When the world feels increasingly tame, what does it mean to reclaim our wildness? Can we appreciate the benefits of industrial civilization while connecting with our evolutionary roots? Can we get ourselves back to the garden?
In this poignant conversation, Academy Award-winning filmmaker Craig Foster shares insights from his experiences diving in the Great African Sea Forest and the inspiration behind his new book, Amphibious Soul: Finding the Wild in a Tame World.
Host and Nori Co-Founder Ross Kenyon asks Craig some unanswered questions he has about My Octopus Teacher, the experience of fame from winning the 2021 Best Documentary Feature Oscar, whether evolution has prepared us for fame, and Craig's adjustment back to civilian life.
Craig discusses the profound lessons learned from marine life, emphasizing the importance of a deep connection with nature and the critical role biodiversity plays in the survival of our planet.
Ross and Craig discuss their various stories of interspecies communication and what it means to build a thread to a species and learn their language. They explore themes of kinship with nature, the significance of tracking as an ancient fundamental language, and the transformative power of cold water immersion. Plunge for the planet!
The discussion also touches on Craig's marine conservation efforts through the Sea Change Project and introduces a unique multimedia aspect of his book that aims to enhance readers' connection to nature.
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Amphibious Soul: Finding the Wild in a Tame World
Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: Today’s show is with a special guest. He’s actually our first Oscar winner on the podcast, which I’m very excited about. Craig Foster’s film, My Octopus Teacher, won Best Documentary Feature at the 2021 Academy Awards. I think the movie’s fantastic. If you haven’t seen it, it’s an amazing, beautiful, tender film, well worth your time. You can view it on Netflix. Craig’s new book is called Amphibious Soul: Finding the Wild in a Tame World. I read it. I really enjoyed it. I hope you do as well. It’s being released next week, May 14th, 2024. Show Craig some support, and thank you so much for listening. Here’s your show.
You’re listening to the Reversing Climate Change podcast by the team at Nori, the Carbon Removal Marketplace. This is a show about the innovators and entrepreneurs developing solutions to climate change. Well, thanks for being here, Craig.
Craig Foster: Wonderful to be with you, Ross. Thanks so much for having me on.
Ross Kenyon: I’m so happy to have you. I just read your new book, Amphibious Soul: Finding the Wild in a Tame World. Why write this book, and why write it now?
Craig Foster: I’ve spent the last 12 years, pretty much every day, diving in the Great African Sea Forest. And I’ve got to know a lot of different species. I’ve got to know a lot of different individual animals. And slowly, over that time, they’ve taught me. They’ve taught me how to move in the forest. They’ve taught me how to deal with the cold. They’ve taught me how to not trigger off all the alarm systems underwater and just be, you know, still the whole body. But what has been very profound is that slowly, over the years — and this is, you know, over 4,000 dives — you start to feel this sense of kinship with them. It feels like having these different families, and each individual animal has got this beautiful personality.
And then you get these little moments of grace where you sense one is woven into that wildness, and you realize that we’ve come through millions of years of living on this planet. We’re built for wildness. We’re built out of wildness. And then in this instant of time we’re thrust into this strange technological world, where this massive influx of the tame world comes into us. So I have sensed this double life very strongly — this huge influence of the wildness that’s come from deep antiquity, and then this massive, seductive force of the tame world. And I just felt compelled to write about this, and to write about really what I’ve learned from these animals and this wild underwater place, because I think they have a very strong message for humanity.
I’m almost just trying to pass on their message. And that is that it’s absolutely critical that we live sensing that there is this entire biosphere that we are totally reliant on. In this craziness of our modern life, we’ve forgotten that we’re absolutely reliant. We’re like a little child that’s completely dependent on its mother. And if we keep doing that, we’re going to be, as a species, in extreme trouble. But she has this enormous regenerative power. So if we just nurture her as she’s nurtured us from the beginning, there is tremendous hope that she can regenerate, and this life support system that’s keeping us going from second to second can regenerate. And then, you know, our children, and even in our not too distant future, we would have a livable planet. If we keep going as we are and forgetting about this, we’re going to run into some serious trouble.
Ross Kenyon: Do you understand this communication from the lives of animals and the biosphere as being some sort of literal communication? Is it some sort of symbolic or poetic understanding that you’ve applied your human mind to and is reading this situation? Or do you feel like there is some sort of shamanic, animistic communication that is happening in your work?
Craig Foster: It’s multi-level. So I mean, I work with a lot of marine biologists, so I’m studying, you know, the deep behavior of a lot of these animals, and just the pure biology of their lives: how they live, how they survive, how they communicate with all the other animals. It is magic in itself. You know, the science behind what they’re doing, and their intelligence and their reciprocity, is extremely powerful. That is enough. Just the pure science of it is enough to be in absolute awe of how this biological intelligence works.
