Latest / Luke's English Podcast / Jordan Jonas_ Survival_ Hunting_ Siberia_ God_ and Winning Alone Season 6 _ Lex Fridman Podcast

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Jordan Jonas_ Survival_ Hunting_ Siberia_ God_ and Winning Alone Season 6 _ Lex Fridman Podcast · Luke's English Podcast

0:00
Speaker 1: The following is a conversation with Jordan Jonas, winner of
0:04
Speaker 1: Alone season six, a show where the task is to
0:08
Speaker 1: survive alone in the Arctic wilderness longer than anyone else.
0:13
Speaker 1: He is widely considered to be one of, if not
0:16
Speaker 1: the greatest competitors on that show. He has a fascinating
0:20
Speaker 1: life story that took him from a farm in Idaho
0:25
Speaker 1: and hobboing on trains across America to traveling with nomadic
0:30
Speaker 1: tribes in Siberia. All that helped make him into a
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Speaker 1: world class explorer, survivor, hunter, wilderness guide and most importantly,
0:42
Speaker 1: a great human being with a big heart and a
0:45
Speaker 1: big smile. This was a truly fun and fascinating conversation.
0:52
Speaker 1: Let me also mention that at the end after the episode,
0:57
Speaker 1: I'll start answering some questions and we'll tried to articulate
1:01
Speaker 1: my thinking on some top of mind topics. So if
1:05
Speaker 1: that's of interest to you, keep listening after the episode
1:08
Speaker 1: is over. This is a Lex Trivement podcast. To support it,
1:12
Speaker 1: please check out our sponsors in the description. And now,
1:15
Speaker 1: dear friends, here's Jordan Jonas. You won Alone season six
1:22
Speaker 1: and I think are still considered to be one of
1:25
Speaker 1: if not the most successful survivor on that show. So
1:29
Speaker 1: let's go back, let's look at the big picture. Can
1:31
Speaker 1: you tell me about the show alone. How does it work.
1:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a show where they take ten individuals and
1:39
Speaker 2: each person gets ten items off of the list. You know.
1:43
Speaker 2: Basic items would be an axe, a saw, a frying pan,
1:46
Speaker 2: you know, some pretty basic stuff, and then they send
1:50
Speaker 2: them all, drop them off all in the woods with
1:51
Speaker 2: a few cameras and so that people are actually alone.
1:56
Speaker 2: There's not a crew or anything, and then you basically
2:00
Speaker 2: live there as long as you can, you know, and
2:02
Speaker 2: so the person that lasts the longest, you know, once
2:05
Speaker 2: the second place person taps out, they come and get
2:08
Speaker 2: you in that and that individual wins. So it's a
2:12
Speaker 2: it's a pretty legit challenge, you know. They they drop
2:15
Speaker 2: you off, helicopter flies out, and you're not gonna get
2:19
Speaker 2: in your next meal until you make it happen.
2:21
Speaker 1: So you have to figure out the shelter, you have
2:23
Speaker 1: to figure out the source of food, and then it
2:25
Speaker 1: gets colder and colder because they I guess they drop
2:27
Speaker 1: you out in a moment where it's going into the winter.
2:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, they typically do it in temperate colder climates things
2:34
Speaker 2: like that, and they start in in September October, so
2:38
Speaker 2: time's ticking when they drop you off, and uh yeah,
2:42
Speaker 2: the pressure's on you got it. It's you know, you
2:44
Speaker 2: get overwhelmed with all the things you have to do
2:46
Speaker 2: right away, like, oh man, I'm not gonna eat again
2:48
Speaker 2: until I actually shoot or catch something. Gotta build a shelter.
2:51
Speaker 2: It's pretty overwhelming, figure your whole location out. But it's
2:55
Speaker 2: interesting because once you're there a little while, you kind
2:58
Speaker 2: of get into a well, at least for me I did.
3:01
Speaker 2: There was like a week or maybe not a week,
3:03
Speaker 2: but that I was kind of a little more annoyed
3:07
Speaker 2: with things. You know, It's like, oh, my sight sucks.
3:09
Speaker 2: It sucks. And then and then you kind of accept it,
3:13
Speaker 2: like you know what it is, what it is. No
3:15
Speaker 2: no amount of complaining is gonna do anybody any good.
3:18
Speaker 2: So I'm just gonna make it happen and so then
3:21
Speaker 2: or you know, do my best too. And then I
3:22
Speaker 2: felt like I got in a zone and I felt
3:24
Speaker 2: like I was right back in kind of Siberia or
3:26
Speaker 2: in that headspace, and I found to actually really enjoyed it.
3:30
Speaker 2: I'd been a little bit out of I guess you
3:32
Speaker 2: call it the game because I had had a child,
3:36
Speaker 2: and so when we had our daughter, we came back
3:39
Speaker 2: to the States and then a bunch of things happened
3:42
Speaker 2: and I just ended up we didn't end up going
3:43
Speaker 2: back to Russia. So it's been a couple of years
3:46
Speaker 2: that I was just you know, we were raising the
3:47
Speaker 2: little girl and boy then and then.
3:49
Speaker 1: You've gotten a little soft.
3:51
Speaker 2: So I was like, did I got a little soft?
3:55
Speaker 2: But then it was fun how like after just some
3:57
Speaker 2: days there, I was like, oh man, I feel like
3:59
Speaker 2: I feel like I'm at home now. And then it
4:01
Speaker 2: was like you're kind of in that flow state, and it.
4:03
Speaker 1: Was actually, there's a few moments like when you left
4:05
Speaker 1: the ladder up or with the moose, that you kind
4:08
Speaker 1: of screwed up a little bit. Oh yeah, how do
4:10
Speaker 1: you go from that moment of like frustration to the
4:13
Speaker 1: moment of acceptance?
4:16
Speaker 2: I mean, the more you put yourself in life and
4:19
Speaker 2: positions that are kind of outside your comfort zone or
4:21
Speaker 2: push your abilities, the more often you're gonna screw up.
4:26
Speaker 2: And then yeah, the more opportunity you have to learn
4:29
Speaker 2: from that. And then to be honest, it's kind of funny,
4:31
Speaker 2: but you almost get to a position where you well,
4:34
Speaker 2: you don't feel that uncomfortable. It's not unexpected, you know,
4:38
Speaker 2: you kind of expect you're going to mess up here
4:40
Speaker 2: and there. I remember, particularly with the moose. The first
4:45
Speaker 2: moose I saw, I had a great shot at it,
4:48
Speaker 2: but I had a hard time judge a distance because
4:50
Speaker 2: it was in a mud flat, which means it's hard
4:52
Speaker 2: to it's hard to tell yardage, you know, because you
4:56
Speaker 2: usually typically go and buy trees or markers be like, oh,
4:58
Speaker 2: I'm probably thirty yards away. This was a giant moose
5:01
Speaker 2: and he was forty something yards away, and I asked,
5:04
Speaker 2: himated that he was thirty something yards away. So I
5:06
Speaker 2: was way off and shot and dropped between his legs,
5:09
Speaker 2: and then I realized I had not grabbed my quiver,
5:11
Speaker 2: so I only had one shot, and I just watched
5:13
Speaker 2: him turn around and walk off. But I was struck
5:17
Speaker 2: initially with like I actually noticed how unmad I was.
5:22
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, this is actually I was like,
5:24
Speaker 2: that was awesome. Though, I was like seeing a dinosaur
5:26
Speaker 2: that was really cool. And then I was like, oh,
5:27
Speaker 2: what an idiot how to miss? But then I was
5:29
Speaker 2: like but it made me that much more determined to
5:33
Speaker 2: make it happen again. It was like, Okay, nobody's gonna
5:37
Speaker 2: make this happen except myself. She can't can't complain it
5:40
Speaker 2: when it's done, me any good to go back and
5:42
Speaker 2: mope about it. And so then I was like I
5:44
Speaker 2: had a thought. I was like, oh, I remember these
5:47
Speaker 2: the native guys telling me they used to like build
5:50
Speaker 2: these giant fences and funnel game into certain areas and stuff.
5:53
Speaker 1: And I was like, man, that's a lot of calories,
5:55
Speaker 1: but I.
5:56
Speaker 2: Have to make that happen again now. So I kind
5:59
Speaker 2: of went out there and tried that, and that was
6:01
Speaker 2: kind of an attempt at something to It could have
6:04
Speaker 2: failed or not worked, but sure enough it worked and
6:08
Speaker 2: the opportunity came again. The moose came wondering along, and
6:11
Speaker 2: I was able to get it. But being able to
6:14
Speaker 2: take failure as soon as you can the better accept
6:17
Speaker 2: it and then learn from it is kind of a
6:20
Speaker 2: muscle you have to exercise a little bit.
6:23
Speaker 1: What's interesting because in this case, the cost of failure
6:25
Speaker 1: is like you're not going to be able to eat.
6:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was really interesting. I mean, the most interesting
6:32
Speaker 2: thing thing about that show was how high the stakes felt,
6:35
Speaker 2: because it didn't feel you know, you didn't tell yourself
6:37
Speaker 2: you're on a show, at least I didn't. You just
6:39
Speaker 2: felt like it was you're going to starve to death
6:41
Speaker 2: if you don't make this happen. And so the stakes
6:44
Speaker 2: felt so high, and it was an interesting thing to
6:49
Speaker 2: tap into because I mean, so many of our ancestors
6:51
Speaker 2: probably all just dealt with that on a regular basis,
6:54
Speaker 2: but it's something that we're with thought all the modern
6:57
Speaker 2: amenities and such in food security that we don't deal with,
7:00
Speaker 2: And it was interesting to tap into what a kind
7:04
Speaker 2: of a peak mental experience that is when you really
7:08
Speaker 2: really need something to survive and then it happens. It's
7:11
Speaker 2: you can't imagine. I mean, that's what all our dope mean,
7:14
Speaker 2: and the receptors are tuned for that experience in particular.
7:19
Speaker 2: So it was, Yeah, it was pretty awesome, but the
7:22
Speaker 2: pressure felt very on Like I always felt the pressure
7:26
Speaker 2: of providing or starving.
7:29
Speaker 1: And then there's a situation when you lift the latter
7:32
Speaker 1: up right, and you needed fat and uh, what is it,
7:36
Speaker 1: Wolverine need some of the fat?
7:37
Speaker 2: Right? Yeah, Well it was when I got the moose,
7:41
Speaker 2: I was so happy, the most joy I could almost
7:43
Speaker 2: experience max maxed out. But I didn't think I uh,
7:48
Speaker 2: I didn't think I won at that point. I never
7:50
Speaker 2: thought like, oh, that's my ticket to victory. I thought,
7:53
Speaker 2: holy crap, it's going to be me against somebody else
7:56
Speaker 2: that gets a moose now, and we're going to be
7:57
Speaker 2: here six eight months, who knows how long, And so
8:00
Speaker 2: I can't. I can't be here six eight months and
8:02
Speaker 2: still lose. So I've got to, like, I've got to
8:04
Speaker 2: outproduce somebody else with a moose. So I had all
8:07
Speaker 2: that in my head already was of course pretty thin,
8:11
Speaker 2: and so I was just like, man, somebody else gets
8:13
Speaker 2: a moose, I'm still going to be behind. And so
8:15
Speaker 2: everything felt like precious to me. And I had found
8:18
Speaker 2: a plastic jug, and I put a whole bunch of
8:21
Speaker 2: the moose's fat in this plastic jug and set it
8:23
Speaker 2: up on a little shelf. I thought, you know what,
8:25
Speaker 2: if a bear comes, I'll probably hear it and I'll
8:27
Speaker 2: come out and be a shoot it. So I went
8:29
Speaker 2: to sleep and I woke up next morning. I went
8:31
Speaker 2: out and I was like, where's that jug? And then
8:35
Speaker 2: I was like, wait, a secy, what are all these prints?
8:37
Speaker 2: And then started looking around, and it took a second
8:39
Speaker 2: to dawn on me because I haven't interacted with wolverines
8:42
Speaker 2: very often in life, and uh, and I was like, oh,
8:45
Speaker 2: those are wolverine tracks, and he was just so much
8:48
Speaker 2: sneakier than a bear would have been or something, so
8:50
Speaker 2: it kind of surprised me. And he took off with
8:52
Speaker 2: that jug of fat. And so then I went from
8:55
Speaker 2: feeling pretty good about myself to like, now I'm losing
8:58
Speaker 2: again against whoever. You know, this other person is with
9:00
Speaker 2: a moose. So I again kind of the pressure came
9:04
Speaker 2: back to, oh, no, I gotta produce again. You know.
9:07
Speaker 2: It wasn't the end of the world. And I think
9:09
Speaker 2: they may have exaggerated a little bit how little fat
9:13
Speaker 2: I had left. You know, I still had a moose
9:15
Speaker 2: has a lot of fat. But it did make me
9:17
Speaker 2: feel like I was at a disadvantage again. And so yeah,
9:20
Speaker 2: that was pretty That was pretty intense because those wolverines,
9:24
Speaker 2: they're bold little animals and they and he was basically saying, no,
9:29
Speaker 2: this is my moose, and I had to counter his claims.
9:34
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, they're really really smart. They figure out a
9:37
Speaker 1: way to get to places really effectively. Wolverines are like
9:41
Speaker 1: fascinating in that way. So let's go to that happy
9:45
Speaker 1: moment the moose.
9:46
Speaker 2: Yeah.
9:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, you are the first and one of the only
9:49
Speaker 1: contestants to have ever killed a moose on the show,
9:52
Speaker 1: a big game animal with a bow and arrow. So
9:55
Speaker 1: this is day twenty, So can you take me through
9:58
Speaker 1: the kill?
9:59
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I'd missed one, and I just decided I'm
10:02
Speaker 2: not here to starve. I'm here to like try to
10:05
Speaker 2: become sustainable. So I was like, I don't care if
10:07
Speaker 2: it's a risk, I'm gonna build that fence. I built it.
10:10
Speaker 2: I would just pick berries and call moose every you know,
10:13
Speaker 2: every day, and it was actually a really pleasant just
10:15
Speaker 2: sitting a berry patch and call moose. But then I
10:18
Speaker 2: also had this whole trap and snare line set out everywhere,
10:21
Speaker 2: so I had all these I was getting rabbits, but
10:26
Speaker 2: and I was actually taking a rabbit out of a
10:30
Speaker 2: snare when I heard a clank because I'd set up
10:34
Speaker 2: kind of an alarm system with with string and cans.
10:37
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's another thing that could have not worked,
10:41
Speaker 2: but it and it came through and I was like, oh,
10:45
Speaker 2: I heard the cans clink, and I was like, no way,
10:47
Speaker 2: And so I ran over. I didn't know what it
10:49
Speaker 2: was exactly, but something was coming along the fence, and
10:51
Speaker 2: I ran over and jumped in the bush next to
10:54
Speaker 2: the funnel exit on the fence, and sure enough, the
10:57
Speaker 2: big moose came running up, and you know, your heart
10:59
Speaker 2: gets pounding like crazy. He was like, no way, no way.
11:03
Speaker 2: I probably could have waited a little longer and had
11:05
Speaker 2: a perfect broadside shot, but I took the shot when
11:08
Speaker 2: he was he was pretty close, like twenty four yards,
11:12
Speaker 2: but he was quartering towards me, which makes it a
11:15
Speaker 2: little harder to make a perfect kill shot, you know.
11:19
Speaker 2: And so I hit it and it took off running,
11:22
Speaker 2: and I just thought, you know, I was super excited.
11:25
Speaker 2: I couldn't believe I actually, you know, I was like,
11:27
Speaker 2: oh my gosh, got the moose. I think that was
11:29
Speaker 2: a really good shot. You get all excited, but then
11:33
Speaker 2: it plays back in your head, and particularly when you're
11:35
Speaker 2: first learning to hunt, there's always an animal that gets away,
11:39
Speaker 2: you know, and you like make a bad decision or
11:43
Speaker 2: not a great shot or something, and it's just it's
11:46
Speaker 2: just part of it. And so of course you're like,
11:49
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna be satisfied until I see this thing.
11:52
Speaker 2: So I followed the blood trail a little while, and
11:55
Speaker 2: I saw some bubbly blood, which meant it was hitting
11:58
Speaker 2: the lungs, which meant it's not going to live. You know,
12:00
Speaker 2: you'll get it, and so as long as you don't
12:03
Speaker 2: mess it up. And so I went back to my
12:05
Speaker 2: shelter and waited an hour. I skinned that rabbit that
12:07
Speaker 2: had caught, and then super nervous, the slowest hour ever,
12:12
Speaker 2: and then I followed it along ended up losing the
12:15
Speaker 2: blood trail. I was like, no, no, And then I
12:18
Speaker 2: was like, well, if there's no blood, I'm just going
12:20
Speaker 2: to follow the path that I would go if I
12:23
Speaker 2: was a moose, you know, like the least resistance through
12:25
Speaker 2: the woods. So I followed kind of along the shore there,
12:28
Speaker 2: and sure enough I saw him up there. Oh you know,
12:31
Speaker 2: I was so excited lay down, but but he hadn't
12:36
Speaker 2: died yet, and so he just sat there and he
12:39
Speaker 2: would stand up and I would just like no, no, no, no,
12:43
Speaker 2: and he would lay back down right, yes, and then
12:45
Speaker 2: he would stand right. And it was like that for
12:49
Speaker 2: you know, a couple hours that took him. And then
12:51
Speaker 2: finally at one point, I you know, and a lot
12:54
Speaker 2: of people have asked, like, why wouldn't you go finish
12:56
Speaker 2: it off? So when an animal like that gets hit,
12:59
Speaker 2: it hadn't idea what hit it, you know, just all
13:01
Speaker 2: of a sudden, it's like, ah, something got it, and
13:03
Speaker 2: it ran off and it lays down, and it's actually
13:05
Speaker 2: fairly calm and it doesn't really know what's going on,
13:08
Speaker 2: and if you can leave it in that state, it'll
13:10
Speaker 2: kind of bleed out and as peacefully as possible. If
13:15
Speaker 2: you go chase after it, that's when you lose an animal,
13:18
Speaker 2: because as soon as it knows it's being hunted, you know,
13:20
Speaker 2: it gets panicked adrenaline. An inch can just run and
13:23
Speaker 2: run and run, and you'll never find it. So I
13:26
Speaker 2: didn't want it to see me. I knew if I
13:28
Speaker 2: tried to get it with another arrow, there's a chance
13:30
Speaker 2: I could have finished it off, but there's also a
13:32
Speaker 2: not bad chance that it would see me take off
13:36
Speaker 2: or even attack, because moose can be a little dangerous.
13:38
Speaker 2: And so I just chose to wait it out. And
13:41
Speaker 2: at one point it stood up and fell over, and
13:44
Speaker 2: I could tell it it died and walked over like
13:47
Speaker 2: you actually touch it, and you're just like, woa, no
13:50
Speaker 2: way like that whole burden of weeks of you're gonna starve,
13:54
Speaker 2: You're gonna starve, and it got rid of that demon.
13:58
Speaker 2: To be honest, it's one of the happy moments of
14:00
Speaker 2: my life. It's really hard to replicate that joy because
14:03
Speaker 2: it was just so so real or so directly connected
14:07
Speaker 2: to your needs. It's all so simple, it was. It
14:12
Speaker 2: was a peak experience for sure.
14:14
Speaker 1: And were you worried that it would take many more
14:17
Speaker 1: hours and would take it into the night, Yeah, I was.
14:19
Speaker 2: I mean until you actually have your hands on it.
14:22
Speaker 2: I was worried the whole time. It's a pretty nerve
14:24
Speaker 2: wracking period there between when you get it and when
14:27
Speaker 2: you actually recover the animal, get your hands on it.
14:30
Speaker 2: So it took longer than I wanted, but I finally
14:34
Speaker 2: got it.
14:34
Speaker 1: Can you actually speak to the kill shot itself? Just
14:38
Speaker 1: for people who don't hunt, Yeah, that's what it takes
14:40
Speaker 1: to stay calm, to to not freak od too much,
14:44
Speaker 1: to like wait but not wait too long.
14:47
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I mean another thing about hunting is it
14:49
Speaker 2: for every animal you get, you probably don't get you know,
14:53
Speaker 2: nine or ten that just turned the wrong way when
14:56
Speaker 2: you were drawn back or went way behind a tree,
14:59
Speaker 2: or you never had a clean shot or whatever it is.
15:01
Speaker 2: And so every time you can see a moment coming,
15:06
Speaker 2: you know, your heart really starts beating and you have
15:08
Speaker 2: to like breathe through it. I can almost you know,
15:11
Speaker 2: you almost feel the nervousness of it. And then uh,
15:15
Speaker 2: and then you just try to stay calm, you know,
15:16
Speaker 2: like whatever you do, just try to stay calm, wait
15:20
Speaker 2: for it to come up. Draw back. You've practiced shooting
15:23
Speaker 2: a lot, so you have like kind of a technique.
15:26
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go back, touch my face, draw on my
15:29
Speaker 2: elbow tight, and then the arrow is gonna let loose.
15:32
Speaker 1: Muscle memory.
15:32
Speaker 2: Most it's kind of muscle memory. You have a little trigger,
15:35
Speaker 2: like draw that elbow tight and then and then uh,
15:40
Speaker 2: then it happens, and then you just watch the arrow
15:42
Speaker 2: and see where it goes. Now with the animal, you know,
15:44
Speaker 2: you try to do it ethically. That is, like, make
15:47
Speaker 2: as good of a shot as you can. Make sure
15:49
Speaker 2: it is either hit in the heart or both lungs.
15:53
Speaker 2: And when that happens, it's a pretty quick death, which
15:55
Speaker 2: is death is a part of life. And but honestly,
15:58
Speaker 2: for a wild animal, that's.
15:59
Speaker 1: Probably the best way to go. They could they could have.
16:03
Speaker 2: Now when the animals kind of walking towards you, if
16:07
Speaker 2: it's walking towards you but not directly towards you, that's
16:09
Speaker 2: what you call quartering towards you. You can picture. It's
16:13
Speaker 2: actually pretty difficult to hit both lungs because the shoulder
16:16
Speaker 2: blade and all that bone is in the way. So
16:18
Speaker 2: you want to so you have to make a perfect
16:21
Speaker 2: shot to get them both. And to be honest, when
16:23
Speaker 2: I took my shot, I was a couple of inches
16:25
Speaker 2: or a few inches right, and so it went. It
16:28
Speaker 2: went through the first long and then it sunk the
16:31
Speaker 2: arrow all the way into the moose. But it didn't
16:34
Speaker 2: it allowed that second lung to stay breathing, which which
16:37
Speaker 2: meant the moose stayed alive longer.
16:39
Speaker 1: What's your relationship with the animal in the situation like that?
16:43
Speaker 1: You said death is a part.
16:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's an interesting thought because no matter what your
16:48
Speaker 2: relationship to however you choose to go through life, whether
16:52
Speaker 2: you know, whatever you eat, whatever you do, death is
16:58
Speaker 2: a part of life. You know, like every animal that's
17:00
Speaker 2: out there is living off of a dead even plants.
17:03
Speaker 2: You know, it's all, it's all, we're all part of
17:05
Speaker 2: this ecosystem. I think it's really easy in a particularly
17:08
Speaker 2: in an urban environment but anywhere to think that we're
17:12
Speaker 2: separate from the ecosystem, but we are very much a
17:14
Speaker 2: part of it, whether it be you know, farming requires,
17:19
Speaker 2: you know, all this habitat to be turned into growing
17:22
Speaker 2: soybeans and da da dah. And when you get the
17:24
Speaker 2: plows and the combines, you know, you're losing all kinds
17:26
Speaker 2: of different animals and all kinds of potential habitat. So
17:31
Speaker 2: it's not cost free. And so when you realize that,
17:35
Speaker 2: then you want to produce the food and the things
17:37
Speaker 2: you need in an ethical manner. So I so for me,
17:43
Speaker 2: hunting plays a really major role in that. Like I
17:47
Speaker 2: literally know how many animals a year it takes to
17:50
Speaker 2: feed my family and myself. I actually know the exact number,
17:54
Speaker 2: and it's like and I know what the cost of
17:56
Speaker 2: that is, and I'm aware of it because I'm out
17:58
Speaker 2: in the woods and I see these like beautiful elk
18:00
Speaker 2: and moose, and I really love the species, love the animals,
18:05
Speaker 2: but there is a fact that one of those individuals,
18:09
Speaker 2: you know, is going to have to feed me. And
18:12
Speaker 2: and particularly like on a loan, it was very heightened
18:16
Speaker 2: that experience so I shot that one animal and I
18:19
Speaker 2: was so so thankful, you know that I wanted to
18:23
Speaker 2: give that big guy a hug and like, hey, sorry
18:25
Speaker 2: it was you, but it had to be.
18:27
Speaker 1: Somebody's that picture you just almost hugging it, right, And
18:33
Speaker 1: you can also think about the calories, the protein, the fat,
18:37
Speaker 1: all of that that comes from that that will feed you.
18:40
Speaker 2: Right, You're so grateful for it like that. The gratitude
18:43
Speaker 2: is it is like, you know, definitely there.
18:46
Speaker 1: What about the bow and arrow perspective, Well.
18:49
Speaker 2: When you hunt with a bow, you just get so
18:50
Speaker 2: much more up close to the animals. You know, you
18:53
Speaker 2: can't just get it from six hundred yards away. You
18:56
Speaker 2: actually have to sneak in within thirty or so, young cards,
19:00
Speaker 2: and when you do that, the experiences you have are
19:05
Speaker 2: just they're way more dragged out. So you know, your
19:08
Speaker 2: heart's beating longer, You have to control your nerves longer.
19:11
Speaker 2: More often than not, it doesn't go your way and
19:14
Speaker 2: the thing gets away, and you know, you've been hiking
19:16
Speaker 2: around in the woods for a week and then your
19:18
Speaker 2: opportunity arises and floats away.
19:22
Speaker 1: You know.
19:25
Speaker 2: But at the same time, that's the only time when
19:28
Speaker 2: you like really have those interactions with the animals where
19:30
Speaker 2: you got this bugling bowl, you know, like tearing at
19:34
Speaker 2: the trees right in front of you, and other cow
19:38
Speaker 2: elk and animals running around you. You know, you get
19:41
Speaker 2: you end up having really I don't know, there's intimate
19:46
Speaker 2: experiences with the animal, just because because you're in it,
19:49
Speaker 2: you're kind of in its world. You're playing its game.
19:52
Speaker 2: It has its senses to defend itself, and you have
19:54
Speaker 2: your wit to try to get over those, and it
19:57
Speaker 2: really becomes you know, it's not they're not. It becomes
20:02
Speaker 2: kind of that chess game. And those pre animals are
20:06
Speaker 2: always tuned in. It's you know, the slightest stick. They're
20:10
Speaker 2: looking for wolves or for whatever it is. So there's
20:13
Speaker 2: something really pure and fun about it, you know, I
20:16
Speaker 2: will say there is an aspect that is fun. There's
20:18
Speaker 2: no denying it. It's like how we're you know, people
20:23
Speaker 2: have been hunting forever and and I think it speaks
20:27
Speaker 2: to that part of us somehow. But and I think
20:30
Speaker 2: bow hunting is probably the most pure form of it,
20:35
Speaker 2: and that you get those experiences more often than with
20:38
Speaker 2: a rifle. So I don't know, I enjoy it a lot.
20:41
Speaker 2: And and the way they do regulations and such kind
20:44
Speaker 2: of the best times to hunt are usually allowed for
20:48
Speaker 2: bo because they're trying to, you know, keep it fair
20:52
Speaker 2: for the animal and such.
20:53
Speaker 1: So so the distance, the close distance, makes you more
20:59
Speaker 1: in touch with the sort of of the natural way
21:02
Speaker 1: of the predator and prey.
21:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, one of the predators where you have
21:08
Speaker 3: to be clever, you have to be quiet, you have
21:10
Speaker 3: to be calm, you have to all of that and
21:13
Speaker 3: the full challenge and the luck involved in mm hmm,
21:17
Speaker 3: the same thing as the predators do.
