#437 – Jordan Jonas: Survival, Hunting, Siberia, God, and Winning Alone Season 6
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The following is a conversation with Jordan Johnson, winner of alone season six, a show where the task is to survive a loan in the arctic wilderness longer than anyone else. He is widely considered to be one of, if not the greatest competitors on that show. He has a fascinating life story that I took him, from a farnie and hobbing on trains across amErica to traveling with thematic tribes in siberia, all that helped make him into a world class.

Explore survivor, hunter, wilden, this guide, and most importantly, as great human being with a big heart and a big smile. This was a truly fun and fascinating conversation. Let me also mention that at the end, after the episode, i'll start answering some questions and will try to articulate my thinking on some top of mind topics.

So if that's of interest to you, keep listening after the episode is over. And now a quick view. Second, mentioned sponsor, check them out in the description is the best way to support the pocket.

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Maybe you will too. This episode is brought you by hidden layer, a platform that provides security for your machine learning models. I've got to change .

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the G P U cluster that a test, A A I and X A I R building and all festival was extremely impressed by the rap rate of progress and is a lot more to be said about that. Maybe have a conversation on soon. But in general, I just want to come on how humble that was by just a sheerly scale of computation that A G P U cluster is Carrying and is quickly growing. And just being able to see that person IT makes IT very.

very, very real.

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models of power, and that we, as a civilization, Carry a heavy responsibility to make sure that we use them in a way that doesn't hurt others. I think security vulnerabilities is a the near term way of hurting others. So it's really important to minimize number security vulnerabilities.

The battle to minimize the number of bugs, the number of attack factories, the size of the attack factories on the machine learning models in on software in general, is a worthy battle to fight. And so i'm glad hidden layers fighting that battle, especially in the context of machine learning, visit hidden layer the console legs to learn more about how hidden layer can accelerate your AI adoption in a secure way. This episode is also brought by notion, a note taking a chemical abortion tool.

I used IT for a long time for note taking, and I think the process of not taking is a science and an art and want to take extremely seriously. Writing is the process as essential for concretizing. Your thoughts without that thoughts are a kind of a more of a final thing that just kind of shows up without a clear structure and leaves before he have a chance to really internalize IT.

So the process of writing does just that. IT makes the thought more permanent and gives its structure. And so no taking is the process.

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There's something about the ease and scale in the efficiency of sharp fy that always makes me think about the machinery of capitalism. And also because i've been beginning to read the history of human civilization a as covered by will dan area dant, I suddenly feel humbled by the scale of IT all in how capitalism is an idea. The modern version of IT is a relatively recent one, just a handful centuries, just with the industry revolution.

And we humans have been battling with idea whether the means of production should be owned by the state, by the individual. And now everybody's talking like that decision. Obvious thing, but IT isn't.

Every genius idea is obvious in retrospect. And the the entire story of humans on earth is a long chain of experiments, successful and failed ones, and from which will learn and will always rise. That's the fascinating thing about us humans.

We always survive. We always find a way that's actually one of the central kerns behind my optimism about the future of humanity. But anyway, back to store.

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I find that there is various communities now that dedicate themselves to rigorously analyzing the failures of capitalism at the edges. But um in those communities and in general, we don't often celebrate the positive impact, the positive metrics over time. The capitalism has resulted in a society, I think, just a number of people living in poverty, decreasing drastically under regimes that enable free markets should serve as a inspiring a notion for anyone who wants to build a business for the very fact that humans build businesses that we together keep trying.

It's the crazier thing. The start business is the crazy st idea because most like you're going to fail is really is the stupid as possible thing except IT is not except that dream is the very engine that enables progress. So i'm a big fan of starbucks, of small businesses.

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Take advantage of next we flexible financing plan at nets wide conflate h legs that nets we dog consonantal legs. This episode is also about to you by element in electorally drink that I love and depend on a special round taking long distance runs in Austin. He is often ninety five hundred degree for and height.

And I love IT ten, twelve, fifty miles. Let's go. But yes, you have to consume a large moult of electrized before and after to make sure I feelgood.

One of the exit should probably run a marathon, but I run for time. I don't want to destination. I don't run because I have to, or even I don't really run for exercise sake.

I run so I can think clearly and content with the heavy of my thoughts, but is when i'm out there, despite myself, whether no sound or Brown noise in my ears, I get to really think there's something about sort of physical chAllenges, especially the higher pace where I start getting uncomfortable and uncomfortable thoughts rise up, and I get to think, and I get to face shots and either meditate them away or try to figure out, what is the cornel of the thing that disturbs me about those thoughts? What is this so uncomfortable? What is the thing that cause this anxiety? And this could be everything from intellectual, physical, hc type dos, technical design, engineering chAllenges, or just a personal life stuff, all IT.

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This episode also parted by asleep as pad for ultra. The ultra part is the existing, the base that goes between the matters and the bad frame. Main north, like gravity.

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But when you can find those out of sleep, that little quite escape from the boiling to our oil of the world, go to easily the access legs and use the legs to get three hundred and fifty dollars off the pad for ultra. This is eleven venant podcast to support IT, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now do your friends here's Jordan Johnson.

You won alone season six, and I think I are still considered to be one of, if not the most successful survivor on that show. So let's go back. Let's look at the big picture. Can you tell me about the show? One, how does IT work?

Yeah, hits a show where they take ten individuals and each person gets ten items of the list, you basic items to be an excessive a frying pan, some pretty basic stuff. And then they send a mall, drop a moths in the woods with a few cameras. And uh so that people are actually alone.

There's not a crew or anything and they knew basically live there as long as you can, you know and so the person that last the long as you know, is the second place person taps out, they come and get you in that in that individual wins. So it's a it's a pretty legit chAllenge. You know, they drop you off, helicopter flies out and you're not going to get your next meal until you make that happen.

So you have to fill out the shell. They have to fear out the source of food and then get colder and colder. I guess they drop out at the moment where it's going into the winter.

Yeah, they typically do IT in temperate colder climates. Things like that end and start in in a september, october. So times ticking when they dropped you off and yeah, pressures on you got is, you know, overwhelmed with all the things you have to do right away.

I go manner, i'm going to eat again until I actually shoot to catch something, got to build a shelter. It's pretty overwhelming. Figure your whole location out.

But interesting is once there little while you kind of get into a, at least for me, I did, but there was like a week or maybe not a week, but I think I was kind of a little more annoyed with things. You know, I got on my sites, sex, and then and then you kind of accept IT. You know, that is what IT is.

No code, no amount of complaining that do anybody any good. So i'm just onna make that happen. And so then all you know, do my best to and then I felt like I got in a zone, and I felt like I was right back in kindi beria.

And that heads space. And I I found to actually really enjoyed IT. I had been a little bit out of, I guess you called the game because I had had a child.

And and so when we had our daughter, we came back to the states and then a bunch of said things happened and I just ended up we didn't end up going back to rush. yes. So been a couple years that I was just know who raised in the little girl and boy .

then and then you .

have a little sort so I was like, did and then IT was fun how like after just some days there, I was like, man, I feel like I feel like i'm at home now and then I was like, you kind of in that flow state .

news actually there's a few moments like when you left the latter up or with the moves that you kind of screw up a little bit ah how do you go from that moment of like frustration to the moment of acceptance? I mean.

the more you put yourself in life and positions that are kind of outside your comfort zone and push your abilities, the more often you're going to screw up. Then yeah the more opportunity you have to learn from that. And then to be honest, it's kind of funny. But you almost get to a position where you you don't feel that uncomfortable, not unexpected. You know you can expect you're onna mess up here.

There you have remember, particularly with the with the move, the first move I saw, I had a great shot at IT, but at a hard time judged distance because IT was in a mud flat, which means it's hard to it's hard to tell you yardage you know, exam because you usually typically go by trees or markers be like, oh, i'm probably thirty yards away. This was a giant moves and he was forty something yards away. And I estimated that he was thirty something yards away, says, we often shot and drop between his legs.

And then I realized I not grabbed my quivers. So that one shot, and I just watched him turn around and walk off. But I was struck initially with, like, I would, I actually noticed how on mad I was.

I like, this is actually that was awesome. Not like, see a dinosaur that was really cool. And then I was like, what an idiot had to miss that then. But IT made me that much more determined to make that happen again, as like, okay, nobody he's going to make this happen except myself can't can't complain. And when I done any good to go back and mop about IT.

And so then I was, I had A T I remember these, the native guys telling me that you still, like, build these giant fences and function game in the certain areas. And stuffing, like, man, it's a lot of calories, but I have to make that happen again now. So I kind of win out there and tried that that was kind of attempt to at something too I could have failed or are not worked.

But sure enough, IT worked in the opportunity, came again, the moose came, wondered along, and I was able to get IT. But be able to take failure as soon you can Better accept IT and and learn from IT is kind of a muscle you have to exercise a little bit. What's interest .

because in this case, the cost of failures like you're not going to be able to eat.

Yeah, that was really interesting. I mean, the most digest thing thing about that show was how high the stakes felt because they didn't feel you didn't tell yourself you're on a show. I didn't. You just felt like I was. You're going na starve to death if you don't make this happen.

And so the stakes felt so high and and IT was an interesting things tap into because, I mean, so many of our ancestors probably all just deal with that on a regular basis, but it's something that we thought all the modern amenities in such an food security that we don't deal with. And IT was interesting to tap into, what a kind of a peak medal experience that is when you really, really need something to survive. And then IT happens if you can imagine.

I mean, that's what are all our doping and recept tres are tuned for that experience in particular. So IT was, yeah, that was pretty awesome. But the pressure felt very on, like I always felt the pressure of of providing or starving.

And then there's the situation when you left a lot up and you needed fat. What is some of .

the fat? When I got the moose, I was so happy. The most joy I could almost experience, max maxed out, but I didn't think, I didn't think I won at that point.

I never thought like all that's my ticket to Victory. I thought, holy crap, it's going to be me against somebody else that gets a mooth now. And we're going to be here six, eight months, who knows how long? And so I I can't be here six, eight months and still lose.

So I ve ve got to like, i've got to out produce somebody else with a moose. So I had all that in my head. Not already was, of course, pretty thin.

And and I just like, man, someone else s get to move him still gonna behind. And so everything felt like precious to me. And I had found a plastic jug, and I put a whole bunch of the moves, its fat, in this plastic jug and set IT up on a little shelf.

I, you know what, if a bear comes, i'll play here and come out and bill to shoot IT. So I went to sleep. I woke up next morning.

I went out and like, what is that jog? And then it's like, way to say, what are all these prints? And that started to look around, and I took a second to dawn on me because I haven't interacted with rains very often in life.

And h those are vine tracks, and he was just so much sneaker than Better. What have been is something so kind of surprise me, took off with that jug, a fat. And so then I went from feel and pretty good about myself to, like now i'm losing again against two other.

The other person is what the most say again. Kind of the pressure came back to, oh, no, I got to produce the end. And, you know, I wasn't the end of the world. And I think may have exaggerated ated a little bit how little fat I had left. You know, I still had a move, has a lot of fat, but I did make me feel like I was at a disadvantage and and so that I was pretty that was pretty intense because I was wildering their bold little animals. And they in, he was basically saying, no, this is my mouse and I had encounters claims.

well, yeah, they're really, really smart. They figured out a way to get to places really effectively. Other things are like, fascinating in that way.

So let's go that happy moment. The moves. You are the first and are the only contestants to have ever killed the moves on the show. The big game animal, 我， the bone arrow, so this is date twenty, so can you take me through the cup?

Yeah, so i'd missed one and I just decided i'm not here to star. I'm here to, like, try to become sustainable. So I was like, I don't get for the risk of that fence I built IT.

I would just pick barriers and calm s every, you know every day and is actually really pleasant to sit, a very patching. But you know, I also had this whole trap and airlines set out everywhere. So I had all these. I was getting rabbits um but a one and I was actually taken a rabb out of a snail when I heard a clink because i'd set up kind of an alarm system with with string and cans so this brilliant idea .

yeah another .

thing that could have not worked but IT and IT came through I heard the cans click and I think no way and I ve ran over. I didn't know what I was exactly, but something was coming along offence and I ran over and jumped in the bush next to the fund exit on the fence and sure enough, the big moose game and up, and, you know, your heart gets pounded in like, crazy is like, no way, no way.

I probably could have waited a little longer and had a perfect broadside shop, but I took the shot when he was, and he was very close, like twenty four yards, but he was quartering towards me, which makes IT a little harder to make A A perfect kill shot, know? And I hit IT, and I took off running, and I just thought. You know, I was super excited.

I couldn't believe I actually you know like, oh my god, he got the booth. I think that was a really good shot. You get all excited, but then IT plays back in your head.

And particularly when your first learning to hunt, there's always an animal that gets away, you know and you like make a bad decision or not a great shot or something. And it's it's just part of IT. And so of course, you're like i'm going to be satisfied until I see this thing.

So I followed the blood draw little while, and I saw some bubbly blood, which meant was hit longs, which meant it's not going to live, know you'll get IT, and so as long as you don't mess IT up. And so I went back to my shelter and waited an hour. I skinned that rabbit that had caught, and then super nervous, the slowest hour ever.

Then i've followed IT along, ended up losing the blood trail. no. And then like, well, if there no blood, i'm just going to follow the path that I would go if I was a move.

You like the least resistance through the woods. So I think that kind of along the shore there, and sure enough, and sum up there, so excited, laid down, but but he hadn't died yet. And so he just SAT there.

He would stand up and I would just like, no, no, no, no. Then he would lay back down here, yes. And then he would stand.

And IT was like that for, you know, a couple hours that took him. And then finally, at one point, you know a lot, you asked, like, why wouldn't go finish IT off? So when an animal like that gets hit, he had no idea what hit IT.

You know it's always something got IT ran off and IT lays down and it's actually fairly calm and IT doesn't really know it's going on. And if you can leave IT in that state, IT or canada bleed out in as as peacefully as possible. If you go chase after IT, that's when you lose an animal.

Because as soon as I know it's being hunted, you know IT gets panicked a general and I can just run and run and run in. You'll never find IT. So I didn't want you to see me.

I knew if I tried to get IT with another arrow, there's a chance I could have finished off. But there's also not bad chance that you would see me take off or even attack. His moves can be a little dangerous and so I just chose to waited out and at one point stood up and fell over.

I could tell you that and walked over like you actually touch IT and you're just like, well, no way like that whole burden of weeks of you're onna start, you gonna start and I got rid of that diamond. To be honest, it's one of the happiest moment of my life. It's really hard to replicate that joy because I was just so, so really or so directly connected. Their needs is also simple. IT was IT was a peak experience for sure.

