It is a commonly-held (and media-fueled) belief in our culture that sun is bad and sunscreen is good. Not only is this inaccurate, but in fact, the opposite is true: Our skin is quite literally designed to be exposed to the sun’s rays, and sunscreen use actually causes a host of issues (one of which, ironically, is skin cancer). Nadine Artemis — sense visionary and founder of Living Libations — joins us to set the record straight on sun exposure and goes over how to properly interact with the sun for optimal health.

Episode Breakdown:

• Why you shouldn’t suntan through glass
• How sunscreen works
• Benefits of sungazing
• Sunlight and bacteria
• Why you don’t want empty vitamin D receptors
• Negative press surrounding sun exposure and skin
• Wise interaction with the sun
• Kids and sun exposure
• Our skin is designed to be exposed to the sun’s rays
• What we ingest determines how our skin responds to sunlight
• Skin cancer myths debunked
• Using plant oils to harmonize your skin with the sun in lieu of toxic sunscreens

Unschooling is a growing movement for those looking for an alternative to the traditional schooling system. Ben Hewitt — modern homesteader, unschooling father and author — calls it "self-directed, adult-facilitated life learning” or “immersion learning.” In this episode, Ben shares his experience with unschooling his two boys on their Vermont homestead. Rather than sitting at a desk, in a fluorescent-lit classroom, memorizing facts all day, Ben’s boys’ days are spent doing things like building barns, apprenticing with a local blacksmith and foraging food for that night’s dinner. Our conversation is fascinating, and whether or not you are a parent (or soon-to-be parent), if you went through traditional schooling for any portion of your life (most of us), you are sure to enjoy this show!

Episode Breakdown:

• How Ben & his family raise and forage 90% of their calories
• Self-directed, adult-facilitated life-learning
• Role of mentors in unschooling
• A day in the life of Ben’s kids
• Immersive learning in rural vs urban environments
• Induced busy-ness and time management
• How to get started with unschooling

“You're captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live.… You are captives — and you have made a captive of the world itself. That's what's at stake, isn't it? —your captivity and the captivity of the world.”

― Daniel Quinn, Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

Daniel Quinn is the author of the best-selling book Ishmael and a pioneer in the concept of ReWilding. Daniel’s books had a massive influence on my life trajectory, and I am so honored to have had the opportunity to interview him! Our conversation traverses animism, the Sixth extinction and so much more. Many of you are familiar with Daniel’s work, but if you’re not, I encourage you to go pick up a copy of Ishmael right away. Find links to the show notes and his books below! And if you are a fan of Daniel’s, I’d love to hear what you thought of our conversation in the comments below. Enjoy!

**Note: Our conversation was recorded via phone, so the audio quality is not excellent. Apologies, and thanks for bearing with us on this one!

EPISODE BREAKDOWN:

• Daniel shares a bit about his background
• Transitioning from Christianity to an animistic worldview
• History and pre-history
• The Sixth Extinction
• Animism explained
• Outlook for the future of our world

Are you getting enough time outside for your physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, and sexual well-being? Join me for a stream-of-consciousness rant on strategically setting up a lifestyle that affords you nature-connection! No matter where you live, or what your current lifestyle is like, nature-connection is always possible. In this episode, I break down a few of my top practices to add into your repertoire to foster (or restore) your connection to the natural world.

Episode Breakdown:

• My recent endeavors in archery and movement programming
• A look inside Elementary School
• Can you go without tan lines this summer?
• Going barefoot — experiencing the environment with your feet
• Nature deficit disorder
• Walking as a practice — reprogramming your movement
• Strategically setting up a lifestyle that affords you nature-connection
• ReWilding tips for summer

Can being awake less get you more out of life? Shawn Stevenson — bestselling author and creator of The Model Health Show — joins us on the podcast to talk about the practice of sleep. Our modern society seems to celebrate those who sleep less — viewing them as "more productive" or "healthier" — when in actuality most of these people are chronically sleep-deprived and hurting their productivity and health in the long run. Shawn explains why getting optimal sleep is vital to operating at high performance and shows us how to set up our personal sleep practice so we can start getting better sleep....tonight!

Episode Breakdown:

• How Shawn got into sleep research
• Society of the chronically sleep-deprived 
• Our sleep cycles explained
• Circadian rhythms and sleep hormones
• Navigating sleep when you live and work in the concrete jungle
• Best time to exercise for better sleep
• The practice of sleep
• Your bed is for sleep and sex — Shawn shares some interesting facts on the relationship between the two
• Creating your sleep sanctuary
• Why you should not sleep near your phone
• Choosing your bed wisely

Get your notebooks out for this episode, folks! Ben Greenfield — ex-bodybuilder, Ironman triathlete, Spartan racer, coach, speaker and New York Times Bestseller author — covers a lot of ground and delivers countless actionables in this interview. Ben shares some excellent primal parenting tips and his top strategies to reduce stress in everyday life. He even takes us on a (verbal) tour of his incredible home, which was clearly designed with the human ape in mind (;

Prepare to be inspired! I’d love to hear 1-2 of your favorite takeaways from our conversation in the comments below!