You know, I’ve spent a lot of time, over 25 years, working throughout Africa with indigenous people, and they have these extraordinary spiritual relationships with nature. I have been lucky enough to learn some of that from them, but I’m certainly no expert. And it’s very difficult to articulate that deep mystery that’s part of us and has been part of us for a very, very long time — especially hard to articulate it within the Western context. But it’s certainly there, it’s very powerful, and I think there is a great benefit in developing some kind of spiritual relationship with nature. You know, it’s part of who we are as humans. But just the sheer science is pure magic as well.
Ross Kenyon: I do like that there’s a strong blend of science and anthropology in your work, but also an ineffable beauty that you almost don’t want to translate into words either. I almost sense a pain at having to put words to your experience.
Craig Foster: It is. It is a difficult challenge to do that. But it’s also — I’ve enjoyed writing this book very much, and trying to translate these incredible experiences with these animals and this privilege of being with them for so long. So it’s a wonderful challenge to try and articulate that, and to speak with you and try to, you know, tease out some of these things that I’m very passionate about.
Ross Kenyon: One question I had reading is that you clearly have a lot of admiration for the San people, for traditional hunters. And I think people might come into your work thinking that it has a universally vegetarian message, or one about not participating in the cycles of life and death in the animal world at all, or more than one has to. And yet there’s a lot of integration that you see possible for humanity, specifically with people who are living very close to nature like that, where animal lives are consumed in order to feed human lives, and trying to find the balance there of what is the appropriate relationship humans should seek to have with the animal world and the biosphere. Is participating in the life cycles of life and death even escapable? Is that an illusion that the tame world has tried to convince us is even possible?
Craig Foster: I think the key thing here, Ross, is to focus on biodiversity. So if you’re looking at indigenous people, they are actually protecting 80% of the biodiversity on the planet at the moment, in terms of the land and the coasts. It’s quite incredible when you think that they only make up 5% of our population. So we can learn so much. Just that idea — 80% of the biodiversity they’re protecting. And remember that biodiversity is the life support system of this planet. So when we make our food choices, when we make all these choices in our world, if we can have biodiversity at the forefront of that, that would be, I would find, the best indicator if you’re really caring about our future and the planet and all these species.
I mean, in nature itself, obviously there’s a lot of give and take, a lot of reciprocity, a lot of predation. And you know, it’s all about respect, deep respect — everything that you would harvest or take being, you know, incredibly careful and respectful in that process. And to focus not on one particular idea, but more on what’s going to be the best for biodiversity. And what’s incredible is that in many of these places where indigenous people are harvesting, even hunting respectfully, we actually see an increase in biodiversity in the landscape.
So humans — this is the amazing thing. We paint ourselves, because of some of the terrifying things that have happened today, with this dark pen. But we have the ability to actually work beautifully with nature and actually enhance the biological systems. That’s our heritage. We come from this incredible heritage of actually working in symphony with the planet, and we can regain that. We know it’s in our memories.
Ross Kenyon: I think that’s a wise approach. If your actions can lead to increased biodiversity and biospheric health, that seems like a good way to judge your actions. You might judge your actions to be positive if it leads to outcomes like that, and therefore you’re avoiding being too prescriptive about specific behaviors, because it seems quite context dependent. Is that an accurate read?
Craig Foster: That’s exactly right. You got it.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, related to that — I think I want to even ask this — I think related to this idea of animal death and hunting, people had strong feelings about the conclusion to My Octopus Teacher. Are you sick of answering questions about the final moments of your friend’s life in that film?
Craig Foster: I had a lot of those questions, but what specifically did you want to ask?
Ross Kenyon: Oh. When people watch a nature film, they expect there to be the cheetah chasing down the gazelle, or something like that. So that’s not shocking. But they often don’t have an emotional connection with the gazelle. And something about your interspecies connection triggered feelings such that I’ve seen more “Wow, that ending was carnage. It was beyond what I was expecting. It was brutal.” In a way, it’s the truth. I don’t think you shouldn’t have done it that way. I think it makes sense. I think you’re being very honest about the subject matter, and you do it with a lot of care, so I’m sure you have strong feelings about this choice. Any documentary is the controlled release of information, and you’ve chosen to do it in this very intentional way. But I’ve heard that several times from people. Maybe now it might be a good point to address it.
