EVERY SPOKEN WORD
155 min read · 31,220 words- 0:00 – 15:00
(drumbeats) Joe Rogan Podcast,…
- JRJoe Rogan
(drumbeats) Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.
- CWCharlie Walker
The Joe Rogan Experience.
- JRJoe Rogan
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music plays) And we're up. All right, Charlie. First of all, thanks for being here.
- CWCharlie Walker
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
- JRJoe Rogan
Very nice to meet you. Why do you do the things that you do?
- CWCharlie Walker
First question is the hardest one.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- CWCharlie Walker
Um, I, I guess over the years have formed a whole bunch of different answers to that, some of them flippant and sarcastic. Uh, without rambling on for ages and ages, I suppose it comes down to, I'm just really curious. I want to get to these places, see, you know, people living lives differently to mine. I grew up in a tiny little village where, you know, it was nice, but nothing happened.
- JRJoe Rogan
Where'd you grow up?
- CWCharlie Walker
Uh, just close to Salisbury in the southwest of England. Uh, about 10 miles from Stonehenge down there.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, wow.
- CWCharlie Walker
Um, and yeah, I suppose I, I started traveling when I was about 18. Took a year out between school and, uh, and university and just got more and more curious and slowly realized that I enjoyed traveling more if I was getting to places by, I suppose, physically difficult means.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- CWCharlie Walker
Um, um, and that particularly helps, I suppose, if you turn up in some remote community in a ... not that I've been doing this, but in a helicopter or 4x4, or whatever, there's instantly a, a distance, a sort of divide. You know, you're ... I spend most of my time, uh, traveling in the developing world, where that's just building a barrier. Whereas if you turn up on foot or in a little kayak or on a horse or whatever, then I think people kind of take to that a little bit more.
- JRJoe Rogan
What was your first trip that you did like this?
- CWCharlie Walker
Uh, besides backpacking around Africa, uh, the first time I did anything sort of particularly physically challenging was I flew to Beijing and I had a flight out of, uh, Mongolia. And kind of quite last minute I thought, "Oh, well, you know, it's, there's 1000 miles between the two, I'll take a bike, a bicycle."
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- CWCharlie Walker
Um, didn't get off to the best start. I, uh, I went to a friend's 21st birthday party about 10 days before leaving and, um, I don't really remember the party, but when I wake up in the morning, one of my quadriceps had snapped.
- JRJoe Rogan
(gasps)
- CWCharlie Walker
Not torn, but snapped. The, the doctor said that the two ends would kind of flap around like fishtails and eventually graft onto the rest. I don't know how scientific that that was. Uh, and then on my first night in Beijing, I fell over and broke my wrist a bit drunk. So-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, Jesus.
- CWCharlie Walker
... two, two weeks later when I sort of cut my cast off and sort of, you know, strapped my knee up a bit and pedaled out, I wasn't in the best shape. And, and frankly, the following two-
- JRJoe Rogan
So you just went with a torn calf, quadriceps muscle, fucked up wrist-
- CWCharlie Walker
Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
... just went anyway?
- CWCharlie Walker
Yeah, I mean, I started slow. I'm not a ... Like, I'm not a sportsman. You know, I'm not an athlete. I've always just liked to ... I've never really particularly trained for anything. I tend to try and keep fit, but that's, that's, that's kind of it. Um, so I've, I've always sort of thought, start slow and build up. And the, the two ... It only took two weeks to, to cross up to the, to Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia. And once I crossed the border into Mongolia, there was just no road. It was, you know, it's just desert and there's kind of tire tracks all over the place and you've just got to, you know, take a northeast bearing and sort of stick with it. Um, and frankly, those two weeks were kind of shitty. Like, I didn't (laughs) particularly enjoy them. Um, but yeah, I mean, you're, you're probably aware of the concept of type two fun. You know, you've done something and once you've ... It's, it's crap-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- CWCharlie Walker
... but then once you've finished, you start to rose tint it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. Yeah.
- CWCharlie Walker
And before I'd even left Mongolia, I was already thinking, "Yeah, there, this, there could be something in this." And, and I saw the potential of bicycle travel. You know, you, you, you can travel a fair distance, you know. If you want, you can go 100 miles a day, you can go 60 miles very comfortably and still have a lot of the day there. You can travel very cheaply, you can travel for ages, and you get to see all those places in between that you wouldn't really go near if you're, you know, on a bus or a train or a car or whatever it is.
