Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs.
This is Tim Ferriss.
Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers, people who are incredibly good possibly the best in the world at what they do.
My guest today is Jordan Jonas.
I spent a week in the woods with Jordan, with a few of my closest friends doing survival training, and all of my friends said you have to have Jordan on the podcast.
So here we are.
Who is Jordan?
Jordan grew up on a farm in Idaho, rode freight trains across the US hence his Instagram at hobojordo spent time in remote Russian villages, fur-trapped and traveled for years with nomads in Siberia and won Alone Season 6 one of the few reality TV shows that I actually watch because you learn so much.
And he won that after being the first contestant to truly thrive in the wilderness in this case in the arctic for 77 days and harvest big game.
It's a crazy story.
We get into it.
He now leads people from all over the world, including yours truly and all walks of life, on extraordinary outdoor adventures, facilitating once in a lifetime wilderness expeditions hunts, family adventures and team building events.
He has a wife and three children and focuses on living life to its fullest with them.
And that's the truth.
I have spent time with them, and Jordan is a model for for living the good life not overcomplicating, focusing on the things that truly matter, the critical few, over the trivial.
Many and I've learned a lot from Jordan, and I think you can too.
Perfect timing for the dogs to have a spaz attack.
With that, please enjoy this conversation with Jordan Jonas and be sure to check him out at jordanjonas, J-O-R-D-A-N-J-O-N-A-S.com and on Instagram and YouTube, Hobo, that's H-O-B-O, Jordo, J-O-R-D-O.
Thanks for listening.
At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.
Can I ask you a personal question?
Now we're seeing a perfect time.
I'm a cybernetic organism living tissue over a metal endoskeleton.
Me too, Ferris.
Jordan, great to see you, man.
Good to see you, Tim.
Good to see you.
And we've upgraded our interaction to in-person.
Because, for those who are listening, we had some audio glitches, some technological woes, and we just decided to do it in person.
So here we are.
And I have twice the number of pooches, meaning two versus one, since you last saw me got a stray adopted a few days ago.
We're also drinking what people might think are ridiculously heavy pours of whiskey, but this is not whiskey.
This is lake missoula tea company.
Lake missoula breakfast.
It is delicious.
Just a bit of caffeine, a little bit of a topper, let's call it.
Yeah, we just both arrived to some city we're not from, so it's At high altitude.
And we're just getting back into the groove of the conversation.
So we are going to get to Russia.
But first I wanted you to and they tie together, I suppose explain what we have here on the table besides the tea.
Because you made the joke, if the interview is not going very well, might as well have this.
Yeah, the handle is pointed towards you.
What are we looking at?
What we're looking at is an axe.
It's one I've kind of designed specifically using the knowledge and experience I have had in Siberia, in particular with the native folks and such
So it's got some unique features, some that I've really grown to love.
So in the forest...
First off, just to set the foundation, the one tool you need is an axe to give yourself a chance at survival.
More than a knife.
More than a knife.
You can do all the things you can do with a knife.
You can get through, you know, you could get a fire.
You could build some traps.
You can get through the ice.
You can, you know, it just kind of gives you the ability to do everything.
Maybe not as well as you want, but...
As the natives would say, the one tool you need is an axe, and I concur.
So the problem, though, is that a lot of people in the States don't know what a good axe is.
And so you'll go buy one at Lowe's and go home.
It just doesn't do the job you need.
So I designed one that...
Has all the features I like.
It's kind of a Siberian axe head shape with some of the Avenki modifications.
The Avenki being the native people.
The Avenki are the native nomadic folks that I lived with.
They live in the woods all the time, so they kind of know what they like.
So some of the features of this axe in particular most interestingly is it's sharpened from one side like a single bevel.
It's a single bevel grind, which means you have to have a right or a left-handed axe, based on what you are.
But what that allows you to do is when you're in the woods, very often you'll be carving things.
You know whether you're building the sleigh or building the trap or building whatever it might be, and it really helps it work as a planer and really helps it do accurate work.
That way it also on most trees that you chop down in the woods.
They're quite narrow.
You're rarely chopping down a giant.
You know cedar tree, you're.
You're going to be chopping down things about the size of your arm and a couple swings with this bevel design and you can slice right through them, assuming it is matched to your dominant hand, right so, exactly so that it's sticking instead of deflecting.
Exactly, exactly so.
If you picture a bevel and the hitting against a tree, if it's ground off on that side, there's a bit of a deflection and by grinding it from the opposite side, when it hits that tree, it just bites right in.
Yeah, i guess you have some experience with deflection.
Deflection oh yes, we do.
And yeah, just to finalize a few last points, you'll notice on a lot of american axes they have a narrow eye.
And can you describe the eye?
The eye is basically, if you had the axe, what would you call it?
Blade, I guess.
Blade, right.
There's the hole through which the handle would fit.
On a Siberian axe.
It's quite wide, which allows you in the field to repair it with a solid piece of wood.
And you can slide the handle through it like a tomahawk.
From the top, the handle goes all the way on that way.
When you swing, the pressure is always tightening the head.
You don't need wedges and all that, which is a cool design.
There's a bunch of other little nuances to the design.
I don't want to bore you too long, but Tim knows he's been up in the woods with me and we got to use it a bunch.
I got to show him how to use it.
It's incredible how versatile an axe is.
I mean, the number of ways that you used it.
Also just a side note.
I never really thought about this but for people who are wondering about this bevel thing description that i gave you could think of, there are certain chef's knives, especially western chef's knives, that are double beveled.
They're sharpened from both sides in.
So if you buy a cheap knife sharpener it generally looks like a v right, you're sharpening it from both sides.
But if you look at a lot of japanese chef's knives single bevel, given the way they use it in cutting fish, kind of horizontally.
And i recall seeing you and we first went out our first day in the wilderness in montana and just a quick sidebar, one of my friends because the forecast it's fantastic, it was a bluebird day and he's like it was his first time going out on a real camping trip and he's like i think i might just leave the rain gear at the At the rental spot.
And I was like, that is the last thing you would just put at the bottom.
Stick it somewhere.
And then it was torrential downpour.
We got hammered.
And even though it wasn't particularly cold, you end up feeling cold very, very quickly.
And when we arrived at, I suppose, the first camp, which maybe was sort of a premature start because of the cold and the rain,
Yeah, it was pretty chilly.
And it was incredible how quickly number one, my friend Mike, and I both were having trouble zippering our jackets, even though it was not even winter.
And then watching you use the axe to Maybe you could describe this.
But when you take a larger stick, people think of fire building and they think of perhaps.
Having like the fat wood and then you have some type of cotton ball or tinder.
But when you're out in the woods, you don't necessarily sure you could pack these things.
But if you're improvising, what blew me away was how you use the axe to create feathers.
Yeah.
Can you explain what that is?
You want a really sharp axe once you get control of it.
They're dangerous.
We'll go to the deflection stories in there.
But once you're a master of the axe, you can go in a downpour, torrential downpour.
Chop down a dead standing tree, because you might see dead trees on the ground.
But it's amazing, particularly in the spring when they've spent a whole winter absorbing moisture.
It's amazing how wet they will be.
And so, dead standing, find something, chop it down and then split it.
You know, chop it a smaller piece out of the middle and then split that open.
And once you got it split open, you're to that dry wood and it never gets wet because it was standing.
And so then split that piece open a couple times, you get a nice edge on it and then with the axe you can just run your axe down that wood with the right amount of control and practice and make some really fine curls that'll catch a spark.
So you don't even need a lighter, you don't need anything.
And what was what was also counterintuitive to me is you don't even have to take those off of the split piece of this internal wood.
Easier if you don't.
It's easier if you leave a big bundle of this curled wood.
So imagine guys, if you would, you have let's just for simplicity's sake, say that you have a fully intact log of wood.
That's about the thickness of your arm.
You then and they're very particular ways to do this safely right, like like leaning it against a larger fallen tree yeah, there's a lot of nuance.
There's a lot of nuance.
But you split that in half.
So now you have, if you're looking kind of down the barrel of each of these split pieces they're half circles, right and then you break those into, you chop those into even quarters, let's say.
And then you stand one up and you're using the axe, which takes a lot of fine motor control, to kind of shave down these thin pieces of wood that then curl as you're pushing it down.
And then you go a little bit higher, you do the same thing, you do it again, you do it again.
You end up with all of these.
It's almost looks like a fiddlehead fern or something where they're all rolled together.
And in fire making too, in survival in the woods, it's great to have a lighter, it's great to have matches.
They all make it so much easier to start a fire.
But they'll occasionally fail you, and they'll fail you when you need them the most.
And so i always carry also just a ferro rod, which is, you know, it just makes sparks.
Basically, you scrape it and it makes sparks.
But with that you need a fine paper, thin material to catch the sparks and light it up.
And that's what you're making with the axe curls.
And so we were in a big downpour, you know, and even that can be difficult, because when it's really raining, you know, you got to be really careful that you've made all these curls, that they don't get soaked before you get the spark on them.
So we made a quick tripod, draped a tarp over it and tucked under that to actually build our fire, made a few sparks and got that burning.
You can then make some not-so-fine curls, make some really quick, rough ones and throw that on top.
It catches and pretty soon you have a fire, which is amazing how life-giving it is in those situations.
Everybody's depressed and wet.
Particular, like soaking wet hands aren't really functioning.
And then the fire, once you get a critical mass and you're able to warm your hands.
You know my buddy Mike.
I remember he said he's like yeah, no wonder we worshipped fire for so long.
Obvious.
All right.
So this acts, and I'm thrilled to have one of these, and we'll put up an additional shorter video on my YouTube channel, which is just Tim Ferriss.
What is your YouTube channel?
Hobo Gordo, actually.
And we will explain why.
I have an Instagram at that too, which I'll put videos up on.
Yeah, so we'll put up some videos of the axe and maybe have you demo some of the more non-obvious ways of using it.
Before we get to the rewind and looking at how on earth you ended up in Russia, let's not let go of the loose end of the deflection story.
So what does it look like if you get overenthusiastic and you don't quite have the control yet?
An axe has a learning curve, especially when you have a really well-made axe and you're swinging it hard to get the jobs you need done, done.
When I did go to Russia, I was a little in over my head.
I had grown up on a farm and used an axe more than probably your typical American, but not like they do over there, by any means.
These axes are sharper than most kitchen knives you would find in an Airbnb.
They're very, very sharp yeah, and so they just use them in a way more than i would, and i was trying to keep up.
You know i'm trying to be productive and in doing so i was in a hurry, so this is going to take a slight bit of a backstory, but the natives over there will build these huge, 30 kilometer circumference fences out of only logs interlocking.
They have no nails nothing up there because they're none around, and And so there's a specific technique to doing that.
Partly that involves chopping a tree down and then you step your foot on it and then you split that tree on that cut end, you know.
So you're taking a big swing and swinging right where your foot sort of is.
And that tree is not flat like it was cut with a saw.
It's got an angle like it was cut with an ax.
And so there's a real deflection possibility there if you don't have all the you don't have it down.
And so I'm trying to keep up. smack hit my boot and You know, we're in the middle of Siberia.
I can't get another rubber boot.
We're working in swamps.
It was very disappointing.
Went home, had a cut on my foot, you know, back to home, which is a teepee.
We had a cut on my foot, kind of bandaged it up and tried to patch my boot as best I could go back out next day.
Same thing.
And make a long story short, I chopped the heck out of my boots.
And finally, one of the native guys was like, hey, you know what, Jordan?
I think five years ago I left a boot upside down on a stump, like you know, five miles that way, and so we spent a whole day.
We got our reindeer, packed them up, rode these reindeer up and over the mountain.
Sure enough, there's a stump with a boot upside down on it, And these are natural rubber boots.
And so I could like, it was smaller than my foot, but I could squeeze my foot in there.
And they're like, great, this is awesome.
Back at it another day or two and swing.
I chopped it and I was so frustrated.
It was annoying that I cut my boot open.
I got mad and I swung with one hand at the tree.
And then here comes deflect, you know, deflects off and rips right into my knee.
And I hammered my knee.
I in the long run.
I went and got it checked out many months later.
But it was uh, you know i mostly severed the mcl, split the bone.
It was a quite a gnarly injury and i i was stuck out there.
I had to crawl back to the teepee.
I knew i was kind of in shock.
So i was like i gotta get back to the teepee before i feel this, which was a couple kilometers away.
So i kind of just bailed out, told everybody like i'm going back to teepee.
And then I got there and man, it was a lot of pain.
I had had surgery on my other knee not long before.
So that was my good leg I chopped.
And then, and I was stuck in that teepee for several days.
I couldn't even move.
I had to like, even to poop, I had a plastic bag.
I had to like go in that and then roll to the edge of the teepee and stuff it out.
I couldn't even stand on either leg.
It was pretty miserable.
And they were out building that fence.
So it was a few days later, they finally came back and And I was still recovering on the TV floor.
What did you do or what did they do in terms of quote-unquote first aid?
They're like, here's a poultice made of God knows what.
