MEET THE HOST
John Schwenck
Before John Schwenck decided to dive into the creative right-brain world of podcasting, he mostly immersed himself in left-brain driven pursuits in applied quantitative research. With an undergraduate education in Economics from Penn State and a graduate education in Statistics from Texas A&M, Schwenck's main areas of expertise has resided in the computational, machine learning, and artificial intelligence realm. Professionally, he has helped build quantitative solutions across several areas spanning the energy, athletics, biomedical, and financial sectors.
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He grew up on the NJ side of the NYC metropolitan area, but has lived in numerous other states including Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and North Carolina. He aspires to travel to all 50 states before he turns 30. Having such broad exposure to vastly different cultural areas of the country has allowed him to exercise independent judgment on many relevant contemporary issues - a trait he strives to convey in his interview style.
In 2019, Schwenck embarked on a 5,775 mile cycling adventure across North America from Central Park in NYC to Seward, Alaska over the course of 95 days. Despite the incessant rain and other nature-induced setbacks, he learned just how far humans can push themselves with enough mental fortitude.
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There is a certain je ne sais quoi common to all who willingly undertake such adventures; battling the elements of nature, performing at the highest competitive level, and taking monumental risks into the unknown. After hearing story after story of those who achieve the seemingly unachievable, he decided it was time to bring these adventures to life.
The Adventures Less Traveled podcast is a one-man operation; Schwenck is responsible for the entire production from interviews to production to editing and promotion. He sets an exceptionally high bar for himself hoping to give the viewers and listeners the best possible experience.
Favorite Quotes:
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Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing
― Helen Keller
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Integrity is doing the right thing when no one is looking.
― C.S. Lewis
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Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.
― Bruce Lee
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It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.
― Theodore Roosevelt
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You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
― Steve Jobs
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Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
― Rob Siltanen
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Make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more dangerous to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.”
― Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild
