House Calls Podcast

What Can Nature Teach Us About Connection?

With guest Baratunde Thurston,

Host, Activist & Comedian 

Hello and welcome to House Calls. I’m Vivek Murthy and I have the honor of serving as U.S. Surgeon General. I'd like to introduce you to Baratunde Thurston, a writer, activist, and comedian. Today we'll be talking about Baratunde's television series about the outdoors and how nature nurtures connections to our communities and to ourselves. My guest today is Baratunde Thurston, host of the PBS series, "America Outdoors." Through his show, he has been exploring the country, shining his lens on how Americans interact with nature. From the Los Angeles River to Tidewater, Virginia, and many places in between, Baratunde has been meeting people in the outdoors and learning how they engage with, and what they love about, the world around them. Baratunde explores his own questions about what issues and experiences are shaping us as Americans. This is an experience he and I share. In my work, I too travel the country, meeting people and talking with them about their lives, about what challenges them, as well as what brings them joy. This conversation digs into how our shared existence on this planet can help us build connections, bringing us closer to the environment, to each other, and to ourselves. As Baratunde has learned, when we heal nature, we heal ourselves. Well, Baratunde, thank you so much for joining today and welcome to "House Calls."

It's good to be with you, Dr. Vivek Murthy. Thanks for hosting me here in in your House Calls show.

I appreciate that so much, and you know, we were chatting a little bit before and I was telling you how much I've heard about you from friends, from, you know, mutual colleagues and just watched your stuff, honestly, which has been just a breath of fresh air, has brought me a lot of laughs and I know has helped a lot of other people as well over the years, so thank you for everything you've done. Thank you for being here and there's a bunch of stuff I'd love to chat with you about today, but I wanna start actually with this incredible show, "America Outdoors" that you are now in your second season of and, you know, something you say about the show, which I have found to be really powerful, is you say that nature has the power to bring us together and to help us heal and it's on those two themes that I'd love to dig in a little bit, but before we do, tell me how it is that nature came to be part of your life and something that you look to for healing and connection.

Yeah, I just wanna repeat, this is cool. I'm talking to America's doctor on a semi-public house call, so I'm not gonna share all of my medical issues with you, though I'm tempted 'cause this is like the best doctor I could ever hope for, regardless of my insurance status, which we don't need to get into, America's great. (Dr. Murthy laughing) So thank you for having me again. As far as the nature part of my life and story goes, it really starts with my mother, Arnita Thurston. May she rest in glorious joy-filled dancing to Earth, Wind and Fire peace. She was born in Washington, D.C., as was I, and so were her parents and she brought me and my sister up in a pretty challenging time in the 1980s for me in Washington, D.C. when a lot of that city was going through a decline, a lot of tough times with crime and other things that unintentionally rhyme, and parks were a really important part of my childhood. Rock Creek Park, specifically, going to the zoo, taking bike trips, but my mom went farther than most other moms that I knew. She was a member of the Sierra Club. She went on hikes and brought me along with her. She put me in this little program, like an urban farming program. I didn't recognize that it was child labor at the time. I thought it's fun, I get to play in dirt. But what came out of that dirt was food that we would eat and I took such pride in tending this garden and bringing things out of the land that were practically useful and delicious for me and my mom and my sister, so it starts with my mother, who I think needed it for her own survival and stress management and who brought nature into my life as a place to play and a place to get to know.

Wow, that's so powerful that it was part of your upbringing. And you know, I've read now several things that you've written about your mom and listened to things you've said about your mother and, you know, I was gonna come to this at the end, but let me just ask you about it now. Every time I hear you talk about your mom, I feel so deeply moved and I think it's partly because I am very close to my own mother and, you know, as we get older, I just am aware of her mortality and I love just, not just the beauty that your mother has brought into your life, but just your appreciation for it and how you revere her and how I think so much of your life, and this show in particular, feel like a tribute to your mother and so I just wanna express that 'cause it means a lot to me just to hear how beautifully you speak about your mom.

Thank you, I'm glad we didn't wait till the end for that. Moms would've appreciated it. I think she also would recognize, as I have much later in my life, the totality of what she represented and was, which wasn't just someone to be revered, but someone to be known, someone to be empathized with, someone to be held accountable, and, you know, she went through a lot of pain and trauma, as many people do, as many peoples do, and part of why I do admire her so is that she faced that down, she sought tools and processes and healing to try to move through to have something beyond the pain and the trauma be her story and I know that nature was a big part of that for her. I mean, every Thanksgiving, you know, Thanksgiving is this like the most on-the-nose holiday we have. What are we supposed to do? Give thanks. And that often takes the form of excess caloric intake, which is not really a way of expressing gratitude for your body, by the way. In our household, it was never about the turkey. It was never about how much gravy. It was how do we get to the ocean? How do we get to a body of water? As a family, we would take a short or long road trip, depending on where we lived at the time, and we would just breathe in fresh ocean air. The dog was a part of the tradition too, she loved it. I hated cleaning sand out of her paws, but we loved the first part of that trip and there was something about being together as a family, which included the animal in our family, and included nature and the outdoors. We were kind of embracing this larger sense of family and it wasn't always comfortable. Sometimes it was rainy and cold and we embraced that too and it was still a part of the experience of, you know, who we are as a collective and I think, you know, I'm reading a lot into it now in my mid-40s, but as a kid, I just thought it was a really neat, fun, different thing for us to do and I'm really grateful for that at this point in my life.

Well, and you've said also that your mom, creating these experiences for you in nature was actually one way to, in some ways, relieve or address some of the pressures that you were facing in your day-to-day life and I just thought that was beautiful and spoke to just how nature can help us heal, but can you speak a little bit to that? Like when you were a child spending this time in nature, to what extent were you aware that it was helping you heal or feel better or deal with some of the trauma or challenges of day-to-day life?

