupert Isaacson: where they were
doing this, that they've, where, where
have they found evidence of this?
Craig Foster: I'm trying to, I
can't remember the exact spot.
I'd have to look it up again.
It's a while since I've seen it, but it's
seemed to be you know, that they couldn't
have got across at that time period.
We know these massive fluctuations
in the coastline and it, it appears
that they, they, they crossed.
I can't remember how long ago,
I mean, Homo erectus came into
existence 2 million years ago.
And then I think.
A few hundred years, a thousand
years ago you know, became extinct.
So it was somewhere during
that time, maybe 800, 000
years ago, I can't remember.
It's funny, actually, I'm
Rupert Isaacson: just doing a quick Google
on it because I'm, I'm intrigued by this.
Um, because I think I, like a lot of
people have, have assumed, right, that
we would have been the first navigators.
And you're, you're, look, you're right.
I've, I've found here in,
Thing on the Guardian.
Um, Homo erectus may have been a sailor.
Um, and I had no idea.
Fossil Homo erectus have turned up
not only in Southern Europe, but as
far afield as China and Indonesia.
Craig Foster: I could have
been Indonesia at that.
Yeah.
Oceans, oceans,
Rupert Isaacson: says it oceans were
never a barrier to the travels of erectus.
Sorry, that's my, my infantile
humor just comes out there.
Oceans were never a barrier
to the travels of Erectus.
He traveled all over the world,
traveled to the island of Flores.
Well, right.
So if they are pre human
humanoids doing this, then yeah,
then we must be amphibious.
And it's interesting too, to me
that you know, if you take pretty
much, Anyone, I'd say it's the
vast majority of the population.
And so where do you want to go on
vacation when you want to go and relax?
You want to feel like
you're most authentic?
Where's your happy place?
Most people will say the beach.
Most people will gravitate to a beach
holiday, and as soon as they take
their shoes off and their bare feet
are in the sand, let alone before they
get in the water, that seems to be
the nervous system reset, doesn't it?
The kind of, ah, moment, the exhalation.
So, but it's, you, you, to my knowledge,
are the first person who's written a
book drawing our attention to this.
What do you think it does to us?
To then be removed from
this amphibious life.
Craig Foster: I mean, I think that
where I see it, I see it like this
Rupert, is that, you know, for this
incredibly long time period, we've
had these, deep relationships with
so many animals, with so many plants.
Rupert Isaacson: So
Craig Foster: even even as you know,
you know, you've worked with a sign
fairly young child starts to develop
quite strong relationships with the
wild and with all these animals.
As a person gets older, there are
these threads going out into the wild
and these incredible bonds build.
And these get passed down
from generation to generation.
So you've got this amazing network
going out from your being to
these animals, to these plants.
Now it's almost, I can always
imagine a huge pair of shears just
coming in and cutting that off.
What does that do to the psyche?
I mean, and, and what do we replace
that with is her relationship
with a cell phone and a computer.
Yeah.
And of course, those people have an
amazing, you know, social network.
They in the wild having these amazing
experience with their, with their group.
And often people today don't have that.
They have maybe some friends
in that, but they're not having
these powerful experiences in a
wild landscape with those people.
Rupert Isaacson: So
Craig Foster: it, it, it.
It has a massive traumatic effect on
the psyche, in my mind, this is what
every person who's born is expecting.
And we haven't had a chance to change
yet, expecting a wild existence, expecting
a relationship with masses of different
creatures and all sorts of other things.
And then that doesn't materialize.
It is.
Unconsciously very disturbing and I think
as you mentioned earlier, it, I think
it's definitely connected to this pandemic
of mental health that we're seeing now.
Rupert Isaacson: I would agree.
I sort of feel, honestly, it's
not possible in our culture
to not be mentally ill.
I mean, I think I'm mentally ill.
I think most people I
know are mentally ill.
And what I mean by that is
they're not lacking in any way.
They're not.
I don't know.
There's no deficit other than nature
deficit that I think, I think that
we're all suffering from a, the trauma
of being like zoo animals, just not
living in the environment that our
organism, as you said, is expecting
or needs or is designed for, but yet,
which we have cleverly constructed
for ourselves a very nice cage with,
you know, Alexa to tell us what to do.
But it seems to make
us desperately unhappy.
And then if we are coming out of, you
know, generation upon generation upon
generation of immediate ancestors who
were also cut off from nature, we can't
even know what it is that ails us.
We can't even know what it is we need.
Not everyone can live in the intertidal
zone on the Cape of Good Hope.
Obviously, a lot of
people live in not that.
How do you think People can basically
rewild themselves while still having
to, you know, maintain the livelihoods
and living conditions that they're in.
How can they, how can they begin?
And maybe they don't even
have access to the ocean.
How can, how can they begin?
Craig Foster: So, I'm glad you asked
that question because now recently, you
know, I've had this privileged experience
of, as I said, you know, living this
life here and for the last 12 years,
literally every day going in the water.
But in the last while I spent a
month traveling to speak about my
book in America to all the, a lot
of the big cities and to England.
So I actually tried to test out and
see if I could access the same state
of mind in New York and in London.
And what I tried to do is
what I've developed is the
system of underwater tracking.
I was inspired by the song in
the Kalahari, they Taught me the
essence of tracking, you know, had
these incredible master trackers.
So I taught myself to track underwater
and that's, I got to know a lot
of the animals in the kelp forest.
So what I tried to do was like, okay,
can I actually do this in these cities?
And I purposely, I didn't go to central
park or to a nice park in London.
I went to the harshest places where
those terrifying tall buildings are.
And at first I was like.
It was just nothing.
I felt that it was impossible.
And I was, you know, um,
yeah, felt I felt not good at all.
And then I just started to
try and get into that same
mode and really concentrate.
And I was lucky in New York,
I had a little bit of help.
It had been raining.
And there were puddles and this
cold concrete, and they started to,
people started to, people and dogs
and animals were walking everywhere,
and they were actually leaving these
incredibly clear tracks on the concrete.
So that really got me excited, and I
could see how people were moving, I
could see from their soles of their
shoes, I got a sense of how fast they
were moving, but also How wealthy they
were, how much their shoes had worn
down how strong they were, the dogs.
It was very interesting to see
where the dogs were moving.
They were very interested in
the smells all along the edge.
I then started tracking some rats.
I started tracking the, the birds.
And I even started tracking the,
the chewing gum where people
had dropped the chewing gum.
These wear patterns, there were some
fascinating tracks that I had no
idea what they were at first and took
quite a while to, to figure them out.
They actually turned out to
be baby strollers, a very
strange track that they leave.
And after about an hour, I
got into, I was suddenly.
looked up almost expecting to
see the kelp canopy above me.
I was in the same mode, that deep nature
detective mode that comes with tracking.
And I'd, I'd seen some, I was
obviously largely tracking
humans, but we are an animal.
And I was quite fascinated by
the rats and how the birds were
alarm calling for the rats.
And this was just an hour.
I knew that if I stayed there,
I could uncover a lot of
incredible probably wild animals.
Or domesticated semi domesticated wild
animals surviving in that environment.
And I could most importantly replicate
that oldest language on earth, that
feeling of pattern recognition that
you get with tracking in London.
It was far more radical
that cause it's an old city.
I was looking at the tooth marks
of animals all over the sidewalks.
They turned out to be slugs, fascinating
shapes created by their, their.
Rupert Isaacson: What does
the slug tooth mark look like?
How do you know what it is?
Craig Foster: That, so every mollusk
has a radula, which is a toothed tongue.
So I could recognize the tracks instantly
because they were the same type of tracks
as the limpets, which is also a mollusk,
leave on the kelp in the kelp forest.
So these slugs were feeding on the
microalgae that grows along the pavements
and leaving these magnificent patterns
of their toothed tongues and now
followed this little silvery trails.
That's, that's
Rupert Isaacson: what the trail of goo is.
It's from the toothed tongue.
Craig Foster: No.
No.
Okay.
So the the body leaves
the, the trail of goo.
Okay.
And the, and the, if you
look more closely, you'll
see these incredible shapes.
I can send you a picture.
I'd love that.
That the, that the, the, the
teeth leave and as soon as you
notice it, it's just incredible.
And I was doing this, yeah, I'm sorry.
I'm, I'm,
Rupert Isaacson: I'm, I'm, I'm
suddenly obsessing on this.
