Speaker 1: Today's episode of Ephemeral features the track Deathless by musician
Speaker 1: Nathaniel Kraus. Here the full piece at Nathaniel Krauss dot
Speaker 1: band camp, dot com, links and more on our website
Speaker 1: Ephemeral dot show. Ephemeral is production of my Heart three
Speaker 1: D audio for fell Exposure. Listen with that phones. This
Speaker 1: is our second episode based on my conversation with explorer
Speaker 1: and author Arling Cogan. If you miss it, Part one
Speaker 1: will give you more backstory about earls life as an explorer.
Speaker 1: I've just done a lot of interviews. Are like, I
Speaker 1: feel like you've done probably a tremendous amount of interviews
Speaker 1: in your life. I have never counted. Ah, yeah, you
Speaker 1: know when silence came out, and also walking came out
Speaker 1: and philosophy for polar explorers. So I did honor something
Speaker 1: too is probably, but recently not so many. I guess
Speaker 1: I'm late to the party that that I happened. Congratulations.
Speaker 1: Earling spent his young adulthood engaged in record setting expeditions,
Speaker 1: sailing around the world, climbing on everest, hiking to the
Speaker 1: North and South Poles on foot the ladder completely alone.
Speaker 1: Then I kind of changed my life and became a
Speaker 1: family man. I'm still a family man, but I think
Speaker 1: it's a season of every thing. And I keep on
Speaker 1: doing old doors and keep on doing expeditions, but with
Speaker 1: a lower profile, and I really enjoy writing books. In
Speaker 1: After we put out the episode Sounds of Silence, on
Speaker 1: the work of composer John Cage, a friend gave me
Speaker 1: a copy of EARLINGOK Silence in the Age of Noise.
Speaker 1: This is probably the trickiest question I give you all day,
Speaker 1: But what what is silence? Silence is to me more
Speaker 1: like an idea in the sense that before I start
Speaker 1: to write about silence, and also before I walked alone
Speaker 1: to the self pole, almost in total silence, I thought
Speaker 1: about silence as the opposite to sounds. But of course
Speaker 1: sounds you can measure in decibels, while silence you can't
Speaker 1: really measure. So to me, silence is kind of the
Speaker 1: opposite of noise. And then I think about noise. Obviously
Speaker 1: it sounds, but it's also all kinds of distractions you
Speaker 1: have through today, that the telephone is beeping, a car
Speaker 1: is passing, a radio is running, and of course also
Speaker 1: you're like man made lights. During the nights, you can't
Speaker 1: see the starry night and all this is noise to me,
Speaker 1: and silence is about yourself. It's about your inner core.
Speaker 1: It's about getting to know yourself. And this silence, inner
Speaker 1: silence is there all the time waiting for you to
Speaker 1: explore it. We're living in the age of noise. So
Speaker 1: much is about noise. So much is about forgetting yourself,
Speaker 1: and about living through other people, living through your telephone,
Speaker 1: living through a TV series, living through games, etcetera. You
Speaker 1: keep on telling yourself all this kind of small day
Speaker 1: to day lives and half truths. Silence is about the opposite,
Speaker 1: is about getting to know of yourself, and of course
Speaker 1: to get to know yourself. That has been said for
Speaker 1: thousands of years. That's one of the most important things
Speaker 1: you can do to live a rich life. And I
Speaker 1: think every idea that has survived for more than one
Speaker 1: thousand years you should take seriously. In the book, Earling
Speaker 1: sides a lot of great sources on silence, including artists, philosophers, scientists,
Speaker 1: and poets, but maybe the most important research came from
Speaker 1: personal experience. You know, my best background is that I
Speaker 1: walked by myself to the South Pole for fifty days
Speaker 1: and nights with no radio contact in total silence into
Speaker 1: this huge last white nothingness which is Antarctica to the
Speaker 1: South Pole. As the first doing it Solow. That expedition
Speaker 1: taught my great lesson of silence, because you know, when
Speaker 1: they walked down there and you don't talk to anyone,
Speaker 1: and you kind of stopped thinking. Because as soon as
Speaker 1: you start to think too much, you think about the
Speaker 1: past or the future. That's kind of noise too. So
Speaker 1: it's starting to experiencing the world. Experiencing yourself is getting
Speaker 1: to noviorself better. When I started out, I felt that
Speaker 1: everything was white and everything was flat all the way
Speaker 1: to the horizon. But as the hours and days and
Speaker 1: weeks passed by and you kind of start to see
Speaker 1: that it wasn't totally white after all. It was a
Speaker 1: little bit bluish, reddish, greenish, even pinkish in the snow
Speaker 1: and the eyes. And it wasn't flat either. It was
Speaker 1: kind of different structures on the ice. So then I
Speaker 1: start to wonder if Antarctic I was changing, But of
Speaker 1: course Antarctica remained the same. I was the one who
Speaker 1: had changed. That experience really taught me a great lesson
Speaker 1: on silence. And as the pulvert Emi, the Dickinson wrote
Speaker 1: the brain is wider than the sky, and by that
Speaker 1: expedition I very well understood what she meant. And then
Speaker 1: I became a father of three girls, and I had
Speaker 1: to start to get a proper job, and my life
Speaker 1: became all about noise afterwards. So this combination about doing
Speaker 1: outdoors and living a busy life, like most of the
Speaker 1: people maybe really feel for writing on silence. And also
Speaker 1: then I sat on to read great philosophers on silence,
Speaker 1: and also some you know, some great authors who have
Speaker 1: already written about silence. But the problem with the philosopher
Speaker 1: is that you know, hardly any philosophers actually write about silence.
