The Prepper Broadcasting Network - All the Goodness of Pine

Episode Date: December 9, 2025

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Maybe you know what a zombie is. When a person dies and is buried, it seems a certain voodoo priests who have the power to bring him back to life. Horrible. It's worse than horrible because a zombie has no will of his own. You see them sometimes, walking around blindly with dead eyes, following orders, not knowing what they do, not caring. You mean like Democrats?

Another snow day in Richmond, Virginia, PBN family. What is up? The road's racing over yet again. And I don't know. We took a snow day. We had a blast, sled, the whole thing. Bike, electric dirt bikes and all the stuff and having a ball and doing the stuff. A lot of people out in Richmond enjoying the snow and the misery of 29 degrees.

Terrible cold. 29 miserable degrees It's something Yeah My son, he's damn near impervious To the cold, I'll tell you Firewood cut Firewood cut

We've been burning We've been burning When I get home We'll be burning I trimmed the Christmas tree And save the trimmings You know One thing we don't talk about a lot

Is the power of pine Maybe we should talk about that On this ride of mine On this ride of mine I've got a good German coffee Don't forget to go to Disastercoffee.com, by the way. Get your Christmas hook gift for someone in your family. You go get the Christmas hook coffee from Disastercoffee.com not only is it tremendous.

I need to get some personal. Not only is it tremendous, but it is also pre-built with a gift tag on it. It's got a two-from gift tag built in. That's the label. So you just buy the coffee. Gift tag's already on the coffee. You're good. You're in.

You're going to give the best Christmas coffee there. is on the planet and uh you know if you pair it with the christmas hook book well now you're giving someone a gift that they can't even get on etzy you know what i mean it's one of those things that's so niche it's so it's so it's impossible you can't buy it anywhere you have to buy it from two different places wrap it up probably terrible branding and marketing on my part and retail acumen but that's just the way that it is uh so yeah i'm i'm remotely frostbitten minor nothing big i'm just kidding but we don't talk about the power of pine you know a lot of survival topics you could argue that the things that i'm best at i rarely ever talk about

what is that that's got to be a condition or something that i got to put that on my bio i get a lead with that my learning learning disability slash ADHD slash whatever that is what is it that a man talks uh only limited amounts about the things he knows the most about how often do i talk about cooking i guess i do a little bit how often do i talk about fishing how often do i talk about playing the guitar how often do i talk about some of the things that i'm the best how often do i talk about writing very rarely maybe i like to play in the areas that i'm not necessarily an expert at or something like that maybe there's a little maybe there's a little risk in there. Well, look, one of the things, I wouldn't say that I'm an expert in it, but I've done a lot

with the pine. You know what I mean? Like, the pine and winter, they just seem to go hand in hand, right? I trimmed up the Christmas tree. We bought a tree that was too big for the house on purpose because we do every year. But this one was extra tall. You know, not National Lampoon's Christmas vacation, but You know what I'm saying? So we had to trim some bottom boughs, and I kept those. I kept those, and I trimmed them even further into basically like fresh kindling. Because whether you've done it or not, I have, and that's the key in survival and preparedness, by the way. The key in survival and preparedness and preparedness and urban survival and so on and so forth,

and firearms and first aid and self-defense like the key is doing it the key is at least doing it too many firsts will kill everything in your preparedness plans a la dave jones right that's the dave jones adage that i love too many firsts you can do a thing once and it's exponentially better than having never done it if you want to master it you got to do the reps it's like i always tell you everything's reps right everything is reps well i I can say I've done my share of reps with pine. You know, I try to avoid it in the springtime. You go into a pine forest.

In the springtime, you leave out with the worst case of chiggers you ever got in your whole life. At least in the southeast of the Gnation. I trimmed these boughs off, stacked them up outside in the cold, because they're filled with sap. You know what I mean? They've got that lovely pine sap, which is basically an accelerant. I mean, it really is. It's an accelerant.