A slug can leave a tooth mark on concrete.
Craig Foster: Absolutely.
Because it, the concrete has a thin
layer of micro algae that's green on it.
Rupert Isaacson: And when
Craig Foster: it scrapes it off,
especially if it's painted, there's
a perfect clear track of the teeth.
And it, you basically go into the world
of these mollusks in the inner city
and you can see the young feeding.
You can see the adults, you can
see the patterns of the feeding.
We started tracking squirrels.
We found where they were,
had their, their young.
We started tracking trees and how
they were self cleaning in London.
And then all the Victorian engravings
on the curb stones were fascinating.
So it, and I can go on and on and on.
So I could replicate the sense of this
oldest language and this connection.
And of course you can see through
the animals, how they're reacting in
the city, and they're obviously more
nervous and so on than they could be.
It was very interesting
to be able to do this.
And I took other people because and
I took certain people who were good
trackers and people who weren't
people who knew nature very well.
And they were totally blown away.
They'd never bothered to
look in a city like this.
And they had the same feeling I did.
So it's apps and they were like.
You know, I think Jackie Higgins is
a very accomplished natural history
writer, naturalist, and natural history
filmmaker said who could, something's
amazing said here, like I went into this
world of nature on a grubby curbstone.
I couldn't believe it.
It was that kind of thing.
And, and it was all the more
fascinating because it was
quite, A challenge to access.
And that was only, you know, one day
in London or one and a half days.
If you had more time, of course, there
are foxes there, many in London, as you
know, living, you could, it's amazing what
you could actually get into and replicate
this feeling it's about replicating
a primal sense of belonging because.
Tracking is world making, it
basically creates your world.
You put together all these
clues like a detective and you
construct this fascinating world.
So we walked past, I'll give you an idea,
we walked past a cathedral, a thousand
year old cathedral in London and the
entire surface was covered in flintstone.
Thousands of these pieces and every
piece had been napped by a stonemason.
So of course, you know, for me
that was fascinating because
Flint is made of the spicules of
sponges from the ancient ocean.
And then I had this, you know, the whole
flint knapping you know, thing that
goes back 3 million years in evolution.
So, you know, you're starting
to see all these incredible
connections inside a major city.
It, it, it Westminster Cathedral is made
Rupert Isaacson: from old sea sponges.
Craig Foster: It was I'm trying,
it was what in Westminster I can't
remember the name of the cathedral.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
I know, I know a very old one, St.
Bartholomew's church, which
is basically made of flint.
I didn't know that was, and
that's about a thousand years old.
I didn't know that flint
was old sea sponges.
Craig Foster: Yeah.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Thank you.
I'll look at it completely
differently next time.
It seems what you're saying, tracking,
tracking is the original human activity.
Okay.
Therefore tracking is story, right?
And what are we if not the
storytelling ape, right?
We have the larynx, we, we, you
know, other animals sort of vocalize
and sometimes in very complex ways.
But I haven't yet read a play
written by another mammal.
I might at one point as we learn to
maybe read what whales do better.
But it seems that that's down to us.
But yet so many animals do track.
So, is tracking, is tracking, does
tracking help reconnect us with
ourselves because it is story and
we're the storytelling, and also
it connects us with the wild,
because what else is there to track?
The environment around us.
Is that, is that what tracking does?
Is it that dual purpose of
reconnecting us both with nature?
What is outside of ourselves and what
and and ourselves at the same time is it?
Craig Foster: Yes, I think
you think you've got it.
So the the key word here
is I think is belonging,
Rupert Isaacson: right?
Craig Foster: So what it does
is it attunes you and connects
you to the subtle things?
That are going on it in your environment
and you can also it's almost like
magic because you can go Into the past.
So I could see the tracks of those
slugs and I knew that they had been
feeding that night and I could see the
paths and everywhere they were, and I
could predict that they would be back.
You know, when there was a lot of moisture
and that does that algae would grow again,
so you could look into the past and the
future but it connects you to their lives.
So the act of forcing your mind
and pushing your mind into the
track creates an enormous amount
of empathy for that animal.
You sense the young coming, those
little slugs coming out, the young,
you know, coming out to feed for some
of their first days on the planet.
You see, you know, the, the adults
near them, you, you, you, you start
this incredible act of empathy,
but you are creating your whole
world from these, these signs.
And that is such an ancient practice.
It goes to the.
the heart of the origin of our
species and how we managed to survive,
but also how we built our world.
So when you replicate that, the ancient
being, the wild person in you remembers
who you are, and it remembers that this
is the way of belonging, and this is
the way of survival, and you feel good.
You feel good when you connect the
dots and you tell the stories of the
animals that are there laid out for
you on the ground in this cryptic way.
Rupert Isaacson: It seems that
what you're talking about here
is actually a really effective
therapeutic practice for mental health.
You, you know, I could see how learning
to do this in an urban environment,
transform oneself from the inside.
What one's one's neurology.
And I could see how
that would absolutely be
an amelioration for say
depression or something.
Craig Foster: Can I just just before
I forget this thought, sorry, Rupert,
you've reminded me of something.
So normally if I'm in a big city
like that, and I haven't remember,
I'm not used to that at all.
So, you know, admittedly, I'm not
very Used to it, but say in a place
like New York in the middle of the
city there with normally within half
an hour, I'm absolutely exhausted
Rupert Isaacson: and
Craig Foster: my nervous system
is a bit shattered after two hours
of doing the tracking, I felt good
Rupert Isaacson: and
Craig Foster: the same with London
and it's almost like I got hyper
focused and the, the, the sounds and
everything that normally be kind of
like an acoustic torture for me, kind
of quiet and, and I was able to, it.
Being a completely different
mindset in that space, it
would normally debilitate me.
Rupert Isaacson: Really, we
should be teaching tracking to
at risk youth, shouldn't we?
Well, to anyone.
It ought to be taught to us in schools.
Okay, so you mentioned belonging,
and you mentioned empathy,
and story through tracking.
Tracking builds a world, you said.
And I remember, for those people
listening, if you have not seen
Craig and his brother Damon's movie,
it's a documentary from 20 years
ago or so, called The Great Dance.
You got it.
You have to watch it.
There with three son, Bushman,
Khoisan master tracker,
hunter gatherers in Botswana.
And I remember you, you filmed a
particular hunter, a man called Karawa.
Running down over hours and hours
an animal that he shouldn't really
have been able to keep up with.
A kudu, running as fast as a horse and
going for all day, and yet he could.
And I remember in your film when
you interviewed him, he said at
a certain point, you must become
the animal, you must become kudu.
And then at a certain point,
you go inside its mind.
And you're no longer yourself.
And of course, what is
that but shape shifting?
Craig Foster: And extreme empathy.
Rupert Isaacson: Extreme empathy.
Is shape shifting empathy?
Craig Foster: I think it would be I would
prefer, yeah, maybe the idea of empathy.
But you, you, and it's a lifetime, you
know, he's done this for his whole life.
So he knows that animal, he knows
its ways through the tracks, through
tracking that animal for years.
He knows it so intimately and
he's continually, you know, from
a young age, putting his mind
into the tracks, into that animal.
What is it thinking?
Where is it going?
And then one day he just steps into it.
It's a natural thing.
And I think in a many, in many
ways, that's the origin of.
Of altered states of trance and continual
throwing your mind into the track and
then one day you find yourself inside
that animal sounds quite esoteric, but
I think if, if you look at it in a,
in that, in that way, that practice
again and again and again, I think I
could see it as being quite possible.
Well,
Rupert Isaacson: for sure.
And, you know, as you know, There are
no psychotropic plants really that grow
in the Kalahari area, so yes, you can
find an altered state of consciousness
through a mushroom or through a
plant like ayahuasca or something
that has dimethyltryptamine in it.
And of course there are shamanic cultures
that use those, but the people that you
were filming had no access to anything
like that, so they could only go in.
Through the method that you described
Craig Foster: and well then they,
although in the transplants, they're
using breathing, right, hyper ventilation,
you know, and the, they're using
Rupert Isaacson: the drug, right?
They, they're, they're only
exactly their physiology.
And,
Craig Foster: and how does that start?
You know, you don't, you're not, how
does, how does that whole thing start?
And I think the origin of, of
trance could well be tracking
this original form of putting your
mind into the mind of another.
So if you track,
Rupert Isaacson: are you de
facto a more empathetic person?
