#437 – Jordan Jonas: Survival, Hunting, Siberia, God, and Winning Alone Season 6

27:52Like I literally know how many animals a year it takes to feed my family and myself. I actually know the exact number. And it's like, and I know what the cost of that is. And I'm aware of it because I'm out in the woods 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, you know, is going to have to feed me. And particularly like on a loan, it was very heightened that experience. So I shot that one animal and I was so thankful, you know, that I wanted to give that big guy a hug. And like, hey, sorry, it was you, but had to be something.

28:33Yeah, that's that picture you just almost hugging it. Right, right. And you can also think about the calories, the protein, the fat, all of that that comes from that that will feed you. Right. You're so grateful for it. Like the gratitude is like, you know, definitely there. What about the bone arrow perspective? Well, when you hunt with a bow, you just get so much more up close to the animals. You know, you can't just get it from 600 yards away. You actually have to sneak in within 30 or so yards. And when you do that, the experiences you have are just, they're way more dragged out. So, you know, your heart's beating longer.

29:14You have to control your nerves longer. More often than not, it doesn't go your way. And the thing gets away. And, you know, you've been hiking around in the woods for a week. And then your opportunity arises and floats away. But at the same time, that's the only time when you like really have those interactions with the animals where you got this bugling bowl, you know, like, tearing at the trees right in front of you. Other cow elk and animals running around you, you know, you get you get you you end up having really, I don't know, in their intimate experiences with the animal just because because you're in it.

29:55You're kind of in its world. You're playing its game. It has its senses to defend itself. And you have your wit to try to get over those. And it really becomes, you know, it's not easy. They're not it becomes kind of that chess game. And those prey animals are always tuned in. It's, you know, the slightest stick there looking for wolves or for whatever it is. There's something really pure and fun about it. You know, I will say there is a aspect that is fun. There's no denying it. It's like how we're, you know, people have been hunting forever. And I think it speaks to that part of us somehow. But, and I think I'm bow hunting is probably the most.

30:39Pure form of it and that you get those experiences more often than with a rifle. So I don't know, I enjoy it a lot. And, and the way they do regulations and such, kind of the best times to hunt are usually allowed for bow because they're trying to, you know, keep it fair for the animal and such. So the distance, the closest distance makes you more in touch with sort of the natural way of the predator and prey. You just want to, yeah, yeah. You're one of the predators. Where you have to be clever, you have to be quiet, you have to be calm, you have to, all of that. Yep. And the full challenge and the luck involved in, the same thing as the predators do.

31:25Exactly how many times do they snap a stick and watch them run off and like darn my stock was failed. Or, you know, so yeah, you're just, you're in that, in that ecosystem. How'd you learn to shoot the bow? So yeah, I didn't grow up hunting. I grew up in a area that a lot of people hunted, but my dad wasn't really into it. And so I never got into it until, until I lived in Russia with the natives. It was just such a part of everything we did and a part of our life that when I came back, I got a bow and I started doing archery in Virginia. They had, it was a pretty easy way to hunt because the deer were overpopulated and you could get these urban archery permits.

32:05So you'd go out and, you know, every couple days, you'd have an opportunity to shoot a deer that they needed population control. And so there were a lot of them and it gave you a lot of opportunities to learn quickly. So that's what got me into it. And then I found I really enjoyed it. Do you practice with the, with the target also or just practice out? Oh no, I would definitely practice with the target a lot. You want to, again, you kind of have an obligation to do your best because you don't want to be flinging arrows into like the leg of an animal. And it's a cool way to honestly to provide quality meat for the family.

32:36You know, it's all raised naturally and wild and free until you bring it home into the freezer. So if we start back, what are the 10 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's opportunities are going to be. So you don't really know, should I bring a fishing net? Am I going to even have a spot to net or not? And things like that. I brought a axe, a saw, a leatherman wave, a Pharaoh rod. This is like a Nick Sparks start a fire, a frying pan, a sleeping bag, a fishing kit, a bow and arrow, trapping wire and paracord.

33:23And so those are my 10 items. Is any regrets? Any? No major regrets. I took the saw, kind of. I thought it would be more of a calorie saver than I didn't really need it. In hindsight, if I was doing, you know, season seven instead of six and got to watch, I would have taken the net because I just planned to make a net, but I would have rather just had two nets, brought one and left the saw because in the northern woods in particular, every tree is, you know, the size of your arm or leg, you can chop it down with an axe and a couple of swings. Yeah, yeah, you don't really need the saw. And so it was handy at times and useful, but I think it was my if I had to do nine items, I would have been just fine without the saw.

34:08So two nets would just expand your food gathering potential. And then in terms of trapping, you were okay with just the little you brought the snare wire was good. I ran some, you know, I put out, I used all my snare wire. I ran trap line, which is just a series of traps through the woods and brush every place you see sign, put a snare, put a little mark on the tree so I knew where that snare was, and just make these paths through the woods. And I put out, you know, I don't know how many, 150, 200 snare. So every day I'd get a rabbit or two out of them. And then I had a lot of rabbits, but once I got the moose, I actually took all those snares down because I didn't want to catch anything needlessly.

34:56And you come to find out you can't live off of rabbits. Man, cannot live up rabbit. So you set up a huge number of traps. You were also fishing and then always in the lookout for moose. Yeah. So like what's in terms of survival, if you were to do it over again, over and over and over and over, like how do you maximize your chance of having enough food to survive for a long time? You 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 a, what I thought was a pretty good plan going into a loan. And then it just, the location didn't allow for what I thought it would.

35:42What was the plan? Well, I thought I would just catch a bunch of fish because I'm on a really good fishing lake. I catch a whole bunch of fish and let them rot for a little while and then just drag them all through the woods into a big pile and then hunt a bear on that big fish pile. That was the plan. And I thought, but when I got there, from one out of a hard time catching fish off the bat, you know, they didn't come like I was hoping. And then for, for two, it had burned prior. So there were no berries. And so there were very few berries, which meant there weren't grouse, there weren't bear.

36:17They had all gone to other places where the berries were. And so what I had grown accustomed to kind of relying on in Siberia wasn't there there. You know, so in Russia, which was a similar environment, it was just grouse and berries and fish and grouse and berries and fish. And then occasionally, you know, you get a moose or something. But I had to reassess, which was part of me being grumpy at the start. Like, that's my sex. And then, and then once I reassessed and, and, 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 camp into a area that was as removed as I could be from where all the action is, where the tracks were so that I wasn't disturbing animal patterns.

37:03I made sure that when the predominant wind was blown out my scent to sea and, you know, to the water. And then really, to be honest, if you want to actually survive somewhere is different than alone, but you do have to be active. And it has to, you're going to have to, you're not going to live, you're not going to be sustainable by, you know, starving it out. You have to be, unlock the key that is sustainability. And I think there's a lot of areas that still have that potential. But you've figured out what is it's usually going to be a combination of fishing, you know, trapping and hunting. And then once you have some, the fishing and trapping, it'll get you until you have some success hunting.

37:40And then that'll buy you three or four months of time to continue and, you know, to keep hunting again. And you just have to roll off of that. But every, you know, depends on where you are. What opportunities are there. So, okay. So that's the process fishing and trapping until you're successful hunting. And then the successful hunt buys you some more time. Mm -hmm. Right, right. Just go year -round. And then you just go year -round like that. And that's how people did it forever. The pressure was, I noticed it, you know, with that, you got that moose and then you're happy for a week or so. And then you start to be like, you know, it's finite.

38:15I'm going to have to do this again. And you'd imagine if you had a family that was going to starve if you weren't successful, you know, this next time. And they're just always that pressure, you know, it made me really, I'm like, appreciate that. Not what people had to deal with. Well, in terms of being active, like, so you have to do stuff all day. So you get up, you get up and planning, like, wonder, am I going to, in the midst of the frustration, you have to figure out, like, what's the strategy? Like, how do you put up all the traps? Is that a decision? Like, you know, most people like sit at their desk and have like a calendar with them.

38:51Are you like figuring out, like, one thing about wilderness life in general is it's remarkably less scheduled than in anything we deal with. Schedules are fairly unique to the modern context. I used to wake up and you just sort of, you have us, you know, confluence of things you want to do, things you need to do, things you should do. And you just kind of tackle them as you see fit as it flows in. You know, so, and that's actually one of the things that you're people really, that I really appreciate about that lifestyle is it really is, you kind of in that flow. And so I'd wake up and be like, maybe I'll go fishing and then I'll wander over and fish.

39:31And then I'd be like, I'm going to go check the trap line, add every day if I add five or 10 snares. You know, you're constantly adding to your productive potential. And then, but it nothing's really scheduled. You're just kind of flying by the seat of your pants. But then there's a lot of instinct that's already loaded in. Oh, there's so much. Yeah. Like, you already just like wisdom from all the time you had to do it before. You just actually operating a lot on instinct. Like you said, where to find to place the shelter? Like, how hard is that calculation? Where to place the shelter? If you're like dropped off and this is all new to you, of course, all those things are going to be things you have to really think through and plan.

40:10When 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 their firewood nearby. And if I'm going to be here for months, is there enough firewood that I'm not going to be walking a half a mile to get a dry piece of wood? Is the water nearby? Is it somewhat open, but also protected from the elements? Because sometimes you get a beautiful spot. It 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 your shelter is.

40:44You said you have to consider where the action will be. And you want to be away from the action, but close enough to it. To see it. Yeah, you want to be right. And so, ideally, you know, it depends. You're always going to make give and takes. And one thing was shelters and locations selection and stuff. It's another thing. You just have to trust your ability to adapt in the situation because everybody has a particular, you know, you got an idea of a shelter you're going to build. But then you get there and maybe there's a good cliff that you can incorporate. You know, or may, and then you just become creative.

41:14And that's a really fun process to just allow your creativity to try to flourish in that. What kind of shelters are there? There's all kinds of philosophies and shelters, which is fun. People, it's fun to see people try different things. Mine was fairly basic for the simple reason that I lived, you know, winters through winters in Siberia in a teepee. So I knew I didn't need like anything to robust. As long as I had calories, I'd be warm. And I wasn't particularly 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.

41:52And then most managers are going to be focused 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'll just be a constant process that by the time you're there a few months, you'll have all the kinks worked out. It'll be really nice little setup. But you don't have to start with that necessarily because you got other needs. You got to focus on that said, you'll see a lot of people on a loan that really focus on you know, building the log cabin because they want to be secure or incorporating the, you know, whatever the earth has around whether it be rocks or whether it be digging a hole, you know, and we've seen some really cool shelters.

42:30And I, I, I'm not going to knock it. Everybody has all his 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. You know, with a shelter, you really need to think about it can't be smoky because that'll be miserable. But it is nice to have a fire inside. So you need to have a fire inside that's not going to be dangerous and smoke free. And then also airtight because you're never going to have a warm shelter out there because you don't have seals and things like that. But as long as the air is not moving through it, you can have a warm enough shelter with a fire with a fire and dry or socks and stuff.

43:12I didn't get the smoke out of the shelter. If you have good clay and mud and rock, you can build yourself a fireplace, which is surprisingly not that hard. You know, you just, oh really? Yeah, it's fun thing to do. It works well. You know, take a little hole, start stacking rocks around it, make sure it's opening, and it 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 it as I was there with my A -frame, you know, I had built an A -frame shelter like that before. And so when I built it and then I had put a bunch of tin cans in the ground so that air would get the fire.

43:50So it was fed by air, which helps create a draft. But I realized in an A -frame, it really doesn't, the smoke doesn't go out very well, even if you leave a hole at the top, it like collects and billows back down. So then I cut some of my tarp and made this and cut a hole in the, in the A -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 bill about the hood vent and then when it was done burning and it was just hot coals, I could close it, seal it up and keep the heat in. So it actually worked pretty well. So start with something that kind of works and then keep improving.

44:29Yeah, exactly. That was one, I mean the log cabin. It feels like that's a thing that takes a huge amount of work before work. The difference between a log cabin and a warm log cabin is like an immense amount of work and all the chinking and all the door sealing and you know the chimney has to be anyway. So otherwise it's just going to be the same ambient temperature as outside. So I don't think it loans the proper context for a log cabin. I think like a log cabin is great as a hunting cabin. If you're going to have something for years but in a three, six month scenario, I don't know that it's worth the calorie expenditure.

45:10And it is a lot of calories. But it's an interesting sort of metaphor of just like get something that works. You see a lot of this with companies, like successful companies, they you know get a prototype, get a system that's working and improve fast in response to the conditions to the environment. Yeah, it's constantly changing. Yeah. Yeah. And 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 amount of time to accomplish. Right. Enforcing that through the pipeline, whether or not it fits. Yeah. Can you just speak to like the place you were, the the Canadian Arctic, it looked cold.

