Latest / Whereabouts Tales | Stories of Belonging and Immigrant Experiences / 8 Months to the Middle East: T.E. Lawrence's Path Revisited #0050

Transcript

8 Months to the Middle East: T.E. Lawrence's Path Revisited #0050 · Whereabouts Tales | Stories of Belonging and Immigrant Experiences

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  Hello everyone, I hope you had a great week so far.
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  Welcome back to Whereabouts Stills.
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  Today I've got an absolutely incredible story for you.
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  It's actually the second part of a story that we started a few
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  weeks ago with Wells Jones, the Adventurer, the guy who
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  skydiving Antarctica, the guy who went from military to
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  acting, decided now to embark on a 29 day expedition across the
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  Middle East tracing TE Lawrence's pet through Saudi
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  Arabia, Jordan and Israel. This wasn't just any trip.
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  Wells shares the unbelievable 8 months of preparation from
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  kidnapping, ransom training with the former SAS Major, packing a
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  satellite phone the size of a weapon and using paper thin
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  solar panels. In 2005, we dive into the raw
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  reality of navigating post 911 conflict zones, unexpected human
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  connections, and how this wild adventure inspired his
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  captivating historical fiction book, Aligning the Sand.
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  Get ready to be inspired and amazed by, Well, Spirit and his
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  truly unique perspective on the world.
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  I'm Paul and this is where I was stills Enjoy.
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  There's so many things that happened prior to that, but
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  that's that's that's important because in order to get out the
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  door, it was 8 months. It wasn't like flying to London
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  or flying to Munich anywhere. It was what?
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  Does it mean preparation itself? What does it mean the eight
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  months? The eight months is well of
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  course, 8 months is a period of time from the from the
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  conception of the idea that we were going to go to the Middle
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  East. We were going to follow TE
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  Lawrence's path from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the Kingdom of
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  Saudi Arabia along the Hijaz, which is along the Red Sea, and,
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  and follow the path and the different events that took place
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  during the First World War with the Arab revolt, the Arabs and
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  the British fighting against the Turks and the French to to
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  overthrow the Ottoman Empire. And of course there's an
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  incredible war going on. This is the sideshow.
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  The real show was France and Germany and France just getting
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  beaten up horribly by the Germans.
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  Do you know? And so that's, that's it was
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  that. And then each day we realized we
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  want to be physically fit and we wanted to take a backpack.
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  We had basic ideas, but the the actual understanding of we
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  really are going into a conflict area.
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  Americans were not going into Saudi Arabia in 2005, 2006.
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  It's just was not happening because the, the the fallout
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  from 911 was very rich in the air.
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  There was a war going on, you know, retaliation and in
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  different parts of the Middle East.
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  And so there was like peeling back an onion.
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  There was a layer. And then when we got to another
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  layer and the layers included, what are we going to wear?
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  What kind of equipment are we going to take?
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  Do we need to learn anything new?
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  Well, we certainly did by the time we realized and our wives
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  were saying get your will together.
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  It's like what you you want the will.
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  You want the money, you want the money.
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  You know, you know, yes, we were adults but had never thought
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  really, you know, and it's that way.
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  Maybe it's more prevalent today that people have wills early on,
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  but that was important. And then discovering, well,
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  excuse me, if we have to have a, if we have to have a will, then
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  it might be a good idea to have insurance.
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  And what kind of insurance would we need?
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  What, what is that all about? And so we, what we thought,
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  well, we realized we're going to need an international insurance
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  carrier. And we said we were told check
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  out Ackerman because they deal with big businesses and they
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  deal with, you know, security protocols and we're going
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  security protocols. We don't need that.
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  Yes, we did. We certainly did.
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  So it was under appreciation, it did best, everything was
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  undermined like you thought, OK, it cannot be so complicated.
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  But the thing which is which is on my mind since you start
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  telling the story. So we talk.
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  We talk about the time when time and the situation when you
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  didn't have booking.com, Airbnb, I don't know, telephone roaming
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  for telephone. How was this planning?
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  What was your safety scenario? Like you said, OK, well you had
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  insurance, you had your wheels done, which I can't understand.
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  But what was the fall back scenario?
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  Or there was no fall back? Well, to get the insurance, we
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  were advised that they would not give us insurance unless we were
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  trained for conflict and risk assessment management and they
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  recommended they had a partner at their firm.
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  That his name is Jamie Luther Pinkerton.
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  He was a partner at the time he had been appointed by the Queen
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  of England to the care of Prince Harry and Prince William.
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  He was a private secretary and he had honors.
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  He was in SAS major retired Irish Guard and his he had
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  specialties, but a lot of it was checkpoints.
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  It was kidnap and ransom. Now when you go through special
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  forces training, this is all. I just had a conversation the
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  other day with a Green Beret retired and he said what we we
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  did that it was like nothing. But as a civilian, when you
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  really are dealing with the concept of kidnap and ransom, it
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  starts bringing in the reality and the complexity of what
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  you're doing. And when you sit there and you
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  are instructed on how to behave as an actor, in my mind, it's
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  like being an actor. I'm always playing the part
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  before the part is on the stage or in front of the film cameras.
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  And so in the same with Jamie, I'm envisioning myself, you
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  know, on the floor in the corner and behaving the way Jamie
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  instructed us to behave and being aware of the 123 of
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  situational awareness constantly.
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  And so having that go through our mind and then realizing,
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  well, how are we really going to get around?
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  How are we going to do this? We can't actually do it on
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  camels. We don't have that time or the
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  back to deal with it. And so and what do we need to do
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  to get in shape? Well, we weren't, we're going
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  to, we're going to take one knapsack each, a rock each, we
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  decide. And what is it going to be?
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  And this is 2005, 2006. And so it's figuring out
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  communications. You said, you know, we're
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  dealing with Motorola razors, flip tops, you know, back then.
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  Very cool. 11 exactly. But for that time, very cool
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  stuff. When you had the razor, that was
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  the deal. Yeah, I mean, it was thin.
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  You could put it inside your jacket.
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  No one would know you had any. And, you know, it was just.
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  And then when they came out with headphones, I mean, you go to
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  men's room and you heard guys standing, you know, doing their
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  business, talking, you know, what's going on in the guys And
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  he's on his head, right? And he's on headphones.
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  So all this stuff was new. And so we ended up getting a SAT
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  phone, a satellite phone that was dedicated to us so that we
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  always had that. And, you know, it's like the
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  early phones in cars. I mean, it was like a piece of
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  machinery. It was.
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  It was like it was. It was a four and a weapon, a
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  four and a weapon. It was, it was, you know, a lot.
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  And then because we wouldn't have cell service and then we
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  realized we'll just get, you know, there.
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  What do they call it the disposable phones?
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  But we, we would first, the first time we ran up a bill, I
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  ran up, I mean, it was an $1100 bill using my phone going to the
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  Middle East. Yeah.
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  And we figured that one out. Yeah, We're, we're at business
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  and we had raised money. We paid for it.
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  But still, it's like, that's a waste.
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  How do you bring that down? And so we wanted to be able to
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  deliver dispatches wherever we were every day.
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  A comment of an observation. And Miles did his and I did mine
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  and then we we needed a way to upload it in the desert.
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  And so we found out, we found the equipment to do this.
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  Let me just bounce back to the kidnap and ransom.
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  What's the fall back? A freaking lot of insurance.
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  No, the, the no, it's very simple insurance line.
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  It was a very big bill. So it does that.
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  That that was the only thing that made the phone bill look
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  small. It Oh yes, yes and how how would
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  we notify or how would we would let the world know that we were
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  in mortal danger? Well, in 2005 they released the
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  406 megahertz communications. It, it was available to to
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  nautical people, but not to civilians and, and to the, to
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  the military. There was, there were it was
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  still high level. Well, we got a personal locator
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  beacon and I've kept this because I've shown it.
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  This is what we got in 2005. It's an ACR personal locator
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  beacon that you flip out, it has an antenna.
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  You open it up and you double hit and it sends a signal to
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  satellites overhead and back then the satellites would would
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  circle around, you know the Earth or however it works
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  periodically. And so you would tie in to
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  satellites that were tied into different countries, but this
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  frequency through this company would relay this message, which
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  is a mortal danger message. They would trip its way back to
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  the United States. It would go to one person would
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  be alerted, and they were able to cut through all the calls to
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  reach this one person because it was an emergency and it was.
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  And this does not get tricked unless it's serious.
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  Understood. So basically that was the fall
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  back then. The fall back was that and then
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  in the and in the plan, in the the instructions they could send
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  out a group let's say that would come after us.
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  To assist. Private.
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  And how did you make your daily daily notes?
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  Was it local there or it was also sent?
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  We we'd bought the brand new back then was the Panasonic
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  tough book and they never. Heard.
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  The tough book was like a little mini suitcase, and it was the
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  military. Technology.
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  State-of-the-art, it was just, it was a mini suitcase and you
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  open that thing up, you could drop this 10 feet in the air,
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  drop it into the sand and you're good.
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  It was OK. And I said, we said, that's
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  great, but how do we charge it? So we found the latest solar
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  panel, which was literally like a piece of paper, four pieces of
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  paper folded out and you could roll it and it had the ability,
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  it was solar powered and the connections to give you the
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  juice you needed for the laptop and for phones.
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  Oh man. Oh like so first of all, I just
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  googled the Panasonic topic and I didn't even know that this
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  exists. Amazing.
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  It was phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal.
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  So we could do, you know, Internet and all this stuff is
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  fair. Still fairly new.
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  You know, all they say, OK, now we're in the desert.
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  We're just talked about, you know, watching, you know,
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  camels, riding camels. We rode through here to here.
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  We did A50 clicks, blah, blah, blah.
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  The temperature, 115°, you know, the sun and tents, no shade, you
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  know, getting bought, all the things that we experienced.
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  But how do we upload it? There's no Wi-Fi.
