Talking with Dr Cliff - The Adventures of the Worldwide Vet

You may already know Dr Cliff Redford from his work in Canada, but his dedication to animals stretches far beyond his Wellington Veterinary Hospital in Markham, Ontario.

Cliff has become a passionate volunteer, travelling the globe to help people and their pets across Jamaica, the Arctic, Greece, India, Panama, Egypt, and Ukraine. From beloved family pets to unexpected wildlife encounters, his stories from the field are as heartwarming as they are extraordinary.

Now, Cliff has captured those adventures in a new documentary and his upcoming book, Far and Wild: Adventures of the Worldwide Vet.

In this episode, we sit down with Cliff to talk about what drives him to give back, how volunteering has transformed his life, and some of the unforgettable moments along the way. He also shares how keeping a journal and always having a smartphone to hand can turn life's experiences into something truly lasting.

🎬 Documentary: Watch here 

📖 Book: Far and Wild 

🌐 Website: drcliff.ca 

📸 Instagram: @drcliffworldwidevet

It's time for another podcast...

Thank you for listening. Please Like and Subscribe, as it really does make a difference.

If you enjoy my podcasts and would like to be kept up to date about podcasts, webinars and courses, please join my mailing list by clicking here.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Okay, so welcome to another podcast. Now I have an interesting guest with me today, and I'm sure we're gonna have a good chat about that. This is Dr. Cliff Redford now. Dr. Cliff is a little bit different to other guests I've had in the his main focus, and I'm sure you correct me if this is wrong, is actually veterinary work, but in different parts of the world. So um Dr. Cliff would talk more about that, obviously. Um and on the photography side, it it's more kind of using when you're not doing uh actual professional documentaries, which you're not filming, but uh kind of filling in on occasion, and we'll go back to the story you told me earlier about using smartphone um and and filling in there. So this is sort of slightly different. And um if you're from Canada, you might already know Dr. Cliff from uh TV appearances. So welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Thank you very much, Graham, for having me.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

You're very welcome. So probably the best way to start is for you to just um tell us a little bit about what you do, and hopefully I haven't made up too much. Um we can go from there.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

The hard part, I talk too much. So the hard part is keeping it to uh little. Uh I will start when I was born. No, I won't do that.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Well, your parents actually before that. They were feeling a bit crispy one evening.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

I don't want to think. Ooh, I don't know. Yeah, let's not go there. I put on second thoughts. No, no, I love them. They're amazing. Um, I am a veterinarian. I am uh located in Toronto, Ontario. My clinic's Wellington Vet Hospital in Markham, which is just north of Toronto. Uh I've been a vet for almost 30 years. Um, and I was a regular small animal, companion animal veterinarian. Um, and then the joke is when I hit my early 40s, my kids joke that my midlife crisis kicked in a little early. And I started traveling and volunteering. Um, and I got I got the bug. Now, I was my first trip 10 years ago was to Jamaica. Um, pretty, pretty hard uh life, eh? What a beautiful country, what a beautiful island. Uh and I went for three months for three weeks, not only to volunteer, but to actually film my adventures because I was trying to develop and pitch an adventure travel animal rescue television show. So I hired film students and photography students straight out of school. I air quotes hired them, I paid them in beer, pizza, and a free trip to Jamaica, and they jumped at it. They were all like, This sounds great. Um, and they did an amazing job. And we filmed all these adventures, came back, tried to pitch this show. It didn't quite happen, although I kept chasing it. But this volunteer travel really bit me. So I slowly started traveling around the world and and you know, went as far east as India more than once, um, down south to Panama, up to the Arctic Circle a couple of times in January. I'm the only crazy veterinarian crazy enough to go up that north, uh, that high. And uh even created a documentary on one of my trips when we went to India uh to experience Diwali and rescue animals as well. So that's that's me in a nutshell. Uh, I do love surfing from where you are. Uh, I got into cold water surfing in Lake Ontario, which is it's a big enough lake that there are surfable waves, um but it's very, very cold. Uh we have to wear giant eight millimeter wetsuits. We sort of look like fat penguins out there. Um, and as my midlife crisis definitely kicks in, I've got into amateur competitive boxing. I compete. So there you go. I love it. I love it. Um, I absolutely love it. And I love the the photography and the film side of these trips and being able to share the experiences.

