We’re Not Teaching Kids What They Really Need to Know

And everything else with that. And you know, you brought up an interesting point too, not to keep going down the rabbit hole, but the other thing that I thought really interesting was when you look at waste components. I feel like we're not maybe looking at that as much as we should be when we're talking about trying to feed a bunch of people. It's like, well, maybe we should start with what we're throwing away that we wouldn't have to. Oh, yeah. And I think like, at first I just thought like, well, you know, there's a lot of food thrown away at restaurants. There's a lot of stuff that's thrown away just because it doesn't meet standards for like the grocery store. It's like, let's start there. And I actually had asked Dr. Schindler about that. He actually did a study with some of his grad students where they looked at, I think they took 30 white-tailed deer and they processed it down to like the very last potential calorie to find out how much is wasted even in like a, you know, a deer that say you go and you shoot a deer and then you take it to the process and get it all done. He said it was between, I think it was between like 13 to 30 days worth of human nutrition that gets wasted in a single white-tailed deer. Whoa. So like... Well, here's the problem with that idea. A waste is only if you do something with it. If you leave it in the field, there's no waste. Right. Like if you just killed a deer, it's not, it just left it there. There's no waste. You're feeding animals. Right. That's true. I mean, they're going to absolutely destroy that thing. It's going to be gone in a short period of time, including the bones. So they'll eat the bones and if they don't eat the bones, the bones will eventually deteriorate and become part of the soil. This is what happens when animals die. Sure. So I guess maybe the way to look at then is like what are we, if we're looking to just, if our objective is to feed as many people as possible and we're maximizing the amount of nutrients we can acquire from a specific thing, like we're leaving a lot on the table or we're giving a lot to different areas, like different animals and things that would be... Well, we're doing it wrong. You know, we're putting our waste in bags and then we're throwing it into the groundfills. I mean, in landfills. Have you seen they did this aerial study of Los Angeles? They're trying to find out where most of the methane comes from. They were trying to figure out... It's fucking landfills, man. Landfills are disgusting. And this is not how it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be animals are supposed to have access to what's left over. I mean, this is what would happen if a bear killed a moose. All right. If a bear killed a moose, it's going to consume a big portion of the body and then it's going to leave whatever's left and then rodents and vultures and then eventually insects and bacteria are going to break it down. And this is a natural cycle of life for animals. This is how it's supposed to be. What we do is we take it, we cut it up, we eat some of it, we throw some of it away, we put that in a plastic bag, we zip tie it, we dig a fucking hole in the ground and we throw that bag in there. It's ludicrous. We know better. We do know better. We understand the whole process of these things breaking down in the wild and what happens to them. We understand that there's animals that their entire diet consists of eating animals that other animals have killed and they leave some of it behind. That's, we're supposed to leave it behind. It's supposed to be a part of the whole cycle of life. We are supposed to compost. All these things are supposed to be natural. You know, when I was a kid, my mom and my stepdad were part of this cooperative farm thing and we started composting. We didn't do it for very long because we eventually wound up moving and we stopped being a part of this thing. But I thought it was really interesting because I was a little kid. I was thinking, oh, I never thought of that before. You take your food waste and you separate it from like paper. You know, give your paper waste and then you have like leftover tomatoes or something like that and all that would go into one specific bin and that bin would go into this big thing. It was like, it was made with like chicken wire and leaves and you had a lid over it and like it was a wood box and you would throw everything in there and it would all sort of rot and compost and then you would take that stuff and you would use it in the garden. And this is how composting is done. This is how fertilizer is made and this is what you're supposed to do. This is like small scale regenerative farming. And what we're doing is assholes. We take our food, we put it in fucking bags, we zip tie it shut and we chuck it in the ground. It's dumb. It's a really dumb way of doing things. I just feel like that is something that we could really leverage at the educational level. Like, you know, we've got schools where we were housing these kids and like, you know, one of the biggest hurdles I think is like we got them indoors sitting in desks for seven, eight hours a day and then we, why not get them out and learn that and do that? And we have these mini little like regenerative areas. Sure. Then you learn it and then it doesn't get forgotten when you're an adult as easily. Well, we're so enamored with this idea of working, you know, we're so enamored with this idea of getting a job. We're so enamored with this idea of the structure of civilization as it stands in 2019 is the way to go. So we're teaching kids how to complete this life that they're born into, the way it's established for their parents, the way it's established for their neighborhood, get in your car, drive to work, work all day, come home, you know, eat what you can, throw the rest of the garbage, go back to work in the morning. And this is nonsense. This is not how you have to do it. You don't have to do anything. There's a bunch of different ways to live this life and there's only a hundred years if you're lucky. So this thing that we're setting up, we're setting up kids to essentially be as miserable as everybody else before them doing the exact same thing that everybody else has done. Like maybe you can get lucky, like I have been or like you've been and you find something that you actually enjoy doing. Then you get lucky, like, oh my God, you know, Zach found a job that he really loves and he got really good at it. And now he actually has joy in what he does. But there's a lot of different places in this country alone where you can live and you could do things in a non-traditional manner and you can get by and you'll probably be healthier and happier than someone that gets stuck in the same goddamn civilization cycle, this industrialized cycle that we're all in. And we don't teach kids that. What we teach kids is here's history, here's math, get your SATs in, get the score, go to the college that you want, get a job. And this is the standard path that seems to be rewarded. And this is what, and if you say, well, I'm going to drop out and find myself, oh, good luck loser, you know, you're going to fuck up your life. You know, what are you doing, man? You're