Craig Foster: I guess everybody's
affected differently, but I think it
would definitely increase empathy.
And I think we also, there are quite a
few studies that show that, you know,
a lot of deep nature connection sensing
or in nature creates empathy for others.
You know, that amazing professor at
Berkeley, Ducker Keltner has done
amazing work on this and they've
shown how this has actually occurred.
Rupert Isaacson: Tell us the name of
this professor again, just so that
we can write it down more slowly.
Craig Foster: Ducker, that's D A
C H E R, Keltner, K E L T N E R.
I had a fascinating
conversation with him recently.
He's a Berkeley professor who
studies the effect of awe in nature
on people, or awe in, in general.
But he, he's very connected to these
nature experiences, and they've
actually tracked the brain chemistry
and the shift in cognition of
people experiencing these things.
And one of the things he says is it
creates this, this care for others,
this empathy and less focus on the self.
Rupert Isaacson: It makes perfect sense.
And of course, if one is divorced from
environments that provide that sense
of awe, not, not, not confusing awe
with fear or stress but actual awe,
yes, that standing in the presence
of something awe inspiring, it's very
hard to have that outside of nature.
Craig Foster: And of course, what
we were talking about earlier, you
know, the, the less you have that,
the less you're connected with all
these other creatures, the less
you doing these ancient practices,
the more it throws you on yourself.
And then, you know, you're fighting
those demons of the underworld
that we spoke about earlier.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Yeah.
We all, we all do our
time in the underworld.
Sometimes the company
can be quite good though.
Craig Foster: Rupert and
Craig said, clutching the
wooden desk in front of them.
That's right.
Rupert Isaacson: As I reach
for my wine glass but okay.
So on this business tracking and empathy
the altered state of consciousness and
Yeah, I guess one could argue that.
When you feel great empathy for
somebody else, it, it is an altered
state of consciousness and it just
might be in ones that we have familiar,
but they always feel miraculous.
Like, for example, when
we fall in love, right?
Or when we feel deep friendship and
connection with someone, is that not in
itself an altered state of consciousness?
And are we then beginning
to track that person?
The acute observation that the
deep, Listening, the desire to
understand that person, you know,
Craig Foster: I love that idea.
That's a great idea.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
That, that person, perhaps that
person become nature, you know,
those of us who spent a lot of time,
I'm sure a lot of listeners have
experienced these states of all and
felt transcendent altered your book.
So amphibious soul, you're there in the
African sea forest, as you call it, which
is a beautiful name that this kelp forest.
On this wild coast, can you take us
into there and can you take us into
there when you, the first time you
can remember feeling that you stepped
into this state of auto consciousness?
What went on?
What brought you in?
How did you access it?
Had you been diving and swimming in there
for a long time before that happened?
Or has that actually been happening
to you since you were a child?
But if so, can you, can you
bring us in there a little bit?
Craig Foster: Yeah, that's great.
, I think that, I mean, I definitely
noticed as a very young child, I was
very shy sometimes overly shy child
that there was something about that
cold water that made me feel good, but
it just didn't have any idea of what it
was or why, or, you know, a child you
don't think like that funny enough, I
mean, what I just on Friday, it's now.
Um, Wednesday, just on this last Friday
I had a very powerful transcendent
experience and it was, and I tried
to really track it and look at it.
And I wouldn't mind just telling
you a little bit about that.
So, and I, I almost sensed the
ingredients of, of what made it occur.
So it was just a, a winter's day here.
It was a very nice, calm day.
I was with my.
Tracking friends, my close friends.
And we know when you're with close
friends, a little bit like we had
earlier, you could have teased, start
teasing each other, you're laughing
at each other, there's a, there's a
great openness and there's a lot of
laughter, and then we started, we
went to this little piece of coast.
We know well, and we did some very.
In depth tracking, really looking
at the micro tiny little amphipods
making little holes and the tiny
little amazing intricate tracks they
were leaving even a person who'd
picked up a shell and dropped it.
And the, the, we analyzed the, the drops
and what height the person dropped it
from and everything was quite fascinating.
And then we entered the water.
We did some underwater tracking
and found some really interesting
stuff with cat sharks and crabs.
And then we did a long swim and
it was particularly clear water.
And then we, we got out after
about 45 minutes and then
walked back along the coast.
And then we lay on this
hot rock in the sun.
And suddenly, I felt my whole nervous
system just dropping right down.
And I could feel that
massive altered state.
Obviously my, my body was
flooded with, with dopamine and
noradrenaline from the cold.
So we died without wetsuits.
And it was extraordinary powerful
feeling of what happened was all
sense of wanting to do anything,
be anywhere went away completely.
All, all sense of purpose went away.
All kind of niggling things that I have to
do this and that entirely vanished in that
and what I had a strong, strong sense of.
Of is what it was like to live 10, 000,
50, 000 years ago, when, and I just
imagine, imagine having a life where
you've never done a single email and never
done a payment, never had tax to do, never
had appointment, never had a meeting.
Of course your life is hard and harsh
and you see death all around and you
haven't got a pharmacy or hospital or
you've never had a cup of coffee, you've
never had watched a a wonderful film,
you know, all the luxuries we have.
You've slept cold many nights.
But you've also got that enormous
freedom of being in that present state.
And you've got nowhere to be, all you have
to do, especially in this environment is
survive and have enough food for that day.
And that only takes about two hours.
So we come out of this place of
incredible freedom and transcendence.
And I'm sure you've heard of this
term wilderness rapture or primal joy.
And this has been a lot of, you know,
people who've spent a lot of time with
indigenous people have come across.
People who have this in immense joy that
bubbles out of them for no good reason.
And we sat there in the rock as
our tracking team, just laughing
for no good reason, just from
the sheer joy of existence.
It's not like we have that every
time, you know, these are moments
of grace, but that's what it's like.
When you reconnect with the wild with
the right people in the right space.
And I can go on and
on, but I don't want to
Rupert Isaacson: like,
like doing murmurations.
Sometimes seemingly just from the
pure joy of moving in the currents.
Hmm.
What's interesting, these, these ideas
of connection, because we are mid
level weak, mid level predators that
if we don't connect with each other
and strategize, hyenas tend to eat us.
Is there also in us a
great sense of safety?
Like the brain is always
asking this question.
Am I safe?
And, you know, if I.
Looked at your ocean and went I'd look
at it and go, no, I'm fucking not safe.
Not no, no, no fucking way am I safe.
You would look at that ocean and say
In this context, in this ocean, because
I'm intimate with this ocean, I am safe.
Because I've spent the time
to develop that relationship.
You can then make me safe.
Does tracking and the competence that
it gives one, the intimacy that it
gives one, with the environment and the
inhabitants of that environment, does
that say to our brain, you're safe?
And therefore allow us
to feel safe together, because
there's some of the parts of our
Group competence makes us safer.
Craig Foster: I think you've hit on a very
Rupert Isaacson: core of social wellbeing.
Craig Foster: I think you've hit on a
very important point is that when you
know your environment and you know,
you can survive off that environment,
that is a primal indicator of safety.
But another big factor here is I think
we have a way of measuring biodiversity.
in our being.
We, we listen to what bird activity, we,
we, we smelling a whole lot of things.
All our senses can determine very, very
quickly what levels of biodiversity
we are that are surrounding us.
And I've had the privilege of
spending some time in these
near pristine environments.
And the effect that has on the psyche
is unbelievable because you feel extreme
safety because you know, if everything's
taken away, you can easily survive.
So it's a, it's, I think it's a
combination of being able to track.
Knowing the physicalities of how to
survive, who's, what animals, what plants
are moving around growing, whatever,
and then the levels of biodiversity,
because biodiversity is that,
you know, life force that animates
us, but also allows us to survive
even today, no matter where you live.
Rupert Isaacson: It's the, it's the
diverse investment portfolio, isn't it?
It's like looking at your bank accounts
and saying, Oh, I've got lots of bank
accounts in these different places,
drawing money from these different things.
That's replacing is that replacing
biodiversity in the way a hunter
gatherer would look at the landscape
and say, I have such a plenitude of
food here that is at my fingertips.
I could go to this cash,
this cash withdrawal machine.
That cash withdraw, this cash
withdrawal machine is living
on, has limpets on this rock.
That cash withdrawal machine is moving
in a herd across the hill there.
And there's another one swimming
past me in the shallows.
