Julia Baird on Phosphorescence and Making a Habit Out of Awe

Ryan talks to Julia Baird about her newest book Phosphorescence, The awe and wonder that unfolds in the midst of deep suffering, how the journey towards achieving stillness requires incremental progress, and more. Julia Baird is a journalist, broadcaster and author based in Sydney, Australia. She hosts The Drum on ABCTV and writes columns for the Sydney Morning Herald and the International New York Times. Her new book Phosphorescence reflects on her encounters with a luminescent phenomenon found in nature, and how she was able to cultivate her own ‘inner light’ in the face of a life-threatening illness. The new Pod Pro Cover by Eight Sleep is the most advanced solution on the market for thermoregulation. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking. You can add the Cover to any mattress, and start sleeping as cool as 55°F or as hot as 110°F. Go to eightsleep.com/dailystoic to check out the Pod Pro Cover and save $150 at checkout. DECKED truck bed tool boxes and cargo van storage systems revolutionize organization with a heavy-duty in-vehicle storage system featuring slide out toolboxes. DECKED makes organizing, accessing, protecting, and securing everything you need so much easier. Get your DECKED Drawer System at Decked.com/STOIC and get free shipping. KiwiCo believes in the power of kids and that small lessons today can mean big, world-changing ideas tomorrow. KiwiCo is a subscription service that delivers everything your kids will need to make, create and play. Get 30% off your first month plus FREE shipping on ANY crate line with code STOIC at kiwico.com. Uprising Food have cracked the code on healthy bread. Only 2 net carbs per serving, 6 grams of protein and 9 grams of fiber. They cover paleo, to clean keto, to simple low carb, to high fiber, to dairy free to grain free lifestyle. Uprising Food is offering our listeners ten dollars off the starter bundle. that includes two superfood cubes and four pack of freedom chips to try! go to uprisingfood.com/stoic and the discount will be automatically applied at checkout. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/dailyemailCheck out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more. Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookFollow Julia Baird: Homepage, Twitter, InstagramSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:03Speaker 00

  Welcome to the Weekend Edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal,

• 0:46Speaker 00

  and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

• 0:54Speaker 00

  Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another Weekend episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I love when people surprise you, when you sort of put them in one category and then you find out they're capable of something you didn't expect. Underestimating is the wrong word, but you just, you interacted with them in one component or one facet, or you experienced their work in one facet, and then you meet them, or you talk to them, or you see something else they did, and you're like, wow! Julia Baird is, I have to say, someone I would put in that category. I read and I have raved about her biography, Queen Victoria.

• 1:37Speaker 00

  It's one of the few biographies we carry at the Painted Porch. I used it as a source in stillness. I used it again in the book that I'm writing just now. Love the book, highly recommend it. Check it out if you haven't. And I shot her a note after I read the book, like, two years ago, two and a half years ago, and we connected. And, you know, I was thinking about people to have on the podcast, and I shot her a note, and she said, "I'm happy to be, I'm happy to come on, but I'd like you to read my new book." And I said, "Sure, of course." She sent me this little book called Phosphorescence, which I'm carrying in my hand. The subtitle is "A Memoir of Finding Joy When Your World Goes Dark." So I thought Julia would be someone I was a fan of as a biographer, but...

• 2:23Speaker 00

  I didn't, I guess I just didn't expect to be reading a book and the subtitle, or and the, and the deck headline on the, on the inside flap is, "A Deeply Personal Exploration of What Can Sustain Us Through Our Darkest Hours." And I just, I just absolutely loved this book. It was a great read about resilience, right? There's, it's deeply stoic. Phosphorescence is basically things that sort of illuminate in the dark. And she's talking, why, why do some animals glow, particularly sea creatures, literally glow? What makes a firefly do what it does? That's where the word phosphorescence comes from. But I think we all know people that are like that. Those are the people that inspire us, even though life's thrown the absolute worst crap

• 3:08Speaker 00

  you can imagine at them. Somehow they still emanate this energy, this positivity, you know? And that's what this book has too, which is, which is fitting. So I wanted to talk to her and I'm so excited to bring you this conversation. In addition to her book on Queen Victoria, Julia is a journalist, a broadcaster, and an author based in Sydney, Australia. She hosts The Drum on ABC TV, writes columns for the Sydney Morning Herald and the International New York Times. She has a PhD from Sydney University. And as I said, just a wonderful writer. And I think you're really going to like this interview. You can go to her website, julia Baird.me.

• 3:50Speaker 00

  You can follow her on Twitter at Baird Julia, B A I R D Julia, and Julia. And then Instagram, the exact reverse, at Julia Baird. Just a wonderful book. Do check out Phosphorescence and, which I'm plugging in the reading list newsletter this month, which you should subscribe to also. And check out her book on Queen Victoria in the Painted Porch and enjoy this interview.

• 4:20Speaker 00

  You know, when I originally reached out, I wanted to talk to you about Queen Victoria, which I loved and was super helpful to me when I was writing Stillness. And I thought a little bit about it when I was writing Courageous Calling, actually. And so when I reached out, I thought we would talk about that. I didn't know you had this new book, which you were nice enough to send me. But when I, when I sat down to read the book, obviously only knowing you from Queen Victoria, I wasn't sure what to expect. But there's sort of a, as the subtitle hints, right, A Memoir of Finding Joy When Your World Goes Dark, there is this sort of looming darkness in the book that you are combating with the phosphorescence.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:05Speaker 00

  What, what happened between the Queen Victoria book and the, the, the place that took you to write this book?

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, although I was kind of finishing my footnotes, as anyone who's ever written a biography knows, is the most arduous part of writing a, of, of writing one of those large tomes. I was finishing, finishing that at the time. I got, got sick. I was diagnosed with this rare abdominal cancer. And at first, they thought it was ovarian, and which would have meant, my tumors were so large, that it just would have meant that I just didn't have long to live. And so I had to get my head around that and then go through this really intense surgery, where they, you know, anyway, which takes, I don't know, I don't

• 5:56Speaker 01

  know how long it takes, 12 hours. The last one took 15 hours. And, and you have to slowly rebuild yourself in a way, walk again and encounter the world again. So you do go into a very dark place. I was really conscious that people had written before about happiness and, you know, you know, meaning. And, and I really wanted to write about what is it, when the world goes really dark, how do you get through? Like, when you don't know if you can swing your legs out of bed, or how do you put one foot in front of the other? And I was really surprised during my own experience. And I've had three surgeries for this.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  For this cancer now, um, I was really surprised about what actually did sustain me and how in some ways it seemed really simple. But it was actually quite extraordinary and it was especially around awe and wonder.

• 6:55Speaker 00

  So you're you're sort of uh you're you're you've got the exhilaration of finishing this book, which must have been many years in the making.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:03Speaker 00

  Queen Victoria book.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 7:05Speaker 00

  You've got two young kids.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:07Speaker 00

  And then you're just at the doctor one day and you get this terrible news.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  Well, no, I was actually, and I had worked so hard on this biography for years, on top of like doing other jobs and moving countries, because I moved back from the States to Australia in that period. And I was like, now finally I can live. And um once I'd kind of finished that whole manuscript, but no, I got um, I just started having terrible pains. So I just went to the emergency. Um, and I had, yeah, it was the size of a basketball. This thing inside me was awful.