Craig Foster: I think what people don’t realize is that, you know, a tiny, tiny percentage of octopus — maybe 1% of these animals — reach adulthood and actually get to mate and to lay eggs and to, you know, have offspring. So that in itself is the ultimate sort of biological goal of these animals. So to see an animal reach that phase and be able to do that is incredible. In that process of sacrificing herself for the young, she gives over a large percentage of her body. And what happens to her mind: it becomes totally senile — senescent. So she’s losing her mind. She’s completely, you know, her feelings are going right down.
So, you know, to be taken by a shark after her babies are safely out of the den, that’s kind of the best thing that could happen to an animal, instead of this long, lingering, slower death. So I guess if you understand where she’s at and what’s happening with her consciousness, that is quite a beautiful parting. And these animals don’t live long. You know, their maximum life is a year and a half, maximum — yeah, two years. So it’s a short but very powerful existence. And it’s very effective in the world of today, because these animals that can breed fast and have large numbers of offspring are able to survive in this very difficult environment, where, say, the pyjama sharks who prey on them find it much more difficult to survive. They’ve got much longer lives, much longer to get to maturity, so their lives are actually much more difficult.
Ross Kenyon: Approaching that question with an orientation to wildness like you have, you see reciprocity. But the people who might ask that are coming from a tamer perspective, and death like that, even if it makes intellectual sense, they don’t necessarily have the spiritual resources to make sense of it in the way that you did. And it seems like maybe part of your work is trying to reteach reciprocity in nature in this way that we’ve somehow lost the ability to see, I think.
Craig Foster: I mean, it’s quite interesting, Ross. When I spent the first few years in the kelp forest — you see, you know, every time you go in you see predators killing prey, and at first it seems like this killing field of some sort. But as you start to understand that system in a deeper way, and you start to see these incredible forces, like within the forest itself, there are these pressures that are put on by predators, from the biological system, from the ocean itself. And it’s this incredible dance. But the dance is so beautiful that it basically inspires life.
I mean, after big storms sometimes you see, you know, some of the rocks are absolutely stripped clean and a lot of animals die. But it’s unbelievable how quickly those communities come back. So the whole system appears to be predator and prey and all these predations, but actually it’s just supporting life for this myriad of species. It’s such a beautiful and powerful thing to see. So the predators are actually just the right pressure for those prey animals to flourish. So it’s a really incredible system that supports life in a deep way. It’s a —
Ross Kenyon: Beautiful thought. Makes me wonder — asking that question of you put me in such a tongue-tied position, and it seems like maybe I didn’t need to feel that anxiety about asking it, because it seems like you’ve contextualized it in a proper way, that it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of pain in that death for you, of experiencing an animal that you were very close with.
Craig Foster: No, it doesn’t seem that way. It’s birth. So it’s just tremendous joy that this animal has reached the pinnacle of its experience and is able to reproduce. As I say, only 1% of octopus get to do that. And at the same time, obviously you’ve developed this relationship, so it’s very sad that you will not, you know, be seeing that animal physically. But you know, even now I often, every week, I visit her main den, and I go down there and I can remember so much of what she’s taught me.
And you know, there’s recently a new beautiful female in the same den. They come back to exactly the same den, even though it fills up. Somehow they can smell it — I don’t know exactly how. And you know, she had eggs in there and I was watching them, and you just feel these generations of these cephalopods coming and going. It’s quite a beautiful thing.
Ross Kenyon: It’s nice to hear. I was hoping you’d say something like that. You have relationships with so many animals, and that can be something as simple as the little pond that was in your yard formerly. It’s with sharks. There’s lots of animals and beings that you are feeling kinship with. It’s the whole thing. Maybe you could share a little bit about what you’ve been feeling working on you spiritually lately.
Craig Foster: I mean, when you ask that question, it comes to mind: in the earlier days, when I was younger and seeking wildness, we did some very extreme things. So we went up to the Okavango Delta and we dived with these massive Nile crocodiles. It’s, you know, extremely dangerous animals — 14, 15 foot massive crocodiles — and we actually dived into their lairs, where they drag their prey. And it was very powerful and exciting and terrifying. And you’d think that’s where you would find this essence of wildness. But because you can do it so infrequently, you don’t get to know an animal like that particularly well. It’s just about survival and this tremendous intensity.
I came back from that experience and started immersing myself in the sea forest, and I developed a relationship with limpets. Now, limpets look almost like a rock. They hardly move, if you’re not watching properly. But I watched them for years, and I got to know these animals intimately. I saw how they fertilize their gardens at low tide, how they tend their gardens, how they defend their gardens. I got to see, eventually, their little faces and their little personalities. And I learned far more about wildness and my own humanity from these very humble little snails, basically, than I did from diving with giant Nile crocodiles.
