Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast coming at you shirtless,
Speaker 1: severely bug bitten in my case, underwear listening uncast. You
Speaker 1: can't predict anything presented by first, like creating proven versatile
Speaker 1: hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear for
Speaker 1: every hunt. First like go farther, stay longer. All right,
Speaker 1: everybody's the return of the author. Buddy Levy. He's the author.
Speaker 1: He was he was previously way back episode one ninety seven.
Speaker 1: Was it that long ago? Yeah? I was just thinking
Speaker 1: the same thing sitting here a couple of minutes ago,
Speaker 1: the episode Eating Folks in the Arctic. That's a good
Speaker 1: title to tell about the books you came because you
Speaker 1: came in and we talked about Crockett, you bet yeah.
Speaker 1: And wrote a book called American Legend about the life
Speaker 1: of David Crockett. And uh then laborath of Ice was
Speaker 1: a book that I wrote about the Greeley expedition, which
Speaker 1: ended up with some cannibalism involved and you know, grim
Speaker 1: experience just like to It's like, I don't know how
Speaker 1: you can write this stuff. You know, it's funny. I
Speaker 1: got asked by one of my professors a while ago.
Speaker 1: He was like, do you ever write books in which
Speaker 1: no one dies, And I'm like, no, I haven't yet.
Speaker 1: It's just everybody's like their feet falling off, take their
Speaker 1: mittens off in their hands, stuck in their mitten. It's
Speaker 1: just like, oh, man, I could believe you went and
Speaker 1: now you your new books out Empire, Stone and Ice,
Speaker 1: and it's like a bunch more people freezing to death
Speaker 1: and dying, And yeah, I like it. I like to
Speaker 1: see people at up against it, you know, when they
Speaker 1: are um in the elements, having to use their wits
Speaker 1: to survive, you know. And a lot of times, you know,
Speaker 1: the expeditions start out with lofty goals and they're they're
Speaker 1: you know, they're trying for new lands or to reach
Speaker 1: the North Pole or but I always go into them
Speaker 1: knowing this, um the only reason I'm thinking as soon
Speaker 1: as I start the book, I'm like, the only reason
Speaker 1: someone wrote the book, because I can tell this must
Speaker 1: all go to ship. It's not gonna be a big
Speaker 1: book about how it went great well. Endurance though, I
Speaker 1: will say that people who always say, like, you know,
Speaker 1: is this like endurance? You know, um Shackleton's and Arctic Expedition,
Speaker 1: And I go, yeah, it's really like endurance, except in
Speaker 1: endurance everyone lives. In my books, most people die, um,
Speaker 1: which isn't not necessarily true, like maybe half, you know,
Speaker 1: and there's a little bit of a happy ending component. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but if you're willing to get there. It's like a
Speaker 1: half glass full half glass crew half half. He's a
Speaker 1: crew half full crew half. Also, I'm always like, I
Speaker 1: don't want to give spoilers, you know, even though, um,
Speaker 1: when you look at the cover, that's not gonna go
Speaker 1: disastrous and heroic voyage yeah, glass half half the disasters.
Speaker 1: It's an image of a ship that doesn't look like
Speaker 1: it's going anywhere anytime soon. The disasters and heroic right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know it's UM. I really do like stories
Speaker 1: that have um, you know, protagonists and antagonists, and also
Speaker 1: where once things have gone really poorly, then there has
Speaker 1: to be some kind of industrious nous and people who
Speaker 1: figure out, whether it's navigation or whether it's like you know,
Speaker 1: woods craft and how to how to mcgeiver their way
Speaker 1: out of these really dire situations. I just love um.
Speaker 1: And also I guess I'm sort of drawn to the cold.
Speaker 1: You know. This is a second book I've written about
Speaker 1: the Arctic, and I have a third one under contract.
Speaker 1: That's about the going to the North Pole indirigibles. We'll
Speaker 1: get to that later. And well try semi rigid dirigibles
Speaker 1: a k A. Blimp. But yeah, so they tried. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they tried to fly blimps to the North Pole. Um,
Speaker 1: they'll each it didn't end. Well, let's that. Yeah, crashing
Speaker 1: a blimp a couple hundred miles from the North Pole
Speaker 1: is uh not you know, it's not on the usually
Speaker 1: on the flight plan. But yeah, I mean, I just
Speaker 1: there's something about, um, you know, the far North. For
Speaker 1: one thing. Um, I grew up with a dad who
Speaker 1: was a Nordic skier and ski racer, and he used
Speaker 1: to take us out in southern Idaho and you know,
Speaker 1: I would go duck hunting on Silver Creek and it
Speaker 1: would be like below sometimes when I was a little kid,
Speaker 1: you know, and so um, and I guess just being
Speaker 1: in cold places has always kind of um intrigued me.
