Kara and Nate on Traveling to 100+ Countries, Swimming Alcatraz & Deciding to Not Have Kids
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- I never ever thought that I would find myself at 32 years old without kids. - We swam from Alcatraz to San Francisco and neither one of us are swimmers. - It was definitely like the scariest thing that I've done. - How many times have you had to bribe people? In Mexico there's random police stops for no reason. He was gonna like take me to the police station and it was gonna be all this stuff and then there was kind of like this moment of pause. You know what this is, I know what this is. - Here's a 20. - Yeah. - We had like no food or water. - Oh, it was all.

- Rain would bring all these crabs out of the ground. Thousands would come out at night. They were literally just crawling over us while we were sleeping. - I had a worm that came out and it was still alive.

Thank you to AG1 for sponsoring this episode of the Unplanned Podcast. What's up, dudes? And welcome back to the Unplanned Podcast. Woo! Yay! Wow, the energy in this room. I love it. Kara and Nate, welcome to the Unplanned Podcast. We're so happy you're here. So cool to meet you guys and to have you on.

on kira and nate were just in singapore right and and they just got done spending four days with the oh my gosh i'm gonna butcher the name the mental wise the mental why mental wise tribe yeah in indonesia or of indonesia yes incredible you guys are you guys land from asia

Like three days ago today. Yeah. We flew the world's longest nonstop flight. So that's Singapore to New York. It's 19 hours. Holy cow. So our bodies, and then we were in central time and now we've moved to West coast time. I don't always look this time. I do. That would send me into labor at this point. And you guys have been to 19 hours. You've been to over a hundred countries, 39 of the 50 States. You lived out of a van for two years, documenting all of this on YouTube and

how did all this get started it started with saving up uh thirty five thousand dollars to go travel for one year that was the plan the plan was never to start a youtube channel and make this our career and i think that's the only reason that it worked yes is because that wasn't the goal because if that would have been the goal it was it all happened so slowly that i think we would have just gotten frustrated and given up

the travel was our number one priority like we just wanted to see as much of the world as possible and that was above all else like youtube was so secondary and i also think that's why it worked because like youtube just kind of came naturally like with it we were so pumped about what we were doing that like we wanted to film everything now i feel like there's been a shift and like

Making videos and telling stories is that new challenge like travel has become more just our normal life Yeah, it's crazy to say but like that just kind of is what we do now It's not as like oh my gosh. We're traveling. This is crazy like let's get the camera out so it's like before the challenge was like Figuring out how to travel without any money and now it's like how do we tell the best story Wow so it's really shifted like our journey has been

crazy but it's been awesome do you guys own a home like do you actually have a house anywhere we have been the closest thing we have to a house is the van that's sitting in my parents driveway wait no way so like literally no house no apartment nothing like you literally don't so where do you keep all your stuff it's spread out across the country so we

when we originally left, the plan was to be gone for a year. So we broke our apartment lease and put our stuff in storage. Okay. And so we had a storage unit for like five years. My uncle owned the storage unit, so we weren't paying for it. Or I think we would have ripped the bandaid off sooner. But last year, my parents were like, you don't want any of this stuff in here. It's taking up space. And they literally just opened our storage unit up and had a garage sale. Oh,

So all like we have a closet at my parents' house and a van that we have some stuff in. And that's pretty much all the stuff we have. I love that. It was kind of sad though because we got married in 2013. Okay. And obviously when you get married, you have showers. You get all these new gifts. Yes. We had all this stuff. Some things that weren't even opened yet.

like unopened wedding gifts in that storage unit. And we left two years later. And so all that stuff was just sitting there gathering dust and had like mice poop on it and all this great stuff. But like all that stuff just got sold for like nothing and we'll never see it again. But yeah, our priorities just changed. Like for the longest time we thought we were going to come home. We were going to have a normal life. Of course, we're going to keep all of this in storage forever.

Otherwise, if we'd have known it was going to turn out this way, we just would have sold it all at the very beginning. That's a crazy idea to travel the world for an entire year. Whose idea was that? The root of all of our adventures is Nate. I just kind of am along for the ride and got really lucky with who I married. But when we got married in 2013, we had never traveled. I had been to the beach in Florida. We grew up in Nashville. I'd been to Canada once.

And that was about it. Travel was not a part of our lives. But we really wanted to go on a cool honeymoon, but we didn't have any money. We were fresh out of college. So Nate was in charge of the honeymoon.

Do you want to tell your portion of that? Do you know what Groupon is? I feel like you might be too young. My mom loves deals and she gets Groupons for everything. Midwest moms love Groupons. So like around... It's like your Midwest mom. Around the time of our honeymoon, Groupon was like at its peak. And so I booked our honeymoon on Groupon.

on which was definitely a risk because i booked this private island in belize so had it have not been good it would have been horrible because we would have been stuck on this terrible private island but it was actually incredible like the group home part of it worked out shout out to group on shout out to group on i don't even know if it's still a website but i it was like the first international trip i'd ever booked myself and i booked it wrong so we got kicked off a day early like

The day we thought was before our last day, they were like, so you're leaving the island this morning? And we were like, no. Where are we going to go? We were terrified. But it was full, so we couldn't stay. So we literally got kicked off the island. Oh, my gosh. So we booked a hotel at the port town that left off, which was not –

that we had been on, very different. I remember we checked in and they handed us a can of bug spray. And that was like, there will be bugs in your room. This is our solution. Here's your can of bug spray. And we had just come from this beautiful, all-inclusive island. But that night, there just happened to be this lobster festival in town. And we went out and explored the local town. And that was one of the best days of our entire honeymoon. And I think that planted a seed for, it was really cool getting to see local life in this country.

let's start to do some more of it. And also when we, when I planned our honeymoon, I was like just figuring out how we could do as cheap as possible. And I discovered a credit card, miles and points. And so I signed up for a first travel credit card and use that credit card to get a free flight. And then that was,

hooked me and that was like my hobby for the next three years was how can we sign up for these cards and work the system and get a bunch of points. And so the first two years we were married, we traveled to 13 different countries using miles and points and just like working the system. See, Matt doesn't act like he doesn't care about points or the travel miles and

Look at them. 13 countries on that. There you go. You just need to do it right. You were obsessed. He gives people grief for it. He really does. No, it was like a full-time hobby. Like, we both had full-time jobs at the time. But, like, as soon as I would get home from work, Nate worked from our apartment, it was, like, fun work time. And Nate would, like, do all this miles and points research. We would go on dates.

that were travel hacking dates. Like we would go sit at like Barnes and Noble and read travel books and they would like travel hack. You used to be able to like buy these gift cards and basically like

It was kind of a gray area. I don't think it was illegal, but like you were basically just moving money around in a circle because like when you sign up for a card to get the points, you have to spend like $4,000 or something, right? Well, we were... We would literally go to Staples on like a Friday night at eight o'clock and buy these weird reloadable cards and like go home and like do our travel hacking day. You'd buy the gift card and then you would use that gift card to pay off your credit card. So like you were literally just moving the money in a circle. It was crazy time. Okay, now I want to do that.

That was the good old days. You can't do it. No, yeah. They shut it down. Yeah, exactly. That's so sad. But there are still other ways. Like there are still fun travel hacking things that you can do for dates if you want. Those trips that we took with those credit card points, we started meeting people on those trips. And like coming from Tennessee, nobody took like –

a year between high school and college to go like a gap year to go figure out what they wanted to do with their life. Like it's very common in Europe. And we started meeting all these people who were like traveling for six months or traveling for a year. And that's kind of like what opened our mind to this being a possibility. I love that. And so that's ultimately what inspired the year long trip around the world.

Okay, here's my question for you because like I love meeting people from all over the world. I love meeting people who, I don't know, have just like a totally different background and like what you guys mentioned that whole sporadic unplanned festival, lobster festival you said in Belize. That sounds so fun. But then my hold up though is like, I don't know, coming from –

I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, and some people are like, oh my gosh, St. Louis, it's so dangerous. It's like, St. Louis is not dangerous. Like, sure, there's dangerous parts, but like, there's, it's very, very safe. And I feel like everywhere in the world has that. There's always- Well, if you know, if you're like a resident, you know what to do, where to go, where not to go. Exactly. And so like, when I go to other countries, it's not that I'm like scared. I'm just like, I

have literally no freaking clue like which parts are the safe parts and which parts are not the safe parts. So how did you feel comfortable like, oh, this is let's just go out and like go to this lobster festival. Like how did you how did you know it was safe? I guess I think that's kind of the beauty of it is we were just like so blissfully unaware. Like we were just so fresh to everything that we were pretty wide eyed. Like when we got kicked off our island and went to mainland Belize, like it is not honeymoon vibes over there.

And I was like, what is going on? This is a disaster. But then, yeah, I just remember going out to the beach and they had all these lights strung up and it was only locals. I'm pretty sure we were the only foreigners there. And it was a little intimidating at first just because we'd never been in that scenario before. Yeah. But then, yeah, we got a cocktail. We ate some lobster. We made new friends. There was music playing and everything.

