Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Well, hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the traveling edition of the Jan Arden Podcast and Show. I am here with Sarah Burke. Sarah is in Toronto, and I am in Dorset, England. So, southern England, just picture the Isle of Wight, where, of course, Queen Victoria spent a great deal of her time. Hello, Sarah.
I can't wait to hear all about your trip. You've got some very British looking floor. Are we in bed? Is this, are you in bed? I've chosen a bedroom. I'm here with my friend, Nigel. Yeah. It's his mom's birthday week. I changed my plans. Anyone following along with me on my socials, I have been in Iceland the last week with some girlfriends. My friend Bev had a very monumental birthday just before COVID. She turned 65. And of course we were supposed to go then.
And all hell broke loose. So we weren't doing any global traveling. Anyway, three years later, Sarah, as you know. Did it. We finally got to go. Did she have the time of her life? She looks stunned in every photo. Time of our lives. If you've ever pondered Iceland, if it's ever been on your radar in any way, shape or form, and especially if it hasn't been.
you should go. It is a little bit expensive. I think five, six days is plenty. I don't think it's a two-week beach holiday or anything like that. I think it's pretty easy to get to, especially if you're in Eastern Canada.
We flew into Toronto and then it's less than five hours. I'm going to say four and some change, four and a half. We rented a car. You drive on the same side of the road as we do. So it's not like, it's not like being in the UK or Australia. We did VRBO, which is like Airbnb. We rented a house. It looks so cute. Yeah, it was adorable.
You know what, for four of us in a house, I'm going to tell you right now, I think it was $870 a night. But come on now, let's just do a little bit of math here. Divide by four. Four of us, a couple hundred dollars each a night. I mean, it is on the high end, I suppose. And this place slept four. I think we could have got two more people in there.
They had a little tiny loft with two mattresses up there that I think you could have put the men. I think the husbands or the boyfriends could have been stuffed up there. But we just had a panoramic view. We saw the Northern Lights. I was in charge of Northern Light Alert because my little bedroom faced northwest. And so, of course, me getting up to pee twice a night.
You don't, Sarah, because you're young. You youngsters, you probably pee once a day, right? Am I right? I do not pee overnight, but I usually wake up at like 6 a.m. to pee. Oh, God. I miss those days. Yeah. So anyway, because I'm on pee northern light alert, I got up the last night we were there. So night before last. And I was just like,
Oh my God. Like I'd seen them, but they're really faint. It was nothing to write home about. I'm like, is that a cloud or is that the Northern lights? Always overcast. But this particular evening I stood there for a second. I, I literally did a child's Christmas eye rub, you know, knuckle in eye. Am I seeing what I'm seeing?
And it was a vista, an arc of dancing green lights that rivaled anything you would see on television or a documentary.
I raced 10 steps into my friend's bedroom. I said, Lisa! She bolted up like a gunshot had gone off. Like everyone's such light sleepers. And so we all got up and we went outside in our bare feet on these, you know, on the- How cold? I'm going to say it was probably zero. It wasn't horrific. It was colder in Calgary probably. And we stood there with this silence,
That's unparalleled, no light pollution stars. I felt like I was on the starship enterprise going into space and we all stood there and we, we just, we felt like holding hands. We kind of threw our arms around each other's shoulders. And we're all like, we are the luckiest people to be standing here witnessing this. And rather than feeling kind of insignificant in the universe, uh,
We felt very attached and very connected and kind of like, whatever this is, I know we're going to die someday, but it's going to be okay. Like it was one of those moments where, you know, what's the point of life? You know, why make your bed if you're just going to get into it again? The glass is half full. Kind of people do that thing sometimes in life where they, what is the point?
And we felt like the point was so big in that moment. I can see it all over your face right now. You're just like still stunned. It's amazing. Do you have a photo? Absolutely. Lisa was there with her camera. I didn't take my phone, but she was there snapping pictures like crazy. Lisa did a whole bunch of really fun things.
I have so many Iceland questions. Oh, please. Okay. What was like an average breakfast for you? Well, oddly enough, we all kind of brought little things with us. Teresa brought oatmeal and, and snack bars and, and we had a bunch of nuts and, but we did stop at the grocery store, arrived very early in the morning, like eight 30 in the morning, went to a grocery store. We were fascinated by,
Anyone who loves traveling, going into grocery stores in other countries is the greatest thing in the world. And we pretty much found everything we needed. Lots of plant-based stuff. I know people are going to ask me that. You were saying like it's easy to eat vegan over there. Beyond easy. Did you go to Costco by chance there? I did see the Costco. I did not go. We didn't go. We thought that was blasphemy to go to a Costco in Iceland. My sister, she got engaged in Iceland. You may remember. I don't
I don't know if you remember in the fall. She said that the Costco there had so many cool things. Like she couldn't believe. So anyway, next time, next time. They probably do have some pretty wild things. But yeah, we went to the grocery store. We bought a whole bunch of fruit.