And when you worried that they would take me more hours and will taken into the night.

yeah, I was I mean, now until you actually have your hands on IT, I was worried the whole time. It's a pretty new racking period there between when you get IT and when you actually recover the animal, get your hands on IT. So I took a longer than I wanted, but I finally got IT.

Can you actually speak to the the kill shot itself just for people who don't hunt? Yes, but IT takes to stay calm, to do not regard too much, to like, wait, but not wait too long.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, another thing about hunting is that every animal you get, you probably don't get nine. Or this turned the wrong way when you are drawn back or went away behind a tree, or you never had a clean shot, whatever IT is.

And so um every time you can see a moment coming, you know your heart really starts beating and you have to like breathe through IT. I can almost you feel almost feel the nervous and this of IT. And then and then you just try to stay calm, you know, like, whatever you do, just try to stay calm.

Wait for the come up. Draw back. You ve practice shooting a lot. So you have like kind of a technique. I going to go back, touch my face, draw my elbow tight, and then the error is gonna .

lose musing memory.

kind of muscle memory. Have a little trigger, like draw that over tight, and then and then, and IT happens. And then you just watch the error and see where IT goes. Now with the animal, you know, you try to do IT ethically, that is like make as good of a shot as you can, make sure IT is either hit in the heart or both lungs. And when that happens, it's a pretty quick death, which is in death is a part of life and but honestly, for a wild animal is pretty the best way to go.

They could he could have um now in a animals kind of walking towards you, if it's walking towards you but not directly towards you that you can ordering towards you, you can picture it's actually pretty difficult to hit both lungs because the shoulder blade and all that bone is in the way so you want to so you have to make a perfect shot to get them both into. Be honest, when I took my shot, I was a couple inches, a few inches, right? And so IT went, went through the first along, and and thunk the arrow all the way into the moose in. But IT didn't IT allow that second longer to stay breathing, which which meant the most data life longer.

What's your relationship with the animal, the situation like that, he said that .

is a partner that's an interesting thought because no matter what your relationship to, however you choose to go their life, whether you know whatever ver you eat, what where you do, death is a part life, you know, like every animal that's out theirs living off of the dead and even plans, you know it's it's all we're all part of this ecosia.

I think it's really easy in an particularly in an urban environment, but anywhere to think that were separate from ecosystem. But we are very much part of IT, whether that be, you know, farming requires all this habitats to be turned into a growing solid beans in. When you get the plows on the combines, you know, you're lose in all kinds of different animals and all kinds of potential habitat.

So it's not cost free. And so when you realize that, then you want to produce the food and the things you need um in an ethical manner. So I so for me, hunting plays a really major role in that.

Like I literally know how many animals a year IT takes to feed my family and myself. I actually know the exact and it's like, and I know what the cost of that is, and i'm aware of because i'm out in the words and I see these like beautiful elk and moose. And I really love the species, love the animals.

But there is a fact that one of those individuals he's going to have to feed me. And I, and particularly like on alone IT was very heightened that experience. So I shot that one animal, and I was so, so thankful, you know, that I wanted to give that big guy hug. And sorry, I was, is you, but had to be some.

Is that picture you just almost hugging IT, right? And you can also think about the calories, the protein, the fat, all that that that comes from that that will feed you.

You're so grateful for IT like the gratitude is like definitely there.

What about the bow and arrow perspective?

When you hunt with the bow, you just get so much more up close to the animals. You know, you can't just get IT from six hundred yards away. You actually have to sneak within thirty or so yards.

And when you do that, the experiences you have are just there, more, more dragged out. So you know, your hearts beaten ten longer. You have to control your nerves longer.

More often than not, IT doesn't go your way. And the thing is away. And you know, you've been hike on around in the woods for a week and then your opportunity arises and floats away. You think no then.

But at the same time, that's the only time when you like really have those interactions with the animals where you get this bugling bull, you know like time at the trees right in front of you and other cow help and animals running in around you, you you end up having really, I don't know, their intimate experiences with the animal just because because you're in your kind of in its world, you're play in its game. IT has its senses to defend itself, and you have wait to try to to get over those. And IT really becomes, you know, it's not easy, there are not.

That becomes kind of that chess game in his plan. Animals are always tuned in its slight to stick there looking for wolves or for whatever IT is. So there's something really pure and fun about IT know.

I will say that there is an aspect that is fun. There's no deny IT. It's like how you know, people have been hunting forever and and I think that speaks to that part of us somehow. But and I think A B hunting is probably the most pure form of IT. And that you get those experiences more often than with a rifle that I enjoy IT a lot in end, the way they do regulations in such kind of the best time to hunt are usually allowed for though, because they're trending, you know, keep IT fair for the animal and such.

So the distance, the close distance, makes you more in touch with the sort of the the natural way of the predation prey. Ah yes, you're one of the predators where you have to be clever, you have to be quiet, you have to become all of that. And the full chAllenge in the lock involved the same thing is the proto do exactly .

how many times they snapp stick and watch him run off. And I turned my stock was failed. Yeah you're just you in that in that ego system. How do you .

learn to yeah, I was I didn't .

go up hunting. I drop in the area that a lot of people hunted. But my dad wasn't really do IT. And I never got IT until until I live IT in russia with the natives.

That was just such a part of everything we did in a part of our life that when I came back, I got a bow and I started doing artery in Virginia. They had, that was a pretty easy way to hunt, because the deer were overpopulated and you could get these urban artery permits. So you go out and every couple of days you'd have an opportunity to shoot A A deer that they needed population control.

And so there are a lot of them and give you a lot opportunities to learn quickly. So that's what got me and do IT. And then I found I really enjoyed IT.

Do you practice with the the target also just practice out. Oh.

no, I would definitely practice with a target a lot. You want to again, you can have an obligation to do your best because you don't want to be falling and arrows into like the leg of an animal. And it's a cool way, honestly, to provide quality meat for the family. It's all raise naturally and wild and free until you bring IT home in to the freezer.

So so we start back what are the ten items you brought and what's actually the chAllenge of figuring out which items to bring?

Yeah, the chAllenge is that you don't exactly know what your site opportunities are gna be. So you don't really know should I bring fishing that i'm going to even have a spot to net or not things like that. I brought A X, A saw, leather man wave, a feroe is like a mix, Sparks start fire, a frying pan, a sleeping bag, a fishing kit, a bone ero trapping wire and parachute, thousand.

ten items. Is any and you regret any?

No major regrets. I I took I took the sock kind of, I thought I would build more of a calories saver than I. I didn't really need IT. I in hand side if I was doing, you know, sees at seven and thirty six and got to watch, I would have taken the the net because I I just planned to make a net. But I would rather just had two nets, brought one and left the saw because in the northern words, in particular, every trees, you know the size of your arms and lay, you can travel down with an act and double swings yeah I don't really need this saw um and so that was handy at times and useful book I think IT was my if I had to do nine .

items I would have without expand. You're a food .

gathering potential.

And in the in terms of trapping, you are okay with just .

a little was good. I ran some. I put out. I used all my city wire. I ran trap lying, which is just a series of traps through the woods and brush every place you see sign, put a snail, put a little mark on the trees, so I knew where that snails and just make these pads s through the woods, and I put out you, I don't know how many hundred, fifty, two hundred stares every day.

I get a rabbit, two out of them, and then, though I had a lot of rabbits, but once I got the moves, I actually took all those SARS down, because I don't want to catch anything needlessly. And you come to find out you can't live off the rabbit. Man cannot live on revlon.

this turns out. Do you set up a huge number of traffic? You were also fishing and then always and look out for a moose yeah so like what what's in terms of survival if you were to do IT over again, over over, over and over? Like how do you um maximize your chance of having enough food to survive for a long time?

You to have to be really adaptable because everything's going to it's always going to look different in your situation, your location. I actually had to what I thought was a pretty good plan going into alone and IT just know the location didn't allow for what I thought I would.

What was the plan?

But thought I would just catch a bunch of fish. I'm on a really good fishing lake. I catch a whole bunch of fish and let him for a little while and then just drag them all through the woods into a big pile.

And then hunter bear on that big fish. Yeah, that was the plan. And at that of the, when I got there for one out to have done catching fish after bad, they didn't come like I was hoping.

And then for two had burned prior. So there were no barriers. And so there are very few barriers, which meant they weren't grows, they weren't bear, they on't know they had all gone to other places where the barriers were.

And so what I had grown accustomed to kind of lying on in siberia wasn't there there in in russia, which was a similar environment, IT was just grass and barriers and fish and grass and berries and fish. And then occasionally, you know, you get a move or something, but I had a rash, which was part of me being grumpy at the start sex. And then and then once I session and you know, right away, I saw that there were moose tracks and such.

So I just started the plan for that. I moved my uh camp in into the area that was as removed as I could be from where all the action, where the tracks worse than that, I wasn't disturbing animal patterns. I made sure the wind, the predominant wind, was blowing out my cent to see are you know, of the water.

And then rarely, to be honest, if you want to actually survive somewhere is different than alone. But you do have to be active and he has you're have to you're not going to live. You're not going to be sustainable by you starve in IT out.

You have to fit, unlock the key that is sustainability. And I think there's a lot of areas that still have that potential. But you forgot out what is. This is usually going to be an accommodation of fishing, you know, trapping and in hunting. And then once you have some fishing and trapping and get you until you have some success hunting and then natal buy you three, four months of time to continue and you know keep punting again and you just have to roll off that. But every you know depends on where you are, what opportunities are there.

So okay, so that's the process. Fishing a trapping until you're successful hunting. And then successful hunt buys you some .

more time.

right? Just go here.

then you just go like that. And that's how people did IT forever the pressure. I noticed that you get that moves, and then you're happy for a week or so and then you start to be like, is finite.

I'm going to have to do this again. And you're imagine if you had a family that was going to starve if you weren't successful, you know this next time they're just always that pressure you know how made me really like appreciate the mother. But people to deal .

with well in terms of being active like, so you have to do stuff all day to get up. So you and planning, like, do I get in in the midst of the frustration you have figure out I was a strate. I did.

You put up all the traps. What is that decision like? You know, most people like that at their desk could have like a calendar. Are you like seeing .

out like one thing about what wilderness life in general is? It's remarkably less scheduled then we deal with schedules are fairly unique to of the modern context that you would wake up and you just start you have a you know confluence of things you want to do, things you need to do, things you should do and you just can tackle and as see fit as IT flows in.

You know, so and that's actually one of the things that you people really, that I really appreciate about that lifestyle, as IT really is. You kind of in that flow. And so i'd wake up and being, maybe i'll go fishing, then I wonder over and fish and then got going to go check the trap line ad every day I add five or ten snayres. You know you're constantly adding to your productive potential and then but that nothing is really, really scheduled. They're just kind of find by the city pants.

But then there's a lot of instinct that .

really looked in.

So like he is just like wisdom from all the time you had to do IT before, they just actually Operating a lot on instinct. Like you said, where to find the place a shelter? Like how hard is that calculation?

Where to place a shelter if you're like dropped off and this is all new to you, of course, all those things are going to meet things you have to really think through and play. When you're thinking about a shelter, you have to think of, oh, here's a nice flat spot, you know, that's a good place, but also is the fire with nearby and if i'm going to be here for months are enough, I would that i'm not going to be walking a half a mile. They could dry piece ood is the water nearby is there is there is IT somewhat open, but also protected from the elements, because is sometimes you get a beautiful spot, he is great on a calm day, and then the wind comes like. And so there's all these factors, you know even down to taking in what game is doing in the area also and how that relates .

to where you shelter or where the action will be away from the action to see IT.

Yeah, you want to be right. And so the idea that depends are I was going to make giving takes and one thing with shelters and locations election. It's another thing you just have to trust your ability to adapt in the situation because you everybody has a particular you know, he got an idea of the shelter in a build, but then you get there and maybe there's a good Cliff that you can incorporate. No, or then you just become creative. And that's a really fun process to to just allow your creativity to try to flourish.

And what kind of shelters are.

There are all kinds of philosophers and shellers, which is fun. People is fun to see. People try different things.

Mine was fairly basic for the simple reason that i'd live t you know, winters through winters in siberia in a tps. I know I didn't need like you anything to robust as long as calories. I'd be warm.

And I was pretty good, worried about the cold, but you'll see. So I kept my shelter really pretty simple with the idea that I built a simple a frame type shelter in the in most managers going to focus on getting calories. And then of course, there's always going to be downtime.

And in that downtime, I can tweak, modify, improve my shelter. And that just be a constant process that by by time there a few months, you'll have all of the kinks worked out. It'll be really nice little set up, but you don't have to start with that necessarily because you get other needs you get to focus on.

That said, you will see a lot of people put on alone that really focus on your building the log cab in because they want to be secure or incorporating, you know, whatever the earth has around, whether IT be rocks or whether IT be dig in a hole. You know, I know he seems some really cool shellers and that I am not knocking different strokes for different folks, but I made my particular idea was to keep IT fairly simple, improve IT with time, but spend most of my energy. The shelter do you really need to think about?

IT can't be smoky because that would be miserable. But IT is nice to have a fire inside. You need to have a fire inside. It's not be dangerous and, uh, smoke free and then also air tight because you never gna have a warm shelter out there, because you don't have seals and things like that. But as long as that here's not moving through IT, you can have a warm enough .

shelter with a fire.

with a fire and dry your socks.

And still I did. You get the smoke out of the shelter.

Do you have good clay and mud and rocks? You can build yourself a fireplace, which is surprisingly not that hard. Yeah, it's fun thing to do.

IT works well. Know, take a little hole, starts stack, and rocks around IT make opening. And that actually works, you know. So that's not as hard as you might think for me. Where I was, I I kind of came up with that as I was there with my a frame.

You know, I had built the a frame shelter like that before, and so when I built that, I had put a bunch of ten cans in the ground so that air would get the fire. So IT was fed by air, which helps create a draft. But I realized in a name frame, IT really doesn't.

The smoke doesn't go out very well, even if you leave a hole at the topic, like collects and billows back down. So then I cutt some of my tarp and made this and cut a hole in the, in the frame. And then I made like a hood vent that I could pull down and catch the smoke with.

And so while the fire was going, IT would just blow out the hood vent. And then when I was done burning and was just hot calls, I could close IT seal IT up and keep the heat in. So that actually worked pretty well.

So start with something that kind of works .

and keep improving.

I was one. I mean, the the log cabin IT feels like that's a thing that takes a huge model. The difference .

between a log cabin and a warm log cabin like an immense amount work and all the thinking and all the door ceiling and you know the chimney anyway. So otherwise this is going to be the same. Ambient temperature is outside.

