Camp Gagnon - Tribal Adventurer’s Crazy Stories From Around The Planet

Episode Date: June 27, 2023

What up people today we have the Tribal adventurer Mike Corey, aka @fearlessandfar on to discuss being inspired by David Choe to go baboon hunting with the Hadza People of Tanzania, living with the death tribe of Indonesia, getting scarified with the Mursi Tribe, and meeting God in central America. Thank You BlueChew, Morgan & Morgan, Füm, & Freeze Pipe for supporting the greatest podcast everIntro: @99OvrAll Produced: Miles McCreery

I found this amazing mausoleum in the middle of the Romanian countryside. It looked like a cathedral in the middle of Dresden. Find this cafe. There's a couple women there all having some espresso. Bear and I go up and we're like, excuse me, ladies, do you know anything about this mausoleum? Do you know if anyone has the key? And this girl's like, oh yeah, we know who has the key. It's the husband of the woman who cuts foreheads.

She's just right down the street. Excuse me? The woman who cuts foreheads? Oh, yeah. And so the woman bends over and she shows her forehead. And there's a cross-cut. cut a scar right in her forehead. We say, oh, the woman who cuts foreheads. Okay, where did she live? Three houses down. So we continue down the road and we knock on this rusty wooden door. It flies open and there is a man there.

This man has purple sweatpants pulled up to his chest. He's got scabs all over his face. Got a little like postman's cap on and we say, hi, we're looking for the husband of the woman who cuts foreheads? And he's like, yes, it's me. Do you have the key to the crypt? And he goes, yes, I'm the cryptkeeper. Can you go show us the crypt? I gotta feed my pigs and then we can go. Follow this old man up the street to the front gate puts in this key that's the size of a fork. Screeches open. We go inside. It's this fantastical again, European style crypt built to look like a church. We open it up. Another big key. There's like bats and there's pigeons swirling everywhere. It's incredible in there. We're talking to him asking, what's your role here? Why do you have the key? And he goes, well, actually, the key's been

passed down for several generations. My family rings the bell when it needs to be wrong. I'm like, oh, the bell still works? He goes, yeah, the bell still works. Do you want to see? There's two bell towers. One is destroyed. One is still there. So we go in this side passage. There's a staircase that spirals up this tower. There's a rope that comes down the middle. And he grabs it and he bong, bong, two, three times. Bong, bong, bong, bong. 12 times it rings the bell. So I say, okay, that's good. There's like bats flying around, everything. He's like, do you want to see the crypt so we go downstairs underneath and there's like rats everywhere. And then we kind of finished exploring the crypt, the mausoleum, and there was still that one thing. We kind of glossed over in the

beginning, the woman who cut foreheads. I say to the cryptkeeper, can we go meet your wife? I heard she's quite powerful and famous. And he says, yeah, she doesn't really like foreigners, but we can go see. And so we leave. But then something's changed because there's people kind of peeking out of the windows and looking up the doors and shutting them when we go by. Didn't think too much of it. But we get to his house again, open the door, and my friend Bear and the creepkeeper go in, and I'm behind. And then the woman screams and she slams the door on my face. And then I hear screaming in Romanian.

And I have no idea what's happening. After that, my friend Bear comes out. He goes, we have to go. We have to go. You don't understand. We have to go. All right. So we run out.

We get in this truck and we start driving. And I'm like, Bear, man, what happened? What did we do? We were polite? And he goes, no, you don't understand, man. How many times did you make him ring that bell? I make him ring the bell. I mean, he rang the bell 12 times.

Did he say why he wrung the bell? No, he just said his job was to ring the bell. Dude, they only ring the bell when someone dies. They thought there was a building that collapsed that a school bus crashed. They thought there'd been a mass murder. You rang the bell 12 times, bro. This is Mike Corey, aka Fearless and Far. He produces some of the most interesting and fascinating travel content I've ever seen in my life.

And for the next couple hours, he's going to basically be telling us some of the most amazing travel stories I've ever heard. He's about to tell us what it was like hunting baboons with the Hadsad tribe of Tanzania. He talks about living with the death tribe of Indonesia. These are people that literally exhume the bodies of their relatives to clean it up in a ritual way. It's fascinating and an amazing look at a different culture than ours. And he's also going to tell us what it was like doing ayahuasca in Central America and basically meeting God. So without further ado, I'll let him explain all the stories, just sit back, relax, and enjoy my conversation with Mike Corey.

Welcome to camp. The first thing I want to ask you. Can you talk to me? about hunting baboons in Tanzania. Oh, I've been three times now. Yeah. Three different hunts with the Hadsda. Two have been posted.

One is still being edited. Oh, really? I can, this story can, as a short story long, let's go long. Short story long. There's parts of this Haza hunting story that I haven't told before, really, that you can't see online.

But basically, I'm always out there searching for real experiences. And in this world that's just getting crazier and more complicated, it just seems like the fundamentals are the most important thing. And these boys, the hodzah, they live the fundamentals. Scientists go there to study them because they still live the way we used to live as pure hunter-gatherers. There's lots of tribes in the world, the mercy, the messiah that still, they live traditionally, but they have cattle, they have livestock. The hodzah don't do that. They're against it.

The Hazza as well, they won't even touch like a cracker or anything process. They only eat meat. They eat honey and also something called ugali, which is like a corn porridge. So I wanted to find this fundamental human experience. And I first heard about it on some podcast. I think it was David Show on Rogan talking about it like three or four years ago, about how this tribe would roll up Bible paper. These missionaries would come, give a Bible, and they just take it to smoke joints.

And I was in... I mean, you can see God that way. You know, depending what you're smoking, like, that will get you close to God. Exactly. So I was in Tanzania filming an episode for BBC. So I have the TV show now called Unsharled Adventure in the U.S. Two Emmy nominations, by the way. Yeah, which is amazing.

Yep. And at that time, I was filming for a BBC called on a show called BBC Travel Show. I had a guy there named Gumbo, my local contact in Tanzania. Gumbo's the man. And I said, hey, I heard about this tribe called the Hadza that are living somewhere. somewhere in Tanzania. Have you heard of them? And he said, yeah, maybe there's only a thousand left. They live next to this remote lake. And we could maybe go, I don't know anybody, but I know a friend who knows a friend, which is always the best way to do it. And we put

the pieces together. But at that time, there was no content online about the Hadza. There was this one podcast mention. I put a little pin in my map. And I research later. So when I went to go meet these boys, they hadn't seen too many foreigners before, only a few. And I don't think I was ready for what the experience is going to entail. Can you describe where they live and what that environment is like? So they live, there's a lake called Lake Aasi. It's near Lake Natron, which is a little bit more famous. Lake Natron is a lake in Tanzania known for petrifying animals.

You'll see these birds and bats that are completely encased in stone, so they say. And so it's supposed to one of the most caustic lakes, most dangerous lakes in the world. It's like sulfuric or something? I think it's just very, very acidic or basic, one of the other. And if animals fall in, they turn into basically these calcified skeletons. Bro. Very cool. So Lake Aasi is a bit farther south from that.

And there's all of these volcanoes around there. So these lakes are quite interesting and not exactly the most hospitable, but these guys have found a living there. And again, there's only about 1,000 left. And they are very, very remote. And getting out there, you have to go through several small villages, hike out, and then you have these small bands of hunter-gatherers living next to this lake. And there, you can still find wild animals, right? Because in the world today, there's not that many remote, remote places.

Yeah. But there, it's still remote enough that you can find wild animals to hunt. And so I've got three different stories of three different experiences. But let me tell you one of my favorites, because it was definitely the most intense. So the second time I went hunting with these guys, I fell in love with them the first time. But the first time we went, we couldn't catch the baboons. The second time we went, they guaranteed me we could catch baboons. But we had to raid their camp at night.

So baboons are supremely intelligent. And if you haven't seen them before, man, they are ferocious. Yeah. They got these big fangs. They're strong. Definitely. These huge canines. And they're fast.

They're smart. And they will attack you if you scare them. If you attack them, they will attack you. And are they strategic? Like in the way that some animals will hunt strategically. Are they sort of defensive in that same way? The way the hansa talk about it is not hunting baboons. It's going to war with baboons.

Wow. Because it is a war. And the hodza hunt with dogs. And one thing I saw with the hansa as well is that day we had tried to get the baboons. And they sent out the dogs. They run. They've got poison arrows. They've got different arrows for different kinds of animals.

So the baboon arrows are these serrated. knife almost looks like a saw blade like really sinister looking and that's because when they stick in the baboons can't rip them out because they literally try to rip out the arrows oh interesting if you shoot a gazelle a gazelle is not going to be able to pull it out exactly so you don't have to worry about the same the same things but with a baboon they could literally they have hands they have human looking hands yeah that they can pull arrows out with so picture a arrowhead with fish hook sticking out of the side crazy now why are they hunting baboons like is this common for them like why are they not just hunting other animals. Because the meat tastes good, bro. Really? Yeah. They said it's the best tasting

mean out there because they said it's saltier. It tastes, it tastes better. Interesting. So if baboon tastes good, maybe people taste good too. Maybe that's why cannibalism was a thing. I don't know. I'm just saying. I came from Mexico where they used to talk about eating people there, the Mayans. We'll get to that in a minute. Okay. But are they, is it a lot of meat? I look at a baboon. I'm like, it's probably easier to hunt some type of like other mammal than this sort of like muscular, fleshy baboon, right? Do you want to know the best part of the baboon? I would love to know, actually.

The ass. The best part of it. The ass was the prime cut. Because if you look at a photo of a baboon ass, maybe you can insert one. It's really fatty. They've got fat asses. Nice.

And if you're a hunter gatherer running through the forest all the time, you need fat, man. That's a great source of energy. So the baboon ass is the first thing to go. That's funny. Yeah. I remember in one of the episodes you put out, do you call them episodes?

Yeah. Okay. One of the episodes you put out, They cut into the ass after they caught the largest baboon, I think, that second hunt that you're talking about. And you were like, why are they doing this? And literally his answer was, they want to check if he's got to ask me. And it's like, all right, whatever.

But that's the thing that they go for. That's the best part. Yeah, that and the nuts. I don't know. In many cultures around the world, it just seems that the nuts are, I don't think they taste good. I've eaten the nuts of four different animals. Okay, which four?

So bison, goat, deer. Human. Not even. Not yet, not yet. Never say no. I always say not yet. And so the nuts don't taste good, but I think they, they give me some spunk, you know? Do you think there's a symbolic element of like virility?

I think that's exactly it. Really? Because nuts don't taste good. Have you had nuts before? I've never had nuts. Well, not yet. Not consensually. But like, I guess I got tea bag going on to middle school.

But I could see the, yeah, the idea of like, okay, we've hunted down this human-ish ancestor and we're going to now eat the like most virile important part for reproduction. Right. And is it preserved for like a specific member of the tribe? Like the nuts or is that just like whoever caught it? Like what is the hierarchy when it comes? Generally the one who catches it gets the cut or the chief. In the case, the haza, the hats are interesting because they don't, they kind of have a chief,

but he's more like the guy who's the best hunter. But they're pretty, there's not one leader. They all have different roles. Interesting. And so how do they sort of organize socially? So one thing you don't see very often is the women. Because you see the hodz of boys, they go out, they hunt. That's the exciting part.

They are hunter gatherers. There is gathering. It's just not as exciting. So the women go out and usually find Gordes, Casabah, kind of potato things. Roots and they cut those up. It's just not as good for YouTube, right? Because you're not out there shooting bad booms with the fish hooks. Sure.

Yeah. And so for them, the females, and actually they seem to not live as traditionally. Like they wear colorful clothing. If you're familiar with the Maasai tribe, which are some of the cattle herders over there. They wear like bright colored clothing. The women seem to do that. But the men wear the skins that they hunt. And that's very much like the trophy.

Even the baboons they shoot, they take a ring from the tail. They skin off some of the fur. and they put it on their bow, like those World War I fighter planes where you had the skulls on your on your biplane. It's really quite cool, actually. Whoa. I'm getting deviated from my story, though. So the coolest haza moment. So my second hunt, we still hadn't caught baboons yet. We had gone to war that day with their hunting dogs. There's maybe like 10 of these hans of warriors, and they have maybe 15 hunting dogs. And the wounds these dogs had were crazy. So it's really hard to keep up with these guys, because you're running through this forest full of thorns. So I try to,

my best, I put gopros on the guys, put a GoPro on the dog, couldn't get the actual attacking of the baboons, but the dogs came back and they had like six inch lacerations, like ribs showing through their skin. And again, it is a war. But the funny thing is, or the interesting thing is, or the thing to keep in mind is, you see these mushing dogs in the north where people think it's cruel to have mushing dogs. You actually go to one of these camps, the dogs love it. The dogs love to run. They freak out. They're so... I'm excited. Motion dogs, usually the dogs that pull sleds in parts of, you know, Alaska. Yeah, Alaska, Yukon, Canada, your people. These hunting dogs, love it. Yeah, they come back. They've got

these massive scars on their body, open wounds. But you can just tell on their faces, they're bred to do that. And they are bred to do that. And we're also, as humans, bred to do this hunting. Yeah. And I saw the craziest thing, man. These dogs came back. They were injured, but they were happy. This guy whipped out his dick and, front of my camera. And he's like, let me, she's trying to show, show something. And I'm like, he's like, fill my dick. And I was like, so I pressed for court. I didn't know what he was doing. He goes to the ground and they have these really big land land snails. You know, like a snail shell, but quite big and white. And he started pissing in this snail shell, filled it up, probably like a half cup of piss, went over to the dog and pulled, then poured the piss into the dog's wound. And it was the craziest thing I'd seen. What they believe, or maybe it's true,

I've never tried putting piss in a wound before is it's a, it sanitizes it. Oh, wow. I mean, urine is supposed to be clean. Right. So they see it as like an antiseptic or something. Exactly. Maybe it's the salt. I don't recommend you try it at home.

Right. I mean, but the fact that they've done it and they've probably done it for a long time, maybe it does something. Exactly. I'm not a scientist. I mean, if it killed a dog,

they wouldn't do it. Right, exactly. Obviously, there's been some data points along the way that show, hey, you piss in a wound and it fixes it. Oh, wow.

So they do that anytime a dog gets injured. Yeah. Oh, wow. There was a dog that's like in six inch cut in its ribs full of piss. Yeah. Maybe the dog's dead. I have no idea, but the dogs seem happy. Like, where do they get these dogs from?

Like, my idea, like, growing up in America is, like, you have to go to a store to find a dog. I think they just breed them. But they're all, no matter where you go in the world, they're always the same dog. Little brown, maybe like two foot long, skinny. Yeah. What kind of breed mostly? I mean, they're probably mutts, but like. A mix.

Yeah. So, anyway. So we didn't get baboons that day. That night, we're on the campfire. We're eating some of these little monkeys and other things we caught, squirrels that they had caught. But the boys really wanted a baboon. It really, really did. And so we set up camp next to a, they call it a fortress, like a castle.

One of those picture of Lion King-type rocks. You know what? They had Simba. Picture that. Covered in baboons. But the baboons were looking at us. They could see us. And the Hanson knew if we went there, they would run.

Like the baboons would run. So we decided to go at night. Campfire, roasting some meat, not quite baboon, but meat. And night falls. And so Sokoro, one of the, let's call him the leader, comes over. And he starts talking to my local guide and he's like whispering. And then my guide comes over and they say, he's like, Mike, I have bad news for you. And I was like, Gumbo, what?

He goes, they're not going to let you come. And I said, well, why aren't they going to let me come? Listen, man, we have to go and bear feet with no lights and we have to walk through the jungle to the castle. And then we have to raid the camp and they're afraid that you're going to hurt your feet. And I look at my legs, just Swiss cheese from the jungle thorns for the day. And I was like, Gumble, I am ready. I'm here. I'm in the middle of buffuck nowhere, Tanzania.

I am ready to raid the baboon camp, bro. Yeah. Let's go. And he's like, oh, you want to? I'm like, yeah, I do. And so it goes back to Sokoro, and he's like, you know, Mike wants to, you know, walk to the woods. And Sokro's like, all right, in one hour we go. So I go back.

I'm like, what do I pack for a midnight raid on a baboon camp? And so I'm packing like, again, my rain jacket. Like, I didn't really know what to pack because the thorns are sharp and I couldn't use flashlight. So I have like a water bottle. And anyway, time comes to go. Me and the Hads of Boys roll out. But picture walking through. the thornyest thicket you could ever picture with fish hooks for thorns yeah in bare feet

in the dark yeah this is not like a trail like it's not like you're going on a like a hike through the woods on a trail this is thick brush that you're having to pierce through like how are they even pushing through it like literally pulling apart fucking branches and shit they're they just i don't know i was worried about keeping my eyeballs and my sockets bro yeah yeah right there's hooks they're hanging everywhere and so i had to walk like this with my with my with my the pit of my arm over my eyes, feeling around with my other hand like an ant with feelers, trying not to fall off the cliff, kick a rock, trip, because we're climbing up these, these, these, these stone steps. I mean, not an actual step, but just like a tiered system. Right. And can you

describe the darkness? Is it perfectly pitch black or were you surprised by your night vision? Perfectly pitch black. Because if it's a full moon, then the baboons will see you too, because they have night vision too. Wow. So they're going during cloud coverage. Like, they're intentionally trying to go. It was a new moon. So there was no moon. Wow. So there was no moon out that night. And so you could not see anything, man. Your eyes weren't even dressing. Like, barely. Couldn't see your hand. I couldn't even trust seeing, looking at my hand because my eyes get stuck by thorns. Wow. So I was just like this trying to follow the sound and feel around and get in and follow the guys. And how are they navigating? I have no idea. Truly. I was in the back. They didn't have a flashlight. No one has

flashlight. So, I mean, this is insane. Like, they're just, they know the path. They know the way. Is it like an intuition? I didn't ask. I would assume that maybe their night visions tuned in more than mine. Maybe they just, they can handle the thorns. Maybe they knew the way. Maybe they're following the fucking stars. I don't know the answer. That's crazy. And their feet are much more callous. Like, they can handle the thorns a little better. All their whole skin is. They've got rhino hide for for skin. There's even a viral short that went big on on YouTube of me showing my legs that just looked like I got attacked by a pack of feral cats. Yeah. And they're totally fine. And they're rubbing like jungle plants on my legs. My poor white boy's skin is just. Yeah. It just fallen apart.

It's just like tissue paper. I mean, it must be so strange. Like looking and feeling the skin of what like we used to be. Or what we could be. Yeah. We weren't such pussies. Yeah. Like literally feeling it being like, oh, this is what human skin. supposed to feel like and instead of like our gooey fleshy marshmallow skin exactly yeah that's exactly what it's like bizarre yeah yeah so soft yeah soft and squishy and and it's so easy to get cut and bruised where they they just get to pound it all day and scraped all day yeah yeah they're a whole different animal so you're pushing through the jungle about to go to war with your feet getting cut up can't see a thing what happens next so we get to the top of there's this lion king rock and then there's a

kind of another bluff that's a bit before and we were told to be very quiet Again, so we're no talking, trying not to kick rocks, not screaming when a hook gets put in our skin from the jungle thorns. And then we get to the top of this bluff. And I was going to whisper translated through my guide. And it's all right, so there's two groups. Best hunters are going to go around and flank the side. Classic pincer movement. One group's going to stay here.

We're going to find rocks, little baseball-sized rocks. When we hear the bird whistle, the signal. from the hunters, we pop up, we start screaming, we start throwing rocks at the baboons. They freak out, they go the other direction. Arrows, poison arrows to the head. Wow. Or body or wherever they hit. Yeah.

So we sit there. And the craziest thing, like thunder, ominous thunder rolling in the background. Lightning strikes. You see the baboons. The baboons hear us. Even we're trying to be quiet. So the screeching of the baboons starts. They know something is up.

They don't know what's up. But they sense that there's something happening. We're sitting there in the darkness and the quiet for probably 20 minutes with the thunder and the baboons screeching. Then we hear a... And we had clicked at our rocks. So when we hear them, we jump up. One of the boys has a flashlight that he borrowed from us, flicks it on, and we just start screaming. And start throwing these baseball-sized rocks, these baboons.

Baboons lose their minds. They are not ready for us. They jump up. We see them screaming. scurring all the way over to the other side of the rock, but then they disappear. And there's silence. And so we don't really know what happened because we did our part of the job. We didn't see the other hunting team.

Right. And how long is that? That's like a minute? We threw rocks at these baboons for probably like five until we couldn't see any more baboons. So like five minutes. Okay. There's maybe like 20 or so on these rocks. And so then we think we got, we didn't know.

There was no communication. There's no, you know, yo bro. You know, ring them up on, on. phone or something. It's just, did they get them? We don't know. So we're sitting around, five, ten minutes goes by. We decided to go over there and we meet some of the hunters. And what had happened is we did get several baboons. A couple by arrows, but a few were scared so much. They fell off the cliff, crashed down to the ground. And just like the buffalo of North America, yeah, fell to their deaths. Wow. So we got three or four baboons that night.

But the craziest thing I saw that nightmark was that on the way back, we had a couple of baboons in our arms. There was one baboon that when we raided the camp just came around the edge and didn't fall off, didn't run away, but kind of tucked underneath. And as we're coming back, one of the hunter-gatherers, a guy named Jabba saw him. But it's like 100 yards away or something. It's far, like 300, 400 feet away. And these guys have homemade bows and arrows, which is maybe a piece of string or tendon. I don't exactly remember and a stick that they find. You mean tendon?

Yeah. Like truly like from an animal. Yeah. I don't exactly know what they use for a bowstring, but it's, it's, yeah, something like that's made from the forest.

And they, so there's one baboon kind of cowering at the edge of the cliff and he somehow sees it. And so he were just, they were discussing something and I go over. I'm like, what's going on? Like,

oh, there's a baboon there. And I look and I see it, but it's really far. And they're discussing whether or not to take a shot with a homemade, bone arrow from, you know, 100 yards away. And I was like, ah, you know, like, no one can get that. Come on. And so, Chabba decides he's going to do it.

Dude takes his bow and arrow with his homemade poison arrow, strings it up, shoots it like hawk eye. Boom, right in the ribs from that far away. An Olympic athlete could not do that with a compound hunting bow. You say like almost like a football field length? Dude, yeah. Wow. It was, it was, I haven't seen.

feats of superhuman ability many times my life. That was one of the most impressive things I've ever seen a human do. Again, this is not high quality. There's no sight on this thing. There's no advance. It's a piece of wood with some kind of string and all made by him. And he was able to shoot it from like a football field away right in the ribs. One shot.

Dead eye. And what is the visibility like at that point? It was one week flashlight going around. It was a little blurry brown thing mixed in some brown rocks. So imagine being on the end of a football field in the end zone. You have a shitty flashlight. You see maybe, I mean, these baboons, they're dangerous, but they're not super big, right? No, they're like head to butt like two feet, three feet of feet.

Right. So this is a small thing. Yeah. I mean, unthinkably small from 100 yards. And literally a homemade bow. And those things are pressure too. Like you've got to pull it back. Like these compound bows that people are shooting now have, they'll have like weight

distribution. So once you pull it back, it actually stops having weight. Exactly. But this bow, you're pulling it back. I mean, it's probably how many pounds of force just from pulling back to bow? I tried. I couldn't even shoot it, man. You couldn't even pull it back.

But I couldn't get the arrow. I couldn't pull it back as far as those guys. And I got some muscle, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You work out. But I haven't spent my entire life pulling bow strings to be able to eat. Wow. When you have to do it to be able to eat, you get pretty damn good at something.

Yeah. And this is a hyper-specialized, like muscular skill movement. Like pulling back, I mean, it's probably 100 pounds, at least. just two fingers on string. It's not like you have like this nice, crispy like padding or something, pulling it all the way back, one shot. No sight.

Yeah, no sight. And these arrows are not like, it's almost difficult to fathom. Like the arrows that people shoot nowadays if you're going to go hunting are specially designed to fly perfectly straight. This is an arrow that he made. And this is costly too.

