New Zealand w/ Earle Birney | You Be Trippin' with Ari Shaffir

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Speaker 2 Oh, there's my grandpa.

Speaker 3 Oh, really?

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 he was a famous Canadian poet, as much as you can be a famous

Speaker 2 Canadian and poet.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Who's the most famous Canadian? I think it's that guy who ran across the country.
What is his name? Terry Fox. Terry Fox, yeah.
My friend gave me a Terry Fox shirt, and people like...

Speaker 3 Like every 30th person, like, what the, how do you know?

Speaker 3 Like, clearly you're from Canada. It's the only way you'd even be like stopped with that.
Is David by Earl Bernie a true story?

Speaker 2 Do you want me to spill the beans? Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 3 there is proof that this was no fictional story. Bernie's companion on that fatal mountain climb was a real David.
Damn. Wait, so you're saying it is a lie?

Speaker 2 I'm saying I'm not saying.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 3 I've just heard of this book.

Speaker 3 Where you been and where you going?

Speaker 2 This is our Reese Travel Show.

Speaker 3 Yeah. We're going to talk about travel today.
It's you be Trippin.

Speaker 3 Hi, everybody. Welcome to UB Tripping.
My name is Ari Shafir. I'm the host of the podcast.

Speaker 3 It's a travel podcast.

Speaker 3 Different guests to a different place every time. This is the only podcast that was convicted of starting off the chlamydia epidemic and koalas in Australia.
We are appealing that as we speak.

Speaker 3 Today, my guest is Earl Bernie.

Speaker 3 Great Canadian.

Speaker 3 Say it right.

Speaker 2 The second most famous second

Speaker 3 name is is Earl Birdie in Canada.

Speaker 3 That's crazy. Ariel John's dad, my buddy, is also a famous poet in Iceland.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah, living in Grandpa's shadow.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 In Iceland, though, everyone is... It's like 80 people in the country.
So everyone's got a show. Like, I know your dad.
He sold me meat.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Slide that over. So try to get it.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Something like that. Yeah, you'll figure it out.
But yeah.

Speaker 3 If you're going to face me, it's okay. Let's air it on this side a little.
Oh, wait. I see what we did here.

Speaker 3 There we go.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Cool. There we go.
Yeah. All right.

Speaker 3 So, where do you want to go today? What do you want to tell me about?

Speaker 2 Yeah, let's go to Australia, New Zealand. Mostly New Zealand.
Mostly New Zealand.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 how long ago is this? When did you go?

Speaker 2 Oh, this would have been

Speaker 2 mid-90s.

Speaker 3 Mid-90s. I actually did have a New Zealand, and it was just a guy who bicycled around.
So this will be far different than that. It will.
Yeah. Mid-90s.
Okay. Different time.
So no cell phones.

Speaker 2 Yeah. No cell phones.
No internet. Back in the day, you know, when you're traveling and you're like trying to connect with someone and you're like, well, here's my parents' number.

Speaker 2 Because it's the only number that anybody, you know, calls you.

Speaker 3 Call them. Maybe they can call you.

Speaker 3 There's a great divide in this podcast between pre-cell phone and post-cell phone.

Speaker 3 And it's probably a greater one for internet completely because at least you can go to, in 2007, you can go to internet cafe and find out some info. Yeah.

Speaker 3 But the pre-internet stuff.

Speaker 2 No, we were in Australia and I was traveling around with some buddies and we were going to go to New Zealand and it was like, okay, well, we'll meet. Well, okay, cool.

Speaker 2 Okay, we'll meet in two weeks in Auckland.

Speaker 3 Oh, that was it?

Speaker 2 And it was like, well, where are we going to meet? We'll just like start looking around in the bars. And that was our plan.
And that was it. Really?

Speaker 3 How long did it take till you met? No, it didn't work at all. It was terrible fun.

Speaker 3 I have this dream of going like, hey, I'm going to be traveling around. If you wanted, people are like, oh, I want to join you.
You ever get that? Yeah. I'll be like, I'll meet you out there.

Speaker 3 And you're like, I've done this too many times. I'm not making any plans.
I'll tell you where I'm going to be. You can meet me.
Too many people cancel, you know? Ah, shit. Sorry.
Something came up.

Speaker 3 Fine. Whatever.

Speaker 3 But I want to do a thing of like, if I have no internet, sometimes I try to like leave my phone at home.

Speaker 3 I'll be like, all right, there's a coffee shop in Phnom Penh called this. I'll be there from 1 p.m.
to 2 p.m. on these three days.
I'll stop in and make sure.

Speaker 2 Does it work?

Speaker 3 No, that's a dream I could do. And it's like, and you can meet me there or not.
But you have an hour window. If you get the late a day, I'll be there the next day also.
And then that's it.

Speaker 3 And then I'm like, assume you're not coming.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we tried that.

Speaker 3 Yeah. It didn't work.

Speaker 3 So what were you doing in Australia?

Speaker 3 Your mother

Speaker 3 so you can go.

Speaker 2 What happened was I think I was in university and I was

Speaker 2 it was a it was a program called Leisure Studies, which I thought was crazy. Leisure Studies.

Speaker 3 Oh, you know parents hate that.

Speaker 3 Totally hate it.

Speaker 3 Absolutely.

Speaker 2 Absolutely, man. You nailed it.

Speaker 3 We got to pay $800 a year for tuition in Canada for this shit.

Speaker 2 And so it was a four and a half year program, and I was four years in.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And I saw what was ahead of that was, in my mind, just

Speaker 2 go get a career, you know, get trapped. Saw what my dad did, saw what, you know, his dad did.
And it was like, okay, I got to work 50 weeks a year.

Speaker 3 You saw it. For the rest of my life.
You saw it. And I got to get a house.

Speaker 2 I got to get a mortgage and I'm supposed to be in a relationship. And it just was like, that would just wash.

Speaker 3 What did you like, panic?

Speaker 2 Yeah, it was like, fuck that. I am not, I'm not into it.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 2 So I took out a student loan,

Speaker 2 four months left in my degree, and bought a ticket around the world and left. Whoa, and it was like this,

Speaker 2 you know, at that time in my life

Speaker 3 and didn't use it on students.

Speaker 3 Wow, I didn't know they could even do that. Yeah,

Speaker 2 nice. So it was

Speaker 2 like this,

Speaker 2 you know, at that time, time I was like, 20?

Speaker 2 Yeah, something like that. Okay.
A little bit more.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 2 22, maybe.

Speaker 3 Damn, what a time. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And feeling like

Speaker 2 I was free, you know, and that was the last thing that I wanted.

Speaker 3 I'm starting to, like,

Speaker 3 I'll get back to it one second, but I'm starting to like, lately, I've just been like seeing the world through some like 18 to 25 year old's eyes. My kid, my friend's kid, it's 18.

Speaker 3 She's going to Israel to like work with orphans.

Speaker 3 And I was like,

Speaker 3 and she's like, you know, and all the Orthodox Jewish community is like, that's nice what you're doing. But I'm just like,

Speaker 3 you're going to be going to bars for the first time because the drinking age is 18. She's like, no, I won't.
Like, don't say this over my dad. But I was just like, everything's possible at that age.

Speaker 3 You're going to be in this brand new country making new friends. I'm like, it's so fucking exciting.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Even like St. Mark's Street here, where it's like, remember like 2021? Like, let's buy a pipe.
We can smoke weed out of it. And it's like, oh, it's just like, yeah.

Speaker 2 things are things are fresh and that's kind of what it was for me and it was

Speaker 2 for me I had this question of like what's life all about and it's clearly not about that and it really led into a lot of psychedelic use drinking drugs in Canada yeah like high school university damn really and it was you know half not it was part like

Speaker 2 trying to access new states of consciousness or trying to

Speaker 2 using that as a as a way to like what is the meaning of life What's this all about? And having all of these great experiences and then half as a party drug and half as a.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's funny. You start with like weed, like weed for sure, but then mushrooms and acid too, where you're like, let's get fucked up with my friends.

Speaker 3 But then like you can't help, if you've done it 10 times, you're for sure going to have one time of seeing the truth of the universe.

Speaker 2 Yeah, at some point, you'd be looking at the stars and the vastness and being like, oh, wow.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Relief, really, 50 weeks a year, I'm going to work.

Speaker 3 Yeah, no fucking way. I was in Glastonbury Festival and my friend did mushrooms for the first time.
I got, it was my job to supply the London people brought the Coke.

Speaker 3 I brought in from Wales, like two pounds of mushrooms for the, for the, for the little group. Like, what? How do you even, I was like, you know, I worked hard.

Speaker 3 But he did mushrooms the first time and they did it four days in a row.

Speaker 3 And just

Speaker 3 yeah, I just kept doing more and more. Totally lost himself in the festival life.
Loved it. Took his shoes off for the last two days.
Didn't have them on at all. And then on Monday, it's getting up.

Speaker 3 Everyone's packing up he turned his phone on his phone had died like three days before it turned it on all these messages came from his boss and he was like and he just fucking threw it he's like fuck this thing yeah and it was like he saw it real yeah

Speaker 2 yeah so it was like that was my trip at that time and it was the search for freedom and and my philosophy was really like

Speaker 2 yeah go ahead was really like life has no meaning And that's why everyone, all these religions are trying to give meaning to life. And you should do this and you should believe this.

Speaker 2 And I was like, God, life has no meaning. And so the only.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And so the only purpose for me was to have fun.
You know, because my time was the only thing I couldn't replace. Like, that was the most valuable thing to me was my time.

Speaker 2 And I was like, I'm not wasting it working. Yeah.
And so I got a ticket and left.

Speaker 3 When you say search for freedom, what do you mean by freedom? I think it means different things to different people. Yeah.

Speaker 2 At that.

Speaker 3 I'm just going to move it close to you. Because I can hear fucking Alan going, but fucking move it in.
Sorry.

Speaker 2 At that time,

Speaker 2 I didn't know.

Speaker 2 It meant not working. That was for sure.
Not in jail.

Speaker 3 Not in jail. But that's different.

Speaker 2 Well, that comes later, yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah, right.

Speaker 3 But like,

Speaker 3 yeah, keep going.

Speaker 2 It was more like anything that impinged on my time or what I wanted. It was very selfish in some ways, what I wanted to do.

Speaker 2 Like, very clear not to hurt other people, not to impinge on other people's right to have their freedom and their time and their thing.

Speaker 3 But it was like I'm gonna have as much fun as I can yeah there's a like a selfish kind of freedom where you're like if if life's meaningless is nihilism whatever but it's like then I don't care if I'm just kicking old lady get out of the road yeah or there's the other kind the more hippie kind where it's like I just want to have fun and also I want other people to also have fun yeah yeah that's where I was at very much and and a little bit being lost also like I don't know what to do I'm fucking 22 I don't know what to do I guess when you say freedom means freedom from and then fill in the blank

Speaker 3 you know? So it's like

Speaker 3 freedom from a relationship, and what makes you want to break up. You're like, I feel more free now.
I'm on my own. I'm lost, but I'm on my own.
It's like free. Or, or like freedom to vote.

Speaker 3 You know, it's like, that's a different kind of freedom from totalitarian. Yeah.
But like, I'm with your freedom. Freedom from responsibility.
It's huge, right? It's huge.

Speaker 3 I tried to tell, I was trying to tell Joe Rogan about it, and I was like, I just, I haven't been able to express it correctly. The long-term travel, you know, backpacking.

Speaker 3 We'll get into this in a second with you.

Speaker 3 But just like,

Speaker 3 I'm headed, you know, here. I'm in, let's say I'm in, I'll cut this open anyway.
Let's say I'm in Melbourne and I'm going to go to Adelaide, you know?

Speaker 3 And it's like, oh, yeah, I got to take the highway. But then it's like, you know what? I'm going to take this Great Ocean River.
I'm going to go down this way.

Speaker 3 And it's just the ability to

Speaker 3 go to a different. Yeah.
There's only like five left. That's very nice.
But

Speaker 3 on a whim, do whatever you want. Or somebody's like, actually, you know what? Up here in Meduro, whatever, there's a fucking tomato festival today.
I'm like, oh,

Speaker 3 go there. Just the complete lack of responsibility.
And then coming home feeling it again. You're like, oh, right.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 But yeah, that's that. It's that crazy freedom.

Speaker 2 And I think travel is so good that way because it's also, for me, was the freedom of

Speaker 2 aspects of like, I don't like aspects of who I am at 22. And when I go, like, I always had an issue with my name, Earl.
It sounded so weird. It sounded kind of funny to me.

Speaker 2 It was like named after my grandfather. Kind of got made fun of.
I don't love the name. And it's like, God, I could travel.
I could change my name.

Speaker 2 I could have a different laugh. I could be a different person.
I could be, you know, something.

Speaker 2 Freedom from everything that I am. No one knows me.
And I have freedom to be someone totally different. And that's another kind that I really valued at that time, too.
Was like, I can be anyone.

Speaker 2 I'm not stuck.

Speaker 3 Yeah. People, I think, where my friend Ashley McComba did like a whole art series on these.

Speaker 3 But it has like the masks people wear.

Speaker 3 And it's just like, you wear different, like when you're in front of your parents, you curse less. You're wearing a mask.
You don't do your normal.

