How A Survival Course Reset A Hollywood Writer’s Life

What if the comfort you chase is the thing holding you back from real resilience? We sit down with Jay Carson—veteran of U.S. politics, creator behind House of Cards and The Morning Show, and now executive director of the Boulder Outdoor Survival School—to unpack how a minimalist 14-day course can reset your inner compass. From a pandemic power outage that felt apocalyptic to making friction fires and sleeping without a bag, Jay shares the skills and mindset that turned fear into capability.

We explore the philosophy behind Boss: keep the gear list short, keep the learning deep, and move often enough that comfort can’t calcify. Jay explains why “compare down” cuts anxiety, how survival priorities put shelter and fire ahead of food, and why discomfort isn’t danger. If you’ve wondered whether you’re fit enough, his answer might surprise you. Baseline fitness helps, but head and heart make the difference—especially on specialised tracks like the Hunter-Gatherer course where, if you don’t find it, you don’t eat it.

There’s history and scope here too. Boss has operated since 1968 across nearly a million permitted acres in southern Utah, taking students from desert scrub to high forest in a single day’s walk. Jay connects those landscapes to his own, tracing a line from 9/11 and an anthrax exposure to a deeper need for nature’s grounding. He also previews his forthcoming book built on survival priorities—part backcountry guide, part life manual—aimed at anyone ready to rethink comfort, risk, and what truly matters.

If this conversation sparks something in you, subscribe, share the show with a friend who needs a reset, and leave a quick review. It helps more people find their way back outside and back to themselves.

https://www.boss-inc.com/

https://www.facebook.com/SurvivalSchool

https://www.instagram.com/boulderoutdoorsurvivalschool/

https://www.youtube.com/@BossSurvivalSchool

https://www.instagram.com/vikingbooks/?hl=en

https://www.facebook.com/vikingbooks/

https://www.youtube.com/user/VikingBooks

Chapters

• 0:00 Meet Jay Carson
• 3:39 From Campaigns To Screenwriting
• 9:05 A Power Outage Sparks A Wake-Up Call
• 12:15 First Boss Course And Perspective Shift
• 16:52 From Student To Executive Director
• 22:25 Balancing Leadership And Instructor Track
• 26:40 Compare Down And Life Benefits
• 29:21 Who Thrives On Boss Courses
• 33:44 Specialised Courses And Hunter-Gatherer

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Hello and good day. A welcome to Super Good Camping Podcast. My name is Pamela. And we are from SuperGoodCamping.com. We're good as one mission to inspire other people to get outside and enjoy camping adventures such as we have as a family. Today's guest certainly has the most mind-boggling resume of anyone we've ever had on the podcast. The very shortened version is that he has created, written, and produced shows the likes of Apple Plus and Netflix. I think have the card. He has been quite involved in US politics. He has worked with folks such as Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton, Senator Schumer. He was the chief deputy mayor of Los Angeles. He ran a global climate change organization of megacities. He is currently the executive director of the oldest and largest survival school in America, the Boulder Outdoor Survival School, our boss. Please welcome Avid Surfer and Outdoorsman Jay Carson.

unknown: 0:51

Woo!

SPEAKER_01: 0:52

Welcome.

SPEAKER_00: 0:54

Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. Mind boggling is uh probably a good way to describe my resume. Like it doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_02: 1:06

Yeah, that's that's exactly it's kind of like, wow, how did you do that? And and that those things don't really interconnect. That's not that's not there's not a sort of a logical progression to go from from being in politics to to you know writing screenplays like a producer.