It just made me realize that we're all the same. Like, of course there are places that are sketchier than other places, but we have yet to find somewhere that we're not comfortable and don't feel welcomed by the people. And yeah, I mean, I'm sure it's inevitable, but yeah, we've gotten pretty lucky. Yeah. I think I'm an eternal optimist. So like in the beginning, I just figured everything would work out. And then that has kind of been our track record up to this point is we have found good people everywhere we've gone. So now there's kind of like,

there's something to back up my optimism so I think we feel just pretty comfortable most places that's I mean you you can get a vibe for a place like there's definitely you know streets we've walked down where we've turned around and been like that doesn't feel like yeah the right area of town that we should be in or you start to walk a little more quickly but yeah Nate's also very aware like we don't just walk around blind and

Yeah. Just kind of. I think my street smarts really suck. So like, I'm like, I'm sure you guys have really good street smarts. Yeah. Mine, mine suck. I'm also curious. Do you guys speak other languages? Yeah, that was my question. No. No way. A little bit of Spanish, like from high school. So it's not, it's not like we're carrying on conversations, but we've, we have some Spanish vocabulary. Okay. For people that have been to over a hundred countries, that's impressive.

Yeah, it's pretty sad. To not even know two languages fluently, but just to just do it with one. That's cool. It's so adorable. Hello and thank you and then delicious is the third word that we like to learn in other countries. That gets you a really long way. It makes people smile and just kind of like opens the door. Yeah.

I love that. That's really cute. I find myself, we were just in Mexico and like, it's just so fun to be like, hola, como estas? No, here's what happens. He would greet every server or anyone that we saw. He'd be like, hola, como estas? I don't think they were actually convinced that he spoke Spanish, but enough that they would respond in full Spanish, like very fast. And then I'd be like,

Yeah, that's as far as it goes. No, I just need to smile and be silent. They were totally testing me. But I really want to learn though. I think it'd be so cool to learn a language, especially Spanish because it opens up pretty much all of South America. Yes. That would be my first one I would learn if I was going to take the time. I think it's a lot easier to go to a country like somewhere in Asia.

Where you don't look like the people. Because then you walk up and they just assume you don't speak the language. And you immediately go to, like, hand motions and gestures and trying to figure it out. And then, like, that just works. Like, you can communicate so much with just, like, body language. But it's a lot harder for us in, like, Western Europe, like in France or something like that, where we could be French. Especially with your mustache. Yeah, I can see it. You walk up and then it's like...

They start speaking to you and it's like, okay, am I going to let this person waste their breath and keep going? Or do I like rudely stop them of like, I don't speak French. I don't have no clue what you're saying, but you're still talking. So my go-to places like that is I just open with hello, just so it's like, we don't have,

I wouldn't be saying hello if I spoke French. And so it's just like, let's go ahead and just establish this right now. And we'll immediately go to hand gestures. Yeah. That's probably a good bet. How did you guys meet, by the way? Like, what's your love story to do all of this travel together? I'm curious how you guys met and what that story looks like. We met in high school. No way. Sweet. So Nate asked me to prom in 2007. Aw. And I said yes. I was a sophomore. He was a senior. Yeah.

He was about to go to college, and I was like the fun one in high school. Like I never wanted to be tied down in a relationship. Knew Nate was going to college, but also had to say yes to go to prom because he was like a really hot senior. Because she was a sophomore, and it was her opportunity to go to prom. You were a sophomore? Oh, yeah. So prom was amazing. We like, I don't want to say fell in love, but like we really liked each other and hung out every single day that summer after prom.

But knowing he was leaving, I didn't want to get too attached because I was like, he's going to go to college. There's going to be all these other girls. We're definitely not staying together. I'm not going to have a boyfriend three hours away when like, you know, that's no fun. So yeah, we tried not to get too attached, but also spent the entire summer together. And like the night before he left, I just like broke down like, ah.

and I don't want you to go and I don't want to break up. Well, we hadn't even said we were dating at that point because we were like, it would be dumb to date somebody before I go to college. So we were like, right before we left, it was like, we either need to say that we're dating and like try to do this or it was a fun summer.

Yeah. So we made that decision to stay together. But I was so convinced that we were going to break up that I had burned, this is back when you burned CDs, I burned a breakup CD. So like, I actually, for some reason, I've had a very easy life, but for some reason I love like the saddest song on every album, like usually it's my favorite, but I've never had a reason to like really like want to feel those sad songs. And I was like, this is going to be my moment. We're going to break up and I'm going to listen to all my favorite sad songs. Yeah.

That's hilarious. But you didn't break up? We never broke up. No way. And this was when? This was, you guys, 17? No, wait. 18 and 16. Yeah, 18 and 16. And he was three hours away. And like I cheered. And so every Friday night I had to be at like whatever sports game was happening at my school. And so like we really didn't see each other that much. Like it's not like I could go up to visit him every weekend because I was busy. And your mom wouldn't let you. Yeah.

My mom was a little protective at the time. Fair enough. Good for her. But yeah, Nate came home every once in a while. And I think that's why it worked for us in the beginning. Like we were kind of forced to have this like –

You know, like we just talked on the phone every night. There were no physical distractions for like two whole years basically. And we really just got to know each other. It would have been so easy to break up because we never would have seen each other again. It would have been like, we're done, bye. And easiest breakup ever. Like we wouldn't run into each other. Like we would have just been completely separate. And there was just no pressure. Like Nate wasn't jealous. Same reason you two weren't.

We just didn't put any pressure on it and stuck with it long enough that it eventually worked. Yeah, and then I ended up coming to the same college once I finished high school, and we got married right after. Did you guys get married in college? No, right after. Right after, yeah. So I graduated in 2013 in May, and we got married in June. See, we broke the mold and made our family mad by getting married in college.

Oh, you did? My brother did the same. No, they came around. They were happy for us and everyone. At first, they were like, whoa, what the freak are you doing? And then they were like, okay, this is good. We support this.

When you know, you know. Yeah, exactly. Like looking back, do you feel like that was crazy or are you glad you did it? Glad we did it. I'm so glad we did it. It is crazy though. Like I was engaged at 19. I think about that now and I'm like, that is why my parents had a heart attack. Like, of course, that's definitely not for everybody and that doesn't always work out like that. So.

I love it. Wild. So you guys get married and then you said it was two years after you got married that you started – or wait, I'm sorry. How many years after you got married was it that you sent it and did 100 countries or started the journey to 100 countries? About two years later. Yeah. Yeah. We were actually – so almost exactly two years after we got married, we were sitting at a Dairy Queen because we had a coupon. Buy one, get one free coupon for a blizzard. You guys are just like us. I was –

so cheap. We had no money. That's me too. I was a preschool teacher and Nate was attempting to start businesses from the spare bedroom of our apartment. We were not...

So, like, in the wintertime, Dairy Queen would give you these buy one, get one free Blizzard coupons because who wants to eat ice cream in the middle of the winter? So we were sitting at Dairy Queen. We were eating our cold ice cream, like, bundled up. We had, like, just finished up a couple trips, like, to the other side of the world where we were meeting these people, doing these big trips. And we were like, what if we did a big trip? Like, what if we just decided, like, one year –

Put everything on hold and, like, let's just see as much as we can. Like, let's save every penny, every mile and point that we can. Let's go on all the travel hacking dates and just do it. Like, before life gets too crazy, we're going to come back. We'll have kids. Everything will go back to normal. But, like, let's do this. And so we picked a date that night. We were like, one year from now, we're leaving.

and we're going to travel for a year and we're going to start telling people. And that was like the biggest decision we've ever made. Yeah, I think telling people was the big thing. Like that made it real because once you start telling a bunch of people that you're going to leave and travel for a year...

It's a lot harder to back out. Right. Wow. I feel like we left the next and you did it. Yeah. You guys telling me that, like that was the same, same exact energy we had when we were like, we're moving to Hawaii. We're like, Tik TOK is our job and YouTube is our job. We can do this anywhere. We should move to Hawaii. Like that was like the same energy. Yeah. Um, but a challenge that we faced was like finding community. We didn't like really know anybody other than some people we knew from social media and

How did you guys have community when you're traveling the whole entire world? Honestly, I don't think we've slowed down enough to feel the lack of physical community. Like we've just been going a thousand miles an hour since January of 2016. Wow. The first...

For years, we had this goal of going to 100 countries, which was just full on. And we were just having the time of our lives. And in the back of our minds, it was like, we're going to go home. We're going to plug right back into our community. Yeah. You know, like it didn't feel like a permanent thing. Then we went to our 100th country, came home right before the pandemic. Like literally. Whoa. January 2020, we were like, we did it. What do we do now? And then it was like, nothing. Pandemic. Pandemic.

So we were kind of forced to slow down for the first time, but we were back in the US. We had made some other YouTuber friends at that point that we could really relate to, thankfully. I do think that was a huge part in us feeling less lonely during the craziness of 2020 and 2021. But yeah, we have a very strong digital community now. So FaceTime? Do you guys FaceTime your parents every week or siblings? Or how do you stay connected with people when you're traveling? It's...

It's not scheduled. Yeah. I think, honestly, I think we're really bad at it. Like, I think we move so fast and we have each other that, yeah, we just haven't really felt the lack of community. Like, it's almost like we don't have the capacity to even have a community. And that sounds really sad. I think one day, like, we will slow down and, like, have more, like, deep connections with people. But I really, like, as, like, cheesy as it sounds, like, we have each other and I don't know

I don't know what we would do without each other. Truly. I don't know how anyone does it alone. Like if I was doing this alone, it would have been over a long time ago. Like it is the only reason we are still able to live this life is because we're able to do it together and like split the roles. When I'm feeling down, Nate picks up the slack. Vice versa. The other day I was like fully out of it, slept for 24 hours and Nate literally went out and filmed an entire video.