Therefore, I feel security, therefore.
Craig Foster: I think, I
think you're absolutely right.
But the fascinating and interesting
and, you know, scary thing is that we
think we, you know, we think we can
live independent of nature and you're
absolutely right that, that, you know,
money has replaced biodiversity and,
and, and skills in many ways, but, or
hunting or tracking skills, but what we've
forgotten, Rupert, is that, and I'm sure
you know this well, The foundation of
all our economics, all our politics, all
our bank accounts is biodiverse nature.
If we have biodiversity collapse,
you can have as many bank accounts
as you like, and as many millions
of dollars as you like, and they
will be worth zero, nothing.
Less
Rupert Isaacson: than a limpet.
Craig Foster: Less than a limpet
because you won't be able to breathe.
You won't be able to eat.
You will die very quickly.
That
Rupert Isaacson: should be,
that should be our new website.
Less than a limpet dot com.
You can't eat the fucker.
Craig Foster: Less than
a limpet's tooth tongue.
So the, that's why, um, what we
talking about and this, this,
this, The, the collection of plants
and animals and their amazing
interrelationships, that is the most
precious thing we ever will come across.
That's what's allowing every person
on this planet to breathe and to
eat and that's what we've forgotten.
I mean, that's what allows
Rupert Isaacson: the creation of symbol
of money in the first place, as you say.
Craig Foster: Yes, everything is,
everything is, is allowed by that.
And that's why we have to desperately
look after that if we want to continue
as a species living on the planet.
Rupert Isaacson: This brings me to
thinking about symbology, symbols
because tracking, when one sees
tracks, they appear as symbols, right?
We know that this three toed
symbol is this type of bird.
And we know that this The other
one in this cluster with these
dots and these little pointy bits
on the end is that kind of mammal.
And then we can take those
things and make images of them.
And, you know, we see this in rock art.
We've also seen this
in our alphabet, right?
We, we've created writing.
We're also the storytelling, eh?
If storytelling also comes from tracking.
And then we created art and
symbology from the tracking.
And then we've created.
Writing from that and then writing it
allows us to storytell
and track in other ways.
Is, is, is that, is that what,
is that the best thing of our
civilization that we've taken the
symbology of tracking through
biodiversity and turned it into
a whole world of symbolism?
Craig Foster: That is such an
interesting idea that tracking
and, and, and as you say, pattern
recognition could have in some way
inspired the first art or symbol making.
I have not.
Thought too much about that,
but I love that idea very much.
I'll have to look at that in more
detail, but it's a fascinating idea.
I mean, what I, what I'm working
with, I'm working with these amazing
group of scientists headed up by
professor Christopher Henshelwood.
There's a, a friend of mine and
he's discovered in Lombos cave along
the, just along the coast here.
The oldest collection of
engravings on earth together with
a whole lot of other interesting
things like the oldest drawing.
What is interesting is
this is the oldest out
Rupert Isaacson: of interest,
everyone will want to know.
Craig Foster: Yeah, sorry.
Yeah.
So the one of the oldest is gravings is
100, 000 years and they're 14 of them and
the youngest ones about 75, 000 years.
And there's a whole lot of
other fascinating corroborating
evidence that goes with this.
But to talk to your point.
At some point, someone had to think and
make a huge jump in cognition to have an
idea inside their brain and to be able
to put it onto a physical object and
engrave it onto that piece of red ochre.
That's a massive jump in cognition.
And To actually create a
symbol in the real world.
It's one thing looking at symbols and
interpreting them, making them is massive.
And that is probably one of the greatest
changes in our entire history as a
species, because once you've got a
symbol, then you can communicate at
a very profound level across time.
And.
Those, those engravings at that hundred
thousand years are really the first proto
books and the first proto computers.
So what you're saying is absolutely true
about, you know, that that's how we have
the sophisticated, you know, storytelling.
We've got all our
technology is based on that.
You can't build a car unless those people
in Africa had done that a hundred thousand
years ago, but whether that It's still
a mystery as far as I know is how that
person first thought that African person
thought to do that momentous thing.
But I love this idea that it could
have been through this, you know, long
period of patent recognition that you
could, that maybe that inspired that.
It's, it's been an interesting
thing to question to throw at the
archaeologists and anthropologists.
Rupert Isaacson: And as you're
talking, of course, it makes one
think of mathematics as well.
Because, you know, what
is that but measurement?
What else can you measure?
But the stuff around you, you know, that
you see, what is that the product of
biodiversity, whether it's in the stars
you're seeing above you or the sand that's
under your feet or the distance you have
to throw the spear or, or there's no way
when one looks at it that way that any
of this cannot have come from tracking.
Now you though, and you talk
about this really well in your
book, you were not always.
Diving to track.
A certain point came when you did.
Can you tell us that story?
When and why did that happen?
And then how did that open up this African
seaforest to you and your perception?
That's quite
Craig Foster: a fundamental thing.
So, I mean, I don't know if this ever
happened to you Rupert, when you spent
your time in the Kalahari, but when
I was first there in the late 90s.
It was both enthralling and
terrifying because I had spent
so much of my life in nature.
I thought I was connected to nature.
And when I met Karawa, as you pointed
out, Kwasi and Ngate, and I saw what they
could do and how they could understand
the wild, I felt pretty useless.
And I felt Outside of nature, and
it bothered me for a long time.
So when I started diving again every
day after a few years, I wanted to
get deeper and I remembered this
incredible time in the Kalahari.
And then I thought there must
be a way of tracking underwater.
There must be a way.
Cause I knew that tracking was the
way of getting into deep water.
Nature.
And I saw these first tracks of the
whelk, the whelks left on the rock
where they leave the slime trails
and the tiny particles of sand
collect, and I was, oh, so excited.
And then from that moment, I just
started seeing more and more tracks.
And now I've got, you know,
thousands of underwater tracks in
my head and I can, every time I
dive, unless it's very, very rough.
I, you know, I'm just looking at them and
they, they're telling me so much about
what's going on and on the land as well.
It's like a, a secret key,
this golden key you're given to
unlock the door of wild nature.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, what's
interesting too, is you've used it
to unlock the, the key of nature.
What appears to be non nature too, in that
I love that your first tracking experience
with the seaforest was the whelk.
And then you just talked about your first
tracking experience in London of the slug.
Yeah.
But you wouldn't have been able to
do the slug without the whelk, right?
The whelk.
Exactly.
Slug.
Craig Foster: Exactly.
Rupert Isaacson: What do
you do when you can't track?
What do you do when the ground
is too hard to show us a sign,
when the water is too murky?
How do you then track?
Craig Foster: So then what you
do is you use your knowledge.
of animals and their behaviors to
try and interpret where they may be.
So, you know, if there's a certain
wind blowing on land, then you
know that they will be using that.
They will be going normally, if they're
hungry, towards where their prey animals
are likely to be or to where shelter is.
In the water depending on what animal
you're tracking, if it's really rough,
for instance, you know, a lot of the
animals will either be going into
their cave shelters or they'll be
going into the deeper water, where
it's, there's less movement they will
be following certain smells, they'll
be following so many different things.
So you can then make predictions based
upon what you know about their behaviors.
Rupert Isaacson: You describe,
you know, you're, you're, you're
a beautiful nature writer and you
describe some encounters with.
animals, not just the ones we would
have expected with, for example,
the octopus that you had your
relationship with, with the film, but
you, you, you talk about some really
profound moments with other animals.
I remember you, you wrote, About
an early dive, I think you said you
were 15 where an octopus took you.
And you had to react to
that in a certain way.
You were always observing, you were
always, as you said, you know, you
were put into the water as a baby.
Your parents dove, you dove.
At what point, I would like you to tell
us that first story with the octopus
that could have drowned you.
And then how
did that transform into the later
encounters with not just the octopus,
but the other creatures that in this
more intimate way, I know you might
say, well, I learned to track Rupert
and then I became more observant, but
it's not just that something internal.
Must have driven you to not just
to want to make that change in
relationship, but to be able
to be ready somehow to
cross that threshold.
Could you just tell us that first
octopus story and then just however
it comes to you, how did that
transform into the relationships
with animals that you have now?
Craig Foster: Sure.
I was, yeah, 15 or 16 we
were in a a very sort of.
volatile estuary way up the coast.
It was a calm day.
And I slipped into the water.
It wasn't too deep and went
down and saw the by far the
biggest octopus I'd ever seen.
