Russ Cook | Africa Runner on Mindset, God & Getting Kidnapped in Congo

Russ, are you the hardest man in the world? I mean, you call yourself the hardest geezer. The hardest man in the world? I don't think so. I've probably got to say, yeah, for the brand rep now, and I'm the hardest geezer. Yeah. Yeah, I'm the hardest geezer ever. In the whole world ever. In the whole world ever. Yeah. Yeah. Five UFC fires should take a bang. Bang, bang, bang. Left hook, right hook, up a cart, boom. Gone. Out of it. No problem.

But there are different types of hard, aren't there? And running the length of Africa, I mean that.

That's the sort of hard, even the toughest guys in the world surely couldn't deal with. Well, yeah, I mean, it's niche. It's definitely niche. But I think it's one of them where anything's possible really when you start really putting your mind to it. And I'm not massively gifted or talented runner or there's no real physical, I'm not physical, especially in any kind. But I had a pretty insane desire and I was willing to put through pretty much anything I could to get it done.

There you go. Powerful things happen when those two things combine, eh? That's very true. Yeah. And we're going to pick all that apart. I just want to chuck something straight that Andrew Tate said to me because he's fascinated me because he's like, anyone can go and lift really heavy weights for a few reps. The hardest thing to do is a thousand reps. Do you agree as someone who's run the length of Africa, do you think it's harder to do intensely long duration and short sharp bursts of intense strength?

Yeah, I'll probably agree with that. It starts mentally fatiguing on you after that many reps, like 19 million steps. Is that what it was? Over 19 million, yeah. It's a lot of reps.

Again and again and just like you think you're done and you wake up next day and you go and again and you go all day long and then you go again and go again and go again. How many hours a day were you running? It depends on the day. I mean towards the end it was close to 10 hours of day. 10 hours a day, yeah. So marathon's every day. At least, yeah, yeah. At least a marathon every day. Yeah, yeah. I was well over the 352 days of the run. I averaged fingers about 50, just over 50 kilometres there.

Wow. Yeah. And so was like, did you ever think I'm quitting? I'm out to stopping at Zambia. Bye. Honestly, there was a few moments where things got really tough. Yeah. And I thought, oh, I can't be asked. And the idea kind of, it doesn't even really come into your head, but it might just like loom around out here for a bit. You might have a glance at the idea of quitting. Right. And then I realized I couldn't. So just kind of quit. Why couldn't you?

Because you could. Well, I could have done, but, you know, I'd pin myself in in so many ways that I really felt like I didn't have a, you know, I was, I was in. That sounds like that's the hack. Yeah. Pin yourself in so many ways. Yeah, yeah. The quitting, there's no choice. Yeah. So how did you pin yourself in? Oh, loads of ways. Let's try and break that down. Well, I think one of the most simplest ones, uh,

that is good to use. It's just telling people what you're doing. Because once you tell people what you're doing, right? You've got like a 12. You've got like a 15. So that's the easiest one straight off the bat is like, right, go and plaster it on your socials and tell everyone, yeah, I'm doing it. It's happening. Yeah. You know, game on.

So there's that, I mean, another one that I pinned myself in was like financially, I was totally pinning. I risked everything I had on it. I borrowed money as much as I could. I had borrowed other people. I was literally, all my resources were in it. To fund it, to get it going. We still started with like barely any money. Started with 10 grand for 300 grand missions.

I had no sponsors that started nothing really. So I was totally financially pinned in. I also recruited people and said to them, I can't pay you right now and I'll back pay you once we start making money, but like sold them on a vision that I was going to do it. So you start thinking about all of these, you know, I've got a girlfriend at home, right, I'm going to do this, you know, this is going to happen and this is going to happen and we're going to be sorted afterwards, you know.

Just pinned in. I really like this. It's like there's no plan B. Yeah. Because if you have a plan B, they just wasn't a choice. Yeah, no, that's it. I think that it's probably like one of the best bits of advice I could give to anyone that's trying to do something really hard is don't give yourself a plan B because when those times do get hard and you do want to quit, if there's a plan B, you'll fucking take it, mate. Yeah, I don't have one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you'd have just come back and run up and down west us.

Yeah, it would have got to day 24 or whatever when I'm pissing blood when I was gone. Would you actually piss blood? Yeah, piss blood, five or six days in the road was on early, that was probably about a month in, I think it was. Yeah. Did that not worry that something was really wrong?

After about five days of this, started getting a little bit worried. I thought on day one, I was like, you know, could just be an anatomy that will, you know, roll with it. And then day two, and I'm like, hmm, day three, day five. I'm like, oh, yeah. Shit, what was it? No, we don't really know. I went, I did end up going to the doctors, they did blood tests, and they found protein in my piss, and that was supposed to be really bad because it kind of a sign that maybe the kidney is, or the liver one, so I can't remember.

I haven't know. It's breaking down. But then, you know, they thought it might be wrapped though, then they figured out, we don't think it is wrapped though. I don't know. I think it was basically the after effects of getting really bad food poisoning. It's just eating anything. I'll get my hands on out there. So I'd get really bad food poisoning. I'd be extremely dehydrated. I'd be vomiting for like three days straight and then just continuing my own bathrooms for all.

So just deplete my body to the point where it had nothing to run off. So just start eating its own muscles as fuel. And then it would obviously just cause some like pretty mad health complications. Now allow them to couple times. So why did you do this?

It's a really good question when you put it on. Why the fuck did you do this? Well, I think a couple of the big reasons is really I wanted to look back at the end of my life once it's all said and done and say like, Russ, we actually had a tear up at it. I maximised everything, all of my potential with my life and I absolutely went for it. I think that was a

a big thing, you know, I look at, I visualise that quite intensely, especially when I was like, you know, we're all going to die. This is the final time we have on planet Earth, and I want to make sure that we, I use it to the best of my ability. And then, yeah, I mean, that would probably be one of my strongest, my best, my best in forces. And, you know, I wanted to experience adventure, I wanted to grow up and work in quite a small town on the south coast, and most of the people, I sort of lived this quite, you know, crooked car, like, grow up, go college, maybe go uni,

Get a nice safe job in a nice safe industry and maybe you'll eventually you get a You know to up to townhouse and all of these things I was just not really doing it for me that just don't surely there's something more out there for me

And that kind of, that was a lot of my younger years, was this intense search for something that meant a bit more or fulfilled a bit more than what I was seeing and ended up stumbling across, running and then, you know, I met this guy in Kenya, had been cycling around the world for six years and he was probably one of the first people where I looked and gone like,

That's cool. You know, he doesn't care what the rule book says. He's doing his own thing. Yeah. And that just kind of heavily inspired me and then started doing, I did an age to London running 2019. And then after that, it was, you know, get the map out, have a look at the world. Africa never been done. That would be pretty cool. And then it was a journey to figure out how it's going to happen from there.

Wow. Like, I guess there must have been times when you probably nearly killed yourself. Like, people can die doing that surely, running in Africa. Yeah, I mean, we heard plenty of stories of, you know, people getting stabbed over five around in South Africa or

Again, all types of things happening in the Congo for the watching their wrist and all this type of stuff. So, you know, it happens. It is a thing, the dangers are real out there. And the logists are like, they are anywhere. You know, go London, same thing. And with running, people die in marathons every year. Oh, yeah. And literally just running and you're running Africa.

Even this is quite a perspective on. We had a bunch of people came and joined us for the last marathon. I put it out on my social resource. I was like, anyone that gone to come running Tunisia for the last marathon, come and do it. And then we had a bunch of people turn up. And a load of them, they'd like been watching the journey. They were like, yes, I'm doing this last marathon. They'd just come off the back of UK, went and landed themselves in Tunisia.

running their first marathons and we had two people hospitalised that day. That would have looked bad if someone had died for years. We had two people hospitalised that day and every year, and it's very sad, but every year, people will die running marathons or half marathons even in the UK every year. That is a serious thing.

How many miles was it? It was over 10,000, just over 10,000. And you did that in under a year? How many days? 352. How did you feel when you finished it? Yeah, some buzz, I think.

Yeah, it had been such a long time on the road that I'd almost like forgotten what life was like outside of it. It was just that I was in that hamster wheel every day, go, go, go, go, go. To finish was just like this alternative world kind of experience where I was like, oh wow, that's actually, that is actually over now. But yeah, I mean, mixed emotions very much like, I really love working towards this goal every single day, trying to move towards this big thing I'm trying to achieve.

But also, you know, and I've really missed that. But also, like, I'm really grateful for came back to the UK with just the whole fresh new perspective on everything. I'd walk around and go, oh, isn't that great? Look at Greg's art. Greg's is so good at double cheeseburgers from Mattie's art. So there was a lot of that going on as well. Right. So would you say it? Because actually, there's a question I wanted to ask.

and this is the perfect time to ask even though I was going to ask it later. Most people in the UK are very unhappy right now. The political landscape is screwed. You know, this country is in a bad way, but I wanted to ask you, is this country that bad considering you went to Africa for a year and came back? Well, it depends what you define as bad, man. Like, what is standing there in Africa is almost everywhere when people would beg me to bring them to England. Everywhere I went, they'd be like,

Bring me to England, bring me to England. And I think, you know, stress these things are relative, but also, it was an eye-opening thing for me going for a lot of these countries, and you see real suffering that people don't really have that much of a choice about, you know, we do have a lot of opportunity here, and as difficult as it is, I'm fully aware of it. We do have opportunity, kids go to school, they get an education, whether it's a good education or not, people might, you can discuss that, but at least they get one.

And you know, out there, I remember we met an eight-year-old kid in Guinea. He was a snake hunter. He literally went out into the jungle hunting snakes every day. Like poisonous venomous snakes that could kill him to like sell with snake for like probably less than a quid to the other locals to like provide a little bit for his family. And it's like, it's almost insulting to hear people in the UK be like,

Labor. Insert X problem here. When you kind of, there's the level of suffering elsewhere in the world. You don't have to go that far to see it. It's just, you know, these people, honestly, I know I've had the conversations with these people in Africa.

you know, throughout various different countries and they literally laugh at some of these problems that people have. So yeah, like mixed, because I also understand that it's, you know, it's relative to where you are and it's not as simple as saying, we have no problems and they have all the problems because there's also the other way around where it's like, hold on a minute, we do actually, you know, I've run for African villages and be like, oh, they're lit, look at the community and it's given us and they're like,

going on in these villages, you can see that they're really relying on each other and they really live as a village, as a community and you can walk around London and it's filled with 12 million people and no one picks their ad up off the pavement because everyone's a guy in somewhere and everyone's got science to do and everyone's on a really important thing.