21:19
Speaker 2: Exactly how many times they snap a stick and watch
21:22
Speaker 2: them run off and like, darn, my stock was failed,
21:26
Speaker 2: you know. So yeah, you're just you're in that in
21:30
Speaker 2: that ecosystem.
21:31
Speaker 1: How'd you learn to shoot the bow?
21:33
Speaker 2: So, yeah, I was. I didn't grow up hunting. I
21:36
Speaker 2: grew up in the area that a lot of people hunted,
21:38
Speaker 2: but my dad wasn't really into it, and so I
21:40
Speaker 2: never got into it until until I lived in Russia
21:43
Speaker 2: with the natives. It was just such a part of
21:45
Speaker 2: everything we did and a part of our life that
21:47
Speaker 2: when I came back, I got a bow and I
21:50
Speaker 2: started doing archery. In Virginia, they had it was a
21:53
Speaker 2: pretty easy way to hunt because the deer were overpopulated
21:57
Speaker 2: and you could get these urban archery permits. So you
22:00
Speaker 2: go out and you know, every couple of days you
22:03
Speaker 2: have an opportunity to shoot a deer that they needed
22:06
Speaker 2: population control and so there were a lot of them,
22:08
Speaker 2: and it gave you a lot of opportunities to learn quickly.
22:11
Speaker 2: So that's what got me into it, and then I
22:13
Speaker 2: found I really enjoyed it.
22:14
Speaker 1: Do you practice with the target also or just practice out? Oh?
22:18
Speaker 2: No, I would definitely practice with a target a lot.
22:20
Speaker 2: You want to Again, you kind of have an obligation
22:22
Speaker 2: to do your best because you don't want to be
22:24
Speaker 2: flinging arrows into like the leg of an animal. And
22:27
Speaker 2: it's a cool way honestly to provide quality meat for
22:30
Speaker 2: the family. You know, it's all raised naturally and wild
22:34
Speaker 2: and free until you bring it home into the freezer.
22:36
Speaker 1: So if we step back, what are the ten items
22:40
Speaker 1: you brought and what's actually the challenge of figuring out
22:43
Speaker 1: which items to bring?
22:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, the challenge is that you don't exactly know what
22:46
Speaker 2: your site's opportunities are going to be, so you don't
22:49
Speaker 2: really know should I bring a fishing net? Am I
22:51
Speaker 2: gonna even have a spot to net or not and
22:54
Speaker 2: things like that. I brought a axe, a saw, leather
23:00
Speaker 2: in wave, fharaoh rod. It is like a mixed sparks,
23:05
Speaker 2: start a fire, a frying pan, a sleeping bag, a
23:11
Speaker 2: fishing kit, a bow and arrow, trapping wire, and parro cord.
23:18
Speaker 2: And so those are my ten items.
23:19
Speaker 1: Is any any regrets any?
23:22
Speaker 2: No major regrets I took. I took the saw kind of.
23:27
Speaker 2: I thought it would be more of a calorie saver
23:29
Speaker 2: than I I didn't really need it. I in hindsight,
23:33
Speaker 2: if I was doing you know, season seven instead of
23:35
Speaker 2: six and got to watch, I would have taken the
23:38
Speaker 2: net because I just planned to make a net. But
23:40
Speaker 2: I would have rather just had two nets, brought one
23:43
Speaker 2: and left the saw because in the Northern Wards in particular,
23:47
Speaker 2: every tree is you know the size of your arm
23:49
Speaker 2: or leg. You can drop it down with an accident
23:50
Speaker 2: a couple of swings. Yeah, yeah, you don't really need
23:53
Speaker 2: the saw. And so it was handy at times and useful,
23:57
Speaker 2: but I think it was my If I had to
23:59
Speaker 2: do nine items, I would have been just fine without
24:01
Speaker 2: the saw.
24:02
Speaker 1: So two nests would just expand.
24:05
Speaker 2: Your food gathering potentially, and.
24:09
Speaker 1: Then the in terms of trapping, you were okay with
24:14
Speaker 1: just the little you brought.
24:15
Speaker 2: The snare wire was good. I ran some, you know,
24:18
Speaker 2: I put out I used all my snare wire. I
24:20
Speaker 2: ran trap line, which is just a series of traps
24:25
Speaker 2: through the woods and brush. Every place you see sign,
24:29
Speaker 2: put a snare, put a little mark on the tree,
24:32
Speaker 2: so I knew where that snare was. And just make
24:33
Speaker 2: these paths through the woods. And I put out you know,
24:36
Speaker 2: I don't know how many one hundred and fifty two
24:38
Speaker 2: hundred snares, So every day i'd get a rabbit or
24:41
Speaker 2: two out of them. And then I had a lot
24:44
Speaker 2: of rabbits. But once I got the moose, I actually
24:48
Speaker 2: took all those snares down because I don't want to
24:49
Speaker 2: catch anything needlessly. And oh, you've come to find out
24:53
Speaker 2: you can't live off of rabbits. Man cannot live off
24:55
Speaker 2: a rabbit alone, it turns out.
24:57
Speaker 1: So you set up a huge number of traps, you
25:01
Speaker 1: were also fishing, and then always on the lookout for moose. Yeah,
25:09
Speaker 1: so like, what what's in terms of survival if you
25:12
Speaker 1: were to do it over again, over and over and
25:14
Speaker 1: over and over, Like, how do you maximize your chance
25:19
Speaker 1: of having enough food to survive.
25:21
Speaker 2: Form you have to be you have to be really
25:23
Speaker 2: adaptable because everything's gonna it's always gonna look different in
25:27
Speaker 2: your situation, your location. I actually had a what I
25:29
Speaker 2: thought was a pretty good plan going into alone, and
25:32
Speaker 2: then it just the you know, the location didn't allow.
25:36
Speaker 1: For what I thought it would.
25:37
Speaker 2: What was the plan, Well, I thought I would just
25:39
Speaker 2: catch a bunch of fish, because I'm in a really
25:41
Speaker 2: good fishing lake. I'd catch a whole bunch of fish
25:44
Speaker 2: and let them rot for a little while and then
25:46
Speaker 2: just drag them all through the woods into a big
25:49
Speaker 2: pile and then hunt the bear on that big fish pile.
25:54
Speaker 2: That was the plan, and I thought, But when I
25:57
Speaker 2: got there, for one, I had a hard time catching
25:59
Speaker 2: fish out the bat you know, it didn't come like
26:02
Speaker 2: I was hoping. And then for two, it had burned prior,
26:05
Speaker 2: so there were no berries, and so there were very
26:08
Speaker 2: few berries, which meant there weren't grouse. There weren't bear
26:11
Speaker 2: there weren't you know, they had all gone to other
26:13
Speaker 2: places where the berries were, and so what I had
26:16
Speaker 2: grown accustomed to kind of relying on in Siberia wasn't
26:21
Speaker 2: there there, you know, So in Russia, which was a
26:24
Speaker 2: similar environment. It was just grouse and berries and fish
26:28
Speaker 2: and grouse and berries and fish and then occasionally, you know,
26:30
Speaker 2: you get a moose or something. But I had to reassess,
26:33
Speaker 2: which was part of me being grumpy at the start,
26:35
Speaker 2: like my sucks. And then and then once I reassessed,
26:41
Speaker 2: and and you know, right away I saw that there
26:43
Speaker 2: were moose tracks and such, so I just started to
26:47
Speaker 2: plan for that. I moved my camp into an area
26:51
Speaker 2: that was as removed as I could be from where
26:53
Speaker 2: all the action is, where the tracks were, so that
26:55
Speaker 2: I wasn't disturbing animal patterns. I made sure the wind
26:59
Speaker 2: the predominant and wind was blowing out my scent to
27:01
Speaker 2: sea are to the water. And then really, to be honest,
27:06
Speaker 2: if you want to actually survive somewhere is different than alone.
27:09
Speaker 2: But you do have to be active and it has
27:13
Speaker 2: to You're gonna have to. You're not going to live.
27:16
Speaker 2: You're not going to be sustainable by you know, starving
27:19
Speaker 2: it out. You have to figure unlock the key that
27:21
Speaker 2: is sustainability. And I think there's a lot of areas
27:24
Speaker 2: that still have that potential. But you figure out what
27:26
Speaker 2: it is, it's usually going to be a combination of fishing,
27:28
Speaker 2: you know, trapping and then hunting and then once you
27:31
Speaker 2: have some fishing and trapping will get you until you
27:33
Speaker 2: have some success hunting and then that'll buy you through
27:37
Speaker 2: or four months of time to continue and you know
27:40
Speaker 2: to keep hunting again and you just have to roll
27:42
Speaker 2: off of that. But every you know, depends on where
27:46
Speaker 2: you are, what opportunities are there.
27:48
Speaker 1: So okay, so that's the process, fishing and trapping until
27:50
Speaker 1: you're successful hunting, and then the successful hunt buys you
27:55
Speaker 1: some more time.
27:56
Speaker 2: Right right, just go and then you just go around
27:59
Speaker 2: like that, And that's how people did it forever. The
28:02
Speaker 2: pressure I noticed it, you know, with that you got
28:04
Speaker 2: that moose and then you're happy for a week or
28:07
Speaker 2: so and then you start to be like, you know
28:09
Speaker 2: this finite, I'm gonna have to do this again. And
28:11
Speaker 2: you imagine if you had a family that was gonna
28:13
Speaker 2: starve if you weren't successful you know this next time,
28:17
Speaker 2: and there's just always that pressure. You know.
28:19
Speaker 1: It made me really like appreciate that what people had
28:24
Speaker 1: to deal with well in terms of being active, like
28:26
Speaker 1: so you have to do stuff all day, so you
28:29
Speaker 1: get up and planning mm hmm, Like what am I
28:33
Speaker 1: going to in the in the midst of the frustration,
28:35
Speaker 1: you have to figure out, like what's what's the strategy?
28:38
Speaker 1: Like how do you put up all the traps? What
28:40
Speaker 1: is that a decision? Like you know, most people like
28:42
Speaker 1: sit at their desk and have like a calendar. Where
28:46
Speaker 1: are you like figuring out?
28:47
Speaker 2: Like one thing about what wilderness life in general is,
28:50
Speaker 2: it's remarkably less scheduled then, and then we deal with
28:55
Speaker 2: schedules are fairly unique to the modern context. How you'd
28:59
Speaker 2: wake up and you just sort of you have a
29:02
Speaker 2: you know, confluence of things you want to do, things
29:05
Speaker 2: you need to do, things you should do, and you
29:08
Speaker 2: just kind of tackle them as you see fit as
29:11
Speaker 2: it flows in, you know. So and that's actually one
29:14
Speaker 2: of the things that your people really that I really
29:16
Speaker 2: appreciate about that lifestyle is it really is you're kind
29:20
Speaker 2: of in that flow. And so I'd wake up and
29:22
Speaker 2: be like, maybe I'll go fishing, and then I wonder
29:24
Speaker 2: over and fish, and then I'd be like, I'm gonna
29:27
Speaker 2: go check the trap line. Add every day if I
29:30
Speaker 2: add five or ten snares, you know, you're constantly adding
29:34
Speaker 2: to your productive potential and then, but nothing's really scheduled.
29:38
Speaker 2: You're just kind of flying by the seat of your pants.
29:41
Speaker 1: But then there's a lot of instinct that's already love
29:45
Speaker 1: so much like you're already just like wisdom from all
29:48
Speaker 1: the times you've had to do it before. You're just
29:50
Speaker 1: actually operating a lot on instinct. Like you said, where
29:53
Speaker 1: to find to place the shelter? Like how hard is
29:56
Speaker 1: that calculation? Where to place the shelter?
29:58
Speaker 2: If you're like dropped off and this is all new
30:00
Speaker 2: to you. Of course, all those things are going to
30:02
Speaker 2: be things you have to really think through and plant.
30:04
Speaker 2: When you're thinking about a shelter, you have to think of, oh,
30:07
Speaker 2: here's a nice flat spot. You know that's a good place.
30:10
Speaker 2: But also is there firewood nearby? And if I'm gonna
30:12
Speaker 2: be here for months, is there enough firewood that I'm
30:14
Speaker 2: not gonna be walking half a mile to get a
30:15
Speaker 2: dry piece of wood? Is the water nearby?
30:19
Speaker 1: Is there?
30:19
Speaker 2: Is it somewhat open but also protected from the elements.
30:24
Speaker 2: Because sometimes you get a beautiful spot it was great
30:27
Speaker 2: on a calm day, and then the wind comes up,
30:29
Speaker 2: and so there's all these factors, you know, even down
30:32
Speaker 2: to taking in what game is doing in the area also,
30:36
Speaker 2: and how that relates to where your shelter is.
30:38
Speaker 1: You said, you have to consider where the action will be,
30:40
Speaker 1: and you want to be away from the action but
30:43
Speaker 1: close enough to.
30:44
Speaker 2: It to see it. Yeah, you want to be yeah right,
30:46
Speaker 2: and so uh ideally, you know, and it depends you're
30:49
Speaker 2: always going to make given takes. And one thing with
30:51
Speaker 2: shelters and location selection and stuff, that's another thing. You
30:55
Speaker 2: just have to trust your ability to adapt in the
30:58
Speaker 2: situation because everybody has a particular you know, he got
31:02
Speaker 2: an idea of a shelter you gonna build. But then
31:03
Speaker 2: you get there and maybe there's a good cliff that
31:05
Speaker 2: you can incorporate, you know, or and then you just
31:07
Speaker 2: become creative. And that's a really fun process too, to
31:11
Speaker 2: just allow your creativity to try to flourish in.
31:14
Speaker 1: What kind of shelters are there.
31:16
Speaker 2: There's all kinds of philosophies and shelters, which is fun. People.
31:20
Speaker 2: It's fun to see people try different things. Mine was
31:23
Speaker 2: fairly basic for the simple reason that I'd lived, you know,
31:26
Speaker 2: winters through winters in Siberia in a teepee, so I
31:30
Speaker 2: knew I didn't need like anything too robust as long
31:33
Speaker 2: as I had calories, i'd be warm and I wasn't
31:36
Speaker 2: particularly worried about the cold. But you'll see, so I
31:41
Speaker 2: kept my shelter really pretty simple, with the idea that
31:44
Speaker 2: I built a simple, a frame type shelter and then
31:47
Speaker 2: most of my energy is going to be focused on
31:49
Speaker 2: getting calories. And then of course there's always going to
31:52
Speaker 2: be downtime, and in that downtime I can tweak modify
31:55
Speaker 2: and prove my shelter and that'll just be a constant
31:58
Speaker 2: process that by the time you're there months, you'll have
32:00
Speaker 2: all the kinks worked out. It'll be a really nice
32:02
Speaker 2: little setup. But you don't have to start with that
32:04
Speaker 2: necessarily because you've got other needs you got to focus on.
32:07
Speaker 2: That said, you'll see a lot of people on a
32:10
Speaker 2: loan that really focus on, you know, building the log
32:12
Speaker 2: cabin because they want to be secure or incorporating the
32:18
Speaker 2: you know, whatever the earth has around, whether it be
32:20
Speaker 2: rocks or whether it be dig in a hole. You know.
32:23
Speaker 2: And we've seen some really cool shelters and I I'm
32:27
Speaker 2: not gonna knock it. Everybody's got there's all the different
32:30
Speaker 2: strokes for different folks. But I, in my particular idea
32:34
Speaker 2: was to keep it fairly simple, improve it with time,
32:37
Speaker 2: but spend most of my energy, you know. The shelter
32:40
Speaker 2: you really need to think about. It can't be smoky
32:42
Speaker 2: because that'll be miserable, but it is nice to have
32:44
Speaker 2: a fire inside. So you need to have a fire
32:47
Speaker 2: inside that's not gonna be dangerous and smoke free, and
32:51
Speaker 2: then also air tight because you're never gonna have a
32:54
Speaker 2: warm shelter out there because you don't have seals and
32:57
Speaker 2: things like that. But as long as the hair is
33:00
Speaker 2: moving through it, you can have a warm enough shelter
33:03
Speaker 2: with a fire. With a fire and dryer socks and stuff.
33:06
Speaker 1: How do you get the smoke out of the shelter.
33:09
Speaker 2: If you have good clay and mud and rock, you
33:11
Speaker 2: can build yourself a fireplace, which is surprisingly not that hard.
33:14
Speaker 2: You know, you just, oh, really, yeah, it's a fun
33:16
Speaker 2: thing to do. It works well, you know, take a
33:18
Speaker 2: little hole, start stacking rocks around it, make mixture is
33:21
Speaker 2: opening and it actually works, you know, So that's not
33:26
Speaker 2: as hard as you might think. For me where I was,
33:30
Speaker 2: I I kind of came up with it as I
33:33
Speaker 2: was there with my a frame. You know, I hadn't
33:36
Speaker 2: built then a frame shelter like that before, and so
33:39
Speaker 2: when I built it, and then I had put a
33:41
Speaker 2: bunch of tin cans in the ground so that air
33:43
Speaker 2: would get the fire. So it was fed by air,
33:46
Speaker 2: which helps create a draft. But but I realized in
33:51
Speaker 2: an a frame it really doesn't. The smoke doesn't go
33:53
Speaker 2: out very well. Even if you leave a hole at
33:55
Speaker 2: the top, it like collects and billows back down. So
33:58
Speaker 2: then I uh cut some of my tarp and made
34:02
Speaker 2: this and cut a hole in the in the A frame,
34:05
Speaker 2: and then I made like a hood vent that I
34:07
Speaker 2: could pull down and catch the smoke with. And so
34:10
Speaker 2: while the fire was going, it would just billow out
34:12
Speaker 2: the hood vent. And then when it was done burning
34:15
Speaker 2: and it was just hot coals, I could close it,
34:17
Speaker 2: seal it up and keep the heat in. So it
34:19
Speaker 2: actually worked pretty well.
34:21
Speaker 1: So start with something that kind of works and then
34:23
Speaker 1: keep improving.
34:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, that was.
34:25
Speaker 1: Wonder I mean the log cabin, mm hmm. It feels
34:29
Speaker 1: like that's a thing that takes a huge amount of work.
34:32
Speaker 2: Work the difference between a log cabin and a warm
34:34
Speaker 2: log cabin, it's like an immense amount of work, and
34:38
Speaker 2: all the chinking and all the door ceiling, and you know,
34:42
Speaker 2: the chimney has to be anyway, so otherwise this is
34:44
Speaker 2: gonna be the same ambient temperature as outside. So I
34:49
Speaker 2: don't think it loans the proper context for a log cabin.
34:52
Speaker 2: I think like a log cabin is great and as
34:55
Speaker 2: a hunting cabin, as you know, if you're gonna have
34:58
Speaker 2: something for years, But in a thirty six month scenario,
35:01
Speaker 2: I don't know that it's worth the calorie expenditure.
35:04
Speaker 1: And it is a lot of calories. But that's an
35:07
Speaker 1: interesting sort of metaphor of just like get something that works.
35:10
Speaker 1: You see a lot a lot of this with companies,
35:13
Speaker 1: like successful companies, they you know, get a prototype, get
35:16
Speaker 1: a system that's working, and improve fast in response to
35:20
Speaker 1: the conditions to the environment.
35:21
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's constantly changing. Yeah yeah, and you end.
35:24
Speaker 1: Up being a lot better if you're able to learn
35:27
Speaker 1: how to respond quickly versus like having a big plan
35:31
Speaker 1: that takes a huge amount of time to.
35:33
Speaker 2: Accomplish, forcing that through the pipeline whether or not it fits.
35:38
Speaker 1: Can you just speak to like the place you were
35:41
Speaker 1: the Canadian Arctic.
35:42
Speaker 2: It looks cold, Yeah, we're right near the Arctic circle.
35:45
Speaker 2: I don't know, it was like sixty kilometers south of
35:48
Speaker 2: the Arctic Circle, so it was It's a really cool area,
35:52
Speaker 2: really remote, thousands of little lakes. You know, when you
35:55
Speaker 2: fly over, you're just like, man, that's incredible. There must
35:58
Speaker 2: be so many of those lakes that people haven't been too.
36:00
Speaker 2: You know. It really was a neat area, really remote,
36:03
Speaker 2: and for the show's purpose, I think it was perfect
36:06
Speaker 2: because it did have enough game and enough different avenues
36:10
Speaker 2: forward that I think it really did reward activity, so
36:14
Speaker 2: I think. But it's a special place. It was DNA.
36:18
Speaker 2: There's a tribe that lived there, the DNA people, which
36:21
Speaker 2: interestingly enough, here's a side note. When I was in Siberia,
36:24
Speaker 2: I floated down this river called the Pudkamen Nayatunguska, and
36:29
Speaker 2: you get to this village called Sulamai, and there's these
36:33
Speaker 2: kept people they're called and there's only six hundred of
36:36
Speaker 2: them left. But this isn't the middle of Siberia, not
36:40
Speaker 2: in like the Pacific coast. But their language is related
36:44
Speaker 2: to the DNA people, and so somehow you know that
36:48
Speaker 2: connection was there thousands of years ago. Super interesting, but.
36:51
Speaker 1: Yes, the language travels somehow.
36:54
Speaker 2: Right, and the remnants stayed back there it's very interesting
36:57
Speaker 2: to think through history.
36:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, within language contains a history of people's and it's
37:02
Speaker 1: interesting how that evolves over time, and how wars tell
37:06
Speaker 1: the story like language tells the story of conflict, and
37:09
Speaker 1: conflict shape language and we'll get.
37:12
Speaker 2: The result of that, right, So fascinating.
37:15
Speaker 1: And the barriers that language creates is also the thing
37:18
Speaker 1: that leads to wars and misunderstandings and all this kind
37:22
Speaker 1: of it's a fascinating tension. But it got cold there, right,
37:26
Speaker 1: it got real cold.
37:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think I don't know what. I
37:30
Speaker 2: didn't have a thermometer. I imagine it probably got the
37:33
Speaker 2: negative thirty at the most. You know, it might have
37:36
Speaker 2: gotten It would have definitely gotten colder had we stayed longer.
37:39
Speaker 2: But yeah, to be honest, I was said, I never
37:44
Speaker 2: felt cold out there. I was pretty I had that
37:46
Speaker 2: one pretty dialed in. And once you have calories, you
37:49
Speaker 2: can stay warm and stay active, you can. You know,
37:52
Speaker 2: you gotta dress warm. You know, never let there's a
37:56
Speaker 2: good one. If you're in the cold, Never let yourself
37:58
Speaker 2: get too cold, because what happens is you'll stop feeling
38:01
Speaker 2: what's cold, and then frost bite and then issues and
38:04
Speaker 2: then it's really hard to warm back up. So every
38:07
Speaker 2: it was so annoying. I'd be out going to ice
38:09
Speaker 2: fish or something, and then I would just notice that
38:12
Speaker 2: my feed are cold, and You're just like, oh, dang it,
38:14
Speaker 2: I just turn around, go back, start a fire, dry
38:17
Speaker 2: my boots out, make sure my feet are warm, and
38:20
Speaker 2: then go again. I wouldn't ignore that, you know.
38:22
Speaker 1: Oh, so you want to be able to feel as cold.
38:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, you want to make sure you're still feeling things
38:26
Speaker 2: and that you're not toughen through it, because you can't
38:29
Speaker 2: really tough through the cold. It'll just get you.
38:32
Speaker 1: So what's your relationship with the cold psychologically physically?
38:38
Speaker 2: It's interesting, Well, I actually there's some part of it
38:41
Speaker 2: that really makes you feel alive. You know. I imagine
38:43
Speaker 2: you sometime in Austin here you come go out and
38:46
Speaker 2: it's hot and sweaty, and you get that kind of
38:49
Speaker 2: kind of SAPs you. There's something about that brisk cold
38:52
Speaker 2: that hits your face that you're like, ooh, wakes you up,
38:55
Speaker 2: makes you feel really alive, engaged. You know. It feels
38:58
Speaker 2: like the margins of air smaller, so you're alert and
39:01
Speaker 2: engaged a little more. There is something that's a little
39:04
Speaker 2: bit life giving just because you feel on an edge.
39:08
Speaker 2: You're you're on this edge, but you have to be
39:10
Speaker 2: alert because even you know, some of the natives I
39:13
Speaker 2: lived with. The lady had face issues because she let
39:16
Speaker 2: her head get cold and they're on a snowmobile. Hat
39:19
Speaker 2: was up too high, you know, that little mistake, and
39:21
Speaker 2: then it just freezes as part of your forehead, and
39:23
Speaker 2: then the nerves go and then you got issues when
39:26
Speaker 2: just hat wasn't high enough. So you got kind of
39:28
Speaker 2: got to be dialed in on stuff.
39:30
Speaker 1: Well, there's a psychological element to just I mean, it's unpleasant.
39:35
Speaker 1: If I were to think of what kind of unpleasant
39:38
Speaker 1: would I choose, you know, fasting for long periods of
39:42
Speaker 1: times going without food in a warm environment is way
39:45
Speaker 1: more pleasant then be fed in the golden exactly like
39:50
Speaker 1: if you were to choose.
39:51
Speaker 2: To choose the opposite.
39:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, there you go. I wonder if that's I
39:57
Speaker 1: wonder if you're born with that or if that's developed
39:59
Speaker 1: maybe time it's I very like you, or do you
40:02
Speaker 1: gravitate towards it. I wonder what that is, because I
40:05
Speaker 1: really don't like survival in the cold.
40:08
Speaker 2: I think a little bit of it is learned, you
40:10
Speaker 2: like almost learned not you learn not to fear it,
40:14
Speaker 2: you learn to kind of appreciate it. And a big
40:17
Speaker 2: part of that is, I mean, to be honest, it's
40:20
Speaker 2: like dressing warm, being in good. It's not that you know,
40:24
Speaker 2: there's no secrets to that, as you just can't beat
40:27
Speaker 2: the cold. So you just need to dress warm than native,
40:28
Speaker 2: you know, all that fur, all that stuff, and then
40:31
Speaker 2: all of a sudden you have your little refuge, have
40:33
Speaker 2: a nice warm fire gun and your tepee, you know,
40:37
Speaker 2: and then I bet you could learn to appreciate it. Yeah.
40:41
Speaker 1: I think some of it is just opening yourself up
40:44
Speaker 1: to the possibility there's something enjoyable about it. Like here
40:48
Speaker 1: and I run in Austin all the time in like
40:50
Speaker 1: a hundred degree heat, and I go out there with
40:55
Speaker 1: a smile on my face and like and learn to
40:58
Speaker 1: enjoy it. Oh yeah, so you're just like I look
41:01
Speaker 1: kind of like you do in the cold. Just I
41:04
Speaker 1: don't think I enjoy the heat, but you just allow
41:06
Speaker 1: yourself to enjoy.
41:07
Speaker 4: Yeah.
41:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I do feel that way. I mean, I
41:11
Speaker 2: don't mind the heat that much, but I think you
41:13
Speaker 2: could get to the place where you appreciated the gold.
41:16
Speaker 2: It's probably just a lack of It's kind of scary
41:19
Speaker 2: when you haven't done it and you don't know what
41:21
Speaker 2: you're doing and you go out and you feel cold,
41:23
Speaker 2: it's like not fun. But I bet you could, you'd
41:25
Speaker 2: enjoy it enough to come out sometimes.
41:29
Speaker 1: I mean, you're right, it doesn't make you feel alive
41:31
Speaker 1: that it like. Maybe that's the thing that I struggle with,
41:35
Speaker 1: is the time passes slow work, because it does make
41:38
Speaker 1: you feel alive. You get to feel time. But then
41:41
Speaker 1: the flip side of that is you get to feel
41:44
Speaker 1: every moment and you get to feel alive and every moment,
41:47
Speaker 1: so that it's both scary when you're inexperienced and beautiful
41:52
Speaker 1: when you are experienced. Were there times when you got hungry?
