Jordan Jonas Lived in a Remote Village in Siberia | Joe Rogan

Yeah, anyway, go ahead. You just got wanderlust, huh? Yeah, I guess so. I mean, yeah, I guess so. It was just a cool experience. And once you get that taste of kind of freedom, it's like a little bit hard to go back to a nine to five, I guess. I can only imagine that feeling when you're 19 years old, and to go back to a cubicle. Right, right. Something like that. No chance. Yeah. We did some construction jobs in Virginia, and then I was a young guy trying to figure out how to live a meaningful life or whatever. What am I going to do with my life? Did you have thoughts? Did you have like an aspiration? Yeah, I mean, I guess to provide some context, I'm a follow a Christian path. So I was... I always feel like I got to put some caveats to that. It's like, I understand for a lot of people that means shame. I know you had like some mean nuns in the beginning. Yeah, you heard that? Yeah. One mean nun in particular straightened me right out. I was like, all right. No, so I know it means a lot of things to a lot of people, but for me it was always like... It was interesting because it was summed up in the Bible, like, you know, love the Lord God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself, and God is defined as love. And so that was kind of always the core focus for my, you know, how I tried to decide what I was going to do in life. And at the time I heard of a guy that was over in Russia building orphanages and needed help. And so I felt really strongly that, hey, that was the right thing to do. How did you hear of this? So I have a brother that's adopted. And when he grew up, he wanted to find his biological mom and just tell her thanks for the chance at life or whatever. And when he did, turns out she had another son who was going to go over there. And I met him and he told me about this guy. So I basically felt it was the right thing to do and bought a ticket for a year, you know, just a full year, go over to Russia. And I headed over there and that was kind of how the next chapter, I guess, started in life. And how old were you then? Probably 21 or something. Yeah, 21. Don't know anybody over there. Don't know how to speak Russian. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was that was interesting. I tried to learn. Oh, absolutely. So this guy that I was building the orphanages, an American guy, but I went over there and I didn't want to live with an American because I wanted to learn Russian. So he sent me to a neighboring village with these two families. Both of them were like ex cons and, you know, had been spent a lot of time in Siberian prisons, but they had changed. You know, they were like super cool dudes. One guy just covered in prison tattoos. One of the funniest guys I know. But he did they drink a lot? You know, they didn't. Those guys didn't because they had changed their ways, you know, in prison. So they they took me in like one of their own. And and I spent the better part of that year with those guys learning the language. How much did you know before you got there? How much? Nothing. Just the alphabet. Yeah. Can you read it? It was brutal. Yeah. I didn't know what anything meant. So. Oh, so it was. Yeah, that was an interesting experience, like just very isolating, to be honest. But also it was I mean, it was pretty cool. You know, did you learn to write it? Yeah. So you could write things to people in that. What is that called? Cyrillic? Is that what it's called? Yeah, right, right, right. So you could write things in Cyrillic. Yeah. You could read it as well. Yeah. As I learned, of course, I could pronounce out the words because I could read it. I didn't know what anything meant. And over time I started to learn the course, the guy I lived with just taught me all the prison slang and stuff. It was always. It was a prison bitch. Yeah. Great Russian. Thank you. Wow. So that's a crazy thing to do to just go move there with no Russian at all. Did you buy a book on English to Russian? Yeah, but I found the best way if you ever go to a different country and don't know anything, just have a notepad with you and you'll start to get familiar with words as you live in there. And then at the end of the day, I'd write those words down as I recognize them. At the end of the day, I would look up the definition and just five to 10 words a day to slowly learn. And by the end of the year, I was pretty starting to get to where I could be comfortable. It took a long time. You had a real conversation with people after a year? Yeah, yeah. It was brutal. It was a long time to wait. Russian seems like it would be harder than Spanish or French because you have to learn the crazy alphabet. It's so different. Well, it's the alphabet and the grammar is so different. I don't know anything about it. How is the grammar different? So you don't speak like, if you want to say like, I love you. There's no form in