Rupert Isaacson: Thanks for joining us.
Welcome to Live Free, Ride Free.
I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson, New York Times bestselling author of
The Horseboy and The Long Ride Home.
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So now let's jump in.
Welcome back.
I've got such a treat for you all.
I've got the incredible Craig and the incredible George who've ded to
be back on, which amazes me because why should they, when they've got
so many other amazing things to do.
So, lucky us all right now, Craig has just come back from
somewhere close to God physically.
Let him tell us about that.
And he's been teasing, I think me and George with little snippets of where
he's been the last couple of months.
And we've been like, all right, Craig, just fucking tell us more.
So he's gonna tell us more.
We're gonna hold a gun to his head.
George, if he doesn't make animal sounds we'll cry.
So, and, and throw our toys out of the, out of the cop.
But where we left the last conversation off with Craig, if you, you listeners
remember was we, we were getting towards the importance of journaling and also
the importance of trying to do things in tribe and community when we're in nature,
because that's what our species is.
There's, I mean, solitude has its place, but it's not really fully who we are.
And we also touched on the impact on the, of the, of the mind
and the brain and the body of.
What does being in areas of high biodiversity mean?
And you know, both Craig and Georgia, lucky enough to live in such areas.
The Cape Peninsula of Africa, Yellowstone National Park, and
I'm here in the forest of Germany.
So I want to kick off with Craig.
Where have you been?
Craig Foster: Yeah, thanks so much Rupert and great to be here with you.
Joy.
I know you're
Rupert Isaacson: not gonna tell us are you,
Craig Foster: mum?
Rupert Isaacson: All right.
Where's the place that you've been that you're not gonna tell us?
So
Craig Foster: yeah, very fortunate to.
I visited this research island which is 3000 miles off East Africa
in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
Very remote area of a whole lot of islands and atolls.
And it is what we call the near pristine environment.
So not much fishing has, has, you know, pressure there at all.
And it's absolutely startling because literally everywhere you look there's
a shark and there's a ray, there's a, you know, manter afin coming up.
They're, you know, just birds soaring everywhere.
There's predations going on.
Huge fish in the shallows.
You know, you can see tuna snorkeling.
It is large numbers of predators.
And it's just as I was saying, you know, earlier the, I, I live in an area, in a
beautiful area here, the kelp forest, and there's a lot of life, a lot of animals.
But this is at another level.
And the, the sheer force of the biodiversity, the life force that's
pumping through this place, it does something to your, your being,
to your mind, your body, your spirit that is hard to quantify.
I mean, it's hot, way hotter than I'm used to.
There are a lot of biting insects.
You know, it, it's, it's, you'd think it would be, it would deplete your
energy, but it actually just gives you this incredible vital force.
And it's, it's fascinating.
I could do, you know, two or three times more physically than I can normally do.
So it affects you in a deep way.
And it affects your whole being.
It's very, very hard to, to quantify.
And the only, what I can say, what, what struck me almost as amusing
was, you know, we do all these things to stay mentally healthy.
Like in a, I do this breathing protocol and I do in a, the cold work
I do, you know, meditation, all this kind of stuff to try and keep sane.
Me too, too,
in a place I couldn't resist in a, in a place like this, I can, I just stop
all of that and I feel just way better.
And, and what it, what it strikes me is that.
You know, all these things we try and do to keep sane is just purely, all
we are trying to do is get back to the state that our ancestors lived in.
Yeah.
Our, our, our design.
That's all we are trying to do.
We are just trying to feel human in a, in a, in a, in the strange world
that we've created for ourselves.
Rupert Isaacson: George, you live in one of the flagship biodiverse places.
Oh, look Craig got baboons walking on his head, in his own, in his own office.
Yellowstone National Park.
Some people think of that.
Tourism traffic jams.
Some people think of that pre-Columbian, you know, pre
Columbus American wilderness.
Of course it's both.
And of course it's very important that the crowds can go there because
without access, similar to where you live, Craig, you know, false bay
in in South Africa, people can go.
People, you know, surfers will go camp, get in there, people
can go beach, C whatever.
And this, this thing of access and the desire for access, remains deep in us,
even when we're urban and suburban, as you say, Craig, there's this, all,
all these things that we do from mind, body, and soul are simply just trying to
get back to what it feels like to live
in the state.
We're sort of supposed to, as our species in the habitat we're supposed
to be in, that we now basically no longer do live in and have lost an, an
almost lost the ancestral memory of, but luckily it does still drive us there.
So George, before the we hit record, you were talking about
revisiting paths that are known.
And I like that.
I like the fact, like I revisit Yellowstone sometimes and I like the
fact that there are certain drives and a obvious one is the Lamar Valley.
'cause one wants to go there and see wolves or big herds of bison.
So, and every time you say the Lamar Valley, there's almost a little party
goes, oh cliche, the Lamar Valleys.
Of course I'm gonna go to the Lamar Valley for the people that know Yellowstone.
Of course, as soon as you go there and it's just one road, it's the same road.
You always drive it.
It's never the same.
The, the animal life that's going on, the wolves, the bears, the the bison.
You made this point about taking just hikes that are known hikes and
then just revisiting in different ways, which I think is another way
of hunting out this biodiversity that we need for our wellbeing.
Talk to us about that, but before you do it, make a, could you please
make an animal sound that you might encounter along that just, it's cool.
George Bumann: Actually, I'll give you one.
I heard this morning, I was just walking the dog and along the Yellowstone
River, and as you do, as we do, there's a, there's a wolf out there.
I never did see it and we didn't have time to drive across the bridge and a
couple miles back, but there was a wolf over there to the south about a mile away.
And the way we knew was the coyotes, one particular coyote was alarming for 20, 30,
40 minutes constantly while we were there.
And who knows how long before and their typical call was when they're
saying, hi, this is our turf.
Is
that, that sort of lets the neighborhood know that they're still at home and
stay on their side of the fence.
But it was, this call this morning sounded like this
and it just went on and on and on.
And they don't do that unless there's trouble.
That's, that's an alarm bark.
And over the years I've come to know, even from a distance of three miles or
however far one could hear exactly what's going on across the valley just by tuning
into the, the natural conversations.
And you're right, the, the goal really is, is trying to shift our
perspective, even in commonly held places to see what, what Craig is
talking about in, in common places.
You know, if you're, if you're super motivated, you know, this might be the
summer of butterflies for you or, or pick a, pick a topic, pick a location
and, and study it as much as you possibly can and find those things.
But for us lately, we live here, you know, and yes, Yellowstone is crowds.
It's, it's been mounting earlier in the year as the years go
on, and they're staying later.
And, but that's one tiny piece of a place that's 2.2
million acres in an ecosystem that's approximately 18 million.
There's a lot of space that has no people and, and a lot of people enjoy that
ability to get away from what is normal, normal existence for us these days, and
find that little slice of themselves that still yearns for this diversity, this
wildness, this freedom, true freedom.
Not freedom of press or not freedom of, you know, religion, freedom
of being that these places offer.
And for us being here and it's like, oh my gosh, we all, even living here, we
we're tied to the computer so much and other things, but making a date on the
calendar and, and sharing it with my wife.
We're like, we're going Thursday.
I don't know where we're going.
We've always looked at this one place and we haven't walked in there ever.
Let's just go, it might be a half hour walk, it might be three hours.
And lo and behold, we, we might stay six or eight.
We, but so often in spending time with people who may have never
come here before, there is a very profound sense that some articulate
as a feeling of coming home.
They've never been there before, yet it feels like coming home.
And I think that space is available to us, not just in places like
Yellowstone or, you know, the, these far reaches of the world that, that
folks sometimes get to the best place to step over that threshold is literally
out the threshold of your own door.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, Craig made a really good point about
that when we were last talking.
Do you remember, Craig, you were, you were saying that when you found
yourself in London the last time you.
We're needing to try to ground yourself with nature.
And of course London actually does have big parks and there is
quite a lot of wildlife in London.
I was just there last week and watching the foxes playing on my mother's studio
roof again in the middle of London.
However, you know, when you're tramping the concrete, like really, really in the
middle of London it's very good to remind yourself that you're still on that, on the
same planet that yellowstone's on or that that island in the Indian ocean is on.
Or it used to blow my mind when I would go up to Scotland, for example, and you could
walk up in Scotland for like five days and see like two people in certain areas
and say, shit, I'm on the same island that London is on, you know, which is this
kind of oversized metropolis, you know, on this small island, but yet it hasn't
actually conquered the island at all.
I do hear you with that coming home feeling George.
And it can come when we get into the deep wild places or it can come when we
find the deep wild in the non wild places because of course it's still there.
And Craig's point about finding the feeding sites of slugs and on algae,
on paving stones and being able to see the little toothed edges.
Of how they've been feeding and then looking at, okay, well what's the
story for the, who's coming now to eat the slugs and who's coming now
to eat the bird that eats the slugs?
And there comes this, you know, PID warbler or whatever it is
that we are now noticing, which we might not have noticed before.
And now we notice, okay, well there are foxes here and they
are predating on that burden.
Suddenly we're back in tracking mind and we're doing it in the middle of the city.
That homecoming feeling.
Something that I wanted to ask you guys, I think all of us often feel, and
I'm sure listeners do too, that when you enter any real focused interaction
with nature, you basically go into an altered state of consciousness.
Or do we, or is it only that we are living in an altered state of
consciousness in the, what modern world that we live in, so that when we go
back and we find the original state of consciousness, we consider that
an altered state of consciousness.
Which is it?
Or is it both?
What do you guys think?
Craig Foster: It's such an interesting question Rupert.
'cause it feels when, when we've got so much distraction now, and
I, I can immediately go back to.
You know, month or so ago on the island and no cell phone signal.
I was, you know, often alone for hours and hours and tremendous quietness
and everything quietens down and you feel like you in an altered state.
But that then you soon realized that's the, that was the
normal state of our ancestors.
And while you were talking, I was thinking, well, you know, our
minds, our minds are built, they're built from the, the, the bricks
of the minds of our ancestors.
That's how we, we are only thinking like we are because of
those who have come before us.
Mm-hmm.
So when, when I'm making a fire or whatever, you know, that deep home
erectus ancestors right there doing it.
So, I think that we are in some sort of altered state now that has been, but
it's kind of like it's a shallow state because we've got so many distractions.
So we can't get into that deeper state that you need for tracking,
that you need for understanding animals because of all this
technology and all these distractions.
So it's a really interesting question you ask.
I mean, it can be flipped either way.
What do you think, George?
Hmm.
George Bumann: I agree.
It's a wonderful question.
Because it's, I think it, it gets to where we've come in the last few centuries,
which is a, a state of being that is, that occupies a space independent of, of
that which our, our brains building blocks were founded on, as Craig said, and, and
we're just sort of in this maelstrom of, of activity and input trying to adapt
to this new situation that is so foreign to the very substance of what we are.
And so, yeah, when we do get into those spaces and states, it's, it seems altered
and yet those, those states are where the greatest listening, the greatest
discoveries, the greatest creative.
We always say this.
My wife and I, Jenny will go for a walk and we do it out
of exasperation sometimes.
Like just, we need to get away.
We need to get out.
We're gonna drive, not we could walk at our back door.
We just to mentally create this space, we drive somewhere and
instantly we're interacting
Rupert Isaacson: better, more genuinely.
Question.
That was gonna be my next question.
What do you guys think about nature and conflict?
Resolution, high biodiversity.
And conflict resolution
just in your own lives.
Just go on with that, George.
Let's go back to your wife.
And she rises the pan head from the corner.
If I
George Bumann: could make an analogy, it's like the pores open
up, you know, it's this flow through that those settings instill in
us like it, we're more creative.
We, we might be talking about an idea for a program or an art,
you know, a piece of writing.
And these ideas just, they start exploding.
Like, oh, we could include this and do this, and yet sitting in
the house or sitting at the office.
It's just these, these, this mental space that we sort of
build is, is not serving us.
What serves us is to, to be more permeable, I guess, is the way that
it feels like to me when we're out.
It's not me, it's not you.
It's not even us as, as a reference to the people.
It's, oh my gosh, did you just see that bird rocket through after that other bird?
Oh my gosh.
The, the, there's a rabbit just jumped.
Did you catch that?
And you know, it's a great example.
A friend was doing a lot of urban school children groups,
and they give them all a camera.
And the first three days, all of the photos were of
themselves and their friends.
At about day three, there's a flower.
There's a mountain scene
Rupert Isaacson: that's interesting.
There's
George Bumann: a geyser, there's a, a textured log on the ground.
And to me that speaks to this inherent curiosity and, and, and
desire on our part to, to sift into something bigger and more than us.