Sometimes as a kid, nature is not healing at all. It's where you scrape your knees, you know, it's where you get cut, it's where bugs bite you, and so I don't wanna pretend it's all, you know, fluffy pillows and puppies and assume you're not allergic to puppies or the down in the pillows, but I knew it was a fun place to go. I knew how I felt in it. I would've never used the word healing as a kid to describe what I was doing in nature, though. I was playing, I was on adventures. I was imagining. I was hiding, a lot of hide and seek with my friends, or seeking, I was engaged in something very active and I was however aware of the pressure part. I was aware of the need to balance some tension and some negative forces. My father was shot and killed when I was young. I was very aware when that happened. I was aware of his absence. I was aware of the choice I was given to go to his funeral. I was aware of that shift. I was aware of the drug dealing happening outside of my windows that was often peaceful, but not always. And disagreements between dealers and police actions and sirens and arrests and gunshots and that's not fun, that's not play, that's not safe. And I was very, very aware of my mother's stress. I absorbed a lot of what she absorbed and I knew that she was financially strapped. I knew she was lonely. I knew that she had a very small threshold for disloyalty because she had been betrayed by people close to her several times in her life, and so us kids better not be disrespectful or disloyal. Her friends better not be, or they wouldn't be her friends anymore. And I saw her trying to make a path for me and my sister, but especially for me. My sister Belinda's nine years older, and so she left the house by the time I was nine. It really was just me day to day and so I saw my mom organizing in the community, hosting vigils at the church, confronting drug dealers and gang members and painfully, often physically in pain, still trying to muster the strength to go to PTA meetings and handle the blisters on her feet and deal with the abuse at her workplace in terms of being passed over for promotions or dealing with racism or sexism. As a kid, I noticed all of that and that's a lot for a kid. There was no manual for all that and the idea of going out sometimes just with a dog on a little trail out back at the elementary school, sometimes on an epic camping adventure up to Bar Harbor, Maine, or all the way to the Outer Banks of North Carolina and seeing wild horses running in Chincoteague and Assateague, that felt like the opposite of everything I just described to you.

Well, what a lot to take on as a child and what a tremendous amount that your mother experiences while I'm so sorry for all the hardships both of you went through during your childhood and I think, given all of that, it's, to me, all the more remarkable that she had the wisdom and the wherewithal and the energy to make sure that you, as her son, had exposure to nature, that you had that relief that perhaps she didn't have, you know, at earlier points in her life. And just what an incredible job she's done giving you a foundation for this beautiful life you've built, so just my hat's off to your mother and may her soul rest in peace. But yeah-

Thank you.

Just so glad that you found her, you found each other.

Yeah, we found each other. The universe put us together and I remember some of the stories she would tell me about her childhood and going down to visit with her grandparents who she had so much love for, a lot more tension with her own parents, but they had some acreage or a farm or something. She would talk about riding horseback and she just lit up when she talked about her relationship with them and I know that a lot of that relationship was based in exploring outdoor spaces, so she probably knowingly wanted that for me and for my sister because of the feelings that it generated in her.

You've mentioned a couple words that have stuck in my head about nature, about exploration, about play, which I think are powerful ways through which our experience of nature can actually help us feel better and help us heal. And the other word that comes to mind is the word awe, A-W-E, awe, and this is something, a feeling that Dacher Keltner, you know, a known well-known psychologist has talked about. The fact that nature's perhaps one of the most powerful forces in our lives that can inspire awe and awe is an extraordinarily powerful healing force, and I've experienced that in nature myself and watching some of your episodes of "America Outdoors," you capture that awe so beautifully in the footage in various parts of the country. There's this one moment I was thinking about in particular. It's from an episode you did in season two on the Suwannee River, which by the way, growing up in Florida, we would sing songs about the Suwannee River. It was, I believe, part of our state song, in fact, so in that episode though, you're at the Okefenokee Swamp and there's a moment where you step out of the boat, you put your hands down and take some of the dirt in the the swamp there in your hands. You hold it up and the man next to you says, "That dirt is responsible for cleaning the water." And it was one of those, to me, it was just an awe-inducing moment 'cause you're looking at this dirt in your hands and just imagining as you're seeing the gas bubbles, you know, like come up from below the surface there that wow, this dirt is actually cleaning the water. It's just like so counterintuitive, but it was just one of many moments of awe that I experienced just in watching nature as you portrayed it on the screen. But I'd love for you to just speak a little bit about that, just about your experience on the show, going to all of these different places, and tell me a little bit about how it may have been healing for you or how you observed nature was healing for those that you visited.

I think the word I use most in "America Outdoors" is "Whoa!" There are so many times where I am just taken aback by something. That swamp scene that you just described was close to one of them. I think I said something like, "This is the cleanest dirt I've ever held."

Yes, that's exactly right.

The water looks black, but the first few inches is actually quite clear and it feels clean. You know when you're putting your hands in dirty water, not just brown water, like dirty and not all dirt is dirty. Certainly not all soil or peat moss.

That's a profound statement.

Not all dirt is dirty.

Not all dirty is dirty.