Which kind of makes me sound bad, but you were just going to lay in bed all day. Happened to be your anniversary, you know, your 10 year anniversary. I'm going to go film this video. You lay in bed all day. It was all I wanted. Something I really like about your videos is like they have like definitely an educational aspect. Like you do a bunch of history and like geography like tied in there.

Do you have a team that's doing research for you or are you guys the team, the research team? We have finally created a team that helps us hit all of those parts. We haven't always had cool map animations or history lessons. It was all we could do just to film the video, but we do have help now. We have somebody helping Nate plan the videos. We have very defined roles.

So Nate does all of the planning and booking and I do all of the like post production. Wow. So like Nate holds the camera. He makes all the decisions on like where we're going, when we're getting there and what we're filming. And then like everything after that is me. Kara pretty much just shows up every day and she's like, what are we doing today? What country are we going to? Literally. She's been down for pretty much anything for the last seven years. You guys make a good team. Yeah. It sounds like you're a planner too. I think that's why it worked. And,

the beginning because it wasn't hard because we both fell into roles that we enjoyed. And I think had one of us been forcing ourselves to do something that we didn't enjoy doing because this wasn't like our life goal wasn't to be YouTubers. Yeah. And, but because Kara enjoyed the editing aspect of it and kind of like the posting on social media and I enjoyed the travel planning and the business side of things, we just naturally fell into those roles. And so it just felt easy.

Does working with your spouse ever get tough though? Because like you're, it's not like you can leave the office, go home and then talk crap about your coworker to your spouse because your spouse is your coworker. We still do that. Well, no, still not.

I think not only is it hard working with your spouse, but working with your spouse in a creative way because there's no right or wrong, right? It's all black and white and gray. And so what you think the video should be or what you think the video should be, it's not right or wrong. It's just your preference versus her preference. And we could not be more creatively opposite. That's so opposite in every way.

Kara may have succeeded without me, but there's no way I would have succeeded without Kara because I tried to like suck all of the personality out of our videos.

I like love cinematics. I love like, I didn't realize this until it became a trend, but like me and Wes Anderson have very similar eyes for like, I love like a nice straight lined up shot. I want the lighting to be good. To the point where he'll ruin a moment. He will ruin a moment because the lighting wasn't good. And I'm like, we will never,

never recreate that because you just ruined it and now it's gonna be planned and I'll get so mad and then I'm so worked up that I can't even be on camera anymore because I'm like I'm mad at you I'm not gonna redo that just because the light was flickering that was your fault that have

And now that moment has passed and this is where it gets hard. Well, so as a creator myself, I noticed you guys did a very good job of capturing the moment of you guys going out of the shoulder of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro. I was watching that video and I'm like, wow, you guys must have had like a plan to capture, have a camera somewhere. I don't know if it was a drone or where you had the camera, but you guys come out of the top of the statue and it's just like, wow. And the moment was really cool. How did you capture that moment in that video?

There was a lot of pressure on that. Anytime there's a one take, like this is only happening once, it's very stressful because Nate loves to plan things out. We do things. If they don't go well, it drives me nuts. I love one time. I'm like, let's do this. Let's not plan anything. Then it gets weird. That's Abby. Yeah.

So we just discovered this camera. It's called an Insta360. Have you ever used one? I've heard of it. So like we used a few like versions of like 360 cameras in the past. Didn't love them. It's too much of a pain to edit. Yeah, it was a lot of work to edit. We didn't really find where it fit in our flow of filming things. And so we just decided like we don't use those cameras. Yeah. Then last summer we were hanging out with our friend Louie and he had one and he was like, oh, check this out. And I think he like went underwater with it.

I can't remember what it is. Oh, no. We were riding those e-foils. You know those crazy floating surfboards? I want to ride one of those so bad. Oh, fun. They're so crazy. It was so difficult. There's a high learning curve. Really? But it's so fun once you get it. Yeah. Anyway, he had one of those. We were in the Mediterranean. He was making these epic videos, and he was showing us on his phone how easy it was to edit, and we were like, we got to get one of these. And now it's become a staple in our camera business.

uh, set up. Like we don't make a video without it anymore. But the camera was like really far away though. So then how did you get it out? You put it on this pole and you go like this and it can be like 10 feet away and it's filming everything. So there's really no like, Oh, let me get the framing right. You just hold it and it's capturing everything. And so for moments that like that, that you can't like recreate, it's a really great tool because you like can't miss the shot. Like it's just the post. Yeah.

editing that you have to do. And you had a drone flying around you guys too, right? We did end up putting the drone up, that's right. Thankfully, that was like a bit... We did get the moment that we popped out of the arm and kind of had that first moment of like, wow, we're here. And that was very like, that was real. None of that was redone. But we did have like an hour up there. So we were able to shoot 360 camera, talking to camera, fly the drone. Yeah, we got there an hour before it opened and had like the whole place to ourself. It was just...

How'd you work that out? Honestly, we got so lucky. A hefty donation to someone. That's all I'm allowed to say. It took a- We are required to say that you cannot recreate this experience, and we really are just very lucky. Yeah, it took a lot of convincing to be honest. That's really cool. But that was like the culmination of visiting all seven wonders of the world, and so we wanted it to be special. Yeah. That's epic. I mean, that really is. Which one's your favorite of the seven wonders of the world?

I mean, you really can't beat getting that experience, like knowing that that's literally once in a lifetime and like so rare. Yeah.

But we really like that whole video, we realized how special each of our experiences were at all seven because somehow we had found ourselves like alone at majority of them. Yeah. What we didn't like intentionally go to all seven wonders of the world. We just, we intentionally went to a hundred countries and in doing so happened to just like visit most of them. So most of them was like, we're here in Rome.

We might as well go to the Coliseum. I see all these news articles about like the happiest country in the world or like the country with the nicest people in the world. I feel like you guys are the right people to ask. Okay. Which country has the nice people or the nicest people and which country has the happiest people? Would you say? Yeah.

We've found that the countries that get the least amount of tourists are always the nicest. Wow. Because they haven't been jaded. They haven't been overrun. They're not tired of tourists.

10 different cities. Yeah, or like if you live in Rome and you see a tourist, well, there's going to be 100 more past you that day. You can't go out of your way to do something special for every tourist that you see. But in 2019, we went to Kurdistan in the north of Iraq. Oh. And so...

They rarely get tourists. I've never experienced anything like that. Everyone we met on the street was just so happy that we were there visiting their country. Wow. And we're- Giving us food, literally just baking bread and then giving it to us, not trying to sell us a single thing. What? No one could speak English. We would just sit on the sidewalk with these local people and talk with our hands and laugh and drink tea and-

I've never felt so welcomed in a place in my entire life. That's sweet. It was the most beautiful thing. And, you know, they had no agenda. Like, they just wanted us to feel...

welcomed and the best thing that happened on that trip we had like a tour guide driving us around and you could go up into the mountains and see all these crazy ruins and like it was the same palace that had been bombed all kinds of crazy stuff we ended up getting stuck in a snowstorm with this guy so we pull over on the side of the road he's like we can't go any further it's snowing too hard it's not safe and we're like on the side of a cliff this huge tour bus of like

They come from people. Yeah, they come from Baghdad in the south where it's a lot warmer. So they never see snow and actually come not to see Saddam Hussein's palace, but just to see snow.

They pull up behind us. They had to stop too because the bus couldn't go any further. And they pull out this huge pot and start a fire and start making this bean stew. We find ourselves having this dinner party on the side of the road with all these Iraqi people eating beans. And we were all just laughing and not communicating with words whatsoever, but just had the best conversation.

Had a snowball fight. We had a snowball fight. It was like, what is our life right now? Like we're in Iraq having a snowball fight right below Saddam Hussein's palace. And that's just the last place I ever would have expected to say like we're the nicest people in the world, but they truly are. And I really do think it's because they don't get tourists often. So when they do see tourists, all they want is for us to have a positive experience. And it was...

The best thing. I'm literally like getting chills over here, like about to tear up. That's so, that's so special. Yeah, that's really cool. Going to all these different countries and experiencing all these different cultures, like how have you guys been able to like remain culturally sensitive and like appropriate in your content? Especially as people online, because I feel like it's so easy to make a mistake that you're not aware of that could be something sensitive to a certain culture. How do you, how do you navigate that? Yeah. Yeah.

I will say it's scarier now than it used to be. Like our first several years on YouTube, we were just so like clueless. Kids from Tennessee having no clue. Yeah, I mean, we genuinely, like we probably did say embarrassing things in some of our past videos. And we probably did say something that was offensive unintentionally. Like sometimes I look back and I'm like, I can't believe we got away with saying that. Or just going in and being like, ooh, this is gross. Like we would not do that now. Yes, but I would do that all the time.

time in our old videos and I didn't think anything of it because we weren't we didn't have as many people watching and you know we were making videos for like our parents it wasn't like we were trying to be influencers we're brutally honest a lot of the time but it just wasn't really a thing like cancel culture didn't really exist

yeah well 10 years i feel like also we grew pretty slow right so we've been doing this for seven and a half years now okay and so it's just kind of there was never really a time where something went viral that just really like grew our channel and so i think we kind of like slowly learned which

which was looking back, like in the beginning when I've loved a viral video. Yes. But I don't think we were ready for it. And I think it actually would have hurt us more, but it was like our audience just slowly grew. And as you start to get more people watching your content, you start to get more feedback on it. And so I think we just kind of like have slowly learned over time. Yeah.