And the needles themselves are an accelerant, to be honest. Even not dry. If they're somewhat dry, like, no, I'm talking they don't have to be brown and dry. But if they've been off the tree for a little while and just dried in the cold, you know, even, I mean, they're not that bad directly off the tree. I've used them for fire that way, too. But they will kick up some flame, not for a long time. But they will kick up some fire.

So I reserved all those trimmings for the fire And because I knew that, you know, fire's a given for us And, yeah, it served me well. It served me really well. The other thing about pine, of course, the needles make that great 250 milligram per cup vitamin C tea, right? Now, the tea sucks, okay? It's horrible.

I've never had a cup of pine needle tea I've enjoyed, but I have cups of pine needle tea. I don't put anything in it. I'm sure there's somebody out there who spruces up, ha, ha, ha, ha, spruces up their spruce tea. And maybe it's good, I don't know. I drink it because sometimes I drink and eat things that have nothing to do with taste whatsoever. You know what I mean? You don't eat two cloves of garlic whole because you just love the taste, right? And the burning pain that it exacts on your poor throat on the way down.

But this time of year, in particular, like eating too much sugar, eating too much crap, you know what? You feel it down there. You feel the stomach is like, what's going on? So I send in the troops, you know, I smash a couple of garlic clothes and eat them whole. Sorry, Lady Liberty, but I do it. And, yeah, it works. It works. Things get right real fast.

And you find yourself in a much better situation. So, you got the pine needles. You got the pine trimmings, right? The sticks, the needles, great for starting fire. You got the pine sap. And if you know how to source the pine sap, see the pine sap will ooze out of the tree where it's been damaged I've never made pine tar I've never taken the pine sap

collected it put it in a in like a steel cup brought that over a fire and melted down the pine sap into what they call pine tar but I've seen people put like wrap a toolhead and put the hot pine tar over it as almost like a glue you know what I mean all of my plans have gone out the window if I'm using pine tar to make tools, okay? I've failed so many, so many different challenges.

Everything's gone wrong for me if I'm in that boat. But still kind of interesting. I've also seen people put it over wounds, which I'm sure would work really well. Probably wouldn't feel good, but I'm sure it would work. Now, in the crooks of the pine tree, I don't know how many of you know this, you probably heard of fat wood.

you might have seen fat wood i don't know but good fat wood is a it's really like a part of the tree where the sap collects in the wood and it gets dark and it has a great smell and it's you know it's impregnated with this sap there's just a ton of sap there i've done this myself which is how i know it works right not just a youtube video but i've done this myself i did it up in the mountains. Trout fishing in Virginia. The night was closing in. I was supposed to stay the night on this mountain, but I actually changed my mind because I saw just a touch too much bear activity for me to sleep in a hammock. No, I didn't even have a hammock in those days. Actually, I was on a one-man tent on the ground. So, but I wanted to cook my trout, so I had to get a fire going,

and I was really into this fatwood thing. And right around the area where, where I was starting my fire, luckily enough, there was a big pine tree that had fallen. Not big, actually. It wasn't a big pine tree. It was a, I don't know, probably three feet. No, not even. It was probably about, of maybe a foot wide, the trunk. Maybe not even that.

Maybe like eight to ten. inches. Anyway, neither here nor there. Um, and I'm talking, not at the base, right? Probably much bigger at the base, but I kind of saw what I was going after and it was around that area. There were these knobs and these, uh, branches that were going into the tree and these little crooks and these knobs I knew would be a great spot. You can also harvest fatwood, they say, I've never done it, um, from the root, roots of the pine. tree, you know. I don't want anything from the roots.

This is my train of thought. I'm not saying it's bad from experience. I'm saying this is my train of thought. The roots suck up water, right? So I don't want anything from the roots. I'll pass. You can have the roots. I'll take the high-up crooks that are filled with the good fatwood.