Like if you're making arrows, like that takes time. And also, if you miss, you'll lose an arrow. Yeah. And you lose the poison. You lose the tip. You lose the feathers. Yeah. Like this is, I don't know how long it would take them to make an arrow, but I mean, it's not like, no time. It's not going to the store. Right, exactly. So there's a cost to every single shot that you miss. That's why you don't miss. Wow. Wow. It's, it's incredible. Did the baboon see you guys? Yeah, that one, probably, but it didn't know what to do. It was stuck. It had been scared and now it's stuck on like a ledge. It was hidden, not for these boys. Wow. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I would feel comfortable being where that bad balloon was. I'm like, dude, 100 yards away in the dark. Like, how are you? There's no way. No ends are going to happen there. I bet you that's what that baboon was thinking.

He's like, yo, try. Pussy, try to hit me. Yo, try. And then thook right in the ribs. And so you now shoot this baboon. It's got poison on it. The baboon can't pull it out because it has these fish hooks in them. Right.

Do you go, do you try to climb this thing, go 100 yards in the jungle? We came back the next day. And we followed the blood trail, which is crazy. But because we shot it and it couldn't pull it out, there was a blood trail that we then followed through the jungle bluffs and the rocks. And we found it the next day. Dead. Wow. I mean, yeah, because that's like, you can get shot with an arrow and then you could probably run for, you know, quarter of a mile or something.

Yeah. Like, who knows? Yeah. But they were able to find even the little blood drops on the rocks and the leaves and the twigs. Wow. And is that where the dogs come in? Yeah, the dogs are really good for that. But even then, the dogs weren't, the dogs are better for hearing and maybe smelling baboons.

That, for to find that one that we shot, they didn't, the hot had to just fall the blood. Wow. I couldn't see the blood. But they pointed out and be like, oh, yeah, shit, there's blood there. I mean, that's amazing. And hunting with the dogs is interesting. That's a thing that like I didn't really put together when I'm thinking about like like homo sapien dog relationship developing over 10,000 years or whatever is that in my mind I was like, oh, dogs were good of protection. I've heard these studies where it's like if you're sleeping next to a dog, your heart rate actually like goes down if you can hear a dog breathing.

Have you ever heard this before? No, I love that. It's an interesting study that like literally based like baked in our lizard brain, if you hear a dog sleeping near you, it will actually put you into like deeper REM and like slow down your heart rate. you'll feel more at ease hearing the sound of a dog sleeping. Crazy. And so in my mind, I was like, okay, these wolves are kind of coming around. Like, you're throwing them food. They kind of like start hanging around more.

They're friendly with humans. And then they're used as protection. And I didn't really connect to the hunting element. In my mind, hunting is like, you know, like British aristocracy, duck hunting. But I didn't really connect it with like deep tribal African hunting. Yeah. Which is an interesting element. Everywhere.

The whole world hunts with dogs, except for Congo. They eat dogs there. So that was just another way to get food. Yeah. So the only tribe I hunted with it didn't have dogs was the pygmies in Congo. Okay. We're going to get to that. But I mean, that's an interesting element, like the human dog relationship.

Like growing up in America, obviously, we have this bond with dogs, but our dogs are not really dogs. Like our dogs are. We call them fur babies, right? Yeah, exactly. And there's like almost like this romance with our dogs, whereas they, I don't know, do you feel like they see it as a romance or do they see it as like a partnership? What is their relationship with the dogs? One thing that I always I always laugh at is

again we have fur babies here we love dogs we pet dogs there's a dog here in the studio comes up you know cutest little thing we've bred them to have these big almost anime type eyes expressive right but dogs are tools dogs were alarm clocks and that's actually a rooster sorry dogs were yeah I don't want to hear a dog cockle doodle dogs are security systems

yeah dogs are fantastic for hunting because I mean dogs are are meant to hunt, right? Like, it was a wolf. The craziest thing is that there was wolves, and then we've just selectively bred them, manipulated them genetically for 10,000 years to have Great Danes, chihuahuas, pugs, it's all just comes from a wolf, right? So that DNA is still there.

Yeah. But the human-animal relationship has changed so much from that time to now. So these guys, they don't pet the dogs. Oh, really? They don't, they treat them kindly for the most part. insofar as like they treat their bow and arrows kindly. They don't want to destroy their bow and arrow. It's a tool.

Right. It's what these animals are. Interesting. There's no cuddles at night, you know? Like the dogs have their spot. The dogs get the scraps. There's people who spend hundreds of dollars in dog food and things here and coddle their dogs. But there, it's just the dogs eat what's left.

Interesting. And they're happy to do that. And they're happy to hunt. And again, like I said, if they get a bit beat up, it's just part of the hunt for them. Do you find the dogs are seeking affection? No. The dogs see it. is a partnership also like, yo, we don't need to be boys. Like, we're good, eating your food. We're

going to go hunt. That's fun for us. Yeah. And take care of us if we got hurt. And like it seems like it's mutualistic in that way. Exactly. They're not really considered pets. They're considered a tool. Yeah, a tool to be able to live together. And it would be difficult for them to live without them either because they contribute so much to the hunts. And again, if there's a rival, some of these tribes, especially in Africa, rival tribes can come and they'll steal your cows or your women even at times or your weapons and dogs are the most fantastic alarm system. Wow. Their smell, they're hearing. It's like such a great symbiosis between animals and humans and

dogs specifically. Right. And their hunting ability is uncanny. Is it difficult for you? Like you grew up in Canada with dogs presumably and you have this like Western relationship with dogs to go there and see the dogs working almost as like colleagues and then also seeing them get injured in such a significant way. I mean, the way these baboons are taking chunks out of these animals. If that that happened to your dog back home, you would be like, we got to go to the ER, we got to fix, like, that is a traumatic event. Is it difficult for you to be around it? I love dogs. Mm-hmm. Fuck cats. Yeah, there's no hunting cats. You know what I mean? Cats do their own thing. Uh, all right, but dogs are very better. Uh, I love dogs, man. And

I all, and I, I don't ever love to see dogs get hurt. But we have this strange attitude where I think one of the problems with our world today in general is that we hear a lot of things, but have very little personal experience. I'm fortunate to have a ton of personal experience about so many strange things from doing this travel gig for 12 years now, right? I've been a full-time traveler for 12 years. I haven't had an apartment in, I had an apartment for two of those years in Mexico City. Oh, wow.

I'm always on the road. Finding these strange, crazy adventures. mostly because I just want to learn as much about the world and myself as I can. So when it comes to animals, I grew up like most of us did. I grew up in Canada, New Brunswick, Canada, basically the main of Canada, small little town. And yeah, everyone's great there. Friendly. We love animals, we love dogs.

And I was told that things like mushing were bad and, like, you know, animals getting hurt. It was bad. But again, I go and I see things firsthand. And I'm not condoning it, but at the same time, you see these dogs. using, they're living their purpose, bro. Right? That's what they're doing. And yeah, they get a bit beat up. But I can see the same thing about humans. If you're not living your purpose, you're lost, right? And maybe you do get a bit beat up when you are living your purpose. But if you don't, you beat yourself up anyway, you know?

Like humans are, I think life in general on this planet is meant to struggle, right? And if we don't give ourselves struggle, we'll create. struggle if we don't have it. And unfortunately, the world's a violent place. Like, I don't want it to be if we could choose it not to be. I'm sure we would choose. But violence is how we got here, right? Survival of the fittest.

The world fights and survives. That's what we do. Humans especially are fascinating because we are the masters of survival. We're not going to win the gold medal in anything in particular, right? Like, we're not the fastest swimmer. We can't hold our breath the best. We can't climb trees the fastest. We can't.

There's nothing we can do the best besides everything the best. We do literally everything the best. Yeah. Right. We win the decathlon, not the sprint, not the long jump, not the 100 meter swim or whatever. And with that, we were able to adapt in the Arctic, in the tropics, everywhere, basically humans can live. Because we're so good at struggling and still making it through. Yeah.

That is our forte. You know, adapt, survive. Struggle, adapt, survive, right? We've always fought. Mm-hmm. And now, more than ever, in the most peaceful time where we have everything, whiskey, we got cigars, we got ice coffee, man, you know, living in this beautiful box where there's nothing can really hurt us. We're the most miserable we've ever been. How strange, right?

We struggle more than ever. Yeah. What's up with that? Have you heard of this concept of anti-fragility? Uh, there's a, no, but yeah, go ahead. There's a, I forget exactly who coined it. It was a sociologist that basically, yeah, yeah, it basically points out this idea of anti-fragility, that human beings and a lot of animals that have persisted for millions of years are anti-fragile. So things like the glass that you're holding, now we're fragile. If you drop it, it'll break and it is no longer able to serve its purpose. Humans are the opposite. The more that we are struggling, the better we actually become, the stronger we become, so long as you don't die. Yes. And to that saying, what doesn't kill

you makes you stronger is completely true. And that humans have this insane ability to be anti-fragile. And it exists not only in like strength, like you go to the gym and you tear your muscles apart and then they get bigger. Yes, exactly. That's amazing. That is such a competitive advantage compared to anything else that exists, like the fact that it can be hurt and then from that pain comes new growth. Not only in physicality, but I also think like emotional growth,

musical growth. I think it's such a unique human experience that from human pain, you can create art. Yes. That is so beautiful that like you going through a breakup and then writing a song about it can help me through my breakup. That is such a cool human thing that we can do

that I think gives us the biggest competitive advantage. For sure. That anti-fragility is essential. And it's cool that you get to see it firsthand. And be with, the most anti-fragile people. I mean, the hads are truly, I mean, it is, I think, significant to be around the people that we came from.

Like this out of Africa theory that, you know, we all were this. We were all hunter-gatherers. And we've lost a lot of the things that I think serve our purpose. And it's interesting to see it firsthand. I'm curious, what did they think of you when you arrived? They, I can't say they hadn't seen Tori. before they had. I was the first one or one of the first to make a video about it on YouTube. There was maybe a few small little hand, you know, cell phone videos, but I was the first to make like a proper experience.

They were impressed with me. I think I know they were because they said so after. Because they had never seen anybody who was willing to handle the pain on a And going back to what we just said a little bit, I've learned through experience that struggle makes me happy. I love when there's a challenge. I love when I have to push my self through something that's uncomfortable. That's where the biggest gains have been. So when I had the opportunity to hang with these boys, I wanted to go, man. And also, I feel like it's my duty as a content creator on YouTube, especially one going and documenting some of these people for the very first time often.

I want to show the full story. I don't want to be in the guy, the guy in the back who's like, oh, here are some people in Africa eating their food and they go hunt and, you know, let us report back later. Now, I want to be hunting, man. Yeah. I want to be in the middle of it all. If I get diarrhea the next day, amazing. Yeah. If I get a big cut up, that's fine.

I want to show people at home what it's really like. And I went, I go into all my experiences that way. And so with the Hadza, I was there trying to keep front row. like bleeding, like tripping, spraying my ankle, trying to keep up with these boys who their life is to run and hunt. And when they bring back the food, I'm the first to try the raw liver when they hand up my direction. You know what I mean? And so I was able to capture them in a way that I, that they hadn't, I was the first white guy to go there and actually be able to capture them in a way that was authentic. Yeah. And I don't think they understood what a camera was, but they saw someone

who was really trying. I always think about it this way. Like, what is your grandma, your mother cook for Christmas? Shepherds pie. Shepherds pie. All right. So you invite me over to your house for Shepherds Pie on Christmas. I'm happy to be there.

I sit down. Shepard's pie comes out and I say, oh, actually, no, I don't like Shepard's Pie. It's not my thing. Yeah. Exactly, exactly, right? Like, why doesn't he like, is he allergic? No, he's not allergic. Then why doesn't, oh, he thinks it's gross?

Yeah, he doesn't like us. We're not good enough? He doesn't like the taste. the texture? Like, who is this guy to, like, even that not liking the taste or texture of something is such a first world bullshit Western. Like, there you eat what you get. Yeah. Right? There's no luxury. Oh, I don't like the texture of salmon. Yeah. Bro, I don't like the texture of salmon. If that's all that's served forever. You know what I mean? And so the whole like taste and oh, I don't, I have no patience for that anymore after seeing people who don't have any other option but to eat what they are able to

get and often it's not enough, right? I go to your place. I say, oh, I just don't like the texture of Shepard's pie. We're not going to be friends after that. Yeah. You know, or the terms change, you know? Offense has been made. Exactly the same thing goes over there. Hang with the Hazza, hang with the mercy, hang with the Messiah.

Let's say they cut open a fresh cow and they drink the blood. As many African cultures do, because they don't want to kill it, they drink. the hot fresh cow blood. Oh, wow. Yeah, because it's protein, right? Protein, iron. You go there, they cut it open. You say it's gross. They're like, all right, well, he's another white guy. You drink the blood. They're like, okay, well, this guy obviously appreciates what we do. And then you can open up, the whole world opens up. Like, we travel to have authentic experiences. That's why you travel to find truth in the world. If you're going to sit on the sidelines, bro, and you're not going to actually participate, you're not going to get the truth and the actual real

experiences. You're robbing yourself of the experience. And it was poison, No, nobody eat it. If it really made you sick all of the time, it wouldn't be food. Yeah. You do a good job, I think, of showcasing the reality of it. Like, I think as Westerners, there's two ways to look at it that I think are both wrong, where there's the one way, which I think was much more common in like the 50s and 60s as like British explorers were kind of like colonizing Africa and showing it. And it was like, oh, look at these savages. And that I think is incorrect. And obviously, I mean, it's like not only racist, but it's, I think, inauthentic to what the

experience is as a human being. Like, they are humans in the way we are humans. And they have insecurity and they have hierarchy and they have respect and disrespect. And so to not show the fullness of the human experience is inauthentic. And you do a great job of showing the fullness of the human experience. But sometimes people go the opposite way where they have this mentality of the friendly savage where they go, look, these people, they're peaceful tribesmen and they don't do anything violent and they just want to hunt and raise their children. And it's like, that's also not true. They are warriors. They are going out there and they are going to combat, not only with other tribes people around them, but with baboons, with the elements that they are surrounded by.

And you have to have a full experience and you have to showcase both. And that's what I think your content does excellently. It shows the fullness of what it is. It's the antithesis of what I want to do to be someone there, even with a videographer standing in front of people saying what they're doing. Often, I do like to work with videographers. Of course, it's good to hang with your boys and get a third-party shop. But with the tribe stuff, I like to do it handheld because.

We are there. And I take you, whoever's watching with me, we're sitting in the dirt, we're eating with them, we're doing all the things because that's how it should be, man. You shouldn't be standing on the sidelines, especially with people. Because, again, you can look and think they're so different than us. Anybody else. It could be a Muslim in Russia. It could be a hunter-gatherer in Africa.

It could be a sea gypsy in Indonesia. It's just the same person, you know? maybe they believe in a different vision of God, but there is only one thing that is a God, right? Different names. They still have a wife and kids. They still want to put food on the table. They still just want to be loved and appreciated and listened to and respected. And once you see past that, the religion, the language, you realize, yo, like, we're all just people trying our best.

Even I was in Madagascar doing a project. And I used to, you know, think critically of people cutting down forests, right? Sure. He used to picture some dude with a chainsaw and a gold, you know, a gold chain. Like, ha ha, I'm going to cut down these endemic redwoods to make a table to sell to some rich dude in New York. Same in Borneo, you know, the palm plantations for the oils and everything. And how could they cut down the forest for the orangutans? You see the video of the baby, like dying in the mother orangutan's arms.

In both those cases, it's just some guy who can't feed his family. And there's no contraception, like for example, Madagascar. and there's a famine so he can't even wear condoms when he fucks his wife to then not have as many kids as he wants so he has all these kids and then he has to feed them somehow so he's like shit my kids can die or I can cut down this forest to make a rice paddy field and then because the soil is so poor in this country after two crops I got to cut down more forest or my kids are going to die then you realize it's not so complicated or so it's not so simple not so simple sure and in the case of borneo the reason why they're cutting down the forest there for for palm oil is because we can't stop eating junk food you know

because everything is palm oil in it so we blame them don't cut down the rainforests meanwhile we're gorging ourselves and like fried tortilla chips yeah and it's in everything and don't do that yeah yeah and yeah we're paying money for it yeah yeah and it really it's the most efficient it's the it's the most efficient plant you can grow to make vegetable oil mm-hmm there's nothing else better than that so they're doing the best they can just to sustain our needs but we're pointing our finger saying don't kill the animals but we're the problem yeah yeah it's hypocritical in nature exactly now with the had a you show up as a foreigner you have all this technology and equipment that they are not really sure what it is why do they embrace you and what is the role of the fixer like

can you explain what a fixer is and how they sort of initiate you into the group whenever i film with these anywhere in the world but specifically with with local tribes too is you you want to have a a person who knows them personally before you show up. Otherwise, you might have some North Sentinel Island kind of shit. Right. Can you explain that story? Well,

I haven't been there. But there's this island, I believe it's off the east coast of Thailand, maybe below India, somewhere in there. Where North Sentinel Island is this island that's notorious for, if you show up there, you just get filled full of arrows like a pincushion. And there was a very famous story,

a decade ago or something where some missionary decided to come and introduce Christianity to these people on the island and he just got completely pincushioned. Yeah. Because again, people can bring problems. And if you've been living on your island or in the middle of the jungle or foreigners aren't necessarily a good thing. I mean, look at the Western world. You're trying to tell me European foreigners going to a native group is not good for them?

Is that what you're trying to say, dude? There's a few data points that indicate otherwise. Controversial take here. Yeah. So, how do you avoid that? How do you avoid just getting shot with arrows a second you show up with your camera and your hat? Right. It would be making sure you have a local contact who knows what's up. Like, and I've been told before, it's best not to visit these tribes. And I'll always listen to a local contact. I think people assume that I run in first contact style, you know, with an off. No, it's, it's a, I don't. I mean, these days, there's very few tribes in the world that would, that would, that would, that would. would greet you with hostility because there's very few places in this world that are truly untouched. Maybe deep Amazon, maybe Papua New Guinea, maybe deep Congo, and some of small islands, but mainly that one, right? So we think the world is filled with untouched tribes. It is,

it is vastly untrue. Yeah. In the last 50 years or so, everything is, a lot of these places have had contact with the Western world. Let me tell you another funny story about the Hatsas. So that I didn't post online. When I first visited them, it was 2021, so a year after the pandemic. And Tanzania was a country where the president at the time declared COVID does not exist in my country. Oh, he's like gone some Florida shit. Let's go.

Exactly. Nice. He acknowledged it exists, but not in my country. So you could live a pretty free life there. I'm an ethical guy. Like, I believe in COVID. I think we kind of, you know, it's accentuated some parts of it. but I went there and I knew I was going to be visiting some tribes.

I got tested before I got there when I got there as well. And so I knew I was, I was COVID-free. Went and did my first hunt with these dudes. And we're, with day one, we're out there hunting baboons, trying to catch them, caught a bunch of squirrels, caught a bat. The first thing we caught was a bat, which is kind of ironic considering the whole pandemic. Yeah, you guys are talking about. You're going to eat this later, bro. Let's run it back, dude.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Patient zero. Dick two. Pandemic dick two. And so then we, we, we, we, catch every time we caught something we rolled up a joint and they weren't using Bible paper like you've heard but they're using newspaper and where do they get newspaper from it just got them to trade it they get all they get most of their shit from trading honey for whatever they want because they're

some of the only guys brave enough to climb into beehives sometimes because some of these beehives are inside Beobob trees I watch this Hots guy go inside this hollow tree so Beobobs are like picture like a Madagascar type tree right these giant things often they're hollow And there's beehives often in the very top of them. So you have to crawl in this hole in the side. Crawl up it, maybe, I don't know, 40, 50 feet. And haul the honey out. Meanwhile, you're in a tomb full of bees.

Crawl back down and you get this golden stuff that tastes better than any honey you've ever had in your entire life. Really? And these guys get stung so much. I watched them cut open so many beehives. But because the honey is so good, again, it's pure, pure, pure, pure honey. And it's so difficult to get because you get stung to shit. they trade that honey for arrowheads.

Otherwise, how they're going to, you know, forge iron. So there's another tribe. They trade the honey for arrowheads. Also trade the honey for things like, I'm assuming, weed or newspaper or whatever they want. So they're rolling up newspaper joints and smoking. Anyway, so I hang these boys. We go hunting. I told you some of the story.

I go back to Arusha, which is one of the biggest cities that's near where, like I ask you where they live. And I'm there. I'm editing. I'm editing. I'm editing. Trying to get all this shit together. Super excited. exhausted, cut up, happy, abused, struggled, you know, loved it.

And then I had to go to Kenya a couple days later to do a BBC shoot for my show. And I went to the hospital to get a COVID test and go in and get it done. And the results were supposed to be back the next day. So next day I go to the hospital and they give me a sheet of paper that says, sorry, we're unable to give you a negative result. Please try again later. And I was like, what does this mean? they're like, oh, you have to try again later.

I'm like, no, but what does that mean? Sounds like positive. Sounds like you're telling me positive. It's positive. It was a positive, but if the president says COVID doesn't exist, how can you give a positive? Come back in two weeks. Maybe you can get that negative. Exactly. Wow. So then I go back to this hotel, and I'm worried because it's 21, 2021, pre, you know, shot in the arm. And I have this thing. And my throat's like getting a little bit sore and stuff.

And so I go back to the hotel and I'm a little bit nervous. tell the hotel that I have the thing, right? Yeah, they'll lock you up, like, who knows? And so I'm in my hotel room and I call the front desk and I'm like, hey, I got, you know, a result back from the hospital. Can I speak to the manager? Oh, come down to the office. And I said, no, I'd like to do it.

No, no, he's busy coming to the office. So I put on my mask and I go downstairs and I'm there and I'm trying to keep like a distance from the desk. And the guy's like, so what's wrong? I'm like, actually, I went to the hospital and I tested positive. And he goes, oh, um, So I'm like, well, I have to quarantine here for two weeks? Two weeks?

You'll be here. Yeah, of course, because he hadn't had business in like a year at that point, right? He was stoked. So I set up base camp in his hotel room. And then every day the maid would come and put like a breakfast dish and a lunch dish. And we wouldn't see each other. She'd knock, I'd take it. After about a week, though, I got decently sick.

I knock as she knocks She brings the breakfast She opens the door and She's there like she's standing in front of the door Normally she'd always go because we were trying to keep no contact And she says can I give you some advice And I say yeah And she says I know why you're sick

You never leave the hotel room You have to go for a walk You have to get some fresh air And she grabs me by the arm She pulls me out of the hotel room And she like pushes me down the steps So I'm here like some kind of strange vampire creature Who's been in the dark for like trying not to be too close

to anybody walking down the streets because they just didn't believe it was real. Wow. And I mean, tracing the lines back together, like people always say bringing smallpox to the Indians or whatever, the Hazza gave me COVID. That's so funny. Because I did, it was in contact with nobody else. I was with them. Then I went right back to the hotel room and stayed there.

And so it was the complete reverse of what everyone would expect. Wow. Yeah. And so you don't think you got it in Arusha? No, there was no. I was in, I was with Gumbo the entire time, right? We were hunting with these guys for probably like four or five days. Before that, we were even out doing stuff in the jungle.

So the only possible way, and the incubation period was four or five days or something, the only thing that would have worked, and the van was with us the entire time. I didn't leave the hotel. I was eating there. I was editing. I got it from the hans. Did they even know what COVID was? Did you try to talk to them about it?

I made a really hilarious video with them during that time, which was asking hunter gatherers the like important life questions. So I went to the hodds and I was. asking, like, what's the most important thing in life? And what do you think it was for hunter-gatherer? Hunting. Meat. Yeah.

Meat. Okay. Meat. What makes you happiest in life? Meat. Meat. It was amazing. And it's like, what happens when you die?

And they're like, well, we don't know. I think you go up to the sun or something, but no one really knows the answer to that. So we don't, we only think about it. Oh, interesting. Really cool answers to these questions. And one of the questions was, what do you think of the pandemic? And they're like, oh, it's a city thing. It doesn't exist.

We eat better food. They eat poisonous food. It's, you know, like it doesn't sound a problem for us. And that's what they believed. Wow. And even then, when I was hanging with these guys, they, we, the first day where we couldn't really get what we wanted, the baboons. My main contact, gumbo.

