Camp Gagnon - Jungle Survivalist Reveals Secrets of Lost Tribes

Episode Date: October 3, 2024

Hazen Audel is a survivalist, biologist, and host of Primal Survivor who's pushed himself to the absolute limits—both physically and mentally—while living with the world's most remote tribes.Today Hazen reveals the life secrets of earths lost tribes. His closest brushes with death, the wisdom of tribal people who seem to have life all figured out, and a wild experience trying datura deep in the bush. This conversation gets real fast—survival, psychedelics, and everything in between.So sit bac...

What would it be like to leave behind the comforts of modern life? The nine to five grind and immerse yourself in the untouched jungles and forests where our ancestors used to Rome? To come face to face with the indigenous people, share their food and experience their mysterious medicinal customs. Well today, you don't have to wonder because in the tent we have survivalist and adventurer, Hazen Odell. And today we're going through his craziest stories, his wildest adventurers, the survival skills that he's mastered, and the deep cultural knowledge he's gained from the indigenous people that he's lived with. From surviving brutal terrain with little more than a knife to enduring extreme weather conditions and predators, he even explains the plant medicine ceremony that him and his friend took deep in the

jungle that changed their psychology forever. So if you're fascinated by tales of survival and ancient wisdom, you're in the right place. That's right. Grab your backpack, zip up your tents, and welcome to camp. Hazen Adele. What's up, brother? Howdy? Awesome. Yeah, man. Love being here.

Thank you so much for coming on. I really, really appreciate it. Yeah. This place is cool. Yeah. And if you could smell the place, it's got like good incense. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's just our feet, okay?

You came in here and very proudly just busted your boots right off. Had to. Well, rarely do people see me in boots, but. I'm not going to get outdogged, okay? I know I made you come all the way out to New York City, which is not your natural habitat. No. Okay? This is weird for you.

There's electricity. There's electricity. There's civilization. You know, there's concrete. There's garbage everywhere. Yeah, exactly. So I know you're uncomfortable, but if taking the dogs out makes you feel more comfy, then by all means. But I had to one up you.

I'm not going to let you out dog me. Okay, so I don't take my dogs out immediately. But this is going to be fun, dude. You have a wild backstory. I mean, just like your life in general is just super cool. And I think really inspirational for anyone that's interested in living, sort of like a non-traditional life where they get to do awesome shit and meet

really cool people. Like you are just one of those people that I don't embodies a lot of like inspiration I think. Oh, that's awesome. I mean your background is super cool, native, you know, coming from which travel groups again? So from my mom's side we're Cootney-Sailish

from northwestern Montana. So Flathead Reservation. And that's part of my ancestry. But I am a I'm a Craigslist special. All kinds of. The whole mix. Yeah, my dad, my grandpa came right out of Greece, and then I've got a Mormon background. Oh, hell yeah.

And I'm 3% Neanderthal, actually, too, which is like 90th percent, maybe even more. I think you're 5% maybe. I don't know. I'm close, too. Look at me. You see my eyebrows? Yeah. This brow right here has saved my life.

Dude, don't even get me started. I get made fun of my eyebrows, my giant forehead all the time. And then we go out in the sun, I don't need sunglasses. Pretty weird, huh? This natural ridge keeps the sun away, almost as if that's what we're supposed to look like. It's like a built-in visor from the Florida Keys. But yeah, so native background, super interesting.

When you turn 18, you just kind of run away to Ecuador and live with a family. You're supposed to be there for a couple months. You end up living there for eight months, almost a year. Then you start going back nonstop. And then you get a biology degree. You start working as a high school teacher.

Yeah. You are Hazen, you are Mr. Adele, the high school teacher. True. And then National Geographic discovered. There's little YouTube videos you're posting about kind of like your interest in nature. And then you get eight seasons doing your own show for National Geographic, getting to travel the world and meet interesting people. And immerse yourself into all these different tribal groups. So cool.

I mean, what a journey. For me, it's been an absolute dream. Yeah. You know, like I grew up watching David Attenborough shows and always thinking, that's what I want to do. But, you know, there's no way it's going to happen. happen like that, but I've just had such a fixation on nature. And then I think with anything, if I could give advice when I was a teacher and doing that as you have a passion and you keep pursuing your passions, it's, you might not get to your exact destination, but it's going to be

such an action-packed and fulfilling life, you know, that you're going to, like, meeting people along the way and stuff. And I think I don't take it for granted that I got to really, and I am living my passion. Yeah. What a lucky thing. There's so many people that don't that just live, you know, that are sort of, that gets sucked into a life that maybe is not like the path they want it. And they can break out of it and they can do something that they're passionate about just like you've proven, which I just think is so awesome. Who would have thought you could make a living just, you know, run around the woods?

Yeah, no way. And I do make a living. Don't tell anybody. But yeah, I get paid even. It's crazy, right? What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because I'm coming on the road. That's right. Pots Town, PA, Friday, November 8th, 2024. I'll be at Seoul, Joles. You can come see me do one hour of stand-up comedy, nothing more and nothing less.

It's going to be an amazing time. If you're not near Potsetown, don't worry because I'm coming to Stanford, Connecticut. I'm going to New York Comedy Club. That's right. They have a bunch of amazing clubs in the city and also an amazing one in Stanford, Connecticut, November 13th. If you want to come hang out, come hang with me, say what's up. I'll be talking to everybody after the show. We'll be doing an hour of comedy, guys. Stand-up comedy. It's my passion. It's what I love to do when I'm not inside this tent. So come kick it with me. A bunch of crazy stories. We'll have a great time. You can find the link at my Instagram. Get it in the story. I'll put it in the description. I can't wait to see you guys there. Let's get back to the show.

I want to know some stories. I want to get into all the crazy journeys all over the world. So I guess this is a starting place? I'm so curious. What is your closest brush with death while living or trying to survive in a remote part of the world. It's kind of interesting with what I do is there's a lot of times, there are a lot of moments that a brush with death is something that happens when you least expect it. And one second before or after would have meant death. And a lot of those seconds, you didn't even realize that you could have died. You know, we just keep going forward.

Right. I think that's a lot of us, you know, like you can. you get run over by a taxi if you were just one second before. Yeah. And it was brushed with death. But things that I'm kind of thinking about, I was telling a, this is a good opportunity for me to tell stories because I have plenty. But it's amazing how much I forget. And so you start instigating questions.

Yeah, yeah, I got an archive of good stories. Yeah. One was, I think one that was relatively recently when we were filming in Lao. So Laos, and we were on the Mekong. The whole study was kind of the cultures all around the Mekong navigating the Mekong. And, you know, with the show, I really try to keep it, I try to keep the integrity of the show really high. Like, utilize what people are doing, showcase what their lives are like, the individuals are like, what they're eating. And I was earlier in that episode as we were filming, we were going,

through these rapids that were some of the largest rapids in the entire world. And you've got to imagine that this river is enormous. I mean, in a lot of places, it's close to a mile wide. Mile wide. Yeah. And this one particular place was a constriction in that, and then it just had these rapids that would be obviously unsurvivable if you got yourself into there. Oh, really? And so kind of showing that off and living that. there, but no way in hell would you ever get close to that water. But then past the water, there's fishermen, there's people making a living by fishing and stuff, and they have specialized boats that are built for that area. And this, I will say, when I say, I really try to keep

the integrity going, this was a scenario that I learned myself is when I can have full control, Like, I know my limitations really well. A lot of people say, you know, you do such dangerous stuff, but I've lived it all. So I know what is dangerous and I know what's not dangerous. And I can probably make things appear way more dangerous than they are. You know, like, I do value my life. Yeah. But in this particular circumstance, we are running out of time. I organized a boat that we were going to do this scene to show. this area. And the boat that showed up, the one that I wanted was a completely different boat. And when I said, I wasn't in control, there was like, I have no qualms and saying, it's not just me out there. There's a very incredibly talented film crew. And we're working together collaboratively, creatively to make the show that we have. I'm very proud of that because they're amazing. But we have some anomalies sometimes as far as the people that are on the crew. There's one person

that was a decision maker, found a boat that looked really cool without my, and it just showed up and I was looking at it and I was like, this is not the kind of boat for these kind of conditions. It's like, yeah, but we got a film today and you're going to have to figure it out. And it was like, no, no, I don't work like that. I was not in control at that time. So I had to make the most out of it. So I had this boat that was kind of looked like a basket and it was cool, looked cool, but I could just tell already I was a whitewater rafting guide for five, six, seven years.

So I know water and I know how to handle it. Where were you guiding? Well, I was working a lot in Idaho, Oregon, Washington, California, all those different rivers. Yeah. So you're familiar with rivers. Yeah. Yeah. So you get in your wicker basket.

Kayak. Yeah, this like wicker basket cano. And I was like, oh man, this is not cool. I was under a time constraint and I got in the water and I just had like a couple minutes to familiarize myself with the boat and I'm like, you guys, this is not, this is not cool really for what we're trying to do. And I said, you know, just try to make it look. We'll get different shots and make it look like you're doing. I was like, man, this is, okay, I'm really uncomfortable with this. But I got in the boat, tried to finish out the scene. I have other people that I'm responsible for

so I had to do it. And if you know rivers, you have eddy lines like on the side because the main flow of the water is so abrupt, but there's friction against the side. So you can actually go up river following the, if you know the river, a lot of times you can follow eddy lines and go up river. Okay, cool. So I was playing around this giant eddy line and this river is so huge. It was a giant eddy, you know, like 300 square feet of eddy that was circulating current. And I was playing around in it, but then pretty soon the Eddie was so intense and this boat couldn't handle it.

I just got swept out into the main current. And usually, you know, you want to give people a heads up because there's cameras and there's people that are like indigenous people that are down the road just in case something happens and safety people. I mean, this is true. I'm just telling you the real story, you know, because a lot of people, like I said, it's, I'm proud of that it's a production. I keep it real, but there's cameramen and everything that make the show beautiful like it is. So anyways, I get swept into this main current, and I'm trying to navigate it, I'm trying to be in a place where the cameras can still see, and the river just took over. I was paddling.

There was this huge whirlpool that just opened up in front of me, and I can remember and still see it to this day. It opened up about five feet wide and just went. down to where I couldn't even see the bottom and it just sucked my boat right under. And by that time, everything's gone. I'm under the water. The whole canoe is gone and never seen for until we found it down the river like eight miles down the river. Pieces?

Yeah. And everything that I had was lost. And luckily enough, I surfaced somewhere, got in there. And I'm in the current by then. This is not planned at all. and going down the river and starting to go towards the side, towards the banks to like, you know, get out of the river. But the eddy lions were so intense because they're counter currents. Every time I got close, I just get sucked under in another whirlpool.

It was huge. This is the biggest current flow I've ever been in. I've been in intense rapids, but this is just the enormity of how much water is there tons and tons of water moving. How long were you underwater if you got sucked into the water? Well, there were sometimes where it was, I mean, you're put in a, in a, in the, in the tumbler, you know, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, you know, like, I don't know. I mean, I felt like I was, I was being sucked down so deeply into the water that my ears were popping. So that's probably, I was sucked down like 10 feet at some point. And the, the water's not clear. It's all like mocha. So you can't see, you're totally disoriented. By that time, it's so dark, you don't know what's up or what's down. You're just at the mercy of whatever is happening. And then so you're surfacing sometimes.

I was probably under 30 seconds. Who knows? Terrifying. Damn. And then, so then I realized that I couldn't get out to the bank because every time I would get sucked under. So then I had to just methodically go, okay, I need to stay in the main current. But after just understanding that the rapids up above were unsurvivable, I scouted down below, but not down below to where I was swimming, like that far. And so I was actually,

I was swimming, trying to keep my wits about me, but knowing that this is probably, I'm out of sight from any crew, any safety boat, any, anything. It was on my own. And at the mercy of the river, and that was when I was understanding, this is, this is quite possibly going to be the end of it, like just knowing. And it was an interesting feeling because, like I said, sometimes these life or death moments happen within seconds. This was minutes. So you're thinking about it and you're actually like, this is totally out of my control. This could be my end. I'm accepting it, you know, like just having that sort of feeling like I'll either survive this or I won't. There's two things. And I kept going, kept going.

down this river and then I was aware enough to go, I can't go on the side of the banks. This is Southeast Asia where people have engineered and constantly built every single person you can imagine New York, every single person living off the land. So every single citizen, every single person is going out and harvesting food. That's where their protein is coming from. That's where their dinner is coming from. Imagine the chaos and the intensity of, of human activity on everything that provides protein. So you're going down this river and there's contraptions of huge traps that try to catch every single fish going down the river.

You've got hooks. You've got you've got nets. You've got all these things all littering the side, whether they were abandoned or whether they're active. And then I'm going down and you could easily get trapped in these traps and nets and hooks that would just drag you under it. So I knew that's another scenario. So trying to go down, navigating this river,

seeing where there's man-made things made out of bamboo, plastic, metal barbs, everything. And so you're navigating down. And you have no idea what's farther. No, you don't. It could be more category five. What I pretty much knew, yeah, it's like, if I'm going to stay in this current,

it's either going to mellow out and then I'll be able to swim somewhere or I'm going to go down rapids and then I won't survive it. Or waterfall or some shit. Yeah, who knows? It could be a 30-foot drop. It could be, yeah.

And you wouldn't... I mean, the water was so big, your body would never be found. So I just rode it out and whether I was probably in the water for... It's hard to know, probably 10 minutes, but being swept down miles. Swimming against the current at points like...

Exhausted. Understanding that there's no way you can swim against the current, you have to go and position yourself best so you're not crashing into rocks, trying to see how far can you see above the water when you're this high up above the water and seeing what's down there. Exhausted. Yeah, and totally exhausted. And what are you wearing?

Are you in? I'm just shorts and T-shirt. Yeah. Yeah. But fortunately, I saw a way, there was a point at which the water, the eddy line was not strong. I got kind of sucked into it. And then I was able to grab onto a branch of a bush that was growing on a rock, essentially, that was about this big in the middle of the river. And then I stayed there. The film crew had totally lost me. You know, they didn't know where I was. So I was stuck on this

rock for 45 minutes until one of the locals saw where I was, because they got all the community out to look for me. And then they were able to get a, one of the locals got a rescue boat that knows the water, pick me up. And then, yeah, we never found the boat again. All my stuff was gone. I didn't return back to the crew until at least an hour and a half later when they, they already thought, I'm a goner. And I showed up walking, exhausted up the bank. And both thankfully be alive and pissed at just the scenario that they put me in. I mean, rightfully so. And so that was a, that was a feeling, but then when we talk about within seconds, I'll just tell one more story while it's in my head.

