Survival Expert on Surviving Mr Beast, Hurricane Relief + Brother’s Suicide

So, okay, so first time I saw you is in the 100-day MrBeast challenge. Yep.

That's the first place a lot of people saw me.

Like 200 million or something.

385 million.

Oh, is it that? Oh my gosh.

Going from nobody knowing who you are to 400 million almost seeing a video is, uh, it was wild because I didn't realize how much it would change until I walked into the airport after the video came out.

Wow.

And the very first people that saw me in the airport were like, We just watched you. I'm like, oh, this is— life is different now.

Yeah. So you still get that? Yes.

We were at the Black Mountain Home for Children yesterday and I was— you just get mobbed and they're like, can you call MrBeast? I'm like, no, I can't call. Just call. Let us talk to him. You know, I just mobbed it like I had to, like, quietly back out, slide to my car.

It was a scooter gang of little girls surrounding him.

I'm like, this is intense.

I've never been bullied by a biker gang before, you know?

Yeah. And so how How did you get that gig in the first place?

It was simply a guy that used to work for me, got hired out there. I didn't think nothing about it. And so when they do these videos, they're looking for people who are subscribers to the channel.

Yeah.

And familiar with the content. And he knew my kids watch and he knew I was familiar. And so they were like, we look for somebody who can like take 100 days off, you know, we want like a family guy. And it's like, it's kind of a tough ask, you know? Hey, yeah, you know, you got a family. How about you just take 100 days off and risk it for, you know, $500,000. And Jason knew that I had basically just moved to a farm in Oklahoma, was kind of— would have time to do this before my World Series of Poker gig that I was going to do in the summer. And, and so I got a phone call and they were being coy about it, like, we have a project. And it was a project. It wasn't the video. I came out and like did a project with them and hung out with Jimmy all the time and it was just like, why am I hanging out with MrBeast? And because he's making sure it was a good fit, right? You know, and then at the end of the project, they're just like, Jason's like, did you say yes? I'm like, to what? He's like, oh, never mind, never mind. And then they pulled me in. They're like, hey, we want to put you in a circle for 100 days, but we can't tell you anything about it. You got to tell us yes or no. I was like, no, no, what are you talking about? And then he's like, Oh, well, if you, if you make it, you get $500,000. I'm like, let me call my wife. Yeah. And so I didn't— I thought she'd say no because we're like building this farm. Like, hey, I'm gonna leave you 100 days alone with the farm that's not built yet with all of our children. Sound good? And she agreed to it right then and there.

Yeah. I had to decide right then.

I mean, I had to think about it, but when the kids got wind of it, I got pressured. Like, come on, Mom, it'll be fine. We'll help you. I'm like, yeah, okay.

Did you realize $500,000 is really only what, $300,000?

So luckily we had a farm, so it was $408,000. Nice. We had just built a farm. Instead of doing depreciation, we just wrote things off in full because we have a big income. And so the farm definitely, you know, those expenses that we didn't have income to write off against. Right now, all of a sudden we had income to write off against.

Oh, nice. So, yeah, business income.

But I still paid $100,000 and something in taxes.

Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So then Well, was it, Mona, was it as hard or easy as you thought it might be being without him for 100 days?

I mean, it was— I mean, it wasn't— yes, it was hard, but not that hard because he— since we were transitioning to Oklahoma, he was still in Vegas like he had done.

I think it was—

how long was World Series of Poker?

12 weeks.

12 weeks. So it's like I was coming off of him already being gone for 12 weeks. So since like there was, you know, he's like, hey, I'm going to do this. It was just an extension of him already being gone.

Okay.

And so it wasn't—

yeah, it was almost 100 days.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's what I thought.

12 weeks, 16 weeks. It's like 4 and a half months.

So 12 weeks.

Yeah, but it's— the 12 is a good chunk.

Yeah, it is.

And it was just not— it was like our farm wasn't really operational.

Yeah, right.

So it was just things weren't getting done.

Things got put on hold. So it's like, I mean, yeah, things just got put on hold.

So you weren't like having to take his—

no, that just—

those responsibilities on, right?

They just didn't happen, right? Right.

Okay, so I get that.

You're a survival guy too. So how does one survive 100 days by themselves? Routine in a house.

Routine.

Okay.

Like you just, you just, you build a routine that takes all day and you rinse and repeat. So the first couple of days was the hardest.

Did you know this going in?

No, I didn't.

You had no plan?

No plan. I didn't know because I had very little heads up that this was going to happen. Okay. Oh, okay. And it's also hard to understand because I don't know what's in the circle. I don't know if I'm gonna have a cot in a tent.

Okay.

You know, I don't know if there's gonna be food or water or air conditioning. I didn't know anything. And so there's no way to really plan for it. But the first few days were the hardest. I almost quit like day 2 because I got paranoid. I thought they were pranking me. I thought they're going to make me look stupid. And then after I got over that, I was like, well, what if I fail? Now my kids are like, oh, your dad's the one that failed the MrBeast. You're the guy from the 100-day circle. You're the guy that failed the 100 days in the circle, right? Ooh, public failure is kind of terrifying, you know? So, but if I quit now, they'll just get somebody else to do it. So it's not a big deal. I don't run anything, right? So your mind goes into that quitting mind, give me all these reasons to quit. And I'd read David Goggins' book because then a whole fitness, trying to get in shape, used to be almost 300 pounds. And he talks about the quitting mind in there. I'm like, this is the quitting mind. My mind's trying to give me reasons to bail out. And so once I recognized it as a quitting mind, I'm like, nope, I'm not listening to that. We're going to do this. And once you— once I locked in, that's when the routine happened. I was like, and I didn't know that at first. It just the routines kind of started to happen. Okay, let's get up and I should start stretching. I'm not flexible. Let's just stretch for an hour. You know, by the end of it, I was like crazy flexible. You know, I would stretch like 2 hours a day and then I get up and I make food. I also write in the morning, like I come up on my content because they were just like, I'm like, hey, what do I— how do I make sure I'm funny and like people want to watch this? Like, just be yourself. I'm like, any tips? Like, don't act and don't try to be a YouTuber.

Who's telling you this?

The director.

Okay. Right.

I'm like, so just do my own thing. So it was really just like on me to—

Yeah, you're good about that.

And so I'd come up with like, like, today I'm going to do this, this, and this. And then I would— there's a little microphone. I'm like, hello, camera guys, I'm going to start making content. And they would roll all the cameras and make sure my audio was good.

Okay.

And so you, you, one of your jobs was to make content?

Oh, yeah. Big time. 100%.

Like, basically vlog.

Yeah. So I watched a ton of Casey Neistat, and so I just like copied— I was like, I put the— I put the GoPro in the microwave. So I put the thing in there, like, showing me putting the food in, then I'd obviously pull it out and then start the microwave.

So basically you're vlogging.

Yeah, I was vlogging every day. But you wanted to do it correctly because I was trying to give the editors— I've been in film and TV for— since '99. So I was— and I had a mindset of like, let me give the editors options, let me give them cutaways. I come up with this idea where I would stand in the same spot every day for 10 seconds to give them like a time-lapse. And of course that went in the video because it's good, it's good content. I'd film sunrises, storms. You just got to give the editors, you know, it was 168 terabytes of footage.

Wow.

They got to cut that down. Just from you? Or the whole project? The whole production. And then they had to cut that down into, I think it was 17 minutes. So 100 days of my life condensed to 17 minutes. I carved an entire chess set out of wood. Yeah.

Wow.

I just didn't make it because as cool as it was, it just didn't fit, right?

It wasn't also because you played Jimmy and you beat him?

So that's—

sorry, sorry, you can cut that.

Yeah, that was always a joke. I did win my game, but then he beat me like 3 times in a row. Uh, after we got out, we had to have a rematch. I got smoked. Like, it was just a fluke that I won that game. I was like, okay, yeah, that was, that was a chance. But there was just a lot of stuff that was in there that it's got to get down to 17 minutes. You can't put it all in. You know, so yeah, they're able to train. What's that?

Stay fit. Were you able to? Yeah.

So I actually got— I remember I lost 33 pounds.

So was that on purpose?

Not necessarily. The food was terrible. I was like, all canned food.

What food? Okay. I was like, I don't remember.

I feel like I watched it.

Spam.

No meat. Save the spam.

Oh, why? Why is it so bad?

Well, it's a survival thing. It's supposed to be like apocalyptic. Oh, okay. Okay.

I get it.

And you had a garden, though?

I had a garden, but I don't eat tomatoes. And I grew tomatoes like crazy. So I would trade tomatoes secretly to people for like a Beast Burger, you know.

That would work. It did.

It did. And then like Tariq brought me a Bojangles once. So thanks.

How'd you get him to do that?

He's just been a good guy, you know. And so I was like, the best Bojangles I ever had in my life.

I bet.

That's a pretty diverse crew, isn't it? Because isn't Tariq Muslim and Chandler's a Christian? And, uh, what's Nolan? Nothing.

Nolan? What are you talking about? He's the best guy on the whole channel.

No, I don't mean that.

I couldn't tell you.

As far as I could tell, spiritual.

Yeah, I don't know.

Or Carl. Maybe they're kind of—

Carl's one of my favorite guys on there. He's a good dude. But they all had their own very much individual personalities. I always liked it because it was such a cross-section of America and they all got along. They were all friends. And I always thought that was a good example. Yeah, it's like, oh, look, people can just get along, right?

Yeah. So, yeah, you know, I didn't think much of it. It was fun to go ahead.

Was your— was it the one where they kept cutting the house down?

They cut the house in half at one point.

Towards the end?

Towards the end.

Okay.

The hottest week of the year.

Okay.

Is that a big deal?

That was—

I remember why, because now you don't have air conditioning.

And there's just the way it rained, it would just run into my room.

But like bugs too?

Bugs. And I would have phantom stings afterwards because like I just keep getting bit by ants. And even after I got out, I think something's biting me. I'm like, oh, there's nothing there.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. Once you expose yourself to the elements, that— and it was, it was like In North Carolina, 97 is brutally hot.

Yeah. You know, well, especially in North Carolina.

Yeah. And so it's just like everything's moist and hot and bugs and it would pour rain and it would just run and I'd like that knock holes in the floor so it would drain out, you know. So it was, it was quite interesting.

Was it a real house to start with?

It was like one of those little like tiny homes.

Okay.

Container home that they just kind of put a facade on.

Okay.

That had power.

It did have power. Yeah. So I had an open-air kitchen at the end. It was kind of fun.

Yeah. The hardest part was the first few days.

First few days, just— and then this paranoia of them just— I'm like, they're going to embarrass me, you know? I don't— I don't know.

Did you get a lot of sleep during this time?

I got so much sleep.

So you slept well?

Sleeping like 13 hours a day.

Stretched?

Yeah. I worked out. Tariq also brought me a bench and some selectable dumbbells.

Okay.

So I had to hide every time Jimmy came because I thought he'd take it away from me.

Now, wait a minute. Tariq would sneak this stuff in?

Yeah.

Because do you think that's part of the entertainment that might get in the cameras, or do you think they're just really actually being sneaky and being like, well, no, it's too much?

It's up on them to get into the videos, to come up with good ideas, to get screen time. Right. And so the only rule was they couldn't leave the circle.

Okay.

So everything else is permissible.

Right.

So what's Chandler doing again in the videos? Chandler just gets to be Chandler because he just is just standing there most of the time.

Yeah, he's funny. It's just like, it's great. So funny.

Yeah.

And then when they destroyed—

I guess he's being himself.

Like, I got— like, after they destroyed my house, like, first time, like, kicked all the windows out and all that stuff, I was just like, all right, as long as they're fighting with each other, they're not messing with me, right? And so I just stayed out. I kept my head low. I'm like, I'm going inside. I'll let them get into trouble, not me, right? You know?

And so they got in trouble.

Well, no, into—

into their—

into their trouble, you know? Because if he's picking on each other, yeah, they're fighting with each other out there. And I'm just like, I'm gonna go inside. Like, then they won't do it. They won't mess with the inside of my house, right? What I thought, you know, so I was always worried they were gonna come in and like, take my clothes or, you know, my cooking utensils.

That happens. I mean, it gets worse because we're in a chain together. Just the chain just kept getting—

the best part was they just picked on each other when they come on. Okay. And so they would just get them after each other and they would leave my stuff alone. So, but, uh, it was, it was tough, but the routine is what You know, I was able to work out every day. The food is just very hard to eat, like rice cakes every day. And so I just stopped. I just drink protein shakes. I had a lot of like— they had a lot of muscle milk that was part of the muscle milk. Yeah, I can't even drink one today. If you brought one in here, I'd retch.

I know what Russell milk is.

Muscle milk.

Holy crap.

It's just like a 30-gram protein shake, but Makes my mouth water right now. Yeah. I drank so many of them.

Okay.

But yeah, so just, I lost, uh, yeah, 33 pounds, right at 33 pounds in 100 days.

So yeah, Rebecca and I were talking about last night, if ever I were actually going to go do a full 40-hour fast, 40-day water fast, 40-day, it would be, you almost need to get away. You almost need to get a retreat and you're supposed to be in active rest. So. But it feels like we were already developing a schedule around it. Okay, you go to bed by 9, you get up by 6, even if you wake up before, just lay in 6, and then maybe from 6 to 7 you journal, and then 7 to 7:30 is hot water, right? For your tea. And then, and then a little bit of a walk, a little 30-minute, just a little stroll.

Come back, read for 30 minutes though, read for 2 hours.

I did a lot of reading.

And then how did you get books? Did you bring them or—

that was the cool thing. They had a whole library of books.

Okay.

A lot of them were silly, like Abby, the mascot dog of Texas A&M or something like that. There's this whole book on this, this puppy that was in the '70s or something. I'm like, I guess I'll read it. No, no, I didn't actually read it, but there was like Sarah Palin's biography and then, you know, some other person's biography and, uh, Then there was like all these business books mixed in, like the YouTube book from, from Derral Eves.

Yeah, yeah. You know, YouTube Formula.

Yeah, YouTube Formula. And then we had like Never Split the Difference, Acres of Diamonds, SPIN Selling. There's all these books mixed in. And I did read all the Hard Things About Hard Things was a great book and it was just talking about doing as a manager, CEO, You know, it was just not doing the hard things is actually the worst thing for your company. I was just like, oh, you know, it's just all this good business knowledge, you know? And then after I got out and they wanted me to come work for them, I realized that's like their company books that everybody reads.

Oh, wow.

And so it was like, oh, okay. Because he started even during the circles, like, you're gonna come work here after this is over. You got to come work for me. You got to come work for me. And so after I got out, I'd read all those books and I realized like, oh, those books were in there on purpose.

He was priming you.

What do you think it was that he wanted you to work for him? What do you think it was about you?

I think it was because of my knowledge a little bit about everything.

Okay.

My background in actual, like, just have a background in television. I'm heavy on the tech side.

Okay.

Right. So they were struggling on editorial just because the shows were getting so big and so much data. This, my show specifically, was just this monster.

That was a pivotal point, I feel like.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so we— but the first thing I did was come in and really upgrade their post-production. I use a company called Studio Network Solutions, which has these arrays of drives that are all fiber connected to the desktop. Now everybody can share the same project folder and they also can work in the same timeline. I brought Adobe Productions in and now everybody can work on the same timeline. Right. So you can be working on the, you know, first minute, I can be working on the second minute or whatever, second act or whatever. And we're all putting a pro— instead of you editing and us trying to like kind of bring it all back together and then realizing now I got to tie it all back in, it just became this more seamless workflow where 5 to 7 editors can jump in on the same project. And so bringing in this, and it's just standard post-production technology, there's nothing new, which is how we've been doing it in Hollywood forever, but bringing that to the YouTube space. And then just I worked on a lot of the just the technical execution of some of the videos and just really got along with the CEO and Jimmy and ended up being moving into a role of chief of staff of just basically managing the day to day and just trying to manage that resource, which is him, which is our most valuable resource, and make sure we're being effective. But that was just such a full-time job. It would only— and it was, it was only supposed to be for like 3 months and then 6 months. And then we started doing the survival videos. So I got pulled back into production. So now I'm traveling to Croatia and Romania and some island in the Caribbean, you know, so every one of those is like a week of travel, the week of shooting, and then you have like a week of recovery. So I just— and then that led into Beast Games. But, but yeah, that was kind of my arc there. It's just really when I went to work there, what I do is like, I'll figure it out. It was just like just a fixer is really what it boiled down to is whatever it'd be fixing, I would just jump on it and get it, get it straight. So yeah.

Mona, what are some tricks for surviving with your husband first 3, 4, 12, 16 weeks, whatever it was? Oh man, 100 days. Because how many kids you all have?

So we at that time, we had 3 at home at that time. Our oldest had gone away to college. So yeah, we had 3 at home. If they had been younger, I couldn't have done it. Like they were old enough that they were, you know, so they were— I mean, Lana was what, 7, 8?

Yeah.

So it's like they were, you know, self-sufficient in the sense that I'm not up with babies and, you know, fighting at least the minimal.

They can make food for themselves, wipe their butts.

Maybe it's the— maybe it's what he was saying. He developed a routine, but You already had one, sort of. You have to have one with kids.

It's always been the worst when he does these things where it's like he comes home and we get back in family routine and he goes back out. If it's like one to another, it's a little easier. It definitely gets draining. But when you get that break in between, it's like, all right, we're back to doing what our family does. And then he's up and gone again. That it gets hard.

It's hard on like Lana especially.

Yeah, our youngest. She's definitely a daddy's girl. Yeah. The boys sometimes are like, Dad's gone? I'm like, yeah, Dad's been gone for a week. But it's like, but she's like, she like, she knows, you know, Yeah, it hits her harder.

So you guys were living in Vegas?

No, we were living in— we had just gotten to Oklahoma.

No, you were living in Vegas, moved to Oklahoma.

Yeah.

All when this was going down. And then did you move to North Carolina then?

That was so after the job. Yeah. Because of after you got out of the circle, that was the one. That's what— that's the one that I finally— I think I hit my limit at.

I was like, go.

Like, I was rolling with it pretty good. And then he's like, how do you feel about moving to North Carolina? And I'm like, nope, absolutely not.

Because I had just gotten my farm.

Like, I have been wanting— this was a dream that she was— since I was 10 years old and I've been like putting it off and putting it off just for different things. And then, you know, and he's like, well, come back to the farm, you know? And so that was kind of the thing. It's like, all right, we're just— it's temporary.

And actually in the beginning it looked like it was going to be— I was just going to get Post like really dialed in, up and running. And it was just going to be a project.

Yeah, a longer project that we needed to move for. And it turned into— it turned into more. And so like my best friend that was living in Texas at the time, her whole family moved up to take care of our farm because they weren't sure if they wanted to— like they wanted, they wanted to see if they wanted land or not. And so like, you know, they moved up to see if they liked it. But yeah, it's supposed to be a placeholder. Moved to North Carolina and I would drive back like all the time, but every, like every 3 months I would come back to just be on the farm and be able to see animals and like, you know, projects that we wanted to do. I remember we had our first bottle calf was born. And so my best friend's like calling me. She's like, it's, you know, the mom's not taking it. I'm like, I'm getting in the car and I load up the kids in the middle of January and drive across country so I can bottle feed a calf because I'm like, I'm not missing out on this. Like, this has been my dream forever. And so I did a lot. We lived on the kids and I lived on the road a lot during that time.

And so when I was traveling, all I was going to say, you weren't—

it's not like you were at home.

Yeah. Yeah. And so that was also a part of the, like, it was just so unpredictable. Like, the thought was like, we'll move there, we'll be there together as a family. And, you know, it'll be 9 to 5 hours. And I think there was maybe 9 to 5 hours, like a week out of the whole thing.

So when I got pulled on to his team, that's when things really changed because you look at where he's at.

It's just like, yeah, he's all over and I'm right next to him.

And so I'll be driving home and I'm like, I'm home, I'll be at home in 15 minutes. And then he calls, hey, we're going to go to Manhattan for this thing. I'm like, when? He's like, I'm at the airport. I'm like, oh, okay. So I would rush to the airport, jump on the plane, and, and he's great with that. I'll be like, hey, I'm going to be back tomorrow, actually. So we're going to hang out, call you back. I'm taking off, you know?

Right. Where does he get this energy with having Crohn's disease?

Uh, I don't know.

He's young.

He's young.

