Green Light with Chris Long - NBA Playoffs. Jordan Jonas, Winner of Alone Season 6. Weekend Fails.

Episode Date: August 24, 2020

0:53 - Chris on the NBA. 25:55 - This Weekend at the Longs. 29:00 - Jordan Jonas on Alone: The Arctic, Riding Trains across the Country, and Living in Siberia. Green Light with Chris Long: Subscribe and enjoy weekly content including podcasts, documentaries, live chats, celebrity interviews and more including hot news items, trending discussions from the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, NCAA are just a small part of what we will be sharing with you. http://bit.ly/chalknetwork Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

But also, I really do remind myself a lot of what even my own ancestors and stuff went through. And it puts so much perspective on my suffering. No matter what I have to go through, it's just nothing compared to even what my grandparents went through. And so especially, like even more so when you're sitting out on like a TV show with a tap out button and you're thinking, man, this sucks. It's like, what are you talking about? This is, we got it made right now. You know, this is amazing. Happy Monday, everybody.

This is Greenlight Pod. I'm your host, Chris Long. Haven't done the Monday thing in a while. But we had this interview stacked, as I told you, we have a surplus of great guests. We're getting to that point, guys, because of you, the listener, not because of me. And this is just a fucking mirage.

I barely know what I'm doing. My producers would probably tell you that. You guys have been spreading the word and listening. So continue to subscribe, comment, do those things you do. I'm not really familiar.

But whatever you're doing, it's helping. A lot of people are listening, and we're getting great guests, like Jordan Jonas, from Alone in the Arctic, season six, which is on Netflix now,

and it's gotten a big boost. It came out last year late. It's gotten a big, big boost because of that Netflix partnership. And people love the show. I mean, when I tell you, I binged it fast, if you listen to Pot on Friday with Wenea, who was another contestant on Alone in the Arctic Season 6, again on Netflix, if you listen to that pod, I told you all about why it's bingeworthy.

If you missed it, it's basically a bunch of people in the Arctic in late fall, early winter, got to make their own shelters. They are alone, if you hadn't figured that one out. And it is cold. They are hungry. there are big ass wild animals and they got to stay out there for months if you want to win. So at this point, you have your spoiler alert. I think that again, after a year, you should probably just watch the fucking show.

But spoiler alert, turn back now, get to the radio, get to your little iPod, whatever you guys are listening to this thing on and turn it off if you plan to see alone in the Arctic season six. but if you haven't seen it, don't care, maybe this will sell you on why you need to. And if you have, you'll certainly enjoy this interview with Jordan Jonas. The winner of $500,000, the winner of the whole damn thing lasted damn near 80 days. Probably could have gone another 40, but everybody was gone. And by the way, you don't know when people are done around you. I mean, the other contestants could be dropping like flies. You'd have no idea.

The only people you see are your med check folks, which come around very rarely. and I guess your reflection on the camera, you know, that you keep footage of your day to day. And maybe, you know, in the ice, when you ice fish for like a pike that has to last you for 17 days. No salt, no seasoning out there. It's not a good setup. It is not ideal. So, yeah, we've got him in a bit. Real quick, the NBA, man.

You know, one thing I noticed watching the playoffs here. and I'm going to be fast trying to shuffle through this NBA stuff, although I'm absolutely enthralled and they've done a great job. That can't be overstated. They have kept sports fans. Like, bookies, bookies loved the NBA more than they ever have. I mean, like, there were no big four sports bets for a while. LeBron has been just as important to the east, okay,

as the NBA has been to bookies this summer. Traditionally, LeBron has kind of kept the East alive. I know we had some great Celtics teams, and I just didn't realize how big of a deal would be a seismic shift when LeBron left the East. So he leaves the East. You think, okay, Katie's headed to the East. You've got Kyrie, Katie.

You've got Janus. Maybe you've got Kauai. Well, Kauai, nope. He's gone. Katie, you know, still hurt. hurt and, you know, the nets are out of it. You have the best, maybe the best player in the league, depending on who you ask in Milwaukee. And he plays on a playoff underachiever right now that plays a brand of basketball that isn't wildly exciting in a smaller market. LeBron and Kauai,

you know, mainly LeBron, Kauai lately with a cameo, really kept the East. alive. It's all LeBron. I just don't want to be disrespectful to why. I love him. That's totally changed. We are back to the West just being, and the West has this millennium been the more exciting brand of basketball, but the West is just right now much more entertaining to me. Okay. And I'm, I'm acknowledging that there's some very good teams in the East that we should respect. Hey, the heat, the heat excite me legitimately. I don't know how good they are. I'd love to see Heat Rockets, finals. Don't know how real that is, but love to see it.

I love watching Jimmy Butler. I love watching his unpredictable fucking facial expressions. And they've got shooters. Spoh doesn't get enough credit. Really, really good coach. It just goes to show you you can learn on the job. Not every guy who jump from, you know, we go through this in the NFL a lot, guys that we deem maybe unworthy of having a job or didn't climb the ranks.

Spolstra has put in the work and, you know, a lot of people didn't take him seriously in the beginning. Because what? Was he a video guy? You can learn when you got a guy like Pat Riley showing you the ropes and he doesn't get enough credit. The Raptors are great. The Raptors really are a heck of a team. And I respect that. No quote unquote superstar, although I really like Siakum.

I saw somebody tweet this weekend that, yes, I sneak on Twitter to read tweet. Sometimes I even was so excited about Luca today. I fucking tweeted and broke my own rule. Somebody said that the Raptors are the New Spurs. Not so fast, my friend. But Nick Nurse has actually made me like him, which is a miracle since the day he debuted his own logo.

Guys with their own logos should be careful. Just be careful when you're considering, you know, announcing that you have a logo now. on Instagram as a pro athlete. There's only a few guys that really should have logos. And I'm not, I'm not, listen, I don't have anybody in mind here. I just see it sometimes. I don't know where the threshold, you know, for necessitating having your own logo is.

But just be careful. I've seen some guys get logo, you know, tread lightly. Any of listeners out there become wildly successful pro athletes, just realize that sometimes wildly successful isn't enough. for you to have your own logo. Drake, not being courtside, I actually look at it as a positive. Made me uncomfortable sometimes.

The post came interviews and the courts had stuff. Because I like Drake. I want Drake to look good, you know? Sixers. They went home. This was inevitable. Injuries accelerated it. I'm not going to throw a shit fit about it.

You know, it's tough. just love the city and I know they're passionate about the Sixers and I love Tobias Harris giving a fuck, you know, I know he didn't have a good series to say the least, but at least offensively, when he hit the ground, I thought he was in serious trouble and he may have passed concussion protocol, but just hit the ground that hard, down three games and none in a tight ish ball game late but that's how these games have gone and they've stretched to big you know unmanageable deficits i mean he came back in the game down i think they were down double digits when he came back in the game uh so it's good to see somebody who actually gives a fuck listen i'm not

saying i don't want to be the effort guy i mean but there's been some effort stuff um that you see sometimes that it's just you notice it okay even they like i forget if his doors broke on the game but in the LA series, there were some callouts from the booth, which didn't happen a lot about effort. It's got to be bad when they call you out in the NBA for effort and getting back on defense. Listen, I know these guys are gassed.

That's part of it. I wondered watching, though, as the Lakers kind of struggled to keep pace late in the game with, and, you know, Joel Embed today was pretty wiped, but he waved off Brett Brown because he wanted to stay in and finish. He was frustrated. You don't want Al Hortford to come in and he had five fouls. the conditioning might be a thing, you know, like it has to be a thing.

I mean, the, the pace of play right now day to day is huge. It's just, it's a lot. And in the current format and coming off that long rest where you just don't know what guys were doing in the office season, I'm sure you're working your ass up, but can you replicate this kind of push? And this is maybe the point in the playoffs. It's like in the NFL season, you see a rash of injuries. Your guys getting a little wiped out, you know, at certain points in the year.

Like, it's a hump that, guys have to get over. I don't know. Maybe they're dealing with something like that where guys are just gassed. But Tobias Harris, you know, hats off to you. Tough dude. Seems like a great guy, too. My Knicks, they are not allowed past the guard booth in the east. They have never been allowed past the Disney World Guard booth. They physically couldn't buy a ticket. Not that you can buy tickets right now, but like they're going to be sitting around card tables and that sort of thing for, you know, guys on the Knicks this year and teams like the Knicks and guys are going to be telling stories about the bubble.