It was quite a lot bigger than myself.
It was probably a Southern giant
octopus, which is a species
one very rarely sees here.
And I was just completely mesmerized
by it and went a bit too close and
I think the animal got a little bit
perturbed and it grabbed hold of me and
pulled it in pulled me into its den.
And the strength of this
animal was just unbelievable.
I mean, it was, I don't know,
five times my strength easily.
And I remember all the skin being
scraped off my arms as it pulled me in.
And I couldn't, I could hardly move.
It was so powerful.
And instinctively I knew to relax.
If I tried to fight and I wouldn't have
been able to, and we'd certainly be dead.
So I was pretty fit and used to diving.
So I could hold my breath
for quite a long time.
So I just had no choice,
but to totally relax.
And then probably within
about 30 or 40 seconds.
Maybe a little longer.
This, this very powerful animal let me
go and I was able to go to the surface.
And strangely, I was not in
any way traumatized, never
had a bad dream about it.
It just was, you know, Fine.
And then, you know, lesson
learned, don't go, you know, too
close to a massive cephalopod.
So that, how that connected to the
other question I'm not totally sure.
What did pop into my mind was, strangely
enough, when you were asking the question
was, you know, how do you track an otter?
And that took me a long time to figure out
because they're extremely cryptic animals.
And I eventually realized that I
could watch the birds very closely
and see where they were flying
and see where they were looking.
And then I would just follow
their, their eyes and use them
like you would use a drone.
And then I could follow an
otter through the kelp forest.
And then when I got close, I could
follow the bubble trails that are
coming out of the otter's fur and
eventually find that animal, very
cryptic animal, and I was able to observe
some of the secret hunting behavior.
I think the desire.
The big driver, what you're asking for,
I just had a enormous desire to be able
to speak this oldest language on earth.
I couldn't even articulate that.
I just, it was a deep yearning
to be able to somehow connect
with that wild person inside me.
And I knew eventually that this tracking
and this Repetition of being in the,
in nature was the key and it was
enormously, um, hugely relieving, a
massive relief to be able to do that.
And I'm still, you know, like to go a
lot further and get a lot better at this.
I still feel I'm learning a lot
and nowhere near the skill of.
You know, some of those master
trackers that I were my mentors.
Um, but it's very, very gratifying.
And, you know, I've learned
so much through it that.
Um, it's a lifelong passion to be able
to do this and to be able to pass it
on to people who are serious about it.
It's not something that you can learn
too quickly, but you can actually
accomplish quite a lot in a very short
time and be very satisfied in a very short
time, but to master takes a long time.
Rupert Isaacson: To your reaction to
the, that first octopus that grabbed
you reminds me of a question which
I wanted to ask a little way back.
You talked about awe.
And how awe and empathy seem
to be connected through this
work that's been done at the
University of California, Berkeley.
Is that correct?
Craig Foster: Correct.
Yes.
Rupert Isaacson: You know,
what's interesting to me is that
by the time you get into Greek
civilization, a new word creeps
in, and that word is panic.
And the God Pan, you know,
the God of nature panic is,
originates in a feeling of panic.
irrational fear of being the hunted prey,
almost a madness that can come upon you.
In the wild panic, but it's
interesting to me that that word is
coined in a one of the first big
civilizations that was actively
trying to remove itself from nature.
They were certainly more connected to
nature than we were the ancient Greeks,
but they were definitely creating all
the technologies and city states and
so forth and so forth that, you know,
have led us to the path we're on today.
It's you did not panic.
It seems that when the octopus took you,
you actually accessed a state of awe,
a certain, I don't know.
Craig Foster: I was pretty frightened,
but I knew that I it was a pure
survival instinct of knowing
that I really needed to relax.
And I've had, I've been in situations
like that again, but not with an animal.
being stuck underwater.
And what saved me was just relaxing and
waiting for that swell to pop me back
out because I was stuck underwater.
So I think there's a, you have to be, I
think it's hard not to panic underwater
if you don't spend a lot of time there.
But if you spend a lot of time, I think
one realizes, okay this is what you need
to do because you also know that, of
course, as soon as you start panicking,
your consumption of oxygen goes up so
radically that you minimize your time.
You know that very clearly.
So you don't really have a choice.
I, I don't think I was feeling
necessarily or in the, I was feeling
quite a lot of fear, but I had to just
suppress that and physically relax my
whole body and try and just, you know.
Not move a muscle.
Rupert Isaacson: It it's,
Craig Foster: but what, what, what,
what, what I did think about when you
said that was, you know, the irony
of this sort of scenario is as we
try to control mother, big mother,
Rupert Isaacson: you
Craig Foster: know, nature, all
this biodiversity, as we, as we
try to control her ironically.
We put her more and more in control,
and that's what we're feeling today.
We're feeling you know, the, the,
the implications of that as she just
starts to exert her force upon us.
And we see that even in the
climate now in so many ways.
Rupert Isaacson: Oh, that's just what
the political liberals are saying.
You know, if you were a true
Republican, Craig, you'd see
through all that climate stuff.
Craig Foster: Good luck with that.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, I think a lot
of the people sadly who, who, who feel
that won't be around to see the the
changes that are coming or in place.
Yeah, well, that's, that's
actually where I wanted to go next.
Obviously we should preserve all
biodiversity because we just can't
survive without it, you know,
just for purely selfish reasons.
We should preserve it for the,
for the reasons of connection,
happiness, and awe, and just justice.
We should preserve it as well.
But, Everyone has a part of the planet.
Everyone has a,
an environment that's dear to them.
And I know that the sea
forest is dear to you.
Can you, just as, I, I, I know that
you will need to go fairly soon.
And I want to make this just the first of
two more, because there's, there's so much
more I want to ask you on these topics.
Um, we, we haven't discussed them.
the ancestors and that spirit
world and so on and so on.
Um, let alone the altered state of
the cold water and what that does.
But, and I want to do that why should
we give a shit about some seaweed off
the coast of a little spit sticking
off a bit of rocky land over there?
Why should we give a fuck about that?
Surely it could use a nice big
McDonald's, you know, overlooking
the, we could clear that those rocks.
The beach, obviously we keep for
obvious reasons, but, you know,
why, why, why should we give a
shit about this patch of seaweed?
Craig Foster: I think first of all
so I'm just laughing because the way
you said it was so funny, but it is
what we have here is one of the great
biodiversity hotspots in the world.
And these hotspots are where there's an
enormous amount of biodiversity and they
are really these places of Extreme hope,
because if we can, what we desperately
need to do, if we want to survive as a
species into the future, we need to allow
this incredible biological intelligence
and this biodiversity to regenerate and
the best places to allow the biodiversity
regenerate are from these hotspots.
And just remember that 65 percent
plus of the oxygen that all of us are
breathing is coming from the ocean, coming
from the phytoplankton in the ocean.
You can be living in the, you know,
deepest city in the world and you'll
still be breathing oxygen created by
phytoplankton plants that live in the
ocean on the surface of the ocean.
So these biodiversity hotspots are
where, you know, this phytoplankton
is blooming at a very high level.
So it's literally, you
give a shit if you want to.
survive as a species, or if you care in
any way about any young people and their
survival and their quality of life, that
would be another major important factor.
And also if you care about these
incredible animals, These, this,
these wild kin that we've lived
with from the beginning of time,
they literally are our family.
They are our ancestors.
We come from them and we only
survive and live because they exist.
Um, so there are, you know, And just
because of the magnificence of the
system, this extraordinary, mysterious
thing that's happened where in 13.
7 billion years, galaxies and giant
cosmic clouds of the Dust and brimstone
have turned into millions upon millions,
millions of these incredible creatures
and plants that keep us alive.
I mean, it's literally,
we're living in a miracle.
Why would you want to destroy that
miracle and us in the process?
There's no, what's the logic of
that to have, you know, another
car or a bigger bank account that
there's no, there's no good reason.
Rupert Isaacson: When you're in the
forest there, what does it look like?
What does it feel like?
Craig Foster: It's a three
dimensional underwater space.
So you imagine being in an underwater
forest where there's reverse gravity.
So you can dive down and then
just push gently and off the
bottom and fly into the canopy.
Um, there are creatures moving around
in that three dimensional space.
They live in all parts
of the three dimensions.
It's not like a coral reef.
It's two dimensional in comparison.
