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Les Stroud on Bigfoot, Orbs, Filmmaking, and Creativity
October 9, 2021
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Les Stroud is a Canadian survival expert and a filmmaker best known as the creator, the director, the producer, the writer, the cameraman, and the host of the television series Survivorman, which has now been uploaded to YouTube via the Survivorman channel, and the links are in the description. At Les's heart, he's an artist.
and thus we touch on what originality is, what art is and isn't, at least subjectively, and the positive and apugnant underbelly of what it feels like to have one's work mimicked. We also touch on Bigfoot experiencing orbs, and how Les's attitude has influenced my approach on not only the UFO topic, but topics that are despised in general. Click on the timestamp if you'd like to skip this intro.
For those new to this channel, my name is Kurt Jaimungal. I'm a filmmaker with a background in mathematical physics dedicated to the explication of what are called theories of everything from a theoretical physics perspective, but also delineating the possible connection consciousness has to the fundamental laws of nature, provided these laws exist at all and are knowable to us.
If you enjoy witnessing and engaging in real-time conversation with others on the topics of psychology, physics, and consciousness, then do check the description for the theories of everything Discord and subreddit. There's also a link to the Patreon, that is patreon.com, slash Kurt Jaimungal, if you'd like to support this channel, as the patrons and the sponsors are the only reason I'm able to do this full-time. It would be near impossible to have conversations on the topics of consciousness and loop quantum gravity and so on with such depth, if not for the sponsors and the patrons, so thank you.
That link again is patreon.com slash Kurt Jaimungal. With regard to sponsors, there are two. The first sponsor is Algo. Algo is an end to end supply chain optimization software company with software that helps business users optimize sales and operations planning to avoid stock outs, reduce return and inventory write downs while reducing inventory investment.
The second sponsor is Brilliant,
Brilliant illuminates the soul of mathematics, science, and engineering through bite-sized interactive learning experiences. Now Brilliant's courses explore the laws that shape our world, elevating math and science from something to be feared to a delightful experience of guided discovery. You can even learn group theory, which is what's being referenced when you hear that the standard model is based upon or has local symmetries of U1, SU2, and SU3.
Visit Brilliant.org slash Toe, that is T-O-E, for 20% off the annual subscription and I would recommend that you don't stop before four lessons. Give it at least four lessons and I think you'll be greatly surprised at the ease at which you can comprehend subjects you previously had a difficult time grokking. Thank you and enjoy this digressive conversation with Les Stroud. Do you mind giving the audience an overview of your Survivorman series and then how it led up to the Bigfoot series?
Yeah, years old. If you think about it, Survivorman started for me in the year 2000, even 1999, because that's when I pitched it, and 2000 is when I did the first pilot version for it, and then 2001 I did the second pilot, and 2002 or 2003 is when I launched it into a full series called Survivorman.
was the zeitgeist for the genre known as survival TV. And I know that sounds like a horrible boast to make myself, but history would bear me out on that. Without Survivor Man, you don't get Naked and Afraid, you don't get Alone, you don't get Man vs. Wild, you don't get any of these other shows without Survivor Man having sort of been there first. And I can also say that, you know, case in point is that nobody wanted Survivor Man when I first tried to pitch it. And not nobody. It took a while before I found somebody who
gave me the opportunity. In fact, I was told on one occasion, this is a quote from a network executive, no one will ever want to watch people surviving on television. That was a quote, right? So I said, no, I think you're wrong. And of course, now look what we have. And so really Survivorman then continued on all through the 2000s for a good 18 years really.
Now along the way, you said what led up to Survive Man Bigfoot, so to fast forward to that situation is that eventually at some point I got a bit tired of it. I was looking for variety in my work. I love variety. I don't want to do the same thing all the time. And at the same time also the shows that came out started copying what I was doing. Of course they couldn't actually do it. Let's be clear about that. They were not actually surviving, none of them were, with the exception of now
alone but alone is also very produced in the edit suite, so you're not getting the story that actually happened. So no one, even to this day, has ever done what I did with Survivorman and that was actually survive and actually film. But the problem with that is I couldn't deliver a lot of episodes, too hard on me. So then they came along and they wanted to have more and more episodes, more and more episodes, so they just basically started up with Bear Grylls and all the rest of them. Well, seeing that
I wanted to go off into some other directions. I did Beyond Survival, which was my series going out and surviving with indigenous cultures and taking part in all kinds of ceremonies. That was still to date the best work I think I've ever done. Then the Bigfoot thing happened because normally I try to work creatively on things that come out of my own brain, so it's not already out there. In other words, I'm inventing something.
But every once in a while, I do adopt the Richard Branson version, which is basically build a better mousetrap. When I saw what Finding Bigfoot did, I just thought, no, they blew it. They completely screwed that entirely. And it could be so much more potent than what they did. So I created Survivor Man Bigfoot. There. It's hard to ask me a quick question about something that happened over 20 years and have me answer it in one sentence. That's for sure. Totally fine. OK. And so what was Survivor Man Bigfoot Edition? So Survivor Man Bigfoot Edition was basically me
producing what ended up being a 10 part, now an 11 part, I did an additional one, documentary series, exploring the phenomenon called Sasquatch, called Bigfoot. And so I would go out and place myself in these various situations, not in a sensational way, not in a campy way, and certainly not in a scripted way, but
You know, your uncle would say, no, I've seen one. I've seen them a couple of times. They do come through my valley in my backyard and I'd say, okay, do you mind if I camp in the valley in your backyard? And then let's see what can happen. I want to see what's possible here. And that's, it was going in as a skeptic with eyes wide open and a very open minded skeptic. And then filming what I thought were solid and strong documentaries on the phenomenon. That's all it was really.
Yeah, I've unconsciously muddled myself after you and I have, well the channel has a great deal to owe to you because much like yourself where you didn't go in with too much credulity nor dismissal, you were playing the middle ground, I too have done that when it comes to the UFO topic where I'm not believing whatever is told to me but I'm also not dismissing it just because it sounds outlandish and I think a part of your appeal is that you're not a cryptozoologist
similar like I'm not a ufologist and so people actually like that that someone from the outside is going in and investigating this well oh yeah absolutely I think that that's been my my my anyway certainly not a shtick and certainly not a gimmick but it's my thing and always has been all the way along look I didn't come out of a privileged background other than my maybe my skin color I didn't come out of a privileged background my background was very low-income there were gangs in the neighborhood lots of drugs a dysfunctional family
So I came from an alcoholic background. I've had my own issues when I was younger. So I have all that in my background. What does that mean? It means that I'm not that guru guy for survival. I'm not that TV celebrity for my face on camera. I'm just a person who used to load boxes on the crates in warehouses as a job. I came from many blue collar jobs and that's
That all of that kind of background, and it means am I relatable? I suppose if you were, you would say I'm relatable. But why? Why am I relatable? Because I'm just like you. I'm not, I'm not, you know, but here's the difference. The difference and the chasm that I place between myself and say my past is that I seek to find a life that is filled with
edifying components that I'm trying to expand my brain. I'm trying to correct, to connect the synapses, synapses, synapses in my brain. I'm trying to make new connections. I'm trying to be smarter. I'm trying to learn. You know, when someone corrects me on my grammar, I'm one of the few people that will not get mad about that. I'm like, Oh my God, I'm saying that wrong. Thank you for telling me, you know, you know, and I seek to learn from larger minds.
If I approach a subject matter that is seemingly in the genre of rednecks down in Alabama who like Sasquatch, well no, I'm going to say let's give them some credibility here. It should be relegated to people with nothing more to do with their time than sit around and read conspiracy series or talk about Bigfoot, but you can elevate certain things to a place of
What you mean?
This is not a conversation we're planning on getting into but I will say that I just knew there was always going to be something better for me. Yes, I did say to myself at 20 years of age, I know I'm better than this and that didn't mean I'm better than them or better than you. I just knew I was better than this, this shitty alcohol-strewn cigarette smoking life I'm living. I'm better than this and I just always knew it and so I've always
When did Survivor Man the first episode come out? I mean how old were you when it first came out? So the pilot, and here's the great way that you ask that because the pilot was when I was around 40 years of age and I was 42 I think when I landed the series. I was now on air for four more years so now I'm 46 right I've been on air with television
on television with Survivorman for four years. I'm now an international TV celebrity. I'm doing interviews. I'm on Jimmy Fallon and Ellen, and I'm still making, at the age of 45, $46,000 per year. That's my take-home revenue. When I was 45 years old, I'd already been a TV celebrity. I'm already there. I made it with Survivorman. Yet I was still only making about $46,000 a year.
The next year is when I'm for the first time in my life, I broke the poverty line. So I'm now I'm a man of 46 years of age. I have two children at home and a wife that doesn't work. And at 46 years of age, because of survival, and it was the first time I ever broke the poverty line. All of that goes back to saying that you see, that's where I come from. So I'm not a highfalutin, you know, I'm not I was not a dancing monkey, like Mr. Grills wanted to be. I was not a TV star, like almost so many reality people want to be. Yeah, just a guy from a neighborhood.
You mentioned this monkey aspect, and when I think about celebrities, like I was watching the Met Gala and I was seeing Billie Eilish, if that's how you pronounce her name, and a few of the other celebrities, and then the paparazzi were saying, turn here, turn here, Billie, turn here, and then
They attempted very often to pull me in that direction.
And you know, I was very much a fish out of water when I was down in Los Angeles, let's say do Jimmy doing Jimmy Fallon and then the next day going on some other interview radio thing and maybe, you know, the next week on Ellen or something like that. That that I always thought that paparazzi Hollywood celebrity lifestyle to me. I'm just a guy from Canada, man. And it was just I always felt so outside watching it thinking, oh, my God. And you look in the vacant.
eyes of the paparazzi or the person asking you the interview. Sometimes you get beautiful people interviewing you, but a lot of times they're on a treadmill of what they think they're supposed to ask you. I walked the runway a few times. I walked the red carpet and I remember being told, �Hey, turn over here last turn.�
When you achieve a certain level, I've always said jokingly but not that I'm just a sea celebrity.
I think for a brief moment in time, I achieved B level status, maybe B minus status as a celebrity for a brief moment in time. And as I got closer, as I saw that, I just thought this is not me. I just I'm not this, you know, I'm a creator. I believe myself to be an artist, a mediocre one. I will say self-effacingly, yes, but I still have always believed that somewhere inside me as an artist. And that's what I try to be not. There's a big difference between being an artist and a celebrity.
Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Okay. When I'm looking at some of your newest series, you have this Lestral's Wild Harvest and you have a podcast series and you have, I think, another series coming up or out. So what's driving this? I assume it's not money. You said that your creative person is a pure creativity. Think Verizon, the best 5G network is expensive? Think again. Bring in your AT&T or T-Mobile bill to a Verizon
There's more than that.
Yes is the short answer because I desire to be creative, but not only that, I desire to be a prolific creative person, a prolific creator. I've always admired artists like David Bowie, Frank Zappa, anybody. I mean, back in the day, people used to do albums, two, three, four albums a year. So I just love an artist who's prolific. That's number one that's driving me.
Number two is my need to feel relevant. When I say relevant, let's be careful about that. How about my need to produce works that matter, which I'm sure sits on the shoulders of me hoping to matter myself as a deeper level, but producing works is what I do. And so I just cannot produce
Fluff, that's not to say I haven't produced shitty work, I probably have, but I try not to. I'll give you a quick story. I was on the telephone with the producer one time and we were brainstorming ideas and I said, I've got this one idea and I said, we could knock it out of the park in just like three months and I know we would make a lot of money with this.
You mentioned that personally you may feel this sense of mattering or this lack of sense of mattering to the world.
And partly what you do is driven by that. I'm curious if when you visit the wilderness, do you think there's that drive? Because when you're in the city, you're one among a million or millions. And then when you're in the wilderness, there's this calm, there's a sense that you matter just as much as anyone else. Is that a motivator there? No, actually, it's not a motivator at all. I'll tell you why, and the answer might surprise you. Firstly, in the city,
There is much more pressure to matter around people. There's much more pressure to matter, I think. Or in my opinion, I come across as being quite selfish in my existence. But when I get into nature, when I'm in the wilderness, I don't matter in the most wonderful way. I've never been asked that question before and that seems like a funny way to answer it.
Out in nature, I just don't matter anymore and it's absolutely wonderful. And so that's why wilderness and nature will always be my escape. You know, that's my safe place. Do you ever get into altered states while you're in the wild? Not because you've ingested something, but because of the experience itself. Let's say it's meditative. Well, or perhaps maybe because I've ingested something. We can talk about that later.
Yes, I have. Yes, I have. Altered states as deep as when I invoke the use of, say, plant medicine or something like that? No, not as deep. But I blame my own personality for that. I can have a bit of a stubborn angle to me, and so I've never truly really gone into great altered states through meditation. I know that it's incredibly valuable, and many people can. I've tried for many years. I'm sure a teacher's out there going, I could show you how to get into an altered state. I get it. I totally get it.
No, I think my altered state in nature is more of a gentle one where I just feel at peace. So see, to me, rather than practicing a technique of meditating while in nature, I'm just allowing myself to be in nature and that is the meditation, if you will. You said that there's some stubbornness that prevents you from using meditation to get to an altered state. What do you mean by that?
I don't know. Maybe it's like you started asking questions about filming Bigfoot and I said I like to go in as a very open-minded skeptic. I mean, through any seeking I've done spiritually in my life, the prayer side of that and the meditative side of that has never been one that truly affected me.
The people who have that affect them all the time say, ìOh, youíre just not fully giving over.î No, thatís not it. It affects you, but Iíve tried very hard and thatís why eventually later on in life when I went down the road of working with plant medicines, that broke through in a massive way and definitely a life-changing way.
A lot of times what those speakers forget is that we all have these much different personalities and a speaker often speaks to you like you should have their personality. All the type A's, the Tim Ferrises and the Tony Robbins of this world speak to you like
Here's what I do and every morning I get up and I have my journal and this is what you've got to do. You really want to be a success? Just let's go. Can I get an amen? Cold shower. I like the feeling. I recognize that, for example, I'm a multitasker. I cannot.
be of a singular mind. I cannot be singularly focused and I'm 60 years old this year. I bloody well know my own personality. Don't tell me that that's my best way to go because you know what, I'm better when I multitask. And every time I say that in a room, you should see the people go, thank God he said that. People thank me for saying that it's okay because they feel pressure from the unitaskers and that's not me, never will be me.
You mentioned cold showers. Wim Hof, have you followed him at all? Do you find any of his practices useful? I did my breathing this morning. However, I'd love to ask him about this and I saw it in an FAQ but I was doing the Wim Hof method very successfully, really enjoying it and then one morning while doing it, just like that I got hit with tinnitus and I've had it ever since. Then I checked his FAQs and people have been asking about tinnitus after the Wim Hof method
and it says, ìDonít worry about it, it goes away.î Guess what? It hasnít gone away. Now, at 60 years of age, I just for the first time in my life have tinnitus. So if anybodyís into Wim Hof, yes itís brilliant. Yes, the cold showers are brilliant and his meditation teaching is probably great though I havenít gone down that road. But the breathing in me, do I know it caused it? Well, let me say that it happened right in the middle of doing the breathing so as far as Iím concerned, I stirred something there.
Whenever I do the Wim Hof exercise, if I'm doing it properly around the second or third time that I hold my breath
Then I get some tinnitus, but it goes away after about a minute or so. Mine didn't go away. Did you ever have temporary tinnitus or you just had only permanent tinnitus that just kicked in and never left? Kicked in once and never left. Oh boy. And I've never had it in my life. So, you know, I might, I finally, funny you asked because I actually did the method very brief. I just did a short version of the method this morning, first time in about three months because my ears have calmed down, you know, and,
That's fact. Oh boy, I'm sorry about that. Okay. When it comes to filmmaking, you know, people who aren't filmmakers don't realize how, let's say when I watch a movie, I notice plenty of what they don't do than what they do. So what I mean by that is that they chose not to show a shot, reverse shot, that they chose to have it at two shots at a two shot. And to me, okay, that's an interesting choice. Most people notice the presence of something, not the absence of something.
And in yours, I remember you talking about you didn't want to include so-and-so element in Survivorman. What's some of what you could have chosen to include that you chose to exclude? And why? Well, first of all, all of the cliches of television filmmaking. So all of the cliches that other producers rely on as a crutch to make up for the content they didn't get. So the
Coming up next moment and the here's what you missed before the commercial moments. All of that is a device. It's a device that just basically says, oh, you don't have enough content to fill an extra 60 seconds. So you're going to do 15 seconds before and after every commercial to fill up that time in your show. That's what I really think is being said there. I think it's a cheat. Certainly within the filming of Survivor Man, there's two levels here, right? There's the filming and then there's the editing.
two different worlds. And in both cases, Survivorman enabled or rather demanded of me that I do things that no one else had ever done because of necessity. The necessity was there's nobody else there. I'm alone. And so I was doing things with the camera that if you watch in history, I can, I can, as a brag say,
I was the first person to do that. There's about six things that I was the first person to do. I did them out of necessity because nobody else was there with me. Other shows picked up for stylistic look as if they are alone, but really there's a whole freaking crew there. Can you give me an example? Well, for example, walking across a field. I'll set up a camera at the halfway point. I'll walk across the field.
I had to do that because I did not have a camera person following me and panning me.