45:49Yeah, we were right near the Arctic Circle. I don't know. It was like 60 kilometers south of the Arctic Circle. So it was it's a really cool area, really remote. Thousands of little lakes, you know, when you fly over, you're just like, man, it's incredible. There must be so many of those lakes that people haven't been to, you know, it really wasn't the area really remote. And for the show's purpose, I think it was perfect because it 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. It was a denny, there was a tribe that lived there, the denny people, which interestingly enough, here's a side note.

46:29When I was in Siberia, I floated down this river called the Pudgaman Naitungoska. And you get to this village called Sula Mai. And there's these ket people they're called. And there's only 600 of them left. But in the middle of Siberia, not in like the Pacific coast, but their language is related to the denny people. And so somehow, that connection was there thousands of years ago. Super interesting. But yes, a language travels somehow. Right. And the reminent stayed back there. It's very interesting to think through history. Yeah, within language is contains a history of people's and it's interesting how that evolves over time.

47:10And how wars tell the story. Like language tells a story of conflict and conflict, shape, language. We get the result of that. Right. So fascinating. And the barriers that language creates is also the thing that leads to wars in misunderstandings and all this. It's a fascinating tension. But it got cold there. Right. It's got real cold. Yeah, I mean, I don't know what I didn't have at the moment. I imagine it probably got to negative 30 at the most. You know, I get mine. I've gotten, it would have definitely gotten colder. Had we stayed longer. But yeah, I to be honest, I was, I said, I never felt cold out there.

47:50I was pretty, I had that one pretty dialed in. And then once you have calories, you can stay warm. You can stay active. You can, you know, you got to dress warm. You know, you don't, never let, there's a good one. If you're in the cold, never let yourself get too cold. Because what happens is you'll stop feeling what's cold and then frostbite and then issues. And then it's really hard to warm back up. So every, I, it was so annoying. I'd be out going to ice fish or something. And then I would just notice that my feet are cold. And you're just like, Oh, dang it. I just turn around, go back, start a fire, try my boots out, make sure my feet are warm.

48:25And then go again, I wouldn't ignore that. You know, also you want to be able to feel the cold. Yeah, you want to make sure you're still feeling things and that you're not toughened through it. Because you can't really tough through the cold. It'll just get you. So what's your relationship with the cold? Psychologically, physically. Interesting. Well, I actually, there's a part of it that really makes you feel alive. You know, I imagine, you know, sometimes in Austin here, you come, go out and it's hot and sweaty. You know, you get that kind of kind of saps you. There's something about that brist cold that hits your face that you're like, ooh, wakes you up, makes you feel really alive, engaged.

49:03You know, it feels like the margins of air are smaller. So you're the alert and engaged a little more. There is something that's a little bit life giving just because you feel on an edge, you're walking around this edge. But you have to be alert because even some of the natives I lived with, the lady had face issues because she let her head get cold and they're on a snowmobile. Hat was up too high. You know, that little mistake and then it just freezes this part of your forehead and then the nerves go and you got issues when just hat wasn't high enough. So you're kind of going to be dialed in on stuff.

49:36Well, there's a psychological element to just, I mean, some pleasant. If I were to think of what kind of unpleasant would I choose, you know, fasting for long periods of time, going without food in a warm environment is way more pleasant than being fed in a cold. Yeah, exactly. Like if you were to choose to watch the opposite. Yeah, okay. There you go. I wonder if that's, I wonder if you're born with that or if that's developed maybe your time is I very like you, or do you gravitate towards it? I wonder what that is because I really don't like survive on the cold. Nothing a little bit of it is learned.

50:15He like almost learned not, you learn not to fear it. He learned to kind of appreciate it. And a big part of that is, I mean, to be honest, it's like dressing warm being in good. It's not that, you know, there's no secrets to that as you just can't beat the cold. So you just need to dress warm the native, you know, all that fur, all that stuff. And then all of a sudden, you have your little refuge, have a nice warm fire going in your TP, you know, and then you got that you could learn to appreciate it. Yeah, I think some of it is just opening yourself up to the possibility that there's something enjoyable about it.

50:52Like here, I run in Austin all the time in like a hundred degree heat. And I go out there with a smile on my face and like, and learn to enjoy it. Oh yeah. And so you just like, I look kind of like you doing the cold. I don't think I enjoy the heat, but you just allow yourself to enjoy it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do feel that way. I mean, I don't mind the heat that much, but I think you could get to the place where you appreciated the cold. It's probably just a lack of kind of scary when you haven't done it. And you don't know what you're doing and you go out and you feel cold. It's like not fun, but I bet you could you'd enjoy it.

51:31You left to come out sometimes. 100%. I mean, you're right. It doesn't make you feel alive. That it like maybe that's a thing that I struggle with is the time passes slower because it 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 moment. So that it's both scary when you're an experienced and beautiful when you are experienced. Were there times when you got hungry? I got shot at rabbit on day one and I snared a couple rabbits on day two and then more and more as the time went. So I actually did pretty well on the food front.

52:14The other thing is when you have all those berries around and stuff, you do have an ability to like fill your stomach. And so you don't really notice if you're getting thinner or 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 were times when I lost a lot of weight. I mean, I lost a lot more weight in Siberia than I did on the low. Oh wow. Okay, we'll have to talk about it. So you caught a fish. You caught a couple. I think I caught like 13 or so. They didn't show a lot of them. You caught 13 fish. 13 to those big fish.

52:53Oh, I caught a couple that were small. This is like a meme at this point. Yeah, it was a perfect example of a person who was thriving. I was thought, you know, this is in the in hindsight. Again, when I was out there, I never let myself think you might weigh. And I just was going to be out there as long as I couldn't try to remain pessimistic. No, but then, but I remember a thought that I was like, I wonder if they're going to be able to make this look hard. You know, I didn't have that thought at one point. And because it went pretty well. And I was definitely was it was hard psychologically because I didn't know when it was going to end.

53:29Like I thought this could go it, you know, like I said, six months could go eight months a year. And then you start to caught, you know, that two and a three year old and you start to weigh in the, is it worth it? If it goes a year and it's not worth it if it goes eight months, and I still lose. So I feel like I had this pressure. And it was psychologically difficult for that reason. Physically, I wasn't too bad. This is off my court talking about Gordon Ryan competing in Injiu Jitsu. And maybe that's the challenge. He also has to face is to make things look hard. Because he's he's so dominant in the sport that in terms of the drama and the entertainment of the of the sport.

54:13In this case of survival, it has to be difficult. You know, you know, and I'm I'll add the for sure though that it's it's the woods. It's nature. You never know how it's going to go. You know what I mean? It's like every time you're out there, it's a different scenario. So whenever how is it? Well, so you you won after 77 days. How long do you think you could have lasted? When I left, I weighed what I do right now. So I just weighed my normal weight. I had, you know, a couple hundred pounds of moose. I had at least a hundred pounds of fish. I had, you know, a pile of rabbits, a Wolverine. You know, I had all this stuff.

54:52And I know I hadn't gotten cold yet. I just thought but in my head, I thought if I get today 130 or 40, even if someone else has big game, I had a pretty good idea they might quit because it would be long cold, dark days. And how miserable is that? Just it's so boring. It's freezing. And so I thought the only time I thought I could think about winning is one I got today 130 or 40. And I definitely had that with what I had. Now, maybe I would have got, you know, I probably would have gotten more. I had caught up that big 20 something pound pike on the last day I was there. Maybe catch some more of those, you know, I don't, you know, and I don't know, I don't know how many calories I had stored, but I had a lot.

55:42And so how long would that elastid me assuming I didn't get anything else? It definitely would have, I would definitely would have reached my goal of 130 or 40 days. And then after that, I thought we were just going to push into the, you know, then it's just to see how much who has what reserves and will go as far as we can. And that would get me through January into February. And I just thought, man, that's going to be miserable for people. And you're like, I can last through. And I knew I was going to do it. What, what aspect of that is miserable? The hardest thing for me would have been the boredom, because it's hard to stay busy when it's all dark out when the ice is, you know, three, four foot thick, you can't fish.

56:24And I just think I think it would have just been really boring. You know, it had to have been a real zen master to push through it. But because I had experienced it, 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'd gone to all these trips to Russia for a year at a time, the time context was a little broader for me than 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, you know, bring what I got back, whether that be psychological, whatever it is.

57:04And we'd all enrich each other. And once it's in hindsight, that year would have been like that talking about it. So I had that perspective. And it, I knew I wasn't going to tap for any other reason other than running out of food someday. So that was my stressor. And then, so you're able to, given the boredom, given the loneliness, kind of zoom out, and accept the passing of time, just let it pass. You know, for me, I'm an app fairly, I like to be active. And so I would try to think of creative ways to keep my brain busy, you know, we saw the dumb rabbit first skit. But then I did a whole bunch of like elaborate Normandy re -invasion, you know, Asian crafts and stuff.

57:42Like I always like, there was a, every day I would think I said, I got to think of something to make me laugh, you know, and then do some stupid skit. And then that would be, that would fill a couple hours of my time. And then I'd spend an hour or two, a couple of hours fishing. And then you spend a few hours, you know, whatever you're doing. Would you do that without a camera? Yeah. Oh, no, the skits, 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 Siberia. So no, because I didn't, in Siberia just do skits by myself.

58:17But I didn't film it. And so it was, it 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. It was part of the cause of me missing that moose. You know, there's issues with it. But I just chose to look at it as like, this is an awesome opportunity to share with people, a part of me that most people don't get to see, you know, because, no, so that was, that just chose to look at it that way. And it wasn't advantage because you could do stuff like that. I think there's actual power to doing this kind of documenting, like talking to a camera or an audio recorder.

58:56Like that, that's an actual tool in survival. I had a little bit of an experience of being out alone in the jungle and just being able to talk to a thing is much less lonely. It is. It really is. It's a, that can be a powerful tool just sharing your experience. I had the, I definitely had the thought. So going back to your earlier comment, but I definitely had the thought, if I knew I was the last person on earth, I wouldn't even bother. Like I wouldn't do that. I got what just, probably not, I'd just give up, I'm sure, because even if I had a bunch of food in this and that, but because I knew you know, you're a part sharing, it gives you a lot of strength to go through and, and having that camera just makes it, that much more vivid because you know, you're not just going to be sharing a vague memory, but an actual experience.

59:45I think if you're the last person on earth, you would actually convince yourself. First of all, you don't know for sure. There's always going to be. Hope that is last. Hope, hope really that does that last. You really don't know. You really, you really hope to find. I mean, if you're, let's like, an apocalypse happens. I think your whole life will become about finding the other person. It would be, and there's a, I mean, I'm against I'm saying, if you knew you were for some reason, you were the last. I wonder if you would. I wonder if that was the thought I had. If I knew I was the last person, like, because out here, I was having a good time, having fun, fishing, plenty of food.

1:00:22But like if I knew I was the last person on earth, I don't know that I would even bother. But now if that was for real, what I bother, that's the question. No, no, I think if you knew, if somebody, some, 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 lying. Right. Right. Right. Right. The power of hope might be more more powerful than I accounted for. That's a Jewish. 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 comes about because whatever happened on earth is a pretty special thing.

1:01:00And if you're the last one, you might be like the last person to tell the story of what happened. And so that's going to be a way to convince yourself that this is important. And so the days will go by like this, but it would be lonely. Boy, would that be lonely? It would be, well, if you delve into the dredges, the depths of it. Yeah. I mean, there is going to be existential dread. But also, I don't know, I think hope will burn bright. You'll be looking for the humans. That's, you know, one of the reasons that's important to talking to you. I think that pressure value is you're always not out of naivety, but you're always choose to look at the positive.

1:01:42You know what I mean? And I think that's a powerful mindset to have. Appreciate it. Yeah. That'd be a pretty cool, survival situation though, if you're the last person on earth. You could share it. You could share it. Yeah. Like I said, many people consider you the most successful competitor on alone. The other successful one is Roland Wilker, rock house guy. Yeah. This is just a fun ridiculous question, but head to head. Who do you think survives longer? If you want to get rid of the competitive side of it, I would just say, well, I'm pretty dang sure I had more pounds of food. But and I didn't have the advantage of knowing when it would end, which I think would have been a great psychological.

1:02:31It would have made it really easy. Once I got the moose, I could have shot the moose and just not stressed. It would have been like a, and so that was a big difference between the seasons that I felt like, I mean, I felt like the psychology of season seven, they kind of messed up by doing a hundred day cap because for my own experience, that was the hardest part. But Roland's a beast. So for people who don't know, they put a hundred day cap on. So it's whoever can survive a hundred days for that season. It's interesting to hear that for you, the uncertainty, not knowing when it ends. That was for sure.

1:03:06It's the hardest. That's true. It's like you wake up every day. I didn't know how to ration my food. I didn't know if I was going to lose after six months. And then it was all going to be for not. I didn't know if it, you know, I just, there's so many unknowns. You don't know, like I said, if I shot a moose and it was a 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 hard part. When you found out that you won and your wife was there, it was funny because you're really happy.

