Jordan Jonas: Survival, Hunting, Siberia, God, and Winning Alone Season 6 | Lex Fridman Podcast #437
- The following is a
conversation with Jordan Jonas, winner of "Alone" season six, a show where the task is to survive alone in the Arctic wilderness
longer than anyone else. He is widely considered to be one of, if not the greatest
competitors on that show. He has a fascinating life story that took him from a farm in Idaho and hobo-ing on trains across America to traveling with nomadic
tribes in Siberia. All that helped make him into a world-class explorer, survivor, hunter, wilderness guide, and most importantly, a great human being with a
big heart and a big smile. This was a truly fun and
fascinating conversation. Let me also mention that at the end, after the episode, I'll start answering some questions and we'll try to articulate my thinking on some top of mind topics. So if that's of interest to you, keep listening after the episode is over. This is the "Lex Fridman Podcast". To support it, please
check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends,
here's Jordan Jonas. You won "Alone" season six and I think are still
considered to be one of, if not the most successful
survivor on that show. So let's go back, let's look at the big picture. Can you tell me about the show "Alone"? How does it work? - Yeah, it's a show where
they take 10 individuals and each person gets 10
items off of the list. You know, basic items would be an ax, a saw, a frying pan, you know, some pretty basic stuff. And then they send them all, drop 'em off all in the
woods with a few cameras. And so the people are actually alone. There's not a crew or anything. And then you basically live there as
long as you can, you know? And so the person that
lasts the longest, you know, once the second-place person taps out, they come and get you
and that individual wins. So it's a pretty legit challenge. You know, they drop you off, helicopter flies out, and you're not gonna get in your next meal until you make it happen, so. - You have to figure out the shelter, you have to figure out the source of food, and then it gets colder and colder 'cause they, I guess they
drop you out in a moment where it's going into the winter. - Yeah, they typically do it
in temperate, colder climates, things like that. And they start in September, October. So time's ticking when they drop you off. And yeah, the pressure's on. You gotta, it's, you
know, you get overwhelmed with all the things you
have to do right away. Like, oh man, I'm not gonna eat again until I actually shoot or catch something. Gotta build a shelter. It's pretty overwhelming. Figure your whole location out. But it's interesting
'cause once you're there a little while, you kind of get into a, well at least for me it did, there was like a week,
or maybe not a week, but that I was kind of a little
more annoyed with things, you know, it's like, oh my site sucks. And then you kind of accept
it like, you know what? It is what it is. No code, no amount of
complaining's going to do anybody any good, so I'm just gonna make it happen. And so then, or you know, do my best to, and then I felt like I got in a zone and I felt like I was right
back in kind of Siberia or in that head space. And I found I actually really enjoyed it. I had been a little bit out of, I guess you'd call it the game because I had a child and
so when we had our daughter, we came back to the States and then a bunch of things
happened and I just ended up, we didn't end up going back to Russia, so it had been a couple years
that I was just, you know, we were raising the little
girl and boy and then. - So you've gotten a little soft. - So I was like, dude,
I got a little soft. (Jordan and Lex laugh) - You had to figure that out. - But then it was fun how like
after just some days there I was like, oh man, I feel like, I feel like I'm at home now. And then it was like you're
kind of in that flow state and it was.
- Actually, there's a few moments like when
you left the ladder up. - Mm-hmm.
- Or with the moose that you kind of screwed up a little bit. - Oh yeah. - How do you go from that
moment of like frustration to the moment of acceptance? - I mean, the more you
put yourself in life in positions that are kind
of outside your comfort zone or push your abilities, the more often you're gonna screw up. And then.
- [Lex] Yeah. - The more opportunity you
have to learn from that. And then to be honest, it's kind of funny, but you almost get to a position where you don't feel that uncomfortable. It's not unexpected, you know? You kind of expect you're
gonna mess up here and there. You know, I remember
particularly with the moose, the first moose I saw, I
had a great shot at it, but I had a hard time judging distance because it was in a mud flat, which means it's hard to
tell yardage, you know? Because you usually, typically
going by trees or markers be like, oh, I'm probably 30 yards away. This was a giant moose and he
was 40-something yards away and I estimated that he was
30-something yards away. So I was way off and shot
and dropped between his legs. And then I realized I had
not grabbed my quiver, so I only had one shot and I just watched him
turn around and walk off. But I was struck initially with like, I actually noticed how un-mad I was. I was like, oh, this is actually, I was like, that was awesome. That was like seeing a
dinosaur, that was really cool. And then I was like, oh, what an idiot. How'd I miss? But then I was like, but it made me that much more determined
to make it happen again. It was like, okay, nobody's gonna make this
happen except myself, so you can't complain. It wouldn't have done
me any good to go back and mope about it. And so then I was like, I had a thought, I was like, oh, I remember these, the native guys telling me, they used to like build these giant fences and funnel game into
certain areas and stuff. And I was like, man,
that's a lot of calories, but I have make that happen again now. So I like kind of went
out there and tried that and that was kind of a
attempt at something too, it could have failed or not worked, but sure enough it worked and
the opportunity came again. The moose came wandering
along and was able to get it. But being able to take failure, sooner you can, the better, accept it and then learn
from it is kind of a muscle you have to exercise a little bit. - Well it's interesting
'cause in this case, the cost of failure is like
you're not gonna be able to eat. - Yeah, yeah, that was really interesting. I mean, the most interesting
thing about that show was how high the stakes felt because it didn't feel, you know, you didn't tell yourself you're on a show. At least I didn't, you
just felt like it was, you're gonna starve to death
if you don't make this happen. And so the stakes felt so high and it was an interesting thing
to tap into because I mean, so many of our ancestors
probably all just dealt with that on a regular basis. But it's something that we thought all the modern amenities and such and food security that we don't deal with. And it was interesting to tap into what a kind of a peak
mental experience that is when you really, really
need something to survive and then it happens. It's, you can't imagine, I mean that's what all our
dopamine and receptors are tuned for that experience in particular. So it was, yeah, it was pretty awesome. But the pressure felt very on. Like I always felt the pressure
of providing or starving. - And then there's the
situation when you left the ladder up.
- [Jordan] Right. - [Lex] And you needed fat and what is it? The wolverine ate some of the fat. - Right, yeah, well it
was when I got the moose, I was so happy. The most joy I could almost
experience maxed out. But I didn't think, I didn't think I won at that point. I never thought like, oh,
that's my ticket to victory. I thought, holy crap, it's gonna be me against somebody
else that gets a moose now and we're gonna be here six, eight months, who knows how long?
- [Lex] Yeah. - And so I can't be here six,
eight months and still lose. So I've gotta, like, I've gotta out-produce
somebody else with a moose. So I had all that in my head, and I already was of course pretty thin. And so I was just like, man,
if somebody else gets a moose, I'm still gonna be behind. And so everything felt
like precious to me. And I had found a plastic jug and I put a whole bunch of the moose's fat in this plastic jug and set
it up on a little shelf. And I thought, oh, you
know what, if a bear comes, I'll probably hear it and I'll come out and be able to shoot it. So I went to sleep and I
woke up the next morning and I went out and I was
like, where's that jug? (Jordan and Lex laugh) And then I was like, wait a second, what are all these prints? And I started looking around and it took a second to dawn on me 'cause I haven't
interacted with wolverines very often in life. And I was like, oh, those
are wolverine tracks. And he was just so much sneakier
than a bear would've been or something so it kind of surprised me. And he took off with that jug of fat. And so then I went from feeling
pretty good about myself to like, now I'm losing
again against whoever, you know, this other
person is with a moose. So I, again, kind of the
pressure came back to, oh no, I gotta produce again. It, you know, it wasn't
the end of the world. And I think they may have
exaggerated a little bit how little fat I had left. You know, I still had there,
a moose has a lot of fat, but it did make me feel like
I was at a disadvantage again. And so yeah, that was pretty intense 'cause those wolverines,
they're bold little animals and they, and he was basically
saying, no, this is my moose. (Jordan and Lex laugh) And I had to counter his claims. - Well they, yeah, they're
really, really smart. They figure out a way to get
to places really effectively. Wolverines are like
fascinating in that way. So let's go to that
happy moment, the moose. - [Jordan] Yeah, yeah.
- You are the first and one of the only
contestants to have ever killed a moose on the show, a big game animal with a bow and arrow. So this is day 20, so can you take me through the kill? - Yeah, so I had missed
one and I just decided I'm not here to starve. I'm here to like try
to become sustainable. So I was like, I don't
care if it's a risk, I'm gonna build that fence. I built it, I would just pick berries and call moose every, you know, every day. And it was actually really pleasant, just sit in a berry patch and call moose. (Jordan and Lex laugh) But then I also had this
whole trap and snare line set out everywhere. So I had all these, I was getting rabbits, but I went and I was actually
taking a rabbit out of a snare when I heard a clank, 'cause I had set
up kind of an alarm system with string and cans, so.
- It's a brilliant idea. - Yeah, another thing that
could have not worked, but. - [Lex] It worked. - And it came through and I was like, oh, I heard the cans clink. And I was like, no way and so I ran over, I didn't know what it was exactly, but something was coming along the fence. And I ran over and jumped in the bush next to the funnel exit on the fence. And sure enough, the big
moose came running up and you know, your heart
gets pounding like crazy. You're just like, no way, no way. I probably could have
waited a little longer and had a perfect broadside shot. But I took the shot when he was pretty close, like 24 yards. But he was quartering towards me, which makes it a little harder to make a perfect kill shot, you know? And so I hit it and it took
off running and I just thought, you know, I was super excited. I couldn't believe I actually, you know, I was like, oh my gosh, I got the moose. I think that was a really good shot. You get all excited, but then it plays back in your head. And particularly when you're
first learning to hunt, there's always an animal
that gets away, you know, and you like make a bad decision or a not a great shot or something. And it's just part of it. And so of course you're like, I'm not gonna be satisfied
until I see this thing. So I followed the blood
trail a little while and I saw some bubbly blood, which meant it was hit in the lungs, which meant it's not gonna
live, you know, you'll get it. And so as long as you don't mess it up. And so I went back to my
shelter and waited an hour. I skinned that rabbit that had caught and then super nervous, the
slowest hour I ever had. And then I followed it along, ended up losing the blood trail. I was like, no, no. And then I was like,
well, if there's no blood, I'm just gonna follow
the path that I would go if I was a moose. You know, like the least
resistance through the woods. So I followed kind of
along the shore there, and sure enough I saw him
up there and I was like, oh, you know, I was so excited, lay down. But he hadn't died yet. And so he just sat there
and he would stand up and I would just like, no, no, no, no. And he would lay back down and like, yes. And then he would stand up
and it was like that for a, you know, a couple hours it took him. And then finally at
one point, I, you know, and a lot of people have asked like, why wouldn't you go finish it off? So when an animal like that gets hit, it had no idea what hit it, you know? It just all of a sudden it's
like, ah, something got it and it ran off and it lays down and it's actually fairly calm and it doesn't really
know what's going on. And if you can leave it in that state, it'll kind of just bleed out
and as peacefully as possible. If you go chase after it, that's when you lose an animal
'cause as soon as it knows it's being hunted, you know,
it gets panicked, adrenaline, and it can just run and run and run and you'll never find it. So I didn't want it to see me. I knew if I tried to get
it with another arrow, there's a chance I could
have finished it off but there's also a not bad
chance that it would see me, take off or even attack 'cause moose can be a little dangerous. And so I just chose to wait it out and at one point it stood up and fell over and I could tell it had
died and walked over. Like, you actually touch it
and you're just like, whoa, no way. Like that whole burden of
weeks of you're gonna starve, you're gonna starve, and
it got rid of that demon. To be honest, it's one of the
happiest moments in my life. It's really hard to replicate that joy because it was just so real. You're so directly
connected to your needs. It's all so simple, you know? It was a peak experience, for sure. - And were you worried that it would take many more hours and it would
take it into the night? - Yeah, I was, I mean, I, until you actually have your hands on it, I was worried the whole time. It's a pretty nerve-wracking period there between when you get it and
when you actually recover the animal, get your hands on it. So it took longer than I
wanted, but I finally got it. - Can you actually speak
to the kill shot itself, just for people who don't hunt? - [Jordan] Yeah, so.
- Like what it takes to stay calm, to not freak out too much, to like wait, but not wait too long. - Yeah, yeah, I mean another
thing about hunting is that for every animal you
get you probably don't get, you know, nine or 10, that
just turned the wrong way when you were drawn back
or went way behind a tree or you never had a clean
shot or whatever it is. And so every time you can see a
moment coming, you know, your heart really starts beating and you have to like breathe through it. I can almost, you know, you almost feel the nervousness of it. And then you just try
to stay calm, you know, like whatever you do,
just try to stay calm, wait for it to come up, draw back, you've practiced shooting a lot, so you have like kind of a technique, like I am gonna go back, touch
my face, draw my elbow tight, and then the arrow's gonna let loose. - So muscle memory, mostly? - Yeah, it's kind of muscle memory. You have a few little trigger, like draw that elbow tight and then. And then it happens and then you
just watch the arrow and see where it goes. Now with the animal, you know, you try to do it ethically, that is like make it as
good of a shot as you can, make sure it is either hit
in the heart or both lungs. And when that happens,
it's a pretty quick death, which is, and death is a part of life and, but honestly for a wild animal, that's probably the best
way to go they could have. Now when a animal's kind
of walking towards you, if it's walking towards you,
but not directly towards you, that's what you call
quartering towards you, you can picture it's
actually pretty difficult to hit both lungs because the shoulder blade and
all that bone is in the way. So you wanna, so you have to make a
perfect shot to get 'em both. And to be honest, when I took my shot, I was a couple inches
or a few inches right. And so it went through the first lung and then it sunk the arrow
all the way into the moose. And, but it didn't, it allowed that second
lung to stay breathing, which meant the moose stayed alive longer. - What's your relationship with the animal in the situation like that? You said death is a part life.
- Oh that, yeah, that's an interesting thought because no matter what
your relationship to however you choose to go through life, whether, you know, whatever
you eat, whatever you do, death is a part of life. You know, like every
animal that's out there is living off of a dead,
even plants, you know? It's all, we're all
part of this ecosystem. I think it's really easy in a, particularly in an urban environment, but anywhere to think that we're separate from the ecosystem, but we
are very much a part of it. Whether it be, you know,
farming requires, you know, all this habitat to be
turned into growing soybeans and da, da, da, da, and when you get the
plows and the combines, you know, you're losing all
kinds of different animals and all kind of potential habitat. So it's not cost-free. And so when you realize that, then you wanna to produce the food and the things you need in an ethical manner. So I, so for me, hunting plays a really major role in that. Like, I literally know
how many animals year it takes to feed my family and myself. I actually know the
exact number, you know? And it's like, and I know
what the cost of that is and I'm aware of it 'cause
I'm out in the woods and I see these like
beautiful elk and moose and I really love the
species, love the animals, but there is a fact that one of those individuals, you know, is going to have to feed me. And I, and particularly like on "Alone", it was very heightened, that experience. So I shot that one animal and I was so, so thankful, you know, that I wanted to give that
big guy a hug and like, hey, sorry it was you, but
yeah, had to be somebody. - [Lex] Yeah, there's that picture of you just almost hugging it. - [Jordan] Right, right, totally. - And you can also think
about it, the calories, the protein, the fat, all of that that comes
from that will feed you. - Right, you're so grateful for it. Like the gratitude is like,
you know, definitely there. - What about the bow
and arrow perspective? - Well, when you hunt with a bow, you just get so much more
up close to the animals. You know, you can't just
get it from 600 yards away. You actually have to sneak
in within 30 or so yards. And when you do that, the experiences you have are just, they're way more dragged out. So you know, your heart's beating longer. You have to control your nerves longer. More often than not,
it doesn't go your way and the thing gets away and you know, you've been hiking around
in the woods for a week and then your opportunity
arises and floats away. (Jordan laughs) You're like, no. And then, but at the same time, that's the only time we, when you'll like really
have those interactions with the animals where
you got this bugling bull, you know, like tearing at the
trees right in front of you and other cow, elk and animals
running around you, you know, you get, you end up having really, I don't know, dare I
say intimate experiences with the animal just because you're in it, you're kind of in its world,
you're playing its game. It has its senses to defend itself and you have your wit to
try to get over those. And it really becomes,
you know, it's not easy. They're not, it becomes
kind of that chess game and those prey animals
are always tuned in. It's, you know, slightest stick, they're looking for wolves
or for whatever it is. So there's something really
pure and fun about it. You know, I will say there's
a aspect that is fun. There's no denying it. It's like how we're, you know, people have been hunting forever and I think it speaks to
that part of us somehow. But, and I think bow
hunting is probably the most pure form of it in that
you get those experiences more often than with a rifle. So I don't know, I enjoy it a lot. And the way they do regulations and such, kind of the best times to hunt are usually allowed for bow because
they're trying to, you know, keep it fair for the animal and such, so. - So the distance, the close distance makes you more in touch with a sort of the natural way of the predator and prey and you're just one.
