Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson

Rupert Isaacson: Thanks for joining us.

Welcome to Live Free, Ride Free.

I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson, New
York Times bestselling author of

The Horseboy and The Long Ride Home.

Before I jump in with today's guest, I
want to say a huge thank you to you, our

audience, for helping to make this happen.

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So now let's jump in.

Okay.

I realize that I have not really
given a good recounting of why this

live free, ride free idea came about
and what my own journey was here.

So, I'm just gonna take an opportunity
in between my fascinating guests

to give you guys an bit of an
update on what brought me here.

What's my own trajectory
of self-actualization.

So the idea came for this web this
website, this this podcast from

a trip to Yellowstone National
Park in 2015, no, 14 when my.

Son Ian was still inside Iliana's abdomen,
but we were taking Rowan, my oldest son,

who many of you know from the horse boy on
this trip to see wolves in Yellowstone as

part of a project that he had going at the
time called End Dangerous, about animals

that are both endangered and dangerous.

And we wanted to look at the
reintroduction of wolves in

Yellowstone, amazing trip.

And we went in March and
it was all snowed up.

So you can imagine how iconic it was
to see the wolves against the snow and

to share this with one child born and
really coming into the light because

Rowan was, you know, coming out of
those years of, severe autism and

really into this total engagement with
the world and another child unborn and

all of that adventure going through
his mother, Hmm, excuse me, into him.

And it was in the course of walking
a trail, I think we were actually

snowshoeing Eliana being very pregnant
at the time where we came up with

this idea of talking to people who
had lived self-actualize lives.

Because we had just run into a
guy called Rick McIntyre, who

many of you may know, wrote.

Books about bestselling books, about
the Wolfly introductions in Yellowstone.

And we had just met him and interviewed
him sort of there on the side of the road.

And I was thinking, gosh, this
is a guy who's really lived a

self-actualize life, and by the way,
he's gonna be a guest on this show.

And I thought, yeah, but there's so many
people out there doing this, and also

so many people out there just wondering
how to live through their dreams and

manifest the reality that they want.

So that's where the idea
for this podcast came.

And it took a few years for it to
come to fruition, but now here it is.

And of course we're talking to all
these incredible people who do all these

incredible things, some of whom are
well known and some of whom are not.

But my story.

Alright, so that's where
the idea came, but.

My own story is this.

I'll just sort of go through
the biography really.

I was born in London in 1967 to
two parents from Southern Africa.

My father's from Zimbabwe
was then Rhodesia.

My mother is South African.

And it was an interesting family
because it was one that sat really

at the crossroads of many cultures.

On my dad's side, we were Ashkenazi
Jews originally from Lithuania,

who had immigrated to Africa.

On one side almost by, by mistake.

It goes the legend.

And on the other side by design.

On my, I'll return to that story
in a minute 'cause it's funny.

On my mother's side, they'd been
out there since I think the late

18th, very early 19th century.

Part English part,
Scottish part Dutch ants.

And in the course of the few hundred
years of living there, the family of

course spread out through society.

And we were kind of represented out
there in southern Africa at kind of every

level from really, really poor there was
a sort of poor white class right up to

sort of almost a blue blood class there.

And we also had a whole side of the
family that, well still today is not

white, is, is of mixed race, which
in South Africa they call colored.

And that's still an official designation.

That's not necessarily a racist term.

People refer to themselves that way.

And so we had family that were kind of.

The evil architects of apartheid.

We had family who were in jail because
they were fighting against apartheid.

We had family who were not white,
we had family who were Jewish, we

had family that were afri speaking.

We had family that were
only English speaking.

And I grew up in this household in
North London where my parents had

moved in the sixties with this kind
of constant procession of all these

different characters coming through the
house and afri cans often being spoken

in the house and everything on the
walls, all the furniture and all the,

the artifacts and objects around those
all being kind of Southern African.

So it's a weird bubble of this kind
of culture within North London.

And there was a certain amount of
back and forth to Africa as well.

So.

I grew up very much seeing these,
as I said, crossroads of cultures.

And I was connected to them all.

I was part of them all, but I wasn't
fully any one of those things.

And at a very young
age that didn't matter.

When I hit my teens, I felt a
great sense of needing to belong

and wishing that I could belong
and not belonging really anywhere.

And it was, took me a while to see
that that actually was a place of

power that, that crossroads of cultures
allows you to take from each one what

is good, leave alone, what is not good.

And it means that while it's true,
you don't quite belong anywhere,

you also sort of belong everywhere.

And if you think of yourself as
a, as a, you know, citizen of the

planet, that's actually a very real
position to be in rather than to

feel what I'm rooted in one culture.

But I was lucky enough to be
connected to many different cultures.

Okay, so that was the
Southern African side.

Then I also had this
great love for horses.

It was kind of born into me and
there'd been lots of cavalry officers

in the past, in the family, and
sometimes it skips a generation.

A lot of you who are horsey
listeners will know this, so my

parents are not horsey at all.

But I had a great aunt who, my mother's
aunt, south African, again, who had

married into an English horsey family up
in a place called Leicestershire, which is

about an hour and a half north of London.

And, she had re old retired horses.

And we used to go up and spend
weekends frequently at that farm.

And I was just always to be found from
the age of about three, just sitting

in the field talking to the horses.

And my parents were very, very urban, so
they were not sympathetic to the idea that

maybe I would want to ride, but my great
aunt said that, boy, he's gonna ride.

And my parents are like, no,
no, no, no, no, we're not gonna.

And they're like, no, he will.

You'll see.

So in the event she was right.

But before we get to that there was
another aspect of my childhood, which

I think has helped to fuel this whole
adventure, which is that I had this deep,

deep, deep craving and longing for nature.

My parents lived and still live in
an area of London that is incredibly.

Urban, it's right in the middle.

It's called Islington.

It's quite a handsome area, but it's
by no means, you know, connected to

nature as we would like to think of it.

Ideally, you know, open fields forest, no.

There's actually, oddly enough,
quite a lot of wildlife in it,

urban foxes, that sort of thing.

But it's very built up and where I was
sent to school was right in the middle

of the financial district of London.

So concrete, concrete, and more concrete.

So I had this burning desire
to get out, to get into nature,

to get on horseback and.

At the same time I was drafted
into a choir, a singing choir.

And the school that I went to,
which is called, still exists

today, the City of London School.

It's an ancient school that was
founded 600 years ago or so.

It provides the boys for both the Chapel
Royal, which is the King's Chapel,

and the Temple, which is where the
Knight's Temple were based in London.

It's the second oldest building in London.

And it's steeped in law.

The Magna Carter sits there, the tombs
of the old Knights Temple, the Marshall

family that were there, you know, with the
effigies of the Knights on top of them.

You think it sounds kind of
Hogwarts ish, but it wasn't.

It was just.

All rather unpleasant and nasty
and actually quite violent.

If you've read the Lord of the Flies
where the boys in that story that from

a choir and they get stranded on a
desert island and, you know, revert

to a not very nice way of treating
each other, it was a bit like that.

And the reason was there wasn't a
lot of really good adult supervision.

So between the school itself, which was in
the heart of the sort of brutal financial

district in terms of the aesthetics, and
then the school itself was quite brutal

because we were the last generation of
boys to be regularly beaten at school.

And then the choir, which although
on the face of it was all very,

very clean cut and lovely, there was
lots of nasty violence behind the,

the scenes and this great longing
to get out and get into nature.

I had a nervous breakdown.

And in this nervous breakdown, I
was about, I was guess I was 11.

I couldn't get outta bed for about, ooh,
three months or more, six months maybe.

And I was deeply upset and sort of unable
to overwhelmed, unable to, to function.

And what got me out of bed was horses.

At that point my parents really
listened to me and I said, look,

I think this would help me.

So that's how I ended up
getting riding lessons.

And it was true.

It brought me out of bed and into
the light and out into nature.

And it was literally as if
a switch had been flicked.

I'd had all sorts of, you know, medical
examinations and so on, and no one

could find the cause of, you know, why
I had no energy and so on and so on.

But as soon as horses were
brought into the picture, boom,

there I was writer's reign.

So that began my equestrian life, life

now I wanted a horse.

And that of course presented its
own set of issues and challenges.

So the deal I made with my folks was
that if I could raise the money, we could

get one and keep it at my aunt's farm,
even though that was a couple of hours

north of London and I would just go up
there every weekend and all holidays.

Just live that life and be
there and be useful on the farm.

Because by then I was getting a
bit bigger, a bit stronger, you

know, useful for shoveling poo
and doing all the myriad, endless

chores that I needed around a farm.

So, I got a gig self, a
sort of self-created gig.

So my sort of be beginning
of entrepreneurship really.

I used to go it occurred to me that
if I were to empty all the crap that

was in our neighbor's garages that
they always wanted to get rid of, but

never could, and took it up to a local
flea market in North London at a place

called Swiss Cottage, which doesn't
exist anymore than a flea market there.

It's all become too gentrified now.

But back then in the late seventies,
early eighties, it did, and

I could sell at the weekends.

All this old

kind of rubbish really at very, very
cheap prices that eventually I could

make enough money to buy a horse.