And not to say we won't mess up because we probably will. I do think it is just naturally easier for us now to be just aware of what's appropriate and how not to offend anyone. And in a way, it's kind of sad because I probably would like to be a little more honest sometimes, but people are scared.

People are mean. Cancel culture is scary. They're so mean. There's so many amazing people who watch our videos, and I'm so thankful for the audience that we have now. I love reading messages and comments. It is one of my favorite things to do. Maybe it's not the healthiest thing to do. People say you shouldn't read the comments, but ours are great, and I love them. But there are a handful of ones that make me sad, and they're just always going to be there. We just do our best not to...

offend anyone have you ever had any any incidents where maybe you did something that your audience didn't like or have you almost been cancelled before has there been something like that that you've ever experienced because I know a lot of creators us included like go go through that at some point yes

I think the day that we thought our channel was ending was at the end of 2019 after we had hit 100 countries. This should have been the biggest celebration of our channel because that's what we had been working towards on our channel for the last four years. It's incredible. Like a

That's insane. It's crazy. Could we do that? Do you think we could even do 50? I think we would kill each other. I would love to do that. I know, I want to. I think we could do 50. We got babies. We can bring the babies. Okay. Abby's tired. Just give her a minute. Abby needs like a rest year or two or three maybe. I don't know. Anyway. Sorry to interrupt you. We'll revisit this conversation next time. So we wanted to do something special for hitting our 100th country. And so I need to give you a little bit of backstory as to –

why this may have been so frustrating for our audience. So we let our audience vote on which country should be our 100th.

And they chose Fiji, which was very nice. Amazing. Thank you, everyone. My mom was like, what if they choose Afghanistan? And I was like, sweet. Like a good reason to go to... Yeah, I mean, nowhere was off limits or we wouldn't have let people vote. But yeah, we had a list of like 97 countries that we hadn't been to. And that was what people chose. So we were pumped. But we kept it a secret. And so we didn't tell anybody. And then we decided we were going to film a...

a documentary of our 100 country journey, basically just like an hour long YouTube video kind of like wrapping up our journey over the last four years that it led us to go to 100 countries. Wow. And the plan was not to stick Fiji at that like announcement that Fiji was our 100th country at the end of the documentary. But at the last minute, we were like, what a better climax culmination for this video than announcing our 100th country at the end of it. And so...

Keep in mind, like, we have no idea what we're doing. Totally making it up. We completely made up everything we've ever done on YouTube. You know, we're just feeling as we go. Like, we're not...

We're not filmmakers. We're not storytellers. Like, literally, we're just two kids from Tennessee who found themselves with a YouTube channel and getting this crazy opportunity to travel the world. Like, we were so happy, but literally had no idea what we were doing and put very little strategic thought into this decision. Like, it was like, okay, how in the world do we make this vlog different from the other 800 that we've made the last four years? I don't really see the issue yet.

Well, we're not there yet. We're getting to it. So Kara spent a month editing this video, basically. And we had been posting three videos a week up to that point. So we had sacrificed a ton of videos to be able to do this one special one. I didn't sleep for a month. We edited all day, every single day. I was exhausted, which meant I was very emotional as well, which we'll play it later. So the guys from Yes Theory had done a...

a documentary and they had done a pay what you want model for the documentary. So they had released it and you could pay anywhere from like a dollar to a hundred dollars to watch this video early. Oh, cool. And we were like, that's a, seems like a cool way to do this because Kara spent a month of editing time on this. It's been a sacrifice for us, you know, and we were excited about it.

And we're like, we could do more stuff like this. Like if this goes well and we can do this pay what you want model to make up for the time that we weren't doing anything else because I was busy with this video, then like we could do more stuff like this in the future. Totally. Because like, how cool is it to do like...

I don't know, like a bigger project. And we've been doing these little daily vlogs for all the years. And all of a sudden it was like, okay, we're going to make a documentary and this is cool. And maybe this is the beginning of our new career of like filmmaking. And we had a lot of excitement behind it and it just made it feel different and like a finale of this

that we had been on. But at the last second, we tacked on like the secret that was we went to Fiji for our 100th country and then we made a video announcing this like pay what you want model. We said we're going to release it on YouTube for free eventually, but like if you want to watch it right now, here it is. And putting it behind a paywall, you would have thought we asked for people's firstborn child.

Like, it was... So, I hit upload, and then we drove from my parents' house to Nate's parents' house, which was about six and a half minutes. Okay. So, we get to his house and, like, check the video that we had just uploaded, and it already had, like, all these views and comments of the worst... No. The worst things that people have ever said, and I was so confused. You're like, I've worked so hard on this. I immediately, like...

fell on the ground in tears. Like, we've just ruined everything we've ever done. Like, four years down the drain, our audience hates us. We should have never charged. But at the same time, we still were confused because we said, we're going to post this for free, but this is just our way of justifying. Well, and they could pay a dollar, right? Yeah.

Yeah. I think I'm still very confused. Looking back for sure. We may like the way we communicated it, the expectations were completely off. Like we did a horrible job because we were just making it up. Like, and this, it, the whole project turned into way more than we thought it would be. We were just trying to get it out there by the end.

We had never said we're going to do a documentary. We had never said that's where we're going to announce Fiji. We had never said anybody was going to have to pay for it. And then we just released this video with all this information at once. And I think what happened was we felt like...

made 800 videos of free content for all of these people. And so like, we didn't see anything wrong with asking for a dollar if they wanted to watch it early, but all of these people felt like they were the reason and to, to their defense, they were as well. Like without people watching the videos, we never would have been able to go to a hundred countries. And so I think they almost felt like we owed this video to them and then we charged for it and it was manipulative and, uh,

It was a very big buzzkill. How did Yes Theory do it without getting hate? I think it was the communication. Yeah. And it wasn't the culmination of four years of their channel. Oh, okay. Yeah. That makes sense. Well, we see that all the time. Even if we post an ad on something, it's like, oh my gosh, I used to like you. Now you're just money hungry. It's like, we've posted a thousand totally free videos constantly. Yeah. And it's...

it's like this is how you're able to continue making videos that are free is because every once in a while you have to make money doing what you're doing. - And I think like big corporations or like traditional media companies have like, they have like a team of 50 people to fill every role. And so they're aware of like, oh, we should be careful how we communicate this like pay, pay, what is it called? - The pay what you want. - The pay what you want model.

Because they're like, oh, because if we don't communicate it, people could be mad. And so you guys just like – we're like, oh, we'll just let them know real fast and yeah, this will be our biggest video ever. And you had no idea what was coming. So I'm so sorry that happened to you guys. That's not fun to deal with. Yeah. I mean it –

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I didn't know that we were giving all that away for free. That's pretty cool. Well, it's AG1's doing it. It's not us. Thank you. Thank you, AG1. Thankfully, I feel like it went away pretty quickly. Like, Nate posted a photo of me very upset. And I think that kind of helped some people understand that, like, this wasn't just a vlog that we were just, like, making you pay for for no reason. It was, like, a bigger thing for me. Totally.

I also think we realized it was our fault in a way and like that kind of helped us get through it. But we also kind of set us up for that response by sharing very openly our financials for our

Four years. Wow. So, like, Nate has always been, like, the business guy and, like, loves numbers and loves business and, like, had tried to start multiple businesses before YouTube, and then YouTube ended up being the business that worked, even though that was supposed to be the fun part.

Like side project? Yeah. But like he's always had this like business mind towards it. And I'm just – that is so not me. But like year one, Nate was like, we should start an email list. And I was like, an email list? Like who does that? Like Nate, it's like 2018. Like we don't – people don't email anymore. But like Nate started an email list and that turned out to be this very valuable thing. Like he's really smart is what I'm trying to say. Wow.

Wow. And he's a huge part of why we get to do what we do. But also in the midst of that, he started keeping track of every single penny that we spent and made from the beginning. So in the beginning, it was like losing money, losing money, losing money, losing money, like every month. Oh, yeah. Then we started making money. That's cool. Can I give just a little bit of like the motivation behind that? I followed a guy who did this for his blog.

Like when he was like building a website and trying to turn that into a business. And I found that really inspiring. And so six months into our first year of full-time travel, we decided like this YouTube thing's cool. We're loving full-time travel. Let's see if we can extend how long we travel by trying to turn YouTube into a business. Yeah. And so when we made that decision, I also decided to document it through these income and expense reports of this is how much we're spending now. We're losing money every month.

follow our journey as we try to like start making money from this so we can continue to travel that was kind of like the motivation behind it and i never thought we would end up making good money from it and so as we drew closer to the end we we hit a million subscribers in our hundredth country like the timing of that just could not have been like

finishing our goal of 100 countries and hitting a million subscribers at the same time was just mind-blowing. It was like the pinnacle of our lives. We were like, it doesn't get any better than this. But so we had started to make good money, and I was still publishing these income and expense reports. Ah, okay. And so I think people saw that we were making money, and then we also did the pay what you want thing, and they were like, how could you want more? And it was like, did we want more?