Slap it on, walk it off, you'll be fine.
Which is mostly what it was.
It was very simple.
We went over to a spruce tree that was bleeding a bunch of sap out.
And we went over there and scraped a bunch of that sap off with the axe and then just put that on my wound.
This is right at the start, right when I got it. packed the wound with that sap.
Then I went back and, shockingly enough, we're out in the woods and the dirt and the rusty acts or whatever.
It never got infected at all.
Healed up as best it could.
A few days later, when they came back, Andre one of the native guys brought me a little cane.
He carved for me, which was nice.
And so then the next couple of days I caned around and then, you know, got to where I could get back out on the fence again and help out.
But It was quite a lesson.
That was my first time with them.
And yeah, I was in over my head a little bit.
High learning curve.
Yeah, that's a memorable lesson.
Memorable lesson.
I was pretty miserable in that teepee for a few days.
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So it sounds like you got close to quite a few of the locals.
Can you describe?
Hopefully this is enough of a cue.
You told me about this when we were out in the wood, s in the mountains, but it involves.
I picked up a few Russian words on this trip and I think one of them was
So if that's enough of a cue, in terms of warm welcome, what was your first arrival like?
This is probably 2005 or 2006.
I was heading over to Russia the first time and didn't know what to expect, but we land in the Moscow airport.
Instead of having a bus or something come up to our airplane, it was a farm tractor, this blue farm tractor in a wooden trailer.
I was like, no way, get off the plane.
We're climbing into this trailer.
Of course I took a picture and this officer standing over there, which means like idiot.
No, the first greeting of russia came over to my phone, made me delete it and welcome to russia.
And then uh, so that was fitting, i guess it's.
I guess it's not that different from how you would probably get treated at jfk taking pictures.
Fair enough, fair enough, A little bit of cultural ignorance.
All right.
So let's go back then, to the impetus, the catalyst, just as a skeletal backstory that we're going to dive into.
But where'd you grow up?
I grew up in Idaho on a farm in North Idaho, for the most part.
Did you grow up learning Russian from family members, then studying in school and then going to Russia?
No, I never thought particularly a lot about Russia, although I was... really into history.
I had read a lot about World War II, Russian war memoirs.
I had read and really was impacted by the Gulag Archipelago.
I had a familiarity with Russia, but it was never a destination that I had thought about.
I lived a fairly typical beginning to life Got a job when I was 13, worked, worked, worked.
And then when I was about 18, my brother invited me to ride freight trains.
So that kind of sent me on a passion.
So we're going to skip forward from there and come back to why hobo Giorno.
Exactly.
So what on earth happened that led to actually getting on a plane?
I grew up in a Christian household, and I had seen the fruit of that path in my life.
I'd seen it in people around me, my family history.
I really valued it, and it was really... meaningful to me.
But as I was a teenager and grown up, I had a lot of questions that I hadn't had satisfactorily answered.
And so I found myself.
Although I really valued Christianity and saw it as very good, I found myself in a place where I was struggling to connect with it on any level.
And so it was in a fairly dark place as a young man there.
And I remember at that time i had read this particular verse and it basically said he who follows the path of righteousness and is in the darkness continue.
And that struck me at the time because like okay, there's people that try to do the right thing and are still in darkness and that.
So that's okay.
But it didn't answer a lot of the questions I had.
And I didn't want to bulldoze it all because I had seen that it was good.
And I also knew I was young.
What do you mean by bulldoze it?
Well, I didn't want to take my faith and Christianity and everything that it meant and just Discard it.
Yeah, I'm going to discard it and go my own way as an 18-year-old.
What types of questions did you have?
Yeah, they were actually fairly simple.
And this goes to the next answer, but I had a...
My two main questions was one, like, surely though your earth is not 6,000 years old.
And then two was, now I just had a hard time matching up Old Testament ethics with Christ's message.
And I just didn't know how to do those things.
And so I had a lot of what I would call cultural baggage.
There's a lot of baggage with my faith.
But because I recognize it as good, I'm going to try to stick with it.
But I have to separate the baby from the bathwater.
And that's kind of a daunting task because it's kind of a lifelong journey of faith.
But I was given a great boost by fact that actually jesus did.
He said in one part of the new testament he says, to give a summary but what's the point of the law and the prophets like, what is all this for?
He says love the lord, your god, with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself.
So i was shocked when i read it because i was like wow, wait a second, he takes all the bath water and throws it out for you and leaves you the baby.
Love the lord, your god, with all your heart and love the your neighbor as yourself.
That was the whole point of the law and the prophets and everything else, And so I didn't have to figure everything else out at the time.
And I was okay with seeing if that would play out.
Like I said, I'd seen enough fruit that I didn't want to bulldoze it.
What kind of fruit had you seen for yourself?
My mom, for one, was like a real woman of faith.
And we'd always had single moms come over and live at the house and she would always work to like give gifts to christmas, gifts to prisoners, children that are out.
You know you know always had her acting in the world in love and in my own life as a young man, you know you got this thing, this ideal that's pushing against your natural lust and this, and that you know it kind of throws a wrench into your natural tendencies, whether that be to anger or to.
You know it overlays your life with a love ideal and I saw that as good and so I chose at that time, with those two bits of information, that like continue, even in the darkness, and that I can like put everything else on pause.
The only thing I need to like accept or not accept is like love, that that core.
And I was like, I'm okay with accepting that.
And then I had this really deep prayer that someday I just wish I had the faith to match, but I didn't actually know if I per se believed it.
I just knew that I'm going to do it anyway.
So in that time I was also traveling and going to New York and going to Virginia and running all around.
And I had heard of this opportunity to go to Russia and build an orphanage.
So that was the first thought of Russia.
And again, it was the distant and I didn't think much of it.
But I did pray.
Well, if you want me to go Lord, you're gonna have to give me a sign, because I don't have any reason to go.
And then I went to New York.
It was kind of a flippant prayer.
I think I went to New York and met a Russian there and she had offered to give me Russian lessons.
Because you know, the topic came up.
And I did, and I don't know what it was, but I think it was maybe either putting a face to a vague idea or an act of God, or whatever you want to call it.
But for some reason, it hit me really emotionally.
I went back to my apartment there, my sister's apartment, and just would cry.
I felt like a heavy burden for... It wasn't even directed at her.
It was directed at this vague idea of going and I couldn't tell.
Even at the time I was like I couldn't quite explain it, but it could be explicable.
But also I could just accept it as the kick that I prayed for.
And so I kind of did, and again I still didn't have the faith to match.
Then I remember going, I was like okay, I'm going to go up and take it as an answer.
I bought a ticket for a year and headed over to, I didn't even really know where.
And there was a guy over there, Justice Walker, awesome dude.
He was getting, heading up that orphanage building project.
And so that was my only connection.
And And.
Then I remember on the train I was like it was hard for me to go because I had like a girl I had a crush on and all these.
I wanted to pursue my education and maybe become an officer in the Marines.
You know, all these things I had ideas for.
And then I was on this train and had given all that up, like on the Trans-Siberian Railway, chugging across.
And I remember, just like Lord, if I could have one thing someday give me faith to match my like willingness to sacrifice.
So that was my kick into Russia, kind of open-ended, and I just had one thing I was grasping like love your neighbor as yourself.
Let me see if I can implement this in the world in whatever place I am.
I wasn't trying to per se do anything other than that.
Tell me if this is a fair read.
I've often said to myself and to other people, and I absolutely borrowed it from someone else.
I did not come up with this, but the general maxim that it's easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting.
So act as if.
Act as if that's very much so.
Right.
And I think particularly when you're dealing with something like apathy or love or you know like, how do you relate in the world?
Like one thing that was clear is like, Oh, well actually it's an action, you know?
Like, and so we're going to do this.
You know you can't be stagnant in that orientation, but I think that's a good summary.
Yes.
How did you go from orphanage to even key?
I went over to help Justice Walker build this orphanage.
And that was neat, but it was just me.
And he needed a lot of groundwork laid and wells dug.
But he eventually had a crew lined up that was going to come over and actually frame the thing and put the thing up and do all that.
So I was there kind of doing the groundwork.
We dug a well and did all this stuff.
But it was still pretty preliminary.
And I was there for a few months, really enjoyed being in Russia, but I was struck by the fact that I actually really want to live with Russians, you know.
And so I told that to justice and he was like, well, let's call the neighboring village.
You called them up.
And the guy was like, whoa, yeah, absolutely.
Send the American over.
My wife's in the hospital and I need someone to watch my kids.
So how long had you been there at that point?
Three months, I would guess.
How much Russian did you speak at that point? very little very little like i uh was trying to pick it up but that's part of the problem is justice was so much he's one of the most well-read people i've ever been with so it's so fun to just talk to him and it's a lot easier than working on your abc yeah exactly and so i was not doing it to the and when you first go to a country you're so struck by how much you can communicate through non-verbally and then you all of a sudden hit a wall and you're like okay I wanted to get past that as fast as possible.
So I went to that little village and was fully immersed in a Siberian.
You know village life right there.
Yeah, it was pretty funny because I hadn't dealt with kids before or anything like that.
You had to go back to his lumber mill job.
And so he was a big Russian dude.
You know that big handshake.
Oh so glad you're here and showed me around.
And here's the kids, five-year-old boy and a two-year-old girl.
You know introduce, have some tea, then the next day he's already off to work.
He pointed me where the grocery store is, and so i was in the deep end trying to take care of these two kids.
I've never done that before grocery shop for him.
I didn't even know the language and uh, That was my splash into Russia proper.
I guess in that regards,
And then how do you get into reindeer territory?
Oh, yeah.
So these guys, these guys that all... Yura had been to prison before.
Who was that?
Sorry, the Russian guy.
The guy with the big hand.
Yeah, the big Russian and he uh, his neighbor was named, was eager, and he had also been to prison, and these are all guys in siberia with pretty storied pasts.
But they really enjoyed having me over there for when i was like really trying to just work hard and it was so random for them to have an american that they uh would kind of tug of war me back between their two houses had american yeah, it was.
They both became like families to me, you know.
They both had kids and both a lot of fun in different ways.
But eager the second family there had been in prison with a native fur trapper from the far north and they were really close because they'd like found god in prison together and this and that, and so he was always telling me you got to go north and meet my fur trapping buddy.
So after that year of living in Russia, I right at the end of it you're a trapper came through town to sell furs and we met and he invited me up to live with him.
And so I was like yeah, I'm going to go home to America, renew my visa, get some, earn some money, and then I'll come back.
And so I went back and headed straight North more or less.
And yeah, Then I was in even more over my head.
So what was the first day like when you land, first day, first week, when you land in the far north?
Now this is in Siberia proper?
Well, we've been in Siberia the whole time, but it was just incrementally further north in kind of central Siberia.
How cold does it get in the far northernmost region?
Well, in the far north, where I would end up being with the nomads, it'd get to negative 58, negative 60s, like kind of the cutoff but chilly.
First getting to the north, it's funny.
Well, one thing I was struck by, Honestly, when I got to Russia, there was a lot of drinking.
Every bit I went further north, every time I would get used to it at one place.
I remember driving in a village.
In the first village, I was with Justice.
And we're just cruising along on a cold winter day in the bus.
And it swerves around this guy laying in the road.
But we're out in the middle of nowhere.
I was like, whoa, it's cold out.
We're going to stop.
And the lady across from me and I could make out with my bad Russian.
She's like, he's a drunk.
He's dead.
I was like what and stuff, and so it was kind of intense.
But you kind of recalibrate at the new norm.
And when i went to the next northern village it restruck me again.
I was like oh, there's chaos.
And that first week was that, because i was with yura and he was showing me around and you know, we go to this first house and i mean, i think even it might have been even on the way from the airport.
But pick up some random drunk guy.
And he's like, he like holds up his phone and listen to this.
And just his wife, just chewing him out and cussing him out.
He's like, that's the fury of a Russian woman.
Cause he's been missing for who knows how long.
Let's see how can I summarize some of what we were talking about at dinner last night.
Yeah.
Correct me if I get anything wrong, but like in the Evenki, you have these sustenance hunters, trappers, et cetera, with encyclopedic knowledge and wherewithal.
I mean, it's just mind-boggling, right?
I haven't had an opportunity to spend time in that region of the world, but certainly in Central and South America and Africa and so on.
When you start to look at, let's just say, like shungan trackers in south africa, there are like levels, and then the kalahari bushman, and then there are levels and it's unbelievable how fluent they are in their environment.
Yeah right, and at the same time, many of these groups have an achilles heel that's what it feels like which is alcohol.
And, to put it in perspective, what is the percentage of deaths attributable to homicide, suicide or alcohol related accidents?
Yeah, the statistic i heard for the northern native villages was 30 percent of people die from homicide suicide.
It's really and having lived there a long time, like actually, I appreciate you stepping back a little bit because I don't want to like air dirty laundry and not put the proper context.
Like I love those people and they're my friends and many of my friends have that issue, but it has really tangible consequences when it's at that level.