Everybody else can just follow and pan. They're out there with a big crew, but they set it up and they do it anyway to make it look like, give you that illusion that he's alone. No, he's not alone at all. He's got a crew of six people with him whereas mine was necessity. Or how about the selfie? If I patented the selfie, I'd be an old man today. When I did the selfie in Survivor Man, we didn't even have iPhones when I started that and so there I was holding a camera on myself that had never been seen before ever until Survivor Man.
And now it's ubiquitous, right? So I'm not gonna go on. I mean, that's that was one of the beauties and the things I loved about the filmmaking side of this was I was tasked with inventing methods that would work for a person who's alone for seven days filming himself. Lots of things I had to develop. My editor likewise had to come up with ways of editing footage shot that way. And you sit back and look at our show and everything else that was on TV in 2004.
Does a part of you feel resentful about that or do you feel flattered?
My format ripped off by the networks. Absolutely. Screw them. They ripped me off. I was asked if I wanted to sue them. They were still airing my other works. It's like suing your mom. Don't worry about it. Let it go. And no one's ever won a format lawsuit, by the way. So no, I'm not going to sue them. So I'm resentful about that. But the other stuff that we're just talking about, oh gosh, no, that makes me prouder than punch to look at something and go, and not arrogantly, just like,
Your series Beyond Survival is in my opinion the best documentary series that Discovery Channel has ever aired.
And he said, I use that series to teach my field shooters how to film and my editors how to edit. And then he started quoting the classical editors and filmmakers that my editor was influenced by. Like, oh, he studied, you know, Hassenfeimer from the, from the seven, from the, from the forties and like stuff like that. And he was right, actually, because my editor's Barry Farrell's brilliant man was very schooled, you know,
So our craft that came out of necessity, myself in the field and Barry in the editing suite, that craft has been the people who know. No, you know, they get they go, OK, you know, and again, sounds like a brag coming out of me, but hell, it happened and history bears me out. And I'm I'm prouder than punched when I see stuff. If it's if it's man versus wild, which was a direct ripoff. No, that stuff is just like you idiots. You had a crew. You didn't have to do any of that stuff. It dorks. You're just trying to look like Survivor Man, you know.
That was, but we're going back 15 years to get that feeling. It's still there because you asked me about it, but by the same token, that's like 15 years ago when I was pissed off at them. I mean, I'm not pissed off at all anymore. What's that ratio, the ratio of filmed footage to what actually airs? And I'm sure it's changed over the year. Has it changed, first of all? Well, it has loosely, but if it's done right, it really follows the classic example. Years ago,
National Geographic was the bar. They were the ones who put out the bar on the standard on lots of different things, including ethics and filming. It was very interesting. They used to always say, ìWhat does Nat Geo say about it?î Oh, they say this. Thatís gone. Thatís blown out of the water. Their filmmakers have no accountability for ethics whatsoever anymore. They donít give a crap. Theyíre just doing reality TV and that includes Nat Geo and all the rest of them. But years ago, they were the standard. And the standard years ago was for a documentary film, itís 40 to 1, 40 hours to a one-hour documentary.
And I gotta say it, I pretty much held to that. Sometimes I was 60 to 1, sometimes maybe 35 to 1, but I always hovered around that 40 to 1. And filmmakers listening to this right now, especially younger filmmakers, when I say younger, I mean in your 30s, even in your 40s, is that craft really matters. It really does matter. As a friend of mine says, just because you know how to run the software, it doesn't mean you're an editor.
You know, and just because you can cut something doesn't mean you know how to tell a story. So 40 to 1 is about where I hover to answer your question more succinctly. Why is it that you emphasize that craft matters? See, it seems obvious, but it sounds like what's underneath that is that you believe or that there is this trend of that craft doesn't matter. Now when I was speaking with Jonathan Blow, he's a video game designer, he was saying, hey Kurt, right now there's this
I think that it's a shame
If the bar is lowered, I think that while it may seem to have a place, delivering problem to the masses is a shame and a sin. I think elevating people, enabling them to elevate themselves through having the kind of craft that enables you to elevate your own storytelling, your own art,
then in process elevates them. You just gave me the perfect example of looking at a Renoir or a Picasso. There's serious craft there. Today, I'll give you the alternative example. We heard the story recently about the whole fans-only thing and how it's like a semi-pornish kind of site and how
that people were making lots of money and this woman who was once a nurse was well in the article she called herself a content creator technically speaking she's correct I suppose but do not conflate content creator and producer and artists anymore and that's what's happening is we're conflating artists with content creators by having a woman who made who's making two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a month doing what
Pictures of her T and A. That's content creation now? I've been doing this for 30 years and I'm up against a woman showing pictures of her T and A and then in an article stating, I'm a content creator and I have a right to blah, blah, blah? No. So it's coming from I don't want to see the bar TikTok and YouTube clips and Instagram stuff. The bar comes down.
Hey, I'm not against entertainment. I'm really not against a chuckle and a laugh and I'm not against low brow entertainment even. That's fine. But don't piss on my back and tell me it's random. You're not a content creator.
So I'm actually going to have to relinquish that term because I'm losing that battle. So fine, you're a content creator, but you're not an artist. You're not a film producer. You're not a storyteller. You're not even really a creator, capital C. Don't do a TikTok video of you punching your brother in the nuts and call it art. So I'm not up against that, but I am kind of up against it because I'm still putting stuff out.
I want to ask you a specific filmmaking question. Yeah, please. That's why I'm here. You're great. In one of your Survivorman series, at times you would cut in, you would put the black bars. Now it's already a low resolution show in the sense that it's 480p in 2004, 2005 and so on. And I'm wondering, and I have a specific clip here, just as a filmmaker, I'm interested. Why did you choose to put? Yeah, I have it here. Can I just link it to you so that you can you show it to me? Yeah.
You see even after all these years and 30 years of filmmaking and everything else, stuff gets done and then you come back and look and you go, why is that there?
Oh, that's a glitch. Sorry, man. Okay, can you re-upload it, please? That's just something that needs to be fixed. I thought there's this artistic choice. There's a reason, because I've seen it in more than one place. I know, and it has to... How the heck is that a glitch? Okay, recently I was working with Team Rubicon and cleaning up at Hurricane Ida, and I was with the four filmmakers there, the media team, and it was a lot of fun because they were all young and they did listen to things I had to say, which was fun for me. But right in the end there,
The guy delivered the final cut we were working on for that week. And he said, oh, I'll shoot it over to you, Les. Now, I could have said, fine, I'll watch it when I get back to the hotel. But I was sitting right there, and I said, oh, I'm going to put it on now. I watched it. Absolute total big faux pas audio glitch. He completely missed, and it would have gone up to YouTube. And I said, John, is that supposed to be like that? And he goes, what do you mean? And he looks, and he goes, oh, shit.
It was a year of conflict because he had been used to only uploading to online under his own control.
No broadcast delivery. Well, you've got to understand when you go pro, you know, there is a difference between uploading to Vimeo and sending your work to Discovery Channel. And filmmakers need to understand that just because you could be a YouTube star. When you go to deliver to A&E or Discovery Channel or National Geographic, you better bloody well have every frame
in the right spot, every color, every audio. It's very specific and very detailed and very tedious and a lot of hard work and I think a lot of filmmakers don't understand how intense delivery to a broadcast network, like my deliveries right now to PBS stations, American Public Television for the Wild Harvest series. There's three sheets of specs.
And you have to be bang on on every single one of those specs because they're giving you money. And it's important. No, I was going to say this is vital. Personally, I find it annoying because there's no creativity there. What I've done because I have a documentary that I gave to iTunes, I used a distributor and then they take care of that and then they send me back these pages of notes. Why is it that in this frame there's a small black line over here?
Why is it that the audio does so-and-so peaks over here? Well, peaking is a simple issue to fix. So I find it annoying. Is there artistry in that, in meeting the distributor's requirements? No, there's... Well, two ways to answer that. If the glitches are real glitches... You want them to be known. You want to solve them. Shame on you. They've got to be fixed. I've never... In all my years with Discovery Channel, I never delivered a show with glitches. Because we... No way. We would not.
This recent round of deliveries, there was a whole bunch and that's why I was saying I was working with an individual who wasn't familiar because with Vimeo or YouTube, it's like, just put it, just upload it, it's fine. It's not fine when somebody on quality control on the other end is looking. This is different from notes on your content. That's a whole different level of interaction with the networks when they're picking apart your work
And they're giving you creative notes. And for people who can't see this, I'm doing air quotes around creative. So yes, I mean, I don't think the tech specs hurt the artistry at all. That's, you know, deliver it, deliver it right. It's going to a network which I think people should follow. So this stuff I just did with Team Rubicon, we're uploading that to only to social media. But I went in and I and I and I remember saying, hey, John, you know, the handle on this little shot, you should move the handles a bit long. You see me getting ready to talk. You don't see me talking.
And John said, oh yeah, took it out and go, now, doesn't that smoother? Yeah, it's way smoother, right? So there is a craft in there, you know, craft. My editor will, Barry Farrell will often say like, you know, if you see that an editor has done a cut on a blink, so the person on camera has blinked, that's a self-taught cutter. That's someone who does not know the craft, you know.
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If you use that code, you'll get two years worth of blades for free. Just make sure to add them to the cart plus 100 free blades when you head to H E N S O N S H A V I N G dot com slash everything and use the code everything. What are some of the techniques you use to make your footage or your episode more engaging when there was a lack of, let's say, engaging activities on screen?
Well, engaging is an interesting word. Story, story, story. You know, you hear that content is king, story will always be king. So that's mainly done during the editing? No, no, this is me filming in the field. You know, I have to see, you know, good in, good out, bad in, bad out. If I deliver my editor crap, he's got nothing. It doesn't matter how good of an editor he is. Not enough shows think that one through because they take crap from their field and they just edit it any old way they want, you know.
My guy had to edit really intense stories, but I had to bring him intense stories. One of my ways was to make sure I brought him a very strong story. To answer your question, I'm in the field, so let's go there. I'm in the field and I'm lacking in content, let's say. I'm lacking.
I have to really, there's two things I did. One is I have to either rack my brain to think, what can I pull out of this area, this next thing? What have I got here? Where's my story here? And sometimes I would just start filming stuff because you never know. The other side of it is I would go in, I'm going to go in the desert today, let's say, and I would have a list of things that I know I want to capture for this particular story I'm going to tell. Well, it's the desert. I should tell a story about eating strawberry pincushion
Cactus fruits. Okay, but the problem is in my situation if it's day three and I haven't been eating I forget so I pull out a crumpled old piece of paper out of my pockets Oh, yeah Pincushion fruit. Oh, yeah. Okay. I got to film that I'll go in now I go and I film it so I keep myself on track with a short list of don't forget to film this kind of list and I also, you know, and then maybe I just have a good eye for looking around going. Okay, well
There's a little bit of story just in this next moment right here, let's capture this. Now what's the difference between a story and just filming an event? So for example, that strawberry pincushion. If it's written on a paper as a bullet point you say, film myself eating strawberry and finding strawberry pincushion. Okay, is that the story or do you somehow add some elements around that to make it a story? How do you take an event and make it a story, essentially? I think what I do is I say, well, what's the story? First of all, it's
This guy, the guy happens to be me and he's going to do this thing. Okay, the big one for me would be how. How is he going to do this thing? What are the how's that I can answer? The first how is how do you find these bloody things? Okay, second how is all right, how do you harvest these things? Do you know? Okay, now there's two ways to harvest it. Which one looks the best for camera?
Because you want things to look great on camera. I could just bend over and pick up a pincushion cherry, right? Or I could get down on all fours. I could talk about avoiding rattlesnakes. I could talk about avoiding the spines of the cactus. I could show a tricky little method for being able to use a pair of tongs to pull off the fruit rather than getting your finger stuck. Both situations, I'm just picking a cherry off of a bush.
I'm just forget that it's a cactus thing but you know both situations I'm doing one thing I'm picking something but one situation I bend over and pick the other one I've just given you three pieces of information over how to do it that's that's how I get the story in something what's the how how is this all going to going down what are the nuances that nobody at home would ever guess on their own of their own accord you know what do I need them to know fill them in fill them in tell them it's all interesting
Some people will be wondering, well, what the heck does this have to do with theories of everything? Now, as you know, theories of everything have to do with physics, there's gravity, and then there's the standard model, how do you unify them? But it's also, what are the fundamental laws that govern us? So consciousness may have a role to play. And if someone was to ask you,
What does what you do have to do with the theory of everything? How would you answer that? No. Look, here's one way. Theory of everything has the word everything, so no matter what. If I'm drinking tea, it's technically theory of everything. But is there some other way? So the way that I position theories of everything. Theories of everything is an investigation into theoretical physics, free will, consciousness, and God. Because I see those as intimately tied. Okay, using that as your jumping off point if someone was to ask you.
Most of the time, I jokingly say I walk around in a mild form of constant existential crisis. It's almost a slight addictive habit of mine.
And yet, I've learned to befriend it over the years. It doesn't stop me. It doesn't spiral me into depression or anxiety. Because if you're constantly going, what's this all about? Why? How? You can really get bogged down in the muck and the mire of that. I use it to
In many ways calm me down because we have this tug of war, this battle for our consciousness of I need to matter, I need to be relevant, I need to create, I need to be part of this big picture and what's going to happen when I die and am I really a piece of energy floating through space? Is this just simply a biological
thing that my spirit and my energy have occupied at this moment. We have all of that versus I'd really like that piece of cheesecake. And I've been in between those for so long in my life when I'm really frustrated it bothers me to be in between because why am I so dumb that I just really want this piece of cheesecake and yet over here I'm thinking about God. And so I've been able to
let go of my existential crises when they are detrimental to my own step forward and say, look, I am this physical being. All I really have, and that's even wrong there, I was going to say all I really have is this flesh and this blood, these muscles, this brain, but of course I'm happy to say that I'm quite certain we could do so much more with the energy of our minds were we to be a little more advanced and a little more skilled
That in the end, I try to bring it back to, now here's where it's going to sound almost woo-hoo-y, but I still think in the end that expressing love and not hating, express giving and not just taking, all I know is that my concept of the ethers and the great grand beyond and God and spirit and energy and life force
feels like it lands in a proper place if I'm not being selfish, if I'm not all about myself, which I can be very easily. And so my work moving forward, I believe, has to somehow fall into that same place that my reasoning is falling into, which is, yeah, yeah, of course there is something greater here, of course there is a
An energy that is part of all things and it's whether people name it or Orthodox it or box it up or not It's not the point that it's as far as I'm concerned. There's that. Yes There is the biological sludge that came from the swamps of so so sure I will not I Do not feel That I'm just biological because if that was true, I wouldn't give a crap about anything
So it brackets what I do because it causes me to say, okay, if I'm going to create something, it's got to mean something. It's got to give. It's got to be from love, if you will. Have I ever done things just for money? On occasion I have, sure, because I needed money, but I'm not in that place anymore. So now, yes, how does it govern? It governs by reminding me how big everything is.
But my touchstone with everybody watching is that I still want to have that piece of cheesecake, regardless of this bigger thinking. No matter how big our thoughts are, I still want to go home and be with my wife and have a glass of wine.
No matter how existentially I meander.
this universe is fractal-like and that these patterns repeat, so if you were to investigate any phenomenon to its utmost degree, you'd still end up with a reflection of the entire universe. And that's why some people say you can study mathematics, you can study logic, if you do it properly or do it to its extreme, you can find God. If you study even these headphones to its extreme, because it's a creation of God in a sense, it's a reflection of God, then you can find God. But then I would ask you then, can math explain
Then I'm sure it can actually but then where does the math rest when you look at something like say having a piece of cheesecake while staring at the corner of a wall that you know that in the end it is not a positive maneuver. It is a negative element. It is an energy that is not even instinctually in keeping with everything that's rolling on it. In fact it's a pullback to the proper outflow of love.
Have you heard of non-dualism? I've heard of it. I couldn't explain it to you. Okay, so the non-dualists would say... What I have to do is I have to go listen to more Sam Harris and then I'll get back to you. Alright, so non-dualists would say... I don't think Sam likes non-dualism because he believes in morality, objective morality.
So the non-dualist would say, I'm not saying I'm a non-dualist, I'm just being a mouthpiece, that there is no two non-dualist, right? There is no two, there is no up-down, there is no evil, there is no good, that it's all the same, that it's like the atoms of the universe are love, because God is love, the atoms of the universe are love, so that even in a heinous act like what Hitler did, there was love in that. I'm not saying I believe this, but certain lines of thinking would say that.
Well, I watched too many Marvel movies to think that everything... I don't think I agree with that. I think that... What do I know, right? But I think that hate is hate, pain is pain, anger is anger, intent to harm is intent to harm. And, you know, I don't see... I mean, no, I don't see where you can derive the love out of those things. I think they are the lack of love, you know.
In many ways, and they certainly exist. There's no question about the examples of how they exist, but you asked me about how this questioning of everything and understanding of everything, how it monitors my world. So what you're really asking me in many ways is what do I believe? And I don't think it's a belief, by the way. I think it's more what have I studied or what do I feel I've learned enough about to have at least an opinion on in my own life.
I was a seeker when I was younger. I do not hold with orthodoxy or church orthodox a goal step further and I feel that there is a place for it but I believe what that is is the kindergarten of spiritual seeking. I think it's a good place for people to go if they need rules and regulations and if they need rituals and traditions and if they need colorful trinkets and colorful light things.