Oh, he's 24.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

And the thing is, it is, it is, it is draining and there's a lot, is a lot, a lot is energy management. Um, but it, I mean, it blows my mind what he's been able to accomplish. It's just, it's phenomenal, but it's just, it's just that laser focus of, you know, if you ask him, he's like, what do you want? The biggest YouTube channel in the world. Still 12 years ago, you know what I mean? That's like, that was the vision, and you get what you focus on.

So, well, now he's there. What now? What?

That I don't know. It's all the businesses and the arrival.

Yeah.

And the Beast Game, I think Beast Games is a big evolution, right? It's a $100 million series on Amazon. It's been renewed for 2 seasons. I mean, that's a big deal for a YouTuber. Yeah, that was the, the gap to— everybody said you couldn't you couldn't jump, you know? And so he's proven it. So what's next? Who knows? Like, right now it's Beast Games, but I couldn't— I've been out for 7 months or—

oh yeah, I couldn't even tell you.

Yeah, I mean, it's just— I see it and I'm like, I'm watching just like you are now. It's like, hey, they're doing that. I walk into the store and I'm like, oh, they have these products now. Like, it's, uh, quite the, uh, quite the empire at this point.

Yeah, but, uh, that's probably got a lot of people working for him too.

I mean, he's not like— I mean, he's probably very involved, but also like you have to delegate a lot when you get to be that—

Festivals is its own company, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Growing up in the '90s, yep, we would— things come on at TV at a certain time, right? And you had to catch it. So we would watch Seinfeld on Thursday nights. When The Cosby Show was on, we were big fans of that, and we'd watch it together as a family. That was nice. And I think there's too something special about everybody watching something at the same time across the nation, dude, there's some energy in that or something.

For me, it was like going to bed every night and watching Star Trek: Next Generation or falling asleep to M*A*S*H. Yeah, that was my routine.

You knew it was bedtime when M*A*S*H came on. Now MrBeast has gotten on a every other Saturday post.

That's right.

So that's something that the kids look forward to watching. And I'll say, no, wait, I want to watch it with you, or what's it called? You know, I don't necessarily watch everyone, but right, right. That and, and maybe Ryan Trahan, we'll watch together as a family. And, uh, I think there's something neat and special about that. Um, I don't know where I was going with that though. Um, oh, so when I saw you on there, uh, I won't say you're middle-aged. I don't know how old you are.

I'm 48.

Okay, middle age.

Uh, I guess you have kids older than I do, so I can say that because 48, that's like I'm making it to my 90s.

Okay. Yeah, I know.

Yeah.

So here's this man on there with all these boys. Yeah, they're still boys. They're, they're becoming men.

They're— I might have kids their age.

They're very much men in the sense of business and what they've accomplished. I look up to them for that. You can learn a lot from them from that. But as far as families and spouses and that kind of real life. It was good to see you continue on in the shows as that. Here's this man, you're a man's man, you know, whereas I don't know their backgrounds, if they've got, you know, good men and fathers in their lives. Well, I guess Jimmy doesn't. I don't know what the story is there.

I don't know.

I don't hear anything.

I know. I know Chandler's dad went to the same church as them.

Yeah.

And so, but I don't know a lot of their families. Yeah, I don't know.

Yeah. So, but it was good to see you. Yeah.

Chandler's dad's great.

Okay.

He's a good guy. We just happened to go to the same church for a while. But yeah, it was just so weird being the old guy on the— because I would have never thought—

you were kind of the dad.

It was survival dad. That's really what they joked. Jimmy's like, yeah, Jimmy's like, I'm like the dad here because he's like building something. And Mack's like, you're like the mom. Sean's survival dad. Really funny line. You know, that's true. It became that. And so on my ex-bio, I was like official survival dad of MrBeast. And so when Hurricane Helene hit, that turned into expert survivalist.

Somehow it like—

yeah, the news loved that title. Like everybody put that on the chyron. It was just like expert survivalist. And it's like, where do you get that degree? Like, where do you get that certification?

I would like to know as well.

And what does— what does make you an expert survivalist? Do you have certifications in first aid?

I do, actually. I do. I'm— Wilderness first aid training, CPR, stop bleed.

Okay.

You know, but I just grew up on land.

Okay.

And before we had the internet. And so I would just say you're—

you just know what to do.

Yeah, just—

yeah.

And I had a book called Bushcraft. It was like Bushcraft 101. I would go out to the pond and just build everything in that book and trap things and snares and fish. And, and so just growing up like that and also have an ADHD. You just get so many interests. So you know a little bit about everything and not a lot about anything. So to them, because I've got life experience.

Yeah, life experience. That's everything.

Like, it's omnipresent. You know, like, Sean can fix anything. And to be fair, like, I did fix a lot of stuff, right?

You know, you came in and did that for them.

Like, even on the island, we had our boat ran out of water. And so they brought us these 55-gallon drums of water. But then they brought us a sump pump that's this big around that won't fit in the drum. And so I siphoned water into an ice chest, put the sump pump in the ice chest, and then pumped it into the boat. And they were just like, you're a mechanical genius. And I'm like, man, that is just like how you steal gas. I don't want to tell you why I know how to siphon, you know. So, but it was just because I'd grown up, also grown up without a ton of money. Like, you had to learn to fix things.

Yeah.

You know, you just like, oh, the dirt bike doesn't work.

Daddy, buy me a new dirt bike. That's—

No, no.

You learn how to figure out what's wrong with it.

And so I guess that makes you a survivalist.

So growing up without the internet.

Yeah. Growing up without the internet.

Well, they would, they would whip you in Minecraft.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. 100%.

No, I don't even know what Minecraft is.

That's a video game.

That's how old I am.

So I was, I was a big video gamer. So I think that's one thing that made it work is because It's on silent mode. Having kids that were in that same, not necessarily same age bracket, they're a little younger. But I was— I played a lot of video games. I played board games. So I had some common interest of these 20-year-olds. So we would play some of the same games. Jimmy being a big board gamer, I'm being a big board gamer. That was a common ground. So I had a lot of common ground with them. So it wasn't like I was just some boomer that—

Right.

Stupid video games and You know, there was, there was a common ground where we could all have an understanding. And my kids give me a younger view because I'm obviously paying attention to the stuff they're doing and what they're watching. So I have some exposure of better than a 30-year-old does, right? A 30-year-old with no kids, just he only knows his upbringing. So he has less in common with these young 20-year-olds. And so that rapport made it work, you know, and, and it was like in the videos, it did become this like dad role. And the people definitely identified that. There's a great scene where they're sitting there struggling trying to get this fire to light. And I walk up, I'm like, give it to me. I'm like, shoot it. I'm like, well, we just got dadded. Come on, stop. Give that to me. You know, one strike and the whole thing took off. It was really funny. And, but the weirdest one was the 7 Days in a Cave— or no, 7 Days in Underground City. Yeah, because it wasn't really a survival video. It was like this underground city. And I'm in there with all these like Logan Paul, IShowSpeed, KSI, like all these super famous streamers and YouTubers. There's like 11 of us in there. So all these famous people and me, you see this picture of us all sitting in this amphitheater and it's like all these famous people and the random old guy. Of course, I'm down there putting a fire together. So that one was strange because it was just like, who's the old guy?

How did I end up here? Is it strange or is that part of the entertainment?

It would just— and all the other ones, it's part of entertainment because there's less survival. Like, I was just there. I mean, granted, I helped them all get up into this cave they couldn't reach, but it wasn't— I wasn't building everything like I was in the other videos. Like in Island, like I built all of our shelter and showed them how to build all the shelter and like help with the food, you know, all— there was a lot for me to do. But in Underground City, it was just kind of like— and it's like all these famous people and Sean.

What's the survival struggle in a movie like that?

For that?

Getting along?

Yeah, getting along. Just basically food and where to sleep. And it just—

it was—

it was just— that was the weird one because it wasn't a ton of survival.

But does everybody get along?

Oh, yeah. Well, that one—

days, 24/7.

So you believe it or not, like, because you're— you're so busy just trying to keep everything going. There's not a lot.

That's the trick then. Yeah. Stay busy.

Busy. And then the funny thing was in Underground City, because there were so many personalities there. They just split into like two factions, like us who had been there since the beginning and the new guys. And so we were kind of like, oh, you guys have to sleep over here because like we've been here longer. You know, like we were the OGs, like we've been here since day one, we get the better plots. They're like, what are you talking about? Like, I don't think this is okay. And so KSI kind of became the dictator and we came back and all of a sudden they're like, we're going to have a meeting. I'm like, what? Like the original people just got ousted.

Started to get Lord of the Flies real quick.

Yeah, so it turned into like Lord of the Flies real fast.

It was the original people.

It was like, let's see, who was the original ones? It was me, Jimmy, was it Carl? Carl and Chandler. I can't remember. Yeah, I remember.

Y'all got ousted.

Yeah. So all of a sudden, like, we were having to like, you know, but then everybody got along at the end. But it was just, it was just all those personalities there. It was different because it wasn't just the boys, right?

Talk about ADHD. Speed wasn't going crazy down there.

Oh, they all were. Yeah, the one I could like—

can't strain.

That wasn't the one that they— that you guys were all wet. That was like—

that was— that was brutal. Yeah, that was—

I watched that and I was like, no thank you.

I don't feel like it even did half of a job of telling how much of a struggle that was because it's supposed to be fun.

I can only imagine.

Yes.

So get your clothes soaking wet and sit in your refrigerator for 7 days. It was 40 degrees. Sit in your refrigerator for 7 days and everything's just wet.

I mean, were you just like— were you— was your skin all shriveled?

It's just everything. Yes. Everything was terrible.

Did you want to quit that one?

I couldn't have made it one more day. You couldn't have made it one more day? The scouting mission and came out. I said, this isn't going to happen.

Oh, really?

For the first reason, for the first part of it, we had to rappel 300 yards into an underground river.

Yeah, I know.

That was horrible.

It sounded like it.

I was like, they're not going to do this. And then, like, I had to do it. So when I get there, they're like, is this safe? I'm like, yeah, I did it yesterday. It's totally cool. Okay, we'll do it. And it was safe. I mean, nobody's ever died doing that, like, statistically speaking. But when you had to slide your butt off that bar and you're just dangling off of a rope 300 yards into a river— the river, if you hit the river and live, it runs into a gap and underground forever. So it's like even if you survived, you just go into the abyss, right? There's a— that's a lot to think about as you're—

I don't know where it ends up.

What's that?

I don't know where that river ends up.

I mean, it does end up somewhere way down, but it's like By then you would be— you would never come out, right? You'd be caught on some rock.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's not like it's a big wide open river. It's flowing underground. And so I'm like, first of all, there's that. And then we got to hike all this stuff up to super slick rocks into this cave that there's no flat spaces. Like everything's a boulder over the— again, over a raging river. It's been storming. So there's this water pouring. I'm like, This, I guys, I don't know if this is going to happen. And then we got there, we got in and day 7, the night that we got out, right? I just, I just didn't sleep. Apparently I'm claustrophobic. Didn't know that. Oh, I would not know this. Yeah.

Now you do.

Yeah, I do. And like, I just stayed awake. Like if they, if they came and said, surprise, we're doing 10 days in a cave. I'm like, I'm out. You don't want to be the guy that calls out because it ends the video. Right? And it's not cheap to make these.

You think you were the most likely to quit at that?

I didn't think I would have been, but with my claustrophobia, I had— I had bared with it for so long. I just couldn't do it anymore, you know? So I was just— I couldn't sleep. Like, it was— it was rough and it was just so cold. And I mean, everybody—

is that why you didn't go to the little star cave, whatever it was?

They went on a little day of adventures. If you notice, even on Island, I stayed back at the camp.

Yeah.

And that's to have something to throw back to. And I did, believe it or not, like it looks like, oh, is Sean just pretending he's worried? Like they were supposed to be back way before dark.

And so when they had, you know, when dark was—

oh, I'm talking about an island. Oh, so island, they went up and hiked up and did the thing and stuff. And I'm back getting everything ready, make sure, you know, getting food ready. It's something to throw back to in the edit. And so that just kind of became my role. So even in cave, they're like, we're going to space exploration. I stay back.

To kind of keep the home.

Well, and also too, like, it took them so much longer than it was supposed to do the cave thing. And I have no contact with them. So when I'm like, I'm kind of getting worried, I'm legit kind of getting worried because both of these adventures took way longer than they were supposed to. And it was starting to rain heavy because I could hear the water running heavy. And they told us that the water rises, you can get trapped in there.

Oh yeah.

And so I'm like, they need to get back, you know? And so, but they've got like a professional guide who's not going to let that happen.

Right.

But on the island, that wasn't— there was no professional guy. I'm just like, cool, how do I go find them? You know, because I don't have like any support on the island other than a camera guy setting cameras up.

Whoa.

So it's like, well, what do we do? I mean, it is a— there's a real— like, me being back at camp does create a real situation of like not knowing what's going on.

So, yeah.

How are you doing with all of this? Like, do you know he's going in a cave like 300 yards?

No, I know he's going in a cave, but like, I'm picturing, like, you know, from Sunday school, the cave that Jesus came out of that cute little cave. And I don't find out till he gets home and can show, because I mean, I don't have any contact with him. And he's showing me these pictures and his videos like, you see that dot? That's repelling. That's me. I'm like, oh my gosh. So yeah, these I don't, these I don't get anything on until the back end. And it was the cave was definitely the scariest.

By the end, are you like, are you sure you want to go?

Yeah, I think— wasn't cave the last one you did?

No, I think Underground City was.

Okay.

Yeah, Underground City was fine.

They were all fine until cave was the one where I started to get like, You really need to maybe think about the other ones. Like, how much more intense is this going to get?

In my mind, Cave is the most dangerous video they've ever done.

Yeah.

Yeah. It hasn't gotten more dangerous, I don't think.

I can't think of anything. Just, just— it was just— I mean, it's a cave. It's so unpredictable. There's a river.

It's a lot of—

even just— I got hurt just getting out of my hammock, you know, not bad, but I slipped and fell and hit a rock.

And it's like, yeah, you had no sleeping place.

We had to wear helmets all the time. We had to be harnessed all the time. Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Because if you slip, hit your head, you're dead.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because by the time they get you up out of that hole.

Yeah, you're going to be gone.

It's not easy to get somebody.

Well, also, like, getting you out, you're not going to, like, stabilize things.

Right. You're going to have to be carried in a litter down this crazy pathway. Then they got to get— the only way out is up.

Whose idea was this?

Oh, I don't know.

Yeah.

They have a whole creative team that's like, listen to the craziest thing possible.

And then, like, is it possible?

I mean, it was a good idea.

It was good. How many million views does that have?

I don't even know. I haven't looked at that one.

Okay. Do, um, I want to get out. I want to take us to where, how, how we got into Hurricane Helene. Yeah, it's been the year anniversary.

Expert survivalist.

I know, so we're gonna, we're gonna get to that. I want to back up, I want to back up a little bit to the quitting mind.

Yeah.

Now I also am curious about this poker, but hopefully we can get to the poker a little later. Maybe, maybe at the very end we'll have a little fun and get back to poker. The quitting mind.

Yeah.

How do you know when it's the quitting mind and when it's the, okay, it's time to quit? For example, when you said that, I'm like, oh geez, I'm 27 and 28 days into a water fast, right? I was determined to go till I healed or 40 days.

Yep.

I didn't quite heal the psoriasis. I mean, stopped itching, but it's not cleared, right? Like maybe I expected. But Rebecca and I, was it the quitting mind saying, my stomach's hurting, I'm waking up feeling weird in the middle of the night, I feel like I've— I'm not as bright as I was of week 2 and 3, the doctor's saying you should pull, you need to do a 40-day supervised fast.

So the quitting mind, it's like you're usually about 40% is when your mind tries to keep you safe.

Right.

Use about 60% left to go. But most people's quitting mind would have kicked in day 4 or 5, right?

Yeah.

You're pushing through. You're put— that's where you're pushing through the quitting mind. And once you hit 28 days of a fast, I don't think anybody's calling quitting mind at 28 days, right?

Okay.

But then again, that's your body telling you.

Say that percentage again. I missed that.

40%. It's like, the idea is that, like, you still got 60% in the tank, especially doing something physical. Like for me, the quitting mind would kick in mile 1 if I had to go run.

Okay.

But for a marathoner, it may be mile 28. So it is different for everybody else. Let's say you're going to run your first ultra.

Okay.

But you've been running marathons. The marathon, the quitting mind's not going to be a problem.

Okay.

Because you've run marathons before. Yeah, you can do it. When you hit mile 40 and your toenails are starting to come off.

Oh my gosh.

And you're getting blisters and the pain, you know that it'll come back.

It's fine.

But that your mind's like, oh, you're doing permanent damage to your feet. You know, you have to look and go— because some people become so— they've learned to move past that. Um, you know, once you train yourself to push past it, you do have to be careful that you don't push yourself too far. Yeah, right.

So, so it— so it's okay as a survivalist, it's okay, or an endurance event, if you really are doing damage, yeah, that's not going to recover, it's fine to quit. Because if you— if I'm thinking about this, if you're climbing Mount Everest and you're getting frostbite, what you're doing is quitting on your family or your obligations at home.

Exactly.

If you do this stupid thing. So it can be— it can become quitting something else by keeping doing something.

It can become too much. And so that's what people argue with, like, Goggins is the guy's crazy. Because he runs 130-mile things where all his toenails fall off.

That's not—

he recovers and does it again. So, you know, that's his— that's what he needs.

But he needs that.

It's for him. Exactly.

Exactly.

But the whole point of it, though, is that we do typically not push ourselves hard enough.

No.

Right. And then again, it's what's on the line. If running 50 miles is going to save your life, you're going to—

you're going to do that.

Yeah.

Who cares if your toenails fall off? I keep talking about toenails. You're like, there is something about it being harder in the beginning, too.

Issue, certainly with a fast or we use equipment. Yeah, you're right.

That's the part to get through. Again, me, it's the first 2 days. I didn't even— I struggled again at the very end because of the, just the heat and the house being cut in half and stuff like that. But I'm like, 10 days away, I can go through anything, right? But it's— yeah, we usually just quit early is the biggest issue.

You get so far in, you might— you're like, I might as well keep going.

I'm sure even at 28 days you're like, what's 12 more days?

See, I'm more like, I'm seeing changes in him that I'm like, okay, wait a minute, this is— something's going awry. Like, the doctor, the first doctor we talked to, he said, listen to your body. I'm like, okay, you need to listen to your body right now. Like, you're, you're duller, like mentally, like you're not as sharp as you were. Your stomach is hurting now all the time, not just intermittently. You're waking up in the middle of the night feeling queasy, that there's like— these are all signs that your body is giving you that you should eat, that you've gone long enough.

Yeah. And this is it. And I have an event at day 39 and 40.

When have you done a 40-day fast before?

No.

This might— well, if you had days— if you've done it before, this might be— this might be quitting mind, right? Like, say you've done multiple.

Yeah, yeah. Next.

Okay, I know that I just need to push through for another day or two and this goes away. But when you haven't been there, Right. You got to look at it and say, hey, I've achieved this. Yeah, let's maybe when the next time I do it, I'll see how I feel at 28 days.

Yeah. Yeah.

Because the doctor— the— so the first doctor isn't necessarily a fasting doctor. The second doctor is. And he's like, yeah, maybe it's time to pull because, I mean, he wasn't going to encourage Justin to continue.

They insist on supervised.

They do like a supervised, which I can understand, but also With these other things cropping up is making me think that there's, yeah, a reason why.

So for people listening who are— we're trying to help people get through this quitting mind. You're talking about it so early. When I tell people I'm fasting, they'll say, you said it, oh, the longest I've gone is 4 days, whatever you did, 4 days. And I'm, I'm like, that's because that's the hardest.

Yeah, it's—

let's get to 6, 5, 6, or 7 days. Depending on the person, you're gonna start cruising.

You're gonna—

you got to get into ketosis.

Yeah.

And once you get into ketosis, it's great.

Oh yeah. And I've done that with carnivore, so I've felt that before. But you know, I mean, I only set out to do 4 days. Yeah. So it was like, that was my goal.

That was your goal.

But if you told me at 4 days I'd do 7, like, I don't know about that, you know. But, uh, but it— I, again, I think the biggest thing with the quitting mind, it's usually early, right? It's not usually mile 29 of a 32-mile race or something. It's usually mile 6.