Some of the kelp is
You know, 45 feet deep.
So, you know, three
dimensional 45 foot space.
The light is even in the middle
of the day is being cut into.
Beams by the leaves of the, and the canopy
and there's coming down in these beams
and as the water moves, the beams flash.
So it's very powerful lighting in this
kind of cathedral like, experience.
Um, you know, the the, the
water is generally quite cold.
So you've got all the.
The amazing brain chemicals rushing
through you that, that occur in the
cold, you get quite used to it after a
while and these amazing creatures with
extraordinary sensory systems living
in this space that are watching you.
And they are measuring your heartbeat,
they're measuring your muscle tension,
and they are reacting based upon your
body language and the way you are moving.
Rupert Isaacson: You've written about
the need to, and you've talked here
about the need to learn relaxation.
This is difficult.
in cold.
So the first thing, and then
first thing is how do you learn
to relax in cold like that?
And I don't just mean ice baths because
I know lots of people who take ice
baths and I've watched them do it and
I wouldn't say they're necessarily
terribly relaxed when they do it.
Some seem to learn how to do it, but
you're talking about a very different,
it's a type of relaxation that can
let an octopus let go of you or allow
yourself to not panic when wedged.
Underwater.
How do you survive in
this cold without bracing?
That's the question number one.
The second question is,
can you describe some interactions
beyond, say, the escape from
that octopus, that have allowed
you to use that relaxation
to enter the world of the
creatures in this forest?
And what, what have they shown you?
So how do you relax?
How do you learn to
relax in that cold water?
And then when you have this
relaxation, where does it bring you?
Craig Foster: So, I mean,
of course you have to get
your body used to the water.
So ideally you start in summer, you
go in for short periods of time.
You don't want to put too much
cold stress on the system.
So you adapt your body
slowly to that environment.
What I do is I visualize, I don't try
to push the cold away, I, I imagine
the cold actually going through
inside my body and flowing through
it and activating a kind of heat,
and that's kind of what is happening.
They are brown fat adipose tissue.
That develops when you expose yourself to
cold and that acts like a internal heating
system and it actually heats your body up.
And this is something that all
early people would have had.
If you, if you living indoors a
lot and you're not exposed to cold,
these, this, this brown fat dwindles.
So the body is totally adapt, you
know, it's ready for this process.
And then you can visualize this
just flowing through you and you
just have to actively just calm
oneself and not tense the body.
You just, just relax every limb.
If people aren't used to it, they'll hold
themselves and they'll tense their arms.
One's got to do the opposite
because you don't want that
cortisol to flood the system.
That's not great for you.
You want that dopamine and
the noradrenaline and so
on to, to be going there.
So I've had amazing experiences with
say a cap clawless otters numerous
occasions they have approached me.
And this is a very, normally
a very, very shy animal.
And then if you keep still enough
and your body's relaxed enough
very, very occasionally they
will then make physical contact.
And when an animal like that makes
physical contact, and then even you
know, one of the Most profound times
is when an animal started touching
my feet and then moved up my body and
then looked in my eyes and started to
touch my face with its amazing little
dexterous hands, their clawless hands.
It does affect one quite radically.
And if that animal then,
feels that you aren't a threat,
it will allow you to hunt with it.
And that's when the real teaching and
learning happens, because then you can
see how these animals are hunting, how
incredibly powerful they are, how clever
they are, and all these amazing techniques
they use to catch different animals and
how clever the prey is in avoiding them.
And I mean, the otters took me years to
figure out that there were these species
of fish that were hiding themselves upside
down in the caves in the algae and they
turn upside down so that their eyes can
look out of the algae to see the otters
as they're coming through the cave.
So you learn about not just the animal
that has trusted you, but of course
about all their prey and their predators.
And you just, these animals
teach you about all the animals
that they interact with.
So if you're just getting to know
an otter or an octopus or a limpet.
They will naturally, if you just
chose only those three, you would
learn about the lives of hundreds of
these animals because they're the web
of life is connected in every way.
There's no thread that's not connected.
And that's why if we pull on one
thread, we pull on everything.
And that's what we've got to be
so much more careful of as humans.
We've been pulling on all the
wrong threads for too long.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
We've been like, like.
Somebody anxious and fidgety in a
wool jumper pulling at the threads
of the garment that keeps us warm
and unraveling it as we wear it.
When you, when you, an animal shows you
how it hunts and you can stay with it,
then they begin to move athletically.
How do you, how do you stay with
them with that same relaxation
without pulsating your body?
in ways that will spook the animal.
How do you keep that relaxation going even
when there's a need to move strongly or
at least to stay close to this animal?
Craig Foster: See, what you've got
to try and do is not they're quite
they're very sensitive to pressure waves
and to sound so you don't ever want
to slap a hand on top of the water.
You are very careful how you put
your hand into the water and pull.
You're very careful to never
slap a fin on top of the water.
You, each thrust is long
and slow and gentle.
You're often pulling yourself along.
So what's nice about the kelp forest
is it's, you know, it's, you've
got, you know, Reverse gravity.
So you can pull yourself along.
I'm making myself neutrally
buoyant with a weight belt.
And then you can pull yourself
along from strand to strand from,
from stipe to stipe as well.
So you, you're trying to reduce
all the pressure waves, reduce all
the sounds and try not to have too
much muscle tension, especially the
sharks can feel the muscle tension.
Some of the other animals, less so.
Rupert Isaacson: Sharks.
There's a lot of them on your coast,
including some pretty big gnarly ones.
You have great whites there.
How do you interact and
stay safe with them?
and relax around.
Craig Foster: So I mean, a thing
with sharks is it's quite important
to make a visual contact with them.
So as soon as you've made visual
contact, then they generally, it's pretty
safe, no matter what species they are.
Why is that?
Because they're a predator, and they
know that you're looking at them,
you know that you've seen them, and
they rely often on sneak attacks.
But you're quite safe, luckily, as
a human with sharks, because their
search image, when they look at you
with all their sensory system, you're
not generally coming up as prey.
You're a strange thing.
You're moving wrongly.
You don't look right.
You don't smell right.
You've got a strange electrical signature.
They generally don't come up as prey.
But, You want to be often upright in
the water that, that makes them, you
look even less like a prey and you want
to be generally keeping quite still.
You don't want to be moving fast away
from them, you know, like a, a cat,
you know, if you pull a string and
it wants to go for it just keeping.
Your heart rate down, keeping
your breathing down cause they
can sense a lot of these things.
And as I say, keeping your muscles
relaxed, then they will see you not,
not as prey and they'll see you also not
as necessarily maybe another predator
there, but you don't want to push them
or intimidate them too much as well.
You'd want to be kind of
neutral in that space.
And eye contact
Rupert Isaacson: doesn't trigger them.
Like it might other types of predator.
Craig Foster: No, I mean, it's good
to have eye contact because then they
know you've seen them, they know you
there it's when you're not looking
that they'll be, they'll come closer.
Um, and sometimes, you know, we've been
say trying to film these bigger animals
and you actually have to try and make
your body small and not very intimidating
to try and get closer to them.
They, they, they quite wary.
It's not sharks are not you
know, how they've been, you
know, depicted on television.
That's not, they're not like that.
Rupert Isaacson: You describe in the book
a, an episode where you're, I believe it
is Great Whites, and you're close to them.
And again, this theme of
relaxation seems to come in.
But then you say at a certain point,
they, open their mouth, they gape as a
way of saying, okay, that's enough now.
Or
what made you feel that that was a
safe situation to put yourself in?
And how do you know to navigate it?
Craig Foster: So with the white
sharks and I've had, you know, help
from people who spent many years
just concentrating on that species.
And this applies to quite
a few sharks as well.
If the water is clear, it's much safer.
And especially with white sharks, if
you can see the bottom where you're
diving, it's much safer because
they can like to come underneath.
So if you, if the water's clear,
it's calm, the animals are relaxed.
You know, it's not I believe overly
dangerous if you're used to being in
the water and you're not overly fearful.
To dive with a great white shark.
It's not overly dangerous.
But you also have to know the signs.
And as you say, this, this gaping,
this, this fairly subtle opening of
the mouth is a very clear indication
that they don't want you there anymore.
And then you have to slowly slowly and
very gently move out of their space.
But, you know, I've, I've dived
with so many different species
of shark, big sharks, great
whites, tiger sharks, bull sharks.
