Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts http://bit.ly/ThisPastWeekend_ Theo sits down with Mike Posner to talk about Mike’s walk across America, what inspired him to start the journey, and overcoming the obstacles and false finish lines along the way. Mike Posner https://instagram.com/mikeposner ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This episode brought to you by Figs Visit https://wearfigs.com and use code THEO to receive 15% off your first order Uncommon Apothecary Visit https://ua-cbd.com and use promo code THEO15 to receive 15% off your order ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Find Theo Website: https://theovon.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/theovon Facebook: https://facebook.com/theovon Facebook Group: https://facebook.com/groups/thispastweekend Twitter: https://twitter.com/theovon YouTube: https://youtube.com/theovon Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiEKV_MOhwZ7OEcgFyLKilw ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Producer Nick https://instagram.com/realnickdavis ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music “Shine” - Bishop Gunn http://bit.ly/Shine_BishopGunn ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gunt Squad www.patreon.com/theovon Name Aaron Rasche Adam White Alaskan Rock Vodka Alex Bmayer Alex Hitchins Alex Person Alex Petralia Alex Wang Alexa harvey Andrew Valish Angelo Raygun Annmarie Reilly Anthony Holcombe Ashley Konicki Audrey Hodge Ayako Akiyama Ben Deignan Ben in thar.. Benjamin Herron Benjamin Streit Bobby Hogan Brandon Woolsey Christopher Becking Claire Tinkler Cody Anderson Cody Cummings Cody Kenyon Cody Marsh Crystal Dan Draper Dan Perdue Danny Crook David Christopher David Witkowski Dentist the menace Diana Morton Dionne Enoch Doug C Dusty Baker Eric Tobey Felicity Black Gillian Neale Ginger Levesque Greg Salazar Gunt Squad Gary J Garcia Jamaica Taylor James Briscoe James Hunter James Schneider Jameson Flood Jayme Sta Jeffrey Lusero Jeremy Siddens Jeremy Weiner Joakim Joaquin Rodriguez Joe Dunn Joel Henson Joey Piemonte John Kutch Johnathan Jensen Jon Blowers Jon Ross Jordan Josh Nemeyer Joy Hammonds Justin Doerr Justin L justin marcoux Kaylyn Dudich Kennedy Kenton call Kevin Best Kirk Cahill Kyle Baker Lacey Ann Lawrence Abinosa Lea Rashka Leighton Fields Madeline Matthews Mandy Picke'l Marisa Bruno Matt Nichols Meaghan Lewis Mike Mikocic Mike Nucci Mike Poe Mona McCune Nick Roma Noah Bissell NYCWendy1 OK Qie Jenkins Ranger Rick Robyn Tatu Rohail Ryan Hawkins Sagar Jha Sean Scott Shane Pacheco Shona MacArthur Stephen Trottier Suzanne O'Reilly Taryn Feingold Theo Wren Thomas Adair Tim Greener Timothy Eyerman Tito Liebowitz Todd Ekkebus Tom Cook Tom Kostya Tugzy Mills Vanessa Amaya Victor I tuck back and sit down to pee Johnson II Vince Gonsalves Vlog Master William Reid Peters Yvonne Zeke HarrisSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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I was in Colorado and I met this guy named Stevie and he's running across America the opposite way.
Right?
And we cross.
It's a beautiful day.
And he actually, I mean, God bless Stevie, but he turned around and walked the wrong way to talk with me all day.
Oh, wow.
I wouldn't have done that.
I love Stevie, but bro, I'm not going east, bro.
Sorry, bro.
Sorry, dude.
Were you guys like grilling out in the evening doing any fresh veggies or did you have a certain caloric intake?
Yeah, a stupid one.
Really?
Yeah.
I was wearing this thing, this whoop thing, at the beginning.
I lost the battery for it halfway through, but it would basically tell me my output, caloric output.
So we're just trying to match it.
At the beginning, it was spitting out crazy, you know, like 8,000, 10,000.
But NASA kind of I think as I as I walked more, I started to get more used to it, and I was eating a little less.
But yeah, just eating a lot of food, man.
And man, you had to stop and shit a lot, too, because you're eating so much.
Yeah, yeah, I guess you got a lot of shit in your body.
That was the worst part.
Not the worst part, but it's just, I a lot of times be like just pooping on the side of it.
I'm like, man, I want to keep walking, but it's like, fuck.
I hate that.
I got to stop again.
I can't poop if I see broken glass near me, you know?
So I think some of that kind of outdoor kind of stuff, I don't have as much strength when it comes to that.
Why broken glass?
Oh, it makes me nervous, dude.
Why not?
You know what I'm saying?
I'm not letting my asshole open up if there's broken glass nearby.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, I'm no Roman warrior, but I know that, you know?
Mike, thanks for being here today, man.
Yes, so you have, and you have two of your buddies that are here today, too.
I just want you, I want to acknowledge them.
I want to acknowledge them, too.
Yeah, man.
Will you let us know?
Just let the listeners know who they are in case they hear some.
Yeah, my buddy Julian's here, who was one of my walk managers.
Basically, I walk supported, which means that I wasn't backpacking.
As I walked, we had a support vehicle that Julian drove, and he basically sorted out a lot of navigation and the food.
Basically, all I had to do was the miles.
I didn't have to carry everything on my back.
And I always try to make that clear because there are people out there right now and every year who do it unsupported.
Is there beef?
Is there a lot of street beef between people who are in the middle?
No, mostly everyone's very supportive of each other.
Every once in a while, I got a little bit, I think, you know, just because I was more of a public figure when I started.
So I think a few people kind of got their feathers ruffled, but that's like 1%.
Most of the people were just really supportive of each other.
And so Julian, he would take turns.
There was another guy, Colin, basically.
Julian would go home for a few months and Colin would come.
They'd switch on and off.
Wow.
That's amazing to have that much support.
We were talking about it when you were in the restroom, but just to have that much, like, yeah, to have somebody that's just so patient to be there.
Dude, he was the best, man.
He never really got flustered or nothing.
Would you get pretty flustered?
Isn't it?
Like, would it be the end of a day and you're like, fuck.
Yeah, sometimes you're just tired at the end of the day.
But I'm like, I go up and down, you know.
I go up and down for sure.
Sometimes, you know, I'm like bouncing off the walls.
I'd be very goofy guy.
Other times it's like a dog in me too, you know, that's like the sports guy.
Like, let's fucking get it.
And I'm not fucking around.
Yeah.
That guy comes out.
And so, and then it's everything in between.
And it's like, I might touch both of those two, three times during the day.
I noticed you said like, yeah, you take in the calories and you would start to learn, okay, I have this input and this output, you know, that's, you were kind of monitoring in the beginning.
Did you start to feel like a machine?
I mean, at the total, you went 2,800 miles.
In the beginning, did you feel more like a human?
And by the end, did you feel like more like a machine?
Or did your humanity kind of grow?
I know that's kind of a big question, but it just had me kind of thinking about that.
No, it was more the second one.
It just became my normal life.
It's just what we do.
I wake up 5 a.m.
and excuse me, wake up 4 a.m.
We walk at 5. Were you guys do it for a pre-walk before the walk or any jog or anything before to get heated up?
The first thing I do at 4 is I meditate for 20, 30 minutes.
And then, Julie, I have a little fruit out.
I have a couple bananas and some peanut butter.
Throw that down the hole.
That Filipino Thanksgiving right there, bro.
You feel me?
We have a lot of Filipino listeners too, man.
Beautiful.
And I just stretch out a little bit and then I just try to get out the door as soon as possible.
And that's really because it's seasonal.
You know, walking in the summer, you got to get those miles in before, you know, it's 3 p.m.
And it's 95 with 95% humidity.
You want to already have 20 done then.
You don't want to be on mile 8 then.
Yeah.
Wow.
So were there some days where you started late and you're like, man, you got in a jam?
Was that something you kind of learned early?
The learning curve must have been pretty steep, huh?
Yeah, I figured it out.
It just worked best for me.
I think there's other guys I talked to that are either running or walking across and they had more loosey-goosey thing where they would, and I don't use that in a bad way.
They're just able to wake up and kind of do what they felt like doing that day.
But I don't really work that way.
I got to wake up the same time every day.
We got a rule on the walk, no snooze button.
Damn.
Snooze button.
No snooze, nigga.
No, it isn't.
There's a P. Diddy quote.
Yeah.
He says, two types of people in the world, those that hit the snooze and those that don't.
And then there's David Goggins quote I love about he said, You don't hit the snooze button because if you do, you wake up already failing.
Damn.
And it's just real.
So that thing would go off, you know, four in the morning.
And I never wanted to wake up and walk zero days that I go, oh, yeah, it's 4 a.m.
Let's get none.
But the big part of me, you know, the big part of me that I actually wanted to accomplish this goal, you know, got my ass out of bed every day.
And I thought, you know, when I set out on this walk, I was going to have kind of like a hippy-dippy, free-flowing walk across America.
I meet somebody and I stay there in their town four or five days, catch the vibe.
But I start this thing, you know, at the beginning, I couldn't walk as many miles as I could at the end, obviously.
So the first day, I only walked eight miles.
You know, on the second day, I think I got 10 or something like that.
And so I started doing the math and the whole thing, you know, the whole like scheduling, navigational part is really based around the mountain ranges.
You don't want to be in the Rocky Mountains in winter.
Right.
You're fucked.
So I'm starting to do the math.
Yeah, you're going to write one of those books where you die at the end like a step boy.
Somebody else is going to write that book.
Christmas McCandalis or whatever, dude.
I don't know who you're doing.
He ate some bad berries or something, a fruit at the end.
Oh, you're talking about the Instant Wild.
Yeah.
So at least you got Julie covering your fruit, you know what I'm saying?
Tasting your fruit for you first in the morning.
And if he's still alive, if at 6.15, you're like, well, it's fucking rock, bro.
Because that boy died at some bad berries or something, buddy.
That's right.
Quick question, so I don't forget.
Did you have a music that was on your alarm every day that you would wake up to?
Oh, just your watch?
It's just a watch alarm.
Yeah.
Right?
Just a bam, bam, bro.
Yeah, well, it's interesting.
You know, when I first started the walk, because I was removed from basically all my friends and family, I noticed I was actually on my phone more.
You know, I always thought like I'll be out in nature.
And then here, lo and behold, I'm out walking across America, walking across New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
And I'm on my phone like all the time.
Like I'm taking pictures of every fucking flower and putting them on Instagram, all this shit.
And I realized like, I don't know, a couple of weeks in or a month in, like, what the fuck are you doing, dude?
Yeah.
Like, you could play on your phone anywhere, man.
You're missing.
Yeah, it started to come back.
Even if we look at your chart, like on the post, I mean, we have your, you know, mikeposner.com and it's, it shows your, your walk across and the path that you took.
It shows where you had social media posts.
And there's a lot in the beginning.
And then the second half, it's an eighth as much, it looks like.
But I mean, it's interesting.
Yes, something happened in there where you're like, oh, man, I'm.
Well, I started off, yeah, just realizing I was fucking missing it.
I was on it too much.
And then I was in Colorado, and I met this guy named Stevie.
And he's running across America the opposite way, right?
And we cross.
It was a beautiful day.
And he actually, I mean, God bless Stevie, but he turned around and walked the wrong way to talk with me all day.
Oh, wow.
I wouldn't have done that.
I love Stevie, but, bro, I'm not going east, bro.
Sorry, bro.
Sorry, dude.
Yeah, bro.
So have you eat, Stevie?
So he walked.
He's East Stevie, dude.
We ain't messing with that guy.
He walked.
He walked.
We had a guy like that growing up, dude.
His boy Shane.
He would only go one direction.
Yeah.
Yeah, that was his thing, huh?
Which direction?