So it’s about the kinship, and understanding an animal, and seeing how they move as the sun moves, and they move away from the heat at low tide, and all these intricate patterns to their life, the tracks they leave. I could talk for hours about limpets, but that’s the key here. You know, it’s more powerful to have a deep relationship with a fly than to go for this incredible African safari and have an amazing experience with lions.
Ross Kenyon: Something about charismatic megafauna, I think, just steals the show. Or mammalian supremacy — the idea of being close to a limpet. I mean, cephalopods too. They’re smart enough. I think people probably link them with mammals, even if they’re not in the same family. That’s okay. But limpets? I don’t think people would imagine doing that. But you also tell stories about being close with flies in the book too. How is it even possible to get close to a fly or a limpet?
Craig Foster: Well, when you start to see — I mean, these incredible marine flies we have in the intertidal, these animals are living in one of the harshest environments on Earth. They’re incredibly hard to find. They’re totally cryptic. And when you see them hatching and then trying to dry their wings and trying to survive in the fierce winds, and you’re trying to take a picture, and you can’t get a picture of one of these things for weeks — and eventually you do, and you see the magnificence of this creature. And you realize that when it changes from this larval stage into a fly, it doesn’t metamorphose from the one to the other. What happens is it goes to a liquid goo. And then that liquid goo, by some incredible mystery, changes into a perfectly formed animal that can fly. I mean, it is totally magical.
So you’re absolutely spellbound by the life cycle and the tenacity of a creature like this marine fly. But it’s only when you get to know it — and it’s the knowing that’s the critical thing here, Ross. This remembering who we are, remembering that we are designed to be born fully wild and have relationships with hundreds of different species. That’s where we come from. That’s our inheritance. We aren’t designed to come into a world where our relationship is with these machines and the cell phone and that kind of thing, and only humans. We’re designed for this connection to this incredibly composite, complex and powerful biological intelligence, and all these animals that animate our existence and teach us about ourselves.
Ross Kenyon: It requires such an openness to do that. The film especially struck me as such a vulnerable document — that you really had to be open to sharing something profound about your heart, and sharing it with millions and millions of people. I know you weren’t quite prepared for the reception that My Octopus Teacher received, but what’s it like being that vulnerable? Because I think you need to, in order to be able to do valuable work like you’re doing.
Craig Foster: Well, I mean, it’s an understatement — a huge understatement, what you’re saying. We had absolutely no idea that this film would go anywhere near the kind of audience that it did. We, you know, you’re working here right on the tip of Africa, fairly isolated in some ways from the rest of the world. You’re utterly unprepared for that giant Netflix platform and that enormous spotlight that then turns on you. So it was very disturbing for me, to be honest, and it took me quite a long time to recover from that.
But of course, in that you learn a lot of other things. You have wonderful opportunities to meet fascinating people. You get to do a book like I have been able to, which is a real privilege, and work with a fantastic team. But it’s absolutely terrifying. And it’s terrifying for that wild person inside to be exposed to millions and millions of people. There’s nothing in our deep design that prepares one for that. In fact, indigenous people would, you know, be horrified at this idea of putting out one story like that, or winning an award or anything like that. It goes counter to our deep human culture.
They had an extraordinary culture of everybody being quite equal, and as soon as someone tried to step forward or, you know, bragged about being a good hunter, they would be brought down, because they knew that, you know, the spotlight story, or anyone being better than anyone else, just causes trouble. So nothing prepares one for that. But you know, you get through that. And then there of course are the good and the bad that comes from that. And I have learned a tremendous amount from it.
Ross Kenyon: I mean, to re-enter the tame world like that — a lot of the anthropology that I’ve read, mostly from James C. Scott. Have you read any of his work before?
Craig Foster: I don’t know his work.
Ross Kenyon: Oh yeah, brilliant writer. He’s at Yale, but he’s written a lot about the birth of agriculture and how hierarchy arose in civilization and human affairs. And I mean, certainly you got elevated from obscurely living on the tip of Africa to winning an Oscar. That’s pretty much as big a leap as one can make, in some regards, or pretty close to it, and nothing in our evolutionary history has prepared one for that amount of spotlight.
I’ve seen some people even compare what happens with fame to being a new form of human sacrifice, because we basically tear those people to shreds. I mean, Princess Diana is going to be the worst example of them all, but Britney Spears also didn’t have a good run of it. Basically none of them do. It seems like a curse as much as a blessing. And I bet you were pretty happy to return to a simple life of wildness.