You got to watch that quitting mind because it'll fear— it'll use fear. It'll say, oh, this will be damaged. Oh, your stomach's going to never recover.

And it's usually before any of that stuff's actually happening, right? You're not actually suffering any of that, right? You're like, you could—

this could— that's right.

Okay, you're not physically like feeling your knee come apart, but you're like, well, if you ran 20 miles, maybe your knees get hurt.

Yeah, because maybe it's a little funny.

You're not even hurting yet.

It's a little funny.

Your mind's already kind of like, you probably shouldn't do this because you could trip and fall, you know? So for me, it's always early and mental only is how I identify it. And it's usually something that isn't even happening. Like, they're not making fun of me. They're not embarrassing me. Like, they're not pranking me. But my brain's saying, oh, this stuff's going to— this could happen. You should quit.

I think you hit on it when you came early and we were milking You said, um, yeah, your mind wants to— it's, it's— you, um, in a fast as an example, you panic. Your body gets in a panic when you're doing something difficult. It doesn't have to be a fast, right? I went on a 100-mile mountain bike bikepacking trip with Jonah. Your body, your mind It's just the way we're built.

It's preservation.

You miss a meal, you, you miss 2 meals, your mind's freaking out.

It doesn't know what to— it doesn't know you got a fridge full of food, right? It just assumes you're in starvation.

Yeah.

You're not a good hunter anymore.

Yeah.

It doesn't know. It doesn't know why we're not eating, but we're not.

And it's arousing you. I was the most fearful in those first weeks. I'd go lay out in the sun. That's how I'd feed. I'd just lay out in the sun. That's my lunch. That would be on the routine. That would be on the fasting routine. Go eat lunch out in the sun, laying there. Not eat lunch, but feed on the sun.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it really does. It, it, it stimulates the mitochondria, which gives you energy. The vitamin D is a natural mood booster. I could go on, but, uh, the first—

he had it. He had like a panic attack the first week.

Oh yeah.

Like day 5 or 6. He woke up and he's like, Rebecca, I can't breathe.

I'm having a heart attack.

And I like jump out of bed and I run around and he's like, I can't breathe. And I was like, you can breathe. And he's just like, I'm like, you're okay. Thinking in my head, I'm going to die here.

Okay. I guess I'd rather die here than the hospital.

Exactly. Like, and I'm just like—

You told me that you've driven to the hospital before with a panic attack.

I know, like feeling his heart. I can feel it slowing down. You know, he's obviously breathing. He's coherent. You know, like—

That's what I was saying. I would drive and go sit in the ER parking lot because I'm like, Well, if this is a heart attack, I'm here. If it's not, right, you know, of course it would go away.

Right. Here's the attitude not to have, I think. I'll tell somebody this and they'll say, oh, I could never do that.

Yeah, then you can't.

No, don't do that. Can't, never could, and couldn't at all. The first little spark of this idea came when I was at an event. I'd spoke about my Lyme disease and a fan came up to me at the end and said, It was a little mom lady, not old, young, little young mom. She said, I fasted 21 days for my Lyme. And I thought, that's kind of crazy. Wow. I didn't say I can't. I could never. I think I put it in my back pocket.

Yeah.

It didn't come out for 2 years.

Right, right.

Took a minute.

Yeah.

And got right past that 21 days. So 21 days is kind of a marker for me. I'm glad I got there.

21 is impressive.

Got it.

It is impressive.

That's 4 solid weeks.

So he just went 4 solid weeks with no food.

And I'm sitting here talking to you. Yeah, I had a pinch of honey.

I even wondered when we came up here, I was like, how's this podcast going to be?

I know podcasts are going to go great. I've lost my train of thought a couple of times, but during week 2 and 3, I didn't.

I know. He's like, I'm going to start fasting before I do podcasts. And yeah, speaking of that, it's good to fast before you're in a hyperfocus.

Your body's like, okay, we need to lock in.

In, right?

Yeah, right.

For whatever you're doing. But if you— again, it doesn't know what you're doing. It just says, I need to lock in. Lock in. With carnivore, I was the— I was the most clarity I ever had was just being on carnivore. I think I did 16 weeks, something like that. Yeah.

Why'd you stop?

It's very difficult. Yeah.

Why so?

Yeah, like, because I was doing— I was not working really, right? We're kind of in between shows. Yeah, we had a lot of downtime. And so my shows when I was at poker were just like here, like, it's kind of spread throughout the year, and I just had a lot of downtime in between. Um, a lot of just normal hours I could—

Did you say shows when you were in poker?

Yeah, we'd like— we'd have like World Series of Poker, then US Poker.

You weren't playing poker, you were doing the television.

What are you doing over there switching the cameras?

I thought you were a professional poker player. We were gonna have to go.

No, I'm a decent poker player. Um, I've won more tournaments than I've lost, but I've only played in like 4.

I'm gonna have you come back when our boys are here and play poker with them. They love to play.

I love playing.

Let's have a community—

this watch. Yeah, I won playing poker.

Dang, you're gonna sweep us.

What was funny— so the little side—

they play with quarters.

Hey, that's fine. Hey, we'll have a buy-in, but it's all—

it's all the same.

I was hosting an event for some guys that came into town, and I put the poker event together. Um, I ordered the watch as the prize, and then I was like, okay, here's how it's gonna go. We hired the dealers and just this fun event, right? And, uh, they're like, are you gonna play, right? I said, no, no, I'm hosting the event, like, you guys enjoy. And they're like, come on, you got to play. And I'm like, yeah, guys, I've read them. I've read them.

Oh boy, this is his broth.

Oh no, it isn't.

This is an important—

no, this is a, this is a chai tea. No honey.

Well, why don't you bring him some broth?

Oh, is it time?

Is it over?

Yeah. Ooh, I'll take some.

Strained it? Okay, we'll do that.

Refeed right on live television.

Bring, bring him a cup of broth too, please.

You didn't put honey in this, did you?

No.

Okay, thank you.

Wait for him to drink it and just start to—

Well, one of those little things you drop in the water.

He's lost 33, 34 pounds.

Oh, I don't doubt it.

It's— but he doesn't have that much to lose.

I was 262 pounds when I lost 33 pounds.

Yeah, no, 33 pounds from 190. I'm wearing Jonah's— I was wearing Jonah's pants.

Yeah, he put on Jonah's clothes. I mean, I was like, should I buy him some clothes? And I was like, no, he can fit in Jonah and Josiah's. I would rather save the money because he's going to— he's going to gain weight, right? Like, he's going to come back.

So, so, and, you know, instead of just sweeping somebody away and say, I could never do that, just put in your back pocket. They're not saying do it. It just is an idea that—

well, it's like, what is it? They say I can or I can't.

They're both true.

Like, it's just whatever you say. You say you can do it, you'll do it. Say you can't do it, you're not going to do it.

Yeah.

You know, and, and it's funny, I have people I work with in this project Reforged, which is this, this project we're doing to help first responders and military and the ladies that run it, like they'll say, I reject that. I've noticed that. Like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm going to die of COPD one day because of my lungs. Right? And she's like, I reject that. You know, she's like, she's even hearing me, my language. And she's like, I reject that for you. And I was like, kind of a funny statement, but it made me think, you know, and she's all yours. I'll say something like, I'm dying. Like, but it's more of a just a saying. She's like, I reject that, you know, because language is important.

Yeah.

You know, I don't consent. Yeah. Yeah. It's like she's like, I reject that for you. That's not what's going to happen. We're going to get this healed, you know, and just realize how powerful language can be. And we spent a week in Dallas Atlanta just a few weeks ago, or gosh, was that last week? And a lot of it's for— we're learning these, these— we're exploring these different counseling techniques to help these guys bring it through this. We tend to heal the physical, but we don't heal the mental along with it. I think it's a huge problem. And so as we pick these people to go through this program, we want it to be a mind, body, and soul healing, right? A full body. If your, your body's healed, but your mind is not, are you really healed? And so one of the things was like my brother's suicide, right? You know, I've carried that with me so heavily for 27 years. I've never been able to talk about on a podcast without getting upset. But I sit through there and we talked through it and like, I'm like, oh, you have guilt on this, you have anger on this. And I'm like, no, I don't. No, I don't. And we start talking through it and realizing you do. And we just, he just like reframed how I was thinking about it. It's like, Oh, I'm free of this, right? Of language.

Wow.

You know, it's just the power of just saying like, no, I have nothing to be guilty for. I have nothing to be angry for. He's helped me reframe it in my mind. And here I am talking about on a podcast and I'm completely free of it, right? Because of language. It wasn't like he gave me a pill or a shot or it wasn't 60 hours of counseling. It was just reframing how your mind is. So like you said, if you say, I can't do that, then you can't. End of story. So important not to say that. Yeah, it's such a good point.

So how did you practice that with your brother? How did you— you didn't just turn on a switch, did you?

I mean, it really felt like some time. It took about an hour. Yeah.

And just talking to somebody who was listening to what I'm saying.

And he's like, I hear a lot of guilt in what you're saying. I'm like, no, there's not. And then he would walk me through what he was hearing. I'm like, okay, yeah. And then I'm like, oh yeah, I guess I do feel guilty for not catching it before it happened. He's like, well, where were you at? I was like, I was at work. I was 21. He's like, well, what happened? I told him what happened. He's like, well, you were at work. You don't even live— like, at what point were you supposed to catch it?

Right?

I'm like, oh yeah, I guess you're right. I wasn't supposed to. And then he's like, and you're holding a lot of anger. You're holding a lot of anger. And, and I got upset. I'm like, yeah, you're right. You're right. Because the day before was his anniversary, which is all in God's timing. Like, I met this thing. For these other people in my— and it got caught. I got blindsided. It was my brother's anniversary of suicide. And, and so I'm like, I'm like, I'm leaving. I'm going home. I need to get out of here. And like, God knew I needed to be right there. And so I'm already very raw with it. And so I'm upset. I'm like, you're right. He did this. And now my whole family suffers for 27 years. He's like, he did what? What did he do to you? He's like, do you think if your brother knew what this did to you guys, he would still do it? I'm like, there's no way.

Right.

So then he didn't do it on purpose. What are you angry about? You know, and I even told him what was in the letters that he wrote. And he's like, he, he felt like a burden. He thought he was doing what was best for the family. He didn't set out to hurt people. And so I'm like, oh, again, just reframing it in my mind. The fact I can even talk about— this is a real test right now. Yeah, I haven't talked to him.

Most he's ever talked about it, like, yeah, usually I just—

my whole face just freezes up and I shut down, you know. And so But I'm like, I tried to— the day before I made a post about this is who Keith is. And I went to type, I forgive you. And I didn't realize like, that's not the right word, but made me really upset when I was trying to type it. And I just put, I love you. And I posted it. And I didn't realize that I forgive you is what made me upset. And so talking with him, it's like, I forgive you, Keith. I was like, 27 years. Hadn't forgiven my brother. You know, still, I feel that.

Yeah.

And it's natural to feel that. But I could talk about it, though. I'm not completely crippled by it. But I had been hanging on to unforgiveness, and it's been destroying me as a person.

Right.

You know? And so just to say that again, the words have power. And so to put that out there frees me of that. And so I'm just like, ooh, the power of language. Like, I don't think— at least I was not aware of how powerful our language is. And so, yeah, if you tell yourself you can't do something, you tell yourself you should be guilty, you tell yourself you should be angry, then you will be those things until you decide to tell yourself something else. So you—

it took you 27 years to write, I forgive you?

Yeah, I forgave my brother. I forgave my brother last week.

Wow.

What he did to us is the way I felt, you know what I mean? Because what I realized was it wasn't— it wasn't his intent, right? In my mind, I was subconsciously believing that, like, this pain he caused was intentional. If I go out there and I knock over your, your prized motorcycle, right? It's an accident, right? You can be like, if I go there and shove it over on purpose, we may have a little more to beef out with before we can get past it, right? But it was like, In the moment, he had what he had to work with. They always say people only have the resources and the knowledge they have at the moment. And in his mind, he was a burden. It was the best thing for our family for him not to be there anymore. But it wasn't to cause a lifetime of suffering. I chose a lifetime of suffering. So, but I don't anymore.

Chose 27 years. Do you regret that now?

I do regret it. But now I have such a powerful—

right.

Yeah. Now I can. Hopefully help people be free of things like that. I mean, we got guys that are the only sort of—

if you need me to, I can remove the cat.

She's fine. I, I'm alert.

Yes, they're too nice to the cat, and that's—

I know that.

Notice they didn't come to us, and because we're on a show, they just, they take advantage. They're like kids.

That's funny.

They know you're going to be extra nice.

We're just dealing with a lot of guys that, uh, a lot of survivor's guilt. I mean, mine's a lot of survivor's guilt too, you know.

Yeah.

We got guys that, you know, guy walked off in the Humvee, go use the bathroom, boom, Humvee gets hit. Only survivor.

Okay.

It's like, that's a lot to do.

So, so help me, I'm having a hard time forgiving somebody. How do I do it? And people in the audience?

Oh, I— it was talking through with someone who's very gifted. He's also a believer. Like, again, it helps for me. It's like we both have scripture to hold each other accountable to.

Are they in business? What's their name? I mean, they might—

so they are in business. It's, uh, Nathan and Christy. Christy Miller.

Okay.

Um, it's called Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

Okay.

And— but it's a lot bigger than that. And I know there's people who have taken that and just turned it into like life coaching and a whole bunch of other things. Okay. But at its core, it's reframing. It's mindset reframing. It's not therapy. It's not, um, psychiatry. It's not any of these medical things. It's not a medical practice at all. It's, it's mindset, but then adding the spiritual element into it. Um, it was, I think, I think it's hard to deal with stuff outside of having Jesus. I just personally think like step one, find Christ, because without something bigger than you, a lot of this doesn't matter. Um, you know, and I have a hope bigger than myself. And for me, like, if I, if I had to accept Christ's forgiveness, How can I accept what Christ has died on the cross for my sins if I can't forgive my brother for something he didn't even intentionally do to me? Right? So my unforgiveness is blocking me from the true blessing of the Lord. Right? So having somebody can walk you through that mindset. Also having a common ground in Scripture is helpful too. Because he's like, look, you haven't— like, we know that unforgiveness is— it has a physical— like, a lot of our emotions have physical effects on our body, and a lot of the ones I feel manifest in my chest. So I also have anxiety and claustrophobia and asthma. So my chest takes a lot of beating. Now that I've— this— but this brother thing I've dealt with, that's just one less thing affecting my lungs, right, in my chest. And so, um, But that's because, again, mind, like healing the soul, the, the mind and the body. You could get me physically healthy, but if my mind's broken still, it's not going to matter. But, but yeah, the NLP, to be fair, I went in there, I was like, this is BS. This stuff does not— it's some wacky stuff, but it's just because it's just talking. I'm like, talking doesn't work. Like, this isn't— it's never worked. I've been to therapy for, you know, oh, I know how you feel. Oh, no, you don't know how I feel. You know, they don't try to know how you feel. They're just trying to reframe things in your mind. And so 2 days I fought against it. I even told them I was going home. I was going to rent a car and leave. And for me, again, it's spiritual warfare because like I'm about to finally be free of something that's crippled me for 27 years and my body's just trying to get out of there. I've had this— they call it— we call it— what's it called? Secondary gain. So if we have secondary gain for the trauma, then we're not going to let it go until we deal with that secondary gain. And that secondary gain for me is like, I need to be guilty that I should have done something. Therefore, it's not my— you know, I I was carrying something that it became part of my identity. And a lot of, for like a lot of the guys in the military, it's survivor's guilt. Like they need to suffer because they're alive.

Wow.

That's secondary gain, right? I need to feel like crap. I need to be miserable because I didn't die on the battlefield like they did. And I'm speaking out of schoolwork. I've never experienced that.

Right.

I'm just talking about guys, talking about guys that have told me that, that secondary gain. So if you come in with secondary gain, you are going to flee from healing. So they were just— they put Christina, pulled me out on the porch and she's like, what's going on? And she's like, she just called BS on me. And I had this— I've had this feeling that I don't have long left. And so because of my lungs right now, I've been in this panic because I delayed her lifelong dream and now I'm having these lung issues and I need to get this built before I die. You know, so she's set, which is now fueling all this anger and anxiety of anybody that comes after my time. So I was getting that fuel. Why? I need to get out. I need to get home. I need to get this stuff built. Now, these are all my quitting mind, right? The quitting mind's kicking in. I need to get home. I don't want to push through this pain. My brother just— my brother's anniversary, my brother dying. I need to be with my wife. You know, all these reasons. And I was telling her, and I finally admitted, I was like, look, I don't feel like I have long left. And she's like, I 100% reject that, you know? And she's like, what? The part that you need the most is going to happen tomorrow. She's like, look, she's like, you'll stay tomorrow. She's like, I will rent the car. I will drive you back if you need. But if you'll stay tomorrow, because I think tomorrow's the part of this that we want you to see. And I hadn't heard of secondary gain at that point. They hadn't even taught it yet. And so I agreed to stay. And the next day is when all this happened. And they're like— and I still even know, I still didn't even know because I sat with Nathan that morning and worked through everything. And later that day, they're teaching. I'm doing much better now. Actually, this is kind of fun and it's interesting. And he's like, this is secondary gain. And he explains it. And I was just like, oh, that's just what I went through. And he's like, yeah. And so it's in the book. You know what I mean? So it wasn't even like they made it up. It's like they called it out and I just lived it. And so it's hard for me to look at that and say, and this is just, this is just woo-woo talk therapy. It's like, oh, there's again, but it's not. They're doing it to you. It's something you have to do inside yourself. But I guess for—

hey, this— we might have to put it outside. This is a good point. I want to dig it. We're going to take a real quick Stay with us because we're gonna, we're gonna make it. I'm gonna drink, I'm gonna actually have food for calories. That's the first time in 28 and a half days.

Wow.

Wait, so you're breaking your fast now?

Yeah, I'm gonna break it right now, but I wanna, I wanna say this. We're gonna get back to that. I want to talk more about her reaction and how she was dealing with this, and then how an invisible Jesus can actually help you during a time like this.

Okay.

An invisible, untouchable, but we're going to say the camera while you come. Oh, we can't get the cat out. That cat is taking advantage like a kid.

Yeah.

Okay. I got to vlog this too, you know, so I'm going to try to vlog and podcast at the same time. All right. We are in the middle of a podcast. Lily brought me my lamb stock. I didn't think I was having it till after, but I'm not going to refuse. I'm also going to use this as the plug for our sponsor. Redmond's. Hopefully Lily didn't put any salt in it yet.

If she did, it was clearly Redmond's.

Okay, yeah, definitely. We buy it by the 25-pound bag, and then we have these shakers. Here's the hack: you gotta have these shakers everywhere.

Everywhere.

Yeah, everywhere. And 3 survive, and there's one, you know, one on the table, one, one by the kitchen, one on the—

yeah.

Anyway, let's see if it has— here we go, breaking the fast. You sure this is not the quitting mind?

No, I'm not calling this the quitting mind right now.

Oh man.

He does not quit easily.

Now the tea didn't do that for me.

Imagine a guy that's fasted 4 days telling you 28 days is the quitting mind.

I know, right?

Well, he's very easily afraid of quitting. I'm not a quitter. He's not a quitter. Like, we are not quitters. We hang on too long.

Same here. I think we do it too long, honestly. And as a sponsor of this show, Redmond's has given you all 15% off if you use the coupon code A, capital A, capital P, L, U, S. So APLUS, capital APLUS at redmonds.com. I'll leave the link for that down in the description. Go get yourself 15% off.

I don't know if we did this too long, but no, I think this was good. This is exactly what your body needs. Let's start. Words matter, you know, like, yeah, you've done it as, as you should, you know what I mean? Like, this is what your body needed. You've got— you've gained great healing, deep healing, and that's what we're claiming, right?

Your body has the power to heal itself.

It does, Justin.

Oh my gosh.

Is that good?

Best broth you've ever had?

Never going to complain about broth again.

This is what he says.

Never going to complain about food again.

You know when you say the words, I'm starving, and you haven't had food in 4 hours?

Yeah, I know, right?

How untrue that is.

Oh, my ass. My bad habit was eating—

I need to eat back.

Oh, me too.

I need to quit after shopping.

I'm going to go right back in.