So there's, it's just, I think one of my takeaways was that it's very much grey. There's no black and white conclusions about these things. It's very complicated and I'm probably not the best placed person to dissect them or something stupid.

That's a bit unfair on yourself. I'm not stupid, but you know. You've just been humble that there's a big world and there's a lot of things that are complicated. Isn't it universal? I don't know much about it. We know a lot less than we actually think we know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Did it change you? Did Africa change you? Did it running the length of Africa change you? Definitely.

Yeah, it's definitely changed me. And if I'm being honest, I don't even know all the ways in which it's changed me. I'm still figuring a lot of it out. I think it's like anything in life you go for me anyway. You go through this intense period of kind of... I threw myself into this challenge where...

I didn't really know how to figure it out but I muddled through as best I can, got to the end of it and now I'm kind of still in the digesting all of the learnings and the lessons and figuring out okay well that didn't go quite go to plan why was that kind of working back from all of those things so you know Africa's definitely changed me a lot and you know probably my perspective is one of the biggest ones out of that. You're the only person that's ever run the length of Africa. Yeah yeah the full length yeah. Wow. How does that make you feel?

Um, again, like it's, you know, it's good, but it's also, that's not my value as a human. As much as you know, I'm not my achievements. And that was a something that I'm, you know, I'm proud that I did, but I don't believe that is me. You know, it's just, it's the thing I did to cool. Right. That's quite a spiritual thing to detach your achievements from your identity. Yeah. And I'm definitely not master that. I think there's definitely times where I will slip into that again. But I think when I really think about it, that's what I would try and be like, you know,

But there's nothing wrong with having some pride and identity around A, doing something to know the human is done. All the money raised, all the inspiration, all the followers, all the people that have been inspired by you. Nothing wrong to own that, is there?

No, I think probably more touching on the spiritual element of it is like I did all of those things, but I wouldn't. I'd be cautious to say that it was just me doing it. Like for me, that was God walking me through a lot of those situations. Yeah. So, you know, I was blessed with the power to do a lot of that stuff, but it's not necessary my or my own doing. So I wouldn't be sat there going, oh, I did all of these amazing things. It's like, yeah, okay, but you know, recognize what for me anyway, but I recognize what's going on there. It's not just you.

Sure. Marching out there and doing your thing and there was no outside. Right. Yeah. But I don't really talk about God much because I have a similar viewpoint to you that I'm stupid when it comes to God because I know nothing compared to what's out there. That being said though, there's millions of people who could have attempted to do what you do and you might believe that they had God on their side and they did nothing. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I definitely had the conviction to go out there and at least attempt it. So, you know, there's me and God, we're working together on that. It was a co-lab. It's a joint venture. It's a joint venture.

I like that, because I was talking to Andrew and Tristan about this, Andrew Tate, because they were grilling me about God and faith. And I was like, well, sometimes a problem with faith is it you outsource your own responsibility.

No, I've just got faith. You know, whatever's destined for me is destined for me because I've got a fundamental exercise. No, I hear that. I've spent most of my life in atheist, so I'm 27. I've probably spent the most 24, 25 years. It wasn't until I met my partner, I am, who were until I kind of got into that way of thinking. But I would have been exactly thinking the same thing. I'm definitely not saying I don't believe. I'm saying I don't know.

Like, you know, it's very easy to advocate personal responsibility. I hear that, yeah. And so, yeah, that would fit for me if you're like, well, you know, I've got to own my own life. But then what Andrew and Tristan said to me was, well, you know, when there's the hardest things in the world going on, like when you're only imprisoned in wrongly, you just don't question because you've got the faith and it just carries you through those things. Yeah. And that's something I've never had with me because I don't yet believe in the same way you do. Yeah, yeah.

What made you believe?

Oh, yeah, that's a good question. Emily's just going to picture it. No, do you know what she didn't picture? She really didn't picture it at all to me, to be fair. Like, when we met and she said, like, okay, she's a Christian and stuff. And I was like, you know, I met her. I was like, wow, she's beautiful. I really want to get to know her. So I just started asking about these kind of things. And I just kind of said, you know, I'm an atheist, you know, and she said she was a Christian. And I was like, yeah, but like, what about, you know, God hates gay people and whatever else is said at the time. I can't even remember.

You obviously knew a lot about her. Because she said about it, I wanted to learn about it and I wanted to learn about it from her perspective. So I went and did my research and I listened to people talking about it. I've listened to parts of the Bible and the Gospels and I think

For me, and this might be a controversial thing to say for other Christians, but for me, I'm still sitting largely in a similar space to you where I recognize I don't know a lot, but as someone that's been on this search for truth and this search for meaning for a lot of my life, I found more truth.

in Christian teachings in the Bible, then I have in any other space. And for me, that was a huge part in being like, okay, this is, you know, if I do the things that are the teachings that I'm being told here, does my life improve? Yes. You know, does my relationships prove? Yes. And it's all, became true in my life. I can see how they work.

And I'm not a Christian scholar, I definitely do know what you need to be sitting on podcast talking to you. Intensity about this because I got found out quickly, but for me, it speaks the most truth than anything I've looked around in a decent amount of spaces at this point.

Yeah, I mean, to be fair, the Ten Commandments are a great set of values to live by. Yeah. And if we all lived by that, this would probably have less war. Yeah. Less division, less polarity. Yeah. Well, I think for me as well, it's easy to get like, and I get like religion can get really divisive.

things but for me if you look at the way Jesus lived his life and it was mostly centered around love and if I can do that then I and if people can do that as much as we can and we won't be able to because we're flawed human beings and that's just the nature of our things work but that is for me I look at and go that's the most truth that I've ever seen show me something that's more true than that

Yeah, well, yeah. So, as the guy who's run over 10,000 miles, 350 days in a row, marathons every day, pissed blood. Yeah, yeah. Has the world gone soft?

It depends what you mean by soft or woke. What do you mean by that? I mean, is there quite a lot of entitlement in the world? Are we focusing on the kind of the wrong problems? Is there laziness? You know, the welfare state is getting bigger. There seems to be in certainly in some of the younger generations, a sense of I deserve without really working hard.

Yeah, I mean, I think there's things that I can recognise as it's definitely a thing. I guess more to how do we combat that is the kind of... That would be one of those questions. Yeah, yeah. Well, this is the complicated thing to answer. How do we combat that? Because... Is it complicated though?

What about do more hard things? I think do more hard things yes but also you know on the individual level people's lives are quite complicated and like the solution isn't normally just like one generic you know do hard things that might be the answer for a lot of people but I don't be the answer for some people

I see a lot of people that are in a lot of pain, they're having a really hard time, they've maybe been rejected by everyone in their life. A good example of this fruit would be, so I've been doing school talks I'm down the country last month, and I went to this school where when kids get kicked out of normal school, they go to this like, whatever it is, and then they get kicked out of that one and end up in this place, right? So it's like the, you know, for lack of a better term, the naughtiest of the naughty kids.

And what I saw there was quite incredible because they're no longer really focusing on teaching the kids maths in English and blah blah blah. The kids can come in and sleep all day at school if they want, they can play football, they can play outdoors, they can walk into math, they walk straight out if they want, don't care. But the primary focus of that school is to love the kids because they aren't getting love in their family, loves at home or whatever.

And I think that sometimes that's a point where, and I get it, but sometimes we can miss that point and be like, ah, work hard, work hard, or whatever it is, whatever we're prescribing. But a lot of the times when people are in that really painful sport, especially like you think young kids like that, that message is never going into their head until they're loved. So I think as much as I fully back the whole like, the entitlement infuriates me, I think it's a nonsense attitude to have about things.

But it's like, okay, we can recognise that problem but how are we, what are we going to prescribe to that? Are we going to tell people, stop being fucking lazy and start fucking moving? Or are we going to go, maybe some people do need to hear that but maybe some people do need to be loved and to be shown that love and then we build off that. So I mean, what do you think on that?

I think it's really powerful. I think you saying that. It doesn't make me feel guilty for asking the question because I do think sometimes, you know, for example, if you ask Andrew Tate, what should he do about being depressed? He'd say, go to the gym. And actually... I get it. It's a great clip for Instagram. It does also work. It does. Yeah. 100% does for a certain group. Yeah. Certain type of person, maybe more male, his target's male and also at certain times. There's no doubt.

Seven times out of ten, I just need to have a word with myself jump in the ice bike and I don't want to do it and afterwards I feel great. So I can put that advice over there and go that works. But what you've said is more powerful because I feel like love is the fuel for all humans and some people if they're devoid of that fuel. The only way they're going to get love is by being naughty or resort to crime or whatever because they're chasing trying to be recognised.

And it feels like a human right would be to be loved. And a lot of people don't even have that right because their parents don't even love them. Yeah, exactly. So like as a society, what do you do for those people? It's not like if you, you know, you do get those kids, they end up in, you know, mum and dad have gone through whatever their situation. Yeah. And they go through prison and it becomes a, you know, perpetuating cycle of, of, of struggle. So you can't just have a system where it's,

Andrew takes the world to get off the fucking arse. As much as like, you know, I've listened to some of his stuff before and been like, it's quite a compelling, you know, and he speaks in a really powerful way and I go, you know?

But the things he's like that, because I think, and I'm making conjecture here, but he's like that, I think, because he was seeking love from his dad that I'm not sure that he got. And so maybe that's made him a bit hard, and maybe he could have a little bit more compassion. Maybe he's one of these blokes that is wired that way, and that's, and I get that, because I think his type of message would work well for, I would listen to that and go, yeah, fucking, come on, let's go, you know?

I don't think he's going to hate everyone. He's very divisive, isn't he? A lot of people really don't like a lot of the stuff that he says, and it's probably white, you know? Because it's not... I don't think it's one man has the answers type of job. No. And also, back to the love thing, because as I'm more think here. Number one, to give love, you've got to be able to love yourself. And that's often the problem. If you can't...

feel it in you, how are you going to give it to others. And the second thing is sometimes giving love means you've got to let someone screw you over because they're in a place where they're not ready to receive it. Like this school I imagine the teachers are treated like shit.

but they're loving unconditionally. And my wife, we were talking about my kids earlier, my wife is all about unconditional love. She says, conditional love is really damaging other than no love, and it's unconditional love, but unconditional love is hard. Because it's saying, I love you regardless of what you do back to me. Well, I'll circle back to Jesus quickly here, but you think him on the cross, getting persecuted by his own people,

And he's like about to die, he's just been like, he starts pretty badly, right? And he's going, he's praying, going, you know, forgive them for what they don't know what they're doing, right? And you think, well, that is, if you look at the wider lesson from that, that is, if we can all live a bit more like that, then we can all, you know, we can all love each other a bit better. Is that not maybe what we want to achieve here? I don't know. I don't know. It's just a question.

