The Jay Morton Podcast #004 - Aldo Kane

we're back with episode four of the j morton podcast i just want to say a massive thanks for all the feedback so far it's always good to hear of your successes and how my book soldier has had an impact on those today i'm going to be joined by a very special guest he's an explorer a tv presenter a soon to be author and an all-round man of the world aldo kane who can definitely talk about today's subject of danger with plenty of experience from his own life adventures but before we get into it a big shout out as always goes to our sponsors harley davidson i've had an exciting week with harley this week as i've had the privilege of being one of the first people in the uk to try out their new adventure motorcycle the pan america we spent a day in wales riding on and off road with guidance from british dakar rider mick extons you can see what we got up to on my socials and find out more about the bike at harleydavidson.com forward slash adventure but now let's get into the podcast and welcome mr aldo kane okay welcome my friend how are you hello i'm good mate i'm good sorry about the delay do you like my artwork i'm uh currently in quarantine spade uh sounds sounds tropical i'm going to show my lack of geography skills here it's portuguese it's a portuguese um settlement which is right slap bang in the middle of the atlantic um an island yeah yeah so there's also like a collection of islands which uh um i'm not sure how far off the course of portugal but they're they're like when you look at the map between um like if you look between portugal and south america sort of thing they're like right in the middle um are you getting uh typically british question but are you getting better weather than we are right now it's i just said to um anna that she was asking what the weather was like um and i was like it's pretty much like being up in scotland it's four seasons in one day here oh no just because you're you're like it's it's a volcanic mountainous sort of lump in the middle of the ocean so it gets like it's being smashed by the sea on all sides um and it gets the sun obviously we're in tropical climate so um but yeah it's like it's like being on the cairngorm plateau half the time that's not good mate that's not good um what are you doing out there out there um we've got i'm working on a project called ocean x which is um it's a big nat geo uh bbc studios james cameron sort of collab um with the ocean explorer which is a a big ocean-going scientific research vessel um which is called ocean x so the film's called ocean explorers from that geo and um basically we we head out into the ocean this is the second mission um and we spend two months um just basically using and utilizing all the assets on board the ship so we've got two submarines i can see it's just i'm in quarantine now for for another six days but i can see the boat just over there it's about 400 meters away freedom is it is it free or not freedom not freedom yeah right there's freedom between here and getting on the boat yeah but um yeah i mean it's it's it's just you know it's a massive sort of set piece about about the state of the oceans and um and i guess it's the sort of call to arms to the younger generation who might a watch it and be inspired about conservation but also you know about making science you know uh available for everyone because it's for a long time been out of reaches of you know of people like me you know i there was no way that i would you know i've ever imagined that i'd be on this ship i'm sharing you know the ship with some seriously huge brains you know best in their field of oceanography and marine biology and everything that goes with it but um the plan is is you know that to make it accessible to inspire the next generation of explorers scientists adventurists um just to get out there and and stop start checking out the planet yeah it's crazy how um how we were brought up as kids and you had i know the internet wasn't the thing like educational tv wasn't that great our school education probably wasn't or maybe maybe wasn't as good as what it is now but in terms of in terms of the earth and the world and even you know even i think of you know i didn't get loads at christmas but all those toys that um parents by their kids at christmas and birthdays that are made of plastic they're pretty much single-use plastic because most of them break after three you know i don't know three weeks of a child throwing it around but you know you had no education on exactly what all that stuff like how bad all that stuff was for the environment and the oceans yeah it's it's you know i'm i'm a conservationist i suppose by like a sort of segway sidestep into it from the job that i do you know traveling the world and and you know some might say it's part of the problem which you know is we we have to be so much more aware of our like footprint now and and i think we uh you're right to say you know i think we are the first generation that's ever been aware of what we're actually like what happens you know as a result of the thing that we've bought or the thing that we've made of the thing that we've done um you know the generations before us you kind of didn't really didn't really think about it um so i think you know you i and kids sort of or my kid you know i've just had a kid i think they'll be you know we'll be the ones that are living in in this time when the things that we've been doing for the last x amount of hundred years are actually having an effect and it's it's hard you know with the amount of travel that i do it's hard to to ignore it you know i did a lot of expeditions over as you have you know you go to these far-off places and you you speak to people and you know the fishing's different you know or non-existent because there's now mercury in the rivers from gold mining illegal gold mining or um there's just you know the rains are a different time of year the rivers are low there's no rivers there's too much water and you you kind of you kind of get to see it and then you kind of get to think actually i need to you know i need to be yeah at least try and and change some habits it's it's yeah it's a massive subject isn't it and you know i could get massive yeah get get shot down in lots of ways for the travel that we do but for example on but it's it's almost it's necessary travel though because you're you know you're finding out these discoveries that are essentially going to change people's habits back in their own countries whether it's reduced travel whether it's you know single-use plastics you know whatever it is recycling um you're the guys that are at the front of this finding that research out to feed it back yes it's yeah i mean i guess when you when you see it like that it's then you know you you kind of think when you go to a shop and oh when you order something online and it comes wrapped in a plastic bag and you just think you know like it never used to be 50 years ago it didn't used to be wrapped in a plastic bag and half the time you've got something wrapped in a plastic bag and then wrapped in another plastic bag and it's you know there's no consideration but um yeah i mean not getting on a run about conservation but i like what africa did i think um definitely bags yeah i've traveled to rwanda three or four times and it utterly blows my mind you know it's a country that's that's had a huge amount of of its own problems over the years um but certainly with regards to plastic bags you know you can't even fly into the country with a plastic bag in your kit you know your kit gets checked for for plastic bags so there is no that's crazy yeah there's anything that's almost like there's like a separate security uh part where you go through