It was kind of like that.
Every time you saw him, dude, he was coming at an angle.
And he walked shoulder first like he was a shark.
This dude was baffling, bro.
But you would see him.
You'd just be hanging out around town and you'd fucking see Shane go by, bro.
Fucking one direction.
Shane shoulder first, dude.
Out of continuity.
Yeah, just looking for, I don't know what he was looking for, dude.
Pirate ships.
I don't know what he was looking for.
A fucking hot current.
That dude was like, it was almost like he was caught in an air current just fucking cruising the world.
But I don't know what happened to him.
I think something probably happened to him.
He left school once, never before.
He was shoulder first, boy.
You know what I'm saying?
That human shark, bro.
Just moving.
Was it hard to start to separate yourself from social media?
I mean, because this must be weeks where you don't do a post, where you don't have a social media posting.
I actually don't know if that's exactly what the fuck those stars mean.
I'm not sure.
But no, I wouldn't.
But it definitely became less, like you're saying.
I stopped using my phone when I was walking.
So anyway, I met Stevie.
Here's the thing.
I met Stevie and this guy blew at the time.
I'm walking supported 24 miles a day.
And he is running unsupported 30 to 40 miles per day.
And not only that, he looks at me and he goes, yeah, man, I didn't bring headphones on purpose because I wanted to face all my demons and just be there.
And so basically two days after I met him, I got bit by a rattlesnake.
And I thought it wasn't a big deal.
I thought I was going to get the anti-vent and I'd be back walking the next day.
Turns out it's a bigger deal.
I thought I was in the ICU.
I'm in the hospital five days.
Takes me three weeks to get back.
I start up at my spot that I got bit at.
Did you walk out to the same exact spot?
Same exact spot.
Julian took me there, man.
I was scared.
I was scared.
Yeah, what was that like?
Having to commit was what happened during that three weeks that was, I mean, I definitely went back and saw some posts and stuff, but what was, I saw one post you were talking about how comfortable it was almost to be back in, like, especially a hospital.
Like, I love surgery.
I love things where they're taken care of and somebody's coming in and, you know, it's lunchtime.
It's volume.
It's Thursday.
It's volume, just whatever, dude.
You know, it's like it's just so much care for you in like a, in, in a medical environment.
You know, there's the nurses.
There's just constant care and it feels good.
And I saw you talk about where, yeah, it was like almost hard to let some of that, you know, it was like you were back into this real-time.
The real small part of me, you know, you got to understand at the time I got bit by that snake.
I'm walking pretty much eight hours a day Completely alone, sweating it out.
You know, it's early August.
That shit was fucking hard, man.
I couldn't really sleep because it was so hot.
And so, and my feet felt like they were fucking broken.
You know, I'd wake up in the morning, stand up, and it just felt terrible.
Like, I could barely stand up some days.
Was it the muscles, the bone, or you getting worn down?
Like, it turns out it was blisters too, but it turns out it was just the muscles.
They were just sore in a way I'd never even fucking wrapped my head around.
But at the time, I thought they were broken.
I thought I was going to finish, and I'd go to the doctor and be like, he's going to be like, dude, we got to fix your feet, you know?
But it was really, I was kind of a bitch, and I just hadn't felt that kind of soreness and pain yet.
And basically, yeah, I went to the hospital and people always say, man, was that the hardest day of your walk?
It's like, no, I wasn't even close, man, because they got me there.
And you're right.
I was now out of the heat.
I'm in air conditioning.
I'm now, I'm not alone anymore.
I got actually female nurses around, you know, and like doctors, you know, just making sure I'm cool.
And, you know, you want something to eat.
You just hit a buzzer.
They bring the shit into you.
Salisbury steak, bro.
You feel me, dude?
God, man.
And meanwhile, you know, like online, this outpouring of sympathy and support.
Oh, it's a way out even if you want it.
Oh, fuck yeah.
Fuck yeah.
You're like, damn, I couldn't have hired a snake to come out.
Julian's been training the snake for two months in the van.
Finally, he let that bastard out.
Dude, so you know, the weak part of me, the little me, he wants to stay there.
Wow.
He wants to stay getting all that attention, that nice food, the air conditioning, nice bed.
I don't have to get up at 4 a.m.
All that feels good.
And it's very easy.
I felt it even in myself a little bit falling into kind of trying to milk it.
And you're staying in that spot.
And that's what playing a victim is.
You're actually creating suffering or making up suffering that's not really there in order to get attention, basically, to get sympathy, to have an excuse.
And I had to just have a talk with myself.
The big me had to talk to the little me and say, look, you're getting better, motherfucker.
You need to go finish what you started.
And, you know, the good thing is when I started this, you do something like this and really do anything worthwhile in life.
The shit's going to be hard.
As you know, to get where you're sitting right now, it just wasn't easy.
Yeah.
You know?
Had to work a lot.
Yeah.
How many times you had to fail and stuff to have what you got now?
A bajillion.
A lot.
Yeah.
And so the thing is, you have to have a no matter what clause in any contract you got with yourself.
Well, I think it's just interesting you're able to have that conversation with yourself.
You know, I've heard you say it a couple of times, the little me.
That's right.
And we struggle with that.
I struggle with that kind of stuff a lot.
You know, like the first part of me not wanting to be, not being strong enough, not wanting to, you know, not being brave enough or not thinking that I can or wanting to take the easy way out, you know.
And then to try and get this bigger picture, you know, and just tools to say, look, you know, like, you know, you got to move.
You know, you got to get going.
Like, you got to, there's this, there's this little speed bump in the beginning.
And if you can get over that, then it's really, it's a lot different.
It's that bigger picture, you know.
But that little speed bump is so powerful a lot of times, man.
So if you just see that you can have this bigger you that's talking to this little you, yeah, man, I can, I can just totally relate to that, you know?
Yeah.
And a lot of times, you know, to be more accurate, I didn't really have to talk to myself in that moment because when I started, I had decided I was going to walk across America.
Yeah, anybody can say that shit.
And that's what I would say publicly.
But what I would say to myself is, I'm going to walk across America no matter what.
No matter what.
So what's that mean?
I played this shit out in my head.
If I break my leg out here, I'm going to let that mother heal and I'm going to go to the spot where I broke my leg and I'm going to finish.
I had already digitized that, you know.
I had already decided that.
So when this snake thing happened, I didn't have to have a conversation with myself.
I have to decide, you know, hey, I'm going to go back.
I knew I'm going back, you know?
And it helps, you know, I had a lot of support too.
My homie Chad is here too.
You know, sometimes I would call him and be like, dude, my feet feel awful.
And he'd be like, he'd go, yeah, motherfucker, they're supposed to.
You know?
Remember, you're walking across America.
Like, dude, that's what you signed up for.
And so you start reorienting yourself.
You ain't at the foot locker, bro.
It's supposed to feel pretty on count.
These...
That's the wrong adjective, dude.
That sounds like my toenails are long and I got fucking hairy feet or some fungus, dude.
I don't know what adjectives are.
Unkempt, bro.
Dude, no, it's like you start to, you start to reorient yourself around this hardship because most of my life, basically my whole life, 30 years before I went on this walk, it was oriented around making it more comfortable.
And just like a bunch of bullshit, you know, it's like, hey, you know, maybe if I play this game a little better, I'll get a little, I'll move from this neighborhood in West Hollywood to this neighborhood in the fucking Hollywood Hills.
And instead of this, I'll date This person, and then I'll feel better.
And I'll sort of zoom out on my life and realize I'm playing in a fucking sandbox right now.
Yeah.
And I'm going, hey, that toy that he has over there looks nice.
Let me try it.
Let me try that one out.
You know, oh, that toy is cool.
Let me try this toy out.
And I was just wasting my life.
And I was doing, quote, what I was supposed to do.
I was finishing my albums.
And don't get me wrong, I love all my music.
It's my heart.
But my life was sort of designed by a 21-year-old me trying to break into LA and become famous.
And I'm 31 and I'm living the same fucking lifestyle.
And so there's this incongruency between who I am now and the life I'm living.
And the channel that you're kind of still kind of wanting.
And it's nobody's fault but me.
It's nobody's fault but mine.
And there is no one that's going to bring those two things into congruency but me.
Right.
I'll call my manager.
He's going to tell me go back on tour.
I love my manager.
That's his job.
That's his job.
He's going to say, you finished the album.
We got to support that.
I'm going to tour.
You finished the tour.
Let's get another album.
And he never said those words to the album.
Right, but no, but that's their job.
And that's what they're supposed to do.
Correct.
And that's what I was supposed to do.
But I sort of slowly realized I'm living someone else's life.
And that thing fucking sneaks up on your ass, man.
Man, it's so funny.
It sneaks up on you.
It's not some come to God moment or anything.
It's like, you slowly realize, man, what I really want to do is just walk.
And I'm not doing it.
I put it off for five years.
Wow.
Because something always came up.
I had an excuse each year.
And you got to start the thing in spring for what we talked about.
Oh, right.
Now in the Rocky.
So every spring, something will come up.
And, you know, then I go out on the walk, right?
Step one, take one step.
So I do it.
I'm out there.
And as I'm going, I meet a lot of people and nice people, good people.
And they come up to me and say, hey, you know, what you're doing is very inspiring.
I'll say, thank you.
And they say, you know, I'd really like to do something like that one day.
But right now, I don't have enough time.
Or I don't have enough money.
Or I'm too old.
Or I'm too young.
I heard all the middle school.
You got to walk around.
I meet these like, you know, I know, I mean, but they be college kids.
No, 100%.
And they feel so much pressure to go get a good job and be successful right away.
I'm telling you, I meet an A-tier and tell me, yeah, man, I'm just too young.
This shit happened in real life.
And I'm sitting there like, what the fuck are you talking about?
And it's not about walking across America.
Fuck that.
That was my dream.
But whatever that thing is for you, you know, 95% of the people listening to this, 95% of people I meet, they got a thing like that.
And it's not, it doesn't have to be a drop everything, quit my job.
It doesn't have to be that.
It's just a thing that you know you want to do.
You are called to do.
And you have an excuse why you're not fucking doing it right now.
You don't have an excuse.
You have a reason.
I don't have enough time.
I have enough money.
Whatever it is.
You have an excuse wearing a reason as a cape.
That's what it is.
And that's my contention to your listeners.
Whatever that thing is, whether it's starting the business, whether it's hitting the gym, I don't give a fuck what it is.
And don't copy my dream.
Fuck you, man.
That's my dream.
Yeah.
Whatever your thing is and your reason for not doing it, that's exactly right what you said.
Really look at it, look in the mirror.
That reason, I can almost guarantee you is a fucking excuse.
Yeah.
And it's just your cop-out for not living your life or taking the easy way out.
And hey, man, we're going to die.
You know, it's like a few years ago, my dad died, and my collaborator, Avici, he died.
So my peer, guy I used to do shows with Mac Miller, he died.
In February, one of my friends I grew up with, Ronnie, died.
And it's like, hey, man, I'm living healthy.
Hopefully it's no time soon, but you're going to die one day too.
Yeah.
And you can either live your life before that happens or not.
It's up to you, man.
Yeah, did some of that death that came into your life, do you feel like that was kind of some of the stuff that really threw the gas on, you know, you said it had been a few years where you'd kind of, you know, something had come up around the springtime.
And what was it you think that was that last thing?
Was it that you'd already told so many people you were going to do this walk?
Like, how did that all kind of, where it's like, okay, I got to take this step?
There was a couple things.
Really, one was Avichi when he died.
It sounds weird to say this, but there's something beautiful about death.
If you haven't been around or had a close one die, you will soon.
And each time that happens, I feel like there's this like, for me, it's about two weeks there where all the bullshit traps, mind games that I'm usually in, they fade out and I can see what's actually important to me.
