Lex Fridman Podcast - #437 – Jordan Jonas: Survival, Hunting, Siberia, God, and Winning Alone Season 6

Episode Date: July 21, 2024

Jordan Jonas is a wilderness survival expert, explorer, hunter, guide, and winner of Alone Season 6, a show in which the task is to survive alone in the arctic wilderness longer than anyone else. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest competitors in the history on that show. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - HiddenLayer: https://hiddenlayer.com/lex - Notion: https://notion.com/lex - Shopify: https://shopify.com/lex to get $1 per month trial - NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/lex to get free product tour - LMNT: https://drinkLMNT.com/lex to get free sample pack - Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com/lex to get $350 off AMA - Submit Questions to Lex: https://lexfridman.com/ama-questions EPISODE LINKS: Jordan's Instagram: https://instagram.com/hobojordo Jordan's YouTube: https://youtube.com/@hobojordo Jordan's Website: https://jordanjonas.com/ Jordan's X: https://x.com/hobojordo PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: - Check out the sponsors above, it's the best way to support this podcast - Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman - Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman - Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here's the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) - Introduction (11:25) - Alone Season 6 (45:43) - Arctic (1:01:59) - Roland Welker (1:09:34) - Freight trains (1:21:19) - Siberia (1:39:45) - Hunger (1:59:29) - Suffering (2:14:15) - God (2:29:15) - Mortality (2:34:59) - Resilience (2:46:45) - Hope (2:49:30) - Lex AMA

The following is a conversation with Jordan Jonas, winner of Alone Season 6, a show where the task is to survive alone in the Arctic wilderness longer than anyone else. He is widely considered to be one of, if not the greatest competitors on that show. He has a fascinating life story that took him from a farm in Idaho and hoboing on trains across America to traveling with nomadic tribes in Siberia. All that helped make him into a world-class explorer, survivor, hunter, wilderness guide, and most importantly, a great human being with a big heart and a big smile. This was a truly fun and fascinating conversation.

Let me also mention that at the end, after the episode, I'll start answering some questions and will try to articulate my thinking on some top of mind topics. So if that's of interest to you, keep listening after the episode is over. And now a quick view second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description, it's the best way to support this podcast. We got Hidden Lair for securing your AI models, Notion for team collaboration and taking notes,

Shopify for selling stuff online, NetSuite for managing your business, Element for electrolytes, and 8Sleep for naps. Choose wisely, my friends. Also, if you want to work with our amazing team or just want to get in touch, go to lexfreedman.com. And now onto the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle. I try to make these interesting but if you skip them please still check out our sponsors I enjoy their stuff maybe you will too this episode is brought to you by hidden layer a platform that provides security for your machine learning models I've got a chance to recently visit the GPU cluster that Tesla AI and XAI are building and well

first of all I was extremely impressed by the rapid rate of progress and there's a lot more to be said about that maybe I'll have a conversation with Elon soon but in general I just want to comment how humbled I was by just the sheer scale of computation that a GPU cluster is carrying and it's quickly growing and just being able to see that in person it makes it very visceral, very real that these machine learning models have power and that we as a civilization carry a heavy responsibility to make sure that we use them in a way that doesn't hurt others. I think security vulnerabilities is the near term way of hurting others.

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This episode is also brought to you by Notion, a note-taking and team collaboration tool. I've used it for a long time for note-taking, and I think the process of note-taking is a science and an art and one I take extremely seriously. Writing is a process that's essential for concretizing your thoughts. Without that, thoughts are a kind of amorphous, ephemeral thing that just kinda shows up without a clear structure and leaves before you have a chance to really internalize

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There's something about the ease and scale and the efficiency of Shopify that always makes me think about the machinery of capitalism And also because I've been beginning to read the history of human civilization as covered by will Durant and Ariel Durant I Capitalization as covered by will Durant and Ariel Durant. I Suddenly feel humbled by the scale of it all and how capitalism As an idea the modern version of it is a relatively recent one. Just a handful of centuries Just with the Industrial Revolution and we humans have been battling with this idea

Whether the means of production should be owned by the state or by the individual. And now everybody's talking like that's such an obvious thing, but it isn't. Every genius idea is obvious in retrospect. And the entire story of humans on earth is a long chain of experiments, successful and failed ones, and from each we'll learn, and we always rise. That's the fascinating thing about us humans. We always survive, we always find a way. That's actually one of the central kernels

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And actually back to capitalism, because once again, business is at the core of the capitalist machine. I find that there is various communities now that dedicate themselves to rigorously analyzing the failures of capitalism at the edges. But in those communities and in general, we don't often celebrate the positive impacts,

the positive metrics over time that capitalism has resulted in in society. And I think just the number of people living in poverty decreasing drastically under regimes that enable free markets should serve as an inspiring notion for anyone who wants to build a business for the very fact that humans build businesses that we together keep trying it's the craziest thing to start a business is the craziest idea because most likely you're going to fail it really is the stupidest possible

thing except it is not except that dream is the stupidest possible thing, except it is not. Except that dream is the very engine that enables progress. So I'm a big fan of startups, of small businesses, and grateful that humans take the risk, and I'm grateful that humans find a way. Anyway, NetSuite is a good tool to manage businesses. Over 37,000 companies have upgraded to NetSuite by Oracle. Take advantage of NetSuite's flexible financing plan at netsuite.com slash Lex. That's netsuite.com

slash Lex. This episode is also brought to you by Elmond, an electrolyte drink that I love and depend on, especially when I'm taking longistance runs in Austin heat. It's uh often 9500 degree Fahrenheit And I love it 10 12 15 miles. Let's go But yes, you have to consume a large amount of electrolytes before and after to make sure i'm feeling good One of these days I should probably run a marathon, but i'll run for time. I don't run to a destination. I don't run because I have to, or even I don't really run for exercise sake.

I run so I can think clearly and contend with the heavier of my thoughts. Because when I'm out there just by myself, whether no sound or brown noise in my ears, I get to really think. There's something about sort of physical challenge, especially the higher pace, where I start getting uncomfortable and the uncomfortable thoughts rise up and I get to think. Then I get to face those thoughts and either meditate them away or try to figure out what

is the kernel of the thing that disturbs me about those thoughts. What is it so uncomfortable? What is the thing that causes anxiety? This could be everything from intellectual, philosophical type thoughts, technical, design, engineering challenges, or just personal life stuff. All of it. So I love running for that reason. So if you want to join me in the element deliciousness, get a sample pack for free with any purchase. Try it at drinkelements.com slash Lex. This episode is also brought to you by Asleep. It's pod for ultra. The ultra part is the extra thing, the base that goes between the mattress and the bed frame, it can morph like gravity does

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To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Jordan Jonas. You won Alone season six and I think are still considered to be one of, if not the most successful survivor on that show. So let's go back, let's look at the big picture. Can you tell me about the show Alone? How does it work? Yeah, it's a show where they take 10 individuals and each person gets 10 items off of the list. Basic items would be an axe, a saw, a frying pan, some pretty basic stuff.

And then they send them all, drop them off all in the woods with a few cameras. So the people are actually alone. There's not a crew or anything. And then you So the people are actually alone. There's not a crew or anything. And then you basically live there as long as you can, and so the person that lasts the longest, once the second place person taps out, they come and get you and that individual wins. So it's a pretty legit challenge.

They drop you off, helicopter flies out, and you're not gonna get your next meal until you make it happen, so. You have to figure out the shelter, you have to figure out the source of food, and then it gets colder and colder, because I guess they drop you out in a moment where it's going into the winter.

Yeah, they typically do it in temperate, colder climates, things like that, and they start in September, October, so the time's ticking when they drop you off. Yeah, the pressure's on. You get overwhelmed with all the things you have to do right away like, oh man, I'm not going to eat again until I actually shoot or catch something. Got to build a shelter. It's pretty overwhelming. Figure your whole location out. But it's interesting because once you're there a little while, you kind of get into a, well, at least for me it did, there was like a week or maybe not a week, but that I was kind of a little more annoyed with things.

You know, it's like, oh, my site sucks. And then you kind of accept it. Like, you know what? It is what it is. No, no amount of complaining is going to do anybody any good. So I'm just going to make it happen. And so then, or, you know, do my best to, and then I felt like I got in a zone and I felt like I was right back in kind of Siberia or in that head space. And I found I actually really enjoyed it.

I had been a little bit out of, I guess you call it the game, because I had had a child. And so when we had our daughter, we came back to the States and then a bunch of things happened and I just ended up, we didn't end up going back to Russia so it had been a couple years that I was just, you know, raising the little girl and boy then and then. So you've gotten a little soft. So I was like, did I get a little soft? Yeah, I figured it out.

But then it was fun how like after just some days there, I was like, oh man, I feel like I'm at home now. And then it was like, you're kind of in that flow state. Actually, there's a few moments like when you left the ladder up or with the moose that you kind of screwed up a little bit. Oh yeah. How do you go from that moment of like frustration

to the moment of acceptance? I mean, the more you put yourself in life in positions that are kind of outside your comfort zone or push your abilities, the more often you're gonna screw up. And then the more opportunity you have to learn from that. And then to be honest, it's kind of funny, but you almost get to a position where you, well, you don't feel that uncomfortable.

It's not unexpected. You kind of expect you're going to mess up here and there. I remember particularly with the moose, the first moose I saw, I had a great shot at it, but I had a hard time judging distance because it was in a mud flat, which means it's hard to tell yardage. You're usually typically going by trees or markers and be like, oh, I'm probably 30 yards away. This was a giant moose and he was 40 something yards away. And I estimated that he was 30 something yards away.

So I was way off and shot and dropped between his legs. And then I realized I had not grabbed my quiver. So I only had one shot and I just watched him turn around and walk off. But I was struck initially with like, I actually noticed how un-mad I was. I was like, oh, this is actually, I was like, that was awesome. And I was like seeing a dinosaur, that was really cool. And then I was like, oh, what an idiot, how'd I miss?

But then I was like, but it made me that much more determined to make it happen again. It was like, okay, nobody's gonna make this happen except myself. So you can't, can't complain. It wouldn't have done me any's going to make this happen except myself. You can't complain. It wouldn't have done me any good to go back and mope about it. And so then I had a thought. I was like, oh, I remember the native guys telling me they used to build these giant fences and funnel game into certain areas and stuff. And I was like, man, that's a lot of calories, but I have to make

that happen again now. So I kind of went out there and tried that and that was kind of a attempt at something too. It could have failed or not worked, but sure enough it worked and the opportunity came again. The moose came wandering along and I was able to get it. But being able to take failure as soon as you can, the better. Accept it and then learn from it is kind of a muscle you have to exercise a little bit. Well, it's interesting, because in this case, the cost of failure is like,

you're not gonna be able to eat. Yeah, that was really interesting. I mean, the most interesting thing about that show was how high the stakes felt. Because it didn't feel, you know, you didn't tell yourself you're on a show, at least I didn't, you just felt like it was,'re going to starve to death if you don't make this happen. The stakes felt so high. It was an interesting thing to tap into because so many of our ancestors

probably all just dealt with that on a regular basis. But it's something that we're – all the modern amenities and such and food security that we don't deal with. It was interesting to tap into what a kind of a peak mental experience that is when you really, really need something to survive and then it happens. You can't imagine. I mean, that's what our all our dopamine and receptors are tuned for that experience in particular. So it was, yeah, it was pretty awesome, but the pressure felt very on. Like I always felt the pressure of providing or starving. And then there's the situation when you left the ladder up, and you needed fat and what is it, the Wolverine ate some of the fat?

Yeah, right? Yeah, well, it was when I got the moose, I was so happy. The most joy I could almost experience maxed out. But I didn't think I won at that point. I never thought like, oh, that's my ticket to victory. I thought, holy crap, it's going to be me against somebody else that gets a moose now. And we're going to be here six, eight months. Who knows how long. And so I can't be here six, eight months and still lose. So I've gotta like, I've gotta out produce somebody else with a moose. So I had all that in my head, already was of course pretty thin. And so I was just like, man, somebody else gets a moose,

I'm still gonna be behind. And so everything felt like precious to me. And I had found a plastic jug and I put a whole bunch of the moose's fat in this plastic jug and set it up on a little shelf. I thought, you know what, if a bear comes, I'll probably hear it and I'll come out and be able to shoot it. So I went to sleep and I woke up the next morning. I went out and I was like, where's that jug? And then I was like, wait a second, what are all these prints? And then I started looking around and it took a second to dawn on me because I haven't interacted with Wolverines very often in life. And I was like, oh, those are Wolverine tracks.

And he was just so much sneakier than a bear would have been or something. So it kind of surprised me and he took off with that jug of fat. And so then I went from feeling pretty good about myself to like, now I'm losing again against whoever, you know, this other person is with a moose. So I, again, kind of the pressure came back to, oh no, I got to produce again. You know, it wasn't the end of the world. And I think they may have exaggerated a little bit how little fat I had left. You know, I still had, a moose has a lot of fat, but it did make me feel like I was at a disadvantage again.

And so, yeah, that was pretty, that was pretty intense because those wolverines, they're bold little animals and they, he was basically saying, no, this is my moose. And I had to counter his claims. Well, yeah, they're really, really smart. They figure out a way to get to places really effectively. Wolverines are like, fastening in that way. So let's go to that happy moment, the moose.

Yeah, yeah. You are the first and one of the only contestants to have ever killed a moose on the show, a big game animal with a bow and arrow. So this is day 20. So can you take me through the kill? Yeah, so I missed one and I just decided I'm not here to starve, I'm here to like try to become sustainable.

So I was like, I don't care if it's a risk, I'm gonna build that fence, I built it. I would just pick berries and call a moose every day. And it was actually really pleasant to sit in a berry patch and call a moose. But then I also had this whole trap and snare line set out everywhere. So I had all these, I was getting rabbits. But I went and I was actually taking a rabbit out of a snare when I heard a clank, because

I'd set up kind of an alarm system with string and cans. So it's a brilliant idea. Yeah. It's another thing that could have not worked, but it did. And it came through and I was like, oh, I heard the cans clink and I was like, no way. And so I ran over, I didn't know what it was exactly, but something was coming along the fence. And I ran over and jumped in the bush next to the funnel exit on the fence.

And sure enough, the big moose came running up and you know and your heart gets pounding like crazy. You're just like, no way, no way. I probably could have waited a little longer and had a perfect broadside shot, but I took the shot when he was – he was pretty close, like 24 yards, but he was quartering towards me, which makes it a little harder to make a perfect kill shot. Hence, I hit it and it took off running and I just thought, I was super excited. I couldn't believe I actually, I was like, oh my gosh, got the moose.

I think that was a really good shot. You get all excited, but then it plays back in your head. And particularly when you're first learning to hunt, there's always an animal that gets away, you know, and you like make a bad decision or not a great shot or something, and it's just part of it. And so of course you're like,

I'm not gonna be satisfied until I see this thing. So I followed the blood trail a little while and I saw some bubbly blood, which meant it was hitting the lungs, which meant it's not gonna live, you know, you'll get it. And so, as long as you don't mess it up. And so, I went back to my shelter and waited an hour. I skinned that rabbit that had caught and then super nervous, the slowest hour I ever had. And then I followed it along, ended up losing the blood trail. I was like, no, no. And then I was like, well, if there's no blood, I'm just going to follow the path

that I would go if I was a moose, you know, like the least resistance through the woods. So I followed kind of along the shore there and sure enough, I saw him up there. I was like, oh, you know, I was so excited. Lay down, but, uh, but he hadn't died yet. And so he just sat there and he would stand up and I would just like, no, no, no, no. And he would lay back down and he's like, yes. And then he would stand up.

And it was like that for a couple hours that took him. And then finally at one point, you know, a lot of people have asked like, why wouldn't you go finish it off? So when an animal like that gets hit, it had no idea what hit it. You know, just all of a sudden it's like, ah, something got it and it ran off and it lays down and it's actually fairly calm and it doesn't really know what's going on and if you can leave it in that state, it'll kind of just bleed out and as peacefully as possible.