So I don't think that loans the proper conduct for a log cabin. I think like log cabin's great in as a hunting cabin, as know if you're going to have something for years. But in the three, six months scenario, I don't know that it's worth the color expendable .

and IT is a lot of calories. Very interesting of metaphor of just like get something that works. You see a lot, a lot of with companies like successful companies, a prototype get a system that work and improve fast in response to the conditions to the .

environment is constant changing IT.

You end up being a lot Better if you're able to learn how to respond quickly versus like having a big plan that takes a huge model time to to accomplish .

forcing that through the pipeline. Where are not in fits?

Ah can you just speak to like the place you are that the canadian arctic IT look cold near .

the arctic circle, I don't know, is like sixty kilometers south of the arctic circle. So uh, IT was it's a really cool area, a really remote thousand, a little lakes. You know, when you fly over, it's incredible.

There must be so many of those lakes that people haven't been to. You know, IT really was a nee area, really remote and further shows purpose. I think that was perfect because I did have enough game and enough different avenues forward that I think IT really did reward activity.

So I think but it's a special place that was dena was a tribe that lived there, the deny people, which interestingly enough, as a side note, and as in siberia, I floated down this river called the pudding on to uka. And you get to this village called suomi. And there is cat people they are called, and there's only six hundred of them left. But IT isn't the middle of area, not unlike the pacific cost, but their languages is related to the deny people. And so somehow, you know, that connection was there thousands years ago, super interesting.

But the language travels somehow, right?

The reminds stayed back. There is very interesting to think through history.

yeah. Within language contains the history of people's, and it's interesting how that of walls over time and how wars tell the story. Like language tells the story of conflict, and conflict shaped and language we get, we get the result of that.

right? So fascinating.

And the barriers that language creates is also the thing that leads toward a misunderstanding. And all the best is a fascinating attention. But I got cold there, right? Real .

cold. Negative thirty at the most I get might have gotten. I would have definitely got in colder had we stayed longer.

But yeah, I had to be honest, I was said I never felt cold out there. I was, I had that one pretty dial in. And then once you have calories, you can stay warm means stay active. You can you know you got a dress warm. You don't never let others a good one if you're in the cold, never let yourself get too cold because what happens as you'll stop feeling what's cold and then frost by and then issues and then it's really hard to turn back up. So every IT was so knowing i'd be out go into ice fish or something and then I would just noticed that my fear cold and you're just like doing IT just turn around, go back, start a fire, drive my boots out, make sure my feather warm and then go again. I wouldn't ignore that, you know?

So you want to be able to feel the cold.

Yeah, you want to make sure you still feel and things and that you're not tough and through IT because you can't really tough through the cold. Little gay.

what's your relationship with the cold? psychologically? Physically interesting.

I actually there's some part of IT that really makes you feel alive. I imagine sometime in here you go out and it's hot and where and you get that of of saps you. Something about that breast cold that hits your face, that you like pool wakes you up, makes you feel really alive, engaged, feels like the margins of air smaller.

So you a and engaged a little more. There is something that's a little bit life giving just because you feel on an edge, you're walk, you're on this edge, but you have to be alert. Because even seen as some of the natives I lived with, the lady had face issues because you let her head yet cold and they're on a snowmobile.

Hat was up too high. Know that little mistake. And then IT just freezes this party or forehead, and then the nerves go. And then you got issues. One, just, hat wasn't high enough if you going to kind of going to be died in on stuff .

but there's a psychological element to just, I mean, unpleasant if I were to think of what kind of unpleasant would I choose, you know, fasting for a long pair of that. We are going without food in a warm environment, is way more pleasant.

then are being fed in a golden.

He exactly like if you were to choose.

choose the opposite.

So yeah, okay, you go. I wonder if that, I wonder you're born with that or that develop maybe your time as I bury like you, or or do you graduate today? I I wonder what that is. That really don't like survival on the cold.

Making a little bit of IT is learned. You like, almost learned not. I'd learned not to a fear. You learned to kind of appreciate IT in a big part of that is, I mean, to be honest, it's like dressing warm in good. It's not that there no secrets to that as you just can't beat the code so you just need to dress the all that all that stuff in an obvious sudden you have your little refuge, have a nice warm fire gun in your tp, you know and then you bet you you could learn to appreciate IT yeah.

I think some of IT is just open yourself up to the possibility there's something enjoyable about IT. Like here I run in all and all the time. And like a hundred degree, he and I got there with a smile on my face.

And like, I learn to enjoy IT. And so just like I look kind like you do in the cold and I I enjoy that. He, we just allow yourself.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do feel that way. I I don't mind to eat that much, but I I think you could get to the place where you appreciated the gold. It's probably just a lack of but I kind of scary when you haven't done IT and you don't know what you're doing and go out and you feel cold. It's like not fun but I bet you could you d enjoy I love to come out sometimes .

when a percent I mean, you're right, IT doesn't make you feel alive. That is like maybe that's a thing that I struggle with, is the time passes slower because he does make you feel like you get to feel time. But then the flip side of that is you get to feel every moment and you get to feel alive in every. So it's both scary when you're an experience and and beautiful when you are experience. Ed, where there times when you got.

I shot a rabbit, day one sare couple rabbits on day two, and then more and more as the time went. So I actually did pretty well on the food front. The other thing is, when you have all those berries around and stuff, you do have an ability to like filter your stomach.

And so you don't really notice if you're get dinner, if you're losing weight. So I can say on alone, I was not that hungry. I ve definitely been really hungry in russia there times when, and I lost a lot of wait, I lost a lot more waiting siberia than I did on a little time. So okay.

we'll have to talk about IT. So you're caught a fish called a couple.

I think I got like thirteen days.

You caught thirteen fish.

Don't team those big fish like a couple that was small. This is like a mean was your .

perfect example of a person .

who was I was thought though this in the in high insight again, when I was out there. I never let myself thinking my way, and I just lose gonna out there as long as I couldn't tried to remain pessimistic. But but I remember, I thought that I was like, I wonder something to make this look hard.

You know, I have that thought at one point in because I went pretty well and I was definitely IT was hard psychologically because I didn't know I was going to end like I thought this could go IT you I said six months could go eight months a year. And then he started to call you that two and a three year old, and you started away. And the is IT worth IT if IT goes a year, and it's not worth that if IT goes eight months.

And I still lose. So I feel like I had this pressure then. There was psychologically difficult for that reason. Physically, I wasn't too bad.

This is off, Michael, talking about gordon ryan competing in, and maybe that's the chAllenge. He also has the faces to make things look hard because he's so dominant in the sport that in terms of the drama, in the entertainment of the of the sport, in this case of survival, has to be .

difficult. You know i'm i'll add for sure though that it's the woods, it's nature. You never know how you can go.

You know what I mean. It's like every time out there, it's a different scenario. So whenever how to do IT .

went well. So you you won after seven, seven days. How long you think you could have lasted?

When I left, I waited what I do right now. So I just wait, my Normal wait. I had you a couple hundred pounds of moves I had at least to, you know, hundred pounds of fish ahead.

Know, pilot rabbits will vine you? I had all this stuff, and I know I hadn't got ten cold yet. I just got, but in my head, I thought if I today, one hundred and thirty or forty, even if someone else has big game, I had a pretty good idea.

They might quit because there would be long, cold, dark days. And how miserable is that? just? It's so boring. It's freezing.

And I thought the only time I thought I could think about winning this one I got today one hundred and thirty or forty and I definitely had that um with what I had uh now maybe I would got, you know I pray were gotten more I had caught of that big twenty pound pike on the last there maybe getting more though I know and I don't know I I don't know how many calories I had stored, but I had a lot. And so how long with that I asked me a woman. I didn't get anything else IT.

Definitely I would definitely would have reached my goal of one hundred, thirty or forty days. And then after that, I thought we were just going to push into the who, you know, then it's just to see how much who has what reserves and will goes as far as we can. And that would get me through january and a february. And I just thought.

man, I was miserable for me and .

you were like, I can last .

what that picked that that is miserable.

The hardest thing for me would have been the boredom because it's hard. It's hard to stay busy when it's all dark out. When the ice is three, four fit decker, you can't fish.

嗯嗯， i just think, I think David just been really boring. He would have to been a real thing masta push through IT. But because I had experience with some degree, I knew I could. And then I think things that might, you know, you start thinking about family and this and that in those situations.

And I just knew that those because i've gone to all these trips to russia for a year at a time, the time context was little broader for me then I think, for some people, because I I knew I could be gone for a year and come back, catch up with my loved ones, bring what I got back, whether that these psychological, whatever that is, and we'll enriched other and and once it's in hindsight, that year would have been like that, talking about IT. So I had that perspective and IT. So I knew I was to tap for any other reason other than run out of food someday. So that was my stressor.

And then see, you were able to, given the bottom, given the loneliness, canna, zoom out and accept the passing of time. Let IT pass. You know.

for me, i'm an at first act. I like to be active and saw, had tried to think of creative ways to keep my brain busy. You saw that like dumb rabbit first kit, but then I did the whole bunch of elaboration, ate Normandie invasion stuff, like was like there was every day.

I would think I got to think of something to make me laugh, you know, and then do some stupid ski. And then that would be, that would fill a couple hours of my time. And then I spent an hour to couple few hours fishing. And then you few hours. Do you know whatever you do?

And would you do that without a camera?

yeah? Oh no. The kids. Funny question. That's a good question. I don't know. I actually don't know that. I will say that was one of the advantages of being on the show versus in side body. I know because I didn't is really the two skids, but I didn't film that.

And so that was that was quite nice to have this camera that made you feel like you weren't quite as alone as if you were just in the woods by yourself. And I think IT, for me, I was able to IT was a pain, was part of the cause of me missing that moves you issues with IT. But I just chose a look at IT is like this is an awesome opportunity to share with people's a part of me that most people longer to see. No, I said that was I just chose to look at at that way. And IT wasn't advantage because you could do stuff like that.

I think this is actual power to doing this kind of documenting like talking to camera or an audio recorder like that doesn't actual tool and survival. I I had a little experience being out a alone in the jung GLE. Just being able to talk to a thing, 哼， is much less lonely.

IT is IT really is. This can be a powerful tool. Just is sharing your experience. I had the, I definitely had the thought. So going back to earlier comment, but I definite had the thought. If I knew I was the last person on earth, I would even bother like I wouldn't do that, like I would just right not I just give up, i'm sure because even if I had a bunch of food in this that but because I knew, you know, you're apart, sharing IT gives you a lot of drink to go through and and having that camera, this isn't mixit that much more vivid. Because, you know, you not just going to be sharing a vegan memory, but an actual experience.

I think if you the last person on earth, you would actually convince yourself first. You don't know for sure there's .

always going to be hope.

hope really does that really don't know you you really to find I mean, if you're left like that apology happened, I think your whole life will become about finding the other IT would be .

and there is a change. I mean, I I guess i'm saying if you knew your first reason new you were the last. I wonder if you would I wonder if that was thought I had.

If I knew I was the last person I here. I was having a good time. Haven't fun fish in plenty food but like you find out, is the last person on earth know that I would even bother. But now if that was for real, would I bother that's know.

I think if you knew, if somebody some way you knew for sure, I think your mind will start doubting IT that whoever told you you're the last person, whatever was was lying.

the power of hope might be more more than I accounted for.

And that also, you might, if you are indeed the last person, you might want to be documenting IT for. Once you die, you know, an alien species comes about, because whatever happened on earth is a pretty special thing. And if you're the last one, you might be like the last person to tell the story what happened. And so that's gonna a way to convince yourself that this is important. And so the days we will go bad like this, but you will be lonely boy, would that be .

long IT would be, well, be diving into the judges yeah I mean.

there is going to be accept and but also, I don't know, I think people burn bay. You'll be looking .

for the humans you know not talking you that precious you you not of nothing but you always choose look at the positive you know I mean and I think that's A A powerful mindset to have appreciated yeah .

that be a pretty call survival situation. Now if you're last personal .

earth you can share IT you .

can share yeah um like many people consider you the most successful competition on alone the other successful one is role and Walker rock .

house guy this .

is just a fun, ridiculous question but head ahead who .

he thinks is longer if you want to get through the competitive side of that, I would just say I am pretty dying. Sure, I had more pounds of food, but and I didn't have the advantage of known when IT would end, which I think would have been a great site psychological oh yes, IT would have made IT really easy. Once I got the moose, I could have shot the moose and just not stressed, I would have been like a and so that was the big difference between the seasons that I felt like. I mean, I felt like the psychology of seasons, and they can mess up by do in one hundred day cap because for my own experience that was the hardest st part.

But all so for people don't know, they put a hundred day cap on so it's whoever can survive a hundred days uh, for that season is interesting to hear that for you. The uncertainty not knowing, but that is the harsh that's true, is like you wake up every day.

I didn't know how to rush in my food. I didn't know if if I was going to lose after six months and then I was all going to be for not I didn't know if, you know, I just, there are so many unknown. You don't know like like I said, if I shot a moose and there was one hundred days done, if I shot a moose and you don't know, it's like crap, I could still lose to somebody else, but it's going to be way in the future. So anyway, that for me was definitely the the hard bar.

And when you found out the one and your wife was there, it's funny because you're really happy. That is great, a moment of you reuniting. But also there's a state of shock of lake.

You look.

you look like you are ready to go much longer.

That was the most genuine shock I could have. I am like, entertain. The thought was you'd hear the helicopters, and I just assume there is other people out there.

I just hadn't. I thought, you know, for one, the previous person that had gone along has had gone eighty nine days, such as new. Whoever else without here with me, somebody he's got that in their cross hairs.

They're going to get to ninety. They're gonna in nine, are going to go to one hundred. And I just figured we can start thinking about the end until a couple months from when IT ended.

So I was just shocked and and they tricked me. Pretty good. They know how to make you think you're .

not you you .

so they want to .

do you really I mean, you have to do that. I guess for the world, don't be counting the days.

No, I think that would be then you know, you see that and some of the people do that. For myself, that would be bad psychology because then you just always disappointing yourself. You have to be settled with the fact that this is going to go long time and suck. Once you come to peace with that, maybe you'll be pleasantly surprised, but you're not going to .

be constantly disappointed. So what was your diet like? Like what was eating habits like during that time? Like many meals a day?

No, I was trying the thing I was like, not trying to. The more the move is hanging out there, the more the critters every quitter in the forest is pack at. Or my try IT.

So one of the ways you can protect the foods by eating.

so three good meal the day, then i'd like cooked up to meat and go to sleep and then wake up in the middle night as their long nights. And I have to meet night at adventure at night. And then I usually have a fish fish stew for lunch and then moose for breakfast and dinner, and then have some for a nighttime snack as a nike for long. So you d be embed fourteen hours and wake up and be finger around and go back to sleep.

He said, okay, that I was a pretty little carb situation.