Speaker 1: One of the first things you read learn at college
Speaker 1: studying philosophy is that nothing comes from nothing. Ex and
Speaker 1: he'll he'll fit. You know, it's easy to think about
Speaker 1: silence as nothing, and then nothing comes from nothing. I
Speaker 1: was just surprised to see how few philosophers actually had
Speaker 1: bordered thinking about silence. Why do human brains up for chaos?
Speaker 1: Why does it seem like all of us are just
Speaker 1: our brains are just destined for chaos sometimes, you know,
Speaker 1: to me, it was a surprise because when I sat
Speaker 1: down to write about silence. You know, I thought about
Speaker 1: myself and everybody else that in the mind that you
Speaker 1: didn't have too much chaloes. But starting to think further
Speaker 1: about it, I think we all have these chales in
Speaker 1: our head almost all the time. The importance of silence
Speaker 1: is sometimes to get order or all these chaos being
Speaker 1: present in our own life, to experience not to think
Speaker 1: too much. Also, in the scilence, you're kind of seeking opportunities,
Speaker 1: So silence is also kind of opposite all these chaos
Speaker 1: that goes on in our minds all the time. Demo
Speaker 1: technology is certainly a great disturber, but I think it's
Speaker 1: important to think about in a time before all this technology.
Speaker 1: Three fifty years ago, seventy years ago, this French philosopher
Speaker 1: Blessed Pascal wrote this book where he claimed that no
Speaker 1: man is able to sit by himself for fifteen minutes
Speaker 1: in silence doing nothing. Of course, when he wrote this
Speaker 1: in the six and fourties, it was already a big
Speaker 1: problem that we have chaos in our minds. Of course,
Speaker 1: today with the smartphone and all this other technology, the
Speaker 1: problem has become so much more massive. So back to
Speaker 1: Pascal again, instead of doing nothing, we start to do something,
Speaker 1: and I think that's the origin of course not all,
Speaker 1: but most other problems. If I managed to kind of
Speaker 1: sometimes just be quiet, be still listening to ourselves, not
Speaker 1: exploring yourself in the world while looking into a screen,
Speaker 1: but kind of look up, I think we can find
Speaker 1: much more peace, and you can find much more low
Speaker 1: I think, and you will live a more meaningful life.
Speaker 1: So it's not about being anti technology. It's more like
Speaker 1: learning how to relate to technology, because you know, it's
Speaker 1: almost insane if you think about the way we're living
Speaker 1: relating to technology. When they walk the streets and they
Speaker 1: see grown men grabbing the telephones to the air like
Speaker 1: there should be teddy bears and totally focused on that telephone.
Speaker 1: To me, it's absolutely insane. I don't know what kind
Speaker 1: of vertically I love to use in the program for
Speaker 1: the kind of you know, you mind get absolutely fucked up.
Speaker 1: You see home, you're googling something, you find what is
Speaker 1: searching for Twenty minutes later, half novelater, you're still googling.
Speaker 1: Some of the brightest people on Earth, working day and night,
Speaker 1: extremely well paid to get too addicted to all this absolution.
Speaker 1: But you know, in many ways it is absolutely terrible.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I really appreciate about your
Speaker 1: writing is that you insert yourself so much into it,
Speaker 1: Like you talk about those things as being problematic, but
Speaker 1: also like participating yourself in them, like as just like
Speaker 1: another member of you know, of the human race in
Speaker 1: this modern era. And that's how I feel, man. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm big on the mindfulness and disconnecting and
Speaker 1: getting out in the silence, but I also am doing this.
Speaker 1: I do the same thing. I get in on the phone.
