The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – As Large as Your Spirit: a reverse refugee memoir by Joel David Bond

Episode Date: June 4, 2024

As Large as Your Spirit: a reverse refugee memoir by Joel David Bond https://amzn.to/3Rc5vwa Joeldavidbond.com Joel David Bond lives in Iraq. By choice. So when he suddenly finds himself quarantined indefinitely on a remote Greek island, friends and family romanticize it as a fortunate event. But even paradise has its troubles: away from his love and the life he knows, and with nothing but a carry-on bag, a weak internet signal, and a fair amount of pluck, Bond is forced to learn some hard locked-down life lessons as an unintended refugee from both heart and home. Through the happy accident of exile, Bond’s path crosses with that of true refugees, and as their lives intersect, some universal truths are learned about loving your neighbor as yourself. Bond’s account captures the refugee experience — be it refugee of heart or home — and how our universal humanity can only be found when we listen to the still, small voice inside. As Large as Your Spirit is an extraordinary memoir of persistent hope, creative grit, uncanny encounters, and what it means to accept yourself and others.

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Anyway, guys, we have an amazing author on the show, and damn it, we always have amazing authors for 16 years, 2,000 episodes. When are we not? Like, seriously, I challenge you to go listen to every damn episode and find an author who wasn't amazing because you're not going to find it but listen to the episodes anyway again because i don't know it helps with the with the radio play uh he's the author of the newest book to come out march 1st 2023 david i'm sorry joel david bond is on the show with us today. His book is entitled As Large As Your Spirit, A Reverse Refugee Memoir.

And he'll be joining us on the show to tell us about what that experience was like and how he lived through it and how you can too and some of the lessons you'll learn from his journeys. helping people navigate their cultural world with mindful intention, fostering empathy and understanding across borders with a profound belief in the power of travel to create a more empathetic world. Joel brings a unique perspective to every journey, drawing from over 20 plus years of overseas living and cross-cultural experience, as well as a master's degree in education and a background as a global flight attendant welcome to the show joel how are you i'm doing really well thanks for having me today chris thanks for coming it's good to have you give us your dot coms where can people find you on the interwebs joeldavidbond.com my full name there you go uh so uh you do you ever you

ever pick up chicks and they go, hey, what's your name? You're like, Bond. Joel David Bond. I do make use of that as much as I possibly can. I would. I would. I'd milk the shit out of that. And then you're like, do you know James?

Yeah, I'm his brother. Double a seven and a half. There you go. A cousin. You know, just work it. You should pick up a British accent, too. I'd develop that if I were you. So enough of that.

Give us a 30,000 overview of your new book, As Large as Your Spirit. Well, Chris, the book is about my experience during the quarantine, during the pandemic in 2020. What, pandemic? There was a pandemic? I know, right? Crazy. But the whole experience really was unique for me because I was living in Iraq at the time. I was living out in the Middle East, and I had decided to take a one-week vacation away

from sort of the intensity of living out in Iraq and decided to go to this Greek island in the Aegean Sea. When I landed on the island, within 24 hours of being there, the World Health Organization used the words global pandemic, and all the borders fell, the borders were closed. It was just like a crazy toppling of dominoes. And what was going to be a one-week vacation, which is my carry-on bag on a Greek island,

was dragged out into five long months. Oh, wow. So I don't speak Greek. I didn't know anybody. I was trapped and isolated alone on this island, a little bit off grid. And it was then partway through as restrictions started to lift

that I learned that there was a refugee camp on the island. And they were filled with refugees from Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, all these places where I had lived and visited. And so partway through, I decided to volunteer at the refugee camp. So the premise of the book is a man from the West caught in Greece trying to get back to his adopted home in the Middle East, who ends up interacting with all these Middle Easterners caught in Greece trying to get to the West. And it's the intersection of our lives and the way that it really changed everyone's course for the better.

Wow. And so, well, let's get into it. section of our lives in the way that it really changed everyone's course for the better wow and so uh uh well let's get into it um i mean this is this is quite interesting where i was joking with you before the show i'm like oh you got stuck in in greece oh no like uh beautiful greece women and hot euros all the time and you know great greek food um you know i i like the mediterranean grill that's biased so uh you can tell greek salads feta cheese i mean oh the horse the horse i know right don't make don't make me relive the experience being by that beautiful ocean the greek buildings yeah that's uh the suffrage is real but no i mean you know you your, uh, one carry on bag, all your belongings are, are over in another country and, and probably it just, it feels incredibly alienated.