But yes, it was amazing because these people, you know you go in the village and they'd be just on the ground, drunk for like weeks on end, just binges that I could only be broken by taking them back out in the woods.
But when they get in the woods and sober up, these are like the coolest, most knowledgeable people.
And then people that you would say are happy and living a fulfilled life and also just really open and pleasant and quick to become family, basically.
But it was almost explicable just in the cultural tumult that they've had to endure over time, because You know it was just in the 30s and stuff that basically the Soviet Union and Stalin like kind of really grabbed a hold of what was had been long before, just the traditional way of life that continued forward alongside Russian fur trappers and this and that.
And they grabbed hold of it with like an iron fist force, collectivized that.
All the people that were spiritual leaders of any kind, shamans and everybody else, got sent to prison camps.
Anyone that was really productive, so like anyone that had more than 500 reindeer, were sent to prison camps as kulaks or whatever you know, and then they kind of just gutted the intellectual and spiritual soul from them and then forced, built these villages, they forced them to be him and then, instead of them having reindeer And being people existing freely out in the wilderness, they turned them into collective farms.
So now you're hired as a reindeer herder to herd the government's reindeer.
And your wife might be hired as a teepee worker to live in the teepee.
And so they just restructured the life.
The kids now don't live with you in the woods.
They go to boarding school. separated the families.
And then somehow they actually made that kind of work, you know, and to some degree the reindeer, while less independent than they were prior, they flourished in that they had big herds of reindeer and people were productive and alcohol was banned.
So they kind of were quite productive.
And then the Soviet Union collapsed.
And overnight, all the reindeer just became for the highest bidder.
So the Russians and people from out of town that had a lot of money just came in and bought all these reindeer that were grandpa's and grandma's you know blood and sweat and just butchered them and sent them to the meat shops and the reindeer herders scraped together what little bit of money they could and bought a few reindeer and went back into the woods the family i lived with was von victorovich was the was the old man when i first got there and he was blind but he was the guy that had like got some of these reindeer took his sons out of the boarding school and raised them in the woods and so it gave me a real appreciation also for the traditional ways of life because I could see it in villages where reindeer herding hadn't been hung on to.
And they just felt like black holes.
Like everybody was just drinking and there was nothing to do.
And they don't have an outlet to like flourish with something they're proud of.
And, in their native ways.
So it felt pretty dead end.
But the village with the reindeer herding had this whole thing and they and you know the reindeer herders out there.
And because of that, even the people that don't do it are proud to be reindeer herders and have a place to send their kids in the summer.
And people have this, there's a little bit of cultural momentum that is really enriching.
Let's unpack this word and this animal and the significance of reindeer, because it's come up a ton and people are like what is up with these magical reindeer?
So first of all, just to paint a picture for folks and this might not help but how similar are reindeer to caribou?
Very similar almost.
You probably wouldn't recognize the difference.
But they do have a slight genetic, just from separation.
So reindeer are technically in the old world and caribou are the similar animal, but in the new world, so canada and stuff, and they can breed with each other and stuff.
But the results turn out poorly, like they get the worst traits of both And then in the old world, more so than well.
In the old world the reindeer were domesticated very long ago, like 10000 years ago or whenever.
So there's actually kind of become a bit of a domestic strain of reindeer, like the natives now can't domesticate the wild ones and if a wild one comes in and breeds with theirs then it's always going to be wild.
So it's been a way of life long enough that there's some even genetic separation between the wild and the semi-domestic.
And what is the role of the reindeer?
Why are they so important?
Is it analogous to say, bison for some of the plains indians in north america?
Is it different?
Well, i guess it is actually.
It's different because of the domestication exactly.
I was gonna say it's analogous in that you know their whole cultural stories and everything are all connected with the reindeer, like with the bison.
But it does differ because the reindeer actually practically make living in the woods in the taiga and those remote northern forests.
A thing like it makes it possible to exist out there year-round and have transportation.
So they ride the reindeer like you would horses, and then they also in the winter time ride them.
You know sleighs, they provide meat when the hunts don't go well, they provide the furs that you know.
So they kind of provide everything.
They also provide just the cultural context, like you could go out there sure, and set up a teepee and and bring in noodles and you know be just fine.
But it would feel fairly dead without just the rhythms of life that are created by the reindeer.
So they're really core to that.
Sort of the rhythms.
To the rhythms.
Of life.
But also they're very practically...
I always hated snowmobiles because they're going to break down and then you're going to be stuck.
You know, 40 kilometers from camp.
And like you said, your hands aren't working.
You got to try to work on this little thing.
When you had a reindeer and a sleigh, no problem.
And so you can and this is a point that is interesting to make that I learned living in the woods for a while is like you're home.
You're just already home wherever you are.
And so like when you have your reindeer and stuff, you're not lost.
You're home.
You're just where you are is kind of home.
And you're able to take that and really embody it and become like a part of the wilderness in that way.
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So we're going to get back to hop and trains in a second, but you kind of passed over Gulag archipelago and you're like had an influence, had an impact on me.
It seems like that might be an understatement.
I don't know for people who are wondering, this is not a light breezy hundred page read.
And we're going to come to that in just a second.
But what did your childhood education look like?
I was homeschooled, so my mom took it real seriously, and she was pretty hands-on in teaching us.
And I, for whatever reason, really got into history as a young kid.
So even probably when I was 12, I read this big.
I remember it was my first real thick book, but it was about Iwo Jima and World War II and other battles.
And then I got really into those memoirs, read a bunch of German memoirs from World War II which were always crazy because they had to go through so much.
And then the Russian ones, because I was anyway got in all the memoirs and then somehow came across the Gulag Archipelago, and I was fairly young.
I was probably 17, 18 when I first read it.
And it impacted me in a lot of ways that were relevant to the little spiritual path that I was on before, because a lot of what he talks about is that happiness can't be our ultimate goal in life.
We have to have purpose.
Could you just for people who and certainly I'm not intimately familiar with it, but what is written about?
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was a guy who's on the front in World War II and wrote a letter back criticizing Stalin or something.
And of course he got checked and he got arrested and sent to Gulag, which were the Soviet prison camps that kind of snaked their way all through the Soviet Union.
They were particularly harsh on political prisoners as opposed to crime prisoners, but like so they would send these guys out to basically death camps and have them mine or do the labor.
Basically that kept the thing going, but they were designed to be really brutal and dark places.
The fact that, even you know, because the political prisoners were the bottom of the rung, they allowed the like rapists and those guys to kind of rule the roost and set the rules and so they degraded into some pretty terrible situations.
But this was all unknown basically, to the West.
And he was some kind of a brilliant mind.
And he, over his eight or however many years he was in the prison camp, had an encyclopedic ability to remember.
Maybe he wrote down, I don't know but all these stories of people who had been through all these situations.
And when you read it, I was just struck by like, man, there's a little paragraph about this lady.
That lady should have her own book.
Like that's a crazy amount of tragedy and story and all the stuff packed in those books.
Another example of something that really stood out was like you know, when you get in prison, everybody says to themselves I'm going to survive, you know.
Then you add at any cost to the end, almost nonchalantly.
And then pretty soon you start down this path where you're basically stomping on others to survive because you need to look out for number one survival of the fittest.
And everybody basically adopted that mentality.
He's like, except for these occasional, the corrupt orthodox church had somehow created these babushkas, these old ladies that didn't allow their soul to go down that path, and he's like they all died but they all were a light in the darkness on their way, and then kind of gets at the point of yeah, the lose your life but don't lose your soul, and like happiness can't be your ultimate goal, that can be taken from you by a health change or by getting thrown in a Gulag or by whatever it is.
You have to have something deeper.
And so forging a purpose.
You know, I wanted to talk about the homeschooling, because not that there is a single mold, but there are certain, I suppose, maybe archetypes that people might have in their heads as to what constitutes like a rugged mountain man, effectively.
And I was chatting with my girlfriend last night and she was like He doesn't really fit my vision of like a rugged mountain man, which is not.
She's not saying you're not rugged, but when you're talking about and I'm sure we'll get to this like Assyrian history and reading Gulag Archipelago as a 17 year old, like these are not terribly common things that get woven together.
How did your mom do the homeschooling?
Like what did a week look like or the lesson plans?
Does that make any sense?
I'm just wondering because I Homeschooling.
I think for a lot of people in the United States seems like an aberration.
But when you look at some of the people whose books we read, a lot of them had some equivalent of homeschooling.
Yeah.
You know what I think it kind of is, is it's a public school.
There is a standard and everybody's going to be taught to that standard.
And there's kind of a minimum bar in this, and that homeschooling allows for more divergent options, both on the negative and the positive, and keep your kid at home and not teach him anything and go on.
But also you can really focus on your kid's unique interests and abilities and they can really excel and develop those in a way you wouldn't in kind of the public school realm.
So yeah, because i was yeah, really into history, you know we leaned into that and i had the time to because honestly, in a public school setting you burn up so much time going into reason, you know, just dinking around, whereas i could get done with my actual academic schooling in just a couple hours in the morning, a few hours maybe, and go on to my interests, and so it allows you to do that.
But you And she kind of taught us, you know, initially she was really hands on.
And then the older we got, it was more hands off, where we had to be more self-taught and follow this whatever curriculum she had.
And then the last two years of school.
So my last junior and senior year I went to a public high school and got that experience.
Got socialized.
Got socialized, which was an odd experience.
I'm not sure what I think of the socialization.
I was going to say prefer to be an indoor cat, but you're not really an indoor cat.
No.
But so with homeschooling though I think it had a really awesome effect thing, you know i think it's great that it's an option in the country it is one thing if you're homeschooled, you have to focus on its weakness, which is community and friends and developing that.
So for people that think that's an interesting option, just know that that's its weakness and then account for that and how you organize that's what we do with our kids.
How do you account for it with your kids?
Uh, we're really active in trying to be the catalyst for community in our town.
Like We're always ready to hang out and we got them in jujitsu and we got them in gymnastics and got them in all the things, and then make phone calls, foster hiking trips with the other families and make sure we're multiple times a week getting the kids together with their friends and stuff.
You just really put effort and focus on that.
It also strikes me that the ability to build community and social bonds and therefore socialize, but not in some oddly artificial environment, is kind of dependent on activities.
Maybe this is particularly true for boys.
I don't know.
But what I observed when I was at your house was I just remember your kids' cousins visiting, and they were always outside doing something which I think is important.
They're not just sitting around talking.
That's not actually natural for most humans, including adults, to just do that all the time there were shared activities.
And then when the cousins left, I guess it was your middle child who was just crying.
It is so, it was so adorable, but just such heartfelt, deep connections.
And similarly it's like when we were out in the woods and we were sitting around, your brother was there.
Maybe he had a thing or two to do with the jujitsu influence.
I don't know.
Another reason to never start fights.
Like you would not see him and be like, I'm terrified of that guy.
And yet, he could absolutely bend you into a pretzel and cause lots of orthopedic lifelong problems.
We were out there.
It was your brother, a couple of llamas, one with a slightly lopsided head, prone to falling over.
It's a long story.
And just a few guys, two of my close friends and we're all around a fire and i can't remember who said it.
Maybe it was your brother, maybe it was mike, but oh, i get it.
I see why this is again not.
It's not saying this is a purely gendered thing, but this is what he said because it was all guys.
It was not okay.
Who said now, i see why guys like fire so much, because they can connect and talk without making eye contact.
You can just look at the fire having something that is like ancillary.
No, I thought it was a fun observation.
I've paid a little more attention to it ever since.
But it does just give you something, a third party.
We should start a little fire on the table here.
For sure, having a common activity like that.
And we are fortunate enough to just be able to live in a place that's really conducive to and sending the kids outside.
And it's something I've obviously tried to foster in them.
So they do spend a lot of time just running around and being creative.
And, you know, they don't have... One thing I've avoided a bit is phones and stuff like that.
And I think it is fairly low-hanging fruit because...
I mean, you can see how they affect us in our everyday life.
We get distracted and we get kind of disoriented with them, I would say.
And with kids, it's even so much more acute.
So they have to go out and run around and play and have fun.
Well, you've also engineered this.
I mean it's a very fancy term to use, but you've designed that into your life as a deliberate environment and place.
You could have been in a lot of other places.
And as, for instance, I'm training this very large puppy right now, although I think I'm being trained a lot more probably
In any case, very different personality from my other dog.
Probably mixed with Anatolian Shepherd.
Very stubborn.
And when you're trying to train a dog like that.
I remember a dog trainer said to me if you're using Treat as an example, right.
You have to tip with 20s because the bar is crowded, right?
There are a lot of distractions.
And...
When I think about kids, and of course, I do not have kids yet.
I hope to in the very near future.
But if you're sitting in an apartment in the city and you're like kids, you can't use your phone, what are you offering them as an alternative?
It's like, what is the alternative that is more compelling?
And you've deliberately put yourself in an environment where you have quite a lot to choose from.
Right, right.
And that has been intentional.
And obviously that is probably more difficult if you have a small apartment and you live in a city.
You know, I imagine it takes a lot more hands-on going to the park.