And I've never been threatened
by one of those animals or, you
know, in any way aggression shown
to me in fact, quite the opposite.
And many people who've dived with
sharks will tell you the same story.
It's the absolute aberration.
You know, when someone gets
attacked and it's often, you know,
curiosity or a shark that's maybe
highly compromised or blind or.
Starving or something.
It's very, very, it's a very rare thing.
These sharks are not, we're
not on their prey list.
So it's it's far more dangerous
driving down to the beach than
to be diving with these animals.
Rupert Isaacson: There is of course, a
waterborne predator that we know does
take people pretty regularly in Africa.
I myself was attacked
by one when I was seven.
Oh, only got.
Away.
We were in Zimbabwe which
where my dad's from.
And a biologist had penned
some, including a big 14 footer,
and they took us into the pen.
They were observing them for us.
I can't remember what they were studying.
Because what happened next obliterated
everything else from my mind.
And we're supposed to keep our distance.
And for some reason I didn't for some
reason, I, I walked too close and
I remember the rush of the water.
luckily the biologists had run up
behind me and grabbed me by the
collar, pulled me up the back.
This, of course, we're talking
is a crocodile, the Nile
crocodile, immensely dangerous.
You open your book with a
very exciting passage in which
you are going into the water to
film one of these in the water.
You've been warned by the guide
who's taking you in, who knows them
quite well, that It's possible that
you might not survive the dive.
And again, it seems to me that this
theme of relaxation comes in here.
Can you just describe
what, what happened there?
What you did?
Sure.
Sure.
Craig Foster: I mean, you, you're right.
Crocodiles are very,
very different to shark.
This is an animal that does
see humans very much as prey.
We're the perfect size.
We're nice and slow.
You know, it's, they're perfect.
So, and I certainly would never
dive with crocodiles again.
Um, this was a time earlier in my
life where I don't think I was as
sensible as I am now, but we were
still using a lot of knowledge of,
of animals we were doing a film.
With my brother Damon Roger
Horrocks, who's a great close
friend, and Didier Noureau.
And we were in the Okavango Delta and the
idea in the film was to see if we could
get inside what we call the dragon's lair
where these crocodiles drag their prey.
And it seemed to be a
pretty interesting idea.
nine impossible thing and then this
one extraordinary animal we encountered
and we thought it might be possible and
we followed this animal down this long
tunnel into the back of its lair and it
was very powerful interesting experience
and this animal allowed us to be in that
place but it was absolutely terrifying.
Um, and certainly Roger and Didier
and to some extent my brother were
sort of doing more of the diving.
I did several dives with these crocodiles,
but it was I think what is happening,
Rupert, is I was, I was desperate to
find this wildness that I was, I'd
be, we've been talking about, and I
felt that maybe I could find it there.
And the great irony was it was lying
in those little limpet shells, right
where I, on the coast where I, where I'd
left, you know, the, the real connection
to deep nature comes not from extreme
experiences that you have very seldom.
It's from repeated
experiences with animals.
You get to know better and better in
environments that are easy to access.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
I think for the young male, there
is this rite of passage thing,
this desire to test oneself.
That's also part of the hunter
gatherer thing, I suppose.
It must be.
You know, there you are, at
a certain point you have to
take your spear and now go.
But is that what was going
on with you at that point?
Was it, was it part of almost
seeking initiation somehow to
put yourself consciously at risk?
Understand more to connect more.
Craig Foster: I mean, it was partly
as our job was wildlife filmmaking
and human animal interaction.
So it was part of the job in some ways.
I, I think the young ego is
certainly looking for affirmation.
But I think that.
That ego can often be, like we
talked about earlier, can be
imbalanced by the strange world
that we find ourselves in.
You know, this is the most, this is
the strangest environment that any
human has ever tried to live in.
This is utterly foreign to us.
So what is that psyche?
What does that ego try to do
in this very strange world?
It tries to reconnect with the
wild and sometimes it might do very
stupid things to try and do that.
It's not just about initiation,
because I had had quite a
few initiations before that.
So I think it's it's about not knowing
where to turn in many ways, and
certainly a big sense of adventure.
And luckily, you know, no one was hurt,
but it could have, it could have been,
I don't think it's in a It's certainly
something I wouldn't try again so,
we were fortunate and we did take as
many precautions as we could, but it,
you know, there's not much you can do.
Why did this particular crocodile
Rupert Isaacson: let you into its
den and why didn't it attack you?
Craig Foster: It's partly mysterious
and it's partly because I think we
look very strange to that animal, you
know, you, you're on scuba, you're
breathing bubbles you've got this,
you know, strange equipment, there's
a strange sound coming off you.
This animal is probably
thinking, what is this thing?
It doesn't know what you are.
It doesn't know if you're dangerous.
You're not, you're not
running away from it.
Almost everything runs away
from a giant crocodile.
So if we're not running away from it,
when it approaches, we're not backing away
because that's asking for big trouble.
So it's thinking, well, maybe this thing
is dangerous, but this particular animal
is something was special about it.
It was hard to say exactly.
But we had encounters with many of
the other crocs and some of them were
you know, a bit more, I wouldn't say
aggressive, but just came really close,
but many of them were quite submissive.
And I think it was because,
and we had lights as well.
And these cameras, there's a very strange
thing to, for them to be seeing underwater
unfamiliar and not backing away.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: But
like aliens coming down.
Craig Foster: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
It does make one wonder though I mean,
I know from knowing you, but also
seeing the work that you've done and
the place you've done it, that you
seem to have been allowed to experience
the shamanic at work through animals,
whether it, and nature in general, just
Numerous times in a way that defies
rational logic, whether it's that
sharing space with a crocodile in
the den, whether it's being able
to witness Karoa doing that running
hunt, which really one ought not to
be able to film or capture on film.
And somehow it happened for you guys
to be able to witness that, that,
and I'm sure many other things.
Just to conclude here, because
I want to pick this up again.
The next time we talk, you, you also
describe a very particular combination of
the indigenous African world with the sea.
You'd mentioned Otters and it was in
that you were having a relationship with
a lady called Charmaine, I believe, and
who happened to be also Zulu and Ganga.
Can we, I know we're
running down on time here.
Can we leave this part
of the conversation?
Can you tell us?
what happened there and why you think.
You were able to witness
something like that and what
did it, what did it teach you?
Craig Foster: I think, yeah, this
is a tough one to try and explain.
Maybe describe is better than explain.
You left the hard one to last.
So, Edouard spent um, incredible three
years with Charmaine Joseph Guaza, who
was a, as you say, a traditional healer.
Um, and I repeatedly witnessed
quite a few things that were
not explainable by my Western
sort of scientific upbringing.
It was impossible to understand or explain
them through that window of reference.
And today, still today, many of these
things remain extremely mysterious.
I think it's worth noting that
even as accomplished and extraordinary as
science is, science still only understands
quite a small part of our world.
Recently, you know, scientists have
discovered dark matter and dark
energy that apparently make up.
I think 95 or more percent of.
our world.
And this, they see that there's this
invisible world that has gravity, it
has mass, it's there, but they can't
even they can't, they can't see it.
They can't measure it very easily.
They can't even capture a few grams of it.
So
I think what we,
We can easily get lulled into thinking
that we understand reality and we
understand the nature of our existence.
The more one looks into it and the more
one spends time with indigenous people,
and especially in my case, indigenous
people in Africa, you realize that the
less and less one knows, and that the
mysterious grows bigger and bigger, and
that many of the things that one witnesses
are not easily fitted into the world of
science, but I'm quite fascinated in I
think what is is called two eyed seeing,
where you combine science and indigenous
wisdom to try to figure out our reality.
That becomes so interesting
and so much more you can see
a bigger picture of reality.
And I'm not saying that all
indigenous knowledge is mysterious.
Of course it isn't.
But I think there's so much to learn
from people who are deeply connected.
To the wild, to the
ancestors, to the sacred that.
Yeah, I mean, it's just a
much richer world for that.
And I also find it fascinating
that, you know, 80 percent of the
biodiversity on this planet is
protected by indigenous people.
So they, they, they know what is valuable.
In the deepest, deepest sense.
So we got so much to learn from that.
And I think a lot of the hope, you know,
it's easy to just look through the world
of science and see this environmental
crisis and be absolutely devastated by it.
But I think a lot of the hope that
certainly I draw from is from this
wilder self from this indigenous wisdom
that I've been privileged enough to,
you know, be, be, be given access to.