Craig Foster: Yeah, I mean, obviously, you know, that kind of thing — I had this tiny little spotlight, you know, few seconds of this fame. So I was able to retreat back into the deep forest, and after a while, people, you know, unless you keep feeding that monster, people don’t recognize one anymore. And that’s a big relief in many ways. But this is the funny thing about living this double life: the wild person just wants to go and live on an island — and I have the skills to do that — and completely separate from the world. And then the social being and the storyteller, you know, wants to also engage, and loves humanity. And when you start to see how precious our biodiversity is, one is very, very keen to share that story as much as possible. So the one is pulling against the other.
And I don’t pretend to have this perfect balance, or, you know, always be wild. I’m often knocked off the knife edge into one world or the other. So it’s a tricky balance, but it’s very useful to try and keep in touch with our deep past.
Ross Kenyon: Parts of it are easier than others, too. You inspired me to cold plunge, which I’d never done, and actually I loved it. My wife had to tell me to get out, because I was past the maximum allowable time at the place that we were at. I was very content there. I felt new sensations. It was an extreme experience. I felt very enlivened by it. And having that sort of wild, extreme experience, even in a controlled environment, is close at hand. It’s not like you’re recommending people have to go and dive with great whites to experience this.
Craig Foster: No, I mean, you can even just have a little ice box in your backyard and feel the tremendous benefits of it. I mean, today I didn’t have too much sleep last night — I worked very late — and just before the podcast I went into the sea forest here. It’s 12°C, and the whole day changed. You know, the entire biochemistry of my brain changed in that 35 minutes. I did encounter some beautiful animals, three species of sharks, and it was particularly clear.
So that also makes a huge difference. You’re in this, you know, magnificent place, and then the cold is changing your whole brain chemistry in a very positive way. So that’s wonderful that you’ve tried that. It is a very powerful experience. One has to be very careful how you do it. You know, I recommend one goes very slowly and just increases the time very, very slowly. But it is a real game changer.
Ross Kenyon: Something about it made me stronger. I think I had read in your book, or maybe it was from Wim Hof or somewhere else, that once you get past the 10 or 15 seconds of pain, of struggle, it starts feeling better and better, and it’s okay. So if you can make it over that first hump. And I’ve been using that for a lot of things, where I’ll do a fair amount of intermittent fasting, and you’ll have a hunger pang and you’re like, it’ll go away, and I’ll just — 30 seconds, you’ll be okay. Whereas previously I’ve used that as an excuse to break fast, or I’ve used it as an excuse to walk away from the discomfort.
But our lives are all air conditioned. They’re very controlled relative to the past. And reintroducing some of that struggle, even in a relatively controlled way, I think has had good effects on my willpower, has made me think about my bodily sensations in a way that maybe I’ve lost track of. And a lot of your work is about noticing and just being connected to these things and not losing the tracking skills. But also, in a very broad sense, I feel like even in those small ways I’ve started to notice and try to bring back some of my awareness and tracking skills. I think that would be a good place for a lot of people to start.
Craig Foster: Yes. I mean, to go back to what you said — I wish it was 15 seconds, but that time, I’ve noticed, is about two and a half to three minutes. So if you can just get past that two and a half minutes, it’s incredible how much the body thermoregulates. When you first go in you think this is impossible, and after just — no, just stay for two and a half minutes, and then you will feel completely different. And if you can get past that point, then it makes a huge difference.
And you’re absolutely right: if you can go into the water, or into any very cold space, and you can remain relaxed and control your breathing — just absolutely remain relaxed and not let the cortisol build up. Because if you’re going in very tense or anxious, then the cortisol comes in and it defeats the whole purpose. If you can remain relaxed, let the dopamine and the noradrenaline and the adrenaline fill your brain, that builds resilience for other forms of stress, like you have with your intermittent fasting. It allows your brain and your being the strength to be more resilient, especially if you do it over and over again. So that is absolutely a sort of byproduct of this practice.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I think I only did three sessions of four to five minutes each, but I did a lot of laughter. I think maybe that was releasing the cortisol. But part of me found it hilarious, in a way, that I was doing this. Very strange. I’m choosing to do something uncomfortable. Why? I don’t know. Some South African guy told me.
Craig Foster: No, no, no. But no, that’s amazing. The thing is that, I mean, we have a wonderful tracking group, and we go in the cold water and there’s this uncontrolled laughter, and you’re laughing but you don’t even know what is funny. And that’s a common experience when all this beautiful biochemistry is flowing through the brain, and you almost go back to this childlike state. We play silly games, and that laughter and that joy, that sort of primal joy, is an incredibly beautiful feeling. It’s a very healing experience to just have that childlike feeling flowing through one.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I’m smiling now, too. That’s a wonderful thing to remember, to experience as much as one can in this short life. What are some other ways that people might be able to participate in wildness? And maybe they’re not ready for a cold plunge — there’s some intermediate step they might be able to take.