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  Wi-Fi is like, that's in the future.
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  Yeah. And so we go ahead.
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  Like you had but it was just so less and so it's it does not.
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  It does not spread in like in, especially in those in those
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  areas and especially in a conflict area.
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  Oh, and and and and in the like Saudi Arabia exactly.
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  We found, you know, so we found a satellite network and that was
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  called began. You could look that up as well,
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  Paul. Began BEGAN is the acronym for
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  Broadband Global Access Network. They don't make anything like
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  that. I mean, we have GPS, we have so
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  many different things. It's broadband global area
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  network. Wow.
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  And I'm passionate about Internet and I, I wasn't I, I,
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  I, I'm an IT guy in my base. I never heard about this.
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  You you put a different word for me.
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  This is this is primitive. This is 20 years ago.
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  And so we had a began. Now, when you look at that, it
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  looks like it's a laptop, it's cream colored and you open it up
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  and there's nothing inside that scared people.
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  Oh, that became an issue at the border crossing into Israel.
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  The, the, the associate there said opened it up.
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  So what is this? What is this?
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  They said it's broadband global access network.
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  It's a connection to the Internet through satellite and
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  it's just she's just like she's putting together Who are you?
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  Because these were all new showing when I showed this.
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  So what is this? It says 406 megahertz.
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  What I said it's. So you raise, you raise, you
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  raise, you raise exclamation mark after exclamation mark at
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  every border cross, every checkpoint cross.
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  Everything absolutely, Oh my God, the equipment.
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  But you see, this is still was all part of I'm in the planning
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  stage and I haven't been in the journey yet.
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  Accepting a little anecdote there it was figuring out what
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  it is we need. Can we carry all this in your
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  pack? In my pack.
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  And so it's, you know, what kind of of sleeping bag do we want to
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  have? How big is it going to be when
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  it really is condensed? Well, it was like a mini soccer
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  ball, a mini football, soccer, football.
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  And let's see, the other thing that I had was a watch.
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  Sunto had just come out with a watch called X9 I, you can look
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  that up. And it was back in 2005 and the
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  company was just, I mean, now they do watches and they have
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  GPSS. But this watch, I could be
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  anywhere in the world and triangulate to see where I am
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  and it would it would connect with satellites.
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  Crazy. So I, I, I, I could say the
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  first, the first smart boat, right?
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  It's very close. Yeah, exactly.
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  It wasn't. We weren't able to type anything
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  in, but we can get our right, we can get our location and we
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  would find out what's going on over our head.
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  Now the interesting thing is, and I, I talked with some, some
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  people here that were, what would you call them?
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  Well, people that do maps and, and cartographs there, it's
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  cardiographers, right? And, and, but they were also
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  doing a course on GPS, how to work with different GPS systems.
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  And it was, it was in the early stages.
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  So it's probably in like 2010. And I said this watch that I had
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  on, I can triangulate with, with satellites and find out where I
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  am and so forth. And I said in the desert, it
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  would take like 90 seconds for it to to, to operate, to connect
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  with whatever satellites are going overhead, right when I was
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  in Amman, Jordan on the Acropolis.
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  I, I, I, sorry, I'm, I'm interrupting you for a second.
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  I'm just found a model of X99-I which is absolutely impressive.
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  Absolutely impressive. Yep, that's the whole kit.
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  Crazy. It's it was like that.
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  The price, the new price was at least €600.
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  As far as I see on this box. There's something I just found
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  it's it's for sale. Is that right?
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  Because that's exactly what I had, right?
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  There. That's still €258, man.
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  Yeah. This is crazy.
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  When you are wearing that watch, you've got a satellite phone,
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  you've got the tough book, you've got a personal locator
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  beacon that you can just go just throw it and you know, the
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  troops come in and ultralight sleeping bag.
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  I mean you're and it's just you feel there's a level of
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  protection, but you it was such a different kind of feeling
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  because people didn't have that then.
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  Do you know? Absolutely.
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  So we felt empowered is my. Exactly.
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  Empowered, then it makes us. It made you somehow independent
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  because you didn't have the stress of you didn't have the
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  stress. I have to rely on someone to
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  send my location. I have to rely on someone for
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  the next, I don't know, six weeks or five weeks or so on.
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  I can do that every day. That's amazing.
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  That's just amazing, I have to say.
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  So we had these things and then we had Jamie and we told Jamie
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  we're not going to register with the embassies, with the
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  governments. We really want to go under the
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  wire. These are the pieces that we've
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  identified. He was impressed with that.
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  He was not impressed that we weren't going to register the
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  embassies. He said the best thing for you
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  to do is to fly into each country.
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  It's the easiest way to get through immigration.
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  And we said other than the first one flying, no, we want to cross
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  the borders on foot or close to it.
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  I mean, it might be a car, but we don't know the person.
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  It's we are doing it to see what it's like for the people, the
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  local people or people going from one country to the other,
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  from Saudi into Jordan. And there was no one going from
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  Saudi into Jordan. Honestly, honestly, I think I
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  think it's the same today that it's.
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  You know, and, and the crossing at Hakl, we were, we were in, we
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  were directed, the guy couldn't speak English to unload our
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  backpack on old part. It's like they're like parachute
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  tables, like a 30 foot long table that's about 30 inches
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  wide. And he said, you know, and with
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  the, with the point of his gun, he's saying take out, out, out.
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  And we everything had to be set out so they could see what it
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  was. And if they're picking things up
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  and just going, you know, and trying to explain as best we
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  can. And then most people thought we
• 23:09
  were consultants. Most people thought we were
• 23:12
  Blackwater, Triple Canopy, Centurion hired hands, hired,
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  you know, security, ex special forces hired security and we
• 23:24
  said La La entertainment, entertainment.
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  La La La La la oh. I don't know if they understood
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  or not, but we got through and the Jamie's instructions, having
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  the insurance, having, you know, it's having the map, knowing
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  we're in Jeddah. We've got to get the Yambo.
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  We got to get the wager. We've got to get to Aqaba.
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  And from, you know, Aqaba, we want to see the Fort where
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  Lawrence and and the arrows. The first win in that war was
• 24:08
  take the taking of the Fort in Aqaba, which is at the the head
• 24:12
  of the the Gulf of Aqaba. It's the head of the Red Sea.
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  And then you go into the Gulf of Aqaba and it runs along still
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  along the Jazz, along the Saudi border into Jordan and AKA Bazit
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  Hackles just a few clicks down South, which is the crossing.
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  And the crossing was not in a city.
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  It was in a shed. It was.
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  It was more than a shed, but the outside had the 10 roofs that
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  were not nailed down. The wind was just clad and they
• 24:51
  were just slamming over your head.
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  And you're looking at the Red Sea just down the hill right
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  there. And there's sparrows flying
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  around and there's nothing. There's a road that leads to it.
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  There's an arm, a gate, you know, you, you come in and there
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  was a guy with his shirt half out of his, his trousers.
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  He wasn't, it wasn't, you know, a formal crossing, but it was a
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  crossing. And inside there was a an
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  officer that stamped our passports.
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  But besides the besides the crossing, you had a lot of
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  checkpoints. Right.
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  Correct. Yes. 39 What are the military
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  checkpoints? All of them are military
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  checkpoints. And if they're not a military
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  checkpoint, you got to get out of there.
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  That was Jamie's instructions pulling up, correct?
• 25:52
  It's something else. If you're pulling up to
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  obviously a checkpoint, there's usually a hot door, there's a
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  truck or there's there's usually a a structure and the
• 26:03
  individuals are not in a uniform of some sort and they're holding
• 26:09
  assault rifles. Run.
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  Back up and so you approach each one gently and each one is
• 26:19
  different. What stands out from the from
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  the checkpoints that what was there one that that generally
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  scared you? There was one where I was more
• 26:30
  intense. But you said what stands out,
• 26:33
  what stood out the most and in this journey was when people saw
• 26:41
  an American passport. This is my new passport.
• 26:47
  But when you hand over this blue passport, United States of
• 26:52
  America, they are like almost like careful with it.
• 26:58
  Oh, a Medici, yes. Why you here see with our own
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  eyes and they literally say you're welcome.
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  This is Saudi and we're first with our you're welcome.
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  They're saying, oh, you're welcome.
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  The tone on it was we didn't know if it was because we said
• 27:27
  thank you, neat said you're welcome or or welcome into the
• 27:30
  country or what it was. And right up to His Royal
• 27:36
  Highness Prince Khalid. It was a surprise that Americans
• 27:42
  were there 2006 spring because the relationships between the
• 27:48
  United States and and Saudi and the Middle East was we were at
• 27:53
  war and suddenly there's two civilians coming through.
• 27:59
  And hand on heart, I am so sorry about the 9/11.
• 28:08
  Wah. To a person, I am so sorry.
• 28:15
  We are not Altaris. And that line was said by His
• 28:19
  Royal Highness Prince Khalid bin Faisal after we had sat for an
• 28:23
  hour in his modulus with all these shakes from the desert,
• 28:27
  camel owners, the eyes of the desert, and they're relaying to
• 28:33
  their Prince. And he's the Prince of the
• 28:36
  province of of the Lassir, which is the lowest.
• 28:40
  It's like a state, the province. And leaving that we were invited
• 28:48
  in to do this, to sit there. And it was through, you know,
• 28:53
  and the go through our handler, not our handler, but someone
• 28:57
  that we had met that said, Oh, we, I'd like you to to come.
• 29:02
  We'll let him know and see if he will allow you to sit in.
• 29:05
  We didn't understand a word because it's all in Arabic.
• 29:10
  And but we did look across the from us and saw all these men
• 29:17
  that look like they were from central casting for a biblical
• 29:22
  movie. They were in camel's hair and
• 29:26
  they had beards and they had, you know, hats and Staffs and,
• 29:33
  and big wide belts around big girths.