Speaker 3 And when you're with certain friends, you act differently than other friends. And man, you can just be whatever you want

Speaker 3 when you hit like, all right, I left Chiang Mai. Now I'm going up Phnom Penh, and no one here knows me again.

Speaker 3 And I'm like, I want to get into hiking. So I'm the hiking guy

Speaker 3 You know? Hi, everybody. Well, I think I got one try at this.

Speaker 3 I'm at 3% batteries. I'm in the middle of nowhere.
And I've got to do my bumpers.

Speaker 3 It's called having a healthy work-life balance.

Speaker 3 And I'm the number one comedian in comedy about it. Earl Bernie has gone from

Speaker 3 bandit to bendy. Yeah.
He's now a yoga instructor.

Speaker 3 You can find him on Instagram at earl e a r e.burney bernie b i r n e y is a yoga teacher and curriculum developer of the yoga studies institute uh you can find his guatemala meditation retreat at nicoleautum.com slash retreat uh or yogastudies institute.org or um

Speaker 3 youtube slash at yoga studies institute i'm aurishafir and i'll say

Speaker 3 Please subscribe, you guys. We're almost at 100 episodes.
Wherever you're watching or listening, be it YouTube,

Speaker 3 be be it Spotify, go right now, do me a favor to help celebrate that nearing 100 episodes and subscribe. I would like it.
I've got nothing else to promote.

Speaker 3 Oh, no, wait, I do have t-shirts at rishphir.com for you be tripping, also at the bottom of the screen if you're watching on YouTube. And I'll show you, I'll show you this.

Speaker 3 Take a moment to tell you this: trippies are coming. The trippy awards are coming, but I'll tell you this.
You should be watching this one on YouTube. This is a podcast.

Speaker 3 Actually, not this episode as much because there's not many photos from prison.

Speaker 3 But mostly,

Speaker 3 it's got an extra thing.

Speaker 3 The Ryan O'Neill episode from last week, Cambodia, so many good pictures. You're not getting those on Spotify.
Now, listen, I'm not telling the Spotify listeners to not listen.

Speaker 3 I'm saying, you guys fucking suck. You guys are wasting your fucking lives.
You may as well be jerking off in a nun's mouth. You know what I mean? Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 3 That means you got to go from afar. It means she's not going to really suck it really hard.

Speaker 3 It means you got to go from afar and sneak up behind her and come in her mouth, which I'm saying is still good, but not as good as fucking a, you know, an Atlantic study slut. Trick fucked.

Speaker 3 Trick sucked, I'd say. Chick sucked.
You didn't get sucked. You get chick sucked.
But it's still better than fuck. It's coming in one's mouth.

Speaker 3 Listen, I'm always I don't always make sense this early in the morning.

Speaker 3 But I do make bucks.

Speaker 3 So subscribe. on YouTube right now.
Thank you. Let's get back to the episode.
Yeah, so you went.

Speaker 2 So how how did you decide to australia you know it was the first stop on the round the world trip around the world and so we went to uh i ended up in uh byron bay did you go oh so you went yeah you went that way from vancouver yeah

Speaker 2 where's byron bay up top byron bay is in between uh brisbane and and melbourne it's kind of the hippie place to go back in the day it's where all the new year's eve parties were and all of the oh really all the mushrooms and all of the is that

Speaker 3 below gold coast I know Byron Bay. I've never been there, but yeah.
That's where all the mushrooms are?

Speaker 2 Yeah, they grow wild there.

Speaker 3 And you had already gotten into them?

Speaker 2 I was

Speaker 2 kind of not out of that.

Speaker 2 You know what? I was selling.

Speaker 2 So that was, you know, to fund my travel was.

Speaker 2 You know, I was buying hits of acid for a buck. And go to Australia, they're selling them for 20, 25 bucks.

Speaker 3 It's an island. The Coke there is the most expensive in the world for the shittiest.
Unreal. It's crazy how terrible it is and how much it costs.

Speaker 2 And so it was just an easy economic way to buy my freedom of time.

Speaker 3 So what, you buy a bunch in Vancouver and then would you go back to re-up?

Speaker 2 No, somebody was hooking me up.

Speaker 3 No one checks for acid.

Speaker 3 They check for

Speaker 3 weed for sure. It's so smelly.
Yeah. Coke,

Speaker 3 but no one's checking for acid.

Speaker 2 Yeah, what would you do?

Speaker 3 It's so small.

Speaker 3 It's the only drug I'll take internationally in between credit cards and a book. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so I got you know what? One time I got to we went up a little bit north. We went to

Speaker 2 I was apple picking outside of Brisbane.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know, trying to make a bit of money for travel. And we picked for 10 days.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 at the end of ten days, everyone got paid. Okay.
And

Speaker 2 so I just sold everyone asset because it's time to party. Everyone's you know, everyone's got paid out.
Yeah, twenty bucks.

Speaker 2 And, you know, I made more in an hour than I had in that two weeks of picking apples.

Speaker 3 And I was like, this is crazy, it's almost like the picking apples is the job fair part.

Speaker 3 Like, I'm just here to meet the clients, thanks for the four dollars, but like, I'm just here to meet clients.

Speaker 2 I was like, I'm done. I was like,

Speaker 3 I'm out of here, I'm out.

Speaker 2 I'm just, I am now funding my travels through selling assets. I'm not doing this.

Speaker 3 How much did you take with you?

Speaker 2 He would send a hundred at a time,

Speaker 3 which is which was which was two thousand dollars worth in 1995, too. Yeah.
Whatever. Yeah.

Speaker 3 It's great.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, then I was going to festivals.

Speaker 3 Oh,

Speaker 3 then your travel would have to be client focused.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I mean, it was. I was just in town.
You're like, I got to go to the parking lot.

Speaker 2 Yeah, or we were at the at the hostel or whatever, you know. I wasn't trying to make millions of dollars.
I was just... Funding my fun, funding my freedom, you know?

Speaker 3 By the way, I got a travel tip. I'm going to ask you for a travel tip later, but it's just general ones.

Speaker 3 If you're stuck in a country, whatever, and you need weed, go to a hostel. Just find a hostel and then just inquire.
They won't be mad at you asking.

Speaker 3 And generally, they'll be like, Yeah, someone here sells to somebody. Come back tomorrow at worst.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I was that guy.

Speaker 3 You were that guy.

Speaker 3 There's a fucking Canadian who's around. If you see this tall, fucking, lanky Canadian,

Speaker 3 just like he's the dude. Wow.

Speaker 3 You were the guy. Okay.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so that, you know, that was going on. It was,

Speaker 2 it was cool. It was a very vibrant time of my life and creative and

Speaker 2 meeting lots of people. And like you were saying, like everything was new, you know, lots of being in a new country, being in a new culture.

Speaker 2 And,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 I ended up at a festival outside of in Sydney.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 at the end of the festival, I was sitting there on the bank. I was, you know, coming down and just like counting the money I had made, all this crinkled up cash kind of thing.

Speaker 2 And this guy was sitting there not that far away. And he's like, oh, what were you selling today? And I was like, oh, I was selling some trips.

Speaker 2 I asked him if he wanted it. And he's like, no, I'm good.
But

Speaker 2 you should be a little more careful.

Speaker 2 He knew what I was doing. And he's like, you should probably be a little more careful about that.

Speaker 2 And we got on talking. He's like, well, where are you going next? I was like, I'm going to go to New Zealand.

Speaker 2 And he's like, you know, it's a little different there. You should be more careful there, too.

Speaker 2 I was like, okay, cool. You know, in my mind, I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what I'm doing.
Okay.

Speaker 3 I did it.

Speaker 3 So you jumped to New Zealand with a bunch of acid.

Speaker 2 Go to New Zealand.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I was traveling with one little bag. A buddy came up to me before I left.
He's like, he hands me this handmade small duffel bag.

Speaker 2 And he's like, if you travel, I've traveled the world with this bag three times.

Speaker 2 If you got more stuff than you got too much stuff.

Speaker 3 Tiny. No way, really.

Speaker 2 And I was like, all right.

Speaker 3 I mean, the asshole takes up no space, underwears.

Speaker 3 And so

Speaker 2 it's like, New Zealand's a little colder. So I bought this old hoodie secondhand and I went, get on my flight, go to New Zealand.
I got a chocolate bar in the front pocket of the hoodie.

Speaker 3 A chocolate, regular chocolate bar? A chocolate bar.

Speaker 2 Get there and

Speaker 2 going through customs, and this drug dog comes up and

Speaker 2 sits down right next to to me. And I was like, oh, that's cute.
It smells the chocolate bar.

Speaker 2 And so they're like,

Speaker 2 they went through everything,

Speaker 2 every siddle seam on my clothing.

Speaker 2 And they find these little flakes of pot, dried pot from the secondhand hoodie that I've got.

Speaker 2 And they're grilling me. And I've purchased.

Speaker 3 Not even yours. It was just from the charity shop.

Speaker 2 And I've got this journal that's just graffitied, and and there's hits of and I've printed I've cut out little letters, lysergic diaphylamide, written backwards on it and there's like a hit of acid like right between me and the cops.

Speaker 3 They're like.

Speaker 3 Not seeing it?

Speaker 2 Not seeing it.

Speaker 3 Wait, how'd you put it? How'd you do it?

Speaker 2 It's just sitting on a journal and I've got

Speaker 2 taped on.

Speaker 2 And finally they're like...

Speaker 2 Brush that off and they're like, okay, don't get any more trouble in New Zealand. I'm like, okay.

Speaker 2 They didn't find it. Nah, and so then.

Speaker 3 So now at this point, you're like, well, that was a close call. Let me change my ways.

Speaker 2 You know, you would think there's a couple big signs, right?

Speaker 3 I barely escaped. Let me not.
It's like when you're like driving and you're tired and you're like, you swerve, like, fuck, fuck, fuck. Actually, let me just get a hotel.

Speaker 3 Or you're like, nah, I'll go another three hours. Full speed ahead.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 No. So I...
I, you know, I kept going and I sold some. I was at the university in Auckland and met some guys, sold them some acid, traveled around a bit, came back, sold them a bit more.

Speaker 2 And then the next day I was in a youth hostel and got this knock on the door and cops busted in.

Speaker 3 What?

Speaker 3 You were already selling. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And that was it. The game was up.

Speaker 3 What do you mean?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 those guys had obviously got busted and ratted me out.

Speaker 3 Where did you get the asset?

Speaker 3 This fucking

Speaker 2 poster. Yeah, this guy down at the Canadian down at youth hostel.

Speaker 3 I went up Pulitzer. I don't know.
I looked him up. Yeah.

Speaker 3 So they came in to get you? Yeah.

Speaker 2 It was wild. I was there for another six hours.
I would have been gone.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, so that was... And so then I'm being like marched to the cop shop.

Speaker 3 Wait, wait, what's your feeling? So they come in. They're like, is a guy named Earl here?

Speaker 2 Yeah, it was wild.

Speaker 2 You know, there's some girl with me. She's freaking out.

Speaker 3 You were hooked up that night? Yeah. Whoa.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I was pretty calm. You know, I was like, this is interesting.
This isn't going to go well, but this is interesting. And that, right away, I had this moment of

Speaker 2 I'm on this. I had this sense of, I know I'm on a search for freedom.
And now I'm like, oh, this is interesting.

Speaker 2 I'm going to do time on this. I got a thousand hits.

Speaker 3 I'm going to do some thousand hits.

Speaker 2 I'm going to do some time.

Speaker 3 That's distribute. Yeah.

Speaker 3 There's no way around. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Sometimes you're like, like they'll catch you with like, well, why'd you have it all baggied out? I'm like, because it's like week by week.

Speaker 3 It's not that. But then it's like, you can't go through a thousand hits.

Speaker 2 It's not a personal amount.

Speaker 3 Yeah. It's just, there's no way.

Speaker 3 Close.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 then where do they they find it? They go through your stuff and find it. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yes, you were just calm, huh? Sorry, it's 100.

Speaker 2 It wasn't 1,000.

Speaker 3 Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Still calm.

Speaker 2 I was, you know, so they're kind of walking with me, and I'm like, there's part of me that's like, I could outrun these guys.

Speaker 2 You know, if I just dropped my pack and ran.

Speaker 3 No guns, right?

Speaker 3 No,

Speaker 3 I doubt it. It's Australia.
It's New Zealand.

Speaker 2 And what do you have to lose at that point?

Speaker 3 So I said in China, when they get caught with drugs, they're like, you have to shoot your way out.

Speaker 3 You're being executed anyway if you're importing drugs.

Speaker 2 Well, I wonder about the states, too. Like, if you ran in that situation, probably not good.
No, probably not a good life decision at that point.

Speaker 3 It can't be like, thank you for letting me do what I have been wanting to do.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, that first night, it was like

Speaker 2 interesting. I'm now.

Speaker 3 First night, what do you mean? So, so they took you

Speaker 2 go to jail for a couple nights, and then

Speaker 2 you're in a

Speaker 2 pre-sentence. You're remanded in custody.
You're in remand.

Speaker 2 You can go home. So it's like pre-sentence.
No, no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 2 There's no going home.

Speaker 2 You know, certainly not if you're a trap, not if you're a foreigner. What do you mean?