the sentence. You could say you love I or love I, you could throw the words in any order, but the word actually changes based on its role in the sentence. So when you're learning the language, you just get all these words dumped on you and you have to try to sort through how it's formed. How would you say I love you in Russian? You could say, yeah, tibya lublu or lublu yatibya. Is there a reason why you'd say it in different ways? I think you could emphasize, make different. It is a flexible language in that you could switch it up to emphasize certain aspects. Is it more ambiguous? Would people be like, are you sure? Say it the different way. No, no, I think it works pretty good. How much do you love? You know, that's not a phrase I got a lot of practice with when I was younger. So when you're up there and these folks have these caribou and they're riding them and they're taking care of them, do they shield the other caribou from seeing one of them get slaughtered? No, they don't seem to be too worried about it. It's a very mutually symbiotic relationship between the reindeer. And the reindeer, they're always getting attacked by wolves and tore up and stuff and they always are coming to the people for protection in those times. Not only from wolves, but even from like mosquitoes and gnats. They'll build big smoky fires. So the reindeer know people are their friends and I guess are okay with an occasional, occasional sacrifice. So if they have 200 of them, how often do they kill one? They try not to kill them. Like they actually really avoid trying to kill their own reindeer. You're mostly living off of, you know, moose and wild reindeer and game birds and stuff. Oh, reindeer that aren't theirs. Interesting. So because these are domesticated, they just behave differently. It's so weird to see them like with saddles on and shit and people riding them. They're one of the first animals to be domesticated actually. By humans? Interesting. Before dogs? Not before, but one of the first I guess. And then they've been domesticated so long that they don't even know how to domesticate wild ones anymore. This is crazy. Jamie, go back to that. Let me see how they put up these teepees. So is this, they have this setup ready to go and then when they get to a place and they decide to, then they pull out the sticks. In the summer, you're moving every three days or so, just following the reindeer herd through the forest. In the winter, everything's a little slower. You'll be in a place for a month or so. But just, yeah, nomads. And what do they do when the weather sucks? Like they have this teepee setup. You're just always out, you know, you're just out in the weather also basically. When it's really cold, negative 50, you know, like they have a little wood stove in the teepee and it keeps the thing pretty warm. And what they're saying about actually is the wind because the way they have these sticks set up, it's like they have these animal skins that go over, is that an animal skin? That's canvas. That is? Yeah. Yeah. Also, it just looks like it's buckskin. So they have these canvases. Do they have loops where they tie it down? Yeah, they do. And then they put, they lean sticks on the outside also to kind of hold the canvas in place. So these people live so nomadic. Yeah, it is very nomadic. Man, it's awesome though. It's so fascinating to live like that and compare it to the modern world because not too many people get the opportunity anymore. You're so wired for it. It's weird. Right. So your body just immediately falls into place for it? Yeah. All your dopamine, you know, like you'll be out there fishing and every day you'll just be like, yeah, I got to fish. Because you're relying on it so much. Whereas like in normal everyday life here in town and stuff, when do you get that excited? You don't have any schedule. So every day you wake up, it's like, well, what do I need to do today? And you're just free to choose. You can go try hunting. You can go collect berries. You go find your reindeer. There's just a number of options all available to you. And they're all directly related to your life. So you don't have any, you know, there's no money being thrown around out there. It's just kind of, I'm hungry. Let's go fishing. Let's go to that spot because it's cool. What do they do if they get injured? That's a problem. They actually have. There's good and bad out there and they just can, they can call in a helicopter, but it's so far out, you know, it's going to be a problem. I've broken some ribs out there and had some, myself had some serious injuries that just wasn't an option. You know, you just got to tough it out because there's overcast. Like what kind of injuries other than ribs? Oh, man. I chopped my knee with an axe one time with cut a tendon, that tendon on the inside of your knee right in half. And the, my other knee had recently had a knee surgery. So I was just laid up literally like