We got nuts. We got snack stuff for the car. We got chips that we'd never heard of in our lives and flavors we'd never heard of in our lives. And just turmeric, whatever, like just bizarre combos of things. You're like, is this going to be the worst tasting chip? There's no bad tasting chips, please. Let's just have that flat out conversation.
There's no bad tasting chips. And we were just like kids in a candy store. We all split up when we got to the grocery store. We had baskets. We didn't really even double up on stuff. I got, this is funny, Sarah. I was, you know, getting my oat milk. They have an entire case of plant-based milk.
And really cool ones that I'd never seen of like no cow and uncow, like all these clever little funny names. It's not milk, but it's, you know, of course I'm thinking that I'm buying, thank God I got a little oat milk for my tea. And then I thought, well, I'll get this other oat milk uncow thing that looks really interesting. It's in a cardboard carton. I get it back to the place. I don't open it till the next morning. I'm so disappointed. I open it up.
And I'm looking at it. I said, oh, you guys, I frigging picked a rancid thing. Oh, no. And my friend Lisa's like, what are you looking at? And I'm, you know, it said, please shake me. And I'm like, okay, I'll close it up. I missed the, I didn't get the assignment here. Closed it up. Shook, shook, shook, shook, shook. Guess what it is? Guess what I bought? Did you buy regular milk? I bought yogurt. I bought oat milk, yogurt, chocolate milk.
and mango flavored. I'm thinking, well, I got a week. I guess I'll try it on some fruit and some oatmeal. It was so delicious. I don't know what to tell you. The food in Iceland shocked me out of my mind. Delicious. Everything was a work of art. The portions were not massive. They weren't like Canadian or American portions. They were really, really
Well appointed. Was there anything that you were like, oh, I've never tried this before? They are a country of lamb, lamb, and more lamb, and then some lamb, and also lamb. Okay. You know, we did a walking tour, a walking food tour of Reykjavik on the third day. And I was really excited about it. For one thing, it was historical. The guide told us about the first settlers that came, the Vikings, of course, all these magical, mystical stories about Vikings and
But at all the restaurants, they'd arranged for me, pain in the ass me, to have vegetarian, vegan. There was no cheese or dairy. My stuff was delicious and everybody wanted my stuff. Everyone, there was 18 people. There was people from Seattle. There was a family. There was a woman that had just gotten a new job in Boston. She was traveling by herself. She had three weeks before she started her new job. So she's like, I couldn't find anyone to come with me. I just booked it and I booked all these tours.
And anyway, so everyone, everyone was like, oh, what does Jan have? What does the Canadian girl have? Like the greatest broccoli and little breads with artichokes and peas and mint. And I can't even explain the stuff that I got. The funniest moment, we went to a very, very traditional, I guess, Icelandic restaurant where lamb, dried fish,
fish, fish, this kind of fish, fish soup. They went out of their way. They made me stuff. I had some kind of vegetable croquette. I had a lovely little green drink, a little crudité, like really, really, they went out of their way to make stuff for me. Well, sort of three quarters of the way through this one stop, this family from Seattle had two kids.
And they're at that age, like nine and 11. It's like traveling. What a pain in the ass with your parents. Oh God. Yeah. There's nothing for us to do. So anyway, the guide is telling us about the very first settlers 800 years ago, a thousand years ago. They, there really wasn't much to eat in Iceland. Like if you couldn't kill a deer or something, there was nothing there. It's very barren shark. They had fermented like putrefied cubes of some kind of shark and
And everyone got a toothpick to, you know, do their little cube of shark. And I mean, they knew I'm like, I'm out. No, thanks. I don't even want to try it. Just I'm out. No, I'm out. The smell when he opened the jar was enough. It smelled like somebody had peed on a sock that had been stuffed inside a drunk, dead person. That's the only way I can explain it.
So this kid, this nine-year-old boy from Seattle, you know, I'm looking at him. I'm filming. Lisa wanted me to film her eating her shark cube for her reel. So I've got my camera there and he looks at it. He puts it in his mouth and he instantly project vomits across. I'm trying to hold the camera on Lisa and,
I thought I was going to puke like as a chain reaction to this nine-year-old puking. And you know how you kind of go, oh God, I'm going to, and I thought if I tell Lisa that this kid's going to throw up, she's going to throw up. I just thought in my mind, this is not a good scenario. The kid was so embarrassed. His dad's, it's all down the front of his shirt.
Because everything that we'd kind of eaten up to that point from a very unassuming, small, like I'm talking one centimeter cube of fermented, putrefied shark meat. Anyway, that's what they ate. And apparently they discovered it by mistake. Somebody got sick from eating just the shark raw. And they're like, this isn't working out. So they've buried it.