Craig Foster: So one of the things that I found most powerful is what you mentioned briefly before, and this is this idea of tracking. And for me, it’s the oldest language on Earth. It goes even further back than our species. And it’s about noticing not only the footprints that are left in the sand, but the hundreds of other tracks that are left all over the planet. I mean, even when I walked down today, there’s a place where the buses have to turn and they leave grooves in the road, because there’s a dip. And just to notice that, and to see that track in the road, sparks a primal instinct to look at signs. We’re absolutely wired to see patterns everywhere and to figure out what’s happened in the past and what might happen in the future.
So we’re all wired for this. And if we start to slowly, even in a city, start to notice all these little signs everywhere, what it does is just gives you this deeper sense for your environment, and it makes you feel good, because that’s what we’ve done for so long. It’s part of our primal existence to be able to notice patterns, and to understand especially what animals have been doing even when they’re not present.
Ross Kenyon: I need to do more of that. I don’t find that I’ve been able to unlock that in me yet. I’m in Seattle, and there’s plenty of animals around. You know, the usual suspects, basically: squirrels, raccoons, lots of birds. I do have a good relationship with crows. I had a very surreal experience a couple of years ago. We keep chickens as well. We had crows in our backyard and they were cawing a lot. What are they doing back there? And we went back there and I tried to run them off, and they did not back down. They attacked me, essentially. And then you can probably see where this is going: they had fledglings in the yard that they were looking after. But we came to a truce.
They would watch from a big cedar that overlooks our yard, and if I got too close to where the fledglings were, they would let warning caws out. But if I was just tending to the chickens, they didn’t say a peep. They watched me like a hawk — like a crow, I guess. But we had an understanding. I felt like that was beyond pets. That was the first wild experience I had where I was communicating with them and saying, like, I’m just tending the chickens. I love that there’s fledglings here. It’s all good. And they grew up and they flew away.
I love crows now. I still talk to them all the time. I feed them peanuts when I can. And something about that — I couldn’t perfectly put into words what that experience was about and how we were able to communicate. But somehow an understanding was struck, and I think the natural world is more intelligent and able to communicate than maybe we often think.
Craig Foster: That’s a beautiful example. So basically, in my mind, you built a thread to the crow. So you know, early people used to have threads to hundreds, if not thousands, of animals and plants. And when you have an experience like that — thank goodness you didn’t chase them off, and you actually realized that they needed to protect their young. You gave them the space, and then the enormous teaching that comes from that is so much more powerful than just having, you know, a clean backyard, or a crow-less backyard.
These animals are some of the most intelligent animals on the planet. You know, there’s amazing work you probably know about with crows, where they use tools and they actually make hooks to go into little holes in the wood and pull out worms. So they are some of the most intelligent. And I use these animals to track otters. I use the white-necked raven, which is very similar to the crow, and I’m watching where they are looking, and they will often scavenge off the kills of otters. So I’m using their eyes to track otters, and they’ve helped me a lot in that process, because otters are an extremely shy animal, incredibly cryptic and very good at hiding. But I’m using those incredible eyes and senses of the ravens to observe and follow otters.
Ross Kenyon: Well, that’s fascinating. I’ll have to keep that in mind. One thing I’ve seen close to that is I’ll hear them caw and there’s a raccoon nearby, especially if they have young in a tree. That is a sign that I’ve been able to infer from their behavior that I wouldn’t have otherwise. I think that’s about it. I’m wondering — I’ll watch them more closely now, and now I wonder how they might behave and what they might be communicating and what I can read into it.
Craig Foster: So that would be a brilliant animal, because you’ve already got a connection to them. So I mean, I described this at the end of the book, but if you can start to — even if you had a little notebook and just start to write down small things that you notice, even if you don’t understand what they are. And if you keep doing that, you’re going to have these incredible aha moments as the dots sort of form into these kind of sentences and ideas. And if you — obviously a good pair of binoculars work well with birds — and if you just spend time watching them and try to figure out what that language is.
So the great trackers that I worked with in the Kalahari are fluent in what we call bird language, and insect language, and all the other species’ language, but particularly bird language. So what happens is, if there’s a predator, say, a kilometre or two away, the small birds in that area are alarm calling very loudly, and then the next layer of birds alarm call a bit less, and a bit less, and a bit less. So a master tracker can feel the ripples coming through the landscape. And they’re so attuned that they can feel that predator moving from kilometres away, from those very subtle ripples that are, you know, invisible to everybody else.