41:57
Speaker 2: I got shot a rabbit on day one, and I
41:58
Speaker 2: snared a couple of rap it Sunday too, and then
42:03
Speaker 2: more and more as the time went, so I actually
42:05
Speaker 2: did pretty well on the food front. The other thing
42:09
Speaker 2: is when you have all those berries around and stuff,
42:11
Speaker 2: you do have an ability to like fill your stomach,
42:14
Speaker 2: and so you don't really notice if you're getting thinner
42:16
Speaker 2: or if you're losing weight. So I can say on
42:21
Speaker 2: a loan. I was not that hungry. I've definitely been
42:24
Speaker 2: really hungry in Russia. There were times when when I
42:28
Speaker 2: lost a lot of weight. I mean I lost a
42:30
Speaker 2: lot more weight in Siberia than I did on eleven.
42:32
Speaker 1: Oh wow, okay, we'll have to talk about it. And
42:36
Speaker 1: so you caught a fish, caught a couple.
42:40
Speaker 2: I think I caught like thirteen or so. They didn't
42:42
Speaker 2: show a lot of them.
42:43
Speaker 1: You caught thirteen fish.
42:45
Speaker 2: Thirteen to those big fishes. Oh, I caught a couple
42:48
Speaker 2: that were small.
42:49
Speaker 1: This is like a meme at this point.
42:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was.
42:52
Speaker 1: You're a perfect example of a person who was thriving.
42:56
Speaker 2: I was thought, you know this, this is in the
42:59
Speaker 2: in hindsight. Again, when I was out there, I never
43:01
Speaker 2: let myself think you might weigh and I just was
43:03
Speaker 2: gonna be out there as long as I could and
43:05
Speaker 2: tried to remain pessimistic. But then the but I remember
43:09
Speaker 2: a thought that I was like, I wonder if they're
43:11
Speaker 2: gonna be able to make this look hard? You know,
43:13
Speaker 2: I did have that thought at one point, and because
43:16
Speaker 2: it went pretty well and I was definitely was, it
43:19
Speaker 2: was hard psychologically because I didn't know and it was
43:23
Speaker 2: going to end, like I thought this could go it,
43:25
Speaker 2: you know, like I said, six months, it could go
43:27
Speaker 2: eight months, a year, and then you start to ca
43:30
Speaker 2: you know, at a two and a three year old,
43:32
Speaker 2: and you start to weigh and the is it worth
43:34
Speaker 2: it if it goes a year and it's not worth
43:37
Speaker 2: it if it goes eight months and I still lose.
43:39
Speaker 2: So I feel like I had this pressure and it
43:42
Speaker 2: was psychologically difficult for that reason, physically it wasn't too bad.
43:48
Speaker 1: This is off my court talking about Gordon Ryan competing
43:52
Speaker 1: in jiu jitsu, and maybe that's the challenge he also
43:56
Speaker 1: has to faces to make things look hard because there's
44:00
Speaker 1: he's so dominant in the sport that in terms of
44:05
Speaker 1: the drama and the entertainment of the of the sport
44:08
Speaker 1: and in this case of survival, it has to be difficult,
44:11
Speaker 1: you know.
44:11
Speaker 2: And I'll add for sure though that it's it's the woods,
44:15
Speaker 2: it's nature. You never know how it's gonna go, you
44:17
Speaker 2: know what I mean. It's like every time you're out there,
44:19
Speaker 2: it's a different scenario. So yeah, whatever, halleluiot went.
44:23
Speaker 1: Well, so you you won after seventy seven days, how
44:27
Speaker 1: long do you think he could have lasted.
44:29
Speaker 2: When I left, I weighed what I do right now,
44:31
Speaker 2: So I just waited my normal weight. I had, you know,
44:35
Speaker 2: a couple hundred pounds of moose. I had at least,
44:38
Speaker 2: you know, one hundred pounds of fish. I had, you know,
44:41
Speaker 2: a pile of rabbits, a wolverine. You know. I had
44:44
Speaker 2: all this stuff, and I know I hadn't gotten cold yet.
44:49
Speaker 2: I just thought, But in my head, I thought, if
44:54
Speaker 2: I get today one hundred and thirty or forty, even
44:58
Speaker 2: if someone else has big game, I had a pretty
45:00
Speaker 2: good idea they might quit because it would be long, cold,
45:04
Speaker 2: dark days. And how miserable is that? Just it's so boring,
45:08
Speaker 2: it's freezing, and and so I thought. The only time
45:12
Speaker 2: I thought I could think about winning is when I
45:15
Speaker 2: got to day one hundred and thirty or forty, and
45:17
Speaker 2: I definitely had that with what I had now, maybe
45:23
Speaker 2: I would have got you know, I probably would have
45:24
Speaker 2: gotten more. I had caught that big twenty something pound
45:28
Speaker 2: pike on the last day I was there, and maybe
45:31
Speaker 2: catch some more of those, you know, I don't you know,
45:32
Speaker 2: and I don't know, like I don't know how many
45:34
Speaker 2: calories I had stored, but I had a lot, and
45:37
Speaker 2: so how long would that have lasted me? Assuming I
45:39
Speaker 2: didn't get anything else, it definitely would have I would
45:42
Speaker 2: definitely would have reached my goal of one hundred thirty
45:45
Speaker 2: or forty days. And then after that, I thought we
45:48
Speaker 2: were just going to push into the who you know,
45:50
Speaker 2: then it's just to see how much who has what
45:52
Speaker 2: reserves and will go as far as we can, and
45:54
Speaker 2: that would get me through January into February. And I
45:57
Speaker 2: just thought, man, that's be miserable for people.
46:00
Speaker 1: And you're like, I can last, and what aspect of
46:05
Speaker 1: that is miserable.
46:07
Speaker 2: The hardest thing for me would have been the boredom,
46:09
Speaker 2: because it's hard to it's hard to stay busy when
46:13
Speaker 2: it's all dark out, when the ice is, you know,
46:16
Speaker 2: three four foot thick, you can't fish, and I just think,
46:22
Speaker 2: I think it would have just been really boring. It
46:24
Speaker 2: would have had to have been a real zen master
46:26
Speaker 2: to push through it. But because I had experienced with
46:29
Speaker 2: some degree, I knew I could. And then I think
46:32
Speaker 2: things that my you know, you start thinking about family
46:36
Speaker 2: and this and that in those situations, and I just
46:39
Speaker 2: knew that those because I'd gone to all these trips
46:41
Speaker 2: to Russia for a year at a time. The time
46:44
Speaker 2: context was a little broader for me than I think
46:46
Speaker 2: for some people, because I knew I could be gone
46:49
Speaker 2: for a year and come back, catch up with my
46:52
Speaker 2: loved ones, you know, bring what I got back, whether
46:56
Speaker 2: that be psychological or whatever it is, and we'd all
46:59
Speaker 2: enrich each other. And once it's in hindsight, that year
47:01
Speaker 2: would have been like that talking about it. So I
47:03
Speaker 2: had that perspective and it so I knew I wasn't
47:06
Speaker 2: gonna tap for any other reason other than running out
47:08
Speaker 2: of food someday. So that was my stressor.
47:10
Speaker 1: And so you're able to give in the boredom, giving them loneliness,
47:14
Speaker 1: kind of zoom out and accept the passing of time.
47:19
Speaker 2: Let it pass, you know. For me, I'm an act,
47:22
Speaker 2: fairly act. I like to be active, and so I
47:24
Speaker 2: would try to think of creative ways to keep my
47:27
Speaker 2: brain busy. You know, we saw the like dumb rabbit
47:30
Speaker 2: first skit, but then I did a whole bunch of
47:32
Speaker 2: like elaborate Normandy reinvasion you know, inadmans and stuff like.
47:37
Speaker 2: It was like there was a every day I would
47:39
Speaker 2: think of, So I gotta think of something to make
47:41
Speaker 2: me laugh, you know, and then do some stupid skit,
47:44
Speaker 2: and then that would be that would fill a couple
47:46
Speaker 2: hours of my time, and then I'd spend an hour
47:48
Speaker 2: or two, a couple of few hours fishing. And then
47:50
Speaker 2: you spend a few hours, you know, whatever you're doing.
47:53
Speaker 1: Would you do that without a camera?
47:55
Speaker 2: Yeah? No, the skits A funny question. That's a good question.
48:00
Speaker 2: I don't know. I actually don't know that. I will
48:03
Speaker 2: say that was one of the advantages of being on
48:05
Speaker 2: the show versus in Siberia. So I know, because I
48:08
Speaker 2: didn't in Siberia just do skits by myself, but I
48:12
Speaker 2: didn't film it, and so it was it was quite
48:16
Speaker 2: nice to have this camera that made you feel like
48:18
Speaker 2: you weren't quite as alone as if you were just
48:21
Speaker 2: in the woods by yourself. And I think for me
48:24
Speaker 2: I was able to It was a pain. It was
48:26
Speaker 2: part of the cause of me missing that moves. You know,
48:29
Speaker 2: there's issues with it, but I just chose to look
48:31
Speaker 2: at it. It's like, this is an awesome opportunity to
48:34
Speaker 2: share with people a part of me that most people
48:36
Speaker 2: don't get to see, you know, because no, So that
48:39
Speaker 2: was I just chose to look at it that way.
48:41
Speaker 2: And it was an advantage because you could do stuff
48:43
Speaker 2: like that.
48:43
Speaker 1: I think there's actual power to doing this kind of documenting,
48:48
Speaker 1: like talking to a camera or an audio recorder like that.
48:51
Speaker 1: That's an actual tool in survival. I had a little
48:56
Speaker 1: bit of an experience of being alone in the jungle
48:58
Speaker 1: and just being able to talk to a thing h
49:01
Speaker 1: is much less lonely.
49:03
Speaker 2: It is, it really is. It's a It can be
49:06
Speaker 2: a powerful tool just to sharing your experience. I had
49:09
Speaker 2: the I definitely had the thought. So going back to
49:12
Speaker 2: your earlier comment, but I definitely had the thought. If
49:15
Speaker 2: I knew I was a last person on Earth, I
49:17
Speaker 2: wouldn't even bother like, I wouldn't do that, like I
49:19
Speaker 2: would just probably not I just give up, I'm sure,
49:22
Speaker 2: because even if I had a bunch of food in
49:25
Speaker 2: this and that. But because I knew you're you know
49:27
Speaker 2: you're a part you're sharing, it gives you a lot
49:31
Speaker 2: of strength to go through. And having that camera just
49:34
Speaker 2: as makes it that much more vivid, because you know
49:37
Speaker 2: you're not just going to be sharing a vague memory,
49:38
Speaker 2: but an actual experience.
49:40
Speaker 1: I think if you're the last person on Earth, you
49:42
Speaker 1: would actually convince yourself first all you don't know for sure,
49:47
Speaker 1: there's always.
49:48
Speaker 2: Going to be guys last hope?
49:50
Speaker 1: Hope really does it? Does that you really don't know
49:53
Speaker 1: you really you really hope to find I mean, if
49:55
Speaker 1: you're like an apocalypse happens, I think your whole life
49:59
Speaker 1: will be come about finding the other.
50:01
Speaker 2: Parce it would be, And there's a chance. I mean,
50:03
Speaker 2: I guess I'm saying, if you knew you were for
50:04
Speaker 2: some reason knew you were the last I wonder if
50:06
Speaker 2: you would I wonder if that was the thought I had,
50:09
Speaker 2: if I knew I was the last person, because out
50:12
Speaker 2: here I was having a good time, having fun, fishing,
50:14
Speaker 2: plenty of food. But like, if I knew I was
50:17
Speaker 2: the last person on earth, I don't know that I
50:18
Speaker 2: would even bother. But now if that was for real,
50:22
Speaker 2: would I bother? That's the question?
50:23
Speaker 1: No, No, I think if you knew, if somebody, some
50:27
Speaker 1: way you knew for sure, I think your mind will
50:29
Speaker 1: start doubting it that whoever told you you're the last person,
50:33
Speaker 1: whatever was lying right.
50:37
Speaker 2: The power of hope might be more more powerful thing
50:40
Speaker 2: than I accounted for in that situation.
50:42
Speaker 1: Also, you might, if you are indeed the last person,
50:46
Speaker 1: you might want to be documenting it for once you die,
50:50
Speaker 1: you know, an alien species comes about because whatever happened
50:53
Speaker 1: on Earth is a pretty special thing. And if you're
50:55
Speaker 1: the last one, you might be like the last person
50:59
Speaker 1: to tell the story of what happened. And so that's
51:02
Speaker 1: going to be a way to convince yourself that this
51:04
Speaker 1: is important. And so the days will go by like this.
51:07
Speaker 1: But it would be lonely. Boy, would that be lonely?
51:10
Speaker 2: It would be well delving into the dredge the depths. Yeah,
51:17
Speaker 2: I mean something.
51:17
Speaker 1: There is going to be existential dread mhm. But also
51:22
Speaker 1: I don't know, I think hope will burn bright. You'll
51:25
Speaker 1: be looking for the humans.
51:26
Speaker 2: That's you know. One of the reasons that talking to you,
51:29
Speaker 2: I think that I appreciated value is you you're always
51:32
Speaker 2: not out of naivity, but you're always choose to look
51:35
Speaker 2: at the positive, you know what I mean. And I
51:37
Speaker 2: think that's a powerful mindset to have. I appreciate it.
51:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, that would be a pretty cool survival situation. Though,
51:44
Speaker 1: if you're the last person on Earth, you could share it.
51:50
Speaker 1: You could share. Yeah. Like I said, many people consider
51:56
Speaker 1: you the most successful competitor on alone. The other successful
51:59
Speaker 1: one is Roland Welker rock house guy. Oh yeah, this
52:03
Speaker 1: is just a fun, ridiculous question. But head to head,
52:06
Speaker 1: who do you think survives longer?
52:10
Speaker 2: If you want to get me the competitive side of it,
52:12
Speaker 2: I would just say, I'm pretty dang sure. I had
52:15
Speaker 2: more pounds of food. But and I didn't have the
52:20
Speaker 2: advantage of knowing when it would end, which I think
52:22
Speaker 2: would have been a great psychological Oh yeah, it would
52:26
Speaker 2: have made it really easy. Once I got the moose,
52:28
Speaker 2: I could have shot the moose and just not stressed.
52:30
Speaker 2: It would have been like a And so that was
52:33
Speaker 2: a big difference between the seasons that I felt like,
52:36
Speaker 2: I mean, I felt like the psychology of season seven
52:39
Speaker 2: they kind of messed up by doing a one hundred
52:41
Speaker 2: day cap because from my own experience, that was the
52:44
Speaker 2: hardest part. But Roland's a he's a beast.
52:47
Speaker 1: So for people don't know, they put a hundred day
52:48
Speaker 1: cap on. So it's whoever can survive a hundred days
52:53
Speaker 1: for that season. It's interesting to hear that for you,
52:56
Speaker 1: the uncertainty, not knowing when it ends, for sure, it's
53:01
Speaker 1: the hardest, that's true. It's like you wake up every day.
53:05
Speaker 2: I didn't know how to ration my food. I didn't
53:07
Speaker 2: know if if I was gonna lose after six months
53:10
Speaker 2: and then it was all gonna be for not. I
53:12
Speaker 2: didn't know if it you know, I just there's so
53:14
Speaker 2: many unknowns you don't know, Like, like I said, if
53:16
Speaker 2: I shot a moose and it was one hundred days done,
53:19
Speaker 2: if I shot a moose and you don't know, it's
53:21
Speaker 2: like crap. I could still lose to somebody else, but
53:24
Speaker 2: it's gonna be way in the future. So anyway, that
53:28
Speaker 2: for me was definitely the hard part.
53:31
Speaker 1: And when you found out that you won and your
53:33
Speaker 1: wife was there, it was funny because you're really happy.
53:37
Speaker 1: There was a great sort of moment of you reuniting,
53:41
Speaker 1: but also there's a state of shock of like you
53:46
Speaker 1: look like you were ready to go much longer.
53:48
Speaker 2: That was the most genuine shock I could have. I
53:52
Speaker 2: didn't even like entertain the thought yet. I didn't even
53:54
Speaker 2: think it was you'd hear the helicopters, and I just
53:58
Speaker 2: assumed there was other people out there. I just hadn't
54:00
Speaker 2: I thought, you know, And for one, the previous person
54:04
Speaker 2: that had gone alongest had gone eighty nine days, so
54:07
Speaker 2: I just knew whoever else was out here with me,
54:09
Speaker 2: somebody's got that in their crosshairs. They're going to get
54:12
Speaker 2: to ninety and they're not going to quit it ninety.
54:14
Speaker 2: They're gonna go to one hundred. You know. I just
54:15
Speaker 2: figured we can't start thinking about the end until a
54:19
Speaker 2: couple months from when it ended. So I was just shocked,
54:23
Speaker 2: and they tricked me pretty good. They know how to
54:26
Speaker 2: make you think you're not. You know that they're not.
54:28
Speaker 1: So they want you to do the surprise.
54:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, they want it to be a surprise.
54:31
Speaker 1: You really weren't. I mean you have to do that,
54:34
Speaker 1: I guess for a while. Don't be counting the days.
54:36
Speaker 2: No, I think that would be and then you know,
54:38
Speaker 2: you see that and some of the people do that.
54:40
Speaker 2: For myself, that would be bad psychology because then you're
54:42
Speaker 2: just always disappointing yourself. You have to be settled with
54:45
Speaker 2: the fact that this is going to go a long
54:47
Speaker 2: time and suck. Once you come to peace with that,
54:50
Speaker 2: maybe you'll be pleasantly surprised, but you're not going to
54:52
Speaker 2: be constantly disappointed.
54:54
Speaker 1: So what was your diet like, Like, what was your
54:56
Speaker 1: eating habits like during that time? Like how many meals
55:00
Speaker 1: a day? This is?
55:05
Speaker 2: Oh, I was trying to eat the thing I was
55:08
Speaker 2: like not trying to the more the moose is hanging
55:10
Speaker 2: out there, the more the critters. Every critter in the
55:12
Speaker 2: forest is trying to peck at it, or mice trying
55:15
Speaker 2: to eat it and stuff.
55:16
Speaker 1: So so one of the ways you can protect the
55:18
Speaker 1: food eating it.
55:20
Speaker 2: So I was having three good meals a day, and
55:22
Speaker 2: then I'd like coick up some meat and go to sleep,
55:25
Speaker 2: and then uh, wake up in the middle of night
55:27
Speaker 2: because there are long nights, and like have some meat
55:30
Speaker 2: at night, eat a bunch at night, and then so
55:33
Speaker 2: I'd usually have a fish fish stew for lunch, and
55:36
Speaker 2: then moose for breakfast and dinner, and then have some
55:40
Speaker 2: for a nighttime snack because the nights were long, so
55:42
Speaker 2: you'd be in bed like fourteen hours and wake up
55:46
Speaker 2: and eat and dink around and go back to sleep.
55:49
Speaker 1: Is it okay that I was pretty little carb situation.
55:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, I actually felt really good. I tried to. I
55:54
Speaker 2: tried to. I think I would have felt better if
55:57
Speaker 2: I would have had a higher percentage of fat, because
55:59
Speaker 2: you know, it's still over more protein. Then if you're
56:02
Speaker 2: on a keto diet, you want a lot of fat,
56:05
Speaker 2: And so I did. I did to try to mix
56:07
Speaker 2: in like nature's carbs different like reindeer, lichen and things
56:10
Speaker 2: like that. But honestly, I felt pretty good on that diet.
56:14
Speaker 1: I will say, how did you what's the secret to
56:17
Speaker 1: like protecting food? What are different ways?
56:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of times. You know, in a
56:21
Speaker 2: typical situation in the woods hunting, you'll raise it up
56:24
Speaker 2: in a tree and a bag put in like a
56:26
Speaker 2: game bag so the birds can't peck at it, and
56:28
Speaker 2: hang it in a tree so that cools. You gotta
56:31
Speaker 2: make sure first to cool it because it'll spoil. So
56:34
Speaker 2: you cool it by whatever means necessary, hanging it in
56:37
Speaker 2: a cool place, letting the air blow around it, and
56:40
Speaker 2: then you'll notice that every forest freeloader in the woods
56:45
Speaker 2: is going to come steal your food. Yeah, and it
56:48
Speaker 2: was just fun. I mean it was. It was crazy
56:51
Speaker 2: to watch, you know. It was like it's all the
56:52
Speaker 2: j all the camp jay's pecking at it or everything.
56:55
Speaker 2: I did you know was it was there was something
56:59
Speaker 2: that could get to it. They put on the ground.
57:01
Speaker 2: The mice get on it and they poop on it
57:02
Speaker 2: and they kind of mess it up. So I ultimately
57:06
Speaker 2: it kind of just dawned on me. Shoot, I'm gonna
57:08
Speaker 2: have to build one of those a venky like food caches.
57:11
Speaker 2: So I did, and I put it up there, and
57:13
Speaker 2: I thought I kind of solved my problem, to be honest,
57:16
Speaker 2: the Venki then, so they would have taken a page
57:19
Speaker 2: out of like they would have mixed me and roll
57:21
Speaker 2: in the solution. They build a tall stilt shelter and
57:24
Speaker 2: then put a box on the top that's enclosed, and
57:27
Speaker 2: then the bears can't get to it, the mice can't
57:30
Speaker 2: poop on it, the birds, the wolverine. You know, it's safe.
57:33
Speaker 2: And I never finished it. In hindsight, I don't actually
57:36
Speaker 2: know why. I think I was just the way it timed,
57:38
Speaker 2: like I didn't think something was gonna get up there,
57:40
Speaker 2: then it did, and then i'd, you know, you're like
57:42
Speaker 2: counting calories and stuff. I should have, in hindsight, just
57:45
Speaker 2: boxed it in right.
57:46
Speaker 1: Away to get ready for the long.
57:48
Speaker 2: For the long yeah, yeah, yeah.
57:50
Speaker 1: Is a rabbit starvation or real thing?
57:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, So you can't just live off protein, and rabbits
57:55
Speaker 2: are almost just protein. I'd kill a rabbit, eat the
57:59
Speaker 2: innards and brain and the eyes, and then everything else
58:02
Speaker 2: is just protein, and so it takes more calories to
58:07
Speaker 2: you know, process that protein, then you're getting from it
58:11
Speaker 2: without the fat, so you actually lose I lost I had,
58:14
Speaker 2: you know, a lot of rabbits in the first twenty days.
58:16
Speaker 2: I had twenty eight rabbits or something. But I was
58:18
Speaker 2: losing weight at exactly the same speed as everybody else
58:21
Speaker 2: that didn't have anything. So that's interesting. Yeah, And I've
58:25
Speaker 2: never tried that before. So I was wondering, if I'm
58:28
Speaker 2: catching a ton of rabbits, I wonder if I can
58:29
Speaker 2: last what six months on rabbits, But no, you just
58:31
Speaker 2: starve as fast as everybody else. Inside to kind of
58:34
Speaker 2: learn that on the fly and adjust.
58:36
Speaker 1: I wonder what to make of that, Like, so you
58:38
Speaker 1: need fat to survive, like funda my team.
58:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the Yeah. And you'll notice when the wolverine came,
58:43
Speaker 2: or when animals came, they would eat the skin off
58:47
Speaker 2: of the fish. They would eat the eyes, you know,
58:50
Speaker 2: they'd steal the moose fast, they'd leave all the meat. Yeah,
58:52
Speaker 2: like behind the eyes is a bunch of fat. So yeah,
58:56
Speaker 2: you can kind of observe nature and see what they're
58:58
Speaker 2: eating and know where the gold is.
59:01
Speaker 1: What do you like eating when you're like when you
59:03
Speaker 1: can eat whatever you want, what do you feel best eating?
59:06
Speaker 2: What do I feel best? I just try to eat clean.
59:08
Speaker 2: I think I'm not like super stricter on anything, but
59:13
Speaker 2: I think when I eat less carbs, I feel better.
59:15
Speaker 2: Meat and vegetables, I like, we eat a lot of
59:19
Speaker 2: you know, I need a lot of meat.
59:21
Speaker 1: So basically everything you ate on the loan, plus some veggies.
59:24
Speaker 2: Plus veggies, throwing some buckweed. I like buck weed.
59:27
Speaker 1: I let's step to the uh the early days of Jordan.
59:34
Speaker 1: So your Instagram handle is Hobo Jordo. So early on
59:39
Speaker 1: in your life you hoboed around the US on freight trains.
59:45
Speaker 1: What's the story behind that?
59:47
Speaker 2: My brother, when he was seventeen or so, he just
59:50
Speaker 2: decided to go hitchhiking, and he hitchhiked down to Reno
59:54
Speaker 2: from Idaho everywhere and ended up loving traveling but hated
59:59
Speaker 2: being dependent on other people. So he ended up jumping
1:00:02
Speaker 2: on a freight train and and just did it. He honestly,
1:00:06
Speaker 2: he pretty much got on a train and traveled the
1:00:09
Speaker 2: country for the next eight years on trains, lived in
1:00:12
Speaker 2: the streets and then everywhere. But you know, he was sober,
1:00:16
Speaker 2: So it gives you a different experience than a lot.
1:00:18
Speaker 2: But at one point when I was I guess, yeah, eighteen,
1:00:21
Speaker 2: he invited me to come along with him. He'd probably
1:00:24
Speaker 2: been doing it five or so, four or five years
1:00:26
Speaker 2: and uh or more, and I said sure, So I
1:00:30
Speaker 2: quit my job and went out with him. Hobo Georda
1:00:34
Speaker 2: is a bit of an overstuff. Feels self conscious about
1:00:36
Speaker 2: that because I wrote, I rode trains across the country,
1:00:38
Speaker 2: up and down the coast back, you know, spent the
1:00:41
Speaker 2: better part of the year running around riding trains and
1:00:45
Speaker 2: all the staying in places related to that. But all
1:00:48
Speaker 2: the people, you know, the real hobos, those guys are
1:00:51
Speaker 2: out there doing it for years on end. But it
1:00:53
Speaker 2: was such a for me. What it felt like was
1:00:55
Speaker 2: a It felt like a bit of a rite of
1:00:57
Speaker 2: passage experience, which is kind of missing, I think in
1:01:01
Speaker 2: modern life. So I did this thing that was a
1:01:03
Speaker 2: huge unknown had been kind of was there with me
1:01:06
Speaker 2: my brother for most of it. We traveled around, got
1:01:11
Speaker 2: pushed my boundaries and every which way, you know, froze
1:01:14
Speaker 2: at night, and did all this stuff. And then at
1:01:17
Speaker 2: the end, I actually wanted to go back and go
1:01:20
Speaker 2: back home, and so I went on my own and
1:01:23
Speaker 2: went from Minneapolis back, you know, up the Spokane on
1:01:26
Speaker 2: my own, which was a for my first stint of
1:01:28
Speaker 2: time by myself for like a week, which was interesting.
1:01:31
Speaker 1: Alone with your own thoughts, with your own thoughts.
1:01:33
Speaker 2: As my first time in my life hadn't been like that,
1:01:36
Speaker 2: you know, and so it was it was powerful at
1:01:38
Speaker 2: the time. You know what it did, too, is it
1:01:40
Speaker 2: gave me a whole different view of life because I
1:01:42
Speaker 2: had gotten a job when I was thirteen and then
1:01:45
Speaker 2: fourteen fifteen, sixteen seventeen, and then I was just in
1:01:48
Speaker 2: the normal run of things kind of, and then that
1:01:51
Speaker 2: just threw a whole different path into my life. And
1:01:53
Speaker 2: then I realized some of the things while I was
1:01:56
Speaker 2: traveling that I wouldn't experience again until I was living
1:01:59
Speaker 2: with natives such and that was you know, you wake up,
1:02:02
Speaker 2: you don't have a schedule. You literally just have needs
1:02:05
Speaker 2: and you just somehow have to meet your needs. And so,
1:02:08
Speaker 2: uh it's it's a there's a really sense of freedom
1:02:12
Speaker 2: you get that is hard to replicate elsewhere. And so,
1:02:15
Speaker 2: uh that was eye opening to me. And I think
1:02:18
Speaker 2: once I did that, I went back. So I went
1:02:20
Speaker 2: back to my old job at the salad dressing plant,
1:02:24
Speaker 2: and uh, there's this old cross eyed guy and you
1:02:28
Speaker 2: a home borid I was back and that's kind of
1:02:31
Speaker 2: where I got it. But that freedom always was very
1:02:35
Speaker 2: important to me. I think from that time on.