• 29:37
  And they sat with sandals in their feet square on the ground.
• 29:41
  And, and they were, you know, red henna colored beards.
• 29:46
  They all looked like there's out of the Bible, like Moses and
• 29:49
  like, you know, and and they were legit and they're
• 29:55
  considered the wealthy Bedouins are the camel owners.
• 30:00
  And they were having audience that they do once a month with
• 30:04
  his His Royal Highness afterwards.
• 30:06
  And it's it's at night afterwards and we step out and
• 30:10
  it's misty and it's dark and we see that the the Prince is
• 30:15
  coming our way. He's on his way to his his
• 30:18
  quarters, to his palace, and he stops and he says hello to us.
• 30:27
  You're it isn't good to see you. Please join me for dinner.
• 30:32
  You will see that we are not all terrorists.
• 30:37
  And we're like, our mouths open like.
• 30:40
  Did you have the feeling somehow that they were trying to excuse
• 30:43
  themselves? No with excuse, they were.
• 30:48
  There was contrition. It was 9/11.
• 30:55
  It nothing like that had ever been done to the United States
• 31:01
  on our territory. Now our people from Ukraine and
• 31:05
  people from Germany, from France, from, I mean, they've
• 31:09
  been bombed, London bombed. We've never experienced anything
• 31:14
  like that. And somehow it was, I mean, it
• 31:17
  was unbelievable. And because there were so many
• 31:22
  terrorists that were actually Saudi, everybody took felt, you
• 31:29
  know, and, and the perception was that America hates Saudi,
• 31:34
  Saudi Arabia. And so that was very big as a
• 31:39
  surprise in terms of a checkpoint, in terms of danger
• 31:43
  or sensing the extremity of the situation was actually in
• 31:50
  Jordan, which is, as Jamie said, Jamie categorized each place,
• 31:57
  state, each country that we were going to.
• 32:00
  Just a generalization. If you get kidnapped in Saudi
• 32:04
  Arabia that I'm not talking about royal family, I'm not
• 32:09
  talking politics. I'm talking if you get
• 32:12
  kidnapped, it is politics, but it's not from necessarily the
• 32:16
  royal family. It's terrorists.
• 32:21
  You, you will not be really, you will not get out.
• 32:26
  That's their practice, the practice, the mindset.
• 32:31
  And he again, he said. I'm not talking about the
• 32:33
  government, talking about the peripheral people.
• 32:38
  Jordan, you'll love it. Make sure you go to here, go to
• 32:41
  Patrick on here, go to this place.
• 32:43
  And there's a wonderful coffee shop, you know, Amman, you must
• 32:47
  go to, you know, because it's loaded with journalists and it's
• 32:51
  where everybody goes. And it's it's very
• 32:53
  international. And and he said, you know, and
• 32:58
  Syria, it's getting it's it's becoming difficult.
• 33:02
  And, and indeed it was we just got our visas.
• 33:06
  To get our visas was as intense as doing any of this, this
• 33:10
  research or we did a lot of research reading more about
• 33:14
  Lawrence and about the area, but it was the crossing going to the
• 33:26
  Dead Sea from Amman. We had a driver that was from an
• 33:32
  organization that we actually identified in our fundraising
• 33:36
  that we're going to give money to this foundation.
• 33:39
  The foundation is out of New York City and it's called Seeds
• 33:43
  of Peace and it's where high school thought leaders, you
• 33:47
  know, people 161718 years old, Israeli and Palestinian get
• 33:53
  together for the summer in Maine, United States.
• 33:58
  It's been going since 1993. In our book, we call it the book
• 34:03
  I I should say the book is called A line in the sand is by
• 34:07
  Miles Spencer and Wells Jones. In our book we call that
• 34:11
  organization and the characters that that that come from it say
• 34:16
  that they were from seeds of hope.
• 34:19
  We didn't put Seeds of Peace in the book, but it's based on
• 34:22
  Seeds of Peace in the book. It's Seeds of Hope and I.
• 34:26
  Will link the book. I will link the book below only
• 34:29
  the forever and to. Know oh sure.
• 34:31
  And I, I, I hope you'll link seeds of Peace as well seeds
• 34:35
  ofpeace.org, because that's very those were the big lessons was
• 34:41
  what we heard from from these people.
• 34:43
  So we met the woman that was in charge of Seeds of peace.
• 34:47
  Her husband, who created it, had passed on.
• 34:50
  And Janet, when she heard that we were going to follow TE
• 34:54
  Lawrence's path and go to the Middle East, she just was lit.
• 34:58
  And I and we said we're raising money.
• 35:00
  We want to donate some money to you.
• 35:03
  And she said, would you like to meet some of the seats of peace
• 35:07
  campers? They're a little older now, but
• 35:10
  we have a group in, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
• 35:14
  We have a group in Amman. We have a group in in Israel and
• 35:19
  she said you can go by the offices and we'll we'll give
• 35:24
  advance notice to them that you're coming and you will have
• 35:26
  an opportunity to speak with the campers to hear it in their
• 35:30
  voice what they learned at the camp.
• 35:35
  And so that was wonderful she at when we were in Amman.
• 35:41
  I don't recall the woman, the people did specific people's
• 35:44
  names, but they they said you want to go to the Dead Sea.
• 35:48
  We said, yes, it's Easter, we want to go to the Dead Sea.
• 35:51
  And just they said, well, we have a driver that will drive
• 35:56
  you. Thank you.
• 35:58
  That's great. And so the driver, Mahmoud, took
• 36:02
  us and we came to the part, we left Amman and we came to the
• 36:05
  area where along the Dead Sea, the road runs North and South,
• 36:10
  just like the Dead Sea. And you have Amman on one side
• 36:15
  and you have Israel on the other side, and you can see one side
• 36:19
  to the other. And so we pull up to the
• 36:21
  checkpoint, A checkpoint that's on this road that giving us
• 36:25
  access to go South to get to where we wanted to go.
• 36:30
  A truck was in front of us. And we hear the usual passports,
• 36:35
  passports and passports and watching, you know, and what
• 36:39
  not. And they say American, yes, yes.
• 36:46
  And is it very good handbag, you can go.
• 36:49
  The truck pulls out there. There was in front of us.
• 36:53
  That's right. The sequence of events is that
• 36:56
  before we're asked for the passports, the truck pulls out.
• 36:59
  While we're being asked for the passport the truck makes its
• 37:02
  turn and it reveals a tank that has camouflage on it.
• 37:09
  The barrel was on the truck and now it's lowering on us as we're
• 37:13
  hearing passports. American yes and I'm saying did
• 37:17
  you did you see that to miles is in the back seat.
• 37:20
  He goes yes. The intensity of that was really
• 37:27
  amazing. I've never had I mean, I've I've
• 37:31
  seen all kinds of military things, but to that be on a road
• 37:37
  in a little car and to see a barrel.
• 37:40
  I mean we were half the size of that time.
• 37:42
  We just a little cock, no local guy and that barrel aiming right
• 37:47
  on us and stopping and even when it stops you see a kind of
• 37:51
  jiggle a little bit. Was that the moment when you
• 37:57
  thought, OK, this is the end? No, it's just I, I couldn't
• 38:02
  imagine there we would have to do something.
• 38:06
  But it was that it was a very powerful message.
• 38:15
  And Mahmoud pulled ahead and, you know, he handed me both
• 38:20
  passports and he pulled ahead and I thought what's wrong with
• 38:22
  him was just like, and we took the left in front of the tank.
• 38:34
  I said, Mahmoud, what's with the tank?
• 38:39
  And he just with his arm went VEM, he's pointing to Israel and
• 38:49
  said them Israel. And I said just don't say
• 38:53
  anything and looked at him. He was white with rage, wasn't
• 38:59
  he was just, it turns out he's Palestinian and he was working
• 39:07
  as a, it was like a volunteer. Maybe he picked up a little
• 39:10
  money driving people around for the Seeds of Peace group.
• 39:14
  And so feeling that that anger and really it was hatred.
• 39:24
  And that's, you know, jumping to 9 to October 7th or October 7th.
• 39:33
  Third. Yeah.
• 39:35
  And I was going to say the day we actually Miles and I talked
• 39:38
  2023 miles, and I got on the phone with you immediately.
• 39:46
  And it's like, what has this become?
• 39:50
  The anger has turned to hatred, and it's on a mass scale that
• 39:57
  people are doing things that are so heinous.
• 40:01
  I'm a producer of events. I've been a producer, I've had
• 40:05
  5000 people in the field. It's not a lot, but it's sung,
• 40:09
  you know, for a concert. The thought of all this and
• 40:14
  seeing all my people at the concert and the reasons they
• 40:19
  were there or do you imagine a couple 1000, It's just horrific.
• 40:29
  But what we say is why? What drives an individual?
• 40:37
  You know, when we fight in school or something, or someone
• 40:39
  shoves us, we shove them back or, you know, we hit them and
• 40:42
  we, we get him, we hit them back and it's over.
• 40:45
  You go, ah, you know, he's a, he's a jerk.
• 40:48
  You're a jerk now, are you OK? Right.
• 40:51
  But when it gets to that level and then the retaliation
• 40:56
  continues and and magnifies it, it it's removing a people.
• 41:05
  But it's it's what we see in the whole world.
• 41:07
  Well, it's not something that is happening only.
• 41:10
  There it It's not what we see. It's what we see everywhere.
• 41:13
  It's like we are, we are fighting against each other for
• 41:17
  the fights that we are not ours, that are not ours.
• 41:20
  So we are fighting against each other because I don't know why
• 41:22
  I'm, I'm blue and you're red or the other way around.
• 41:25
  I'm fighting against you because you are on the right, I'm on the
• 41:28
  left, it doesn't matter. But I'm fighting against each
• 41:30
  other. I think, I think in the history
• 41:33
  of humankind, that's at least my opinion.