And so I gathered the fat wood, you know, and scraped a little bit of it onto my Tinder bundle. to create that sort of little fatwood sawdust, not like a sawdust, but more like kind of, I don't know, it comes off, it doesn't come off in like nice curls like you're feathering a stick. But, you know, it kind of comes off in granules almost. And I put that in the Tinder bundle and used the fatwood to start a fire. It works, man. The miracle of pine, right?

The miracle of the pine tree. The pine tree really is special. some people say that you can use like the bark of pine to start fires and you can i mean it's it burns it's weird especially the virginia pine it's like scabby and big and you got to crumble it down but it's also it's brittle but at the same time it also kind of breaks up in long hard pieces and i don't know maybe i haven't given it the time it deserves maybe it just takes too long to process and i don't never have the patience to process it but what i would tell you is that uh it is one of those trees it is one of those trees and it doesn't matter what kind by the way like i say virginia pine

white pine spruce whatever the evergreen family now you do need pine literal like white pine for the pine needle tea or something along i don't know if you can get the same benefits from spruce to be honest with you but you do need pine needles of on the tree to make pine needle tea. I will say that. No, duh. But it is just something to consider. I know many of you out there like the idea, the romantic idea of knowing the planet you walk on, right? This notion, we've grown out of this concept. We've truly, we've grown out of the concept of understanding the planet we're on, right? You don't know it. I'm driving by a bunch of trees right now. I'm looking at them. They're covered in snow. I have no idea what they are. There's

trees that have been transplanted into people's front yards, no clue what it is. I have no idea what they are, what they do. There's a bunch of them out there. I don't know. Ornamentals mostly. But the tall ones, the big ones, I can identify all of those. The natural ones, the locals. You know what I mean? The local yokels. So it seems romantic an idea to know the planet you live on. And that sucks, but it's also great. It sucks that we don't know, right? It sucks that we don't know like a dogwood tea can actually reduce your fever, right? I have a dogwood outside my house literally right out the front door. And for years and years and years, I looked at.

I also love the dogwood, too, by the way. It's one of my favorite trees. It made an appearance. It's beautiful white flowers made an appearance in Seasons in the Valley. One of the books I wrote pre-preper, one of the chef-chefi books I wrote, It's called Seasons in the Valley. You can get the e-book on Amazon. It's filled with some hoity-toity recipes, seasonal recipes.

It's a whole section on the black truffle. And literally, you know, using real black truffles for recipes in that book. But the dog would, yeah, for years it's been in my yard. I had no idea it had the ability to reduce fever. So, you know, just these kinds of things. And how do you learn these kinds of things, PBN family? Now, you can put an app on your phone and identify. It all depends on what skill set you want.

I mentioned this in my forging class. My forging class course over at pbnfamily.com, if you're a member, you can take it for free right now. If you're not a member, it's five bucks a month. What the hell? But I mentioned this in my course. You have to decide what you want to be, right? If you want to be a forager, then you have to be a forager. You have to forage.

If you want to be a plant identifier who looks really good in groups and can say, oh, look at that over there. That's a maple. Then, you know, that's up to you. I'm not going to tell you what to do. But if you take my course, it's all about how to be a forager. And the way to become a forager is to forge. It's not to walk through the woods and go, I know what that is, I know what this is. I know you actually have to take and you have to process and you have to use.

and in doing that, then you become a forager. So, just something to chew on. I don't know. You know, it's a whole thing. It's a whole thing. Business? Any business? What do we want to talk business?

The calendar is still going strong. Make sure you take a look at that. Make sure you support those great, excuse me, advertisers in the Christmas calendar now. It's awesome. in 2026 now into 2026 we are turning back to audio okay we're turning back to audio we put a solid year into video I'm just telling you like it is we put a solid year into video and video is good we're going to have video the ability to do video whenever we want to do videos fine but we put a solid year into video hashtags and this tags and we put, you know, great interviews up, and we put great, all that kind of stuff.

