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Pilot Podcast - Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson · Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson

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Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Live Free Ride Free, where we talk to people who
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have lived self-actualized lives on their own terms, and find out how they
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got there, what they do, how we can get there, what we can learn from them.
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How to live our best lives, find our own definition of success,
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and most importantly, find joy.
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I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson.
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New York Times bestselling author of the Horse Boy.
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Founder of New Trails Learning Systems and long ride home.com.
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You can find details of all our programs and shows on Rupert isaacson.com.
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welcome to Live Free, ride Free episode number one.
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This is your host, Rupert Isaacson.
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Some of you may already know me from my book and film The Horse Boy, , which
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told the story of how I and my autistic then very severely autistic son Rowan,
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traveled across Mongolia, , in search of healing on horseback because he had
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become, In the saddle in front of me.
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and then a subsequent book called The Long Ride Home, which talked
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about, , three further journeys that we made in Africa and in the Australian
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rainforest and in the Navajo Reservation.
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, again, looking for healing and , finding it
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what is Live Free?
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Ride Free?
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It's about, People who self-actualize.
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What does that mean?
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It really means we're talking with people who've managed to successfully live life
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following their passionate interests.
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We could call that living life on your own terms.
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We could call that achieving a certain freedom.
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We could call that fulfillment.
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We could call that, , living a Life.
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Of creativity and joy , but really what it comes down to is how
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is it possible to live a dream?
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To dream a dream, go after it and live it.
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Because so often we are told that this is not possible.
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The, the messages that we get, at school often from our parents, from the wider
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community are, no, you can't do that.
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You've got to go for security.
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You've got.
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Get a job, you've got to, immediately get on the property
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ladder as quickly as you can.
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You've got to be responsible.
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You've got to, you've got to, you've got to.
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And really the underlying message of that for so many of us growing up
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is you're not allowed to have fun.
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Fun is counterproductive to, success.
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even though people who are successful seem to have quite a lot of fun.
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and I remember.
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You know, noticing that when I was quite young and thinking,
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well, how does that correlate?
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Well, we're not here to have fun.
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We're here to work.
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Well, why can't work be fun?
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Well, you're not here to have fun.
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You're here to learn.
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Well, why can't learning be fun?
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Why can't it be joyful?
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I never really bought it.
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I never really bought the line that you had to suffer
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somehow in order to be worthy.
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And I never quite bought the line that you had to have a bad.
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In order to effectively have a good time.
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So where was the missing link?
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And it's, it's, it's something that has gone through my whole life.
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So let me talk a little bit about my own story, Rupert.
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so I've spent my life really, making my living, doing things that everyone
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told me you can't make a living at.
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It started really early, with my interest in writing stories and drawing
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pictures and that sort of thing.
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And people said, well, that's a waste of time.
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You should be doing more maths.
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You should be doing more science.
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And I was like, well, I'm not really good at those.
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And.
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Um, it's not that I don't find them interesting, but when I'm in those classes
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at school, my teachers, humiliate me and make me feel really stupid.
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so I find it rather difficult to learn under those circumstances.
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So naturally I gravitate towards the things that I find not only
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easier, but that give me joy.
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And what happened was I ended up becoming a writer.
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Now people said, oh, well you can't make a living at writing.
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And I remember, Hearing that, um, as a sort of a teenager and thinking, well,
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but you go into a bookstore and there are thousands of books in there that are
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being published by companies that have been around for some of them for over a
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hundred years, who've obviously made quite a lot of money publishing these books.
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And some of these writers must obviously be making their living doing it.
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Or how would they possibly.
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Be able to spend the time.
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It's very time consuming.
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Writing books, writing these books.
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So I remember thinking, I think I could probably do that.
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And then also in my childhood and early teens, I was always horse mad.
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Horse obsessed.
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Horse driven.
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When as a three year old, I was always.
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Being found in my aunt's farm, sitting out in the field with her old
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retired horses, just talking to them.
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And it was very, very clear that I was gonna have a life around horses.