- Yeah, yeah. - You're one of the predators.
- [Jordan] Mm-hmm. - Where you have to be
clever, you have to be quiet, you have to be calm,
you have to all of that. - [Jordan] Yeah.
- And the full challenge and the luck involved in catching the same thing as the predators do. - Exactly, how many times
do they snap a stick and watch 'em run off and like, darn, my stock was failed or, you know? (Jordan laughs) So yeah, you're just,
you're in that ecosystem. - How'd you learn to shoot the bow? - Yeah, I was, I didn't grow up hunting. I grew up in a area that
a lot of people hunted, but my dad wasn't really into it. And so I never got into
it until I lived in Russia with the natives. It was just such a part
of everything we did and a part of our life
that when I came back, I got a bow and I started
doing archery in Virginia. They had, it was a pretty easy way to hunt 'cause the deer were overpopulated and you could get these
urban archery permits so you would go out and, you know, every couple days you'd have
an opportunity to shoot a deer that they needed population control. And so there were a lot of 'em and it gave you a lot of
opportunities to learn quickly. So that's what got me into it. And then I found I really enjoyed it. - Do you practice with the target also, or just practice out? - Oh no, I would definitely
practice with the target a lot. You wanna, again, you
kind of have an obligation to do your best 'cause you
don't wanna be flinging arrows into like the leg of an animal. And it's a cool way, honestly, to provide quality meat for the family. You know, it's all raised
naturally and wild and free until you bring it home
into the freezer, so. - So if we step back, what are the 10 items you brought and what's actually the
challenge of figuring out which items to bring? - Yeah, the challenge is
that you don't exactly know what your site's
opportunities are gonna be. So you don't really know,
should I bring a fishing net? Am I gonna even have a spot to net or not? And things like that. I brought a ax, a saw, a Leatherman Wave, a ferro rod, is like makes
sparks to start a fire, a frying pan, a sleeping bag, a fishing kit, a bow and arrow, trapping wire and paracord. And so those were my 10 items. - Is there any regrets, any? - No major regrets. I took the saw kind of, I thought it would be a
more of a calorie saver, then I didn't really need it. I, in hindsight, if I was doing, you know, season seven instead of
six and got to watch, I would've taken the net because I just planned to make a net, but I would've rather just had two nets, brought one and left the saw. Because in the northern
woods in particular, every tree is, you know,
the size of your arm or leg, you can chop it down with
an ax and a couple swings. - So ax is fine?
- Yeah, yeah. You don't really need the saw. And so it was handy at times and useful but I think it was my, if I had to do nine items, I would've been just fine without the saw. - So two nets would just expand your. - Food-gathering potentially. (Jordan and Lex laugh) - And then the, in terms of trapping, you were okay with just
the little you brought? - The snare wire was good. I ran some, you know, I put out, I used all my snare wire. I ran trap line, which
is just a series of traps through the woods and brush, every place you see sign, put a snare, put a little mark on the tree. So I knew where that snare was and just make these
paths through the woods. And I put out, you know,
I don't know how many, 150, 200 snares. So every day I'd get a
rabbit or two out of 'em. And then, so I had a lot of rabbits, but once I got the moose, I actually took all those snares down 'cause I didn't wanna
catch anything needlessly. And oh, you come to find out you can't live off of rabbits. Man cannot live off rabbit
alone, it turns out. - So you set up a huge number of traps. You were also fishing and then always on the lookout for moose. - [Jordan] Yeah.
- So like what's, in terms of survival, if you
were to do it over again, over and over and over and over, like how do you maximize your chance of having enough food to survive for a long time? - You have to be really adaptable because everything's gonna, it's always gonna look different. Your situation, your location. I actually had a, what I thought was a pretty
good plan going into "Alone" and it just, the, you know, the location didn't allow
for what I thought it would. - What was the plan? - Well I thought I would
just catch a bunch of fish 'cause I'm on a really good fishing lake. I catch a whole bunch of fish and let 'em rot for a little while and then just drag 'em
all through the woods into a big pile and then hunt
a bear on that big fish pile. (Lex laughs) - Yeah, yeah, - That was the plan. And I thought, but when I got there, for one, I had a hard time
catching fish off the bat. You know, it, they didn't
come like I was hoping. And then for two it had burned prior, so there were no berries. And so there were very few berries, which meant there weren't
grouse, there weren't bear, there weren't, you know, they
had all gone to other places where the berries were. And so what I had grown accustomed to kind of relying on in Siberia
wasn't there, you know? So in Russia, which was
a similar environment, it was just grouse and berries and fish and grouse and berries and fish. And then occasionally, you know, you get a moose or something. But I had to reassess, which was part of me
being grumpy at the start. Like, this place sucks. (Jordan laughs) And then once I reassessed and you know, right away I saw that there
were moose tracks and such, so I just started to plan for that. I moved my camp in a, into a area that was as
removed as I could be from where all the action
is, where the tracks were so that I wasn't
disturbing animal patterns. I made sure the wind, the predominant wind was
blowing out my scent to sea and, or you know, to the water. And then really to be honest, if you want to actually survive somewhere is different than "Alone". But you do have to be active and it has to, you're gonna have to, you're not gonna live, you're not gonna be
sustainable by, you know, starving it out. You have to unlock the key
that is sustainability. And I think there's a lot of areas that still have that potential. But you have to figure out what it is. It's usually gonna be a
combination of fishing, you know, trapping and then hunting. And then once you have some,
the fishing and trapping, it'll get you until you
have some success hunting. And then that'll buy you
three or four months of time to continue, you know,
to keep hunting again. And you just have to roll off of that. But every, you know, it
depends on where you are, what opportunities are there. - So, okay, so that's the process, fishing and trapping until
you're successful hunting. - [Jordan] Mm.
- And then the successful hunt buys you some more time. - Mm-hmm, right, right. - You just go year-round.
- And then you just go year-round like that. And that's how people did it forever. The pressure, I noticed
it, you know, with that, you got that moose and then
you're happy for a week or so and then you start to be like,
you know, this is finite, I'm gonna have to do this again. And you're, imagine if you had a family that was gonna starve if
you weren't successful, you know, this next time. And there's just always
that pressure, you know, made me really like appreciate the, what people had to deal with. - Well in terms of being active, like, so you have to do stuff all day. So you get up, so you.
- [Jordan] Get up. - And planning.
- Mm-hmm. - Like, what am I gonna, in the midst of the frustration you have to figure out
like what's the strategy? Like how do you put up all the traps? Like what's, is that a
decision like, you know, most people like sit at their desk and have like a calendar, whatever. (Jordan laughs) Are you like figuring out, like. - One thing about wilderness
life in general is it's remarkably less scheduled
than anything we deal with. Schedules are fairly unique
to, of a modern context. So you'd wake up and you just sort of, you have a, you know, confluence
of things you wanna do, things you need to do, things you should do and
you just kind of tackle 'em as you see fit as it flows in, you know? So, and that's actually one
of the things that, you, people really, that I really
appreciate about that lifestyle is it really is you're kind of in that flow. And so I'd wake up and be like, maybe I'll go fishing and then I'll wander over and
fish and then I'd be like, ah, I'm gonna go check the trap line, add, every day, if I add
five or 10 snares, you know, you're constantly adding to
your productive potential and then, but nothing's really scheduled. You're just kind of flying
by the seat of your pants. - But then there's a lot
of instinct that's already loaded in.
- [Jordan] Oh, there's so much - Like you already,
there's just like wisdom from all the times you've
had to do it before. - [Jordan] Mm-hmm.
- That you're just actually operating a lot
on instinct, like you said, where to find, to place the shelter. Like how hard is that calculation, where to place the shelter? - If you're like dropped off
and this is all new to you, of course all those
things are gonna be things you have to really think through and plan. When you're thinking about a shelter, you have to think of, oh here's
a nice, flat spot, you know, that's a good place. But also is there firewood nearby? And if I'm gonna be here for months, is there enough firewood
that I'm not gonna be walking a half a mile to get a dry piece of wood? Is the water nearby? Is there, is it somewhat open but also
protected from the elements? 'Cause sometimes you get a beautiful spot, it is great on a calm day and then the wind comes like, and so there's all
these factors, you know? Even down to taking in what
game is doing in the area also and how that relates to
where your shelter is. - You said you have to consider
where the action will be and you wanna be away from the action, but close enough to it.
- To see it, yeah. You wanna be, yeah, right. And so ideally, you know, and it depends. You're always gonna make give and takes. And one thing with shelters and location selection and stuff, it's another thing you just
have to trust your ability to adapt in the situation because you, everybody has a particular, you know, you got an idea of a
shelter you're gonna build, but then you get there and
maybe there's a good cliff that you can incorporate, you know? Or may, and then you just become creative. And that's a really fun process too, to just allow your creativity
to try to flourish in it. - What kind of shelters are there? - There's all kinds of
philosophies on shelters, which is fun. People, it's fun to see
people try different things. Mine was fairly basic
for the simple reason that I had lived, you know, winters, through winters in Siberia in a teepee. So I knew I didn't need like.
- [Lex] Yeah. - [Jordan] Anything too robust. As long as I had calories I'd be warm. And I wasn't particularly
worried about the cold. But you'll see, so I kept my shelter really pretty simple with the idea that I built a
simple, A-frame type shelter. And then most of my
energy's gonna be focused on getting calories. And then of course there's
always gonna be downtime. And in that downtime I can tweak, modify, improve my shelter. And that'll just be a constant process that by the time you're
there a few months, you'll have all the kinks worked out. It'll be a really nice little setup. But you don't have to
start with that necessarily 'cause you got other
needs you gotta focus on. That said, you'll see a
lot of people on "Alone" that really focus on, you
know, building a log cabin because they want to be secure, or incorporating the, you know, whatever the earth has around, whether it be rocks or whether it be digging a hole, you know? And we've seen some really cool shelters and I'm not gonna knock it, everybody's got, there's
all different strokes for different folks. But I mean, my particular idea
was to keep it fairly simple, improve it with time, but spend most of my energy, you know, the shelter you really
need to think about, it can't be smoky 'cause
that'll be miserable, but it is nice to have a fire inside. So you need to have a fire inside that's not gonna be
dangerous and smoke free. And then also airtight because
you're never gonna have a warm shelter out there 'cause you don't have
seals and things like that. But as long as the air's
not moving through it, you can have a warm enough shelter. - With a fire.
- With a fire and dry your socks and stuff. - How do you get the
smoke out of the shelter? - If you have good clay and mud and rock, you can build yourself a fireplace, which is surprisingly not that hard. You know, you just.
- [Lex] Oh, really? - Yeah, it's a fun thing to do. It works well, you
know, dig a little hole, start stacking rocks around it, make it, make sure it's opening and it actually works, you know? So that's not as hard as you might think. For me, where I was, I
kind of came up with it as I was there with my A-frame. You know, I hadn't
built an A-frame shelter like that before. And so when I built it, and then I had put a bunch
of tin cans in the ground so that air would get the fire. So it was fed by air,
which helps curate a draft. But I realized in an
A-frame, it really doesn't, the smoke doesn't go out very well. Even if you leave a hole at the top, it like collects and billows back down. So then I cut some of
my tarp and made this, and cut a hole in the A-frame. And then I made like a hood
vent that I could pull down and catch the smoke with. And so while the fire was going, it would just billow out the hood vent. And then when it was done burning
and it was just hot coals, I could close it, seal it
up and keep the heat in. So it actually worked pretty well. - [Lex] So, start with
something that kind of works and then keep improving it. - [Jordan] Yeah, exactly. - I was wondering, I mean the log cabin. - [Jordan] Mm-hmm.
- [Lex] It feels like that's the thing that
takes a huge amount of work before work.
- [Jordan] Right, the difference between a log
cabin and a warm log cabin is like an immense amount of work and all the chinking
and all the door sealing and you know, the chimney has to be, anyway, so otherwise it's
just gonna be the same ambient temperature as outside. So I don't think "Alone"
is the proper context for a log cabin. I think like a log cabin's great in, as a hunting cabin, as you know, like if you're gonna
have something for years, but in a three, six month scenario, I don't know that it's worth
the calorie expenditure. (Jordan laughs) - And it is a lot of calories. But that's an interesting
sort of metaphor, of just like get something that works. You see a lot of this with companies. - [Jordan] Mm.
- Like successful companies. They, you know, get a prototype, get a system that's working, then improve fast.
- [Jordan] Mm-hmm. - In response to the
conditions, to environment. - Yeah, because it's constantly changing. - Yeah,.
- [Jordan] Yeah. - And you end up being a lot
better if you're able to learn how to respond quickly versus like having a big plan that takes a huge amount
of time to accomplish, that's interesting.
- Right, forcing that through the pipeline,
whether or not it fits, yeah. - Can you just speak to
like the place you were, the Canadian Arctic? It looked cold. - Yeah, we were right
near the Arctic Circle. I don't know, it was like 60 kilometers south of the Arctic Circle. So it was, it's a really
cool area, really remote. Thousands of little lakes. You know, when you fly
over you're just like, man, that's incredible. There must be so many of those lakes that people haven't been to. You know, it really was a
neat area, really remote. And for the show's purpose,
I think it was perfect 'cause it did have enough game and enough different avenues forward that I think it really
did reward activity. So I think, but it's a special place. It was Dene, there was a tribe that lived there, the Dene people, which interestingly
enough, here's a side note. When I was in Siberia, I
floated down this river called the Podkamennaya Tunguska. And you get to this
village called (indistinct) and there's these Ket
people they're called, and there's only 600 of 'em left. But, and this is in the middle of Siberia, not in like the Pacific coast, but their language is
related to the Dene people. And so somehow, you know, that connection was there
thousands of years ago. Super interesting, but. - Yeah, so language travels somehow. - Right, and the remnant
stayed back there. It's very interesting to
think through history. - Yeah, within language, it
contains a history of a peoples and it's interesting how
that evolves over time and how wars tell the story. Like, language tells a story of conflict and conflict shapes language and. - [Jordan] Right. - We get the the result of that. - Right, so fascinating. - And the barriers that
language creates is also the thing that leads to
wars and misunderstandings and all this kind of stuff.
- [Jordan] Mm-hmm. - It's a fascinating tension.
- [Jordan] Mm-hmm. - But it got cold there, right? It got real cold. - Yeah, I mean I think,
I don't know what the, I didn't have a thermometer, but I imagine it probably got
to negative 30 at the most, you know, like it might've gotten, it would've definitely gotten
colder had we stayed longer. But yeah, I, to be honest, I was said I never felt cold out there. I was pretty, I had that one pretty dialed in. And then once you have
calories, you can stay warm, you can stay active, you can, you know, you gotta dress warm, you know? You don't never let,
oh there's a good one. If you're in the cold, never
let yourself get too cold. Because what happens is you'll
stop feeling what's cold and then frostbite and then issues and then it's really hard to warm back up. So every I, it was so annoying, I'd be out going to ice fish or something and then I would just
notice that my feet are cold and you're just like, ah dang it. I just turn around, go back,
start a fire, dry my boots out, make sure my feet are
warm, and then go again. I wouldn't ignore that, you know? - Oh, so you wanna be
able to feel the cold. - Yeah, you wanna make sure
you're still feeling things and that you're not toughing through it 'cause you can't really
tough through the cold. It'll just get you, so. - What's your relationship with the cold psychologically, physically? - It's interesting. Well, I actually, there's some part of it that really makes you feel alive. You know, I imagine, you know, sometime in Austin here, you come go out and it's hot and sweaty and you're like, ugh. You get that kind of, kind of saps you. There's something about that
brisk cold that hits your face that you're like boo, it wakes you up, makes you feel really
alive, engaged, you know? It feels like the margins
of error are smaller so you're alert and engaged a little more. There is something that's
a little bit life-giving just because you feel on an edge. You're walk, you're on this edge, but you have to be alert
because even, you know, some of the natives I lived with, the lady had face issues because
she let her head get cold when they were on a snowmobile, hat was up too high, you know, that little mistake and
then it just freezes this part of your forehead
and then the nerves go and then you got issues when
just hat wasn't high enough. So you kind of gotta
be dialed in on stuff. - Well there's a
psychological element to just, I mean, it's unpleasant. If I were to think of
what kind of unpleasant would I choose, you know, fasting for
long periods of time, going without food in
a warm environment is way more pleasant than. - Being fed in a cold? - Yeah, exactly. (Jordan laughs) Like if you were to choose to survive. - I'd choose the opposite. - Oh yeah, okay, well there you go. I wonder if that's, I wonder if you're born with that or if that's developed, maybe your time in Siberia, like you, or do you gravitate towards the, I wonder what that is 'cause I really don't
like survival in the cold. - Hmm, I think a little
bit of it is learned. You like almost learn, not,
you learn not to fear it. You learn to kind of appreciate it. And a big part of that is I mean, to be honest,
it's like dressing warm, being in good, it's not that, you know, there's no secrets to that. It's, you just can't beat the cold. So you just need to dress
warm, the native, you know, all that fur, all that stuff. And then all of a sudden
you have your little refuge, have a nice, warm fire
going in your teepee, you know, and then you, I bet you could learn to appreciate it. - Yeah, I think some of it
is just opening yourself up to the possibility that
there's something enjoyable about it. Like here, I mean I run
in Austin all the time in like 100 degree heat.