1:02:38
Speaker 1: What'd you learn about the United States? About the people
1:02:41
Speaker 1: along the way? Because I took a road trip across
1:02:43
Speaker 1: the US also, and there's a there's a romantic element
1:02:47
Speaker 1: there too, of like of the freedom of the well
1:02:54
Speaker 1: maybe for me not knowing what the hell I'm going
1:02:56
Speaker 1: to do with my life, but also excited by all
1:02:59
Speaker 1: the possibility. And then you meet a lot of different
1:03:03
Speaker 1: people and a lot of different kinds of stories, and
1:03:06
Speaker 1: also like a lot of people that support you for traveling,
1:03:11
Speaker 1: because there's a lot of people kind of dream of
1:03:14
Speaker 1: experiencing that freedom, at least the people I've met, and
1:03:18
Speaker 1: they usually don't. They usually don't go out outside of
1:03:21
Speaker 1: their little town. They have a thing and they have
1:03:24
Speaker 1: a family usually and they don't explore, they don't take
1:03:28
Speaker 1: the leap. And you could do that when you're young.
1:03:30
Speaker 1: I guess you could do that any moment, just say
1:03:33
Speaker 1: fuck it and leap into the abyss of being on
1:03:38
Speaker 1: the road. But anyway, what'd you learn about this country,
1:03:41
Speaker 1: about the people in this country?
1:03:43
Speaker 2: You're in an interesting context when you're on trains, because
1:03:46
Speaker 2: the trains always end up in the crappiest part of town,
1:03:50
Speaker 2: you know, and you're always outside interacting. Oh the interesting things.
1:03:54
Speaker 2: You know. Every once in a while I'll have to
1:03:56
Speaker 2: hitchhike to get from one place to another. One interesting
1:03:59
Speaker 2: thing is you notice you always get picked up by
1:04:01
Speaker 2: the you know, the poor people or something. You know,
1:04:04
Speaker 2: they're the people that empathize with you, stop pick you up.
1:04:07
Speaker 2: You go to whatever ghetto I mean you end up in,
1:04:10
Speaker 2: and people are really oh what are you guys doing?
1:04:13
Speaker 2: Real friendly and and and relatable. It kind of you know,
1:04:17
Speaker 2: broadened your my horizons for sure, from being just Idaho
1:04:21
Speaker 2: kid and then meeting all these different people and and
1:04:25
Speaker 2: just seeing the goodness and people and this and that.
1:04:28
Speaker 2: It's also very you know a lot of drugs and
1:04:31
Speaker 2: a lot of people with mental issues that you're friends
1:04:35
Speaker 2: with dealing with and know all that kind of stuff.
1:04:37
Speaker 1: So any memorable characters.
1:04:40
Speaker 2: Well, there's a few, for sure, I mean a lot
1:04:43
Speaker 2: of them I still know that are still around. But
1:04:45
Speaker 2: the uh Rocco was one guy we traveled that he's
1:04:49
Speaker 2: become like a brother, but he's he was he traveled
1:04:53
Speaker 2: with my my brother for years because they were the
1:04:55
Speaker 2: two sober guys. Kind of he rather than traveling because
1:04:59
Speaker 2: he was hooked on stuff, did it to escape all that,
1:05:01
Speaker 2: and so he was kind of sober and straight edge
1:05:05
Speaker 2: and he always five seven Italian guy that was always
1:05:09
Speaker 2: getting in fights. And he has his own sense of
1:05:13
Speaker 2: ethics that I think is really interesting because he's super honest,
1:05:17
Speaker 2: but he expects it of others, and so it's funny
1:05:22
Speaker 2: in the modern context. The thing that pops in my
1:05:23
Speaker 2: head is when he got a cars for the first time,
1:05:26
Speaker 2: which wasn't that long, you know, in his thirties or something,
1:05:30
Speaker 2: and he registered it, which he was mad about that
1:05:32
Speaker 2: he had to register. But then the next year they
1:05:35
Speaker 2: told him he had to register again and he's like,
1:05:37
Speaker 2: what did he lose my registration and went down there
1:05:40
Speaker 2: to the DMV chewed him out that he had to
1:05:42
Speaker 2: reregister because he already registered, where's the paperwork? But he
1:05:46
Speaker 2: just kind of views the world from a different lens,
1:05:48
Speaker 2: I thought. But on everything, he's a character. Now. He
1:05:52
Speaker 2: just lives by digging up bottles and finding treasures in them.
1:05:55
Speaker 1: But he notices the injustices.
1:05:57
Speaker 2: And he notices in a very interesting peaks up and
1:06:00
Speaker 2: he's always why doesn't everybody else speak up about their
1:06:02
Speaker 2: car registration? And then there was like, you know, Devo
1:06:07
Speaker 2: comes in mind because he was such a unique character
1:06:09
Speaker 2: as far as just for one, he would have lived
1:06:11
Speaker 2: to be one hundred and twenty because the amount of
1:06:13
Speaker 2: chemicals and everything else you put into his body and
1:06:16
Speaker 2: still you know, one of those guys you can always
1:06:20
Speaker 2: get a dime, you know, always sparadim sparadigm and you
1:06:23
Speaker 2: have bum change. And I'd see him sometimes and I'd
1:06:27
Speaker 2: be gone and then go to New York to visit
1:06:29
Speaker 2: my sister or something, and sure enough, there's Devo on
1:06:31
Speaker 2: the street. What do you know, didn't you go visit
1:06:34
Speaker 2: him in the hospital because he got bit by twenty
1:06:36
Speaker 2: you know, twenty seven hobo spider bites, and you know
1:06:39
Speaker 2: he's just always rough, but uh, charismatic, vital like the
1:06:44
Speaker 2: vitality of life was in him. But it was just
1:06:46
Speaker 2: so permeated with drugs and alcohol too.
1:06:49
Speaker 1: I wonder it was because I met people like that
1:06:51
Speaker 1: and they're like, there's just yeah, joy perm is the
1:06:54
Speaker 1: whole way of being. And they're like they've been through
1:06:57
Speaker 1: some shit, they have scars, have got damn rough, but
1:06:59
Speaker 1: they've always got a big smile. There's a guy met
1:07:02
Speaker 1: in the jungle named Pico. He lost the leg and
1:07:05
Speaker 1: he drives a boat and he just always says a
1:07:10
Speaker 1: big smile, even given that like the hardship he has
1:07:13
Speaker 1: to get everything requires a huge amount of work. But
1:07:16
Speaker 1: he's just big smile. And the stories in those.
1:07:19
Speaker 2: It something about, yeah, enduring difficulty that makes you able
1:07:23
Speaker 2: to appreciate life and look at it and smile.
1:07:27
Speaker 1: And you advice far to take a road trip again.
1:07:30
Speaker 1: Or if somebody else is thinking of hopping on a
1:07:32
Speaker 1: freight train, heier.
1:07:35
Speaker 2: Now because you have a map on your phone, you
1:07:36
Speaker 2: tell you you're kind of cheating.
1:07:38
Speaker 1: Now, it's not about the destiny, because the map is
1:07:40
Speaker 1: about the destination, right, But here's like.
1:07:44
Speaker 2: Right, give it trains where you're going going anywhere exactly?
1:07:49
Speaker 2: I say, do it, like go out and do things.
1:07:50
Speaker 2: Especially when you're young, experiences and stuff helped create the
1:07:55
Speaker 2: person you will be in the future. But doing things
1:07:57
Speaker 2: that you think like, oh, I don't want to do that,
1:07:59
Speaker 2: immorals scared of that. I mean, that's what you gotta do.
1:08:03
Speaker 2: You just get out of your comfort zone and you
1:08:05
Speaker 2: will grow as a person and you'll go through a
1:08:07
Speaker 2: lot of wild experiences along the way. Say yes to
1:08:11
Speaker 2: life and that.
1:08:11
Speaker 1: Well, yes to life. Yeah, I love the boredom of it.
1:08:14
Speaker 2: Freight train riding is very boring and like you'll wait
1:08:19
Speaker 2: for hours for a train that never comes, and then
1:08:21
Speaker 2: you'll go to the store and come back and it'll
1:08:23
Speaker 2: be gone. You're like, no, but I remember we went
1:08:26
Speaker 2: to jail. We got out and then, uh.
1:08:29
Speaker 1: How'd you end up in jail?
1:08:30
Speaker 2: Oh? You know it was things trespassing on a train.
1:08:34
Speaker 2: But we were we were riding a train and my
1:08:36
Speaker 2: brother woke up and they had a dead outland on
1:08:40
Speaker 2: his head and hit the train and fell on him
1:08:42
Speaker 2: and we were like woke up and we were laughing
1:08:44
Speaker 2: at that's got to be some kind of bad homeen
1:08:47
Speaker 2: And then we were like looking out of the train
1:08:49
Speaker 2: and we saw a train worker look and saw us
1:08:51
Speaker 2: and he went like, oh, we know that's a bad
1:08:54
Speaker 2: home anyway, Sure enough, the police stop the train. Somebody
1:08:58
Speaker 2: had seen us on it, and they searched it, got
1:09:01
Speaker 2: us and threw us in jail. It was not a
1:09:03
Speaker 2: big dealer. In jail a couple of days and then
1:09:04
Speaker 2: they uh uh, but when we got out, of course
1:09:07
Speaker 2: they put us. We were in some po dunk town
1:09:09
Speaker 2: in Indiana, and we didn't know where to catch out
1:09:12
Speaker 2: of there, and so we were at some factory and
1:09:14
Speaker 2: we just fan in factory and were ready there for
1:09:16
Speaker 2: like four days no train that was going slow enough
1:09:19
Speaker 2: that we could catch. And then we found this big
1:09:21
Speaker 2: old roll of aluminum foil. And now I gotta apologize
1:09:25
Speaker 2: to this woman because we were so bored just sitting there.
1:09:27
Speaker 2: We built these like hats, you know, like horns coming
1:09:30
Speaker 2: out every which way and loops and just sitting there.
1:09:32
Speaker 2: And it was that night and some minivan pulled up
1:09:35
Speaker 2: to this train that was going by to We're like,
1:09:37
Speaker 2: we're like circle car entertaining yourself with whatever you can.
1:09:43
Speaker 2: Poor lady was terrified.
1:09:44
Speaker 1: See, hitch hiking was tough.
1:09:46
Speaker 2: I didn't like titch hiking just because you're depending on
1:09:50
Speaker 2: the other people and it is not I don't know why.
1:09:53
Speaker 2: You just want to be independent. But did you do
1:09:55
Speaker 2: meet really cool people? A lot of times there's really
1:09:58
Speaker 2: nice people that pick you up and and that's cool,
1:10:01
Speaker 2: But I just personally actually didn't do it a lot,
1:10:06
Speaker 2: and I wasn't you know, if you're on the streets
1:10:09
Speaker 2: for ten years, you'll end up doing it a lot
1:10:11
Speaker 2: more because you need to get from point am. It
1:10:12
Speaker 2: might be, but we just tried to avoid it as
1:10:14
Speaker 2: much as we could because it didn't appeal to us
1:10:16
Speaker 2: as much. Well.
1:10:17
Speaker 1: That one downside of hitchhiking is people talk a lot.
1:10:21
Speaker 2: They do.
1:10:22
Speaker 1: It's both the pro and the con. Yeah, because they'll
1:10:26
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes you just want to be sort of
1:10:28
Speaker 1: alone with your thoughts or there is a kind of
1:10:32
Speaker 1: lack of freedom and having to listen to a person
1:10:34
Speaker 1: that's giving you.
1:10:35
Speaker 2: Right, it's so true, and then you don't know how
1:10:38
Speaker 2: to react. I mean I was young, remember, I got
1:10:40
Speaker 2: picked up by nineteen or something, and then I was
1:10:43
Speaker 2: just like, hey, how's it going, And she's like, I
1:10:45
Speaker 2: usband just died. And then and then it's all and
1:10:48
Speaker 2: I got diagnosed with cancer and this is that and
1:10:50
Speaker 2: pretty bitter and all that and understandably so, but you're
1:10:54
Speaker 2: just like, I have no idea how to respond here,
1:10:56
Speaker 2: because so then you're young and you have to be nice.
1:10:59
Speaker 2: And I remember that ride been interesting because I didn't
1:11:03
Speaker 2: really know how to respond, and she was angry and
1:11:06
Speaker 2: going through some stuff and dumping it out. She didn't
1:11:09
Speaker 2: have anyone else to dump it out on.
1:11:10
Speaker 1: I was like, wow, I'm going to take the freight
1:11:12
Speaker 1: turn that next time. So how'd you end up in Siberia?
1:11:17
Speaker 2: I'll try to keep it a little bit short on
1:11:20
Speaker 2: the how, but I bet the long story short was
1:11:23
Speaker 2: out a brother that's adopted, and when he grew up,
1:11:26
Speaker 2: he wanted to find his biological mom and just tell
1:11:29
Speaker 2: her thanks. And so he did. And when he was
1:11:34
Speaker 2: he was probably twenty or something, he found his biological
1:11:36
Speaker 2: mom told her things. Turns out he had a brother
1:11:39
Speaker 2: that was going to go over to Russia and help
1:11:42
Speaker 2: build this orphanage, and that brother was about my age.
1:11:45
Speaker 2: I mean, I remember at that time I read this
1:11:47
Speaker 2: verse that said if you're into darkness and see no light,
1:11:52
Speaker 2: just continue following me. Basically, I was like, Okay, I'm
1:11:55
Speaker 2: gonna take that to the bank, even though I don't
1:11:57
Speaker 2: know if it's true or not. And then the only
1:11:59
Speaker 2: glimpse of like light I got in all that was
1:12:02
Speaker 2: when I heard about that orphanage to go build that orphanage,
1:12:06
Speaker 2: and I prayed about it and I felt, and I
1:12:09
Speaker 2: can't explain like it brought me to tears. I felt
1:12:12
Speaker 2: so strongly that I should go, and so I was like, well,
1:12:14
Speaker 2: that's a clear call. I'm just going to do it. Yes,
1:12:17
Speaker 2: I just bought a ticket, got a visa for a year,
1:12:21
Speaker 2: and then I went and helped build an orphanage and
1:12:24
Speaker 2: we got that built. And I wanted but he was
1:12:27
Speaker 2: an American and I wanted to live with Russians to
1:12:28
Speaker 2: learn a language, and so he sent me to a
1:12:32
Speaker 2: neighboring village to live with a couple Russian families that
1:12:35
Speaker 2: needed a hand and somebody to watch their kids and
1:12:38
Speaker 2: cut their hay and milk the cow and all that.
1:12:40
Speaker 2: So uh, I found myself in that little Russian village
1:12:44
Speaker 2: just getting to know these two guys and their families.
1:12:49
Speaker 2: It was. It was pretty fascinating. And of course I
1:12:52
Speaker 2: didn't know the language yet, and they were too awesome dudes.
1:12:56
Speaker 2: Both of them had been in prison and met each
1:12:58
Speaker 2: other in prison, and like, we're really close because they
1:13:01
Speaker 2: had found God in prison together and stayed to get
1:13:06
Speaker 2: you got out and stayed connected and U. So I'd
1:13:10
Speaker 2: bounced backs between those two families, and they used to
1:13:11
Speaker 2: always tell me about their third buddy they'd been in
1:13:13
Speaker 2: prison with, who was a native fur trapper now in
1:13:16
Speaker 2: the north, and so they you got to go meet
1:13:18
Speaker 2: our buddy up north. And uh, one day that guy
1:13:21
Speaker 2: came through to sell furs in the city and he
1:13:25
Speaker 2: like invited me to come live with him. And my
1:13:27
Speaker 2: visa was about to expire, but I was like, when
1:13:29
Speaker 2: I come back, I'll come And so I went back home,
1:13:32
Speaker 2: earned some more money and did some construction or whatever,
1:13:35
Speaker 2: and then went back and headed north to hang out
1:13:39
Speaker 2: with Era and fur Trap and and that started a
1:13:44
Speaker 2: whole new you know, opened a whole new world that
1:13:48
Speaker 2: I didn't know about.
1:13:49
Speaker 1: Before we talk about urine fur trapping. Let's actually rewind
1:13:52
Speaker 1: and would you describe that moment when you were in
1:13:55
Speaker 1: the darkness as a crisis of faith?
1:13:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for sure. It was like it was darkness
1:14:04
Speaker 2: and that I didn't know how to parse, you know,
1:14:08
Speaker 2: what is this thing that's my faith and what and
1:14:12
Speaker 2: what is what's the wheat and what's the chaff? And
1:14:14
Speaker 2: how do I get through it? And I basically just
1:14:20
Speaker 2: clung to keeping it really simple, and oddly enough, in
1:14:25
Speaker 2: my Christian path, it would the God was actually defined
1:14:29
Speaker 2: and a certain way. God is love, and I was
1:14:31
Speaker 2: just like, that's the only thing I'm going to cling to,
1:14:34
Speaker 2: you know, and I'm going to try to express that
1:14:36
Speaker 2: in my life in whichever way I can, and and
1:14:40
Speaker 2: just trust that if I do that, if I act
1:14:43
Speaker 2: like I you know, we've I've heard this lately, but
1:14:45
Speaker 2: if you just act like you believe, over time, that
1:14:49
Speaker 2: world kind of opens to you. When I said I
1:14:51
Speaker 2: would go to Russia, I pray and I was like, Lord,
1:14:54
Speaker 2: I don't see you. I don't know, but I got this.
1:14:58
Speaker 2: But I felt like it was a clear call. I
1:15:00
Speaker 2: have only one request, and that is that you would
1:15:02
Speaker 2: give me the faith to match my action. You know,
1:15:07
Speaker 2: I'm choosing to believe, Like I could choose not to
1:15:10
Speaker 2: because you know whatever, but uh, I'm gonna choose to acting.
1:15:14
Speaker 2: And I just asked to have faith someday and then
1:15:18
Speaker 2: and then and honestly, for the whole first year I
1:15:20
Speaker 2: went through, and that was a very crazy time for me,
1:15:24
Speaker 2: learning the language, being isolated, being misunderstood, blah, and then
1:15:27
Speaker 2: but then trying to approach all that with a loving
1:15:30
Speaker 2: open heart. And then I came back and I realized
1:15:34
Speaker 2: that that prayer had kind of been answered. That wasn't
1:15:36
Speaker 2: the end of my journey, but it was I was like,
1:15:38
Speaker 2: WHOA that was like my deepest requests that I could
1:15:42
Speaker 2: come up with, and somehow that had been answered.
1:15:44
Speaker 1: So through that year, you were just like, first of all,
1:15:48
Speaker 1: you couldn't speak the language.
1:15:49
Speaker 2: It's really tough, tough because it's unlike on a loan
1:15:52
Speaker 2: where because not only can you not speak and you
1:15:56
Speaker 2: feel isolated, but you're also misunderstood all the time, so
1:15:58
Speaker 2: you seem like an it and all that, and so
1:16:02
Speaker 2: that was tough. I felt very alone at that time
1:16:06
Speaker 2: at certain times in that journey.
1:16:08
Speaker 1: But you were sort of radiating, like you said, leads
1:16:11
Speaker 1: would love, so you're radiating this kind of camaraderie.
1:16:15
Speaker 2: I was really intentional about trying to that. That was
1:16:19
Speaker 2: I don't know why I'm here. I just know that
1:16:21
Speaker 2: I you know that that's my call is to love
1:16:24
Speaker 2: one another, and so I just try to, like well,
1:16:26
Speaker 2: and that have meant digging people's wells. It might man
1:16:29
Speaker 2: just going and visiting that old lady babushkap at the house.
1:16:32
Speaker 2: It's lonely, and I was really cool. I got to
1:16:34
Speaker 2: talk to some fascinating ladies and stuff and then go
1:16:38
Speaker 2: to that village help those families. I'm gonna be like
1:16:41
Speaker 2: cut the hay be the most, the hardest worker I
1:16:44
Speaker 2: can be, because that's my goal here. I didn't have
1:16:47
Speaker 2: any other agenda or except to try to live a
1:16:51
Speaker 2: life of love. And I couldn't define it beyond that.
1:16:54
Speaker 1: What was it like learning the Russian language?
1:16:56
Speaker 2: It was super interesting. I think I had the thought
1:17:00
Speaker 2: while I was learning it one that it was way
1:17:02
Speaker 2: too hard, like if I would have just learned Spanish
1:17:05
Speaker 2: or German, I would be so much farther. But here
1:17:07
Speaker 2: I am a year in and I'm like, how do
1:17:09
Speaker 2: you say I want cheese properly? And then but at
1:17:15
Speaker 2: the same time, it was really cool to learn a
1:17:17
Speaker 2: language that that I thought in a lot of ways
1:17:20
Speaker 2: was richer than English.
1:17:22
Speaker 1: It was.
1:17:22
Speaker 2: It's a very rich language. I remember there was a
1:17:25
Speaker 2: comedy act in Russian, but he was saying, you know
1:17:28
Speaker 2: what one word you can't have in English is nade
1:17:32
Speaker 2: the pity pilsa meaning like I didn't drink enough to
1:17:36
Speaker 2: get drunk, you know that type thing. And but it's
1:17:39
Speaker 2: just a You can make up these words using different
1:17:42
Speaker 2: prefet you know, prefixes and suffixes, and like blend them
1:17:45
Speaker 2: in a way that is quite unique and interesting and
1:17:48
Speaker 2: honestly would be really good for poetry because it also
1:17:50
Speaker 2: doesn't have sentence structure, and the same way English does.
1:17:54
Speaker 2: The words can be jumbled in a way.
1:17:55
Speaker 1: And somehow, in the process of jumbling, some humor, some
1:17:59
Speaker 1: some musicality comes out. It's interesting, like you can be
1:18:03
Speaker 1: witty in Russian much easier than you can in English,
1:18:06
Speaker 1: like witty and funny. And also with poetry you can
1:18:11
Speaker 1: say profound things by messing with words and the order
1:18:14
Speaker 1: of words, which is hilarious because you had a great
1:18:18
Speaker 1: conversation with Joe Rogan and on that program you talked
1:18:22
Speaker 1: about you know, how to say I love you Russian
1:18:26
Speaker 1: hilarious and it was for me the first time. I
1:18:30
Speaker 1: don't know why. You were a great person to articulate
1:18:35
Speaker 1: the flexibility and the power of the Russian language. That's
1:18:38
Speaker 1: really interesting because you were saying like yeah, blue tiba yeah,
1:18:43
Speaker 1: to be out to blue, yeah, to blue, to be
1:18:46
Speaker 1: able to blue yeah. You could say every single order,
1:18:49
Speaker 1: every single combination of ordering of those words has the
1:18:55
Speaker 1: same meaning but slightly different.
1:18:59
Speaker 2: You could like, and it would change the meaning if
1:19:01
Speaker 2: you took ya out and just said blue yeah, there's
1:19:04
Speaker 2: like a different emphasis or maybe or ya yeah the
1:19:07
Speaker 2: blue or something, you know, like right, exactly, so it
1:19:13
Speaker 2: is rich and that, and it was interesting coming from
1:19:15
Speaker 2: an English context and getting a glimpse of that, and
1:19:17
Speaker 2: then wondering about all those you know, Russian authors that
1:19:20
Speaker 2: we all appreciate that, oh we actually aren't getting the
1:19:23
Speaker 2: full the full deal here.
1:19:25
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, definitely. I've recently become a fan actually of
1:19:30
Speaker 1: Larissa vol Konsky and Richard Prevere. They're these world famous
1:19:34
Speaker 1: translators of Russian literature. Tolstoy do the Sievsky, check of
1:19:38
Speaker 1: push Kimbogakov, buster Knak. They have helped me understand just
1:19:44
Speaker 1: how much of an art form translation really is. Some
1:19:47
Speaker 1: authors do that are more translatable than others, like this
1:19:51
Speaker 1: is more translatable, but then you can still spend a
1:19:53
Speaker 1: week on one sentence. Oh yeah, like just how do
1:19:56
Speaker 1: I exactly capt this very important sentence? But I think
1:20:01
Speaker 1: what's more powerful is not like literature, but conversation, which
1:20:07
Speaker 1: is one of the reasons I've been I've been carrying
1:20:12
Speaker 1: and feeling the responsibility of having conversations with Russian speakers
1:20:19
Speaker 1: because I can still see the music of it, I
1:20:21
Speaker 1: can still see the wit of it, and in conversation
1:20:23
Speaker 1: comes out like really interesting kinds of wisdom you like you.
1:20:29
Speaker 1: When I listen to like world leaders, the speak Russian speak,
1:20:33
Speaker 1: and I see the translation and it loses it loses
1:20:38
Speaker 1: the irony, the like in between the words. If you
1:20:44
Speaker 1: translate them literally, you you lose the reference in there
1:20:50
Speaker 1: to the history of the people's.
1:20:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. And I've definitely seen that on like
1:20:56
Speaker 2: you know, and if you listen to I think it
1:20:58
Speaker 2: probably was a Putin speak each or something and you
1:21:01
Speaker 2: just see that, Oh wow, something major is being lost
1:21:03
Speaker 2: in translation. You can actually see it happen. I wouldn't
1:21:07
Speaker 2: be surprised if that wasn't the case with the you know,
1:21:10
Speaker 2: that whole greatest tragedy is the fall of the Soviet
1:21:12
Speaker 2: Union that I hear him being quoted as saying all
1:21:14
Speaker 2: the time. I bet you there's something in there that's
1:21:17
Speaker 2: being lost in translation that is interesting.
1:21:20
Speaker 1: I think the thing I see the most lost in
1:21:22
Speaker 1: translation is the humor.
1:21:24
Speaker 2: Mmmm. I'll just say that that was the hardest. That
1:21:27
Speaker 2: was the tangibly. The hardest part about learning the language
1:21:30
Speaker 2: is that humor comes last, and you have to like wait,
1:21:32
Speaker 2: you have to wait that whole year, you know, or
1:21:35
Speaker 2: however long it takes you to learn the language to
1:21:36
Speaker 2: be able to start getting the humor. You know, some
1:21:39
Speaker 2: of it comes through, but you miss so much nuance
1:21:41
Speaker 2: in it. And and that was really difficult in interaction
1:21:45
Speaker 2: with people to like just be the guys. You know
1:21:47
Speaker 2: when when there's humor going on and you're totally oblivious
1:21:50
Speaker 2: to it.
1:21:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, everybody's laughing, Yeah, trying to laugh along. What do
1:21:57
Speaker 1: they make of you?
1:22:00
Speaker 2: To be honest?
1:22:00
Speaker 1: Person that came from no descended upon us.
1:22:06
Speaker 2: I've had a nickel for every time I heard like
1:22:08
Speaker 2: Americans suck, but you're a good American, like the only
1:22:11
Speaker 2: good American I've ever met.
1:22:12
Speaker 1: But then of course they never met you're the only one.
1:22:16
Speaker 2: But uh, you know, I think because I was just
1:22:21
Speaker 2: tried to work hard, tried to be more useful than
1:22:24
Speaker 2: I was a drain, all that they all. I think
1:22:27
Speaker 2: I think it was pretty appreciated me out there. I've
1:22:30
Speaker 2: definitely heard that a lot, So that's nice.
1:22:33
Speaker 1: Can you talk about their way of life? So like
1:22:36
Speaker 1: when you when you're doing for.
1:22:38
Speaker 2: Trapping, herd trapping was an interesting experience. You basically what
1:22:44
Speaker 2: you do in uh October or something. You'll go out
1:22:47
Speaker 2: to your hunting cabin and you'll have there you'll have
1:22:50
Speaker 2: like three hunting cabins. You'll go stock them with noodles
1:22:53
Speaker 2: or whatever it is, and then for the next couple
1:22:56
Speaker 2: of months or however long, you'll go from one cabin.
