Geopolitics and Empire is joined by Johnny of the Staying Free Podcast.

Hey, hey, thanks having me on.

Yeah, and then this is probably unusual.

It's in-person on the ground interview.

We're here somewhere in Mexico at the beach in Puerto Vallarta.

And so I've been listening to your podcast for a while. You've had some of the same guests that I've had on. I really like what you're doing. And I just happen to be going to the beach. So I said, why don't we do this in person? And it's always great to meet like-minded people. So maybe just to start, if you want to tell us us whatever you want to tell us about yourself and

the work that you're doing at staying free yeah sure so you know thanks again for having me on

and thanks for the kind words about about my podcast you know i'm a big fun of yours as well uh yeah i guess

my story um you know probably as with like many people it kind of that my my real big moment where my life changed

quite significantly was kind of off the back of uh lockdowns and all the rest of it with everything

that was going on with kind of COVID hysteria um so actually at that point um when this was all

kind of kicking off I was traveling I was living in Australia at the time,

but I'd been traveling for about a roundabout maybe like a year and a half, close to two years. And this all started kind of kicking off. And I realized at that point that, you know, the world was kind of fundamentally changing. So, you know, Melbourne at the time had just gone into a big lockdown. So I decided, okay, like this isn't the time to be here.

You know, I'm going to kind of gone into a big lockdown. So I decided, okay, like,

this isn't the time to be here. You know, I'm going to kind of go back to the UK and reset myself. Went back to the UK and was there for a little while. And during that time, I always kind of wanted to, I always kind of wanted to get going again. You know, I like traveling. I like going to different places. My plan before then was actually to go to Canada. I wanted to go there, try it out, live there for a bit. But I kind of could sense that the world had fundamentally changed and that Canada had become a place I definitely did not want to go. So when it was, the world started to open up a little, a little bit again. You know, this was kind of May of 2021.

You know,

we'd just come out in the UK out of a like a long lockdown. You know, we'd been in some form of lockdown, I think for seven, if not maybe eight months, something like that. I mean, it was, we'd had kind of like breaks from it, but it'd been, it'd been bad was it was hard and um i thought okay well where in a

world do i want to go you know now the things are opening up a little bit um and me for me was like

really really high on that on that list you know it just seemed like the most free place in the world

so i decided okay i'll come out to mexico uh did a bit of traveling initially in mexico

and was just really enjoying that life of just

having this freedom that, you know, I'd not felt for a long time. And then eventually kind of,

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