• 7:42Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know.

• 7:43Speaker 00

  And and.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:44Speaker 00

  And the prognosis was probably not like you're sort of staring staring your own mortality in the face.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was trying to, I don't know, I I was trying to be, well, I suppose in some situations it's okay. I remember my doctor saying to me one day. Um, listen, this is a surgeon, very clinically spoken. And he just said, listen, Julie, I have to be honest with you. All the signs are that this is very serious. And I was like, right. And it's at that point that you go into, okay, how am I going to conserve my energy? How am I going to stay strong? And that point I went to a root point of really intense stillness. I think is the best way to describe it.

• 8:27Speaker 00

  And and how long is this this journey? Is it a year, three years? Like, I I'm not totally clear on the timeline.

• 8:35Speaker 01

  Since I first, since I was diagnosed.

• 8:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:38Speaker 01

  So that was in twenty fifteen.

• 8:41Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, um, yeah, it's it's it's very intense. And I've got little kids and, you know, um.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  I mean, they've they've kind of grown into teenagers now, but they my my little boy had just started school. So that that's that's the most confronting thing for me. I think you can kind of bear anything happening to you, but you worry about. You just worry about your little ones, right?

• 9:06Speaker 00

  No, that's that's sort of been the vibe of the pandemic, right? It's like it's like we can figure it out, but you you're sort of this sort of powerlessness and frustration because it it it it's taking something away from people who are not at all to blame, your your kids.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  That's it, exactly right. And the innocence of that. And I just remember one day and my doctor called me and was like, my surgeon, this guy, the clinical guy. He was like, I have to tell you, it's it's spread to your liver. And I went.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Oh, that's not good.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  And he said, no, it's not. And I was cutting sandwiches for their lunch, you know? And so I just took them by the hands and I was walking them down the hill to their school, just with my heart in my stomach, thinking. I have got to get through this. Um, yeah. So, yeah, it it really does. I mean, life narrows to a slit when you go through times like that and everything else kind of falls away and it's it's really only what you care about. And I find the whole concept of a bucket list really interesting because I think bucket list assumes you've got quite a bit of time. If you're really at a point where you're like, oh, I this could be, I don't know, months or I don't know, it's it it you your world almost shrinks in a way.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  You you don't really want to go and jump off cliffs. You just want to sit next to your kids. And

• 10:30Speaker 00

  Right.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  Be with them and

• 10:32Speaker 00

  I yeah, I

• 10:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:34Speaker 00

  Ironically, it's like you want to do the things that you took the most for granted and tried to rush through in the course of your ordinary life, the sort of. Banal uh regular moments.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, you fall in love with ordinariness all over again. I remember walking back into my little place after I'd had my first surgery and I was like, oh, I love this, there's my bed, there's my couch, there's my comfy, all those things like having been able to have a cup of tea again was such a great thing. So yeah, um, and that's a real gift. Um, being able to really relish and savor pleasures, which is something my na- my son does very naturally. He just has a very low bar for what he enjoys in life. Like literally, we had this big trip to the US and his favorite moment was he got a ball of pizza dough at a restaurant and he talks about it.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  That was just unbelievable, this moment for him. It was just so good. Um, he just, yeah, he just relishes things. And I think that's one thing that's, you know, really core to happiness. When you've thought about all of these things, I know.

• 11:45Speaker 00

  No, no, you're you're right. It's it's uh the the more, weirdly, the the more you can sort of shrink your view to what's in front of you, there I guess there's there's less FOMO and there's less uh entitlements and you're just like, this is so nice. I want this for as long as I can have it.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. And that gives you a real peace. So.

• 12:08Speaker 00

  Well, what I thought was, go ahead, sorry.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  Why don't you go?

• 12:12Speaker 00

  Well, I was gonna say, what I thought was so unique about the book is, and you sort of talk about this at the beginning, which is like, you know, sort of most self-help books and most sort of uh memoirs are usually coming from some place of positivity or reflection on how wonderful everything is. Let me show you how you should be. What's fascinating about this book is that it comes, it's still a lot of that, but coming from a very dark place that it it obviously not quite on the scale of, like, one of my favorite books is Man's Search for Meaning. There is something powerful about, hey, let me tell you what the meaning of life is from someone who has seen the worst of life, as opposed to even even my books, I would have to admit,

• 12:55Speaker 00

  come from thinking about stuff, but not having to have gone through what you went through.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  Right, now, I mean, one of the worst things when you're going through a really tough time is it can be positivity, to be honest, like, and, and, and a lot of the discussion around, I think. At the same time, I was really drawn to really positive, pragmatic people over that time, and I really kind of, I, I value that. But when, I was very conscious, because I write a lot about awe and wonder and paying attention to the world and how astonishing that can be in uplifting you and drawing you out of yourself and giving you, as Rachel Carson discovered, like a really, um, a, a, a, a strength that's, that's remarkable and that we take for granted.

• 13:46Speaker 01

  Um, so I write a lot about the natural world, um, which we can talk about in a moment, but I, I really wanted to be conscious that, um, when you're getting a terrible diagnosis or your partner has just died, or something terrible's happened to a child of yours, it's not like, you can't just say go and lie under a tree and everything will be fine. It won't. It's horrible. It's awful. Life, you have moments of immense suffering and struggle in life. That is life. Um, along, but, but twinned with that suffering can be moments of great beauty and tenderness and, um, and, and sights that are purely marvelous. And I think I was just so surprised by

• 14:29Speaker 01

  my daily ocean swim and what that gave me. Um, and I, I, I wanted to write about that, that, that, that everyone is different, I think, although I think, I think awe and wonder really can give that to anyone, but you just need to work out ways of deliberately living. Um, so that when you, when you go through difficult times, you can almost, um, rope together your cross beams of resilience and just hang on to them for dear, for dear life.

• 14:59Speaker 00

  Well, you talk, you talk about the sort of love of the outdoors and wilderness of Theodore Roosevelt, which I've always been fascinated by.

• 15:08Speaker 00

  And I don't remember if you make the connection, but what I thought when I was reading that is, and I, I thought about it when I read the subtitle of your book, is have you seen the famous diary entry that he did after his, his mother and wife died in the same house on the same day?

• 15:23Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. No, what's he saying?

• 15:25Speaker 00

  So he, he, I forget what it is. It's eighteen eighty something or whatever. But basically, his mother dies and his wife dies in childbirth. And he just writes in his diary that night, there's a big X, and he says, "The light has gone out of my life."

• 15:43Speaker 00

  And you get, you know, when you read that, you're like, oh, this is the end, right? This is the end of the guy's life. And you're, actually, this is the beginning of all the great things. Like, he, he moves, he heads to the west in response to this devastation. And so I think there's something powerful about this idea of like, when life strips everything away from you, what do you find? And I, I found that your book was sort of like, what do you find is really important when, when all, all the light goes out of your life?