Speaker 3 So, not going home to like Canada, but I mean, like, do you say, like, no, you stay in prison? Yeah. Oh, wow.

Speaker 2 Because you. I mean, if you can get bail, you get out, but there's no way I was getting bail.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 3 Damn.

Speaker 3 What's your feeling at this point?

Speaker 2 Some degree of fascination, some some degree of survival, some degree of like, like, there's so much like trying to figure it out. Like, the cops are like,

Speaker 2 you got to admit to this. If you admit to this right now, you know, that's the best thing you can do.
We'll give you half the time, and this offer is on the table for the next 30 minutes.

Speaker 2 What are you going to do? And I'm like, no, I'll talk to a lawyer. Thanks.

Speaker 3 Yeah, what a trap. What a trap.
Like, why would it be better for me to get it? Right out of a movie, man. I was

Speaker 3 lying to a cop's not worse. You guys aren't sentencing.
You're just arresting. Yeah.
Don't ever, don't ever tell tell them anything

Speaker 2 so that was yeah you know i'll talk to a lawyer it's good thanks

Speaker 2 and and then it's like just trying to sort out like

Speaker 2 everyone's kind of scrambling you know everyone's kind of just got arrested everyone's in in this remote remanded in custody it's all fucking crazy yeah in a very slow monotonous weird way but it's all kind of crazy who else was in there who did you meet Did you meet?

Speaker 2 It was wild. Yeah, man.
I met some amazing people.

Speaker 2 You know, remand is wild because

Speaker 2 people are going in and out. You're kind of allowed to have more rights because you're not convicted yet.
So you've got kind of, you can have your clothes. You've got more visits.

Speaker 2 And we're in a prison in downtown Auckland that was right kind of,

Speaker 2 I guess, kind of downtown. And once in a while, there'd be this tennis ball would come flying over the wall and everyone would run for it and scramble.

Speaker 2 Someone's filled a tennis ball with some pot and thrown it over the wall. Really? There's shit like that going on.

Speaker 3 That's nice.

Speaker 2 It's wild, man.

Speaker 3 Who was doing it? Just a friend of whoever.

Speaker 2 Well, you'd see there was a payphone in the yard. So it'd be like, okay, yeah, you guys outside? Yeah, okay.
Cool. Okay, throw it.

Speaker 3 Okay, good. And you could get in the...

Speaker 2 Stop talking.

Speaker 3 You try to smoke it down as fast as you could.

Speaker 2 Like someone, you just

Speaker 2 hide it on you.

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Speaker 3 Were you afraid of like, I mean, I don't know what the Canadian system is, but there's a a big stereotype of the American prison system.

Speaker 3 Are you afraid of that at this point? Or is that happening there?

Speaker 2 Not really.

Speaker 3 It's not that kind of thing.

Speaker 2 It's very gang-related in New Zealand. And

Speaker 2 so there's, you know, the Maori gangs, there's the Pacific Islander gangs, and then there's the motorcycle gangs.

Speaker 3 The gang tattoos and everything. Wow, those seem tough.
Those gangs seem tough.

Speaker 2 Yeah, tough, beautiful culture, though, man. Beautiful people.
And what a...

Speaker 3 And the women are not great.

Speaker 3 Let's be honest. But

Speaker 3 I didn't meet any.

Speaker 3 No one's saying I'm Polynesian. Well, no, Polynesian is actually pretty hot.
It's the tougher one. Anyway, go ahead.
Let's not derail.

Speaker 2 It was.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I got derailed.

Speaker 3 What was the food like there? Terrible. Yeah.
Like what? What do they give you? Gruel?

Speaker 2 You get oatmeal in the morning.

Speaker 2 And it's wild. You get

Speaker 2 a different prison, four of us. It's a four-seater.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 like

Speaker 2 four seats at a little table. Okay.

Speaker 2 And you get

Speaker 2 one quart of milk or whatever it is. Then you get your oatmeal.
And then, you know, you gotta.

Speaker 2 You gotta only take your quarter. And

Speaker 2 so when I get to the camera.

Speaker 3 Oh, and they serve food just for the four of you?

Speaker 2 You go and get your food, and then there's some sugar, there's some milk at that table.

Speaker 2 And so when I came into that prison, the reason reason that seat was empty was because someone had taken more than his

Speaker 2 25% and someone fucking punched him and killed him.

Speaker 3 Died. Killed him on a

Speaker 3 milk?

Speaker 2 Yeah, one punched.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 and then the other thing that was wild was, you know, there's like this system of someone's getting the sugar at the end of the day because that's how we were making alcohol.

Speaker 2 And so someone's kind of going around at the end, kind of collecting all the sugar left.

Speaker 3 And by the way, guys, don't take your full amount so we can have some booze. Yeah.
Wow.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, it's that.

Speaker 2 You get a sandwich for lunch.

Speaker 3 It's so hard. You're like, I'm eyeballing it a quarter.
Like, I don't know. Shouldn't we pour out equally first and then add the coffee?

Speaker 3 Like, wow.

Speaker 3 You ever like scramble like four eggs for two omelets? And then, so then you're pouring out the first one. Like, I don't know what two is anymore.

Speaker 3 The first one's always like way light, and the last one's like this thick omelet.

Speaker 3 Jesus. Okay.
Are you, do your parents know yet?

Speaker 2 It was, yeah, it was wild. I didn't, uh,

Speaker 2 it's a bad phone call to have to make, but the way they found out was because it came out in the paper,

Speaker 2 and it was the

Speaker 2 son of the famous Canadian poet.

Speaker 3 Oh.

Speaker 3 Oh, you embarrass your whole family name.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it was, it was bad. Someone's calling my grandma, and they're like, you know, your grandsons got arrested for selling acid in New Zealand.
And she's like, you got the wrong.

Speaker 2 That's not my grandson.

Speaker 3 My grandson's on the straight and narrow.

Speaker 3 Wow, you got to disappoint all of them. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Freedom to fuck up. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Good for them, though. They were.

Speaker 3 So did anybody pick on you physically?

Speaker 2 No, there was.

Speaker 3 But they're just in remand, right?

Speaker 2 In that, you know, right away at that time, this guy came up to me and there's this thing of, you know, trying to make...

Speaker 2 especially for kind of the shittier gangs, trying to make a name for yourself, prospecting to be in the gang.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 so he came up and he was

Speaker 2 he was talking shit. And then this other guy came up.
His name was Caveman. One of the most amazing guys I ever made.
Totally deserving of that name. He was in a gang

Speaker 2 called the Headhunters.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 he says, this guy's talking shit about you.

Speaker 2 Or he said, you were talking shit about him.

Speaker 2 And I was like, dude, I've been in this country for a week. I don't know anybody.
I don't know this dude. I don't know who the fuck he is.

Speaker 2 He's like, hold on a second. Goes back to this other guy.
Comes back. He's like, yeah, sorry about that, man.

Speaker 2 And we'd started walking around. And

Speaker 2 he was one of the

Speaker 2 top guys in his gang. And

Speaker 2 he was a...

Speaker 2 Him and I

Speaker 2 we got along pretty good. Really? So he was

Speaker 2 an amazing character.

Speaker 3 Why?

Speaker 3 Tell me about him.

Speaker 3 Tough.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 A million stories.

Speaker 3 Gentle lover or like both?

Speaker 2 What? Both.

Speaker 3 Both? Yeah.

Speaker 2 He had those Polynesian tattoos on the leg where they've carved it in with bamboo?

Speaker 2 He had all those. And he was just kind of wild.
He had these wild stories like the...

Speaker 2 Like global warming was caused because we had taken so much oil out of the planet that the planet had shifted.

Speaker 2 And he would tell me, I remember him telling me that story, and I kind of giggled, and

Speaker 2 he's kind of stared at me like, and it's like, oh, shit.

Speaker 3 Sorry, KB. He's like, I thought you were joking.
No, no, no, you're right. You're probably right.

Speaker 3 Were you, was anybody, was there like fucking going on there?

Speaker 2 I don't think it's a thing.

Speaker 3 Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I never heard of it.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know, there was other, you know, there was like

Speaker 2 not great to be a kid fucker in there.

Speaker 2 You know, there's no kids.

Speaker 3 That's your one big joy and you can't get it. You know, if you're like a reader, like prison's great.
I can get access not to every book, but to some books and all the time you want.

Speaker 3 If you're like working out, prison's awesome for you. If you're a kid fucker, unless if they put you in a kid's prison, game on.

Speaker 3 Game on. But that's probably not what you meant.

Speaker 3 Okay. Okay.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that happened a few times.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I was a kid fucker, so I can make these jokes.

Speaker 3 Reform, though. Reform.
But don't get me around a kid.

Speaker 3 Anyway, sorry, go ahead.

Speaker 3 I can't be in a...

Speaker 2 Bad place to be.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And, well, you know what it was like? It was like

Speaker 2 it felt like the room was always filled with gas, and it was only going to take a spark. to ignite stuff and it didn't happen much but when it did

Speaker 3 uh

Speaker 2 like everything's extreme. You know, everything is kind of extreme.
And so

Speaker 2 generally the MO was, you know, all of these gangs are.

Speaker 2 What was cool for me is I wasn't part of a gang. I wasn't part of this or that.
No one knew me. No one.

Speaker 2 I didn't go in having a problem. Whereas most people, New Zealand's small, gang seen as small.
People go in and there's...

Speaker 2 There's a problem, you know?

Speaker 3 Were there any other non-New Zealanders? Or Pacific? I mean,

Speaker 3 Oceanians? No.

Speaker 3 So did that make you like exotic? Totally.

Speaker 2 Total anomaly. Anomaly.

Speaker 3 Were people in the middle of accents in a weird way?

Speaker 2 Yeah. Like, trying to...
It was very hard to put me in the in a box. You know, everyone's got a box.
And it's like, well, what the fuck box does this guy from?

Speaker 3 I'm just a backpacker trying to make money. Yeah.
I'm actually not tough at any way.

Speaker 3 I just saw an avatar.

Speaker 2 Mortbikes and guns. I don't fucking.

Speaker 3 Wow. Yeah, you're just a hippie backpacker.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 So that was great.

Speaker 2 But, you know, other people, they go in and they got a problem

Speaker 2 on the get-go. And I was pretty clear, like, if I don't fuck anybody around, there's no reason.

Speaker 2 But, you know, it's not that easy.

Speaker 3 Did people pick on you? No. Did you see fights where there are brawls and stuff? Yeah.
Whoa.

Speaker 2 Not often, but yeah, it would melt down a few times.

Speaker 3 What did you do when the ship popped off?

Speaker 2 It kind of depended, you know, like there's times when.

Speaker 2 I remember one time,

Speaker 2 you know, I'm now connected to my scene

Speaker 2 and there's protection in that.

Speaker 2 But then if something goes down...

Speaker 3 With Caveman and with... Yeah.
Like you're not in the gang, but you're friends with them. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So then if something goes down and there's a problem with

Speaker 2 the crew.

Speaker 2 You know, if they got my back, I got to have their back. And then, you know,

Speaker 2 we're kind of hearing stuff that, you know, in this prison, this was a high-medium security at that point.

Speaker 2 So there's three different wings, and we'd all spill out to the same yard in the day, and you kind of hear a bunch of ruckus going on in the other wing, and it's like, word kind of filters back somehow, you know, like something's going down, and then you've got to go to the yard the next day, and you don't know what's going on, you know.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I hear a lot of stories of like Ali Sadiq had a story on my old show that's not happening about like

Speaker 3 the rumor going on that the Mexicans would start a riot against the blacks. But like, who's spilling the beans? Who's talking? It should just be a sneak attack.
Everyone should be a sneak attack.

Speaker 3 You shouldn't get word they're planning something today. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Talk quietly. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Both both happen. You know, it's a small.
One of the things that was cool about prison was people don't talk shit

Speaker 2 because it gets around. And then you've got to be, and you get held accountable and you get held accountable at a level that's way more severe than in the real world.

Speaker 3 You can't just be like, that guy smells.

Speaker 3 That's going to snowball. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And so, you know, there was one time,

Speaker 2 there was a couple different different incidents for sure. There was this one guy,

Speaker 2 he was a white power dude from South Africa. And kind of,

Speaker 2 that's another bad,

Speaker 2 you don't want to be that dude in New Zealand.

Speaker 3 Oh, right.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 he was fit, he was strong, and he got in a fight with somebody in the black power gang and he beat him up. So then somebody else came at him, beat him up.
Third guy came at him, beat him up.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I was working out every day. I was in the gym every day, because what the fuck else are you going to do?

Speaker 2 And that one day, I didn't go to the gym. And I was walking laps in the yard.

Speaker 2 And there's always a game of, it's called Crash. It's like rugby, but it's like a variation of rugby.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 the game's not going on.

Speaker 3 That's what's on.