Yeah. Incredibly. I mean, the entire experience as, as dramatic as it sounds and as amazing as it sounds to live on this Greek Island. I mean, it really was traumatic because everybody, if you think back to 2020, was locked down. You couldn't go out. You couldn't interact with people. You were wondering what the future was going to hold.

And I had that same experience, but all of a sudden isolated in a place that was off grid, very, very poor connection to the Internet with nobody that I knew. And I didn't speak any Greek. And in the midst of all of this, I'm trying to figure out, you know, can I get back home? Is it possible? Have I accidentally just moved to Greece now? How long is this pandemic going to go for? You know, a lot of questions we were asking there, you know, I mean, we were kind of asking questions like, am I going to die here?

Is this how it goes down? Yeah. I mean, everyone, if you think back and put yourself in that space, we all had this sense of fear and uncertainty and just really not sure what was happening. And so the whole experience, while you read through the book, is obviously this great memoir of Greek islands and the food and all the amazing scenery and the people that are there.

But at the same time, it's also an internal reflection of what does it mean to find a place to call home? Yeah. Because I'm not able to go back to mine. And at the same time, I'm interacting with these refugees who have lost their home. And so it's this sense of what does it mean to find a geographical space, but also an interpersonal space, an intrapersonal space to call home. So there you go.

Yeah. I mean, you kind of found a little bit of your tribe there in the refugee camp of, uh, people who, you know, also had lost their home. Yeah, I really, really did. I mean, all of these people is, I think one thing that really amazed me the most was how much I learned about the global migrant crisis. 1% of the world's population has been displaced due to global conflict. And that statistic has stayed roughly around that same number for a number of years now,

which is a significant number of people. And 1%, that's the size of some large nations, just totally displaced. And so as I'm working with these people and volunteering and helping them learn English is what I was doing, I was teaching English. I'm literally giving them a voice to navigate through the complex bureaucracy of the migrant asylum seeking system. So it was really just fascinating to be able to hear their stories and what they were going through and to learn just the history of global migration.

So many of my students were doctors, lawyers, high ranking politicians, very educated people from their home countries. I really defied my expectations of what a refugee was. We think, particularly here in the States, you're sort of immersed in the news of refugees being maybe second-class citizens, or they do the labor jobs, or they come across. And some of that is true. But I think what I really learned through actually talking and speaking with these refugees was how educated and intelligent a lot of them were and they couldn't for whatever reason practice their business or their industry their art back in home and were forced to go someplace else and then without the language skill couldn't integrate into the societies they were moving to yeah even more sadly they're painted as sometimes criminals a lot of times and you see politicians that will take and do that and be like you you know, they're sending us their worst. They're criminals, you know.

And a lot of these people from Syria, I think Syria probably was a large part of that group maybe. Yeah. A lot of these folks from Syria, yeah, they were doctors and held good jobs. They had beautiful houses. They had, you know, they were a lot like us i mean i think you know the story of what you you're telling people is you know they're a lot like us where they were living their lives they had you know the car and garage and the house and the kids and the backyard and and the career and and then war came and uh turned their lives upside down and you know frankly when you think about it i mean it can kind of happen just about any of us, really.

I mean, no one's really immune from that. Yeah. And I think that's kind of my whole mission, Chris, is to help people see that these people who you think are other, who are different, who are across the boundary line, sociopolitically, economically, religiously, whatever it might be, are actually not that different from you and I. And then if you're willing to step back and take a look at the fundamental values that are being shared. I mean, I tell people all the time, I've spent seven years

living and working in Iraq, which people say, whoa, like, you know, what are you doing in a place like that? I'm like, I'm the same thing anybody else is doing anywhere else in the world, taking the kids to school and seeing grandma and picking up milk from the supermarket. You know, the things that everybody does, everybody's doing in these places that are, you know,

libeled with the news and the headlines. So I tell people if I were to choose where I was going to live in the world based solely on the news headlines, but the same logic, I would never want to move to america gun violence and protests and political upheaval because the news always gives you the one percent of terror right yeah one percent of bad you know if it leads it bleeds right yeah and while that one percent is true that's a real thing those things that happen on the news it is only a small percentage of reality and 99 of daily life is you and I just doing our thing, making it day by day.

