Sabbatical on “Devil Worshippers,” The Aztecs, Samarra Holy Site & DARK Discovery in Argentina | 468

(upbeat music) - I gotta ask you, how's Russian prison? - Yeah. (laughing) - Oh, the food was all right. - The food was all right, really? - Yeah. - They feed you like it all in there? I'm surprised at that. - They gave me some soup. Besides that, not the best experience. I don't recommend it for people. I gotta be honest with you. - Yeah, now what happened there again? You were like taking video on the border or something and ran into the military, was that it or? - More or less. So what happened was me being my adventurous self. I decided to wander over near the Chinese border with Russia. And Russia has some complicated laws that most foreigners wouldn't know. Like certain parts of the country, you can't be within like 20 minutes of the border without a permit. I did not know that this actually isn't like a major crime. It's like, if you get caught doing that, they're supposed to put you in prison for like, I would not present like the local jail for like two days, 48 hours. Or you pay a $5 fine. - $5? - Yeah. So that shows like the severity of this. That should have been the end of it. But yeah, so I wandered over there and like these big scary, military, Russian looking dudes come over there like you're not supposed to be here. And hour after that, I'm being like question by like the local police there. And then three hours after that, I'm being questioned by the FSB, which is the KGB, like their, like newer iteration. And that's when I knew like shit was gonna get a lot more serious than that. So it's like, there was one guy in the FSB who basically made it his mission to like find something to pin on me, to like keep me there. And it was pretty fucking scary, not gonna lie. - Yeah, I can imagine in the seriousness. - Yeah, yeah. Like I do, I do the 48 hours in the jail. They release me. And then what happens is they literally set up like a sting operation to like get me back in prison. I wish I was making this up. It's like they set up like a taxi to take me back to like the closest city. And waiting there, they have like 10 guys waiting for me. And then their whole idea was they knew I didn't have my passport 'cause I got caught without it. And so they were going to claim that I resisted a rest because I didn't present my passport when asked. And so within like seconds of arriving in the city, they just throw me into a van. - In a van. - In a van. - Like a white like rape fan kind of deal? - Exactly. - Oh no. - A van of nightmares, you know? - I haven't thrown into one. - They didn't even give me any candy or anything. They take me to like the bigger jail in that city. And then they tell me like tomorrow, you're gonna be on trial. - On trial. - On trial. - For what? For resisting a rest? - Hey guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five-star review. They're both a huge, huge help. Thank you. - The excuse they gave at first was this is also ridiculous. They had like gone into my YouTube portfolio. And I like willingly told them on my YouTuber, 'cause I thought, you know, that would be a simple enough explanation to show I'm not like the big CIA spy. - That's where I was going with it. - Yeah. But they, and I made what's really frustrating is I made like two videos that I had released in Russia. And obviously this is a very sensitive time to be making like videos in Russia. - Yeah. - But I made videos that were basically positive about the country. I was like, just going around. And this is what I do normally in my videos. I'm just like meeting Russian people. They're giving me vodka shots. They're being awesome. They're showing me stuff. - Right. - Like no problems whatsoever up until this point. And, but my mistake was in the, not even in the video, in the description of the video, I had written that something like before Russia invaded Ukraine, like the world was different, you know, like something like that. They saw that and they're like, no, you can't write that, that they, you're applying that this was a war. (laughing) - We would protect ourselves. - Yeah. - Yeah. So they said, yeah, we're gonna put you on trial for that. 'Cause I-- - For having that in your YouTube description. - Literally. - Yeah, you're offending the Russian armed forces or something. - Now, do they have like a Russian Saul Goodman you can talk to like lawyer or what's the deal here? (laughing) - Well, that's, it's good you asked that because they were, I was allowed to have a lawyer at that trial, but they didn't tell me that. And-- (laughing) - Yeah. And also I was supposed to have a translator with me for the trial. It turns out the translator they give me was the girlfriend of this FSB officer that wanted to put me in prison. - That's nice. - So she's just like mis-translating stuff I said, probably didn't matter, but, and then the judge that I get for this trial, I looked it up and she had actually sentenced a Russian guy to prison who later died from a hunger strike. - Oh, no. - She had like pictures of Putin all over like the courtroom. (laughing) Yeah, very uncomfortable situation. Arguably the scariest situation in my entire life. And the trial, it just gets going. It's over very quickly within 15 minutes. - 15 minutes. - Yeah, yeah. - You get a witness up there or something, right? - Nothing, nothing. But they had witnesses against me, which were basically all the police and the FSB. - He is CIA. - Yeah. Pretty much, yeah. They would say things like, look, he speaks Chinese. (laughing) Like, he must be like, you know. And so, yeah, they hit me with those two charges that I offended the Russian armed forces and I resisted arrest. And the only fortunate thing is like, they didn't, they couldn't put me in prison for like 10 years, according to their laws for that. They gave me two weeks or 15 days. - In prison. - In prison. - Yeah, which is still horrifying. - Like Siberia? (laughing) - This actually was basically Siberia 'cause it was far Eastern Russia. - That's nice. - Yeah, yeah, pure nightmare feel. So they just take me over there and I'm trying not to lose my mind. 'Cause you know, very few people will ever be put in prison for something they didn't do, you know? And knowing that, I just assumed they were gonna like, do the worst at that point. Like, they were gonna like plant drugs on me. They were gonna like do something to keep me there for 10 years. And then I was gonna be like on US national news. That's like within like a couple of days. - We made a deal, we got 'em out. That would have been you. - It would have been, I might have been that guy. Ironically, this actually happened during the US election. - Oh no. - And there were, this is very interesting. When I was in the prison, the warden came up to me and he was like, "Thomas, we want Trump to win the president's "I shit you not." They were very, very pro-cho. (laughing) - That opened the eye to you. (laughing) - Episode, one of the few things I've been like while I was there. (laughing) - Oh my God. (laughing) - Wow. - Yeah. So the warden actually talked to you though. - Yeah, yeah, he came up to me. I mean, I was probably the most interesting prisoner they had ever had. 'Cause this is like, bum fuck Russia, they told me like, "Yeah, we've never had an American here before." So we're very excited about this. - They got you in prison uniform, obviously, and all that too? - At least in that prison. No, they don't do uniforms in Russia. - So you're just like this in prison, but sitting on like a steel cot or something? - Pretty much. - Yeah. - Do you have a cell mate? - That was another interesting thing. I started off with no cell mate. (laughing) Then the second day I was there, for whatever reason, they decided to move me to another cell. That does have a cell mate. Like this 50 year old guy. And you know, like I've never been a prison before. So I was a little concerned. I was like, let me feel this guy out. Let me see how he is. - Yeah, well, literally, like, I don't want to be like, fight for my life, to not get raped or some shit. (laughing) You know, but thankfully, yeah, the guy was cool. He was schizophrenic, but he was schizophrenic. - I assume. - What was he in for? - Drug possession. Weed is still very much illegal in Russia. So. - Oh, so he wasn't like a murderer or something like that? - No, that's good. - He had actually done six years in prison for having like weed plants in his house. - Wow. - And then he just got like caught again. And so I think he was actually being helped for like 15 days. And then they were gonna try to put him, send him back to prison again, like a long ass prison. - Jesus, what's it like, are you locked down for like 23 hours a day in the cell or what's the case? - Yeah, it's like basically almost every day. It's actually almost like 24 hours in the cell. It's like close to like solitary confinement for like a couple of hours. couple days out of the week, they let you have some exercise and in Russian prison exercises, they put you in a cage with like snow on the ground and you're allowed to walk around in circles. Nice. For like 10 minutes or so. But yeah, actually the guy in my cell, a weird thing about him was I didn't fully think this at the time, but some people were like, maybe they put that guy in there to like inform on you because he was asking me some weird questions. Like what? He would just like out of nowhere and be like, Tomas, I want to ask you about drugs. He would just ask me like, have you ever like smoked weed before, have you ever like done okay? And I just had to have like, I guess about a fairly paranoid person to begin with. So I was just like, you know what, no, no, I've never done any of that. Never. Like I don't agree with America legalizing that shit, like I'm sorry. When my dad got into his 50s, he hit a brick wall. He was doing the same workouts, he had the same diet, but he felt like he was moving through mud and had no energy. And of course, the problem here was testosterone. 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When did they, I'm trying to remember the time on when did they make the deal for where they traded boot for a grinder? Was that 2023? It was before you were in there? It was before. Right. Yeah. So you already had that in the back of your head like she got. Yeah. They were giving her hard time for a little hash or something. She went to a real gulag also like they had her doing hard labor. Yeah. So you didn't have to do hard labor the two weeks. You were just pretty much locked down. No. Yeah. Apparently what they did to me was like a tactic that goes back to like the Soviet Union times where when they don't have like a real crime depend on someone, they'll just like make up one. Something that seems plausible and then they'll use those 15 days to like gather more shit on the person or like gather and excuse to like charge him with something deeper like being a spy or I think at some point like they realized they were not going to get me for being a spy because I'm not. But they're like he's American so maybe I'll have like you know drugs in his bag. So a super scary thing that happened was like they just kept drug testing me over and over again. And then at one point they their drug testing. Yeah. They bring and they do it in like the most frightening way as possible like like my first night in the prison at like 10 11 PM. They just show up and like they send like the nice like female CEO to come on and be like tell us you're going to come out for a little bit. That has bees there. They throw me into like the rapist van again and then they take me to like this sketchy looking hospital and they had given me like the most sketchy looking Warren ever. It's just like handwritten and it says we're going to drug test you. And you need to sign this and I was like fuck and like I try I'm not going to like I tried to resist at that point because I'm like losing my mind and they're just like Thomas. If you actually resist if you don't do this you're going to be charged with resisting the police again. You're going to get another 15 days this no goal will yeah. So I was just like can I at least see this as the test is happening and they're like yes. And luckily was a fair test right you weren't on drugs but like it so is it a but where they do in a blood draw where they haven't you like p into a cup. P in a cup. Yeah. That's usually like how I do drug testing. Yeah. They're not like holding it for you right. Nah. That's good. Yeah. Thank you. You need to get a wizzinator in there. Nah. No. I guess not. Yeah. Good for you. So they would take you out of the prison to go to a hospital to do that. That's kind of interesting. Yeah. It's not the most efficient way of doing it. But no. No. Yeah. But it's definitely paranoia feel like. Why are they taking me to like third site to do this. When they stick you in the van do they have you like prone on the ground. Now what they'll do is they'll have like four dudes they pick like the four biggest dudes from the FSB and then I'm just like in the middle of them. You talk with them at all or yeah that's the surreal thing they're like trying to joke with me. Oh, Thomas, I was like, you know, you make YouTube videos. Can I be in your YouTube video? Oh my God. With that said, there was a few of them like as they're taking me places that actually were sympathetic to me and they actually reached out to me like afterwards and they're like, we're really sorry about what happened. They're just like, we know this is bullshit, but you know, they think you're a spy and like, we got to go through with this. Well, how many languages do you speak again? You were telling me out there. I usually tell people I speak 10, but I studied like 20, could you see why people might think you're a spy? I did understand it. I'm not going to lie. I'm American. So we usually speak like English and five words of Spanish. That's right. Yeah. And definitely like you said, it's in the middle of like the war and it's a tighter time and all that. I just don't as long as something like that's going on, it's almost like the risk versus reward of going there, especially if you're someone who is checked in publicly on the map in a lot of places, it's a big risk, huge risk. It was. Yeah. And I do take like some responsibility for being a little naive and like going there. I mean, my general philosophy and travel has always been that people are not their governments. Yes. You know, I, that's what I try to show on my videos usually, like I just go to places and they can be countries that like hate America and yet the people are like so friendly, like I went to Iraq, for example, and people like American, I will give you a free taxi ride. Let's go. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. So I naively thought I could go to Russia and like do the same thing and to be fair, I met many friendly Russians, but because of the situation, you know, you get just asshole cops that want to make their career by like catching an American and I got caught in something bigger than myself, I guess. For sure. I love that quote though, people are not their governments. It's funny. My friend Eric Zooliger, who has also similarly gotten himself in some interesting situations internationally, he said that a few years ago on my show and he said two things. He said, people are not their governments and countries are just stories. The borders are just stories that have been told and accepted at some sort of social level over time. And I think that's probably the coolest thing about tools like YouTube and guys like you who are willing to go out there and do it is that you bring home to people like me who are just here in New Jersey, so many different perspectives of cultures and people and places that you know are usually just a word and some headline as a full country doing something involved with something and show that there's so much more below the surface there, which is a really, really important thing. And like it is a risk to go to Russia and I got to say you got some balls to do it and it didn't turn out the best, but it's kind of cool that you were, because I was also going to ask you how you got the footage out there, but you were able to get footage and talk with people and actually show that it's not all just people screaming, yeah, Putin the whole time. It's not that simple. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there were a few people that were screaming, yeah, good, but there's many more people that were saying, fuck, Putin, like privately, and you got a whole range of perspectives across the country, getting the footage out interestingly, it's just like, I don't know like how deeply they went into my footage. I assume like they took my laptop and like tried to get into it, but nothing was gone except for like the footage of the actual border, because like on that border, apparently there's like a bridge that goes to China and it's not listed on any map and my speculation was like China was helping rush avoid sanctions over that bridge. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. So it's not listed on any map. - Yeah. - Tim Cook, what are we doing? - Come on. (laughing) - Yeah, so that probably like, rang the spy alarm dollars, I even harder for them. (laughing) - Because of that. - You're like taking pictures of most important bridge in the world. - Yeah, this is my problem. I just wandered off the beaten pass so much. I accidentally wandered in some shit sometimes. - Fuck yeah. - Yeah. - What dude, what got you into this in the first place? You've been doing this for a long time since COVID, right? - Yeah, yeah, I actually started at the height of COVID because this is interesting. Like I lived in China for six years during like the 2010s and I just like woke up one day or not one day, but it's a gradual process. I was like, I wanna go to China, I wanna like, it seems like the place to like build a business or whatever. - In China. - Yeah, and the 2010s it actually was. Have you ever heard of like, why combinator? Like the bitch? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. They were setting up like a branch over there. They're like, China's the future. Like go here to start a business. - Wasn't Sam Altman involved with that? - He was the president, actually. - Yeah. - I actually, man. - You're not beating the allegation in here, man. - Yeah, I know all this sounds really weird. I also studied international relations today. - Goddamn it. - Yeah. - Goddamn it. - And economics. - Check the bats from after you leave. - But so anyway, I was in China not doing anything spy related, I promise. Running a little business, it was actually like events. And then what happens is COVID happens. And if you have anything that involves like meeting people in person, you're basically fucked. - That's right. - So wait, you were in mainland China when COVID hit. - Yeah. - Yeah, literally. - All right, step back for a second. What the fuck was that like? Cause they hit earlier over there than they did here. - It did, yeah. - And was it, I mean, obviously it was bad here and they shut the whole fucking place down. But in China they had like drones watching people in the windows and stuff. Again, I just saw what I can see on the internet. What was it like? Like when suddenly it was like, oh, COVID is here. We're fucked. - Yeah, I had a, you could say the greatest luck there in COVID because like I started off there when the, when COVID was just getting taken off. And you start seeing like Chinese people slowly starting to wear like face masks, which they never did before. It's not like Japan where like, - It's gonna say they all wear it there. - Yeah, they'll do it even if they have like a cold or something. But in China, the Chinese people are more like the more rowdy version of Japanese people. - Right. - They also didn't get hit with two nukes. - Yeah, yeah, there you go. So yeah, I just start seeing that. And I start thinking, you know what? Maybe it's not the best time to be here. Being that like my business was like temporarily shut down. Anyway, you know what, I'm just gonna fly to New York, hang out for like a few months, come back, see my family. - You're from Long Island? - Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I fly back to Long Island basically, stay at my family's house. And what happens is, no joke. Like the day after I get back to Long Island, the Chinese government puts out a notice saying, we are shutting the borders. Foreigners are not allowed to come back. It doesn't matter if you have permanent residency. It doesn't matter if you have a wife and kids here, you cannot come back. And they kept the borders shut like that for three years. So-- - Three years, it was that long? - Yeah, yeah, they were the last country to reopen after North Korea, or North Korea was the last after China. - So China shuts down the borders and then Langley calls you and says change your plans. - Yeah, exactly, I just accept the call. All right, you know, let's take it about that. But instead, I had been just like watching YouTube videos like past the time when I'm back at my family's house. Bored as fuck as we all were, you know, we got to do like the quarantines and stuff. New York actually became like the hotspot of the world at that point. - Yeah. - So I was like, "Huh, fuck." - I was like, "Huh, fuck." 'Cause I love traveling. And we couldn't go anywhere at that point. Everybody was like Americans are like the most dangerous people in the world now, more than normal. - Yeah, you're also on Long Island, which is like landlocked too. - Yeah, there's no mountains to hike or anything. It's like shit. So yeah, this is pretty wild. I looked up like a list of countries Americans could travel to. And it was a very short list. It was something like Mexico and Tanzania in Africa. I think the UK allowed you to go there for like two weeks, but you had to do like a quarantine, and I was like, "No, fuck that." (laughing) So I was like, "You know what, I've never been to Africa. "I'm going to go to Tanzania. "Books my flight." There was a mix up at the airport. They thought I needed a COVID test to go to Tanzania. They had like this crazy president at the time. That was like, "Covid doesn't exist. "You don't need anything. "You just come over." (laughing) But yeah. So they didn't let me on that flight. I told them they fucked up. They didn't refund me. But I was like, "Oh, that's right. "The guy at the US. "I just booked like the next flight and went over there." And while I was there. - Did you know anything about it like before you went there? - I knew that the president said there was no COVID. - Right. - And I knew I didn't need a COVID test. But this was such a crazy unprecedented situation that the airline employees were like, "That's not possible. "You must need a COVID test to go here." So I ended up like going and printing, should I say this like a fake COVID test. - That boy. - For the next day. It turned out I didn't need it 'cause then I actually found an employee that knew the actual rules. And then got over there. And I was like, "You know what? "This whole experience is insane." It was like all of this. I'm like, "I should fill this. "I should make videos of this." - Oh, so you didn't already have the idea that you were gonna film when you went to Tanzania. You were just trying to full send it for yourself. - Yeah, yeah. I just wanted to like take a vacation. - I'm like an idiot. (laughing) - Wow. - Yeah. - So would you get like a camera offline and ship it? - Yeah, so what ended up actually happening was I spent like a month at Tanzania. And this was like a gradual process. I was like, "You know what? "I'm gonna make some videos. "Maybe I'll go back to America first. "I'll get the camera. "I'll do some planning." And then I actually flew back, touched down. And my YouTube channel, I did make some videos in Mexico first, but it really kicked off when I was in Africa. Like traveling around. - All right, wait, let me make sure I understand the timeline. So you go to Tanzania. You're like, "Fuck, I should do YouTube." You come back to America and then you went to Mexico first before you go into Tanzania again. - Yeah. - Okay. - We look fusing. - Got it. - Yeah. - All right, so what month did you go to Mexico? - That was December 2020. - All right, so you went to Tanzania for a month. You come back home, you get the YouTube thing figured out. And then you're like, "Well, there's still only two countries "I can go to or whatever. "So I'll go to the other one I haven't been to." - Yeah. - What was your first content down in Mexico? - This is pretty wild, but-- - I was like, "I met with Sikorios," you know? (laughing) - That, no, we weren't at that trend yet on YouTube. (laughing) I was like, I wouldn't, you know, I thought this was like a pipe dream at first. I'm not gonna lie. I thought like, you know what? I'm kind of like, I'm honestly like, I'm an adventurer, but I'm kind of like a nerd at the same time. So I was like, I thought I'd make like a language channel. I thought I would just like talk to people different languages and like, they were like viral videos at that time of like guys like speaking languages and people would get excited and they're like, "Oh my God, well, they still have those, "but I think they're less popular now." But anyway, I was gonna do something like that. So I was like, I'm gonna learn the language of the Aztecs, which I thought would be cool. And just find people that speak it, which I did. - There's still people that speak that. - Yeah, it's a language called Nahuatl. - Nahuatl, that's kind of hard. - It's well, the pronunciation's crazy. - Yeah, so you start learning Nahuatl. - I did, yeah. And there was like no resources in English. I had to find like some tutor in Spanish. They had like their own website in Mexico. - So you already spoke Spanish at least. - I did, yeah. - Right, okay. But still, that's well. - Yeah. - Do you still have some of it today? - The Nahuatl. - Yeah. - A few words. - Yeah, let's stick it on the mic. Take me back to 1492. - Tla socomati. - Wow. - Yeah. That means. - That's cool. - Thank you. - Awesome. - Yeah. - They have that fun. I don't even know what that's called, but like you have to stick your tongue against your teeth. Make one of those sides. - Like that, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - They just like mix a bunch of consonants together. - Very pronounced, pronounced. Yeah. That's kind of cool. - Yeah. It's a fun. Oh, actually, it's not a fun language. (laughing) It's like really fucked up. But the meeting the people was amazing. And that was like, that was my first experience with thinking I could actually like do this. 'Cause I like took this trip to like the middle of nowhere in Mexico. - Yeah, where is it? - Where is it? - This is like East Coast, Mexico, near Betacruz. I don't know if you know what that is. - Yeah, let's pull it up on a map just so people can get an idea. Do you remember the name of the town you were in? - Oh, yeah. Yeah. The heart of it is called Huihutla. - It's the J-U-E. - It's a H-U-E-J-U-T-A. - And then. - H-U-E-J-U-T-A. - Yeah, it should come up with that. - J-U-T-A, yeah. I wanna see this on the map, just getting an idea. Like how many people live in a town like this? - Probably like a few thousand. - Okay. - So it's not like a couple hundred. - Yeah, there we go. - All right, yeah. So this is like-- - There it is. Huihutla, there it is. Yeah, that one right there. - So it's like, I don't know, I'm totally eyeballing it, but maybe like an hour and a half. have two hours in land, kind of deal. - Yeah, it's about, I think it was like maybe five or six hours from Mexico City, but yeah. So yeah, it's pretty interesting. It's like the one part of Mexico where people still use that language in like daily life, so they're literally still speaking like Aztec to each other. - And you just went alone. - Yeah. - So do you have one of those personalities where you lack a lot of fear? 'Cause from day one, I mean, you're going down to Mexico, we know there's a lot of safe parts in Mexico, but obviously like you're going out into the heartland out here, you don't know what's out there. There's a fucking lot of cartels and shit. And you don't appear to have been worried about that too much in your calculations. - I'm gonna be honest with you, I didn't even realize that could be dangerous. I mean, yeah, I thought like, yeah, the cartels are like over there. - Similar Jeff Nadeu's just hitting his head against it. (laughs) I mean, there's a coastal idea of it, you know? It'll probably be all right. - Yeah, you're like a nice enough guy that I feel like in a lot of dangerous places, certain people, if they're not government related, would see you and be like, he's got no clue. That's all right. - Yeah. - I do fly under the radar. - That's good, yeah, that's what good spies do. - Yeah, yeah, it's still bad, I never signed up. - That's right, anyway, I still don't believe it. But how long were you down there? Learning the language and doing this? - I did that whole trip in, a little less than a month. - Did you know that there's an online cannabis company that ships federally legal THC right to your door and that they found a way to combine THC with carefully selected functional ingredients to create gummies, baked goods, and flour for whatever type of buzz you'd want? Well, the company I'm talking about is mood.com and they're a credible line of cannabis gummies. And today you can get 20% off your first order at mood.com using promo code Julian. 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Try it today at Mood.com. - I think, and you picked up like a decent part of the language in that short of time? - Yeah, yeah, I try to tell people this, you're not gonna become like an expert in a language in two weeks, but it is fully possible if you use like the right tactics to get semi-conversational. - What are the right tactics? - So just like do a speed run of like, let's say the most important 100 words, learn like the important grammar aspects. And as soon as you can just start talking to like a teacher or like real people that speak the language and they can like basically bring you up to speed where you'll just be like, oh, they say like this. Oh, okay. Oh, they ask questions like this. Oh, I get it now, okay. And like, you're still not gonna understand everything they say back to you, but yeah, I managed to have like legitimate conversation just like doing that. - Wow. - And I've done this with like, yeah, literally like 20 languages, I think. - Did you film yourself learning the language? Was that part of it too? - No, no, I didn't do that. - You just filmed the people and you walking around. Is that video still up? - It's still up, yeah. It's the very first video I ever did. - It's the oldest. - I wanna see this. - Yeah. - So how do you say a name in the town again? Way. - Wayhutla. - Wayhutla. Oh, yeah, it's back when everyone had to be messed up and shit, looking at them all wearing it. - I don't know if you ever had another YouTuber on here, but it's usually pretty cringe for them to watch their first video. - I've had plenty of you guys on here. - Don't worry. - It gets easier by the second one. - Yeah. - Also, look at that fucking thumbnail unless you made over there. And that's just a complete AI-fied version of all of us. - That's amazing. - I'm in a city in Mexico. Also known as Mexico City. (laughing) Also known as the Norte de Plan. The former capital of the Aztec Empire. Now, the Aztecs, they had a language. It's called Nowak. And what many don't know is that this language is still spoken by over a million Mexicans today, spread around the country. - Oh, yeah, I was trying to take on my schedule. - So I have the phone. - That was their voice. - That was great. - This is great. - I have too much free time. I wanted to see, here in the former capital of the Aztec Empire, how many Mexicans still understand this language? Well, we're about to go and find out. That is way better than my first video. - We're making a video about life here. Could I ask you a few questions? - They're looking at you like you have 10 heads. - So first question, what's your name? - And you got to understand them under the mask too. - Yeah. - No, no, not you. That's what you were saying. So what language are you speaking? - Everything. - No, no, no, no. - It's a mask that I didn't understand anything. - No, no, no, no. - There's nothing. - I'm not gonna bother enough to do those. - Oh, you're like I was testing my skills, and they just walk away, not good. - This is basically the entire video. I just go around the knowing Mexicans. - Okay, we have a positive right there. - I love the walk-in talk. Like it was the old history channel videos, where you're like narrating like your Steve Irwin, like you're in the middle of like Mexico City. Pretty cool. (laughing) - Yeah, it was great. I thought that would fly. - Well, I did some. - That wasn't quite the video there. (laughing) Got me popular, I guess, but I thought that my confidence is. - Yeah, that's what you gotta do, man. You gotta, I think that's like the biggest thing with anybody that creates anything online. You have to start somewhere. And when you turn on that faucet the first time, it's not clean water that comes out. You gotta be, you gotta like embrace absolutely fucking doing cringe shit or sucking at something. Like, yeah, obviously had the skill, but like the whole, now you can go, we'll talk about it later, but you can go to the straight-of-war moves and like film the whole fucking place for a few days and capture a perfect video and you know in your head what it's looking like while you're doing it. You don't know that when you're doing it the first time. - Yeah, yeah, that's like way into the drug cycle. You could try. (laughing) - That's a good one. - You've graduated like needles at that part. - Yes. - You're going to the straight-of-war must. - Yes, no strap either. You're just gonna straight in the van. - I got you. - So have you ever edited before? - Nah, nah, that was my first time. And it's actually pretty simply edited. I would say I started off with like eye movie and 'cause like my thinking was just like, it's more about the experiences. I'm just gonna show what I'm doing. So I don't have to throw like any special effects or anything in there. The only tricky part about editing is just, you can't just like upload like a video for like two hours. - That's right. - That's gonna get boring as shit. So you have to like zoom in on like what's interesting? What isn't? And I slowly like learn that over time. - That's kind of hard though too because you're in it. And so all these little moments stick out to you and then you gotta pull yourself out and be like, okay, I know all this stuck out to me. But if I'm someone who has no idea I just did this and is clicking the video, what is actually gonna stand out to them? That's a hard job when you're going to a lot of different places. - Exactly, exactly, yeah. - On that same trip like later on, like I meet like this guy on a bus who like also speaks that language, not a little. And then he's the one that takes me to like that town. And at the time I'm just like, this is like the greatest friendship ever. Like this is so interesting. Everyone's gonna like feel this the same way. But now looking back I'm like, I probably should have cut that down to like just one video instead of four. But it's a learning process. - Yeah, it's how you experiment. So you were doing all your own editing then, do you still do all your own editing now? Or do you have something like that too? - Nowadays, especially since the trips are getting like crazy or grander, the videos are getting longer. I do currently have an editor. He's another American. - That's right man, it's a pretty good job. - Yeah, yeah, and he kind of gets your vision obviously 'cause it's still very, like your videos, there's, I don't know who your main influences were, but there's some similar vibes to your videos like Peter Centinello's. Like they're very, he's just on the ground, what's happened? And you're on the ground, what's happening? It's not overredited, overproduced, trying to do all bells and whistles at all times, which some channels do a great job with that. But yours is like very almost like first person POV, you know? - Yeah, I would say if there's any like guiding philosophy, to like my videos, it's like I want to make this as natural as possible. I want you to feel like you're there. I want us to have like a spontaneous adventure, you know, just like go where people are not going and just see what happens. I try if I can not to ever get like a guide or like a fixer or something like that. And I've had some problems because I didn't do that in a few places. I've also had amazing experiences that wouldn't have happened if I had taken like the guided route. So I think it's at least for me. That's the best way to do it. Yeah. Now, once you finish up in Mexico, you said you went back to Tanzania. Yeah. Was that straight from Mexico? So this was right around Christmas, went back for Christmas, and then. What's your family saying at that point? You just spent a month in Mexico. You're making a video. What are they saying? It's really funny because my parents are the most normal, lower middle class people. They're just like, "What the hell are you doing, Tom?" But they were like. I mean, at this point, I had like I studied in Argentina for like a few years. I lived in China for like six. They were kind of like, this is another crazy thing that Tommy wants to do. Right. Our size a little bit unusual. Whatever. I'll go over there. You were in Argentina studying out there? Yeah. In college? Yeah. So I studied Spanish in college, and then I did a study abroad. And then afterward, I was like, "You know, what if I like stay over, do like a master's program, didn't finish it?" But I was like, "Yeah, I mean, Argentina is fun." Yeah. So you spent a lot of time there. You spent time in some of those enclaves filled with people that were somewhere else between the years in 1939 and 1945? Oh, yeah. I did. I did, actually. I actually made a video about