- 15:00 – 30:00
Mm-hmm. …
- CWCharlie Walker
up some, um, uh, like audio lessons.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- CWCharlie Walker
Uh, and just sort of listened to them while I was, while I was on, on the road. Um, and then I got quite good at just sort of, I guess, charades. You know, even, even if a, a... Like China was always linguistically the hardest place.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- CWCharlie Walker
But even after I learned how to ask for an egg, you know, in a village shop to some rural area, I still preferred to do it the way I'd done for, (laughs) you know, for weeks up to that point, which was go into a shop and start sort of, you know, flapping, clucking your wings-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- CWCharlie Walker
... and sort of, you know, clucking slightly more and more manically. (clucking) And then (pops lips) putting out-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, that's hilarious.
- CWCharlie Walker
... from behind me an egg and pointing it. And they go, "Oh, the foreigner wants an egg. Yeah, we'll get him some eggs."
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, that's hilarious.
- CWCharlie Walker
Um, so you k- yeah, you can make a bit of a game of it, um-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- CWCharlie Walker
... and of course, yeah, in lots of parts of the world, there are plenty of people who do speak good English, um, so I, I will say, I wasn't, um, I wasn't washing a great deal (laughs) at this time in my life, you know, living in a tent, getting the odd splash wash in a puddle or a river or whatever. And so my hands, which were on front of me and the bike, uh, sorry, in front of me on the bike's handlebars most of the day, uh, it, when I arrived in a new country, I'd find the first English speaker I could and ask them how to count to 10 in their language, and then I'd write on my knuckles one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 on each hand. And then, you know, on the palm, hot, cold, yes, no, good, bad, up, down, left, right, just a whole bunch of vocabulary. And that, you know, you pick it up pretty quick when it's in front of you for maybe six, eight hours in a day. And when that was done, I'd wash them off and maybe learn some new words and sort of carry on. So even though I was passing through regions and, and didn't have all that long to get to grips with many languages, I, I got a bit of a head start with that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, wow. Um, what is it like when you're alone for that long?
- CWCharlie Walker
That's probably the biggest challenge. And I've definitely got better at that over the years. But when I was off on that bike trip, you know, there were, there were times, particularly up in Tibet where that picture was, the, the road I was following in Tibet is the, the, the western sort of approach to Tibet, and on a good day... I was there in winter, which is not ideal, it's, it's cold, but on a good day, there'd be maybe one vehicle going in either direction. But often there'd be several days at a time with no vehicles and, um, there were, you know, no settlements along the way. And later on... So to get into Tibet, I didn't have permission, so I had to sort of (laughs) in, in the night, I cut a hole in the fence of a military base and snuck into, into Tibet. Uh, so beyond that point, I was having to kind of hide.
- JRJoe Rogan
To get into Tibet? So, so it's difficult to get into Tibet?
- CWCharlie Walker
Yeah. So, so the, you know, Tibet used to be a independent country.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- CWCharlie Walker
A lot of protests, most, you know, ethnic Tibetan people don't want to be part of China, but in the '50s, the, the, you know, the, the People's Liberation Army marched in. Uh, and, uh, this was only a couple of years after the, um, the Beijing Olympics, and in the lead up to those, there were, in, in Lhasa, the, the capital, I think it was around three dozen, uh, self-immolations. Y- you're aware of that phrase?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- CWCharlie Walker
Yeah. Uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
Horrific.
- CWCharlie Walker
... usually monks. Yeah, and, you know, for the, for the listeners who might not know, this would be-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, they probably know from the Rage Against the Machine cover.