Remember the bubble and you're like the awkward guy that was like, no, I was on one of a few teams that they just said like, don't bother. And if you're the Knicks, you know, I think God hates you. I think God hates the Knicks, man. I'm a Knicks fan. I'm a long-suffering Knicks fan. Maybe they'll do something with that 77th pick that they just got in the lottery. Go on.

I just think the man upstairs doesn't like the Knicks very much. And that's how I'm justifying my side team, the Portland Trailblazers. You know, if God hates my main team, the New York Knicks, why would I disagree with the Almighty? Got to jump ship. Am I officially jumping ship and making my side team my main team? I'm not sure, but I check in with my side team every night, every night. Just see how they're doing.

Sometimes I find myself, I say, go Knicks, and I say, go Blazers. and I slip up. It just slipped out, you know? Maybe that's a problem. And by the way, the Blazers are fun, okay? They've given the Lakers problems at different times in the series. Obviously, they came out and jumped them in game one, game three, wasn't quite enough. Game two, they got blown out a little bit.

But they've made it interesting. They're not going to sweep them, obviously, like my man Chuck said they would. But they are fun. The uniforms look great. The all whites, the Blazers, all whites are terrific. I put them up there with the, well, they're better in my opinion. But I really like O'KC's orange uniforms. Sponsored by Love's Travel Stops.

They are the most giant rest-ups disguised as convenience stores of all time. If you've driven right in the middle of the country and you just cut a line through that motherfucker and drove, you're going to see about a thousand loves. They might be wasting their money right now because we can't go any fucking place because of the pandemic. Bright orange jersey. You know, bright yellow patch. Nope.

Can't visit a love's rest stop because where would you be going? Can I order a Slim Jim online? No. Okay. So what are we doing here? We're really like, I think people that that stop at love truck stops don't really mess with the NBA like that.

Maybe it's mismarketed. Also, the signs are 500 feet high. So I don't know why you even need to pay for any advertising outside of your giant skyscraper-ass rest stop signs. And maybe I'm confusing those with other gas station signs, but I just feel like Love's always has a really big sign next to like a McDonald's sign. It's like a tractor beam. I'm hungry. Driving all day. I feel super unhealthy.

Fuck it. I'll order $30 worth of McDonald's. And I don't even need GPS to get there. I just follow the giant golden arches right next to the love sign. Anyways, Unis, Lakers, Purple and Black Unis, not a fan. Not the worst in L.A., though. And I'll get to the Clippers in a minute. As for the series, again, the West is more fun right now.

It just is Utah, Denver, unpredictable. Houston, OKC. I have a strong lean, but it's been fun. I have a lean of where the series is going to end up. I think Houston wins in maybe six. Portland, I'm fearing that Chuck's prediction was wildly off base, but you've got a fighter's chance when you've got a guy like Dame who can get hot. The best thing smoking right now is a series I could see every year.

Dallas, L.A. First off, as I said, this is the quintessential Western Conference series. I mean, the total overtime didn't help right now, but if you had the under, it just got smashed today. I think it was like 140 to 140. A ton of lead changes, tons of big threes. Could you imagine, and the dude on the broadcast said it, if that game was played at American Airlines Arena, the roof would fall off the place. It has been so fun.

It's a series I could see every year. and Dallas didn't even have full strength. They're down like 20-something, and they come charging back. They're up double digits. Clippers come back. Then there's a bunch of lead changes. I didn't count them.

First of hopefully many series, and I don't know how it ends up, but let me just say this. Those basic-ass black-and-white uniforms that Clippers somehow settled on with that stupid GTA font, and anybody that's played a video game knows what I'm talking about. they're awful, those uniforms.

And it sucks because the Clippers have so many great throwback options, not the Otom's even, not the Lamar Otoms, like the back in the days. And Luca might send the most insufferable NBA uniforms home early this year, which is a shame, I guess, because you like the team. I mean, I like the team. You know, there was some guy, how can you not love Kauai? I like Pepperley, as annoyed as some people get with him.

Montrez, Harold plays his ass off. And we'll get to that whole thing in a second. Playoff P. It's good TV right now. But Luca, how can you not love Luca? How can you not love him? If you're an NBA team that isn't in that division

and doesn't have to see him all the time, if you're an NBA fan, if you're an owner, you have to love him because he's great for the league. the next 20 years, God willing, you've got a star. He's LeBron's error. And I say that with no disrespect to other stars. I just think his game is that complete. There is the global aspect of it, which is nice for the NBA.

No doubt about it. His game's that complete. I will always remember the day the Slovenian guy broke Twitter. Just broke it. That was today. Everybody was just sitting and watching. You got nowhere to go, but to see a guy on a bum ankle, drop 40. he hit two game winners

he got called a bad thing the other night and he answered and screamed in everybody's face today like the fucking clippers acupuncturist got Luca screaming in his face

like he probably found whoever's administering the the COVID tests in the hallway and screamed in that fucking person's face after the game it was Ann won all night and good for him he's tough he responded.

I'm sure he's used to it. Okay. European dude, NBA gets tested a lot. And by the way, I don't want to get too far down this road with Montrez-Harrel. I mean, I'm not, if you're keeping score and you really want to be persecuted or feel persecuted, not be persecuted, this would be a feel-persecuted thing. Put a tiny little check, tiny little tick on your score card. Let's see how long you milk this one. imagine imagine being black you know um there is no what if he called him this nope there's no

historical context to being called a soft white boy okay it's a mean thing to say it it probably it looks bad you know to be caught on camera you know with everything the NBA and society's trying to do because some people just don't understand sports trash talk listen you're going to hear it sometimes it only really sucks if you can't prove otherwise. I never had a problem with proving otherwise. And Montrez knows he probably fucked up because everybody saw it on TV. And I'm sure sometimes you say things,

I'm sure that you don't realize what it looks like if you get caught in slow-mo saying it on national TV. And I think you knew it. That's why Luca and him chopped up before the game. And it didn't seem like there was any animosity there. I can tell you as an athlete that played in a predominantly black league, I've heard worse. But in all honesty, it never offended me because, again, it doesn't ring true to me. So it was water under the bridge for Luca.

Well, maybe now it's water under the bridge. Maybe it wasn't water under the bridge. Maybe he probably was. I mean, there's nothing wrong with one to show Mantras Harold that he's fucking wrong. or the plethora of other dudes that test them on the regular. I just have never seen somebody who we knew was a generational talent

have such a coming out party. And the reason we saw what we saw last night as you listened to it Monday morning and feel that way is because it's the playoffs. And these aren't the Steve Nash, Dirk Nowitzky days. So a lot of people aren't watching the math.

who were watching them a few years ago outside of like Dallas. Like I'm not I'm not down playing how fun they are to watch, but they're not a huge, huge market NBA team. And Mark Cuban does a great job. These, this isn't a team with the pedigree like, you know, the Steve Nash,

Jason Terry, Dirk Nowitzki teams because the guys haven't been able to do it yet. But I think this is going to be a more fruitful exercise for Mark Cuban. I really do. Luke is a guy again, if you're an NBA fan that you're going to get to watch for the next 20 years. God willing, him staying healthy. There has not been a guy more recently that I've watched.

And Lamar Jackson comes to mind because there's such an infusion there. But with quarterbacks, especially a guy who plays physical and runs around, you know, you never know. And football, the shelf life is shorter. It's more unpredictable. Who's to say that Lamar is going to have the same type of success in that year and the next year? I mean, you know how people talk about football players and do they figure them out. And there's some truth to that or whatever.

But if you're starring the NBA, yeah, I feel like you're a star in the NBA and you know. And like, you already knew who was a star, but tonight, the playoff performance, the game winner, the next game winner, you know, the toughness, the playing on a bad ankle, I thought he was dead the other night. It just solidifies that he's going to be around for a while. And good for Mark Cuban and good for the Dallas Mavericks because they have another European player that happened to play for my old dumpster fire team, my main team.

Let me not talk like I've already ditched them. Sometimes you got one foot out the door, I guess. Chris Staps, Porzingis, who was hurt today? So this is going to be a series. Now the question is, how bad does Lucas ankle feel tomorrow? It was a big question to me to see how he'd feel after he heard it initially. Now he presumably rubbed that thing down with God knows what, shot it up with God knows what, took whatever he could under the sun to go play because it was important to him.

and just two nights ago it felt like you know in game three hey why would you come back in the game this seems risky it's kind of trending like it's over well it's anything but over and uh star is born that was already born so it's a rebirth of a star like a star was born on top of a star that was what last night was to me and i love sports man thank you NBA the other big story playoff You do hate to see it. Flip side of the pro athlete coin there. You know, the pro athlete lifestyle coin. Everybody's like, you know, being a pro athlete's awesome.