You know?
Yeah, it's almost like other people, when they do die, or whatever the thing that permeates from them is this value of existence that really hits the rest of us pretty severe.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
I think it's just that.
It reminds you of your own mortality.
And I really believe when you acknowledge you're going to have a death, you can start to live a good life.
And so the thing is, that shit always like, it always lasts for like a few weeks for me.
And then it go away and I start to just get caught up in bullshit.
And so, yeah, when Avici died, it was a big reminder.
And I remember just thinking, like, man, I got to go on the I actually wanted to go like immediately, but I didn't have anything prepared or nothing.
So I was like, all right, dude, wait till the spring.
That's when you do it the right way.
Wait till Julian can tell his mom he's going out of town.
You got to plan a little bit.
That's right.
But you got to plan a lot.
You got to plan a lot, huh?
You got to plan a lot.
You got to plan a lot.
Yeah, it's so funny with that mortality, man.
It's so funny how, yeah, it's so funny when I had a buddy that passed away a couple weeks ago.
He died of addiction, my friend Tommy.
I'm sorry for him, Lots.
Yeah, thanks, man.
And he was a beautiful dude, man.
But yeah, we went to his service and it was just like, man, if he could be doing anything, he would just be alive.
That's it.
You know, that's the first thing he would be.
And it's like, it's so hard to get a rationale, to get like a, make your life feel tangible to you sometimes as we get older.
You know, when you're young, it feels like so, I mean, you don't really have that much of a confidence alive, but it feels magical.
There's a sense of awe.
Yes.
Good word.
Awe.
Sense of awe, man.
And then we get older and it's almost like we get so much in these grooves of society and of life that it's hard to get it back to a level where it feels like tangible, you know, where it feels where you feel alive and not just kind of part of what's going on.
That's right.
That's right.
Did you have, I can imagine you probably had a lot of experiences of feeling alive on this on this journey.
Yeah, as you're talking, it was like, you know, reminding me that was why I left.
You know, that's why I pulled the trigger on this thing.
It was like a friend of mine said, man, so he starts doing the math and he's thinking about my career, all that stuff.
He's looking, you know, it's going to take you six months to a year.
And he says to me, so you basically giving up a year of your life to do this?
I don't know.
I thought about it for a second.
I'm basically taking one back.
I ain't giving up nothing.
Now I'm claiming some sovereignty.
I'm getting out of those grooves you're just talking about.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm setting my grounds here.
I am myself.
It's just cool.
You know, when I can boil down, you know, that's the best.
That's right.
You know, when I can boil down, there's a lot of reasons why I walked.
You know, some of them are small.
Some are big.
Some of them are shitty reasons.
Like, one small reason is I wanted a fucking attention from it.
I'm not proud of that.
That's a character flaw, right?
Right.
But I'll try to be real about it.
But the main reason I went out, if I can really put, I couldn't even articulate this before I left.
I had to do the fucking thing to be able to say it.
Was I wanted to become somebody that I was actually proud of.
So I wanted if somebody said, you know, who inspires you?
Who's your hero?
Who you look up to?
I wanted to be able to look them in the eye and say, me.
You know?
And.
Say yourself was.
Yeah.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, but I'm creating this dude in my head.
Like that dude, he walked across America.
So he's an idea.
And then I go try to become him in real life.
And this is just my idea.
It's like creating a life that actually inspires you.
You know, it's like my goal shouldn't be something that like is that like isn't inspiring, isn't cool to me.
Right.
Like this walk, that's fucking cool.
It's a little less cool to me now, honestly.
Now I've done it.
I met all these people that done it like in more badass ways and faster, just to be totally honest.
But like, it just inspired me the whole way.
You know, it's dope.
Other people I tell about, they're like, dude, you're an idiot.
You are a crazy white person.
Yeah.
And I get that.
But this is not about you.
This is about me and my life.
Right.
And I had to send it, man.
In this journey for me, I had to do it.
That's right.
Were you amazed at some of the feelings that started to like you, some of the reasoning you did it started to become more clear after you started?
Like, was that kind of fascinating to you?
Were you like, holy shit, if I hadn't even started on this, I would have never gotten to some of these feelings and revelations and stuff for myself because I couldn't even see them before.
Yeah.
I mean, I felt like I still do feel like a completely different person.
You know, I was a guy.
Even if I look at interviews of myself before, well, it's kind of like sometimes I'm going to punch the guy in the face.
That's wild.
I don't even know if other people can see it, but I can see it.
I was more, I would like, if you were saying some stuff I didn't really agree with, I'd be like, yeah, man, I would just fucking agree with you.
I was less real, less authentic, more afraid of conflict.
Man, just like not as not as good a person, I feel like.
And I thought I was going to become, I talked earlier, I thought I was going to have this kind of hippie-dippy walk.
And I thought I was going to become like softer.
But the opposite happened.
I had to tap into discipline and focus every day.
And I became harder.
I became harder as a person.
Was there, yeah, were there, were you surprised that some of the toughness that was in you?
Like, did you ever kind of like, did you have some moments where I could see imagine having some moments like, Jesus Christ, man, I didn't know.
Because I feel like for me, I always hope that there's certain, there's a certain person inside of me that I don't get to see that much.
You know, there's like a power.
There's like, you know, someone that's extremely confident and very powerful.
And like, did, were you amazed sometimes?
Did the, did, did people that you didn't know, parts of yourself that you didn't know, did it, did they come to the surface sometimes?
Yeah, 100%.
You know, it was like.
It's awesome, man.
So here's the thing, man.
Imagine if you you never even noticed swimming up to the fucking surface.
Like, hey, Mike, I'm in here too.
What up, man?
So before I left, I had this inkling that there was more in me, a little more in me, than I was letting out.
And I think that's the problem with a lot, especially men, is we know we got this fucking dog inside.
We got this greatness untapped motherfucking thing.
And you don't know what the fuck to do with it, where to point it.
And a lot of times we can point it the wrong direction and it fucks everything up.
Easy direction.
And I just had this inkling there's a little more in you than you are giving to the world.
So I went out on this thing and I found I was wrong.
It's not a little more in you.
It's a fuck ton more than in you, man.
Wow.
You know, it's way more.
And I still don't know.
I feel like I just scratched the surface of it.
So, you know, now it's my job to keep exploring and figure out what that looks like for me.
And that's what I'm up to now.
But here's the thing, man.
It's not like you're not going to recognize me.
I still got all my, like I said, I'm a goofy guy too.
But there's this dog part of me, you know, that I think I was trying to suppress a lot earlier in my life.
And I look in the mirror, you know, maybe do some affirmations or meditation.
You say, I am tough or I'm resilient.
I'm confident.
Yeah, it's like you don't really fucking, yeah, I'm fucking Hawkeye.
Yeah, I'll give myself crazy names, bro.
You don't really believe yourself because you haven't shown any evidence in your real life.
So it's like, go do something fucking tough.
And you actually don't need to do affirmation.
Right.
Because then it starts to live in you.
It's you.
You did it.
I'm still me, you know?
But a little more of you now.
There's more of me.
And I needed those parts to come out.
Some other dude, you don't want to be too fucking hard.
Maybe you need to soften up a little bit.
Yeah, yeah.
For my journey, man, that's what I needed.
That burning man, they say, you don't get the burn you want, get the burn you need.
I feel like that about the walk, too.
You don't get the walk you want, you get the walk you need.
Wow.
You know?
Tell me about some of the vagrants out there, bro.
Because I grew up, you know, we grew up along.
I used to live back behind this.
They had a river behind us and they had a rest area on the other side of it.
That was a backup of the interstate.
Okay.
So rest area, a lot of men would meet up there, you know, doing drugs, doing sex, you know, river sex.
Doing sex, dude.
Oh, yeah.
What is river sex?
Sex out there right by the river, bro.
You know, and so, and anyway, but a lot of it was drug-induced kind of sex.
You know, it's a lot of these men probably had families and stuff, but they were doing drugs.
But did you get to stop in any unique rest areas?
Was there some decent, you know, decent, you know, road warriors out there?
Did hitchhikers look at you like, oh, look at this fucking guy.
Look at this show off, you know?
I looked, you know, at the time, I had the big beard like I do now, big hat.
You know, I had two walking sticks.
I looked pretty fucking crazy.
So no one gave me really like much of a hard time.
A few dogs came out, you know, looking for a, looking to tango to fend them off with my sticks.
And what state was that in where these dogs were?
I mean, they're in every state, but the one that came at me the most, I had two in Colorado that were kind of sketched.
But I had some dog spray, too.
Oh, you did?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And what flavor is that?
What is it?
That's fucking...
Stay the fuck away from these flavors, dude.
It's nothing good, dude.
All right.
I'm picking this like, dude.
I want to tell you my rest area story, man.
I think you like that.
Yeah, these are good.
Dude, don't get too comfortable.
Sorry, man.
I'm fucking about to put some lotion on.
I don't like the way you say this.
The way you say, yeah, your voice drops an octave, dude.
What the fuck?
Yeah.
Jesus, dude.
We were in Ohio.
Julius, what was the city?
The Walmart.
Do you remember?
I feel like it was close to Dayton.
No, it was close to Dayton.
Yeah, I don't remember the city name, but we were in Columbus.
And they were like, where are you headed next?
I forgot the city name.
It's a city west of Columbus.
You probably zoom in.
Akron?
No, it wasn't Akron.
It's a smaller city, but there's a Walmart there.
Is there to the left is Dayton?
Springfield.
Yep.
Okay.
Springfield.
So we're in Columbus.
And everyone's telling us, yeah, man, just be careful when you get to Springfield.
Just watch out.
And people say that to you the entire way.
And usually the place they warn you about are the best places.
So I'm not really listening to them.
And Julian, part of his job would be to figure out where we're going to sleep each night.
So like I said, we had a support vehicle.
So if there's Walmarts, we could usually park there.
They usually let us park there.
And so just like that, there was a Walmart right on our route, which is perfect.
And he's like, that's where we'll stop that night.
So I get there and I'll take my shoes off.
You know, I stretch and stuff.
And I'm like, hey, Julian, I'm going to go take a dookie in the Walmart.
Oh, yeah.
I've done that, dude.
So let me go make a deposit in the bank.
You know, let me go drop the kids off at school.
Oh, bro.
Why are you laughing at that?
That's not a good joke, dude.
There's nothing more.
I think there's nothing more American than, you know, pulling over the shit at a Walmart.
That's pretty much it.
And I've done that, and I love it.
I love being in there.
Except sometimes people write stuff on the, like the outside wall.
I find a lot of people have markers out there.
Anyway, let me get you.
I found something worse than a sharpie message on a stall.
I'm going to tell you what happened.
So I get to the stall and the back stall.
I think I'm in a freaking handicapped stall, which I shouldn't be.
Well, you know, but come leg stretched.
You burned it, bro.
You just walked there.
The complete opposite and being handicapped is walking all the way to the Walmart.
Listen, man.
Listen, I'm sitting on this toilet, okay?
And I've been on the toilet for like 120 seconds.
All right.
I'm just getting started.
Oh, yeah.
I already told you how much I eat.
Prelimins, baby.
Yeah.
I got my phone out.
I'm comfortable, dude.
I'm staying here.
I'm downloading the episode or something.
We're going to be here.
Listen, man.
So, like, I'm just in the prelims.
I hear somebody knock on the door and I can see there's another stall next to me empty.
They knock on the door.
They're like, hey, are you okay?
I'm like, yes, I am okay.
All right.
All right.
My fucking spidey sense is tingling, dude.
Why is this dude knocking on the door when there's an open stall?
Yeah, yeah, that's alarming.
That's alarming.
So then he follows with, do I know you?
No.
Bro.
I go fan.
Dude, I go, nope.
I go, you do not know me.