And I guess they came back like three weeks later. They dug it up because they were super hungry. And they thought, well, we'll try it again. This is all a myth here. Okay. So apparently these Vikings dug up the shark and after it had fermented and putrefied and they were fine. Well, I mean, good for the kid for trying something new. I was so glad in that moment that I didn't eat stuff like that. But yeah, it was, we had a great, a great guide.
Young, good-looking Nordic guy. Just so handsome. The people there are extremely good-looking. I think all the fresh air and being outside. You know, this is a very big island. It's, I think, a 2,000-kilometer radius, which is pretty substantial.
And they have less than 300,000 residents, but they have a million visitors every year. So you imagine how that infrastructure, you imagine what that means week after week at the Reykjavik airport. It's a huge airport. What a great place. What a great trip. So you're now solo and like hanging out with Nigel. I remember there being a birthday of some sort. His mom is 83.
87. Okay. And is the birthday today? We surprised her today. Well, it's this week, but we surprised her today. She was out getting her hair done. And so Nigel let us in. I sat in her chair. We got a fire going.
And she came around the corner and I just popped up and I went, hello. Well, the look on her face, he goes, I bloody hope we don't kill her. I hope we don't kill her too. It's such a great surprise. We're going to spend the weekend here. I was wondering if after like a week of being with people, like who you love, of course, like, you know, these are friends that you were traveling with, but if you needed that, that break, that quiet time. No, you were good. We were, we laughed so much.
You know, when you're in 120 kilometer an hour winds, climbing up a very small iron staircase to the mouth of a volcano,
And you're crouching down and hanging on because you think you're going to get blown over the side. I mean, there were people grabbing their children because their children were getting blown sideways. This is Iceland. No warnings. No, we're closed today. The winds are too heavy. No railing. No, there's not a guardrail in that country. You guys have to look out for each other. And I want to talk to you about Eliza Reid too. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I saw that. You know, if you were in Canada or America or...
You know, probably here in England, you'd have all kinds of warnings and do not go past here. Don't go past this point. People are like billy goats. They're hanging on the side of rocks or on the side of stuff. You have to use your noggin. You have to use your common sense. Don't go out on that ledge. There's a 300 foot drop. No one's going to tell you not to. And there's no guardrail there and there's no warning sign. So Iceland really struck me in that sense as just not being so regulatory about
where they squeeze your...
ability to make a decision out of your body. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. And follow-up question, because you were traveling with, I think you said your childhood best friend. And when was the last time you guys did something like this? We think, well, we went to Hawaii right after grad when we were 18. I don't know how our parents let us go. We were like 12 going on nine at that time. And then I think when we were 19, we went and visited our friend, Kim Dunning. Hi, Kim. Hi.
We went down to California and we visited our friend Kim. But as far as we've certainly been, I've been on weekends to Montana. Her and her husband have a little cabin down there, beautiful cabin.
But we haven't been on a holiday since. So we just, it was very emotional. At one point I started crying. We were at one of the food stops on our walking food tour and I just burst into tears because I just thought this is so great. We need to do this more. And all of us are in our 60s with the exception of Lisa. She's the baby. And we flew on her birthday. She turned 55. We just learned more about each other. And you probably picked up the old stuff right away.
Like no time had passed. I have friends like that. And everyone got along so well. It was so respectful and everyone was so generous. Like we fought every meal, Sarah, about who was going to pay.
That's good. So it just turned out really great. There was no turd in this glass of milk at all. Everyone is so like-minded. We're just on the same page. Good travel buds. Such good travel buds. We laughed to the point where we felt sick. Like it was so windy one day. And if you go onto my Instagram, I think it's still up there somewhere. I'll post it again. We stopped to see this little red and white church. There's a picture of it on my Instagram.
And we went down this long, long narrow road and the winds, I was hanging onto the wheel of that vehicle. It was a big Toyota Land Cruiser or whatever. One of the girls were like, do you really want to get out? I said, I want to get a picture of this place. And I got the door open and I managed to shut it, but I didn't think how I was going to get back in. And I couldn't get back in. So when I opened the door,
I had to really hold it with my leg and my shoulder. And I started laughing hysterically because I was petrified. Lisa's filming me. And I'm like, I seriously can't get back in. I can't shut the door. So I gave up because I thought, no, I have to grab the steering wheel to pull myself in, but I also have to hang on to the door. And we're going to rip this door off if I let go of it. That was the win. I'm not kidding you.
They're laughing. They're all dying laughing, which was kind of dangerous, but what can you do? And then I forced the door shut and I stood there for a second and I said, I can't get back in. And they're laughing. They're inside the car. So I went out around to the passenger side, which was being kind of blocked from the wind from the other side of the car. And I crawled over Bev. She's like, I'm not getting out. So it was one thing after another with this trip. It was just, I mean, one day we drove 600 kilometers. Holy. We drove around this peninsula and we just...