Then just like kindergarten, that's a good place to go to start, to start there. But I like being a seeker. I like being open and searching. And in my process now as a 60 year old, still feeling like I could listen to one podcast from a great thinker and go, God, I'm an idiot. But I don't really think I'm an idiot. I have felt enough
That whatever the answer, here's the thing, you and I can't, nobody's going to answer this till they die. None of us know until our breaths leave this body. None of us really know, even though, regardless of altered states, even with an altered state, still can be certain, but not quite that certain. And then when we die, we say, oh, oh, it's like this. And there's plenty of standup comedy routines to have fun with that.
I've seen enough to basically say that I do allow it to guide my life. I don't need to be in a selfish state anymore if I have over time. So that's how questioning everything, I won't stop. I won't stop questioning everything, trying to seek the understanding of everything. I wish we all would. What do you see as the connection between consciousness and Bigfoot? That's a big question.
The Bigfoot phenomenon is a rabbit hole. It's a rabbit hole covered in ice with grease poured over top of it. It's really slippery. And once you go down that rabbit hole, it leads off to a hundred other rabbit holes. So the question you ask is interesting because the journey of someone who wants, who's interested in that phenomenon starts off looking for a big hairy ape. That's really smart. If you dig deep enough, you leave that school pretty quickly.
It's no longer giganopithecus, the big hairy ape that's really smart. Instead, you start going, wait a minute, and then you keep having a whole bunch of wait a minute with attributes, various attributes, including potential telepathy and cloaking and all sorts of various versions of manipulating energy.
Consciousness in Bigfoot, where it lands, first of all, nobody has a freaking clue what these are. But the phenomenon is big enough. Hundreds of years to thousands of years, hundreds of cultures, all saying the same thing, by the way, and tens of thousands of anecdotal references, including sightings. Something's there. My question is, never mind just Bigfoot. If that species is out there, and I can come back to them, what else is out there?
You can't just go, okay, so there's Bigfoot, I'm going home now. Say, well, if there's Bigfoot, what else? And a lot of possibilities open up. For example, I think that the potentiality is there for this species, nicknamed Bigfoot, but for example, Sasquatch and whatever the different names are there, to be a combination of all of these attributes people talk about, which would include
psychic abilities, the ability of telepathy, which would include cloaking abilities, which now one gentleman had a theory that I still think holds some weight. What if it was simply a species of intensely savant autistic individuals and their savant autism gave them such extraordinary ability of hide and seek and on top of that a savant ability of telepathy and a savant ability and they had the
They understood how to manipulate their own energy, their own life force energy. To me, all of that's possible if we're talking about the potentiality of the human mind, but the minute you throw Bigfoot into it, oh, that's just nonsense. How do you know it's not a species that's way ahead of us? Okay, they don't compose symphonies. They don't build airplanes and cars. I get that. That doesn't mean they can't do all these other things. So I didn't really answer your question because I don't know the answer to the comparison of consciousness and Bigfoot. What I'm suggesting is if they exist,
They are in a realm of existence that we are far from grasping our understanding, and they're farther ahead than we are on certain levels, just way behind us in other levels. Why I'm asking is, Les, you don't disparage the Bigfoot topic. I don't disparage the UFO topic, even though plenty of the scientific community would. And I'm pretty sure I was inspired by you, but either way.
I used to listen to your shows. And then
Right and I have insomnia and right when I'm about to fall asleep you play the harmonica and I'm just cursing you and I'm just wishing man I wish someone would timestamp when those harmonicas are so that I could start it from right after either way bracket that I was listening to you and I believe you said something like okay I went out to the woods filming for Bigfoot I think this was way after the series you're filming for Bigfoot didn't occur so you thought you know there are stories that they can hear what's going on with the cameras or sense it in some manner so why don't I turn the cameras off
No, that was all correct. That was from the Portland episode. It was the last thing I ever filmed. It was outside of the full series, but it's on YouTube now.
Douglas Goldstein, CFP®, Financial Planner & Investment Advisor
And I've told this story, I told it just recently on Sasquatch Odyssey, a podcast. Bottom line was that I was walking on the trail on the way out and never ever before in my life have I ever experienced any kind of psychic or telepathic phenomenon of any sort whatsoever. And I wasn't high and I wasn't drunk and I wasn't tired and I'm walking out and I just had this powerful voice speak to me inside my head.
And so much so that after the fact, I actually went in to see a counselor to make sure I wasn't schizophrenic because it hit me that hard. I thought I got to know what's going on here and the counselor reassured me that no, you're far from schizophrenic. Don't worry about that. What you received was a gift and you should just celebrate that fact and be really aware of that. And then it happened another two times. And then for the Portland one that you're referencing, what happened there was
I don't think I said this in the show but first of all I put my thought energy out there telepathically to the Sasquatch in that area that I was told were there by a woman who has telepathic communication with them, she says. So I said I'm coming to meet you and I did this for about a week ahead of time and I started to at one point feel like I was getting an answer if you will in my brain.
Yeah so now I go up there and I go out in the bush and the orb thing had happened and later on I'm just sleeping on the ground and I'm starting to doze off and that little crackling fire going and all of a sudden I felt a very warm and actually felt a bit soft and furry so it could have been anything but it basically
went over my ankle and flipped my ankle enough that it woke me up and I jumped up immediately. And it felt like a nice big warm hand flipping my ankle over and I jumped up immediately. I didn't see anything. Fast forward to the next morning. We're walking out. We run into the lady again. Anyway, we see her. I did not tell her this. And she says, she called him guardian, so she's giving an appointment. I was speaking with guardian and he told me that during the night he came over and touched
And what do you do with that? That was the next morning she said that to me after it actually happened and I hadn't told her. And those things have happened to me about four times in my life without forcing it. Lots of times nothing happens. Sometimes you tell these stories and people think shit's going on all the time but
Most of the time, nothing's ever happening. These are occurrences that have happened over a number of years. I've had four telepathic experiences. Anyway, so that's what happened though of that particular show, and I don't think I at the time was ready to talk about that on camera, and I didn't mention it. Because if I mention it, people go, he's losing it, right? And I just say, screw you guys. Not so much fear and ridicule. No, it's not the ridicule I fear.
It's their inability to handle the full story. And yes, I'm belittling them when I say that. Yes, I sound a little condescending when I say that. But screw them. If I just say, hey, yeah, Bigfoot, talk to me. But all the chuckle starts. But I could say that to a lot of people that go, really? Tell me what happened. That's the person I like to share with.
Okay, so let's say a week prior to you going out and experiencing that orb, you were doing some exercises where you were trying to contact Bigfoot via intention and meditating, something like that? More via psychic outreach, like specifically speaking. So I've done it several times and nothing's ever happened, but
A couple of times I have gotten an answer. One time it was actually rather quite funny. I would go on a hike. So if people are wondering how to do this, I mean, I would go on a hike and I would just, if I want an interaction, I will just put it out there. I'll just say, you know, I'm coming out. I'm going to be hiking in an area. You know, don't know if anybody's even there, but if someone is there, I would be welcoming, in love to have some kind of interaction. And then often it's like, and nothing. Okay. And I just go, as a guy,
One time though, bam, in the middle of my head, all I got was, no thanks, we're sleeping. I mean, it's just the craziest thing. And again, remember the first time this happened, I went in to see a counselor, and I've only had this happen four times in my whole life. But I tell you, it is the strangest thing ever when it happens. It's so strong. Anyone who has this as a skill in their life will just go, yeah, of course I have that. They would accept this conversation with zero judgment.
Now these four times it's occurred to you, were they each single sentences? Just like, no, we're sleeping? Or were they paragraphs? I'll give you the script. The first time was, we're right over here. If you want to meet us, stay the night. To which I replied, this is in Tennessee, to which I replied, because it's the first time anything like this ever happened in my life. And I was scared. And the hair was back up on the back of my neck. I had never felt that.
That's cool. When they said, we're here, did they give you a location or they said here and it was implied they were near you? Both. The location was basically the hill right over there that I could see from about 150 feet away. That's pitch black. I'm in the dark.
The image in my brain that was seared in my brain was of a large hulking male figure and a small child, both in classic Bigfoot look if you will. That really freaked me out. A few months went by after that one. The next one was a little more menacing. It was during a meditative process on the Texas Bigfoot episode and that one I never told anybody on camera but there I did get
During the meditation stage, I got a, yeah, yeah, get ready, get ready for this was kind of sort of the message and it felt menacing and dark and I didn't like it and I didn't, I just kind of, no, no, no, no, not going here. The third time was the in Oregon and it was the answer in my brain was simply, no thanks, we're sleeping. And the fourth time is the Portland episode where basically this particular being said, yeah, yeah, we're here, we're ready for you.
You know, and that was a wonderful experience. So am I crazy? Are they hallucinations? Is it lucid dreaming? Is it blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? I don't know, but I know that in all our instances I was wide awake, very sober, very straight, and not trying to make this happen in my brain. And I've tried many, many other times and nothing happens. But these times it sears in the middle of your brain. You can't not hear it.
When the first time you had a back and forth, or at least you said one statement, which is, I don't think I'm ready. Did you say that in your mind? Do you say it out loud? How did you say it? Yeah, I say it in my mind. And so someone's going, Oh, yeah, sure. They'd speak English. Sure, sure, sure. No, what they do is it's a process of your mind deciphers for you what you're supposed to understand. And to me that if I was Chinese, it would be in it would be in Mandarin, you know, or something. So, so, yeah, yeah. So, so, so, you know, it's a
So you gave your intention like, hey, I'm not ready currently. Okay. Now when they spoke to you all of these times, were they instantly understood or were they understood linearly? Like when you read, you understand the first word, the next one, then the next one and the next one, or was it all at once they said that sentence to you? Interesting question. The sentences were short enough
I'm not sure that I can decipher it linearly or in a linear fashion, or if it was all at once. It was just too short. Okay. As an aside, the reason is that some people, when they speak to other beings, or let's say even they have an encounter with God, it's as if all of that is said to them like that. And it's not like... It's like when you read one word, you don't read each letter, you read the word instantly. If I was forced to make the distinction, that is what I would say. I would say it feels like it's all at once. It's just that the sentences were short.
Same thing sort of thing. Is it all right if I ask you a couple of details of the orbs of what the heck happened there? Okay, so firstly, how large were the orbs and what color were they? Where did they come from? When did they come? Why? Well, you won't be able to answer why. Well, I mean, I was we were Devin and I because Devin was with me on that one, we were sitting and I just hear Devin go. Hey, let's come here. You got to look at this. And I and I have something like that. And I get up and I walk over to Devin. He's 10 feet away, 15 feet away.
And about 15 feet away from him were two hovering orbs, one the size of a golf ball, one the size of a pie plate. The pie plate one was much more fuzzy and less distinctive. The golf ball was more focused in, if you will. They stayed hovering there and you could see like gentle hover in their movement, but in the same position for, I want to say a good 15, 20 minutes.
Enough for us to look and go, is there a car light flashing off something? Is there a local? I mean, we're in the middle of the forest, right? Our eyes are, you know, I mean, we're all clear, again, straight, you know, no, no, we weren't smoking anything or drinking anything sober. And I think what's going on there, if this species truly exists, this phenomenon is actually something
is that one of its attributes is its ability to manifest or ability to manipulate its own life force energy and in doing so it has a physical manifestation which is the big hairy creature we see that smells and shits and eats and screams and throws rocks and the other manifestation which potentially could be as light energy which we would then translate as being an orb and also the other message that we got the next morning from the woman who is an empath and a psychic with these beings that she said
She was told that some of the others, not the one guy that's supposed to flip me over at night, but some of the others came to look at us in the earlier part of the night. And that's when the orbs were there. Okay. What color were the orbs? Both the same color too? Like your shirt, whitish. Have you heard of any connections between UFOs and Bigfoot? Of course I've heard people say that often, often, often, often.
My first craziest experience was on the mountain in Radium Springs and there was a scenario that happened there that I do not believe I mentioned on the show because I didn't want to confuse the viewers. Before you feed somebody filet mignon, you've got to give them a taste of meat first. That night I looked over in the skies and I saw these four big lights. They were massive, huge.
and they were all lined up and they could not have been airplanes but they were up in the sky and they were just there for 20 minutes and then I went back and I'm not sure where I went to go maybe I went to get my camera I came back they just they were gone they disappeared and I've never seen anything like that in my entire life and I'm just like oh my god I can think and this is but at the time I'm just like oh this is cool what the hell is at the time I'm like what the hell is that and that was the night you were with Devin or that was a different night
No, this is the night I'm alone. This is on the top of a mountain in Radium Springs, but I was one of my Survivor and Bigfoot episodes. That was the night after those lights where I felt I'd had something come in and sit on top of me while I was trying to sleep. And everybody's going to say that's old lady syndrome, that's sleep paralysis. I get that. I'm familiar with that. That is not what I felt that night. It felt
The world of the phenomenon of Sasquatch is
Over on one side here, it's a big hairy ape that's smart, and on this side, it's aliens and everything in between, able to travel dimensions. That's what you mean by the slippery rabbit hole with mud and so on. Yes, although more so what I mean by the rabbit hole is my line of, if there is Sasquatch, what else is there? Have you heard of Skinwalker Ranch?
of course yes yeah okay so see when I was researching a bit about UFOs then I read about skinwalker ranch and the fact that there have been observed portals whether or not this is true there's been observed portals perceived portals and then sasquatch coming out and then this is a place where there's plenty of UFO activity and poltergeist activity as well so strange confluence of all these unexplained phenomenon and you know when as a scientist when you hear about let's say well what's consciousness have to do with
so-and-so phenomena the scientists would always say there's this tendency in us to say unexplained phenomenon here unexplained phenomena well they're related somehow because they're both unexplained and that's a foolish mistake but when it comes to Bigfoot and UFOs and well let's just say Bigfoot and UFOs it seems as if it's more than just the connection being drawn because there's question marks over each in other words okay well you want to riff on that yeah well I know what I just think that
I just think existence is so much bigger than our little human brains can comprehend. And the thing is, it doesn't scare me. The rabbit hole doesn't scare me. It's just like, yeah, of course. I mean, we've had so much about UFOs that if a UFO landed in New York tomorrow,
I just think my mind has always been, is this possible? And the answer to every single question that that's asked on in my mind is, could be, yep.
Have you felt the fear and then you managed to overcome it or just temperamentally you don't feel the fear when it comes to that?
Temporamentally, I don't feel the fear. And also, I'm well aware of the fact that if I was face to face with an alien tomorrow, he's got a or she or it has a huge advantage over me. Of course. Right. So what am I going to do about it?
You know, what can I actually do? Go grab my AK-47? Actually, I want to say, of course, sorry, I would step back. And the reason I say that is that there's some view that certain aliens have, let's say, evil intent or negative intent, and that they cannot read our minds. Although you can communicate with them by intending, like you did with the Bigfoot, but they can't read your minds. And the human capacity for love is what extinguishes
Well, it extinguishes hate. And so in some sense, let's say there are multiple types of aliens and one is evil, then you do have a power over the evil ones with your love. So that's why I say, well, I don't say, of course. I think that's wonderful, fanciful thinking. But if that were true, then nobody'd ever be hurt, would it? Because there's a lot of loving, caring people that have been murdered. Why didn't their capacity for love just stop the human being from murdering them? No, no, I think
You know, I hear about the greys, for example. I hear about the greys. Look, when I had my first experience, what did I say to you? The hair was up on the back of my neck and I felt very, very nervous and I was too afraid to stay. I said, I'm not ready for this. Do I kick myself? Yeah, a little, but I wasn't ready.
So there was fear there. I'm saying as a general rule, I don't walk around guiding my life based on fear of the unknown. I love the unknown and embrace the unknown. It's just that there will be aspects of the unknown that could be very detrimental to me and could harm me. And I don't think my capacity to love is going to stop me if I'm by myself in the middle of the forest and there actually are grays and a gray comes over to accost me.
I've heard that that Sasquatch are there and often protect humans from the greys. I've heard that's a storyline people say. I mean, so, you know, I'm just kind of like, you know, when it's my time, it's my time. I don't want to feel pain. I don't want to hurt. I don't want to be abducted. I don't want to anal probe. But hey, I'll just go on. You know, that's not going to stop me from experiencing any of these things. Okay, let's get to some audience questions. Krippetis asks, I've seen almost everything that
You've done, Les, and I've appreciated your recent embrace of posting everything on YouTube. Frankly, I've had medical issues and I've watched Les's survival shows when I couldn't eat and I was in pain and it was extremely therapeutic. Has Les ever considered doing an urban survival show? No, I'll tell you why not. As people ask sometimes, well, you do like almost a homeless kind of thing, right?
My problem with that is every time I get down to the brass tacks of doing it, it feels like I would actually kind of be disrespecting people who are truly hurting and truly homeless to go and do a survival show where I'm digging what digging in a dumpster. The other answer to that is I don't give a crap about the city. I'm a nature nut. I'm a wilderness guy. My stuff is all based on being in nature. I'm not there to teach you survival. I or do survival tricks like these other shows.