Unless you want to brief that. Yeah, I mean, don't lose that next story. But I'm curious, like, did you talk to the person that got the liquor boat? Like, did you let them have it? Oh, yeah, yeah. They got an earful. Yeah. And everybody involved from the corporate level and everything.

I mean, that's like your life. It is. And they said, nah, well, it looks cooler if you almost die. It's like, what? Well, out of liability, they didn't show, they like just show. a second of that. Did you ever see the footage? I did, yeah.

And for a while there, the only way that they could stand, because there was a drone. So the drone driver, his name's Adam, Adam Laster, he's like the best there is in the business, was following me going down the river. But then since I was getting sucked down, you would lose you for 30 seconds. And then, you know, he's trying to stick with the current and then just lost me after going down and getting up and all that stuff. How did it feel getting on that rock in the middle of the road? river after fighting the current for 10 minutes.

It was one of those things. It was like, within reach and then got it and then got swung into the rock and then got up onto the rock and I was like... Just collapsed? I was kind of like, am I still I'm still there? Broken bones. Any broken bones? Like, I don't know what it was. Damn. And did you look down the river

at all, like a little farther down to see if there was anything else? There was nobody. I mean, the rapids are just, you're just seeing sprays of water and everything you couldn't. I couldn't really see anybody. So how did you miss that branch? Like, You don't know if I went for another swim and I would have died of exhaustion or if I would have cracked my head open on something or went on. So, yeah, it was not good.

Don't show my parents this podcast. Yeah, I'm making you go back to Washington immediately. And so that was one. What's the other one? Well, this one that I was thinking about was this was one of the very first year. And it was my, we were in Africa and we were with the Sand Bushman. And they're amazing. Bushmen are their hunters and gatherers, but they were the predominant, they were the original

humans. So they were in Central Africa. And all of us, all of us different colors all around the world, Chinese, Swedish, Russian, we all came from that original part of Africa. So there are our original people, the Sand Bushman, Coysan, is what they're called. Coyson. And where is that? Like what? So now they've essentially, they're pretty small, very slight billed people and they're hunters and gatherers. And so they have really kind of been pushed. So many of these indigenous people have been pushed to the very limits of what's survivable because they're always minorities. They don't have resources. They don't have money backing them.

They don't have these sort of things. So that is the plight of so many traditional living people. So they're being pushed to try to survive. the most hostile conditions. Because as you know, New York got taken over. But when people first came to New York, it was a metropolitan of Native American people living off the land. Where all these people are living, colonists and stuff start joining forces and utilize, it's like we celebrate Thanksgiving and then we understand the atrocities that happened. But white people were dependent on Native people to survive. Right. Because they don't know

shit about where they are. Right. And then pretty soon the colonists start taking over, start running the place, and then the people that saved their lives initially get pushed out into, you know, places like where their Indian reservations right now. Central South Dakota, you know, like look at that. You're taking people that have lived in the most rich landscape available and now they're being, are they going to eat rocks? And then people expect them to. to live traditionally. So the good land kind of gets built on.

Always. And the people that live off the land get pushed into shittier land. Always. Every single city in the United States used to be the most fertile, like food abundant, most deer, most game, most fish. Makes sense. I mean, if you have all these ports and stuff, like that's where you would build a city is like, okay, there's like a port here or something. There's people here. There's an initial infrastructure by.

Yeah. There's an ability to congregate, I guess. But that's a tangent, probably even more, a more important tangent to go down rather than a life or death situation. But we'll try to stay on topic. So I was with the Sand Bushman living with them for about two weeks. And an interesting thing about the Sand Bushman is not only they're a hunter and gatherer, so they're living off of just the resources that are there. They're not farmers.

They're dependent on what they find, what they know about game. and the most traditional of the sand bushman that have been living like humans have evolved from is their pursuit hunters. So if you think about we are mammals, believe it or not, we're animals, we're mammals, but what's unique about us is we're bipedal, so we're on two feet. So being on two feet, believe it or not, is the most efficient use of energy to go somewhere. All other animals have to move all four legs. Believe it or not, an in-shape human being can outrun any animal in the animal kingdom. They're not going to go as fast. You'll get outpaced maybe by a horse.

But if you continue to run after a horse, a marathon runner can run down a horse to death. What would facilitate that death would be living in the conditions that they're living in where it's 100 degrees. hot sun during the day. We don't have fur, we sweat, we dissipate heat. So we can run after an animal that's covered with fur. And a lot of times they're breathing and they have to breathe in alignment with their movements of their stride. We can breathe independently.

This is our human evolution. This is what made humans humans is because we're bipedal. We started to be able to have languages. We could chase after game and communicate at the same time. devised relays. We had all these strategies and we could carry weapons with us while we're running.

And our whole body is like, they think like our head is actually a counterbalance and our arms are a counterbalance when we're running. Interesting. It's really interesting. So yeah, a wolf is probably they can run the furthest than any other animal.

And we can still run down a wolf to death. Wow. When you're really in shape. So we have evolved. that's the reason why humans are like that. We've forgotten that. It's hard to find those kind of people. But still to this day, there are a few communities still left where they can live in a world without fences and they can live that way. But it is, I mean, tomorrow they're not going to be able to be pursuit hunters anymore.

So we were at some of the very last communities that were doing that. And we got involved with, we just couldn't find the opportunity to do a pursuit hunt. And so we were waiting at a watering hole, looking for some game to come in. And then if the conditions were right, they have, we were going to find the prey. They also use assistance with little poison tip bow and arrows, and their arrows are only about this long. But the poison that they use on that tip of the arrow, this is amazing. I mean, don't get me, sorry, I will go on tangents. But these people are fascinating, right?

they have these little tipped arrows and these little arrows are just feeble I see some arrows that you have that are so much more advanced by Native American with fletching and stuff like this these are very primitive but they work perfectly for what they have

a lot of these people they only weigh about 80 pounds they're very small slender and their bow and arrows they look like little kid things like little kiddie arrows and like the bows are small the arrows are small, but they have found a poison that they have discovered somehow that lives on a very certain kind of bush, not every bush, probably about one out of a hundred bushes.

And about two feet down into the soil is a small little beetle grub that's about this big. And they will get the juice out of that beetle grub. and that is the poison that they use to put on their poison-tipped arrows. Wow. They put that little beetle grub blood on the end of that arrow. And the toxin that's in there, what happens is if you get it into your bloodstream by any means of a scuff, that's why they're not precision arrows. They're lobbing them into maybe herds of animals into something like that.

And if it just glances the ear, if it like these arrows around here are trying to get like get into the vital organs and cause massive hemorrhaging and stuff these are just like a little poke but the poison is enough and so powerful and how it works is it inhibits our hemoglobin our blood from taking in oxygen we breathe air in our lungs our blood cells get oxygen and then feed the rest of all of our cells in the body this poison stops that from happening So no matter how hard you breathe, your body's not getting enough oxygen to live. So you suffocate.

Exactly. No matter how hard you breathe. So with the assistance of their little bows and arrows, that's brutal. That helps so they're not chasing a giraffe for three days until it dies. It might be a day and a half. But also their knowledge is, again, they know every single animal. They know what happens when it gets subdued by toxin. they know this kind of animal will stay with the herd.

This kind of, the other kind of animal will usually separate from the herd and go towards shade. They know everything there is to know about every single animal, just like we know, I don't know, like water comes in plastic water bottles. You know how to drive a car, just like put your blinker on, not even thinking about it. But their whole world is understanding of this.

And so there were some heart of beasts that were coming down. and we were in a hide, like a bunch of bushes right next to the watering hole, seeing what was coming. There were a couple of Pallas that came down, but they weren't really, they just weren't in the right position and stuff. And then there was these heart of beasts, if they were going to get closer, this might wind up being a, if there was an arrow that was, again, glanced or something, the pursuit hunt was going to be on.

Good luck having the cameras following us, but it may have been a chase for a couple of days. And what kind of? You said a heart of beast. What's that? It's like a, it's a kind of a, of an antelope. Okay. They're really cool. If you look at them, I don't know if you put like little pictures of animals.

They're rad. They look like they're out of Star Wars. Like one of the bar scenes where they have all these weird animals, their faces like that. They're cool. Yeah, so check them out. So a heart of beast were coming. And then, but off in the distance, it looked like there was a sandstorm popping up. There was like this cloud of dust and plume.

and it's like, oh, you know, let's protect our cameras. It looks like a big gust of wind's coming over. And we were just watching it. Heart of beasts were still there. And then they kind of were like looking back at the dust storm a little bit and things were starting to like kick off. And then pretty soon there was like three elephants that were like running out of this plume of smoke. I was like, oh shit.

And there were radios and stuff like elephants coming, elephants coming. And we're seeing them and there's elephants. And then it was like three, 50s. 15, 100 elephants, like a whole giant herd of elephants. And they were coming our way, basically stampeding. And with all of these elephants coming and they were going to this watering hole that we're at, there were two things that were going to happen. If we were to stay in this hide, they were either going to trample us by accident because we were in the way.

They were just going to go mow through us. and we would have died. Or if they would have seen us, the big bulls would have chased after us and killed us because we were a threat to their herd. Yeah, they get aggressive, the bull elephants, right? Oh yeah, they're the second most dangerous animal in the world, elephants, actually. Behind the hippo?

Hippo number one. Oh, you're good, you're good. Come on, dude. So we were like, we got to hightail it out of here. Like now, now. Now we have to go. And so, and one of our, you know, I love to highlight the elders, like the libraries of the community. And we had this, oh, if you watch the episode, his name's Tuka.

He's like this old man, but he's the one that knows. He's been, he's experienced real life as a kid pursuing all these animals and knows everything. So he was with us. And we, like, all of us young guys were spry. We're like, get the out of there. And then Tuka's like, I was like, I had to go, like, Tuka, we got to go, we got to go, we got to like holding his hand. And he's kind of an old guy, you know, like trying to take a 90-year-old guy, you know, like, let's get, we got to go, we're going to die. And, you know, just holding him and carrying him, we high-tailed another and then just about barely got out of the way of the elephants.

Dude. And that was another one of those things like, yeah, could have died. I just snacking it like that. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because I want to tell you about Smore Camp. Yes, join Smore Camp. What is this?

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Let's get back to the show. You're making me think of all these other stories. Have you ever seen a bull elephant like charge? Like, uh... Oh, yeah. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They get moving, huh? Yeah, one of our last, the last episode I actually shot, which was going through the Great Rift Valley. And one of the highlights of my, I don't say it's a career, but it's what I was doing by filming Primal Survivor.

I got to, we were in the heart of the Serengeti, which is just this wildlife mecca, probably one of the best wildlife places I've ever been to. Yeah. And then by filming, we were in the most remote place, special access, in an area that is like it was a thousand years ago. It was amazing.

And you're totally at the mercy of the wildlife there. There, you are not the top of the food chain. Yeah, it's weird, right? It's really, when you know that you... Tumbling. Yeah, and it really made me feel like, this is what it was like to be a caveman. Like, you can walk, but behind every single bush,

there could be an elephant, No, there could be a lion. There could be something that could eat you. And so you have to really understand that. And it's very humbling. Yeah. But we are in that place. And it's amazing that you can have such huge animals.

And if you're ever in the presence of an elephant, it just boggles your mind. Like everything is so massive to wear just even to like see their skin. Like our skin is this thick. their skin is like that thick, you know? Put your hand on it. It's just a wall. It's like a tree. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And their skin is so interesting, too. They're really interesting.

I always think their skin kind of looks like, especially on their hind legs, like their pants don't fit properly. You ever notice that? Like, it's kind of flabs a little. I always wonder, like, what is, why is that? But it's like rock hard. And yeah, even their hair, their hair is like as thick as a pencil lead. Really? Yeah.

It ain't soft. It's like hay almost. It's like plastic. it's like plastic black plastic super thick fishing line and stuff it's crazy but um yeah you can just be walking and they've just kind of been hanging out eating and you didn't even see them and you thought it was a rock or something and then these big ears come up and you're like you got to get out of there you know because it's bad cool now what are the what are the Bushmen like in that in that area the one thing that I was so impressed I think every out of the

the 70, 80 programs that we filmed and maybe possibly even over a hundred different traditional living people, 100 different language groups. I get take homes from every single people that I'm with. You know, they have a really unique understanding of life. And I think my biggest challenge is being around these magical people that really have life figured out. How can I implement that into my life, which is pretty effed up as a westerner. Like, we live in New York and we've figured out a way to live, but there's a lot of values and lessons of humanity and the ways that we're just befriending each other. We have really lost. What are some of the takeaways that you apply to your own life? I guess what I'll say, if we can stick on, stick to with the Sand Bushman,

I would say that they were the kindest, most gentle people I've ever been around. And living with them. And whenever I film, you know, I really try to, I'm there in their houses, drinking tea with them in the morning, eating their food that they have. The film crew, they have responsibilities. So they go somewhere else and whatever sort of Safari Lodge they have or something. But I just, I understand that it's such a once in a lifetime experience. every day being with these people.

And the one thing that I just loved is being a part of the community for a few weeks and just seeing one thing that I love is there's always the sound of kids laughing and playing and giggling. That's just always in the background. And people are doing their things. And like you see the women preparing food. you know, I can remember one day we spent all day collecting nuts and it was like an all day walk to get the nuts. And then once we brought all the nuts in their baskets, the women all day are cracking nuts open that are really technical and hard and manual labor.

But women here are like, I have to cook all day, work my fingers to the bone. Yeah, they're working all day. But it's all the women all together chatting. gossiping, giggling, and sharing together time. And as they're doing it, the infants are right there. Their kids are right there. And they're having a great time. And they're, yeah, absolutely instrumental for keeping the kids giggling in the background,

keeping the elders healthy, keeping the society going. Having kids around, it makes things so much less serious. Oh, man, I get super broody when I get to these places. and I'm just seeing healthy kids laughing and everything. And here I am as a Westerner, not having my dream of having kids. And not, but being there, it's like, I'm living a lie. Like this is.

So, but then I think one thing that I loved is just seeing how, as the kids got older and they're not hanging out with their moms as they're doing their thing, the boys kind of get in their little mini tribe. They're like anywhere from, you know, four years old to, 13 years old, and then the girls go in their little posse of people. And if you know, a girl that's this old, however that old is, is able to take care, wants to carry around a doll. Yeah, yeah. In real life, that's an infant or somebody that can get away from the mom for a few

times. And they love it. And they grow up that way, growing, like taking care of their siblings, cousins, friends. They already know how to raise children from when they, they they start it this big. And they're in such safe company. And the girls make up their own games. They're singing songs that have been passed down from generations, hundreds of years old. They have these unique games that they're doing and dances. And they're all on their own. The boys are going out practicing hunting, but they're just getting themselves in trouble. Like, you know, shooting stuff with bows and arrows and coming up these crazy games. I was just watching them. Like, they'd take, they'd,

take sticks and they would polish them. Like these are little kids. They take special sticks that they know from the special tree and they would polish them and then they would they would, this is a really cool thing and they would put sand, they'd make these jumps of sand and these kids could throw these

sticks that looked like an arrow but didn't have anything. They were just a polished stick and they could get it to skip across the sand like it was on wheels and then it would go off a jump, this jump and then they would have target practice after that. It was It was awesome stuff I've never seen before.