Do not jump on people.

Oh, it's over there. That door's open.

4 hours before bed, you're not supposed to eat. But I get bored, I get depressed. I just want to eat something.

That's what gets me is the—

I'm going to say to myself, dude, you didn't eat for 28 days. You can live 12 acres.

That's right. It's so funny because I often don't want to eat after dinner. Like, I feel like I get satiated enough. Occasionally I'm like, I really do wish I had— like, I could eat something right now. Yeah, but he's like, how do you do it? I'm like, I just don't eat. Like, it's not that hard.

This is great. Um, the, uh, y'all feel free to keep talking.

Oh no, we don't need that.

The other thing a lot of people are asking me, well, you don't eat nothing? No, just electrolytes, sunshine, and sleep. Those were my feeding. Sunshine. So half a teaspoon of Redmond's in the half a gallon of warm water. I even— dude, I didn't even drink cold water during this.

That's a temp water, right?

You're not supposed to.

Great for you.

So I'm trying to tell him that, but he doesn't want to believe it.

I'm on it.

We bought an ice maker and had it installed in our home.

I don't think I'm doing that ice no more.

Oh, great. Now we have an ice maker.

Well, it's good for the bath, for the cold plunges. We can sell our $10,000 cold plunge. And then that's a magnesium. That's a half a teaspoon. And then a half a teaspoon of, um, uh, this is a mix of minerals. Yeah, it's a mineral mix, so it's got calcium, iodine, magnesium, zinc, selenium, etc., etc. And I kind of went off and on on this with my fast. I was kind of wondering if it was affecting my stomach. You can have bowel movements because it's excreting minerals and you don't really want to do that on long fast. And then one other thing, can you guess? Mm, potassium.

Potassium.

I don't know, would creatine count as calories? Does that have calories?

I think so.

I don't think it does.

I think creatine's one of those.

I would add creatine normally.

Yeah, one of those two things that everybody should be taking.

And then it tastes like— now this is a weird description. It tastes like it kind of wants to be seawater. It kind of wants to be milk. Milk kind of has a milky texture because of the calcium.

Okay, did you sip on that all day?

Yeah, so I'll keep sipping on that all day. Well, thank you, Redmond's, for sponsoring the podcast. We really use it. Do you all use Redmond's?

I like Redmond's salt.

Okay, we'll give you one.

Yeah, it's American product.

Yeah, low lead, has naturally occurring lead, which I imagine salt would, so we aren't too worried about it. But, um, it's pretty clean in those tests. All right, so back to the deep stuff.

Yeah, right.

What were you thinking during all this, Mona?

He— so he was out of town, and it was right after he had had his whole, like, the health scare part where he's, you know, in a hyperbaric chamber and thinking that he's gonna die and all that kind of stuff. So it's—

I'm still pretty sure I'm gonna die.

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's never good when this kind of stuff happens.

What do you mean? You're still sure? No, the story or right now?

In my mind, because my lifelong asthma, I mean, I got that really bad lung infection from the nasty dust we were breathing in Swannanoa that— because I almost died at 5 from pneumonia or around that time and just have asthma. So it's just I'm one bad sickness away from dying and I got COVID, this new COVID that went around. And it hit my lungs really hard and I didn't realize it, but I was like at 80, high 80s oxygen.

Oh, wow.

Just during the day with my heart rate at 120 beats per minute to maintain it. And I— this COVID, I was feeling up and down. I finally— I was testing negative the whole time. And so I was basically over the COVID but the lung part had set in.

Yeah.

And I didn't realize it. I got on an airplane. That, you know, it's effectively 10,000 feet, which crashed my O2, which upped my heart rate. I'm a big guy, starts depleting my oxygen even more. I happened just by the grace of God to be going to Dallas where my doctor is, Dr. Matt Chalmers. I was going there for Rise Up Kings to do an event.

Right.

And I was like, I don't feel good, but at least I can go. Yeah.

Yeah.

And so I was like, at least I can do the non-physical parts. Right. And I text him on the plane. I'm like, I'm in bad shape. He's like, come straight. I'll open up the office. I mean, again, a doctor I can text. Who will open up his office. I can go in and get hyperbaric oxygen, quinine, all the things I need to get healthy. If I'd gone into a standard— if I'd been going to Indianapolis, I'd have been in the ER. Who knows what would have happened, right? Right. So I'd just be another statistic, probably. So again, like in my mind, like I'm just one sickness with my lungs away from not making it. And I just had the proof of it that week, you know? So Well, we're going with—

so he— that all happened in Dallas. He got healed up physically. But I'm like, all this I'm getting from, you know, a distance, right? Not, not being able to be there. And then he flies to Atlanta for the next part of the trip. And that's when all this, like, emotional stuff happens.

And I'm also texting like, this is stupid, this is boring.

And the thing is with him, like, whenever he gets that way because of his, like, ADD and stuff, if he's bored, he's done. And I'm like, you're a grown man. Like, we try to teach our children it's okay to be bored. Like, boredom is a good thing. But then here you are, a grown man, like, I'm bored, I'm not going to stay. So I'm doing the, like, tough love on the other end. Like, it's okay to be bored. Like, you need to be there for these men. Like, you know, that kind of, like, tough love, like, do not come home kind of thing. And then do not come home. Like, you know, and so then the next day I'm, like, complaining again.

And she's like, sounds like you're exactly where you need to be.

Right. Well, and I mean, it was radio silence for a while. And I'm like, okay, either, either he got on the road or he's actually enjoying himself and learning something. And so when I checked in on him, he told me all of that. And that's where I was just like, you know, thank you, Lord, for keeping him there because this is exactly what he needed. Because I mean, I've— I never met his brother. His brother killed himself before we got together. And so I just know his, you know, the day that he died and his birthday are hard days for him, but he doesn't want to ever talk about it. So like from that, and I've always encouraged him, I think I finally put it on the calendar of like, talk about it, you'll get over it, right? Those, those days, we just need to— you need to take them as a like like a family day, like a more somber day, like let's do what is good for your soul on that day. But he just doesn't ever want to do it. And there's days sometimes when he was really busy and it happened, he wouldn't realize until almost evening that it was that day. And that's always been the strategy of like having him cope with it is like, just don't talk about it. And I know— Yeah. And I know that's not a healthy—

So the thing is that day, to be fair, I spend my entire last 27 years distracting myself. That's why I stay so busy.

Yeah.

So all over the place.

Right.

So this definitely seems like a hopefully a turning point for him that now going forward, those days can be like just a remembrance of him in a good way, not a keep busy, don't talk about it, stuff it kind of day where, you know, the rest of us kind of have to tiptoe of like, we want to see if Dad's okay, but we don't want to like trigger the memory for him.

And then like, how am I supposed to be working with these men that we're going to bring through Project Reforge? Like, hey, brother, you know, you need to get over this. You're like, yeah, you too.

You know, you first.

Yeah, you first. And now because in my mind, it was nothing I could ever get over. It's a lifetime sentence. And now I understand, like, oh, these other people that don't get over it, they're in the same boat. You know, we've decided we're going to suffer this for the rest of our lives, you know? But yeah, it was just— it was such a—

yeah, it was definitely a God thing to have him where he was.

Yeah. And because I almost didn't go to that because I'd just been sick. Like, I had all the reason in the world not to go.

Right.

But I was like, well, we're just sitting in a room, you know, talking. I can do that. And so I just, I just went and it was like I had Rise Up Kings to NLP training and all this coaching stuff to what did I just do? Salt and Light to here. So it's like whole 2-week tour. I'm like, well, I'm already traveling. I might as well just stay locked in because I've already got these flights booked and But I'm glad I did because, like, I mean, if I hadn't gone, like, we wouldn't even be able to have this conversation. And who knows? Again, like, even when I just even talked about my brother in this, I did a thing on Rise Up Kings. I got upset talking about my brother and I was like, you know, when you kill yourself, you don't, you don't end the pain for you, end the pain for you, but you pass it on to your family. Right. And that just went super viral. And so many people reach out to me and say, like, look, I'm there. And that, like, that made me go find help. I mean, that's powerful. Like, somebody tells you they were thinking about— mom of 3 messaged me and was like, I'm going to not do it for my kids. I'm going to get help. I'm like, oof, you know? So now I can speak from the side of like, there's power over on the survivor side too. Like, you don't have to be like me. You know, you can also heal from that damage. So he does. Transfer the pain. But I— it's not a lifetime sentence, right? It's something you grieve and you move on. I mean, remember, so this is all very fresh to me. I'm just still processing a lot of this.

So what is the practical for people listening? Is it just saying out loud, I forgive you? Is it writing it down?

I think it's going to be a little different for everyone. I think finding someone to walk through it with you.

Okay.

So I don't know that because I don't hear myself speak. You do, but you don't.

And one of these trained people, not just some.

Yeah. I mean, honestly, I probably could have done well just talking to my wife about it.

Okay.

You know, like you could have even talked. I could have talked about it. And then again, for me, it's so hard for me to give advice outside of having Christ, right? Because like for me, I'm like, get in scripture, start reading scripture. I don't believe in the— I don't believe in God. Great, read scripture and see what happens, right? Like, you don't— I don't believe in Jesus. I'm not gonna make you believe in Jesus. Go read the living word of God and see what happens. Go read it 4 days a week for a month and just see what happens.

And the Lord brought like this, you know, fancy NLP doctor like through just circumstances. But I truly believe that like, you know, if you're, if you're in the word and you know the Lord and you're seeking him and this is what you're struggling with, like the Lord will bring the person that will help you with it, whether it's a pastor, a friend, a counselor, you know, traditional counselor, because we're all so different. Right? We're going to process differently. But the Lord— I think what we can all say is that the Lord would want you free of that. And so it's like, pursue the freedom in whatever way the Lord is going to bring that to you.

And for me, it was Nathan Rossi and Christy Miller, their NLP program. It gave me the tools I needed, but they're believers on top of it. So it's like, I can't just say go find an NLP practitioner because it's such a it could just end up being a life coach. It's like, try harder, you know, like this stuff doesn't help. So I don't— I can't speak for every person out there.

That's—

I just— this worked for me, but it worked for me because of my belief in God.

For you, it's helpful to read the scriptures?

Yeah.

How so? Because it's not necessarily related.

So for me, I've just started doing this. Nathan, again, Nathan, who's been helping me, He challenged all of us in Project Reforged to read the Bible 4 times a week, whether you believe in Christ or not, because there's actually science out there that says people, whether they believe in God or not, that read the Bible 4 times a week have a noticeable improvement in quality of life.

Okay.

2, 1, almost no difference. 3 made some difference before. Was the really— that every other day cadence is really what people notice the most. And so now I got the Bible app on my phone, or when I'm traveling, I'll listen to scripture, or I'll listen to somebody talk about scripture. Um, like, I'll just jump into, like, John Piper talking about Romans, you know, and I'll listen to that. But I'm in scripture now every other day.

Huh, not heavy at all.

You started right at the base, at the top.

But for me, like, when I, when I found Christ for the first time, like, she had been praying for me to go to church. I just woke up one day and I was like, hey, can I go to church with you? And I'd gone to church my whole life. I just stopped going, especially after my brother had stopped going. And, um, I went in and they were just preaching the Gospel of Luke. And I sat there, I don't know how many weeks, and I was just like, I feel bad for everybody else in church because like clearly he's talking to me. And so I, I heard the gospel for the first time in like my 20s, truly hearing the gospel, not a vengeful God who has all these rules that you have to try to follow to get to heaven, but a God who loves you as you are and asks you to be more like him and gives you the Holy Spirit to guide you. And, and understands that you're imperfect, right? But because of who he is, you turn away from sin. It's a lot easier than— that's a much easier burden than to think, I need to be perfect so I can get into heaven. And it becomes less of a fear of hell, more of a love of God. And so again, that was scripture. He wasn't preaching. He was reading through Luke and then preaching on it. But he was reading. It was the scripture that was moving me. It was the verses that truly revealed to me what our calling is in Christ. And so when you, if you just open the book, it's the living word of God. Again, this, the study doesn't look at whether people are Christians. They just look at people who read the Bible 4 times a week, and they saw a noticeable improvement. So I had asked one of these people that had messaged me, like, what can I do? I said, hey, let's just, just start by getting in, just getting in the word 4 times a week and see how you feel. And they messaged me back 2 weeks later, like, this has been amazing. Like I've been— so much things have been revealed to me. I used to be a Christian and, and now it's rekindling my faith again, which is helping them with these suicidal thoughts. So all that to say, it's like, to me, like, I don't know that any of this works for me, especially outside of having that scriptural base. And being in the Word on a regular basis has been very good for me. I feel like I'm actually— Charlie— losing Charlie Kirk inspired me to become as versed in the scriptures he was. Like, when I— because I really went back and watched him after that happened. I've always seen clips, right? You see the clips. I went back and watched him speak. I was like, oh my goodness, this is a man who knows the Bible inside and out. And I was like, you know what, I want to, I want to know scripture like that to help people. And so, but yeah, all that to say, scripture, Plus, you know, Nathan and Christy also being believers. I mean, they prayed over me in April, barely met them for the first time. And I was having all this. I thought I had heart trouble and I was going to get a heart scan, but I was just having a crazy amount of anxiety. I just quit Beast. I just kind of stopped doing Hurt. So my life went from like crazy to— and like all this kind of snapback anxiety came in and they prayed over me and just prayed for peace. He's like, they kept saying, Lord, give him peace. Lord, give him peace. I felt that grip on my heart just go away and it hasn't been back, you know? So it's like power of prayer. So I wish I could sit here and say there's something in this, this training that's going to fix everything. But like, our bodies have the power to heal, right? They're created to heal. We just have to give— get things out of the way. To let that happen. Nobody from outside is going to, to heal you. I mean, you stitch up a wound or something, but especially mentally, what I realize is like, if the desire is not there to heal, then you won't heal, right? That secondary gain idea, like, I'm going to hang on to this. No amount of talk therapy, if I don't myself want to give it up, you're not going to.

Yeah, I sat with Rebecca the other night saying, because I went into this fast testing that the body has the power to heal itself. Well, there's no better way to test it than to give it nothing but water. And it has crazy healing properties. I mean, within 36 hours, my muscle stiffness is gone. My joint pains are gone. Sure, it didn't knock out the psoriasis, but it doesn't itch anymore.

Yeah, this time.

And it may take longer. You know, it's been there 10 years. I'm not going to heal it in 28 days.

Sessions of fasting.

I need to tell Rebecca, and I told her, I said, I'm healed. I'm healed after this. I'm better off than most people of my age. I'm active.

So what?

My crotch itches.

There's a lot worse things.

There's a lot worse things.

We didn't know you were going to hear that, Sean. Mona's like, maybe I don't want to come on.

Oh my gosh, I have this rash and it itches and, uh, but I'm healed in every other spot. I mean, when the doctor went through all the other possible symptoms and things that you could be going through, it's like, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.

Well, and even to like asking you, but you have to claim it.

I feel sick. I feel like I have Lyme disease, but I need to say, I don't got Lyme disease. Or I need to say, my body's put that—

put it to rest.

Son of a B in a remission. It's not getting to me. With your lungs, it's not going to get you. You don't have to. You don't. It was just like with our kids. I managed somehow to do it with my kids. I said, we're not opting into this teenagers have to rebel.

That's right.

We're not opting into that. We are going to be a family. I'm not opting into kicking them out at 18. We can all stay around. That's going to be our family culture. We need to make it a healing culture.

Yeah.

Where—

well, your body—

I appreciate you saying that.

What you say, you know. So that's— I've always said like I was diagnosed with something, not that I have.

Yeah. Yeah. One thing the Bible said— we used to do this back in our radical days— the Bible says the earth is the Lord's and all that's in it. Remember this stage? I stopped saying ours. We named our car the Precious so that we didn't have to say our car. We just would say that. Try catching yourself on that.

Oh yeah.

You claim so many things all day and to try to not to do that is an act of, I guess, worship or acknowledgement or whatever, just to remember that the earth is the Lord's and all that's in it. So why are we worried?

Yeah, that's— for me it's like we just are stewards of the day.

We're just hired.

We don't know.

We're hired hands. We're working by the hour. Who do we care? We're just a little extra.

Yeah, I'm with you. And even just like, like, I would love to take credit for my story, right? It's like, it's a cool story. And I go, but God made my life so— like, if I tried to take credit for this stuff, how did you figure this out? I'm like, well, phone rang and I picked it up. Like, you know what I mean? Like, I don't have— there's no way for me to take glory. You know, it's just such a— everything's just such a God thing. Like, oh, well, I knew I was going to get sick on the airplane, so I just planned myself a trip to Dallas. Like, no, I just happened to be going to Dallas. My doctor just had— it's like, like, I just have to give glory to the Lord because the story is just— otherwise it just looks silly, you know? So I'm with you on that. It's just like this steward the day, and it's not even—

it happened like the Lord orchestrated that.

Yeah, it wasn't a chance.

Yeah.

You know, I'd flown to any other city that day, I'd probably be dead. I really firmly believe that. The way my oxygen was crashing and the way the hospitals want to ventilate everyone.

Yeah.

And I could breathe just fine. I could breathe. But I wasn't processing oxygen. So why?

Interesting.

You know, but so what do you tell yourself now? What are you telling yourself now with your brother and with your health?

Well, my concern is that they're going to pray my lungs back into health and I'm going to get stem cells and they're going to be like, hey, your lungs are fine. You know, so be careful, guys. You guys are going to heal me before they get there. But hey, but I'll be healed.

You know, did you know that grief is held in your lungs?

That's what they told me.

That's interesting.

Yeah.

And so you're going to start healing now?

100%.

You've let that go.

Yeah. And there's a lot of stuff in my life I've had grief over. Now, my brother just happened to be the, the largest, the top of the pile. So, but yeah, it's like, how can my lungs heal when everything I carry in my lungs? And so, but yeah, it's even Dr. Matt who I went and saw, Matt Chalmers. He's just like, your body has the power to heal. He goes, I don't heal you. Yeah, H-bot doesn't heal you. Quinine doesn't heal you. It just gives your body the ability to heal. And if you think you're sick, you are. You know, it's like, I'm this, I'm that. I have asthma, you know. No, I've been diagnosed with asthma, like you said. And there's a lot of technology that can heal that. But if I go into it, like in this much more healthy state, how much more effective will that treatment be? You know, Black Rifle Coffee, one of the guys there, his dad got some stem cells and just like doesn't even use an inhaler anymore. Like, I've never not had to have an inhaler with me. And so there's a lot of hope in that. And again, like, God, we're using stem cells. God created stem cells, right? This is like a natural part of the body. We've just learned the technology to help heal people. And it's interesting that I have to go to Tijuana to do it. You know, I feel like everything in the States, if any kind of healing modality, is not allowed, right?

Right. There's a lot of people who are, uh, very cautious or nervous about it. You know, like with Justin and the fasting, people are like, oh, I'm so afraid, I'm so— you know, like really putting their fear out about it.

And I'm like, but are we not afraid about like eating while they're drinking a Diet Coke?

Like, yeah, why don't we worry about that and not not be fearful of the body. Like, this is, this is a healing modality. Like, this is not crazy.

Too fast, right?

Like, there's science to back it too.

Yeah, it's like there's so much information out there and people are like so afraid. And I'm like, but why don't we trust our bodies as well? Like, you know what I mean?

There's just so much fear. There's no money in fasting either. That's right. It's going to be a government problem, but it's also going to be people mindset problems. You ever see the Who Killed the Electric Car? It wasn't just the government, it wasn't just the car companies, it was the consumers too, not adapting it, right? So there's these three storms going into health too. Yeah, we can't just blame the government, right? Because it's the people and their mindset too, and how much they like their Coke.

Well, that's what— if somebody asked me today, I can't remember, we were talking about that, why don't you think that happens? I said, because ultimately no one cares. Yeah, no one cares. And like, I know for one thing we're not supposed to do, we're not supposed to be in a calorie surplus every day.

No, that's so bad for your body. You never get—

when I started going and losing weight and doing carnivore and doing keto and all this stuff, no one ever talked about my diet when I was shoveling pizza and Doritos, right? I never said a word. No, that carnivore, I don't heard that.

Oh, you don't get your 5.

Let me go back to eating pizza.

Oh my God, you're gonna have cholesterol, right?

Watch your cholesterol. I don't know, but I'm not diabetic anymore.