I am clear as day.
You do not know me.
How are you going to know somebody that's just in a shitter behind a door?
Unless you're David Blaine, bro.
He's like, what the fuck is this, dude?
He's like, he's like, are you sure?
I say, yeah, I'm sure.
I'm sure.
He's like, let me just check.
I think I know you.
I see two.
Okay, I'm sitting down at the thing.
I see two hands with clear rubber gloves on.
Not rubber like the doctor has.
Yeah.
But they're not even like the, like, like the Subway people wear.
Uh-huh.
You don't have the clear gloves.
Wow.
Okay.
Two of these.
Two of these creep over the, the, I'm looking at the top of the thing.
The sandwich maker mittens over the top, over the top of the stall.
He fucking pulled.
I don't see two eyes come over like this.
Okay.
See, the eyes come over.
I'm sitting down.
I'm in a vulnerable position.
I go, dude, what the fuck are you doing right now?
Okay.
Mean Posner came out, dude.
Mean Posner.
It wasn't the guy.
I go, what the fuck?
He goes, he drops back down.
Gloves disappear.
He goes, oh, I'm sorry.
I go, what the fuck are you?
He goes, I just thought you needed help.
You were in there a long time.
I go, I've been in here two minutes, man.
What are you talking about?
I didn't hear anything else.
I think he left the room, but I'm fired up, man.
Oh, and that's hard to shit when you're real fired up.
Yeah.
You know?
Oh, yeah, I do.
Actually, it wasn't that hard to shit, man.
Really?
Yeah, I finished my business.
So I finished my business, but I'm fired up and I'm ready to like fight this guy.
Oh, yeah.
And I opened the door.
He's not there.
And I was using, you know, Sherlock Pose.
You know, I was looking at those gloves.
I think he's probably at the subway.
I think he's the subway.
What's he going for?
I go looking for him.
Dude, I never found him.
But I still don't know what was like, is there some kind of weird meetup that happens in that back?
Like, what do you make?
What theory do you have to explain that?
I could see, man, it was daytime.
Daytime.
Probably 4.30 p.m.
I could see that.
But the sun is out.
Sun is out.
I could see people getting off work and maybe you say this.
If you gave out a certain vibe or something, you walked through the store.
Did you think you were doing that?
Were you kind of peacocking as you went through it?
Everywhere I went on this walk, I did not feel I stuck out.
So I'm perpetual peacocking on this walk.
So maybe this guy had daydreamed that a man came in like you, you know?
Maybe that's the thing.
You don't know where his life is meeting you at.
But that's wild to do a pull-up in those fucking.
Dude, he popped up, man.
Damn, that's crazy.
It was slow.
It was slow.
I wonder who he thought you were.
I'm thinking there's some sort of weird, weird meetup for like truckers.
Oh, I'm sure there's Tuesdays at 4.30 meeting the back.
Let's discuss why the gloves were on, though.
What do you make of that?
I think to not leave fingerprints, probably.
Oh, my God.
You know what I'm saying?
Oh, my God.
Just in case it gets real rectal or something.
You never know what this means.
Real rectal?
It's going to get rectal, bro.
You got to have a fucking mitten on, bro.
Because this dude, if he's out there like that, you know, maybe he's like a pianist, but don't want to, you know.
I don't know.
That's wild to me.
I don't like wearing those.
I used to work at a sandwich place and I don't like wearing those.
Dude, you know, I hooked up one time with Jared from Subway's sister one time, a long time ago.
Okay.
Tell me more.
That's it.
That's nothing.
That's it.
Yeah.
But it was a long time ago, but it was still, you know, it happened.
How did you know who her brother was?
People knew she knew.
You know, that was.
You knew before you met her?
No, I ended up meeting her that night, and people were like, hey, that's Jared from Subway's.
Oh, they were telling you.
Yeah.
Okay.
How much fandom did you have across?
Because you were a, I mean, you were a very.
Superstar?
Yeah.
I appreciate that.
But how much fandom did you run into?
Or, you know, people that are supporters and stuff?
Yeah.
Well, first of all, I've had some popular music, but I live a pretty normal life.
Most people don't know what my face looks like, which is pretty awesome.
You know, I can go to the store or whatever, and it's not a problem.
There's a nice freedom with that.
Huge, man.
And if you, I'm sure you have some friends who are like really famous.
It's scary.
It sucks.
It does suck, doesn't it?
It takes a lot of, just a lot of extra work to do.
And probably something that takes you even further.
We talk a lot about in here about like fame and the, and what is the real value in it, you know, and what is like just how much of a sidetrack it can be to being a human.
Huge.
You know, I feel bad for a lot of guys.
You see a lot of young guys these days who are struggling because of the fame, you know, something you can't live up to as a person, just as one person.
That's right.
You can't match that, this fictional kind of, you know, ambiance or this crystal ball, you know, or this disco ball that's kind of created.
You can't just be that as one person.
And you see a lot of people, you know, struggling with it.
You know, I mean, even Justin Bieber, you see him recently come out about opening up about a lot of his struggles, which I think is pretty cool.
But just the value of fame, I think, is not as valuable, I think, as a lot of people think it is.
It's valuable in this way.
Not so much in this way.
Yeah.
There's a sacrifice.
Big time.
Big time.
But to answer your question, man, at the beginning of my walk, I said publicly, I'll walk with anybody.
And so people would come from all over and they'd walk with me.
And it was very beautiful.
You know, my job when they showed up was to listen.
That was my intention.
I fucked it up sometimes a lot, you know, because they start asking me questions.
I notice I'm talking about myself.
Oh, yeah.
But my job really was to listen.
And there's a lot of people, and I would just ask, you know, every time someone showed up, hey, why did you come here today?
What were you looking for?
And not in the mean way, just so I know.
Right.
And it's always different.
Some people, they just wanted to go on like a wild goose hunt, you know, whatever they call it, because they know roughly where I am, but not exactly.
And it was just a fun thing to do on Saturday.
Like Easter egg.
Like you're like this Easter egg that's missing a lot of people.
They just want a picture.
But some people had some shit they wanted to talk about that they felt like they couldn't tell to anybody else.
You know, so it was just different every time.
And it was really beautiful because even if somebody is real excited, you know, as like a fan or something like that, you walk like two, three miles, the sun starts beating down on you real quick, real quick, you're just two dudes out there.
Yeah.
So it was really cool.
Oh, that's interesting.
It's like you could walk right out of your this like encasing kind of that happens sometimes from people knowing you in advance.
It takes a minute and one of my, I would call him a mentor, he's a hospice chaplain.
His name is Kevin Deegan.
Chaplain Kevin, we call him.
And before I left, he kind of gave me a lecture on listening.
And he said, Mike, there's three levels of listening.
The first is contextual, meaning I say, hey, my dad died two years ago.
It's just a fact.
That's context.
And the second is emotional.
It's one step deeper.
And that's, my dad died two years ago and I felt lost.
And the third is identity.
And that's, my dad died two years ago.
I felt lost.
But it was the first time I felt like a man changed who I was.
Or the first time I felt like a real adult.
And so he taught, you know, if you can move the conversation away from step one to two to three, then there can be healing, he says.
He says, you know, on that third level.
And so that's why I was trying to listen to people.
And it's just certain cues and questions he gave me, whether it's just like, tell me more about that.
Or how did that, you know, what did that change for you?
It's a question you can ask.
Ask people.
And you're trying to take it out of small talk.
Yeah.
Yeah, because you can really connect with people at that level too.
And it feels so good to connect with somebody at a level where you're both just human souls, kind of that, because you know what it's like to need something.
And when you hear somebody need something or people are sharing what they need, man, it's just such a magnet.
It's such a comfortable place.
It's a gift you can give to somebody else at any time.
Yeah.
Just to really be there, really listen.
It's pretty powerful, huh?
Yeah, man.
And the last one he gave me, you know, he said, if all that shit doesn't work, you're saying goodbye, you ask them, if I pray for you, what should I pray for?
I asked that question about 20,000 times on this walk, you know, just from New Jersey to California.
And people will tell you, man, pray for me, my sobriety.
Pray for my family.
In the Navajo Nation, they say, pray for my people a lot.
People would say that.
Pray for my people.
And then you get out level one, get to go a little deeper.
Was that one of the most popular answers?
People praying for their sobriety?
A lot of people with sobriety came out.
I wouldn't say like a lot.
I won't say like an abnormal percentage, but yes, some people.
The guy I'm thinking of when I say that, it was one of the most touching things happened on the whole walk.
This dude, I was walking in Arizona on the wallapie reservation.
And I'm having sort of a end of the day, tough day.
I think I'm doing 24, 26. And this guy stops, pulls this red F350, pulls the side of the road ahead of me, and it starts to reverse.
And I'm like, oh, what's this going to be like?
You know?
And I'm On, like, a two-lane, busy highway, it's like you know, speed limit 65 or whatever, it's dangerous.
So, dude, he like kind of dangerously like crosses the road.
I'm like, oh gosh, like, don't get hit by a car, please, bro.
And he comes over and he's talking to me.
He's like, Yo, I've just been following you.
And it's a indigenous young man.
His name is Rowan.
And we just had this little talk.
Honestly, I was tired.
I wasn't doing any of that shit.
Chaplain Kevin told me.
I wasn't really listening.
I was just thinking about myself.
But I remember to ask him that question.
I said, if I pray for you, what should I pray for?
And he said, man...
And he took a moment like that.
He's just, you know, several years ago, my dad died.
Alcohol, you know, I got a lot of alcoholism on his reservation.
Oh, yeah.
And he died of alcohol.
And a few years after that, I think it was his brother.
He died from alcohol.
And just like last year on Easter, my mom died of alcohol.
And I was like, you got your brother?
He's like, nah.
Like, I'm alone now.
So I would say, just pray for me.
I have a problem with alcohol too.
I'm sober now.
I can't remember how long, but just pray for my sobriety.
You know?
And I was like, fuck, man.
Shit.
I will.
You know, I will.
And he said, you just wait here, man.
I want to get, I got something for you.
He runs across the road again.
I'm kind of scared back to his dude, dude.
Alcohol ain't going to get this guy, man.
It's going to be a damn fucking Corvette.
So he goes up to his truck and he had this little leather pouch and it's tied to like, you know, you drive the car like this and there's the little handle there sometimes on the truck.
It's tied there real tight, looped around.
Little leather pouch.
He undoes it.
He brings over.
He says, hey man, this is in our tradition.
This is sweet grass and sage.
And we believe sometimes spirits or souls, they get lost right here where you're walking.
And this is just, you know, in our tradition, we believe it's protects you.
And I want you to have it.
And I thought, fuck, man.
You know, he left.
And he put his fucking hand out the window like this.
You know?
Drove by, drove away from me.
That shit just, after he left, shit just hit me right in the heart.
Like, how did this guy, man, this guy, first off, I'm a white guy walking on his land, you know?
Right, which probably, yeah, which traditionally didn't really work out well.
No, we fucked, we fucked them over every single type of way possible, you know.
How could this guy be so welcoming to me, so kind, even after everything he's had such a hard run, you know, and his smile.
And that's one of the most touching moments, that whole walk, man.
Especially when you're having a day where that's like, yeah, you're at the end of the day.
Sometimes you can't be, you know, your best self after, you know, it's hard.
You can't always be your best self and do the things you want to do, like you're saying, like some of the guideposts that the chaplain had given you and things like that in conversation.
And yeah, it happens a lot.
And it's like you get into a moment, you're like, oh, and then somebody does for you what you, you know, you want to be doing for them or what you, you know, it's like somebody brings your journey, what's your thing.
They bring it right to you, man.
That's powerful, huh?
Powerful.
Before I left, I brought these sort of like intentions for myself.
And one of them was, like I said, listen deeply.
