TDC 059: Live Wild or Die Boring (Part 1)

TDC 059: Live Wild or Die Boring: The Urgent Case for Reconnecting with the Natural World (Part 1)

Why nature isn't just good for your soul—it's essential for survival, creativity, and breakthrough innovation.

Episode Summary

In this episode of The Digital Contrarian, host Ryan Levesque shares insights from recording his upcoming book Return to Real and reveals shocking research about our digital lifestyle.

You'll discover how concrete environments increase early death by 12%, learn why nature walks boost creativity by 60%, and understand why tech founders won't use their own products.

Question of the Day 🗣️

When was the last time you spent a full day in nature without digital devices? What did you notice? Share in the comments!

Key Take-aways

• People in concrete environments are 12% more likely to die early than those surrounded by nature
• Children with limited nature access are 55% more likely to develop depression later in life
• Four-day wilderness trips boost creativity and problem-solving by 50%
• Nature walks increase innovative thinking by 60% compared to indoor walking
• World-changing inventions like Velcro and bullet trains were inspired by nature

Timestamped Outline ⏱️

00:00 – Live wild or die boring
00:32 – My experience recording Return to Real
02:10 – How the modern digital way of life has left us dumbed down
04:02 – Rewild your life, rewire your brain
04:49 – The shocking health impacts of nature deprivation
06:22 – Why your next breakthrough will come from nature, not screens
08:18 – The science of nature's effect on creativity
10:09 – Why tech founders don't use their own products
11:43 – The real solution to digital addiction

Links & Resources 🔗

• Get on the waitlist for Return to Real book → https://ryanlevesque.net/return-to-real-book/
• Issue 053 of The Digital Contrarian – "Between Death and Danger is the Path"
• PLOS One wilderness creativity study
• Stanford walking and innovation research

Connect & CTA 🎯
👉 Enjoyed this? Subscribe & leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

🎁 Join 100 000+ digital entrepreneurs who get Ryan's "Strategic Insights for Digital Entrepreneurs Who Think Differently" every weekend: https://ryanlevesque.net/join-the-digital-contrarian/

Credits
Host: Ryan Levesque
© 2025 RL & Associates LLC. All rights reserved.

Transcript

Live wild or die boring. The urgent case for reconnecting with the natural world, part one. I'm just getting back from Austin, Texas, where I recorded the entire first draft manuscript of my forthcoming book, Return to Real. 

And after an intense two day experience locked away in an ultra modern half underground bunker of an Airbnb, I've never been more confident that AI is not going to replace highly skilled human writers anytime soon. For pedestrian procedural writing, yeah. But for anything world class, for anything that requires nuance, for anything that requires a level of linguistic precision or emotional depth, or resonant storytelling from actual lived experience, or for anything demanding a complex multi-layer thesis, or that offers a new and novel way of looking at the world, no chance.

At least not with the technology that we have today. Look, I have been working on this book for months, literally living, eating, and breathing the topic. I've used AI tools considerably in the process of researching, writing, structuring, and editing, and I still have a lot of work to do.

So I can't imagine someone trying to use software to one shot it with AI. Now at the same time, I know that when this book is finally finished with what's gone into it, it will be the best thing that I've ever written. And something that in a tiny little way might just change the world for those who read it. 

Now, well in Austin, as part of the process for road testing some of the concepts in the book, I hosted a 12 person return to real dinner with a table full of friends, peers, and colleagues, each of whom I appreciate and respect for different reasons. Now one of the conversations at the table that struck a chord and created a bit of controversy was around a surprisingly contentious topic confronted head on inside the book, which is how the modern domesticated digital way of life has left us dumbed down and defanged. Look, our bodies were designed to be feral and free, engaged with the natural world, hands in the dirt, not trapped all day inside a box. 

After all, that's how our paleolithic hunter-gatherer hardware evolved over hundreds of thousands of years. That's what our bodies are optimized for. Yet we increasingly spend the overwhelming majority of our days disconnected and detached from nature. 

We live in a box, we work in a box, eat food from a box, delivered in a box, but we weren't ever built to be stuck inside a box. In fact, there is an increasing body of evidence that underscores the pernicious effects that the modern way of life is having on our biology and on our brain. And while I was in Austin, I experienced this myself. 

In an effort to maximize our time together in person, Charlie and I spent most of our two days together inside that ultra-modern box of an Airbnb. After all, it was over 100 degrees outside. We had Uber Eats deliver food to our doorstep in, you guessed it, a box.

After all, we had no time for anything else. And for me, for years, this modern way of life felt normal. But after living a very different way of life over the last few years on a farm immersed in nature, all while still running a business, by the way, it's something that you can't unsee or unfeel. 

In fact, on this trip, I was reminded why I felt the calling and craving for the wild and free in the first place, because it turns out our biology desperately desires it. But most of us have suppressed that desire. We've buried it. 

We've put it in a box. Rewild your life. Rewire your brain.

The phrase, live wild or die boring is printed on the inside of a t-shirt that was gifted to me by Mike Berczyk. For 20 years, Mike has taken small groups on outdoor adventures around the world, like the rite of passage trip to the Grand Canyon that I wrote about in issue number 53 of the Digital Contrarian, between death and danger is the path. By the way, Mike and I are exploring a possible collaboration on one or more return to real outdoor adventures, possibly in 2026, for other entrepreneurs who are also feeling the pull. 