Or you know there's a lot of creative outlets in learning to paint, learning an instrument, learning of this or that.
That may scratch that itch.
For me, I...
Did have it as a high priority to let the outdoors be a big part of our life.
So I moved where that was possible.
And I have, you know, structured our life such.
I got the llamas you know we're joking about, initially so that I could take the family out on vacation.
One, two week long trips, rather than because I just couldn't carry enough gear to take them out for shorter.
So it's been really intentional.
It's been great.
And it's something to work out in a more urban context.
But it's not where I'm at.
Llamas people might be like llamas.
Really, are we in the andes?
What's going on?
Yeah, why llamas?
You know the reindeer history.
Now, when i first got back from russia, i thought it would be amazing to pack with reindeer in america.
So i lived in idaho and there was a law against owning reindeer north of a certain border.
I contacted my legislature or whatever there and, oddly responsive, pretty soon i was in meetings at the government with the government officials and they overturned the law.
So now you can own reindeer in north idaho.
Unfortunately, part of that was they had to be in a high fence, so it kind of ruined the ability of what i was envisioning to like.
So you couldn't back them out yeah, i couldn't like load them full of gear and pack up in the woods.
So then your only other options are horses and llamas.
And I honestly just hadn't grown up with horses.
And there is quite a learning curve on them.
They're dangerous.
Everybody that does a lot with horses has some kind of stories of getting hurt on them.
For people who have no idea, how big are llamas?
They're about 350 pounds.
They're a lot smaller.
They're a lot smaller.
They're a lot smaller.
And I'm sure there are cases where they might, but they tend not to kick.
They're very like safe and you can have like mean angry llamas, of course, like you can have a bad bitey dog, but you know, if you have a good llama it's.
They're oddly chill animals.
You can go up on the woods and they don't like tear up the ground.
They sit there quietly.
The kids can ride them.
So in that way, they're, Quite nice for kids.
Obviously adults can't, but they can pack the gear and I can walk without gear as long as I want to.
So, you know, those great advantages of horses and I love them.
But for me the low maintenance and low risk of a llama.
Just I was like well, if I can't have reindeer, I guess that's the next closest thing.
Are there any terrain or sure footedness advantages to llamas?
I'm thinking about, for instance, like horses versus donkeys, right?
Like it seems like there are some advantages of using donkeys over horses.
Yeah.
The uh main advantage everybody should follow uh Hobo Georgia on Instagram because you have photos of the aftermath of some horses going cartwheeling down an incline.
Yeah.
Don't want to be caught up in that.
Yeah, it's easy to get killed, i think.
Yeah, this is the common historical theme.
So-and-so got bucked off, the horse in the fourth crusade ended or whatever.
Yeah, where were we going?
Advantages of llamas on terrain yeah, so they have.
You know, like the horse, you have a metal shoe on the bottom, and metal, particularly on rock, is pretty slippery, and so you'll do a lot of slipping and sliding on rocks.
The llamas have a soft pad with two little claws.
They look like little raptor claws in the front.
And so it's actually quite interesting to see how they work.
They're very small.
Yeah, they're small little paws but they can stick on like a wet rock and that soft paddle grip and they can walk up and down the rocks.
Or if you're in mud or soft dirt, you see those two little front claws dig in like a raptor claw and they can climb up that.
Yeah, the terrain issues are pretty great.
The other pack animal people use is goats.
And those are nice because you can really go over boulders and they can hop from this to that.
They're somewhere in between a horse and a goat as far as their off-roading abilities.
Sounds like you would have to have a whole caravan of goats for carrying capacity.
And goats also are always with you.
With a llama, I can tie them up and go hike up this way and that way.
The goats...
They're always with you.
You can't tie them up and you can't leave them in chaos will ensue, but they're, they're, they're funny little critters, but they weren't my cup of tea.
Let's hop to purpose, which i feel like looking back at your family history, looking back, and is it fair just to tie up one loose end with gulag archipelago?
Is it?
How analogous is it to man's search for meaning by victor frankl?
Yeah, it's really similar.
I think it's like the thicker version of that.
You know, it's like gulag archipelago.
Light would be that man's search for me.
Yeah, got it.
Okay, could you give us bit of your family history and you can go back to your grandmother?
You could kind of start wherever you want.
The purpose specifically made me think your dad, right and the reinvention of purpose yeah, which i think is a pressing need for a lot of people in a fast-moving modern environment where they feel like they're on very unstable ground, perhaps in a lot of ways.
And But let's go back.
You know, I threw out this term, Assyrian, but most people don't.
It's not a familiar word.
Yeah, there's a kind of I guess you would almost call it the indigenous people of the Middle East.
You know, before kind of the Arab takeovers and stuff were Aramaic speaking.
Assyrians is what they're called.
So that's what my family was.
They lived in northwestern Iran, kind of near a lake called Lake Urmia.
During the chaos of World War I, the Ottoman Empire was crumbling and all these people who had been under the Ottoman colonial yoke were seeking out their independence and their freedom and breaking off.
In all that chaos.
Basically, I think what happened was it was an easy time to get rid of an entire people group.
Actually, Anatolia, you have an Anatolian shepherd, was a pretty diverse place up until then.
After that time, it was basically just Turks and Kurds left.
The Greeks, the Assyrians, the Armenians kind of got all ran out of there.
What were the reasons for running them out?
It's complicated.
History is not black and white.
They were minorities because those groups were Christian overall, living under the Ottoman umbrella.
And so sporadically, at times, they would live okay.
And then at times, there would be big massacres.
And over the course of centuries there were just constant.
It wasn't a pleasant way to live, I guess would be the quick way to put it.
And so there was... sporadic massacres all the time.
When World War I happened, you couldn't blame them for wanting independence.
A lot of those Christian minorities joined with the British or the Russians to try to forge out their new nation states that were forming from the crumbling Ottoman Empire.
The same time, nationalism was really rising and there was a big turkey for the turks movement like we don't want other people here, and that was ultimately the movement with the most power.
And so when the russian empire collapsed from the bolshevik revolution, they kind of left a vacuum in these areas that had they'd kind of provided a bit of a defense for, and because of that crazy nationalist fervor that was going on, the Turks decided that they could just kill or expel all the minorities who you know.
Of course some of them had been problematic and that there was, like these freedom movements everywhere, collective punishment at a massive scale.
And obviously my, my grandparents were kind of out of it because they were in iran but when the russian presence left there the turks went into there too and it was basically at that point it was just a kind of a uncontrolled well ultimately it would be a genocide it killed like 750 000 assyrians and millions plus armenians and you know it was quite a disaster so my grandma and grandpa both of them Would ultimately be for all practical purposes, sole survivors like their families were completely wiped out.
My grandpa was in a village when they were coming in and burning it down.
And his dad was in a wheelchair, basically put a money belt on him and told him this.
He was 17, told him just run and don't look back.
He looked back to see his dad's house on fire, you know, with his dad in it.
He never knew what happened to his sister, ended up getting taken in by some Jesuit priests and kind of raised in there.
And then my grandma had a different story where they, the Ottoman empire, was still kind of conscious of like trying to put on a image to the world.
And so instead of I mean there was plenty of just straight up massacres, but instead of they called them deportations, but they were kind of deportations to nowhere.
So they just drove people out into the desert and marched them around until they died.
And so my uh grandma and she had seven siblings and a mom.
Her dad was taken off to be shot and then they just drove him around in the desert until all but the mom, my great-grandmother and one sister of my grandma were left.
You know, the baby just had died and the mom fell down.
She's like i just can't go on anymore and my shalom, my grandma and shushan like picked her up like we gotta keep going.
At some point there they split off from the guards or whatever, Stumbled through and were actually ended up being rescued by a British military outpost type thing.
And then they were taken to a refugee camp.
Mom and the sister never recovered, really, from just the trauma.
And then grandma was sent to Baghdad and raised in a refugee camp.
So these two people kind of lost everything.
Even their like, I mean the Assyrian people nation kind of almost vanished.
Like there's Aramaic is what they speak.
It's like almost a gone language now.
You know, it's very just small fragments of it hanging on.
So they kind of lost everything.
And then they met in Baghdad somehow, you know, got married, immigrated to france right before world war ii, and then you know the nazi invasion happened and there was a whole they have a whole series of stories from you know kind of the deprivation.
At that time they were already poor immigrants arriving there and then to like go through that whole nazi occupation and And then they eventually made it to America and actually died not long after.
So my dad was 10 when his parents died and was raised by his sisters.
But what I find something to be that I think about a lot is that they ended up having 11 kids, you know, so they had a really big family.
And I would go to all these family unions with my aunts and uncles and my dad and this and that.
And they were just the most joyful, fun, so much love and joy and family and all of this.
It was a real bright spot in my childhood.
And then it was just that Jonas family stuff.
And then you almost take it for granted until you step back and you're like, wait a second, we're one generation from like.
This is my grandma and her dad.
You know, grandpa had their entire families wiped out and lost their whole culture and had to immigrate and give up everything and then had to do that again and but somehow they've raised like a really joyful family, like a full of people, and our like conversations were never about like those people did that to us and like this is what happened.
You know, it was never.
Hate was never the common language.
It was always love and family.
And now there's like some old grainy videos of grandma and grandpa and they and they're just laughing and eating.
You know they raised rabbits and whatever, eating rabbit around the table and laughing.
And you think, well, that's so interesting.
I don't know what cross they bore.
And I know my dad said his dad used to always sit in his closet and pray.
And he's like you know, I'm sure he had like a lot to deal with, but they didn't pass it down one generation, which is impressive.
You know, and not only did they not pass it down, they built and put into the world something really beautiful, which is my family, including my dad.
And so, leading into what you're talking about dad, it's something that i think about regularly, more than you would think, because maybe i have a history into orientation, but just the fact that that's a legacy that i have, that we all have, you know, shared humanity, but what a thing to be able to live up to.
Like, I don't have to be defined by the hardship and the tragedy in a negative way.
It's like you can expect.
You can see how other people have risen to that occasion and come out of it and create it.
And so when I find myself in a hard situation in the past or now or whatever you know you can you have that?
Uh, look at, hang on to having a choice.
Yeah, you have a choice of how to relate to it.
I mean, there were so many people and i there's just like you have every right to be fully traumatized and never recover.
You know what i mean.
Like there's no judgment on my front for that.
But on the other hand, it's like what about those few people that did somehow recover or what you know?
I don't know what you would call it, but they somehow built something in the world in spite of the, like unimaginable horrors you know, watching your family get killed and raped and all the things that went on and then just being able to build a loving family.
It was pretty impressive.
Yeah well, let's talk about your dad.
I mean, whether by nature or nurture or both, he made seemingly some pretty remarkable choices as well.
Yeah,
So he grew up as a obviously a son of immigrants in America and they was raised by mostly his sister out on, you know.
And so he all i think he really wanted was a family and stability and wanted to work hard.
And you know his most joyful moments as when i was growing up, was just when he'd come home from work and we'd run out and give him a hug.
I think that was his like life most fully lived was just being a provider and being able to.
You know he was an engineer, so he was smart guy and you know they're like just create a family, that's really what he wanted.
He was very family oriented, but then it was interesting because when he had also had childhood diabetes and polio, so he had some health issues and he wasn't great at managing his diabetes well.
So when he was probably about I mean, I was pretty young, I guess, you know I was still a teenager.
Probably he started to, you know, get the sores on your feet that you get.
And then basically because of the degrading situation with his feet, he lost his job.
And all of a sudden, he had to watch as my mom had to go back to school, which was something that was very difficult for her because he's just not academic.
But no longer could dad be the provider.
He was basically somebody we had to care for because he ended up losing his foot and this and that it was like a 12-year process of his health degrading and it was really hard for him, like he had to, you know, his mom's going to school and we had to go to the food bank.
And i remember him just like crying like oh, i failed, like the one thing he wanted to do yeah, brutal.
And then his foot finally recovered and he and i went out in the woods and we were splitting wood and he like crushed his foot into the log splitter.
Oh, and i was oh, deflate yourself.
So then they just amputated his other foot and so basically, he lost his ability, his physical ability to to pursue his purpose in the world.
That was really difficult for him to do.
He had to watch his family suffer and this and that.
But then it was interesting over the years to watch him well.
So from my perspective as a son, from my mom's perspective as a wife, we never lost sight of his purpose.
You know, like we, we knew who he was in our lives.
It was never about the money he was bringing home or the, this or that.
It was like, man, he, what an encourager and you know, what a joyful person and all that.
And we never lost sight of that.
He did.
But then it was interesting to see, over the course of those 12 years of health degradation, how it was almost like he had to refine his purpose and And he did.
And then, when his health was at its worst and he was on dialysis and in tons of pain and stuff was in a way when his like spiritual giftings or something were at their peak.
Like he was really able to.
I could hear him at night crying in pain and like oh.
And then in the morning he would oh jordan you're, you know, doing great and this and that, and let's read this psalm together, let's do this.
You know, he was very much.
He refound his purpose in pouring into us and into facing the loss of his health and his own death with joy.