Speaker 1: The idea of like especially historical um stories where you know,
Speaker 1: they did not necessarily have the kind of gear that
Speaker 1: we have now. In some cases, though, the the Inuit
Speaker 1: Arctic clothing is probably better than what we have um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I just I'm really drawn to um expeditions
Speaker 1: gone awry and then how are they going to get
Speaker 1: out of this? Yeah. One of the things that uh,
Speaker 1: I want to get into with you when we get
Speaker 1: going on it is Um, I've always been a big
Speaker 1: fan of Stephenson, okay, and I always knew that he
Speaker 1: had like a little bit of a fall from grace,
Speaker 1: But I didn't fully understand the fall from grace. And
Speaker 1: I don't know, like you paint him out to be
Speaker 1: a real um. He's the villain of the book, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't like what he does is villain as doesn't
Speaker 1: undo why I why I'm interested in them really. So,
Speaker 1: I'm interested because like his his observations and the things
Speaker 1: that he recorded about the Esca Mo Hunters that he
Speaker 1: spent time with. I mean, he had observations and and
Speaker 1: and um things about life ways and cultural practices that
Speaker 1: I haven't counted anywhere else. I mean, he might have
Speaker 1: been a total like what's in it for me? I'm
Speaker 1: out of here? Uh Yeah, and I'll let you guys
Speaker 1: kind of die. Um. He might be that kind of guy,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't undo some of the insane stuff he did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true, and I mean, I'm glad you brought it
Speaker 1: up because, um, Villa mur Stephenson's just funny. He had
Speaker 1: he was born William and then he changed his name
Speaker 1: back to the Icelandic sounding. Yeah, another score against the guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was Bill Jalmer. So how would you have said
Speaker 1: it villelm Willelmer. He was born William. He was born
Speaker 1: William named Willie. That would annoy the out of Like
Speaker 1: he didn't want to sound American. He wanted to sound
Speaker 1: more authentic for being an ex you know and explore
Speaker 1: or would be uh, you know, Arctic legend having a
Speaker 1: name like Amondson or Nonsen or freach Off you know, um,
Speaker 1: which is but yeah, he it was funny because he
Speaker 1: was born William. He changed his name back to the
Speaker 1: Icelandic spelling um and uh. But his he was his
Speaker 1: people called him staff. You know, it was easier than
Speaker 1: pronouncing Villemer. You know. But the guy I used to
Speaker 1: hang out with, the guy Matt peel logs for log
Speaker 1: Homes and another log Peeler. He's like I would always
Speaker 1: tell you about his name is bear Paw. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't think that it probably is no but yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right. I mean the guy is what he's really complex. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know because the this book Empire at weiss
Speaker 1: Stone deals mostly with the period that just has to
Speaker 1: do with the Canadian Arctic Expedition. Um. You know, his
Speaker 1: action in and around this particular expedition are the ones
Speaker 1: that I primarily deal with treat But you are a
Speaker 1: strange behavior man. Yeah, I mean he would. You were
Speaker 1: absolutely right that if you've taken in totality the bulk
Speaker 1: of this guy's work, you know, Um, he was very
Speaker 1: influential in in understanding how one how it was possible
Speaker 1: in really small teams to live in the Inuit or
Speaker 1: a new Piet way. Um. The problem I think he
Speaker 1: ends up having is that he's trying to do an
Speaker 1: expedition that is of a much bigger scale, uh, involving
Speaker 1: you know, multiple ships, fifteen scientists, and so it sort
Speaker 1: of went against his core principle, which is like if
Speaker 1: you if you were in a small team on skis
Speaker 1: or snow shoes, and you know, with sledges, self contained,
Speaker 1: you're going eating just what you encounter and living essentially
Speaker 1: off the land, You're going to be able to do
Speaker 1: better than if you're trying to take you know, whole
Speaker 1: bunches of people who may or may not have a
Speaker 1: lot of experience, uh, in ships, you know, in very
Speaker 1: uncertain waters. And then that's when things go wrong, you know.
Speaker 1: Um and so, yeah, I think, um, he's a really
Speaker 1: complicated figure, and I struggled a lot with you know,
Speaker 1: how much to villainize him. I have to say, Um,
Speaker 1: so in the in the scope of just what happens
Speaker 1: in this book. You know, some of his actions I
Speaker 1: think were, um, you know, you can't really square it
Speaker 1: with like the what he should have done. It was
Speaker 1: self seeking. We'll cover. Yeah. I got a quiz question
Speaker 1: for you. Okay, what was Stephenson's favorite wild game? Um,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go with ru or bearded seal. Wolf. Wolf
Speaker 1: really like more than anything else. Wolf my favorite. One
Speaker 1: of my favorite Stephens and meals. He talks about in
Speaker 1: My Life with the Eskimo as they find a whale,
Speaker 1: beat a beached whale and its tongue is dried out
Speaker 1: but it still looks good. They cut its tongue out.
Speaker 1: He talks about how they had to boil it and
Speaker 1: change the water multiple times to get all the salt
Speaker 1: out of it, and they later learned from the Eskimo that, um,
Speaker 1: that whale has been laying there five years, so it's
Speaker 1: fermented and tempered. Oh man, we should get we gotta
Speaker 1: cover a couple of things real quickly. We should get
Speaker 1: a terminology right. Let me tell you a story. I
Speaker 1: was on now Nevak Island, Okay with the chupa Eskimo,
Speaker 1: and I said to a chupick Eskimo, I said, hey, uh,
Speaker 1: I noticed you guys say chupick eskimo. Uh what like
Speaker 1: what you like a white guy like me to call you?
Speaker 1: And he goes, well, if I'm if I'm not an eskimo,
Speaker 1: what am I? I just I said, I'm just checking, man,
Speaker 1: because there's a lot of confusion about the whole in
Speaker 1: New Eskimo thing. And he's like, I've never heard anybody
Speaker 1: call me a chupick into it. He hadn't know what
Speaker 1: did he call himself chupick eskimo, big eskimo. So there's
Speaker 1: a there's this kind of thing. I think that like,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of confusion around the terms. And now
Speaker 1: it's anytime. It's just one of those situations where um,
Speaker 1: maybe I'm like, okay, maybe he can. He'll say it,
Speaker 1: but it's not cool for me to say it. He's like,
Speaker 1: if you're not gonna call me that, I don't know
Speaker 1: what you're gonna call me. It's like that. We had
Speaker 1: the Native American guests and we asked him, is it
Speaker 1: Indian cool? And he's like, yeah, but for some it's not,
Speaker 1: you know, so maybe it's Yeah. I noticed that in
Speaker 1: the in the beginning of your book, You're like, I'm
Speaker 1: using Eskimo because all the journals that was like that
Speaker 1: was at the time, like when we're talking, and that's
Speaker 1: what that's. So that's the term I'm gonna stick with
Speaker 1: in my book though, Right, these are like people of
Speaker 1: different tribes and many of them now go by into it. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a really good point. And you know, so I
Speaker 1: actually have that disclaimer in the in the open on
Speaker 1: one of the first pages because um, but so the um,
Speaker 1: you know, the term for most of the people that
Speaker 1: were on this expedition would be um Inuit or you know, Inupiat,
Speaker 1: and so it depends a bit on where they're from,
Speaker 1: you know, and and so I think it's important to distinguish.
