The Joe Rogan Experience - #1162 - Valentine Thomas

Episode Date: August 27, 2018

Valentine Thomas is a former lawyer and financier who quit, to pursue a sustainable quest for happiness as a spearfisherwoman.

three two one boom you gotta appreciate a person who shows up with not just food but booze you showed up you brought whiskey and fish that's very impressive that's why it's exactly what my mommy taught me your mother taught you to bring food and booze everywhere? Exactly. Well, you got a good mom. So your name is, you would introduce yourself as Valentine, but your mom calls you Valentin? Well, I introduce myself to English-speaking people. I say I'm Valentine. Right. But then when I speak to somebody that speaks French, I say Valentin. Valentin.

Oh, okay. Because you're from Montreal. Yes, exactly. Okay. So I found out about you online and I've read your story and it's a very interesting story because you were a lawyer, right? Yes, I used to be a lawyer. I did my law degree in Montreal, and then I did my master in law before moving to London. And now you are a spearfisher. Yes, full time. That's kind of crazy. That's an interesting transition. I'm fascinated by spearfishing. It seems like a lot of fun. It seems very exciting and dangerous and risky but how did you go from being a lawyer and that's a big jump i mean you gotta you gotta pay for an education you had to well in canada do you have to pay for that how's that work um it's kind of cheap compared to the u.s

definitely it's about something maybe like three four thousand dollars a year so compared to the u.s is almost free i guess oh that's not bad three four thousand a year but still that's three four thousand a year for many years that you decided yeah i'll just rather my mom just definitely didn't get a good return on investment now how do they feel about you doing this um she still sends me university applications time to time being like hey why don't you study

something different or something and I'm like no I'm not having a midlife crisis I just don't like what I was doing so I just pick something else

oh by the way I'm going to have to apologize for my English seems perfect I'm from Montreal so French is my first language or something well listen

you're way better than Georges St-Pierre he was here a couple weeks ago. And George is more hard to understand. And he was fine. Yeah, I'm not going to speak like this. And I'm going to try to make an effort. Well, listen, I'm impressed with anybody who can speak more than one language.

I was just in Thailand. It's just amazing that they speak English so perfectly. You know, and then, you know, their language is so oddly different than ours. You decided when to do this like how how deep into your your law career were you it was about i actually made a career switch when i moved to london in 2010 so i started working in finance so i work for hedge funds and i basically decided on quitting law i didn't like the part of law where I was stuck in one place. So, you know, when you study law, let's say in Canada, even in Canada it's even worse because I was studying in Quebec,

which is civil law, and then I was stuck in Quebec for the rest of my life. And I just got like, ooh, that's not going to happen. So meaning that, okay, so like if you pass the bar in California, you would also have to pass the bar in New York if you wanted to work in New York? Exactly. Okay. So it's a long process. That's different then.

Is that the same with, like, if you were a doctor, would that be the case? Country-wise, I would say. State-wise, I couldn't know. But state-wise, it is for law. Yes, it is. So for you, you would have got stuck in Quebec. And Quebec is a very interesting place because it kind of doesn't want to be a part of Canada. True.

We're very different in Canada, but my biggest problem with Quebec is definitely not a culture or anything like that. It's the fact that it's an eight-month-long winter. It's rough. I'm not doing it. But the people are amazing. It is. It's a very European city, actually, in Canada. People are very about food, about sitting outside.

Yeah, shout out to my friends David and Fred from Joe Beef in Montreal, one of the best restaurants in the world. You ever eat there? Yes. Woo! That's amazing. How good is that place? That's pretty good.

That's a jamming place. So I'm sorry. So you decided you didn't want to be stuck? Yeah, pretty much. I kind of got, got like claustrophobic of being like oh this is going to be the next 40 years of my life how'd you get into spearfishing um very weird story i was i got into spearfishing when i was living in london which still doesn't make much sense right and then i then I met this guy, and he was like, oh, you have to try spearfishing. You would be so good at it.

And he asked me to go do a course in Egypt, the freediving. So I said, all right, I'm going to go. Egypt? Yeah, Egypt. It's very big for freediving, Egypt. Really? The sea is, like, very clear and deep, and the water is beautiful, and it's calm very often.

You can swim from shore, and you have very great depth. So it's really nice for that. But so I did my course. I went there literally kicking and screaming. I didn't want to go. When I was 14 years old, I almost drowned in the side of France with my parents. Refused to swim in the ocean for about 10 years after that.

Like if I couldn't see the bottom, I was not even interested in going near the water. And then I was like, all right, I'm going to try this thing. And I go there, and I'm like, okay, it's not too bad. No, it's not that bad. It's actually really cool. So he said, okay, well, now that you know how to freedive, in three months, we're going to this very big spearfishing trip

on Ascension Island. Ascension Island is literally one of the biggest, most elite spearfishing destinations in the world. You go hunt for big fish. Where is it? It's right in the middle of the Atlantic. It's right between Brazil and Africa. It's a military island divided between the U.S. and the U.K. Oh, wow.

I've never heard of it before. Do people live on it? Yes, they do. They have locals that… What language do they speak? English. Really? Yeah. It's a very, very odd place, but it's very pretty. And it's one of the... There it is. Jamie nailed it. Got it up there. What's the Google Maps tell us how long does it take to get there? The definition of the middle of nowhere. That's crazy in the middle of nowhere. But wow, it's between Africa and Brazil. That's fucking nuts.

To get there, we had to go to the military base in the UK, which is about an hour and a half away from London. And we have to take a Royal Air Force flight there. That's the only way to get there. There's no commercial flights. Really? It's a stopover on the way from the military base in the UK to the Falklands. So how does a civilian get a ride on a military flight? They allow about five civilians per flight.

Oh, wow. So how do you book it? Do you do it through a travel agent or something? I didn't do the booking myself, but I think it's like through the airline or something. Wow. It was a weird experience. I was imagining like when

i was like being strapped down and then facing the other side it's actually a commercial flight oh okay bigger because it's meant for bigger guys like the movie predator no i was really expecting that i thought like a door was open in a bag and i was like run out and because i have some friends that have done some gigs overseas um and they have had to fly in those kind of planes that sounds pretty cool yeah i guess until someone shoots at you yeah that would make it a bad day that would change things so when you were free diving before you went to this elite spearfishing destination how long could you hold your breath when i started yeah there's zero probably like

15 20 seconds and so you were going there with 15 20 seconds worth of breath i was pretty bad i just did my deepest dive on my way there was something like 15 meters oh shit i'm canadian uh no that's okay it's close enough to yard we understand what that is 45 meters yeah 45 feet yeah so it was something like that it wasn't that great and i actually remember my first time i went spearfishing i was in a boat and the water was really bad it was rocky you know when it sees like black black because it's raining and i was in the back of the boat i was shaking i was holding my my little gun and i was like what the fuck am i doing here i'm like well i'm not watching tv right now like i don't want to be here i don't want to be here i don't want to be here and then my friend was like, what the fuck am I doing here? I'm like, well, I'm not watching TV right now.

Like, I don't want to be here. I don't want to be here. I don't want to be here. And then my friend was like, come on. Stop being a freaking pussy. Just jump in the boat. Just jump in the water and come. I'm like, okay.

I take a deep breath. I jump in. And then the water that was so dark and so horrible and chopped just became super clear. And there was fish everywhere. And I was like, wow, this is actually pretty freaking cool. And you're doing this, again, free diving, no tanks? Free diving, no, no tanks. So I take my first drops.

I'm a little bit clumsy because I have my gun, and I'm like, I don't really know how to dive with that. And then I took a shot on my first fish, and I stoned it, and my friend was like, oh, yeah, that's great. You stoned it, but you killed it. I killed it on the first shot. Yeah. That's hunting terms, too. It's funny you said stoned it and my friend was like, oh, yeah, that's great. You stoned it, but you killed it. I killed it on the first shot. Yeah. That's hunting terms, too.

Oh, is it? It's funny you said stoned it. And yeah, and then my friend was like, well, you're not done, you know, you have to grab the fish, you have to drag it all the way to the boat. And I was like, all right, I'll grab the fish. I have waves in my face.

And then I get, it was kind of a big fish. It was a big, it was a good. What kind of fish was it? It was a blackjack, which is not that great to eat. Blackjack? Yeah. Probably something that not many people would eat. Why wouldn't they eat it?

It's edible. It's not bad. It's just not one... It's not a very flaky fish, I would say. It's a little tough. The meat is a little tough. Oh, so it's just too dense or something? Yeah, kind of. They're very strong fish, I would say. It's a little tough. The meat is a little tough. Oh, so it's just too dense or something? Yeah, kind of.

They're very strong fish. Whoa, that's a cool looking fish. That's what it looks like? Yeah. Oh, okay. It looks exactly like that. That's a good first fish to deal. It was pretty big too.

It was about like 25 pounds. Oh, wow. Your Instagram is filled with this stuff, which is, I guess, one of the ways that I found you. It's hard to remember how I find people online, but your Instagram is filled with you with all these cool fucking fish and all these... I mean, you look like you're living a life of adventure.

This is one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you about... Is that a lionfish you killed? Yes, that's a lionfish. Can you eat those? They taste... They're probably one of the best tasting fish ever that exists out there. They're fantastic.

Do you ever get them on, are they commercially available? Or is it something you have to... In Florida, yeah. You can find them at Publix in Florida. Oh, really? Which is, I was very surprised about. You just have to be really careful when you harvest them, of course, because if you touch a spine, it hurts. Is it poisonous? Yeah, very poisonous. but it's just painful it's not deadly no you can get into a bloodstream

epileptic shock oh well that's so you can you can that can happen but normally you just have like if somebody was somebody told me it's like you had a hammer in your head repeatedly oh it's like a throbbing pain for about a day and a half. Whoa. So like a bullet ant almost. It's a pain. It's not, it's, it's, you really try to avoid it at all costs. Oh.

So what would you compare the meat to? Hogfish. Oh, I don't know what that tastes like. So, or maybe a very tiny Chilean sea bass maybe. Oh, okay. That type of like oily, flaky. Did you know that Chilean, did we talk about this on the podcast? Chilean sea bass is not really a bass, it's a cod.

Maybe. It's horseshit. It's also endangered, but it's so good. Is it endangered? How's it on every menu if it's endangered? Yep. People are assholes. So you go to this one destination.

You shoot this blackjack. Were you hooked immediately? Yes. Really? It was not about the spearfishing part, actually. I was still traumatized in the water. I still had panic attacks when I was in the water. But I fell in love the second I arrived to shore and we barbecued the fish on the beach. And I was like, okay, this is for me.

That's the same exact thing that happened to me when I went deer hunting. When me and my friend Brian Callen and Steve Rinella and Dan Doty, we were cooking this deer meat by a fire. And I was like, this is the greatest thing ever. The meat was so fresh because it was like from an animal that was, you know, literally killed hours ago. And then we're eating it by the fire. I was like, this is, I'm going to do this forever. This is the greatest thing ever.

It's primal, right? It is. You feel, what I always tell people is that, you know, when you live in a big city, like when I've never experienced that before, I've never felt that I was part of the ecosystem whatsoever. Right. And then all of a sudden I've been putting myself in the water when I'm surrounded by sharks or big fish or different things. And I'm like, wow, we're actually not on top of the food chain at all. There's a lot of stuff above us that can kill us and it's it's it's it's scary and it's humbling and I think as a person you have to experience that you have to you have to put yourself out of your comfort zone to understand that you

need to respect what's around you you can't tell me ten years ago oh you have to eat that fish because it's bad for DRM and I'd be like yeah yeah sure buddy right and then you see in a plane you're like oh that looks good and it's fine and this but then when you're in the water and you see what's going on and you see that a spot you've been diving for five years all of a sudden is empty then it makes you understand that you know we actually have a very strong impact and it's it's our job to to understand and and respect it we're we're it we're the ecosystem we're just the one that we're the smartest one sometimes we're the only ones that are consciously aware of our actions and the repercussions yes

of our actions what when when you're you know first experiencing this, your first time, this feeling of connectedness and freedom and just being a part of the ecosystem, did you imagine that somehow this could be your life and your job? Not at all. I've never been hiking. I'm not a big fan of – I've never used to be a big fan of the outdoors. I don't go to the gym. I don't exercise. You don't go to the gym? No. I basically don't

do anything. And then all of a sudden I was living in London in a nice apartment with two dogs and a nice car and all of a sudden I was in freaking Africa camping in a bush catching my own food and sharing with villagers that had nothing to eat. And I was like okay, wow, this is.

How did that happen? Like, how did you go from this one trip? I got invited to film a documentary in food sourcing. And I was like, okay, I'm going to try it. And I fell in love with it. And the second I went back to London, I remember sitting at my desk and be like, there's no way I can do that. There's no way I can keep doing that for the rest of my life.

And everybody thought I was completely crazy. I sold everything. And I just left. I moved away. And I have like maybe two suitcases of stuff for the past three years. I was reading somewhere where they were going to do an interview on you. And they decided not to. They were going to do an interview on you and they decided not to they were going to feature you in something but they decided not to because of concerns for the

depletion of fish in the ocean and i said that is one of the dumbest fucking things i've ever heard because the impact of someone like you what you're doing for your own personal consumption taking a fish a day or whatever you're getting for your own personal consumption, taking a fish a day or whatever you're getting for your own personal consumption is negligible in comparison to all these people that are probably writing these articles that are going to buy sushi from commercial fishermen. They're buying fish from the store that's wrapped in saran wrap. They're completely out of touch. What I mean is you're in touch.