Yeah. In fact, I was having Canada as my backup to move to when I get old with that healthcare system. But then there was that whole trucker thing. And then evidently their real estate prices are going through the roof right now. So I guess it's Mexico at this point for me as backup. But no, you're right if it bleeds it leads the one percent and you know the news and you think oh my god it's it's horrible everywhere

but yeah these are the the interesting thing about that experience that you went through that's cathartic is you know during covid we all kind of got scraped away that veneer of us to where, you know, I was living my life, you know, worried about buying things and being successful and spending money and getting money and building companies and everything. And I remember, well, losing extraordinary amounts of money that we'd planned for events for the year. I mean, we used to do a lot of events like CES and NAB Show and South by Southwest. And, I mean, just incredible amounts of money for these events that I do. And it just gone. And it was guaranteed money.

It was like, you know, every year we built this business. And so that was stripped away. And then you're like, what do we do next? And it kind of turned us all into immigrants a little bit when it came down to it. Maybe not. I might be pushing it on my analogy there. But it kind of stripped away all of you know that sort of thing and and i remember thinking i remember thinking jesus

christ i could number one my life could die we don't know how bad this is because no one really knew and there were morgues being filled and then on top of that you're like well who gives a fuck about the car and the house and the all this other bullshit I'm always working on? I've got my mom and my sister that I love very much, and they can be taken from me. They were both not in the best of health and age. And then it just really came down to like, I don't give a fuck about any of this stuff. What's the most important thing to me? Oh, my family.

And it made me arrive at that moment with covid and i imagine a lot of you know that's almost kind of the experience of a refugee you know a lot of stuff gets torn away from you and doesn't matter anymore your identity yeah i mean i don't think you're terribly off with the analogy i mean it is that's part of what i address in the book is the concept of how I'm living this life on this Greek island, away from home, not able to return, having lost my community. And while I come from a place of privilege, you know, I was there on vacation, basically, you know, I had the means and I, you know, and I wasn't forced out of a home.

I, as I began to go into the refugee camp and to volunteer in the, in the community there, I began to identify those shared values of what does it mean? What does it feel like to have lost everything, even temporarily? What does it feel like to not know where your next meal is going to come from, where you're headed to, if you have a place to sleep at night, and just trying to figure out and navigate all of those bits and pieces. I think it really made me much more empathetic towards the refugee crisis and towards my students in just their plight, because I'm experiencing similar emotions, albeit a different circumstance

at a different level, a different space, you know, coming at it from a different angle, but the emotions that underlie all that were so much the same. And so when I would have students come in and, you know, tell me that they, you know, were tired of living in the refugee camp, that they were, you know, just wishing that they could move on to the next thing, that they were missing their friends and their family back home, well those are all emotions that i had as well i'm tired of living on this greek island i'm tired of not being able to go home i miss my friends and my family and i'm wondering what i'm going to do next and so once i was able to make those sorts of connections it really made for strong relationships with several of those students

i'm still friends with and connected with on social media today wow you know one of the things that happened to me when i went through my crisis and i've talked about this before on the show we'd done this podcast for i think it was about 10 years at that point or 14 maybe um 12 something like that uh and i it did run itself out i was tired of talking about google and iphones and and technology and silicon valley and you know we had great ceos on the show but it did kind of run itself out social media kind of run run the course of this thing and and it just seemed what we were talking about didn't mean a hill of a hill amount of beans when kovat hit it just seemed like well this is fucking just stupid like who gives a shit about an iPhone when you're gonna die tomorrow or your family's gonna die

tomorrow you know and then you know we lost probably the same thing a lot of nut not wholesale because I mean I know refugee camps they can't leave but we lost a lot of our freedoms too it was kind of you know, you know, like you got to stay in your home. And you're like, oh, shit. You know, I remember how nice it was to finally go out and eat someplace, or at least one I feel safe. But I remember I was kind of starting to really fall into depression because I'm like, fuck, 2008 all over again. I've seen this movie. And one of my friends posted on Facebook, and he says, here's what you do right now. You do two things, one of my friends posted on on Facebook and he says here's what you do right now you do two

things one of two things be a lifter or find a lifter and that's what you do right now this is this is this is what you do in this moment and so I think it's interesting what you did is you know you had the experience of of you know being in a moment of loss and and in transition I guess but you didn't know how long that transition was going to take place and you decided to be a lifter in that moment yeah I mean I think overall the full experience you know I needed something to do with my time that felt productive that felt like I was doing something meaningful and like you said you, COVID hits and all of a sudden you're like, well, who really gives a rat's ass about the latest model of technology that's coming out? Or, you know, all of a sudden you sort of the veneer stripped away and you began to