• 41:36
  But maybe I'm, maybe I'm too subjective now because I leave
• 41:39
  this girl, I think there. I think there was not a period
• 41:42
  when neighbors were not talking to each other because they had
• 41:44
  different political views. Well, it's, it's families.
• 41:47
  Yeah, exactly. And I think the humanity is
• 41:50
  going, is going away because the problem is that we are we are
• 41:54
  fighting political fights which are not ours.
• 41:57
  We are raged against each other. I it's what's happening in the
• 42:01
  States is what's happening. I'm talking about my case in
• 42:04
  Romania. It's exactly the same.
• 42:06
  It's hate, which is broadcasting, broadcasting to
• 42:10
  all the social media. And this what's happening the
• 42:14
  there is one, one view of this, which I think it's critical to
• 42:18
  mention. Back then, when that was the
• 42:21
  case, the heat between Palestine and Israel was not, was not
• 42:27
  spreaded through social media, was only a local like the
• 42:31
  Mahmoud, the driver was hating them, but he was not.
• 42:35
  He was not writing something on on Twitter just because he felt
• 42:38
  like he I wanted I want everyone to die on the other side or I
• 42:42
  don't know, but the easiness with which we can hate each
• 42:45
  other online. It's becoming too too accessible
• 42:50
  to everyone. And this is exactly, exactly and
• 42:56
  do people. Know, do people know that at one
• 43:00
  point in time there was an agreement between the Zionists
• 43:04
  Heimweitzmann and Amir Faisal Hussein?
• 43:09
  Faisal Hussein, his brother is in that family.
• 43:12
  The Hussein family's been the king of of Jordan from the
• 43:16
  beginning and Faisal himself was the first king of Iraq.
• 43:22
  It is they made an agreement that that the Zionists could
• 43:32
  live in in in Israel, in this new this area.
• 43:38
  And Faisal in the end did put a codicil on it.
• 43:41
  And he said, I agreed to this as long as the British agreed to
• 43:46
  the promises to the Arabs that they'd made.
• 43:52
  Well, it was a time when Arab and Jew at the highest level
• 44:01
  were together in agreement. And then it just.
• 44:09
  What do you think? Now I want to go a bit on this
• 44:12
  rent because I think as a person who has been there and
• 44:18
  experienced the Middle East for a long on a long trip and see
• 44:24
  the what the what the local behaviours are.
• 44:27
  What do you think could be the solution today?
• 44:30
  Oh my goodness, I don't know. I don't have that.
• 44:33
  I don't have an opinion on that. One would think, you know, 2
• 44:38
  states stop fighting, but I don't, OK?
• 44:45
  I just don't. I don't.
• 44:46
  I'm not equipped for that, and quite frankly, no one is.
• 44:50
  Absolutely. I think like you said, I think
• 44:52
  the first solution is A2 state solution.
• 44:54
  If it's doable, I don't know and like you said, we are not.
• 44:58
  I was just curious, right? But.
• 45:02
  I don't jump in that way. I'll tell you why, because if I
• 45:05
  did, I would have gone to the Middle East with, you know, a
• 45:13
  different kind of intention. It's like to prove that I'm
• 45:16
  right about some opinion that I have.
• 45:19
  I didn't we didn't do that. We went to to an adventure to
• 45:24
  understanding, which meant what did that mean?
• 45:28
  Well, we don't want to stay in fancy hotels all the time.
• 45:31
  We don't fly jets from here to there.
• 45:33
  And because someone likes us, you know, just take, take, take.
• 45:37
  No, go in and and and have a a a don't have a view.
• 45:44
  Just be human. Breathe.
• 45:46
  Eat with people, listen, ask questions, observe their
• 45:51
  clothing. You know Abdul Leila?
• 45:54
  He's 1617 years old. Abdul.
• 45:56
  Lady, your dad ever get mad at you?
• 45:58
  Yeah. Did he ever hit you?
• 45:59
  No. Why would he hit me while he was
• 46:02
  mad at you? No, he's a he's a Saudi kid.
• 46:07
  I said, well, what'd you do? He said I set my grandmother's
• 46:11
  dining room table on fire. Abdul Leila and, and he was kind
• 46:18
  of loud, he says. I was playing with matches
• 46:20
  underneath the table and they're all in the other room.
• 46:22
  And it caught and, and things happened and it really made a
• 46:25
  mess. And I said, and your dad, did he
• 46:28
  yell at you? My dad would never yell at me,
• 46:32
  really. He didn't raise his voice.
• 46:34
  No. Well, how did you know he was
• 46:37
  mad? He said there's a vein over his
• 46:41
  right eye that comes out when he's upset.
• 46:47
  And he made me read the Quran every night for one hour for one
• 46:53
  month. I said, well, probably know more
• 46:58
  about the Quran, he said. He laughed.
• 47:00
  He says, yes, he said, but no, we don't fight.
• 47:04
  We people think we fight. No, no, we don't hate each
• 47:09
  other. Even in school, no one does
• 47:12
  that, you know, I said. What Wasn't that school I went
• 47:16
  to? The same for me.
• 47:21
  It's like I said my name with a southern accent in 4th grade and
• 47:25
  got, you know, it's brand new in the school.
• 47:27
  Got downstairs in the playground.
• 47:30
  Someone pushed me really hard into the dirt because I had a
• 47:34
  different accent. The The thing is that when
• 47:37
  you're new in school, you get bitten because you have a head
• 47:39
  and you get bitten because you don't have a head.
• 47:41
  So it's like Ted talking about going in.
• 47:47
  Have you had any kind of prejudice going in with the
• 47:50
  Middle East that was debunked? What while you were there?
• 47:55
  Well, no, I mean, we went to see with our own eyes and there was
• 47:59
  a reason for going. I mean, the headlines in the
• 48:02
  papers, any paper on the Middle East was just horrific.
• 48:06
  But I, I learned I by that time in age and experience, I've
• 48:15
  worked with so many different people in producing, I've worked
• 48:20
  with different cultures. I've done things events for
• 48:24
  different cultures from prayer groups, you know, African
• 48:27
  American prayer groups. My wife was, was doing event
• 48:30
  where we were the only light colored skinned person, you
• 48:35
  know, in the room. And it was a huge room and, and,
• 48:41
  and before being in the room, it's working with different
• 48:44
  people of different backgrounds and cultures and countries.
• 48:50
  And I love that. And so going to the Middle East
• 48:53
  was something that I didn't know I have.
• 48:56
  I had Jewish friends growing up, but I didn't know.
• 48:59
  I'd only knew what I read. And I knew that TE Lawrence was
• 49:05
  a British citizen, and he, through his experiences as a
• 49:11
  young man, ended up, you know, being a young protege at the at
• 49:16
  the museum, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England.
• 49:20
  And they sent him on a archaeological dig.
• 49:25
  And he learned the language over a period of three different
• 49:28
  seasons. He learned the language.
• 49:30
  He loved the people. He had felt like he had plays.
• 49:33
  And he didn't try to change people.
• 49:36
  And that resonated with me about TE Lawrence.
• 49:39
  I see he and I are alike. I don't want to change anyone.
• 49:43
  I want to know their best. And if I'm, if I'm in charge of
• 49:47
  an event and doing bringing these people in, I say to
• 49:50
  people, I want your ideal. What do you mean no one says
• 49:54
  that? Well, I want your your would you
• 49:57
  conceive you've heard what we want to do.
• 50:00
  Now take this and let's just blow this out of the water.
• 50:03
  If it's too much money, if it's too much this for it doesn't fit
• 50:07
  because something else over here.
• 50:08
  But let me hear your the best and you'll be influenced by, you
• 50:13
  know, the sound man by the lighting man, by the stage
• 50:16
  production, by the the sets. It's all influenced itself.
• 50:20
  But let's work on our highest level.
• 50:23
  And when I meet people, it's just I want to know who they
• 50:26
  are. And it's not because, hey, OK,
• 50:28
  tell me it's not with an American face.
• 50:31
  Hey, hey, man, how you doing? You know what's happening, dude.
• 50:36
  He's like, that's fine for certain things, but it's seeing
• 50:41
  people where they are. And Jamie gave us the greatest
• 50:46
  word to cover all of it. He said.
• 50:49
  The one thing that I have found in all my work, there's one word
• 50:55
  and one behavior that crosses all cultures.
• 51:01
  What's that? Graciousness gracious.
• 51:08
  You want to ask something, something of somebody, be
• 51:10
  gracious. You want to receive something?
• 51:13
  Be gracious. There's no talking.
• 51:16
  Just sit in grace and be alert. It's not.
• 51:21
  Universal Language. That's it.
• 51:24
  People say love and right, but he said gracious graciousness.
• 51:29
  And so how long I didn't have prejudices?
• 51:32
  That's that's. I mean, I'm sure I did.
• 51:34
  Maybe I did look when I first found out how you in order to
• 51:39
  use the bathroom facilities. And if there's no, it's like,
• 51:43
  where's, where's the tissue paper?
• 51:45
  Toilet paper? There's no toilet paper.
• 51:48
  There's a hose in water. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa,
• 51:50
  whoa, whoa. I didn't know that one.
• 51:52
  What is it just this one place? No, it's every place.
• 51:58
  And, and the customs are different.
• 52:00
  It's like, well, this is different.
• 52:02
  And you got to learn to, you know, there's a lot of things
• 52:05
  you need to learn. And I see that as just chalking
• 52:11
  one up. Wow, I love that.
• 52:13
  That's great. You know, that's different.
• 52:15
  Eating with your right hand as a man, not crossing your legs,
• 52:20
  sitting in a chair, simple as that.
• 52:23
  In Saudi Arabia, when you're amongst the the Bedouins and
• 52:26
  stuff, you know, it happened when we were at the Majlis.
• 52:31
  First of all, we're always, you know, when we can relax.
• 52:35
  We're so tired. We've been on the go and they're
• 52:37
  being focused so much on each other where we're going, making
• 52:41
  sure we don't go to the same door twice or the same door.