Hulls out, he brought some crackers and stuff in case we got hungry. Holes out some of these, like, you know, sugar cracker or bits. biscuit type things. Hands them to me. I take a bite. We hadn't eaten in like six hours. And I hands them over to the guys. They looked at me like I was crazy. They looked at me the way you would look at me if I gave you raw baboon liver. Yeah, I'd be like, what the? Like, is this food? Are you crazy? And they're so venomously against processed food and, and Western type food. Interesting. And they are, they wouldn't, I think it's poison. They have a nutritional, like elitism. Like, they're aware that this other food exists. Oh, yeah.

And they believe theirs is better. Getting back to the point, like they, they, they, they're, they're, they're in the network of people. People come through. There's other tribes like the, the, the, the, the, the tugga that have, they make the arrowheads. They're going through with their cattle. Like there, there's people wandering through all of the time. They are remote. But again, uncontacted tribes in this world, it's very, very few and far between.

Right. And so for me, again, I would have gotten COVID from them. They would have gotten it from one other tribesmen. And some of even go to town. The unreleased video that I'll be putting up soon is actually I found out that the tribe leader had a motorcycle. Hmm. He had a motorcycle to go to take his honey into town to trade for arrowheads and other stuff. And so they kind of headed in the bushes, hit it in the bushes.

But they're still connected. Like they would still go to town sometimes to be able to barter their wares. Wow. Yeah. And are they going into like the main town where it like there's hotels and things? or are they going into like more remote towns or just other like agrarian tribal people? Yeah. I mean, it would be a, it wouldn't be a city.

It would be a town. But the town itself would be a stopping point for tourists to go on safari and stuff. Got it. Interesting. So they're actually interfacing and trading in that regard. And even in the face of seeing what life could be, they're still choosing to live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Yeah, exactly. They definitely are very aware of how the West, like the Western world and sort of the modern world works.

but they they they venomously oppose it and who instills the moral ethic in the group that says hey this processed food evil like this western lifestyle wrong like where does that come from in the group i think it's just their creed bro i don't i don't think they there's not one chief that's like hey we don't do this in the hatha don't really have a group leader per se it's it's more spread out amongst others but um yeah i think it's just part of how their belief system yeah and even Even like, again, most, it's very easy. It would be very easy for them to follow the path that most other tribes have, which is get cows. Right.

Because cows are basically like a bank account for a lot of these remote people where you can store value in cows, right? And they can accrue interest. They have babies, right? You can get some like dividends, some interest off them as well. Like you can drink the milk. You can drink the blood. It is an appreciating asset. Exactly.

In a world where you don't really or you can't really have money in a bank, cows are a great replacement. but they completely reject that. All around them are other tribes that have cattle because it makes sense. Right. And they have, they've always had the option, but they've resisted that as well. And that would be like the first step into modernization would be allowing themselves to have cattle. Interesting. Yeah.

This is like, again, we were talking about Yuval Harari, his book Sapiens. Have you read that book, by the way? Yeah. Yeah. I thought it was so fun. But he sort of outlines that progress in human history where it's, you know, hunter-gatherer. And then this hunting and gathering is great, but what if you can't hunt and gather? Being able to go to an agrarian society where you can actually raise cattle, you don't have to go out as much.

You can raise crops. You can actually have, you know, different vegetables and things like that is a more simple. It's an easier lifestyle. And it's interesting that they've chosen to not adopt it, even though, as we've seen in, you know, human evolution, it is easier. And it's, why do you think that they've rejected it in that way? Is it just the ethos of what it means to be Hadza? I think maybe, I don't know, I would like to think maybe they've seen the evils of modernization. I mean, I went there and I was just so fascinated by what we could be.

Yeah. You know, we could be weapons. Yeah. We are, we could be hunters. Can you describe their physique? Well, to be jacked, you got to eat a lot. They can't or don't, right? So they are generally about five foot, two, four around there.

They've got like some chest definition, I think, but they're not muscular men. The most muscular men I've seen are the guys who are, have the cattle. Sure. In Ethiopia, for example, like the mercy I hung with those guys. Last year I got like scarification and also drank the cow blood. Can I see the scarification? Actually, man, you can see it, but it's barely there now. Oh, interesting.

After all that blood. There's only like a few. You can see the Camboscarus from Frog Venma a bit better. Some small little like smiley faces below that. Maybe you can't. I'm from here actually. Interesting. And did they not go as deep, you think?

Were you too much of a wuss? Is that a little bit too much of a wuss? Little segue story. When I was getting it done, they, I wanted scarification. And so she traced, they put dirt on my arm first as a stencil. Because if you get a tattoo, they stencil it, right? But if you live in the remote Omo Valley of Ethiopia, you're not using, ink as a stencil. So they use dirt.

They cover your arm in dirt. Then they take a stick and they, they stencil that way. Oh, cool. And she did this like, almost like McDonald's M&M, like M symbol on my arm. And it was maybe like a centimeter, like half an inch thick like at the M. And like, oh, it's cool. Okay, sure. I mean, not a McDicks fanboy, but if it's a tribal symbol, I'm down. Then I look at her arm and she has this like puffy half inch

by half inch, just thick ass scar that looks like they dug in down to the bone and it's and so I was like listen I'm in remote Africa I'm trying my best to evade bloodborne diseases staff infections course so I don't not looking for the you know half inch deep gouge going halfway down my arm and so I said can we do something a little bit smaller and then so she traced these little these lines on my arm and they did it with a razor blade and a thorn actually oh wow bled so much but didn't didn't leave much of a scar but I guess if you're using you get cut by an axe or like you get in a car crash

your skin gets torn up big time but if it's with a razor blade and it's not like a gouge where you're taking out actual a chunk you can remove and your skin heals pretty well. Interesting yeah I also don't know necessarily the biology the physiology but I guess your skin might not keloid as much. Perhaps yeah like some people will get scars and it'll like kind of bubble over it'll become like a larger like raised sort of groove I think it's the trauma of the injury. Again, because if you go get plastic surgery, generally there's no scars because a scalpel cuts so perfectly.

It's so fine. Whereas if it's torn, then you get a massive scar. Interesting. So these guys there, they were jacked, man. Like, these guys, they heard cattle all day, but they're drinking so much blood and milk that they get the protein required to be able to get jacked. Are they taller?

Yeah, much taller too. Like over there in Sudan and Ethiopia, like, they're six, like, I was one of the shorter guys. six foot like one and it was deuce tall to me interesting what's up guys we got to take a break real quick because we need to help you have better sex that's right and by we obviously i mean myself and also my good friends at blue chew blue chew is an amazing service that delivers chewable tablets right to your door that help you have the best sexual performance of your life 2023 is the year to maximize your sexual performance in the bedroom and that's why you got to check out blue chew.com oh yeah

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and making this conversation happen. Now let's get back to it. Do they have an awareness of like obesity? Like what do they think of that? I'm sure they've seen obese people. Have they seen photographs of obese people? I don't think they. No, I don't think so. Obesity is one of these things in the Western world where it's so natural here and it's just an excess it's living in excess is what it is you know and when you live in excess for so long then you can you're able to put on that weight right and for the haza like they they and again if you're if you're a Olympic bodybuilder or you're trying to be you know mr olympia then you have to eat a lot yeah people don't understand to be jacked like arnold or some of these like men's health covers whatever you got to be eating all

of the time yeah a lot of hg yeah yeah yeah yeah Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, the hodz aren't strong people per se. Interesting. But they're excellent runners. Yeah, but we're born to run. There's a book called Born to Run about a tribe in Mexico. Like, that's what we're good at. Endurance, man, suffering over a long time, pursuing these animals. They can sprint faster, but we can push, push, push. Yeah, that's interesting. I remember reading that that that's a, that's a human advantage that we have over a lot of other animals, is that they might be faster off the line. But a lot of these really fast animals can only go, you know, three, four minutes at that speed.

they kind of slow down and then go fast again. And humans, we can just sustain, you know, a moderate speed for a long time. Exactly. And we're born for it. It's really interesting. And especially being around people that that is their life. Like, they have no concept of not running. And I'm sure it's interesting seeing them just like just persevere for an hour, two hours.

Effortlessly. And I mean, they still drink water. But they'll find a dry riverbed. They'll scoop some hands of gravel out. it'll fill up with muddy water and they just suck it up. Maybe they have like half a glass like this to last them for six hours. I mean, we're taught to drink liters of waters a day when we're not doing anything. Right.

I think just perpetual dehydration. What was the longest run that you saw them go on that either you went with them or that you heard about? Oh, man. Like I train hard for my job. Again, professional adventurer. I don't want to hurt myself. Don't want to hurt other people. I'm always training, right?

And I want to be able to film things and keep. up and I could not keep up to those guys. Like when when they found something it was just game on and again it's not running on a track it's running on the most unstable rock strewn thorn-filled thickets it is torture to move through the landscape and they just zip through like they're they're built for it. Wow. Because they are yeah hours at a time. They we would we would go for there was 30 minutes where we'd be basically sprinting. Yeah. Sprinting these boys do sweat by the way. Um, They're not superhuman, but they're just built different.

And I mean, I'm, I'm 185 pounds. I can't do that. You know, they're maybe like buck 50. And how old are like some of the best warriors? The best hunter was guy named Shakua, who was 25. He was considered the best hunter. The oldest guy that was there, I think could have been Socorro, who was like 37. I met some older guys, but they weren't hunting.

maybe they were 50, 60. Average life expectancy is a bit hard to understand though because child mortality is so high. So if you die when you're zero, you kind of throw the average lifespan off a little bit. Sure. I didn't see many guys there who looked above 60. But again, I wouldn't say they're not around necessarily. I just think they weren't there at the hunt. I was at a hunting camp, not at a village.

Okay. So they have like satellite hunting camps that sprout off of the main. village. Depending on where the animals are. And then they kind of track the animals over like long periods of time. Exactly. Interesting. And as far as the like hierarchy goes, when do the boys get to hunt? Like I'm sure they're not taking six year olds. So do you know when that like sort of is there a manhood ritual that goes along with hunting? I think the right of passage for them is just hunting. I saw a boy who was probably nine or eight and he had a little homemade bone arrow. And And he wasn't out hunting, but he was still shooting stuff around camp at the hunting camp.

Oh, wow. So they start young. Oh, that's so cool. Is that, I've always thought that was interesting. Like traveling, and I've done a little, but not to the same extent. It's always interesting how children, regardless of culture, are generally the same. Yeah. Like, once the culture kind of gets baked into you, then you kind of start deviating in terms of how you live your life.

But children are so similar. Did you find that with the hodz of people, like seeing this young, nine-year-old kid? Was he similar to, like, little kids that, like, you knew from growing up and stuff? for sure man and especially in these cultures where I think there is a bit of struggle you're out there you're rolling around the dirt and you're happy you know the country the people that struggle the most have seemed to be the happiest with one exception where I was in the Andes in Peru and you live at high altitude when you can't grow bananas in your backyard can't have three people

four chickens and a pig. And every day is just a struggle to find water, a struggle to grow food. It's low, you know, low oxygen in the air. It's just, it's difficult. I used to have the series where I'd go back when face filters were a brand new thing, like maybe eight years ago or something. I'd take my phone to these kids in Madagascar or in Tanzania, and I'd show them face filters for the first time where they turn into a chameleon

or a rainbow comes out of their mouth. And they would love it. It was the funniest thing ever. for them. And they weren't sure if it was real or not. So they look at each other and it was always touched their face. Try to take it off. Oh, interesting. Yeah, it was great. And it was always just a great ice breaker. And like, how can you break the ice with people when you don't speak the language? That's always a very difficult barrier to break as a travel. Yeah, the language thing is interesting. Like the Hazza speak with this interesting like click dialect where like, and I think

people, especially Westerners have this idea of like people in, you know, remote areas that are speaking with clicks. It's not just clicks. They're speaking of, obviously like a verbal language that has clicks throughout the language. Now obviously you do not speak this language. No. And so, and probably not many people in the world speak this language. I mean, in terms of like HADSA, there's what, like 1500? Something like that.

Yeah. And so it's a unique language to them. And you need a fixer, like we were talking about someone that knows the tribe and has interfaced with them before. How do they speak the language? So they would be, in the case of the Haza for me, I had gumbo, which I mentioned, right? Yeah, I'd tell me a little bit. And also had another local guy who was a friend of Gumbo, who was the one who spoke some Hadzane, is the language.

But they, he wasn't actually Hansa himself. He was the Tuga, and the Tuga was a tribe that they traded arrowheads with. So his Adzane wasn't completely fluid. Okay. It was, it was okay. But often that's all you need. And what's also amazing sometimes, too, is just, if you. You speak with your hands and you do some charades, a lot of information you can get across.

It's cool that it gets across, right? Yeah, yeah. And we're so expressive. Humans, we've bred dogs to be the same way. We can communicate even with a little twitch of the eye. Exactly. All that means something. So with facial expressions and if you want to even, you know, mime things out like charades,

you can get generally a message across. Have you heard this about Italians? That this is a theory, I don't know if it's true or not. This is a thing that I read, but that Italians are so expressive with their hands as like a stereotype. that they speak like this. And by stereotype, I mean, it's completely true. Italians, you know, like, yeah, what do you? Like American Italians, but then even in Sicily, whatever.

And I heard that there is a reason that Rome was one of this first, like one of the first metropolitan cities that had a ton of international transients. You had people coming from North Africa. You had people coming from like far up in Europe. You had people traveling from all over that were going to Rome as a point of trade, as a, you know, to live, whatever. And as a result of having all of these mixed languages. And it's not like languages we have now where you can think of like 20.

It is like specific dialects. You could be from the same part of Ireland and speak three different languages. So you have people all meeting in Rome that are all speaking different languages. And as a result, in order to communicate, they're using these hand gestures. And from that Roman empire, they've continued the hand gestures, even though they're speaking the same language. I thought it was a great theory. And I'm like, sounds kind of true. Mark, I love that.

I love it because I get commented, I get a lot of comments about myself and how I love speaking with my hands. I don't know where I picked it up, but that's probably how I picked it up. Yeah. Was because I'm dealing with a lot of people who we don't speak the language, the same language. And I have to communicate ideas like, hey, you know, what is this thing we're eating or like over there?

What is? Yeah. That would make so much sense. Isn't that interesting? Like, no matter what language you speak. Yeah. Right. Literally means what is that over there.

Exactly. Yeah, literally like this. What are we eating? There we go. You can communicate across so many cultures just with the same basic hand movements. We come to camp to understand ourselves, right? Exactly, dude. I mean, that is, again, a human element.

That, like, those things, like, surprise, anger, like, those little adjustments you're doing with your eyebrows transcend all humanity. Yeah, yep, exactly. And even, like, cross species, like, the way you're saying with dogs, like, even they understand it. And it's cool that the fixers, is that the technical term? I mean, a fixer will be a television term where essentially, I think it comes from the idea that you have someone, on location who will fix everything. Someone's late. Something's wrong.

They want to kill you. We can fix this. They speak the language. They know how everything works. They'll fix the problem. But essentially, it's someone who's there who knows how the system works and can help make things happen. Yeah.

And I'm always curious also, like as a comic about humor as it pertains to humans. Like the evolutionary advantage of humor. It's a very interesting thing that we like telling jokes, that we like stories and that we like punchlines. And I'm curious, I have some theories. personally is like the evolutionary advantage of humor but I'm curious in your experience with these remote tribes what is their relationship with humor and how do they tell jokes with each other

one of the times I was hunting with a hadza um so it was the it was the night actually we were going to the baboon raid and so we'd come back from the baboon raid like we spoke about right successful which was great but baboon was for breakfast not for midnight snack we went we after the successful hunt, we went back, chilled around the campfire for a bit, went to bed. Just those guys sleep on the dirt with some animal skins and the stars are there, the crickets are chirping, it's fantastic.

So I cheed a little bit. I had a sleeping bag. But was there laying with these guys. And so we're there and they're chatting. I can't understand their clicks, but it's just fun to listen because they're very expressive, right? And there's a few moments of silence. It was by, this crickets, crickets, crickets.

And then... someone farts, everyone laughs. That's so funny. The comedic timing of the fart was just perfect. And that transcended any like language, cultural, religious. It's just all barriers were transcended with one perfectly time fart. How weird. You laugh too, probably.

Of course I did because that's funny. And that was such a human moment. You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, that's so funny. Are they telling stories a lot? Yeah, they're always telling stories, man. And it's it's it's the entirety of how they operate.

I'm sure that's there's no books there, right? It's all all of these, the, the, the, the, the lessons, the creeds we've been speaking about. I'm sure it's has passed down in front of campfires. Yeah. And so there was no like literacy. There's no written language that they were using on a daily basis. I don't think there is a written language for Hadzani. Interesting.

They wouldn't use it. I don't think. Interesting. Yeah. And then in terms of like interpersonal relationships, I know you were obviously at like a satellite hunting camp and you weren't in the main village. so to speak, but in terms of like wives, marriage, relationships, do they talk about women kind of in the way that like guys in the West or guys, you know, like you would traditionally

think of guys talking about girls? Did they talk about like relationships and women they loved and how did they find wives and things like that? Did you get to see that? Yeah, I think that we, our view on love and marriage and relationships is just so different than what they think. I was hang with the Maasai in Tanzania as well. And they have multiple wives, right? And I was hanging with a girl I was dating at the time, who's quite a big YouTuber as well. And she would did a piece, a story about how interviewing these Maasai women about what it's like to share a husband. And you think, oh, you know, like maybe, you know, he's with her and the judge, but it's not like that. It is a partnership. You know, he's out in the field all day long. The women need help at home

with the kids and everything. And so it's not even about sex. Like we, I think we tie in this multiple wife thing around the world too much with like sexual encounters and sharing a husband sexually. But for them, it's just like, it's a business agreement where there's a shitload of work to do. My man's out in the field all day long.

I got a kick, cook. I got six kids. You know, there's two of them are sick. How can we make this work? And often it's even the, his brother died. And so now the, the, the aunt's wife's widow, she comes and he takes a second wife. It's not, it's not really like Western marriages. And it's not really like love as we see it. You know, it is more like it's

beneficial for our families to get together. So it's an entirely different way to think about it. And with the Hanzah, I don't exactly know the system there. It's not polygamous. I think the men have one wife, but it's not seen in the same way. One really funny example is like, I was in Namibia and I made a video with this tribe called the HIMBA. HIMBA are very famous for the women being very, I could use the word aggressive, but more like sexually aggressive, let's say, very open, very Amazon warrior type attitude. Interesting. And also for not wearing shirts. They don't think breasts are sexual. They think ankles are sexual. So their ankles are bound up with goat skin and wire, but the ladies are out to play, man, everywhere. And they're, again, very forward. I went there

a couple of years ago just to understand the culture a bit more. And the first thing that happened when I arrived is that this gorgeous Himba woman with this elaborate headdress and all of these interesting necklaces and her boobs out was like, so do you have a wife? I want to be your husband. what does a guy say? I was a bit taken aback. I didn't ever expect that kind of forwardness from any, from a woman, especially like a tribal woman in Africa. She literally proposed you.

She wanted you to be her husband. Because most of the time men and women kind of segregate in these communities, right? Men do the men thing, women do the women thing. And you don't cross too much. But she's like, do you want to be my husband? And I was like, I wasn't ready for a marriage proposal. Yeah. And how long were you there for it?

I mean, that was in the first 10 minutes. And so it was that forward. Like, there's not like a cultural issue. with marrying an outsider or marrying someone that doesn't understand the values. She just saw you and was like, oh, this could be my ticket. Let's go. My clever answer was, I'm from Canada. It's cold.

And she's like, oh, I'll wear a coat. So she was, she was gung-ho. And that was one. And then over the course of the day, there was eight, nine different marriage proposals from nine different women. Whoa. And so at a certain point, like, they look at you. It's not a joke.

They want to marry you, man. That's what they want to do. So it's kind of a joke in the beginning. but after a while you're kind of breaking people's hearts. And these women, let's paint a bit more of a picture. So the Hymba are famous for, again, not wearing shirts. They have the ankle bracelets and everything. Also, they don't take baths.

They live in a part of, again, Namibia is a desert. Man, it's the middle of nowhere. And they barely have enough water for their livestock, their goats and their cattle. So they don't want to waste water by showering with it. So they shower with smoke. So imagine showering with smoke your entire life, never bathing. Hmm. So they have this interesting, they call it ochre, but it's butter from the cows and red clay

and they infuse it with incense and they cover their entire body. But, I mean, even as a dude, imagine never washing your junk in your entire life. Yeah. But part of me wonders if it is actually better or like more hygienic. Like our bodies, I don't know. Again, this is maybe me getting a little too hippy-dippy, but I'm on your side, though. But is there an element where, I mean, we know like, pheromones are important. We know that our bodies have, like, self-cleaning systems.

Like, you create earwax that then is cleaning your ears at all times. So is there an element where their lack of Western hygiene that as Westerners, we view, is gross, is actually better? Or is actually more hygienic in some way? I, it would make sense because we wouldn't be, wouldn't have evolved in a way. that was detrimental to ourselves. Mm-hmm. Right? We evolution is a really good job of pulling the weeds, bro.

So I would think that all of this circumcision, washing your junk is probably unnecessary. Even brushing your teeth is probably unnecessary with a traditional diet. Exactly. Yeah. The sugar will rot those things out in a sec. Exactly. You hear all these stories of like once we get sugar cane and it gets shipped over to England

and all these people are eating sugar all day, not washing their not brushing their teeth and their teeth are just rotting out. But over there, they don't have such a sugar-heavy diet. No, and again, you meet some tribes around the world who still enjoy the seductiveness of jolly ranchers and bullshit, right? Of course. But there, they don't hate it. They think it's poison. And I've never seen whiter teeth in my life. Really? Straight. For real. Straight teeth as well. And that's an interesting story as well, like the malaclusion where we have a problem with our teeth just drifting different directions is a modern problem that they thought.

was genetic but dude it's because we're not putting our teeth to work we're drinking smoothies we're eating white bread it's pudding it's baby food right it's it's not gnawing sinew off a bone you do that your teeth just like a human are like i have a purpose i'm gonna put myself in line yeah if you just eat as eyeballs and and your teeth don't know what to do right interesting and so they just drift different directions and this has been proven as well like scientifically that without a purpose your teeth just drift and so like i had braces a lot of people my family have braces. Obviously in the Western world, it's a problem to have teeth go different directions there. It's not a problem. Teeth go exactly where they should because they have a purpose,

which is the chew. They don't have, you know, smoothies and protein shakes and shit. Interesting. Yeah. And even to that point, so I spent a little bit of time in like rural parts of Honduras. I was doing like medical mission trips when I was in high school. And we would go to like these really remote parts outside of like San Pedro Sula or Tugusa Galpa, like up in the mountains, like two hours to get up there. And a lot of these people are living sort of like semi, semi, Western, like they have Western clothes because people are donating clothing to them, but generally they're living off the land in the mountains of Honduras. And as an American, you think, oh, we smell or we create body odor that is pungent. So we have to cover it up with deodoran and colognes and

things like that. And what I found is that when I was around people that weren't wearing cologne and things like that all the time, they did have an interesting smell, but it wasn't pungent. It wasn't gross. it was just a scent. And it made me wonder, like, do we smell bad because of our diet? Or are we eating things that are bad for us that then make us smell worse? Because when I was around people that weren't wearing deodorant and colognes, it did have a smell, but it wasn't bad. And I'm curious if you had a similar experience with any of the people you were with,

where there is a body odor, but it's almost like sweet in a way. Did you find that? It's like a big soap's agenda. That's what I'm saying, dude. We got to take down big soap, bro. We got to take them down. Johnson and Johnson. So we're coming for you.

But did you find that to be the case? Exactly. No, you're on point. Because, again, in the case of the Hymba, they never showered, ever, man or women. Didn't smell bad. Smelt. There was a smell. But again, our body does a really good job of all these things.

And there's even interesting examples of like shampoo and conditioner. We take the oil out. We put the oil back in. And I have my own little story, bro. my lips get a little bit chapped sometimes. I know. I'm not your pussy, but I'm working on it. But if I start using lip chap, it only gets worse.

And this could be total conspiracy. I don't know. But I feel like some of these products we use kind of exacerbate the problem. And then they have other remedies to fix it. And therefore, we're kind of stuck in this loop of just using shit to make our body healthy when our body, again, would be perfectly fine

if we just left it alone. Interesting. And that's because, oh, but I've seen over and over again in the far reach of the planet. Yeah. Now, I was noticing with like a lot of the, in some of your content, like, they don't necessarily all have like beards and things like that. So do they like trim their beards or do they grow in different ways? Did you notice anything about that?