get checked for guns explosives all that kind of stuff then you go through the plastic bag one but i mean it is is equally as dangerous for the planet but but i mean they they you know they pretty much banned it overnight um and it's you know it's one of those things that you know like another thing there you know they last saturday of every month in rwanda you know everyone comes out and and cleans up their street their borough their neighborhood sort of thing so but anyway uh yeah i mean it's you you just think in the uk you could seriously ban plastic bags overnight you could ban it but there's just too much politics in the way yeah like um i know we're gonna we're off on a segway of environmentalism at the minute i i live out in the countryside and i'll go and do like a walk in the morning and um like even just up here right because all the rubbish that's thrown out into the countryside here is off the road so it's people are driving down winding the window down and lobbing the rubbish out and i've noticed right that it's the same rubbish that gets logged out in in any countryside setting it's always like cigarette packets uh cans of pop like fanta coke um all that kind of stuff it's crisp packets it's chocolate bar packets it's basically everything that's bad for you gets thrown out you don't you never find right you never find like on an organic peanut butter jar yeah i mean there's a massive correlation right between people looking after themselves and people looking after the planet yeah i mean it's a hard one i like with people throwing stuff out of the car like i'll have a pop uh yeah if i'm driving and i see someone doing it then i'll carefully pull up next to them and and have a pop at them about it you know it's it it's basics man it's just like take it and put it in the bin it's that thing right it's like it's like uh you put in you put it on the ground right you're expecting someone else to clean up your shirt that's like a metaphor in life yeah i i i used to work in um when i left the marines i worked in a school for a few years doing this thing called skill force and it was like he used to work with the kids that were borderline about to be kicked out for not not specifically because they were bad but they didn't like fit the system um and it was all military people and we chat to them about why they'd throw litter away and it genuinely didn't cross their minds they just thought that someone else would pick it up so it's not necessarily like you know people are thinking um can't wait for someone to pick this up it's just like that person's got a job to do that but you know like it's i i was out with um anna on the on the downs up in bristol and it was like when the first lockdown ended and there was just everywhere and we just finished eating our pizza and we were like should we try it and see what it's like just to get up and leave two bottles of beer and like the pizza rappers is mega chad but we we were like right let's do it right let's get one two three up and then just start walking away and you're like you can't do it how can how can anyone like do it no but they must obviously not think about it it's just like a lack of education probably i think it's a massive lack of education um i don't know it's just a lack of i don't know like having that lack of respect for this for the earth it's the same down here on the beach in the summer especially last year because everyone comes down to bournemouth and pals onto the beach and everyone left and it was it was shocking right you expect a few bags you expect a few you know beer bottles beer cans whatever to be left over but you were literally right in every square meter or every square two meters there was a bag so you know they've taken they're taking the time right to finish in whether it was a throwaway barbecue cans of beer or whatever they put it into a bag sealed the bag up but left the bag yeah yeah i know i'm mega bad for it like when i see people doing it i'll just have a have a go at them and say who's picking your up for you yeah i kind of have to like not getting a scrap over other litter now like an actual fist fight but you had time to lift forever yeah but um yeah oh good so that's what we're doing we're out um i uh we're just about to board the ship in about four days time and then we'll be away for six weeks back for a fear four and then away for another six and then that's it in the bag sort of thing are you are you going down in in the vessel in the submarine yeah have you been in one before ah i mean yeah i've been in like a big military nothing like that yeah yeah like i've never been in one until that last uh job there so on the ship on the ocean explorer they uh the sub team there um is run by a guy buck um and they they're all like nearly all ex-british naval um sub-rescue guys so they're like mega crawled up and just you know to be in the sub with them is is epic and you kind of like you know when you're diving or you're skydiving right you're you're completely in control of all your systems right your life support system is in your hands you just know when to pull you know your reserve drills or like you're diving on your rebreather whatever you know like the systems that you go through but when you're in a sub you're literally you know you're a passenger and uh it's it's quite it's a quite an eerie feeling they're made of acrylic i think it is like it's a two-piece acrylic um dome that's put together and then everything else is bolted on round about it um and they go down to about a thousand meters um so yeah it's yeah it's i mean they'd get down to a thousand meters i think they're going down they can go down fail i may get this wrong but it's like an hour or two um to get down and essentially in this sub is um like on a rebreather on the old military rebreathers on you know in the chest you've got the scrubber they've basically got the same scrubber which is lime um crystals and it just when you breathe out it then scrubs the co2 out of your expelled breath and then it occasionally pumps in a bit of oxygen so you you're effectively inside a big re-breather um but yeah it's like you know and you know from walk it gather it seems like most of the stuff is mechanical you know when you're on the bottom you want to get to the top you blow your cylinders the gas expands in these expansion cylinders and you come back up but um that they're like truly amazing it's like proper james bond sort of stuff and that ship is it's well documented now the ocean explorer but it has um two of these subs uh triton subs i think they are and a helicopter three or four boats on their rov with a 6 000 meter cable on it so it's it's like mega well equipped uh for doing that sort of stuff super cool what what are you what are you finding like what's what's it like being a thousand meters down i take it you're you're on you're on light systems and it's complete darkness um yeah are you on the surface of the ocean floor or are you sat floating i'm i'm vouching on the territory of of uh marine biologists and scientists here um way above my playground effectively the subs have got um these subs have got a depth limit of a safe working sort of limit of of about a thousand meters so they will always try and and dive where they've got a hard stop of seabed at that so that they couldn't for whatever reason fall past that and they usually dive in in pairs um but yeah they can you know they're neutrally buoyant so they can stop at any depth in the water column and carry out work and um you know the propulsion units on them small jets so they can they can make good way now you know out here certainly you go five six hundred meters off the coast of their zones and you're down to you know the seabed is three four