• 52:44
  I mean, just so many different things that became habit.
• 52:48
  But we were in the Modulus and it was so quiet and and Miles
• 52:54
  was sitting to my left and yet his legs crossed.
• 52:58
  And I thought, Miles, don't fall asleep.
• 53:00
  Don't, don't, don't. I saw his head go like this.
• 53:04
  And I thought, that's not good. And on my side was Osama.
• 53:09
  Osama's in our book. And Osama looked over at Miles,
• 53:15
  and he says to me, tell Miles to uncross his legs.
• 53:20
  I said what? Tell Miles uncross his legs.
• 53:27
  OK, Miles, Miles, uncross your legs.
• 53:33
  What, uncross your legs and you look across the other side with
• 53:38
  all these men. They're like 30 somewhere.
• 53:40
  They were all over. They're all staring at us
• 53:42
  because who are these these guys in Western clothing, you know,
• 53:48
  and they're similar to their legs spread apart, big thick
• 53:51
  leather sandals, you know, and they're like beards and just and
• 53:58
  they're like and Miles uncrossed his legs.
• 54:03
  And I'm saying later said Atomic that Oh no, no, no, man does not
• 54:08
  cross his leg. Women maybe, but you don't see
• 54:10
  that anyway, so. But don't do that.
• 54:14
  I was like, OK. I know the scene from the book.
• 54:17
  It was it was nice. It's nice to describe in the
• 54:20
  book as well. By the way, I can only I can
• 54:22
  only recommend the book. We didn't get there yet, but I
• 54:25
  can only recommend the book, the storytelling and it's
• 54:28
  impressive. It's really nice.
• 54:30
  I have to say it. Thank you.
• 54:31
  Thank you. How long in days was the trip?
• 54:35
  It was like 29 days. When the this intensive.
• 54:39
  It was a four month pardon. Intensive, right?
• 54:43
  It was 29 days of intensive. I've been asked what what was
• 54:47
  the hardest part about doing this?
• 54:49
  And it was in the end. By the time we were making our
• 54:52
  crossing into Israel, we were exhausted.
• 55:00
  We were really, really, you know, we stood on that bus for
• 55:05
  that amount of time and not knowing what's going on, holding
• 55:11
  on to our gear, the smells, the perspiration, the windows on the
• 55:18
  bus couldn't come down. We're going to go across the
• 55:20
  King Hussein Al and B Bridge. And it was exhausting.
• 55:29
  And I forgot your question. No, that, that was the question.
• 55:32
  How, how many days? And I wanted to, to, to follow
• 55:36
  up on that because you finished the trip, you got home.
• 55:40
  Was that the period of of silence like a like a hangover
• 55:44
  from the intensity? That's interesting.
• 55:50
  Well, I will say, and this is really may sound weird.
• 55:54
  It was another time that I actually got off the plane and
• 55:57
  kissed the ground our the United States ground.
• 56:02
  It was after doing the sea festival, which came later in
• 56:08
  Saudi Arabia and that was very, very intense.
• 56:12
  It was we were on to starting to write a book.
• 56:20
  We were there were so many things going on.
• 56:22
  It was wonderful to be home and it was very different.
• 56:25
  I was living, we were living in Golden, Co in the Rocky
• 56:29
  Mountains and it was just, it was great to be home, but I was
• 56:35
  on a whole different schedule, still getting up early, early in
• 56:38
  the morning and going to my office, which is a separate
• 56:41
  facility, the house and we were kind of on the hillside, a
• 56:44
  mountaintop. And I was able and just I was in
• 56:49
  communication with so many different people.
• 56:52
  And there was a continuation of the wrap up to the trip because
• 56:56
  we were also the reason for going was doing working with a
• 57:01
  Broadway producer, theatrical producer on a play back then.
• 57:06
  We called it a line in the sand and we had just picked up she
• 57:11
  she had negotiated for us, our executive producer at our
• 57:14
  approval, a a rider. And so we were just we jumped in
• 57:20
  on that and I it wasn't long. I was on a plane to London, you
• 57:24
  know, back and in Colorado, but then right out the door again,
• 57:30
  meeting. So there was this writer.
• 57:32
  There was no no break in between or after that.
• 57:35
  No, no. And then immediately, because we
• 57:39
  met Osama and Osama said that they they want to do, there are,
• 57:46
  there are some things that are up your alley and they're open
• 57:50
  to hearing your proposal, if you would give us a proposal on
• 57:53
  three different events that they wanted to do and what our idea
• 57:57
  was about it. And so we poured ourself into
• 58:01
  doing that and creating slideshow, PowerPoint slideshow
• 58:07
  to present. And then we were back in Saudi
• 58:10
  Arabia. We're back in Riyadh, we're back
• 58:12
  in Jeddah and presenting ideas. We went to Aramco, the
• 58:17
  headquarters there. We were looking for funding.
• 58:20
  Miles was dealing with Coca-Cola and Apple to get funding for
• 58:24
  this eight days sea festival that we were awarded.
• 58:28
  And we brought in 27 countries into Saudi Arabia.
• 58:32
  It was a big boom back then. It was a a big deal because
• 58:36
  Saudi did not hire Americans to do events.
• 58:42
  We were the first company and it was, it was fantastic and we had
• 58:48
  the skill set to do it. But so I was very busy with
• 58:54
  that. Children in school, two
• 58:56
  daughters in school, boys elsewhere.
• 58:59
  And it was just constantly on the go.
• 59:06
  And the whole thing about the putting the event together, we
• 59:10
  just immediately poured ourselves into that because it
• 59:14
  was, it was a very big deal because and it was from our
• 59:19
  journey and it was from it was for Prince Hala, the man that
• 59:23
  had us to dinner after his modulus.
• 59:26
  And they found out what our credentials were and our
• 59:29
  background was. And it's extensive on an
• 59:32
  international level. And they say, well, show us what
• 59:36
  you would do. And they went for it, you know.
• 59:39
  And so it was spending more time in Saudi and living there.
• 59:45
  But it was like Lawrence. It was like living in a tent.
• 59:48
  It was out in the desert, out in the southernmost part of a seer
• 59:53
  very close to the Yemen border. The is where we did this eight
• 59:58
  day, the Osir Osir 8 days sea festival and we brought in
• 1:00:04
  Formula 2000 boats and each one intercontinental race.
• 1:00:07
  So each one was representing a country and we brought in hot
• 1:00:12
  air balloons, each one was representing a country,
• 1:00:14
  different groups, balloons were from different countries.
• 1:00:17
  It was to show, to bridge a better understanding between the
• 1:00:22
  world and Saudi Arabia, and we were the the conduit.
• 1:00:27
  And for that to happen and many, many lessons learned there.
• 1:00:34
  So it didn't stop until it stopped until it was over.
• 1:00:42
  It was flying to Dubai all the time.
• 1:00:44
  And, and when I say that, you know, it's a 13 1/2 hour flight
• 1:00:50
  flying from JFK to Dubai. And it was exotic, it was
• 1:00:56
  wonderful. We were able to fly business
• 1:00:58
  class on Emirates. And it was just, oh, it was
• 1:01:02
  just, yeah, you know what I'm saying?
• 1:01:04
  One time they messed up my, they met, they messed up my, my
• 1:01:08
  business class ticket. And they said, Mr. Johns, we the
• 1:01:12
  gal said we simply don't have it in the system.
• 1:01:16
  She said, but I see something here, but we can put you in, in,
• 1:01:20
  in, in coach. And I said, well I paid for
• 1:01:26
  business and it was a lot of money.
• 1:01:28
  You know, our company paid for it.
• 1:01:30
  And she said I do see that, but we don't have a seat for you.
• 1:01:36
  I said that doesn't make sense. And she said I know it doesn't,
• 1:01:40
  but what I'm going to do is I am going to upgrade you.
• 1:01:45
  No, I was just waiting to hear to 1st class.
• 1:01:51
  No way. Flying first class on Emirates
• 1:01:56
  and I said what does that ticket cost?
• 1:01:58
  Well, she said today if you were trying to get it, it's 19,000
• 1:02:02
  Papa PP today. If you were trying to get this
• 1:02:07
  seat, that's what the chip fee is, $19,000 to fly.
• 1:02:13
  But what do they do? They basically say take off.
• 1:02:16
  You know, you can change your clothes, change into this.
• 1:02:19
  We want you to be comfortable. No, thank you.
• 1:02:21
  Yes, thank you. Do you need dry cleaning?
• 1:02:25
  Sure. Do you need laundry and shower?
• 1:02:29
  Please. Do you need a shower?
• 1:02:30
  This is your shower. It's like, wow.
• 1:02:34
  Yeah, that's, yeah, that's once in a lifetime.
• 1:02:38
  It was. And it was, it was amazing.
• 1:02:42
  It really that's amazing. But what's the story?
• 1:02:45
  Was the story or the book already bubbling inside you like
• 1:02:48
  you had the idea to to write it already?
• 1:02:50
  Or was nothing that? Or it it and you were too busy
• 1:02:54
  or it was never an idea. It was an idea and what I was
• 1:02:58
  doing, especially after I had done the the Sea Festival and I
• 1:03:06
  do production. Miles was handling finances and
• 1:03:09
  things like that, so he wasn't always on the ground there.
• 1:03:13
  He was all over the world on. He was in London, he was in
• 1:03:16
  France working deals out for support for this event.
• 1:03:21
  And it was after doing the Sea Festival, which was the last
• 1:03:25
  event. And the amount of time that I
• 1:03:27
  spent in Saudi. Miles was doing the outline to
• 1:03:32
  the book very much like he did with A Line in the Sand, which
• 1:03:35
  is was it is a different story. I mean, it's the real, it's what
• 1:03:38
  we wrote. But back then in 2007 and eight,
• 1:03:42
  we were, I did a lot of character sketches of people
• 1:03:46
  that I knew and would want to be in the book.