So for two years, every weekend
I sat in my own market stall aged

between 12 and 14, and I flogged as
much gear as I could get out of all

the garages in the neighborhood.

And I did actually make enough
money from this to buy a horse.

And the horse that I bought
was a horse off the racetrack.

That's how you get cheap horses.

He was cheap and there
was a reason he was cheap.

He was, he was, oh God,
not very manageable.

And he scared the bejesus out of me, and
I had to learn to ride well quite quickly.

I had been taking lessons of course,
for a couple of years at this point,

but this was a whole other level.

And luckily for me, there was someone
who could mentor me who was living on

the farm and she was a radiographer.

Who was also horsey who exchanged the, she
was called Trudy and she exchanged living

in the farm cottage and doing the horses
and other work through the week before

and after work in return for free rent.

And then I, at the weekend, the
deal was, would take over the

chores when I came up, which I did.

And she was quite knowledgeable and
she showed me how to retrain and

make manageable this extremely hot,
unmanageable horse who actually taught me

so much that that was what set me on my
professional track with horses because if

you can learn to manage a horse like this.

We do all kinds of crazy stuff but was
also brilliantly talented in many ways.

If you could learn to handle a horse
like this in the competition arena and

in, out in the hunt field, it's a big
fox hunting area then you could kind

of train any horse, any other horse
after this would be kind of easy.

So he really set me on my
professional path, even though

I didn't know it at the time.

So that was sort of my boyhood of having
these dreams and thinking how do I

possibly manifest my way out of being
in the middle of the city, not having

access to nature, wishing that I could
ride and be with horses wishing myself

into a, a more sensory, not just sensory
friendly, but let's say sensory possible

environment and by hook and by crook.

Quite early in my life I manifested this.

And when I'm thinking back, remember
where we started with my African

family constantly coming through.

I would hear all these different
perspectives on life and I would see

how the people who were fighting against
apartheid and who were the sort of

freedom fighters within the family
were consistently gaining ground.

They were always further ahead each time
one met them and the people who were

within the family who were more resistant
to that were always losing ground.

And I realized quite
early, oh, I see nature.

The world, the universe
wants harmony injustice.

It doesn't last.

It can go on for quite a long
time, but always the world is

gonna return to harmony if it
can harmony as the natural state.

And somehow this really came into me,
I think, through the constant arguments

and s that all these different sides
of the family constantly brought.

'cause a lot of my non-white family
too, by the way, they couldn't go to

university in and the good universities
in South Africa 'cause of apartheid.

So they would come to the UK and do
that, and of course they would stay with

us in our house in London and so on.

So I really did get all
these different perspectives.

Okay.

And, and so that people could
create their own realities if

they wanted to into the bargain.

There was also always this spiritual
side where the earliest memories that

I've got are of walking in the garden.

I think I must have been.

Between three and five, somewhere
there, maybe even younger, maybe.

No, it's hard.

It's hard to to tell.

But I'm very, very young and it's a
sunlit garden and I'm up early on a summer

morning and none of the adults are awake.

So I'm walking in the garden and
there are bees buzzing, there's

flowers growing outta the brick wall.

There's sun on the brick wall.

And somehow I can hear God talking
through those bees and those flowers.

And the message is very reassuring.

The message is you are loved.

Every, everyone is love.

Everything is love.

And I had little reminders of this
all the way through my boyhood.

I remember being in the school chapel.

Even though school was not nice, as I
had talked about, there was this sign on

the on, on the wall of, of the chapel,
as there often is in these things,

said, God is love and love is God.

And I remember having this deep
resonant relationship with just that

little text on the wall of that chapel.

This is absolute truth.

Yes, this is truth.

God is love, and love is God.

And somehow even in the, the darkest time
of that breakdown period, I never felt

abandoned by God or by the universal love.

It felt more like a descent into the
underworld, like a journey into the

underworld that needed to be made in
order to come out, into the light,

into another place, a better place.

And then I also frequently
would have this recurring dream.

Of being in a place where there was
threat and danger, even a sense of being

hunted and being able to manifest a
doorway, a portal that took me immediate

and sometimes me and people I loved
immediately out and away and into

this other dimension in which was pure
safety, pure love, and this feeling

of great relief and joy and surprise,
but also not surprise, this feeling

of, of, well, like a return home.

And, and this, this dream
came up constantly through

my, through my childhood.

So all of these elements
sort of came parallel.

And I remember too when I was about
seven on a trip back to Africa, seeing

on my grandfather's farm, my grandfather
was not particularly nice, man.

He was one of the.

People on the reactionary
end of the family.

But there were lots and lots of people
working on his farm and big cattle farm in

the compound where all the workers lived.

There was a witch doctor at work,
what they called an in ganga.

And I remember seeing a healing
happen at about seven years old.

A big ritual and the drums going all
night and the people dancing all night

and the ang hands on the sick one.

And again, having this feeling of, oh,
I see there are more ways to healing.

There are more ways to
love than we might think.

And even though all the grownups
were just like, oh, that's just

sort of superstition, that's
just what these people do.

I could see that people
were getting better.

Getting sick and getting
better through this.

And it helped me to think, yes,
you can look for alternatives

within the spirit world.

In fact, you should always look
for alternatives within the spirit

world as much as you look for
anything within the material world.

So all of these things sort of came
together very much when I was a boy.

And then a lot of these family
stories too from previous generations.

This idea of ancestry and ancestors.

So I, I had said that there was a
funny story that on my father's side,

the people going to Africa one of
them had ended up there by mistake.

It, the, the family law was that my
great uncle Harry Shapiro, Herschel

Shapiro had actually run away from
his wife Minnie in, lithuania and had

gotten on a boat to he wanted to go
to the USA but it turned out he got

on the wrong boat and he ended up on a
boat to Port Elizabeth in South Africa.

So he kind of went, oh, well, and
learned English on the way down.

And when he arrived there, he realized
that there was, what he'd heard, I

suppose, on the voyage about all the
findings of the gold fields and the

diamond mines, which were all happening
around that time in the late 19th century.

So he was thinking, well, maybe I
could get up there and make my fortune.

But as he arrived in Africa, the poor
war broke out and he found himself

drafted into the English army in Port
Elizabeth, and he joined the Johannesburg

mounted rifles, even though it was
a thousand miles from Johannesburg.

And there was, you know, no horses.

And he tramped up and down.

South Africa for two or
three years without seeing a

shot fired, luckily for him.

And then ended up in Johannesburg
where the mines were.

But of course, you know, they'd
already already been taken over

by big, you know, corporations.

So he ended up getting a job in the
kitchens as a butcher and his wife managed

to track him down and find him there.

So he was making a bit of money
eventually by buying and selling

cattle as part of the butchery thing.

And then he ran away again up to the up
to the newly formed at that point colony

of Rhodesia, what is now Zimbabwe, and
began to deal in cattle up there in this

sort of slightly wild west atmosphere.

Then his wife mini tracked him down
again and he then capitulated and

they stayed to together and he.

Had a daughter, Frida, who was my
grandmother my grandfather Robbie, who

married her, his parents had come out
to Africa from also from Lithuania.

And their name was Schmid Ovitz.

And they changed their name when they
got to German, Southwest Africa, what

is now Namibia, the young colony of
German, Southwest Africa at that point.

'cause they were German speaking.

And they hoped to integrate more
into the German society there.

So they changed their name to Isaacson.

The logic there, I don't see, I mean, fa
berg or something, but Isaacson is like,

he go from one Jewish thing to another
Jewish thing, and of course they found

that it was a bit too antisemitic there.

And so my grandfather, Robbie, in
the 1920s went across to Rhodesia

and joined the company, the cattle
auctioneering company that my great

uncle Harry had by then founded, sorry,
great Greatuncle and married Frida.

And eventually took over that
company and that was his life.

Cattle ranching and so on.

My, on my mother's side the family
stories were very, very strong.

So on the Scottish side,
we had cousins who had.

Ancestor cousins who had fought
at the Battle of Aladdin, if any

of you know your Scottish history,
we've been watching Outlander.

That was the big battle in which
the British finally smashed up the

Scottish clans because they just
couldn't deal with any more civil

wars happening on British soil.

They were trying to build the empire and
they're like, okay, we've had enough.

Now, you know, there've been
plenty of these uprisings.

We're gonna just really smack 'em.

And they did.

And they smashed the clans at Aladin.

And then there was something called
the Highland Clearances where they

basically put them all on boats and
sent them to either two the Americas

or Australia, which is why we have,
you know, a lot of Scot's influence

in the, in Appalachia and, you know,
Celtic influence in music there.

Also Irish settlers and of
course out in Australia as well.

And in that battle our family with a
Clark family, who were part of Clan

McPherson, who of course fought on the
wrong side, fought on the Scottish side.

And McPherson himself didn't
do so well after that.

But we had another cousin on the
English side at the same time called

Judge Jeffries, who hanged all of
our cousins on the Scottish side.

So again, it's this sort of weird
dichotomy within the family ancestral

line of goodies and baddies and
really knowing these stories.

And then that was the Scottish
line on the English line.