So there are these incredible subtle signs and these languages that were, you know, absolutely normal for so long, that we’ve lost. But we can regain them quite easily, because they’re built into our design. So that would be a perfect animal for you to start to understand. And then there’ll be many other calls that will tell you not only about raccoons but a lot about what other animals are doing, and also how high are they off the ground, where they’re looking — these are also indicators of all these signs. And it’s deeply satisfying when you make those breakthroughs.
Ross Kenyon: People listening, I’m sure, know a lot about how their cats and dogs might be feeling based upon their behavior or their sounds. But for the chickens too — I have one chicken that is a little bit of a crybaby. Everything seemingly bothers her, so I’m like, okay. But there are certain sounds that they’ll make where, okay, that means that there’s a land-based predator, that means that there’s an airborne predator. And even just knowing three, four, five different sounds that you can translate as how severe this is and what it’s meant to communicate, it is deeply satisfying in the same way that learning another language is deeply satisfying.
Craig Foster: But you see, what’s interesting about that, Ross, is that it’s not just another language. It’s the fundamental language of survival that we’ve used as a species from the beginning of time. And that’s what you’re tapping into. It’s so much more powerful than English or French or anything else, because it’s the fundamental language of our species. And to relearn that and to dive into that language wakes up something inside us that is hard to articulate. But it’s very transformative and it’s very energizing.
Ross Kenyon: Wow. Well, you’ve elevated my experience. I had somehow inadvertently denigrated it, or demoted it, to just the level of French or English. Turns out there’s a universal language that I’ve been speaking and didn’t realize it. Wrapping up here, maybe you could tell people how they can get involved in your other work.
Craig Foster: I’m involved in marine conservation. So we have a not-for-profit organization called the Sea Change Project — a group of amazing scientists, filmmakers, storytellers and journalists who are dedicated to marine conservation, who are absolutely, you know, in love with the Great African Sea Forest, but are very concerned about this idea of biodiversity being so fundamental to the health of the planet and the health of our species. So part of this project is studying 1,001 animals in the sea forest and telling stories about these incredible animals, finding new species and giving this place a name. You know, we’ve given it the name — the Great African Sea Forest has now been used globally. So we know how important, how precious it is. So that’s fundamental to our work.
I mean, that’s the reason — you know, the underlying reason to write this book and step back into a little bit of the spotlight, which I’m quite uncomfortable with a lot of the time — is this deep desire and love for this incredible biosphere that keeps us breathing and eating from second to second. I mean, she’s our original mother, this mother of mothers that’s kept us alive for so long. And you know, if you think about that incredible mystery, that this universe is 13.7 billion years old, and from these giant explosions in space and this cosmic dust, this universe has fashioned, you know, animals that can fly, humans that can communicate across continents, whales and limpets and crocodiles.
I mean, it’s just the ultimate mystery and wonder, that you can’t even imagine that that could happen. So we’re living in a miracle. We’re living in a biological miracle, even if you look at it on the most fundamental level, and we don’t know how that’s actually happened. So our work is just to try and remember that we are born wild, and that this connection to wildness, to tracking, to cold water, to these animals, invigorates the human in a very powerful way.
And you know, so many young people — we get messages from all over the world, people who’ve disconnected from the wild. And I feel this is probably the most dangerous thing, because when we disconnect, it’s easy to harm nature. If you are connected and you love nature and animals, and you have a relationship like indigenous people do, it’s almost impossible to destroy or harm this incredible system that is our mother. So this is the fundamental message that we’re trying to speak about.
We are often, of course, contradictory. Our lives are very contradictory in many ways. But you know, the San shamans I’ve worked with have taught me that it’s also good to be comfortable with the natural contradictory nature of our species — but that the key is to build relationship and wonder and gratitude for Mother Nature, who just, you know, looks after us in such a beautiful way.
Ross Kenyon: So much there to think about. I think being able to sit with tension or contradiction is an important skill. I don’t know that we should expect consistency in a realm that it is not always available, and I think it limits us. I think it’s okay to hold the tame and the wild within you. We certainly need both. You’re reliant upon enormous supply chains to make lenses that can capture beauty in a very specific, highly engineered way, and I’m not sure you would want to give up that necessarily either. I can think of examples for myself as well. You’re nodding, I think. Are you tolerant of such a sentiment?