Yeah, it's awesome. It can be really great, especially I can imagine if you're not hitting people every day, your entire career and possibly damaging your brain and murdering your joints. And you play basketball for a living. When you make $35 million a year and you're tall, people like you. Like, it's cool to be a basketball player. But the flip side of a sport that's as specialized as basketball is, you know, if you're a star, there's nowhere to hide.

And Paul George, whether you think he's a first tier or second tier guy, there's nowhere to hide for him in a hole like this. And as an athlete, I've been in the hole before, slumps are bad. But when you're 1 of 11 and you're, you know, say a premier pass rusher in the league on a bad team, that's different than playing for the L.A. clippers in front of the entire country because as I said with Love's travel stops there's nowhere to fucking go everybody's glued to their TV the next game is Brooklyn Toronto which I would rather I don't know what I'd rather do than watch that game suffice to say I didn't um Joey buckets wasn't playing Joe Harris

hope he's doing okay he left the bubble uh personal matter shout out to Joe Harris but like wasn't interested in watching that game. Everybody's watching the Clippers. Everybody's watching Playoff B. And this is the flip side of the athlete coin. When you say something like he said in front of the media, as innocuous as it sounds, you've got to back it up in perpetuity.

When you're an NBA star, it's got to be lonely when you're not playing well. A big slump for a guy on a big stage like this is tough, especially when there's a perceived history there. So I bet he regrets the sound bite. the only thing that sucks is we cross the line all time and I talked about this before with with athletes where we you know a guy is disappointing or you know it doesn't pan out or has a bad performance on a big stage and people not even fans of the clippers like you can just see it people like

kind of dehumanize that guy a little bit like wherever paul george goes the rest of his life if he never plays another basketball game people will remember this stretch this is a tough one because as I said everybody's watching. It's a bad time to have a slump. And it's not a character flaw. I don't know, Paul George might be a good guy. Might not be a good guy. But you judge him just based on his, you know,

showing up on a big stage. That's the flip side to the athlete coin. And there's no one doing it. So I hope he climbs out of the hole just for his sake. And if he does and the Clippers get the series, I would love to see the Clippers play. Damien Lillard. Oh, what if Paul George just limped?

through this series, didn't get a shot right, and eventually they see the Blazers. And Dame, and Dame's like, I've been waiting for this shit for what feels like three months. That would be high drama for Pat Beverly as well. Marcus Morris probably also regrets emptying the air clip at that dude's foot when he thought he hit a playoff game winner. Again, love and Luca, all in.

But wasn't just basketball this weekend. I was doing a lot of other stuff, stuff around the house. So certain things, I don't have anything for you on some NFL news. You know, it's funny, I got Jordan on in a minute or two here. I'm watching him like harvest his own food, kill a moose, which we'll talk about. I'm watching him like, you know, ice fish had a wildly successful click. and I undercooked the salmon on the Trigger this weekend because I ran out of pellets and didn't even realize the pellets weren't working anymore or however you would say that.

I fucked up flipping a steak earlier this week because I was an IG Live popped up on my phone. Okay, I got distracted and one side of the steak was just mangled. And yet I got to interview a guy like this. he's going to totally emasculate me. Just totally amasculate me. I left the hose on today, okay? Here I am talking up everything I did today. We got this $200, you know, water slide thing for the kids.

The best $200 you could ever spend. I mean, when I was a kid, I feel like stuff like that, bounce houses, water slide stuff, like inflatable stuff, was simply super rich kid birthday party stuff. Now it's accessible or relatively accessible to where you're looking at your kid three days in a row filling up the inflatable water slide. And you're like, is my kid going to be soft because he's doing this birthday party special occasion shit every day?

Yeah. So I was supposed to turn the hose off at the end. And, hey, honey, can you turn the hose off? Yeah, I'm sorry. Did you say leave the hose on and you wanted a small lake in our side yard? And I'm water boys guy, okay? Got a foundation. I don't like waste and water. Left the hose on. I have like Lake of the Ozarks in my fucking side yard. So it has been a rough day for your boy. I screwed things up all the time. And yet I have to get totally emasculated. Like, a guy like Jordan Jonas who just lived in the Arctic for 80 days. My wife, Meg, my lovely wife, Meg, assembles our kid toys, okay? I'm not going to front, dude.

Guys out there don't front. If you can't do it, you can't do it. I know my weaknesses, okay? Without further ado, I got to get to Jordan Jonas because it is late Sunday night. I know my producers are like, dude, get on with it. I have a date with some key lime pie downstairs, okay, which I harvested. I didn't. I ordered it takeout.

See, I'm not front. I ordered a takeout from the prolific Maya restaurant in Charlottesville. Shout out to my guys at Maya. Without further ado, let's get to Jordan Jonas of Alone season six. I started watching the show. I had never watched any of the other, you know, seasons. And somebody was raving about the show. and they know like I'm into, you know, the outdoors.

Obviously, you guys are maniacs, but I started watching. I couldn't stop. It was like so bingeworthy. It was unbelievable. And the first thing that I saw when I turned on the show was, oh, there's a dude from Lynchburg. Yeah, yeah. So I'm thinking to myself, like, I'm rooting for this guy.

I also was pulling for Wienia because I just loved how calm she was. Oh, yeah. You know, she was like, she would shrink in the woods. like she would keep you calm. Yeah, totally, totally. The mindset for it, for sure. Yeah, but everybody was different.

Yeah. I loved seeing the different psychologies and the attitudes. I mean, there were some people that were gung-ho and they were like, I'm going to win this thing, and I'm in a hurry to do this and that. And there were some people that were patient

and you had a strategy. And I mean, I guess before we get into a loan, like, I was reading your bio, and which is for the aspiring podcasters out there that's fucking step one you just read the bio and then you're set the thing that blew my mind was besides all the cool stuff you've done in your life used to hop trains and I'm like and I just got done watching the Ken Burns country music documentary and I'm thinking of myself like is Jordan Jonas like a reincarnated 1940s

dude, like, why did you end up the way you ended up so adventurous? And is that like a normal thing in Idaho where you grew up? No, it's probably not very normal. Somehow our family just got a little wild. I don't know. My brother, my brother must be a weird genetic thing. But my brother was the first one to get traveling. And when he was like, you know, 17, he hitchhiked down to Reno and then met up with some

hobos and started riding the rails and stuff. spent years doing it honestly. And my sister kind of went a whole different direction. And she was like kind of in the high fashion New York scene. And so I had these two opposing, you know, very different worlds kind of going on that I could look at. And but at some point, you know, I went and lived with my sister in New York City. And then I went traveling with my brother on freight trains. And I don't know.

Yeah, you just get a taste of. of freedom doing that. That's pretty interesting and kind of just gives you a different perspective on ways to live life. You had all the bases covered. I guess like first, you know, which is a shock to me because it's true. Like siblings are not all the same. Like me and my brothers, I got two brothers.

We're all different. We're in different stuff. But like to have one person into fashion living in presumably Manhattan or I don't know where. Right. Yeah, Manhattan. And then another brother like hitchhiking like Merle Hagger. across state lines.

And you're in the middle of it. You go visit the city. You've done the train thing. Let's deal with the city thing first because people that have seen the show and maybe research you, surviving in a city, is that the scariest thing to you? No, I don't know. I was probably 19. I spent a few months, you know, my sister had a little tiny, you know, shared bathroom apartment in Manhattan.

and she was working in some high-end store. I remember, like, packing bags for Donna Karen and, you know, random people that would come in and buy $10,000 worth of clothes and a shopping bag. You know, it was like old torn-up clothes that they would resell to designers, you know? But I remember I went down to Union Square Park and just sat on the park there and some random dude came up to me and was like, hey, man, I don't recognize you here, which was a really weird thing to say in New York. A billion people.

I guess I stood out, but we ended up chatting, and they were kind of homeless dudes, too, but I ended up hanging out with them for those few months. Some of the nights I'd sleep in the park. Some of them I would go back to my sister's apartment. I was getting a weird experience. You slept in that, in union, was union school? Yeah, we got, we got rustled out of there because I guess it was a time, you know, at the time George Bush was president, but he was coming, he was going to be

driving through town so they had to clean up the parks. Chasing us out of there. Did they wake you up? Yeah, they woke us up. Yeah, yeah. So why did you get the choice? Did you sleep in the park because there wasn't any square footage? Or you just like, you just can't?