We just saw the most incredible things. And the Icelandic horses. The horses, yes. They revere their horses. They cherish them. They're looked after. They get to run all over the place. And I will preface this by saying there are signs everywhere that say there are no wild horses in Iceland.
They are all looked after. They are all belong to someone. Everyone rounds them up as a community. They go to these little circle wheel things. People take the ones that are theirs back to their farms. But they are revered. They're healthy and well and looked after. And I just thought, what a concept. This was very different. It wasn't like...
Mules in Santorini going up and down a hill all day and literally dying from being overworked and carrying 400-pound men.
from Atlanta up a hill. The men from Atlanta are going to be really angry on Twitter, Jan. Well, nevermind carrying me. So I'll throw myself into the equation, putting me on a, but it just, it's so differently. The feel so differently. It's such a huge part of them. There's people stop taking pictures of these horses along the highway. It's very special. They would no more slaughter a horse here than they would their own grandchild.
So there is a place for horses in tourism, especially these beautiful horses. And make no mistake, they're not ponies. But obviously, I could not stop thinking about the juxtaposition of
what happens in Canada. I'm so glad you had that experience. Kate, Eliza Reid. So I asked you before you left, I was like, are you hooking up with our girl, the first lady of Iceland? And you said no. She had written me months ago. I said, oh, we're going to be there in April. She goes, oh, unfortunately, I'll be on a book tour, blah, blah, blah. Well, two days into our trip, she goes, hi, I've been looking at your Instagram. I see you're in Iceland.
would you like to come and see the official presidential residence? And we were all freaking out. Did you have the right shoes? Did you have the right outfit? No, we looked insane. I had these Claude Hopper black boots on and jeans with holes in it. I put on the only kind of decent black sweater I had. My hair was crazy. Anyway, we all went. And we didn't think we'd meet the president, but we did. She brought him in. But they walked us through this amazing...
Iceland has only been an independent country since 1944. So during the war when people had a lot bigger things on their hands, I think the Icelanders were less like, we don't want to be part of Denmark anymore. And they're so busy with the war that they just let them have their independence. There was very little fight over it. It's pretty hard to govern something that's four or five days sailing across the water from you. Anyway, it was a wonderful visit. We got to see the first...
printed Bible in Iceland that was 400 years old, this old 400-year-old table that people sat around and made decisions in government and
It is a fascinating place. Eliza couldn't have been more gracious. What was she like in person? First time meeting. Oh, wonderful. She's, she's just beautiful. And, and, you know, four kids. And we talked about learning Icelandic. I said, is it hard? She goes, I've been here 20 years and I make mistakes all the time. And people are very kind with me. It's a, there's words that are so long. You just don't even bother even trying to pronounce them. But yeah, she was, she was really gracious. And then when we were coming out of the residence, um,
Phil Fontaine, anyone who knows anything about Indigenous representation in our country, Phil Fontaine is masterful. He's done so much to educate Canada and to
protect indigenous rights and to promote indigenous values and everything. He was coming out. So I rolled the window down when we were driving away. I said, we love you, Phil. We're from Canada. And then one of the people he was with said, oh my God, Jan, what are you doing here? And then we had this big moment in the parking lot and they had a ceremonial drum with them. And Phil was there with his partner, Catherine. And then it turns out that Catherine was
had his partner, Phil's partner, had a baby long, many, many years ago. Teresa, her mom and dad,
fostered her baby. It was very long story, very complicated, but their baby Brian was given up into the foster system. Teresa's mom and dad looked after Brian for almost a year. And then Catherine, you know, got back together with her partner and they were able to get their baby back after nine months. And Catherine's, Teresa said, I'm Teresa de Crom and my mom and dad looked after Brian. And she's just like, oh my God, well, her and her, her and Brian,
Fast forward, went to Teresa's dad's funeral and Brian brought his little baby and he came up to them, to the kids and said, thank you. Your parents took me in and thank you so much. And it was really emotional. So there was that connection when you talk about here we are in Iceland and there's that connection with Teresa that was really emotional and Catherine was emotional. And she said to Phil, Phil, this is the family that took in Brian. And he was like, oh my God. And so that sidebar was taking place. And then
And then just all of us meeting Phil and being so gobsmacked at, you know, being able to stand there with this man who's just, you know, when you talk about politics and when you talk about people that are doing the right things and sticking their necks out, Phil is...
Hands down, the guy. Yeah, he's unbelievable. Google Phil Fontaine, folks. Anyway, so our trip took on many, many layers. Lots of laughter. The food was incredible. We learned about ourselves a lot. The
The space, I have never felt so much space around us. The vastness. Miles and miles and miles and miles and miles without passing a car. I felt that way when I was in Nunavut. I went in April, actually. It was this time of the year. And at three in the morning, four in the morning, it's still light out. And you're just like, what's going on? Was it light out at that time for you guys?