There were four brothers who went out from
a village called Luxton, which is, you can

see it on a sign off the M five if you're
driving in southwest England in Somerset.

The Luxton brothers and L-O-X-T-O-N
four brothers went out from the

village of Luxton, same name,
and went to make their fortunes.

And this was during this depression,
which happened in England after

the Napoleonic Wars where the
old wartime economy had crashed.

And, you know, things were not
looking so good for a lot of people.

So out they went, three, went to South
Africa, one went to Australia, and there

is to this day a town of Luxton in South
Africa and a town of Luxton in Australia.

So they were busy guys.

They got involved in things and, you know,
became adventurous and business people.

And one of them, another great,
great uncle Henry Lockton

did an interesting thing.

He went north of the Orange River, which
at that time was the northern boundary

between like civilized land and the great.

African hinterland of, you
know, danger and mystery beyond.

And at the time there was something
happening called the Umani.

And the Umani, some people call it Dani,
was the explosion of the Zulu Empire in

which the Zulus kind of went on a massive,
you know, killing spree across Southern

Africa, subjugating all the other tribes.

They could find a bit like, you know,
the Huns and the Mongols when they

exploded out very, very war-like people.

Very, very organized.

And the British wanted to keep the
Zulus and the sort of all these tribes

who are being displaced outta the
British zone, south of the Orange River.

So there were a bunch of
escaped slaves of mixed race.

They were called the carass, the
bastard, literally meaning bastards.

The qua and some other related groups
who were of mixed race and they, they

had run away from the British and Dutch
Cape Colony and created their own sort

of free mount mounted on horseback, but
sort of iCal raiding cultures along the

North Bank of the Orange, orange River.

And the British made a deal with them
and said, look, you guys can operate

up here and you can live on these
fertile islands in the Orange River

'cause it's desert on either side.

And we'll kind of leave you alone,
provided you kind of act as a buffer

zone, like a military buffer zone
between the farming areas south

of that and the great beyond.

And that deal was struck.

These groups, Greek was
busted, runners were organized.

Militarily under the leadership
of what we call caps, literally

captains AFRI speaking, but not white.

And my great-great uncle Henry fell in
love with the daughter of one of these

bastard captains, a woman called Anna Boy.

And he stayed up there
and had children with her.

And of course that meant he
was, and that side of the family

was then forever cut off this.

Remember this is 150 years ago from the
white side of the family further south.

But what he did was quite clever.

He managed to get a deal brokered.

Between the Cape government, basically
directly with Queen Victoria through

official channels for his family to
retain that land along those islands

in the Orange River in perpetuity.

And to this day, the Luxton family
still farm cattle and wine in that

area and are non-white to this day.

And under apartheid they resist it.

Managed to resist every, every attempt
to move them because under apartheid,

all the good areas were taken for
whites and all the not so good areas.

That's where the non-whites
were shunted into.

And, they managed to hold onto it
because of this old ratified deed.

And in fact, the apartheid government
even tried to get my family there to

reclassify themselves as white so that
they would, that the government wouldn't

lose face by letting them stay there.

But my family on that side
said, no, no, we are colored

and we're gonna stay colored.

We're not gonna be white.

We're not white.

And they managed to hold on and
survive just through like sheer grit.

Why is all this important?

Because all this informs
the next point in my life.

So, I school, I take a year off.

I travel, I work I spend a lot of time
in the states and I get into training

horses in the states in my year off.

I go to university in York and
England and I study history.

And I started with archeology
and I then I go to history.

And while I'm at university, I pay my
way by riding horses on movie sets.

I, we have a, a family friend who's
a stunt man and he managed to get me

a union card and I used to manage to
make enough money to pay my rent and

travel by working on these movie sets.

And if any of you have seen
the film, Willow that you'll

see me quite a lot in that one.

Hanging out in various backgrounds of
battle scenes riding horses around, but

many films from the mid late eighties
and TV stuff with horseback horses.

Alright.

And I'm in Africa quite a
lot through each summer.

Just traveling, just traveling,
hitchhiking around, experiencing

it while I'm down there.

Aged 19.

'cause I went to university quite young.

I I, I finished school at 17, went
up to university at 18, I'm 19 and

I'm in one of my summer travels.

I'm in Africa and I hitchhiked
from Zimbabwe across into Botswana.

I got cousins in Botswana and my
cousin Frank meets me at the sort

of road head where I've come in.

And at that time, the, it was
before the big diamond thing

really took off in Botswana.

So it was still very, very,
very, very remote and poor.

And just donkey carts and,
you know, people really.

Living at survival level and
he was pioneering out there.

My cousin, Frank Taylor, something
called Agroforestry, which is now

a thing, but no one had heard of
it then Dry Land Agroforestry.

And he was finding groups of
bushman hunter gatherers who'd

been displaced usually by more
aggressive cattle owning tribes.

And all the game had been shot out
and all the wild foods had been,

you know, take eaten by cattle.

And these people were destitute and he
got into put up fences and then inside

those fences, plant the wild foods
that normally they would've gathered.

And he started finding a market for these.

If you've ever seen the product
Devil's Claw, which people use for

arthritis a lot, my cousin Frank
Taylor was the first person to get

that onto the international market.

And so he's a very, very Christian man.

And quite, quite dour, quite scary,
big tall, lean rangey, pissing

blue eyes, sort of, you know, dude.

And when he picked me up and he
was driving me out to his place on

that trip, he said, where in your
spiritual journey are you Rupert?

And it was the first time
anyone had asked me that.

And what was weird is I'd had a, a
dream just not so long before that

in, in the dream I'd met the devil.

And the devil was this man playing a
violin, standing on a hillside and had

sort of let me know that there were
choices to be made and in the world.

And I'd said.

Okay, well, I dunno where I am in my
spiritual journey, Frank, but if it's

any use, I, I had this dream, the,
you know, not so long ago and he said,

ah, yes, ah, yes you are, you're going
to be tested sort of thing, you know?

And when, if you get tested and you
want to go towards the light, you can

always expect resistance from the dark.

And this is normal and, you know,
but just pay attention to this.

And so I thought, well
that's interesting, isn't it?

You know, no one I know back in
England, you know, ever talks like that.

And okay, didn't think much more of it.

Go back to university graduate.

And then afterwards I'm like,
well, what do I want to do?

I thought, well, what I
really wanna do is write.

I always loved stories,
always loved storytelling.

I guess that's something I left out
was I'd always been an avid reader and

I'd started experimenting with writing
and storytelling in my mid-teens.

And.

I through university, put out a,
wrote a, a group of short stories and

found, and they never got published,
but I found an agent in London who

was actually interested in them.

And he said, look, you know, if
you were to take a bit more of a

perfectionist approach and actually
edit these things properly, you know,

they're kind of publishable, so you
know, you should think about this.

So I thought, well, maybe
I, I'd like to write.

And all my friends at that point were
going off into corporate jobs many

of them in banking and immediately
starting to make a lot of money.

I didn't do that.

I, I went out to North America again
to horse train and to see if I could

begin to establish myself as a writer.

And I was also in love.

I was deeply in love with a girl from
Canada who, we'd had an idyllic time

for one year, and then through various
events had broken up and she dumped

and well, she dumped me once and
then we got 'em back together again.

And then I went out to North
America largely to follow her,

and it was all completely crazy.

I had no work and work permit, no nothing.

And I, but I had, you know,
connections in the horse world.

So I went out, started training
horses in Virginia and then ended

up going up to Toronto where she
was hoping that she would sort of

take me back and that somehow I'd
sort of become a writer in this.

And it was winter and she said,
no, actually I'm dumping you.

And so I'm like, oh, okay.

Well I guess I, I have a choice.

I can either go back to England or
I can see I can take the adventure.

And I had this gut feeling.

Rupert take the adventure.

You should take the adventure.

No.

No matter how difficult it is.

As you know, if you followed any of
my work, I'm an autism dad and we have

a whole career before this podcast in
helping people with neurodivergence,

either who are professionals in the field.

Are you a therapist?

Are you a caregiver?

Are you a parent?

Or are you somebody with neurodivergence?

When my son, Rowan, was
diagnosed with autism in 2004,

I really didn't know what to do.

So I reached out for mentorship, and
I found it through an amazing adult

autistic woman who's very famous, Dr.

Temple Grandin.

And she told me what to do.

And it's been working so
amazingly for the last 20 years.

That not only is my son basically
independent, but we've helped

countless, countless thousands
of others reach the same goal.

Working in schools, working at
home, working in therapy settings.

If you would like to learn this
cutting edge, neuroscience backed

approach, it's called Movement Method.

You can learn it online, you
can learn it very, very simply.

It's almost laughably simple.

The important thing is to begin.

Let yourself be mentored as I was by Dr.

Grandin and see what results can follow.

Go to this website, newtrailslearning.

com Sign up as a gold member.

Take the online movement method course.

It's in 40 countries.

Let us know how it goes for you.

We really want to know.

We really want to help people like
me, people like you, out there

live their best life, to live
free, ride free, see what happens.

So I did and I survived by snow
shoveling and working on construction

sites and finding whatever
under the table work I could.