SPEAKER_00: 1:23

I you know, I um I've probably been too dumb to know that it was a bad idea to jump off a clip. I mean, I don't mean that in a like self-depriate. I really like I just I've been I I used to say too young to know, but like I'm not, you know, I'm 48, so I'm not too young to know anymore. I'm too maybe I shouldn't say too dumb. It's not very nice to me, but like I've I've been unaware of the danger of jumping into a whole new career before I did it. And if I look when I look back, I go, that was really not a good idea. But but it worked, you know? And um, and so yeah, that's kind of how I ended up. Like I did one thing and I just was like, politics is where I started working after college. I'm from Macon, Georgia originally. Went to school in New York City, got onto my first campaign in 1997. It was Chuck Schumer, Senator, now Senator Schumer's first race for the Senate. We won. It kind of rocketed all there were a lot of stars on that campaign. I was not one of them, I was 19 or 20. You know, I was like started by I had the very senior job of organizing the supply closet. You know, that was I I worked my way up to like senior intern by the end of it, but I wasn't, you know, Chuck wasn't calling me in the middle of the night to run tax policy by me. But um but a lot of my bosses launched into really high places in politics. I just ended up with like another job and another job and another job, you know, and before I knew it, I'd been working in politics for like 15 or 18 years. And I looked around and I was like, I do not want to do this anymore. I I looked above me at where people were landing, and I was like, I don't want her job, I don't want his job, I don't want her job, I don't want his job, I don't want his job. And I was like, what am I doing? You know, if it if where I'm going is somewhere I don't want to be, I'm gonna, I wanna change. And so I became a writer and it worked, you know, that's the short version of it. But anyway, yeah, and I started, I started screenwriting and um, you know, sold some stuff, and then some stuff got made. And one of those was I was really early, really lucky to be really early on um House of Cards, you know, the first Netflix show. And that was a really instructive experience to, you know, learn. The showrunner was, you know, my best friend from college, and so I was really able to learn watch him and learn from that and get to be in the writer's room with some of the like real stars of star writers of Hollywood. And um I learned a ton from that. And then with a couple of years I sold a show to um Apple uh that became known as the morning show. Right. And so um, and I was just going along my merry way as a screenwriter, and I ended up at the Boulder Outdoor Survival School as a student in 2021, and that really like changed the trajectory of everything. I just feel like I rambled on there for a while. So I'm gonna stop. No, no, no, no. That's totally fine.

SPEAKER_02: 4:38

I'm curious, yeah, it's better than me talking. They they've heard me talk before. Um what uh so what what what prompted the the landing at at Boss at the Boulder um outdoor, what is it's outdoor survival school? Is that the yeah, right?

SPEAKER_00: 4:54

We call it yeah, we call it Boss. It it bold it we stands for the Boulder Boulder Outdoor Survival School. It's in Boulder, Utah. A lot of people think that's Boulder, Colorado, but um Boulder, Colorado is gorgeous. Boulder, Utah is more gorgeous, and um and yeah, what led me there? Really, two things. Um one I was aware of at the time. Oh, three. Two of them I was aware of at the time, and one of them I really didn't learn until later. Um the first was that one of my closest friends had done a course. He had done a 14-day course. Boss offers seven, 14, and 28-day courses. He had done a 14-day course like a decade earlier. And this is a guy that was a director and a fashion photographer and started a big clothing company. He had done, you know, the guy had done everything in the world. The only experience he kept talking about was his boss course. And, you know, after a while that kind of landed with me. I was like, when you've seen everything in the world, and the one thing you keep coming back to is this course where they take you for it in the wilderness for 14. What, what, you know, like I inside I started to ask, what's so special about this course? So that really landed with me. And then early, I took my student course in 2021, the fall of 2021. And early in the pandemic, and before you think I'm crazy, you might think I'm crazy, but just to give us the context, it was like five days into the pandemic, you know, everything had shut down. There's no toilet paper, the the stores are emptying out, and I'm nervous. I've got four little kids, and and the power goes out in our house. We live in Topanga Canyon just outside of Los Angeles, and uh, you know, it's pretty rural. So when the power goes out, it like is dark. And I thought, it's funny because I thought, oh my gosh, I wonder if this is the end of the world. You know, like I'm not ready for it. Yeah, and we live in a spot where we don't have cell service, and so when the power goes out, we lose Wi-Fi and and this stops working. And I I looked down at this and it wasn't connected to anything. And I had four little kids, it was night. I had four little kids running around, and my wife and I thought, I don't know how to do anything. I mean, I don't know how to do anything. And I would fancy myself an outdoors menu because I hiked a fair amount and had kind of grown up outdoors in Georgia and had done, you know, a hundred miles, 150 miles of the Appalachian Trail, but I would have told you in 20, yeah, you know, I I really got it. You know, you want to know about the outdoors, just ask me. I'll and I knew in that moment that I was not telling you the truth or me the truth. I didn't know anything. And I I put those two things together. I remembered my friend Mike talking about his course and the power that it had, like what he learned out there, but also how it changed his life. And then I had that moment of like, I don't know anything. And I signed up for a course. And the third thing that I didn't realize at the time, but I kind of learned as I was out there on my course, I did a 14-day uh expedition course. And you basically you go into the backcountry in southern Utah and you know, you learn to survive at the with the help of an instructor and a group of students around you, but you learn to survive with not much more than a knife and a water bottle. Um, no tent, no sleeping bag, no uh matches, no flashlight. Um, the list of what you don't bring is a lot longer than the list of what you do bring. Out there on that course, I realized that there was also this gnawing feeling that something was missing in my life. I didn't realize it, but out on the course, I it I started to realize like, oh, there's a perspective I'm missing in my life. You know, I'm 44 years old. This was when I took the course, I'm 48 now. I'm 44 years old, and there's just I don't have my directional headings set right. And those 14 days helped me realize that. Like I didn't go to the course for that. I went to learn wilderness skills. I learned all those skills, but the thing that has lasted for me for years is the is the change in my directional setting. You know, from the simplest way to put it is like not caring as much about stuff that doesn't really matter and realizing the stuff that does matter actually matters, you know. Um so yeah, those are the kind of the three reasons, the three things that put me there. By the way, the power outage that I thought was the end of the world. I got in the, I got in our minivan and I, you know, drove. I you know, who knows? I said to my wife, I'm like, I don't know when I'll be back, but I'm gonna drive until I find cell service. You know, like now I'm in a movie in my head, you know, I write them, right? So I'm like ready to I go one and a half miles down the road to the little village, the power's on, my phone works. I call Southern California Edison and they say, Yeah, sir, um, someone ran into a telephone pole and knocked the power out. It'll be back on in about 90 minutes. I said, Oh, and in a weird way, it would is helpful that it became funny because I was like, wow, like my lack of knowledge about how to do anything made me terrified over what was a really, really simple little incident. Like some guy plowed into a telephone pole, he was fine, but it knocked the power out, and I thought it was the end of the world. So it's a zombie apologetic.

