February 3, 2025 • 44 mins
#143 - Gary Arndt shares his transformative 13-year journey across more than 200 countries, providing insights into the essence of travel, the challenges of long-term exploration, and the impact of social media on the travel experience. The discussion emphasizes the importance of adventure, personal growth, and the dynamic nature of travel in an ever-evolving world.
• Gary’s early life and limited travel experiences
• Transition from a successful business career to full-time traveler
• Embracing the challenges and joys of long-term travel
• The significance of adventure and stepping outside comfort zones
• Reflection on the influence of social media on authentic travel experiences
• Creation of the Everything Everywhere podcast during the pandemic
• Importance of storytelling and historical context in travel narratives
• Future aspirations for travel and podcasting
To learn more about Gary give him a follow on Instagram @everythingeverwhere or check out his website www.everything-everywhere.com.
Want to be a guest on Journey with Jake? Send me a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/journeywithjake
Visit LandPirate.com to get your gear that has you, the adventurer, in mind. Use the code "Journey with Jake" to get an additional 15% off at check out.
Visit geneticinsights.co and use the code "DISCOVER25" to enjoy a sweet 25% off your first purchase.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
They say life is short and the world is wide.
My guest today, gary Arndt,knows this better than most.
Having traveled extensively,gary reminds us that the world
is far too vast to see it all inone lifetime.
As a debate champion and thehost of the award-winning
Everything Everywhere podcast,gary brings a unique perspective
(00:21):
on exploration and discovery.
So buckle up.
It's time to see the worldthrough Gary Arndt's eyes.
Welcome to Journey with Jake.
This is a podcast aboutadventure and how, through our
adventures, we can overcome thechallenges of life that come our
way.
While I expect you will learnsome things about different
adventures, this show willentertain you.
Each episode will featuredifferent guests or guests as
(00:43):
they share experiences andstories from the different
adventures they have been on.
Not only will you beentertained, but you'll also
hear the failures and trialseach guest faces and what they
have done or are doing toovercome the hardships that come
their way.
My goal is to take each of uson a journey through the
experiences of my guests, withthe hope that you'll be
entertained and inspired toovercome your day-to-day
(01:07):
challenges.
After all, it's not all aboutthe destination, as it is about
the journey.
(01:31):
Welcome back to Journey withJake.
I'm your host, jake Bushman,and I'm excited to bring you
another fantastic episode Today.
We're joined by the highlyaccomplished Gary Arndt.
Before we dive in, I'd like toinvite you to subscribe to the
show wherever you listen topodcasts, if you enjoy what you
hear.
Leaving a rating and review onApple Podcasts or Spotify would
mean the world to me.
You can also catch episodes onYouTube.
Just search Journey with JakePodcast.
(01:53):
And while you're there, be sureto subscribe and hit that like
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I'd love to connect with youall.
The best place to do that is onInstagram.
At Journey with Jake Podcast, Ishare clips from past, current
and upcoming episodes, alongwith a bit about my personal
journey.
So come, follow along.
I'd love to hear from you.
Lastly, journey with Jake ispart of the Podmatch Podcast
(02:15):
Network.
If you're looking for moregreat podcasts, visit
podmatchcom forward slashnetwork.
Now on to today's episode.
I had an incredibleconversation with Gary Arndt,
who spent over 13 yearstraveling the world and is now
the host of the EverythingEverywhere podcast.
If you enjoy this episode, Irecommend checking out episode
(02:37):
55 with Kat Medina, where wediscuss embracing the traveler's
mindset.
All right, let's get to myconversation with Gary Arndt.
All right, I am super get to myconversation with Gary Arndt.
All right, I am super excitedtoday I have Gary Arndt on the
call with me today.
Gary, welcome to Journey withJake, thanks for having me.
Yeah, this is exciting.
I was doing a little researchon you and I'm like, wow, gary
(02:58):
does a podcast, he does a showevery day.
He's got a lot of people wholisten, a lot of downloads
really cool and it's a historypodcast and we're going to dive
into that.
Before we do that, we're alsogoing to talk about your travels
, but I'd like to know a littlebit about who you are, a little
bit, a little bit about yourbackground.
So, if you don't mind, justkind of tell us where you're
from and just kind of a littlebit of background so we know who
(03:19):
Gary is.
Grew up in Wisconsin.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Did not do a lot of traveling growing up.
My family, I think we tookmaybe two road trips ever One we
took to South Dakota, one wetook to Niagara Falls.
Went to college.
I was recruited in economics,but that kind of fell by the
wayside.
In the 90s I had a friend whowas doing stuff with this new
(03:49):
thing called the World Wide Weband he said, oh, you should come
check this out.
He built a product that tieddatabases to the internet, made
it real simple, and thencompanies started coming saying,
well, could you do this for ourwebsite?
And he didn't want to actuallybuild a website, he wanted to
focus on the tools.
He's like do you want to do it?
So I was like, sure, fastforward.
(04:10):
Four years later I'm 28 yearsold.
I got 50 people working for me.
Sell the company before thedot-com bubble bursts.
Start a couple other companies.
Go back to school for a bit.
In my 30s I studied geology andgeophysics, got bored and
realized I didn't want a careerin academia.
So I came up with theharebrained idea of selling my
home and traveling around theworld for a year, and that one
(04:30):
year turned into 13 years.
Turns out, the world's reallybig.
I visited over 200 differentcountries and territories, 400
different UNESCO World HeritageSites.
I've been to every state twice,including every US territory,
every Canadian province, everystate in Germany, every state in
South Africa, every state inAustralia.
Lots of travel.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Lots and lots.
That's amazing how many placesyou've been to when you sit and
think about it, where you'vebeen, and you said 13 years of
traveling.
Have you seen it all, or isthere still things out there
that you still haven't seen?
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Oh, lots of things I haven't seen.
Like I said, the world's areally big place.
Oh, lots of things I haven'tseen.
Like I said, the world's areally big place.
There are some countries, kindof obvious ones that are pretty
popular tourist destinations,that I haven't been to.
I've not been to Jamaica, I'venever been to Peru.
There's lots of parts ofcountries that I haven't visited
.
Technically, I've been to China, but I haven't been to Beijing,
(05:21):
I haven't been to Shanghai.
So yeah, there's a lot to gosee.
It's almost impossible to claimthat you've seen everything.
The world is far bigger than alifetime, wow.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Yeah, for sure, absolutely, and that's amazing.
It's amazing how many you'vebeen to, but still plenty to go
out there and see.
All right, I want to ask aboutyour debate experience and trust
me, I'm not going to get in adebate with you because, yeah,
that's not my thing.
Why debate?
Was that something you did inhigh school?
Did you have a debate team inhigh school and then that just
carried over into college?
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Yeah, I joined the debate team.
Turns out I was really good atit.
I did speech and debate.
I was one of the top 10 in theUnited States, got recruited in
college.
I was in the top 10 at thenational tournament.
My junior and senior year was ahigh school debate coach, ended
up coaching.
I did it for three years and Ihad three different teams placed
(06:15):
in the top 15 in the country,won multiple state tournaments.
So yeah, it was something I waspretty good at.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
All right, I don't know debate at all, so I'm just
going to ask a little couplesome technical questions for
these competitions.
How does it work?
I mean, are you assignedsomething ahead of time?
Is it on the fly, like, howdoes this work?
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yeah, so you have a resolution that you debate for
the entire year and it'sprimarily a research activity.
I mean, that's, that's thebiggest thing.
It requires an awful lot ofresearch you have to have.
You know.
I would say that a lot ofdebate rounds are won before you
ever walk into the room.
And it's also a very you know,the top tier of academic debate
(06:53):
is very fast paced.
It's not a bunch of peoplesaying and my opponent such and
such, it's not that at all.
And a lot of people.
You know it's not a spectatorsport.
If you were to go watch thefinal round of the national
debate tournament, which I thinkis on YouTube, you probably
wouldn't understand it.
And by understand it I mean youprobably wouldn't literally
understand what they're sayingbecause they talk so fast.
(07:14):
Wow, okay.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
I just think it's so interesting.
That's what I love about doingthis show.
I meet people who do all kindsof things, a lot of travelers,
things like that.
I think you've traveled to moreplaces than anybody I've ever
talked to, which is awesome, butyou've also done debate.
I also think I read somethingabout you having sort of like a
video game company or like aplace where people can come play
video games.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Yeah.
So after I sold my firstbusiness I bought a popular
video game website.
This guy next to me had it andhe got into debt, tried to use
it to fund an ISP or something.
So I bought it from him, I paidoff his debt and then we grew
that.
We had a deal with CNET at thetime where we were selling ad
inventory.
We established basically anetwork of video game sites.
(07:58):
I think we were doing like 50million ad impressions a month
at our peak.
And then we also opened up aland gaming center in
Minneapolis which was a reallynice facility but turned out.
The span at which something likethat was viable was pretty
short.
It was at a period where peopledidn't have great internet
(08:19):
connections at home, so youcould come to a place and play
on, you know, an ethernetnetwork with your friends.
We had, you know, lots ofenergy, drinks, stuff like that.
But as internet connections gotbetter at home and computers
got better, the necessity of aplace like that kind of
disappeared.
So even when I startedtraveling I'd often go to like a
uh, an internet cafe, and thosedon't exist anymore because
(08:41):
everybody has phones now.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Yeah, everyone has phones.
Internet connection is a lotbetter, for sure.
Okay, so 2007 rolls around.
You decide I'm going to get outof academia and I'm going to
travel.
What was it about travel?
Why did you say, hey, let's dothis?
Speaker 2 (08:56):
When I sold my business, I conned the company
that bought it to send me on atrip around the world.
It was a three-week trip whereI visited all their major
offices.
I to send me on a trip aroundthe world.
It was a three-week trip whereI visited all their major
offices.
I went to Tokyo, taipei,singapore, frankfurt, brussels,
paris and London, and I hadnever been out of North America
before and this was a realeye-opening experience.