And that's what he did.
He found he was like finally, he was like man, it's.
I'm in too much pain, it's too degrading, you know, to have me rolling him off the bed and i take him to dialysis.
He's like i'm just gonna stop going to dialysis.
And That was a hard decision for him, but when he did it was just like all right, let's just party for the next two weeks.
He was diabetic, so finally he could eat all the crap food he wanted.
We all had tons of laughs, and he was kind of full of joy right up until the end.
You're like what a cool legacy to see someone face all that and see purpose, not in their life even, but even in how to face death and the way he did that.
We're all going to be in the same position where we lose our whether it our health or whatever inevitable suffering is coming down the hatch.
I now have a template for how to face that in a way that I'm still putting into the world some kind of light, because I could see that it's not only possible, but I could see the template for doing that.
So it's interesting, having seen that, it really makes you grateful for the like, the blessing I have now and that I do know what I love to do and that I have an opportunity to share it with others.
I know my, even like my purpose now as it is, but I also know that's going to have to evolve with inevitabilities of aging and everything else, and so it's interesting to make sure your priorities now are in such a way that, as you have to shift directions, that you'll be able to make that adjustment.
They should rhyme.
It's not going to be something completely different.
It's just going to evolve into a little bit different angle.
When you think of your dad's purpose, changing over those 12 years is one way to view it as him going from prioritizing how he acted in the world, like how he does things in the world, to how he then supports and teaches the rest of you in the family.
I mean, was he taking on more of a teacher role?
Was it a supporter role?
I mean, Maybe not explicitly, but definitely implicitly.
His gifting was that he really was an encourager and was really joyful and people enjoyed being around him.
And he was able to lean into those skills, those gifts, in spite of the fact that he couldn't walk or that he didn't have hands or whatever.
And so I think you lean into those giftings that you have that are not dependent on what you've done, your ability to produce, you know, which is great while you have it.
After he stopped dialysis, how long did he last after that?
It was about a week.
It wasn't as long even as we expected, you know.
It might be up to two weeks or whatever at about, i think about a weekend.
His temperature just spiked and then that was it.
We were all around and did you at the time understand his decision?
To be honest, I actually he was really struggling with it, because he was also a man of faith.
And I remember him reading, you know he was like because he really was having a hard time hanging on, you know, because of just the pain, the amount of pain he was in and stuff.
But he was like, it says here, you know. the Lord will never give you more than you can bear.
And I remember actually in conversation with him, well, that's actually not true, dad.
Like everybody that's died was given more than they can bear.
It says it won't tempt you beyond your ability to bear, which is a different thing.
You know, you're kind of on a different realm.
And so we had that conversation.
So it's not that I was.
I wanted him to hang on as long as possible, but I also wanted him to have the freedom.
We talked a lot about how it's weird in the modern world, where you have this choice that we've never had in the past, where you have to now choose when to stop going to dialysis or stop doing this or that, or you can just drag on your inevitable downfall kind of forever, and so i think it was.
Ultimately, it just came down to the fact that he wasn't ever going to get better.
He recognized that he was in a lot of pain and i think he wanted to free in a final act.
You know, you kind of free us up too.
Probably I'm going to use some of the promises and perils of modern healthcare, like you said, to extend the runway sometimes in cases where the quality of life just entails so much suffering or lack of awareness that it just it raises a lot of ethical questions.
Right, that we didn't have to face 200 years ago, 300 years ago, just to take a closer look at modern living and specifically where i want to go with that is uh, maybe we could take it to our trip in the mountains because, particularly since we weren't doing any hunting
If you're hunting, then you have to time your rhythm with your quarry, and it's a different situation.
But I remember asking you at one point, I was like, so when are we waking up tomorrow?
And you're like, well, when we want to wake up.
And I suppose the and this comes back to the evenki as well and living in a settlement where you are managing someone else's property or an employee of the government, versus having more flexibility in the way you structure your life in your days right, i would just love you to hear you riff on sort of over structure versus too little structure, versus where humans kind of naturally fall.
The first glimpse i got of this way of life that we've lost in the modern context was actually riding trains, where it's like you wake up in the morning, i don't have anything you have to do, i just got to figure out where to get food and water and that's basically it.
Can you give us like a minute or two of just like, how on earth did you end up hopping trains?
The quick minute or two of that was that my brother had, for whatever reason, done it for years.
He hitchhiked and didn't like relying on people to pick him up.
Somehow he heard about riding trains, jumped on one and probably a lot to do with this freedom that we're about to discuss just loved it and you know, and in 10 years he basically or seven or eight or ten, however many years he just rode trains and at some point, when i was 18 or so, invited me to go along and and so i did, which was probably a fork in my road, just from having a job and doing the stuff to all of a sudden pretty, pretty wide fork.
Yeah, but what you glimpse, what i think is the appeal there, is that that rhythm of life that humans are designed for, that we've lived for as long as humans have been around, then i would really get immersed in again living with the natives later where yeah, you wake up and you have a things you have to do, but there's no particular schedule.
They're all directly tied to your existence.
Right now, you know you're not working to make money to put in your 401k, so that later this you know, it's just all very direct.
It's like oh, let's go catch some fish today, we're hungry, or the reindeer might be getting away, let's go herd them back.
And you know, you kind of have these uh, activities that are directly related to your life and in that you would know the proper terminology, but it feels like your dopamine and your serotonin and all that kind of stuff is just lined up properly.
Well, you're living the way that we have evolved to live.
Exactly.
And so you're in the right mold basically for that.
And I've described it before, but when you're successful on a hunt or when you're like, get into some good fish and you're in that rhythm, so you just couldn't be more joyful than that.
There's just no more.
That's it.
That's your max human experiences.
This is amazing.
Yeah.
And we didn't have to earn a bunch of money and it's just.
It's just so much more accessible in a way.
Well, it also makes me think about.
Sorry to jump in, but when you were talking about your brother and his german shepherd, who had never done any herding, and a couple of goats like running amok, And your brother started trying to gather them and the German shepherd just clicked into what it is artificially evolved to do.
And boom, it was off to the races.
Rhythm of life.
Exactly what it needed to do.
And humans are not that different.
No, we're not.
And we have so many layers on top of that simplicity that sometimes it gets it's all feels like hacks.
You know, as we know, like even you look on your phone, I got seven likes.
It's just a little hack of our berry picking recipe.
But it's not, you never quite fully get there.
It was always a little bit hard to articulate.
I was like, life feels just more realistic.
You're more in the world.
But it's a little bit difficult to articulate.
Well, it seems very tangible in the sense that you're dealing with fewer layers of abstraction.
You're not like.
I'm going to do this thing to then ensure this other thing that will give me more happiness in the future.
It's like hmm, i know i'm gonna need to eat in a few hours, or i'd prefer to eat.
You don't need to eat in a few hours, you get fast.
But you're like, i kind of like to eat yeah, i'd like to be warm.
Yeah okay, i'd like to sleep tonight.
So it's like okay, when cause and effect are very related, it's very easy to track and not just track, but like have the gratification of individual cause and effect.
Yeah, and that's very tangible and it was so much so that this is only a working hypothesis.
But when i was living with the natives, you know, i had the issue that i it wasn't my native language and as much as they were, you know, i love those people and they're my friends.
It wasn't like my family, it wasn't the people that you grow up with, you know.
But i was like i wonder if everybody would choose this way of life if it was in a little bit more pleasant climate And with the too modern, with the too modern.
A little bit.
Maybe a negative 20 and not negative 50.
Modern medicine and food security are amazing.
And so aside from that, it's like, I wonder if people wouldn't choose this way of life.
Even people that just have no idea that they might like the outdoors.
Can I give like a sidebar experience that sometimes comes along with this?
You were talking about a little bit earlier today, but can you talk about the bear incident specifically that you're mentioning earlier?
Yeah, with your friend with the gun we had.
We were.
This was a time where we'd kind of gone out in the woods and a bunch of we'd taken a bunch of the younger dudes that were living in the village and kind of drinking, and my fur trapping buddy has his big fur trapping territory and he was like at least you get these kids out there and just like spend a summer, you know, and have them living off the land and just because i'm curious, is this sable or what are they sables, what they fur trap?
So we spent a summer out on that territory, invited a handful of these guys, and it was great.
We had a horse out there and you know cutting hay for it and all that with the sai and living off the land.
Basically all that we fished and hunted.
Well, one day we came out.
I heard my buddy was sleeping and he woke up and he was like and you could hear the dogs barking like crazy.
Well, we woke up and I thought, man, that dumb dog, it just barks at every squirrel, this or that.
And so I didn't get up and look.
Well, my buddy goes out to brush his teeth and runs back in.
There's a bear out there.
So I jumped up and we look out and a bear, just 150 yards, you know, not far at all from our cabin, had killed a moose.
What kind of bears are we talking about?
These are brown bears, just some kind of brown bear in Siberia, and they are bigger than a black bear.
Yeah.
Bigger than a black bear, some kind of a grizzly.
So we come out and the bear like took off up in the woods.
They're like, what is that laying over there?
And you know sure enough a big fresh warm moose right oh no way so we it was a windfall for us so of course we like cut it up and take it back to camp we dug a big pit into the permafrost you know as a makeshift fridge and threw the meat in there and then a few days later that bear came back with a vengeance like he's not pleased he was not pleased he came back first sign was one of our dogs just ran into the little cabin and under the bed or whatever and then the other one we started hearing barking outside and then the bear was it was a lot of tall brush in the area so we could just hear i could just hear the bear just through the ripping through the brush and then ripping this way and that i was like oh it was pretty intense right off the bat i was like holy crap so i grabbed the sks which is like a assault rifle is basically what they use to hunt over there and run out of the cabin and like go kind of towards where the dog is barking I figured the bear was over there.
So I'm walking over towards this bark.
And then Yurka, one of the younger guys, was behind me.
And when we just hear this, the bear was right behind us and snorted.
We're like, whoa, like flip around.
And then it just charged through the alders.
And we're like, whoa. well that was crazy like what's the dog barking and so then you could hear this kerfuffle out in the woods i was like i'll hear you take the gun i'm gonna take the my little three megapixel camera i had at the time and i love that that's your reflex look i'm gonna take some photos perfect time it was a bad choice in the end but yeah anyway i gave the gun to yorka same thing we're like kind of paying attention to where we last heard the chaos and again the bear was behind us like move and snorted again and yorka just took off running with the gun and he full-on ran and disappeared from my sight i had had you know my knee issues we discussed earlier so i actually couldn't run nor would i want to from a predator so i kind of just stood there i was like like oh my gosh i'm just here with my stupid megapixel camera and so anyway he was gone a long felt like a very long time it was probably 30 seconds to a minute like a good enough long time that i was like what in the world and then finally he comes back in his knees he's like i can't do this my knees are shaking and i was like i was like you got the gun like don't run and then right as i said that the bear like stood up in front of us and he just and filled this old magazine into it and it took off and you know we ended up getting it which we you know then we were i was laughed at because we were joking around but they had always been telling me like you know us a vinky one shot one kill and then it was like vietnam but then uh it was a crazy you know it's pretty intense and then It was also interesting because I was the first bear that I was with him with when they killed him.
They had this whole ritual of how they honored the bear.
The word, the Avinkia word for bear is grandpa.
And then they take the eyeballs out.
They took the eyeballs out and put them under a rock so that when the spirit of the bear came back, it wouldn't see who did what to it.
And then the funny, the better part was they took the intestines and threw them in the river.
So when it did come back, it would be the neighboring village that the intestines floated to that caught the wrath.
But yeah, that was a pretty intense little moment there.
We're going to do one more story.
I mean, these are all going to be stories.
We're going to do one more story.
Some of the native hunters are better than others.
I'm going to cue you.
Also involves moose, if I'm not mistaken.
Canoe?
Oh, this is great.
Yeah, this is another hilarious story.
There were these two mid-60s women that were going to come out to the tribe.
So there's the village, the native village, 500 people.
It was about a 12-hour float from a place that's a common stop that the nomads often stop.
So they had found out that we were going to be there.
So these old ladies are going to come out and visit the tribe.
Well, they got, it's just a 12 hour float.
So you don't really need much to get there at the end of the day and can eat when you get there.
So all they brought as any native did would be an ax.
And so they untied their rope as an aluminum boat and jumped in the boat and they're just floating along.
Well, picture two you know, senior citizen women floating down and there's a moose swimming across the the lake and, as you do, we gotta kill this thing, we'll be the heroes, or whatever.
So they rode up next to it and, with the rope that was attached to the front of their boat, They lassoed over the.
I don't know the antlers or the neck of this thing.
But at the same time, they had the axe.
They pictured themselves chopping it in the neck and trying to kill it.
Well, it of course got traction on the shore and on the water before they were able to pull that off and took off into the woods and skied these ladies in this boat behind them several hundred yards up into the woods before it finally went through these two trees and snapped the rope off and it disappeared.
And those ladies just were gone for a few days.
They had to sit by the side of the river until the next people.