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And I remember my own parents saying to me, well Ru, you know,
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that's just an expensive hobby.
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You can't, you can't do that.
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And I remember thinking, yeah, but there seems to be this thing
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called the bloodstock industry.
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There seems to be this thing called the horse in.
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And people seem to buy and sell horses and people seem to get paid
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to be professional riders and people seem to get paid to breed horses and.
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where is the disconnect?
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Why can't I develop a skillset where I could maybe make my living
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doing this as well as other things?
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And of course, that's end ended up, you know, what happened.
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and then, when I was very young too, sort of 16, 17, I got really
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rather heavily into playing.
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Fantasy role-playing games, Dungeons and Dragons, that sort of thing.
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And, smoking too much of things I shouldn't smoke and listening to
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too much heavy metal and doing it partly cuz I was a bit depressed.
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And partly cuz it was fun and, and escapism.
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And again, people saying, well this is a waste of time.
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You, you, you can't make a living doing this is just, you know, this
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is just not, you know, something which is gonna be productive for you.
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And I remember looking at these Dungeons and Dragons books and these
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Dungeons and Dragons figurines and saying, well, someone's getting paid.
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Because someone is publishing these books, someone is selling these games,
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someone is creating these figurines.
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Why not me?
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And of course, as we all know, um, the gaming industry since
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then in the last couple of decades has taken off exponentially.
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It's now worth much, much more than any other sector of
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the entertainment industry.
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And, I ended up, , getting together with a group of people and putting
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together a TV show called The Quest, which is exactly about gamers and,
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putting people into a fantasy world.
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teamed up with the people who made Lord of the Rings and that sort of thing.
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Now, how did I become a professional writer?
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I ended up writing a couple of bestsellers.
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How did I end up becoming a professional horse trainer?
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I travel all over the world doing that.
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Now, how did I end up?
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producing media, including this gaming stuff?
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Well, I simply did it because I felt I didn't really have any other choice.
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I was so compelled by these interests that I had, these passions, if you
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like, that I had that I couldn't really.
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Think about doing much else.
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But in order to establish myself, while I was trying to figure out
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the professional tracks of this, I did every Jo job under the sun.
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You know, I have done every construction site.
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I have been a window cleaner.
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I have been an industrial cleaner.
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I have clean toilets, I have shoveled snow.
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I have, I have, I have, I have every menial job you can think of.
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And I did this for some years.
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And so what is true is that when you want to live free and ride free, , the
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early years of this can be, quite uncertain and not everybody can deal
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with that uncertainty and that anxiety.
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Without mentorship, I didn't really have much mentorship, but I, what I
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did have was a family where there was somewhat of a tradition of freelancers.
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And, so it wasn't completely outside the box, even though my parents were
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skeptical about the horse side of things.
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And certainly ske skeptical about the gaming and heavy metal side of things.
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By the way, I do have a heavy metal band and hopefully we will be
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producing an album for next year, which I'll turn you guys onto.
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but the writing, at the very least, they, they, they could see that that could
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work if one really put one's mind to it.
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So I didn't have much mentorship.
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I had a bit of a precedent to follow.
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What do you do if you're coming out of a situation where everyone is giving you
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negative feedback, but there's this little niggling part of you that says, yeah, but
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I kind of want to live free, ride free.
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How do I do that?
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So that's really the point of this podcast.
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We are gonna talk to mentors.
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We are gonna talk to really interesting people who've done it, who've made it,
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who've bootstrapped it, who've come up from wherever they've come up from, and
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have done extraordinary things that people said they sort of couldn't do.
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In this first season, I've got the amazing Sir Tim.
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Who is the head of the Eden Project in England?
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Absolutely amazing man who was actually a musician and then a music producer.
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and then sort of fell outta the industry and ended up in Cornwall
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with his family, wondering a bit what to do, and discovered these gardens
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behind a wall and turned them into the lost gardens of Halligan, which is.
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I think it's the third or fourth.