• 16:13Speaker 01

  That's right. And how can you find it? And that's why I became really obsessed with the idea of phosphorescence or bioluminescence. And that's, you know, living light. From vampire squids to fireflies to those little phytoplankton. You, you would have seen images of, of when the waves turn a kind of neon blue. And you jump in it and it sparkles. I, I really became very, very intent on finding it. Like, I'm physically finding it. And actually, it, it occurred in my neighborhood just about a month ago, which was unbelievable. And my daughter saw it as well, because I had dragged her along to see it once.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  And she said it was just the most euphoric experience of her life. Like, there's something, sometimes I wish we could do recordings of, you know, like the double rainbow man. That sound in his voice when he was just like so excited. That's what happens when you see something like these massive curling sparkling, like electric blue waves in the middle of the night coming towards you.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  Or you say, you know, a whale breaching, or whatever it is that you've kind of experienced um in the natural world, we can revert to a childish and artless self. And it can give you, um, I don't know, a kind of high, I don't know what you think of when you think of awe. But I really um have learnt that with awe, you have to deliberately pursue it. We tend to think, oh, well, we'll see a sunset at the end of the day, you might see at the beginning of the day. There's some cool, I don't know, um, uh, you know, cool things you can see in the parks at the end of your street. All those things, great, um, but but pursue it, like hunt them down.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  Because, um, so Rachel Carson, when, before she wrote, um, The Silent Spring, all about pesticides, kickstarting the modern environmental movement in many ways. A few years before that, she wrote, the work she was most proud of was about wonder. And it was about teaching children to wonder. She used to take her nephew, um, who was three or four years old, out through the woods. And they would go down and look at tidal pools in Maine at night with little torches and see the activity in there. And she said that if she was, if she could have one wish, if she was a fairy godmother of all the children out there, it would be to give them a sense of wonder that would be undiminished throughout their lives, so that their attention wouldn't be distracted by trivial things.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  Um, because, she said, it gives us kind of an immeasurable kind of strength. And I was struck by that. It actually does. It makes us strong. Because when we're exposed to awe, we feel small. It's less about ourselves. Um, when we feel small, we're more likely to feel part of a community, we're more likely to want to protect the earth. And, um, there's a kind of real ancient wisdom in that. And I was speaking to some First Nations people in Australia who said the same thing to me, how crucial it is to be psychologically small. Even though we're told so often, especially professionally, which I completely understand, that it's important to occupy space and have authority and command attention, whatever.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  That's good in one realm, but actually, as human beings that care for each other and care for the planet and that need to sometimes, um, kind of cope with our own sorrows.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  Smallness is a great thing.

• 19:51Speaker 00

  Oh, completely. I mean, I was, I was in Budapest, maybe this is towards the end of 2019. And I remember I went to this, I was walking by and it was happening, so I walked in, was in some, you know, enormous, you know, 500 year old church cathedral, and there was some like sort of classical concert, some choir was singing. And I remember sitting in one of the pews, listening to this. I'm not a religious person. But I remember thinking like, when it was beautiful and looking around, and I was trying to think like, what this must have felt like to a person 500 years ago, because they would have been doing the same concerts in the same way, in the same room,

• 20:32Speaker 00

  singing the same songs as I was hearing right then. And how, because so much less stuff had been explained, because they'd never been in a skyscraper or an airplane, or had an iPhone in their pocket, how much more marvelous and unimaginably unreal all of that would have felt. Just the sort of, I felt jealous for a second, right? Like, I felt jealous of what it would have been like to experience what I was experiencing in a less jaded, spoiled way.

• 21:09Speaker 00

  And I think there's something pure and grateful and vulnerable about these, either natural experiences and then also sort of man-made experiences where you're just like, how did this happen? Like, what made this? And then, and then you're dwarfed by it.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 21:28Speaker 00

  And it's, it's just, it's very powerful.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think you can absolutely get that from music, from architecture. A lot of architecture has got big soaring arches, especially in cathedrals and those kinds of things.

• 21:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:40Speaker 01

  Are designed to give us that sense of space and of wonder. We can have moments of awe at human achievement, or witnessing moments of great magnanimity or generosity, or those kinds of things. But the dwarfing is a crucial part, and I was struck by this as well when I was looking, I started looking through the diaries of astronauts, and they talk about The overview effect. So it's when, you know, we we send um they they they're generally like scientists, engineers, mathematicians, teachers into space and they come back also philosophers and poets and theologians.

• 22:19Speaker 00

  Right.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, and and they talk about like putting their finger up and a thumb up and obscuring the earth like a pea behind it. And how it can't you have this sense of, you know, obviously perspective, but but determination to care more fiercely for each other and protect what it is we have.

• 22:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, uh, yeah, it's this, I think, uh, I I forget which one said it, but he was saying you you you wanna grab politicians by the back of their neck and say like, get your shit together, what are you doing?

• 22:54Speaker 01

  Send them into space. Some of them can come back, maybe some of them could stay there, but mostly come back because you want them to have that sense of perspective. Especially when it comes to climate, you know, um, all the discussions we're having this week. The the when when people are in space, you know, national boundaries disappear.

• 23:11Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  Maps are artificial creations, you know, in terms of, I mean, sorry, not the mapping, but the the borders between countries are.

• 23:18Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  Um, and I think that's a really profound thing to recognize. There's a whole bunch of science which is being done around the question of awe now, which I find fascinating. And some are trying to measure awe in goosebumps and others by like they'll get people to walk through a grove of um Californian redwoods. And those who do, as opposed to a crop control group who doesn't, are more likely to help someone who like falls over or drops a pen on the way into the park than those who don't. Um, people are more likely after them, you know, standing next to something like a T-Rex to sign their names smaller, um, to feel that they're more part of a group. And obviously, there's there's more work to be done in it, but it's it's it's it's really, really interesting, I think.

• 24:05Speaker 00

  Well, when you think about those, um, those views from space, like, I remember thinking about this when I was writing Stillness, uh, my book Stillness is the Key, like, that photo of Earth, like, the famous blue marble photo.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 24:17Speaker 00

  Like, how unreal it is to go, like, that photo's fifty years old. That's it. Like, like,

• 24:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:25Speaker 00

  How recent our, our ability to see the world from the distance that we are able to see it, uh,

• 24:33Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 24:33Speaker 00

  is, is so shockingly recent. Like, even, you know, we, we talked about getting the ten thousand foot view. Like,

• 24:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 24:40Speaker 00

  when was the first time a human being was even able to get a ten thousand foot view? I, like, I think that would, that would surprise, the answer to that would surprise people.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. And like, if you went back to ancient times and you suggested this to someone, you would think that such a perspective would provoke a revolution, you know? It should, like, so fundamentally transform the way we see each other, um, and the world. And yet, and yet, you know, we've continued on in many destructive ways, I think. Um, another really interesting part of awe too is there was a study recently, I think it was, came out in the Psychology Journal, Emotion. It was, took people on a bunch of awe walks, um, that a control group who just went on walks, and then they had another group that had an awe walk, and that meant, you pay attention, you look around you, is the, is the, is that tree in, in, um, you know, those

• 25:33Speaker 01

  flowers blooming, what kind of, uh, what's happening with the, whatever, bandicoots, for example, you don't have them, they're an endangered species, they live in my place, they squeak all night, and they, friggin', they're little funny marsupials, but anyway, they dig up, they dig up, um, entire areas. Anyway, I would, I, on my morning walks, I see what, what damage the bandicoot has, has, um, done that day. Now, those who went on the awe walks, at the end of this several week period, were kind of a lot more pro-social sentiments, were more content, um, but one really fascinating metric was that they were asked to take photographs of themselves throughout the walk.