Speaker 1: But it got a little bit clunky. UM too. That's
Speaker 1: why I wanted to just use the word eskimo, because
Speaker 1: they were using using it. Yeah, though, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it is important to be sensitive to what people actually
Speaker 1: like to be called. That's why I'm outline for you
Speaker 1: that I just asked a person rather than guess right
Speaker 1: it was it was an unexpected reply on his part. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think. Um, and so you know, for the most part,
Speaker 1: the people that we're dealing with that went on the
Speaker 1: expedition who came with the family, who came with Stephenson
Speaker 1: and he picked up near Barrow, they were yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and so um they and there were there were four
Speaker 1: mainly and then this other were five who originally went
Speaker 1: on the expedition, right, what they there's a point we
Speaker 1: gotta okay, this is the last thing we're gonna do. Okay,
Speaker 1: and then we're gonna start from the beginning. This last
Speaker 1: thing we're gonna do. Though. Uh, once you crossed the
Speaker 1: Baring Strait, okay, so in places its what fifty seven
Speaker 1: miles and all of a sudden you're in Siberia. Um
Speaker 1: was that a completely different sort of like tribal like
Speaker 1: like once you cross the straight would you would you
Speaker 1: find are people who were a new piat or is
Speaker 1: it a different who totally different tribal history and different groups. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a really interesting question and a good one. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're going up, they are looking at
Speaker 1: the map to the left, you know, Russian Siberia, um
Speaker 1: like church Key people and chochooch Key and then you
Speaker 1: know to the right Alaska and in Um Canada you
Speaker 1: know um Inuit a new piat um and so like,
Speaker 1: and that was it's really interesting because there were some
Speaker 1: of the um Native members of the expedition were like
Speaker 1: freaking out when they realized they were gonna be landing
Speaker 1: on the Siberian shores. They're like, you know, my people
Speaker 1: have told me you land there, like you don't come back,
Speaker 1: they will kill us. And you know, they just had
Speaker 1: some of it was just lower that they had heard um.
Speaker 1: But in the in they end up being treated very
Speaker 1: well by the indigenous people of of the Siberian side. UM.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's it's uh, it's an interesting question, you know.
Speaker 1: H And Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams. He's out hunting. He's
Speaker 1: out hunting with Askima hunters and they're off Alaska and
Speaker 1: they're hunting wal wrists, and he says for a while,
Speaker 1: he goes, they were technically in Russia. Yeah, a little
Speaker 1: bit of fluidity about, you know, to the to them,
Speaker 1: I doubt they were talking about that being one continent
Speaker 1: and its being another continent, right, I mean you can
Speaker 1: be on a floating berg and all of the sudden,
Speaker 1: which which the people in this book end up on,
Speaker 1: you know, and like a mile square chunk of ice floating,
Speaker 1: and you know at some point you like are crossing
Speaker 1: into other character you know of Russia now, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden it's like, oh, these people are different,
Speaker 1: while we're on a new continent. Yeah, trying to not die, alright.
Speaker 1: Some backup was because I got I got to talk
Speaker 1: about a funny story. Um, the guy wrote in as
Speaker 1: they do, so this, this guy writes into the letter,
Speaker 1: UM says nothing to do with the Arctic exploration. He's
Speaker 1: got a broad their name Murray. It's a good name
Speaker 1: for a story. It's a good way to start a story.
Speaker 1: His brother Murray. He's just like, yeah, I don't know, man.
Speaker 1: His brother Murray is driving through the night on the
Speaker 1: Archery deer hunt when his truck ran out of gas.
Speaker 1: His truck and his gas can were old okay. The
Speaker 1: truck's phil spout had the flap on it, and his
Speaker 1: gas can spot was made for regular gas, so the
Speaker 1: spout diameter prevented him from filling the tank directly from
Speaker 1: the can. You can picture this, right, I keep I'm
Speaker 1: gonna point out with the listeners in my truck, I
Speaker 1: keep a little funnel that's well adapted to my A
Speaker 1: little male. Yeah, like a little funnel well adapted to
Speaker 1: my truck's intake. He took an arrow out of his
Speaker 1: quiver to prop open the flap and was gonna spill
Speaker 1: gas from the can into the opening. Totally makes sense.
Speaker 1: With the arrow holding the flap open, he reached for
Speaker 1: the can from the bed of his truck and promptly
Speaker 1: pushed the arrow's knock into his eye. He pulled the
Speaker 1: arrow out, filled the tank, felt okay, proceeded on his trip.
Speaker 1: The next morning, his eye was swollen shot, so he
Speaker 1: had it for the hospital. He was examined by the
Speaker 1: doctor who took X rays and determined that no permanent
Speaker 1: damage was done. Over the next year, Murray had recurring
Speaker 1: sinus infections, which you never had before. He'd take the
Speaker 1: prescribed antibiotics, get better, only to have the infections returned.
Speaker 1: Now here's what this story takes. You can probably see
Speaker 1: where this is going. But I need to I always
Speaker 1: want to call our resident doctor Adam Alan. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: haven't talked to him. We haven't had reason to talk
Speaker 1: to him. Like one day, I'll came go on with
Speaker 1: Murray here. One day, a while at work, Murray had
Speaker 1: something caught in his throat, began to cough. He coughed
Speaker 1: up a pocket of mucus that had something hard encased.
Speaker 1: When he wiped the object clean, he found the knock
Speaker 1: of the arrow, which had come loose, got into his
Speaker 1: eye socket, worked its way through his sinus cavity, and
Speaker 1: then out the back of his throat. In a year's time,
Speaker 1: I got a lot of questions. Didn't show up on
Speaker 1: the X ray. Like I, I wear contacts, So I
Speaker 1: just don't know how. But you hear about those dudes
Speaker 1: and get shot by nailguns, don't know it? Sure? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's and that doctor that broke that file off up
Speaker 1: in my mouth. My My other question is how did
Speaker 1: he not notice the knock was missing from the arrow?