Yes, but also like we had sacrificed in other areas to be able to pull together this month-long documentary. I mean, we could have done it for free and the business wouldn't have gone bankrupt, but we were making sacrifices. What people don't realize is like you guys grinded for how long? Like you guys grinded for a very long time trying to make this work, losing money as a business in the hopes that it would turn into a profitable business. And then it did. So like you took on this major risk and I feel like that's your reward for taking on that risk.

But it's funny you mentioned that because I was looking at your website and I saw all those reports. I was like, wow, this is really cool that they like- He loves finance stuff. I do. He was a finance major. Yeah. And we loved getting to share it. We loved how transparent we could be. And it was just so cool because anytime somebody would say something about how weird it was that we were sharing how much money we were making, we would just point them to those first ones where we were losing. We didn't have any money for a really long time. Yeah.

And like how inspiring to get to share that like you can go from here to here if you just stick with it long enough. And it just came back to bite us. And I do feel like that's the one thing like after that whole thing went down with the documentary, like that kind of, we never recovered from that. Like we always felt a little sad. Yeah. That our audience died.

that way and that like us being transparent ended up being a negative. Yeah. Why does it always happen that way with online? I mean, that's why people are scared to be transparent, right? Cause like you see the people that get burned from being transparent and you're like, Oh, I want to hold back. I want to like crawl into a ball and go underneath the rock and never share anything. And so I think like, that's probably why people are hesitant to share, um,

Yeah, that's crazy. I wanted to ask you guys, I was watching one of your YouTube videos today before we met you guys, by the way, and you mentioned having to bribe the police in Mexico on your, was it your honeymoon or like what? It was an early trip in our marriage. Okay. Yeah. So two year anniversary, I think. And it made me think, I'm like, how many times have you had to bribe people to get out of sticky situations? Yeah.

throughout your travels? I can only think of two off the top of my head and both of them have been police officers that have pulled us over while driving. Wait, okay. Once driving a scooter in Thailand. Okay. And then once driving a rental car in Mexico. So the Mexico story is when you rent a car in Mexico, they make a big deal about the insurance. Okay. Because you do have to like buy Mexican insurance on the rental car or you'll,

we'll get a ticket or stop by the police we had bought it and i had left the piece of paper in our hotel room so like i knew that we were in the wrong like we had done it right but i didn't have the proof yeah and we decided that we would drive because we were cheap from uh cancun to chichen itza so it's like a three-hour drive and it takes you to a bunch of small towns in mexico actually we did well we were on a tour bus we didn't like drive it ourselves a water taxi and we had a

bus. Yeah. That was really cool. So, so we drove and we learned in Mexico, there's these, it's just, it doesn't work like the U S right. Like there's, it's not like if you're doing something wrong, you get pulled over. It's just like, there's random police stops for no reason. And, uh, we got pulled to the side from one of those. They asked for our insurance. The guy, I thankfully had realized that I didn't have the insurance and I don't, I guess I'd read a blog about like

having to bribe police officers. You probably shouldn't do this. Like, you probably... Not a proudest moment. Because I think the more tourists that do it, the more it becomes an expectation. Like, you're just creating a problem for more people down the road and rewarding the police officers for this. But I had moved all of my money, except for, like, a 20, into my back pocket, and I had a 20 in my front pocket. Like, I was kind of prepared for this because I knew there was a chance we were going to get stopped at one of these police stops. Yes. And we didn't have the right paper. That's a great strategy that we do. Because I would be...

Like my guilt would be exposed 100% on the outside. Yeah, I think I was okay. I don't remember it being too crazy. It was almost kind of like this. It was serious. And then, you know, he was going to like take me to the police station and it was going to be all this stuff. And then there was kind of like this moment of pause where it was both like,

you know what this is. I know what this is. It's like, here's a 20. Yeah. It was like, here's my like 20 and my like driver's license. And then after that, it was like, he was like slapping me on the back. Like we were like best friends. Like it had gone exactly how he wanted it to. Oh my gosh. Living in Arizona. Um, yeah, people go to Mexico all the time. And so we've had friends across the border that, that I've had to bribe the police with like situations like that. So

And the one in Thailand. What happened in Thailand? We were driving a scooter. We were probably supposed to have some kind of license, and it was the same. And you didn't have the license. Right. Did you have the whole money situation figured out with a dollar in your front pocket, too? Oh, my gosh. That's kind of like the go-to now. If we know we're in the wrong doing something, it's just like...

We don't break the rules that often. Put what we think is an acceptable amount of money in one pocket and the big stash somewhere else. Good travel hack. Yeah, it really is. I was thinking about the time that we were in Italy. Oh, yeah. This is why I asked the question about how do you avoid dangerous parts of town? Not that this was dangerous. We're suckers. We just get things happening. They saw us come off the plane. They're like, these are the dumb Americans we're going to take advantage of. Oh, no. We bought the ticket for the...

whatever it was, trolley, tram thing. The tram. But you have to, like not in the US, like they come around and validate your ticket. Oh yeah. You have to go in and stick it in. And we had been on this tram, trolley thing for. You guys have been to Italy, right? 60 seconds. 60 seconds. No, not even 60 seconds. We have our, all of our suitcases. I'm like. We have just flown for so long. He's like, my ticket's right here. Yeah. And the guy's like acting like he doesn't speak any English, which I think he actually kind of did. Oh no, no. He spoke English. And he, and.

he was like, nope, it's not validated. And then he wrote us a fine for, what is it, like 150 euros. Yeah, it was like 150, 200 euros for not validating our ticket. And he was yelling at us, like making a huge scene. And he was like, then they went over and they were like laughing at us and were like, we had just arrived. Like literally a day earlier. We were like, how are we going to survive here? We were in Italy for literally, what, like an hour? And we had just figured out using... We were like, we have the ticket, we bought it.

Right there. So brutal. It was brutal. Did you pay it? How do you pay a ticket in Italy? We just paid it right then and there. He was like, credit card? Yeah, he wanted to put the credit card in the machine right there. Oh, jeez. He got us. You probably could have left the country without ever paying.

Really? Yeah. I feel like we sound like we try to, like, bend the rules a lot. We really don't. I know people that have, like, parking tickets and they're like, I can never go back to Sweden because, like, they have, like, a parking ticket that's out there. But that happened to us again. Okay, this time it wasn't with the police. Like, we were just trying to buy...

a ticket to get on the subway in Athens and this local girl came over trying to help us and I was like, no, no, no, it's okay. We're okay. She's like, no, she's like really getting her, like getting really uncomfortably close to us. Really, really close. And I go to put in a- We knew she was not being-

Yeah. It seems sketchy. I put in a 20 euro bill into the machine and she knew right away that I had done something wrong. It was going to reject it. She gets in and she like points away and has her back behind her back. She grabbed the machine. I can hear her crumple up the bill in her hand and put in her pocket. And that was like, that was our only cash. Right in front of us. But here's the other thing too. That was all we had. All we had to get back to our cruise ship. We're going to miss our cruise ship. Oh no. And she also,

would not leave after that. So she clearly just robbed us right in front of our very eyes, but she wouldn't leave. So she wanted more. And so we were just like... She wanted more from us and we're like, you got what you needed. Like, now leave. And she was just like, what? And

And that we're like, oh my gosh, you literally just robbed us and now you're not even like, what else did she want? I feel like you've been scammed as many times as we have. Really? And we've barely been anywhere. Yeah. We've been on two cruises. Unfortunately, as a traveler, I do think you become really jaded to people who want to help. Like we pretty much refuse all unsolicited help, which is sad because, you know, there probably is half of those people are genuinely trying to help, but like,

If I need help, I'll go ask somebody. Yeah. And I feel pretty comfortable if I ask somebody that they're not there trying to prey on tourists. But if somebody comes, like, just because you never know and because you hear so many of these stories. Yeah. And it makes me sad, though, because I know that, like, there are really good people in all of these countries. Yeah.

And the vast majority of like, I just think humans are good. I don't know. I just, I truly believe that. But you get that like 1%, those bad apples, like the girl that stole our money. And luckily, luckily we didn't know this at the time, but our credit card did work to buy. I thought we couldn't use our credit card there. We were able to get a ticket back to get on our cruise ship. But yeah. We were sprinting though. We were, we did sprint back to the cruise ship and barely got on. But yeah.

So you guys just celebrated 10 years of marriage. So congratulations. Thank you. I'm sure you guys get asked all the time, like with all your travels. And we did briefly talk about this beforehand. Yeah. So I know you're comfortable talking about it. But like everyone always asks about kids when you've been married for a while. How would that fit into your travels? Is that something you're planning on? Yeah.

Gosh, I never ever thought that I would find myself at 32 years old without kids. I would be the last person like out of my friend group and family back home. Like everybody is shocked that we don't have kids yet, including me.

So when we got married, I was 22 and we decided let's have a few years to ourselves and then we'll for sure have kids in like five years. That five year mark, we were like at the peak of our travel and YouTube career that we never like could have dreamed of. And we're like, okay, let's put this off a little longer. This is kind of a special situation. When we said five years, we didn't realize this is what we were going to be doing and it's fine. Like we'll just wait a couple more. This won't last forever. Yeah.