If you have potential interest in this sort of thing, shoot me an email. I'm taking an early temperature check on potential dates and timing. Now, most of us have some vague notion that time immersed in nature is good for us, right? But most of us don't realize how essential it actually is. 

For example, according to a Harvard study, tracking over 100,000 individuals, people living in concrete, heavy, low green environments were 12% more likely to die early than those surrounded by nature. And in a comprehensive Danish study, children raised with limited access to daily nature will get this 55% more likely to suffer from depression, substance abuse and other psychiatric disorders later in life. In other words, taking us out of nature is literally making us sick and depressed. 

And at the same time, returning to nature has a remarkable healing effect. In fact, the Japanese practice of forest bathing, walking slowly in a forest, unplugged, mindfully engaging all five senses has been demonstrated to lower cortisol, reduce your blood pressure, boost immune function, and even elevate anti-cancer proteins after just a few days in the woods. But one of the most overlooked benefits of nature is the strategic advantage it gives us in terms of how much it improves our creativity and problem-solving capabilities. 

Which brings us to why your next big breakthrough is more likely to come from a stroll in the woods than a scroll of the screen. Velcro, the wetsuit, the bullet train, the wind turbine, sonar, radar, self-cleaning glass, what do they all have in common? Well, each of these world-changing inventions was born in the wild. Velcro was inspired by burdock burrs clinging to the fur of inventor George Demestrel's dog back in 1940.

The bullet train design in Japan is based on the Kingfisher's streamlined beak. Wind turbine blades have bumpy tubercles like those of a humpback whale fin because they've been found to counter-intuitively increase lift and reduce drag by as much as 30%. Wetsuits like Speedo's fat skin suits have dermal denticles, which are tiny little ribbed scales based on shark skin. 

They're so effective that they've been banned from Olympic competition. Sonar and radar, of course, come from studying dolphins and bats. And it's the lotus leaf microstructure and its ability to repel water and dirt that gives us super hydrophobic surfaces used on things like self-cleaning windows, fabrics, and most importantly, solar panels. 

And in my own life, it wasn't until I stumbled upon the yellow goldenrod and purple aster on our farm that Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about in Braiding Sweetgrass as an example of competitors in nature who actually collaborate that I was inspired to reach out to arguably my biggest competitor in business, Daniel Priestley, who's the co-founder of ScoreApp, and propose a collaboration. By the way, it ended up leading to the acquisition of my software company and insight that was ultimately worth millions. Now, I don't know that I would have reached out to Daniel Ward, not for that flash of inspiration, because the idea literally came to me from being immersed in the natural world. 

In fact, new and novel insights might just be nature's greatest strategic edge. And there's growing evidence that backs this up. Hiking in nature, 50% boost in creativity and problem solving. 

In a PLOS One study, researchers from the University of Utah and University of Kansas split 56 participants across a wilderness trip. Those who took a four-day backpacking trip without digital devices, get this, scored a 6.08 out of 10 on a creativity problem solving test versus 4.14 before the trip. This represented a 50% improvement in creative output after unplugging and connecting with the natural world. 

Or how about this? There's a Stanford walking study where nature walks elevate innovation by 60%. A Stanford University study found that participants walking outdoors, especially through natural settings, experience up to a 60% uptick in creative thinking compared to those walking indoors. And benefits included things like better problem solving in divergent thinking, with effects lingering for hours after the walk.

So in the areas of innovation, inspiration, creativity, and problem solving, biological wisdom might be more powerful than artificial intelligence. But this naturally poses a challenge because the pull of the screen is squeezing the natural world out of our lives. If you don't intentionally make space for the natural world in your life in a meaningful way, it will be the thing that gets squeezed out. 

Because the digital technology that dominates our daily life is a relentless machine with an insatiable appetite. And it won't stop calling for your attention until every second of your existence is consumed and monetized. And yet, the Silicon Valley founders behind this technology often keep their children, and in many cases, themselves, away from the very screens and their homes free from the very technology that they've created. 

For example, Pavel Durov, the tech founder of the mobile phone messaging platform Telegram, which has over 1 billion, that's with a B, monthly users, has confessed to, get this, not using a phone himself in his everyday life. In fact, in a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, he put it bluntly, I find it extremely distracting and potentially harmful. What the heck? Or how about this? Mark Zuckerberg refuses to post photos of his kids on Facebook without first hiding their faces. 

He won't even put his kids faces on the literal book of faces that he himself created. This is akin to the tobacco company executives of the 1950s and their mad men enablers of the 1960s, knowingly peddling poison while refusing to touch the stuff themselves. I guess the phrase never get high on your own supply now apparently applies to the technocratic elite as well. 

Now we know in our heart that time and nature fuels the soul, yet instead of force-bathing, we most often return to the sanctuary of our screens to cope with the complexity of life. Non-stop streaming videos, endless social news feeds, it's an addiction of epic proportions. But as Johan Hari, New York Times best-selling author of Chasing the Scream and Lost Connections in his famous TED talk, Everything You Think You Know About Addiction Is Wrong, which has been viewed by over 62 million people, summarizes, the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. 

The opposite of addiction is connection. So if that's the case, perhaps what we've lost is our connection to the natural world. And perhaps that's precisely what we need to regain.

Because it may not just be our health that depends on it. It may be the future of humanity. We'll continue this conversation in part two of this discussion. 

So stay tuned. I'll leave you with that for today. We'll pick up this conversation from where we left off in an upcoming episode.

But in the meantime, have a great rest of your day. Remember to hug the ones that you love. And until next week, I wish you all my best.