- [Jordan] Uh-huh. - And I go out there
with a smile on my face and like, and learn to enjoy it. - [Jordan] Oh yeah?
- So you just like, I look kind of like you do in the cold. (Jordan laughs) And just, I don't think I enjoy the heat, but you just allow yourself to enjoy it. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do feel that way. I mean, I don't mind the heat that much, but I think you could get to the place where you appreciated the cold. It's probably just a lack of practice. It's kind of scary when
you haven't done it and you don't know what
you're doing and you go out and you feel cold. It's like not fun, but I bet you could, you'd enjoy it. You'll have to come out
sometime in the winter. - 100%. You, I mean, you're right. It does make you feel alive. - [Jordan] Mm.
- That it, like, maybe that's a thing
that I struggle with is the time passes slower. 'Cause it does make you feel alive. You get to feel time. But then the flip side of
that is you get to feel every moment and you get to feel alive in every moment.
- [Jordan] Right, yeah. - So it's that, it's both scary when you're inexperienced and beautiful when you are experienced. Were there times when you got hungry? - I got, shot a rabbit on day one and I snared a couple rabbits on day two and then more and more as the time went. So I actually did pretty
well on the food front. The other thing is when you have all those berries around and stuff, you do have an ability
to like fill your stomach and so you don't really notice
if you're getting thinner or if you're losing weight. So I can say on "Alone",
I was not that hungry. I've definitely been
really hungry in Russia. There were times when
I lost a lot of weight. I mean, I lost a lot
more weight in Siberia than I did on "Alone".
- Oh wow. - [Jordan] Many times, so. - Okay, we'll have to talk about it. So you caught a fish, you caught a couple. - I think I caught like 13 or so. They didn't show a lot of 'em, but. - You caught 13 fish? (Jordan laughs) - 13 of those big fish too. Well, I caught a couple that were small. - [Lex] This is like a meme at this point. - [Jordan] Yeah, it was a. - [Lex] You're a perfect
example of a person who was thriving, not surviving. - I was thought, you know, this is in the, in hindsight, again, when I was out there, I never let myself think you might win, I just was gonna be out
there as long as I could and tried to remain pessimistic about it. (Jordan laughs) No, but then the, but then I remember a
thought that I was like, I wonder if they're gonna be
able to make this look hard, you know?
- [Lex] Oh yeah. - I did have that thought at one point. And 'cause it went pretty
well and I was definitely, it was hard psychologically because I didn't know
when it was gonna end. Like I thought this could go, you know, like I said, six months,
could go eight months, a year, and then you start to, you know, I had a two and a three year old and you start to weigh in the, is it worth it if it goes a year? And it's not worth it
if it goes eight months and I still lose. So I feel like I had this pressure and it was psychologically
difficult for that reason. Physically, that wasn't too bad. - This is off mic. We're talking about Gordon
Ryan competing in jiu-jitsu. And maybe that's the
challenge he also has to face is to make things look hard. (Jordan and Lex laugh) Because there's, he's
so dominant in the sport that in terms of the drama
and the entertainment of the sport and in this case of survival, it has to be difficult. - You know, and I'm, I'll
add that for sure, though, that it's the woods, it's nature. You never know how it's gonna go. You know what I mean? It's like every time you're out there, it's a different scenario. So yeah, whatever,
hallelujah, it went well. - So you won after 77 days. How long do you think
you could have lasted? - When I left, I weighed
what I do right now, so I just weighed my normal weight. I had, you know, a couple hundred pounds of moose. I had at least a, you
know, 100 pounds of fish. I had, you know, a pile of rabbits. - [Lex] Yeah.
- A wolverine, you know? I had all this stuff and I
know I hadn't gotten cold yet. I just thought, but in my head I thought if I get today 130 or 40, even if someone else has big game, I had a pretty good idea they might quit because it would be long, cold, dark days. And how miserable is that? Just, it's so boring, it's freezing. And so I thought, the only time I thought I
could think about winning is when I got to day 130 or 40. And I definitely had that with what I had. Now maybe I would've got, you know, I probably would've gotten more, I had caught a, that big,
20-something pound pike on the last day I was there. Maybe catch some more of those, you know? I don't, you know, and I don't know, like, I don't know how many
calories I had stored, but I had a lot. And so how long would that have lasted me assuming I didn't get anything else? It definitely would've, I would definitely
would've reached my goal of 130 or 40 days. And then after that I thought
we were just gonna push into the who, you know, then it's just to see how much, who has what reserves and
we'll go as far as we can. And that would get me through
January into February. And I just thought, man, that's gonna be miserable for people. (Jordan laughs) - And you were like, I can last through. - [Jordan] And I knew I
could do it, yeah, yeah. - What aspect of that is miserable? - The hardest thing for me
would've been the boredom. Because it's hard to stay busy when it's all dark out. When the ice is, you know,
three, four foot thick, you can't fish. And I just think, I think it
would've just been really boring. You would've had to have
been a real zen master to push through it. But because I had experienced
it to some degree, I knew I could. And then I think things that my, you know, you start thinking about
family and this and that in those situations. And I just knew that those, because I'd gone to all
these trips to Russia for a year at a time, the time context was a
little broader for me than I think for some people. 'Cause I knew I could be gone for a year and come back, catch
up with my loved ones, you know, bring what I got back, whether that be
psychological, whatever it is. And we'd all enrich each other. And once it's in hindsight, that year would've been
like that, talking about it. So I had that perspective and it, so I knew I wasn't gonna
tap for any other reason other than running out of food someday. So that was my stressor, and then. - So you're able to, given the boredom, given the loneliness, kinda zoom out and accept
the passing of time, just let it pass. - You know, for me, I'm an,
fairly, I like to be active. And so I would try to
think of creative ways to keep my brain busy. You know, we saw the like
dumb rabbit fur skit, but then I did a whole
bunch of like elaborate Normandy reinvasion, you know? (Lex laughs) Reenactments and stuff like.
- [Lex] Nice. - There was like a, every day I would think I
gotta think of something to make me laugh, you know? And then do some stupid skit. And then that would be, that
would fill a couple hours of my time and then I'd
spend an hour or two, couple, few hours fishing and then you spend a few hours, you know, whatever you're doing. - Would you do that without a camera? - Yeah. (Lex laughs) Oh no, the skits, funny question. That's a good question. I don't know, I actually don't know that, I will say that was the, one of the advantages of being on the show versus in Siberia. So no, 'cause I didn't, in Siberia just do skits by myself. (Jordan laughs) But I didn't film it
and so it was quite nice to have this camera
that made you feel like you weren't quite as alone as if you were just in the woods by yourself. And I think it, for me, I was able to, it's a, it was a pain, it was part of the cause
of me missing that moose, you know, there's issues with it. But I just chose to look at it as like, this is an awesome opportunity
to share with people a part of me that most
people don't get to see. You know, 'cause, so that was, I just chose to look at it that way and it was an advantage 'cause
you could do stuff like that. - I think there's actual power to doing this kind of documenting, like talking to a camera
or an audio recorder, like that's an actual tool in survival. - [Jordan] Mm-hmm.
- Is that I had a little bit of an
experience of being out alone in the jungle and just being
able to talk to a thing is much less lonely. - It is, it really is. It can be a powerful tool,
just sharing your experience. I had the, I definitely had the thought, so going back to your earlier comment, but I definitely had the thought, if I knew I was the last person on Earth, I wouldn't even bother. Like, I wouldn't do that. Like, I would just, probably
not, I'd just give up, I'm sure. Because even if I had a bunch
of food and this and that, but because I knew you're, you know you're a part, you're sharing, it gives you a lot of
strength to go through and having that camera just is, makes it that much more vivid 'cause you know you're
not just gonna be sharing a vague memory but an actual experience. - I think if you're the
last person on Earth, you would actually convince yourself, first of all, you don't know for sure. (Jordan laughs) There's always going to be. - [Jordan] Hope dies last, yeah. - Hope really does die last. You really don't know.
- [Jordan] Yeah. - You really, you really hope to find, I mean, if you're, if like
an apocalypse happens, I think your whole life
will become about finding the other person. - It would be and there's a, I mean, I guess I'm saying if you
knew you were for some reason, knew you were the last, I wonder if you would. I wonder if you, that was a thought I had, if I knew I was the last person. Like, 'cause I, here I
was having a good time, having fun fishing, plenty of food. But like, if I knew I was
the last person on Earth, I don't know that I would even bother. But now, if that was for
real, would I bother? That's the question. - No, no, I think if you knew, if somebody, some way you knew for sure, I think your mind will start doubting it. - [Jordan] Hmm, interesting.
- That whoever told you you're the last person, whatever. - [Jordan] Right, right, right. - Was lying. - Right, right, the power of
hope might be more stronger. - [Lex] More powerful.
- Than I accounted for in that situation. - Also, you might, if you are indeed the last person, you might want to be
documenting it for once you die, you know, an alien species comes about, 'cause whatever happened on
Earth is a pretty special thing. And if you're the last one, you might be like the last
person to tell the story of what happened. And so that's gonna be a
way to convince yourself that this is important. And so the days will go by like this, but it would be lonely. Boy, would that be lonely? - It would be, well it'd be delving into
the dredges, the depths of. (Jordan laughs) - [Lex] Yeah, I mean.
- Of something. - There is going to be existential dread, but also, I don't know. I think hope will burn bright. - [Jordan] Hmm.
- You'll be looking for other humans. - That's, you know, one of the
reasons I was looking forward to talking to you, things I appreciate about you is you're always not out of naivety, but you're always choose
to look at the positive. You know what I mean? And I think that's a
powerful mindset to have. Appreciate it. - Yeah, that'd be a pretty
cool survival situation though. If you're the last person on Earth. - You could share it. (Jordan and Lex laugh) - You could share it, yeah. Like I said, many people consider you the most successful competitor on "Alone". The other successful one is Roland Welker, Rock House guy.
- [Jordan] Oh, yeah. - This is just a fun, ridiculous question, but head to head, who do
you think survives longer? - If you wanna get me the
competitive side of it, I would just say, well,
I'm pretty dang sure I had more pounds of food. (Jordan and Lex laugh) But, and I didn't have
the advantage of knowing when it would end, which I think would've
been a great psychological. - [Lex] Oh yeah.
- It would've made it really easy once I got the moose, I could have shot the moose
and just not stressed. That would've been like a, and so that was a big
difference between the seasons that I felt like, I mean, I felt like the
psychology of season seven, they kind of messed up
by doing a 100 day cap because from my own experience, that was the hardest part. But Roland's a, he's a beast. - So for people who don't know, they put a 100 day cap on
so it's whoever can survive 100 days for that season. It's interesting to hear that for you, the uncertainty, not knowing when it ends. - [Jordan] That was for sure, yeah. - Is the hardest.
- [Jordan] It was. - That's true, 'cause like
you wake up every day. - I didn't know how to ration my food. I didn't know if I was
gonna lose after six months and then it was all gonna be for naught, I didn't know if it, you know, I just, there's so many unknowns you don't know. Like I said, if I shot a moose
and it was 100 days, done. If I shot a moose and you
don't know, it's like crap, I could still lose to somebody else, but it's gonna be way in the future. (Jordan laughs) And so anyway, that for me
was definitely the hard part. - And when you found out that you won and your wife was there, it was funny because
you were really happy. There's great sort of
moment of you reuniting, but also there's a state of shock of like. (Jordan and Lex laugh) You look like you were
ready to go much longer. - That was the most
genuine shock I could have. I hadn't even like
entertained a thought yet. I didn't even think it was, you'd hear the helicopters and I just assumed there
was other people out there. I just hadn't, I thought I, you know, and for one, the previous person that
had gone the longest had gone 89 days. So I just knew whoever
else was out here with me, somebody's got that in their cross hairs. They're going to get to 90 and
they're not gonna quit at 90, they're gonna go to 100. You know, I just figured we
can't start thinking about the end until a couple
months from when it ended. So I was just shocked. I was, and they tricked me pretty good. They know how to make you
think you're not, you know, that they're, you're not. - So they want you to do the surprise. - Yeah, they want it to be a surprise. - So you really weren't, I mean you have to do
that I guess for survival. Don't be counting the days. - No, I think that would be, then you know, you see that
on some of the people do that, for myself, that would be bad psychology 'cause then you're just
always disappointing yourself. You have to be settled with
the fact that this is gonna go a long time and suck. Once you come to peace with that, maybe you'll be pleasantly surprised, but you're not gonna be
constantly disappointed. - So what was your diet like? Like what was your eating
habits like during that time? Like how many meals a day? This is, like what? (Jordan and Lex laugh) - [Jordan] I, oh. - [Lex] So one meal a day or? - I was trying to eat the thing. I was like not trying to, the more the moose is hanging out there, the more the critters, every critter in the forest
is trying to peck at it or mice trying to eat it and stuff, so. - So one of the ways
you can protect the food is by eating it. (Jordan laughs) - So I was having three good meals a day and then I'd like cook up
some meat and go to sleep and then wake up in the middle of night 'cause they're long nights and
like have some meat at night, eat a bunch at night. And then, so I'd usually have a fish, fish stew for lunch and then moose for breakfast and dinner. And then have some for a nighttime snack 'cause the nights were long so you'd be in bed like
14 hours and wake up and eat and dink around
and go back to sleep. - Is it okay that it was
pretty low carb situation? - Yeah, I actually felt really good. I tried to, I think I would've felt
better if I would've had a higher percentage of
fat because you know, I, it's still over more protein
than if you're on a keto diet. You want a lot of fat. And so I did, and I didn't try
to mix in like nature's carbs different like reindeer
lichen and things like that. But honestly I felt pretty good
on that diet, I will say. - How did you, what's the secret to like protecting food and what are the different
ways to protect food? - Yeah, a lot of times, you know, in a typical situation
in the woods, hunting, you'll raise it up in a tree in a bag, put it in like a game bag so
the birds can't peck at it and hang it in a tree so that it cools. You gotta make sure first to cool it 'cause it'll spoil, so you cool it by
whatever means necessary, hanging it in a cool place, letting the air blow around it. And then you'll notice that
every forest freeloader in the woods is gonna come
try to steal your food. - [Lex] Yeah.
- And it was just fun. I mean it was crazy to watch, you know? Like it's all the jay, all the camp jays pecking
at it or everything I did, you know, was, there was something that could get to it. If put on the ground, the mice
get on it and they poop on it and they kind of mess it up. So I ultimately, it kind of just dawned on me, shoot, I'm gonna have to build
one of those Evenki, like food caches. So I did and I put it up there and I thought I kind of solved my problem. To be honest, Evenki then, so they would've taken a page outta like, they would've mixed me
and Roland's solution. They build this tall stilt shelter and then put a box on
the top that's enclosed and then the bears can't get to it, the mice can't poop on it. The birds, the wolverine,
you know, it's safe. And I never finished it. I don't, I, and in hindsight,
I don't actually know why. I think I was just, the way it timed. Like I didn't think something
was gonna get up there, then it did. And then I, you know, you're like counting calories and stuff. I should have in hindsight just
boxed it in right away, but. - To get ready for the long haul. - Yeah, yeah. - Is rabbit starvation a real thing? - Yeah, so you can't just live off protein and rabbits are almost just protein. I'd kill a rabbit, eat
the innards and the brain and the eyes and then
everything else is just protein. And so it takes more
calories to, you know, process that protein than
you're getting from it without the fat. So you actually lose, I
lost, I had, you know, a lot of rabbits in the first 20 days. I had 28 rabbits or something. But I was losing weight
at exactly the same speed as everybody else that
didn't have anything. So that's interesting.
- Fascinating. - Yeah, and I'd never tried that before. So I was wondering if I'm
catching a ton of rabbits, I wonder if I can last,
what, six months on rabbits? But no, you just starve
as fast as everybody else. And so had to kind of learn
that on the fly and adjust. - I wonder what to make of that. Like, so you need fat to
survive, like fundamental fat? - [Jordan] Yeah, that's the, yeah. And you'll notice when the wolverine came or when animals came, they would eat the skin off of the fish. They would eat the eyes, you know, they'd steal the moose fat. - Eyes have fat?
- Leave all the meat. Yeah, like behind the
eyes is a bunch of fat. So yeah, you can kind of observe nature and see what they're eating
and know where the gold is. - What do you like
eating when you're like, when you can eat whatever you want? What do you feel best eating? - What do I feel best? I just try to eat clean, I think. I'm not like super strict on anything, but I think when I eat
less carbs, I feel better. Meat and vegetables, I like, we eat a lot of, you
know, I eat a lot of meat. - So basically everything
you ate on "Alone" plus some veggies.