(09:16):
I literally circumnavigated theglobe, had a lot of free time
when I wasn't doing businessstuff.
It was a real eye-openingexperience.
After that, I did a coupleother short trips.
I did one to Iceland by myselfwhen I went back to school.
I was on a research projectthat we flew down to Argentina
to collect soil samples, whichwas a blast.
It was something I reallyenjoyed doing, and I was at a
(09:38):
point in my life where I had noobligations.
I had no wife, no kids.
I had plenty of money to gotravel, and so I did, and this
few months adventure turned into13 years.
Yeah, it took me the better partof 2007 to cross the Pacific
Ocean, to give you an idea.
So I kind of just the generaldirection was go West.
(09:59):
Last point in the US well, notin the US, but in the
continental US was LA.
Flew to Hawaii, learned how toscuba dive there, went to Tahiti
and then Easter Island, andthen the Cook Islands, and then
New Zealand and then Fiji, samoa, tonga, american Samoa, back to
Fiji, new Caledonia, vanuatu,the Solomon Islands, nauru,
kiribati, back to Fiji, hawaii,guam, the Marshall Islands,
(10:23):
micronesia, palau, thePhilippines, and then I went to
Okinawa, worked my way upthrough Japan to Seoul, and then
I was in the Hong Kong aroundChristmas.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Wow, and then you kept going.
So when you're doing this, whenyou're just out traveling the
whole time, do you have aresidence?
Like how does this work, Likehow do you know?
Speaker 2 (10:43):
I mean, cause you're no Okay.
So how does that?
So for Well, I should say forabout 10 years, I just lived out
of my bag, stayed in guesthouses and hostels and things
like that.
I was moving around too much tohave a permanent place to stay.
Other people do it different.
They'll go to a major city andstay there for several months or
a better part of a year.
I just moved around a lot.
(11:03):
That was the way I did it.
There's no set way to do it.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
What was the longest stint you had?
I guess?
Speaker 2 (11:10):
I stayed a month in Saigon.
I stayed close to a month inMelbourne.
I think I stayed a little bitlong.
Well, I stayed three months, Iguess, in Girona in Spain, spent
a fair amount of time inBangkok, and these were periods
where I just kind of got tired.
I was sort of burned outtraveling.
So I would just hole up in aplace for a while and what I
call doing an anti-vacation,because I was out traveling all
(11:33):
the time I I just would stay inand play video games and do that
anti-vacation traveling againthe anti-vacation, but you're
still somewhere where you were,whether it was in Bangkok or
wherever the case may be, doingthe anti-travel.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
I like that what has been over the course of these
last few years like what's beenthe hardest part about it, like
what was the hardest part abouttraveling for you.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
And this isn't.
This isn't just me, this hashappened to almost everybody.
I know that's done.
Long-term travel you eventuallyget burned out.
The constant moving aroundbecomes difficult.
It's hard to establish anyfriends, any sort of life in a
regular place.
Everybody you meet is kind ofephemeral.
When I came back to the US, Iremember taking my stuff out of
(12:19):
storage that I originally put inand taking out all the plates
and everything else and it waslike I had just put pause on my
life and now I was hitting playagain.
But everyone else I knew, theirlife kept going on.
They got married, had kids andthey were in a very different
place.
So there's definitely anopportunity cost in terms of
traveling.
If you're going to be doingthis, you're not doing something
(12:41):
else, whatever that might be.
So I would say those are thebiggest challenges to traveling
long-term.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
What do you think is the biggest benefit that you got
out of this?
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Oh, I have done and seen more than 99.999% of humans
that have ever lived.
Most people don't go anywhere,or they go in a few places, or
they take a vacation and they goto some tourist spot.
It's not just.
I've visited a lot of places.
(13:12):
I've been launched from anuclear aircraft carrier.
I've been swimming with greatwhite sharks.
I've been sled dogging in theYukon.
I've been man.
There's so many things I'vedone dogging in the Yukon.
I've been man.
There's so many things I'vedone, and it's something that a
lot of people never get to do.
You know, maybe they might doone of those things, whether
it's hot air ballooning overSouth Africa done that.
(13:35):
I've been in a Formula One racecar, hit 180 miles an hour on
it.
Done that, ridden camels, youname it.
So a lot of different things.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
All right, perfect and that's you know.
Journey with Jake is all aboutadventure and challenges with
adventure, things like that.
I do love to hear stories, anyparticular adventure that you
remember that you wouldn't mindsharing with us kind of the
background behind it and kind ofwhat happened 2010,.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
I was staying for a couple months in Bangkok and
they were undergoing these verylarge, really large political
protests.
And one day the protesters andthere were hundreds of thousands
of people that had converged onBangkok were going to protest
at the prime minister's housewho lived a couple blocks from
where I was staying, and theywere going to go dump blood on
(14:22):
the front gate of his house.
So I'm like, all right, I got togo see this.
So I go down with my camera andI'm just this foreign dude with
a camera and I'm right on thestreet between a couple thousand
very angry protesters andhundreds of cops in full-blown
riot gear, helmets, shields,billy clubs and I'm between them
(14:44):
and it was kind of exhilarating.
But I got some amazing photosfrom it and they ended up.
I didn't stay for the wholething because it took them hours
to march down the street todump the blood.
Supposedly one of thejournalists that were there took
a sample of the blood that theydumped, because they had took
samples from like thousands ofpeople and they had these
plastic water jugs full of humanblood and it was just full of
(15:08):
everything Hepatitis, hiv.
They tested it and like it wasthis mix and concoction of like
every nasty disease you couldthink of.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Wow, and you were there for that.
Yeah, that's amazing when youlook back on all your travels,
the 200 plus countries you'vebeen to, like you said, the
States multiple times Is thereany particular place where?
If, like, if you could only goback to one place, where would
you want to go back to?
Speaker 2 (15:38):
I always get this question of some form of
everyone, and the assumption isthat there is a best place.
You know, it's like saying tosomeone with children okay, if
you, if you could get rid of allyour kids except one, what
would be the one?
And there there's an answer,and there really is no answer to
that question.
A city is a very differentplace than going to visit a
beach or mountains, forcompletely different reasons,
(16:02):
and I don't think these thingsare exclusive and it kind of
reinforces this notion thatthere is a best place and
therefore everyone must go tothe best place.
There are fantastic places thatpeople have just never heard of
and they're unlikely to evervisit because they're just
unaware of it.
One of the greatest places youcan visit, I'll tell you right
(16:23):
now Namibia, and everybody Iknow that's been to Namibia
agrees with me, but almostnobody knows about Namibia, and
it is one of the largest desertsin the world.
I spent like five days in thedeep desert and this is desert,
desert, right, this is dune,this is nothing but sand dunes.
(16:43):
We camped one night on thisthing called the Long Wall,
sometimes called the Wall ofDeath, which is a 300-foot-high
dune that abuts the AtlanticOcean, even though you're in the
tropics.
Technically it's like reallycold because it's all cold water
coming up from Antarctica.
And just again, an amazingexperience, and most people
(17:04):
don't know about it.
If you look at where most likeAmericans travel, they're going
to places like Mexico or theCaribbean because it's close.
If they go to Europe, they'regoing to England, ireland, maybe
Italy, maybe France.
That's about it, and there'sjust a very small universe of
things they choose from becausefor the most part, that's all
(17:26):
they know.
If you ask an American to namea city in France that isn't
Paris, most of them can't, andif you don't even know it exists
, it's very difficult to plan atrip there.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
And for you was it just kind of discovering it as
you went.
Is that kind of how it workedout for you?
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Yeah, there was a lot of that, like you'd kind of
have an idea of what the nextplace would be Beyond that, like
you'd meet people at a hostelor something.
Then that's why they're greatplaces to stay, because it's you
get to meet people and there'salways someone who just came
back from the place you're goingand they'll say, oh go, do this
.
See this, don't do this, don'tyou know, don't take this taxi
(18:05):
or whatever.
They'll have, you know, very,very fresh experiences that
you're not going to get fromlike a guidebook.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
All right, you mentioned, you talked about
Namibia and the and the wholekind of the desert atmosphere
there.
Since we're speaking todifferent places like that, I
kind of want to, I want to hear,like, how about a mountain
place?
What kind of what mountainplace jumps out to you?
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Well, a lot of Americans don't know about it,
even though it is kind of a bigtourist attraction like the
Jungfrau in Switzerland up inthe Alps.
It's very popular, I think, inIndia and other people in Europe
.
But in places in Europe but forwhatever reason, americans just
don't really know about it.
But it's got a beautiful trainride to get up there.
That's fantastic.
(18:49):
The Canadian Rockies you can'tgo wrong going to, like Bamford,
jasper, even though Banff is soovervisited in the summer.
I've been there in the winterand there's literally nobody
there and it's just as beautiful.
And even if you go in like thespring or the fall, it's a
completely different experiencethan if you just go right in the
(19:09):
middle of summer.
I went up in the Andes inArgentina, outside of Salta,
which again is kind of very dry.
No tourists up there at all.
Another great place to visit,trying to think of some other
mountain areas, and there arethings that are mountains that
maybe we don't call mountains.
They're not necessarily thebiggest peaks in the world, but
(19:31):
even if it's like Blue RidgeMountains in Tennessee and North
Carolina, I think that'sanother really great drive.
A lot of people from thatregion visit, but it's probably
not on a lot of people's list ifyou're not from that area.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Yeah, I mean, I live out West so I haven't been there
, but I've heard it's beautiful.
I've heard great things aboutthat part of the country.
All right, since we're stillyou know we're desert mountains.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
How about tropical or beach places for you?
Those are two different.
They can be two differentthings.
Okay, yeah, let's talk boththen.
A lot of beaches are kind ofthe same insofar as you go to a
white sand beach it's calciumcarbonate you have palm trees.
Palm trees are basically aglobal species.
You'll find very similar or thesame species of palm trees
almost anywhere.
(20:20):
There was one beach that Ivisited I don't even know the
name of it or if it has one.