Yeah, actually felt really good. I tried. I tried to I think I would felt Better if I would have had a higher percentage of fat because, you know, it's still over more protein if you dia. And so I decided try to mix in like natures cards different, like rain, you're like in and things like that. But honey, I thought pretty good on that diet.

How did you what's the secret to like protecting food?

What are the different ways to you raised the put in like a game bags the birds can pack at IT, hanging in a tree so that cools. You have to make sure first to cool IT, because IT spoil so cool IT, by whatever means necessary, hang in in a cool place, let in the air, blow around IT. And then you'll notice that every forest freeload in the woods is going to come steal your food.

Yeah, and he was just fun. I mean, I was IT was cozy to watch, you know, like all the j, all the camp. James peck in editor, everything I did you know was, uh, there was something that could get to IT put on the ground, the masked on, and they pop on IT, and they kind of messed up.

So I, ultimately, the kind is done on me. Shoot, I don't have to build one of those vi, like food cashes. So I did, and I put IT up there, and I thought, I kind of solve my problem, to be honest, the venki then.

So they would have taken a page, they would have mixed to me, enroll in solution. They build a tall still shelter and then put the box on the top that's enclosed. And then the bears can't get to the mice can't prove on IT the birds, the wolf and you know it's safe.

And i've never finished IT in the hindside. I don't actually know why. I think I ve just the way at time like I didn't think something was going to be out there, then I did. And then you you're counting calories and stuff I should have in hindi. Just boxed in right away to get .

ready for the long.

for the long. Yeah, yeah.

Is a rbis starvation of real thing?

Yes, you can just live off protein. And rabbits are almost just protein. I kill a rabbit, eat the inner ds and the brain and the eyes, then everything else is just protein.

And so that takes more calories to, you know, process that protein, then you're getting from IT without the fat. So you actually lose, I lost, I had, you know, a lot of rabbits in the first twenty days. I had twenty eight rabbits or something, but I was losing weight to exact the same speed as everybody else that didn't have anything.

So that's interesting. Yeah, I ve never tried that before. So I was wondering if i'm catching on the rabbits.

I wonder if I can last about six months under habits. But no, you just start as fast as everybody else inside. You cannot learn that on the fly and adjust.

I want to make so you need fat to survive fundament. Yeah.

that's the, and you notice when the wildering came or when animals came, they would eat the skin off at the fish. They would eat eyes, you, they would steal the moves fast behind the eyes. And so yeah, you can kind of absorb nature and see what they're eating and know where the gold is.

What do you like eating when you like, when you can eat whatever you want? What do you feel best?

What you feel best? I just try clean. I think i'm not like super stricter anything, but I think when I at less carbon, feel Better meat and vegetables. I like read a lot of, read a lot .

of meat. So basically .

everything you lus S S.

let's stop to the the early days of Jordan. So a your instagram handles hobo Jordan. So early on in your life you're hold around the U. S and free trains. What's the story behind that?

My brother, when he was seventeen or so, he just decided to go hitchhiking, and he hit, hiked down the reno from hope where we were, and ended up like love and traveling, but hated being independent on other people. So he ended up jumping on a freight train and and just did IT he honestly he pretty much got on a train and travel the country for the next eight years on trains, lived in the streets and everywhere but um you know he was sober that give you a different experience to not but at one point when I was, I guess, eighteen, he invited me to come along with them.

He proved in doing IT five or so four, five years and or more and I said, sure, I quit my job and went out with the hob George, as a bit of an overstatement, self conch about that, because I wrote, I wrote, trains costs, country up and on the coast back, spent Better part of the year and run. And different than all the staining places related to that. But all the people, you know, the real hobos those guys are out there, are doing IT for years on end.

But IT was good for me. What I felt like was IT felt like a bit of a right of passage experience, which is kind of missing, I think, in modern life. So I did this thing that was a huge unknown.

I'd been kind of was there with me, my brother, for most of IT. We travelled around, got pushed my boundaries in every which way, froze at night stuff, and then, and then at the end, I actually wanted to go back and go back home. And so I went on my own and went from many apples back, you know, the spoke and on my own, which was at my first stints of time by myself for like a week, which was interesting .

on with .

ads at my first time in my life, have been like that. So if that was powerful at the time, you know what I did to is that give me a whole different view of a life. Because I had gotten a job, and I was thirteen, and in fourteen and fifteen, sixteen, seventeen.

And then I just in the Normal run of things kind of and then that just a whole different path in in my life. And then I realize some of the things I was travelling that I wouldn't experience you again until I was living with natives in such. And that was, you know, you wake up, you don't have a schedule, you literally just have needs and you just somehow have to meet your needs.

And so it's a is a really sense of freedom. You get that there is hard to replicate elsewhere. And so that was I opening to me.

And I think once I did that, I went back. So I went back to my old job in the salad dressing plant. There's this old cross guy hobo, joris back.

And that's kind where I got. But that freedom always was very important to me. I think from that time on.

would you learn about the united states ove the people on the way? Because I took a road trip across the U. S. also. And there is a, there is a romantic element there, two of, like of the freedom of the, oh, maybe for me, not knowing what the harm will do with my life, but also excited by all the possibilities.

And and then you meet a lot of different people, a lot different kinds of stories, and also like a lot of people that support you for traveling because there's a lot of people kind of dream of experiencing that freedom, at least the people I met, and they usually don't they usually don't go outside there a little town. They they have a thing and they they have a family easily and they they don't explore, they don't take the leap. And you can do that when you're Young.

I guess you could do that any moment. Just say fucking and leap into the the abyss of being on the road. Anyway, what you learn about this country, about the people in this country.

you're an interesting context in your own trains because the train eyes end up in the crap as part of town. They are always outside interacting. The interesting things. We know everyones a while. I have to hit track to kit from one place.

Another one interesting thing is you notice you always yet picked up by the, you know, the poor people know that the people that empathy with you stop picking you up. You go to whatever get to and receive, end up in in. People are really all you guys do, really friendly and relative. I kind of brother in my horizons, for sure, from being I to hope kid and meet in all these different people and and just seeing the goodness in people and this and that it's also a very a lot of drugs and a lot of people with my mental issues that you're friends with dealing with in all that kind of stuff.

So any memorable .

characters, this a few for sure. I mean, a lot of them, I still know that are still around. But the rocca was one guy with travel that he become like a brother.

But he was, he was, he traveled my brother for years because they were the two sober guys, kind of. He, rather than traveling, because he was hooked on stuff, did IT to escape all that. And so he was kind of sober and state.

He always, five, seven italian guide. I was always fight and like as his own sense of ethics that I think is really interesting because he is super honest but but he expects IT of others and so it's funny in the modern context. The thing that pops in my head is when he got a cars for the first time, which wasn't that long you know thirties are some, uh, and he registered IT when SHE was mad about that, he end register.

But then the next year they told him me at the register again and he, like, what did you lose my registration? Went down there to the D. M.

V. Chew amount that he had to reregistered that the already registered where is the paperwork? But just kind of use the world from a different lens. I that but on everything, he is a character now he just lives by. Up bottles and finding treasures in them.

But he notices the injustices .

in a very different, speaks up in his eyes, like why does that really speak up about car registration? And then there is like, no devo comes in mind because he was such a unique characters, far as just for one, he would have lived to be one hundred and twenty because the amount of chemicals and everything else you put in his body and still, hi man.

You know, one of those guys always get a time, you know, spare time, spare time and you have bump change in i'd see him sometimes and I would be gone and then go to new york to visit my sister something. And I sure if there's theo on the street where you know you go visit in the hospital because you ve got a bit, but twenty seven hobo spider bites you just always rough. But a charismatic, vital like the vitality of life was in emda was just so permanent. Rui.

because I people like that, like they're just yet joy premise the whole way of being and I like they have been to some show their scars have got rough, but they always got a big smile. This guy met in jungle in peo. He lost the leg and he drives a boat and need your service, has a big smile, even given that, like the harch P S, to get everything requires a huge model work. He's just big smile. And the stories and .

those something about the enduring difficulty that makes you able to appreciate life and look at IT and smile.

Any advice far to take a road trip again, or if somebody else take of hoping out of fright train you are now because .

you have a map on phone, because you're onna cheat though .

is not about the day, because the map is about the destination but here is like .

the I give a where you going anywhere I say, do IT I got and do things, especially when you're Young experiences and staff help create the person you will be in the future putting doing things that you think like I don't want to do, cared to that I mean, that's what you've got ta do. You just get out of your comfort zone and you will grow as a person, and you'll go through a lot of wild experiences along the way, say, yes to life.

yes to life. Yeah, I love the board. M of IT fright .

train writing is very boring. no. And I will wait for hours for a train that never comes and then you'll go to the storm, come back and it'll be got you like, no and but remember, we wanted to jail. We got out and then you .

up in jail.

So, you know, I was thing trust pass, I going to drain. But we were ride my train, and my brother woke up, and I had a dead outland on his head, hit the train and fell on him. And we would like, woke up and were laugh and got to be something bad.

And then we were like, looking out of the train, and we saw drain worker look and sauce, and we know that a bad. Anyway, sure enough, the police stopped the train. Somebody had seen us on IT, and they searched that.

I got us there, us. In jail. I was not a big deal. Jail couple days. But when we got out, of course, they put us.

We were in some pott town in inDiana and we didn't know where to catch out there. And so we were at some factory, and we just plan in factory ready there for like four days. No train that was going slow enough that we could catch. And then we found this big old role of aluminum foil and added that to apologize to this woman, because we were so bored, just said that we built these like, like horns coming out every which way, and loops, and to sit in there. There was at night and minivan pulled up to this train that has come back for the search, entertain in yourself with whatever you can for lady was hate.

Hiking was tough.

I don't like to hiking you depending on the other people. And IT is, I don't know why you just want to be independent, but if you do meet really cool people all of times, there is really nice people that pick you up and that's call but I just personally actually didn't do IT a lot um and I wasn't you know I ve if you're on the streets for ten years, you'll end up doing IT a lot more because you need to get from pointing to be. But we just try to avoid IT as much as we could because didn't appeal to us as much.

Well, that went downside of hike hiking is people .

talk about .

is both the problem in the cn yeah ah because you know sometimes you just want to be sort of along with your thoughts, there is a kind of lack of freedom and having to listen to a person that's giving you .

it's so true I mean, you don't not to react to I think I was the Young and picked that was from nineteen or something and then I was just, hey, how to go and just like I have been just died and then all and I got diagnosed cancer and this is that but and pretty bitter and all that and understandably so. But you're I have no idea how to respond here so then you're Young and you have be nice and and I remember that right been interesting because I didn't really not respond. SHE was angry and go on thems staffing dumping IT out anyone else to dump IT out on its like.

oh, i've onna take the free turn next time so how do you end .

up in siberia? I'll try to keep IT a little bit short on, but I the long storage shot was that a brother that's adopted and when he grew up, he wanted to fined his biological mom and just tell her things, so he did. And when he was, he was pried.

Twenty years, he found his biological mom toler things. Turns out he had a brother that was gonna go over to russia and help build this orphanage. And that brother was about my age.

And then remember, at that time, I I read this first, that said, if you're in the darkness and see no light, just continue following me. Basically, only gonna take that to the bank, even though I don't know if it's true or not even known. Only glimpse of, like, light I got in all that was when I heard about that orphant you go build that orphanage.

And and I pryed about IT, and I felt, and and I can I explain, I brought me to tears. I felt so strongly that I should go. And so I was like, that's a clear call.

I've just gonna IT because I just bought, I take IT got a visire year and then I went and help build an orphanage. And we got that built. And I wanted, but who's in america? And I wanted blood with russians to learn a language. And so he sent me to a neighboring village to live with a couple russian families that needed a hand, somebody to watch their kids and cut their hay and and that. So I found myself in that little russian village, just getting .

to know .

these two guys and their families that was IT was pretty fascinating and and because I didn't know the language yet, they were too awesome to both of had been in prison and met each other in prison and like we're really close because found god in prison together and and stayed to you, got out, stayed connected and side bounce back between those two famous.

And they still tell me about their third bud we'd been in prison with, who was a native fur trapper now in the north. And so they, you got to go meet our body up north. And a one day that guy came through to sell fs in the city, and like inviting you come live with them.

And my vic was about to expire, but they won't come back or government went back home, earn some more money is a construction, whatever. Then went back and headed north to hang out with eura and fur trap. And that started a whole new, you know, open the whole new world that I didn't know about before.

Talk about you're in first trapping list, actually, rwa. And would you describe that moment when you were in the darkness as a crisis of faith?

Yeah, yeah. For sure. I was like as darkness and that I I didn't know how to pass. You know, what is this thing? That's my faith.

And what what is? What's the week and what's the chef? And how do I get through IT and um I basically just clang to keeping IT really simple and ugly enough in my Christian path that that god was actually defined and uncertain god is love and I was just like that the only thing i'm a clan to you know and i'm going to tried to express that in my life in whatever way I can and and just trust that if I do that, if I act like, I know I ve heard this lately.

But if you just act like you believe over time that world kind of opens to you. When I said I would go to russia, I pray, I like, lord, I don't see you. I don't know, but I got this, but I felt was a clear call.

I have only one request, and that is that you would give me the faith to match my action you know i'm choosing to believe like I could choose not to because you know whatever but want to choose the acting and I just asked to have faith someday. And then um and and honestly, the first whole first year I went through that was a very crazy time for me, learning the language, be an isolated, misunderstood and then but then trying to approach all that without loving open heart. And then I came back and I realized that that prad kind of an answered that wasn't the end of my journey. But I was I was like, wow, that was like my deepest request that I could come up with and somehow that .

had been answered. So through that year, you were just like first you couldn't speak the .

language is really tough. That's tough because it's unlike on alone where because not only you not speak and you feel isolated, but you're also misunderstood all the times. You've seem like an idiot. And I had, and so that was tough. I felt very alone at that time, at certain times in that journey.

But you were so radiating, like you said, lead would love. So you are radiating this kind of comradery compact.

I was really intentional about trying to do about that. That was, I don't know why i'm here. I just know that I you know that that's my call is to love one another.

And so I would just tried to like what that have been dig in people's wells and my men just go and visit that old live babb sh cup at the house. Lonely and I was really cool. I've got to talk to some fascinating ladies and staff in in what go to that village.

Hope those families i'm going to be like cut the, hey, be the most, the hardest worker I can be because that's my goal here. I didn't have any other agenda and expect to try to live a life of a love. And I couldn't define IT beyond that was I .

like learning the russian language.

I I was super interesting. I think I had the thought while I was learning IT, one, that I was way too hard. Like, if I was just learned to spanish, a german, I would be so much farther.

