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In My Corner featuring BULENT GURCAN of Naked & Afraid
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Jun 30, 2025
Join Marc Ash in an insightful interview showcasing guests from diverse backgrounds, sharing their personal anecdotes and true stories. Hear about personal triumphs and gain valuable life lessons from those who have overcome challenges. This episode is filled with inspirational stories.
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[Applause] [Music]
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[Applause] welcome to In My Corner with Mark Ash an
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interview show with guests of various backgrounds and fame from TV and TV personalities authors pastors doctors
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advocates and more enjoy this episode
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all right welcome to In My Corner with Mark Ash uh today's um guest most of you
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will know from Naked and Afraid but he is also a renowned actor and producer which I hope to touch on just a little
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bit today um Balant Girkin how are you doing today good how are you thank you
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for having me yes sir no it's my pleasure to have you i've got to say you know um when I watched Naked and Afraid
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once I got hooked on it about a year or so ago year and a half or so ago uh you've been one of my favorite uh cast
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members on there um thank you and you're one of the few that um you know obviously that I like that I have not
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yet met in person because you know I'm an actor a TV personality and have been since the 80s just started out in
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professional wrestling and now I act and produce movies as well um I got to say
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um I was reached out to by negative freight cast last week um the casting um
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but with a nerve condition I have I can't handle heat weather and all that it was from an application I'd put in
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two or three years ago when it wasn't as bad so I got to say right off the bat just some of the climates you go to just
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the fact that you can last two hours my hats off to you let alone 21 to 40 days so yeah it's uh it gets quite
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interesting because it's one of the aspects of the challenge is the
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environments that you have to survive is not 700 degrees you know on the beach
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mhm exactly so it's either the cold and most of time it's hot and humid in um I
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felt humidity in Mexico episode in Colombia episode but Africa wasn't humid
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but it was about 132 degrees oh wow um yeah it is
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it definitely adds that to the challenge where
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the hunger and lack of water and shelter sleeping on dirt all night it adds up to
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that you have to face it every day because I think that that temperature was steady for about 10 days straight
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out of the 40 oh wow and it never dropped below 120 period
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wow yeah because I've had um I'm sure you know who Wes Harper is yes um I've
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had him on uh um which he lives just down the road from me so I mean actually did an in person with him but we talked
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a little bit about the Africa you know adventure and you know he was telling me how miserable it was with the you know
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the climate and things there um at least compare for what I could handle i'm built for a frozen i'm not built for a
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hot episode um but like I said now I'm going to let
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the fans know that one thing you and I agreed to not talk about was politics or negatively about you know other other
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contestants um I mean there might be a contestant or two I've mentioned that I just don't add a whole lot of commentary to just because I had a little personal
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run in with one or two but you know overall majority of the cast and I get along great um you know out of the ones I've met um um but with no politics I
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guess we can't talk about your two favorite subjects millennials and snowflakes uh what is a snowflake
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well I don't know you you kept talking about snowflakes on castaways so
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you here's the thing the the the political thing is um
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people do not know how to debate or talk like an adult exactly
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everything that you say they take it personally it becomes a competition where I have to
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win i'm more right than you are rather than like a gun debate right yes we have
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the second amendment that protects the rights but we also have an issue
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um with let's say school shootings nobody seems to be able to get onto the table sit down talk like an adult and
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find a happy medium yes we have an issue and no we don't want to give up our
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right and find something in the middle that will resolve the problem nobody
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cares about the problem everybody cares about who's right and who's wrong right i
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agree yeah and like I said I'm going to avoid I mean avoid that i just I was always
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hear you joking about millennials and snowflakes all day so I was just wanted to throw that in as a little joke
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with millennials it's just um so everything that is wrong with
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millennials okay 70% is caused by us the Gen X's
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obviously these are our kids right right and I say only 70% because the 30% I
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give it to the boomers those are the ones who said you can beat your children well when you don't this is what happens
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you you somehow raise a child who can stand in front of a car who doesn't want