Speaker 1: I can totally see how you would not toss hitting
Speaker 1: the bed of the truck, or you think that it
Speaker 1: like you'd think that it whatever in all the fos
Speaker 1: m hmm. I wonder if he kept it first to
Speaker 1: write a book about that. It's a mystery. Yeah, good
Speaker 1: but for you man, But yeah, no plastic showed up
Speaker 1: on the X ray. I don't know, man, I give
Speaker 1: it a fifty fifty. Phil's not buying I'm not buying it.
Speaker 1: You're not this guy, Phil saying, this guy's bald faced liar.
Speaker 1: I think this guy might come down to beat Phil's ass.
Speaker 1: He's risking that for sure. We gotta talk to Allen.
Speaker 1: You call me a liar. Bill, FIL's gonna know when
Speaker 1: he hears that from across the park. When he hears
Speaker 1: that from across the parking is gonna know that his
Speaker 1: theater days or through right, and it's a better outcome
Speaker 1: than and if the other end went in with the
Speaker 1: broad hand. You know that. You cough that up. Here's
Speaker 1: here's a correction that came in that this guy is
Speaker 1: no listen. I'm gonna read the correction. During episode three
Speaker 1: with Cole Wetzel, Steve makes an error when discussing the
Speaker 1: capitalization of wildlife species common names. Quoting here, Steve was
Speaker 1: correct when he states that black bear would not be
Speaker 1: capitalized when using a sentence okay, and also that proper
Speaker 1: nouns such as English would be capitalized when used like
Speaker 1: an English sparrow. I was talking about how I need
Speaker 1: to do a seminar for my colleagues because I will
Speaker 1: oftentimes have to go through something incorrect where someone capitalizes
Speaker 1: black bear. Okay. However, he is incorrect that sparrow would
Speaker 1: not be capitalized when using when utilizing a species official
Speaker 1: names such as English sparrow. Still quoting the American Ornithological
Speaker 1: Society states on their website, English names of birds are
Speaker 1: capitalized in keeping with standard or ornithological practice as such unquote.
Speaker 1: As such, the official common names of all birds species
Speaker 1: such as whooping crane or red cocketed woodpecker would be
Speaker 1: capitalized when written. If using more generic descriptors such as
Speaker 1: woodpeckers or eagles. When describing groups of words, the lower
Speaker 1: case version should be employed. He goes on to say,
Speaker 1: I know Steve prides himself I'm being correct, as evidence
Speaker 1: by every time he argues about a miss trivia question.
Speaker 1: So I just wanted to provide a helping hand. I
Speaker 1: have one word for this person. Oh yeah. First off, yeah,
Speaker 1: first off, the American Ornithological Society doesn't get to decide
Speaker 1: what's proper English. He could have like, listen, it makes
Speaker 1: no sense to me that he he agrees with you
Speaker 1: that black bear would not be capitalized either word, but
Speaker 1: English sparrow both would be capitalized. Red cockaded woodpecker would
Speaker 1: be capitalized, which is just like black bear. Yeah, how
Speaker 1: about like like, don't get your don't get your grammar
Speaker 1: from wherever you got it. Also, there's a phenomena And
Speaker 1: I love this guy. Thanks for listening. I'm not hacking
Speaker 1: on him. I love It's great that he wrote in
Speaker 1: not hacking on him. I'd rather he wrote in that didn't.
Speaker 1: But you're just wrong, buddy. The out point out is, um, So,
Speaker 1: I know some people that when they're telling me stuff,
Speaker 1: I'm always like, how could they have gotten that information?
Speaker 1: And I think that some people proceed all their Internet
Speaker 1: searches with the truth about We've known a couple of
Speaker 1: people like that, Like like, if you're in the search
Speaker 1: like a picture that you're like, I'm gonna do a
Speaker 1: little research on Hillary Clinton. Okay, are you type in
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton and you could read that stuff. Are you
Speaker 1: type in the truth about Hillary Clinton and read that stuff?
Speaker 1: It's like because you're sort of like, there's there's two,
Speaker 1: you know, versions out there. So I think maybe he
Speaker 1: wrote in the truth about capitalizing bird. Um, here's another
Speaker 1: half correction there. They were back with you, buddy, So
Speaker 1: hang tight there. But as a writer, you're probably interested
Speaker 1: in that very much though that kind of fluid. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think language changes over time, and you
Speaker 1: know it, rules are not static, but you know, there
Speaker 1: are certain things where you would want to use a
Speaker 1: Latin word for something and you know, um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: you can get in the weeds on this stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You ever read Lewis and Clark journals? How that was
Speaker 1: randomly capitalized for whatever reason something different, Like in the
Speaker 1: same paragraph it'll be spelled to day. I just decided
Speaker 1: to capitalize beyond all of a sudden the middle of
Speaker 1: Uh okay, here's the guy. This is this is one
Speaker 1: helfle Finger is not here. This is one for helfl Finger.
Speaker 1: Here's a wrinkle that crossed my mind, and the ongoing
Speaker 1: I added the word ongoing. I misquoted him. He's saying
Speaker 1: here's a wrinkle that crossed my mind and the white
Speaker 1: tail white tailed deer debate. I'm adding that's an ongoing
Speaker 1: debate with our buddy helfle Finger. He asked, has anyone
Speaker 1: brought up how big horn sheet big horn sheet is
Speaker 1: the accepted name. It looks to me like it's grammatically
Speaker 1: the same as white tail deer, but no one insists
Speaker 1: that you call them either big horned sheep or just
Speaker 1: big horns one what halfle finger thinks about that big
Speaker 1: horns is pretty common. I feel like, yeah, but I
Speaker 1: get what he's saying about the comparison to white tailed
Speaker 1: and big horn I bet if you went back in
Speaker 1: time you would find that they probably once upon a time,
Speaker 1: helpful finger, I'll have some smartass know what all things
Speaker 1: to say about this, But I bet if you went
Speaker 1: back in time it was like big you'd see an
Speaker 1: example of big hyphen horned. It was before it was
Speaker 1: officially named. Would just described these animals as that deer
Speaker 1: is white tailed, that sheep is big horned. But now
Speaker 1: and then it just becomes like buddy was ting becomes
Speaker 1: something entirely on its own after a while, So you'd
Speaker 1: have to look at what um, yeah, to take about
Speaker 1: three seconds to go look like, what is it's show name?