I think, I think massive amounts of body hair is more of a, again, I don't know this exactly, but more like a cold weather adaption. Interesting. Right? Maybe. Because even then, like, those guys, they would, they would go and, like, it was. watch the hansa videos they would go into town sometimes to get something done for sure like there's i mean everyone in the world gets haircuts for the most part so even the smallest little town um

the dudes would have probably a guy with a pair of scissors and a like those little square razor things that you know what i mean and just uh do a fresh fade because one of the guys had a fresh fade really are they trading it for honey i i don't know what they're trading it for oh how interesting do you think they're influenced by western culture in that regard where they see a cool hairstyle and they go that's cool or is it all tribal and like organized within the society where it's like oh these people get this hairstyle these people get this hairstyle they would see they would see going into town to again buy certain things they would see people who looked good right and then they would potentially be influenced by that but again the world is connected man you can go to the most rural parts of

africa and still have a cell service right right and everybody watching watches YouTube and influencers do their thing and especially music videos, right? Like every culture has music, like club music, dance music. And in all those videos, no matter if you're in Tanzania or wherever, you see dudes who have the chains, who have the glasses and the girls. And how could you not want that though? Right. And that's the problem.

On a base human level, that stuff is awesome. Exactly. And I roll in with my iPhone and my pants on and shit and got my gadgets and they see rock stars and movie stars and music stars with the same thing. The hods are one of the few tribes that have resisted that, but generally it's very seductive, the Western world. How could you not want all of these amazing things, especially when you see the most successful examples having all of them, right?

You want the girls too. You want the tech. You want to look cool. Yeah. And so you leave your hometown, whether it be a tribal village or something else. And then you go to the big city to make the money, to have the go to the clubs,

all that kind of stuff. Live the life that you think will make you happy. Exactly. Was there any shame in any of the people that left? Like, is there a culture of, oh, don't leave. And if you do leave, you can't come back? I know for a fact that when people do come back, they're treated differently. Because I heard of friends speak about that, who was, I believe, was Messiah.

But at the same time, one of the ways, one of the biggest criticisms I got for making this content was you should just leave them alone. they're happy by themselves. Yeah. I mean, that's a reasonable criticism. I can understand why some would say that. It makes sense because, again, they, many of these tribes, a few of these tribes have decided to stay out of the Western world. As I've told you, it's not as clean cut as we like to believe it is, the fantasy of it all, but some have. But the reality is the world has 8 billion people.

There's less and less room. Their traditional homelands are being encrouched on. There's struggle. There's properties being bought up and things being built and other tribes grazing cattle on traditional hunting lands. The world's a very small place. And so for the case of the Haza, for example, I was working with the foundation called Malaka Foundation, which is an NGO that helps the Hansa. And what they're doing is they're sending Hansa to school. And my attitude in the beginning was like, well, like, no, let's help them do their thing, you know? That's going to make them modernize. We don't have a choice. if they're going to modernize. They have already and they will continue to, even if we leave them alone. Again, they're not living on a small little patch of forest and no people visit.

You know, they go to town. So then what really is the solution? The example that I love to give is the Messiah, who are, again, these nomadic, pastoralist people who have the cattle and they still live quite traditionally. But they've had many people go to school, learn how to read and write, learn law, learn to be an engineer, a doctor, whatever.

learn how the world works, the system work, and then come back and say, I'm from this land, I'm going to fight for my people. I know the laws. I know the people to talk to and they are able to fight for those traditional homelands. Otherwise, people who know the system are going to take advantage of those who don't. Right. This is like the Native American example we have in the States where, you know, like again, I don't know the details of how exactly true it is. But there's this idea that New York as a land was sold from the Native Americans to Europeans. for like $20.

Like an insanely low amount of money because the native people at the time didn't have a concept of land ownership. So they were like, sure, we'll sell you the land for like, what does that even mean? How do you own, it's like owning air? Like, how do you own this air? Yeah.

And as a result of them not understanding these laws that Europeans brought in, they got screwed over. Right. And so if someone had gone and educated, maybe a chief to say, hey, here's what the rules these people are playing with. And they're going to,

to do this with the laws and the deal that you're making with them. And it's not like the deals that you're used to. It's a different set of deals and a different type of, you know, constitution that they're working under. They maybe would have been able to negotiate a little bit better or not have done the deal at all. So to your point, yeah, if you can tell them, hey, here's how the world is working and you can use that to protect yourself and to sustain the society that you choose to

sustain, I could definitely be beneficial. That makes sense. And who's going to fight for it more? your hometown, wherever it is. Where is it? Orlando. Orlando. So who's going to fight for Orlando more than someone who was born there? Of course.

Right? I could go in. I could do a fundraiser for maybe there's a typhoon or a horror, but it's going to be someone who's from there, who understands the people who has emotional connections, who will fight the hardest. So someone can come in, they can do a fundraiser for some tribe, and we can make some money and support them a little bit.

But ultimately, I can't be there every day. I can't make it my life's mission. I could, but there's a lot of interesting things in the world in a lot of places to spread my love and attention, you know? Right. But if you're from there, you're never going to fight more than someone who's not. So you're always going to fight more than someone who's not. Interesting.

So by empowering these people, even though it seems counterintuitive, it's ultimately the best way to allow them to survive with some semblance of traditionalism, right? Sure. What's up, guys? We've got to take a break real quick because I've got to talk to you about some of the best vases in the game. That's right. You see this vase right here?

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Now let's get back to the show. Have you seen any examples of Westerners trying to come in and trying to help with good intentions that actually ends up backfiring? I know there's lots of this volunteerism stuff where people go in and I'm sure they do there is some helping at the end of the day, but I think it's mostly as a company will make money off of tourists to be able to have an authentic experience with local people. Not the best, not great, either way. But again, the best way to save these people, I do think is with tourism, as much as it does seem counterintuitive as well, but in a world where it's impossible to stay off the grid,

and it's impossible to be completely disconnected. And all of the young kids, especially boys, will see these rap videos, music videos, even in their local language, or even shit over here in the U.S. And they want to have that. Because who, what guy doesn't want to have, you know, girls and money and, you know, stuff? And then go to the big city and try to get a job. Like, people are fleeing these traditional communities because who wants to do what your grandfather's doing? You know?

Right. You want the new shit. You want what the cool kids are doing, man. It's the guy with the fucking glasses. You want to do that. And so you leave. And then who's left? It's the old people.

Old people die. The songs, the dances, the story. the traditions go away. Big people live in the big city, telling stories from here, watching, you know, movies made here. It disappears. So then what is the solution

to keep people in the villages? Well, it can be tourism. People going in, showing interest, saying, hey, your local culture is super cool. You know, if you're from a small town like I am in Canada, there's shit we do there that I'd never really thought was cool.

Like, for example, the leaves changing colors every year in New Brunswick, Canada. I just thought that's what the world did. Of course. I went to, it was like Dubai or something and I met a tourist there who was like, oh, I've always wanted to go to the northeast of

America and see the leaves change color. I would love to do that before I die. And I'm like, that's what, like, before you die, that was the worst part of the year. We had to rake up all the leaves. It was a chore for us. What do you mean you want to see it? And that's what I associated with it too.

Hard work, man. But it just shows you that you don't appreciate shit where you're from. But that girl saying that to me made me realize that's kind of special actually. And someone will travel across the world to see it. So there is value there. And so, again, I'm not there doing, you know, look at the colors of the fall tours. Sure.

But there is money in that there. If there's attention from other places coming back to these small communities where not much happens. Right. And then it's managing it well. Can you do that? It gets a bit more complicated. But tourism, when managed well, can save these cultures that will disappear. Not if they will, but they will disappear.

They are disappearing now. People talk about endangered species, man. there are endangered cultures that are going extinct every single month for sure yeah yeah and we you need someone from the culture in order to interface and sort of like screen people coming in because if there's no one screening it you have people coming in and they'll destroy the area and not because they're evil or stupid it's because they don't know right they're like oh let me pick up this plant let me climb this tree let me take a photo with this thing and let me walk on this, you know, part of the trail and then they're destroying the local habitat or destroying

the nature around it. Whereas if you had someone that's from there that grew up in the community that's able to say, hey, I'm going to invite you in as my guest and we're going to look at things, but you have to listen to me and you're not going to be unsupervised. And I'm going to show you how to actually immerse into this experience. You know, imagine someone goes to New Brunswick and they're like, oh, this is beautiful. Let me take all the leaves or let me take seeds and let me just like mess up the ecosystem. Then it destroys it for everyone. And so to your point. You need someone that is going to receive them and show them

how to be a tourist. I think we have this idea of tourism that it's like, go there and it's a free for all. Show up and do whatever you want and explore as far as you want, especially when you're in remote places. It's like, oh, this is nature. Get out there. But you need someone that's going to say, no, don't walk over there. Don't touch that plant. This tree is

sacred to our community and this is something that we really appreciate. So don't climb it and treat the things with respect. And you need a local to do it. Because otherwise, how do you know? Even if you're an outsider that learned everything, you don't know everything. And so to your point, I think it is important to, yeah, to have someone that can show it. And what a shame it would be like in New Brunswick. If the people there were like, oh, this, leaves changing things, is stupid. Let's cut down these trees and let's put in evergreens that are

never going to shed trees or never shed leaves. Like for pulp or paper or something. Yeah, exactly. And then it destroys that experience. And then everything becomes one thing. So it is helpful, either from inside the community for people to have a really strong moral constitution to resist or have an education on how to receive people not from the community. Yeah. Exactly. That's really, really interesting. And I'm interested also in the spiritual drug component.

So, like, with the Hadza, they're smoking weed. Is it weed as we know weed to be, or is it a different type of drug? No, it's not weed as we know weed to be because I smoked weed with them and it was great. Then I went back home to Canada where it's legal, took one token and was on outer space, bro. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I always tell me. I'm like, I can't, like, that's actually such a good point. Yeah, keep going on that idea.

Just, yeah, no, it's just like, even when I was in Pakistan, too, there was weed growing. We get out of, so we get to the airport, I'm doing a two-week tour of Pakistan. We're in Islamabad. We, the guys like, oh, it's your first day. Let's go from the airport to this scenic viewpoint over Islamabad. It's in the east. And so we drive from the airport to this scenic viewpoint. We get out and there's like a little culvert, like, you know, ditch with some trees.

and then there's a viewpoint. It's filled with weed. Just wild growing weed all through. And I'm like, is that pot? Yeah, yeah, it grows everywhere here. No problem, right? And so later we were smoking some weed and it's kind of, you can smoke it like it smoke a cigar or a cigarette.

No problems. But the shit we have now, man, it's like. Yeah, God had nothing to do with our weed. That is a man-made invention, dude. I mean, like, you look at Jamaica and people always like point to Jamaica as like this big weed culture. And they're smoking natural weed, truly a weed. Like, when people say weed, like,

That's how it wasn't Pakistan. It was a weed. It is a nuisance. Like, it is literally a weed. And they'll smoke it all day, but they're not getting to the levels of high that we're doing in America. I mean, American culture just has such a desire to just fucking squeeze everything out of everything. Break a world record. Yeah.

The biggest egg, the biggest pumpkin, the strongest weed. I mean, they're doing weed dabs. Like, you've smoked a dab before maybe. I mean, it's like, what even is that? And you can't smoke that all day. No. It is not a naturally occurring thing. But this weed that's growing in the dirt.

I guess, yeah, you could just chief it all that. Maybe it's a bit like cocaine, right? You go to Peru and everyone choose Coca-Leaf because the altitude thins your blood and the Coca-leaf when chewed with a bit of, he's like some kind of rock or something, it increases the blood flow and makes you have some a reasonable amount of energy. But you refine that shit down to cocaine and it's a whole different thing, right? Yeah. And I think maybe it's kind of the same thing.

I mean, it's not refining it chemically, you're refining it genetically. Yeah. To make it the most potent thing in the world. Yeah. So in terms of other drugs, like, were you around any of the tribes that were doing, like, obviously, ayahuasca is like a really common one in like Central and South America? Mm-hmm.

Was there any version of like a psychedelic experience that people were having in the Mercy or the Hadza? Mercy and Hadza, no. What's interesting with the Hadza as I was, I had heard that, alcohol well I had heard and I had seen that alcohol was a massive problem in Africa and it's quite sad in the case of the Hadza I had heard on my third trip that there was some kind of pseudo agreement that since they do get very little tourism there I've probably changed now with these videos but if there was alcohol found or smelled at a tribe, therefore they would not bring tourists back. So they were using it kind of as an incentive

not to drink alcohol because it does exist everywhere. And if you don't buy it, you can make it quite easily. And that's fascinating because alcohol destroys people, man, destroys cultures, especially people who were more tuned into the land, right, where they go out every day, they hunt. When alcohol comes in, especially I saw in Ethiopia, it just, destroys communities. Men get violent. They drink themselves to shit. You see people just laying in the street. It becomes a massive problem.

And again, it's very hard to be able to police or enforce because you can make alcohol. Anyone can make it. Yeah. Really easily. Throw some berries in a bag and you got fucking wine. I mean, they're making it in prison. I mean, weed itself, you couldn't have a functional high for sure. And like they were smoking pot and we were hunting together, right?

And that's fine. And in Ethiopia, there was cat, cats this leaf. And you chew this whole fistful and it tastes almost, I don't know, I mean, like you're chewing a tree. Yeah. It tastes like grass. Yeah. And it gives you a moderate high for sure. But you have to chew a lot to be able to feel anything.

But what's really interesting, though, is every culture I visited, right? I've been to 80, 90 countries now. Maybe close to 100 way. Kind of stop counting. Every culture does three things. everyone sings everyone dances and everyone gets fucked up

somehow with something even you can say Muslim cultures but you go chill at the Muslims they're like smoking cigarettes drinking espresso and everyone just like something everybody gets fucked up everyone

and that begs the question why because it was bad for us we wouldn't do it I'm talking depths of the Amazon you know sandy pyramids in the Middle East everyone has something just to tune

tune the antenna a little bit differently. And I find that fascinating. Because there's something too getting fucked up that it is a required human experience. Yeah, so interesting. I mean, even like natural highs. Like I went to Tunisia and they were talking about like ancient Tunisians in North Africa

basically going to like these caves and they would do like these performances where they would bang this drum inside a cave. So imagine how loud of drum is. Now you're inside a cave. I mean, this thing is booming. It's hitting you in the chest. And like a drum in real life.

Like this is a thing, even just as Westerners, like you might not hear a drum. like a real, like a fucking drum. And it hits you differently than a speaker. Right in the chest. It's a different experience. I always tell people this. Like live music and recorder music is different.

And they're both cool. But when you get that, like a real vibration from a drum hitting you in the chest, it is a fucking spiritual, dude. This shit is crazy. And so imagine you're in a cave. They're doing that. They're burning like incense. And now it's like changing your olfactory system. Like you're smelling something different.

They have candles that they're intentionally putting like baskets over to make like a flicker. And they're creating this. environment that is truly generating like a high, like you're releasing adrenaline and dopamine in your brain. So even if you're not consuming a substance, you're still having almost like this quasi spiritual experience. And what these guys would do is they would do almost like human stunts. Like they would like take cactuses and they would like bang it on their arms. Okay. To like show like their pain resistance. Or they would like, you know, like play with fire in a unique way that showed like they were basically ascending into like this like natural high and then

doing these extraordinary feats as like entertainment, but also as like a spiritual exercise. And to that point, even though they weren't consuming something literally, they were still feeling fucked up. Yeah. And it transcends everywhere. But you don't have to consume something. Like have you tried, have you heard of holotrophic breathwork? Mm-hmm.

So do you ever heard a breath of fire? Like in yoga where you're like hyperventilate, hyperventilation. Let me tell you a couple cool facts about air first. Please. So do you know what percentage of air is oxygen? I could guess, but tell me. 20%. So most, 21, I think.

But most of the air we breathe is actually nitrogen, not oxygen. When you hold your breath, the trigger to breathe, right, you would think would be a lack of oxygen. So it's not the lack of oxygen. It's the buildup of CO2. So we inhale oxygen and we exhale CO2, right? And it's a cool thing I learned free diving is that when you feel like you have to breathe, it's not from a lack of oxygen. It's a buildup of the opposite.

triggers your need to breathe. So even when you feel like you're going to die, you're fine. You have lots of oxygen left in your lungs. And that's the trick to holding your breath longer under water. Even you, if I laid you on this table, Mark, and we practiced. It's a little table, dude. Breathing, you could hold your breath for like three, four minutes with understanding these principles. Another interesting thing. So when you lose weight, where does the weight go? You breathe it out. You breathe it out. How do you know that? I actually don't know. I just, I remember reading that somewhere. They're like, you're literally breathing out fat. Because we're carbon-based life forms. We breathe out the carbon when we lose weight. So it's not pissing it out, you know, pooping it out. It's not, it's literally we breathe out the carbon to lose weight. So then here's another question. Trees. You have a, like three potted plants right here. Yes, beautiful. Natural. Are they natural? No, they're fake. You should know this, dude. You live in the jungle. Come on. How are they getting light here?

If you did have a real pot of plant and it grows into a beautiful tree, right? The soil always stays the same, right? You have a plant, you plant it. The soil is there. It grows. The soil doesn't drop as the plant grows. The plant could grow six feet, but it never moves. So then where is the plant getting its mass from?

Because there's no holes underneath trees in the jungle. It's like the plant's not sucking out the earth to make itself. So where does the mass come from for a plant? the air man interesting we breathe out the carbon carbon dioxide the plant sequesters the carbon so it gets its mass from the air not from the nutrients and shit yeah it needs that too but it's the that's why the soil this will listen drop right so it's fascinating to think that air is so much more than we think it is getting back to the point holotrophic breathwork is when you hyperventilate for it could be 20 minutes 15 45 and you get

as high as you would doing a few grams of mushrooms. Really? For sure. Or like eating enough pot where you feel a full body physical high. I tried it for the first time, maybe just two years ago. And I felt like my dead grandmother had come back, put her hands on my shoulders and said, it's okay.

I couldn't make it back for a funeral. So I felt some remorse. But it's okay, son. It's fine. I forgive you. just by breathing. Hmm. And so whether it be, again, drugs or alcohol or some kind of plant medicine, breathing itself

is an incredible tool that we, I think we're just starting to re-unlock, because I think we forgot it, the tools breath can give us, the capabilities, the visions, the lessons, even. How interesting. Yeah, I spoke with William Truebridge. Have you heard of him? He's arguably the greatest free diver of all time. He lives between Bahamas and Japan

and lives in Blue Hole in Bahamas, which is, as he calls it, like, if you were to create a free diving destination, it is the perfect destination for free diving. And we were having this discussion where he was like, he was like, you know, you hyperventilate. I was like, yeah, you know, you're oxygenate your blood. And he goes, no, exactly what you said.

You're extolling all the CO2. Right. And we were talking about drugs, and it's so funny you bring this up because he's like, I've done a lot of drugs. This is what he said. He was like when I was in college, did Molly, did ecstasy, did mushroom, smoked weed.

I liked substances. I like chasing that feeling. And he said he stopped doing it after like two weeks of free diving. And now he's dedicated his whole life to free diving and teaching others to free dive. And he actually teaches an anxiety course through the breathwork that he learned

through free diving. And he's described it like, look, I could meditate for 45 minutes and get to a really contemplative reflective place that is like spiritual. Or I could swim for 30 seconds. I hit, I start descending. And he holds a world record,

365 feet or something, finless free dive, single breath hold. And he says, like, sometimes he'll do training and he will like go into a cave and he'll just lay there. He can hold his breath eight, nine minutes, easy. And he'll go down there. It's like a minute down and he'll hang there for three or four minutes. And he says those experiences, he's thinking about his wife and his kids on the boat at the top of the water. He's thinking about being connected to all the oceans in the world, how he's one with everything.

Like literally the psychedelic mushroom trip that people would have. And he says he has that same euphoria and bliss that he could get doing the substance. is that he's already felt, but he says through the breathwork and the sensory deprivation of being in the water, he's like, it's the same feeling. He says the difference is that it's sustainable and that it kind of comes from within. Like he says, like using these substances to put you into a different place externally isn't really sustainable. You know, like, you know, alcohol makes us feel good, weed makes us feel good, mushrooms make us feel good, but if you do it every day and abuse it, it destroys you. Yeah. But you could meditate and you can get in the water and

you could lay there and feel that oneness clean. It's pure. It's pure. pure and you're getting that same euphoria and peace in a sustainable way. You could do it every day. And the way he describes it was just like blew my mind. I was like, wow, what a powerful thing that we have here that, that, you know, I like to use drugs to inform my sobriety. I never want to abuse drugs. And so even, you know, if I did Molly, I like, oh, what does it feel like to just want to love everyone? And then when I get sober, I'm like, oh, I should do that more. And I don't want to rely on the substance. But it was useful to use the substance to get to that place. And I think people can get to it through meditation. And it is interesting the desire to want to disconnect from reality across every culture. I mean, it's such an interesting thing. And I'm curious if it's struggle. Like we like as human beings, the human experience is struggle. And it is hard.

And when it is not hard, it's kind of like a fluke. You know, at least it should be. And so I wonder if the desire to be fucked up or to create disconnect. I almost think fucked up is like almost like a pejorative for what it could be. And I know you don't mean it that way. But I think it is the desire to disconnect. create a little bit of distance from this realm and this plane that we're existing in to kind of get into a different headspace. What do you think that why? Like, why is it across all cultures

the desire to disconnect a little bit? Three months ago, I had a pretty intense mushroom trip. How many grams? Four and a half. Wow. Yeah. And as I was there, I had a little cigar, one of those cigareos, kind of like, little cigarette style ones. Probably hit those last one of these open. And I was looking at it and they were individually wrapped as they are. Like a look this. They always are. Right. And I was there and one thing I've seen a lot of places, tobacco is not cigarettes, but tobacco, right? Whether you smoke it or snuffing up your nose, like rapé in the Amazon or you use it as an incant, there's lots of ways tobacco's used ceremonially. And I was looking at this and I thought it was so similar to what we are.

inside there is this wholesome thing made of earth, right? Tobacco leaves, that's it. On the outside is a fake layer of plastic used to protect what's inside. Humans are exactly the same way. We have our true selves on the inside, but to weather the storm of real life, you never know where this thing's going to go. You know what I mean? You have to build a fake synthetic later on the outside to protect what's inside.

The problem with humans is we can't really get rid of that layer easily. we got to, you know, try something else. We've got to bend it. We've got to take it off through, in my opinion, whether it be smoking, drinking, doing something to just bend reality a little bit, then we can live a little bit more freely, right? And there's lots of ways you can do that. Even tobacco itself just helps take a bit of an edge off things, you know? And so I think that it's the same thing. And I would argue that plastic is fear, man.

We are so tuned into fear humans are. You'd think that we would have figured it up by now, but I think because the most fearful of us were the ones that survived the wars and the beasts, therefore fear has become such an important survival mechanism. So not feeling fear would get you killed. So feeling fear is as human as breathing. And now in a modern world where we don't have struggle, we fear us so much, right? We don't have experience either.

One thing I noticed with the Hads as well is that they have small groups. Are you familiar with Dunbar's number? Yeah. I love that realization. Can you explain what that is? For sure. There was a scientist that studied brain size in primates. And what he discovered is that at a certain point, primate groups would fractal.

They would break at a certain number and form smaller groups. And it was in correlation with their brain size. So orangutans, chimps, bonobos, would all do that. And for humans, the size at which they would fracture based on our brain size, was 150. And then from there, we would, again, fracture and fracture again. So that, I'm kind of extrapolating that information. But if you think about it, so that means our default brain setting is 150, right?