Yeah. Why don't we then? Why is there so much hate and divisiveness and polarity and, you know, political extremism? Why is there so much of that in the world? We're in Testimonology. We're in Testimonology. We're just, so, so I'm like, I'm running it up. Yeah. Well, this is a pleasant surprise for me. Yeah. Because I'm only on question three. Yeah. I thought we'd be talking about resilience and grit and endurance. Yeah.

It's an important question, isn't it? It is. Well, I mean, humans with flawed, man, so I don't think are we ever going to get it right? Maybe not, you know? But I think a lot of these, you know, ancient wisdom can really help us learn from the past and learn from what we've gone through before. And I'd say getting rid of them would be a bad idea.

i.e. what they're doing with all the wisdom from all the books, getting rid of them. Well, just like, there's stuff to be learnt from what we've gone through before, I think, and it's easy to describe for whatever reason you want really, but keeping hold of them, I'd say, could do a pretty good job of keeping us on the right track moving forward. Can you be honest in a world full of lies? Can you be kind in a world full of hate?

Can you? Yeah, I mean it's bloody hard isn't it? Well you can try our best and I think we can try and set ourselves up in the best way possible. Will we ever get there? It doesn't appear to me like we can right now but maybe we can. What do you think?

I think it takes a very, I was going to say strong person. I think everyone can be strong. I think it takes a very focused, committed, clear mission based person where I think we lack that the most at the moment is politics. It feels like it's just so hard to be a politician because you can come in like wanting to change housing like we were talking about earlier because housing has got so expensive.

Yeah. But there's been like 12 housing ministers in the last 10 years, and they probably come in, you know, with all these ideals. Yeah. And then the system just corrupts or taints them. And in the end, they have to hustle just to make a bit of money and make a career. And they go from wanting to, you know, change things to just... Surviving. Yeah, exactly. So that's... If someone came into politics and went, I'm not taking any bribes. You can't buy me any glasses or any clothes.

not taking. Here's my mission for the next 10 years of this country. These are our policies. These are our values and I will not be broken. That's what it feels like it takes. We don't have many of those people left. So do you think any of, can you, can you recall any policy that you think I like that? Not right now. No, I mean. And why not?

That's a good question. I don't know. Maybe you're a product of your environment to a certain degree, aren't you? You know, if we all got invaded and this country was in war, that solidarity, that connection, that companionship, that fighting for a common goal would immediately come back. It would have to. And we've lost it maybe because we're arguing over such petty little things because life's been easy. And you know, you ran the whole length of Africa pissing blood.

and you probably look at us in Britain going, you've got it easy. You need your 20 degrees. What do you think? I think a lot of the Africans that I spoke to in the moment probably say similar thing to that.

But at the same time, we can't help we're not in World War 3. We can't help that society is quite good. So a lot of the entitlement and the wokeness comes from life being easy. But we all strive for life to be easy. You probably want life to be quite easy for your children. Well, do you though? Do you want a paradise? Actually do. Do hard shit. Do you actually want your life to be easy for your kids? I think the chimp human brain goes, I want it to be easy.

This is the paradox from what I said earlier, doing hard things. Because then, when it is easy, you become intelligent, you've got no resilience. So you don't really want it to be easy, do you? Are you going to make your four-year-old child's life really hard to grit them up? It's hard, isn't it?

Because you want to love them? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I definitely wouldn't want to make it too easy. I'll get that would be the instinct, I'll hunt like... Son or daughter? Son, well, yeah, step on step is my step son. Right. I wonder if it would change if you had a daughter. Yeah, yeah, maybe a little bit. Yeah. A little princess, maybe. Exactly, yeah. You'd be straight down to the school, having to go at the teachers instead of letting us solve our own problems. Yeah. The first boyfriend's getting a grip then.

Elbows yeah. Yeah big elbows. No, maybe I don't know maybe a little bit But yeah, it's an easy life for good life. That's the thing. I don't know. I don't think it is. I don't think it is. No, so you don't you wouldn't want your kids to have an easy life? No, I think a lot of people are being sold. You want them to be like adequately challenged. That's it. You know adequately challenged. Yeah, if you challenge too much you break. Well, it's like

Yeah, I mean, that is it. It's like, I'm going to go super metaphorical with it for a sec. But like, I remember listening to a podcast with, I think it was Lex Friedman and Jordan Peterson, and they were like talking about whether if you stare into the abyss, does the abyss stare back into you, or do you find the light in the abyss? And it's like, if you go through a really hard thing, you either like overcome it and conquer it and you grow out of it, or does it overwhelm you and kind of crush you?

You want them, you want to go through the challenge just enough so that you can overcome it and you grow from it and you move on. But if you bite off of it all in your shoe, then maybe that will come back and kind of mess you up and give you some mad trauma and that's what you don't want. But there's no balance in that fact. Sometimes you've got to fuck around to find out.

But surely we won't ever want to believe that they can own their challenges and trauma and, you know, turn it into something that's powerful and empowering. Everyone I reckon listening has had their own version of trauma that they've transcended that they've beaten. It was hard. They didn't think they were going to get through it and they got through it. So if their past self can do that, surely their future self can do it for future things. But how much, you know, you would like to think so, but how much there's only so much people can bear, you know,

Yeah, yeah, there is. I mean, I guess we all have a breaking point. Yeah, I mean, definitely. Yeah, I think you foolish think you don't. You know, definitely do. Yeah. But at the same time, surely you've got to believe that you could be anything that's thrown you away. Gambling, drugs, alcoholism, you know, things that people have to deal with every day. There's cases of those things breaking people. There's cases of people after 25 years of those addictions being cleaned the next day forever.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's quite incredible what humans and the human spirit can overcome and come apart with, but there's, I think there's, I think anyone that's really gone through like big moments of suffering will know that like, oh, I can't bear unlimited suffering. You know, there's definitely limits to this game. And, you know, the world could be cruel out there.

That was the question I was going to ask you, because you're Mr. Endurance. 10,000 miles. Is there a limit to your own endurance? 100%, yeah. What, 10,000 to two? Yeah, I mean, I was dangling around the line a bit for a while around there.

I mean, there's just different types of endurance, and I probably shouldn't really say this because it's part of the whole, but when you choose to endure, it's a totally different thing because, you know, like, I've gone and I've gone right, I'm gonna run this 10,000 miles, but realistically, by a few days here and there, when we're in the middle of nowhere, at any point, if things really got too tough for me, I could just check out and go, like, I'm done, going back home.

But there's, you know, the type of suffering that I saw a lot more in Africa was the type of suffering where it's like, you know, born into extreme poverty. Young kids playing around in like swamps, basically, with malnourished pot bellies because they only get third part. That's...

the type of suffering that you, you know, is put on you. I think that's the wildly different concepts, I think. So as much as, yeah, maybe Mr. Endurance, man, or whatever, yeah, but I chose to do all of it, you know. Right. It's not like any, it's not like the Africa thing in any way, or something that was like necessary, put on me as much. It was like, that was a choice. So if there is an all-loving God, why do we have this extreme poverty and cruelty in Africa?

It's one of the most commonly asked questions, I think isn't it? Yeah, I've never asked it. It's like the things that people really have to say about God and... Why did little children, you know, get innocent kids?

No, I mean, I really don't want to butcher the answer to this. I'll try my best. I think it's a complicated thing. I think we have free will as humans and we are flawed. So we're always going to create kind of this evil thing is always going to happen in this, in that sense.

If we didn't, if there was no such thing as evil or in this world and we were just forced to love each other, then is that even really love? If that's all you've ever had, you're forced to do it. It doesn't even really mean that you're not choosing to do it.

So I think there's that and then there's also like the kind of thing that we spoke about earlier when I come back to that is I don't know what God's plan is with everything the universe is obviously infinitely complicated in a way that we as humans were never really made to understand and for me the question isn't like oh if there was a God wise there are some all of these terrible things it's like

I know that God's plan is the best for us. I just don't know how painful that is going to turn out to be because, you know, there is a lot of painful things that go on in this world. There's no denying it, but I don't know how it all works, man.

Me neither. I'm fascinated to try and figure out. It seems a human thing that we're trying to make everything mean something. Yeah, yeah. Find meaning. And sometimes I catch myself making something mean something and go, does it really mean that? Have I just made that up? Yeah. Am I even smart enough to figure out what this is going to be anyway? Yeah, I still try and figure everything out. Yeah, well, I do the same thing. And then I listen to people online that are way smarter than we talk about. And I go, why am I even trying?

Do you know what I mean? Just keep running throughout the country. Yeah, maybe just stay in your lane whilst you know what I mean?

Yeah, but this is the great thing about podcasts and stuff like this. You can learn from people you learn from. Yeah, exactly. And you meet people at different points of the journey as well. Like, I like to listen to the, to the, like the Jordan Peterson's of the world and stuff and watching him talk about God. And I go, Oh, wow, that's fascinating there. But I also know that when I first listened to him when I was like 18 or 19 or something, I'd, I would only be able to understand maybe a third of what he said. Cause it's just also like abstract and complicated. I can even get it.

So maybe like people that speak about things they're slightly dumb. Maybe pick a few people up in that early stage with like, I can't understand what the people that actually know what they're talking about are talking about. But that's kind of what hopefully what I'm going for. Yeah. Well, I mean, I had Jordan on the show when he blew up.

What did you think of him? He's quite controversial these days, don't he? Yeah, he is. He is, is he? Sometimes it's just media. I found him intense, and I like intensity, so I don't have a problem with that.

The experience wasn't great because we were locked in, my videographer was locked in a room, wouldn't let him set up the eight into the time. And then some guy just chatted Tim for 20 minutes when he was supposed to be in with me. So it was all a bit of a rush. I found him intense, serious.

But yeah, I quite like people who take things seriously. Yeah. Yeah. And you see, what's interesting in the world right now is he's a massive influence on men has been. And then you've got Andrew Tate, who's a massive influence on men. And you know, you've got Jordan Peterson, the intellectual, and you've got Andrew Tate, who can speak to the masses. Yeah. Who can literally have 12 year old kids understanding his message. Yeah. So you've got quite an interesting cultural thing going on with two very different people. Yeah, I mean, what do you think about Andrew Tate?