Let's put it on a T-shirt. Let's merchandise this. Let's monetize this podcast. (Dr. Murthy laughing) So the swamp was a moment of awe because swamps don't have a good marketing department. They are supposed to be dangerous and dirty and scary and nasty and haunted and risky and peaceful and beautiful are just not words I was trained to associate, but that's what I felt, that's what I noticed. I've been paragliding in Utah and that is an awkward height from which to see the earth. We're not supposed to see it from that height. That's bird height. Like we can see it on the ground and we've gotten used to seeing it from way high in an airplane, but to kind of float quietly 50 feet above, 100, 200 feet, is awe-inspiring. It's really magical. And I think there's, oh man, there's so many moments and places I was in awe from the very first place we went on the show, this place called Death Valley that is not its proper name, based on the indigenous people who were there long before the Westerners showed up and the Europeans showed up, it's called Timbisha and I had thought of the Southwest as this kind of boring, brown, waterless place and it took going there with the show and looking at it with the eyes of people who spend real time there, including millennia, to see the variation in that brown, and it's actually not, it's reds and browns and there's some greens and there's blues in the sky and the way the light hits it and the sunlight changes it and it is awe-inducing and awe-inspiring. So there's, every episode we've done, I've had some moment of true surprise and delight and awe. As for the healing part, it's easy to actually make a show like this and just, I can start to fall into a pattern of going through the motions because it's also work. And you're like, okay, I gotta get these questions, I gotta hit this mark. I gotta make sure to pass this milestone 'cause the drone is looking and I don't wanna do this 20 more times, so there's a level of focus that can take me out of the outdoors, and then I have to stop. This also happens every shoot, almost every day, and I just take a breath (Baratunde exhales) and I open my eyes again and I see New Mexico and I see this relationship with time from this ancient part of this young country and you're just like, I'm so used to thinking of America as young. We're like a toddler nation, you know, relative to some of the much, much older places on the earth, but we have ancient wisdom here too and there are petroglyphs here and there are people who built their towns in alignment with the stars and there was, it's not a literal healing, but there was a metaphorical kind of loop closing to reconnect me to the cosmos as we looked up at the Milky Way and to walk through what used to be, you know, this built environment occupied by humans who align their buildings exactly, exactly with certain features of the cosmos. I run around trying to be in sync with time hundreds of times a day. What time is it? I'm behind, I have all these notifications. And these fools had no iPhones. They had no atomic clocks, but they were cosmically connected and they built their whole reality on time.

Yeah.

And it made me feel small, at the same time as it made me feel part of something really, really large, like time itself, and space and all the energy out there 'cause we're comprised of all of that. And there's something healing in that feeling of participation and belonging into something so much more than just my day-to-day stresses and inbox pain points.

That's beautifully described, especially what you said at the end of feeling like we're a part of something so vast and grand and big. That I think is a really powerful feeling and I think sometimes when our head is buried in our inbox, we just lose sight entirely. Our world becomes our inbox, becomes the tasks in front of us, but you're reminding me that nature reminds us that the world is so much bigger than what we see day to day.

Humans are, we're a funny little species. (both laughing) We've done some dope things. We made Snuggies and smartphones and that's pretty good, democracy, there's all kind of stuff we come up with, but one of the other things that we, that some of us have done, even when I say we, I gotta be very careful because there's so much to our species and I just live in such a modern Western 21st century narrow, narrow slice of what the human experience has been a part of, but I think we separate ourselves from nature in the modern era quite easily and quite often and I've done it. I had this beautiful nature-infused childhood and then I got sucked more into the tech and the screens and the rush and the race and I've traded connection of one sort for connectivity of another sort and there is a downside to that.

Yeah.

And so being able to go back out and meet people, you know, not just be in the space myself, but be with people who are deeply connected to their natural spaces has been a great gift, a great gift to the show because you see how many ways there are to belong, how many ways there are to be with, how many ways there are to connect, and how many ways there are to not be alone, which I know this is something that, I mean, you wrote a whole book about loneliness. You're like a loneliness expert and I feel like I've come across a powerful practice of belonging and togetherness that many people are showing me is available in so many different ways beyond the ones we often think of first.

And I'd love to pick up on that point about togetherness and how nature can actually help foster connection. One of the things I love about your episodes is through the conversations you're having with people, I feel like I as a viewer can see you forming these beautiful bonds with people who seem to come from really different backgrounds and life experiences than you. I was thinking in particular about one of the episodes where you were in Elaine, Arkansas, where you were in Arkansas, and you were with Kayle and with Ann-Marie, and I believe you were using rifles together and it was this powerful scene.

Shotguns.

Shotguns, sorry, yeah. And you were laughing together. It seemed like you were having a good time and I was wondering if you could talk to a little bit about how this experience of actually being outdoors, especially outdoors with others, how has it helped foster connection?

Yeah, the Arkansas episode, they're all my favorite. That is a high favorite because of the range of experiences. I was in the town of Elaine, which has a traumatic racial massacre history that they are moving through and evolving through and I was in another part of the state with an Olympic sport clay shooter, Kayle Browning. The connections that I find happening with people outdoors are easier than the connections I find with people online. That should come as no surprise. I think online we become avatars and these caricatures of ourselves, and I say we 'cause I have participated in Twitter fights more than I'd like to be proud of. I have been superficially and exaggeratedly judged, and I have done that to others. It is, you know, this algorithmically propelled environment encourages, and not just encourages, rewards that kind of behavior. We are rewarded with dopamine hits and sometimes cold hard cash to see ourselves separately from our fellow selves, whether those are human selves or other life forms, and so to be outside, it's easier to leave the talking points behind. It is easier to show up with questions rather than statements. Such a simple adjustment. I mean, you can do it in conversation at any time. We always have the option to ask something instead of saying something. That one little trick can really open the door to a possible connection, but when we're in the outdoors and we're focused on an activity more than just words, and certainly me as a new person, to most of the things that we're doing on the show, I got a lot of questions. Why are you doing this is one of my questions. A lot of people, ultra marathoner, why are you doing this? A regular marathon is ultra to me. That's too much. (Dr. Murthy laughing) So I got a lot of questions and questions are literally open doors. We also get to share a reality. If you're in the same physical space with someone, it's harder to deny each other's reality. We're looking at the same thing. It's not a deep fake, it's not propaganda, it's not fake news, like no, there's really a fish right there, I promise. Yes, it got away, but I promise I saw a fish. And so you can ground in something common and shared and then it's multisensory, so we're in our bodies. And it's another, I think another kind of factor that pushes us away from each other and pushes us into corners is that we're doing so much of this stuff in our heads. It's very cognitive, it's very intellectual, it's very verbose and word-based, and the outdoors invites us to smell and touch and feel and so when I'm in Maine on an oyster fishing boat, a oyster farming boat with Mere Point oysters, my first question has nothing to do with like who you voted for, It's like, "Aren't you cold too?" (both laughing) Yes, and we can bond over our shared experience of the cold or our shared sense of awe. And so the questions, the physicality of it, the need to be careful and safe or just enjoy, they invite a different way to connect that doesn't start with, well, I'm coming from over here and you're coming from over there. We might still be. I've definitely interacted with people whose politics are very, very different from mine, but we didn't start with, "Why don't you list your politics. I'm gonna tell you why you're wrong about everything." That's just not a good way to approach anybody training you to use a shotgun, first of all, just kind of, right? But again, the outdoors invites common sense. There's something primal and sort of physically true about the experience out there. So for a host of reasons, I find it a much more suitable place, a suitable environment, if you will, for creating connection.