They couldn't carry their boat.
So they just sat there until finally somebody floated by that could help them drag their boat back to the water.
And the lady, they made it out.
The lady was very funny because we then had to get back to the village eventually.
It was like, you know, by land, it was like a 30 kilometer reindeer ride.
And that poor lady and I had the same problem.
I would always fall off the reindeer.
And, but she was the only other person that apparently had that problem, because they just put the saddle on loosely.
It's not like a horse saddle where you kind of cinch it up.
They just throw it on and it kind of wobbles, but they get used to it.
And so they can kind of ride along and.
And it took me a long time to get used to, but obviously it took her also a long time.
And I was walking, but we were in the rain and that poor lady.
Every time we crossed a river or a puddle or anything, there was a swoosh.
I kept lifting her back on, but it was very funny.
That was a great, great story.
They're a different breed of people that when grandma sees the moose swimming across the river, she goes and hacks its head off, all right.
So i'd be remiss if we didn't talk a little bit about alone, which is probably the only let's call it reality tv show that i've watched two full seasons of in the last, which were they decades six and seven.
Oh yeah, the word on the street, otherwise known as the internet, was that season six, which you were a part of, and season seven were kind of two of the highlights, with some insane fucking events that transpire in these two seasons.
If you ever have to.
You know I had to, well had to.
I chose after elbow surgery to do hyperbaric oxygen treatment for a host of reasons.
Um sidebar on that.
If you're going to do that, um needs to be hard shell.
Medical grade, you know, typically like 2 to 25 atmospheres.
Don't do any soft shell stuff, it's a waste of time.
But what do you do?
You're just sitting there and especially in a hard shell, you can't bring anything in.
But they set up tvs and so what.
So my guilty pleasure turned into watching these multiple seasons of Alone.
So for the season that you were a part of, the format of the show changed a bit over time.
But it was referred to along the lines of kind of the Super Bowl of survival, right?
And in your particular season, season six, what was the format?
The quick summary of the show is, yeah, 10 people go out in the woods all by yourself.
You self-film and you get to pick 10 basic tools like an axe and a ferro rod and a sleeping bag and a few things like that.
And then they drop you all off in different areas in the wilderness.
And the person that lasts the longest wins.
And hypothetically, you know, indefinitely.
I think maybe there was a year cut off, but hypothetically, a year plus you might stay out there if people really get into a groove.
So so yeah, that was the format of the season.
It's a fairly simple concept.
Location northwest territories, canada.
So we're just south of the arctic circle right yeah, right at the not warm, not warm, not warm, but conveniently very similar parallel to where i was in siberia.
So yeah, i was.
Yeah, it's very, i mean the, the it seems like, having watched two seasons and some other shows also, that i mean alone is my favorite.
I mean, you learn so much.
If you're into any um degree of this is a great show.
Honestly, you really learn a lot because you get to see a lot of different approaches and what seems to work and what doesn't, and there are multiple approaches that seem to work.
Yep right, like just don't build a cabin yeah, just do.
I mean no seriously, don't try to build.
Like abraham lincoln log cabin, that image in your mind, don't try to do that.
But then you got like stone house and season seven.
Like i mean, i probably wouldn't have tried to do it because i'd be afraid of, like blowing a gasket for sure, but it worked.
Yeah uh, very different from the shelter that you built.
Yeah yeah, let's talk about the tools for a second mm-hmm, because there were things that would not be obvious to someone watching the show that I found interesting.
For instance, when we were out in the woods you showed me.
This is gonna require a little explanation, so you'll have to explain what basic paracord could be used for.
But you've got this.
Looks like a transatlantic cable of paracord which was not allowed on the show.
It was not allowed.
You had to have basic, but it's a single cord that has like fishing line and filament and all sorts of things.
Yeah.
Super handy.
I've never seen it.
What is that called?
Survival cord.
And it has a, you know, a Tinder material inside of it.
You can pull out.
It's kind of a wax coated uh thing, uh catches spark well, and then it has a snare like kevlar cable.
So you make a snare and then it has a fishing line and then the regular string that usually comes in the paracord and paracord is just a string that has an outer sheath and then a bunch of little inner strands that are more like individual strings and they're kind of twisted together and make for a strong rope or you can break it down into useful bits.
Turn it into a gill net.
Yeah, turn it into a gill net, which is, Which seems to be one of the winning.
Yeah, gill net's hard to beat.
It's such a passive way of collecting food in there.
What is that?
A gill net is a.
It's just a big net that you throw in the water and set in the water in such a way that fish swim in by get caught in it.
Fish can't back up, so when they swim into a net, if it's sized properly to their body and gills, they'll get caught in it and then they just sit there.
So just for definition of terms snare kind of similar right.
In the sense that you're trying to get a given animal around the neck and you have to size it properly.
Yeah, so snaring is another.
In an actual survival situation it's kind of the not the golden ticket, but incredibly important.
You know it's also usually illegal in most places because it's really effective.
But if you're really starting, it would be yeah, you size to what you're trying to catch.
So, like a hair would be about the size of your fist.
You make a piece of wire or, if you only have string a loop about that big, set it on the trail and do some things to try to sorry, i'm laughing because another story just came to mind when, So in another example of footage you're not going to see on the show,
So I give them points, a medical team would come out and check on participants.
And I can't remember the exact parameters, but if you're like losing too much weight body weight or they'd schedule occasional visits to to get your SD cards, give you new batteries and then just make sure you're, you know, not critically in danger with your health organ failure or something like that.
Now I think you were telling me that at one point, when they were doing a medical check for you, that you'd set up.
Remind me what this is called.
A squirrel pole.
A squirrel pole.
Because squirrels like to run up things and then across something else.
Exactly.
You never have a power line in front of your house.
So what is, yeah, explain how you just roughly, how you build this thing.
Yeah yeah, whatever reason squirrels are, they just love running up things and then across things, and so you know, that's why you see them running on the power lines and everywhere, and so you can take advantage of that to catch them by clearing all the branches off of a couple trees and then running a pole between those two trees and then throwing a couple snares along that pole, and eventually some squirrel will run up and zip across, especially if you see one in the area.
What does that look like when a medical check is being done right behind?
It was kind of funny because it was early on.
It was maybe the second week or something and they still had this crew member guy who I thought was hilarious.
Of course, it's alone, so they try to be really stoic.
They don't want to give you actual human interaction.
Yeah.
This one guy was just like, whoa, hell yeah.
This is awesome.
I liked what was going on out there.
But they all come walking in.
You're set up.
Yeah, for the medical check and scared a squirrel.
And it ran up and hung itself.
And it was sitting there kicking while the guys walked by.
But he was that one British guy in particular.
Whoa, hell yeah.
That's awesome.
I was like, oh man thanks guys, and so that was kind of funny about the.
They accidentally helped me cheat there.
So how long, how long did you ultimately last?
77 days, and is it fair to say that last is the wrong word to use, because my understanding in conversations with you is that it was Of course.
Television has to be edited in such a way that everyone is going through this crucible with coming close to glancing off the breaking point.
Right, right, right.
But it doesn't seem like it was that hard for you.
Yeah, it really wasn't.
It could have been.
It's the woods.
You never know what's going to happen.
But man, that was going really well.
I actually...
You know I snared a bunch of rabbits.
Had like 20 something plus rabbits before I got the moose, which I got a moose at day 20.
And then from then on, I really nailed the fishing and I just was piling up food like crazy.
And just because of my previous experience, for you know, years at a time in Russia I wasn't a couple few three, four months there just didn't seem like a long time away from the family, because I knew everything, our relationship was strong and generally could handle it and i'd come back and we'd catch up and it'd all be good.
But i bore a lot of stress because i didn't know how long this show would last.
So i was, which is something that changed in season seven.
Yeah, it was a big difference in season seven by in the next season they capped it at 100 days which, had that been my season would have been interesting because i, once you get the moose, i could have just basically partied and, you know, enjoyed myself.
But because i got this moose, it was a lesson i learned, a lesson that i learned.
That was the first large mammal harvest.
Yeah, on the show right yeah, yeah.
And something that i really noticed out there was i should have been more present in the moment because i did allow myself to stress about this future.
You know, i was like okay, i got a moose, now i'm getting fish.
Surely somebody else is so man, we're gonna be out here six, eight months.
And i lost some fat, so now i'm gonna lose.
So i had like, so i can't be out here eight months and lose.
So i was uh, bearing a lot of stress because i didn't actually as much as i would advise myself if i were to go on again like, just be in the present.
You know, don't worry about that future.
What happened is Yeah, I was gunning for 140 days before I even thought it might end.
Hadn't even allowed the thought to cross my mind that it would.
Had a lot of food to get there and then it ended at day 77.
I can't say I ever thought I was going to win.
I went out there to win because I wasn't trying to prove anything.
But I was just, you know, you try to keep going stride, just see what happens.
I'm just going to go out there and see if I can be sustainable.
But I was genuinely shocked when it ended and thought it was going to go quite a bit longer.
So let me tackle a couple of things, because there are a number of details that i think might be instructive to get into.
So first let's talk about the basic tools.
I'm amazed i don't want to give too many spoilers but, like one of your competitors made a shocking decision, which was to not bring a pharaoh.
Yeah, and that was intense.
That was that was that was.
That was a very risky maneuver, ended up making it work, but in part, he was very good with something called bow drill.
Look up bow drill online, we probably but it's using friction to create a fire.
But if you're accustomed to using softer wood and then you go into alpine territory yeah, and it's much much, much harder wood, you got a problem on your hands.
Yeah, he was able to find a cedar board which doesn't grow up there.
Yeah, you're allowed to use anything that you find.
So tin cans or barrels or whatever effectively human garbage or things that have been washed up on the shore.
So 10 basic tools.
What did you choose to bring?
I took an ax, a saw, a Leatherman which is like a multi tools, a knife and pliers and stuff and a frying pan and a ferro rod, a sleeping bag, a bow, an arrow you get like bows and arrow a fishing kit, trapping wire and paracord.
And trapping wire was just a thin gauge, solid stainless steel wire and then you could create the gill net out of the paracord.
Yeah, so i got the.
I've thought about bringing a gill net, but then i just thought i'll bring a paracord.
I can make a gill net and the paracord will come in handy for other things too.
So what are some common mistakes?
If you look at what people choose to bring, what are certain things they choose to bring?
Let's leave aside a gill net right, because you already covered that.
You can create that.
Yeah, what are some other, would you say, mistakes?
I mean, I always, with my own biases, always think, when someone doesn't bring an ax, I'm like really.
But I have my own.
How are you going to get through the ice?
They're so handy.
But I brought a saw which, in hindsight, I probably should have just brought a gill net and had two instead of making the one.
Anyway, I do think not bringing a fire starter is a poor choice because it's just so much stress.
You have to bear so much stress of not letting your fire go out.
Everything's harder, so you have to be really conscious of the fact that Things like staying hydrated is super important.
And so if there's an extra step to hydration, you're going to drink a little bit less water.
Just to be clear, if you're drinking out of a natural source, you want to boil that water.
Yeah, typically you'll want to boil it.
So if you're going to boil it and then you have to start a bow drill fire to boil your water, then all of a sudden you're also burning a lot of calories.
Yeah.
It just becomes a stressor.
You don't want your fire to go out at night because you got to wake up.
So I think that's a big one.
Some people are really good with bow drills, but I still think it's not worth the trade off.
Yeah.
Well, I was really into bringing a bow.
I mean, you do need practice with a bow to be effective with it.
But I can't tell you how much time I spent enjoying myself just hiking through the woods because I could maybe shoot a squirrel or maybe get a grouse.
Well, that's something that stood out to me is that and I think one of the stronger competitors in season seven did something very similar where it wasn't that you would necessarily go out on a dedicated large mammal, or let's just say you wouldn't go out on a dedicated hunt, but if you went out to do anything, you just bring the bow.
Take the bow yeah, because it's like on your way to your fishing spot or on your way to get firewood, and it just gives you always something to do and it gives you always that oh, is there a rabbit or is there, you know?
So you're kind of having more, you're more engaged, whereas if i didn't have hadn't taken the bow, it would have been a lot of time.
Whereas, like boy, How many arrows are you allowed to bring?
Nine.
Nine.
Interesting.
I don't know why.
Seems like a lot or a little.
I don't know if they chose nine.
Committee had a long debate that landed on nine.
But that's actually a decent number.
Substantial number of arrows.
I never had an issue with them.
What type of tips did you bring?
So I brought blunt tips which are judo points, except they weren't specifically judo points to get in the nuance.
But yeah, you don't want a sharp blade when you're shooting small game, because you don't want to just shoot right through the animal.
You want to like hit it and blunt force kind of knock it out and kill it.
And so for small game I had five of those.
And then I had four broadheads which are just sharp blades.
Yeah, what type of how many blades?
Two blade?
They were vpa, like just solid steel broadheads.
No, just so that they were tough and i could yeah, sharpen them on the fly and all that.
So the moose corralling or fencing I mean fencing gives people an image that maybe is not exactly the right image.