Speaker 1: I feel like I talked on the phone for eight
Speaker 1: hours yesterday or something. You probably did. You know, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't like to write a book and give everybody advice
Speaker 1: about how to live and look at me because I'm
Speaker 1: such a great person, because you know, I'm also getting
Speaker 1: hooked on this technology. And that's also why I thought
Speaker 1: I had that message to tell, because I lived through it.
Speaker 1: I always had my phone with me somehow, or I
Speaker 1: tempted to have my phone with me all the time.
Speaker 1: Maybe the biggest mistake of doing the world today is
Speaker 1: to avoid nature, to think that we're kind of above nature,
Speaker 1: that we don't need nature, that we don't need to
Speaker 1: listen to nature. I think that's the main reason for
Speaker 1: people feeling restless, why they feel insulated, why they feel lonely,
Speaker 1: quite also why people feel depressed, because we avoid nature
Speaker 1: almost happens. I've always been a walking species. We have
Speaker 1: always been exploring the world by walking, by feeling, by touching,
Speaker 1: by smellling, listening, see in and that has defined us
Speaker 1: as a species. While today we're the first generation who
Speaker 1: just sit on over arsis and exploring the world looking
Speaker 1: down into a screen. And of course this is doing
Speaker 1: something to our mental health. I just read in the
Speaker 1: paper somewhere that people like average spent four hours every
Speaker 1: day on social media, and other people, of course spent
Speaker 1: four hours every day on looking at TV on what
Speaker 1: don't you do both? But let's say you spend four
Speaker 1: hours every day doing this kind of media, that adds
Speaker 1: up to a hundred and twenty thousand hours of your life,
Speaker 1: about thirteen years day and night plus minus. When you
Speaker 1: are as well as me, you start to go to
Speaker 1: six eighty ninety birthdays. In more ways, and Sweden we
Speaker 1: have this problem which goes all this so comic in
Speaker 1: the shunty at shall believe it. All these days amounts
Speaker 1: and years that passed by, came and went I didn't
Speaker 1: really understand that was life. Do you know? It's a
Speaker 1: little bit sad because somehow people start to fair, not
Speaker 1: on the death, but maybe even more to start to
Speaker 1: fair late in life that I'll kind of missed alt
Speaker 1: on this huge opportunity to have a great life. But
Speaker 1: do not despair. How does one find silence in the noise?
Speaker 1: Maybe try taking a walk? What does it mean to
Speaker 1: live in the present moment? I think it's an idea
Speaker 1: that we're all familiar with, but like, what does that
Speaker 1: look like? Like? How how does one achieve such a thing?
Speaker 1: You can achieve it by almost any means. First of all,
Speaker 1: I think in general the present hurts, just like Pascal
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier on the present hurts, and that's why
Speaker 1: we try to avoid it. And the opposite to the presence.
Speaker 1: Of course, it's the future on the past, and every
Speaker 1: time you think, as I said, you're thinking about the
Speaker 1: future on the past. The present has to be about
Speaker 1: experiencing the moment there and then I can do it
Speaker 1: in nature. But you know, it's also about shutting out
Speaker 1: the world and experiencing your own silence or you're inner silence.
Speaker 1: Whenever you run, could food, have sex, study, chat work,
Speaker 1: think of the idea, read or dance, and you know,
Speaker 1: I love it. That's when you can be really in
Speaker 1: the present moment. And of course if you make low
Speaker 1: and you're not in the present moment, of course you
Speaker 1: all experienced that, but it's not so interesting to make
Speaker 1: low if you're not in the present moment. I think
Speaker 1: it's different in early published walking one step at a time.
Speaker 1: I think walking is quite often about silence. Of course,
Speaker 1: you can walk with people and talk, or you know,
Speaker 1: use your phone or listening to music. But sometimes I
Speaker 1: would try to walk without holding anything in my hands
Speaker 1: and not having anything in my ears, and then it
Speaker 1: is very much about silence. You have it in the
Speaker 1: English language, just like you have it in the Norwegian
Speaker 1: language and in sun script. That when you move you're
Speaker 1: being moved motion, emotion. So this is something you find
Speaker 1: in almost any language, at least as I know about.
Speaker 1: So this walking is doing something to your mind. The
Speaker 1: reason Socrates was walking all the time was not because
Speaker 1: you wanted to become fit. It was because you want
Speaker 1: to meet people and they want to think better, like
Speaker 1: a Steve Jobs. Definitely a huge and very important innovator
Speaker 1: and businessman, and of course he walked all the time too.
