Daniel Vitalis

I’m in love with the idea of human wildness –– as in free, sovereign, and undomesticated! My passion resides at the intersection of human-zoology, personal development, and lifestyle design. In other words, I’m obsessed with what’s most natural for our species, and keenly focused on how to reinvigorate our wild nature, all while masterfully living modern lives. You could think of it as “best practices for your inner ape” meets “strategies for self-actualization”.

Daniel Vitalis is the host of the ReWild Yourself Podcast, and the founder of SurThrival, a premier line of food-based nutritional supplements. He is a writer, public speaker, entrepreneur, and lifestyle pioneer in the sphere of human health, personal development, and strategic living. He’s especially interested in the meeting place of ancestral health and lifestyle design. 

He is best known for relentlessly flouting taboo — and exposing the forces of domestication wherever they lurk — in his lucid and provocative interviews, essays, videos, and dynamic on-stage presentations.

Daniel can be seen in the hit documentary film “Hungry For Change”, and has been featured in The Huffington Post, RT, Marie Claire magazine, as well as countless other interviews and media appearances.

Show highlights:

-300,000 years of homo sapiens existence, plus millions of years of hominoids preceding that.  The story is still unfolding.  But we have now alienated ourselves from the natural world.

-Technology is just saving problems we created with our technology, plus creating new harms.

-Tower of Babel – illustrative of man’s desire to become gods, to be the creators.  Now we want to create our own life forms.

-We say something’s unsustainable but we keep on doing it.  No one wants to look at the answer to the problem.

-Daniel started out looking for the right diet.  Saw that farming is what destroys civilizations because it destroys the land base.   Sees hunting/gathering as the healthiest lifestyle, and it can be done today with positive health outcomes.

-Having adventures in the service of obtaining food, while getting movement, fresh air, sunlight, forest bathing, exposure to microbiota, and social interaction.

-Differences in personality between foragers, hunters, and mushroom gatherers.  Get a more comprehensive view of being on the planet with a balance of those activities.  We’ve been hunting 3.5 million years.  Seeing mortality on a regular basis grounds you, gives awareness of the fragility of organisms.

-All coffee is imported.  Local food ends where coffee begins.  Yaupon is the only native North American plant that contains caffeine.  When Ceylon Tea Company wanted to imported tea from China, they created a demand for tea by smearing yaupon.

-Coffee is grown in fragile ecosystems and is responsible for deforestation and pollution of waterways.  Yaupon is in the Ilex genus and a sister to yerba mate and guayusa.  We can switch coffee consumption to a coffee substitute that grows in the US.  An indigenous caffeine source that is ecologically sustainable.

Hour 2

-Surthrival’s yaupon is all wild harvested from Texas and wildcrafted.   3 roasts of yaupon – green, medium, dark.  Roasting brings out flavor and reduces caffeine.  Yaupon is high in theobromine, gives a gentler buzz.  Lower in bitter tannins.  More flavor, less bitter.  Doesn’t tax the adrenals.  Blend yaupon with bone broth, colostrum, and ginger for a full-bodied beverage.  For the most stimulation, get green.  For the most flavor, get dark.  Or mix different roasts together.  Can make in a French press.

-Everything is about showing off individual gains now, at the expense of the community.  In tribal communities, the community is first – a result of a shared upbringing, reciprocal economy, shared harvest, shared fate.  Difference in attitude of a group when keeping your own harvest vs. sharing a harvest.

-Reciprocal gift economy is the historical basis of our exchange.  Creates an interconnected web of strength.

-What is the biological underpinning of gift giving?  Something we are evolved to do, it feels right.

-Lisa in Cape Cod asks if there is a limit to the amount of shellfish one can safely consume?  If clams are from a relatively clean area, and harvested at a safe time with no algae blooms, is no limit.  Clams are an ancestral food and low in accumulated biotoxins.

-Aquatic Ape Theory.  Why do we have all these adaptations to the sea if we grew up on the savannah?  Humans have many physical differences from apes that can be explained by an aquatic origin.

-We are omnivores;  vegan is not a good long-term option.  Which is more moral?  Eating an animal that is free, wild in nature, lives on wild food, vulnerable to predators every day vs. a farm raised animal.

-Where to live?  Difference between ecological vs. ego knowledge.  Space vs. place.

-Benefits and disadvantages of living in colder climates.

-Food connects you to a place.  Impact of lack of food diversity.

People care about their environment when they get food from that place.

-Sal wonders about foods for conserving jing, male essence, and one’s semen.  Eat pine pollen, oysters.  Build polarity with your partner, regulate your  sex life.  Build up what you have, don’t conserve.  Being a man is about brimming with energy, taking big risks, and doing for the community.  Try hunting.

Daniel Vitalis, re wilding, hunting and gathering, July 18, 2017 ONE

Daniel Vitalis, re wilding, hunting and gathering, July 18, 2017 TWO