SPEAKER_01 3:54

Yeah so one thing I'll pick up on there is when I talk to people about going on well wildlife trips, I generally recommend that they don't do the regular safari stuff, but if they can, they volunteer because my experience of volunteering is they often get a very different picture of what's going on both with the wildlife and local communities. And uh local communities working with wildlife is a really key part of conservation. So I'm just sort of interested that you went down a volunteering route. So um did that sort of take you where it you expected it to take you, or how was that experience of volunteering as a sort of starting point?

SPEAKER_00 4:35

Yeah, that's a great question. And and I'm not one who enjoys uh you know the white picket fences of all inclusive resorts and and things like that. Um, these are my vacation trips, uh, and I work, I'm gonna say now 80% of the time on these trips volunteering. Uh, it always takes me to places I didn't expect. That's the that's the beauty of it. I mean, and you don't have to be a veterinarian to volunteer for animal rescues. They they need regular folk. You don't have to volunteer in animal rescues. You can help go and dig a well and and or build a build a school, or you know, there's so many things you can do. I think I think volunteer travel trumps other travel any day. The experiences that you get like culturally, get away from you know, I'm from North America, get away from those Americanized resorts and go and have someone cook you a meal that's homemade and them telling you the history of it. And this is why Anthony Bourdain's show is so powerful, right? Like food was used to to bring people together. I use animals to bring people together. Um, and I've experienced cultural events and again, foods and religions, and learned different languages, only a couple of words here or there, but I've made so many great connections by volunteering and getting out of my comfort zone. Um, you know, I never would have expected, you know, I would have uh eventually gone to a war zone to help out. And I never would have expected, I'm not much of a turtle veterinarian, but I've been able to help with uh wildlife sea turtle conservation by spaying and neutering the the local dogs that are eating the turtle eggs. I was on a I was on a hike in Panama with Raul, who ran the Bocas del Toro, uh, which is sort of the community island on the south end of Panama. Um, he had brought me down to again spay and neuter the local dogs and cats. They were eating the turtle eggs and they were damaging the the conservation efforts of these turtles. So he takes me on a hike to go and and and see some of these turtle releases and these turtle nests, and he shows me uh uh uh Pablo Escobar's one of his beach cottages. And he's like, Here's Pablo Escobar's beach cottage. It's abandoned, obviously. Pablo Escobar's uh uh no more. Um uh sorry, it wasn't Pablo Escobar, it was Noriega's. Noriega's beach cottage. His his friend was Pablo Escobar. So Noriega, the ex-president of Panama, and he's like, Have you noticed do you notice anything about this cottage? And I'm kind of looking at it, and he sort of hints and he says, The windows aren't removed, the copper wires not no one is uh everyone's afraid of Noriega, even though he's long gone, that no one is gonna ransack his his cottage, which would have happened or his beach mansion. So I never would have expected that, you know. I didn't I didn't have a chance to do that. I got to go to a my first ever hookah bar, like the Shisha bars where you smoke the nicotine, um, was in this tiny hidden away hookah bar in Cairo, Egypt. It was like Indiana Jones. Yeah, like I never would have had that experience if I just did regular travel and it was the volunteer people that said, Hey, we want to thank you for your work. We're gonna take you to this uh amazing Egyptian experience. So um it's I recommend it for everybody. Uh maybe don't go to a war zone, but I recommend it for everybody uh to get out of that white picket fence and and and learn something new.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

Yeah, no, that that's brilliant. Now mentioning war zones is obviously uh well, obviously you you've you've been to Ukraine, uh you were in Ukraine a couple of times, I think. And that would be uh hopefully a different experience to most people who are listening to this because uh I'm pretty sure most of us wouldn't want to end up in that kind of situation. But do you want to say something about how that worked out and and what you were doing there?