it, though. Oh, you did? Yeah. Let's pull that bitch up. Yeah. You might like that one. Okay. I actually met the daughter of a former Nazi. And like without a fixer, I just found they're on the street. It was amazing. You found her on the street? Or I found her at her house in the swastika. Yeah, she does that in the full uniform. That's her. That's her. That's her. Yeah. Seems like such a nice lady. Yeah, she was very nice. So you could tell that the Germanic vibes looking at her. You saw her drop in your life. Just look at her. You ain't from there. Why, she's a little far right now. I can't tell you yet. Yeah, look at the sweater. We had to do what he did because something. If you're a soldier, you have to do it in the captain order. Okay. Are you drinking latte there? Absolutely. Good for you. If you want a soldier head, the part with Gal, the load is really good. I just arrived. The body lucha. Well, actually, no battery lucha, yeah. It's beautiful. That is beautiful. Tourist destination in Argentina, in Argentina. Same as ski resorts, same as panoramic views, or lake here. That would have wildy. All right, let's go over there. It's also famous for one of them. Oh, wait, wait. You about to be like Nazis. Yeah, I wasn't. That would be the house of Eric Priepki. No, he was high up. And what is it now? I'm just translating what's on the screen. It's a family house. I just rocked into this house on the street. He don't look German. Yeah, he's like son and wife both. Yeah, they're married now. It's your house you live here. The guy says, yes, there are a few questions if you don't mind. Oh, here she comes. That's the mind. We're in the history of barrel lucha. It's German history and old. I don't want to be too direct. Where are you from? You say from the US? And she goes his son Jorge was something, but he was also been married in myself as well. I was a widow and as well. He was divorced. But I was a widow. That is my son, but not from Priepki. Oh, so she was married to Priepki. She's like another daughter-in-law. Daughter, yeah. She was married to his son. There's no one. Neither my father nor my husband. They all passed away. Now there's just the granddaughters. I don't know where they live. And he's up here in barrel lucha. No, no. I've been here for 30 years. I met them because they were German. I was too. The majority of the people in barrel lucha are German descent. Yes. But now there's nobody left. What happened? They left? She was, I speak German. They all did. But they all died. And that's a shame. And I'm losing my German, too, because I have no one to speak it with. Finds me YouTube videos. And my children also don't speak it. They don't speak it either. No, they don't want to. All right. We'll cause you right there. Yeah. That's interesting. It's like you ask them their political opinions or didn't want to go there. So right after that, actually, she, she starts like kind of defending, not like forcefully, but being like, you know, he was just following orders. So he was doing what he had to do. You know, I wasn't his fault, you know. But have you heard of Eric Preke? Yes. I can't remember if he was one of the guys that they ended up catching. They did actually. They did catch him, right? In the 90s. And oh, there's like a famous video of him talking, I think, with the newscaster. That's him, right? Yeah, that's exactly it. Yeah. Yeah. So this was this happened late enough that you had like full TV coverage of it. Yeah. And then I forgot, I guess they took him to Israel after that. Can we pull that up? Eric Preke just go to his Wikipedia so we can just refresh people on that. But yeah, there's like a famous video of, I believe it was an American newscaster went down there. They did an investigation. They thought they found him. And then they start interviewing him. I want to say he was stationed in Italy. He was in the war. Yeah. Yeah. So here we go. I believe what he did was he let a massacre. Yes. That's right. Italian POWs are done. Yep. Yep. This, he was a German mid-level schtuchenstoffel commander in Schischer. I don't know what the fuck that says of Nazi Germany. In 1996, he was convicted of war crimes in Italy for commanding the unit which was responsible for the Adrian teen massacre in Rome on March 24th, 1944, as the Americans were advancing through the country in which 335 Italian civilians were killed in retaliation for a partisan attack that killed 33 men of the German SS police regiment Bozen. Preke was one of the men held responsible for the mass execution after the end of World War II. We fled to Argentina where he lived for almost 50 years. In '91, Preke's participation in the Rome massacre was denounced in Esteban Bukes book, Alprin Torre de Suiza, Argentina in 1994, 50 years after the massacre. Preke felt he could then talk about the incident and was interviewed by American ABC news reporter Sam Donaldson. This caused outrage among people who had not forgotten about the incident and led to his extradition to Italy for a trial that lasted more than four years. Yeah, can you actually go to YouTube, deep and pull up Sam Donaldson, Eric Preke, this is actually a pretty wild footage. He's just like an old man. He's like, yeah, you know, it's fallen orders. That's it right there. Boom, so they find him. Here we go. Yeah, here we go. Sounds like what I did. Preke, Sam Donaldson, American television. Yes, you were in the Gestapo in 1944, were you not? In Rome? Yes, in Rome, yes. You know the communist blow-ups are a group of our German soldiers. Yes. For every German soldier, ten, ten Italian had to die. Civilians? Well, civilians, you know, they have been more than terrorists. But children were killed? No, not a war. Fourteen-year-old boys were killed? No. But why did you shoot them? They had not done anything. You know, that was our order. You know, in the war, you know, that kind of things happened, you know? You were just following orders? Yes, of course, yes, but I didn't shot anybody. But you killed civilians in the cave. No, no, no. That was not there. Yes, I was there. But that was as I think that was ordered by our command. But orders are not an excuse. It's wow, man. It's as time all of us are armed, are you, man? And you carried it out? Yeah, I had to carry it, you know, yes. And civilians died? Many civilians died. Or no part of the war, still they are dying. You will live in this time, but we did live in 1933, in a sense that all Germany wasn't there. Nobody won't speak about it now, but the most part of Germany was Nazi. Well, we didn't commit a crime. We did what we ordered us, you know? That was the crime, that was it. If you deport Jews to concentration camps? No, no, no, no. Never? - No, no. I never was against shoes. I'm from Berlin. We lived together in Berlin, as many as we saw, I think it's. You're not a gentleman. I'm not a gentleman. Yeah, that's one of the wildest, like, man, original man on the street videos, if you will. Sam Donaldson pulled off. Yeah, it was really wild also, because I remember he had actually built himself into the community. He was, like, a respected member. I was, like, the community in Batalouche. Like, he set up, like, a German school. People to learn German. And, like, I think, as far as I know, everybody liked the guy in Batalouche. And then it was just, like, a big shock to everybody, like, when these interviews started coming out, and then they came and captured him. Isn't it wild? And you've heard other stories and other contexts about this before, where someone does, like, wicked things. And then they changed their identity, go on the run, whatever it is they do. And live for decades by all accounts, like, not doing those things, at least. And totally, like, flip over to trick people into hiding what they once were, which shows, like, this is what I psychologically can't get with it. It's like, are they so sociopathic that they can flip on a switch of goodness for 50 years? Or, do they actually, like, wake up from being a monster and be like, you know what, I shouldn't do that anymore? I'd love to know. Only he'll ever know, which one it was, or if it's a mix of both, I don't know. But it's a really strange thing. I was super strange. Yeah. I mean, I would lean towards the guy who was probably a little sociopathic to begin with. I believe I've encountered some sociopaths in my life. And it's, like, amazing how they can lie. And I just, like, switch on a dime to, like, accomplish whatever they're trying to do. Right. But it's, like, they have to get their fix, right? They're sociopaths. They need to manipulate, lie, cheat, steal, do whatever. Like, they get off on doing that to other people. So it's, like, did he do that secretly in other ways over those 50 years? I'll bet he probably did. But if he didn't, is he that committed to the bit of sociopathy that they can be like, no, I have to be this good guy now. Even if it's all pretend, I'll just be that. And then does it? I don't know. It's weird. It might have been like, I'm going to show you. I can be a good guy. Yeah. I think I'm a Nazi. And you're talking to his fucking daughter-in-law on the property that he owned. Yeah. It's, it's trippy, like, how little, like, security or whatever they had over there. It was just like, to be fair, I guess there's not a lot of crime in that city. But, yeah, like, considering their reputation and stuff, I was like, well, I can just rock up to their house. And she comes out. You ever think of visiting that Colonial Dignidad thing? You ever hear that? How was that? Is that an Argentina and Chile? It might be in Chile. Colonial Dignidad. Dave's pulling it up right now. There was a, it's, I'm definitely pronouncing it wrong. Now, is it Chilean German film? Actually, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's based on that colonial, which is, which is a film starring Daniel Broell. They did make this. They came out like a decade ago that I don't remember if it's like fictionalized, but yeah, it's in Chile. So there's a place called, I believe it's called Colonial Dignidad, right there. Yep. A settlement of German colonists founded in Chile in 1961 by the preacher and pedo Paul Schaeffer. It is located in the commune of Peroll, Lenaris province, Molle region. It became notorious for funding as a clandestine center of detention torture and murdered during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. It adopted the name Villa Bavaria at the suggestion of German former Waffen SS officer and arms dealer Gerhard Martens. It's like rumored, it's been a while since I look at this. They were trying to like recede the master race or something there. Like it was just all, it's like this like army base almost. Then it's just all fucking German people. This looks insane. Yeah, that's your next video. Go down there. It was about to say, where is this? Go knock on the door. Let's see what's happening back there. Thanks for the tough. All right. You want a commission? You know, I'll just watch the video safely from the confines of my New Jersey home. How about that? Sounds good. Yeah. I got the coordinates for you right here. Yeah, there you go. Excellent. All right, 36, 22, 15 South, 21, 35, 15 West. Excellent. There you go. Hope that doesn't count as doxing. I'll be there next week. This is public information. So. All right. So when did you do that video, by the way? That was 2021. So like 40 years early on. Yeah, pretty early. Yeah. So you went back to your roots in Argentina. You're like, let's go find some Germans. Yeah, exactly. Like I like without COVID, I probably would have started the channel somewhere like Argentina or China. But like most of the world was like blocked off at that point. Right. So I was like as soon as these places started opening their borders again, I was like, yeah, I'm going there. Yeah. Now, did you have before you were starting YouTube, did you have like some money saved up from the work you were doing to be able to fund yourself for a while? Because obviously you got to travel places that cost money. And like at the beginning, as we all know, when you're starting a channel, you don't make money. Yeah. That's that's good question because I had actually basically used up like all my money at that point. Right. Right. Cause this was like, it was almost like a year before I started doing this from like when I left China and like my businesses had been running anymore. So yeah, it was funny. It was like they were sending out those like those checks during COVID, like by the Trump. Yeah, the stimulus checks. And with literally with that stimulus check, I booked my flight to Tanzania. And I was probably on like my last thousand dollars, like no joke. So this was like, I was literally doing like a Hail Mary. Was that the second flight to Tanzania? The second flight to Tanzania. Right. Yeah. So you're like, it's got to work. I got to do something viral in Tanzania. Yeah. It's a good sign of my insanity or stupidity that I thought this would be a good idea because like the chances of it working were pretty minute. But somehow that somehow that I think it's because there was like literally no other videos of Africa or at least vlogs like that. What happened? You get on the ground in Tanzania? Did you have any idea what kind of content you were doing or you're like, I got to go find some. Yeah. I mean, I had like a mild idea, but what I usually do is I just fly to the country and then I start research and went on there. Because I feel like I could learn more by like talking to locals and I'll be like, yo, this is cool. You should go here or like, this is crazy or there's Nazis over there. So you ever seen Tanzanian National? A fun fact. It was a German colony. Oh god. God damn it. There was a big world war one battle back in the day. All right. We'll leave that one to the side. You get there. You start talking to people. What stories peaked you that you ended up going after? So at that point, like those were like really early days. So you know what? I thought people would just be interested in watching me like walk around, talk to people. And that's basically what I did. Zanzibar is actually pretty awesome. It's like a big like resort destination. Like the Europeans like to go to it. Yeah. Billy Joel son. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. He's a long island guy. I think Freddie Mercury was born there or something. Was he really? Yeah. Frederick Mercury born in Zanzibar. Yeah. Cause he's like, I think Iranian Indian descent or something. No shit. Yeah. So a cool place. A very cool place. I recommend it. It used to be like this like Omani colony. Keep that keep that Mike close by the way. I'm out there again. It used to be like an Omani colony. And they built like these crazy cities there that still stand. It's called stone town stone. Can we go in? Stone town. Zanzibar. Yeah. That's also a hard name for a video. Yeah. Going into the stone ages is Zanzibar. There you go. Here we go. All right. So that fight that Zanzibar right there on the coast. We can see that. Yeah. And then is that one right below it? What you're talking about? Up to the right. Right there. Yeah. Is that it? Yeah. That's it. So is this like castles old castles? So it's got it almost looks like an old city in the Middle East. A little bit, but yeah, they had some like forts and the whole city is like architecture from 400 years ago. And they got like markets down there too. That's really cool. Bazaars. Yeah. I'm sorry. That is the correct term. Yeah. No, it was. It's a really awesome place to walk around. I heavily recommend it. It's a very unique place in Africa. Also, I don't know if anywhere else like it. So you had videos that did really well if you're just talking to the people here. At the time. Yeah. Yeah. This was the moment when I realized like I could just start filming. And I might encounter somebody that would say something so insane that it could be a video. So what they say that was insane. Well, my first viral video. I don't know if it should be proud of this, but like. Was like in a village in rural Tanzania. And I'm just like trying to find like this mystical banana looker that they have there. - Oh, a mystical what? - A banana liquor, this made it from bananas. - Banana liquor? Yeah, I wanted to try it and that was supposed to be what the video was about, but like I've stopped at this bar to like find that they don't have it and then like the I think she was like the owner of the bar. She's like, "Hey, my daughters are here. Do you want to talk to them?" And then like, it slowly turns into I'm like, "Is she trying to like marry me off to a daughter?" So we just like travel around and then we finally find like a shack like serving this liquor. It's kind of nasty, but I was like, "You know what, y'all are like for the experience." And I just uploaded that and I was like, "I was forced into polygamy in Tanzania. That was the title." That's a good title. So wait, you were forced into polygamy. So when the camera stopped, some cool things happened. Well, that's a trade secret, but I know. I actually didn't see him again. Are you married legally in Tanzania? Is that what you're telling me? I'm actually not sure. I'm not sure. I think I got married like four times when I was in Africa. Okay. You get the benefits of marriage? I don't know if I can say that. I can put that out there, that's the protect identity. Okay, it's a good title. Yeah, it was a great, it was a very noteworthy experience. And for some reason that video has like nine million views. You know, I'm not surprised. Can we just, why didn't you see that title and you look at the title? What was it? The polygamy? I was forced into polygamy. It was forced into polygamy. It was totally against your will. It was, yeah. You were not happy about it. I had to talk to a therapist. It was worse than the Russian prison. Yeah, it was super rough. It's a great title. Okay. Yeah, you're still doing the walk and talk with the cam. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Roll the beginning, Dief. That's what I want to see where the walk and talk with. Good morning. Good morning from the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro. The Chaga people for a thousand years have lived on the side of the mountain. And they still continue to do so today. They're known for two things. One is being very good at business. The second is that they frequently get drunk on bananas. Today, we've got to go and investigate both of these things. I'd like to marry. So if you've never seen a Tanzanian mustache before, let's do a little search. Let's see where it's going. Let's see where it's going to be. How do you say a beautiful in Chaga? I'll drive you off. I'll drive you off. All right, you are beautiful. If you want to say that, you have to say like this. I should say it to you. Yeah, I should. I was really going on. Okay, at what point did the sexual favors begin? That's around like minute 30. Okay, all right. Yeah, let's go to the next spike. Yeah, right there. I think there's like a only fan's link in there. Got it. Do you work here? Oh, is this the father marrying you off then? Oh, they got kids too. You're about to be the father that stepped up. They're like the white guy. The kids are saying, yeah, too. No, I don't know where they are. They help me get to him begging. They love it. Okay, she said, let's go together. I see where this is going. So it took quite a bit to like the shack or something like that. To a shack. To a shack, yeah, as you know, which is where they serve the actual liquor. I don't think it was even like a bar. It was just like like a shack. Or you just like take up the back room in the shack too. There was not actually a backroom, but there was a back of the shack. That's right. Yeah. And then. Yeah, I can't. Oh, this is where it's. Yeah, so and then you can say I have a new husband. That's a great screen grab right there. Look at her face. She's like, fuck yeah. And then the chick on the other side's like, get the cameras up. Let's go. This is like one of those like Mormon porn videos, but there's no Mormons around. You know what I mean? He got like eight wives and the dude. Tanzanian Mormons. Yes, that's right. I can see that. I can see your future there. Yeah, yeah. So you never brought them back to the U.S. Unfortunately not. Unfortunately did not see them again after that. We were going in different directions. But you've got a side piece in the country. If you need it. I'd yeah, if I go back to Tanzania. Yeah, which I do love Tanzania by the way. It's a wonderful country. It seems like it. Recommend everyone visit. They got safaris also. I've heard great things about the safaris in Tanzanian. Some other countries over there. It's definitely a dream of mine to go do that. Yeah, yeah. Did you get to do that and I take it over there? I did. Yeah, off camera. I didn't think it'd be like. You didn't roll camera for the fucking elephants and shit. What's wrong with you? No, I did because you could actually. I think this is a new gond actually. You can see Elvis walking on the side of the road. I was just like, you know what? I think that's more fun. Just like it's not even so far. It's not fucking Elvis on the side of the road. Did you get video of that? I did. All right, yeah. It's in there. I love elephants. Yeah, it's the best. Did you look at any of the poaching culture over there at all? Because obviously that's a huge problem across a lot of Africa. Yeah, I think that might have been in the back of my mind. But, uh, my bad. You're good. Uh, I think that was in the back of my mind. But, uh, no one over there gives a shit. So no one brought it up. It wasn't really a thing. That was being talked about. So yeah, it didn't quite explore it. Yeah, it's, I was also, um, I had like barely any money at that point. So I had to find like the cheapest Safari ever, uh, normally they're like $1,000, $2,000. Uh, because, yeah, I was like for like these rich, uh, American European tourists. Yeah. And, uh, I had like 200 bucks. So I found one that was like, you know what? There's not going to be any lions on this one. Hopefully. But we'll show you some drafts of shit. Yeah, so just like handing you a gun from 1870. Dropping you off. Yeah, yeah, yeah, uh, uh, for this one, we don't have a car. We're just going to like throw you out there. Um, and then if you make it back, it's a good test. Yeah. Good test out there. It's a fun experience though. It's amazing how a lot of these places, like you talk about Zanzibar, which is obviously like a, like a major metropolis and all that. But places like this because of where they are geographically, you can have that. And then like you said, on the side of the road, there could be elephants. And when you walk across the road, just down to the city, it's a full blown. Open national geographic shoot, you know, it's, it's unbelievable. Yeah, seriously, um, they do have laws there where like the people can't build their houses like in the actual grazing lands. Um, because these safaris are like a major cash go for this country. So yeah, they go out of their way to protect them. But there are towns just close enough where yeah, you might have like a lion wander in once in a while. Yeah, that's not fun to find in your backyard. So you did find a lion in your backyard. Unfortunately, I still have never seen a lion in person outside of a zoo. So that's for the best. Yeah, even thanks though. I did make a video with this one Messiah tribe where they have a tradition where you're not a man until you go out and kill a lion with your bare hands supposedly. With your bare hands? I think that was it. So I'm like 20, 21,000 lions in Africa. Like what the fuck are we doing? Come on, tribe. Yeah, they might be responsible for like a half of the deaths. Yeah, I don't like that. I don't like that. That's, uh, yeah. I'm all for tribal, you know, doing their traditions and stuff. But, you know, there's a few things here and there. It's like, yeah. There's a lot of stake. If they don't kill that lion, they can't form their own village. And then they can't have like 10 wives or 50 wives like this one guy dead. So, 50. It's a big deal. It's a big deal. Oh, no, he had 10 wives and 50 kids. 10 wives and 50 kids. Yeah. That's a lot of alimony checks. Yeah, they don't have alimony there. So he was, uh, he was busy. He wasn't wasting any time. The Messiah tribe of Kenya and Tanzania is famous for the traditional writer passage where young men had to kill a lion to become recognized as a warrior. However, the idea that they did this with their bare hands is a myth. Uh, the historically used iron spears and shields. So they went straight up Maximus Desmus Meridius on these motherfuckers. They're like, they're like, are you not entertained? That's nuts, man. That's what they were trying to show off to me. They're like, no, we actually use our hands. We're also, have you been in Africa at this point? Quite a few places. I started off in East Africa, which, um, I like all of Africa, but I would say if you're a beginner, that's the best place to start. If you're just getting into it, uh, like, because, uh, Kenya, Tanzania, they're a little more used to tourists. Okay. And there are people are really friendly, though. But I've also been to West Africa. Those countries were pretty crazy. Nigeria. Yeah. Especially, um, Nigeria's popping off. Nigeria was insane. It's, uh, it's probably the second most corrupt country in the world. I don't want to say second because Congo. was number one, which is also in Africa, yeah, but I actually went viral on national news in Nigeria because again, not trying to do this. I bring a camera into the airport and it's the most like horrifying airport in existence. It's just like you could literally bribe anyone in the airport to do anything. So it's just like you want to cut the line. Okay, just give this guy like five bucks. You want to bring this through security, give this guy maybe 10 bucks. Yeah. They're like, there's people like shout at me for no reason because they see I have a camera. You can imagine why the police, they try to like have me delete the footage, but they didn't realize that if you just like delete the footage, but not out of like the deleted files folder, it's still there. That trash cans helpful. It's very helpful. So that footage survived and I uploaded it and it just went crazy in the country. They were like, all these Nigerians started contacting me. They were like, thank you for doing this. Like we've been complaining about this for so long. Like the government said they're actually going to do something now, which I think they actually did. They like went in for like a month or two and we're like making sure there was no corruption. I mean, I kind of yeah, yeah, I know Nigeria more or less said I think they went back to it after that. But yeah, it was wild. Yeah. And like my the Nigerian diaspora is unbelievable. Like every Nigerian, I know they're like a doctoral lawyer company. They're like fucking geniuses. And it's like a lot of them. It's because a lot of them are leaving the country too because there's all kinds of issues there. Yeah. Well, it's kind of like New York. It's like if you could make it there, you can make it anywhere because it's insane. It's like so as soon as it's like, yeah, you want like a better job, a better life, you know it. They're just like, yeah, we're not going to get that here. So let's go over to the US. Let's go to Europe. Yeah. So that was what year were you in Nigeria? 2021. Yeah. Okay. So we just all these things we've been looking at actually happen the same year. Wow. That was a pack year. I think I made like something like half my videos actually just that one year in 2021. Yeah. Wow. But I think a lot of travel bloggers like make the same mistake when I start off, they're just like, I'm just going to film everything and upload everything. And I was kind of in that mentality. I was making like a billion videos. Yeah. But again, you got to figure out like what's working and what's not and what you're interested in what's not as part of it. But yeah, because didn't we just wasn't there like Trump just like bomb Nigeria. I can't keep up with this shit. He bombed on like six, seven months ago or some shit for like, yeah, that was like last year on Christmas day. Perfect. Perfect celebration. All right. What do you do? All right. So in December 25, 2025, President Donald Trump announced that the US launch airstrikes against ISIS militants in northwestern Nigeria, the strikes involving Tomahawk missiles were conducted in coordination with the Nigerian government and targeted militant camps in Dakota state. Yeah. I think it was like they were killing the ISIS guys were like killing some of the local Christians and stuff. So he hit him on Christmas. There you go. That's exactly what Trump was. Yeah. He ever like, because you're all over the world all the time. And so you hear the news while you're in all these other places. I imagine it comes up as you've already alluded to with the people around you. Does it give you like a totally different perspective on like the things that the United States does around the world because you're in these other places while you're hearing about it? I'm glad you asked that because yeah, one of the things I discovered was like living, especially living abroad, but even just traveling abroad for like a long period of time will give you a different perspective on America. Like and you can only I feel get that perspective by doing that. There's maybe like half ways to it. But and then you go to these countries, like Nigeria, Iraq, whatever. And then you meet these people and you ask them like, damn, what was it like? What was it like when the US was here, like bomb and shit and stuff. And it was like, yeah, that sucked. It's over now, but you know, life goes on. And again, yeah, the people are not their government. And you realize they're people just like you. Some of them, like in Iraq, there was a few times where I had guys that were like, we need to make sure he's not like a Jewish spy. There was a guy like saying it was like right in front of me. And I was like, which forced me to say things like, I'm not Jewish. I'm not Jewish, by the way. I hold up across or something. Yeah. Free Palestine. Yeah. When you got it, yeah. When were you in Iraq, 2021? No, that's so that came much later. That was actually last December. So what was that? What was that like being in Iraq now? That was a very interesting trip for sure. It was very surprising also because I basically went from the north all the way to the south. So I saw all different parts of the country. And I kept meeting people that were like, well, you're the first American I ever met. I'm so happy about this. I want to give you food. I want to give you this. It's like the most generous country I've ever been to. And you would never expect that necessarily before going. But there are some like divisions in this. I guess America is now there's some divisions in the country. And there's like all these different groups have different opinions on America. So they're like reactions would vary. So for example, the Kurds, they had kind of been like screwed over by the US a few times, but they also remember that like we were very supportive of them. So we're still been given to my country, though. Yeah. Yeah. So they were I guess like neutral, neutral towards positive weirdly like the in my experience, the Sunnis were pretty positive towards Americans because like they dislike the shea's who are like in control of the country now. And we also helped get rid of the Islamic state, which they didn't like. So. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah. And then but the majority of the country in the South is like Shia. And I don't think I've ever talked about this anywhere actually. Like there was this one place. I believe it's like the holiest place in like Shia Islam. They have like this tower there. And I really wanted to see this. We'll find it. Yeah. Yeah. I actually forgot the name of the city. I think it starts with the S. But it's like an hour or two hours north of Baghdad. Imam al-Shreem in Najaf housing the tomb of Ali, he'd been out to leave because an and son of Muhammad and the first Shia Imam. Yeah. There was one other. Yeah. I don't know if you can find it. Yeah. Holiest Shia sites in Iraq. I can definitely point out. Okay. We'll get it. And you said you visited this place? Yeah. I went there. And yeah, zoom in a bit. Okay. Just like a little north of Baghdad. Get zoom in in your bag. A little north. Let's see. Khan Ben al-Sad, Tarmayish, Bukabak, Adoujee, sorry for not mentioning the S1 up there. Samara. Yeah, that one. That's where it is. Yeah. That's it. All right. So can we Google Shia holy site in Samara? That's the tower. Yeah. Yeah. Is that what you're talking about? That's what I was talking about. Yeah. So the very. That's fucking cool. It looks like a wedding cake. Yeah. So that's what I thought I'd be doing if I went there. I thought I could climb the tower and take a picture like that or something. They didn't let you do that. So I don't know when they stop letting people do that. But now it's like fenced off. You can view it from a distance. But the really notable thing that I did not quite realize before going there was that this city is actually controlled by Shia militants, not the Iraqi government. Right. So all of our Iraq you have like checkpoints and they're run by like the Iraqi military and they'll like check your passport and they'll be like, oh you have a visa. Oh, okay, fine. They'll be friendly usually and let you go. The militias are a little bit different. They're like your American. That's very suspect. They had me like get out of the car, the taxi, like go for a while. Do you have this on film? To be honest with you, I was really shook at that point. Yeah, I can imagine. I didn't know if you just still had it in your hand though. I still had Russia in the back of my head and I was like, I don't want to fuck with this. I don't want to fuck with this. This was supposed to be like a more calm year or something. I was like, but uh. So they pull you out of the car or the question, you know? I do have footage. It's in my Iraq video actually of being like pulled out of the car and just having my baggage search. Do you remember where? Don't ever come to Iraq or else. Another great title. There you go. Right there. It's the first spike. Probably earlier. Yeah. It's before I get to like the town it's along the way. I go before that. Yeah, I go even earlier. Yeah, somewhere along there. Right there. Yeah. All right, let's let's get some volume on this and roll it. Yeah. Passport passport. Yes Who is that guy, so these are just some passengers in the taxi and I racked to have a shared taxis Which people usually take instead of buses. Yeah, we have those here, too There we yeah, we got shared ubers. Oh damn I've been out of America. Yeah Okay, so these guys are just randos in there, but they could be spies I mean theoretically theoretically. Yeah, let's keep going Going to out there They're trying to guide me to like the right place. I didn't know where I was going No lines on the road Okay, so this is the actual check Right so you're outside now. Yeah, I left my camera on in the bag Oh, they're holding the bag You're like Russia part two Didn't actually put the police on so it's apparently that's very legal You don't look Moroccan A little bit stressful going through those checkpoints sometimes I really feel American here Yeah, you're looking All right, that's good right there. So that was you got through it. They just were like you're good Yeah, they were like yeah, nothing weird here But the so the checkpoint in Samara that was run by the shea militants They like took me out of the car for like 20 minutes and it was like holding up the entire taxi and I felt like really bad about that And they were being nasty towards me So like by the time they finally like let me in and I realized like I'm fully within like a zone control But like she a militants that like still have like a grudge against the US. I just got like a completely shook I was like I don't want to film here. I don't even want to be here like I'm like I'm just gonna get out of here And I ended up like just finding another taxi And like about 20 minutes later. I was on the road back to Baghdad back to Baghdad. Yeah, yeah, the safe confines of Baghdad When people talk about Baghdad in here, it's usually you know Different vibe when was the part where they were calling you a Jewish spy was at the cops there. Oh, that's actually in that video Um, I believe or they say something about Israel in there So there's this is actually really cool. This is the part of my rag at one of the show where it's like this guy with like 15 kids again He's like, hey, you know, you haven't had lunch. Yeah, I'll come. I'll make lunch for you She asked me. Are you Jewish? I'm not Jewish. I'm definitely not Jewish in this country Like a Jewish shrine and It still has like the star of David's stuff inside of it, but they I think they converted it into a mosque, but they still but they keep the star They keep the star out of respect. Yeah, it was interesting. It's the only place in Iraq like this each other's religions Yeah, we need more of that in the world exactly. All right, where this is it Okay, so they're in Those are yeah, like she has profits or Important people and she is You could see that this is a she household Profit mom who's saying up there most important person and she as long besides Me, a man himself Most of this region is she Not what I was expecting So I basically been sitting here for like five minutes by myself. That would naturally leave with a conclusion that thought I Literally at the root bank just said I'm hungry They brought me to their house, and now they're just cooking a meal on the spot How many countries in the world would that happen Are you a journalist? You say I'm a journalist. It's just traveling Okay, these people are super nice Except for the guy's brother. He's like uncle Keeps asking stuff like am I a journalist Even worse are you Israeli? Even looking at you like you're a fucking halian I'm gonna check after poison Bring some water in here. You