So cool. And so ingenious, right? Yeah. Like they just come up with their own games. And again, they're safe. Like what's going to get them? Here, are kids on their own safe? No.

But they're every single person, they're a tribe. That kid might not even be remotely related to them. They treat them as their own. Yeah. If there was any problem, that's their child that they're responsible for. And there's no weird. There's no weirdness that compared to our society where we're inundated with weird distrust for reasons. Yeah, yeah.

But you live in a tribe. This creepy teacher, this creepy person, Cub Scout leader, whatever. Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't exist. And there, there's consequences to any kind of that behavior. Right. That is not in the gene pool. And you would die.

Right. And it's just their kind. the kind and it's That's so cool There's something to be said For like these kids Making up games with You know with whatever they have

Like I think as a westerner We kind of will view Like people living in this kind of environment And be like oh it's so sad That they don't have toys You know what I mean like they don't have toy Like we pity them When I actually think

You have more creative fun And you come up with more Interesting things to do And now you actually exercise your creativity more When you have fewer things to play with Well I could see right away. You know, I was a biology and art and jewelry teacher for 10 years. I had kids that were 18 years old. You're trying to get them to make small sculpture, metal silversmithing and make rings

and stuff, like really fundamental stuff. And these kids that are dexterity and understanding spatially how to make things is superior to an 18-year-old. And these kids might be six years old. Yeah. Like their ability to make things and think things through. and yeah, that... There's problem solving all day. It's problem solving all day long, and what we value in our current education is not real. You know, when you think about, like, how important,

what our bodies are capable of, like I was saying, those kids are so incredibly capable, they're an adult. Yeah. Yet we sort of want to pace all of our children, as if they meet a mark when they're in sixth grade, by the time they're 14 years old, they should be like this. Those kids, you just understand that there's no limitation

to what humans are capable of learning it from when they just start. But when I think about, the kids are taking care of themselves. They're safe. Here in our Western society, the typical is you have a husband and a wife taking care of a child on their own.

if you're lucky enough, like I don't know, where do your folks live? In Florida. Okay, so, but you want to stay in, I see you have a wedding ring? Yeah, Mary. Yeah. You have kids? Are you going to stay in New York?

You don't have family support. You don't have uncle support. Right. Are you going to trust your neighbors? Are you close enough with your neighbors to take care of your kids? No. So that's what's happening in Western society where we have such enormous demands on a partnership and raise this child on our own.

and you have worked so hard to maintain your career. You need your career to stay alive. There's so many things that are getting in the way of your lifestyle that you thought you needed. And over there, you carry on with your enjoyment of life. You have the entire tribe taking care of all your children. It's just how do you expect a partnership to work, a marriage to work, when it's just you three against the world. And then we're also, like, think of all the different job titles you've had, comedian, podcaster, hustler.

Your wife in her life today, I'm sure she's high functioning, power woman. Look at a highly qualified woman these days. They're going to change careers four or five times in their life. every single career sometimes dictates a different lifestyle you go you're going to work in the corporate world in New York

your whole what you eat the style furniture all that stuff is kind of like from there and then oh we're going to get you another job in Detroit they go there

working in a marketing thing they're different people and you're expected to follow your wife or your wife is supposed to it's like these demands and now we're becoming so different from one another

that it's like we choose partners, it's like impossible. Is my partner going to be a vegan? How much does she work out? What religion is she? What does she want to do with the kind of money that you make? What style is she? You know, there's like all these things where we're constantly changing. We have the world at our fingertips.

But you get into these indigenous communities, and none of that matters. You're all, the expectations of your life are, I'm going to hunt like all of my brothers and I'm going to raise kids. Yeah, it's all kind of ascribed to you in a way and it's an ancient lineage.

It's a culture that's grown up with that exact expectation which is really comfortable. I don't doubt that that would probably bring a lot of fulfillment and purpose. You know what I mean? I do think those are probably like the biggest indicators of happiness is like community purpose, competency.

Those three things I think are so fundamental. I think especially in the Western world in New York City specifically, you lose a lot of that. You know what I mean? Community kind of gets dissolved and things. So there's no question. There is a big dilemma when you, there's a lot of, I think, naivety when people look at, there was a while there on TV where they would have kind of like what I consider poverty porn. You know, you see these kids and they have dirty clothes or they have like flies on the face. they're trying to make it look as miserable conditions. And there are out there, but a majority of the time, yeah, these people don't have what we have. They have, everything that they have is that they're a resource of what they understand about nature. That's what they're getting. But, you know, the demise of the world is paved with good intentions. We think that they need our quality of life, our education, our understanding of the world, and we're going to go save them. Why do you want to save somebody that doesn't have anything, but all they do is laugh and love all day long. And you want to change that?

Because I know that you're not laughing and loving all day long. Right. In your time spending, like, living with tribal people, did you notice anything that you'd be like, oh, man, that is tricky or that is something that you wouldn't necessarily want to take part in? Like, is there any part of, like, a culture or a ritual tradition where you're like, ah, I wouldn't want to be a part of that? Yeah.

Because obviously there's so many positives. I'm one of these people that like, you tell me some tribal shit. I'm like, you know, I'm with that. Like, you know, sleep on the ground. That's how most people live. I'm like, yeah, I literally called my wife. I was like, we need to get a floor mat. I want to sleep on the floor.

Like, that's the way we should be living. Like, there's so many things. I could, we could go all day. We will. But I'm curious if there's any things you go, ah, it's actually the way we do it in the West is actually better. Well, yeah. And I have the, I was born with the illness, the disease. I'm not going to diss on that I have luxuries of being a westerner.

One of the best things is, I get to travel all around the world. How awesome is that? Yeah, that's cool. I was blessed with an education, and I can go to a library, read about anything in the entire world. I could go snowmobiling tomorrow, and I could go surfing tomorrow. I could be on a jet ski somewhere tomorrow. I can do all kinds of things, whatever I want.

The world is my oyster, right? That's kind of amazing, but it's also, once you know that you can have anything in the world, is there ever any contentment? Because you're always going to want the next best thing. And the way, especially Western capitalist society is structured, is we're being conditioned to try to get the newest, most advanced, most sparkly thing. and those sparkly things, we get disillusioned and think that those things represent who we are. And I have to fight that.

Believe me, you know, like I have a certain car or I'm building my house. I want it a certain way because I've been influenced by Pinterest and all that sort of stuff. But sometimes it just takes away from what is really important. And it should be brotherhood and those sort of things. So, yeah, me being able to constantly travel. and have these experiences, I always feel like, this is my reality check. I was only home for six months, and I realized I'm already in the rat race, doing stupid stuff. And I only have a certain amount of time for my friends.

And I'm starting to kind of prioritize my own selfishness. And, yeah, that's, I mean, that's, as we know, every day, the world is changing more than it, ever has ever before. And, you know, I always have a lot of empathy for indigenous people that are struggling when there's this divide even more. And like I said, the indigenous people and traditional living people, people without very little monetary resources get pushed, pushed, pushed further and further away into places that are just unsurvivable.

And we live our lives. We don't even know our impacts on not just them, but the natural environment. that we should all know is what we're totally completely dependent on. Yeah. Do you think you would ever, like, you know, maybe when you kind of slow down, maybe the show stops or something like that, do you think you would ever just live, like maybe in Ecuador, like with the family that you were living with there? Would you ever just kind of live off the grid for extended periods of time? Well, I guess my lifestyle now as a westerner and living that, like, I'm building my own house.

it's very influenced by the other half of my life living off the land. So I have an ability to live off-grid. I have developed the land to promote more wildlife because I love wildlife. I love the snakes. I love all that stuff. But also, if I needed to, I have deer. I have marmints. I have things that I can hunt if I had to.

I'm trying to work it out to where I can have fish and all that stuff because I have a little stream. I can make the place better than how I found it by using technology and understandings of what native people do because you would think native people that are eating monkeys all day would destroy the monkey population. Well, if they did that a thousand years ago, there wouldn't be any more monkeys,

but they have devised ways to make the rainforest where they live have more monkeys that they're eating every day. So they think like that. So I'm thinking about that too. How can I make the land better than how I found it? How can I make the soil richer? So I have a big garden. I love growing.

And that starts to become my lifestyle. Rather than spending my time at a job and doing that, I am fortunate enough to go like there is value in this. I'm not doing it to go like when the shit hits the fan. I'm not like that. A lot of people say I'm a survivalist. I'm not into like hoarding bullets when the shit goes down. I understand that the only way that we're ever going to live is by having a relationship with our neighbors that we don't like.

And knowing that, yeah, we might have different political values, but they will always know that I will help them at any time. And hopefully they would return the favor. That's the only way we're going to survive. And if I have a garden, you know, I'm going to do my best to make more food than what I need. Yeah. And so. That's interesting.

So these tribal people would actually try to create more hospitable environments to bring animals in? Yeah. Like they were intentional without, to not overhunt. Yeah. Oh, really? I mean, the places that were they discovered a way to overhunt, places like Easter Island, you know, those people killed themselves out. So it's just another example of evolution. Right.

We're genetically predisposed that the ones that are smart enough. to not overhunt persist and the ones that unfortunately overhunt die off. Yeah, the genetics at which mentalities were like, I'm not here to eat everything. I just, I'm here to eat what I need. And then there were people that survived because their genetics in their brain were like, wait, I can make more fish in this river if I did, if I made this kind of wetland or something like this.

Oh, interesting. And with the mentality, of I'm going to over harvest and I'm going to be a capitalist and market it. Well, that's why we today are not sustainable. Our world is not sustainable. I can't tell you when the human race is going to destroy itself if it ever does, but it's becoming more and more inhospitable for everyone on this planet more and more every day. Can you speak to some of like the, and speaking of like hunting and actually going out and acquiring food?

Can you speak up to like the interesting ritual dining experiences you've had with some of these tribal people? Like obviously there's, you know, sort of blood tribes that persist on drinking goat's blood primarily. I think you probably saw that episode where I was with the Samburu, which are a lot like the Maasai. If you get into places central and western Africa, again, they've been pushed to such inhospitable, harsh places that they can't be hunters and gather. There's simply not enough. Naturally, there's not enough gain to sustain human activity. So they have kind of brought technology, which was technology that may have been developed a thousand years ago, 500 years ago, but by taking cattle and domesticating them and hybridizing them and breeding them to where they can fit in these inhospitable areas, they live off their cattle.

these cattle are like not like American cattle these cattle eat like dried sticks you know and stuff like that but then again there's a culture that's around that and they couldn't survive without their cattle that eat sticks in 100 degree weather where these cattle aren't going to be able to drink water every day so that's a lifestyle there's a majority of the people tribal living people hundreds of different languages live like this every day. And in a lot of this kind of the Maasai culture, Masai, Samburu, that area is, the conditions are so harsh that they have to have the most able men to be able to take care of the cattle. So those are people that are from 16 to 23 years old.

And they're considered the warrior class. So the tribe themselves, the women, the elders, the children have to stay put. They can't afford to continually graze and move with the cattle. So the warrior class, the 16 to 23 year old men, go out with their cattle, their family's cattle, their tribes cattle, their community's cattle, and go out and feed their cattle. It's not like they go out and go peruse and then they come back the next day. they're gone years. Okay, they're gone. A 16-year-old has to take care of the cattle.

Those cattle are out there gone. They will not see their family until maybe they're 21, 22, 23 years old. So it's crazy, right? Like five years. Easy, yeah. When we were filming this episode, it was really interesting

because there's a lot of research being done to get into these communities. We don't just walk up and say, hey, let's start filming. Years in advance of planning, getting to know the people, seeing if it's appropriate that we film them, is it, you know, all that sort of stuff is, it's really through and through. And with this one, we were trying to show this amazing lifestyle. So trying to find the appropriate warriors and stuff. And we found the right

community. There was a community that had an affiliation with making some other films too. So they were kind of accustomed to what it would take to make a film and stuff. And we're like, okay, this is great. The settings, great, the landscape's beautiful. This is awesome. You guys are super traditional. You guys are accepting of us. Sweet. Okay. Where are the warriors? And we're talking to the women, you know, the moms. Like, where are you, and they're like, yeah, okay, so where are your warriors? We're going to try to do a documentary about them and they're like, I don't know. They're warriors. No, like, where's your son? Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. Like,

gone. He'll come back in like four years. That's the way it was. Wow. So then we're like, we start a manhunt for these, for these warriors, amongst hundreds of other warriors that are out there totally in this vast part of the world. Where are they living? They're just living out in the mountains, in the bush, in the deserts. Like building shelters out of what they find. In Africa's huge. So, you know, you can fit like three United States in Africa. So they have all this land, but nobody wants it. You can't do anything with it. It's so remote. You can't build roads there. There's no water. There's no way to grow crops. So they're there. That's why we haven't meddled with it. And how much cattle is one warrior going out with? That's a whole other talking point. But

when I was there, we were, okay, to find these people, we started the manhunt for these specific people. Couldn't find them. We're trying to ask other communities like, hey, have you seen these guys? We have pictures of them. And then pretty soon there was rumors. about like we were looking after them because they were in trouble and we were going to send them in jail. So then pretty soon, everybody was trying to keep them quiet. Like we're not going to say, but we eventually found them. And then we were lucky enough to document their lives and I followed them in their lives, what they do every day for years.

Once they get done being a warrior at 23, they go back to the tribe. They find a wife or the communities. they find a wife, they start a family, that's their next stage in life. Wow. But at that time in their life, they're warriors. And so I was there living with them as they would. They just have sandals that are made out of tires, basically a sarong. A sorong is like a sheet that's like a, you know, like a sorong, you know, like a, that's what they, that's traditional dress.

And then they had their spears. and they had a couple other unique items that they would just carry with them. And that was it. Wow. But in real life, though, if you see it in real life, they were all carrying AK-47s. So they all had this, but they had AK-47s

because they're warriors, and all the warriors traditionally carried spears and clubs. And so when they saw other warriors, like a group of like three or four brothers with 50 cows, their job is to either steal them or protect the cows, from other ones because the more cows you have, the richer you are, the richer your whole community is. Well, now the advancement is you can protect your cattle if you're stringing on an AK-47. So that was interesting. That was the one thing that we had to remove from the show

because it was just like such a distraction, you know. That's crazy. Yeah, it's crazy. So they're literally trying to like steal cattle for each other. Yeah, that's their thing. And if you think, they probably get pretty bored out there, you know, just fall in their cows. 17-year-old kid. So it's kind of like fun, fun stories being out there in, you know, frontier town. Wow. So how far would they kind of roam? Oh, hundreds of miles. Hundreds of miles.

