![Call of the Wild](https://cdn.magzter.com/1377116771/1683890207/articles/KTyFToIpB1684580775639/CALL-OF-THE-WILD.jpg)
Overheard in the men's bathroom of a movie theater in Boston, after a screening of Creed III:
"That movie basically just makes me want to get in shape."
"It makes me want to get in shape mentally."
"Huh?"
"Bro, that movie was all about mental stuff.
You didn't get that?"
The mental stuff. That's where it's at. The mind, the mind it can bear you sweetly along on pulses of transparent super-energy, or it can rear up and bite your face off. And if, like me, you've watched 432 episodes of survival TV, the beloved subgenre that pits bare, forked man against the unrelenting wilderness, you've seen it happen over and over again. It's not Alaska that breaks you, or Mongolia, or northeastern Labrador-it's the contents of your own head.
Remember Jim Shields from Season 3 of Alone? How passionately I relate to this guy. Deposited on the cold shore of a fuming-with-bleakness lake in the Andean foothills, with only a couple of GoPros for company (that's the hook of Alone: no camera crews; the contestants film themselves), he spreads his arms, throws back his head, and, in an attempt at exultation, bellows, "PATAGONI-AAAAH!"-only to be almost visibly demolished, half a second later, by the ensuing unresponding immensity of silence and solitude. He exhales, as if the weight of it is about to collapse his rib cage. He looks momentarily holographic, like he might go fuzzy and vanish from the picture. And sure enough, on only his third day out there, his third day in the storm and vacancy of his own aloneness, Shields "taps out." He can't take it anymore: He radios the producers. His Alone time is over.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der June 2023-Ausgabe von The Atlantic.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der June 2023-Ausgabe von The Atlantic.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
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THE GLACIER RESCUE PROJECT
Can the mighty Thwaites be stopped from tumbling into the sea?
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A Novel Without Characters
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The Industry That Ate America
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Kafka's Not Supposed to Make Sense
“The incomprehensible,” he explained, “is incomprehensible.”
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Tornado Watch
How Lee Isaac Chung reimagined Twister, one of the biggest climate-disaster thrillers of all time
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Too Cute to Fail
Koalas are threatened by climate change, cars, and chlamydia. Can Australia find a way to protect its most beloved animal?
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THE FIRST THREE MONTHS
What I saw inside the government’s response to COVID-19
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THE VALLEY
Searching for the future in the most American city
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THE AIRPORT-LOUNGE ARMS RACE
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Hypochondria Never Dies
The diagnosis is officially gone, but health anxiety is everywhere.