That's supposed to be my question. No, I don't mind sharing. I mean, I've got to know him very well personally. And, you know, I'm not a female, therefore, I'm maybe not as sensitive to the misogyny that others are. I don't know if he's innocent or guilty. The way I see life is,

You're innocent until proven guilty, and so are you. And if something was accused to me, I'd like to think that you would see me as innocent until otherwise proven guilty. And I'd take the same stand with Russell Brand when everyone went for him and all of that.

Yeah, that all seemed to go away though, didn't it? For now, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Weird how that works. So, you know, I try and take that view with everyone. I try not to colour my perspective of them unless it's been proven. Yeah. And I look at the proof and I agree with it.

You know, today there's... I saw someone on Instagram. It's probably the first person I've unfollowed. She basically said, anyone who voted for Trump, you know, they're voting for this evil crime and this satanic thing and this evil thing. And, you know, I don't accept this.

And it's like, I didn't vote, I'm not in America, but I thought, you've just judged, you don't even know. And that's a big stream. So I think, at the moment, it's innocent until he's proven guilty. And then if he's proven guilty and the evidence is compelling, well, then I'll put my hands up and say, okay, I need to change my viewpoint. I think he's got trauma from a strong male father figure in his life growing up. And I think he uses that anger

quite well to become successful in terms of strong body good at fighting and wealthy. Not bad things to aim for. Along the way he says some wild shit. Even I look at it good.

and but that doesn't trigger me too much because I think sometimes it's a kind of a joke yeah and you know I take my work seriously but I don't really take myself too seriously yeah so you started taking the piss out of me I'm not

Like, one of my friends started shaming me in front of people, look at Rob, Rob's never lifted in his life, do you even lift? I'm obviously not a bodybuilder. But like, so fucking what? I don't want to be. I've never taken steroids. All you fuckers have, you know? So my balls are probably bigger than yours.

And so, like a lot of the stuff he says that wines people up probably doesn't wind me up. And I think all these young kids and all these men would not be clinging on to his message if there wasn't this major issue with masculinity in the world. And I think culturally he's hit on it. And so a lot of people say, well, he's really bad for boys growing up. But if they weren't lost, they wouldn't be looking to him. And I think that it is hard for young boys to know what a man is.

I think that's pretty fair. Like if you go to school and you're taught that there's 60 genders, I'm not against any identity. But I think there's male and female. But my son came back at age 12, where he's probably just about to go through puberty, probably quite confused anyway, and he's being taught at school the 60 genders.

That is... I'm all for how... Identify how you want. I honestly do mean that. However you want to identify and call with it. But don't confuse my son age 12. That's a problem for me. Yeah. Yeah.

So that actually happened, so he was at school and they wanted to teach them about 60 genders. I don't think they sat and went through every single gender in school, but they're teaching this stuff of how many genders there are, and that seems really confusing at that age. As a parent, what do you do about that?

Give him to my wife to show. Yeah, I mean, you know, if it was something he did come to me and say that. And I said, you know, how people identify as how they want, but your sex is very clear, you know, and you are a male.

I'm clear about that. Guy'd have a look in the mirror. You're very clear about that. I don't let anyone. Because it's just like growing up as a kid. And you know, I know in some ways life is a bit easier than when I was a kid. And it's also in a lot of ways a lot harder and a lot more confusing. Yeah. When we were growing up, it was like, okay, if you got bigger than me, if you got bigger than I have. And how do I get those girls? Yeah, yeah. Like they were my problems. Yeah. And like now it's just

What do you think about it? I love the way you spun it. You just wound me up with it. What do I think about it? I think this is super old war for me to get into it. Do it, do it. But just be yourself. No, no, I think like...

So my number one stance on anything like this would always be love first. So yeah, obviously I'm a Christian. I believe in male and female. I know that there is some, there is some few cases where that does seem to be like legitimately getting blurred.

in there. I always would have like if anything I think as Christians it's our job to love anyone that's like going through a confusing time like they're not sure what their identity is in that sense. It's our job to treat them with maximum amount of love possible.

And I would really try and refrain from any kind of like judgment on that group of people. But I do understand that when it gets into the school system and children, then it does become quite inflammatory for parents. And I'm not there yet, so I can't fully relate, but I can understand how that would become a bit where you'd be like, oh, I've had enough now.

Yeah, I think it's super confusing for the young people out there that have that kind of mixed messaging going around. But yeah, I guess my messages would be like, love first and then let's have a conversation out of that instead of this kind of culture war that gets created around, which I think maybe actually just pushes people even further into the extremes.

Yeah, and the algorithm's only reward polarizing extreme conflict. Yeah, yeah. If you say, hey, hey, I've got a balanced view. Yeah, exactly. This is really a bad show. Yeah, it's better if I'm to come on a podcast and be like, yeah, well, do you know what? Yeah, fuck that group of people.

Fuck that group of people. It's not very entertaining to come here and go, no, do you know what? I understand this group of people. I think we should love them. And this, I understand your point of view as well. And I think we should love you as well. And it just doesn't, it just doesn't mix well. But that's maybe part of the problem that like a New Orleans conversation is a bit, it's not, you know, it's not click wherever you know, it's difficult to have it. But at least in a podcast, you can have it. Yeah. This is why I like this medium. Yeah. Because, you know, I'm on question four of 24.

Yeah, yeah. Because we've let this go and we have had a nuanced conversation. Yeah, yeah. We have had, I think this, but I also can appreciate this. And so, you know, maybe Trump, maybe Trump won Trump on the election because of Joe Rogan.

because Harry's been to it. I haven't listened to all of it. Yeah. But my point is going to be not so much about what Trump said, just the fact that he went on Joe Rogan, 100 million views. He went on Theo Fine. He went on Patrick Bet David. You add those three up, probably quarter of a billion views adding the Spotify and everything, maybe even half a billion views. Right. Harry's didn't do any of that. And then Joe Rogan endorsed him. And he only won, I think, by six or seven million

votes. It was 71 million to 66 million, I think when I looked, or 65. And Joe Rogan is a place where you can go and have a three hour, completely new ones to conversation, not black or white, not clickbait, not polarizing, you'll go everywhere.

And so I just think hallelujah for this format and for these long conversations. No, I totally agree actually. I think these are needed more, especially like you look at Instagram and TikTok is just pure... Yeah, it is. ...trivial. Yeah, absolutely trivial. It is. We sort of have to play the game a bit, because if we have a shit thumbnail and title, this will get no. Yeah, no. I mean, we've done the whole YouTube thing. Yes, it is. You have to play that game. And it makes a huge difference on what gets watched or not. It does.

Yeah. You know, I've had some chats with some really creative RTP pulling, you know, pop stars and in music and stuff like that about this sort of paradox between, you know, wanting to do good art and saying, here's my good art. Yeah. And not some...

clickbait thumbnail and whatever else, but without the thumbnail and the title, it doesn't even get viewed. You know, without you doing all your social media and all your interviews and everything, you know, you're just running on your own through Africa. Yeah. No, I mean, it is a...

It's a hard one to kind of... Are you okay playing that game? You know, being a bit of a whore on the front end to get... Well, honestly, it's something I thought about probably quite a lot since I've been back because, you know, is that a good game to be playing? Like, I understand it's like, in some ways it's just marketing, isn't it? But for me anyway, especially post-Africa...

I have spent a lot of time thinking, like, I'm going to build this platform now. I best use it for something worthwhile. Like, if I'm going to take people, you know, because that's essentially what we're trying to do here with all of these content kind of stuff. We're trying to take people's attention, right? That's what we want is, you know, I'm going to, I want all these people's attention. It's quite self-indulgence, quite narcissistic, being like, I'm worthy of this attention. Yeah.

And I think for me a lot of it is like well if we are going to try and do that then we do need to try and somewhat pass a good message on and then pass or pass something good on from it. It can't just be a...

Oh, I'm running the length of Africa. Come and donate and come and, or come and buy my stuff. I'm sponsored by these people, blah, blah, blah. It needs to be a bit more like, okay, what you actually provide into the world, Russ. You know, otherwise I don't want it. I actually don't want it. If it's not, if I can't figure out how to provide something good, I don't want attention for attention sake. It's not, it's just, what's the point in that? Yeah, I think, I think that's a really good way of looking at it and unfortunately the algorithms just,

reward attention for tension say yeah and yeah I mean it is it is it's like a self thing because you see you watch creators go on this they go oh I did this and people really loved it so now I'm gonna up the ante and I'm going yeah and I think sometimes that is how the and Andrew takes probably way smarter than me so don't like disrespect him too heavily but it's kind of how people end up in the

saying the man is shit ever. It's because they know that stuff bangs. Yeah. So it's like, yeah, what should we do today? Let's call these people faggots and whatever he's saying and like, yeah, like you go on his Twitter and it's just like this person's a faggot and this person's a, he's getting mad at the man. Yeah. And it's like,

Pretty much every ist, racist, every ikomaphobe. He's just picking it off. That's why I think I try and detach myself from my achievements or my social media too much because I don't want to get sucked into that. I know I'm going to times, I don't want to get sucked into it too much.

Right. But games the game and all that, you know. Yeah. We've got to put food on the table and make a career out of something. Yeah. Yeah. I think this paradox of life will never end. Yeah, nice. Yeah. Just trying to navigate it as best as possible, isn't it? I think about the analogy I always think about as an artist. You could make the most amazing art. And if no one's looking at it, is it even art? It's an expression of self, but surely every artist wants their work to be seen and loved.

Yeah. Well, yeah, and I mean, it's an interesting point to like, how would you measure success? How do you measure success of your podcast? Do you measure the success on the amount of people to watch it, the impact that it has for the people to watch it? Like, how do you actually, how do you guys do that? Yeah, that's a very good question.

Numbers is so easy to look at and go the numbers doing well. So we're doing well Yeah, and so for me the measure is did I feel really good about the episode? Yeah, I did we have a good conversation and how do I feel afterwards and if there wasn't much from them I feel a bit empty Yeah, or if I was chasing a bit sometimes I'm like I've got to get something out of this and I chase something a bit gimmicky. Yeah, yeah, I feel a bit dirty. Yeah

I don't want to play that game, I don't have to. But I have got that barometer whereby I feel dirty if I pull out a gimmick. So it's always afterwards. People surprise you. But if I feel like I'm feeling really good about this, and if I feel like this is a great piece of art, I'll put it up.

Yeah, I'll do a thumbnail and a title that might pick out the racy bits, but I honestly won't give a fuck if it gets fixed or not. However, I will still have to go to certain guests, because I know they get views to keep the channel alive, because I'm paying David, I'm paying all the staff back at the office, I'm paying all the short form editors, you know, we've got all the equipment, paid my driver, it's a long fucking trip for me.