• 26:13Speaker 01

  And at the beginning, and like over time, their actual physical head shrunk in terms of the proportion they took up of these selfies, right? So at the beginning, it's like, hey, here I am on my walk, uh, day, week one. Next it would be, oh, wow, look, can you see this? You know, autumn leaf behind me in this tree, it's actually phenomenal. And their head would get, it's like it literally. Their heads got smaller. It's like this, it could not more perfectly illustrate what an antidote to narcissism it is actually paying more attention to the world.

• 26:44Speaker 00

  They were sort of shrinking into the, or becoming more a part of the landscape and

• 26:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:50Speaker 00

  the larger picture instead of standing front and center and taking up most of the frame.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 26:58Speaker 00

  That's so lovely.

• 26:59Speaker 01

  Isn't it? Yeah.

• 27:01Speaker 00

  I love that.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:02Speaker 00

  Uh, what is, why, why do you think swimming does this? Um, why is swimming so uniquely or well suited to bringing about some of the, the feelings we're talking about? And I think you brought up sort of phosphorescence. It does seem like a lot of the species that have that are underwater species.

• 27:24Speaker 01

  No, that is true. That's absolutely, although to my delight, um, in during lockdown, there were a bunch of discoveries that like, uh, all these Australian marsupials do actually glow under UV light. Um.

• 27:39Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 27:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:40Speaker 00

  Scorpions do.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  Uh, no, like, um, platypus do, um, what were they? There were a whole bunch of wombats do. And they just, just discovered it by using a different torch. It was actually like a, a, a light shone on them in a, um, UV torch in a museum. It was first in the States. I can't quite remember which university. And then they scrambled to have a look at it here, but you're right. It's, it's, um. Especially in the deep, deep sea, which I'm kind of obsessed with because they're so funky looking down there, like. Spectacular light shows from all these different octopuses and, and you know, squids and so on, but then also these really. Crazy looking blobfish and angelfish, but that's another, that's another discussion. So I was writing, um.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  Columns for the New York Times and my editor said to me, why don't you write something, because he knew that I was ocean, ocean swimming every morning at seven. He said, why don't you write something about it? Um, and I, I sat and I was really puzzling over what it was that it did to me. So. I start to swim at, um, at the southern end of a beach and then we go round with a group of people. Usually at seven, at seven in the morning, you go round the headland to the next beach. And you swim over a, um, protected, it's like, like, I don't, I'm not sure what is in Mars, but it's a couple of kilometres. And you go, um, over this protected marine bay. So there's little.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  Stripy sharks, um, port jackson sharks, there's cuttlefish that I became very obsessed with and still am. Um, and, uh, you know, occasionally we get dolphins, we get turtles, we get different kinds of fish, like. Um, and I was like, okay, so obviously what, and a lot of people, like, are really. Once they start this, it's become a huge group now. People, a lot of people got off antidepressants. Once they start to do this, they call it vitamin C. And there is something, and I was puzzling over it. I'm like, okay, it gets me up in the morning. And it makes me exercise. And then you also see people and banter.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  Like just stupid banter with people with which you only have in common the fact that you love the tides and should you wear a wet suit on it or, um. What is the ocean doing today? It's actually a really healthy thing to do first thing in the morning because you're just mucking around, right? And then, um, but I, but there was something else and ob- obviously there's physical beauty to it. I think exercising outside, there's. Evidence around how superior that is, um, but.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  I then realised that it was about awe and it was um something about swimming on the edge of a vast ocean. Whose rips and tides and curls, you have to try to understand and to navigate carefully and respectfully. And and the wonder, so when I'm going along and I see a cuttlefish. And they're they're so cool, like they've got these funny heads with these like trunks coming out and um. They splay, like if you get a real show off, they will, I I mean, I had one just recently, a few weeks ago, so he was like. Um, I'm gonna go over the weeds now and I will go from this cool, like blonde.

• 30:49Speaker 01

  Golden colour, which is over the sand, to this like prickly brown red colour over the weed. And now I'm gonna go over the rocks and I'm gonna change to exactly that colour. And um now, when you raise your two. Front fingers at it, it actually will raise them back. At you, um he was like, I'm gonna go forwards, I'm gonna go backwards, um and I was so, I was just like. Like crazy with it because I just couldn't believe it. And so I raced down to try to see if I could see this giant cuttlefish again, um. And it was giving me something wonderful. And um during those times when it was really difficult, I realised that these.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  These sightings and that experience was sustaining me in a way that I wanted to try to articulate.

• 31:38Speaker 00

  I wonder if part of it, like with the ocean, we're just less familiar with them, so there's a sort of.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right.

• 31:45Speaker 00

  Strangeness to them. And then I think you you talk about this in the book, and I think. It's that there's no screens down there, no noise. It's just, it's like being in the womb or something.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  That's right. And it's like, um it's also a a a rhythmical breathing thing too. It's like breathe, one, two, three, breathe, one. And you just. You know, you, there there's something soothing, um. The bloke who wrote Blue Minds, who I've forgotten, I've forgotten his name now, but he said that water meditates you. And I think.

• 32:18Speaker 00

  I love that.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  That's right, right? Um, so, yeah, it does, it does. Overtake you in that sense. And I also got true really attracted to. Even though there's commotion under the ocean, and there's a dawn chorus there amongst fish too, which I did not know and was delighted to find out. But underneath there is a silence and a stillness. And I really was drawn to that in the period after I was sick and when I was recovering. And uh and that's why I've actually started to learn how to freedive. Because just being under and holding my breath. And I actually saw it as a state like what the Tibetans, you know, um, what Buddhists call the bardo. So a state we all suspended between birth and rebirth.

• 33:03Speaker 01

  And it's an incredibly peaceful prospect to me. Yeah.

• 33:11Speaker 00

  There's a, there's a river in Texas. It starts from a, a natural spring. Um, it's, it's in San Marcos. And the, it, there's this sort of rare species of, or I think it might be the only place. It's like a, it's like a, an underwater rice. I forget what it's called, but it's this sort of w- wavy, like tall grass. And the, the river is, it's like millions of gallons are just coming up. You see where the river starts. It just starts out of nowhere. And, and this, you know, millions of gallons are just pouring out. And you get underwater, you can kind of swim against the current. Uh, like almost like a treadmill or one of those infinity pools. And you're just watching these like waves of grass.