kilometers down so um that's slightly worrying i mean it's all mega safe these guys these guys fly these things all the time but there's still that nagging thing when you get in there you know like the abyss we're just like oh god yeah but yeah just generally it's it's you know we're following the the advice of the scientists you know the idea is is to collect as much data the seabed is is hardly mapped um at all like in any detail so we spend the ship spends a lot of its time in the at nights you know working night shifts it's it's mapping and scanning up and down just and eventually these maps will be open source you know so that anyone can can use them for research purposes that's awesome mate and yeah two things congratulations thank you on becoming a father and congratulations on the book as well yeah thanks dude it's been it's been a bit of a i guess this year with with um covered and all the rest of it's just been a bit of a non-starter and lots of respect and and bloody amazing and in others fatherhood is you know like i spent the last four or five years traveling so much that i was never home um so when lockdown sort of hit anna and i were both home at the same time she's a producer of doing different things and uh yeah so um yeah that was that's basically lockdown baby so he's um actually actually me i was um i don't know how i got away with this but i was on ship uh in the dominican republic when when atlas was born uh yeah i think yeah i think yeah after our message i think you told me actually yeah so i i i like i know i left anna a month before uh yeah i got it we um we no she we chatted about it and and um this job was was already been a bad contract wise and it's too much hassle to change it so we you know we we sort of honored that and i ended up watching or give birth on whatsapp call from like somewhere off the coast of dominican republic i had just been diving all morning came out sort of had lunch and then sort of went into the science lab and watched and i gave birth uh on whatsapp you get like what like what like what like what we yeah it's probably too much information isn't it yeah one of the people in there was was was just holding the phone and like almost interviewing anna chatting to anna how she's doing um blah blah blah her birth and partner and then like when atlas was pulled out sort of like spun the camera around so i saw him immediately and then um yeah super weird anti-climax that went back to my four-man room and just sat there for an hour and just like just i just got a kid yeah what just happened um so that was that was super cool um i got back 17 days later and um so i've just had two months at home with him um so i tell you the biggest complaint i had was like i got mega tendinitis from from like holding him and holding them in that position i was saying to my missus about having and she was like you literally come home three weeks after it's born you start dripping about having tendinitis after the first two days of hardly any holding especially you know like your history like you know you should have been complaining about tenderness but it's just been like it's amazing watching anderson like just take to motherhood and all the rest of it and yeah it's been you know it's it's not massively been on my radar you know i'm 43 now and but i tell you since you know the last couple of the last two months at home with with him has just been it's been awesome um too early to say yeah whether it affects what you do at work and you must have seen it yeah i was gonna i was gonna ask that um because that's you know that's the biggest obviously i'm i'm not a father so i can't really comment on this but um like when i ask people you've got you know that are in situate or in jobs where there's a lot of danger involved you know the biggest thing that that definitely uh well males and females both of them say that it changes your perspective on life and um especially there's a lot more thought and consideration going into dangerous activities whether it's you know i don't know motocross or yeah jumping out planes or whatever that is there's a lot you know there's a definite perspective shift on on that have you felt anything like that i i haven't yet because i've you know this is the first trip that i've been away since then um since he's been born but i've worked with enough blokes when they're away that have had a kid and they've sort of then been you know that the perspectives change you know like whether it's on a tough climb or whatever it is you know this something changes um but yeah i i'm not sure how that would how that affects me in a way you know in the military you get kind of used to compartmentalizing don't you so i still feel like i would be able to be effective at doing what i'm doing and making the right decisions not based on that emotional part yeah but um you know i guess like the the the thing that has struck more than anything is just that you know we in a line of work we mitigate as many of the the hazards as we can and the the risk of those hazards come into fruition right we sort of like you know you wear a helmet you wear the right kit you do this you do that you take the right weapon you know all this stuff like you're mitigating bad things happening as much as you can but you know things like car crashes and road traffic accidents are just like you just can't really mitigate against that and it's usually someone else's fault like foxy and i when we did the um narcos thing like both of us nearly got decapitated by this like in a in a road traffic accident uh this like massive metal shutter came flying straight off the top of the vehicle that was about to hit us he stand on the brakes this thing came flying off the top into there's like 20 foot long metal shot roller came through the butt came through the window and like took all the headrests off it just kind of like stopped there foxy and i were like but that's you know that's at the end of like punchy three months worth of filming and it's like a road traffic accident i was gonna say you were like meeting up with some of the hardest you know some of the biggest gangsters in the world drug dealers like guns weapons like people threatening to kill you and then all of a sudden you get involved in an rta and nearly lose your head yeah so that's that's it but i mean yeah it's been it's been a mega year with um with that with birth and yeah book book is out 30th of september so we're um i'm still going through and doing the final edit actually it's been good you know locked down was was good because it gave me the chance to just like well you must know as well it's hard when you when you sit down and you've got all these stories and you try and like fit them into a book and some of the things that you think are cool and you've written up i'm not um the opposite as well right because i i found like i've got my perception on everything right still now like i've got my perception in i don't know whatever it is and i think that something's really i might think that something's really chad or like not as impactful as um the person i'm telling the story to or whatever or and another person might just be like what you did what and you thought that was the most least impactful thing that you ever did yeah i think it it's it's a yes it's a funny one and and i guess like we live and have lived like quite um no i wouldn't it's you know it's not mainstream is it the way that we have lived our lives up to this point and and i guess we kind of either take things for granted after a while or you become complacent in in that line of work that you're in um so you kind of gloss over some parts and and like you dig into the bits that you think people want to hear about but that's you know that's