And then when do they know to come back? Just eventually, you know, and there's all. And they might every once in a while come across a tribe or a community. And if there's a wedding going on or a circumcision ceremony or something like that, they would go in and they can kind of have a little bit of. social interaction, maybe groom a couple brides, you know, come back a couple years later, see if they're single, you know, all that sort of stuff. But when they're not with those far and few between little ceremonies and social gatherings,

the only thing that they have to eat is living off of their cattle. So they're only eating blood and milk for years. Wow. And so I did that too. So for two weeks, all I had to do, all I had the entire time. was in the morning we milked them and we chose one specific cow that they've already strategized because every day they have to go, they take a special little bow with a bone arrow with a little sharp metal blade and they would go right into the jugular and then a stream of blood would go

and they had a gourd like imagine a nowgene bottle. They'd fill that up with blood. The cows are healthy enough or big enough. They know because they know their cattle which ones are healthy enough. And then they just, once they get all the blood that they need for the day, they just put pressure on that vein, hold it there for about 30 seconds, 40 seconds, and then it just closes up and the cow walks away. All the cows are used to it. And so we would mix blood and milk and have like a blood milk smoothie. And that's all I had for two weeks. Amazing self-experiment, because, you know, where am I getting my water? Where am I getting my my greens where am I getting sometimes when we could find water because we have to give the cattle water when we could find it wow that was a whole other thing too but um yeah I was climbing mountains going through thorny bush doing it everything if you're thinking about the most efficient food in the entire world of what we need blood has everything that we need to our bodies can just kind of go blood to blood milk has all the fat all those other nutrients so if you're

you're taking two nutrients that our bodies would totally need is very efficient. It was amazing. After two weeks, I didn't take a shit. Really? It's like, well, for any more. I mean, it's like, because there's nothing there. It's just water and then just totally condensed. So I can remember by the time I had to, I was like, oh, man, this is going to be ugly.

This is going to be real bad. I got to go now. I got to go now. And by the time, not to be too graphic, but it was like, I just shit like a black golf ball. That was it. Really? But it had to go, yeah. Wow.

And it was hard as a rock. It was like a big black ball bearing coming out. Ding! Yeah. But, you know, that's what a feather in my hat to be able to, you just develop so much respect for these guys living like that. And I get to show the world that this is how people, other people live. You think your life is this way or whatever.

Wow. People go to this. And when I say, that's all they had. when we're on the ground I mean we would take our sarongs of nudity whatever it doesn't nobody cares about that stuff we haven't like gotten the evangelists

in there to say that our bodies should be shameful it's like whatever we put on this thin sheet on the ground we lay on that on the rocks everything for our pillow we find a rock and we put our tire sandal on the top of it and that's

and that is our pillow and that's what every night is for them Wow. And how did you sleep? One thing I think, one of my superpowers is being able to just sleep. Yeah. I can sleep on a plane. I can sleep kind of anywhere. And I think a lot of it's just conditioning. Like I said, a lot of these people, their understanding of what's uncomfortable and their threshold or their conditioning is incredible.

And I'm not at the level as a lot of these people, but my abilities to withstand uncomfortable is I think far superior to most people. Sure. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because I got to tell you about this sick little wrist accoutrement that I got on right here. I know it looks fashionable. I know it looks sick, but it's actually for my health so I can live a long time. This is known as the whoop.

You probably see me wearing it during this podcast, maybe on stage. And I'm telling you this is the single best device for tracking all of your health needs. I'm telling you it is the most advanced health and fitness wearable on the market. All right. And this October, I'm doing sober October. That's right. I'm not doing fentanyl one time this entire month or alcohol. Neither of those. And I'm actually joining the rest of the flagrant crew. Allegedly they're going to do it. Akash has been doing it his whole life. We're going to see if the other guys can keep up. I don't know. All I can say is that alcohol negatively affects my sleep drastically. I got my app right here. I'm kind of addicted. I track it every single morning because

I like to know how I'm sleeping every night. Alcohol kills it. So now that I know this, I guess, got to be very careful with my alcohol intake. I don't cut it out completely. I'm just a little bit more selective. If I got to perform the next day, I don't drink, and that's thanks to Whoop. So if you're interested in taking control of your health, if you're interested in learning about your own sleep habits, you can track your workouts. I use the fitness trainer so I can keep on task with my workouts. I work out better and I work out faster. And if you're interested in doing this for yourself, viewers of this show are actually going to get one month free trial when they sign up at join. dot whoop.com slash camp. That's right. That's join. Dot whoop.com slash camp.

Use a promo code camp and you're going to get one month free trial. See what kind of improvements in your health you can make for yourself. Let's get back to the show. Now, is this a custom that's done mostly by the Simbuhr? Or are there a lot of sort of... Yeah, a lot of Maasai language-based tribe. A lot of pastoral cultures is what they're called. You know, a lot of times they might have cattle or some other. We've made a couple programs where it's even harsher landscape, too harsh and too hot and too dry for cattle. Then we were with people like the rendile,

which they have to have camels, which the camels can go multiple days without water. You talk about another incredibly harsh. But living with them, same thing. Camel blood and camel milk. Wow. And just living with them. I mean, how many people like are just,

go on blood and milk? I mean, is it most of these pastoral communities? You can say millions. Wow. Millions of people. That's wild. And you felt good. Like you had energy throughout the day. Yeah. Yeah. It was an experiment. I mean, it felt like I should be hungry, you know, because you didn't have really a lot in your belly. Yeah.

But energy-wise, I had everything that I needed. But I think, you think about that, but I think the world that's probably watching this podcast needs to understand that half of the world, half of the world's population doesn't know where their dinner will come from or even if they will have dinner. You got to understand that. And what do you mean by that? Do you mean poverty or do you mean hunting a gathering?

No, poverty, but just like they didn't have dinner plant. They got to go out and look for it. They're going to hunt. When you hunt, you don't know what you're going to get. When you go fishing, you don't know what you're going to get. And it can be anything from, you go to Southeast Asia, their predominant protein source are insects. So you don't know what kind of insects are you going to get that day or eels or frogs or crayfish. You know, they might be growing rice and they can get rice, but they need all these other things.

So, yeah, like I said, they don't know. They just get whatever they're lucky enough to find, but they have the skills, you know. luck happens to those people that are prepared. Right. And they're prepared. And I think a lot of people think, oh, they don't have anything to eat or they can't find enough to eat. Well, our priorities in life are finding food. Yeah.

So it's not like they're not thinking about that. So they might not have all these things, but they know that they have confidence. And unless there's like, you know, sometimes you get big droughts and blights or things like that, that become really stressful times. But for the most part, people have pretty good food security. They know that there's some sort of a backup. You know, if they might not be able to hunt that day, they got bad luck, but they do know tomorrow it'll be a trek, but they know a tree that has nuts on it that will, you know,

they kind of live like that. A lot of them, they'll have backups. Wow. But you think it was like, oh, man, it's like, it seems kind of pretty. primitive. Okay. As a westerner, how about all the stores and restaurants are not there? Wait, I planned on having food. You have way less food security than all these, the other half of the world has. Because it's just freely available. You can just go out and just grab. Well, like, again, you're, you're going to be hard pressed to find any place on the planet.

it except maybe Antarctica that has not been manipulated by humans. We might not see it. You could go into the smack dab in the middle of the Brazilian rainforest, and it is so pristine and I'm like untouched. Well, now with technology like LiDAR and all this sort of stuff, you can go back 500 years ago. And there were millions, maybe even billions. No, I'd say millions anyway.

Millions of people modifying the landscape to sustain their societies, like their civilizations. We look at mega societies like some of the ones in Southeast Asia. Then you've got like Mayan, Incan, Aztec. They were incredibly sophisticated. Egypt. Yeah, these are massive cities. They were manipulating the land. landscape to sustain thousands and thousands of people, a very sophisticated culture.

They said the cultures that were in when the first voyage, white people came to New York, if you really look at the accounts, they were incredibly sophisticated, just like Aztec, Mayan, but we don't see remnants of it because they weren't making the structures out of stone. They was all wooden fences and wooden structures and all that, the stuff that has decayed 500 years ago. But there were hundreds of thousands of people, native people living along this east right here. Wow. And it was very sophisticated. Interesting.

Now we don't see, there's not even, you couldn't even find remnants of that. It's like not even in our imaginations. Wow. But people have been on this planet for a long time. And when you look at our society, like right now, this is just a drop in the bucket compared to what humans have been doing to the planet. So, yeah, they're finding out now in the central Amazon that seems like miles and miles and miles of untouched. Actually, it was hand-dug canals all over the place, enormous gardens, enormous fish hatcheries, things like that. But something happened in human history, whether it was some sort of a disease that wiped them out, warfare, change in society.

they're showing in humans in areas they went from becoming hunters and gatherers, pastoralists, agriculturalists, sophisticated, going back to small tribes and being hunters and gathers again. Like people fluctuate when you think about over thousands of years. There is a belief that kind of just is all linear that's like, oh, they do this, this, this, it's like, no, no, no, you become, you know, agrarian and then you revert because everyone dies out or you have to break off and go to a different area. and you go back to pastoralists and then back up.

And no, it's not a linear progression. It's a lot of ups and downs. Yeah. Very interesting. And they, when you think about when the Spanish came, they were looking for gold. There was hundreds of different language groups in the areas that they were trying to conquer.

They brought with them unintentionally, and then eventually, intentionally, their diseases, primarily smallpox. People don't, people are like nowadays, we have the luxury of being like anti-vaccine and all that stuff. People don't realize smallpox is not something that we have to have a consideration for. Smallpox wiped out three quarters of the population of South America. Wow.

South America is enormous. It's way bigger than the United States. And three quarters. Imagine if smallpox didn't go through and wipe out three quarters of the population. every, all of our skin colors would be darker, you know, because it was a mega population. But that happened all throughout the world. Wow. And so those things, if you look about, if you look over hundreds of thousands of years, those things have been happening.

Are there pastoralist tribal communities in South America? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mostly like at this time, it's kind of, well, rant modern day ranchers. You could say that they're pastoralists. You know, and there's a lot of bakeros and caballeros and all that stuff all throughout different places.

And there's goat herders and little different ways of life. And, you know, I don't want to just say that I work with, as I've had this kind of career and lifestyle, I don't really say, oh, they're a tribal community, their tribal knowledge. I just say traditional living people because they're living traditionally. but they may have been tribal at one point. You don't necessarily consider them tribal, but now they're still living off the land. They're living off of traditions that have been passed down,

maybe only two generations, three generations, but it's still an interesting enough story, interesting enough lifestyle to be able to make a program about. What's an example of being out with one of these traditional living communities that identified something about the land that you would have never seen, or that was just like so ingenious, like someone being like, oh, this little piece of fungus is actually like really delicious. Or, oh, if you go through like behind this tree, there's actually a ton of grubs that you can eat.

Like, are you ever exposed to like little things where you just realize like, oh, wow, these people are genius and they are complete masters of the environment. You're saying such a specific question that's like as if there's a specific answer. That is everything. That is everything these people know. Like with everything. Like they know, it's just their knowledge is just immense. You know, I can remember like going with traditional living people and like trackers. You know, you're looking at a pile of leaves and everything.

And in their eyes, they see a tape here walk through here. Two days ago there were some deer. Oh, Kuwait. Mondays just came through. Wow. This morning and the Quattamundis were catching fish from that pond over the, like you can read the land like that. Just from looking at a path of dirt. Just from looking, yeah.

Wow. You look at it's like, there are leaves. They don't have paw prints. They don't have, but they can read the land like that. Yeah. And I don't have, this stuff is not a superpower. We can try to make it supernatural or something. None of this is that way.

It's practice. It's learning. It's going to school from your dad, from your grandma, and it's been refined. And they know things that we're all capable of, but we're not conditioned to sing. And it's just like if somebody took the candlestick off your mantle, you'd be like, what happened? There was a candlestick right there. I know where it was. I know where my glasses are in my cabinet.

their life is, you know, it's not a candlestick on a mantle, it's a footprint that is different. And they know that and they read that. So I guess that understanding and I could just go off. Yeah. And it's just to me, to me it's my normal. So it's hard for me to say like a specific story. But they're constantly like inspiring me and constantly blowing my mind. I saw this video a while ago.

I forget which group or where it was, but basically they were able to collect like remnants of salt from a nearby stone. And they take the salt and they basically start feeding like a local monkey population. Oh, right, yeah. I forget what, I don't know any of the details. And they slowly kind of get them like kind of accustomed to the salt.

And what they do is, oh, actually, I might be mixing up details here. Basically, they get them accustomed to a specific type of fruit, and they really like the fruit. And then they put the fruit inside, like, a small trap where basically the monkey's able to put its hand into the trap, but when its hands in a fist, it can't take it out. And then the monkey gets stuck because it goes, I don't want to let go of the food, but I can't get my hand out.

And so then they start feeding the monkey salt. And then the monkey gets so much salt in its throat, it gets so thirsty that when they basically take the monkey out of the trap and release it, it runs right to a water source. and then they're able to identify where the water source is from where the local animal takes it. And it was just like one of these things where it's just like, wow, this is so genius.

Like such a genius way of understanding the land and using the resources and the animal wisdom around you to learn how to survive in the land. Have you ever seen examples of anything like that or things of that nature? Again, it's like we've been talking about rainforest and we've been talking about Africa, but another landscape that we're in,

lot is like tropical Pacific islander like fishermen people. And their understanding of the coral reef, if that's where they are. Or you can go into Indonesia where they don't have coral reefs, but they have seagrass beds. And they're understanding. And it's like you can be with these people that survive off the ocean. And I love just saying, you know, these little kids that you have sitting on your lap, know the name of 250 different fish. Wow.

They can go swim without goggles or anything and name every single fish. They don't just know the name. They know what they eat. They know what season they're coming in. They know when they're breeding. When they breed, they live in this kind of coral. They know what they're eating

and they know how to catch every single different fish at different times a year, at different weather conditions. this is the kid that's sitting on your lap. Yeah. And that's the beginning of their knowledge that they acquire. Then imagine spending every day out getting your lunch, breakfast, dinner, every day going out there, getting everything you need from the coral reef. And you're with other people that are doing the same.