realize all of us, what really was valuable and what was just fluff. And as the volume got turned down on the external noise of the world and the volume got turned up on your own internal world i think we all began to dial in a little bit more closer to the sorts of things that were meaningful and important to us and for me that was being able to connect with others help others to you know provide uh some service with the skills that i had through education and also to connect with these people who were from part of the world that i loved you know and that was my adopted home and i'm i'm here and they miss that place i miss the same place and if there's you know iraqi refugees in this camp i can talk about baghdad with them

you know i can i can even share a few you, informal greetings and casual conversation in their native language. And, you know, while they have people who are fluent, you know, in their own language that are living with them, sometimes it's just nice to have an extra person come along who has a different perspective. And the whole experience, as I just can't explain enough how much it really altered my own perspective and enabled me to grow. And the title of the book itself, As Large As Your Spirit, really stems from that idea of being in the situation really allowed my spirit to expand. To fill a space larger than I thought I could. You know, it's this very expansive moment, this expansive experience. Isn't it, isn't it interesting how much, how good it is for us when we go from whatever it is we're doing to moments of gratitude or gratitude sort of stage where, and then we give back in those

moments. Isn't it interesting how that, how that can change us and make us better and improve the quality of our life? I remember when I first decided that I was going to go and volunteer at the refugee camp. It was about two months into the whole ordeal on the island as local restrictions started to lift. And I would take the bus across the island. It was about an hour-long bus journey across through the mountains to the other side of this Island. And I remember thinking, why am I doing this? Like, this is costing me money. This is costing me time. I have no income right now because everybody is every, you know,

everything has been put on pause and yet I had this just compulsion. It was this, it was this drive to go and do this because, well, one, what else was I going to do? But also, it was so gratifying in so many ways to connect with people and to, especially after so long not being connected, and to be able to give back and to also receive from the community that I was working with and to just learn so much about the crisis, about their stories, about why they had left their country and why they were looking for better life someplace else and what their motivations were and their whole journey to get to the island.

I mean, some of the stories were just incredible and I couldn't actually give voice to all of them in the book, but you know, the, the people who would pay, you know, seven, eight,

you know, $10,000 to a people smuggler to shove them in a little rubber dinghy to go a mile across the water to these Greek islands. Then they get lost and float around in the aegean sea for days you know um some of my people that i worked with had been stuck in the refugee asylum seeking process for upwards of seven years holy crap made my five months look like a blip on the map i mean it gave you perspective you see in that case of gratitude huh yeah and i remember one particular instance

there's i had two young boys who were um from syria they were about 18 years old i think and they'd been sort of stuck in the system for a couple years at this point and had had traveled through turkey hitchhiked across turkey basically paid their money to these people smugglers got across on the boat to the island and then ended up in this refugee asylum seeking camp which was i mean the conditions chris i can't even begin to tell you i mean it's it's just abysmal just the conditions that these people live in in this camp and it was so bad that i remember these two boys um they missed class one day and i i asked the coordinator for the volunteer center like where these kids were. And she informed me that they'd been picked up at the Coast Guard because they'd been caught trying to swim back to Turkey. Oh, wow.

Because conditions were so bad in the camp. And it was so unhygienic. It was so just unhospitable. Like so many things about that space weren't good that they thought well it is better to sleep anywhere back in a war-torn zone hike hitchhike back to turkey to syria or to sleep at the bottom of the sea if we don't already die yeah it was better for them to do that than to stay in the refugee camp and thankfully the the coast guard had picked them up and brought them back in and they received help and assistance so they need now thank you know they're both resettled into

europe and and have new lives and are doing well and prospering in germany and austria i believe and um but it just it was amazing to me to just hear these stories of these people and all they went through to go for this better life and here i am living this kind of you know luxurious lifestyle in this resort villa but at the same in the same instance as i hear about these two boys trying to go back to syria i actually lost my house in iran and it was sold out from underneath me and everything had to be moved um out of my house in my absence oh geez and so i had to coordinate coordinate via FaceTime with a group of friends to, like, pack up everything and put it in boxes and move it out.