• 33:52Speaker 00

  You know, go sway into the current like it's, you know, you're in the middle of the prairie somewhere, but you're underwater. And it's one of the most sort of incredible rhythmic things that I've ever experienced in my life.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:04Speaker 00

  And you, yeah, I think you go and you experience one of those things. And then you leave. To me, what the idea of the book, your book is, is like that energy that you bring back into the world. We need more of that.

• 34:17Speaker 01

  Yes. I think that's right. And it's almost hard to put your finger on. And that's what I was trying to, to grasp. Like, what is that? When you're sitting on a hill in a, it's some area where there's no light pollution. You're looking at the stars, like, what is that? We all know that that soothes us. We all know that it makes us feel better, but, but, but why? And, and that's why I think, you know, scientists are, are trying to get to it.

• 34:45Speaker 00

  And why have we designed life to be literally the opposite of that? And to have as little of that as humanly possible? That is the strange, strange thing about the modern world.

• 34:57Speaker 01

  The infinite distraction. I think that's

• 35:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's

• 35:01Speaker 00

  But even just environmentally, right? Like, like, for instance, on the Gulf Coast in America, they it's somewhat recently, there's this like law that um because turtles are attracted to light, you can't have lights on any building that faces the ocean.

• 35:17Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 35:17Speaker 00

  So it's pretty incredible.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:19Speaker 00

  But you you're sort of walking along the ocean, it's completely dark. Uh, and it's you can actually see the stars and it's wonderful. But to think that like this was a thing they had to this it's this incredible gift. Anyone that experiences experiences it loves it, just as if, you know, you you get out of the city and you're away from the light pollution, you can actually see the stars. You're like, this is incredible. And then you're like, this only exists by accident, or this only exists because they rammed this unpopular law down people's throats. If people had their if people had the freedom to choose, they would choose not this, even though they love it when they have it. It's insane.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's so true. It's like, it's almost like we're we're we're becoming toddlers again that need to relearn attention. I don't know about you, but when I write, I download, um, I think the Freedom App. So it locks all of my other internet access on my computer. And I don't get

• 36:15Speaker 00

  Right.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  distracted because otherwise I'm back and and then sometimes I have to go and put my phone like the other end of the house or something. So I'm not looking at that. I have to, I have to really fight for my attention. And that's why I have eco resorts where they promise you you can't get wifi. Um, because we get distracted. But the more the world, you know, has become urbanized, and we only tipped over a few years ago into more people living in urban than regional centers. The more we're going to have to be reminded of these mountain, growing mountain of evidence about how good green is for us, the side of green, even in France, even in our house, like and in our neighborhoods, in our communities, how crucial that is. I was just reading an article this morning about the shrinking backyard in Australia.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  Um, and what that's going to mean in terms of climate and creating kind of little heat pools. So, um. Yeah, it's uh uh um I was reminded of this too when the so I'm not sure if you're aware of this like this this growing um forest therapy movement. And I went and met um uh Professor King Lee in uh Tokyo to talk to him about it. He is a very busy and in-demand man. Um um Shinrin Yoko is uh Yoko is what it's um called this so. And and people are being taught around the world to be forest therapists and also to go on these uh you know um.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  Walks into natural areas and use all their five senses and take it in slowly and. And what I find that wonderful in the sense that that's what people do and obviously it's not too expensive and all tied up with eco resorts that they you know. But not everyone can access. That's a great thing to be doing, but there's also strikes me at the same time that it's it's almost sad that we have to be. Taught how to do that again.

• 38:04Speaker 00

  Yes, yeah, like that uh you mentioned indigenous peoples. It's like we're paying, we're rediscovering a thing. That was has been well-known for uh thousands of years by people that. We not only didn't listen to, but tried to take away, not only do we take the stuff away from them, we took them away from it. And tried to indoctrinate them with our understanding of reality uh to their detriment and our detriment.

• 38:37Speaker 01

  That's right. And and I mean, when you think about one of the central tenets, as as a non-indigenous person, I won't won't. E- explained it as well as it should be explained, but the central tenet um that Aboriginal people in Australia always talk about is listening. To country. You listen to country. And in a way, that's a it's a psychologically soothing thing for a person to be take time out. And be still and get off your devices and listen to country. But there's a second part of that, which is i- is is country sick now? Like, what are we doing to country?

• 39:07Speaker 00

  Right.

• 39:07Speaker 01

  Are are are we um caring for it? And are are we disconnected from it? Are we taming it and conquering it and plundering it, mining it? Or are we nurturing it? Um and Aboriginal people have always been custodians of the land. That's what we. Um you know, the phrase that we always use and that's caretakers and that's a fundamentally different understanding of what it means to be human.

• 39:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I mean, there's also this sort of myth-making or revisionism that we can tell about, you know, first peoples where they also had problems with over-hunting and not sort of burning large swaths of land to do what they want. I mean, human beings, I think, just generally have this tendency of like, sort of, there's the part of us that appreciates land and wants to be a custodian of it. Then there's the other part of us that wants something for it, and so we exploit it and we ravage it and we steal from it. And we don't realize that what we're really doing is stealing from ourselves and stealing from the people that we claim to care about, which is our family and, you know, subsequent generations.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  Right, exactly, for everyone. Um, yeah, I mean, I haven't seen evidence of that, you know, in Australian history, and we have the oldest continuous living culture on the planet, sixty-five thousand years. And one of the big things that actually has been an issue is that Aboriginal people always did burning as a way of controlling the climate and controlling the, um...

• 40:40Speaker 00

  Right.

• 40:41Speaker 01

  The bushfires. So we're having, we have, like, having a lot of discussions around the times of these, like, horrific bushfires about whether we've not, like...

• 40:51Speaker 00

  Well, no, we're rejecting their ancient wisdom on how, you know, if you sort of take over certain functions from nature, then you also have to take over some of the destructive functions of nature, or you make yourself super, super vulnerable.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 41:08Speaker 00

  It's like in California, like, a million acres a year would burn on its own. And then now, nobody burns anything. And then the whole state catches on fire and people go, "How could this happen?" It's like, this has been happening for a million years.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  Exactly. We just have so much to learn on that front, I think. We better do it quickly.

• 41:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, or there won't be anything, anything left to learn.

• 41:33Speaker 00

  One of the things I was gonna ask you, I have some Victoria questions, which we'll loop back to, but I was curious, you know, like, going through what you went through, I was struck, when I, and obviously before I knew what you had gone through, one of the things I was struck by when I was reading about her life, was just how much pain she must have been in, as a human being, or just throughout her life, not just the pain of the loss of her husband, and the pain of childbirth, but it sounded like, when they sort of looked at her body after death, they were like, how did this woman stand this?

