Space, the Deep Sea, and the Nudge That Saved His Life

Whether slapping himself awake at 2,300 mph on his way to space or trusting a life-saving nudge to walk away from the doomed Titan submersible, in this episode of Travel Tales by Afar, Jim Kitchen reveals how extreme exploration taught him the difference between collecting experiences and truly connecting with the world.

Transcript

Jim Kitchen: I literally took my hand and like, I slapped myself as hard as I could to wake up. ’Cause, I was not gonna be the guy that passed out on the way to space from three Gs, right?

Aislyn Greene, host: I’m Aislyn Greene, and this is Travel Tales by Afar. This season we’re highlighting explorers of all stripes. And this week we’re joined by someone who’s taken exploration to extraordinary heights—and depth. Jim Kitchen is a professor of entrepreneurship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. And in his spare time, he’s an entrepreneur of a different type. He has visited all 193 countries, traveled into space aboard a Blue Origin flight, and descended seven miles down to the ocean’s Mariana Trench.

But Jim’s story isn’t about checking off bucket-list adventures. It’s about how travel transformed him from someone focused on collecting experiences to someone committed to connecting with places, with people, and ultimately with himself. In our conversation, Jim shares the pivotal moment that shifted his approach to travel, what it’s really like to rocket into space at 2,300 miles per hour, and how learning to listen to subtle nudges quite literally saved his life.

Aislyn: Well, Jim, welcome to Travel Tales. It’s so delightful to have you here today. And before we kick things off, could you tell me a little bit about what I’m seeing in your background? Because it is the most travely background I think I’ve ever seen.

Jim: Well, thanks for having me. So just for those of you that are listening, let me describe my bulletin board. I have 35 years of stuff [from] places that I’ve traveled. So this is a, yeah, postcard from Dubrovnik. There’s pictures up here of me as a much younger Jim with my—on a trip that I went to with my dad, uh, to the pyramids—but probably hundreds and hundreds of pictures. Just little reminders of places where I’ve, that I’ve traveled.

Aislyn: All right. I’d love to go back to the beginning because I wanna understand how you became the traveler that you are today. When we first chatted, maybe a month or two ago, you mentioned that your parents were public school teachers who took cross-country trips every summer. So did those trips kind of lay the foundation for what we’re seeing and hearing today?

Jim: Yes. My wanderlust is 100 percent genetic. It’s in my DNA, it’s, it’s who I am. It’s what I am. And it’s all passed down from mom and dad. Dad was a petroleum geologist, worked in Africa. He and my mom got married. They raised their family. My four brothers and sisters in Africa.

Aislyn: Where in Africa?

Jim: In Libya and they realized that Libya wasn’t the place where they wanted to raise their family. So they moved back to South Florida where dad had been during the war, and that’s where I was born. And there’s no petroleum geology work—there’s not a lot of jobs down there. So dad and mom became teachers and dad settled into teaching and the best three things about teaching weren’t the money. But it was June, July, and August. And so every summer, and when I say every summer, let’s be clear, every summer school would end and off we would go. They’d put the kids in the back of the wood-paneled station wagon, and as the youngest and with the least seniority I had the way back.

Aislyn: OK, were you facing out the rear window?

Jim: Yes, you got it. You got it. And I have the dubious distinction of being one of the few people in the world that has seen the entire continental United States facing backwards. So we would go every summer from South Florida to Washington State. We’d spend the night in campgrounds, cheap motels. We would go see state parks. We would hunt for fossils. But the goal was dad was gonna, you know, collect as many specimens as he could because he would sell these things as a budding entrepreneur. He would sell citrine and amethyst and fossils and things like that. He had this little home shop that really shaped who I was growing up in South Florida.

We’re lower middle class down, down there. And you know, it’s like, wow, there’s so much excess and there’s such an emphasis on, on collecting. And that was really my mentality. You know, “Go as fast as you can, collect as much stuff as possible. Go, go, go, go, go.” But travel always had a way of finding me.

[Those early trips] it brought them so much joy, it brought the kids—you know, maybe we didn’t appreciate it at the time, but we certainly appreciated it later. But it shaped who I was and what I wanted to do, and I didn’t really know it at the time, but I went away to college. Then I had decided I was gonna be in the CIA. That was gonna be my job when I went to UNC, uh, Chapel Hill from, from South Florida.