Yeah. You're learning so much about everything. And then, as an elder, you have the luxury of teaching those little kids again. Yeah, and it all restarts. Exactly. And it's just like, we're so incredibly brilliant and smart and our abilities to know things. But everything we know as a Western is just kind of like everywhere and it winds up just being distractions, you know. What do we do with all this knowledge?

They apply it. It's just awesome. Yeah, they're masters of such specific types of knowledge. They might not know football rules or whatever the fuck. But every part of their brain is focused on one's, specific element in one specific piece of land. And it's really amazing to see how ingenious you can be when you become so familiar with one little place.

And one of the things about tribal communities or traditional living communities that I find so interesting is I guess like the spiritual and like drug culture. Yeah. That goes along with a lot of them. Obviously we're familiar with like ayahuasca and peyote. I'll go into that. Yeah. I'm curious.

Have you had experiences with those types of ceremonies? Sure. But like I said, you keep, you give me a topic and then you refine, I'll get a story. Yeah, yeah. I got a story going back. You were saying about, like, what they know. Yeah. So I was hanging out with these kids.

They were like 12 years old, 12, 13. And we were spearfishing. And they have these goggles. You can't just go to the store and buy some goggles at Wally World. They, like, get driftwood. They carve out the driftwood. They make goggles that are shaped custom to their face. They'll get glass that washes up on the beach, like bottoms of Coke bottles and stuff.

they can polish the glass, make it totally smooth, totally clear. They glue them in. You'll see this in different episodes that we have. They'll glue them in with tree resins, animal, like, hide different glues that you can get from stuff from animals, you know, stuff like that. And they have them. And then they can see under the water. And then they make their own fish and spears out of, again, driftwood, debris that's washed up with Chinese letters on it and stuff like that and they improvise and

make things out of it. And then voila, they improvise a spear. And then those little 12 year olds go out and go spear fishing and then bring home food for their families. You know, this is what they do. Making goggles is so clever. Yeah, bringing home the bacon. But I was just hanging out with these kids like, they're just doing it just like, because they know and it's fun and I'm a kid. So let's just go. Let's just go see what happens. I didn't know what to do. I'm like fiddling around. fiddle farting with like a spear that they made. I don't know what the hell. Compared to them,

they never miss. You know, like those guys, they see something, they'll get it, you know? And I have crazy stories about that too, but staying, I can remember where we were going. They were in a place where they were looking for octopus.

And so they were like looking around. They know how to see just certain holes and things. They know exactly where to look. And where is this? This time, this one was in the Solomon Islands. Oh, cool. A pretty remote area.

And I was going with them. And they found an octopus. They got it. Sweet. Okay, cool. This is a big enough octopus to feed their family for the day or whatever. But then as they were coming home, they saw this big coral, had a coral. And they were like, oh, this is a good place.

They looked underneath it. And there were lobsters that were way deep in the coral. You know, this is a, this is kind of like a, it was like a shelf of coral that was about as big as two of these tables, you know. So you couldn't reach in and stuff. And you don't want to really reach in to because there's more eels that'll rip your thumbs off and stuff like that. And, but they could see them way in there. Impossible to get. So what they did is they took the octopus and they put it at the end of their spear and then put it in the bottom of it.

Well, an octopus is a mortal enemy to lobsters because octopus eat lobsters. You would think that lobsters are just like sitting around cockroach. They don't have brains. Well, they know the threats. The minute that they saw the octopus in there, they bolted in all directions. But the kids knew what was happening. So the kids were like under the water holding their breath around it, like about 10 feet away from the coral head. And it was like I was under the water seeing this.

I didn't know what was about to happen. I was just watching it unfold. I didn't know about this. They don't teach you this in books, you know? You have to see it. And they just put it down there. And all of a sudden it just like shot out all these lobsters going super fast swimming out. How many?

There was like 10. Wow. And, you know, it's like a crayfish or shrimp. You know, they go backwards and they're super fast. And these kids were catching them under the water like, Like one-handed catches like a baseball. They were like, phew. And they were like shoved and they were like catching them and running after them.

And when I saw this and seeing just how they were like shooting out like lasers and they just like catch them, you know? And I was under the water and I cracked up. I was so overwhelmed with wow. I was like cracking up under the water. And I was like, I could have drowned today because it was like all. my ears got it. I was just like seeing this. And I had to bolt up to the surface and just crack up. I was like, that is amazing. Oh, that's fine. They got like, they have, and they didn't,

weren't wearing anything but shorts and they were like cram and lobsters into their, into their shorts and stuff. And it was like, it was just hilarious. And they were just like little 12 year old kids, like out for recess. Yeah. It was just awesome. Oh, we want to get these lobsters. We can't get it. Get the octopus, scare them, get them out, grab them. Yeah. And it was just like, that was just one. trick that I think I told when I was trying to pitch this show about like

these indigenous people are amazing I was always saying pardon my friends but I said the shit that these guys are doing every day is stuff I haven't seen on television ever before. You can listen to my stories

you won't believe them and I remember finally there was the company that believed in me because I was just a kid and didn't have any television experience. I'm just a small town boy. There was a company

called Icon Films. They're the same film company that makes River Monsters. And very enlightened company. It was a father, husband, wife, team that run the business. And they didn't take me seriously, but then they started hearing stories secondhand

of what my lifestyle was like, is like, you know? And then we kind of had a conversation and I was like, I told him, yeah. The thing that these people are that I was raised by since I was 19 what they do is amazing you I've never seen it on TV yeah what and then I told them I said but it'd be impossible to like make a show about it because you don't ever know what's going to happen and that just pissed them off and then they said okay we'll go

down and I said well I'm going down in April you know for just doing my own thing and that was Ecuador yeah and then and then that company came down um his daughter just wound up it was going to Ecuador. His daughter just serendipitously was working in an orphanage way up in the mountains. He wanted to go see her. So he's like, okay, well, this is all working out. And then they brought one of their camera people, and we just shot a pilot. And I said, when they were filming, I said, you cannot plan what you're going to see. You just have to keep the record button on, because it will just, something amazing will happen. You will not know how to get the right shot and position yourself, you're just going to have to roll with the punches.

And that's what we did. We stayed there. We were just there for about just a couple days they could afford for a pilot. You know, there's no money there. But during that time, it was like, okay, I think we're going to go hunt monkeys. This is going to be great. Blow guns, all that stuff. Ooh, great, great. They have it all planned out. No. Trencial rains came down. And then the tribal group that I was with, we went out. There was a hunting party with women and children. and guys carrying spears and blow guns. And then all of a sudden it rained. And one of the women saw this giant bees nest up in a tree.

And then all of a sudden, all plants stopped. It was awesome because they found this bees nest. It was raining when it rains that hard. It's difficult for the bees to fly. They wound up just cutting down the tree with the machete, this big huge tree. And then it just, it was full on. It was like you can't stop them. And then what we wound up, when you say like people bag, it's very disrespectful for like they bagged the deer, they bagged the pig, they bagged whatever.

No, they bagged a huge enormous bees nest full of honey, full of grubs, full of, you know, all that stuff. And it was again, absolute total complete chaos. People are laughing. People are getting stung by hundreds of bees. and when we took that, that was part of our pilot. It was just like, yeah, we couldn't plan this. We didn't wake up and plan like on day three. We're going to go see this.

It was just like, you keep the cameras rolling. And then when we pitched it to like Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, BBC, it was National Geographic. And they saw it. And like the essentially like the CEO was like, I saw that. I saw that five minutes of film of just like. a pilot teaser. It was like, that B sequence is the most exciting bit of film I've ever seen in my career. Wow.

And it was totally an amateur, like Yahoo kid just being with them and rolling with their punches. Wow. And it was, but it wasn't me. It was the people that stole the show. And that's what I really hope is always going to be there, you know. Yeah, yeah. I mean, how do you cut down a bee's nest? Like, you just literally get a machete, chop it down.

Oh, yeah, it was total complete chaos. What do you? Like cutting down a tree like this big. with just a machete and then going and like tackling this big bees nest and there's like bees in our hair and things are stinging and getting into our ears and everything. And they're stinging the shit out of you? Oh yeah, yeah. And like kids are just diving in and getting handfuls of honeycomb and dead bees and slurping down. Everybody's drunk off of honey and everybody's like naked rolling around in the mud trying to get bees off of them.

It was hilarious. It was awesome. We had to like blur out all kinds of things because there was. There's just nudity everywhere. Everybody had to shed their clothes and stuff because the bees were everywhere. And that's not dangerous? Like ball sacks and boobs everywhere. It's really hard to add it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's kind of fire. But you're not worried about, like, bee stings? Like, is that dangerous if you get stung by too many bees? That was another, you know, you just get, that was, I went and lived with these people when I was 19. I thought that I would go on a trip for a couple weeks. And it wound up being eight months of my life being taken in.

by an indigenous community for the, you know, I'm from Native American ancestry, but I was with Native Americans, Amerindians, that by the time I was invited to their house for the first time, taken in by some little kids, and just seeing that

dad walks in with dinner. It was a dead pig strapped to his back, and he had a spear in his hand. That was what we ate. I was like, whoa, whoa, I haven't seen this. And then the next day hanging out with the kids And what we were going to do is they're on a mission I don't know the language Why are we going?

Why are we traipsing through the swamp and the mud? And then all of a sudden they find this tree that's like this big And at that time, every tree looked like a tree. Yeah. And they're like, they cut this one tree down and I remember it had purple wood. I was like, why did we trudge all day to find this little piece of wood? And then I realized this is a very, very special. pole to rot resistant. That's what they use. It's so strong that they use it for their canoeing going up and down the river. It's super strong, but it still floats. So if they lose the pole, and it has all these qualities. And I was just like, whoa, we went all that way. But then you realize, again, my eyes were opened. When I first stepped foot in the rainforest, it was like, it was all green. Yeah. Now I recognize, and I know there's 250 different species of trees.

in one acre. Yeah. Okay? 250 species of trees in one acre. If you take hundreds of acres, there's a thousand different kinds. And these kids and these families know every single name of every tree and know that every single tree has a use. Whether you make rope out of it, whether you make glue out of it, whether you make this

kind of medicine out of it, whether you make this kind of rot resistant pole for your house. This is the kind of things when it's in fruit does this. This is the kind of tree that they use for thatching. so everything they needed, their whole pharmacy, grocery store, hardware store is right there. Yeah. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because you need a clean and healthy alternative to give you energy throughout the day.

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Like just with nothing. Like you had nothing on you. Where'd you'd be like, I'd go to the Amazon? Like really? Yeah, it's full of food. I was like, which is just so funny to me

because in my mind I'm like, oh, food is a restaurant. You know what I mean? Like if I go on a hike in the woods, like up stay with my wife, I'm like, we have to bring food because where we're going there is no food.

Which is socially true, but technically the exact opposite of the truth. When you walk out there, it's like, oh yeah, there's, you know, rope over there and there's medicine over there. and there's food right there. It's right here and it's all free. Yeah. It's literally just sitting there. Yeah. I remember I made a joke. There was like this wonderful lady and she was totally traditional,

no clothes, anything, and just like giggled and laughed all the time. But I was like, and at that time, eventually later on I was, I had a business run and tours, jungle trips and stuff. And she was just laughing at us, you know, and we didn't know exactly what I were laughing about, but one of the clients after kind of, again, their eyes were open to just how much knowledge there is about everything. And she said, you know, I bet she's thinking, oh yeah, you guys, you foreigners, you got Wally World, you got your cars, you got, you know, Lowe's, Home Depot, you got all that. But we got the whole damn forest, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that's why I stayed there because

when I was a little kid, I was just a, I think I was a social, I was socially awkward. I didn't have a lot of friends. Kids made fun of me because I don't know. I was just different, right? And so I guess how I found my friends was I was always catching grasshoppers, praying manuses, looking for snakes. I had wall-to-wall aquariums. I was totally fixated about nature. So there was no stop in me.

I had to live my life around nature. It's just how I was and always just dreamed about being a biologist and being in these areas with all these kinds of snakes, the same kind of snakes that were in all the books that I was reading when I was a little kid. And so that was the first time in my life. I come from a background where nobody's ever traveled. Nobody's had an education. I got really lucky, you know. in a lot of ways, my mom and dad broke the poverty line. And so I think that was kind of a real advantage that I had because I was so incredibly naive.

Nobody could tell me how to travel. I went into school not knowing nobody was older than me to say this is what school is going to be like. It was how you study. It was like, I just like got thrown into the river. Yeah, yeah. And then. Did you do good when you were at school when you were younger? Were you good at school?

No, I was just talking with my friend over here. Like, I just, I mean, that is a whole other story of just how lucky I was, considering my mom's Native American, has nine brothers and sisters, totally poverty-stricken. My dad coming from, like, you know, having a mom and dad that didn't know how to drive or anything like that, and then they meet. But, you know, I didn't necessarily have that academic guidance from, like, all the other kids where their dad was a single income family at that time, you know, or families,

all those kids, like their dad was a doctor, worked the tire store or whatever, and the mom didn't work. She just took care of the kids and did, it was like a parent teacher's PTA and stuff. But both my parents had to work and struggle and stuff. So I didn't have that kind of support. So I think how I navigated school was different. And I didn't recognize it until I was way later. But like I didn't know what, I didn't know what fashion was.

Thanks for pimping me. out with this totally red shirt. Yeah, kids super. But then I look at the shirt and I'm like, oh yeah, cool, California poppies. But those are just like plastic plants because California poppies have a different kind of leaf. Anyways. That's funny. But yeah.

And so I was just, I didn't know why kids were always making fun of me. But it was because my parents just dressed me and I didn't know what was cool or anything. And then I think the one, nobody gets. ever make fun of me because I was doing something so different than them. Like every time I tried to play football, I wasn't playing football right. So then people made fun of me. I was always like the lowest reading level. I was put into like I seriously at that time I was, you know, when it was math time, I was pulled out of class and I was learning math with my fellow, my fellow classmates that had Down syndrome and stuff like at that era, you know, they didn't have names for ADHD.

and all that sort of stuff. And I just kind of got on that track of just being considered delayed. Wow. But I was so passionate about nature, my folks were like, somehow you have to go to college. You have to be a biologist.

You want to be. They didn't know how I could do it. They didn't know how to afford it. But I went in there, and I think I went in to college thinking, oh, I'm going to learn about even more names of snakes. Yeah.