like fish Choking it up Another brother years. Yes Maricopa racked out. Oh, yeah, yes, he's keep cannons. I was life. Oh, it's war That was so good It's not like now sitting in peace sitting there more, it's tanks miss the family by Family gets killed this one. That one gets shelled cars Government or governments Yeah, I was just a funny delivery, bro. I'm for sure. How was it? Well, it's work It's all serious. Yeah, yeah I was like I was really nervous about asking that question, but I was like yeah, there's no other way to ask this So let's just go for it. Do you think like you were As a foreigner in all these places obviously there's a lot to build in social anxiety when you go anywhere Even for you, I'm sure after all these countries you still go to new places and you're still like all right I got to feel this out. Do you think some of that like? It's kind of channeled to be able to actually get good shit You know what I mean like you're on such high alert that you end up asking questions that get you to a farther place and actually get real information Out of people. Oh for sure. Yeah, I mean I think even that day I had like in the back of my head like I should probably ask somebody here about the war Yeah, like that would be interesting. I just don't want to like offend them and get some shit started But yeah, no, it's it's interesting as like when I first arrived in a country I'm actually like usually pretty nervous because like every single country has different first of all laws about filming in public They have different attitudes towards cameras. There's some countries where the people like really hate that you're filming Others like love it. They like try to get in front of the camera And and that I'm also just thinking like all right I mean this is my my travels, but it's got to be interesting So you know, what can I like ask the people here? What would be good? So yeah, I it's always different for every country so Not wearing a bush chanio for sure. It was a real missed opportunity Real conversation. Yeah, what made some real friends with that or maybe like a Halliburton You know, just wear that shirt in there be like what do you think of this? Right, right? Yeah, yeah, Halliburton Yeah, like throw them in the dungeon. Yeah, yeah exactly talk about yeah, ask where the oil is Didn't get to ask that you ever you ever get to Get to meet any of the EZD's or some of the groups that were like I did actually you did that's actually the other video I made in Iraq Oh, wow, all right, so they were obviously massacred in Large numbers were also sold in the slavery when ISIS came in and everything they are not They have their own religion. It's not Islam. It's their own different thing And there's what like 1.5 million of them or were 1.5 million of them in Iraq. Yeah They were very, very interesting group of people, and I knew their story before going, so I just became really obsessed with the idea of trying to find them, but they've been displaced from their homeland, which is like this mountain that's like near the border with Syria. And so a lot of them are still like in these refugee camps and stuff spread around the region. They're actually Kurdish, so I don't want to say like a lot of people when I rack and the rest of them at least have like no sympathy for them, but it definitely doesn't like endure them. And then on top of that, they have like a different religion, which it's not that they actually like worship the devil or anything, but it's more like, I don't even know how that got started to be honest with you. Like their main god is actually it looks like a peacock or something, yeah, and it's like that protects them from the devil or something like that. Can we Google just so we get this specific Steve? Can we Google Yazidi religious beliefs? And we'll just literally pull up the CIA a PD on that and see what they say. I mean, listen, you know those editing that. So Yazidiism is a monotheistic ethnic religion that developed through a complex historical process involving pre-Islamic Kurdish religious substratum and the teachings of sheikh Abin Adin Musafir scholars generally recorded as an independent religious tradition with deep roots and ancient Iranian beliefs shaped by later sufi influences its followers called Yazidis are Kurdish speaking community Yazidiism is based on the belief in one God who created the world and entrusted its guardianship to seven self emanated. Angels preeminent among these angels is Tuwasi Melek peacock angel who is the leader of the angels and that's the greatest authorities over the world. There's a girl Nadia Mirad who won the Nobel Peace Prize I want to say in like 2018 who was a young Yazidi girl whose family many of them were massacred by ISIS and she was actually sold into slavery with ISIS and and wrote a book. I believe it's called the last girl about the whole thing which is a phenomenal book I highly recommend it I never want to read it again though it's one of those like it's very very important read brilliantly written tells the whole story but like you know not obviously not a not a pleasant story. She's really really really resilient woman who I'd love to have on the podcast sometimes if she ever does that but you know I hadn't really known about that part of it until I learned her story and then saw how many people were in the middle of this and when I've talked to like a lot of my Navy seal guys and stuff guys were serving back then like oh yeah it was it was nasty. Oh yeah yeah I mean there were like reports of it in the media and stuff I'm sure they were like tied in like 90% of the details right but even like the 10% that we know it was horrific you know they were just like straight up sex lives for ISIS. Just like I think they would keep them like cages and then just like they come out like rape on the stuff and that's horrible it was horrible yeah in every way in every way but so you did a full video where you went and found some of them many of them displaced in some of these camps where were these camps again like some of the ones did you go to them or I did yeah and I actually went to the holiest place for the Yezidis and yeah they were I was just really struck by like how kind they were. Because this is like the holiest place in their religion and they're like yeah you can go in yeah you go go ahead like you know take some pictures you know show it off I made like this faux pas where they have this thing where you're not supposed to step on like the doorstep or something and accidentally did that and they came over and they're like no no no don't do that but they were like smiling as they said it. So I mean there's maybe some other regions where they wouldn't be that friendly so yeah they were just like very nice very kind it was a little bit hard to communicate with them because actually they speak Kurdish not Arabic so some of them spoke Arabic and you don't speak any Kurdish. It was just the basics of it like some greetings and stuff but for the people I found that spoke Arabic or English there were some people spoke English I got to know like their story basically they're not getting like any funding or anything for like the refugee camps now so they're just kind of like stuck in their situation. It's horrible man yeah we went around and we bought a bunch of stuff for like the kids in the town got cutest kids ever they look like they could be like anything. Some of them look like they were Swedish some of them look like they're from Saudi Arabia's and like every kind of like ethnicity that's kind of like the Kurds in general. Yeah it's amazing there's like 33 million Kurds and they have these provinces where basically they rule but they don't have on the map lines that show that they have a country. Yeah yeah it's one of the more forgotten quests for self-determination in the world I would say because yeah they're spread across four countries including Iran and Turkey most notably. And yeah just because of pure geopolitics it will probably never happen I made another video called the country that will never be a country which I filmed in southern Turkey. South-Eastern Turkey I should say which is like the Kurdish region. Yeah my buddy Eric Zulugur span from Turkey for life because he was on a train and they came by and asked him where he was coming from and he said Kurdistan. No sure. Yeah no shit. Well I hope I'm not bad. They don't have a check. They don't like it. They don't like it there. All right inside the country that will never be a country let's give this some violin roll. Yeah you could skip towards like maybe the middle of it. So this is the Kurdish enclave. You're in? Yeah. King of the castle. King of the castle. I think actually like the later part of the video we go to like this place without a major war with the Turkish government. Over the many years of conflict. Peace be upon you all. How's the life here life is so expensive. He's the new year things are worth it. Right post 25. Actually you're five. What is your name? That's like going to be like a Turkish architect. You're back with me. Here is not your home. Where are you from? Akadas. Akadas, sure. You're still a woman you're with right there. She also has like a small YouTube channel. I make videos with her once in a while. Yeah. She's kind of adventurous. Also American. It's from Indonesia. Indonesia. A whole place. In Indonesia. Just in the capital. We had like a chance encounter. A chance encounter. We found out she was interested in making videos and went from there. I hope you told her you're married man. Yeah. You want to be the fifth? That was how I worked it up. There were four. Okay. Men don't own them. Yeah. Friendly Kurdish people. They're in the neighborhood. Trying to make sure that there's nothing inappropriate going on here. Oh yeah. That was a lot of slug. Okay. Funny. No, mine. You hit some. The water's for the big musk. Grand musk. Oh, the Arbakeer. What's your name? I think that was Garbachkar. That is a good idea. It's a very narrow street. That came up with it myself. All right. (tires screeching) So this is the Grand musk. - What's your problem? - I think that was a garbage truck. - That is a good idea. - It's that very narrow street. came over with it myself. Alright, so this is the grandmask of the Arbacheer of Ahmed. May needs a head job to go in. So, could he use. He's not supposed to be like a Kurnish. This is the bandana that I bought back in his mirror. - The head showing is a head gobbling. - And you're also showing Turkish pride. You're showing, you're very encouraged pride, though. - Ah, that guy turned my turkish. - Oh, I don't know how to say that shit. - And turkish? (laughs) - Smoked like a very basic turkish. - So they're speaking turkish. - That's what I was thinking. - I didn't know what the hell was. - That's turkish women are not gonna be a word. - Jokes. (laughs) - Once again, even out here. - Turkey is more liberal than you thought. - So it's not like it's open. - So here we have the grand mosque of the Arbachev. - So it's open air? - The big rocks. - Yeah. - Or, I think that-- - This is actually one of the oldest cities in the full-watching history going back almost 5,000 years. Of course, there have been many different groups and religions that have passed this area. It has been Muslim for the last 1500 years. Alright, me, someone from a Muslim country, how does this work? I know, you watch your feet, your hands. Cool. Yeah. I did so much effort. Yeah, that's pretty cool. It is cool. And they actually bring while you do it. How long ago was this one? Around the same time I went to Iraq so I passed something. Yeah I'm a YouTuber, yeah, I kind of like that, come here. - You are from here? - Yeah, I'm from Europe. - Particularly 100% from here. - Nice, nice, yeah. - How is life here? - Yeah, it's good. Before I was living in Antalya Istanbul, after 15 years, I came back to my hometown. - You messed home? - Yeah, this year, it's on time, I wasn't here. - You're here? - Yeah, better life. - No, no. - We are, we are, but it's nowhere-founding, you're way open. - You do seem to have some nice people here, yeah. - Be careful, that's true. - Turn it up, you too, I'm nice to welcome to you. - Yeah, you too. - You did say, thank you. - Thank you, thank you. - Who's going to be here? - He had some more controversial takes off camera, but you want to enlighten us? - Still want to get him in trouble, but you can imagine what he thought about the region. - Okay, yeah, free, free the curts, I got you. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, that's like a whole thing now, because now, you got like some of the hardliners in Israel trying to scream that Turkey's the next to Ron, or something, I mean, you know, I wish they'd keep trying to find a fucking war everywhere. - Yeah, it gets a little tiring, it gets exhausting, right? - A little exhausting, yeah. I mean, I try to, if I can't stay out of politics in my videos, I'm like pretty like even on that. I think both sides are fucked up, but I, my one opinion is I think the Middle East is the Middle East, and I mean, if we're not, if we don't have like a direct reason to be there, then we shouldn't be messing around there. So, it is unfortunate that, yeah, we keep going drawn into conflicts there, or starting shit. - Yeah, it's, when you look at everywhere we've been for the past over, you know, like basically 25 years, it just seems to destabilize a bunch of places, and you get to see the human side of it to where the people who are forced to live with the bombs drop and all the time, or now, you know, adjusting to their life, and the aftermath of that whole period that still continues in many places, obviously. But it's like, to me, especially the more we get involved with things that are completely avoidable. I'm not saying like everyone is great, and there's not evil out there. There is, you can't just go fucking bomb everyone, you don't like, though. To me, it just creates more and more generational distrust and dislike towards America. And, you know, I would, obviously you've met a lot of these people in person and stuff. It's like they're normal people, and they may hold some of those beliefs because of the things that have happened to them and their family. And, you know, I wish it wasn't that way, and I didn't have anything to do with that myself, but I understand why they feel that way. - Yeah, that was the really hard thing about traveling through the Middle East 'cause you meet all these different groups, and they all have different hopes and dreams about what state they should be living in. And they all really have valid claims to what they're saying. You know, it's like, so I'd meet the Kurds, I'd meet the Palestinians, I'd meet people in Iraq, all different kinds of people in Iraq. I met, I haven't talked about this before, I met Iranians in Oman and Dubai afterward. - After the war started. - After the war started, yeah. And what was really trippy for me was they would be like, we want Trump to continue bombing Iran. We want the Netanyahu to keep bombing Iran. At least the Iranians I met, they're all very pro-war, pro-Trump, pro-everything. But I mean, obviously, I don't know if I should be saying that when I want to go there, but yeah, the government there is maybe not the best, and it's like, yeah, you just end up having a lot of sympathy for all these different people. You're like, yeah, I want you guys to have like your ideal government. I want you to have freedom. I want the Kurds to have freedom. I want the Turks to have like the best country possible. I love all these different people, but they all hate each other. So it's like, fuck, I don't know what to do. I just know that America can't solve it by itself. - That's right. And it's a good point to make too. It's like, and unfortunate casualty information wise in the ongoing Iran war is that people are so pissed off about us being in this whole thing that there's now people who are like, well, maybe their government's not that bad, strictly because they're that pissed off. And like, that fact doesn't change. It's been obviously they've been living under a totalitarian regime since 1979 covered that over the years on this show many different times. And like, that doesn't change. It's horrible. And I wish they could have a new government. The fact of the matter is, and I would imagine this is even harder for someone like you who knows these people on the ground and wants the best for them, like you were just saying, but the fact of the matter is, it is on people to change their government sometimes. Like, it's not, you can't just have other countries like the United States try to come in and wreak havoc and get a new government because it ends up, like, I think if we've proved anything, we're not very good at rebuilding nations, at least at this point in time, you know? And so, in some ways, it's like, you feel like you're stuck between a shit and a fart, right? Like, you stay out, they stay under the control of the regime. You go in, you cause massive fucking third, fourth, fifth, and tenth order effects. And it's just not the world, unfortunately, it's really, really complicated. - It is, yeah, it's like just one of those situations where there's no good answer. - That's right, I would think. - That's right. - Have you spent any time in Palestine and Israel at all? Like, since the conflict really popped off there, obviously it's always been popping off, but in the last few years. - Yep, that was another very notable experience on my channel, you could say. Again, I swear I didn't do something intentionally. Yeah, it's like, I ended up being in Israel and Palestine and just like about three weeks after October 7th, three years ago. - You have remarkable timing, which I really do. - It's almost like you have good intelligence. - I did, yeah, I wish I did, but it was like, I had been planning to go there anyway. I had the flights booked, and then I was like, yeah, I'll still go. But, yeah, so that was a very interesting experience. As soon as I got there, I had to fly into Tel Aviv. Literally, as soon as I'd check into my Airbnb, there's sirens, there's like missiles or whatever coming from Gaza. So I'm like, okay, that's how it is here. I met with all different kinds of people. I met protestors in Israel that are against the constant fighting. I met, obviously, the majority of the Israeli population is super pro, everything they're doing. But I would say probably the highlight of the trip was going into the West Bank. And again, doing it, I would do in any other country. I was like, all right, I'm gonna try to travel in the West Bank in the most tense time ever. So I went to a city called Ramallah, which I believe is the biggest city in the West Bank. I did have one contact there. He was this guy who had, he was Palestinian. He had lived in Israel briefly, but I guess he was kind of like an illegal immigrant there. So they put him back in the West Bank. And he had a very normal peaceful view on everything. He was just like, why can't we just have an open border? And like, you know, go back and forth and whatnot. He looked kind of like Jesus. - Oh, he did. - Stingling enough. Yeah. - This is on video. - It is on video, yeah. He's in there. - He's in there. - Yeah. - And yeah, but he's got it, right. - Okay. So yeah, like he helped me out. And then I had like, it turned out this was a crazy idea at the time, but I was like, I wanna go see the Dead Sea. But there was literally unspricingly zero tourists in the West Bank at this point. So there was like, no buses running. - I should, that one, yeah. - It will shoot you at the checkpoint. - Yeah. - wrapped in Palestine. Your title's not hard, just fuck. - All right. So the guy that looked like Jesus, it should be like maybe middle halfway there. He's like, yeah, at the start of it, I'm in Jerusalem. - Is Ramallah a place where they have settlements as well? - Yeah, that guy, yeah. They do, yeah, he actually lived in what was supposed to be a refugee camp, but it actually looked like a neighborhood. - Okay. - Let's play him. - Okay. - Now I really don't know, but usually the scouts, they said they trained here, and here it's a door, these are doors for the soccer players. - Okay, the soccer players are up here. - Yeah. - Like, clean hands of people who die. They don't have money to pay for the start, so they can't really do it. - You and medical staff are in here. - Yeah, I like you guys, you know. - And then there's an image, the Al-Aqsa mosque. Very important in Palestine. - So all the people here, they were refugees after the 1948 war. - That's okay, yeah, they were, it's good. - Yeah, from the images that I'm the hypha, I met the Ramallah. - So what? - You passed that. - I'm going to push you fingers. - This is my house, but yeah, it's my house. It's a very poor economics in a place like this right? Yes, it's pretty striking coming from like the Israeli part where that is like fully a first world developed country, like there's parts Tel Aviv that look like New York basically. And yeah, with that said, I mean, I try to be as honest as possible with my videos. Like in Palestine, it wasn't as bad as like some of the other Middle Eastern countries I had been to. It's like, it was definitely less developed than Israel, but not as bad as, let's say like what I saw in Iraq or like lack of running water and stuff like that. Yeah. Okay. So this was a few weeks after October 7th, literally, yeah. Did you go to any of the settlements? Like the Israeli settlements in there, no, I did not have like a contact to do that. And I don't know if it's still going on, but at that time, what was kind of dangerous about it was the worm really buses running between the different cities because the Israelis had set up like checkpoints. I think they're always there. But like at this point in time, they were super severe, like literally Palestinians would need like five to 10 hours to like pass these checkpoints. So you'd have to spend like an entire day to like get like get past them. And so the reason I titled the video like that, like they will shoot you at the checkpoint trapped in Palestine is because I ended up at this town near the Dead Sea. And this like really friendly guy, he had a hotel. It was closed because they had zero tourists. He reopened the hotel for me, like let me stay there. But I actually had a flight the next day, my planning. And I had to get back to Tel Aviv to take it. And I was like, fuck, I'm going to miss this flight. So they tried to help me like set up a plan so I could pass the checkpoint without getting shot because like apparently Palestinians would walk up to these checkpoints and the Israelis would just like unload on them. So it was kind of like kind of a intense thing to do. But they managed to get like a tax driver from Jerusalem. And the Palestinians that live in Jerusalem are the only ones that can go back and forth between the two places. Why is that? It's just a specific rule that they have. I believe they come from East Jerusalem, which I guess is apart from like a special jurisdiction. And they get like a special license plate that allows them to pass between the two. Israelis are actually not allowed to drive into Palestine. I think that's the Israeli government telling they can't do that. And then Palestinians obviously cannot go into Israel proper. So yeah. They get that guy. He's like waiting on the other end of the checkpoint and I just like walk across it. And thankfully they just they were definitely kind of curious why the hell I was doing that. But I was like, did not get shot. You're walking across it like the bullets might be hitting me. I had that thought in the back of my head. Were you shitting yourself? I was very nervous like what the interaction was going to be for sure. The interaction, Jesus Christ. Do you think that, do you think that situation is solvable in our lifetime? My honest opinion is no. I agree. Yeah. Because the Israelis, their mentality is they have no other home. And so they consider like any kind of antagonism to Israel is just like a fight for survival. And so there and plus obviously the the Hasidic birth rate is like super high and like they're super conservative, super yeah like pro like just fuck off Palestinians. And then you know the Palestinians rightly also have their claims to the land and they're going to continue to want their land back. And yeah, the best we could hope for is I don't even know just like no more fighting. Yeah. And I don't think we'll see that I think a lot of it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. I think again like when you see leaders of the government openly advocating for war with the NATO member because they're already boarded this war that they're not sending their guys to go fight by the way. You know you're talking about Turkey. Yeah. And it's like because they well they're boarded the Iran war and they're talking about Turkey now as like an enemy and it's like you got to read the room a little bit man. You know you don't have the international support. The support in America below age 55 is at fucking zero on you know not literally but you know what I mean and you can't keep asking for these conflicts because at some point and I think we've crossed that point with a lot of generations around the world. It's like well who really is it asking for the war? Is it you getting attacked or is it you provoking people to attack or attacking attacking them first? Have you spent time in Lebanon? I did actually. When? I actually went for the first time I did another study abroad there when I was in college. Oh no kidding. Randomly. In Beirut? In Beirut. Yeah. Beautiful place I've heard. Yeah I loved it. It was really nice. It's a very unique place in the Middle East also and it's got like beach clubs and all this stuff going on. And I should I say this, I was planning to go there this year also maybe within the next few months. I'll show you working on it. Yeah. I've been really anxious to get back there at some point. But yeah it's Lebanon is I don't think any country has a more complicated claustrophoc of a history and political situation than they do. What do you say now? The country was founded as basically like a Christian colony by the French because it used to be part of Syria or a broader Syria which used to be part of the Ottoman Empire and the French were like you know what you got all these Christians in the mountains. Let's let them have like their own land. Was that the Sykes Pico where they did that? That's where the British and French divided the territories. I think the French already had Lebanon. But yeah so like the government that they came up with and no other government has this is like every position in the government is reserved for like a specific religion. So like the president is always Christian. The speaker of the house is always Shia Muslim I think. The prime minister is always Sunni and he just leads to a lot of like crazy corruption and like all this stuff in the country and and then to make things even like more complicated like a ton of Palestinian refugees came over the border. I believe that was in the 40s or 50s or something like that and the Palestinian situation was actually what led to their big civil war in the 70s which it was basically like the Christians in Israel against the Palestinians and then later the Shia Muslims it was crazy fucking complicated. And I'd still like that today when I was there. I will say like a lot of Lebanese people are like really cool they're just like you want to go out to the bar you know like let's go. But a lot of people there would like meet me and be like you're American okay let me just like voice every grievance I have in your country yeah yeah like I'm a college student I probably agree with you just calm down and that's even years ago they were doing that yeah yeah that was like 2011 yes yeah it's you were saying when you go to a lot of these places you try not to use a fixer and stuff like that if you can avoid it and you're doing a lot of stuff alone so you are literally still traveling just as yourself. Yeah I mean unless I travel with like another you do buddy or whatever but I might be able to hook you up with somebody tell them they root my my friend Arab who's been on the show he's got to be you know Arab you can say he's my friend also actually. Oh all right so you already know yeah you should talk to him yeah he's from I mean he's from here but his family's Lebanese and he goes back there that's true yeah yeah I think he's I think he's there right now he definitely was last month I don't know if he still is but yeah yeah that would be pretty cool we could set that up yeah yeah let's let's hit him up afterwards for sure how do you know him at some point I feel like every travel vlogger contacts the other one right you know we all know each other on Instagram who are the other who are some other cool guys you know small brain American smaller yeah yeah I don't know him let's pull that up we did a big trip through China together small brand American small brain small brain okay yeah these are some of my favorite types of creators yeah okay there you go so he travels all over the world too he does yeah he's got probably a slightly different Style India sucks don't ever come here. Yeah, I think that's what he's known for at this point to say in countries are Kind of fucked up. It's funny. Really funny dude though. You know him Amanda. You seen his videos I have seen Mike okay. He's probably the only one I haven't talked to actually I've talked to bold and bankrupt. I know him. Yeah. Yeah. He's probably the most he's very famous Who else? Yeah, probably like yeah almost all them at this point send a message Yeah, my one buddy Brandon Buckingham who does a lot more American stuff I've talked about this before but he did a great documentary in Lebanon a couple years ago now But what's really sad about it is He was he was supposed to go to India for some thing. He was covering for a documentary. He Has two flights to get there and when he's on the layover flight somewhere in the fucking Middle East Or Europe they realized like his visa didn't come through for for India So he couldn't go so he's like, well, I'm already halfway around the world. Let's find a place So it goes to Lebanon Right before the bombs start dropping so he gets there and the bombs start fucking dropping and He's there like capturing the story of what it is for like a week or two and what's really sad is you see all these Young guys in the video that he's talking to who we're talking about. What a beautiful place this is so nice open in their world to him and Within weeks they were all dead. Oh, that's fucking crazy That's crazy. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that is the trippy things that could happen while traveling Have you run into that where people you get really tight with? Or killed after you do a video? The closest thing I had to that Thankfully, I don't know anyone that died after I met them, but I went to a country called Eritrea if you've heard of that. I have heard of that. Can we pull that up on the map? Someone else talked about that on the podcast, but yeah, it's become popularly known as like the North Korea of Africa because they're like very The government doesn't allow the people to have like Wi-Fi for the most part It's very cut off from the rest of the world and Right next to Sudan and to the north of Ethiopia. Yes, in a real hotspot region. I Went there from Ethiopia actually and So it's unsurprisingly another country where they really don't like you showing anything bad about it and Which wasn't my mission going there. I just wanted to like experience the country What happened was like I was sitting at like this one cafe. What's cool about it? It's like it was an Italian colony and the Italians like poured all this money into it So they have like these cities that like look vaguely Italian and I have like these cafes and stuff and these are pizza and stuff So I was like, I want to hit one of those up and I just sit down and then there's frequently like power cuts and there's like no Like electricity or anything and this one guy there is just like hey, I'll get you a coffee And he tries to do it and he's like, sorry, I couldn't get you a coffee because the power was off That's literally all that happened in the video After I leave They start sending out these flyers on Facebook in the local language which was Tegrenia The one is just of me saying like I went there to like cause trouble and then another one was like This guy who said there was like no power in the country and the only fucking thing that I can hope is just like these were just like Nationalists that are just like you know like Trying to point this out and be like hey, these are bad people I really hope nothing happened to that guy and nothing should have happened that guy because he didn't say anything against the government But I do like worry about that It's like for all this shit that's fucked up here that we got to take care of which you know, obviously interesting times were living through Man, there are so many times where I'm so grateful to live here to where you know, you can do this and you can say what you want and yeah You know, obviously it's been some issues with that would like censorship in the past But there's not people showing up to your door to shoot you or take you away in the middle of the night so to speak That is the single greatest thing about this country. Yeah, it Like I don't think there's any other country that has as great a freedom of speech as the nice days Have you Obviously you're spending most of your time on the road now but in doing this now for like six years And then even before that obviously living in China we can come back to that but like Do you have a greater appreciation? For what we do have that's good in America because of being in so many places that don't even have the most basic things Yeah, for sure So I said earlier like when you live abroad you start to view your own country differently But that's like both good and bad yes There's like you realize all the stuff that you wish you know, I wish that the US Metro's could be more like Japan's but at the same time. I'm like I kind of enjoy the fact that people are Actually, I have personalities here. I'm like you man There's like good and bad in every single country I would say but um Yeah, no like The good things about the US I usually say is like especially for people coming from like Developing nations or just anyone that has like a dream or whatever. It's like there's no better place to be You know, you can accomplish your dream here Like you can make more money in the US and that's your goal. It's probably the best place in the world to do that um and also just the amount of like land and stuff you can have at a relatively affordable rate You know like just The houses that we have in middle-class neighborhoods in America would be like mansions in most parts of the world You know In Hong Kong for example like people pay like 10 million dollars to live in like a three-story building that looks like a mini apartment building or whatever Yeah, um and in most European countries also, I think it's very unheard of to have a house like we do here So Yeah, no, it's this great and we also I would say like many Americans or Friendlier I would say then really most of the developed world. Yeah, you say this is a New Yorker too Yeah, well, I'm kind of I'm not gonna lie like I'm imagining like the South when I say this It's like I did some traveling down there But uh, New Yorkers gonna be nice too, you know, it's like we're pretty friendly to like tourists and foreigners and stuff I think so yeah, I think so there's more of a aggressive letting people know how you feel here Which I actually appreciate more than some other places where in this country that I won't name where they smile in your face in the Minute you turn around they stab you in the back. Yeah, we're very direct. Yeah or in this part of the country I like that I do value that And you got to be direct where you go obviously we're seen in your videos because you know You're an outsider so you got to make very clear that you're just here to do YouTube videos and not spy on people so That probably helps that it is true. Yeah, I can't Joke around too much. I gotta like be pretty As soon as I usually as soon as I said there's any kind of possible issue with police and I have been Like detained like maybe like five times during these travels. All right. So there's been a bunch of other stories besides Russia We saw the one where you were at least talking on the side of the road in Iraq. Where else did you get arrested? See, I wouldn't even count that one as an arrest. But uh, thank you. I've only been to prison once Get a tattoo on it out by the way. I did not no prison. I know Even in prison It's a good point. Yeah, that's some nice. All right, but you have four other times you were detained. Yeah, start with the first one first one And I believe this is in a video It was actually in Kenya. It's like this is such a weird experience. It was like I'm just like walking through Mombasa, which is another kind of old cool looking city And uh, I filmed this church And then so what happens is the people that like work at the church they call the Kenyan police on me for like filming a church And this is wild. They think I'm like a Muslim terrorist You yeah, they think me Uh, my beard was bigger at that point. Maybe I thought you were chechen. Yeah, I thought to like that. Uh, apparently what happened was There was like a girl from like Scotland that like went down there and then she this is kind of close to the Somalia border She like crossed over and joined al-Shabab Oh, that's the word and then they did some attacks there or whatever So they're like all right Why people like to come here to do terrorism It was a Scottish al-Shabab chick. Yeah So she was probably like pale like as pale as I am So like it's the weirdest racial profiling like I've ever seen But the way they did it was super sketch It was like I'm just on the street and this like Kenyan police officer who's not in a uniform gets out of a car And he's just like hey, I'm