And then I took this one class, this entrepreneurship class, a venture capitalist was teaching it. And he inspired us to think of ideas every week. And one of those ideas was a travel business. I knew travel pretty well. I had traveled somewhat extensively, and so it was logical for me to start a travel business. And this guy said, “You know, you really should do this idea.” And I was like, “Really?” He’s like, “Yeah, you could always be a CIA agent, but you can’t always do this.”

And so I took his advice and I started a travel business specializing in group tours to the Caribbean. Got these incredibly, uh, insane deals, like 17 days in Australia, New Zealand. [People would say] “Come and check out our hotels, come and check out our beautiful country.” And I would take people up on that. And so I traveled to all of these places. I’d started this travel business. I had this incredible . . .

Aislyn: How old were you when you started?

Jim: I was in my early 20s. I was in, I was uh, I was in college, right? So travel found me in college. It was in my DNA, right? It was what I wanted to do. And I also had started a, um, was the East Coast wing of a space travel company. I’m showing, uh, a brochure called Project Space Voyage. This was 1987. Wow. Um, they were lower Earth orbit trips.

And this was a company called Space Expeditions. Visionary traveler, T.C. Swartz had started it. And so I flew out to see him and I was gonna be his East Coast representative for Project Space Void. So I was like wanting to sell travel and space. And so I had, um, you know, I had this early interest in that as well. And then I, I sold that company, you know, scaled it and sold it. And I’m at this crossroads in my life where I don’t really know what I’m gonna do. That was the beginning of the transition from this collection phase to connecting.

Aislyn: I see. So before you were like, “I want to go and see as many places as possible. I want to kind of like a little bit of box checking maybe.” And then what was it about that moment—like, why was that so transformative for you?

Jim: So I had this, um, huge existential crisis in my life. I was married, I had young children. I had all that I ever wanted for my life. But I just wasn’t a fully functional human being. I mean, I looked the part, I had all of the, the degrees that made me successful. This beautiful family. I had an amazing house, all of these things. But I was like, there’s something missing, right? There’s something missing to all of this.

I began traveling and listen, let me not delude any of you thinking that I had this wily plan, that I was gonna figure out my life. I was like, you know what? “Travel has served me well, let’s, let’s go with it.” And I started learning who I was, what I stood for, what was important.

Aislyn: So how did you travel from that point on that allowed you to do that? What shifted in terms of how you approached the world?

Jim: Great question. So I had traveled to roughly half of the world’s countries and there’s 193 countries, and let’s just say I had 100 left to go. So I had this list of places I hadn’t yet traveled, but I went there with the intention of not going—you know, there’s some, there’s some people and good for them, there was one person that went to like 20 countries in one day in Europe, right?

Aislyn: Yeah. Totally fast as they could.

Jim: And then there’s a Guinness World Record of somebody that went to all 193 countries in like one year, and it’s like, “God bless him. That’s amazing.” That’s exactly the opposite of what I was trying to do. I was trying to, my goal again was not to collect, it was to connect.

So an example, I think the, where the light started shining for me was I’m in Afghanistan about as far away from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, as one could get, and I’m in this busy market, people are yelling, screaming at each other in a language that I don’t understand, and there are cattle walking through the streets and strange smells and strange food and strange people, and strange, just wearing strange clothes.

And they’re literally like these two guys to my right, maybe, uh, a couple meters away from me, six feet or so away from me. And they’re just screaming at each other and I’m like, “Oh my gosh.” And my guide is laughing and I see that, hmm, they’re actually kind of laughing and screaming and I’m like, “Oh, I’m seeing this, I’m seeing this one way, but I should have been seeing it at, at another.”

And I, that was my transition from collecting to connecting and, and how important that was, and not underestimating that connection to understand and feel what they’re feeling to learn as much as I could from them.

The second was find things that you’re so passionate about. And so first, you know, connecting. Second is to find meaningful things to do. And for me, that was my transition into teaching, which is what my parents were, ironically.

Aislyn: Full circle.