But here I am a year and the night, like, how do you say I want cheese properly? And then, but at the same time, I was really called to learn a language that that I thought, in a lot of ways was richer. The english was, it's a very rich language member. There was a comedy act in russian, but he was saying, you know, one word you can have an english is neither putty pizza, meaning, like, I didn't drink enough to get drunk to, you know, type thing and but it's just, you can make up these words using different different, you know, prefixes and species like blender m in a way that is quite unique and interesting and honestly would be really good for poetry, because IT also doesn't have sentence structure in the same way english does. The words can .

be jumbled and away. And somehow in the process of jumbling, some humor, some musicality comes out as interesting, like you can be witty in russia and much easier than you can in english, like windy and funny. And I also, poetry can save profound things by messing with words in the order of words, which is hilarious. Because you had a great conversation with joe rogan. And on that program you talked about, you know, how to say, I love you.

russia, aria and IT .

was for me the first time. I don't know why is you're a great person. Articulate the flexibility in the power of the russian language is really because you are saying, like, yeah bu bia debet lua, you can say every single order, every single combination of ordering of those words that has the same meaning, a slightly different.

You could, I would change the meaning if you took you out. And just to be blue also.

right? exactly.

And so that is rich. And that way IT was interesting coming from an english context and get a glimpse of that and then wondering about all those no russian authors that we all appreciate that oh, we don't actually the full, the full deal here.

Oh yeah, definitely. I've recently become a fan actually of a lot of conan rich previous. There are these world's famous translators of russian literature, told toy to C S sky check of push kambula ka, but ter knock the'd helping understand just how much of an art phone translation really is.

Some authors do that aren't more translated than others, like the C, S, K is more translations. But then you can still spend a week once no yeah like just how do I exact captain is very important sentence I think was more powerful is not uh like literature but conversation which is one of the reasons have been i've been Carrying in feeling the responsibility of having conversations with russian speakers um because I can still see the music of IT. I can still see the weight of the in in conversation comes out like really interesting kinds of wisdom you you like you when I listen to like world leaders, they speak russian, speak and I see the translation and IT loses IT loses the irony, the like in between the words, if you translate them literally, you, you lose the reference in there to the history of the people's yeah .

for sure. And I ve definitely seen that. I know. And if you listen to, I think that pride was that putin speech or something, and you just see that something major being lost in translation, you can actually see that happen. I won't be surprised if that wasn't the case with the, you know, that whole greatest tragedy is the fall. This so union, I hear him being quoted as saying on them, I bet you there something in there that's being lost in translation that is interesting.

I think the thing I see the most lost in translation is the humour.

I say that the hard part learning that humor comes last and you feel like a weight you have to wait that whole year, you know, or how how long IT takes you to learn the language to build, start getting the humor, you know, some of IT comes through, but you miss so much nuance and IT. And that was really difficult in interaction with people to like that. We know when there's humor going on and .

you're totally oblivious .

to every is .

laughing in your yeah china laugh along. What do they make .

of you to be honest?

Person that came from no depended upon us.

I had a nick forever dam I heard like american suck the .

only one.

But you know, I think because of tried to work car, try to be more useful than I was a drain, that they all, I think that I think I was pretty appreciated me out there. I heard if I heard that a lot and so that's nice.

Can you talk about their way of life also like when when you're doing fur trapping .

is r trapping was an interesting experiencing you you basically what you do in a october something i'll go out to your a hunting cabin you have like three hunting cabins. You go stock and with noodles, whatever IT is. And then for the next couple months long, you will go from one cab, and usually the guides are there, are in on their own, go out, go from one cabin.

Each cabin will have five or six trap lines going out of IT every day. It'll take a half a data walk to the your trap line, open all the traps and half data get back and y'll do this. Been a week at a cabin, open up all the traps.

And then it'll take a day to higher to the other cabin, go to that one, open up all those traps and then there and in next three weeks later. So they'll end up back at the first cabin and then check out the traps. And so it's kind of that rythm and you'll do that for uh, you know a couple a few months during the winter.

And your train like pine Martin is we would have the equivalent of over here. And it's like a wheel, very little wheel, and they make coat out of IT. And so when I went, he showed me how to open a trap, showing the ropes, give me a topographical map, there's one cabin and there's the other.

And we parted ways. We were like five weeks. We did run into each other once in the middle there, at a cabin other than that, nearly off by yourself. Open the shot graves or something to add to your noodles and make a meal Better. Catch a fish, then working really hard, china, to get lost and stuff.

How do you get from one trapped in location to the next?

That's funny, because I IT was both. And basically by landMarks and feel, I didn't have come this and things like that. So I got myself to travel to once.

And I the first time I went to one cabin, I got in my self to travel first, I went to the other cabin. I nailed IT. And so are two different experiences on my first trip. But the no one that I nailed that remember the go and it's a good day hike as well.

I know the cabinet s south, and so if I just walk south, you know the left, the sun should be on the left in the morning and right in front of me in the middle the day and by evening IT should like end up at my right and just kind of guess what time IT is in and follow along in in its IT takes all day and kidding, not ended up like hundred yards from the this is the trail and that's the cabin. Like, amazing. In the other time, I went out and had over the mountains, and I thought, you know, hours at past that pride had gotten slightly lost.

And then I thought I was hallway there, so I thought, OK, i'm going to sit down and cook some, cook some food, go to a drink, i'm thirsty. I SAT down. And when to start a fire in my matches, i've gotten a wit because the snow had fAllen on me and soaked me.

And I didn't have them wrapped in plastic. I say, oh, no, I can't drink water, you know so as well, i'm just going to power through and half f way there. I kept hiking and then I realize I was good night.

And and then I realized out at the halfway point, because I saw this rock that, oh, no, that's the halfway point, as though I can do this. And so I need to go get water and at a path, and to divert down the mountain and head to the water, I ended up, now there was a whole or deal. I had to take my skis off because I was going to, through an old forest fire burns, so they were really close trees, but then the snow is like this deep. So I was just charging through and just wish you a bear, what to eat me, get IT over with that finally made IT down to the water, chop the hole to that. I was was able to .

take a step, see you .

severely dehydrated, severely dehydrated. And hauser exit code, like, you know, you feel sort of nervous, you're over your head. And then, and then I got down to the river, chopped the whole night drink IT, hiked up the river, and eventually to the other bin.

Probably the morning he PPT in the ice to .

get the IT was .

just got to be like the one of the worst days of you, your life.

You know, IT was a bad day for sure. That was a bad day. And here's, I was funny as I got to the cabinet like during the morning, and I should brushed over a lot of the like, the misery that I felt and I played down as baby go ta sleep in in europe, charges in from from the like, wow, do you what are you doing? Like has to go at sex and you lay down and just fell sleep.

I fell asleep. And I think that's funny. The last few weeks that we've been apart, who knows what he went through, who knows why I was there at that time at night all just sumi zed in the sect and we went to sleep in the next morning, we parted ways and you don't really tell never new nether of us said what happened just like, that's interesting .

yeah and he probably was through similar kinds of thing. Yes, they what gave you strength to nose in those hours when you you know he's going to waste high snow? yes. Oh, that you're laughing. But like.

that's hard. yeah. You know that russian and up by deal.

I is afraid hands i'm sure that right?

It's kind like you just put one foot front of the other. You know when you think about we have to do it's really intimate and but you just know if I just do IT, if I just do IT, if I just keep tradings, eventually i'll get there and pretty soon you realized i've covered a couple kilometers um and so when you're really in IT in those moments, I guess you you're just put in your head .

down in getting through. I had some of my wisdom to that like once take IT oneself of a time .

I don't I think that a lot I tell myself that a lot when i'm about to do something really hard just I said the one step at a time just gna get, don't like something thing. H, that's a long ways. Just go. And then you look back and you covered a bunch ground.

One of things I realized that was helpful in jungle. That's one of the biggest realizations for me. It's like, IT really sucks .

right now.

But when I look back at the end of the day, I won't really remember exactly how much is sucked. I have a vae notion of its sucking, and i'll remember the good thing. So being dehydrated, i'll remember drinking water, and I won't really remember the hours of feeling like shit.

That's absolutely I don't know that so funny how like awareness of that having been through and then being aware, that means next time you face like you know once this is over, i'm going to look back on IT, it's going to be like that and nothing and I actually laugh about IT and think IT was it's a thing. I'll remember, you know, I remember that story of that miserable day gone under the ice. And I can smile about IT now and now that I know that I can be in a miserable position and realized that that's what the outcome will be once once over.

This be a story if you survived.

survive.

And that can be. So you mention, you ve learned about hunger during these times. Like, when was like the hungry as you've gotten?

This was the first time. So continue the story slightly. I went for chapter with that guy, and then he turned out all his cousins are these native nomadism deer hunters.

And after I, like, earned his trust and he liked me a lot, he he took me out to his cousins who were all these, you know, no mad living in tps. This is a some any know people still lived like this, and they were really open and welcoming because their cousin just brought me out there. No in vouched for me.

But IT was during fencing season and fencing in siberia for those trainers, like an incredible then you take an x, you got and you just build these thirty kilometer loop fences with just logs interlocking. It's tons of work and all these guys are more efficient bodies. They're Better at IT, and i'm just like working less efficiently and also a lot bigger, dude.

But we're all just done the same reactions kind of and I got out that was like hundred and fifty five pounds and I get down pretty being skinny for my six three frame and this work and really hard and in the spring and there's no like there's not much to forrid, you know the fall you can have pinned that in this and that, but in the spring, you're just stuck with whatever random food you've got. And so that's where I lost the most wait and felt the most hungry. And I head a lot other issues, you know, is new to that type of work. And so the work and as hard as I could, but also make a mistake, chop in myself at the acts and and getting injured kinds stuff, you know.

so injuries plus low calorie intake and exhaust.

I remember if you got you're this poor and again and get stuck sliced in the bread, you know, like cut in the bread and somebody throws all the spoons and drops the pot soup there and it's like before you can even do slice in your slice all the meats like have gone from the ball. Everybody else grabs this phone and mid air and and years, like hoping this one little noodles are going to give me a lot and nurse.

Wa.

so I really guess that me, yes, the first come first.

So I guess because it's like all the dudes out there work the fence.

So you mention the act. Give me a present. Probably the most bad as present were forgotten. So tell me the story of this, of the sex.

So when I got there, I thought I grew up on a farm I thought was pretty good with an x, but they do tons of work with those things. And and I really grew to love their type of acts or style axes. And just an act in general, always say it's the one until you need to survive in the wilderness.

And and I agree. And what does this one has? Certain a design features that the natives that was unique to the event, to the native, as with one, is what these russian heads, or the soviet heads, whatever they had, there are a little wider hunt top here, meaning you can put the handle through from the top like a tomahawk and IT.

I mean, you're not dealing with a wedge. And if I ever loosens and you're swinging IT only gets tighter IT doesn't fly off. And so that's something that kind of cool. Um then they have what what they do that's unique is so you see is the wolf rine ex it's got the little wolf erin head in honor the world I thought on the show so you have .

actually two access is one of the small is a little smaller.

I didn't want to make IT too small because you need something to actually work out. There is some kind of serious um but then they sharpen IT from one side. So if you're right handed, you sharpen IT from the right side.

That means when you're in the woods and living, there's a lot of times where you whether you're making a table or S A or an x handle, whatever you do in that you're holding the woods and doing this work. And that makes IT really good for that planning. The other thing that is, especially in northern woods, all the trees are like this big, you that you never cut down a big, giant tree.

And so when you swing with a single sided, acts like this up from from the one side, IT really with your right hand swing like this, IT really bites into the wood and gives you a, because with that, if you can picture IT that angles gonna cause deflection. And without that angle on your right, and it's linger, just food like bites in there like crazy and so that there's other little DIY, you know, that handle was made by some omas guys in canada. The hand forged.

I was hand for yeah me yeah .

and so it's a pretty sweet .

little amazing.

The other thing know like I was slightly rounded this poll here, it's just a little nuance because when you pound a stake, if you picture IT, if it's if it's convex, when you're pounding IT, it's gona blow the fibres apart. If IT has just a slight concave IT helps hold the fibers together. And so it's a little new one, not too flat, because you want to still be able to use the back as you would.

What stuff are using the eggs?

So that act subir important to chop through ice in a winter situation that you pray hopefully won't need. But what do I use an acts all the time for is when i'm when it's red, wet and rainy, and you need to start a fire like it's hard to get to the middle of dry wood, if just a knife or A H.

So you can, I can go out there, find a dead tall tree, a dead standing tree, chop IT down, split IT apart, split IT up, and get to the dry wood on the inside, save IT some little curls, and have a fire going pretty fast. And so if I have an X, I feel always confident that I can get a quick fire in whatever weather and I wouldn't feel the same without IT in that regard. So that's the main thing.

Um of course you can use that I use IT. You're taking an animal apart or if you're um you know all kinds ah what else been built in a shelter? T skin and tp polls that .

was the use of a soars.

I greatly prefer next. A saw though has its value goes up quite a bit when you're in hard woods, like when you're in a hardwood oak and hickory and things like that. Is there a lot harder to chop? So I saw is pretty nice in those situations.

I'd say um in those situations, i'd like to have both in the north woods and in like more kennie ous forest. I don't think there's enough advantages that assign course with a good acts. Now you will see people a little like camp access and stuff and then just don't think they like access. It's like, well, you can actually try try good one first and get good with IT. The one thing about an x y're dangerous. So you need to like practice, always control IT with two hands, make sure you're you know where it's gna go IT doesn't hit you or when you chop in like so you're create and something that you're not doing IT on rocks and stuff so that you do on top of woods so that when you're hit in the ground you're not dull in your x know there's you have a little bit thoughts about IT .

have you ever enjoys yourself from the next in the early days?

Yeah that first i've gotten a nee surgery and about three months later and I went over to russia as I got I got a good, neat, okay. And then that's when I was built in that fence at first time. And at one point I shopped my rubber boot with my act that reflect IT off.

And I was new to women ah and I was really frustrated because I done this before and um and the native guy was like, oh, you know what I think there's a boot we left a few years ago. We left a boot like four kilometres that way. So we got the rain year, took him road him over.

Sure enough, there's a stump with a boot upside down. I put IT out. I like sweet back in business when, back couple days later, tune chopped IT. Cut your foot, cut my rubber boot.

I just like doing IT mad ough that I just grab the acts and swung IT at the tree and it's just one handed and I just I was like, I fell down like, oh my god because get your acts really like razor sharp and then just swing and in my I didn't you want to look I was like, oh no, I looked and IT wasn't a huge wound because I had hit right on the bone of my nee but IT split the bone cut. Attend in there and how on the middle woods I literally like I knew I was in sure, as I am just going to go back to T P. Right now.