And to be honest, it really just, it didn't bring me a ton. I don't think of new audience. If it did, then they're very quiet. But what it did do, I think, is it hurt my podcast audience. Because now I'm showing things off on video, and the podcast audience is going, I can't see what the hell you're talking about, James. And the other thing is, the show itself is, different. And I only found that out by doing members-only podcasts. I've been doing members-only

podcasts that are just audio. And in doing those just audio podcasts in front of the mic, first of all, it's such a wonderful time. And second of all, it's very clear that I can think better. I can be better. I can do better. I'm better on my feet when I don't have to worry about lighting and smile and look at the camera and look away and what am I going to put in front of the cameras and focus? Is it not focus? I don't know. I don't, you know, in other words, for me,

not really in love with it. Not really in love with the video content. Not to say we won't do it, but we're definitely going back to audio. We're definitely going back to majority audio. You know, I may do like surviving America once a week on video, something like that, or an impromptu video and I feel like showing you something.

but uh i don't know again again the other thing too that worries me about video is what the hell is video going to become what is video becoming if you don't have kids you might not know it but video is becoming just dominated by artificial intelligence and you got about two years before you you have no clue if what you're watching is a human or not you know uh and that's not to say that audio can't be dominated in such a way but you know a little a little more difficult You do a straight-up informational prepper show, sort of akin to Sunday night, or was it Sunday or Monday night? The Changing Earth podcast was so good.

You have to listen to it. The winter edition of the Changing Earth podcast, Winter Preparedness, that is, I mean, really, Sarah should just take that show, text speech to text that thing, and, you know, sell the audiobook. because it's, I mean, sell the e-book because it's that good. I mean, it's that good. Just so, so pregnant with information about winter preparedness. It's unbelievable. But they got dual hosts and that kind of stuff.

I don't know. I think it would take a long time for AI to be able to replicate personality and things like that. The way that we do business here at PBN, the way that the hosts do because we're conditioned by the live. and we're very real, real people. So, in other words, we talk, but we also talk about what the hell we want to talk about. There's too much authenticity, right? So we find ourselves in a situation where I think through audio, good luck, right? Good luck copycatting the I Am Liberty Show.

It was almost kind of like I was built for it, to be honest with you. Because I had found myself in a situation where it was like, you know, I used to get, and I still do, actually, and I always used to look at this as a detriment. But now it's kind of almost the most valuable thing in the AI world. But one of the running jokes was always, this guy never stays on topic. You know what I mean? He never stays on topic. So you get to the point where you're like, well, yeah, I guess you're right.

I'm not staying on topic. well one of the interesting things is how do you AI that how do you tell AI give me a podcast that is consistent with a consistent host but the host is completely inconsistent and he may talk about he may say that the show is going to be about Thomas Jefferson and it winds up being about you know baking dinner rolls on a Sunday afternoon while listening to Louis Prima and thinking of his Italian heritage or something. Or he might go down a rabbit hole about Dante Gabriel Rosetti on a show titled Water Storage for Beginners, like, good luck, good luck. And I do, at the end of the day, I do think audio is superior entertainment. I really do. So look to the audio, look to the high-quality audio.

audio ads coming back, all that kind of stuff. You know, sort of what was the PBN? What was the PBN? What was the PBM experience for a long time? It's a beautiful thing. Look for that to return in 2026. Less video, more audio, back to it. Less social media, more podcasting, right?

More writing, more things, more substance. It's time to get off the, it's time to get off the meta-teet and the Zucker teat and the Elon Musk teat to try to, you know, grow my, business on the tail feathers of these lizard people. Because, yeah, you know, to thine own self be true. Talk to you soon, PBM family, and visit lemitangosurvival.com. Buy somebody a real survival kit for Christmas. A great gift, man.

Or, and, you know, pack them a little note that says, we also got you a $5 membership. Talk to you soon.