1:22:58
Speaker 2: Usually the guys are just out there doing this on
1:23:00
Speaker 2: their own, so they'll go out and they'll go from
1:23:03
Speaker 2: one cabin and each cabin will have five or six
1:23:06
Speaker 2: trap lines going out of it. Every day, it'll take
1:23:08
Speaker 2: a half a day to walk to the end of
1:23:10
Speaker 2: your trap line, open all the traps, and a half
1:23:11
Speaker 2: a day to get back. And they'll do that. This
1:23:13
Speaker 2: will spend a week at a cabin, open up all
1:23:15
Speaker 2: the traps, and then it'll take a day to hike
1:23:17
Speaker 2: over to the other cabin, go to that one, open
1:23:20
Speaker 2: up all those traps, and then there and then like
1:23:22
Speaker 2: three weeks later, so they'll end up back at the
1:23:24
Speaker 2: first cabin and then check all the traps, and so
1:23:27
Speaker 2: it's kind of that rhythm, and they'll do that for
1:23:30
Speaker 2: you know, a couple few months during the winter and
1:23:33
Speaker 2: you're trapping sable'll sable like pine Martin is. We would
1:23:38
Speaker 2: have the equivalent of over here, and it's like a weasel,
1:23:42
Speaker 2: a furry little weasel, and they make coats out of it.
1:23:45
Speaker 2: And so when I went, he showed me how to
1:23:48
Speaker 2: open the trap, showed me the ropes, gave me a
1:23:50
Speaker 2: topographical map. There's one cabin, there's the other, and we
1:23:54
Speaker 2: parted ways for like five weeks. We did run into
1:23:56
Speaker 2: each other once in the middle there at a cabin,
1:24:00
Speaker 2: but other than that, now you're just off by yourself,
1:24:03
Speaker 2: hoping to shoot a grouse or something to add to
1:24:06
Speaker 2: your noodles and make your meal better, catch a fish,
1:24:09
Speaker 2: and then working really hard trying not to get lost
1:24:12
Speaker 2: and stuff.
1:24:13
Speaker 1: How do you get from one traping location to the next.
1:24:16
Speaker 2: That's funny because I it was boasting basically by landmarks
1:24:19
Speaker 2: and feel like I didn't have compass and things like that,
1:24:22
Speaker 2: so by feel okay, I got myself into trouble once
1:24:27
Speaker 2: and I the first time I went to one cabin,
1:24:29
Speaker 2: I got myself into trouble. For the first time I
1:24:31
Speaker 2: went to the other cabin, I nailed it. And so
1:24:34
Speaker 2: I had two different experiences on my first trip. But
1:24:37
Speaker 2: the one that I nailed it, I remember I had
1:24:39
Speaker 2: to go and it's like a day hike. I was like, well,
1:24:42
Speaker 2: I know the cabin south and so if I just
1:24:44
Speaker 2: walk south, you know, the left. The sun should be
1:24:47
Speaker 2: on the left in the morning and right in front
1:24:49
Speaker 2: of me in the middle of the day, and by
1:24:51
Speaker 2: evening it should like end up at my right and
1:24:53
Speaker 2: just kind of guess what time it is and and
1:24:56
Speaker 2: follow along and and it's you know, it takes all
1:24:59
Speaker 2: day and kidd you not. I ended up like one
1:25:02
Speaker 2: hundred yards from the cabin. I was like, whoa, this
1:25:05
Speaker 2: is the trail and that's the cabin, like amazing. And
1:25:08
Speaker 2: then the other time I went out and heading over
1:25:12
Speaker 2: the mountains, and I thought, you know, hours had passed,
1:25:15
Speaker 2: I probably had gotten slightly lost. And then I thought
1:25:19
Speaker 2: I was halfway there, so I thought, okay, I'm gonna
1:25:21
Speaker 2: sit down and cook some cook some food and get
1:25:23
Speaker 2: a drink. I'm thirsty. So I sat down and went
1:25:27
Speaker 2: to start a fire. And my matches had gotten all
1:25:29
Speaker 2: wet because the snow had fallen on me and soaked me,
1:25:31
Speaker 2: and I didn't have them wrapped in plastic. I was like, oh, no,
1:25:34
Speaker 2: I can't drink water, you know. So I was like, well,
1:25:37
Speaker 2: I'm just going to power through them. Halfway there, I
1:25:39
Speaker 2: kept hiking and then I realized it was getting night
1:25:41
Speaker 2: and uh. And then I realized I was at the
1:25:44
Speaker 2: halfway point because I saw this rock that I was like,
1:25:46
Speaker 2: oh no, that's the halfway point. I was like, I
1:25:49
Speaker 2: can't do this, and so I need to go get water.
1:25:51
Speaker 2: I ended up having to divert down the mountain and
1:25:53
Speaker 2: head to the water. I ended up, you know, there
1:25:56
Speaker 2: was a hole ordeal. I had to take my skis
1:25:58
Speaker 2: off because I was going through an old forest fire burns,
1:26:00
Speaker 2: so they were all really close trees. But then the
1:26:02
Speaker 2: snow was like this deep. So I was just trudging
1:26:05
Speaker 2: through and just wishing a bear would eat me get
1:26:09
Speaker 2: it over with. But I finally made it down to
1:26:11
Speaker 2: the water, chopped the hole through the ice, was able
1:26:14
Speaker 2: to take a sip.
1:26:14
Speaker 1: See, you're severely dehydrated.
1:26:16
Speaker 2: Severely dehydrated and exhausted, exhausted, cold, like you know, you
1:26:22
Speaker 2: feel sort of nervous, you're in over your head. And
1:26:24
Speaker 2: then I and then I got down to the river,
1:26:25
Speaker 2: chopped the whole nice drinket, hiked up the river, and
1:26:28
Speaker 2: eventually got to the other cabin. It was probably three
1:26:30
Speaker 2: in the morning or something.
1:26:31
Speaker 1: He chopped a hole in the ice to get some water.
1:26:37
Speaker 1: It was just got to be like the one of
1:26:38
Speaker 1: the worst days of your life.
1:26:41
Speaker 2: You know, it was a bad day. For sure. It
1:26:45
Speaker 2: was a bad day. And here's what was funny. As
1:26:47
Speaker 2: I got to the cabin at like three in the morning,
1:26:49
Speaker 2: and I should have brushed over a lot of the
1:26:51
Speaker 2: like the misery that I felt, uh, and I laid down.
1:26:55
Speaker 2: I was about to go to sleep, and then you're
1:26:57
Speaker 2: charges in from there. I was like, whoa dude, you're
1:27:01
Speaker 2: what are you doing? And I was like, how's it going.
1:27:03
Speaker 2: He's like, it sucks? And you laid down and just
1:27:05
Speaker 2: fell asleep. I fell asleep, and I was like, oh,
1:27:07
Speaker 2: that's funny. The last few weeks that we've been apart,
1:27:10
Speaker 2: who knows what he went through, who knows why he
1:27:12
Speaker 2: was there at that time at night? All just summarized
1:27:15
Speaker 2: and it sucked. And we went to sleep, and next
1:27:17
Speaker 2: morning we parted ways and knows what you didn't really
1:27:20
Speaker 2: tell them, never knew. Neither of us said what happened.
1:27:24
Speaker 2: It's just like that's interesting.
1:27:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he probably was through similar kinds of things,
1:27:30
Speaker 1: Like what gave you strength in those in those hours
1:27:33
Speaker 1: when you're you know's going to waist high snow all
1:27:40
Speaker 1: of that. You're laughing, but like that's hard.
1:27:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know that Russian aid phrase and glows out
1:27:48
Speaker 2: by saki deal.
1:27:50
Speaker 1: Eyes are afraid hands do I'm sure there's a poetic
1:27:53
Speaker 1: way to translate that, right.
1:27:55
Speaker 2: It's kind of like, you know, just put one foot
1:27:56
Speaker 2: in front of the other. You know, when you think
1:27:58
Speaker 2: about what you have to do, it's really intimidating, and
1:28:01
Speaker 2: but you just know if I just do it, if
1:28:02
Speaker 2: I just do it, if I just keep trudging, eventually
1:28:05
Speaker 2: I'll get there and pretty soon you realize i'll've covered
1:28:08
Speaker 2: a couple kilometers or and so when you're really in
1:28:11
Speaker 2: it in those moments, I guess you're just you're just
1:28:14
Speaker 2: putting your head down and getting through.
1:28:16
Speaker 1: I've had similar moments. There's wisdom to that, m like, once,
1:28:20
Speaker 1: just take it one step at a time.
1:28:21
Speaker 2: One step of time. I think that a lot, Honestly,
1:28:23
Speaker 2: I tell myself that a lot when I'm about to
1:28:24
Speaker 2: do something really hard, just and I'm glas I I said,
1:28:27
Speaker 2: who could do it? One step at a time. I'm
1:28:28
Speaker 2: just gonna get don't like sit there and think, oh,
1:28:32
Speaker 2: that's a long ways. Just go and then you'll look
1:28:35
Speaker 2: back and you covered a bunch of ground.
1:28:37
Speaker 1: One of the things I've realized was helpful in the jungle.
1:28:39
Speaker 1: That was one of the biggest realizations for me, is like,
1:28:44
Speaker 1: it really sucks right now, but when I look back
1:28:49
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, I won't really remember
1:28:54
Speaker 1: exactly how much it sucked. I have a vague notion
1:28:58
Speaker 1: of it sucking, and I'll remember the thing so being dehydrated,
1:29:01
Speaker 1: I'll remember drinking water, and I won't really remember the
1:29:07
Speaker 1: hours of feeling like shit.
1:29:09
Speaker 2: That's absolutely true. I got to tone. It's so funny,
1:29:11
Speaker 2: how like just awareness of that, having been through it
1:29:14
Speaker 2: and then being aware of it means next time you
1:29:16
Speaker 2: face it, you'd be like, you know what, once this
1:29:18
Speaker 2: is over, I'm gonna look back on it and it's
1:29:20
Speaker 2: gonna be like that and nothing, and I'll actually laugh
1:29:22
Speaker 2: about it and think it was It's a thing I'll remember,
1:29:24
Speaker 2: you know, I remember that story of that miserable day
1:29:27
Speaker 2: going down to the ice, and I can smile about
1:29:30
Speaker 2: it now. And now that I know that, I can
1:29:31
Speaker 2: be in a miserable position and realize that that's what
1:29:34
Speaker 2: the outcome will be. Once it's over. It's just gonna
1:29:36
Speaker 2: be a story.
1:29:37
Speaker 1: If you survive them.
1:29:38
Speaker 2: If you survive, and that could be.
1:29:42
Speaker 1: So you mentioned you've learned about hunger during these times,
1:29:46
Speaker 1: like what was like the hungriest you've gotten.
1:29:49
Speaker 2: It was the first time. So to continue the story slightly,
1:29:52
Speaker 2: I last went for trapping with that guy, and then
1:29:55
Speaker 2: it turned out all his cousins were these native nomadic
1:29:58
Speaker 2: reindeer herders. And after I like earned his trust and
1:30:02
Speaker 2: he liked me a lot, he took me out to
1:30:04
Speaker 2: his cousins who were all these you know, nomads living
1:30:07
Speaker 2: in teepees. I this is awesome. I didn't even know
1:30:09
Speaker 2: people still lived like this, and they were really open
1:30:11
Speaker 2: and welcoming because their cousin just brought me out there
1:30:16
Speaker 2: and vouched for me. But it was during fencing season,
1:30:19
Speaker 2: and fencing in Siberia for those reindeers like an incredible thing.
1:30:23
Speaker 2: You'd take an axe, you go out and you just
1:30:26
Speaker 2: build these thirty kilometer loop fences with just logs interlocking.
1:30:31
Speaker 2: It's tons of work. And all these guys are more
1:30:34
Speaker 2: efficient bodies, they're better at it, and I'm just like
1:30:38
Speaker 2: working less efficiently and also a lot bigger dude, But
1:30:41
Speaker 2: we're all just on the same rations kind of. And
1:30:44
Speaker 2: and I got down that was like one hundred and
1:30:46
Speaker 2: fifty five pounds, you know, getting down pretty dang skinny
1:30:49
Speaker 2: for my six y three frame and just working really hard.
1:30:53
Speaker 2: And then it's in the spring in Siberia, there's no like,
1:30:55
Speaker 2: there's not much to forage. You know. In the fall
1:30:57
Speaker 2: you can have pine nuts and this and that, but
1:30:59
Speaker 2: in the spring, just stuck with whatever random food you've got.
1:31:03
Speaker 2: And so that's where I lost the most weight and
1:31:07
Speaker 2: felt the most hungry. And it had a lot of
1:31:09
Speaker 2: other issues. You know, I was new to that type
1:31:12
Speaker 2: of work, and so working as hard as I could,
1:31:15
Speaker 2: but also making mistakes, chopping myself with the axe and
1:31:19
Speaker 2: getting injured all kinds of stuff, you know.
1:31:22
Speaker 1: So injuries plus a very little calorie and take low, yeah,
1:31:26
Speaker 1: and exhausted.
1:31:27
Speaker 2: I remember if you got your this poor son of
1:31:29
Speaker 2: again to get stuck slicing the bread, you know, like
1:31:32
Speaker 2: you're here cutting the bread and somebody throws all the
1:31:33
Speaker 2: spoons and drops the pot of soup there, and it's
1:31:36
Speaker 2: like before you can even done slice in your slice,
1:31:39
Speaker 2: all the meats, like you've gone from the bowl. Everybody
1:31:41
Speaker 2: else has grabbed a spoon in midair, and you're like, oh,
1:31:45
Speaker 2: hoping this one little noodle's gonna give me a lot
1:31:47
Speaker 2: of nurse.
1:31:50
Speaker 1: Wow, So everybody gets I mean, yeah, first come for
1:31:54
Speaker 1: a serve, I guess.
1:31:55
Speaker 2: Because it's like all the dudes out there working on
1:31:57
Speaker 2: the fence.
1:31:58
Speaker 1: So you mentioned the axe and you gave me a present.
1:32:02
Speaker 1: This is probably the most badass president I've ever gotten.
1:32:07
Speaker 1: So tell me the story of this of the sacs.
1:32:10
Speaker 2: So the Natives, when I got there, I thought, you know,
1:32:12
Speaker 2: I grew up on a farm. I thought I was
1:32:14
Speaker 2: pretty good with an axe. But they do tons of
1:32:17
Speaker 2: work with those things, and I really grew to love
1:32:21
Speaker 2: their type of acts or style of acts, and just
1:32:23
Speaker 2: an axe in general. They'd always say it's the one
1:32:25
Speaker 2: tool you need to survive in the wilderness, and I agree.
1:32:29
Speaker 2: And this one has certain yeah design features that the
1:32:33
Speaker 2: natives that was unique to the evenki to the natives
1:32:36
Speaker 2: I was with one is with these Russian heads or
1:32:40
Speaker 2: the Soviet heads whatever they had, they're a little wider
1:32:43
Speaker 2: on top here, meaning you can put the handle through
1:32:46
Speaker 2: from the top like a tomahawk, and it I mean,
1:32:49
Speaker 2: you're not dealing with a wedge. And if it ever
1:32:51
Speaker 2: loosens and you're swinging, it only gets tighter. It doesn't
1:32:54
Speaker 2: fly off. And so that's something that's kind of cool.
1:32:59
Speaker 2: Then they have what's what they do that's unique is
1:33:05
Speaker 2: so you can see there is the wolverine axe that's
1:33:07
Speaker 2: got the little wolverine head and honor of that wolverine
1:33:10
Speaker 2: I fought on the show.
1:33:12
Speaker 1: So you have actually two actses. This is one of
1:33:14
Speaker 1: the small.
1:33:15
Speaker 2: This is a little smaller. I didn't want to make
1:33:16
Speaker 2: it too small because you need something to actually work
1:33:19
Speaker 2: out there. You need something kind of serious. But then
1:33:22
Speaker 2: they sharpen it from one side. So if you're right handed,
1:33:25
Speaker 2: you sharpen it from the right side. And that means
1:33:27
Speaker 2: when you're in the woods and living there's a lot
1:33:29
Speaker 2: of times where you're whether you're making a table or
1:33:31
Speaker 2: a sleigh or an axe handle or whatever you're doing
1:33:34
Speaker 2: that you're holding the wood and doing this work, and
1:33:36
Speaker 2: it makes it really good for that planing. The other
1:33:39
Speaker 2: thing it is, especially in northern woods, all the trees
1:33:42
Speaker 2: are like this big. You know that you're never cutting
1:33:44
Speaker 2: down a big, giant tree. And so when you swing
1:33:47
Speaker 2: with a single sided axe like this, sharpened from the
1:33:50
Speaker 2: one side, it really with your right hand swing like this,
1:33:53
Speaker 2: it really bites into the wood and gives you a
1:33:56
Speaker 2: because with that if you can picture it. That angles
1:34:00
Speaker 2: is going to cause deflection, and without that angle on
1:34:03
Speaker 2: your right hand, it's ling it just like bites in
1:34:05
Speaker 2: there like crazy and so uh that there's other little divince.
1:34:11
Speaker 2: You know. The handle was made by some Amish guys
1:34:13
Speaker 2: in Canada. This is all hand forged.
1:34:16
Speaker 1: By its hand forged. Yeah, I mean yeah, and so
1:34:19
Speaker 1: it's a pretty sweet little Yeah, it's amazing.
1:34:22
Speaker 2: There's other things, you know, like I slightly rounded this
1:34:25
Speaker 2: pole here. It's just a little nuance because when you
1:34:27
Speaker 2: pound a steak in if you picture it, if it's
1:34:29
Speaker 2: if it's convex when you're pounding it, it's going to
1:34:33
Speaker 2: blow the fibers apart. If it has just a slight concave,
1:34:36
Speaker 2: it helps hold the fibers together. And so it's a
1:34:40
Speaker 2: little nuanced, not too flat, because you want to still
1:34:42
Speaker 2: be able to use the back as you would.
1:34:44
Speaker 1: What kind of stuff are you using the axe for?
1:34:46
Speaker 2: So the acts it's super important to chop through ice
1:34:49
Speaker 2: in a winter situation, which you probably hopefully won't need.
1:34:53
Speaker 2: But what I use an axe all the time for
1:34:56
Speaker 2: is when I'm when it's red, wet and rainy and
1:34:59
Speaker 2: you need to start a fire, like it's it's hard
1:35:02
Speaker 2: to get to the middle of drywood if just a
1:35:05
Speaker 2: knife or a saw, and so you can. I can
1:35:08
Speaker 2: go out there, find a dead tall tree, you know,
1:35:10
Speaker 2: a dead standing tree, chop it down, split it apart,
1:35:13
Speaker 2: split it open, get to the drywood on the inside,
1:35:16
Speaker 2: shave it some little curls, and have a fire going
1:35:19
Speaker 2: pretty fast. And so if I have an axe, I
1:35:21
Speaker 2: feel always confident that I can get a quick fire
1:35:24
Speaker 2: in whatever weather, and I wouldn't feel the same without
1:35:28
Speaker 2: it in that regard. So that's the main thing. Of course,
1:35:32
Speaker 2: you can use it. I use it if you're taking
1:35:35
Speaker 2: an animal apart, or if you're uh, you know, all
1:35:38
Speaker 2: kinds of uh what else building a shelter, ta skin
1:35:43
Speaker 2: and tpee poles.
1:35:44
Speaker 1: Or whatever you're doing, what's the use of a saw.
1:35:47
Speaker 2: I greatly prefer an axe. A saw, though, has its
1:35:52
Speaker 2: value goes up quite a bit when you're in hardwoods,
1:35:54
Speaker 2: Like when you're in a hardwood oaks and hickory and
1:35:58
Speaker 2: things like that, it's there are a lot to chop,
1:36:00
Speaker 2: So a saw is pretty nice in those situations. I'd say,
1:36:05
Speaker 2: in those situations, I'd like to have both. In the
1:36:08
Speaker 2: north woods and in like more coniferous forests. I don't
1:36:11
Speaker 2: think there's enough advantages that I saw in Curse with
1:36:14
Speaker 2: a good axe. Now you'll see people with little like
1:36:17
Speaker 2: camp axes and stuff, and they just don't think they
1:36:19
Speaker 2: like axes. It's like, well, you haven't actually tried to
1:36:22
Speaker 2: try a good one first and get good with it.
1:36:24
Speaker 2: The one thing about an axe, they're dangerous, so you
1:36:26
Speaker 2: need to like practice, always control it with two hands,
1:36:28
Speaker 2: make sure you're not you know where it's gonna go,
1:36:30
Speaker 2: it doesn't hit you. Or when you're chopping, like say
1:36:34
Speaker 2: you're creating something that you're not doing it on rocks
1:36:36
Speaker 2: and stuff, so that it's you're doing on top of wood,
1:36:39
Speaker 2: so that when you're hitting the ground, you're not dulling
1:36:41
Speaker 2: your axe. You know, there's you gotta be a little
1:36:42
Speaker 2: bit thoughtful about it.
1:36:43
Speaker 1: Have you ever injured yourself on an axe in the
1:36:45
Speaker 1: early days?
1:36:46
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that first i'd gotten a knee surgery. Uh.
1:36:50
Speaker 2: And then about three months later I had torn my
1:36:53
Speaker 2: a cl and I went over to Russia and I
1:36:55
Speaker 2: was like, well, I got a good knee, It's okay.
1:36:56
Speaker 2: And then that's when I was building that fence that
1:36:58
Speaker 2: first time, and and uh, at one point I chopped
1:37:02
Speaker 2: my rubber boot with my axe that reflected off and
1:37:05
Speaker 2: I was new to him, and uh, and I was
1:37:08
Speaker 2: really frustrated because I'd done it before and uh. And
1:37:12
Speaker 2: the native guy was like, oh, you know, I think
1:37:14
Speaker 2: there's a boot we left. You know, you know a
1:37:16
Speaker 2: few years ago, we left a boot like four kilometers
1:37:19
Speaker 2: that way. So we got the reindeer, took him, wrote
1:37:21
Speaker 2: him over. Sure enough, there's a stump with a boot
1:37:23
Speaker 2: upside down, pull it off, put it on. I was like,
1:37:25
Speaker 2: sweet and back in business. I went back a couple
1:37:28
Speaker 2: of days later. Think too chopped it cut your foot,
1:37:31
Speaker 2: cut my rubber boot. And I was just like doing it.
1:37:34
Speaker 2: And I was mad enough that I just grabbed the
1:37:36
Speaker 2: axe and swung it up the tree and it just
1:37:38
Speaker 2: one handed and like deflexs it off and mam right
1:37:40
Speaker 2: into my know. I was like, oh, I fell down.
1:37:44
Speaker 2: I was like, oh my gosh, cause you get your
1:37:46
Speaker 2: axe really like razor sharp and then just swung it
1:37:49
Speaker 2: into my knee. I didn't even want to look. I
1:37:51
Speaker 2: was like, oh no. I looked, and it wasn't a
1:37:53
Speaker 2: huge wound because it had hit right on the bone
1:37:56
Speaker 2: of my knee, but it split the bone cut a
1:37:58
Speaker 2: tend in there and I was on the middle would
1:38:00
Speaker 2: so I literally like I knew I was in Shockcas,
1:38:03
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna go back to TP right now. So
1:38:04
Speaker 2: I like ran back to TP, laid down, and honestly,
1:38:07
Speaker 2: I was stuck there for a few days. That was
1:38:10
Speaker 2: so much pain, and my other knee was bad, it
1:38:13
Speaker 2: was rough. I couldn't even literally couldn't even walk at
1:38:16
Speaker 2: all or move. I had to like there was a
1:38:19
Speaker 2: plastic bag. I had to like poop in it and
1:38:21
Speaker 2: like roll to the edge of the TP like shove
1:38:23
Speaker 2: it under the moss. Like I was just totally immobilized.
1:38:27
Speaker 1: I guess I should teach you to not act when
1:38:30
Speaker 1: you're in a state of frustration or anger.
1:38:32
Speaker 2: There you go. I mean, it's such a lesson too.
1:38:35
Speaker 2: There were so many of those, and it was always
1:38:38
Speaker 2: I was always in a little bit over my head.
1:38:39
Speaker 2: But I said, you kind of do that enough and
1:38:41
Speaker 2: you make a lot of mistakes, but every time you learn,
1:38:44
Speaker 2: I'm like, now it's like an extension in my arm
1:38:46
Speaker 2: that's not gonna happen because I just know how it works. Now.
1:38:50
Speaker 1: You mentioned, what would how do you start a fire
1:38:54
Speaker 1: when everything's around you?
1:38:56
Speaker 2: Is wet. I mean, it depends on your environment. But
1:38:58
Speaker 2: I will say in most of the four so I
1:39:00
Speaker 2: spend a lot of time in and all the north woods.
1:39:02
Speaker 2: The best thing you can do is find a dead
1:39:05
Speaker 2: standing tree so they can be downpouring rain, and you
1:39:09
Speaker 2: chop that tree down. And then when you when you
1:39:12
Speaker 2: split it open, no matter how much it's been raining,
1:39:15
Speaker 2: it'll be dry on the inside. So chop that tree down,
1:39:18
Speaker 2: chop a piece, you know, a foot long piece out,
1:39:21
Speaker 2: and then split that thing open, and then split it again,
1:39:24
Speaker 2: and then you get to that inner drywood. And then
1:39:28
Speaker 2: you try to do this maybe under a spruce tree
1:39:30
Speaker 2: or under your own body so that it's not getting
1:39:32
Speaker 2: rained on while you're doing it. Make a bunch of
1:39:34
Speaker 2: little curls it'll lot catch a flame or light. And
1:39:37
Speaker 2: then you make a lot of a lot more kindling
1:39:40
Speaker 2: and little pieces of drywood. Then you think, because it
1:39:42
Speaker 2: will happen, you'll light it and it'll burn through and like,
1:39:45
Speaker 2: dang it, So just be patient. You're gonna be fine,
1:39:48
Speaker 2: you know, like and make a nice pile of curls
1:39:52
Speaker 2: that you can light or spark, and then get a
1:39:55
Speaker 2: lot of good dry kindling and then don't be afraid
1:39:58
Speaker 2: to just boom, boom boom, pile up bunch of wood
1:40:00
Speaker 2: on and make a big old fire. Get warm as
1:40:02
Speaker 2: fast as you can. It's amazing how much that of
1:40:04
Speaker 2: a recharge it is. When you're cold and wet.
1:40:07
Speaker 1: You can throw relatively wet wood on top of that.
1:40:09
Speaker 2: Once you get that going, yeah, then it'll dry as
1:40:12
Speaker 2: it goes. But you need to be able split open
1:40:14
Speaker 2: and get all that nice dry wood on the inside.
1:40:18
Speaker 1: I saw that you mentioned that you look for fat wood.
1:40:21
Speaker 1: What's wood?
1:40:22
Speaker 2: So on a lot of pine trees, a place where
1:40:25
Speaker 2: the tree was injured when it was alive, it like
1:40:27
Speaker 2: pumps sap to it. And then it is a good
1:40:30
Speaker 2: point because I use this a lot. It pumps that
1:40:34
Speaker 2: tree full of sap, and then years later the tree dies,
1:40:37
Speaker 2: dries out, rots away. But that sap infused wood, it's
1:40:44
Speaker 2: it's like turpentine in there. You know. It's oily, and
1:40:47
Speaker 2: so if it gets wet it does you can still
1:40:49
Speaker 2: light it. It repulses water, and so if you can
1:40:52
Speaker 2: find that in a rainstorm, you can just make a
1:40:55
Speaker 2: little pile of those shavings, get the crappiest spark or
1:40:58
Speaker 2: quickest light, and it'll just sit there and and burn
1:41:01
Speaker 2: like a like a factory fire starter. You know, it's
1:41:04
Speaker 2: really really nice. That's good to spot. It's a good
1:41:07
Speaker 2: thing to keep your eye out for.