You're as in touch as you can get but to think that somehow or another you're doing something evil because you take photos of it and put it on your instagram what was that one you had this amazing photo from a couple days ago with you this this big fish it was so fresh and you guys were eating pieces of it. You had cut a chunk out of its tail? Yes, that was in Thailand. Yeah, Phuket? It was, yeah, near Phuket, actually, yeah. We just went with this friend of ours, with his family, and we just went out for the day.

And we went spearfishing with my friend. We caught a fish, and the guy was super happy. He caught it right on the spot. And all the kids were just picking on it. And it was, they were so excited. Yeah, there it is right there. The second they came, that the boat arrived back to the island, they just went and grabbed the fish and they were trying to take pictures. It was super cute.

What was the argument for not, what was the piece that they were trying to put you in where they pulled you out of it? What was that about? Oh, that story is, it's still, it's still getting me pretty angry. So basically where I was speaking at that Women a woman empowerment conference in New York last May. And then when I was actually in Thailand, the woman that is organizing it calls me. And she's like, oh, look, Valentine, I need to talk to you about something. And it's a little touchy. I'm like, what?

She's like, well, one of our sponsors said that if you speak at a conference, they're going to watch you through participation in the conference. What was the sponsor? The Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal. Oh, my God. And she said, yeah, they feel like that your lifestyle isn't aligned with ocean preservation. And she said, she didn't say it directly, but she said,

and you know me, I don't mind that you have pictures in a bathing suit. I'm like, what do you mean pictures in my bathing suit? Sorry, my bikini was not clean. Like, what do you want from me? I'm at a beach. What am I supposed to wear? Well, you're also swimming. I'm swimming.

You're not wearing a bathing suit. I mean, it's not like you're in your high heels, you know, being an Insta model. You're wearing a bathing suit. There's nothing wrong with that either. But you're wearing a bathing suit because you're actually in the water. Exactly. I'm not in Mykonos next to a freaking pool. I'm in an Africana beach when it's like 110 degrees.

What am I supposed to wear? You're not on a yacht with Dan Bilzerian. Exactly. Exactly. Respect. So, I mean, what did you say to them? Wall Street Journal, that is so crazy. You know, and I get it from their perspective. It's a bullshit argument, but from their perspective, it's just about optics.

It's about how it looks. That's all it is. And if they go there and people love to get outraged about something, if they go there and then they go to your Instagram and they find pictures of you with fish, they're like, well, this girl's cleaning out the ocean all by herself. She's killing all the fish. Yeah, I'm very good. You would have to be really good. I mean, have you ever seen a commercial fishing boat, what they do? Yes. Yeah. Most people haven't. Jamie, see if you could pull off the horrific effects of commercial net fishing. Because if you find a video, we could watch a clip of the video.

It's crazy when you see the sheer volume of fish that they pull out of the ocean. And when you realize there's countless numbers of these boats, and essentially, pretty much unregulated. And no one's watching them. They're doing it all over the world. I mean, there's areas where you're not allowed to fish. But overall, it's nothing like the way we treat wild mammals, or wild birds. The way we treat wild mammals, especially in North America, is they're very closely monitored. Their numbers, their populations. We make sure that unless it's an invasive species like wild pigs,

like here we go. This is awful. They take this gigantic net. They circle all these fish. And then when they're pulling them in, you get to see the sheer volume. See, as they get close. But that's one of the smoother way to commercial fish.

France is very big on trawlers. And it's two kilometers wide net that is actually, it's scraping the bottom completely, destroying everything. Destroying the coral. And there's electric shocks on each side. This is actually a fairly mild one. And it looks like they're getting these little tiny fish. But you could find it, folks, if you wanted to go and Google it online. But that is the issue too, right, that these nets go all the way to the bottom

and they destroy anything that they touch. go all the way to the bottom, and they destroy anything that they touch. Like the whole, the bottom of the ocean just gets dragged, and all the coral gets destroyed. It's just extremely destructive, but it's what... That's how you get sushi. There's so much, the fish industry, it's not even necessarily how you get sushi, it's how you get sushi so damn cheap.

Right. But it's, by the way, if we keep doing that, there's literally going to be no fish very, very, very soon. But then, how do you explain that in Canada, you're not allowed to spear fish?

What? And you have to release most of the fish you rod and reel. There's a lot of stories. You have to release most of the fish you rod and reel?

Yeah, too, in Canada. Like the striper, the striped bass. How many can you get a day? Striped bass, like one a day or something like that? One a day. Spear fishing, one a day. And the U.S. side.

In Canada, you're not even going to touch anything. Why can't you spear fish in Canada? Because the Anglers Association in Canada thinks that we're the evils, basically. That you're evil, why? Because you can actually see what you're catching? Yeah. So basically, we're the cheaters because we can see the fish.

And I'm like, how can you be in your camping chairs on your boat, drinking beers all day, telling me that I'm the cheater when I'm working my ass off, diving at like 60 feet to catch my fish, to bring it back. And I risked my life. I risked my life drowning. I risked my life with sharks. I risked my life. I risked my life drowning. I risked my life with sharks. I risked my life with all sorts of things that can happen. And you're telling me, drinking your Budweiser in your freaking camping chair,

that I'm the cheater? I'm like, I'm sorry, but no. Well, people always want to think that everybody else is doing it wrong. True. You know? Vegans want to think people that eat meat are doing it wrong. People that eat meat want to think vegans are doing it wrong. People who fish off a boat want to think that people who spearfish are doing it wrong.

You think they're probably doing it wrong. No, I have nothing against catching you on food as long as you're respectful with the way you do it. But there was a big scandal in Florida for the past years with the bread snapper, by example, and it was about like recreational recreational fishing, you're allowed a certain amount of red snapper, and then the season closes. And when a season closes, as an individual, my license to fish is gone. And then they give it away to the commercial fishermen. And I'm like, whoa, wait. So basically you're telling me that I'm not allowed to catch that fish for a few months because the population is too bad. But then you're giving my quota to the commercial boats that are catching hundreds a day.

They're like, yeah. That doesn't make any sense. No, it doesn't. But most people are not going to spearfish. Most people't make any sense. No, it doesn't. But most people are not going to spearfish. Most people are going to fish. So you guys don't have a voice, right? In terms of like representative voice, it comes to creating these laws and establishing these rules.

There's not that many of you. Oh, and the food chain, we're the plankton it's you know you had a commercial fishing with very big uh lobbyists and a lot of money and then you have the anglers which is a little bit it's still not super bad because they still have big boats company and equipment it's still like a market which is good enough and then you have the spear fishermen right and spear fishermen were not a lot in the world i couldn't even tell you how many but we're not we're not a million that's for freaking sure it's probably less spear fishermen than there are bow hunters that's highly possible yeah i would i would imagine because it seems more

dangerous and difficult than bow hunting it seems like the next level seems like one of the most difficult things you can do if you want to get your food. Because you're going into an alien environment and you're holding your breath. True, but actually the human body, that's the main argument I get from people. They tell me, oh, I could never do it.

But the human body is actually made to do this. So there's a thing called the mammalian dive reflex. And this is very present in aquatic mammals, such as like dolphins or seals and things like that. And the human have it in a way weaker way, but we still have it. And so when you immerse your face underwater, your heartbeat is automatically going to slow down, especially if the water

is colder. So your body is getting prepared to hold its breath to catch food. And that's a new DNA. Is it preparing to catch food or is it just preparing to survive? To hold your breath underwater. Right, for some reason.

I mean, I guess that was a very subjective thing to say because I'm seeing catch catch food but i just don't see why a human being genetically would have to go underwater are you aware of the aquatic ape theory no um it's a very controversial theory but the theory is that we evolved um somehow or another like you know dolphins apparently were at one point in time a land animal is that is that right were dolphins a land animal at one point in time i don't know if that's true i might have made that up but the idea was that humans were the only ape that grew up in close proximity to water to the point where we evolved in the water. Dolphins may have remains of legs.

Yeah. Okay. Fossil remains shows dolphins and whales were four-footed land animals about 50 million years ago and share the same common ancestors as hippos and deer. Whoa. Scientists believe that they later transitioned to an aquatic lifestyle and that their hind limbs disappeared okay so this is fairly recent if you think about evolutionary terms you know the dinosaurs were killed 65 million years ago so inside of that 15 million years later they were walking around which is fucking nuts they were like hippos they think

so google the whoa look at that what they used to look like. What the fuck, man? Google aquatic ape theory. I don't know enough about this to really speak on it, but that has never stopped me in the past. But this theory is one of the reasons why they think humans have so much fat on us when we're babies, is that we float easier, and that if you take a human baby and you chuck them in the water, okay, well, what the fuck is that? How about an actual article, not a picture? Is this a cartoon?

Well, but it's not even just about your heartbeat slowing down. There's a bunch of things that happen and like crazy things. Babies know how to hold their breath. They instantly hold their breath. That's like their Nirvana album cover. Mammalian diving reflex. Yes, that's what I'm talking about. Purports that some humans,

notably children under five, may also use this reflex to survive prolonged submersion. The mammalian dive reflex was developed in the 19th, theory was developed in the 1960s as an explanation for well-publicized survival

of exceptional submersion times of some near-drowning victims. But see if there's anything, like an actual article that makes sense on the aquatic ape theory. There's a new aquatic ape theory. This is from the Smithsonian. Oh, okay. Hmm. Okay.

Okay, the aquatic ape theory, now largely dismissed, tries to explain the origins of many humankind's unique traits. Popularized in the 1970s and 1980s by writer Elaine Morgan, the theory suggests that early hominids lived in water at least part of the time. This aquatic lifestyle supposedly accounts for our hairless bodies, which made us more streamlined for swimming and diving, our upright two-legged walking, which made wading easier, and our layers of subcutaneous fat, which made us better insulated in water, think whale blubber.

The theory even links an aquatic existence to the extinction of human speech, evolution, rather, of human speech. The hypothesis was met with much criticism, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 2009, Richard Rangham of Harvard University and colleagues suggested in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology that shallow aquatic habitats allowed hominids to thrive in savannas, enabling our ancestors to move from tropical forests to open grasslands. So from 2.5 million to 1.4 million years ago, Africa became drier during certain seasons.

1.4 million years ago, Africa became drier during certain seasons. Already dry savannas became even more arid, making it difficult for hominids to find adequate food. But Wrangham's team suggested that even in this inhospitable environment, there were oasises, wetlands, and lake shores. And these aquatic habitats, water lilies, cattails, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So that's the theory the theory is that we like you know obviously there's a bunch of different kinds of uh primates and some of them are still in trees today those fucking losers we left them behind ha ha those are the ones that really dumb people point to if people came from monkeys why are monkeys still around well they're dumb they were the dumb monkeys bro come on get it. We're the ones that made cars.

But that some of these apes spent a lot of time in the water. And that's why if you ever see a baby chimp, their heart is a rock. They're jacked. Baby chimps, they come out sinewy,

no body fat, and you throw them in the water they drown. They don't hold their breath. They don't know what to you throw them in the water, they drown. They don't hold their breath. They just – they don't know what to do. They just gag on water and drown. Not that I know. Not that I'm throwing chimps in the water. But that's what they say.

But if you throw a baby person in the water, they hold their breath. So this is the aquatic ape theory. But that's what scientists are basically saying about freediving. When I first learned about it, it completely blew my mind. How long can you hold your breath now? Five and a half. Holy shit. But like facing down on the water

and not moving and doing your preparation. Not swimming? No, not swimming. How long can you hold it if you have to dive into the water? How much time do you give yourself? It depends the depth. It depends the fish you hunt.

It depends the conditions. It depends on a lot of things. So if you're fighting the water currents, it's more difficult? Yes, because basically what you want to do when you free dive is you want to be as calm as possible. You want to be as relaxed as you can, which is why yoga and meditation are often very close to freediving. Because if your heartbeat is high, then your body is going to need more oxygen.

That makes sense, obviously. But then again, the second you emerge your face in the water, you do like your first dive and then you feel the pressure. Your body understands that you're trying to hold your breath and you need to do that. So the blood is going to start coming from your fingers, your extremities, your toes, and then your hands, your feet. So all the vessels are going to start constrict. So all the blood flow is going to go towards your vital organs.

So your body is getting ready for it. So they want to make sure that the oxygen goes exactly where it needs to be and make sure that you need as as less effort to do anything as possible when you're actually underwater now when you first tried holding your breath how long did you do it for the first time i did it yeah i think my first time trying it was about a minute that was like the best you could do. Yeah. No techniques, just ready, go.