So I like ran back to T, P, laid down. And now I was stuck there for a few days. I was, that's so much pain and my other name was bad.

I was like, good. I I couldn't be that literally couldn't even walk at all, move at like that there is a plastic bag. I like pop in IT, like a role to the edge of the tp, like an so I could just totally mobilized.

I guess I should teach you to not act when you, in a state of frustration or anger there.

go as, I mean, it's such a lesson to, there are so many of those and IT was always, I was always in a little bit over my head, but I said, you kind of do that enough and you make a lot of mistakes. But every time you have learned, like now, it's like an extension of my that's not going to happen because I just know how works.

Now you mentioned what would how you start a fire when everything around you, what I mean IT defends on your environment.

But I will say in most of forest, i've been a lot of time, and in all the north winds, the best thing you can do is find a dead standing tree so you can be downpouring rain and you chop that tree down. And then when you, when you split IT open, no matter how much just been raining, it'll be dry on the inside, a chop that tree down, chop a piece foot long piece out, and then split that thing open, and then split IT again.

And then you get to that inner dry wood. And then you try to do this maybe under a spruit ree or under your own body so that it's not going rained down while you're doing IT. Make a bunch of little curls that a lot catch a flame or light and then you make a lot, a lot more kindling and little pieces of dry with than you think because we will have you like burn through.

So just be patient. You can be fine, you know, like make a nice pile of curls that you can light or Spark and then get a lot of good dry kindling and then don't afraid to just boom, boom, boom, pile a bunch of went on and make a bigger and get warm fast. It's amazing how much hard what would on .

top of that once you get .

that go and then dry as IT goes. But you need to build, split, open and get all that nice dry wood on the inside.

I saw that you mention that you look for fat wood. What's a fat wood?

So on a lot of pine trees, a place where the tree was injured when I was alive, like pumps sap to IT and is a good point because I use this a lot um IT pumps that tree full is happen and years later the tree dies, dries out, rots away. But that sap infused wood um it's it's like turpin time in there, you know it's oil. And so if he gets wet and you can still like IT, IT would repulse his water.

And so you can find that in a rainstorm units, make a little pile of those savings, get the crappier Sparkle, click is lie and at the burn, like like a factory fire starter. You know, it's really, really nice. That's good to spot, a good thing to keep your eye out .

for yeah really faster. And then you make this .

thing that is like the song .

to go and fast that was was that there was .

a world use motorised if you mix IT was some saddest and then no so you like me that I don't know how .

many times i've watched the happy people a year in the tiger by her. You've talked about this movie, what what is that? Locate relatives to where you were.

So there's this big river called the in, say, that feeds to the middle of russia. And there's a bunch of tributary off of IT, and one of the tributary is called the pod common attn gua and up that river. And just a little ways in north another river called the bacca. And that's where that villages, where they film happy people. So in several terms, were neighbors.

Similar .

environment, similar place that for trapper that I was with knew the guy, you know.

in the films. What would you say about their way of life? Maybe in where you've experiences, where you saw in a happy people.

there's there's something really, really powerful about spending that much time being independent. You know, depending on what you talk about IT already, but you're putting yourself in these situations all the time. We're uncomfortable where it's hard, but then you're rising in the occasion and you're making to have and there nobody when you're first trap in by yourself is nobody else to look at to blame for anything that goes wrong.

It's just yourself that you reliant on. And and and there's something about the natural rhymes that you are in when you are when you're that connected to the natural world that really is just feel like that's what we're designed for. So there's a psychological benefit you gain from spending that much time in that role.

And for that reason, I think that you know people that are connected to those ways are able to tap into a particular I noticed that a lot with the natives. So if I met the natives in the village, I would think of them as like unhappy people, like drink a lot. They are always fighting.

The murder rate is through the roof. The suicide rate through the roof. But and you meet that the same people, how in the woods live in that way of life? I think these are happy people and it's kind of it's an interesting jx position to be the same person.

But but then know I lived in a native village that had the ranger hurting going on around IT. And everybody kind of benefit because of that, also went to a native village. They didn't hold those ways anymore.

And so everybody was just in the village life. And I just felt like a dark place. The other native village was rough in the village because every drank all the time. But when they had that escape and had that escapin, the once you're out there is just the whole different world. And there was such an odd just to position.

It's funny that the people that go trapping experience that happiness and still don't have a self awareness to stop themselves from the drinking and doing all the dark stuff when they go to the village. It's strange that you are able to you're in IT, you're happy, but you are able to sort of reflect on that. The nature of .

that happiness is really weird. I ve thought about that a lot and I I don't know the answer. It's like there's a huge draw to comfort. There's a huge and it's all multifaceted, some complex because, you know, you can be out in the woods and how is really cool life?

I will say it's a little little different for men and women because the men are living like the dream as far as like what I would like. So you're hunting and fishing and you know, managing rain beer, and you get these all these adventures. So what does that happened?

Is that lot more guys and girl Young men out there in the woods. And there's a draw also, I think, to go to the village probably to find a woman. And then there's a draw of like technology and the new things. And I think once there are there, honestly, alcohol becomes so overwhelming, everything else, canada fiddles away.

But it's funny that that the comfort you either draw the comfort, but once you get to the comfort, once you find the comfort within the comfort, you become the last version .

of your self.

Weird .

lesson for us.

We need to keep struggling.

Yeah a lot of times you have to force yourself. And so like if we take them as an example, been a lot of time you drag us drunk guy into the woods, literally just dragon into the woods and then he would sober up and then he was like, a month black out drunk. And now is.

But now, boom, back into life, back into being an a knowledgeable and capable person. And because comforts are available to us all, almost have to force yourself into that situation. Planned IT out. Okay, i'm going to go, going to go that thing and do that hard thing and then deal the consequences. Will i'm there?

What do you learn from that on the nature of happiness?

What does that take to be happy? Happiness is interesting because it's like it's complex. Molly fasted and includes a lot of things that are out of your control and a lot of things that in your control and and IT makes its quite the moving target in life.

No, I mean, so yeah, I one of the things that really impacted me and I was a Young man, and I read the guards pillai o who was, don't pursue happiness because the ingredients of happiness can be taken from you outside of your control, your health, your but pursue like a spiritual fullness. Pursue, pursue. I think he works at duty.

And then happiness may come alongside or IT may not. But so he gave the example that I thought was really interesting of in the prison camps, everybody's trying to survive, and they have made that their ultimate goal. I will get through this and then, and they've all basically turned into animals and pursuit of that goal, and like line and cheating and steel in the use.

I can somehow the corrupt or the x church produced these little babbs who were like caddles in the middle of all this darkness because they did not allow their solder get corrupted. And he's like, what they did do is they died. They all died, but they were lights.

They were alive and lost their lives. But they didn't, with their souls suffered myself. I was really powerful to read and realized that the pursuit of happiness wasn't exactly what I wanted to. I wanted to living out my life according to love, like we talked about earlier.

trying to be that candle.

trying to be that candle. They make that your ideal. And then in doing so, interesting. So when, for me personally, my personal experience of that is I thought when I went to russia that I kind of gave up, I like in my twenty, I spent my whole twenty years living in tps and doing other stuff that I thought I should give begin a job. I should be pursued in in a career.

I should an education of some sort, like what am I doing for my future? But I felt I would knew what my purpose for the new, my calling, what I was going to do. IT and IT sounds a glamorous now when I talk about IT.

But IT sucked a lot of the times. And then there was a lot of a lot of lonely, a lot of bike giving up what I wanted, a lot of watching people I cared about. You know, you put all this effort in, and you just see the people that you put all ever and just die.

And this and that you see of that happened all the time. And then the other thing I thought I gave up was like a relationship because you couldn't. No, I wasn't going to find out a partner over there.

And so interestingly enough, now in life I can look back and be like wall. We are those two things I thought I gave up. Hazara been, like, almost provided for the most in life.

And I have this, this career guide, people in the wilderness that I love. I got genuinely love IT. I find purpose in IT.

I'd know it's healthy and good for people. And then I have an amazing wife and an amazing family. Like how did that happen? But I didn't exactly aid at IT. Like I consciously in a way, I mean, I hoped IT was ten years, but I aimed at something else which was there is less than I kind of got in the good ago.

So ah yes, just because you matching good go to to go there, you have some suffering in your family history, whether it's the armenia, a syrian genocide or the nothing occupation of friends. Maybe you could tell the story of that, what this, the survival thing that runs in your blood IT seems I love history.

like I find so much richness is in knowing what other people went through and find so much perspective in my own place in the world. I have the advantage of in my direct family, my grandparents, they went through the armenian genocide. They were a syrians, which was like a Christian minority.

And indigenous people in the, at least they lived in northwestern iran. And during the chaos of world war one, you know, in the autumn, empire was collapsing and had all kinds of issues in IT. One of its issues was, I had a big minority group, and I thought I would be a good time to get rid of IT.

And and you know, they can justify IT in all the ways you can. Like, there are some people that were rebelling, and this is that, but ultimately was just a big collective guilt and extermination policy against the armenians in the syrians and the my grandparents, my grandma was thirteen at the time, and my grandma was seventeen, which is interesting because that happened almost hundred years ago. But I just just my dad was born when my most, my grand, pretty old, my grandmother, her dad, was taken out to be shot of the turns, are coming in and rounded up all the men, and they took him out to be shot.

And then they took my grandma and her. He had seven brothers and sisters, and her mom, and you'd like, drove her out into the desert easily, dad, yet taken out to use. So his name was salman uma.

Whatever took him out, they're all tied up, all shot needs, say a quick pye before they shot him. But he fell down, and he found wasn't hit. Unusually, of course, he'd come up and stabs everybody, finish him off.

But there is some kind of an alarm in all. The soldiers rushed off, and he found himself in the bodies and was able, on himself, they were naked and, you know, hungry and all that. And he ran out of their, escaped, went into a building and found the love of bread wrapped in a shirt, and was able to escape, fled.

He never saw his family for us to continue the story. My grandma got taken with her, with her mother and brothers and sisters in all this. This is drove one of the desert until they died, basically run him around in circles.

And this is that all the raping and pillaging that the companies. And at one point, her mom had the baby, and the baby died, and her mom just collapsed and said, I just can't go any further and and my grandma and her sister, like picture activity, we go how to keep going. And like picture up, they left the baby along with the other, everybody else died.

I was just the three of them left, and somehow they stumbled across this british military camp, then were rescued. My neither the sister nor my great grandmother ever really covered as far, you know, recovered from what I understand. but.

My grandma, I did um same the same time in another village in in the end there the turks came in and where burning down my grandpas the village and they caught and my grand's dad was in a wheelchair he had like some money belt and stuff falls money in IT and told that gave IT the grandpa just told him to run, don't turn back and they came in the front door, was running out the back and the he never saw that again but he said he turned around and saw the bill you know the house on fire never knew what happened his sister SHE then so he was just alone he ran at at some point he um I can't remember you like lost his money belt now he took us a jacket off. Forgot us and something happened anyway so he got, he was in a refugee camp, ended up and taken in by some jesuit missionaries. So anyway, both of them had lost basically everything.

And then at some point, the melton bag dad started a family, immigrated to france, and then just happened to be right before the not invaded. My aunt, he is still alive. He actually met a resistance fighter for the french and under a bridge somewhere, and they and they fell in love and take out marriage, says he had kind of an in on the on the french resistance one point.

And of course, they were all hungry that recently immigrated, but also had this, not the occupation and all that. And so the uncle joe, the resistance fatter guy, told him, my, hey, we're going to storm the snowdon factory. I come.

So they stormed the noodle factory and all my own rounds in there, and like, thrown out noodles into wheelbarrows, and everybody is. Then the nazis game back and took IT back over, and they shot too much people in everything. And and grandpa, because he had hard to come from where he came from, was paranoid, ed, that he buried all the noodles out in the garden.

And then I do on Scott, stuck in that factory overnight with all the nazi guards or whatever in the the not girls were out from house to house to find everybody that had had noodles and the punish him, but they didn't find my grandpas. Fortunately, they searched his house, but not the garden. And so they had noodles and somehow must have been in the same factories.

And but olive oil, they just lived off of that for the all the whole war years. My arms ended up getting out of that. They hid behind boxes and crates, tes overnight, and stuff in the resistant storm again in the morning. And this, they got away and stuff, but anyway, chaos. So when they moved in america, I will say the most patriotic tic family everywhere, everything will love IT here.

I mean, that's that's a lot to go through. What lessons do do you draw from that? And perseverance?

Look, just one generation away from all that suffering, like my ants and uncles and dad suffer the kids of these people. And somehow I don't have that. What happened? All that trauma like I, like somehow my grandparents born IT and then they were able to build a family, but not just a family, that a happy family like. I knew all my ants and uncles, and I didn't know them. They die before me, but they were IT was so much joy the family unions were the best thing ever at the Jones is and the um and this is like how in one generation did you go from that to that IT must have been a great sacrifice of some sort to not pass that much like resentment or like what did they do to to break that chain in one generation .

duty IT works the other way. Like where they are, ability to escape genocide, to escape, uh, not the occupation, gave them a gratitude for life, not a trauma in the sense like you're forever bearing IT IT IT. The flip side of that is just gratitude to be alive when, you know, so many .

people do not survive. The only footage I saw, my grandma, I was like, they were all the kids and stuffing, they were cooking up a rabbit that they were raising, they were 那个 呃， but a joyful woman, he could see IT in her. And he must have been, so he must have understood how, fortunately, he was, and been so grateful for, and so thankful for everyone of those eleven kids SHE had.

So I recognize that again in in my dad, because my dad went through a really slow kind of painful decline in his health and new diabetes, ended up losing one leg. And so he lost his job. He yet to watch his mom or my mom go to school long.

All I wanted to do was be a provider. And being like a family man, I bet the best time in his life was when his kids rand, when we but then always found himself in a position where he couldn't work and end to watch his life go to school. He was really hard for her and and become the bread winner for the family.

And he just felt like a failure. And I wash him. Go to that after all these years have let that foot heel.

We went out first day and were split in firewood with the splitter. And he was so good to be back out, Jordan. So not any crash is put IT logs splitter and you're like new and they is ambulation.

I've got both legs amputation. And then is the health continue to decline. He lost his move in his hands. So he was like incapacity to a degree and in a lot of pain I would hear at night in pain all the time. And I was delayed a trip back to russia and just stayed with my dad for those last six months.

And I was so interesting, having had lost everything, i've watched a well IT through the years, but then he found his joy and his purpose just in being almost that mean a little to, I have to help p roll under the court to all. But we would laugh. He would like, got here at night.