And then we realized, you know, 10 years in, like, maybe this will last forever and we're going to have to make a hard decision because my whole life I thought I would just wake up one day and be ready. Yeah. And feel like it was time. Yeah. And the last couple of years I've realized that like that might not happen and I am just going to have to decide at some point. And the way that I like process things is just by completely telling myself like, okay,

okay, this is what we're going to do. And then seeing how that feels. Like, it's really hard for me to just, like, think about it. Like, I have to just be very extreme about it. So last year, I was like, okay, I'm just going to say that we're not having kids and see how that feels. And I'm going to start telling people that we're not having kids. Like, in your personal life or online? All personal. We did –

mention it on YouTube at one point when I felt like ready for people's opinions. But like I really just wanted to know for me how it felt and surprisingly saying I'm not gonna have children out loud like didn't feel as crazy as I thought it would and

And I've just kind of started processing like what our life would look like without children. And I don't hate it. Like I, you know, like I love what we're doing right now. But the truth is we haven't slowed down long enough to really know if that is a void that I'm going to want to fill. Like we just go so quickly and,

It's so hard for me to imagine having children. And everybody says, like, oh, you can still travel. It doesn't mean that you have to change. And in a way, I know they're right. Like, you can definitely still travel with kids, but most people don't do what we do. No. Anything we've done in the last month could never be done with children. No way.

Shot literally spent Ford. It was a four days right with that tribe Yeah what in in fairness to people with kids the way I found that tribe was through a video of someone that took their kids to go stay with No, it is possible. Of course like several years from now we Yeah, it would be a huge change in what we're doing right now and I

You know, it's like every day seems to be better than the day before right now, which is so great. Like we're so happy and loving life and it just feels like we're constantly like having more fun and like getting the next big thing. And I don't think I'm ready to like change that yet. And we just kind of assume like it could all end tomorrow. Like you just never know with YouTube and our life.

And I feel like we're really lucky to have gotten as far as we have. And, you know, I might wake up tomorrow and feel ready and I will be totally okay with having kids if that happens. But I've accepted that that might not happen. And did you not have strong opinions either way on it? Yeah, I really don't have like...

I think I've always thought I would be a dad, but I also have never like really been drawn to kids in the sense that like, I'm never going to be the one to convince Kara that we should have kids because I am not willing to like step in and do 80% of the work. You know, like if I talk us into it, I feel like I'm the one that's going to like, you know, like, I don't want to be like a stay at home dad.

And so I just kind of feel... I don't want to put the pressure on her to decide, but I do kind of feel like it needs to be her decision. It's very much a team thing, you know? So it's just like, I think it's good that you're both like...

It's really nice that we're on the same page about it. I am so thankful for that. But at the same time, like I wish Nate would just be really passionate when we're together. Because then I would go with it. Like I'm a nine on the Enneagram. I don't know if y'all are into that. I'm the peacemaker. Like I'm kind of down for whatever he's down for. And I think that's why our relationship works because he has a lot of crazy ideas. I'm like, okay, we'll figure it out.

I know if Nate was like, I think we should have kids, then I'd be like, okay, that's all I would need, honestly. It's just for him to say, like, yes, then we would do it. And I'm sure that, like,

I would never know what I ever would have done without this child. Like, I know we will fully embrace it. Like, I don't doubt that if we had kids that we would be so happy. And that almost makes it harder because it's like, that doesn't mean that we should. Anyway, if you just had an opinion one way or the other, then like, I could finally just be like, yes or no, and we could just move on. But it is this weight that I carry that I just...

I just don't know. Like one, we really don't for sure know that it's even an option for us because we've never tried. But also just the fact that like we've gotten to this point in life where we're like thinking so much about this is pretty crazy because for sure, have we never left Tennessee and like started to do something unconventional? We would have had kids five,

years ago. Like that was just a path that you follow. You get a job, you get a house, you have kids or maybe you have kids and then you get a house like, but you know, there's just kind of like these steps that you take in life. And then we left to go travel and that was unconventional. And now we have this unconventional job and we just realized like,

you can kind of orchestrate your life in a different way from what society tells you. And I think there's a lot of freedom in that, but there's also the pressure of the choices when kind of like the whole world is an option for you. I'm curious how people responded when you said that, even online or in person. Because you clearly would be amazing parents, but you're saying that doesn't mean that you need to have children. Right.

Yeah. I mean, I think people see me with kids. Like we have kids in our family and I interact with every baby that I see in public, like every single one. And I think people see that and they're like, oh, but you'd be the best mom. And people are really supportive in that way. Yeah. I think overwhelmingly it's been like a positive response of like, you know, if you did have kids, it would be great. You would be great. Don't worry. And, you know, like that's nice to hear, but it doesn't really help. Yeah. Yeah.

Like it's nice, but it doesn't help my decision. I think it's good that you're open and like vulnerable in sharing that because there's probably a lot of couples that are in that same position but do feel like they need to follow like some set plan, like life plan or else like maybe they won't be fulfilled in life. And I don't think that's the case. I'm weird. I just like –

I just knew that I wanted to have babies. That's very normal. No, that's like, you know, obviously we've all been like recreating for thousands of years. That's a very normal thing to do. Like I know that I'm the abnormal one here. I think it was my urgency that was abnormal. I was literally like, it needs to happen to me. I feel like you, Nate, where I'm like, or maybe, I don't know. I feel like both of you guys. Well, they're on the same page, man. Yeah. With Abby though, Abby was like, we're having kids like now. And I'm like, oh. It was like a desperate thing. Like, yeah.

It was a little scary. But we had talked about waiting two years after we'd been married two years. It's like, okay, like I was just like, holy crap, that happened so fast. But even in those two years, I would be like, Matt, what if it randomly just happened? I know I have an IUD, but what if it just happened?

happen. I don't know. What would you think? Well, she would get sad. She had the IUD in and it would happen month after month. She'd get sad because she'd be like, oh my gosh, like, I think I'm having, like, not to be weird, but she's like, my boobs are getting bigger. I'm pregnant. I'm pregnant. And it's just like, okay, you have an IUD. Like, I really don't. But Abby was like, she was born to be a mom. I was just like constantly. But see, you know, everyone's just different, has different goals. Everyone's like,

life looks different and it's like you're allowed to just yeah and like us getting married at 20 and 21 and then having kids when we did like people told us that was crazy and wrong but it was the right decision for us and you guys doing everything you're doing is the right decision for you and I think that's that's something that people need to realize is there's not this cookie cutter mold that everybody has to fall into you just gotta figure out what's right for you yeah

I do feel like you're so far ahead, though. Like, we're way older, but y'all are like, I feel like you're further ahead in life. No. You figured out how to get this successful career while having kids, and I feel like we've kind of felt like we've had to almost choose, and you've done both, and you're way younger than us. It is very impressive what you've done. No shot. Seriously. Are you so tired? How do you parent and have... Now that you ask it...

don't know how you do it well thank you i think that even though we do butt heads a lot we make a really good time abby has been a trooper we've been knocking out podcasts in la these past couple of days and i'm like i'm like are you sure you're okay like she's 32 weeks pregnant like i'm like this is you're you're tough and she's seriously she's a she's a trooper popping in really quickly sorry for the interruption just to say hey have you thought about

Leaving a review. That's right. Stop what you're doing right now. If you're driving don't don't do it right now Just wait until you've parked the car and then leave the review be safe If you're holding a baby set your baby down and then leave us a review you're going to the bathroom It's honestly the perfect time you honestly wash your hands I love to be on my phone in the bathroom So you could totally leave a review in the bathroom, but don't forget to leave a review. We'd really appreciate it. I

And hit the like button and subscribe. Okay, now back to the episode. Something I want to ask you guys, though, about – I'm bringing up van life now because we briefly talked about it earlier. He always talks about – everyone always talks about van life, I feel like. I think it would be so sick to take our whole family and, like, just travel the country in a van and see the world and, like, have those experiences. Totally. Because something that I miss about living in Hawaii is we had this teeny tiny little house. We didn't have a lot of stuff.

and everyone there doesn't have a lot of stuff because everything's very, very freaking expensive. And I love that though because like you prioritize people and you prioritize nature and just like being out. Experiences. And it's so much better than all this crap that we don't need. It's better than trying to keep up with the Joneses. And I want to do that with my family. I'm curious, do you think...

Am I asking for it? If we were to take our two babies under two out in a van, would that be... What are your thoughts on that? This is why they're not having children. I think van life is best in short seasons. So I would not say sell the house, move into a van, and go for two years and see all 50 states. That seems like you might be setting yourself... Do whatever your heart desires. No, it is so possible. I'm not saying it's

I'm not saying it's not possible. He was just asking for my advice. I want your advice. No, seriously. Yeah, give it to me straight. I think you could 100% do it. Okay. We have friends that just did a month in Japan with two kids in a very tiny RV. Tiny RV. Whoa. Everything in Japan is just cute and tiny, including the RVs. I don't know how they did it. They seem to have a lot of fun. I think it would be very hard, but I will say there is no...

no more freeing feeling than van life, even compared to international travel. Like even though with international travel, you can get on a plane and be on the other side of the world in a day. Yeah. Something about being in a van and not having to like pre-book anything because worst case scenario, you just park at the closest Walmart and sleep there every night. Like there is so much freedom for two years. We just woke up.

for the most part, having no clue where we'd sleep that night. And it was just like, go explore whatever was close by and seemed fun. And then figure out where to sleep. And that was like having that freedom for two. Yeah. It was slightly shadowed by the pandemic, but for the most part, van life was amazing. Yeah. Especially with all the outdoor time that you get with family. Cause like you don't buy a van to live inside of the van. Like it's definitely nice to have, especially when it's like extreme weather, but like,

the amount of time we got to spend outdoors just because we were forced to especially if you had kids i think would be really magical like i really think it would be a great way and if we wanted so say we brought our in-laws along because our in-laws just moved in with us to help us with our two babies like is there a would there a van that be that is there a van that could fit six people two babies and four adults or would that not i think you're moving to an rv yeah honestly

Honestly, I think RVs get a bad rap because they're very functional. They're just not cool. RV life is not a trend on YouTube. Van life is, but it's the same thing. You're living in a vehicle. The RV is just what old people have done forever, and so it's just not going to be cool. What's the scariest video you've ever filmed? Scariest experience or...