- CWCharlie Walker
Yeah, yeah, exactly that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- CWCharlie Walker
So people marching out in, you know, in front of the, the, the soldiers or the police, pouring a tin of, uh, petrol over themselves, or gasoline, lighting themselves on fire, and, and burning to death, you know, i- in protest at what they see as the, the occupation of their, their country. Uh, and of course, the, the Chinese government doesn't want people seeing these sorts of scenes, so they, they, they made the whole area off-limits to foreigners, and basically, well, it still is really. Y- you, you can visit sort of limited little pockets in, in, in Lhasa, the capital, and a couple of other kind of temples and towns nearby.But to do that, you've got to be in a, in a group with a guide and a vehicle and permits and, you know, it's, it's, it's expensive and, and you, you're just not allowed to travel by yourself with a, with a bike. So that was the only way I could get in was to sort of sneak in. But after that point, I was then having to, to hide the whole time, and, and to bring, bring it back to your question, the loneliness there, I really, really struggled. You know, I was, I was up there for about six weeks and, you know, I probably had two conversations in that time. You know, it was, it was really hard. Um, but now I've got a lot better at it, and there's ... Ah, I, I keep meaning to look this up 'cause there was someone, it's one of those people that's always quoted, it'll be Oscar Wilde or Mark Twain, someone like that, once said that, uh, "Loneliness is the paucity of one's own company and, uh, solitude is the richness of it." Uh, and it's-
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- CWCharlie Walker
... you know, it's two sides of the same coin. So being by yourself can totally suck, but if you just kind of try and flip the perspective of it, and you know, it's not always possible and it's certainly not easy, you can then sort of, you know, enjoy the pa- the space, the peace, the freedom, um, particularly if you've got a, you know, kind of a busy life when you go back home.
- JRJoe Rogan
It is an interesting thing about human beings that we seem to have a requirement for other people's company.
- 30:00 – 45:00
(laughs) …
- CWCharlie Walker
um, and... Uh, I, I mean, I couldn't even push my bike. I had to carry it for about a day and a half, take everything off, carry it for a mile, hide it in a bush, walk back. It was-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- CWCharlie Walker
It was five miles for every one mile forward just portaging it back and forth.
- JRJoe Rogan
Holy shit, man.
- CWCharlie Walker
Um, yeah. That was-
- JRJoe Rogan
How much crime did you encounter?
- CWCharlie Walker
Not a huge amount. I mean, I, um, I mean, p- like, my, uh, pocket got picked in, in Malaysia, which is one of the safest (laughs) places in the world. Uh, my horse got stolen in Mongolia. That, that happens. Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
You had a horse?
- CWCharlie Walker
Yeah. They're not, they're not expensive. Uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
How much is a horse?
- CWCharlie Walker
I bought a horse for about 120 pounds, so I guess-
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- CWCharlie Walker
... 150 bucks or so.
- JRJoe Rogan
You could get a-
- CWCharlie Walker
Uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
... horse for 150 bucks?
- CWCharlie Walker
It, it depends how many... Eh, every few years Mongolia has, um, they, they call it a, uh-... uh, snow or ice event. Uh, so essentially the, the, you know, Mongolia winter is really cold. You know, it gets down to about -40 Fahrenheit or Celsius. Um, and if, uh, if it snows and then thaws and then freezes, you get this crust of ice-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- CWCharlie Walker
... over the ground. The, the horses, which are kind of left to their own devices over winter, they're, they're kind of semi-feral, it's called, you know, they're, they're kind of half wild. Um, they, they, they can't break through that crust of ice as they would with snow, with their hooves to get to the grass. Uh, so come spring, actually last time I was in Mongolia, the, the whole countryside was just littered with corpses of sheep and horses and-
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- CWCharlie Walker
... and goats. So if they've had a bad winter before, sometimes they lose up to about a third of their kind of national livestock. And horses cost quite a lot, but it wasn't too bad when I was there. Um, the, the horse I would sort of, at night... So I spent about two months hiking across Mongolia with this horse. I tried to ride it, but it was so small, the tiny little pony. I, I'd gone to quite a lot of effort to find a horse that was, you know, up to the challenge. And I went out into this sort of village outside the capital city, asked around and, and y- you can't do anything there without having to drink copious amounts of vodka. So it's a real pain in the ass, to be honest.
- JRJoe Rogan
You have to?
- CWCharlie Walker
Uh, yeah, I mean, that's just the way everything is done. Um, and-
- JRJoe Rogan
How so?