1:03:42That was a great sort of moment of you reuniting, but also there's a state of shock of like you look, you look like you were ready to go much longer. That was the most genuine shock I could have. I hadn't even like entertained the thought yet. I didn't even think it was, you'd hear the helicopters. And I just assumed there was other people out there. I just hadn't, I thought, you know, and for one, the previous person that had gone along has had gone 89 days. So I just knew whoever else was out here with me, somebody's got that in their crosshairs, they're going to get to 90 and they're not going to quit at 90.

1:04:19They're going to go to 100. You know, I just figured we can't start thinking about the end until the couple of months from when it ended. So I was just shocked. And they tricked me pretty good. They know how to make you think you're not, you know, that they're not. So they want you to do the surprise. Yeah, they wanted to be a surprise. You really weren't, I mean, you have to do that, I guess, for survival. Don't be counting the days. No, I think that would be, then you know, you see that on some of the people do that for myself. That would be bad psychology because then you're just always disappointing yourself.

1:04:49You have to be resettled with the fact that this is going to go a 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 your eating habits like during that time? Like how many meals a day? This is Oh, no, I was trying to eat the thing. I was like not trying to, the more the moose is hanging out there, the more the critters, every critter in the forest is trying to pack at it or mice trying to eat it and stuff. So one of the ways you can protect the food is biting it.

1:05:25So I was having three good meals a day and then I'd like, cook up some meat and go to sleep and then wake up in the middle of the night because they're long nights and like, have some meat at night, eat a bunch at night and then so I'd usually have a fish stew for lunch and then moose for breakfast and dinner and then have some for a nighttime snack because the nights were long so you'd be in bed 14 hours and wake up and eat and think around and go back to sleep. Is it okay that I was pretty low carb situation? Yeah, I actually felt really good. I tried to, I think I would have felt better if I would have had a higher percentage of fat because you know, it's still more protein than if you're on a keto diet, you want a lot of fat.

1:06:11And so I did try to mix in like nature's carbs, different like reindeer liken and things like that. But honestly, I felt pretty good on that diet. I will say. How did you, what's the secret to like protecting food? What are the different ways to do that? Yeah, there's a lot of times, you know, in a typical situation in the woods hunting, you'll raise it up in a tree and the bag put in like a game bag so the birds can't peck at it and hang it in a tree so that cools. You got to make sure first to cool it because it'll spoil. So you cool it by whatever means necessary hanging it in a cool place, letting the air blow around it.

1:06:45And then you'll notice that every forest free loader in the woods is going to come steal your food. Yeah, and it was just fun. I mean, it was, it was crazy to watch. You know, it's all the J, all the camp J's pecking at it or everything I did, you know, was, was there was something that could get to it. They've put on the ground, the mice get on and they poop on it and they kind of mess it up. So I ultimately kind of just donned on me shoot. I'm going to have to build one of those a Venky like food caches. So I did and I put it up there and I thought I kind of solved my problem to, to be honest, the Venky then, so they would have taken a page out of like, they would have mixed to me and roll and solution.

1:07:27They've built a tall stilt shelter and then put a box on the top that's enclosed. And then the bears can't get to it. The mice can't poop on it. The birds, the Wolverine, you know, it's safe. And I'd never finished it. I didn't, in hindsight, I don't actually know why. I think I was just the way at time. Like I didn't think something was going to be up there. Then it did. And then I, you know, your, like, count calories and stuff I should have in hindsight just boxed it in right away. But to get ready for the long, for the long haul. Yeah. Yeah. Is a rabbit starvation a real thing? Yeah. So you can't just live off protein and rabbits are almost just protein.

1:08:02I kill a rabbit, eat the innards and the brain and the eyes. And then everything else is just protein. And so it takes more calories to, you know, process that protein than 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 20 days. I had 28 rabbits or something. But I was losing weight at exactly the same speed as everybody else that didn't have anything. So that's interesting. Yeah. I'd never tried that before. So I was wondering if I'm catching ton of rabbits. I wonder if I can last what six months under rabbits, but no, you just starve as fast as everybody else inside to kind of learn that on the fly and adjust.

1:08:41I wonder what to make of that. Like, so you need fat to survive, like, fundamentally. Yeah. That's the, yeah. Any of you noticed when the Wolverine came or when animals came, they would eat the skin off of the fish. They would eat the eyes, you know, they'd steal the moose fat. I have to leave all the meat. Yeah. Like behind the eyes is a bunch of fat. So yeah, you can kind of observe nature and see what they're eating and know where the gold is. What do you like eating when you're like, when you can eat whatever you want? What do you feel best eating? What do I feel best? I just try to eat clean.

1:09:14I think, I'm not like super strict or anything, but I think when I eat less carbs, I feel better. Meat and vegetables. I like, we eat a lot of, you know, I eat a lot of meat. So basically everything you ate on loan plus some veggies plus veggies. I'm throwing some buckwheat. I like buckwheat. I wish. Let's step to the early days of Jordan. So your Instagram handles hobo, Jordan. So early on in your life, you hoboed around the US on freight trains. What's the story behind that? My brother, when he was 17 or so, he just decided to go hitchhiking and he hitchhiked down to Reno from Idaho everywhere and ended up loving traveling, but hated being dependent on other people.

1:10:06So he ended up jumping on a freight train and just did it. Honestly, he pretty much got on a train and traveled to country for the next eight years on trains, lived in the streets and everywhere. But, you know, he was sober. So it gave you a different experience than but at one point when I was, I guess, yeah, 18, he invited me to come along with him. He'd probably been doing it five or so four or five years and or more. And I said, sure, so I quit my job and went out with him. Hobo, Jordan, has a bit of an overstepped self -conscious about that because I rode a, I rode trains across the country up and down the coast back.

1:10:45You know, spent the better part of the year and round, riding trains and all the staying in places related to that. But all the people, you know, the real Hobos, those guys are out there doing it for years on end. But it was such a, for me, what it felt like was a, 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 with me, my brother, for most of it, we traveled around, got pushed my boundaries in every which way, you know, froze at night and did all the stuff. And then, and then at the end, I actually wanted to go back and go back home.

1:11:26And so I went on my own and went from Minneapolis back, you know, at the Spokane on my own, which was a, for my first stint of time by myself for like a week, which was interesting. Along with your own thoughts. With your own thoughts is my first time in my life, haven't been like that, you know, and so it was, it was powerful at the time. You know what it did, too, is it gave me a whole different view of life, because I had gotten a job when I was 13 and then 14, 15, 16, 17. And then I was just in the normal run of things kind of. And then that just threw a whole different path into my life. And then I realized some of the things while I was traveling that I wouldn't experience again until I was living with natives and such.

1:12:05And 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, it's a really, a sense of freedom you get that is hard to replicate elsewhere. And so that was eye opening to me. And I think once I did that, I went back. So I went back to my old job at the salad dressing plant. And there's this old cross -eyed guy and he was, oh, my God, I was back. And that's kind of where I got it. But that freedom always was very important to me, I think, from that time on. Would you learn about the United States about the people long the way?

1:12:47Because I took a road trip across the US also. And there's a romantic element there too of like, of the freedom of the, or maybe for me, not knowing what the hell I'm going to do with my life, but also excited by all the possibilities. And then you meet a lot of different people, a lot of 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 that people I've met and they usually don't, they usually don't go outside of their little town. They have a thing and they have a family usually and they don't explore.

1:13:32They don't take the leap. And you could do that when you're young. I guess you could do that any moment. Just say, fuck it and leap into the abyss of being on the road. But anyway, what would you learn about this country, about the people in this country? You're in an interesting context when you're on trains because the trains always end up in the crappiest part of town. And you're always outside interacting. Interesting things. We know every once in a while, I'll have to hitchhike to get from one place to another. One interesting thing is you notice you always get picked up by the poor people.

1:14:09They're the people that empathize with you. Stop, pick you up. You go to whatever ghetto. You end up in and people are really, oh, what are you guys doing? Real friendly and relatable. It kind of broadened your horizons for sure from being just an Idaho kid and meeting all these different people and just seeing the goodness in people and this and that. It's also a very big, you know, a lot of drugs and a lot of people with mental issues that you're friends with, dealing with, you know, all that kind of stuff. So any memorable characters? Well, there's a few for sure. I mean, a lot of them I still know that are still around.

1:14:50But that, uh, Rocco was one guy we traveled that he's become like a brother. But he was, he travels 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 straight edge. And he always, like, five, seven Italian guy that was always getting in fights and like, yeah, his own sense of, uh, ethics that I think is really interesting because he's super honest, but, but he expects it of others. And so as funny in the modern context, the thing that pops in my head is when he got a car as for the first time, which wasn't that long, you know, his 30s or some, and he registered it, which he was mad about that he had to register.

1:15:39But then the next year, they told him he had to register again. And he's like, what did he lose my registration? Went down there to the DMV, chewed him out that he had to re -register because he already registered. Where's the paperwork? But just kind of used the world from a different lens that I thought, but on everything, he's the character. Now he just lives by digging up bottles and finding treasures in the but he notices the injustices in the notice speaks up in a very interesting and speaks up. And he's always like, why doesn't everybody else speak up about the car registration? And then there was like, you know, Devo comes in mind because he was such a unique character as far as just for one, he would have lived to be 120 because the amount of chemicals and everything else he put into his body and still, right, man, you know, one of those guys, you can always get a dime, you know, spare time, spare time, and you have bum change.

1:16:30And I'd see him sometimes and I'd be gone and then go to New York to visit my sister or something. And I'd be sure enough, there's Devo on the street. What do you know? You go visit him in the hospital because you got bit by 27 hobo spider bites. You know, he's just always rough but a charismatic vital like the vitality of life was in him, but it was just so permeated with drugs and alcohol too. I wonder what it was. Because I met people like that. They're like, there's just, yeah, joy permeates the whole way of being. And they're like, they've been through some shit. They've scars. They've got them rough, but they've always got a big smile.

1:17:06This guy met in the jungle in the pico. He lost the leg and he, uh, drives a boat and he just always says a big smile, even given that like the hard trip he has to get to everything requires a huge amount of work. But he's just big smile and his stories and those. It was something about, yeah, enduring difficulty that makes you able to appreciate life and look at it and smile. And you advise far to take a road trip again or if somebody else is thinking of hopping on a freight train. It's easier now because they have a map on your phone and you feel like you're going to cheat and now it's not about the destiny because the map is about the destination.

1:17:48But here's like, yeah, right, give a chance where are you going? Yeah, going anywhere. Exactly. I say do it. Like, go out and do things, especially when you're young, uh, experiences and stuff help create the person you will be in the future. But doing things that you think like, I don't want to do that I'm a little scared of that. I mean, that's what you got to 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. Say yes to life. Yeah. I love the boredom of it. Freight train riding is very boring.

1:18:23And I, you'll wait for hours for a train that never comes and then you'll go to the store and come back and it'll be gone. You're like, no. And then, but I remember we went to jail. We got out and then, uh, I mean, how'd you end up in jail? Oh, you know, it was things. Trust pass. I got a train, but we were we were riding a train and my brother woke up and they had a dead outland on his head and you know, you hit the train and fell on him and we were like woke up and we were laughing. That's got to be some kind of bad old man. And then we were like looking out of the train and we saw a train worker look and sauce and he went, like, oh, we know that's a bad old man.

1:19:01Anyway, sure enough, the police stopped the train. Somebody had seen us on it and they searched it, got us and threw us in jail. It was not a big dealer in jail a couple of days. And then, uh, but when we got out, of course they put us, we were in some podung town in Indiana and we didn't know where to catch out of there. And so we were at some factory and we just, band and factory and we were ready there for like four days. No train that was going slow enough that we could catch. And then we found this big old roll of aluminum foil and now to, I gotta apologize to this woman because we were so bored just sitting there, we built these like hats, you know, like horns coming out every which way and loops and just sitting there and it was at night and some minivan pulled up to this train that was coming by and we're like, we're like we're hurting.

1:19:44We're like, like, certain other cars. So entertaining yourself with whatever you can. Poor lady was terrified. So hitchhiking was tough. I didn't like hitchhiking just because you're depending on the other people and it is not, I don't know why you just want to be independent. But if you do meet really cool people a lot of times, there's really nice people that pick you up and and that's cool. But I just personally actually didn't do it a lot. Um, and I wasn't, you know, if you're on the streets for 10 years, you'll end up doing it a lot more because you need to get from point A but we just tried to avoid it as much as we could because it didn't appeal to us as much.

1:20:22Well, that one downside of hitchhiking is people talk a lot. No, they do. So it's both the pro and the con. Yeah. Yeah. Because they'll, you know, sometimes you just want to be sort of alone with your thoughts or there is a kind of lack of freedom in having to listen to a person that's giving you a ride. It's so true. And then you don't know how to react to it. I mean, I was the young remember I got picked up as friend 19 or something and then I was just like, Hey, how's it going? She's like, how far has been just died? And then then this all and I got diagnosed with cancer and this is that. But and pretty bitter and all that and understandably so, but you're just like, I have no idea how to respond here.

