#37 Justin Fornal - International Explorer, Cultural Detective, Seeker of Lost Rituals & Talismans, Writer, Filmmaker & Extreme Athlete

"Don't sell your soul because you can't buy it back. Selling out is something I just can't do."

My guest this week is Justin Fornal and I’m incredibly lucky to have him. He’s someone who has lived and continues to live such an exciting and technicolour life that he very much resists categorisation. To describe Justin as an international explorer, cultural detective, award winning writer, filmmaker, culinary celebrity, and extreme athlete is about as close to the mark as you’ll get. In 2018 Men’s Journal simply ranked him as the #3 most adventurous person in the world.

As a cultural detective, in search of secret societies, lost rituals and ancient talismans, he has travelled to the far corners of the earth, living with hunter-gatherer tribes, meeting with witch doctors who (still to this day) believe in human sacrifice, and taking part in ritual exorcisms, so just be aware that some parts of our conversation are not for the squeamish or faint-hearted.   

Everywhere Justin goes, he always sets off with a deep respect for each culture that he interacts with, and sharing whatever he finds with integrity and a real commitment to the truth of a place, not adherence to institutional narrative. He is the Co-Founder of the History, Arts, & Science Action Network (HASAN) a non-profit organization that focuses on relic repatriation, historic justice, and documenting vanishing cultures. He’s also the co-host of TV show UNEXPLAINED AND UNEXPLORED, alongside one of my previous guests Emiliano Ruprah, a show that has been airing on the Discovery Channel and Science Channel since 2019.

Justin has also written extensively for National Geographic, VICE, The Explorers Journal, and Parts Unknown. I strongly recommend you read some of his articles which I’ve linked to below.

He is also an extreme open water swimmer and having swum 100 miles around the Whisky Island of Islay on Scotland’s freezing West Coast, he is currently planning the longest unassisted swim in history for Summer 2022.  The GREAT ARCTIC SWIM will be the first attempt to swim from Canada to Greenland across the Nares Strait.

Truth is, unless there’s a documentary made about his life, I’m not sure one CAN do Justin Fornal justice. The sheer depth and breadth of his experience makes keeping pace with him an impossible, yet very very enjoyable and joyous task. He truly is larger than life and a real polymath in every sense of the word. We start the conversation with him lighting up one of his rare pipes collected on his travels, before journeying through his culinary, cultural, and sporting adventures in that order. I hope that you find this conversation as interesting as I did.

Links:
https://justinfornal.com/articles
IG: @justin_fornal
https://greatarcticswim.com/
Weird Homes, Atlas Obscura

Host: Michael Campion
Website: www.michaelxcampion.com
LinkedIn: @michaelxcampion
IG: @michaelxcampion
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Michael Campion is a Corporate Trainer, Career Coach, and Entrepreneur based between Singapore and Hong Kong. If you are lookin