Speaker 2 It's like totally on. We're walking our laps.
And

Speaker 2 so this guy had,

Speaker 2 they they had talked to him and they're like look

Speaker 2 let's figure this out let's find some peace and they're like meet at the meet in the gym meet on the stage let's sort this out so he goes to meet them and uh someone comes up behind him and fucking shivs him oh no he jumps up he jumps up like off the stage runs out and there's someone at the door supposed to prevent him from getting out and he's like full speed runs through that guy runs through the door and they spill out right to the in the middle of the uh where the game of crash usually is going on and so this guy's been stabbed so i'm right there and this guy's stands up he's bleeding and he's fumbling around trying to get out this thing out of his shorts and pulls out a knife and then they're just like having a knife fight like right there

Speaker 3 damn and you're just like uh

Speaker 2 excuse me fellas excuse me just gotta get through just a little bit a little bit it's like i don't want to see it you know i don't want to but it's like how do you not watch a knife fight you know it's like by far the most interesting thing going on pretty interesting yeah like

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Speaker 3 Wow. Was there any entertainment there? Do they,

Speaker 3 like, could you get books? Yeah. What's your day-to-day?

Speaker 3 And so this is just the holding place?

Speaker 2 No,

Speaker 2 this was after that. Okay.
I got a good tour of New Zealand prisons. Wait,

Speaker 3 so they arrested you, said, okay, we're holding you. We're charging you with this.
Then how long until you went to court for your case?

Speaker 2 Not long, but I pled,

Speaker 2 I don't know, I put it off a little bit, trying to figure out what to do for maybe a month.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And then I ended up pleading guilty.

Speaker 3 Just hoping it would lower.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Did they give you a lawyer there?

Speaker 2 They did.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 What?

Speaker 2 That, you know, another long story, but they gave me like, every lawyer in New Zealand has to take a turn at being a legal aid.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 2 And so

Speaker 2 generally your legal aid lawyer is just some rookie, you know, somebody that's got way too many people on their caseload. They go, I've saw it over and over.

Speaker 2 They meet you for the first time in the jail 10 minutes before you go into front of the judge. Not the best.

Speaker 2 I get like one of the top three lawyers in New Zealand. And this guy's got to take his turn at legal aid.

Speaker 2 Half the inmates are like, you are the luckiest motherfucker in the in the world. You got this guy.

Speaker 2 And the other half are like, fire him right away.

Speaker 3 He doesn't want to be there doesn't want to be there he's not getting paid he's trying to like let's just deal with it and let me go back to my fucking high-level work

Speaker 2 and that's what he says to me he's like if you don't plead guilty i'm not representing you

Speaker 2 he was he was an asshole he was just trying to do exactly that he's like i

Speaker 3 you know there's no money in this he doesn't have a name i'm just trying to make a law to like help something but then the side effect of that law is people were just going to end up doing this you know and it's like no it'll be nice We'll make everyone get real representation.

Speaker 3 It's like, it's not going to be real representation.

Speaker 3 Or we're like, they, when they like, they're like, oh, heroin's illegal. I'm like, do you think it's going away? Because it's illegal? No.
You're just creating violence on top of heroin.

Speaker 2 So it was wild. So we get, I plead guilty.
I go to sentencing. And the judge was old.

Speaker 2 He died while I was in prison.

Speaker 3 And he was like, that's an appeal.

Speaker 2 He's looking at me and,

Speaker 2 you know, so my lawyer, he's just going on and on.

Speaker 3 How do you know? Were you tracking because you were going to kill him? You got out?

Speaker 2 I saw it in the paper.

Speaker 3 Threw away my life.

Speaker 2 So, my lawyer, what's his name?

Speaker 2 What's the dude back in the 60s that was instrumental in

Speaker 2 the LSD scene?

Speaker 3 Ken Keesey.

Speaker 2 Nope.

Speaker 3 Pot is fucking brain.

Speaker 3 We know this. Yeah.
Oh, I almost had it.

Speaker 3 Let's get it.

Speaker 2 Turn on, tune, and drop out.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Timothy Leary?

Speaker 2 Timothy Leary. He had just died.
And my lawyer's like going into like Timothy Leary. And I'm pretty sure it's Timothy Leary.
Anyway, I'm like, at one point, I'm like,

Speaker 2 is he prosecuting me or defending me? I'm not quite sure. And I'm on the stand, like, wondering if I should fire this guy right there because he's so disjointed.

Speaker 2 And it's wild to see, like,

Speaker 2 yeah,

Speaker 2 to see

Speaker 2 how, like, the prosecuting lawyer's job is to present as bad a scenario as he can. So, he's basically lying, like, trying to make me out to be the worst person in the world within realism.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 2 And he's asking for seven years.

Speaker 2 And then my lawyer is supposed to be,

Speaker 2 my lawyer is supposed to be, you know, presenting on the other side.

Speaker 3 Two weeks. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And then

Speaker 2 there's like a pre-sentence report that was just fucking full of shit. It said I'd been in prison since 1971 and it was like the day I was born.
Like it was just all garbage. The cops had lied to me.

Speaker 2 Prison guards had lied to me. The prosecuting guard lawyer was lying.
My lawyer's lying. And I'm looking at the judge and I'm like,

Speaker 2 he's got to navigate

Speaker 2 in the court of justice. He's got to navigate a situation where no one's telling the truth.
And my whole vision of the justice system just crumbled. I'm like, this whole setup is fucking stupid.
Wow.

Speaker 2 And this guy's 75. He doesn't understand me.
He doesn't understand LSD. He's lecturing me about how, you know, how dare you come to our universities and be corrupting our youth.

Speaker 3 And I'm like, look, I'm just giving them a better price.

Speaker 2 Totally giving them what they want. And it's exciting and it's fun.
And, you know, wherever I was at with it.

Speaker 3 But you can't say that to him. No.

Speaker 2 So he.

Speaker 3 Was this Auckland?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So he gave me six years and six years. Brought it down to four.

Speaker 3 What do you mean brought it down?

Speaker 2 Because it was a first-time offense.

Speaker 3 So he goes, I'm giving you six years, but I'll make it four because of this. Yeah.
So he gave me four, basically.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Four years.

Speaker 3 That is so long.

Speaker 2 So then in New Zealand,

Speaker 2 if you're in on a

Speaker 2 violent offense, you get out in your two-thirds state. No one does their full thing unless there's like unless it's murder, basically.

Speaker 2 Then you do 10, 10 or 12.

Speaker 2 And if you're on a non-violent, you go up for parole on a third. So I knew I was up for parole on a third of that.

Speaker 3 18 months or something. Wow.
16 months. Still, that's a long time.

Speaker 3 I mean, you say, like,

Speaker 3 if it's like,

Speaker 3 let's just say it was like, I don't know, November 7th. You're like, all right,

Speaker 3 so Thanksgiving, I won't be here. And then next year, Thanksgiving, I won't be here.
And I'll also miss next Christmas. And then sometime around the end of ski season, maybe right after it ends,

Speaker 3 then I'll get out. I'm missing two full ski seasons.

Speaker 3 And it's not like, I just couldn't ski this year. You can't do shit.
God damn, it's a long time. They go, oh, you got out of Jones just seven years.
Like, that's a long time to be in prison.

Speaker 2 You know,

Speaker 2 they call it

Speaker 2 bed and breakfast.

Speaker 2 All the people with a real sentence are like anything under two years,

Speaker 2 you're just in for bed and breakfast.

Speaker 3 I mean, a week would be kind of cool, interesting. You know, it'd be like, as long as there's no violence or like, or like,

Speaker 3 it'd be like, this is interesting, you know, see the life.

Speaker 3 But you got to know you're getting out in a week.

Speaker 2 That was an aspect of it for me was, that was my mindset of like, well, this will be interesting, you know?

Speaker 3 Did you journal during this?

Speaker 2 I did.

Speaker 2 Part of it for me was blood on the wall.

Speaker 2 Part of it was like this realization of everything I normally worry about, money, girlfriends, job, travel, feeding myself, clothing, washing my clothes, everything that I normally have to worry about.

Speaker 2 I don't have to worry about for a couple years.

Speaker 2 And then to see,

Speaker 2 well, does that mean freedom from all of those all of those things that afflict my mind

Speaker 2 they're gone

Speaker 2 so does that mean I'm suddenly in paradise is that nirvana you know you take away everything that you worry about normally now are you suddenly in like this afflictive free state

Speaker 2 you know and I had that realization I didn't know what to make of that but I was like well that's interesting everything I worry about

Speaker 2 Any my friends like everybody I meet, I'll never see them again because I'm getting deported and they're not allowed to leave.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 it was this fascinating aspect of like,

Speaker 3 huh,

Speaker 2 what, now what?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Which is another sense of freedom, you know, which became kind of my trip of

Speaker 2 what I really realized was like

Speaker 2 my sense of freedom was about my mind. Like people kept on trying to take things from me.
And the guards try to hold this over your head of like, well, we'll try to get you in line.

Speaker 2 Well, we'll take away your visits or we'll take away this. And it's like, fucking.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah. How do you punish someone who's already in prison?

Speaker 2 It gets to be real hard.

Speaker 3 Yeah, no meal today. Like, fuck.
But also, like, you're legally obligated to give away that meal.

Speaker 2 But that's what happens. And, you know, we kind of attach on to the things that we do have.
I remember I got

Speaker 2 we were in a

Speaker 2 we were in a high medium and a buddy was, oh, we were out, we were, they had a farm and we had to go out and, you know, pick

Speaker 2 carrots. Yeah, we were like picking carrots or something.
And some guy goes up in the guard and he's like, I'm going to go get some water. And the guard said, no.

Speaker 2 And I got in his face. I was like, fuck you.

Speaker 3 You got in the guard's face?

Speaker 2 Yeah, like, don't fucking tell this person you can't go have some water. Who the fuck do you think you are?

Speaker 2 And so he calls back to the...

Speaker 2 to the prison and they went and searched my cell.

Speaker 2 And we had had a going away party for a buddy the night before.

Speaker 3 Because he got out?

Speaker 2 He was getting out. And so, you know, we were smoking a lot of pot.
And somebody gave me a joint for a nightcap. So I went back to my cell, totally forgot about it.
Go out to work the next day.

Speaker 2 That all happens. They search my cell, find a joint.

Speaker 2 So now you've got to go to

Speaker 2 court within the prison.

Speaker 3 Prison court.

Speaker 2 It's fucking hilarious. There's like a...

Speaker 2 And I'd been through it once before, so I kind of knew that the first time it's a little scary, the second time you just see it's a joke.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So they come in and they're like, and they want you to stand on these little two footprint things. Like stand on the, stand there.

Speaker 3 Like

Speaker 3 yourself.

Speaker 2 So I like, you know, walk in. I'm like, stand two feet over there.
And they're like, no, no, no, no, you got to stand there.

Speaker 3 I'm going, stand over here.

Speaker 2 No, no, you got to stand. And I'm like,

Speaker 2 shut up. And they're like, okay, so here's the charges.
How do you plead? And I'm like, I'm not

Speaker 2 nothing. This is all bullshit.
Like,

Speaker 2 you're going to find me guilty. Like, the whole thing's a kangaroo court.
I'm not,

Speaker 3 I'm not pleased.

Speaker 2 And they're like, well, you got it. And I'm like, well, I'm not.
And they're like, but you got to say guilty. I'm not.
The whole thing's fucking stupid.

Speaker 2 And they're like, well, we'll take that as a not guilty ben.

Speaker 3 You do whatever you want.

Speaker 2 So it's all this kind of charade. And then they, you know, throw you in the pound for a week.

Speaker 3 For 2000 weeks.

Speaker 3 They throw you in what?

Speaker 2 The isolation, the pound.

Speaker 3 For a couple weeks?

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's the limit there. A couple weeks.

Speaker 3 They give you rights of the limit every time. They don't just give you like an afternoon or or whatever.

Speaker 2 I think it was like a week or two, generally, 10 days.

Speaker 3 But did they ever go like, well, that was a light offense, so I'm just going to give you the day. Probably not.

Speaker 2 Nah.

Speaker 3 How do they go for hard offenses? You're like, I got a week for fucking a joint and that guy fucking stabbed somebody. He gets a week? That's not fair.

Speaker 2 Yeah, they'll send you to a different prison or something. So they're always holding.

Speaker 3 I was in solitary. How was that?

Speaker 2 It's a nice break for me.

Speaker 3 It's a nice break. Yeah.
It doesn't drive you insane.

Speaker 2 Some people. Some people hated it.

Speaker 3 Social people.

Speaker 3 Extroverts.

Speaker 2 I don't know. Claustrophobic people.
You're 23 hours in a cell, half this room.

Speaker 3 Wow, really? Yeah. In New York, that would cost $7,000 a month.

Speaker 3 Damn.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, there's this thing of...

Speaker 2 I've always, and you know what happened to that guy? This buddy of mine was,

Speaker 2 we all had a job, and he had

Speaker 2 the guard that searched my cell yeah we had this uh we all had a job and this guy he was one of the more hardcore guys I ever met awesome guy he was with a club called the Filthy Few

Speaker 3 Filthy Few yeah nice

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 I came into his cell one day and he was laughing and giggling and I was like, what's going on, man? And he's like, I can't tell you. I was like, come on, man.
What's going on? He's like, nah.

Speaker 2 I was like, tell me what's up. And he looks at me and he's like, if I tell you and you tell anyone, I'll kill you.

Speaker 3 Wow, that's a real threat. I was like,

Speaker 2 and he,

Speaker 2 like, I knew the guy, you know, and he'd be like, actually, you know what?