- Plus veggies, throw in some buckwheat, I
like buckwheat, like grechka. - Let's step to the early days of Jordan. (Jordan and Lex laugh) So your Instagram handle is hobojordo. So early on in your life, you hobo-ed around the
US on freight trains. What's the story behind that? - My brother, when he was 17 or so, he just decided to go hitchhiking and he hitchhiked down to
Reno from Idaho where we were and ended up loving traveling but hated being dependent on other people. So he ended up jumping on a
freight train and just did it. He honestly, he pretty much got on a train and traveled the country
for the next eight years. - [Lex] Yeah.
- On trains. Lived in the streets and everywhere. But you know, he was sober so it gives you a different experience than a lot. (Jordan laughs) But at one point when I
was, I guess, yeah 18, he invited me to come along with him. He'd probably been doing it five or so, four or five years or more. And I said sure. So I quit my job and went out with him. Hobojordo is a bit of an overstep, feel self-conscious about
that 'cause I rode trains across the country, up and
down the coast, back, you know, spent the better part of
the year running around riding trains and all the, staying in places related to that. But all the people, you
know, the real hobos, those guys are out there
doing it for years on end. But it was such a, for me what it felt like was a, it felt like a bit of a
rite of passage experience, which is kind of missing
I think in modern life. So I did this thing
that was a huge unknown. Ben kind of was there with me,
my brother, for most of it. We traveled around, got
pushed my boundaries in every which way, you
know, froze at night and did all the stuff. And then at the end, I
actually wanted to go back and go back home. And so I went on my own
and went from Minneapolis back, you know, up to Spokane on my own, which was my first stint of
time by myself for like a week, which was interesting. - Alone with your own thoughts. - With your own thoughts, it was my first time in my
life having been like that, you know, and so it was
powerful at the time. You know what it did too is it gave me a whole different view of life 'cause I had gotten a job when I was 13 and then 14, 15, 16, 17. And then I was just in the
normal run of things kind of. And then that just threw
a whole different path into my life. And then I realized some of the things while I was traveling that
I wouldn't experience again until I was living with natives and such. And that was, you know, you wake up, you don't have a schedule, you literally just have needs and you just somehow
have to meet your needs. And so it's a, there's a really sense of freedom you get that is hard to replicate elsewhere. And so that was eye-opening to me. And I think once I did that, I went back. So I went back to my old job at the salad dressing plant and. (Jordan laughs) There's this old, cross-eyed guy and he was, "Oh Hobo Jordo's back." And that's kinda where I got it. But that freedom always
was very important to me, I think from that time on. - What'd you learn
about the United States, about the people along the way? Because I took a road
trip across the US also and there was a, there's a romantic
element there too of like, of the freedom, of the, well maybe for me not knowing
what the hell I'm gonna do with my life, but also excited by all the possibilities and then you meet a
lot of different people and a lot of different kinds of stories. And also like a lot of
people that support you for traveling 'cause they go, there's a lot of people kind of dream of experiencing that freedom, at least the people I've met. And they usually don't, they usually don't go out
outside of their little town. They have a thing and
they have a family usually and they don't explore,
they don't take the leap. And you can do that when you're young. I guess you could do that any moment. Just say fuck it and leap into the abyss of being on the road. But anyway, what'd you
learn about this country, about the people in this country? - You're in an interesting context when you're on trains 'cause the trains always end up in the crappiest part of town, you know? And they all, and you're
always outside, interacting. Well the interesting things, you know, every once in a while
you'll have to hitchhike to get from one place to another. One interesting thing is you
notice you always get picked up by the, you know, the
poor people or stuff. You know, they're the people
that empathize with you, stop, pick you up, you
go to whatever ghetto I remember you end up in and people are really, oh what are you guys doing? You know, real friendly and relatable. It kind of, you know, broadened your, my horizons for sure from
being just a Idaho kid and then meeting all
these different people and just seeing the goodness
in people and this and that. It's also very, you know, a lot of drugs and a lot of people with mental issues that you're friends with,
dealing with, you know, all that kind of stuff, so. - Any memorable characters? - Well there's a few, for sure. I mean a lot of 'em I still
know that are still around. But the Rocco was one guy we traveled with. He's become like a brother but he's, he was, he traveled with my brother for years 'cause they were the two sober guys. Kind of he, rather than traveling 'cause he was hooked on stuff, did it to escape all that. And so he was kind of
sober and straight edge and he always, he was
like 5'7" Italian guy that was always getting in fights. And like he has his own sense of ethics that I think is really interesting 'cause he is super honest
but he expects it of others. And so it's funny in the modern context, the thing that pops in my head is when he got a car for the first time, which wasn't that long, you know, he was in his 30s or something and he registered it, which he was mad about,
that he had to register. But then the next year they told him he had to register again and he is like, "What, did you lose My registration?" (Jordan and Lex laugh) Went down there to the DMV, chewed them out that he had to re-register 'cause he already registered,
where's the paperwork? And, but he just kind of views the world from a different lens that I thought. But on everything, he's a character. Now, he just lives by digging up bottles and finding treasures in the. - But he notices the
injustices in the world and speaks up.
- He notices in a very, and speaks up
and he is always like, why doesn't everybody else speak up about their car registration? (Jordan and Lex laugh) And then there was like, you know, Devo comes to mind 'cause he
was such a unique character as far as just for one, he would've lived to be 120 'cause the amount of
chemicals and everything else he put into his body and still, hey man, you know one of those guys. - [Lex] Yeah.
- He could always get a dime, you know, oh, spare a dime, spare a dime, and you have bum change. And I'd see him sometimes and I'd be gone and then go to New York to
visit my sister or something and I'd, sure enough,
there's Devo on the street, what do you know? I didn't, you'd go visit
him in the hospital 'cause he got bit by 20, you know, 27 hobo spider bites. You know, he was just always
rough but charismatic, vital, like the vitality
of life was in him. But it was just so permeated with drugs and alcohol too, it's kind of. - I wonder because I've
met people like that. They're like, they're just, yeah, joy permeates
their whole way of being and they're like, they've
been through some shit. They have scars, they've
got, they're rough but they've always got a big smile. There's a guy I met in
the jungle named Pico. He lost a leg and he drives a boat and he just always has a big smile. Even given that like the
hardship he has to get, everything requires a huge amount of work. But he's just big smile and
there's stories in those eyes. - There's something about,
yeah, enduring difficulty that makes you able to appreciate life and look at it and smile. - Any advice if I were
to take a road trip again or if somebody else is
thinking of hopping on a freight train or hitchhiking? - It's way easier now 'cause
you have a map on your phone and you can tell where you're going, you're kind of cheating now. - It's not about the, 'cause the map is about the destination. - [Jordan] Right. - But here is like, you don't give a damn. - Yeah, train's where you're going. You're not going anywhere. (Jordan and Lex laugh) - Exactly. - I say do it, like go out and do things, especially when you're young, experiences and stuff help
create the person you will be in the future. Putting, doing things that you think like, oh I don't wanna do that,
I'm a little scared of that, I mean that's what you gotta do. You just get out of your comfort zone and you will grow as a person and you'll go through a
lot of wild experiences along the way. Say yes to life in that way. - Say yes to life, yeah,
I love the boredom of it. - Freight train riding is very boring. (Lex laughs) Okay, and like you'll
wait for hours for a train that never comes and then
you'll go to the store and come back and it'll be
gone and you're like, no. And, but I remember we went to jail, we got out and then. (Lex laughs) How'd you end up in jail? - Oh, you know, it was things,
trespassing on a train. But we were riding a train
and my brother woke up and they had a dead owl land on his head and he like hit the train and fell on him and we were like woke
up and we were laughing. That's gotta be some kind of bad omen. (Jordan and Lex laugh) And then we were like
looking out of the train and we saw a train worker look and saw us and he went. (Jordan swooshes) Like, oh, we know that's a bad omen. (Jordan and Lex laugh) Anyway, sure enough, the
police stopped the train. Somebody had seen us on
it and they searched it, got us and threw us in jail. It was not a big deal. We were in jail a couple days. And then they, but when we got out,
of course they put us, we were in some podunk town in Indiana and we didn't know where
to catch out of there. And so we were at some factory and we're just, abandoned factory and we waited there for like four days, no train that was going slow
enough that we could catch. And then we found this big
old roll of aluminum foil and now I gotta apologize to this woman 'cause we were so bored,
just sitting there, we built these like hats, you know, like horns coming out
every which way and loops and just sitting there. And then it was at night and some minivan pulled up to this train that was going by too fast. We were like. (Jordan grunts) We went like circled her car. - [Lex] Entertaining yourself. - Entertaining yourself
with whatever you can. The poor lady was terrified. - So you, hitchhiking was tough. - I didn't like hitchhiking
just 'cause you're depending on the other
people and it is nice, I don't know why, you just wanna be independent, but you do meet really cool people, a lot of times there's really nice people that pick you up and that's cool. But I just personally
actually didn't do it a lot and I wasn't, you know, I, if you're on the streets for 10 years, you'll end up doing it a lot more 'cause you need to get
from point A to point B, but we just tried to avoid
it as much as we could 'cause it didn't appeal to us as much. - Well the one downside of hitchhiking is people talk a lot.
- [Jordan] Oh, they do. - So it's both the pro and the con. - [Jordan] Yeah, yeah.
- Because they'll, you know, sometimes you just want be sort
of alone with your thoughts or it's, there is a kind of lack of freedom in having to listen to a person
that's giving you a ride. (Jordan and Lex laugh) - It's so true. And then you don't know how to react. I mean, I was young,
remember I got picked, I was probably 19 or something
and then I was just like, "Hey, how's it going?" She's like, "Oh fine,
my husband just died." And then this all.
- Yeah. - And I got diagnosed with
cancer and this and that but, and pretty bitter and all
that and understandably so. But you're just like, I have
no idea how to respond here. - [Lex] Because you kinda.
- And so then you're young and you had to be nice. And I remember that ride being interesting 'cause I didn't really
know how to respond. And she was angry and
going through some stuff and dumping it out. She didn't have anyone
else to dump it out on. I was like, wow. - I'm gonna take the
freight train next time. - [Jordan] Yeah.
- So how did you end up in Siberia? - I'll try to keep it a
little bit short on the how. (Jordan and Lex laugh) But I, but the long story
short was I had a brother that's adopted and when he grew up, he wanted to find his biological mom and just tell her thanks. - [Lex] Yeah.
- And so he did. And when he was, he was probably 20 or something, he found his biological
mom, told her things. Turns out he had a brother that was gonna go over to Russia and help build this orphanage. And that brother was about my age. And I remember at that time, I read this verse that said if you're in the darkness
and see no light, just continue following me, basically. I was like, okay, I'm
gonna take that to the bank even though I don't know
if it's true or not. And then the only glimpse
of like light I got in all that was when I
heard about that orphanage, to go build that orphanage. And I prayed about it and I felt, and I, and I can't explain,
like it brought me to tears. I felt so strongly that I should go. And so I was like, well
that's a clear call. I'm just gonna do it. Yeah, so I just bought a ticket, got a visa for a year and then I went and
helped build an orphanage and we got that built and I wanted, but he was an American and I
wanted to live with Russians to learn a language. And so he sent me to a neighboring village to live with a couple Russian
families that needed a hand, somebody to watch their
kids and cut their hay and milk the cow and all that. So I found myself in that
little, Russian village, just getting to know these
two guys and their families. It was pretty fascinating. And I, of course, I didn't
know the language yet and they were two awesome dudes. Both of 'em had been in prison and met each other in prison
and like were really close 'cause they found God
in prison together and stayed, you know, got
out and stayed connected. And so I'd bounce back
between those two families and they used to always tell
me about their third buddy they'd been in prison with
who was a native fur trapper now in the north. And so they'd, you gotta
go meet our buddy up north. And one day that guy came through to sell furs in the city and he like invited me
to come live with them and my visa was about to expire, but I was like, "When I
come back, I'll come." And so I went back home,
earned some more money and did some construction or whatever. Then went back and headed north to hang out
with Yura and fur trap. And that started a whole new, you know, opened a whole new world
that I didn't know about. - Before we talk about
Yura and fur trapping, let's actually rewind and. - [Jordan] Mm-hmm.
- Would you describe that moment when you were in the darkness as a crisis of faith? - Yeah, yeah, for sure. It was like a, it was darkness in that I didn't know how to parse, you know, what is this thing that's my faith and what is, what's the wheat and what's the chaff and how do I get through it? And I basically just clung to
keeping it really simple and oddly enough in my Christian path, it, the, God was actually defined
in a certain, God is love. And I was just like, that's the only thing I'm gonna cling to, you know, and I'm gonna try to
express that in my life in whichever way I can and just trust that if I do that, if I act like I, you know, we've, I've heard this lately, but if you just act like you believe, over time that world kind of opens to you. When I said I would go to Russia, I prayed and I was like, Lord, I don't see you. I don't know, but I got this, what I felt like was a clear call. I have only one request and that is that you
would give me the faith to match my action. You know, I'm choosing to believe, like I could choose not to
because you know, whatever, but I'm gonna choose to act and I just ask to have faith someday. And then, and honestly the, for the
whole first year I went through and that was a very crazy time for me, learning the language, being isolated, being misunderstood, blah blah. And then, but then trying
to approach all that with a loving, open heart. And then I came back and I realized that that prayer had kind of been answered. That wasn't the end of my journey, but it was, I was like, whoa. That was like my deepest request
that I could come up with. And somehow, that had been answered. - So through that year you were just like, first of all, you couldn't
speak the language, that's really tough.
- Right, that's tough because it's unlike on "Alone" where, because not only can you not
speak and you feel isolated, but you're also
misunderstood all the time. - [Lex] Yeah.
- So you seem like an idiot and all that. And so that was tough. I felt very alone at that time, at certain times in that journey. - But you were sort of
radiating, like you said, lead with love, so you were radiating
this kind of camaraderie, this compassion.
- Mm-hmm, I was really intentional about trying to, that was, I don't know why I'm here, I just know that I, you know, that that's my call is
to love one another. And so I would just try to like, and then it meant digging people's wells. It might meant just going and visiting that old lady, babushka at
the house that's lonely or go. And that was really cool. I got to talk to some fascinating ladies and stuff and in what, go to that village, help those families, I'm gonna be like, cut the hay, be the most, the hardest worker I can be. Because that's my goal here. I didn't have any other agenda or anything except to try to live a life of love and I couldn't define it beyond that. - What was it like learning
the Russian language? - It was super interesting. I think I had the thought while I was learning it one, that it was way too hard. Like if I would've just
learned Spanish or German, I would be so much farther. But here I am a year in, and I'm like, how do you say
"I want cheese" properly? (Jordan and Lex laugh) And then, but at the same
time it was really cool to learn a language that
I thought in a lot of ways was richer than English. It was, it's a very rich language. I remember there was a
comedy act in Russian, but he was saying, you know, one word you can't have in English is (speaks foreign language) meaning like, I didn't
drink enough to get drunk, but you know, that type of thing. And, but it's just a, you
can make up these words using different prefix, you
know, prefixes and suffixes and like blend them in a
way that is quite unique and interesting and honestly
would be really good for poetry 'cause it also doesn't have sentence structure in the
same way English does. The words can be jumbled in a way. - And somehow in the process of jumbling some humor, some musicality comes out. It's interesting, like you
can be witty in Russian much easier in than you
can in English, like. - [Jordan] Yeah.
- Witty and funny. - [Jordan] Mm-hmm.
- And also with poetry, you can say profound things
by messing with words and the order of words. Which is hilarious because
you had a great conversation with Joe Rogan and on that
program you talked about, you know, how to say,
"I love you" in Russian. - [Jordan] Right, right.
- Which is hilarious. And it was for me the first, I don't know why it's, you were a great person to articulate the flexibility and the power
of the Russian language. That's really interesting.
- [Jordan] That's interesting. - Because you were saying like
(speaks foreign language), you could say every single order, every single combination of
ordering of those words is, has the same meaning
but slightly different. - You could like, and it
would change the meaning if you took (speaks foreign
language) out and just said (speaks foreign language).
- [Lex] Yeah. - There's like a different
emphasis or maybe, or (speaks foreign language)
or something, you know, like all these different. - Or just (speaks foreign language) also. - Right, exactly. So it is rich and that,
and it was interesting coming from an English context and getting a glimpse of that and then wondering about
all those, you know, Russian authors that we
all appreciate that, oh, we actually aren't getting
the full deal here. - Oh yeah, definitely. I've recently become a fan actually of Larissa
Volokhonsky and Richard Pevear. They're these world-famous translators of Russian literature, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov,
Pushkin, Bulgakov, Pasternak. They've helped me understand just how much of an art form translation really is. Some authors do that art more
translatable than others. Like Dostoevsky is more translatable, but then you can still spend
a week on one sentence. - [Jordan] Oh yeah.