Speaker 1: And also, of course I think a great thing with
Speaker 1: walking is that get all to the house, to get
Speaker 1: away from a family, get away from your friends. You
Speaker 1: can have a break and you can decide your own
Speaker 1: speed and hopefully you can see the starry night or
Speaker 1: the sunrise, or you can listen to the birds, are
Speaker 1: listening to a river, or you're just footsteps, and all
Speaker 1: this is about getting closer to yourself. I think it's
Speaker 1: definitely plaform of meditation, and I think meditation in general,
Speaker 1: and yoga and mindfulness, all these are to me great ideas.
Speaker 1: But one of the reasons I wrote those two books
Speaker 1: was because I felt you can definitely experience great meditation
Speaker 1: and also deeper in a silence without using any techniques,
Speaker 1: for instance, just by walking. That's cheap and it's always
Speaker 1: availble bull like I flew from all Slaughter Sri Lanka
Speaker 1: to be on this retreat. It was either there that
Speaker 1: it was a vegan, it was your goa all the time.
Speaker 1: It was quite silent, peaceful, and it was great. And
Speaker 1: when I came home after twelve days or something to Norway,
Speaker 1: I was very happy. But then I started to wonder,
Speaker 1: did that we all have to travel half the world
Speaker 1: to experience this kind of emotion. Um uh yeah, I
Speaker 1: haven't come back to Sri Lanka. I kind of very
Speaker 1: interesting when you mentioned that you personally maybe use working
Speaker 1: as one of your primary modes of meditation. Maybe that's
Speaker 1: a little culturally determined, right, Like if you had been
Speaker 1: born somewhere else, grown up somewhere else, that maybe it
Speaker 1: would be a different approach. Absolutely, it's interesting to see
Speaker 1: in theres of walking. It's like I grew up in Norway,
Speaker 1: they close to nature. We didn't have a car. My
Speaker 1: father insisted that cars and TV and motor boats and
Speaker 1: a few other things very diseases in the world. So
Speaker 1: we walked quite a bit, so of course I was
Speaker 1: kind of ingrained in my life. One of the most
Speaker 1: difficult cool questions I had as a father was my daughters,
Speaker 1: all three daughters. They always asked me, why do you
Speaker 1: have to walk when it's faster to drive? And I fact,
Speaker 1: that's a very good question. And that's also another reason
Speaker 1: I wrote the book, because you know, some of the
Speaker 1: best and obvious things in life are not that easier
Speaker 1: to explain. When I wrote about walking, I just studied
Speaker 1: walking cultures in different places, and interestingly, like in Bombay
Speaker 1: in India, you see poor people walking all the time.
Speaker 1: Rich people they are having cars and even helicopters to
Speaker 1: get around, And of course in a norn Europe you
Speaker 1: see that it's the opposite. It's quite often the privilege
Speaker 1: of walking because they have the time and all. So
Speaker 1: you can quite often the live in nicer neighborhoods, so
Speaker 1: closer to the forest, so it's kind of more natural
Speaker 1: to walk. But walking is something also deeply democratic because
Speaker 1: everybody can do it. When you read about the big
Speaker 1: revolutions in history or the world, at least the ones
Speaker 1: I've read about, they have usually started by people walking
Speaker 1: the streets. And of course this is something politicians quite
Speaker 1: often are kind of worried about, because if sufficient of
Speaker 1: people walking the streets, they become very, very powerful. And
Speaker 1: also walking is a bit an artistic in the sense
Speaker 1: that as long as you're driving, you will kind of
Speaker 1: get from a to B in a particular speed and
Speaker 1: you will follow the rules. Or you take the metro,
Speaker 1: or you take the channel, you take the bus, and
Speaker 1: it's all kind of regulated by the government. But then
Speaker 1: by walking, you can walk very we like you don't
Speaker 1: have to follow the tracks of the form all the
Speaker 1: trump and you can have your own speed, you can
Speaker 1: do details, and you can stop whenever you please. You
Speaker 1: mentioned politicians, right, like, certainly here in the US, I
Speaker 1: think of it at least like a certain national out
Speaker 1: of politicians, Like they come up in black cars, they're
Speaker 1: surrounded by people, they're sort of swooping out of place,
Speaker 1: and then they leave out. You don't really see your
Speaker 1: representatives walking around with the people, And I guess it's
Speaker 1: different in doorway. Yeah, I think that's a very valid
Speaker 1: point because you know, one problem is, of course that
Speaker 1: you never see your own politicians. Good afternoon, everybody, quiet weekend.