Our brain works at numbers of 150. So it ties very interestingly into our risk assessment because generally the odds are always 150. If some dude gets bit by a snake, one in 150, you know? If a guy gets eaten by a shark, one in 150. And so now we have a world where we have the experiences of 8 billion freaking people, all happening all at once, we see the worst things, the kidnappings, the beheadings, you know,

the guy mulled by a rampaging zebra. That gets blasted because it's good clickbait. That goes to us and our brain's set on 1 in 150. And so we assess risk so poorly. You know, we're terrible at assessing risk. We'll do things like, you know, drive cars, right? Super dangerous. The two things I'm most scared about as a traveler is infected cuts, staff, MRS, and driving cars. Statistically, super dangerous. And even in the States, there's like a one in

seven chance you'll die of obesity, man. Yeah. That means the most dangerous thing you can do is nothing. Right? Sit at home and worry about the world is the most dangerous thing statistically you can do. Yeah. Right. Skydiving is like one in 200,000. Yeah, right? And even like shark attack there's 10 maybe fatal shark attacks a year, 510. From there, do you know how many sharks people kill a year in comparison? Thousands, hundreds of thousands. 100,000 sharks a year. Right?

And those odds are just tiny. So we're just so bad at assessing risk that way. You know what I mean? I mean, that 150 is so interesting that we're assessing everything based off of that number. Exactly. Yeah. Like, I mean, if you're in a remote tribe and you're the amount of people you're with is about 150. Someone gets bit by a snake and you're like, okay, yeah, that's the,

that's the risk. You're making an actual judgment. Did you find that the people you were with had a different relationship with risk and fear? Oh, they feared snakes, right? And they feared the poisons of the modern world, man. How interesting. Have you ever seen that, there's a recent study that I saw, it was like an infographic again. I don't know. It might be dubious, the, the veracity of this information. But it was dreams, like nightmares people have across society across the world. And so like the most prevalent nightmare people have across the entire country. So in America, do you know what the what the biggest, most fearful, reoccurring nightmare could be? I would say falling. It's the tie between falling and losing your teeth. Oh,

I've had a losing teeth dream. Of course. We all have. Why though? I don't have no idea. I'm assuming it's connected like vanity or so like what that's like our social currency. If you're missing your teeth, things are not going so well. You're other old or poor or whatever. And in basically every other place in the world, it's snakes. Yeah. The nightmare across almost, almost everywhere, is literally like, oh, I got bit by a snake in my sleep. Wake up. Oh, there's no snake. Yeah, because snakes are a real problem. I love snakes. Snakes get killed for bad reasons all over the world. Often cultures will kill a snake upon seeing a snake because they assume it's venomous. But I've got a super cool story about that too. So my channel is called Fearless and Far, right?

Not because I am fearless. I was probably born more fearful than most, but I've realized that fearlessness is a choice you make in the face of fear. So anyone can be fearless. It's just making a choice in a moment, deciding to do it anyway. That's what I preach. And so I've done a lot of research about fear,

and I found the most fascinating story about snakes. So they were doing a study with babies, six months old, so just barely alive, right? Just barely born. Very few experiences. and they had photos of snakes and fish, spiders, and flowers. And they were all blurred. So you couldn't really tell which was which.

And if you blur them, you could see how they would look similar, right? They would slowly unblur these photos for these newborns, again, who have no frame of reference what a flower or a spider was. And every single time, the baby's pupils would dilate when it became a spider. Because epinephrine dilates the pupils, which is one of the fear. hormones, which means that fear isn't learned. We thought fear was something you learned from your mom. You see a, your mom sees a rat. She jumps up. She's scared. Okay, rats bad. I'm scared. No, no, no. We have fears embedded in our brains already when we're born. How interesting is that?

Fascinating. Mostly ancestral threats. So snakes would have been a big deal. Spiders would have been a big deal as well. But it begs the question, right? So if there's, if it's proven that there's fear pre-baked into our brains, what else is in there? Like, we're a social primate, man. We need to be part of the tribe. So if we're kicked out of the tribe, we're ostracized, that's even, that's even scarier than snakes and snakes and death sense. So then no wonder we have social anxiety. No wonder we're afraid of public speaking. Naturally. Because again, if snakes and spiders are that scary, man, getting kicked out of the tribe means you are dead. You need your boys. Interesting. And the whole tribe. So that I found that fascinating. That's

me kind of taking the data forward, but at the same time, it would make so much incredible sense. Absolutely. I mean, have you ever seen it? I know you hate cats, but there is a lot of really funny videos where people will like prank their cats where they basically put a cucumber behind the cat. And then when the cat turns around, they jump three feet. Freak out. Because they think it's a snake. They think it's a snake. Oh, fascinating. Right. So they have like this sort of like elongated thing that they're not really familiar with. And my cat has never seen a snake. Right. Well, maybe it has. It was like a little kitten when we found her in the bushes. But not attacked by a snake. No, of course.

Of course not. I mean, if it's attacked by a snake, we wouldn't have a cat. And so literally, like, we put the cue horn behind our cat, cat freaks out, has never seen a snake before. It doesn't have any concept of what it is. And I don't think the cat's afraid of veggies. No, hopefully not. Exactly, right? It is this fear that's built into them baked into their brain. And that is a little, like, concerning for me, because I'm like, how many generations does it take for it to get ingrained? Like, we've heard this idea of, like, ancestral trauma that, like, a lot of people talk about that people kind of assume maybe is, you know, like new age, hippie, bullshit, but I'm like, what if your great, great grandfather developed a fear? Right. And that maybe is abnormal from like the rest of the human experience, something hyper-specific. Is it possible that that could get passed down genetically without ever being taught to you? And it is built into your DNA. Right. That's a fascinating question that we don't have an answer to is, is it one experience or is it a collective

experience that just kind of sunk in there? If it's one experience, that's almost like a collective consciousness. Yeah. It's fascinating to think. Yeah. Another example with cats is that there's the same, again, embedded fear and instinctual fear response was shown even greater in an animal study where there was mice who had lived some like eight, 10 generations in a lab. So again, like mom was in a lab, born babies, babies down 10 generations. And then they took these babies who had lived 10 generations in a lab and they put them into a cage with the scent of a cat, just the scent.

and the baby's fruit. Ten generations removed from ever seeing a cat. And still the smell of a cat caused a fear response. How bizarre. It's cool, right? Yeah, it's really cool. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break real quick because you need an attorney.

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have other creative needs that you might need. You can go to for the people.com slash gagnon. That's correct. For the people.com slash GAG, N-O-N. Submit a claim in eight clicks or less. It is so simple. For more information, go to for the people.com slash gagnon, Gagnan, G-A-G-N-O-N-O-N-O-N, or dial Pound-G-N-O-N-O-N-O-N or dial Pound-G-A-G-N-O-N-O-N-O-N-W-E-L-E-L-E-L-E-L-E-L-E-L-E-L-E-L-E-L-E-L-E-L-E-L-E-L-E-E-R-E-E-E-R-E-E-R-E-E-R-E-E-R-E. Now, let's get back to the show. We're back. We just had an experience that is my least-favorite thing about living in the city as I hate peeing inside. I hate it. I hate peeing inside. That feels unnatural. That is gross to me. Tell me the pros and cons. Peeing inside is like, okay, I'm peeing into water, perfectly good water. It's splashing up on me. Sometimes someone else peed in there. I'm splashing pee onto me. People shit in the water. Now I'm peeing into shit, splashing shit particles up. I'm inside this room. It smells weird. I hate it. I'm like, it's the worst

experience. Now in Florida where I grew up, I got to pee, go outside, backyard. That's an experience. I like that. What's your best diarrhea story? I'm trying to think of a good one. I mean, I'm, I don't want to talk about today's, but I'm trying to think. I have my best diarrhea story. Oh, this is a bad one.

I was like 12 years old playing soccer. I played soccer all growing up. And I was playing at this field in Orlando. And these soccer fields in Orlando are like big giant fields. And then there's like one porta potty like half a mile away. So it's this big tournament. I'm playing. We're at the end.

age where there's still girls playing on the team and the girls were the best ones. I mean, like boys pre puberty, girls like basically post puberty. Like, of course. These chicks were beasts. Right. And so they were fucking us up. But there was a girl on the team I really liked. I was like kind of had a crush on. And I'm like, I'm like, and I'm like a kid, right? And so I'm playing the game. And in the middle of the game, I'm like, ooh, I don't feel so good. I don't know what's going on. I was drinking pasteurized milk probably. Should I have my mom's unpastrized? And so I'm like, not feeling good. I'm like, oh, no. I literally run off the field. I don't get subbed off. I don't tell the coach. I just like, like,

the ball's over here. I'm running towards the ball. The ball gets pushed to the other side of the field. And I just keep on running. Other priorities. Yeah. And the coach is like, no, Mark, the other way. And now I'm in the other field. Like on another game and just running through that field. My coach is like, no, the goal is done this one. And I'm just fucking booking it. Right. But I mean, it's not even, you're not even running at this point. I'm like, it looks like an idiot. And so I'm running over to this port party. And there's an effect. I can't remember the name of it. It's like the porcelain effect where once you see the toilet. Oh yeah. Your brain. goes it's time and so literally I'm running I see this porta potty and I'm like 20 feet away explosion fertilizer the fields explosion dude oh my god and I'm far enough away from my team that no one knows but now I'm in my sock I'm in my shorts loaded I mean just absolutely plastered right and it's like filling up my shoe I'm dumping it out I mean it is an insane amount for just a boy to have and I am just like I'm just like I'm so nauseous I finally make it in there and I'm just like it's like my like literally it's like dumb and dumber dude I'm like like covered in fucking chocolate shit. It's like the grossest thing. And I'm sitting in there and I'm like,

what do I do? Because now I made it to the bathroom. I feel okay. But I got to get out there. And you got shitty shorts. I'm covered in shit. Like I can't even explain to you. It's like, it looks like fucking slumdog millionaire, bro. Like I landed in the fucking, I'm in it. And it's all over me. It's like fucking war pain. I'm putting it on. And I'm like sitting in this port pot and I'm like, okay, what do I do? I literally sat in there for like 10 minutes. Just like, I can't leave. Where am I supposed to go? I'm not going to walk back to the field. And then eventually I hear the knock. Oh my God. And I'm like, oh, no. Like, what am I going to do? Like, there's only one port-a-potty. There's a line. I've made a mess of this whole thing. And all of a sudden, I hear my mom's voice.

Okay, thank God is your mom. An angel sent from heaven. I open up the thing. I'm like, yeah, yeah, literally. I'm like, hey, mom, I have a problem. I have an accident. And she knows there's a problem. It's like, she followed a baboon that got hit with a poison arrow. Like, there is a trail leading to the port-a-potty. And she's like, oh, this is bad. Stay right here. And so I lock up the port-a-potty again and now I'm like oh thank God my mom's here she's gonna take care of me she pulls the car like fucking hit in a concession stand like popped a soccer ball like fruit cart goes literally dude like fucking bananas fly and she like makes it right in front of the port by she like she like rolls open the door like it's a fucking hostage situation like bank get away she's like get in the car

I open it up like I literally get in and she goes take off all your clothes and I was like okay so I just like take everything off and I just like my mom has a bag we throw it in the back of the bag and then we just leave we leave the game we drive to like a store like a ross or something she buys me like he's giant basketball shorts that don't fit and I'm like okay fine I'm in my clothes I'm good and she's like so you want to go back to the game like no I'm not going back to the game are you kidding it's over yeah dude like we lost six nothing like they're missing a player for half of it like what are you talking about and so literally I'm like no we can't go back and so we just leave and then we finally we go back to practice and I'm expecting everyone to make fun of me it's

going to be a whole thing. And I'm like, fuck, dude. Like, this is going to be the worst day in my life. I show up to practice the next day or like two days later. And I walk on the field and no one says anything. I was like, wow. No one said anything. I was like, this is amazing. Like, no, I expected to have jokes. I had like my thing lined up. I was like, no, fuck you. Like I had like, I had ammo. No one says anything. And then the coach comes over to me and goes, hey, Mark, sorry for your loss. It's like, what? Sorry for your loss. Like, you guys lost the game. I fucked you over. And apparently my mom had told the coach, hey, Mark had to leave the game because we found out that my mom had passed away.

I was like, what? So she told the coach and basically was like, yeah, just be cool about it. And the coach was like, why did he just run off in the middle of the game? And she was like, oh, well, I told him before that at a certain time he had to leave. Like your grandma died. Literally. Yeah. Lied to the whole team that we had a family emergency.

We had to leave. What an angel. And I was like, wow. Your mom deserves the gold star. man. I know. Purple heart. Dude. So she took one for me. It was like, nah, that's what it is. And he was like, oh, man, thank goodness. I thought he should himself.

There was shit all over the porta. It was a big issue. It was a crime scene. Literally. I thought that was him. I thought he died. I thought he got sucked into the tube. And she took one for me and we fucking no one, no one brought it up. No one even knows that story. What it's linked. Until everyone hears it now that I played soccer with. That's what really happened. Okay. Listen, every real man has a good diarrhea story. Yeah. Well, what's yours?

So I was hanging with a death drive in Indonesia. Okay. That was the name of my soccer team, actually. Yeah. That's a tribe. So in this place called Toraya in Sulawesi, Indonesia, there's a tribe there where they have different views on death. I'm with my local contact. We're bouncing around funeral to funeral, visiting these places where they sacrifice 30, 40, 40 water buffalo per funeral.

And they put the bodies in the cliffs. And then they take the bodies out of the cliffs 10 years later and they have family reunions with dead bodies. So it's already a pretty intense experience. And there's no really schedule of when these funerals happen. You just have to fucking get on a motorcycle and bounce around and ask people. So we're on day seven of watching dead people walk around being held by other people. And I had eaten some bad curry. So my buddy Andri's motorcycle had this shitty seat in the back.

My pelvis was rattling into this frame for seven days, bouncing around the backwoods of middle of nowhere, Indonesia. And I realized I got a shit real bad. And it wasn't one of those polite moments. where it's like, oh, sometimes soon, you may have to visit a bathroom. You know, this polite diarrhea, then there's like aggressive, offensive. This was like, you need a bathroom now. T minus 10.

Exactly. Nine. And so I'm like, andry, I need a bathroom. But we were traveling on the side of this kind of cliff hill. And so there was no place to pull over. And he's like, all right, up here, there's a small village. And so we're going and that we can't pull over. Otherwise, I'm sitting in the street.

And so eventually on like five from 10, countdown from zero, we get to this hut that's kind of like half perched in this little plateau on this mountain side. And so he, we go run up. He knocks on the door and he's like, oh, my friend needs a bathroom. Of course, they don't speak English. And the woman gestures around the back. And so I run around the back. And there's three doors there. I go to the first one, knock, knock, knock, knock, open, open, open, nothing. Locked. Second door. Pull open, open, open, shake, shake, nothing. Third door, same thing. Locked. Fuck. And so I realize there's a little patch of forest that's off to the side. So I run down the stairs again, go and it's not a forest. It's their.

pumpkin patch. And I'm going to shit my pants at this point. I pulled down my pants and I shit all in their pumpkin patch. And I turn around and because I had rattled and shook in every single door, it was like grandma grandpa, nine year old daughter all watching

my bare white ass shit. No. My back was facing them shit into their fucking pumpkin patch. In their crops. This is their food. Yes. Bro. So what happened? What can you do? I ran away. I went to front we got back in the motorcycle

when I left with the shit ass I wiped on a fucking pumpkin pumpkin leaf but like how am I gonna what can you say though when you shit in someone's pumpkin patch happy Halloween bro that is wild and then you just hit it I mean if anyone

is allowed to hate like white Western tourists it's those people they should be allowed I'm so sorry but I didn't know what I did not know what else to do I mean that is brutal Damn. Yeah. Okay.

Now, before our pee excursion, you were mentioning the drug culture of these different tribes. And I want to get in like the drug and also like the spirituality. Like everyone has this need to get fucked up and then music and dance. What is that ayahuasca experience like? And how does it interface with their belief about God in existence? I've traveled quite a bit in South America, like Venezuela, Brazil, Brazil, Peru, a lot of places. And that changed my view on some of these psychedelics in particular,

because I was in this remote community in the middle of Brazil, and I was trying to do Cambo. Cambo is this frog poison ritual where they literally take a stick, fire, they burn your skin, they rub poison in. You have a severe allergic reaction. Your face swells up, you throw up, And then supposedly, and maybe truthfully, you see better, smell better, hunt better. So these people would do it for, they would say it boost your immune system, but also it increases your senses. I didn't bring a eye chart, but it really did feel to work. So I was there to do that, which was an experience in itself. But the night before, I was with all of the village elders in this longhouse they had.

And they were sipping ayahuasca, doing rapé. rapese a blend of probably tobacco, probably coca, probably a lot of different things. And they take a hollow eagle bones, since birds' bones are hollow and they blow this powder into each other's noses. And they were saying they do that, again, tobacco and coca leaf to speak to high-level spirits. And they were sipping ayahuasca to speak to low-level spirits. And so through my translator, I'm like, oh, so like, you know, heaven and hell. Like, no, no, no, just, you know, not good or bad. I don't, just different, you know, because death doesn't have to be bad. Death is what happens to everyone.

It's the natural cycle of things. So it wasn't considered the underworld to be a bad place, just the next place. And that was interesting perspective, using these substances to be able to speak to spirits. And spirits can be all sorts of different things, right, in our modern lives or in their traditional lives. And I got quite interested in the land of psychedelics and being able to talk to the spirits of my own life or spirits of past lives or other people's lives. And so I pursued different ayahuasca experiences in different places, different jungles around the world. So I had one recently, which destroyed my foundation, fundamentally rebuilt me from the ground up. Fucked me up for weeks.

And so again, I'm Mr. Fearless and Far, traveling the world to fight my fear. So I've done, like I'm a certified skydiver, certified scuba diver, free diver. I used to have a deathly fear of public speaking. Now, obviously, that's been gone over as well. So I approached this third eyewas experience in the jungle, previously having two before, with an attitude of let's see how deep this rabbit hole goes because I think I've seen my demons. Markman, there is shit hidden underneath the surface that you are not ready for, that we are not ready for. for. So, let me set the stage. I've been traveling around the Yucatan Peninsula, right? And this is the

land of the Maya. And we talk about the Maya like there are people of the past. Like the Maya don't exist anymore. There's still seven million Mayans existing today, many of whom who still speak the original language, Maya, that still exists. You go an hour from Cancun, you could find boys who only speak Mayan. That's it. So, in the... In that, there's lots of caves filled with artifacts. Still, like, there's still guys who sacrifice animals to the rain god, like Jack, sorry, Chuck. That still happens.

But it's not well known. In Belize, there's a particular cave that still has a lot of artifacts in it, human remains of virgins that were hauled down to the depths of these caves and sacrificed. In Belize, in particular, there's a few, once called ATM Cave, where there is something called the Crystal Maiden, which is a Christian. crystallized skeleton, a virgin that was sacrificed there a couple hundred years ago, and because of the calcification of the limestone, she's now a crystallized skeleton in the base of this cave. You have to crawl through rivers to get there.

So, fuck. That place is, I don't want to say well-known, but it's an attraction in Belize. You can go. There's no videos about it. You probably haven't heard of it because one of the first people to bring a camera, maybe 10 years ago, drop the camera and crack this poor crystal skeleton. skull and now they're like no cameras. Imagineing that tourist, man.

What an idiot, dude. I mean, fuck. Drop their point shoot, crack the skull and now no cameras. So it's not as popular globally as it should be, but it exists. ATM cave, you can look it up. But there's another cave. It's called the black hole. So there's the blue hole in Belize, which is the big scuba diving place.

It's like a blue eye in the middle of the ocean. It's one of the wonders of the worlds, they say. But there's a black hole in Belize, which is a cave you have to repel down into. and you can hike two hours inside of it through a river, and inside there there's a sacrificial site where Mayans would have sacrificed humans to their reign god because the Mayan civilization, a lot of reasons it fell apart, but one of them was no rain.

So at the end of the Mayan Empire, they were sacrificing more and more humans to hopefully appease the gods and get more rain. There's a skull there that was lopped off the head of a virgin and placed in one location for probably the past, They don't know exactly how long, but several hundred years. And because it hasn't been moved, it's been completely calcified.

A crystal skull still exists, just like real life Indiana Jones. So we were on expedition to see this thing. We had to crawl through this cave, pressing yourself through cracks the size of your chest, climbing up these massive cave formations that are millions of years old and found this crystal skull. And so we had been really tuned into Mayan sacrifice, right? Like we had spent days and weeks even going to many of these caves, finding these things, finding Mayan obsidian blades. They would have cut heads and wrists with to give blood sacrifices.

Also on top of that, you hear like they gave blood. They would offer blood by two ways. The women would take an obsidian blade and plunge it through their tongue and then run a thorny vine through the hole in their tongue or a knotted rope to get the blood out or dudes would use their foreskin. So blade and then run and knotted rope through a foreskin piercing to do blood sacrifice. God damn. So where was I going with this? Right, we had been tuned in.

So a picture of these Mayan guys with shaved teeth because they sharpen their teeth with files, with gemstones inset on their shark teeth. They would also take the heads of babies and they would tie wooden planks to their foreheads and then tie a rope so they had flat forehead. on that plank, they'd also take a small stone attached to a rope and dangle it in front of their eyes. So they'd become cross-eyed. So picture cross-eyed, flat-headed people with shark teeth imbued with diamonds, infusing themselves in the ass with hallucinogenics. Because they had these special trumpet-shaped things where they'd put hallucinogenics in their assholes bent over, going into these caves for sacrifices.

This was the world I was immersed in. I did not rectally do hallucinogens. Not saying I wouldn't. But that's how the Mayans used to do it. So I was all about this world. And then the opportunity came up to do an ayahuasca retreat. And I had just come straight from finding the crystal skull. And also had done a few before.

And so I went in with the attitude, let's see how deep this rabbit hole goes, right? I think I've confronted most of my fears, you know? So there's a small group of us. We meet in the jungle. We're in this kind of yurt thing. There's a shaman there. He has a kind of ayahuasca.

There's hundreds of kinds of ayahuasca. We speak about it like ayahuasca is a hallucinogen, but ayahuasca is a vine that then unlocks the DMT of other plants. So, and there's quite a few plants. So you can have all sorts of different concoctions of ayahuasca. This one is called sky, sierra, sky ayahuasca. And so generally what happens with these ceremonies is you all sit in a circle. There is a shaman in the middle who has this gourd or something he puts. horse you, a glass, you take a shot. And what does the shaman look like? This guy, so this guy was actually a

white dude. However, he something like 30 years ago went to Gabon, I believe in Africa, and there's a plant there called Iboga, which is the most dangerous and powerful hallucinogenic in the world. It's an African plant. And generally how you become a shaman in this culture in Gabon is you ingest some dangerous amount of Iboga, it can kill you, and then you go into a coma for one week, two weeks, three weeks, and then you die, or you awaken and become a shaman. So this man had done that some 20, 30 years ago, was in a, I think, a two-week coma in the middle of Africa, awoke again, and then was Christianed with becoming a shaman. So he's put in the reps, bro.

Whoa. So in this tribe, he was the guy. Like he, and now he's made it his life mission to be able to help people with these experiences. So he travels to the world. And I don't know if there's anything more legit than that. So maybe he's not, you know, a shaman from the depths of the Amazon, but the dude is put in the time. And so he, from there, gave a round, you take a shot of ayahuasca. It tastes like the shavings from the bottom of a gas, of a gas run.

lawnmower. Gasoline, grass clipping. It doesn't taste good. It tastes nasty. So first shot, I sit back. Notoriously, I take a while, like I can drink alcohol and smoke and it's usually pretty fine. So first shot, I don't feel very much. Second shot, I start to feel hallucinogens. Things are painted on the walls, patterns, mandolus, things like that. You start having emotions, joy, awe. Like, how often do you feel awe? True awe. These things you had never felt before. And so I'm starting to drip like pretty good after two shots. And then he opens the ceremony again and says if anyone wants any more, you can come in for a third shot. I'm already 75% gone, knowing that the trip is continuing.

But I got a piss and I've done two shots before. So I'm like, yeah, we don't take a third. Biggest mistake of my life. So I go up and I kind of hobble over in the candlelight, take the third shot. All right, the plan was to take a shot, go take a piss outside, come back in the year. So I take the third shot, go outside, kind of hobble through. I see this world almost looking through one of those symbols. Yeah, clidoscopes.

Everything's interesting patterns. I can still kind of walk. I get to the edge of the forest. I go piss in nature. The best way to do it. And then I'm like, shit, I got to puke because puking's part of it. I'm not a puker, but after three shots of this horrible lawnmower clipping beverage, you got to puke. Normally after one, you puke.