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to be there and expect not to get run over and then when they do get run over
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they want to call the cops they wanted to defund or they want to call the cops they were throwing rocks at i'm like
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that doesn't work like that common sense part is like almost left right and
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I don't think it'll be fair for the entire millennial population to say you
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know all of them are the same I would say there's a good chunk of it the same and I met some really u impressive
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millennials too right it just happens that way it's like
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exactly well let's move back on to um well let's talk a little bit before we get into negative afraid let's talk a about your um acting and producing
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career outside of Naked and Afraid um so that started right after my first
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challenge okay um this young lady no it
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was the husband um the husband contacted me he wanted a cameo for a 20th
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anniversary and it this gentleman was an 18year-old 18-year veteran of the Air Force
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so I thought about how I can make it in a way that it will it won't just sound like happy 20th anniversary right and
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the the families of um arms forces members I think suffer
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more than we do when we get deployed i went to Iraq twice right enduring
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freedom and Iraqi freedom and this is what I told the the lady i said "Look
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um when we get deployed we know every day when we go to bed we know if we are
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missing a limb you guys the families that we live behind you just wait for
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the door bell to ring and of course at this time we don't have the capabilities
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of calling a home emailing a home none of that existed right um you just
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waiting for the door knob doorbell to go in put your hand on that door knob and
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you waiting to see either us or three people in uniform with a with a folded
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flag i said "You guys are the heroes that you have to put up with that every freaking day in day out." And apparently
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this really touched the lady and she called me crying and that was happy
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ending from that I wrote a a short um film
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about a young lady who lost her father in the war and struggling with that loss
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and dealing with it every wrong way possible drugs and alcohol until one of
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his father's soldiers brings brings her a letter it you know we all wrote these
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letters when we went to war you know just if in case if I won't make it back these are my last words for you and that
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gives the young lady um some kind of a closure and she cleans up her act and
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learns to move on in life in a better way called Gossamer Wings i think it's
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still in YouTube um you know from there we start riding because
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yeah emotional things happen in life but we all seem to
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watch some kind of an uh it either be being a feature film or a TV series to
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escape reality right this is why fiction sells more than non-fiction and that's
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when we got into horror because horror is to me comes natural because I've seen
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very horrific things in life right uh action because I've been in action from
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the war to fighting with the cartel in in in customs and border protection in
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the southern border to dealing with um illegal immigration every day so that
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came natural and I've seen wicked things my first line supervisor I think he got
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out of jail from alien smuggling freaking love this guy he was an awesome
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supervisor right so and then when you hear um these people say "Yeah let's
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defund the police." And like like "Dude you're trying to cut a apple tree because of two bad apples why don't
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you just take the bad apples and smash them to the ground exactly they is still giving you apples that's still giving
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you um shade it's still preventing uh
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what is it erosion it is doing you good then bad right but but people because of
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political agendas they are trying to pull things left and right and that's when it goes to so we we try to we
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start writing when we get to the point that we have enough
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scripts which we have I think over 50 right now for the features at least
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um we got into the problem of finance
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because finance of it takes my partner always says that Tanya u it takes a
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village to make a film i hate that statement but it is absolutely true it
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takes so many people so many resources um just to give you an idea if the film
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is let's say $2 million which is considered a very low budget film you
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have to find an attachment attachment being a director or attachment being a name
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actor the name you go to to either of them says hey we are trying to shoot this film in this time frame uh would
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you be interested and the manager of that actor or the director says you know what we need a pay or play money uh what
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does that mean and he basically explains for that time for me to devote that time
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frame in this actor's calendar you're going to give us aboutund to $300,000