Um, if you go chase after it, that's when you lose an animal. Cause as soon as it knows it's being hunted, it gets panicked. Adrenaline in it can just run and run and run and you'll never find it. So I didn't want it to see me. I knew if I tried to get it with another arrow, there's a chance I could have finished it off, but there's also a not bad chance that it would see me take off or even attack, because moose can be a little dangerous.

And so I just chose to wait it out. And at one point it stood up and fell over and I could tell it had died and walked over. Like you actually touch it and you're just like, whoa, no way. Like that whole burden of weeks of you're gonna starve, you're gonna starve. And it got rid of that demon.

To be honest, it's one of the happiest moments of my life. It's really hard to replicate that joy because it was just so real. You're so directly connected to your needs. It's all so simple. You know, like it was a peak experience for sure. And were you worried that it would take many more hours than it would take it into the night?

Yeah, I was. I mean, until you actually have your hands on it. I was worried the whole time it's a pretty nerve-wracking period there between when you get it and when you actually Recover the animal get your hands on it. So it took longer than I wanted but I finally got it Can you actually speak to the the kill shot itself just for people who don't hunt? Yeah, what it takes to stay calm to it to not freak out too much Can you actually speak to the kill shot itself just for people who don't hunt? Yeah. What it takes to stay calm, to not freak out too much, to wait but not wait too long. Yeah. I mean, another thing about hunting is that for every animal you get, you probably don't

get nine or 10 that just turned the wrong way when you were drawn back or went way behind a tree or you never had a clean shot or whatever it is. And so every time you can see a moment coming, your heart really starts beating and you have to like breathe through it. I can almost, you almost feel the nervousness of it. And then you just try to stay calm,

like whatever you do, just try to stay calm, wait for it to come up, draw back. You've practiced shooting a lot, so you have like kind of a technique, like I'm gonna go back, touch my face, draw my elbow tight, and then the arrow's gonna let loose. It's a muscle memory mostly. It's kind of muscle memory, you have a little trigger,

like draw that elbow tight, and then, and then it happens and then you just watch the arrow and see where it goes now with the animal you know you try to do it ethically that is like make as good of a shot as you can make sure it is either hit in the heart or both lungs and when that happens it's a pretty quick death which is death is a part of life and but honestly for a wild animal that's probably the best way to go. They could, they could have, um, now when a man, animals kind of walking towards you, if it's walking towards you, but not directly towards you, that's what you

call quartering towards you, you can picture it's actually pretty difficult to hit both lungs because the shoulder blade and all that bone is in the way. So you want to, so you have to make a perfect shot to get them both. And to be honest, when I took my shot, I was a couple inches or a few inches right. And so it went, went through the first lung and then it sunk the arrow all the way into the moose.

But it didn't, it allowed that second lung to stay breathing, which meant the moose stayed alive longer. What's your relationship with the animal in a situation like that? You said death is a part of life. Yeah, that's an interesting thought because no matter what your relationship to, however you choose to go through life,

whether whatever you eat, whatever you do, death is a part of life. Every animal that's out there is living off of a dead, even plants. We're all part of this ecosystem. I think it's really easy, particularly in an urban environment, but anywhere to think that we're separate from the ecosystem. But we are very much a part of it, whether it be farming requires all this habitat to be turned into growing soybeans and da-da-da-da. And when you get the plows and the combines, you're losing all kinds of different animals and all kinds of potential habitat. So it's not cost-free. And so when you

realize that, then you want to produce the food and the things you need in an ethical manner. So for me, hunting plays a really major role in that. I literally know how many animals a year it takes to feed my family and myself. I actually know the exact number. And I know what the cost of that is. And I'm aware of it because I'm out in the woods and I see these like beautiful Elk and moose and I really love the species love the animals, but there is a fact that one of those individuals, you know is going to have to feed me and I and particularly like on alone it was very heightened that experience So I shot that one animal and I was so, so thankful, you know,

that I wanted to give that big guy a hug and like, Hey, sorry, it was you, but had to be somebody. There's that picture. You just almost hugging it. And you can also think about it. The calories, the protein, the fat, all of that, that that comes from that, that will feed you.

Right. You're so grateful for it. The gratitude is definitely there. What about the bow and arrow perspective? Well, when you hunt with a bow, you just get so much more up close to the animals. You can't just get it from 600 yards away. You actually have to sneak in within 30 or so yards. And, uh, when you do that, the experiences you have are just, they're way more dragged out.

So, you know, your heart's beating longer. You have to control your nerves longer. More often than not, it doesn't go your way and the thing gets away and, you know, you've been hiking around in the woods for a week and then your opportunity arises and floats away. But at the same time that's the only time when you like really have those interactions with the animals where you got this bugling bull you know like tearing at the trees right in front of you and other cow, elk and animals running around you. You know, you get, you end up having really, uh, I don't know,

there's intimate experiences with the animal just because, because you're in it, you're kind of in its world, you're playing its game. It has its senses to defend itself and you have your wit to try to, to get over those. And it really becomes, you know, it's not easy. They're not, it becomes kind of that chess game and those prey animals are always tuned in. It's, you know, slightest stick there looking for wolves or for whatever it is. So there's something really pure and fun about it. You know, I will say there is an aspect that is fun, there's no denying it. It's like how we're, you know, people have been hunting forever and I think it speaks to that part of us somehow.

But, and I think bow hunting is probably the most pure form of it and that you get those experiences more often than with a rifle. So I don't know, I enjoy it a lot. And the way they do regulations and such, kind of the best times to hunt are usually allowed for bow because they're trying to keep it fair for the animal and such. So the distance, the close distance makes you more in touch with the natural way of the predator and prey. You're one of the predators where you have to be clever, you have to be quiet, you have to be calm, you have to all of that. And the full challenge and the luck involved in catching it. The same thing as the predators do.

Exactly, how many times do they snap a stick and watch them run off and like, darn, my stock was failed. Or, you know, so yeah, you're just, you're in that ecosystem. How'd you learn to shoot the bow? Yeah, I didn't grow up hunting. I grew up in an area that a lot of people hunted, but my dad wasn't really into it,

and so I never got into it until I lived in Russia with the natives. It was just such a part of everything we did and a part of our life that when I came back, I got a bow and I started doing archery in Virginia. They had, it was a pretty easy way to hunt because the deer were overpopulated and you could get these urban archery permits.

So you'd go out and every couple of days, way to hunt because the deer were overpopulated and you could get these urban archery permits. So you'd go out and every couple of days you'd have an opportunity to shoot a deer that they needed population control. And so there were a lot of them and it gave you a lot of opportunities to learn quickly. So that's what got me into it. And then I found I really enjoyed it. Do you practice with the target also or just practice out? Oh no, I would definitely practice with a target a lot. Again, you kind of have an obligation to

do your best because you don't want to be flinging arrows into like the leg of an animal. And it's a cool way honestly to provide quality meat for the family. It's all raised naturally and wild and free until you bring it home into the freezer. So if we step back, what are the 10 items you brought and what's actually the challenge of figuring out which items to bring? Yeah, the challenge is that you don't exactly know what your site's opportunities are going to be. So you don't really know should I bring a fishing net? Am I going to even have a spot to net or not? And things like that. I brought a axe, a saw, a Leatherman wave, a ferro rod, it's like a mix sparks start a fire, a frying pan, a sleeping bag, a fishing kit, a bow and arrow, trapping wire, and paracord. And so those are my 10 items.

Is there any regrets? No major regrets. I took the saw kind of, I thought it would be more of a calorie saver, then I didn't really need it. In hindsight if I was doing you know season seven instead of six and got to watch I would have taken the net because I just planned to make a net, I would have taken the net because I just planned to make a net, but I would have rather just had two nets and brought one and left the saw because in the northern woods in particular, every tree is the size of your arm or leg. You can chop it down with an axe and a couple swings.

Yeah, you don't really need the saw. And so it was handy at times and useful, but I think it was my, if I had to do nine items, I would have been just fine without the saw. So two nets would just expand your- Food gathering, potentially. Yeah. And then in terms of trapping, you were okay with just the little you brought?

The snare wire was good. I ran some, you know, I put out, I used all my snare wire. I ran trap line, which is just a series of traps through the woods and brush every place you see sign, put a snare, put a little mark on the tree. So I knew where that snare was and just make these paths through the woods. And I put out, you know, I don't know how many 150, 200 snares. So every day I'd get a rabbit or two out of them and then I

had a lot of rabbits but once I got the moose I actually took all those snares down because I don't want to catch anything needlessly and well you come to find out you can't live off of rabbits man cannot live off rabbit alone, it turns out. So you set up a huge number of traps. You were also fishing, and then always on the lookout for moose. Yeah. So like, what's in terms of survival, if you were to do it over again,

over and over and over and over, like how do you maximize your chance of having enough food to survive for a long time? You have to be really adaptable because everything's gonna, it's always gonna look different, your situation, your location. I actually had what I thought was a pretty good plan

going into a loan, and then it just, the location didn't allow for what I thought it would. What was the plan? Well, I thought I would just catch a bunch of fish because I'm on a really good fishing lake. I'd catch a whole bunch of fish and let them rot for a little while and then just drag them all through the woods

and to a big pile and then hunt a bear on that big fish pile. Yeah, yeah. That was the plan and I thought, of when I got there, for one, I had a hard time catching fish off the bat. They didn't come like I was hoping. And then for two, it had burned prior,

so there were no berries. And so there were very few berries, which meant there weren't grouse, there weren't bear. They had all gone to other places where the berries were. And so what I had grown accustomed to kind of relying on in Siberia wasn't there, there. You know, in Russia, which was a similar environment, it was just grouse and berries and fish and grouse and berries and fish. And then occasionally, you know, you get a moose or something.

But I had to reassess, which was part of me being grumpy at the start like, that's my sex. And then, uh, and then once I reassessed and, and, and, you know, right away I saw that there were moose tracks and such. So I just started a plan for that. I moved my, uh, camp in a, into an area that was as removed as I could be from where all the action is, where the tracks were so that I wasn't disturbing animal patterns, I made sure the wind, the predominant wind was blowing out my scent to sea or to the water. And then really, to be honest, if you want to actually survive somewhere, it is different than alone. But you do have to be active. You're not going to be sustainable by starving it out. You'd have to unlock the key that is

sustainability. I think there's a lot of areas that still have that potential, but you have to figure out what it is. It's usually going to be a combination of fishing, trapping, and then hunting. Then once you have some, the fishing and trapping will get you until you have some success hunting, and then that'll buy you three or four months of time to continue and you know to keep hunting again and you just have to roll off of that but every you know depends on where you are what opportunities are there. So okay so that's the process fishing and trapping until you're successful hunting and then the successful hunt buys you some more time. Mm-hmm right right. Just go year round.

Then you just go around like that and. And then you just go year round like that and that's how people did it forever. The pressure, I noticed it, you know, you got that moose and then you're happy for a week or so and then you start to be like, you know, this is finite. I'm gonna have to do this again and imagine if you had a family that was gonna starve if you weren't successful, you know, this next time.

And there's just always that pressure, you know, it made me really appreciate the amount you weren't successful this next time. And there's just always that pressure. It made me really appreciate the amount of what people had to deal with. Well, in terms of being active, so you have to do stuff all day. So you get up and planning. Like, what am I gonna,

in the midst of the frustration, you have to figure out what's the strategy? How do you put up all the traps? Is that a decision, most people sit at their desk and have a calendar, are you figuring out? One thing about wilderness life in general is it's remarkably less scheduled than anything we deal with.

Schedules are fairly unique to the modern context. You'd wake up and you just sort of you have a you know confluence of things you want to do, things you need to do, things you should do and you just kind of tackle them as you see fit as it flows in you know so and that's actually one of the things that your people really that I really appreciate about that lifestyle is it really is, you're kind of in that flow. And so I'd wake up and be like, maybe I'll go fishing and then I'll wander over and fish.

And then I'd be like, I'm gonna go check the trap line, add every day if I add five or 10 snares, you know, you're constantly adding to your productive potential. And then, but nothing's really scheduled, you're just kind of flying by the seat of your pants. But then there's a lot of instinct that's already loaded in.

Oh, there's so much, yeah. Like you already, just like wisdom from all the times you've had to do it before. You're just actually operating a lot on instinct. Like you said, where to place the shelter. Like how hard is that calculation, where to place the shelter? If you're like dropped off and this is all new to you, of course,

all those things are going to be things you have to really think through and plan. When you're thinking about a shelter, you have to think of, Oh, here's a nice flat spot. You know, that's a good place. But also is there firewood nearby? And if I'm going to be here for months, is there enough firewood that I'm not going to be walking a half a mile to get a dry piece of wood? Is the water nearby? Is it somewhat open, but also protected from the elements? Cause sometimes you get a beautiful spot, it was great on a calm day and then the wind comes like,

and so there's all these factors, even down to taking in what game is doing in the area also and how that relates to where your shelter is. You said you have to consider where the action will be and you want to be away from the action but close enough to it. To see it. Yeah, you want to be, yeah right. And so ideally, you know, it depends. You're always gonna make given takes. And one thing with shelters and location selection and stuff, that's another thing. You just have to trust your ability to adapt in that situation because everybody has

a particular, you know, he got an idea of a shelter you're gonna build, but then you get there and maybe there's a good cliff that you can incorporate. You know, and then you just become creative and that's a really fun process too, to just allow your creativity to try to flourish. What kind of shelters are there? There's all kinds of philosophies on shelters,

which is fun. It's fun to see people try different things. Mine was fairly basic for the simple reason that I had lived winters, through winters in Siberia in a teepee. So I knew I didn't need anything too robust. As long as I had calories, I'd be warm. And I wasn't particularly worried about the cold. But you'll see.

So I kept my shelter really pretty simple with the idea that I built a simple A-frame type shelter and then most of my energy is going to be focused on getting calories. And then of course, there's always going to be downtime. And in that downtime, I can tweak, modify, improve my shelter, and that'll just be a constant process that by the time you're there a few months, you'll have all the kinks worked out. It'll be a really nice little setup, but you don't have to start with that necessarily because you got other needs you got to focus on. That said, you'll see a lot of people on a loan that really focus on building the log cabin because they want to be secure or incorporating whatever the earth has around,

whether it be rocks or whether it be digging a hole. And we've seen some really cool shelters and I'm not gonna knock it. Everybody's got different strokes for different folks, but my particular idea was to keep it fairly simple, improve it with time, but spend most of my energy. You know the shelter you really need to think about, it can't be smoky because that'll be miserable, but it is nice to have a fire inside.

So you need to have a fire inside. That's not going to be dangerous and, uh, smoke free and then also air tight because you're never going to have a warm shelter out there because you don't have seals and things like that. But as long as the air is not moving through it, you can have a warm enough shelter. With a fire. With a fire and dryer socks and stuff. How do you get the smoke out of the shelter?

If you have good clay and mud and rock, you can build yourself a fireplace, which is surprisingly not that hard. You know, you just, yeah, it's fun thing to do. It works well, you know, take a little hole, start stacking rocks around it, make sure it's opening and it actually works, you know? Um, so that's not as hard as you might think. Um, for me, where I was, I, I kind of came up with it as I was there with my a frame, you know, I hadn't built an a frame shelter like that before.

And so when I built it and then I had put a bunch of tin cans in the ground so that air would get the fire. So it was fed by air, which helps create a draft. But I realized in an A-frame, the smoke doesn't go out very well, even if you leave a hole at the top, it collects and billows back down. So then I cut some of my tarp and made this and cut a hole in the A-frame. And then I made a hood vent that I could pull down and catch the smoke with. And so while the fire was going,

it would just billow out the hood vent. And then when it was done burning and was just hot coals, I could close it, seal it up, and keep keep the heat in so it actually worked pretty well so Start with something that kind of works and then keep improving. Yeah, exactly. I was wondering I mean the the the log cabin Mm-hmm. It feels like that's a thing that takes a huge amount of work Right work the difference between a log cabin and a warm log cabin This is like an immense amount of work and all the chinking and all the door ceiling and you know the chimney has to be anyway so otherwise it's just gonna be the same ambient

temperature as outside. So I don't think alone is the proper context for a log cabin. I think like log cabin is great in as a hunting cabin as you know like If you're gonna have something for years, but in a three, six month scenario, I don't know that it's worth the calorie expenditure. And it is a lot of calories. But that's an interesting sort of metaphor of just like get something that works. You see a lot of this with companies, like successful companies, they get a prototype,

get a system that's working, and then improve fast in response to the conditions, to the environment. Yeah, because it's constantly changing. Yeah. And you end up being a lot better if you're able to learn how to respond quickly versus having a big plan that takes a huge amount of time to accomplish.