SPEAKER_02: 10:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 10:39

Well, it was kind of weird, though. At that time everything seemed a little bit of what was going on.

SPEAKER_02: 10:45

Yeah, it sounds as we're definitely heightened in and around that time for sure.

SPEAKER_00: 10:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 10:50

I can see how that would play out. Okay, so that's 20 2021. How so now we we're gonna jump way ahead. Now you're the director of executive director. Executive director of boss. Um, how did you go from taking a 14-day course? I'm running the show.

SPEAKER_00: 11:09

Yeah, yeah, this is the more complicated part of the story. Like taking a course was a direct answer to my uh, you know, problems I believed I had. Becoming the executive director of something is a way to just add more problems in. Um, no, but I really um I the power of that course, it blew me away. I mean, I it was the most profound experience of my life, aside from the birth of my children and my marriage. I mean, it was really like that level of, and you know, I mean, I love what you said at the beginning. It's like getting people, I'm gonna paraphrase it badly, but like getting people to get out there, right? Like that, and this was as deep out there as I ever thought I could or would go. I mean, no trail in the no list, no trails, no roads, no, you know what I mean? Like we were just walking in the in the wilderness. It was such a powerful experience for me. I wanted everyone to get a chance to to experience it also. And so they, after my course, they asked me back to train to be an instructor. So you, you know, we you you come in as an apprentice, and uh I think it was probably affirmative action for older people, you know, because I was like a lot of the apprentices are in their 20s and they need to be. It's it's hard work, but I was in my 40s. They didn't tell me that, but it's always been my suspicion, you know, like that the only way I made it in was like through some side door. But I was really honored to be asked, and I was working my way as an apprentice, and I was so I get to do multiple courses that way, and I get to be the apprentice on a course. You have two instructors and the apprentice and then a 12 students. And that apprentice is sometimes the bridge between the instructors and the students. Like I know way more, I know how to do way more than the students do and way less than the instructors. You know, like the instructors are like, oh, you need to make a uh shelter. Here, I got a box of envelopes. Let me turn it into, you know, I mean, their abilities are, you know, I mean, bosses had more instructors on alone or naked and afraid or survivor than any other than any other wilderness school. I mean, these these people, these are the experts in the world at this stuff, boss instructors. Then the apprentice is, you know, somewhere in the middle, right? Uh, I can reliably start a friction fire, which is more than most of our students, but I can't, you know, build a helicopter out of these, out of, you know, out of the box of envelopes. And then um the executive director job came open a couple of years into me doing that. And I had run, you ran through my weird resume, and I had run uh a couple of organizations, and I just I wanted to help. I really that's what I felt like boss had given me so much that I wanted to give back to it. So I kind of sheepishly raised my hand and said, I had been really enjoying a lot of anonymity as a as an as an apprentice. I don't think anyone knew that I'd done anything, you know. I was just a guy that showed up and helped out on courses. It's like, well, I kind of had done a few other things and and so they hired me to help run the school. And so I've been doing that for almost two years now. Yeah, and it's really been great, really, really fulfilling. So yeah, that's kind of that's how I ended up there.