And I managed to find shelter to live
in an old museum, a private museum

where the guy who ran it let me sleep
under a glass case full of sea turtle

skulls on a bed roll for a while.

And I managed to kind of survive
my way through that winter.

And then at the same time I began to
write and place my first published

articles in magazines, which I'd
sent, sent off to editors and.

Managed to get them published.

Stuff about horses, stuff about travel,
stuff, about experiences in Africa.

And I thought, wow, actually,
I guess I could do this.

So I then moved up to, from Toronto
up to Montreal and managed to

find a gig as a window cleaner.

And that actually paid not so bad
money and we were living in abandoned

buildings and squatting in abandoned
warehouses so we could survive by then.

Had a group of friends.

We were all doing this
together since the nineties.

Lots of rock and roll, lots of
partying, lots of sex, drugs,

and rock and roll and getting by.

I found out while I was doing this
about a story that was unfolding

in Northern Quebec where the Cree
Indians were under threat of having.

An area the size of France, of that
land, the size of Quebec alone is

the size of Western Europe, right?

An area the size of France flooded
in order to create hydropower was a

government company called Hydro Quebec
was gonna do this to sell that electricity

to New York and the New England states.

And the threat to the people
up there was existential.

It was basically that would've
been kind of the end of them.

And they were still people that
lived really traditionally hunting

caribou and moose trapping beaver
fur, trapping also trapping for

meat and living under canvas in tps.

Even in the midst of the winter and
Northern Canada, the winters, I mean,

you might think, you know, winter,
but until you've been up there, it's

just like, it's a whole other thing.

And I got wind of the story.

That the Cree Indians had actually
had a previous run in, back in

the seventies with Hydro Quebec.

And although they'd lost, they'd
been given a, a big government

settlement and they were clever.

They'd used this money partly
to send a lot of their kids away

to law school so that 'cause
they knew it would happen again.

And so that now it had happened again.

They had a whole bunch of lawyers who
were Cree and who were busy fighting this.

I said, this is a fascinating story.

And it was all over all the papers
in Canada all the time 'cause it was

a, a big like Native Canadian versus,
you know, the establishment story.

And I realized that nobody back
in the UK or Europe at all was.

Reporting on this.

But it was huge because if, if the
thing went through, it was gonna

cause the volume of water was gonna,
cause that was being shifted, it

was gonna cause the earth's crust
to shift and that was gonna release.

All these scientists were saying massive
amounts of mercury from the bedrock

that would not just poison everything
up there, but poison everything, you

know, downstream of there, including,
you know, water in New England

and the Great Lakes and all this.

So I managed to get up there to that area
and I published the story and that's an

easy thing to say, but when you are a
homeless window cleaner, to publish a

story in a big national paper is not easy.

What happened was I called a big
national newspaper in the uk, the

independent on site, the Sunday
Independent, and I said, look.

If you don't know me, I'd like to get
up there and do this story for you.

And they said, we do indeed not know you.

But it is an interesting story if you can
bring something back that's publishable.

Let's see.

So I had to take a punt on it,
and it's incredibly expensive

to get up into these areas.

Me and a, a friend, a
photographer friend went up.

It's not just once you're up there, you
have to get like planes into these areas.

There's, there's no roads, you
know, and snowmobiles and stuff.

Like, I don't have this money, but
I managed to contact the tribal

council and say, look, you know,
I would like to try to get this,

you know, into the British press.

I can't guarantee that I'll publish it,
but you know, would you help me have a go?

And they, they did.

And when me and my friend Ryan
arrived up there and we were living,

you know, in the winter in Montreal,
which is damn cold in all our

winter gear, and they looked at us.

They said, where's your winter gear?

And we're like, well, we're wearing it.

And they just laughed at us, took us
off, kitted us out with caribou, skin

parkers, moose skin, mittens, you
know, halfway up the arm and moose

skin boots up to the top of the thigh.

And then you get on these snowmobiles
and out you go really fast.

And the wind chill factor, it's like
even, even you've only got this much

of your skin exposed because you've
got goggles and you've got balaclava.

It's like someone takes a hot knife
and just puts it to you there.

Incredibly cold.

And we managed you know, we were allowed
to see, privileged to see this life,

this traditional life, really unchanged.

People were using snowmobiles and people
were using rifles, but people were

living off the forest, under canvas
in their tribal system and holding

to their culture and holding to the
ecology and looking after the ecology.

Not just for themselves, but for us
because they were protecting us from

all getting poisoned with Mercury.

And I managed to get a story back
to the UK and I got it published

and that was my breakthrough.

It also, let me see something about
manifestation because although

all the odds were against the
Cree winning this land claim,

they won.

They managed to persuade New York and all
of the states that were gonna buy this

hydropower to not buy it in advance and
the government shut the project down.

It was an extraordinary landmark win.

And it made me realize, oh my gosh, you
really can win against the odds like that.

Okay, so I end up back in England
because, you know, there's only

so long you can exist as an under
the table homeless window cleaner.

And by then I'd had my
first thing published.

So I went back and I began to.

Work on newspapers and magazines.

And I ended up co-founding a
very short-lived magazine about

ecology and hunting together.

It's called International Field
Sports and Conservation, or IFC.

And, but it was operational for a couple
of years and we managed to get national

distribution and I got to see what it
was like to actually run, edit, sell the

advertising, bootstrap up something that
could go like international news agents

and you know, you could buy it wherever.

And we had to do everything.

We had to write the copy, sell the
advertising, design everything up

for the printers, get it to the
printers, learn about color offset

printing, blah, blah, blah, blah, bu
raise the money from issue to issue.

And although in the end it did
fold after, but it only folded

after about two years and it.

Again, made me realize that
you can do these things.

And of course, I was at the same time
still always horse training on the side.

Right about the time that it
folded, I got a job to go and

write a guidebook to South Africa.

And at the time, that was just
when South Africa, this is 1992.

This is just when South Africa
did the changeover finally

from apartheid to Black rule.

And everyone had been boycotting traveling
there for, you know, decades and now

suddenly it was gonna open up to tourism.

So get out there and
write the first guidebook.

So I, so I did for a guidebook company
called Kagan who don't exist anymore, but

who did really beautifully illustrated
guides and similar to the Lonely Planet.

Or rough guides, but much more
beautifully produced and with

more of an emphasis on culture.

And I went out and basically lived
in my car in South Africa and Namibia

for about a year and a half or a year.

Yeah.

Year, year and a half.

And of course I spent a lot
of time in Africa before,

so that's why I got the job.

I knew the place quite well.

But this was different 'cause
I had to see it in real detail.

And of course the guy book job itself
didn't pay enough to fully live on.

So I, because I'd published this
first big story, I managed to get

journalistic assignments to go out
and cover, you know, the changeover

of apartheid into, into Black Rule.

And it was an incredibly
violent year in Africa.

And I'd never had any bad
experiences in Africa, even when

I was hitchhiking around before.

And I'd run into, you know.

Armed areas where there
was civil war going on.

And even when I was very young at
seven, you know, we'd been out there

during the, the War of Independence
but it hadn't really touched us except

having to go around in, you know,
armored, armored convoys and things.

But this year it did, oh my gosh, did it?

I got several direct assaults on my life
in a really short period of time, in

about a six week period, I had about as
many really violent episodes in which

I either had to fight, plead, hide,
or run or take a massive beating, not

knowing if I was gonna be killed or not.

And I didn't know what post-traumatic
stress disorder was back then.

But when I had completed that year
and came back to England to write the

thing up and deliver it, I was just
jumpy as all hell and getting all

these weird viral diseases and like
colds all the time and flus and things.

And I never got that.

I was always like so robust and you know,
having fights with my girlfriend and

getting into fights in pubs and things
like that, stuff, I just never did.

All classic symptoms of PTSD.

Fortunately for me, at the time I
was riding semi-professionally for

a, so I always had this parallel
track with horse training for

a lady outside London eventing.

And so of course what I was doing
was I was getting up from the.

A place in London that I was renting,
getting on my bicycle, this is most

days, cycling across London to Paddington
Station through all the traffic and

then getting on a train, going out
into the countryside, cycling again

out to the farm, saddling up, being
with the horses, being out in nature

with the horses, then going home.

What I didn't know then was what I
was doing is I was filling myself with

something called BDNF, brain derived
neurotrophic factor, which you get when

you move and problem solve, and it creates
new neural pathways and oxytocin, the feel

good and communication healing hormone
by being with the horses all the time.

So, slowly I healed from the PTSD
of all these, i, i, I really violent

incidents, you know, had a guy climb
through the, my window with a kitchen

knife in his hand, and you know, what
followed there was not nice and so on.

So, I.

Recovered.

And although I didn't quite know
why, there's a little part of me that

clocked it and went, just hold onto this
knowledge, but I didn't quite know why.

And I'd also had a really, another really
interesting spiritual experience out in

Africa that year where I'd been on Table
Mountain and I had gotten a fever and been

delirious and had this revelation back
to the God is love, love is God thing.

I'd remembered that up on Table Mountain.

And then I realized, oh well
if that's true and that is true

then, and if everything is God,
then everything must be love.