• 42:07Speaker 01

  I know, right, and that was one of those things I was awkward about, because I realized that too, that's why, she wanted to be carried around by strong servants a lot of the time, I mean childbirth had literally kind of ravaged her body, in a way that, and she would never be examined by doctors, and, you know, and she never received any help for what must have been, you know, an ongoing, very difficult, physical condition, so that gave me a lot more insight and compassion into the fact that she was not physically mobile, if you're not physically mobile, you're gonna have other attendant health issues, and so on, so, yeah, and that was that the doctor found that she, yeah,

• 42:52Speaker 01

  that she'd had a prolapse on her, on her, on her deathbed when he examined her, and it's a thing of like, do we tell that story when we tell a queen, is that like, too much, you know, like, you know, going into her, her privacy, is it something we should know, we shouldn't know, and you don't want to be prurient about it, but we also need to understand that in, you know, centuries past, and, and still today, what childbirth can do to women, and what they endure silently, and...

• 43:23Speaker 00

  It's like, I think it is important to talk about, as you think about someone like Queen Elizabeth, that we sort of marvel at her decades and decades of service, but then you're like, what if you found out she was also in chronic pain every single moment of that service, you realize like... Oh, this wasn't like an impressive person. This was like a superhero. Like, this is, this is incomprehensible that a person could have done this.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, but they talk about the veins of iron that went through Victoria's character. That's right. And they didn't have, you know, the, the pain relief in the, in the way that they did now. And a lot of her uncles had been addicted to opium and had gout and like had done, you know, like, were massively in debt and indulged every, you know, kind of gambling and like dozens of mistresses and all the rest of it. And she was so upright. Um, and but also, but think about another thing that she was constantly, um, a- attacked for, which was her reclusiveness. She worked. She worked very hard, but she didn't want to go out into public and she, um, didn't want to leave the comfort of her carriage a lot of the time.

• 44:26Speaker 01

  Um, and towards the end of her life, when she had a big jubilee, she didn't get out. The, the, it drew up in front of the, um, abbey or the cathedral and she stayed in there for the rest of the ceremony. But now we would understand that if we know, again, that, you're right, that she was in chronic pain.

• 44:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, Churchill had that joke about, I forget who he was talking about, but he's like, uh, they're a modest man who has much to be modest about. Um, it's sort of funny, you know, we admire sort of modesty or humility or restraint. But then you look at someone like Queen Elizabeth or you look at, uh, Queen Victoria and you're like, oh, but this person, this person is that way. But they could get, if you look at their predecessors, particularly their male predecessors or, uh, you know, kings and royalty of, of, of any nationality in any country, you're like, think of what you could get away with that you have chosen not to let yourself get away with.

• 45:25Speaker 00

  That, I'm always very impressed, the sort of voluntary regulation, you know, like, she could have done whatever she wanted. Instead, she chose to work very hard.

• 45:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. Um, I mean, she did stretch the limits of constitutionality. She did, you know, have. Um. A visceral dislike of William Gladstone, tried to prevent him from coming prime minister. She corresponded with generals in the field directly about how to conduct the war. So I mean, when there was overreach, that was the kind of thing she did, but you're uh but you're right. I mean, she conducted herself in a way she didn't. She burst into tears on on discovering how close she was to the throne and um. Yeah, I think we know it's a heavy burden and an inherited power is a very peculiar thing. Um. I think we kind of can fundamentally recognize that. But she grasped it and she performed her duty.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  And so Eng- England has had the Victorian and the current, you know, Elizabethan. Eras of these women who uh should never be underestimated as, you know, decorative or functional because of how hard they work. Um. And the fact that, you know, that that that that both of them have been the most famous uh working women of their time.

• 46:43Speaker 00

  One of the the things, there's a couple of things that in that book that you just sort of threw off offhandedly that really hit me. And and one of them connects to the new book also. Um. And I ended up doing a bunch of research on it when I read it. But you sort of threw out this weird thing about William Gladstone, how he liked to just go cut down trees. Um. As as a hobby. And that strikes me as a as a, I mean, it's it's a form of, I guess, forest bathing, but also just sort of hobby and getting lost in the flow state of doing a thing. Uh. Kind of an unusual hobby, but I just I love the peculiarity of it.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. Oh, that's so smart. I've not had anyone weave together these two books before, so that's quite a delightful insight for me. Um. That's right. I mean, and he would do it for months at a time.

• 47:28Speaker 00

  Thousands of trees he chopped down in his lifetime.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  Three months and then go off and really, I don't know, think about what to do about Ireland. Um, read a few like, you know, heavy tomes and uh he would, you know, conduct a few sermons. He was like, he gave a few sermons for his servants, which I'm sure they were thrilled about every week. Um, I mean, Victoria said she spoke to him. He speaks to me as if it was a public meeting. And that was part of his problem with the awkwardness of his relationship with her is that, you know, he was kind of um strict and and booming and very, very smart and but possibly charmless. Whereas, you know, Benjamin Disraeli was so um elegant in prose and and manner and constantly complimenting her and she was utterly charmed by it. I think he was, you know, really great company.

• 48:15Speaker 01

  So that was part of that. But no, I think that's it. He did get into, that's how he got into flow. And this is a man who gave four to five hour speeches, you know, on the stump, which itself is hard to fathom as well.

• 48:27Speaker 00

  Right. He must have been practicing them in his head as he was doing this.

• 48:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, the dot points for his work. But, you know, imagine the luxury of being able to do that now. Like, we can, we don't all get a day off, let alone a weekend.

• 48:44Speaker 00

  Right. No, it's like, uh, sorry, you can't reach the president. He's chopping down trees on his property right now. No one would accept that.

• 48:50Speaker 01

  He's in the flow. Yeah.

• 48:53Speaker 00

  The other offhanded thing I loved, uh, less connected, but more of a fascinating historical what if that I I'd wanted to ask you about. You mentioned that there was some talk of Queen Victoria marrying, was it Van Buren or Pierce? I forget who it was, but there was some idea that that she would marry uh either a former or sitting US president. Was that right?

• 49:16Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, that's right.

• 49:18Speaker 00

  Am I making this up? I remember it being in the book.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  It was a, it was, it was gossip, but um not actually founded, as so many things were. When she, when she was very eligible. Um, and that was, that was one of the um names that was suggested, I believe, in the the the American papers, but it never took, never took hold. Um, and Albert was her great lover, but she also had a second love, which was John Brown, her servant.

• 49:49Speaker 00

  I was just thinking of how different the special relationship would have been had had had America and Britain after the revolution, after the War of 1812, which wasn't that distant to, you know, her age, had been somehow joined by marriage. Once again, it would have been insane.

• 50:07Speaker 01

  That would have been amazing. And Britain would have gone completely crazy. Can you imagine her marrying an American? I mean, they destroyed the German that she married. They just couldn't, they were constantly at him, right? Um, for being German and like, they said he was penniless and he was um, uh, uh, under, under a fog of, of suspicion for that, even though Albert was one of the best things that had actually happened to the monarchy for quite a long time. But no, it's a fascinating prospect, actually.