And another one was leave each place I go better than it was when I came.
And I read that now.
And that's one of the things I want to punch old Mike in the face.
Like, you fucking cocky motherfucker.
You think you're going to breeze in to the wallapie nation and leave it better?
Yeah.
No, motherfucker.
You're going to walk there.
And because of people's, not just there, but everywhere that you walk, because of people's kindness and grace, they will leave you better.
You know what I mean?
I hear that now.
I read it.
I'm like, dude, you're so cringeworthy.
You were so cocky.
But for some weird reason, it's a normal train of thought.
I used to think like, especially when our podcast really started out, a lot of young men would reach out with things that were struggling.
And I was thinking like, oh, yeah, this is great.
I have an opportunity to be able to help other people be a part of their life.
But then over time, it's like I've had so many struggles on my own that these, it's like the people that support the pod are always there for me.
So it's like, it's just interesting, man.
It just shows how much that we need each other.
You know, it really, that's one thing that I'm constantly, you know, reminded of.
I got a question for you.
Yeah.
I know the story or the, I think it's the night you got or decided to get sober, Daryl Strawberry.
That Daryl Strawberry date.
Fucking amazing, man.
If anybody watching this hasn't seen that, they probably all have.
Thank you, man.
That means a lot comes up.
What happened the next day?
What happened the next day?
Did you go to a center?
What happened?
The next day, I flew back out here to Los Angeles and I'd been partying before I even left Los Angeles.
I've been doing some cocaine and doing that.
And there was still some cocaine on my counter even when I got home.
Oh, shit.
So I did that.
You left a little booby trap off.
The worst, bro.
So you came back and did more cocaine?
Yeah, I had to, man, because I left it right there, you know?
And yeah, so at that point, then the next day I had some meetings and stuff.
I was supposed to do work stuff, and I had to cancel it.
And I went into an office of a manager that I had at the time.
And he asked, he was introducing me to his manager boss.
So the management company was kind of trying to take some Notice of me what was going on in my career and stuff.
And he said, Hey, what's going on?
And I just told him, Daryl Strawberry, I just told him what happened.
You know, I just, I wasn't doing well.
And I just said, you know, I'm not really doing that well.
You know, it was the first time I'd gone into a place, I guess.
And I don't know if it was the first time I'd gone in and been honest, but gee, I'd not thinking about what did he, you know, what do I need to do to make my work better or career better?
What try to position myself in here?
I said, I've just been struggling.
You know, I've been, you know, struggling with some cocaine and doing some drug.
And he said, well, I go to these meetings if you want to go.
It was crazy because the guy who I was kind of scared to talk to, he said, well, why don't you come with me to this thing tomorrow?
You know, I go to these meetings.
And then the next day I went and then I continued to stay in there and start to figure out some other stuff because my alcoholism isn't really, I don't know how much I have a problem with drugs and alcohol, but I have a problem with the way that I think and feel about myself.
And it's a constant battle.
It doesn't, I can't just beat it.
You know, it's like it's one of those things that keeps coming back.
You know, I mean, it's that Mike Posner, bro.
It'll come back day after day, dude.
You know what I'm saying?
It'll show up across the country, bro, day after day.
It gets up.
It gets up before me, my alcoholism.
And it trains and it meditates and it's ready, bro.
That shit comes.
It'll fucking come off the, you know, I mean, you open the cereal cupboard and that motherfucker will jump out with a fucking little dragon in his arm.
You know, it'll do stuff.
So it's like, I have to, I got, you know, it just, it's a never-ending battle kind of.
But that's what happened.
That was like the next day that happened.
You still go to the same meeting?
I do sometimes.
Yeah.
Not as much, but I do.
And I go to a lot of them still.
Yeah.
You know, it had me thinking when you were walking, everywhere I go, people say that their town is the meth capital of the world.
You must have heard that all the time, huh?
I never heard those words, but pretty much every place I went, I mean, yeah, it struck me whether it was the smallest town in Pennsylvania or Indianapolis or, you know, St. Louis, every place I went, I never saw it aside from a lot of needles on the side of highway, especially in Pennsylvania.
I mean, those things are fucking everywhere.
Really?
Yeah, a lot of needles.
I don't say needles, like there were syringes.
I don't know if they had needles on the ends.
I couldn't tell.
But every place I went, I would meet somebody who say, we have a huge drug problem here.
Huge.
Every place.
That's wild, isn't it?
White, black, every place I went.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's one thing I noticed in these programs that this shit doesn't discriminate.
You know, I know some of those most powerful people now in entertainment that are, you know, through this program.
And I know people that have nothing, you know, that have, you know, haven't achieved any of their goals really or struggling with them.
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It's pretty powerful.
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And now back to the episode.
We had some calls that came in, man.
We had so many questions.
We want to get to a couple of video questions from some support.
They come in video, huh?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, boy.
Yeah, these people mean it.
There's your boy right there.
What do you think his name is?
I'm going to go with Alan.
I'm going to go with Jeremiah.
Okay.
That's Michael.
There we go, bro.
Yo, what up, Theo and Mike?
Mike, congratulations, man.
I'm so happy for you for finishing that walk, doing what you said you were going to do.
You freaking delivered, man.
So congrats on that.
I have a question for you about false finish lines.
So I've seen you mention that false finish lines have been a big struggle on the walk.
You know, you make it to the end of a state, then you just got to keep going.
So my question to you is, how do you deal with those false finish lines?
You know, you want that reward in your brain.
You want to be happy about what you've accomplished, but you just got to keep going.
So I'm curious, like, how you mentally and physically deal with that.
Right on, brother.
Gang, gang, guys.
Gang, bro.
Thank you for the question.
That's what all of them say to you?
Yeah, man.
And then they say gang, gang.
You just say one gang back.
You just say gang, yeah.
Dang.
But do you ever say gang twice and they say gang once?
Yep.
Or you just, you're like the.
Whoever starts the gang has to double it.
Let's try one.
All right.
Gang, gang.
Gang.
It didn't feel right.
Okay.
Just on my end.
All right, let me try.
I felt like my gang wasn't authentic.
I feel like it was authentic to you, though.
And that's what.
Gang, gang.
Gang, bro.
That felt better.
I'm a better leader.
I'm a better first dude.
But hey, man, Michael, right?
Yeah.
That's a great question.
How would you get to that finish line when you know there's so much more to go to reboot yourself?
And I got even this nomenclature false finish line or fake.
I got that from David Goggins.
He did a post about that.
Before I was experiencing it, but I didn't know how to conceptualize it.
So just a little background.
I was walking across Missouri.
And when I was walking across Missouri, it's like end of July.
It was fucking 95, you know, 90% humidity.
And you're completely covered.
I mean, you look completely covered.
I wore it's the same shirt.
I wear this shirt on the walk.
I didn't wear this one too much because it's blue and I ended up wearing the white ones because they're cooler.
But this is a walk shirt.
So they're long sleeve dry fit, but Coach Chad helped me out with this too.
It's a UV protected.
Oh, damn.
So man.
I got your complexion.
Believe it or not, I never got sunburned.
I'll show you this.
This and see if I can.
You never got sunburned?
Look at that.
And that's 10, I finished 10 days ago.
You see that?
Yeah.
So only my hand got tan.
Yeah.
Because I always wore this shirt.
Tan-handed bad boy over here.
That's only my whole body looks like.
Wow, that's amazing, man.
All right.
So look, I'm walking in Missouri and it's hot and it's flooded.
And I want to blow it out of proportion because people have lost their homes and everything.
So I'm just doing my walk.
So don't feel too bad for me, right?
But there are days that I'm walking the wrong way because I get to a road and it's just not there.
It's underwater.
Or I get there and the water's coming up to my knee and I'm walking more.
It's come up to my hip.
I'm like, dude, I got to go a different way, dude.
Like, this ain't going to end.
Or I'm walking the, I was on the Katie Trail and I'm walking through like nasty water.
Like still water.
Oh, yeah.
And like soup.
That's how I feel like when I picture some parts of Louisiana.
Oh, yeah.
Stagnant.
Some swampy water, dude.
Look, so I remember coming out of this wind water and my legs were just stinging.
They just stinging.
I'm like, dang, I got to wash those off soon, man.
This is not good.
Right?
So anyways, and there's no sell service there or whatever.
So we call it the old Fulton loop because I had to go up to this city called Fulton, Missouri.
And it was like, yeah, it was just the wrong way.
And it's demoralizing, walking the wrong direction.
Damn.
As you'd imagine.
But I kept saying to myself, man, just get to Kansas, dude.
Just get to Kansas.
So that was kind of my mantra in Missouri.
Just get to Kansas.
Now, a couple weeks pass.
And what happens?
I get to Kansas.
And I crossed that border and I fucking cried, bro.
I cried.
It was amazing.
Because nobody knew how hard it was, but me, you know, and somebody else that did the walkthrough.
I mean, just nobody knew.
And I thought, I made it, man.
I made it to Kansas, you know?
And it was the end of the day right at that border.
I went to bed and I felt proud.
And I went to sleep.
And the next day, the alarm went off, 4 a.m.
You just start walking, right?
So I get up to go.
And my mind, my body, my spirit, if you believe in that, if you don't want to Believe in spirit, we just call it morale.
My morale, they were all gone because they thought I was done because I kept telling them, just get to Kansas.
So they go, We made it, motherfucker.
Got you here.
Yep, see you later, Mike.
Right.
So, this one, this was actually the hardest day of the walk for me.
I started to go and in hindsight, I think I was pretty bad dehydrated as well.
But I get to a point where I'm limping.
And if my mind isn't actively thinking, walk, right, left, step, walk.
If my mind isn't thinking, if it drifts at all to any other topic anywhere, my body just stops.
And I finish my thought tangent and I realize, I'm not even, I'm not moving.
fuck and it'll be like That's how just, I just had nothing left.
It's just no energy there, man.
And my feet are fucking hurting bad.
And there's like, there's some trees and they have shade.
And I would walk to like a shade and I would like, I would sit down and try to just like cool off, get my shit together.
And I see like another tree, another piece of shade.
And it'd be like 200 feet in front of me.
And I'd walk there and my body would just fucking stop again.
I'd sit down.
I was just going from shade to shade.
And they're not very far apart.
And I'm taking a break at each one.
And it's just, so this is why I learned this lesson, man.
You can't create a finish line that isn't your finish line.
So you got to break the motherfucker down.
You don't have to be like, hey, man, I got 2,601 miles.
That's too big, you know?
So, but you're just going to the next checkpoint, but you're knowing that you're not done.
And so then we got a new mantra after that.
I got bit by a snake hard shit.
I learned.
And Julian here, he'll remember, you know, when we crossed the Rocky Mountains, or those were big deals because we had to plan for them differently, this kind of thing.
Whenever we'd finish something like that, we'd be excited.
We celebrate that shit.
We did it, you know, for sure.
But we would always say, this ain't a finish line.
It's a checkpoint.
Yeah.
And we'd say it, you know, we're hyped up.
We're saying finish line is a checkpoint, boy.
That's a checkpoint, boy.
That's that checkpoint.
There ain't no finish line.
We ain't done.
You know, that's how we would do it after we're done.
Be excited to not be done.
That's right.
We ain't done.
You ain't stop us there.
We ain't done.
You know?
And so even when I finished the walk, it's one of the best days, you know, best moments of my life.
I got 30 people at the beach waiting for me.
And I took a vow of silence that day.
I walk up to that beach and I had a moment with each person.
You know, they're standing shoulder to shoulder looking at me.
The water's behind them.
I can see the water.
Like, fuck, man.
I made it here.
And I'm going down the line, hugging each person, just having a moment.
And I'm listening.
They're talking to me, but I didn't say shit.
I'm not saying anything until I get in that water.
I seen Coach Chad there.