Right, right.

I mean, I'm pre-diabetic.

Well, and I think that's one thing that we forget. Like, we live in a modern world and our bodies were not created to live in this way.

Yeah.

No.

Like, we weren't. And I was even reading something about the electricity, when electricity was discovered. I mean, it's a great discovery. I'm not gonna go no electricity.

We love the grid.

Yes, but like talking about the non-native EMFs and all this stuff. And I'm like, oh wow, you know, like another rabbit hole to go down.

Radio and radio waves. Of course radio is good. Of course internet is good. But everything has a blessing and a curse.

So I don't know. I say all that to say is like, let's start. I think questioning everything is so good. I think that is— that's something that I feel like in the last year Justin and I have— I mean, it's pretty much been our whole adult lives. We— I feel like we question everything. Yeah.

Our bodies are so primal. What I just did is absolutely ridiculous. It's just crazy. But it's not in the grand historical scheme of things. If you read books, A Long Walk to Water— my friend was reading this book about— people are doing this now and it's not their choice. So what happened was what you said, you know, when you first go on this fast, even if it's missed one meal or two, your body gets into primal mode and it's like, you better hunt. You better go gather, get going. Uh, it gets you going. And your body is built to store fat. Oh yeah. We shouldn't curse our body for, oh, you, you gain weight, so you gain weight so easy. We should thank it. This is a wonderful thing. It stores fat wonderfully and it burns it very efficiently. That's why you are quick to gain weight and it's hard to lose it.

Yeah, we just lost those.

That's a wonderful benefit.

Yeah, we lost those seasons of cold. Less, right? We used to— the winter would thin you out.

Yeah, actually, actually, I— yes. So you gain weight in the summer because it's the carbs of fruit. You'd have all these berries, and then you do lean out in the winter because all of that—

that's your moment of ketosis. Yes, natural autophagy.

Yeah, you're going to be fasting. You're going to be— I read this book. Oh, I wish I could remember the name of it. It was about the Native Americans the Sioux, I think, they would hunt and they would have these baskets. And if they would fill up these baskets with their cured meats, they would be— or smoked, whatever they did, they would be safe in the winter and they would know that. So they'd fill these baskets and all winter they're just chilling in the teepee and just eating this beef jerky. And just resting and telling stories and smoking their pipes and resting. And it's just like, oh my God, I kind of envy that.

Yeah. We've talked about doing that. Just seeing that, like eating, like eating seasonally and working seasonally. Like when we're, you know, he's out there in 100-degree weather brush hogging. He's like, it's not meant to be this way. It's like, you know, when it's—

the animals should be brush hogging, not me.

Right.

You know, I'm enough animals.

Or you're just eating like the things that are available, like this, like you said, the summer, it's like, that's what the carbs are, the fruits are. But then, you know, you're meat heavy and more in ketosis in the winter. It's like, it's almost easier to live that way. It's— we're so used to comfort that we don't because we want it year-round.

You know what makes it hard? Nobody else is doing it.

That's true.

This lifestyle that Rebecca and I live, it's homesteading, and you guys are getting into— it's hard. It's a very hard lifestyle. I was, I was separating butter last night at 8:30, and I wanted to be in the bed.

Yeah.

Uh, I, I, I, uh, put away broth. I mean, I processed broth. I, I rendered lard. Milk the cow in the morning. It's hard. It never ends. It's hard. And nobody else is doing it. I see people just going to the grocery store and that looks easy.

It's hard.

It's a hit. It's the biggest lie at the grocery store because you had to work and you had to be away from your family to work to get that money.

Traded time just like I did for your food, right? And your food's garbage.

I know that's the thing about the grocery store is that like the food is just not as um, mineral-rich, you know, 85%, um, a tomato ripened vine— a tomato ripened on the vine. Sorry, I'm 46 now, my brain doesn't work as good as it used to. Sounds like compared to like the homegrown, you know, the homegrown to the, um—

sounds like she hits me when I suggest fasting.

Homegrown to a tomato grocery store tomato, like 85% less minerals. 85%. That's a lot.

Thing is, is like, so if the minerals are not in the ground, they won't be in the vegetable, right? Vegetables can't create magnesium, right?

Whatever.

So the soil has been stripped of minerals. There will be no minerals in your food. I know it's hollow food. It's calories and no nutrition.

And, you know, here we don't really have a lot of cornfields. We have tomato fields. And year after year after year, they're just putting tomatoes on it. Peppers, and they're— I never see them putting anything on it to give it back, give back to it, you know what I mean? And so I'm just like, oh.

And then when you monocrop, you have a pest that breaks out. Yeah.

And then they're spraying.

Spray, because you have no choice.

Yeah.

Lose everything or spray.

Yeah. Well, and some of those tomato fields, we can segue into Helene, they were, you know, right by King Creek, and it I'm pretty sure it's pretty toxic.

They're already growing back.

They're growing back and I'm like—

They already have replanted them.

I would never thought of that.

You're right. You would not want to tell we breathe.

I know. And so I'm like, you know, I mean, I want to, you know, segue into Helene and like what you experienced.

Oh, yeah.

One thought before we get into Helene. I want to go to Helene. One thought. I just go, go, go on this rant. I feel like I learned it during this fast. I'm thinking, am I sensitive to food, right? So I did a 36-hour fast, my pains went away. I came off of it, it just all came flaring back. And I said, oh God, it must be something I ate. Thank you, body, for showing me. And so I'm even sus of meat even. And but I'm out there doing my chores. I'm moving the cows. I'm seeing the cows. I'm hungry for them. They're eating. They're eating this grass. Yeah. If you look at that garden, it's not natural. That garden, if I left it, will not thrive. It will not be there. It will soon be gone.

Oh, yeah.

But those cows, if you let them loose, they're going to be happier than ever.

Easiest thing on the farm.

Animals are natural. They ruminate and are also natural. I'm even suss of the chickens and pigs because it takes so much grain.

Yeah.

And I'm moving them off of grain. But they— it's natural. I'm sorry, you garden vegetarians. It's not natural. It's not natural.

Vegetables are nature's nutrition food.

Yeah.

Some fruit on season. You could go up to Pisgah and for 2 to 3 weeks the blueberries are in. That's natural. Gorge. Have your diarrhea. Enjoy yourself. I would if I was a Cherokee Indian. I'm sure it happens.

We've got—

we've got— preserve what you can. Just go to town. Just go to town.

Get those.

It's worth it. It's worth it after all that meat.

The back of our property, we have like, I don't know how many metric tons of muscadine grapes that are growing.

Oh wow.

You know, you just eat them off the ground, they're so sweet. Yeah, like right now, like August, September, we could have just been— I mean, we couldn't even have eaten all the grapes that grow. Yeah, yeah. I just think about that, like, but they're there, they're gone, right? It's just that moment. So it's interesting you guys have the same thing up here with the blueberries.

Yeah. And, and the doctor we saw, they're very vegetarian, 100% plant-based. I know, they don't even do— they do SOS, no salt, no oil. So not even olive oil. No salt, no oil, and no sugar. I get the no sugar, but, um, they—

the way they go, and it's great. I'm happy for them.

For breaking the fast, it's fruit smoothies or fruit juice.

You start with juice and then fruit juice, and then you go to salad. I'm like, without any—

raw salad is not easy to digest.

Well, he was saying cook it, so he's not talking about like cooked salad.

He's not—

just put it on my tombstone.

He's talking about like spinach or like a green, all the high-oxidant things.

And then third or fourth, grains. It was grains and then beans. And so if you look at that though, for Rebecca and I to grow— first of all, fruit is hardest Yes. To grow.

Yes.

And takes a lot. And then to grow grains and then beans, you can't do that. That's not sustainable. If you look at it from a natural, sustainable, I'm going to grow my own food way, you've got to grow meat. You don't even burn the calorie— the tending the garden takes more calories than you get from it. Yeah. The garden has to be a garnish, tomato sauce for the Oh, not a bulldozer, a dump truck.

Dump truck. How do you need help? What do you—

Yeah, what do you need? How can I help? And so we were up here and I saw you guys had had a lot of damage as well. Also, we're just a big fan of the channel, right? So we were aware of you guys. Like, she's like, I can't believe you're Justin Rhodes.

Yeah. Oh my gosh. Oh, really? Why?

Because I mean, well, because I've been a fan for a really long time. And then when he's telling me that, like, your property, like, that was one of the things I miss most about Oklahoma is my creek. And all of a sudden he's with a video with him in the background.

And that video did rise like, how beautiful.

Yeah, that was just a get to me.

I'm like, you're lucky roads are closed or I'd be going up there. Talk about mindset. He shifted my mindset because you come up here and you're, you're, you're vlogging like, and this is soon after the disaster, like you're at some resort and you're showing the little— this was never there. You showed this little 1-foot waterfall feature and I'm kind of looking at it like it ripped through here and we're torn up, you know, whole creek straightened out. Yeah. And you're like, oh, look how beautiful.

And, you know, you're, you're on this—

you're, you're, you got this side of the creek in your back background. That's beautiful. Not this side. Yeah, I did all the work.

Yeah, yeah.

Changed my whole mindset. Yeah, I teared up when I remember that.

It was really, it was really powerful, but it was just, that was just what I was experiencing.

Yeah.

Because again, the grass is always greener, you know. Just come up and just like, you guys are still so blessed. Yeah. You know, in the midst of all this.

Anyway, we were very blessed.

And I don't like to look at— a lot of people were like, we didn't know what had happened, we were just putting out our content, right? And it was bad what happened to us, no doubt. It's been— it'll be $100,000 worth of work if you count, you know, the true cost of our machines doing all this. That's right. But people would get on there and comment, people have died. Well, I didn't know that. Yeah.

And you didn't.

And, and, but we didn't just—

never said like, oh, we're in such dire straits. We were just like, this is what we're going through. When you have something like that rip through, like, I think back, like, we were just so distraught from it because it was like tearing up all these years of work that we've put in and money.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's like just going away.

And that is that the bigger piece is I don't want to bounce off somebody who's down and find my joy there. I want to suffer with them too.

Of course.

Oh, they had a lost loved one. Yeah, that's terrible. I want to suffer with them, not bounce off of them and say, like, oh, I'm so joyful. I didn't have anybody die. Yeah, I'm happy. Yeah, I don't want to use them for that.

Of course. Of course. Well, that was like, they talk about that loss because it is your life that's taken. It's the hours of your life. Like, I built a greenhouse, spent all this time, all this work into it. And what was it? A month later, a tornado just leveled it. I mean, it took, it took my life force, hundreds of hours of my life that I used and deleted that from existence. Like, I lost that life. Like, it's gone. I will never get those hours of my life back. And that it was just taken in a moment. And so I can relate with that feeling of like, and there goes all that money, the time I spent earning that money, you know? No, but in your reality is your reality. I mean, you can't change the fact that no one was killed. I mean, that's great.

Thank God.

But you're still recovering. It's still a different story.

But right.

It just— yeah, I mean, there's people who are a 77-year-old couple that lost everything. They make $700 a month. Wow. How do they recover? People stepped up and they did. We made it happen.

How do they recover, Sean, when they have a mortgage on a house that's gone and they have to rebuild another house?

Uh, bankruptcy.

Okay.

Yeah.

I mean, and then you can't get a loan for 7 more years.

Well, right. And so you're renting.

It's terrible.

It's a long road. Yeah.

That makes me so very sad.

A lot of people have dislocated.

They— what happens when your land's gone? You got to experience part of this.

Yeah.

But what do you do if that was the only land we owned?

Our land is gone. I mean, the top 6—

what happens if that was the the only landline. It's gone.

And there are those— I've seen those here. I've seen those over at the— is it Green River? Where'd we go? It was hit real bad. I would go— I'd take CRR over there.

Yeah, it's, uh, Big Hungry.

Big Hungry. Yeah, I mean, houses were moved, like, just like 6 inches.

So like just enough to like really mess you up.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So where like the whole house is still there, but it's You can't live in it. Yeah, it's not livable.

And something I recognized early on, one reason I connected with you and just my background in social media is that the story wasn't being told. Like, people were not seeing what was actually going on up here. And I just figured the more people we get talking about it, the more awareness, the more money will come into the area.

Right.

That's true.

It was super true. I mean, we raised millions of dollars because I was sometimes the only— I was like one of the first people to report from Chimney Rock. Everybody was saying, no, it's going to be a lithium mine. And I'm like, no, these are people trying to rebuild. People weren't donating money because the rumor was, why would you give money?

That wasn't true.

No, it's open today. There's no mine there. Yeah, it's a town still, right? But it's just the misinformation.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And Cunnicut did a good job just walking down through there.

Yeah.

Yeah. His YouTube channel, just filming.

He was one of the first that went.

He didn't even comment.

He just said, this is just the reality of it. I grabbed the mayor, the fire chief. I'm like, are we rebuilding Chimney Rock? Like, 100%. Is this going to be a lifting of mine? No. Yeah, guys, please go donate. Here's our GoFundMe. People need help here. I mean, Bruce is firefighter. His house and his business washed down the river.

So sad.

And he's up here working 12 hours a day as a volunteer firefighter.

Yeah.

Like, these people need help. They don't need conspiracy theories right now.

Did you buy into those at first?

Well, no, because I was here. I was on the ground. The only people buying into them were sitting in the front seat of their truck in Texas, yapping.

Yeah.

And so I'm here, boots on the ground.

Well, because like we're hearing them and we're like, right?

I mean, is this true?

Like, you know what I mean? We bought it for a little bit, but even then we did have some illegal mining.

Remember?

Right. There was like—

remember where we went? We— I went with you to a campground.

That's right.

This kind of, you know, they were a little, you know, I don't know, druggies or something, but they were living in a tent. Yeah. People's houses had gotten away.

There was—

maybe they were sus of it or something. I don't, I don't remember.

No.

So what do you think?

There was a guy up there. There was a guy up there, um, who's just a known agitator.

Okay.

Uh, that's what we ran into.

That was him?

Yeah. I never, I never posted that. I don't even want to say his name because he's still around, right? And I don't want to— I don't want that right energy on me, right? Um, but, uh, he had come into the area, take advantage of the situation.

Oh, okay.

So, but, um, but yeah, so a lot of that is, man, the disaster space is so corrupt. Uh, there's just a lot of corruption that comes into it because it's so last minute. It's, it's all feels. Um, and, you know, even like some of the big organizations, they come in and they leave and they take a lot of money with them.

And Samaritan's Ministry or Samaritan's Purse, legit, they're just right down over here. They're still working.

They're still working on this house.

House, and it's so great. I like love to see it because Mercury One, first in, last out, guaranteed.

Uh, I was just with them this weekend, and they're still like— we have a whole warehouse at the Better Together Coalition. We're still rebuilding houses. We're just about to break ground on a house right up the road from you guys.

Oh wow.

Um, that's okay, that washed down a river, but it's taken 9 months to get permits.

Yeah, it's ridiculous.

Well, you get all these, these—

that's part of That's conspiracy theory.

What's that?

That's part of the conspiracy.

That's not necessarily conspiracy theory.

That would not be true.

Yeah.

So, you know, FEMA will buy your land from you and turn it to a green zone. That's how I got banned off TikTok. I took one of their webinars and posted it and got banned off TikTok as misinformation. And they took it.

TikTok is so strict about stuff like that.

TikTok's a waste of time. And so, but it's true. And here's, and here's the non-conspiracy side of why FEMA says they do it. Because if they turn a piece of property that's subject to disaster into a green zone, it's a property they'd never have to serve in the future. Right. It is now off the list. Like if we take all these properties along this river and just turn them into parks, well, they'll never be a disaster.

It doesn't matter what happened. It won't matter in the future.

People, it's much better to have people in the cities where there's infrastructure and they, you know, that's what they want. And there is— and that's not a conspiracy. The idea that people need to be in cities, they want these 15-minute cities. Again, that's all real design. And yeah, but it becomes a little more nefarious of like they're trying to take your land. They're not trying to take your land. They're making it almost impossible for you to keep your land.

Right.

Right. They're just saying like, look, we're not going to give you anything, but if you let us turn it into a park, we'll write you a check for pre-storm evaluation on the land. And so you're like, well, I have nothing. I'm getting nothing.

I have a mortgage.

So they're not taking your land.

Right.

They're not forcing it away from you, but they're also not helping. They're like, I'm not going to help. But if you let me buy it from you, and then what are you supposed to do? Yeah, you have nothing. You got to take the money, right? Or somebody comes in and says, hey, I'd love to build 3 Airbnbs here. Let me buy this land from you.

And, you know, there's some weird rules, some hard rules. Remember those people you gave the RV to? I went with you and there's something about how they can't rebuild now because the the river is moved and now you have to be so many feet away from the—

your septic has to be so many feet away.

Yeah. Now there's no spot for a septic tank and they don't take into account, you know, that event.

Yeah. And basically what started my whole journey up into here was just an accident. Just me. No, it was YouTube.

See, this is not your job. Why did you get into the disaster?

So we just started Beast Games. I had just come off like, I don't know, a year-long grind being on Jimmy's team and just traveling and making videos. And I was already telling them I need time off. Like, I got this land, I need to start getting our house built and I need time off. And so I was taking time off. I don't do Beast Games. Like, I'm not— that's not survival content. I don't do the contest stuff. I'm not in that content. We had already hired a couple other people to help me do my job, and so I was able to step back. And when it happened, I basically just messaged the company. I was like, hey, I'm like, I'm going to go up and help. Do you do what do we want to do with what's going on up? It's North Carolina. It's our state. Like, clearly we got to do something. And we were like, yeah, we got to think. If you think of something like this, let us know. Right? So he's like, it's your project, right? I'm okay. So I'm trying to figure out what to do because they're off doing Beast Games in Canada. Like, like, not here, right? I'm the only one here. And then Ryan Hall's team, the Y'all Squad, he's the big weather guy on YouTube. They knew I was in North Carolina. And if you're outside North Carolina, you don't realize that our states can be 8 hours from—

right. It's very big.

And so he's like, hey, man, I got 30 Starlinks. It's bad. It's real bad. They need Starlinks. I was like, can you get on with your fire department and see if you can get a hold of these? We can't get a hold of anybody up there. The fiber lines got cut on both sides coming in and out of here.

Right.

No communication. And so even FirstNet went down and then Verizon that day had the global outage which took out all Verizon.

So I didn't even know about that.

Huge stack of unfortunate events. And so I couldn't get a hold of anybody. So I was like, told her, do some survival gear and it's enough to survive for a day. So I'll be back tomorrow. I'm going to go. Yeah, I get up there, get through the block because I'm a volunteer firefighter. So I'm like, he's like, hey, nobody's coming through. I'm like, Station 41. Like, he's like, oh, okay, you can go ahead. Man, I get up to the airport and they land with these 30 Starlinks. The picture I posted was like I had me with the highway patrol with all these Starlinks stacked. The reason I had the highway patrol is because the FEMA guys at the airport were like, nothing's leaving the airport. We'll put your name on it and we'll release it to you. And I was like, like hell you will. I'm saying I'll never see these again if it gets into FEMA's hands, right? Because it's just the bureau. Bureaucracy of it.

Yeah.

And so, and I said, hey, my air— I'd already been talking to these highway patrol. I said, my airplane's out there. If we let them have those, we'll never get these. And they're like, we're going to go get them. And so he goes again, the airport guy was like, hey, you can't go out. He's like, I'm state trooper. He's like, we're going on the airport. And so he escorted me out there. They drove— they wouldn't let me drive my truck out there, but they drove their police car out. That's why the police car is in the picture. Oh, that's because we had to load them into the police car to get them off the airport. So right away we were meeting resistance, like right off the bat. And then Nick Soder, Chris Hall, we basically split them up. They had a bunch they brought with them and I headed down to Black Mountain and was going to— they were going to go to the other side. We basically just split up.

Right.