three days. I was just laying in a teepee. Then move I had to roll over poop in a bag. It was brutal. But then, you know, they rubbed like pine sap on it and it actually healed. And really, yeah, I could have swore it would get infected, but they're just packed it with pine sap and pine sap. Yeah. So it healed right up pretty fast. What happened to the ligament or the tendon that got cut? It doesn't really feel as bothering me, but I didn't know it was cut at the time. It was only later when I did an MRI. Yeah, they told me it was. And so it never healed? Well, I don't know what it did. They said it was hanging on by a thread. I don't know if it ever healed back or what. You don't even care? You don't want to check it out? I don't notice it as being weak. So I haven't bothered. My surgery knee hurts more than that knee. What kind of surgery? You see a couple ACLs. Yeah. Yeah, you know how it is. Yeah, I do. So when one of those videos was showing a net, is that the way they would fish? They would do? Both. But a lot of times you'd put nets out, and a lot of times you'd just go cast your birch, you know, homemade rod and just see what you can catch. So this is a net that would just move it across the middle of the river? You'd set it and leave it. There's a set in it right now. How do they do that thing that they do on the ice when they do that, when it's frozen? When it's frozen? When they cut a hole, and then they somehow or another get that net to go through to the other side. Two holes, and then you get a long stick, and you shove it in the hole and slide it, then push the stick under the ice, and on one end you have a string tied to it. So you push it and keep trying that until you get it to slide under the ice to the other hole. And when you do, you pull the stick out of that hole and tie your net on the end of the other one, and you can pull the string through. So on the string on the end of the stick, do you catch it with a hook or something and try to pull it up? Let me see if I can... No, you just pull the actual stick up through with the string tied on the back side of it. So you just have to find the stick. You just got to get the stick to... You might have to, three or four times, slide it under the ice until it ends up where the other hole is. Whoa. Yeah, it works good. I did it on that alone show. It was fun. Yeah, that's why I'm asking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that must be really hard to do by yourself, because I've seen people do it on television on those survival Alaska shows. It wasn't too bad. No, it was... That part wasn't too hard. But no, yeah. I don't know. It was all good stuff to learn out there with the natives and then came in handy for sure. Have you ever seen the Werner Herzog documentary? Yeah, that's all. Yeah, yeah. So the native that I actually first met that I was telling you about, that you're a guy, he isn't a nomad himself. He's a fur trapper, so he does all that. Real similar to that Werner Herzog documentary. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. And that's actually where they filmed that isn't that far from where I was in Siberia. So I went fur trapping him with him one year. He showed me the rough ropes. He showed me a topographical map. He's like, there's a cabin, there's a cabin, there's a cabin. Threw some noodles in each of my cabins. We stocked them with noodles. And then he just dropped me off and said, I'll see you in a month and a half or whatever. Wow. And so just was out there. And I had a stupid little... Oh, they're wrestling, huh? There you go. Yeah, good times. These kids wrestle a lot? Yeah. It's a good way to grow up, man. Always just outside, having a good time. Yeah, I guess so. The Werner Herzog documentary was really fascinating because as you watch those people, and when they talk about no depression, they're all happy, they're always laughing, they love what they do, they enjoy what they do. Even though that's everybody's goal, everybody's goals are happiness. Everybody's like, fuck that, I'm not doing that. Yeah, that's a fascinating conversation in and of itself because having been up there and stuff, I'm just like, man, this is an awesome way to live. If it was my friends, my family, in that context, I would probably choose that way of life. But then you find yourself here in America and you're stuck on your phone. And it's just so unsatisfying that it's interesting to experience both, but it's kind of hard to... I mean, because you're in where you are, so my family's all here, everybody's all here, we're not nomads. Right. But it's funny to have experienced that way of life and almost think, man, that's kind of what we're made for. It's almost better. I wish I could implement that in some way here. Well, I'm aware of that because people say it, but I'm not aware of it in the sense that they've experienced it before. I've never experienced just completely living. I've hunted