No, no, technique like you breathe a little bit before. Even with techniques? Yeah, with techniques. It was – when you hold your breath, you have a buildup of CO2 in your body because you're not exhaling any. And then when your body realizes that there's a build-up it gives you an urge to breathe and then it gives you contract contractions like diaphragm contractions and this is what makes somebody panic you know like my body need hair and you want air you want air and then the more you train then you realize that you're learning

how to control it and it's not because your body tells you to breathe that you're necessarily out of oxygen. So what techniques do you do to relax that? Breathing. So I do mostly, especially when I'm in the water, I do a very short inhale, so about five seconds. And then I do a long inhale, maybe 10 to 15 seconds. And then when when you exhale you're focusing on like everything getting relaxed and then i'm sorry can you say that again because you said inhale twice oh sorry did you mean to no so you inhale for five seconds and then you exhale for 10 to 15 seconds oh okay so you exhale slowly you exhale super slowly you use your tongue to control the air coming out and then when you do that you get as relaxed as possible and then the more relaxed you are that along with your mammal diving reflex which is your heart beating slow down naturally your blood shifting from extremities to your

vital organs and then you also have about a few years ago maybe only 50 years ago they taught that when you reach 30 meters your body would be completely crushed inside. That was what scientists would think. 30 meters? Yeah, something like that. That it was like, that the pressure would be so great there that your body would be completely crushed. But then again, with that dive reflex, what it does is that that overflow of blood is going around your alveoli and your lungs, which prevents them from crushing. Your body is actually a design machine to go underwater.

Oh. Which is completely crazy considering that I've never knew that, especially growing up in downtown Montreal. Yeah. And then you put somebody in the water and you're like, hey, you actually made for that. So when people tell me, yeah, I could never do that. It's too hard. No, no, you're actually born like that. So was it like, was it a revelation for you?

I mean, did you really feel like this is more of who I am than the life that I was living before? 100%. I had this, I was living in London too, so it was all about, you know, earning money to buy as many things as possible, to try and impress as many people as possible. And then at some point I was like, wow, I just, I cannot do that. I cannot spend my entire life just seeking to buy things and impress people I don't like. And then when I started spearfishing, it really gave me a different perspective on life. It gave me the... It humbled me in a way that was so intense

that it changed my way of thinking completely. Basically. So I was... How did it humble you? Like in what way? Because I realized that when we were... Let's say when I filmed a documentary in... I filmed a documentary called Aqua Negra in Cape Verde two years ago.

Aqua Negra? Yeah. Agua. Agua? Does that mean black water? Yes, in Portuguese And then we were there for about five weeks Five or six weeks

And then the living conditions were really bad And there was no grocery stores around And we had to catch our own food And it was really a self-sufficient type of trip And the first week I remember The only thing I could focus on was oh god this is this is terrible that we don't have a shower there's no hot water the bathroom is disgusting I'm starving there's nothing around and then all you can think is like how your comfort's gone

and after a week that's the the the focus changed on the good things that we were seeing around us. And by having nothing all of a sudden, then I was like, oh, actually now, for the first time in my life, can take the time to realize what's good around me. And then how we were having fires with the neighbors and then how we were offering them fish. And we were like, oh, you know, if I give this guy two fish, he's going to eat one today and then one tomorrow. But no, they're inviting new neighbors to share and they make sure that there's like a whole like community sense to all of it.

And I was like, wow, I've been living in London for six years. I don't even know the name of my neighbor. And it's bad. It's not a way of living that I want. It's not focusing on the right things, and it's in that way. It's realize how much of an asshole we actually became, and I just didn't want to do that.

Well, it's a very recent way that people have been living. This way of living in apartment buildings and the way of living in houses where we don't know our neighbors. Yes. In terms of human history, it's very recent. And I don't think we're designed for it. I don't think so either. It's the human.

I do believe that a human being, to be happy, you need to have this sense of community. Which is why, you know, when you go on the subway and you see like somebody singing, everybody's laughing. And you see those videos on YouTube and it makes you all warm and happy inside yeah it's because that's what we we're meant to be you know and it's we're meant to live with other people we're meant to socialize we're meant to have this this this you know this strong feeling of of um i don't know how to say that in english um to be part of something, to be part of a group. And people like that. And I do think it's a necessity for a human being to be actually happy. I think so, too.

And I think it's probably one of the reasons why so many people are so grossly unhappy and so depressed and so disconnected. And they feel alienated even though they live in these giant cities. People feel extremely lonely even though there's a lot of people around. I mean, one of the weirder things about New York City, you know, I have friends that live in New York City, and one of the things that they say they love is how many people are there. There's all this energy. There's all this energy.

I'm like, yeah, but you're not even talking to those people. That's what's weird. It's like you're alienated in this little 1,200-foot little cubicle that you live in, you know, this little, I guess 1,200 foot's not that small. But, you know, some of them, like Ari's place is like, I have to ask him. I think it's tiny. It's probably like half that. It's probably like 600 feet.

It would probably be like 5 million. It's probably super expensive, right? But the idea is that you don't know anybody around you. But you're stacked around all these people. And then you go out, you're walking around these people, but you're not really talking to them. And you have a few people that you're friends with, maybe that you work with, and you interact with them. But then you're constantly surrounded by all these other people that you don't even know. It's a very weird, weird way to live. Whereas the way you were living, the way you were describing this with these people,

and they're all sharing fish and they're, you know, you're, everyone's taking care of everybody and giving some to their neighbors and sharing. And that's how people have been living forever. I think there's certain human reward systems that are built into who we are as a being, as a species that just aren't being met. And that's why I'm so fascinated by your choice to go from being a lawyer to living this very interesting life of spearfishing. But it's also, it's not always easy in the sense that I still haven't found a place where I want to live because

the society isn't designed for this. My lifestyle is very hard to adapt with modern society. I struggle with a lot of things. I don't know where to live. I don't know. Because this sense of community, you can have it in small villages. So that's kind of why i've been living in um well not anymore but i lived in the bahamas for a year and i got to experience that when everybody knows each other everybody talked to each other why don't you stay there um because for now i guess well i i couldn't i broke up with my ex-boyfriend. I couldn't live there anymore. So it was his house. I was like, all right, I'm out. So that is, I just, I don't know.

It's, I still need, you know, to survive. I still need to, yeah, I catch a lot of my own food and my freezer's literally full to the brim, but you still need money to live. Right. And how do you make money? I get a few things. I'm working right now on a cookbook and a TV show with a Canadian company.

Do you make any money off your Instagram page? Yeah, sometimes. Because some people do, right? Sometimes. How do you do that? How do you make money off your Instagram page? Like sponsors and different things like that. I just don't like being like, hey, drink my detox tea.

Oh, yeah. Skinny tea. I just don't like doing that. And the problem also is, like, was it two years ago? I was a super big contract with a cruise ship company. They need a girl to, like, they need a free diving girl. And we're not that many of us. So when they hired me, about a week later, she calls me back.

She's like, I'm sorry, we can't hire you anymore. I'm like, what? Why? And she says, because we're partnered with WWF. And our marketing department said that you raised a red flag because you spit fish for a living. WWF? Wrestling? WWE?

A WWE, like the panda one. Like the what? The one with the panda. The one that made them change their name to WWE. The World Wide... Yeah, that's what it used to be. Okay. Is that what you're saying?

The wrestling? Pro wrestling? No, no, no. The eco-friendly... Oh. With the panda. Damn it. World Wildlife Federation?

Yeah, that one. Oh, they made them change their name? That's why they changed their name? Oh, I thought they changed their name because of a lawsuit because they had to show that they were entertainment. I don't think so. Huh. So WWF owned it? I believe so.

Interesting. I didn't know that. I really thought that it was just because of regulations. WWF. WWF. So. So basically, yeah, they said like, oh, because we really want to keep our eco-friendly partners. Meanwhile, their fucking boats filled with roast beef and chicken and all sorts of other shit.

Meanwhile, when they cross, they're allowed. I think it's about when you're two miles away from the coast, you're allowed to dump your garbage in the ocean. What? Everything. As a cruise ship, you're allowed to open the trap and just throw everything in the freaking ocean. Come on, is that true? It's true. What?

It's the law. It's the law. Do they do that? Of course they do that. Oh, my God. And that's one of them. That's one of the problems. How many, there are five people cruise ship.

How many straw do you think they are five people cruise ship how many straw they think they use and glasses because they're too lazy to wash them that's one of the problem whoa and then the bahamas you know you know how much dredging you need to make for for cruise ship a boat to actually pass and dock somewhere you need to rip up the entire bottom of the ocean so it's deep enough. It's a very, very detrimental organization for the ocean. And then they're telling me, oh, sorry, we can't work with you because you catch your own food in the water. And sorry, you're bad for the ocean. I'm like, what? I catch my own food.

I don't buy this disgusting farmed salmon from Whole Foods because it's gross. And now you're telling me that i'm bad like what yeah most people don't know that farm salmon they dye the fish to make it look orange like if you buy farm salmon and they're not dying it would be a white meat because they're not eating what they eat naturally it's bugs certain bugs give them or shrimp what is it no it's? No. It's pelicans. No, not pelicans. What are those little fucking weird... Bunch of crabs. The ones that people have on their lawns.

Salmon is not pale orange. It's dark orange. Flamingos. Flamingos are pink because of the shrimp they eat, right? I think so. Yeah, it literally makes them pink. But salmon are dark when they're wild because of their diet their natural diet which includes a lot of bugs I guess yeah they just basically feed them and whatever they have like salmon is not supposed to be pale orange right it's dark orange right yeah yeah I've caught wild salmon before it's awesome yeah it is really good yeah but. But sadly, with all the water that they made to make electricity and all the stuff like that, they killed a lot of them.

Well, they killed quite a few. There's an interesting place in Seattle where you can go and watch the salmon swim upriver. There's like a bridge, and you go underneath the bridge, and they have this setup where there's thick glass walls, we can actually look into the ocean and watch the salmon go up the salmon ladder. It's really fascinating. So it's crazy to watch them. But one of the guys who was there, who was a guide, was explaining how when they were doing construction and doing various things in their building Seattle, they had shut down one of the rivers and these salmon would just get to the mouth of the river where they thought they were supposed to go and fucking die. And it it was crazy like millions of them died while they were trying

to figure out a way to carve this path again yeah it's pretty weird how they died too you like rot yeah i went to i went diving in the salmon river and and in bc and i was underwater with my girlfriend i could see they had like big stains of like rot on their body so they live like they're full life in the ocean and they came to breed one last time which I guess is a good last choice when you think about it and then they just rot

to death yeah it's very strange and if you catch them too far along the process their body's already deteriorated like you know i know guys who have caught them and then you can you know they've in survival situations like people eat them because you have to but if you caught them like towards the end of their cycle their body's like mush like you literally shove your fingers through it yeah yeah well it's but you see that's

what that's what people eat but again you know the wall street journal and their instagram page when they're promoting a recipe for shrimp that are probably coming from thailand or salmon that is farmed and very bad for the environment but then they think that i don't know why there's something ridiculously taboo about catching food yeah it's ridiculous and people imagine you know how i know how hunting has a bad reputation for for because of the blood and and things like that but in fishing we deal on top of it with a bunch of lobbyists that are fighting us for the fish at the same time because they want to sell those fish because they they want the fish. Yeah. And all we are for them is something in the way, and we don't buy their fish at all.

Right. And because there's so few of you, they can, you know, They can shut us down. They can say anything that they want about us, and we don't have the power to say something back. Right. If they shut down sports, spearfishing, there really wouldn't be much outcry. how many spearfisher people are there i would lose my shit but i don't think

well you'd make a post on instagram and a couple people would like it i'm like i got 5 000 likes um how many spearfisher people are in the country let's let Google just America, just United States. How many spearfish? How would you know? Because you don't have to have a license for the ocean, right? It depends on the state. Some states?

Florida, you do. You do have to have a license. In Florida, you do. Oh, interesting. Well, it's like, you know, $25 license. I Googled that, and there's a city called Spearfish in South Dakota. I don't know how to find it. How many active

just write Spearfisher men. No disrespect to the Spearfisher ladies. I don't think we count that much. How many Spearfisher men are there in the United States? Going back to that state or that city? It's growing really fast, actually.

The sport is going fast. There's like a trend now for people to catch their own food, and people are starting slowly. Because there's so many big people, special celebrities. That are spearfishing? No, that are voicing themselves when it comes to food sourcing, and now people are starting to realize that hunting or spearfishing? No, that are voicing themselves when it comes to food sourcing. And now people are starting to realize that hunting or spearfishing is actually not as bad. It's way better.

It is. But it's just very difficult. You know, according to Sports Illustrated, there's estimated between 1 million and 2 million. In the country? Yeah. How many did they do? That's a lot of people. Yeah, that's a big estimation.

That's close to 1%. Right? There. Holly dug it. That's a lot of people. Yeah, that's a big estimation. I don't think so. That's like almost, that's close to 1%, right? There's 3 million people. If there's 2 million, 300 million people, rather, if there's 2 million spearfisher people. Yeah, close. Yeah, but that's. That doesn't make sense. That's ridiculous. That's, I mean, even if it was one half of a percent, that's crazy.

So you're telling me if you get a room with 200 people, one of them's going to be a spear fisherman? Get the fuck out of here. Oh, I'm sorry. This article I just saw at the very, very top is from 1954.

There was only 80 people alive back then. That makes it even worse, I feel like. That's hilarious. You talk about pulling it. You know how people are like, yeah, bro,

that article's from 2016. Wow. You should know if you want to take up spearfishing. Wow. By the know-it-all. Wow. That's crazy. 1954.