Speaker 1: But I think it's a even bigger problem that politicians
Speaker 1: never see you. I'm not commenting, so they kind of
Speaker 1: absolutely separated from their own citizens. And of course, you
Speaker 1: know this makes sense due to security and blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: but also think it's kind of lacking willingness to meet
Speaker 1: people because it's quite comfortable to move around and not
Speaker 1: having to relate to the people. Today, it has become
Speaker 1: a democratic problem in many parts of the world that
Speaker 1: the people who are supposed to help you to sort
Speaker 1: of two problems and support you and be your best
Speaker 1: representative in the government. Then no, the true statistics and
Speaker 1: by reading and studying and advisors, but they are absolutely
Speaker 1: no cue who you are as you said in Norway.
Speaker 1: Fortunately it's better. It's not perfect hair either, but here
Speaker 1: you can actually see the Prime Minister shopping milk in
Speaker 1: the evening on the way back home from her office.
Speaker 1: It's it's quite sweet. And of course with five point
Speaker 1: five in the people, it's much much easier. But I
Speaker 1: think it's very important for everybody to walk the streets
Speaker 1: and get to know your fellow citizens and see what
Speaker 1: it looked like. It's important to keep in mind that
Speaker 1: it was not we who invented the possibility to walk
Speaker 1: on two legs. It was the possibility to walk onto
Speaker 1: legs who invented manity. And then eventually, due to evolution,
Speaker 1: we can walk on two legs. We're able to move
Speaker 1: much longer distances, able to hunt fish, move around covering
Speaker 1: huge distances. Then, all the time that we went off
Speaker 1: from Eastern Africa, it has always been about walking, about
Speaker 1: doing something physical to survive and to prosper for over civilization.
Speaker 1: Of course, the developmental languages has been very important, Farming
Speaker 1: has been very important, and walking has been very important
Speaker 1: to make us into who they are today. So many
Speaker 1: people talk all the time about the search in the hurry.
Speaker 1: It's there has so much to do, blah blah blah
Speaker 1: blah blah. But of course, if you're going to watch
Speaker 1: a lot of TV and social media, it feels like
Speaker 1: you have a lot to do, but you know you
Speaker 1: really have time to spend fire ten minutes extra walking.
Speaker 1: In general, it's a huge misunderstanding like this that you
Speaker 1: have to drive all the time to save time. Time
Speaker 1: is extended when you move slowly, and opposite, if you
Speaker 1: drive quickly from A to B, you don't hardly experience anything,
Speaker 1: either in a chunnel or on the surface, but still
Speaker 1: have to watch the light. You have to be careful,
Speaker 1: and although it goes quicker, nothing is happening, and then
Speaker 1: it feels like time moves really quickly. However, when you
Speaker 1: move slowly from A to B and suddenly you start
Speaker 1: to see people, you start to see how people addressed.
Speaker 1: If in a city you start to see shops, what
Speaker 1: the houses are looking like, you start to get the smells,
Speaker 1: you hear all the sounds, and then because so many
Speaker 1: small things are happening, time is expanding and you feel
Speaker 1: that you have experienced something, and life get richer than
Speaker 1: kind of a ten second can feel like internity, I
Speaker 1: can have the kind of also the same experience in
Speaker 1: my own living room if we're reading a great book
Speaker 1: or thinking of listening to music, and they had this
Speaker 1: kind of feeling that like time is just expanding. But
Speaker 1: then again, if you're kind of doing the same things
Speaker 1: every day, harder and a variety, you hardly see anything
Speaker 1: one day that you didn't see the day before or
Speaker 1: experienced more less exacted same things, then time moves very quickly.
Speaker 1: Um Like people said to me like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: in years ago, time so quickly. And also I'm sixty.
Speaker 1: You can hard to tell them that, you know, I
Speaker 1: feel that life is long. Time moves slowly. I don't
Speaker 1: want to move in the slower You've got a great quote.
Speaker 1: I think this is one of yours. You call lots
Speaker 1: of billion people obviously to this one. Letting your body
Speaker 1: travel at the same speed as your soul. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a quote from me, but the idea is not original.