SPEAKER_02: 14:36

So I I would assume that's you know, a relatively full-time job. How do you find time that you I still I assume you're still progressing through becoming an instructor? So how do you where do you free up the time to to do that? Because that's good. I mean, that's I also that's a pretty long road, like having done some, not necessarily survival stuff, but having done some backcountry sort of business uh I know the jump from apprentice to I actually know some stuff now.

SPEAKER_00: 15:04

Yes. It is a long road. And it has actually uh, truth be told, it's slowed down my progression to instructor. You know, like the time it takes to run the school has slowed down my ability to um has slowed down my ability to become an instructor. I mean, I'm still on my way, you know. I I hope that I'll I'm definitely on the slow, probably one of the slowest instructor tracks of anyone. Um it was not helped by our house burned down in the Southern California fires in January. And that slowed it down too. You know, that really it it kind of took me off the roster for running courses um for this for this past season and or helping to run courses for this past season. But you know, I just try to balance it. I you know, the courses are being out on courses, like it, you know, there's no no cell phones, no, and so in a weird way it takes me out of work for a while, but I come back with so much energy and rejuvenation that it's really it's really good for me. You know, my my wife is I think she misses me when I'm gone, but she's like real the version of me that comes back from a course is she likes, you know. I mean, she likes me before, but it's really like I have a perspective and uh Yeah, there's just like a you know, like when you get out in nature, it just it quiets down the voices that don't really matter and allows allows me to, you know, allows me to see life a little better and a little truer.

SPEAKER_02: 16:38

Yeah, I I I totally it keeps me from potentially killing people for you know the nine months until I get back to in the outdoors. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 16:49

Yeah, it it yeah, it really is like it's an it's an antidote to a lot of the annoyance of my life, you know. First of all, we teach this concept at Boss on courses called compare down. And so, right, you do an orientation before you go out, and we say, you know, if you spend your most people in the world, certainly in Western society, spend their life comparing up. Man, like look at that guy's car. How don't I have that car? You know, look at that guy's house, why don't I have that? You know, we just are kind of we're like looking, and I think it's evolution, right? It's sort of like, wow, look at that, I want that, I want that. And so what we teach at boss is compare down. And so it's instead of I can't believe it's sleeting, you know, you're like, okay, well, it's sleeting, but at least I have this poncho I can put on, you know, and at least it could be so much worse. It could be actually, now I've done some compare down out there where I've been like, man, at least it's it's raining hard, but at least it's not a thunderstorm. And I'm like, oh crap. Well, there, you know, but a lot of times, so I bring that into my regular life a bunch, you know. I don't build a lot of friction fires in my day-to-day life, you know, here in my office, but I bring that compare down concept in a bunch. And then just the physical activity of being, that's really helpful to bring into my life, but the physical, just being out there, like, you know, um, I I come back, yeah, just really rejuvenated. And it's really, you know, I'll be sitting in traffic on the on a freeway here in Southern California, and I like will just think, well, pretty soon I'll be out there and it'll it'll all it'll all be fine.

SPEAKER_01: 18:41

So in terms of physical fitness, is there a certain level of physical fitness people have to have before undertaking one of your courses?