SPEAKER_00 8:51

Yeah, and it uh I think I think the the war on Ukraine, the attack on Ukraine by Russia hurt everybody. It like it it upset all of us. I get emotional just thinking about it. And it was literally three or four weeks into the uh war, which is now four and a half years almost four and a quarter years, yeah. And I was just so upset, and I knew that there were veterinarian, large veterinarian organizations that were planning to go because at the border of Ukraine and Poland, these Ukrainian sort of refugees, let's call them, escaping the war, were having trouble going into other countries because they wanted to bring their pets. And if their pets weren't vaccinated or they didn't have the documentation, who grabs the documentation when you're escaping, you know, regarding your rabies vaccine for your puppy. They weren't being allowed, and and a lot of these people were refusing to leave the the the country because they love their pets so much. So I I I just I got up, I called get off the get off the couch gang. We were all part of the get off the couch gang. Within a week, literally, I had I had made a decision on a Sunday. I texted my kids, they were all you know grown up out of the house. Hey, your dad's probably gonna go to Poland to volunteer. My daughter was on a trip, her own little volunteer trip in Europe. She was in Spain, she was like, hey, get me a ticket and I'll come meet you. So the first the first volunteer trip was right at the border. We were in Poland. We did go one day into uh Lviv, um, and I fell in love with the Ukrainian people. We were helping all these people cross um and making sure their animals were safe. I fell in love with it so much that when I came back and I saw some of the you know horrific stories because I wasn't able to watch news there, I didn't speak uh you uh Polish that I ended up going back and I went back the summer of four years ago, so 2022, and I went into the war zone. I went into Kharkiv and the Donbass region, Krematorsk, places like that. Yeah, I was not prepared. I mean, I did as much preparation, I went by myself, obviously, this time. Um uh I actually had like a pre-PTSD uh experience where I had 24 hours of non-stop hiccups, um which I didn't even know. It was literally the night before leaving, I couldn't sleep. Uh, I had tried all these tricks. Um, what am I gonna do if I I can't do surgery while I'm doing hiccups? Like it it be it was funny at first and then painful. Um, and it was like my body was didn't know how to deal with the adrenaline. The second I crossed the border into Ukraine, literally, it was like the second I crossed, the hiccup stopped because my body, I think, realized okay, we're now in a country at war, you don't have time for any of this.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

Yeah, yeah, you have to be on, don't you? You know, it's not about anticipation anymore. You need to be on.

SPEAKER_00 11:51

Yeah, my body seemed to figure it out. And it was first of all, it was the most fulfilling experience ever. Uh my eyes are misty dealing with it. Um, working with these absolute heroes that have now for four and a quarter years refused to leave their city of Harkiv and continue to go into the war zone to to rescue animals that have been hit by bombs, you know, buildings have crushed them or injured them, some of them shot, some of them just abandoned, and then they bring them to safer parts of the country, and eventually either you reunite them or get them to other countries where they can find their new forever homes. Like these guys are absolute heroes. And while we're doing this, like there is there was literally in Harkiv, there was we called it Russian thunder. You could hear every couple of minutes, sometimes there'd be a couple of hours where there was nothing, but you could hear these explosive artilleries, these bombs, whatever you want to call them. I'm Canadian, so I don't really know weapons very well, uh, other than hockey sticks. Um that's right, that's right. Like I was doing surgery on a dog in this clinic that had been abandoned and sort of the keys were left for the rescue, and the clinic would shake like a like a subway train was passing by because a bomb had landed so close. So it was it was uh you know life-changing and fulfilling and scary and and heartwarming. So um uh I I I hope to go back one day, and hopefully it's under better circumstances, but uh um I'll go back if I have to, uh, even in the current situation.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

And you did produce uh a documentary while you were there, the second trip?