1:41:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really fascinating. And then you make this thing.
1:41:12
Speaker 2: That's just to get the sauna going fast. It's a
1:41:19
Speaker 2: used motor oil ad. If you mix it with some
1:41:21
Speaker 2: sawdust and then now is going just like it's homemade
1:41:27
Speaker 2: fat wood.
1:41:28
Speaker 1: I don't know how many times I've watched Happy People
1:41:32
Speaker 1: a year in the Taiga by one of herzog You've
1:41:35
Speaker 1: talked about this movie. Where where is that located relative
1:41:39
Speaker 1: to where you were?
1:41:40
Speaker 2: So there's this big river called the Yenise that feeds
1:41:44
Speaker 2: through the middle of Russia, and there's a bunch of
1:41:46
Speaker 2: tributaries off of it, and one of the tributaries is
1:41:49
Speaker 2: called the Pudcamon. There tun Guska and I was up
1:41:52
Speaker 2: that river, and just a little ways north is another
1:41:54
Speaker 2: river called the Bachhta, and that's where that village is
1:41:57
Speaker 2: where they filmed Happy People. So inside you're in terms,
1:42:00
Speaker 2: we're neighbors, nice, similar environment, similar place.
1:42:06
Speaker 1: The fur trapper that I was with knew the guy
1:42:09
Speaker 1: you know in the films, What would you say about
1:42:11
Speaker 1: that way of life, maybe in the way you've experienced
1:42:15
Speaker 1: in the what you saw in happy people.
1:42:17
Speaker 2: There's there's something really really powerful about uh spending that
1:42:23
Speaker 2: much time being independent, you know, depending on what we
1:42:29
Speaker 2: talked about little early. But you're putting yourself in these
1:42:31
Speaker 2: situations all the time where you're uncomfortable, where it's hard,
1:42:34
Speaker 2: but then you're rising to the occasion, you're making it happen.
1:42:37
Speaker 2: There's nobody when you're fur trapping by yourself, there's nobody
1:42:40
Speaker 2: else to look at to blame for anything that goes wrong.
1:42:43
Speaker 2: It's just yourself that you're reliant on. And and and
1:42:48
Speaker 2: there's something about the natural rhythms that you are in
1:42:51
Speaker 2: when you're when you're that connected to the natural world
1:42:56
Speaker 2: that really is does feel like that's what we're designed for.
1:42:59
Speaker 2: And so there's a there's a psychological benefit you gain
1:43:02
Speaker 2: from spending that much time in that realm. And for
1:43:06
Speaker 2: that reason, I think that you know, people that are
1:43:08
Speaker 2: connected to those ways are able to tap into a
1:43:11
Speaker 2: particular I noticed it a lot with the natives. So
1:43:14
Speaker 2: if I've met the natives in the village, I would
1:43:17
Speaker 2: think of them as like unhappy people, like like they
1:43:22
Speaker 2: drink a lot, they always fighting. The murder rate is
1:43:26
Speaker 2: through the roof, the suicide rates through the roof. But
1:43:29
Speaker 2: you meet those same people out in the woods live
1:43:32
Speaker 2: in that way of life. I thought, these are happy people,
1:43:35
Speaker 2: and it's kind of a it's an interesting juxtaposition. It'd
1:43:37
Speaker 2: be the same person, but by then, you know, I
1:43:40
Speaker 2: lived in a native village that had the reindeer hurting
1:43:43
Speaker 2: going on around it, and everybody kind of benefited because
1:43:46
Speaker 2: of that. I also went to a native village that
1:43:48
Speaker 2: they didn't hold those ways anymore, and so everybody was
1:43:51
Speaker 2: just in the village life and it just felt like
1:43:53
Speaker 2: a dark place, whereas the other native village. It was
1:43:56
Speaker 2: rough in the village because everybody drunk all the time,
1:43:59
Speaker 2: but well had that escape and it had that escapevalve,
1:44:01
Speaker 2: and then once you're out there, it's just a whole
1:44:03
Speaker 2: different world. And that was such an odd juxtaposition.
1:44:08
Speaker 1: It's funny that the people that go trapping experience that
1:44:13
Speaker 1: happiness and still don't have a self awareness to like
1:44:19
Speaker 1: stop themselves from them drinking and doing all the dark
1:44:22
Speaker 1: stuff when they go to the village. It's strange that
1:44:26
Speaker 1: you're not able to you're in it you're happy, but
1:44:28
Speaker 1: you're not able to sort of reflect on the nature
1:44:31
Speaker 1: of that happiness.
1:44:32
Speaker 2: That's it's really weird. I've thought about that a lot,
1:44:35
Speaker 2: and I don't know the answer. It's like, there's a
1:44:37
Speaker 2: huge draw to comfort. There's a huge and it's all
1:44:40
Speaker 2: multifaceted and somewhat complex because you know, you can be
1:44:43
Speaker 2: out in the woods and have this really cool life.
1:44:45
Speaker 2: I will say it's a little bit different for men
1:44:47
Speaker 2: than women because the men are living like the dream
1:44:50
Speaker 2: as far as like what I would like. So you're
1:44:53
Speaker 2: hunting and fishing and you know, managing reindeer and you
1:44:56
Speaker 2: got these all these adventures. So what ends up happening
1:44:59
Speaker 2: is that lot more guys than girl, young men out
1:45:02
Speaker 2: there in the woods, and so there's a draw also,
1:45:04
Speaker 2: I think to go to the village, probably to find
1:45:06
Speaker 2: a woman, and then there's a draw of like technology
1:45:09
Speaker 2: and the new things, and I think it. But then
1:45:12
Speaker 2: once they're there, honestly, alcohol becomes so overwhelming that everything
1:45:16
Speaker 2: else kind of just fiddles away.
1:45:20
Speaker 1: But it's funny that that the comfort you find ei
1:45:22
Speaker 1: there's a draw to comfort, mm hmm. But once you
1:45:26
Speaker 1: get to the comfort, once you find the comfort within
1:45:29
Speaker 1: that comfort, you become the lesser version of yourself.
1:45:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
1:45:33
Speaker 1: It's weird.
1:45:34
Speaker 2: What a lesson for us, like we need to keep struggling. Yeah,
1:45:39
Speaker 2: a lot of times you have to force yourself in that.
1:45:41
Speaker 2: So like if we took them as an example, I mean,
1:45:43
Speaker 2: a lot of times you drag this drunk guy into
1:45:46
Speaker 2: the woods, literally just drag him into the woods, and
1:45:50
Speaker 2: then he'd sober up, and then he was like a
1:45:52
Speaker 2: month blackout drunk, and now he's sobered up and now
1:45:54
Speaker 2: boom back into life, back into being an a knowledgeable,
1:45:58
Speaker 2: capable person. Because comfort so available to us all you
1:46:02
Speaker 2: almost have to force yourself into that situation, plan it out. Okay,
1:46:06
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go do that hard thing,
1:46:09
Speaker 2: and I'm do that hard thing, and then deal with
1:46:11
Speaker 2: the consequences when I'm there.
1:46:13
Speaker 1: What do you learn from that? On the nature of happiness?
1:46:16
Speaker 1: What does it take to be happy?
1:46:18
Speaker 2: Happiness is interesting because it's like it's complex and multifaceted.
1:46:23
Speaker 2: It includes a lot of things that are out of
1:46:25
Speaker 2: your control and a lot of things that are in
1:46:26
Speaker 2: your control, and it makes it's quite the moving target
1:46:32
Speaker 2: in life, you know what I mean. So, yeah, I
1:46:35
Speaker 2: one of the things that really impacted me when I
1:46:38
Speaker 2: was a young man and I read The Gulag Archipelago
1:46:41
Speaker 2: was don't pursue happiness because the ingredients to happiness can
1:46:44
Speaker 2: be taken from you outside of your control, your health,
1:46:48
Speaker 2: you're but pursue like a spiritual fullness. Pursue, pursue I
1:46:55
Speaker 2: think the words it duty, and then happiness may come alongside,
1:46:59
Speaker 2: or it may not. But so he gave the example
1:47:01
Speaker 2: that I thought was really interesting. In the prison camps,
1:47:04
Speaker 2: everybody's trying to survive, and they've made that their ultimate goal,
1:47:08
Speaker 2: I will get through this and then and they've all
1:47:11
Speaker 2: basically turned into animals in pursuit of that goal, and
1:47:14
Speaker 2: like lying and cheating a steel And then he was like,
1:47:17
Speaker 2: and somehow the corrupt Orthodox Church produced these little babushkas
1:47:21
Speaker 2: who were like candles in the middle of all this
1:47:25
Speaker 2: darkness because they did not allow their soul to get corrupted.
1:47:28
Speaker 2: And He's like, what they did do is they died.
1:47:30
Speaker 2: They all died, but they were lights while they were
1:47:33
Speaker 2: alive and lost their lives, but they didn't lose their souls.
1:47:36
Speaker 2: So for myself, I was really powerful to read and
1:47:39
Speaker 2: realize that the pursuit of happiness wasn't exactly what I
1:47:42
Speaker 2: wanted to aim at. I wanted to aim at living
1:47:45
Speaker 2: out my life according to love, like.
1:47:47
Speaker 1: We talked about earlier, trying to be that candle.
1:47:50
Speaker 2: Trying to be that candle. Yeah, make that your ideal,
1:47:52
Speaker 2: and then in doing so it is interesting. So for
1:47:56
Speaker 2: me personally, my personal experience was that is I thought
1:47:59
Speaker 2: when I went to Rush that I kind of gave up.
1:48:01
Speaker 2: I was like in my twenties, that spent my whole
1:48:03
Speaker 2: twenties living in tepees and doing all this stuff that
1:48:06
Speaker 2: I thought I should give you getting a job, I
1:48:08
Speaker 2: should be pursuing a career, I should get an education
1:48:11
Speaker 2: of some sort, Like what am I doing for my future?
1:48:13
Speaker 2: But I felt I knew where my purpose was, I
1:48:15
Speaker 2: knew who my calling was. I'm just gonna do it.
1:48:17
Speaker 2: And it sounds glamorous now and I talk about it,
1:48:20
Speaker 2: but it sucked a lot of the times, and it
1:48:22
Speaker 2: was a lot of a lot of loneliness, a lot
1:48:24
Speaker 2: of like giving up what I wanted, a lot of
1:48:27
Speaker 2: watching people I cared about. You know, you put all
1:48:30
Speaker 2: this effort in and you just see the people that
1:48:32
Speaker 2: you could put all this ever and just die and
1:48:33
Speaker 2: this and that, and then it was that happened all
1:48:36
Speaker 2: the time. And then the other thing I thought I
1:48:37
Speaker 2: gave up was like a relationship because you couldn't you know,
1:48:42
Speaker 2: I wasn't going to find a partner over there. And
1:48:45
Speaker 2: so interestingly enough, now in life I can look back
1:48:49
Speaker 2: and be like, wholla, weird. Those two things I thought
1:48:51
Speaker 2: I gave up is where I've been, like almost provided
1:48:54
Speaker 2: for the most in life. Now I have this this
1:48:56
Speaker 2: career guiding people in the wilderness that I love, like,
1:49:00
Speaker 2: I genuinely love it. I find purpose in it. I
1:49:02
Speaker 2: know it's healthy and good for people. And then I
1:49:04
Speaker 2: have an amazing wife and an amazing family, Like how
1:49:07
Speaker 2: did that happen? But I didn't exactly aim at it,
1:49:10
Speaker 2: I consciously in a way. I mean, I hoped it
1:49:15
Speaker 2: was tangential, but I aimed at something else, which was
1:49:18
Speaker 2: those lessons I kind of got from the Gulag Acapellago.
1:49:21
Speaker 1: So you have, just cause you mentioned the Gulag a Cappellago,
1:49:26
Speaker 1: I gotta go there. You have some suffering in your
1:49:29
Speaker 1: family history, whether it's the Armenian Assyrian genocide or the
1:49:36
Speaker 1: Nazi occupation of France. Uh, maybe you could tell the
1:49:41
Speaker 1: story of that. What the survival thing. It runs in
1:49:48
Speaker 1: your blood, it seems.
1:49:50
Speaker 2: I love history, like I find so much richness in
1:49:53
Speaker 2: knowing what other people went through and find so much
1:49:55
Speaker 2: perspective in my own place in the world. I have
1:49:58
Speaker 2: the advantage of in my the direct family. My grandparents, Yeah,
1:50:02
Speaker 2: they went through the Armenian Genocide. They were Assyrians, which
1:50:06
Speaker 2: was a you know, like a Christian minority indigenous people
1:50:09
Speaker 2: in the Middle East. They lived in northwestern Iran, and
1:50:14
Speaker 2: during the chaos of World War One, you know, and
1:50:18
Speaker 2: the Ottoman Empire was collapsing, and I had all kinds
1:50:21
Speaker 2: of issues and it one of its issues was it
1:50:24
Speaker 2: had a big minority group and it thought it would
1:50:26
Speaker 2: be a good time to get rid of it. And
1:50:30
Speaker 2: and you know, they can justify it and all the
1:50:33
Speaker 2: ways you can, like there are some people that were
1:50:34
Speaker 2: rebelling or this is that, but ultimately it was just
1:50:37
Speaker 2: a big collective guilt and extermination policy against the Armenians
1:50:44
Speaker 2: and the Assyrians. And my grandparents my grandma was thirteen
1:50:49
Speaker 2: at the time and my grandpa was seventeen, which is
1:50:52
Speaker 2: interesting because it happened almost one hundred years ago. But
1:50:54
Speaker 2: our gener just my dad was born when my mom
1:50:56
Speaker 2: was my grandma was pretty old so but my grandmother,
1:51:02
Speaker 2: her dad was taken out to be shot. You know,
1:51:05
Speaker 2: the Turks were coming in and rounding up all the men,
1:51:08
Speaker 2: and they took him out to be shot. And then
1:51:11
Speaker 2: they took my grandma and her She had seven brothers
1:51:15
Speaker 2: and sisters and her mom, and they like drove her
1:51:18
Speaker 2: out into the desert. Basically, her dad got taken out
1:51:23
Speaker 2: to be shot. So his name was Shaman Yamara or
1:51:26
Speaker 2: whatever took him out. They were all tied up, all shot.
1:51:29
Speaker 2: He said a quick prayer before they shot him, but
1:51:32
Speaker 2: he fell down and he found he wasn't hit. And usually,
1:51:36
Speaker 2: of course they'd come up and stab everybody or finish
1:51:39
Speaker 2: him off. But there was some kind of an alarm
1:51:41
Speaker 2: and all the soldiers rushed off, and he found himself
1:51:44
Speaker 2: in the bodies and was able to untie himself. They
1:51:46
Speaker 2: were naked and you know, hungry and all that, and
1:51:49
Speaker 2: he ran out of there, escaped and went into a
1:51:53
Speaker 2: building and found the loaf of bread wrapped in his
1:51:55
Speaker 2: shirt and was able to escape. He fled. He never
1:51:59
Speaker 2: saw his family for So, to continue the story, my
1:52:02
Speaker 2: grandma got taken with her with her mother and brothers
1:52:07
Speaker 2: and sisters and all just they just drove them into
1:52:09
Speaker 2: the desert until they died, basically, and run them around
1:52:11
Speaker 2: in circles and this and that, and then all the
1:52:14
Speaker 2: raping and pillaging that accompanies it. And uh, at one
1:52:19
Speaker 2: point her mom had the baby, and the baby died,
1:52:24
Speaker 2: and her mom just collapsed and said, I just can't
1:52:26
Speaker 2: go any further, and and my grandma and her sister
1:52:29
Speaker 2: like picked her up to tea we got to keep going,
1:52:32
Speaker 2: and like picked her up and they left the baby
1:52:34
Speaker 2: along with the other everybody else had died. It was
1:52:37
Speaker 2: just the three of them left, and somehow they bumbled
1:52:40
Speaker 2: across this British military camp and were rescued. Uh. My
1:52:45
Speaker 2: neither the sister nor my great grandmother ever really covered
1:52:49
Speaker 2: as far as you know, recovered from what I understand,
1:52:51
Speaker 2: but my grandma did say at the same time, in
1:52:55
Speaker 2: another village in north and they ran there. The Turks
1:52:59
Speaker 2: came in and were burning down my grandpa's village, and
1:53:03
Speaker 2: they caught and my grandpa's dad was in a wheelchair
1:53:06
Speaker 2: and he had like some money belt and he stuffed
1:53:08
Speaker 2: all his money in it and told it, gave it
1:53:10
Speaker 2: to Grandpa and just told him to run and don't
1:53:12
Speaker 2: turn back. And they came in the front door as
1:53:14
Speaker 2: he was running out the back and they Uh. He
1:53:18
Speaker 2: never saw his dad again, but he said he turned
1:53:20
Speaker 2: around and saw the bill, you know, the house on fire.
1:53:22
Speaker 2: Never knew what happened to his sister she then, so
1:53:26
Speaker 2: he was just alone. He ran. At some point he
1:53:30
Speaker 2: I can't remember, he like lost his money belt, like
1:53:32
Speaker 2: he took his jacket off, forgot it was and something
1:53:34
Speaker 2: happened anyway, so he got he was in a refugee camp.
1:53:38
Speaker 2: He ended up getting taken in by some Jesuit missionaries.
1:53:41
Speaker 2: So anyway, both of them had lost basically everything. And
1:53:45
Speaker 2: then at some point they met in bag dad started
1:53:49
Speaker 2: a family, immigrated to France, and then it just so
1:53:52
Speaker 2: happened to be right before World War Two, and so
1:53:54
Speaker 2: then the not just invaded. My aunt. She's still alive,
1:53:58
Speaker 2: but she uh, she actually met a resistance fighter, you know,
1:54:03
Speaker 2: for the French, and under a bridge somewhere and they
1:54:07
Speaker 2: and they fell in love and she got married. So
1:54:09
Speaker 2: she had kind of an inn on the on the
1:54:12
Speaker 2: French resistance at one point. And of course they were
1:54:15
Speaker 2: all hungry they recently immigrated, but also had this Nazi
1:54:19
Speaker 2: occupation and all that, and so the uncle Joe, the
1:54:23
Speaker 2: resistance fighter guy, told him like, hey, we're gonna storm
1:54:25
Speaker 2: this noodle factory, like come, and so they stormed the
1:54:29
Speaker 2: noodle factory and all my aunts surrounding there, and we're
1:54:31
Speaker 2: like throwing out noodles into wheelbarrows and everybody was running.
1:54:35
Speaker 2: Then the Nazis came back and took it back over
1:54:38
Speaker 2: and shot a bunch of people and everything, and and Grandpa,
1:54:43
Speaker 2: because he had already come from where he came from,
1:54:44
Speaker 2: was paranoid. So he buried all the noodles out in
1:54:46
Speaker 2: the garden. And then my two aunts got stuck in
1:54:50
Speaker 2: that factory overnight with all the Nazi guards or whatever.
1:54:53
Speaker 2: And then the Nazi guards went all from house to
1:54:55
Speaker 2: house to find everybody that had had noodles and you know,
1:54:59
Speaker 2: punish him. But they didn't find my grandpa's fortunately, they
1:55:02
Speaker 2: searched his house, oh, but not the garden. And then,
1:55:06
Speaker 2: uh so they had noodles and somehow it must have
1:55:08
Speaker 2: been in the same factor or something olive oil, and
1:55:10
Speaker 2: they just lived off of that for the whole all
1:55:12
Speaker 2: the whole war years. My aunts ended up getting out
1:55:15
Speaker 2: of that. They hid behind boxes and crates overnight and stuff,
1:55:18
Speaker 2: and the resistance stormed again in the morning and they
1:55:21
Speaker 2: got away and stuff, but anyway, chaos. So when they
1:55:24
Speaker 2: moved to America, I will say, the most patriotic family
1:55:27
Speaker 2: everywhere ever. They loved it. It was like paradise here.
1:55:32
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a that's a lot to go through.
1:55:36
Speaker 1: What lessons do you do you draw from that? On perseverance.
1:55:40
Speaker 2: Look, I'm one just one generation away from all that suffering,
1:55:44
Speaker 2: Like my aunts and uncles and dad and stuff were
1:55:47
Speaker 2: the kids of these people, and somehow I don't have that,
1:55:51
Speaker 2: Like what happened to all that trauma? Like it's like
1:55:54
Speaker 2: somehow my grandparents bore it and then they were able
1:55:58
Speaker 2: to build a family, but not just a family that
1:56:01
Speaker 2: but a happy family. Like I knew all my aunts
1:56:03
Speaker 2: and uncles and I didn't know them they died before me,
1:56:05
Speaker 2: but there were it was so much joy. The family
1:56:09
Speaker 2: unions were the best thing ever at the Jonases and
1:56:11
Speaker 2: they uh And it's just like, how in one generation
1:56:15
Speaker 2: did you go from that to that? And and it
1:56:18
Speaker 2: must have been a great sacrifice of some sort to
1:56:22
Speaker 2: not pass that much like resentment or like what did
1:56:27
Speaker 2: they do to break that chain in one generation.
1:56:30
Speaker 1: Do you think it works the other way? Like where
1:56:33
Speaker 1: their ability to escape genocide, to escape uh Nazi occupation
1:56:40
Speaker 1: gave them a gratitude for life that it was not
1:56:43
Speaker 1: a trauma in the sense like you're forever bearing it.
1:56:47
Speaker 1: The flip side of that is just gratitude to be
1:56:50
Speaker 1: alive when you know so many people did not survive.
1:56:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, it must be because the only footage I saw
1:56:55
Speaker 2: my grandma was like they were all the kids and stuff,
1:56:58
Speaker 2: and they were cooking up a rabbit that they were
1:57:00
Speaker 2: raising there whatever, and but a joyful woman. You could
1:57:05
Speaker 2: see it in her. And she must have been so
1:57:08
Speaker 2: she must have understood how fortunate she was and been
1:57:12
Speaker 2: so grateful for it, and so thankful for every one
1:57:14
Speaker 2: of those eleven kids she had. So I recognized it again.
1:57:18
Speaker 2: And my dad, because my dad went through a really slow,
1:57:21
Speaker 2: kind of painful decline in his health and he had diabetes,
1:57:25
Speaker 2: ended up losing one leg, and so he lost his job.
1:57:29
Speaker 2: He had to watch his mom or my mom go
1:57:31
Speaker 2: to school. He'd long all he wanted to do was
1:57:34
Speaker 2: be a provider and be like a family man. I
1:57:37
Speaker 2: bet the best time in his life was when his
1:57:38
Speaker 2: kids ran to him the game Huck. But then all
1:57:41
Speaker 2: of a sudden he found himself in a position where
1:57:42
Speaker 2: he couldn't work and he had to watch his wife
1:57:44
Speaker 2: go to school. She was really hard for her and
1:57:48
Speaker 2: become the breadwinner for the family, and he just felt
1:57:51
Speaker 2: like a failure. And I watched him go through that,
1:57:53
Speaker 2: after all these years of letting that foot heel. We
1:57:55
Speaker 2: went out first day and we were splitting firewood with
1:57:58
Speaker 2: a splitter, and he was so good to be back
1:58:01
Speaker 2: out Jordan's son. And he crushed his foot in the
1:58:03
Speaker 2: log splitter and You're like no, and so then they
1:58:06
Speaker 2: just amputated it. We've got both legs amputated. And then
1:58:09
Speaker 2: his health continued to decline. He lost his movement in
1:58:13
Speaker 2: his hands, so he was like incapacitated to a degree,
1:58:16
Speaker 2: and in a lot of pain. I would hear him
1:58:17
Speaker 2: at night in pain all the time. And uh, I
1:58:21
Speaker 2: delayed a trip back to Russia and just stayed with
1:58:23
Speaker 2: my dad for those last six months. And it was
1:58:25
Speaker 2: so interesting, having had lost everything. I've watched him wrestle
1:58:30
Speaker 2: with it through the years. But then he found his
1:58:32
Speaker 2: joy and his purpose just in being almost I mean
1:58:36
Speaker 2: a vegetable. I'd have to help him pee, roll him
1:58:39
Speaker 2: onto the cot, take him to dialysis, and and but
1:58:42
Speaker 2: we would laugh. He would like I'd hear him at
1:58:45
Speaker 2: night crying or like in pain, like ah, and then
1:58:47
Speaker 2: in the morning he'd have the encouraging words to say
1:58:50
Speaker 2: and and asked at it, and I was like, Wow,
1:58:53
Speaker 2: that's how you face loss and suffering. And and he
1:58:57
Speaker 2: must have gotten that from him somehow, from his parents.
1:58:59
Speaker 2: And then you know, I find myself on this show
1:59:01
Speaker 2: and I had a thought like why is this easy
1:59:04
Speaker 2: to me in a way, like, you know, why is
1:59:05
Speaker 2: this thing that's And I was like, and it just
1:59:08
Speaker 2: felt like this gift that had kind of handed down
1:59:11
Speaker 2: and now would be my duty to hand down, you know.
1:59:13
Speaker 2: And it's but it's kind of an interesting and.
1:59:16
Speaker 1: Be the beacon of that represent that kind of perseverance
1:59:19
Speaker 1: in the in the simpler way that something like Survival
1:59:25
Speaker 1: in the Wilderness shows.
1:59:26
Speaker 2: It's the same, it rhymes, it rhymes, and it's so simple,
1:59:30
Speaker 2: like the lessons are simple and so we can take
1:59:33
Speaker 2: them and apply them.
1:59:35
Speaker 1: So that's on the survivor side. What about on the
1:59:38
Speaker 1: people committing the atrocities? What do you make of the Ottomans?
1:59:42
Speaker 1: What they did to Harmonians, or the Nazis, what they
1:59:44
Speaker 1: did to the Jews, the Slavs and basically everyone.
1:59:47
Speaker 2: What what do you.
1:59:50
Speaker 1: Why do you think people do evil in this world?
1:59:56
Speaker 2: It's interesting that it's really easy, right, It's really easy.
2:00:00
Speaker 2: You can almost see it, sense it in yourself to justify,
2:00:07
Speaker 2: to justify a little bit of evil, or you see
2:00:09
Speaker 2: yourself cheer a little bit when the enemy gets knocked
2:00:12
Speaker 2: back in some way. It's really in the way. It's
2:00:16
Speaker 2: just perfectly naturalist for us to feed that hate and
2:00:20
Speaker 2: feed that tribalism in group out group. We're on this team,
2:00:25
Speaker 2: and I think that can happen. I think it just
2:00:29
Speaker 2: happens slowly, like one justification at a time, one step
2:00:32
Speaker 2: at a time. You you hear something and it makes
2:00:37
Speaker 2: it makes you think then that you are in the
2:00:39
Speaker 2: right to perform some kind of you know, you're justified
2:00:44
Speaker 2: and create, you know, bring a couple of eggs to
2:00:46
Speaker 2: make an omelet type of thing. And then but all
2:00:49
Speaker 2: of a sudden, that takes you down this whole train
2:00:51
Speaker 2: to where pretty soon you're justifying what's completely unjustifiable.
2:00:59
Speaker 1: Does gradual Yeah, as a gradual process of a little
2:01:02
Speaker 1: bit of a time.
2:01:03
Speaker 2: I think that's why, like for me, like having a
2:01:07
Speaker 2: path of faith is like works as like a mooring
2:01:09
Speaker 2: because it can help me shine that light on myself.