SPEAKER_00: 18:50

There it yes, but it's not uh what a lot of people assume. You know, there are a lot of people that assume, you know, I need to be a 22-year-old Olympian in peak physical condition to be able to do this. I'm glad you asked that question because we you have to be at least 18 to take a course at boss, but we have people in their 60s and sometimes 70s take boss courses and they do great. And what I've found, certainly as an apprentice, is how someone does once if you have a base level of physical fitness, I would not show up at a boss course and have it be the first time you've ever hiked with a pack on, right? That's not a great idea. But if you have a base level of physical fitness, and we have all kinds of, you know, we you get it, we make you get a physical from your doctor, and there's some running tests that we do beforehand to make sure that you're, you know, that you can handle this. But once you have a base level of physical fitness, it's all head and heart as to whether you're gonna succeed on your course or not. It really is. It's like, can you get your head into a place where you're embracing the experience that you're going through? And can you can you, you know, expand your heart in a way where you can really get see the joy of what you're doing so that your the attitude you're bringing toward it every day is this is awesome, instead of man, we haven't eaten in like three days, and I paid money for this, and this kind of sucks. And I, you know, I see I've seen people get in that loop, and I'm just like, that is not going to that that doesn't go anywhere good because this isn't gonna get easier, you know. I mean, it does, there's easier days than than others, but in general, that's really the difference maker for someone doing it. And so, yeah, that and and then we do have we have skills courses where we there's not much hiking involved at all. We have there's a lot of movement in our expedition courses, and that's intentional, where we're trying to we're trying to create a situation where you're out of your comfort zone. And so if you sit in one place all day, you'll find humans will find a way to create a comfort zone if they sit. And so we move almost every day. And it's like just when you've settled into this one place, it's like, okay, guys, we're moving, and you're like, what? And then you've got to build a new shelter. There's a method to our madness. You're learning the skills. Every time you move, you're learning the navigation skills and the shelter building skills and the fire building skills and all that sort of stuff. But we're moving people constantly. In our skills courses, that's not the case. So you can spend seven or 14 days sitting pretty much in one place and just really honing your skills. And we have those for people who aren't physically capable of doing our regular courses. And then this year, for the first time, maybe ever, but in a long time, we're doing an over 50 only course. So it's just for students over 50. Because anyone over 50 can take, not anyone, but as I said, tons of people in their 50s and 60s and some in their 70s take boss courses. But I do talk to people sometimes and they say, you know, I'm a little intimidated about the idea of I'm I'm 63 and there's going to be a 23-year-old on that course, and they're going to be going, you know, this many miles an hour, and I'm going to be holding the group up, and I just don't want to be that weight on the group. I tell those people you wouldn't be a weight on the group, but sometimes they just believe that they will, and so they don't come on the course. So we're just running one 50 and over course this year. We're running an all-women's course this year and a 50 and over course. Because the same thing, we have, you know, a large number of women instructors and a large number of um women students. But every now and then I'll hear, you know, I don't want to be like one of two or three or four women in a group of, and so we're just running one section that's an all-women course this year, too.

SPEAKER_01: 22:57

So and how many would be in a group typically?

SPEAKER_00: 23:01

12. We're limited to 12 on most of our courses. We have some specialty courses. Um one's called the Hunter Gatherer, and the other is called the Desert Navigator. And those are fewer. Those are nine students each, and those courses are wild. I've actually never done the Desert Navigator, but I did the Hunter Gatherer in 2024, and it was mind-blowing. Um, we have there are some rations involved in our 14-day expedition courses. You know, we the first part of the course there's not much food. We're trying to really establish you in the environment. And then after that, there's some rations. Not a lot, but you know, there you you get some food. And the hunter-gatherer, if you don't find it, you don't eat it. And so that is wild. It was a really powerful experience for me. And you know, learning to trap and fish. And I grew up in Georgia doing some of this stuff, but not, but this is like primitive trapping, primitive hunting, primitive um fishing. And it was with whether I ate or not, dependent on how I did it, those things. That's a motivating director. It was motivating, and I was very bad at trapping, and I was pretty good at fishing. And so, you know, there was this I checked my traps and I was just like, well, I'm not gonna eat tonight, you know. But there's a tree over there with acorns, my senses were so heightened on that course because they were the difference in eating or not eating. And so, you know, I when my traps wouldn't work, and there was a really low acorn crop for whatever reason in 24. We were out in September, but I just hiked through the woods until I found an oak tree that had acorns on it because I said, I can't trap any rodent. I mean, I'm not can't, but I'm not capable at the moment of trapping any rodents, and I'm I'm starving as a result. And so I found an uh oak tree and I, you know, took my socks off and filled my socks with you know massive amounts of acorns and uh brought them back. And well, we had to leach the tannins. I learned all this stuff, you know. We had to leach the tannins in a creek, and anyway, it was just an amazing experience. I made a bow and arrow, bow, a bow and a set of arrows for my son, which was probably like the greatest achievement of my career. I loved it, it was amazing. And uh, and they burned, unfortunately, which was like of all the things that burned, that was like that was like as the house was burning, I was like, I mean, I wasn't anywhere near it, but I was like, oh, if I could just grab that bow and those arrows, but I couldn't.