Speaker 1: I think many people have felt the same and talked
Speaker 1: about the same. If you move too quickly, your spirit,
Speaker 1: your soul is just lagging behind you. That's also what
Speaker 1: I mean, like you're not experiencing so much, you're not
Speaker 1: diggesting your what you're seeing, what you're kind of going through,
Speaker 1: because you've gone too fast. Another big misunderstanding today is
Speaker 1: like things are just going to happen quickly. You're going
Speaker 1: to have a quick fix, You're going to go from
Speaker 1: one mood to another fast. While I'll find it when
Speaker 1: I'm out in a nature that I'm just becoming a
Speaker 1: part of everything which is surrounding me. Every now and
Speaker 1: then when the wind is blowing, you kind of feel
Speaker 1: is a part of you. You know, if you see
Speaker 1: a bird which somehow you know has a broken leg
Speaker 1: going or whatever kind of painful for you too. We
Speaker 1: need to respect nature, and we need to learn from nature,
Speaker 1: and we need to listen to nature, because nature has
Speaker 1: a lot to tell us about where we come from,
Speaker 1: where we are, and also quite a bit about what's
Speaker 1: going to happen next. And of course when you walk
Speaker 1: in the cities or do an over hike in the force,
Speaker 1: part of every something fantastic is happening, but like small
Speaker 1: details are going on all the time. I have kind
Speaker 1: of fun or found interesting sometimes to look at people
Speaker 1: how they walk. Quite often by looking how they move forward,
Speaker 1: you can tell if you're in good mood, bad mood,
Speaker 1: if they're depressed, if they are optimistic, Like if you're
Speaker 1: really sad, you kind of crumbling in, almost shrinking, and
Speaker 1: you're dragging your feet after you. You kind of lower
Speaker 1: your head, love your neck even, you know, briefing in
Speaker 1: a different way, and you're much more tense in your
Speaker 1: whole body. And opposite, if someone is super happy, just
Speaker 1: got a great message, they walked offly. Differently, if a
Speaker 1: couple walk together, if they're in low you know, you
Speaker 1: can just tell by the baldy language. And opposite, two
Speaker 1: people walk together and they have fed up at their shold,
Speaker 1: you can also tell by your body language. And also
Speaker 1: if one is fed up and the other one is
Speaker 1: still in love, we can also tell. You can also
Speaker 1: quite often tell I couldn't say accurately, but what kind
Speaker 1: of profession they have. One of my neighbors is former
Speaker 1: army officer, and it still walks like an armory of officer,
Speaker 1: although his retired. You can spot a lawyer or an
Speaker 1: auditor that kind of a little bit similar, and the
Speaker 1: priests will work differently. Again, how long has it been
Speaker 1: since you're last confession. I'm not saying it's kind of
Speaker 1: one to one. You can just say that's guy is
Speaker 1: a priest, that guy is a football player. But it's
Speaker 1: just fun to try to guess. In general life, I
Speaker 1: think curiosity, curiosity also about people, is super important. I
Speaker 1: love curiosity, and I think you know it's stop being
Speaker 1: super curious and you become a very old man. Are
Speaker 1: there moments in your day. There's certainly moments in my
Speaker 1: day where it's like, Okay, I need to just stop
Speaker 1: what I'm doing, I need to hit pause on the
Speaker 1: rest of my life and just walk for like twenty minutes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in my life too, And I think twenty minutes is
Speaker 1: a good number because it doesn't have to be long.
Speaker 1: Twenty minutes is great, I think, but even less can
Speaker 1: change your dramatically. As you know you asked earlier on
Speaker 1: about meditation. We just walk for fifteen twenty minutes and
Speaker 1: without talking on the phone or checking your phone and
Speaker 1: maybe not talking to anyone, just kind of having a
Speaker 1: break to me can re energize me. You still need
Speaker 1: as much sleep, at least I do, but my whole
Speaker 1: attitude and also the way I move it totally changes.
Speaker 1: I think this is something like people have been doing
Speaker 1: to every generation for thousands or years. But interestingly, now
Speaker 1: you can see, like you know, quite often universities are
Speaker 1: starting to study kind of what everybody knows, and I
Speaker 1: think it's University's, Stanford, University of Virginia, something together that
Speaker 1: have kind of proven that just while walking fifteen minutes,
Speaker 1: your creativity goes dramatically up and your mood goes up,
Speaker 1: and you know it makes a wonder for you. Of course,
Speaker 1: two and a half thousand years ago, hippocratist the father
Speaker 1: and modern medicine, he said, the best medicine in the
Speaker 1: world is to do a walk. And if you come
Speaker 1: back from a walk and you're still in a bad mood,
Speaker 1: you should go for one more walk. And his third
Speaker 1: advice was just make sure the doctor is not giving
Speaker 1: you the wrong medicine. So I think it's three great advices.
Speaker 1: Also in one it's wild to me because I feel
Speaker 1: like we all know that that walking is good for
Speaker 1: your health, your spirit, your mood, your heart, your soul.
Speaker 1: Like I think we all intrinsically know that, and yet
Speaker 1: sometimes it feels, i don't know, like hard advice to take,
Speaker 1: like to just take a break. Yeah, it's quite often
Speaker 1: when I read articles is about educating people, like telling
Speaker 1: them what's best for them and blah blah blah. And
Speaker 1: this should be done by you know, of course schools, college,
Speaker 1: the government, private businesses to should kind of tell you
Speaker 1: what's good for you, which quite often that's a good reason.