I'll try again. Okay. Just give it a shot. Whatever. I mean, it's a great sport. It's the best way to eat fish and seafood. Oh, I can only imagine. I love fishing i love i love fishing it's really fun it can be a little stressful sometimes i get that but it's imagine if you you're floating you're floating in a saltwater tank and then you're looking around and you're trying to meditate as

much as you can and then you're waiting you're in a hunting mode you're focusing around and you're trying to meditate as much as you can. And then you're waiting, you're in a hunting mode, you're focusing on your prey to try to get it. And then you have like five grizzly bears that are cycloning you, trying to eat your ass. Does that happen all the time? I try to eat the fish, not you. Do you get approached by sharks? In the Bahamas, yeah.

In the Bahamas, they're pretty much always there. There's a guy who just got bit in Texas. He got bit by a bull shark and now he has flesh eating bacteria that's destroying his leg. Apparently there's flesh eating bacteria in the water. We don't need to Google that. It's pretty disgusting.

I got pretty bad encounters with sharks. My worst one was in Tampa. Something super easy. It was in 15 feet of water. And that's actually the dangerous spearfishing is when you start getting cocky. And you say like, oh, water's shallow. It's fine.

We don't have to watch each other. Everybody's doing their own thing, which is really bad. Definitely never do this. Yeah. I got my lesson big time. And I shot a little fish. So I clip it to the back of my gun. And then this tiger shark come in and i'm like oh tiger shark they're a little bit they can't be they're

aggressive yeah they're not the nicest one you want to you want to show up and then it was a junior juvenile one it was still a good like seven feet long seven yeah about seven feet long, seven, yeah, about seven feet long, but it was young, and the youngs are really the one that you don't trust, the big old sharks, you know, they're wiser, they know, they check you out, and things like that, but the young ones, they're the one a little bit crazy, so they're going to go more towards you, and they're going to go try to do like curious bites, which is what happens most of the time, with shark bites, it's a curious bite, bites which is what what happens most of the time which shark bites it's a curious bite and so the the shark is in front of me and he's charging me with his mouth open so with my gun i'm poking it i'm poking like the eyes i'm poking the gills i'm poking the nose i'm trying to poke

everything that's going to hurt him as much as i can and i'm not very strong especially in the water so i'm really trying to like bang this freaking gun as much as hard can. And I'm not very strong, especially in the water. So I'm really trying to like bang this freaking gun as much, as hard as I could in his face. And he doesn't back down. He keeps like circling and he keeps coming in for me.

And at some point, I'm like, okay, like something, I'm going to have to shoot it hoping that, that, you know,

I'm not going to miss because if I miss, then it's the only thing between me and the shark. So you're poking it with the tip. Yeah, I'm just poking it with the tip. And then you roll his eyes back. Oh. Which is when they're ready to bite.

And I'm like, oh, shit. I'm like, I'm dying. And I'm like, okay, well, whatever, you know. So I'm like, okay, I'm going to try to aim and try to see if I can shoot it. And then my friend arrived. He's like, oh, I heard you screaming. What's up? Do you have a fish? I'm like, there's a'm going to try to aim and try to see if I can shoot it. And then my friend arrived. He's like, oh, I heard you screaming. What's up? Do you have a fish?

I'm like, there's a tiger shark behind you, buddy. And he's like, oh, crap. He was like a – my friend Felix from Montreal is like a 17-year-old at the time. And he never – rarely spear fish. It was his first time he was seeing a shark. I promised his parents I would bring him back in one piece. Oh, Jesus. I'm like, okay.

I'm like, don't panic. Everything is fine. fine how deep is the water like 15 feet of water it was so shallow so i'm like put your back against mine and then cover your half and if he comes too close just poke it and the shark came in a couple of times and then because we were two he was like whatever he just left he didn't like that that he was outnumbered and i'm like wow so when i was alone with the shark i was screaming in the water and i was like calling my friends for help and then nobody could hear me and then we went back to the boat if you scream under the water how far away can people hear you not not too not not too far 10 feet 15 feet so it depends on the wave again and the winds and everything like that but nobody could definitely hear me then when i get get back on the wave, again, and the winds and everything like that. But nobody could definitely hear me. Then when I get back on the boat, I see my friend swimming towards the boat.

And he screams, tiger shark! I'm like, no shit, dumbass. I've been screaming for your help for the past half an hour. And then you get to the boat, and we left, and the shark was circling. It was like, ooh. That was really scary. But in that situation, again, if I had shot the shark to save myself, I would have got the worst publicity ever. That's one of the things I don't understand. When did that happen where sharks became something that are protected in the public eye?

Because was it the governor of New York that killed that shark when he was fishing? Was it the governor, the mayor, one of those guys? Was sport fishing, caught a shark, and who was it, the governor? Yeah, Cuomo. Cuomo. Very common in the States, shark fishing. They're edible. I've had Mako shark in restaurants before.

But something happened something changed and i think it was when there was all this awareness about um shark fin soup yeah there it is andrew cuomo he caught 154 pound thresher shark and everybody freaked the fuck out it's when it's when they realized that the asians were catching millions a day to make shark fin soup. Yeah. So it became, instead of it being something that was just another fish, then it became something that's protected. And people with a very shallow understanding of what a shark is were freaking out about

it. Yeah, exactly. The Asians win it for everybody else. I'm joking. How dare you? Be careful today. Especially with crazy rich Asians, number one in the box office. I mean, that practice of chopping off the fins and throwing the sharks back is horrific.

But there's sustainable populations of some sharks. I mean, apparently off of the coast of California, near Catalina Island, the Channel Islands, a lot of mako sharks out there. And then great whites. Actually, the population of sharks right now in California is very high of great whites. Yeah. Because the seal population became really high. And then because, you know, the great white shark population takes more time to grow. Now we're at a stage where there's a shit tons of lionfish

and now there's a lot of great whites too. But great whites are protected, right? Yes. Are tiger sharks protected? Sharks are protected in a lot of places. In Florida, I don't think you're allowed to eat it. Depends where. Some marinas are very

funny about it. In New York, I went spearfishing in New York about a couple months ago. And a guy was like cutting a mako in a dog and nobody seemed to be offended by it at all. Well, people that are on the water, people that are fisher people, they wouldn't be offended. It's the casual person on the outside that gets offended. Yeah, exactly. But again, that's the double-edged sword of the internet, you know, gave a voice to everybody.

Exactly. But it's just like, you know, remember that gorilla thing? What was his name? Harambe? Yeah, people are like, oh, this is terrible. They should have never shot the gorilla. They should have shot the mother instead. I'm like, what?

What? We're saying when a surfer gets bitten by a shark they're like oh it's his fault it was in his territory like you shouldn't have like done anything to the shark i'm like put your mother in that cage with that gorilla then tell me which one you're gonna shoot my money's not in the freaking my money's not on your mother it's probably gonna be in the gorilla yeah i wished there was another way i mean i don't know that they needed to shoot that gorilla i don't know enough about gorilla behavior i would like to think that the gorilla wouldn't have done anything to the baby, but I don't know anything. I don't know much about the situation enough.

It's sad. But if I have to choose a baby over gorilla, I'm taking the baby every time. I'm going to save the baby. It's a fucking human. Yeah, but it's easy to be irrational when it comes to that. When it's not you and you don't have any stake in the game. You're talking about it from the sidelines. And that's people talking about sharks.

That's people talking about bears. That's people talking about a lot of animals. Yeah, pretty much. And this is why spearfishing, hunting, it's very well hated, I guess, around the world. I have friends that run a bear hunting operation in Alberta. Shout out to John and Jen. Saw them this weekend in Calgary. They run a bear hunting operation.

They don't run a hunting operation, but they spend a good amount of time bear hunting black bears. And the black bear population up there is incredibly dense. There's so many of them. They're everywhere. And they decimate the deer population. They decimate the moose, the elk. They eat all the babies and they cannibalize each other. I mean, they're beautiful animals. They're fascinating. They're interesting. I'm glad they're around, but their populations need to be controlled. There's a lot of them and they're delicious. And all these things are like, they fly in the face of reason for most people. They think if you're shooting a bear that you're

a trophy hunter, like someone who's shooting a rhino or something like that. Someone who's a terrible person wants to shoot something that's endangered. They are as far from endangered as as humanly possible. They're not endangered by any stretch of the imagination. They live in dense forests and there's a giant number of them, and you can shoot two of them up there. They encourage you to shoot two of them. They're trying to thin out the population because of the effect they have on the undulates up there.

But it's one of those animals that my friend Steve Rinella calls them charismatic megafauna. It's cute. Yeah. It's just we've made them into movie characters and TV show characters. And people have this idea of what they are based on just this this sort of image that gets portrayed in the public. And we accept this narrative. And I think that's happening right now with sharks. You know, no one wants sharks to go extinct. I think sharks are awesome. They're cool.

one wants sharks to go extinct. I think sharks are awesome. They're cool. But they're also edible. And if there's a lot of them, I've seen people catch Mako sharks off of the coast of California and cut them up and make shark steaks up and eat them. And it used to be normal. No one cared until I feel like within the last decade, something happened in the last decade that people became incredibly outraged when someone kills a shark. I actually think that people became outraged when you kill anything. But they're so hypocritical because they're killing things left and right with their pocketbook. They just don't know it. They're killing things with their credit card.

They're killing things with cash. If you buy fish in the store, you're killing fish. I don't care if you like to think you're not. You are. You're supporting the fish industry. You're supporting the killing of these animals. You're eating them. It's a direct connection.

You're paying a supermarket hitman to go out and do the work for you. 100%. If you eat fish, you cannot be against pit fishing. If you eat meat, you cannot be against hunting. But it's also the weirdness of it. I went to Whole Foods today before I came here to get some lunch. And as I'm walking through, just because I was thinking that I was going to have this conversation with you today. And I'm walking by these long aisles of ice with these fish on it.

And I could just point to one of those fish and go, hey, give me that thing. No connection whatsoever to where that thing came from, how it got there. I just take it and I could bring it here. I probably should have just for effect. Just slap it down on the table. Well, imagine the amount of grocery stores in the country with a fish display, which is completely full. Well, let's just imagine in this area, there's a Whole Foods that's about two miles up this way. And then if we go down the street, there's another one, there's a Sprouts, they have

a fish section. Then we go a little bit further down, there's a Gelson's, they have a big fish section. There's just fish all over the place. But the ocean's pretty fucking far from here. I mean, you have to drive to get to the ocean, you know, and they're not going to the ocean and pulling these fish out themselves. It's all coming from a giant commercial boat that distributes it all throughout Southern California, all throughout Northern California, all throughout. Then you get into the middle of the country. That's where it gets really crazy. If you're buying halibut and you're in South Dakota, where the fuck is that coming from? You know? Alaska, probably. Yeah. You're not supposed to eat halibut if you live there.

I completely agree. You should be close. You should be close, though. I mean, I'm just kidding. Eat halibut. Eat whatever you got to eat. But we're weird. People are weird.

And our connection with food. Yeah, but all of those boats, you know, they have... I mean, the States is actually doing a way better job than a lot of countries. I must admit, under control of fisheries. But when I see laws and regulations on the small little individual anglers or spear fishermen, and then I see a chihuahua that can catch everything he wants, that's just, it's just boils my blood to a next level. Well, it's insane. And in our lifetime, the population has decreased radically.

And there's no better example than that than the Tokyo fish markets. You know, the Tokyo fish markets who interview those guys and they talk about what it used to be like when they just, the amount of tuna that they used to deal with and the amount they deal with now, it's a significant dip. this is within you know 40 years like what is it going to be like 40 years from now and the estimates are that it's going to be a radical decrease in the population of almost all fish yeah for sure it's it's that's the problem people want to have access to everything now if if we would put regulations on everybody's fish, it's like, okay, look, everybody, I know you want your salmon, but it's going to be close of January to May. I know you want your halibut, but you can't eat it this year.

We eat it next year. If we would be willing to live with just, I mean, I think people would survive it, that's for sure, because I don't think people would get used to pretty much anything. But then the industry is worth so much money that they're not willing to do that. It's not just the industry is worth so much money, it's that there's certain people in certain countries in particular where that is all they have. I mean, there's certain people out there where they're dependent upon the ocean and its bounty for their survival. And if they can't sell fish and they can't buy fish and we're talking about individual fisher people that have boats and you know are doing it on their own small scale commercial fishermen there's not a lot of room for error

there they're not making a ton of money those aren't a problem though like the small family commercial fishing boat they're not the problem i I mean, it's, when you see, when you see those guys bringing it, you know, like the guy in the video earlier, yeah, he's catching a big net,

he's catching like quite a bit of fish, but the reality of things are ships, foreign ships raiding the entire ocean with nets that are like

kilometers long. Like a fillet, a net that is a mile long. Yeah. And you just catch everything you can in it and then you're like dolphins turtles turtles dolphins sharks everything yeah and then it's not it's not the freaking johnson family that lives in in north carolina or catching lobsters and and then tuna that are making a problem But you would have to have some regulations that were accepted by all these different countries too.