Yeah, I think they're kind of back to regular hours. The sun would come up, oh gosh, 630, 645. And then, you know, 930, it was still quite light. And then the sky would sort of finally go dark. But they have a few months where they have 24 hours of sunlight. And, you know, then they go into having three hours of sunlight, four hours of sunlight, five hours of sunlight. So it takes a bit of getting used to. But they're a proud...
very proud culture and they have tourism is growing exponentially like it's really taking off at
I couldn't recommend it enough. Yeah, it's a little bit pricey, but you know, there's a way to do it affordably. Like any holiday, there's probably many tiers that you can choose. You don't have to eat in fancy restaurants. You can go get groceries. You can make your own sandwiches. You can do breakfast and lunch and wherever you're staying. There's a lot of Airbnbs that I, that I saw online that were $85 a night, you know, a hundred dollars a night. So it's, it's manageable.
Sounds awesome. Okay. So update on our voice note training. Our listeners have sent in some things. You mean voicemail? Yeah. We got a voicemail. So I would love to play it for you coming up here. Okay. Well, you'll want to stick around to hear that voicemail. You're listening to the Jan Arden podcast and show lots going on today. I'm here with Sarah Burke. Don't go away. We're going to be right back.
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Hi, my name's Kelly and I'm the first ever guest co-host on the Jan Arden podcast. I'm alongside Jan Arden herself and Sarah Burke. So glad to be here with the two beautiful ladies. So let's get this started by me telling you what I used to bring for my school lunch.
Just kidding. What I'd like you both to talk about is passion. How did you know what your passion was? How did you find it? Am I too old at 46 to find something to be passionate about and a purpose? I feel like I'm just drifting every day lately. Well, I'm going to sign off this voicemail. Choice is part of your destiny. Love you both.
By the way, I also booked a reading with Kim, the clairvoyant that you had on the show. I'm so excited. That's the cutest. Kelly. Thanks for being with us. God, thanks for co-hosting today. Checks in the mail. That's really cool. I do like a voice note. I'm telling you. So if you want to send us a voice note, you know how to do it. Go onto the gram. Go onto the gram. Open a DM. Open a DM. There's a little microphone thing there you can hit.
Yep, at Jan Arden Pod. So Kelly is asking us about finding your passion. Well, listen, there's so many people out there showing us the way about passion and passions change all the time.
It's not like it's 1910 and you have to pick being a bus driver or being a welder or a carpenter, whatever your trade is, which are fantastic. It's so great to have trades, but you're also allowed to change your mind or to change it up at any point. There's a famous painter. Her name is Grandma Moses. You can Google her, Grandma Moses. She started painting, I think, at 80, and she became one of the most famous folk art paintings of a century.
This is someone who'd never picked up a brush in her life. Sarah, what are your thoughts? I think you can, I don't think you're always supposed to know what to do. Some of the fun is in looking. That actually makes a lot of sense for me in my like current phase. But let me throw it back to university.
So when I applied for university, my only goal was getting far away from my parents because I had felt like being the older kid in the family, like with me and my sister, like I just, my parents were always on me and I just wanted out of the house. So I move four and a half hours away to Ottawa from Toronto and I'm miserable and I don't like my program. And I'm sitting there like, is this what I wanted? Just admitting that it would be okay to change my mind completely.
So I ended up being in like the journalism program at Carleton. It's a renowned program. It's a wonderful program. I was getting great marks, but I was bored as F. Like I just, I couldn't get myself into it. You know, they call it like the turkey dump, I guess, at Thanksgiving. I dumped Carleton.
when most people break up. You know, I felt like I had this like drive home of shame with my dad where like, right? Where you're just like, what have I done? I've wasted so much money. Like I got a bit back, but you know, what am I going to do next? So for the next year, I'm working at American Eagle in the mall, just making my money back and being like, what am I doing? What am I doing next? What am I doing next?
And I ended up in a program that was, you know, a mix of the hands-on stuff where you get to touch the radio buttons and all that, which I wouldn't have been able to do at Carleton until the end of the program. I would have been bored for a long time. I found my love. I found my passion by admitting that it was okay to not be happy. You know, it was hard to let go of, really hard to let go of. Well, I think what you sort of touch on is the shame of failing.
And if you're failing, you're trying. We've talked about that a lot on this show. You know, failing is 99% of...
why I'm laying here on this floral pillowcase talking to you. And it's because I try a lot of things and I do a lot of things. People are like, oh my God, you do a podcast, you're writing a book. I've got a novel coming out on November the 7th, doing the music, doing the television show. There's just things I like to do. I'm not really great at any of them, but I like doing them.
I like doing it. I don't think I could just do music now. I don't think I could just do the podcast or just write. I like doing a lot of stuff. The only person telling me that I can't do stuff is going to be me. Very good point. There's actually a second fail in this story for me. Oh, can't wait to hear it. In the program I ended up taking in London, Ontario, it was a joint degree diploma. I
At one point, you had to choose where you wanted to specify. So you could do graphic design, you could do TV, you could do broadcast journalism, or you could do radio.