• 1:03:50
  And we actually didn't use, we didn't go that direction.
• 1:03:53
  We went after October 7th. It was it was a call to action.
• 1:03:59
  We need to do the book now. We need.
• 1:04:01
  To that was the trigger. That was the trigger.
• 1:04:04
  Oh. Interesting.
• 1:04:06
  And we need to join the narrative and and just be
• 1:04:10
  absolutely factual to what happened in terms of characters,
• 1:04:15
  that sort of thing. It is a historical fiction and
• 1:04:20
  we decided on it. We had to make that choice and
• 1:04:23
  because we were dealing with similar concepts in the play,
• 1:04:28
  we've had four different writers in the play.
• 1:04:30
  So we we were never far from the story of Lawrence and wanting
• 1:04:34
  that story to come out because we're working on a play.
• 1:04:37
  But in this, in the case of the book, we decided in order to
• 1:04:44
  hook people to bring them in is it must be entertaining.
• 1:04:51
  And we wanted to we thought, let's make it a sleuthing story.
• 1:04:55
  It just evolved and let's have a time travel device kind of like,
• 1:05:00
  you know, Raiders of the Lost Ark and and all the you know,
• 1:05:05
  and we want to ride in the style of, you know, Alexander Dumas,
• 1:05:10
  you know, things and the gentleman and just create,
• 1:05:14
  create a a story around an entertaining story around the
• 1:05:22
  actual history of the region. You, you take, I don't know, I
• 1:05:27
  don't know if it it's, it looks like we talked before the the
• 1:05:31
  discussion, but you, you take all my questions away or all my
• 1:05:34
  ideas in the direction that I want to go.
• 1:05:36
  Hey, which is fun, don't get me wrong, but I, I want, I said
• 1:05:39
  it's worth mentioning because you kind of identify the idea
• 1:05:43
  that I'm going to towards during the reading or the listening of
• 1:05:49
  the story that I've done. By the way, great guy reading
• 1:05:52
  the reading the story on audible.
• 1:05:54
  I, I can only also recommend that I realized it was a fiction
• 1:05:59
  during the reading, the, the reading process.
• 1:06:02
  And it was first when it, it was discussion about the time
• 1:06:06
  travelling machine. It was something that shocked
• 1:06:08
  me. And then I realized, oh, it's a,
• 1:06:10
  it's a fiction. It's a it's a combined thing
• 1:06:12
  between reality and fiction, but how did you decide what to keep
• 1:06:16
  raw and what to hide behind fiction?
• 1:06:21
  The hide behind fiction, which is the change from what was
• 1:06:25
  actually yes, that's it. It is the actual, we didn't
• 1:06:34
  take, you know, an FJ truck and ride camels all the time.
• 1:06:42
  It was very much under the wire. We found a travel company that
• 1:06:49
  was willing to read 7 Pillars of Wisdom.
• 1:06:52
  David Weber. I just made contact with him
• 1:06:55
  just a couple of days ago. He's with the company, his
• 1:06:58
  company that he created travel company on.
• 1:07:01
  And now remember we're talking about the 2000s.
• 1:07:04
  His company started in I think in 1999 or maybe 2001 or two.
• 1:07:09
  We contacted him in 2005 when we wanted to do this trip.
• 1:07:13
  And again, it was a a lead given to us because travel companies
• 1:07:19
  and especially going to an area conflict, you want to what you
• 1:07:25
  want to go into the air. What do you do?
• 1:07:27
  Why? What are you doing?
• 1:07:29
  You're you're risking your life. Well, he understood our mission
• 1:07:33
  to follow TE Lawrence's path, and so the the travel company
• 1:07:40
  helped us to get there. And the book, you know, the
• 1:07:51
  actual journey was more harrowing than the way we
• 1:07:57
  described it. The we didn't get into the
• 1:08:02
  intensity of the Americans being in a foreign land and being
• 1:08:08
  looked at and and the nuance of getting inside the tent with the
• 1:08:18
  people, not manipulation. It's like behavior and being
• 1:08:25
  real and being asked at one point, you know, and my
• 1:08:31
  interpreter, this was later when I was doing the sea festival,
• 1:08:35
  saying the mayor of the little Algasmo wants to meet you and he
• 1:08:43
  will go tonight. And we went, and we went.
• 1:08:45
  And it was to have a meal with this man in his concrete place
• 1:08:49
  with fluorescent lighting, tiny, and all these wizened Bedouin
• 1:08:55
  people sitting around talking. And I'm the guest sitting on the
• 1:08:59
  left, which is was the place of I guess they were, I was told
• 1:09:03
  that's the place of honor next to the the host and getting, you
• 1:09:08
  know, a great big, huge platter full of rice and a goat that's
• 1:09:13
  been cooked sitting on top of it.
• 1:09:15
  Now, in this case, I'd by this time I'd had at least a dozen
• 1:09:20
  meals like this. It's a formal meal.
• 1:09:24
  It's like Thanksgiving, you know, you do it when it's
• 1:09:28
  special and they do it because it takes a lot of time and it's,
• 1:09:33
  it's very good. It's it's like great, we're
• 1:09:37
  going to have Turkey and you know, and, and cranberries and
• 1:09:43
  so on the head of this goat, there were little pieces cut up
• 1:09:51
  the little tubes and little three quarter inch to an inch
• 1:09:57
  little pieces on top of the goat.
• 1:09:59
  And I, Ali was, was over on my right.
• 1:10:02
  And he says he want you to ask to eat that.
• 1:10:07
  Say la, no, don't eat that. I said, what is it?
• 1:10:11
  He said goat intestine. I said, really, if I do it, is
• 1:10:17
  it a good thing? He said if you do it, you get
• 1:10:20
  sick. But yeah, very good thing, very
• 1:10:23
  impressive. So I get sick, but I it's
• 1:10:30
  impressive. Yes, they do that to make you
• 1:10:33
  very special if you do that. And so I thought I remembered in
• 1:10:38
  the movie Lawrence of Arabia, there was something that he ate
• 1:10:41
  and, and someone and he said, oh, it's very good.
• 1:10:44
  Would you like more? And he says, no, something like
• 1:10:47
  that. And so it came to it.
• 1:10:51
  It first started with, you know, someone will pull a piece of
• 1:10:56
  meat off and toss it towards me. And it's like the best little
• 1:11:01
  piece of meat that's, that's there.
• 1:11:03
  It's not just, it's like a, a, it's someone being serving you
• 1:11:09
  and pick it up and eat it. And then the, the little slender
• 1:11:14
  man with all this, you know, sort of brown, red beard and
• 1:11:20
  stuff. And he, he says, please have
• 1:11:27
  one. And he's pointing to the
• 1:11:29
  intestines. And all I think is intestines,
• 1:11:31
  intestines, intestines. They, they were like little, a
• 1:11:36
  little hose, but it was definitely had something in it.
• 1:11:42
  And so I did. I reached it and put it in and I
• 1:11:46
  knew everyone would be watching. And I just, it was the most
• 1:11:51
  horrible thing I've ever had in my mouth in my life.
• 1:11:55
  It was like lizard shit. It was just awful.
• 1:11:59
  It was, you know, but Ali, Ali said that was very good move,
• 1:12:07
  very good move later anyway. What was the hardest part
• 1:12:18
  emotionally to write of the book?
• 1:12:28
  The man that was drinking in the car, our driver when he said
• 1:12:36
  that I he was sobbing. He started crying.
• 1:12:39
  He pulled over in the car. That's the story in the book.
• 1:12:43
  The actual story again is more intense.
• 1:12:47
  We put it in this driver that he had a bottle of Johnnie Walker
• 1:12:51
  while it was around a bottle of Johnnie Walker.
• 1:12:54
  But it was a person close to me that was Saudi and he was
• 1:12:59
  uncontrollable. He had he had picked up the
• 1:13:03
  Johnnie Walker in Saudi and you know that you lose a you lose a
• 1:13:07
  hand if you're found with that. I mean, it's like drugs.
• 1:13:11
  Drugs is death, but there's no drinking.
• 1:13:14
  But there is a black market. And this this individual was
• 1:13:20
  very high in the Saudi because of his last name in the family
• 1:13:25
  name was recognizing and respected, but he had access to
• 1:13:33
  a cachet and to get a bottle of Johnnie Walker red back then was
• 1:13:38
  400 riyals. So it was a lot of money.
• 1:13:41
  It was a lot of money to do it. So we put it together and we we
• 1:13:45
  had done it a couple times before, but he he got back to
• 1:13:48
  the little place where we were in the middle of nowhere and he
• 1:13:55
  just, he doesn't know how to drink.
• 1:13:58
  He puzzled and then started falling apart and he said, I, I,
• 1:14:03
  I so sorry, I so sorry. And you're slobbering.
• 1:14:09
  I said, I said Ali, what is it? And that's the man's name, Ali
• 1:14:13
  in my, in the real case. And he say 2 terrorists from my
• 1:14:20
  village, from my village went into North Tower and he's just
• 1:14:29
  and he's just uncontrollable and he's wailing.
• 1:14:33
  And then the other guy that I was with, great guy Mark Locke
• 1:14:37
  was just Ali was Amen. He's British.
• 1:14:39
  Hey, man, what's going on? What's up?
• 1:14:41
  What's up? What's up, man?
• 1:14:43
  What's up? What's up?
• 1:14:45
  And he said I and he just said I so sorry, I so sorry I not tell
• 1:14:50
  you I'm not. I've known him for a while and
• 1:14:52
  he hadn't said anything. But this the damn cracked.
• 1:14:56
  And I just said, Ollie, it wasn't you, he said.
• 1:15:04
  And that's why I got so mad at you for driving into town alone.
• 1:15:14
  They'd take you and he's crying. They'd take you.