So the shirt that I'm wearing, the,
the, the, the cotton fibers of it

must be actually made of love matter.

Must be love.

And even the, even the car, the metal
of the car that I'm driving and the fuel

that's running it, which is made from
fossil forests, is actually all love.

So everything is love.

And this base faith.

Had also, I think, kept me going through
this time of great fear that I'd undergone

out there that in, in that violent year.

I then got another job right after
that to go and do a guidebook in India.

And India, as anyone knows, who's ever
spent a long time out there, because

when you go write a guidebook, you've
got to really immerse yourself in

those, you're out there for a long time.

India will change you because.

It's incredibly spiritual and at
the same time it's really brutal.

People are just horrible to each other.

And at the same time it's so sublime and
the spirituality is actually very pure.

It's both at the same time.

It makes you really have to become
comfortable with ambiguity that things

are both dark and light together.

And that is useful because that
is just sort of how life is.

It's just pumped through a really
amplified lens when you're out there.

And I came back from India
and got another job in Africa.

It was while doing this other guidebook
that I began to hear a story about the.

A group of Bushmen, Kalahari, sun bushmen,
hunting and gathering peoples who had

been in South Africa under apartheid and
had been kicked out of a national park.

What's now the second biggest
national park in South Africa, the

Halal Khari National Park on the
border of Botswana and Namibia.

They'd been kicked out in the seventies
when the park had been created and been

living by the side of the road ever since.

And what was interesting was the
bushmen were a big part of my family

mythology in that my that great,
great uncle I told you about before,

who'd gone north of the Orange River.

He had spent a lot of time
interacting with the Coi Sun and.

My grandfather, who was a
journalist had also spent quite

a lot of time up there with them.

And everyone who'd gone up
there had in the family had

always sort of reported back.

These are just the purest people.

These are the best people in the world.

They, they, they don't make war.

They're like a sort of, almost
like an elusive fairy folk.

And there was always this sort
of mythology about these people.

And part of that mythology was that there
were none of them left in South Africa.

They'd all been wiped out at
the end of the 19th century.

And you know, if you wanted to find
those people, you had to go up to very

remote parts of Botswana or Namibia
much deeper into the Kalahari desert.

Well, it turned out that no, there
were actually bushmen living in.

South Africa all along, they'd
just been displaced, but a very,

very small group of them had left
just literally an extended family.

Around that time too, I ran into my
first group of Sun Bushmen up in Namibia.

Literally, I'd, I'd found out where to go.

I'd finally been able to get my hands
on a four by four, and they're very

expensive and driven out to this
place called in Eastern Namibia and

parked under a big bear Bab tree and
two Bushman had walked out of the

thickets and one of them spoke English.

A guy called Benjamin and he said, yeah,
you know, I can absolutely introduce

you into the culture a little bit.

You've made it all this way.

And I had my first taste of that
life, of that hunting and gathering

life that still exists up there.

And seeing how functional those
people are with each other.

No chiefs gender equality
children have a voice.

They're hunters, but they have
a deep ecological sense and the

entire culture based around healing.

Healing and conflict resolution.

Because if you're hunting and gathering
in an area where you're not the top

predator, if you fragment as a group,
if, if, if conflict within the group

gets beyond a certain point, then
the highness is gonna get you all.

So you actually have to stick together.

So you have a, a healer who
sits at a shaman, healer who

sits at the middle of the.

Culture whose job it is to kind
of constantly resolve conflict,

not just heal physical ailments.

And this is regarded as
incredibly important.

And I, I remember thinking, gosh, if
this is how humans actually are, 'cause

this is the oldest culture on the
planet, then that's actually a really

good advertisement for our species.

And it means that all of that stuff
that we think of as normal human

behavior like war or organized violence
or that sort of thing, it's not

actually, it's an aberration, which
is why we, why we know it's wrong.

That's why we bother with
having a justice system.

And it seems to have all come in quite
recently, like the last 10,000 years with

the domestication of plants and, you know,
animals, agriculture and owning stuff

and overpopulation and all these things.

And it's driven us nuts, but
it's not who we really are.

And right at that time that that happened,
and I found out that this group of

bushmen in South Africa still existed.

This group of bushmen in South
Africa instituted a land claim very

similar to the one in Canada that
I'd followed, where they said we

would like our land back, please.

We were kicked out of that
national park under apartheid,

and they managed to find a lawyer.

And I found out about this and the
journalist in me just went, oh my

gosh, you have to follow this story.

And then the personal side of me said,
Yar ru, and this is where your non-white

family used to operate and still do.

I bet you there's a family
connection to this story.

So I dug a little further and
I found out that the bushman up

there were actually being opposed.

Their land claim by another non-white
group who said, we were also

displaced from this area and we, you
know, why should they get the land?

We want the land.

And you know, there was a, there's a kind
of a conflict going on between these two

groups who'd been displaced and of course
the national park was having none of it.

I found out of course, that the second
group were cousins of mine and then

I found out that many of them had
married into the group of bushmen and

that therefore I was cousins in law,
cousin-in-law to this group of bushmen.

So I went to find them and

found their camp by the side of the road,
sat with them, talked with them, and

was immediately just taken in as family.

Now this group had been displaced.

So I talked about a very beautiful
life up there in Namibia with those

bushmen that I'd run into up there.

But down here in South
Africa, it was not like that.

Because they'd been
displaced and victimized and

predated upon in every way, and alcohol
and drugs and all of that had crept in.

This was the antithesis.

Yet there was still something
really gentle and beautiful

and wounded about this group.

And what they said to me is,
Ru we've lost our healers.

We lost our healing tradition
when we lost the land.

And we are now, we, it, it, it's
almost pointless us getting the

land back if we, if we don't, you
know, recover our healing tradition

because we'll just destroy ourselves.

It's quite wise.

And at the time I was going then
between there and deeper Kalahari

to write a book about these cultures,
which eventually became a work called

The Healing Land, which was published
here and in the US the healing Land.

And in the course of this, I
became initiated into more and

more into this healing tradition.

And I got to see things that just
bogle the mind hunting magic in

which the animal is brought to you
shapeshifting in which the healer

turns themselves into a leopard.

Cancer's being pulled
out of people's bodies.

I, I, I saw all this, it's all recounted
in that book, and I'm not the only one.

I mean many anyone who's spent any time,
you know, in a, in a culture like that,

they've all got their stories of this.

And what you realize is that these kinds
of miracles are actually the norm in

human society, in, in true human society
that's living in nature, that's living

the old way, that's living close to
animals and plants we're supposed to live

in, you know, constant connection and
relationship with up to about 300 species.

In, in really supportive groups
in which the predators are

outside of the human thing.

And the predator is never your fellow man.

And now we've replaced that with
no relationship with any other

species unless we're lucky enough
to live on farms or whatever.

And the only, the predator
is always our fellow man.

Now this sends us completely crazy.

So I follow the land claim

and I help the group in South Africa
to connect with the healers by their

own request to connect with the
healers up in Botswana and Namibia.

In fact, the group in South
Africa, the, they're called.

Asked, said, war Ru.

You know, you're a journalist,
you've gotta get us to the West

so we can tell our story there.

You've gotta get us to the United
Nations and you've gotta connect

us with these healers up there.

Oh, and you, it was your mother
and your mother's stories about

Africa, which largely kept Africa
alive in your heart, even when you

were a boy growing up in London.

So you have to get, get your
mother and bring her out here.

When we got to see the healers to
dance for the land to be returned,

and you gotta get us to the un.

And remember that thing I talked
about about adventure Sometimes

when an adventures in front of
you and you feel this, pull in

your solar plexus in your throat.

I'd felt it in in Canada that time.

I'd felt it many times on the back of a
horse going into a dangerous situation.

I'd felt it.

When you must, you must take
the adventure in front of you,

even though you're scared.

And so I said, okay, I'll, I'll try.

And I had no idea how to do
any of these things because

they all cost a lot of money.

I didn't, you know, to hire, set
up expeditions to hire vehicles

to get a load of people up into
Botswana or get someone to the un.

How anesthesia that and what do you
even do when you're at the UN and

get these people from Africa to,
you know, to, okay, okay, I'll try.

So I did and I founded a nonprofit
called the Indigenous Land Rights

Fund, and we raised some money to

begin to.

Create a fund to bring a group from
South Africa, a group from Botswana

over to America and get to the un.

But while that was in the very early
stages of development, my mum did come

out and the bushman stripped her naked.

She was such a sport on the sand
dunes in the area in South Africa.

Covered her with a
sacred pollen called Mao.

And then we sang songs
to her and honored her.

And then we went up into Botswana.

And by then I had, I had forged a
relationship with a heer called Besa.

And those of you who know my book
about Rowan, my son autistic son,

know that his middle name is Besa.

And I'd heard stories about Bess.

All over the Kalahari.

And when I finally met him living under
a thorn tree in Western Botswana, near a

settlement called Hansi this man saw me
got up from where he was sitting went.

There are two, be

two two.

And he pointed himself.

He went, oh, Besa, old Besa.

You Klein Besa, little besa.

So I was always little
Besa in the Kalahari.