Speaker 3 Just don't tell me. No.
I wanted to know, but now, actually, it's just not worth it. What if I slip up? Just, nah.

Speaker 2 I was like, no, we're cool, man.

Speaker 2 And he had

Speaker 2 he had gone into

Speaker 2 where the guards hang out, and he had found a printout of every guard's address.

Speaker 2 And to him, that was like the ultimate thing he could ever have got.

Speaker 3 Black, I mean, crazy plastic.

Speaker 2 And so this guy that had searched my cell

Speaker 2 a week later went home and they had emptied his entire house from his forks to his Harley.

Speaker 3 Everything. Robbed him blind.

Speaker 2 Took everything.

Speaker 3 Just because you were were like, give the guy the fucking water. Basic human right, by the way.

Speaker 3 Water is basic human rights.

Speaker 2 Don't be a dick.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Whoa.

Speaker 3 It could be worse, I guess. But now it's like, ah, shit.

Speaker 3 And you got to move.

Speaker 3 That's the worst part about prison shows is when they get you on the outside. When they send some other former prisoner, hey, go fuck with this guy on the outs.
Or go fuck with that guy's wife.

Speaker 3 You know, this other prisoner's wife or brother or something.

Speaker 3 You're like, everybody's in prison now?

Speaker 3 So this is all Auckland. Do you remember the name of the prison?

Speaker 2 Yeah, that one was called Peremo Remo.

Speaker 3 Wow. This is it?

Speaker 2 That's not the angle I ever saw.

Speaker 3 That's the prison. Oh, yeah, that's outside.

Speaker 3 Whoa.

Speaker 3 It's big.

Speaker 2 There was three of them on that site. There was a...

Speaker 2 I think there was a maxi, a high-medium, and a low-medium.

Speaker 3 Auckland Prison.

Speaker 2 only specialist maximum security prison unit yeah that was the only maxi in new zealand maxi and so when you're in that prison it's kind of it was interesting in that way because now you can't hold anything over everybody's head and so there was a different uh a different feel there because the the inmates kind of had a different kind of sense of power There's nowhere to send.

Speaker 2 I remember we were at,

Speaker 2 they'd come around with these boards a couple times a day

Speaker 2 and they'd just kind of check your name off. Like, is everybody everybody still here?

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 battle the bands.

Speaker 2 One time, this guard came in, and we were

Speaker 2 smoking a joint.

Speaker 2 And I was kind of freaked out.

Speaker 2 I was kind of freaked out, you know, like here we are in the maxi smoking a joint, and the guard, someone dropped the ball looking out, you know, making sure that someone should be standing guard for the guards.

Speaker 2 And he opens the, we had these blankets over the cells, over the

Speaker 2 bars.

Speaker 2 And he's like, oh, shit, sorry.

Speaker 2 And just keeps walking like he didn't want to know. You know, he didn't want to cause any problems.

Speaker 2 So at the moment.

Speaker 3 That's how I am with people on heroin. It's just like they look up and you're like,

Speaker 3 not going to join it.

Speaker 2 You know, some guards would be the opposite, but he just.

Speaker 3 Worst male inmates will be kept.

Speaker 3 Like, look at

Speaker 3 Is that the hallway?

Speaker 2 Yeah, it looks familiar. They've upgraded it.
Oh, wow. No, that's not quite the ones I was in, but, you know, same idea.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 We had bars instead of solid doors.

Speaker 3 Oh, really? So you could see out? Would you talk to each other through the

Speaker 2 little bit? It was solid on the side, but open in the front. And in that prison, they would just press a button, and all the doors would open.
Same time.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Was there ever fights ready to be had as soon as those doors opened? No.

Speaker 2 Well, that was the thing, because people were more chill there because everyone had to be there for a long time. And everyone,

Speaker 2 you know you're going to be with those people for years. And so the guards knew they had to come to work every day with these same inmates for years.
So

Speaker 2 who wants to start a problem, you know? Yeah. So there's a different vibe.
Whereas at the as you go and go down, you get a point system.

Speaker 2 depending on your crime and your time and your previous and your escape risk. So you start at like at 32 points or something.
and then as those points drop

Speaker 2 you kind of

Speaker 2 the highest security prison is equal to this many points.

Speaker 2 Then you drop down to this prison is this many points and so as you go down there's different why'd they put you in a maximum security prison if you're just a non-violent offender?

Speaker 2 Um my points were up there. It depends on what

Speaker 2 it depends what uh prisons are full and what prisons are full, you know, like is the high medium full then you got to send them to maximum stuff like that.

Speaker 3 Wow.

Speaker 3 Oh, that's nice. Do they have

Speaker 3 do they have gardens there and stuff? No, no.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's that's familiar. That that is that what a what a what it looks like usually the the ones we had was like a metal sink attached to the toilet underneath it's like cold metal toilet.

Speaker 3 That's how you have to shit every day. Yeah, no toilet seat, right? Nothing to pull up.

Speaker 3 Damn, that is

Speaker 3 did you cry when you went in?

Speaker 2 No, no the hard part was was making that phone call to my parents and feel good about that

Speaker 2 could they come visit you how did it work they asked if they should and i said no let me just write it out save the money yeah what is it gonna do yeah

Speaker 3 oof

Speaker 3 did you like

Speaker 3 i mean in the beginning was it just like hopeless So you're like minimum 18 months on a four-year, which should have been six-year sentence.

Speaker 3 Are you just like, fuck, like, that first week must have been like

Speaker 3 trying to grapple with what your new reality was?

Speaker 2 I remember about a year in, I was working in an upholstery shop at that time.

Speaker 2 We were re-upholstering sofas and shit.

Speaker 2 And I remember looking out and being like, I'm bored. And that idea struck me as like the first time I'd had that moment.
It took me a year to get bored. And I was like, oh, I'm bored.
That's wild.

Speaker 3 Wow.

Speaker 2 And I knew like

Speaker 2 I had this sense of like this is a waste of my time. This whole thing is a waste of my time.
And knowing I had this ticket around the world just ticking away and

Speaker 2 what I, you know, what my hopes and dreams were. But

Speaker 2 it was,

Speaker 2 I was more...

Speaker 2 It was fascinating in this freedom of my time and my mind. Freedom of my mind was a big thing and that kind of had fed into me

Speaker 2 getting into meditation, getting into yoga, that school.

Speaker 2 I was always interested, you know, I was like, what's the meaning of life? What's it all about? And I was trying to read some books and

Speaker 3 could you get access to books? Very, very few.

Speaker 3 So like, yeah, I'm saying, how do you even if you're like, I want to get into meditation here, it's like, all right, go to the strand, get a book, or take a class. Yeah.
How do you even explore that?

Speaker 3 It was inventing it.

Speaker 2 Hard. And I just kind of got lucky.
I remember going back to this one guy, and he'd given me some kind of new age-y shit. And I was like, I'm not into that, give him back.

Speaker 2 And he's like, You should go talk to this guy, Mike, down the way. He's a Buddhist.

Speaker 2 And I was like, a Buddhist? That's weird.

Speaker 2 But okay. Let's go over to his house,

Speaker 2 his cell.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Wow, so you learned from him.

Speaker 2 And he's like, well, here's some stuff. And I started reading the books he gave me.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And he was wild. He was a counterfeiter.
He was in for counterfeiting.

Speaker 2 And...

Speaker 3 He was a counterfeiter, a Buddhist counterfeiter.

Speaker 2 And he brought his teacher in. There's this Tibetan llama that he brought in a couple times, and I met with him.
And

Speaker 2 he

Speaker 2 refused. He was...

Speaker 2 Here we go.

Speaker 2 I was in unit two.

Speaker 3 Is this the hallways?

Speaker 2 I guess so. Who's filming?

Speaker 2 No, because there's no cell phones then, right? Oh, right.

Speaker 3 Oh, that's this now.

Speaker 3 I mean, this is not good.

Speaker 3 No, that was not a great video.

Speaker 3 Sorry.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 he was just doing his hardcore Buddhist studies, and at one point he's like, hey, we should order these tapes from this guy named Geshima Michael Roach this Buddhist American guy and

Speaker 2 so we wrote God knows how he's God knows how he yeah I don't know how he heard of him

Speaker 2 but he had had this correspondence course yeah and they sent us these audio cassette tapes

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 He

Speaker 3 audio cassette tapes about Buddhism well he was teaching this

Speaker 2 He had studied with a teacher named

Speaker 2 Geshe Lobson Tarchin. He had studied with a Tibetan dude in New Jersey, in Howell, New Jersey,

Speaker 2 and had done a real serious course of Buddhist study, learned Tibetan, very authentic, great teacher. And he had created this, the Geshe program as a 20-year study in Buddhist philosophy.

Speaker 2 And so Geshe Michael had studied that with his teachers, and he had created this

Speaker 2 kind of westernized summary of that 20 years of study.

Speaker 3 Oh, wow.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 anyway, we wrote them. They sent us these audio cassette tapes all the way to New Zealand.
And I just started studying those. And that was kind of my entry into it.

Speaker 3 Into Buddhism. Yeah.

Speaker 3 In a fucking Auckland prison, maximum security prison. Yeah.
Was anyone else interested?

Speaker 2 Yeah, we were in a low medium at that time, but

Speaker 3 they would move you around. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there's very, you know, there was a few people doing yoga, but this was before yoga was really a thing anyway.

Speaker 3 You know, I'm a yogi. I do.
Okay.

Speaker 3 Glad you know. A lot of yoga is about kind of like

Speaker 3 being in a mind state and you know, like really clearing yourself. I'm about bragging.
I'm not that kind of yogi.

Speaker 3 I'm a new way jogi.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, so that was the,

Speaker 2 that was my entry into kind of this other sense of freedom was like freedom, can I free my mind of like negative thoughts and negative emotions? And that kind of became my trip.

Speaker 3 While you were in prison?

Speaker 2 Last

Speaker 2 15, 20 years of my life.

Speaker 3 It might be easier in prison than somewhere else.

Speaker 2 It was my first real retreat. You know, I've probably done 50 or 60 retreats.

Speaker 3 Silence

Speaker 3 and otherwise?

Speaker 2 Depending on the kind. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Because it's like, it's all the

Speaker 3 what's on your mind. Oh, I got to do this.
I got to do that. I got to do that.
That's still bothering me. Oh, I got to call my, I got to send my mom flowers for Mother's Day.
I got to, all that.

Speaker 3 And then also just like literal noise of a city.

Speaker 3 Half of that is just gone in prison. You have nothing to do, take care of.
And like, it's probably quiet or the same sounds anyway. Similar sounds every day.

Speaker 2 It's very monotonous.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 It's like good training where

Speaker 3 it's like lifting with like a spotter

Speaker 3 for a while, and then you're like, now do this in Cambodia.

Speaker 2 Well, yeah, yeah, it's interesting because it's like I said, it's kind of like you watch your mind fill in the gaps of affliction, and now you're just at war with guards or something, you know?

Speaker 2 So all of the emotional turmoil has now just found a new object. And then

Speaker 2 you can kind of get an interesting view of like, oh, that

Speaker 2 the problem isn't the outside

Speaker 2 job, rent, girls, because now it's a totally different subset of the world. But my mind is the problem.
So, now, how can I

Speaker 2 now let's deal with the source?

Speaker 2 And that kind of led me down this road of like,

Speaker 2 okay, let's work on the mind.

Speaker 2 Can I get the freedom that's

Speaker 2 kind of my more interesting trip now is freedom from pride, jealousy, anger?

Speaker 3 Do you still

Speaker 3 do a bunch of acid?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 3 You still sell? Can't tell me, actually. There's no way you can tell me.

Speaker 3 I retract the question.

Speaker 3 It's like asking, like, have you cheated on your wife this week?

Speaker 3 Literally, the only answer will be no, regardless.

Speaker 2 Did you ever read Keith Richards' biography? Uh-uh.

Speaker 2 First chapter is amazing, but in his text, he's like.

Speaker 3 Good racist, that guy. Hates black people.
Oh, yeah. You know that? No.
Made it up. How did i sound convicted like did i sound like i was nice that's all acting

Speaker 2 he talks about how heroin kind of gave up on him he didn't give up on heroin

Speaker 2 and uh i kind of feel the same about psychedelics like i would if they

Speaker 2 if they got me to where i used to get to i i would still do them but i yeah they kind of gave up on me you know simon rex said this to me once he was like i

Speaker 3 i did enough much i got there i learned everything i needed to you do it a bunch you learn everything and you're like, oh, now I'm just like, not even chasing a dragon. Just like.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, I guess I'm chasing a different dragon. Do you teach?

Speaker 3 Yeah. You teach classes? Yeah.
Meditation

Speaker 3 and yoga. Yeah.
You're also a yogi. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I don't teach so much the physical yoga anymore, but I teach a lot of meditation. I help people get in retreat.
I teach philosophy a lot. I teach a lot of yoga philosophy.

Speaker 3 I'm going to make you an offer right now. All right.
You know Yoga with Adrian?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I've heard of that.

Speaker 3 She's pretty high level, and she went way bigger.

Speaker 3 There it is.

Speaker 3 During the pandemic. She's one of my students.
Would you like to also be one of my students?

Speaker 2 I would love that.