That's interesting. Right, and forcing that through the pipeline, whether or not it fits. Can you just speak to the place you were, the Canadian whether or not it fits. Yeah. Can you just speak to like the place you were, the Canadian Arctic? It looked cold. Yeah, we were right near the Arctic Circle. I don't know, it was like 60 kilometers south of the Arctic Circle.

So it was, it's a really cool area, really remote, thousands of little lakes, you know, when you fly over here, you're just like, man, that's incredible. There must be so many of those lakes that people haven't been to, you know, it really was a neat area, really remote. And for the show's purpose, I think it was perfect because it did have enough game and enough different avenues forward that I think it really did reward activity. So I think,

but it's a special place. It was a Dene, there was a tribe that lived there, the Dene people, which interestingly enough, here's a side note. When I was in Siberia, I floated down this river called the Padkamene Tunguska and you get to this village called Sulamai and there's these Ket people they're called and there's only 600 of them left. But this is in the middle of Siberia, not in the Pacific coast, but their language is related to the Dene people. And so somehow, you know, that connection was there thousands of years ago, super interesting. Yeah, so language travels somehow. Right,

and the remnants stayed back there. It's very interesting to think through history. Yeah, within languages contains a history of a people's and it's interesting how that evolves over time and how wars tell the story. Like language tells the story of conflict and conflict shapes language and we get the result of that. Right, so fascinating.

And the barriers that language creates is also the thing that leads to wars and misunderstandings and all this kind of stuff. It's a fascinating tension. But it got cold there, right? It got real cold. Yeah, I mean I think I don't know what that I didn't have a thermometer. I imagine it probably got to negative 30 at the most. You know, it might have gotten, it would have definitely gotten colder had we stayed longer. To be honest, I never felt cold out there. I had that one pretty dialed in. Once you have calories, you can stay warm, you can stay active. You got to dress warm. There's a good one if

you're in the cold. never let yourself get too cold because what happens is you'll stop feeling what's cold and then frostbite and then issues. And then it's really hard to warm back up. So every, it was so annoying. I'd be out going to ice fish or something. And then I would just notice that my feet are cold and you're just like, ah, dang it.

I just turn around, go back, start a fire, dry my boots out, make sure my feet are warm, and then go again. I wouldn't ignore that. Oh, so you wanna be able to feel the cold. Yeah, you wanna make sure you're still feeling things and that you're not toughen through it because you can't really tough through the cold. It'll just get you.

What's your relationship with the cold? Psychologically, physically? Oh, that's interesting. Actually, there's some part of it that really makes you feel alive. I imagine, you know, sometime in Austin here, you come go out and it's hot and sweaty and you're like, you get that kind of kind of saps you. There's something about that brisk cold that hits your face that you're like, wakes you up, makes you feel really alive, engaged. You know, it feels like the margins of air are smaller, so you're alert and engaged a little more.

There's something that's a little bit life-giving just because you feel on an edge. You're on this edge. But you have to be alert because even some of the natives I lived with, the lady had face issues because she let her head get cold when they were on a snowmobile. Her hat was up too high, that little mistake and then it just freezes this part of your forehead and then the nerves go and then you got issues when just the hat wasn't high enough.

So you kinda gotta be dialed in on stuff. Well there's a psychological element to just, I mean it's unpleasant. If I were to think of what kind of unpleasant would I choose, you know, fasting for long periods of time of going without food in a warm environment is way more pleasant than... Being fed in a cold room.

Yeah, exactly. Like if you were to choose... I'd choose the opposite. Oh yeah, okay. Well, there you go. I wonder if that's, I wonder if you're born with that or if that's developed in maybe your time in Siberia, like you, or do you gravitate towards,

I wonder what that is, because I really don't like survival in the cold. I think a little bit of it is learned. He like almost learned not, he learned not to fear it. He learned to kind of appreciate it. And a big part of that is, I mean, to be honest, it's like dressing warm, being in good, it's not that, you know, there's no secrets to that.

You just can't beat the cold, so you just need to dress warm, you know, all that fur, all that stuff. And then all of a sudden you have your little refuge, have a nice warm fire going in your teepee, you know, and then you, I bet you you could learn to appreciate it. Yeah. I think some of it is just opening yourself up to the

possibility that there's something enjoyable about it. Like here, I run in Austin all the time in like a hundred degree heat and I go out there with a smile on my face and like, and learn to enjoy it. And so you just like, I look kind of like you do in the cold and just, I don't think I enjoy the heat, but you just allow yourself to enjoy it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do feel that way.

I mean, I don't mind the heat that much, but I think you could get to the place where you appreciated the cold. It's probably just a lack of, it's kind of scary when you haven't done it and you don't know what you're doing and you go out and you feel cold. It's like not fun, but I bet you could,

you'd enjoy it, you'll have to come out sometime. 100%. I mean, you're right, it does make you feel alive. Maybe that's the thing that I struggle with is the time passes slower, because it does make you feel alive. You get to feel time. But then the flip side of that is you get to feel every moment and you get to feel alive in every moment. So it's both scary when you're inexperienced and beautiful when you are experienced.

Were there times when you got hungry? I got shot a rabbit on day one and I snared a couple rabbits on day two and then more and more as the time went. So I actually did pretty well on the food front. The other thing is when you have all those berries around and stuff, you do have an ability to like fill your stomach and so you don't really notice if you're getting thinner or if you're losing weight. So you don't really notice if you're getting thinner or if you're losing weight. Um, so I can say on alone, I was not that hungry. I've definitely been really hungry in Russia. There were times when, when I lost a lot of weight.

I mean, I lost a lot more weight in Siberia than I did on alone. Oh, wow. Okay. We'll have to talk about it. So you, uh, caught a fish. You caught a couple. I think I caught like 13 or so. They didn't show a lot of them. You caught 13 fish?

13 of those big fish. Well, I caught a couple that were small. This is like a meme at this point. You're a perfect example of a person who was thriving. I was thought, you know, in hindsight, again, when I was out there, I never let myself think you might win. I just was going to be out there as long as I could and tried to remain pessimistic about

it. No, but then, but then I remember a thought that I was like, I wonder if they're going to be able to make this look hard, you know, I didn't have that thought at one point. And because it went pretty well and I And I was definitely, it was hard psychologically because I didn't know when it was gonna end. Like I thought this could go, you know, like I said, six months, could go eight months, a year. And then you start to cause, you know,

I had a two and a three year old and you start to weigh in the, is it worth it if it goes a year? And it's not worth it if it goes eight months and I still lose. So I feel like I had this pressure and it was psychologically difficult for that reason. Physically, it wasn't too bad. This is off mic, we're talking about Gordon Ryan competing in jiu-jitsu and maybe that's the challenge he also has to face is to make things look hard. Because he's so dominant in the sport that in terms of the drama and the entertainment of the

sport and in this case of survival, it has to be difficult. You know, and I'll add that for sure though that it's the woods, it's nature, you never know how it's going to go. You know what I mean? It's like every time you're out there, it's a different scenario. So whatever, hallelujah, it went well. So you won after 77 days. How long do you think you could have lasted? When I left, I weighed what I do right now. So I just weighed my normal weight.

I had a couple hundred pounds of moose. I had at least a hundred pounds of fish. I had a pile of rabbits, a wolverine. I had all this stuff. And I hadn't gotten cold yet. I just thought, but in my head, I thought, if I get today 130 or 40, even if someone else has big game, I had a pretty good idea they might quit because it would be long, cold, dark days. And how miserable is that? It's so boring, it's freezing.

The only time I thought I could think about winning is when I got to day 130 or 40. his one I got to day 130 or 40. And I definitely had that, um, with what I had. Uh, now maybe I would have got, you know, I probably would have gotten more. I had caught that big 20 something pound pike on the last day I was there. Maybe catch some more of those, you know, I don't, you know, and I don't know, like, I don't know how many calories I had stored, but I had a lot. And so how long would that have lasted me? Assuming I didn't get anything else?

It definitely would have, I would definitely would have reached my goal of 130 or 40 days. And then after that, I thought we were just gonna push into the, you know, then it's just to see how much, who has what reserves and we'll go as far as we can. And that would get me through January into February.

And I just thought, man, that's going to be miserable for people. And you were like, I can last. And I knew I could do it. Yeah. What aspect of that is miserable? The hardest thing for me would have been the boredom because it's hard to stay busy when it's all dark out, when the ice is, you know, three, four foot thick, you can't fish. And I just think it would have just been really boring.

He would have had to been a real Zen master to push through it. But because I had experienced it to some degree, I knew I could. And then I think things that might, you know, you start thinking about family and this and that in those situations. And I just knew that those, because I'd gone to all these trips to Russia for a year at a time, the time context was a little broader for me than I think for some people, because I, I knew I could be gone for a year and come back, catch up with my loved ones, you know, bring what I got back, whether that be psychological,

whatever it is, and we'd all enrich each other. And once it's in hindsight, that year would have been like that, talking about it. So I had that perspective and it, so I knew I wasn't gonna tap for any other reason other than running out of food someday. So that was my stressor. So you're able to, given the boredom, given the loneliness,

kinda zoom out and accept the passing of time. Just let it pass. You know, for me, I'm an act, fairly act, I like to be active. just kinda zoom out and accept the passing of time. Let it pass. For me, I'm an act, fairly act, I like to be active. And so I would try to think of creative ways to keep my brain busy. We saw the dumb rabbit first skit, but then I did a whole bunch of elaborate Normandy

reinvasion, invasion, enactments and stuff. I was like, there was a, every day I would think, I gotta think of something to make me laugh, and then do some stupid skit. And then that would be, that would fill a couple hours of my time. And then I'd spend an hour or two, a couple, few hours fishing.

And then you spend a few hours, whatever you're doing. Would you do that without a camera? Yeah. Oh, no, the skits, funny question. That's a good question. I don't know. I actually don't know. I will say that was one of the advantages of being on the show versus in Siberia. So no, because I didn't in Siberia just do skits by myself, but I didn't film it. And so it was quite nice to have this camera that made you feel like you weren't quite as alone as if you were just in the woods by yourself.

And I think for me, it was a pain, it was part of the cause of me missing that moose. There's issues with it, but I just chose to look at it as like, this is an awesome opportunity to share with people a part of me that most people don't get to see. So I just chose to look at it that way. And it was an advantage,

because you could do stuff like that. I think there's actual power to doing this kind of documenting, like talking to a camera or an audio recorder. Like that's an actual tool in survival. I had a little bit of an experience of being alone in the jungle and just being able to talk to a thing Mm-hmm is much less lonely. It is it really is it's a That's can be a powerful tool just sharing your experience. I had the I definitely had the thought so going back to your earlier

Comment, but I definitely had the thought if I knew I was the last person on earth I wouldn't even bother like I wouldn't do that. I would just probably not, I'd just give up, I'm sure. Because even if I had a bunch of food and this and that, but because I knew you know you're a part, you're sharing, it gives you a lot of strength to go through and having that camera just makes it that much more vivid because you know you're not just going to sharing a vague memory, but an actual experience. I think if you're the last person on earth,

you would actually convince yourself. First of all, you don't know for sure. There's always going to be- Hope dies last. Hope really does die last. You really don't know. You really hope to find. I mean, if you're like an apocalypse happens,

I think your whole life will be going about finding the other person. It would be. And there's a chance. I mean, I guess I'm saying if you knew you were for some reason knew you were the last, I wonder if you would. I wonder if that was the thought I had. If I knew I was the last person, like, because here I was having a good time, having fun fishing, plenty of food. But like, if I knew I was the last person on Earth, I don't know that I would even bother. But now if that was for real, would I bother? That's the question.

No, no, I think if you knew, if somebody, some way you knew for sure, I think your mind will start doubting it. That whoever told you you're the last person, whatever was lying. Right, right. The power of hope might be more stronger than I accounted for in that situation.

Also, if you are indeed the last person, you might want to be documenting it for once you die, an alien species comes about. Because whatever happened on Earth is a pretty special thing. And if you're the last one, you might be the last person to tell the story of what happened. And so that's going to be a way to convince yourself that this is important.

And so the days will go by like this, but it would be lonely. Boy, would that be lonely. It would be, well, delving into the dredges depths of something. There is going to be existential dread. But also, I don't know, I think hope will burn bright. You'll be looking for other humans. That's one of the reasons I was looking forward

to talking to you. I think that appreciate about you is you're always, not out of naivety, but you always choose to look at the positive, you know what I mean? And I think that's a powerful mindset to have, I appreciate it. Yeah, that'd be a pretty cool survival situation though if you're the last person on Earth.

Yes, you can share it. If you could share it, yeah. Like I said, many people consider you the most successful competitor on a loan. The other successful one is Roland Welker, Rockhouse guy. Oh yeah. This is just a fun, ridiculous question, but head to head, who do you think survives longer?

If you want to get to the competitive side of it, I would just say, well, I'm pretty dang sure I had more pounds of food. But, and I didn't have the advantage of knowing when it would end, which I think would have been a great psychological. It would have made it really easy. Once I got the moose, I could have shot the moose

and just not stressed. That would have been like a, and so that was a big difference between the seasons that I felt like, I mean, I felt like the psychology of season seven, they kind of messed up by doing a hundred day cap because for my own experience that was the hardest part. But Roland's a beast. So for people who don't know, they put a hundred day cap on, so it's whoever can survive a hundred days for that season.

It's interesting to hear that for you, the uncertainty, not knowing when it ends. That was for sure. It's the hardest. That's true. It's like you wake up every day. I didn't know how to ration my food. I didn't know if I was gonna lose after six months and then it was all gonna be for naught.

I didn't know if it, you know, I just, there's so many unknowns. You don't know, like I said, if I shot a moose and it was 100 days, done. If I shot a moose and you don't know, it's said, if I shot a moose and it was 100 days, done. If I shot a moose and you don't know, it's like, crap, I could still lose to somebody else, but it's gonna be way in the future. So anyway, that for me was definitely the hard part.

And when you found out that you won and your wife was there, it was funny because you're really happy. There's great sort of moment of you reuniting, but also there's a state of shock of like, you look like you were ready to go much longer. That was the most genuine shock I could have. I hadn't even like entertained the thought yet.

I didn't even think it was, you'd hear the helicopters and I just assumed there was other people out there. I just hadn't, I thought, you know, and for one, the previous person that had gone along, I said, gone 89 days. So I just knew whoever else was out here with me, somebody's got that in their crosshairs. They're going to get to 90 and they're not going to quit at 90. They're going to go to a hundred. You know, I just figured we can't start thinking about the end until a couple months from when it ended. So I was just shocked. And they tricked me pretty good. They know

how to make you think you're not, you know, that they're not. So they want you to do the surprise. Yeah, they want it to be a surprise. You really weren't. I mean, you have to do that, I guess, for survival. Don't be counting the days. No, I think that would be, then, you know, you see that on some of the people do that. For myself, that would be bad psychology, because then you're just always disappointing yourself.

You have to be resettled with the fact that this is gonna go a long time and suck. Once you come to peace with that, maybe you'll be pleasantly surprised, but you're not gonna be constantly disappointed. So what was your diet like? Like what was your eating habits like during that time? Like how many meals a day?