Oh, I think I was just having an experience, you know, getting to know the guy, those guys and they seemed like friendly folk. That's the question I got because I'm like, it's so interesting. And I think of myself as a wander. I'm always daydreaming about busting loose and. You know, it's boring. And I always feel like the most daunting thing about your life is you only have one to live. And there's so many places and there's so many experiences.

And I get almost stressed out that I, you know, sometimes tethered by like real life, which is awesome. And it's got straightoffs. But how do you like, how do you get to be, did you know from an early age that you were just kind of like a different dude? And I mean that as a compliment. Yeah, I guess so. I guess I just had at least had a different path. you know, I just had, you know, and it's not all credit to me because I did have like an interesting, you know, family.

So I had all these weird connections and I just took advantage of them. I remember telling myself when I was pretty young to, you know, air on the side of saying yes to weird experiences and doing new things. And sure enough, yeah, I had, I just had a lot of random experiences. And it was interesting because you also find out at some point after you have a lot, you know, including going to Siberia and all the things. It's like that experience isn't everything. You know what I'm saying? So like you're saying,

you also have a family and build those relationships. And there's more value there than just acquiring experiences, which I remember thinking when I was like out in the middle of Siberia, just on this reindeer, super epic place, really beautiful. And I was just like, man, this is interesting. This is another experience in my head. but as soon as I forget this, it's all gone kind of. So, you know, there's some vanity to just,

to just acquiring experiences for experiences sake. Though it's also a really good thing to do, especially when you're, you know, figuring things out and young and all that. I wonder, and this was one of watching the show, one of the most immediate pressing questions for me, was how do you do this, not knowing what's going on at home?

Oh, yeah. Well, on the shows, specifically that was that was you just having one having a really solid relationship with my wife you know we communicate well and get along well and kind of just trusting that she would be able to handle it so it's kind of even though it was harder for her than me you know probably it was uh just it was just just being like oh she can handle it and kind of letting go of that control i guess and then and doing you know making the best of what i was doing because you know she's making a lot of sacrifices so that I can have this opportunity.

You know, it helps to bring the bag home. Yeah. There are definitely times where you think, well, man, if I don't win, I wonder if it's worth it. You know, it might not be worth it. And so it's just because it's a lot of time away when the kids, my kids were two and three at the time. So you know how it is. It was just like, you know.

Dude, I've left camping trips that are like two. days long. In the middle of the night, bro, I've been sitting there at the fire and then I call a cab and wait. This is two, three in the morning. I wait for a yellow cab just to go home and sleep in my bed. You know, it was my first camera after my son was born because I was sitting at the fire and I'm thinking to myself and he's like, where the fuck are you going? I'm like, well, I'm going to take a leak. I'll be right back. And you never come back because it's just all of a sudden in my life I started feeling that magnet, you know. You know, it's like before you're untethered or you're relatively untethered. Well, it's like one of the cool things, I'd be lying if I didn't say the finances were a big motivator.

And the work I do has not been, you know, typically very fun. It's like demolition on houses in Virginia where it's like 100 year old houses and plaster, just nasty work. And to be able to put that in perspective, how hard it is to make, you know, a few bucks doing that versus what I actually love to do anyway. You know, it was a cool opportunity on a loan to be out there doing something. I would have never imagined being financially viable. You know, I never thought that could be something that would pay me back my Siberian experience

and stuff. So being able to use that opportunity to, you know, you really are buying time with your family because how much time, how many houses would I have to demo to make $500,000? You know what I'm saying? Yeah. It really like kept me motivated out there. Like, okay, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Don't be lazy.

Don't be anything like that. Just get after it, make it happen as much as like that. And it probably, it probably, you know, even beyond the 500K puts you on the map in ways that, like, you have exposure to do, you know, to. Oh, yeah. Passively teach your craft or engage in some. Absolutely. Now we've been doing like awesome. It's been really fun teaching like survival.

courses and it's it's just been really good it's such a such an awesome opportunity and like I said it's not really the finances it's the time that the finances give you buy yeah it's the quality of life I mean nobody yeah yeah just money I don't really have much to buy but yeah no and that's a nice thing I mean I don't think you're somebody who strikes me who's walking around their house like I need a new this I need to do that at all it's a beautiful thing and you know I'm sure there's mechanical injury risk and hopping a train, but you get to go some cool places. Like, oh, yeah. Did you remember, like, one moment of like, yeah, I'm free right now?

Like, one place you were? I'd ridden across and up and down the East Coast with my brother and across the country. But then we went back to Chicago together, and then I split up with them, and I was going to head back to Spokane, and they were going to go hang out in Madison or something. And I, uh, catch you in Spokane, bro. Yeah, I'd catch in Spokane, bro. spoke here. I hopped on the train by myself, you know, and that was a whole ordeal getting the right train and, you know, it was a whole ordeal. But then I remember getting on it.

And that was the first time I had been alone for a good amount of time. And it took me about a week to get home. But I remember the, you know, when you're driving through the planes on the, riding through the planes, I should say, and you see the Rocky Mountains coming up in front of you. And you just get to see them come closer and closer. And it was sunrise. ride, you know, the morning. And I just remember that time being like, man, this is awesome. That was specifically one of those times where I remember feeling very free. What's the hardest part of that lifestyle? Wait, you do a lot of waiting. So you're always waiting for trains and waiting for this and

that. And yeah, so you kind of have to be patient and know how to sit around. And, uh, that was probably the hardest time. That was before cell phones, you know, so people could, you never have a way to pass the time. You guys just, you know, screwed around and, uh, how about the physical act? How about the physical act of actually nailing? The physical act, it can be rough. Like, a lot of times it's not that hard, but, but sometimes catching a moving train or even more so trying to jump off a train that's moving a little too fast. Like maybe it's going through a town that you want to get out on. So that, at the end of my cross-country trip, same thing. It was flying by my little hometown in Idaho here and heading

to Spokane, but I really wanted to get off. So I just, I was like, ah, screw it. I can probably jump off. And sure enough, you try to run with the train, put your feet on the ground and hold onto the rails and run, run, run. But your feet just don't catch up. And you're just a bam, boom, and roll down the gravel. So I ate it pretty good a couple times, you know, trying to get off a train going too fast. But are you alone doing this outside? Is this like a thing where is this underbelly where people are actually doing this on the reg? Yeah, I think so.

There definitely was there was like a small, you know, relatively small group of people that rode trains and kind of everybody knew everybody to some degree. back at the time, I don't know the scene at all now. But back then, my brother, I love that you call it a scene. Yeah, I love it. The all hobo scene. Yeah, it's a cool scene. There definitely was one. I'm sure there still is, yeah.

But my brother was pretty plugged into it. Kind of knew everybody and knew where, what parks they'd be hanging out in when you got to certain towns and stuff. Your brother sounds pretty cool. Oh, yeah. How about the, how about the Siberia, trip for for anybody who hadn't seen the show you know they really just touched on it for a minute but i was so interesting in and i guess this already answered my question you didn't go just on a whim and

learn to be like kind of a lone ranger but but did you learn to be sort of a survivalist there you weren't that beforehand or was this a continuation of a lifestyle you were trying to let you know we were we're pretty industrious bunch you know just growing up up on the farm here and this and that and working the way we did. But, but, but no, as far as being like the survival skills and wilderness skills outside of, you know, your basic stuff you do growing up in Idaho, what set me apart was definitely living in Siberia with those natives. You know, you kind of really see what people do practically and what works and what doesn't work. And they've honed that down over generations, you know. Would you miss the most when you were there?

definitely just people, you know, for, and not, you know, I learned Russian, but while I was learning Russian, it was really difficult not speaking, you know, the language. And, but I miss surprisingly little, uh, as far as like physical things. Uh, it definitely didn't miss like the internet and things like that. Yeah, you know what? The internet is something that when you don't have it, you're pissed for like five minutes. Then you're like, wait, this is kind of nice. Yeah, for sure. Exactly. So it didn't miss that much. But yeah, I guess if there was one year that I got pretty, like I definitely got skinnier in Siberia than I did on that alone show.

And how long were you there though for the people that didn't? Because you were there with the nomadic group that were reindeer herders. I was in Russia for, yeah, not exclusively. I was in Russia for five years. And three of those was with the Avenki. Yeah. And with that group, I mean, is their, their lifeline is hurting reindeer? right?

I honestly, I honestly, before I met them didn't really know people like that still existed. They kind of, you know,

they live in teepees. They're nomadic. They spend, you know, very little time in villages and things like that. They pretty much just live in the woods and follow reindeer,

their semi-domestic reindeer herds all around in the wilderness and kind of protect them and also live off them. And, uh, yeah, that's pretty fast. fascinating way of life.