- Like just how do I exactly capture this very important sentence? But I think what's more powerful is not like literature, but conversation. Which is one of the reasons I've been carrying and feeling the responsibility of having conversations
with Russian speakers because I can still see the music of it. I can still see the wit of it. And in conversation comes
out like really interesting kinds of wisdom. You, like you, when I
listen to like world leaders that speak Russian speak, and I see the translation and it loses, it loses the irony, the
like in between the words. If you translate them literally, you lose the reference in there to the history of the peoples. - Yeah, for sure. And I've definitely seen
that on like, you know, and if you listen to, I think probably it was a
Putin speech or something, and you just see that, oh wow, something major is being
lost in translation, you can actually see it happen. I wouldn't be surprised
if that wasn't the case with the, you know, that whole greatest tragedy is
the fall of the Soviet Union that I hear him being quoted
as saying all the time. I bet you there's something in there that's being lost in
translation that is interesting. - I think the thing I see
the most lost in translation is the humor. - I'll just say that was the hardest, that was the tangibly the hardest part about learning the language
is that humor comes last and you have to like wait, you have to wait that
whole year to, you know, or however long it takes
you to learn a language to be able to start getting the humor. You know, some of it comes through, but you miss so much nuance and it, and that was really difficult
in interaction with people to like just be the guy, you know, when there's humor going on and you're totally oblivious to it. - Yeah, everybody's
laughing and you're like. (Jordan laughs) Trying to laugh along. What did they make of you? - [Jordan] To be honest.
- This person that came from, descended upon us. All full of love. - If I had a nickel for
every time I heard like, oh, Americans suck, but
you're a good American, you're like the only good
American I've ever met. But then of course they never met any. - Yeah, exactly. You're the only one. But you know, I think because I
was just tried to work hard, tried to be more useful than
I was a drain and all that, I, they all, I think it was pretty
appreciated, me out there. I've heard, definitely heard
that a lot, so that's nice. - Can you talk about their way of life? So like when you're doing fur trapping. - As a fur trapping was
an interesting experience. You basically, what you do
in October or something, you'll go out to your hunting cabin and you'll have there, you'll have like three hunting cabins. You'll go, you stock 'em with
noodles or whatever it is. And then for the next couple months or however long you'll go from one cabin. Usually the guys are just out
there doing this on their own. So they'll go out and
they'll go from one cabin and each cabin will have
five or six trap lines going out of it. Every day, it'll take a half a day to walk to the end of your trap line, open all the traps and a
half a day to get back. And they'll do that. They'll spend a week at a
cabin, open up all the traps, and then it'll take a day to
hike over to the other cabin, go to that one, open up all those traps, and then there, and then
like three weeks later or so, they'll end up back at the first cabin and then check all the traps. And so it's kind of that rhythm. And they'll do that
for, you know, a couple, few months during the winter. And you're trapping sable, they're called sable, like pine
marten is what we would have the equivalent of over here, and. - What is it?
- It's like a weasel, a furry little weasel and
they make coats out of it. And so when I went, he showed
me how to open the trap, showed me the ropes, gave
me a topographical map and there's one cabin, there's the other. And we parted ways for like five weeks. We did run into each other
once in the middle there at a cabin. But other than that, you know, you're just off by yourself, hoping to shoot a grouse or something to add to your noodles
and make your meal better or catch a fish. And then working really hard, trying not to get lost and stuff. - How do you get from one
trapping location to the next? - That's funny 'cause like it was basically by landmarks and feel, like I didn't have a compass
and things like that. So.
- By feel? Okay.
- I got myself into trouble once and I, the first time I went to one cabin, I got myself into trouble. First time I went to the
other cabin, I nailed it. And so I had two different
experiences on my first trip. But the one that I nailed it, I remember I had to go
and it's like a day hike. I was like, well I know the cabin's south and so if I just walk
south, you know, the left, the sun should be on
the left in the morning and right in front of me
in the middle of the day. And by evening it should
like end up at my right and just kind of guess what time it is and follow along and it, you know, it takes all day and I kid, you not, I
ended up like 100 yards from the cabin. (Jordan laughs) I was like, whoa, this is the
trail and that's the cabin. Like, oh, amazing. And then the other time I went out and I, heading over the mountains
and I thought it, you know, hours had passed. I probably had gotten slightly lost and then I thought I was halfway there. So I thought, okay, I'm gonna
sit down and cook some food, get a drink, I'm thirsty. So I sat down and went to start a fire and my matches had gotten all wet 'cause the snow had
fallen on me and soaked me and I didn't have 'em wrapped in plastic. I was like, oh no, I can't
drink water, you know? So I was like, well I'm
just gonna power through. I'm halfway there. Well, I kept hiking and then I realized it was getting night. And then I even realized I
was at the halfway point 'cause I saw this rock
that I was like, oh no, that's the halfway point. I was like, I can't do this
and so I need to go get water. I ended up having to
divert down the mountain and head to the water. I ended up, you know,
there was a whole ordeal. I had to take my skis off 'cause I was going through
an old forest fire burn. So they were all really close trees. But then the snow was like this deep so I was just trudging through and just wishing a bear would eat me. (Jordan laughs) Get it over with. But I finally made it down to the water, chopped a hole through the
ice, was able to take a sip. - So you get severely dehydrated. - Severely dehydrated and I. - [Lex] Exhausted, cold.
- Exhausted, cold. Like, you know, you feel sort of nervous. You're in over your head. And then I got down to the river, chopped a whole nice drink, hiked up the river and eventually
got to the other cabin. It was probably 3:00 in
the morning or something. - So you chopped a hole in the ice to drink.
- To get some water, yeah. - I was like. (Jordan crackles) - Was this, gotta be like
one of the worst days of your life. - You know, it was a bad day, for sure. I've had a few. (Jordan laughs) It was a bad day. And it, here's what was
funny is I got to the cabin at like 3:00 in the morning
and I have brushed over a lot of the, like, the
misery that I had felt. And I laid down, I was about to go to sleep and then Yura charges in from
there I was like, whoa dude, you're a, what are you doing? And I was like, "How's it going?" He is like, "Oh it sucks." And he laid down and just fell asleep. I fell asleep and I was
like, oh, that's funny. The last few weeks that we've been apart, who knows what he went through, who knows why he was there
at that time at night? All just summarized and it sucked. And we went to sleep and the next morning, we parted ways and who
knows what happened? - And you didn't really tell him? - Never knew, neither of
us said what happened. It was just like, oh, that's interesting. - Yeah, and he probably was
through similar kinds of things. - [Jordan] Who knows, yeah. - Like what gave you
strength in those hours when you're, you know, going just through waist-high snow? - [Jordan] Yeah.
- All of that. You're laughing but like that's hard. - Yeah, you know that
Russian, that phrase, (speaks foreign language). - [Lex] Eyes are afraid, hands do. I'm sure there's a poetic
way to translate that. - [Jordan] Right, it's
kind of like, you know, just put one foot in front of the other. - Yeah.
- You know, when you think about what you have to do,
it's really intimidating and, but you just know if I just
do it, if I just do it, if I just keep trudging, eventually I'll get there and pretty soon you
realize you'll have covered a couple kilometers or, and so when you're really
in it in those moments, I guess you're just,
putting your head down and getting through. - I've had similar moments,
there's wisdom to that. Like once, just take
it one step at a time. - One step at a time. I think that a lot, honestly,
I tell myself that a lot when I'm about to do
something really hard. Just, you know, (speaks foreign language) one step at a time. Just gonna get, don't like sit there and
think, oh that's a long ways. Just go and then you'll look back and you covered a bunch of ground. - One of the things I've
realized that was helpful in the jungle, that was one of the biggest
realizations for me is like, it really sucks right now. But when I look back.
- [Jordan] Mm-hmm. - At the end of the day, I won't really remember
exactly how much it sucked. I'll have a vague notion of it sucking and I'll remember the good things. So being dehydrated, I'll
remember drinking water and I won't really remember
the hours of feeling like shit. - That's absolutely true. Like I totally, it's so funny how like just awareness of that, having been through it and
then being aware of it means next time you face it you
can be like, you know what? Once this is over I'm
gonna look back on it and it's gonna be like that and nothing. And I'll actually laugh
about it and think it was, it's the thing I'll remember, you know? I remember that story
of that miserable day going down to the ice and
I can smile about it now. And now that I know that, I can be in a miserable
position and realize that that's what the outcome will be once I, once it's over.
- [Lex] It's gonna be a story. - It's just gonna be a story. - If you survive, though. - If you survive and that can be. - So you mentioned you've
learned about hunger during these times. Like when was like the
hungriest you've gotten? - It was the first time. So to continue the story slightly, I went fur trapping with that guy and then it turned out
all his cousins were these native, nomadic reindeer herders. And after I like earned his
trust and he liked me a lot, he took me out to his
cousins who were all these, you know, nomads living in tepees. I was like, this is awesome. I didn't even know people
still lived like this. And they were really open and welcoming 'cause their cousin just
brought me out there, you know, and vouched for me. But it was during fencing season and fencing in Siberia
for those reindeer is like an incredible thing. You take an ax, you go
out and you just build these 30 kilometer loop fences
with just logs interlocking. It's tons of work and all these guys are
more efficient bodies, they're better at it. And I'm just like working less efficiently and also a lot bigger dude. But we're all just on the
same rations, kind of. And I got down, that was like
155 pounds, you know? Getting down pretty dang
skinny for my 6'3" frame and just working really hard. And it's in the spring in
Siberia, there's no like, there's not much to forage. You know, in the fall
you can have pine nuts and this and that, but in the spring you're just stuck with whatever random food you've got. And so that's where I lost the most weight and felt the most hungry and I had a lot of other issues, you know? I was new to that type of work and so working as hard as I
could, but also making mistakes, chopping myself with the
ax and getting injured. All kinds of stuff, you know, so. - So injuries plus very
low calorie intake. - [Jordan] Low, yeah.
- And exhausted. - I remember if you got, you
were the poor son of a gun to get stuck slicing the bread, you know like you're
here cutting the bread and somebody throws all the spoons and drops the pot of soup there and it's like before you can
even done slicing your slice all the meat's like gone from the bowl. Everybody else has grabbed
the spoon in midair and poop and you're just like, ah, hoping this one little
noodle's gonna give me a lot of nourishment. (Jordan laughs) - Wow, so everybody gets, I mean, yeah first come,
first serve, I guess. - Because it's like
all the dudes out there working on the fence. - So you mentioned the ax
and you gave me a present. - [Jordan] Yeah, yeah. - This is a probably
the most badass present I've ever gotten. (Jordan laughs) So tell me the story of this ax. - So the natives, when I got
there I thought, you know, I grew up on a farm, I thought I was pretty good with an ax. But they do tons of work with those things and I really grew to
love their type of ax, their style of ax and
just an ax in general. They'd always say it's the
one tool you need to survive in the wilderness and I agree. And so this one has certain, yeah design features that the natives, that was unique to the Evenki, to the natives I was with. One is with these Russian
heads or the Soviet heads, whatever they had, they're a little wider on top here, meaning you can put the
handle through from the top like a tomahawk and it, that means you're not
dealing with a wedge. And if it ever loosens
and you're swinging, it only gets tighter. It doesn't fly off. And so that's something
that's kind of cool. Then they have, what's, what they do that's unique is, so you can see there's the wolverine ax. So it's got the little
wolverine head in honor of that wolverine I fought on the show. (Jordan and Lex laugh) - So you have actually two axes. This is one of the small. - This is a little smaller. I didn't wanna make it too small
'cause you need a something to actually work out there. - [Lex] Yeah.
- You need something kind of serious. But then they sharpen it from one side. So if you're right-handed, you sharpen it from the right side. And that means when you're
in the woods and living, there's a lot of times where you're, whether you're making a table
or a sleigh or an ax handle or whatever you're doing, that you're holding the
wood and doing this work and it makes it really
good for that planing. The other thing it is,
especially in northern woods, all the trees are like this big. You know that you're never
cutting down a big, giant tree. And so when you swing with
a single-sided ax like this, sharpened from the one side, it really, with your right
hand swing like this, it really bites into the wood and gives you a, because with that, if you can picture it, that angle's gonna cause deflection. And without that angle on
your right-handed swing, it just like bites in there like crazy. And so that, there's other
little divine, you know, the handle is made by
some Amish guys in Canada. This is all hand-forged by. - [Lex] Oh, it's hand-forged.
- Yeah. - [Lex] I mean, yeah it looked. - And so it's a pretty sweet little. - Yeah, it's amazing. - There's other things, you
know, like I slightly rounded this pole here, it's just a little nuance 'cause when you pound a stake in, if you picture it, if it's convex, when you're pounding it it's
gonna blow the fibers apart. If it has just a slight concave, it helps hold the fibers together. And so it's a little nuanced, not too flat 'cause you wanna still be able
to use the back as you would. - What kind of stuff
are you using the ax for in a survival situation?
- So the ax is super important to chop through
ice in a winter situation, which you probably, hopefully won't need. (Jordan laughs) But what I use an ax all
the time for is when I'm, when it's wet and rainy and
you need to start a fire. - [Lex] Yeah.
- Like it's hard to get to the middle of dry
wood if just a knife or a saw. And so you can, I can go out there, find a dead, tall tree, you know, dead standing tree, chop it down, split it apart, split it open, get to the dry wood on the inside, shave it some little curls and have a fire going pretty fast. And so if I have an ax, I feel always confident
that I can get a quick fire in whatever weather and
I wouldn't feel the same without it in that regard. So that's the main thing. Of course you can use it. I use it if you're taking an animal apart or if you're.
- [Lex] Yes. - What you know, all kinds of, what else? Building a shelter, skinning tepee poles or
whatever you're doing. - What's the use of a saw versus an ax? - I greatly prefer an ax. A saw though has, its value goes up quite a
bit when you're in hardwoods. Like when you're in a hardwood, oaks and hickory and
things like that, it's, they're a lot harder to chop. So a saw is pretty nice
in those situations. I'd say in those situations, I'd like to have both. In the north woods and in
like more coniferous forests, I don't think there's enough
advantages that a saw incurs. With a good ax, you'll see
people with little like camp axes and stuff and they just
don't think they like axes. It's like, well you
haven't actually tried to, try a good one first and get good with it. The one thing about an
ax, they're dangerous. So you need to like practice, always control it with two hands. Make sure you're not, you
know where it's gonna go. It doesn't hit you. Or when you're chopping, like say your creating something, that you're not doing
it on rocks and stuff so that it's, you're doing it on top of wood so that when you're hitting the ground, you're not dulling your ax. You know, there's, you gotta
be a little bit thoughtful about it. - Have you ever injured
yourself with an ax in the early days? - Oh yeah. (Jordan laughs) That first, I'd gotten a knee surgery. And then about three months later, I had torn my ACL and
I went over to Russia and I was like, well I got
a good knee, it's okay. And then that's when I
was building that fence that first time and at one point, I chopped my rubber boot with my ax 'cause it reflected off and I was new to them and
I was really frustrated 'cause I had done it before and the native guy was like, oh, you know, we got , I think there's a
boot we left, you know, a few years ago we left a boot like four kilometers that way. So we got the reindeer,
took the, rode them over. Sure enough, there's a stump
with a boot upside down. (Jordan laughs) Pull it off, put it on, I was like, sweet, I'm back in business. Went back, a couple days later, ping, chopped it, cut your
foot, cut my rubber boot. And I was just like, dang it. And I was mad enough that
I just grabbed the ax and swung it at the tree
and it just one-handed and like deflected off and
bam right into my knee. - Oh no.
- And I was like, oh, I fell down, I was like, oh my gosh, 'cause you get your ax
really like razor sharp and then just swung it into my knee. I didn't even wanna look. I was like, oh no. I looked and it wasn't a huge wound because it had hit right
on the bone of my knee, but it split the bone, cut a tendon there and I was out in the middle of the woods. So I literally, like,
I knew I was in shock 'cause I'm just gonna go
back to teepee right now. So I like ran back to teepee, laid down. And honestly, I was stuck
there for a few days. I was in so much pain and
my other knee was bad. It was like rough. I had to, I couldn't even,
literally couldn't even walk at all or move. I had to like, there was a plastic bag, I had to like poop in it and like roll to the edge of the teepee. Like shove it under the moss, like I could just
totally immobilized, but. - I guess that should teach you to not act when you're in a state
of frustration or anger. - There you go, that, I
mean, it's such a lesson too. There were so many of
those and it was always, I was always in a little bit over my head, but like I said, you kinda do that enough and you're make a lot of mistakes, but every time, you learn. I'm like, now it's like
an extension of my arm. That's not gonna happen because I just know how it works now. - You mentioned wet wood. How do you start a fire when
everything around you is wet? - I mean, it depends on your environment, but I will say in most of
the forests that I spend a lot of time in, in all the north woods, the best thing you can do is
find a dead, standing tree. So it can be down pouring rain, and you chop that tree down and then when you split it open, no matter how much it's been raining, it'll be dry on the inside. So you chop that tree down,
chop a piece, you know, a foot-long piece out, and then split that thing
open and then split it again. And then you get to
that in inner, dry wood. And then you try to do this
maybe under a spruce tree or under your own body so that
it's not getting rained on while you're doing it. Make a bunch of little
curls that'll light, catch a flame or light. And then you make a lot more kindling and little pieces of
dry wood than you think, 'cause it'll happen. You'll light it and it'll burn
through and it like, dang it. So just be patient, you're gonna be fine. You know, like, and make a nice pile of curls
that you can light or spark and then get a lot of good, dry kindling. And then don't be afraid
to just boom, boom, boom, pile a bunch of wood on
and make a big, old fire. Get warm as fast as you can. It's amazing how much
that of a recharge it is when you're cold and wet. - You can throw relatively
wet wood on top of that. - Once you get that going, yeah, then it'll dry as it goes. But you need to be able to split open and get all that nice,
dry wood on the inside. - I saw that you mentioned
that you look for fat wood. - [Jordan] Yeah.