And so here I am sort of having the same emotional experience of... Losing your home. Of losing everything. And so what good is it to do anything? And so, you know, the book takes you through all that process and that cycle of what it means to really find that space to call home, not just geographically, but in your own heart, in your own head, and mirrors that same journey with those refugees. There you go. Yeah. You know, you look at the refugees that come to America and stuff, and the mindset of what these people believe in the dream of America,

they almost believe in the dream of America more than people that are born here in America. Yeah. And when people come here, that's why you see some immigrants do really better than the people who come here is because they understand the American dream. And they're like, I'm working hard and doing the thing uh you know meanwhile the rest of us are just sitting around eating cheetos and watching tv scratching our belly buttons and uh america um but you know these are people who put their life on the line i mean they put their personal health their safety you know there's people that are attacked sexual assault uh there's

all sorts of things that happen to them as they as they do these things and they have children too i mean you have to really you know kind of what you uh talked about where you know wherever they're at is so awful that taking this risk is worth it to them and And I think we need to have some compassion for those people to realize that's the situation they're in. They're not a bunch of people who are just like, hey, let's go on a fucking joyride from Chile to fucking America and walk half the way because that just sounds like fun. Let's go streaking on Sunday night and just end up in America.

It's not something they were just like hey, this seems like something would be nice to do It's like no, they're they're running from the hell the whores and everything else that go on But I love the fact that you that you found, you know humanity gratitude giving back, you know during that time, I was really getting depressed and lost because it was just like hundreds of thousands of dollars just evaporating show after show after show after show. And it was just like watching money burn. And then the conversations of like, well, how long are we doing this for? Maybe two or three years. Okay. All right. And it was just awful. And so I sat down with myself, and maybe you had done this a little bit,

but I sat down with myself and I said, what are my assets? What do I have that I can give? And like my friend said, this is a moment where you either find a lifter or you be a lifter. And I'm like, I'm not a good lifter. I'm not a good follower. I'm a leader type. That's just kind of how I am.

I like to be the guy who sits around and cries in his beer all day, but it's just not me. And so I said, what are my assets? Well, I have this great podcast, this great audience we've built over 10, 12 years. And I go, how can we give back? How can we serve the community because everyone's in a dark place right now I remember going through 2008 I remember how lonely that is what can I do to serve the community um and I've got this I've got this uh soapbox and so I said

you know what fuck it we're not going to talk about Silicon Valley and all that bullshit anymore we're going to have authors on we're going to talk about books we're going to talk about Silicon Valley and all that bullshit anymore. We're going to have authors on, we're going to talk about books, we're going to talk about education, we're going to talk about inspiring, how to change the world, how to fix the world. I remember my episodes back then, I was trying to talk people through how I got through 2008, how you can be an entrepreneur, how you could maybe figure out how to do things. And I was coming up with ideas that people could try and do that I was seeing people do. Like there was some people really inventive as entrepreneurs and they decided to be grocery delivering people.

So they were helping old people that couldn't get out or they didn't want to get out because of the risk to them and helping them go do groceries and stuff like that. And so that's what it became. And we opened up the scope to where we started having all these great book authors like yourself on the show to talk about anything and everything. So, you know, we've got romance novels, the politics, everything, but all sorts of stories and cathartic moments and things you can learn about people. And for the first time in all the companies I owned,

in everything I've invested, everything I've ever done in life, I found a business that I love. And the passion that I love in doing the podcast. I fell in love with something for the very first time in 50 years of my stupid life. Of owning companies, dozens of companies. People would be like, it's good that you do what you love. I'm like, I don't love any of this other side. It makes money and I'm the CEO And so being able to talk about things that have an impact on life that can change people's worlds

To me that just has become the biggest boner in the world of doing all this and yet You know kind of when you think about you may be in the same place and feeling where you're at in life and what you're doing now It's kind of like we had to hit that bottom to to find ourselves yeah i mean i think you end up being able to provide your biggest strengths born out of your own broken weakness that's well said and put that on a shirt i should put some coasters out there or whatever, you know, a couple bumper stickers, you know, cheesy wall art from Hobby Lobby, whatever it is. But yeah, I mean, I really do believe that like once you're broken open,

once you've reached that moment of, of broken weakness, it's from that that you're able to rebuild and give back to the world some of your greatest strengths. You know, broken bones heal back stronger, you know, than they were before. And I think the same thing goes for our own mental capacity and our own emotional capacities, is that when you find yourself really broken internally, it's from that space as you learn. And, you know, I mean, you obviously have to go through a healing process. Like it doesn't just happen automatically.