not it how did you how did you find the process of like getting it all on paper and getting out because i have to say i'm like i'm nervous now now that it's getting to the point of getting stuck out there and i think it's it's weird you open yourself up to well it's your life on paper and anyone can read about it it's quite daunting yeah yeah i kind of i made sure i forgot like i didn't concern myself with you know like reactions on the book reviews all that kind of stuff it was more just i was more focused on the book and um you know making sure because it's hard right because i've got a way of telling a story and i don't like over dramatizing everything too much i like to tell it how i want to tell it but sometimes to make a story sound better i don't know not better than what it is but to make it sound like a story in a book you have to put this over over dramatization on it and that was something i was really really conscious about when i was writing the book was to make it sound like it's com make it sound like i'm speaking i'm telling that story as opposed to it being a story in a book yeah i didn't want it to sound like some some fairy tale or something i just wanted it to sound like i was sat you know opposite someone just telling them stories of what i did so i was like yeah i was really conscious of just making sure that it sounded like my tongue um yeah and then yeah like i was in quite a rush from finishing the book money to finishing like the final manuscript document to turning that into a book that was that was quite a rush period and um are you having to get it signed off by the mod yeah so um mod and like i didn't actually think about it but yeah mod it's only a short chapter um two actually is like the military part of the start and then it goes into all the other expeditions and trips and and filming but yeah so the mod will will have to um verify and check and do all the stuff that they do at the start which i think will take a bit of time but uh you find it are you finding it quite quite therapeutic almost together because like you forget half the stuff you did and when you're having to bring it bring a lot of those stories out and retell them and go through them all again you're like well like i remember that bit or you know like new memories pop up that you've not thought about for years and years and years i tell you what's what's been interesting is um so i've kept a dick to phone on like on on loads of jobs basically for the last like eight or nine years just because i was like at some point i want to write a book but like i'm not going to sit down and write a diary every night so like sat in the jungle somewhere just whip it out i just do like three minutes did this today with this person feel you know mega did this did that whatever it is and um and i did it on the row actually when when foxy and i rode across atlantic and it's funny what you over the period of weeks days months and years you that then becomes truth in it and it's a very blurred line between what actually happened and how you remember and how you remember it's based on uh like where you gripped at the time were you fearful were you in control with you know and that has a a knock-on effect to the parts that you remember and the parts that you forget so like describing the cap size for example like foxy nine the team had in the middle of atlantic at night time in my head you know it's one thing and then when i went back through and listened to the dictaphone things for each day it was actually um it was actually more terrifying listening to the dictaphone and how calm and collected it was and this happened this person nearly died did this did that but then you sort of i had remembered it in a different way that was much more romantic and heroic and and all the rest of it so it's quite it's been mega therapeutic to go through the process and just re-remember those things yeah that's bizarre how like the memory just remembers something in a certain way um and i found weirdly right i'd i'd go to a a part that i'd want to remember and i can remember i can remember the story like very very broadly but i can't remember the detail i'm the same i've got a flash image of what happened i'm thinking about a certain image now in my head or a certain memory now in my head i've got that memory in there it's like logged in the brain but to try and actually get the detail around what happened like the exact detail of who was there and what was happening i find like over years i've just i don't know it's almost like my brain's just thrown out this irrelevant information and just kept the that i don't know the pictures the picture of the memory that's it i've got um i mean it'll be in there somewhere but i've just got such a terrible memory for like i'll meet someone and they'll go do you remember that time you did this and you said that and and i'm like absolutely no idea of it and i don't know whether that's because there's a frenetic pace of my life you know up till now it's been it's it's been utterly frenetic you know we you you kind of like you finish one job you're on to another one you're rerolling your kit re-rolling your brain you're not processing anything from that so you have these snapshots of a thing that happened rockfall i don't know you know someone firing a weapon at you or um like a wild animal they have these like snapshots and then like you say you kind of everything else fades to black there's no detail i'm i'm exactly the same although and right we don't live week to week day to day we don't live a very a normal life every day is different every week's different every month is different so if you think you you go out and you do a nine-to-five job you get up this you get at the same time you have the same thing for breakfast you get on the same train you work in the same office everything's very similar so your memory looks the same throughout the week and i find this right if you ask me what i did yesterday it'd take me quite a while to actually remember in fact like almost almost not be able to remember i'd have to look in my calendar or diary to see what i had on yesterday to actually actually know yeah i'm the same yeah it's because you've got you're moving forward that much that you've got so much going on ahead of you you're constantly thinking of right what am i doing tomorrow what am i doing next week like what i wonder relevant like yesterday yeah it's gone it's gone but i wonder i wonder if there's like if if you know lots of us i know foxes like that as well you know i wonder if it's a way of like just pushing on and getting on and getting on you know we don't spend a huge amount of time dwelling on what's happened or sort of or the present i don't know whether it's a good thing and a bad thing but uh it's certainly like it has an effect on on my memory you know because there's you know i've i've i once did this drive that went from london to melbourne basically but i i did the london singapore stretch and uh there was times you know it's like two and a half months on the road driving overnight a drive from london to melbourne yes yeah and uh yeah like in a hundred miles yeah it wasn't fun it was from a channel channel four uh like i don't think where there was a gold rascal um it's called hell of a tour but there's a you know like a rascal van gaal and the timely tiny the the most horrible van that you could ever imagine this is a really small yeah so there's one of them with this like campervan conversion on it that these four people were were sort of traveling down to melbourne and this in this that wagon and i was running the expedition basically the safety support from a hilux so i was driving the high locks every day and it was me a producer director and