SPEAKER_00 13:42

Yeah, the second trip to India. So I again I had been chasing this TV show dream, and I'd come really close. I had had once um the the largest network in Canada, uh, which has ties with uh, I believe Animal Planet, um, had green lit our show. Uh, we had created a trailer, had greenlit our show, and then a new CEO came in. They kind of switched the team, they switched a lot of people got fired. I can't feel bad. I got to keep my job as a veterinarian. So I had come so close, and this thing was so important to me that I started talking with Diego, who had helped me with some of these sizzle reels and done some of the some of the local filming. We had always talked about we should just do a film, we should just do a documentary, get into film festivals, get a proof of concept, you know, win some film festival awards. And then I went to Ukraine. And the joke is I came back from Ukraine, I almost had been hit by a uh an artillery, a missile. Um, and I was foolishly filming sort of the pre-effects, not knowing what was gonna happen on my iPhone by a window. Um, but at least I got the footage. Um uh my family was a little mad at that, but you know, I got the footage. You gotta do what you gotta do, right? You gotta you gotta do what you gotta do. Uh, it was not smart, but you almost, you know, life is short. You almost get hit with a missile. I came back and I literally called him up and I said, I'm getting a I'm taking out a loan on my house. Let's do this film. And so we ended up three or four months later. So it was 2023 in the fall of 2023. We went back to Hyderabad India, which I had been to before, and I specifically decided, let's go back during Diwali, the Festival of Lights, and let's do this documentary that's about the animal rescue and about this beautiful festival, the fireworks and the music, but that this festival of lights has a bit of a dark side, as we used to say, and that these fireworks terrify animals and hurt animals. Um, so we ended up Diego filmed the crap out of this thing. Like it was unbelievable. Um, the stuff he was able to do. And we did create this documentary. It got picked up by some small documentary channels, not enough to pay even a fraction of what it cost me. Um, but we won some film festival awards, uh uh best cinematography, best documentary, best editing. Um, never best host. I don't know what that means. Yeah, that's that's fine. Um I'm a little bitter. Um no, it was really, really I am so proud of what uh we were able to create the music, the images. Um, it was absolutely uh, and I was able to do it with my daughter again, Emily. So we have it, you know, for forever. It's gonna be saved digitally forever.

SPEAKER_01 16:40

Yeah, and and you've got the book as well.

SPEAKER_00 16:42

So yeah, let's talk about that. So I started journaling 10 years ago when I went to Jamaica, three six months before going to Jamaica. I started journaling and not not thinking anything of it, right? And there was started to get to be this thought, like some of the stories are really amazing. You know, the the bomb hitting in Ukraine and me having to help take out an eye on a crocodile when I have no wildlife experience at the time, and uh uh dealing with a monkey in India again, never dealing with a monkey, and and and sort of the the challenges and the adventures and and the fun stories um that I would tell everybody. And people started saying, You should write a book, you should write a book. I never really thought about it. I'm a scientist, I'm not a I'm not a writer. Um, but I started okay, let you never know what happens, right? I'm I'm one of those guys that hey, it doesn't hurt to start putting these words that are in my journal onto the computer. Um now I type with two fingers and my thumb, um, so it's very, very slow. I recognize the style. That's great. Um but apparently I'm a pretty good storyteller. I have the gift of the gab and the storytelling from my father. And I once I get into something, I'm like a terrier with a bone. I'm not gonna let go. And so I started pitching this to the big five publishers, Penguin House and and whatnot. Um and I came close again, but never never signed a deal. But I wasn't I was ready to independently publish it, but I ended up signing with ECW Press through a friend who's a veterinarian that has these detective novels. Um uh that's very, very successful. So he got my foot in the door, and as soon as they they said, Oh, send me a send me a summary or a couple of chapters. And I said, Well, I can send you the whole book. I'm done. And they were like, What? You've written how many, how many pages? And I said, Oh, about 330. And they said, Okay, first you're gonna have to cut that. That's too many. Um, which they were right. Uh, we cut about 15% of it. But yeah, I have a book coming out uh all across the world, uh, North America, September 15th, and then uh mid-October for like New Zealand, Australia, Asia, UK. Uh it's called Far and Wild Adventures of the Worldwide Vet. And it basically is a prequel to the documentary. It it goes from Jamaica, Greece, India the first time, Panama. So I talk about Noriega's cottage, um, uh uh uh Egypt, Panama, uh and then Ukraine, uh Ukraine twice. Um, it opens with the scary part of the the missile landing near me. Um because like uh any good storyteller, you gotta hit them hard, right? You gotta hit them get their attention. Yeah, and it's it's it's very personal. It's very, very personal, and and I have to do the audiobook uh narration soon. And my big worry is how do I not cry on audio, like on the microphone, into the microphone when how do I stop my voice from cracking? And maybe the answer is I don't. Maybe that's what people want to hear. So uh I am super proud of it, and nothing's probably gonna happen of the TV show. Uh maybe. Uh, there's still some some hint of of hope, but I'm so proud of this this book, and and I think people are gonna love it.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

Brilliant. Well, I'll have the links in the description to for anyone listening who would like to know more, they're all there. And I'll also have Dr. Cliff's website uh link as well. Appreciate it. So between all of that, you should be able to find out more.