And that would be a real difficult thing to pull off, to get these countries to accept that they're going to lose money and to do it in a timely fashion where these fish could actually bounce back. It's not going to happen until there's nothing left. That's crazy. And everybody sees it. Everybody is talking about it. When you look at the sheer size of the ocean,

the idea that we could fish the ocean out is so crazy. That's a lot of fish. But when you see those commercial boats and how the quantity of fish they managed to take out of the ocean, it's a lot of fish. Is there any talk about doing something about this? Is there anything on the table? Is there any discussion about regulating the amount of fish

these gigantic boats can pull out? Well, again, the U.S. is trying to regulate that, and they actually made efforts that prove to increase the amount of fish, or it's good. They're actually working in the right direction. But the problem is that still to this day, I'm not sure exactly how many nautical mile you have to be, but a Russian or a Chinese foreigner trawler is allowed to fish from the coast of the United States. And international water, they just raid everything.

There's nothing you can do about it. Who's going to regulate that? Right. The UN? China's going to be like, yeah, sure, buddy. Yeah, I mean, look, Japan's still killing whales. You know, they kill whales under the guise of science. Have you seen how they do that?

The Sea Shepherd busts those guys. How they pretended that it was for science. Yeah, and then they kill them and sell them. I mean, it's really fucked up. You know, the same exact problem was going on in the United States in the 1800s. Market hunting is what they were calling it, where they devastated all the wildlife in North America. The buffalo population was almost brought to extinction levels. Really close. There's still some wild herds that exist in Mexico, and there were some of them that exist in the United States. And now they brought them back.

But to this day, the majority of buffalo that live in North America are all on private land, the majority of them. But at one point in time, there's millions and millions of them all throughout the country. majority of them but at one point in time there's millions and millions of them all throughout the country um elk they're they've only been repopulated to a small percentage of their original range i think it's something like 30 there's some animals that have thrived like white-tailed deer because um they live uh primarily in farmlands and farmlands have gotten so huge that they they were essentially like farm animals now. It's very strange. Like when you think of white-tailed deer, the places where they're the most popular. That's like Santa Claus deers, right? No, that's actually reindeer. That's

a caribou. Yeah, caribou are these migrating deer that live in Canada primarily and in Alaska. And they migrate for hundreds and hundreds of miles in these massive herds. They're very different in that, you know, unlike deer, you'll see them, like hundreds of them, moving together in one group, in one line across the tundra. But these animals that were in North America, not Alaska, but North America, no, not the lower 48, they were wiped out almost to nothing.

Antelope, deer, elk, buffalo, they were almost all wiped out by market hunting because this was back when we didn't have refrigerators. So people would shoot these things and bring them to market, and people would go to market and buy that meat, and they would bring it in on trucks. I mean, I guess they just had blocks of ice and these trains and trucks and they would bring in this meat and they killed almost everything in a short amount of time, like less than 100 years. There was almost nothing left.

And then they instituted these laws where it was illegal to sell wild game. So if you buy elk, like say in this country, if you buy elk meat, you're buying it from New Zealand. You're buying it from New Zealand. You're getting it from... Oh, so it's actually in force right now still? Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

There are some commercial farms. I don't know what they sell. I mean, I think you can sell commercially raised deer and elk in America. But if you go to a restaurant, most of what you're getting, you're actually getting from New Zealand. Really? Yeah. But you can't go to the woods like say if you went to the woods and you went and shot an elk like that one up there and you tried to sell it's illegal to sell you can't sell that meat it's not a

marketable product it's something that has you have to have a tag for it you have to pay for the tag and then it has to be for your own personal consumption or you can give it away to your friends but you can't sell it okay which is not much of a bad thing yeah it's the only way they had to eliminate market hunting was the only way to bring these populations back and then they had to enforce these very strict conservation efforts and then here's the big one is i think it's called the pickman robertson app whatever the pickman robertson is that it is that's the name of it that what it is? That's the name of it? What it is is it takes 10% of all of the proceeds from hunting supplies and gear and puts it to wildlife conservation, which is an enormous amount of money, billions and billions of dollars.

So it goes to preserve habitat and wetlands, goes to reintroduce species into places where they had been decimated, goes to reintroduce species into places where they had been decimated. Like elk are now in viable numbers in places where they were completely extinct, like in Virginia, and I think Tennessee has them now as well. Kentucky, I know, has them. Pennsylvania has them. And at one point in time, there was none there, like up until just a few decades ago. If things are actually handled in a responsible and smart way,

there is a way to save everything. But the problem is this is the United States. The United States is like it's on land. It's controllable. It's within the boundaries of this one country. The control is accepted. When you're talking about the ocean, it would be really difficult to get other countries to agree

to that kind of strict management that brought back wildlife in North America to do that to the ocean. But if they did do that to the ocean, maybe everything could bounce back. A few states, Florida is definitely one of them where they're looking very closely to what's going on and then they have close seasons and things like that and actually makes a really nice and big difference but again i think the problem is not coming from that the problem is coming from again like deep trawling and the commercial, foreign commercial fishing. What's a big industry in Florida?

It is. Florida sport fishing is a giant industry. People go there every year to grouper fish and fish for tarpon. And, you know, there's a lot of fishing in Florida. And it's probably a pretty significant part of their economy. Yeah, I think I read somewhere that actually the number the number of jobs in a rick and roll recreational fishing was higher than in commercial fishing in the States Wow I believe I read that some the number of jobs so so the number of so you create more jobs yeah right so like selling

fishing rods and lures and guiding people and charters and things like that yeah that kind of makes sense so the commercial also i mean the biggest problem with commercial fishing is i went to um actually went to taiwan last last year and i was helping them finding government and giving them a proposal on how they can change the law to make the fisheries better. And they were explaining it to me. They have those ships, and they hire people from the Philippines or from Indonesia, and then they put them on a ship for six months. They take their passport, and they're getting paid like... Nothing. Literally nothing.

And all they do all day long is they catch tuna, they catch tuna, they catch tuna, they catch tuna for like 14 hours a day. And then that's it. And then they bring the tuna back, and they catch it for like 14 hours a day. And then that's it. And then they bring the tuna back and they sell it. You know, the problem is people are fucking up so many different parts of the world so fast. It's hard to like go, well, we got to really put it all aside and concentrate on the fish.

No, for sure. Again, it's a lot of money and there's a lot of people depending on it. But then at some point we're going to have to realize, hey, there's no fish. So we're more people. So we're going to have to turn ourselves on them. But people are not going to change their ways or do anything unless they're being told, sorry, there's no more fish. How long have you been doing this now? Full time?

Yeah. About three years. And have you noticed a difference in three years? Depends where, but yeah, some places definitely. There's some, when I've been traveling there's some places where I've been and the third time that I, third time or fourth

time I was coming back, I could see there was even less and less fish. Really? The Mediterranean is a disaster. Mediterranean? There's literally nothing left in that place. What would happen? And it's, again, that's another example where it's just been overfished for so many years. They don't allow spearfishing there, but a commercial fishing boat is allowed to catch as many tuna as they want.

For tuna, I mean, spearfishing is illegal. Yeah, Anthony Dordain did something in Italy, and there were so little fish that they were actually throwing frozen fish into the water, like frozen octopus into the water, and they wanted him to pretend to catch these frozen octopus. Instead, he made a mockery of it and showed the guy throwing the frozen fish into the water, frozen octopus into the water. I'm not surprised. If you catch a fish in Greece, you can sell it for like 100 euros. Because there's no fish? There's no fish. There's definitely no fish, but people won't change their ways until you tell them, sorry, you can't

have your candy anymore. Then they're going to be like, I guess I have to make an effort now. Fuck. So what would be the solution? I mean, can they, is there a way to commercially raise fish that's viable? Like they do with the cattle industry? Well, I'm actually going to the Marshall Islands in October,

and I'm going to visit this. The Marshall Islands? The Marshall Islands. Where are those? That's in the middle of the Pacific. I'd like to go nowhere. That's my thing. Is it near Hawaii?

No, it's near Australia, I think. Oh, wow. Or something like that. No, it's near Papua New Guinea. Oh, wow. That type of area. You got to be careful. They eat people over there.

Oh, that's fine. I don't have much meat. I'm like the appetizer. But they have... So I'm going to visit a farm that is sustainable and everything so if there's any New Guinea people

listening that I'm joking around don't get mad people get so outraged this motherfucker's calling us all cannibals is that where it is? show me where it is again right there where your

where your arrow is oh my god that is ridiculous don't go there so they told me that they have a sustainable farm so I'm going to visit it. I'm going to see it.

You just have to be really careful because again, if it leaks into the ocean then it contaminates all the fish and then if some of them escape,

it creates problems. What kind of problems does it create? You can have a captive one so basically it's going to infect you out of fish. Infect them with diseases? Yeah, with diseases.

What kind of diseases do they get when they're in captivity? They can get all sorts of stuff. So it's a lot infect the other fish. Infect them with diseases? Yeah, with diseases. What kind of diseases do they get when they're in captivity? They can get all sorts of stuff. So it's a lot like captive animals, like avian flu and swine flu. Yeah, pretty much. Oh, fucking great. There were some stories about some really bad fish farms that are feeding them with pig stuff.

Again, it's all about being responsible. We did a podcast recently about CWD. Quantic Wasting Disease is a disease that's spreading amongst deer in this country. And they think a lot of it is coming, or some of it at least, is coming from deer farms. They have these deer farms and all these animals are eating off the same food. Then they escape. And then they spread it. And then there's an incubation period

and i mean it exists in the wild and it exists in deer farms so it's like it's very complicated but so they have a similar issue with fish then yeah they do actually and it's it's pretty bad but it's what kind of diseases do they get i wouldn't know what type of disease they have it's just i'm not really familiar with fish diseases, to be honest. What is that term? There's definitely, like, some fish have cancer. It's bad. What is the term zoonotic?

Is that the term? When it leaves and makes the jump to humans, the diseases. Are there any? Yeah, that's what, like, avian flu is and swine flu. Oh, okay, yeah. It's a disease that makes it jump to humans. Is there any diseases in fish that make the jump to humans? Apart from parasites, the only thing it can take off that human can actually get.

And parasites are pretty rare with ocean fish, right? It's more common with freshwater fish. There's worms. We can see worms sometimes, but you just discard them and then it's fine. They're not going to kill you. They're just going to taste a little funky. Ew. Do you have eaten worms that came out of fish?

For sure, right? Probably. I just probably don't know it. When I cut the fish raw, I cut it pretty small so I make sure that there's nothing in it. So you look to see the worms? Yeah, you can see them. How much worm can you get in your body to where it starts growing? Take a little slice?

I'm not going to try. Do you know? But no. When you cook the fish, they're all dead. So if you freeze it, that's why a lot of people freeze their sashimi before eating it. Yeah, they try to do that with pigs and a lot of animals in this country too. But there's two types of trichinosis apparently. Maybe there's more, but there's two very specific kinds of trichinosis.

One that if you freeze, it'll die. And this is trichinosis that comes from an animal that's from the southwest of the United States. But then there's trichinosis that comes from animals that's in the northern territories, and Canada in particular, like bears, Alaska, and that stuff. You could freeze it. It doesn't matter. It doesn't even kill it when you freeze it. Yeah. So you you could freeze it. It doesn't matter. It doesn't even kill it when you freeze it. Yeah.

So you have to cook it. It has to be cooked to, I think it's 160 degrees. Some 147 to 160 is the recommended temperature. You have to kill those little fuckers. Yeah. Otherwise, it just gets into your muscle tissue. I have some friends that caught it. It's horrific.

Oh, that's bad. Yeah. It just gets into your muscle tissue. I have some friends that caught it. It's horrific. Oh, that's bad. Yeah, like your whole body's like in pain because it's literally they're burrowing their way into your body. I don't think you have something that bad in fish.

I mean, maybe that's why I'm skinny. Who knows? He's got a tapeworm. Maybe that's why. Well, maybe you're just eating fish all the time. It's probably pretty lean stuff. Yeah, true. But also freediving, when you go spearfishing, you burn about between 1,000 and I think

1,300 calories an hour. What? So if you want to lose weight, go spearfishing. Really? Yeah. 1,300 calories an hour? That's incredible. It's very, very intense. Wow, that's amazing. You would think a lot of people would listen to this like, oh, I could eat so much

food. I'll just go freediving oh, I could eat so much food. I'll just go free diving. But you also don't eat food, which is. What's that, Jamie? The Marshall Islands? Oh, Jesus. That's where they blew that thing up. We've shown that a million times. That's the crazy nuclear bomb testing area.

That is the nuttiest shit ever. You see that? It's miles high water spraying up into the sky. So maybe the fish are gonna have like three eyes or something oh yeah you're gonna have fish that can read your mind they're gonna know you're coming what are you spearfishing for in the marshall islands i'm not gonna be spearfishing i'm just gonna be visiting a farm and see what they're doing and it's yeah so it's kind of good i have

a lot of people asking me for for um what I can do, what I can eat. And so this is one of the possible alternatives that they have, these farms. Yes, exactly. So I'm going to check it out and make sure that it's legit. Is it possible that they could reintroduce fish into the ocean, like stock the ocean? Because that's what they do with some lakes. Like I used to go fishing at this lake in boston and um they restock it every year with rainbow trout yeah that's actually my my lake

when my parents have a country house they do that too and it works the only problem i would see with that for like an ocean fish would be i'm thinking because they never had predators yeah captivity that that may be it might have a survival problem after that but maybe they can learn it i i i don't know yeah the strong and smart survive i mean it's still better that if you know if there's yeah if they put ten thousands if two thousand survive it's still good it's better than nothing yeah yeah i wonder what do we have to do i wonder if it's it's still good. It's better than nothing. It's still 2,000, yeah. Yeah, I wonder what it would have to do. I wonder if it's even possible to restock something as big as the ocean. It's just being fished so quickly, and that's the biggest problem.