I went to the Solomon Islands,which, again, I think they get
10,000 visitors a year, and thevast majority of those are
people there for business orthey work for non-governmental
organizations.
I went to an outer island inthe Solomon Islands called
Ronell and I asked them how manyvisitors they get a year and
(20:43):
they said 10.
I think that might be a bitmore at this point, but it's
probably less than a hundred.
And then they took me to thisplace where the ships used to
come in.
They have a new small port now,but they took me to this place
where the ships used to come in.
They have a new small port now.
They took me to the old one andI guess nobody had bothered to
go down here in like severalyears and so I was at this beach
(21:03):
that no human had been on inyears.
It was a very weird experiencebecause you saw like gigantic
clamshells on the shore whichyou would never see anywhere
else because somebody would grabthat right away.
It just had this feeling ofremoteness that I always kind of
liked.
Pide La Cuesta, just north ofAcapulco, I thought was a great
beach, really a big beach too,really wide, really long.
(21:26):
Culebra in Puerto Rico had someof the best sand, if you just
want to get technical about thesand.
Anguilla Caribbean also hadvery great sand.
Yeah, those are some of thebeaches off the top of my head.
And as for tropical areas,iguazu Falls in northern
Argentina, southern Brazilthat's a fantastic place to
(21:47):
visit.
It's kind of rainforest-y inthe area.
Northern Australia, if you wantto go to Kakadu National Park, I
think that's one of the greatnational parks of the world.
In the Northern Territories.
There's some really cool thingsto see in Papua New Guinea.
I really enjoyed my time thereand some really great scuba
diving as well.
Oh, and for the beaches one ofthe best beaches, the very, very
(22:10):
underdeveloped area for tourismand I don't think it's going to
be developed anytime soon, butthere's certainly potential is
in West Africa and Sierra LeoneVery poor country that's had a
lot of problems, but that wholecoast along the West Africa,
along the Gulf of Guinea.
The water is so warm because itcomes north and then it has to
hook 90 degrees and as it getsin that section where it goes
(22:34):
east west it just bakes in thesun so the water becomes really
warm.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
This is amazing that I can, just, you can just name
all these places, just thisplace here.
Well, when you've been there.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
It helps.
It's absolutely.
It's not like you're memorizingit for a test yeah, no, exactly
.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
And so you have and that's the cool part you have
those memories of the placesthat you've been and so you know
about them and you learn aboutthem.
I wanted to ask about, kind oflike, the influence of social
media, because when you firststarted, 2007, social media
wasn't a big, it was kind of inits infancy, you know, if at all
, but then near the end of yourtravels, I think you kind of
finished right around the penwhen the pandemic kicked in,
(23:10):
probably 2020.
I know you know social mediawas a lot bigger, so I know
places got more popular.
Did you notice any any of thatLike?
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Oh yeah, okay, yeah.
So, for example, I startedtraveling in March of 2007,
which was like a month afterSteve jobs announced the iPhone,
but before the iPhone becameavailable in June.
So when I started, there were,for all practical purposes, no
smartphones.
And even when smartphones cameout, international travel was
difficult with them.
And then eventually they'll letyou get a SIM card and now they
(23:43):
have eSIMs, which make ittrivial and it's very easy to
travel around the world with aphone.
The first time I was inJerusalem was in 2009.
And I remember going to theChurch of the Holy Sepulchre,
which is one of the holiestplaces in Christianity and there
are many pilgrims that werethere, and I returned back about
not quite 10 years latercompletely different experience
(24:06):
Everyone had a phone in front oftheir face.
Everyone's just taking pictures, not even trying to take a good
picture, but like literallyevery single person had a phone.
When I started your, like yousaid, social media really wasn't
a thing, but it quickly becamea thing and I think in a lot of
ways, it ruined the experience.
There's a lot of people outthere that are just trying to
(24:29):
take an Instagram shot ofthemselves.
I was in Sri Lanka once and itwas for this event that they
were hosting for quote unquoteinfluencers.
I primarily did photography,like you know, standard travel
photography, but then there weresome of these influencer
influencers that were there andI remember we climbed to the top
of this mountain wasn't a verybig mountain in Sri Lanka and
(24:51):
there was this woman who was aChinese influencer and she
walked up the mountain in like aball gown so she could take a
picture at the top of themountain of her wearing a ball
gown.
No one in their right mind isgoing to dress like that,
walking up a mountain, but it'sto create this unreal sense of
(25:12):
how glamorous your life is andwhen you travel long term it is
not glamorous this unreal senseof how glamorous your life is
and when you travel long-term itis not glamorous.
It's staying in a lot of seedyplaces.
I've gotten bed bugs, I've beenin the hot room that the air
conditioning doesn't work and inall my stays, only once did I
(25:33):
ever leave a place because itwas too bad, and that was in
Manila, because literally thebathroom for my room was a
toilet sitting right next to mybed.
That didn't work.
I was like, okay, there's myline, this is what is too much
for me?
Speaker 1 (25:45):
You found your line in Manila.
Wow, I wondered about thatbecause it just seems like,
especially as of late and I seea lot of travel posts and things
just because of what I do withJourney with Jake and it just
made me wonder.
I was like you know, especiallyyou, starting in 2007,.
It just had to be a totallydifferent thing, and so thanks
for sharing that, because itdoes.
(26:05):
It sounds like it has just kindof evolved differently.
People stand in there with, youknow, phones in front of their
faces instead of actuallylooking at what's going on and
where they're at.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
You know I'm not against smartphones.
In fact, they can be veryuseful things traveling.
I remember I rented a car inSkopje, macedonia, and I did a
two-week trip around the Balkansand I was able to navigate
using Google Maps and rent hotelrooms.
It was very handy, not tomention you point the camera at
something and translate a signand get at least a gist of what
(26:37):
it's saying.
They're very handy, but I have,for the most part.
You know I had a very bigfollowings on social media and I
haven't.
I basically abandoned postingon these places because, for the
most part, it's just not veryauthentic.
I just felt it was like a wasteof my time.
And when you look at the time,a question I love to ask people
can you tell me the last 10things you hit like on on social
(26:59):
media?
No idea, right?
No, no one can.
It's all ephemeral.
Yeah, time you could waste onTikTok or Instagram.
You could spend reading a bookor even watching a movie and get
more out of it than youprobably would just scrolling on
stuff that you're not going toretain.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
So you talked about your camera.
You pretty much traveled withyour, your camera, throughout
these 13 years.
Were you documenting all ofthis?
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Yeah, I, like I said I've taken well, just of the
photos that I processed.
I have over 50,000 photos on mywebsite from all over the world
.
I was named travel photographerof the year three times in
North America.
I won three Lowell Thomasawards, which is like the
Pulitzer for travel journalism.
So, yeah, I was documenting alot of it and I had a popular,
real popular travel blog.
But the social media part of itbecause it's out of the other
(27:48):
thing is it's all controlled byan algorithm.
And one of the things Irealized is, if I there are a
lot of photos I like that if itwasn't of a mountain or a
rainbow or a waterfall, it'sjust not going to get very many
likes.
And so a lot of very goodphotographers that I know who
and there are greatphotographers they end up just
posting the same things over andover and they run photo tours
(28:10):
to the same places becauseeverybody just wants photos of
these things rather than goingsomeplace.
That's really interesting, butit's not going to be, you know,
patagonia or Iceland.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
What, if anything?
Is there a solution for that?
Speaker 2 (28:25):
People need to broaden their horizons.
Like I said, the reason whypeople go to so few places is
because they don't know of manyplaces.
If I talk about going toMontenegro, most people either
have never heard of the countryor don't know where it is, or
they don't know anything aboutit.
They just don't know.
And so if you don't know, or ifthey do that like it scares
(28:47):
them right.
There's the idea of this place.
Well, I don't know what that is, but oh, ireland, that's fine.
I've heard of that, I know whatthat is.
Because they don't knowanything about it.
It's outside of their comfortzone.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
I kind of want to go back to some of these seedy
places you stayed at.
First of all, explain.
I've had a couple of people onwho stay at hostels quite a bit.
Give me kind of the gist ofhostels overall because I still
don't know if I fully understandwhat they're like.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
For the most.
You can get a private room at ahostel just like you would a
hotel, or you can stay in a dormroom, which is super cheap.
I didn't do that because I wastoo old for that stuff.
That tends to be for youngerpeople Probably going to share a
bathroom.
That's the biggest differenceand there's usually a pretty
(29:39):
sizable communal area and thereare certain hostels they're
chains in Europe.
They'll have a restaurant and abar downstairs and they tend to
be a lot cheaper than a regularhotel, so they probably don't
have maid service every day.
If you're there for a week,you're responsible for your own
towels and making your own bedand stuff to keep the cost down.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Gotcha Okay, so that's kind of how it's set up,
but there are private rooms.
Then In my mind I always justpictured a line of bunk beds and
people-.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
They do have that, but most I mean there are like
some upscale hostels.
Now there really are.
I have a friend who has writtena book on boutique hostels in
Europe and some of them arereally, really nice.
Did you ever spurge and wouldstay at a nice hotel every now
and again?
No, which does not say I didn'tstay at fancy hotels or
(30:22):
something, but I wasn't the onepaying for it.
Gotcha Okay.
I remember I spent back-to-backnights in Cape Town, south
Africa.
One night was at the one andonly, which I think costs like
$1,000 a night, and I had abutler for my room.
Then the next night I was backat a hostel.
But the reason I don't believein splurging for hotels is
because I would rather splurgeon a business class ticket than
(30:46):
I would on a hotel.
You spend most of your time ina hotel, unconscious, sleeping.
Maybe occasionally having anice shower or a bath would be
worth it, but for the most partI would prefer to.
Flying is horrible, flyingeconomy class, and I have flown
at the time.
I think there's longer flightsnow, but I went from Dallas to
(31:08):
Sydney, which at the time wasthe longest flight in the world,
and I flew economy and it wasjust an absolute miserable
experience.