Craig Foster: Of course. I mean, I’m very well aware of my entire, you know, my life being contradictory, in the technology and so many things. But I mean, I think that we also mustn’t put too much pressure on individuals. You know, these giant companies, the military, governments — these are people that, you know, we really need to put pressure on to stop these crazy practices, like, you know, deep sea mining and trawling the ocean bed and, you know, setting off enormous explosions. I mean, that stuff’s really got to completely stop, and we have to remember who we are and redevelop the relationship with this planet. Otherwise, you know, we’re going to destroy the life support system.
The planet itself will always survive and regenerate, but we’re a very fragile species, so you can’t live independent of nature. She’s in charge. We’ve forgotten that she’s the foundation of everything. So there is no reason — there’s no good reason I’ve ever heard — that our fundamental focus shouldn’t be on looking after the life support system, the biodiversity of this planet, because everybody relies on that. If someone’s a billionaire and the life support system is compromised, their millions and billions will be worth absolutely nothing. You know, if you care about your children’s future, it’s the same story, and it’s critical that we leave them with biodiversity in place. There’s no good reason not to do that.
In fact, you know, it’s like we’re in a car and we’re driving along and we’re about to go over a cliff and we’re arguing about the color of the seats. I mean, that’s the kind of, you know, stupidness that’s going on. We need to be looking at the fundamentals, and the fundamentals are this connection to nature.
Ross Kenyon: One thing I like about it is that you’re not merely asking people to give up things that they like. I think you’re offering them something that’s very positive, that could be emotionally and spiritually and physically rewarding in a way that what they have now might be a pale substitute for such wildness. And it’s probably not feeding them in the same way that they think it is. So it’s not like you’re trying to replace it, or say we need to just do everything the same but cut 70% of it. It’s something entirely orthogonal to that suggestion, I think.
Craig Foster: I mean, the technology of nature is thousands of times more complex and powerful than our most sophisticated space-age technology. I mean, you know, it operates all at a single temperature. It makes any of our systems look pathetic, actually. And it’s so economical. You know, the tiny bird or bee can fly on a tiny drop of nectar for miles. None of our systems come even close to being able to do all these extraordinary things. So the wonder is there. The one-dimensional nature of our technology, that’s kind of hoodwinked us into thinking this is such a wonderful thing, leads down a road of, you know, all sorts of mental health problems and physical problems. You know, we need to try to remember where we’ve come from, and just how wondrous and fascinating this system is.
Ross Kenyon: Well, thanks for being here, Craig. I’m really grateful to have you.
Craig Foster: Absolutely wonderful talking to you, Ross, and I can feel your passion for this, and really respect and appreciate the work you’re doing to try to look after our wonderful planet. So thanks so much for your time and your sensitivity.
Ross Kenyon: Well, thanks for saying that. I appreciate that. If you’re listening, links to all of the things we discussed are in the show notes. Go buy Craig’s new book, Amphibious Soul. If you haven’t seen My Octopus Teacher, it’s on Netflix. It’s amazing. And also the Sea Change Project — you should check it out and get involved if you are able. And thank you so much for listening.
Craig Foster: But I just say one other thing, Ross, that I always forget. Sorry, I didn’t know if it’s possible to include. But what is an interesting thing is, I’ve experimented with something, and you may not have connected with this because you probably might have got an earlier copy of the book. But embedded in the book is a digital code that connects the reader to a 27-part short film series that shows short films about some of the key experiences in the book. So each chapter has got about two or three of these films.
And it can take you back 25 years in the Kalahari when I was tracking with some of the great masters. Or it can take you into a crocodile’s lair in the Okavango. It can take you, you know, diving in the Great African Sea Forest. It can take you back to this incredible human origin story on the coast here in South Africa. So I’m very interested to see how readers will interact with this multimedia opportunity to actually feel some of these things that are very hard to articulate in words. So there are 27 of these films that I [unclear] connect very much to the reading experience and enhance the whole book and the connection to nature that I’m trying to bring across.
Ross Kenyon: I’m jealous. I think I got the early version, and I definitely would have watched those had I known about them. That’s a really nice little tie-in, and that’s smart. I don’t know why more people don’t do things like that.
Craig Foster: I guess, you know, being a filmmaker — and I love making films, especially films that I don’t have to go through the whole big process with broadcasters. So it’s been a fun experience to do that over two years while I’m doing the book. So I’ll gladly send you the link, and then you can get a sense of that. And some of them are about tracking and learning about the tracking, and it’s just a visceral experience.
Ross Kenyon: Thank you so much for listening. If you could please subscribe and give us a great rating and review on Apple Podcasts, or a rating on Spotify, that’d be much appreciated. It helps us get our content out to more people. You can sign up for our newsletter at nori.com, follow us on social media, and we will catch you next time.