not even going to college? Jesus Christ. And it's very unfortunate that we have this incredibly rigid system and it really makes people feel like, made me feel like a failure. I didn't fit into the system. I just, because I have ADD or whatever, emotional issues, whatever I had, I just could not sit still in class and concentrate. I had way too much fucking energy. This was just not for me. I was twiddling my thumbs and tapping the floor and looking at the clock. When that fucking thing hit, I was gone and I didn't want to do homework. I literally didn't do any homework my entire high school career. I didn't do any. I just got by being smart enough to pass tests by learning what I learned in class and not putting in any fucking extra effort. I just wanted to get out and I found something that I was good at. I figured it out. I got lucky that I did that. But for a lot of people, they just live these lives of frustration, and they never do find a thing. They're not taught to find a thing. There's also, I think, there's great satisfaction to working on something that you enjoy, whether it's working with your hands or working on something that's creative, and working with the land. You talk to people that run their own little organic farms. I know this couple that runs an organic farm. And when they talk about their food, they talk about the vegetables they grow and the stuff they grow, they like beam. They're excited about it. They're excited. It's a natural, there's a gravity that we have towards that. It's a natural human reward to be able to cultivate your own food. If you can make a salad out of some stuff that you grew yourself, man, that feels amazing. It really does. And there's people that could be making a living doing that. They're never encouraged to do so, and they might be way happier than selling insurance. Yeah. Yeah, no, I agree. And you could feed other people too, man. That's the other thing. If you could figure out a way to run an organic garden and you do compost, you don't use pesticides, and you do everything organic, and everything is regenerative, and you actually can feed people, my God, how good would you feel? Pretty satisfying for everything. Yes. Yeah, I would think really satisfying. It's not for everybody, but it's got to be for somebody. And they're not being, no one's teaching you that in school. You have to be one of those outside the box thinkers, because school's essentially set up for scale, right? You got 500 kids, you got to turn them in and not losers. How do I get 500 kids to not be a loser? Well, just standard path, like standard American diets, like standard American education, these like standard paths that will work for X amount of people. You get 10 people, seven of them won't be losers if you just shove them into this machine and pump them out in this fucking form. Yeah. It's a bummer. Now, here we're getting education advice from the ultra marathon runner. Yeah, but you're a good guy to get education advice from. Well, I was a teacher for five years, so. But it's also you're a successful guy at an unusual thing. You found a thing that you really excel at that you actually enjoy. And that is for so many people, the ultimate goal of life. You can make a lot of money in this life, but you will not be as happy in, it's really contrary to like capitalist ideas. Like we were taught to think that the more money you make them to happier you'll be. That's definitely not true. But you will make more money if you're happier with what you do, which sounds like a contradiction. But it's not, you'll excel. And if you're excelling, you'll probably, if you're, whatever you're doing is profitable, obviously, there's some things that you can excel at that are just, there's no fucking way to make a lot of money as a bowler. You know, if you're like, I'm really into bowling. Well, you're kind of fucked. Because it's just one of those things that nobody gives a shit about. But find something else you're interested in too. Yeah, yeah, it'd be nice if you found something that actually paid the bills. But if you can find something that you enjoy, you'll have an infinitely happier life. It's just, you can do that. You just have to find those, you have to explore those things. And I think that's where we fail kids. We fail kids and giving them this landscape of possibilities that actually does exist. I think there's a landscape of possibilities for what you can do. And everyone is different. Like, I don't want to be an ultra marathon runner, man. If you and I are competing, I'm fucked, okay? I'm not going to win. I'm not going to excel. I'm built like a chimp. I'm not the guy that's supposed to be running 200 miles. It's just your realm. And it's also, it's not what, I don't desire to do that. Conversely, if you had to become a standup comedian, you'd probably be like, well, fuck this. I don't want to do any, thinking about things that's funny. And the first time you bomb, you'd be like, what am I doing with my life? Everybody has a different personality and these different personalities and these different interests and desires. They take different paths. And I think we need to open that up to people more and just sort of in some way encourage people to seek more, to genuinely try to find the things that interest you. Maybe you should be a fly fishing guide. Maybe you should be a guy who makes homemade mugs out of exotic hardwood. You know, maybe, you know, maybe you're a knife maker. Maybe you're a person who maybe should make fucking dream catchers. I don't know. Don't make dream catchers. Does anybody really like dream catchers? This is like something you buy and then you put it on the wall and you go, what the fuck am I doing? Am I pretending I'm a native American or something? But there's things you can do, man. You just have to find that thing. And I think that's so hard for people. And that's why people, when they find someone like yourself that's doing this unusual, unorthodox thing and you're extremely successful at it, it becomes so attractive to people to hear your story. Yeah. And I think it's, I would have never guessed I'd be doing what I'm doing now 10 years ago. So it's equally surprising to me, I think sometimes. But it is interesting to when you think about just where you thought you would maybe be and then where you end up and all that stuff in between. And ultimately, I think you want to be smart about stuff. I didn't necessarily just quit my job and say I'm going to be an ultra marathon runner. You kind of have a few different options available or you just keep options open too. For me personally, I like to coach too. So I'm going to do some of that and that helps supplement things. And then podcasting has always been a fun thing to do. So historically, I'd always go on podcasts. And then a couple of years ago, it was like, well, if it's this much fun to go on them, it must be fun to do them too. So starting these other, I think when people start kind of really exploring where their curacities are, you find these different avenues too. And they just kind of snowballs a little bit as opposed to being, you know, maybe you start out making the dream catcher and then you become something else. Right, right. You just get really in the feathers.