I quit. I was trying to eat the thing. I was like not trying to, the more the moose is hanging out there, the more the critters, every critter in the forest is trying to peck at it or mice trying to eat it and stuff. So one of the ways you can protect the food

is by eating it. So I was having three good meals a day, and then I'd like cook up some meat and go to sleep, and then wake up in the middle of night because they're long nights, and like have some meat at night, eat a bunch at night. And then, so I'd usually have a fish stew for lunch, and then mousse for breakfast and dinner,

and then have some for a nighttime snack because the nights were long, so you'd be in bed like 14 hours and wake up and eat and dink around and go back to sleep. Is it okay that I was pretty low carb situation? Yeah, I actually felt really good. I tried to, I think I would have felt better if I would have had a higher percentage of fat

because it's still more protein than if you're on a keto diet, you want a lot of fat. And so I didn't try to mix in nature's carbs, different reindeer lichen and things like that. But honestly, I felt pretty good on that diet, I will say. What's the secret to protecting food? What are the different ways to protect food? Yeah, there's a lot of times,

you know, in a typical situation in the woods hunting, you'll raise it up in a tree in a bag, put it in a game bag so the birds can't peck at it, and hang it in a tree so it cools. You gotta make sure first to cool it, because it'll spoil. So you cool it by whatever means necessary, hanging it in a cool place,

letting the air blow around it. but by whatever means necessary, hanging it in a cool place, letting the air blow around it. And then you'll notice that every forest freeloader in the woods is gonna come and steal your food. And it was just fun. I mean, it was crazy to watch. It was like all the J, all the camp Js pecking at it.

Everything I did was, there was something that could get to it. If you put on the ground, the mice get on and they poop on it and they kind of mess it up. So I, uh, ultimately it kind of just dawned on me, shoot, I'm going to have to build one of those event key like food caches. So I did. And I put it up there and I thought I kind of solved my problem to be honest, the event key then, so they would have taken a page out of, like, they would have mixed me and Roland's solution. They build this tall stilt shelter and then put a box on the top that's enclosed.

And then the bears can't get to it. The mice can't poop on it. The birds, the Wolverine, you know, it's safe. And I never finished it. I mean, in hindsight, I don't actually know why. I think I was just the way it timed. Like I didn't think something was going to get up there. Then it did. And then I, you know, you I don't actually know why. I think I was just the way it timed, like I didn't think something was gonna be up there, then it did.

And then I, you know, you're like counting calories and stuff, I should have in hindsight, just boxed it in right away. To get ready for the long haul. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is a rabbit starvation a real thing? Yeah, so you can't just live off protein and rabbits are almost just protein.

I'd kill a rabbit, eat the innards and the brain and the eyes and then everything else is just protein. And so it takes more calories to, you know, process that protein than you're getting from it without the fat. So you actually lose, I lost, I had, you know, a lot of rabbits in the first 20 days, I had 28 rabbits or something,

but I was losing weight at exactly the same speed as everybody else that didn't have anything. So that's interesting. Yeah. And I'd never tried that before. So I was wondering if I'm catching a ton of rabbits. I wonder if I can last what six months on rabbits, but no, you just starve as fast as everybody else inside to kind of learn that on the fly and adjust. I wonder what to make of that. So you need fat to survive, like fundamental. Yeah, that's the, yeah. And you'll notice when the Wolverine came or when animals came, they would eat the skin

off of the fish, they would eat the eyes, you know, they'd steal the moose fat, they'd leave all the meat. Yeah, like behind the eyes is a bunch of fat. So yeah, you can kind of observe nature and see what they're eating and know where the gold is. What do you like eating when you're like, when you can eat whatever you want? What do you feel best eating?

What do I feel best? I just try to eat clean. I think I'm not like super stricter on anything, but I think when I eat less carbs, I feel better. Meat and vegetables. I like, we eat a lot of, you know, I need a lot of meat So basically everything you ate on alone plus some veggies veggies throwing some buckwheat. I like buckwheat Let's step to the the early days of Jordan so Your Instagram handles hobo, Jordan. So early on in your life, you hobo it around the U S on freight trains.

What's the story behind that? My brother, when he was 17 or so, he just decided to go hitchhiking and he hitchhiked down to Reno from Idaho where we were and, uh, ended up loving traveling, but hated being dependent on other people. So he ended up jumping on a freight train and just did it. He honestly, he pretty much got on a train and traveled the country for the next eight years

on trains, lived in the streets and everywhere. But, you know, he was sober, so it gives you a different experience than a lot. But at one point when I was, I guess, yeah, 18, he you a different experience than a lot. At one point when I was, I guess, yeah, 18, he invited me to come along with him. He'd probably been doing it five or so, four or five years or more. And I said, sure. So I quit my job and went out with him.

Hobo Jordan is a bit of an overstep. I feel self-conscious about that because I rode trains across the country, up and down the coast, back, spent the better part of the year running around riding trains and all the staying in places related to that. But all the people, the real hobos, those guys are out there doing it for years on end. But it was such a, for me, what it felt like was a, it felt like a bit of a rite of passage experience, which is kind of missing, I think, in modern life. So I did this thing that was a huge unknown. Ben kind of was there with me, my brother, for most of it, we traveled around,

pushed my boundaries in every which way, froze at night and did all the stuff. And then at the end, I actually wanted to go back and go back and go back home. And so I went on my own and went from Minneapolis back, you know, up to Spokane on my own, which was my first stint of time by myself for like a week, which was interesting. Alone with your own thoughts.

With your own thoughts is my first time in my life having been like that, you know? And so it was powerful at the time. You know what it did too, is it gave me a whole different view of life. Cause I had gotten a job when I was 13, and then 14, 15, 16, 17. And then I was just in the normal run of things kind of, and then that just threw a whole different path into my life.

And then I realized some of the things while I was traveling that I wouldn't experience again until I was living with natives and such. And that was, you know, you wake up, you don't have a schedule. You literally just have needs and you just somehow have to meet your needs. And so it's, there's a really sense of freedom you get

that is hard to replicate elsewhere. And so that was eye-opening to me. And I think once I did that, I went back. So I went back to my old job at the salad dressing plant. And there's this old cross-eyed guy and he was, oh, hobo Gordo's back. And that's kind of where I got it. But that freedom always was very important to me,

I think from that time on. What'd you learn about the United States, about the people along the way? Because I took a road trip across the US also, and there was a romantic element there too, of like, of the freedom, of the, well, maybe for me not knowing what the hell I'm gonna do with my life,

but also excited by all the possibilities, and then you meet a lot of different people and a lot of different kinds of stories. And also like a lot of people that support you for traveling because there's a lot of people kind of dream of experiencing that freedom, at least the people I've met. And they usually don't go outside of their little town. They have a thing and they have a family usually and they don't explore, they don't take the leap. And you can do that when you're young. I guess you could do that at any moment. Just say fuck it and leap into the abyss

of being on the road. But anyway, what'd you learn about this country, about the people in this country? You're in an interesting context when you're on trains because the trains always end up in the crappiest part of town and you're always outside interacting. Oh, the interesting things. Every once in a while, you'll have to hitchhike

to get from one place to another. One interesting thing is you notice you always get picked up by the poor people, or they're the people that empathize with you, stop, pick you up. You go to whatever ghetto you end up in and people are really, oh, what are you guys doing? Real friendly and relatable. It broadened my horizons for sure from being just an Idaho kid and then meeting all these different people and just seeing the goodness in people and this and that. It's also very, you know, a lot of drugs and a lot of people with mental issues that you're friends with, dealing with, and all that kind of stuff.

Any memorable characters? Well, there's a few for sure. I mean, a lot of them I still know that are still around, but the Rocko was one guy we traveled with. He's become like a brother, but he's, he was, he traveled with my brother for years because they were the two sober guys kind of. He, rather than traveling because he was hooked on stuff,

did it to escape all that. He was sober and straight edge. He's a five-seven Italian guy that was always getting in fights. He has his own sense of ethics that I think is really interesting because he's super honest but he expects it of others. And so it's funny in the modern context, the thing that pops in my head is when he got a car for the first time, which wasn't that long, you know, in his 30s or something, and he registered it, which he was mad about that he had to register.

But then the next year they told him he had to register again and he's like, what, did you lose my registration? Went down there to the DMV, chewed him out that he had to register again. And he's like, what, did you lose my registration? Went down there to the DMV, chewed them out that he had to re-register because he already registered, where's the paperwork? But just kind of views the world from a different lens. I thought, but on everything, he's the character.

Now he just lives by digging up bottles and finding treasures in them. But he notices the injustices in the world. He notices them in a very interesting, and speaks up. And he's always like, why doesn't everybody else speak up about their car registration? Yeah. And then there was like, you know, Devo comes to mind

because he was such a unique character as far as just, for one, he would have lived to be 120 because the amount of chemicals and everything else he put into his body and still, hey man, you know, one of those guys, he could always get a man, you know, one of those guys. You can always get a dime, you know, always spare a dime, spare a dime, and you have a bum change. I'd see him sometimes and I'd be gone and then go to New York to visit my sister or something. And I'd, sure enough, there's Devo on the street. What do you know? And you go visit him in the

hospital because he got bit by 27 hobo spider bites. He was just always rough but charismatic, vital, like the vitality of life was in him, but it was just so permeated with drugs and alcohol too. It's kind of interesting. I wonder what, because I've met people like that. They're like, they're just, yeah, joy permeates the whole way of being. And they're like, they've been through some shit. They have scars, they've gotten rough, but they're always got a big smile. There's a guy I met in the jungle and they Pico, he lost the leg and he, uh,

drives a boat and he just always has a big smile. Even given that, like the hardship he has to get, everything requires a huge amount of work. But he's just big smile and stories in those. There's something in those eyes. Something about enduring difficulty that makes you able to appreciate life and look at it and smile. Any advice for her to take a road trip again or if somebody else is thinking of hopping on a freight train? It's way easier now because you have a map on your phone and you're kind of cheating now.

It's not about the destiny, because the map is about the destination. Right. But here is like, you don't wanna give a damn. Yeah, right, the train's where you're going. You're not going anywhere. Exactly. I say do it, like go out and do things,

especially when you're young. Experiences and stuff help create the person you will be in the future. Doing things that you think like, oh, I don't wanna do that, I'm a little scared of that. I mean, that's what you gotta do. You just get out of your comfort zone and you will grow as a person

and you'll go through a lot of wild experiences along the way. Say yes to life in that way. Say yes to life, yeah. I love the boredom of it. Freight train riding is very boring. Yeah, okay. And like you'll wait for hours for a train that never comes

and then you'll go to the store and come back and it'll be gone. You're like, no. And I remember we went to jail, we got out and then. How'd you end up in jail? Oh, you know, it was things trespassing on a train but we were riding a train and my brother woke up and they had a dead outland on his head

and he hit the train and fell on him. We woke up and we were laughing. That's got to be some kind of bad omen. Then we were looking out of the train and we saw a train worker look and saw us. He went, like, oh, we know that's a bad omen. Anyway, sure enough, the police stopped the train. Somebody had seen us on it, and they searched it, got us, and threw us in jail.

It was not a big deal. We were in jail a couple days. But when we got out, of course, we were in some podunk town in Indiana and we didn't know where to catch out of there. And so we were at some factory and we just banned in factory and we were right there for like four days. No train that was going slow enough that we could catch. And then we found this big old roll of aluminum foil.

And now I gotta apologize to this woman because we were so bored just sitting there. We built these like hats, you know, like horns coming out every which way and loops and just sitting there. And then it was that night and some minivan pulled up to this train that was going by too fast. We were like, entertaining yourself with whatever you can. Poor lady was terrified. So hitchhiking was tough. I didn't like hitchhiking just because you're depending on other people. And it is not, I don't know why you just want to be independent, but if you do

meet really cool people, a lot of times there's really nice people that pick you up and that's cool. But I just personally actually didn't do it a lot. And I wasn't, you know, if you're on the streets for 10 years, you'll end up doing it a lot more because you need to get from point A to point B. But we just tried to avoid it as much as we could because it didn't appeal to us as much. Well, one downside of hitchhiking is people talk a lot. Oh, they do. So it's both the pro and the con. Yeah, yeah.

Because they'll, you know, sometimes you just want to be sort of alone with your thoughts or, there is a kind of lack of freedom in having to listen to a person that's giving you a ride. It's so true. And then you don't know how to react to it. I mean, I was young, I remember I got picked up, I was probably 19 or something. And then I was just like, hey, how's it going?

She's like, my husband just died. And then this all, and I got diagnosed with cancer and this or that, and pretty bitter and all that, and understandably so. But you're just like, I have no idea how to respond here. And so then you're young and you had to be nice. And I remember that ride being interesting because I didn't really know how to respond here. And so then you're young and you gotta be nice. And I remember that ride being interesting because I didn't really know how to respond. And she was angry and going through some stuff and dumping it out.

She didn't have anyone else to dump it out on. I was like, wow. I'm gonna take the freight train next time. So how'd you end up in Siberia? I'll try to keep it a little bit short on the how. But the long story short was I had a brother that's adopted and when he grew up, he wanted to find his biological mom and just tell her thanks.

And so he did. And when he was, he was probably 20 or something, he found his biological mom, told her thanks. Turns out he had a brother that was going to go over to Russia and help build this orphanage. And that brother was about my age. I mean, I remember at that time I read this verse that said, if you're in the darkness and see no light, just continue following me. Basically I was like, okay,

I'm going to take that to the bank, even though I don't know if it's true or not. And then the only glimpse of like light I got in all that was when I heard about that orphanage, you go build that orphanage. And I prayed about it and I felt, and I can't explain, like it brought me to tears. I felt so strongly that I should go. And so I was like, well, that's a clear call.

I'm just gonna do it. Yes, I just bought a ticket, got a visa for a year, and then I went and helped build an orphanage. And we got that built, but he was an American and I wanted to live with Russians to learn a language. And so he sent me to a neighboring village to live with a couple Russian families that needed a hand, somebody to watch their kids and cut their hay and milk the cow and all that. So, uh, I found myself in that little Russian village, just getting to know these two guys and their families. It was a, it was pretty fascinating.

And of course I didn't know the language yet and they were two awesome dudes. Both of them had been in prison and met each other in prison. And like, we're really close cause they had like found God in prison together and, and stayed to get, uh, you got out and, uh, stayed connected. And, uh, so I'd bounce backs between those two families and they used to always tell me about their third buddy. They'd been in prison with who was a native fur trapper now in the north. And so they'd go meet our buddy up North.

And one day that guy came through to sell furs in the city and he like invited me to come live with him. And my visa was about to expire, but I was like, when I come back, I'll come. And so I went back home, earned some more money, and did some construction or whatever, then went back and headed North to hang out with Yura and fur trap and that started a whole new, you know, opened a whole new world that I didn't

know about. Before we talk about Yura and fur trapping, let's actually rewind and would you describe that moment when you were in the darkness as a crisis of faith? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. It was like, it was darkness in that I didn't know how to parse, you know, what is this thing that's my faith and what's the wheat and what's the chaff and how do I get through it? And I basically just clung to keeping it really simple. And oddly enough, in my Christian path, that God was actually defined in a certain way,

God is love. And I was just like, that's the only thing I'm gonna cling to, and I'm gonna try to express that in my life in whichever way I can, and just trust that if I do that, if I act like I, you know, I've heard this lately, but if you just act like you believe, over time that world kind of opens to you.

When I said I would go to Russia, I prayed and I was like, Lord, I don't see you. I don't know. But I got this, what I felt like was a clear call. I have only one request, and that is that you would give me the faith to match my action. I'm choosing to believe. I could choose not to because whatever,

but I'm gonna choose to act, and I just asked to have faith someday. And then, honestly, for the whole first year I went through, that was a very crazy time for me, learning the language, being isolated, being misunderstood, blah, blah, blah. But then trying to approach all that with a loving, open heart. And then I came back and I realized that that prayer had kind of been answered. That wasn't the end of my journey, but it was, I was like, whoa, that was like my deepest request that I could come up with

and somehow that had been answered. So through that year, you were just like, first of all, you couldn't speak the language. That's really tough. That's really tough. It's tough because it's unlike on a loan where, because not only can you not speak and you feel isolated, but you're also misunderstood all the time.

So you seem like an idiot and all that. And so that was tough. I felt very alone at that time, at certain times in that journey. But you were sort of radiating, like you said, leads with love. So you were radiating this kind of camaraderie. I was really intentional about trying to,

I don't know why I'm here. I just know that I, you know, that that's my call is to love one another. And so I would just try to like, and that would have meant digging people's wells. It might meant just going and visiting that old laid babushka up at the house that's lonely. And that was really cool.