• 1:15:19
  And I'm thinking Jamie, our risk assessment guy, kidnapping,
• 1:15:23
  ransom stuff, he said you cannot go without me anywhere.
• 1:15:31
  You must be with me. They know me.
• 1:15:35
  No one touch you, but you go alone.
• 1:15:39
  They're very bad people. They grab you.
• 1:15:44
  And then it turned out that the two terrorists and we found this
• 1:15:50
  out, right? I found it out writing the book.
• 1:15:53
  I said, you know, Miles, how many terrorists were there?
• 1:15:55
  There were 19, right? Yeah, 19.
• 1:15:57
  But they all weren't from. No, look, I am going to find out
• 1:16:00
  exactly what country everyone was from, what tower they went
• 1:16:04
  into. So that we know as we're writing
• 1:16:06
  the book, you know, And then I see the last name of two guys
• 1:16:11
  that are from this village that Ali's from.
• 1:16:18
  And it's like, Oh my, are they? Were they his brothers, cousin?
• 1:16:28
  And he said in his slobbering and his crying that night in the
• 1:16:31
  room, they are part of a different kind of religion.
• 1:16:37
  They got pulled in. They became terrorists, clearly.
• 1:16:45
  And so the story in the book is a driver and he pulls it out
• 1:16:49
  from underneath the dash. And we, you know, my intention
• 1:16:55
  in that little blurb is to get out of the car.
• 1:16:58
  It made my it just made me sick to my stomach.
• 1:17:01
  And we weren't at our destination and the sun was just
• 1:17:03
  coming up. And it's like, I don't want to
• 1:17:06
  be in this car. I didn't know the man.
• 1:17:10
  But in Ali's case, I was consoling him, saying, Ali, it
• 1:17:14
  was not you. You're a good man, you know?
• 1:17:19
  And he's holding on to me like, you know, from a chair.
• 1:17:23
  He's not not standing up and hugging.
• 1:17:25
  He's just like begging for forgiveness.
• 1:17:29
  That's intense, man. That's really intense.
• 1:17:33
  And it's more intense than the book.
• 1:17:34
  You're right. It's, it's just crazy.
• 1:17:42
  The book is, as I said, the book.
• 1:17:43
  I will I will link in the show notes description.
• 1:17:46
  But I realised that the book is not, it's not only the story,
• 1:17:51
  it's also a history of the places.
• 1:17:53
  This was at least my feeling as I read the book and it connects
• 1:17:58
  somehow the best to what we are seeing, we're still seeing
• 1:18:03
  today. Did the journey somehow help you
• 1:18:10
  understand what is not written in the history book?
• 1:18:15
  And maybe why not? Well, I know from living here
• 1:18:22
  and especially where I live now in New Mexico, that the Native
• 1:18:27
  American history still isn't clear and presented from their
• 1:18:35
  point of view. Indians, you know, Cowboys and
• 1:18:39
  Indians that I mean, the movies were made on that and stars were
• 1:18:43
  made on that and they were misrepresented.
• 1:18:46
  There's a show that's called Dark Winds and it's about the
• 1:18:50
  DNA tribe and it's it's authentic and it's it's going
• 1:19:01
  into its fourth season because it is so real and good.
• 1:19:10
  They're learning about people is what it's all about.
• 1:19:19
  And as far as writing the book, the discovery that Moses and
• 1:19:28
  Abraham and the prophets in the King James Version Bible, we're
• 1:19:35
  not the sole owners as Christians of those prophets.
• 1:19:41
  And I didn't know that. I didn't know that.
• 1:19:45
  And it's in the book until we're in Magar Al Shaheb and our
• 1:19:49
  driver, in very broken English, is trying to explain that
• 1:19:55
  Ibrahim Abraham is lived there. I'm going, but he's going about
• 1:20:01
  how Musa and Baba Baba and go whoa, whoa, whoa, what do you
• 1:20:05
  did you say Moses, Iowa, Abraham, Abraham leap it there
• 1:20:13
  and I'm going to look over there and it's all sand, sand and
• 1:20:17
  there's a couple of structures out in the valley. 10 year he
• 1:20:22
  say, and I'm going, wait a minute.
• 1:20:24
  That sounds familiar because I know the Bible.
• 1:20:28
  It's there, we're standing in the area.
• 1:20:31
  So it's coming away with touching the past, which is
• 1:20:37
  touching the present and recognizing that history
• 1:20:42
  repeating like we had, we were saying earlier, mankind's, you
• 1:20:48
  know, man against man, man against nature, man against God
• 1:20:53
  and these battles that were man against, you know, put the
• 1:20:56
  religion and stuff. And like we say in the book, you
• 1:21:03
  do unto others as others would do unto you.
• 1:21:05
  We find that that's in all the all the religions.
• 1:21:08
  Where the heck is it being followed?
• 1:21:13
  And where does righteous indignation stop?
• 1:21:18
  Wait a minute. I believe in God.
• 1:21:22
  I believe in my country, I believe in this land is mine.
• 1:21:27
  I believe in my family. I love my children.
• 1:21:29
  I make my month. I do, I provide.
• 1:21:32
  Who are you to tell me to move? Who are you to tell me my
• 1:21:38
  religion is bad? And you have October 7th where
• 1:21:44
  the hatred is blinded. It's making a statement as as
• 1:21:51
  horrific as possible. What more can be done to the
• 1:21:56
  crimes the of the heart, the crimes of the head, not just to
• 1:22:01
  another person? I mean, it's just when does this
• 1:22:06
  stop? And it's recognizing that it is
• 1:22:11
  going on and it's not being shocked by it.
• 1:22:16
  It's sad. There's grief.
• 1:22:18
  There's just, I mean, the closer you are to it.
• 1:22:20
  Here in the United States, we had a fire ripped through a, a
• 1:22:23
  portion of, you know, outside of Los Angeles, along the coast and
• 1:22:28
  in and in 36 hours of poof. And a few people died.
• 1:22:34
  And you look at Ukraine, you look at Gaza, which is where the
• 1:22:40
  focus of the attacks are. Right or wrong, they're still
• 1:22:44
  attacks and the the desolation, but it's not just, you know,
• 1:22:50
  the, the burning of the buildings and the scorching of
• 1:22:52
  the earth like we had in California, which is awful.
• 1:22:56
  My son was on the fire there. He's in LA County fireman.
• 1:22:59
  He was fighting that fire for 36 hours straight.
• 1:23:03
  And what does he say? He said it was nuts.
• 1:23:05
  And he leaves it at that. These other places in the world
• 1:23:09
  like you were talking about, they're people, babies,
• 1:23:15
  children. You know what, what is sacred?
• 1:23:23
  I, I have a sense of sake I that I hold sacred that I won't do
• 1:23:29
  and I work to not think, you know, did I?
• 1:23:33
  What do we hold dear? Our opinion and so.
• 1:23:41
  Beliefs. Our beliefs, Opinions,
• 1:23:45
  Schminions. Everyone's got 1, you know, But
• 1:23:51
  storytelling like we're doing now, maybe the listeners will
• 1:23:55
  relate to a piece of this, but it's in storytelling that we, we
• 1:24:01
  discover our empathy because we listen autobiographically, we
• 1:24:06
  listen back, We listen like, oh, I relate to that because it's
• 1:24:09
  similar to me. And it doesn't matter what color
• 1:24:12
  you are, what you're wearing on your head or your body or the
• 1:24:14
  food we're eating. We're talking about our soul
• 1:24:20
  when we tell stories. Oftentimes you do.
• 1:24:23
  There's, there's no disputing it's their story.
• 1:24:28
  I'm talking about one-on-one, sitting down, breaking bread,
• 1:24:33
  not booze, Just I'm not saying, you know, people do it that way,
• 1:24:37
  that's fine. But really just having
• 1:24:40
  conversation that's open. Correct, correct.
• 1:24:46
  And so these are some of the lessons, and I didn't know I
• 1:24:49
  would get all these things at all.
• 1:24:52
  What? Legacy.
• 1:24:53
  What legacy do you hope that the book leaves behind?
• 1:24:58
  Dead. I've I've never really thought
• 1:25:01
  of that. We wrote it with an intention
• 1:25:04
  that to be a primer for most people that has been with the
• 1:25:09
  readers. They respond to the history, to
• 1:25:11
  understand history, to understand a culture, to
• 1:25:14
  understand a place. I know the history.
• 1:25:17
  So it's people getting outside themselves and the churn that
• 1:25:23
  they're involved in that churn of social media and being on
• 1:25:26
  top. And I don't like that and I
• 1:25:28
  don't like that, but I don't like that.
• 1:25:30
  And it's like, it's like a big bread, big VAT with a with a
• 1:25:35
  paddle that's turning the bread and we're the bread and we're
• 1:25:38
  all the idea. It's just like getting.
• 1:25:40
  It means nothing. 0. Is the top part of the iceberg.
• 1:25:46
  Let's go below and that's what that's where Miles and I with
• 1:25:50
  that book and the next book, Havana Familia, it's we're we're
• 1:25:54
  looking at Cuba as the, you know, mistreated mistress, the
• 1:26:00
  mistress of Spain, the mistress of the United States, the
• 1:26:05
  mistress of Russia. You know, Cuba, this little,
• 1:26:09
  little place because of where it's located, but it's beautiful
• 1:26:14
  and how how people mistreat and how it's being mistreated now
• 1:26:19
  excuse me, by their own people or it's not being allowed to
• 1:26:25
  flourish. Meeting a guy there in Cuba, I
• 1:26:29
  said what, what, what is it about the country?
• 1:26:33
  He said There's two challenges of what I want to do and he said
• 1:26:40
  and to be allowed to do it, to be allowed.
• 1:26:47
  Because if I point out anything, it seems that I'm pointing out
• 1:26:51
  some If I point out that chair is broken, I can fix it.