Yeah, I love that, and it strikes me also that you're having this shared experience of nature together versus when you're dialoguing with somebody online. There really is no shared experience there. There's just the words you may be exchanging and as you were talking also, I'm actually thinking about my own life and realizing that in the way that you described of having, as you've grown up, like moved more online and lost some of your connection with nature, I certainly have experienced that. You know, as a kid I spent a lot of time playing outside. I was always, you know, in the yard, cycling around the neighborhood. I was out all the time and over the years, especially after I finished school, I was indoors more on my computer all the time. I was on my phone. I lived in cities where access wasn't always so easy to nature and bit by bit by bit, my exposure to nature sort of was chipped away and I realized the times where I am able to get back in nature like how much I miss that, but also how much I wanna build it back into my life. And I have a feeling that I'm not alone out there and feeling this way and so I'm curious, for folks out there who are like me, who realize that they want more nature in their life, are there things that you have learned that, or advice you could give us for how we can get more exposure to nature in whether it's in small bites or in sort of easy ways that might be compatible with the somewhat nutty lives we all live?

Yes, the short answer is yes. We have 70 to 80 examples of this across the two seasons and 12 episodes of the series in "America Outdoors" and they are as simple as trying to, not even succeeding, just trying to grow food in your yard or your window sill. Many people don't have yards. Most of us have enough space to have a little bucket, a little tray, try growing some basil or something, just herbs, you know, keep it light, and we did a whole segment with Florence Nishida in our Los Angeles episode, which was purposefully designed to not just focus on the expected outdoors. It's like, of course we're gonna have a Utah episode. Come on, have you been to Utah? It's amazing. We'd be irresponsible to do a show called "America Outdoors" and not do Utah, like we'd have to lose our license. But to do a city episode and show that there is a river that people have access to, to show state parks, which are far more accessible to people often than national parks, just in terms of their distribution and access via public transit or walking, to show city parks, if you're not even gonna be able to get to a state park. There's many different ways to dip your toe in the water in terms of trying to find that connection. And then we've also, we've showcased so many organizations and groups and so this isn't necessarily about taking some solo expedition where you've gotta like solve the nature gap in your life by yourself. No, there's groups like the Native American Youth and Family Center we featured in Portland. There's groups like Bike POC that we featured in Arkansas. There's a fantastic woman in Maine, Farmer Steph, who works with kids and she has a summer program that has to do with food and agriculture and a winter program where kids are exploring the forest in the snow, which I got to do with them.

Wow.

And making wreaths in this tradition called tree tipping, which should be called tree trimming 'cause tipping makes it feel like you're knocking over trees.

Yeah, I was gonna say.

We're definitely not doing that. So there's a lot of ways to do this with others and there are a lot of groups and organizations, some with a bent toward conservation, some that are just educational, some that are exploration-based, but we don't have to figure all this out by ourselves. And so it's been really fun to meet various groups that are trying to make it easy with others to explore the outdoors near you.

I love that, I love that. There's a statement you made, I think, in an interview that I listened to where you said that you want people to feel positive and hopeful through their experience with nature and that stuck with me 'cause I want the same thing too for my kids, for everyone, but sometimes by turn of day, I look around and it feels like there's a lot of despair in the world, that people are worried about the future, that they're not feeling hopeful about what's to come, and I'm curious just to get your thoughts on what you are seeing. Are you also seeing this despair out there and where do you think it comes from?

I would love to say I only see positive things, Vivek. Everything's gonna be all right. But that would not be honest. I see what we all see. I see anger, I see polarization and division. I see way too many wanting for the basics, the basic needs in their life to be met. I see selfishness, I see envy. I see the seven deadly sins. I see all kinds of things that are part of what it means to see and to be aware and to be human and oftentimes I feel overwhelmed by that despair myself. The trick is I also see the hope and I see the possibility, and I see not just the possibility, but the proof of people pursuing the possibility. And in a metaphorical sense, nature's great for that because you can visit the site of a burn scar where a whole area's been physically devastated and you can literally see the signs of new life returning. You can hear the birds, you can see the green shoots coming out of the ground. You can smell the flowers blooming, even as you look at the destruction. And so that, both and, is a metaphor, but it's also a literal truth for our democracy, for our sense of how we get along with each other or not. I see the same stuff. I see all kind of conspiracy and fear and every type of ism that we know of. Some of them getting louder than some of us are used to. And I see people planting seeds of a restored possible democracy. I see people, you know, we have this whole podcast that I do, which is so consistent with "America Outdoors," but has a broader kind of remit. Can't believe I just used the word remit, but you're wearing a tie and a jacket and it just inspired me to use the word remit. I don't normally.