But there are solutions. It's just people have to be willing to talk about it. And right now, that's the biggest problem. With the same situation as with the Wall Street Journal, when people are trying to talk about food searching and mentioning alternatives. People are like, no, no, no, no. They're like, we don't eat fish. We don't eat seafood. No, no, no, that's not true.

Don't you think that it's the optics, though? I mean, what they're concerned with is not that it's rational. It's that they don't want any controversy that's what it is so a person like you although what you're doing is if you explain it and you look at it objectively it's very rational but they're not trying to be rational what they're trying to do is avoid any conflict like there is a guy who is a nascar okay? And he lost a sponsor recently for some racist stuff that his father said 30 years ago. This is how crazy people are getting. 30 years ago, his father used a racial slur.

And because of that, this guy who wasn't even alive when this happened, or maybe he was alive, maybe he was seven years old or some shit. He lost a sponsor. I mean, it's one of the, companies are such cowards. Like they're so terrified because of social media,

because people are so willing to protest. And there's a bunch of fuckheads out there that just get a thrill off of getting people fired and of getting things cancelled and of like exercising action and seeing a result all they're doing is pushing buttons it's not that they've thought about this and like hey is this guy really responsible should we really blame him for something his father did 30 years ago and that's ridiculous what we should do is nothing. Just let it go.

I mean, unless this guy is like some sort of white supremacist or some racist himself, and he's not, we should just do nothing. But that's not fun. What's fun is getting a rush, a power trip out of action. Like, clearly, there should... Like, if you find a real racist, someone who's doing something actively to harm other people simply based on their ethnic origin or the color of their skin,

yeah, that's terrible. You should talk out about that. That should be eliminated from our society. Real, real racism. But that's not what this is. What this is is people deciding that they're going to take action and then NASCAR being a pussy about it or this company being a pussy about it. And that's the same thing that's happening with you. It's not, this is not a rational decision. Like they

should look at it and go, wow, what an interesting way to get your fish. Like how many of these people that made this decision actually eat fish? I would bet it's most. I would bet it's most. People should understand also that by refraining people to talk about it, you're being part of the problem. Yes. This is why things have been so bad for so many years, because nobody wants to talk about it. They all want to eat it. They just don't want to know where it's from. But no one's looking at things long term. All they're looking at is potential short term income loss. So what the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post or whatever, whatever paper it is, what they're worried about, they're worried that someone's going to come along and say the Wall Street

Journal support, was it Wall Street Journal? Yeah. The Wall Street Journal supports mass extinction of fish. They just reframe it in some outrageous, unrealistic, non-accurate way. Well, people need to chill out too. I think like, I understand where they come from in the sense that, especially

like the millennials or whatever, we're all born when, you know, we had a bunch of toys from China. Nobody gives a shit about that. We ate whatever we want. Nobody gives a shit about that. We had freaking processed food. Nobody cared about it. We had hot dogs and nobody was saying anything about it.

And then we all reach like our mid-20s and all of a sudden we're being told about everybody. Oh, by the way, you know everything, like all you Barbies, they're very bad for the environment. Oh, you know what? By the way, like the hot dogs you've been eating, they're very bad for the environment oh you know what by the way like the hot dogs you've been eating they're very bad for the environment and you're like we live in an era where being told that everything we're doing is wrong and it's hard it's hard for somebody that lives in middle city that doesn't know anything else to be like oh yeah you know what's the I'm gonna stop eating this that I've been eating for the last 20 years just because somebody told me so somebody had a very funny tweet about Starbucks.

Do you know California eliminated straws? Yeah. And Starbucks said this whole thing about how big sign about how we're doing our part for the environment, we're eliminating straws. And then on the tweet it said, okay, so you're just putting plastic lids on your coffee cups? Yeah. And what happens with them? And then Starbucks, it said, oh, dot, dot, dot.

Like, you're not fucking, you're not fixing shit. Just because you get rid of the straws. You got plastic lids everywhere you go. Those goddamn Starbucks lids are littered on the street. They're everywhere. But this is actually, this is a perfect example because it shows exactly this. They did a little bit of action. People are like, they have either a very small action that makes them feel better or they like to point out the fingers of somebody else.

Yes, you with your straw. Exactly. You're evil if you have a straw now. It's just the way people are dealing with that they've been told that everything they've been doing since their kids are bad so now they're like no but but but look at her she's pier fishing she's evil you're like what it's just it's just i think it's that i think it's the way that people are are handling the fact that they've been told everything is wrong that they're trying to be like, no, I made my effort.

I made a Facebook post this morning saying that I wasn't getting straws, so I'm green. California seeks to be the first state to limit plastic straws. Like all restaurants. Wow. Yeah. It hasn't passed, but it's been proposed. Governor Jerry Brown.

How can it be so difficult to be like, look, plastic is a problem. You use something else. You know, one thing that they, I don't know, maybe I saw this on your page. Did I find this on your page? That there's a new invention that they use for water runoff before it goes into the ocean is this giant net that catches all this plastic particles. Was that on your Instagram page? No. It's really interesting. Someone has invented this cover that's like a filter that as the water is going through, it catches all the stuff that would ordinarily be washed out to sea. And so it basically, over these storm drainage pipes, these enormous pipes, is this huge net.

So the water can still go through it, but it just shows you this insane amount of debris and garbage that would have ordinarily just been washed out to sea, and they're catching it in these nets. It's not everything, but it's a start. I mean, it's not going to make up for the fucking cruise ship that's dumping things just right offshore it's crazy i did not know that that was the case yeah you you it's it's legal too and that's the worst part of it but i don't know but you can't spearfish but you can't spearfish yeah because i'm the bad guy so this what you want to do is you want to spearfish and you want to raise awareness and you want to continue to live this life. So what you're trying to do along the way is trying to figure out how to make a living while you're doing it and where to live.

I do. I'm going to want to write a book at some point. Do you mind if I ask you how old you are? I'm 31. So this is an age where people are like, oh, Jesus, you're in your 30s. You should have your shit together by now. That's a lot of people think. You know, like you're in that area where like you should have your career in order.

You should think about settling down, having a family. You should start your 401K and you should have all this stuff in line and you're out there. Fishing. Stabbing fish. No, I don't mind that. I don't think my age is an issue. I don't think it's an issue either. I'm just saying that in the path from graduating high school to going to college

to becoming a person that's 31 years old, I mean, a lot of people compare themselves in a very it's a sort of foolish way they compare themselves with other people like how much stuff have these people accumulated how much have i but it was for me it was it was a crucial step of my life to be able to take a step back i want to take a step back of all of that and be like okay whoa whoa like i've been telling the same thing since i'm born about what I should want, about what I should do, about, you know, about what was expected of me. People have been telling you that. You know, it's like when I was seven years old, I look at my mom and I said, you know, mom, when I grow up, I'd rather have, like, a job that I don't like when I make a shit ton of money than a job that I love when I make nothing.

I was seven. I told that to my mother. And my mom was like, when I make a shit ton of money, not a job that I love, when I make nothing. I was seven, I told that to my mother. And my mom was like, what did I do wrong here? Well that's a rational thought with kids. And then when I quit my job, then my mom was the one being like, why are you doing that, you have no security in life, and blah blah blah, and I'm like, well sorry, it's good.

I need a step back, I need to look at everything around me, I need to look at society, I need to look at how things work. And I want to make sure that when I'm in it, it's because I actually know what I want. Yeah. And I like being told what to do. Right. So that's kind of what I'm doing. I'm figuring out my own things.

I'm figuring out what's important for me and what my real values are. own thing and figure out what's what's important for me and what my real values are and i don't think you can discover the person you really are by staying in your nine to five by not knowing anything and being unhappy and not being able to go outside of your comfort zone right comfort zone's the big word right because it's comforting that you get that check every week it is but and ultimately it's it's numbing you have kids you have this and that but it's it's fine. Ultimately, it's numbing. You have kids. You have this and that. But it's people that tell me like, oh, you're so courageous to have done that. Or, oh, I envy your life so much. I'm like, well, when I first quit my job, I lived in my freaking car for a while because I didn't have a place to stay and neither no money to sustain myself. Did you really live in your car?

Yeah, I did for a while. How long? Like about a month, something like that. And what did you do? It was like sporadic in my a month something like that and what did you like in my car smell or did you shower somewhere no no i had friends so i was like showering there's also beaches uh showers in the beach but i was did you when that was happening how old were you at the time 23 years ago so 20 so you're 28 28 yeah and you were like were you like what the fuck am i doing my life I'm living in my car.

Yeah, but I have. Yeah, but I felt free and I never regretted my life. Well, you are courageous if that's the case because a lot of people would panic, me included. It's, I guess you're courageous in a way regarding like the fact that you're sleeping in a car. Yeah. But if you're unhappy with your life why why keep going with it well that's what you're saying is logical right but logic is not how most people live their lives what you're saying is like you're it's romantic like you're saying i want to live my

life with passion and i want to follow my interests and i don't mind living in my car and showering at the beach. I don't mind. I'm fine with that. Most people are not fine with that. Most people would be insecure and they would be scared of the future and they would want some sort of stability. And that's, that's what's courageous about your, your decision. Because one of the things that like, I was talking to people about you before i did this podcast and the question from everybody is like how does she make a living i'm like oh no i'm not sure i'm like she i guess she's a professional spearfisher person i go but i don't know how you make money doing that i'm like maybe you guide people take people out sometimes very rarely i'm

a freediving instructor too so i don't i only give private lessons I'm a freediving instructor too, so I only give private lessons. I'm a freediving instructor too, so I don't really – I give lessons once in a while. I have contracts here and there. I'm not – right now I reached a point where I'm not rich, but I'm not starving either. Right. And I'm kind of – I'm happy about it, and I actually do believe it's going to lead to something. What will it lead to? it and i'm i actually do believe that it's going to lead to some something but lead to to something that to a job that i think is going to be you know i'm starting giving conferences

around and i think that's that's something that really really interests me conferences like like this woman's empowerment thing you were going to talk yeah pretty much just without all the well shit going behind it well that was just one and i'm sure look people love a story about someone who's following their passion because there's so many people out there that really desperately want to do that they just don't know how to do it or how to get the courage to do it or they get stuck with a mortgage or maybe they have a family and responsibilities or maybe they have loved ones that are taken care of and they can't and so when they hear about someone who's going for it, either they're jealous of you and they hate on it and they say,

that's stupid, that girl's a fool, blah, blah, blah. Or they go, God, I wish I could do that. Those are the two, depending upon the mindset of the person that's watching you, that's going to be their reaction. I completely agree. Well, I have a TV show coming on. I have my cookbook coming on. What's the TV show?

I have a – it's going to be in French, but it's about – I'm going to be traveling around the world and fishing with – I'm not even sure I'm going to talk about that. Whoops. Whoops. It's a TV show. It's going to be fun. And I'm starting with – my sister just graduated from fashion design in London. And we're just starting a bathing suit company with recycled fabric. Oh, okay.

So we're doing, I have a few things in my pipeline. I'm not, I don't like being bored. I don't like, I know it seems like it, like, oh, like I'm free spirited and I travel around, but I'm, I'm still a very ambitious person and I do want to achieve things that are going to make me proud. It's not always, you know, it's not... I didn't quit everything to become a hippie and live on the beach and wear no shoes the rest of my life. No, I just... I quit my job to live and build my life and my career the way I wanted to

and in a way that was making me proud and happy. So this is pretty much what I'm doing right now. It's very admirable. It really is. And it is really brave. Thank you. Because you're not going to get a whole lot of reinforcement from other people. I'm sure you probably didn't.

There probably weren't a lot of people that were telling you, you go for it, girl. Go sleep at the beach. Yeah. Stay in your car. Yeah. You don't have a shower? Who needs a shower? You don't know where your food's coming from?

Who cares? But there's also the group of people who are like, oh, yeah, this is a good idea. And then the second you turn around, they're like, oh, my God, this is so stupid. Well, that's just humans. People love to talk shit. But even in my hardest moments when I was broke or anything like that,

I never regretted it. Not one second. I told myself I made a wrong decision. It's like it's a good sign. Well, the good thing is you were doing something that's so soul-sucking. it not one second I told myself I made a wrong decision so I guess it gets signed well the good thing is you were doing something that's so soul-sucking that anything seems like it's it's it's worth it I really found myself in situations when I was like oh I'm actually an asshole I was like okay I'm gonna have to work on that as a lawyer no even No, even like in this life, you know,

especially when, you know, filming a documentary in Africa or in different places, where, you know, you have no food and you, like, have a table of people and we're sharing, like, a can of tuna between four people and you're like, yeah, let's share. I'm happy to share. And you're just like, I just want to, like,

push you on the ground and run away with a can of tuna. Right. You're discovering yourself. And sometimes you don't always like what you see. But it's good. It's what it's for, you know. You look at yourself and then... I would never discover the type of person that I am when I'm starving

on a nine-to-five job. Unless you're starving, right. Exactly. How many people ever are, right? Definitely not that many and again that was the thing that shocked me the most and i think it's also what touches people the most about africa has been one of them is people are super close with each other people are really nice and you're really focusing on on the nice things and it's you're like wow i want

that i want to keep doing that. But then, you know, you spend your month there and then you spend a month in New York City and you forget everything. Yeah. It takes literally a week

to forget everything. You know, another hard thing would be if you tried to relay your experiences on a television show, it would be edited down to,

even if it's a one hour show, with commercials it becomes 44 minutes and you're just not going to be able Even if it's a one-hour show, with commercials it becomes 44 minutes. And you're just not going to be able to get all that. They know that. It would be very hard. I told them that I was not interested into doing anything scripted. And I told them, if I want to do a TV show, if I'm puking, I want it there.