And we took a highway patrol with us to get us through all the blockades and the state highway patrol. I can never thank enough. They sent us like an appreciation letter. I'm like, what are you talking about? You guys like literally without them. Yeah, exactly. And I got to the first fire department. I'm like, my job's done. I'm going to hand these off to the fire department. They'll get them out to all the other fire departments and there'll be a network set up and I can go home. My job's done here. And I walk into the fire department and I'm like, oh man, like these people have lost houses. Like, this is— they're just trying to deal with what they're dealing with. I can't just dump this on them. They can't even set one up right now. Like, what are we supposed to use? Do we have to have an account? I was like, I got it. And so I just set it up, got them up and running. And it was awesome because like, it's nobody knows that some of these firefighters are even alive. And so they're able to call and like tell their wife that's outside the area, like, I'm okay. You know, it's just so emotional. Just, you know, and, and I'm like, I was like, where's the next closest fire department? He's like, you're not getting any of them. All the bridges are out. You can't get across the river. Like, all the bridges are out. And I was like, oh man, we got to get these to these fire departments. Apartments. Nothing's getting up there. I'm like, I said, silly as it seems, I need a helicopter. And so I go out and sit in my truck. I'm like, how do I get a helicopter or like a drone or something? And I see a helicopter. So I watch it land. I drive to where it landed. Sure enough, it's a United Cajun Navy. They just got there. They got a helicopter. I'm like, I need a helicopter. Like, great. Why? I'm like, I have Starlinks. They're like, we need Starlinks. And I just started working with those guys and they just started running missions and I would set them up. I'd get the batteries and everything, hand it to them, and they would take it to a fire department or church. And so we just started doing Starlinks. But we were running into a situation. We had a guy who's having like heart issues. We needed medicine. I'm trying to set one up at camp to get us because I just sent one out and I'm having to use my credit card every time. Now my credit card's not working. I'm trying to use a gift card.

Yeah, how many Starlinks do you really need?

Exactly. And so I got But I can't even call them to like— and so now I'm trying to use a gift card. It's not working. It's taking 45 minutes. It takes forever because you're like, yeah, like an hour window when you turn them on.

Yeah.

And it cuts the internet off. So you don't get— if you don't realize it, you plug it in, you come back, it's been an hour. You can't even get on the internet to set it up. So I messed up and plugged like 5 of them in not knowing there was a timer. And so I'm like, I just ruined these. I just ruined like possibly life-saving equipment. So I got frustrated. I tweeted it, posted that Elon was just like, hey Elon, you got to make these free. These got to be just— geotag them, everything that's actually— it just needs to turn on and work. And I'm just like, I have 6,000 followers on X at the time. I'm just Hail Mary, right? Like a couple hours later, someone comes up like, yo, Elon Musk just retweeted you.

What?

Wow.

What?

And I connect my phone because I'm trying to preserve bandwidth. I connect it all of a sudden. It's just like, like all the notifications are like flying. I don't, I don't keep notifications on anymore, but back then I did because I had so little activity, right? But it was just like my phone's got blown up and, and he's just like, hey, it'll be done tomorrow. I'm like, whoa, that's—

it was really amazing.

Yeah, he did. And not only that, he also extended it for free for 3 months to the whole disaster area. And I'm like, wow, the power of social media. I was like, social media can be for social good, right? Did that blow up your account?

Yes. Yeah, that's what happened. So that's 6,000. How many, how many, how many followers?

I have 110,000 almost now.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

You were not that back then. You were even at what, 50?

Probably 50 when I was— I kind of spiked up. And the thing is, is I built such a—

my—

if you look at my follower base, it's like 99% American. So a lot of people have millions of followers, right? But it's like bot accounts or whatever. It's— but it's like, this is real people that— oh, yeah. We're just getting such a bad— oh, off. I've got to flag it.

No shot.

Sorry, gotta wait a second.

Hold that thought.

I was always saying, I think pause where I'm at. Of course I feel like I got something in my eye.

Y'all need to talk about anything off camera. This might be a good time to stand up.

Yeah, let's take a stand.

I drank that whole broth.

Was it good? Feel okay still?

Yeah, I'm so right.

That tea— is it okay?

That tea didn't hit. The broth hits. So are you gonna do elimination? Like, yeah, I'm doing the GAPS diet for 21 days. I'll do the 6 stages in 21 days.

We'll do the re-engineer.

Um, I don't know if you know the GAPS diet. So it's basically broth and then soup, boiled meats, then boiled vegetables in that, and then raw eggs in it.

Wow.

And you just It's just different stages of solid skin.

My thing with fasting now is I don't want to lose any muscle.

Yeah, you lose muscle. Yeah, so, uh, 20% of it is at least lean muscle. I just— it's— but it comes back in 6 weeks without even—

does it really?

Okay, see, there you go.

Muscle memory, man. Muscle memory.

You will gain this back and you'll be more lean. It'll be more lean, jacked look. So you will suffer? Yes, for the fast.

So, but you got to let my quitting mind keep telling me I can't do it because I'm going to lose muscle.

No, I have Worse, I'm going to tell you, it's your quitting mind.

What's that?

6 weeks.

6 weeks, it'll come back. Even without training. But you're going to train.

Yeah, exactly.

And it's going to come back. Think of it as a clean slate. Yeah. What are you living for? What are you doing? Like, you're training just for longevity and to be around for your grandchildren, right? So do a reset and build back.

Yeah.

What's your rush? You can't be a little weakened for 6 weeks? 20% weight loss.

For me, it's just my mind. It would take me years to get the muscle back. Yeah, I know you got it back in 6 weeks.

6 weeks without training.

That's incredible. I didn't know that.

And that's after a long fast.

See, I'm reframing my mind here.

Yeah, and truth. Fill it with truth.

Yeah, it would be good to do a reset.

I have atrophied. I mean, I have— I mean, look at my legs.

He stopped working out when he injured his shoulder.

Uh, yeah, that's part of it. I'll do it too, because I had to stop working out, what, 2 months before I fasted? 2 and a half months.

Out at the end of—

so that's part of it. Is that better, Matt?

Hold on one second, let me look this up. I'm looking up—

he's gonna get us back on track. Yeah, okay. What's this, Rebecca?

This is Jonah's flight.

Oh, okay. We might have to— no, he, he'll fly into Charlotte and drive himself home.

I know, but I'm just wanting to see where he's at.

Should we— can you— I wonder if you would— are you guys going to eat lunch with us? Do you want to eat lunch with us?

I mean, if you have it.

No, sure. Why don't we have Lily have lunch ready at 12 while we're taking a break here? We'll text her if you want. I'll text her since you're dealing with that.

Sorry, I thought that I knew his flight number, but I guess I don't.

You okay with tofu and tempeh?

I actually like tempeh.

It's 3110.

Okay, I had it wrong.

I don't eat kale.

You don't eat kale?

I only—

he's trying to get a rise.

I think you're the only person I met that hates kale more than I do. I know, like, tastes like the stuff you—

I even hate kale more than goats. Feed that kale to the goats.

Yeah, let it turn into lamb chops.

Yeah, I have a feeling you'll eat your goats. You'll let them eat them, right? Oh yeah, we're okay.

My farmer won't eat them.

Good, that's, that's one of the big problems with people and their goats.

Yeah, we just, we just butchered a ram.

Is they—

I swear, I don't like gamey.

I'm—

to her, dark meat chicken's gamey. Yeah.

So I know that's my struggle. So I just worry it'd be too gamey and I just don't know how to prepare it. Like it's going to be tough.

Goat?

What is it?

Goat? Goat? There's no bad ingredients, just bad recipes.

Yeah.

So figure it out. I mean, go into a culture that eats goat and get recipes from there.

Yeah.

So we were doing the—

we probably got what had a little bit of grain. So it probably wasn't too gamey, but we see goat every week.

No, goat's fine at the farmer's market. We would have goat burgers. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's, it's more, it's more like beef than it is lamb if you grind it.

If you want something that's ground and put yogurt in it and then grill that, I feel like if you grind it, I can eat anything.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we were doing these American Black Belly sheep and we butchered an intact 2-year-old ram and it was fine. Yeah, it was great.

Almost hearing it all.

Pure grass-fed.

Yeah.

You're talking about followers.

Oh, I don't think we're up. We're not up and running yet.

And I'm just making—

We can keep all this, by the way.

Come over.

Okay. Act like you like me. And Matt, I don't know if you've already cut it, but you can keep it. It's been pretty interesting. I like, I like the whole natural feel. Um, heat up in case. Heat up the casserole. Okay.

It's two S's.

She'll know.

She won't.

She won't judge you. Okay, so we'll get back to where we were. We were at— Oh, your ex. So you were documenting this on X.

So because I'd been very trained in vlogging.

Yeah.

And just tell it just in my natural voice, right? I just, I just speak on camera. If you look at my content, it is one and done. One angle on a cell phone. I don't even use a lav mic, but I was getting millions and millions of views because I was the only one. So when Elon reposted my post, that again, social credit. There's a guy from MrBeast reposted by Elon. So every news station on the planet knew I was here and on the ground and I had, and I had, I had connection, right? So all of a sudden I'm on Fox News, News Nation, Newsmax. Never CNN or MSNBC.

I was going to say none of the mainstream.

Yeah. Yeah. And so which—

why did they not cover the—

No, they couldn't get in there. People, it was so hard to get up here.

I also think that none of the— none of the mainstream were really interested in the story either.

And to be fair, we didn't want them up here at that moment.

We were still in rescue and recovery, but they still weren't reaching out to somebody like you. They could have instead of sending somebody have reached out and they didn't.

No, they started reaching out once they knew I was on the ground.

Scene ended.

Oh no, that's what I mean.

No, no, that's what I'm saying is like when we got the Starlink from our neighbor, he— they don't live here full time and he's— we got a hold of him and we were like, can we borrow your Starlink? And he's like, you can have anything you want.

Nice.

Because, you know, they're in Florida, they understand hurricanes, you know. And so we brought it home and we were like, let's see what is being talked about. Like, we don't— at this point, we only know what happened here. Yeah, we don't know what's happened in the—

it was kind of sad to scroll. It was shocking, actually, after 4 days of feeling in the dark and this adrenaline running, to scroll and see Jake Paul pigging out on hamburgers, right, right, in my feed. That's right. Or whatever. I remember that one specifically, but nothing was about it.

I was served a lot of content from our area. And so I was seeing a lot of it and sharing it with him. But we turned on the TV, there was nothing, nothing. And it was like we were like, oh no, we've been passed by.

Yeah, they're going to forget us.

Can I say something?

They haven't even— they haven't even paid attention to us.

Yeah, it's— it's— it was a I miss the '90s moment. And actually, just recently, with Charlie Kirk's death, it did fill the feeds. And whether you supported that or not, I never even followed him, to be honest. I think I saw one of his things, but I have come to appreciate him since after I've learned, you know, he's bold. He's—

well, he spoke—

he's not afraid to say his opinion. And people ought to be able to say their opinion without being hated or murdered. Murdered, especially murdered. But it was— it's not refreshing, but it was refreshing in a way to see America speaking about one thing again. And then especially then at his memorial. Oh my God, have we all ever been tuned in to something since 9/11? Since 9/11?

Since 9/11?

Yeah. At the same time, it was— it doesn't happen as much anymore because of social media. So it's understandable how things get buried.

Well, that's what happened with Helene, too. The reason Helene was the way it was is because it was a political story. One thing I realized, a lot of the money I raised wasn't for Hurricane Helene. It was against Joe Biden and FEMA.

Why was it political? What makes it so political?

Because FEMA was such an abject failure.

Which is hilarious that you say that, because there are people online still trying to say about how wonderful FEMA was.

And I'm sure there are spots where they did wonderful work. Work, right? But they're supposed to do all the work.

Yeah, they didn't do all the work, right?

And the thing is, we pay all this money into this system and then got nothing for it.

Yeah.

And there was all these rules, and what we came through was found— we came in and backed up the areas of government failure. But the thing was, is like, they were pretending like everything was fine because it was an election season.

Yeah.

And of course, Republicans, rightfully so. Yeah.

I mean, we were what, like 6, 8 weeks from election?

Yeah.

So it became So yeah, my hurricane content, I became very political as well. Right.

And so hilarious because it was a natural disaster. Yeah.

And I was just criticizing FEMA, which meant I was pro-Trump, right? I'm like, I'm just— I'm literally just saying like, hey, FEMA, this is going on here. How do we get help?

Yeah.

You know, where's this money? Where's these— you built this massive camp and nobody can go live in it, right? You know, what is this camp for? Right. And so and so I just started reporting what was going on. And so it was just facts, just facts. Yeah. You know, it was just my opinion in there too. But again, I'm on boots on the ground. I'm standing here. And then people would argue with me. My favorite was I was a FEMA, a FEMA crisis actor because I went to Chimney Rock and said everything was not— was going to be rebuilt. And then like, but me, have you watched any of my other content? I'm the worst crisis actor ever.

But actually, when I first followed you, I wondered I wondered, is he conservative? Is he liberal? I didn't know.

I didn't know.

You would not know based on your post. Exactly.

I was just talking about what was going on. And as I got deeper into it, I recognized that in the next 4 years, we need a different leadership because this leadership, what we're— the path we're on is not good, you know. And so I did become political during the election. I came out on election morning. A good chunk of my followers are North Carolina. And I came out and said, here's why I'm voting for Trump, you know, and we were a close state and I got— I can't remember. I got a lot of views on it. And, you know, hopefully I felt like I made a difference, you know, because I felt like we needed something different.

Yeah.

And because guess what? Biden didn't send me Starlinks. Trump did. You know, I didn't talk to Kamala Harris. I talked to J.D. Vance.

Right?

Like when I asked, I said, hey, I need to talk. I would love to talk to JD Vance before he comes in. I'd love to tell him some of the context from the ground.

And this is—

did you actually get to talk to him or just his team?

His team and him.

You talked to him?

But I dealt with his, his team, but then I got on a conference call with everyone.

Oh cool.

Told them what I was saying. And then they— like when he landed, when he asked the things to ask, I'm like, this is things I told— like, here's someone who's listening instead of telling me what's going on here, like the current administration was doing. They were saying they were here to learn and find out what the best way to help. You know, when they got on TV and said, hey, we have— the federal government has 64 Starlinks up and active, me and my little ragtag crew had 74 up and active.

Like, right.

So you mean 3 civilians can outpace the might of the $37 trillion in debt federal government? What? You know, so I just, again, I just became more, I became more political as it went on because I kind of felt like I got forced into it. And, but this, at the end of the day, I was still just reporting the facts and I can't help it. The facts were making a political party look bad. I can't help it. Was making our governor who was MIA look bad. You know, it's like, sorry, you're not here. Where's the daily? Where's the weekly press conference of the updates from the governor? You know, I would say that in Raleigh, North Carolina ends at Hickory. They don't care what happens past that, you know? And it just, it really felt that way.

Yeah.

Every politician that came up to the airfields were Republican. And I'm here. I mean, I would have seen the other ones if they came, you know?

Right.

So why, why is it that this one party seems to be the one that's pouring in and helping? So, but yeah, the Starlink's kind of what put me on the map. And then JD Vance reaching out to me and following me, right? That was a whole nother like spike, you know. So, yeah.

And Matt Swole actually converted from Democrat to Republican.

I always tell him I take— I always say I gave him his first Red Pill.

And he was all about— he was all about the COVID thing. Usually a lot of you get a lot of converts after COVID.

Oh, yeah.

People's eyes are awake.

But well, that was the beautiful story of Matt and Aaron is they took me in, right? I was sleeping in my truck, sleeping wherever. They're like, hey, our house here, he's in Nashville.

Oh, okay.

Yeah. And so there's this redneck camo-wearing guy out doing— but again, I've got authenticity because like Elon's reposted me and they seen me on MrBeast. So I'm not, I'm not just some random guy. So, hey, you should— we have an extra bedroom. Come sleep here when you come up, which is such a blessing because I'm actually getting a whole night's sleep. I'm not tossing and turning on a air mattress or whatever, and we would just sit and talk like Americans. Guess what? Me, Aaron, and Matt don't agree on everything. Yeah, we don't. But that's okay. I still love them. We can still be friends. We still get along. It was funny, though, is like, we won't agree on something, and then like months later, he's like, so this Jan 6 thing, you know? So he's like, my eyes are kind of getting opened here. But, but yeah, we just had conversations, and I was just able to speak truth of what I've seen, right? And we would just have a conversation.

Conversation is so powerful.

Beat each other up, right? Scream at each other. And I'm like, hey, yeah, I see. I see where you're coming from on that. I don't believe that way.

But isn't most of America that way?

They are. That's the thing.

That's the truth. Yeah. I don't care if you're liberal and conservative. People can sit in a room and talk.

As soon as you get past the keyboard, everybody's tough behind the keyboard.

Yes.

Yeah.

That is America. I think we're fooled because it comes— we just get the ugly and the ugly comes across and 3 seconds. You got to hook people in 3 seconds now.

I've never had somebody saying something like— I never had anybody say a mean comment like they do online to my face for whatever reason.

Yeah, yeah, nobody's ever walked up.

You might—

you might—

could maybe count 3 times or something where you maybe got an altercation, but you know, growing up being bullied or something.

I mean, I just mean politically. No one's ever come up to me off one of my posts and instead of posting the mean comment, said to me to my face.

Right.

You know what I mean? It's just the keyboard that lets you say such wicked things.

Yeah.

So I'm guilty of it too. And, but when you get everybody in a room, but like you said, I think that's the trick is we've, you know, taken the crazy 3% on the right and that crazy 3% on the left and said, this is the left and the right.

Right. And it's not true.

It's not true. But to be fair though, the party that has this, that's starting to adopt this ideology, that if you disagree with anything, then you're a bigot or a Nazi, right?

Like, or it's hate speech.

It's hate speech. That's a hard place to come back from.

Or disinformation.

Disinformation, right? So it's like, how do I have— how do I reconcile? If you think I'm a hateful bigot, how do I— how do I find common ground with you? Yeah, because you've already labeled— again, it's language, right? You've already decided we can't have common— you're telling me by your labels that there is no common ground. And that's where true division happens. But it's fake, you know? Yeah, that's most— it's 80/20 rule. I feel like 80% of America probably only disagrees on 20% of stuff. That's not that big.

But also that 80% of America can have peaceful disagreement, right, with the other side.

Exactly.

You know what I mean? Like, we can disagree peacefully. It doesn't have to be that it's this hateful thing.

And I'm much more libertarian than I am conservative, just because I don't believe in legislating. I don't believe in giving the government power over a lot of things.

Yes.

Like somebody's like, oh, you're all for gay marriage. No, I believe the government should have no say over marriage, period. Right? Like, wait, what do you mean? It's just not their domain. The government should not regulate marriage. Like, marriage is a religious institution. We call this is Christian. You want to go out and create a different kind of— that's fine. It's America. Do what you want.

Right.

Doesn't make me a liberal, you know. Right. And I'm still welcome in the conservative party.

Yeah.

You know, I think we have huge problems with our prison systems. I'm still welcome in the conservative party. But when you have a party or when a party becomes you have to agree with everything or you're not invited, then naturally you're going to force people to the other side. Right. And And it's— and what is a bigger tent now? I believe the Republican Party has come a much bigger tent than it used to be. Um, you know, with Maha, the Make America Healthy Again movement, a lot of libertarians, a lot of middle ground people who just really care about healthy food.

Um, that used to be a left issue.

Like, are we living in California? Yes, that was like very much the granola group.

They're like the pregnant ladies taking the Tylenol.

Yeah, yeah.

Uh, just because he said, said it's bad.

And in town, 2017 said you shouldn't take Tylenol.

They have a recent tweet I have to say, pregnant women should not take Tylenol.

It's weird because we embraced a lot of those ideas way back in the early 2000s.

We were conservative before it was cool.

Yeah.

So was she.

I was late to the bus.

And then like, and so like, you know, like we believed in raw milk a long time ago. We believed in a lot of these healthy things.

We believed not to put toys in our nightstands. Which was very liberal at the time.

Yeah, exactly. So liberal.

But we didn't care. We—

and I was just who I was. And a lot of our conservative friends would be like, yeah, politically conservative. But why can't I be conservative and also not want poison on my food? What is political about that?

So I'm glad it's— I don't know how it switched, but it switched.

I feel old because I'm like, I've seen it long. I've seen it like, yeah, snake around. And I'm like, I don't Yeah, I don't want it to be political though. I don't want healthy food to be political. I just want it to be right.

Disaster.

That's one thing we ought to be able to agree on. Yeah, but ethanol is good for you while you're pregnant, or it's not. It doesn't have to be, are you a— are you a Democrat or a Republican?

Too much now. I even joke, it's like, well, the only way I know what's right is just to look at what they're angry about and just do the opposite. But that goes two ways now. Anything that we think is right.

We'll see.