And I'm going to, no, you learn about freaking organic chemistry and the Krebs cycle and horrifically boring horrible stuff. And I'm not that smart, smart enough to learn at that time. So it was like, man, if I'm really going to be a biologist, I'm going to, I pretty much dropped out of school after two quarters, so just a number of months. And I was like, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to have to just go to Ecuador. Well, go to South America. And then I dwindled it down to like that Ecuador seems to be a place that would be cool,

seems safe enough. I was mowing lawns at that time for money. The plane ticket was $680. I had $78 left over and a passport. And I had my camping equipment that I used when I was in high school. I brought all that and I thought, I'm going to go to the jungle, go to the end of the road. I'm going to camp. And when my $78 runs out, I got to go back. But I was way into, what I really wanted to do was be an ichthyologist, a biologist, a fish biologist. and I loved all the freshwater tropical fish because that's what was in my aquariums and everything. So I wanted to see it in real life. So I wanted to go to these rivers and I thought, wow, I'm good enough fishermen catching trout and bass back home. I can go do that in rivers over there and catch Oscars and angel fish and all that sort of stuff. And then rice is cheap enough, about a 20 pound

bag of rice, had my camping equipment, my little stove and all that stuff. I learned real quick that all that stuff doesn't really apply to where I was at, but I tried it. And I was shy. I didn't know the language. I thought, you know, from where I come from, you know, everybody was like, you're going to get kidnapped. You're going to get, you're going to die. And so I was just kind of, I went there with so much fear.

And I was essentially hiding. I did get to the end of the road as far as the road would take me. I hiked up a river, found a place that was like, oh, this would be cool to camp out. And I was hiding, essentially hiding from the world. And I was just going to live by myself, like call of the wild, and then just go fishing, get my protein, mix it with rice. And $78 later, in a few weeks I'd have to go back. But what happened was I was in a place that was so remote. I got discovered by, like, the kids that are fishing along the river too.

and they eventually over like two weeks they told their parents which are indigenous of that community like yeah he's just living this white kid just living in a tent his tent is rotting away and I'm kind of concerned because he's sleeping in a huge mud puddle

because every time it rains you know I had to learn all these things on my own you didn't know where to sit at your camp you didn't know where to be. No I didn't know anything and there's no cell phones there's no YouTube there's no anything I was just like

learned everything the hard You know, my feet are rotting. I got crotch rot because I couldn't keep my shorts dry and all that stuff. But then I got taken in by a local indigenous family or Kichua. And that was when, like I said, they just, dad came in with a pig strapped over his shoulders. Wow. And then looking at their house and everything's made out of crushed palm and crushed bamboo and thatched roof. And they pretty much, there's that.

Christian, my casa is your house. It's like, my house is your house. And after just spending one evening with them, they were like, you should, why don't you just come live with us? You love nature. And I obviously, they're going to be my best teachers, way better than these teachers at the university. And they know the names of the stuff. They know where to find it. And every day we can go look for bugs and snakes. It's freaking awesome. So that was, they just said, come live with me and come live with us. And then we wound up live. with them and then finding a way to kind of earn my keep by pulling up and down the river and carting, carting coffee around and stuff like that. You had like a job within the family. Yeah, like just trying to, and then eight months later, I had to return back or else I'd be kicked out of school forever because my grade point was so horrible. Yeah. I just barely got into school.

But I can remember going back to school and I was the only kid with a tan. The first day of school, everybody else was just like. like a bunch of white people, like, what have you been doing all summer? And I was just hardened. And in that eight months, I learned two languages. I'd been living without electricity for eight months. Yeah, what do they speak? Spanish?

That was Kichu and Spanish. Wow. So, like, you can imagine, it's such an impressionable age at 19. My whole perspective of the world had changed. And then I'd come back to this, like, all these people know nothing about what I experienced. I can't even have a conversation about what I had experienced. So I finished that year. And as soon as first day of summer, I was back in that same place.

And that just continued and wound up being half of my life in my 20s. Wow. And then I kind of refined my travels as I was in my 30s of like branching out of South American, going into remote Southeast Asia, remote South Pacific. And it was just my passion, you know. What does Kichua sound like? Does it sound like Spanish? No, different.

Like, I don't know. Like, Coca-Cola is, um, is, uh, Mishki Yaniyaku. Which means sweet black water. Ah, that's funny. Yeah. Oh, that's funny. It's like that. Is it, how is the language set up?

Is it like the similar structure to Spanish? Or is it just completely its own thing, like unrelated to, yeah, it's unrelated to Spanish. Wow. Yeah. I mean, don't get me going down the rabbit hole of just how fascinating language is. Yeah. And that's another thing. So much of this knowledge that I'm talking about right now is, you know, it's like,

it ain't nothing compared to what's out there. But every day our life is changing more and more. There's becoming less and less traditional knowledge. This information that's been acquired over generations is not being passed on to the next generation. It's happening more and more. Along with that languages, every day we're losing languages. About 50 years ago, 50 years ago, 50 years ago, we are losing about three languages a day throughout the world.

Wow. Now all those languages have been wiped out to where now, we're losing a language about one every four days in the world. Just where I come from in Washington State, in the northwest, you've got at one time, let's just say 200 years ago, we had all of these different tribes. there's about within Washington, Idaho, and Oregon, there was about 200 different tribes.

Wow, 200 different dialects probably and all unique kind of languages. Now, there may be two languages that were even recorded. Wow. And there's no traditional speakers. Wow. And that's happening all throughout the world. So much wisdom is possessed within the languages themselves.

Absolutely. A way of looking at the world. Yeah, it's interesting. I wonder if, did you find that with, With Kichua, like the way that they spoke, like the words that they used to describe things is completely different than anything you had experienced. Do you have examples of that? Well, you know, I'm always interested to see how languages are, like they represent the landscape. A lot of them, like those languages were derived from animal sounds, you know, and then they were turned into words and stuff like that.

You know, it's really interesting. but like Oh, that's interesting. But, you know, there's a lot of times when I want to like speak romantically about things. I'd rather say it in Spanish. You know? And it's pretty cool because, well, look at our language today. This is an idea right now, like the English language.

We're having these new words. Let's, let's download this. Type that into your brain. I'm switched on. it's like all about our environment, our current environment. You know, download this information. Are you, are you? And I mean, it's just something to examine.

Yeah, yeah. If you want me to go down into, like, fascinating languages, like you go into Papua New Guinea, which still has the most current linguistic diversity in the world. A couple hundred years ago, there was easily 3,000 languages. Now there's probably 400 languages. now.

And you go into any of those tribes, even to this day, one tribal person that speaks their language, they also know five other languages. Wow. That are like languages and communities that are just up and down the river. Wow. That's really interesting. It's really, really interesting. The family that you were with, the house that they were actually in, you said it was

like palm and like thatched roof. Yeah. Is it single bedroom or are there multiple rooms within the one home? That one was pretty much their... They're, for the most part, either just not even walls. So they're all living just on the floor. Or there might be one room. But you get into other places like Sumatra where you have, or like traditional Native American like along the West Coast that was all like community houses where there would be five, six, seven families all living under the same house that they would build.

Wow. They're all different. I'm always curious, like, how, like, romantic and like sexual relationships work. Like if you have, you know, three, five kids all living in like a single kind of thatched, you know, house. Like, are they more private about it? Like, do they go off into like, do you know? That's pretty interesting. There is, you know, a lot of times they'll sneak off to the garden or something or sometimes sexuality is just like in your face.

Yeah. You know, like if there's a party, people are just having sex with everybody. You know, in some cultures, this is just like a total origin. They just, you know, take your hand. Yeah. What is that? I will say, a lot of people have those questions. Do you ever get it on with any?

I was like, no, that's not really my thing, but I see it. So what happened? Can you give me like an example of that? Like, where there's just like a sex party that happened up? I've seen, yeah. Yeah, I've seen like. Where was that? Well, the Wal-Rani traditionally have been pretty frisky.

But then, you know, you get these missionaries coming in and they change all that right quick. I mean, that's missionary. They introduce missionary. They do that. You know, they teach people that they should be ashamed of their bodies and they need to wear clothes. And what I learned when I was 19 is the reason why I had crotch rot is because I was,

the reason why I had transfoot and crotch rod is I was, had all these clothes. Yeah, you're wearing clothes too much. And they were all wet and they wouldn't dry out. Yeah, yeah. And the Walrani, traditionally, male and women, they just totally barefoot. Their feet are conditioned, tough as nails. They don't wear shoes. but they don't get trench foot.

Yeah. And their only clothing is a wild cotton cord that they put around their torso. If they don't have that, they consider themselves naked. But that's all they have. Traditionally. Now, you don't see any young people carrying on life like that. Instead, they're wearing Western clothes that are all wet, mildewy, covered with stains. Yeah.

They can't go and continually get brand new clothes. Of course. But they're suffering from skin infections, all these sort of things, just to kind of comply with the norms of the world. Wow. And, you know, that's something I really struggle with. Like I was saying, this traditional knowledge is being lost. And with Western influence, with TV and magazines and Marlboro commercials, we are like this disease that is, taking over the world and showing other people that they need to live like this that doesn't relate to humanity.

And the Walrani, where are that? The Walrani are in eastern Ecuador, kind of right on the border of Peru. And they're pretty like sexually open? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's a, it's interesting. There's even, I would like to know, like.

if I could really dive into like and have the authority to say, you know, I'm an anthropologist. But hopefully I will know more about individuals. But like I'm really interested to see like there is homosexuality. I've seen in some cultures and other cultures totally non-existent. But I have seen that. I've seen. You were you were trying to mention like ayahuasca and drug usage and stuff. What I've seen is like, and my belief, my understanding.

of what I think of what I've seen in my life is some people are just innately gay. You know, you've all grown up with a kid that was just feminine or whatever. And of course, of course you're going to come out of the closet. You know, that's your thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then now we're in an era where it's hard to tell people, people want, and like people want to poop in a cat litter box, you know, now. Like, you don't know what they're going to do.

And there's like, it's all over. Yeah. There ain't no more rules. But, you know, I've noticed a lot of times. times, like the key to a culture where I was doing a lot of work, like living with in South America, like really feminine males or gay males, they were born considering they were considered to have a gift. You know, they have male qualities and feminine maternal qualities. And that gives them a gift, a different insight than anybody else. And so oftentimes they're the spiritual leaders. They

wind up being the shaman. They wind up being the medicine men. So they were born with the gift. You could even look at traditional Hawaiian culture. Like you look at Mahu and stuff, they still view that. You know, being gay is considered a gift. Interesting. And they understand that. And there's a place for them. There's like a spiritual narrative that they're imbued with like a masculine and a feminine. Oh, that's interesting. Which I think is really neat. But then again, there are different Western cultures, missionaries, go in there and say that's all wrong. It's all, you know, it's like, yeah, they've been doing it for 10,000 years. You've been living your life, Western life, for 100 years. Like, why do you think you're so good at that? Yeah. And you're, and you're not at all sustainable. Yeah.

Wait, where are these orgies happening? You mentioned orgies. I'm like, oh, well, just like sometimes it might be like, there might be a big party where all the different communities are like, hey, we're going to have a big party. You know, something for, whatever. there might be a wedding, I don't know, whatever party they might have, seasonal party, and then they wind up. With that culture, they wound up taking, kind of taking on their next tribe over culture, because they never used to make out their own alcohol, but the Kichua would make their own alcohol by,

they would ferment yucca and other fruits like a palm fruit. And so then, you know, all of us humans are, we're adaptable, we're continually being influenced by things that were changing. So, yeah, none of these people are locked up in a museum and they don't change. So even the wall,

Ronnie, when you look at them and they're like, wow, they've been living like this for 10,000 years. No, they've just been losing and gaining technology and understandings from all their neighbors. Whether they wound up killing and eating their neighbors

or whether they wound up intermarrying, you don't know. Yeah. But, yeah, I just remember going, to some parties, you know, some festivals and while running, just kind of like being a fly on the wall and watching it all take place. I was like, oh, sweet.

But you know what works? Just out in the open or like they kind of are private about it? I think they'd like go out into the woods and stuff. That's wild. But, you know, there's a lot of places that I haven't seen that maybe sexuality is a whole different thing. I don't know. You went to weddings? Yeah, different weddings.

That's always cool to see what their take on. stuff is and you were talking about ayahuasca that was the family that I was living with they recognized that I just wanted to take in all of their knowledge and I was so amazed at what these kids knew about medicinal plants and stuff and he said well if you really want to know about medicinal plants you should go live up like go up river we'll give you our canoe and live with this family up here and they were they were

um his name was Don Pablo at that time, but I lived with him and his family, and he was a shaman. And so I got to see his insight and experience his understanding of just medicinal plants and the spirit world, you know, stuff that I even don't fully understand, but know that I've had enough exposure to know that it is real and it's deep. And maybe it's my place to understand it or it's not my place to understand it. but what did you see? Well, I can just, you know, again, when you're talking about, do these people know something on the other side of the tree

or all these crazy stories? Well, now I think hiawaska is kind of on everybody's, you know, it's an everyday word now. Yeah. And, of course, leave it to white people to make, turn it into churches and stuff like that and have it just be like almost kind of like bastardized, you know? But in some ways, too,

we're acquiring technology and plant chemicals that if done with respect, it's like brand new to science. And it's helping people. And it's like, again, all these, so many missionaries go there to teach. We need to understand that all these people around the world have plants that could be our answer to curing cancer. You know, and I think we're understanding like mushrooms are really, we're just kind of, at the forefront of trying to break through science about how this could be a remedy for what we ail from so much as Westerners, like depression. Yeah. But cultures, like different cultures down in Mexico, they already had traditional uses of mushrooms all figured out.

They figured it all out. They knew it. They may not have known the science of it, but they understood that it worked. That it was medicinal and it helped in some capacity. Yeah, and I think people are starting to see the value of like ayahuasca. And hopefully, you know, I think the problem when I say like white people bastardize it, well, the problem is we wind up capitalizing on it. It's usually at the end of the day we're trying to figure out some way to get money involved with it,

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And for listeners of this show, here's how it works. You sign up using the promo code, deposit and place your first lineup, and $50 in promo funds will appear in your account instantly. That's right when you play your first $5 lineup. You don't even need to win your lineup to receive a $50 bonus. So even if you'd lose like me, you can keep on playing. Pricepics.com slash camp. Check it out. Let's get back to the show. Traditionally, Hiawaska, you don't just go, Hiawaska comes from a certain vine and you just scrape the bark of it off. Well, it ain't just like pot where you go smoke it. It's like to have hyawaska work, you have to have that and mix it with another plant. And if that plant isn't there, there's a couple other alternatives that you have to mix them together to make the component for our bodies to utilize it in a certain way that goes into our brain for it to work. If we just use hiawaska as hiawaska, we want to just poise. We want to just poise. reasoning ourselves.

Right. Yeah, you need like the DMT inhibitors so your body is not catalyzing it. But then it's like let's not, let's not take that into some understanding out of the tens of thousands of plants. They figured out that these two specific plants together do this. Yeah. And then, and then of course it's done, it's never kind of like so many of us Americans were Yahoo's. So we're just trying to find a Yahoo experience. Oh, yeah, let's get all gacked out on something, you know?

