What is the first thing you stopped spending money on? I

stopped spending money on.

Okay.

Got it.

Well, look, we went from 26 paddocks to 104 in a couple of years.

And we did that by diverting the money that we used to spend on chemicals and fertilizers, which was $70,000 a year.

That's how much we spent.

What are the honest conversations that your family's been having and exploring about the financial value of your land now compared to when you came into custodianship over it? And how are you thinking about that moving forward?

So you were posting on social media throughout the trip and what has your response been like of people following along? Do you think it's raising awareness? Did you have any particular strategies of you know how you decided what to talk about what was your approach to social media

yeah so that's a really good question I it started off you know there was a very specific scientific story to tell these are the projects that I was doing this is why they mattered and there was kind of one audience that I had in mind for that excuse me Um, but I think very quickly, um, my plan, you know, I decided early on that I was going to record one video per day basically, and kind of do a day in the life.

Um, uh, and part of that was because, um, I was filming a lot while I was out there, but I also didn't have enough time to edit any of my videos while I was there.

And I didn't have enough time to like really put together a plan beyond, let me just get as much footage as I can.

I got to worry about staying cold, staying warm, staying fed and sleeping enough and actually doing my science.

And so my plan went out the window when I realized I just got to survive out here and get this stuff done.

But when I came back, started doing these one videos a day and very quickly got tons of support online.

Were there any particular explorers, either historical or even fictional, that you drew inspiration from? Yeah.

So, so tell us what you've got going on right now in your, quote-unquote, retirement.

Well, yeah, the, the retirement's really just a transition to, to the next, to the next phase and, you know, and you've just met Kristen and she, and she knows better than most that, uh, a, a, uh, uh, a idle mind and mike situation is not a good thing.

So I, I, I tend, tend to always be seeking new stimulus, new information, and so I'm always sort of in the growth mode.

And, uh, depending on where I am at the time, I try to invest it specifically for the, the people I'm aligned with.

And but I did, you know, did this last window of time with Cal Berkeley and, and that has been a great thing.

It's been a great experience.

It was first time I was really an assistant coach in my career.

He was-- Yeah, I was at the Indy Pro Series, and he was there or working already.

So maybe you could take us on this sort of story arc of monetary union and where things have landed presently.

Well, it is a political project, and I think that you go back to the antecedents of some of this.

You have to go back to the 1870s, and various French people wanted monetary union in Europe as a way of recovering some of the land that France had lost to Germany or to Prussia in the Franco-Prussian War.

So all these things have political antecedents.

If you go back to the euro, I think you've got to think of the Werner Plan.

Pierre Werner, then Luxembourg Prime Minister, who had this idea of forging a monetary union.

The big issue then was, should you have convergence first and then crown it with the defining glory of the monetary union when everything has been done? Or do you produce a monetary device which makes countries converge and therefore bring in the currency union first as a means of bringing about convergence? And in the end, they did both at once.

They're just American, I