Speaker 1: But quite often, as you say, we know what's good
Speaker 1: for us, nobody needs to tell you you should exercise,
Speaker 1: you should walk, you should move around, you should not
Speaker 1: sit in a share all day. This almost everybody knows.
Speaker 1: Quite often, it's not a lack of knowledge, it's just
Speaker 1: lack of like, you know, a little bit of guts
Speaker 1: to get going. Yeah, when you were read in the book,
Speaker 1: I mean what you might have known someone this already.
Speaker 1: But like health wise, physical, bodily, health wise, it seems
Speaker 1: like walking can be incredibly good just for your well being.
Speaker 1: It is, as a Hypocritus said two and a half
Speaker 1: thousand years ago, as you know it's quoted, it is
Speaker 1: the best medicine. You know, It's an open question today.
Speaker 1: Should be careful saying it, but you know, it's kind
Speaker 1: of open question today if doctors throughout history has saved
Speaker 1: more people than they have killed, at least if you
Speaker 1: look before you got antibiotics, I think that maybe not killed,
Speaker 1: but you know, maybe even you know, conditions even worse.
Speaker 1: But of course the antibiotics, it was radical that help
Speaker 1: a lot of people. But prior to let's say nothing,
Speaker 1: fourth to whenever fort five, it's not easy to figure
Speaker 1: out how much help it was with dr or sexually.
Speaker 1: But one thing which is absolutely shortness that people who
Speaker 1: walks a lot, they're less sick, they are more flexible,
Speaker 1: they are not on the living longer life than other people.
Speaker 1: They also live richer, more meaningful lives than other people.
Speaker 1: But still, you know, even the Norway could just tell
Speaker 1: in many parts that even an old slowed capital of Norwa,
Speaker 1: it's six d people still kind of you know, huge
Speaker 1: neighborhoods where very few people are walking, they spend much
Speaker 1: more time smoking, watching TV being inside. Average in those
Speaker 1: parts of the city lives nine years less than they are.
Speaker 1: Rich and other parts of the city. This is quite dramatic.
Speaker 1: That's super sad. No I don't have a follow up
Speaker 1: on that. I'm just going to change the subject. Do
Speaker 1: you have any advice, practical advice for somebody that might
Speaker 1: be listening and like wants to find some silence in
Speaker 1: their lives and peace and some purpose. But it's maybe struggling.
Speaker 1: I think everybody almost is struggling with it. So that's
Speaker 1: a good start at list if you feel that you
Speaker 1: are unique because it's struggling with it. It's like, as
Speaker 1: you quoted Pascal the philosophers said, well this is a
Speaker 1: universal problem or challenge to get to know of yourself,
Speaker 1: and silence is you know very much about experiencing yourself.
Speaker 1: So first of all, it is difficult. As you said,
Speaker 1: the president is hurting, so I think that's a good
Speaker 1: start to accept that. But then again, the silence we're
Speaker 1: talking about now, this inner silence is within you at
Speaker 1: all times, just waiting for you to explore it. So
Speaker 1: it's no focus, focus, and I don't think you need
Speaker 1: any formula. You need to just past this chresshold that
Speaker 1: we talked about that for a few seconds of some minutes,
Speaker 1: it is uncomfortable to sit or walk and doing nothing
Speaker 1: and try to get into your inner PC in and
Speaker 1: experience your own silence. It is uncomfortable sometimes, it takes
Speaker 1: a lot of energy sometimes, and it can feel to
Speaker 1: start with as a waste of time sometimes, but of
Speaker 1: course it's not. It's what you know partly makes life meaningful.
Speaker 1: The most important question you should ask yourself is how
Speaker 1: should I live my life? You need silence, and your
Speaker 1: silence is different from my silence. That's also why in
Speaker 1: my book I'm not giving that many advices because we
Speaker 1: have to accept. Like you know, everybody got their own silence.
Speaker 1: And the reason is because silence is about who we are,
Speaker 1: is about over personalities, about all our experiences. That's why
Speaker 1: your silence will always be different from my silence. That's
Speaker 1: really lovely. Thank you. Um. I wanted to at least
Speaker 1: add just if you could tell me a little bit
Speaker 1: about your your publishing company and why you started in
Speaker 1: the kind of in the kind of work that you
Speaker 1: do there. You know, you do whatever you do, you
Speaker 1: do it for more than one reason. But a few
Speaker 1: of the reasons I started publishing was because my girlfriend
Speaker 1: was pregnant. So I want to have a job. I
Speaker 1: want to an interesting job. I like publishing because you
Speaker 1: both have to be commercial but you also have to
Speaker 1: think about intellectual matters all the time, so kind of
Speaker 1: you need to think about both, which fitted me and
Speaker 1: I have always read this since I was ten years old.