But there it's like we just don't, there there's ceremony and there's history and there's the appropriate person and it's used in the right setting. And those settings, again, have been refined over hundreds of years and perfected to where they're really at maximum usage for their community. Did you ever do it in Ayahuasca experience? I did try ayahuasca one time with a shaman in Ecuador and it was it didn't affect me. I was with other people that it did for some reason. I don't know. I haven't ever tried it ever since.

So you drank both the bruise? Yeah, I did it all. And I did it all the same with other people and they all had effect, but I didn't. And so you just laid there just with no visual effect at all? Yeah, no. Wow. No. That's interesting.

The shaman, they all had an explanation for it. Yeah, what did they interpret that as? You know, I can't even kind of remember, but, you know, just my body wasn't ready or there was something else. But there have been other experiences. There's other, there's a plant medicine that is primarily used by Kichua in that region. It's called Huanto and its brugmancia is the genus. And like, you'll see it grows around. people have it at houseplants,

but you go down to Florida, it's in everybody's yard. It's like a trumpet flower. Big flower. It's like a kind of a datura, tropical datura. Oh, interesting. But I will say,

you know, I'm sure a lot of people listening at this podcast are like writing it down, but it ain't like ayahuasca. You can do wanto, and it's such a powerful medicine. It can be incredibly dangerous to where you try it one time

and you will never be the same, meaning never be the same enough to where you won't really ever be able to be a functioning member in the community. So it's not something that you want to fuck around with. Yeah, I've heard of this before, Datura. Datura is the same. It's the same chemical components that are not safe. You know, like I think a lot of people are understanding this like you can get, you can start under the right conditions, the right care. you can have these experiences like mushrooms or ayahuasca and the ill effects are not even really there. Wow.

Yeah, I've heard really wild stories about Datsboro specifically. Like I had heard stories of people that had accidentally absorbed into their hands trying to clear out bushes in their yards. And they basically would have these like very dark and sort of demented kind of. kind of hallucinations. It's not like a fun little acid trip or anything. It's like sometimes it's dark. It's something that you do not want to do for recreation.

You do it for them. For them in that region, the shamans have been using Datura and Huantos so much. Like I said, they don't function in normal society. But their culture has allowed them to almost be

like well, they foster an environment to where they can support them and allow them to survive and live and carry on their work for the community. Wow. But if you take them out of that scenario, like they're like zombies or whatever. Different people. But their understanding of the spirit world and things like that are deep.

Wow. Did you ever try to try? Yeah, I did. Really? I did twice. And I, you know, I was young. now that I know these sort of things because I did it with a friend of mine

that I went down there, I was excited to show it off. And I will say he was never the same. He was essentially schizophrenic after that. Yeah. So that's why I'm like, I don't just think that it's the answer. Wow. Yeah. I mean, that's intense.

And did you have any ill effects from it? Did you have any? Fortunately, no. But like I said, now that I know things like that, I don't mess around with that sort of stuff. I'm not cavalier about trying every single drug in the world. Yeah, of course. I'm the same way.

I mean, that's just, but I've heard so many wild stories about that one specifically. I mean, trying it twice. What was the experience like? Gave me a, I think I'm pretty a pragmatic person. As much experience that I've had seeing amazing things that couldn't be explained by science. In a lot of ways, I kind of keep it to myself for some reason. know, I'm still kind of evaluating that too, but I think with my experience is working with shaman, not only with like plant medicines, but also there's a lot of traditional use that we don't

really acknowledge or imply, but like a lot of dance, a lot of singing will induce trance without any plant medicine. They've trained their bodies or physical activity or, you know, sweats, Native American sweats. And that's, all around the world. So like physical exhaustion sometimes can just can bring you into the spirit world or that or that other understanding or different consciousness. And the wanto, when I took wanto, I can remember, it gave me a real understanding of light and dark spirits in the forest and knowing. Like so many drugs, it's like, oh yeah, I think I know it. And then you go on there's like, oh, they're so.

much going on. I only look at the world from my understanding. I look at the world that is that complies with my narrative. That is the problem. We all we all only do what we believe. But there's so much more world. We have to understand that we only believe what we believe. Yeah. But there's so much more out there. I mean, that's wild. Yeah. That deter experience, I guess you're able to see, were you religious going into it? No. Did you believe in God? Yeah, I always a little bit. Yeah, but I definitely kind of had an understanding of light and dark,

and I can remember, because I took want to with my friend, and we were walking, and I can remember seeing, thinking he's by himself. Like I took a couple steps back, and we were walking, and the rainforest got really dark, and I got really scared, and he got really scared. This is just like while we're under trance, right? But I can remember darkness taking over. And it was like darkness taking over him.

And it's kind of a, it's a ceremony that you do at night. So you're kind of walking around like zombies in a lot of ways. But what's really interesting is you're seeing the same things. You know, like he was seeing the same spirits and what they look like. and we could both describe, you know, they look like broom handles with faces on him. And we both understood it. We were seeing the same things and seeing.

But I can remember seeing this one time when he kind of walked off into the forest and just darkness overtook. And I was scared for him. And yeah, when he came back and he woke up, he was never the same. And, you know, trying to, trying to he was under dress for days and days and days and just terrified of the rainforest and it was like he couldn't get the drug out of him it seemed like but then you know we took him back home and he still hasn't ever been the same and i was always thinking got the only people that are going to be able to save him or change him or something or get some understanding about what happened we have to go ask the shaman because they know this and when i asked the shaman they just said that was the problem he went out by himself

You don't ever go into the forest sick. You don't ever go into the forest in some places alone because you can be overpowered, taken over by the devil, by bad spirits. Yeah, I mean, I don't think I've ever really been this open about talking about that sort of thing. Yeah. But, you know, I think I'm in a place in my life where I'm trying to understand God and I think I've had a couple experiences where, you know, I think now we live in this world of like supernatural,

metaphysical, all this sort of stuff. And I'm starting to really look at it as witchcraft. I mean, you know, because I've just had some really, it's like people are, people are tinkering around with things that are very dangerous. Like what kind of things would you, would you? kind of interpret as like almost witchcraft. Well, I don't, I don't want to go into too much detail, but I've had some very, like,

like an ex-girlfriend introduced me to like a medium. It's like somebody that's like a psychic and medium thing. And I kind of got messed up with her and this person and just had some experiences that like basically got, Yeah, I think there was like black magic there. Wow. I had my house haunted and was kind of taken over by dark entities that I'd been holding with me for years. And I didn't, I don't believe in this stuff.

I don't believe in this stuff. Yeah. But once I experienced that and I'm like, that ain't stuff that you just go play with and go like go down and do that. But we're in a society right now where everybody has their own rules. and like I said, they're really cavalier about it. Specifically about like kind of spiritual things. Well, I think there is stuff to there. Yeah, go talk to a medium, go talk to a psychic, do a Ouija board, someone of spirit.

And I guess I just try to categorize it as witchcraft. Like it's black, it's dark. And you think you're doing it for good. But yeah, I'm trying to live in the light. Yeah. And you've seen some things that kind of give you a lot of confidence that, oh, this is, there's more out there. them kind of overseen. Yeah.

And if you want to look at the light as Jesus, if you want to look at the light as all these other things, that just seems like so much more safe and a better structure for humanity aside from all these other things. Wow. That's just my beliefs. It's my, what I've seen myself.

Yeah. And so I'm, when I start hanging around people that want to do that sort of stuff, I leave. Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I feel, I feel the same way. I don't, like that.

used to know kids that would play with Ouija boards like as kids and like I grew up very Catholic so like the idea of trying to summon a spirit like a sleepover was like fucking insane. I was like I don't know. I don't really think anything's going to happen. You know what I mean? It's one of those things like I think

nothing is going on but I don't want to fuck with that. So I just kind of just like get away from it. But I've never even had one of these experiences where I'm like whoa my mind is so you know I'm seeing spirits in any capacity whether through you know, medicine or not, like in the way you have. So I'm sure that those experiences are pretty, you know, mind-shattering.

We're like, oh, this is some real shit. Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty wild. So do you mess with plant medicine now? Are you, like, pretty selective? Yeah, I mean, I will say, you know, when we're talking about, I want to acknowledge and respect that I'm a Westerner. I come from that.

I'm not going to deny that. I live in two very different worlds. You know, I have a very different perspective on a lot of things. But the one thing that we suffer as Westerners is we have the highest rate of depression, loneliness. And that's what I'm struggling now with and looking for guidance as far as mentors, friendships, and medicines, you know. And I'm trying to. Mushrooms, that's been helpful? I mean, I don't know yet.

I don't know yet, but I mean, you can be drugged up on pharmaceuticals or you can try to do some other things that might be healthier for us. I don't know. But that's my, I'm not ashamed because I think we all suffer. Yeah. No, it's a heavy thing, especially dealing with, yeah, those types of chronic things, like those types of chronic feelings, depression, anxiety, stuff like that. And for me, like, I've done mushrooms a couple times and I've found that it's been helpful for, like, my anxiety and kind of like my internal feelings. You know, it's like really helped me a lot.

So I, but I'm very strict with it. I don't, I don't consume anything like that in some type of recreational setting, I guess. I try to do it very. Yeah, I don't think I've even been drunk in over eight years. I haven't had the room spinning in over eight years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not a pot guy. I mean, I don't have anything against it, but it's just, it's not my thing.

Yeah, I do think people kind of mess with these things in a way that it's a little loose. Yeah. A little loose, a little, they're seeking, kind of like we were saying before, seeking a feeling, an experience. They just want to see and feel something. I'm good on seeing and feeling stuff. I just want to feel good and, like, you know, confident and optimistic about things. And I have no interest in just, like, you know, getting a thrill. And I get enough thrills as it is.

I'm chilling. It's, yeah, yeah. It's just like, like I said, you know, there's just like, there's just, in the Western society, modern, society, there's just so much. Our world is changing so fast. And like I was a teacher, 10, 15 years ago, I was a teacher for 10 years. I saw what my kids would be like. Then I wound up stopping, teaching, and five years later, I went back into the classroom.

Five years difference between kids of the same age is like two generations. Now we have technology and understanding and vocabulary for different things, you know, like courtship when you meet somebody and you meet a girl. You're trying to, way back in the day, the gentleman was out looking for a partner and trying to court and be a gentleman and get to know somebody.

Now we have this vocabulary of like, oh, he's such a creeper. I'm just trying to do my job. And there wasn't a word for a creeper. We were just, it was people that were confronted by a man, took it as a compliment. Yeah, yeah.

I was like, eh, that's bad. And then, you know, like I was just thinking about all these things about, um, like,

like 20 years difference between people. Like now there's like, you know, the 25 year old life coach, you know, the scene like that. And like, you know,

it's like, and then those people are making money and everybody's trying to be this like entrepreneur and salesman and, God, I was just like, I mean, this is my cynicism about like being this 28-year-old life coach and their philosophy that they tout is finally in my life. I am single. I'm free of all attachment. I'm not responsible for anyone. I can focus on myself and focus on my personal growth.

every day I can wake up whenever I want I can focus on journaling and reading and yoga I'm living my best life I love my you know it's like these coaches are we're being trained to think that

the strength of us is to become fiercely independent what I've learned around the world and the way I view the world fierce independence is all wrong. Really what it is is what so many people are now. Self-absorbed, arrogant, narcissists.

We can't be fiercely independent. We need to be deeply connected. Why aren't their life coaches saying that? That's where happiness is. That's where we need to be devoted towards. Yeah, I'm with you. I do also see people, though, in the West that are trying their best to, like, stay connected to community

and, like, trying to stay connected with their family. And I try to be, like, too judgmental of someone that's, like, you know, trying to figure it out in their 20s that's, like, sounding dumb as a life coach or whatever. I don't know. I kind of look at them, like, yeah, you think you got to figure it out, but you don't yet. But, I mean, I used to remember writing, you know, once I... I'm not going to hold it against them, you know what I mean? And I'm like, everyone's trying to figure it out on their own path.

Once I was at drinking age and I can remember journaling and just thinking that my thoughts were just so profound. Yeah, yeah. Now I look at it. I was like, yeah, I was a complete fool. Yeah, and you're lucky you didn't have the internet at that time. I know. Now we have internet. So then, yeah, this life coach is like such this sage wisdom. But then you look at every single one of her pictures on Facebook and Instagram. It's just a selfie of her with her blonde, blonde blue-eyed.

And from afar, she looks pretty good in a bathing suit doing yoga moves. That's all there is, really. That's what's marketing people. I'm like, yeah, if, I don't know, people are trying to figure it out. They are trying. And I appreciate people working and hustling and trying to be a developed human being. But it's like if you think that you're just coming up with all these ideas and growth by staying in your living room and thinking, you know, it's about exposure and going out and collaborating and getting feedback from people, not from books that you want to read. It's like what I said, people only believe what they believe. Yeah.

They only gravitate towards their own narrative. Right. You got to force yourself out of that and have a community of other people that aren't beautiful and blue-eyed. You've got to go talk with the elders. You've got to talk with that neighbor across the street that has nothing in common with you. Yeah, yeah. Because they have value because everybody knows something that you don't know. Yeah, exactly.

But if you want to hang out with all the people that believe what you believe, you ain't learning nothing. Yeah. No, I completely agree. You're just believing in your own bullshit. Yeah. Now, again, exposure is definitely important. And it definitely is inoculation against ignorance, you know, being around other people and you get to see different ways of life. I remember for me, like, hearing my dad come back from, you know, trips and telling me stories about how people, you know, people act and how people talk and how, you know, the different customs people have in different, you know, countries.

Oh, Japanese businessmen, they take business cars with two hands and things like that. I was just always so charmed by all these little ideas. But is why I love hearing, you know, just travel. And, like, I think travel is so important for people if they can do it. I'm curious if you had advice for people that wanted to travel cheaply or they wanted to see the world or get exposure to different cultures. Like how do they do it? Well, traveling cheaply is the way to get exposure because nowadays people are traveling and they're getting this cultural experience at the next camp mead, you know? Like, you know, this resort here, you know, and doing that.

But if someone's like, you know, listening to this and they live in some suburb of Ohio and they're working a job and they can save up some money, if they would, wanted to get exposure to a completely different culture. What should they do? I think, remember when I said one of my biggest skill sets was just being so naive when I started traveling. I didn't have any understanding of what kind of trouble I could get myself into. I had no money. So I had to live like the locals.