I'm glad that's what I inspired people.

It is not normally in my remit to use the word remit, but here we go. (Dr. Murthy laughing) And so in the "How to Citizen" series, we are actively telling the story of people who figured out some piece of how we live together better and how we practice the democracy, well beyond voting for people. Voting's important. So in "America Outdoors," in "How to Citizen," I'm seeing parallel versions of the same story. Yes, it's hard. Yes, things can be very rough. Yes, some days you may not even want to get out of bed, and, oh my goodness, look at this new experiment happening. And sometimes they're in the same place. There's a community that's come together to restore a natural place that people depend on. That's what I saw in Okefenokee. Right where you started me off in this conversation, I see generally overlooked, generally poor Black people fighting to save a swamp that is the headwaters of a massive fresh water source for millions and millions of people in Florida. And a swamp that sequesters naturally millions and millions of metric tons of carbon, that if they're released, is gonna add to the warming of the atmosphere and create higher water levels, more flooding, more intense storms, more intense fires, more expensive everything all the time. And so those people who somewhat could point to a Southeast Georgia community be like, that's a sign of the crisis of democracy and the hardship of climate change and it's a sign of the hope of both those things.

Mm-hmm. You're right that we can either be blind to the causes of despair, and I don't blame people for feeling worried or sometimes pessimistic about the future when they look at the extent of the challenges that are before us, but we somehow have to find some way to find hope because without hope we can't keep going through that darkness and find better days and what you're saying, which I really resonate with, is that nature can give us reasons to be hopeful. It can remind us that there's life, even after injury, after destruction, and I think there's a deeper metaphor in there for how we too can find hope and life and regeneration despite the very caustic and sometimes destructive and deadly experiences that so many have been through. You referenced the podcast also, which I wanna touch on. I love the fact that you are taking the word citizen, and through your podcast, you're making it a verb, which I think is exactly right. Being a citizen is not a designation alone, it's a set of responsibilities that we have to execute on. I'd love if you could speak a little bit about that. Like what does it mean to think of citizen as a verb? What should that mean to each of us?

We have a set of four principles that kind of put flesh on the bones of that concept of citizen as a verb, so “to citizen” is to do four things. One is to invest in relationships. Citizening isn't a solo activity. It's to invest in relationships with yourself, to really take time, to be embodied and connected and know yourself, to invest in relationships with others, and the planet around you, and really have an expansive sense of who we're relating to, to citizen is to understand power. It's not something to be feared, it's not a dirty word. As Eric Liu taught us in a very early episode to citizen, to exercise power is to get somebody to do what you want them to do and that's just a fact of life. It's literally in physics. It's a natural thing and we have to understand, though, how to wield that, how to generate that, especially with others, so that's number two, to citizen is to commit to the collective, not just our individual self. And I think in the context of both human democracy and natural ecology, especially we start to think about those in overlapping terms. If we have a sense of self that's bigger than our individual self, that includes our families, our neighborhoods, our species, maybe even all life, they're concentric circles of self and we slide up and down that scale, but we need to practice that expansive. It's almost like breathing. You contract, you expand, and as you expand, you increase the value of your inclination to be selfish 'cause you're being selfish on behalf of a greater sense of self. And the fourth is to citizen is really simply to participate, to show up. Just assume there's something to do. You may not know what that thing is, but a lot of us have been miseducated into the idea that we're not powerful. That's for other people. That we have to take care of ourselves completely by ourselves, which is nonsensical. We are evolved to be social and no one can handle the entirety of the human existence on their own. Merely from a food and shelter perspective, we need other people. It's kind of madness to think otherwise. And so we invite people in to thinking about this word differently, thinking about making it active, which opens up the participation and recognizes people who are doing that, who may not bear the paperwork of a quote, unquote, "legal citizen," but they've got all the actions. They're showing up for their community, they're understanding their power, they're committed to something much greater than themselves, and they're deeply invested in relationships, not just transactions.

Clearly you've thought deeply about this over the years.

Well, it's like "America Outdoors" on steroids. Sorry, I just made a steroids reference to a doctor.

That's okay, it's all good. (both laughing)

I have thought about it and-

Hold on, let me just call this steroid hotline to report you. I'm just kidding, no such hotline exists. Don't worry, anybody out there listening to this.

When they say there's no hotline, there's definitely a hotline. (Dr. Murthy laughing) So I have thought about this. I've done informal study, but again, I, to we, and so this podcast, it's me and my wife, Elizabeth, she's executive producer. She helped define that whole framework I just spit real smooth-like. That wasn't just me by myself. And then we have learned from all of our guests. We have 57 episodes as of you and me talking right now. That's a lot of case studies.

That's incredible.

Yeah, and we've met fellow travelers along the way. There's a British fellow. I love, we're starting to collaborate with a British guy on like citizen as a verb and every once in a while I'm like, is this part of a long con to get America back? (Dr. Murthy laughing) His name is Jon Alexander and he wrote this book called "Citizens: Why The Key to Fixing Everything is All of Us." And there's, you know, we're not alone. Again, actually comes back to loneliness. The more we can see each other, the more that we can see of each other, the more we can be, period. We can just be more if we see more of ourselves and sometimes that's literal. I wanna see myself represented in this piece of media. And sometimes that's a bit more metaphorical. I just, I need to see more life. I need to recognize, I need to look at a stream right now and like reconnect to something that places me in the context of something beyond myself.