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depends of the size of the actor um for us to schedule that time frame for us if
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you can come through we keep the money if you come through he his actual salary is this and this now from $2 million you
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went tound $150,000 for the actor or the director now you're trying to find that
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money it's a vicious circle right even if you get the money right it is so many moving
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parts from locations to casting to crew right it is so delicate and you
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have a fixed time frame you have to get everything done within that time frame we have um people coming to us is like
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"Hey we need to find $300,000 for a $16 million film okay with Baldwin Brothers
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and we can't find it we are gonna run out of time because once they run out of
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that time it's gone all the resources everything is gone you start from the zero again
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it's a really challenging um industry and I wanted to direct because
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I write the film I see in my head right
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I actually see the scenes to which makes it easier for me to direct and for you
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to direct And obviously nobody going to come and give me $2 million so I had to learn so many different things from
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finance uh for you basically a director is the general contractor right general
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contractor comes to a building that does with the HVAC the the air conditioning the electrical the plumbing structural
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engineering right uh the painters it coordinates everything so is and and the
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director when it comes to the set he has to have the knowledge of lighting right
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electrical acting um you have to get into the producer side where the
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producer needs and wants has to in line with budget and resources
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and the actor says you know what I need my own trailer and it going to cost
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it's specific trailer right more money now you have to get into the drawing board to see if that can can happen with
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the producers and the financiers because now you're out of budget it it is a
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almost like a circus that has to function every aspect of it at the same
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time unisonly and you are the biggest problem solver right and I like I like
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problems I work better under stress anyway so that's how all of that evolved
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but uh since the Hollywood I say collapsed because everybody's fleeting
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out of Hollywood and the old way of making films and financing is literally
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went to crap alternative financing is what is happening but with that is
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difficult because the somebody in stock market doesn't understand film finance
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so there's the educational part that you have to go through with each and every single one investor which takes forever
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and it is quite frankly scary because you don't have a tangible um product in
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hand unlike a stock or when you buy a company when Elon sold PayPal he
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actually had a product that made money right that determine the price of it or
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the value of it we don't have that in film So when he gives us $300,000 to give it
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to the actor for as a payer play money he there is actually no guarantee that
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money will not go to trash because all the parts couldn't come together at the
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same time that it needed to regardless of how much I bust my butt to make it
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happen happens sometimes and it's difficult to convince somebody to give you 300 grand that it might just go to
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the trash right exactly i mean well you know because I've talked to you before you know I promote comic cons you know
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occasionally on the side you know of course I've run run on one that's that done very well and then I'll turn around
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and run another one and barely you know spin the needle at the door i mean because everything's everything is
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always hit or miss i mean um you know cuz like I may schedule a Comic-Con and then you know another M may schedule
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event across may schedule a event across town and for whatever reason they're more popular to the locals than what I'm
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bringing you know there's there's all kinds of tangibles that that come into play the film is slightly even more
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hectic because we have been all of those things we have been talking is
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pre-production and then the production right if it starts raining for three weeks straight because you want to shoot
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it in uh British Columbia or Washington State which is very common now you have
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delays delays cost money every day is money on the set let's just say
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production went great postp production the editor comes in you know what i don't have the transitions i need we
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need to go back and shoot some more scenes additional money you did that you
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actually got the music the sound design the color and everything is fine now you
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go to the distributor and the distributor says "Uh yeah I won't distribute this this is not good enough
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for me it's not big enough." Yeah exactly exactly right so there's so many problems so many moving parts it's a
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It's a difficult business and And I'll be honest with you that's why I got my YouTube monetized and I