Now, funny enough, I did not choose radio. I chose broadcast journalism because, and it took me forever to make this decision. I remember like pacing back and forth in the apartment with the girls and being like, I don't know what to do. But I figured broadcast journalism would be like a few extra harder skills that maybe would be easily transferable into radio if I decided to go that way. So they tell you, your first job in radio, why don't you try and drive the summer car? Give out free swag. For me, it should have been driving, you know, maybe the car for like the news station. So I apply.
and they hire me for the rock station. And I'm like, I don't think this is the way it's supposed to go. You know, like this is just not the way it's supposed to go.
So the first time I ever went on air, I remember we were given away like Oasis tickets or something. And there was a huge lineup outside the arena. It was before you could get them online like all the time. Yeah. And they sent me down to like go live with listeners. The thrill I got that day, like... You were hooked. It solidified everything. But there's two fails in there because I was trying to go in one direction and then I kept ending up the other direction. Yeah. Yeah.
And here I am, like if I was doing the news now in 2023, I think I'd be miserable, honestly. Well, my dad used to say all the time, I went to college very briefly. Like I think I lasted six months. I went to Mount Royal College. It's now called Mount Royal University. But this would have been like 82, maybe 83.
And, uh, I took theater arts cause I did not know what to do. And I was, you know, mortified. My parents were disappointed. Like I, I had no inkling of what I should do. I loved music, loved it, loved writing songs, loved all of that. But me, that wasn't for me. I can't, I can't become that. Like who's kidding who here? There's no way.
that this, you know, thumb with eyes from the prairies is going to be, no, I mean, I never really thought about how I looked. I just thought someone like me doesn't do that. And dad said, getting back to the point, he said, well, you don't go to university to do what you want to do. You, you figure out what you don't want to do. And what a great way to let me off the hook because they knew I was kind of ashamed. I didn't want to fucking go into theater. Yeah.
I had no interest in theater, but I had no interest in it. You know, just sitting at the table for my dad to let me off the hook. Well, that's how you figure out what you don't want to do. Back to what Kelly asked about like finding your passion maybe later. Yeah, Kelly. Maybe later in life at 46. Yeah.
Here's the thing, Kelly. You've an advantage over the young Jan and over the young Sarah. And the advantage is that instead of making decisions based on external things to yourself, I think now what would be important because you've had a lot of life at this point. You've lived a lot. You're young, Kelly. This is coming from young, younger, youngerson. But listen, listen, hear me out.
At this point in your life, I think you know yourself. And if you can dial into what makes you feel good, what makes you smile ear to ear when you're doing something and find your passion that way versus, oh, I'm a young person. I'm told I should go to university. And even though I don't know what I want to do yet, I'm going over here. Right? Yeah. I think you got to listen to what feels good. If you're out with some girlfriends and accidentally stumble upon something you love, great.
great. And like, don't stress about finding it because I think that things present themselves where you'll be like, oh my gosh, I'm so happy right now. Why is that? Just pay attention. Good advice. Is it? It's excellent advice. It's not going to come to you in any one way. How one person discovers their joy, their bliss, their passion, their path is not going to be the way that you find yours. Rayanne. Yeah, exactly. Like Rayanne. Like for me, it's like, what was your big break? Well, I didn't have a big break.
I had thousands of seemingly insignificant moments that tap themselves together that I wasn't even able to look at or consider until I looked behind me as the decades wore on. Oh, that was a meaningful moment or that was a meaningful moment. So even when you think you're in the shit, you could be standing right smack dab in the middle of a very meaningful crossroads in your life, but you don't get to know everything.
until you get a little further up the hill. But you don't see it when you're in it. Embrace the unknown. Oh, exactly. There's nothing. This is an adventure. This is an adventure. I don't know anything about parenting. I don't have kids, but I was a kid. And I know for me, one of the most important things my mom and dad did for me was to let me fail and to not remove my obstacles. A lot of parents are picking up things that are in their kid's way.
There was that whole thing just before COVID of some of those famous actresses that I won't name, but they were paying for their kids to go get into university and they were paying for their kids to do that bullshit. And they all ended up getting fined and it was a big debacle. But they just thought, oh, I'm going to get my kid into this program. I'm going to get them into this program.
And that really turned into a really, maybe a teaching moment, not even for the kids, but for the parents. Stop living their lives for them and stop removing the obstacles.