It was basically like a fullday in the air and if I could,
you know, getting a businessclass seat for something like
that would actually be worthmore than upgrading from, say, a
hostel to the four seasons.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
For me, Very good, okay, yeah, that makes sense.
Like you said, you're asleepmost of the time.
You're in a hotel.
In hotel you're out exploring,you're out seeing things, rather
than just sitting in a hotelroom.
So that that makes total sense.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
I can see where you're, where you're coming from
on that and I should say I'vetalked about this with other
long-term travelers and most ofthem agree with me.
They would rather, if you'regoing to spend money on
something, get a good planeticket rather than a good hotel
room.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Okay, I want to ask about kind of what you're up to
now, because I know 2020 hittravel slowed down due to the
pandemic, things like that.
Is that what kind of got youoff?
The travel thing was thepandemic.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Yes, there were problems before the pandemic
that I was noticing in travelmedia.
Everything shifted and when Istarted, I just had my website
and people went to the websiteand they read my articles and
they commented on the website,and that shifted over time as
everything moved to like Twitterand Facebook and then
eventually Instagram, and thesewere all platforms that were
controlled by very big companiesand everything was done through
an algorithm and over time, thenumber of people that
(32:27):
organically visited a website orknew who you were drop, drop,
dropped and it was dependentupon this.
And just before the pandemic Iwas asking people and the
average was like 90% ofeverybody's website traffic was
coming from Google.
Well, when people are searchingfor travel content, they're
usually planning a trip, and so,rather than me writing my
thoughts about the history of aplace, everything just became
(32:50):
guides, things to do, top 15things to do in Vegas.
Everyone was writing the samearticle for the same places and
it was no longer fun.
Over on social media, it waspeople who were just doing
clickbaity type things or thesame type of photos in the same
type of places.
None of this was interesting tome anymore.
(33:11):
So when the pandemic hit mylast international trip.
I came back from PortugalFebruary 28th 2020, got sick,
had COVID real early on.
Two weeks after that.
95% of my income dries up.
I thought, like a lot of people, that this would be over with
really quick Like this would bea few weeks.
(33:31):
I didn't realize it would lastas long as it would.
Over with really quick Likethis would be a few weeks.
I didn't realize it would lastas long as it would.
And eventually I realized I hadto do something and I thought
this was a good opportunity tomake a change.
So I had this idea for apodcast that I had been kicking
around.
That would not be a travelpodcast per se, but I could use
a lot of the things I learnedthrough traveling.
The original idea for the showwas going to be really long
(33:54):
episodes that would be publishedinfrequently, maybe like a
two-hour episode published onceevery two weeks.
But I realized that that reallywasn't a very good business
model and I went back to thisidea and I had a friend who had
a daily podcast and he didreally well with it and I got
talking to him and I startedthinking about it and I realized
, well, this would work a lotbetter.
So I relaunched the show usingthe artwork and the theme music
(34:18):
that I had already purchased therights to, and, on July 1st
2020, I launched the firstepisode of Everything Everywhere
, daily.
Everything Everywhere is thename of my travel blog.
I call it travel adjacent.
It's not a travel show liketoday.
We're visiting this place andhere's what we're to see, and
it's not that it's educationalcontent, it's history.
(34:39):
But, like I said, I'm able touse everything I learned
traveling.
I will talk about my travels inthe course of doing this If
it's relevant for the show.
And the show has been a hugehit since I launched it.
It's been up.
It's going for about four uh,four and a half years.
Now.
We're closing in on our 40millionth download.
We get I get about a millionand a half downloads a month.
(35:00):
The show is far more successfulthan I ever could have imagined
.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
That's amazing.
Congratulations on that.
I think that's fantastic.
I listened to your episodetoday, I think, cause you have
an episode every day.
I think because you have anepisode every day, I think it
was 1600.
I think it was the episodetoday.
I think it was episode number1600.
Even so, I was like, wow, howmany episodes.
And that makes sense If you'redoing it every day.
That's what's what's going onand I enjoyed it.
In fact, I got to.
I got to travel here thisweekend.
(35:24):
I'm going to be downloadingsome episodes and listen to it
by travels.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Yeah, I've done episodes like on geography,
about the.
You like on geography about the.
You know certain countries.
I've done it about inventions,people battles, science and math
episodes.
You, you know all sorts ofdifferent things.
The episode I'm working ontonight will be the election of
1788, the first presidentialelection ever, and how it was
completely different than anyother election we ever had.
(35:49):
There was no popular vote.
There was no one knew reallywhat to do.
It was a unanimous vote.
George Washington wonunanimously.
A lot of things that neverhappened again and a lot of
problems.
They realized, yeah, we shouldprobably fix this and they did
with subsequent amendments andstuff.
I've done it on rivers of theworld and the origin of words
(36:10):
and phrases, lots of differentthings, even sports.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
So it's similar.
It reminds me of you knowyou're talking about how the
world's a big place and you knowyour 13 years of travel.
You've seen a lot of places,but you haven't seen everything,
and it's a lifetime to seeeverything, and even more than
that.
It sounds like it's the samewith this podcast.
I mean it sounds like you can.
It's endless.
I mean you could.
There's so many differentthings you could talk about.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Yeah, Every every time I do an episode, it usually
brings up one or two ideas forfuture episodes I could do.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
What do you think the future holds you kind of just
want to keep this rolling.
I mean what?
How do you, how do you feelabout it?
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Yeah, it's going really well right now.
Certainly not going to ruin agood thing.
The the downside to this isthat it's very difficult to
travel when you're doing apodcast every single day.
And so I literally I, you knowI went through this period of 13
years where I was travelingaround the world almost nonstop
and I have not been out of thecountry since I, since the
(37:03):
pandemic hit, and I've onlytaken a few flights for, like
conferences and stuff.
But even that, I think I'mcutting down on the conferences
because I'm just getting nothingout of them.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Yeah, and it sounds like maybe I'm wrong on this,
but you're pretty much just aone-man wrecking crew for this
right.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
You're just kind of handling everything for yourself
for the most part.
Yeah, I've developed a systemthat is pretty efficient.
Vast majority of the time isspent writing and research, so I
write a script for every show.
I like to tell people.
I write a 2000 word term paperevery day.
The actual recording is prettytrivial and if you're doing a
monologue, scripted monologueshow, that's the easiest type of
podcast to record.
It's technically very simple todo.
(37:39):
Yeah, so I got about, you know,50,000 people a day that that
listen and the show just keepsgrowing.
So Fantastic, that's awesome.
I might end up.
I've been thinking of maybegoing to like Australia or
something this winter and Iwould just I wouldn't travel or,
you know, run around like Iused to do, I would just get an
apartment somewhere and recordthe show from there for a period
(38:01):
of time.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Yeah, you can do that yeah, change of scenery.
I like it.
Where now Wisconsin was yourhome?
Is that where you're living now?
Where's where's home now?
For you where you're living now.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Where's home now for you?
Okay, back in Wisconsin, backhere.
And that was one of the betterdecisions I've ever made too.
I was living in Minneapolisduring the pandemic and when I
started the show and I livedright on Lake Street, which is
where all the riots occurred.
My neighborhood was a lot of itburned down and was trashed,
and a couple of months afterthat I just put all my stuff in
(38:33):
a U-Haul.
One day, notified my landlord,by the way, I'm gone.
You may do what you will.
They never followed up on it.
Yeah, I moved back here andhave no regrets.
In fact, one of the things Irealized after moving was I live
in a community with about Idon't know about 80,000 people,
maybe a little bit more with thesurrounding communities.
There's an Amazon fulfillmentcenter here.
(38:54):
There's nothing I can't gethere that I can't get in a major
city.
We have all manner of ethnicrestaurants.
I can watch any movie.
I can see any sporting eventbecause of the way the internet
works now and streaming, but Ipay a fraction for what I would
pay if I was living in New Yorkor something, and I tell people
(39:15):
I live in a very nice building,arguably the nicest apartment in
this community, right on ariver.
I see deer and geese every day.
I get to look out of my windowand see a river, even though I'm
in the middle of town.
For what I pay, you wouldbasically be living in a closet
if you were in New York.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
Thank you so much for taking some time with me.
This has been fascinating toget to know who you are a little
bit better.
Didn't really know who you wereuntil I found out I was going
to be talking to you and I waslike I was just super impressed
with hundreds of places thatyou've been to.
Not only that, but just whatyou're doing with your podcast.
I think it's really cool.
I think that's awesome.
You're an inspiration to me, soI appreciate that.
My final question to you beforewe wrap this up is, since this
(39:53):
is an adventure type podcast,what does adventure mean to you?
Speaker 2 (40:02):
Adventure just means kind of doing something new and
out of your comfort zone.
You know, I remember the firsttime I went bungee jumping it
was in Queenstown, new Zealand,and it was kind of drizzling, so
they didn't have a lot ofpeople doing it, it was
basically me and a family fromIndia.
And the way they did it it wasby weight, and so these two
little girls, who were like 10years old, went bungee jumping
before me and after a10-year-old girl does it, and
(40:24):
you're a grown man, you can'treally chicken out.
You kind of have to do it atthat point.
But I did it.
You kind of have to do it atthat point, but I did it Never.
I didn't see saltwater until Iwas 21 years old, but I taught
myself.
I didn't.
I shouldn't say I didn't teachmyself, but I learned how to
scuba dive, done, you know, overa hundred dives around the
(40:45):
world with all sorts of things,and you know it's all about
going to places that you'venever been before and
experiencing new things and andand that's adventure.
Gary, thank you so much forcoming on journey with Jake.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
Thank you for having me.
A big thank you to Gary Arndtfor joining me on the show.
If you'd like to learn moreabout Gary or check out his
podcast, you can follow him onInstagram at everything
everywhere, or visit his website, everything-everywherecom.
It was such a greatconversation.
Thank you again, gary, andthank you to all of you for
(41:17):
tuning into Journey with Jakeeach week.
For those of you who follow meon Instagram, you might've seen
my recent announcement.
February may be the shortestmonth of the year, but it's
going to be packed with content.