So, ideally, I have really meaningful conversations with really interesting people and we create great art, and sprinkled in between, I've got to play the game and get some views. Yeah, that's it, because you can't, you know, I'm sure you don't care about the views, but for example, if it came out and was like, oh, 100 views, 50 views, 50 views. That would make you feel sure about it. Oh, shit, yeah.

You know, here's the thing. If you sell one book or a million books, I've written 19 books. If you sell one book or a million books, it doesn't change one single word in the book. But if you sell one book or a million books, it would completely wildly change how you fail about that book. It's the same book.

Well, at least with this, we can edit it. And if it doesn't do well first time, we can edit it and change it. The book's already... I'm pointing over there because you've booked some of that. But that book is done. So did you get a sense of, I feel good about this book when you sell copies? You know, obviously you've been on some big shows and you've sold a load. Or can you honestly detach from that and you don't care?

I think I've done a pretty good job of attaching from it. You know, I've put it out there and I don't even know what the harmony is sold or anything. I don't literally don't even like it. Let's shout it out. So let's sell a few more. Yeah, it's called the hardest keys of mine over miles. So it kind of documents like...

a lot of Africa and how it happened, all of the behind-the-scenes stuff on that, but also quite a lot of the backstory of how I came to even thinking about it and the journey of my younger years and all that kind of stuff. I'm proud of it. It's a good book. Most people are ready. Anyway, you've got the odd one or two to leave a shit review. Pretty much everyone that's ready has said that it's inspired them or helped them in some ways. So happy days, but it's out there. It's not me, it's my book.

I try to tell you how it's not, I like that, it's not me, it's my book. But if you sell a lot of copies to get a good feeling inside, I feel like I'm fairly indifferent. My publisher probably hate you. Fairly indifferent to how it is. Is that a good feeling indifference?

In difference about the book, I think, is a fine feeling because I'm not defined by the book sales. That's not... You're allowed to get excited if you do that. I'm allowed to get excited and I do get excited, but I think I'm trying to proportionate excited. There's some things in life to get excited about and there's other things that are like, oh cool, that's great. We're all invited by different things, selling loads of books. If people read the book and that genuinely helps them

that would be more, I'd be more buzzing about that than selling loads of coffees, I think. Yeah, and that's something, I agree with that. That's something I've come to learn a lot more in recent years, because you're so, you are really not that in control of your views, unless you learn the algorithm and you become an algorithm hall, which you refuse to do. And I know others that have become that and they become very successful, are refused to do that.

I'll play certain games, but I refuse to be an algorithm here. So what that means is sometimes I'm going to be like, oh, that didn't get the views I wanted. Sometimes I'm going to be surprised. But the thing that keeps you going through the whole time is when you read the comments and people love the work and people say that your content really helped them.

help them through depression. In my instance, it's a lot about helping people make money. That's there all the time. And sometimes you have a 10, 20,000 viewer, but it helps a lot of people. Sometimes you have a 2 million viewer and it just didn't really have much impact. Yeah. I think, well, it's like the authenticity element of it all as well, isn't it? It's just, do you want to sell yourself for the views? Maybe you do. The thing is, maybe not, but if it's your living,

Yeah, I'll get it and some people would probably go down that route like this is just my job. There's loads of people doing it in obviously loads of different ways and like everyone's on their own path but I don't know. It's like you can play to the algorithm so much that you just end up moulding your personality to the algorithm. And then when it changes you've got to change and when it changes you've got to change. And it's like I don't know if that doesn't necessarily feel like the right way.

Not for me. For me anyway, I would want to necessarily do it a little bit more. We're going to act on the values that I have and we're going to make this stuff that I believe is going to be important or that I want to make and hopefully that coincides enough with the algorithm that some of it works anyway. I agree. I mean, you've been doing this a long time. How long have you been saving this? Nine years. Wow. Nine years.

um, part time with all my other interests. But yeah, we've had some ups and downs, some highs and lows and courted controversy. And it's, I mean, Andrew Tate blew us up. Yeah. Fucking blew us up when, you know, so we went wildly viral. And then this shadow ban that shadow ban that show, David, I got him on when people were starting to actually see that some of the things he was saying was true. And he wasn't just a wacko. Yeah. Blue us up. Shadow ban, shadow ban, shadow ban.

Then you're like, okay, I'll go back to entrepreneurs, millionaires and billionaires. I've had 23 billionaires with great stories. The billionaires never get any views. Really? And they've probably got the best lessons to go. Exactly. So, yeah, it's been like, you remember those old graphic equalizers that go up and down like that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what it's been like. Interesting.

So as the guides run the length of Africa, the only guide in the world, how do you build resilience? How do you build resilience? I'm going to steal that. I heard someone else say this before, but they were talking about giving yourself, building enough evidence in yourself to know that you can do something and that will give you the confidence. That's what confidence is. And then on the resilience, the resilience end of things for me is,

It's mostly like a way up right between this is how I like negotiated things in my brain. I've got the pain of the moment right now which is you know either pissing blood or just being robbed at gunpoint or I've been held hostage in the jungle. I've got this back injury and I can't sleep and blah blah blah. I've gone through the desert or whatever.

And then I've got the pain of quitting. And it's like, ah, what ones do you want, mate? Because you've got to pick one. And for me, the pain of quitting was just always way more intense than anything else. So I'm not saying that I would never quit. I'm saying that I made quitting so painful that it meant I could bear quite a lot before I would even think about quitting. That's very powerful. Yeah. Yeah. Endurance. How do you build endurance? Is that same as resilience? Or is that different?

No, I'd say it's different. I think like the endurance the physical endurance for me is literally just Practice practice practice like thousands of hours out on the road running just building that evidence that shows me that I'm capable and just like

one step at a time I didn't start off an amazing runner or anything but I've been out there an awful lot so I guess it's like with you in business right like similar kind of principle just you go put yourself out there you try try try you fuck it up a little bit then you learn from it and then you keep going keep going again 17 years later it's kind of mental what can happen yeah it's just purely just a reps thing wow yeah I tried to simplify everything as much as possible like

But I think simply profound and the good thing about that is anyone can do reps. There's no secret recipe. Anyone can do more reps today than they did yesterday. I think one of the biggest things that stops people doing reps is they're scared of failing, they're scared of the embarrassment of failing, but the amount of times that I've failed doing so much stuff.

You know, I went into Project Africa, right, at the start. I had 10 grand, less than 4% of the budget. I had all this pressure. I had people work with me like, well, I couldn't pay, yeah. I borrowed money up to my eyeballs, got myself in loads of debt, halfway across the world. And I had no, like, I'd failed in almost like every other business dispute I'd ever been in. So fail, in fact, you like fail, fail, fail. And then eventually, like, you learn enough.

that you'll get it and it's like no one remembers any of those failures that no one even knows about most of them they're all done undercover but like they see the success that I might like with Africa it's like man I've felt so much before that it's actually hilarious and what is your attitude to failure now?

It's still bowel. I'm definitely still scared to fail out with some things, I think. But I always try to do try and remind myself that my biggest successes have grown out of my biggest failures. And failing is not necessarily the enemy. It's often just the enemy of doing it. It's the enemy of actually going out there and putting yourself on the line saying, I think I can do it. We'll find out.

Yeah, what's your relationship with failure? Have you failed a lot younger years or? Yeah, I've been scared of failure my whole life. Yeah. And probably up to the age of 27, I would just avoid it at all costs. Yeah. Or only do anything if I knew I was guaranteed. Yeah. Whether it was getting a job or asking a girl out or anything, I would never do it unless I was 99% sure I would get a yes. Yeah. And I just, you know, people say,

Oh, I don't regret things. I don't live like that. I always ask, I'll ask you, you know, if you have any regrets and most people say I don't have regrets. Well, I do. Yeah. Yeah. And one of them is there were so many chances I never took. So many questions I never asked. Yeah.

because I was just scared of them saying no in the shame. Because I couldn't detach between, they're not rejecting me, rob the human, it's just the moment, the time, the occasion. Which is where I learned that identity attachment that you understand.

And then when my dad had this major nervous breakdown, he got beaten up by the police, he got sectioned, he got diagnosed with bipolar, we couldn't see him for months, he was really fucking ill. And I just felt such intense shame that I just thought, well, what if I got to lose? And what does it matter if I go bust? And what does it matter if I

trying to blag a job that I don't really know what I'm doing, and they find me out. What does it fucking matter? And then from age 27, I'm just starting trying shit, trying to start selling, marketing, launching, podcast, launching businesses, going into a state agent's blog into buy property when I had no fucking clue. And that's actually the quickest way to learn, is just like on the job doing it. You can visualize running 10,000 miles, or you can fucking get running.

Yeah, get trying and figure it out along the way. Yeah, that's largely what I did with my plan. Changed a lot and there were so many things that we were like, ah, never thought of that or, you know, there's something, but yeah, no, it's exactly like you said you just go out there, you ain't gonna have all the answers to start with, but if you've got enough passion and desire to figure it out along the way. Yeah, and this whole thing we've touched on about serious, you know, I said how intense and serious Jordan Peterson and David Goggins are and were.

I have this theory. Be fucking serious about your work, but not serious about life and what people say to you and shit you read online. So if you don't take yourself seriously, but you do take your work seriously, I think that's a good combination. That sounds like really strong advice actually. I don't think I've ever quite thought of it like that, but that makes a lot of sense.

Yeah, because sometimes I, you know, obviously meet some pretty successful, intense, cool, interesting people and like, I'm, I'm driving down on flying. I'm thinking, I hope they like me. Yeah. Well, if they don't like me, what if they think I'm a twat? What if they think I'm a shit into you? But so fucking what? Yeah. If they don't like me, that's their fault, not mine.

No, it's an interesting concept. I like it. I like it. Take your work seriously, but chill out and everything else. But you seem like quite laid back, you smile a lot. You know, you left the door open, you took a really loud piss, you're obviously, shit, like that. Exactly, you don't give a fuck. You know, you welcome us into your home, you got, like, I get the sense that, you know, there's a lot of shit you've seen in the world that's really fucking awful. So, when you don't have to be like that and you can just have fun, surely, that's good, isn't it?

I mean, honestly, that was like a large part of my approach to the whole, to the whole mission was, I can't, I don't know about other people, I can't level, uh, operate at that level of intensity for 352 days in a row. So I'm taking my rest bikes wherever I fucking have them.