Crime like, in pain like and then in the morning you'd have encouraging words to say and and yes, I know, wow, that's how you faced loss and suffering. And and he must have gotten that from somehow, from his parents. And then I find myself on this show, and I thought, why is this easy to me? In a way, like, you know, why is this thing that and I like and I just felt like this gift that is kind of handed down and now would be my duty to hand, you know, like, but it's kind of an interesting .

and be the picking of that represent that kind of perseverance in the in a simple way that something like survival in the wilderness shows yeah. It's to say it's IT IT.

IT rimes IT rims and it's so simple, like the lessons are simple and so we can take him and apply them.

So that's a survive side. What about on the people committing the atrocities is what do you you make of the auto, what they did to harmonize or the noise, what they did to use the slaves and basic everyone, what? What do you, what do you think people do evil in this world?

It's interesting that IT is really easy. It's really easy sense in yourself to justify. To justify a little bit of evil, receive cheer a little bit when the enemy gets knocked back in some way throughout in the way.

It's just perfectly naturalist for us to feed that hate and feed that tribal ism. In group out group were on this team, and I think that can happen. I think IT just happened slowly, like one justification at a time, one step at a time. You h you hear something and IT makes IT makes you think then that you are in the right to perform some kind of, you know, if you're justified in create me a big a couple eggs to make an ARM let take thing and then but also that takes you down this whole train to wear pretty soon you're justifying what's completely uh, unjustifiable this .

gradual yeah it's gradual process of little, little time.

I think that's why like for me, like having a path of faith is like works, is like a mourning because that can help me shine that light on myself. You know, it's like something out because if you're just looking at yourself and looking within yourself for for your compass in life, it's really easy to get that thing out of work.

But you kind of need a perspective from what you can step out of yourself and look at yourself and judge yourself according me in my walking in line with that idea, you know and in and I think without that, check your your subject no is easy to ignore the fact that you might be able to commit those things. But we live in a pretty easy, comfortable society. Like, what if, what if we pictured yourself in in the position of my grandparents? And then, Alice, you've got the upper hand in some kind of fight. What you going to do you? You definitely picture becoming evil in that situation.

I think one thing faith in god can do is humble you before these kinds of complexity of the world. And humility is a way to avoid the slip is slope towards evil. I think humility that you don't know who the good guys and the bad guys are and you defer that to of bigger powers to try to understand that yeah, I I think there is a kind of a lot of the trusts were committed, but people who are very sure of themselves being good .

yeah that's true.

IT is said that religion is at times used is a way to kind of just is yet another tool for justification, which which is a sad application of a of religion .

really is it's so in here and so natural in us to justify ourselves. It's really, it's really, I mean, I mean, it's almost just understanding history, read history IT IT blows my mind that, and i'm super thankful that somehow, and this has been miss you so much, but somehow this ideology of rose that love your enemies forgive forgive um those that persecute you and just on down the line that something like that rose in the world into a position where we all kind of accept those ideals I think is really remarkable and worth appreciating. That said, a lot of that gets wrapped up in what you're out.

You know what is that? The natural just becomes another instrument for tribal ism or another justification for wrong. And so I even myself himself conscious sometimes talking about matters of IT because I know i'm talking about talking about something else. Then you know, they're what someone else might think of when they hear me talking about is so interesting.

I've been listening to a Johnny Peter and talk about this. He is a way of articulating things which is sometimes hard to understand in the moment. But when I like read IT carefully afterward, IT started to make more sense that i've heard him talk about religion.

And god is a kind of baseliner like a metaphor substrate from which morality of our sense of what is right and wrong comes from. And I just our conceptions of what is beautiful in life, all these kinds of higher things, they are like fuzzy, understand that their religion helps create a substrate for which we is a species. Like as a civilization can come up with these notions. And without IT, you are lost at sea. I guess for him, morality requires as abstract.

Like you said, it's kind of fuzzy. So i'm only been able to get clear vision of IT when I live IT. IT is not something, professor, anything that is something that you take seriously and apply in your life.

And when you live IT, then that there's some clarity there, but that IT has to be kind of defined like IT. It's like it's and that's where you come in with the religion in the stories because if you leave IT completely undefined, I don't not really know where you go from there. Actually that isn't a funny to speak to that I did mushroom.

I've ever done this mushed. Ah i've done a couple times that one time was didn't do that many other time more. And I had a really profound experience in helping couch all this in in the proper context for myself.

So I could when I did that, I mean us that not a swing, and I could see my everything was so blissful, except I could see my black hands, like on these chains, like on the swing, but everything else was polish ever, and kind of a morph. And I could see the outline of my kids, and I could just feel the love for them. And I just like, man, I just feel the love is so wonderful, like, you know.

But then I would know, at times I ve tried a picture, and I couldn't quite picture the kids but I could feel the love and then um and then I started asking all the deepest is identical questions I I fall like I just one answer, another answer, answer everything was being answered and I felt like I was communing with god, would everyone to say and but I was very aware the fact that that meeting was just peeling back the timeless corner of the infinite and IT just dumped me with every answer I felt like I could have and I blew me away so then I asked IT, well, if you're the infinite, like why did you reveal to me? Said, why did you use, like, the story of jesus to the reveal your and and then that infinite, a morice thing, had to somehow take form for us to like, for us to build a relate to IT. IT had to have some kind of a form and but whenever ver you create a format of something you're like boxing IT in and subjecting at the boundaries and stuff like that and then that subject to pain and subject to the broken ness and all that, another oh wow and then but when I that thought then I was sad.

I could relate my like dark hands on the chains to the rest of the experience. And then all of a sudden I could picture my children as the children rather than this, a morph feeling of love. IT was like, oh, there's a long and authenticity, but but then they were bounded.

And then once they're bounded, your subject to the death and to the misunderstanding into the that, like, you know, picture the amy, but that are the cell. And then when he dies, IT turns into a unformed thing. And h so we need some kind of form to relate to.

So instead of all, is just talking about god completely intangibly IT kind of gave me a way to relate to IT. And I think, well, that's but really powerful in me in putting IT in a context that was click ball. But I .

ultimately god is so the thing that's formless that is unbounded, we humans need, I mean that the the purpose of stories, they resonate with something unus. But when you need this out of the bounded nature constraints of those stories, others SE wouldn't able to live, relate to. And and then when you look at the stories is literally, and or you just look at him just as they are, that seems a silly, too simplistic.

right and right. I, A lot of my family and loved ones of friends have completely left the faith, but I and I totally, I on the way I get IT, I can understand, but I also really see the baby that's being thrown out with the bath water. And I want and is interesting.

you say that the way to know what's right, wrong is a have to live IT sometimes it's it's probably very difficult, articulate, but in in the living .

of IT do realize that like a lot fort, I feel somewhat in articulate a lot of the time and unable to articulate my thoughts, especially on these matters. And then you just think I just have to but I do I can live IT I can try to live IT you know and in what I also struck with right away as I can't because you can't love everybody, you can't love your enemies and you can't um but as placing that in front, the idea is so important to put like A A check on your human things, on your tribal alison, on your um and then you can very quickly likely time bout with evil, you know you can really quickly take its place in your life.

Almost you almost want to observe IT happening, you know but and so I so much appreciate all the the miss driving and that's where, you know, I grew up in a Christian family is I had these like, he shares that I didn't really understand, like a relationship with the god. Like what does that mean? But then I realized when I struggled with trying with taking, actually did try to take this seriously and struggle with, what does that mean to live out a life of love in the world? But that's like a rustling match because it's not that simple.

IT doesn't. So IT sounds good, but it's really hard to do. And then you realized you can do IT perfectly. But but in that struggle, in that wrestling match, is where I actually sense that relationship. And then and that's what what kind of gains life in how that and i'm sure that related to what Jordan Peterson is getting, adding this this metaphor .

in in the striving of the ideal, in the striving towards the idea, you discover the had to be a Better person. One thing I noticed .

really dangerous ly on alone was because I had so many people that were close to me. I just leave IT altogether as, like I could do that I actually understand why they do, or I could not, you know, I do have a choice inside to choose at that point to to maintain that ideal. And I could I could add enough time on along.

The nice thing, you don't have any distractions to have all the time in the world to go in your head. And I could play those pads out in my life. And not only in my life, but I feel like society in generationally like hate thrown all away and everybody start from square one. Or we can trader, you know, in what's valuable in this unrestful with the inside, the just, I chose that path.

Well, I do think is is a kind of wrestling magic. You can go. I'm very much a believer that we all have the capacity for good and evil and striving for the ideal to be a good man being.

It's not a trivial one. You have to find the right tools for yourself to be able to be the candle as you. But before. And and for that religion and faith can help. I'm sure there's otherways, but I think is grounded in understanding that each human is able to be a really bad person and a really good person. And that's I, A choice to deliberate choice. And the choice is taking every moment and builds up over time and and the hard party about is you don't know, you don't always have the clarity using reason to understand what is good, what is right, what is wrong if to kind of live IT, uh, with humility and constant struggle yeah you have to you you might wake up on a society where .

you .

committing genocide and you think you're the good guys and I think you have to have the courage to realize you're not it's not always obvious .

IT isn't .

mean and what history has the clarity, the show, who were the good guys and who were the bad guys?

right? Yeah, think that I know the line between good evaluation through the heart of heavy and we push IT this way and that and our job is to work on that with ourselves.

Yeah, that's the part. What what I like that the full quote talks about the the fact that IT moves and moves from the line, moves moment by moment, day by day. We have the the freedom to a move that line. So so if IT, it's very deliberate thing. It's not like you're .

born in this way and it's IT yeah .

I and and especially you know in conditions with they're like warm peace in the case of the camps you know absurd levels of injustice in the face of all that when everything he's taken away from you, you still have the choice to be to be the candle like the grandmas by with grandma's, you like all parts of the world, are like the .

stronger say.

I don't know what IT is. I don't know they have this like wisdom, uh, that comes from patients and have seen at all, have seen all the bullshit of the people that come and gone, all the abuses of power, all of this. I don't know what that is, and they just .

keep going right. Yeah, so true.

What do you think of as we've got ten, a beautiful song? What do you think of a Warner herzog yle of narration? I kind of wish he narrated my life.

Yeah, it's amazing to listen to cause .

that document is actually in russian. I think he took a longer series. yeah.

And then put narrow over. And narration can transform like a story. Yeah.

he does an incredible job when I I was sad. But have you seen the full version? Watch the full version like it's in russian.

So you'll and he had to fit into two hour format inside. I think what you lose in those extra couple hours is worth watching. They think you'll like IT.

So yeah, they always go. They always go pretty dark. He is a very dark sense about nature that is violence and .

it's murder. I think that's important to recognize because it's really easy. And especially with what I do, what I talk about, and I see so much of the value in nature because, you know, I also see like a beautiful moose in a cave running around.

And then next week I see the cafe ripped the reds by wolves. And and it's a it's not as it's it's not as russian as we'd like to think. You know IT is did you know things must die for things that live like he said in and that's just played out all the time and it's indifferent to you.

Dos doesn't care if you ever die and doesn't care how you die or how much pain you go through while you like. It's pretty brutal so that it's interesting that he taps into that. And I think ending is valuable because it's easy to idealize in a way.

But yeah, the indifferences I don't know what to make IT there is a difference is a bit scary, a bit lonely. You're just a cog in in the machine of nature. I care about you.

I think that something that with a lot on on that show another part of the depth of psychology down into but IT. And that's when I thought like I could I could I understand that deeply, but I could also choose to believe, yeah, for some reason that matters. And then I could live like IT matters. And then I could see the trajectories in the canada was another fork in the road in my path. I guess.

what do you think about the connection to the animals? So in that in that movies with the dogs and with you at the other domesticated the dear um what do you think about that human animal connection?

And interesting that we assign so much value and love and appreciation for these animals. And some degree, we get that back in our simple, I think now, now you just said the reindeer. I think of the one they gave me because he was long and talks in them.

Dani and I remember doing the and this lotion to meet the leaves and go with me through the woods and trust him to take me through rivers and staff in. And IT really special, is really enriching, you know, out of have that relationship with an animal. And I think IT also puts you in a proper context. One thing I noticed about the natives who live with those animals all the time, as they relate to life and death a little more naturally IT feels, you know, we feel really removed from IT, is particularly in urban settings. And I think, I think when you interact with animals and you have to confront the life in the death of them and the responsibility of person in a sibiu tic relationship, you have, I think IT opens a little bit awareness to your place in the in the puzzle and put you in IT rather than about IT.

Have you been able to accept your own death?

I wonder, you know, you wonder when when IT actually comes, what are you're going to think? But I did have you know, I did have my dad to watch, confronted in his positive of manner. You could and I and that's a big advantage.

And so I I think when the time comes that I will be ready. But I think but I think that's easy to say when the time feels far off. You know that would be interesting if you got a cancer diagnosis tomorrow. And stage four, uh.

be heavy if you have ever confront death while and survival situations, I mean.

when you, I mean, you're I I have a time at a time where I got, I was going to die. I had a lot of situations that could have gone either way and a lot of injuries, broken ribs and this, and but the one that that I was able to be conscious through a slowly evolving experience that I thought I might die, and was at one point where safe finding gas out of A A barrel in IT was almost to the bottom. And I second really hard to get the gas out.

I I didn't get the size and go inside. I like waited. And then while I was sitting there, europe put the a new canister on top and put the housing.

And I I didn't see. And so then I went to get another size, and I went like, exact hard. I couldn't just instantly, like a bunch of gas filled my mouth, and I couldn't like IT IT out like that.

And I just full mouthful of gas and I just drink. And I just like, oh, like, what is that going to do and and he and my friend, we're going to go on this fishing trip. And so I and I was just like, I might just stay and I was in this little russian village and and there I are right.

Well, I was like me and I had a buddy that died doing that with disco couple years ago, you man. And so anyway, I made my way to the hospital by then. You know, you really out of IT because and then, and they put me in this little dark ment, almost sounds like unrealistic, but exactly how happening in a little, a little little room with a toilet.

And they gave me a cold. You got ized bucket, and then this had a cold water for IT. There's just like just truck water puke into the toilet and just flash your sister like you can. But a cold water fast.

I was just sitting there like until, like, you puke and check until you puke and in the dark and I it's, I started to shiver because I was so cold, but I said I still like, get the thing up until as picture, I remember reading you about the jack and his torture, where they would put a hose in somebody and then make a drinking water till if you, anyway, the and I and I just felt so the only way I can express, I felt so possessed. Like demand for this, like I was just permeated with gas. I could feel like this coming out of my pores and I wanted to like rip IT out of me and I couldn't like puke into the toilet and then can see.