police We need to like question you you need to get in this car. He's not in uniform Yeah, and his car is not a police car. Oh, I would have been thinking this is like, you know, yeah Fucking human trafficking. Yeah, I was like, fuck I never should have come to Africa This is what happens Eventually I just like I do get in because there's like no way out of it. I just hope for the best. They take me to a police station and actual police station. They question me for like four hours or something like that. They figure out I'm not a Muslim terrorist, shocking like, and then they drop me back off of my Airbnb and on the way there they ask, oh by the way, can you buy us dinner? And I was like, no, not really an option. You're supposed to let me off early, like you want me to do that. You know, like isn't that how corruption works? Yes. You didn't do corruption right? Yeah. So this wasn't actually serious thing. It's like they do not do corruption for terrorist suspects. Okay. Yeah. So you were confident enough to say no when they said you got to buy us dinner now, even though they had just detained you and questioned you for being a Muslim terrorist. Yeah. Yeah. I was bold move. I tried to like make a joke out of it. I would have said what do you want? What do you move for a tie and V in the maze? What do we got? Yeah. I was like, yeah, I still need to buy dinner for myself. So you know, sorry. Wow. I think the restaurants are closed. Did they ask you while they were questioning you if you spoke Arabic? Uh, no. No. I could totally see you be like, yeah, it just starts speaking Arabic. They're like, got one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There you get. That's how it's knowing languages. Not the best. Not the best countries. All right. So there's three other times you get detained. No, where else? Right. Right. Um, yeah. So straight of hormones, which was very recent. Yeah. Let's hold off on that one. Give me the other two. We're going to come back straight to the moment. I believe I was thinking Russia for one of them. And then the other one. And for reasons, I can't say everything about this one, but China actually win. So this was right after they reopened to Taurus. And I was probably, I believe like the first travel vlogger to go around like, you know, like with like just a camera talking to people, just winging it. And maybe in me, I decide to go to Wuhan. Yeah. Because you know, why not? I mean, I was like, this isn't like 2023. This is 2023. Yeah. And um, I, uh, I don't want to say like, who stopped me. I'll just let you use your own interpretation, but I did get stopped by somebody you don't want to get stopped by in China. And, uh, they take my information. Um, they know everything down. And then they let me go. But then like a few days later, I'm at my hotel. These people show up again. They take me into the hotel room. I get interrogated for like eight hours for eight hours. Three day hours. How many people interrogating three people? Um, they brought somebody that like spoke English for it, just the case. I didn't like know what they were saying in Mandarin. Oh, so you decided still to converse with them in Mandarin? I feel that good with your Mandarin. Uh, especially at that point, I honestly like my Mandarin probably wasn't good enough to like do a full interrogation, but I did want to be like, guys, listen, you know, like I like your country. I lived there. Do we have to do this? I'm a YouTuber. You know, um, and what's funny was like, there's now like a billion people going to China to like make videos and being like, yeah, look, China's awesome. Like, uh, look at this hotel. Look at how like nice it is. Look at Chongqing. Look at the lights and stuff. This was before any of that. So they were just like, why were you filming? Like, this is very strange, you know, like, and so I think they were trying to go the Russia angle, but credit to the Chinese, they did not do what the Russians did. They were just like, this guy's clearly a YouTuber and, uh, they probably should I say, I think he probably bogged my phone and then let me go. Is your phone still bugged? I have that was probably like seven phones ago. Okay. I'm just going to say you're switching that out a lot. Yeah. So when when you switch out a phone, do you want you to take the SIM card out? Well, I don't even know, like, would would the bug be in the SIM card? From what I saw, they download. I looked this up afterward and, uh, because it was an iPhone and, uh, you know, like, you can't just like, um, upload like malware onto like an iPhone because you got like the app store and stuff. It has to go through that. There's some they have literally like downloaded some kind of like app that allows you to like hack the iPhone and then just like do like in like a third party way start uploading shit onto it. They had like left that on the phone when they gave it back to me and I even pointed out I was like, Hey, what's this? I was like, Oh, don't worry about it. You can delete it if you want. We are listening now. Yeah. They they they don't that's a country that is not very direct that they're very indirect communication stuff. Yeah, they keep minors on everyone who comes in. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but I do believe they concluded I was not a threat or fucking CIA or whatever, but they were talking you for eight hours. Yeah. That's a long fucking time. You can watch the whole Godfather trilogy in that time. Really long time. Yeah. Uh, the nicest thing they did was they showed up with McDonald's and they were like, we wanted to bring something from your country. We had to eat like if you haven't had lunch yet. So, uh, you want chicken finger? It's like, uh, thanks. I guess, yeah, the finest of American cuisine. Oh my god. So how did they interrogate you though? Is there a lot of like nothing, nothing, nothing until they try to hit you with something or what's the kind of jab and cross and? I want to be very clear for my own situation that this was not the secret police. Uh, it basically what they did was they just asked me a series of questions. Um, and, uh, I think what they were doing was they would ask you like casual questions and then kind of like fear the conversation into the territory of like, oh, do you actually like know a guy that might, you know, be doing anything against our country? Um, stuff like that, uh, they also needed time apparently to like upload all this shit to my phone. So I think that's the main reason why I took like so long. But um, yeah, how do you keep calm during that whole period? Yeah, that was, I was weirdly like very calm during that book and back, because I was just like, I know I'm just a YouTuber. I know I'm like not doing anything bad. I know I've even like said nice things about this country and I usually say nice things about it. So like, why are they gonna do anything else? So I just waited for them to figure that out. And um, but afterward I thought about it and I was like pretty angry, pretty annoyed about it and just, um, ended that particular China trip pretty early after it. Are you afraid to go back to China now? I've actually been back multiple times since then. I, well, China, it's, it's tough. I lived there for six years. I had a lot of friends there, that girlfriend there, like, you know, like all kinds of stuff. So like in some ways, because I live there for so long, like my social circle, social circle, excuse me, it's about as big as the one I have in like New York or even bigger. So it'd be really tough to not go back to. Tough to leave it back. Yeah. So I mean, I'm not gonna lie. Like the, I think the time I went back after that, I was like pretty nervous rocking up the customs, but it was over in like five seconds. Didn't even give like a second glance to the passport. Do you look for tales in countries? Like are you looking for people telling you? Um, in Russia, that was, uh, don't tell me you're going back to Russia. No, no, no, no, that's, uh, that's off limits. That's legally off limits too. They have officially been at me for five years, but don't get any ideas in 2030. I thought you got back either way. I'll put that on the record. Okay. Did you go to Ukraine though? But if you want to talk with that, you went to Ukraine when after you were arrested in Russia, after I was arrested. Oh my god. All right. Where'd you go in Ukraine? Um, went from Lviv to Kiev to Odessa. And, uh, I'm just hitting all the hotspots. I just, yeah. Oh, I didn't go to the front lines at least. Not that insane, I guess, but I did get bombed while I was there. So there's that. You got bombed? Is that on camera? Uh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, uh, we could pull that up. We could pull that one up. That's, uh, what's it like getting bombed in the middle of a war zone? We're 1.8 million casualties have happened over the last four and a half years. Pretty fucking shitty. Right? Yeah. So, um, Ukraine was not what I expected. What the fuck did you expect? Yeah. Well, I go into that a bit, but this is actually me looking at a notification of my phone saying that like, 500 drones are coming to the center that's nice. Yeah, okay I was walking out by a loud siren noise And then I got these messages on my phone telling me that a Fleet of drones is going across Ukraine specifically To Levy right now, right stay in a shoulder. You still go drinking even when they're sirens up Oh That would be deep and that's what I didn't think 2024 one year ago while traveling across Russia as a slightly naive tourist The local FSB aka the KGB. They decided I must be an American spy in order to get time to investigate me I was sentenced to jail for 17 days by a compromised judge for such vague crimes as resisting authority and calling the Russia Invasion in Ukraine and invasion in my YouTube video. I was interrogated a lot during that time And they would always come back to the same subject. Who do you know in Ukraine? When was the last time you were there? They went through my phone looking for some hidden Ukrainian connection But the truth was I had never been there, but I always promised to myself while I was in that jail If I ever got out I would go and visit Ukraine. I go and visit the people struggling for survival Against the same ridiculous regime that I put me there Well now I'm free. Now keep it my fucking promise. This is my trip to Ukraine You're getting better at the entrance. You can see the progression. Yeah, the progression is there so Where you went to all the different places so Kiev it Odessa and then what's this? Yeah, to first place you were at Levy. Levy. And yeah, that was really crazy because Levy is supposed to be like the safer city 'Cause it's closer to the public border Yeah, so Apparently that attack that I experienced was the largest attack they had ever launched on that city during the war So it was like a huge surprise to like everyone there and That was like like second or third day in the country and I was like oh Jesus fuck But I tried to make the most out of it unsurprisingly The one political stance I heavily take is I'm very anti-Russian government at this point. I can understand that yeah And so I was like alright at least I can do some good here. I'm gonna go to like the places that were hit Which I show in the video I managed to convince the Ukrainian police to like let me in and film it because I was like you know what I'm not a journalist But I'm gonna show America what's happening in your country. So you don't consider yourself a journalist. Don't what you do That's a good question I feel like I'm like in some ways trending in that direction, but no, I don't I think I I just try to follow and show what I think is interesting And if I can help some people by doing that. Yeah, I think that's I don't want to say by definition, but I think it's a Not the right term to use right here, but I can't think of the right word. It's like just kind of a consequence of you doing the work you do Is that the result is that there is an element of journalism to this from the outside like that's what I see you're showing me places You're not going in there. What's great is, you know, maybe minus like the Russia Ukraine thing because of your own experience like You're not going into these other places with like an agenda of here's what I want to get out of it Which by the way, that's good journalism But you are showing people stories of other people that exists around the world and places they exist in and what they think of the places that they exist in in a way that a lot of people don't do And that by definition, I think is really giving people an element of journalism so that people can decide for themselves Yeah, I mean, I think I've said in my videos a few times. I'm like an unintentional journalist. Yeah, sometimes like I just End up filming something that maybe a normal journalist wouldn't even get to because it's you know There's some like very unique situations that I get myself into and To say the least and for sure and I'd send up like revealing stuff. I believe there's been times where like I've made a video And then I see like a news organization making a video about it like a year later or like a few months later or something like that So yeah Do you have an how long were you in Ukraine again? I think I spent about two weeks there In total and um what what is the war for people at home because you weren't several different places So you got to see it from multiple different angles. Obviously we see like the strong attacks and stuff We hear about all the violence and all the continued casualties on both sides, but like What it for lack of a better way of asking it what are the vibes of the people on the ground with respect to this being a war where it continues to be sometimes You know two weeks a bunch of guys fighting and killing each other over You know 14 yards. Yeah It's wild the Ukrainians were some of my favorite people in the entire world they like That intro I did with like the the guys at the bar just being like yeah, we got to keep drinking We don't have a choice That's the attitude of most of the people there Especially the people that are like still living there. I met so many people There's a girl in the second video that I made in Ukraine. I made two of them in total where this girl could literally like move out Move to like Europe or wherever and just find like a normal job But she's like intentionally choosing to stay there and like support like the war effort and like the country and everything And there's so many people like that. They're just like you know what like we got to support our country It's fucked up. What's happening Um, if I can't join the military then I'll do something else to like help out and um, yeah, there was all this crazy What do they say about their government with respect to the leadership in the war and where things are? I don't think I met a single person inside Ukraine that disliked the government. Really? Yeah, they were all very supportive of it um I did meet Ukrainians outside of Ukraine that voiced opposition to the government But they also had other weird opinions like maybe Russia should take over Ukraine So um yeah, did you go so you didn't go to those regions though like the Donbass? Um, didn't know it's impossible to go to Donbass. Yeah, that's pretty much like a death wish going there Um, I did have somebody that invited me to go to Kharkiv which is um a huge city that's right near the Russian border And um, I almost went but more just for like time reasons I ended up skipping it I'm like, hey, I'm in Kiev. There's already like sirens Gonna go to Odessa. That's like getting bombed like all the time. Yeah, maybe that's enough Maybe I'll like limit the danger Yeah Probably not a bad move Yeah, you put yourself in the middle of the Of the shit all over the place, you know, yeah, that's the one thing It's like you get you also get you got to not fall into that trap of like all this amazing content here Or whatever when you keep going harder and harder and harder because the fact of the matter is think of all the stories You would leave on the table for the rest of your life if you went somewhere you really it wasn't worth it to be and the worst thing happened You know, yeah, no, yeah, I have to remind myself of that all the time Is your family get worried about you? Of course, yeah, yeah, they were obviously especially worried when I was in the prison um Kind of difficult to contact them Um, you really know like who your true friends are like what you end up in prison go to Russian prison learn who's got your back Yeah, yeah, I don't do that sometime everyone that actually cared about me. It was like doing everything they could get me out of there Um, I try to find a lawyer try to find some kind of aid organization That was used to foreigners being in Russian jails Yeah, so um, yeah Kind of like because of my family. I've tried to like Maybe tone it down a little bit Doesn't sound like I yeah, I mean, I guess I do have like adrenaline rushes that like I you know, which I can't control but I mean yeah, there are like I there are some locations. I don't want a name which I was thinking about going to and then I crossed off the list for my friends and family Um, one of them we're currently at war with Uh, yeah, so I do what I can yeah What before you ever did this stuff though were you like an adrenaline junkie and did you get that out in other ways? Um, yeah, you can say that. I've always liked climbing mountains um, I've always like just going to places. You're not supposed to go to Uh, trespassing a little bit stuff like that trespassing trespassing. Yeah, into like, you know, just like Trades stations or whatever. I don't know Um, perfectly normal. Yeah, yeah, you know, yeah, it's just just what you know It's always people like you like the quiet dude is like yeah, just you're having a good time. I always got a fucking wild streak to you Yeah, yeah, you know, you can't judge a book by its cover. That's right. That's goddamn right. Yeah, spoken like a true spy Exactly now you did go to Look at the straight of Hormuz and you put out a full either like a 50 55 minute documentary on this which you know until So, February 28th or actually even probably a few days after that, most people in the world didn't know what the trade or where Moose was, but then it became the most important thing because you realize how important it is from an economic standpoint to basically like world trade continuing to happen and it has been the choke point in a lot of ways of the Iran conflict that continues to just go back and forth and somehow get worse. But you went and looked at it for yourself where we hear about a lot of these attacks and stuff happening. First of all, where were you like on the actual physical ground? So, at this moment, I'm in the UAE, but so where I went was the Omani side of the straight of Moose. Omani is actually like separated into like two pieces, there's like one that's on the other side of the UAE, which like juts into the straight of Moose, that is the straight of Moose basically. And that's where I went. I went there, I went to, I got obsessed with like this one village that's on like the very tip of it, like the very tippity tip, it's called Kuhmzar, yeah, there it is. And there's actually no roads that go there, you can only go there by boat and you went on a boat together. You got on a damn boat, you weren't worried about the mines and shit or they know we're near there. You wouldn't be anywhere near there, okay, yeah, that would be probably like if you got closer to Iran. Right, so they're not planting it like across the straight, that's more on their actual got it. Yeah, I'm crazy, but not that crazy. All right, that's good. So you took a boat, we're talking like a dinghy boat or you know, we're talking a dinghy boat. A dinghy boat. A dinghy boat. A dinghy boat, I guess. Are you rowing? Not rowing, not rowing. That's good. A motor, which it takes like from the place I got the boat, it took like an hour through pretty rough waters to like get to that village. Yeah, how is the water there? Is it like the Atlantic Ocean in the northeast here where you can't really see your hand or is it more clear? What's it like? Oh, that's a good question. No, you can't really like see into the water. God, I would say. Yeah, it's not really brown, but he has a lot of fucking chips coming through there. There's a lot of shit in there. Yeah. Okay. So you go up to, what was the name of that place again? Cooms are. Cooms are. Yeah. And that's an interesting place because if they speak like this weird language that like nobody else speaks because it used to be like this like meeting place for trade between like the Persians and Arabs and even the Portuguese at one point. So like their language is a mixture of all these different languages. And so I was like, you know what? That sounds interesting. Let me try talking to the people. They were fairly friendly, I would say, except there was like a weird thing with the women there. Like the women did not want to be like talk to by a man or like the men were like very overprotective. So I was like, okay. Don't talk to the women. Right. Got it. To like you have enough wives. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I don't have any room for number six. No, it was four earlier. Actually, fifth, it just keeps increasing. You know, it's like my bad at one like during this conversation. I don't know. Yeah. Anyway, like I saw walking through the village and at some point, this guy is like, you know what? You should go down like this road. There's like this cool like mountain dang like it's like probably like the best part of the village. Go see that. So like I start walking that way and then I can even have this on camera like a police car. It just like starts rocking up on me from behind and they're just like, uh, get in the car. Oh no. They don't say why there's like getting the car. And so my boat driver is in there. I guess they found him first. We worked for him. Yeah. And then they put me in the back seat and the only thing that makes me not panic as much is the fact that they didn't like slap any handcuffs on me. Anything like that. So I'm just like hoping for the best at this point. No zip ties. Even. No. Yeah. No bag on my head or anything when the bag comes out. It's a problem. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, so the weird thing about this place is like again, you only get there by boat. And um, they're like, we need to take you to the big police station. So we're going to throw you on this police boat and we're going to just ride you all the way back to like the bigger town of the area. So we do that. It's like going to police boat. Uh, it's like an hour ride back. And they take me to this police station and they tell me like, yeah, we want to know why you were filming. We don't, you know, it's probably not a good idea that you're filming because you know, there's like a conflict happening and, you know, that's a good point. That's a good point. Um, like, thankfully, it wasn't too intense, like again, they're just, they're not, you know, restraining me or anything. They're just asking like what I'm doing. And after I would say about 15, 20 minutes, they're just like, okay, you know, it's probably best if you leave Oman because we don't really want you to film anything else. So, but they didn't like deport me or anything they didn't deport you. Yeah. So what they do, just dump you out on the side of the road and say get lost pretty much, pretty much. They just like, okay, yeah, you can go. We're not going to give you a ride back to your hotel. It's not Kenya. Uh, you just find less customer service here. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So just walked back and I had rented a car, which was actually like a pretty complicated thing because I drove it from the UAE from Dubai and into Oman. Into Oman, you have to get like these special permits to do that. Okay. So I'm like, all right, I think I'm going to get in that car and then drive back to Dubai and then just go to like a pool party or something, you know, that was, that was pretty intense. Different world. Now, what did you see in the straight of Hormuz, like with your own two eyes? What did it look like, you know, because like we have this picture in our head of like a bunch of boats backed up and like people would guns on the ships and stuff like that, but the fact of the matter is it's probably more, I'm guessing of a situation where it's like a lot of boredom until something happens, but what did you actually physically see? Yeah, definitely more of the latter, but I did see, um, I believe I showed that in the video. You see like just these boats, like backed up, um, some are like clearly like a shipping container, boats, ships, um, some clearly had like petroleum on board. And um, so like you'll see like the traditional money fishing boats and then in the distance beyond them, you'll just see like these tankers that have been like stuck there probably for months at that point. So nice goats right there. Yeah, they were guarding the bus stop there. That's a bus stop. That's a bus stop. It looks like it ain't been used in a while. Oh, never. Oh, okay. Got it. Well, a good thing I ran through. There you go. I was actually asking them if the buses were still coming. Oh, yeah, they are. Who's helicopter? That's the Omani Mall, they're. Okay. Yeah. So we're now in, uh, Sap, which is the closest thing to civilization here in, uh, Los Santo, Venezuela. It's right here you got a spot promoting knives and fruits, you'll find some lines. It seems to be shut down. Anyway, what I've heard is to get to the furthest northern tip of the straightforwardness, the northern tip of this peninsula, what you have to do is you've got to take one of these. You've got to take a boat because there's a village up there. That's a little more. It's a little more than the rest of the peninsula, the rest of the country. Now I might be the only person in saying enough to want to take a boat tour in the street of Formos at this point time, so I don't know if anybody will take me, but let's find out. I think I played about, and it's like a tour, like, it's not a real tour, but, um, to get the boat operator and the ride over was about, like, $300, something like that. There were more expensive options, but, uh, what do you get on that, like, a catered meal? Apparently, yes, you know, like, because, uh, before the conflict, they weren't, like, bringing people to this village and, like, stuff like that, so, but until I keep the, uh, the rich tourists entertained, they, like, give them lunch. But by the way, when you were saying earlier, you met Aaronian, so we're talking about the war and saying they're happy to see it happening. You mentioned they were in Oman, were you talking to some of these people when you went up to the tip there as well? Uh, they weren't there. They were in, uh, I guess, like, you can call it the mainland of Oman, like, like, Moscow is. Didn't actually, um, film anything there. Got it. So when you were just coming in country, yeah, yeah, okay. And so you didn't see anything, like, blow up or gunfire exchange, um, straight, you just all backed up, votes. Uh, thankfully, yeah, or for YouTube purposes, maybe not thankfully, but no, thankfully. all things considered, yeah like I think this is the part where I'm just like trying to find the boat but when I'm actually on the boat and like looking out yeah you can see some of the boats back yeah let's let's get him on the boat let's see if we can find that yeah that might be about like five minutes later or something like that so five minutes after this yes because now it's the last turn one and the wind is coming oh maybe so it will be difficult to do later yeah right around there's the exciting journey potentially very stupid journey I'm not sure yeah it was in this month it's a two box a Tata two box record you know what you've got about that oh my god oh yeah that's where we listen to when you walk it's the right yeah I know it's the almost some legends as well what's that your driver the map of this area I even get a pretty good geography first of all you'll notice that even though this is a lawn this parable lawn is completely disconnected from like the heart oh wow so it's like a lasso the UAE is in the middle yeah and then another crazy thing is to get to the very tippity tip of this peninsula Mosanda you can only go there by boat and there's a village there in that village they speak a rare language that no one else speaks it's called komzari it's a mixture of Persian, Hindi, Portuguese, Arabic all these different places that traded with the region and passed through this is very exciting I don't think anyone is dark to the map very good reason but that's what we're going to do today we're going to go check out that village to be honest I found out about that when I was there maybe I'll see my people off the way at the strait of harm up soon as it that's the boat yeah that's the boat driver thank you and there yeah that's all right there's white boys crazy all we can do now is just one for the best so he wanted you to as well as identity pretty much yeah and I mean I'm sure he would get trouble for this all the time the water is dropping you've got to feel like yeah there they are what a mess you're not worried about getting too close to those things I was definitely pretty nervous on this boat like more than some of the other trips I've been on because I realized like holy shit like this was a really stupid thing to do but yeah I just hope for the best there's my understanding also that these these tankers they try to park like closer to well mon so I mean as long as you don't go past them I guess you're okay this in moments like this do you feel like the world gets really really small because you're this little speck in the middle of it and yet you're at the heart of like the world's greatest crisis at that time yes interesting way to put it yeah that's how I usually feel when I'm traveling I'm just like one person kind of like 8 billion and so much shit going on at this very moment oh yeah it's 8 billion people with their own thoughts yeah with the name sabbatical come from by the way it's interesting um I actually like when I was in China I was like trying to build like a startup company so it was going to be like this edtech kind of thing and that was actually the name that I gave that company I had to like think about it for a while and I was like you know what that name is not bad like why don't I like reuse it for a YouTube channel and that's basically it I mean I did also think about it like this is probably going to be like four months sabbatical and here we are I'm gonna go to the letter here I'll go back to some real job after were you looking forward to going to next the most yeah well I hinted at it before uh lebanon possibly possibly um that entire region again um don't want to like say it just in case but uh multiple countries in the Middle East okay and um but uh I guess like on a personal entertainment level this was supposed to be the year that I go back to africa or like sub-saharan africa where I basically started the channel and um so I wanted to like do this like trip from Egypt down the south africa somehow still figure out how to do that by land because there's some yeah there's some uh insane countries in the way there but um yeah I'll do some variation of that later all right don't get caught in Congo for sure yeah but the one other thing we haven't talked about today is you just got back from Cuba I did just get back from Cuba all right how was that and you weren't funded going there were you what was that apparently they investigating that now so I got I was not funded that's totally self-funded fact that was a problem I did not bring enough funds with me to Cuba and they don't have eight theams in case you haven't heard yeah so um yeah uh now it was a uh self-funded trip that I did with a friend of mine and um we flew into Havana from cancun and um the situation is definitely not getting better there um what's it like so a perfect uh symbol of like the entire experience was uh as soon as uh we got to like this Airbnb um which interestingly they have Airbnb's in Cuba did not know that beforehand it's the only thing you could stay in now um I like all the lights in the city go off like complete blackout power outage and uh for the majority of the time I was in Cuba like they had like no power anywhere so like the country's already like adapting to this like anyone that's trying to have like tourist stay at their hotel or whatever or their Airbnb they will have like a generator in there but I did end up staying in places there that did not have one because it's obviously expensive and um you just have to hope for like a miracle that like the power would stay on while you're sleeping because it's Cuba and it's like very hot they're in the night um but like uh there was other well stuff like there was like no water in the faucets so like I was just like yeah shit all right I guess no showers on this trip um the people of their understandably very paranoid which is funny because I've done a lot of traveling in Latin America and there's some of the most like you know extroverted like oh put me on camera like yo it's uh let's go like they're very like relaxed with like being filmed Cuba's not so much because you know they're I guess worried about saying the wrong thing and then being thrown in a Cuban dungeon so I did have even with that said I did have multiple Cubans that speaking very honestly about what they thought about the government and you got that on camera I did yeah and uh I don't want to name names but there was another travel blogger that went there who's uh kind of infamous now because he just recorded a ton of Cubans talking shit uh doing crimes and stuff and then supposedly they all got thrown in prison after he went so trying to be responsible with this but uh yeah very interestingly the Cuban people what they most often told me was we think freedom is finally coming or like we think it's like just around the corner but you know we were getting really tired of this like and uh can you're like government hurry up and help out um the only people I met that were like supportive of the Cuban government as far as I could tell we're like government employees like at like you know it was like this cool castle I went to and the lady was just like you should talk to Trump and tell him to stop doing this yeah you know I get back yeah yeah I'll put that on the the agenda got a direct line to him you know how long how long were you there about I think it was like 10 days or something yeah yeah you're never worried I was worried flying in uh they have some like for Latin America a pretty intense security at the airport it's like they like have you empty like your entire bag they go through everything um like I didn't realize this beforehand but apparently like you're not allowed to bring like meta glasses into it which I just bought and then I don't even end up using them on the trip but I was like super paranoid about that going in they didn't they actually like pulled it out like looked at it and I guess didn't realize they were meta glasses but you didn't chance it uh like after didn't do you use them? No, yeah. I didn't, I just didn't really see like a reason to use it. And then I thought if I like, you know, the one thing that it might be useful for was like rocking up on like the police or something and like talking to them. And I was like, yeah, that's not a good idea. Yeah, smart. Yeah. Yeah. Be interesting to see what happens there. Because again, it's like, you know, off a regime, feel bad for the people and all that. But like, yeah, you know, what are you getting involved in and what don't? Yeah. The one common theme I've noticed in a lot of these countries, like Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, is that the people honestly do support like US military action into these places. They generally hate their own governments and they really want the US to intervene. They'll be like more pro Trump or whatever than like the most Republican person in America. Yeah. And it just leads to like this like weird situation where it's like, yeah, you know, like, I don't know what to think anymore. It's like, I want to help you. But I don't know if like our people should be dying for that. It's complicated. Because it's also what's the success going to be? What does success look like? What does it take to get there? Is it even possible to get it? It's very different, you know, going in and abducting one guy in a coordinated microwave weapon military operation in Venezuela overnight versus going into a country in 93 million people protected by insane geography with a crazy regime in the dead center of the Middle East. These are just not the same thing. So, you know, it's like, I'm always willing to look at situations on a case by case basis. For sure, it's just you do want to make sure you learn lessons of the mistakes you've made. And I feel like we don't do that sometimes here. Yeah. I think that's an understanding. Yeah. Well, listen, dude, you're living in a very interesting life. And you're obviously doing some pretty brave things out there in the world and going to get stories that people probably wouldn't see in many cases. So I think it's really, really cool. It's amazing to see how far you've come since the earliest video. And I really appreciate it when guys like you come in here from literally halfway around the world to tell these stories. It's always amazing. So thank you for doing this while you're home. That's really happy to be here. All right. Everyone go subscribe to sabbatical. If we collab this, you'll be able to subscribe on the actual title right there as well. You can just see his channel and check out everything that you've been doing for six years now. And we'll have to do this again, my friend. Very nice. All right, my friend. Nice meeting you. Everybody else you know what it is. Give it a thought. Get back to me. Peace. Hey, guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five-star review. Thank you.