SPEAKER_00 20:32

Yeah, yeah. And you can just literally Google Dr. Cliff Far and Wild book, and and you'll you'll come up with all kinds of links for the pre-order or or to order it once uh once it's available.

SPEAKER_01 20:46

Yeah, that's that's brilliant. So obviously you've got a lot of stories, and we were talking a little bit about the um India, the story there. What it's are there one or two stories you'd just like to share with people now? Maybe give them I'm gonna give them a flavor of what's in the book, but also just to to share the stories.

SPEAKER_00 21:03

Yeah, yeah. I'll I'll I'll do two of them and and and we'll sort of go back to the documentary. So this is not in the book, but your your photography uh listeners will really appreciate that. This story. Um we're in India, we're doing the documentary. We had just had a really long night where I was doing emergency surgery on uh on a cattle egrette, basically this beautiful white bird. And we didn't get back to the hotel until about 3 a.m. It was a very emotional story, so everybody was just just drained. Um, and they filmed it so well. So we gave the the film crew the morning off. We were normally meeting at breakfast in the hotel and then heading out, and there never seemed to be many rescue stories in the morning. So we're doing b roll, you know, golden hour, all that sort of stuff. Well, of course, the one time we give them time off, that's when uh an emergency hits. So we get a call from the animal rescue that there's a dog. That has fallen down a well, which happens a lot in India. Um, these wells are open, dogs get scared. This dog must have gotten scared by the fireworks because the fireworks and the the crackers go off for three days straight during the daytime as well. And the film crew was like, We're gonna need 20 minutes at least to pack our gear up because they're dealing with some serious, uh, proper uh uh equipment. Well, we don't, you know, the veterinarian in me is we don't have that time. We gotta go, we gotta go. And but then the director in Diego and the producer in Diego, um, he's like, We can't miss this. This is this is the story. You're gonna repel into a well. This is the story. He's like, I got it covered, let's go. So we go, go, go, and it's just him, my daughter, and I. And he literally he films it on a C300 and my daughter's iPhone. And he basically says, Emily, you just stay here. Don't film it in vertical. This is not for TikTok. Film it in horizontal. You just stay here. Uh, just just get shots of your dad. Just don't stop recording. I'll fix it in post, you know, as the saying goes. And I go, I I throw on the harness, I I rappel down the well, and I do have repelling experience. I do have some sort of uh like certification of stuff like that for various sports I used to do as a as a less old adult, let's say. And in the end, and obviously there's no there's no second take, you know. This this dog's almost drowning. I get down there in the nick of time. Uh, spoiler alert if you haven't seen the documentary, the the the dog does okay, but it is pretty harrowing. And these shots are amazing, and not only are they amazing because Diego's skilled, but he was and he ends up able to like sort of change the the the the you understand this with still images and moving images. He's able to change the feeling of the story by utilizing the rawness of the iPhone and the C300 compared to the the the beautiful imagery with these big giant you know shoulder health cameras, uh with the with the little steady thingies that they have, uh whatever they're called now. Um uh and it and it works. And you know, we've had so many conversations over beer after it about you know utilizing the shot and the the lighting and the in his case the sound as well and the motion and the angles of I sometimes can't get Cliff exactly. I'm over his shoulder, and then I'm sort of from a distance, and sometimes you lose sight of the and the dog slips under the the water right at the time where you know you just lose, and everyone's like, Well, you didn't I can't see what's going on. Where's the dog? And you're almost like leaning your head around the screen that you're looking at, whether it's a still image or not, to try and well, what happened to the dog? And it so you're able to use those angles and those lightings and those techniques to create that emotion. And and uh a picture is worth so many more than a thousand words, you know. It's it's so valuable. So sometimes you just gotta get the shot, right? And and don't line it up perfectly, just grab it, just grab the shot.

SPEAKER_01 25:31

I think that's really important. It's something I talk about a lot. The the the most important thing is getting the shot. Uh it doesn't have to be perfect because perfect is is a great way of actually not doing anything. And yeah, you know, and the storytelling aspect is far more powerful because the pictures that we love that inspire us, it's because there's an emotional connection of some sort. And uh so the picture doesn't have to be technically perfect as long as there's a story there, as long as there's something we can connect to, and that's the power of smartphones, which most of us carry all the time.