And as a result, we find, I feel like I personally find more of myself
or step out of myself as often as needed by entering those spaces.
Craig Foster: Can I add to that?
Yeah, please.
While I've, I've got the idea in my head.
So you're asking about the conflict resolution in these spaces and
mm-hmm.
Craig Foster: For me, it's so unnatural that we put so much
pressure on our human relationships.
It's just like that's never happened before.
Mm-hmm.
So, you know, in, in the world of our design, we have these relationships.
With all the tiny creatures.
We've got relationships with predators.
We've got the relationships with prey, hundreds and hundreds
of these relationships with different forms of animals.
And a lot of our being is taken up with that.
Now we sever that.
All those incredible threads, those bonds are severed and all the pressure
is on these human relationships.
That's so true.
When you go into these spaces, it's those threads start to, to reweave and
it, it just lifts all that pressure on your wife or your children or
whoever, and suddenly you are working with this pantheon of creatures
and humans are just part of that.
And that feels far, far more peaceful.
Rupert Isaacson: You know what, obviously Craig and I, you share this we share
this experience in the Kalahari with son Bushman who are non warriors and
appear to be the human blueprint.
So it would appear that humans are not really warriors that this comes
in somewhere after agriculture and it, so what is gets so confusing,
I think, is that if you're involved in agriculture or herding, you are
involved in nature very deeply and you still have these big relationships
with all these different species.
You still have.
The weather matters.
You know, you okay.
All of the things we know and yet out of those cultures came, war and conflict
creation rather than conflict resolution, overpopulation for some of the apocalypse,
all of that stuff, fam pestilence all from overpopulation, you know, whether
it's in villages, whether it's in cities.
But that's 10,000 plus years ago now.
So for most of us, us, you know, including the three of us sitting
here, we're inheritors in our immediate DNA of that conflict warrior culture.
And, you know, you and I, Craig, our forebears were colonial pirates.
You and I were lucky enough to get involved in land rights restoration
of the indigenous, very indigenous people that our ancestors had
a part in kicking off the land.
And it was good and felt good to pay that karmic debt to a large degree.
You know, George, you are, you are sitting there in Yellowstone, 19th
century earliest National Park formed.
Why?
'cause they kicked the people out and you know, the Nez pe Indians,
I dunno if they were the only ones there, but they're certainly the ones
that the stories are told because of Chief Joseph running away from the.
The American Calvary hunting him to, you know, pacify the West.
And now we come out of that conflict society, that Viking society, Booman,
you know, your Germanic you know, Craig, you are Anglo-Saxon, Dutch, Germanic.
I am too.
With that little bit of Ashkenazi Jew that just won't go away.
And the Rabbi Rupert.
But nonetheless we haven't, us both the ones who helped to Sav, as you said, and
the ones who wanted to remain connected.
And
so
we've been lucky to find ourselves in these places of di biodiversity.
The human mind is biodiverse, right?
The human mind is like a, it's like a forest.
No axons like trees, dendrites going out to wire like branches, like twigs
branches and roots to wire with others.
And it seems that if we get rigid in our thoughts, we become like a
plantation of eucalyptus or pines that someone's gonna chop down or.
If their mind is allowed to do what it needs to do, it becomes like a wilder
ecosystem with more possibility when given that most people are going to be coming
out of this feeling of constant conflict.
This feeling of constantly being in the amygdala in with cortisol, the stress
hormone, that we have this crazy tolerance for it, it seems, but it drives us insane.
You are both in the business of bringing the stories from the wild places to
people screens, to bringing people directly out into it, to creating
art that tells the story of that.
How do you see your roles there as conflict resolvers, whether on
the meta scale or the minor scale?
I'd like you guys to talk about what you do from that perspective and
how can through that, how can people listening pick up some tips about how to
resolve internal and external conflict through direct, interactive with nature
and bringing the stories of nature that they've tracked back with them.
Do you wanna kick off with that, George?
And then do you wanna.
Just Sure, sure.
I can
George Bumann: take a stab at it.
I, I think it's a, it's a very potent question and and one that, that
needs to be worked on all the time.
I would say because we, by our very nature have, have done a lot of things that,
you know, if mankind had its chance to do over again, maybe
we would pick a different path.
But here we are, you know, and I think one of the greatest services
to, to life and to community is, is to tell this story and, and in a
way that includes all of the voices.
You know, I spent a lot of time listening to wild animal conversations,
and in nature you quickly realize that there is no Outlander, there is no
immigrant, it is only us in this moment.
You know, so poo-pooing the starling because it's in your, it's European
ancestry poo-pooing the, the dandelion because most of those species and or
variations were brought to North America, you know, trying to eradicate these
things when in fact, you know, there is a, certainly is a place for maintaining
native plant communities and so on.
But in nature, all of the conversations and all of the speakers are valid.
Accepted and contribute.
Mm mm So true.
And so when we tell the story of Yellowstone, you know, there on
record there's 30 ish, 35, you know, tribes that had affiliations
here, it's probably closer to 50.
We do our very best in our programming to bring those voices in, let them
speak for themselves, not tell their stories for them, and, you know,
curate, curate the best we can.
A a, a re and a res sorting of the deck so that we have a picture
that fits the current time.
It's, it's so easy and we do it subconsciously, is to, to tell
the story from our perspective for which that's all we have, right?
My Germanic ancestors were the first settlers in the part of New York that
was cleared of the Haudenosaunee people when George Washington cleared the entire
landscape of those tribal allies to make way for, for our, my European ancestors.
And so I can't undo that.
But what I can do is make sure that what's going on now is honest about that
and honest about what we've done to the, the tribes of non-humans and, and
allow other people to the tribes of
Rupert Isaacson: non-humans.
That's a book title.
George Bumann: Hmm, perhaps so.
But, you know, it just diversity.
We crave that diversity.
You know, you, you, you want to get all the baseball cards you want, all
the, the knick-knacks, you want all, we, we crave that, that sense of,
of variety as, as the spice of life.
And we are not the keepers of that as an individual being.
We must be in community.
We must be in association with others to supply what we have our blind spots
for or have neglected or have missed.
And I dunno.
I'll stop there.
I'll, I'll let Chime and Craig chime in here.
Craig Foster: So what came to mind when you asked the question rep was
fundamentally what I am trying to bring across.
And so the help of a, a wonderful team is this very simple idea that
Mother Nature is the shareholder of.
Everything we do, all our businesses, all our endeavors.
She is the, the foundation, she's the life force.
She's everything.
Yet we've forgotten that.
I've said this before, but I purposely say it again because
it's such a fundamental thing.
Like if you take away the biodiversity, what we are talking about now,
every single thing will collapse.
We won't be able to breathe, eat, function, and, and this
is what we've forgotten.
So
Rupert Isaacson: fire up all that ai.
Are we gonna power it?
Yeah.
Not through nature, it's just,
Craig Foster: it's just a joke.
Everything will collapse.
Yeah.
Ar ar go very fast.
So it's like, if we could just put all this incredible mental force
we've got into looking after the most foundational thing that will
affect every single human's life on this planet more than anything else.
It seems the logical way to go, but people have somehow conveniently forgotten this.
So it's trying to bring that story back and how you do that.
I think, you know, ultimately it's through storytelling.
'cause storytelling is this foundation.
For the way we operate.
So everything that we see around us is based upon a story.
We are the storytelling
Rupert Isaacson: ape too, you know?
Yeah, exactly.
We have the larynx.
Yeah.
Yes.
Craig Foster: So, so we need to change the story from this massive
extractive force to one of reciprocity.
And, you know, the, the, one of the new and interesting ways we are trying
to do that is through this project we've called 1001 Sea Forest Species.
And I dunno if you want me to go into some of the detail now, or we
want you to go into not the detail
Rupert Isaacson: now.
Craig Foster: Okay.
So it's, it's taken many years to get to the point we are, and it'll take quite a
lot or more years, but essentially what we're doing is studying 1,001 animals
in the great African Sea forest and on the, the intertidal shore, getting a
beautiful scientific page on each animal.
Its proper scientific name.
And then layering into that powerful stories, like these incredible stories
that George tells us of these face-to-face encounters with these incredible animals.
The, the, the personal stories that pieces of their secret lives.
Then adding to that, these, you know, high level photographs that are almost
like love letters to these animals, beautiful images, short films on them,
anecdotes, incredible bits of behavior.
So suddenly you've got this interwoven digital platform
that stores all the memory.
'cause I'm already forgetting half of what I've already encountered.
It's too much.
But if I can store it in there, and the prof we working with and Jannis, the PhD
biologist and all the other team members, we put it in and we create this hive mind
of this incredible ecosystem hive mind.
It's like a
Rupert Isaacson: hive mind.
That's the follow up to the tribes of nature.
Yeah.
Craig Foster: It, it, it's this incredible pulsing beating heart of the, these
creatures and the smallest ones that you can, you know, most people will never,
ever see, have stories, have a voice, and then you can show other people in other
parts of the world they don't have to go.
And do it at this intense level.
They could just take 10 or 50 animals that they're in their backyard
really, and do the same thing.
Build a a hive mind of them and let them speak as well.
Let biodiversity speak.
Let the, the divine creation that is manifest in nature have a voice.
It's a very, very powerful way of getting this idea back that she is this thing
that's kept us alive from the beginning.
And if we, if we aren't careful with her, we, we, we gonna be extinct, basically.
I mean, it's a horrible thing to say, but she's holding us up every second.
Rupert Isaacson: Give us a story on one of the things that is so
small that we don't even see it.
We'll notice it.
That's in your Thousand One Species Project.
Craig Foster: I was just working on the, it's called the Cape Marella this morning.
Rupert Isaacson: Cape Marella.
Craig Foster: Cape margin.
And these are tiny little predatory snails, like a cleanup crew.
They live underneath the sand and they put their little proses up through
the sand and they've got incredible smell and they're just waiting.
And if any animal is dead or dying or injured, they come out
on mass and they just envelop it.
And they, they consume it
Rupert Isaacson: in the kelp forest.
Craig Foster: Yes.
And you know, 99.9%
of people have died.
They've definitely never seen one.
So if an octopus makes a kill, they just onto that kill immediately.
They clean it up, they clean the smell up.
And what's amazing is they have this ability, and this is like the secret
life, if they get a piece of flesh or a tiny animal that's died, they can
wrap it into a bundle and pop it into a compartment on the back of the mantle,
and then they charge away to try and get away with this thing that they can eat.
And I've got images and pictures of this extraordinary.
Are there other trails
Rupert Isaacson: snails trying to stop them when they do that?
Yes,
Craig Foster: yes.
They, they, they're all fighting like rugby scrumming to get hold of this thing,
but it's so beautifully wrapped that they can get away and then they go underneath
the sand and away and then consume it.
So, I mean, it's just there.
These hundreds and hundreds of these incredible stories that have now.
They've just been sitting on this giant hard drive, just, you know, what's gonna
happen to, how did you find out about
Rupert Isaacson: the Cape Marella?
Craig Foster: I've been, you know, looking very, very closely at Octopus
and their kilts and then wondering what's happening afterwards and looking very
just, you know, staying still okay after a kill, just holding on underwater.
And then you see these tiny little proses coming up, these tiny
creatures coming out, and some even like coming down from the kelp.
And, and then they go inside the shell where the, the predation being made.
And if you're not quick enough, you don't see them.
And then suddenly the shell is clean.
They've just cleaned out everything.
So it's just from this fine observation that you, you've see them and then it got
these incredible, you know, images and video of this, of these amazing behaviors.
And you, you get this cent, this, this smell, this just phenomenal.
Rupert Isaacson: Before we hit the record button, you said that it
was gonna take about a decade to get all this material together.
What's your a, do we have to wait that long, or are, are you gonna release it
in sort of watchess that we can enjoy?
Yes.
Yeah.
So fairly soon
Craig Foster: the first layer of the app will be available.
You don't need wifi, and people can take it out into the field and literally
anything they see will be in there.
And it's a bit of a tracking thing to find, find it,
Rupert Isaacson: anything they see in the kelp forest or anything they see in any.
Craig Foster: Anything they see on the shore or in the
kelp forest will be in there.
Okay.
It's very unlikely they'll find anything that's not and then that
you'll be able to get a sense for it.
But we are gonna add the layers and layers and layers as as time goes past.
Rupert Isaacson: Craig, you know, you've been one of my heroes since
I've known you, but you just confirmed why you are one of my heroes.
It's like
one of the things which we do in what we call movement method,
which is the way we work.
It started with autism, but now it's schools or people with, you know,
looking to for a neuroplasticity boost.