Jim: And the last one was, and this is the most difficult, is to learn to love yourself. So while you’re connecting and learning to love other people, give yourself a break. And for me, what that meant was what do I stand for? What are my values? What am I, what am I living by? What are the rules? What are my boundaries? What are the things that I will not live my life without? And so I had this context now for, you know, moving forward and then, you know, I got to travel to a bunch of other places and I just found myself, I found myself through, through travel and, you know, there it was again.

Aislyn: That’s really lovely. Well, so we’re gonna take a pretty big leap here, literally and metaphorically. So the reason that I reached out to you was because you on, let’s see, March 31st, 2022, you were on a Blue Origin flight, so I want to hear all about that. But first, how did you—it sounds like space was also an interest of yours as a child, you mentioned the business that you started when you were young. So how did you arrive at that moment on March 31st where you’re about to shoot 66 miles into the air, into space?

Jim: Yeah. When I was a, a child, my parents, one of the things that we did, they were huge space buffs. We would go out and watch the space launches on the beach. We were about three or four hours south of Cape Canaveral, and we could see the big launches from the coast. I remember sitting in my mom’s lap and just watching those things and being, wow. And you know, at that time our heroes were space heroes. And so we wanted to be like Gus Grissom or Alan Shephard.

But that was a lot like saying, “Hey, I also wanna be a baseball player, right?” And generally astronauts were in the Air Force, etcetera, right? They were fighter pilots and these were the elite few. So no, I wasn’t gonna be an astronaut, but that dream never faded.

And, you know, fast forward, I started this company and I was selling low Earth orbit space trips, so I was keeping this dream alive. I met my wife and actually had the foresight—hello, had the foresight when just before we got married, I asked for a prenup. And for all of the women that are going, “What?” No, [it] had nothing to do with money, had nothing to do with anything related to money, but it did have to do with going to space.

And I did say to her—and just as importantly, she remembers me saying to her—that if I ever get a chance to go to space, I wanna do it. She’s like, “Yeah, as if, OK.” And so—

Aislyn: I’m loving this marriage clause.

Jim: I’m like, “I’m doing this, right? I’m doing this.” I wanted to do—I’m gonna hold something up here. This is the Chicago Daily Tribune, and it says space flight story.

Aislyn: What year is this?

Jim: It was May 6th, 1961, and this is a picture of Alan Shephard. I wanted to do what Alan Shephard did. I didn’t wanna fly to space in a plane. I wanted to get in a rocket if I was gonna do this and do what he did. And so I reached out to Blue Origin and. And I followed them, actually invited myself to one of their launches. They were like, “What do you mean you’re here?” And I was like, “Yeah, I’m here to watch.” And they’re like, “Come on over.” I made friends with them. And then was on the fourth human launch in 2022.

Aislyn: Wow. I hear that you replaced Pete Davidson. Is this correct?

Jim: That is not correct. Pete Davidson was replaced, but yes, he was replaced because he kind of chickened out a couple weeks before the breaking news. Um, yeah, he just decided that I think he got scared. That’s just my, yeah. I think, you know, and I could, I could see that, um, that seems scary.

Aislyn: Were you scared?

Jim: Yeah. There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of that, you know, when you decide that you’re gonna do that, they’re the, they’re stages of space travel. The first one is like, “I’m excited. Oh my gosh. Are you kidding me?” Because I got a call that said, “Guess what? If you want, you know, you can be on the fourth launch.” And the fourth launch, it was early, right?

Aislyn: That’s early. What was your immediate thought though, when you got that call? Immediate, the very first thing that came to your mind?

Jim: You know, those pictures of like Tiger Woods, or I don’t know, a famous tennis player winning like Wimbledon or like the U.S. Open, and they’re like, they’re masters. And they’re like, ah, all down on their knees. And they’re like, “Yes, finally I won my first like [big match], oh my gosh.” That’s the reality that, you know, it’s that excitement phase, but that leads into denial.

And then there’s this acceptance phase of like, “OK, this is happening.” And then this is the most strange, the abject horror phase. This is like the terror phase, and this can last until like three or four days before launch, before you go back to the calm acceptance phase of, “This is happening.”