My mom would say to me, well, you did it. You're going to have to figure out how to get out of it. And Kelly, in the event that you're maybe finding yourself like bored with your day to day right now, switch it up, take some risks, do some things you've never done before. Even if it's like taking a pottery class, like whatever it is, it doesn't matter. Switch up your surroundings and you'll find something that lights you up. My mom took medical terminology.
when I was a teenager at the college, at Mount Royal College, every Wednesday night. I said, why are you taking that? I don't know. I just want to get out of the house. I thought it would be interesting to know what all the isms are and the ologies and that. Off she went. She had her big, big binder that she brought home every night. My mom. Just remember the twists and turns are okay. The twists are the only thing. The twists are your life, not the landing pad. The twists, that's
That's the life. That's what builds character. That's what makes you who you are. By not getting it right, you're building. Those are the foundations of who you are as a person. What did you want to be when you were growing up, Sarah? A dentist. Oh, for Jesus. I'm not kidding. For real. And I think it stems from like loving. And when I say loving, I mean like I was excited to go to the dentist. I still to this day go to the same pediatric dentist I went to when I was four years old. And every time I waltz in, he's like, he's like, my radio girl.
And I'm like, remember when I wanted to be you? How old is your dentist now? He's got to be on the brink of retirement. Dr. Bambasit. And he's still trying to set me up with a nice Jewish man and like, you know, twist my arm to come to synagogue every weekend. I'm like, dating someone. Thanks, Dr. Bambasit. See you in six months. Wow. How's it going with your boyfriend? Everything's good. We're approaching busy summer season and we have some plans to travel ourselves. I'm taking him to Nashville for the first time in May. So we're excited. How long have you been going out with this guy?
This summer will be like two years official, but you got to remember that like almost 15 years of before that where we were just like best friends. So you're best friends. Boy, that is something else. The old naked with the best friends scenario.
What's his name? It's Mark. Is Mark Jewish? Mark is not Jewish, but Mark really enjoys the Jewish traditions. He'll do whatever mom puts on the table. You want some gefilte fish? Gefilte fish. Yeah, we just had Passover, so. So gefilte fish is a what? It's a fish. It's kind of similar to like meatloaf where it's like kind of all mixed up, but it's fish. Oh.
Okay. Yeah. A fish meatloaf. Basically. I'm sorry. This is not your thing. No, no, no. I get it. And matzah. Lots of matzah because you don't eat leavened bread on Passover. It's, oh my God, Jen, you would have laughed so hard. So my family went to the Blue Jays home opener. We always go. My dad has seasoned seats. We've been sitting in the same spot forever. You know, everyone around is family friends. My mother busts out a kosher for Passover bagel.
in the middle of everyone else is eating their hot dogs and other things. And she's just enjoying her egg sandwich on her kosher for Passover bagel in the middle of the dome. Oh, you got to leave her. She's going to survive the end of times. All you heathens with your hot dogs will be gone.
So my dad was like, we got to invite Jan to come to a game. I would love that, Mr. Burke. And I'll be with your mom with my gluten-free bagel. There you go. You should come sometime. That's very sweet. We'll get you out. We'll take you out. I think I saw you just announced a new show in Ontario. Aren't you doing something at the winery at Jackson Triggs? I'm at Jackson Triggs. And then I'm also going to be at a casino. Is
There's a brand new casino in Pickering. Okay. We're going to make something work. We'll figure out some time. I'd go to the opening of a Dairy Queen. You know what I'm saying? Oh, yeah. But no, it's a really, really beautiful entertainment center. People have this idea of casinos from yesteryear. And let's keep in mind that the biggest, most beautiful showrooms on the planet are in Vegas at casinos.
So I think people are running with that model of, yeah, people want to gamble. They want to have a meal. Maybe they want to come and stay in a hotel. So these things that they're building now are far cry from what they looked like 20 years ago. So this new one in Pickering is, you know, state of the art, not a bad seat in the house. And from a musician's point of view, when you walk in and you've got all the bells and whistles and you've got lighting gear, you don't have to, you literally show up with your guitar.
Everything is built in. So from our point of view, there's such great jobs. You don't have a lot of overhead.
people can go do something after the show. Now they can go have a drink. They can do some slots. They can go and have a cheesecake or some, a dinner with friends and they can stay the night. Yeah. So I, I think it's a pretty fantastic model and I'm, I'm really grateful to have the opportunity to do these shows because it's. So how does the summer look for like touring and stuff at this point? You know, you're in the spring. I don't tour as much. I'll do summer festivals. I do one-offs like the Jackson Trigs. I've got,
I've got a festival in Saskatoon. I've got a bunch of speaking engagements. And your golf tournament. Will you perform at that? No, I don't perform at all. We just golf at Silvertip in Canmore. We have breakfast, lunch, and dinner on the hill for that day. And I have dinner afterwards. We have the silent auction and all that stuff goes on. And we raise money for Enviro. So there's still some tickets left. And you can just go on to any of my socials.