Is this thing of, okay, fine, not everybody can get into the forest of
Germany immediately or down into the cult forest or into Yellowstone or wherever.
And yes, you can learn to see the slug tracks where they've eaten in
the middle of London, but when you're a kid who is born to be sort of awed
as much by the big stuff as by the little stuff, you may or may not be
open to something so detailed at least.
You might need to go through something a bit more obvious before I.
You can look for the fine detail.
And one of the things which we do therefore, is because people are stuck
in classrooms because they're stuck in therapy offices, which are just shit,
you know, they're just linoleum and fluorescent strip lights, and so I'm
gonna hear it make you feel better.
It's like, no, you're not.
It's, there's no way you can possibly make me feel better because look, you know.
No, but as you say, severed from the ancestral connection with nature,
how would that therapist even know?
So we have this thing about just bringing the outside inside.
So generally we do these classroom makeovers where I'll say, I
just want to see antler in here.
I want to see bone, I want to see sheepskin, I wanna see animal heights.
I wanna see sand.
I wanna see wood chips.
I wanna see different types of light.
I want to see stuff that would be in a hunting and gathering camp
so that when the kids touch it, it will trigger an ancestral memory.
And there's enough studies done now just showing how, for example, toys
made out of natural objects, you know, affect the brain better than
toys made outta plastic or whatever.
You guys do this on a meta scale, you know, you bring back these stories, Craig,
that the films that you've made have made peop millions, tens of millions of
people now look more closely at nature.
You've, you've really.
I've done an amazing job with this.
You know, George, your, your books and the art that you do, I feel
composites of stories that bring them into human environments,
that amazing place that you live.
And, you know, I said, talk to me, George, about the process of putting natural
story into art and then giving the, that natural story to people to bring
into their non-natural environments.
And what's that process for you?
Hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: From an emotional point of view as well.
Yeah, I, I've seen you and, and anyone listening should go and find
the YouTube video of George will put a link to it doing a, a, a, a Clay
Wolf and a TEDx talk as, as he's talking you should see him do it.
This is story.
George Bumann: Yeah.
Yeah.
I think it's important that we get away from
Craig's waving a, another one of my creations in front of the camera.
Okay.
It's a Clovis reproduction a spearpoint, one of the older technologies from the,
the, the, the prehistory of North America.
And ironically, one of the most difficult points to reproduce is that
why is it so difficult out of interest?
Largely in Wow.
Because it can you see the fla that goes, I would've thought that from the bottom.
A real
Rupert Isaacson: artifact.
George Bumann: Yeah.
That's why I sign them.
So if they somehow fall outta someone's pocket, they don't get confused for it.
I've had some friends pull it over, pull one over on their, their friends
with some of my reproductions.
But the, the, that, that about a 12,000 year old type of point.
Correct.
Yeah.
Correct.
Yeah.
And this is the type of weapon reused to hunt mammoths and wild
horses and camels and things that existed in in North America.
At that time what makes it tough is that flake that goes up the base
from the bottom toward that the tip.
And to get that to happen on both sides, you break I've broken hundreds
to get to just a handful that I have completed, and I only give them the
people I really appreciate in person.
So maybe I was gonna
Rupert Isaacson: say thanks for the Clovis point.
Yeah.
George Bumann: Well you need to, we need to meet up in, in person
and, and perhaps one will appear.
Craig and I had that on his book tour as our mutual friend John
was kind enough to, to hook us up.
But back to the, the topic of, of just art.
I think we need to step away from the story as it, we've been referring
to it as a, a spoken word story.
Craig's doing it beautifully in the digital realm with his films.
I'm doing it with my hands.
I'm, I'm making sculptures.
I'm actually.
I think I can show you one of these here.
This to me is a story.
This is a miniature basket I made from a local plant for my wife for Christmas
and died some of it with black walnut.
But in this little basket is a story of
Rupert Isaacson: something brilliant, George.
George Bumann: It it's, well, thank you.
But it, it has its own story.
There's a, I have the relationship I have with this patch of plants and
I curate them and take care of these plants and weed out the, the dead stems.
And I've learned so much about my home through these plants.
And so it comes with this, this experience of, of place that when you
look at a, sadly when they're in museums and separated from the people and the
landscapes where they're created, these, these historic works, you just feel,
maybe not the details of, but the thrust of this, this relationship with the
landscape, with nature, with one another.
And when I'm working on a sculpture, I don't use photographs.
I, I sketch either on paper or I sketch in clay or wax, and I may
finish the piece in the field.
Although a lot of pieces, I have to wait till that bison is back in that same
coat pattern next year to finish it.
But a lot of times those sculptures might be 5, 6, 8, 10, 12 years in the
making because I don't want to create just a representation that visually thi
makes you think of a wolf or a bear.
But these are, in essence my travel logs from years and
years of really detailed study.
So I have my own data sheets.
I had a phishing tackle box and I threw all the phishing tackle out and made
my own data sheets to take 50 plus measurements on every mammal that I
find deceased and have tape measures and calipers and dissecting knives and rubber
gloves and pencils and pens and, and all of this making death masks, which was
a, a, a historic thing that artists did of, of people when someone passed away.
It was a common thing in the, the 19th century to make a, a plaster cast, a
death mask of their face, you know, making those of animals that, that I'm
able to, deepens an understanding and appreciation for them that I see in
the movement of the sun on a given day.
I spend the entire day watching elk just to understand what their body
looks like and how it functions at exactly this time of the year with their
coat pattern exactly the way it is.
And you don't see that subtle relief of the ribs and that subtle push of
the ileal crest of the pelvis until the sun gets just at a certain angle
and they turn at a certain angle.
And so what I create in clay, to me, is the accumulation of just
mountains of time paying attention.
And the sculptures to me are also an excuse to look deeper.
You know, Craig's collections and, and his video and, and his journals function
similar to mine in that way, where they help inspire more questions or, right.
Well, what you know, what if this was an adult instead of
a sub-adult or a juvenile?
Oh my gosh.
Holy cow.
And then there's other elements within there, like she's, she's
walking a little in funny, oh my gosh.
She, you can actually see the very subtle bump on her metatarsal bone where she
must have broken her leg at one point.
So the stories in these layers, like what Craig's would do, it's the
story helps build the next story.
The he, the story helps you look further into the experience.
Rupert Isaacson: I so agree.
You know, when we signed off from our last conversation Craig, you were
talking about journaling, so of course I probably have to start journaling.
So I found myself very quickly after that.
It was journaling, but story, it's just gathering story and
exactly as you just described, George, you know, this observation.
So a friend of mine who runs a fox hunt in Northern Germany, but it's not an actual
fox hunt because I don't do that anymore.
We lay a scent and we ride after that, but it's still, the hounds
have to work it out and so on.
Asked me to come up and spend three days hunting, three, three days in a row
hunting because they needed the support.
They were short of manpower and I said, of course.
And not my horse though.
And normally when you go and you trust your life to the unpredictable country,
you particularly if it's gonna involve jumping, it's better to be on a horse
that you have a deep relationship with.
Because, and there's a story there, but it wasn't, I, yeah.
And I was in an era of Germany I didn't know.
And we're in this for us.
And you are, I've got Craig's words going in my mind as we're.
Laying the lines and helping the hounds find the lines and saying, yeah.
In this, in this highly human affected landscape that we're in, it's still,
we are, we are now the Wolf Pack.
We're taking the place of what the Wolf Pack was.
It's just a modified human wood pack wolf pack.
And now that particular form of it that we are doing is about 300 years old.
But, and we're, I'm, I'm on this horse that's designed to run really
fast and jump these fences, which was evolved at exactly the same
time 300 years ago for this purpose.
Which was taking stock from the original step herders of Central Asia, what we
call the turman horse, which is now the ancestor of the thoroughbred horse
and mixing it with the Arabian horse.
I'm on an Anglo Arab, as they call it, very hot horse to ride.
And this has now come up to Northern Germany, but actually they would've come
in here long before because the Goths and the Lombards and the ards and the
vandals and Thewas and the alimony and all these tribes that would've been pushed
into this part of Germany from the east by the Huns because of climate change,
you know, 2000 years ago, established these cultures of the horse here.
And that we are still actually kind of the indigenous people that were always
here practicing the same culture.
And as I'm thinking this, we, the hounds bring us past
these, this, these megaliths.
And these old burial mounds, these old stone burial mounds, dolmans, you
know, with the, with the capstone on top from five, six, 7,000 years ago, I
didn't even know were in this forest.
And I had had an experience like that before.
In Cornwall, once hunting in the mist.
In the mist came up.
And I found out I was in the middle of a stone circle on my horse and but alone.
And you feel that touch of the divine comes.
It's like the, the old Celtic called ano, you know, with you in that moment.
And you must give respect and ride on.
And so I get the sense of the story of the horse that I'm on is being
brought in here by these tribes.
And then these were the same tribes that would've had a common ancestor with
these guys thousands of years before even that building, these grave mans.
And then, what are we?
But the human wolf pack.
Okay, but now that the, the hounds which create the wolf
pack, where are the wolves?
And that is, ah, but the wolves are coming back in all these parts of
Germany for the first time in 150 years, the wolves are coming back.
And not, in fact, we had been warned going out that we could run into wolf and were
we gonna, would our hos be all right?
Were they gonna be all right?
Blah, blah, blah, blah bum in this area that 150 years, years ago wiped
them out despite the fact that there was this deep, connection with nature.
This is the area where all the grims fairytales come from.
So little red riding with forest is one hour north of air Wolves.
Don't get a very good rap in that one, do they?
SEL and Gretel for it's an hour.
The other way, the sleeping beauty castle is just a couple of
hours from me, blah, blah, blah.
And here we are in amongst all this, in, in all this story, living this
story, still practicing the story and the older story is coming back.
First these mega lists.
And then the wolf itself, not five days ago in the same village that
I'm sitting in here, which is much, much closer to the city where, pretty
close to downtown Frankfurt here.
Someone, my, my friend Philip, sends me a picture of a big male wolf just walking
on the hills, just on the other side from this window that I'm pointing at here.
And this thing of full circle and con that is that not conflict resolution, right?
And to bring a story into oneself and to sort of live it and ride it if you
like, and experience it as a living story and realize this is what's going on.
And then think, oh my gosh, even that comes from conflict and realize, because
why are all these wol here anyway?
'cause of Chernobyl, because of the, the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl
in 1986 where they had to mark off a huge area of central Europe
and say, no one can go in there.
So what happened?
Nature just reestablished itself.
And apparently there are these wolves that are showing up here, have a gene
that's been switched on, which is anti radiation, which is why they thrived.
And now they, they, they've overpopulated that Chano area and they've gone out and
that's why they've now come to Germany.
And that's why they're now showing up in the Netherlands and Belgium where
they, you know, have been gone forever.
Wiped out in the little red riding hood time, so on and so on and so on.
And conflict and conflict resolution.
As you know, if you followed any of my work, I'm an autism dad and we have
a whole career before this podcast in helping people with neurodivergence,
either who are professionals in the field.
Are you a therapist?
Are you a caregiver?
Are you a parent?
Or are you somebody with neurodivergence?
When my son, Rowan, was diagnosed with autism in 2004,
I really didn't know what to do.
So I reached out for mentorship, and I found it through an amazing adult
autistic woman who's very famous, Dr.
Temple Grandin.
And she told me what to do.
And it's been working so amazingly for the last 20 years.
That not only is my son basically independent, but we've helped
countless, countless thousands of others reach the same goal.
Working in schools, working at home, working in therapy settings.
If you would like to learn this cutting edge, neuroscience backed
approach, it's called Movement Method.
You can learn it online, you can learn it very, very simply.
It's almost laughably simple.
The important thing is to begin.
Let yourself be mentored as I was by Dr.
Grandin and see what results can follow.
Go to this website, newtrailslearning.
com Sign up as a gold member.
Take the online movement method course.
It's in 40 countries.
Let us know how it goes for you.
We really want to know.
We really want to help people like me, people like you, out there
live their best life, to live free, ride free, see what happens.
Do you feel guys, that what we're having to learn how to do again in our
conflict culture is to learn how to track, learn how to hunt nature itself?
Again,
George Bumann: that one's you, Craig,
that's a tough one.
I just wanna point out
Rupert Isaacson: to a long time, so we had any animal sounds, George.
Yeah.
I am missing their sounds.
I, yeah.
George Bumann: And what is that common Raven telling us
what my turf, this is my home.
Explain yourself because you weren't invited.
Explain yourself,
Rupert Isaacson: Craig.
Are we having to, are we, are we indeed having to learn how to
track nature again as a species?