You know, I'm trying to get laughing without every, like, any opportunity, you know, anything to just kind of ease off, because the nature of it is that there's certain parts that do have to be intense, like what you said with the work, it's like, you know, you have to turn up to work and you do have to be serious about it and you do have to get it done. It's like, yeah, right, when it's go time, it's fucking go time, boys. When it's not go time, it's absolutely not fucking go time.

Yeah, you're intense with both. Intensely chill out a lot or intentionally run through that brick wall head first. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. And on the note of intensity, right? Who wins out of you and David Goggins doing a straight up run until you drop me?

You reckon you can take him? Because he's an intense guy, and he runs all these ultra-moutheons and 60 miles a day. But you think you can outrun him. Respect. Respect. Respect. You're allowed to be conned. With respect, you beat David Goggins. With respect. Are you going to call him out then? I could. I mean, the thing is Goggins. Look, what is it? How old is he now? 48? Yeah, maybe. I'm entering into the whole Jake Paul Mike Tyson, baby. What do you mean?

I'm 27. Oh, you feel a bit of sympathy for him? No, I just like... Because he might be motivated if he's older than you. He's 48, and 10 years ago, you know, we're maybe talking about something different, but he's 48. Age is real, wouldn't you? Yeah. I'm sure he's still actually pretty at it.

Yeah, but I think it would be compared. I think the internet would love you versus David Gorgens. I'm down. Mr. Gorgens, if you would like to. I will happily take part. You will not run David Gorgens. I will outrun you. But you're going to need a longer continent than Africa. Is there a longer continent than Africa?

We can do it wherever you want. I'll come to your house with you in your back garden. Anywhere, anytime. Let me know. I want it. This is going to be a long Facebook Live if we're Facebook Live. It'll be like live for three years. It'll still be running.

No, I think that would be interesting, wouldn't it? I would love to. I don't think we'll get a nibble on it, but we can, but try. Alright, I would love to see that. I want it. Call Miss David. Come on, David, you've been on... USA versus the UK, the ultimate showdown. I've always had that. I think we're starting something, eh? We could dust the yanks. We got them. We got them. I'll do it for the country. Well, we need something to be positive on.

Right, so we do quick fire rounds on disruptors. What's a 30 second or less tip for developing great mental strength? Quite I've taken up half the time by breathing. 30 second or less. It will start from when you use your first word. We'll still let you have your 30. Tip four, what was it? Tip for developing mental strength? Good mental strength, yeah. Good mental strength. Do progressively hard things repetitively, continuously, and you'll gradually get a lot better than you ever thought. Nice.

Are you running away from something in your life? Oh, here we go. The therapy session is started. Right, yeah, we're doing more than 30 minutes on this. Am I running away from something in my life? I don't think so, but maybe. Maybe we all are. No, I think

It's a common thing for long-distance dramas to be running away from something. I would rather ask you this. I actually think other people are probably a better place to answer this than when you ask the person. What are your thoughts? We've only chatted for an hour or so, maybe you've seen some stuff online, but do you think I'm running away from things?

And I trust that you'd actually tell me if you thought I was. I would tell you and I thought you were. I'm not picking up anything from what I've researched or I feel more like you're running towards something not working. I would hope that's the case, but you never to be too sure about these things.

What's your biggest trauma that you've ever experienced in your life? The biggest trauma. I had some quite rough years when I was younger with my parents. I felt quite badly and I didn't speak to them for a long time. I moved out when I was quite young. It was bad at the time, but relatively speaking, it's a pretty minor thing to go through. My dad had similar to your dad, some big mental health problems when I was younger as well. I found out quite trauma when I was a kid.

yeah yeah because sometimes that motivates running away from something but what about this what maybe you're running towards being loved see i think that's potentially that is it um but i'm also like is that a bad thing i don't think is you know i actually think that's a good thing to be done you like run towards being loved um i definitely think when i was younger i had um

This, I don't know if you've ever felt this, like this force that wanted to like prove myself and I wanted to prove other people wrong about me and I wanted to go and show people like, you're all fucking wrong about me. You're like, I'm that guy, whatever. But what I think I've come to find is that

That's super powerful, man. It's like jet fuel. It's like really flaws. Nothing will get you off your ass like that. Whether it's like a good one that has a heartbreak or you've been rejected by this person, family, whatever it is, all of that stuff.

But if you chow down on that too long, it's pretty toxic. So it's good for a bit, use it wisely, because once you start basing your whole life off that, I think you become quite a toxic person. But if you want to use it every now and again for a little scuba dive into the fucking pain cave, then maybe you can get away with it.

Yeah. Yeah. I understand that completely. I can relate to that. I think it's very powerful motivator, but just don't let it consume you. Because in the end, it's about them and not you. Yeah. Yeah. And that's dangerous. Super dangerous. But also can help you get some really big stuff done really quickly. Yes. Goodness. Yeah. Right. Okay. Back to the quick fire round. Cool. What is the daily routine of the world's longest endurance athlete?

Do you get up at 2am and have a nice bath? No, none of that. It's daily routine at the moment. It's super mixed because I'm off doing, you know, a book this week and then school tours and then all of this kind of other stuff. So it's super scatty at the moment. But in Africa, for example, it would be wake up, generally probably 8am. I would always try and prioritize as much sleep as possible. It's the best way to recover. So I would never, generally, never be one of these early, early,

Five a.m. Get out there. Nah, fuck off me, I'm sleeping. Yeah, I wake up eight, maybe running by nine, and then I do 20 kilometres, have breakfast, another 20 kilometres, have lunch, another 20 kilometres, have dinner, go see, done. That's a good clip. Yeah. I'll wake up at eight and then 20 kilometres something, 20 kilometres something, 20 kilometres something. Done. Right. Yeah. How does, what does Emily think of all this?

I mean, does Emily fit in? No, she does. Well, you know, relationships always, like, we've really tried to navigate these things well. And I think that's actually why we're here. Why we're still here is because, you know, we are normal people here today. We still have arguments like everyone, everyone relationship does. We're still pulling each other in different ways. I want you to do something. She wants you to do that blah, blah, blah.

But I think the one thing that we are really good at is we'll have our argument, we'll have our discipline about X, Y, Z, but we will come and chat about afterwards. And the best probably marker for us is that our relationship gets better after these things happen. Like we do actually work through it. So yeah, I mean, she is great. She's supported me so much through all of my stuff and she continues to even, I think yesterday or the day before I was like,

So, babe, what do you think about our poll to poll mission? She's like, look, if you want to do it, you can do it. She's very much on board with support in whatever it is that I'm doing it. I think as long as we know that we're on the same page of why I'm doing it or what I'm trying to achieve, then we're good. How long have you been with your misses? Oh, 18 years. 18 years. So, I mean, ups and downs, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. And she was with me when I was

you know, struggling and she's supported me the whole way. Yeah. So yeah, that probably doesn't get enough attention. It's not. I remember when I met David Goggins and was talking to him and he said, sometimes he has to sit his wife down and go, look, I've got to go. I'll be back in a year. I've got to go. I want you to love me, but you can't get my way. I've got to go. Yeah. And you know, wives and sometimes husbands are very driven people. Yeah.

They sometimes have to put themselves second or third and let the guy go and do his crazy mission. I think that's the difficult part about it, but also you're right. It's serving the other person's best you can. I think that's what love is really isn't it? So we try to navigate that as best as possible. Obviously when I'm away for expanse time then it's no point for changing it. It doesn't come with its problems or its tricky moments because it does. But I love it's bits and we work for it as best as we can.

That's great. You've run the whole of Africa and everyone knows it. But what is a secret you've never shared or a story you've never told? Oh, that's it. That's the clips. Who's on clips team? That's a good one. A secret that I've never shared. I don't really think I'm a secret kind of guy.

or a story you've never told. The stories that I haven't told is normally for good reason. That's why I won't. I drove a long way. Stories that I've never told.

I can't even think, mate. I can't even think of the story that I've not told. A story that I've not told, well, I kind of have a little bit, but I'll tell this one, because I haven't gone into it properly online before, is when I was in the Congo, I met this kitty, about eight years old, and he, we met the snake hunter in Guinea, and we met this kitty in Congo, and he went out hunting rats every day.

And I met him on the side of the road. I've actually got a photo of him. I'll show you afterwards. I've got a photo of him. He's still on the side of his two great big rats. Scuffed up clothes like all ripped up clothes and everything. And when I saw that kid, that really kind of had this thing going on in my mind where I was like, I really admired him in a load of ways because you think

for an eight-year-old to be going out working hard, he's grafting, he's sacrificing himself to provide for his family at that age. I think like, wow, that's incredible, isn't it? Like, how many are you holding this schedule would you get doing that? I thought probably not many.

Then at the other side of it, I'm thinking the amount of suffering and like, you know, he's not getting an education, he's risking his life in the jungle every day, all this kind of stuff that he's going through is that right? And is that something that I should be like admiring and endorsing about culture? Because that's a culture that's kind of let that happen. So that was like about 120, 130 days into the mission where I was

One of the first times where I've really sat there, I remember running for a few days thinking about that, just soon on it going like, what, because it kind of bleeds into a more of a wider thing of like, okay, if you could go into a country like the Congo, for example, like colonisers have done like the Belgium and or England in Africa, we've done a lot of it.

and help them with stuff. Is that a good thing to do? Or is it a bad thing to do? And what the pros and what the cons? And you end up in this rabbit hole of thinking that that situation is a bit more complicated than the first six. So before I went out of colonization, that's a terrible thing. We should never have done that.

And then after I'm like, huh, is it? Yeah, I mean, there's two, there's pros and cons to it and super complex and it's not quite as straightforward as going. It's a bad thing or it's a good thing. Yeah. So that story about Akidin and Congo always makes me think about that. What do you think, colonization? Good or bad?

I agree with you. I think that so many things in life we think are simple because we put our own values or vantage point on it and in reality it's all very different. And if you go over and just claim a nation and murder a load of people, I don't see the good in that.

If you improve their lives significantly over time, I see good in that. And I imagine you've had both extremes of colonization. Yeah, yeah. I think I mean, why are you doing it as well? It's just for ego and power doesn't feel like necessary.

Yeah, I think it kind of also speaks to the wider, like, political stance that a lot of you see, like, all of these election campaigns take place and it's like simplifying really complex things and it'll be like, oh, you know, you don't want immigration, for example, therefore, you're racist.

On the other side it will be like, you know, you want equal rights or you want whatever thing and therefore you're a woke, you know, idiot what blah blah blah and it's like, you see a lot of that, I see a lot of that going on. Well, immigration's the one subject, it seems, isn't it, where it's just so divided. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And yeah, people are branded racists. Yeah.