• 50:39Speaker 00

  Um, you know, when we're talking about someone like Queen Victoria or, or some of the, the people you mentioned, it strikes me that, uh, this sort of phosphorescence is, well, I call it stillness, but it's like when somebody has it, you can just feel it. Like when you're, Marcus realist in meditations, he says, you know, you want to be like the smelly goat in the room. Like everyone knows it's there, uh, which I think is a funny image, but like when you're, when you're around someone who has that, although they're not literally lighting up, we do talk about people who light up a room. You're just, you're just around them and you can, you know, this energy, when people talk about energy, which obviously doesn't really exist, but of course it also exists.

• 51:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's energy, like I think with the phosphorescence thing, sometimes lighting up a room can mean charisma and attractiveness and charm and extraversion and, um, but you also want to know how you feel when that person leaves a room. It's like, go back to Gladstone and Israeli again. Um, a woman, I'm trying to work out if these American ambassadors, why? I can't remember, but to, uh, you, a woman said that sitting next to William Gladstone at a dinner party, you, you felt like you were sitting next to the smartest man in the world. It was so impressive and so brilliant. Sitting next to Israeli, you felt like you were the smartest woman in the world. Um,

• 52:03Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 52:04Speaker 01

  And that was the essence of his charm, I think. But in my family, and I write about this in my book, we talk about basement people and penthouse people. You have some encounters with people, you walk away and You've you you know, someone can be a little bit toxic, said a few things, oh, haven't you finished your book yet? Oh, or whatever.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  And then that just takes you down and someone else can take you up and that's kind of and that's and that's to the penthouse. And what is it about those people? And my mother was one of those people. She was a very calming. Um, and she was an introvert, but there was something about her that was so um

• 52:42Speaker 01

  strong and content and non judgmental um. And she had this grace that you've always left feeling better. And I think that's a real aspiration to be that person. I think with a phosphorescent person, it feels like they know what makes them s- strong and they're not kind of needing input. They've worked out um how to pay attention to the world and to others and how to shrink their own heads in photos on all walks, you know? There's some very appealing about people who who have that worked out.

• 53:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, it it's um, it's like

• 53:28Speaker 00

  they they ma- they make you, I don't I don't know, you it it, do you know who Caesar Milan is, the the dog trainer?

• 53:36Speaker 01

  I have a dog, I'm familiar with this, yes.

• 53:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's like somebody where you're like, how does this person just like have an energy that like an animal can sense, right? Like, again, it feels it feels preposterously woo woo that someone you're like, oh, I felt their energy or they have very calming energy or whatever. But then then you experience it and you're like, oh, this is real, like, this is real.

• 54:01Speaker 01

  That's exactly right. Um, I think, I mean, I have had my dog trained. I think that what he's often picking up with is the massive bag of treats that they always have. Um, that's be very effective, but I know exactly what you're talking about. And I'm wondering if what you've noticed in all your research is that it's people who adhere to, say, you know, a stoic philosophy and really deliberately pursue it and have packed stillness and meditation into their day. And that kind of takes them somewhere else. And what I've noticed with my work on awe and wonder and even talking to people who regularly freedive or surf surf or whatever, that does give them something or or people who are conscious of.

• 54:43Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, of being still or of looking outwards. They're kind of the people I really wanna spend time with. Is that what you found in the work?

• 54:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's like, you know, for instance, someone who is like very skilled at martial arts, they could be wearing totally regular street clothes and they sort of walk in the room, they touch you and you're like, oh, this person, this person has a carriage or a sense of themselves that's, that's been changed by something they've experienced or learned that I don't have as just a regular person. Maybe this is, could also get to someone who's been at war or also like, I don't know, I never met the Dalai Lama, but someone who has just done an intense sort of spiritual discipline. You're just like, oh, you're operating at a frequency that is so distinct that it's, I'm getting vibes.

• 55:37Speaker 01

  Hmm. Yeah, that's, that's right. And then how do you get to that place? Because I think sometimes we think it's by, I don't know, rote learning verses or by ticking off, whether it's religious or secular rituals. And, and it's actually not. It's kind of creating a space where,

• 56:00Speaker 01

  wherever it is about you. I mean, like, because we don't have many spaces where we talk about character and how you form character, right? It's not cutting and pasting inspirational quotes. It's developing a practice, whatever that may be. What is it for you?

• 56:13Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it's, it's, I, I have this weird experience. I, I, I can feel myself getting into a weird place. I tend to, I run usually lately, I've been running in the morning, but then I, I sort of work out in the evening and after my kids have gone to sleep, I'll work out in the gym. And then I usually, I live out in the country, so I'll, I'll go for like a short walk on my property in the dark, no light, just sort of by the moon. And I can just feel myself accessing like a different frequency that I'm not normally on, where I'm kind of present and locked in and calm and quiet in a way that's just, yeah, like sort of not, not where I normally am.

• 56:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, see, isn't that interesting, cause that's what I was trying to discover, like, what is that? Is it the moon? Is it the space? Is it the silence? And and swimming is exactly like that for me. I mean, my kids will push me out the door. Yesterday, my kid was like, mum, Sam was like, like.

• 57:12Speaker 00

  You need it?

• 57:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, you've got to have your swim. He said, I don't know why you miss it, uh, like every now and then, because the days you miss it, you always say you don't feel the same and you know, aren't the same, you just got to, and I'm like, yeah. I'm aware of all of that. Um, but you know, a lot of people could say the same for exercise as well, but I think it is um. Repetitive behaviour. It's almost like a, yeah, I mean, it's like it's. It's a spiritual practice, I think.

• 57:39Speaker 00

  A- Australia is the perfect place to swim just because it's also insanely naturally beautiful, like those those rock pools. Are are, I mean, I don't know, A- Austin has some some amazing sort of natural swimming pools, but I don't think there's anything that comes close to. Those swim clubs in uh in Australia.

• 58:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think though what I learned, and um, as you would know, one of the best things about writing a book is um, the correspondence that you get from people. Especially about the stuff that we all share, like during Covid and um, maybe the last presidential election in your country and. Some of the stuff that's been happening here, it's like, there's just so much division and toxicity, and it's really wonderful to think about the things that we all. We all love and we all share, and I'm acutely conscious that you don't need to be sitting on top of a, you know, the Grand Canyon or. Um, swimming with whale sharks to get a sense of that awe, and a lot of people can find it in their own.

• 58:39Speaker 01

  Backyards. I mean, a sunrise and a sunset can give you that thing. Um, it's just, I think, for me, working out what it is that takes you outside of yourself. And just building into your day, it's kind of, it's, it's, it's as simple as that.

• 58:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's a Seneca line, I wish I could speak Latin, but it's something like, uh, the whole world is a temple of the gods. And I think if you can go through life that way, not only does it, one, sort of connect, uh, give you a good sense of what our obligations are to the planet that we've been given. But it also allows you to, to sort of constantly be in that state of awe or reverence, because you're seeing it as a temple as opposed to just, uh, a random, you know, it's, you're, you're, you're, you're really seeing the landscape.