So I take a knee and I puke and I puke and I puke and I puke. And then I stand up and I'm like, all right, I had to get back because, you know, this is going to get bad. And I realize I have no idea where I am anymore. I can't even tell. I can't even see the path back. I may be 30 feet from the front door. I wasn't far.

I could not see anything but patterns. So I take three steps and I'm like, looks like we're camping here tonight. I lay down. There's a pile of dead leaves and sticks. I curl up in the fetal position in this pile of dead leaves and sticks. And this was the scariest thing that's ever happened to me. When you drink, you smoke, pot, whatever, you do drugs, generally you can always know where your body is.

Right, you can feel, okay, you know, like I know where I am. Maybe your mind's spinning, maybe you've got the rolls, whatever. I was laying there, curled up in the fetal position, and I was squeezing my hands, and I felt like one hand was drifting way up there. One hand was down there. I was losing sense of where my body was. That is a scary feeling, because now you are adrift at sea in your own mind. there is no ground anymore. There is no body. There is no body. You have become the earth. You've become the universe. And my heart started thumping like I had never felt before my life because

there goes any buoy, any safety is now gone. And the patterns that I, that I would see were very similar to what you'd feel maybe with mushrooms or any DMT, but these started to get aggressive towards me. I get pulsing, vibrant patterns. And then if you've done, these things before, again, these patterns are quite beautiful, but the intensity, they started to shake, and then literally the world ripped open. So I saw a tear blast open, and it became a horrifying white light. I can only compare it to, let's say you've never seen inside a human body before, and someone just tears open a human body. It is horrific, but kind of. of fascinating. Oh my God, look how complex and beautiful this machine, this biological machine is.

But how horrifying it is at the same time. That was the feeling that I had. But an undeniable presence that I was being watched by someone. There was someone there. There was no one around me. I was in the middle of fucking jungle. There was somebody observing me who was like, oh, you, you little mortal, you wanted to see behind the curtain. You were not ready. You poured little moat of dust. It was like, I felt like an earthworm being shown the schematics of a rocket ship. I couldn't even understand the paper that it was printed on, let alone what it even meant. I was shown the entirety of the universe. And I knew in my entire lifetime I would never know what I saw.

I was shown the answer. I was shown the purpose, but my little feeble brain, my earthworm brain, could never even come close to understanding the paper it was printed on. And with that comes a little bit of fear, right? Like primordial, visceral, all-encompassing fear, panic, terror like you've never felt before. I am nothing in the face of this. And in that moment, there was a beautiful comparison that all I wanted to do was give myself, the best gift, the ultimate thing I could do with my life, was just giving myself to that. I didn't want to die, but my entire existence would be justified by giving myself to that thing.

And then I got mine sacrifice. I had seen the skulls in the caves, the crystallized remains of sacrifice victims. Not all were involuntary. I'm sure some were. But if you hit that point, you feel like there's no greater gift. Your life purpose is to offer what, like what can you offer to this thing? besides yourself. So I sat there in this pure terror trying to give myself to it, not even trying to die per se.

In the case of like suicide, I think it's a very superficial way to think about it. But that it felt like the right thing to do. And that's all that was going to quell this, this presence, this force in my life. And so there I am trying to offer myself to. this thing, trembling. And I remember there, just like laying and shaking and being like saying some, some silly things to myself, like, it's okay, baby, it's all right. And one thing that I had to keep on saying is it's, it's just the trip.

Every trip has an end. Every trip has an end. Every trip has an end. But I was reduced to nothing. I was a cork floating in an ocean when I didn't even realize I was a cork. I was lost, man. But in that beautiful, terrifying moment, I understood what human sacrifice served, right? And how you could in a moment of pure, just authentic, like pure being, you know, with no filters, no plastic in between you and this thing.

Be like, yeah, this is what I would do in my life. There's nothing else I can do besides give myself to this thing. Wow. So came back from that and could not find my feet. for several weeks after. I would just stare off into the distance. Like, is that God? Yeah, I guess it probably was.

Is it the guy in the white robe or the dude with a bunch of arms? No, but it was undeniably something that I felt. Undeniable feeling of there was something there with me that was showing me this. What is this? I can never understand. But it was something. And from there, I appreciate psychedelics. I appreciate tuning the knobs of consciousness to try to understand our purpose, why we're here.

Even like paying penance in the sense of it could be as simple as going to the gym or doing the thing you're afraid of. Like all of these things suffering in itself shows that shows this thing that you are worth it and you are working to live your best life and you are paying penance to it. I kind of feel it all came together in that moment. And as crazy as human sacrifice seems now, so removed from it, it felt like the exact right thing to do in that moment. Wow. Yeah. That is heavy. Life changing, right?

And so what were you seeing? Like you said, you were seeing patterns and then this whiteness. It ripped open. And was it the continual whiteness? Was it consuming? Was the whiteness all around you? It was just like, if anything, you know when a spaceship hits hyperspeed? colors you know in in the sci-fi movies where you you go into light speed and then it's

everything just a force just kind of pushes it it was a bit like that yeah whoa but an undeniable presence that somebody and something was there when I was laying in the bushes there was someone else who had a bad trip as well who was nearby and like maybe within let's say three four meters and that that was not presence like I it was an acknowledgment someone was there but that wasn't presence. Like there was someone there seeing parts of me that I did not know someone could see. And then from there, it's hard to gather the fragments back to take, you know, some bullshit fears you have in your own life seriously when you feel that creationary fear, like that primordial

ooze, pawns scum, you are just a little thing in a massive web type of fear. Whoa. Yeah, man. And so what was that come down? Like, how long did that experience last for? What was your sense of time? Well, so that ayahuasca is a bit similar to mushrooms in the sense that it doesn't fuck you up for like a day, right? So probably had my dosage around seven and was pretty good by 12.

Wow. So my trip to the depths of my soul was maybe, again, I didn't have a watch, but like an hour and a half. The longest hour and a half my life, but probably about that. And then they let a campfire outside, and we just sat around and kind of chatted, man. The shaman, they're good, a good shaman doesn't interfere because, again, if you're facing your demons, that's not a bad thing. Like bad trips don't have to be a bad thing. They can change your life and they can give you new perspective. It's horrifying.

but there are lessons to be gleaned from the back of the dragon's cave, you know? Yeah. Did you discover things about yourself, like specific things in that moment that you still take with you? Well, I had always suspected some kind of interconnectivity with the world, and that showed it to me very vividly, right? And I still don't consider myself, like, religious. I used to think I was atheist, but now, after something like that, I can't say I'm atheist, or like agnostic of anything. But feeling that, that fear that was so overpowering made me come back to my own life

and realize like all of this bullshit we feel with, you know, like in public speaking or asking for a raise or approaching a girl or picket, you know, being on a podcast, whatever, speaking to a guest who's famous, those little butterflies. What is that exactly, right? I think a lot about fear and our interpretation of fear is really interesting because like biochemically fear and excitement are almost identical and one is just your focus on a negative outcome and the other is focused on a positive outcome excitement and fear is negative outcome and that fine line is so interesting why do we focus on the negative why do we obsessed with the small things and again if

my greatest gift is to give my life to this presence like what are these stupid little bullshits I get upset about in my life every day. It just makes you see the, I felt the bigger picture. I can say I saw the big picture in a way that I didn't think existed that most of people don't get to experience. Can you specify the fear? Was it a fear of death? Was it a fear of this being forever? Was this a fear of you never coming back from the trip? Or was it a fear of the presence of eternity staring at you? That's a really good question. None of those. Eternity. It was the fear of, it was just realizing everything, which is very hard to explain. Because all of the fears that we feel in a normal life are attached to something, a result normally.

Death, failure. This was just a fear realizing that we're all just so insignificant, but also so significant at the same time. You know, like it doesn't really matter and everything we do doesn't matter. but that sounds depressing but at the same time it was beautiful you know it was just a realization that everything I thought

was important is not and that there is this thing that could just whisper at me and turn me into dust right it's like meeting some kind of power like Genghis Khan or something

you know just that's again very small comparison compared to what I felt but somebody who could just go and you are just vapor right that's what it felt like Like an undeniable power at which could just erase me at any given moment, but it shows not to.

And how that could exist any moment of every day. Did you feel grateful for like the mercy? Did you feel like there was mercy to not eviscerate you? I felt like I paid my penance. I felt like I gave my gesture and that it was like, I see you kind of thing for a blip. And the gesture was that I will sacrifice my life. I'll give my life. My confidence in feeling that I would, I would do that if I had to.

And also the gesture of, you know, let's see how deep, almost like some kid going to like a Muay expert being like, you know what, I want to learn Muay. Let's let's spar for real. And he's like, bro, like, you don't want this. He's like, no, no, for real. You know, I want to see what Muay's about. Like, here it is. You can't help but respect that guy a little bit.

You might kick his ass, maybe break his nose, knock him unconscious. But at the end of the day, you've got to appreciate the bravery, right? Because most people won't even step up to the plate. That's a bit of how it felt. Or that's how I interpret it. How do you even know? Right? Like, your mind is so good at interpreting things however you want to feel it.

Even like the patterns you see. I have these sacred geometry tattoos. I wonder if you never saw mandala's or fractals. before in your life and you drop some acid or mushrooms or DMT. What would you see? Like as my mind expecting to see these things, therefore creating these things or do they always exist? Right. And then taking these substances allows you to see the fractals and patterns. We'll never be able to find that out because you can't give DMT to six or six months ago. Right. Yeah, but it's interesting to think,

you know, the chicken or the egg dilemma. Which one's there? Are we making it or it already there. Sure. I mean, what is the cultural discussion about ayahuasca amongst the people that use it in these ritual experiences that have used it for thousands of years? I mean, they must see similar things. They must see Mendel's and things like that, right? I'm not brought my nose, let's see. If you want to re-up, you got more in there. Go. Did the shaman discuss that? Like, oh, that experience is common amongst what people have historically seen. Was there a discussion like that amongst the other people that did it? I just thanked him for his guidance.

He's not there to make sense of it. At least generally, I don't feel like that's what they do. They're there to just help facilitate it. And yeah, help you. And also, I think part of the reason they're there is to help guide you through the experience. And generally, they don't mind if you take too much. Because they know themselves that, again, the dragons are on the back of the cave. And that back of the cave is dark, man.

Yeah. Have you got shook? Good. What was the darkness, though? Was it the darkness, the insignificance? I guess I use darkness in the sense that that's where the fear is. Right. And there was lots of fear back there because I'd never ventured there before.

But I guess I use this analogy of the dragon in the cave because there's a quote by Joseph Campbell that says the cave you fear to enter hides the treasure that you seek. And the sense of the dragon and the cave is this analogy of fear and setting forth into an unknown. place where there are terrible guardians that will try to hurt you, but there was treasure back there. And the darkness is the fear, right? And so the darkness there was just treading into a place where I thought I had some idea of what was back there, but I didn't even know how deep the rabbit hole could go. And was the, in the way that the, the Mayans described, you know, seeing high level spirits and low level spirits, and they're not good or bad, they just are powerful. Right. Did you feel that the presence that was seeing you was good or bad? Was it

comforting or discomforting? Was it just pure power? Yeah. I don't believe the wines did ayahuasca. They had something else that was similar. They had mushrooms and some other plant. This was in the south, but. Oh, sorry. Yeah, no, it was. But the, no, I don't feel like it even was good or evil. It just was, it was just a thing that was, I wish I could explain it better. It was the cause and solution to everything. It was the creator and destroyer. I mean, Can you say that the creator of the world and the story of the world is good or bad? He's doing both, right?

It's thinking about good and bad. It was almost like it was a human construct. Right. There is no good or bad. It's just what is. That's kind of what it felt like. So it wasn't like he was out for good or evil. It was just he has made this thing with maybe there's an agenda, but not one that I could understand.

Wow. Yeah, I was actually just talking with Maas about this, about the idea of like personal insignificance. Like, I was raised very Catholic. Right. And I still really appreciate the virtues of Catholicism. And I like the structure of how the religion works. Right. And I think that virtue of insignificance is really instilled.

And at times too much and people can feel guilt and things like that, like some negative side effects from the organized dogma of the religion. But for me, the insignificance is really liberating. I really like the feeling that, hey, posting this clip, making this episode, doing this joke, these things are not significant in the grand scheme of, life and I won't really be remembered two or three generations, you know, and if I do a really great job, maybe I'm remembered for five, but who even gives a fuck? And to just do what is good and give of yourself to people and be a good human being is like the utmost thing while you're here for the tiny amount of time that you're here. Exactly. And I really like that feeling. And I can understand how people feel imprisoned by the insignificance and depressed by it. But I don't

have that feeling at all. I find it a really comforting feeling, the insignificance, and that we're all going to die and we're here just for such a small period of time that just do what is good to the people around you and take care of the people around you and that's enough. But for you, you have to leave this experience and then go into this insignificant world. You're posting episodes on YouTube and an episode doesn't do that good or you get an argument with your girl and you guys are fighting about something. How do you deal with the insignificance of the day to day? Because we're all doing insignificant things in the face of this like eternity that you got to witness for a brief period. Yeah. I think you nailed it. You said twice there, which was doing good. And for some reason in this world today, we have forgotten that intention is really important. And we're taking face value for what we say and do without the intention put behind it. And yeah, I do some interesting things. And if you take those things out of context and don't show the entire storyline, then they can be considered a lot of different things. And I do have a fair amount of haters. But I think the solution to, you know,

purpose and even haters is just knowing you have good intentions, knowing that you're operating out of love, not with some sinister motive, knowing that you're trying your best, knowing that you're going to make mistakes. And if you want to take that, it's like me putting a knife on this table, right? I might make some content. And someone, and you take it and you stab yourself on the chest and say, why are you hurting me? That's what I feel like haters are doing. If you have good intentions and you make content, and it could be controversial content, but again, trying to show a part of the world in my case. They're trying to have an opinion that's different, right?

And someone wants to take that knife and stab themselves in the chest with it and say, why are you hurting me? That's not my, that's like you, you are inflicting self-harm. And I feel in this whole like woke culture situation now, people just love harming themselves. What's up, guys? We got to take a break real quick because I got to tell you how you can take the bad out of your habits. That's right.

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And like I told you before, The world, the interesting things in this world are going away very quickly, right? We speak about endangered species. We don't speak about endangered cultures, but they're going away even faster. And so unfortunately, a lot of these interesting things are done by village elders, dudes who are like 60, 70, 80, right? I can give three examples off the top of my head. So I film this food in Philippines called Etag, which is a smoked pork where the maggots

live in the pork and village elders bring it and they cook it and eat it with the maggots in the Philippines. It's a ceremonial pork. All right. I met an 85 year old who was doing that. I was in Turkey and I went to this abandoned monastery where there was this one man who was trying to preserve this hidden abandoned monastery and he's the only one knew about it and he took me up there and he showed me and he was maybe like 65. And just recently I was in Yucatan, a couple hours from Cancun and I met a Mayan man who takes scrap metal from junkyards and makes shotguns. He takes a water pipe, a muffler, some pins from a bicycle, a spoke, and makes a shotgun out of this.

It's an old Mayan way of how they got independence of making guns out of scrap metal. He was maybe 70. All three of these men have died, right? I was the last one to tell their story. They'd never really seen many tourists. Maybe they came in for whatever, take some photos. I made a documentary about their life what they did. the special thing they're trying to preserve.

And then, you know, five, sometimes, like even recently, two weeks after I finished the mine video, the guy died. Just because he was in poor health already, he helped us. But, and I had heard that he took massive joy in helping his apprentice make one last shotgun for us. And he was brought to life. But then unfortunately, because he had some kind of illness, he cancer or something, he'd be passed.

So if haters want to come to my doorstep man and talk shit about what I do, like I just love showing the world how incredible it is. And people can come in and see one piece of content, call me a neo-colonialist or call me, you know, a beauty. You're using that man for his story, you know? Fuck that. Like, I just want to help the world see how beautiful it is so then we can all appreciate how special these things are before they're gone forever. And when things like that happen, it breaks me. my heart, but the silver lining is, at least I captured some essence of this person and this dying craft that now, and maybe hopefully years in the future, people can continue to see this

and see how the world once was because the world was changing too fast. People don't understand. But me firsthand, being in the trenches, going to these remote places, in 20, 30 years, it'll be like a monoculture of just fucking iPhones and blue jeans, man. Hmm. Would you do this even if you didn't film it, even if there was no financial or monetary connection to the content? I did. I did for many years before I picked up a camera. Yeah. That was my original motive to travel was one thing that's very interesting too is when you get into travel television sometimes, not necessarily travel television, all television, there is a push for inauthenticity. We need the shot. This is the story. Let's make this, make this happen, right? It doesn't matter what's real. One thing I've been very passionate about from the beginning is keeping my travels authentic. Because I began traveling because I felt lost.

I went out into the world because I felt out of place. I didn't feel like I felt fed in. I wanted to go find answers and find truth to then be able to find my place in the world. I think everyone's born with a lens, right? And that lens of the world, it's built by your culture, your upbringing, wherever you're born. And for some people, it's just blurry. Some people can see exactly where they are, right? And they're happy.

They can have, you know, a kid and a job by 25, whatever. They're happy. They do the thing and life's good. But for many, it's blurry. And they just live with a blurry lens, not knowing where they should be, how they should act, really what their purpose is for their entire life. And they're unhappy. They get divorced.

They make bad decisions. They drink. But I feel like if you travel, you can smash that lens and you can pick up, you know, the views from this culture, day the dead in Mexico. Or you can pick up, you know, how the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the haza, eat and hunt and, and, and find struggle and survive. And you can build your own lens in which to see your place in life so much more clearly. And that's what I did. So, there's always a push, especially

in the TV industry, to be able to just make it happen. Who cares if it's real? Like, reality television, hate to break it to, is not real at all. It's script, you know, right? Scripted. So fundamentally, that's a very important part of travel. So from the beginning, I came from a place of trying to find my answers to my own questions, my own views on death, my own views on significance, you know, what's really important? And then from there, I found a lot of lessons, and I was able to overcome a lot of my personal fears. And I realized that these things I was most afraid of, if I leaned into them and did more of those things, life, the universe, God, pick, pick whatever you want. Just, oh, here's everything you ever wanted. Oh, there it is. You've paid your

pedants. You did your thing. Right. That's what's in the back of the cave, bro, is the treasure is everything you've ever wanted. I get to be, I've been traveling the world and paid to do so, to do the most epic adventures. I'm probably like top 0.01% of people because I decided to grab a torch and a compass and go do the things I was afraid of most. Right. And originally it was being a center of attention. I had several traumas when I was younger. grade four, a teacher brought me up a bunch of times, made fun of me in front of the kids. And then like anybody, when you're when you're a kid, those things stick, right? Why did they make funny?

It was so silly. Like my hamster died and I was super sad. And the teacher made me to go in front of the class and explain in French, by the way, it was my first year French immersion. So I'm Canadian from the East, from the Atlantic provinces. So it was my first year French immersion and I had to explain in front of the class why I was upset and the teacher kept saying, en Francais, en Franca. And I know how to say, I know how to say, like, where's the post office? You know what I mean? I didn't know how to say, my homestead, so I'm so maybe not the biggest hardship someone's been through. Right, but as a kid. And your first

experienced in front of a class, right, it stuck. And I, and I, for many years after, retreated the world like it was the classroom and authority figures like it was teacher. So I used to like really hate authority figures and really get it. French Canadians. Yeah. Is this your last immersion being across from a French Canadian. Are you French Canadian? Of course. I'm English. Get on.

That's right. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Both of my parents are from, my mom was from LaValle originally, but my dad was from Quebec City. Oh, shit, no way. Yeah.

And then they moved to Florida, obviously. Yeah. And then that's actually where they met. So, yeah, I'm technically full French Canadians. Right on. So, yeah, I'm from like the next province over to the east. Do you want to leave or is this? No, that's right.

It's okay. Trugging some trauma right now. No, but again, like any kid, man, you just. En frose. Okay. I'll also like all the Of all the Of there you go

Yeah a little bit But like any kid You're a ball of clay You take some dense Or like you're a piece of paper man You're you're You fold You get a couple folds

You can't unfold paper Right there's always going to be a crease And it's just your Your relationship with those creases And if you can accept those Then oh my God man The world gives you everything And so my journey

And the reason why I am Fearless and far Is because I like to speak about and help people through that wall you encounter, that gate when you feel fear in your life, that the successful will have to walk through, right? The successful will choose to walk through, and it's always a choice. It's not a lack of feeling. Like we spoke about the ancestral, instinctual fears that are embedded in our head.

Everybody feels fear. It's just the successful people choose to go through the gate anyway, right? And do you still struggle with any of those insecurities? Yeah. And what does that look like? I don't think that you can ever be rid of it. It doesn't matter what the trauma is. I think your life is always going to be defined by it.

And it's just being able to treat it as a friend or at least acknowledge those parts about yourself. For example, I was a perfectionist for a lot of my life, right? Would work really hard to get something done. And when I got it done, it was always excellent. But it would take me a lot longer. That's just fear, man. You know?

Like, it's just that adult manifestation of that original fear of being judged, right? Because I was judged. And so we maybe, even like I had gotten more comfortable speaking in front of a group, right? There's still those sneaky little adult fears. If you're afraid of the ocean, it's a loud fear. It's visceral. You get to near the ocean. You feel, okay, I am afraid of the ocean.

But things like perfectionism, jealousy. anger. It's abstract. It's abstract. The connection is not as as solid of a line, but it's all still fear. Usually some kind of trauma that made you that way that you haven't tied together yet. That's super fascinating to think about. Like resentment, for example, if, like, you're never going to find someone say, I hate cooking who, like, who actually has learned how to cook. It's a person who tried to cook maybe for their mom or their girlfriend. And then they're like, oh, this is disgusting. And then now they put the plastic on their life. And it's like, I hate cooking. Cook me stupid. I'm never going to cook again. Right. It's self-defense. I'm not bad.

The form is bad. You just, you try to unsubscribe. You don't play the game, right? You say, oh, I'm not even participating. And therefore you protect yourself from it, but it still exists. Of course. Yeah. And I think that probably goes for everything. Like musicians feel this where they're like, oh, you know, this music sucks. And then musicians internalize. it, but really the person that's saying it to them dealt with the rejection perhaps in some other art form or some other creative pursuit and they capitulated and they

don't pursue something creative and as a result they lash out and they want someone else to feel the pain that they felt in that rejection. Yeah. Yeah. Hurt people, hurt people. Yeah, yeah. For real. Yeah, exactly. I'm interested in stand-up comedy man because I feel like that probably is the arena

in which you throw yourself to the wolves the most. Hmm. So you do some stand-up, right? Yeah, of course. So then what has that been like for you? I always was drawn to it. I always really liked it. It was like rewarded in my family. My family would like would play it all the time. Like I would drive to these soccer games with my mom.

We'd listen to Sirius and play comedy like through it over and over and over. So it was like valued within my little community. And so I was always drawn to it and I like performing. And there certainly is a fear and an anxiety that happens. But to your point, fear and excitement are the same feeling. just focused on different outcomes. Right. And as a result, being able to harness that energy

and put it towards excitement will always make the outcome much more fun. Right. And that judgment obviously exists and the pain of failure still exists, but it's also exhilarating. And I view it as like, you know, I think a lot of comics overemphasize the importance of comedians, you know, obviously because we exist in that world and we're like, dude, we're the best or we're the philosophers, blah, blah, blah.

I don't necessarily see it that way. but I see it as a really cool way to interface with human gangs. That it is one of the last bastions it feels like of pure connectivity where there's not, you know, it's just me on a stage talking to a group of people and all having a shared emotional experience. It's just really, really fun. I think music does similar things, any art form like that. The thing I like about music in better, you know, in certain ways,

is that it transcends language, whereas comedy is confined really by language, even physical humor, typically falls within like a, you know, a cultural strata, which I wish could, you know, transcend,

but it's a little difficult. But yeah, obviously with comedy, there's a fear of rejection and failure, but that's also what makes it so exciting. Right. There's a little bit of a risk, but it's one thing I noticed

speaking in front of large groups versus like one-on-one is that there was a whole different, hmm, I don't know if it's strategy or energy. And I feel like every time you tell the story, It could be to one person, could be two people, could be a groom. There's a ball of energy, and you're both energy shapers, just adding, taking away, like we're doing some kind of Harry Potter spell combat.