- [Lex] What's fat wood? - So on a lot of pine trees, a place where the tree was
injured when it was alive, it like pumped sap to it. And then this is a good point
because I use this a lot. It pumps that tree full of
sap and then years later, the tree dies, dries out, rots away. But that sap-infused wood, it's like turpentine in there, you know? It's oily and so if it gets wet, it does, you can still light it, it repulses water. And so if you can find
that in a rainstorm, you can just make a little
pile of those shavings, get the crappiest spark or quickest light and it'll just sit there and. (Jordan crackles) And burn like a factory
firestarter, you know? It's really, really nice. That's good to spot. It's a good thing to
keep your eye out for. - [Lex] Yeah, it's really fascinating. And then you make this thing. (Jordan laughs) - [Jordan] That's just to
get the sauna going fast. (Jordan laughs) Just, that was just doing that. - What was that, that was oil? - Oh, it was just used motor oil I had, if you mix it with some sawdust and then saunas.
- [Lex] It just burns. - Going just like that. (Jordan laughs) It's kinda like homemade fat wood. - I don't know how many times I've watched "Happy People: a Year in
the Taiga" by Werner Herzog. You've talked about this movie. Where is that located
relative to where you were? - So there's this big
river called the Yenisei that feeds through the middle of Russia and there's a bunch of
tributaries off of it. And one of the tributaries is called the Podkamennaya Tunguska. And I was up that river and just a little ways north
is another river called the Bakhta, and that's where that
village is where they filmed "Happy People". So in Siberian terms, we're neighbors, so. (Jordan laughs) - [Lex] Nice. - Similar environment, similar place. That fur trapper that I
was with knew the guy, you know, in the films. - What would you say
about their way of life maybe in the way you've experienced it and the way you saw in "Happy People"? - There's something
really, really powerful about spending that much time being independent, you know, depending on what we talked about a little earlier, but you're putting yourself in
these situations all the time where you're uncomfortable,
where it's hard, but then you're rising to the occasion, you're making it happen. There's nobody, when you're fur trapping by yourself, there's nobody else to look
at to blame for anything that goes wrong. It's just yourself that you're reliant on. And there's something about the
natural rhythms that you are in when you are that connected to the
natural world that really is, does feel like that's
what we're designed for. And so there's a
psychological benefit you gain from spending that much
time in that realm. And for that reason, I
think that, you know, people that are connected to
those ways are able to tap into a particular, I noticed it a lot with the natives. So if I met the natives in the village, I would think of them
as like unhappy people. Like, they drink a lot. They always fighting and the murder
rate is through the roof, the suicide rate's through the roof. But, and you meet those same
people out in the woods, living that way of life, I
thought these are happy people. And it's kind of a, it's an
interesting juxtaposition. It'd be the same person. But by then I, you know, I
lived in a native village that had the reindeer
herding going on around it and everybody kind of
benefited because of that. I also went to a native village that they didn't hold those ways anymore. So everybody was just in the village life and it just felt like a dark place. Whereas the other native village, it was rough in the village because everybody drank all the time. But when it had that escape and it had that escape valve, and then once you're out there, it was just a whole different world. And it was such an odd juxtaposition. - It's funny that the
people that go trapping experience that happiness.
- [Jordan] Mm-hmm. - And still.
- [Jordan] Mm-hmm. - Don't have a self-awareness to like stop themselves from then drinking and doing all the dark stuff
when they go to the village. It's strange that you're not able to, you're in it, you're happy, but you're not able to
sort of reflect on that, the nature of that happiness. - That's, it's really weird. I've thought about that a lot
and I don't know the answer. It's like there's a huge draw to comfort. There's a huge, and it's all multifaceted and somewhat complex because, you know, you can be out in the woods
and have this really cool life. I will say it's a little bit different for men than women because the men are living like the dream as far as like what I would like. So you're hunting and
fishing and you know, managing reindeer and you got
these, all these adventures. So what ends up happening is
that a lot more guys than girl, young men out there in the woods. And so there's a draw also, I
think, to go to the village, probably to find a woman. And then there's a draw of like technology and the new things. And I think it, but
then once they're there, honestly alcohol becomes so overwhelming that everything else kind
of just fiddles away. And I, it's.
- But it's funny that that, the comfort you find, there's a draw to comfort.
- [Jordan] Mm-hmm. - But once you get to the comfort, once you find the comfort, within that comfort, you become the lesser version of yourself. - Mm-hmm, yeah, oh, for sure. - [Lex] It's weird.
- What a lesson for us. (Jordan laughs) - Like we need to keep struggling. - Yeah, a lot of times you
have to force yourself in that. So like if we took them as an example, I mean a lot of times
you'd drag this drunk guy into the woods, literally just drag him into the woods and then he'd sober up and then he was like
a month blackout drunk and now he is sobered up and
now boom, back into life, back into being a
knowledgeable, capable person. And because comfort's
so available to us all, you almost have to force
yourself into that situation. Plan it out, okay, I'm gonna go do, I'm gonna go do that.
- Do the hard thing. - And I'm gonna do that hard thing and then deal with the
consequences when I'm there. - What do you learn from that
on the nature of happiness? What does it take to be happy? - Happiness is interesting
because it's like, it's complex and multifaceted. It includes a lot of things
that are out of your control and a lot of things that
are in your control. And it makes, it's quite the moving target in life. You know what I mean? So.
- [Lex] Yeah. - I've, one of the things
that really impacted me when I was a young man, and I read "The Gulag Archipelago" was don't pursue happiness because
the ingredients to happiness can be taken from you
outside of your control, your health, your, but pursue like a spiritual fullness. Pursue, I think he words it duty and then happiness may come
alongside or it may not, but, so he gave the example that I thought was really interesting of in the prison camps, everybody's trying to survive and they've made that their ultimate goal. I will get through this. And then, and they've all basically
turned into animals in pursuit of that goal and like lying and cheating and stealing. And then he was like, somehow the corrupt
Orthodox church produced these little babushkas
who were like candles in the middle of all this darkness because they did not allow
their soul to get corrupted. - [Lex] Yeah.
- And he is like, what they did do is they died. They all died, but they were
lights while they were alive and lost their lives, but they didn't lose their souls. So for myself, that was
really powerful to read and realize that the pursuit of happiness wasn't exactly what I wanted to aim at. I wanted to aim at living out
my life according to love, like we talked about earlier. - Trying to be that candle. - Trying to be that candle,
yeah, make that your ideal. And then in doing so, it was interesting. So when I, for me personally, my personal experience was that is I thought when I went to
Russia that I kind of gave up. I was like in my 20s, I spent my whole 20s living in teepees and doing all this stuff that I thought I should be getting a job, I
should be pursuing a career, I should get an education of some sort. Like, what am I doing for my future? But I felt I knew where my purpose was, I knew what my calling was,
so I'm just gonna do it. And it sounds glamorous
now and I talk about it, but it sucked a lot of the times. And it was a lot of loneliness, a lot of like giving up what I wanted, a lot of watching people I cared about. You know, you put all this effort in and then you just see
the people that you get, put all this effort in
just die and this and that and then (indistinct), that happened all the time. And then the other thing I thought I gave up
was like a relationship 'cause you couldn't, you know, I wasn't gonna
find a partner over there. And so interestingly enough now in life, I can look back and be like, whoa, weird. Those two things I thought I gave up is where I've been like
almost provided for the most in life. Now I have this career guiding people in the
wilderness that I love. Like, I genuinely love it. I find purpose in it. I know it's healthy and good for people. And then I have an amazing
wife and an amazing family. Like, how did that happen? But I didn't exactly aim at it. I like, I consciously in a way, I mean I hoped it was tangential, but I aimed at something else, which was those lessons I kind of got from "The Gulag Archipelago". - So you have, just 'cause you mentioned "Gulag
Archipelago", I gotta go there. You have some suffering
in your family history, whether it's the Armenian
Assyrian genocide or the Nazi occupation of France. Maybe you could tell the story of that. What, this survival thing, it runs in your blood. it seems. - I love history. Like, I find so much richness in knowing what other people went through and find so much perspective
in my own place in the world. I have the advantage
of in my direct family, my grandparents, yeah, they went through the Armenian genocide. They were Assyrians,
which was a, you know, it was like a Christian
minority indigenous people in the Middle East. They lived in northwestern Iran and during the chaos of World War I, you know, and the Ottoman Empire was collapsing and it had all kinds of issues. And it, one of its issues was
it had a big minority group and it thought it would be a
good time to get rid of it. And you know, they can justify
it in all the ways you can. Like there's some people
that were rebelling or this or that. But ultimately it was just
a big, collective guilt and extermination policy against the Armenians and the Assyrians. And the, my grandparents, my grandma was 13 at the
time and my grandpa was 17, which is interesting 'cause it happened almost 100 years ago. But our, just, my dad
was born when my mom was, my grandma was pretty old, so, but my grandmother, her dad was taken out
to be shot, you know? The Turks were coming in
and rounding up all the men and they took 'em out to be shot. And then they took my grandma and her, she had seven brothers
and sisters and her mom, and they like drove her
out into the desert. Basically, she, her dad
got taken out to be shot. So his name was (indistinct),
whatever, took him out. They were all tied up, all shot. He said a quick prayer
before they shot him, but he fell down and
he found he wasn't hit. And usually, of course they'd
come up and stab everybody or finish 'em off but there
was some kind of an alarm and all the soldiers rushed off and he found himself in the bodies and was able to untie himself. They were naked and, you
know, hungry and all that. And he ran out of there, escaped, went into a building and
found a loaf of bread wrapped in a shirt and
was able to escape, fled. He never saw his family for, so to continue the story, my grandma got taken with her mother and brothers
and sisters and all just, they just drove them into the desert until they died, basically. And run 'em around in
circles and this and that and then all the raping and
pillaging that accompanies it. And at one point her mom had the baby and the baby died and her mom just collapsed and said, "I just can't go any further." And my grandma and her
sister like picked her up to, we gotta keep going
and like picked her up. They left the baby along with the other, everybody else had died. It was just the three of 'em left. And somehow they bumbled across
this British military camp and were rescued. The, my, neither the sister
nor my great-grandmother ever really covered as far, you know, recovered from what I understand. But my grandma did. At the same, in another
village in the north and they ran there, the Turks came in and were burning down my grandpa's village and they caught, and my grandpa's dad was in a wheelchair and he had like some money belt and he stuffed all his
money in it and told it, gave it to grandpa and
just told him to run and don't turn back. And they came in the front door as he was running out the back and they, he never saw his dad again. But he said he turned around
and saw the, you know, the house on fire. Never knew what happened to his sister. She, and so he was just alone. He ran, yeah. At some point he, I can't remember, he
like lost his money belt and like he took his jacket off, forgot it was in, something happened. Anyway, so he got, he
was in a refugee camp. He ended up getting taken in
by some Jesuit missionaries. So anyway, both of them had
lost basically everything. And then at some point
they met in Baghdad, started a family, immigrated to France, and then it just so happened to be right before World War II. And so then, and the Nazis invaded. My aunt, she's still alive, but she actually met a
Resistance fighter, you know, for the French and under a bridge somewhere. And they fell in love and she got married. So she had kind of an in
on the French Resistance at one point and they, of
course they were all hungry. They'd recently immigrated but also had this Nazi
occupation and all that. And so the Uncle Joe, the Resistance fighter guy told them like, "Hey, we're gonna storm this
noodle factory, like, come." And so they stormed the noodle factory and all my aunts ran in there and were like throwing out
noodles into wheelbarrows and everybody was running. And then the Nazis came
back and took it back over and like shot a bunch of
people and everything. And Grandpa, 'cause he had already
come from where he came from, was paranoid. So he buried all the
noodles out in the garden. And then my two aunts got
stuck in that factory overnight with all the Nazi guards or whatever. And then the Nazi guards
went out from house to house to find everybody that had
had noodles and you know, punish 'em. But they didn't find my
grandpa's, fortunately. They searched his house
but not the garden. And then, so they had noodles and somehow it must have been in the same factory or
something, but olive oil. And they just lived off
of that for the whole, all the whole war years. My aunts ended up getting out. They hid behind boxes and
crates overnight and stuff. And the Resistance stormed
again in the morning. And this, they got away and stuff. But anyway, chaos. So when they moved to America, I will say the most patriotic
family everywhere, ever. They loved it. (Jordan and Lex laugh) It's like paradise here. - I mean that's a lot to go through. What lessons do you draw
from that on perseverance? - Look, I'm one, I'm
just one generation away from all that suffering. Like, my aunts and uncles
and dad and stuff were the kids of these people. And somehow I don't have that. Like, what happened to all that trauma? Like I, it's like somehow
my grandparents bore it and then they were able to build a family, but not just a family that, but a happy family. Like I knew all my aunts and
uncles and I didn't know them. They died before me, but they were, it was so much joy. The family reunions were the
best thing ever at the Jonas'. And they, and it's just like how in
one generation did you go from that to that? And it must have been a great
sacrifice of some sort to not pass that much like resentment or like, what did they do to break
that chain in one generation? - Do you think it works the other way? Like where their ability
to escape genocide, to escape Nazi occupation gave them a gratitude for life? - [Jordan] Oh yeah.
- It's not a trauma in the sense like you're
forever bearing it, the flip side of that is
just gratitude to be alive when you know so many
people did not survive. - Yeah, it must be because
the only footage I saw of my grandma was like, they were all had the kids and stuff and they were cooking up a rabbit that they were raising or whatever, and they, but a joyful woman, you
could see it in her. And she must have been so, she must have understood
how fortunate she was and been so grateful
for it and so thankful for every one of those 11 kids she had. So I recognized it again in my dad 'cause my dad went through a really slow, kind of painful decline in his health and he had diabetes, ended up losing one leg
and so he lost his job. He had to watch his mom
or my mom go to school. He had long, all he wanted to do was be a provider and be like a family man. I bet the best time in
his life was when his kids ran to him and gave him a hug. But then all of a sudden he
found himself in a position where he couldn't work and
he had to watch his wife go to school, which
was really hard for her and become the breadwinner for the family. And he just felt like a failure. And I watched him go through that. After all these years of
letting that foot heal, we went out first day and we were splitting
firewood with a splitter and he was just, "It's so
good to be back out, Jordan. It's so nice." And he crushed his foot
in the log splitter and it's like, no. And so then they just amputated it. We've got both legs amputated. - [Lex] Wow.
- And then his, the health continued to decline. He lost his movement in his hands. So he was like incapacitated to a degree and in a lot of pain. I would hear him at night
in pain all the time. And I delayed a trip back to Russia and just stayed with my dad
for those last six months. And it was so interesting, having had lost everything, I've watched him wrestle
with it through the years, but then he found his joy and his purpose just in being almost, I mean, a vegetable. I'd have to help him pee,
help roll him onto the cot, take him to dialysis and, but we would laugh. He would like, I'd hear him at night crying
or like in pain, like, ah, and then in the morning he'd
have like encouraging words to say and ask. And I was like, wow, that's how
you face loss and suffering. And he must have gotten that from his, somehow from his parents. And then, you know, I
find myself on this show and I had a thought like, why
is this easy to me in a way? Like, you know, why is this thing that's, and I was like, and it just felt like this gift that had kind of handed down and now would be my duty
to hand down, you know, like, and it's, but it's
kind of an interesting. - And be the beacon of that, represent that kind of perseverance in the simpler way that
something like survival in the wilderness shows. - [Jordan] Yeah.
- It's the same. It rhymes. - It rhymes and it's so simple. Like, the lessons are simple and so we can take 'em and apply 'em. - So that's on the survivor side. What about on the people
committing the atrocities? What do you make of the Ottomans, what they did to Armenians, or the Nazis, what they did to the Jews, the Slavs and basically everyone? What do you, why do you think people
do evil in this world? - I think it's interesting
that it's really easy, right? It's really easy. You can almost see it,
sense it in yourself to justify a little bit of evil. Or you see yourself cheer a little bit when the enemy gets
knocked back in some way. It's really in the way, it's just perfectly naturalist for us to feed that hate and feed that tribalism, in group, out group, we're on this team. And I think that can happen. I think it just happens slowly. Like, one justification at
a time, one step at a time. You hear something and it makes, it makes you think then
that you are in the right to perform some kind of, you know, you're justified and, you know, break a couple eggs to
make an omelet type thing and then, but all of a sudden that takes
you down this whole train to where pretty soon you're justifying what's completely unjustifiable.