And those of you who know my website,
the Long Ride Home website, know that

we have a program on there called
Little Besa about how to bring everyday

Shamanism into and healing into your life.

And that's why it's called that because
that was the name I was given and Besa

was the one who showed me Shapeshifting.

Besa was the one who showed me a lot
of the more extreme healing techniques

and the Bushman in South Africa.

When they heard that I found Besa, they
said this, man, this is the man we need.

We've heard about him too.

This is the man we need to dance
for us to help us restore our own

healing tradition and secure the land.

So up we went and we held the healing.

And

it was a real anticlimax.

I'd been at, I'd been at healings
where there'd been high drama, you

know, healers bleeding from the mouth,
from the eyes, from, you know, as they

pulled sickness out of people and diving
into the fire and swallowing coals and

nothing like this.

In fact, Bea turned up drunk dance
for maybe it's all done through

Dance the ceiling for maybe

hour and a half.

And then that was it.

And then the next day we had to drive
out and I said to Avi Kpa, who was the,

the sort of representative of the Bushman
and the land claim for South Africa.

Do you think, do you
think it was worth coming?

Do you, do you think it?

And he, he looked at me, he said, Rupert
Besa showed up drunk because I'm a drunk.

He was showing me what I need to
change in myself to make this happen.

And he said, Rupert, a year from today,
I'm going to sit down with the president

of South Africa and I'm going to sign
the land claim for half the National Park

would've been the largest
land claim in African history

a year and a day.

It was off by one day a year and a day
after that conversation, he did indeed sit

down with the president of South Africa,
Tavo and Becky at the time, and he signed

the largest land claim in African history,

manifestation, self-actualization.

On the way back from that healing in
Botswana to South Africa, we camped in

a canyon on the Namibian border that had
been part of the Kani land ancestrally.

And at four in the morning I was
seeping in the back of a pickup truck.

I woke up fault, upright and saw
what looked like a little white,

whirlwind, little white wind going
like that across the canyon floor.

And instinctively I
thought, oh, that's death.

And I just went back to sleep again.

At the morning fire making coffee.

The lady who I was doing a lot
of that work with Belinda, she

said, did you see that thing at
about four o'clock this morning?

And I said, yeah.

I said, what do you think it was?

She said, well, I think it was death.

What do you think?

I was like, yeah, I think it's death too.

And then David Ropa comes along
and says did you guys see that

thing at four in the morning?

And we both said, yeah,
what do you think it was?

Do you, was it death?

And he said, well, almost.

And he said it was a departing soul.

'cause this is where we used to, this
is where we used to bury our dead in

the answer before we lost all this land.

And that's a, that's a soul returning
from where we live now, to here.

When we get back to the village, we
will find that somebody has died.

And indeed, when we got
back to the village.

A whole day to drive.

Later we found that somebody
had drive, I had in Indeed died.

So I got a real window on these parallel
worlds and fields of consciousness

and realities that exist altogether.

And right about that time, as the
bushmen in South Africa became

successful with their land claim,
a bigger threat to a larger group

of bushmen up in Botswana happened.

Whether Botswana government with
DeBeers Diamonds decided to kick

another group off their land in
order to make way for diamond mines.

And this was the point at which they,
they then said, could you help us too?

And this was the point at which we
decided, okay, this UN thing, we

need to see if we can make that.

Okay, so how to get this delegation
of Sun Bushman, hunter gatherers

have no power, no power at all, who
are being put in jail and tortured.

This is up in Botswana.

If they go up against
the government in any way

and me, this freelance journalist
with no backing private funds, I

have no organization behind me,
no big newspaper, no nothing.

I'm just a freelancer.

What to do?

As you may know, if you've been following
my work, we are also horsey folk here.

And we have been training horses for
many, many years in the manner of

the old classical dressage masters.

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com to unlock the secrets
of the old masters.

Well, I published this
book, the Healing Land.

So I thought by this point, so
I thought, okay, maybe I could

use that as a bit of a platform.

So I.

Go to a big independent bookstore in
the US and I say, can I do a book talk?

And they say, yeah.

And I think, well, maybe, you know,
so this costs me about 500 bucks

that I don't really have to put on.

And by now I'm also a new parent and

five people show up to my talk.

Okay.

Then I find that there's an actual
department in the United Nations a

sort of private group attached to
the United Nations that have their,

they have their office in the United
Nations Tower in New York who deal

with exactly this type of issue.

So I contact them and they give me a.

An audience and I walk into this
boardroom and I've got RO in my, I

don't know it at the time, but autistic
child in a baby Bjorn around my neck.

And I make a case.

I tell them what's going on and they
say, yeah, yeah, we know, we know.

We know that they're all being kicked
off their land in the Kalahari.

There's nothing we can do about it.

You have no power, you have no clout.

So you know, hippie like you, no
way is that anything gonna work.

And they laugh at me and they kick me out.

They kick me out of the office

like, okay, what do I do now?

Right about then is when autism comes into
my life, like a hurricane, like a tsunami,

and I'm just beginning to.

Come to grips with what
this is gonna mean for me.

And I'm driving, living in Austin, Texas
by now, driving to a therapy appointment,

early therapy appointment with my son,
wondering, panicking, what am I gonna do?

What am I gonna do?

Autism.

Autism.

And I get a phone call.

And the phone call is from someone
who says, you don't know who I am.

But a friend of mine was at that

talk that you did at that bookstore,
and they've talked to me and I've

researched what you were talking
about and I believe that this is

indeed something worth backing.

And I'm, tell me what your
budget is that you need.

So I told, told her, she, she said,
I'm gonna give you a third of it.

And when you go out to raise
money, tell everybody that.

I and my organization are
backing this, and you'll probably

get the rest of the money.

I'd never met or heard, heard
of this person ever before.

And I did, and we raised the money
and in, in, you know, most people's

fundraising terms, it wasn't a lot, it
was about a a hundred thousand, which

was to hopefully cover not just bringing
a group of bushmen to the USA, but also

helping them begin a, a legal process.

But the legal process in Botswana was
gonna have to be in their own high court.

And because this area that they
were, had been kicked out from,

had actually been given to them
under British rule in perpetuity.

So, and it had been written
into the constitution of.

The Botswana government, so
they Botswana government.

Now were going against
their own constitution.

But the judge in this case was gonna be,
of course, a cousin of the president.

So what would you know?

And all with the billions and
billions of Debi DARS behind them.

So what to do?

Well, we did everything.

I managed to make contact with a group
called Journey to the Heart, who ran

something called the Gathering of
the Shamans every year in California,

healers from all over the world.

And I managed to get that group to
formally invite the bushmen over and

raise some money also to be part of their,
you know, against part of their travel.

And then partly through the same
organization, we managed to make

contact with an organization called
Artists for Amnesty, which was the like

Hollywood Wing of Amnesty International.

And they got behind it.

And we managed to get
by hook and by crook.

Dave Matthews, those of you who were
around during the nineties may remember

that Dave Matthews was the kind of
the big singer-songwriter of that era.

Don't hear about him anymore.

But he was huge back then.

Him and Jackson Brown to host a
party in Hollywood for the Bushman.

And this went out to
news outlets and so on.

And it was a, you know, big do, we got
the Bushman over, we're in California,

and then we go around after this.

We go and do everything we can.

We, we, the Bushman, a lot of
them ride, ride really well hunt

kudo off horses with spears.

So I took them fox hunting with
there's, there's, there's packs

of hounds in California and
on the east coast in America.

And, you know, you get lots of like
high powered lawyers and people

like that out with these hunts.

So I thought maybe if I take
them there, they can network.

And they did.

And they picked, they of
course rode incredibly well.

Everyone was, you know, impressed.

And then next thing you know, we have
some lawyers coming forward saying,

Hey, I'll represent you pro bono.

And we then went from there
across to the Navajo reservation.

We thought we'd go from the west coast
to the east coast, Navajo reservations

on the way and the Hopi reservation
to talk to groups of Native Americans

to talk about, well what do you do
with the land when you've got it back?

There are, you know, gonna be
their own sets of challenges then.

So, we are camping in Canyon Dee,
which is the second biggest canyon

in the USA after the Grand Canyon in
Arizona on the Navajo reservation.

And we're talking with the Navajo
about, you know, land stewardship and

how it all works for them and so on.

While we're camping, a medicine
man shows up and he says, Hey,

I hear you guys are here to get
the land back for these people.

Would you like me to do a
ceremony, a sweat healing for that?

And we said, yeah, of course.

So we do, and we do these rounds of
prayers for the return of the land.

And at the end of it, the healer says, has
anyone else got anything that they wanna.

Asked for healing for, and I said,
yeah, my son's just been diagnosed

with autism and he's, it's really
severe and I don't know what to do.

So we do a round of prayers for that, and
as we're cooling down after the sweat, the

healer comes to me and says, do you hunt?

I said, yeah, yeah, I do, but maybe
not in a way that you're familiar with.

And he said, yeah, well, that's not
important, he said, but I'm just getting

it loud and clear from the spirit world
that you have to stop and it's somehow

connected with your son's autism.

And I thought, of course, of course,
this thing that I love doing, fox

hunting was such a huge part of my life.