I don't know. What would you say? I have my answer. Yeah, same. Do you want to say it at the same time? Yeah. One, two, three. Alcatraz. Really? Is it haunted? It's like we planned it. We swam from Alcatraz to San Francisco and neither one of us are swimmers. Not even close to a swimmer. I would never describe myself as a swimmer.

But like we kind of found ourselves in like during the pandemic being attracted to like physical challenges. I think because everything was taken away from us and like everything was so scary to post on YouTube about travel that we would just like needed some kind of challenge that like we felt in control of and like pushing our bodies kind of became that thing. It just happened naturally. Like we didn't like set out to do like physical endurance things, but yeah, we were enjoying it and

someone told Nate about this crazy swim and so of course he signed us up for it. Well, I got an email one day and we had done, posted several things and they were like, next you should do the Alcatraz swim. Oh my gosh. And when I read the email, I was like, nope, no way I would ever do that. Yeah. And then when I started to think about it, I realized that the reason that I wasn't doing it was very illogical, which is I,

I am scared of like deep dark water and not knowing what's in the water with me. - That's scary. - There have been shark attacks 'cause there are like seals and stuff. - Shut up. - Like it's a bay, but like sharks get in it. - Golly.

I've heard of that. I would be crapping my pants. It's not flat water. Yes. I would undoubtedly die. There's no way I would make it. Abby can't swim very well and I have to help her sometimes. Okay, you might not make it. I would die. In fairness, you wear a wetsuit because the water is so cold and the wetsuit does make you more buoyant. Okay. So that helps a little bit. No, I would die. How long did it take you to swim from Alcatraz to the shore, I guess? An hour and four minutes. Oh my gosh. That had to feel like the longest hour and four minutes of your life. It was an out-of-body experience.

Like, when I think back to it, I still don't feel like that was me. Did you, like, check each other? We had a, like, support boat. Yeah. So we had an angel swimmer in the water with us making sure we didn't drown. And then we had a boat that was going beside us. And kind of keeping us on course because it's not like, oh, okay, there's the land, jump in. You had to, like, swim, like, this way. Even though, like, this was our goal, we had to start swimming this way. There's a really strong current that comes through the bay. And then the current, like... I've heard about that.

So like it was all I could do just to like keep breathing and kicking my legs. And so the person swimming with me would like keep me on track. So I didn't have to think about where I was going. I just had to think about going. Well, I was watching a documentary about Alcatraz and people like people that try to escape, they die, right? Like they get eaten by a shark. Oh, they totally lived. They get swept out. Oh, you think they lived? They 100% lived. I think they're walking the streets somewhere. I mean, they're probably like 80 now, but.

No way. The people that we swam with. So we both had wetsuits, booties, dry caps. Yeah.

The angel swimmers that swam with us did it in just their bathing suits. Oh, come on. There are people that like, this is their thing is this cold water, open water swimming. And they'll go and swim like 10 miles in this water and just a bathing suit. That's crazy. It's insane. So every time you like, think you've done something cool, there's always somebody that's taken it up like 10 notches. Wow. But for us, that was the scariest thing. We were just so underprepared. I don't think it could have ended badly. Yeah.

Like I think we did it in the safest way possible. We had a person in the water. We had the boat. Like if something did go wrong, like I don't think we would have just died on the spot. But it was definitely like the scariest personal thing that I've done. And I would never do it again. Honestly, if you're like here's a million dollar check, go do it again. I wouldn't do it. Oh, I do. I'd do it for that. I would not. 20 million? Okay, maybe. Maybe. Would you do it, Abby? Maybe.

life how much would you pay for my life i want to do it now now that you guys said it was so scary i'm like i want to feel that thrill you know oh it was like a drug like i could not believe it when i stood on the land well first of all i could hardly stand i literally like almost buckled under the pressure like when i stood up my legs were like frozen and then i took the longest hottest bath with a coffee and lavender oil that was my next question what did you eat after that thai food

That's my favorite. Really? Yes. We love Thai. And we all, wait, which type of curry do you get? Do you guys curry people? All of them. Or like a noodle person. Because we're yellow curry all the way. We like yellow curry. We get it twice a week. When we order at our favorite Thai place in Phoenix, they just know, they know it's us every time. They try to convince us to branch out and we're like. They actually got me to start getting. Massaman curry. I get Massaman right now. I like Massaman. So fire. Yeah. Kara got food poisoning from that in Thailand. Oh, that's great. No, I didn't.

Okay, wait. We were going to talk about this. What? Speaking of food poisoning. Oh, food. Because you guys are vegan. No, no, no, no. Wait, oh, okay. Never mind. You've had unique foods that for Americans, like people here, like you've tried a lot of different types of food. We've eaten every organ that exists. Wow. And you've gotten food poisoning, I'm sure, multiple times. More times than I can count. And you also had a parasite. Oh, I did. Oh, my God.

Don't know if I've ever told this story. I'm not sure this story needs to be told. Oh, I'm so curious wait so like we've eaten a lot of crazy things and I used to really pride myself and like I will eat anything like Anything and especially with YouTube like it always made like a better video if we ate something. Yeah So I can't really pinpoint what it was or it could have been something very normal who knows but we were in Vietnam and

in 2019 and I was just minding my own business sitting at the kitchen table doing some editing and I felt this sensation no in my butt no no yes and I mean it was like pretty clear what I was feeling I'd never felt it before and I ran to the bathroom I would have no idea what the heck was going on I mean it just felt very like

What you would expect. No. So I didn't even say anything to Nate. Like I'm like, what is happening in my body right now? So I run to the bathroom. I've seen this in the untold stories of the ER. Really? Yes. This is the worst part. At this point, it only gets kind of better. I think like it. I kid you not. So like an insect went up your butt? No, I kid you not. I go in the bathroom and I went like this. We don't need a visual for this. I had a worm on my finger that came out of my butt.

Yes. And it was still alive. And I literally stood there in shock. Like, what does this mean? What do I do? Are there more? Maybe. I don't know. It's like 10 p.m. in Vietnam, too. No, no, no. Yes. So I took a picture of it, obviously, because I was like, this is crazy and I need somebody to tell me if I'm going to die. I put it on a little piece of toilet paper and I showed Nate and I was like, what do I do?

And immediately, like, Googled the nearest pharmacy, and there was one that was closing in, like, two minutes. And so I bolted to the streets, and turns out the pharmacy was, like, basically, like, a window of a building that, like, had, like, a little, like, garage door type thing. And there was just a man standing there, and there was a bunch of random, like, peanuts and stuff. And I was, like, I showed him the photo. Oh, no. I Googled, like, a medicine that you could get in Vietnam that would, like,

kill everything and flush it out. And I was asking him if he had it and he showed me the box and he said it was $1 and I said, give me all of them. So I paid like $10 for 10. But you only needed one of these. Like you can only take one of these. I bought 10. They were only a dollar. I was like, I'm just going to take all of them and then truly this will go away. But I started with one and I never had any like symptoms. Like I think a lot of people get really sick

But like I had had food poisoning like a billion times. So like maybe I technically was sick from it at some point and just assumed that it was a bug and like, I mean not like a physical bug. It literally was. And yeah, so I don't know many details but I took the pill and it never happened again and

Wow. But now I have like feelings all the time where I'm like, is it happening again? Like I like always think that I have one now. Like it was traumatizing. Oh, that would be. It was actually traumatizing. And it was just one. It was only one worm. Did you see multiple? No. Okay. Well, apparently they like come out when you poop, but they're dead already. Oh, they're already dead. So I still to this day, this was like four years ago, I inspect every time I look in the toilet. We've really gone. Hey. He said, okay. Okay.

It was so traumatizing. I'm so scared it's going to happen again. And I don't even know if there are any, like, long-term effects that, like, you know, I don't know if they're that scary. Like, maybe you have a tummy ache. They feel very elusive. Sorry, I just...

I wanted to tell the story. You needed to get that off your chest. Yeah. And you know what? It's fine. Some people like get scared about travel with stuff like this, but you move on. I will say there was a time in my younger life where I would have said like having a parasite is the worst possible thing I could ever imagine. And then at some point I realized I wanted to travel so much that if that was the cost, then that was okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Have you ever felt like super unsafe or has there been something that's happened that was truly unsafe, like a near-death experience maybe? We were in a car crash in Vietnam. Oh, shoot. That's too traumatic in Vietnam experiences. You can get in a car crash anywhere, but it wasn't that big of a deal, except that our suitcases got trapped in the back of the car and we ended up at the police station and they were having to cut the trunk open to get our suitcases out. Oh, my gosh. We have been so fortunate. We have never been robbed.