But that to me seems like the most complicated thing ever. Super complicated. I don't actually think there's... I really don't think there's a clear way out of that either, to be honest. No. Because, like, you hear, like, I know you had Nigel Frogs on last week. He's like, I don't know exactly what he stances anyway, but you probably tell me he's more on, like, stop.

we need much less immigration. And I understand that from allowing people to assimilate culturally to the UK, you know, if you have too much, then it becomes a problem. But also you've got the whole economics of, well, if you just took all of these workers out of the country, then surely the whole economy is going to have collapsed on that. So what do you do? Because people are in the UK aren't having kids like they used to.

So it's not like we're replacing the population like we used to. So what had you do? I don't know. Would you stop immigration and then have a deal with that problem? Or would you keep immigration and then kind of work on the assimilation front of things? I don't know the answer to that. So I mean clearly it doesn't seem like a multitude of politicians really know the answer either. No they don't. What would Nigel Farage say to that? I'd be interested to hear what he would say to that.

Yeah, I don't want to speak for him. I think I know what he would say. I know him very well, but I don't want to speak for him in case I take it out of context. But immigration is so complicated because you have nations and borders where you have your own cultures. And that's allowed. That's called a community. And if someone or some people come into your community,

who don't fit your values you're allowed to not have them in your community so on the one hand when people take quite a strong anti-immigration stance i don't immediately ban them as racist yeah and i understand it like in london i actually really like a cosmopolitan culture i like going down and seeing lots of different types of people in different restaurants and and there's a buzz and energy about that yeah but it's also what is Britain

We don't make anything anymore. What are we known for? What could you say we are? So I see both sides. And then like this is terrible heartbreaking story, but you know immigration when it's illegal are people in other countries selling you some scam passport and you just want to get to the UK because you want to honestly work because you know the country is ruined that you're in. And you're taking your baby and your children on a boat and then like this one man he worked

God knows how many years to be able to afford to get a passport to come to the UK was of course all illegal. He didn't know that because he was sold and he's in this boat and his frickin newborn baby drowns and he's still coming to the UK still trying to come to make a better life.

And actually, immigrants are often far better harder workers in the UK than some of the lazy bars they bring up. And if you look at a lot of very successful people, they are immigrants. They're to work fucking hard. So yeah, I like, it's so complicated.

Yeah, but that's why I find it hard to, when people have such really strong opinions on this and they get so offended and also like just hateful in the way they're speaking either direction because it happens on both sides. I'm like, do you not understand how it's actually quite a complicated issue to solve that? Surely, people will just hold in, they'll jump.

Get him out! Get him out! Like, fuck that! You know, they'll be like, he's a racist! Okay, maybe there is elements to that, but I'm like...

Yeah. But here's something to talk about because I think about this a lot and I don't talk about it. I think it's great to own a complication and nuance. Yeah. Nothing is black or white, but the problem is then you make everything more fucking complicated. Yeah, well, that's it. No, it's a really worthwhile point because you need to make some action. You better have some policies. You have to have action. Yeah, you have to. If you don't, then you just end up in a fucking world and messing with loading nonsense and what we're even doing here.

So I get it, and that's why part of my probably controversial take would be like, I kind of have more respect for politicians than most, because I'm like, I would hate to be making those decisions. And they're not paid very well. No, they're paid shit. Yeah. And I'd be like,

You know, if someone sat me down, right, Russ, you need to drop the immigration policy, but I'm like, ark, you know. Piss that lot off, or piss that lot off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're inciting, you know, in a lot of people. So I actually kind of simplify to it, and I'm like, argh.

rough, but you did choose to be here, but I mean, someone's got to do it. Yeah. I just think it's like, how do we incentivize the best people to get into it? Yeah. Because you want those decisions to be getting made by the people that are the most informed and the most, like, they know the most about these, and the most competent in that area. I've done, I've done a fast, you know, in that case. What do you think about up in the salaries? I'd less of them, but more quality.

No, I think it's a good idea. I think it's really, you know, people in those positions are like high, high responsibility jobs and there should be a salary that reflects that. Probably not very well accepted. A lot of people would probably think that's bullshit, but...

Yeah, I mean, they're paid not bad, aren't they? But there's a lot of perks, I guess. But when you think, you know, if someone of that level of competence could go into the private sector and go and be worked for some big corporate, they're probably going to earn 10x what they would as a salary as a politician. You don't really want to create that. You want to create an incentive that's going to get people in there that are super competent and they're going, that's what, you know, that's why they're there. Well, this is, I agree. And this is why

Well, in the private sector, you have reward and punishment. If you are given the market what they want, you make profit. If you're not, you lose your money, you go bust, you're fucked. And so the private sector is pure merit-based, and I like merit-based. You get unlimited reward, if you do well, but you get penalised badly if you fuck up. The public sector, you have no merit.

If they do really well, there's no reward. And if they do really shit, there's no penalty. Look at lockdown. I would even go on record and say maybe that was a crime against humanity. Maybe. But they weren't even tried. They weren't even questioned. They just got away with it. There was no punishment for that. But also there's no reward if they handled it well. If there's reward punishment and incentive within politics, i.e. the public sector becomes more like the private sector. Maybe there's some solutions there.

Yeah, the private sector isn't like, I get the private sector is really good for a lot of that kind of stuff, more than people to do well. But then I think you get some examples in America, for example, like with the health sector in America, where I'm like, if the function of like the health service, the function of the health service, I don't think should be to make money, because then you're kind of getting, you're mixing it a bit, and you do not think like the function of the health service is to keep people healthy.

But we have a health service which isn't a for-profit corporation. Yet it costs the taxpayer hundreds of millions and it's fucked. And it doesn't work. And then you have to go private. It's not great.

The America system though, do you think that's better? Would you rather that? I'm not in America, so I can't say. But like, they've got sky-high insurance and they'll go and, you know, you break your arm and you've got a fucking five-ground bill, ten-ground bill, whatever his kid falls over and now you've...

But that opens another question, which is, is that the fault of that industry, or is it because it's not being governed properly? But if the free market has no constraints, then that's kind of what happens. But you're always going to have a government, so there are always going to be some constraints.

And probably the biggest challenge of a government is knowing when to intervene and when to. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And lockdown, I thought, was over intervention. So it's like billionaires. Why billionaires pay no tax? Well, are you going to blame the billionaire? Are you going to blame the politicians that let them and take bungs off them? If they were governed properly, you know, I'm afraid, I don't have to label myself, but I am more in support of free markets. I think I probably would be as well. But they still need some governance, but they either get none.

Or 100%. Is it 100% governance? Well, I mean, when taxes are as high as they are, we're as close to 100% tax as you possibly could be. Are we? We are. 100%. Well, it's never going to be 100% because we would all just leave. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They think of the Laffer curve.

Zero percent tax, the government gets zero tax revenue. A hundred percent tax. Zero tax revenue. And it goes in a bell curve. Yeah. You're never going to have a hundred because we all leave. Yeah. So there's a point where you're as close to the hundred in where we all go, fuck off. Yeah. I'm going to Africa. And we are getting dangerously close. There's double the amount of successful entrepreneurs and millionaires leaving every year.

So we're at like, there's intervention of controls and policies and laws, but there's intervention of all your money you earn is tax revenue. Yeah, no. Honestly, I don't like being taxed. Not to the next man. But I don't mind being taxed a fair amount. Yeah, no, that's it. Because I know I need the roads maintained, the police, the NHS schools, but

You just don't want the government to piss away our money on nonsense, like inefficient. You'd be like they are at the money. So I guess it's like, how do you make... We want them to spend our money. Take my 40% tax if you're going to spend it efficiently. If you're going to piss it out of the wall, you're going to piss a lot of people off and it's just the game.

Generally, I think the system needs work, but when people talk about revolutionising the system, it's like, okay, but to what? If this is so bad, then tell me what's better.

Well, I think what's better is more people can run for government. We're only ever choosing from two, really. Now, maybe we're creeping up to a third. And when we had conservatives in and there was lockdown, you had Rishi and Liz Truss. We never got a chance to vote. It was just a very small minority of people. So if that was a question, the first thing is, let more people run. Let it be a bit more of a fair game.

where and embrace enterprise and entrepreneurship. Like we've got so many great entrepreneurs in the UK and no political party is using them well, they're just taxing them to shit and sending them away. Yeah, and then I think have reward and punishment in politics. If you're in a major corporation, you fuck up, you get fired.

But let me just pose this one to you. And I'm kind of thinking of the topic in my head here. So you might have some come back on this. But all of the entrepreneurs in Britain, like British ones, how much of their success is down to the success of the country and like the opportunity that they've had. They went to the British school system, one of the best school systems, you know, in the world. And all of these things like, did we not maybe have an obligation to give back

I know maybe we're talking about numbers of 40% or whatever. So I would say that the Great Britain of the past, 80s, 90s, noughties, was that fertile ground where they embraced entrepreneurship.

you know, where there may have been grants and subsidies and tax breaks. Because don't forget an entrepreneur has to put their mortgage and their livelihood on the line to self-fund the business. Do you know what? I think I understand this more intimately now than I did maybe three or four years ago, right? I would have been more on the side of like, I would have been like this, but I would have jumped on a ball.

Fuck those billionaires. Tax them to shit. Get their money and spread it around. We're struggling to have it. And now I've gone through the setting off of business, employing people, all of this kind of stuff. And I'll go, fuck, that whole entrepreneurship game is so hard. And it's not like, it's a totally different level to every other job I've had in terms of like, any other job I've had, I'll go to work, I'll do what I'm supposed to do. I finish, I check out, don't think about work for another second.

And then I get on with the rest of my life, blah, blah. Work, it's all consuming. Some of these problems are just the hardest things to solve, and you just about manage to figure out a way by the skinny and teeth to get through it. And then you get to the end of it, you're fighting and guiding money. So it's 100% in favor of rewarding people that are willing to bear that.

burden of going out there and creating jobs for people, stimulating the economy. All that, I think power to those people, they, we really need to incentivize that. I actually 100% agree. Yeah. And I was going to agree with you, I think. At the moment, we have the nation of Britain and entrepreneurs and small business owners are enemies. They need to be allies. Because yeah, I've

set up many successful businesses. And this was a great nation to do it in. It's just a lot bloody harder now. And there's more taxes and less tax breaks and there's less support and we're sort of alienated. And what made us great through 80s, 90s, 90s was the nation was a fertile ground to be able to take the risk and start a business. And that's one of the things that made us great and we're losing that now. And if we bring that back,

So how do we bring it back? Well, we've stopped putting taxes up. Yeah. Because you have to add VAT on as 20%, which means your prices have to be 20% more. 25% corporation tax. 45% income at the highest level. Now, 15% national insurance. Business rates. Business rates are a joke. I just heard about business rates. I just tried to get a warehouse now.