I'm showing you survival techniques to facilitate getting you out in the wilderness. So no, I won't do an urban show because of that. Bookman asks about limits. I want to know about him pushing through personal limits. Doing hard things is tough, but controlling the mind is tougher. How has survival shifted his mindset? The rewards are greater. To do the heavy lifting
can break your back. But if it doesn't, then the rewards are so much greater. And the survival component of what I've done has been painful at times. But hey, I'm sitting here right now. I just had a wonderful cappuccino. Some cheesecake. I'm on the other side of it and some cheesecake. You know, so the beauty of pushing through the difficulties is then when you have you have
The perspective. Perspective is everything in life. Travel is so important. I just wish people would do more of that. And pain and struggle. Give you perspective. If we bubble wrap ourselves and protect ourselves, we just don't have any perspective anymore. And so I just always knew that. So that's how it changed. I learned that getting to the other side of pain, getting to the other side of struggle and survival,
When times are hardest, what is the one thing that gives you the strength to carry on? Trying to think of when times are hardest.
Feeling like I'm not done or reminding myself that I'm not done. I don't ever want to finish ever. I want to be, you know, just putting out a novel on my 97th birthday just before I die or something, you know, just reminding myself that I'm not finished and I have more yet to do gets me going, keeps me going. It's like, okay, all right, suck it up. Let's get up and go again. You know,
Atstan Allister asks, have you ever used any of Wim Hof's cold endurance techniques? If so, can these extend one's survival in harsh conditions? If the harsh condition is being submerged in ice cold water, sure, because that's what it is. Yeah, that'll extend that. You jump out of a boat in Alaska, I mean, that's probably going to help that.
Absolutely. I do believe and agree with the concept of it simply because I felt my own body felt stronger and felt better because of doing the Wim Hof Methods. Notwithstanding our earlier conversation about potential tinnitus from the breathing, I think Wim's on to something pretty great and I do adhere. I haven't gotten into his meditative techniques yet, but I've got steps one and step two definitely.
James McKevitt asks, Kurt, in Canada, most outdoorsmen have watched Survivor Man religiously. By the way, I'm from Toronto in case you didn't know this. Did Mr. Stroud ever suffer any long-term physical or mental duress from his extreme survival outings? Thank you. No, not at all. Zero. Two reasons for that. I've had short-term. I've had parasites. That's the only thing that's really been an issue, but I've taken care of those with some pills, basically. And otherwise, no. No long-term.
No, it's funny because it's the opposite, I think. I'm out in nature, seven days alone. Nature heals, nature strengthens, nature destresses, and I get that healing, that strengthening and that destressing to the nth degree. So no, I have no long term and no short term really. I have nothing but benefits.
Okay, I'm interested in what kind of theory of everything does Survivor Man has? How does he feel about the Great Reset? And the technocratic neo feudalism, which we seem to be headed for. So how does he feel about the Great Reset? Firstly, what the what is the Great Reset? And then how do you feel about it? I'm assuming he's talking when he says the Great Reset, I assume I'm assuming he's talking about right now this moment in time of the pandemic, because that's what everybody's calling the Great Reset. And, and
How do I feel about it? What an interesting way to ask that. More about the technocratic neo-feudalism we seem to be headed for. Just this morning, I was thinking that here's how I feel about it. That I want to turn my back on it and continue creating. Because getting caught up in all of that going on around us is not good for the soul.
If it's your thing, okay. But I gotta be honest, it's never been my thing to get caught up in these big moments in time like this. In fact, when I was an outdoor guide, stuff used to come and go in the world and I barely even knew. I'm not saying we live selfishly, but what I'm saying is I better serve this greater theory of everything, if you will, if I am putting
Content out that uplifts people, inspires people, brings about a positive influence in people's lives. I'm better served and I better serve this great thing that's going on we call life, if I concentrate on that. And I'm not copying out from the question, I'm saying I turn my back on it, on that question, because it'd be a waste of my energy to try to even have a feeling about it right now.
Hi, I'm here to pick up my son Milo. There's no Milo here. Who picked up my son from school? I'm gonna need the name of everyone that could have a connection. You don't understand. It was just the five of us.
Well, first of all, being comfortable alone is an important skill. But the most important, one of the most important skills to have today, being comfortable alone. I'm going to say, you know, I'll say
Yes, that has merit. For one, if it's forced upon you, then you have that skill set. You have that associated muscle memory with being alone. If you're comfortable with it, you're okay. All right, well, I'm going to be alone for a bit. Okay, I can deal with that. And some people can't. They panic. But is it one of the more necessary skills and more vital skills?
It's circumstantial. I think that's a circumstantial skill. And if your circumstances indicate that that may be part of your future, then sure, you better be comfortable with being alone. But if not, then you can cruise without really developing that skill set and concentrate on other skill sets where you're more gregarious and you're more involved with people and so on. So I say it's circumstantial, but yeah, if your circumstances push for it,
Then yes, it's an important skill. OK, two more questions. Philip Warheim asks, he may have spoken about this already, but ask him about prepping, especially for climate change and EMP slash solar storms. Yeah. So I'm sorry to burst the bubble here, but I think prepping. If you see prepping as building a bunker in the backyard,
Douglas Goldstein, CFP®, Financial Planner & Investment Advisor
Yeah, so being prepared, of course, that's a no-brainer. But the other version, I think they're very, very foolish individuals. First of all, whatever goes down, we're not going to be ready for it. Oh, I'm just going to hunt deer and fish for walleye and I'll be set. Yeah, and if the lakes are full of acidification and the deer have died because of
I think a lot of the hardcore prepper stuff is just bullshit and silly and nonsense and small-minded. And also, by the way, everybody else who has a bunch of guns also knows
Who has all the food? And we know you have all the food. And we have bigger guns. You know what I'm saying? It's a silly situation. But I think better than being prepared with food on hand. I think better than being prepared with spare clothing and equipment is being prepared with skill sets that enable you to survive through whatever if you were just there in your clothes.
Have you thought about making a course, whether it's on Skillshare or whatever it may be, on how to survive or is it so different in each environment?
Oh, it's vastly different in each environment. And I kind of have, right? Because if you think about it, 20 years of creating survival films with Survivorman and the like, those films read out like a course. I wasn't making a TV show. I was teaching you how to survive. And I just launched the series Surviving Disasters with Les Stroud on PBS stations in the United States and on YouTube here in Canada. And those are meant to teach you ways to survive natural disasters. So yeah, I could do the whole online course thing.
But you know, the thing about that is, Kurt, is that to me, that smacks of being a businessman, doing something for a business sense. I've been doing courses my whole career and putting them out there in film form. So I'm not into business. All right. Last question comes from Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho. That's all one name.
He wants to know, regarding the missing apple slash candy on his Bigfoot special and Bigfoot in general, does he think there could be a species that is both interdimensional and low tech that is primitive even? Yeah, absolutely I do. And that's what I mean by their ability to manifest their own, to manipulate their own life force energy and then different manifestations.
So there's a physical manifestation and an orb manifestation. Who knows? If we could do it, I'd do it. You know, what if I could manipulate my own life energy? Perhaps I could vibrate to a point where I'm not visible to the eye anymore. Right? I'd be cool as hell. Sub question from him. Like, have you ever experienced lost time while camping? Do you understand what he means by that? Oh, I totally do. And you know, the short answer is no, I haven't. I know what he means, but I have not.
Les, what do you have to promote? Where can people find out more about you? What's next for you? Okay, actually, I'll do it again. I did experience last time while in the middle of a car accident. So there you go. And heard a very strong voice that told me to move. And if I didn't move, I was going to break my neck. So I moved and I did not break my neck. But I did break three ribs punctured along and dislocate two shoulders.
How old were you? That was just a couple of years ago and it happened in slow motion. I mean it was legitimate slow motion in that role. It was unbelievable. My wife was beside me. She experienced the exact same thing. Slow motion. She watched it happen. No voice for her? It happened very fast. No voice for her though. No. So the biggest thing for me really is my YouTube. I'm really having fun putting everything else on YouTube. Survivorman Les Stroud.
I have a brand new book out for kids, Wild Outside, Getting Your Kids Out of Nature Again, and it's for them by the way, written to them. I'm finally releasing my Mother Earth album on double fold-out vinyl album this year and two new albums after that. Then I have my two series that are on the PBS stations presented by American Public Television, Wild Harvest, Local Foraging, Turning Them into an Amazing Meal and Surviving Disasters.
with less drought about surviving natural disasters. So a lot on the go all the time, a lot of this stuff outflowing and getting all the way back to what you originally asked and I think the reason is because I really don't want to cease this manifestation of my life force right now. I like the flesh and blood manifestation of my life force and that flesh and blood emotionally wants to be a prolific artist.
I love having a long list of things to say. Thank you, man. It was an honor for me to be able to speak with you. Thank you very much. Love the questions and love this podcast. I appreciate it. Thanks, man.
The podcast is now finished. If you'd like to support conversations like this, then do consider going to patreon.com slash C-U-R-T-J-A-I-M-U-N-G-A-L. That is Kurt Jaimungal. It's support from the patrons and from the sponsors that allow me to do this full time. Every dollar helps tremendously. Thank you.
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"text": " Les Stroud is a Canadian survival expert and a filmmaker best known as the creator, the director, the producer, the writer, the cameraman, and the host of the television series Survivorman, which has now been uploaded to YouTube via the Survivorman channel, and the links are in the description. At Les's heart, he's an artist."
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"text": " For those new to this channel, my name is Kurt Jaimungal. I'm a filmmaker with a background in mathematical physics dedicated to the explication of what are called theories of everything from a theoretical physics perspective, but also delineating the possible connection consciousness has to the fundamental laws of nature, provided these laws exist at all and are knowable to us."
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"text": " Yeah, years old. If you think about it, Survivorman started for me in the year 2000, even 1999, because that's when I pitched it, and 2000 is when I did the first pilot version for it, and then 2001 I did the second pilot, and 2002 or 2003 is when I launched it into a full series called Survivorman."
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"text": " was the zeitgeist for the genre known as survival TV. And I know that sounds like a horrible boast to make myself, but history would bear me out on that. Without Survivor Man, you don't get Naked and Afraid, you don't get Alone, you don't get Man vs. Wild, you don't get any of these other shows without Survivor Man having sort of been there first. And I can also say that, you know, case in point is that nobody wanted Survivor Man when I first tried to pitch it. And not nobody. It took a while before I found somebody who"
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"text": " gave me the opportunity. In fact, I was told on one occasion, this is a quote from a network executive, no one will ever want to watch people surviving on television. That was a quote, right? So I said, no, I think you're wrong. And of course, now look what we have. And so really Survivorman then continued on all through the 2000s for a good 18 years really."
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"text": " Now along the way, you said what led up to Survive Man Bigfoot, so to fast forward to that situation is that eventually at some point I got a bit tired of it. I was looking for variety in my work. I love variety. I don't want to do the same thing all the time. And at the same time also the shows that came out started copying what I was doing. Of course they couldn't actually do it. Let's be clear about that. They were not actually surviving, none of them were, with the exception of now"
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"text": " alone but alone is also very produced in the edit suite, so you're not getting the story that actually happened. So no one, even to this day, has ever done what I did with Survivorman and that was actually survive and actually film. But the problem with that is I couldn't deliver a lot of episodes, too hard on me. So then they came along and they wanted to have more and more episodes, more and more episodes, so they just basically started up with Bear Grylls and all the rest of them. Well, seeing that"
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"text": " I wanted to go off into some other directions. I did Beyond Survival, which was my series going out and surviving with indigenous cultures and taking part in all kinds of ceremonies. That was still to date the best work I think I've ever done. Then the Bigfoot thing happened because normally I try to work creatively on things that come out of my own brain, so it's not already out there. In other words, I'm inventing something."
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"text": " But every once in a while, I do adopt the Richard Branson version, which is basically build a better mousetrap. When I saw what Finding Bigfoot did, I just thought, no, they blew it. They completely screwed that entirely. And it could be so much more potent than what they did. So I created Survivor Man Bigfoot. There. It's hard to ask me a quick question about something that happened over 20 years and have me answer it in one sentence. That's for sure. Totally fine. OK. And so what was Survivor Man Bigfoot Edition? So Survivor Man Bigfoot Edition was basically me"
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"text": " producing what ended up being a 10 part, now an 11 part, I did an additional one, documentary series, exploring the phenomenon called Sasquatch, called Bigfoot. And so I would go out and place myself in these various situations, not in a sensational way, not in a campy way, and certainly not in a scripted way, but"
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"text": " You know, your uncle would say, no, I've seen one. I've seen them a couple of times. They do come through my valley in my backyard and I'd say, okay, do you mind if I camp in the valley in your backyard? And then let's see what can happen. I want to see what's possible here. And that's, it was going in as a skeptic with eyes wide open and a very open minded skeptic. And then filming what I thought were solid and strong documentaries on the phenomenon. That's all it was really."
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"text": " Yeah, I've unconsciously muddled myself after you and I have, well the channel has a great deal to owe to you because much like yourself where you didn't go in with too much credulity nor dismissal, you were playing the middle ground, I too have done that when it comes to the UFO topic where I'm not believing whatever is told to me but I'm also not dismissing it just because it sounds outlandish and I think a part of your appeal is that you're not a cryptozoologist"
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"text": " similar like I'm not a ufologist and so people actually like that that someone from the outside is going in and investigating this well oh yeah absolutely I think that that's been my my my anyway certainly not a shtick and certainly not a gimmick but it's my thing and always has been all the way along look I didn't come out of a privileged background other than my maybe my skin color I didn't come out of a privileged background my background was very low-income there were gangs in the neighborhood lots of drugs a dysfunctional family"
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"text": " So I came from an alcoholic background. I've had my own issues when I was younger. So I have all that in my background. What does that mean? It means that I'm not that guru guy for survival. I'm not that TV celebrity for my face on camera. I'm just a person who used to load boxes on the crates in warehouses as a job. I came from many blue collar jobs and that's"
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"text": " That all of that kind of background, and it means am I relatable? I suppose if you were, you would say I'm relatable. But why? Why am I relatable? Because I'm just like you. I'm not, I'm not, you know, but here's the difference. The difference and the chasm that I place between myself and say my past is that I seek to find a life that is filled with"
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"text": " edifying components that I'm trying to expand my brain. I'm trying to correct, to connect the synapses, synapses, synapses in my brain. I'm trying to make new connections. I'm trying to be smarter. I'm trying to learn. You know, when someone corrects me on my grammar, I'm one of the few people that will not get mad about that. I'm like, Oh my God, I'm saying that wrong. Thank you for telling me, you know, you know, and I seek to learn from larger minds."
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"text": " If I approach a subject matter that is seemingly in the genre of rednecks down in Alabama who like Sasquatch, well no, I'm going to say let's give them some credibility here. It should be relegated to people with nothing more to do with their time than sit around and read conspiracy series or talk about Bigfoot, but you can elevate certain things to a place of"
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"text": " What you mean?"
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"text": " This is not a conversation we're planning on getting into but I will say that I just knew there was always going to be something better for me. Yes, I did say to myself at 20 years of age, I know I'm better than this and that didn't mean I'm better than them or better than you. I just knew I was better than this, this shitty alcohol-strewn cigarette smoking life I'm living. I'm better than this and I just always knew it and so I've always"
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"text": " When did Survivor Man the first episode come out? I mean how old were you when it first came out? So the pilot, and here's the great way that you ask that because the pilot was when I was around 40 years of age and I was 42 I think when I landed the series. I was now on air for four more years so now I'm 46 right I've been on air with television"
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"text": " on television with Survivorman for four years. I'm now an international TV celebrity. I'm doing interviews. I'm on Jimmy Fallon and Ellen, and I'm still making, at the age of 45, $46,000 per year. That's my take-home revenue. When I was 45 years old, I'd already been a TV celebrity. I'm already there. I made it with Survivorman. Yet I was still only making about $46,000 a year."
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"start_time": 857.756,
"text": " The next year is when I'm for the first time in my life, I broke the poverty line. So I'm now I'm a man of 46 years of age. I have two children at home and a wife that doesn't work. And at 46 years of age, because of survival, and it was the first time I ever broke the poverty line. All of that goes back to saying that you see, that's where I come from. So I'm not a highfalutin, you know, I'm not I was not a dancing monkey, like Mr. Grills wanted to be. I was not a TV star, like almost so many reality people want to be. Yeah, just a guy from a neighborhood."
},
{
"end_time": 910.503,
"index": 35,
"start_time": 887.005,
"text": " You mentioned this monkey aspect, and when I think about celebrities, like I was watching the Met Gala and I was seeing Billie Eilish, if that's how you pronounce her name, and a few of the other celebrities, and then the paparazzi were saying, turn here, turn here, Billie, turn here, and then"
},
{
"end_time": 934.804,
"index": 36,
"start_time": 910.759,
"text": " They attempted very often to pull me in that direction."
},
{
"end_time": 962.841,
"index": 37,
"start_time": 935.742,
"text": " And you know, I was very much a fish out of water when I was down in Los Angeles, let's say do Jimmy doing Jimmy Fallon and then the next day going on some other interview radio thing and maybe, you know, the next week on Ellen or something like that. That that I always thought that paparazzi Hollywood celebrity lifestyle to me. I'm just a guy from Canada, man. And it was just I always felt so outside watching it thinking, oh, my God. And you look in the vacant."