Speaker 1: I learned how to read late. I read lots of books.
Speaker 1: I was kind of familiar literature, so I felt I
Speaker 1: had something to contribute, and I want to earn enough
Speaker 1: moneys i could buy a house for my family. So
Speaker 1: that's kind of why I started book publishing. And I
Speaker 1: did it for a few years and I liked it
Speaker 1: a lot, so I've done it for twenty five years.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a great job. I don't know if
Speaker 1: I'm going to do it the rest of my life,
Speaker 1: but at least it is a great job to published books.
Speaker 1: So today we are Norway's biggest on nonfiction and we
Speaker 1: also publish children's books, a little bit, philosophy, sound fiction,
Speaker 1: and I have turned two four colleagues and it's great,
Speaker 1: it's meaningful. The world is getting a little bit better
Speaker 1: because you published great books, just like you with your podcast.
Speaker 1: The world is getting a little bit better, and I
Speaker 1: think that's very important because everybody can change the world,
Speaker 1: but you know, you need to do it in tiny
Speaker 1: persons at the time, you've written six books eight sorry,
Speaker 1: you've written April books now. First I wrote about walking
Speaker 1: North Pole and to the South Call. Then I book
Speaker 1: on the Three Poles and some old expeditions. And then
Speaker 1: I wrote a book I call Philosophy for polar Explorers,
Speaker 1: kind of what I didn't teach me at school kind
Speaker 1: of book. And then I wrote a book about crossing
Speaker 1: New York City. I wrote a book about art collecting,
Speaker 1: and then I wrote a book on Silence and the
Speaker 1: Woman Walking. This is also a really cool on the bookshelf,
Speaker 1: like I want to get more and more of your
Speaker 1: of your books that are they are this size. But
Speaker 1: one of the things I really like about the way
Speaker 1: that you've structured is it almost reads like a series
Speaker 1: of Cohens and Mando's, Like do these sort of individuals
Speaker 1: sometimes like parable kind of stories sometimes sort of always
Speaker 1: gonna ask you. Did you write the book in no regionally?
Speaker 1: Did you write it in English? In the first place,
Speaker 1: I've wrote it in the Norwegian I have to, but
Speaker 1: then I worked really hard to get the English. As
Speaker 1: you say, that is kind of more like a meditation,
Speaker 1: like I wanted to read or to be almost a
Speaker 1: little bit apotized while reading. And also, like you know
Speaker 1: you said, esthetics I think is really important because I
Speaker 1: think especially book on Silence, but also walking, it has
Speaker 1: to somehow reflect the content of the book. And I
Speaker 1: think you know, books should be beautiful and great to
Speaker 1: have around you. If not, you know, you could just
Speaker 1: have e book or listen to no streaming, which is
Speaker 1: good too, but that's a different story. Yeah, well it's
Speaker 1: it's uh, both of those things that I mean, specifically
Speaker 1: on on the On the writing, it's very effective. I
Speaker 1: mean hypnotizing is a great word for it. Um. The
Speaker 1: English prose is beautiful and it's so poetic and so
Speaker 1: excellent job. I mean, I know this is your business,
Speaker 1: but from from from my humble opinion, good job. Thank
Speaker 1: you know it's more than the business, because you know
Speaker 1: it's I don't think it hardly anyone sits down to
Speaker 1: write a book because that would like to earn money.
Speaker 1: I think you know the reason to write a book
Speaker 1: is uh, and these are no both of us all
Speaker 1: for us publisher. You know that has to come really
Speaker 1: from your heart. So I wouldn't spend a year and
Speaker 1: a half to write you know. That's finn book and Silence.
Speaker 1: If I didn't really feel that I had something really
Speaker 1: important to say, well, Early, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: the time that you gave me today. My my pleasure,
Speaker 1: you know, I I feel privileged, would be invited to
Speaker 1: be able to talk about things that are really close
Speaker 1: to my heart, so thank you, or us to say
Speaker 1: Norwegian to some touch. This episode of Ephemeral was written
Speaker 1: and assembled by Alex Williams, with producers Max Williams and
Speaker 1: Trevor Young and editing by rima Il Kali. Special thanks
Speaker 1: to Nitro Sound in Oslo, Norway, and to Andrew Howard
Speaker 1: for gifting me a copy of Silence in the Age
Speaker 1: of Normals, which, along with Walking One Step at a Time,
Speaker 1: are the books by Arling Cockay on which this conversation
Speaker 1: was based. Find them wherever books are sold, and find
Speaker 1: us on the worldwide Web at Ephemeral Show. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: in Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite show.
Speaker 1: Would be such an