• 1:26:57
  They don't want to hear that in communism the chair is not
• 1:27:02
  broken. Coming coming from a communist
• 1:27:07
  country which is close to Russia, I know exactly what you
• 1:27:10
  mean. Exactly, exactly.
• 1:27:14
  I you just look away and when you look away, it's not there.
• 1:27:18
  And then if it's not there, then there's not a problem.
• 1:27:21
  And I think as much as we try to to to tell the history in
• 1:27:25
  documentaries, in history books, I think you find a way, you find
• 1:27:30
  an captivating way to tell the history through fiction.
• 1:27:35
  And I think it makes it more interesting for people because
• 1:27:40
  they, the stories, the storytelling, it's captivating.
• 1:27:44
  And with that you are, you are getting inside the pieces of
• 1:27:47
  history here and there. And I haven't seen it done until
• 1:27:53
  now, because until now it's either you read fiction, either
• 1:27:56
  you read history books like documentation and so on.
• 1:28:00
  And they are usually if you're not really interested interested
• 1:28:06
  in the topic, like in Middle East.
• 1:28:08
  In your case, the books. The books are boring for someone
• 1:28:13
  who's not one hour. No, let me finish.
• 1:28:15
  I I I have AI make I try to make a point.
• 1:28:20
  The books are boring because they if they are only history.
• 1:28:23
  Not everyone is interested in history.
• 1:28:25
  Not everyone has the patience to read history.
• 1:28:27
  Not everyone has the attention spent to read history.
• 1:28:30
  I'm I don't know if you're aware of of Romanians history, but we
• 1:28:34
  have a major event in 1989 together with the fall of the
• 1:28:40
  Soviet Union was a revolution which happened in Romania and
• 1:28:44
  it's now 2035 years ago and nobody actually knows know what
• 1:28:49
  happened. And there are a lot of books
• 1:28:50
  written by different guys that did investigation there and they
• 1:28:55
  are purely history book. They are incredible nice, but
• 1:28:58
  nobody has the attention span and everyone that I'm talking to
• 1:29:01
  and asked have you read that book?
• 1:29:02
  Now that's boring. Yeah, of course, because,
• 1:29:06
  because, and, but if you find a way to tell it with fiction
• 1:29:09
  inside it and make the storytelling inside and make it
• 1:29:12
  a big part of of fiction, which makes it captivating.
• 1:29:16
  And then you put inside some interesting captions of history
• 1:29:22
  that makes the book captivating. And this is what I think you
• 1:29:25
  managed to do. And this could be the solution
• 1:29:28
  for telling the history and maybe avoiding this this
• 1:29:34
  constant repetition of history that is happening in the last
• 1:29:37
  years I had the long. Run so people listened not at
• 1:29:44
  all no, it's so that people will listen well where where it can
• 1:29:50
  get inside and not just be of a fleeting, you know, image
• 1:29:55
  exactly that's that's that's what we have and so we're doing
• 1:29:58
  the same thing with Havana Familia.
• 1:30:01
  The next book is to continue with Magnus and Finn.
• 1:30:05
  And when we're in certain areas, we take a time travel device
• 1:30:10
  like we did in A Line in the Sand and catapult ourselves back
• 1:30:15
  in time to specific, you know, critical moments in history.
• 1:30:25
  And so that's accurate. That's that's, as I said, that's
• 1:30:30
  extremely interesting and I hope I, I hope it will have the same
• 1:30:33
  success as or but it will have it will be successful because
• 1:30:37
  it's, it's important for people to know the history.
• 1:30:40
  We have to know our history in order not to have it repeat
• 1:30:43
  itself again around us. True.
• 1:30:51
  Is there one message that you want to leave to the next
• 1:30:56
  generation of storytellers or adventurers like you?
• 1:30:59
  I think you are in. I want to give a bit of context
• 1:31:03
  to this question. It's the second episode, the
• 1:31:06
  second talk that we have together.
• 1:31:07
  And I'm impressed by you. I'm impressed by what you have
• 1:31:10
  done. I'm impressed how by how you
• 1:31:12
  live your life, by how you lived your life and that you, you
• 1:31:18
  constantly want to do something. And that's something which is
• 1:31:22
  missing. Like like you said, we go
• 1:31:23
  through social media, we go through clicks to like dislikes,
• 1:31:27
  we get angry, but we don't have this drive that you have.
• 1:31:31
  And I would ask you if you have a message for a new generation
• 1:31:35
  or for the next generation that CU and if think might like that
• 1:31:42
  way of living? Well, it takes a lot of trust
• 1:31:47
  and and a higher power that is guiding because when I I think I
• 1:31:53
  mentioned it in the first episode, getting tapped on the
• 1:31:57
  shoulder to do something and I've been tapped many times to
• 1:32:02
  do things really came from an early lesson.
• 1:32:05
  My mother said when I wanted to run away.
• 1:32:08
  I was 15 years old. I wanted to leave and saying I
• 1:32:11
  do not like this place. I like the place, but there's so
• 1:32:15
  much more and you know these this is five towns mom.
• 1:32:20
  My graduating class I did end up staying was 31 people, very
• 1:32:24
  rural and I just come from a camp in Great Falls, Mt, many
• 1:32:29
  thousands of thousands of miles away and was with international
• 1:32:34
  people my age. And so my head was just open and
• 1:32:39
  she said what do you mean I want to run away?
• 1:32:44
  You have no business setting 1 foot forward until you learn to
• 1:32:49
  deal with where you are right now.
• 1:32:51
  Stop commenting about everything around you.
• 1:32:55
  I don't like this, I don't like that.
• 1:32:57
  I think it's better over there. See the beauty of where you are
• 1:33:00
  in the moment, even with the challenges and you've got a few
• 1:33:04
  young man and see them through like this.
• 1:33:10
  Read a book. I said I do not want to read a
• 1:33:12
  book. Should read Call the Wild.
• 1:33:14
  I do not want to read Jack London's Call the Wild.
• 1:33:17
  I want to go there, mom. That's where my head, I want to
• 1:33:21
  go there. And she just says you will adapt
• 1:33:27
  to where you are, fully engage, see what's around you because
• 1:33:33
  there's so much. And she was right.
• 1:33:36
  And so that's what I've I've done.
• 1:33:39
  It's like I just felt that wherever I was and what was
• 1:33:43
  necessary is one that if man had done it before, I could figure
• 1:33:47
  it out myself and trusted that I would.
• 1:33:51
  And I've just been given opportunities to do that.
• 1:33:56
  So curiosity, adapting and trust in your own thought.
• 1:34:02
  We get a lot of input from social media, what we're
• 1:34:06
  supposed to be and do that. I did a lot of television
• 1:34:09
  commercials. I know about manipulation of buy
• 1:34:12
  this, buy that, you know, it was fun as an actor, but the, the
• 1:34:16
  overall, you know, concept of it is pretty powerful because it
• 1:34:21
  shapes nations and just be, you know, be clear on where you are
• 1:34:29
  and, and, and control you have control of one thing that is
• 1:34:35
  your thinking. That's the and you have choice,
• 1:34:40
  but you cannot control another person, you know?
• 1:34:47
  So watch your thinking and take action.
• 1:34:51
  Don't sit, just move. Don't sit enough.
• 1:34:56
  It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't I.
• 1:35:00
  Have children, I have grandchildren.
• 1:35:02
  I look, I'm sorry that I haven't met you earlier in my life
• 1:35:05
  because you're, you're an impressive person.
• 1:35:07
  And I think you, you, everyone who's who's younger could, I'm
• 1:35:13
  not saying I'm old, I'm not saying old, but everyone who's
• 1:35:16
  at the fresh age, I think they, they should, they can get a
• 1:35:19
  lesson from here and they can see that at the end, you can do
• 1:35:23
  pretty much what you want. It's depending on the trust
• 1:35:26
  levels that you have. And I think that's that's the
• 1:35:28
  most important message that we can have for everyone.
• 1:35:31
  And it's not over. It's just even for me, it's not
• 1:35:34
  over. And the desire to learn more, to
• 1:35:38
  be open to it. When I meet an older guy my age
• 1:35:41
  and I say, So what, what are you a beginner at?
• 1:35:43
  And they're like, what, what are you a beginner at that you that
• 1:35:48
  you're really enjoying, but you don't, you know, and people
• 1:35:51
  think and they go, oh, you know, take up a language, try this, do
• 1:35:55
  this, do something, keep be engaged.
• 1:35:59
  And I wish you the very best, Paul.
• 1:36:05
  I truly do. And I have an understanding of
• 1:36:08
  of, you know, the travels that you've done and the most recent
• 1:36:13
  change of thought or it's not change, it's the evolving.
• 1:36:17
  Your evolving thought is wonderful.
• 1:36:21
  Very, very best to you and your your wife and your boy.
• 1:36:26
  Thank you so much, Ted, and thank you for your time.
• 1:36:28
  Thank you for the nice words. Thanks for telling the story.
• 1:36:31
  As I said, I'm I'm, I, I listen and I think you notice that.
• 1:36:35
  And whomever is he's a watcher of this podcast.
• 1:36:38
  I know that I'm a talker, but not in these two episodes.
• 1:36:41
  No, no man, I'm. Sorry.
• 1:36:43
  I wasn't, no, you don't have to say sorry.
• 1:36:45
  I'm, I'm, I'm generally listening and I'm, I'm, I'm
• 1:36:48
  generally curious about about your story.
• 1:36:50
  And I think your story is amazing.
• 1:36:52
  You're an amazing human being. And I hope there are more more
• 1:36:56
  like you in the future because we need, we need adventure.
• 1:37:00
  Thank you, Ted. Very kind, very kind.
• 1:37:03
  Hope we can do this again someday like.
• 1:37:06
  Paul, it's just stand to. We'll be in touch.
• 1:37:08
  Absolutely. Talk to you soon, Ted.
• 1:37:10
  Bye. Thank you, Paul.
• 1:37:11
  Bye.