I got to talk to some fascinating ladies and stuff and then go to that village, help those families. I'm going to be like, cut the hay, be the hardest worker I can be because that's my goal here. I didn't have any other agenda or anything except to try to live a life of love and I couldn't define it beyond that. What was it like learning the Russian language?

It was super interesting. I think I had the thought while I was learning it, one that it was way too hard. Like if I would have just learned Spanish or German, I would be so much farther. But here I am a year in and I'm like, how do you say I want cheese properly? Yeah.

And then, but at the same time, it was really cool to learn a language that language that I thought in a lot of ways was richer than English. It's a very rich language. I remember there was a comedy act in Russian, but he was saying, you know, one word you can't have in English is, ney de piri pilsa, meaning like, I didn't drink enough to get drunk, you know, that type thing. But it's just that you can make up these words using different prefixes and suffixes and like blend them in a way that is quite unique and interesting and honestly would be really good for poetry because it also doesn't have sentence structure and the same way English does, the words can be jumbled in a way.

And somehow in the process of jumbling, some humor, some musicality comes out. It's interesting. You can be witty in Russian much easier than you can in English. Witty and funny, and also with poetry, you can say profound things by messing with words and the order of words, which is hilarious because you had a great conversation with Joe Rogan

and on that program you talked about how to say I love you in Russian, which is hilarious. It was for me the first time, I don't know why, you were a great person to articulate the flexibility and the power of the Russian language. That's really interesting. Because you were saying like, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you. You could say every single order, every single combination of ordering of those words

has the same meaning, but slightly different. You could, like, and it would change the meaning if you took ya out and just said, luvlu tibia. There's like a different emphasis or maybe, or ya tibia luvlu, or something, you know, like there's all these different. Or just tibia luvlu also.

Right, exactly. So it is rich, and that one, it was interesting coming from an English context and getting a glimpse of that. And then wondering about all those Russian authors that we all appreciate that, oh, we actually aren't getting the full deal here. Oh yeah, definitely. I've recently become a fan actually

of Larisa Volokonskaya and Richard Pervier. They're these world famous translators of Russian literature. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Tchaikov, Pushkin, Bulgakov, Pasternak, they've helped me understand just how much of an art form translation really is. Some authors do that art more translatable than others, like Dostoevsky is more translatable, but then you can still spend a week on one sentence.

Like just how do I exactly capture this very important sentence. But I think what's more powerful is not like literature, but conversation, which is one of the reasons I've been carrying and feeling the responsibility of having conversations with Russian speakers, because I can still see the music of it. I can still see the music of it. I can still see the wit of it. And in conversation comes out like really interesting kinds of wisdom.

You like, when I listen to like world leaders that speak Russian speak, and I see the translation and it loses, it loses the irony. The, like in between the words. If you translate them literally, you lose the reference in there to the history of the peoples. Yeah, for sure.

And I've definitely seen that on, like, you know, and if you listen to, I think it probably was a Putin speech or something, and you just see that, oh wow, something major is being lost in translation. You can actually see it happen. I wouldn't be surprised if that wasn't the case with the, you know, that whole greatest tragedy is the fall of the Soviet Union

that I hear him being quoted as saying all the time. I bet you there's something in there that's being lost in translation that is interesting. I think the thing I see the most lost in translation is the humor. I'll just say that that was the hard, that was the tangibly the hardest part about learning the language is that humor comes last

and you have to like wait, you have to wait that whole year, you know, or however long it takes you to learn a language to be able to start getting the humor. You know, some of it comes through, but you miss so much nuance. And that was really difficult in interaction with people to just be like, when there's humor going on and you're totally oblivious to it.

Yeah, everybody's laughing and you're like. Yeah. Trying to laugh along. What did they make of you? To be honest. This person that came from no, descended upon us. All full of love. If I had a nickel for every time I heard like,

oh, Americans suck, but you're a good American. You're like the only good American I've ever met. But then of course they never met. Yeah, exactly, you're the only one. But you know, I think because I was just, tried to work hard, tried to be more useful than I was a drain, all that, they all, I think it was pretty appreciated me out there.

I definitely heard that a lot, so that's nice. Can you talk about their way of life? So like when you're doing fur trapping. As a fur trapping was an interesting experience. Basically what you do in October or something, you'll go out to your hunting cabin and you'll have like three hunting cabins. You'll go stock them with noodles or whatever it is.

And then for the next couple months or however long, you'll go from one cabin. Usually the guys are just out there doing this on their own. So they'll go however long you'll go from one cabin Usually the guys are just out there doing this on their own so they'll go out and they'll Go from one cabin and each cabin will have five or six trap lines going out of it every day It'll take a half a day to walk to the end of your trap line open all the traps and a half the day to get Back and they'll do that This will spend a week at a cabin open up all the traps and then it'll take a day to hike over to the other Cabin go to that one open up all those traps and then it'll take a day to hike over to the other cabin, go to that one, open up all those traps and then there and then like

three weeks later or so they'll end up back at the first cabin and then check all the traps. And so it's kind of that rhythm and they'll do that for, uh, you know, a couple, few months during the winter and you're trapping sable. They're called sable. Like pine Martin is what we would have the equivalent of over here. And what is it? It's like a weasel, a furry little weasel, and they make coats out of it.

And so when I went, he showed me how to open the trap, showed me the ropes, gave me a topographical map. There's one cabin, there's the other. And we parted ways for like five weeks. We did run into each other once in the middle there at a cabin, but other than that, you're just off by yourself, hoping to shoot a grouse or something to add to your noodles and make your meal better,

catch a fish and then working really hard, trying not to get lost and stuff. How do you get from one trap and location to the next? That's funny, because it was both basically by landmarks and feel. I didn't have compass and things like that. By feel. I got myself into trouble once,

and the first time I went to one cabin, I got myself into trouble. First time I went to the other cabin, I nailed it. And so I had two different experiences on my first trip. But the one that I nailed it, I remember I had to go and it's like a day hike. I was like, well, I know the cabin's south. And so if I just walk south, the sun should be on the left in the morning and right in front of me in the middle of the day. And by evening it should end up at my right and just kind of guess what time it is and follow along.

And it takes all day. And kiddin' not, I ended up like 100 yards from the cabin. And I was like, whoa, this is the trail. And that's the cabin, like, oh, amazing. And then the other time I went out and heading over the mountains and I thought, hours had passed, I probably had gotten slightly lost. And then I thought I was halfway there, so I

thought, okay, I'm going to sit down and cook some food, get a drink. I'm thirsty. So I sat down and went to start a fire and my matches had gotten all wet because the snow had fallen on me and soaked me and I didn't have them wrapped in plastic. I was like, oh no, I can't drink water. So I was like, well, I'm just going to power through. I'm halfway there. I kept hiking and then I realized it was getting night. And then I realized I was at the halfway point because I saw this rock that I was like, oh no, that's the halfway point. I was like, I can't do this. And so I need to go get water. I ended up having to divert down the mountain and head to the water.

I ended up, you know, there's a whole ordeal. I had to take my skis off because I was going through an old forest fire burn. So they were all really close trees, but then the snow was like this deep. So I was just trudging through and just wishing a bear would eat me. Get it over with. But I finally made it down to the water,

chopped a hole through the ice, was able to take a sip. So you're severely dehydrated. Severely dehydrated. And I- Exhausted. Exhausted. Cold. Cold, like, you know, you feel sort of nervous here then over your head. And then I got down to the river, chopped a whole nice drink, hiked up the river,

and eventually got to the other cabin. It was probably three in the morning or something. He chopped a hole in the ice to drink. To get some water. He had to like, kkkk. This gotta be like one of the worst days of your life. You know, it was a bad day for sure. I've had a few.

But it was a bad day. And here's what was funny is I got to the cabin at like three in the morning and I brushed over a lot of the misery that I had felt. And I laid down, I was about to go to sleep. And then Europe charges in from there. I was like, whoa, dude, Europe, what are you doing? I was like, how's it going?

He said, oh, it sucks. And he laid down and just fell asleep. I fell asleep and I was like, oh, that's funny. The last few weeks that we've been apart, who knows what he went through? Who knows why he was there at that time at night? All just summarized and it sucked. We went to sleep and the next morning we parted waves and who knows what happened. You didn't really tell them.

Never knew. Neither of us said what happened. It's just like, Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. And he probably was through similar kinds of things. Like what gave you strength in those, in those hours when you're, you know, going to waste high snow, all of that. You're laughing, but like, that's hard.

Yeah. You know that Russian phrase, глаза боец руки делу? Eyes are frayed, hands do. I'm sure there's a poetic way to translate that. Right, it's kind of like, you know, just put one foot in front of the other. You know, when you think about what you have to do,

it's really intimidating, but you just know, if one foot in front of the other. You know, when you think about what you have to do, it's really intimidating. And, but you just know if I just do it, if I just do it, if I just keep trudging, eventually I'll get there. And pretty soon you realize you'll have covered a couple of kilometers. Right. And so when you're really in it in those moments, I guess you're just, you're just putting your head down and getting through. I've had similar moments.

There's wisdom to that. Like once, just take it one step at a time. One step at a time. I think that a lot. Honestly, I tell myself that a lot when I'm about to do something really hard, just, you know, go side by side with your dealer, one step at a time. I'm just going to get, don't like sit there and think, oh, that's a long ways. Just go.

And then you'll look back and you covered a bunch of ground. One of the things I've realized that was helpful in the jungle, that was one of the biggest realizations for me, is like, it really sucks right now. But when I look back at the end of the day, I won't really remember exactly how much it sucked. I'll have a vague notion of it sucking, and I'll remember the good thing. So being dehydrated, I'll remember drinking water.

And I won't really remember the hours of feeling like shit. That's absolutely true. I got a tone, it's so funny how like this awareness of that, having been through it and then being aware of it means next time you face it, you're like, you know what? Once this is over, I'm gonna look back on it. And it's gonna be like that and nothing. And I'll actually laugh about it and think it was,

it's the thing I'll remember. You know, I remember that story of that miserable day going down to the ice and I can smile about it now. And now that I know that, I can be in a miserable position and realize that that's what the outcome will be once it's over. It's just gonna be a story. If you survive though.

If you survive and that can be. So you mentioned you've learned about hunger during these times. Like when was like the hungriest you've gotten? It was the first time, so to continue the story slightly, I went for trapping with that guy and then it turned out all his cousins were these native nomadic reindeer herders.

And after I like earned his trust and he liked me a lot, he took me out to his cousins who were all these, you know, nomads living in teepees. I was like, this is awesome. I didn't even know people still lived like this. And they were really open and welcoming because their cousin just brought me out there and vouched for me.

But it was during fencing season and fencing in Siberia for those reindeers, like an incredible thing. You take an axe, you go out and you just build these 30 kilometer loop fences with just logs interlocking. It's tons of work and all these guys are more efficient bodies. They're better at it. And I'm just like working less efficiently and also a lot bigger, dude. But we're all just on the same rations kind of, and, and I got down, that was like 155 pounds, you know, getting down pretty dang skinny for my six, three frame and just working really hard. And then in the spring in Siberia, there's no like, there's not much to forage, you

know, in the fall you can have pine nuts and this and that, but in the spring you're just stuck with whatever random food you've got. And so that's where I lost the most weight and felt the most hungry and had a lot of other issues. I was new to that type of work and so working as hard as I could, but also making mistakes, chopping myself with the ax and getting injured,

all kinds of stuff, you know? So injuries plus very low calorie intake. Low, yep. And exhausted. I remember if you got, you were this poor son of a gun to get stuck slicing the bread, you know, like you're here cutting the bread and somebody throws all the spoons

and drops the pot of soup there. And it's like, before you can even done slicing your slice, all the meat's like gone from the bowl. Everybody else has grabbed the spoon in midair and you're just like, ah, hoping this one little noodles are gonna give me a lot of nourishment. Wow. So everybody gets that me.

Yeah. First come first serve, I guess. Cause it's like all the dudes out there working on the fence. So you mentioned the ax and you gave me a present. This is a probably the most bad-ass present I've ever gotten. So tell me the story of this, of this axe. So the natives, when I got there, I thought, you know, I grew up on a farm.

I thought I was pretty good with an axe, but they do tons of work with those things. And, um, and I really grew to love their type of acts or style of acts. And I'll just an axe but they do tons of work with those things and I really grew to love their type of axe, their style of axe and just an axe in general. They'd always say it's the one tool you need to survive in the wilderness and I agree. This one has certain design features that the natives, that was unique to the Evenki, to the natives i was with one is with these russian heads or the soviet heads whatever they had they're a little wider on top here meaning you can put the handle through from the top like a tomahawk and it uh that means you're not dealing with a wedge and if it ever loosens and you're swinging it only gets tighter it doesn't fly off and so that's

something that's kind of cool. Then they have what's, what they do that's unique is so you can see, and there's the Wolverine X. So it's got the little Wolverine head in honor of that Wolverine I fought on the show. So you have actually two axes. This is one of the small, there's a little smaller. I didn't want to make it too small cause you need a something to actually work out there. You need something kind of serious. But then they sharpen

it from one side. So if you're right-handed, you sharpen it from the right side. And that means when you're in the woods and living, there's a lot of times where you're, whether you're making a table or a sleigh or an ax handle or whatever you're doing, that you're holding the wood and doing this work. And it makes it really good for that planing. The other thing it is, especially in Northern woods, all the trees are like this big, you know, that you're never cutting down a big giant tree. And so when you swing with a single sided acts like this, sharpen from the one side, it really, with your right hand swing like this, it really bites into the wood and gives you a, because with that,

if you can picture it, that angle is gonna cause deflection. And without that angle on your right-handed swing, it just like bites in there like crazy. And so that, there's other little, you know, the handle was made by some Amish guys in Canada. This is all hand forged by- Oh, it's hand forged. Yeah.

I mean, yeah, it looks- And so it's a pretty sweet little- Yeah, it's hand forged. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it looks... And so it's a pretty sweet little... Yeah, it's amazing. There's other thing, you know, like I slightly rounded this pole here. It's just a little nuance. Cause when you pound a stake in, if you picture it, if it's convex,

when you're pounding it, it's gonna blow the fibers apart. If it has just a slight concave, it helps hold the fibers together. And so it's a little nuanced, not too flat, because you want to still be able to use the back as you would. What kind of stuff are you using the axe for?

Oh, so the axe is super important to chop through ice in a winter situation, which you probably, hopefully won't need. But what I use an axe all the time for is when I'm, when it's wet and rainy and you need to start a fire. It's hard to get to the middle of dry wood if it's just a knife or a saw. And so I can go out there, find a dead tall tree, dead standing tree, chop it down, split it apart, split it open, get to the dry wood on the inside, shave it some little curls, and have a fire going pretty

fast. And so if I have an axe, I feel always confident that I can get a quick fire in whatever weather. And I wouldn't feel the same without it in that regard. So that's the main thing. Of course, you can use it. I use it if you're taking an animal apart or if you're, all kinds of what else, building a shelter, skinning teepee poles or whatever you're doing. What's the use of a saw versus an axe?

I greatly prefer an axe. A saw though, its value goes up quite a bit when you're in hardwoods. Like when you're in a hardwood, oaks and hickory and things like that, they're a lot harder to chop. So a saw is pretty nice in those situations, I'd say.

In those situations, I'd like to have both. In the Northwoods and in more coniferous forests, I don't think there's enough advantages that a saw incurs. With a good axe, now you'll see people with little camp axes and stuff, and they just don't think they like axes. It's like, well, you haven't actually tried to try a good one first and get good with it. The one thing about an ax, they're dangerous.

So you need to like practice, always control it with two hands, make sure you're not, you know where it's gonna go. It doesn't hit you or when you're chopping, like say you're creating something that you're not doing it on rocks and stuff so that it's, you're doing on top of wood so that when you're hitting the ground, you're not dulling your ax. You know, there's, you gotta be a little bit thoughtful about it.

Have you ever injured yourself on an ax in the early days? Oh yeah. That first, so I'd gotten a knee surgery and then about three months later, I had torn my ACL and went over to Russia and I was like, well, I got a good knee, it's okay. And then that's when I was building that fence that first time.