You know, I'm sure we've been taken advantage of a few times. I think the close... Somebody in Marrakesh, we had two things happen in Morocco where somebody was trying to steal Kara's phone out of her pocket. Okay. It was just like a kid. Yeah. And she caught him in the act and kicked him. It was just like a reflex. Yeah. He was kind of bumping into me. It was like a crowded area. And then all of a sudden, I felt him pulling in my pocket. And the first thing I did was just like that just because I was like, what's happening? And he was like...

But just kind of like the same thing, like with the girl, like he kind of like stood there and acted like he wasn't trying to do anything and kind of kept following us for a while. So it was just annoying. But then we also, it kind of turns into this,

uh maze of alleys and we turned down we were kind of on the main road and then we turned down one that was dark and quiet to get back to where we were going and then there was like a group of like five guys standing on the corner and as we turned down the alley i felt like all five of them kind of like come in behind us that's really scary and there was like one open like shop or something okay so we like i was like yeah i think they're following us and i we ducked into the shop and then they walked past and as soon as they did we like ran back to the main road

But after we were back at the main road, there were a bunch of people, so I felt pretty safe. But I was like, hey, let's hang out and see if that was just me imagining things or if they were following us. And sure enough, 60 seconds later, they came back to that corner just to... That's freaky. They were hanging out again. So I do think we avoided something there. Yeah. We also got followed through a market in Egypt. So we've had some weird stuff happen, but it's never...

ended poorly we have been so incredibly fortunate but yeah even if we hadn't like I hesitate to even tell the stories that have been like sketchy or like almost gone wrong because people get so hung up on the negative negative experiences that people have abroad and it's so easy to forget in our own backyards like

Our hometown of Nashville, literally, I don't want to get political, but has somebody get shot every single day on the news. Every single day. And people aren't scared to go to Nashville. Why aren't we talking about that? People get so nervous to go to Marrakesh when you're a lot safer there, I think. Maybe somebody wants to steal your money, but I don't think you're going to get shot at Marrakesh.

Totally. But in Nashville, like, that's likely. That's a very, very good point. And so, yeah, I try not to even tell those stories often because it's so rare. Like, we're literally out in foreign places every single day for the last seven and a half years and we have, like, two and a half stories where something almost went wrong and didn't. Yeah. When, yeah, that stuff happens everywhere. So,

But that's the moral of the story. If you're listening to this, don't be scared. These people have been doing this for seven years, five years? Seven and a half. Seven years. And this is it, okay? That's crazy. And there's a little worm every once in a while. And I also want to ask, since you've been to so many countries, if you had to choose one place to settle down, never leave. Never leave. Like, where would you choose? Where would you move to or settle down? Because you guys don't even own a home. No.

I don't see us ever actually settling down outside of the U.S. Like, we haven't found a country that we just, like, are so obsessed with that it's worth all of the hoops you have to jump through. Oh, yeah. You know, like, it's just, I feel like it's just annoying a lot of times to live somewhere else. Like, short term, lots of places. But if I was, like, for real settling down forever, I do think it would be in the U.S.,

And we have been to 39 states, and there's one that we always go back to. Which one? Like, we can't get away from it. I think for sure if we end up settling down, it'll either be Nashville just because that's where family is, and that makes sense for that reason, but Colorado, I think, is like the ultimate place to live. Whoa, Colorado. We love Colorado. Why Colorado? Why not? I mean, it doesn't have a beach. That's kind of my only thing.

we have friends that live there and i think they've just kind of like brought us in to the culture there which is like go out do like really hard fun cool things in the mountains and then at the end of the day like go have this well-deserved beer and like community with the people it's the people that i feel like have drawn us back like they're just cool people who all value

Like you were saying before, experiences over stuff. Yes. Like, and their careers aren't their life. And I feel like that's hard to find in a lot of places. Like, they don't talk about their day at work. It's like, what are we doing after work? What are we doing this weekend? What are we doing next weekend? Like, it's all about the adventure, and that's just kind of how we live our lives. We really connect with those people.

That's really cool. I really love that. We have to visit more. As we wrap up, I'm so curious. You're the planner for the trips and things going on. Maybe I'll direct this more towards Nate, but what's coming up for Kara and Nate? Yeah, what's new?

We had some fun stuff. We have a lot of flexibility in our schedule. We're definitely not as planned out as usual, but there is one big thing coming up in July that I'm really excited about. We're going to do desert Island survival in Tonga. So we did it last year in Panama. So there's a company that orchestrates it and basically do four days of training. And then they send you out on your own beach or Island and you have to survive with pretty much nothing.

So like for me, I grew up watching Bear Grylls and like survival shows. This was my dream. And it was our video that performed best on our channel last year. So that means I get to do it again. And so they're doing it in Tonga this year and my parents are coming. That's

I can't wait. That's going to be so cool. It's one of those things, like, you know how, like, negative memories kind of fade and you only remember the good things? Yeah. Like, with childbirth, you know, like, I feel like it's like, oh my gosh, this is the worst pain I've ever experienced. And then you're like, when do I get to do it again? Yeah. The survival, like, after Alcatraz, I feel like that was, like, the next physically hardest thing we've ever done. Like, I was half alive when it was over with. Oh, gosh. I lost 10 pounds. I had no energy. Like, it was...

so bad but like how many days was three days of surviving but we had like no food or water it was all on us to like find food and water and like we were drinking out of trash like it rained and we were catching the rain and these two liters that we found washed up on the literally i would die i was crazy the night was the worst though because we built our shelter and it was happened to be just this one season where like the rain would bring all these crabs out of the ground

and they were called Halloween crabs. So there are these purple and orange crabs in there about this big. Oh, that's huge. Thousands would come out at night. That's terrifying. And so you'd be late. While we were sleeping. They were literally just crawling over us while we were sleeping. The crabs crawling over your body. Crawling over your head. Eating our clothes. It's not, yeah, I was going to say, it's not like you could just sit there and not react because they would eat holes in your clothes.

That is wild. You guys are so cool. That is wild. But like here we are signing up to do it again less than a year later. Do you want to go, Abby? I kind of want to because I'm like, here's me. I want to say yes to everything so I can have the experience. Nice. But I also think that

I'm a wuss. You guys are tough. Honestly, it's one of those things I feel like everyone should experience because the smallest luxuries or the smallest things in everyday life become luxuries. Like lights.

like for like months after we did the survival like to be able to see after the sun went down was this miracle like we have lights that's beautiful and like couches like something to lean back on like you don't have anywhere to sit in the like on the beach you're just like sitting in the sand you're constantly dirty your back always hurts because you have nothing to lean on so just like the act of sitting in a chair was like wow like

Like beds, I still get in beds and I'm like, wow, crabs aren't eating me right now. And I'm not getting rained on. Like there's a roof and it's raining outside, but I'm dry. Like how amazing. It just resets like your life. It's amazing. Like that's the best part for sure. Oh my gosh. And the views are really good. The views like the view while you're there or like the views on your video? Both. Oh my gosh.

i was talking about youtube oh that's hilarious it was finally one of those times where we did something that we're really proud of yeah and the views reflected that totally usually the weirdest videos are the ones i end up hitting on youtube and we're like why that one like we've done so many cool things like why would that one isn't that frustrating when you like put your heart and soul into a video you spend like 100 hours on it or what i'm sure you guys have spent crazy amounts of time on videos

And then nobody watches it. It seems to be the case most of the time for us. That's cool that that one worked out. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So that was fun. It was a win-win for everyone. Well, Kara and Nate, it has been a pleasure hanging out with you guys. Yes. Thank you so much. Thank you so, so much. Thank you for having us. I think you guys are awesome. I look up to you guys so much. Really do. The feeling is mutual.

I think your videos are awesome. I think you guys are great people. And just hearing your stories gets me excited. Makes me love our world, too, and love humanity. If you guys want to go check them out, I know they have their YouTube channel. They also have a newsletter. Remind me of the name of your newsletter. Daily Drop. Daily Drop. So go check out their newsletter. It's great. They also have...

FairDrop, right? FairDrop is, we didn't even talk about that. That's another company that you guys have, which do you want to share a little bit about like maybe the newsletter or FairDrop? Yeah, I think I'm most excited about the newsletter right now. Oh, sick. So DailyDrop, if you heard the miles and points stuff and kind of how we got into travel and working the credit card system and getting to travel for cheap,

That's what Daily Drop is all about is this teaching people how to do that. So we send out an email five days a week and we're alerting people to the best deals when there's a good opportunity to earn points. Then we teach people how to redeem their points either for cheap or free travel or for like first class experiences that you might not be able to afford otherwise. It's really cool. It's really funny too.

That's awesome. And they're a gift. Oh, it's funny? Yeah. Our writer's amazing. Oh. It's so entertaining. Even if you don't do any of the travel hacks, like, it's just fun to read. I love that. Yeah. You guys are doing some really cool stuff. Well, thank you so much for coming out. Thank you. It was a pleasure. And, yeah, now we say peace out, dudes, to end our episode. Do you want to say it with us? I'm ready. Make sure you're liking, subscribing, leaving a review, wherever you get your podcasts. We love you guys. And as always, three, two, one. Peace out, dudes.