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, most visited tourist attraction in the uk and then he started the Eden Project,
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which is rainforests under roofs, a massively successful
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billion dollar project.
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and he's now doing these, environmental education Eden Centers.
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Internationally, all over the world.
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Absolutely incredible, man.
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How did he achieve it?
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How did he go from wondering what to do with his family in Cornwall to that?
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Well, he's gonna tell us, , what did he say with all the naysayers?
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Well, he's gonna tell us how did he find the money?
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He's gonna tell us how did he find the drive and the energy and
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the, and the mastermind community that he had to pull together.
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And where did he find mentorship?
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He's gonna tell us.
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We've also got the amazing Tony Lyons, a guy you've never heard of,
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but you might have seen his books.
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he is a publisher in New York and he has Skyhorse Publishing and he's one of
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these guys who will publish all the stuff that other people just will not publish.
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, all the super controversial stuff, all the stuff that can really,
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sometimes get you in trouble.
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I stayed at his house once and picked up the fact that the FBI were actually
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monitoring, , the internet there.
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Very, very brave man.
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Very, very cool man.
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Has made.
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An absolute success of this, bringing, if you like, truth to the masses.
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How did he go from a guy in New York working on Alaskan fishing boats, trying
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to make some money to running this incredible publishing house that does
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the cutting edge, or the conspiracy theory stuff, but really looking at
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where the truths of it are and where the smoke and mirrors of it are.
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all of the, really interesting stuff, that, some of us maybe don't want to look.
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But are always fascinated by even down to things like coloring books
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and anything, anything that will work.
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How did he do it?
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How, how do you become that sort of an entrepreneur?
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Well, he's gonna tell us, I've got the incredible Warwick Shiller.
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Warwick Schill is a horse trainer, but he's much more than that.
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He runs an incredibly successful podcast and online, video library, that has
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made him so independent that he's now on a mission to explore another of his
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passions, which is shamanic healing, and self transformation around in these
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different places around the world, the rainforests, the deserts, and so on.
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He lives this incredible life.
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He started, , just with horses in a round pen.
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, in fact, before that in our sheep farm in, in Australia.
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How did he get from there to here?
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How does anybody get from there to here?
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It's a process and it's a process of dreaming first small dreams that
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become bigger and bigger and bigger.
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And one bridge, one dream bridges to another.
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and he now mentors people, Warwick in how to do this.
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Jane Pike, the incredible Jane Pike from New.
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another horse, woman, but who has moved into the realm of,
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understanding the nervous system and its effect on the brain.
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and has taken that type of, neuroscience out to the masses, in a way that
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is really quite unprecedented.
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, how did she do that?
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She was sitting, in a, on a farm in New Zealand, wondering
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what to do during covid, during lockdown, , with her children.
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And, but she'd always had this interest.
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She starts writing about it on the internet.
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And then from there she begins to podcast and she begins to, broadcast stuff.
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And little by little it grows until it becomes this sort of engine.
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How did she do it?
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She's gonna tell us Megan Beasley, Dr.
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Megan Beasley Anthrop.
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Gone Rogue who worked with the Bushman of the Kalahari, the COIs son, people known
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for their healing hunter gatherers, has helped them, get their land back after
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mass evictions and, and illegal, all sorts of horrible, illegal stuff out there.
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She started as an academic, , went and lived with these people and then.
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Has parlayed that over 30 years into, one of the most, successful, sort of
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community benefit organizations called the Kalahari Peoples Fund, that it currently
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exists, between Africa and the usa.
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Very, very humble lady, but she, she took a dream.
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Of these people that she sort of fell in love with and has turned it into a success
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for herself and for them that has actually sort of gotten them their land back.
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And how did she do it?
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How did she get from there to here, and what steps can you take?
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So.
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What I don't want to do is denigrate the idea of getting a job for security.
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There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
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When I was, piecing it together myself to become a writer or a horse
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trainer or, producing other types of media, the jobs that I did gave me the
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money to build what I wanted to build.