And, uh, at one point I chopped my rubber boot with my ax cause it reflected off and I was new to them. And, uh, and I was really frustrated cause I'd done it before and, uh, and the native guy was like, Oh, you know, we got, I think there's a boot we left, you know, a few years ago, we left a boot like four kilometers that way. So we got the reindeer, took them, rode them over. Sure enough, there's a stump with a boot upside down. Pull it off, put it on, I was like, sweet, I'm back in business.

Went back, couple days later, ping, chomp, chopped it, cut your foot, cut my rubber boot, and I was just like, dang it. And I was mad enough that I just grabbed the ax and swung it at the tree and it just one-handed and like deflected off and bam right into my knee. Oh no. I was like, oh I fell down. I was like, oh my gosh, because you get your axe really razor sharp and then just swung it into my knee. I didn't even want to look. I was like, oh no. I looked and it wasn't a huge wound because it had hit right on

the bone of my knee, but it split the bone, cut a tendon there, and I was out in the middle of the woods. So I literally like, I knew I was in shock because I'm just gonna go back to TP right now. So I like ran back to TP, laid down, and honestly I was stuck there for a few days. I was in so much pain and my other knee was bad. It was like rough.

I couldn't even, I literally couldn't even walk at all or move. I had to like, there was a plastic bag, I had to like poop in it and like roll to the edge of the teepee, like shove it under the moss. Like, I guess just totally immobilized. I guess that should teach you to not act when you're in a state of frustration or anger. There you go. I mean, it's such a lesson too. There were so many of those. And it was always, I was always in a little bit over my head, but like I said, you kind of do that enough and you make a lot of mistakes.

But every time you learn, now it's like an extension of my arm, that's not gonna happen because I just know how it works now. You mentioned wet wood. How do you start a fire when everything's around you is wet? I mean, it depends on your environment, but I will say in most of the forests that I spend a lot of time in, in all the Northwoods,

the best thing you can do is find a dead standing tree. So it can be downpouring rain and you chop that tree down. And then when you split it open, no matter how much it's been raining, it'll be dry on the inside. So chop that tree down, chop a piece, you know, a foot long piece out and then split that thing open and then split it again.

And then you get to that inner dry wood. And then you try to do this maybe under a spruce tree or under your own body so that it's not getting rained on while you're doing it. Make a bunch of little curls that'll catch a flame or light. And then you make a lot more kindling and little pieces of dry wood than you think. Cause what will happen, you'll light it and it'll burn through and it's like, dang it. So just be patient.

You're going to be fine. You know, like make a nice pile of curls that you can light or spark and then get a lot of good dry kindling and then don't be afraid to just boom, boom, boom, pile a bunch of wood on and make a big old fire, get warm as fast as you can. It's amazing how much of a recharge it is when you're cold and wet. You can throw relatively wet wood on top of that.

Once you get that going, yeah, then it'll dry as it goes, but you need to be able to split open and get all that nice dry wood on the inside. I saw that you mentioned that you look for fat wood. What's fat wood? So on a lot of pine trees, a place where the tree was injured when it was alive, it like pumps sap to it. And then this is a good point because I use this a lot. It pumps that tree full of sap and then years later the tree dies, dries out, rots away, but that sap infused wood,

it's like turpentine in there. It's oily and so if it gets wet, you can still light it, it repulses water. And so if you can find that in a rainstorm, you can just make a little pile of those shavings, get the crappiest spark or quickest light and it'll just sit there and burn like a factory fire starter. It's really, really nice. That's good to spot. It's a good thing to keep your eye out for. Yeah, that's really fascinating. And then you make this thing.

That's just to get the sauna going fast. That was just doing that. What was that? That was oil? Oh, it was used motor oil I had if you mix it with some sawdust and then, no, it's just burnt. It's burnt. It's kind of like homemade fatwood. I don't know how many times I've watched Happy People, A Year in the Taiga by Wanda Herzog.

You've talked about this movie. Where is that located relative to where you were? So there's this big river called the Yenisei that feeds through the middle of Russia, and there's a bunch of tributaries off of it. And one of the tributaries is called the Podkhamenna Tunguska, and I was up that river. And just a little ways north is another river called the Bakhta, and that's where that village is where they filmed Happy People.

So in Siberian terms, we're neighbors. So. Nice. Similar environment, similar place. That fur trapper that I was with knew the guy in the films. What would you say about their way of life, maybe in the way you've experienced it, and the way you saw in Happy People?

There's something really, really powerful about, uh, spending that much time being independent, you know, depending on what we talked about a little earlier, but you're putting yourself in these situations all the time where you're uncomfortable, where it's hard, but then you're rising to the occasion. You're making it happen. There's nobody, when you're fur trapping by yourself, there's nobody else to look at, to blame for anything that goes wrong. It's just yourself that you're reliant on. And there's something about the natural rhythms that you are in when you're that connected to the natural world that really does feel like that's what we're

designed for. And so there's a psychological benefit you gain from spending that much time in that realm. And for that reason, I think that people that are connected to those ways are able to tap into a particular, I noticed it a lot with the natives. So if I met the natives in the village, I would think of them as unhappy people.

They drink a lot, they're always fighting. The murder rate is through the roof, the suicide rate's through the roof. But, and you meet those same people out in the woods, living that way of life, I thought, these are happy people. And it's kind of an interesting juxtaposition to be the same person. But then I lived in a native village

that had the reindeer herding going on around it and everybody kind of benefited because of that. I also went to a native village that they didn't hold those ways anymore. And so everybody was just in the village life and it just felt like a dark place. Whereas the other native village, it was rough in the village

because everybody was drunk all the time. But it had that escape and it had that escape valve. And then once you're out there, it's just a whole different world. And it was such an odd juxtaposition. It's funny that the people that go trapping experience that happiness and still don't have a self-awareness

to like stop themselves from then drinking and doing all the dark stuff when they go to the village. It's strange that you're not able to, you're in it, you're happy, but you're not able to sort of reflect on that, the nature of that happiness. Pete It's really weird. I've thought about that a lot and I don't know the answer. It's like, there's a huge draw to comfort. There's a huge, and it's all multifaceted and somewhat complex because you can be out in the woods and have this really cool life. I will say it's a little bit different for men than women

because the men are living the dream as far as what I would like. So you're hunting and fishing and managing reindeer and you got all these adventures. So what ends up happening is that a lot more guys than young men out there in the woods. And so there's a draw also, I think, to go to the village probably to find a woman. And then there's a draw of technology and the new things. But then once they're there, honestly, alcohol becomes so overwhelming that everything else

kind of just fiddles away. And I just said. But it's funny that the comfort you find, you either draw to comfort, but once you get to the comfort, once you find the comfort, within that comfort, you become the lesser version of yourself. Yeah, for sure. It's weird.

What a lesson for us. Like we need to keep struggling. Yeah, a lot of times you have to force yourself in that. So like if we took them as an example, I mean a lot of times you'd drag this drunk guy into the woods, literally just drag him into the woods, and then he'd sober up. And then he was like a month blackout drunk

and now he's sobered up and now boom, back into life, back into being a knowledgeable, capable person. And because comfort's so available to us all, you almost have to force yourself into that situation, plan it out, okay, I'm gonna go do that. I'm gonna do that hard thing and then deal with the consequences when I'm there. What do you learn from that on the nature of happiness?

What does it take to be happy? Happiness is interesting because it's complex and multifaceted. It includes a lot of things that are out of your control and a lot of things that are in your control. And it's quite the moving target in life. You know what I mean? So one of the things that really impacted me

when I was a young man and I read the Gulag Archipelago was don't pursue happiness because the ingredients to happiness can be taken from you outside of your control, your health, your, but pursue like a spiritual fullness. Pursue, pursue, I think he words it duty. And then happiness may come alongside or it may not. He gives the example that I thought was really interesting in the prison camps. Everybody's trying to survive and they've made that their ultimate goal.

I will get through this. They've all basically turned into animals in pursuit of that goal and lying and cheating and stealing. Then he was like, somehow the corrupt Orthodox church produced these little babushkas who were like candles in the middle of all this darkness because they did not allow their soul to get corrupted. And he's like, what they did do is they died.

They all died, but they were lights while they were alive and lost their lives, but they didn't lose their souls. So for myself, that was really powerful to read and realize that the pursuit of happiness wasn't exactly what I wanted to aim at. I wanted to aim at living out my life according to love, like we talked about earlier. Trying to be that candle.

Trying to be that candle, yeah, make that your ideal. And then in doing so, it was interesting. So for me personally, my personal experience with that is I thought when I went to Russia that I kind of gave up. I was like in my 20s, I spent my whole 20s living in teepees and doing all this stuff that I thought I should be getting a job, I should be pursuing a career, I should get an education of some sort. Like what am I doing for my future? But I felt I knew where my purpose was, I knew what my calling was, I I was gonna do it. And it sounds glamorous now when I talk about it,

but it sucked a lot of the times. And it was a lot of loneliness, a lot of giving up what I wanted, a lot of watching people I cared about. You put all this effort in and you just see the people that you put all this effort in and just die and this and that and then commit. It was that happened all the time.

And then the other thing I thought I gave up was a relationship, because you couldn't, I wasn't gonna find a partner over there. And so interestingly enough, now in life, I can look back and be like, whoa, weird, those two things I thought I gave up is where I've been like almost provided for the most in life.

Now I have this career guiding people in the wilderness that I love. Like I genuinely love it. I find purpose in life. Now I have this career guiding people in the wilderness that I love, like I genuinely love it. I find purpose in it. I know it's healthy and good for people. And then I have an amazing wife and an amazing family. Like how did that happen? But I didn't exactly aim at it.

I consciously, in a way, I mean, I hoped it was tangential, but I aimed at something else, which was those lessons I kind of got from the Gulag Archipelago. So you have, just because you mentioned Gulag Archipelago, I got to go there. You have some suffering in your family history, whether it's the Armenian-Assyrian genocide or the Nazi occupation of France. Maybe you could tell the story of that. The survival thing, it runs in your blood, it seems. I love history. I find so much richness in knowing what other people

went through and find so much perspective in my own place in the world. I have the advantage of it in my direct family. My grandparents, they went through and find so much perspective in my own place in the world. I have the advantage of in my direct family, my grandparents, they went through the Armenian genocide. They were Assyrians, which was like a Christian minority, indigenous people in the Middle East. They lived in Northwestern Iran. During the chaos of World War I, the Ottoman Empire was collapsing and it had all kinds of issues. One of its issues was it had a big minority group and it thought it would be a good time to get rid of it. They justified it in all the ways you can. There were some people that were rebelling or this or that, but ultimately it was just a big collective guilt and extermination policy against the Armenians and the Assyrians and my grandparents.

My grandma was 13 at the time and my grandpa was 17, which is interesting because it happened almost 100 years ago, but my dad was born when my grandma was pretty old. But my grandmother, her dad, was taken out to be shot. The Turks were coming in and rounding up all the men and they took them out to be shot. Then they took my grandma and her. She had seven brothers and sisters and her mom, and they drove her out into the desert. Basically, her dad got taken out to be shot, so his name was Shalman Umar, or whatever, took him out. They were all tied up, all shot. Needed to say a quick prayer before they shot him,

but he fell down and he found he wasn't hit. And usually, of course, they'd come up and stab everybody or finish him off, but there was some kind of an alarm and all the soldiers rushed off and he found himself in the bodies and was able to untie himself. They were naked and you know hungry and all that and he ran out of there, escaped, went into a building and found the loaf of bread wrapped in his shirt and was able to escape. He fled. He never saw his family. To continue the story, my grandma got taken with her mother and brothers and sisters. They just

drove them into the desert until they died basically and run them around in circles and this and that and then all the raping and pillaging that accompanies it. and pillaging that accompanies it. And at one point her mom had the baby and the baby died and her mom just collapsed and said, I just can't go any further. And my grandma and her sister like picked her up to T we got to keep going and like picked her up and they left the baby along with the other everybody else had died. It was just the three of them left. And somehow they bumbled across this British military camp and were rescued. Neither the sister nor my great-grandmother ever really recovered from what I understand. But my grandma did. At the same time, in another village in Iran there, the Turks came in and were burning down my grandpa's village and they caught, and my grandpa's dad was in a wheelchair

and he had like some money belt and he stuffed all his money in it and gave it to grandpa and just told him to run and don't turn back. And they came in the front door as he was running out the back and he never saw his dad again, but he turned around and saw the house on fire. Never knew what happened to his sister. So he was just alone. He ran. Yeah, at some point he, I can't remember, he lost his money belt and he took his jacket off, forgot it was in there. Something happened. Anyway, so he was in a refugee camp. He ended up getting taken in by some Jesuit missionary.

So anyway, both of them had lost basically everything. And then at some point they met in Baghdad, started a family, immigrated to France, and then it just so happened to be right before World War II. And so then the Nazis invaded. My aunt, she's still alive, but she actually met a resistance fighter, you know, for the French and under a bridge somewhere and they, and they fell in love

and she got married. So she had kind of an in on the, on the French resistance at one point. And of course they were all hungry. They'd recently immigrated but also had this Nazi occupation and all that. And so the Uncle Joe, the resistance fighter guy told him like, hey, we're going to storm this noodle factory. Like come. And so they stormed the noodle factory and all my aunts around in there and were like throwing out noodles into wheelbarrows and everybody was running. Then the Nazis came back and took it back over and shot a bunch of people and everything. And grandpa, because he had already come from where he came from, was paranoid, so he buried all the noodles out in the garden.

And then my two aunts got stuck in that factory overnight with all the Nazi guards or whatever. And then the Nazi guards went out from house to house to find everybody that had had noodles and punish them. But they didn't find my grandpa's, fortunately. They searched his house, but not the garden. And then so they had noodles and somehow it must have been in the same factory or something, but olive oil. And they just lived off of that for the whole, all the whole war years. My aunts ended up getting out of the, they hid behind boxes and crates overnight and stuff. And the resistance stormed again in the morning and this, they got away and stuff. But anyway, chaos. So when they moved to America, I will say the most patriotic family ever, they loved it. It was

like paradise here. I mean, that's a lot to go through. What lessons do you draw from that on perseverance? Look, I'm just one generation away from all that suffering. Like my aunts and uncles and dad and stuff were the kids of these people. And somehow I don't have that. Like what happened to all that trauma? Like it's like somehow my grandparents bore it and then they were able to build a family, but not just a family, but not just a family, but a happy family. I knew all my aunts and uncles and I didn't know them, they died before me, but it was

so much joy. The family reunions were the best thing ever at the Jonas'. It's just like how in one generation did you go from that to that? And it must have been a great sacrifice of some sort to not pass that much resentment or, like what did they do to break that chain in one generation? Do you think it works the other way? Like where their ability to escape genocide, to escape Nazi occupation,

gave them a gratitude for life. It's not a trauma in the sense like, you're forever bearing it. The flip side of that is just gratitude to be alive when you know so many people did not survive. Yeah, it must be because the only footage I saw of my grandma was like they were all the kids and stuff and they were cooking up a rabbit that they were raising or whatever.

But a joyful woman, you could see it in her and she must have understood how fortunate she was and been so grateful for it and so thankful for every one of those 11 kids she had. So I recognize it again in my dad because because my dad went through a really slow, kind of painful decline in his health. And he had diabetes, ended up losing one leg, and so he lost his job. He had to watch his mom, or my mom go to school.

He had long, all he wanted to do was be a provider and be like a family man. I bet the best time in his life was when his kids ran to him and gave him a hug. But then all of a sudden he found himself in a position where he couldn't work and he had to watch his wife go to school, which was really hard for her, and become the breadwinner for the family.

And he just felt like a failure. And I watched him go through that. After all these years of letting that foot heal, we went out first day and we were splitting firewood with the splitter and he was just so good to be back out Jordan. And he crushed his foot in the log splitter and he was like, no. And so then they just amputated it. We've got both legs amputated and then his health continued to decline. He lost his movement in his hands. So he was like incapacitated to a degree and in a lot of pain. I would hear him at night

in pain all the time. And I delayed a trip back to Russia and just stayed with my dad for those last six months. And it was so interesting having had lost everything. I've watched him wrestle with it through the years, but then he found his joy and his purpose just in being almost, I mean, a vegetable. I'd have to help him pee, help roll him onto the cot, take him to dialysis.