a camera guy in the hilux and uh we we were basically like it took i think two and a half months to get down through all the stands and down into singapore basically but i remember getting in places like bishkek or whatever and you sort of like open the curtains at night and like you're just like where am i and like i got to the point where i was just like you know i wasn't looking at any of you know like the stuff you have in the hotel desk it tells you where it is i just opened a window where it's in china or i don't know kyrgyzstan or whatever you just stand and look out the window and look at everything and just try and work out where you are what city in china you're in and like sometimes i genuinely stand there for minutes no idea where i was that's crazy because yeah you don't have i don't know you don't like now you could probably just turn your phone on right and just like figure out where you are or where you've met you've been literally like all over the world literally all over the world is that is there anywhere that you've not been or anything that you've not done that you'd want to yeah yeah since i've been a kid mate and you you'll laugh at this since i get been a kid i wanted to collect everest just because yeah um to climb everest and you know having you know and it's it's a funny one because it it doesn't hold the same as it did when i was a kid that i wanted to do it for probably different reasons more macho bravado reasons when i was younger you know than it is now but you know the high mountains of the himalayas i'd love to do more and um but i've i love to go to patagonia never been and that's like up on the list antarctica up on the list um and alaska i reckon but it's you know it's but i'd love to do it for my for myself as opposed to filming and all that sort of thing so um yeah you like i'm like i'm one of those people it's like i don't have places i don't have places specifically that i want to go and take off boxes but i have things that i want to do in those places like i'd like to go i'd love to go on a you know a solid you know week or two weeks heli skiing trip in alaska oh mate that's yeah that's a dream isn't it yeah that'd be gold standard for me that's that's that's a box ticker i'd love to go to the polls but again like the logistics that it takes to get there and i think i might i think i might get bored i know yeah i mean for me that's that's the same what i find amazing is like with with travel you know we are have been living in this golden age you know we're probably only the second generation of people that can say that they've traveled the world extensively um you know back in the day in 1600s when you were a privateer on board a ship you know you would do one or two voyages in your life that you might get down the coast of africa or across to south america wherever um but like you know we can literally go from the north pole to everest south pole you know far south east asia australia you know you can do it in a year yeah um it was crazy how easy you could travel right yeah i remember sitting on the beach with um anna just it would have been just two years ago we were in crete a place called lutron crete and there's loads of old world war two sort of relics down there and um i think the germans occupied crete uh down that neck of the woods and i was saying to anna like we're in golden days you know just being able to jump in a plane head down there and it was bizarre because it was probably about a year bef just before the the whole sort of lockdown thing happened and you know you could literally travel unchecked and have been able to travel you know unchecked for for years but i think we're lucky in that you know to have seen with our own eyeballs the desert the jungle the high mountains you know most you know i think most people over the years would have seen one of these places or it would have been their life's visit but um what's your favorite environment for for working and um [Music] do you know what i tend not to keep favorites i have i have things that i like about certain environments that you don't get in other other environments right for example you know i enjoy working in a mall like the arctic's obviously my bag i've got the most experience in the arctic or or snow or mountain conditions and yeah i enjoyed the desert and i yeah i enjoyed the jungle i enjoy like the vastness of the jungle and the fact that you will not see anyone for for a lot of time and you you pretty much have to be self-sufficient and yeah swimming in rivers at the end of the day before you get in in your habit feels good right yeah love it i reckon like if you can i've always thought if you can work in in the jungle then you can pretty much work anywhere you know it's like if the admin isn't of keeping all your together and keeping everything that needs to be dry dry and you know the stuff that's wet it's wet and you know then just your body being eaten away to bits or rotted to bits as you go and if i always feel like you know if you can if you can operate or work in that environment then it's all transferable everywhere else yeah it's hard trying to like relate to people how hard the jungle is to operate and i remember like finishing selection in there in in the jungle and you you like that literally you finish you come back into camp and you know you've been wearing these pants for literally four weeks in the jungle sweating in them and obviously like you said they've got a wet and a set of dry pants so the dry pants you get into in the evening you literally wear whilst you're sleeping and that's it and the wet pants you wear are you working pants you wear them all throughout the day you do everything in them sweat toilets the lot and you take these like crispy like things off that are just one color and i just remember looking at my legs and i don't think you could see him i don't think you could have got my thumb on my leg and have a bare patch of skin that wasn't covered in a bite or a scratch or a cut or a i don't know they're mainly bites right just you know covered in these red blotches and worms and all kind of actually i don't want to go back to the jungle i'm fine without it it just reminded me but you're like literally sleeping on you literally sleeping on the floor for seven days at the end of the exercise like every night you weren't even in a hammock i remember waking up i remember waking up one night all day and um we were sleeping on the floor and i woke up and i was like i was feeling my lip and i was like i was like i must have been bit by something because it felt like my lipid swollen and i started feeling it it was a leak and it had literally stuck to the top of my lip and just sat there growing and growing and growing i literally had this powerfully duck clip that was a little yeah they're actually that's that's the one thing that people worry most about is leeches and it's it's usually the least offensive of all the things that you can have yeah have you had any bad experiences in uh in any of the environments we're the old um i'm trying to think of like i guess it's my job to always try and make it like the hardest part yeah the hardest part when you have a film crew and like that's the interesting thing is is looking after film crews in in these environments and when i started doing this work i was like i've been in the marines like a mega um yeah [Music] like i've been in the marines and i've done this and then and then i i get to work with like my first film crew was in um inside a volcano and i just like when i started working with them yeah i started working with them and i was just like i literally have done nothing with my life and you know you know what it's like from filming you know these guys are filming