Craig Foster: I think we have we've definitely lost track.
I mean, to be this idea of being in conflict with the great mother mm-hmm.
Which we are in now, is a, is an absurd, absurd place to be.
I mean, why would you you know, wage conflict against the very thing that's
nurtured you from the beginning of your species and keeps nurturing you
despite everything is thrown into it.
It, it is, it unfortunately is a definition of insanity.
But it's understandable given all the pressures, you know, that the, this
shifting baselines and each new generation gets forced into these strange places and
these linoleum covered environments where there's no hint of ancestral connection.
You know, the knowledge of the elders you know, no longer there to guide us.
It, I think it's absolutely critical that we, we rarely start to.
Understand where we are sitting and how, just how fragile our position is.
Because this great mother that's, that's, that's there.
This, this biological intelligence, this biodiversity is, is very strong.
We can push her down and she will make you know, life impossible for us to live.
And then she'll bounce back in a, in 10 million different ways.
Like she's done the before.
Just
like the wolf.
Yeah,
Craig Foster: yeah, exactly.
It's just like the, the wolf from Chernobyl.
But I think, you know, it's easy to see ourselves as a dark species, but
we are actually so beautiful in so many ways, and we understand at such
capacity for this, you know, loving the mother at such a deep level.
You know what George is talking about this, the, the, just watching this elk
and understanding them over the years, that's a form of deep love and respect.
Mm.
And in
Craig Foster: his art and this incredible, like clover's point when he gave it to me,
I was just, you know, deeply emotional.
'cause you can feel if, you know, napping and stone tool making
the tremendous energy, power and practice it takes to do this.
I think it took him 30 years to master these points.
Am I right, George?
Yeah.
The, the, the amount of the capacity for the love we have is
just tremendous in all humans.
So we actually, I think, are a very beautiful species.
Mm.
Craig Foster: And it's worth keeping us alive, but we just have lost track
completely of you know, our, our relationship with the bigger forces that
actually are in charge of our future.
George Bumann: And a lot of it's distraction, I think certainly the
conflict and is in the background working on us, but the distraction that
we referenced earlier is, is enormous.
Mm.
You know, so often I'll take students or class out into Yellowstone and you
know, the intention is to understand, you know, bird language for instance.
And we go out and we just sit.
And the only rules are no watches, no phones, no nothing.
I'll keep track of the time.
You just sit and watch and listen and to some people, so they're
like, we don't have to do anything.
So initially that, that and alone for a lot of people is, is a, is a huge relief.
We're we're human doings.
We're not human being beings.
Well that can also be
Rupert Isaacson: very scary, can't it?
George Bumann: It can.
So you kind of curated
Rupert Isaacson: and your mind I'm not doing something.
George Bumann: Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
And, and that's, I struggle with that very much.
Yeah.
You know, what, what is this thing about me?
Working on, on something or just, just reading a book for crying out loud.
I, I should not, is
Rupert Isaacson: that not because, is that not because we actually ought
to be kind of tracking all the time?
Do you, do you remember which of the guys was it in the Great dance
Craig, who said of the three son hunters that you are always tracking?
Craig Foster: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: You are never not tracking, right?
No,
Craig Foster: not, yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: And is our, is our desire for distraction, simply our desire to be
tracking when we're cut off from that?
Mm-hmm.
Craig Foster: Yeah.
'cause it's, it naturally just animates you and to you.
But now you take that away, the mind is searching.
That's an interesting idea,
Rupert Isaacson: but I guess you're right, George.
You have to have a certain quietude to create the space where the white, we
have to give ourselves that greatest
George Bumann: gift.
That greatest gift is the time and space.
And sometimes you have to legislate it for yourself, you know, put it on the
calendar like a doctor's appointment.
If you look at other species who are contained and caged, they start
these repetitive behaviors and self damage, inflicting behaviors.
We, we in many ways resemble that caged animal.
We are not exerting ourselves in the way that our nervous system needs.
There's been, I'm, I'm in the process of, of correcting my own eyesight,
naturally wor glasses since I was 12.
And one thing I didn't write about in the book with the magpie experience
that we talked about in the last podcast episode was I had this moment
of that altered state, but I also, and I didn't write about this, had absolutely
perfect vision for just a few seconds.
And what I've found is through this process and this, this was a technique
developed and studied and figured out in New York in the 19 teens,
late 1918 hundreds and early 19 hundreds, it was the end of glasses.
The eyes are an extension of the brain's nervous tissue.
And when the brain is out of sorts, the eyesight is out of sorts, quite literally.
You know, when I'm out in nature and I feel that relaxation with
practice in this technique known as the Bates method I get a lot more and
longer periods of clear vision now, and as one keeps doing this, you.
You don't need your glasses anymore.
Whether that's nearsighted, farsighted, I have astigmatisms.
I can see the top of that mountain right now.
I can see individual trees
and they've done studies on native Alaskans at the time.
They started educating those, those native children in westernized schools and
their eyesight went down precipitously.
And yet in the native community where the elders were taught in the
old ways and lived in the old ways, they had perfect vision into their
seventies, eighties, and beyond.
What is the Bates method?
It's on the whole, it's a technique that teaches you to relax.
It is the think of a water balloon is what basically what the eyeball is in any
slight influence on that changes the shape and hence the clarity that you perceive.
And we, we have these clench fists.
Yeah, some people keep them in their back.
Some people keep them in their legs, their jaw muscles.
And those of us who have need vision correction often keep them
in these muscles we don't even know.
We have in the orbits of our eyes that are squeezing the eyeballs
in ways that distort our vision.
And as we learn to let those relax, the eye takes its natural and healthy state
and we just see clearly, it then affects our mental space, our mood, our, you know.
I've been going without glasses for a while, and a lot of that early state,
I felt isolated from my community.
I wouldn't recognize people in the grocery store and they'd have to wave, you know?
And I think a lot of things that go through our minds, if they,
even if they don't distort our, our actual eyesight, they isolate us.
These lessons of nature are to expand us.
And through the expansions, I personally feel like it's, those are
the spaces where I'm my best self.
I'm healthier, I'm more creative, more relaxed, you know, and we,
Rupert Isaacson: I was, I was doing a podcast the other day with a neuro, a
neuroscientist called Cheryl Pratt and University of Washington, and she made the
point of that when we are forced to have focused attention for an unnatural period
of time, it's so exhausting for the brain.
It's, her book is the neuroscience of You.
It's really good.
And they look at not how all the brains are the same, but how each
brain is different in her lab.
But that one of the generalities is that.
Forced attention school, but also living in a city.
She said, because if you're in a non-natural environment, you're actually
honing in constantly on these framed points of attention because there's
nowhere to generally rest your vision that in nature, because the lines are
soft, you can, you go from sharp, focused attention and then immediately relax.
She was making the point that A DHD is largely brought on by the mental
exhaustion of being forced to have too much focused attention and the
fatigue that the brain goes through, rather than the tracking skill, which
of course is what it is, of being able to narrow in zip, but then softly focus
out again and z and focus out again.
It's always balanced and actually you probably spend most of your
time being able to rest the brain and as you say, rest the eyes.
Mm-hmm.
Craig Foster: That's, that's so interesting because this, that's what
I've noticed and, and I know George has noticed this too, in a, in a big way,
that when you are in these places these near pristine places or places of, of.
What I call the beating heart.
When the biodiversity's in all in place
mm-hmm.
Craig Foster: You just feel totally different.
It is just, and you feel sad that, you know, so many people will
not be able to experience this.
You feel, so obviously we are very privileged, but
it's, it's just so different.
The whole physicality, the whole mental space is different.
Utterly is a different person there.
And what it does is it starts to break down the self and you
start to feel part of everything.
And you don't feel that that, that that sharp, nasty taste of the ego
in your mouth it, it naturally breaks that down and softens everything.
And I love the way the, your neuroscientist friend has, has articulated
that because it's exactly the case.
It, it, it fundamentally changes one, and it's not surprising.
I mean Sure.
We've had you talk about, you know.
The last 10,000 years of this sort of much harsher ancestry
post agricultural revolution.
But one doesn't think about the 3 million years of fully wild
living that comes before that.
That's a much deeper memory.
That's a much deeper in our psyche.
That's what we, who we really are.
Forget about this last few seconds of 10,000 years.
That's really what we are about.
And that's where I think we desperately need to draw our, our, our
inspiration from as we move forward.
Rupert Isaacson: Conflict resolution again, because I, I guess if it's, if
it's healing conflicts within oneself, whether it's the conflict of the self,
that horrible little voice always telling you your shit, there you go.
Or the exhausted muscles around the eyes squeezing the eyeballs because
they don't get a chance to relax even in somebody who's grown up like George has.
You know, because long before George got to Yellowstone National Park, he was
exploring the forests of New England.
You know, it's, it's not like George wasn't in natural environments, you
know, and yet even those of us who can access them we still suffer because so
much of our time is, has to be spent.
Engaging economically.
And isn't it interesting that, as you say, Craig, the 3 million years,
and of course there are still people on the planet who are living in that
3 million year old authentic way.
Yeah.
It's easy to forget that, you know, we'll be often reading books, you
know, our hunter gatherer ancestors.
It's like they're still there.
Craig Foster: Yeah.
We, we un contacted wild people living.
It's, it's incredible.
They're still there.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
It didn't go anywhere.
We just stopped listening.
But the,
if they are conf, if the whole point of that culture is conflict
resolution, because when you're not top predator, your only hope is strategy.
Together, together, together, love communication.
If you fragment, if conflict gets beyond a certain point, everyone's
gonna get eaten by the ness.
Which is of course what we're facing on a meta level as a
species now with our conflicts.
And we can all become extinct and become eaten by the hyena, as you
say, different types of hyena.
So much of it still comes down to, to this idea of conflict resolution and
what, what you were saying earlier that love, if we're a species of love,
we talk about we're a storytelling species, but what is story beloved?
I remember once I was on on Table Mountain and this is when I was 25 and,
so obviously back in the Plato scene and I, I came down with a fever and I
went up Tableman with my cousin Simon, who's actually still a psychiatrist in
Cape Town area and his flatmate Lni, who's a now psychiatrist in London.
And it was on a few times in my life I've ever actually become delirious.
And then I was like, shit, how am I gonna get down, right?
Because, you know, table mountain.
Okay, so I've gotta think now and I've got to try to be, and I'm in an
altar state of consciousness before I kind of knew what that word meant.
And as I'm coming down the mountain in this altar set of consciousness, this
thought comes to me where I remembered in the chapel at school, there was
this, why did it come into my mind?
Then in the chapel in school, there was a inscription that one
often sees on the wall of a chapel, God is love and love is God.
And I remember as a kid thinking, yeah, that's true.
You know, just in the way that, yeah, that's true.
That's true.
Dunno why.
I know that's true, but it's true.
This same thought comes to me as I'm stumbling now down the mountain.
And as you know, that's a very powerful place, dramatically.
Table mountain, the two tip of the continent tip of where
humanity becomes two oceans Meat.
Yeah.
Whatever.
And I realize, oh, well if God is love and love is God, then
everything is God, which means that.
The stones under me.
All matter must be God, which means the shirt I'm wearing, which is created from
cotton, which is a plan, must be love.
And the paint job on the car down there that we're struggling towards, which is
coming from chemicals that come from rocks that are matter created must be love.
And the car door that I'm opening now with the metal that it's made of
and the fossil fuel that maybe it's not so good, but nonetheless is,
is is a carbon, is is a fossilized.
Forest is love.
Even the gas power in this car is love.
And I thought, well what about, what about hate then?
What about torture?
What about atrocity?
What about war?
Where's that as?
And then this thought came, ah, that's twisted forms of love
removed from the source, expressing insane pain, but it's still love.
And with that, I passed out, but I never forgot it.
Did I need to be on a place like Table Mountain to have that revelation?
Talk to me guys about how you've come to your view of nature and love.
Have you, are there some moments of epiphany that stand out for you that way?
Kickoff, whoever can bring one to mind.
Quickest.
George Bumann: I talked last, Craig,
Craig Foster: your,
I was looking at you, George.
We make animal sounds and then we'll forget.
Oh, that's so cool.
There you go.
George Bumann: You have to embarra.
What's that?
That's an elk.
Is it?
Is red stag?
Yeah.
Relative red stag.
Relative of, is it bugling
Rupert Isaacson: or is it just No, that's a cow.
That's a female's vocalization.
George Bumann: That's a, yeah.
Calling her calf.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Can you just give us the bugling of the male quickly?
George Bumann: If my throat's clear enough,
Rupert Isaacson: I can now see why they call it bugling.