And that was the best thing that ever happened in my life. And so we, traveling when I started traveling, It was much more frontier. There weren't even phones, landlines or anything that could, where I could talk to mom and dad, you know. I don't know cell phones. But now with cell phones, everything's starting to become kind of 2% milk, everything, you know. But yeah, just traveling and going on a budget and learning from the locals, which means taking their bus system. Not you taking your safe Uber that you do the same thing.

thing that you have doing in New York. Live cheaply. You know, you might have to go through the trenches and eat street food. And experience what was like to have dysentery and all that. I mean, it does. It happens. But there's also just the people you meet. And I think that, I mean, something that I can acknowledge now is that I just love.

love the person that's so incredibly unassuming. The lady that's making street tacos, you know? It's just like, in her own way, she knows way more. And the kind of stuff that I want to learn about, and she's the person I want to hang out more than that car salesman down the street, you know, or somebody that you would think, oh, they're much more of a resource. Yeah, yeah.

But it's like all these unassuming people, I think they wind up becoming friends that I identify with. with mostly. Yeah, they all have little pieces of knowledge or little nuggets of knowledge. Yeah. What can I learn from them? Yeah. What can I, what can I glean that I can apply to my own life and try to imbue myself with

some of their, you know, some of their wisdom. It's such a fun task and especially seeing it in people that other people would write off. You know what I mean? I think it's like a really cool quality. Yeah. Yeah, I think of just being open. I mean, I just think about, I have so many stories of, you know, maybe going to Thailand and you could go into the party scene, but then you wind up meeting some meetings.

somebody that rents out four plastic chairs for a living on the resort, you know, and just talking with that person. It's like, wow, you support your family by, you've acquired in your life three plastic chairs and you rent them out to tourists. And that's your whole living that you provide for your family. But then to do this, you sleep on the sand in your little shack with these three chairs. That's your whole livelihood. Like knowing that people live like that. it's both something to where I don't take my quality of life or my understanding of life for granted. But it's also, it's like, yeah, I've seen somebody in their own way thrive that way. So all this shit that was security and this fancy cars, like I can get swooned by like classic sports cars and all that stuff.

And then it's just like spending the, evening with that guy, none of that shit matters. Sell it all. You know, he goes back to his family and might come home with just, it would be appalling or so saddening to know how little he has to support his family, but he loves his kids and he has kids to come home to. And he has a wife and they're doing it. And they're like love is awesome for us. Shit, if you want to make lots of money here in the United States, you make your own path. You go to your school across the country away from your family. You start being the self-made man.

You know, I think a lot of these life coaches I heard, like, if someone does not match your path, you have to let them go. You know, like, no. No, now it's just like it's all about us. Yeah. And if they're not providing a resource, if they're not enabling us to become richer or whatever, we let them go. Oh, man, we're just like all this self-absorbed, individualistic, just makes us alone and depressed.

Do you feel defeated, by the way, society is now in the West? Yeah. Like, it weighs on you. Yeah. Yeah. Like, as a teacher and I care about my kids, you know, young people. and what their life is like. And I'm really involved with education,

like just trying to get kids in loving nature. And everybody has that skill. I was just in Florida just a couple days ago, leading kind of a kids camp. And I mean, it was like for free. You know, just getting kids out and just playing and checking out the ocean and looking at tide pools

and looking at crabs and catching crabs with their own hands and seeing what's out there. Like the kids are little monsters that do what. what they're naturally doing. Like, once you get them away from what they're, all of a sudden they're just teaching themselves and being just like those kids in the sand community,

you know, like they're learning and they're participating and they're gleaning. So is that the solution, you think? I think we need to have our people outside, like familiar with outside, rather than everybody thinking that if you go outside, there's a bunch of bugs. Like once, yeah, their parents teach them

there's a bunch of bugs outside. But if you just let them keep playing and sleeping, they're just bugs. They don't bother you. But it's like there's been a couple, way back when, you know, like our grandpas knew everything. And our grandpa's knew so much. And the grandmas knew everything. The grandmas knew how to knit, crochet, cook, can, communicate with their friends, all this sort of stuff. Grandpa knew how to fix the tractor, fix the door, work on shoes.

There was like all these skill sets that they had to bring. And that was three generations ago. Now for somebody in the Western society, the way that you achieve everything that you want is by being really good at one thing, being an accountant. All I need to do is be a good accountant, show up for work, do that. then I get money to be able to have everything else. And it's like, oh man, if you know everything there is but master of none, you won't make any money in today's world. But in grandpa's era, in grandma's era, that was the only way to survive. That was the richness.

And they knew so much and they utilized it. And there was a communication with everybody because they acknowledged that there was something that they could learn. Whereas now you get a radiologist and an accountant together, they can't really add to each other's knowledge base that's going to get anywhere. I see. Yeah, maybe. I could see that. I don't know.

I think some grandparents. I think about my grandparents. I'm like, some of them didn't know anything. Well, I mean, well, then look at their great grandparents. Sure, maybe. I mean, it wasn't that long ago. And, you know, you see those great grandparents. understood the value of growing their own food, having a garden.

Yeah. And they knew that. And now... I think about my great-grandfather, bro. He was cutting... He was a garbage man in Canada and was cutting ice out of the Lawrence River. And that's all I did all these, very poor and had nothing. I'm like, I don't know if he was growing his own food.

Maybe it was. It probably was. I mean, it was so much more hand-to-mouthed back then. Yeah, yeah. And you had to rely on your neighbors to survive. There wasn't this huge disparity of wealth like we have today. Money wasn't even nearly as important as it is today. And you had a great grandpa, but the great grandma knew so much to keep the homestead alive.

And those skills are like little kitsy things that you might find on Pinterest sometimes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that stuff is stuff that we need and having a relationship with our food and understanding where our food comes from. Yeah, I agree with that. I think that's probably important. Super important.

Yeah. I'm curious, like, speaking of, like, people that you meet and just like, you know, people that you respect and that you draw a lot of, you know, fondness to, are there any, like, of the, you know, traditional people that you've been with in terms of, like, warriors or, like, leaders of, you know, specific groups. Yeah.

Were there any guys that you met that you're like, yo, this is the most badass, you know, tribal dude I've ever met my life. Oh, totally. Yeah. Like who's like, who's the one where you're like, you know, this guy's like one of the six dudes? One thing is we're all in a community where

when you're a tribe, everybody's honored and they're found a place. I kind of equate it to like where I live, there's a little ski town. that all the weirdos and ski bumps like me go. They're all my friends. And they're into party, you know. And there's so many weird misfits that's like,

they'll have a party. But if like Jerry, the weirdest misfit of them all, if he's not part of our party, it's just not a party. It's not our community. Like it's a small enough community to where everybody's embraced, everybody's appreciated and accepted for who they're.

For all their quirks. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And what I've found is like the smaller of the community, the more friends you have. Yeah. When you go into New York, you don't want to talk to your neighbor. You don't rely on your neighbor. You look at them as a threat a lot of times.

You try to stick to yourself. And you just, you don't really acknowledge the differences in people. So again, you're just handpicking your favorite friends on Facebook. Yeah, yeah. That it can party the same way you are. Yeah, yeah. And when you get into a tribe, there are all these individuals. There's the kind of quirky one, but it has a value.

Like, that person is great with kids. Or that person would be just loves grown potatoes, like such a good potato. If we didn't have potatoes, we'd all starve. But then there are some other ones that are warriors. They're just, like, born that way. You're just so good. But one thing that I've noticed is, like, our culture acknowledges the warrior. in so many of the, like a community,

they're no better than the guy that's growing potatoes. That's just their job. They're a warrior. Right. Everyone's equal. Yeah. Everybody's an equal. And even in a lot of, like, I'm Native American,

and you get into a lot of Native American cultures. And if you were to go and like a woman at work, like a Native American, you invite her to work. And in our culture, Oh, everybody, everybody? Look at Willamina. Isn't she so good she is doing, she has brought in this many sales.

It's so good. A lot of traditional, like, they don't want to be any better than anybody else. They just want to be a part of a group. Right. But in our culture, it's like, who is better? Who's the best?

The best person gets the most followers. You know, it's like that. But who is the dude, though, that you met? You were like, oh, this guy's the best. Well, I can just like some of the best. these guys like Shokan when I was in Mongolia. Those guys were eagle hunters. I mean, they were like the quintessential studly.

You know, like he was in the winter. The warmest it got was 18 degrees. And Shokan was just like my buddy. But he was just like this stout, awesome dude. And could lasso horses and just like built, handsome, all that sort of stuff. And just had hands of iron and wood. and hunted with an eagle, you know, and like go down the Mongolian plateau with an eagle in hand, ready to hunt foxes and stuff, like quintessential stud, you know.

And his name was Shokhan. So how cool is Shokhan? Yeah, Shokhan. Yeah, you're going to have a power name. How do they get these eagles? Oh, that's a whole other thing. I mean, as you know, we can start talking for days and days and days. I don't know how long these podcasts last.

But, yeah, in that culture, they take Golden Eagles. and it's the wildest most remote place where humans live in Mongolia. Still half of the population of Mongolia still lives in Yerts, which means that they're migratory. Wow. And now today, before it used to be every single person was a pastoralist. They raised sheep to live now. About a quarter of them do, but that's still a huge population.

It's a place where you could ride a horse straight for hundreds of miles and not encounter a fence. Wow. You know, I love that. Yeah. But for the winters, certain cultures, they will get fledglings. Like, they have to climb up and climb up all these rock cliffs or climb down rock cliffs and stuff and steal one of the baby chicks and raise it up. And then just like falconry. Wow.

They use these eagles, and that's, they're still so remote, too. They can't just go to, they can't go to Louis Vuitton and get themselves. They have to make their own clothes. So the warmest clothes are stuff that they're going to eat anyway, which is foxes, wolves, palace cats, all these sort of things. And so they utilize, yet again, technology that's been developed in advance over thousands of years. They use those as hunting tools because they did, traditionally. They didn't have guns.

Bowes and arrows can't go that far. They use eagles, train them to go get that animal. They use that animal for pelts, hats, money. The meat, they'll either get themselves and feed the eagle. But then a cool thing about their culture is they'll keep an eagle, train it up. But as they're training it, they're also always training it to be wild someday. So they never, they always, they utilize the eagle when it's like in its teenage, early adult age. And then by the time they're able to, they just let them go after utilizing, refining their skills, hunting skills for like five years.

Then they were turning those eagles back into the breeding population. Oh, wow. And they just continue. So that's awesome, you know. That's really cool. Again, that's a mindset, you know, a preservation mindset. Whereas the mindset today is how many eagles can I raise up to sell. You know, it just doesn't work.

That's really cool. Yeah, so they put them back in the population. And then they, I guess, would maybe go get another eagle and kind of raise it and then put it back on the population. Yeah. Oh, that's really cool. Did you hunt with him? Yeah. So rad.

Sick, right? Yeah. I was like, I was capital awesome. It was rad. It was totally rad. That place is so cool. If you had to get dropped off any place in the world and you had to survive for like a month. Would you rather, like, where on earth would you want to go? Well, it's always, the tropics are always the easiest.

There's more protein there. Yeah. Yeah. What about, like, any Arctic or, like, extreme cold conditions you've had to. I was, I lived with the Inuit family up in northern Canada. Yeah. The coldest it got was 70 below zero. That's brutal.

We spent the night. We were on a hunting expedition with them. the only way to survive that is you have to make an igloo. That technology that was refined over thousands of years. If you brought your tent, you would freeze to death. Yeah, you'd die. And so we were out at night. It was 40 below zero.

But it was like inside the igloo was like zero, I guess. Wow. You know, heated with a candle. And so just, again, that knowledge. But I learned from a person that grew up living in an igloo. And he was telling stories about like the worst times of the year was in summer

when there was no more snow. There wasn't, it was so cold but there was no cover. Oh, damn. And there's no trees. So the only thing to make a structure out of were like whale bones and driftwood

and animal pelts. And then the bugs are so bad. They just wanted, wanted to get 40 below zero again. Oh, crazy. But you're learning from people that have been conditioned like that. And that's their comfort. Yeah, it's pretty countertuitive though. They don't make people like that anymore, though.

You know, his kids live in housing developments, you know, government-funded housing. They're getting government subsidies. They're not needing that knowledge to go hunt every day. But then you go up into those communities like that. the highest highest suicide rates in the world are within those communities because they're not participating out.

They don't have a reason to have that knowledge to retain that lifestyle that their mothers and fathers did. Yeah. Because now they're reliant on six packs of beer or, you know, a cup of noodles,

and they're just sitting in a shack that was given to them for government subsidies or whatever, and they're not going out needing to hunt, needing to understand the environment. They have no reason to wake up early. Yeah. But we're trying to make their lives easier.

And so I just noticed, you know, the people that are still living traditionally, having dog sleds, having the responsibility to feed 15, 20 dogs, you've got to hunt all the time. And they have a reason they have to wake up early every day. Yeah. I can remember talking to some old people, this old, old husband and wife

and I was like so how is how is your life compared to like the way it is now you know you can just tell in their skin and everything

like they'd lived a hard life yeah and there's no question that people you know that modernity has made things easier but has also made

people probably slightly less happy well what they said I don't doubt that but I also I don't judge those people if like no I mean for like their circumstance

You know what I mean? It's not really their fault. It is not at all their fault. They're just trying to survive and if they get given a government subsidy and that's what it takes. Yeah. And that is the responsibility that we have because the people that are offering government subsidies or whatever originally 50 years ago were responsible for not allowing these people to hunt and stuff. But in this conversation, I can just remember going with these old people. So what's the difference between like the way you grow up and the way it is now? and the wife said

life now is a lot easier but back then it was worth living for that's a cool way to put it yeah man I agree I'm with you on that part I do think things are probably almost too convenient to become victims of the convenience so I think doing hard things daily working out

even cold plunging regardless of the health benefits like just doing something hard in the morning I think is a beneficial and worthwhile all the whole thing to do. So I think it's, I think it's important for people do that. And I appreciate that you, you know, we're able to come on today and talk about ways that people can better themselves. If it's going out in the, going out in the woods, going camping, like, enduring difficult things to make life a little bit less comfortable to make it more worth living, I think is an awesome message. So I really appreciate you coming out.

Hey, this is rad. Yeah, man. This is fun, brother. I appreciate it. Let's do it again soon. Sweet. Thanks, man. If you enjoyed this episode with Hazen, there is a ton more for you that I think you're going to like. I would recommend you join our inner sanctum. That's right. join the log cab and join where all the guys and gals, all the camp folk like to hang out. Smoor Camp, in the description. It's going to be a weekly newsletter. You're going to get all the updates of everything going on with the show, episodes that are coming out, guests that we have coming on, polls so you can weigh in on what we should do with the show

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I have a feeling you're going to like this episode. This one right here is absolutely amazing and on par with what we're talking about. So enjoy.