If I'm crying, I want it there. If I hate it, if I'm crying for my mommy to come pick me up, I want it there too. Because I think that's the beauty part about those travels and that's what needs to be shown, I think. That would be a real reality show. But the reality of reality shows is most of them are at least planned out if they're not scripted totally. And you could tell, you know, you could tell when people like, well, we got to fix this gas pump. We're not going to get this boat started. You know, it's like such bad actors. You see to their face.

You could smell it when they're acting. It's just like, well, that's what it was. The beauty of the Anthony Brunet show, actually, it was all about. But he wouldn't do that. I mean, that's why when they threw the frozen octopus in the water, he was mocking them. Exactly.

But it's... I mean, I understand why a lot of people see that in me. I'm a girl and sometimes I'm a little bit girly and things like that.

And people are like, oh, all she wants is to be in a TV show and do this and do that. And it's... I get why people would think that. But it's... I mean, if you pass five minutes with me, you're going to realize it's not that i i get why why people would think that but it's it's i mean if you pass five minutes

with me you're gonna realize but i also think what you're trying to do is relay your passion for something and when people are really like i've struggled with that with bow hunting because i've done some things on camera i did some uh a film last year for under armor where we went elk hunting but part of me is like not everything should just be broadcast. Not everything should be filmed. Sometimes life should just be experienced, especially for someone like me who's, I think I'm overexposed in the first place. I would be better off doing less things publicly. So that's one that I've decided to do less of publicly.

publicly. So that's one that I've decided to do less of publicly. But part of me wants people to know that there's a satisfaction to like bow hunting in particular is very, very difficult. It's very hard to do. It takes intense practice. It takes a lot of physical exercise. You have to be able to run up the hills. You have to have endurance because you're climbing through the mountains all the time. And then it's hard to do. it's hard to find the animals it's hard to get close enough to shoot one you have to be able to execute when the moment is there it's very difficult to shoot an animal with a bow and arrow especially long distance i mean you have to have an extreme amount of proficiency before you can ever pull that off in their high stress situations so part of me wants to relay that there's a misconception about what people see when they think of hunting they think of cruelty and they think of someone who doesn't respect nature and they think of they think of

this um they think of this uh abusive relationship that humans have with animals instead of the way I look at it, which is you have this deep understanding of the food chain and this food chain exists, whether you're there or not, this food chain exists with bears and wolves and mountain lions and deer and elk and all these animals are struggling for survival. And all you do is interject. You step in for a little bit, and you take your part in the food chain. And in turn, you also give out all this money that goes to conservation. This money that goes to conservation ensures that this opportunity will be there for other hunters in the future and ensures that the populations of these animals will stay healthy and ensures that they'll be monitored by the proper fish and game and wildlife biologists and all these different

people that are going to ensure that these animals are, that this environment and this experience is preserved and the wild habitat that these animals enjoy will be preserved. And for people, it's very conflicting. You know, for people, it seems almost hypocrit very conflicting you know for people it's it's it seems almost hypocritical that you could say that you love these animals but you also want to eat them yeah but that's that's no what's what's what's what's the hypercute thing to do is to say that you love them and then buy them for grocery store not caring how they got there yeah that's when you're being ridiculous what's the problem is that's been

available for so long we're used to it like if there was just a machine that you could go to where you could just get your money from this machine you talk to somebody about hunting and then they put their finger in the ears and they're like oh i don't want to hear anything and you're like what well it's the same way they go to mcdonald's the wall street journal approached you with fishing spearfishing it's the same thing it Wall Street Journal approached you with spearfishing. It's the same thing. It's not a well-thought-out, rational argument. They're worried about outrage.

And in this day and age, it's very easy. I had a picture I put up the other day of a target that I have in my backyard with some arrows in it. And all these vegans are attacking me for shooting a fucking target. That's crazy. I mean, they know I'm practicing and I'm getting ready to shoot animals, but all they're doing is, there's no animal there. It's a fucking rubber elk. And they're getting angry because that's what people like to do.

They like to express outrage. And they talk too much. There's too much expression. Take it from someone who does talk too much. Me, I talk way too much. There's too much expression. Take it from someone who does talk too much. Me, I talk way too much. But they're not considering what they're doing. They're just doing it. And you don't change people's opinion by being an asshole online.

You just get everyone to realize you're an asshole. True. I got a bunch of vegans following me now because I took the time to respond to their concerns, and now they actually got it. following me now because I took the time to respond to their concerns and now they actually got it but how can we make improvements when when you have in one side an angry bunch of people that all they want to do is scream scandal or everything they see and then on the other side the people that matters that have a strong voice are scared to talk about everything because they're scared of that first group and then by doing that we're nothing. I've been toning down a lot on my Instagram. I stopped posting fish with, like, blood on it or things like that

because people just don't want to see it. And I don't have a choice to do that because, again— But what percentage don't want to see it? This is the thing. I mean, if someone eats fish, if they like sushi, and they get upset when they go to your Instagram page, and you've got a spear through a tuna, you're almost you're educating them in a lot of ways. And the people that do get upset, even though you hear their voices,

and their voices are, it's a loud minority. I mean, you have, how many followers do you have on Instagram? Uh, 84,000. Think, think what 84,000 people looks like in a room. That's a giant number of people. Now imagine 50 of those people are screaming assholes. That's what you have. True. It's a small percentage. The number of people that see it and they're rational adults, they know that in order to kill a tuna, there's going to be some blood. There's no bloodless method for killing a tuna. It doesn't exist. But also the weird thing is that in a way I understand the outrage on a certain level. I went deer hunting for the first time in New Caledonia in last October.

And it was not with bows, it was with actual gun. And when I shot the deer, I started crying. I was like, oh my God, I killed Bambi. And it was so bad. And I get there, and it was like, oh, it was all cute and everything. I'm like, okay. And then it was dead. And then I carried it on my back. And we walked back to the house.

And then they started cutting it in pieces. And it started looking like meat. And my guilt went completely away. Completely away. And I was like, wow, how much of a hypocrite can I be? Then I'm crying because I killed freaking Bambi. Like actual physical tears going down my face. And then the second I see a piece of meat,

I just got excited. I'm like, we're going to make burgers all of a sudden. And fish is a little bit easier because a lot of us have seen whole fish as kids. You know, you put a whole fish on the table so that the gore is a little bit less there. So it's more about the blood than seeing the actual fish dead. But I get it.

I know it's bad, but I felt really, really like an hypocrite after that. I know. I know that. I mean, I felt that way. I felt in a weird way. I felt like a weird sense of loss the first time I shot a deer. But it went away when I started eating it too. And I never killed an animal before that. But I had killed fish. I've been fishing since I was a little kid.

I love fishing. But I didn't feel a connection with fish the same way I felt the connection with a mammal. It's because it's closer to us. You know, it's our closer to our species. Fish is like an alien thing that lives in an alien world that breathes water but again the one that have like the human-like eyes then i tend to feel a tuna is one of them i tend to feel it's true i have i have a picture i have i have to show it to you of tuna eyes it's you're like it's it looks it looks really like you can see expression and and their eyes and that's when that's the second where people are starting to feel like oh i'm a murder like fear there's i think it's curiosity but i guess you can say how about just freaking out

because it knows you're going to eat it it's anthropomorphization right we look at animals so we see that's one of them that's actually very you see that that's kind of human like oh that fish is an asshole i could tell looking in his eyes what is that that's a duck to toot it fuck those teeth are amazing yeah that's a pretty weird fish look at that jamie look at that folks so it's you know you can see like it's like a little bit white on the outside and then it's color and it's just freaking out because it's looking out at the air for the first time it's like holy shit there's another world up here claude guys you gotta see this well for a second

he was right there he's alive or she's alive yeah it's probably freaking out it's outside the water like what in the fuck is this oh imagine if it was alive it would have drawn my ass my my hands would have sounded of his gills so if it comes back alive it's this is a very very strong fish oh i'd imagine look at it looks like a tank but i mean imagine being a fish you live your whole life in the water and then all of a sudden someone pulls you out of it and you look into the air and you're like what is this and why can't I breathe? Well, at least I did it very quickly, so that's the good thing about it.

Yeah, but it's got to be a freakout. And plus their brains are like the size of your fingernail, right? But I knife his brain pretty quickly. What's that? I knife his brain pretty quickly. Is that what you do right in the dome? So you kill them, and if you don't, you shoot them, and if you don't kill them on the spot. You shoot them?

With a gun. Really? Yeah. You shoot tuna with a gun? With a spear gun, yeah. Oh, okay. Spear gun. Oh, sorry.

Yeah, spear gun. Sorry. I thought you were like, bang. No, no, no. Like gangster lean. Like sideways style. Shoot them right in the head. I was like, what?

Because I know they club them. They club fish and they pull them on boats. But I didn't know they shot them. True. But you shoot them underwater. That's how you do it with a speargun. You shoot them underwater. Yeah.

Yes, I get that. With a speargun. And then when you get it on land, what I do is, well, what most spear fishermen do, you grab them from the gills. That's a little gore. Sorry. Graphic content, beware. And then you grab it by the gills and you knife it. And it dies instantly.

Right. If you go line fishing or even commercial fishing, what they do is they just throw it in the boat and then it dies of asphyxiation for hours. Yeah. So we kill it as quick as possible. Yeah. And do you immediately throw them on ice?

Yes. You know what I didn't know? Oh, you bleed it first. as possible. Yeah. And do you immediately throw them on ice? Yes. You know what I didn't know? Oh, you bleed it first. You bleed it first. Because you know when you eat sushi or fish and it tastes fishy? It's very often the blood that makes that taste. So every time we catch a fish, you just cut the gills, you let it bleed. That's the same with meat.

It's the same with meat? Yeah. They butcher a deer, they'll hang it by its legs and cut its throat and gut it and let everything let the meat bleed out it's dead already right yes it's already dead and fish you have to do it straight away almost in the water if there's not too many sharks around because the blood coagulates very very very, very quickly. Right. And then it becomes too late. And then it changes the flavor of the fish.

Yeah, because when you fillet it, you know, you cut it on the side. And then when you flip it, it's just like blood everywhere. And then it's tainting to me. And then it creates a taste that is not that good. And I think that's one of the reasons why they soak fish in milk. It changes the flavor. fish and milk. It changes the flavor because I think, if I remember this correctly, there's enzymes in milk that destroy the harmful bacteria that causes fish to taste fishy. And I think they said that this works also with meat and with chicken, that there's a certain

smell to chicken in particular, that when you get it, it might smell a little funky. What that is, is this certain bacteria that's on the surface of the skin, and then if you soak it in milk, see if you can find that. I read that really recently. This is saying it helps odor-free cooking when you're doing fish or shark even, too.

I tried with shark, actually. You eat sharks? You monster. Well, I was in M time I used the milk. You eat sharks? No. You monster. Well, I was in Montauk, and I saw a guy was fileting a shark. Montauk? Yeah. In Long Island? Yeah, in Long Island, yeah.

And then he was fileting, like, a small mackerel shark, and I asked him for a piece, and he gave me a slub of, like, I was like, okay, thank you. So I walked over with my big piece of shark. And what struck me was, like, the you. So I walked over with my big piece of shark. And what struck me was like the smell. It smelled like meat. You can smell like the ammonia in it. It was super strong.

And then I read online, it said put in milk and lemon juice for 24 hours. Did you do that? Yes, I did. So lemon juice would break it down. I was good. Was it good? Yeah, it was good. How do you cook it?

I just fry it in a pan. Do you have a special way that you like to cook fish? It depends which one, but I really like lightly floured and just I sear it in olive oil and then I cook it slowly in butter. I'm a friend, so I put butter in everything. Yeah. Have you become more into cooking because you kill your own fish? Opposite. Really?

I actually, I mean, opposite in a way that I always love to cook and I got into spearfishing because of cooking. So this is what made me fall in love with the sport. It's the fact that, or the lifestyle, you can call it. It's the fact that, or the lifestyle, you can call it. It's the fact that catching my own food, I get access to amazing fish and seafood that couldn't be more fresh than that. There's a guy named Hank Shaw. He's been on my podcast before. He's an amazing chef. And he has a bunch of wild game recipe books.