And it was one of the great early loves.

And even though it was so morally
ambiguous it's such a madly beautiful,

pagan dangerous, incredible thing to do.

And I actually, you know, used to write
for the equestrian press and go round

with these different hunts and hunt and.

Of course this is gonna be taken from me.

Of course I must give this up.

Makes perfect sense.

So I said, okay, okay, I'll do it.

I'll do it.

And

I had to tell a friend of mine
who was the head of the masters of

Fox Sounds Association in America
about this because he and I were

working quite closely together.

And when I did tell him, he said, oh,
Ruper, I knew you'd always turn on us.

You're bloody hippie.

You know, you, you always, you know,
I knew you'd turn into an antique.

I said, look, it's got
nothing to do with that.

It's just a personal decision.

It's based, you know, outta
this weird shamanic thing.

I dunno what to tell you.

And as I'm having this conversation
with him on the phone, this

is, I was briefly back home.

It was at night.

The sitting on my porch,
the porch light threw out a.

Light into my front field.

And as I'm talking to him, a fox comes
walking outta the dark into that porch

light, and about 25 feet away from me
just stops and just starts barking, going,

well, I'm on the phone, this
guy, I put the phone up like

this and say, can you hear that?

And he's like, yes.

I'm like, well, that's what's going on.

When I'm having this
conversation with you.

He's like, okay, well maybe,
maybe something, something

is going on, as you say.

So, and one of, one of the things
that the Bushman had really taught

me was always, always, always look
for what wildlife is showing you.

When wildlife shows up in your
path, it's the ancestors talking

to you that keep your ears open.

Ask what are you here to tell me?

And this is an important thing.

Okay.

All right.

So we get now to the East
Coast and we get to the un.

Finally, we find ourselves there in the
United Nations and we testify before

Congress for the Human Rights Commissions.

And uh uh, we do all these things.

But what really makes a difference is
that we get to the State Department.

And when we walk into the State
Department, what is weird is there's

pictures on the wall blown up,
pictures of the wall indigenous

peoples and among them are portraits
of my friends in South Africa, some

of whom are on this delegation.

'cause it's half Bushman from
Botswana, half from South Africa.

What are the odds of that?

And we walk into an office, we're
shown to an office, and the guy

who's dealing with us in the
State Department is Apache Indian.

He says, I grew up on the reservation.

I know exactly what's going on with you.

And right in front of us, he picks
up the telephone calls the land

minister in Botswana and says,
I've got four guys sitting in here

in my office saying they've been
tortured, you know, for protesting

illegal evictions from their land.

You're supposed to be an ally of ours.

What's going on?

And that was something
that began the game change.

Well, it wasn't the end of the road by
any means, but it pushed us over the line.

And that was through that happened
through the help of an organization

called First Nations Development
Institute, run by an amazing woman

called Rebecca Adamson who, whose Lumbee
Indian and who helped us massively.

It was her contacts that got us there
for the next two to three years.

We just kept it up.

We managed to get through
artists for amnesty.

The Bushman invited to back across to to
California to to be at the premier of the

Blood Diamond movie with Leonardo DiCaprio
and Morgan Freeman is there and so on.

And we're protesting outside the DeBeers
Diamonds Shop in Fifth Avenue in New York.

And we're doing everything we can and
we are, we're protesting in London as

well through an amazing organization
there called Survival International.

And we're helping the lawyer
and helping to raise money.

Interestingly, through the Fox hunting
world, it was the fox hunting world

that really came out and donated money
for the lawyers, for the Bushman.

And there are many, many little
sub stories to be told in this.

But suffice to say that these
lawyers began to go out.

To Botswana, which is where the
new land claim is being fought,

which is an even bigger area at
stake than the South African one,

rather similar to the one in Quebec.

It's the size of a European country.

It's about the size of
Belgium or Switzerland.

This area called the Central
Kalahari Game Reserve.

Only about 3,500 people living in it.

And the Botswana government saying,
we've got to displace you all to

make di way for diamond mines.

No way.

I mean, we could say, look, there's lots
of people in Belgium and Switzerland,

millions of people and they have mines
and no one needs to be displaced.

The Bushman Aren even asking for money.

They just don't wanna be
kicked off their land.

And eventually we managed to get, I
managed to get again through artists

for amnesty, invited to a get together
of Nobel Peace Prize laureates in Rome.

And there are.

In the room.

It's Mical Gorbachev, it's
Sting, it's Bob Geldoff.

It's even though they're not
laureates lek, Jose Ramos Ter from

East Timor, all these amazing people.

Bishop Tutu, Desmond Tutu.

And they hear me out and they write a
joint letter to the Botswana government

saying, let these people alone.

And then I also managed to get Gloria
Steinem, who's the sort of godmother

of feminism in, in the USA and Abby
Disney, who's Walt Disney's granddaughter

and Warren Buffet's daughter-in-law.

It all came in through us amnesty
to come out on a safari to

Botswana, to this disputed area.

And while we are there with the Bushman,
the Botswana government come in with

troops armed and, and they kick us out.

It's a big international
embarrassment 'cause these are big

cheeses that they've done this to.

And

then finally kept the court cases
going on the court cases going on court

cases going on about 2005, early 2006.

The prosecutor on behalf of
the government in Botswana does

something monumentally stupid.

He has an indiscretion
with the wife of the judge.

And suddenly, just despite the fact
that they're all cousins at, in the

same noble family, suddenly it becomes
personal and the judge rules in favor

of the bushman against all odds.

Now I realized what was happening
with these lawyers that was go

going out to Botswana, was that the.

Lawyers were briefing the community,
and the community were then going

and relaying this to their healers.

And the healers were going into the spirit
world and getting a series of instructions

there and coming from the ancestors and
coming back out and briefing the community

who were then briefing the lawyers.

And what we kept getting from
the healers was keep hanging on,

keep hanging on, keep hanging on.

Something unexpected will happen.

Well, something unexpected did
happen, and the Bushman won the

largest land claim in African history.

Again, I didn't even expect to win.

When people were asking me,
Rupert, why are you devoting

so much of your life to this?

What happens if you don't win?

Like your, your, your ego will collapse?

And, you know, and I was like, you,
you've got me completely wrong.

I'm in it for the crack.

I'm in it for the adventure.

I will give it my best shot.

But.

I'm in it because the
adventure has called me.

The ancestors have called me.

If it doesn't work out well, how lucky
and fortunate and privileged was I

to be part of an adventure like this?

But I have a gut feeling
that we will be successful.

And indeed it happened.

And I was lying on my couch in Texas,
exhausted from a series of autism

tantrums, still at the early stages
of wondering what to do, but beginning

to find my way with that a bit.

And I got a call from the BBC in
London saying, can we have a comment?

And I'm like, on what?

And they said, well, you've won.

I said, we've won.

What?

They said, you know, the
Bushman case, you're involved.

You know, can we have
a statement from you?

I'm like, yeah, the
statement is beep beep.

You know, bleep, bleep, bleep.

Just 'cause I was so surprised

and that did not conclude
my journey in the Kalahari.

But this, my focus at that point
then could shift completely to my

son whose autism was so severe,
nonverbal, incontinent, tantruming.

Now I tried all the orthodox
therapies, they didn't work.

So the journalist in me said, well,
you know what you don't know, which

is, you dunno what to do here.

You need mentorship, someone to show you.

None of these therapists that
you reaching out to seem to

really know what they're doing.

If there's going to be a
mentor who's that mentor, what

qualities must that mentor have?

And I thought, well, that mentor
needs to be autistic, adult

autistic who started life in the
same place as my son, incontinent,

tantrumming, that sort of thing.

Self-harming, unable to make friends
nonverbal and has somehow made it.

Who's that person?

And I realized actually
that person exists.

That's Dr.

Temple Grandin.

She's a well-known autistic author,
a neuroscientist and professor

of animal scientists, and.

Why don't I contact her?

'cause she was nonverbal, wiping
her poo on the wall, age three, and

they were gonna institutionalize
her, but she found her way.

How did she find her way?

So I asked her for an interview
and I went up and talked to her.

And when I went into her office,
she was stemming and doing, you

know, the repetitive movements and
behaviors and like really autistic.

And I'll say, oh my gosh, you can be like
that and still be like totally successful.

And so I said, how does my son become you?

And she said, Rupert, do three things.

Follow the child, follow
their interests, follow what

upsets them, and avoid that and
follow what makes them happy.

And go with that.

Follow their, follow them physically
so that you can observe what they

get into, follow them intellectually,
check out their obsessions and

just go down those rabbit holes.

Do your stuff outside as much as you can.

'cause there's no bad
sensory triggers in nature.

'cause that's where our
organism is supposed to be.

And your sun, like most people on
the spectrum, has a oversensitive

nervous system that's triggering
his amygdala all the time.

His fight, flight, freeze, they
filling himself with cor, him

with cortisol stress hormone.

So he can't learn.

He's unreachable, but in
nature, this will be less.

And let him move.

Don't confine him to desks,
chairs, therapy rooms.

Do your stuff out in nature where
he can move because he's a pri,

he's, he's a kinetic learner.