There were mechanical injuries there. Were those legit, or did you throw that multitude of... Oh, no. All the injuries were for sure legit and probably under-emphasized or whatever. Under-exaggerated. That's a pretty gnarly stuff happened out there. But it's like, you know, it's a steep learning curve. It's not how I'd grown up living.

So that kind of just... Yeah, what was the toughest skill that you had to learn? because I know like when you see the finished product, you turn on TV, you see Jordan Jonas, you know, on a loan. You're like, there's nothing this guy can't do. But at some point, you didn't know what you didn't know. What was the thing that you were like, fuck, I'm struggling to learn this skill? Funnily enough, maybe it was wielding an axe. That's where I seem to have the most issues early on.

But the way they do it, it's not like you really would in the States. It's like you can get away chopping some firewood for your camp, no problem. here, but over there, it's like they literally spend months out of the year just building these fences where, you know, so these 30 kilometer circumference fences out of nothing but trees you're chopping down and splitting lengthwise, you know, so horizontally. So you kind of got to swing your axe hard and split open the tree and split it horizontally. It says like so much work cutting down thousands of these, you know, leg sized trees or arm sized trees and hauling them around. insane amounts of work and you're underfed and so you're kind of what's what's underfed i know what it is

on the show but what's underfed when you're living somewhere for three years uh well on those fences i think i just most of the eventi folks are just smaller than me have probably slower metabolism and they they'd have like a little chunk of moose meat for just a small piece and a bunch of dried noodles for everybody, for all, say, nine of us working on the fences, and they just throw all that in a pot and eat it. And you'd be lucky to get a little tiny scrap of meat on your spoon. You know, if you're cutting the bread, by the time you're done cutting the bread, the soup was got. Oh, man.

Yeah, dude. So it was just like slim pickings. And I mean, I got down to 155, which was as thin as I've ever been. and just chopping, you know, just building fences, working hard every day and not, yeah, not eating enough for whatever reason. And why did you? The hunt wasn't going well. Yeah, probably.

That was my first year there, so I didn't really know how things worked very well. And, yeah, I was just figuring it out. Yeah, that's a little bit of a shock coming off an American diet, even if you're, you know, a little bit of a responsible eater. Oh, yeah. I just, what was the motivation to go into Siberia? I mean, I guess Russia was, was for something entirely different, or was, did you plan? Well, I was initially, yeah, just helping the, some of the missionary guy build an orphanage and do his thing.

And then I, through meeting, you know, living with other Russians, I met the Avenki and kind of fell in love with their way of life and them as people. And you also see not only the, all the positive. of their way of life, but also all the negative things going on. And you know, you kind of hope that there's a way you can be a positive influence on their way of life or on some of the people or whatever it is and vice versa. And what are those negatives? It's mostly alcohol related. But they, you know, like there's lots of murders and suicides and people.

just dying of, you know, freezing to death because they drink too much. There's an insane amount. I think one in three is the statistic of people die from suicide, homicide, or accident over there. So that's pretty insane numbers. But you keep in, do you keep in some contact? I know, I mean, do you know. I'm not a great at keeping in contact, but I talked to him some months back and,

Actually, just about a month ago, probably. And, you know, they're, of course, hard to get a hold of, too, because they're always in the woods and their phones never work. But, uh, yeah, are they looking for a cut of that 500K, buddy? I'm sure they would. I'm sure they are. They're like, hey, motherfucker, we just got Netflix. And I swear we deserve a cut of this because all these things are we saw.

They do. They do. So. So you come back, what's the psyche of somebody who's a survivalist? I think about like panic and, you know, I think about control. You mentioned control. Just to leave that long, you have to relinquish control. What's like a key personality trait in your-

Yeah, I think that is a good one right there. You know, understanding the balance between knowing what you can control and actively pursuing those things and then letting go what you can't control and not letting it kind of tear you up and eat you up. Also, I think just having gratitude is really important because it's easy to, in any way of life, but when you're out there too,

it's just easy to be like, oh, this sucks and that sucks. It's much better approach in general to focus on what you're thankful for. And when you're alone, you don't have anybody else to blame for your attitude. Yeah, no, definitely, right? So it's a good, it'll be a good reflection of who you are and how you handle stressful situations because, yeah, it's all on you.

And definitely people who have a good perspective on suffering and also on what's actually happening with them. So just having an understanding of history and the things that people have gone through that are much worse and stuff like that. Yeah, with regularity. I mean, like, with regularity, man. We live in such an awesome time.

I read a book recently and, you know, gosh, if I overcome my 80D to actually read a book cover to cover, here I am. I can't remember the book, the name of the book, but it basically conveyed that there's a lot of good news. There are things that are getting easier around the globe. I mean, and somebody's getting credit for granted. I mean, that doesn't mean there aren't problems that need addresses. immediately. But as far as the human condition, it's easier than it's ever been, even in some really tough places. Exactly. And you want to start at, you want to start no matter where you are

with some degree of gratitude. So even if things are bad for you and this and that, if you just focus on that, you're going to just tear yourself down. So yeah, right now we have so much to be grateful for. It's like there's a lot to improve. And but starting with the gratitude, it'll really help you be able to not lose what you already have when as you try to move forward, you know, or not take it for granted. How do you convert that suffering? I'm sure it's not a linear version of suffering to gratitude, but those are the two things you're trying to balance out. What do you, how do you reset yourself in situations where you're super uncomfortable? Is there something you say to? Yeah, well, it depends, I guess, on the specifics of the situation. I definitely have like

there's a kind of a fun Russian saying I always think of which is like Glaza Bayatsa Ruki deal which means like your your hands are afraid but your eyes are afraid but your hands do meaning like you might be worried about doing something now but

you basically just need to tackle it get started and it'll get done and so a lot of times when you're miserable and you have some kind of situation that you just don't want to do you kind of just have to get started and once you get started, you'll find you got it done. But if you never get started, you won't even get there.

You know, with you reciting that, it's comforting, but if a random Russian dude with a bunch of tattoos had that, like, padded on his chest, I'm thinking he's Vigo Mortensen in Eastern provinces. Like, get it overweight. You know, the deed has to be done. I, uh, yeah, I mean, I'm not taking it out of context there. That's one thing, but also I really do remind myself a lot of what even my own ancestors and stuff went through. And it puts so much perspective on my suffering. No matter what I have to go through, it's just nothing compared to even what my grandparents

went through. And so especially like even more so when you're sitting out on like a TV show with a tap out button and you're thinking, man, this sucks. It's like, what are you talking about? This is, we got it made right now. You know, this is amazing. No, I mean, it's true, though. I mean, it's true.

And then even, like, specifically on the show, and I talked to Winnia about this was like, you could still, I mean, the tap out button sounds good, but I'm watching it. I'm thinking that I hope nobody's watching this and lulled into a sense of a false sense of security where you press the button. It's like the Truman show.

Somebody just rolls up. And they're like, hey, come with me. I got a stake and you'll be home in an hour. Like, you could get yourself in a situation where you could be mortally wounded or fall through the ice. like, no, definitely. That's easy to do. And it's not a, and honestly, the tap out button was never anything that was a comfort or anything for me, because you just never thought about it. It wasn't like a option. So it was just a thing that I would notice that I was like, that I never had in

Siberia. You know, I was like, oh, this is a. Yeah, this is cool. In Siberia, I have to like, how do I book a plane ticket with the own internet? I, I guess I looked at it and I wondered, you know, you going into it and before we get into the, you know, the process of starting out there. But was there a type of mechanical injury or a cardinal sin that you're like, I can't make this mistake there because I will be dead? I guess the consequences of the mistakes that I would make. Well, there were some that definitely the most serious thing you're going to do out there is probably fall off of something.

definitely some little cliffs I would climb up and down to get to my fishing hole. And that was, you know, something, don't slip, don't slip. And then, but I was more than anything, I was worried just about losing something because I'm not always the best at keeping track of my stuff. I hear that, brother. I hear that. I was just like, do not lose anything. Do not get injured.

You know, obviously, those are lessons I've had to learn the hard way. And I was in both situations, I never really lost anything. never got hurt in in really any way, which is just for me, had to be seriously learned traits because I naturally lose everything and am not very careful. Yeah, no, I'm like, jolly. You sound like a very much more skilled version of me. So I totally can empathize with that.