You know, so it's become like your moral compass becomes opposite of whatever the other party is doing, right? Oh, don't take Tylenol. I'm taking Tylenol.

That's why it's good to go back to what Rebecca said. You got to question everything.

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, our— we've got a great Democrat. What is he, the local guy? Hager?

He's a representative in Raleigh.

And he—

but he's on our side.

What is the red shirt for Republican? You got to do the right thing.

I mean, you don't think he's the right thing because we called him about the whole, you know, chemical, uh, the community.

He's all about— he's all against it.

I called his office and, you know, they're just right over the mountain.

Oh, I'm getting a lot of trouble right now because if you look at my political post and you think I'm a Democrat because how hard I'm going after Republicans right now.

Yeah, go after— well, that's the thing. Here's the thing, I'm seeing conservatives going after Trump when he goes to war. 100% want to go to war.

You know, it's funny too, how are we the anti-war party now? I know, I know.

We're not afraid to— when Trump goes to war, give him crap about it.

That's right, that's right.

But I don't see that happening on the other side. Yeah, I don't ever—

maybe it's, uh, you had— it becomes just that's real good about toeing the party line, right? And I got a call from a representative who had other representatives say, hey, we know you know Sean, give him a call because like, man, he's really like, he's really causing like problems.

Good.

And they're like, hey man, like, you know, he's like, first of all, I ain't gonna tell you to stop because I agree with you. Uh, he goes, but the word is, is like, you're helping getting Democrats elected. Well, and I was like, then change your stance, big guy. I said their bad behavior is getting Democrats elected.

Well, I, every time I email or call, I let them know that this is a reelection issue and we will not forget at.

Exactly.

Chuck Edwards up in Washington pushing for the federal— no, no, no, no. I call him, I let him know this is a reelection issue, and I will let everyone know. We will not forget. You have sold our children to a corporation, and that is not okay. I'm like, I care if you're Democrat.

You know, there's a really great, great guy running in the primary against Chuck Edwards. Oh, Adam Smith from Savage Freedom.

Great. I'm— we will, we will go and we will rally and we will make sure everyone knows.

Yeah, Adam Smith, he ran the disaster relief center down there at the Harley-Davidson dealerships for Noah, believes in clean food. Oh yeah, Green Beret.

Uh, Chuck needs to leave. I'm sorry, Chuck. Yeah.

Hey, so you stayed too long. Here's the line I gave Adam the other day, uh, when I saw him. I said, uh, the difference between Adam Smith and Chuck Edwards is Chuck Edwards is photo ops And Adam Smith was special ops.

Oh, good. I like that.

He was the boots on the ground. He, he lived it. He didn't just come and hand out medals and take photos. And so, you know, Nick Fretches.

We've hit a button over here.

I'm loving, I'm getting this stump for Adam Smith on your podcast.

Keep prodding, Sean.

This is why, like, Chuck Edwards represents us. Right up in Washington.

Yes.

And we let him know we don't want this.

86% don't want it.

We let him know, and he tried to blow it up my butt about how this is all just about labeling. And I was calling on the phone, and I'm— because, you know, they didn't record. Yeah, the vote.

That's right.

And I called his office every day until they'd let me know that he did vote for it. And then I let them know that we will not forget.

So good old Jimmy Dixon.

Oh gosh, him.

Did you see the video I got of him? We can't farm without chemicals. I had a person that I can't reveal my sources, but basically he's in the GOP and was just like, hey, this is blowing up pretty big, man. 86% of Republicans— no, people disagree with this. And he goes, I don't care what the internet says. If you want to know what I think about it, I got a green button on my desk. I got a red button on my desk. And that's my public record. You don't care about the internet? That's your constituents' voice.

Well, you had a conversation with him, which he never looked up from his phone.

Once he realized I had the John Deere hat on, I'm like, what are we going to do about this?

He totally ignored you. He did.

Once he realized I wasn't on his side, he thought I was a farmer going, hey, man, we need to keep these chemicals. And then when I said, hey, 86% of North Carolina, he just was like—

And I was so glad, though, that you put that all over the internet because that just shows he doesn't care about the people.

But this is all to go back to like this whole genesis of like when I was at Beast, I'm trying to figure out why the heck, Lord, am I in all these? Why do I have all this favor? Like, what am I doing here? What am I supposed to do with this? And I never knew until Helene hit. I was like, oh my gosh, I can take that notoriety, that social media, and make it for social good. So all of a sudden I have enough of a base now. When I go post you saying stupid stuff in your little meetings that 7 people watch, now millions of people see it. Yeah, it gets to you, right? They can't hide anymore. They can't do this stuff in secret anymore.

So—

and that's the thing that's so maddening also is just the games they play. Like Justin and I were going to go— they were having a Tuesday morning session, then they move it and then they moved it to Wednesday. And thank God we had to drive 4 hours. We were going to drive 4 hours. Hours, spend the night, went the night before and been there for nothing. And then we wouldn't have been able to be there. And we had some issues here at the farm that we couldn't button up. And so we had made the decision, we really want to be there, but also we can't.

Right.

And then, you know, I find out that evening, oh, we moved it to Wednesday. And I'm like, that's such trickery.

It is. It is despicable. Yeah, and it is politics and they will not get away with it because we will know because we have the internet. That's right.

He doesn't care about the internet. But the thing is, is that we have it now.

Voters care about the internet.

We'll see.

That's right.

Your voters are on the internet now, buddy.

You don't care about the internet. You don't care about your voters. But, you know, he's decided to step down now.

Oh, Jimmy Dixon.

He's not going to rerun. Oh, interesting. Interesting. So, but it's the battle's not over. These chemical companies have nothing but money. And they have everything to lose. I mean, we already have two states that have fallen to it, Georgia and South Dakota. They're going after it federally. And the thing, it's like we are up— did you see the New York Times article?

Oh yes, the New York Times article. I'm gonna bring people up to date. These— we're talking about pesticide immunity. It's gone. It went to our state level in North Carolina. Should companies get immunity from being able to be sued if someone were injured by their product. Um, and now it's gone to the federal level. So that's where we are. No, I didn't— we didn't see this.

Yes, it's—

it's—

so I saw that New York Times.

Yeah, so the New York Times came out the article, an opinion piece. It's like, it's okay to spray glyphosate on our food. Like, that's the title. There's pictures. What? Like, this is getting ridiculous.

What was their argument?

I didn't even read it.

You sure?

I buy a subscription. Oh, I'm sure as I can't pay no money.

No, no, I agree. I didn't read it either because I don't— I'm not going to give them money, right?

I'm not going to help them promote more garbage. Yeah, but, you know, I made a video where I was like, I went into a convenience store and bought a Honey Bun, a pack of cigarettes, and a vape or whatever. No, just Honey Bun, a pack of cigarettes. This is like the whole raw milk thing. Like, why are they trying so hard when we can buy cigarettes and food that literally kills us?

Yeah.

To ban raw milk. Again, it was the same thing. It was just all this secret, trying to do stuff under the COVID of darkness. We made it such a poison pill. They said, just get rid of the frickin' raw milk thing, guys. Like, this is not that big a deal.

Well, and okay, now North Carolina is revisiting it.

That's right.

Because of the whole thing in Florida. But they never tested the milk.

The whole thing in Florida is scary.

And has it? Has it?

That it was the raw milk?

Hasn't lettuce killed more people?

Lettuce kills more people every year.

With that than milk?

It's just frustrating because it's like, if we want to drink it, than lettuce. It's like this. I wouldn't drink raw milk from just any place.

No.

Yeah.

To be honest, I'm still scared of raw milk because of the lifetime of programming that's been in me that it's so dangerous. I still have to like, I might die if I drink this. Yeah, because it's been a lifetime of propaganda.

I had that for months.

It is. It is. Every once in a while I'll have like a— but also I'm not— I'm very confident because We don't feed grain to our cows. I learned this early on and I think it gave me the confidence.

Grain, guys.

The grain can allow the E. coli in the rumen to grow. And so when you don't feed grain, and I'm not saying don't feed grain ever to a cow because they're just very strong. And I'm not saying drink raw milk from any farm. Because there's a lot that goes into it.

Yeah, yeah.

But yeah, like you can minimize the risk by properly handling the product.

Yeah.

And so, you know, like this farm in Florida that supposedly had all these people get sick and hospitalized. Well, one, was it that because we never tested anything, we just have antidote, you know, and then mistakes happen too, you know? Like, I don't know, like one of my kids bit into a pepper that I grew in my front yard and it had like a bug had somehow crawled into it and like made a home. And he was like, oh, you know, like he opened up, there's like a basically like a web in there.

Yeah.

He was like, oh my gosh. And I'm thinking, how could they have prevented that at the grocery store? Because it's not like, you know what I mean?

It's called pesticide. There's no bugs in their farm.

Right. So anyways, I just was thinking about. Like, things happen. Like, it's food. It's not growing and changing and living. Like, I don't know.

Anyways, it's just the— again, the whole thing, even just like with Helene and raw milk, pesticides, just the internet being able to be used to bring awareness. Like, you know, Elon says we are the media now, which drives the media nuts, right? But it's just the truth. Like, it's so— all the media is so curated now. Yeah, it's all paid for. Like, how do you believe anything And even the, we are the media now, you have to be careful on X too, because a lot of people think they're the media and they know what they're talking about.

They have no idea.

Social media is the media now.

Yeah. It's just like when I go, when something happens, I go to X. I don't go turn on CNN because that's the most up-to-date stuff. And I have people I've been following and they've been correct for a long time.

And I trust Instagram is just as good about it. I mean, you, you were, you were on par with what was happening with Charlie Kirk through Instagram, right?

Right.

Because my cousin texted me. I was picking her up at the airport and she said, Charlie Kirk's been shot. And I was like, what? And I immediately went to Instagram and was served the video.

Unfortunately, in the '90s, you would have turned on the TV.

Yeah, yeah.

It'd run the TV, turn on Channel 3.

Well, I would have got a phone call.

Yeah, yeah.

Because I got a phone call for 9/11.

My mom— you guys, think about how we watched 9/11. Somebody called, turn on the TV, and you went, turn on the TV, and you sat there for the next 15 hours.

Exactly.

So now somebody DM'd you, or you were scrolling, right, and you see the big news.

Yeah, it's always a text for me. Hey, did you see?

And I'll sometimes catch things on X and I'll text it to her and maybe she didn't see it.

Yeah. Or I'll text to my wife. I sent that to you an hour ago.

Really?

It doesn't go the other way. She's always sending me these reels. Have you watched that reel yet?

That's what I mean.

Yeah. And then she wants to Because I'll post the fasting content, I'll get 100,000 views. Yeah, I go back to my farming content, 20,000. I mean, that's increased even though now since the fasting got me some traction.

Now you're in there.

Instagram knows this person wants to see Justin's posts on fasting, so they'll send it to them anyway.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's what I mean. It's like I will be— I'll see— I'll be— I watch this guy who speaks Chinese, but he's a white guy, and I love the thing. It's so funny. Oh, he gets on and he's like talking to this person from China. And then he like just falls into like the perfect dialect and they just freak out. I don't know why I find it so entertaining. I thought I was following him because I was getting served so much of this content. And I realized, like, I looked one day, I'm like, I'm not even following this guy. Yeah, I was watching the content. You almost don't need to follow because the algorithm—

I think I'm that way with Adam Rose. You guys follow him? He's so funny. Oh yeah, he does reacts and then he does cooking. Yeah, he'll do cooking stuff. And then, you know, Adam Rose. Yeah, he never talks in it.

But if you get— if you're getting more than your subscriber base, like if I'll post something, they'll get 6, 7, 8 million views on, on X. I only have 100,000 followers. Clearly I have a lot more than 100,000 people watching my content.

Yeah. So tell me what it's like on X. Is it worth it for people to go in on there? I mean, I— it's a no-brainer for conservatives, isn't it? Which is a lot of the homesteading audience. But for some reason, homesteaders aren't on there.

They never have a lot of—

they weren't on Twitter and they're not going over to X.

Well, so X is very much a news-based Okay, platform news is what performs there. Current events, what performs there.

Political opinions seem to—

political, um, I do think people want homesteading content. I, I mean, I've had some of my best videos have to do with homesteading. You know, they're looking for authenticity.

How should I post there?

I think we talked about last time, it's just like, it's a slice of life, right? It's just like what, what you're, what you're doing.

And it—

here's the thing, you can't rush X. Like, it's just going to grow as it grows. Asking questions. People, you know, asking questions is a great format, but I hate the fake stuff. Like, this is a picture of Kamala Harris, what would you say to her? It's like, oh, such—

you gotta really want to know the answer. I think—

what's that?

I've noticed I got into the question thing and then I thought, I don't give a crap what they say to the answer, right? And I said, I don't need to post questions like that.

You need to post—

I need to post questions that I would really want to hear what they say. Yeah, because you were telling me you got to engage on X. Yeah.

And then going in and that's so— there's so much content on X and I mean, the people that are just— there's so many accounts that just— what are they offering other than repost, regurgitating, right? They've gotten really good at regurgitating to their follower base to get monetization. They're playing the money game. But I think there's a real hunger for authentic people doing things, actual things in the world, right? Whatever it is. And I think that's going to be a big future for X is these— as the algorithm develops, these repost platforms are going to die and they already are starting to. They got millions and millions and millions of followers. And I look at their engagement rate and it's way down, you know, and I'll post something and I posted a thing just asking people to vote on for the Black Mountains Home for Children. They go on Chick-fil-A and they vote, they click the app and they vote. That's all they need to do. It's going to take them from $30,000, maybe upwards of $350,000. I'll get 100,000 people that interact with that in just a few hours. And so they love to help. They love to be a part of it. They love to to again, just to see what you're doing and be a help. Like, it's a value from the platform other than consuming. It's like, here's a way you can give back. They want to learn things. I think homesteading, you know, Instagram is great, but I don't feel like we have good discussions on Instagram. I feel like X is a better platform for posting something like saying, hey, you should never feed cows grain. And then there's a whole discussion that comes up, right?

Yeah. I feel like it is a better community platform because I've learned a lot.

I'll post something. You can't just not feed any cows.

Yeah, like a whole thing.

That's what I mean. But it comes this whole— I learn all the time. I'll say something as I learn and I'm like, oh, I want to do this. And some guy's like, hey, I'm a 25-year certified arborist. Let me explain to you what you really need to do here. I'm like, can I slide into your DMs, get some more information? Because really there's a lot of experts on there that have 300 followers, right? Right. So, um, I'll get on, start talking to guys, get 25 years of experience who's just helping me for free because he loves the content in the homestead. So it feels like a community, right? I feel like I have a community on there. If I— like, I needed prayer when I was in the hyperbaric oxygen tube. I was blown away. I mean, I had like 4,000 comments.

Wow.

You know, 131,000. I mean, just all this engagement. I'm sitting there for like— I'm stuck in my bed. I'm reading all this, this good, positive feedback. And it was just— it was so encouraging. And I was just like, that's the power of social media. But X is a platform you have to be authentic on in my mind. Now you can go and be an engagement farmer and ask the stupid— all the low, just the low effort stuff that drives me nuts. I just block those people when I see the silly post of like, this is Joe Biden, what would you tell him? Block. Like, just, it's low IQ.

To be fair, some of the best, um, posts you've had have been you asking silly questions, like the plane one.

But that wasn't being silly. I just saw Air Force One fly over my house. I said, what is that? Of course everybody jumps on there, it's a plane, it's a plane, I know it's a plane. It could also be Air Force Two. And somebody's like, oh, Peter Hesketh is going into Kinston Airport Base to go to— I was like, that's cool. I just had Peter Hesketh land 5 miles from my farm, you know. But again, because I asked a question and it was kind of a stupid question, you get all this engagement, 14 million views. So the bait is to keep doing that because the algorithm's rewarding it. So I don't blame these monetization guys that are making money doing it for playing the algorithm. Algorithm, but X is trying to make the algorithm better. Look at the Facebook algorithm, it could be terrible.

I don't even know.

So, so these guys, American AF and Greg, yeah, it seems like, like they're— every one of their posts are interesting and engaging or funny, and they must do it full—

I think they do it full time.

And I think they sit and just read ads and and come up with jokes.

Yeah, exactly. And that's making content. But then this is the tier 2 that I hate where they take what he made or they made and then they repost it, you know, and I take honor in it. Like I posted like this and it was engagement farming, but I thought it was funny because it was the whole Jimmy Kimmel thing and I had this cute picture of me holding 2 goats. And so I was like, can these 2 baby goats get more views than—

Yeah, yeah, I saw that.

It went crazy. The thing is, I'm becoming what you hate. Well, I'm tongue in cheek playing a game, right?

And it did.

It did millions of views. And so, but then I use the word— I on purpose put 126,000 views knowing the real number is 129,000. And then sure enough, tier 2, can this hot dog get more than Jimmy Kimmel's 126,000 views? I'm like, cool, at least you stole— at least I know you stole it from me.

Oh, because I use right numbers.

So let me ask you this. I'm, I'm— I always started out with YouTube, uh, with my avatar was the target market was a 35-year-old man with two children. I think that's how old I was. It might have been how many children I had. Now that avatar has stayed the same. I still want to reach the young man with two children, but as I've aged—

they can have more than two children—

but the caveat was it was who wanted to grow their own food. But now as I've aged and my kids are getting bigger and they're taking over more of the farm, and we've arrived with our farm, there's not a whole lot of projects left. I'm I'm way more than a homesteader. Yeah. Um, uh, we talked about watching MrBeast and Ryan Trahan, and the books I read are on the Titanic, or the one I'm reading now is on hunting tigers in Siberia. Um, I'm a father and I'm a husband and an entrepreneur. Yeah. So I want to start talking, and I know these young men are too.

Yeah, yeah.

They're about health, So I want to start transitioning to where it's not— my brand is not just about homesteading.

Yeah, your brand's Justin Rhodes.

And so I could ask you if that's going to work on YouTube, or if I should start another channel.

Here's the thing, I know the least about is YouTube, which is funny.

You're one for the Mr. YouTube. And then, uh, um, MrBeast would probably have me start another channel because, you know, he the slightest difference. MrBeast too, he's got his own channel for it. But I don't want to be MrBeast. I don't want to be recognized at the gas station. Yeah, I don't want to be— there's a lot of pressure, whatever, whatever he is. I don't want to be that.

Well, and I think like for you, your brand, like because you are your brand. Yeah, right. And you know, you were, you were, you were focusing on part of you as your brand. You're the part of you that is a homesteader with two kids or whatever. Your target audience was at 35. Yeah, but you as a person have grown since then.

Yeah.

And, you know, I started out doing disaster stuff and I can post about raw milk and get even more views.

Yeah.

They're interested in whatever I'm up to.

That's what I want to get at with X is X friendly for being more— YouTube puts you in a box.

That's right.

Don't say that's what people ask me on YouTube.

I said I don't have time to do YouTube.

It's not just easy for me to just post a not homesteading video, it's gonna, it's gonna sink. Uh, but YouTube still knows, you know, I don't, I don't think it kills the channel.

No, I mean, um, it's like the, the, the X is just an easier platform to just be yourself on. Yeah, because they're looking to follow personality, not a brand. Brands do terrible on X, in my opinion.

So on X, you can post about the book you're reading, 100%, about the food you're growing, about the fast you're doing, about the midnight mass you went to, fight, tried, um, the, uh, political— and I guess I found out, I mean, yeah, going to the political—

I posted my health scare and we were at Salt and Light. Every person I walked up to was like, hey, how you feeling, man? I'm like, wow, like everybody here knows I was ill, you know? Like, they've been— I've been praying.

Yeah, I've noticed that, you know?

And it's It's a, it's a real community. It's versus just a viewer. It's like they say, oh, you have this many followers. I feel like I have that many supporters. Like people are supporting there. They're on my team. They want to see me succeed at what I'm doing. They want to see us keep Raw Milk from getting in. They want to see us keep people coming to me. They want to see our farm be regenerative and restore the land. They want to see us be able to provide clean meat to our friends and family.

Yeah, that's a pretty big jump from you to go from survival work to a farm. That's a pretty big jump.

I mean, you can make some ties. Like, I only had 6,000 followers because of MrBeast. Like, just, he followed me one day on X, and then I had 6,000, like, just like that. And so, ever—

because you were working under him when you— that was a blessing.

Of course.