SPEAKER_00 26:04

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, especially with with filming and taking photos of wildlife, they're not gonna stand. You just need to start clicking, right? And thank goodness we have digital cameras now that are taking these amazing photos. Just click, click, click, click, click, click, click, and you might get that little wink that the fox gives you, or that that yawn that the crocodile gives, you know, or they're panting because it's hot or they're stressed, and it and it's just you know, becomes almost uh you're anthropomorphizing them, they become human. Um, so it's it's pretty amazing. The second story, which is more about adventure and a little bit less about filming, um, though we did catch it on film, uh uh, and and the story is in the book. We had a bit of a day off. I was in Poland. It was that first trip volunteering with the war. I had a bit of a day off or half a day off. It was quiet. So, Dr. Lachlan Campbell, who's uh an Australian veterinarian, and I met him in Poland. We've become very good friends. Um, he's gone to Ukraine many times since then. We're gone, we we went for a hike and we just had some time off. And we we didn't go to the place we wanted, we were lost, we tried, and then we just stumbled upon this trail. And while we stumbled upon this trail, we end up stumbling upon a deer that had its antlers wrapped around rope that was like some sort of fence line in this field, and it's bucking and it's spinning and it's panting, and this this deer is gonna die. Like they have this thing called capture myopathy, where the the muscles become so inflamed due to the stress that it actually becomes poisonous to them. Um, and he literally slaps me on the shoulder and he says, Let's go be heroes, mate. And he he throws his phone down onto this little tripod to capture the image. Um, I do the same thing, and I'm like, Okay, well, I've done a lot of wildlife rescue at this point, he's done none, and I've learned to okay, let's step back for a second and figure out how we're gonna do this because that deer's gonna get hurt, we're gonna get hurt. Let's just okay, let's just have a plan. And he says, Easy, mate, let's just go tackle it, and off he goes. That was the plan. That was his plan. These Aussies, right? They're crazy, absolutely, so crazy, never knowingly overthinking. That's right, that's right. He was a little younger than me, but not young enough to have that kind of attitude. Like he was still probably 40 at the time with kids, and I we got this great video of me grabbing.

SPEAKER_01 28:50

I've seen the video, it's on your channel, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 28:52

So yeah, yeah. Check out uh youtube.com slash drcliff, but it's on there, and and he literally just as I'm pulling the rope in, he just grabs the antlers and tries to wrestle this deer off. Um, we're slammed to the ground, there's wrestling, it's like a BJJ match against this deer. We're losing. We eventually get this deer free. Uh, it happened to she she he happened to kick me in the hand with my iPhone and turn my iPhone off, but the other tripod got it. So it's nice having two uh two views. Um, and so that's the type of thing that sometimes you can have paralysis by overanalysis, right? Absolutely. Whether it's being a surgeon or or or dealing with this sort of critical life and death situation or a sick animal or getting that photo, getting that image, trying to get the right angle, you might just miss it. You might just just start taking a picture and see what you get in post and maybe fix it in post. But um, so Lachlan uh reminded me that sometimes you're just gonna have to go and tackle it, mate.

SPEAKER_01 30:06

Absolutely. I think it's always best to say yes, and then it cuts out all that worrying and all the other things. You just get in there and then figure it out.

SPEAKER_00 30:12

So yeah, yeah, it can sometimes get me in trouble. Um, but uh I've got all my stories and adventures. That's right, that's right. I would rather uh go out at 90 miles an hour with my hair on fire. That's uh that's the way to do it.

SPEAKER_01 30:26

Absolutely. Look, we got gonna wind things up shortly, but is there anything you you'd like to share with the people who are listening? Anything else before we uh before we finish up?

SPEAKER_00 30:37

Um, I mean, I loved your question about volunteer travel and and how important that is. These these trips, and again, it's not just being a veterinarian, but these trips have made me a better person for without a doubt. We are it's a cliche, I know, but we are so blessed living in uh the the countries that we're living in. The fact that whoever's listening to this podcast, the fact that you have the time and the means to be able to listen to this podcast means that you're probably living a blessed life. And yes, you're gonna have there might be health issues in your family, and that's very sad, and and there can be financial issues, but you know, we we we are very, very blessed to live the life that we have. And these trips, they recognize that they have they have introduced me to some wonderful people who have uh risked their lives and risked you know everything to to do what they feel is important. Um uh they're they're being kind to animals, they're being kind to each other. Um, and so I I just recognize or I recommend people get out there and be uncomfortable, challenge yourself a little bit, learn a new skill like photography or another language. I'm trying to learn Greek. Uh, I should probably stick with learning photography. Uh Greek is a very different language. Um, do you speak any other languages?