But we would laugh, he would like, you know, hear him at night crying, or like in pain like, ah! And then in the morning, he'd have like encouraging words to say, and just add another, wow, that's how you face loss and suffering. And he must have gotten that from him,

somehow from his parents. And then, you know, I find myself on this show and I had a thought like, why is this easy to me in a way? Like, you know, why is this thing that's... And I was like, and it just felt like this gift that had kind of handed down and now it would be my duty to hand down, you know? But it's kind of an interesting thought. And be the beacon of that, represent that kind of perseverance in the simpler way that something like survival in the wilderness shows. Yeah.

It's the same. It rhymes. It rhymes. And it's so simple. The lessons are simple. And so we can take them and apply them. So that's on the survivor side. What about on the people committing the atrocities? What do you make of the Ottomans? What they did to Armenians or the Nazis what they did to the Jews the Slavs and basically everyone? What do you? Why do you think people do evil in this world? It's interesting that it's really easy, right? It's really easy. You can almost sense it in

yourself to justify a little bit of evil or see yourself cheer a little bit when the enemy gets knocked back in some way. In a way, it's just perfectly naturalist for us to feed that hate and feed that tribalism in group out group, we're on this team. And I think that can happen. I think it just happens slowly, like one justification at a time, one step at a time, you hear something and it makes you think then that you are in the right to perform some kind of, you know, you're justified in creating, break a couple eggs to make an omelet type thing.

And then, but all of a sudden that takes you down this whole train to where pretty soon you're justifying what's completely unjustifiable. It's gradual. Yeah. It's gradual. Yeah. It's a gradual process of a little bit at a time. I think that's why for me, having a path of faith works as a mooring because it can help me

shine that light on myself. It's like something else, because if you're just looking at yourself and looking within yourself for your compass in life. It's really easy to get that thing out of whack, but you kind of need a perspective from which you can step out of yourself and look into yourself and judge yourself accordingly.

Am I walking in line with that ideal? And then, I think without that check, your subject, it's easy to ignore the fact that you might be able to commit those things, but we live in a pretty easy, comfortable society. Like, what if, you know, what if we pictured yourself in the position of my grandparents and then all of a sudden you got the upper hand in some kind of a fight? What are you going to do? You know, you definitely picture becoming evil in that situation.

I think one thing faith in God can do is humble you before these kinds of complexities of the world. And humility is a way to avoid the slippery slope towards evil, I think. Humility that you don't know who the good guys and the bad guys are. And you defer that to sort of bigger powers to try to understand that. I think there's a kind of, I mean a lot of the atrocities were committed by people who are very sure of themselves being good. Yeah, that's so true. It is sad that religion is at times used as a way to just as yet another tool for justification. Exactly.

Which is a sad application of religion. It really is. It's so inherent and so natural in us to justify ourselves. It's really, I mean, I think it's almost, I mean, just understanding history, you read history, it blows my mind that, and I'm super thankful that somehow, and this has been missed you so much, but somehow this ideology arose that love your enemies, forgive those that persecute you and just on down the line, that something like that rose in the world into a position

where we all kind of accept those ideals, I think is really remarkable and worth appreciating. That said, a lot of that gets wrapped up in what you're talking, you know, what is so natural just becomes another instrument for tribalism or another justification for wrong. And so I even myself am self-conscious sometimes talking about matters of faith because I know when I'm talking about it, I'm talking about something else other than, you know, there's everybody within what someone else might think of when they hear me talking about it. So it's interesting. Yeah, I've been listening to Jordan Peterson talk about this. He has a way of articulating things which are sometimes hard to understand in the moment, but

when I like read it carefully afterwards, it starts to make more sense. I've heard him talk about religion and God as a kind of base layer, like a metaphorical substrate from which morality of our sense of what is right and wrong comes from and just our conceptions of what is beautiful in life. All of these kinds of higher things, they're like fuzzy to understand, that their religion helps create this substrate for which we as a species, like as a civilization,

can come up with these notions and without it, you are lost at sea. I guess for him, morality requires that substrate. Like you said, it's kind of fuzzy. So I've only been able to get clear vision of it when I live it. It's not something you profess or anything like that. It's something that you take seriously and apply in your life. And when you live it, then there's some clarity there, but that it has to be kind of defined. Like it's like, it's, and that's where you come in

with the religion and the stories, because if you leave it completely undefined, I don't really know where you go from there. Actually, isn't it funny to speak to that. I did mushrooms, have you ever done those before? Mushrooms, yeah. I've done them a couple of times, but one time was,

didn't do that many, the other time more. And I had a really profound experience in helping couch all this in a proper context for myself. So when I did it, I remember I was sitting on a swing and I could see my, everything was so blissful, except I could see my black hands like on these chains, like on the swing, but everything was so blissful except I could see my black hands like on these chains like on the swing but everything else was blissful and kind of amorphous and I could see the outline of my kids and I could just feel the love for them and I was just like man I just feel the love it's so

wonderful like you know but then I would you know at times I would try to picture them and I couldn't quite picture the kids but I could feel the love and then um and then I would, you know, at times I would try to picture them and I couldn't quite picture the kids, but I could feel the love. And then, um, and then I started asking all the deepest existential questions I could, you know, and it felt like I was just one answer, another answer, another answer. Everything was being answered. Then I felt like I was communing with God, whatever you want to say. And, but I was very aware of the fact that that communing was just peeling back the tiniest corner of the infinite. And it just dumped me with every answer I felt like I could have. fact that that communing was just peeling back the tiniest corner of the infinite and it just dumped me with every answer I felt like I could have and it kind of blew me away. So then I asked it, well, if you're the infinite, like why did you reveal to me yourself? Why

did you use like the story of Jesus to reveal yourself? And then that infinite amorphous thing had to somehow take form for us to be able to relate to it. It had to have some kind of a form. But whenever you create a form out of something, you're like boxing it in and subjugating it to boundaries and stuff like that. And then that subject to pain and subject to the brokenness and all that. And I was like, oh wow. But when I had that thought, then all of a sudden I could relate my dark hands on the chains to the rest of the experience. And then all of a sudden I could picture my children as the children rather than this amorphous feeling of love. It was like, oh, there's Elana and Altai and Zaya. But then they were bounded. And then once they're bounded, you're subject to the death and to the misunderstanding and

to all that. I picture the amoeba or the cell, and then when it dies, it turns into an unformed thing. So we need some kind of form to relate to. So instead of always just talking about God completely and tangibly, it kind of gave me a way to relate to. So instead of always just talking about God completely and tangibly, it kind of gave me a way to relate to it. And I was like, oh, wow, that's, that was really powerful to me and putting it in a context that was applicable. But ultimately, God is sort of the thing that's formless, that is unbounded. But we humans need, I mean, that's the purpose of stories. They resonate with something in us,

but when you need the sort of the bounded nature, the constraints of those stories, otherwise we wouldn't be able to like, can't relate to it. Can't relate to it. Yeah, yeah. And then when you look at the stories literally, or you just look at them just as they are,

it seems silly. It's too simplistic. Right, right. And then that was always, you know, a lot of my family and loved ones and friends have completely left the faith. And I totally, in a way I get it. I understand, but I also really see the baby that's being thrown out with the bath water and I want to cherish that in a way, I guess.

And it's interesting that you say that the way to know what's right and wrong is you have to live it. Sometimes it's probably very difficult to articulate, but in the living of it, do you realize it? Yeah, and I'm glad you say that, because I've found a lot of comfort in that, because I feel somewhat inarticulate a lot of the times, and unable to articulate my thoughts, especially on these matters. And then you just think, I just have to,

but I can live it, I can try to live it, you know? And then what I also am struck with right away is I can't, because you can't love everybody, you can't love your enemies and you can't, but as placing that in front of you as the ideal is so important to put like a check on your human instincts, on your tribalism, on your, I mean, you can very quickly, like we're talking about with evil, you know, it can really quickly take its place in your life.

You almost won't observe it happening, you know, but, and so I so much appreciate all the me striving. And that's where, you know, I grew up in a Christian family. So I had these like cliches that I didn't really understand, like a relationship with God, like what does that mean? But then I realized when I struggled with trying, with taking, I actually did try to take it seriously and struggle with what does it mean to live out a life of love in the world.

But that's like a wrestling match because it's not that simple. It doesn't sound, it sounds good, but it's really hard to do. And then you realize you can't do it perfectly. But in that struggle, in that wrestling match is where I actually sense that relationship. And then it's, and that's where it kind of gains life

and how that really, and I'm sure that relates to what Jordan Peterson is getting at in his metaphor. In the striving towards the ideal, you discover how to be a better person. One thing I noticed really tangibly on Alone was that because I had so many people that were close to me kind of just leave it all together, I was like, I could do that. I actually understand why they do. Or I could not. You know, I do have a choice.

And so I had to choose at that point to maintain that ideal. And because I could add enough time on Alone, the one nice thing is you don't have any distractions. You have all the time in the world to go into your head. And I could play those paths out in my life. And not only in my life, but I feel like societally and generationally, like, I throw it all away and everybody start from square one, or we can try to redeem what's valuable in this

and wrestle with it. And so I just, I chose that path. Well, I do think it's a, it's a kind of wrestling match. Cause I'm, I'm, you mentioned Gulag Archipelago. I'm very much a believer that we all have the capacity for good and evil and striving for the ideal to be a good human being is not a trivial one. You have to find the right tools for yourself to be able to be the candle, as you mentioned before.

And then for that, religion and faith can help. I'm sure there's other ways, but I think it's grounded in understanding that each human is able to be a really bad person and a really good person. And that's like a choice. It's a deliberate choice. And it's a choice that's taken every moment and builds up over time. And the hard part about it is you don't know. You don't always have the clarity using reason to understand what is good and what is right and what is know. You don't always have the clarity using reason to understand what is good and what is right and what is wrong. You have to kind of live it with humility and constantly struggle. Because then yeah, you have to, you have, you might wake up in

a society where you're committing genocides and you think you're the good guys. And I think you have to have the courage to realize you're not. It's not always obvious. It isn't man. And only history has the clarity to show who were the good guys and who were the bad guys. Right. You gotta wrestle with it. It's like that quote, you know,

the line between good and evil goes through the heart of every man and we push it this way and that. And our job is to work on that within ourselves. Yeah, that's the part. That's what I like. Sort of the full quote talks about the fact that it moves. It moves from, the line moves moment by moment, day by day, we have the, uh, the freedom to, uh, move that line.

So it's like, it's very deliberate thing. It's not like you're born this way and that's, that's it. Yeah, I agree. And, and especially in, you know, in conditions that are like war and peace, uh, in the case of the camps, you know, absurd levels of injustice in the face of all that, when everything is taken away from you, you still have the choice to be, to be the candle, like the grandmas.

By the way, the grandmas in like all parts of the world are like the strongest. I don't know what it is. I don't know. They have this like wisdom that comes from patients and have seen it all. They've seen all the bullshit of the people that come and gone, all the abuses of power, all of this. I don't know what it is. And they just keep going.

Right, right. Yeah, that's so true. What do you think of, as we've gotten a bit philosophical, what do you think of Werner Herzog's style of narration? I kind of wish he narrated my life. Yeah, it's amazing to listen to. Because that documentary is actually in Russian.

I think he took a longer series, yeah, and then put narration over it. And that narration can transform like a story. Yeah, he does an incredible job with it. I will say, have you seen the full version? Have you watched the four part full version? You should, it's in Russian, and so you'll get the fullness of that.

And he had to fit it into a two hour format, and so I think what you lose in those extra couple hours is worth watching, and I think you'll like it. Yeah, they always go pretty dark. Do they? He has a very dark sense about nature that has violence and it's murder. I think that's important to recognize

because it's really easy, I mean, especially with what I do and what I talk about, and I see so much of the value in nature. Gosh, you know, I also see like a beautiful moose and a calf running around. And then next week I see the calf rip the shreds by wolves and you're just like, oh. And it's not as, it's not as Russoian

as we'd like to think, you know. It is, you know, things must die for things to live, like you said, and that's just played out all the time, and it's indifferent to you. Doesn't care if you live or die, and doesn't care how you die or how much pain you go through while you, you know, it's like, it's pretty brutal.

So it's interesting that he taps into that. And I think it's valuable because it's easy to idealize in a way. Yeah, the indifferences, I don't know what to make of it. There is an indifference. It's a bit scary. It's a bit lonely. You're just a cog in the machine of nature.

That doesn't really care about you. Totally. I think that's something I sat with a lot on that show is another part of the depth of your psychology to delve into, but it, and that's when I thought like, I could, I understand that deeply, but I could also choose to believe that for some reason it matters.

And then I could live like it matters and then I could see the trajectories and that kind of that was another fork in the road of my path, I guess. What do you think about the connection to the animals? So in that movie it's with the dogs and with you it's the other domesticated, the reindeer. What do you think about that human animal connection?

In the context of that indifference, isn't it interesting that we assign so much value and love and appreciation for these animals and in some degree we get that back in a recipe. I think now you just said the reindeer. I think of the one they gave me because he was long and tall, so they named him Dleenie. And I just remember Dleenie and just watching him eat the leaves and go with me through the woods and trust him to take me through rivers and stuff. And it really is special. It's really enriching to have that relationship with an animal. And I think it also puts you in a proper context. One thing I noticed about the natives who live

with those animals all the time is they relate to life and death a little more naturally. It feels – we feel really removed from it, particularly in urban settings. I think when you interact with animals and you have to confront the life and the death of them and the responsibility of – the symbiotic relationship you have, I think it opens it a little bit, awareness to your place in the puzzle, and puts you in it rather than above it. Have you been able to accept your own death? I wonder, you know, you wonder when it actually comes,

what you're gonna think. But I did have, you know, I did have my dad to watch confronted in as positive a manner as you could and that's a big advantage. And so I think when the time comes that I will be ready, but I think that's easy to say when the time feels far off. It'll be interesting if you got a cancer diagnosis tomorrow and stage four, it's like, be heavy. Did you ever confront death while in survival situations? I mean, you're in cutting-edge.

I did have a time, I had a time where I thought I might, I was gonna die. I had a lot of situations that could have gone either way and a lot of injuries, broken ribs and this and that. But the one that I was able to be conscious through a slowly evolving experience that I thought I might die in was at one point we were siphoning gas out of a barrel and it was almost to the bottom and I was like, so it's sucking really hard to get the gas out. And then I didn't get the siphon going. So I like waited and then while I was sitting there, Yura put a new canister on top and put the hose in

and I didn't see. And so then I went to get another siphon and I went like sucked as hard as I could and it just instantly like a bunch of gas filled my mouth and I couldn't like spit it out. I had to go like that. And I just full mouthful of gas that I just drank. And I was just like, oh, like, what is that gonna do?