When you're getting ready to be on the show, I got a little bit of background from Winnia, but like you arrive, I presume you spend some time with people beforehand. Are you sizing up the competition? Because for her, she said, you know, it was a, it was a personal journey. I wasn't like, hey, the 500K would be great. But, you know, this was about me going on a journey for you, which I understand, I'd be in it for the money too. That was a big part of it.

So you're competing. Are you sizing people up? Well, there's a degree that you can't help, right? You kind of look at people and think, oh, they're probably going to do well and they're not. And then it wasn't, it's not like a competition in the way that you feel like you're directly pitted against other people. So that's nice. But I did find when I was out there, you know, I would be worried about like, oh, man, I wonder if Michelle's just laying the fish or I wonder, you know, like, you just, you do think about what other people are doing. And there's a degree of sizing other people up, I guess, although it doesn't really feel like a competition. You're just obviously curious who's going to do well and how long it's going to go and all those things. And for me, I guess it's all of the above. There was definitely, it was really cool to be able to share.

like all the skills that I've acquired over in Russia with my friends and family here who have only ever heard stories. So I was like, man, that's super cool to have the opportunity to like share this aspect of my life with them. So that was real motivating. And also the idea of having something for my grandkids and beyond where it's like, what if I had a hour long, you know, series on my great, great grandfather.

How awesome would that be? Like, man, so it's cool. Those were motivating things. But also, it's all stuff I could do. The fact that they were offering a big financial prize was why I definitely did it. You know, in this context, it was already all stuff I was doing for free. So it's not like I wouldn't without the money. But it's impossible.

I feel like, you know, and obviously all the viewers do it. And they don't want spoilers, which is kind of fucked up. But we're sitting there watching people like it's a sport. I didn't want to watch it like it was hunger games. Right, right. You know, you are like, and another thing I wondered was the psychics. psychological toll of being out there and knowing that you are, in essence, in a way, competing. I don't want to put words in your mouth.

You're trying to last the longest, but you don't know how many people are left. Yeah, that was definitely a trip. Yeah. So what did you, did you gauge, all right, this is how many days? To be fair, like, I mean, the nice thing is, is I told myself from the very beginning that the show, like, basically wouldn't start until day 90, because I just figured, Well, I'd kind of, I guess maybe as you were saying, are you sizing people up? I remember somebody at orientation saying that they wanted to be the, you know, break the record and be there 90 days. And it just put in the back of my head that, oh, you know, they're probably going to do that.

They're probably going to be here 90 days. And I can't even think about the show starting until day 90. And that, and I grilled that into my head so much that I really believed it. Like, I didn't even think about it. I never thought it would end when it did. and I thought it probably had 20 or 30 more days before the odds of any sort of odds of winning started to get on the map. But that said, I would every time a helicopter flew over, you know, I'd like follow it, run out on the river and be like, oh, where's that thing going? You know?

Yeah, because I mean, you, y'all, I mean, that's a big lake, I presume, but you wonder how close you are to people. You can still see helicopters traveling here and there. And so you're, you know, trying to gauge by that. Yeah. You know, you start counting the helicopters. Yeah, I don't know. Like, you know, like it's so stereotypical. Somebody's thinking you got a big rock and you're just, you know, like Tom Hanks and

castaway dissimony helicopters went by. I don't know. Yeah. You know, I was definitely, whenever one would fly over, you'd get pretty curious. And then on med check days, you just hear it landing over there and over the there and over the man, you're like, geez, there's still a lot of people out here. Yeah, and then you're also looking at the people like maybe, hey, you're going to tell me something? Like, you got to tell me if I'm doing good?

Like, when he said, you know, you're trying to read into everybody, everything they say, and they're really good at not giving you any extra information, but. But they tell you your family's okay? No, they don't give you any reports from your family. Now, that's kind of sadistic, in my opinion. Well, they would probably tell you if something was really bad. So no news is good news. No news is good news.

Yep. Yep. And then they, but I remember trying to read into everything. They said one week they told me like, Jordan, you know, you're filming less than everybody else. You need to film more. And it was kind of funny because I felt like I'd been filming a lot. I mean, I had been every week, except the week that I built my fishing net because it was so boring that I thought nobody wants to sit me while having me watched me do that net for 40 hours. hours. So I might have skipped some net making. And then, uh, uh, but that was getting kind of

towards the end and I didn't realize it. But I remember in hindsight now, it's kind of funny when I look back because I remember I told the guys, I was like, well, that's not that bad. If there's only two of us out here. Yeah. And they, uh, and they like looked at each other funny. But in hindsight, I think they were like, hmm, what does he know, you know? Yeah. Has he been scouting? Has he been exiting the map, like in a video game? Yeah, exactly. A little zone. You start your health goes down.

I, like, so I'm wondering, you're six, had you listed at 62175 on the site, but you said the lowest you'd been was 155. What'd you weigh when you went in and what was your nutritional mindset? Because when I was like, I need to be get ready for ketosis. I need to be getting ready to starve. And I felt like watching you, you were like, I'm hunting. Like, I'm going to eat. Yeah, I knew, well, the nice thing for me, because I have a fast metabolism.

is that I knew I had no chance in hell if it was a starving game. So I was just like, wasn't even an option. That's why I didn't bring at rations because I was like, well, if two pounds is going to be the difference, then I'm going to lose because I'm not, you know, I got way less than two pounds between me and the next biggest guy or way more. So anyway, I, it was always about providing calories, you know, ideally, though I fully expected to suffer, you know. What's your resting heart rate?

Because like, oh, I don't know. My resting heart rate. I've never, I don't have one of those fit bits. Yeah, I didn't, I didn't peg you as a fit bit guy. But like, I know you burn a lot of calories. I know out there with your mindset, it was funny because I watch you on the show. And I know it's cold when you're cold. Yeah.

You talk slower. You move slower to try to conserve energy. Then I saw you on Rogan and your words per minute sped up exponentially. Like, were you just, just everything you did when necessary, you just try to conserve things. I think when you're by yourself a long time, or at least myself, uh, I just, everything's real slow, you know, you're just kind of, you talk slowly. Yeah, dude. I was like, trying to get anywhere in a hurry. And I was trying to be intentional a little bit about that because I didn't want to get injured or, you know, I didn't want to

ever feel like I was in a hurry to do anything. So I think I was just being real chill. And I, and I, and yeah, Like we were saying before, my plan was always to try to provide food. It was one of the things I like about the place that they put us was that it's a, I mean, I'd never been to Northwest Territories, but I'd been to Siberia. It's somewhat similar. It's a place that I know rewards hard work, you know. So I knew that I, it wouldn't be my work if I could unlock the key to whatever my location was because everybody, you know, is going to have different strategies based.

on their location. But if I could figure out what my location offered, I knew I could probably unlock a key to staying there semi-indfinitely or something. So that was my goal, just because I had seen it done before. And, you know, you get on Reddit before the show,

and you're like, I wonder what everybody's saying about this show and you get on there. And it had been pretty unanimous that, like, the best strategy is to just build up a lot of extra weight before you go on the show, get chubby,

and burn as few calories as possible because with the gear you have, it's impossible to provide enough calories, you know, to make up for all your energy. Yeah, so you go, did you gorge yourself a little bit? I did.

I tried to put on, I've never been able to put on weight, but I tried my hardest and I did succeed. I got like, I gained like 25 pounds before I went out. So that was a lot. And it was pretty nice. It's hard to breathe with 25.

Oh, yeah. You like developed sleep apnea, automatically. I've always had trouble gaining weight, and that's weird in my profession, but I mean, like, the weight just falls off me, so I can only imagine if somebody was like, you've got to gain 20 pounds to do this,

it would be so uncomfortable. Oh, yeah, and it was. It was like at the ground running. I was feeling pretty chubby. But that all blew off of me really fast, and I went back to my normal weight, and that's basically what I ended the show at was, so I'm normally like, now I'm probably 170, 172,

and I think I ended the show at one. 168. Oh, so when you lost all that weight, you had lost it from an inflated state. That's why I didn't actually see when you were telling me. That's exactly right. What about the, what about like your location? Because it is luck of the draw. I felt like when I watched it, there were some guys who got really bummed deals. I thought you ended up somewhere pretty good. Was that the jackpot or were there negatives that I'm not thinking about? Well, I think as far as the location. I definitely the survival guys did tell me I had

by no means the most big game on my territory. So it wasn't like it was the place with the day turn out to be kind of wrong. Yeah. Well, they were, you know, they were there in all the seeing everybody's footage and stuff. And there's a big game. And I actually

tracked big game. Some moose that left north of my territory into my neighbor's territory. So I know they were in other people's territory. I don't really, you know, it's, it's hard to say. I think, and I think even watching their season seven on is right now, and I, and it, I think it shows that there's a lot, there's a lot out there if you're like, have the really go get a mindset. It's not necessary, you know, there's

no guarantees, but. No, I mean, like, who knows how many times a moose strolled through somebody else. That's what I mean. It's like, even last night, exactly. If you're sleeping and me and myself, included, you know, like if I'm sleeping in my house tonight, how many deer walked by my house? I don't know, you know, especially when there's no snow. It would, it would be incorrect of me to say none because I just don't know, you know what I'm saying? So yeah, and I think there's people who had, who had tarot land that was definitely fishing only was their main strategy, at least early on. But I, and so if that wasn't their specialty, then you're in trouble.