- CWCharlie Walker
"Well, hey, you wanna come and look at a horse? Great. Well, let's first, um, let's first, you know, let's first drink some vodka and, um, we'll pour a little offering to the gods and we'll flick a little bit into the sky as an offering to the sky god. And, you know, it'd be rude to refuse 'cause, you know, it's, it's an offering."
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- CWCharlie Walker
And then, I mean, to be fair, I was in my mid-20s, so I was, you know, I was quite happy (laughs) just to drink the stuff. Um, but, uh, you know, this kind of quite unpleasant paint-stripping vodka and just bottles and bottles and bottles. So I spent this long day going from person to person to person out, you know, in the sticks, um, you know, driving across, you know, grasslands, you know, off-road. And finally, we met these people who had a, this guy had a horse to sell and he said, "Yeah, here's the horse. Do you want to check it out?" And I was like, "All right." I didn't, I, I had never ridden a horse before. I didn't know what I was looking for.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- CWCharlie Walker
But I thought, "I'll check out the hooves." I was about to try and check the back hooves and they're like, "No, no, no, don't do that. You'll, you'll get your face kicked off."
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, Jesus Christ.
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
(laughs) …
- CWCharlie Walker
the, the, the height will probably be comfortable. You'll be fine."
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- CWCharlie Walker
Um, yeah, it was, it was- that was, uh, not necessarily the, the best fit for me as a job. But soon after that, I started planning the next trip and started writing these books and, and sort of since then I've kind of turned that into a career.
- JRJoe Rogan
So, immediately you sort of understood when you returned, like, this is not a one-off, this is something you're just gonna continue to do?
- CWCharlie Walker
Yeah. Yeah. Um, well, people started asking me to give presentations about the trip I'd been on, you know, sort of photo slideshows, I guess, and I started doing more and more of those at, you know, to village halls and clubs and festivals and schools and businesses, and that slowly became, like, about half of my living. And I realized, oh, I could do this for a job, you know. This could be, this could be a living, um, and enable me to carry on, you know, taking on challenges. So since then, there's, you know, there's- there's always something in the pipeline, do some sort of journey, come back, relate the story, write about it, repeat.
- JRJoe Rogan
Now, when you start up again, are you... is there any hesitation about, like, the length of the trip? Like, that four-year thing, even though I'm sure it must have been a fascinating and wonderful experience, there, there had to be a little bit of a hesitation of committing to that much of your life-
- CWCharlie Walker
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... again.
- CWCharlie Walker
I, well, I mean, the longest I've done since then is eight months. So-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- CWCharlie Walker
... you know-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- CWCharlie Walker
... it's, it's, it's a lot different, and the last couple have been sort of two or three months. Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
But it was... Was it because of that four-year one where you're like, "That's a little much"?
- CWCharlie Walker
Well, you just, you know, you get a bit more settled. Also, now I've started to kind of build a career, you don't want to totally put everything on pause for a huge amount of time again. Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
You mean by build a career, the writing and the books?
- CWCharlie Walker
The, uh, yeah, the writing and the speaking.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- CWCharlie Walker
And, you know, it's not like I have, you know, a, a monthly paycheck, um, or a, you know, salary or pension, anything like that. So you kind of got to keep feeding the beast.
- JRJoe Rogan
And so for the speeches, like, w- what are you doing? Are you, like, posting up at a theater and people come to see you talk?
- CWCharlie Walker
Uh, I do some at theaters, um, a lot at schools, uh, ones for businesses will be at, uh, conferences or they just want someone to come in for the afternoon to kind of, you know, spark up their team or, you know, a, a real variety, all sorts of different events. Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
You'd be the last person I would want to have come to talk.
- CWCharlie Walker
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Because I would say, like, "These people are gonna quit and they're gonna go wander the world."
- CWCharlie Walker
I've spoken-
- JRJoe Rogan
"I'm gonna have no workforce."