and I've camped out for a week at a time. Yeah, you start to get a feel for it. Yeah, I'm sort of. I mean, it seems like when there's no other option, like that's how you're eating. We were eating Mountain House and when we shot a deer, then we'd eat the deer. Yeah, no, you were speaking of which, you've read those like Quanta Parker and stuff, the movie, the books and stuff. Me too. And now having lived with those natives, it's like there's so much good there. You see like they really are happy people. So there's a giant difference between the people who live in the village and the people who live in the forest. And the people who live in the forest, you would genuinely call like happy people. Like this is, they're knowledgeable, they're being productive, they're doing all this stuff. Whereas when you go to the village, it's just like everybody's drunk. Nobody's doing anything. It's like just a total wreck, especially villages that don't have any reindeer herding connected to them because they kind of don't have their cultural context to remain connected to. So at least in the villages that have reindeer herding, the kids can go out in the summer and live with the reindeer herders and kind of experience that. And it gives them a source of pride. It gives them like the experience of living in the forest, becoming like kind of really in touch with nature and all that. And whereas in the village, it's just kind of a dark hole. Everybody drinks. In those native villages, it's like the statistic is that one out of three people die of suicide, homicide, or accident. So it's just, and you feel it. Like I've got some stories of that. That's just brutal too. But the... Now you were saying that these people that live in the villages outside of the people that are nomadic, those people live in a real shitty way. Yeah, it's rough. It's like unconnected to any other villages. You have to only get there by helicopter. You fly in and it's... What is their job? What do they do? Some of them work like in relation to the reindeer herds. And I don't know, I think a lot of people live off of grandma's pension, which in Russia is probably like a hundred bucks or something. Some people work at the school and the administration. It's just not a lot going on, but a lot of people are sustenance, hunters, fishers, and trappers that live in the village. But yeah, it's so weird because the first time I went there, it was just like, man, this place is crazy. Everybody's drunk. It's just like being in a zombie land. Even when the reindeer herds will come from the woods, they'll run into their house, lock the doors, shut everything up, and then you'll just see everybody marching over. Really? And then they'll start banging on the doors and the windows and the guys inside the house are like, get out of here. Just drunks. It's just drunks. It's just insanity. And it's weird because then you take the same people, go into the woods, they sober up, and it's just night and day. It's so weird. It's so weird. Yeah. But you see the effects of it. So like I was telling you earlier, it was pretty brutal. When I first went over there, there was a nice family. It was like Dasha and Artyom and their two little kids. Well, the first time I was there, I got back or I met the family. I lived with them in their teepee and all this and that. And then I went back to America. After enough, right after I left, a tree fell on their daughter out in the woods and killed her. And then they, after that, started drinking a bunch, quit the nomadic way of life, started living in the village. I went back over there. The guy got stabbed in some drunken brawl or whatever and was in the hospital. Slowly recovered. He had this big old gash with a piece of glass someone had cut him open with. He slowly recovered and then went back to his village. The drinking continued. Sure enough, they killed him. They took his body back to the morgue, which the freezers had broken. So it's in the middle of the summer. This body's there, but it was a murder. So they had to wait for the police to come and investigate, but it's way out in the middle of nowhere. So it took like a week and it's like a week later. It was just brutal. We go over there, had to pick up this guy who's your buddy and his wife is helping me dress this body because they're basically like, okay, we're done with the investigation. You can go bury him. Is he decomposing? Yeah, yeah. Oh, Jesus Christ. This is brutal. And the wife is helping you? Yeah, and the wife's helping. We took care of his body, pick him up and skin slips off and all that stuff. And then we took care of him, buried him. It was pretty rough. But then a year later I come back. She had gotten remarried, kind of starting her life again. Turns out he hangs himself not long afterwards. So again, it's this woman who's lost two husbands and her daughter. She's her and her son. I just found out a little while ago she got too