1:21:02Cause you got it. And so then you're young and you had to be nice. And I remember that ride being interesting because I didn't really not to respond. And she was angry and going through some stuff and and dumping it out. She didn't have so how'd you end up in Siberia? I'll try to keep it a little bit short on the how. But I bet the long story short was that of brother that's adopted and when he grew up, he wanted to find his biological mom and just tell her thanks. And so he did. And when he was he was probably 20 or something, he found his biological mom told her things turns out he had a brother that was going to go over to Russia and help build this orphanage.

1:21:48And that brother was about my age. I mean, I remember at that time I read this verse that said, if you're in the darkness and see no light, just continue following me basically. I was like, okay, I'm going to take that to the bank even though I don't know if it's true or not. And then the only glimpse of like light I got in all that was when I heard about that orphanage. You go build that orphanage. And and I prayed about it. And I felt and I can't explain like I brought me to tears. I felt so strongly that I should go. And so I was like, well, that's a clear call. I'm just going to do it. Yes, I just bought a ticket, got a visa for a year.

1:22:26And then I went and helped build an orphanage. And we got that built. And I wanted, but he was an American and I wanted to live 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 milk the cow and all that. So I found myself in that little Russian village just getting to know these two guys and their families. It was it was pretty fascinating. And of course, I didn't know the language yet. And they were too awesome. Dude, it's both of them had been in prison and met each other in prison.

1:23:05And like, we're really close because they had found God and prison together and stayed to get you got out and stayed connected. And so I bounced back between those two families and they used to always tell me about their third buddy that had been in prison with who was a native fur trapper now in the north. And so they thought, you got to go meet our buddy up north. And one day that guy came through to sell furs in the city and he like invited me to come live with him. And my visa was about to expire. But I was like, when I come back, I'll come and send a went back home earn some more money. And it's a construction or whatever then went back and headed north to hang out with Yura and fur trapping.

1:23:48And that started a whole new, you know, open a whole new world that I didn't know about. Before we talk about Yura and fur trapping, let's actually rewind. And would you describe that moment when you were in the darkness as a crisis of faith? Yeah. Yeah. For sure. It was like a was darkness in that I didn't know how to parse. You know, what is this thing that's my faith? And what is what's the wheat and what's the chaff and how do I get through it? And I'm basically just clung to keeping it really simple. And oddly enough, in my Christian path, it would be God was actually defined in a certain God is love.

1:24:36And I was just like, that's the only thing I'm going to cling to. And I'm going to try to express that in my life in whichever way I can. And just trust that if I do that, if I act like I, you 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. And I was like, Lord, I don't see you. I don't know. But I got this, what I felt like 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.

1:25:17But I'm going to choose to act. And I just asked to have faith someday. And then and then honestly, the whole first year I went through. And that was a very crazy time for me. Learning the language, being isolated, being misunderstood. And then, but then trying to approach all that with a loving, open heart. And then I came back and I realized that that prayer had kind of an answer. That wasn't the end of my journey. But it was, I was like, whoa, 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 of all, you couldn't speak the language.

1:25:55That's really tough. That's really tough. Because it's unlike on a loan, where because not only can you not speak and you feel isolated, but you're also misunderstood all the times. You seem like an idiot. And all that. And so that was tough. I felt very alone at that time. It's certain times in that journey. But you were sort of radiating like you said, lead would love. So you're radiating this kind of camaraderie. I was really intentional about trying to, 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've just tried it like, and then I've been digging people's wells.

1:26:34It might just go in and visit in that old laid babushka at the house. It's lonely. And I was really cool. I got to talk to some fascinating ladies and stuff. And in what go to that village, hope those families, I'm going to be like, cut the hay, be the most, the hardest worker I can be because that's my goal here. I didn't have any other agenda or except to try to live a life of love. And I couldn't define it beyond that. What was it like learning the Russian language? It was super interesting. I think I had the thought while I was learning it. One that it was way too hard. Like if I would have just learned Spanish in German, I would be so much farther.

1:27:12But here I am a year in. And I'm like, how do you say I want cheese properly? And then, but at the same time, it was really cool to learn a language that that I thought in a lot of ways was richer than English. It was, it's a very rich language. I remember there was a comedy act in Russian, but he was saying, you know, one word you can't have in English is naidepiripiulsa, meaning like, I didn't drink enough to get drunk. You know, that type thing. But it's just that you can make up these words using different prefixes and suffixes and blend them in a way that is quite unique and interesting. And honestly, it would be really good for poetry because it also doesn't have sentence structure.

1:27:57In the same way, English does is the words can be jumbled in a way. And somehow in the process of jumbling, some humor, some musicality comes out. It's interesting. Like, you can be witty in Russian much easier than you can in English. Like witty and funny. And also with poetry, you can say profound things by messing with words and 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 in Russian. hilarious. And it was for me the first time, I don't know why, you were a great person to articulate the flexibility and the power of the Russian language.

1:28:43That's really interesting. Because you were saying like, yeah, li -blu, tibia, yeah, tibia, li -blu, tibia, yeah, li -blu, tibia, li -blu, yeah, you could say every single order, every single combination of ordering of those words is has the same meaning but slightly different. You could like, it would change the meaning if you took yaw out and just said, li -blu tibia. There's like a different emphasis or maybe or yaw tibia, li -blu. Or something like all these different things. Or just tibia, li -blu also. Right, exactly. And so it is rich. And that one, and it was interesting coming from an English context and getting a glimpse of that.

1:29:23And then wondering about all those, you know, Russian authors that we all appreciate that. Oh, we'd actually aren't getting the full, the full deal here. Oh, yeah, definitely. I've recently become a fan actually of Larissa Volkonskin, Richard Provere. There are these world famous translators of Russian literature. Tolstoy, the C .S. Kichak of Pushkin, Bogak of Busternaq. They've helped me understand just how much of an art form translation really is. Some authors do that art more translable than others, like the C .S. Kichak is more translatable. But then you can still spend a week on one sentence.

1:30:00Like just how do I exactly capture this very important sentence? But I think what's more powerful is not like literature, but conversation, which is one of the reasons I've been carrying and feeling the responsibility of having conversations with Russian speakers, because I can still see the music of it. I can still see the wit of it. And in conversation comes out like really interesting kinds of wisdom. You like, when I listen to like world leaders that 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 lose the reference in there to the history of the peoples.

1:30:59Yeah, for sure. And I've definitely seen that on, like, you know, and if you listen to, I think it probably was a Putin speech or something. And you just see that, oh wow, something majors being lost in translation. You can actually see it happen. I wouldn't be surprised if that wasn't the case with the, you know, that whole greatest tragedy as a fall of the Soviet Union. I hear him being quoted as saying all the time, I bet you there's 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 humor. I'll just say that that was the hard, that was the tangibly the hardest part about learning the language is that humor comes last.

1:31:37And you gotta feel like wait, you have to wait that whole year, you know, or however long it takes you to learn the language to be able to 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 just be the guy, we know, when there's humor going on and you're totally oblivious to it. Yeah, I was laughing in your trying to laugh along. What do they make of you? Yes, to be honest, this person that came from no descendant upon us, all full of life. I've had a nickel for every time I heard like, oh, American suck, but you're a good American, you're only good American, I've never met, but then of course they never met.

1:32:19Yeah, exactly, they only want you. But, you know, I think because I was just tried to work hard, tried to be more useful than I was a drain, all that, they all, I think I think it was pretty appreciated me out there. I've heard, definitely heard that a lot, and so that's nice. Can you talk about their way of life? Also like when you're doing foot trapping. As a foot trapping was an interesting experience to you, basically what you do in October or something, you'll go out to your hunting cabin and you'll have like three hunting cabins, you go, you stock them with noodles or whatever it is. And then for the next couple months or however long, you'll go from one cabin, usually the guys are just out there doing this on their own.

1:33:06So they'll go out and they'll go from one cabin and each cabin will have five or six trap lines going out of it. Every day, it'll take a half a day to walk to the end of your trap line, open all the traps and a half a day to get back and they'll do that. This will spend a week at a cabin, open up all the traps, and then it'll take a day to hike over to the other cabin. Go to that one, open up all those traps, and then there and then like three weeks later so they'll end up back at the first cabin and then check all the traps. And so it's kind of that rhythm and they'll do that for a you know, a couple few months during the winter and your trap in Sabel.

1:33:41They're called Sabel like Pine Martin is what we would have the equivalent of over here. And uh, what is it? It's like a weasel, a furry little weasel and they make coats out of it. And so when I went, he showed me how to open the trap, showed me the ropes, gave me a topographical map. There's one cabin, there's the other, and we parted ways for like five weeks. We did run into each other once in the middle there at a cabin, but other than that, you're just off by yourself, hoping to shoot a grouse or something to add to your noodles and make your meal better, catch a fish and then work and really hard trying not to get lost and stuff.

1:34:18How do you get from one trap location to the next? That's funny because it was both basically by landmarks and feel like I didn't have come this and things like that. I feel okay. I got myself into trouble once and I the first time I went to one cabin, I got myself into trouble. First time I went to the other cabin, I nailed it. And so I had two different experiences on my first trip. But the one that I nailed it, I remember I had to go and it's like a day hike. I was like, well, I know the cabin south. And so if I just walk south, the sun should be on the left in the morning and right in front of me in the middle of the day and by evening, it should end up at my right and just kind of guess what time it is and follow along.

1:35:03And it takes all day and a kidy not ended up 100 yards from the cabin. I was like, whoa, this is the trail. And that's the cabin. Oh, amazing. And then the other time, I went out and heading over the mountains and I thought, you know, hours had passed. I probably had gotten slightly lost. And then I thought I was halfway there. So I thought, okay, I'm going to sit down and cook some food, get a drink, I'm thirsty, to sat down and went to start a fire and my matches had gotten all wet because the snow had fallen on me and soaked me and I didn't have them wrapped in plastic. I was like, oh, no, I can't drink water.

1:35:40You know, so I was like, well, I'm just going to power through. I'm halfway there. I kept hiking and then I realized it was getting night and and then I realized I was at the halfway point because I saw this rock that I was like, oh, no, that's the halfway point. I was like, I can't do this. And so I need to go get water. I ended up having to divert down the mountain and head to the water. I ended up, you know, there's a whole ordeal. I had to take my skis off because I was going through an old forest fire burn. So they were all really close trees. But then the snow was like this deep. So I was just trudging through and just wishing a bear would eat me and get it over with.

1:36:15I finally made it down to the water, chopped the hole through the ice. I was able to take a sip. So you're severely dehydrated? I'm severely dehydrated. And I exhausted cold cold like, you know, you feel sort of nervous here and over your head. And then I and then I got down to the river. Chopped the whole nice drink, it hiked up the river and eventually got to the other cabin. It was probably three in the morning or something. He chopped a whole and ice to get some water. It was this got to be like the one of the worst days of your life. You know, it was a bad day for sure. I'm out of view. It was a bad day.

1:36:51And here's what was funny is I got to the cabin like three in the morning and I should have brushed over a lot of the like the misery that I felt and I laid down as about to go to sleep. And then your charges in from from the way I was like, whoa, dude, you're what are you doing? And I was like, how's it going? He's like, it sucks. And you lay down and just fell asleep. I fell asleep and I was like, oh, that's funny. The last few weeks that we've been apart. Who knows what he went through? Who knows why he was there at that time at night? I'll just summarize in the sucked. And we went to sleep in the next morning.

1:37:23We parted ways and you know what I mean. You didn't really tell me. Never knew neither of us said what happened. It's just like, oh, that's interesting. Yeah. And he probably was through similar kinds of things. Who knows? Yeah. Like what gave you strength in those in those hours when you're you know, she's going to waste high snow. Yeah. All of that. You're laughing. But like that's hard. Yeah. You know that Russian phrase in the glasah by Atsaru Kiyodilu. Eyes are afraid hands do. I'm sure there's a poetic way to translate that. Right. It's kind of like, you know, just put one foot in front of the other.

1:38:03You know, when you think about what you have to do, it's really intimidating. And but you just know if I just do it, if I just do it, if I just keep trudging eventually, I'll get there. And pretty soon you realize you'll have covered a couple kilometers. All right. And so when you're really in it in those moments, I guess you're just you're just putting your head down and getting through. I've had some other moments. There's wisdom to that. Like once, just take it one step at a time. Once up at a time. I think that a lot. I don't say tell myself that a lot when I'm about to do something really hard.

1:38:31Just, you know, go to Atsaru Kiyodilu. One step at a time. Just going to get, don't like sit there and think, oh, that's a long ways. Yeah. Just go. And then you'll look back and you covered a bunch of ground. One of the things I've realized it was helpful in the jungle. That was one of the biggest realizations for me is 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 it sucked. I'll have a vague notion of it 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.