So I often wondered that because you know, with Red Deer, which is the European
equivalent, they don't make that sound.
It's more like a Yeah, they bark.
Sort of,
George Bumann: Yeah, they roar.
Yeah.
George Bumann: Very un unmanly sound.
When some people hear it for the first time, they're like, we're, we're expecting
more Like that ro like the bison.
Do you know?
Like, no, that's, that's our a
Rupert Isaacson: You somehow feel unmanned personally by that.
That's,
yeah.
Anyway.
Yeah.
I digress.
Okay.
Craig, it's all you.
That's a great digression.
Craig, falling in love with, love with nature.
How did it happen for you?
Craig Foster: So, I think
you know, the, the, the, the, the natural thing for me when I was younger was to
try and you, you feel that inside you, you feel that three millennial ancestral
pull and because of the strange place you grow up in, you've got absolutely
no idea really of how to find that.
So you go for a cliche, you go for it must be in the wildest, most dangerous place.
So, you know, I started with big sharks and then progressed to diving,
you know, in giant crocodile layers going into the down the tunnels in
the avago to the place where these massive reptiles drag their prey.
Thinking that that one might be a good place to find what you're talking about.
But because you can only spend literally minutes in these places, and we are
very lucky to make it out alive.
It's what, what George is saying, you get absolutely, really no, you get
this unbelievable adventure and in, in way too much adrenaline, but you
you don't get any of that incredible detail that he's talking about.
So it was an amazing adventure.
But ironically, I came back here to the great African Sea Forest and
started studying an animal that you would think would be very boring
and wouldn't bring you anywhere.
And that's the humble limpet.
This is an animal that kind of looks like a rocket, doesn't seem to move much.
Rupert Isaacson: Why?
Why did you choose that animal?
Craig Foster: Because they're so accessible.
You can go down, I can go down every single low tide and observe these animals.
It's so, so the world hotspot for limpets, about 25 species or more
from the massive giant limpet to the, you know, tiny little Yale limpert.
But I was like just watching these animals day in, day out, day in
out, and not much was happening.
And then suddenly you get these epiphanies and they take you into their secret lives.
Deeper and deeper, and you think, okay, I've looked at
them now every day for a year.
That's it.
And then the next day, oh my goodness, you knew nothing.
And it takes you deeper and deeper.
And they're fertilizing their gardens at low tide, you know,
pooping on their own lgal gardens.
They're trimming the gardens just to the right amount.
They're growing certain alies, they, you know, tender gardens for years.
I mean, it is, you know, incredible ways of trying to avoid predation,
extreme predators hunting them.
I mean, it's just, there's absolute, but what is, what happens at a certain
stage, and this is the critical thing, you suddenly feel like you are,
your consciousness is starting to blend a little bit with a lipid consciousness.
As hard as that sounds.
This is a mollusk you know, that lives in a shell.
It's like a snail an ocean snail of a sort, highly modified.
And then you go into the, you know, what's growing on the shell.
You've got these marine lichens boring into their shells and they're building
them up to survive that each, you can look at each shell and you can tell.
How that animal has lived in what environment?
By the shape of the shell, by how it's being carved by the rocks around it.
And what happens is you start to merge to some degree with lier consciousness.
So, and the, the, the, the, you feel like you're part of
that intertidal environment.
Somehow, somehow your mind is, and you can figure things out.
You can think of what it might be like to be in a storm as a limpert or what it's
like to feed, or how you're dealing with the sun and the heat, and where all these
biotic pressures are moving you around.
And suddenly you are, you feel the beating heart of the intertidal
in your own beating heart.
That's very different to going into a crocodile there a few times.
You know, you, you actually feel part of this thing.
And that's the critical thing, is that the sense of belonging, this
is the most key word, belonging.
So you feel that you belong on this planet.
You're part of it.
You are wild animal in a sense, living the strange domesticated existence, but
you are actually a wild animal at heart.
And then you feel the, the, that.
It is hard to, it doesn't want to sound like a cliche, but you feel
the, the immensity of the creation of the biodiversity that's, that's
literally inside you and keeping you alive from second to second.
And that it's like, you know, nature and all this diversity and this incredible
detail and these lives of these animals is the most cl closest thing I've
ever come to the divine manifest in something you can actually witness and
feel and appreciate and understand.
It's manifested in a way.
It's so complex and so extraordinary.
So it becomes, the simple creature is a limper.
It seems simple, but it's highly complex becomes divine in a sense.
Rupert Isaacson: It's a big extreme jump though, to go from going into
the crocodiles layer to the limper.
Was there a conscious, was that a conscious thing to say?
I, I want to take it now to the microcosmic level.
I, I, I, I need to do this.
That I, I feel that the crocodiles less stuff, although yes, young men
need to do this sort of thing, testing themselves, that's also part of our
300, 3 million year old history too.
But there's also, that's also ego.
I mean, everybody does it.
Presumably we're supposed to, presumably we're wired to someone's, you've got to
steal yourself to put that spear into the bison at a certain point and know
that it may well turn back and duff you.
Okay, but that sounds like a conscious decision to go from
the crocodiles led to the Limper.
Where was that decision made?
Craig Foster: I mean, unconsciously, it was made in the plaster scene when I was
your 25-year-old person in the Kalahari.
When I saw and felt those incredible sound on trackers able to speak
with nature so fluently, and I also wanted to speak with nature like
George does in the most profound way.
And then, then I suddenly, years and years later, 20 odd years later,
okay, I'm stopping everything.
I'm stopping filmmaking.
I don't care about, you know, I'm just gonna, if I lose money
or whatever, it doesn't matter.
I have to be able to speak the language of nature and which is ultimately tracking.
And I think George probably came onto that path a lot earlier than I did.
I don't know what, what is, what would your answer to that question?
I'd be very curious to know, George.
George Bumann: Yeah.
I think a lot like you Craig, I, I, I proceeded with deeds.
I.
You know, things, activities that I thought put me in the space to know.
And I think when you first asked the question, Rupert, that, that's what
initially came to my mind is the love begins with the knowing and, and the
knowing can't take place without first.
And I hunted and I fished and I trapped.
I did all kinds of things that I don't do now.
They're part of my ancestry and I still know how to do them.
I dream, I do them in my dreams more than I, I can tell you.
But they were all in an effort to, you know, your kind of question there to
Craig about when did you pick the limpets?
And I, I kind of see that in myself.
The, the choices.
It's a deep seated one as well, but it's, it's just something on a continuum where
subject matter doesn't matter anymore.
The real goal is the relational tie and, and the desire to know another, another
across the species boundary that sees and experiences this world in ways I
never will, but like all relationships, they require time and putting in
that time, no matter what it is.
For me, it was ravens.
When we first moved to Yellowstone,
they taught me how to be a better person.
They, they showed me things that no other human could show me.
And to the, the, the apex experiences that come with that cultivation of
knowing even very simple, normal standards, simple creatures, stories and
experiences I've had with butterflies and, and beetle larvae and bison.
And wolves and anybody, and I say anybody intentionally that I've had the pleasure
of spending time with to really feel them.
And it becomes emotional.
And when something happens to them, I feel some piece of what they're feeling.
It, it's welling up in me now.
You know, I was trying to finish a sculpture of this one alpha female wolf
that I'd known since she was so young,
and she went outside the park and got shot.
Mm-hmm.
I couldn't finish the sculpture I got with her in front of me, as I often try to do.
So I had to finish it from memory, but.
You know, whether it was Mama Dear here, is you open to noticing.
Just start there.
You know, so many people don't know or even begin on a path like
Craig's or Mine or yours, Rupert it.
It starts with just noticing, don't do anything different than you already
are right now, but just look in the grass before you get in the car.
Look in the sky.
What are the clouds like today?
How many birds do you see?
Let that be your stepping off point to begin to know, to see when
something changes and it's different.
And you find that with that time, that knowing soaks into you in that way.
Our ancestors knew implicitly that you are of this place.
Yes, you're human, but you are not separate from this.
You do not live just at an address.
You live of this place
and you treat it differently.
As a result, you react differently.
You experience more than you probably ever thought possible
Rupert Isaacson: It, it sounds like,
and I wonder if our 3 million year old ancestors went through this and
I need to go back and ask some of my friends in the Kalahari, but.
Craig, and it sounds like you became broken hearted somehow, even though you
were so, you know, living your life with indi indigenous people and nature, but
of course you were having to film and, you know, that's a, and sell those films
internationally and that's a hell of a business and yes, it will exhaust you.
But at the same time, you were doing it in these natural places with, and
yet it, you still became broken hearted
and that of course cracked your heart wide open.
George, have you become brokenhearted?
Yeah.
And tell us about that.
George Bumann: I still am in ways.
Mm-hmm.
I think we all are.
It's different shades of it and it's sort of our, our burden to bear, but also our,
our challenge to overcome by just not dwelling on that, but
seeking those good things, those really beautiful things in life.
Like Craig was saying, just how amazing we are as a species, like our senses and our
ability to, to put two and two together and find relationships is unbelievable.
I think this comes from tracking not only the outside friend and I are having
a very deep, extensive conversation on this that's lasted weeks visiting every
now and then and hitting this topic of tracking outwardly and inwardly.
We deny the inward tracking so much that I totally agree.
We do find ourselves broken hearted and not knowing why.
Yes.
George Bumann: How the hell did I get here?
That's, I'm in here with these people, with these animals and I feel like shit.
Mm-hmm.
What is that about?
And so you start having to follow the bent grass and the, and the pebbles kicked out
of their places within your own heart and mind in ways that are not comfortable.
I think that's keeps a lot of us from going there.
Is it to heal, requires some pain
and, and healing ourselves.
The, the ancestors of my lineage who did the things they did to Native
Americans, they were hurting themselves as much as they were hurting the
people they were doing things to.
Rupert Isaacson: And they were coming out of a cycle of warfare back in Europe.
That an oppression Right.
That was, you know.
Mm-hmm.
George Bumann: And me banging my head against a computer is doing harm to me.
That I need to repair.
And boy, nature is one hell of a sve.
It always has been.
And it's there for free to all of us all the time right now.
Stop.
Put the video on pause and just go out for five minutes.
Rupert Isaacson: Do you hear that listeners?
Do it.
Stop.
Well, even though it's sacrilege to stop George Boman and Craig Foster
and one gets fined for doing that.
But nonetheless, stop it and do that.
Go out and, and then go out for five minutes
and then cut and write down what you saw and then click restart.
You're probably gonna listen to this in stages anyway because
it's a couple of hours long.
Yeah, the, I was just thinking, you know, you could go through YouTube and
look for morning rituals, you know, all of which are great meditations.
Meditations are gratitude.
I do think God wants us to appreciate and enjoy and be grateful for.
But appreciate not just, you know, not just thank you in that kind
of coward way, but no, really.
Thank you.
This is incredible.
God wants us to dance.
God wants us to rejoice.
The, this planet is so joyful when one watches nature, one often is,
seems to be observing it at play.
And we know that we are very playful species.
And it's interesting when I'm watching my horses, and my horses
are the, probably my closest bond with nature because they're family.
I, I, they're, we are a herd of human, cross species, human horse
family and have been for years.
And some of my horses were born outside my back door and used to come into the
kitchen and get a beer out of the fridge.
I'm not joking.
And
they, but they carry me and they carry autistic children out
into the world and they allow themselves to be interacted with.
And they're okay being in service, but they're not in servitude.
And one is fulfilling and one is crushing.
And I think we've been in servitude as a species for a bit that taming.
And when you were saying George, okay, here I am in this beautiful
place among these amazing people and there's a wolf over there and there's
this raven who's talking to me.
And yet I feel like shit.
It is almost like, I feel that when you go into nature, there is, it does of course
bring to a head the infection that's inside from the last 10,000 years that is
actually doing what it should do, which is coming to a head a big pustule to be,
there's lots of YouTube videos on that and jolly satisfying they are to watch you.
People getting bot flies out of their hands and things.
Watch three hours of that.
But nonetheless, it, it's painful and the pressure, the buildup of the pressure and
so, and, and it could kill you, right?
There is always that slight thing that it, it could, if the pressure builds up
enough, and I know you've experienced this Craig, you know, in the Kalahari
with the healers, that they, they experience death when they heal sometimes.
And this happened when my son was healed.
He's sleeping downstairs now.
He just got off the plane.
Huge hulking guy now from Texas this morning here in Germany.
Remember?
Wow.
You were that little kid who was falling asleep in my arms at the
transpires, in the Kalahari peacefully while we and Unter who were healing.
You were going into the spirit world and suffering on your behalf and we died that,
oh, if you've seen that happen, Craig.