drunk, passed out in the snow and died. So now it's just the one son left from this whole family. And you hear those stories often up there. It's really rough. But that's balanced with what could be so beautiful. It's such a juxtaposition because you're out in this life where you have people who are happy, ultimate freedom, and they're doing great. But the village in alcohol just does this whole other thing to them. And it's like these people who are so beautiful, so nice, so friendly, so open to you. But you just see them suffering so much from this scourge. It's like, man, that's brutal. It's crazy that the scourge doesn't extend to the people that live in the forest. Yeah, once they get out in the woods, they don't have the alcohol available. But even if they did, do you think they would drink it? It seems like... Yeah, they usually drink it. When they go to the village, they get it, and then they'll take off to the woods, and they'll drink for a few days until it's all gone. And then it's all silver. And they get back to normal? And everybody's back to normal. Do you think it's a genetic thing? Do they have that? No, it's been a good quest. I've thought about that. There's that hypothesis that maybe it is because people have been introduced to alcohol more recently. They're not... can't process it as well. But that was a thing. You could also have the explanation. It's probably a combination of both. When you do have a people that are largely stripped of their culture, and they're like... Even the avankias cool as their way of life is, they had 70 years of communism where they came in and they collected all the best reindeer herders and said that they were like kulaks or whatever. The bourgeois, because they have too many reindeer, sent them all to prison, collectivized all these reindeer herds, these family herds. They turned into government herds. So it's been like their culture's not completely intact. And it's like, well, there might be enough cause just from that kind of thing to explain some of the alcoholism, but I imagine it's a combination of both. Yeah, I've always wondered that about the Native Americans, the same sort of situation. How much of it is despair from them being removed from their normal nomadic way of life and how much of it is just the fact that they don't have the genes to process alcohol because they didn't evolve with alcohol. There's that story of Cynthia Ann Parker who's on the wall out there who's Quana Parker's mother. And she was kidnapped by the Comanche when she was nine and then recaptured by the Texas Rangers, I think it was the Texas Rangers, when she was like 30 with a child. And she was begging to go back to the Comanches. She did not want to live. And she found the way of living that the settlers had was just pathetic. She hated it. The Comanche lived in a world where everything was magic and like the sky was a god, the wind was like you worship nature, you lived off the land, you followed the buffalo herd. And then all of a sudden you're in a village. Cooped up in a house and you got it. Yeah, everybody's pushing Jesus on you. You're like, Christ. Man, it's the same thing over there. It's this juxtaposition of ultimate freedom and this beautiful way of life versus you're in the village, in this little house. These people are never going to be good in Russian society because they live in some remote village, no internet, nothing. But they're also the ones that aren't connected to their way of life are also not going to be great evenky because they've just lived in this little house and drank a bunch. People get caught in that weird in-between place. But it seems like even if it's not cultural, there's something that draws people to that way of life that when they live like that, it's very satisfying. Absolutely, and for my own experience, I'm not a native, but I lived with them and it was awesome and it spoke to me deeply. Same thing even on things like The Alone Show. It's like, oh man, this is what we're built for. You really feel it. It's an interesting thing. I don't have a great memory or I don't usually have good, very vivid or interesting dreams. But when I'm in the forest, it's like I have all these vivid dreams that seem really meaningful and powerful. It's like my memory is way better. I remember people that I've long forgot just because you go so long without distraction. You can really delve into your thoughts. It's a fascinating thing to experience and once you do, you realize what's missing. It was interesting listening to you talk to Elon Musk and as the inevitable march of progress moves forward, it's like we lose things but we don't actually know what we're losing. As far as the natives and one of the reasons I want to see them preserve their culture and their old ways and take it forward is just that it's kind of a memory receptacle. So that as things move forward, we can still connect with what we've lost because it is a lot.