1:39:14That's absolutely true. I don't know. It's so funny how like this awareness of that, having been through it and then being aware of it means next time you face it, you're like, you know what? Once this is over, I'm going to look back on it. And it's going to be like that and nothing. And I'll 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 going down to the ice. And I can smile about it now. And now that I know that I can be in a miserable position and realize that that's what the outcome will be. Once it's over, it's just going to be a story.

1:39:43If you survived it. If you survived. And that can be. So you mentioned you've learned about hunger during these times. Like, when was like the hungry is you've gotten there? It was the first time. So to continue the story slightly, I, I was less, went for a trap and with that guy. And then it turned out all his cousins were these native nomadic reindeer herders. And after I like earned his trust and he liked me a lot. He took me out to his cousins who were all these, you know, nomads living in TPs. I was like, this is awesome. I didn't even know people still lived like this. And they were really open and welcoming because their cousin just brought me out there.

1:40:20No, I'm not. And vouched for me. But it was during fencing season and fencing in Siberia for those reindeer. It's like an incredible thing. You take an axe. You go out and you just build these 30 kilometer loop fences with just logs interlocking. It's tons of work. And all these guys are more efficient bodies that better at it. And I'm just like working less efficiently and also a lot bigger dude. But we're all just on the same rations kind of. And, and I got down to that was like 155 pounds. You know, getting down pretty dang skinny for my six three frame and just working really hard. And then since the spring in Siberia, there's no like there's not much to forage.

1:41:02You know, in the fall, you can have pine nuts and 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 weight and felt the most hungry. And it had a lot of other issues. You know, I was new to that type of work. And so working as hard as I could, but also making mistakes, chopping myself with the axe and and getting injured. I'll kind of stuff. So injuries plus very low calorie intake. Low. Yep. And exhausted. I remember if you got your this poor son of a gun to get stuck, slicing the bread, you know, like you're cutting the bread and somebody throws all the spoons and drops the pot of soup there.

1:41:41And it's like before you can even done it slice in your slice, all the meats like you've gone from the bowl. Everybody else has grabbed this spoon and midair. And you're like, oh, hoping this one little noodles are going to give me a lot of nourish. Wow. So everybody gets sent me, yeah, first come first serve, I guess. Because it's like all the dudes out there working on the fence. So you mentioned the axe and you gave me a present. This is probably the most badass present I've ever gotten. So tell me the story of this of this axe. So the Nate is when I got there. I thought, you know, I grew up on a farm.

1:42:19I thought I was pretty good with an axe, but they do tons of work with those things. And, and I really grew to love their type of axe or style of axe. And I'll just an axe in general. They'd always say it's the one tool you need to survive in the wilderness. And, and I agree. And what is this one has certain, yeah, design features that the natives that was unique to the event key to the natives I was with. One is with these Russian heads or the Soviet heads, whatever they had. They're a little wider on 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.

1:42:56And if it ever loosens and you're swinging, it only gets tighter. It doesn't fly off. And so that's something that's kind of cool. Then they have what's what they do that's unique is. So you can see this is the Wolverine axe. So it's got the little Wolverine head in honor of that Wolverine. I thought on the show. So you have actually two axes. This is one of the small. This is a little smaller. I didn't want to make it too small because you need a something to actually work out there. You need something kind of serious. But then they sharpen it from one side. So if you're right handed, you sharpen it from the right side.

1:43:32And that means when you're in the woods and living, there's a lot of times where you're whether you're making a table or a sleigh or an axe handle or whatever you're doing that you're holding the wood and doing this work. And it makes it really good for that planing. The other thing it is, especially in northern woods, all the trees are like this big, you know, that you're never cutting down a big giant tree. And so when you swing with a single sided axe like this, sharpen from the one side, it really with your right hand swing, like this, it really bites into the wood and gives you because with that, if you can picture it, that angle is going to cause deflection.

1:44:07And without that angle on your right hand, it's like just like bites in there like crazy. And so that there's other little, you know, the handle is made by some Amish guys in Canada. This is all hand forged by, oh it's hand forged. Yeah. I mean, yeah, look. And so it's a pretty sweet little. Yeah, it's amazing. There's other thing, you know, like I slightly rounded this pole here. It's just a little nuance because when you pound a stake in, if you picture it, if it's, if it's con vex, when you're pounding it, it's going to blow the fibers apart. If it has just a slight concave, it helps hold the fibers together.

1:44:44And so it's a little nuance, not too flat because you want to still be able to use the back as you would. We're kind of stuff we're using the axe for. Oh, so that's an excellent, super important to chop through ice in a winter situation, which you probably hopefully won't need. But what I use an axe all the time for is when I'm, when it's wet and rainy and you need to start a fire, like it's hard to get to the middle of drywood if just a knife or a saw. It's a, you can, I can go out there find a dead tall tree, you know, dead standing tree, chop it down, split it apart, split it open, get to the drywood on the inside, shave it some little curls and have a fire going pretty fast.

1:45:26And so if I have an axe, 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. Of course, you can use it. I use it if you're taking an animal apart or if you're, what, you know, all kinds of, what else, build in the shelter, tea skin and tee peep holes or whatever you're doing. What's the use of a saw versus the next? I greatly prefer an axe. A saw though has, it's value goes up quite a bit when you're in hardwoods. Like when you're in a hardwood oaks and hickory and things like that. It's, they're a lot harder to chop.

1:46:06So a saw is pretty nice in those situations. I'd say in those situations, I'd like to have both in the north woods and in like more kind of forest. I don't think there's enough advantages that a saw in curves with a good axe. Now you'll see people with little like camp axes and stuff and they just don't think they like axes. It's like, well, you haven't actually tried to try a good one first and get good with it. The one thing about an axe, they're dangerous. So you need to like practice, always control it with two hands. Make sure you're not, you know where it's going to go. It doesn't hit you or when you're chopping like so you're creating something that you're not doing it on rocks and stuff.

1:46:42So that it's, you're doing on top of wood so that when you're hitting the ground, you're not dull in your axe. You know, there's, you got to be a little bit thoughtful about it. Have you ever injured yourself on the next in the early days? Yeah. That first, so I'd gotten a knee surgery. And then about three months later, I had torn my ACL and went over to Russia and I was like, well, I got a good knee. It's okay. And then that's when I was building that fence that first time. At one point, I chopped my rubber boot with my axe because it reflected off and I was new to him. And I was really frustrated because I'd done it before.

1:47:16And, and a native guy was like, oh, you know, I think there's a boot we left, you know, a few years ago we left a boot like four kilometers that way. So we got the reindeer, took him, rode him over. Sure enough, there's a stump with a boot upside down. Pull it out, put it on. I was like, sweet and back in business. I went back a couple days later, put in a chump chop that cut your foot, cut my rubber boot and I was just like, dang it. And I was mad enough that I just grabbed that axe and swung it at the tree and it just one handed and like deflected off and ran right into my nose. And I was like, oh, I fell down.

1:47:50I was like, oh, my gosh, because you get your axe really like razor sharp and then just swung it into my knee. I didn't even want to look. I was like, oh, no, if I looked and it wasn't a huge wound because it had hit right on the bone of my knee, but it split the bone, cut a tendon there. And I was on the middle of the woods. I literally like, I knew I was in shock as I'm just going to go back to T .P. right now. So I like ran back to T .P. laid down and honestly, I was stuck there for a few days. I was there so much pain and my other knee was bad. It was like rough. I couldn't even, I literally couldn't even walk at all or move.

1:48:23I had to like, there was a plastic bag. I did like poop in it and like rolled to the edge of the T .P. like shove it under the box. I was like, I can't just totally immobilize. I guess that should teach you to not act when you're in a state of frustration or anger. There you go. I mean, it's such a lesson too. There were so many of those. And it was always, I was always in a little bit over my head, but like I said, you kind of do that enough and you make a lot of mistakes. But every time you learn, I'm like, now it's like an extension of my art. That's not going to happen because I just know how it works now.

1:48:55You mentioned what would, how you start a fire when everything's around you is what? I mean, it depends on your environment. But I will say in most of force that I spend a lot of time in and all the north woods, the best thing you can do is find a dead standing tree. So it can be downpouring rain and you chop that tree down. And then when you, when you split it open, no matter how much it's been raining, it'll be dry on the inside. So it's chop that tree down, chop a piece, you know, foot long piece out. And then split that thing open and then split it again. And then you get to that inner drywood.

1:49:33And then you try to do this maybe under a spruce tree or under your own body so that it's not going to rain down while you're doing it. Make a bunch of little curls that'll catch a flame or light. And then you make a lot of, a lot more kindling and little pieces of drywood than you think because it'll happen you'll light it and it'll burn through and it like dang it. So just be patient. You're going to be fine. You know, like make a nice pile of curls that you can light or spark and then get a lot of good drag kindling. And then don't be afraid to just boom, boom, boom, pile a bunch of wood on and make a big old fire, get warm as fast as you can.

1:50:09It's amazing how much that is of a recharge it is when you're cold and wet. You can throw relatively wet wood on top of that. Once you get that going, yeah, then it'll dry as it goes. But you need to be able to split open and get all that nice dry wood on the inside. I saw that you mentioned that you look for fat wood. What's fat wood? So on a lot of pine trees, a place where the tree was injured when it was alive, it like pumps sap to it. And then it is a good point because I use this a lot. It pumps that tree full of sap and then years later, the tree dies, dries out, rots away. But that sap infused wood.

1:50:48It's like turpentine in there. It's oily. And so if it gets wet, it does it. You can still light it. It repulses water. And so if you can find that in a rainstorm, you can just make a little pile of those shavings. Get the crappiest spark or quickest light and it'll just sit there and burn like a factory fire starter. You know, it's really really nice. That's good to spot. It's a good thing to keep your eye out for. Yeah, it's really fascinating. And then you make this thing. That's just to get the sauna going fast. That was just, what was that? That was a well. Oh, it was a used motor oil ad if you mix it with some sawdust.

1:51:28And then, no, it's not as good. It's burned just like that. That's kind of like homemade fat wood. I don't know how many times I've watched happy people a year in the Thai Gava, one of her's, you've talked about this movie. Where is that located relative to where you were? So there's this big river called the Yenisay that feeds through the middle of Russia. And there's a bunch of tributaries off of it. And one of the tributaries is called the Pudkhaman in the Atun Guska. And I was up that river. And just a little ways north is another river called the Bhakhta. And that's where that village is where they filmed happy people.

1:52:04So in Siberian terms, we're neighbors. Similar environment, similar place. That's for Trapper that I was with knew the guy in the films. What would you say about their way of life? Maybe in what you've experienced and what you saw in happy people? There's something really, really powerful about spending that much time being independent. Depending on what we talked about a little earlier, but you're putting yourself in these situations all the time where you're uncomfortable, where it's hard, but then you're rising to the occasion, you're making a happen. There's nobody, when you're fur -trapping by yourself, there's nobody else to look at, to blame for anything that goes wrong.

1:52:49It's just yourself that you're reliant on. And there's something about the natural rhythms that you are in when you're that connected to the natural world that really does feel like that's what we're designed for. And so there's a psychological benefit you gain from spending that much time in that realm. And for that reason, I think that people that are connected to those ways are able to tap into a particular, I noticed it a lot with the natives. So if I met the natives in the village, I would think of them as unhappy people. They drink a lot. They always fight. And the murder rate is through the roof, the suicide rates, through the roof.

1:53:34But, you meet those same people in the woods living that way of life I thought these are happy people. And it's an interesting juxtaposition to be the same person. But I lived in a native village that had the ring you're hurting going on around it. And everybody kind of benefited because of that. I also went to a native village that they didn't hold those ways anymore. And so everybody was just in the village life. And it just felt like a dark place. Whereas the other native village, it was rough in the village because everybody drank all the time. But when it had that escape, and it had that escape valve.

1:54:07And then once you're out there, it's just a whole different world. And it was such an odd juxtaposition. 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're not able to, you're in it, you're happy, but you're not able to reflect on the nature of that happiness. It's really weird. I've thought about that a lot. And 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 and so complex.

1:54:47Because you know, you can be out in the woods and have this really cool life. I will say it's a little bit different for men than 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 reindeer and you got these, all these adventures. So what ends up happening is that a lot more guys and girl, young men out there in the woods. And so 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 it, but then once they're there, honestly alcohol becomes so overwhelming that everything else kind of just fiddles away.

1:55:25But it's funny that the comfort you find, you there's a draw to comfort. But once you get to the comfort, once you find the comfort, within that comfort, you become the lesser version of yourself. Yeah, I hope for sure. It's weird. What a lesson for us. Like we need to keep struggling. Yeah, a lot of times you have to force yourself in that. So like if we took them as an example, I mean, a lot of times you drag us to drunk guy into the woods, literally just drag him into the woods and then he'd sober up and then he was like a month blackout drunk and now he's sobered up and now boom back into life, back into being a knowledgeable, capable person and because comfort's so available to us all, you almost have to force yourself into that situation, plan it out.