I mean, and nobody even knows about that. I mean, bless him. Bless Jimmy for that. Just for that. Yeah, you were working full-time for him but able to do Hurricane.

Oh, that's it. Yeah, that's something I definitely want to mention, is that they paid be full-time to keep doing that. We were talking about doing a video, but then it just became— just didn't seem right.

Way more than—

yeah, I was like, this is not— this is not— we just need to help people. And he never once took to the internet. People like, MrBeast should have done more for North Carolina. I'm like, you don't know what you're talking about. Yeah, you have no clue what you're talking about. You think I got a truckload of Prime delivered overnight because of me? Yeah, you think that was— I mean, yeah, sure, I asked for it, but you know how I could ask for it? Because I spent some days in the freaking cave with Logan Paul. You know, like, that wasn't that, you know what I mean? Like, do you think Jack's Links bringing a whole truckload of Buttery Gum was a fluke? I don't know if you noticed, but MrBeast has a Jack's Links brand now, right? His name's on the— I wonder how that happened.

He gave you access to the warehouse. So like, there was—

I had trucks, you know, a truck, a trailer, his credit card.

Yeah.

Like, you know, stuff that he'll never take credit for because it just wasn't appropriate.

I think that is a good thing to talk about too, though, is that like people are like, oh, you're like, MrBeast isn't— MrBeast isn't— but MrBeast actually is, and he's not taking any of the credit for it.

Yeah.

Do you know what I mean? Like, I think that it's a good lesson to learn that like just because maybe we don't see it or hear it with our own ears or eyes, that it's not happening.

And to be fair, if you took— if he took credit for all the stuff he does, then people would complain about that. Oh, look at him just trying to—

he's just trying to take credit.

Yeah, you can't win. You just can't win.

No, but I'm— what— yeah, I mean, like, it's, it's just amazing. I think too, like, a lot of, like, the stuff that is out there on the internet, you know, the conspiracy stuff, uh, no matter what genre it is, I think sometimes, like, there's a lot happening behind the scenes that we will never know about.

Yeah, people chill. People will criticize for a video on healing 1,000 blind people or giving 1,000 people prosthetics, or didn't they give houses to people? But other people are just spending that money on themselves and making a dumb video where it's all just going to be taken to the dump after it's over.

You know what's so funny about the blind videos? Uh, our middle, our young, or Jackson is the— was a thumbnail kid.

He's not blind though.

He's not blind, but they just say, hey, we need to see your son. So That video goes viral and it becomes a news story. So I'll walk in, CNN's on, and I'll see Jackson's kid on CNN. And then they love the comment section with Brett Cooper. And that's—

kids do.

Yeah, yeah.

And so she talked about that video and used it as his thumbnail. Some guy got a tattoo of the thumbnail. No, his face is tattooed.

Jackson's face is tattooed.

Oh man, can you imagine getting, getting grief for healing the deaf or the blind.

It's wild. You just can't win. You got to be yourself. I think YouTube wants people to be more— have more stuff on a channel like these podcasts. They're trying to—

That's right.

I'll post it there and probably I should start another channel, but I'm kind of hanging on thinking— and Tim Schmoyer helped me, coached me on this. You know, at first, you know, YouTube Shorts is separate.

Really, it is. Yeah, it is.

But it does some— I would imagine it drives some traffic to the main videos, but that's how they want the podcast to be. And I think, yeah, I think what you're saying, I think that might be more important, is to be yourself. I might be on to something, and I might be making a shift at a good time. All right, I think so, because with AI, you don't need no more courses anymore.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what I was about to say.

How are we going to stand out?

Yeah, with AI The only thing that's going to save you is being authentic. Authentic.

That's right, right.

And so this is a time to build a brand because making content is going to be just some words, but people are going to hunger for—

because you can get your health advice here, your custom health advice.

I built my pond by talking to Grok.

Exactly.

I said, hey Grok, I want to build a pond.

I use it unbelievably. Yeah, so many times. I planned my refeeding program based off of— yeah, yeah, hey Grok, get me a 14-day, um, refeeding program based on the GAPS diet. I mean, you can be so specific. So specific.

The more specific you are, the more benefit you get. Yeah, I'm not— I, I rarely go to YouTube anymore and look up a video for stuff. I just look—

no, when I need video, but it'll come to grog to where you're getting graphics.

But I feel really scared about AI. I don't really like it.

And you should.

Yeah, yeah, everything is a blessing and a curse.

By using it, aren't we promoting it? Like Do you know what I mean?

Like, you see all those videos about how, like, how it actually breaks stuff up, and sometimes it's like, like, one lady made this video and she knew the stat was wrong, and so she asked them where they got the stat, and AI told her it's like, well, sometimes we just make it up to make it look good. It's like, yeah, wait a minute. So it's like, I wouldn't ask it anything important.

It's not foolproof. You have to know that. You can't go in.

Well, I think we use the example of social media.

Yeah, right.

I think most people would say social media is bad, but social media, yeah, has so many people in West North Carolina right now not homeless because what we get on social media.

Yeah, it's true.

And so there'll be a lot of AI for good, a lot of AI for bad. The internet, the internet has a lot of terrible stuff on it.

It does.

It's also a lot of great stuff.

Where I'm worried, you know, I'd rather, I'd rather go back and live with the Cherokee and just eat fresh meat, never store it, never salt, and just, you know, and live on the ground, be in the sun, hunt and gather. But now I'm like, this is coming whether we want it or not, right? And it's going to go after my job.

Yeah.

And how am I going to stand out as a content creator? And I feel like it's going to be like what you said. You got to be an authentic human. It's just they'll never take— they'll never have a soul.

That's right. And you, you are only going to— your life experience is a unique fingerprint to you. It's unique content to you, your kids, your day, your, your health, your wellness. Everything's going to be unique fingerprint to you. But I think what's going to become very difficult is to stand out once that hits. Like, if you're not already established going into it, I think it'll be very tough to break into it later because we're going to eventually be competing with AI content. Imagine what—

what's AI content?

It's going to be this: hey, AI, make me a movie about homesteading where 3 people live on the land and they blah blah blah blah blah blah. I want it to be about 50 minutes long, and I don't want to know the end, and it's going to generate a movie, you're gonna sit there and watch it.

No, that's not far away. Yeah, I'm saying it's going to go too, is you won't even prompt that AI, right? It will be coming up with that content for you.

Well, it'll remember everything.

He's already doing that. That's right, it's already working overnight for you now. It wakes up and talks at night, and it wakes up in the morning.

Me are going to become the new hipsters where we refuse It's going to cost more money because it's not, you know, sorry.

Well, no, no, no, no.

Sorry. People say that again. Say that again.

I just say that like, I mean, cause I'm with her. Like I do not want to watch a movie like that. I want real actors that I know. And so we're going to become the new hipsters that want the old school way, even though it's more expensive and not as practical, but like, it's just too, but I feel like I'm raising my kids that way too.

They're not going to accept that.

Right. We're still human. AI doesn't change our humanity.

Yeah.

And when, when video games came out, I'm a big board gamer. When video games came out, they said board games are dead. Board games are the biggest they've ever been in history. People are flocking to board games because it's social. It's human connection. In the age of AI, when everything is fake and made up, people are going to hunger for authentic experiences. They're going to hunger for artifacts of history, right? The museums will probably take off like never before. Like people are going to want to travel and have experiences, books. It'll be a resurgence because at the end of the day, you can't change that. We're human.

Because I feel like sometimes I feel really stressed out about it, but that makes me feel—

if you're a knowledge worker that does medical records processing, start finding a new career. Yeah, right.

I mean, there's going to be certain things too.

I tell my boys, I'm like, you want to have a six-figure business?

Electrician, HVAC, plumbing, grading. That's not going anywhere.

No.

Guy's never going to take over.

Robots, however, that's a little bit off.

But, but I don't know that everybody wants to hire a robot.

And I think that's the thing that'll happen. It'll be a revolution where we just won't use it. It's like, cool, we have robot plumbers, I'm hiring Greg, my neighbor, right?

I'm going to hire somebody I can look at.

Health revolution too, where we want to go back to a more simple life.

Like, that's what I'm—

some point we'll be saying maybe the old days were the good old days, for sure. And we should—

that's what, even with our homestead, part of what we want for our homestead is I want people to be able to come for a week of a retreat eat, live on the land, serve, you know, help the animals, eat the food, and just unplug from the fake world for a week and hopefully inspire them to leave and go do it themselves. And we want to do a lot of teaching. So it's like, how do you know, how do we get to start our own homestead? You know, and so we're learning right now. So I'm like, I don't know, figuring it out myself. But I think people would love to come and learn along with us and just see where we've been so far. And that's a lot of what I want to talk about on X going forward is like, hey, this is what I've learned. And I posted a thing about buying manufactured homes and it blew up. There was so much conversation over it. You know, people are like, those things will blow away in a tornado. And then people are like, no, they're actually built, you know. So there's a lot of interest.

Kind of guy you like to host?

I do. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay.

That's, that's, that would be the dream is to have like 5 tiny homes where people can come and we make an income because it's like you're paying to come do this stuff, you know, we have a value that we should be reimbursed for.

Yeah.

And you're receiving something that's going to be hot.

You know, homesteading events are hot. In-person events are going to get big. Consulting, one-on-one consulting, coaching, uh, these are the things that you can't quite get on AI.

And that's the one thing I would just like— it could be at any level. Come stay in the tiny home.

Yeah.

And just hang out and come engage with us as you want, right? Like, you don't— maybe it has to be like a retreat.

Maybe we need to get you to host Him and I are at odds because I want it—

I want it to be more of a ministry. Because what I noticed is that I want to be a ministry as well. Yeah, because I like— so for our friends that lived on our farm, well, you know, when we moved, it's like part of the plan for that was to let them live there at a very discounted rate so that they just basically pay the utilities. Yeah. So that they could save up so they could get their own land and seeing what's happening with housing prices and all that kind of stuff. Like, I would love because like since we, since we are blessed in the way we are financially to be able to take that hit so that somebody else could live in a house, you know, across the street from us. For, you know, little to nothing, learn with us, and then turn around and the money they saved, go get their own land.

Yeah, I'd love if someone like a young couple was like gonna live with us for a year and they just live in a tiny home.

Yeah.

And we're just, just labor for room and board type of thing. And then they go off and save that money. You know, they still have off-farm jobs and they save up money and they go buy 5 acres and a manufactured home and start raising their own food.

You don't have to wait on it. I'll just let you know, you don't, you don't have to wait on cabins. People can camp out.

We have RVs over here.

Yeah, they bring tents. If you already have RVs, you're already a game ahead.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's one thing I guess I feel like people don't need to have.

Like people— and if a lot of people who want to do this aren't going to be traditional, you don't feel like you— and the fact that they have to have like a building to—

interesting.

Yeah. Just maybe campfire talks at night after the kids go down, do campfire talks. You don't have to be an expert homesteader either. But I think that a lot of people are going to be in your situation where they just need to put the cow out on the field.

I want to learn from others too. It's like there's plenty of people out there that— well, that's it too.

You bring in research. It doesn't have the— yeah, they can't just do it. And you bring in guest speakers for that. That's right. So there's this— and you Right. So then you're at— it's actually profitable.

100%.

You get paid to get consulted.

There's a thing that's interesting with NLP. You insert a goal on your timeline and so you take this, this, this big goal. My, my, my vision was I was in something like this actually, and I was— had like 10, 12 people there and I was teaching something, right? And that's when I knew that my vision would be fulfilled, like I was doing what I thought I was going to be doing. So I visualized that and they say you're going to insert— I said, let's just call this May 2026. That's just what popped up to me. And you insert it in your timeline visually, just like taking this and you're putting it into May and then you kind of in your mind float up above that point and look back towards now and try to visualize all the things that need to happen, though, that timeline to end up at May 2026 where I'm teaching and I'm like, visual, I'm like, oh gosh, I need chairs. I don't have chairs, I don't have tables. And like, and I was like, oh, there's— what if I had a guest speaker? So all these things started popping. I just like have 2 pages of notes. That I just started writing.

But you don't even need chairs. Have them bring—

yeah, yeah, but again, you start visualizing it.

But again, I can simplify.

Exactly. And then you start looking at what you think, and then it's like, well, do I have to have tiny homes? But I already have an RV.

But that's a good process though, that you thought— a lot of people don't even get that far. You think of the goal, well, then you got to think of the steps before that. Well, then you set yourself up a timeline all the way until you have a daily—

yeah, I've never really set goal that far in the future. I've just— I'm really, really blessed I can just get up and do it. I tend to be successful at it without a lot of planning.

That's because you're a hard worker and you make stuff happen, right?

But now what if you take hard worker and actually set goals and have a plan? Like, whoa, that might really unlock some really good stuff. And, uh, so, but that was— that's the— for me, it's just— and then again, for us, it's like I came up with a line. It was just— it was just given to me about— he was trying to— they were saying like, try to summarize what you want to do in a single line. I was like, it's a revival of soil, soul, and skill. That's like summarizes what we want to do. We want to have a revival of soil, soul, and skill and take that and spread it to other people and have other people go live like that. And I think especially as we go into this AI age, I think it's going to be having land and raising your own food is going to become the most wealthiest of things.

Yeah, this is inspiring me to think about event. Yeah, because things are changing. Yeah, and membership's not as hot with you with Abundance Plus, you know, the digital stuff, you know, the, um—

I think COVID taught us that remote doesn't work.

Yeah, because it worked for 2 years, 2020, 2022, all the digital subscriptions going through the roof because that's what we had the choice of loading. And but it hasn't lasted, right?

Right. It was a temporary thing. People need—

now we have subscription fatigue and oh Gosh, um, people need connection now in the world of AI.

Yeah. And then again, like, I think that's going to be the, the hottest thing on the market is real in life. Like, I was going to pick apples yesterday. There was so many people there paying $24 a basket to pick apples.

Yeah.

And maybe that's something too. We could do an event around the strawberry picking in the spring. Yeah, we already go and they do pizza ovens. And so you could do— they could only do 100 people, but you could do a high-end event. Event, a family-friendly event, and we're already going over there to pick strawberries. Go over there and do a meet and greet, you know. So there's—

as you meet your supporters, your followers in person, it changes the interaction.

Oh, I know that. It recharges us every time we go to an event. We get burned out, we hear the ugly comments, we think that's everybody, right? And then we go there and we're inspiring these people.

Um, it was 2018 when we went to Homesteaders of America, and that was just a particularly tough year for us, like on the farm. Lost animals. And of course, like, because we started all over, we got raked over the coals for things that we had.

Police got called on us twice.

Yeah, I mean, like, we didn't have, like, control over some of these things, you know. And it's just farming. Like, when you have livestock, you have dead stock. And I remember being nervous about going to HOA because, um, was that the year they had threat and we had a bodyguard? No, that was 2019.

So 2018, 2019, both tough years. Wow. They had to give us a bodyguard in 2019.

But we went in 2018 and it was like nobody said one mean thing and they were all very nice and they were like, yeah, like you have livestock, you have deadstock and you know, and, and it inspired me somehow.

It inspired them, I guess, because they're having mistakes. They don't see that. The people aren't posting that on the cute little Instagram post.

No, they don't. They gloss over it.

That's one thing.

But we'll say, oh, you know, we had, we had to shoot our milk cow.

They might say it's like 3 months later when they already got the new cow.

Right.

That's a different story than if you're showing, I don't even know what's wrong with this cow, but we've got to put it down. It's not coming into heat when you still have the doubt.

Well, the sheep, you know, that was a big thing too. You know, we bought these sheep for $75 apiece and then they start dying. Well, I'm not spending $275 for the vet to come out.

Yeah, that's just how it works. That's just life.

Like, the sheep were totaled.

It, it made no sense. And but then, you know, then they're calling the police on us. The police are coming out, investigate— not the, the animal police, you know, the animal whatever you call them.

He still had a gun on his side.

That's right. Still had authority.

And, and he's driving a, you know, a police car. He pulls up and we look out and I'm like, why are the police at my house? Yeah, what have we done wrong? Like, you know, like, we don't break the law.

Their first call they got was our dog and cats were fighting in the video.

They were not fighting, they were playing. And somebody called, they reviewed the video, they didn't come out because they saw nothing wrong with what happened because it was play. It was not.

But even if it's fighting, we were not pitting the animals against each other.

It wasn't the episode of cat and dog fight arena. Yeah.

And then, and then the next one was the cat or the cow. They said that we were starving her on grass. She had something wrong with her that we had tried to correct.

You mean a milk cow looks skinny?

Well, no, it wasn't.

Yeah, that too.

Well, she wouldn't come back. Like, there were so many things. Anyways, we, we did talk to the vet about that and she was like, well, we can give her antibiotics for 7 days and if she doesn't get better, Then we know it's this other thing which we had suspected. Toxic. Toxic.

So a comment said, you, if I hope because we ate her, she said, I hope for karma's sake that your children get sick eating that meat and they have to take antibiotics.

Wow.

Because you wouldn't get somebody said that.

Like, nobody would ever say that to your face.

Come say it to my wife.

We will kill a cow before we give it antibiotics because we don't want to eat antibiotics.

Well, because this was why— sorry, um, because part of the thing is, is that that's probably— if we give her antibiotics for 7 days and then we realize that it's Fescue toxicity and we have to harvest her anyways, right?

Now you're eating antibiotics in your meat.

Now it's like you can't kill her. Yeah, because there is a withdrawal period. And then do we even want to eat her?

Like, they aren't a cure-all. It's not guaranteed.

It was just really— it was just really frustrating. Oh, and the other thing was, is like, you can't be your animals vet. And I'm like, well, the thing is, is like, there's not— big animal vets are actually like a dying—

they don't exist—

business. They're so hard, and it's very difficult to find. And if you're gonna have these animals, you're gonna need to know what to do.

Yeah. So would you rather me not know and not try?

Right. And so it was just really frustrating in a lot of ways. So we went in 2018, and they— everybody was so very gracious to us. And so very kind. And that's how most people are, right?

Right.

Even if they disagree with us. I mean, if I disagree with you on something, I don't have to, like, comment.

In 2017, we stayed with pagans, Mormons, Catholics, Protestants, Mormons, nothing.

Say that.

Yeah, yeah. Mormons, Orthodox.

We had a lot of adventures.

Yeah. So it's fun. Anyway, we We should probably end it on that note. We need to catch lunch with them. We're going to feed you all a nice turkey, Devon, from the farm.

Not going to complain.

The happy ending is that y'all are posting. You're posting on X, the Sean Hendricks. The Sean Hendricks. Yep. The Sean Hendricks. And also on Instagram.

You can watch the circlecast episode.

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Man stuck in the circle.

Yeah.

Yeah. Watch him do that. And then he's in a lot of the Survivor ones after that.

The water.

7 Days in a Cave, Island, Underground City. Out of all those, probably the cave is probably the most exciting.

The island was the most fun.

Yeah, that was like— you'll have the most fun watching that one. Yeah, right. And that's where I really connected with you as a dad ministering to these boys. It was good. They're men, but yeah, yeah, but young, young men. You were coaching them in life things, which is what really matters. Yeah. Yeah. And then, yeah. And so you're the man brand on X, man. You're doing it. You have a good man brand. Yeah, well, it's all kinds of things.

Try to keep it— like I said, just try to keep it honest. We show the good and the bad. You know, part of me was like, I don't post anything about being sick, but like, that's part of life. And, you know, a lot of people out there are struggling. It's like, okay, so for me, it's just hopefully be authentic and be a blessing.

And have you shared about your brother too on there yet? I did.

I shared about it. When it happened, but I haven't— I didn't know if I could talk about it yet. Right. And so I haven't— this is the first time I've been able to speak about it.

And that's— thank you.

I'll probably just at some point just steal this clip and post it over on X.

Steal away. Steal away.

I'll tag you.

Thank you. Thank you. We can get you the original folder if you want. We'll get you the Dropbox file.

Yeah, I think that because that's my first— like sitting in front of other people, it's different too. Than by yourself on a camera.

So yeah, text me, Matt, when it comes in and I'll email all the people.

I don't always see emails, but I think it's good just to show the good and the bad, whether you get the criticism or not. Because guess what? If people go down this journey and you only show them the good, that's a huge disservice.

Oh yeah.

All right. Let's get a picture before you go. All right. Thanks, everyone.

All right.

Thank you. Bye-bye.