Kinesthetic learner.

Whew.

That made sense.

I said, well anyway, look, if that's
resulted in you, let me try that.

So I went home and I did, and
those of you who know my story know

that that resulted in me following
him to a horse called Betsy.

Him becoming verbal on that horse and me
realizing that it was in certain rhythms

that he was verbal and that those rhythms,
if I produced them, I got more speech.

And we lived in the saddle together for
three or four years and I was so broke.

And

he became verbal, literate and numerate

in about 18 months.

And then I thought, okay, is it just
him or is it other children too?

So I started throwing unofficial
play dates on the farm for other

kids on the spectrum, and they
started having the same result.

And then I had to homeschool him
because the local school, the special

ed department was, was not good.

And I thought, well, if
I can use these rhythms.

Feed in information on the horse.

What about off the horse?

So what about on my shoulders?

What about on a yoga ball?

What about on a swing?

What about on play equipment?

And I did that and it worked, and
then I got curious and I went to

neuroscientists and said, please,
can you explain why it's working?

And I got a similar explanation
from quite a few saying, yeah,

what's happening is you're creating
oxytocin through hip rocking rhythmic.

Hip rocking oxytocin is a feel-good
hormone that's calming down this

oversensitive nervous system,
but it's also a communication

hormone makes us communicate.

Oh, and it's switching off the
amygdala, telling it to stop

producing cortisol, which is
giving you access to the intellect.

And then because the kid is moving
and problem solving all the time,

that creates neuroplasticity.

That creates a, a, a protein in
the brain called brain derived

neurotrophic factor BDNF.

That's basically like
miracle growth for the brain.

And in these billions of brain
cells that are being produced are

these ones of particular interest
called perkin cells that among many

other things, govern social skills.

So you're taking a kid with autom
auto, Greek word for the self

selfism, filling him with a,

a soothing to the nervous
system communication hormone

for someone who doesn't
want to communicate.

They're now fooled with a communication
hormone and social skills brain cells.

You're gonna see change.

And we went, oh my gosh, yes you can.

That means we can replicate this.

So we began teaching people how
to do this with horses and that

became something called a horse Boy
method and do this without horses.

And that became movement method.

And then how to train the
horse, how to do this as its own

therapy for adults with trauma.

Remember back to when I'd had all that
PTSD and I'd been out in Africa and I'd

been out with those horses and it had all
sort of gone away that had never left me.

Now I understood the neuroscience and
I realized, yeah, we could pair up

veterans, first responders, adult artists,
people who've suffered abuse and help

them to train the horses like this.

And sure enough, it turned out
to be its own therapy, and that's

called Tachin, T-A-K-H-I-N, equine
integration, these three programs.

And in the course of this, I had to
learn a lot of dressage, so we ended up

teaching a lot of dressage as well, and
running this from this ranch in Texas.

Meanwhile, that word tahin, T-A-K-H-I-N,
it's actually a Mongolian word.

It means the wild horse, the PKIs
horse who was never domesticated.

It means honored one or revered one.

I always liked that word 'cause I
felt that as a rider, as someone who

works with horses, I like the idea
of honoring the horse's wild nature.

And those of you know my story know that
I also did something rather crazy having

seen that my son had this amazing response
to the horse and having this background

in this shamanic healing with the bushman,
I wondered if there was a place that

combined these two things on earth.

And so, yeah, that's
Mongolia gut feeling again.

That sent that, that
pull at the solar plexus.

Gotta go there.

So I did

and I wrote a book about
it called the Horse Boy,

and made a documentary about
it called The Horse Boy.

And this is back in we,
we put out the first

little proposal about maybe doing it
when YouTube was very young in 2005.

We made the journey in 2007

and it went viral.

It's one of the first
things that ever went viral.

I think the ancestors were at work and

a book deal resulted that was big
enough to not just fund the expedition

and make the movie, but also to, for
us to open up a therapy center doing

horse boy method and movement method.

And that book, the Horse Boy, if you've
read it or if you've seen the film,

you'll know that we ended up at the
end of it with the reindeer people

in Southern Siberia where it borders.

On the steps in Northern Mongolia and
the healer of the reindeer people ghost.

Two days after doing the healings on
Rowan Rome did his first intentional

poop and cleaned himself, which was
like watching England win the World Cup.

And he said to me, you have to do
three more journeys to confirm it.

So in 2008, I went back
out to the Bushman and Besa

came and healed my son.

But we had to do it in Namibia because
after we had helped the Bushman win

the land claim in 2006, I and a group
of 16 journalists and human rights

workers had been banned from Botswana.

Can't go back.

It's like winning an award.

So we had to get, we had to do
it in the neighboring country,

Namibia, and get a passport organized
for Besa who lived under a tree.

Can imagine how.

That was not a straightforward process so
that he could come across into Botswana.

Into Namibia, sorry, and heal his
namesake, my son, Rowan Besa Isaacson.

And he did, along with another
legendary healer called from the Quai

Bushman in Namibia, a beautiful man
and his friend, we, his three healers

collaborated on, on my
son over three days.

And then the year after that, we were
in the Daintree rainforest in Queensland

with a cuckoo langi shaman from the
Aboriginal Kuku Langi people there.

And the year after that on the
Navajo Reservation, remember we'd

been there before, that's where
I'd with the Bushman, where I'd

been made to give up hunting the.

At the end of each of these healings,
there was a massive leap forward.

And I tell that story in a
book called The Long Ride Home.

And now here I sit talking to you.

My son is now 23.

He is independent.

He just came out of the bath
in the other room there.

He travels all over by himself.

He has his own house, his
own car, couple of jobs.

He's doing very well.

He's got two younger siblings
now, Ian and Freya, who

are both a source of great annoyance
and a source of great joy to him

just as all siblings should be.

And we continue to do this
work now in about 40 countries.

Serving, I can't count how many families
through these methods and also the

parallel horse training, and I still
write books and make films and so on.

So that's a sort of potted version
of my story of self-actualization.

I think what really comes out for
me with it is that what really

makes self-actualization happen
is when it's about service.

Somehow

the horses brought me out of my depression
as a child and brought me into nature,

and I had to earn my way to them

running that market stall and stuff.

They really also served, served me so
generously and, and have ever since.

And then I got involved in service with
the first Dec Cree and then with the

Bushman, and then of course with autism.

And I think many of you can probably
trace parallels in your own lives.

That service seems to be at the key here.

So I want to leave you with this, and
some of you have heard me say this before.

There can be no real happiness, I
think, unless one is in service to

a community, to one's community.

And that is how we're wired
because we're hunter gatherers.

We're supposed to be constantly
looking out for each other.

In our current society, we've been
told we need to be in competition with

each other, and it brings us misery.

However, if you are in
service, it is exhausting.

There's no question it's exhausting.

So how do you not burn out?

Well, the people that you serve, or
the planet, if you're serving the

planet, acts as a shamanic prism for
your dreams, because if your dreams are

put into the service of the dreams of
people more vulnerable than yourself,

then your own dreams start to come true.

And this is done because this
will stop you from burning out.

This is what will allow you to
keep getting up day after day.

Year after year to do the work.

And in my position as an autism
dad, I can never, never stop.

In fact, even beyond the grave, I
have to set up structures for Roman.

And so I, I can't burn out.

I can't fail.

But my dreams of horses and riding
and living free and riding free

are tied up in service to
him and people like him.

And also to some degree with human
rights and the ecological offshoots of

human rights, indigenous rights, it.

So here's the deal, guys.

If you put your dreams.

Into the service of the dreams of people
more vulnerable than yourself, then

your dreams will start to come true.

You may have forgotten what your
dreams are, and you may have pushed

them away because a lot of us
have this experience is a dream.

Life comes along, goes, takes a big
pool over it, and then stomps on it and

buries it, and it breaks our hearts.

But actually, the dream
didn't go anywhere.

It just got fertilized and and
planted, and now it requires moisture,

blood, sweat, tears, and up it comes.

So what I want to leave you with
my friends is what are your dreams?

Just this question, what are your dreams?

And if you have forgotten,
you've pushed them away.

Just asking yourself the question
is enough, because then you'll push

your subconscious and in an unguarded
moment, 36 hours or so after you ask

yourself that question, you'll be
sitting in traffic with your mind

wandering or on the loo, and it will
go bubble bubble ping, and you'll

go, oh, yes, that was it, that dream.

And then almost immediately you'll push
it away again, you, but I can't have it.

But actually this time you can.

The rules are different if
you've, in fact, you must.

In fact, you will.

That's the contract with God.

That's the contract with the universe.

If you put that dream out there and
you say very clearly that you want

to put that dream, you will put that
dream into the service of the dreams of

people more vulnerable than yourself,

then I look forward to hearing your
feedback, particularly a year maybe

after watching this or listening
to this and telling me how those

dreams are starting to come true.

So what are your dreams?

You listening right now.

You watching right now,
what are your dreams?

What are your dreams?

And that my friends, is all
I've got till next time.

I hope you enjoyed today's
conversation as much as I did.

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I can't wait for our next guest
and also to meet you there.

In the meantime, remember, live free.

Ride free.