I'll be releasing two episodesa week, every Monday and
Thursday.
Throughout February.
I've had some incredibleconversations with fantastic
guests and I can't wait for youto hear them.
(41:39):
Be sure to join me for my nextepisode this Thursday, featuring
Autumn Carolyn.
Autumn is a traveler,photographer and the author of
Travel and Wonder.
We dive into her incrediblejourney, including some
unforgettable stories like beingkissed under the Eiffel Tower
in Paris.
You won't want to miss it and,as always, remember, it's not
(42:00):
always about the destination, asit is about the journey.
Take care, everybody.
They say life is short and the world is wide.
My guest today, gary Arndt,knows this better than most.
Having traveled extensively,gary reminds us that the world
is far too vast to see it all inone lifetime.
As a debate champion and thehost of the award-winning
Everything Everywhere podcast,gary brings a unique perspective
(00:21):
on exploration and discovery.
So buckle up.
It's time to see the worldthrough Gary Arndt's eyes.
Welcome to Journey with Jake.
This is a podcast aboutadventure and how, through our
adventures, we can overcome thechallenges of life that come our
way.
While I expect you will learnsome things about different
adventures, this show willentertain you.
Each episode will featuredifferent guests or guests as
(00:43):
they share experiences andstories from the different
adventures they have been on.
Not only will you beentertained, but you'll also
hear the failures and trialseach guest faces and what they
have done or are doing toovercome the hardships that come
their way.
My goal is to take each of uson a journey through the
experiences of my guests, withthe hope that you'll be
entertained and inspired toovercome your day-to-day
(01:07):
challenges.
After all, it's not all aboutthe destination, as it is about
the journey.
(01:31):
Welcome back to Journey withJake.
I'm your host, jake Bushman,and I'm excited to bring you
another fantastic episode Today.
We're joined by the highlyaccomplished Gary Arndt.
Before we dive in, I'd like toinvite you to subscribe to the
show wherever you listen topodcasts, if you enjoy what you
hear.
Leaving a rating and review onApple Podcasts or Spotify would
mean the world to me.
You can also catch episodes onYouTube.
Just search Journey with JakePodcast.
(01:53):
And while you're there, be sureto subscribe and hit that like
button.
I'd love to connect with youall.
The best place to do that is onInstagram.
At Journey with Jake Podcast, Ishare clips from past, current
and upcoming episodes, alongwith a bit about my personal
journey.
So come, follow along.
I'd love to hear from you.
Lastly, journey with Jake ispart of the Podmatch Podcast
(02:15):
Network.
If you're looking for moregreat podcasts, visit
podmatchcom forward slashnetwork.
Now on to today's episode.
I had an incredibleconversation with Gary Arndt,
who spent over 13 yearstraveling the world and is now
the host of the EverythingEverywhere podcast.
If you enjoy this episode, Irecommend checking out episode
(02:37):
55 with Kat Medina, where wediscuss embracing the traveler's
mindset.
All right, let's get to myconversation with Gary Arndt.
All right, I am super get to myconversation with Gary Arndt.
All right, I am super excitedtoday I have Gary Arndt on the
call with me today.
Gary, welcome to Journey withJake, thanks for having me.
Yeah, this is exciting.
I was doing a little researchon you and I'm like, wow, gary
(02:58):
does a podcast, he does a showevery day.
He's got a lot of people wholisten, a lot of downloads
really cool and it's a historypodcast and we're going to dive
into that.
Before we do that, we're alsogoing to talk about your travels
, but I'd like to know a littlebit about who you are, a little
bit, a little bit about yourbackground.
So, if you don't mind, justkind of tell us where you're
from and just kind of a littlebit of background so we know who
(03:19):
Gary is.
Grew up in Wisconsin.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Did not do a lot of traveling growing up.
My family, I think we tookmaybe two road trips ever One we
took to South Dakota, one wetook to Niagara Falls.
Went to college.
I was recruited in economics,but that kind of fell by the
wayside.
In the 90s I had a friend whowas doing stuff with this new
(03:49):
thing called the World Wide Weband he said, oh, you should come
check this out.
He built a product that tieddatabases to the internet, made
it real simple, and thencompanies started coming saying,
well, could you do this for ourwebsite?
And he didn't want to actuallybuild a website, he wanted to
focus on the tools.
He's like do you want to do it?
So I was like, sure, fastforward.
(04:10):
Four years later I'm 28 yearsold.
I got 50 people working for me.
Sell the company before thedot-com bubble bursts.
Start a couple other companies.
Go back to school for a bit.
In my 30s I studied geology andgeophysics, got bored and
realized I didn't want a careerin academia.
So I came up with theharebrained idea of selling my
home and traveling around theworld for a year, and that one
(04:30):
year turned into 13 years.
Turns out, the world's reallybig.
I visited over 200 differentcountries and territories, 400
different UNESCO World HeritageSites.
I've been to every state twice,including every US territory,
every Canadian province, everystate in Germany, every state in
South Africa, every state inAustralia.
Lots of travel.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Lots and lots.
That's amazing how many placesyou've been to when you sit and
think about it, where you'vebeen, and you said 13 years of
traveling.
Have you seen it all, or isthere still things out there
that you still haven't seen?
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Oh, lots of things I haven't seen.
Like I said, the world's areally big place.
Oh, lots of things I haven'tseen.
Like I said, the world's areally big place.
There are some countries, kindof obvious ones that are pretty
popular tourist destinations,that I haven't been to.
I've not been to Jamaica, I'venever been to Peru.
There's lots of parts ofcountries that I haven't visited
.
Technically, I've been to China, but I haven't been to Beijing,
(05:21):
I haven't been to Shanghai.
So yeah, there's a lot to gosee.
It's almost impossible to claimthat you've seen everything.
The world is far bigger than alifetime, wow.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Yeah, for sure, absolutely, and that's amazing.
It's amazing how many you'vebeen to, but still plenty to go
out there and see.
All right, I want to ask aboutyour debate experience and trust
me, I'm not going to get in adebate with you because, yeah,
that's not my thing.
Why debate?
Was that something you did inhigh school?
Did you have a debate team inhigh school and then that just
carried over into college?
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Yeah, I joined the debate team.
Turns out I was really good atit.
I did speech and debate.
I was one of the top 10 in theUnited States, got recruited in
college.
I was in the top 10 at thenational tournament.
My junior and senior year was ahigh school debate coach, ended
up coaching.
I did it for three years and Ihad three different teams placed
(06:15):
in the top 15 in the country,won multiple state tournaments.
So yeah, it was something I waspretty good at.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
All right, I don't know debate at all, so I'm just
going to ask a little couplesome technical questions for
these competitions.
How does it work?
I mean, are you assignedsomething ahead of time?
Is it on the fly, like, howdoes this work?
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yeah, so you have a resolution that you debate for
the entire year and it'sprimarily a research activity.
I mean, that's, that's thebiggest thing.
It requires an awful lot ofresearch you have to have.
You know.
I would say that a lot ofdebate rounds are won before you
ever walk into the room.
And it's also a very you know,the top tier of academic debate
(06:53):
is very fast paced.
It's not a bunch of peoplesaying and my opponent such and
such, it's not that at all.
And a lot of people.
You know it's not a spectatorsport.
If you were to go watch thefinal round of the national
debate tournament, which I thinkis on YouTube, you probably
wouldn't understand it.
And by understand it I mean youprobably wouldn't literally
understand what they're sayingbecause they talk so fast.
(07:14):
Wow, okay.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
I just think it's so interesting.
That's what I love about doingthis show.
I meet people who do all kindsof things, a lot of travelers,
things like that.
I think you've traveled to moreplaces than anybody I've ever
talked to, which is awesome, butyou've also done debate.
I also think I read somethingabout you having sort of like a
video game company or like aplace where people can come play
video games.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Yeah.
So after I sold my firstbusiness I bought a popular
video game website.
This guy next to me had it andhe got into debt, tried to use
it to fund an ISP or something.
So I bought it from him, I paidoff his debt and then we grew
that.
We had a deal with CNET at thetime where we were selling ad
inventory.
We established basically anetwork of video game sites.
(07:58):
I think we were doing like 50million ad impressions a month
at our peak.
And then we also opened up aland gaming center in
Minneapolis which was a reallynice facility but turned out.
The span at which something likethat was viable was pretty
short.
It was at a period where peopledidn't have great internet
(08:19):
connections at home, so youcould come to a place and play
on, you know, an ethernetnetwork with your friends.
We had, you know, lots ofenergy, drinks, stuff like that.
But as internet connections gotbetter at home and computers
got better, the necessity of aplace like that kind of
disappeared.
So even when I startedtraveling I'd often go to like a
uh, an internet cafe, and thosedon't exist anymore because
(08:41):
everybody has phones now.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Yeah, everyone has phones.
Internet connection is a lotbetter, for sure.
Okay, so 2007 rolls around.
You decide I'm going to get outof academia and I'm going to
travel.
What was it about travel?
Why did you say, hey, let's dothis?
Speaker 2 (08:56):
When I sold my business, I conned the company
that bought it to send me on atrip around the world.
It was a three-week trip whereI visited all their major
offices.
I to send me on a trip aroundthe world.
It was a three-week trip whereI visited all their major
offices.
I went to Tokyo, taipei,singapore, frankfurt, brussels,
paris and London, and I hadnever been out of North America
before and this was a realeye-opening experience.
(09:16):
I literally circumnavigated theglobe, had a lot of free time
when I wasn't doing businessstuff.
It was a real eye-openingexperience.
After that, I did a coupleother short trips.
I did one to Iceland by myselfwhen I went back to school.
I was on a research projectthat we flew down to Argentina
to collect soil samples, whichwas a blast.
It was something I reallyenjoyed doing, and I was at a
(09:38):
point in my life where I had noobligations.
I had no wife, no kids.
I had plenty of money to gotravel, and so I did, and this
few months adventure turned into13 years.
Yeah, it took me the better partof 2007 to cross the Pacific
Ocean, to give you an idea.