everything that we're doing running backwards you know the producers the directors like they're they're all there and actually you know i was kind of like ended up being humbled in a way you know i'm not a mega eagle dude anyway sort of you know i was saying that i thought it was mega but like inside i thought i've done everything you know and and then you go there and these guys are just like operating in the jungle no military experience but they're like they're doing all the the same that we would have done you know like wet and dry routine and uh so it's quite good you know being sort of skilled in that way that that actually we're not all always over that the uh the man behind the camera doesn't get enough credit does he um yeah i mean you pick up the weight of one of those cameras and he is like you said right he's literally doing everything that that you're doing and we're doing at the same time yet he's carrying that big lump and it might and it's probably gonna be cold right he's not wearing gloves because he's having some new stuff on the camera so his fingers are numb it's usually you know it's usually hammering it down with rain like they're solid guys and they've i mean that's the thing with all of them you know they're doing an incredibly technical job and creative so they're not just like point and shoot you know that all the guys that i've worked with you know in these environments and you you know you're doing a i'm doing a 10 hour slog through the jungle you know to get to somewhere with cave paintings you know and it's taking us three weeks to get there i'm hanging out the camera guy's hanging out as well but he's still got a job to do i just need to hang out my office on camera and and they tell you how hard it is but he's actually he's actually got to like keep his camera dry change lenses do all that stuff and you know he's not allowed to and uh and it's the same like when you watch them you know and diving stuff and you know all the stuff that we've just will be doing on this and you know the guys are in the water diving with with big predators and not that that's an issue you know that's their their normal bag but it was good in a way when i switched into this line of work i actually sort of was was humbled by by how hard working these guys are and that's why actually is that you know a lot of people say there's no similarities between television work in the military but i think it's you know the transferable stuff that you take from the military into television you know you're working in small groups often under tight deadlines extreme conditions remote places um and everyone's pushing to get the job done and it's so i find it it's like it's pretty similar but um yeah like you find like you find yeah you find there's a big similarity in that in that sense but you also find because of that there's the similarities in other senses like sense of humor like like you know the the whole taking the piss kind of um like the sense of humor is very similar in the tv world i find yeah and it i guess it kind of has to be you know the expeditions that steve back sean i did his expedition series you know we did 10 world first expeditions back to back in 11 months you know so it was like four weeks in mexico back for a few days out to greenland for a month back for a few days out to oman for three weeks you know so we were just like crunching through these these expeditions and you know the steve camera guys the producers directors everyone that's on the ground is just getting you know run into the ground and it's you know it's hard work and they've got to continually think about the story and where this fits in and what they need to get and you know when i'm switching my light out and my hammock at night you know you can still see that they've got their lights on and they're charging batteries and downloading data and so yeah it's it's uh it's pretty epic but i mean yeah they you know all the all the crazy stuff that we've done you know that we could talk about in tv times you know there's a crew that's always there you know you've always got that camera guy and the sound guy that they're filming it in the same rockfall areas here in the volcano or wherever it is you know it's it's um yeah it's pretty mad stuff mate one thing i want to talk about because i'm super interested in it was the atlantic road yeah yeah that is yeah it says is is that right would you do it again uh yeah yeah yeah i do you know like how long did it take like when was it right it's like four weeks we we finished 16. uh i'm counting on my hand five years um yeah five years ago we uh we finished it how long did it take for you to turn around and say that you do it again yeah probably five years um you know what do you know what mate like with the with the royce you know right so it's five of us we rode from you know foxy was on board team essence and we rode from mainland europe to mainland south america and it's we're the first team to to sort of do it um everything you know it there was no one specific part of it that was very very hard you know i i firmly believe that anyone can do it it's just where the people would want to do it and then how long they would last um doing it but it's like you know the rowing you roll for two hours on and then two hours off and then that's it you know for us that was 50 days you know there's no real sort of rest there um it's a it's a feat of of endurance and and just like parking your brain and if you're anything like me and your brains like a million miles an hour it was a difficult and b good to just concentrate on like what you were doing right there right there i mean it was like a having your mindfulness ass handed to you um for the first time you know you're sort of yeah because there's nothing else around right you are lit like there's zero distraction it's not like you can pick up your phone or you can watch a movie it is is literally two hours of rowing and then i guess that two hours that you spent off you you're resting right eating administrating yourself that's my phone just went there um can you hear me okay yeah good good yeah um in in um in a 24-hour cycle you're two hours on two hours off but you really only sleep in the nighttime set of two hours yeah so so in a 24-hour shift or stint you'll probably have four hours where you would probably sleep because it's sort of night time and of that four hours you know you you gotta get into your cabin you've got to get dry you gotta sort your kit out you got to do your admin clean yourself click because the salt absolutely obliterates like any parts of your skin that are touching so you got to do like 20 minutes half an hour of admin when you finish your shift and then depending on where you are in the atlantic yeah you know if it's cold you've got to put all your kit back on when you come back out tether on to so really that that two hours off is is not two hours off um and so by the time you get into a routine of it you're still you know your sort of admin is spread out through the day and you sort of like take take bits here and there um you know bits of rest but generally um can you hear that is my phone ringing no no all right um generally it's just it's just hard it's hard work but like let's say the raw you know you sit in the thing and all you got to do is is that really it's like that's hard is that hard physically because i wrote like the only row i've done is on a row machine and that's hard physically yeah i could imagine doing that for two hours i would say the erg is harder than than rowing on the boat because like maybe i'm talking absolute here but when when i did the raw um i had like 45 minutes rowing experience in the in the um in the rowing boat that was it i just i had