You're kind of out of luck on that one. But I think most people, aside from those couple, had, you know, had resources of some sort on their land. And, I don't know.

But my spot I initially really didn't like, and I had a lot of footage of me probably complaining about it. And then, of course, once you get a moose, you can't complain. You got to pack it.

And you've got to pack it out. And, and store it. I mean, it's just like... It was just, yeah, the pack, none of that was a problem at all. I was so happy as work I'll ever do. I was just, you know, I'd lived in Siberia off of the similar type of land, but it wasn't, you know, it hadn't been a forest fire.

So I, you know, where I was didn't have very many berries and thus it didn't have very many grouse. And both of those are what I ate a lot of in Russia. So I was like, man, this is a bummer. I got to figure something else. There were no, because there were no berries, there were no bear. And bear was like what I thought would be my most likely thing to. I heard you say that.

I heard you say that. What's the, what's the fear level, you know, because when I'm up in northwest Montana and I'm not outside as much as you, but I'm just, I'm very cognizant of brown bear. And like, you just have to be, was there a predator that somehow you were maybe, I mean, a lot of people underrate how fucking impressive a moose is. Because they have a moose is as dangerous as anything. I know I mean when you're out there you're kind of have to like I mean on one hand you're just

you're living with nature and amongst it and you're part of it on the other hand you kind of have to take your kind of place at the top if you can't. You know what I'm saying? It's like okay if there's a bear here it's going down between us and I'm going to win

would be my philosophy that was my idea and in general I'm not that afraid of them, only because I've lived with those natives who have spent their whole lives with bears. And there's just very few stories of people having bad running in the states. Even in the states. It's just not that common.

So you just have to kind of lean into statistics on that one. Because I think the level of fear is out of proportion with the odds of you getting mold. Absolutely. Absolutely. But I will say as far as going out, I mean, quite the extravagant way. to go out to be like the one guy. I listened to the grizzly man's like audio and he got.

Yeah, or the guy that survived recently. Did you see the dude that like that survived that attack and hiked out and it's just. I saw something that was crazy. No, there's definitely can be wild. But I would be more afraid of like I said, falling or something. Yeah, yeah.

And I just tried to anytime I got worried about predators of some sort, which would only make sense, really be bears. I, you just remind yourself of statistics and it's like, it's super unlikely. And then set yourself up in a position where if a bear does come, he's not coming

for you first. He's going for your stash first. And so then you have a chance to maybe hunt them. Yeah. The whole statistics thing's great, except I'm not jumping in the water off the coast of California. They did say all that shit about shark attacks and all that. Like, come on, dude.

come on you got a better chance to get hit by lightning yeah okay then you jump in you jump off so so so with the moose i mean that was one of the most that was kind of the biggest action of the whole show um and i know you you didn't get a clean shot at the first one or maybe miss it or whatever but yeah yeah it was a big botched was that the bigger one the one you missed Yeah, oh yeah, that was a very big moose. It was such a cool moment because it was just, well, I saw it and I went out there. And I'd kind of set it up. It was like, again, I knew that if animals walked by, I wouldn't even know it.

So I'd set up some alarm cans. So when they walked by on their trails, it would shake cans. And so that's what happened. That morning, I heard the cans go, clang, glank, glank, and I woke up. And I got up and the moose had that big old moose had run out. but he had scared himself with the cans and basically ran right at me and then turned around and looked back at the cans. So it couldn't have worked out any more perfectly for me.

The only problem was he was out in a mud flat and it was so hard to judge distance. And I had grabbed my camera and an arrow rather than my quiver. And so how it came up and I took a shot at him and I'd grossly underestimated how far was because I thought he was, he looked a lot closer because he was so big. I just thought, well, he must be like 30 yards. I sent an arrow and it like dropped short. And I was like, what the heck? And then I went to grab another arrow because once you take your first shot, you can kind of gauge the distance and make your next shot. Well, I only had grabbed one arrow like a moron. And so then I just watched the moose kind of like turned back and stare in my direction and then trot slowly off.

and I was like, but I was sort of disappointed, and but sort of like, man, that was so cool. I was like I just felt like I just saw a dinosaur. Like that was awesome. Right, yeah, but at the same time, are you thinking never in a million years? Are you thinking, I'm going to have another clean shot? Or were you?

Yeah, well, I was worried that that was about the best shot I could have. But I also knew that it was actually tougher than it looked because it was like a mud flat, super hard to judge distance. So I was like, understandable that I missed. So I tried to learn from what happened. And I was like, okay, so what do I need to do next time to make sure that I'm, you know, that I have a better shot if a moose does come by. Yeah, I was, I, your, your mental, like, ability to just get over, it was amazing.

Because I was sitting there laid back with a joint and I was just distraught. I was on the couch distraught. I was like, Jordan. Come on, man. He's got to take this thing home. Like, dude, when the next moose came, it was like, I couldn't believe it. And it was such a moment that you were like, I think he's going to win. Like, he's really going to win.

That one again was like a lot more set up than it wasn't like just waiting for a moose, the dumbly walked by. You know, I'd like, every day I would call and spend hours just like eating berries and calling moose. And then I built that whole fence. It was like a whole Evanky style fence like we were talking about. earlier that kind of funneled them into one spot. So if another moose came, you would come down one path and I knew which path, basically. And so that's why I was able to get the second

moose. And gosh, that was the biggest, like, happiest day. And you can't repeat that anyway, man. It was just so much joy when that thing finally went down. But it was such a roller coaster day because he shoot it and you're like, oh man, I don't know if that was a good shot. And so then you get all nervous and you, you know, you felt like a really good shot. And I saw the moose cough. And so I was like, oh, man, I got him in the lung. I was all excited. Right? You saw that bubbly blood. And then I went back to my shelter. And I was like, okay, I'm just going to wait an hour before I go look and the longest hour ever. And I like sit there skin to rabbit, like paste around in circles. I was like, oh gosh,

oh gosh, oh, gosh. Oh, got. I'm going to go. When you get up on it, you know it's dying. When I and I talked about this because, you know, some of her fans were asking the show didn't do a great job of showing the scope of how long it is and how dangerous it is to wait out a wounded, big, powerful animal like that. Oh, yeah. I guess the question would be like, do you think the show kind of shorted you as far as showing, like, how seriously you took that? Because she was saying that some people were, and there's always going to be these people who's like, I don't understand why you kill an animal, that sort of thing. The ethics. Oh, right.

Yeah, yeah. know, like, that maybe don't hunt or whatever, but she was saying they cut out so much of, just by virtue of the fact you had to sit there so long, of the seriousness with which you took that kill. Oh, for sure. Absolutely, man. I mean, like, I don't know if I blame the show.

They don't know. They fit in what they can fit. Like, literally, for all 77 days, I had like an hour of air time. So it's like you can just expect that there's tons they didn't put in there. Yeah. And, and, and, but man, I was, it was as serious as it gets and I was so grateful and it had, you know, when it finally died, like, went up and gave that big old moose a hug.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, like, just couldn't believe it. Like, because I remember I did get crap on the internet for people like, man, you weren't thankful at all or something. Wait, hold on. You got crap on the internet. They believe it or not.

Actually, I got much less than I would expect. And they were, and it didn't bother me at all. But it was funny because I was like, oh, that's totally just not true. I definitely was so thankful for that thing. I've been with the cracklins, man. I was getting hungry. Oh, man.

It was great. I was trying to share them with the production crew. They're like, no, dude. You gotta try one of these. They don't know what they must have. They were so good. Rendered down the fat and you have those little fatty balls. There's no time when they taste better.

I'll tell you what. No, I couldn't even imagine, like, being hungry. and you were well fed relatively speaking, but even you said like that once the Wolverine took the fat, for those of y'all listening out there, why don't you just tell it? Well, I'd like, so, I just haven't dealt with wolverines in my life. I'd heard all about them in Siberia, believe it or not.