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started a Roku channel that's monetized so because I I I got tired of dealing with one of the um film distributors
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it's like the In My Corners like we're doing here they distributed the one I did with Wes Harper i did one with uh
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you know a crime author that's pretty well known they're like "No we don't like that wouldn't even distribute that one." But I turned around and contacted
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channels off of Roku and Fire Stick that were picking up that picked up the other one i said "Hey would you like to have
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this one?" And they're like "Yeah of course it was never offered to us." I mean so I go on direct with them so I'm
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just like well I'm better off doing it on my own than trying to work with these guys because they're not letting the
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channels judge what they want and what they don't want yep yeah so but um we're
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running a little bit shorter on time today um due to my late start and the technical errors uh that gives us about
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10 minutes left i definitely want to touch on naked and afraid here real quick um and the uh Africa the Africa XL
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I got to say um that one had a good vast variety of people i mean I consider Wes
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and Gwen you know to be good friends i mean I have a pretty good relationship with Kate i'm trying to think who else
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was all on that episode um but anyway well there's one guy that
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I'm going to ask you about but I'm not going to comment much on him but uh because he was but he was kind of a
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centerpiece of this so I don't I don't want to avoid you know mentioning um but Seth Reese he was one that uh you know
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he was in two or three different camps of course got banished i mean and of course he was with you for a little bit um what what was it really like working
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with him i mean I've got to say I mean I've only talked to the guy you know through messenger and on the phone i've never personally met him we just kind of
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personality clashed is all you know so quite frankly I can't really say I work
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with Seth okay when even when I went to his camp I said "Look dude I'm trying to
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do this thing alone because I'm better being alone i don't really work well
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with everybody so I didn't even sleep in the same camp
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with him my my camp was completely different and far away from him so I couldn't really tell you how he is but
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um it is an extreme challenge right from
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temperature to location to resources everybody's reaction to extreme
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conditions going to be extreme as well so you can judge somebody who's on
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normal life put them into that kind of a condition and expect them to act the
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same way that never going to happen so good or bad what he tried his best and
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um he I would say he did kill an animal because that's the reason why he had to
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leave because he was trying to track that animal at noon
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noon it's 132 degrees under shade and you are out in the open trying to track
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an animal and you will get lost because Africa everywhere looks the same at
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least within the 2,000 acre place we were in looks the same right uh he came
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up to me and said like hey dude can you give me some water I gave him some water he said thank you you saved my life with
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that water I said you know you would do the same thing to me but that was it for him you know you can only
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I I judge people with whatever they can do that's what he did his best and um
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I think I don't believe he finished the 21 day challenge before that and he was there for 23 or 24 so he did finish at
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actual 3-week challenge right in Africa which is hell a lot more extreme
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condition than most places so he did his best that's all I can say well man I'm
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saying I got to say regardless of my personal feelings just like I said just the fact that he survived that heat i got me take my hat off to him so Yep um
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and then let's see you also were with uh it was two girls it was McConnie and was
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it Kate yes okay i mean what what was that like
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um the first the insertion day was an extremely hot day as a matter of fact if
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you go back and watch in the insertion day you'll see me do a handstand the the
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the soil in Africa where we were has a lot of iron in it therefore when it gets
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hot it burns your feet it's not like a real dirt my feet got so hot I had to
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get on my hands and get my feet off the ground okay that took a lot out of me
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get finish the actual insertion and get to the campsite and I had to sleep the
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next day or two to recover from that right right there's it is dehydration it
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is heat it is Africa that you never been is southern hemisphere which everything
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turns the different uh ways so I think Kate
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didn't take that well and she just wanted to leave and I said all right let
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her go you know that's her choice she left quite early for me to say anything
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about Kate right i mean I talk to Kate periodically she's somebody I've got a
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decent relationship with you know and everybody like everybody likes to pick on her about the episode with the bugs