1:56:11Okay, I'm going to go do that. And do that hard thing and then deal with the consequences when I'm there. I mean, what do you learn from that on the nature of happiness? What does it take to be happy? Happiness is interesting because it's complex and multifaceted. It includes a lot of things that are out of your control and a lot of things that are in your control. And it makes it's quite the moving target in life. You know what I mean? So yeah, one of the things that really impacted me when I was a young man and I read the Gulag Arca Pellagov was don't pursue happiness because the ingredients to happiness can be taken from you outside of your control, your health, your, but pursue like a spiritual fullness pursue.

1:56:58I think he words it duty and then happiness may come alongside or it may not, but so he gave the example that I thought was really interesting and in the prison camps, everybody's trying to survive and they've made that their ultimate goal. I will get through this and then and they've all basically turned into animals and pursued that goal and like lying and cheating and stealing and then he was like, and somehow the corrupt Orthodox church produced these little babushkas who like candles in the middle of all this darkness because they did not allow their soul to get corrupted. And he's like, what they did do is they died.

1:57:36They all died, but they were lights while they were alive and lost their lives, but they didn't lose their souls. So for myself, that was really powerful to read and realize that the pursuit of happiness wasn't exactly what I wanted to aim at. I wanted to aim at living out my life according to love. Like we talked about earlier. Trying to be that candle. Trying to be that candle. Yeah, make that your ideal. And then in doing so is interesting. So when for me personally, my personal experience is that is I thought when I went to Russia that I kind of gave up, I was like in my 20s, I spent my whole 20s living in teapies and doing all this stuff that I thought I should give you getting a job.

1:58:13I should be pursuing a career. I should get an education of some sort. Like what am I doing for my future? But I felt I was new where my purpose was, I knew what I was calling was. I was going to do it. And it sounds glamorous now when I talk about it, but it sucked a lot of the times. And there's a lot of a lot of loneliness, a lot of like 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 this effort and just die and that and then it was that happened all the time. And then the other thing I thought I gave up was like a relationship because you couldn't, you know, I wasn't going to find a partner over there.

1:58:50And so interestingly enough, now in life I can look back and be like, whoa, we're those two things I thought I gave up is where I've been like almost provided for the most in life. Now I have this career guiding people in the wilderness that I love. Like I genuinely love it. I find purpose in it. I 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 aim at it. I like, I consciously in a way, I mean, I hoped it was tangential, but I aimed at something else, which was those lessons I kind of got from the Gulagar Capella Go.

1:59:26So you have just because you you mentioned Gulagar Capella Go, I got to go there. You have some suffering in your family history. Whether it's the Armenian, Assyrian genocide or the Nazi occupation of France, maybe you could tell the story of that. What the survival thing runs in your blood, it seems. I love history. I find so much richness 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 and they were Assyrians, which was a, you know, like a Christian minority and indigenous people in the Middle East.

2:00:16They lived in Northwestern Iran. And during the chaos of World War One, you know, and the Ottoman Empire was collapsing and had all kinds of issues. And it, one of its issues was it had a big minority group and it thought it would be a good time to get rid of it. And, you know, they can justify it in all the ways you can. Like there's some people that were, we're belling or this is that. But ultimately it was just a big collective guilt and extermination politely against the Armenians and the Assyrians and the, my grandparents. My grandma was 13 at the time and my grandpa was 17, which is interesting because it happened almost 100 years ago, but our generally, just my dad was born when my mom was, my grandma was pretty old.

2:01:03So, um, but my grandmother, her dad was taken out to be shot, you know, the turds were coming in and rounding up all the men and they took them out to be shot and then they took my grandma and her, she had seven brothers and sisters and her mom and they'd like drove her out into the desert. Uh, basically she, her dad got taken out to be shot. So his name was Shalman, Numara, whatever took him out. They were all tied up, all shot. He'd say to quick prayer before they shot him, but he fell down and he, uh, found he wasn't hit and usually of course they'd come up and stab everybody or finish him off.

2:01:45But there was some kind of an alarm and all the soldiers rushed off and he found himself in the bodies and was able to untie himself. They were naked and, you know, hungry and all that and he ran out of there, escaped, went into a building and found the loaf of bread wrapped in a shirt and was able to escape. He fled. He never saw his family for, so to continue the story, my grandma got taken with her, with her mother and brothers and sisters and all just, they just drove them into the desert until they died, basically running around in circles and this and that and then all the raping and pillaging that accompanies it and, um, uh, 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 picked her up to the tea.

2:02:37We got to keep going and like picked her up and they left the baby along with the other. Everybody else had died. It was just a three of them left and somehow they bumble across this British military camp and were rescued. Uh, my, neither of the sister nor my great -grandmother ever really covered as far, you know, recovered from what I understand, but my grandma did, um, at the same time in another village in North, in the ran there, the Turks came in and were burning down my grandpa's village and they caught and my grandpa's dad was in a wheelchair and he had like some money belt and he stuffed all his money in it and told it gave it to grandpa and just told him to run and don't turn back and they came in the front door as he was running out the back and they, uh, he never saw his dad again but he said he turned around and saw the built, you know, the house on fire.

2:03:28Never knew what happened to his sister. She then so he was just alone. He ran. Yeah, at some point he, uh, I can't remember, like, lost his money belt. Like he took his jacket off. Forgot I was in it. Something happened. Um, anyway, so he got, he was in a refugee camp, he ended up getting taken in by some Jesuit missionaries. So anyway, both of them had lost basically everything and then at some point they met and bagged dad, started a family, immigrated to France and then it just happened to be right before World War II and so then the not she's invaded my aunt. She's still alive but she, uh, she actually met a resistance fighter, you know, for the French and under a bridge somewhere and they, and they fell in love and she got married.

2:04:15So she had kind of an in on the on the French resistance at one point and they, of course, they were all hungry. They'd recently immigrated but also had this Nazi occupation and all that and so the Uncle Joe, the resistance fighter guy told him, like, hey, we're going to storm this noodle factory, like, come and so they stormed the noodle factory and all my aunts around in there and were like throwing out noodles into wheelbarrow and everybody was running. Uh, then the Nazis came back and took it back over and like shot a bunch of people and everything and, and uh, grandpa, because he had already come from where he came from was paranoid so he buried all the noodles out in the garden and then my two aunts got stuck in that factory overnight with all the Nazi guards or whatever and then the the Nazi guards went out from house to house to find everybody that had had noodles and you know, punish them but they didn't find my grandpa's fortunately, they searched his house, oh, but not the garden and then, uh, so they had noodles and somehow it must have been in the same factory or something but all the oil and they just lived off of that for the whole, all the whole war years.

2:05:19My aunts ended up getting out of that they hid behind boxes and crates overnight and stuff and the resistance stormed again in the morning and this, they got away and stuff but anyway chaos. So when they moved to America, I will say the most patriotic family everywhere ever loved it. Just like paradise here. I mean, that's a, uh, that's a lot to go through. What lessons do you draw from that on perseverance? Look, I'm one, I'm just one generation away from all that suffering. Like my aunts and uncles and dad and sufferers, the kids of these people and somehow I don't have that. Like what happened to all that trauma?

2:05:58Like I, it's like somehow my grandparents bore it and then they were able to build a family but not just a family that, but a happy family. Like I knew all my aunts and uncles and I didn't know them they died before me but, um, they were, it was so much joy. The family unions were the best thing ever at the Jonas' and they, uh, and it's just like how in one generation did you go from that to that and and it must have been a great sacrifice of some sort to not pass that much like resentment or like what did they do to break that chain in one generation? Do you think it works the other way like where their ability to escape genocide to escape, uh, Nazi occupation gave them a gratitude for life.

2:06:48Oh yeah. It's not a trauma in the sense like you're forever bearing it. The flip side of that is just gratitude to be alive when you know so many people at the Nazi way. Yeah, it must be because yeah, the only footage I saw of my grandma was like they were all the kids and stuff and they were cooking up a rabbit that they were raising or whatever and they, uh, but a joyful woman. You could see it in her and she must have been so, she must have understood how fortunate she was and been so grateful for it and so thankful for every one of those 11 kids she had. So I've recognized it again in my in my dad because my dad went through a really slow kind of painful decline in his health and he had diabetes ended up losing one leg and so he lost his job.

2:07:35He had to watch his mom or my mom go to school. He'd long all he wanted to do was be a provider, being like a family man. I bet the best time in his life was when his kids ran to him again. But then all of a sudden he found himself in a position where he couldn't work and he had to watch his wife go to school, which was really hard for her and and become the breadwinner for the family. He just felt like a failure and I've watched him go through that after all these years of letting that foot heel. We went out first day and we're splitting firewood with a splitter and he was so good to be back out Jordan at seven nights.

2:08:07And he crushed his foot in the log splitter and he's like, no. And so then they just ambitated it. We've got both legs amputated and then his health continued to decline. He lost his movement in his hands. So he was like incapacitated to a degree and in a lot of pain. I would hear him at night in pain all the time. And I delayed a trip back to Russia and just stayed with my dad for those last six months. And it was so interesting having had lost everything. I watched him wrestle with it through the years. But then he found his joy and his purpose just in being almost, I mean, a vegetable I'd have to help him pee, roll him under the cot, take him to dialysis.

2:08:47And but we would laugh.

2:08:52He in the morning, he'd have like encouraging words to say and and I said, wow, that's how you face loss and suffering and and he must have gotten that from him somehow from his parents. And then you know, I find myself on this show and I had a thought like, why is this easy to me in a way? Like, you know, why is this thing that's and I was like, and it just felt like this gift that it kind of handed down. And now it would be my duty to hand down. You know, like, but it's kind of an interesting and be the beacon of that represent that kind of perseverance in the in the simpler way that something like survival in the wilderness shows.

2:09:31Yeah, it's the same. It rhymes. It rhymes and it's so simple like the lessons are simple and so we can take them and apply them. So that's on the survivor side. What about on the people committing the atrocities? What do you make of the Ottomans? What they did to Armenians or the Nazis? What they did to the Jews, the Slavs and basically everyone. What do you what do you think people do evil in this world?

2:10:02It's interesting that it's really easy. All right, it's really easy. You can almost see it sense it in yourself to justify to justify a little bit of evil or you see yourself cheer a little bit when the enemy gets knocked back in some way. It's really in the way it's just perfectly naturalist for us to feed that hate and feed that tribalism in group out group. We're 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 hear something and it makes it makes you think that you are in the right to perform some kind of, you know, you're justified and create, you know, bring a couple eggs to make an omelette type thing.

2:10:53And then, but all of a sudden that takes you down this whole train to where pretty soon you're justifying what's completely unjustifiable. This is gradual. As gradual process of a little bit at a time. I think that's why like for me, like having a path of faith is like works as like a mooring because it can help me shine that light on myself. You know, it's like something else because if you're just looking at yourself and looking within yourself for your compass in life, it's really easy to get that thing out of whack. But you kind of need a perspective from which you can step out of yourself and look into yourself and judge yourself accordingly.

2:11:34And in my walking in line with that ideal, you know, and then and I think without that check, you're subject, you know, it's 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, you know, what if we pictured yourself in the position of my grandparents and then all of a sudden you got the upper hand in some kind of a fight, what are you going to do? You know, you could you'd definitely picture becoming evil in that situation. I think one thing faith in God can do is humble you before these kinds of complexities of the world.

2:12:20And humility is a way to avoid the slippery 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 sort of bigger powers to try to understand that. Yeah, I think there's a kind of, I mean, a lot of the atrocities were committed with people who are very sure of themselves being good. Yeah, that's so true. It is sad that religion is at times used as a way to kind of just as yet another tool for justification. Yeah. Which is a sad application of religion. It really is. It's so inherent and so natural in us to justify ourselves. It's really, it's really, I mean, I think it's almost, I mean, just understanding history, read history, it blows my mind that.

2:13:21And I'm super thankful that somehow, and this has been missed you so much, but somehow this ideology arose that love your enemies. Forgive forgive 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 talking, you know, what is so natural, just becomes another instrument for tribalism or another justification for wrong. And so I even myself, I'm self conscious sometimes talking about matters of faith because I know when I'm talking about I'm talking about something else other than, you know, there's everybody within what someone else might think of when they hear me talking about it.

2:14:14So it's interesting. Yeah, I've been listening to Jordan Peterson talk about this. He has a way of articulating things, which are sometimes hard to understand in the moment, but when I like read it carefully afterwards, it starts to make more sense. I've heard him talk about religion and God as a kind of base layer, like a metaphorical substrate from which morality of our sense of what is right and wrong comes from. And just our conceptions of what is beautiful in life, all these kinds of higher things that are like fuzzy, to understand that their religion helps create this substrate for which we as a species, like as a civilization can come up with these notions and without it, you are lost at sea.