So I kind of just the generaldirection was go West.
(09:59):
Last point in the US well, notin the US, but in the
continental US was LA.
Flew to Hawaii, learned how toscuba dive there, went to Tahiti
and then Easter Island, andthen the Cook Islands, and then
New Zealand and then Fiji, samoa, tonga, american Samoa, back to
Fiji, new Caledonia, vanuatu,the Solomon Islands, nauru,
kiribati, back to Fiji, hawaii,guam, the Marshall Islands,
(10:23):
micronesia, palau, thePhilippines, and then I went to
Okinawa, worked my way upthrough Japan to Seoul, and then
I was in the Hong Kong aroundChristmas.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Wow, and then you kept going.
So when you're doing this, whenyou're just out traveling the
whole time, do you have aresidence?
Like how does this work, Likehow do you know?
Speaker 2 (10:43):
I mean, cause you're no Okay.
So how does that?
So for Well, I should say forabout 10 years, I just lived out
of my bag, stayed in guesthouses and hostels and things
like that.
I was moving around too much tohave a permanent place to stay.
Other people do it different.
They'll go to a major city andstay there for several months or
a better part of a year.
I just moved around a lot.
(11:03):
That was the way I did it.
There's no set way to do it.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
What was the longest stint you had?
I guess?
Speaker 2 (11:10):
I stayed a month in Saigon.
I stayed close to a month inMelbourne.
I think I stayed a little bitlong.
Well, I stayed three months, Iguess, in Girona in Spain, spent
a fair amount of time inBangkok, and these were periods
where I just kind of got tired.
I was sort of burned outtraveling.
So I would just hole up in aplace for a while and what I
call doing an anti-vacation,because I was out traveling all
(11:33):
the time I I just would stay inand play video games and do that
anti-vacation traveling againthe anti-vacation, but you're
still somewhere where you were,whether it was in Bangkok or
wherever the case may be, doingthe anti-travel.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
I like that what has been over the course of these
last few years like what's beenthe hardest part about it, like
what was the hardest part abouttraveling for you.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
And this isn't.
This isn't just me, this hashappened to almost everybody.
I know that's done.
Long-term travel you eventuallyget burned out.
The constant moving aroundbecomes difficult.
It's hard to establish anyfriends, any sort of life in a
regular place.
Everybody you meet is kind ofephemeral.
When I came back to the US, Iremember taking my stuff out of
(12:19):
storage that I originally put inand taking out all the plates
and everything else and it waslike I had just put pause on my
life and now I was hitting playagain.
But everyone else I knew, theirlife kept going on.
They got married, had kids andthey were in a very different
place.
So there's definitely anopportunity cost in terms of
traveling.
If you're going to be doingthis, you're not doing something
(12:41):
else, whatever that might be.
So I would say those are thebiggest challenges to traveling
long-term.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
What do you think is the biggest benefit that you got
out of this?
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Oh, I have done and seen more than 99.999% of humans
that have ever lived.
Most people don't go anywhere,or they go in a few places, or
they take a vacation and they goto some tourist spot.
It's not just.
I've visited a lot of places.
(13:12):
I've been launched from anuclear aircraft carrier.
I've been swimming with greatwhite sharks.
I've been sled dogging in theYukon.
I've been man.
There's so many things I'vedone dogging in the Yukon.
I've been man.
There's so many things I'vedone, and it's something that a
lot of people never get to do.
You know, maybe they might doone of those things, whether
it's hot air ballooning overSouth Africa done that.
(13:35):
I've been in a Formula One racecar, hit 180 miles an hour on
it.
Done that, ridden camels, youname it.
So a lot of different things.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
All right, perfect and that's you know.
Journey with Jake is all aboutadventure and challenges with
adventure, things like that.
I do love to hear stories, anyparticular adventure that you
remember that you wouldn't mindsharing with us kind of the
background behind it and kind ofwhat happened 2010,.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
I was staying for a couple months in Bangkok and
they were undergoing these verylarge, really large political
protests.
And one day the protesters andthere were hundreds of thousands
of people that had converged onBangkok were going to protest
at the prime minister's housewho lived a couple blocks from
where I was staying, and theywere going to go dump blood on
(14:22):
the front gate of his house.
So I'm like, all right, I got togo see this.
So I go down with my camera andI'm just this foreign dude with
a camera and I'm right on thestreet between a couple thousand
very angry protesters andhundreds of cops in full-blown
riot gear, helmets, shields,billy clubs and I'm between them
(14:44):
and it was kind of exhilarating.
But I got some amazing photosfrom it and they ended up.
I didn't stay for the wholething because it took them hours
to march down the street todump the blood.
Supposedly one of thejournalists that were there took
a sample of the blood that theydumped, because they had took
samples from like thousands ofpeople and they had these
plastic water jugs full of humanblood and it was just full of
(15:08):
everything Hepatitis, hiv.
They tested it and like it wasthis mix and concoction of like
every nasty disease you couldthink of.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Wow, and you were there for that.
Yeah, that's amazing when youlook back on all your travels,
the 200 plus countries you'vebeen to, like you said, the
States multiple times Is thereany particular place where?
If, like, if you could only goback to one place, where would
you want to go back to?
Speaker 2 (15:38):
I always get this question of some form of
everyone, and the assumption isthat there is a best place.
You know, it's like saying tosomeone with children okay, if
you, if you could get rid of allyour kids except one, what
would be the one?
And there there's an answer,and there really is no answer to
that question.
A city is a very differentplace than going to visit a
beach or mountains, forcompletely different reasons,
(16:02):
and I don't think these thingsare exclusive and it kind of
reinforces this notion thatthere is a best place and
therefore everyone must go tothe best place.
There are fantastic places thatpeople have just never heard of
and they're unlikely to evervisit because they're just
unaware of it.
One of the greatest places youcan visit, I'll tell you right
(16:23):
now Namibia, and everybody Iknow that's been to Namibia
agrees with me, but almostnobody knows about Namibia, and
it is one of the largest desertsin the world.
I spent like five days in thedeep desert and this is desert,
desert, right, this is dune,this is nothing but sand dunes.
(16:43):
We camped one night on thisthing called the Long Wall,
sometimes called the Wall ofDeath, which is a 300-foot-high
dune that abuts the AtlanticOcean, even though you're in the
tropics.
Technically it's like reallycold because it's all cold water
coming up from Antarctica.
And just again, an amazingexperience, and most people
(17:04):
don't know about it.
If you look at where most likeAmericans travel, they're going
to places like Mexico or theCaribbean because it's close.
If they go to Europe, they'regoing to England, ireland, maybe
Italy, maybe France.
That's about it, and there'sjust a very small universe of
things they choose from becausefor the most part, that's all
(17:26):
they know.
If you ask an American to namea city in France that isn't
Paris, most of them can't, andif you don't even know it exists
, it's very difficult to plan atrip there.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
And for you was it just kind of discovering it as
you went.
Is that kind of how it workedout for you?
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Yeah, there was a lot of that, like you'd kind of
have an idea of what the nextplace would be Beyond that, like
you'd meet people at a hostelor something.
Then that's why they're greatplaces to stay, because it's you
get to meet people and there'salways someone who just came
back from the place you're goingand they'll say, oh go, do this
.
See this, don't do this, don'tyou know, don't take this taxi
(18:05):
or whatever.
They'll have, you know, very,very fresh experiences that
you're not going to get fromlike a guidebook.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
All right, you mentioned, you talked about
Namibia and the and the wholekind of the desert atmosphere
there.
Since we're speaking todifferent places like that, I
kind of want to, I want to hear,like, how about a mountain
place?
What kind of what mountainplace jumps out to you?
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Well, a lot of Americans don't know about it,
even though it is kind of a bigtourist attraction like the
Jungfrau in Switzerland up inthe Alps.
It's very popular, I think, inIndia and other people in Europe
.
But in places in Europe but forwhatever reason, americans just
don't really know about it.
But it's got a beautiful trainride to get up there.
That's fantastic.
(18:49):
The Canadian Rockies you can'tgo wrong going to, like Bamford,
jasper, even though Banff is soovervisited in the summer.
I've been there in the winterand there's literally nobody
there and it's just as beautiful.
And even if you go in like thespring or the fall, it's a
completely different experiencethan if you just go right in the
(19:09):
middle of summer.
I went up in the Andes inArgentina, outside of Salta,
which again is kind of very dry.
No tourists up there at all.
Another great place to visit,trying to think of some other
mountain areas, and there arethings that are mountains that
maybe we don't call mountains.
They're not necessarily thebiggest peaks in the world, but
(19:31):
even if it's like Blue RidgeMountains in Tennessee and North
Carolina, I think that'sanother really great drive.
A lot of people from thatregion visit, but it's probably
not on a lot of people's list ifyou're not from that area.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Yeah, I mean, I live out West so I haven't been there
, but I've heard it's beautiful.
I've heard great things aboutthat part of the country.
All right, since we're stillyou know we're desert mountains.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
How about tropical or beach places for you?
Those are two different.
They can be two differentthings.
Okay, yeah, let's talk boththen.
A lot of beaches are kind ofthe same insofar as you go to a
white sand beach it's calciumcarbonate you have palm trees.
Palm trees are basically aglobal species.
You'll find very similar or thesame species of palm trees
almost anywhere.
(20:20):
There was one beach that Ivisited I don't even know the
name of it or if it has one.
I went to the Solomon Islands,which, again, I think they get
10,000 visitors a year, and thevast majority of those are
people there for business orthey work for non-governmental
organizations.
I went to an outer island inthe Solomon Islands called
Ronell and I asked them how manyvisitors they get a year and
(20:43):
they said 10.
I think that might be a bitmore at this point, but it's
probably less than a hundred.
And then they took me to thisplace where the ships used to
come in.
They have a new small port now,but they took me to this place
where the ships used to come in.
They have a new small port now.
They took me to the old one andI guess nobody had bothered to
go down here in like severalyears and so I was at this beach
(21:03):
that no human had been on inyears.