Speaker 1: I think it's official name is Big Horn Sheep. But
Speaker 1: this guy is not wrong like the last guy. When
Speaker 1: you were a kid, did you watch Happy Days reruns?
Speaker 1: You everyone Fonzie I had to apologize but he uh yeah,
Speaker 1: he couldn't. He couldn't pronounced like I was, alright, buddy,
Speaker 1: how do we begin? Um? Let me set the scene.
Speaker 1: One of the things I like most about this book
Speaker 1: is it you're gonna take off after this? Is that? Um?
Speaker 1: When when I give at at times, i'll give a
Speaker 1: list of like ten ten my ten favorite books, Ten
Speaker 1: greatest books for outdoor enthusiasts. My Life with the Eskimo
Speaker 1: is always on there. It's amazing and me get like
Speaker 1: Arctic Dreams, it's like coming into the Country by John McPhee,
Speaker 1: like the greatest greatest book for outdoorsmans. Okay, be like
Speaker 1: coming into the Country for John McPhee. My Life with
Speaker 1: the Eskimo by Stephenson, Arctic Dreams by very Low pez Um.
Speaker 1: Journals of Lewis and Clark explain why I don't want
Speaker 1: to get into it. Um, But it's always on there.
Speaker 1: I I love it that this book begins and Stephenson
Speaker 1: is like literally finishing his manuscript of My Life with
Speaker 1: the Eskimo. Right, Yeah, it's amazing because and by the way,
Speaker 1: I think that contributes to some of the problems that
Speaker 1: end up occurring. Um. But we can get into that.
Speaker 1: So give us the year and why, like worth's going
Speaker 1: on in America and right so you know, it's night
Speaker 1: this story Empire of Isostone begins around nineteen thirteen. Is
Speaker 1: the expedition in nineteen thirteen to nineteen eighteen ultimately, but
Speaker 1: Stephenson has just come back from being in the Arctic
Speaker 1: for like four years, right, um, and he had been
Speaker 1: on the nine five He did an expedition in in Iceland,
Speaker 1: and then he was on the north coast of Alaska
Speaker 1: and the Mackenzie River area, and he was really interested
Speaker 1: in the ethnology and studying, um, the native people's there,
Speaker 1: and also you know, My Life with the Eskimo pretty
Speaker 1: much suggests that, Um. His theory was that a small
Speaker 1: group of people, um, of white people with you know,
Speaker 1: native assistance and adopting native life ways could survive for
Speaker 1: an indefinite amount of time in the Arctic north and
Speaker 1: even on the ice right and and moving between land
Speaker 1: masses and and out on the Polar Sea as hunting,
Speaker 1: hunting and eating seals primarily and walrus and you know,
Speaker 1: back on land caribou and Arctic fox and stuff. And
Speaker 1: he wasn't like what's cool about him two is he
Speaker 1: wasn't sort of chasing the North Pole. He was just
Speaker 1: trying to find uncontacted peoples and hang out with them, right.
Speaker 1: He he was a different, uh, you know, a different
Speaker 1: kind of explorer, more of you know, a scientist explorer
Speaker 1: rather than trying to be the first at something. Though, um,
Speaker 1: we can get into this a little bit later. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, he he was eyeballing the idea that this
Speaker 1: place Crocker Land that Perry had said, Robert Perry had
Speaker 1: said he'd seen from the east coast or the west
Speaker 1: coast of Greenland that there was a landmass above Alaska
Speaker 1: that was undiscovered. So that was kind of in the
Speaker 1: back pocket, right, was this happening at kind of the
Speaker 1: tail end of Arctic exploration like started in saying the
Speaker 1: mid eighteen hundreds with search for the Northwest West passage, right,
Speaker 1: and so, but also at the very tail end of
Speaker 1: I mean Peery in nineteen o nine had claimed cook
Speaker 1: and oh eight in period nineteen o nine had had
Speaker 1: claimed to the North Pole. So that was sort of
Speaker 1: other even though it was contested, that was sort of
Speaker 1: off the you know, off the bucket list for people.
Speaker 1: They're like that one the North Pole's you know, been bagged.
Speaker 1: Now that ultimately becomes contested played out, Yeah, we don't
Speaker 1: need to go there, um, but there you know. So
Speaker 1: Villa Almer's will Helmer Stephenson was a very serious scientist, right,
Speaker 1: and so he was wanted to um prove in a
Speaker 1: way that you could live, that that small groups of
Speaker 1: people um could live off the ice and land um
Speaker 1: for an indefinite period of time. Now, make all your clothes,
Speaker 1: everything you need and and you know, if you're smart,
Speaker 1: bring along uh Inuit people a seamstress and hunters um,
Speaker 1: because their skills in these things was unparalleled. Right. Um.
Speaker 1: So you know, in nineteen o Sevenson had been he
Speaker 1: had just come back from like four years in the Arctic,
Speaker 1: and he he kind of he did something really interesting.
Speaker 1: So there was this notion and he perpetuated it of
Speaker 1: the blonde Eskimo. So he came back in and claims
Speaker 1: that he's contacted while he was out there for four years,
Speaker 1: that he's contacted these descendants of Laife Ericsson who are
Speaker 1: blonde haired, blue eyed Eskimos or Inuit people's and you know,
Speaker 1: because there was a mystery of what happened to the
Speaker 1: to Laife Ericson like up in Greenland, right right, And
Speaker 1: so then the idea was that like descendants of laf
Speaker 1: Ericsson had um made their way to the west and
Speaker 1: over to the islands north of Alaska and the Yukon
Speaker 1: Coronation Goal Victorial Islands, and that they were living, that
Speaker 1: these were descendants of laf Ericson. Now this made headlines
Speaker 1: right New York Times, National News, and Stephenson um kind
Speaker 1: of went with it like he just rolled with it.