SPEAKER_01: 25:48

So there's no guns. You're not you're not taking guns. Okay, no.

SPEAKER_00: 25:53

No, but it it doesn't, um it's not you, you know. Um, I mean, there are a lot of hunters that are um boss instructors, but on the course we're it's a different course, right? We're we're really trying to teach you how to do as much with these and this as possible. So you're you're out there, you've got nothing, what can you do? We don't even have a knife on the hunter-gatherer course. There's not even a knife. You make a knife out of obsidian flakes. Wow. So we shot a we shot a we shot a jackrabbit with a bow we made ourselves and arrows we made ourselves, and then we we processed the jackrabbit using an obsidian flake and cooked it over a fire that we made with a with a with a bow drill kit, like a friction fire. And I was like, there's just a feeling of look at that, we did all of that, you know? And it really was, I don't do it very much in my day-to-day life, but it was a I like I have that experience, I carry that experience with me.

SPEAKER_02: 26:55

Like satisfying is the word that comes to mind.

SPEAKER_00: 26:57

Yeah. There may be this other, as I was just reminded of this, that's talking about my house burning down, like I, or my family's house burning down. I realized that I had a a well, a reservoir of resilience that I discovered on my boss course that I've been able to go back to many times in my life. Whether it's parenting four kids or dealing with traffic in Los Angeles or my house burning down, there's this I learned over those 14 days that I I'm more resilient than I thought I was, and that I can handle difficulty, I can actually embrace difficulty in a way that I wasn't aware that I was able uh to do. And that I don't know, that may be of all the things, the you know, one of the most powerful things that I took away from the course.

SPEAKER_02: 27:55

Yeah, I can see that. Bit of a side question. When you when you say out there, how what what are the logistics of like do you guys own a bunch of land? Do you use uh I can never remember the term? We call it Crown Land here. Uh uh is that what you do? You you or you go into national parks, or how does that how does that play out for you?

SPEAKER_00: 28:17

Great question. We because Boss is so old, and it was founded in 1968, it started as a um it started as a 30-day course for wayward students at BYU, at Brigham Young University. The idea of take them into the wilderness and they would learn self-confidence and they would come back to school and be able to thrive. It worked, but also it was so popular that students started trying to fail their courses so they could go on the I guess. Yeah. And so then they were like, okay, I think we need to open this up to everyone. It quickly became so popular that it just was, it became a private company by by the mid-70s, it was a private company. We're now a nonprofit. Um, we became a nonprofit in 2017. But it's been around for so long that the land agencies, the you know, the Bureau of Land Management, the Forest Service, the National Park Service, they know that we take good care of the land. And so we have we have permits to to take students on about a million acres of land. Like that is some of the most mind-bending parts of it is the range of boss, it it runs from you know 2,500, 3,000 feet above sea level down in the desert to 11,000 or 12,000 feet up on Boulder Mountain. And you can walk that in a day if you take the right route. And so you can basically go from we say this, it's interesting, we say, you know, we can walk you from Mexico to Canada in a day. Because you're you know, you're down in the sh in the scrub, like pinyon tree, juniper forest, cactus everywhere, and then it within a Day, if you take the right route, you're in spruce and fir and aspen trees, and you know, big rocky granite cliffs. And so um we have a 41-acre campus in Boulder, Utah, but that's just where your orientation. You show up, you do orientation there, you eat a meal there, you do that kind of stuff, and then we you know we leave the campus um on the first day, and the whole course takes place out in the out in the wilderness.

SPEAKER_02: 30:30

Excellent. How does this all tell me about your book? What what how does this play into it's coming out in 2026?