That there is this mystery that's out
there that actually makes up quite a
large part of our, our reality and that
we're not sure what's going to happen.
And certainly I think,
There are a lot of forces at play
that we have no idea what's going on.
Yeah.
I don't know if that skirts
your question or answers it.
Rupert Isaacson: I'm
going to nail you down.
I've seen obviously too, a lot of
things which I can't compute from a,
from a, you know, from a Western point
of view, for example, I I've seen.
A Cuckoo Yalanji Aboriginal shaman on my
son, just with his fingers going up and
down the spine, up and down the spine, up
and down the spine, and the man wearing
no shirt, so he couldn't hide anything,
you know, and he was flicking his fingers
into a ceramic cup, a chipped teacup, and
as he was doing it, you know, I couldn't
help but want to have a look inside, so
I look in there, so does my ex Kristen,
and what we see is, The cup is slowly
filling with viscous, with little bloody
filaments in it, like he snot, you know.
And it's visibly before our eyes
as he flicks his fingers from
my son's spine into there.
And at a certain point he chucks
it into the fire, and Rowan gets
up and says, my son, and says, I
feel better, I feel clear headed.
Which for him at that time to say
something like that in his level of autism
was, Not, you know, jaw dropping enough.
We came back two successive days.
And second day, less in the
cup, the third day, almost none.
And then he said, okay, it's fine.
You know, he'll be, he'll be right.
And then we had tea and toast cause
as you know, with these mysterious
things, it always comes to the
mundane because there's no separation.
That's the wonderful thing I
love about indigenous culture.
So I saw that I can't explain it.
But there it was.
And I also didn't just observe
it happening, but I observed
its ameliorative effect.
That's obviously, and so many
of us have spent any time.
You know, I've been lucky enough to
spend time with people who are less
out of touch with their wild souls.
have these stories.
Tell us what happened on the beach that
Craig Foster: day with Charmaine.
So I think what you're referring to, cause
there are a number of these occasions,
but it was very early in the morning.
It was kind of misty.
We went down to a remote
part of the, the coast And
she asked me to be part of this ritual
where essentially we were, we were
supposed to be calling what she called
them Dao, which is the water spirit, which
is a an entity or a force that she'd been
working with for a long time and was part
of her culture and part of her training.
Um, and I was still pretty skeptical in
some ways of all these things, even though
I'd seen some pretty strange things,
but I was happy to go along with it.
And I was very interested in
the culture and what it meant.
And I was had to have some of
her blood in my one hand and
a scorpion in the other hand.
And I was went into the water.
Rupert Isaacson: How do you
hold a scorpion in your hand?
Lisa.
Oh, I just had a scorpion in my hand.
Well, you pulled it out of your trousers.
Craig Foster: That's so funny.
So it was, I knew the scorpions in the
area quite well, and there's a, a species
that doesn't you know, sting very easily.
And if you're calm with them,
they, they, they're pretty chilled.
So there was one there and then
she just advised me what to do.
So very carefully held that
didn't in any way hurt it, went
into the water up to my chest.
She was intoning her the prayers behind
and I was asked to, to connect to this
water spirit in the best way I could.
And then I came out thinking
nothing was going to happen.
Let the scorpion go.
Very gently and we were walking
back and the next minute I heard
the splashing behind me and I looked
around and there was a Cape Clawless
otter right in the shallows staring
straight at us and splashing water
everywhere, which was very strange.
And then Charmaine said, okay,
let's go down to the water.
And we walked and I thought the otter
was just going to leave which it didn't.
And we sat right next to it and this otter
just flung water all over our bodies.
And it appeared to be, strangely enough,
the otter appeared to be quite frightened.
It was, I've never seen anything
like it before or since.
It seemed to be being held in that
space and it didn't want to be there.
And it was splashing around
in a very small area.
And then Charmaine did some more prayers
and suddenly this animal kind of,
I don't know realized it could
leave and it just shot away.
And we were absolutely covered in water
and I was just absolutely terrified.
gobsmacked and know what was going on.
Germaine was not in any way surprised.
It was just like a normal
day at the office for her.
And you know, she just gently gave thanks
and I was like, didn't know what the
hell was going on and was fascinated.
And then we, you know, left the area.
Rupert Isaacson: Did she say what
the purpose of the ritual was?
Craig Foster: Yes, it was to basically
give thanks and acknowledge this
water spirit, this Mdao that she'd
been working with for a long time.
And she interpreted this otter
as Being connected or being
brought in by this, this force.
It was very hard to understand
and to interpret in any way.
But it was, it was very powerful
experience and I can't deny
that that's what happened.
It sounds, you know, I've seen
artists before and they've been,
you know, I've been close to them,
but never an animal in that state.
And it was completely different
to anything I'd seen before.
Rupert Isaacson: Was the splashing of the
water over your bodies significant to her?
Craig Foster: It was quite a long
time ago, so it's hard to remember.
It sounds almost like
Rupert Isaacson: baptism or benediction.
Yeah.
Craig Foster: Yeah.
And they do use, I mean, she used
to use water a lot in that way.
So it does, it did feel,
it did feel like that.
Rupert Isaacson: And ultimately
is she, was she connecting with
that water spirit for healing?
Craig Foster: Yes,
Rupert Isaacson: exactly.
Why scorpion?
Why not a sea creature or water I think it
Craig Foster: was what, you know,
sometimes spontaneously what was
happening in the moment I think
it was as part of it, she observed
Rupert Isaacson: that that
was there and yes, okay.
It wasn't that this is a ritual
that always involves a scorpion.
Craig Foster: No, I don't think so.
You hadn't
Rupert Isaacson: been scouring
Craig Foster: the
Rupert Isaacson: pet shop.
No, no, no, no.
It was
Craig Foster: a wild, a wild
scorpion that was just there.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Interesting.
Yeah.
It's funny when, when you, there, there
is a similar story I'll share on when
we next talk, which happened to me
with a fox that was not a million miles
from that and had, was tied up with
my son's autism in an interesting way.
and a Navajo healer.
So when I read that in your book,
it resonated very deeply with me.
Times of transformation,
you know, messages that way.
Well, I've kept you for A long
time, and I know that you have to
get up early to make your dive.
So, can I get you back on?
Craig Foster: Wonderful, yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: A deeper dive,
I had to say that, didn't I?
There's a lot more I want to ask.
For those of you listening,
the book is Amphibious Soul.
It's Craig Foster.
You also need to see his
film, My Octopus Teacher.
You may well have already.
You certainly also need to
see his film, The Great Dance.
Um, just give us where they can
find you online and all of that.,
Craig Foster: I, I personally don't
use social media to, for lots of
reasons, but I our NGO Sea Change
Project are very active and we use
that for conservation and everything.
So it's seachangeproject.
com and it's also worth noting that.
I don't know if you were able to access
this or if you did Rupert, but when
you read the book, there's a QR code
in the book that connects you to 27
short films I made that show you some
of the crocodile diving and some of
these interactions with these animals.
And each chapter has about three
of the films and They're connected
to certain pages in the book.
And I, my son, Tom did
all the sound for that.
And so it was a really fun process to do.
It's just there's no extra cost.
It's just like a passion part of
the whole project of trying to
immerse people through the book and
through these these short films.
Rupert Isaacson: There's also in, in
the book, an amazing color section
of a tracking photo images from
one of your tracking doc from your
tracking diaries over the years with.
Some fairly pretty extraordinary moments.
I don't want to spoil them for people
but showing how tracking and animals
and the sea forest come together We
also have not in this conversation
really touched on the work of sea change
at all So I want to talk about that.
I want to talk about what's
actually being done with this story.
Story is healing healing is story
This is The healing work of the story,
the sea change project and helping to
not just to preserve the coast of the
forest itself, but to bring people into
touch with it for their own healing.
So I'd like to talk about that
Craig Foster: next time if we can.
Wonderful.
Thank you so much, Rupert.
Really great reconnecting with you and
I love your work and so appreciate your
fabulous intellect and creative ideas.
Thank you.
Rupert Isaacson: It's I'm, I'm, I'm
glad you labor under the illusion that
I have an intellect, but I can certainly
introduce it to the people who can put
you on right on that one, but thank you.
No, I mean, you.
It's just always such a brilliant
pleasure just to be in your company.
Thank you for joining us.
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