He Left Wall Street, Cycled the World for Five Years — and Came Back Believing in Humanity I Ep. 197

What happens when you stop following the path you’re supposed to take — and start seeing the world for yourself?

Malcolm Blair, 63, from Saint John, New Brunswick, has lived several lives in one.

He studied at Princeton, worked for Merrill Lynch in Manhattan, entered the commercial fishing business in the North Atlantic, built houses - and then, at 29, walked away from conventional life.

With his girlfriend, two bicycles and a one-way ticket to Glasgow, he set off on what they thought might be a one-year adventure.

They returned to Canada more than five years later.

In this episode of "The Stoic Pirate", Malcolm tells extraordinary stories from that journey: encounters with remarkable kindness and extreme poverty, a situation in Russia where he thought he was living the final 30 seconds of his life, and the terrifying moment in Africa when a man put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

But this conversation is about much more than adventure.

It is about happiness, fear, curiosity, success, failure, taking risks, meeting strangers — and refusing to become cynical.

After seeing both the best and the worst of humanity, Malcolm still believes:

“There’s just as much good in the world as there ever was.”His advice?

“Go and see for yourself.”A conversation about living differently, staying curious - and what it really means to live a successful life.