WanderLearn Podcast

• Podcast

Thru-hiking can take social distancing to an extreme.

Unless you camp close to random people or you spend lots of time in town when you resupply, you will be safely away from any contagion. 

That's why 2020 is the best year ever to thru-hike, especially if you recently lost your job. 

Put your stuff in storage (or sell it all). Stop paying rent. And hike for the next 6 months.

By the time you finish hiking, the Coronapocolypse will have killed a few million people and ravaged the economy while you were happily backpacking. 

You'll return to civilization in the post-apocalypse - and just in time to vote for in the US elections.

I recorded the following podcast with Gehn Shibayama a month before the Coronavirus outbreak. What we discuss is extremely relevant for the 2020 pandemic. We discuss:

• How two East Asians females died on Pacific Crest Trail a couple of years ago.
• How thru-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail is different now that it was 15 years ago.
• How thru-hiking El Camino de Santiago has changed in the last decade.
• How to invest your money (super relevant today now that the markets have tanked - thereby making it a great time to invest).
• Why he was a trail angel in 2019.
• Why do some vegans not tolerate people using their kitchen utensils to cook animals? 
• What's he planning to do in the 2020s? 

A few fact-checking corrections:

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• Podcast

On March 20, 2020, Rejoice and I spontaneously went Live on Facebook to share our thoughts about the Coronavirus pandemic.

(Don't worry. The photo of us hugging was taken months before the Coronapocolypse.)

In 2014, when the Ebola contagion was raging across West Africa, I was traveling in West Africa. The world was panicking. Some worried that it would kill hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions.

I thought most people were overreacting. Therefore, I wrote a prescient article called, "Don't Worry Too Much About Ebola."

I feel I could write the same article today about COVID-19.

Yes, Ebola and COVID-19 are different viruses. 

COVID-19 spread far and fast; Ebola didn't. 

Ebola's death rate was 53%. COVID's death rate is about 1%.

Still, the principle is the same.

Humans excel at detecting patterns.

However, we have a tendency of over projecting trend lines. 

When we see a graph skyrocketing (or plummeting), we often believe (incorrectly) that the trend will continue for a long time.

It often doesn't. 

Listen to my podcast with Rejoice. Sorry that her voice is sometimes hard to hear. She speaks softly.

Lastly, don't misunderstand me. 

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• Podcast

Liz Warner is going to run 30 marathons before she turns 30 years old in June 2020. However, her real accomplishment is raising nearly $30,000 for 20 charities in the process! 

In this podcast, we discuss some of the highlights and lowlights of her first 27 marathons. 

She's going to finish on Mt. Everest in late May 2020.

Go to her donation page and follow her on Instagram.

Liz mentioned the Effective Altruism TED Talk as an inspiration. 

In the podcast, I couldn't remember the name of the guy who ran 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 consecutive days. The guy's name is Dean Karnazes.

Confession: I goofed. I didn't realize how many marathons she had run in Africa. I only asked her about a couple of them. I would have liked to delve into all of them. 

Still, in our one-hour conversation, we cover a lot of ground. 

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• Podcast

On March 14, 2020, Dan Grec's Kickstarter will end. If you're listening to this before that date, buy Dan's book on Kickstarter. His book (and website) are called The Road Chose Me.

If you're listening to this after March 14th, buy Dan Grec's book on Amazon.

Why buy his book? 

Because for 999 days Dan Grec drove through 35 of the 54 African countries. His book recounts his 3-year adventure.  

In this 90-min podcast, we discuss:

• His road trip across Latin America.
• How he saved money for 4 years for this 3-year trip.
• Why he biked to work in Yukon's winter.
• Which were some of the toughest African border crossings.
• How he got (or didn't get) African visas on the fly.
• How much it cost to ship his truck across the Atlantic
• How many times he got malaria and how it was.
• What he thinks of South Africa's future.
• What makes Sudan special and unique.
• His speaking tour.
• What he's planning to do next.

We discussed the Caprivi Strip. Here are the facts from Wikipedia:

Caprivi was named after German Chancellor Leo von Caprivi (in office 1890–1894), who negotiated the acquisition of the land in an 1890 exchange with the United Kingdom. Caprivi arranged for the Caprivi strip to be annexed to German South West Africa in order to give Germany access to the Zambezi River and a route to Africa's east coast, where the colony of German East Africa (now part of Tanzania) was situated. The river later proved unnavigable and inaccessible to the Indian Ocean due to the Victoria Falls. The transfer of territory was a part of the Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty of 1890, in which Germany gave up its interest in Zanzibar in return for the Caprivi Strip and the island of Heligoland in the North Sea.

We also wondered where the expression "rest on your laurels" comes from. Simply put: the origins of the phrase lie in ancient Greece, where laurel wreaths were symbols of victory and status.

You can watch the interview on YouTube, although the audio is out of sync.

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• Podcast

In early 2020, Randy Williams has been to 142 countries. Although this is remarkable, it's especially impressive when you consider that he's been working full-time for most of his life. 

It's understandable how someone who has years to travel is able to visit 142 countries, but doing it when you have a real job in the workaholic USA is hard.

Randy Williams describes:

• His first trip to Africa. He started in Cape Verde, then went to Senegal, Tunisia, and Algeria.
• Traveling to Tripoli, Libya soon after Khadafi's death.
• Traveling to Iraq and Venezuela. 
• How Kabul, Afganistan was in January 2020.
• How a journalist friend was killed in Somalia.
• Using the Sherwes Travel Agency to get his business travel visa to Libya.
• How to be a trailblazer.
• How he got into Yemen a couple of months ago.
• Why he sees travel as a buffet.

You can see some of travel photos on Slow Jams on Instagram.

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