Speaker 1: He didn't. He said he had encountered these people and
Speaker 1: that he wanted to go back and study them more.
Speaker 1: And so part of it is that not true? Well,
Speaker 1: it's it's not true. He was trying to milk the
Speaker 1: idea that they were descendants of Laife Ericson. What what
Speaker 1: is more probable, and Ahmondson talks about this later, is
Speaker 1: that you know that more much more recent European um
Speaker 1: explorers intermingled with the native people there. But Stephenson was
Speaker 1: kind of rolling with this myth that these were descendants
Speaker 1: of Laife Ericson and they were called blonde Deskot. The
Speaker 1: had died out, they had just integrated into yeah, into
Speaker 1: a culture, and so he used that as a marketing tool. Right.
Speaker 1: So he gets back after four years in the Arctic
Speaker 1: and he put this trip together, the Canadian Arctic Expedition,
Speaker 1: which is my book is about. He he whips this
Speaker 1: thing together in a matter of months. You know, sometimes
Speaker 1: expeditions of this magnitude, with multiple ships and twenty scientists,
Speaker 1: you know, they take years to put together. Right. So
Speaker 1: Stephenson rolls up to Seattle in n perpetuating this on
Speaker 1: Eskimo story. The headlines eat it up. He flies over
Speaker 1: or sails over to Europe and goes to like an
Speaker 1: international polar conference that starts talking up like this new expedition.
Speaker 1: He's going to go try to find these blonde Eskimos
Speaker 1: and um right about them. And also that there's there
Speaker 1: was a theory that there that Perry had seen this
Speaker 1: place called Crocker Land, which was a land mass above Alaska.
Speaker 1: It was undiscovered, right, So those two things were kind
Speaker 1: of the impetus for UM getting this expedition put together.
Speaker 1: So Stephenson goes over to Europe, makes a couple of presentations.
Speaker 1: All the while he's talking to the Canadian government. He's
Speaker 1: trying to get financing from the American Museum of Natural
Speaker 1: History the Canadian government, and within like three or four
Speaker 1: months he cobbles together this UM expedition that's going to
Speaker 1: have the most scientists. I mean, this is arguable, some
Speaker 1: will argue it, but the most scientists that have ever
Speaker 1: been on a polar single polar voyage UM three ships, UM,
Speaker 1: one of the greatest ice navigators in history. This guy,
Speaker 1: Robert Bartlett from Newfoundland, suit total badass. And then you
Speaker 1: know he's cobbling this thing together. The thing that I
Speaker 1: found really amusing is that while so they take off,
Speaker 1: they he gets all these scientists together, he gets the
Speaker 1: money together from UM, the Canadian government, he agrees to
Speaker 1: become uh you know, he was he was an Icelandic
Speaker 1: American because he was he was born in Manitoba, and
Speaker 1: then they moved to North Dakota when he was like
Speaker 1: three after a couple of his family members died in
Speaker 1: the flood, and then the family moved to Nodak and
Speaker 1: then so the Canadian government is like, well, we'll pay
Speaker 1: if you become a Canadian citizen. So he was just
Speaker 1: totally flexible. He's like, I'll do whatever. You what man
Speaker 1: signing the papers, it becomes a Canadian. So he's in
Speaker 1: icelandic American, Canadian, you know. And uh so he cobbles
Speaker 1: this thing together. They take the Carlak, the ship that's
Speaker 1: like unsuited really for the task at hand, like a
Speaker 1: whaling whaling boat. I mean it was a you know,
Speaker 1: and it was Carlaca is the allusion word for fish,
Speaker 1: and they it was used in Seattle in the in
Speaker 1: the salmon industry, and it was a whaling vessel. Was
Speaker 1: the boats about a hundred and twenty nine feet and
Speaker 1: uh so ship. Yeah, but I mean, what what's so
Speaker 1: bizarre about this is? And I love it in a
Speaker 1: way about Stephenson, he's so badass. He's like Bartlett. He
Speaker 1: ends up in listing this guy Bob Bartlett, who's who
Speaker 1: had been The backstory on Bartlett is that he had
Speaker 1: been on two attempts to the North Pole with Peery
Speaker 1: as the captain of the S. S. Roosevelt. Like Per's
Speaker 1: iron clad super badass ice breaking expedition vessel right, and
Speaker 1: so Bartlett had gone almost in the North Pole. He
Speaker 1: got sent back because UH Perry took Matthew Henson instead
Speaker 1: for the final hundred and fifty miles. But he was
Speaker 1: already a known um explorer and had one like the
Speaker 1: Hubbard medal. He was a big deal. But Stephenson ends
Speaker 1: up like, Okay, I'm gonna use this guy, UM, and
Speaker 1: I'll meet you in the car look um up in
Speaker 1: in Nome. So but Stephenson takes like a cruise pleasure ship,
Speaker 1: the s S. Victoria, and he's on the ship heading
Speaker 1: toward or they're all gonna meet in Nome UH, and
Speaker 1: he's he's like writing the manuscript. He's got a secretary
Speaker 1: with him. He's finishing the book like my life with
Speaker 1: the Eskimo, thinking about how I'm going to turn this
Speaker 1: into a best seller. While this new expedition UH is
Speaker 1: supposed to be taking off in like a month. So
Speaker 1: he arrives on a you know, on a separate ship
Speaker 1: UM and then rolls up to g Nome and it's
Speaker 1: like okay, well let's go now, manuscript and then they
Speaker 1: take the manuscript and he how right up to the
Speaker 1: deadline was he was he a popular writer well a time, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean he was becoming, um, like an Arctic expert. Right.
Speaker 1: But so this thing he had spent four years, Um,
Speaker 1: he was just dropping this manuscript that was going to
Speaker 1: be like my life with the Eskimo, how you know,
Speaker 1: here's how it's done. And then but that was gonna
Speaker 1: be published like probably when he came back or handled
Speaker 1: by other people so that he would come back to uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a best seller. And he's got the follow up, right,
Speaker 1: he's got the sequel. Um, that's what I've been doing.