But as you work through that healing process, you then can turn around and give back to people who are in, you know, earlier iterations of yourself, basically, and help them move along that same journey. Yeah. I mean, we lost all our revenue streams pretty much for the most part i mean we still had we still had some of our uh smaller revenue streams but we lost our big money and i remember just sitting there on the podcast going well fuck it i don't know where i don't know how this is gonna all turn out but we're just we're gonna do a podcast today and

we're trying to make people smile we're trying to make people laugh And even though I want to go cry half the time And Yeah, I mean you listen to a few shows And I'm cracking, I can't hold it together I'm trying to give people ideas I'm trying to give people things They can lift and I'm trying To be a lifter and I'm cracking While I'm doing it

And you know I just I think there were some times where I was ready to break And I just, I was like just keep lifting Try to was ready to break. And I was like, just keep lifting. Try to be a lifter. Be a giver. Try and serve. And I think, too, you know, your story is an example of what we need to do more often. You know, I created something called Gratitude Sundays from COVID where I spend a lot of Saturdays focused on my family, my two dogs,

me, I focus on the gratitude that I have for life. It just seems like when we give back, when we try and be in that spirit of giving, it just opens up a better part of us. Yeah. I really, I think, you know, you've really touched on something there. The owner of the villa where I was trapped in greece um when i first arrived it was very bates motel you know they weren't open for the for the season yet and it just it felt like i was walking into like this horror film you know like barren skeletal trees with like skittering brown leaves across the pavement with the paint

flaking off the buildings you know it was just like they hadn't renovated yet for the summer season because i arrived in you know in early march one of those places where you don't go in the shower basically yeah but the uh the owner of the whole uh the whole site was actually really uh really warm and welcoming and uh early on i mean i was the only guest for four out of the five months that i was stuck there and so he was super generous and he said you know i can't charge This is act of God. Like, you know, I know you didn't intend to stay here for this long, so just pay me monthly rent. Here's the keys to the laundry. Take care of yourself. Just don't give me COVID. But I remember he had this little mountain hut on the interior of the island that his own little market garden that he would go and it was his it was his escape from the rigors of running a resort on the beach side there and i remember he took me um up

there one afternoon and we spent an afternoon just digging around to the dirt just getting our fingers in the mud and pulling up weeds and tending to the carrots and the onions and the parsley and everything just in this beautiful little tiny tiny mountain mountain hut, like 10, you know, 10 foot by 10 foot footprint, you know, in this little building. And I remember being in that space and he was very much into Zen meditation and mindfulness practices. much that entire day, but the few words of wisdom that he did give me really just kind of opened me up and made me realize how grateful I was for the whole experience and how it would be easy to be bitter and angry and frustrated and sad and confused about the whole situation. But at the same time, I'm in a space that's beautiful. And I have people who I have never known before in my life volunteer to take care of me and take me under their wing and make sure that I was safe and accommodate for me in this time in this space when I was a complete stranger, another stranger to them. And yet to just sit down in the dirt and pluck the weeds.

And I remember sort of thinking it was like plucking the weeds my own heart like let's just pull this let's just pull this crap out and let's just focus on what's good there you cultivate that and and and you know he so he was helping you out as well and you were paying it forward and giving it back and you know it's it's kind of interesting I you know I almost wonder if we need more of that in this world, because that used to be the way we lived as a community. You know, I mean, if there was a traveler who came through, you would break bread with that traveler. I believe that's where the term breaking bread comes from. And you would welcome them in your home, and they would tell you the stories of their journeys, and then you would feed them and house them. And, you know, that used to be part of our community we we we lived in such a way where we were dependent on each other for survival a

lot of times and in this case i mean what a great beautiful story uh in in um in learning that but also a great example for maybe how we need to think about living our lives you know more gratitude more charity more giving back more empathy for our fellow human beings you know i mean i it still kills me when you understand how well america integrates immigrants better than any country in the world because because they love the american dream and it kills me how we don't get it here in America because we're so you know we're so spoiled and these people who come they have this they they just they they believe in the American dream more than we do and and the vision of what it is and so when they come here

they just they just want to be stupid americans which i don't know why anybody would at this point but anyway i'm just kidding but you know they they they believe in that dream that they're willing to risk their life for it and then we're like to them going how dare you try and come here well what the hell what what was that what's the statue of liberty out there for what's that all about you know i know right this this is the whole i mean america was founded on all of those ideals those concepts and yet today you know i mentioned earlier one percent of the world's population is displaced due to conflict the u.s officially invites in less than one percent of that one percent oh really yeah that's an interesting figure yeah and and