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and things and you know I try to explain to people that you know I'm a southern North Carolina boy bugs here really
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don't bother me i mean they don't seem to bite me like they do other people i'm like you know which I know she's up in
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Maine and it's probably the same kind of the same thing but I can't expect to fly to the other side of the world and have
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the same experience you know the the the same thing that applies say Seth to
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applies to Kate too it's an extreme condition right it's out of her element
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if you look at Maine in the winters of the Maine and the summers of Maine it
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looks nothing like a South Africa therefore the reaction is going to be different how she going to adopt going
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to be different or ability to adopt if you would you know I did um I
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rem Kate with the last one standing the second one and we actually have a pretty
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decent relationship you know she calls me every once in a while it is just that
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when you put somebody in extreme condition everything out of that person going to be extreme yeah exactly i mean
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that's what I'm saying i don't expect you know what I'm used to here to fly to Africa Colombia Venezuela or even going
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down to Bise for it to be you know exactly the same because it's a different environment different bugs
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different everything so I mean I guess I don't I don't I don't criticize Kate for that like I said I have a pretty decent
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relationship with her um of course you know like I said Gwen and Wes are probably my two best buddies off of that
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you know particular challenge i was with Makani for I think
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at least I would say 10 days and Mani being a vegetarian was I mean it just
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make me question the motives for joining the 40-day challenge
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where in a place that's been 7-year drought and we humans we can't jump we
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are short we can't run you can compete with vegetable sources with an animal
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and we can't really digest leaves right so I it was strange to me and she
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eventually because there was nothing for her to eat where we were she said she
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need to go find her people and trying to find some food that she can eat and I
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said by all means you know and that's where my solo journey started
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yeah I was going to say you did spend most of that particular challenge alone um
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now castaways was uh I'm trying to remember the the um how
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exactly it worked i just remember everybody was broken up into teams uh Castaways was a different very different
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challenge that's a challenge that you got imagine your airplane crashed and
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you got to an island that's it you just on an island in the middle of an ocean
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you're going to go survive somehow so you have to find every tool you didn't start with a knife or or or a fishing
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line or whatever you think you're going to get you were completely zero you have to be very innovative the engineering
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skills to come in to utilize whatever you can find that wash to the shore right it's it's good and
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the bad you you catch an animal you have no knife to cut the animal to actually be able to eat it right it was very it's
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a different challenge the people the cast members for that was very talented
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and um strong people so there's a couple of things happened that I think two of
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the people got poisoned I believe so yeah one of them throw her
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knee out i didn't get to meet them on the challenge but you know it these
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things are tough man it's not it's not everybody's not it's not designed for everybody but
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I think everybody that was sent to Castaways had the ability to
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finish the challenge but you can't do nothing when you're poison bro oh absolutely absolutely um you know like
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last one standing um yeah i mean I talk I talk to Patrick all
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the time and he but I mean I think he's being really entertaining right now gary but he know he's somebody I've talked to
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regular for the last you know year or so once I started doing the comic cons um because the very first Naked and Fred
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guys I brought in was EJ and Gary um you know so I I've gotten to be good friends with them too um you know of course we
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also had Trish and her daughter Julia on the first one because they're I mean everybody but Gary was is actually local
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to me at that particular point in time so um but uh you know Gary I just love
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Gary he's a he's a he's a wild guy um but we had we had a lot of fun um you
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the second go around I brought you know a lot more Naked Afraid people in um made you know some good friends um but
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now your first episode the 21day one that's the one that's kind of escaping me at the moment but I mean I I I like
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vaguely remember it um tell me um remind me who your partner was and a little bit about how that one went
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first I remember my second partner Sarah okay first one I'm not going to lie to
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you I don't remember the name of her she's actually in New York i saw her once after the show uh that was in
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Colombia where I threw my bag you'll see me carrying entire tree trunk like a
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dummy right because you don't know what to expect you You never been in a