Right, right.
But animals are really good at taking the path of least resistance.
Right, right.
It's something you employ when you're trying to snare them, when you're trying to do anything to catch an animal.
You just take advantage of the fact that we all take the path of least resistance.
So what do you?
What do you do?
So i was actually out there.
You know i'd done a lot of calling, a lot of placing my shelter in the proper wind location and doing all this to make try to make a moose encounter happen, and i had set up a trip wire that would signal a tin can so that it would like if a moose came by, i would know.
And then i went out, had a 40 yard shot at a moose and I missed.
And long story short, that was a big fail on my part.
But I remember watching that moose run away, just like, oh, you idiot.
Like, how'd you do that?
You know, you get used to screwing up and failing.
When you're in the woods like that by yourself, whining isn't going to help.
There's nobody else you can blame anything on.
It's like, you literally better solve your problem or you're screwed.
So I was like i was disappointed i missed the moose, but at the same time i was immediately it's still running away.
I was like, how do i make this happen again?
Like i got like it just made me more determined to learn from what i just did.
And then, as i was watching it run away, it just kind of dawned on me that there's, i mean i don't know how far apart, but say 500 yards, you know, there's just kind of hills, two hills.
It's not like there were cliffs or anything but hills.
Animals are going to go through the low point there because it's easy.
And then I just remember oh, we built those fences in Russia.
Like, should I really?
Because what had happened is it had come on a kind of unexpected path.
So I wasn't really quite set up to get them.
But I was like, well, I guess I'm not here to starve.
I'm here to like... make it happen.
Like I'm an action oriented person in that way.
So I went over there and decided to try to build one of those fences and funnel the cause.
I remember even the native saying before guns they used to funnel animals with fences like that.
So can you explain when you say fence, like that might involve animals, chopping down some saplings kind of knocking knocking them over basic yeah so that you're creating obstacles something like a moose does not want to have to step over or navigate so they go kind of where you intend them to go yeah yeah so i had kind of set up the same tin can alarm system and then i had found a nice shooting bush that i could shoot from and get to with relative cover And then I built a fence.
But again, it was just I hadn't even finished it when it ended up working.
But it was just, you know, with the natives, we do four rows.
So four rows of you know arm thick logs, kind of stacked in such a way that they hold up into a fence.
OK, so it did look like it did look like a fence when it's done.
But I just initially did one rung, you know, like the first rung and ran it all the way across.
How long did that take to create it? probably a couple of days.
I was going to say, it sounds like, yeah, it was a lot of work.
And I was like it was a calorie risk and expenditure.
But it was clear I wasn't going to win if I was starving.
And so I was just, I wanted to like get food.
And so I, uh, built that funnel.
And then actually then not long after I was out pulling, uh, again, I hadn't even finished it yet.
I was pulling a rabbit out of a snare of all things.
And I heard that can clank.
I was like oh, what is something's coming?
No way, ran over there, stuck up to the bush, and that moose just came strolling along my fence to the opening where I was and it worked amazingly well.
You know, it was the morning after I'd spent the whole evening calling the moose and Was able to put an arrow in it.
And What was the distance on that?
Like 24 yards.
See, I mean, that's like... Doable.
That's the payoff.
40 yards.
I mean, look, I... Yeah, recurve.
I mean, I do a lot of recurve and I would not put money on myself for 40 yards shot on a moving target.
Nor would I.
But but when you're starving yeah, oh yeah, you have a couple shots, it's actually doable you can kind of correct.
But in my miss i had only had one arrow with me at the time.
So yeah, so i hit it and it was actually felt like a really good shot.
But he took off.
So you know, i'm gonna wait an hour, let him kind of just calmly.
You know, if you're bow hunting, one thing you realize is like a lot of times the animal doesn't see you when you shoot it and it's quiet and it gets hit, It doesn't know what happened.
So it's going to run over somewhere and like lay down.
It doesn't feel good.
And so usually that first place it lays down because it doesn't think it's getting chased per se.
It just lays there and then it slowly bleeds out and it's you know about, as calm of a way you can probably go as a wild animal.
But what happens if you get too eager and start running after this animal?
You put an arrow in, is it'll?
If it sees you, it'll then know it's getting chased and they'll get this second wind and just take off and run.
And by then they'll no longer be bleeding as much.
And very often people lose animals like that.
So fortunately I was aware of that, waited a good long time.
You waited a while also.
I mean, more than an hour ultimately.
Yeah, it was about an hour.
And then I started tracking it.
And it's a great blood trail.
And then it just started to dry up.
And the ground had been like an old burn.
And so it was hard.
And they weren't tracked.
And I was like, no way am I going to lose this movie.
So I get stressed like no way.
And I had that lost its blood trail and it was just sitting there thinking as well.
The last thing I can do is it's going to take the path of least resistance once again, particularly when it's wounded.
So I just I did it a few times where I stood in the woods and then you just kind of walk through the As if you were going to go where does it take you and go with the flow.
And sure enough, you know, 500 yards up or whatever there was laying there.
Oh, no way.
Duck down.
And it was still alive.
And so I was 50 something yards away.
And it's like man, I can either try to stick another arrow in it, in which case it's either going to run away.
Maybe I kill it or maybe it charges me.
It's got a 30% chance of each.
So.
I said my best bet is to just watch it and let it calmly finish its process, and so that was a very long couple hours honestly watching it.
It would stand up and I'd my heart would sink like no no, no.
And then it would lay back down like ah yes, it would stand up.
It's a very emotional roller coaster and finally it stood up and tipped over and we were talking about earlier.
But the joy that i felt is was irreplaceable and i could.
You almost can't match it.
Just that demon of starvation that for three weeks now just chewing out you're gonna starve.
You're gonna starve slayed that.
How much meat do you get off a moose like that?
Oh, it's hard to say.
I'd be a little bit guessing, maybe 400 or 500 pounds.
I don't know.
Yeah, it's a big animal.
Yeah, a big animal.
And then you have all the bone marrow and the brain and organ stuff.
Talk about, I don't know if people like eating liver, but I got myself sick of it.
You got a liver the size of my body.
There's no way to preserve it, so you got to eat that thing first.
Yeah. why can't you preserve the liver versus other things?
Usually things that are really bloody, you know, like you have a lot of blood in them spoil fast.
So same with like fish.
If you catch a fish, there's a blood line in there that you want to scrape out or spoil.
Oh, okay.
And the gills carry blood.
So you want to rip those out or it'll spoil any animal that you're going to preserve.
You just want to make sure it's bled really well.
And liver, for whatever reason, is just saturated, saturated and there's no way to drain it.
You know.
So, Oh man, plenty of vitamins there for a while.
God, I'm just thinking of the OD of vitamins that you have.
Yeah, it's a little bit of a concern.
Yeah, for you adventurous eaters out there, don't eat a polar bear liver in one sitting.
Yeah, that's fatal.
Vitamin A will do you in.
So you mentioned you had some fat stolen.
Mm-hmm.
Noticed some very unique earrings on your wife this morning.
Yeah, these may tie together.
Yeah, what were the?
What were the earrings man, so you get, you know you're out there and you're, things are going well, but you're still living on the edge, you know, and little mistakes can be the difference between surviving or not.
And so you know, even the process of keeping your self hydrated, like we talk about is, is elaborate and involved and thought out.
Walk into your fishing hole.
It's like, Oh, I better take some ash so I can sprinkle on the really icy spots.
And you know, everything's thought out.
And so The last thing you need is this whole extra variable coming in and adding a bunch of difficulty.
Well, one morning I went out and I had set my meat out on a shelf with this like kind of half-hearted not half-hearted, but you know, maybe a bear will come.
And if a bear comes, I can shoot that from my shelter.
So I could maybe double up and get it almost like a ready-made bait pile.
But I hadn't even really thought about the fact that there's wolverines up there and that they might show up and I might not hear it or notice it as much.
And so I came out one morning and I stored probably 90,000 calories worth of fat in this gallon jug.
I don't know how much is in a gallon, but a full gallon of fat.
And I came out and it was like the day I was like, okay, I'm going to render that fat.
And I started looking around like, what are these tracks?
Like, huh, that's interesting.
And then it just, you slowly start to have something dawn.
You're like, no.
And then I noticed my jug was gone.
And then I was like, oh, those are Wolverine tracks.
And like, oh, no.
And just like ran down the tracks.
You know pointless, that thing's long gone.
And so i came back and i was like, oh no, i'm like got a wolverine here.
One thing you notice about the woods when you have meat, every forest freeloader knows you have the meat and so, like all the jays and all the you know the wolves were coming around and the wolverine now, and just everybody's coming to get your meat and that wolverine they're known as being some of the most ferocious animals you know on earth and just They're like that honey badger video everybody's seen, but they're much larger and on steroids.
I guess it's technically in the weasel family.
It's like if you took a weasel and put it on every performance-enhancing drug imaginable, like Dolph Lundgren and Rocky IV.
Yeah and, and gave it on top of that just like a very irritable combative demeanor.
I mean, they're not huge like 40 pounds or whatever, but they fight off wolf packs, they take down full-grown moose, yeah.
So just think about that for a second guys 40 pound animal, how much does a moose weigh?
Yeah, like 1000 pounds at least.
I mean, that's insane.
They just grab on, and there's been stories of them holding onto a moose's neck for days until the thing suffocates of blood loss and dies.
Just like, and so they make up for their size and just being aggressive.
And i was my first time of really dealing with one like that, and so and i was he kept surprising me with how bold he was.
You know, kind of figure.
Okay, that'll take care of it.
And then all of a sudden whoa, right in front of me, you know, you run by and grab a chunk of meat and run off.
Yeah, no way.
And so basically, there was, it came down to the fact that it was either me or him on this island, and That was very clear.
And he was claiming my meat and this and that.
And I made a long trip wire again for him.
With the can.
With the can, which proved to be a really useful tool.
And then one night I heard that thing clank, came out of my shelter.
This was after the previous night of the similar situation happening.
And I didn't take a shot at the Wolverine because he was behind a bush.
And so this next night I was like, if I get a chance, I'm going to take it came out and he was behind a bush.
I could see his eyes glowing and I just sent an arrow in there and it ricocheted through and hit him.
But I could see him spinning around and know what was exactly how I had hit him.
So I just grabbed the ax and ran over there and I got over there and he lunged at me and I could still I could see like yeah, but he had like been pinned to the ground and the part of the arrow was stuck in the ground and part of it was hung up in the alders.
So it like caught his lunge.
And I swung and it eviscerated him.
And then he spun around and was like grabbing at his own injury.
And then I swung again and again.
But I definitely have this mental image of his teeth and his jump right at me, like to see his face.
Yeah, it was good he was pinned.
I mean i, i think i would have still won, but it would have been a lot more of a.
We would have both suffered a lot more.
I think you would have suffered a lot more.
I was hoping i would win, But no, it was a very primal moment.
That's all I can say about it.
The moose was so thoughtful and the wolverine was just one of those things where you're like what just happened.
That was crazy.
I can't believe that just happened.
Anyway, it solved this problem that had been harrowing me for weeks, by that point, and it was pretty liberating.
And now his claws have been turned into your ears.
And so I had to make some earrings out of those claws, gift them to my wife.
They're pretty nice.
So to bring in something that was, i don't think people would pick up.
On watching season six, there's a point where, as i think you put it to me when we were out in the woods, you were like, in effect, right up to that point, you've been making plans, executing the plan, sort of living on offense, if that makes sense, but you kill a wolverine, and so there's this kind of mystery in the show people might not immediately pick up on, which is not the only wolverine around right right, we were allowed to kill one wolverine.
Well, that's the thing.
Right yeah, you had like a tag you have to follow these rules, not something that is yeah yeah, artfully able to kill every wolverine out there, omitted from the final cut.
I only had about a day of relief before i heard another wolverine.
I was like no, but this time i was in defense and it just so happened to line up with the time of year where i had this very tangible mental shift that went from me being in that you know when you're in fight or flight, i was in fight.
I was in like a proactive mode, like you say, making plans, making things happen.
Well, now the ice was freezing on the lake and i couldn't go out and fish, and so couldn't fish, at least in the normal way.
Yeah, in the normal way.
I couldn't even go walk on the ice to ice fish yet.
So there's a couple week period there where it's just hard to fish.
And then I had all the rabbits I needed, honestly.
I had so much protein with the moose that there's no reason for me to go kill or snare rabbits.
So I didn't do that.
Also, aka toilet paper, right?
Yeah.
What did you use for toilet paper?
The rabbit feet.
It was quite luxurious.
Okay, continue.
Your imaginations can carry the rest of it.
And then this Wolverine came, and I had to only play defense.
And it was a very tangible shift that I went from being in control of my own destiny to all of a sudden being on this what felt like a downhill trajectory.
It's like I've collected everything I can collect and now I just see what happens and try to defend against the Wolverine.
And all I can do is wait for the ice to.
You know, it felt like a very different frame of mind and and that was a, you know, a more difficult period to get.
I mean, all these animals have optimized to steal food, right?