such a busy schedule i was in venezuela for five weeks and i was doing that drive i just had loads of stuff on and um but when you when you sit down and you you roll like two of you or one of you wrote you know rarely does it ever happen that both euros go in at the same time and you get a perfect stroke and it's all about position and it's literally like survival you know you're getting smashed around by swell wind blowing waves tied whatever it is um and you're kind of just like you kind of just are generally going in the right direction but slowly sometimes you've got one aura and sometimes you get too in and if you do hit a super flat bit of water that that you can actually get a good rhythm up or a good stroke and sometimes it's like treacle and it's it's much worse than you know if you've got one or two in but um yeah it was an exercise in sort of just just like grafting and and not looking too far into the future you know we it took us seven seven and a half weeks or something and when i say we we rode across atlantic like when you leave the gosh in portugal and you end up in venezuela and we passed like canary isles and cape verde you don't see them it's not like you stop in and jump out and shake out and spend the night like you when you leave portugal you don't see land again until you're basically in venezuela which is you know that's that i love that feeling of being out in the open ocean and you're you're pretty small you know you're very small um in that boat but yeah i i still have a i still would quite like to i don't know if i'd like to do it but you know there's a part of my brain it's like could i do it solo um you fat really solo would i want to do it so that's the other thing you know yeah do you find it all right doing these things where you leave you find the older you're getting that yeah do you find the older you get and the less tolerant you are to this kind of stuff or or or the more picky you are yeah i think it's i think it's that and you know stage of life you get to you kind of also look at you know you kind of look at what's the what the risk reward and you know when you're potentially younger um and less issue less of that responsibilities you know you take more risk more chance um whereas whereas now you know seven eight weeks is a long time to be away if you know if i suppose i suppose it's yeah it's about risk reward doesn't it at the end of the day are you thinking about it would you do it ah like if you'd have asked me five years ago out of out of 100 100 said yes i think now i don't know i don't know if i could one i don't know if i've got 50 days time to take myself out ruin the atlantic and two i just i don't know i don't if i don't know if like you said right the risk versus reward i think i think when i was younger i'd throw myself into anything so i just enjoyed the experience of whatever it was i was doing whether it was adventure or military or or or whatever it was right i enjoyed that experience and i still enjoy experiences but i'm i'm i don't know i'm i'm probably kind of am i right to say i'm getting soft [Laughter] your experiences change and for me i'm i'm finding that i get a lot more energy from i don't know like doing different things and like i even found writing a book was an adventure or an experience that i enjoyed and you know all the things that i've done since leaving the military i'm now finding that i get just as much fun and enjoyment from them than i did from doing the expeditions on everest so i'm i'm kind of like like i'm racing cars now and i'm getting so much i'm just getting such a buzz from that i'm like so i've got all these races could i now take the time out to go and climb everest to k2 and i'm like well i'll miss a couple of races and that's fun yeah i think i think i mean the racing would chat with that in a minute sounds amazing but i think you i think i think like for me certainly at 43 um i need to be much more picky like you don't you don't bounce back from making the wrong decisions at 43 as you did when you're 23 right so taking two months out to do something has to be for me has to you know have specific points that that you know that are that are worthwhile doing um five years ago i was in a very different place and you know i think everyone on that boat was sort of running away from something when you're on a boat that small the demons come with you like you're not getting away from it it's like the worst place ever yeah no access to anyone else right yeah but um i i think you know it has to be much more and like you say like the racing you know it's that must be amazing and you get the same buzz it's it's quicker but you're also like progressing you know that you're saying it's like i was liking it to when i was in the military you know i only did 10 years but that that time you're always like we've got this on and then that's to prepare you for that and then we do that and then you're ready you know when you're you're chasing that thing um and i think that's like with the racing that surely must be what it's like for you you're in the moment you've got like race you're learning love that like learning a new skill thing yeah same yeah that's probably where i was getting to with the experiences like i get such a massive kick from seeing that i'm progressing in something and whether it's you know racing cars whether it's whether it's with surfing you can see that progression and you can see you can see the result of how much time and energy that you're putting into it you can see that result physically and you get the feeling back from that result too because you might you know you might perform a different you might perform something you've never performed on a wave or or do a turn you've never turned it might be like that's the that's the best feeling in the world right same with racing it's when you're seeing you're physically seeing right your time's getting uh getting lower and lower and lower that's an instant feedback for me to go yeah i'm actually i'm getting better at this but that's i think that's that's the point there is that you've channeled all of your years of experience and and um life into that one thing let's say it's racing or surfing whereas you know for me for many years i was a jack of all trades you know i could climb fairly decent i could paddle all right i could skydive all right i could dive but i never focused my attention everything pinpoint onto to one thing and it's you know it's amazing that when you do start to do that when you find a passion and then you start to direct everything to it it's then amazing how quickly you become successful at it and uh i just find that i mean it's amazing but it's also i'm like you the welder i'm like you i need that variety because i'll yeah i'd get i'd get bored just doing one thing over and over again yeah with that but that's a good thing is that having these i guess over the years i've sort of fine-tuned mine down into probably a few things that i like doing whether it's climbing diving um and the expedition so so i kind of have become better at those things and and a lot of the other things have just flown by the wayside but it's funny like you sort of i was gonna say you kind of like like for me i associate as being a climber right because that's what i've always done that's interesting yeah i wear all the climbing gear and the shoes and i'm like when was the last time i actually climbed something it's been like two years ago yeah but then you look at people that are just literally living and breathing climbing and they're like they're sending some roots that i don't know i wouldn't even even looked at when i was climbing yeah they're doing it in jeans i was away with uh leo holding last year at the end of last year