2:01:12
Speaker 2: You know, it's like something ouse be cause if you're
2:01:13
Speaker 2: just looking at yourself and looking within yourself for your
2:01:18
Speaker 2: compass in life, it's really easy to get that thing
2:01:21
Speaker 2: out of whack. But you kind of need a perspective
2:01:25
Speaker 2: from which you can step out of yourself and look
2:01:27
Speaker 2: into yourself and judge yourself accordingly. And am I walking
2:01:31
Speaker 2: in line with that ideal? You know? And then and
2:01:35
Speaker 2: I think without that check your your subject. You know,
2:01:38
Speaker 2: it's easy to ignore the fact that you might be
2:01:41
Speaker 2: able to commit those things. But we live in a
2:01:43
Speaker 2: pretty easy, comfortable society. Like what if you know, what
2:01:48
Speaker 2: if we pictured yourself in the position of my grandparents
2:01:51
Speaker 2: and then all of a sudden you got the upper
2:01:53
Speaker 2: hand in some kind of a fight, what are you
2:01:55
Speaker 2: going to do? You know, you could you'd definitely picture
2:01:59
Speaker 2: becoming evil in that situation.
2:02:03
Speaker 1: I think one thing faith in God can do is
2:02:09
Speaker 1: humble you before these kinds of complexities of the world,
2:02:14
Speaker 1: and humility is a way to avoid the slippery slope
2:02:18
Speaker 1: towards evil. I think humility that you don't know who
2:02:22
Speaker 1: the good guys and the bad guys are, and you
2:02:26
Speaker 1: defer that to sort of bigger powers to try to
2:02:30
Speaker 1: understand that. Yeah, I think there's a kind of I mean,
2:02:34
Speaker 1: a lot of atrocities were committed by people who are
2:02:37
Speaker 1: very sure of themselves being good.
2:02:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's so true.
2:02:43
Speaker 1: It is sad that religion is at times used as
2:02:49
Speaker 1: a way to kind of just as yet another tool
2:02:52
Speaker 1: for justification, which is a sad application of religion.
2:02:59
Speaker 2: Really is it's so inherent and so natural in us
2:03:02
Speaker 2: to justify ourselves. It's really, it's really I mean, I
2:03:07
Speaker 2: think it's almost I mean, just understanding history, read history.
2:03:13
Speaker 2: It blows my mind that And I'm super thankful that somehow,
2:03:19
Speaker 2: and this has been missed you so much, but somehow
2:03:21
Speaker 2: this ideology arose that love your enemies, forgive those that
2:03:27
Speaker 2: persecute you, and just on down the line, that something
2:03:33
Speaker 2: like that rose in the world into a position where
2:03:36
Speaker 2: we all kind of accept those ideals. I think is
2:03:40
Speaker 2: really remarkable and worth appreciating. That said, a lot of
2:03:46
Speaker 2: that gets wrapped up in what you're talking. You know,
2:03:49
Speaker 2: what is so natural just becomes another instrument for tribalism
2:03:53
Speaker 2: or another justification for wrong. And so I even myself
2:03:57
Speaker 2: am self conscious sometimes talking about matters of faith, because
2:03:59
Speaker 2: I know when I'm talking about it, I'm talking about
2:04:01
Speaker 2: something else rather than you know, everybody with then what
2:04:05
Speaker 2: someone else might think of when they hear me talking
2:04:08
Speaker 2: about it. So it's interesting.
2:04:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've been listening to Jordan Peterson talk about this.
2:04:13
Speaker 1: He has a way of articulating things which is sometimes
2:04:16
Speaker 1: hard to understand in the moment, but when I like
2:04:18
Speaker 1: read it carefully afterwards, it starts to make more sense.
2:04:21
Speaker 1: I've heard him talk about religion and God as a
2:04:25
Speaker 1: kind of base layer, like a metaphorical substrate from which morality,
2:04:31
Speaker 1: of our sense of what is right and wrong comes from,
2:04:34
Speaker 1: and just our conceptions of what is beautiful in life.
2:04:38
Speaker 1: All these kinds of higher things that are like fuzzy,
2:04:43
Speaker 1: understand that their religion helps create the substrate from which
2:04:47
Speaker 1: we as a species, like as a civilization, can come
2:04:51
Speaker 1: up with these notions, and without it you are lost
2:04:54
Speaker 1: at see. I guess for him, morality requires that substrate.
2:04:59
Speaker 2: Like you said, it's kind of fuzzy, So I've only
2:05:02
Speaker 2: been able to get clear vision of it when I
2:05:05
Speaker 2: live it, and it's not something you profess or anything
2:05:08
Speaker 2: like that. Just it's something that you take seriously and
2:05:11
Speaker 2: apply in your life and when you live it, then
2:05:14
Speaker 2: there's some clarity there, but that it has to be
2:05:19
Speaker 2: kind of defined, like it's like it's and that's where
2:05:21
Speaker 2: you come in with the religion of the stories, because
2:05:23
Speaker 2: if you leave it completely undefined, I don't really know
2:05:29
Speaker 2: where you go from there. I actually isn't a funny
2:05:32
Speaker 2: to speak to that. I did mushroom. Have you ever
2:05:35
Speaker 2: done those mushroom? I've done them a couple of times,
2:05:39
Speaker 2: but one time was didn't do that many, the other
2:05:41
Speaker 2: time more and I had I had a really profound
2:05:45
Speaker 2: experience in helping couch all this in the proper context
2:05:50
Speaker 2: for myself, so I could I When I did it,
2:05:53
Speaker 2: I remember I was sitting on a swing and I
2:05:54
Speaker 2: could see my Everything was so blissful except I could
2:05:57
Speaker 2: see my black hands like on these chains, like on
2:06:00
Speaker 2: the swing, but everything else was blissful and kind of amorphous,
2:06:05
Speaker 2: and I could see the outline of my kids and
2:06:07
Speaker 2: I could just feel the love for them, and I
2:06:09
Speaker 2: was just like, man, I just feel the love. It's
2:06:11
Speaker 2: so wonderful, why, you know, But then I would, you know.
2:06:15
Speaker 2: At times I would try to picture them, and I
2:06:16
Speaker 2: couldn't quite picture the kids, but I could feel the love.
2:06:19
Speaker 2: And then and then I started asking all the deepest
2:06:22
Speaker 2: existential questions I could, you know, and it felt like
2:06:25
Speaker 2: I was just one answer, another answer, another answer. Everything
2:06:27
Speaker 2: was being answered, and I felt like I was communing
2:06:30
Speaker 2: with God, whatever you want to say. And but I
2:06:33
Speaker 2: was very aware of the fact that that communing was
2:06:36
Speaker 2: just peeling back the tiniest corner of the infinite, and
2:06:39
Speaker 2: it just dumped me with every answer I felt like
2:06:42
Speaker 2: I could have and it kind of blew me away.
2:06:46
Speaker 2: So then I asked it, well, if you're the infinite, like,
2:06:49
Speaker 2: why did you reveal to me yourself, why did you
2:06:51
Speaker 2: use like the story of Jesus to reveal yourself? And
2:06:55
Speaker 2: then that infinite amorph thing had to somehow take form
2:07:02
Speaker 2: for us to like, for us to be able to
2:07:04
Speaker 2: relate to it. It had to have some kind of
2:07:07
Speaker 2: a form. And but whenever you create a form out
2:07:11
Speaker 2: of something, you're like boxing it in and subjugating it
2:07:14
Speaker 2: to boundaries and stuff like that, and then that subject
2:07:17
Speaker 2: to pain and subject to the brokenness and all that,
2:07:19
Speaker 2: and I'm like, oh, wow. And then but when I
2:07:21
Speaker 2: had that thought, then all of a sudden I could
2:07:24
Speaker 2: relate my like dark hands on the chains to the
2:07:26
Speaker 2: rest of the experience. And then all of a sudden
2:07:28
Speaker 2: I could picture my children as the children rather than
2:07:32
Speaker 2: this amorphous feeling of love. It was like, oh, there's
2:07:36
Speaker 2: a line in all time zion. And but but then
2:07:40
Speaker 2: they were bounded. And then once they're bounded, your subject
2:07:42
Speaker 2: to the death and to the misunderstanding and to all that.
2:07:46
Speaker 2: Like you know, I picture the amba or the cell,
2:07:49
Speaker 2: and then when it dies, it turns into an unformed thing.
2:07:53
Speaker 2: And uh so we need some kind of form to
2:07:56
Speaker 2: relate to. So instead of always just talking about God
2:07:59
Speaker 2: can deletely and tangibly. It kind of gave me a
2:08:02
Speaker 2: way to relate to it. And I was like, oh wow,
2:08:04
Speaker 2: that's that was really powerful to me, and putting it
2:08:07
Speaker 2: in a context that was applicable.
2:08:12
Speaker 1: But ultimately God is sort of the thing that's formless,
2:08:19
Speaker 1: that is unbounded, right, But we humans need I mean,
2:08:24
Speaker 1: that's the purpose of stories. They resonate with something in us.
2:08:28
Speaker 1: But when you need the sort of the bonded nature
2:08:31
Speaker 1: the constraints of those stories, otherwise we wouldn't be able
2:08:35
Speaker 1: to like relate to it, can't relate to it. And
2:08:39
Speaker 1: and then when you look at the stories literally and
2:08:42
Speaker 1: where you just look at them just as they are,
2:08:45
Speaker 1: it seems silly mm hmmm, just too simplistic.
2:08:50
Speaker 2: Right right. And then that was always you know, a
2:08:54
Speaker 2: lot of my family and loved ones and friends have
2:08:56
Speaker 2: completely left the faith, and I totally in a way,
2:08:59
Speaker 2: I get it, I understand, but I also really see
2:09:03
Speaker 2: the baby that's being thrown out with the bathwater, and
2:09:05
Speaker 2: I want to cherish that in a way, I guess.
2:09:08
Speaker 1: And it's interesting that you say that the way to
2:09:12
Speaker 1: know what's right and wrong is you have to live it.
2:09:15
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's probably very difficult to articulate. But in the
2:09:21
Speaker 1: living of it, do you realize it.
2:09:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm glad you say that, because that's I found
2:09:27
Speaker 2: a lot of comfort in that, because I feel somewhat inarticulate.
2:09:30
Speaker 2: A lot of the times. I'm unable to articulate my thoughts,
2:09:33
Speaker 2: especially on these matters. And then you just think it's
2:09:36
Speaker 2: I just have to. But I do have to. I
2:09:38
Speaker 2: can live it. I can try to live it, you know.
2:09:40
Speaker 2: And then what I also am struck with right away
2:09:42
Speaker 2: is I can't because you can't love everybody. You can't
2:09:44
Speaker 2: love your enemies, and you can't. But as placing that
2:09:49
Speaker 2: in front of you as the ideal is so important
2:09:51
Speaker 2: to put like a check on your human instincts, on
2:09:54
Speaker 2: your tribalism, on your I mean, you can very quickly,
2:10:01
Speaker 2: like we're talking about with evil, you know, it can
2:10:03
Speaker 2: really quickly take its place in your life. Almost you
2:10:07
Speaker 2: almost won't observe it happening, you know. But and so
2:10:12
Speaker 2: I so much appreciate all the the me striving. And
2:10:15
Speaker 2: that's where you know, I grew up in a Christian family,
2:10:17
Speaker 2: so I had these like cliches that I didn't really understand,
2:10:21
Speaker 2: like a relationship with God, like what does that mean?
2:10:24
Speaker 2: But then I realized when I struggled with trying with
2:10:28
Speaker 2: taking I actually did try to take it seriously and
2:10:31
Speaker 2: struggle with what does it mean to live out a
2:10:32
Speaker 2: life of love in the world. But that's like a
2:10:35
Speaker 2: wrestling match, because it's not that simple. It doesn't sound
2:10:38
Speaker 2: it sounds good, but it's really hard to do and
2:10:41
Speaker 2: then you realize you can't do it perfectly. But but
2:10:45
Speaker 2: in that struggle, in that wrestling match, is where I
2:10:48
Speaker 2: actually sense that relationship. And then it's and that's where
2:10:51
Speaker 2: it kind of gains life and how that really and
2:10:56
Speaker 2: I'm sure that relates to what Jordan Peterson is getting
2:11:00
Speaker 2: in his metaphor.
2:11:02
Speaker 1: Yea, in this in the striving right of the ideal,
2:11:07
Speaker 1: in the striving towards the ideal, you discover the how
2:11:12
Speaker 1: to be a better person.
2:11:13
Speaker 2: One thing I noticed really tangibly on a loan was
2:11:16
Speaker 2: it because I had had so many people that were
2:11:18
Speaker 2: close to me kind of just leave it all together.
2:11:21
Speaker 2: I was like, I could do that, I actually understand
2:11:23
Speaker 2: why they do, or I could not. You know, I
2:11:27
Speaker 2: do have a choice, and so I had to choose
2:11:29
Speaker 2: at that point to to maintain that ideal. And because
2:11:34
Speaker 2: I could add enough time on a loane, one nice
2:11:36
Speaker 2: thing is you don't have any distractions all the time
2:11:38
Speaker 2: in the world to go into your head. And I
2:11:41
Speaker 2: could play those paths out in my life and not
2:11:44
Speaker 2: only in my life, but I feel like societally and
2:11:46
Speaker 2: for in generationally, like I'd throw it all away and
2:11:50
Speaker 2: everybody start from square one, or we can try to,
2:11:54
Speaker 2: you know, redeem what's valuable in this and wrestle with
2:11:58
Speaker 2: it and strugg and so I just I chose that path.
2:12:03
Speaker 1: Well, I do think it's a kind of wrestling match
2:12:06
Speaker 1: because you mentioned Gulag Archipelago. I'm very much a believer
2:12:11
Speaker 1: that we all have the capacity for good and evil,
2:12:14
Speaker 1: and striving for the ideal to be a good human
2:12:17
Speaker 1: being is not a trivial one. You have to find
2:12:21
Speaker 1: the right tools for yourself to be able to be
2:12:24
Speaker 1: the candle, as you mentioned before, and then for that
2:12:30
Speaker 1: religion and faith can help. I'm sure there's other ways,
2:12:33
Speaker 1: but I think it's grounded in the understanding that each
2:12:37
Speaker 1: human is able to be a really bad person and
2:12:40
Speaker 1: a really good person. And that's like a choice. It's
2:12:45
Speaker 1: a deliberate choice, and it's a choice is taken every
2:12:47
Speaker 1: moment and builds up over time. And the hard part
2:12:54
Speaker 1: about is you don't know, You don't always have the
2:12:57
Speaker 1: clarity using re and to understand what is good and
2:13:02
Speaker 1: what is right and what is wrong. You have to
2:13:04
Speaker 1: kind of live it with humility and constantly struggle, because then, yeah,
2:13:09
Speaker 1: you have to. You have You might wake up on
2:13:11
Speaker 1: a society where you're committing genocides and you think you're
2:13:18
Speaker 1: the good guys, and I think you have to have
2:13:20
Speaker 1: the courage to realize you're not. It's not always obvious,
2:13:27
Speaker 1: and only history has the clarity to show who were
2:13:31
Speaker 1: the good guys and who were the bad guys?
2:13:33
Speaker 2: Right, you gotta wrestle with it. It's like that quote,
2:13:37
Speaker 2: you know, the line between good and evil goes through
2:13:39
Speaker 2: the heart of every man, and we push it this
2:13:42
Speaker 2: way and that, and our job is to work on
2:13:46
Speaker 2: that within ourselves.
2:13:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the part that's uh what I like sort
2:13:53
Speaker 1: of the full quote talks about the fact that it moves.
2:13:57
Speaker 1: It moves from the line moves moment by moment, day
2:14:01
Speaker 1: by day. We have the the freedom to uh move
2:14:07
Speaker 1: that line. So it's like a it's very deliberate thing.
2:14:10
Speaker 1: It's not like you're born this way and that's that's it.
2:14:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree.
2:14:15
Speaker 1: And and especially in you know, in conditions that are
2:14:19
Speaker 1: like worn peace, uh in the case of the camps,
2:14:25
Speaker 1: you know, absurd levels of injustice. In the face of
2:14:30
Speaker 1: all that, when everything is taken away from you, you
2:14:32
Speaker 1: still have the choice to be to be the candle
2:14:34
Speaker 1: like the Grandma's by the way, the Grandma's in like
2:14:38
Speaker 1: all parts of the world are like the strongest.
2:14:45
Speaker 2: I don't know what it is.
2:14:46
Speaker 1: I don't know. They have this like wisdom that comes
2:14:52
Speaker 1: from patients and have seen it all. I've seen all
2:14:54
Speaker 1: the bullshit of the people that come and gone, all
2:14:57
Speaker 1: the abuses of power, all of this, know what it is,
2:15:01
Speaker 1: and they just keep.
2:15:02
Speaker 2: Going right right. Yeah, that's so true.
2:15:08
Speaker 1: What do you think of as we've gotten the bid
2:15:12
Speaker 1: philosophical what do you think of Werner Herzog's style of narration?
2:15:17
Speaker 1: I kind of wish he narrated my life.
2:15:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's amazing to listen to because.
2:15:22
Speaker 1: That documentary is actually in Russian. I think he took
2:15:28
Speaker 1: a longer series, Yeah, and then put narration over it,
2:15:33
Speaker 1: and that narration can transform like a story.
2:15:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, he does an incredible job with it. I I
2:15:42
Speaker 2: have you seen the full version? Have you watched the
2:15:44
Speaker 2: four part full version? You should? You'd like it. It's
2:15:46
Speaker 2: in Russian and so you'll get the fullness of that
2:15:49
Speaker 2: and it's Uh, he had to fit it into a
2:15:52
Speaker 2: two hour format, and so I think what you're losing
2:15:54
Speaker 2: those extra couple hours is worth watching. I think you'll
2:15:58
Speaker 2: like it. So, yeah, they.
2:16:00
Speaker 1: Always go they always go pretty dark. He has a
2:16:04
Speaker 1: very dark sense about nature that has violence, and it's I.
2:16:09
Speaker 2: Think that's important to recognize because it's really easy I mean,
2:16:13
Speaker 2: especially with what I do and when I talk about
2:16:16
Speaker 2: and I see so much of the value in nature. Gosh,
2:16:21
Speaker 2: you know, I also see like a beautiful moose and
2:16:24
Speaker 2: a calf running around, and then next week I see
2:16:26
Speaker 2: the calf rip the shreds by wolves and you're just like, oh,
2:16:30
Speaker 2: and it's a it's not as it's it's not as
2:16:36
Speaker 2: Brousseuian as we'd like to think, you know, it is it.
2:16:41
Speaker 2: You know, things must die for things to live, like
2:16:43
Speaker 2: you said, and that's just played out all the time,
2:16:46
Speaker 2: and it's indifferent to you. Doesn't doesn't care if you
2:16:49
Speaker 2: live or die, and doesn't care how you die or
2:16:52
Speaker 2: how much pain you go through while you you know,
2:16:54
Speaker 2: it's like it's pretty brutal, so that it's interesting that
2:16:58
Speaker 2: he taps into that, and I think I think it's
2:17:01
Speaker 2: valuable because it's easy to idealize in a way.
2:17:04
Speaker 1: But yeah, the indifference is I don't know what to
2:17:09
Speaker 1: make of it. There isn't a difference. It's a bit scary,
2:17:12
Speaker 1: it's a bit lonely.
2:17:14
Speaker 2: M hm.
2:17:15
Speaker 1: You're just a cog in the in the machine of nature.
2:17:19
Speaker 1: I think that doesn't really care.
2:17:21
Speaker 2: About you totally. I think that's something that's that with
2:17:23
Speaker 2: a lot on that show another part of the depths
2:17:26
Speaker 2: of psychology delve into it. And that's when I thought,
2:17:30
Speaker 2: like I could I could I understand that deeply, but
2:17:34
Speaker 2: I could also choose to believe for some reason it matters,
2:17:38
Speaker 2: and then I could live like it matters, and then
2:17:40
Speaker 2: I could see the trajectories and the kind of that
2:17:42
Speaker 2: was another fork in the road of my path.
2:17:44
Speaker 1: I guess, what do you think about the connection to
2:17:47
Speaker 1: the animals, so in that in that movie is with
2:17:49
Speaker 1: the dogs and with you, it's the other domesticated, the reindeer.
2:17:56
Speaker 1: What do you think about that human animal connection in.
2:17:59
Speaker 2: The context of that indifference? Is an interesting that we
2:18:02
Speaker 2: assign so much value and love and appreciation for these animals,
2:18:06
Speaker 2: and in some degree we get that back in Reciprie.
2:18:09
Speaker 2: I think right now you just said the reindeer, and
2:18:11
Speaker 2: I think of the one they gave me because he
2:18:14
Speaker 2: was long and tall, so they named him glean Me.
2:18:16
Speaker 2: And I just remember lean Me and just watching him
2:18:19
Speaker 2: meet the leaves and go with me through the woods
2:18:22
Speaker 2: and trust him to take me through rivers and stuff,
2:18:24
Speaker 2: and it really is special. It's really enriching, you know,
2:18:30
Speaker 2: to have that relationship with an animal, and I think
2:18:34
Speaker 2: it also puts you in a proper context. One thing
2:18:36
Speaker 2: I noticed about the natives who live with those animals
2:18:39
Speaker 2: all the time is they relate to life and death
2:18:41
Speaker 2: a little more naturally. It feels, you know, we feel
2:18:44
Speaker 2: really removed from it. And it's particularly in urban settings.
2:18:47
Speaker 2: And I think I think when you interact with animals
2:18:51
Speaker 2: and you have to confront the life and the death
2:18:54
Speaker 2: of them, and the responsibility of in a symbiotic relationship
2:18:58
Speaker 2: you have, I think it opens it a little bit
2:19:02
Speaker 2: awareness to your place in the in the puzzle and
2:19:07
Speaker 2: puts you in it rather than above it.
2:19:10
Speaker 1: Have you been able to accept your own death?
2:19:13
Speaker 2: I wonder, you know, you wonder when when it actually comes,
2:19:16
Speaker 2: what you're going to think? But I did have, you know,
2:19:20
Speaker 2: I did have my dad to watch confronted in as
2:19:25
Speaker 2: positive a manner as you could and I and that's
2:19:28
Speaker 2: a big advantage. And so I I think when the
2:19:33
Speaker 2: time comes that I will be ready. But I think it.
2:19:36
Speaker 2: But I think that's easy to say when the time
2:19:38
Speaker 2: feels far off. You know, it'll be interesting. If you
2:19:40
Speaker 2: got a cancer diagnosis tomorrow and stage four it's be heavy.
2:19:45
Speaker 1: Did you have a confront death will in survival situations
2:19:49
Speaker 1: when you're I mean here.
2:19:50
Speaker 2: I did have a time at a time where I
2:19:53
Speaker 2: thought I might I was gonna die. I had a
2:19:55
Speaker 2: lot of situations that could have gone either way, and
2:19:58
Speaker 2: a lot of injury is broken in this and that.
2:20:01
Speaker 2: But the one that that I was able to be
2:20:04
Speaker 2: conscious through a slowly evolving experience that I thought I
2:20:07
Speaker 2: might die in was at one point we were siphoning
2:20:10
Speaker 2: gas out of a barrel and it was almost to
2:20:12
Speaker 2: the bottom, and I was like, so that sucking really
2:20:14
Speaker 2: hard to get the gas out, and then I didn't.
2:20:16
Speaker 2: I didn't get the siphon going, so I like waited,
2:20:19
Speaker 2: and then while I was sitting there, you're put the
2:20:21
Speaker 2: a new canister on top and put the hose in
2:20:24
Speaker 2: and I didn't see and so then I went to
2:20:26
Speaker 2: get another, you know, siphon, and I went like sucked
2:20:30
Speaker 2: as hard as I couldn't have. Just instantly, like a
2:20:32
Speaker 2: bunch of gas filled my mouth and I couldn't like
2:20:34
Speaker 2: spit it out. I had to go like that, and
2:20:37
Speaker 2: I just full mouthful of gas that I just drank,
2:20:40
Speaker 2: and I was just like, oh, like what is that
2:20:43
Speaker 2: going to do? And and he and my friend were
2:20:46
Speaker 2: going to go on this fishing trip and so was I.
2:20:49
Speaker 2: And I was just like, oh, I might just stay
2:20:50
Speaker 2: and I was in this little Russian village and uh
2:20:54
Speaker 2: and they're like all right, well you was like, man,
2:20:57
Speaker 2: I had a buddy that died doing that with dec
2:21:00
Speaker 2: a couple of years ago, you know, and oh man,
2:21:02
Speaker 2: and so anyway, I made my way to the hospital.
2:21:05
Speaker 2: By then, you know, you're really out of it because
2:21:07
Speaker 2: and then uh, anyways, they put me in this little
2:21:10
Speaker 2: dark room. It almost sounds like unrealistic, but it exactually
2:21:14
Speaker 2: how it happened. They put me in a little a
2:21:16
Speaker 2: little room with a toilet, and they gave me a
2:21:20
Speaker 2: cold you know, galvanized bucket, and then like they had
2:21:24
Speaker 2: a cold water faucet and they're just like just chug
2:21:26
Speaker 2: water and puke into the toilet and just flush your
2:21:29
Speaker 2: system as much a can. But they only had a
2:21:30
Speaker 2: cold water faucets. I was just sitting there like chug, chug,
2:21:33
Speaker 2: chunk up until like you puke and chug until you
2:21:36
Speaker 2: puking them in the dark. And I and it's like
2:21:38
Speaker 2: started to shiver because I was so cold. But I
2:21:41
Speaker 2: said to like still, like get.
2:21:42
Speaker 1: This thing up.
2:21:43
Speaker 2: To me and chug I was picturing I remember reading,
2:21:47
Speaker 2: you know about the Japanese torture where they would put
2:21:49
Speaker 2: a hose in somebody and then make them drink water
2:21:52
Speaker 2: until they puke anyway, the uh and I and I
2:21:55
Speaker 2: just felt so the only way I can express it,
2:21:57
Speaker 2: I felt so possessed, like demon possition, Like I was
2:22:00
Speaker 2: just permeated with gas. I could feel it that was
2:22:02
Speaker 2: coming out of my pores, and I wanted to like
2:22:05
Speaker 2: rip it out of me. And I couldn't like puke
2:22:07
Speaker 2: into the toilet. And then I couldn't see, but I
2:22:10
Speaker 2: was wondering if it was like rainbow. And then and
2:22:13
Speaker 2: then I just remember like I could tell I was
2:22:15
Speaker 2: going out pretty soon, and and I remember looking at
2:22:20
Speaker 2: my hands up close you'd see them a little bit,
2:22:22
Speaker 2: and I was like, oh, that's how Dad's hands looked,
2:22:24
Speaker 2: you know, they were alive, alive. And then you know, interesting,
2:22:30
Speaker 2: it are my hands going to look like that in
2:22:31
Speaker 2: a few minutes or whatever? And so then I wrote
2:22:33
Speaker 2: down like to my family what I thought, you know,
2:22:35
Speaker 2: like I love you all, like feel at peace, blah
2:22:39
Speaker 2: blah blah blah. And then I passed out and I
2:22:42
Speaker 2: woke up but I didn't think. I actually thought. I mean,
2:22:45
Speaker 2: when I went to pass out, I thought it was
2:22:47
Speaker 2: there was a coin toss for me. So I really
2:22:49
Speaker 2: felt like I was confronting the end there.
2:22:54
Speaker 1: What are the harshest conditions to survive?
2:22:56
Speaker 2: And on Earth, Well, there are places that are just
2:22:58
Speaker 2: purely uninhabited, dole, but I think as far as places
2:23:02
Speaker 2: that you have a chance, no chance, well maybe Greenland.
2:23:07
Speaker 2: I think of Greenland because I think of you know,
2:23:10
Speaker 2: those Vikings that settled there were rugged, capable dudes and
2:23:15
Speaker 2: they didn't make it. But there are Inuit that that,
2:23:18
Speaker 2: you know, natives that live up there. But that's a
2:23:22
Speaker 2: hard life, you know, and the population has never grown
2:23:24
Speaker 2: very big because they're you're scraping by up there, any picture,
2:23:28
Speaker 2: and the and the Vikings that did land there, you know,
2:23:31
Speaker 2: they just weren't able to quite adapt, and the fact
2:23:35
Speaker 2: that they all died out is just a symbol to
2:23:37
Speaker 2: that must be a pretty difficult place.