I wish that that idea that you're talking about, that concept of us being part of a collective, having a responsibility to one another, was more present in society when I was growing up 'cause I remember growing up, and even though my parents emphasized those lessons to me, it felt like the world around me was telling me that, you know what, you gotta grow up and just be independent and that means not rely on anyone else and you build your own path and the stories I was hearing were about like the individual who like built an organization or built a company or did something essentially on their own, or the one person who won the Nobel Prize 'cause of an incredible discovery that they and they alone made in the research laboratory. It was a story of individuals and we sort of over the years came to feel like, wow, that means that I need to figure it all out and be by myself. I need to be able to execute all whatever I do in my life and achieve whatever that means or be successful, however you define that, all on my own, and that was pretty heavy load to take on as a kid, you know, to feel like, God, that's what it's gonna take for me to make it in the world.

And where were your parents in that story for you? Were they encouraging the individual path? Were they kind of trying to pull you into a more collective story? What was their role?

It's interesting, I've tried to reflect on this a bunch. My parents were definitely people who understood the power of relationships and community and they demonstrated that to me through their own actions. Like they were always there for other people. They showed up for other people. They were investing in their community. They were helping to build a place of worship so the community could come together 'cause they knew that was important, so they believed a lot in the power of community, but I think that they were also raised in an educational system and a modernizing culture that was telling them that, hey, your kids need to be successful in these stereotypical ways. They gotta like figure out how to excel in school by themselves. They gotta then get a good job and like, and build a medical practice or build a company or something on their own and my sense, growing up, was that that wasn't intrinsically part of who they were, but in an effort to get their kids to do well and be successful, they felt like, hey, I guess that's what the world is doing, maybe that's what my children should be doing too, so I found with them, they were grappling with that and I sensed, I suspect that this is this complexity, this sort of back and forth between these like, you know, these two sort of polls of community and togetherness and doing it all on your own. I think a lot of us have that tension in our lives 'cause it does feel often that society is telling us to go the way of doing it on our own and that if we can't, that somehow we're weak, we're not enough, we're not sufficient. I now realize, the benefit of hindsight, that's completely incorrect. Like the things that I have done in my life, whether it's talking to you on this podcast or whether it's serving as Surgeon General or other things, like these weren't all me. You know, like there's like a team of people who helped, beautiful, wonderful, talented people who helped me create this podcast. It's my wife who supported and guided me through a lot of ups and downs I've had and my journey to serve as Surgeon General during these two stints and I would be lost in the wilderness without them and I just, so I'm trying to like think about how to bring my own kids up with this sense of that, yes, they should strive to work hard to, to do a lot, to achieve their dreams, but they should never forget that we do that in concert with other people and that that's not a source of weakness or a cop out in any way.

Thanks for answering that. I agree with you. We are, most of us in that conversation sometimes struggle between the solo individual and the collective. I think in our society, not just the US, but kind of the modern West in general.

Yes.

We've really, well we've done a lot of hero worship.

Yeah.

You know, the story of the hero, it's in a lot of the pop culture, it's in the business culture, it's in the political culture, and it doesn't serve us, not completely. It's a part of the diet. Now I'm gonna explain to you what a balanced diet is, so what you want is… (Dr. Murthy laughing)

I'm taking notes here, hold on.

A proportion of individuality because it is important to have a sense of self and to not be totally defined by others, and there's a lot of people who've come to this country fleeing something that's a bit too much on the collective side for their taste.

Sure.

I kind of get that. But at the same time, we have to recognize we literally need each other.

Yeah.

None of us can do everything that we need alone and I don't think the market and just capitalism and the transactions baked into it are the healthiest way to meet those collective needs. There is a tremendous place for it. I mean, look at my microphone, it's doing pretty good. I bought it with money, right, it's great, but also there's just so many things we need that go beyond what a financial transaction can provide and health, and many elements of health, that's a big piece of it. You know, the mental, I have had, making the "America Outdoor" show in particular, such amazing experiences with people who are on a healing journey, and particularly a mental health journey, and nature and nature with others, it's far more than pharmaceuticals for them. Sometimes we need drugs. As someone who's been through surgeries and injuries and headaches, I subscribe, and sometimes we need to walk in the forest or sit around a campfire or sleep out under the stars or go fly fishing. And foster kids in Arkansas are part of this program, The Mayfly Project, and they go fly fishing and they get to have relationships with reliable, safe adults who are there for them. They get to take their minds off of trying to find a forever home and just try to find a fish right now, just a fish right now. And even if there's no fish, to stand in the water and take in the sun and the smell and the birds, that does something really powerful for them and it does something in community for them. And the Iraq war veterans who I spent time with in Utah had a similar tale of working through PTSD. Stacy Bare created a program called Adventure Not War where he took war fighters back to the site of their service for fun, not for combat. Okay, let's go hiking in Afghanistan now. What?

Wow.

And it is, I mean, he's literally rewriting a story, rewiring neural connections, and therapy's good, drugs can be good, so can immersion with others in a natural environment that weaves us, again, into something greater than ourselves so there's great value to it, it's not like a luxury good and it's not just something for people with a lot of money and it's not just a nice thing to do if you can squeeze it in. It's increasingly, to me, feels like a defining characteristic of what it means to be a person, a human, is to also be of nature and connected to it.

You’re right that we have in nature a source of extraordinary healing that I think we have perhaps largely or increasingly overlooked and left behind. And it is also strikes me that even small doses of it can be very powerful. I have noticed in my own life that when I may be having a rough day feeling incredibly stressed, but sometimes if I just go outside and take a 10 minute walk, or if I just sit out as I used to do during the pandemic sometimes on the front porch, and just feel the breeze against my face for five minutes, that can just change how I feel, how I think, and that can last for quite a while. I love how you frame nature as a source of both connection and healing and I think you're, you know, the show really does a beautiful job of illustrating that.