Episode Breakdown:

• Ben’s upcoming wilderness retreat with his twin boys
• Creatively adjusting your daily workout to include your kids
• The enormous responsibility and privilege of being a parent and building a lineage
• Engaging your children in the practice of gratefulness
• Teaching kids alternative-to-sitting positions
• The science of gratitude
• Ben’s favorite practices to reduce stress in everyday life
• Tour of Ben’s optimized home habitat
• The ultimate practice of functional fitness
• Bowhunting vs firearm shooting

Ryan Ford — leading parkour athlete and coach — defines parkour as the "art of movement in which we’re training our body and mind to overcome obstacles efficiently." I've found — and Ryan speaks to this in the interview as well — that training to easily overcome physical obstacles directly relates to my ability to easily overcome mental challenges in life. I even did a video series on this very subject awhile back called the "Obstacles as a Metaphor" series. Find it in the show notes below!

In this episode, Ryan gives us a peak inside the world of parkour — explaining its roots in natural movement, real life applications and tips for getting started.

“If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.” -Frank A. Clark

Episode Breakdown:

• Origins of parkour
• Physically and mentally overcoming obstacles
• "Parkour vision"
• Parallels of skateboarding and parkour
• Training under pressure
• Olympic Parkour
• Who can parkour?
• The importance of progression
• Ryan’s parkour school — Apex Movement
• Learning to fall
• Two parkour skills to possess for emergency situations
• Ryan’s optimal movement strategy
• Developing your unique movement style
• Living your passion
• Analyzing modern children’s playgrounds

You are most likely familiar with the three phases of water — solid, liquid and vapor — but did you know that there is also a fourth phase of water? Dr. Gerald Pollack relives the discovery of what he calls Exclusion Zone (EZ) water, which is basically "living" water that is highly structured and negatively charged. Spring water aficionados — this interview is for you! 

Our conversation is heavy on the science, but fret not as we explain EZ water’s health-promoting effects in your body, as well as its applications in other areas of science. Aha-moments abound as Dr. Pollack and I merge scientific research with intuition! Listen closely for an emerging worldview around health and biology that’s hitherto been unexplored!

Episode Breakdown:

• What is water?
• Water anomalies
• How Dr. Pollack became interested in water
• Discovering the fourth phase of water
• Free infrared energy from the sun
• You’re not neutral — you’re negatively charged
• Health promoting effects of building structured EZ water in your body
• Dr. Pollack tells us about a remarkable water
• Utilizing EZ water to cleanse cells
• Best drinking vessel for your water
• Is drinking EZ water good for you?
• Negative vs. postive charge
• The Institute for Venture Science

In this episode, wild woman Michaela Boehm joins us to explore polarity in relationships. Michaela teaches and counsels internationally as an expert in intimacy and sexuality, and she is currently the only counselor in the world personally trained and authorized by David Deida (If you aren't familiar with Deida, definitely check out his prolific work). 

Be warned — this interview may push some buttons, as Michaela and I dissect some popularly-held beliefs on happiness and relationships! Our one hour conversation is brimming with nuggets of insight on relationships, intimacy and becoming your best self. Enjoy!

Episode Breakdown:

• Michaela’s work
• Are we supposed to be happy all of the time?
• Polarity in relationships
• The Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon
• How can guys get in touch with their true masculinity?
• Maintaining sexual polarity while fostering both your feminine and masculine sides
• Communicating your “flavor” needs to your partner
• David Deida’s 3 stages of intimacy and growth
• Feminism vs. being a wild woman
• Will the new generation have neutrality issues?

James Earls — author of Born to Walk — talks to us about an important part of the movement conversation: fascia and bipedalism. Fascia is the 3-D spider web of fibrous, gluey, and wet proteins that hold our bones all together in their proper placement (from Anatomy Trains, go here for more details). Bipedalism, as I'm sure you know, is the act of locomoting upright on two legs. In our conversation, we explore James' fascinating knowledge on movement efficiency and how we may have evolved through walking.

Episode Breakdown:

• How James got into this work
• Fascia being ignored for 2k years
• What is tensgrity?
• Why do dogs seem to move so easily?
• Bipedalism
• How did we evolve through walking?
• Movement efficiency
• Ground direction force

From oysters to getting rid of my couch to what I learned from Dispatch 8...in this stream-of-consciousness rant, I give you the rundown on what I've been up to lately and some of the new insights I've been incorporating into my life. 

Episode Breakdown:

• Daniel’s latest adventures 
• Eating wild marine animals
• Daniel’s relationship with Western furniture
• Ideas for going “furniture-free” in your home
• Thoughts on Dispatch 8
• Getting Things Done
• Being fearless in purging things from your life
• Immortality projects
• Intentional mortality salience

Biomechanist Katy Bowman joins us for a lesson in movement. While many of us think of movement as our 30-60 minute daily exercise session, Katy says it's what we do the rest of the time that counts. You will come away from this interview with a new outlook on your home and office habitat, and I hope it inspires you to make some positive changes to your environment! After talking with Katy, I got rid of my couch the next day...just sayin'...