2:15:01I guess for him, morality requires that substrate. 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's not something you profess or anything like that. It's something that you take seriously and apply in your life. And when you live it, then there's some clarity there, but that it has to be kind of defined. Like it's like, it's and that's where you come in with the religion of the stories because if you leave it completely undefined, I don't really know where you go from there. Actually, it's in the funny to speak to that. I did mushroom. Have you ever done those?

2:15:41Mushroom did. I've done them a couple times, but one time was didn't do that many the other time more. And I had had a really profound experience in helping couch all this in the proper context for myself. So I could when I did it, I remember I was sitting on 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 blissful and kind of amorphous. And I could see the outline of my kids. And I could just feel the love for them. And I was just like, man, I just feel the love. It's so wonderful. Like, you know, but then I would, you know, at times I would try to picture him.

2:16:22And I couldn't quite picture the kids, but I could feel the love. And then, and then I started asking all the deepest and existential questions I could, you know, and it felt like I just won answer another answer, another answer. Everything was being answered. And I felt like I was communing with God, whatever you want to say. And, but I was very aware of the fact that that communing was just peeling back the tiniest corner of the infinite. And it just dumped me with every answer I felt like I could have. And it kind of blew me away. So then I asked it, well, if you're the infinite, like, why did you reveal to me yourself?

2:16:56Why did you use like the story of Jesus to reveal yourself? And, and then that infinite amorphous thing had to somehow take form for us to like, for us to be able to relate to it. It had to have some kind of a form. And, but whenever you create a form out of something, you're like boxing it in and subjugating it to boundaries and stuff like that. And then that subject to pain and subject to the brokenness and all that. And I was like, oh, wow. And then when I had that thought, then all of a sudden 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 amorphous feeling of love.

2:17:40It was like, oh, there's a law in all times. I and, but, but then they were bounded. And then once they're bounded, you're subject to the death and to the misunderstanding and to the all that. Like, you know, I picture the amoeba or the cell. And then when it dies, it turns into an unformed thing. And so we need some kind of form to relate to. So instead of always just talking about God completely and tangibly, it kind of gave me a way to relate to it. And I think, oh, wow, that's really powerful to me. And putting it in a context that was applicable. But ultimately, God is sort of the thing that's formless that is unbounded.

2:18:26But we humans need. I mean, that's the purpose of stories. They resonate with something, you know, but when you need the sort of the bounded nature, the constraints of those stories, otherwise we wouldn't be able to relate to it. Can't relate to it. Yeah. And then when you look at the stories literally, or you just look at them just as they are, it seems silly. Mm -hmm. It's too simplistic. Right. And then that was always, you know, a lot of my family and loved ones and friends have completely left the faith. And I totally, I, on the way, I get it. I understand, but I also really see the baby that's being thrown out at the bathwater.

2:19:10And I want to cherish that in a way, I guess. And it's interesting that you say that the way to know what's right and wrong is, if to live it. Sometimes it's, it's probably very difficult to articulate, but in the living of it, do you realize it? Yeah. And I'm glad you say that because that's, I found a lot of comfort in that because I feel somewhat inarticulate a lot of the times. I'm unable to articulate my thoughts, especially on these matters. And then the only thing is I just have to, but I do have to, I can't live it. I can try to live it. You know, and then what I also am struck with right away is I can't, because you can't love everybody.

2:19:50You can't love your enemies. And you can't. But as placing that in front of you, I was the ideal is so important to put like a check on your human instincts, on your tribalism, on your, I mean, you can very quickly, like we're talking about with evil. You know, it can really quickly take its place in your life. I almost, you almost want to observe it happening, you know, but, and so I so much appreciate all the, the me striving. And that's where, you know, I grew up in a Christian family. So I had these like cliches that I didn't really understand, like a relationship with God. Like, what does that mean?

2:20:29But then I realized when I struggled with trying, with taking, I actually did try to take it seriously and struggle with what does it mean to live out a life of love in the world. But that's like a wrestling match because it's not that simple. It doesn't sound, it sounds good, but it's really hard to do. And then you realize you can't do it perfectly, but, but in that struggle in that wrestling match is where I actually sense that relationship. And then it's, and that's where it kind of gains life and how that really, and that, I'm sure that relates to what Jordan Peterson is, you know, getting out in his, in his metaphor.

2:21:08In this, in this striving of the ideal, in this driving towards the ideal, you discover the, how to be a better person. One thing I noticed really tangibly on alone was that because I had so many people that were close to me kind of just leave it all together, I was like, I could do that. I actually understand why they do. Or I could not, you know, I do have a choice. And so I had to choose at that point to, to maintain that ideal. And because I could add enough time on alone, the one nice thing is you don't have any distractions, you have all the time in the world to go into your head. And I could play those pads out in my life, and not only in my life, but I feel like societally and for, in generationally, like, I throw it all away and everybody start from square one or we can try to, you know, redeem what's valuable in this and wrestle with it in just driving.

2:22:05And so I just, I chose that path. Well, I do think it's the kind of wrestling match because I'm, I'm, you mentioned Guggar Capalgo. 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 human being is not a trivial one. You have to find the right tools for yourself to be able to be the candle as you mentioned before. And then for that, religion and faith can help. I'm sure there's other ways, but I think it's grounded in understanding that each human is able to be a really bad person and a really good person. And that's like a choice.

2:22:50It's a deliberate choice. And it's a choice that's taking every moment and builds up over time. And, and, and the hard part about is you don't know. You don't always have the clarity using reason to understand what is good and what is right and what is wrong. You have to kind of live it with humility and constantly struggle. Because then yeah, you have to, you have, you might wake up on a society where you're committing genocides. And you think you're the good guys. And I think you have to have the courage to, to realize you're not. It's not always obvious. It isn't, man. And, but history has the clarity to show who were the good guys and who were the bad guys.

2:23:39Right. You have wrestle with it. It's like that quote, you know, the line between good and evil goes through the heart of every man. And we push it this way and that. And our job is to work on that within ourselves. Yeah, that's the part that's what I like. So 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 move that line. So it's like, it's very deliberate thing. It's not like you're born this way. And it's it. Yeah, I agree. And, and especially in, you know, in conditions with that are like worn piece, uh, in the case of the camps, you know, absurd levels of injustice in the face of all that.

2:24:36When everything is taken away from you, you still have the choice to, to be, to be the candle like the grandmas. By the way, the grandmas, in like all parts of the world are like the strongest. Yeah, I don't know what it is. I don't they have this like wisdom, uh, that comes from patients and have seen it all. They've seen all the bullshit of the people that come and gone, all the abuses of power, all of this. I don't know what it is. And they just keep going. Right, right. Right. Yeah, that's so true. What do you think of, uh, as we've gotten a bit philosophical, what do you think of, uh, Warner Herzog style of narration?

2:25:22I kind of wish he narrated my life. Yeah, it's amazing to listen to. Because that documentary is actually in Russian. I think he took a longer series. Yeah. And then put narration over. And that narration can transform like a story. Yeah, he does an incredible job with it. I, I was, I, have you seen the full version? Have you watched the four part full version? You should like it. It's in Russian. And so you'll get the fullness of that. And it's, uh, he had to fit it into it to our format. And so I think what you lose in those extra couple hours is worth watching. I think you'll like it. So yeah, they always go, they always go pretty dark.

2:26:08Do they? He has a very dark, uh, sense about nature that is violence and it's, uh, I think that's important to recognize because it's really easy. I mean, especially with what I do and what I talk about and I see so much of the value and nature. Gosh, you know, it, I also see like a beautiful moose and a calf running around. And then next week I see the calf ripped the shreds by wolves and you're just like, oh, and it's, uh, it's not as, it's, it's, it's not as rustle and as we'd like to think, you know, it is, it, you know, things must die for things to live. Like you said, and that's just played out all the time.

2:26:52And it's indifferent to you. Doesn't, doesn't care if you live or die. And, and doesn't care how you die or how much pain you go through while you, you know, it's like, it's pretty brutal. So that, it's interesting that he taps into that and I think, I think it's valuable because it's easy to idealize in a way. But, yeah, the indifference is, I don't know what to make of it. There isn't a difference. It's a bit scary. It's a bit lonely. Mm -hmm. You're just a cog in the, in the machine, of nature. I think that doesn't really care for you. Totally. I think that's the most that with a lot on, on that show is another part of the depths of your psychology delve into.

2:27:33But, and that's when I thought like I could, I could, I understand that deeply, but I could also choose to believe that for some reason it matters. And then I could live like it matters. And then I could see the trajectories and the kind of that was another fork in the road of my path, I guess. What do you think about the connection to the animal? So in that, in that movie, it's with the dogs. And with you, it's the other domesticated, the reindeer. What do you think about that human animal connection? In the context of that indifference, it's interesting that we assign so much value and love and appreciation for these animals.

2:28:12And in some degree, we get that back. And I reciprocated. I think right now you just said the reindeer. I think of the one that gave me, because he was long and tall, so they named him Dleene. And I just remember Dleene, and just watching him eat the leaves and go with me through the woods and trust him to take me through rivers and stuff. And, and it really is special. It's really enriching, you know, to 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 is they relate to life and death a little more naturally.

2:28:49It feels, you know, we feel really removed from it, and it's particularly in urban settings. And I think, I think when you interact with animals and you have to confront the life and the death of them and the responsibility of putting in a symbiotic relationship you have, I think it opens a little bit of awareness to your place in the, in the puzzle and puts you in it rather than above it. Have you been able to accept your own death? I wonder, you know, you wonder when, when it actually comes, what are you going to think? But I did have, you know, I did have my dad to watch, confronted in his positive of manner as you could.

2:29:32And I, and that's a big advantage. And so, I think when the time comes that I will be ready, but I think it, but I think that's easy to say when the time feels far off, you know, it'll be interesting if you got a cancer diagnosis tomorrow in stage four. So be heavy. Did you have a confront death wall in survival situations? I mean, when you're, I mean, you're in, I did have a time, I had a time where I thought I might, 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 that. But the one that that I was able to be conscious through a slowly evolving experience that I thought I might die in was at one point where siphoning gas out of a barrel and it was almost to the bottom and I was just like, so it's sucking really hard to get the gas out.

2:30:21And then I didn't, I didn't get the siphon going. So I like waited. And then while I was sitting there, Europe put the, a new canister on top and put the hose in and I, I didn't see. And so then I went to get another, you know, siphon and I went, like sucked as hard as I couldn't, just instantly like a bunch of gas filled my mouth and I couldn't like spit it out. I had to go like that. And I just full mouth full of gas that I just drank. And I was just like, oh, like what is that going to do? And he and my friend were going to go on this fishing trip and so I was, I was just like, oh, I might just stay.

2:30:56And I was in this little Russian village. And they're like, all right, well, Europe was like, man, I had a buddy that died doing that with diesel a couple of years ago. You know, you know, oh, man. And so anyway, I made my way to the hospital by then, you know, you're really out of it because and then, uh, and it was, they put me in this little dark room. It almost sounds like unrealistic, but it's exactly how happened. They put me in a little, a little room with a toilet and they give me a cold, you know, galvanized bucket and then like, there's had a cold water faucet and they're just like, just jug water, puking to the toilet and just flesh your system as much as you can.

2:31:35But they only had a cold water faucet. So I was just sitting there like, chug, chug, chug, chug, until like you puking, chug until you puking them in the dark. And I, and I was like, started a shiver because I was so cold. But I said to like, still like, get the thing up to me and chug until I puked. I was picture in a member reading, you know, about the Japanese torture where they would put a hose in somebody and then make them shrink water to the puke. Anyway, the, and I, and I just felt so, the only way I can express it, I felt so possessed like demon because it's like I was just permeated with gas.

2:32:07I could feel it just coming out of my pores and I like, I wanted to like rip it out of me and I couldn't, I'd like puking to the toilet and then couldn't see. But I was wondering if it was like rain by me. And then, and then I just remember like, I could tell I was going out pretty soon and, um, and I remember looking at my hands up close, I could see them a little bit and I was like, oh, that's how dad's hands looked, you know, they were alive alive and then, yeah, they're interesting. Is it, are my hands going to look like that in a few minutes or whatever? So then I wrote down like to my family, what I thought, you know, like I love you all, like feel at peace and then I passed out and I woke up.

2:32:48I didn't think, I actually thought, I mean, I went to pass out, I thought it was, there was a coin toss for me. So I really felt like I was confronting the end there. What are the harshest 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, you know, chance to go out and put it. What with maybe Greenland, I think of Greenland because I think of, you know, those Vikings that settled there were rugged, capable dudes and they didn't make it. But there are in you that, that, you know, natives that live up there, but that's a hard life, you know, and the populations never grown very big because they're, you scrape them by up there and you picture and the Vikings that did land there, you know, they just weren't able to quite adapt and the fact that they all died out is just a symbol to that must be a pretty difficult place.