And then you know, [the countdown begins]: 10, hmm, 9, 8—I’m thinking of my family and friends—7, 6—I’m a professor, love what I do—5—you know, like I’m fine with this, like I am who I am. I’ve learned so much from travel and life, and I’ve said my goodbyes to everyone, you know?—4, 3, 2—I’m at peace. I’m whole, if anything happens, I’m OK—1—oh my gosh, this is getting ready to happen. You’re like, “Oh my gosh.” And then the thing takes off and you’re like, “Wow, that’s insane.” And we’re talking 2,300 miles an hour within just a minute or two, and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, holding on.” But it was an extraordinary experience, one that I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world, and I still pinch myself daily as a, you know, just to remind myself and will never, can never get that outta my brain.

Aislyn: It is interesting that you had this moment of acceptance that I often associate with people who are maybe facing the end of their life. That seems like a very profound moment to have when you get to continue your life. But I, so I wanna hear more about what followed all of that. But first, going back: What did your wife say when you brought up the space [opportunity], that it was actually happening, that the prenup was, was coming due, and then B, what was the training like?

Jim: She was like, “Are you really, like, seriously, like this is really happening?” It was such an honor though, like I’m a school teacher. I’m a professor of entrepreneurship at, at UNC, right? So I’m back in this humble, beautiful phase as a professor, like a teacher, right? I’ve got a couple hundred students at the business school, Ken Flagler Business School at UNC and just enjoying life. And then all of a sudden I find out I’m going and I tell her that and she’s like, “Oh my gosh, are you kidding me? Like, that’s so amazing.”

And I just feel so blessed. I feel like, wow, I have this balance in my life and, and like everything is going so well because I’m so connected. I’m so, I’m in such flow, not by luck or happenstance, right? Through work, like being methodical about that. There’s some strategy here. I hope you guys are seeing, and the training part of that really did take me out of that terror phase and back into that acceptance and excitement phase of, “It’s OK. This is fine. It’s OK.” But the training was amazing. It was three days of what to do, what not to do.

Aislyn: Did they like expose you to G forces? Like were, was your body actually being changed?

Jim: Yeah, I had actually, I actually did that outside of Blue Origin in a centrifuge up in, uh, at Nastar, in Pennsylvania and learned about, you know, how to breathe properly, which really came in handy. So I felt fully equipped to go both through the work that I had done, sort of mentally and physically, and what, what Blue Origin, how they trained me. Um, so that was, yeah, it was amazing. It was a piece of cake.

Aislyn: OK, yeah, it sounds like it was a piece of cake. So what was that like? What did it feel like? And then what did it feel like once you were actually in orbit? Walk me through that experience.

Jim: Yeah, so one, zero liftoff and you’re like, “Wow, it’s, this is, this is happening” and you see flames out your window. So everyone has a four-foot window. And you see these flames and you’re like, “Fire!” It’s like, “Wow, that’s not—” but you’re kind of equipped for that. And then it takes off slowly and then it tilts and turns slightly. So now I’m going, you know, sort of sideways up and every second or two, it’s like 100 miles an hour.

So we get to what’s called Max Q, which is really the most dangerous part of the launch. It’s the maximum dynamic pressure on the, on the vehicle, like that’s when things could kind of explode. Essentially, that’s the time—there’s two, there’s two of those. OK. Um, there’s that one, there’s Max Q, and then there’s the separation. Because if the capsule doesn’t separate from the rocket booster, and the whole thing falls down in one piece, right? So there’s no parachutes, can’t solve that, etcetera. So when you get separation, that means you are in space. You will be getting outta your seat and you can do whatever you want for the next four minutes.

But on the way up, so it’s 2,300 miles an hour, and I get to Max Q, and I’m feeling the Gs. I didn’t expect to feel the Gs ’cause they’re only like 3 Gs. I had done 6.2 Gs. But at this point, my vestibular system’s off a little because I’m in seat 3 and I’ve talked to some other seat 3 people and seat 3 for some reason, I don’t know, it’s just something. And my vestibular system was a little bit off and I’m like, “I’m feeling a little effects of these Gs.”