- Which is gradual. - [Jordan] Yeah.
- It's a gradual process of a little bit at a time. - I think that's why like for me, like having a path of faith is like, works as like a mooring because it can help me
shine that light on myself. You know, it's like something outside. Because if you're just looking at yourself and looking within yourself for your compass in life, it's really easy to get
that thing out of whack. But you kind of need a perspective from what you
can step out of yourself and look into yourself and
judge yourself accordingly. And in my walking in line
with that ideal, you know, and then, and I think without that check, you're subject, you know, it's easy to ignore the
fact that you might be able to commit those things, but we live in a pretty
easy, comfortable society. Like what if, you know, what if you pictured yourself in the position of my grandparents and then all of a sudden
you got the upper hand in some kind of a fight, what are you gonna do? You know, you could definitely picture becoming evil in that situation. - I think one thing faith in God can do is humble you before these kinds of
complexities of the world. And humility is a way to avoid the slippery slope towards evil, I think. Humility that you don't
know who the good guys and the bad guys are.
- Mm-hmm. - [Lex] And you defer that
to sort of bigger powers to try to understand that.
- Yeah. - I think there's a kind of, I mean, a lot of the
atrocities were committed by people who were very sure of themselves being good. - Yeah, that's so true. - It is sad that religion is at times used.
- [Jordan] Mm-hmm. - As a way to kind of just, as yet another tool for justification. - [Jordan] Exactly, yeah.
- Which is a sad application of religion. - It really is. It's so inherent and so natural in us to justify ourselves. It's really, I mean, I think it's almost, I mean, just understanding history, read history, it blows my mind that, and I'm super thankful that, somehow, and this has
been misused so much, but somehow this ideology arose that love your enemies, forgive, forgive those that persecute you. And just on down the line that something like that rose in the world into a position where we all
kind of accept those ideals, I think is really remarkable and worth appreciating. That said, a lot of
that gets wrapped up in what you're talking, you
know, what is so natural, it just becomes another
instrument for tribalism or another justification for wrong. And so I even myself am
self-conscious sometimes talking about matters of faith, because I know when I'm talking about, I'm talking about something else other than, you know, everybody, than what
someone else might think of when they hear me talking about it. So it's interesting. - Yeah, I've been listening
to Jordan Peterson talk about this. He has a way of articulating things which are sometimes hard to
understand in the moment, but when I like read it
carefully afterwards, it starts to make more sense. I've heard him talk about religion and God as a kind of base layer, like a metaphorical substrate
from which morality, of our sense of what is
right and wrong comes from, and just our conceptions of
what is beautiful in life. All these kinds of higher things that are like fuzzy to understand, that their religion helps
create this substrate for which we as a species, like as a civilization can
come up with these notions. And without it, you are lost at sea. I guess for him, morality
requires that substrate. - Like you said, it's kind of fuzzy. So I've only been able
to get clear vision of it when I live it. And it's not something you
profess or anything like that. It just, it's something
that you take seriously and apply in your life. And when you live it, then
there's some clarity there. But that, it has to be kind of defined. Like, it's like it's, and that's where you come in
with the religion and the story because if you leave it
completely undefined, I don't know, really know
where you go from there. I actually, and the funny, to speak to that, I did mushrooms, have you
ever done those before? - [Lex] Mushrooms, yeah.
- I've done 'em a couple times, but one time was, didn't do that many, the other time, more. And I had a really profound
experience in helping couch all this in a proper context for myself. So I could, I, when I did it, I remember I was sitting on
a swing and I could see my, everything was so blissful except I could see my black hands, like on these chains, like on the swing, but everything else was
blissful and kind of amorphous. And I could see the outline of my kids and I could just feel the love for them. And I was just like, man,
I just feel the love. It's so wonderful. Why, you know? But then I would, you know, at times I would try to picture 'em and I couldn't quite picture the kids, but I could feel the love. And then, I started asking all the deepest and existential questions
I could, you know, and it felt like I was just one answer, another answer, another answer. Everything was being answered and I felt like I was communing with God, whatever you wanna say. And, but I was very aware of the fact that that communing was just
peeling back the tiniest corner of the infinite, and it just dumped me with every answer I felt like I could have. And it kind of blew me away. So then I asked it, well,
if you're the infinite, like why did you reveal to me yourself? Why did you use like the story of Jesus to reveal yourself? And then that infinite, amorphous thing had to somehow take form for us to, like, for us to be able to relate to it. It had to have some kind of a form. And, but whenever you create
a form out of something, you're like boxing it in and subjugating it to
boundaries and stuff like that. And then that subject to pain and subject to the
brokenness and all that. And I was like, oh, wow. And then, but when I had that thought, then all of a sudden I could relate my like dark hands on the chains to the rest of the experience
and then all of a sudden I could picture my
children as the children rather than this
amorphous feeling of love. It was like, oh, there's
Illana and Altai and Zaya. And, but then they were bounded and
then once they're bounded, you're subject to the death
and to the misunderstanding and to the all that. And like, you know, I
picture the amoeba that, or the cell, and then when it dies, it
turns into a unformed thing. And so we need some kind
of form to relate to. So instead of always
just talking about God completely intangibly, it kinda gave me a way to relate to it. And I was like, oh, wow, that's, that was really powerful to me in putting it in a context
that was applicable. - But ultimately God is sort of the thing that's formless. - Right. - [Lex] That is unbounded. - Right.
- But we humans need, I mean that's the purpose of stories. They resonate with something, you know, but when you need the sort
of the bounded nature, the constraints of those stories, otherwise we wouldn't be able to like. - [Jordan] Can't relate to it. - Can't relate to it. - [Jordan] Yeah, yeah. - And then when you look
at the stories literally, or you just look at 'em
just as they are, it seems silly.
- [Jordan] Mm-hmm. Just too simplistic. - Right, right, and then
that was always, you know, all my, you know, a lot of
my family and loved ones and friends have
completely left the faith. But I, and I totally, in a way I get it. I understand, but I also really see the baby that's being thrown
out with the bath water. And I want to cherish that in a way, I guess. - And it's interesting that you say that the way to know what's right and wrong is you have to live it. Sometimes it's probably very
difficult to articulate, but.
- [Jordan] Mm-hmm. - In the living of it, do you realize it? - Yeah, and that, I'm glad
you say that because that's, I've found a lot of comfort in that because I feel somewhat
inarticulate a lot of the times and unable to articulate my thoughts, especially on these matters. And then you just think
it's, I just have to, but I do have to, I can live it. I can try to live it, you know? And then what I also am struck
with right away is I can't, 'cause you can't love everybody. You can't love your enemies and you can't, but as placing that in
front of you as the ideal is so important to put like a
check on your human instincts, on your tribalism, on your, I mean, you can very quickly, like we were talking
about with evil, you know, it can really quickly take
its place in your life. Almost, you almost won't
observe it happening, you know? But, and so I so much appreciate
all the me striving, and that's where, you know, I
grew up in a Christian family, so I had these like cliches
that I didn't really understand, like a relationship with God. Like, what does that mean? But then I realized when
I struggled with trying, with taking, I actually did
try to take it seriously and struggle with what does it mean to live out a life of love in the world, but that's like a wrestling match 'cause it's not that simple. It doesn't sound, it sounds good, but it's really hard to do. And then you realize you
can't do it perfectly. But in that struggle, in that wrestling match
is where I actually sense that relationship. And then it's, and that's
where it kind of gains life and how that real and that, I'm sure that relates to
what Jordan Peterson is you know, getting at in his metaphor. - Yeah, in the striving. - [Jordan] Right.
- Of the ideal, in the striving towards the ideal, you discover the how to be a better person. - One thing I noticed really
tangibly on "Alone" was that because I had had so many
people that were close to me kind of just leave it all together, I was like, I could do that. I actually understand why they do, or I could not, you know? I do have a choice. And so I had to choose at that point to maintain that ideal. And because I could add
enough time on "Alone", one nice thing is you don't
have any distractions. You have all the time in the
world to go into your head. And I could play those
paths out in my life, and not only in my life,
but I feel like societally and for, and generationally, like, I'd throw it all away and
everybody start from square one. Or we can try to, you know,
redeem what's valuable in this and wrestle with it. And so I just, I chose that path. - Well, I do think it's the, it's a kind of wrestling match 'cause I'm, you mentioned "Gulag Archipelago". I'm very much a believer
that we all have the capacity for good and evil.
- Mm-hmm. - And striving for the ideal
to be a good human being is not a trivial one. You have to find the
right tools for yourself to be able to be the candle,
as you mentioned before. - Mm, I like that. - And then for that, religion and faith can help. I'm sure there's other ways, but I think it's grounded
in understanding that each human is able to
be a really bad person and a really good person. And that's like a choice. It's a deliberate choice. And it's a choice that's
taken every moment and builds up over time. And the hard part about it is you don't know, you don't always have the clarity using reason to understand what is good and what is
right and what is wrong. You have to kinda live it with humility and constantly struggle. Because then yeah, you have to, you have, you might wake up in a society where you're committing genocides.
- [Jordan] Mm-hmm. - And you think you're the good guys. And I think you have to
have the courage to realize you're not. It's not always obvious. - It isn't, man, but. - And only history has the clarity to show who were the good
guys and who are the bad guys. - Right, you gotta wrestle with it. It's like that quote, you know, the line between good
and evil goes through the heart of every man, and we push it this way and that, and our job is to work
on that within ourselves. - Yeah, that's the part, it's what I like, sort of the full quote talks
about the fact that it moves, it moves from, the line moves moment
by moment, day by day. We have the freedom to move that line. So it's like a very, it's
a very deliberate thing. It's not like you're
born this way and it's a. - [Jordan] Yeah, I agree. - And especially in, you know, in conditions that are like war and peace in the case of the camps, you know, absurd levels of injustice, in the face of all that, when everything's taken away from you you still have the choice to be the candle like the grandmas.
- [Jordan] Yeah. - By the way, grandmas in
like all parts of the world are like the strongest humans. - Shout-out to the grandmas. (Jordan laughs) Seriously. - It's like, I don't know what it is. I don't know. They have this like wisdom that comes from patience
and have seen it all. They've seen all the of
bullshit of the people that have come and gone, all the abuses of power, all of this, I don't know what it is. And they just keep going. - Right, right. Yeah, that's so true. - What do you think of, as we've gotten a bit philosophical, what do you think of Werner
Herzog's style of narration? I kind of wish he narrated my life. (Jordan laughs) - Yeah, it's amazing to listen to. - Because that documentary
is actually in Russian. I think he took a longer series.
- [Jordan] Mm-hmm. - Yeah, and then put narration over it. And that narration can
transform like a story. - Yeah, he does an incredible job with it. I will say I, have you
seen the full version? Have you watched the
four-part full version? You should. You'd like it, it's in Russian and so you'll get the fullness of that. And it's, he had to fit it into a two-hour format. And so I think what you lose
in those extra couple hours is worth watching. I think you'll like it, so. - Yeah, they always go, they always go pretty dark. (Jordan laughs) - [Jordan] Do they? - He has a very dark sense about nature that is violence and it's murder. - And yeah, I think that's
important to recognize because it's really easy, I mean, especially with what
I do and what I talk about and I see so much of the value in nature. Gosh, you know, I also see like a beautiful
moose and a calf running around. And then next week I see the calf ripped to shreds by wolves. And you're just like, oh. And it's not as. (Jordan laughs) It's not as Rousseau-ian as
we'd like to think, you know? It is, it, you know, things must
die for things to live, like you said. And that's just played out all the time. And it's indifferent to you. It doesn't care if you live or die. - [Lex] Yeah.
- And doesn't care how you die or how much
pain you go through while, you know, it's like, it's pretty brutal. So that, it's interesting
that he taps into that. And I think it's valuable
because it's easy to idealize in a way, but. - Yeah, the indifference is, I don't know what to make of it. There isn't a difference. It's a bit scary. It's a bit lonely.
- [Jordan] Mm-hmm. - You're just a cog in
the machine of nature. That doesn't really care about you. - Totally, I think that's
something I sat with a lot on that show is another part
of the depth or psychology to delve into. But it, and that's when I thought, like I could, I understand that deeply, but I could also choose to believe. - [Lex] Yeah.
- That for some reason it matters.
- [Lex] That's. - And then I could live like it matters. And then I could see the
trajectories and then kind of, that was another fork in the
road of my path, I guess. - What do you think about the
connection to the animals? So in that movie, it's with the dogs and with you it's the other
domesticated, the reindeer. What do you think about that
human-animal connection? - In the context of that indifference, isn't it interesting that
we assign so much value and love and appreciation
for these animals. And in some degree, we get
that back in a recipient. I think right now you
just said the reindeer, and I think of the one they gave me 'cause he was long and tall, so they named him (speaks
foreign language). And I just remember
(speaks foreign language) and just watching him eat the leaves and go with me through the woods and trust him to take me
through rivers and stuff. And it really is special. It's really enriching, you know, to have that relationship with an animal. And I think it also puts
you in a proper context. One thing I noticed about
the natives who live with those animals all the time is they relate to life and death
a little more naturally. It feels, you know, we
feel really removed from it is particularly in urban settings. And I think when you interact with animals and you have to confront the
life and the death of them and the responsibility of, in a symbiotic relationship you have, I think it opens it a
little bit of awareness to your place in the puzzle and puts you in it rather than above it. - Have you been able to
accept your own death? - I wonder, you know, you
wonder when it actually comes, what you're gonna think. But I did have, you know, I did have my dad to watch, confront it in as positive
a manner as you could. And I, and that's a big advantage. And so I think when the time
comes, that I will be ready. But I think it, but I think that's easy to say
when the time feels far off. You know, it'll be interesting
if you got a cancer diagnosis tomorrow and stage four
it's like, be heavy. - Did you ever confront death
while in survival situations? I mean, when you're, I mean,
you're in (indistinct). - I did have a time, I had a time where I thought
I might, I was gonna die. I had a lot of situations that
could have gone either way and a lot of injuries, broken
ribs and this and that. But the one that I was able
to be conscious through a slowly-evolving experience
that I thought I might die in was at one point we were
siphoning gas out of a barrel and it was almost to the bottom. And I was like, so it's
sucking really hard to get the gas out. And then I didn't get the
siphon going, so I like waited. And then while I was sitting there, Yura put the, a new canister
on top and put the hose in and I, well, didn't see. And so then I went to get
another, you know, siphon and I went. (Jordan inhales loudly) Like, sucked as hard as I could. And it just instantly like a
bunch of gas filled my mouth and I couldn't like, spit it out. I had to go. (Jordan inhales loudly) Like that and I just, full mouthful of gas that I just drank. And I was just like, oh,
like what is that gonna do? And, and.
- [Lex] Wow. - He and my friend were
gonna go on this fishing trip and so was I and I was just
like, oh, I might just stay. And I was in this little Russian village and they're like, all right, well, Yura was like, "Man, I had
a buddy that died doing that with diesel a couple years ago, you know?" And I was, oh man. And so anyway, I made
my way to the hospital and by then, you know,
you're really out of it because, and then, and it was, they put me
in this little, dark room. It almost sounds like unrealistic, but it is actually how it happened. They put me in a little room with a toilet and
they gave me a cold, you know, galvanized bucket. And then like, they just
had a cold water faucet and they're just like, just chug water and puke into the toilet
and just flush your system as much you can. But they only had a cold water faucet. So I was just sitting there
like, chug, chug, chug until like you puke
and chug until you puke and I'm in the dark. And I was like, started to
shiver 'cause I was so cold. But I had to like, still like, get this thing up to me
and chug until I puked. I was picturing, I
remember reading, you know, about the Japanese torture
where they would put a hose in somebody and
then make 'em drink water until they puked. Anyway, the, and I just felt so, the only way I can express
it, I felt so possessed, like demon possessed. Like I was just permeated with gas. I could feel it just
coming outta my pores. And I like wanted to like rip
it outta me and I couldn't, I'd like puke into the
toilet and then couldn't see, but I was wondering if
it was like rainbow. And then I just remember, like, I could tell I was going out pretty soon and I remember looking at my hands up close. You'd see 'em a little
bit and I was like, oh, that's how dad's hands looked, you know, they were alive, alive and then. (Jordan clicks tongue) And it was interesting. Are my hands gonna look like that in a few minutes or whatever? And so then I wrote down like
to my family what I thought, you know, like, I love
you all, I feel at peace, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I passed out and I woke up, but I didn't think, I actually thought. - [Lex] You're not gonna wake up. - When I went to pass
out, I thought it was, there was a coin toss for me. So I really felt like I was
confronting the end there. - What are the harshest
conditions to survive in on Earth? - Well, there are places that
are just purely uninhabitable, but I think as far as places
that you have a chance. - You have a chance is
a good way to put it. - What, maybe Greenland. I think of Greenland because
I think of, you know, those Vikings that settled there
were rugged, capable dudes. - [Lex] Yeah.