Speaker 3 You're in.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And Bernie and Yoga with Adrian are both students of mine.

Speaker 2 I saw you had a rooftop class.

Speaker 3 I do it all over, bro. I was doing it from the Amazon.
Let's do it. I was doing them everywhere.
I got to get back on it, actually. I really got to get back on it and start teaching them again.

Speaker 3 They're so stupid. And it's also like most of them are like, hey, I can't get to this move.
It's like, you should be like foot down, head, like straight out. But you understand what I'm going for.

Speaker 3 You should also try it. You're probably better than me.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Rename all the moves.

Speaker 2 Blow me up like you did with her, man.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, she's huge. She's famous.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 3 Let's see how many.

Speaker 2 I'm so proud.

Speaker 2 She got more followers than me. I'm pretty sure.

Speaker 3 Yeah, me too.

Speaker 3 Okay, here, last one. Healing yoga break 12 days ago.
300,000. No, let's see how many subscribers she has.
12.8 million. Amazing.
I'm so proud of her. Good job, Adrian.
I'm so proud of her.

Speaker 3 Good job, me for teaching her and allowing her this. And now, Earl, it's going to be good job you.

Speaker 3 Are you on here teaching? Where do you?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm probably on there somewhere.

Speaker 3 Do you have a, like a, how do people reach you?

Speaker 2 Um, Instagram, best way.

Speaker 3 I teach. Is this you? Round Glass Live.
What's your?

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, that was one platform. You taught at Three Jewels?

Speaker 3 Yeah. I go there.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, sometimes they're pretty cool.
The back of a coffee shop? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I teach twice a week there online.

Speaker 3 Online? Yeah. Did everything change for yoga during the pandemic when people realized online is actually just as good?

Speaker 2 It

Speaker 2 changed the whole world. Well, it changed yoga too.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah, you shorter classes. I don't know if you can get it all in.
That's true.

Speaker 2 You can go camera off.

Speaker 3 What?

Speaker 2 You can go camera off and take a break. So, you know, like when you're on the Zoom, you just take your camera off, go get a drink.

Speaker 3 Oh, you can't take a break. Right, right, right.
You can break easily. Yeah.
But I mean, like, you can reach so many more people.

Speaker 3 But as a student, though. Right.
I get what you're saying. But as soon as you're like, oh, it's going to be trash.
I got to get there in 40 minutes. If I don't get there right now, I'm fucked.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Instead of like, no, I'll just take a dump. I'll start 10 minutes later.

Speaker 2 The whole new world.

Speaker 2 But no, for me, there's, you know, was, I learned with a teacher, and that was by far the best for me. You know, she busted my ass.

Speaker 3 Really? Yeah.

Speaker 2 She was good.

Speaker 3 Damn, imagine being in prison and talking about yoga is busting your ass.

Speaker 3 How lucky you are in a way. Did you consider yourself lucky or unlucky towards the end of this? And I want to talk about getting out, too.

Speaker 2 Yeah, both. You know, at first, it's

Speaker 2 a lot of anger. You know, these guys, you know, that principle of my time being the most valuable thing I own, and some motherfucker sold my time for his.

Speaker 3 And all I did was sell him the drugs he wanted. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So there was a lot of anger and there was a lot of

Speaker 2 anger at the cops, a lot of anger at the whole system. You know, I wasn't exactly a fan of the system to begin with.

Speaker 2 And then I think humans have an amazing capacity to adapt to their environment and then prison. You know what? When I went up for parole,

Speaker 2 I didn't get my parole

Speaker 2 for pretty medium behavior.

Speaker 2 And by that time, it was... you know, they gave me four more months or something, and it was like,

Speaker 2 you know, that's fine, man.

Speaker 3 No problem. You'd already gotten used to it.
You're already used to it.

Speaker 2 I wasn't going to let them win, you know, like

Speaker 2 fuck, awesome, whatever, man.

Speaker 3 Wow.

Speaker 3 So, you get out. How do you get out? How do they tell you you're getting out? How much in advance do they tell you?

Speaker 2 When I went to my parole hearing, they gave me a date. They can either give you another parole hearing or they give you a date.
So I had a date.

Speaker 3 They're like, you're out this date. Yeah.
And then, can you then go like, so I don't know how it was in Canada, but in America,

Speaker 3 you apply to colleges, you have two semesters a year. You apply to colleges in the first semester, and you usually find out where you got into.

Speaker 3 So your grades aren't,

Speaker 3 your application process doesn't include your senior year grades. But once you got in to your high level, reach school or whatever, you're like, there's all I got to do is not fail this class.

Speaker 3 And then it's fuck off. Was it that? Totally that feeling.

Speaker 2 A little bit of both, you know.

Speaker 3 Stab anyone?

Speaker 2 You can kind of push the, you can kind of push the envelope a little. You can care a little bit less now.
Right. So you can have a little bit more of a fuck you attitude.
Like, fuck you.

Speaker 2 I've got my date.

Speaker 2 I don't have to go to another parole hearing. But at the same time, you can only push that so far.
So, yeah, I guess. Oh, there's the guy.

Speaker 3 That's you with Roach. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's us teaching.

Speaker 2 He's in Sedona now. Fucking amazing.
Amazing guy.

Speaker 3 Sedona rules, huh? So it's for so such a hippie place. Yeah.

Speaker 3 It's like

Speaker 3 it's weird because it's like crystals and like drunk natives. And UFOs.
Yeah, it's like people unrelated but all coming together.

Speaker 2 And super rich and gated communities and you can't get a coffee after three because every cafe should die to a bizarre place.

Speaker 3 So sorry, tell me more about getting it.

Speaker 2 So yeah, so then they

Speaker 3 had some questions too.

Speaker 2 So then they handcuffed me, take me out.

Speaker 3 And they're gonna do breakout? What are they gonna handle? Well, they took me to the airport.

Speaker 2 So then I'm in the...

Speaker 3 Oh,

Speaker 2 airport,

Speaker 2 the only guy handcuffed. And they walked me right onto the plane in handcuffs and then

Speaker 2 on handcuffed me. And they're like,

Speaker 2 see you later.

Speaker 3 Who got the flight?

Speaker 3 They did. To where? Did you say, here I want to go? Or do they go, we're sending you to Washington? No, Vancouver.

Speaker 3 Oh, right, right, right.

Speaker 2 And I didn't know if I would get arrested, landed, going back to.

Speaker 3 Can you ask for Comfort Plus or can you?

Speaker 2 Dude, it was the very, very back of the airplane. And it was back in the day when you could still smoke, I think.

Speaker 2 Did you? And the walls just stonk like cigarette. I remember being in the plane and the walls just like radiating cigarette smoke.

Speaker 2 And everyone in the front section that smokes can't smoke in the front section. So they go to the price.

Speaker 3 Did you start smoking in prison? No. You didn't?

Speaker 3 It's wild. How could you not?

Speaker 2 You know, I tried. That just doesn't work for me.
We were smoking pot. We got at one point, fuck another story.

Speaker 3 I got to ask you about masturbation, too.

Speaker 2 We, you know, I was kind of having to rely on other people a lot. So

Speaker 2 at one point, there was a woman that had been coming in to see me all that time. And, you know, I wrote her a message, had her take it out.
She sent

Speaker 2 back to that guy in Canada. He sent

Speaker 2 another,

Speaker 2 I can't even remember if it was a thousand hits. I think it was a thousand.

Speaker 2 And sent it to a guy that had gotten out. He kept 500,

Speaker 2 sold 500, bought a bunch of pot.

Speaker 2 And we're getting that sent back in.

Speaker 2 He goes to the prison grounds, buries it outside. And some people had these jobs where they're, you know, you go work on the fields, you're kind of mowing lawns or shit.

Speaker 2 They went out and, you know, dug up the stash.

Speaker 2 So we had a half pound of pot in the prison a half pound wow

Speaker 3 so it was hilarious it was like where do you hide a half pound of pot in prison yeah in the wall how are you gonna do this inside the prison wall so it was hilarious so we were like

Speaker 2 we were smoking so much pot at that point it was absurd what do you got to do

Speaker 3 that's so funny you got more into pot when you went back home and started smoking because bc weed is the best in canada and possibly at least then North America, maybe.

Speaker 3 Did it hit you like, whoa, this hits different. I don't know what New Zealand weed is like.
No one's ever mentioned it. Yeah,

Speaker 2 it was, you know, I got back and got into the same scene a little bit.

Speaker 2 I can't remember. You know, I was from BC, so I knew what to expect.

Speaker 2 But I'd kind of slowed down a bit.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Somebody... kind of offered me a job

Speaker 2 you know running pod into the states it was the heyday of pod in BC, and I kind of was like, I don't,

Speaker 2 I don't want to get back into that

Speaker 2 mainly because I didn't want to

Speaker 2 get back in the scene. I didn't want to get back into the paranoia of the scene.
I didn't want to potentially put my family through that again. And

Speaker 2 so I kind of

Speaker 2 finished my degree and kind of tried to move away from that scene. And I was also getting into Buddhism at that time.
And there was this idea of

Speaker 2 not right away, but maybe a year later, of like half of me is still drinking

Speaker 2 and smoking and the other part of my life is meditating and trying to trying to access these super clear states of mind. And I was like, what am I doing?

Speaker 2 This is stupid.

Speaker 2 I'm trying to like gain a lot of mental clarity and then I'm drinking and it just kind of was like, I'm

Speaker 2 the stop for the first time in my life. I'm going to like

Speaker 2 stop for a year.

Speaker 2 I'm just going to go clean for a year and see what it's like. There will always be another party I can go back to.

Speaker 3 Sure.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 I'm going to go sober for a year. And it took me a long time to get to that.
I knew I wanted to do that, but it took me a year to

Speaker 2 kind of

Speaker 2 have the balls to do it. Wow.
And to make that announcement to my friends.

Speaker 3 Once you say it, then you're a bitch if you don't do it. I had to do it.
Saying it to yourself is like, eh, whatever. Five days was good.

Speaker 3 When you have to let someone else down.

Speaker 3 I love those people who like, I quit smoking, and when they start smoking again, you can just see them, oh, I got to call my daughter, and they will go around the corner a bunch because they just don't want to say, like, ah, fucked up.

Speaker 3 Like, bite the bullet and just tell everybody, we're going to make fun of you. Right.

Speaker 3 Now we're in a year, but you can't hide it forever. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Wait, so I don't want to keep forgetting. I keep forgetting this.
How was the masturbation in prison?

Speaker 3 How did you do it? It's where

Speaker 2 it's called foofoo.

Speaker 3 It's called foofoo. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And so there's like, you know, it's almost like, oh, that guy, you know, too much foo-foo. But yeah, it's, it's kind of fucked up, like the

Speaker 2 whole sexuality thing. What do you mean?

Speaker 2 It's a, I don't know, it becomes

Speaker 2 what people talk about or

Speaker 2 degrading

Speaker 2 a lot of degradation of women or

Speaker 2 I don't know, like, the energy is kind of fucked up. But yeah, I mean, it's what else are you going to do? You know, so yeah.

Speaker 3 Where did you do it? Shower and your bunk?

Speaker 2 Nah, you know, in your cell.

Speaker 3 Were you alone in the cell? You have a

Speaker 2 first place.

Speaker 2 That's for sure. Pretty straightforward, really.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 3 That's the jam then.

Speaker 3 Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's great.
If you have your own bunk, it's like you're not bothering anybody.

Speaker 3 Great. Okay.
Question answered.

Speaker 3 Damn, what a shit.

Speaker 2 I'll tell you a different story about that that I'm too shy to share online.

Speaker 3 Yeah, in your classes, yeah.

Speaker 3 Oh, afterwards, you mean. Okay, okay, oh, fair.

Speaker 3 Oh, this is online, though, but okay.

Speaker 3 All right, fair.

Speaker 3 Well, let's wrap this up, I guess. Unless there's other stuff of this New Zealand part of the trip, but that's interesting that this fucking

Speaker 3 you go from backpacking, which is a different thing, to selling drugs is not like gang member drugs. It's just a money thing.

Speaker 3 And then my friend Kurt Metzka did a joke about it where he goes like Batman. You know, he goes,

Speaker 3 the idea of things in comic books are different than reality. And he goes, Batman's going, like, I'm going after the source, I'm getting the dealers off the streets.

Speaker 3 And then, and then Metzco's like, Carl, what do you mean? Carl's cool.

Speaker 3 We listen to rap songs, but he comes over and sells me weed.

Speaker 3 Oh, don't hurt Carl. And it's just like, oh, yeah, dealers have this terrible connotation, but it's just like, it's a guy who's coming door to door with some weed.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah. It's like, it's just like, so you go from that to this hardcore thing to like,

Speaker 3 I mean, honestly, the Buddhism is closer to the backpacking part of you

Speaker 3 then it's almost like the prison part was like an unrelated

Speaker 2 like you could take that out and it's a natural jump from backpacking to buddhism yeah i think the the prison slowed me down enough to step back and to get into buddhism in a way that i never ever would have done otherwise and then to come out and to be

Speaker 2 really

Speaker 2 you know taking a deep deep dive into that and ended up in Arizona and started a retreat center and I ended up doing a three-year retreat, silent retreat.