I just started crying.
Wow.
Because he, you know, that was the guy talking to me on the phone.
He's been there every day.
Yeah.
Talking to me on the phone almost every day, you know, before.
And he said in my ear, there was never a doubt.
There was never a doubt.
And I keep going down that line, you know.
All the people, you know, guys I met at the Navajo Nation that drove there, you know, barely any gas money because we connected when I walked there.
Wanted to be there when I finished.
And last two guys were Julian and Colin, the other walk manager.
They took turns.
And also Julian's ass, I started crying, dude.
He's like, man, get up, give me a hug, dude.
And he said, we finished our moment, and I'm getting ready to go in the water.
And he looked at me, he said, this ain't finish lines.
It's a checkpoint.
And our motto, too, was keep going.
That's another one of our mottos.
Yeah, yeah, no.
I caught on to that one.
Yeah, for sure.
Every time I was say goodbye to Julian, the whole walk or Colin, I'm going to go walk another eight miles.
We go like this.
Keep going.
Keep going, baby.
Every time.
So we did that.
He just reminded me, no, even though you're done with this journey, you're not done, motherfucker.
This is actually just the beginning.
You know, because we talked about all this stuff.
You became this new guy.
You found parts of yourself.
You're stronger.
Now you can do so much more.
I mean, the things that are on my on my on the buffet now is so much more than it was before I did the walk.
Right.
It was salad before you got dessert on there.
Yeah, I got coupons.
The balsamic vinaigrette.
Yeah.
You got balsamic, dude.
You got fucking oysters, bro.
Everything.
They got a fresh catch area.
You fucking, this thing's big.
Dude.
Y'all took the sneeze guard off.
Listen, so.
So.
Yeah.
You know, Buffett's gutter when they got that fucking sneeze guard on that bitch.
I wonder.
I never knew what that was.
Yeah, dude, that's so you can't lean in.
I don't want you in there.
I didn't know why they had it.
They have it for you, dude.
Theo Von's action.
These look good.
Jesus.
Damn, I wonder why don't they put them on a better, you know, mobile?
Because they always got these shady on a piece of glass up at the top.
You're always doing like this.
I'm like, I should have been a surgeon.
I'm just trying to get a couple of fucking potatoes, bro.
That's crazy, man.
I didn't know that.
Wow, that's a safety sneeze goal.
So listen, dude.
So you ran into the water?
I ran in the water, but I wanted to not make that mistake again.
So, my body's pretty jacked, you know, it's not injured, but it's pretty jacked up.
You know, my feet are hurting and all that stuff.
But I know the next day after the walk's the most important day of the walk, you know.
Who cares?
You go, we learned a bunch of stuff, tapped a new part of yourself, and you go the next day and you forget it all.
Who cares?
Anybody can do that.
So how do we do that?
How do we keep that going?
Well, this is how I've been.
This ended 10 days ago, so I'll tell you where I'm at, you know.
But the next day was very important to me.
And I knew I knew I needed rest, you know, for my body.
But in order to not fuck this mistake up, I knew I had to be up at 4 a.m.
again the next day.
And I knew I had to get after it.
So I called this dude named Coach Marcelo.
He runs a boxing gym.
Argentinian man.
I said, hey, man, can you meet me at 5.30 Saturday?
And I'm doing this, you know, like a week before I finish the walk.
I said, can you meet me at 5.30 Saturday?
Wow, planning ahead.
That's cool.
And he said, yeah, I got to confirm.
I said, I can't confirm.
I'm turning my phone off Friday.
I'm leaving my phone off for two days after that.
I said, I need you to confirm now.
Can you meet me at 5.30?
He said, yeah, I'll be there.
So I'm up at 4. I hit that meditation.
I ride my bike over to the boxing gym.
And I fucking jump the rope.
I hit the heavy bag.
I hit the mitts.
I do the sit-ups.
He's throwing the medicine ball.
And this shit, my body needs to rest.
I know that.
But hey, I also need my body, my mind, my spirit to know I'm not done.
So that's what I did the next day.
And I did some yoga after that, some physical therapy.
And I just kept my phone off for two days because I knew I needed to feel how I felt without having to explain to other people how I felt.
And I wrote about it.
But I just try to keep that first week.
I gave myself this week, I let myself sleep a little bit, which I needed, you know, but that first week.
But you decompressed a little.
I needed to keep that schedule.
And I thought I was going to get depressed.
You know, you finish this big thing, but I really haven't.
And that's because even though I'm not on the walk, I'm working on other things.
Whether it's writing, I'm doing some writing, a pro style, which is exciting to me and difficult.
You're still walking inside of yourself.
Do you find yourself kind of like the steps kind of keep going inside of yourself sometimes?
Can you still feel them in your being, kind of?
I don't know if I would put it quite like that, but yeah, I definitely feel like I left the walk, but the walk never leaves you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
For sure.
Do your legs sometimes be like, dude, take me for a walk.
I feel like it would be like having a couple dang Dobermans on you.
Yeah, dude.
You know, they've been pretty tired, dude.
But me and Coach Chad just start hitting some hikes.
Because next thing, one of the things I want to get into is mountaineering.
So instead of walking on flat, just going that way.
So we've been going doing some hike, man.
He took me out some bullshit yesterday.
And he's out of Louisiana, right?
And that's flatland.
I don't know how I would not let that man at an altitude.
So I don't know what you guys are doing up there with him.
Dude, he's got machetes out and shit.
You don't want to see that.
And y'all look just at a Carl's Jr.
It's like, what the hell's going on?
You don't want to see this guy on a Saturday, bro.
You don't want to see him.
It's dangerous, huh?
Yeah.
Some men get real dangerous on the weekend.
I've seen Cameron Haynes and some of those guys, they get real dangerous on the weekend.
Has he come on your podcast?
Very violent.
No, he hasn't.
He would come on.
No, I haven't even met him.
We just communicate it sometimes online, but he's really...
Yeah, he seems pretty gnarly.
He runs like a marathon a day.
He doesn't stop.
We got this question that came in right here from me when I was younger.
All right, what do you think his name is?
Oh, man.
I'm going to go with Scott.
That's Jeff.
That's a strong Jeff.
Hey, what's up, Theo?
What's up, Mike?
It's Ben.
Damn.
Fuck, man.
Or as Mike knows me by BC Birdman.
I know him.
I don't know.
We walked together back in Indiana around about five miles around Terre Haute.
So what I want to ask Mike is that you told me...
Oh, I remember this dude.
He changed his whole fucking...
I remember this dude.
Oh, it might be because of Movember.
This guy was dope, man.
Yeah.
In Indiana, that you developed a love for Ford F-150s.
First of all, is there any plans to buy an F-4 F-150 for your own?
And then also, follow up.
Anything on the walk later on that after we've stopped walking with you that you came to love or came to appreciate that you didn't think you would or that you just couldn't expect?
I remember this guy.
He walked to me and I remember he got a hat that looked like mine kind of.
Oh, cool.
And this guy is a bird enthusiast.
Oh, wow.
So he talked to me on the walk.
You know, we walk a few hours.
He will go in camo and he has these long lenses.
And sometimes they call the cops on him because he looks scary, bro.
Yeah, he's got these long lenses because he's trying to get this shot of this bird, you know, and he'll be just camped out in the grass waiting for that.
Oh, yeah, perking on birds, bro.
We have dudes like that.
So F-150.
Yeah, I realized, like, man, everyone has an F-150.
I always lived in a city or a suburb.
Yeah, you don't see trucks here now.
I mean, you never see a truck.
You never see a truck.
Dude, but you on the walk, everyone has an F-150.
Everyone has it.
A lot of America has trucks.
We never see them.
I started to love these F-50s.
And then I realized they're F-250s.
Damn.
And there's F-350s that growing up.
It don't keep going up.
All the jackets.
Dude, then my new favorite car, after he met me, became the F-750.
It's like a front cab of a semi-oman.
I can't even imagine that.
It's a big boy.
Ooh.
I don't want all that.
Dude, just relax.
750.
You put your hands on the table, dude.
Jesus, dude.
Hold on, let me put my gloves on first.
Ooh, I'll put them on, bro.
Maybe that was me back there at that fucking Walmart.
Dude, I wouldn't be surprised.
Oh, that's an F750.
That's the big boy.
But normally they don't have like, see, that looks weird because it has the regular back.
Usually they have like a dump truck or something on the back like that.
I've never even seen it.
But I was CDs.
I see them come up.
I go, I think it's an F750.
I start hyping it up.
And then either if it's big like that, either it's a 650 or 750.
If it comes by and it says on the side of the car, so I'm looking at it.
It's coming right at me.
I'm getting excited.
It comes by, it says 650.
I'm like, fuck.
Man, you hate to see it.
But if it comes by, it comes by like this and says 750.
I might even run a little bit after I see that boy.
It's a little thing that gets you going, huh?
Dude, I think like another, I don't know, just the second part of this question, any other things I learned or I didn't expect, a thing that popped in my head was hunters, man.
I always thought hunters didn't give a fuck about animals.
Right.
I thought they were like the people that hated it.
Like, fuck animals, man.
They'll fucking kill me soon, you know?
So it turns out, at least all the hunters I met, they actually care about animals more than anybody.
Yeah.
And what I learned was, you know, you could live in LA and West Hollywood and you buy a fucking burger.
And what you're basically doing is paying somebody else to, you know, factory farm these poor cows and fucking kill them in a terrible way.
And you're, you know, you're funding the genocide, basically, you know, but you're a hunter like some of the guys I met.
And you find out, one, it's just very regulated.
You know, it's a certain time you get the tags.
Yeah, October, November is it?
Yeah, and you got, and you got, they're only giving out the tags so you don't decimate the population.
You're not hunting the babies, you know.
So it's all that.
And then what they taught me, I was asking a hunter, I was like, man, so if you see a deer, where you shoot, you shoot it like in the head?
And they're like, no, you don't want to shoot a deer in the head.
It's ain't casino or something.
I didn't know, dude.
I didn't know, man.
Dude, I thought you.
Tell me where a stream is.
I thought, you just, I thought you just, you see the animal, you shoot the, shoot them.
That's what I thought they did, you know?
But I found out they wait till they can kill it in a way where it won't suffer, where it's going to be dead.
So even if they can see the animal or the animals in the scope, if it doesn't turn in the right way and they don't get a clean shot, they don't kill it.
And that I learned that that changed my whole perspective of what I thought hunting was.
And these people are doing this.
You're like, basically, you're in the food chain then.
It seems very ethical to me.
Yeah, in a lot of small areas, I mean, especially.
As ethical as killing could be, that would be it.
But it's more ethical to me than buying a burger at the store or whatever.
Right, and they use it, especially locally.
I'll get calls when I was back in Louisiana.
Hey, you know, we have some venison or we got this or we got some quail, you know, or we got a fucking fresh load of fucking hamp meat.
What about those dudes?
They come, this is a real thing.
Because I've seen a lot of roadkill, as you might imagine.
One of those dudes, they pick up the roadkill, eat it.
I think as long as they cook it and eat it, that's fine, dude.
Did you ever have any roadkill meat?
If they're doing that fucking highway sashimi, bro, I'm out, dude.
That's what I'm out.
Did you ever have any roadkill meat?
I've had a lot of exotic meat that was probably killed.
I wouldn't know if it was killed by an auto, but I bet it was killed by something, you know, fast and unnecessary.
Like what?
Exotic meat.
Owl people know.
I've had owl meat.
I've had...
What else?
I wouldn't say I've had gerbil, but I've had something just a touch bigger than that.
What the fuck, dude?
What's a touch bigger than a gerbil?
Probably like a little maybe.
A muskrat?
Yeah, I'm trying to think of what else you could be thinking.
Maybe a large groundhog.
What else do they have?