and uh sign up for the jan arden classic we got a group of girls going down it's become like a golf trip they're talking about making like team t-shirts and i'm like i don't know guys do we need i would do it people people do they wear matching outfits and stuff at this thing really okay yeah they'll have like red skirts and pink tops and so pick a theme there's people that go all out and uh or they'll have all tart and stuff or okay yeah it's pretty cool
But Silver Tip, God love them, they donate all the green fees back to Enviro's, to the charity. Beautiful. And it's to help at-risk young men and women, just people to overcome opioids and overcome the fentanyl stuff. And there's a very low success rate with that kind of recovery. But Enviro's continually is pushing that.
forward a lot. So yeah, it's a great day. It's a fun day. It's one of the most beautiful, difficult courses you will ever golf in your life. I'm already practicing. We'll put the link in the show notes if anyone wants to see some more information. But before we wrap up today, just because we've been tracking this whole Twitter thing over the last six months, I wanted to bring... Yes, blue check mark. I still have my blue check mark. It's supposed to disappear soon. I do too. Okay.
Which is so weird. So did you see this? NPR quit Twitter. The first of many, I'm sure. So they've got 52 official Twitter feeds. Jesus. They became the first major news organization to go silent. In explaining the decision, they said it was Twitter's decision to first label the network a state-affiliated media. What is that, Russian?
Well, it's the same term that they use for propaganda outlets in Russia and China and all this kind of stuff. So you can see why, you know, they were making this decision. They later labeled it government funded media, which the news organization says is inaccurate and misleading because it's a private nonprofit company. It receives less than 1% of 300 million annually.
from their budget. I just think Elon continues to make just really ignorant, sweeping negative gestures. Whenever you have a democracy, part of having credible journalists, newspapers that give you various viewpoints and freedom of speech and all those things that certainly America holds so dear, three guns. But yeah, when you start screwing with that, you screw with really the fabric of democracy and
And being able to hear stories and to have things reported on in a fair way. And I think you know who the name we shall not name opened that whole can of worms of fake news, fake media, that the media is the bad guy. And it's not. They just don't want anyone telling the truth about them. And it's like the association with being labeled government-funded media is enough for so many people.
dumb people these days, sorry, to say, oh, I can't follow that. If it's government funded, I hate it. I still think at the heart of sweeping things, statements like this is just fear. It's someone exerting their narcissistic, weird idea of power. And money does that to people, that kind of enormous wealth. When you're richer than the government, well, not really, but
And when you have a platform like Twitter, Twitter's starting to get so boring. I use it mostly for the horse stuff. Or to complain about bed skirts. I was laughing at that. Yeah. You know, I don't, I don't like a bed skirt. I just, I think they're dirty. They're dust gathering. Bed skirts are not where it's at.
They're on the floor. Things hide under there. It makes it easier for murderers to be... When they have a bed skirt that you can't even see them. Like, you want to be able to see the clown plainly under your bed. Oh my God, don't...
You want to see the shoe at least hanging out a bed skirt is like. I'm going to have a nightmare tonight. Down under your bed, Sarah. Point being, the NPR thing is interesting, but also like here on Canadian soil, Pierre Polyev did a whole thing, you know, trying to ask Elon Musk to label CBC News that way. And like, well, by definition, yes, government funded media. Sarah, isn't everything government funded?
Education is government funded. Healthcare is government funded. And with the point. Government funded. Banks are government funded. And it's only meant to hurt. It's meant to intimidate you people, the listeners. It's meant to intimidate you. It's meant to scare you. It's meant to say government is big brother. We work as a society because of government. Yeah, there's shitty people sometimes that lead us, but there's also bad.
really great people and great stories and people that work hard on a very local level, a community level. You know, the kind of government, it's not always about the prime minister or the president. It's about the person that's working tirelessly to fill food banks and to get lunch kits done for thousands of kids that their parents can't swing that. That's government. So fuck off.
Elon Musk. And that's all the time we have today. You've been listening to the Jan Arden podcast. If you've heard a few beeps, I think you can only imagine what I've said. We thank you for listening. Hit that subscribe button. You can even give us a few stars. Five would be great. Send us a review. It helps people find our podcast. Send us a voice note. Send us a voicemail. And I'm teasing you, Sarah. Once again, it's been a pleasure talking to you. I'm so glad that Sarah went out of her way so that I could speak to you from ahead in the future.
We've been trying ever since Iceland to find a spot to sit and record. Four days of like, how about now? How about now? Yeah, poor Sarah. I'm like, Sarah, can you get up at 4 a.m. your time to record? She goes, oh, okay. All good. Anyway, thanks for listening. We would love to hear from you and what you want to hear about. But thanks for listening to my trip. It's been fantastic. I'll let you know how Dorset goes. But apparently I'm going to be going to Hampton Court. I'm going on Tuesday. And I'm a fanatic about Henry VIII.
And I'm going to be going to Hampton Court, which was Henry's Castle. And I'm so excited. And next time you hear our voices, don't forget special guest. Melissa Gilbert. Melissa Gilbert is on the next episode. We'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to Lidu. This podcast is distributed by the Women in Media Podcast Network. Find out more at womeninmedia.network.