You'll appreciate this. There is science behind what you say. I spent some time with, just grabbing her name, Amy MacDonald at the University of Utah Department of Psychology, and they have scientifically, statistically proven the thing that you just said. There's a reason you feel better after a 10 minute walk outside because you're giving your brain a chance to rest and recover and recharge. And I went through an experiment with electrodes and the funny looking hat and everything, and they put me into an agitated state with some computer exercises that kind of mimic the worst social media email, calendar-tasky experience you can imagine, and then they unleash me for a walk through Red Butte Gardens, which is this stunningly beautiful place, and they measure the brain after, and there's like baseline, then there's the computer exercise, which depletes you, and then there's where do you end up after the nature walk? Above baseline, above baseline, reliably speaking. And if you are just walking outside, you get some recovery. If you're walking in a natural environment outside, you get the maximum recovery. If you're just looking at pictures of outside, you get a little bit of recovery, so everything helps. The maximum is the best option, is to put your body outside fully. That's not always available to us, or to all of our bodies, but it is something to aspire to, which means we gotta make the outdoors accessible to all the bodies and we've got to make it accessible to all the financial classes so it doesn't require an expensive vehicle that you alone own to go get somewhere and get the benefits, the health benefits of that natural recovery.

Absolutely, I couldn't agree more, especially around the accessibility piece. My family, you know, we live in Washington, D.C. and Rock Creek Park is one of the places that we-

Yes.

We go from time to time to get that time in nature and it's such a beautiful place where we can be close to water, trees, peace and quiet and it just, it feels beautiful and restorative, so I couldn't agree more

Your kids are lucky. I mean, I feel like I was lucky to grow up in D.C. because the size, it's not overwhelming, you know, it's not New York City. I love New York City, but it seems wild to grow up there and I've met people from there and they're wild, but D.C. has scale and like ecological range. You can get to the ocean without too much crazy effort. You can get to some mountains in Appalachia and Blue Ridge. You can get to swamp, actual swamp, not D.C. political swamp. Legitimate science swamp is right nearby. And there's a decent amount of trails and pathways and rivers and canals and there's a lot to be able to explore without having to cross the size of a whole state. Also, you know, for the record, and you can remove this if you want, but I think D.C. should be a state. I'll put it there, there we go.

Well, I know you're not alone, absolutely. You know, as we come to a close, Baratunde, I so enjoyed this time with you and I-

Me too.

I had a couple of things I would still, I would love to just get your thoughts on as we close. One is on the, on the concept of love, which you have raised in the context of how to citizen, you've raised love as an important part of our efforts to citizen and citizen well. Can you say a little bit more about that, about the role of love and why is it so important?

The very first guest on our podcast is Valarie Kaur, K-A-U-R. She's a Sikh woman, S-I-K-H, for those who don't know. She wrote a book called "See No Stranger," and she, it helps lead this movement, The Revolutionary Love Project, and she's kind of channeling MLK, Martin Luther King Jr. when she talks of love, not the romantic kind, but the kind that has you feeling like you're a part of a beloved community, the kind that, as her book title invites us to do that sees a stranger as just a part of ourselves we do not yet know. And know for me is a key unlock, for part of what love is. I felt like I was an awkward teenager with respect to romance and love far beyond my teen years.

Ah, yeah, well, you and me both, brother.

I didn't have, so we could bond over that in a different setting, but my game was not tight as a kid or a young man, or less than young man, and so I was just like really excited for attention. And I say, "Oh, love is attention. Someone's paying attention to me. They love me. I'll pay attention to them." And that's what the internet helps us feel that way, you know, it's just like we have measures of it and we can quantify attention and so we feel loved, but it's shallow, it's the cheap calories. It's not the healthy meal. And then sometimes love is admiration or appreciation. I felt that way about my mother for a very long time. I wrote that way about my mother, just a sense of absolute indebtedness and appreciation. Part of the way, but on its own, that's not it. And so I think a big component of love has to also be knowing. And I thought about this with my relationship with my mother. I've thought about it in my other relationships when I love someone or feel loved by someone, part of the reason is 'cause I really know them. I know some embarrassing things about them. I know maybe some not so nice things about them and they with me, right? And so the world might see this nice thing that I'm putting on a show, but then my partner, she knows, and she's still with me, that's love.

That's love, yeah.

And so when it comes to the collective version of that, that is something to aspire to, that patriotism, which is love, which requires knowing, encourages us to know each other, to deeply know each other, not just prejudge, not infer each other, not project upon each other, but to ask questions of each other and listen, to share space and reality and experience with each other, get to know each other, and to know our story, to know our history and to approach that knowledge with the same sort of approach that we'd have in a loving, personal relationship. I gotta know this place. I really wanna love this place. I'm willing to know this. Not everything I find out is gonna make me feel good. Not everything my wife finds out about me makes her feel good and vice versa, and same with you and your kids, I'm sure, but there's love there and that knowing can deepen it, so I want us to know ourselves and to know each other, to know our story, our history, our present, and our possible future story, and I want us to write that story with shared knowledge together. And I think if we do that, we are citizening, we are embracing the knowledge of who we are and who was here before we got here, and not just feeling ashamed for, but feeling empowered because of it. Okay, now I know. What am I gonna do with that knowledge? Ooh, where are we gonna go from here? Much more interesting question to answer, but only possible if we've answered some of the other ones. So let's get to know each other, including, not just our human neighbors, but all the life that's out there that's a part of our life experience.

To know someone else deeply and to be known, that's one of the greatest gifts I think we can have as human beings.

And one of the scariest, and one of the scariest.

Scariest, yeah. Not easy, but certainly I think one of life's greatest gifts. What gives you hope that we can move toward that reality?