Yeah, that's all they do, and so, especially something like wolverine.
It's like you can take the bark off of the right pillars holding up your elevated platform.
But Yeah, I made a cool platform the Avenki had showed me.
I built a bunch of them with the natives.
Participant in the labor season almost killed himself trying to copy that.
Yeah.
There's a certain technique to how to build them, which was useful to know to do it safely.
But you're also calculating not using unnecessary calories.
And so...
I should have finished it.
There's actually a box in that raised platform and then you build a box on top and it's pretty everything proof.
But of course, again, that Wolverine kept surprising me.
So I built the platform, done a few tricks to try to keep it from getting up there.
And then it got up there.
And by then it was like, shoot, I should have built the thing.
But, you know, anyway, so, yep, learning on the fly and trying to react accordingly.
Most people in modern life, they have their, I'm making this up, right?
Random meal, but they're like salmon or chicken breast, some veggies, maybe some pasta or sweet potato, who knows.
But you mentioned the fat being stolen.
Oh, yeah.
And people can look up something called rabbit starvation, too.
But how important is fat?
Yeah, you learn that really fast also.
And that was the first time just solely living off the land that I had, where I didn't have any noodle backup or anything like that.
And so for an extended period of time.
So I was curious how long you could live off a rabbit.
I was curious, you know, all this kind of stuff.
And what I learned quite quickly was your body needs fat right away.
And every day you're burning your fat reserves or fat you're bringing in.
The protein, it's actually more attainable.
Out there there's a lot of little animals and a lot of things.
Even mushrooms have protein in them, but the fat is the bottleneck of survival, for sure, and so that's why we love it, i guess.
But it was.
Uh, it just proved and it was so interesting to observe the animals is how honed everybody was in on just the fat.
The wolverine, the crows, the jays, everything would just try to get the fattiest part of your fish, or eyeballs eyeballs brain skin, and they would leave the chunks of meat.
Like a big fish, they'd strip to strip the skin off, eat kind of the fatty belly area.
The eyes do the same thing too right, like when they're grabbing salmon if, If they're plentiful enough, they eat the brain and just leave all of the meat.
Yeah, that's pretty interesting.
Yeah, and that's the fuel of the forest out there.
All right, so let's talk about some new projects.
Well, first of all not really first of all, but lest I forget where can people get one of these incredible axes?
I have one.
People do not just run around your living room swinging this like a toy.
It's not a toy, but it's a uniquely designed tool.
I don't want to say all in one, but multipurpose tool.
Yeah, I think if people take the time to learn it and learn its nuances, you'll love it.
But there's a learning curve to it because it is like a kind of a finely tuned tool. machine but the uh jordanjonas.com i have a website jordanjonas and jordanjonas.com there's you know slash axe you can get that there's two versions there's a this is a little bit smaller version it's easier to carry when you're backpacking and stuff and then i have like the fuller bigger version that if you're on the farm or car camping things like that has a little more heft and more And then if people, and you and I have to book some time before this goes live so that I don't screw myself here, but if people want to experience what it's like to go into the wilderness with you, which I highly recommend, if you can do it, guys, you will learn a ton.
You will not be able to absorb everything.
There's going to be a lot that you pick up.
And are able to practice, which was so fun.
Not just some of the finer details of fundamental survival skills, but learning how to use a relatively simple tool like a tenkara rod.
But just learning how to utilize a simple tool well.
Same with the axe.
So how can people learn more about?
Yeah, same same deal.
It's like you know, the instagram, the follow along youtube instagram.
Yeah, jordanjonascom is where i have access to sign up for courses and sign up for you know.
There's hunts available there and stuff that people can guide you on.
But yeah, they do book pretty quick like this season's booked.
But it's like i'm all about taking people out on private trips and stuff.
You just have to kind of get in early or wait for my schedule to come out for next year and try to squeeze in.
I love them, man.
It's been such a cool way to share what i love.
I talked about it earlier with the purpose.
It's kind of i've had this stage of my life the purpose is defined and trying to share the lessons that i've gained with others, and i really enjoy it, find it meaningful and i know people get a lot out of it.
So I would love to see some folks out there.
So speaking of purpose.
The book.
What are you up to?
Why write a book.
My wife and i talk about it fairly often, that it's like we have a life that is very good, very full and on a lot of levels i would say, like emotionally spiritually, on the family, it's a big blessing.
When i was on alone too, it kind of struck me.
I was like this is a well, how's this situation that's so difficult, or i mean even life-changing for people?
It just kind of felt like another trip to russia or like it felt very normal for me.
I was like i wonder what prepared me in life to make uh, this kind of unusual situation seem normal and just to provide the counter to that.
I mean, people break on this show right yeah, in a lot of, in a lot of different ways, sometimes a very dramatic fashion, And so it made me a little bit introspective about what had prepared me for it.
Well,
And in thinking about those things, I was like man, there really are some patterns of my being that have created, you know and tim, if you guys listen, know he's really good at naming things and putting a place on it but have created like a reservoir of resilience that i can tap into and that is well exercised, and i just thought it would be really interesting to share with people, through the story of my life and all these kind of fun stories, but also some of the keys to living a life well really, but by building a resilience that'll help that.
And what is interesting is, you want to build that resilience before you find yourself in the situation.
Cause once you find yourself in the situation, it's often a little late.
And so the key is to come through hard times and trials and you know, anybody can get through it.
But you want to get through it and be positive and be putting light into the world.
So it's me trying to help.
Like your grandparents.
Like my grandparents, like my dad.
It's me trying to help people learn the lessons that I've learned.
That might help make their reservoir of resilience, you know, fill up so that they're able to confront things as they come.
So it's a fun project.
I got Harper Collins and I partnered up on it and it'll be, what I work on this year.
It's been fun starting.
What's the tentative update plan?
Any idea?
Early, I start at 2027.
It's exciting.
Yeah, it is exciting.
First book, so it's a fun new project.
Yeah, I'm going to for people who I really encourage people to watch season six and seven.
There's a Reddit thread titled quote can we agree that Jordan from season six is the best contestant to ever play the game?
And it just goes on and on and on and on.
You'll find some disagreement.
Yes.
I mean, it's red.
It's red.
So of course there's plenty of disagreement, but you mentioned hardship.
And earlier this morning we were chatting because I was.
I was in Tennessee and was with a very, very skilled podcaster and kind human, Sean Ryan.
And found this folded up piece of paper in the chair I was sitting in, and it ended up being a copy of the Serenity Prayer.
And I have long been a fan of the Serenity Prayer.
In part because it has echoes of and reinforces a lot of my reading in Stoicism.
What I didn't realize is that what I thought was the Serenity Prayer is actually just a small piece of it.
Are you able to pull it up on your phone by chance?
Yeah, it's a great prayer.
I'll read the full thing here.
It says...
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Then it goes on living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardships as the pathway to peace taking, as he did, this sinful world as it is not as I would have it, trusting that he will make all things right if I surrender to his will, so that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with him in the next, has a lot of interesting concepts.
There's, you know, the everyone, not everyone, but most people are familiar with a start.
The next one is like living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time.
There was that lesson I got slapped with on alone.
Whereas I'm worried about the future and worried that ended up not coming.
And then accepting hardship as the pathway to peace, as we were discussing this morning.
You know, it's a quite a profound bit of wisdom and there's a lot in there.
Yeah right, it's just, it's wild.
I mean some of my favorite, maybe concepts, maxims from buddhists philosophy, from stoicism.
It is so neatly wrapped into the serenity stoicism, it's so beautifully put and it just kind of blew my mind that i had such a partial understanding of it.
Yeah yeah, because i only knew, i think, like most people, the very beginning and not the rest.
Jordan is there.
People can find you at jordanjonascom, J-O-N-A-S.
They can find you on Instagram and YouTube at Hobo Jordan.
Makes me laugh every time I say it.
Is there anything else you'd like to say?
Anything you'd like to add?
Ask of my audience.
We've all been noticing lately that the political division is ramping up more and more.
I've been thinking a lot about the idea that so many people I know and love over the years have vastly divergent political opinions.
But when you filter each other through politics, you're really likely to see people as avatars of an ideology rather than as fellow humans.
And I see that right now with, it seems like with immigrations, the hot topic at the moment.
Of course, I believe we should keep track of immigration and who comes in and people who take advantage of the system shouldn't, because there's a social contract and a trust that has to be shared and maintained in a society.
But at the same time, I have a personal belief, based on my faith, that I should help those in need when I have the ability.
So in my personal life I've chosen to take on.
For example, in my case, a couple who was who were Russian asylum seekers didn't want to go to the front in Ukraine, so they fled.
But I don't expect others to be forced via the government and taxation to live out my morality.
And I don't judge or think ill of those who don't because I know there is a genuine sacrifice there.
So I don't use politics to vicariously fulfill my moral obligations, that I feel good about myself without having to make the personal sacrifices that a personally lived out ethic in the world requires.
If I have the government fulfill my morality, it costs me nothing, and I can even find myself in a situation where I'm judging People who might actually practically be doing more to bear the actual burden of what I think is right in the world.
So I think if more people approach their morality at a personal level actively, but also taking responsibly for it in their lives, the reality has a way of tempering the extremes.
And it cuts in every direction.
If someone on the right has a really strong opinion about abortion, it's like the foster children adopt.
Support single moms.
If someone on the left has a really strong opinion about wanting an open border well, take in an immigrant family.
Support them using your own means and social connections.
Get to know the complexity that comes when you do all that and you'll find you'll actually understand people that don't, because it is a sacrifice, and you'll be less judgmental and probably less self-righteous.
So some I've been thinking about a little bit lately.
Working that out is my favorite part of my spiritual path of Christianity.
It's like I don't have a law.
I don't know what I'm supposed to do usually.
I'm supposed to filter the real world through this ideal of love your neighbor as yourself.
Love the Lord, your God.
And in doing so, I'm constantly like, what does it mean to love your enemy?
That's not realistic.
What does it mean to give to everybody you've asked?
That's not realistic.
But it makes me wrestle with this thing.
And in that, I actually have, it all comes to life.
Whereas I could have chosen to throw it out at some point and throw all that wrestling out with it, but I would have lost a lot of what provides meaning and value in my life also.
And yeah, so I don't know, working that out in your life is super valuable.
It strikes me, I mean, this framing of wrestling with God.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
And look, I know I'm getting over my skis here a bit, but it's the people who wrestle with X who foster a type of introspection that I think often leads to decisions that are better aligned with their truest of true values.
Right right, right.
Yeah, it gets a little dangerous when you know for sure, and so it's uh.
Well, there's that struggle, i guess.
Yeah, i mean, i don't know attribution, but it's like you know, admire the seeker of the truth, beware the person who's found the truth.
Yeah, i mean, there are times when it's like to have solid values or principles that you choose to live your life by, but at the same time to wrestle And to ask questions.
Under what circumstances would this not be right?
And to cross-examine.
It's asking a lot of people, I recognize.
It's asking a lot of anyone.
Because it's easy to just have a formula to follow.
Yeah, like the, the highest path is to like, work it out well.
I i admire how you have tried to work it out.
I think it's a very thoughtful approach.
It's not an easy approach and i just love what you do in the world, man.
I feel like you're reintroducing people to a lot of core evolved sensitivities that make humans human, and when you do that, the abstractions and the concepts that people are willing to go to blows over on social media just fall away as what they are, which is typically some type of artificial line in the sand that people have chosen and been encouraged to take on as some type of team identity.
And that just falls away when you simplify things and put people in an environment where they can see that i think it's really beautiful, and people don't have to live in montana to do that right.
There are ways to seek it out.
So I appreciate you taking time on the show, man.
It's great to see him.
It's been fun getting to know you and hanging out with you in the woods and here and really enjoyed it.
I'm excited, man.
I can't wait to pack in my own ax now next time and make absolutely sure I don't stick it into my foot.
So i said it'd be continued.
Thanks, jordan.
Yeah, and for people listening, we'll link to all sorts of things in the show notes at timblog slash podcast.
Just search jordan and there may be one other jordan and you can certainly search jonas.
There's not going to be another jonas.
He'll pop right up until next time.
As always.
Just be a bit kinder than is necessary.
To others yes, but also to yourself.
To quote Jack Kornfield if your compassion does not include yourself, then your compassion is incomplete.
Thanks for tuning in.
Hey guys, this is Tim again.
Just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday.
Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday?
That provides a little fun before the weekend.
Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter every my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday.
Easy to sign up, easy to cancel.
It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week.
It's kind of like my diary of cool things.
It often includes articles.
I'm reading books, I'm reading albums, perhaps gadgets gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcasts.
Guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then i test them and then i share them with you.
So if that sounds fun again, it's very short a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about.
If you'd like to try it out, just go to timblog slash friday.
Type that into your browser timblog slash friday.
Drop in your email and you'll get the very next one.
Thanks for listening Back in the day this was 2004, maybe.
I had someone approach me in a coffee shop and say good day mate, and introduce himself.
Who was that?
It turned out to be founder of AG1.
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