Yeah.
Where the.
The norm, the, the, the healing energy becomes overwhelmingly strong
because they have to, they're now facing something in the spirit world.
That's a such a huge challenge that they have to deal with.
And, you know, these are guys in their seventies, eighties, they're
dancing 12 out, and then, you know, they have to attend it, me to bring
him back so that he can then continue and then onto takes on here and row's
just sleeping through all of this.
But they're really expressing
our, our need to come to a head and pop and burst,
but then come back to a homeostasis again to harmony.
And we, we see this all the time in nature, don't we?
You know, volcanoes and weather systems and predator prey relationships,
but this deep broken heartedness.
I think everyone listening probably goes, yeah,
what you just said, George, just start noticing you.
What you don't see on those like morning ritual videos is that get up out of bed.
Don't worry about deep breathing.
Don't worry about, just go outside and look and write
down what you see and observe.
Do you feel better or do you feel worse?
I think you too, do it every day just because of where you live.
I think back to the snail tracks on the eating, the algae, on the paving stones.
It can be difficult when it's less obvious.
And then it helps to have someone inspire you to begin to notice the limpet,
the snail thing, the, the small stuff as you said, George, the bank grass,
the pebbles kicked, who kicked them?
What animal kicked them, even if it was a human animal.
What was the human animal story of that?
So to heal this broken heart,
you know, you, you, you are talking Craig, about the thousand One Species Project to
make people fall back in love with nature.
Do we need actually to fall in love with nature, to fall
back in love with ourselves?
Craig Foster: I think it's a wonderful thing that you said there.
Because we are nature.
Yeah.
There's no separation.
Yeah.
So we, we, we do need to.
And love nature to love ourselves.
And we, our, our whole survival depends on the natural world.
So if we don't love her, we don't fall in love with her again.
We'll, almost certainly that'll be our demise.
Mm-hmm.
So it is, it is, to me, it is the most precious thing we'll ever encounter.
It's our life support system.
Everything we do depends on it so that nobody can convince me that there's
anything more important than protecting our mother of mothers, our great mother.
Nature.
There's no, it's a foundation of every single aspect of our existence.
And somehow we just need to realize that, and all of us have kind of somehow
forgotten just how critical it is.
So absolutely essential.
And to realize there is no separation.
And that's what's happening here in the little death that you're talking about.
In the Kalahari.
You're dying, your ego is dying, and then you are merging with all that there is.
And it's the same thing that needs to happen.
We need to realize that we are inseparable from this extraordinary.
Biological intelligence, not only on this planet, but extends into the deep cosmos.
That is our, you know, deep, deep mother.
So it's a, it's a, I think, an absolutely vital thing that we desperately need to
change the story to be on that track.
Rupert Isaacson: We talk about the death of an ego, death of the ego,
and because of ego's gone wild, gone nuts, maybe not gone unw,
egos now seem to cause great suffering to the point that we always seem to
be trying to escape our ego, whatever.
But that's impossible because it's part of nature now.
It must be or it wouldn't be in us.
So it can't be bad.
It's got to be there actually for a reason.
It must have just gotten outta whack somehow.
What do you think, George, in the natural wild human context, what's the ego for?
Do you, and both of you, what do you observe of ego
in animals in other species?
Is it solely human
or is it actually expressed everywhere?
It's just that we, what, what and what is, what is its purpose?
What is the same natural wild?
What's the wild.
Expression of the ego.
What do you think, Georgia?
George Bumann: Great question.
Rupert.
I think it does exist in other species, and like most things, there's a, a
continuum of, of how that's expressed.
And I think at the most basic level ego, ego expressed in, in nature is,
I'm the best you wanna meet with me?
Look how shiny my feathers are, right?
Mm-hmm.
You know, I'm bigger, I'm stronger.
It ha it has a place to further the species, to further the
strongest aspects of the species into the unknown of the future.
And so there, I think it is a very useful tool to, to help life perpetuate
itself, or I think it goes wrong, is when it it's taken out of context.
It's, it's applied to, to everything or in, in places that it isn't, doesn't fit.
And that's where we start running into trouble.
You know, you can see Bull Elk number six in his main adversary number.
10 in Yellowstone.
Mm-hmm.
You know, and vying for that one s harem of females and fighting it out
a couple times a year, but doing a, or during the breeding season and showing
off a whole bunch in between and as a way to advertise to those females
and intimidate your, your rivals.
So that's where I think that's, that's my initial snap response.
Craig, do you have other thoughts on, on egos roll in nature?
Yeah.
Craig Foster: Yeah.
I think that it's not always so cut and dry.
You know, the, sometimes it appears as if the biggest, strongest and
tiniest can win out, but that's often and sometimes not the case.
But I think it's an amazing tool.
It's a powerful thing.
It's incredible for survival.
It's absolutely necessary, but it has its place.
And I think animals are very good at finding that balance where we, we've
just got it completely out of balance.
And that's because our environment and especially money, has turned us upside
down with trying to deal with ego.
So we've, we've got a environment where it's very difficult to deal with it.
And we need to really draw on our ancestral memory to find
the appropriate place for it.
So it's it's such a dangerous thing when it's, you know,
out of control like it is now.
But there isn't, go ahead.
Sorry.
I was thinking of the story with wolves.
You know, the, the wolves that were actually Mika and more docile
actually out one, the, the, the, the meaner wolves because people
interacted with them And am I right?
George, there's some, yeah.
Ideas around that, that the, the biggest, strongest, meanest
ones didn't actually survive.
It was the, the more social ones that did.
George Bumann: Yeah.
Some of Robert Sapolsky's research with baboons in Africa show that very clearly
that they had a breakdown by virtue of disease, where this safari camp was
throwing putrid meat out into the dump and the most dominant males were eating
the meat and soon died of disease.
And you had this culture of male dominance and suppression of through
violence, of, of other animals' behavior within the troop turned
over to a, in essence, a matrilineal.
Control of the community and their selection was for males who were nice.
Hmm.
You know, nature does that.
It, it balances out the, the, it, it makes room for all the strategies.
Hmm.
But it
George Bumann: also makes room for the best strategies for
that moment to come to the fore.
And I think because of money in particular, you know, David Grabber's
last book, the Dawn of Everything, is this beautiful analysis of this
kind of idea of mankind going from hunter gatherer to metropolitan
living and the hunter gatherer, you know, agrarian pieces all in between.
And one of the segments he highlights in there is the first initial contact
in North America with Native Americans and Europeans and some of the Native
Americans going back to Europe or going to Europe rather, and seeing just how
horribly they treated the poor and the indigent and, you know, literally laying
in the streets, starving, injured, sick.
That never happened in their culture, you know?
And, and Conran, one of the, the, the Native, native American emissaries
who was part of that, one of those trips said, you've made a deal with
the devil in the form of money.
You would sell your, your mother, your daughter for this, this surrogate
to power, control, ego, whatever.
You know, I'm, I'm paraphrasing now, but that, that the world we've built
around ourselves is, is not balanced in context to the natural order of things.
So these terrible things happen much more readily.
And that's one of the things I've found with just noticing and knowing
and loving, whether it was the mule deer around the house or our mag pies
who others de despise because they eat other birds, but then they're being
depredated by the ravens that are flying up and down the creek this morning.
And you, you realize there's no good or bad, it's ill in context.
Yet when isolated and set aside from the natural order, some of these tendencies
of any species can become malignant.
Right.
And I think we're dealing with that.
I'm thinking of can I just,
Craig Foster: can I add to that ru Yeah, sorry.
I think what just George has sparked for me what is so apparent, and it's
kind of obvious in a way, but when you in these wild, near pristine places and
you just feel that incredible natural heartbeat everywhere, it's absolutely
astonishing to one at that time that we've given up all of this magnificence for
this weird substance we call money and, and the power and that comes with it.
But we've, we've diminished our lives so much in that process.
We, we, we naturally want like, comfort.
But there, there's a huge price to pay for that.
Of course one needs some level of of comfort and security with, you know,
where you live and water supply and so on.
But it, it, it needs to be balanced.
And to give up these incredible natural systems for these levels of comfort is
the worst deal that anybody has ever made.
It's just, and it's so obvious when you're in those places.
It's just, what the hell have we done?
And this madness to, to know levels of comfort actually create massive
discomfort in the wild animal that we are.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
What I think you put your finger on there is suffering.
And so what I'm, and while you're talking about the, you know, bull
elk fighting or that sort of thing for the ego in a natural, in, in
the natural world, does the elk that loses the fight suffer psychologically
or does it feel, is is the fact that it's living in its correct context, in its
correct environment, in its correct way.
Actually mitigate that suffering so that the ego can work to the degree that it
needs to, to say, okay, fine, we'll have this DNA work in this way over here.
But then as you were also saying in the context of those baboons then
the alpha males get to alpha male and end up dying off in the females.
Choose the nice ones.
Is there suffering in the same way that we as humans in our non
wild context experience suffering?
I would posit that.
I don't think so.
When I, when I, for example, when I observe my horses, they
go through these ups and downs in the horse politic that they have.
'cause they're an integrated herd and have been for years.
And some were born into the herd.
And so they really know each other.
And my old horse zag, who was very, very much the dominant horse for a long
time aged and two years ago, became not so much unless he finds himself in
the pen without the new dominant male.
And then he kind of feels, okay, I kind of have to sort of assert myself again.
But you can almost see him kind of go and it's almost not an assertion.
It's he then has to be the one that watches out for danger.
He has to be the one that takes responsibility.
And that's, it's really exhausting for horses when they do that.
So they'll often in the daytime, 'cause they have to remain vigilant
at night for the other ones, they'll stretch out completely.
It looks like they're dead.
And actually it's hilarious.
You know, sometimes people will call in the animal health department, say, I
think there's a dead horse in the field.
It happens like all the time.
Say, no, it's not a dead horse, it's sleeping horse.
And the non-dominant horses will actually stand watch for the sleeping,
supposed a dominant horse because they know that he's got to restore
his energy to keep them safe.
So it seems to be that there's this, and then of course, you know, this
Craig, you know, among, again, among the bushmen that we've spent so much
time with, there's all these leveling, again, conflict resolution strategies.
Like if you are the alpha male and you, you are like the best hunter.
The, your kill is not yours because all the arrows are made by women
and children in the village and it's very, very clear whose arrow is whose
'cause they've all got, they will put their signature on it somehow.
And the other people in your hunting party will also know because they'll see the
arrow that you used if you made the kill.
And they go, oh, that's aren't Betty's.
So when you're allowed to eat the liver, but you've got to take it back and
then you've gotta give that one, that carcass to Aunt Betty and Aunt Betty
will be the one that distributes it.
And these are sort of 3 million year old human strategies for making sure that the
ego can be used enough, but not too much.
I would posit that that plus the shamanic washing of the psychic dirty laundry
every 10 days or so for wee funky monkeys in, in those indigenous contexts,
mitigates that suffering and then allows the ego to do its job, which is sometimes
to make us go a bit beyond our, the energy level or the commit, you know, the comfort
level perhaps that we would like to go to for the good of the survival of the group
is money.
Where we call it money, but I feel that money's neutral.
Unless we can give it power either way.
But is it, what we are really looking at is fragmentation.
And the idea of just turning inward on the self.
I'm no longer working for the good of the group.
I'm now working.
The group is only me, even though I'm part of a group.
And is that when we actually then suffer from our egos and that's
when the ego becomes unwed?
Is that, is that it?
If you made it this far into the podcast, then I'm guessing you're somebody
that, like me, loves to read books about not just how people have achieved
self actualization, but particularly about the relationship with nature.
Spirituality, life, the universe, and everything.
And I'd like to draw your attention to my books.
If you would like to read the story of how we even arrived here, perhaps
you'd like to check out the two New York Times bestsellers, The Horseboy
and The Long Ride Home, and come on an adventure with us and see what engendered,
what started Live Free Ride Free.
And before we go back to the podcast, also check out The Healing
Land, which tells the story of.
My years spent in the Kalahari with the Sun, Bushmen, hunter gatherer people
there, and all that they taught me, and mentored me in, and all that I learned.
Come on that adventure with me.
Craig Foster: That's the ultimate suffering is when
that, that loss of belonging.
I don't think there's belonging.
Right.
The greatest suffering because a social animal, a tribal creature like
ours, the scariest, most terrifying thing has been ousted in being alone.
That's the worst punishment.
And that's the punishment now that we've thought it upon ourselves.
We are, you know, we out of the cycle of all these other divine beings that
we've lived with from the beginning.
And it's a, it's a very, very painful
George Bumann: greed.