SPEAKER_01 32:04

Um, I'm working on my French, so I speak a little bit of French and a tiny bit of Russian, but it's very, very small.

SPEAKER_00 32:11

It's very, very small. My uh uh, you know, I should know French because I'm Canadian and we learn it up to it's required up to grade nine. Okay. Um, and then I stopped because I I'm a mathematical brain, I don't have a language-based brain. Uh, whereas my wife, who's Greek, is the exact opposite. She speaks Greek and English and French all fluently, uh, pretty good Italian, can understand Russian. We go to Spain for 10 days and she starts speaking Spanish. Like it's it's unbelievable. So, uh, anyways, uh I ramble.

SPEAKER_01 32:48

I lived in uh France for five years and I still can't speak it. I get easily distracted, is my excuse.

SPEAKER_00 32:53

Yeah, there you go. Fair enough.

SPEAKER_01 32:55

Uh still working on it.

SPEAKER_00 32:58

Um, but uh no, I you know, I really appreciate being able to talk to you, and and I and I love what you and your listeners do as far as trying to capture those images and and really express emotion and stories, especially with one single still image. The stories can be so so powerful. I have it easy. We we do we do moving pictures, you know, the moving photos with with audio and music, uh, and can really uh can really play around and do these tricks. But uh the art that you guys do is uh is is absolutely fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 33:33

Well, thank you. I I'd actually written down three things. The volunteering is definitely one of them, it's something I've spoken about a lot because you you do get a different perspective on things. I've met the most amazing people, and happily there are some I'm still in contact with. We're looking at working together. This is in uh Zimbabwe at the moment. I'm off to be here soon to work with the project there, working with elephants. Um I'm really looking forward to that. So there'll be some a bit of tracking and um monitoring the health of the population, all that kind of thing. Um, writing was what I wrote down because um I I think whether it evolves into a book or not isn't so important. But I think uh also looking back, you know, from years later or whatever it might be, it it reminds you of that place at that time, maybe what you were feeling and what you were seeing and what you were doing. So it's such a powerful thing to do. And maybe I'm wrong, but I think these days we probably do less of it. I'm from that generation where that's all we had. But um, I I think that's a very powerful thing to do. And then the final one was just remember the smartphone because things happen perhaps when you're least expecting it. And as you said, it doesn't have to be a really good shot. The thing is to get the shot. And most of us are carrying around a really good camera pretty much every day. And it doesn't have to be cinema quality if you get um just something happening that that's such a big thing.

SPEAKER_00 35:00

So yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, both the writing and you know, going back, it's it's love. I find it lovely when the phone and and the different social media apps send me reminders of memories. Yeah, and they go, Oh, you know, on this day five years ago, here's a photo that you had posted or that you'd taken. And you go, Oh my god, I I totally forgot about that. And that was such a beautiful moment. And it could have just been dinner with your kids and your father, you know, something so beautiful. Um, and and writing for me was very therapeutic. Uh going back and reading the stories and and and and polishing them was also very therapeutic. And Lord knows I need therapy, so it has saved me some money and has been very, very helpful. Um, my therapist reminds me I need therapy. Um, so yeah, I recommend journaling. Therapy after spending time, that's the key thing. Um, I recommend journaling to everybody. Uh, I wish I had started it before I was 42 years old.

SPEAKER_01 36:04

Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. Well, look, I've really enjoyed our chat. It's been great to uh get to know you a little bit, spend a bit of time. As I've said, the links will be in the description for everybody who wants to uh uh learn more about your your life, your uh adventures, your experiences. And thanks for um for coming on the show.

SPEAKER_00 36:25

Well, thank you very much. I'm glad we stumbled upon each other, and uh, I'm gonna be following along with your adventures as well.

SPEAKER_01 36:31

Great. Okay, thanks, Cliff. Look forward to it. Bye for now.