Speaker 3 A three-year retreat. Where was that?

Speaker 2 In Arizona.

Speaker 3 In Arizona. Wow.
That's another one.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know, and

Speaker 2 that idea of that search of freedom going a different direction.

Speaker 3 Damn.

Speaker 3 All right. Well, before we stop then, this is all very interesting.

Speaker 3 Does that sound sarcastic?

Speaker 3 Sounded sarcastic out of my mouth. I want to see what this is.
It's kind of a dream of mine was for people to bring.

Speaker 3 I never really got it because I got to tell them way in ahead of time. But like, I'm lining my walls with travel stuff from me.

Speaker 3 These aren't like fake ones, you know, stuff I picked up on my journeys or whatever. But I was always had this dream of like, I have a souvenir.
I got nothing to do with it. Do you want to put it up?

Speaker 2 Yeah, travel trotchki around the world.

Speaker 3 Can I even tell you? This is just on your own. What is this?

Speaker 2 This is, I was recently in Indonesia.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Whoa, cool.

Speaker 2 And there's a place called Borobadur in Indonesia.

Speaker 3 Burobadur.

Speaker 2 Yeah, cool, cool spot.

Speaker 3 Borobadur.

Speaker 2 It's an old temple.

Speaker 3 Oh, it sounds like in Mongolia. What do they have? Borobatu.
This is Mongolia. Where do they have?

Speaker 2 Oh,

Speaker 2 Ulaanbatar.

Speaker 2 This is more like that place in Cambodia.

Speaker 2 There we go. Open it up.
You see this now?

Speaker 2 And what is this?

Speaker 2 So it's a site where they have... it's old, a thousand years maybe.
Yeah. And they built this site, took them a hundred years, finished it,

Speaker 2 and then it kind of got lost to the jungle. And it was found, I don't know, maybe 150 years ago.

Speaker 3 What is it?

Speaker 2 And it's...

Speaker 3 Like the Anchors?

Speaker 2 Similar, but not as expansive and not the big rock. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Speaker 2 B-U-R-U.

Speaker 3 That's the thing. Oh my god, this is a mimic of these things.

Speaker 2 And so it's a fascinating thing.

Speaker 3 Wait, what?

Speaker 3 There you go. What is this?

Speaker 3 It's just an old temple?

Speaker 2 Yeah, it is. And it's kind of like a minimizing.

Speaker 3 Just an old temple. It's like, oh, dude, no, it's fucking amazing.
Wow, that's a human size, what you got in your hand. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Borobador temples compounds. And it's all these like bell type of things.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Wow. And so it's kind of reflective of Buddhist philosophy where there's like

Speaker 2 a realm.

Speaker 3 Oh, this is one of those things with the top. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 different realms of existence going from like form to formless, kind of, or like this kind of realm of existence to form and then formless. And so

Speaker 2 it's got all these relief carvings. If you scroll down, you'll probably see some.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 Like carved into the, yeah, like that one on the bottom. What, this? Yeah, that one.
So they're carved into the

Speaker 2 wall, all of these carvings that tell the stories of the Buddha and tell the story of the wheel of life.

Speaker 3 I never went to Java.

Speaker 3 And it's all in this massive temple area.

Speaker 2 Yeah. It looks like that, but with a lot more tourists.

Speaker 3 With a lot more, yeah. All these pictures,

Speaker 3 all this shit like this. It's like, oh, right.
Wait a minute.

Speaker 3 Nobody's there today. He's like, wait, hold, hold.
I've almost got my perfect picture. Hold.

Speaker 3 Bro, thoughts, my buddy. Travel writer.
He's like, embrace the imperfections of stuff. Don't shy away from it.
Don't try to make it like, oh, there's a homeless guy in there. Let's shift.

Speaker 3 And it's like, the homeless guys are part of this fucking scene.

Speaker 3 Include them.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so all

Speaker 2 volcanic rock. So this is from the earth there,

Speaker 2 a little relic,

Speaker 3 a little Buddha in there. And so they carved it?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 It took them 100 years to do.

Speaker 3 What do you mean? Oh,

Speaker 3 I want to see where this is.

Speaker 2 It's in Yogyakarta. Not Jakarta is the main city.
This is Yogyakarta.

Speaker 3 I never went there. I started over here.
Yeah. In like Obali, and then I went east.

Speaker 3 I went to Sumbawa, Ethnos Tagora, and whatever, and then all the way to Timor.

Speaker 3 But yeah, wow,

Speaker 3 this is awesome.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's a cool spot.

Speaker 3 Cool spot. So it's in the middle of fucking nowhere.
It is. Yeah.
You went there?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I've been there a couple times.

Speaker 3 To meditate?

Speaker 2 Well, it's one of those sites.

Speaker 3 Is it like a magic spot?

Speaker 2 It's like, how do you meditate there? There's a thousand people there, 500 people there.

Speaker 3 Good point.

Speaker 2 But it's it feels very powerful. It feels very cool.
It's a rare, the the

Speaker 2 it's preserved you know in

Speaker 2 such a pristine way that makes it kind of unique It's not very popular

Speaker 2 They limit it now. You're only allowed they only allow so many people on it at one

Speaker 2 protect it Yeah, they make you get these those those sandals I was wearing today. They make you buy these sandals and wear those sandals not to

Speaker 3 Not to fuck up the dude when I was in Myanmar it's this place I don't want to say the city but but

Speaker 3 yeah.

Speaker 3 So I don't know anything. They don't give me anything.
And it's like you're like Indiana Jones exploring these things. You're all alone.
They're all each like a kilometer away from each other.

Speaker 3 Every emperor built a one, some super grand, somewhere in linear, so it was smaller. But you're going, you're walking around, and somebody, I finally went to like an eighth one.

Speaker 3 I see somebody coming out putting their shoes back on. I was like, oh, are my shoes supposed to go? Oh, shit.

Speaker 2 That's that place with the hot air balloons, right? Yeah. Yeah, amazing.
God, it rolls.

Speaker 3 It's an amazing place. When I went to Southeast Asia four, five, four months, maybe, I had two things I wanted to do.
That place, and then where those pillars are in the water off

Speaker 3 Vietnam. Pillars of Mountain Lee.

Speaker 3 I forget what it's called. It's just a massive pyre, like, you know, of like, just rock.

Speaker 3 Yeah, but I didn't remember it to the other one.

Speaker 2 Well, you could, uh, you could add this. Really?

Speaker 2 Add this to your list of places to go. Oh, my God.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I've got to get back. Asia's calling me.
Oh, my my god, thank you, Earl.

Speaker 3 Yeah, man.

Speaker 3 If I just smashed it right now, it was the funnier thing to do. I'm regretting it.
Wow, look at this. It's from the wall, bro.

Speaker 3 Where should I put this? Maybe I'll have to

Speaker 3 move this. This is from Myanmar, so I'll move this.
This is from that place.

Speaker 2 Oh,

Speaker 2 in Vietnam? No, in Myanmar.

Speaker 3 Oh, cool. I met a lady, she helped me with the sunset, finding a sunset spot, and then she was like, I saw it.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah, the sunset. That's the thing, right?

Speaker 3 Oh, but yeah, that was great. All right, moving this down there.

Speaker 3 I think I have nothing from Indonesia up here.

Speaker 3 Yeah, no, nothing. Great.
Fuck yeah, dude. This is awesome.

Speaker 2 No, I'll keep it on.

Speaker 3 We'll just be watching over all these fucking podcasts.

Speaker 3 I appreciate that. That's fucking awesome.

Speaker 3 Okay, so now before we leave,

Speaker 3 dude, fucking great. Hey, the rest of the guests, where the fuck have you been with the fucking gifts?

Speaker 2 Sorry, rest of the guests. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Standard set.

Speaker 3 Where's what? I try to ask, what's calling you? And like a travel tip.

Speaker 3 It could be a general travel tip or like

Speaker 3 it could be specific to like

Speaker 3 put stuff up your butt to get before you go to prison. I mean, whatever it could be.
It's fit anywhere from Pack Light to if you need to smuggle acid inside the wheels of a skateboard is a good place.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I would say my travel tip is what we were talking about before we started was to,

Speaker 2 you know, so much of travel,

Speaker 2 we can get caught up and never actually see the place, you know.

Speaker 2 So to spend some time to really see the place and to try to get off the beaten trail, like to try to get out and to meet the people and to not be scared to try to speak the language.

Speaker 2 I've traveled so much where I never met anybody from the country because it's just easier to meet people from England or Australia or Canada.

Speaker 3 I meet Germans in Indonesia.

Speaker 2 And then to try to

Speaker 2 get off the main trip at some point and to

Speaker 2 deal with the language barrier and people are so beautiful and people are so accepting and people,

Speaker 2 it's not like the States, man. People are, I find, so much more welcoming and want to, are happy to sit there with Google Translate to have a

Speaker 3 you think you're also more open to it because you're in the position of like, everything's fresh here. Yeah.
So you can lead a conversation of like, what's it like here?

Speaker 3 And that's just infectious.

Speaker 2 So I would say that's what I try to do when I travel now to do that. Meet people.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Try to get into their real culture and even to make the extra little effort, even though it's harder. It is harder.
Get off the tourist traps. And, you know, tourist things are great.

Speaker 2 Like, this place was amazing. But, you know, it's.

Speaker 3 I know what you mean. I have a general rule is, and I've said this before as a travel tip, probably,

Speaker 3 but especially in a place like this or Anchor Watt. I always picture Anchor Watt when I say this advice.
When the busload of Chinese tourists come, take one last picture and leave.

Speaker 3 It is, your experience is over.

Speaker 3 It's as if it started raining. Don't be mad about it.
It's just your time is over there now. It's going to be unenjoyable.
You should have got there earlier, whatever.

Speaker 3 Here they go. All right, one last.
And then like, let's get out of here. Lesson learned.
Lesson learned. So a place like this, like sun get there early early before the real tourists show up but

Speaker 3 so now but you in in in new zealand though so so a lot of times you're like oh let me get off the beaten path you talk to people a little bit but it's to me anyway it's like surface level things and i'm also like fetishizing the conversation to like it's cool i talk to a local but i'm not really meeting anybody so now in new york i'm not like i met a local it's like i met a guy telling me about a cool new like restaurant you know it's like that's like a real meeting now i live in New York, so it's not like I'm not wide-eyed about meeting someone here.

Speaker 3 So if it happens, it's real. But you

Speaker 3 were like living with these guys for a year plus.

Speaker 3 What's your observations about New Zealand people? And I know it's a very specific subset of hardened criminals.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 First time in my life, I was a minority.

Speaker 2 So it was very interesting to see what that felt like, where I just wasn't, I didn't speak the language I wasn't part of the Maori culture class

Speaker 2 no but it was

Speaker 2 I didn't speak the language more metaphorically you know

Speaker 2 and so there was an exclusion that wasn't intentional

Speaker 2 so that was interesting to kind of feel like that aspect of being a minority

Speaker 2 Maori people I found like

Speaker 2 and it was a very tough scene but had a very strong value on family. So when they found out, you know, I'm not connected to a gang.
I'm in a different country. You know, I didn't have anything.

Speaker 2 That culture was very, do you need anything? You know, can I help you out?

Speaker 2 Yeah, to some extent. You know,

Speaker 2 I wasn't part of them. I wasn't being invited in.
But they were. They didn't try to jump you in.

Speaker 3 Nah.

Speaker 3 No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 2 So that was part of it.

Speaker 3 That's interesting because even like

Speaker 3 pieces of shit, like degenerates, gang addicts, whatever, whatever,

Speaker 3 gang marriage,

Speaker 3 whatever, piece of shit in the nicest way possible. But like, you know, the dirtbags of society.
That's who I am. So it's like, I'm not saying it with any disdain, but like

Speaker 3 they still have that, like, your mom always told you to hold Dorbin for an old lady. You know, you could have like

Speaker 3 killed someone in a gang violence day before, but it's like, here you go, ma'am. Let me get that.
It's still, like, that's in you. Yeah.

Speaker 3 So I could see that being like, oh, let's look out for this fucking foreigner. He's lost.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Fast. Well, I mean, prison morality is, like I said, it's different, you know, in some ways it's way better.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Truth, honesty.

Speaker 2 But yeah, so that was an interesting part of New Zealand culture, getting to see kind of the Tongan Samoan culture, how that's different than the Maori culture. And then

Speaker 3 they're different.

Speaker 3 Is Tongan Samoan? Or is that two different things? Two different things. And then Maori is a third.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 It's so interesting. People are like, this country is like that.
I'm like, what are you talking about? Apply that to America.

Speaker 3 East Village is different than the West Village. Don't say a country has one vibe.
Wow. What were they different? How were they?

Speaker 3 Broadly.

Speaker 2 Physically, Tongans are just massive.

Speaker 2 Wow. Samoans are also massive.

Speaker 2 And what was wild was traditionally they have a history of, I think, as it was explained to me, a lot of violence.

Speaker 2 Each country, each island kind of at some point in the other,

Speaker 2 pillaging the other.

Speaker 2 So there's traditionally conflict, but when you take the numbers of Tongans and Samoans in the New Zealand prison, it kind of equalled out the Maori population.