Episode Breakdown:

• Exercise vs movement
• Olympic sitters
• Flaccid Fin Syndrome
• Arterial plaque explained
• Furniture-free living
• Switching from normal shoes to barefoot shoes
• How to build natural movement patterns
• Tour of Katy’s furniture-free home
• From pulling bows to asdfghjkl; — decreased hand use of modern humans
• Standing is the new sitting
• Where to find Katy’s work

Dr. Darcy Harris is an expert on the grieving process, and in this interview, she explains how to be present in your own personal grief, as well as with someone who is grieving. Most of us have experienced grief in one way or another in our lives, and Darcy's therapeutic words can help us to understand how to embrace it and even allow it to deepen our experience in life.

Episode Breakdown:

• The grief process
• What is thanatology?
• Recognition of mourning
• Implications of not directly interacting with death
• Terror management theory
• Speed dating for death
• How to be with someone in grief
• Planning for loss
• Reproductive loss
• Deepening our experiences through grief
• Where Darcy draws inspiration
• Grief and emoting
• Misconceptions about the grieving process
• Darcy gives you an assignment
• The power of positive thinking doesn’t stop the fact that we die

In my final Dispatch conversation with Arthur Haines (not to worry...Arthur will continue to join us on ReWild Yourself! podcast!), we discuss the death of Homo sapiens domestico fragilis and traverse the vast spectrum of ReWilding.

Episode Breakdown:

• The extinction of indigenous humans
• What is the ReWilding mindset?
• The vast spectrum of ReWilding
• Immersion in nature for better health
• How to best spend 30 minutes in nature
• Bringing wildness into your gut flora
• Raising the next generation of ReWilders

In this episode of ReWild Yourself! podcast, I have a fascinating conversation with Stephen Cave — author of internationally acclaimed book "Immortality: The Quest to Live Forever and How It Drives Civilization" — about death and why we fear it. He elaborates on the "4 stories we tell ourselves about death" from his popular TED talk.

Episode Breakdown:

• First experiences with death
• Other species’ relationship to death
• Immortality projects
• The “elixir” story
• The “resurrection” story
• The “soul” story
• Science and the immortality quest
• The “legacy” story
• How to cope with death denial
• Stephen’s thoughts on the “zombie apocalypse” heroism over death
• What it’s like to work in the death field
• Stephen’s new projects

In this episode of ReWild Yourself! podcast, Mark Harris — author of Grave Matters — gives us an introduction to the green burial movement. He explains the many ways in which green burial is a better alternative to traditional modern burial practices.

Episode Breakdown:

• History of green burial
• The invasive process of embalming
• Purpose of modern day embalming
• Impact of having less interaction with the dead
• The burial vault
• Green cemeteries 
• Mark’s personal burial plans
• How green burial works
• The green burial movement
• Mark’s mission

Dr. Sarah Buckley — GP/family physician, author of the best selling book Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering and mother to four home-born children — shares her passion for natural childbirth and the "beginning of the great love affair" between mother and child. She takes us through the hormonal physiology of childbearing from pregnancy to after birth.  

Episode Breakdown:

• Wisdom vs. science
• Sarah’s history with childbirth
• Some of the differences between hospital births and home births
• Healthy birth pathways
• The stresses of Caesarean sections
• Why some stress is good for you
• The beginning of the great love affair
• The pleasure hormones between mothers and babies
• Alter-native
• Unique altered state of birth
• What happens after birth
• Importance of skin-to-skin contact
• How much of our behavior is affected by our beginning
• Sarah’s natural birth membership website

I was humbled by my conversation with Stephen Jenkinson, teacher, author, storyteller and founder of the Orphan Wisdom School. This, my friends, is a very powerful interview. Stephen will make you re-think everything you thought you knew about dying.

Episode Breakdown:

• How to come to terms with death
• The hallmarks of "dying badly"
• What "dying well" looks like
• The consequences of being kept away from ground zero of human mortality
• We live our lives as if dying is the annihilation of life
• Considering “after-life"
• Understanding that your death does not belong to you
• A disconnection from our ancestors
• Learning from death

It was a such pleasure to talk with Evan Strong — a professional skateboarder and Paralympic Gold Medalist with an amazing survival story. Evan shares some profound insights on "getting into the zone" and achieving peak performance states when competing in extreme sports.

Episode Breakdown:

• Evan tells us a bit about his history and current endeavors
• The life of an Olympian
• Altered states in extreme sports
• The true nature of competition
• Prepping for competition
• What does it look and feel like to be “in the zone”
• Evan shares his survival story
• How Evan coped with losing his leg
• Living your truth

In this episode of ReWild Yourself! podcast, I talk with Rory Miller — author of Mediations on Violence — about the human violence blueprint. We debunk some of the most common misconceptions about violence and self defense.

Episode Breakdown:

• The Violence Taboo
• Why are humans so afraid of violence?
• The Violence Threshold
• Common misconceptions surrounding violence
• Misconceptions about law enforcement
• The unknowns vs. creating your own reality
• Levels of security
• Scenarios of violent situations
• Rory’s top tips for human survivability
• Awareness makes your life richer
• Nature vs. nurture