So I literally took my hand and I’m like, I slapped myself as hard as I could to wake up, ’cause I’m not gonna be that guy that goes to space after 40 or 50 years of wanting, you know, to do this dream of being an astronaut selling space, trips, prenup, you know. I was not gonna be the guy that passed out on the way to space from three Gs, right? So I woke myself up, like, come on man, you got this.

And uh, but then the capsule separates and you’re like, you look out your window and it’s silence, complete silence. And everyone is looking at that. And you can’t help but see it. It’s the, the Earth, it’s half of the Earth. And then the blackness of the universe and this little wisp of the atmosphere. And while the Earth was really cool, it was just that blackness. That was just mind blowing. It was like, “That is infinity and wait, that’s the Earth. That’s the Earth. Are you kidding me?”

You know, like there’s been 108 billion people that have walked on this planet and all of them in one form or another, in one language of another, whether they spoke it or just thought it said, “I wonder what it’s like up there and to be able to see where we are from there.” Only 700 people have been able to see that. So the gratitude, the tears.

Aislyn: I was gonna ask, did you cry?

Jim: The tears that, like the first thing I did, I’m a spirit and just, you know, I’m not pushing this on anybody, but I’m a spiritual person. Like this just comes, this is part of me. And I said a little prayer, I mean, you got four minutes and I just said, um, had a brief moment of connection there. The tears, uh, to be able to see that in this precious place that we live, that little whisper of the atmosphere that separates us from calamity, like that little atmosphere like does a lot, right? It does a lot. It serves a huge purpose. It’s insane how important that thing is, and just the beauty of seeing out hundreds, if not thousands of miles. I had spent my entire life traveling in and out of borders and I looked out and it’s just one big place. All I could see was the ocean and the mountains and you know, lakes and rivers and far off there.

There were no borders or boundaries at all, and I couldn’t help think, you know, if that was what everyone could see it would shape a lot of the way that we see the world today. It would shape a lot of opinions on the things that we think today and that I think would, would shift a lot of the behavior that we, we see in ourselves and that we see, we think towards others and we, we might think a little bit more holistically.

Aislyn: Well, I feel like there are two things behind you that are tied to this flight, and I’m curious to know if I’m right. There’s what I believe is your space suit, and then there’s the 194 flag. Could you tell me a little bit about both of those items?

Jim: Yeah, that’s my space suit. I’m gonna go, I’m gonna go get something.

Aislyn: Do you ever wear it?

Jim: No, no. That would be way too cheesy. Yeah, spacesuit was, was cool. Um, these are socks that I wore. Um, big socks.

Aislyn: Um, yeah, they’re really big, big socks.

Jim: They’re, they’re, they’re like uncomfortably large, like gym socks.

Aislyn: Up to your knee!

Jim: So there’s a reason for this. Um, OK, so for, for those of you that are listening on a podcast. These are socks that literally might go above your knee, right? Like they’re, they’re huge, uh, huge socks. And the reason is, is we were limited to three pounds. The only thing that we could bring with us went, had to go in this, this little bag. Um, this is maybe a foot and a half long bag by maybe seven or eight inches. So everything that you brought had to go in here.

So I brought some jewelry, I brought some stickers. This sticker went to space. I brought some of these, and then I brought some stickers that said “My professor went to space and all I got was this lousy sticker.” So if anybody wants one of those, I have some extra, but I had, um, some cool things. So you want to guess why I wore those socks?

Aislyn: To keep you warm?

Jim: Nope. So I could pack way more stickers. Way more stuff in my socks. Gosh, I hope anybody from Blue Origin doesn’t hear this, but I had probably 10 pounds of stickers and other things so I can give ’em to my students in my socks—muled. I was, I was a mule. I was a sticker mule.

Aislyn: Unexpected confessions from Jim Kitchen.

Jim: But the spacesuit was great. The 194 was—after traveling, so I, I finished my trip around the world, sadly, in 2019. My last country was Syria. A bittersweet moment, but amazing nonetheless. And so that was 193. There was 193 countries in the world recognized by the U.N.

194, um, represented to me the next big leap that I took, and it was really so meaningful being able to do that and be able to show that particularly my students and my, my children, that anything is possible to never stop believing, keep those dreams alive. That 194 was really important. It was, it was a manifestation that 194 equals, equals that. And so I came out of, when I landed it, uh, you know, I pulled that out and, uh, that was my 194 flag. And it was, it was awesome. And, and to accomplish a lifelong dream like that is, uh, spectacular.