- And they didn't make it. But there are Inuit that, you know, natives that live up there. But it's a hard life, you know? And the population's never
grown very big 'cause they're, you're scraping by up
there and you picture and the Vikings that did
land there, you know, they just weren't able to quite adapt. And the fact that they all
died out is just a symbol to that must be a pretty
difficult place to live. - What would you say, that's primarily because just
the food sources are limited? - The food sources are limited, but the fact that some
people can live there means it is possible. You know, they've figured
out ways to catch seals and do things to survive, but it's by no means easy or to be taken for granted or obvious. I think it's a harsh, probably
a harsh place to try to live. - Yeah, it's fascinating not just humans, but to watch how animals have figured out how to survive, of watching like a documentary. And polar bears, like, they just figure out a way and they get, and they've been doing it for generations and they figure out a way. They travel like.
- [Jordan] Rugged. - Hundreds of miles to like, to the water to get fat. And they travel 100 miles to like, for whatever other purpose because it, because they want to stay on the ice. I don't know, but it's
like there's a process. - [Jordan] Yeah.
- And they figure it out against the long odds. And some of them don't make it. - It's incredible. It's what a, what tough things, man. You just think every little, every animal you see up in the mountains when I'm up in the woods, it's that thing just
surviving through the winter, scraping by, like, it's
tough, tough existence. - What do you think it
would take to break you? Let's say mentally, like if you're in a survival situation? - I mean, I think it
would happen mentally. It would have to be, well, I, we talked about that earlier. I guess the thing that I've confronted that I thought I knew was that if I knew I was
the last person on Earth, I wouldn't do it. (Jordan laughs) Like I thought, but maybe you're right. Maybe I would think I wasn't. But I think, you know, I can't imagine, I can't imagine, we're so blessed in the time we live. Like, but I can't imagine what
it's like to lose your kids. Something like that. It was an experience that
was so common for humanity for so much of history. Would I be able to endure that? I would have at least a
legacy to look back on of people who did. But God forbid I ever have to delve that deep. You know what I mean? That, I could see that breaking somebody. - And I mean in your family, in your own family history, there is, there's people who have survived that. - [Jordan] Right.
- And maybe that would give you hope. - I mean, I think that's
what I would have to somehow hold onto. - But in a survival situation, you're, there's very few things that. - I don't know what it would be, like. So on "Alone", like on "Alone", I knew if I wasn't gonna, ultimately it is a game show. So it's like ultimately I wasn't gonna kill myself out there. It's like, but so if I hadn't been able to procure food and I was starving to death, it's like, okay, I'm not,
I'm gonna go home, you know? But like, if you put
yourself in that situation, but it's not a game show, and having been there to some degree, like I will say I wasn't even close. Like, I don't even know.
- [Lex] Yeah. - Yeah, I hadn't got, it hadn't pushed my mental
limit at all yet, I would say, or on the scale. But that's not to say there isn't one. I know there is one and, but I have a hard time, I know I've dealt, you know, I've dealt with enough pain
and enough discomfort in life that I know I can deal with that. I think it gets difficult
when you start to, when there's a way out
and you start to wonder if you shouldn't take the way out. As far as like, if there's no way out, I don't know what. - Oh, that's interesting. I mean that is, that is a real difficult battle when there's an exit,
when it's easy to quit. - Right, why am I doing this? - Yeah, that's, I, that's the thing that
like gets louder and louder the harder things get, that voice. - Totally, it's not insignificant. Like if you think you're
doing, like, you know, if you think you're doing
permanent damage to your body, you would be smart to quit. You should just not do that on a, when it's not necessary. Because health is kinda all
you have in some regards. So I don't blame anyone when they quit because of that reason. It's like, good. But if you're in a situation and it's, you don't have the option to quit, is knowing that you're doing permanent, that's not gonna break, that won't break me. You know, you just have to get through it. I'm not sure what my mental limit would be outside of like the family suffering in the way that I described earlier. - When it's just you, it's you. - [Jordan] Right.
- You're alone. There's the limit. You don't know what the limit is. - [Jordan] I don't know. - Injuries, like physical
stuff is annoying, though. That could be. - Isn't it weird how like, I mean, I can be, have a good life, happy life and then you have a bad
back or you have a headache. - [Lex] Yeah.
- And it's amazing how much that can
overwhelm your experience. And again, that was something I saw in dad that was like interesting. How can you find joy in that when you're just steeped
in that all the time? And people, I'm sure listening, there's a lot of people that do. And it's so, and talk about the cross to bear and the like hero journey to be like, good for you for trying to find what you can, what you,
your way through that. I, there was a lady in Russia, Tanya, and she had had
cancer and recovered but always had a pounding headache and she was really joyful
and really fun to be around. And I just like, man, I mean you just have to have a
really bad headache for a day to know how much that throws
a wrench in your existence. So all that to say, if you're not right now
suffering with blindness or a bad back or it's like, just count your blessings
'cause it is all, it's so easy to have. It's we're, it's amazing
how complex we are, how well our bodies work. And when they go outta whack it can be very overwhelming and they all will at some point. And so that's an interesting
thing to think ahead on, how you're gonna confront it when it does. Keeps you humble, like you said. - It's inspiring that
people figure out a way. With migraines, that's a hard one though, if you have headaches. (Jordan laughs) - So hard. - Oh man, 'cause those
can be really painful. And it's like.
- [Jordan] Overwhelming. - And dizzying and all this, ugh. - [Jordan] Yeah, anyway.
- That's inspiring. That's inspiring that you found. - There's not nothing in that, you know, I mean it's, you can find, somehow
you can tap into purpose even in that pain. I guess I would just
speak from like, right, my dad's experience. I saw somebody do it
and I benefited from it. So thanks to him for seeing
the higher calling there. - You wrote a note on your blog in 2012. You spent five weeks-ish in the forest alone. I just thought it was interesting 'cause this is in contrast to on the show "Alone".
- [Jordan] Mm-hmm. - You are really alone with like, you're not talking to anybody and you realize that you write, "I remember at one point, after several weeks had passed, I wandered into a particular
beautiful part of the woods and exclaimed out loud, 'Wow'. It struck me that it was the first time I had heard my own
voice in several weeks." With no one to talk to what, where, what, did your
thoughts go into some like deep place? - Yeah, I'd say my mental
life was really active. You know, I, what you end up, when you're that long alone, I'll tell you what you won't have is any of the skeletons in your closet that are still in your closet. Like you'll be forced to
confront every, every person. Even the one not, I mean, it's one thing if you've cheated
on your wife or something, but you'll be confronted
with the random dude you didn't say thank you to. - [Lex] Yeah.
- And the like, and the issue that you
didn't resolve, you know, all this stuff that was long gone will come up and then
you'll work through it and you'll think how you
should make it right. And I had a lot of those thoughts in my, while I was out there and it was, it was so interesting to see
what you would just brush over and then and confront it. Because in our modern world, when you're always distracted, you just never, ever gonna
know until you take the time to be alone for a
considerable amount of time. - Spend time hanging
out with the skeletons. - Yeah, exactly. I recommend it. - So you said you guide people. What are your favorite places to go to? - Hmm. If I tell 'em, then is everybody gonna go? (Jordan laughs) - I like how you actually have a, it might be a YouTube video
or your Instagram post where you give 'em a
recommendation of like the best fishing hole in the world. And like, you give detailed
instructions how to get there, but it's like a journey of life. It's like a "Lord of the
Rings" type of journey. - Right, right, no, I love the, I love the, like in the, you know, there's a region
that I definitely love in the States because it's special to me. I grew up there, stuff like that. Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, those are really cool places to me. I like the small town vibes
they're still maintaining and stuff there. - Just what, a mix of like
mountains and forests? - Mm-hmm, but you know
another really awesome place that blew my mind was New Zealand, that South Island of New
Zealand was pretty incredible as far as just stunning stuff to see. It was pretty high up there on the list. But there's, all these places
have such kind of unique, unique things about, Canada became like,
where they did "Alone", it's not typically what you'd say because it's fairly flat
and cliffy and stuff. But it really became beautiful to me 'cause I could tap into
the richness of the land, you know, or you know,
the fishing hole thing. It's like that's a special little spot. You know, something like that. And you see the beauty and then you start to
see the beauty on the, in the smaller scale. Like, oh, look at that
little meadow with that. It's got an orange and
a pink and a blue flower right next to each
other, that's super cool. You know, and there's a
million things like that. - Have you been back there yet? Back to where the "Alone" show was? - No, we're going back this summer. I'm gonna take, guide a trip up there, take a bunch of people. I'm really looking forward. - [Lex] Get back to the roots. - Being able to enjoy it
without the pressure of. (Jordan laughs) It's gonna be a fun trip. - What advice would you
give to people in terms of how to be in nature? So like a hikes to take
or journeys to take out of nature where it
could take you to that place where the busyness and
the madness of the world can dissipate and you can be with it. Like how long does it take for you, for people usually to just like? - Yeah, I think, yeah, I think
you need a few days probably to really tap into it, but I, you know, maybe you
need to work your way there. Like it's awesome to go out on a hike, go see some beautiful little waterfall or go see some old tree or whatever it is, you know, like, but I think just doing is it, you know, everybody thinks about doing it. You really, you just really do do it. Like, go out and then
plan to go overnight. Don't be so afraid of
all the potentialities that you delay it inevitably, you know? Like it's actually one of
the things that I've enjoyed the most about guiding people
is giving 'em the tools so that now they have this
ability into the future. You can go out and feel like, I'm gonna pick this spot
on the map and go there. And that's a tool in your
toolkit of life that is, I think, really valuable
because I think everybody should spend some time in nature and everything. I think it's been pretty proven healthy. - Yeah, I mean camping, camping is great. - [Jordan] Mm-hmm.
- And solo. I got a chance to do
it solo is pretty cool. - Yeah, that's cool you did. - Yeah, it's cool, and I
recorded stuff so that helped. - [Jordan] Oh good, yeah.
- So you sit there and you record the thoughts. Actually for having to
record the thoughts, I had to like, it forced me to really think
through what I was feeling, to convert the feelings into words, which is not a trivial thing because it's mostly just feeling. - [Jordan] Mm-hmm, yeah. - You feel a certain kind of way. (Lex and Jordan laugh) - That's interesting. You know, I felt like the
way I met my wife was like, you know, we met at this wedding and then I went to Russia basically, and we kept in touch via email
for, you know, that year. And a similar thing. It was really interesting to be, have to be so thoughtful and purposeful about what you're saying and things like, I think it's probably
healthy, good thing to do. - What gives you hope about this whole thing we have going on, the future of human civilization? - If we talk, you know, we
talked about gratitude earlier, like look at what we have
now, that could give you hope. Like look at what we've, the world we're in, we live in such an amazing
time with, you know. - Buildings and roads
- [Jordan] Buildings and roads - Airplanes.
- [Jordan] Food security. - Food security.
- And my, and you know, I lived with the natives and
I thought to myself a lot, like, I wonder if not
everybody would choose this way of life, because it is, there's something really rich
about just that small group, your direct relationship
to your needs, all that. But with the food security
and the health, you know, modern medicine, the things that we now have
that we take for granted, but that I wouldn't choose that life if we didn't have those things. Otherwise, you're gonna watch
your family starve to death or things like that. We, so we have so much now, which should lead us to be hopeful while we try to improve because there's definitely
a lot of things wrong, you know, but I guess it's, there's a lot of room for improvement and I do feel like we're sort of walking on a knife's edge, you know? But I guess that's the way it is. - As the tools we build
become more powerful. - [Jordan] Yeah, exactly. (Jordan laughs) - It seems.
- That knife's edge is getting sharper and sharper. I talk yeah, I'll like argue with my
brother about that sometimes. He takes the more positive
view and I'm like, ooh. I mean it's great, we've done great, but man, more and more
people with nuclear weapons and more, it's just gonna take one
mistake with the more power. - I think there's something
about the sharpness of the knife's edge.
- [Jordan] Mm-hmm. - That gets humanity to really like focus and like step up and not screw it up. There is just like you said with the cold, going out into the extreme
cold, it like wakes you up. - [Jordan] Yeah.
- And I think it's the same thing with nuclear weapons, it just like wakes up
humanity, like (indistinct). - [Jordan] Everybody was half asleep. - Exactly. (Jordan and Lex laugh) And then we keep building
more and more powerful things to make sure we stay awake. - Yeah, exactly, stay
awake, see what we've done, be thankful for it, but then improve it. And then, you know, of course I appreciated your little
post the other week when you said you wanted some kids. You know, that's a very direct
way to relate to the future and to have hope for the future. - I can't wait. And hopefully I also
get a chance to go out in the wilderness with you at some point. - I would love it. - [Lex] That'd be fun. - Open invite, let's make it happen. I got some really cool spots
I have in mind to take you. - Awesome, let's go. Thank you for talking today, brother. Thank you for everything you stand for. - [Jordan] Thanks, man. - Thanks for listening
to this conversation with Jordan Jonas. To support this podcast,
please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me try a new thing where I try to articulate some things I've been thinking about, whether prompted by one of your questions or just in general. If you'd like to submit a question, including in audio and video form, go to lexfridman.com/ama. Now allow me to comment on the attempted
assassination of Donald Trump on July 13th. First, as I've posted online, wishing Donald Trump good health after an assassination attempt is not a partisan statement. It's a human statement. And I'm sorry if some of
you want to categorize me and other people into blue and red bins. Perhaps you do it because
it's easier to hate than to understand. In this case, it shouldn't matter. But let me say once again that I am not right wing nor left wing. I'm not partisan. I make up my mind one issue at a time and I try to approach
everyone and every idea with empathy and with an open mind. I have and will continue to have many long form conversations with people both on
the left and the right. Now onto the much more important point, the attempted assassination
of Donald Trump should serve as a reminder that history can turn on a single moment. World War I started with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. And just like that, one moment in history on June 18th, 1914 led to the death of 20 million people, half of whom were civilians. If one of the bullets on July 13th had a slightly different trajectory where Donald Trump would end up dying in that small town in Pennsylvania, history would write a
new, dramatic chapter, the contents of which all the so-called experts and pundits would not be able to predict. It very well could have led to a civil war because the true depth of the division in the country's unknown. We only see the surface turmoil, on social media and so on. And it is events like the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
where we as a human species get to find out what the truth is of where people really stand. The task then is to try
and make our society maximally resilient and robust to such destabilizing events. The way to do that, I think, is to properly identify
the threat, the enemy. It's not the left or the
right that are the "enemy". Extreme division itself is the enemy. Some division is productive. It's how we develop
good ideas and policies, but too much leads to the
spread of resentment and hate that can boil over into
destruction on a global scale. So we must absolutely avoid the
slide into extreme division. There are many ways to do this and perhaps it's a
discussion for another time, but at the very basic level, let's continuously try to
turn down the temperature of the partisan bickering and more often celebrate
our obvious common humanity. Now let me also comment
on conspiracy theories. I've been hearing a lot of those recently. I think they play an
important role in society. They ask questions that
serve as a check on power and corruption of
centralized institutions. The way to answer the questions raised by conspiracy theories
is not by dismissing them with arrogance and feigned ignorance, but with transparency and accountability. In this particular case,
the obvious question that needs an honest answer is why did the Secret
Service fail so terribly in protecting the former president? The story we're supposed to believe is that a 20-year-old untrained loner was able to outsmart the Secret Service by finding the optimal location on a roof for a shot on Trump from 130 yards away, even though the Secret
Service snipers spotted him on the roof 20 minutes before the shooting and did nothing about it. This looks really shady to everyone. Why does it take so long to get to a full accounting of
the truth of what happened? And why is the reporting of the truth concealed by corporate government speak? Cut the bullshit. What happened? Who fucked up and why? That's what we need to know. That's the beginning of transparency. And yes, the Director
of the US Secret Service should probably step down
or be fired by the President and not as part of some political circus that I'm sure is coming, but as a step towards uniting
an increasingly divided and cynical nation. Conspiracy theories are not noise. Even when they're false, they are a signal that some shady, corrupt
secret bullshit is being done by those trying to hold on to power. Not always, but often. Transparency is the
answer here, not secrecy. If we don't do these things, we leave ourselves vulnerable
to singular moments that turn the tides of history. Empires do fall, civil wars do break out and tear apart the fabric of societies. This is a great nation, the most successful
collective human experiment in the history of Earth, and letting ourselves
become extremely divided risks destroying all of that. So please ignore the political pundits, the political grifters, clickbait media,
outrage-fueling politicians on the right and the left who try to divide us. We're not so divided. We're in this together. As I've said many times
before, I love you all. This is a long comment. I'm hoping not to do comments
this long in the future and hoping to do many more. So I'll leave it here for today, but I'll try to answer
questions and make comments on every episode. If you would like to submit questions, like I mentioned, including audio and video form, go to lexfridman.com/ama. And now let me leave you with some words from Ralph Waldo Emerson, adopt the pace of nature. Her secret is patience. Thank you for listening and
hope to see you next time.