},
{
"end_time": 988.302,
"index": 38,
"start_time": 963.404,
"text": " eyes of the paparazzi or the person asking you the interview. Sometimes you get beautiful people interviewing you, but a lot of times they're on a treadmill of what they think they're supposed to ask you. I walked the runway a few times. I walked the red carpet and I remember being told, �Hey, turn over here last turn.�"
},
{
"end_time": 1015.845,
"index": 39,
"start_time": 990.111,
"text": " When you achieve a certain level, I've always said jokingly but not that I'm just a sea celebrity."
},
{
"end_time": 1045.179,
"index": 40,
"start_time": 1016.049,
"text": " I think for a brief moment in time, I achieved B level status, maybe B minus status as a celebrity for a brief moment in time. And as I got closer, as I saw that, I just thought this is not me. I just I'm not this, you know, I'm a creator. I believe myself to be an artist, a mediocre one. I will say self-effacingly, yes, but I still have always believed that somewhere inside me as an artist. And that's what I try to be not. There's a big difference between being an artist and a celebrity."
},
{
"end_time": 1070.469,
"index": 41,
"start_time": 1045.589,
"text": " Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Okay. When I'm looking at some of your newest series, you have this Lestral's Wild Harvest and you have a podcast series and you have, I think, another series coming up or out. So what's driving this? I assume it's not money. You said that your creative person is a pure creativity. Think Verizon, the best 5G network is expensive? Think again. Bring in your AT&T or T-Mobile bill to a Verizon"
},
{
"end_time": 1102.483,
"index": 42,
"start_time": 1074.224,
"text": " There's more than that."
},
{
"end_time": 1132.09,
"index": 43,
"start_time": 1102.978,
"text": " Yes is the short answer because I desire to be creative, but not only that, I desire to be a prolific creative person, a prolific creator. I've always admired artists like David Bowie, Frank Zappa, anybody. I mean, back in the day, people used to do albums, two, three, four albums a year. So I just love an artist who's prolific. That's number one that's driving me."
},
{
"end_time": 1159.974,
"index": 44,
"start_time": 1132.517,
"text": " Number two is my need to feel relevant. When I say relevant, let's be careful about that. How about my need to produce works that matter, which I'm sure sits on the shoulders of me hoping to matter myself as a deeper level, but producing works is what I do. And so I just cannot produce"
},
{
"end_time": 1183.797,
"index": 45,
"start_time": 1160.93,
"text": " Fluff, that's not to say I haven't produced shitty work, I probably have, but I try not to. I'll give you a quick story. I was on the telephone with the producer one time and we were brainstorming ideas and I said, I've got this one idea and I said, we could knock it out of the park in just like three months and I know we would make a lot of money with this."
},
{
"end_time": 1212.978,
"index": 46,
"start_time": 1184.428,
"text": " You mentioned that personally you may feel this sense of mattering or this lack of sense of mattering to the world."
},
{
"end_time": 1242.961,
"index": 47,
"start_time": 1213.507,
"text": " And partly what you do is driven by that. I'm curious if when you visit the wilderness, do you think there's that drive? Because when you're in the city, you're one among a million or millions. And then when you're in the wilderness, there's this calm, there's a sense that you matter just as much as anyone else. Is that a motivator there? No, actually, it's not a motivator at all. I'll tell you why, and the answer might surprise you. Firstly, in the city,"
},
{
"end_time": 1273.831,
"index": 48,
"start_time": 1243.899,
"text": " There is much more pressure to matter around people. There's much more pressure to matter, I think. Or in my opinion, I come across as being quite selfish in my existence. But when I get into nature, when I'm in the wilderness, I don't matter in the most wonderful way. I've never been asked that question before and that seems like a funny way to answer it."
},
{
"end_time": 1303.712,
"index": 49,
"start_time": 1274.275,
"text": " Out in nature, I just don't matter anymore and it's absolutely wonderful. And so that's why wilderness and nature will always be my escape. You know, that's my safe place. Do you ever get into altered states while you're in the wild? Not because you've ingested something, but because of the experience itself. Let's say it's meditative. Well, or perhaps maybe because I've ingested something. We can talk about that later."
},
{
"end_time": 1333.985,
"index": 50,
"start_time": 1304.292,
"text": " Yes, I have. Yes, I have. Altered states as deep as when I invoke the use of, say, plant medicine or something like that? No, not as deep. But I blame my own personality for that. I can have a bit of a stubborn angle to me, and so I've never truly really gone into great altered states through meditation. I know that it's incredibly valuable, and many people can. I've tried for many years. I'm sure a teacher's out there going, I could show you how to get into an altered state. I get it. I totally get it."
},
{
"end_time": 1360.759,
"index": 51,
"start_time": 1334.309,
"text": " No, I think my altered state in nature is more of a gentle one where I just feel at peace. So see, to me, rather than practicing a technique of meditating while in nature, I'm just allowing myself to be in nature and that is the meditation, if you will. You said that there's some stubbornness that prevents you from using meditation to get to an altered state. What do you mean by that?"
},
{
"end_time": 1383.797,
"index": 52,
"start_time": 1361.596,
"text": " I don't know. Maybe it's like you started asking questions about filming Bigfoot and I said I like to go in as a very open-minded skeptic. I mean, through any seeking I've done spiritually in my life, the prayer side of that and the meditative side of that has never been one that truly affected me."
},
{
"end_time": 1413.353,
"index": 53,
"start_time": 1384.957,
"text": " The people who have that affect them all the time say, ìOh, youíre just not fully giving over.î No, thatís not it. It affects you, but Iíve tried very hard and thatís why eventually later on in life when I went down the road of working with plant medicines, that broke through in a massive way and definitely a life-changing way."
},
{
"end_time": 1437.5,
"index": 54,
"start_time": 1413.78,
"text": " A lot of times what those speakers forget is that we all have these much different personalities and a speaker often speaks to you like you should have their personality. All the type A's, the Tim Ferrises and the Tony Robbins of this world speak to you like"
},
{
"end_time": 1457.125,
"index": 55,
"start_time": 1437.875,
"text": " Here's what I do and every morning I get up and I have my journal and this is what you've got to do. You really want to be a success? Just let's go. Can I get an amen? Cold shower. I like the feeling. I recognize that, for example, I'm a multitasker. I cannot."
},
{
"end_time": 1485.043,
"index": 56,
"start_time": 1457.585,
"text": " be of a singular mind. I cannot be singularly focused and I'm 60 years old this year. I bloody well know my own personality. Don't tell me that that's my best way to go because you know what, I'm better when I multitask. And every time I say that in a room, you should see the people go, thank God he said that. People thank me for saying that it's okay because they feel pressure from the unitaskers and that's not me, never will be me."
},
{
"end_time": 1511.22,
"index": 57,
"start_time": 1485.52,
"text": " You mentioned cold showers. Wim Hof, have you followed him at all? Do you find any of his practices useful? I did my breathing this morning. However, I'd love to ask him about this and I saw it in an FAQ but I was doing the Wim Hof method very successfully, really enjoying it and then one morning while doing it, just like that I got hit with tinnitus and I've had it ever since. Then I checked his FAQs and people have been asking about tinnitus after the Wim Hof method"
},
{
"end_time": 1540.111,
"index": 58,
"start_time": 1511.578,
"text": " and it says, ìDonít worry about it, it goes away.î Guess what? It hasnít gone away. Now, at 60 years of age, I just for the first time in my life have tinnitus. So if anybodyís into Wim Hof, yes itís brilliant. Yes, the cold showers are brilliant and his meditation teaching is probably great though I havenít gone down that road. But the breathing in me, do I know it caused it? Well, let me say that it happened right in the middle of doing the breathing so as far as Iím concerned, I stirred something there."
},
{
"end_time": 1564.48,
"index": 59,
"start_time": 1540.52,
"text": " Whenever I do the Wim Hof exercise, if I'm doing it properly around the second or third time that I hold my breath"
},
{
"end_time": 1589.548,
"index": 60,
"start_time": 1565.503,
"text": " Then I get some tinnitus, but it goes away after about a minute or so. Mine didn't go away. Did you ever have temporary tinnitus or you just had only permanent tinnitus that just kicked in and never left? Kicked in once and never left. Oh boy. And I've never had it in my life. So, you know, I might, I finally, funny you asked because I actually did the method very brief. I just did a short version of the method this morning, first time in about three months because my ears have calmed down, you know, and,"
},
{
"end_time": 1617.363,
"index": 61,
"start_time": 1590.503,
"text": " That's fact. Oh boy, I'm sorry about that. Okay. When it comes to filmmaking, you know, people who aren't filmmakers don't realize how, let's say when I watch a movie, I notice plenty of what they don't do than what they do. So what I mean by that is that they chose not to show a shot, reverse shot, that they chose to have it at two shots at a two shot. And to me, okay, that's an interesting choice. Most people notice the presence of something, not the absence of something."
},
{
"end_time": 1645.555,
"index": 62,
"start_time": 1617.705,
"text": " And in yours, I remember you talking about you didn't want to include so-and-so element in Survivorman. What's some of what you could have chosen to include that you chose to exclude? And why? Well, first of all, all of the cliches of television filmmaking. So all of the cliches that other producers rely on as a crutch to make up for the content they didn't get. So the"
},
{
"end_time": 1674.241,
"index": 63,
"start_time": 1646.374,
"text": " Coming up next moment and the here's what you missed before the commercial moments. All of that is a device. It's a device that just basically says, oh, you don't have enough content to fill an extra 60 seconds. So you're going to do 15 seconds before and after every commercial to fill up that time in your show. That's what I really think is being said there. I think it's a cheat. Certainly within the filming of Survivor Man, there's two levels here, right? There's the filming and then there's the editing."
},
{
"end_time": 1700.947,
"index": 64,
"start_time": 1674.855,
"text": " two different worlds. And in both cases, Survivorman enabled or rather demanded of me that I do things that no one else had ever done because of necessity. The necessity was there's nobody else there. I'm alone. And so I was doing things with the camera that if you watch in history, I can, I can, as a brag say,"
},
{
"end_time": 1725.35,
"index": 65,
"start_time": 1701.681,
"text": " I was the first person to do that. There's about six things that I was the first person to do. I did them out of necessity because nobody else was there with me. Other shows picked up for stylistic look as if they are alone, but really there's a whole freaking crew there. Can you give me an example? Well, for example, walking across a field. I'll set up a camera at the halfway point. I'll walk across the field."
},
{
"end_time": 1748.558,
"index": 66,
"start_time": 1725.742,
"text": " I had to do that because I did not have a camera person following me and panning me."
},
{
"end_time": 1777.534,
"index": 67,
"start_time": 1749.531,
"text": " Everybody else can just follow and pan. They're out there with a big crew, but they set it up and they do it anyway to make it look like, give you that illusion that he's alone. No, he's not alone at all. He's got a crew of six people with him whereas mine was necessity. Or how about the selfie? If I patented the selfie, I'd be an old man today. When I did the selfie in Survivor Man, we didn't even have iPhones when I started that and so there I was holding a camera on myself that had never been seen before ever until Survivor Man."
},
{
"end_time": 1806.937,
"index": 68,
"start_time": 1778.183,
"text": " And now it's ubiquitous, right? So I'm not gonna go on. I mean, that's that was one of the beauties and the things I loved about the filmmaking side of this was I was tasked with inventing methods that would work for a person who's alone for seven days filming himself. Lots of things I had to develop. My editor likewise had to come up with ways of editing footage shot that way. And you sit back and look at our show and everything else that was on TV in 2004."
},
{
"end_time": 1826.34,
"index": 69,
"start_time": 1807.841,
"text": " Does a part of you feel resentful about that or do you feel flattered?"
},
{
"end_time": 1856.578,
"index": 70,
"start_time": 1826.817,
"text": " My format ripped off by the networks. Absolutely. Screw them. They ripped me off. I was asked if I wanted to sue them. They were still airing my other works. It's like suing your mom. Don't worry about it. Let it go. And no one's ever won a format lawsuit, by the way. So no, I'm not going to sue them. So I'm resentful about that. But the other stuff that we're just talking about, oh gosh, no, that makes me prouder than punch to look at something and go, and not arrogantly, just like,"
},
{
"end_time": 1881.886,
"index": 71,
"start_time": 1857.671,
"text": " Your series Beyond Survival is in my opinion the best documentary series that Discovery Channel has ever aired."
},
{
"end_time": 1909.599,
"index": 72,
"start_time": 1882.875,
"text": " And he said, I use that series to teach my field shooters how to film and my editors how to edit. And then he started quoting the classical editors and filmmakers that my editor was influenced by. Like, oh, he studied, you know, Hassenfeimer from the, from the seven, from the, from the forties and like stuff like that. And he was right, actually, because my editor's Barry Farrell's brilliant man was very schooled, you know,"
},
{
"end_time": 1938.695,
"index": 73,
"start_time": 1909.94,
"text": " So our craft that came out of necessity, myself in the field and Barry in the editing suite, that craft has been the people who know. No, you know, they get they go, OK, you know, and again, sounds like a brag coming out of me, but hell, it happened and history bears me out. And I'm I'm prouder than punched when I see stuff. If it's if it's man versus wild, which was a direct ripoff. No, that stuff is just like you idiots. You had a crew. You didn't have to do any of that stuff. It dorks. You're just trying to look like Survivor Man, you know."
},
{
"end_time": 1965.862,
"index": 74,
"start_time": 1938.882,
"text": " That was, but we're going back 15 years to get that feeling. It's still there because you asked me about it, but by the same token, that's like 15 years ago when I was pissed off at them. I mean, I'm not pissed off at all anymore. What's that ratio, the ratio of filmed footage to what actually airs? And I'm sure it's changed over the year. Has it changed, first of all? Well, it has loosely, but if it's done right, it really follows the classic example. Years ago,"
},
{
"end_time": 1995.486,
"index": 75,
"start_time": 1966.493,
"text": " National Geographic was the bar. They were the ones who put out the bar on the standard on lots of different things, including ethics and filming. It was very interesting. They used to always say, ìWhat does Nat Geo say about it?î Oh, they say this. Thatís gone. Thatís blown out of the water. Their filmmakers have no accountability for ethics whatsoever anymore. They donít give a crap. Theyíre just doing reality TV and that includes Nat Geo and all the rest of them. But years ago, they were the standard. And the standard years ago was for a documentary film, itís 40 to 1, 40 hours to a one-hour documentary."
},
{
"end_time": 2023.166,
"index": 76,
"start_time": 1995.93,
"text": " And I gotta say it, I pretty much held to that. Sometimes I was 60 to 1, sometimes maybe 35 to 1, but I always hovered around that 40 to 1. And filmmakers listening to this right now, especially younger filmmakers, when I say younger, I mean in your 30s, even in your 40s, is that craft really matters. It really does matter. As a friend of mine says, just because you know how to run the software, it doesn't mean you're an editor."
},
{
"end_time": 2050.794,
"index": 77,
"start_time": 2023.626,
"text": " You know, and just because you can cut something doesn't mean you know how to tell a story. So 40 to 1 is about where I hover to answer your question more succinctly. Why is it that you emphasize that craft matters? See, it seems obvious, but it sounds like what's underneath that is that you believe or that there is this trend of that craft doesn't matter. Now when I was speaking with Jonathan Blow, he's a video game designer, he was saying, hey Kurt, right now there's this"
},
{
"end_time": 2080.572,
"index": 78,
"start_time": 2051.715,
"text": " I think that it's a shame"
},
{
"end_time": 2107.278,
"index": 79,
"start_time": 2081.988,
"text": " If the bar is lowered, I think that while it may seem to have a place, delivering problem to the masses is a shame and a sin. I think elevating people, enabling them to elevate themselves through having the kind of craft that enables you to elevate your own storytelling, your own art,"
},
{
"end_time": 2135.401,
"index": 80,
"start_time": 2108.712,
"text": " then in process elevates them. You just gave me the perfect example of looking at a Renoir or a Picasso. There's serious craft there. Today, I'll give you the alternative example. We heard the story recently about the whole fans-only thing and how it's like a semi-pornish kind of site and how"
},
{
"end_time": 2165.128,
"index": 81,
"start_time": 2135.708,
"text": " that people were making lots of money and this woman who was once a nurse was well in the article she called herself a content creator technically speaking she's correct I suppose but do not conflate content creator and producer and artists anymore and that's what's happening is we're conflating artists with content creators by having a woman who made who's making two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a month doing what"
},
{
"end_time": 2194.667,
"index": 82,
"start_time": 2165.606,
"text": " Pictures of her T and A. That's content creation now? I've been doing this for 30 years and I'm up against a woman showing pictures of her T and A and then in an article stating, I'm a content creator and I have a right to blah, blah, blah? No. So it's coming from I don't want to see the bar TikTok and YouTube clips and Instagram stuff. The bar comes down."
},
{
"end_time": 2213.063,
"index": 83,
"start_time": 2194.991,
"text": " Hey, I'm not against entertainment. I'm really not against a chuckle and a laugh and I'm not against low brow entertainment even. That's fine. But don't piss on my back and tell me it's random. You're not a content creator."
},
{
"end_time": 2238.524,
"index": 84,
"start_time": 2213.626,
"text": " So I'm actually going to have to relinquish that term because I'm losing that battle. So fine, you're a content creator, but you're not an artist. You're not a film producer. You're not a storyteller. You're not even really a creator, capital C. Don't do a TikTok video of you punching your brother in the nuts and call it art. So I'm not up against that, but I am kind of up against it because I'm still putting stuff out."