2:23:40
Speaker 1: What would you say that's that's primarily because just the
2:23:43
Speaker 1: food sources are limited.
2:23:44
Speaker 2: Food sources are limited, but the fact that some people
2:23:47
Speaker 2: can live there means it is possible. You know, they
2:23:49
Speaker 2: figured out ways to catch seals and do things to survive.
2:23:53
Speaker 2: But it's by no means easier to be taken for
2:23:57
Speaker 2: granted or obvious. I think it's a hard probably be
2:24:00
Speaker 2: a harsh place to try to live.
2:24:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's fascinating, not just humans, but to watch how
2:24:05
Speaker 1: animals have figured out how to survive, watching like a
2:24:09
Speaker 1: documentary on polar bears, Like they just figure out a
2:24:12
Speaker 1: way and they get and they've been doing it for generations,
2:24:16
Speaker 1: and they figure out a way. They travel like hundreds
2:24:19
Speaker 1: of miles to like, to the to the water to
2:24:23
Speaker 1: get fat, and they travel one hundred miles to like
2:24:28
Speaker 1: for whatever other purpose because it because they want to
2:24:30
Speaker 1: stay on the ice. I don't know. But it's like
2:24:32
Speaker 1: there's a there's a process and they figure it out
2:24:35
Speaker 1: against the long odds, and some of them don't make it.
2:24:38
Speaker 2: It's incredible. It's a what a what tough things? Man?
2:24:43
Speaker 2: You just think every little every animal you see up
2:24:46
Speaker 2: in the mountains when I'm up in the woods, it's
2:24:47
Speaker 2: nothing just surviving through the women winter scraping body.
2:24:51
Speaker 4: It's toughsen What do you think it would take to
2:24:55
Speaker 4: break you, let's say mentally, like if you're in a
2:25:01
Speaker 4: survival situation.
2:25:04
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it would happen mentally, it would
2:25:06
Speaker 2: have to be Uh, well, we thought we talked about
2:25:12
Speaker 2: that earlier. I guess the thing that I've confronted that
2:25:15
Speaker 2: that I thought I knew was that if I knew
2:25:17
Speaker 2: I was the last person on earth, I wouldn't, I thought.
2:25:21
Speaker 2: But maybe you're right, Maybe I would think I wasn't.
2:25:24
Speaker 2: But I think, you know, I can't imagine. I can't imagine.
2:25:29
Speaker 2: We're so blessed in the time we live, like, but
2:25:33
Speaker 2: I can't imagine what it's like to lose your kids
2:25:35
Speaker 2: something like that. It was an experience that was so
2:25:37
Speaker 2: common for humanity for so much of history. Would I
2:25:42
Speaker 2: be able to endure that? I would have at least
2:25:46
Speaker 2: a legacy to look back on of people who did.
2:25:49
Speaker 2: But God forbid I ever have to delve that deep,
2:25:53
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, that I could see that
2:25:56
Speaker 2: breaking somebody.
2:25:57
Speaker 1: And I mean in your fam in your own family history,
2:25:59
Speaker 1: there's there's people who have survived that. Right, Maybe that
2:26:02
Speaker 1: will give you hope.
2:26:03
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that's what I would have to
2:26:05
Speaker 2: somehow hold on to.
2:26:06
Speaker 1: But in a survival situation, you're there's very few things.
2:26:10
Speaker 2: I don't know what it would be like so on
2:26:13
Speaker 2: a loan, like on alone, I knew if I wasn't
2:26:16
Speaker 2: gonna ultimately it is a game show, So it's like,
2:26:19
Speaker 2: ultimately I was gonna kill myself out there. It's like,
2:26:22
Speaker 2: but so if I hadn't been able to procure food
2:26:28
Speaker 2: and I was starving to death, it's like, Okay, I'm
2:26:31
Speaker 2: not I'm gonna go home, you know, but like if
2:26:33
Speaker 2: you put yourself in that, in that situation, but it's
2:26:35
Speaker 2: not a game show, and having been there to some degree,
2:26:40
Speaker 2: like I will say I wasn't even close, like I
2:26:43
Speaker 2: don't even know. Yeah, I hadn't got it, hadn't pushed
2:26:47
Speaker 2: my mental limit at all yet, I would say, or
2:26:50
Speaker 2: on the scale. But that's not to say there isn't one.
2:26:53
Speaker 2: I know there is one. But I have a hard time.
2:26:57
Speaker 2: I know I've don't you know, I've dealt with enough pain,
2:27:00
Speaker 2: enough discomfort in life that I know I can deal
2:27:04
Speaker 2: with that. I think, I think it gets difficult when
2:27:07
Speaker 2: you start to when there's a way out and you
2:27:10
Speaker 2: start to wonder if you shouldn't take the way out,
2:27:12
Speaker 2: as far as like if there's no way out, I.
2:27:18
Speaker 1: Don't know what, Oh that's interesting, I mean, that is
2:27:22
Speaker 1: that is a real difficult battle. When there's an exit,
2:27:26
Speaker 1: it's easy to quit, right, Well, am I doing this? Yeah?
2:27:30
Speaker 1: That's that's the thing that gets louder and louder at
2:27:35
Speaker 1: the harder things at that point.
2:27:37
Speaker 2: Actually, it's not insignificant. Like if you think you're doing
2:27:41
Speaker 2: you know, if you think you're doing permanent damage your body,
2:27:45
Speaker 2: you would be smart to quit. You should just not
2:27:47
Speaker 2: do that on a when it's not necessary because health
2:27:52
Speaker 2: is kind of all you have in some yards. So dude,
2:27:55
Speaker 2: I don't blame anyone. Then they quit because of that reason.
2:27:58
Speaker 2: It's like good. But uh, but if you're in a
2:28:02
Speaker 2: situation and if you don't have the option to quit,
2:28:05
Speaker 2: is knowing that you're doing permit that's not gonna break
2:28:07
Speaker 2: That won't break me, you know, just you just have
2:28:10
Speaker 2: to get through it. I'm not sure what my mental
2:28:12
Speaker 2: limit would be outside of like the family suffering in
2:28:18
Speaker 2: the way that I described earlier.
2:28:19
Speaker 1: Well, it's just you, it's you. You don't know what
2:28:25
Speaker 1: the limit is.
2:28:26
Speaker 2: I don't know.
2:28:26
Speaker 1: Injuries injuries like physical stuff is annoying though.
2:28:32
Speaker 2: That could be, isn't it weird? How Like? I mean,
2:28:34
Speaker 2: I can have a good life, happy life, and then
2:28:37
Speaker 2: you have a bad back or you have a headache. Yeah,
2:28:39
Speaker 2: and it's amazing how much that can overwhelm your experience.
2:28:43
Speaker 2: Then again, that was something I saw in Dad that
2:28:47
Speaker 2: was like interesting, how can you find joy in that
2:28:51
Speaker 2: when you're just steeped in that all the time? And people,
2:28:54
Speaker 2: I'm sure listening, there's a lot of people that do.
2:28:56
Speaker 2: And it's so and talk about the cross to bear
2:29:01
Speaker 2: and the like hero journey to be like, good for
2:29:03
Speaker 2: you for trying to find what you can what your
2:29:08
Speaker 2: way through that. There was a lady in Russia, h Tanya,
2:29:12
Speaker 2: and she had had cancer and recovered but always had
2:29:16
Speaker 2: a pounding headache and she was really joyful and really
2:29:21
Speaker 2: fun to be around. And I just like, man, I mean,
2:29:24
Speaker 2: you just have to have a really bad headache for today.
2:29:26
Speaker 2: Know how much that throws a wrench in your existence.
2:29:29
Speaker 2: So so all that to say, if you're not right
2:29:33
Speaker 2: now suffering with blindness or a bad back or it's
2:29:36
Speaker 2: like just kind of your blessings because it is all
2:29:39
Speaker 2: it's so easy to have. It's amazing how complex we are,
2:29:42
Speaker 2: how well our bodies work, and when they go out
2:29:44
Speaker 2: of whack, it can be very overwhelming. And they all
2:29:48
Speaker 2: will at some point, and so that's an interesting thing
2:29:50
Speaker 2: to think ahead on how you're going to confront it
2:29:52
Speaker 2: when it does keeps you humble.
2:29:55
Speaker 1: Like you said, it's inspiring that people figure out a
2:29:57
Speaker 1: way with my brains. That's a hard one though. You
2:30:00
Speaker 1: have headaches. It's so hard, oh man, because those can
2:30:06
Speaker 1: be really painful, and it's like well and dizzying and
2:30:10
Speaker 1: all of this stuff that's inspiring. That's inspiring that you found.
2:30:16
Speaker 2: There's not nothing in that, you know. I mean, you
2:30:20
Speaker 2: can find somehow you can tap into purpose even in
2:30:23
Speaker 2: that pain. I guess I would just speak from it,
2:30:25
Speaker 2: like right, my dad's experience. I saw somebody do it
2:30:28
Speaker 2: and I benefited from it. So thanks to him for
2:30:32
Speaker 2: seeing the higher calling there.
2:30:34
Speaker 1: You order a note on your blog. In twenty twelve,
2:30:38
Speaker 1: you spent five weeks ish in the forest alone. I
2:30:44
Speaker 1: just thought it was interesting because this is in contrast
2:30:47
Speaker 1: to on the show alone you're really alone with like
2:30:51
Speaker 1: you're not talking to anybody, and you realize that you're right.
2:30:56
Speaker 1: I remember at one point, after several weeks had passed,
2:30:58
Speaker 1: I wandered into parting the beautiful part of the woods
2:31:01
Speaker 1: and exclaimed out loud, wow, it struck me that it
2:31:04
Speaker 1: was the first time I had heard my own voice
2:31:07
Speaker 1: in several weeks with no one to talk to. What where?
2:31:13
Speaker 1: What did your thoughts go into some like deep place?
2:31:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd say my mental life was really active. You
2:31:22
Speaker 2: know what, you what you end up when you're that
2:31:25
Speaker 2: long alone. I'll tell you what you won't have is
2:31:27
Speaker 2: any the skeletons in your closet that are still in
2:31:31
Speaker 2: your closet, Like, you will be forced to confront every
2:31:34
Speaker 2: every person and even the one. I mean, it's one
2:31:37
Speaker 2: thing if you've cheated on your wow wife or some
2:31:40
Speaker 2: but you'll be confronted with the random dude you didn't
2:31:43
Speaker 2: say thank you to and the like, and the issue
2:31:46
Speaker 2: that you didn't resolve. You know, all this stuff that
2:31:48
Speaker 2: was long gone will come up and then you'll work
2:31:52
Speaker 2: through it and you'll think how you should make it right.
2:31:54
Speaker 2: And uh, I had a lot of those thoughts.
2:31:58
Speaker 1: And while I was out there and it was it
2:32:01
Speaker 1: was so interesting to see what you would just brush
2:32:04
Speaker 1: over and then.
2:32:07
Speaker 2: And confront it. Because in our modern world, when you're
2:32:10
Speaker 2: always distracted, you're just never ever gonna know until you
2:32:14
Speaker 2: take the time to be alone for a considerable amount
2:32:16
Speaker 2: of time.
2:32:17
Speaker 1: Spend time hanging out with the skeletons.
2:32:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, I recommend it.
2:32:23
Speaker 1: So you said, do you guide people what are your
2:32:25
Speaker 1: favorite places to go to?
2:32:29
Speaker 2: If I tell them, then is everybody going to go?
2:32:32
Speaker 1: I like how you actually have It might be a
2:32:35
Speaker 1: YouTube video or your Instagram post where you give them
2:32:38
Speaker 1: a recommendation of like the best fishing hole in the world,
2:32:41
Speaker 1: and like you give detailed instructions how to get there.
2:32:43
Speaker 1: But it's like a journey of life. It's like a
2:32:45
Speaker 1: Lord of the Rings type of journeys.
2:32:46
Speaker 2: Right right. No, I love the I love that. Like
2:32:50
Speaker 2: in the you know, there's a region I definitely love
2:32:55
Speaker 2: in the States. It's special to me. I grew up there,
2:32:58
Speaker 2: stuff like that, Idaho, Montana. Those are really cool places
2:33:02
Speaker 2: to me. I like the small town vibes. They're still
2:33:05
Speaker 2: maintaining and stuff.
2:33:06
Speaker 1: There a mix of like mountains and forests.
2:33:10
Speaker 2: But you know, another really awesome place that blew my
2:33:13
Speaker 2: mind was New Zealand. That's South Island of New Zealand.
2:33:17
Speaker 2: Was pretty incredible as far as just stunning stuff to see.
2:33:22
Speaker 2: I was pretty high up there on the list. But
2:33:24
Speaker 2: there's all these places have such kind of unique, unique
2:33:29
Speaker 2: things about Canada became like where they did Alone. It's
2:33:32
Speaker 2: not typically what you'd say because it's fairly flat and
2:33:36
Speaker 2: cliffy and stuff, but it really became beautiful to me
2:33:39
Speaker 2: because I could tap into the richness of the land,
2:33:41
Speaker 2: you know, or or you know, the fishing whole thing.
2:33:45
Speaker 2: It's like, that's a special little spot, you know, something
2:33:47
Speaker 2: like that, and you see the beauty. And then you
2:33:49
Speaker 2: start to see the beauty on this in the smaller scale,
2:33:52
Speaker 2: like all that little meadow with that it's got an
2:33:54
Speaker 2: orange and of pink and a blue flower right next
2:33:56
Speaker 2: to each other. That's super cool, you know. And there's
2:33:59
Speaker 2: a million things like that.
2:34:01
Speaker 1: Have you been back there yet, back to where the
2:34:03
Speaker 1: Alone show was?
2:34:05
Speaker 2: No, We're going back to this h summer. I'm going
2:34:07
Speaker 2: to take guy to trip up there, take a bunch
2:34:09
Speaker 2: of people. I'm really looking forward to being able to
2:34:11
Speaker 2: enjoy it without the pressure.
2:34:13
Speaker 1: Of what what advice would you give to people in
2:34:18
Speaker 1: terms of how to be in nature? So like the
2:34:24
Speaker 1: hikes to take or journeys to take out of nature
2:34:27
Speaker 1: where it could it could take you to that place
2:34:29
Speaker 1: where the busyness and the madness of the world can
2:34:33
Speaker 1: dissipate and you can be with it. How long does
2:34:37
Speaker 1: it take for you for people usually to just.
2:34:40
Speaker 2: Like yeah, yeah, I think you need a few days
2:34:42
Speaker 2: probably to tap into it, but you know, maybe you
2:34:45
Speaker 2: need to work your way there. Like it. It's awesome
2:34:49
Speaker 2: to go out on a hike, go see some beautiful
2:34:51
Speaker 2: little waterfall, or go see some old tree or whatever
2:34:55
Speaker 2: it is. You know, Like, but I think just doing
2:35:00
Speaker 2: is it that you know everybody thinks about doing it?
2:35:03
Speaker 2: Really you just really do do it, Like go out
2:35:06
Speaker 2: and then plan to go overnight. Don't be so afraid
2:35:09
Speaker 2: of all the potentialities that you delay it inevitably, you know.
2:35:15
Speaker 2: Like it's actually one of the things that I've enjoyed
2:35:17
Speaker 2: the most about guiding people is giving them the tools
2:35:21
Speaker 2: so that now they have this ability into the future.
2:35:24
Speaker 2: You can go out and feel like I'm going to
2:35:26
Speaker 2: pick this spot on the map and go there, And
2:35:31
Speaker 2: that's a tool and your toolkit of life that is
2:35:33
Speaker 2: I think really valuable because I think everybody should spend
2:35:36
Speaker 2: some time in nature. Everything. I think it's been pretty proven.
2:35:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean camping, camping is great, and solo okay,
2:35:46
Speaker 1: and she has to do it solo.
2:35:48
Speaker 2: Is pretty cool. Yeah, that's cool. You did.
2:35:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's cool, and I recorded stuff so that that helped.
2:35:53
Speaker 1: Oh good, Yeah, until you sit there and you record
2:35:56
Speaker 1: the thoughts. Actually, for having to record the thoughts I
2:35:59
Speaker 1: had to like it forced me to really think through
2:36:01
Speaker 1: what I was feeling, to convert the feelings into words,
2:36:05
Speaker 1: which is not a trivial thing because it's mostly just feeling.
2:36:12
Speaker 2: M h.
2:36:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, you feel a certain kind of way.
2:36:17
Speaker 2: That's interesting. You know. I felt like the way the
2:36:20
Speaker 2: way I met my wife was like, you know, we
2:36:21
Speaker 2: met at this wedding and then I went to Russia
2:36:23
Speaker 2: basically and we kept in touch via email for you know,
2:36:27
Speaker 2: that year and a similar thing. It was really interesting
2:36:31
Speaker 2: to be have to be so thoughtful and purposeful about
2:36:34
Speaker 2: what you're saying and things like, I think it's probably
2:36:38
Speaker 2: a healthy, good thing to do.
2:36:40
Speaker 1: What gives you hope about this whole thing we have
2:36:42
Speaker 1: going on the future of human civilization.
2:36:47
Speaker 2: If we talk you know, we talked about gratitude earlier,
2:36:49
Speaker 2: like look at what we have now that could give
2:36:51
Speaker 2: you hope, Like look at what the world we're in.
2:36:54
Speaker 2: We live in such an amazing time with you know,
2:36:57
Speaker 2: buildings and roads and buildings and right food security and
2:37:02
Speaker 2: you know, I lived with the natives, and I thought
2:37:03
Speaker 2: to myself a lot, like I wonder if not everybody
2:37:06
Speaker 2: would choose this way of life, because it is there's
2:37:08
Speaker 2: something really rich about just that small group, your direct
2:37:14
Speaker 2: relationship to your needs, all that. But with the food
2:37:18
Speaker 2: security and the help, you know, modern medicine, things that
2:37:23
Speaker 2: we now have that we take for granted, but that
2:37:25
Speaker 2: I wouldn't choose that life if we didn't have those things.
2:37:29
Speaker 2: Otherwise you're gonna watch your family starve to death or
2:37:31
Speaker 2: things like that. We h so we have so much now,
2:37:34
Speaker 2: which should lead us to be hopeful while we try
2:37:38
Speaker 2: to improve, because there's definitely a lot of things wrong,
2:37:42
Speaker 2: you know, but but I guess it's there's a lot
2:37:46
Speaker 2: of room for improvement. And I do feel like we're
2:37:48
Speaker 2: sort of watching it walking on a nice edge, you know.
2:37:51
Speaker 2: But I guess that's the way it is.
2:37:54
Speaker 1: As the tools would build become more power.
2:37:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, just getting Sharper and Sharper I talk. Yeah,
2:38:05
Speaker 2: I'll like arguement with my brother about that. Sometimes he
2:38:08
Speaker 2: takes the more positive view, and I'm like, I mean,
2:38:10
Speaker 2: it's great, we've done great, but man, more and more
2:38:14
Speaker 2: people with nuclear weapons and more it's just gonna take
2:38:18
Speaker 2: one mistake with the more power.
2:38:21
Speaker 1: I think there's something about the sharpness of the knife
2:38:23
Speaker 1: s edge. It gets humanity to really like focus and
2:38:28
Speaker 1: like step up and not not screw it up. There
2:38:32
Speaker 1: is just like you said, with the cold, going out
2:38:35
Speaker 1: into the extreme cold, it like wakes you up. And
2:38:38
Speaker 1: I think it's the same thing when you go the weapons,
2:38:40
Speaker 1: it just like wakes up exactly. And then we keep
2:38:47
Speaker 1: building more and more powerful things to make sure we
2:38:49
Speaker 1: stay awake.
2:38:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, stay awake, see what we've done, be thankful
2:38:53
Speaker 2: for it, but then improve it and then you know.
2:38:55
Speaker 2: Of course, uh, I appreciated your little post the other week.
2:39:00
Speaker 2: He said you wanted some kids. You know, that's a
2:39:02
Speaker 2: very direct way to relate to the future and to
2:39:04
Speaker 2: have hope for the future.
2:39:06
Speaker 1: I can't wait, and hopefully also get a chance to
2:39:09
Speaker 1: go out in the wilderness with you at some point.
2:39:11
Speaker 1: It'd be fun.
2:39:12
Speaker 2: Open invite. Let's make it happen. I got some really
2:39:14
Speaker 2: cool spots of it have in mind to take you awesome.
2:39:18
Speaker 1: Let's go. Thank you for talking to it, brother, Thank
2:39:20
Speaker 1: you for everything you stand for. Thanks man, thanks for
2:39:25
Speaker 1: listening to this conversation with Jordan Jonas. To support this podcast,
2:39:29
Speaker 1: please check out our sponsors in the description. And now
2:39:34
Speaker 1: let me try a new thing where I try to
2:39:36
Speaker 1: articulate some things I've been thinking about, whether prompted by
2:39:39
Speaker 1: one of your questions or just in general. If you'd
2:39:43
Speaker 1: like to submit a question, including an audio and video form,
2:39:47
Speaker 1: go to Lexfreeman dot com slash ama. Now allow me
2:39:53
Speaker 1: to comment on the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on
2:39:56
Speaker 1: July thirteenth. First, as I've posted online, wishing Donald Trump
2:40:01
Speaker 1: good health after an assassination attempt is not a partisan statement.
2:40:07
Speaker 1: It's a human statement, and I'm sorry if some of
2:40:10
Speaker 1: you want to categorize me and other people into blue
2:40:15
Speaker 1: and red bins. Perhaps you do it because it's easier
2:40:19
Speaker 1: to hate than to understand. In this case, it shouldn't matter.
2:40:23
Speaker 1: But let me say once again that I am not
2:40:26
Speaker 1: right wing nor left wing. I'm not partisan. I make
2:40:29
Speaker 1: up my mind one issue at a time, and I
2:40:31
Speaker 1: try to approach everyone and every idea with empathy and
2:40:36
Speaker 1: with an open mind. I have and will continue to
2:40:39
Speaker 1: have many long form conversations with people both on the
2:40:44
Speaker 1: left and the right. Now onto the much more important point,
2:40:50
Speaker 1: the attempted assassination of Donald Trump should serve as a
2:40:54
Speaker 1: reminder that history can turn on a single moment. World
2:40:59
Speaker 1: War One started with the assassination of our Sduke Franz Ferdinand,
2:41:03
Speaker 1: and just like that, one moment in history on June eighteenth,
2:41:07
Speaker 1: nineteen fourteen, led to the death of twenty million people,
2:41:12
Speaker 1: half of whom or civilians. If one of the bullets
2:41:16
Speaker 1: on July thirteenth had a slightly different trajectory where Donald
2:41:20
Speaker 1: Trump would end up dying in that small town in Pennsylvania,
2:41:25
Speaker 1: history would write a new dramatic chapter, the contents of
2:41:28
Speaker 1: which all the so called experts and pundits would not
2:41:32
Speaker 1: be able to predict. It very well could have led
2:41:35
Speaker 1: to a civil war because the true depth of the
2:41:38
Speaker 1: division in the country is unknown. We only see the
2:41:41
Speaker 1: surface turmoil on social media and so on. And in
2:41:45
Speaker 1: his events like the assassination of our Shduke Franz Ferdinand,
2:41:48
Speaker 1: where we as a human species get to find out
2:41:52
Speaker 1: what the truth is of where people really stand. The
2:41:57
Speaker 1: task then is to try and make our society maximally
2:42:00
Speaker 1: resilient and robust to such destabilizing events. The way to
2:42:04
Speaker 1: do that, I think, is to properly identify the threat
2:42:09
Speaker 1: the enemy. It's not the left or the right that
2:42:12
Speaker 1: are the equote enemy. Extreme division itself is the enemy.
2:42:17
Speaker 1: Some division is productive, it's how we develop good ideas
2:42:21
Speaker 1: and policies. But too much leads to the spread of
2:42:24
Speaker 1: resentment and hate that can boil over into destruction on
2:42:28
Speaker 1: a global scale. So we must absolutely avoid the slide
2:42:33
Speaker 1: into extreme division. There are many ways to do this,
2:42:36
Speaker 1: and perhaps it's a discussion for another time, but at
2:42:40
Speaker 1: the very basic level, let's continuously try to turn down
2:42:44
Speaker 1: the temperature of the partisan bickering and more often celebrate
2:42:48
Speaker 1: our obvious common humanity. Now, let me also comment on
2:42:52
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories. I've been hearing a lot of those recently.
2:42:57
Speaker 1: I think they play an important role in society. They
2:43:00
Speaker 1: ask questions that serve as a check on power and
2:43:03
Speaker 1: corruption of centralized institutions. The way to answer the questions
2:43:07
Speaker 1: raised by conspiracy theories is not by dismissing them with
2:43:11
Speaker 1: arrogance and feigned ignorance, but with transparency and accountability. In
2:43:17
Speaker 1: this particular case, the obvious question that needs an honest
2:43:21
Speaker 1: answer is why did the Secret Service fail so terribly
2:43:25
Speaker 1: in protecting the former president? The story we're supposed to
2:43:29
Speaker 1: believe is that a twenty year old, untrained loner was
2:43:33
Speaker 1: able to outsmart the Secret Service by finding the optimal
2:43:36
Speaker 1: location on a roof for a shot on Trump from
2:43:39
Speaker 1: one hundred and thirty yards away, even though the Secret
2:43:43
Speaker 1: Service snipers spotted him on the roof twenty minutes before
2:43:46
Speaker 1: the shooting and did nothing about it. This looks really
2:43:51
Speaker 1: shady to everyone. Why does it take so long to
2:43:55
Speaker 1: get to a full accounting of the truth of what happened?
2:43:58
Speaker 1: And why is the reporting of the true truth concealed
2:44:00
Speaker 1: by corporate government speak. Cut the bullshit? What happened, who
2:44:06
Speaker 1: fucked up, and why? That's what we need to know.
2:44:09
Speaker 1: That's the beginning of transparency. And yes, the director of
2:44:12
Speaker 1: the US Secret Servers should probably step down or be
2:44:15
Speaker 1: fired by the president, and not as part of some
2:44:18
Speaker 1: political circus that I'm sure is coming, but as a
2:44:21
Speaker 1: step towards uniting and increasingly divided in cynical nation. Conspiracy
2:44:27
Speaker 1: theories are not noise, even when they're false. They are
2:44:32
Speaker 1: a signal that some shady, corrupt, secret bullshit is being
2:44:36
Speaker 1: done by those trying to hold on to power. Not always,
2:44:40
Speaker 1: but often, transparency is the answer here, not secrecy. If
2:44:45
Speaker 1: we don't do these things, we leave ourselves vulnerable to
2:44:49
Speaker 1: singular moments that turn the tides of history. Empires do fall,
2:44:54
Speaker 1: civil wars do break out and tear apart the fabric
2:44:59
Speaker 1: of societies. This is a great nation, the most successful
2:45:03
Speaker 1: collective human experiment in the history of Earth. And letting
2:45:08
Speaker 1: ourselves become extremely divided risks destroying all of that. So
2:45:13
Speaker 1: please ignore the political pundits, the political grifters, clickbait media
2:45:18
Speaker 1: outrage fueling politicians on the right and the left who
2:45:22
Speaker 1: try to divide us. We're not so divided. We're in
2:45:26
Speaker 1: this together. As I've said many times before, I love
2:45:30
Speaker 1: you all. This is a long comment. I'm hoping not
2:45:35
Speaker 1: to do comments this long in the future and hoping
2:45:38
Speaker 1: to do many more. So I'll leave it here for today,
2:45:42
Speaker 1: but I'll try to answer questions and make comments on
2:45:45
Speaker 1: every episode. If you would like to submit questions like
2:45:48
Speaker 1: I mentioned, including audio and video form, get Alexfreema dot com,
2:45:53
Speaker 1: slash Ama. And now let me leave you with some
2:45:56
Speaker 1: words from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Adopt the peace of nature.
2:46:03
Speaker 1: Her secret is patience. Thank you for listening, and hope
2:46:08
Speaker 1: to see you next time,