I heard about it in Siberia a lot, but they'd never come to our, you know, there's just not that many in Siberia. Apparently in the North America, there's a lot more because, they're all over up there. So when I got the moose, I kind of half expected a bear to come.

And so I put all my meat, you know, I put a bunch of my most appealing meat on this shelf in front of my shelter and hung a lot of the rest of the meat in my shelter and got it to start smoking. But then I figured, you know, if a bear comes,

it'll go to that shelf, make a bunch of noise, and I might have a shot at it. So I was, that's what I was thinking. But what happened was I fell asleep and didn't wake up and woke up in a Wolverine. It looked like a herd of buffalo had run around there. It just trampled the whole area, grabbed a big jug.

I'd found a plastic gallon jug and packed it full of kidney fat. And he grabbed that jug and took off with it. And I just never heard any of it. So I woke up in the morning. I was just like, what? Where's a jug? Where did I hang that jug? And then slowly dawned on me.

I was like, no, that guy just. Oh, we do. dude. But, you know, like, it was a little overblown, I think, on the show. Yeah. So you weren't like, it didn't, because they made it seem like you were in peril because of the fat store. Yeah, no. I was in peril only in my relation to what I thought I had to live to, which was like 140 days or something. You know, like I was like, right, right, right, right. Right. There's a lot of audio of me being like, I don't think I have enough fat. There's not enough fat, but it's probably all in relation to me thinking I had to get there through February or to February instead of to end of November.

You know, so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's a lot of just relative talk. And then there were some other details. But as far as fat goes, I still had a lot. You know, there's still a ton of fat on a moose. And I, like I said, didn't really lose any weight in the time I was out there. off of my normal weight.

Do you miss salt? Do you miss salt? Because that's like... You know what? That was a surprise to me person. I was like, wow, I don't miss salt at all. Every time I ate, it was just as good as, as good as maximum delicious. And I didn't... Really, dude.

Yeah. It's crazy. I didn't really miss it. And I thought about that even towards the end. I was like, man, this is still good. Especially the meats. Like, I was getting sick of fish, but the moose was just still delicious. So on the way out,

You know, you're in, what, you last 77 days, is it? Yeah, that's how long, yeah. I mean, then that's when they came and got me. I thought it would have definitely stayed long. Yeah, and you could have lasted a lot longer. I mean, it sounds like your sights were set very high. When you first see your wife roll up in the helicopter, do you think you're hallucinating?

Well, she came up behind me while I was talking, and I had, I was like, I had again no clue that she was there. I didn't even entertain it as a thought. And I think probably as maybe a reason to bring Janelley out, they were like, we're adding extra medical checks. And I was like, what extra medical checks?

I'm fine. Why are they adding an extra medical check? And so I like, I was flipping out. I couldn't believe they were having a medical. I'm like, is this show rigged? I was like taking footage of my belly.

like I still got a gut and can't pull me out of here. And so then when they showed up, I was like all ready to go off on them about why you guys have extra medical checks. I feel totally fine. I'm skinny, but I'm fine, blah, blah, blah. And that's all this stuff to say to him. And then I heard Janantly coming up behind me, but I just thought it was like production crew or something milling around. And sure enough, she could have like basically slit my throat. He came right up behind me.

I was shocked. I couldn't believe it. I was as genuine of a surprise as I could have. Are you immediately thinking about your first shower or your first meal or what? Like what's what's going? What's that? I was actually most I was actually really excited to show Janelle around up there because I knew my house. Let me show you my house. Yeah, exactly. Well, she had lived with me in Siberia. So I knew it would be there would be like things that would be nostalgic for her. And I knew she'd probably went through a pretty rough few months. I was like, I was really excited to have her come up and check it out and be like, oh, this reminds me of Siberia. Oh, this is cool.

I knew she'd like it. And so that was mostly what I was thinking. Like, I wanted to show her around and I was wishing they would let her stay a little bit there. But I rushed us out of there, of course. They would have been pissed. And it sounds like you'd ask them, hey, can we stay another night? Yeah. What news did, what news did you miss?

Like, did you like, it was nice not to be plugged into the news. Obviously, some of the type of person that likes to read some news and stay informed, but you just don't want to follow the news cycle because it's just so unhealthy psychologically. So it was nice. I don't remember what had happened during the time I was gone. What were the dates? What were the dates? It was, uh,

basically the end of August, so September 1st through like November, say, 25th of 2018. I don't know. Yeah, so I'd have to go back and look at world news, but it's never any good news nowadays. Yeah,

I don't know what happened during that time. Never any good news. How about when you get on the helicopter, they take you to, because when you had to go to the hospital for a little bit in yellow knife, she was saying, right, right.

Like, like, what, what's that process for you? and how big is the social shock, like the stimulation shock? Well, for me, it was, I didn't have any refeating program to go on. They kind of told me to stay away from carbs. But, yeah, I hadn't really suffered from deprivation. So I didn't really need to be refed. And honestly, it sounds weird, but to me it felt like just another trip back from Russia.

I think, which felt pretty normal because a lot of times I would go from Siberia and then go to New York City. And then it's like from the least populated place on earth to New York City and just eight hours or whatever. Or, you know, it just a matter of hours. So how about it really? It felt like that, honestly. It felt like, oh, another trip back from Russia. And I think it hadn't, it wasn't, it definitely was one of them, had it been a trip to Russia, it would have been one of my shortest. so it just kind of put it all into perspective on that front.

I mean, it was just such an exciting time. I couldn't, you know, I couldn't believe it that I had won. And so I was just really excited. Yeah, that 500K, I know you're not like trying to do anything with it per se, but I mean, to your point, it's just the life changer. It's a life changer, yeah. And so it, yeah, I was just surreal on that front. But on the like cultural shock, culture shock front, it felt pretty normal.

honestly. I was really excited. I'm sure I talked a lot because I was probably excited to talk to people and stuff. Yeah, but they were probably like, yo, back up. Dude, you smell. Did you smell yourself at some point? I probably smelled like smoke, which some people like that's a great. That's such a good cologne man. And it's, yeah, yeah. What kind of wood you're burning? Like the, if I sit by a campfire in Montana, I smell like one thing in Virginia. It's a whole different. Yeah, yeah, totally. Like different lines of a cologne line. you actually don't get that bad a B-O when you're in the wilderness a long time. I think your body somehow neutralizes it.

But if you like, if I take a shower and then I just sit out for a few days, then I'll definitely be stinking. But if you're like, you're out in the woods, something about it, you kind of neutralize out. I don't know what it is. Yeah, but there's nothing more satisfying. And I can only imagine you'd have to worry about like clogging the train being out 77 days. But like if I'm out a week.

Asana is what I was wanting. a nice hot sauna. And that's what I, we have like built one in Virginia. So yeah, we got one too. It's the greatest, dude.

Oh, you did. Awesome. Yeah. Last question, man. And again, thank you for being on.

It's been great. What, have you changed it all from the experience? Like, I know you've done it all, seen it all. So what's left to, you know,

how could you grow? I've done it all. There's a lot to do and see and learn. And I, there's, I had a lot to learn on stuff. But, uh,

have I changed from the experience. It's opened a lot of doors for me that I would have otherwise not been able to go through, which has been awesome. I don't know that, you know, and then you go, you have those doors open and you have new experiences and those experiences can change you in hopefully positive ways, but I don't know. Going on Rogan had to be cool. Oh, that was awesome. Yeah. No, that was, that was a blast. And that led to more, uh, I mean, more people watch Rogan than probably the show, I'm sure. So, Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, maybe, and that's not to belittle a very successful Netflix show. It's just, uh, Joe Rogan's as successful as you get as far as media goes.

Yeah, well, that was pretty fun. And he was, I mean, as cool as he seems on the show, you know? Yeah, he seems like, yeah, time and all that. And, uh, uh, so yeah, things like that. There's like a lot of new opportunities. As far as what's changed, I haven't changed a lot. other than that. You know, I still keep it pretty simple and stuff. And people recognize you? If I go to the, if I ever feel low and need an ego boost, I can go down to the local hunting goods store. That's the demographic that you walk in. That's the demographic that recognizes me. That's great. Dude, well, uh, Jordan Jonas, winner of, uh, alone in the Arctic season six, It's been a pleasure.

He was on Joe Rogan. Check it out. If you haven't checked it out. And now he's on the green light pod. And I hope you guys enjoyed it. Jordan, if you ever down my way, holler at me, man. I appreciate you coming on.

Yeah, I will be. So thanks, Chris. It's been fun chatting.