and just a mate we did this uh rooting oh man and it's just amazing watching someone that's like that they're in a state of flow you know when you find something that you like and you're passionate about and you you know you you watch them they're just in a state of flow which is which is amazing and that comes i guess through finding that thing and then dedication yeah it's really nah have you um is there is that is there anything out there like um like hobby-wise or or um hobbies probably not the right word learning a new skill or a new sport or whatever that is that you've never done that you that you'd want to do i just started last year um doing paramotoring yeah i've seen that i i always wanted you know like personal flight is amazing and it's relatively cheap compared to any other version of sort of personal flight and i never i never stop had the time money or sort of um interest really in learning how to paraglide but then the you know the the advent of like parajet and their kit and the paramotors you know it can be quite easy you know 10 days i was learning to fly and and it was always a bit that i enjoyed most at the end of a skydive mainly myself but like once you get under cam you're like right it's fine right now i can enjoy it yeah so that that paramotor and kind of opened up this new i haven't done loads of it but it's something i want to get more into doing like point point-to-point or expedition stuff you just have like a little baby bag and you choose a route and just yeah brush it out but um yeah that's that's up there and um i don't know whether everything needs to go on hold for a bit with uh now the atlas has arrived i might need to wipe again i'm not a father right but it's finding that that fine balance of you don't want to quit at all because you'll not be the guy that you were before you had that kid and you want that kid to see that guy because yeah you know they're obvious they're obviously looking at you and they're absorbing everything that you that you do and if you were to just stop everything that you know that made aldo okay and who aldo kane is today then you know it's so true it turned into a couch potato or whatever and it's like you don't want your kids to see that you want your kids to be inspired by what you're doing right go out if it's not the same as what you're doing do whatever he's passionate about it's so true you know we you know some people that would look on the outside think you know i wasn't there for the birth but i want to be there for the life of him not just the birth but what a story to tell atlas right yeah i mean where were you on the birth of but i think that's you know that's that's the point you know and and there's there's a lot to be said for working away for a chunk of time and then having a chunk of time off because when i'm home for three weeks four weeks two months i'm home and i'm like i'm present that's what i'm doing and and you know if there's a lot of people who who can probably relate to this that have a nine-to-five job they get home at night and they're kids in bed when it comes to the weekend and knackered and they don't do the cool things that they might have wanted to do with the kids just because life is hectic and busy so um and i guess it's the same in relationships i've learned over the years that trying to manipulate myself and my life to please other people just ultimately ends up in in a disaster for me you know it ends up in a in like you know you you're not your best version of yourself you're not i'm not alder king if i'm not being true to what excites me and my passion and when i'm in full flow and passion with adventure and exploring and all that sort of stuff then that's the best version of me and that's you know when i come home that's who i am um so i think yeah i think it's it'll be it'll be a juggling sort of i guess it'll be a juggle to try and work out how to make it work but it certainly won't be stopping me in my tracks because that's that's who i am yeah no doc may i resonate with you totally it's it's the same on my side like i don't you know we've got the military probably to thank for that right for kickstarter into that kind of life because you know you're constantly away and then you come back and you've got whether it's a weekend whether it's a week's leave or two weeks leave to spend with whether it's a girlfriend or or whoever right and i i prefer that like i prefer that kind of life because you know even now you're going off doing all the stuff that you love doing that give you energy and make you happy and make you who you are today and then you could like like what you said right you come back and you've had that separation as well right so that guy is doing a nine to five job he's just looking at his kid every night and it's like you know he's dropping poos and he's changing nappies and all that kind of stuff i guess there's there's opportunity there to build up some sort of like you know resentment's probably a too stronger word but complacency of you just expect to see your kid or your girlfriend or your wife or your husband yeah every time that you come back from work whereas you have that separation it's like i bet now you're missing so much that you just can't wait to get back and see i think there's this banana yeah it's this there's that and i guess there's like similar to that that's also taking things for granted that you know and it doesn't suit everyone right this is my life and the way that it suits me but you're coming back from somewhere where you can't turn on the tap and get water or you have to filter it because if you drank it you'd probably get very sick or um you know you don't you don't have to have a fire every night to keep warm or you know the basics of survival that we take for granted food water shelter i love coming back from a trip and like coming home and just like turning the tap on yeah you know and that is it it's the same thing right with your relationships and the things that you take for granted so with my line of work and you you'll be able to relate to it is that you you kind of you almost always in a honeymoon period yeah yeah yeah you know and that it can last years it just keeps everything fresh and moving and exciting and and if you're away getting new experiences and learning that should be bolstering your relationships with other people and other things if you know if that makes sense god that went deep i could chat to you for hours although but i'm conscious that we've both got lives lives to live external from this podcast [Laughter] thank you very much dude for yeah for having me on mate it's been it's been mega catching up with you actually mate we need to catch up for beer when i get back i was actually thinking the last time i saw you was was um oh what it was it was an event was it was it yeah that was it yeah it was live that was easy a year and a half ago so let's when you're back let's get out for a beer in london definitely skip get beers mate thank you so much dude that was wicked mate it's been a it's been a pleasure and um mate obviously when's your book out september life life on the edge yeah september september 30th yeah so yeah lessons from the edge yeah september 30th lessons from the airpod okay pleasure mate appreciate it boom cheers dude thank you cheers aldo mate appreciate that buddy thanks to our sponsors harley davidson who have helped make this latest adventure possible check them out at harley davidson.com or give at harley underscore uki or follow on twitter thank you

Channel: Jay Morton

Views: 8,281

Rating: 4.9753084 out of 5

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Id: _PeVRcFdMqg

Length: 68min 59sec (4139 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 03 2021