- CWCharlie Walker
I've spoken to, to a handful of CE- CEOs about that, and, um, one, maybe charitably, but I think he was right. He said, um, you know, if... I, I kind of said what you said as a joke, and he said, "Well, you know what? If, if I've got a member, if I've got a member of staff, if I've got an employee who wants to go away for that huge amount of time, then they're- they probably shouldn't be working for me." You know, it's like-
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- CWCharlie Walker
... you know, that's not gonna be the most motivated person. But I'm, but I'm not there to, you know, say, "Hey, you know, quit your job and fuck off for years on a bicycle." I'm there to try and... I'm with businesses. It's different, different talks, different events, it's all different. But with businesses, I'm there to, to sort of take some of the lessons about resilience, um, you know, ambition, et cetera, from what I've been doing, uh, and try and apply that to, to their lives, to their, to their setting.
- JRJoe Rogan
But isn't... aren't those lessons only learned through the experiences? I mean, I would imagine...
- 1:00:00 – 1:07:57
Whoa. …
- CWCharlie Walker
uh, but only 1 million people. So it, it's massive and empty and it's far north. Uh, about half of it is north of the Arctic Circle. And there's, there's one large city, but outside that, there are scattered, some remote and very remote communities, um, and they're, for the most part, um, they're, there are plenty of sort of, you know, crumbling, near abandoned industrial towns from the Soviet era as well. But there are, there are lots of scattered small villages of indigenous Siberian peoples, particularly the Sakha who are the, the largest, uh, ethnicity in, in the region. Um, and then there are smaller peoples like the Eveny, the Evenki, who traditionally herded reindeer. There's all sorts of people scattered across this massive area. And I wanted to, to head out there. It's- it's the, it's also the coldest inhabited place on Earth. Um, so, uh, the, the record recorded low, and Jamie might be able to confirm this, but a place called Verkhoyansk. I can't remember the exact temperature, and it's in Celsius only, but about -67.3, something like that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Whoa.
- CWCharlie Walker
Um, and that's inhabited. People live there. And so every winter it's super cold and people survive in that. And they used to survive, m- many of them, in a sort of nomadic sense, living in, in sort of skin tents. Um, reindeer, you know, hide teepees, essentially. Um, so I wanted to get out there, experience some elements, not in the total depths of winter, but in sort of February, March, April, um, of that extreme cold.
- JRJoe Rogan
Is in February the total depths of winter?
- CWCharlie Walker
Um, I think January's their coldest time.
- JRJoe Rogan
What is February?
- CWCharlie Walker
Well, I mean, I was prepared for -50 Celsius, which is sort of minus-... I guess it's about -60 Fahrenheit. They hit the same at -40. - 40, yeah. But because the- Yeah, and then it branches off. ... each degree is different, it gets- Yeah. ... confusing straight away. Um, so I wanted to get out there, experience this cold, and, and just meet some of these people scattered around and just kind of see, you know, see what their lives are like and also see if they're changing with the, you know, if their lives, their sort of traditional ways of life are being threatened by the, the climate changing. You know, in, in, um, summer, last summer, when, you might remember there was, it was, uh, I mean, it was all over the news for a while, perhaps less so in America, 'cause you guys got your own wildfires here, but, um, an island in Greece, Evia, was, was on fire, like the whole island essentially, really bad wildfires. But at the same time, an area the size of Belgium, in Yakutia, was burning. Uh, all co- all collectively, all the different wildfires at the same time. Um, so they, you know, they have crazy bad wildfires out there. Uh, also just close to Verkhoyansk, that town with the record cold, they had a, a record arctic high of, um, 39 point something degrees Celsius. Again, I, that's about 100 and- Yeah, that's hot. That's about the same as it is here today, I think. Yeah. Um, and- All the way up there. Yeah, uh, in the Arctic Circle. Um, so- That's insane. Yeah, I just wanted to go and check it out and see what it was like, so I, you know, planned to hike, um, a few hundred miles along frozen rivers, which in winter, for about three months, get sort of plowed and turned into ice roads. Um, zimnik, or zimniki, as they call them there. A bit like your sort of ice road truckers, I guess- Yeah. ... I don't know. But it's on the river. The river's frozen perhaps two meters thick, uh, and towards the top on the frozen sea ice. Uh, and to hike up to this town called Tiksi up on the north coast, um, it's a port town. Um, but I arrived, I flew in on the 21st of February and the world changed a lot in the, in the sort of three or four days after that. Um, day after I arrived, uh, Russian forces marched across the border where they'd been