},
{
"end_time": 2270.077,
"index": 85,
"start_time": 2241.647,
"text": " I want to ask you a specific filmmaking question. Yeah, please. That's why I'm here. You're great. In one of your Survivorman series, at times you would cut in, you would put the black bars. Now it's already a low resolution show in the sense that it's 480p in 2004, 2005 and so on. And I'm wondering, and I have a specific clip here, just as a filmmaker, I'm interested. Why did you choose to put? Yeah, I have it here. Can I just link it to you so that you can you show it to me? Yeah."
},
{
"end_time": 2300.111,
"index": 86,
"start_time": 2270.657,
"text": " You see even after all these years and 30 years of filmmaking and everything else, stuff gets done and then you come back and look and you go, why is that there?"
},
{
"end_time": 2330.009,
"index": 87,
"start_time": 2300.435,
"text": " Oh, that's a glitch. Sorry, man. Okay, can you re-upload it, please? That's just something that needs to be fixed. I thought there's this artistic choice. There's a reason, because I've seen it in more than one place. I know, and it has to... How the heck is that a glitch? Okay, recently I was working with Team Rubicon and cleaning up at Hurricane Ida, and I was with the four filmmakers there, the media team, and it was a lot of fun because they were all young and they did listen to things I had to say, which was fun for me. But right in the end there,"
},
{
"end_time": 2356.271,
"index": 88,
"start_time": 2331.084,
"text": " The guy delivered the final cut we were working on for that week. And he said, oh, I'll shoot it over to you, Les. Now, I could have said, fine, I'll watch it when I get back to the hotel. But I was sitting right there, and I said, oh, I'm going to put it on now. I watched it. Absolute total big faux pas audio glitch. He completely missed, and it would have gone up to YouTube. And I said, John, is that supposed to be like that? And he goes, what do you mean? And he looks, and he goes, oh, shit."
},
{
"end_time": 2385.06,
"index": 89,
"start_time": 2356.681,
"text": " It was a year of conflict because he had been used to only uploading to online under his own control."
},
{
"end_time": 2410.265,
"index": 90,
"start_time": 2385.299,
"text": " No broadcast delivery. Well, you've got to understand when you go pro, you know, there is a difference between uploading to Vimeo and sending your work to Discovery Channel. And filmmakers need to understand that just because you could be a YouTube star. When you go to deliver to A&E or Discovery Channel or National Geographic, you better bloody well have every frame"
},
{
"end_time": 2438.746,
"index": 91,
"start_time": 2410.674,
"text": " in the right spot, every color, every audio. It's very specific and very detailed and very tedious and a lot of hard work and I think a lot of filmmakers don't understand how intense delivery to a broadcast network, like my deliveries right now to PBS stations, American Public Television for the Wild Harvest series. There's three sheets of specs."
},
{
"end_time": 2466.374,
"index": 92,
"start_time": 2439.77,
"text": " And you have to be bang on on every single one of those specs because they're giving you money. And it's important. No, I was going to say this is vital. Personally, I find it annoying because there's no creativity there. What I've done because I have a documentary that I gave to iTunes, I used a distributor and then they take care of that and then they send me back these pages of notes. Why is it that in this frame there's a small black line over here?"
},
{
"end_time": 2494.701,
"index": 93,
"start_time": 2466.817,
"text": " Why is it that the audio does so-and-so peaks over here? Well, peaking is a simple issue to fix. So I find it annoying. Is there artistry in that, in meeting the distributor's requirements? No, there's... Well, two ways to answer that. If the glitches are real glitches... You want them to be known. You want to solve them. Shame on you. They've got to be fixed. I've never... In all my years with Discovery Channel, I never delivered a show with glitches. Because we... No way. We would not."
},
{
"end_time": 2521.698,
"index": 94,
"start_time": 2494.94,
"text": " This recent round of deliveries, there was a whole bunch and that's why I was saying I was working with an individual who wasn't familiar because with Vimeo or YouTube, it's like, just put it, just upload it, it's fine. It's not fine when somebody on quality control on the other end is looking. This is different from notes on your content. That's a whole different level of interaction with the networks when they're picking apart your work"
},
{
"end_time": 2551.22,
"index": 95,
"start_time": 2522.534,
"text": " And they're giving you creative notes. And for people who can't see this, I'm doing air quotes around creative. So yes, I mean, I don't think the tech specs hurt the artistry at all. That's, you know, deliver it, deliver it right. It's going to a network which I think people should follow. So this stuff I just did with Team Rubicon, we're uploading that to only to social media. But I went in and I and I and I remember saying, hey, John, you know, the handle on this little shot, you should move the handles a bit long. You see me getting ready to talk. You don't see me talking."
},
{
"end_time": 2579.582,
"index": 96,
"start_time": 2551.544,
"text": " And John said, oh yeah, took it out and go, now, doesn't that smoother? Yeah, it's way smoother, right? So there is a craft in there, you know, craft. My editor will, Barry Farrell will often say like, you know, if you see that an editor has done a cut on a blink, so the person on camera has blinked, that's a self-taught cutter. That's someone who does not know the craft, you know."
},
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"text": " Razor blades are like diving boards. The longer the board, the more the wobble, the more the wobble, the more nicks, cuts, scrapes. A bad shave isn't a blade problem, it's an extension problem. Henson is a family-owned aerospace parts manufacturer that's made parts for the International Space Station and the Mars Rover."
},
{
"end_time": 2626.459,
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"text": " Now they're bringing that precision engineering to your shaving experience. By using aerospace-grade CNC machines, Henson makes razors that extend less than the thickness of a human hair. The razor also has built-in channels that evacuates hair and cream, which make clogging virtually impossible. Henson Shaving wants to produce the best razors, not the best razor business, so that means no plastics, no subscriptions, no proprietary blades, and no planned obsolescence."
},
{
"end_time": 2642.824,
"index": 99,
"start_time": 2626.459,
"text": " It's also extremely affordable. The Henson razor works with the standard dual edge blades that give you that old school shave with the benefits of this new school tech. It's time to say no to subscriptions and yes to a razor that'll last you a lifetime. Visit hensonshaving.com slash everything."
},
{
"end_time": 2670.572,
"index": 100,
"start_time": 2642.824,
"text": " If you use that code, you'll get two years worth of blades for free. Just make sure to add them to the cart plus 100 free blades when you head to H E N S O N S H A V I N G dot com slash everything and use the code everything. What are some of the techniques you use to make your footage or your episode more engaging when there was a lack of, let's say, engaging activities on screen?"
},
{
"end_time": 2701.596,
"index": 101,
"start_time": 2672.995,
"text": " Well, engaging is an interesting word. Story, story, story. You know, you hear that content is king, story will always be king. So that's mainly done during the editing? No, no, this is me filming in the field. You know, I have to see, you know, good in, good out, bad in, bad out. If I deliver my editor crap, he's got nothing. It doesn't matter how good of an editor he is. Not enough shows think that one through because they take crap from their field and they just edit it any old way they want, you know."
},
{
"end_time": 2726.271,
"index": 102,
"start_time": 2701.903,
"text": " My guy had to edit really intense stories, but I had to bring him intense stories. One of my ways was to make sure I brought him a very strong story. To answer your question, I'm in the field, so let's go there. I'm in the field and I'm lacking in content, let's say. I'm lacking."
},
{
"end_time": 2756.613,
"index": 103,
"start_time": 2727.944,
"text": " I have to really, there's two things I did. One is I have to either rack my brain to think, what can I pull out of this area, this next thing? What have I got here? Where's my story here? And sometimes I would just start filming stuff because you never know. The other side of it is I would go in, I'm going to go in the desert today, let's say, and I would have a list of things that I know I want to capture for this particular story I'm going to tell. Well, it's the desert. I should tell a story about eating strawberry pincushion"
},
{
"end_time": 2782.807,
"index": 104,
"start_time": 2757.005,
"text": " Cactus fruits. Okay, but the problem is in my situation if it's day three and I haven't been eating I forget so I pull out a crumpled old piece of paper out of my pockets Oh, yeah Pincushion fruit. Oh, yeah. Okay. I got to film that I'll go in now I go and I film it so I keep myself on track with a short list of don't forget to film this kind of list and I also, you know, and then maybe I just have a good eye for looking around going. Okay, well"
},
{
"end_time": 2813.114,
"index": 105,
"start_time": 2783.319,
"text": " There's a little bit of story just in this next moment right here, let's capture this. Now what's the difference between a story and just filming an event? So for example, that strawberry pincushion. If it's written on a paper as a bullet point you say, film myself eating strawberry and finding strawberry pincushion. Okay, is that the story or do you somehow add some elements around that to make it a story? How do you take an event and make it a story, essentially? I think what I do is I say, well, what's the story? First of all, it's"
},
{
"end_time": 2836.732,
"index": 106,
"start_time": 2813.404,
"text": " This guy, the guy happens to be me and he's going to do this thing. Okay, the big one for me would be how. How is he going to do this thing? What are the how's that I can answer? The first how is how do you find these bloody things? Okay, second how is all right, how do you harvest these things? Do you know? Okay, now there's two ways to harvest it. Which one looks the best for camera?"
},
{
"end_time": 2865.009,
"index": 107,
"start_time": 2837.637,
"text": " Because you want things to look great on camera. I could just bend over and pick up a pincushion cherry, right? Or I could get down on all fours. I could talk about avoiding rattlesnakes. I could talk about avoiding the spines of the cactus. I could show a tricky little method for being able to use a pair of tongs to pull off the fruit rather than getting your finger stuck. Both situations, I'm just picking a cherry off of a bush."
},
{
"end_time": 2893.592,
"index": 108,
"start_time": 2865.691,
"text": " I'm just forget that it's a cactus thing but you know both situations I'm doing one thing I'm picking something but one situation I bend over and pick the other one I've just given you three pieces of information over how to do it that's that's how I get the story in something what's the how how is this all going to going down what are the nuances that nobody at home would ever guess on their own of their own accord you know what do I need them to know fill them in fill them in tell them it's all interesting"
},
{
"end_time": 2921.63,
"index": 109,
"start_time": 2894.138,
"text": " Some people will be wondering, well, what the heck does this have to do with theories of everything? Now, as you know, theories of everything have to do with physics, there's gravity, and then there's the standard model, how do you unify them? But it's also, what are the fundamental laws that govern us? So consciousness may have a role to play. And if someone was to ask you,"
},
{
"end_time": 2952.278,
"index": 110,
"start_time": 2924.036,
"text": " What does what you do have to do with the theory of everything? How would you answer that? No. Look, here's one way. Theory of everything has the word everything, so no matter what. If I'm drinking tea, it's technically theory of everything. But is there some other way? So the way that I position theories of everything. Theories of everything is an investigation into theoretical physics, free will, consciousness, and God. Because I see those as intimately tied. Okay, using that as your jumping off point if someone was to ask you."
},
{
"end_time": 2981.152,
"index": 111,
"start_time": 2952.432,
"text": " Most of the time, I jokingly say I walk around in a mild form of constant existential crisis. It's almost a slight addictive habit of mine."
},
{
"end_time": 3011.459,
"index": 112,
"start_time": 2982.312,
"text": " And yet, I've learned to befriend it over the years. It doesn't stop me. It doesn't spiral me into depression or anxiety. Because if you're constantly going, what's this all about? Why? How? You can really get bogged down in the muck and the mire of that. I use it to"
},
{
"end_time": 3040.896,
"index": 113,
"start_time": 3013.387,
"text": " In many ways calm me down because we have this tug of war, this battle for our consciousness of I need to matter, I need to be relevant, I need to create, I need to be part of this big picture and what's going to happen when I die and am I really a piece of energy floating through space? Is this just simply a biological"
},
{
"end_time": 3069.019,
"index": 114,
"start_time": 3041.305,
"text": " thing that my spirit and my energy have occupied at this moment. We have all of that versus I'd really like that piece of cheesecake. And I've been in between those for so long in my life when I'm really frustrated it bothers me to be in between because why am I so dumb that I just really want this piece of cheesecake and yet over here I'm thinking about God. And so I've been able to"
},
{
"end_time": 3097.261,
"index": 115,
"start_time": 3069.445,
"text": " let go of my existential crises when they are detrimental to my own step forward and say, look, I am this physical being. All I really have, and that's even wrong there, I was going to say all I really have is this flesh and this blood, these muscles, this brain, but of course I'm happy to say that I'm quite certain we could do so much more with the energy of our minds were we to be a little more advanced and a little more skilled"
},
{
"end_time": 3127.21,
"index": 116,
"start_time": 3098.968,
"text": " That in the end, I try to bring it back to, now here's where it's going to sound almost woo-hoo-y, but I still think in the end that expressing love and not hating, express giving and not just taking, all I know is that my concept of the ethers and the great grand beyond and God and spirit and energy and life force"
},
{
"end_time": 3157.073,
"index": 117,
"start_time": 3127.841,
"text": " feels like it lands in a proper place if I'm not being selfish, if I'm not all about myself, which I can be very easily. And so my work moving forward, I believe, has to somehow fall into that same place that my reasoning is falling into, which is, yeah, yeah, of course there is something greater here, of course there is a"
},
{
"end_time": 3186.647,
"index": 118,
"start_time": 3157.312,
"text": " An energy that is part of all things and it's whether people name it or Orthodox it or box it up or not It's not the point that it's as far as I'm concerned. There's that. Yes There is the biological sludge that came from the swamps of so so sure I will not I Do not feel That I'm just biological because if that was true, I wouldn't give a crap about anything"
},
{
"end_time": 3214.531,
"index": 119,
"start_time": 3187.449,
"text": " So it brackets what I do because it causes me to say, okay, if I'm going to create something, it's got to mean something. It's got to give. It's got to be from love, if you will. Have I ever done things just for money? On occasion I have, sure, because I needed money, but I'm not in that place anymore. So now, yes, how does it govern? It governs by reminding me how big everything is."
},
{
"end_time": 3235.333,
"index": 120,
"start_time": 3215.247,
"text": " But my touchstone with everybody watching is that I still want to have that piece of cheesecake, regardless of this bigger thinking. No matter how big our thoughts are, I still want to go home and be with my wife and have a glass of wine."
},
{
"end_time": 3257.483,
"index": 121,
"start_time": 3235.998,
"text": " No matter how existentially I meander."
},
{
"end_time": 3285.23,
"index": 122,
"start_time": 3257.773,
"text": " this universe is fractal-like and that these patterns repeat, so if you were to investigate any phenomenon to its utmost degree, you'd still end up with a reflection of the entire universe. And that's why some people say you can study mathematics, you can study logic, if you do it properly or do it to its extreme, you can find God. If you study even these headphones to its extreme, because it's a creation of God in a sense, it's a reflection of God, then you can find God. But then I would ask you then, can math explain"
},
{
"end_time": 3314.65,
"index": 123,
"start_time": 3285.64,
"text": " Then I'm sure it can actually but then where does the math rest when you look at something like say having a piece of cheesecake while staring at the corner of a wall that you know that in the end it is not a positive maneuver. It is a negative element. It is an energy that is not even instinctually in keeping with everything that's rolling on it. In fact it's a pullback to the proper outflow of love."
},
{
"end_time": 3337.756,
"index": 124,
"start_time": 3317.602,
"text": " Have you heard of non-dualism? I've heard of it. I couldn't explain it to you. Okay, so the non-dualists would say... What I have to do is I have to go listen to more Sam Harris and then I'll get back to you. Alright, so non-dualists would say... I don't think Sam likes non-dualism because he believes in morality, objective morality."
},
{
"end_time": 3361.152,
"index": 125,
"start_time": 3337.995,
"text": " So the non-dualist would say, I'm not saying I'm a non-dualist, I'm just being a mouthpiece, that there is no two non-dualist, right? There is no two, there is no up-down, there is no evil, there is no good, that it's all the same, that it's like the atoms of the universe are love, because God is love, the atoms of the universe are love, so that even in a heinous act like what Hitler did, there was love in that. I'm not saying I believe this, but certain lines of thinking would say that."
},
{
"end_time": 3392.09,
"index": 126,
"start_time": 3362.551,
"text": " Well, I watched too many Marvel movies to think that everything... I don't think I agree with that. I think that... What do I know, right? But I think that hate is hate, pain is pain, anger is anger, intent to harm is intent to harm. And, you know, I don't see... I mean, no, I don't see where you can derive the love out of those things. I think they are the lack of love, you know."
},
{
"end_time": 3422.278,
"index": 127,
"start_time": 3392.466,
"text": " In many ways, and they certainly exist. There's no question about the examples of how they exist, but you asked me about how this questioning of everything and understanding of everything, how it monitors my world. So what you're really asking me in many ways is what do I believe? And I don't think it's a belief, by the way. I think it's more what have I studied or what do I feel I've learned enough about to have at least an opinion on in my own life."
},
{
"end_time": 3450.384,
"index": 128,
"start_time": 3422.602,
"text": " I was a seeker when I was younger. I do not hold with orthodoxy or church orthodox a goal step further and I feel that there is a place for it but I believe what that is is the kindergarten of spiritual seeking. I think it's a good place for people to go if they need rules and regulations and if they need rituals and traditions and if they need colorful trinkets and colorful light things."