Oh, we already are, dude. It's not, hope's such a fun word, such a fun word. It's like empowering and dismissible at the same time. It's vague enough that everybody can kind of claim it, but you also sound kind of naive for using it. And so if I wanna offer something useful, what gives me hope is not ideas. It's practices that I have seen and played with myself. And I don't have all the answers, but I've seen enough evidence that we can come up with useful, loving answers that it gives me the motivation to keep moving. Spending time with indigenous people while we make "America Outdoors," again, a requirement. Can't do a show called "America Outdoors" without connecting with the first people in on this land. And what I've learned is a consistent lesson, one of their persistent presence, not just sort of historical value to our story, but also their different versions of saying the same thing. When we heal nature, we heal ourselves. When we heal ourselves, we can heal nature. And I've seen different tribal nations and communities doing regenerative work around forests, around ranch practices, around river and water management that are, it's technology, but it's like this ancient ecological wisdom technology, and there is so much that we know how to do if we take the time to get to know each other and learn. We're out here trying to invent things that have existed for thousands of years in some cases. So what gives me hope is that I see many projects on the ground taking place that demonstrate that power to regenerate when it comes to nature and climate, that power to citizen when it comes to our democracy and our ability to live together better, so it's not just hope, it's evidence. I'm so happy to hear you say that 'cause I do think people sometimes look around and say, "Is anything getting better?" And what you're telling us is that, yeah, so there are a lot of people doing a lot of things that are very promising and that are making things better. We may not be able to see them all the time, we may not see them reported on in the news you read every day, but if you're willing to look closely, if you're willing to go close to the land, to communities, to understand what's happening and to talk to people, there are many reasons to be hopeful and I'm so glad that both in this conversation and through the show as well, that you're helping to bring some of those to light.

Man, thank you, and I think to, at the risk of over-emphasizing, but also the hope of clarifying, just seeing the evidence is the start-

Yeah.

To being the evidence. And what I am hopeful for is that when we tell these stories, this is what the how to citizen thing is about, we citizen more. And, you know, someone listening to this, I want you to think about a tough time, might have been the death of a friend, might have been a physical disaster, a natural disaster, might've been a surgery and some rehab. The act of the recovery with others feels good. It feels good. Look at Jose Andres, you know what I'm saying? Look at World Central Kitchen as an example. There's millions of groups like this, but we will have, bad things will happen, I guarantee, and we can choose to do good things after that and to do things to try to prevent those bad things from happening when we just get in there. We don't just read about the disaster, but we find some way to contribute to the recovery, we feel better and we are better and so story and practice, let's go.

Beautiful, such great advice. I wanna wrap with a couple of rapid fire questions if I could, Baratunde, these are more fun. One, what's your favorite food on the road?

Popcorn. Eating on the road is hard and what I tend to do with the "America Outdoors" filming schedule, which is usually eight days at a time, is I will, you know, do this like grocery order as I take off so that when I get to the hotel, I've got peanut butter, I've got apples, I've got some granola and some blueberries and some yogurt and some bananas, baseline. I have a little fridge in the room almost always, but I gotta have my popcorn, I gotta have my seaweed snacks, but really I gotta have my popcorn. I freaking love popcorn, Vivek.

Oh my gosh.

I love it, I love it. It's like it's a delicacy. When I make it, it's spicy. You get hit it with that Old Bay, hit it with the butter and the grated Parmesan, and I stir in a big stainless steel pot and it makes the house smell like, mm, I'm making myself hungry just describing it.

I'm getting hungry.

So on the road-

Now I know what you and I are eating when we get together in person.

Yes.

This is good. Any hot tips on packing for long trips? I'm asking, of course, for a friend. (Baratunde laughing)

Packing cubes. Use the compression. Use underwear that you can hand wash and think about all kinds of clothes you can hand wash, so that'll save you time, it'll save you money, it'll save you space in your luggage. That's a win-win win. That's at least three wins on just hand washable gear. And you can never have enough cables: charging cables, data cables, clothes lines that, you know, cables you can use to dry your clothes on that you just hand washed. I have used USB cables for many things they weren't intended for, but a cable's a cable, man. It's just a rope, it's just string and you can use if for a lot of things, so if you're in doubt, bring the extra cable.

Now I'm thinking about all the creative uses of cables that you may have employed over the last few years, anyway. And this may be relevant to the next question, but yeah. What's your best animal encounter story?

Oh, manatees on the Suwannee River, for sure.

Whoa.

We were looking for manatees the whole day. I kayaked and estimated 10 miles with a scientist from the University of Florida, didn't see a manatee. Got all the way to the lunch break and we're like, "Oh, I guess we're not gonna see manatees today," and the manatees interrupted our lunch. Someone spotted them right across the river from where we were docked and we poured in to the boats and the kayaks got the drones up in the sky and we spotted a group of three manatees and I got to jump into the springs, these beautiful, crystal clear blue water springs like something out of a movie and a swim with the manatees, within feet of them, they came right up to me.

Wow.

And I have never had an experience like that with an animal. That was awe, that was awesome.

Incredible, wow. Well, Baratunde, just thank you for everything today, for the beautiful stories you shared, for the inspiring work that you're doing giving us a window into just the beautiful healing, connecting power of nature. And thank you to your mom, to Arnita Lorraine Thurston, for everything she did to help make you the incredible human being that you are. I'm grateful to her as well.

Oh man, well, I'm grateful to you, Dr. Vivek Murthy. Thanks for your double duty service to the country. Thanks for using this platform to have really interesting conversations, and thanks in advance for the free medical advice that I'm gonna hit you up for offline, just appreciate you.

No problem. Yeah, we can talk about that rash that you've been worried about, no problem. (both laughing)

Have a great day, have a great day, thank you.

You too, take care, my friend. Until we see each other in person with lots of popcorn.

Yes, with lots of popcorn.

Thank you for joining this conversation with Baratunde Thurston. Join us for the next episode of House Calls with Dr. Vivek Murthy. Wishing you all health and happiness.