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and then I would risk.
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certain amounts of money to go off and do expeditions, which I would then try and
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sell to magazines and newspapers and that.
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So sometimes I was successful and sometimes I was not.
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but the, the overall, momentum eventually.
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Took over after a certain number of years.
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So there's nothing wrong with saying, well, you know, I want to, have a
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job so that at the weekends or in holidays I can pursue my interests.
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That's perfectly good.
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What is tricky is if one says, I'm gonna work for 30 years and only when I retire.
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Am I then going to allow myself, to follow my passions and my interests?
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The problem with that is it kills the soul as we know, and
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we don't have to put it off.
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You might die tomorrow.
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You don't have to wait for that.
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You can, we can all live free, ride free.
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Now.
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Some people also say, ah, it's too late for me.
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You know, I'm in my fifties, I'm in my sixties, whatever.
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Well, I'm in my fifties.
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it's never too late.
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It's never, never too late.
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If you are breath.
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It's not too late.
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And, some of the people which we're gonna be interviewing here were late starters.
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people only really got going in their forties, fifties, and sixties after,
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if not drifting for some decades.
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Certainly not really finding fulfillment.
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a really good, , example, I think of somebody who, did what you might
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call a Joe job or a job that he didn't find at any, at any rate, fulfill.
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But ended up parlay that into massive success, was the author Charles Bukovsky.
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, some of you may know him.
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Very controversial writer from the sixties and seventies, but real
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genius, well, he worked in the postal service for decades and decades,
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, before his writing ever got going.
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And he course he used that and he used the frustration of that to some
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degree, , in his writing, , and created some very powerful, very funny things.
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But now he's a household.
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So it's not that you have to completely buck the system.
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It's not that you have to not have a job.
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It's not that you have to, , not put some sec, you know, emphasis
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on security and that sort of thing.
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But what you don't want to do is say, well, I can't follow the dreams.
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I can put off fulfillment because I haven't got the time, I haven't
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got the wherewithal clearly.
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There is a way to bridge from one to the other, and that's what the people here on
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Livery Ride Free are going to teach us.
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Alright, so how are we gonna do it?
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Well, we're going to do it in two stages.
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So each person's gonna come on and we're gonna interview them and have their story.
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How did they get there from here?
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But then we're gonna have them back.
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And you guys, you, the listeners can ask.
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Your questions.
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Some of that's gonna be live, and some of that's going to be you emailing
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them in and we will have them answer your questions so that we can get
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mentorship going so that those of us who want to benefit from the wisdom of
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a Tim Smith, a Warwick Schiller, a Tony Lyons, a Jane Pike, a Meghan Beasley,
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we can actually tap into them directly.
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So it's gonna be a two staged, process inspired.
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Leads to inspired action leads to an inspired life.
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Thoughts become habits.
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Habits become destiny.
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Thoughts become things.
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So we want to think good thoughts.
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So join us on the Adventure to Live free.
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Ride free.
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Look us up on, my websites too, ntls.co, which is our neuroscience,
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and, autism, work that we do.
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And long ride home.com, which is our shamanism, personal
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development and horse training,
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Rupert Isaacson: Also, check out our other podcast, equine Assisted World, which
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looks into this fascinating universe of how people use horses to heal.
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Basically, whether it's physical, neuropsychiatric, emotional, you
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name it, there's this incredible world out there that's developing all
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the time and we are looking at it.
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So give it a shot.
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Thank you for joining us.
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We hope you enjoyed today's podcast.
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Join our website, new trails learning.com, to check out our online
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courses and live workshops in Horse Boy Method, movement Method, and Athena.
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These evidence-based programs have helped children, veterans, and people
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dealing with trauma around the world.
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We also offer a horse training program and self-care program
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for riders on long ride home.com.
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These include easy to do online courses and tutorials that
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bring you and your horse joy.
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For an overview of all shows and programs, go to rupert isaacson.com.
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See you on the next show.
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And please remember to press, subscribe and share.