Speaker 2 So there was this balance of power in between these different kind of groups. And then once in a while the Tongan-Samoan

Speaker 2 conflict would kind of blow up and then kind of settle down. And so it was all of this kind of interplay that

Speaker 2 was kind of fascinating.

Speaker 2 And then the other cultures was just kind of the motorcycle cycle culture or the gang culture was super interesting to me to i that's not my world man i didn't motorcycle culture yeah like that's part of the gang yeah like yeah exactly right that is weird like i'm in a gang but also we do love like

Speaker 3 we love motorcycles it's almost like guns and it's almost like pure guns and bikes man yeah

Speaker 3 let's go bicycling with a motorized bicycle guns bikes tattoos

Speaker 3 yeah

Speaker 3 did you want to get one of those maori tattoos

Speaker 2 One of my best friends,

Speaker 2 he looked at me one day and he's like, dude, what's wrong with you? I was like, what are you talking about, man? He's like,

Speaker 2 you're just a blank slate.

Speaker 2 I was like, I don't know. What are you talking about? He's like,

Speaker 3 he's like, yeah.

Speaker 2 He's like,

Speaker 2 you got nothing on you. You got no tattoos.
You're just like a blank slate. Like, fucking draw a picture.

Speaker 2 And he was kind of covered. And he was an amazing tattoo artist.
And

Speaker 2 he had.

Speaker 3 canvas with nothing on it. He had a...

Speaker 2 Anyway, he was just like,

Speaker 2 I'm out of space.

Speaker 2 I'm done. But he just kind of would look at me like, why don't you have tattoos?

Speaker 3 That's so funny.

Speaker 2 It's like, I don't. And I really wanted to...
Because in New Zealand, there's a little bit more of a sense of who you get your tattoo from.

Speaker 2 Not only what is it, but like...

Speaker 2 who you got your tattoo and I really would have got a tattoo from him, but he's just into

Speaker 2 skulls and devil faces and guns and motorcycles and wasn't wasn't my thing yeah

Speaker 3 where else is calling you right now

Speaker 2 uh in general southeast asia is a big one you've been plenty yeah

Speaker 3 where you left you haven't been there yeah vietnam vietnam ruled yeah i was only in southern vietnam yeah but it ruled but honestly what's what's calling me right now a lot of my travel now yeah it goes up and down right like certain ones like pop their heads up in your mind then go away for a while i'm people i'm now pretty people

Speaker 2 in my travel. It's people I want to go see.
Interesting.

Speaker 2 But what I want to do right now is spend more time on the west coast of Canada and just be around the trees and the forests and be out in nature.

Speaker 3 Do you know those pools? I think they close for a while. Don't say their name.

Speaker 3 There's these pools of water that's like hot springs and then the waves come. Do you know what I'm talking about? And the waves come in and kind of like they hit the bottom ones more.

Speaker 3 They kind of go up in steps.

Speaker 2 So the bottom ones are colder than the top ones because the water hits those more often yeah you know what i'm talking about you're talking about in in bc yeah there's a yeah there's a bunch of that i can think of a bunch of that yeah

Speaker 2 hot springs cove what hot springs cove is one whoa

Speaker 3 all right i gotta find those places yeah

Speaker 2 so that yeah that uh

Speaker 2 that's kind of calling to me to be out in nature in between whistler and vancouver is fucking that's unreal man

Speaker 2 unreal and if you go just past whistler and then go inland oh that's my favorite trip

Speaker 3 Is that the Naimo?

Speaker 2 No, no, no, no. You go, man, I'm not going to remember the name, but you go, it's the Dewey Lake Highway.

Speaker 2 And every corner just follows.

Speaker 2 Not quite. North of that.
Oh, interesting. And then you go down the Fraser Canyon, and then you hit the Okanagan.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 2 Wow. And that trip,

Speaker 2 that circle trip from Vancouver up Whistler up into

Speaker 2 through the Dewey Way Lake Highway and then down into the Kootenays into the into the

Speaker 2 Kootenays and then

Speaker 2 that's just amazing.

Speaker 3 Driving is a great time to meditate. Like in a different way.
I was telling my friend Duncan Trussell's like a real Buddhist like that, like you.

Speaker 3 And we were just talking about meditation and I was like, no, but occasionally I'll get like, I'll take an edible.

Speaker 3 And I'll sit on the window seat daytime so I can like, so if the clouds break, you can sort of see the difference.

Speaker 3 And I'll just stare out I have a notebook open if I get a thought of like that's something I quickly write it down then go back to staring just like clear your head because yeah that's that's it

Speaker 3 it's like the low level but that's yeah that's what it is yeah but when you're driving I'll turn the radio off and it's just like your just mind is like going at all at the same time a thousand miles and then nowhere Yeah, you know, it's cool that like when you say like, you know, you're doing that and you quiet it kind of quiet down and then something comes up and then you write it down.

Speaker 2 I think that's the one of the cool things about meditation or silence or a retreat.

Speaker 3 Gives you a clear thought.

Speaker 2 Is like it allows kind of those clear thoughts to bubble up, and then it's like

Speaker 2 the shit we hear in silence.

Speaker 3 Yeah, right.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's those quiet moments where it's like allows you to like see something of beauty. Yeah, you've got to be off your phone, yeah.

Speaker 3 You've got to be able to like totally let your mind be bored just the right level, and then you're like, oh, wait, I had a realization.

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 3 or you see something,

Speaker 3 yeah.

Speaker 3 You know the Obey Giant campaign?

Speaker 3 Shepherd Ferry?

Speaker 3 Interesting, cool artist, graphic,

Speaker 3 maybe illustrator. I don't really know how he started.
He started a campaign, I think, in college at RISD, maybe or somewhere else. I don't really know anything about him.

Speaker 3 Shepherd Ferry, I'd love you to do this podcast.

Speaker 3 If anybody knows him.

Speaker 3 There were these stencils, these Obey Giant stencils that he'd start putting up and stickers that he'd give to people. You've seen them.

Speaker 3 It was about Andre the Giant. You've seen these, right? Obey.

Speaker 3 And so, and a lot of this one, Andre the Giant has a posse. And so they'd be up like in places like this.
People would put them up on a watchtower or whatever, like a water tower, or just

Speaker 3 on a factory somewhere. And one of the things,

Speaker 3 it means nothing. This guy was a wrestler, but it means nothing.

Speaker 3 It's just, you're supposed to see it. And then part of it is go, oh, what does this Obey that what does Obey Giant mean? And then you go, what is this factory?

Speaker 3 I pass this every day on the way to work. What do you, what are they even doing?

Speaker 3 And it just allows you to like break from your fucking, like every day the exact same thing, and just for a second go, oh, I've never, I've never seen it. You see it without seeing it.

Speaker 3 And then you go, like, ah, do we need a water supply? It's like, do they not have underground water here? It just makes you think about that. And driving in those

Speaker 3 in those places make you think that. Like you see, like a fox.
You're like, I wonder who hunts foxes? What are they, who's their natural enemy? What do they hunt? Oh, interesting.

Speaker 3 The whole wildlife, it just gets you into like whatever it could be. Yeah,

Speaker 2 that's one of the main reasons I think I meditate is to try to be able to train my mind to be present in the present and get out of all of that anxiety and worry and bullshit that's spinning around in my head and

Speaker 2 then be available for those moments of like

Speaker 2 I remember walking to work and I saw this garden in New York, saw this garden of flowers that had been planted. And I was like, oh, those have, they weren't planted yesterday.
Right.

Speaker 2 I've been walking by those flowers for like a month and I never noticed them. And I'm like, because I'm just fucking mindless all the time.

Speaker 3 It's so funny. You go into a store, like a dude tea shop or something in like this neighborhood.
or anywhere and you're like, oh my God, how long have you guys been here? Like, about a year.

Speaker 3 I'm like, wait.

Speaker 3 What? And also, I'm into whatever they're they're set. Like, you know? So, like, I should have, I'm the kind of guy who would notice this place, a weed coffee shop.

Speaker 3 It's like, okay, this is like, this is, I'm the target market. How did I not notice it?

Speaker 3 I've passed it then.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Yeah.
Like, yeah.

Speaker 3 A lot of it's the phone. Right.

Speaker 3 Anyway, Earl. Cool.
It was a fucking pleasure, buddy.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that was great.

Speaker 3 Thank you very much. Super fun.
That was great. I'm glad you're out of prison.
You fucking got your life back together.

Speaker 3 You were shiftless punk.

Speaker 2 That's true, Chan. I like your optimism.

Speaker 3 Don't get back in the drugs. Well, that's the episode, everybody.
God damn it. It's not straight.
I went and reset it. Now it's crooked.
I've got it. I'm on 2% battery.

Speaker 3 And now it's shaking in the wind.

Speaker 3 Thank you very much, Earl Bernie, for coming on today's episode. From Bandit to Bendy.
That's what his book should be. He's a yoga instructor.
You can find him on Instagram at earlier.b-i-r-n-e-y.

Speaker 3 He's a a yoga curriculum developer at Yoga Studies Institute, which you can find at yogastudiesinstitute.org. You can also find his weekly yoga seminars at youtube.com/slash at yoga studies institute.

Speaker 3 Not to brag, but I'm also a yogi. And you can find my curriculum

Speaker 3 at youtube.com slash at Ari Shafir. If you go to the Yoga with Ari playlist, I have over 100 yoga instructions.
They are not for the high-level yoga people. They are for a break.

Speaker 3 They are to laugh and to stretch.

Speaker 3 Oh yeah, breathe is my mantra. I was studied at the feet of the great yogi, Dr.
Shabasadan Hathaharajanadan,

Speaker 3 the University of

Speaker 3 New Delhi,

Speaker 3 West Campus.

Speaker 3 That sounds like a joke. I'm not joking.
Legitimately get in shape with Yoga with art. But that's not where you should subscribe.
You should subscribe. to the UB Trippin' Pod

Speaker 3 Instagram, Yubi Trippin' Pod YouTube account, at Ubi Pod on both those things.

Speaker 3 And yeah, hit subscribe. Keep me up to fucking more subscribers and leave comments.
It's fun. You get into the discussion.
Any place you've been, New Zealand, next week will be

Speaker 3 Israel, Prachanuka,

Speaker 3 Byron Bowers.

Speaker 3 Get into the discussion. I was there.
I did this. People are, oh no, oh, I found a legislator.
I'll never go because blah, blah, blah. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? God, that's shaky.

Speaker 3 It's also bent, so I got to stand like that.

Speaker 3 Yeah, subscribe, leave a comment. And also, we always post, Heather and Caitlin are always posting extra pictures from the episodes on the Yubi Chippen podcast account.

Speaker 3 Also, they're posting, if people put up a Yubi Chippen sticker somewhere, they're reposting it. You drew a close-up and you draw a far away.
I should do it here. Are you going to put it on a tree

Speaker 3 on a lake in New Zealand? That's where I'm going to be for the next, well, for this episode, for the next month, because of this episode. And And then next week, I'll be in Israel.

Speaker 3 Thank you very much, Alan Caffey, for editing this episode so well. Sorry, I don't have a sock on this.
I left it in the camper van.

Speaker 3 So you're getting a lot of P's and T's that you shouldn't get.

Speaker 3 And you hire your mom's house for producing this podcast. We're almost at 100 episodes.
Please leave in the comments

Speaker 3 right here on YouTube.

Speaker 3 or send in a message to the You've been Tripping podcast Instagram account for your trippy awards, best meal, best sexual adventure. Also could be worse.
Worst trip, best trip, best guest.

Speaker 3 All since the

Speaker 3 Paul Morrissey episode for the first week of January of 2025 up until today.

Speaker 3 That's a trippy nominee for best episode just for because it got me traveler and gave birth to this podcast.

Speaker 3 um

Speaker 3 i think that's all i have to tell you everybody i really uh love doing this thanks little birdie for coming in um

Speaker 3 it was a while ago but it's out now uh all right bye everybody get out there and travel and do some yoga while you're out there it's actually a fun thing to do i'll tell you a real quick memory one time i was in indonesia

Speaker 3 yep on an island indonesia uh not the not bali

Speaker 3 I was doing yoga in the morning and it was fucking hut.

Speaker 3 And I'm doing yoga. I fell asleep for a short time.

Speaker 3 I fell asleep because it was so stretchy. It was yin yoga.
That's my favorite kind of yoga. You just stretch, then you go a little further, stretch more.
I took one of those in yoga with Art.

Speaker 3 Then a herd of fucking monkeys go by.

Speaker 3 Yeah, just a herd of monkeys. And I woke up.
I'm like, am I dreaming? Was I asleep? Or is that a herd of monkeys? And the yoga instructor said, you were asleep, and you were snoring.

Speaker 3 It was very distracting.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that's fucking monkeys, but who cares? They come here every day. What you find amazing, we find normal.

Speaker 3 That's what you get with yoga. That's what you get with travel.

Speaker 3 Makes you think. Makes you fart, too.
Really does make you part. Really does make you part.
There's a lot of new foods you get when you travel. Really does make you part.

Speaker 3 Travel.

Speaker 3 Really makes you fart. Or Mario Shafir.
Until next week, go to Israel, another continent.

Speaker 3 Got a lot.

Speaker 3 Bye, everybody.

Speaker 3 Oi, oi.