What the fuck, dude?
Yeah, man.
We came up in an area that had a lot of exotic meats.
You know, I've had guinea pig, large ones, nothing small.
I've had...
I've had dove, yeah.
A couple brothers near me used to always be grilling up doves, and I'd go get over there and eat it with them once a week.
Was it doves flying around?
They'd shoot them?
I don't know.
Where did they get them?
I think they catch them, you know.
Catch them with their hands.
Because a dove will come over, bro.
That's the fucking Bible trying to reach out to you on wings, dude.
You can't catch a dove with your hands, bro.
I can't.
But these chefs could, these local chefs.
We had one or two more video questions that came in, man.
This is just, I mean, it's wild because I could talk to you.
I mean, there's just so much to encapsulate that you started a feed and that you took it on and that you really did it.
Hey, man, that's the thing.
And it must be hard for you.
Is it hard to corral all of the levels of it, the physical, the emotional, the.
Yeah, but that's one of the reasons I told you I'm doing that writing now.
Because then I can start to see what I actually, a lot of stuff I'm saying today.
I'll be able to kind of think out because I'm writing it to myself.
Do you think there'll be a book or something where people can get a hold of it?
I mean, I think it could be helpful to people.
I really think it could be.
I think, I don't know if I'm, if I'm called to do it, I'll do it.
But I got once, you know, if I'm going to do a book, I'm a writer.
You know, I write my own song.
I write other people's songs.
So I couldn't use like a ghostwriter or anything like that.
You have to do it yourself.
And, you know, you do that book.
It's going to be hard.
This is as hard as a walk, you know?
And it's going to take longer for sure.
Walk took six months.
You know, you do that book.
Yeah.
If you do it right, you know, it's going to take three, four, five, six, seven years.
You don't know.
Keep going, man.
I love it.
Keep going, baby.
Keep going.
This guy has a question right here.
We'll get it.
What's his name, dude?
That's Alberto.
Oh, hold on.
Okay.
Albert or Alberto?
I'm going to go with Edwin.
He didn't really say he put his name as Silver Fox.
Oh, shit.
We were way off, dude.
Well, so he must be Native American.
Is that a Native American name?
Yeah, it must be.
Hi, Mike.
This is the Silver Fox here.
This is Harry.
He's referring to me.
I lost my father four months ago, and I have recurring dreams with him in the dream.
And I was wondering if you think that it's a mechanism to help your brain cope with the trauma, or if there's more to it, and if you've experienced that yourself.
Gang, gang.
Gang.
Gang, bro.
Silver Fox.
Yeah, I felt bad as joke at the beginning of that.
It's okay.
You didn't know.
I was about to joke even and I didn't.
Dude, my dad came and visited me in a dream recently in Hawaii.
I was in Hawaii.
I hadn't seen my dad in 20 years and he showed up in a dream.
It was really cool.
What was the dream?
He was there.
Matthew McConaughey was there.
And Robert De Niro was there.
And there was kind of an argument.
It was at lunch.
And I was trying to get everybody to communicate, but De Niro didn't want to talk to my dad.
McConaughey was a little bit indifferent, but it ended up they chatted for a minute.
And I don't know what it was all about, but that was just the dream.
And then I got to just see my dad.
I just hadn't seen him.
And he was younger than I'd ever met him at.
And it was just, it was crazy.
And it was just, I mean, I'd never had no dream.
And then I'm in Hawaii.
So did he die 20 years ago?
No, he died about, I think maybe, yeah, he died about 20 years, 22 years ago.
22. But it was just to see him, just to have like a moment where I thought I was really there with him, you know?
And I know your father passed, yeah.
Do you feel like there was, was there moments where he was with you?
Was there moments or was it a disconnect?
Was there any moment?
No, this is actually a crazy question because it happened all the time when I started this walk.
Like, it was crazy.
I mean, I was telling my friends, I was like, dude, I see my dad or I had dreams about my dad.
I don't really feel like some people believe different things.
I don't really feel like that's him visiting me.
I don't really believe that.
So I would say I'm having dreams about my dad.
But yeah, it would be all the time, man.
So much more than when I was on the walk.
And I wake up and I remember just feeling like...
And the last year, 10 months, he was really like dying.
He was in the hospital bed, that kind of thing.
He was sick.
And in the dreams, he's never sick.
It's always more like a few years before.
That's the state his body's in.
He's in.
And I remember the feeling like when I'd either wake after I'd wake up or the feeling was always like almost shock, like, he's really dead.
He's really gone.
And I remember feeling like how sad it really was.
And then I remember the whole deal that happened when he was sick.
It almost refreshes it because they were there for a second in your head.
But it feels more like, it felt more heavy than it did when I was there.
Like helping take care of him because I was just doing it then and I had to make sure I was doing a good job.
And I'll look back and I'll just remember the feeling was like, fuck, man, that shit really happened.
Dad got cancer and he died.
Fuck.
You know, I didn't really know what to do with that.
You know, I would wake up and I would take care of what I said I was going to take care of.
If I had to theorize to Silver Fox, I would think it's probably, again, I'm no fucking psychologist, but I would just, I would guess like me feeling what I need to feel.
And maybe I'm cruising so hard and I'm doing all the stuff.
I'm busy.
All that shit's good, you know?
I don't feel bad about any of that.
But maybe I didn't feel all the pain, all the grief I needed to.
So it's coming at night.
That's what I would guess, dude.
Was it easier to go to sleep at night or was it harder to go to sleep at night on the walk?
I would feel, it would seem like you'd be so exhausted, but that's just what I would think.
It would be little like waves you got to catch, you know, like I was trying to get to bed at 7.30 because I knew I wouldn't fall asleep, right?
But I was trying when I was trying to be like in the bed, you know, starting the process.
And you in the camp or you in the Winnebago when you sleep?
You guys get a hotel sleep?
Mostly, every once in a while, but mostly, yeah, we had an RV.
That was our support vehicle.
But then when we would do the actual like parts that were like the Rocky Mountains or certain parts of the desert in Arizona, like the or the Mojave Desert in California, the RV couldn't drive on those parts.
So then I'd be sleeping in a tent.
But that was the best part, dude, sleeping in a tent.
Anytime we had finished those, we'd come back.
Our RV, we call Larry.
We'd come back, Julie, we'd be like, man, I love Larry, but kind of like, fuck Larry, bro.
We don't really need him, dude.
So, yeah, man, it would be hard, especially in the summer when it's hot.
I wasn't sleeping too well.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, it is hard to sleep when it's so hot.
And I was in Maui this summer for just a week.
Humble brag.
Yep.
And Island fucking Humblebrag, too, dude.
And I didn't have any air conditioning in the hotel room.
And it was so hard to sleep at night.
Dang.
What fucking promoter puts you out there, dude?
Don't worry, Theo.
All expenses paid, dude.
All expenses paid.
Just come on out.
It'll be a great time, man.
I would put a couple ices on my back.
I would lay down and put some ices on my back.
That's right.
That's right.
Let's get one more question, man, and then we'll quit taking up all of Mike's day.
Hey, I'm here for you.
This is awesome, man.
Oh, wait, let me guess the name.
I'm stumped.
Yeah, me too.
There's something about the way his eyes got caught in that frame.
One's bigger than the other.
Yeah, I'll go with Shane.
I'll go with Shane.
That's a damn good guess.
Thanks, bro.
Fuck, man, you are good.
Well, let's see.
We're both fucking.
Dude, that's a fucking Shane, though.
Hold on.
Did he say his name?
Wait, wait, I got a guess.
Hold on.
I'm going to go with...
He didn't say his name.
It's Finn Sanders.
Finn.
Damn.
That's close to Shane.
I feel like they're in the same neighborhood.
you gotta get a regular name Finn you gotta fucking why did we Did we have any crazy guesses, though?
I don't know why I didn't guess Bartholomew.
You should have guessed that.
You should have guessed Bartholomew.
That would have been a good guess.
All right, come on.
Come on, Finn.
The discussion topic that I want to talk about is regarding Mike's philosophy on life, which I have been trying to adopt.
Loving people, forgiving, understanding.
I just wonder where do you draw the line when you recognize actually malevolent and pathological behavior.
Do you still think you can exterminate stuff like that with love and understanding?
Or do you think that you sometimes have to draw the line?
Thank you to you both for what you're doing.
This is the collab of the year.
Gang Gang.
Gang.
Gang, bro.
That segment good, bro.
You just came because it came out like my stomach.
And not my brain.
Yeah.
You know, first time I did, I was trying to sound cool.
Yeah, you were stuck in your throat.
I was thinking about gang.
You need that guttural gang.
It's a gang, bro.
Gang.
Yeah, that isafa gang.
In the beginning, you got to get that guttural gang.
I want to hear you answer the question too, because it's a good one.
Especially you in recovery.
I know forgiveness is a big part of that.
Yeah, I think you have to do your best.
You know, I think that not, like, I think almost everybody, almost everybody you can find a way to relate to.
Almost everybody.
And I think there's instances where you can't.
And for me, my instincts will usually kind of let me know.
Like, this is something, this is someone you can work with and learn from.
Or you guys can, you know, you guys can be a part of each other's lives or help each other in some way.
And this is something that's out of your capable jurisdiction.
There's nothing if you continue to engage here that you're going to be able to get to help each other.
It's just not a good match.
That's for a higher power.
That's something that you can't handle.
And so, you know, that's where I kind of, I think I'll just trust my instinct sometime and try to, and that's where I'll draw the line.
It's not that something's pure evil, but it's just something that I can't really help, I can't help or it can't help me, even in a, in a, in a positive way, like just in any type of emotional way or anything, you know.
Yeah.
I think sometimes it's just out of my hand.
I'm not, you know, I'm just a layman of the higher powers.
So it's like, you know, a lot of times I need more help.
Sometimes you do run across some people.
It's just, they need to send this person back into the drawing board, back into the ether, and let them get them remodeled, you know?
Oh, shit, dude.
Sometimes I think you talking about killing them, dude?
I mean, I ain't killing them, bro, but I'll come to the funeral.
Oh, you know?
I'll be out there, bro.
It's the dark arts, man.
It doesn't end, Michael.
Man, it doesn't end.
I think, man, I think it's a difference between forgiveness and who you choose to spend your time with or spend your life with, really.
Forgiveness is for yourself, you know, really.
I think.
I'm looking at you like you asked me the question.
No, it's okay.
I love it.
Hey, listen, bro.
Hey, listen, man.
I think forgiveness is for yourself.
You know, somebody fucks you over or something, then you got to carry that.
You know, they always say, like, you hate somebody.
They don't feel that hate.
You feel the fucking hate.
You got to walk around with that, you know?
And so I think the forgiveness is for yourself.
Yeah.
But then at the same time, like, I think, this is where I'm at right now in my life.
If you asked me a year ago, I think I'd say something very different.
But right now, I think I'm a 31-year-old man.
Part of my job is to be respectful, but also not be disrespected.
So if somebody's going to disrespect me, or even like if I first meet someone and it just feels off, that's cool.
I'm just going to be nice to you, but we're not going to be friends.
I'm not going to go be friends with you just to be nice because you asked to have dinner with me or whatever.
I'm good.
And then it goes, same thing.
Sometimes someone you love might do some shit that you think is disrespectful.
And one of the big things for me is I always in the past, just, because I was so scared of conflict, I just withdraw.
And maybe I just like avoid them.
Or maybe I don't avoid them, but I got this little thing in the back of my head going.
Remember that one fucking time you did?
That resentment.
Yeah, that resentment.
And now I think part of my job, you know, as a, as, to myself, is to not allow myself to be disrespected.
Or if I disrespect my boys, call them out on it.
Hey, motherfucker.
I don't like the way you said that to me, dude.
Yeah.
You know?