• 59:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. It's almost like, I don't know, it's like almost living in a state of grace in a strange way and actually seeing how

• 59:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:36Speaker 01

  everything is like childbirth. I mean, we do, our kids are milling around all the time, but unbelievable. Like the day when you, you know, you must have been like this when your partner gave birth. It's just like unbelievable. And that happens every day all over the place. Like, what the hell is that? Speaking of awe, you know?

• 59:54Speaker 00

  Well, my, my son turned five yesterday.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:57Speaker 00

  And, uh, you're just like, this, this thing is five years old and is like tall and walking around and has opinions about things and tells you stories about it's like, if you look at life from the right eye, it's, it's almost like you're, you're high on drugs because it's so incomprehensibly weird and beautiful and wonderful and blows your mind all the time if you let it.

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. And, and again, it's like, like to anyone who might be listening, who's going through a really horrible, like feral time and doesn't know how they're going to get out of it. It might sound like, oh yeah, you know, here they are banging on about childbirth or tree or, you know, nice waves or whatever. And I think, like, when I was going through like black times, it's like, you just, it's like, Um, you're not gonna go from um being flat out in your bed to a state of ecstasy on a cliff in a mo- in a moment. It's it's understanding what it is that can give you this strength and trying to bring it into your life by increments. And before you know it, I mean, there's a fantastic book that's been written.

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  I think it's called, it's The Sound of a Snail Eating. And it was a woman, who was really unwell and she um like, to the extent she really could not get out of bed for a considerable period of time. And someone gave her a plant and um did not know there was a snail on it. And every day she observed this snail. And she wrote this beautiful book about it because um she, you know, the the snail then reproduced. And she kind of like learnt about all the the sound that it makes when it eats and the thousands of rows of teeth. And wove that into her own story. And you can see that this snail in a way gave her life.

• 1:01:44Speaker 01

  And it's extraordinary because she was pulled out of herself at a time when she didn't really wanna inhabit herself. And yeah, and um. Yeah, who would know? I mean, if, you know, like honestly, you something really terrible happens, you wouldn't say here's a snail. But people have found tha- that out um by going through that experience. And I was exactly the same with cuttlefish. And that's what took me to understand that um making a habit out of awe. Can, you know, can be like a leg rope um to su- to survival.

• 1:02:20Speaker 00

  Well, I think that's that's well said, because it's not, they didn't gift her a trip to the Grand Canyon. Or to, you know, Stonehenge or something.

• 1:02:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:29Speaker 00

  Uh, she, the, the, she had it, she had it within her, they gave her the plant, but it could have been anything. It was that she was open to seeing.

• 1:02:39Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 1:02:40Speaker 00

  And experiencing and not closing herself off to the wonderful thing.

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  That's right. And then low on the hold, what happens when you do?

• 1:02:50Speaker 00

  Yeah. Speaking of last insane, mind blowing things, I only just learned this recently because I was reading a book about it to my kids. But did you know that wombats have square poop?

• 1:03:00Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:03:00Speaker 00

  And they're the only animal in the world that does that?

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah.

• 1:03:04Speaker 00

  How fucking weird is that?

• 1:03:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. There's a place called Kangaroo Valley, which of course is inhabited almost entirely by wombats that I go and stay up with my kids. We go on night missions to try to find them with torches and stuff, but they're everywhere. And there's these cubes. And I was really amused recently to see that someone had done like a study and worked out that, oh, it's their intestines. Like, that's how they actually produce it. I'm like, well.

• 1:03:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, we didn't know, like, nobody knew how until like this year.

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  But like, of course, that's what happened. You know what I mean? It's not like they took it around afterwards. They've, you know, and then just shape it into a little nice place. But, you know, wombats are amazing. A friend of mine wrote a book about them, actually. One of my friends who's got a great capacity for wonder. He's written a book about great whites and also wombats. They're incredibly fast. And, and children are so good at this. And if I can talk about this, but so if I just to mention this book, it's by James, James Woodford, called The Secret Life of Wombats. And he found, so the world expert to date, the best work that's been done on the life of wombats was by a 12 year old boy. He used to sneak out of his boarding school in Victoria at night with a torch

• 1:04:15Speaker 01

  and wriggle down into wombat holes. He learned how they moved, how they related to each other, how they grunted to each other, the sounds they make. And he went back and wrote it all up. And to date, it's this definitive thing. And there's

• 1:04:28Speaker 00

  That's the best.

• 1:04:28Speaker 01

  Right. And there's something about the capacity of kids for wonder. And I was really struck by Martha Nussbaum saying, what sounds like a really simple thing, but like, how wonderful, twinkle little stars. Like, tell your kids to wonder what that is. Like, what is that? I'm still wondering about the stars, you know? And that cultivating that curiosity and that openness to awe is a great thing to give a child. And then sometimes we find actually they're giving it back to us.

• 1:04:57Speaker 00

  Well, and that that your job as an adult is it's you're not it's not even your job to cultivate it. It's your job to not crush it because it's already there. Your job is not to steal it from them, which is what so many parents do.

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, but also but also to just take take them out whenever you can. Like my little one, for some reason, is very resistant. I don't know if that's his way of rebelling against me is to not want to swim. It's like that's a massive rebellion, but like I will drag if there's big surf and big seas near my place. The there's like there's massive waves and I like to go and sit on the cliffs and watch the surfers. And and I've dragged him out to do that recently, like I dragged them to see to the bioluminescence when it was happening in the waves. And then they get it, you know, and I feel like the fact that my daughter was yelling at me that we had to run as fast as we could because we'd heard the two beaches along. There was blue bioluminescence in the waves and she was yelling this at me at like eleven o'clock at night.

• 1:05:55Speaker 01

  And of course I was in my swimmers and outdoors before you could say anything. I felt that when I heard her running along the beach and she was like, oh, my God, oh, my God. I felt like that she was going to be OK. I found that very reassuring that she had that capacity um to run kind of screaming into the light, no matter whatever it else she was going through at the time.

• 1:06:17Speaker 00

  That's beautiful. Well, we'll call it there. I I truly loved the new book and I loved the other book and I'm I'm a huge fan and I'm so glad we got to talk. And I'm I'm glad that you found uh found light amidst the darkness. And and now you're doing in a very phosphorescent way uh sha- sharing it with other people.

• 1:06:37Speaker 01

  Ah, it's been an absolute delight to talk to you, Ryan. Thank you so much. I love how you wrote the books together.

• 1:06:44Speaker 00

  That's my job.

• 1:06:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's wonderful. Thank you.

• 1:06:49Speaker 00

  My new book, Courage is Calling, is now officially a New York Times bestseller. Thank you so much to everyone who supported the book. It was literally and figuratively overwhelming. We signed almost 10,000 copies of the book, which just, you know, it hit me right here, and I appreciate it so much. If you haven't picked up a copy, or you want to pick up a signed copy as a gift, please do. You can get your copy at dailystoic.com/courageiscalling, or you can just go to store.dailystoic.com.