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situation with no shoes no nothing you trying to carry things you're trying to do things you don't know how much to
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push yourself you don't know how much to hold back and uh that was a learning experience that threw my back and I was
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um in rehab for that lower back for about three four months oh wow yeah i remember
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you threw your back out i just was having a hard time remembering who your partner was um now Sarah it was
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Katherine cat yes the name was Katherine there we go okay all right um and the
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second one Sarah i mean there's been many Sarah do you remember her last name
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you're right there's She's the blonde okay
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i know like I know Sarah Bartell what's that now dancing she's from
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Tennessee okay okay that's Sarah Bartlett I believe yes there we go yeah
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yeah okay i mean yeah she's pretty strong a strong uh partner to have um
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absolutely and I think she'll make a great um cast member for Excel as well
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and um I'm sure she'll get up there we because she is a millennial really we
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didn't click that much but as the the challenge went on we found ways to work
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with each other and we got stronger and stronger towards the end oh absolutely
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absolutely and now do you have any more episodes that are coming up or any more
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like or even in your movie studio i mean what's what's next to come up i mean I do understand NDA so if it's something
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you can't talk about I'm not going to try to push it but you know I haven't my
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last challenge was last one standing and I don't know what will be in the future
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the film production is always contingent to financing i was approached to open up
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a brand new uh YouTube channel because the way I talk apparently affects people
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differently mhm because I don't hold it back i I'm not here to make friends right i'm going to tell you the truth
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the way I see it and from my point of view you like it you don't like it you think I can pontificate i was told that
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I pontificate that's a word I had to learn right and I'm like if you if you
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just stop doing dumb nobody will try to give you an advice
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yeah absolutely and uh they that and a podcast that they're trying to put me on
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and we'll see how that would go but you know continue working all right
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absolutely i mean if you need any help with that you know feel free to reach out to me i mean I'm I don't know where
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where you're living at currently but like I said I'm in South Eastern North Carolina but you know there a lot of things we can do is remote like building
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up watch time and you know attracting you viewers that's you know that's something we can definitely do remotely
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so awesome thank you not a problem um but uh like I said Ben I got to cut it a
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little bit short due to my uh technical errors which I greatly apologize for i want to say yeah I great I greatly
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appreciate you coming on um and uh hopefully I'll be able to get you back on some other stuff that we got going
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because like I said I do make you know little small independent movies and of course we do different kind of talk
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shows game shows um as a matter of fact that's what Wes's next project's going to be with me is one of our game shows
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we're going to kind of do like um the first episode we're going to do like a celebrity um celebrity uh battle so
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it'll be me against Wes in the first episode before we start bringing everyday citizens in so Awesome awesome
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he's He's a nice man very nice man i read his met his wife too great couple
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great yeah they are they are they really are they really are and like I said they just live right down the road from me so
33:14
I you know he's somebody I talk to pretty regular so all right but once again Wes like I said I'm sorry i mean
33:20
excuse me Balant i don't remember mentioning Wes i don't don't give them people this is Balant Girkin it is not
33:26
Wes Harper okay um but we are grateful to have Balant here um you know I I'm
33:32
glad that I that he brought his wet sense of humor with him instead of the dry sense of humor i saw I saw that
33:38
YouTube video i had to throw that in there but once again like I said I want to
33:43
thank you very much for coming on and and and folks the next episode we're going to do uh is it would be with Jolie
33:51
Laroo she was on one of the regular episodes of Naked Afraid earlier this year uh that'll be taped next week uh so
33:57
this one like I said I'm taping it on Friday it may be a day or two before it hits the air uh just let Balant know but
34:05
you know of course if I have a good day and get the editing real good it may be tonight who knows but so but like I said
34:12
once again thank you Balant and is there anything you would like to say in closing thank you keep watching keep you
34:18
know uh support your cast members they they go through hell and back and um the
34:26
people need to give some credit to even the people who attempt to to finish
34:32
a challenge because it is very easy to sit on the couch and yell at the TV
34:39
exactly and you know like I mentioned earlier you know I I you know I was contacted by casting and just due to you
34:47
know a medical condition I have i mean like I said with me not knowing what kind of climate they're sending me to
34:52
I'm not even going to attempt it because I know if I get anything above 70 I mean
34:57
I'm coming home there's no doubt about it i'm coming home and I I don't want to go into a challenge where don't get me
35:04
wrong I know the building fire the food the water i mean none of that's easy none of that is easy but you know I go
35:09
in mentally prepared to try to tough working that situation out that I need something else
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