Absolutely. Where you add some, you take some away, and it changes on the group size. I mean, I haven't, most of my presenting to large groups hasn't so much been storytelling. It's more YouTube tips, or I always try to throw stories in there, but I've realized that it is a fascinating. spell to cast. And it's different every time. And it requires a lot of intuition, not just, you can't just practice at home in front of a mirror, especially in a group. You have to feel the group. It's like a living entity. And I would love to hear you speak about that a little bit, because in my brief experiences speaking in front of large groups, it's been so fascinating to see

how they all react together. Yeah, absolutely. There is a group energy. And it's so interesting. Like, you can be, like the audience can sense fear. Yeah. In a very bizarre way. And it's not only comedy, it's just all public speaking. Like you can go to a conference if, you know, you work in business and you go to a business conference. You can feel the fear. And in a group setting, it's so tangible.

Even if they're not admitting any physical language characteristics. Like, what is that? Is that a collective consciousness? Is that a pheromone thing? That's on like some metaphysics shit where it's like you can, like the energy is palpable. It's such a bizarre thing. And their anxiety induces anxiety in you. Right.

and it makes the experience bad. I don't know why it happens, but it is so fascinating to me. And simultaneously, they can feel comfort. Even if you're acting anxious, like there are comedians that have an anxious energy, but they're comfortable. And the audience will laugh at the anxiety

and feel comfortable. They'll feel comforted. There's no worse experience as an audience to see someone bomb on stage. Like, no one wants that. If you paid money to go to a comedy club, you want to sit there and enjoy and laugh with everyone and with the person.

You don't want them to bomb. Right. And yet, you can see someone up there and they're bombing and you feel anxious. and it is almost disconnected from the physical body language characteristics. Like it's something you can feel in the voice. It's intangible. And there are levels to stand up, and I think all public speaking, that is a sharpened intuition

to what the group energy is. And I think musicians do it. I think DJs do it. I know people will shit on DJs and be like, oh, you're pushing buttons. A great DJ will feel the intuition of the group. And so I opened and tore with this guy, Andrew Schultz. He's excellent. He's one of the best comics today.

And not only for the joke writing, but for his ability to feel energy. Truly, like, I don't think he really talks about this much. And there's levels to comedy where, like, you write a joke. And you go on stage and you say the joke and people laugh. And the difference is that Andrew will have what he's going to say. He'll have jokes. But he will change the words and the language and the profanity and the order and the energy

and the emotion and the facial. accuse everything to what the audience needs in that exact moment. When I was starting stand-up, I was really good at writing jokes. I was good at being able to be like, here's a setup, here's a misdirect, punchline, you laugh. But if the audience wasn't giving energy back, I had no way to pivot. I would just keep going through my script. I have my five minutes of jokes and I'm going to say them the exact same way every night, over and over.

And if the audience is hot, I'm killing. And if the audience is not, I'm bombing. Even though it's the same jokes. It's funny regardless. It is objectively a funny misdirect. I told you a joke and it is objectively funny, but yet the audience won't laugh. And the difference between a great comic and a good comic is that a good comic goes in front of a good room and kills and goes up in front of a bad room and bombs. But a great comic goes up in front of any audience.

And I think a great public speaker, a great artist, a great musician, the greats are able to feel the intuition of what the energy needs and what it necessitates in order to get them all to acquiesce. And that is when you're in the presence of like an expert artist, That is what they do, I think, on a level that good artists don't do. And that's something that I'm trying to ascend to, that I'm trying to get to the level of. And you can only get there through experience and repetition and being in those states where you feel the energy is off. Oh, they might need a joke that is less aggressive. They're feeling nervous. Or they don't trust me as a comedic person.

So I need to show them that I have control of this situation. Someone heckles something. and it sets the whole room, the energy's off. And I need to be able to assess the situation in a funny way to show them, I'm in control of the situation, we're all okay, you're still having a good time, and we're all okay. I've seen situations where someone will, I've been heckled before, dude, I got heckled in time on a show.

I was like two years in, and I didn't know how to react to it. I had no, I had nothing. I wasn't in control the situation. I was in control so long as the audience let me be in control. And then as soon as someone wanted to take control back and they heckled me and they shouted, you suck, whatever, I didn't react. act. I didn't respond. I had nothing. So I just kept on going. And I was doing great. That person said something and it was a bomb. Right. And it's like, but the jokes are the same. But it is just losing

control of the intangible energy in the room. Whereas now I would assess the situation. I would try to, I would pull energy back. I would kind of put them in a place where they're part of the group and then we would all keep going. And then the audience would go, oh, he knows what he's doing. We're okay. And they'll respect you more. Yeah, of course. And it's again, it's not a comedy thing. This is like an art thing where a great musician, a great DJ, anyone that's in front of people interfacing in like a pure like oral perspective will be able to assess the energy, know what needs to be done in that moment and then change jokes around. I mean, I've seen Andrew do it where like we do one show. He does a joke one way. The next show he does a joke a different way.

I go, hey, you messed up that joke. He goes, I didn't mess it up. No, you said it completely different. I mean, the laugh, you got a laugh either way, but you did it wrong. And he goes, no, no, no. The audience in that moment needed the joke to be different. Right. Like a thing that people will bring up is like if you say bitch, especially in New York

City, there is a certain progressiveness. If you say bitch too much, they don't like you. And some audiences, if you say bitch, they don't care. And it's knowing what they need. Oh, I said bitch twice. And now they're starting to be like, is this guy hate women? And then you have to adjust. And it is a fascinating thing to do that just comes with experience.

And I wonder if it's just the chirping, like the just the. is it the sounds they're making? Because really, it's not just if there's laughs or not. There is something else there that isn't spoken. You're not looking at people's faces per se, right? Sometimes. Sometimes maybe.

But like in general, I feel like there is an energy, for lack of a better word, that comes off. That is not just one person. And maybe it could be the shuffling of feet and the laughs or lack thereof. Yeah. But I'm really fascinated with that. And I'm a man of science, man. I have a BSC in biology.

And I grew up very analytical thinking in science. But then I travel and I see and feel things like that that science cannot explain. And people think science is like a party pooper. Like, oh, it doesn't prove it. It's more like, okay, prove it and we'll get on board. But it doesn't discredit a lot of things. It's more like prove it and we'll start talking about it. Absolutely.

And there's lots of things out there. Like, for example, dude, do you know about the humor theory? Like humorism? so like germ theory what we believe now like germs cause sickness that's only a new thing that's like a hundred years old right like we only started believing in germs like around 1900 or so yeah before that we it was like the miasma theory where we thought that it was stinky air bad smelling air caused sickness yeah just a few years before that like 150 years ago we thought it was it's called the humerus of of human blood bile uh i think of red sorry yellow bile black

bile, blood and phlegm. Semen. Seamen. Yeah, whatever they are. That's the fifth one. And by, by leaking those, you could adjust someone's health. And so cancer or, you know, the black plague was some imbalance of humors or some bad air. This is new, man. This is new in the past 150 years. Yeah. We've been around for so much longer than that. And we think we know so much right now. But 150 years ago, we thought that bad air and too much mucus, caused fucking cancer. Yeah, I mean, malaria. Malaria literally means bad air.

Does it? I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It means bad air. So people were believing like, oh, you're breathing in bad air. And so you got malaria, not recognizing like, no, there's a mosquito with infected cells that's biting you that's then giving you this disease. And yeah, it's just so funny how, I mean, that's like the whole plague doctor thing. Have you, have you heard of this? With the mask, right? Yeah, plague doctors would have this big beak on their mask. And they believe that they were somehow like purifying the. air they were creating distance from the air that they were breathing in and it was purifying the

air or something like that when the plague had nothing to do with that it had to do with you know a germ infection exactly but we that's not that long ago so we don't even know what we don't know right we were still very modern 150 years ago but we had such a back and do you know how they found out about germ theory there was a hospital somewhere in europe and there was two wards in this hospital there was like the midwife ward and there was like the maternity ward and the maternity doctors would also go to the morgue and they would handle dead bodies. But the ones who worked with the midwives didn't. And so the babies born there were generally would live,

but there was like a high mortality in the area with the maternity ward. And some guy had the crazy idea that if you hold and touch dead bodies and go deliver babies, some of those babies get sick and die. And this guy came with this idea and he had a sanitation station with like chlorine and water. And he's like, let's just try this out for a little bit. You know, just experiment. Oh, Steve. Oh, Steve.

And he proved that if you wash your hands after touching a dead body and touch a baby, more babies live. And everyone laughed at him, made fun of them, didn't believe him. All the doctors like, you're crazy. We can go, you know, take a head off a dude and then pull a head out of a vagina. No problem. And then he died. And then a couple years later, like, oh, shit, he was right.

You can't do that. I mean, my wife is going to love this story. My wife is a midwife. Okay. That's what she does all day. She does homebirths. And so she goes people's homes and delivers babies. And we've actually talked about the idea.

Like, she's always wanted to try to do, like, work in India. India has a really high child mortality rate. I think it's one of the highest in the world. And she would love to go and, like, do work with, like, the mothers of, like, rural areas and, like, help deliver babies. Yeah. And I think that would be so cool. And in your time traveling, did you ever see, like, birth rituals or things like that amongst tribes that you visited? Generally, no, because it's quite sacred.

And, again, for most of the time. guys and girls like if I'm a foreigner I'm hanging with the boys you know and uh girls do their thing guys do their thing unless they're trying to marry you yeah unless they're trying trying to marry me Christ um so I haven't seen that though I have seen some really interesting blood letting happen uh oh yeah didn't you get leeches yeah I got leeches a couple times in Poland in Turkey uh and dude I was traveling in um in Romania I'm going to give you one of my little secrets how to find cool places okay you remember taking taking notes Pay attention.

If you find a cool photo, let's say, on Instagram or online, Instagrammers have this thing where they don't tag places, right? Like, planet Earth. You can screenshot that image or save it and then do a reverse image search in Google to find where the photo's been posted. So from there, I found this amazing monastery, a monoselium, a crypt in the middle of the Romanian countryside.

This looked like a cathedral in the middle of Dresden, like this incredible church. decaying in the middle of a countryside in Romania. And again, with no location. So reverse image search found some Russian dude who went, took a photo and was able to track down the coordinates. So I've got a friend in Romania named Bear. Bear is a mushroom forager. And also he's a big guy, like maybe 250 pounds.

And also is the drummer in a medieval punk band in Transylvania. Medieval punk? Yes. Whoa. And he's great at it. Awesome, dude. So he has a little rob-mhompherson. hood cap with a feather and I contacted him and said, hey man, I'm looking for this monastery.

It's near this small town. He's like, oh, yeah, actually my dad has a cabin near there. If you want to go check it out, we can show up and see if we can get in because this monastery looked, sorry, mausoleum looked incredible. And so we get in his dad's car. We roll down, have a little party at his cottage and then head down to this small town. This is like the sleepiest little town in Transylvania. Nobody's there, right? There's a couple little brick shacks with corrugated steel roofs and there's this giant again like downtown Germany

Baroque style church it looks like but it's a mausoleum in the middle of town decrepit really strange why it's there so we couldn't get in there was a giant fence big padlock huge spikes on the fence it's like 8 a.m and so we're walking around and we're

trying to find anybody who knows anything about the story damn and we find this cafe and there's a couple women there maybe like mid-thirties all having some espresso at 8.30. And so Bear and I go up and we're like, excuse me ladies, do you know anything about this mausoleum? Like, it's incredible. It's in the middle of town. And I'm like, oh, actually, yeah, no, it's there. It's locked though. And we ask, do you know if anyone has the key? And this girl's like, oh, yeah, we know who has the key. It's the husband of the woman who cuts foreheads. She's just

right down the street. Huh? It's like, excuse me? The woman who cuts foreheads? Oh, yeah. And so the woman bends over and she shows her forehead. And there's a cross cut a scar right in her forehead right here. And we say, oh, the woman who cuts foreheads.

Okay, where did she live? Three houses down. So we're a bit bewildered, but we have a lead. So we continue down the road and we knock on this rusty wooden door. And it flies open. And there is a man there. This man has purple sweatpants pulled up to his chest. A bunch of holes in it seeing all sorts of bits and pieces you don't really want to see.

He's got scabs all over his face. He's got hair growing and tough set of all sorts of bulges and bumps in his face. Got a little like postman's cap on. And we're like jet blue eyes. And we say, hi, we're looking for the husband of the woman who cuts foreheads. And he's like, yes, it's me. And like, do you have the key to the. the crypt and he goes, yes, I'm the cryptkeeper. Can you go show us the crypt? And he's like,

I got to feed my pigs and then we can go. And so he closes the door. We hear the squealing of happy pigs. And he comes back out. He's got a hula hoop, like old school style with the keys. And so he just takes off walking and we're like, all right, I guess we're in. Follow this old man up the street, gets the front gate, puts in this key that's the size of a fork, puts it into the gate. It screeches open, we go inside, it's this fantastical, again, like European style crypt built to look like a church. We go to the front door, we open it up. Another big key, there's like bats and there's pigeons swirling everywhere. It's incredible in there.

We're still really well preserved. And so we're exploring doing this video for YouTube about this really interesting abandoned place. And we're talking to him asking, you know, like what's your role here? Why do you have the key? And he goes, well, actually, the key's been passed down for for several generations, my family rings the bell when it needs to be wrong. I'm like, oh shit, the bell still works? He goes, yeah, the bell still works.

You want to see? I mean, of course you want to see. There's two bell towers. One is destroyed. One is still there. So we go in this side passage. There's a staircase that spirals up this tower. There's a rope that comes down in the middle.

And he grabs it and he was like gestures like to start filming. So I press record. Bong, bong, bong, two, three times. Bong, bong, 12 times. He rings the bell. he's looking at me like he's waiting for me to give the answer to stop. So I say, okay, that's good. Like 12 rings is enough.

There's like bats flying around. Everyone's waking up. It's two in the morning. Exactly. And then so at that point, he's like, you want to see the crypts? So we go downstairs underneath and there's like rats everywhere. It's covered in seaweed on the floor underneath this thing. It's dark in there.

He was saying that they used to fill the coffins full of seaweed to keep the dead skin all supple. And that Tomb Raiders had come in and ruin the coffins and taken the, bodies and the seaweed's now on the floor. Really interesting stuff. And then we we kind of finished exploring the crypt, the mausoleum, and there was still that one thing that I didn't, we kind of glossed over in the beginning. It's like the woman who cut foreheads. So I say to the cryptkeeper, can we go like meet your wife? I heard she's quite powerful and famous. And he says, yeah, she doesn't really like foreigners. We're in a small town, but We can go see.

And I don't want to offend her. I'd love to go see. And so we leave. But then something's changed because there's people kind of peeking out of the windows and looking up the doors and shutting them when we go by. But again, he said that they don't get foreigners there. And like, what are we doing with all this fancy camera equipment? So didn't think too much of it.

But we get to his house again, open the door. And my friend Bear and the crewkeeper go in and I'm behind. And then the woman screams and come and she slams the door on my face. And then I hear screaming in Romanian. And I have no idea what's happening. I'm outside for five minutes, 10 minutes. And then after that, my friend Bear comes out, he goes, we have to go now. And I say, like, did we offend somebody?

I didn't know. I goes, no, you have to go. We have to go. We have to go. Like, no, let's go. Let's go. And so, shit, all right. So we run out.

We get in this truck and we start driving. And I'm like, Bear, man, what, like, what happened? What did we do? We were polite? And he goes, no, you don't understand, man. Listen, like, how many times did you make him ring that bell? And I say, I make him ring the bell. I make him ring the bell.

and he rang the bell 12 times. And he goes, did he say why he wrung the bell? And he said, no, he just said his job was to ring the bell. Dude, they only ring the bell when someone dies. So we rang the bell 12 times. The village thought that the 12 people had died. They thought there was a building that collapsed, that a school bus crashed. They thought there'd been a mass murder.

You rang the bell 12 times, bro. What the hell? Why did he ring it? I don't know why he rang it. She was saying it's common knowledge when you ring a bell someone died. Oh my gosh. And so we had to get out of there because we had convinced this small, sleepy Romanian town that there had been a massacre, dude. There was a massacre, dude.

What the hell? And then people high tail it out of there in a car and they're like, oh, those guys killed everyone. Exactly. Bro, that is wild. I mean, that guy's kind of dumb for raining it. Like, dude, he should let you know, like, oh, I wish I could ring the bell, but I'd have to kill you. And then you know, oh, I understand what's going on. Whose fault is it?

I don't know. And the fact that he was like, he was treating it like an olive garden waiter. Just like, tell me when. You're like, bro, what? I didn't know when to tell you when. What are you talking about? It's exactly the look. It's like more parmesan.

More. Yeah, take them more. Yeah. 12 rings. Okay, we're good. When? When? Yeah, dude. That is crazy.

Yeah. I haven't gone back. I don't think I'm going to. And so she was a blood letter. That was like her thing. She was a blood letter. So they would still believe, I'm assuming, in the humors. And that wasn't that long ago.

Right. I mean, isn't that like how George Washington died or something? I think so. Again, this wasn't that long ago, man, that we thought that's how the world worked. We don't know what we don't know. Yeah. We barely know. Will we ever know?

The sad thing is I don't think in our lifetime we're going to know. Yeah. Right? That's a scary part. Right? We think we have a good idea of how the world works and, but we'll never know. Yeah. You just try your best.

Now, if I'm listening to this and I'm hearing all your cool stories and I'm like a 20-year-old kid living in Florida like I was, I would hear this and be like, yeah, yeah, that's cool. You get to travel and stuff. But that's not, I'm not going to travel. Like, in order to travel, it's, you know, a thousand dollar plane ticket. it's thousands of dollars in equipment. I got to quit my job. I have to find some place to go. I got to get a hotel.

That's going to be another 300 bucks a night. I got to eat food. That's going to be expensive. Traveling is a luxury that's reserved for people like you and not for people like me. So how can people travel? And is this a lifestyle opportunity that can be opened up to everyone?

Why do you think that, though? Because that's what traveling is. Well, why do you think that's travel? I think what's happened is we have spent too much time on Instagram and think traveling has to be, you know, floating breakfasts and baths in Bali and luxury. That's the curse of what Instagram or this like photographic focus society or style of tourism the curse that's caused is that we have to think that tourism is that, right? There's no glamorous photos that go viral necessarily of the guy with the backpack paying

$3 for a hostel eating $1.00 noodles on the side of the road, right? Where's the glamour and aspirations in that? There is some, but it's not broadcasts to the world. What we see is luxury, expensive, in affordable travel, that those people themselves can't even afford for most cases. And it's broken travel, man. Why is it broken? Because travel you see about finding truth, man.

Now travel is about taking photos, right? And looking cool for your friends. It's like fucking Pokemon catching. You go, you take a photo of the Eiffel Tower, the great wall, you come back, you show, well, before you see slideshows, now it's Instagram, right? I mean, I'm a little bit hypocritical. Come on, I make online content. But at least I can help people find truth because I'm going to find truth.

And I think that's where people think they can't travel is because they think it has to be a certain way based on what they've seen. In my eyes, like, I'm a professional adventure, right? I got this adventure travel YouTube channel. I've had two different adventures, TV shows, one of which is still on air and has two Emmy nominations. I love travel. I love adventure, but those things don't have to be to Bali or Cancun or Dubai, right? You want adventure, bro. Go find some woods and go camping by yourself.

You'll be safe, but you'll be terrified. You know what I mean? Go get a cheap plane ticket to wherever, jump on the train, travel across the continent. You'll be safe. You'll be scared. You might cry, but God, you'll have good stories, man. Men should have good stories, right? We've been telling stories around campfires forever.

ever. And now the problem is we've warped risk so much that we think the world is a dangerous place where everything is either expensive or dangerous. And we see people like me do these crazy things that I could never do. Man, I'm just doing what you could do. Right. The main thing is just get a local contact. How do you do that? The biggest thing is if you have any hobby or anything you want to learn, you go do that there. Let's say you want to learn Bacatta or salsa, right? There are Bacchata and salsa clubs in, again, like, correct. Lackas, Venezuela, or even Taipei, Taiwan. You know what I mean?

It doesn't matter what you do. Could be football, soccer, right? Could be jiu-jitsu. Could be whatever. You go, the easiest way to integrate yourself into a foreign culture is just go do a sport, learn a thing and be there with those people because they'll see you differently, right? If you want to go stand in front of the Eiffel Tower and take a selfie, you're not going to have an authentic experience. You go try to learn a skill, even if it's your first time, you're going to get that respect.

And then from there you can build out itineraries. Like, how do you find off the beaten travel? You can type in off the beaten locations, Mexico. Yeah. Buzzfeed, the best places to go, Cancun. Exactly. Places no one knows about. Yeah, top research result.

Yeah, Cabo. Exactly. Right. Maybe they could be a bit different than the normal sites. But if it's easily accessible, it's on the beaten path. So then how do you find? off the beaten path. Well, that's where things get interesting. And that's by finding local contacts and people. And the world does seem expensive when all the travel you see are the people who are posting about it. But often,

the problem is that people posting about it are sponsored. They're given money by people to post things, right? The mom and pops dive shop or the hostel or these, you know, rag tag roadside noodle stands, do they have a marketing budget or a team that's going to pay an influencer thousands of No, they exist, right? So therefore there's a giant skew towards luxury travel because these brands have a lot of money to say, hey, come, my shit's the best. Come do this thing. And so we have that, but we don't see the other thing, right? And if you're an influencer trying to make money, which you do, like you have to make money.

Of course, it's going to be much easier to go to the path of luxury because there's more money. How do you make money, you know, sleeping on a beach in Thailand and making a vlog about that? There's no sponsor. You can do ad rev, but that's a. a long slog for most people. Should it be about making money, though, for most people? For you, this is your business. But if someone wants to do what you like to do,

it doesn't necessarily have to be about money. Right. If you're looking to make a profession out of it, at a certain point, you do have to think about money. And that was my greatest challenge, was transferring that attitude of just, you know, rag-tag backpacker to, okay, well, if this is a business, I got to stay in the positive, right? Right.

But in the beginning, of course, you should blow your money. For the first five years in my travel, I just work at whatever job I could find, then blow it all. What kind of jobs are you doing? So I worked in a pet store for a while. Yeah, just like a regular job. Regular Joe Pet Store. I worked at a pet food company for a while too. I worked at a fish farm where they would raise salmon.

So my family actually, my father owns a company that makes dog food and fish food, like for salmon. So I would work there sometimes, but also had other jobs at pet store. So my life's always been animal focus. from the beginning. That's why I did biology. Your parents didn't just give you money to be like, hey, go travel. No. So you work there, nine to five, save money. I mean, I can't say my parents didn't help me. Like, they, they helped me a lot. Like, they, they were pretty supportive with my crazy adventures. I was able to have a job working for the family company for when I wanted in the summers. But even then, I didn't always work for them. I often did. And it was a big challenge for me

over time, too, to not get more involved with the family business, especially when I, I had a love for animals. Of course. Yeah, but they're in your hometown, friends or family. And you say you want to go travel the world and go to Turkmenistan, Mauritania, Venezuela, Pakistan. There's not generally a ton of people cheering you on. Sure. Some people will try to hold you back.

My family was good. They just said make good choices, I think. So I was lucky for that. But I still like paid my dues, man. I lived in Toronto for two years when I. when I was just trying to make this work in the shittiest apartment that I could that I could afford in an apartment building with two other men that were probably 60 filled with cockroaches and there wasn't even a bathroom in my bedroom. We had to share a bathroom with no shower. It was only a

bathtub. Wow. So I had to share a bathtub with two 60-year-old men for, it was probably there for like a year and a half. A couple of bell rayors, huh? Yeah, man. One of them I never saw was a hermit. The other one drank on the porch every single morning. Whiskey. Whoa. Yeah. But again, that's paying the penance, man. It's putting the time in the trenches to be able to make it work, right? And by doing that, I think you prove to yourself and the universe that you want it.

And it's amazing. If you're not afraid to be uncomfortable, it's only a matter of time. If you believe in yourself enough that you're going to make it work and you got to sleep in your car, maybe your parents' basement, maybe in a cockroach-filled apartment and share a bathtub with two grown men, who cares, right? You end up in a chair like this and you can talk about your stuff, you know? Now, you, no, let's say you didn't have supportive parents. You think you still could have done it where you just saved up money and then found the local people, got a cheap flight and then made a work.