Doesn't make you a good neighbor or friend or family member.
We could replace the, the word money, and we probably should with greed.
How much do we need?
And it could be greed for
Rupert Isaacson: anything, right?
Could be greed for other people's energy, other people's attention,
George Bumann: attention, food, certain type of clothing, pick
Rupert Isaacson: validation.
George Bumann: Mm-hmm.
Prestige.
Prestige
and prestige.
In our wild condition.
I think you, you two have experienced it firsthand.
That, that, that there is a continual check on that sort of
stuff for the good of the group.
We don't depend on the group in the way the wolves do here in Yellowstone that
I watch, and when there's a conflict,
they bite that yearling and pin it to the ground and then move on.
Everybody moves on.
It's done.
It's over.
The point was made, you know, Ecker totally right.
Writes about it in the form of ducks.
You know, ducks have a squabble on a palm, and, but then after that they,
they go on, they, they aren't spinning in, in the pond thinking, why the
hell did that son of a bitch do that?
I can't believe he did that.
You know, this, this is the, this is the, the mine spinning of a caged animal.
We put ourselves in that mine cage where we do that stuff.
And that's not how nature works.
Nature has, its off ramps to tension in a group has, its off ramps to,
to greed and jealousy and, you know, the, the desire to hoard things.
It, it just especially if you're a social animal, you there is not room for you.
To do things your way all the time, exactly the way you want.
If you do, you die or you're ex, you know, you're excommunicated,
you're, you're ousted from your group.
If the species behaves that way in its broader community, it dies.
And right now that's what we're doing.
We are behaving as if our agenda is all that matters.
And this comes with a, a rub.
It's a, it might in our case for most people, because of that
comfort, Craig refers to that comfort that rub is, is not felt as much.
But spring's coming a little earlier here to Yellowstone country.
Yeah.
Our tanager, Western Tanager just showed up and they're two weeks late.
Why was there just a weather system?
But is that weather system something that's been driven
by the warming of the climate?
Is there something happening in Costa Rica where they winter that's prevented
them from having the resources to come back to North America as they always do?
Usually in the mid to third week of May, this rub is, it's building.
And before long, the, the comfort walls that we've built around
ourselves, they already aren't enough to keep the impacts from being felt.
But unless we, we begin to know and to feel and to love better
on a daily basis as part of our typical at Mo the ship's going down.
And that's a very interesting, pessimistic way to look at it.
We're saying
Rupert Isaacson: that, you know, they're building, we like more Dubais.
Have you ever been to Dubai?
I I don't want to go to Dubai.
You know, I suspect eventually I'll find myself there somehow, you
know, for some reason terrifies me.
This idea that you can build these things in places where people are not supposed
to live like that in these ways and just say, no, you know, we can just create
all this artificiality for comfort.
I, but I think you put your, your finger on it.
We talked, we said prestige.
It's, it's this desire for prestige where it goes wrong, but
we're told that's what we needed.
I mean, when I, I was at school in that same school that, that,
that had the chapel that said, God is love and love is God.
We were also told you must be in competition with each other.
It was instilled into us.
I know the school you went to, I know you went to Bishops in South in Cape Town.
My cousin Simon went there and Craig, I know they, they would've
told you the same thing, you know?
And I.
The sports we played, the way we interacted with each other, the bullying
that went on psychologically and physically, it was all about prestige.
And, but everyone in any level of our society's experiencing that at any time.
Both of you though, have said, and I think this is
what sometimes gets forgotten in conversations like this, so I, I wrote
this word from both of you, which I've heard you say several times in this
conversation and in other conversations, and I think it's, it's the way out.
You talked about that.
It's a brilliant thing.
You talked about nature has, its off-ramps, George, brilliant.
To the, to the negative.
Where do those off-ramps start?
Where does the healing start?
Where does the conflict resolution start?
I think you've both made the point.
I've drawn a box around this word and the word is notice
you, you, the moment you start to notice nature, you're outside of yourself.
You have perspective of yourself.
Prestige falls away.
It's the immediate antidote, the immediate panacea, even when it's worrying,
as you say, why the tanana is laid.
I talked about that hunting story in that same.
Three days of hunting where I was noticing the megaliths and the human
story and the human wolf pack that we were, and then now the wolf's coming back.
There were these yellow butterflies appearing in February in the clearings
of the woods that should not be there in Northern Germany in February.
And as we paused, letting the horses breathe and letting the hounds cool
off and have water 'cause it was un unseasonably, unseasonably warm,
beautiful, beautiful yellow butterflies drifting through the clearing,
but they shouldn't be there.
But the very noticing of them
assuaged my pain of worrying about climate.
Okay, I'm worried about it's getting warmer, but these butterflies are very
beautiful and the planet will be fine even if we make it not fine for ourselves.
It will, but, but that would be sad because as you, so as you say with
creatures of love, but this word notice, notice, notice it seems that what you
do is you notice things and you show other people how to notice things.
And in your showing of other people how to notice things, you help them to rewild.
And if you help 'em to rewild, you help 'em to heal.
Is noticing really where it needs, where it needs to start for everyone.
That simple act,
Craig Foster: Noticing, I think is the fundamental essence of tracking.
High level noticing and tracking is the oldest language on earth.
Tracking is our way of connecting and belonging and feeling part
of this incredible ecosystem.
So you've hit it.
Absolutely.
You know, spot on.
Noticing at a high level and taking notice is critical for this, this conversation
and this changing of the story that will, you know, determine our future.
George Bumann: George,
I concur.
You know, just by noticing your internal chemistry is already shifting.
Did you notice what so and so did when you said that?
It's sometimes a hard pill to swallow, but it's a beautiful gift
Rupert Isaacson: and
George Bumann: out of
Rupert Isaacson: those gifts Right?
We have to notice each other too.
It's so true.
Yeah.
'cause we are nature.
It's not just noticing the nature around us,
George Bumann: right?
It's all the same.
It's all one.
Rupert Isaacson: Oh my God.
George Bumann: That's a.
As a good friend said he had a, a tracking mentor who did a, spent
his career tracking mostly illegal immigrants on borders, but a lot of
lost individuals and, and criminals.
And it just very high level tracking in the context of the non survival world.
But in his, his little note to, to my friend in the book he'd given him, he said
that tracker will never be limited by what can be found on the ground or in nature.
It'll only be limited by the mind of the tracker.
Craig Foster: Beautiful.
George Bumann: Yeah.
It's there.
Every single step of the way is there, if we are of the mindset to
search for it and to see it and to understand what that means for us
Rupert Isaacson: and in order to notice each other in this way so that we can
not make each other and therefore the planet suffer
and ourselves, do we again?
Does it start though with noticing what is outside of ourselves?
Because if we can do that, if we can track what is outside of us in nature, what
appears to be outside of us in nature,
is that our first step to being able to notice the effect of what
I said on my wife or the effect of what I said on my kid, or the
effect of my mood today on my horse.
Does it start with noticing the cloud, with noticing the bit of grass around
the tree that's growing out of the sidewalk of the house that you live
on, where the dog's poop, but is there life in there and what life is
there and what life is in that tree?
What tree is it?
Does it still always, I I kind of think it does have to be that, that there
has to be that external tracking that allows the internal tracking to begin.
And
I think you guys help people with that.
I think you,
I think you assuage suffering.
You know, you, you, you studies are now being done on the effect on the mind
and the endocrine system and the human on, say, watching nature documentaries
and it's very, very good for us.
It is gotta be done.
Someone's gotta go out there, film that thing and bring it in and show it.
If we're not in it, George, you know, when you, you are creating the art that
you create and bringing the stories that you create, someone's actually,
you actually gotta go out there and do that, create that piece of art.
Even if it's a image of that art,
it assuages suffering 'cause you bring the nature in, but you had to go out
and notice it first in order to do that.
There's something I'd like to ask you as we sort of approach probably towards
the conclusion of, of where we are.
This conversation, we've talked about deep, wild places.
The kelp forest, even though it's very, very close to Cape Town, is a deeply
wild, seemingly quite intact ecosystem.
Yellowstone National Park, the same.
And these forests in Germany where I live, even though they're work forests,
they still maintain an awful lot of life and I'm lucky to spend time in them.
Do you have places that, you know, what are your favorite places?
Maybe two or three that you can tell listeners that are actually
in or really, really close to.
Really shit environments that we don't have to go as far as the other, we don't
have to get on and play the Cape Town.
Think of cities that, you know, that are kind of crap
and places that you found in or close to them.
Not 3000 miles off the coast of Africa.
Craig Foster: What comes to mind was when I did this book to her and, and
had such a great time meeting George and some other special people I was in
this place near Miami doing one of these talks, and I was, it was not easy for
me to be on a book tour and to be in airplanes and traveling and big cities
and, you know, press and it's not, it's not, doesn't come naturally to me at all.
And I remember walking along this road and it was, it was, it wasn't
that far from Miami and there were, it was right near where the.
These massive airplanes were taking off and I managed to get off this sort of
highway, and the ocean was coming into this shallow area and the tide was coming
up, and I just needed some nature time.
And I lay in this very shallow water.
And every now and again, this massive airplane would come over my head and the
whole ground and everything would shake.
And it was incredible.
The animals there were quite used to it, and they didn't even bat an eyelid.
And I found these beautiful, beautiful crustacean, these
shrimps living in beer bottles.
And they, it was like a perfect home for them.
And it was just, and then there were these fish that came in, and
then I noticed these incredible what looked like decorator crabs.
And then were Muller.
I was just lying still in this very shallow, very warm water, these
massive airplanes coming over.
And yet these animals were there living in these beer bottles and this life I
saw some extraordinary creatures and it was just like almost more powerful.
So it, it's a funny thing when you find these creatures in
these funny little places.
In these areas where there's so much human dominance, it can be very powerful
and emotional and you think this is a miracle how these things, and they
were horseshoe crabs there as well.
I saw these horseshoe crabs, like in these ancient creatures
moving, but I'm keeping dead still.
So everything that sort of, you know, was, was okay with me being in that space.
And then every now and again, this airplane would come over and the
whole, everything would just shake.
And it was I think that the, you can find these little pockets of
life and it very, very powerful.
More, more surprising than, you know, finding something
in the middle of a wild place.
In a very wild place in many ways.
George Bumann: Yeah,
the dump
Rupert Isaacson: go on.
George Bumann: I spend more time at the dump probably observing ravens
than sometimes than I do anywhere else.
Right?
You so social of a creature and so many nuances to their behaviors and
their calls and their relationship to us concentrated in that one spot.
That is just the last place most people would ever wanna spend any amount of time.
Dump your trash and get the hell outta there.
And the dump is, you know, I almost lamented a little bit when
they started putting, they put in a compactor unit, so not all the
trash was in these open dumpsters.
'cause it offered a lot more food and there were a lot more ravens.
And now it's, it's more sparse.
But
that gift of seeing an animal make its way in a landscape that we've
engineered around our preferences and what suits us and they all this,
it's just the most tragic thing for these creatures to be referred
to as vermin or dumpster chickens.
I heard ravens was called to before, you know, and they're like, yeah, but is this
not amazing that this creature that we thought lived on the edge of this most
amazing wilderness and none of 'em are living purely off the wilderness land.
They're flying 20, 30 miles daily, one way to take advantage of what we throw away.
Mm.
And then they fly that 20, 30 miles home to defend their territory
until the next day when they fly.
And this idea that this bird I'm seeing right here on the edge of the
dumpster watching me get rid of my recycling and my refuse has commuted
here to be in this spot right now.
It has a story, it has a family, it has, gosh, these life experiences
that I can't possibly imagine.
And yet we get to interface a little bit right here at the dump for a few
minutes and yeah, I'll just love that idea of these, these, these strings
of, of connectivity to yes, some of these pristine places, but also
some of these most unlikely places.
And it takes all of it for this to exist.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, I think the point that you're both making there
is that what reminds us the noticing, what reminds us of our connection with
nature is when we see nature interact with us, you know, it, you can go to
Yellowstone and think, well, I'm kind of looking at a living museum here, or
the Serengeti, but I'm not part of this.
You know, I've flown here in a plane, I've gone on safari.
But I think when you go to these liminal places, the edges of cities,
the edges of industrial complexes, and you see the coyote hunting, you know,
along the edge of the polluted, swampy thing in New Jersey, or, you know, as
you come into Newark Airport, and it's often those places, transportation
hubs, industrial places where people don't actually want to live.
That's 'cause where the animals come in and live, isn't it?
I would think about being in airplanes.
I was in, I flew to London recently and we're coming down over it.
We're coming down and I'm looking at London.