},
{
"end_time": 3480.213,
"index": 129,
"start_time": 3450.572,
"text": " Then just like kindergarten, that's a good place to go to start, to start there. But I like being a seeker. I like being open and searching. And in my process now as a 60 year old, still feeling like I could listen to one podcast from a great thinker and go, God, I'm an idiot. But I don't really think I'm an idiot. I have felt enough"
},
{
"end_time": 3509.497,
"index": 130,
"start_time": 3481.8,
"text": " That whatever the answer, here's the thing, you and I can't, nobody's going to answer this till they die. None of us know until our breaths leave this body. None of us really know, even though, regardless of altered states, even with an altered state, still can be certain, but not quite that certain. And then when we die, we say, oh, oh, it's like this. And there's plenty of standup comedy routines to have fun with that."
},
{
"end_time": 3539.036,
"index": 131,
"start_time": 3510.367,
"text": " I've seen enough to basically say that I do allow it to guide my life. I don't need to be in a selfish state anymore if I have over time. So that's how questioning everything, I won't stop. I won't stop questioning everything, trying to seek the understanding of everything. I wish we all would. What do you see as the connection between consciousness and Bigfoot? That's a big question."
},
{
"end_time": 3570.64,
"index": 132,
"start_time": 3541.493,
"text": " The Bigfoot phenomenon is a rabbit hole. It's a rabbit hole covered in ice with grease poured over top of it. It's really slippery. And once you go down that rabbit hole, it leads off to a hundred other rabbit holes. So the question you ask is interesting because the journey of someone who wants, who's interested in that phenomenon starts off looking for a big hairy ape. That's really smart. If you dig deep enough, you leave that school pretty quickly."
},
{
"end_time": 3601.305,
"index": 133,
"start_time": 3571.476,
"text": " It's no longer giganopithecus, the big hairy ape that's really smart. Instead, you start going, wait a minute, and then you keep having a whole bunch of wait a minute with attributes, various attributes, including potential telepathy and cloaking and all sorts of various versions of manipulating energy."
},
{
"end_time": 3631.186,
"index": 134,
"start_time": 3601.971,
"text": " Consciousness in Bigfoot, where it lands, first of all, nobody has a freaking clue what these are. But the phenomenon is big enough. Hundreds of years to thousands of years, hundreds of cultures, all saying the same thing, by the way, and tens of thousands of anecdotal references, including sightings. Something's there. My question is, never mind just Bigfoot. If that species is out there, and I can come back to them, what else is out there?"
},
{
"end_time": 3662.125,
"index": 135,
"start_time": 3632.927,
"text": " You can't just go, okay, so there's Bigfoot, I'm going home now. Say, well, if there's Bigfoot, what else? And a lot of possibilities open up. For example, I think that the potentiality is there for this species, nicknamed Bigfoot, but for example, Sasquatch and whatever the different names are there, to be a combination of all of these attributes people talk about, which would include"
},
{
"end_time": 3690.469,
"index": 136,
"start_time": 3662.995,
"text": " psychic abilities, the ability of telepathy, which would include cloaking abilities, which now one gentleman had a theory that I still think holds some weight. What if it was simply a species of intensely savant autistic individuals and their savant autism gave them such extraordinary ability of hide and seek and on top of that a savant ability of telepathy and a savant ability and they had the"
},
{
"end_time": 3720.725,
"index": 137,
"start_time": 3690.776,
"text": " They understood how to manipulate their own energy, their own life force energy. To me, all of that's possible if we're talking about the potentiality of the human mind, but the minute you throw Bigfoot into it, oh, that's just nonsense. How do you know it's not a species that's way ahead of us? Okay, they don't compose symphonies. They don't build airplanes and cars. I get that. That doesn't mean they can't do all these other things. So I didn't really answer your question because I don't know the answer to the comparison of consciousness and Bigfoot. What I'm suggesting is if they exist,"
},
{
"end_time": 3746.715,
"index": 138,
"start_time": 3720.998,
"text": " They are in a realm of existence that we are far from grasping our understanding, and they're farther ahead than we are on certain levels, just way behind us in other levels. Why I'm asking is, Les, you don't disparage the Bigfoot topic. I don't disparage the UFO topic, even though plenty of the scientific community would. And I'm pretty sure I was inspired by you, but either way."
},
{
"end_time": 3767.944,
"index": 139,
"start_time": 3747.5,
"text": " I used to listen to your shows. And then"
},
{
"end_time": 3796.647,
"index": 140,
"start_time": 3768.387,
"text": " Right and I have insomnia and right when I'm about to fall asleep you play the harmonica and I'm just cursing you and I'm just wishing man I wish someone would timestamp when those harmonicas are so that I could start it from right after either way bracket that I was listening to you and I believe you said something like okay I went out to the woods filming for Bigfoot I think this was way after the series you're filming for Bigfoot didn't occur so you thought you know there are stories that they can hear what's going on with the cameras or sense it in some manner so why don't I turn the cameras off"
},
{
"end_time": 3826.766,
"index": 141,
"start_time": 3797.039,
"text": " No, that was all correct. That was from the Portland episode. It was the last thing I ever filmed. It was outside of the full series, but it's on YouTube now."
},
{
"end_time": 3853.302,
"index": 142,
"start_time": 3829.548,
"text": " Douglas Goldstein, CFP®, Financial Planner & Investment Advisor"
},
{
"end_time": 3882.79,
"index": 143,
"start_time": 3854.889,
"text": " And I've told this story, I told it just recently on Sasquatch Odyssey, a podcast. Bottom line was that I was walking on the trail on the way out and never ever before in my life have I ever experienced any kind of psychic or telepathic phenomenon of any sort whatsoever. And I wasn't high and I wasn't drunk and I wasn't tired and I'm walking out and I just had this powerful voice speak to me inside my head."
},
{
"end_time": 3912.875,
"index": 144,
"start_time": 3883.968,
"text": " And so much so that after the fact, I actually went in to see a counselor to make sure I wasn't schizophrenic because it hit me that hard. I thought I got to know what's going on here and the counselor reassured me that no, you're far from schizophrenic. Don't worry about that. What you received was a gift and you should just celebrate that fact and be really aware of that. And then it happened another two times. And then for the Portland one that you're referencing, what happened there was"
},
{
"end_time": 3943.575,
"index": 145,
"start_time": 3913.746,
"text": " I don't think I said this in the show but first of all I put my thought energy out there telepathically to the Sasquatch in that area that I was told were there by a woman who has telepathic communication with them, she says. So I said I'm coming to meet you and I did this for about a week ahead of time and I started to at one point feel like I was getting an answer if you will in my brain."
},
{
"end_time": 3969.206,
"index": 146,
"start_time": 3944.377,
"text": " Yeah so now I go up there and I go out in the bush and the orb thing had happened and later on I'm just sleeping on the ground and I'm starting to doze off and that little crackling fire going and all of a sudden I felt a very warm and actually felt a bit soft and furry so it could have been anything but it basically"
},
{
"end_time": 4000.265,
"index": 147,
"start_time": 3970.623,
"text": " went over my ankle and flipped my ankle enough that it woke me up and I jumped up immediately. And it felt like a nice big warm hand flipping my ankle over and I jumped up immediately. I didn't see anything. Fast forward to the next morning. We're walking out. We run into the lady again. Anyway, we see her. I did not tell her this. And she says, she called him guardian, so she's giving an appointment. I was speaking with guardian and he told me that during the night he came over and touched"
},
{
"end_time": 4027.79,
"index": 148,
"start_time": 4001.118,
"text": " And what do you do with that? That was the next morning she said that to me after it actually happened and I hadn't told her. And those things have happened to me about four times in my life without forcing it. Lots of times nothing happens. Sometimes you tell these stories and people think shit's going on all the time but"
},
{
"end_time": 4055.742,
"index": 149,
"start_time": 4028.558,
"text": " Most of the time, nothing's ever happening. These are occurrences that have happened over a number of years. I've had four telepathic experiences. Anyway, so that's what happened though of that particular show, and I don't think I at the time was ready to talk about that on camera, and I didn't mention it. Because if I mention it, people go, he's losing it, right? And I just say, screw you guys. Not so much fear and ridicule. No, it's not the ridicule I fear."
},
{
"end_time": 4074.565,
"index": 150,
"start_time": 4056.084,
"text": " It's their inability to handle the full story. And yes, I'm belittling them when I say that. Yes, I sound a little condescending when I say that. But screw them. If I just say, hey, yeah, Bigfoot, talk to me. But all the chuckle starts. But I could say that to a lot of people that go, really? Tell me what happened. That's the person I like to share with."
},
{
"end_time": 4098.643,
"index": 151,
"start_time": 4075.725,
"text": " Okay, so let's say a week prior to you going out and experiencing that orb, you were doing some exercises where you were trying to contact Bigfoot via intention and meditating, something like that? More via psychic outreach, like specifically speaking. So I've done it several times and nothing's ever happened, but"
},
{
"end_time": 4127.858,
"index": 152,
"start_time": 4099.036,
"text": " A couple of times I have gotten an answer. One time it was actually rather quite funny. I would go on a hike. So if people are wondering how to do this, I mean, I would go on a hike and I would just, if I want an interaction, I will just put it out there. I'll just say, you know, I'm coming out. I'm going to be hiking in an area. You know, don't know if anybody's even there, but if someone is there, I would be welcoming, in love to have some kind of interaction. And then often it's like, and nothing. Okay. And I just go, as a guy,"
},
{
"end_time": 4157.91,
"index": 153,
"start_time": 4129.172,
"text": " One time though, bam, in the middle of my head, all I got was, no thanks, we're sleeping. I mean, it's just the craziest thing. And again, remember the first time this happened, I went in to see a counselor, and I've only had this happen four times in my whole life. But I tell you, it is the strangest thing ever when it happens. It's so strong. Anyone who has this as a skill in their life will just go, yeah, of course I have that. They would accept this conversation with zero judgment."
},
{
"end_time": 4187.346,
"index": 154,
"start_time": 4158.746,
"text": " Now these four times it's occurred to you, were they each single sentences? Just like, no, we're sleeping? Or were they paragraphs? I'll give you the script. The first time was, we're right over here. If you want to meet us, stay the night. To which I replied, this is in Tennessee, to which I replied, because it's the first time anything like this ever happened in my life. And I was scared. And the hair was back up on the back of my neck. I had never felt that."
},
{
"end_time": 4216.937,
"index": 155,
"start_time": 4187.858,
"text": " That's cool. When they said, we're here, did they give you a location or they said here and it was implied they were near you? Both. The location was basically the hill right over there that I could see from about 150 feet away. That's pitch black. I'm in the dark."
},
{
"end_time": 4247.056,
"index": 156,
"start_time": 4217.773,
"text": " The image in my brain that was seared in my brain was of a large hulking male figure and a small child, both in classic Bigfoot look if you will. That really freaked me out. A few months went by after that one. The next one was a little more menacing. It was during a meditative process on the Texas Bigfoot episode and that one I never told anybody on camera but there I did get"
},
{
"end_time": 4276.067,
"index": 157,
"start_time": 4247.312,
"text": " During the meditation stage, I got a, yeah, yeah, get ready, get ready for this was kind of sort of the message and it felt menacing and dark and I didn't like it and I didn't, I just kind of, no, no, no, no, not going here. The third time was the in Oregon and it was the answer in my brain was simply, no thanks, we're sleeping. And the fourth time is the Portland episode where basically this particular being said, yeah, yeah, we're here, we're ready for you."
},
{
"end_time": 4306.749,
"index": 158,
"start_time": 4277.073,
"text": " You know, and that was a wonderful experience. So am I crazy? Are they hallucinations? Is it lucid dreaming? Is it blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? I don't know, but I know that in all our instances I was wide awake, very sober, very straight, and not trying to make this happen in my brain. And I've tried many, many other times and nothing happens. But these times it sears in the middle of your brain. You can't not hear it."
},
{
"end_time": 4336.596,
"index": 159,
"start_time": 4307.056,
"text": " When the first time you had a back and forth, or at least you said one statement, which is, I don't think I'm ready. Did you say that in your mind? Do you say it out loud? How did you say it? Yeah, I say it in my mind. And so someone's going, Oh, yeah, sure. They'd speak English. Sure, sure, sure. No, what they do is it's a process of your mind deciphers for you what you're supposed to understand. And to me that if I was Chinese, it would be in it would be in Mandarin, you know, or something. So, so, yeah, yeah. So, so, so, you know, it's a"
},
{
"end_time": 4361.049,
"index": 160,
"start_time": 4337.585,
"text": " So you gave your intention like, hey, I'm not ready currently. Okay. Now when they spoke to you all of these times, were they instantly understood or were they understood linearly? Like when you read, you understand the first word, the next one, then the next one and the next one, or was it all at once they said that sentence to you? Interesting question. The sentences were short enough"
},
{
"end_time": 4393.78,
"index": 161,
"start_time": 4363.831,
"text": " I'm not sure that I can decipher it linearly or in a linear fashion, or if it was all at once. It was just too short. Okay. As an aside, the reason is that some people, when they speak to other beings, or let's say even they have an encounter with God, it's as if all of that is said to them like that. And it's not like... It's like when you read one word, you don't read each letter, you read the word instantly. If I was forced to make the distinction, that is what I would say. I would say it feels like it's all at once. It's just that the sentences were short."
},
{
"end_time": 4424.189,
"index": 162,
"start_time": 4394.377,
"text": " Same thing sort of thing. Is it all right if I ask you a couple of details of the orbs of what the heck happened there? Okay, so firstly, how large were the orbs and what color were they? Where did they come from? When did they come? Why? Well, you won't be able to answer why. Well, I mean, I was we were Devin and I because Devin was with me on that one, we were sitting and I just hear Devin go. Hey, let's come here. You got to look at this. And I and I have something like that. And I get up and I walk over to Devin. He's 10 feet away, 15 feet away."
},
{
"end_time": 4452.739,
"index": 163,
"start_time": 4425.145,
"text": " And about 15 feet away from him were two hovering orbs, one the size of a golf ball, one the size of a pie plate. The pie plate one was much more fuzzy and less distinctive. The golf ball was more focused in, if you will. They stayed hovering there and you could see like gentle hover in their movement, but in the same position for, I want to say a good 15, 20 minutes."
},
{
"end_time": 4481.698,
"index": 164,
"start_time": 4453.899,
"text": " Enough for us to look and go, is there a car light flashing off something? Is there a local? I mean, we're in the middle of the forest, right? Our eyes are, you know, I mean, we're all clear, again, straight, you know, no, no, we weren't smoking anything or drinking anything sober. And I think what's going on there, if this species truly exists, this phenomenon is actually something"
},
{
"end_time": 4511.92,
"index": 165,
"start_time": 4482.244,
"text": " is that one of its attributes is its ability to manifest or ability to manipulate its own life force energy and in doing so it has a physical manifestation which is the big hairy creature we see that smells and shits and eats and screams and throws rocks and the other manifestation which potentially could be as light energy which we would then translate as being an orb and also the other message that we got the next morning from the woman who is an empath and a psychic with these beings that she said"
},
{
"end_time": 4539.343,
"index": 166,
"start_time": 4512.551,
"text": " She was told that some of the others, not the one guy that's supposed to flip me over at night, but some of the others came to look at us in the earlier part of the night. And that's when the orbs were there. Okay. What color were the orbs? Both the same color too? Like your shirt, whitish. Have you heard of any connections between UFOs and Bigfoot? Of course I've heard people say that often, often, often, often."
},
{
"end_time": 4567.756,
"index": 167,
"start_time": 4539.889,
"text": " My first craziest experience was on the mountain in Radium Springs and there was a scenario that happened there that I do not believe I mentioned on the show because I didn't want to confuse the viewers. Before you feed somebody filet mignon, you've got to give them a taste of meat first. That night I looked over in the skies and I saw these four big lights. They were massive, huge."
},
{
"end_time": 4596.903,
"index": 168,
"start_time": 4568.114,
"text": " and they were all lined up and they could not have been airplanes but they were up in the sky and they were just there for 20 minutes and then I went back and I'm not sure where I went to go maybe I went to get my camera I came back they just they were gone they disappeared and I've never seen anything like that in my entire life and I'm just like oh my god I can think and this is but at the time I'm just like oh this is cool what the hell is at the time I'm like what the hell is that and that was the night you were with Devin or that was a different night"
},
{
"end_time": 4620.947,
"index": 169,
"start_time": 4597.637,
"text": " No, this is the night I'm alone. This is on the top of a mountain in Radium Springs, but I was one of my Survivor and Bigfoot episodes. That was the night after those lights where I felt I'd had something come in and sit on top of me while I was trying to sleep. And everybody's going to say that's old lady syndrome, that's sleep paralysis. I get that. I'm familiar with that. That is not what I felt that night. It felt"
},
{
"end_time": 4645.998,
"index": 170,
"start_time": 4622.329,
"text": " The world of the phenomenon of Sasquatch is"
},
{
"end_time": 4668.234,
"index": 171,
"start_time": 4646.698,
"text": " Over on one side here, it's a big hairy ape that's smart, and on this side, it's aliens and everything in between, able to travel dimensions. That's what you mean by the slippery rabbit hole with mud and so on. Yes, although more so what I mean by the rabbit hole is my line of, if there is Sasquatch, what else is there? Have you heard of Skinwalker Ranch?"