And he got into it because he wanted the freshest ingredients. And he wanted wild game ingredients as opposed to buying farm-raised or factory-farmed food. He wanted to be able to cook amazing dishes from, like, say, a wild pig that he shot himself. So he got into hunting because of that. And because of that, he's very valuable for people that are really interested in cooking wild game because he was a legit, excellent chef before he ever got into hunting and then getting into hunting. And now he writes books about it and he's very,

very passionate about it. It's interesting. It was, it was a very similar situation to me. I literally got into it just pretty much just for the food. Actually, the first two years when I thought it's pit fishing, I didn't even like spit fishing.

I was in the water scared of my own shadow for two years. I was of spitfishing. I didn't even like spitfishing. I was underwater scared of my own shadow. For two years? I was. I didn't like it. But you said you liked it the first time. I liked it. I liked the concept. I liked what was behind it.

I fell in love with catching my own food and cooking after and all of that. But spitfishing itself, it took me a while. So you were still nervous about it. I was extremely nervous. Extremely nervous. Like struggling to breathe. And every time I was going for a spitfishing trip i couldn't sleep for a month i was literally imagining myself being chewed by a shark and this and that and it was it was if never it's my trip's never been about that even though i was completely petrified

of them i've been lost at sea once which was pretty shitty day you got lost at sea once, which was a pretty shitty day, I must say. You got lost at sea? Yeah. What happened? About two years ago. I was in Mexico, and I was with friends. Fucking Mexico. I was so angry. I hated the guy so badly. What happened? So I jump in the water with a friend of mine.

I've never spearfished before, and we're in the water. Your friend never spearfished before? No, no, no. He never did anything. He's just like, I want to look around and see what you're doing. How deep is the water? It's pretty never spearfished before no no he never did anything he's just like I want to look around and see what you're doing and then I see the boat how deep is the water

it's pretty deep you can't see the bottom and then the boat started going like further and further and further and further

and my friend is like oh what's going on I'm like nothing nothing and I'm like okay we're gonna start swimming from the shore right now

for the shore yeah for the shore so start swimming it was like it would have been durable. It was like, I don't know, maybe a good like

five miles maybe. The fucking shore was five miles away? It was far. It was like, I would have done it. It was definitely been after dark when I reached the shore.

So I'm trying not to panic. My heart is like pounding in my chest. I can feel it in my throat. It's drifting away. Drifting away? Wait, for no reason. Who was in charge of the boat?

The captain that we hired. That was American, actually. What did he do? Just start drinking and not paying attention to you? Oh, wait. And then we're stuck, so I told my friend,

okay, let's swim. We swam for about an hour, an hour and a half. Oh, my God. And then a boat passes by. So I started screaming and yelling, and I had my buoy. Luckily, I was swimming it. And it passed next to me, and it waved at me like, hi.

I'm like, no, no, no, no. I'm like, help, help, help. I go completely nuts. And then the boat stops, and they pick us up, and I'm trying to explain. And my completely inexistent Spanish that we've been straining at sea. And so I'm like, the boat is like right there, super far away. And they drop us to the boat. The guy is asking me for money.

I'm like, I'm lost. I'd seen my wetsuit. The guy who took you to the boat is asking you for money. The guy that picked me up was asking me for money for a tip for rescuing me in the middle of the ocean. I was like, sorry, I don't have a tip in my panties right now but thank you for saving my life and then you drop us to the boat and then we get to the boat and the guy's like oh i didn't put

enough gas in the boat oops i'm like what so he ran out of gas he ran out of gas. He ran out of gas. So you were, he would never have been able to get you. Never. Holy shit. It was so bad. And then we managed to, the Coast Guard came and they tried to tow the boat and he started telling the Coast Guard to like go screw himself because, because I don't want to pay for this. You're all a bunch of assholes. I'm like, can you stop talking right now?

Oh my God. And he literally insulted him so badly, the Coast Guard left. Did they take you with them? No. I was still on the boat. Oh my God. With my friends that were drinking, I didn't understand what was going on. They were like, why are you so mad? And I'm like, just keep drinking.

So how'd you get back? And then he managed to find full reception. He called the cousin of his wife, his neighbor, this and that to come tow him. He arrived like about an hour and a half later. I got back to shore and the guy's like, oh, so what time are you going tomorrow? I'm like, screw you. I'm leaving.

I never want to see you again. What time are we going tomorrow? What a fucking delusional asshole. It was so bad. I know you almost died and I left you in the ocean and I didn't have any gas and I told the coast guard to go fuck off. Exactly. I'm like, I'm never seeing you ever again.

And we get to the car and my friend is like, oh, I give him like a hundred dollars in chip. Is that enough? I'm like, you did what? You did what now? And my hair is like. And yeah, so it was. Yeah. Is that the scariest thing that's ever happened to you in

the water besides the tiger shark yeah definitely for sure it was was there anything else like that that really freaked me out that should freak you out five miles is a long way to swim especially if you don't swim distance all the time did you have any flotation device or anything i had one buoy about that big and we were two. I was more scared because it was about like 435 so the sun was getting down

really quickly. You wouldn't be able to see where the shore is. No. I mean with the lights, yes. But it's more, I was more freaked

about like sharks and things like that when it's dark. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. So I had moments in spearfishing that was a little bit freaky. I also had a blackout last year.

Underwater? Yeah, that's the biggest danger of spearfishing is actually blacking out. It's not sharks. It's not getting bitten by anything. Underwater? Yeah. So basically what happens is that you dive down, and then when you come to the surface, if you stay too long,

your lungs on your way to the surface are going to expand back. And then your residual volume of air that you have left in your lungs becomes really, really small. So then the percentage becomes too low and then you pass out. The what becomes too low? The percentage. Percentage. I can't think of a word. Of oxygen in your lungs become too small.

And then you just pass out. So basically your brain shuts down to make sure that a lack of oxygen is not creating become too small. And then you just pass out. So basically your brain shuts down to make sure that a lack of oxygen is not creating any permanent damages. Oh, what a shitty system. It's actually kind of smart. Not in that time. But then that's what happens with people is that

when it comes back up, if your buddy is not watching you, and that's why spitfishing is a team sport, if they're not watching you, if you pass out in the water, you're going to sink right're gonna sink right down you're both doing at the same time well normally well the good system to dive is one person dives at the bottom the person is watching the other one oh okay and then it's one up one down one up one down oh and then you you you watch each other's back is that what happened with you? Yeah, I was actually very lucky. The guy that was diving with me lost his brother a few years before to a blackout. So he was looking at me very, very closely.

And I was beyond grateful to see his face at the surface. I knew it. And it was going to blackout. How did you know you were going to blackout? Because I dove down and I was aiming at a fish. It was pretty deep i was at like 85 feet and i aimed for a fish it was in a pole spear too was in a gun and i missed it and i started chiseling it in the water and then i missed it again i was like god damn it and then

i realized i was like whoa i'm actually pretty deep and i've been there for quite a while so i started panicking a little bit so when you panic you let air even more which is completely stupid and then i start finning finning finning and when you panic, you let air even more, which is completely stupid. And then I started finning, finning, finning. And then you have – you start doing – Finning? Sorry? Finning. Finning.

What does that mean? Finning. You know when you wear fins? Mm-hmm. Oh, kicking. You're trying to get to the surface fast. Yeah, exactly. And then what happens first before you black out is you have a loss of motor control.

So I could start feeling, I could feel like my body making like weird movements. And then I knew that I was out of oxygen. And then I knew that I would probably, most probably going to pass out. Wow. And then I came back, I came back. And then I saw that my friend was watching. And I was like, oh, I really hope you're really watching. I hope you're really watching.

And he grabbed me and then he woke me up. And it was. How far were you from the surface and you blacked out? I black hope you're really watching. I hope you're really watching. And he grabbed me and then he woke me up. How far were you from the surface and you blacked out? I blacked out at the surface. Oh, at the surface. Yes, which is why it's called a shallow water blackout. Because even if you're in deeper water, most of the time it happens at the surface. So when you got to the surface, what did he have to do to wake you up?

You have to take the mask off. You have to keep the head off the water. And then you have to blow in the ice because you have a high concentration of nerves. You slap a little bit, not too hard. Call the person's name and then you normally wake up pretty, pretty fast unless you inhale water. What did you, was it like you had a dream? Like if you get choked out, like one of the things that happens when you get choked out is you wake up, it's like you're dreaming. Like what? Whoa, I was at a disco. I saw something. I was riding my skateboard.

Like it's weird. I've never been choked out to the point of passing out. I would imagine similar though. Luckily for me. But yeah, I missed out on it a few minutes and I just wasn't sure what was going on. And then you're just done for the day when it happens. Yeah, you have to be done, huh? Yeah, the risk of getting another one the same day is actually very high. Wow.

So once you shut off, you get shut off again. Yeah, so you have to wait at least the following day to get back in the water. Did you jump back in the next day? I think I did. It was the day after. I really want to go back in the water as soon as possible. Just to jump back on the horse? Yeah. So at night I was a little bit stressed out and my friend gave me some Kratom and it was fun.

Oh, that stuff. I used to think that stuff, that Kratom was, I didn't think it was a drug. I thought it was a mild stimulant. I heard that people take it for pain. But I thought that when they're taking it for pain, that they're not getting high. They're just taking it and it alleviates pain, like Advil or something like that. And then I took, I think I took eight of them, eight or ten, which is a lot. Because I know Chris Bell takes like ten every day. Oh, but it's a pill? Yeah.

Oh, okay. I took it in powder mixed with like. Yeah, this is just the powder in pill form. And I was high as fuck. And I was like, oh, okay. Now I know why people are nervous about this stuff. I mean, but the weird thing is I was high, but my body was very functional. Like I was high, but I wasn't uncoordinated.

I wasn't like knocking things over. It wasn't that. Everything worked normal. Like everything was moving as I wanted it to move. But I was like, whoa, I'm fucking tripping. Isn't it an opium derivative? It is an opiate. It operates on your opiate receptors in some sort of strange way,

which is one of the reasons why they're making the argument that it should be illegal. But if any opiate is legal, it should be that one, because it helps people tremendously with addiction, tremendously with pain. It doesn't seem to be toxic to the point where it can kill you, or it's very, very rare that it does. It seems to operate in a completely different way than any other opiate. And like I said, even though I was definitely high, like I was definitely under the influence of something, nobody, I don't think anybody knew. I mean, I could have conversations with people, but in the back of my head, I was like, I'm so high, but I'm talking to people and it was all totally normal. I wasn't driving, but if I was driving, I think I'd be fine. I'm fine. I was fine. Walk. I think I even worked out. I think, yeah, it's just, it's just operates in a very different way.

It's, um, I've never, I mean, I've, I've had my knee operation. I had one of my knee operations. Um, they gave me a morphine button, like when I was in the hospital, like they said, if you want morphine, just press that button and it'll give you some morphine I just fucking hate that thing once you get high off the morphine you're in the hospital like this is great keep pressing the button and the pain of the knee is it was on also my knee

was on this motion machine right after the surgery was done they put me on this machine that extends and contracts your knee. Okay, yeah. Brings it back and forth, and that's not comfortable. But when you hit that morphine pad,

bang! That's fun. But other than that, I never really have had opiates, I don't think, except they gave me a pain pill prescription. I don't remember what kind it was. It was Vicodin or Percocets or one of those.

I took it once and I hated it. It just made me feel really stupid. I just remember thinking my brain is just really dull and I still could feel the pain. I just didn't care. It was weird. Those morphine buttons

are very dangerous. When I got my operation, I keep pressing the button too because I thought it was really fun. Until they told me, well, it's time to go home. And I stood up and I fell right on my face. I had a complete face plant. Really?

Yeah, like an actual complete face plant. Oh, what were you in the hospital for? I was a hernia. Hernia? Yeah. And they didn't ask you, like, how many times you press that button, Valentine? They definitely didn't seem to have taken into consideration my weight oh yeah right you're tiny well why wouldn't they ask you how many times you press the button before they let you get up i i don't know but i remember the

woman being like the nurse being like like you had you had a lot you sure you want more you sure that much i was like yeah bring it in i. Well, once you're under the influence of it, I imagine you don't really worry about it. Nah, you don't. Until you pass out. Well, listen, Valentine, I'm glad we did this. It was really fun. I'm glad we had this conversation. I think, like I said, I think what you're trying to do with your life is admirable. Life is short. I wish more people would chase their dreams and live their lives in a way that they want to rather than just jump into the fucking rat race. I'm definitely not regretting any second of it.

So I'm happy I did that. Thank you so much for having me here. And it's crazy how you came up. I was asking a friend of mine for a podcast to listen, and he talked to me about yours. So I was sitting in a beach in the Bahamas, and my friend Arunas that podcast to listen, and he talked to me about yours. So I was sitting at a beach in the Bahamas, and my friend Arunas that went to law school with me was like, Oh, you should listen to the Drogon podcast. It's awesome. I looked you up on Instagram, and I saw you were following me.

I was like, nice. Well, there we go. My friend was like, what? No shit. Well, we did it. Thanks for doing this. I hope maybe this opens up some doors for you and some things happen. Well, if people stop hiding behind their close-minded opinion, let's see. I think slowly but surely conversations like this open doors and change people's perceptions. And that's what I hope people got out of this.

It's good. If I have one message today, it's talk about it. Know where your food comes from and don't be scared to see what's going on. And live the life the way you want. And that's what you're doing. Oh yeah. Get out of your comfort zone because you're never going to discover the person you are by staying in there. Boom. Bye everybody. Mmm.