sadly the the politicians you're out there they're making it sound like i don't know there's just turnstiles running down there and everyone's getting in and everyone's a criminal and it's just it's just sad um and you have to understand the reason they're doing it is because they see those people as potential voters and they know they can't win with the with the setup they have now for their thing and they're just worried about that and that's really not the reason to throw people away um and you know some of our greatest people in this country and the thing that made this country great was immigrants i mean us being able to pull people from all over the world you know oppenheimer and einstein and some of the people we pulled out of Germany, Nazi Germany, that helped us build the bomb that made us a superpower by having that giant stick.

There's so many just interventions that came to America. And, you know, now we're in a situation where we need more of that. We need more ideas. We need more better people. You look at the head of Google, the CEO of Google, he grew up on a third floor in India. Um,

Steve jobs was the son of an immigrant from Syria. Uh, yeah. I mean, unless you are native American, you are of immigrant stock in this country. You know, my great grandparents immigrated from Germany and Norway,

you know, like this is Scotland, you know? So, you know, who are we to turn around and be like, oh, these people aren't welcome here. It's because they're not, they're not the right kind of immigrant. Like, what is that supposed to mean? If we're all going to be connecting with each other across empathetic, cross-cultural, religious, socio-political lines, nobody's the wrong kind of immigrant unless you truly are a criminal, in which case those vetting processes are in place yeah they are

and they know the other thing to the politicians make it seem like there's no vetting process in place that was rigorous process in place Americans can even pass the citizenship test they make when they become a citizen wasn't most Americans have no idea how to pass that test. And these people love us. They love our country. And, you know, we've got a lot of people running around that don't love this country and don't really give a shit about democracy and the Constitution. So there's that.

I mean, let's ship the January 6th people off to Mexico and we'll trade. I'm all for that. You can even exchange here. I'm all for that, you know. They don't like our country anyway. Go back to where. Anyway, but, you know but the interesting thing about it, we had somebody on the show one time who told me what that term is when Mexicans or people come here from other countries and then they

don't want anybody to let them in. They call it the close the door behind them policy. And it's a policy that's built out of scarcity. And even when Americans do it, it's a policy built out of scarcity. And the great thing about this country that made it great was this mindset of abundance, that a rising tide lifts all boats. Yeah, you can be from Ireland and Mexico and you can be a Jew. You can be whatever you are. We can all work together and we can build America and rise all the boats together, wherever

you're from and whatever your religion is, whatever your background is, et cetera, et cetera. And now we live in this scarcity thing where we're fighting over everything and anything and we're not realizing that that's just a race to the bottom. Yeah. Yeah, when, and we're not realizing that that's just a race to the bottom. Yeah. Yeah. When it comes down to it. So,

uh, let's get into some other things that you do. Cause I know you do some speaking and some other things in your website. Tell us about what you're doing there. Yeah. So I'm currently actually writing my second book, uh, which is about,

uh, actually an overview of my seven years of life in Iraq. And then I do some public speaking around the Kansas City area at the moment where I'm based, going around to various organizations, talking about cross-cultural awareness and empathy and helping people understand what it means to just connect with people who might be different from you. And then I've also done some travel in the past. So I've done some tour guiding and travel itinerary arrangements for people to help them actually immerse themselves in cultures where they wanted to go. And so I've taken people on tours through Iraq and Turkey and Poland, Germany, Denmark, Norway, UK, France.

So Morocco, taking people all over the world and basically help them integrate across culturally and connect with people, share meals with families that are local there and understand what it means to connect across cultures. So that's the majority of what I've been doing. And then I also work in education. So when I'm not sort of based in one location here in the States, I tend to be living abroad, overseas someplace, working in international private education. There you go. You are the great bridger of getting us to understand each other on a national scale. I mean, some of those places sound highly, extremely dangerous, like France.