Speaker 1: Labruth Device, Empire Advice and then Realm of Ice and uh. Um.
Speaker 1: But what I found so interesting about him is like,
Speaker 1: so he was he was multidimensional. You know, he already
Speaker 1: had lived um in small you know, with small groups,
Speaker 1: um in like the Mackenzie River Delta for years and
Speaker 1: living pretty much off the ice and land and sea ice,
Speaker 1: and so he had um, he was very good at that.
Speaker 1: I think what he was less skillful at is organizing
Speaker 1: an expedition of the magnitude of the Canadian Arctic Expedition. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these guys, you know it goes to ship so unbelievably fast.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. It's like, I mean literally like they leave
Speaker 1: and then then it went to ship. They leave and
Speaker 1: they get all there's you know, like they leave um esquimal.
Speaker 1: They end up going to Nome, and then Bartlett, the
Speaker 1: captain of who's from Newfoundland, he's like, this ship, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not really suited. This guy has been the former
Speaker 1: captain of the Roosevelt, like super bad vessel, right, and
Speaker 1: he's in this this uh small ship with I think
Speaker 1: the um he called the engine. He said, it has
Speaker 1: the power of a coffee pot. It's just not I mean.
Speaker 1: And by the way, these were not um. They weren't
Speaker 1: technically icebreakers anyway, but they had to be nimble and
Speaker 1: they had to be sheathed in hardwood so that you're
Speaker 1: going to encounter ice. Right. The problem is that when
Speaker 1: they took off, when they Bartlett finally stops and says, okay,
Speaker 1: we need to do some work. We got a retrofit
Speaker 1: to what time of year did they Well, so they're
Speaker 1: taking off in July and you know in that in
Speaker 1: that region, the window is pretty short anyway for navigable waters.
Speaker 1: Um and there they were trying to make it from
Speaker 1: uh Nome after they got through the Bearing Street and everything.
Speaker 1: They're trying to make it from Gnome over to Herschel Island,
Speaker 1: which is above Um the Canadian yukon Um to the east,
Speaker 1: so just you know, some a few hundred miles or something,
Speaker 1: and the goal was to get there and then they
Speaker 1: were gonna unload all the ships and like retrofit everything
Speaker 1: and then get get it together from there. And there's
Speaker 1: a sort of ongoing joke among the members of the ship.
Speaker 1: They're like, because what happens is they leave so fast
Speaker 1: um because the weather window is closing that they don't
Speaker 1: have all They've got three ships, the car Look which
Speaker 1: is the flagship of the expedition, the Alaska, and the
Speaker 1: mary Sacks, and they're all going to be used in
Speaker 1: different ways, but they have all the wrong equipment on
Speaker 1: the wrong and the wrong members on the wrong ships.
Speaker 1: So Stephenson is like, we'll sort that out at Herschel
Speaker 1: Island and they end up like it becomes a joke
Speaker 1: among the men. Barlett says it a few times. They're like,
Speaker 1: we can't find the you know, we can't find certain
Speaker 1: scientific tools, and they're like, you got a geologist on
Speaker 1: the car Look and he needs other equipment that's on
Speaker 1: the Mary Sacks, which, by the way, after they all
Speaker 1: leave their separated within a day, the armada is completely separated,
Speaker 1: and they never see the Alaska or the Merry Sacks again.
Speaker 1: The people of the calling the Carlic, don't you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like it's like like I want I want to
Speaker 1: make sure people understand. It's be like, let's say you
Speaker 1: have a big group of friends. You're all going to
Speaker 1: go on some kind of monster hunting trip, road trip,
Speaker 1: hunting trip, and you're all planning on being in different
Speaker 1: areas hunting different ship. But you're in such a eagerness
Speaker 1: to get out of there and get some miles behind
Speaker 1: you that you just load everything randomly into truck and
Speaker 1: you're not even in the truck you're supposed to be
Speaker 1: in for where you're ultimately going, and then you pull
Speaker 1: out of the parking lot and never see each other again.
Speaker 1: How was the hunt? Well, yeah, so it's it's it's
Speaker 1: really funny you point out, like how quickly this thing
Speaker 1: becomes a debacle. Right, So there Stephenson's on the Carla
Speaker 1: and Captain barlett Or is on the Carla and a
Speaker 1: number of the scientists, right, But then some of them
Speaker 1: are on the Alaska the ray sacks, and they get separated,
Speaker 1: like the day out. So then the ship the Carlick
Speaker 1: gets There was a really really heavy winter ice and
Speaker 1: snow much earlier, so by August early August, they're experiencing
Speaker 1: snow squalls, really zero degree temperatures, and you know they're
Speaker 1: they're starting to encounter big ice pack already, and they're
Speaker 1: they're just like five ten miles off the coast of
Speaker 1: Alaska at this point. Uh, And you know the guy like,
Speaker 1: so there's a bunch of the wrong equipment and a
Speaker 1: bunch of the wrong people are all those ships, and
Speaker 1: then within days, um, they get encased in. So Bartlett
Speaker 1: makes what's kind of a controversial decision, right, So you
Speaker 1: could either in those days there were different theories. You
Speaker 1: could either hug the shoreline, stay close to shore in
Speaker 1: case things got iced up, and then you can make
Speaker 1: it to land like like you ditched the boat, yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: or maybe the boat you find uh enclosed protected bay
Speaker 1: and then you win her there the time the next session.
Speaker 1: But the other approach was to go out farther offshore,
Speaker 1: where often there were bigger open leads and open leads
Speaker 1: of water, and and so Bartlett, after consulting with Stephenson,
Speaker 1: and this becomes kind of controversial because they don't really
Speaker 1: agree on who said what. Bartlett decides to take the
Speaker 1: Boulder choice, which is to go offshore and then head
Speaker 1: east through not you know, weaving through open leads between
Speaker 1: the ice and make it to Harold Island. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: just want to clarify thing here, and you can chime
Speaker 1: in on this. The way you can imagine the polar
Speaker 1: ice is um, it's fracturing all the time and coming
Speaker 1: back together again, and windstorms will blow big chunks away,
Speaker 1: so you you can pick your way through it, and
Speaker 1: then it'll get calm and everything will well together, right,
Speaker 1: and then it might break apart in a different fashion.