},
{
"end_time": 4697.21,
"index": 172,
"start_time": 4669.104,
"text": " of course yes yeah okay so see when I was researching a bit about UFOs then I read about skinwalker ranch and the fact that there have been observed portals whether or not this is true there's been observed portals perceived portals and then sasquatch coming out and then this is a place where there's plenty of UFO activity and poltergeist activity as well so strange confluence of all these unexplained phenomenon and you know when as a scientist when you hear about let's say well what's consciousness have to do with"
},
{
"end_time": 4725.794,
"index": 173,
"start_time": 4698.166,
"text": " so-and-so phenomena the scientists would always say there's this tendency in us to say unexplained phenomenon here unexplained phenomena well they're related somehow because they're both unexplained and that's a foolish mistake but when it comes to Bigfoot and UFOs and well let's just say Bigfoot and UFOs it seems as if it's more than just the connection being drawn because there's question marks over each in other words okay well you want to riff on that yeah well I know what I just think that"
},
{
"end_time": 4748.848,
"index": 174,
"start_time": 4726.288,
"text": " I just think existence is so much bigger than our little human brains can comprehend. And the thing is, it doesn't scare me. The rabbit hole doesn't scare me. It's just like, yeah, of course. I mean, we've had so much about UFOs that if a UFO landed in New York tomorrow,"
},
{
"end_time": 4775.708,
"index": 175,
"start_time": 4750.06,
"text": " I just think my mind has always been, is this possible? And the answer to every single question that that's asked on in my mind is, could be, yep."
},
{
"end_time": 4804.019,
"index": 176,
"start_time": 4776.237,
"text": " Have you felt the fear and then you managed to overcome it or just temperamentally you don't feel the fear when it comes to that?"
},
{
"end_time": 4823.49,
"index": 177,
"start_time": 4804.667,
"text": " Temporamentally, I don't feel the fear. And also, I'm well aware of the fact that if I was face to face with an alien tomorrow, he's got a or she or it has a huge advantage over me. Of course. Right. So what am I going to do about it?"
},
{
"end_time": 4850.265,
"index": 178,
"start_time": 4823.968,
"text": " You know, what can I actually do? Go grab my AK-47? Actually, I want to say, of course, sorry, I would step back. And the reason I say that is that there's some view that certain aliens have, let's say, evil intent or negative intent, and that they cannot read our minds. Although you can communicate with them by intending, like you did with the Bigfoot, but they can't read your minds. And the human capacity for love is what extinguishes"
},
{
"end_time": 4879.445,
"index": 179,
"start_time": 4850.759,
"text": " Well, it extinguishes hate. And so in some sense, let's say there are multiple types of aliens and one is evil, then you do have a power over the evil ones with your love. So that's why I say, well, I don't say, of course. I think that's wonderful, fanciful thinking. But if that were true, then nobody'd ever be hurt, would it? Because there's a lot of loving, caring people that have been murdered. Why didn't their capacity for love just stop the human being from murdering them? No, no, I think"
},
{
"end_time": 4905.009,
"index": 180,
"start_time": 4879.974,
"text": " You know, I hear about the greys, for example. I hear about the greys. Look, when I had my first experience, what did I say to you? The hair was up on the back of my neck and I felt very, very nervous and I was too afraid to stay. I said, I'm not ready for this. Do I kick myself? Yeah, a little, but I wasn't ready."
},
{
"end_time": 4929.224,
"index": 181,
"start_time": 4905.367,
"text": " So there was fear there. I'm saying as a general rule, I don't walk around guiding my life based on fear of the unknown. I love the unknown and embrace the unknown. It's just that there will be aspects of the unknown that could be very detrimental to me and could harm me. And I don't think my capacity to love is going to stop me if I'm by myself in the middle of the forest and there actually are grays and a gray comes over to accost me."
},
{
"end_time": 4957.005,
"index": 182,
"start_time": 4929.582,
"text": " I've heard that that Sasquatch are there and often protect humans from the greys. I've heard that's a storyline people say. I mean, so, you know, I'm just kind of like, you know, when it's my time, it's my time. I don't want to feel pain. I don't want to hurt. I don't want to be abducted. I don't want to anal probe. But hey, I'll just go on. You know, that's not going to stop me from experiencing any of these things. Okay, let's get to some audience questions. Krippetis asks, I've seen almost everything that"
},
{
"end_time": 4980.299,
"index": 183,
"start_time": 4957.722,
"text": " You've done, Les, and I've appreciated your recent embrace of posting everything on YouTube. Frankly, I've had medical issues and I've watched Les's survival shows when I couldn't eat and I was in pain and it was extremely therapeutic. Has Les ever considered doing an urban survival show? No, I'll tell you why not. As people ask sometimes, well, you do like almost a homeless kind of thing, right?"
},
{
"end_time": 5008.422,
"index": 184,
"start_time": 4980.691,
"text": " My problem with that is every time I get down to the brass tacks of doing it, it feels like I would actually kind of be disrespecting people who are truly hurting and truly homeless to go and do a survival show where I'm digging what digging in a dumpster. The other answer to that is I don't give a crap about the city. I'm a nature nut. I'm a wilderness guy. My stuff is all based on being in nature. I'm not there to teach you survival. I or do survival tricks like these other shows."
},
{
"end_time": 5038.029,
"index": 185,
"start_time": 5008.797,
"text": " I'm showing you survival techniques to facilitate getting you out in the wilderness. So no, I won't do an urban show because of that. Bookman asks about limits. I want to know about him pushing through personal limits. Doing hard things is tough, but controlling the mind is tougher. How has survival shifted his mindset? The rewards are greater. To do the heavy lifting"
},
{
"end_time": 5069.07,
"index": 186,
"start_time": 5039.206,
"text": " can break your back. But if it doesn't, then the rewards are so much greater. And the survival component of what I've done has been painful at times. But hey, I'm sitting here right now. I just had a wonderful cappuccino. Some cheesecake. I'm on the other side of it and some cheesecake. You know, so the beauty of pushing through the difficulties is then when you have you have"
},
{
"end_time": 5098.882,
"index": 187,
"start_time": 5069.872,
"text": " The perspective. Perspective is everything in life. Travel is so important. I just wish people would do more of that. And pain and struggle. Give you perspective. If we bubble wrap ourselves and protect ourselves, we just don't have any perspective anymore. And so I just always knew that. So that's how it changed. I learned that getting to the other side of pain, getting to the other side of struggle and survival,"
},
{
"end_time": 5125.179,
"index": 188,
"start_time": 5099.206,
"text": " When times are hardest, what is the one thing that gives you the strength to carry on? Trying to think of when times are hardest."
},
{
"end_time": 5154.701,
"index": 189,
"start_time": 5129.462,
"text": " Feeling like I'm not done or reminding myself that I'm not done. I don't ever want to finish ever. I want to be, you know, just putting out a novel on my 97th birthday just before I die or something, you know, just reminding myself that I'm not finished and I have more yet to do gets me going, keeps me going. It's like, okay, all right, suck it up. Let's get up and go again. You know,"
},
{
"end_time": 5179.531,
"index": 190,
"start_time": 5156.459,
"text": " Atstan Allister asks, have you ever used any of Wim Hof's cold endurance techniques? If so, can these extend one's survival in harsh conditions? If the harsh condition is being submerged in ice cold water, sure, because that's what it is. Yeah, that'll extend that. You jump out of a boat in Alaska, I mean, that's probably going to help that."
},
{
"end_time": 5205.879,
"index": 191,
"start_time": 5179.872,
"text": " Absolutely. I do believe and agree with the concept of it simply because I felt my own body felt stronger and felt better because of doing the Wim Hof Methods. Notwithstanding our earlier conversation about potential tinnitus from the breathing, I think Wim's on to something pretty great and I do adhere. I haven't gotten into his meditative techniques yet, but I've got steps one and step two definitely."
},
{
"end_time": 5235.742,
"index": 192,
"start_time": 5206.63,
"text": " James McKevitt asks, Kurt, in Canada, most outdoorsmen have watched Survivor Man religiously. By the way, I'm from Toronto in case you didn't know this. Did Mr. Stroud ever suffer any long-term physical or mental duress from his extreme survival outings? Thank you. No, not at all. Zero. Two reasons for that. I've had short-term. I've had parasites. That's the only thing that's really been an issue, but I've taken care of those with some pills, basically. And otherwise, no. No long-term."
},
{
"end_time": 5266.459,
"index": 193,
"start_time": 5236.954,
"text": " No, it's funny because it's the opposite, I think. I'm out in nature, seven days alone. Nature heals, nature strengthens, nature destresses, and I get that healing, that strengthening and that destressing to the nth degree. So no, I have no long term and no short term really. I have nothing but benefits."
},
{
"end_time": 5298.097,
"index": 194,
"start_time": 5268.541,
"text": " Okay, I'm interested in what kind of theory of everything does Survivor Man has? How does he feel about the Great Reset? And the technocratic neo feudalism, which we seem to be headed for. So how does he feel about the Great Reset? Firstly, what the what is the Great Reset? And then how do you feel about it? I'm assuming he's talking when he says the Great Reset, I assume I'm assuming he's talking about right now this moment in time of the pandemic, because that's what everybody's calling the Great Reset. And, and"
},
{
"end_time": 5327.005,
"index": 195,
"start_time": 5298.66,
"text": " How do I feel about it? What an interesting way to ask that. More about the technocratic neo-feudalism we seem to be headed for. Just this morning, I was thinking that here's how I feel about it. That I want to turn my back on it and continue creating. Because getting caught up in all of that going on around us is not good for the soul."
},
{
"end_time": 5355.213,
"index": 196,
"start_time": 5327.944,
"text": " If it's your thing, okay. But I gotta be honest, it's never been my thing to get caught up in these big moments in time like this. In fact, when I was an outdoor guide, stuff used to come and go in the world and I barely even knew. I'm not saying we live selfishly, but what I'm saying is I better serve this greater theory of everything, if you will, if I am putting"
},
{
"end_time": 5383.797,
"index": 197,
"start_time": 5355.981,
"text": " Content out that uplifts people, inspires people, brings about a positive influence in people's lives. I'm better served and I better serve this great thing that's going on we call life, if I concentrate on that. And I'm not copying out from the question, I'm saying I turn my back on it, on that question, because it'd be a waste of my energy to try to even have a feeling about it right now."
},
{
"end_time": 5413.712,
"index": 198,
"start_time": 5385.486,
"text": " Hi, I'm here to pick up my son Milo. There's no Milo here. Who picked up my son from school? I'm gonna need the name of everyone that could have a connection. You don't understand. It was just the five of us."
},
{
"end_time": 5444.07,
"index": 199,
"start_time": 5414.326,
"text": " Well, first of all, being comfortable alone is an important skill. But the most important, one of the most important skills to have today, being comfortable alone. I'm going to say, you know, I'll say"
},
{
"end_time": 5471.271,
"index": 200,
"start_time": 5445.026,
"text": " Yes, that has merit. For one, if it's forced upon you, then you have that skill set. You have that associated muscle memory with being alone. If you're comfortable with it, you're okay. All right, well, I'm going to be alone for a bit. Okay, I can deal with that. And some people can't. They panic. But is it one of the more necessary skills and more vital skills?"
},
{
"end_time": 5506.118,
"index": 201,
"start_time": 5477.79,
"text": " It's circumstantial. I think that's a circumstantial skill. And if your circumstances indicate that that may be part of your future, then sure, you better be comfortable with being alone. But if not, then you can cruise without really developing that skill set and concentrate on other skill sets where you're more gregarious and you're more involved with people and so on. So I say it's circumstantial, but yeah, if your circumstances push for it,"
},
{
"end_time": 5532.483,
"index": 202,
"start_time": 5506.954,
"text": " Then yes, it's an important skill. OK, two more questions. Philip Warheim asks, he may have spoken about this already, but ask him about prepping, especially for climate change and EMP slash solar storms. Yeah. So I'm sorry to burst the bubble here, but I think prepping. If you see prepping as building a bunker in the backyard,"
},
{
"end_time": 5560.589,
"index": 203,
"start_time": 5532.995,
"text": " Douglas Goldstein, CFP®, Financial Planner & Investment Advisor"
},
{
"end_time": 5588.507,
"index": 204,
"start_time": 5561.391,
"text": " Yeah, so being prepared, of course, that's a no-brainer. But the other version, I think they're very, very foolish individuals. First of all, whatever goes down, we're not going to be ready for it. Oh, I'm just going to hunt deer and fish for walleye and I'll be set. Yeah, and if the lakes are full of acidification and the deer have died because of"
},
{
"end_time": 5618.148,
"index": 205,
"start_time": 5588.985,
"text": " I think a lot of the hardcore prepper stuff is just bullshit and silly and nonsense and small-minded. And also, by the way, everybody else who has a bunch of guns also knows"
},
{
"end_time": 5645.572,
"index": 206,
"start_time": 5618.524,
"text": " Who has all the food? And we know you have all the food. And we have bigger guns. You know what I'm saying? It's a silly situation. But I think better than being prepared with food on hand. I think better than being prepared with spare clothing and equipment is being prepared with skill sets that enable you to survive through whatever if you were just there in your clothes."
},
{
"end_time": 5667.073,
"index": 207,
"start_time": 5646.51,
"text": " Have you thought about making a course, whether it's on Skillshare or whatever it may be, on how to survive or is it so different in each environment?"
},
{
"end_time": 5696.357,
"index": 208,
"start_time": 5668.268,
"text": " Oh, it's vastly different in each environment. And I kind of have, right? Because if you think about it, 20 years of creating survival films with Survivorman and the like, those films read out like a course. I wasn't making a TV show. I was teaching you how to survive. And I just launched the series Surviving Disasters with Les Stroud on PBS stations in the United States and on YouTube here in Canada. And those are meant to teach you ways to survive natural disasters. So yeah, I could do the whole online course thing."
},
{
"end_time": 5723.166,
"index": 209,
"start_time": 5696.903,
"text": " But you know, the thing about that is, Kurt, is that to me, that smacks of being a businessman, doing something for a business sense. I've been doing courses my whole career and putting them out there in film form. So I'm not into business. All right. Last question comes from Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho. That's all one name."
},
{
"end_time": 5746.937,
"index": 210,
"start_time": 5723.814,
"text": " He wants to know, regarding the missing apple slash candy on his Bigfoot special and Bigfoot in general, does he think there could be a species that is both interdimensional and low tech that is primitive even? Yeah, absolutely I do. And that's what I mean by their ability to manifest their own, to manipulate their own life force energy and then different manifestations."
},
{
"end_time": 5775.333,
"index": 211,
"start_time": 5747.176,
"text": " So there's a physical manifestation and an orb manifestation. Who knows? If we could do it, I'd do it. You know, what if I could manipulate my own life energy? Perhaps I could vibrate to a point where I'm not visible to the eye anymore. Right? I'd be cool as hell. Sub question from him. Like, have you ever experienced lost time while camping? Do you understand what he means by that? Oh, I totally do. And you know, the short answer is no, I haven't. I know what he means, but I have not."
},
{
"end_time": 5797.927,
"index": 212,
"start_time": 5776.203,
"text": " Les, what do you have to promote? Where can people find out more about you? What's next for you? Okay, actually, I'll do it again. I did experience last time while in the middle of a car accident. So there you go. And heard a very strong voice that told me to move. And if I didn't move, I was going to break my neck. So I moved and I did not break my neck. But I did break three ribs punctured along and dislocate two shoulders."
},
{
"end_time": 5825.094,
"index": 213,
"start_time": 5799.138,
"text": " How old were you? That was just a couple of years ago and it happened in slow motion. I mean it was legitimate slow motion in that role. It was unbelievable. My wife was beside me. She experienced the exact same thing. Slow motion. She watched it happen. No voice for her? It happened very fast. No voice for her though. No. So the biggest thing for me really is my YouTube. I'm really having fun putting everything else on YouTube. Survivorman Les Stroud."
},
{
"end_time": 5854.633,
"index": 214,
"start_time": 5825.589,
"text": " I have a brand new book out for kids, Wild Outside, Getting Your Kids Out of Nature Again, and it's for them by the way, written to them. I'm finally releasing my Mother Earth album on double fold-out vinyl album this year and two new albums after that. Then I have my two series that are on the PBS stations presented by American Public Television, Wild Harvest, Local Foraging, Turning Them into an Amazing Meal and Surviving Disasters."
},
{
"end_time": 5883.712,
"index": 215,
"start_time": 5854.923,
"text": " with less drought about surviving natural disasters. So a lot on the go all the time, a lot of this stuff outflowing and getting all the way back to what you originally asked and I think the reason is because I really don't want to cease this manifestation of my life force right now. I like the flesh and blood manifestation of my life force and that flesh and blood emotionally wants to be a prolific artist."
},
{
"end_time": 5906.271,
"index": 216,
"start_time": 5884.326,
"text": " I love having a long list of things to say. Thank you, man. It was an honor for me to be able to speak with you. Thank you very much. Love the questions and love this podcast. I appreciate it. Thanks, man."
},
{
"end_time": 5927.517,
"index": 217,
"start_time": 5908.353,
"text": " The podcast is now finished. If you'd like to support conversations like this, then do consider going to patreon.com slash C-U-R-T-J-A-I-M-U-N-G-A-L. That is Kurt Jaimungal. It's support from the patrons and from the sponsors that allow me to do this full time. Every dollar helps tremendously. Thank you."
}
]
}No transcript available.