2:33:45What would you say that's, that's primarily because just the food sources are limited. The food sources are limited, but the fact that some people can live there means it is possible, you know, that they've 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. Yeah, it's fascinating, not just humans, but to watch how animals have figured out how to survive. Of watching like a documentary on polar bears, like they just figure out a way and they get, and they've been doing it for generations and they, they figure out a way, they travel like hundreds of miles to like to the, to the water to get fat and they travel 100 miles, like for whatever other purpose, because it, because they want to stay on the ice, I don't know, but it's like, there's, there's a process.

2:34:39Yeah. They figured out against the long odds and some of them don't make it. It's incredible. It's what a, what a tough thing, man, you just think every little, every animal you see up in the mountains when I'm up in the woods, is that thing just surviving through the winter, winter scraping by? It's tough, tough existence. What do you think it would take to break you? To say mentally. Um, like if you're in a survival situation, I mean, I think it would have mentally, it 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 on earth, I wouldn't do it.

2:35:25I got thought, 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 we're, we're so blessed in the time we live, like, but I can't imagine what it's like to lose your kids, something like that. It was an experience that was so common for humanity for so much of history. Um, would I be able to endure that? I would have at least a legacy to look back on of people who did, but God forbid I ever have to doubt, delve that deep, you know what I mean, that I could see that breaking somebody. And I mean, in your family, in your own family history, there's, there's people who have survived that.

2:36:07Right. Maybe that would give you hope. I mean, I think that's what I would have to somehow hold on to. But in a survival situation, you're, there's very few things that I don't know what it would be like. So I'm alone, like, uh, I know alone, I knew if I wasn't going to, and ultimately it is a game show. So it's like, ultimately, I wasn't 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, okay, I'm not going to go home. You know, but like if you put yourself in that situation, but it's not a game show and haven't been there to some degree, like, I will say I wasn't even close.

2:36:49Like, I don't even know. Yeah. Yeah. I hadn't gotten, it hadn't pushed my mental limit at all. Yeah, I would say we're all on the scale, but that's not to say there isn't one. I know there is one. And but I have a hard time. I know I've dealt 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 to do. Oh, that's interesting. I mean, that is, that is a real difficult battle when there's an exit.

2:37:31It's easy to quit. Right. Yeah. Well, I'm doing this. Yeah. That's, I, that's a thing that like, it gets louder and louder at the harder of these things. That point, it's not insignificant. Like, if you think you're doing, and I got, you know, if you think you're doing permanent damage to your body, you would be smart to quit. You should just not do that on a, when it's not necessary, because health is kind of all you have in some regards. So, well, I don't blame anyone then they quit because of that reason. It's like good, but, but if you're in a situation and it's you don't have the option to quit, is knowing that you're doing permanent, that's not going to break, that won't break me.

2:38:14You know, I just, you just have to get through it. I'm not sure what my mental limit would be outside of like the family suffering in the way that I described earlier. One is just you. It's you alone. There's the limit. You don't know what the limit is. I don't know. Injuries, injuries, like physical stuff is annoying though. That could be. Isn't it weird? How, like, I mean, I can be, have a good life, happy life, and then you have a bad back or you have a headache. And it's amazing how much that can overwhelm your experience. And then again, that was something I saw in Dad. It was like interesting.

2:38:53How can you find joy in that when you're just steeped 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 talk about the cross to bear and the like hero journey to be like good for you for trying to find what you can, what you, your way through that. There was a lady in Russia, Tanya and she had had cancer and recovered, but always had a pounding headache. And she was really joyful and really fun to be around. And I just like, man, I mean, you just have to have a really bad headache for today. Know how much that throws a wrench in your existence.

2:39:35So, so all that to say, if you're not right and I was suffering with blindness or a bad back or it's like, it's just kind of your blessings because it is all, it's so easy to have. It's, it's amazing how complex we are, how well our bodies work and when they go out of whack, they can be very overwhelming and they all will at some point. And so that's an interesting thing to think ahead on how you're going to confront it when it does. Keeps you humble, like you said. It's inspiring that people figure out a way with my brains. That's a hard one though. You have headaches. It's so hard. Oh man, because those can be really painful.

2:40:13And it's like and dizzying and all of this, that's inspiring. That's inspiring. There's not nothing in that. You know, I mean, you can find somehow you can tap into purpose even in that pain. I guess I would just speak from like right and my dad's experience. I saw somebody do it and I benefited from it. So thanks to him for seeing the higher calling there. You are, you're going to note on your blog in 2012, you spent five weeks ish in the forest alone. I just thought it was interesting because this is in contrast to on the show alone, you're really alone. Like you're not talking anybody and you realize that I remember at one point after several weeks that passed, I wondered into a particularly beautiful part of the woods and exclaimed out loud, wow.

2:41:09It struck me that it was the first time I had heard my own voice in several weeks with no one to talk to. What what did your thoughts go into some like deep place? Yeah, it's in my mental life was really active. You know, you end up when you're that long alone, I tell you what you won't have is any other skeletons in your closet that are still in your closet. He will be forced to confront every every person, even the one not, I mean, one thing if you've cheated on your wow, a wife or some, but you'll be confronted with the random dude you didn't say thank you to 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'll work through it and you'll think how you should make it right and I had a lot of those thoughts and while I was out there and it was it was so interesting to see what you would just brush over and then confront it because in our modern world when you're always distracted, you just never ever going to know until you take the time to be alone for a considerable amount of time.

2:42:22Spent time hanging on with the skeletons. Yeah, exactly. I recommend it. So you said you guide people, what what are your favorite places to go to? If I tell them, then is everybody gonna go? I like how you actually have a it might be a YouTube video or your Instagram post where you give them a recommendation of like the best fishing hole in the world and like you give detailed instructions how to get there, but it's like a journey of life. It's like a Lord of the Rings type of journey. Right, right. No, I love the I love the like in the you know, there's a region that I definitely love in the States because it's special to me.

2:43:02I grew up there. Stuff like that Idaho Wyoming Montana. Those are really cool places to me. I like that small town vibes. They're still maintaining and stuff there. Just like a mix of like mountains and forests. Mm -hmm. But you know, another really awesome place that blew my mind was New Zealand. That's South Island of New Zealand was pretty incredible. As far as just stunning stuff to see, I was pretty high up there on the list, but there's all these places have such kind of unique unique things about Canada became like where they did alone. It's not typically what you'd say because it's fairly flat and cliffy and stuff, but it really became beautiful to me because I could tapped into the richness of the land, you know, or you know, the fishing hole thing.

2:43:50It's like that's a special little spot, you know, something like that and you see the beauty and then you start to see the beauty in the smaller scale. Like all of that little meadow with that, it's got an orange and a pink and a blue flower right next to each other. That's super cool. You know, and there's a million things like that. Have you been back there yet? Back to where the alone show was? No, we're going back this summer. I'm going to take a guy to trip up there, take a bunch of people. I'm really looking forward to the journey. You know, we'll enjoy it without the pressure of. What advice would you give to people in terms of how to be in nature?

2:44:29So like a hikes to take or journeys to take out of nature where it could take you to that place where the business and the madness of the world can dissipate and you can be with it. How long does it take for you for people usually to just like? Yeah, I think you need a few days, probably to do it. Tap into it, but you know, maybe you need to work your way there. Like, it's awesome to go out on a hike. Go see some beautiful little waterfall or go see some old tree or whatever it is. You know, like, um, but I think just doing is it. You know, everybody thinks about doing it. You really just really do do it.

2:45:10Like go out and then plan to go overnight. Don't be so afraid of all the potentialities that you delay it inevitably. You know, it's actually one of the things that I've enjoyed the most about guiding people is is giving them 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 toolkit of life that is I think really valuable because I think everybody should spend some time in nature. Everything. It's been pretty proven. Yeah, I mean camping camping is great. And solo. Oh, gosh, yes, it did.

2:45:53Solo is pretty cool. Yeah, that's cool. You did. Yeah, it's cool. And I recorded stuff though that that helped. Oh, good. Yeah. So you sit there and you record the thoughts. Actually, for having to record the thoughts, I had to like, it forced me to really think through what I was feeling to convert the feelings into words, which is not a trivial thing because it's mostly just feeling. You feel a certain kind of way. That's interesting. You know, I felt like the way the way I met my wife was like, you know, we met at this wedding and then I went to Russia basically and we kept in touch via email for, you know, that year.

2:46:34And a similar thing. It was really interesting to be, have to be so thoughtful and purposeful about what you're saying and saying. I think it's probably healthy. Good thing to do. What gives you hope about this whole thing we have going on? The future of human civilization. If we talk about gratitude earlier, like, look at what we have now. That could give you hope. Like, look at what we've the world we're in. We live in such an amazing time with buildings and roads and buildings and rather than food security. And I lived 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 just that small group, your direct relationship to your needs, all that.

2:47:22But with the food security and the help, you know, modern medicine, 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, you're going to watch your family starve to death or things like that. We, so we have so much now, which should lead us to be hopeful while we try to improve because there's definitely a lot of things wrong, you know, but, but I guess there's a lot of room for improvement. And I do feel like we're sort of watching it walking on a nice edge, you know, but I guess that's the way it is. As the tools we build become more powerful.

2:48:02Yeah, it's exactly. I'm just getting sharper and sharper. I've talked, yeah, I'll like argue with my brother about that sometimes he takes the more positive view. And I'm like, I mean, it's great. We've done great, but man, more and more people with nuclear weapons and more, so it's going to take one mistake with the more power. I think there's something about the sharpness of the knife's edge. It gets humanity to really like focus and like step up and not not screwed up. There is just like you said with the cold going out into the extreme cold, it like wakes you up. And I think the same thing when you go to weapons is just like wakes up humanity like.

2:48:50Exactly. And then we keep building more and more powerful things to make sure we stay awake. Yeah, exactly. Stay awake. See what we've done. Be thankful for it, but then improve it. And then, you know, of course, I appreciated your little post the other week when you said you wanted some kids. You know, that's a very direct way to relate to the future and to have hope for the future. I can't wait. And I hope they also get chance to go out in the wilderness with you at some point. I would love it. That'd be fun. Open in. Let's make it happen. I got some really cool spots that I haven't managed to take you.

2:49:23Awesome. Let's go. Thank you for talking to me, brother. Thank you for everything you stand for. Thanks, man. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Jordan Jonas. 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 and video form, go to lexfremend .com slash AMA. Now, allow me to comment on the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on July 13th. First, as I've posted online, wishing Donald Trump good health after an assassination attempt is not a partisan statement.

2:50:12It's a human statement. And I'm sorry if some of you want to categorize 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 issue at a time and I try to approach everyone and every idea with empathy and with an open 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 attempted assassination of Donald Trump should serve as a reminder that history can turn on a single moment.

2:51:04World War I started with the assassination of Arsch Duke, France Ferdinand. And just like that, one moment in history, on June 18th, 1914, led to the death of 20 million people, half a home or civilians. If one of the bullets in July 13th had a slightly different trajectory, where Donald Trump would end up dying in that small town in Pennsylvania, history would write a new dramatic chapter, the contents of which all the so -called experts and pundits 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 country is unknown. We only see the surface turmoil on social media and so on.

2:51:50And in his events like the assassination of Arsch Duke, France Ferdinand, 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 maximally resilient and robust as such destabilizing 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 is the enemy. Some division is productive. It's how we develop good ideas and policies. But too much leads to the spread of resentment and hate that can boil over into destruction on a global scale.

2:52:35So 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 continuously try to turn down the temperature of the partisan bickering and more often celebrate our obvious common humanity. Now, let me also comment on conspiracy theories. I've been hearing a lot of those recently. I think they play an important role in society. They ask questions that serve as a check on power and corruption of centralized institutions. The way to answer the questions raised by conspiracy theories is not by dismissing them with arrogance and feigned ignorance, but with transparency and accountability.

2:53:22In this particular case, the obvious question that needs an honest answer is why did the secret service fail so terribly in protecting the former president? The story we're supposed to believe is that a 20 -year -old, untrained loner was able to outsmart the secret service by finding the optimal location on a roof for a shot on Trump from 130 yards away, even though the secret service sniper spotted him on the roof 20 minutes before the shooting and did nothing about it. This looks really shady to everyone. Why does it take 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?

2:54:08Cut the bullshit. What happened? Who fucked up and why? That's what we need to know. That's the beginning of transparency. And you ask the director of the US secret service 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 uniting and increasingly divided in cynical nation. Conspiracy theories are not noise, even when they're 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 secrecy.

2:54:51If we don't do these things, we leave ourselves vulnerable to singular moments that turn the tides of history. Empires do fall. Civil wars do break out and tear apart the fabric of 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, clickbait media, outrage, fueling politicians on the right and the left who try to divide us. We're not so divided. We're in this together. As I've said many times before, I love you all.

2:55:38This is a long comment. I'm hoping not to do comments this long in the future and hoping to do many more. So I'll leave it here for today, but I'll 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, go to lexfremar .com slash AMA. And now let me leave you with some words from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Adopt the pace of nature. Her secret is patience. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.