Aislyn: Yeah, absolutely. And from there you took a very different path. You dove deep quite literally. So just months after touching space, you descended seven miles down to the Challenger, Deep in the Mariana Trench. So why did you do that and why so soon? Were you just looking for the next great adventure?

Jim: Yeah, to be able to go from the highest place from 67 miles down to 7 miles below. Again, it was just this sort of convergence of time and events, it lined up that this trip would be offered just after I went to space. And so I said yes.

Didn’t really know a lot about it, but I learned in a hurry, what a real submarine was. Victor Vescovo is the visionary behind this titanium submersible that was created and tested and licensed. And uh, he had this professional organization of scientists and he was mapping the world’s oceans, and he would be at the Mariana Trench in July of 2022.

So I learned a lot about this submersible versus the other one that has been in the news recently and just an amazing organization. Professional standards were very high, safety standards were very high. And some of the things that, that people should know about this is that submersibles are very safe, right? They’re small. This submersible sits two people. It was very thick, titanium, maybe like three or four inches of spherical titanium had been tested extensively at the Mariana Trench. It had been down there before. And then there’s this syntactic foam all around it. So it looks, when you see these pictures of these submersibles, like maybe 15 feet long and maybe 8 feet wide, but the sphere is actually very small and it has enough room for two people. So if you’re claustrophobic . . .

Aislyn: You would hate this.

Jim: It’s not for you. And this would be a no for you. Um, so I sat next to a pilot, literally to my left, Tim McDonald. And we, he and I went down, took about four hours from the top of the ocean down all the way to the bottom to seven miles below. It takes that long.

Aislyn: And then did you stay down below?

Jim: Yeah, you’re down there for about three hours and then there’s four hours on the way back up.

Aislyn: So what did you see down there? Or not see, I guess?

Jim: Oh, oh, oh, oh. So good. So good. You know, there’s some similarities between space in the bottom of the ocean, but what’s so cool about this is that when you get down to the bottom, you turn the LED lights on and you’re at a place—hear me when I say this—you’re at a place where no one we’re in the eastern pool of the Mariana Trench, in a place where no one has ever been to before. No one, no human has ever seen this, and all of a sudden, Tim turns the LED lights on, flashes. There it is, right there. And then there’s stuff down there. You see it and you’re like what? There’s, there are things that are—

Aislyn: I’m picturing creatures that are unnameable.

Jim: Yes, megalodon. Megalodon is there. That’s exactly, I’ll show you. I, I knew we were talking today, so there is this thing called an amphipod. And I’ll show you this.

Aislyn: Oh wow, it looks like a little shrimp.

Jim: It’s a little shrimp. And so you can kind of see like there’s a shell. And this amphipod is, is pretty big. They, there’s ones that are like a foot long that are down there. So here’s the situation—

Aislyn: Foot-long shrimp.

Jim: Foot-long shrimp, foot-long amphipod. Here’s the thing. That thing is all shell, very little body, that huge exoskeleton because there’s no oxygen, OK? You are seven miles down, no oxygen, no sunlight, freezing temperatures, right? Like it’s 32 degrees, but it would be colder. But it just can’t, like it can’t freeze. So it’s 30-something degrees, it’s freezing down there and crushing pressure—16,000 pounds per square inch, that means like an African elephant would be sitting on top of like my fingernail—and yet amphipods live down there. And what the real story is these things called haletherium, which are these little like oozy little transparent creatures. And then these things called bacterial mat. So it’s, it’s this gold-looking bacteria that lives in between rocks in the water.

And it thrives down there. You are like, “Wait, how does this, how does this, how does this live?” This thing swims around. We caught ’em like, I have a jar of these things and it lives.

Aislyn: How did you catch ’em? You like have like little external scoopers?