massing, you know, up to, I think, about 140,000 troops by the time I flew out. And when I flew out, you know, with hindsight, it all seems kinda stupid to have gone, maybe foolhardy. But at the time, basically the entire world, except for presumably Putin, the US intelligence, and UK intelligence, which both seemed to think something's gonna happen, but all the world's media, all commentators, all pundits were saying, "No, this is just a bluff. You know, this is just Putin trying to, you know, scare NATO into concessions, you know, to get more promises that NATO won't spread it, you know, that Ukraine won't join NATO," whatever else. Um, but they marched, they marched across the border, um, and two days later, they formally in- formally (laughs) , a formal invasion, they, uh, they, they, you know, launched their full scale nationwide invasion, marched into Kiev, bombed everything. Um, and I was so far away from all this, you know, the, um, Batagay, the small town where I started hiking up in the Arctic, um, that is geographically the same distance from Vancouver as it is from Kiev. You know, so it's just really, really far away. I was closer to the North Pole, I was east of Pyongyang, I was on the same time zone as Central Australia, just really, really far away. And I kind of thought about it and I thought, well, A, I'm here, and it's gonna be interesting, you know, I'm possibly one of, if not the last tourists in Russia, certainly out in the east. Um, and I've got this almost unique but accidental opportunity to see this country and the lives of normal people, ordinary citizens, as what seems to be a horrific, you know, potentially the brink, the precipice of World War III starts to unfold. And so I thought, right, well I'm gonna, I'm gonna carry on with this trek, but I'll just try and keep across, you know, information. Um, uh, but as soon as I got to Batagay, I, it's a short flight from the capital of the region up to Batagay on an old Antonov twin prop sort of Soviet plane. And from there onwards, my, you know, I couldn't get any phone signal, I basically, the only real information I could get was local state media. I passed a village perhaps once a week. Um, and you turn on the, I mean, the most, the most insane thing was turning on the, and y- I mean, you'll be aware of this, I'm sure, but you turn on the local news out there and they're talking about Ukraine on their news segments and every second or third sentence will have the word fascism or Nazism and they were slowly just drip feeding... Well, drip feeding's the wrong word. They were just gushing this false information out into their public space and loads of people believed everything they heard, totally believed everything. You know, the, I remember while I was still in the capital, just the day after I arrived, the, the, you know, the troops had gone into the Donbas, this disputed territory in the east that they're sort of annexing, and that evening, I was in some guy's, uh, sort of cabin just outside town. I, you know, we'd met and went for drinks with some other people and he said, "Hey, let's go back to ours for some drinks." Uh, and this guy, I'll call him Anatol, I don't wanna say his name, but, um, he (laughs) he started dicing up some horse ribs to cook us some, some sort of, you know, peppering them and everything. And he asked me what I thought about Ukraine. This is really early days, um, and I said, "Well, you know, I don't..." I had to be careful with what I was saying, "I don't know that much about it. But it, you know, it seems like this is gonna get really serious." And I'm also aware that when I turn on my phone and look at the news apps, the information I get from the BBC or The Guardian or whatever else is totally different from what I see here. And of course, I knew all this, but I was sort of couching it in terms that gave him the chance to kind of, you know, I was, I wasn't, I didn't want- Right. ... to preach. Yeah. Um, and he said, "Yeah, well, you know, it's great because, um, you know, Vladimir Putin is, is making Russia great again, and this is, this is Russian land and it, it belongs to Russia, and, um, those Ukrainians are all Nazis anyway. Um, and, you know, we're gonna, uh, they're, they're performing genocide on Russian peoples." And the thing I found cr- like, craziest about all this, not just the fact that he was so precisely parroting Putin's propaganda, you know, which I had assumed beforehand people would be taking with a pinch of salt. But the fact that, I mean, this guy was Sakha. He's not a Slav, he's not a White Russian. This guy is from a people who about 400 years ago were-... brutally, aggressively colonized by a sort of militaristic, expansionist, Czarist Russia, who spread into the area and, and, you know, and just took over. And I just thought somehow, with hindsight naively, that these people that were from a, you know, sort of ethnically different background heritage might not be quite so sold on the cause of Russian nationalism, which is essentially what Putin used to sell the invasion in the first place.
Episode duration: 2:56:29
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