I'm looking at just how many big green spaces there are in that city.
Huge.
And the one I know best is Hamstead Heath, which is very central.
And it's about a thousand acres of ancient woodland, huge oaks that are in the upper,
you know, hundreds of years old, some of them pushing a thousand years old.
And then the plane flew to go into Heath throat on the west side, but had gone
over the east side, which is the docks and the old, you know, industrial areas.
And there's the Lee Valley coming down and the River Lee, all
these beautiful wetlands on it.
They've reintroduced beavers there to control flooding
because of climate change.
And then the plane swung to the west.
And I looked down, I said, oh, that's Richmond Park and Bushy Park, these
old hunting forests that were there because there were huge populations
of Red Deer, which are still there.
And I looked down and I saw this big herd of Red Deer just moving across
the, this, this big open Glade, but all the buildings, you know,
off over there and Sunrise rising.
Yeah, you can, you can.
Access any of those green spaces, those natural spaces.
And as you say, you know, fro from living in the middle of the city, and as you
say, these interactions, the, these snails in the bottles and the crabs
and the fish with a plane coming over, or the dump where you actually get to
interact with a raven because you're both there, more or less for the same reason.
And where we think when we're destroying nature, these industrial sites, these
liminal sites, often that seems to be where nature finds its first foothold.
Is it, is it the, is, is it the noticing of, of that in those places
that actually has the most power for us because it serves as a metaphor for that.
Yeah.
We can rewild
if it's, if it's always got to be Yellowstone or Mongolia, well, we might
see that as very separate from ourselves.
George Bumann: What I, I see them, I see them as infinitely more important
than a Yellowstone and the Kalahari and the Schatz followed, you know,
kelp forest in the societal sense.
Yeah.
To me that you cannot sensitize yourself to.
Let's say you do go to one of those places on a bucket list trip,
you'll miss so much if you've not been doing your homework at home
locally.
Mm, mm-hmm.
George Bumann: Yep.
I had a friend who went to Zambia.
She'd never been there.
Total bucket list trip.
Wanted to see painted dogs so badly it hurt.
And they went day after day and couldn't find any, couldn't find any.
They're going along and they're in the Landy, you know, and the
guide's in the front in the seat, and she's in the, like toward the back.
She says, is there, could they be over there?
And the guy turns and looks at her and then he looks off and
they are, they're over there.
You know, it looks back at, how did you know that?
Well, I don't, I don't know.
But those birds over there were kind of doing what the birds in my yard do.
When the neighbor's dog's out,
these lessons transfer.
And if you're already practiced in your own local language arts version of, of
nature's conversations, the ability to notice and discover goes way, way up.
So as nice as it is to go to Yellowstone and see a wolf or
something like that, actually I get as excited or more excited when I see.
The equivalent in a suburb, you know?
Yeah.
Visiting my, my brother-in-law, and there's just this for me, I, I can't
imagine living there is housing development and tract after tract of
the same house built over and over on these loops and, you know, there's
a seven, you know, it's called Seven Trails and there's not a single
trail among any of them, you know?
Well, they usually,
Rupert Isaacson: they usually, I've noticed in America name those housing
develops after the thing that they destroyed to make it like Absolutely.
Fox crossing.
Absolutely.
It's like the fox that used to cross here before we built this thing.
George Bumann: Totally.
It's so bad and it's so true.
But even in the context of that, I could know that that woman who's walking
her dog is coming before she ever gets there through what the birds are doing
between the houses and that one feeder.
I know that there's a Cooper's Hawk coming.
Mm-hmm.
You know, probably from that direction, you cannot get what
there is to receive from nature.
If you're not paying attention to what's closest to you on a daily basis.
Those animals in your neighborhood are your very best teachers, your
best guides, your best mentors.
I don't know.
How do you feel
Craig Foster: you'll that Craig?
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, I think you said it so beautifully.
They are, these creatures are really, I mean, certainly for
me, my, my finest teachers.
Especially for me, the, the underwater creatures.
But it's a place that I do, I do visit every day.
But it's, it's the daily interaction and that familiarity
with the, the wild language that is actually critic wild language.
Ooh, much better to go to a local place that's very close that has
just a few animals than go to these bucket list places where
it's just a passing, passing cloud.
Rupert Isaacson: Alright, so what are we gonna conclude this with?
I am going to, I'll tell you where I'm gonna go.
I'm gonna go do, I'm gonna go notice.
So I need to take my dog Axel, one of my two dogs, my high maintenance
Doberman, who we rescued in Texas.
He'd spend his first two years in a cage and is a neurotic to all sorts of degrees.
But very sweet.
And I live in fear of his bottom because if you don't empty it
this is a relationship with that.
If you don't make sure to empty that bottom before eight o'clock,
at nine o'clock at night, it's going to empty itself.
Not where you want termed it.
And we actually take bets, my son and I how many poos it will be.
On a given night.
And it will depend on how much horse poop has been eaten earlier
in the day and such and such.
So it can goes by to six, it could be as little as one, but it's usually
you're safe with three or four.
And whoever, whoever bets three or four first usually will, will win.
So, you know, it adds a sporting element.
But what there is down in the al, which is where I'm the park, I'm going
to walk him in al is an old German word for water matter an owl au.
And you'll often see that alba al, you know, and that in people's names as well.
And the ta just means a valley, like a small valley.
And that on top is where that wolf was the other day.
But it's here, it's in the village.
And but it's, it's very much sort of a park, but it's June.
And I know that if I go down there now at nine ish now as just as it
gets dark, the fireflies will be out.
I'm gonna go and notice the fireflies first thing I'm
gonna notice if they're there.
'cause it's, I haven't been able to get out.
And sometimes it's, I think now is the time.
Sometimes I hit it just right, sometimes I don't.
So are they still there?
And where are they and are there more or less than they were?
And I'm gonna notice how they make me feel because the fireflies
always make me feel transported.
I.
So that's the noticing in my hood that I'm gonna do now while
I go and empty my dog's bottom.
By the way, you're welcome to lay bets.
And I'll be a gentleman.
I won't pick four or three.
You guys can have that.
So whoever does that and you get it right, I owe you a euro.
Okay?
So dunno, if you do, you wanna take a bet on it, George, take, pick a number.
Boy,
check in with your gut.
You're into it.
Your hunter's trackers.
Mm-hmm.
Mind inter I feeling, I'm feeling
George Bumann: four to five, but a little closer to four.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
George is four.
Craig I'll go for two.
Woo.
Living dangerously, but you could well be right.
A seasoned tracker amongst us has spoken, so, okay.
Gives me pause.
So that means I've gotta go for three or five.
George Bumann: Yeah, you gotta report back now.
Rupert Isaacson: I, I'm gonna go for three.
All right.
But I will honor the bet.
Alright, but what, what local noticing are you gonna do now
when we close this conversation?
Craig, where are you gonna go?
Craig Foster: I go, I, I go to bed quite early and get up very early.
I will be going probably into the water quite early tomorrow morning.
There's a very interesting big octopus.
That I is getting quite comfortable with me and allowed
me to film it, walking Biped.
Ooh.
And also was actually feasting on a small shark recently, which is very unusual.
So when you say
Rupert Isaacson: it allowed you to film it, walking byed, is that a behavior
that they're normally very shy about?
'cause it needs Yeah, well, you
Craig Foster: have to get very close and look underneath the web,
because otherwise you can't see the arms that have changed into legs.
So this, it'll only allow you if it is not threatened.
So it's got it, you know, they quickly realize who you are.
They know you as an individual, you're not harming them anyway.
So, it's, it's, and it's a big, large, quite confident animal.
So, I'll be going to look for that wonderful octopus in the morning and
notice whatever she's got to teach me.
George,
Craig Foster: where are you gonna go?
Sounds
George Bumann: great.
Well, I haven't stopped.
I don't know if you've noticed my eyes darting, hither and yawn.
We had an elk walk through and the mag pies are either, I think they
may be making a false nest in the spruce tree right outside the window.
Rupert Isaacson: Why are they making a false nest?
What's a false nest?
George Bumann: They're tricky buggers.
They are,
Rupert Isaacson: but why, why do they make false nests?
George Bumann: I think to lead the nest predators astray.
Okay.
They will create multiple nests that they seem to be active in and yet
only lay eggs in, in one of them.
And they actually been known to move their eggs between nests.
Wow.
As well.
If there's trouble and maybe just for fun, I don't know.
No one's interviewed them Mag magpie to, to see, but they just erupted
here in a big fit of, of chatter, which makes me wonder if the raven
is giving them difficulty again.
So my dog needs to go out.
He's been moaning here for the last minute or two and we may go check the mag pies.
The one is going into the nest right now.
I'm curious if the, the ravens are out.
So many of our adventures start this way.
We'll be laying in bed and we can hear something through the window
and skip breakfast and run out to see what the heck's going on there.
And, so I'll, it's midday here in the United States, so I'll, I'll probably
go out, might sit down and either on the porch or in a little patch of cottonwoods,
literally right off the corner of the house we call the Tree Palace.
I've got names for all of the places that we've given them.
So, no one else knows these names, but we know, and immediately in the family
when someone says the Winnie the Pooh Forest or the Sitting Rock, or that,
Rupert Isaacson: that, that is a really, that that thing of intimacy with the
landscape where you begin to name it.
George Bumann: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Even though, of course it has its own
language as independent from us.
But that's a language of love, isn't it, when you begin to name certain
rocks, certain trees, certain, yeah.
George Bumann: Yeah.
They're terms of endearment.
Yeah, for sure.
And they're part of our own story of healing and just living here.
So I'm gonna go sit in the tree palace and Okay.
See what the mag pies are talking about.
Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: All right.
I guess we should go do that.
I'll go get Axel.
He's revving up his bottom and hopefully the fireflies will, will
add the sublime to his, to his
specializing of the plants on which the fireflies
dance.
Craig, your octopus, please greet her from me and tell her how grateful I am.
To her and her kind for letting you film the film that you made, which I think did
create you, your, your charity Sea change.
I think, I think Mar to Besi did create a sea change actually in people's
perception of nature through media.
I, I really do.
You know, well it, so, but the octopus had to allow itself to be filmed that way.
So please thank her on my behalf George the Magpie I love magpie and they have a
nest right outside this window here too.
And I've, now you've said falseness.
I didn't know this about them and I've wondered why they seem
to spend so much time there, but there don't seem to be any eggs.
So now I'm wondering if, if that's why
George Bumann: put on a monkey suit and peek in the nest, because if they see you.
Going into the nest.
They'll hassle you from here on, ever forward.
So put on a disguise, check the nest, and then take off the disguise.
I, I'm gonna disguise myself as
Rupert Isaacson: George Boomer, I think.
Yeah.
George Bumann: Go, go
Rupert Isaacson: talk to him.
Yeah.
I
George Bumann: visited Rupert and these birds are attacking me.
What's going on here?
Just rabble-rousers.
No,
you've just trained them.
This, this has been a pleasure.
Yeah.
It's such a joy to, to share this with you both.
It's such
Rupert Isaacson: a, it's such a privilege to be able to have conversations
like this about topics like this with people that you love and respect.
So my utter gratitude to you guys for the
Craig Foster: work.
Well, thanks so much for all your effort in, in doing this rut and keeping
going and your energy and everything.
So really, and your, your, your way with this.
Thank, thank you so much.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, hopefully we can do
Craig Foster: this again.
George Bumann: Yeah, that'd be wonderful.
Okay.
Thank you.
Rupert Isaacson: All right.
That's, I'm gonna click that.
Bless
Craig Foster: you guys.
Bless you guys.
Bless you.
I made this one today, Georgia.
Then if you can see, oh,
George Bumann: look at that.
Whoa.
Oh, I don't have yours to show me, but I drilled a hole in yours and I'm making,
I'm making a necklace to put it on.
Somebody could take that out of context, Georgia.
We're among friends.
Among friends.
What is that?
That's beautiful.
That's so beautiful.
What is
Craig Foster: that?
This is a, this is a, a seed that's come down from Mozambique.
Okay.
It's a Zulu love bean.
It's like a lucky seed.
And then I've just engraved this.
I dunno if you can see that kinda shamanic octopus on there.
Yeah, if you can.
It catches the light.
Yeah.
So it comes in on the ocean.
Rupert Isaacson: Alright guys.
Craig, I know you need to go to bed and get up early for your
octopus, my dog's bottom, you guys.
Craig Foster: Lots of love.
Lots of love.
Bless you.
Take at you.
We'll be in touch.
Thank you.
Okay, wonderful.
Cheers.
Bye.
George Bumann: Bye.
Cheers.
Is.
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