It was a very weird experiencebecause you saw like gigantic
clamshells on the shore whichyou would never see anywhere
else because somebody would grabthat right away.
It just had this feeling ofremoteness that I always kind of
liked.
Pide La Cuesta, just north ofAcapulco, I thought was a great
beach, really a big beach too,really wide, really long.
(21:26):
Culebra in Puerto Rico had someof the best sand, if you just
want to get technical about thesand.
Anguilla Caribbean also hadvery great sand.
Yeah, those are some of thebeaches off the top of my head.
And as for tropical areas,iguazu Falls in northern
Argentina, southern Brazilthat's a fantastic place to
(21:47):
visit.
It's kind of rainforest-y inthe area.
Northern Australia, if you wantto go to Kakadu National Park, I
think that's one of the greatnational parks of the world.
In the Northern Territories.
There's some really cool thingsto see in Papua New Guinea.
I really enjoyed my time thereand some really great scuba
diving as well.
Oh, and for the beaches one ofthe best beaches, the very, very
(22:10):
underdeveloped area for tourismand I don't think it's going to
be developed anytime soon, butthere's certainly potential is
in West Africa and Sierra LeoneVery poor country that's had a
lot of problems, but that wholecoast along the West Africa,
along the Gulf of Guinea.
The water is so warm because itcomes north and then it has to
hook 90 degrees and as it getsin that section where it goes
(22:34):
east west it just bakes in thesun so the water becomes really
warm.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
This is amazing that I can, just, you can just name
all these places, just thisplace here.
Well, when you've been there.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
It helps.
It's absolutely.
It's not like you're memorizingit for a test yeah, no, exactly
.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
And so you have and that's the cool part you have
those memories of the placesthat you've been and so you know
about them and you learn aboutthem.
I wanted to ask about, kind oflike, the influence of social
media, because when you firststarted, 2007, social media
wasn't a big, it was kind of inits infancy, you know, if at all
, but then near the end of yourtravels, I think you kind of
finished right around the penwhen the pandemic kicked in,
(23:10):
probably 2020.
I know you know social mediawas a lot bigger, so I know
places got more popular.
Did you notice any any of thatLike?
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Oh yeah, okay, yeah.
So, for example, I startedtraveling in March of 2007,
which was like a month afterSteve jobs announced the iPhone,
but before the iPhone becameavailable in June.
So when I started, there were,for all practical purposes, no
smartphones.
And even when smartphones cameout, international travel was
difficult with them.
And then eventually they'll letyou get a SIM card and now they
(23:43):
have eSIMs, which make ittrivial and it's very easy to
travel around the world with aphone.
The first time I was inJerusalem was in 2009.
And I remember going to theChurch of the Holy Sepulchre,
which is one of the holiestplaces in Christianity and there
are many pilgrims that werethere, and I returned back about
not quite 10 years latercompletely different experience
(24:06):
Everyone had a phone in front oftheir face.
Everyone's just taking pictures, not even trying to take a good
picture, but like literallyevery single person had a phone.
When I started your, like yousaid, social media really wasn't
a thing, but it quickly becamea thing and I think in a lot of
ways, it ruined the experience.
There's a lot of people outthere that are just trying to
(24:29):
take an Instagram shot ofthemselves.
I was in Sri Lanka once and itwas for this event that they
were hosting for quote unquoteinfluencers.
I primarily did photography,like you know, standard travel
photography, but then there weresome of these influencer
influencers that were there andI remember we climbed to the top
of this mountain wasn't a verybig mountain in Sri Lanka and
(24:51):
there was this woman who was aChinese influencer and she
walked up the mountain in like aball gown so she could take a
picture at the top of themountain of her wearing a ball
gown.
No one in their right mind isgoing to dress like that,
walking up a mountain, but it'sto create this unreal sense of
(25:12):
how glamorous your life is andwhen you travel long term it is
not glamorous this unreal senseof how glamorous your life is
and when you travel long-term itis not glamorous.
It's staying in a lot of seedyplaces.
I've gotten bed bugs, I've beenin the hot room that the air
conditioning doesn't work and inall my stays, only once did I
(25:33):
ever leave a place because itwas too bad, and that was in
Manila, because literally thebathroom for my room was a
toilet sitting right next to mybed.
That didn't work.
I was like, okay, there's myline, this is what is too much
for me?
Speaker 1 (25:45):
You found your line in Manila.
Wow, I wondered about thatbecause it just seems like,
especially as of late and I seea lot of travel posts and things
just because of what I do withJourney with Jake and it just
made me wonder.
I was like you know, especiallyyou, starting in 2007,.
It just had to be a totallydifferent thing, and so thanks
for sharing that, because itdoes.
(26:05):
It sounds like it has just kindof evolved differently.
People stand in there with, youknow, phones in front of their
faces instead of actuallylooking at what's going on and
where they're at.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
You know I'm not against smartphones.
In fact, they can be veryuseful things traveling.
I remember I rented a car inSkopje, macedonia, and I did a
two-week trip around the Balkansand I was able to navigate
using Google Maps and rent hotelrooms.
It was very handy, not tomention you point the camera at
something and translate a signand get at least a gist of what
(26:37):
it's saying.
They're very handy, but I have,for the most part.
You know I had a very bigfollowings on social media and I
haven't.
I basically abandoned postingon these places because, for the
most part, it's just not veryauthentic.
I just felt it was like a wasteof my time.
And when you look at the time,a question I love to ask people
can you tell me the last 10things you hit like on on social
(26:59):
media?
No idea, right?
No, no one can.
It's all ephemeral.
Yeah, time you could waste onTikTok or Instagram.
You could spend reading a bookor even watching a movie and get
more out of it than youprobably would just scrolling on
stuff that you're not going toretain.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
So you talked about your camera.
You pretty much traveled withyour, your camera, throughout
these 13 years.
Were you documenting all ofthis?
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Yeah, I, like I said I've taken well, just of the
photos that I processed.
I have over 50,000 photos on mywebsite from all over the world
.
I was named travel photographerof the year three times in
North America.
I won three Lowell Thomasawards, which is like the
Pulitzer for travel journalism.
So, yeah, I was documenting alot of it and I had a popular,
real popular travel blog.
But the social media part of itbecause it's out of the other
(27:48):
thing is it's all controlled byan algorithm.
And one of the things Irealized is, if I there are a
lot of photos I like that if itwasn't of a mountain or a
rainbow or a waterfall, it'sjust not going to get very many
likes.
And so a lot of very goodphotographers that I know who
and there are greatphotographers they end up just
posting the same things over andover and they run photo tours
(28:10):
to the same places becauseeverybody just wants photos of
these things rather than goingsomeplace.
That's really interesting, butit's not going to be, you know,
patagonia or Iceland.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
What, if anything?
Is there a solution for that?
Speaker 2 (28:25):
People need to broaden their horizons.
Like I said, the reason whypeople go to so few places is
because they don't know of manyplaces.
If I talk about going toMontenegro, most people either
have never heard of the countryor don't know where it is, or
they don't know anything aboutit.
They just don't know.
And so if you don't know, or ifthey do that like it scares
(28:47):
them right.
There's the idea of this place.
Well, I don't know what that is, but oh, ireland, that's fine.
I've heard of that, I know whatthat is.
Because they don't knowanything about it.
It's outside of their comfortzone.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
I kind of want to go back to some of these seedy
places you stayed at.
First of all, explain.
I've had a couple of people onwho stay at hostels quite a bit.
Give me kind of the gist ofhostels overall because I still
don't know if I fully understandwhat they're like.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
For the most.
You can get a private room at ahostel just like you would a
hotel, or you can stay in a dormroom, which is super cheap.
I didn't do that because I wastoo old for that stuff.
That tends to be for youngerpeople Probably going to share a
bathroom.
That's the biggest differenceand there's usually a pretty
(29:39):
sizable communal area and thereare certain hostels they're
chains in Europe.
They'll have a restaurant and abar downstairs and they tend to
be a lot cheaper than a regularhotel, so they probably don't
have maid service every day.
If you're there for a week,you're responsible for your own
towels and making your own bedand stuff to keep the cost down.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Gotcha Okay, so that's kind of how it's set up,
but there are private rooms.
Then In my mind I always justpictured a line of bunk beds and
people-.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
They do have that, but most I mean there are like
some upscale hostels.
Now there really are.
I have a friend who has writtena book on boutique hostels in
Europe and some of them arereally, really nice.
Did you ever spurge and wouldstay at a nice hotel every now
and again?
No, which does not say I didn'tstay at fancy hotels or
(30:22):
something, but I wasn't the onepaying for it.
Gotcha Okay.
I remember I spent back-to-backnights in Cape Town, south
Africa.
One night was at the one andonly, which I think costs like
$1,000 a night, and I had abutler for my room.
Then the next night I was backat a hostel.
But the reason I don't believein splurging for hotels is
because I would rather splurgeon a business class ticket than
(30:46):
I would on a hotel.
You spend most of your time ina hotel, unconscious, sleeping.
Maybe occasionally having anice shower or a bath would be
worth it, but for the most partI would prefer to.
Flying is horrible, flyingeconomy class, and I have flown
at the time.
I think there's longer flightsnow, but I went from Dallas to
(31:08):
Sydney, which at the time wasthe longest flight in the world,
and I flew economy and it wasjust an absolute miserable
experience.
It was basically like a fullday in the air and if I could,
you know, getting a businessclass seat for something like
that would actually be worthmore than upgrading from, say, a
hostel to the four seasons.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
For me, Very good, okay, yeah, that makes sense.
Like you said, you're asleepmost of the time.
You're in a hotel.
In hotel you're out exploring,you're out seeing things, rather
than just sitting in a hotelroom.
So that that makes total sense.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
I can see where you're, where you're coming from
on that and I should say I'vetalked about this with other
long-term travelers and most ofthem agree with me.
They would rather, if you'regoing to spend money on
something, get a good planeticket rather than a good hotel
room.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Okay, I want to ask about kind of what you're up to
now, because I know 2020 hittravel slowed down due to the
pandemic, things like that.