Have you ever seen what the farmers are up to over there when they throw a fit? They're like spraying feces on every government building it's pretty i mean you know the mold and the cheese alone is enough to kill you so that's true that's true if you eat enough of it i'm wearing half of it right now i've tried to i've tried to jump off a cliff eating their cheese but it's good that's and their coffee is good too um but uh no it's great that you're bridging these gaps so uh who who is he works with you is it individual people is it corporate sponsors putting on these associations how does uh what sort of client base uh are you looking for out there mostly individuals so small groups

and individuals for touring and traveling and then for my can be, uh, I've done a lot of church groups, NGO groups, uh, community gatherings, uh, you know, interfaith dialogue groups I've done. So anything that's a, that's an organization, rotary clubs, that kind of thing. Uh, I've done a lot of that public speaking just to get the message out to the community on what it takes to connect. There you go. You sound like Anthony Bourdain 2.0. Excellent. I like that. I'll take it. There you go. You know, I used to love watching Anthony Bourdain and somebody explained to me years ago the breaking of the bread and the importance of yeast

and having leavened bread and being able to share that with a stranger and how we used to get to know people over dining. So when you would watch Anthea Bourdain go to different cultures and places and find this human bond between each other, I really enjoy that. I do that now with meetup groups that I have for singles and stuff. We have luncheons and dinners and meetups. Part of my podcast is there's two or three people a day I meet on here and make friends with, like yourself,

that just wisen me and expand my mind. I love it. Although, maybe we should break bread on the show. Maybe we should all eat while we're doing the show. That might be a good idea. We could change the format a little bit. You just found yourself a new little bread on the show. Maybe we should all eat while we're doing the show. I know, right? That might be a good idea. We could change the format a little bit. You just found yourself a new little shirt for the show. You're having spaghetti over there while I'm having spaghetti.

And we're just, I don't know, it might be made for a weird show because there'll be a plate clanking. What's that popular Korean trend where you watch other people eat their noodles? Mung bong or bae or something like that. We have a whole new youtube thing going on there we're all just getting fat watching the show uh you know and people are talking with their mouth full yeah maybe we do have an asmr show going on i don't know whatever monk bang um but you know it's learning the importance of sitting down together in in a human setting of having empathy and seeing that we're human beings is so important this this world that we live in now is so disconnected from 2d screens and you know watching each other through social media we have no idea who each other is. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I think at the end of the day, we are social beings. Even the most, you know, introverted person still needs a connection. We still long for being, you know, connected to other people on some level.

And in our age of social media, we've become so disconnected. And so for me, it's been this great opportunity in my travel to be able to not just pop in and out and do these city trips, but to actually go and live these places to spend, you know, immerse myself in the culture and connect with the people and actually make

lifelong friends. And so for me, that's, that's my perspective is the, you know, it's the art of slow travel, basically the art of slow relationship building, community building over time.

Yeah, there you go. Well, this has been fun and wonderful to have you, Joel, and open our eyes to, you know, sometimes in the darkest moments of your life, the best time is to give back. But don't wait until then either. Give back now. Try and figure out a way that you can improve the world. We all can be leaders in that. Yeah, I agree, agree 100 there you go so give people your dot coms as we go out so people can find you on the interwebs yeah website

joeldavidbond.com and i'm on instagram facebook and linkedin at joeldavidbond and my book as large as your spirit is available on amazon there you go let's get you a deal like uh anthony bourdain had we need a replacement for that we need somebody to show us the international uh things and understanding i learned so much about you know other countries and other worlds especially the food part oh yeah sign me up i offer myself as tribute for the next one like well they're gonna have to pay you damn it i don't know you know you're gonna get uh food poisoning in some of those places so you know you know, you got to. Already. And only a lot of those, you've gotten, yeah, a lot of those food guys, they get food poisoning in different places.

But me, I just go to McDonald's for the food poisoning. So, you can get that local too. So, thank you for coming on. As Large As Your Spirit, a reverse refugee memoir came out March 1st 2023 uh great book you should pick it up and be reminded of what's important to life i think uh you know one of the things that really bugged me was we all kind of became human and got along with each other and and kind of short each other up during covid but like somewhere near the end of covid we're all just like okay fuck everybody let's go back to making money and slinging shit and selling shit and fuck everybody uh you know and it's like i was like wow we just lost that probably a beautiful moment to they can be better

people and we just went back to being the shittiest people in the world now we have this redemptive moment so close i know so close it's. Maybe we should bring that back again, but not. But yeah, it's the only thing a man can learn from his history is man never learns from his history. Anyway,

thanks for my audience for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisvoss, linkedin.com, 4chesschrisvoss, youtube.com, 4chesschrisvoss, chrisvoss1,

TikTok, you know, all those crazy places on the internet. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other for damn ass sakes. And we'll see you next time.