But I was wondering if if I was like rainy and and then I just member red, like I could tell I was going out pretty soon and and remember looking at my hands supposed i'd seem a little bit and that's how dad hands looked now they were alive, alive. And yeah, interesting IT. As are my hands going to look like that in a few minutes, whatever that I wrote down, like to my family, what I did, you know, I love you all.

I feel at peace. And then I passed out and I woke up. But I didn't think I actually thought me. When I went to pass out, I thought I was, there was a coin task for me, so I really feel like I was confronting the end there.

What are the hardest conditions to survive in on earth?

Well, there are places that are just purely uninhabitable. But I think as far as places that you have a chance .

go to put IT, maybe Greenland.

I think of Greenland, because I think of, you know, those are vikings that settled there were rag capable dudes and they didn't make IT that they are no natives that live up there. But it's a hard life, you know, in the populations never grown very big, because there you scrape by up there. Any picture in the in the vikings that did met land there, other weren't able to quite adapt. And in the fact that they all died out is just a symbol that that must be a pretty difficult place.

What what would you say? Primarily because just the food sources are limited.

Food, food sources are limited. But the fact that some people can live there means that is possible. You know, that they figured out ways to catch seals and do things to survive. But it's by no means easier to be taken for granted or obvious. I think it's a harsh, probably a harsh place to try to live.

It's fascinating not just humans, but to watch how animals have figured out how to survive. Of watching like a document and polar bears like they just figure out away and they get and you've been doering trail to to the to the water to get fat and they travel hunter miles like for whatever are the purpose OK. Because because they wanted stay on the ice, I don't know, but it's like there's this a process yeah they figured out against the long eyes and some .

of them don't make IT. It's incredible. It's tough things, man. You just think every little, every animal you see up in the mountains when i'm up in the words, is that thing just survive into the winter scrape by. It's tough, tough existence.

What do you think you would take to break? You say mentally.

and I give you .

in a survival situation.

I mean, I think I would mentally, I would have to be. Well, I we thought we talked about that earlier. I guess the thing that i've confronted that that I thought I knew was that if I knew I was the last person I earned, I wouldn't.

I got that. But maybe you're right. Maybe I would think I wasn't, but I think, you know, I can't imagine, I can't imagine so blessed in the time we live like, but I can imagine what it's like to lose your kids like that.

I was an experience that was so common for humanity for so much of history. Would I build under that? I would have, at least I would like to see to look back on of people who did.

But god forbid I ever have to deal that deep. You know what? I mean that I could see that break in somebody.

and I mean, in your in your own family history, there's there's people have survived that. But I will give you home.

I an I think that's what I would have to somehow hold on to.

But in a survival situation.

you very few things I don't know like one like I like, I know if I was in IT and ultimately is a game show. So it's like ultimately I was going to kill myself out there.

It's like, but so if I hadn't been able to procure food and I was starving to death, it's like OK, i'm not i'm going to go home you but like if you put yourself in in that situation but it's not a game show and having been there some degree like I will say I wasn't even close like I don't even know yeah yeah I hadn't I hadn't pushed my mental limit at all yeah that would say on the scale. But that's not to say there isn't one. I know there is one IT, but I have a hard time. I know I ve ve got with enough pain and enough discomfort in life that I know I can deal with that I think I think IT gets difficult when you start to when there's a way out and you start to wonder if you shouldn't take the way out as far as like if there's no way out.

I don't know what. Oh, that's interesting. I mean, that is that is a real difficult battle when nursing exit once easy to quit.

I'm doing this yeah .

that's and that's a thing that I get louder and louder the harder of this k that IT .

is not in significant like if you think you're do you know if you think you're do a permanent damage your body, you would be smart to quit. You should just not do that on when it's not necessary um because health is can I have some so I do I don't blame anyone, then they quit because that reasons are good. But a but if you're in a situation and you don't have the option to quit, is is knowing that you're experiment that I going to break that break me know if you just have to get through IT and not sure what my mental list would be outside of like the family suffering .

in the way that I described earlier, is just you limit, you don't know what the limited, I don't know injuries. Injuries, like physical stuff, is annoying. No, no.

that could be, isn't IT weird? I an, I can be, have a good life, happy life, and then you have a bad back or you have a headache ah and it's amazing how much that can overwhelm your experience. Again, that was something I sign, dad, that was like, interesting.

How can you find joy in that when you're just stepped in that all the time? And people i'm sure listening. There's a lot of people that do and it's so I and and talk about the cross, the bear and the like hero journey to be like, good for you for trying to find what you can.

What is your way through that? There was a lady in russia. Tania and SHE had had cancer and recovered, but always had a pounding headache.

And SHE was really joyful and really fun to bear around. And I just like, man, you just have to have a really bad headache for the day. Know how much that throws the ranch in your existence.

So so all that to say, if you're not right now suffering with blind ness or a bad beer, so kind of blessings because that is all it's so easy to have. It's it's amazing how complex we are, how well our bodies work in when they go out of wake IT can be very overwhelmed, ming, and they all will at some point. So that's an interesting thing to think ahead on how you're going na confront IT when IT does you humble like he said.

it's inspiring the people figure out away with my brains as a hard one though you have headaches. So oh, man, because those can be really painful and like and disease and all .

this that's inspiring.

that's inspiring that you found this.

Not nothing in that you can find somehow you can tap into purpose even in that pain. Guess I would to speak from like, right, my dad experiences, I saw somebody do IT and I benefit from IT. So thanks to him for seeing the higher calling.

There you are. You are a note on your blog in twenty twice. Spent five weeks ish in the forest alone. I just thought I was interesting, because this is in contrast to on the show alone, you are really alone with, but you're not talking anybody.

And you realize that I you I remember at one point, after several weeks at past, I wanted into particularly beautiful part of the woods and exclaimed that law. wow. IT struck me that I was the first time I had heard my own voice in several weeks with no one to talk to. What where? What did you, your thoughts go to sound like deep place?

Yeah, in my mental life was really active. You know what? What end up when you're that long alone tell you what you won't have is any skeletons in your close that are still in your closet. He will be forced to confront every every person, even the not. I mean one thing, if you've cheated on your while a wife for them, you'll be confronted with the random dude you didn't say thank you too and the like and the issue that you didn't resolve. You know, all this stuff that was long gone will come up.

And then you work through IT and you think how you should make IT, right? And I had a lot of those thoughts while I was I was there and I was IT was so interesting to see what you would just brush over and then and confront IT. Because in our modern world, and you're always distracted that you're just never ever gonna know until you take the time to be alone for .

a considerable time spent with this guys.

I recommend that he said.

you guide people what? What are your favorite places to go .

to tell him that is everybody going to?

I like you actually have there might be youtube video or instagram post. Would you give a recommendation like the best fishing home in the world and like you give detailed instruction is how to get there.

But it's like a journey of life is like a lot of the I love them. I love them like in the there's a region that I definitely love in the states because it's special to me. I grew up there stuff like that eye hole, while in monta, those are really cool places to me. I like that small town vives they're still maintaining.

and stuff there like mountain .

and forest. But you know, another really awesome place that blew my mind was a new zealand at south island of new zealand was pretty incredible. Far is just stunning stuff to see.

I was pretty high up there on the list. But there are all these places have such kind of unique, unique things about canada. We came like where they did alone is not typically what you'd say because it's fairly flat and clifton and stuff. But I really became beautiful to me because I could tapped into the richness of the land, you know, or 偶尔 know the fishing whole thing like that， a special little spot know something like that, and you see the beauty, and then you start to see the smoot ty in the smaller scale, like a little metal with that, got an orange in a pink and a blue flower right next to each other. That's super cool, you know, and there is a million things like that.

Have you been back there? You back toward the alone showers?

No, we're going back this summer. I'm going to take guide to trip up their unch people enjoy without the pressure of what what advice .

would you give to people in terms of how to be in nature? So like a hike to take or journeys to take out a nature where IT IT could take you to that place, where the business in the .

madness of the world .

can dissipate. You can be with IT. I call long as I take for you, for people usually to just .

like think I think you need a few days IT happened IT, but know maybe you need to work your weather like it's it's awesome to go out on hike, go see some beautiful little water for, go see some tree whatever is you know like um but I think just doing is IT you know really thinks about doing IT you just really do do you like go out and then plan to o overnight don't be so afraid of all the potentialities that owned delay IT.

Inevitably, you have exactly one of the things that i've enjoyed the most about guiding people is, is given him the tools so that now they have this ability into the future, you can go out and feel like i'm going to pick this spot on the map and go there. And that's a tool in your tool of life. That is, I think, really valuable because I think everybody should spend some time in nature, and anything has been pretty proven.

Cm, camping is great. Very cool. Yeah, that's .

ool.

Yes, cool. And ever I recorded stuff so that I hoped you sit there. New record thoughts, actually, for having to record the thoughts. I had to like IT forced to really think through what I was feeling to convert the feelings towards, which is not a trivial thing because is most of just feeling.

yeah, you feel a .

certain kind away.

That's interesting. You know, I felt like the way the way met my wife was like we met at this wedding and then I went to russia and we kept in touch at e mail for, you know, that year. And and a similar thing is interesting to be have to be so doubtful and purposeful about what you're saying and thing you like, but it's probably healthy getting .

do what gives you hope about this whole thing we have going on the the future of human civilization .

if we know earlier. Like look, go what we have now that you'd give you a hope. Like look at what we, the world were in living in such an amazing time with, you know.

building and roads.

buildings and roads, food security and and, you know, I live with the natives. And I thought to myself a lot, like, I wonder if not everybody would choose this way of life, because IT is there's something really rich about this, that small group, your direct relationship to your needs, all that but with the food security and the help modern medicine, the things that we now have, that we take for granted, but that I wouldn't choose that life if we didn't have those things otherwise.

Are you going to watch your family starve to death and things like that? We so we have so much now, which should lead us to be hopeful. Well, we try to improve because there's definite a lot of things wrong, you know. But but the there's a lot of improvement and I do feel like we're sort of watching walking on a knife edge, you know. But I guess that's the way IT is.

Um as the tools we build .

become more part yeah just get sharper and sharper. I I talk like argument with my brother about that. Sometimes he takes a more positive view and I I mean, it's great. We've done great. But man, more, more people with nuclear weapons and more, just gonna take one mistake with the more power.

I think there's something about the sharpness of the live stage that gets humanity to really like focus and like step up and not not screw up. There is it's just like you said, with the cold going out into the extreme cold, I like wakes you up. I think the same thing when nuclear weapons is just like .

wakes up like was IT and that would keep building .

more and more awwa ful things to make .

sure we stay awake to to see we've one be thankful for prove IT. And then of course, I appreciated your little post the other week said you wanted some kids you know, that's that's a very direct way to relate to the future .

and to have hope for and hopeful to get chance to go. The winder ness would use some point, would love to .

be in I some really cool spots that they have mind to take you.

awesome. Let's go. Thank you for talking their brother. Thank you for everything you stand for.

thanks.

Thanks for listening to this conversation with Jordan on us. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me try a new thing where I try to articulate some things i've been thinking about, whether prompted by one of your questions or just in general, if you'd like to submit a question, including an audio video form.

Got a lex remondi flash A M. A. Now allow me to comment on the attempted assonance of dotal trump on july thirteenth. First, as i've posted online, wishing downal trump good health after an assassination attempt is not a partisan statement. It's a human statement.

And i'm sorry if some of you want to category me and other people into blue and red bins, perhaps you do IT because it's easier to hate than to understand. In this case, you shouldn't matter. But let me say once again that I am not right wing nor left wing.

I'm not partisan. I make up my mind one next year at the time. And I tried to approach everyone and every idea with empathy and with an open an mind.

I have, and will continue to have many long form conversations with people both on the left and the right. Now onto the much more important point. The attempt is a, since Donald drop should service the remind that history can turn on a single moment. World were one started with the assassination of archduke transferred name, and just like that, one moment in history, a 5， nineteen fourteen LED to the death of twenty million people, half whom, or civilians, if one of the bullet, and you, like their teens, had a slightly different trajectory where Donald trump would end up dying in that small town, pennsylvania history would write a new dramatic chapter.

The contents of which all the so called experts in on us would not be able to predict IT very well, could have LED to a civil war, because the true depth of the division in the countries unknown, we only see the surface term oil on social media, so on. And in this events like the assassination of our duke transformed, and where we, as a human species, get to find out what the truth is of where people really stand, the task, then is to try and make our society maximum ly resilient and robust is such a stabilizing events. The way to do that, I think, is to properly identify the threat, the enemy.

It's not the left or the right that are the quote, enemy, extreme division itself as the enemy. Some division is productive, is how we develop good ideas and policies, but too much leads to the spread of resentment and hate. I can boil over into destruction on a global scale.

So we must absolutely avoid the slide into extreme division. There are many ways to do this, and perhaps it's a discussion for another time. But at the very basic level, let's continuous.

They try to turn down the temperature of the partisan beery and more often, celebrate are obvious common humanity. Now let me also come out on conspiracy theory. Hearing a lot of those recently, I think they playing important role in society.

They ask questions that serve as a check on power, corruption of centralized institutions. The way to answer the questions raised by conspiracy theories is not by dismissing them with arrogance and fained ignorance, but with transparency and accountability. In this particular case, the obvious question, the needs an honest answer, is, why did the secret service fail so terribly in protecting the former president? The story was supposed to believe, is that a twenty year old untrained lona was able to outsmart the secret service by finding the optimal location on a roof for a shot and trump from one hundred thirty yard away, even though the secret service snippet spotted him on the roof twenty minutes before the shooting and .

didn't nothing about IT.

This looks really shady to everyone. What does IT takes so long to get to a full accounting of the truth of what happened? And why is the reporting of the truth concealed by corporate government? Speak cut the bullshit.

What happened? Who fucked up on why? That's what we need to know.

That's the beginning of transparency. And yes, the director of the U. S. Secret servers should probably step down or be fired by the president and not as part of some political circus that i'm sure is coming, but as a step towards you.

And increasingly divided in cynical nation conspiring theory are not noise, even when they are false. They are a signal that some shady, corrupt, secret bullshit is being done by those trying to hold on to power. Not always, but often.

Transparency is the answer here, not secure. If we don't do these things, we leave ourselves vulnerable. The singular moments that turn the tide of history, empires do far.

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

So please ignore the political pundits, the political grifters, click bait media outrage fueling politicians on the right and the left. We tried to divide us. We're not so divided.

Or in this together. As i've said many times before, I love you all. This is a long comment. I'm hoping not to do comment this long in the future and hoping to do many more.

So I leave IT here for today, but I try to answer questions and make comments on every episode if you would like to submit questions like I mentioned, including audio and video form. Got a extreme dcs A M A. And now then we leave you some words from rough waldo emerson.

Adopt th Epace o f n ature. Her secret is patients. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.