Yes, 50% of the rent you have to give off to the guy for that. Yeah, fuck. Yeah. And for a start-up business, it can be 50, 60 grand a year. Yeah. For a start-up business. Yeah. And all that comes off like you're left down KFC licking people's fingers for food. That's what you've got left.

And that's wrong. But the quandary is we're in trillions of debt and our services are fucked and they need funding. But what Labor are doing is hiking up taxes, going for business owners because it's popular for the workers.

an enemy between labor and capital. And they, you know, labor need capital. Labor workers need employers. But the workers hate the employers. And then there's unions that have. But, you know, I want all my staff to make loads of money. I've got a hundred staff. I know I want them all to be rich. Because the more money they're making, the more money I'm going to make. So I don't hate labor. But it seems the nation is creating this divide between us.

where employers and employees, capital and labour, are like at each other's throats. That needs to be solved. No, yeah, I agree. If you could unite that, then that's great. So you don't think labour would, do you think the Tories would?

I mean, they'd had 14 years at it and they did a bad job. The problem with conservatives, and Nigel said this to me, they've lost their values. Like, if you think what conservatives stood for, the low taxes, well, taxes are high. You know, everything they stood for,

became homogenized. And conservatives like swung from the right way towards, what are they? So now I think, I predict this. I think Nigel Farage will be prime minister. I reckon, yeah. I do. I do. And other people, damn, damn, whatness said it. Like, Nigel's not perfect, no one's perfect, but Nigel supports small business. He likes business.

And that, to me, is good news. I know there was Brexit, which was obviously a mess. I'd be interested to hear him talk about more things that aren't immigration. He seems to talk a lot about that. He's probably feeding the algorithms as well. He knows how to get a good clickbait going. Yeah, look, but his whole kind of... I'm sure there's... I'm sure he has spoken about... He can read his party policies. Yeah, yeah. He can find them. And yeah, someone else needs a go.

because, like, labor and conservative for so long, it's just left or right. And, you know, labor are quite far left now. They are socialist. Get this right now. Well, it's a lot of stretch, do you know? Yeah, it's not a stretch. It's not a stretch. But I'll happily be challenged by the way. But, like, Nigel told me this. Yeah. Inside 10 Downing Street, they've taken down all the oil, all the old oil paintings of all the old great British prime ministers. I've looked around 10 Downing Street.

They're putting up pictures of communists now. Okay, that's true. That's why I was talking. The tax burden is maybe some people say it's the highest since the Second World War. Some people reckon the late 70s was the highest, but basically

It's the highest tax burden in a hundred years since the war. Inflation just keeps going up. Our cost of living relatively is as poor as it's been since the Second World War in terms of what we can afford. If you think about how expensive housing is compared to our wages, housing's gone like that, wages hasn't. Even food and everything is so much more expensive. So the quality of life is really poor. Yeah. And we need something different, I think.

So, next, would you vote for Nigel Farage next time? I mean, obviously, I'd have to see the policies. Yeah, yeah. Because one thing, people just vote for who they like or agree with. I've got to see the policies. Yeah. And I quite liked his policies. It was obviously super early. But obviously, he did take a lot away from conservatives, which helped they become. Yeah. Based on knowing him and based on what I think his policies might be, I think there's a fair chance, yeah. Yeah.

I didn't vote for Labour, I can't vote for Labour because they are the most likely to take you into far left socialism and I don't think that ever ends well. I mean the evidence just doesn't really is it? Yeah I think it's tricky and I'm not sure, really genuinely not sure who I would vote for.

And so what happens when all this goes on is I just think, get your head down, be an entrepreneur, be successful, make money, that's the solution. They only talked about that. One of the only things that I'll probably add to it is I do see a lot of, I quite enjoy the political chat, I find it really interesting. And it is so nuanced, you can almost forever have a conversation around it. But there does come a point where I think you kind of have to stay and go, whoever it is that comes in, whether you're a bit more left wing, you like Kia Starmo, you're a bit more right wing, you like Nigel Farage, whatever.

They might do a few things that help you here and help you there, but generally it's up to you, big man. So focus on number one, get your own stuff going. And this person might fuck you a bit, or that person might fuck you a bit, but say love thee, baby. That is life. If you can create your own luck and roll with that, then all that stuff becomes a little bit less, like a little bit less.

so intense one way or the other, whether it's like, you know, you see Donald Trump win the US election, they're like, he's saved America, or they're supposed to say, he's not, you know, Nazis are in America. And it's like, ah!

Yeah, I've got I met someone recently from Russia and he said he built a successful business and the state just took it off and I remember that stuff like that you're like, oh, that's mad. Yeah, but that can happen in those far communist. Yeah, I fucking hate it

It's why I love Earth's socialism, communism, but I'm still grateful. If we ever got, do you not think though, so say Keir Stalin comes out tomorrow and he's introducing all these communists, mate, we ain't allowed on that, so I've been surely. People ain't gonna just let that happen. Yeah, but you can bore the frog really fucking slow, can't you?

Yeah, the first thing you can do is go into number 10 and judge you. Thank you. I've heard this a little bit later up. A thousand years later, all of a sudden. I'll hear that. I guess if you were going to do it, then that is how you would do it because you're not going to be able to do it quickly. So I know maybe the should be a bit more calling things out either way.

Yeah, but Britain is still a country where you can set up a business. You've got the limited company structure. You can limit your liability. You know, people do support small business. People support small business. I'm always shouting for people. Go to the local coffee shop. If they don't take cash, go somewhere else and use cash. Support the small business. I don't just go to the big massive supermarkets. Yeah. And Britain are quite good at that still. Yeah, I think.

I think like it's great. I think it's great to see like there's nothing better like I had two lads came around my house Monday cleaning my cars 18 years old set up their own business and they're like they DM me on Instagram I never really read my DM's but I just saw that when I thought do you know what boys in your car yeah like paid them up nice and I was like that's I do love seeing them yes

do love seeing, and that was me when I was 18, I was going scrubbing people's floors, cleaning toilets, and it's like, just whatever, you know, you're trying to make something work and you just start off, it's not glamorous, mate. You know what I mean? But you, I do like to encourage, and I do like to see that in young people where they're like, you know, I'm going to go and create my own path here. And I think, you know, I'm all for policies or anything that the government can do to kind of really, you know, stagnant, like, we'll really get that going. Yeah. 100%. Yeah.

Any regrets? Any regrets? I would have learned French before going to do this run. I think I would have been a wise thing for me to do. I think I know why. Tell us why.

That's a violent nation, speak French. We went to 16 different countries and you think DRC, speak a lot of French, ROC, speak a lot of French, Cameroon, Benin, Togo speaks from French and then you've got Ivory Coast, Senegal. There's a lot of countries about French and I spoke to none, so it made conversing with locals really difficult and ended up getting into some sticky situations on a few occasions.

like what? Well, when I was in the Congo, I ended up getting separated from my support crew and then they basically sent out a call for this local man that they found and he sent a bunch of people on motorbikes and then the word getting started getting spread around. There's a white guy going pick up off on a motorbike. If you go and get him, there's probably some money in it for you.

ended up running through these tiny little villages. Got held up by one of them. The chief was really not happy with me. But I managed to escape that situation but then I stumbled into another situation where some blokes picked me up on a motorbike. We had a total language barrier. They were speaking in Garlamost but I think they probably would have spoken some French if I was able to speak French. Yeah, they'd driven me on a motorbike for seven hours into this rural Congolese village. They kidnapped you.

Yeah, well, they- I mean, you didn't say you didn't go willingly, didn't you? No, no, no. So they kidnapped you? Well, I didn't, I kind of, I got on the motorbike half willingly, so, you know, I was, I was thinking that they were going to take me back to my friend, and then seven hours in, you know, I was realized that last day I was not happening, and I was-

in this rural village in the middle of Congo, and then luckily the second chief of the village spoke a few words of English and I managed to say to him, like, look, if we can contact my friends, they'll come, they'll bring some money, we'll swap everyone out and it'll be alright. But they took them two days to get there because it was right in the middle of this jungle, there's no roads going there. So you stayed in this village on your own?

Not speaking the language. Yeah, I got escorted everywhere. When it was really quite scary. So that motorbike only really was probably the scariest few hours of my life right there. So I just had no idea what was happening. So I've been picked up on this motorbike and they said, I'm me, which is friends in French. And I was like, okay, maybe the boys have sent them and they're going to take me back.

And I was like, the boys are no further than half an hour on a motorbike at max. And then half to half an hour, I was like, oh, this is getting a bit sketchy. After an hour, I'm like, oh, fucking hell. Two hours, three hours, four hours, I'm like, you don't, you're just resigned myself to the fact that I must be getting kidnapped here and getting into a situation that's gonna went badly. How did you get out of it then?

Well, you know, the only way really we got out of it is because we managed to make contact with my team and I said to the chief, we'll bring some money in. Did you pay him? Yeah. And then, you know, we were free to go after that. We had to bribe away continuously through various different police checkpoints and all kinds of things. Really? So they're basically stopping you and threatening you unless you pay. Yeah, yeah.

You just want to have a run? Yeah, I know, I know. But I think, yeah, it was a really tricky situation. And French would have helped. French would have probably helped. So, yeah, that's what I'm going to say. You should love French. You should love French, definitely. And I think if I have to do a pulse pole, I'll be learning Spanish. Yeah. And did you share any of these secret stories in the book?

Yes, they're all in the book. Yeah, I'll talk about all of these things. Shout out the book again. Yeah, so it's hard, skis are, mind over, miles, get it. Anyway, you get your books. I did the audio books as well, so you can, I think you can even listen to it for free on Spotify. Don't be giving it away for free. Well, boys and girls, it's free on Spotify. There we go. Your publisher's going to find it.

If you've got a Spotify premium, I think that's what it is. So final question, this show is called Disruptors. First off, thanks for letting us come to your home. It's been a lot of fun. The show is called Disruptors. What does disruptive, what does the word mean to you? Disruptive.

I think it's about doing things in a different way, no? It's about looking about what's out there and going, hold on a minute, I can do that better or I can do this different and going out there and making you mark on the earth. That's what disruptive means to me. Bosch. Yeah, come on. Bosch. This has been great. Nice one. No worries, thanks for having me.