And you can do that with love, too.
It's interesting how you can.
And it can be a moment for them where they go, oh, man, you're right.
And they can learn and it actually can help them not do that in another part of their lives.
Or sometimes you read it fucking wrong.
And, you know, and you get to get to the bottom of it.
Yeah.
But I had a friend of mine, one of my best friends, dude, he was there on the beach.
He's an interventionist.
So he travels 250 days a year.
That's amazing.
Dude, this guy.
I would love to have him come on.
Would he ever be willing to come on here and talk about that?
I can't speak for him.
I'd love for him to.
He fucking should, but we'll see.
Okay.
But at the very least, man, sometime like, the three of us eat, or even if I'm not there, you should meet him.
I'd love to meet him, man.
And he's older than us, too.
that's one of the things I love about him because he just I reflect I'm like, this dude's an angel, bro.
Damn.
You know, when you meet someone that's bad vibes, it's like the opposite.
Yeah, yeah.
But he's in recovery, 33 years.
Wow.
I bet him.
Imagine him being on the front lines of seeing somebody have a moment that starts to change their life.
That's his job every day.
Fuck, that's crazy, bro.
Every day.
And why'd I bring him up?
What were we talking about?
We're talking about just like how sometimes, you know, you can.
Oh, I don't know why.
He said to me the dopest shit about resentment because one time when I first met him, he had texted me a few times and I missed it.
And the second time he called, left a message.
I was like, oh, yeah, I'll call him later.
Fucking forgot.
Like three times.
I basically blew him off.
And I called him back eventually.
He said, hey, you know, you made it pretty clear to me that you didn't want to continue our relationship.
And that's not how I felt at all.
I just felt like, hey, I'm a fucking artist.
I don't have to call people back.
Everybody understands I'm doing important shit, which I'm not really.
You know, I'm just doing my life.
It's not any more important than anybody else's.
But in my head, that's really what I fucking thought.
And he said, look, man, you made it pretty clear you didn't want to continue the relationship.
But now you're calling me, so I see you do.
But I wrote you an email.
I was just getting ready to send.
And I'm going to send it anyway so you can see where I'm at.
And because resentment has an appetite I could never satisfy.
And that just stuck with me, man.
It's like, you got a problem with somebody, even if your problem is not justified, you got to say it.
You know, you got to say it.
That was, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And he just called me out my shit.
Damn.
It's nice when something can come through and touch you, especially like in Hollywood, you know, its ego is so dangerous and it's easy and it happens to us without us even knowing it.
So over the years, bro.
Sneaks.
It's crazy.
Slipsy.
Like that snake and it fucking bit you, dog.
It's not even like the snake, bro.
It's like a snake that bites you real slow over 10 years.
Like a romantic snake, yeah.
The snake is like, boop, you're going to the hospital, motherfucker.
You know?
Did you feel when that snake got you like it was something?
Was it anybody in particular?
Did you like, oh, somebody sent this snake?
Like, was there a third thing in your head?
Dude, that's some Louisiana shit.
I'm just like a rock, dude.
I don't know.
God damn it, Jeffrey.
He got me again.
What?
Damn, man.
If a snake came all the way up to the interstate, snake don't go by the interstate.
What do you think it would have been like if I walked across Louisiana?
You think that would have been pretty cool?
There's a lot of drunk drivers down there.
That's the only risky part outside of that.
Yeah, I think it would have been pretty cool.
But I got some of those swampy areas.
Oh, dude, your crotch would have definitely, your nuts would have turned into a real hornet's nest, I bet.
Oh, my gosh, dude.
Because, yeah, animals could live inside of your body down there.
They find dead people all the time.
They find a little animal in them.
I'm like, damn, what is this?
But they died first, then the animal went in.
The animal went in and killed them from the inside.
A lot of people think that.
How the animal get in?
Like, what kind of animals it is?
About some of those gerbils, bro.
If something stops by at night and you've been putting on weight, you won't even fucking notice.
Oh, my gosh.
You won't even notice.
Mike.
I would notice, dude.
Speak to you.
I could see you.
Yeah, my bad.
I wouldn't notice, man.
Mike walked across America and it's almost like you went all that way to meet yourself in some ways, man.
For sure.
100%.
100%.
Dude, it's captivating, man.
It's really, really inspiring.
Were you amazed by how many people were inspired by who got on board and started to really feel inspiration from you?
Yeah, it was pretty great because you're doing the thing for yourself.
And then, like I said, there's this shitty part of me that's doing it for attention.
But you're able to recognize that and say those two things.
You gotta say it.
It's a smaller part, but it's there.
But mainly, you know.
And as I went along, they got smaller.
And I really like, after I buy snake, I shut down everybody walking with me because I didn't want anybody else to get hurt.
And it really became more of like my journey, you know.
And this is how I know because when I started the walk, I thought when I finish, I'm going to go, when I get to LA, I'm going to post on Instagram and I'm going to walk across LA.
I'm going to have like a thousand people behind me.
Oh, yeah, I'm sure they would be in our head.
You know, I'm going to have this fucking news helicopter.
I'm going to have a parade, dude.
Missiles.
And then as I got closer, I go, dude, you don't even fucking want that.
All you want to do is be there with the people you love the most.
It's not even the people you love the most.
Be there with the people you want to see in that moment.
And I didn't blow it up.
I actually did the opposite.
I did a post on.
I'm like, hey, man, as you guys know, I'm getting close.
And some people have been writing in, like, can we walk with you?
Can we meet you at the end?
And I said, no, you can't.
You know, you can't walk with me that day.
I'm taking a vow of silence.
I'm not taking any fucking selfies that day.
I'm going.
I'm just going to finish it alone for me.
And that's really what I wanted.
And I had to ask for what I wanted.
And you know what happened?
I walked across LA, man.
Some people recognized me.
All of them respected that.
Wow.
And they said, you know, they said, Mike, we're not trying to slow you down.
Just, you know, finish up or keep going.
Everybody was cool with it.
But it's crazy you had to ask yourself for what you wanted.
That's really interesting.
I had to ask myself, but what I wanted, what I'm saying, is it changed.
The guy who started the wall had this goofy vision and get this validation from a lot of people being there.
That's not really the guy that made it to the other side.
So it was interesting, because I think part of that attention wanting part of myself had to be there for me to start.
But then when I did the thing, man, that thing kind of died a little bit along the way.
He didn't make it across, dude, really?
Maybe a little bit.
He made it across, but he's a little weaker now.
I like that.
Yeah.
Man, thank you so much, Mike, for coming and talking.
Anytime.
And I just want to add last thing.
I know you're wrapping it up, but I didn't say this on the record.
But I told you before, that's how this whole thing started.
Was, you know, in between my segments, I would break up my day 8, 8, usually 8, or 8, 8, 4, 4, make 24. And it got a little longer towards the end.
But in between all my rips, that's what I called them, all my 8-mile rips.
A lot of times we would put your shit on, dude.
Just fuck.
Because it's hard out there.
It's a grind.
I can't imagine.
So me and Julian would be on there.
We just put your shit on.
We're like, dude, this guy, man, we'd be laughing so hard.
And then we could just listen to one video.
You know, we lose service.
Yeah.
But when you lose service, one Dio Vaughn joke, that lasts you like a month.
That nocturnal bus, dude, we just like I'd leave.
You know, I'd leave.
I'd walk eight miles.
You know, that takes me two, two and a half, two hours, 45, whatever.
I come back, man.
I'd be like, dude, I'm chasing that bus, dude, that dream bus, dude.
You know, we just repeat that shit for like a month.
Yeah.
One joke.
That's awesome, man.
One joke.
I'm glad I could be a little bitty part of it.
No, you helped so much, man.
So that's what I'm saying.
You chasing that bus, man.
That shit is, there's nothing like it, dude.
Get it while you can, bro.
Because that shit gets few and far between, bro.
The bus starts to rust, baby.
The bus starts to rust.
You get older, bro.
Yeah, man.
That thing.
God, man, there's nothing better than just blowing up in your sleep, bro.
You need not to do anything.
And the girl's usually beautiful.
It's usually a girl you really like.
I had some nightmare dream busts.
Damn, dude.
What the fuck?
I had some nightmare dream busts.
Oh, my God, dude.
Horrible.
I've never even heard of that.
it's where...
Who would come in a nightmare?
No, I'm having sex in the dream, but it's with a person I don't like.
And then I think it only happened one time, if I'm being honest.
But I'm having sex with somebody I don't like.
And I have no condom.
And I come in.
Oh, my God.
And then I wake up.
And then I came in real life in a dream bus.
And I'm like, fuck, man.
This is how I'm starting this day off?
God, this is horrible.
That's how half of America fucking got here, too.
Half of the people in existence became people, just how you said.
They didn't even like them.
Somebody didn't really, really, really like them at their core, probably.
Dude, people have ejaculated into a lot of people they didn't really enjoy, I bet.
Yeah, that's unbelievable, isn't it?
Horrible.
Horrible.
Damn, that's a terrible note to end on.
Yeah, it is, man.
But that's life, huh?
Yeah.
You got to keep going.
Got to keep going, dude.
What it is, though, man.
You have a new album that's out, too, if people want to hear songs from across your journey.
Yeah, no, I actually made this thing before I left.
I made an album basically for myself to listen to when it got hard.
And so I made these songs and I got little messages from people I respect, like Steve Tyler from Errol Smith.
Yeah, he's amazing.
And Diddy and my mom and Bun B E40.
And so there's the songs and there's little messages from them basically saying what they wanted me to remember when it got hard.
Wow.
And I made this little project for myself, remind myself who I am.
And then, you know, after I walked with it a little while, I started to put songs out and I put the whole mixtape out.
I call it mixtape as an album.
It's called Keep Going.
Keep going.
Yeah.
I'm going to keep going, man.
That's right, boy.
Amen.
Hey, man.
I appreciate you.
All the happiness you felt in the world.
Happiness you gave me, dude.
I can't tell you how much we laugh.
Well, thanks.
Listening to you in the car on the way over, just laughing.
I'm glad to be reminded that that's what I'm doing because sometimes, yeah, you get a little bit confused, you know, it's the point.
Because it's the point, right?
Once I'm making music or I'm walking across America, right?
It's supposed to, you know, nourish me, make me a better person at the same time, hopefully help others along the way, make their journey a little easier.
And what you're doing here.
I think a lot of it, yeah, no, a lot of our listeners, I think, are, you know, are, I mean, it's what else, it's what, it's, it's outside of the walk, you know, it's the, it's the walk that's going on inside of all of us.
You know, I think a lot of young men and women and even strong lesbians are feeling that shit right now, bro.
Everybody, dude.
You know, so we're out there, man.
But thank you for being here, Michael.
You got it.
Appreciate it, man.
Now I'm just floating on the breeze and I feel I'm falling like these leaves.
I must be cornerstone.
Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this peace of mind I found.
I can feel it in my bones.
But it's gonna take a little time for me to set that parking break and let myself on wind shine that light on me.
I'll sit and Tell you my story Shine on me And I will find a song I will stay there just for me too fast on a runaway train with a heavy load of mine Ladies
and gentlemen, I'm Jonathan Kite and welcome to Kite Club, a podcast where I'll be sharing thoughts on things like current events stand-up stories and seven ways to pleasure your partner The answer may shock you Sometimes I'll interview my friends Sometimes I won't and as always I'll be joined by the voices in my head You have three new voice messages A lot of people are talking about kite club I've been talking about kite club for so long longer than anybody else so
great Hi Sui are easy to you anyone who doesn't listen to kite club is a dodgy bloody wanker Jamain with cheese and a McFlurry machine is broken I think Tom Hanks just butt-dialed me anyway first rule of Kite Club is tell everyone about kite club second rule of kite club is tell everyone about kite club third rule like and