Jim: We had some things down there that, that caught these, these little vape traps that caught ’em. And it’s, it’s crazy. And so despite all of those conditions, life exists. And what’s fascinating about the Mariana Trench, seeing the bottom of that, is despite all of that, like completely inhospitable to life, things thrive down there. And you’re like, “Wow, that is maybe what’s on some of these other, like Jupiter’s moons or you know, places that we think life is inhospitable, like nothing could ever live there, but yet it does. So that was a good year. Being able to see, being able to see that, that was a good year. The top to the bottom, 67 miles plus 7 to 74- mile difference between the two is just extraordinary.

Aislyn: Did you feel that it was an equally spiritual experience down in the trench, like going down there? Did you have that same sense of kind of a wonder or was it different?

Jim: It was different. Definitely looking at the Earth from space has that spiritual component of, oh my gosh, but this appreciation for life being so persistent and so amazing, this beautiful planet on which we live. It’s so spectacular and I’m just in awe of it. And it’s funny, it’s so beautiful. Like the other day I was high fiving, you know, I was walking down this path and I was high fiving plants and this girl’s like, “Whatcha doing?” I’m like, “You know, they’re plants.”

Like, I don’t know, I’m just high fiving. I’m like, like, this is fun. This is a beautiful planet on which we live. We have beautiful people. You and I are talking, like I’m enjoying this conversation. I love talking about travel and this transformative experiences, and we just live in such a cool place. We just need to find the goodness in, in all of us, and it’s just such a joy to, to be living this short little time that we get on this, on this planet.

Aislyn: I love this idea of focusing on gratitude. So with that in mind, let’s close with this idea of travel nudges, because you mentioned that you had the opportunity to take a ride on the Titan submersible, but you are hypervigilant now about something you call nudges. And you listened to something inside of yourself and you backed out and the submersible later imploded.

I mean, it was such a tragedy and I can’t imagine what it was like to be so close to having potentially lost your life. So what do you mean when you say nudge? What happened around the Titan submersible? And what’s your advice for people who want to try to tap into this side of themselves?

Jim: All right, here’s the story. I’ve lived this life where I’ve done a lot of work to get to where I am now or where I was. And I realized that when I was traveling in Colombia, for example, I’m in the backseat of a car and I see these migrants picking carrots, and I’m like, if I don’t act on that, that little nudge, uh, it’s gonna go by. [I was like] “Stop the car, stop, stop the car. Stop the car. I don’t know. I don’t know why. Stop the car.”

I get out and I start picking carrots, [I ask] “Can I pick with you?” And I spend like three or four hours with these guys, and I get to know their story of where they came from, what they’re doing, what jobs are available, how they’re moving around the country. And it’s like, oh, I’m so glad that I acted on that nudge and I kept doing it over and over again.

And you have to differentiate like what the difference is between a nudge and like the chili you ate last night, right? So it’s like, OK, one is real, the other is heartburn, right?

Aislyn: So what does it feel like for you, a nudge?

Jim: For me, it’s tapping into that spiritual side where I’m almost kind of living my life. With somebody in my brain, like they’re slightly ahead of me, and they’re saying, don’t miss this, and it can be this transformative experience—and we’ll talk about the Titan here in a minute—or it can be something as small as like, “Hey, you know, um, you see that hydrocortisone, you’re planning your travel bag. You should probably bring that.”

And you’re like, “eh,” and then two days later you’re like, “Golly, I got bit by something.” And you’re like, “I tried to tell you, you should have brought that.” Now that’s a terrible explanation, but I think you kind of get the point.

And it’s, it’s, so I, I’ve, I’ve begun following these nudges and so my things like hydrocortisone man, I just embrace it and when I hear it and feel it and sense it tie into it and just, so I would just say to the viewers and listeners, start listening for it. I think everyone can tap into it. And here’s the thing, when you’ve done some work on you and figured out who you are and what you stand for, the voices that get in the way of those nudges, suddenly there’s a lot less volume. Like the self-criticism of, we talked about, you know, loving yourself when you’ve done the work, you’re not, you’re suddenly not hearing, “Hey, you’re so dumb. That was the stupidest thing you ever said, right?”

You’re hearing just silence. Like, “Hey, I’m good.” And so now you be, can be—again, to listen to those nudges and hear them so often—the radio’s too loud or our voices in our head are too loud and we, we drown ’em out with our own negative self-talk. And so, so I think it’s quieting those things and listening to and being mindful of those nudges.