And he and my friend were gonna go on this fishing trip. And so was I, and I was just like, oh, I might just stay. And I was in this little Russian village and, and they're like, all right, well, Euro was like, man, I had a buddy that died doing that with diesel a couple of years ago. You know, and I was, oh man. And so anyway, I made my way to the hospital

and by then, you know, you're really out of it because, and then, and it was, they put me in this little dark room. It almost sounds like unrealistic, but it is actually how it happened. They put me in a little in a little room with a toilet and they gave me a cold, you know, galvanized bucket. And then like they just had a cold water faucet

and they're just like, just chug water and puke into the toilet and just flush your system as much as you can. But they only had a cold water faucet. So I was just sitting there like chug, chug, chug, chug until like you puke and chug until you're puking and I'm in the dark. And I was like, started to shiver cause I was so cold. But I said to like, still like, get this thing up to me and chug until you're puking them in the dark. And I was like, started to shiver

because I was so cold, but I said to like, still like, get this thing up to me and chug until I puked. I was picturing, I remember reading about the Japanese torture where they would put a hose in somebody and then make them drink water until they puke. Anyway, and I just felt so, the only way I can express it, I felt so possessed, like demon possessed. Like I was just permeated with gas. I could feel it was coming out of my pores and I wanted to like rip it out of me and I couldn't, I'd like puke into the toilet

and then couldn't see, but I was wondering if it was like rainbuck. And then I just remember like, I could tell I was going out pretty soon and I remember looking at my hands up close, I could see them a little bit and I was like, oh, that's how dad's hands looked. You know, they were alive, alive and then,

you know, interesting. Are my hands gonna look like that in a few minutes or whatever? So then I wrote down like to my family what I thought, you know, like, I love you all, like feel at peace, blah, blah, blah. And then I passed out and I woke up. I didn't think, I actually thought,

when I went to pass out, I thought it was, there was a coin toss for me. So I really felt like I was confronting the end there. What are the harshest conditions to survive in on earth? Well, there are places that are just purely uninhabitable. But I think as far as places that you have a chance. You have a chance, that's a good way to put it. Maybe Greenland, I think of Greenland because I think of,

you know, those Vikings that settled there were rugged, capable dudes, and they didn't make it. But there are Inuit that, you know, natives that live up there, but that's a hard life, and the population's never grown very big because you're scraping by up there, and you picture, and the Vikings that did land there,

they just weren't able to quite adapt. And the fact that they all died out is just a symbol to that must be a pretty difficult place. What would you say that's primarily because just the food sources are limited? And the fact that they all died out is just a symbol to that must be a pretty difficult place to live. What would you say that's primarily because just the food sources are limited? Food sources are limited, but the fact that some people can live there

means it is possible. They figured out ways to catch seals and do things to survive, but it's by no means easier to be taken for granted or obvious. I think it's a harsh, probably a harsh place to try to live. Yeah, it's fascinating, not just humans, but to watch how animals have figured out how to survive.

I'm watching like a documentary on polar bears. Like, they just figure out a way and they get, and they've been doing it for generations and they figure out a way. They travel like hundreds of miles to the water to get fat. And they travel a hundred miles for whatever other purpose. Because they wanna stay on the ice, I don't know.

But it's like there's a process. And they figure it out against the long odds and some of them don't make it. It's incredible. What tough things, man. You just think every little, every animal you see up in the mountains. When I'm up in the woods, is that thing just surviving through the women winter scraping by it's tough, tough existence. What do you think it would take to break you?

Let's say mentally. Um, like if you're in a survival situation, What do you think it would take to break you, let's say mentally? Like if you're in a survival situation. I mean, I think it would have, mentally it would have to be, well, we talked about that earlier, I guess. The thing that I've confronted that I thought I knew was that if I knew I was the last person on earth, I wouldn't do it.

Like I thought, but maybe you're right, maybe I would think I wasn't. But I think, you know, I can't imagine, I can't imagine we're so blessed in the time we live, but I can't imagine what it's like to lose your kids, something like that. It was an experience that was so common for humanity for so much of history.

Would I be able to endure that? I would have at least a legacy to look back on of people who did, but God forbid I ever have to delve that deep, you know what I mean? I could see that breaking somebody. And I mean, in your own family history, there's people who have survived that. Maybe that would give you hope.

I mean, I think that's what I would have to somehow hold onto. But in a survival situation, there's very few things that would. I don't know what it would be. So, on Alone, like on Alone, I knew, I wasn't gonna, and ultimately it is a game show. So it's like, ultimately, I wasn't gonna and ultimately it is a game show. So it's like ultimately I was

gonna kill myself out there. It's like but so if I hadn't been able to procure food and I was starving to death it's like okay I'm not I'm gonna go home. You know but like if you put yourself in that situation but it's not a game show. And having been there to some degree, I will say I wasn't even close. I don't even know. Yeah, I hadn't got, it hadn't pushed my mental limit at all yet, I would say, on the scale. But that's not to say there isn't one.

I know there is one. But I have a hard time. I know I've dealt with enough pain and enough discomfort in life that I know I can deal with that, I think it gets difficult when you start to, when there's a way out and you start to wonder if you shouldn't take the way out as far as like, if there's no way out, I don't know.

Oh, that's interesting. I mean, that is a real difficult battle when there's an exit, when it's easy to quit. Right. How long am I doing this? Yeah, that's a thing that gets louder and louder the harder things get. That voice.

It's not insignificant. If you think you're doing, you know, if you think you're doing permanent damage to your body, you would be smart to quit. You should just not do that when it's not necessary because health is kind of all you have in some regards. So, I don't blame anyone. Then they quit because of that reason.

It's like good. But, but if you're in a situation and you don't have the option to quit, is knowing that you're doing permanent, that's not gonna break, that won't break me. You know, you just have to get through it. I'm not sure what my mental limit would be outside of like the family suffering

in the way that I described earlier. When it's just you, it's you, you're alone, there's the limit. You don't know what the limit is. I don't know. Injuries, like physical stuff is annoying though. Oh. That could be.

Isn't it weird how, like, I mean, I can be, have a good life, happy life, and then you have a bad back or you have a headache. Yeah. And it's amazing how much that can overwhelm your experience. Then again, that was something I saw in dad that was like, interesting. How can you find joy in that when you're just steeped in that all the time?

And people I'm sure listening, there's a lot of people that do and it's so, and talk about the cross to bear and the like hero journey to be like good for you for trying to find what you can, what your way through that. There was a lady in Russia, Tanya, and she had had cancer and recovered but always had a pounding headache and she was really joyful and really fun to be around. And I just like, man, you just have to have a really bad headache for today to know how much that throws a wrench in your existence.

So all that to say, if you're not right now suffering with blindness or a bad back, it's like, just count your blessings because it's so easy to have. It's amazing how complex we are, how well our bodies work and when they go out of whack, they can be very overwhelming and they all will at some point. And so that's an interesting thing to think ahead on, how you're gonna confront it when it does.

Keeps you humble, like you said. It's inspiring that people figure out a way. With migraines, that's a hard one though. If you have headaches. It's so hard. Oh man, because those can be really painful. It's overwhelming. And dizzying and all of this.

That's inspiring, that's inspiring that you found a way. There's not nothing in that. You can find somehow you can tap into purpose even in that pain. I guess I would just speak from like, right, my dad's experience, I saw somebody do it and I benefited from it. So thanks to him for seeing the higher calling there. You wrote a note on your blog in 2012,

you spent five weeks ish in the forest alone I just thought it was interesting because this is in contrast to on the show alone You're really alone. We're like you're not talking to anybody and you realize that I You write I remember at one point after several weeks had passed I wondered into a particularly beautiful part of the woods and exclaimed out loud, wow. It struck me that it was the first time

I had heard my own voice in several weeks with no one to talk to. What, did your thoughts go into something like deep place? Yeah, I'd say my mental life was really active. When you're that long alone, I'll tell you what you won't have is any skeletons in your closet that are still in your closet.

Like you will be forced to confront every person. Even the one, I mean, it's one thing if you've cheated on your wife or something, but you'll be confronted with the random dude you didn't say thank you to and the like, and the issue that you didn't resolve. All this stuff that was long gone will come up and then you'll work through it and you'll think how you should make it right. I had a lot of those thoughts while I was out there.

And it was so interesting to see what you would just brush over and then confront it because in our modern world, when you're always distracted, you're just never, ever going to know until you take the time to be alone for a considerable amount of time. Spend time hanging out with the skeletons. Yeah, exactly. I recommend it. So you said you guide people.

What are your favorite places to go to? Well, if I tell them, then is everybody gonna go there? I like how you actually have, it might be a YouTube video or your Instagram post where you give them a recommendation of like the best fishing hole in the world. You give detailed instructions how to get there, but it's like a journey of a life. It's like a Lord of the Rings type of journey.

I love the... There's a region that I definitely love in the States. It's special to me. I grew up there. Stuff like that. Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, those are really cool places to me. I like the small town vibes they're still maintaining and stuff there. A mix of mountains and forests.

But you know another really awesome place that blew my mind was New Zealand, that South Island of New Zealand was pretty incredible. As far as just stunning stuff to see, it was pretty high up there on the list. But there's all these places have such kind of unique, unique things about Canada became like where they did alone. It's not typically what you'd say because it's fairly flat and cliffy and stuff, but it really became beautiful to me because I could tap into the richness of the land, or the fishing hole thing.

It's like, that's a special little spot, something like that. And you see the beauty, and then you start to see the beauty in the smaller scale. Like, oh, look at that little meadow with that. It's got an orange and a pink and a blue flower right next to each other. That's super cool.

And there's a million things like that. Have you been back there yet? Uh, back to where the alone show was? No, we're going back this summer. I'm going to take guide a trip up there. Let's take a bunch of people. I'm really looking forward to being able to enjoy it without the pressure. What, what advice would you give to people in terms of how to be in nature?

So like a hikes to take or journeys to take out of nature where it could take you to that place where the busyness and the madness of the world can dissipate and you can be with it. Like how long does it take for you, for people usually to just like. Yeah, I think you need a few days probably to really tap into it.

But maybe you need to work your way there. Like it's awesome to go out on a hike, go see some beautiful little waterfall or go see some old tree or whatever it is. But I think just doing is it, you know, everybody thinks about doing it. You really, you just really do do it. Like go out and then plan to go overnight.

Don't be so afraid of all the potentialities that you delay it inevitably. You know, like it's actually one of the things that I've enjoyed the most about guiding people is giving them the tools so that now they have this ability into the future. You can go out and feel like, I'm going to pick this spot on the map and go there. That's a tool in your toolkit of life that is, I think, really valuable because I think everybody should spend some time in nature. I think it's been pretty proven healthy.

Yeah, I mean, camping is great. And solo, I've gotten a chance to do it solo. It's pretty cool. Yeah, that's cool you did. Yeah, it's cool. And I recorded stuff, so that helped. Oh, good, yeah. So you sit there and you record the thoughts.

Actually, for having to record the thoughts, it forced me to really think through what I was feeling to convert the feelings into words, which is not a trivial thing because it's mostly just feeling. You feel a certain kind of way. That's interesting. You know, I felt like the way I met my wife was like, you know, we met at this wedding and then I went to Russia basically, and we kept in touch

via email for, you know, that year and, and a similar thing. It was really interesting to be, have to be so thoughtful and purposeful about what you're saying and things like, I think's probably a healthy, good thing to do. What gives you hope about this whole thing we have going on? The future of human civilization. If we talk about gratitude earlier, look at what we have now.

That could give you hope. Look at what the world we're in. We live in such an amazing time with, you know. Buildings and roads. Buildings and roads. Air and airplanes, food security. And, you know, I lived with the natives and I thought to myself a lot, like, I wonder if not everybody would choose this way of life because it is, there's something really rich about just that small group, your direct relationship to your needs, all that. But with the food security and the

relationship to your needs, all that. But with the food security and the help, modern medicine, the things that we now have that we take for granted, but that I wouldn't choose that life if we didn't have those things. Otherwise you're gonna watch your family starve to death or things like that. We have so much now, which should lead us to be hopeful while we try to improve because there's definitely

a lot of things wrong, you know, but I guess there's a lot of room for improvement and I do feel like we're sort of watching it walking on a knife's edge, you know, but I guess that's the way it is. As the tools we build become more powerful. Yeah, exactly. It seems. The knife's edge is getting sharper and sharper. I've talked, yeah, I'll argue with my brother about that sometimes. He takes the more positive view and I'm like, ooh, I mean, it's great.

We've done great, but man, more and more people with nuclear weapons and more... It's just gonna take one mistake with the more power. I think there's something about the sharpness of the knife's edge that gets humanity to really focus and step up and not screw it up. There is, just like you said with the cold, going out into the extreme cold, it wakes you up. And I think the same thing with nuclear weapons is just wakes up in the night.

Everybody was half asleep. Exactly. Then we keep building more and more powerful things to make sure we stay awake. Yeah, exactly. Stay awake, see what we've done, be thankful for it, but then improve it. Then of course, I appreciated your little post the other week when you said you wanted some kids. and then of course, I appreciated your little post the other week when you said you wanted some kids.

You know, that's a very direct way to relate to the future and to have hope for the future. I can't wait. And hopefully I'll also get a chance to go out in the wilderness with you some point. I would love it. That'd be fun. Open invite, let's make it happen.

I got some really cool spots of it. Have in mind to take you. Awesome, let's go. Thank you for talking to me, brother. Thank you for everything you stand for. Thanks, man. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Jordan Jonas.

To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me try a new thing, where I try to articulate some things I've been thinking about, whether prompted by one of your questions or just in general. If you'd like to submit a question, including an audio and video form, go to LexFreeman.com

slash AMA. Now allow me to comment on the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on July 13th. I'm sorry if some of you want to categorize me and other people into blue and red bins. Perhaps you do it because it's easier to hate than to understand. In this case, you shouldn't matter. But let me say, once again, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. into blue and red bins. Perhaps you do it because it's easier to hate than to understand.

In this case, you shouldn't matter. But let me say once again, that I am not right wing nor left wing. I'm not partisan. I make up my mind one issue at a time and I try to approach everyone and every idea with empathy and with an open mind. I have and will continue to have many long-form conversations

with people both on the left and the right. Now, onto the much more important point. The attempted assassination of Donald Trump should serve as a reminder that history can turn on a single moment. World War I started with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. And just like that, one moment in history, on June 18th, 1914,

led to the death of 20 million people, half of whom were civilians. If one of the bullets on July 13th had a slightly different trajectory, where Donald Trump would end up dying in that small town in Pennsylvania, history would write a new dramatic chapter, the contents of which all the so-called experts and pundits would not be able to predict. It very well could have led to a civil war. Because the true depth of the division in the country is

unknown. We only see the surface turmoil on social media and so on. And it is events like the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand where we, as a human species, get to find out what the truth is of where people really stand. The task then is to try and make our society maximally resilient and robust as such to stabilizing events. The way to do that, I think, is to properly identify the threat, the enemy. It's not the left or the right that are the quote, enemy.

Extreme division itself is the enemy. Some division is productive. It's how we develop good ideas and policies. But too much leads to the spread of resentment and hate that can boil over into destruction on a global scale. So we must absolutely avoid the slide into extreme division. There are many ways to do this, and perhaps it's a discussion for another time.

But at the very basic level, let's continuously try to turn down the temperature of the partisan bickering and more often celebrate our obvious common humanity. Now let me also comment on conspiracy theories. I've been hearing a lot of those recently. I think they play an important role in society. They ask questions that serve as a check on power and corruption of centralized institutions. The way to answer the questions raised by conspiracy theories is not by dismissing them with arrogance and feigned ignorance, but with transparency and accountability.

In this particular case, the obvious question that needs an honest answer is why did the Secret Service fail so terribly in protecting the former president? The story we're supposed to believe is that a 20-year-old untrained loner was able to outsmart the Secret Service by finding the optimal location on a roof for a shot on Trump from 130 yards away, even though the Secret Service snipers spotted him on the roof 20 minutes before the shooting and did nothing about it. This looks really shady to everyone. Why does it take so long to get to a full accounting of the truth of what happened?

And why is the reporting of the truth concealed by corporate government speak? Cut the bullshit. What happened? Who fucked up and why? That's what we need to know. That's the beginning of transparency. And yes, the director of the US Secret Service should probably step down or be fired by the president.

And not as part of some political circus that I'm sure is coming, but as a step towards uniting an increasingly divided and cynical nation. Conspiracy theories are not noise, even when they're false. They are a signal that some shady, corrupt, secret bullshit is being done by those trying to hold on to power. Not always, but often. Transparency is the answer here, not secrecy. If we don't do these things, we leave ourselves vulnerable to singular moments that turn the

tides of history. Empires do fall. Civil wars do break out and tear apart the fabric of societies. This is a great nation, the most successful collective human experiment in the history of Earth. And letting ourselves become extremely divided risks destroying all of that.

So please ignore the political pundits, the political grifters, clickbait media, outrage-fueling politicians on the right and the left who try to divide us. We're not so divided. We're in this together. As I've said many times before, I love you all. This is a long comment.

I'm hoping not to do comments this long in the future and hoping to do many more. So I'll leave it here for today. But I'll try to answer questions and make comments on every episode. If you would like to submit questions, like I mentioned, including audio and video form, go to lexfreeman.com. And now let me leave you with some words from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Adopt the pace of nature. Her secret is patience. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time. you