Is that what kind of got youoff?
The travel thing was thepandemic.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Yes, there were problems before the pandemic
that I was noticing in travelmedia.
Everything shifted and when Istarted, I just had my website
and people went to the websiteand they read my articles and
they commented on the website,and that shifted over time as
everything moved to like Twitterand Facebook and then
eventually Instagram, and thesewere all platforms that were
controlled by very big companiesand everything was done through
an algorithm and over time, thenumber of people that
(32:27):
organically visited a website orknew who you were drop, drop,
dropped and it was dependentupon this.
And just before the pandemic Iwas asking people and the
average was like 90% ofeverybody's website traffic was
coming from Google.
Well, when people are searchingfor travel content, they're
usually planning a trip, and so,rather than me writing my
thoughts about the history of aplace, everything just became
(32:50):
guides, things to do, top 15things to do in Vegas.
Everyone was writing the samearticle for the same places and
it was no longer fun.
Over on social media, it waspeople who were just doing
clickbaity type things or thesame type of photos in the same
type of places.
None of this was interesting tome anymore.
(33:11):
So when the pandemic hit mylast international trip.
I came back from PortugalFebruary 28th 2020, got sick,
had COVID real early on.
Two weeks after that.
95% of my income dries up.
I thought, like a lot of people, that this would be over with
really quick Like this would bea few weeks.
(33:31):
I didn't realize it would lastas long as it would.
Over with really quick Likethis would be a few weeks.
I didn't realize it would lastas long as it would.
And eventually I realized I hadto do something and I thought
this was a good opportunity tomake a change.
So I had this idea for apodcast that I had been kicking
around.
That would not be a travelpodcast per se, but I could use
a lot of the things I learnedthrough traveling.
The original idea for the showwas going to be really long
(33:54):
episodes that would be publishedinfrequently, maybe like a
two-hour episode published onceevery two weeks.
But I realized that that reallywasn't a very good business
model and I went back to thisidea and I had a friend who had
a daily podcast and he didreally well with it and I got
talking to him and I startedthinking about it and I realized
, well, this would work a lotbetter.
So I relaunched the show usingthe artwork and the theme music
(34:18):
that I had already purchased therights to, and, on July 1st
2020, I launched the firstepisode of Everything Everywhere
, daily.
Everything Everywhere is thename of my travel blog.
I call it travel adjacent.
It's not a travel show liketoday.
We're visiting this place andhere's what we're to see, and
it's not that it's educationalcontent, it's history.
(34:39):
But, like I said, I'm able touse everything I learned
traveling.
I will talk about my travels inthe course of doing this If
it's relevant for the show.
And the show has been a hugehit since I launched it.
It's been up.
It's going for about four uh,four and a half years.
Now.
We're closing in on our 40millionth download.
We get I get about a millionand a half downloads a month.
(35:00):
The show is far more successfulthan I ever could have imagined
.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
That's amazing.
Congratulations on that.
I think that's fantastic.
I listened to your episodetoday, I think, cause you have
an episode every day.
I think because you have anepisode every day, I think it
was 1600.
I think it was the episodetoday.
I think it was episode number1600.
Even so, I was like, wow, howmany episodes.
And that makes sense If you'redoing it every day.
That's what's what's going onand I enjoyed it.
In fact, I got to.
I got to travel here thisweekend.
(35:24):
I'm going to be downloadingsome episodes and listen to it
by travels.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Yeah, I've done episodes like on geography,
about the.
You like on geography about the.
You know certain countries.
I've done it about inventions,people battles, science and math
episodes.
You, you know all sorts ofdifferent things.
The episode I'm working ontonight will be the election of
1788, the first presidentialelection ever, and how it was
completely different than anyother election we ever had.
(35:49):
There was no popular vote.
There was no one knew reallywhat to do.
It was a unanimous vote.
George Washington wonunanimously.
A lot of things that neverhappened again and a lot of
problems.
They realized, yeah, we shouldprobably fix this and they did
with subsequent amendments andstuff.
I've done it on rivers of theworld and the origin of words
(36:10):
and phrases, lots of differentthings, even sports.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
So it's similar.
It reminds me of you knowyou're talking about how the
world's a big place and you knowyour 13 years of travel.
You've seen a lot of places,but you haven't seen everything,
and it's a lifetime to seeeverything, and even more than
that.
It sounds like it's the samewith this podcast.
I mean it sounds like you can.
It's endless.
I mean you could.
There's so many differentthings you could talk about.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Yeah, Every every time I do an episode, it usually
brings up one or two ideas forfuture episodes I could do.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
What do you think the future holds you kind of just
want to keep this rolling.
I mean what?
How do you, how do you feelabout it?
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Yeah, it's going really well right now.
Certainly not going to ruin agood thing.
The the downside to this isthat it's very difficult to
travel when you're doing apodcast every single day.
And so I literally I, you knowI went through this period of 13
years where I was travelingaround the world almost nonstop
and I have not been out of thecountry since I, since the
(37:03):
pandemic hit, and I've onlytaken a few flights for, like
conferences and stuff.
But even that, I think I'mcutting down on the conferences
because I'm just getting nothingout of them.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Yeah, and it sounds like maybe I'm wrong on this,
but you're pretty much just aone-man wrecking crew for this
right.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
You're just kind of handling everything for yourself
for the most part.
Yeah, I've developed a systemthat is pretty efficient.
Vast majority of the time isspent writing and research, so I
write a script for every show.
I like to tell people.
I write a 2000 word term paperevery day.
The actual recording is prettytrivial and if you're doing a
monologue, scripted monologueshow, that's the easiest type of
podcast to record.
It's technically very simple todo.
(37:39):
Yeah, so I got about, you know,50,000 people a day that that
listen and the show just keepsgrowing.
So Fantastic, that's awesome.
I might end up.
I've been thinking of maybegoing to like Australia or
something this winter and Iwould just I wouldn't travel or,
you know, run around like Iused to do, I would just get an
apartment somewhere and recordthe show from there for a period
(38:01):
of time.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Yeah, you can do that yeah, change of scenery.
I like it.
Where now Wisconsin was yourhome?
Is that where you're living now?
Where's where's home now?
For you where you're living now.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Where's home now for you?
Okay, back in Wisconsin, backhere.
And that was one of the betterdecisions I've ever made too.
I was living in Minneapolisduring the pandemic and when I
started the show and I livedright on Lake Street, which is
where all the riots occurred.
My neighborhood was a lot of itburned down and was trashed,
and a couple of months afterthat I just put all my stuff in
(38:33):
a U-Haul.
One day, notified my landlord,by the way, I'm gone.
You may do what you will.
They never followed up on it.
Yeah, I moved back here andhave no regrets.
In fact, one of the things Irealized after moving was I live
in a community with about Idon't know about 80,000 people,
maybe a little bit more with thesurrounding communities.
There's an Amazon fulfillmentcenter here.
(38:54):
There's nothing I can't gethere that I can't get in a major
city.
We have all manner of ethnicrestaurants.
I can watch any movie.
I can see any sporting eventbecause of the way the internet
works now and streaming, but Ipay a fraction for what I would
pay if I was living in New Yorkor something, and I tell people
(39:15):
I live in a very nice building,arguably the nicest apartment in
this community, right on ariver.
I see deer and geese every day.
I get to look out of my windowand see a river, even though I'm
in the middle of town.
For what I pay, you wouldbasically be living in a closet
if you were in New York.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
Thank you so much for taking some time with me.
This has been fascinating toget to know who you are a little
bit better.
Didn't really know who you wereuntil I found out I was going
to be talking to you and I waslike I was just super impressed
with hundreds of places thatyou've been to.
Not only that, but just whatyou're doing with your podcast.
I think it's really cool.
I think that's awesome.
You're an inspiration to me, soI appreciate that.
My final question to you beforewe wrap this up is, since this
(39:53):
is an adventure type podcast,what does adventure mean to you?
Speaker 2 (40:02):
Adventure just means kind of doing something new and
out of your comfort zone.
You know, I remember the firsttime I went bungee jumping it
was in Queenstown, new Zealand,and it was kind of drizzling, so
they didn't have a lot ofpeople doing it, it was
basically me and a family fromIndia.
And the way they did it it wasby weight, and so these two
little girls, who were like 10years old, went bungee jumping
before me and after a10-year-old girl does it, and
(40:24):
you're a grown man, you can'treally chicken out.
You kind of have to do it atthat point.
But I did it.
You kind of have to do it atthat point, but I did it Never.
I didn't see saltwater until Iwas 21 years old, but I taught
myself.
I didn't.
I shouldn't say I didn't teachmyself, but I learned how to
scuba dive, done, you know, overa hundred dives around the
(40:45):
world with all sorts of things,and you know it's all about
going to places that you'venever been before and
experiencing new things and andand that's adventure.
Gary, thank you so much forcoming on journey with Jake.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
Thank you for having me.
A big thank you to Gary Arndtfor joining me on the show.
If you'd like to learn moreabout Gary or check out his
podcast, you can follow him onInstagram at everything
everywhere, or visit his website, everything-everywherecom.
It was such a greatconversation.
Thank you again, gary, andthank you to all of you for
(41:17):
tuning into Journey with Jakeeach week.
For those of you who follow meon Instagram, you might've seen
my recent announcement.
February may be the shortestmonth of the year, but it's
going to be packed with content.
I'll be releasing two episodesa week, every Monday and
Thursday.
Throughout February.
I've had some incredibleconversations with fantastic
guests and I can't wait for youto hear them.
(41:39):
Be sure to join me for my nextepisode this Thursday, featuring
Autumn Carolyn.
Autumn is a traveler,photographer and the author of
Travel and Wonder.
We dive into her incrediblejourney, including some
unforgettable stories like beingkissed under the Eiffel Tower
in Paris.
You won't want to miss it and,as always, remember, it's not
(42:00):
always about the destination, asit is about the journey.
Take care, everybody.
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