And they’ve served me and here’s how they served the Titanic. So I had signed up to go and I am in Canada the week before the disaster. And I’m at the hotel and I hadn’t been paying attention to any of the travel plans, etcetera. I didn’t remember where I should fly into, but I just, so I just show up at the hotel and I see out my window, there’s this icebreaker called the Polar Prince.

And it’s right in my view. And I’m like, “Golly, what is that thing? I feel sorry for anybody that has to ride on that thing.” And I go down and I go to the passenger meeting and I’m like, “Where’s our ship that, you know, we’re going out to the North Atlantic on?” And then we’re going from there to that Titanic in a submarine.

And they’re like, “Oh yeah, that’s the Polar Prince.” And I’m like, “I mean, the seas are 25 feet. That thing is a flat-bottom icebreaker. How in the world?” And you know, everyone’s like, “Hey, shush, you like we’re getting ready to go to the depth of the Titanic.” And I’m like, “What are you guys talking about? Have you ever been on an icebreaker like this? This doesn’t have any horizontal, vertical stabilizers. I mean, are you, are you kidding me?”

And I asked the question. Raised my hand, asked the question—no one liked me in this meeting, especially the company—and I said, how many times have we been to Titanic depths in the seven weeks, the three weeks of training, and then the four weeks of passengers prior, how many times has the Titan been to Titanic depths? And they said, “None.” I was like, “OK,” and I made the motion to the guy that was leading the meeting and I said, “Talk to you after, talk to you after.”

So everyone went away and they, they got their stuff and they went on the Polar Prince and I pulled the guy aside and said, “I just don’t have a good feeling about this.” I had been on a titanium submersible with a professional team and could juxtapose the different operations. I just listened and I was like, “This doesn’t make any sense to me.” I told him, “I’m not going.” I said, the reason why—I didn’t wanna spook everyone else, I’m not going, I don’t feel good—so I had spent an extraordinary amount of money. I’m walking away from an extraordinary amount of money, called my wife and said, “I’m coming home.” And the next dive that Titan took was its last.

And um, I knew Hamish Harding, he was a Blue Origin guy. I feel terrible for the billionaire’s son who didn’t really want to go, but the company had sold them this thing. And there’s so many stories about the company and there’s been documentaries about them, and I’ve tried to stay outta all of that, but my nudge served me well. Saying no. Mm-hmm. It’s not, it’s not right. They’re not right. The whole situation’s not right. That’s a no, it’s not worth your life. And a few days later, my friend Hamish and those, those people died and it was, uh, very hard to get over the survivor’s guilt of that. But I think that the message is just to listen. You know, listen, listen more. Be more in tune. Do that work. Find out who you are, what you love. Connect deeply with people and then listen for those nudges.

Aislyn: And it sounds like your experiences of over the years kind of prioritizing, like in this moment you prioritized listening to yourself over, let’s just face it, like economics.

Jim: Some things are, are more important and I just, I’m a big fan of listening, but you’ve gotta do the work so that you don’t get in the way.

Aislyn: Well, beautiful note to end on. When does your book come out where you share all of these, this wisdom? I’ll keep you posted.

Jim: It’ll, it’ll be sometime next year. It’s part travelogue, but most part lessons learned while traveling the world from a guy that was just like all of you, all lessons that we can learn to be a better form of ourselves and written from a, a humble perspective where we’re all just trying to figure this whole thing out.

The big lesson is to pack lightly. Let’s keep it light and keep it fun, and don’t take ourselves in our situations so seriously, and just let yourself breathe a little bit more.

Aislyn: And don’t forget to stuff your socks with stickers.

Jim: That’s, I think that’s the new working title for the book, Stuff Your Socks With Stickers. I love that.

Aislyn: And that’s Jim Kitchen: traveler, professor, author, sticker mule. In the show notes, we’ve linked to his social media handles and his websites. Jim’s story really does remind me that the most profound journeys aren’t always about how far we go, but how deeply we’re willing to connect, whether that’s with a stranger in an Afghan marketplace, with the infinite blackness of space, or with that quiet voice inside of us that knows when something isn’t right.

Something to ponder, while we prepare next week’s episode for you. We’ll see you then.

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