SPEAKER_00: 30:42

It it's so funny. I had a a call with my editor just today to talk about that. So yeah, late 26 or early 27, mostly based on how long it takes a book to get printed, which is something I'm learning. Yeah, that's a whole other story. But like once your book's done, it gets has to get in line with because there's not many printing presses left in the world. And so you get in line and it actually takes about nine months for a book to be printed. So yeah, so it'll late 26 or early 27. I will hopefully be done with it in about January of 26. I wanted to tell the story, really the story of transformation that this 14 days had for me. And I tell it through the lens of the priorities of survival. Is like you're in a difficult situation, perhaps it's a survival situation, but it's a wilderness situation that's not what you were expecting. What are your priorities of survival? What's the thing that you do first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth? And that's kind of the spine of the book that I take people through, walking them through the like you're going through my 14-day course and the experience I had out there, but the let the the spine of it, the lessons we're teaching are are the priorities of survival. So, okay, first is it's everybody you won't because you spend time outdoors, but anyone that doesn't spend time outdoors is like, so food's gotta be the biggest problem, right? And I'm like, nope, bottom of the list. And they're like, bottom of the list, but you gotta be hungry within a few hours. And I'm like, you're hungry, but hungry is different than dying. And so it's even one of the other things I learned was like discomfort is not danger. You know, in Western society, I think advertising tries to teach us this discomfort is dangerous, you know, like don't be uncomfortable, make sure you buy this pillow or you might die. It's sort of the implication, right? And like it's not dangerous to be uncomfortable. And that's kind of what the priorities of survival teaches is like, sure, you're hungry, spend all your time looking for food instead of building shelter, figuring out how to bake a fire and finding water, and you're gonna be comfortably dead. And and so just reteaching that, and um yeah, that's what the that's kind of what the what the book does. And I hope that people that spend a lot of time outdoors read it, but also people that might never go outdoors read it as like a you know, a sort of a metaphor for for life.

SPEAKER_02: 33:22

So I think that's great. It's uh if if nothing else to to convey that uh change of mindset that happens because it's you know, like like you said, people are you know worried about comfort and stuff like that, or or your your day-to-day life of what is important stuff. Not really. It's not not really go out, reconnect with yourself, reconnect with nature and stuff, come home, discover that you know your BPMs are are down, that you're you're breathing, that your wife is much happier with you when you get back from a trip like that. After you've showered, obviously, but yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, like and completely off topic. Tell me about the whole deal with anthrax. That was on my wild. That must have been just wicked.

SPEAKER_00: 34:19

That was a wild one. Yeah, I was 23, I think, maybe 24. Um I was working in the United States Senate, and it was about a month after September 11th, and these letters were getting mailed around the country that had actual anthrax powder in them. And um we think there were a lot of copycat letters, but there was, you know, that there basically we think there was one person, not we, but they determined there was one person that was mailing them to various people, and they mailed one to our office, to my boss's office. I was working for Senator Dashel from South Dakota, and um, and I was fortunate or unfortunate enough to be in the office that day and uh was one of the people that actually got it. I mean, there was a scare around the country where everyone was trying to get Cypro and antibiotics and make sure that, but we were like sitting in the office with it in the air. And um yeah, it was a really terrifying, it was a terrifying week that first week where um we knew we had it. Or a few days I didn't know I had it, and then but thought I might. Yeah, and then finding out we had it and figuring out whether it was going to be antibiotic resistant, it turned out not to be, but if it were, I wouldn't be talking to you right now. It killed the the the letter that was sent to my office killed two postal workers, and there were 19 of us, I believe, in my office who contracted it, you know, who had it in like when you did this swab in our nose and then tested our blood, we had it, you know, racing through us. So we got good medical care and and we survived, but it was a really yeah, it was a I think it was a I wasn't old enough to have a lot of perspective on it. And I look back on it now and I think wow, that was that was crazy. You know, that was a really crazy year of my life. And it it may have been when I mentioned that third thing, the gnawing feeling, the need the deep need to kind of get out into nature and experience its healing qualities in my life. I could draw kind of a straight line back to that year, to 2001. You know, we had been in the Capitol on 9-11 where the fourth plane was headed, and then a month later got anthrax. And yeah, that was that's a tough, that was a you know experiences you could do without. Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_01: 36:52

That's it for us for today. Thank you so much to Jay Carson, executive director of Boss, the Boulder Outdoor Survival School. Uh, and please do check out his book. It's coming, we hope, sometime maybe in 2026, 2027. It's tentatively called Two Births One Stone. And otherwise, you can reach out to Boss anytime they are at boss-inc.com, B O S S dash Inkin C dot com. And they're on Instagram at Boulder Outdoor Survival School. And that's it for us as well. If you would like to talk to us anytime, we are at Hi at SupergoodCampaign.com, that's H I at Supergoodcampaign.com, and we are on all the social media and we'll talk to you again soon. Hi, hi, hi.