That's still an option? Of course it is because, again, the flight is generally the most expensive thing. If you can take care of that and you can, again, if you just keep an eye on flight deals, a few hundred dollars can get you a lot of faraway places. People are still existing everywhere in the world. Like, sure, you can go to Bangkok or. Antanarrivo, Madagascar, and you can live a luxury life of Starbucks and, you know, Marriots. But there's people who are living there on dollars a day. The question is, are you willing to be uncomfortable enough to sleep in a place that costs a couple dollars a day,

eat food that costs a couple dollars a day? Or do you need those luxuries of a modern life? Right. And if you are willing to forfeit those luxuries in favor of growth, stories, experience, hardship. Right. Finding yourself, then the expense solely becomes the flight. And that's not that expensive. Sure.

Now, there's someone, I don't know if you can tell, that's listening right now, that's typing in the YouTube comment section. Right now, if you listen close, you can hear them typing. I can hear them. And they're saying, you have a mic. You're a handsome white man. You don't have to worry about someone fucking with you because you're a dude. You can fight. You're charismatic.

You can talk your way out of situations. And you're a white guy. So people like you, you know, if I'm a person. black kid that goes and travels there's going to be racism i got to deal with prejudice people want to take advantage of me what is the answer to that kid right but i mean i was a soft-bodied nerd for most my life bro just just through travel i was able to kind of define my path and i've experienced i mean i'm not comparing my race the racism i've received to to some other people but like you go to japan it's pretty racist like i went into a restaurant before and simply walking in they're like no no no no no

no no no no and just slowly push you out of the door yeah um now being said, of course, like, passport privilege is a real thing. That's, that's probably the biggest thing. And something I got hung up in the beginning, because I used to just sprout, like, you know, travel the world, do your thing. And then there was a kid from Bangladesh who said, I want to travel like you, but I can't get the visas. And I'm like, passport is very important. And that is definitely luck, right? You're not control, there's no control where you're born. You fall out of a vagina in a hospital, and that is your citizenship. And therefore, you get a book. and that book dictates where you can go.

And it is very hard to get away from that, especially if you're born in an impoverished country. Yeah, that's not fair. That's just what it is. That is what it is life. It is what it is. And there are ways, of course, to work and be able to get other citizenships or be able to work around the system.

But unfortunately, that is the reality of the world. But now you're a dude also. So, you know, maybe you can travel certain parts of the world as like a black guy and be cool because maybe you can deal with some of the, the racial dynamics. I mean, like, should black people be concerned going to some of these countries in terms of, like, how they'll be treated in terms of prejudice? Obviously, you're not black, but have you seen things like that?

I have a friend of mine that I've heard speak about it who's a woman who's black, and she was saying that oftentimes she'll go to countries and people will assume that she could be a prostitute because, I guess, black women with money in certain countries that's associated with that. So I can, I can't speak to all of the, like the racist traveling around the world, I know that white people are often at target. And if you have white skin in places,

it can be a problem. Sure. But, yeah, I wouldn't, if you're traveling, you seem to kind of come over those barriers because people see you as a traveler and realize you're not from there. And therefore,

the kindness comes through. Again, not the expert, of course, but one thing that I think we get misconstrued is that the world is as violent and aggressive and quick to cast judgment as we are in the modern world. I've found it's the opposite that the tourist friendly countries are often the most unfriendly and the tourist unfriendly are the most friendly. Whereas you come to the modern world here and we can be pretty, you'll stand on the bike lane, bro. You get you getting clipped. You get pretty unfriendly. You get lost in Pakistan or

Congo even, like I got lost in the Congo jungle for a week with these pygmy tribes. And they were just like, how did you get? How did you get here? Why are you here? You need help, right? Same thing if you saw like a Congolese in your neighborhood back in, well, where your parents are from in Quebec or even in Florida, whatever. You see some guy who's obviously out of place, right? Wearing different clothes, looking lost.

You're not going to be like, oh, let's go, let's go, you know, fuck with that guy. going to say, okay, like let's help that guy, right? And that has always been the sentiment. In the most dangerous places, the faraway places, I've always been treated with the most respect. Any traveler who goes to these places, regardless of skin color would be treated that way because obviously not many people go there. And people have fascination. Also, they see your appreciation. One of the biggest problems going to Mauritania, which is right below Morocco, which is one of the most, again, dangerous places in the world is I had to, I'd walk in the street every 15 minutes, someone invite me over for tea. And tea in Mauritania is a 45 minute affair where they pour tea

back and forth four or five times for every single glass. So to even have two glasses of tea, you've got to wait 45 minutes. I had tea dates all day. Like we spent an entire day doing tea with people just because they wanted to invite us into their house and talk about how were you here? Oh my God. What have you seen? The world's a friendly place. And in 12 years of travel in almost 100 countries, I do not have one example of intentional harm towards me. Really? I've been pickpocketed. I've had cars smashed and things taken out when I wasn't there.

So there's opportunistic crime. There are hyenas out there, many. But that could happen in New York. But also, these people, I've got a $1,000 iPhone. I can buy another one if I lose it. They get that. Maybe they sell it for a couple hundred. That feeds their family for a week or a month or two, several months.

It's, I can't say I understand it, but I understand the appeal. If you're in a really hard place, just like we spoke about those people. people cutting down the forest. They don't want to do that. But when it comes to that of your family starving, man, you'll do desperate things, right? Yeah, desperate people will do desperate things. That's not necessarily their fault. It's a circumstance that they're in. Right. Yeah. Now, should women be concerned? Like, if there's a girl this, it's like, oh, I want to travel the world like you. Should there be a slightly more precaution than just like an average dude, just due to like gender dynamics that exist in the world and self-defense and things like that?

Yeah, of course. I mean, if you're like a strong-looking guy, you can strut yourself around most places and be okay depending on the neighborhood. If you're a woman, it takes a little bit more common sense, but both sexes require common sense. Right. Like I've seen people make poor decisions. I was partying in St. Martin in the Caribbean, which is an island that's half owned by France, half owned by the Netherlands. And I was partying with this group of people and there was a girl with us, a white girl, and these group of guys came over in a car said, hey, you want to come party with us? We got a liquor.

And she's jumped in and went away. I never saw her again. She may be fine. But you don't do that stuff, you know? Right. It's problems. Right. Most women, I would assume, would have some common sense.

I can't speak to that experience. But there are women out there doing it. Like, Eva Zubek is a good, a good prominent example. She's probably the biggest adventure solo female traveler. And she has been all over the world doing a lot of, like, even in Pakistan, spent two years living there or something motorbiking around. So it is possible. But I always recommend.

Two things. Number one, never listening to the fear that you're given. Advice is, in my opinion, hand me down fears where someone gives you advice, but really they're just, they have fear inside of them and they're like, here, take my fears and hold them and then guard them close. It's not from real experience. It's like getting advice on how to fix your car from a baker. Like they might have heard something once, but they don't actually have practical experience. Right. And generally in your hometowns, you're not going to find someone who's traveled the world for 10 years and have been to these places and it's going to say traveling the world solo is the best thing you could ever do but once you leave you meet infinite amount of people who have done that and say

literally it's the best thing you can do you don't need money you just got to do it and the number one thing is not holding that hold and the number one thing holding you back is not finances or family it's just fear it's fear of the unknown right because when you sit in your hometown all you digest is just all of the horror stories of the world and how the world's so dangerous It's not a dangerous place. And you make that risk assessment to 150. The number's number, right? Exactly.

That's our default risk assessment. Yeah, exactly. And I guess, yeah, people look at that where they're like, oh, I don't have a buddy. I don't have a person to go with. And I think, I'm sure your experience is similar to this, where when you go solo, you're forced to interact with other people. Like, if you're sitting alone at a restaurant,

you're not talking with one person the whole time. You're looking around. You're seeing what's going on. You talk to the waiter a little bit. You talk to the guy at the bar. You talk to the person that's, you know, bringing the rice over. Like, you're now, you're forced to interact. And that force interaction is going to open up way more doors than if you're with another person.

Definitely. It's a handicap to travel with a friend. I was supposed to originally. I didn't just wake up one day and say, oh, I'm going to travel to the other side of the world. I didn't read a motivational quote or watch a YouTube video and just decide to change my life. Unfortunately, how humans work is you've got to get kicked in the nuts and drug through the dirt first before you do any drastic life change. And in my case, that was exactly it. Like I was just graduating university, felt super lost.

Had a girlfriend at a really bad breakup. Had a grandparent die, the first death in the family, and had a car crash. Boom, boom, boom. Trifecta of terrible shit. Had a friend who was going through bad times too. There was a poster on the wall saying, hey, do you want to be a volunteer on this island in the middle of nowhere in Indonesia called Hoga off of Sulawesi? And different than the death tribe.

But same island. and if you want to come raise this money and you can go so me and my friend were like yeah me and you against the world bro and saved money for months and months day came to pay the deposit it was like five G's to to lock in the trip and so I text them I'm gonna go pay catching the pub after he's like yeah see they're after so I dropped the five geez like shaking hands okay like it's locked in but I got my bro and then um go to the pub get a pint and then get a text like half an hour later hey sorry I couldn't get the money together after all and uh can't go so sorry bro let's talk about it oh my my heart just pinballed down my leg because now I had paid five Gs to lock myself into an island

hoga off of wakotobi off of Bhutan off of Sulawesi middle of nowhere for three months by myself and I was horrified getting on that plane like a week later my parents at the airport I was I was like young, like 22 maybe, and wave goodbye and thought I would never see them again. I felt like I was walking to the electrocution chamber and got there and had the best time of my entire life. Went there. It was an island in the middle of nowhere, no running water. Okay, no mirrors. Three months with a research team. We were scuba diving, doing assessments on the coral reef. I had thought that the only way to live life was the system in which we were born where like you got to dress fancy, work at a bank, be a doctor, all this crazy shit.

And looking good was so important. I went there and after, you know, the first day everyone shows up. They've got jelled hair. They've got their nails done. Everyone's looking good in their new adventure gear. Week one, starting to fall of pieces. Week three, month two, you are just hobos, man. Hair growing out of places, you know, mosquito bites, sleeping in hammocks.

Again, the only shower was a bucket in a hole with mosquito larvae poured on your head. You haven't seen yourself in a mirror. This is kind of back before like smartphones too. And I realized the cool kids who were like, you know, the hot guy of the pretty girl day one, they had worked so much on their outside that they had nothing on the inside. And the people who knew some magic tricks or some funny jokes or some stories or how to like twang on a guitar, they became the cool kids like because the whole thing shifted. Because without the exterior, the cool kids had nothing.

But we live our society that way, right? How you dress and how you act on the outside is really important, right? But we don't really work on our inside or being able to handle hardships, especially living on this island for three months. And that changed my life. Again, that broke my lens and I was able to take one little fragment from there and insert it back in. And I came out of there addicted to travel because I realized that there was people who have chosen to live different lives.

I met a guy who was even older than me. Like a few months later, I was in Honduras with on Utila, one of the Bay Islands. Went through Togusa Galpa, by the way. Rough place. Yeah, especially in that time. I think San Pedro, nearby city,

was like the murder capital of the world per capita for a really long time. There was like narco shit. It was crazy. Yeah. Rough place. There's two islands. There's Roatan and Utila, both like scuba diving mechas. And Utila was more backpacker.

So I went there, spent, again, saved my money, went to do another internship. So a bit cheaper than a normal experience to be a basically slave for a dive shop, but live in paradise. And there, I met a dude who was a banker in the UK who had his, this was his mission. It's hilarious. I love telling a story because it just kind of shows what's possible. And I don't condone doing this, by the way. But his mission was to be high. enough in the banking system to get a car, like an Audi or something, and then drive the

Audi to Poland or Romania, sell it in the black market, take the cash and travel the world forever, and never go back to the UK. So you meet these characters who have just chosen these crazy life paths that are just so different than yours, right? And you realize that you can live on a couple dollars a day, right, if you have to, if you do something insane like that. and other people who just have decided to reject the modern world and play in a different playground. And when you have much more examples, then you realize you can do it. And then from there, meeting people who have found many creative ways to make a living around the world, then you realize you go back home and you think people are just trapped in these prisons

of their own making, right? They think you have to live that way. And because there's no data points of people living otherwise, they just go with the herd. We're tribal creatures. We'll do what people do. And by going and meeting other people who have already done it, the road is paved and it allows you to be a bit more free thinking. So it's easy to go, you know, maybe get a dive master certification and teach. You're not making a lot of money, but you're meeting cool people. You're partying. You know, maybe you'll meet your wife or your husband. Or maybe you'll just, you know, break your leg and learn something. And my story is that I went down there. I got flesh eating disease on my foot because it was a place where you didn't wear shoes,

came back, it was an infection that wouldn't heal, went skiing in Vermont for a week, put that thing in a ski boot, just incubation chamber. Gangrene, dude. And it erupted, and I spent four months on a couch

because the blood pressure of just sitting up from bed was so excruciating it would take just a massive amount of time and energy to get out of bed to do anything. And in that moment, I had a friend send me a link to a competition saying, hey, bro, you love to travel.

If you want to join this competition, it's like a video competition, you send a video of yourself saying, you know, why you like travel, this company could select you to win and you get to travel for free. And again, this is me a long time ago. I was still, didn't never want to. The last thing I wanted to do was put myself in front of a camera, ever. And so I said, no, bro, it's not my thing, you know, like it's a stupid, whatever, like resentment, right? Again, the thing that I was most scared of, I just say, no, it's stupid.

I hate it. Yeah, of course. That's what you do. You build a plastic. And then so he said, well, listen, what are you going to do? Sit in the couch for four more months? So I was just getting better at this point. And I was in that point of desperation where I was drug through the dirt again that I was

finally in a spot willing to make a change. And so I remember recording my first video, did 40 takes of saying my name and where I was from. Fucked up 39 of them. Right. Then like another 40 takes of why I like travel. fucked up. And then just Frankensteined a vlog together that was okay.

Submitted it. My friend saw it. Oh, my God, you're a natural. He's like, dude. I have no idea. I was like weeping in my closet. And then felt like a phony. And then so I had made it to like the next round like top 25 or something.

And then I had to submit another video. So I Frankenstein another monster together. Submitted it. And we all know what looks good from watching news and movies. And so it just faked my way for the first few. years entering these competitions and ended up winning a couple. But it wasn't by talent, bro. It was it was it was I think my lack of talent that enabled me to try extra hard and watch speakers and watch myself and even if I was really hard on myself that allowed me to perfect it after a certain

amount of takes and eventually do that for long enough and you perfect the craft. I'm not the perfect speaker, but I used to stutter, you know what I mean, back in the day. So like a legit stutter? Like a whenever I started a sentence, I would always take two tries. Oh, wow. Yeah. Even just the anxiety sometimes of starting a sentence. And again, there's no videos of this because I didn't make videos. Yeah.

I cut those ones out in the beginning. But that was a very real thing. So now, but again, the cave you fear to enter hides the treasure that you seek because I decided to do the thing I was most afraid of, not just waking up one day and doing it, but because in moments of desperation, I was like, fuck. Well, you know, I've been in this bed for four months. or life like life on this side of the planet is so shitty. Let's try the other side.

Those were the moments in which I was able to find my path. And I think if I had one thing I wasn't natural at is what it's when I was drug through the dirt. I said fuck and then decided, okay, how can I what can I do differently from here? Yeah. And in your travels, do you have any regrets of things that you did that looking back, You're like, I wish I hadn't have done that or my boneheadedness in this situation. I hooked up with this girl and it fucked everything. Like, was there anything that you did that you're like, oh yeah, I wish I could not do that

and that you would recommend other people not do. Ringing that bell. Convincing a small runny in town that there'd been a mass murder. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So that's definitely, that's definitely one of them. But I don't try to be too judgmental on myself because again, like we spoke about, if I really feel if your intentions are pure.

and you know you're not out to offend anybody, I think that's, that's it. Like you're going to offend people. If you have a strong message, you're going to offend people, right? Yeah. Mistakes are okay. And most people are pretty,

they're pretty generous when it comes to mistakes. They go, oh, your intentions are good. You fucked up, so I'll give you a pass. Especially traveling. Like the first time I went to Cuba, again, on another internship where I was able to travel cheaply, helping the University of Havana,

on a sea turtle project on the beach where we slept. in a tent in a tent for a week on a beach which sounds good but man the sand flies and when that sun comes in at seven o'clock damn um i remember meeting the the father of one of the students and um so i met the mother first and kissed her on the cheek and met the father and kissed him on the cheek and then caused a very awkward moment where i realized oh you don't kiss everyone on the cheek hilarious you just you just kissed i didn't know it was supposed to make out with everyone You got to understand. And the funny thing was he didn't, because normally you turn.

He didn't turn. So I kissed him like right. Oh, God. Not like right here. It would have been better. I don't even know. Maybe the lips would have been. At least that's intentional.

And you're like, hey, I'm smooching you, baby. Let's go. Man. Right on this little soft. Yeah. The last thing. So you asked, I think the hods of people, what is the purpose of existence? Why are we here?

Right. And so many of them, their answer was like, you know, hunting, meat, things like that. I'm curious actually if you felt, if you were almost disappointed by their answer, I think a lot of times Westerners, like, we seek like sage wisdom and to go to a yogi and, you know, Bangalore, and he tells you unthinkable wisdom that changes your life. And more often than not, the wisdom is simple and kind of obvious and in front of you the whole time. So I'm curious for you, what is the purpose of this? Why are we here? Why are you on Earth? Yeah, great question. the that's exactly it i i assumed that these people in faraway places would have these elaborate answers

about you know their belief systems and everything but every single time just translating what is the purpose of life it doesn't translate it's it's this philosophical questioning that we have that does not really exist there right there's a way of doing things and the purpose in most of these, let's call them more primal cultures, is the bare bones, man, you know, you go, you get food, you bring back, you get a wife, if you hunt really well, that's, that's the best thing to do. And I feel like we just overcomplicate so much and try to find this purpose is it's, I don't know if it's possible. It's just being able, I think, to find purpose through struggle. And I think if you do put yourself through struggle, you stop worrying about the purpose so much.

It's just we have all this free time now and all of the luxuries in the world at our fingertips. We have the and the luxury of sitting back and wondering what it all means. But if you're out there grinding, like imagine if you have to wake up and hunt for breakfast every single day. Right? It wasn't just there in your kitchen. Your life changes, right? If everything is a mission, your life changes. I think men especially are like sharks, not necessarily with the big teeth, but that sharks and the

lot of these fish that live in the big ocean, like tuna too, have something called ram ventilation, where the only way they can breathe is by forcing the water through their gills. They have to keep moving in order to breathe. I think men especially are exactly the same way. If we don't have something we're going towards, if there's no forward momentum towards something, we suffocate. We get in fights on Twitter. You text me saying, you failed to mention something that I did or didn't do, whatever. It's only now that with all of this free time, we're able to sit back and start to criticize others for the mistakes and really have these existential crises about our existence. If you fill your life full of passion and fire and with reckless disregard, go towards the

things that excite you, it could be badminton. It could be fucking finger painting, man. It could be whatever. If you just follow that fire, like a moth to a flame, the rest figures itself out. That's what I've learned. Amazing. Well, I truly have appreciated this so much. This is so fun. Your channel, fearless and far, has honestly been an inspiration for me. Like, when I first even started doing this show, one of the original dreams of it that I hope to actualize one day is creating like long form conversational content with people around the world. And, you know, obviously not everyone can speak English, but through your experience, there's a lot of people that actually can, and they actually have a pretty good grasp of the language and communicate

things, you know, despite never coming to America or living in an English-speaking nation. Right. And so that is on my bucket list to do, to find, you know, someone that has lived in, you know, Turkmenistan that can talk to me about what the culture of that place even is, considering that myself and I think a lot of people that live in America have no idea that that country even exists. So the idea of having, like, a long-form conversation like this is one of my, dreams that has been partially propelled by the content that you make and the experiences that you've had is so cool and so exciting to me. And I feel like is one of my passions in life. And I'm really

grateful for the stuff that you've made that has shown me that there is a way that's feasible to do that. And that's ethical. And it can really give, I don't know, different perspective and different truth to what existence really is. So, yeah. Well, thank you, man. And I think we both share the same interest. And maybe we didn't realize it from the beginning or maybe you did. But again, I have a biology background. I wanted, well, I started traveling to see animals, landscapes, you know, jungles. And then time and time again, I'd come back and I'd, the things I'd remember most were

the goat farmer who brought us in for milk tea or the shaman who showed us how to use this vine and he brought it back home and I watched him cook it or make a pipe out of it. It's always the people that made the deepest mark. And so I used to think I traveled for places, but dude, it was always the faces, the people, right? And it is the biggest thing out there. You see a location, maybe it's a mountain, but you see the person there, and you can relate to that person. And so the greatest stories come from people, and I'm just out there to find amazing people with amazing stories. And it seems like when the podcast is very similar.

Absolutely. Has there been any person individually that you met that really touched you in a unique specific way or even like made you cry just through interacting with them? So many times I've gone to places with, I couldn't help it, but a critical eye. For example, eating that maggotty meat in the Philippines. So in this remote part in the north, there's a few interesting characters. One of them is a woman called Wangod, who is a 103-year-old or probably one. 107-year-old tattoo artist who used to tattoo headhunters. And this woman gets a lot of attraction up there.

People make a pilgrimage up to this town. She taps some dots on your arm or on your back and usually grabs your penis. This woman, she has a little sick pleasure of whenever a foreigner comes up and gets a tattoo with her, she thinks it's really funny that they want a photo with Wang Odd? Yeah, of course. That when they say cheese, she grabs your dick and makes a funny face. So if you type in Wang Odd penis, you'll see. all these hilarious photos of her grabbing tourist dicks.

Anyway, up there is like the Wild West bro. And there was a man up there named Patrick, who was the village elder who smoked this meat. And so, again, I had heard about this meat. I always hear whispers of certain things and I have to go figure it out. And it was probably the most repulsive food that I had ever heard up. Again, a flank of pork riddled with bugs. How could you ever eat that? right i met this man he was against 70 75 and he explained so beautifully the tradition so he is the

village village elder and he has two he has two requirements whenever there's a wedding or a funeral he has this pork which he smokes and there's pork for the living and pork for dead so he keeps them and one side is for funerals for the dead and one side's for the living for weddings and he smokes them because um to i guess try to cook it I don't know, but because he does it in his closet, it gets filled with maggots. But he brings this pork to these events. And another very common thing there is called Pinnick-Pikan, which is a beaten chicken dish, where they believe that if you beat a wild chicken with a stick, it's screaming, calls the attention of the gods.

And also it tenderizes this bush chicken that's lived its entire life in the jungle. And so hanging out with these guys up there, I realized that when we ate this, beaten chicken and this maggotty meat for a four-year-old's birthday that and they all thought it was perfectly normal and the whole community got together and that this has been handed down by generation by generation and that the smoked meat yeah there's some bugs but it's extra protein it tastes like spoiled milk and with the chicken now the gods are paying attention and now we have this big party and the four-year-old stoked because it's like his favorite food and everyone's getting together dancing and singing and the time comes up it's like mike try try our

our special dish. And it's like shepherd's pie. You know, I watched seven men cook all day while the wives went around and entertain the kids. What do you say, man? You say yes. And you eat it. And everyone's super happy. And you have those just genuine moments living like the locals do.

Those moments always touch my hearts so much. And again, that hadn't really been captured before. And again, if you hear about people eating maggoty meat, you're like, I must. What savages are those? But you get to see the beauty around it. And you get to see that these are actually human beings just with a bit of a different practice. You know what I mean? I got diarrhea for 14 days after.

Well, bro, I would not trade it for the entire world, right? Amazing. I mean, you inspire me. You make me want to fucking get out there. So thank you so much. I subscribed to your newsletter. It's amazing. Thanks.

It's awesome fucking content on there that's super helpful for travel and just like cool stories and shit. Your channel is awesome. Your Instagram is great. And I actually haven't checked out any of the, TV shows yet. So the one night now you can watch is called Unchartered Adventure on the Weather Channel in the States.

If you have a TV with Weather Channel, you can find me. Amazing. Thank you so much for that. I really appreciate it. Let's do this again soon. Let's do it. Peace.