Speaker 1: So they're literally like getting stuck in the ice. Then
Speaker 1: they drift for a day and then all of a
Speaker 1: sudden it opens up and they can make some more headway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then they dodge chunk eyes and they get frozen
Speaker 1: into some more ice, and then they realize they're still
Speaker 1: moving because the ice. Then they're stuck in ice that's
Speaker 1: moving right. It's high. It's kind of like going through
Speaker 1: you know, an ice jigsaw puzzle whose pieces are being
Speaker 1: moved around by wind and current. Right, and so there's
Speaker 1: kind of there's a way to weave your way through
Speaker 1: the labyrinth. Um, and you know, you have to make
Speaker 1: headway when these things open and part, and there's like
Speaker 1: a few miles of open water. But the stuff is
Speaker 1: all happening earlier than usual, and so um, they never
Speaker 1: The irony of this is that, like the first thing
Speaker 1: they're trying to do, We're gonna take these three ships leave,
Speaker 1: go over Point Barrow and then head east to this
Speaker 1: place called Herschel Island and meet there. They never even
Speaker 1: do that. So like because the car Now, what ends
Speaker 1: up happening is that the two other ships, the Alaska
Speaker 1: and the mary Sacks, they make it through. But the
Speaker 1: story that I follow concerns itself more with what happens
Speaker 1: to the members of the car. Look, which is the flagship,
Speaker 1: and Stephenson and the Captain Bartlett are both on it,
Speaker 1: so and a bunch of scientists and then an Inuit
Speaker 1: family and um, a couple of hunters. So Barlett Truck
Speaker 1: makes the bold move he's going to go offshore and
Speaker 1: try to make his way north and then up and
Speaker 1: around and meet it at Herschel Island. Within days, they
Speaker 1: are what's called biss set or encased in like a
Speaker 1: mile square of ice, right, so it it sort of
Speaker 1: knits all around them and they're they're like, you know,
Speaker 1: floating iceberg, though it's not like high berg. It's it's
Speaker 1: like a flat flow and it's well then so and
Speaker 1: and then things really go wack. So they hang out
Speaker 1: on the ship like waiting around for a while to
Speaker 1: figure out like what's going to happen, and to really
Speaker 1: important things happen early on UM one is that while
Speaker 1: they're still within striking distance of the northern Alaskan coastline,
Speaker 1: Stephenson in in second week in September, decides, Hey, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go caribou hunting. He basically tells Captain Bartlett, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go cariboo hunting. I'll be gone for about ten
Speaker 1: days to two weeks should no disaster occur. And Barlt's like,
Speaker 1: what you're going caribo hunting? And no, he pieced out heat.
Speaker 1: So there's a whole there's a whole thing that's going
Speaker 1: on here, which is that UM And you know I
Speaker 1: told you I have not really I hate spoilers, but
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, you gotta lay it out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so they're they're frozen in they've been floating in
Speaker 1: kind of a circuitous weaving way. They're not going any
Speaker 1: one direction for very long for a couple for like
Speaker 1: a month. Stephenson's all auntsie because he's like, Okay, my expedition,
Speaker 1: the to other ships are somewhere. I gotta get out
Speaker 1: of here, you know, like I should probably go to
Speaker 1: land Um. And so he says, I'm going caribou hunting
Speaker 1: because under the pretense that they need fresh meat, because
Speaker 1: if they are going to be stuck for a really
Speaker 1: long time on the ship, they're gonna they're gonna they've
Speaker 1: got like a couple of years with how much is
Speaker 1: he really gonna hauld back anyway? That's what I was
Speaker 1: gonna ask. Where they set up for like kind of
Speaker 1: a normal Arctic expedition where they were prepared to be
Speaker 1: there for years, were prepared to be there for maybe
Speaker 1: two years. And they have Pelican because they have like
Speaker 1: they have like presumably former information to base stuff off of,
Speaker 1: like the terror and the Arabis like disappearing, and like
Speaker 1: you think they would they kind of be like man
Speaker 1: hip could go bad out right, So usually you would
Speaker 1: bring more food than you you know, you for a year,
Speaker 1: and then you gotta figure like if they is go
Speaker 1: really poorly, we gotta have even more. But so Stephenson says, um,
Speaker 1: going Caribo hunting. I'm taking these two Inuit hunters can
Speaker 1: be named Jimmy and Jerry, and also the a couple
Speaker 1: of the scientists who were supposed to be on the
Speaker 1: other ships. They're supposed to be doing like ethnological study
Speaker 1: over in above northern Canada. And so he's like, I
Speaker 1: need to take those two guys so that they can
Speaker 1: go where they're supposed to go. And then he brings
Speaker 1: this photographer along, um, this guy named Wilkins, which is
Speaker 1: kind of cool because then you've got this photographic image
Speaker 1: of Stephenson leaving the car. Look like he can't you know,
Speaker 1: he's got the dog sled team and he's like charging
Speaker 1: off and the ship's bailing on his expedition, and there's
Speaker 1: like photographic evidence of him doing it, you know. But
Speaker 1: he says, I'm going hunting and I'll be back, and
Speaker 1: you should probably like big coal fires around the ship
Speaker 1: in case so I can see it so immediately like
Speaker 1: it's just a bad timing, right immediately the freaking whopper
Speaker 1: of a storm comes in. Stephenson gets about like six
Speaker 1: to eight miles and he gets to this little island
Speaker 1: um right above it's called I think I'll find it later.
Speaker 1: But he was walking across the So he's walking across
Speaker 1: the pack ice with dogs led team. He took the
Speaker 1: best dogs too, the best hunters and best and so
Speaker 1: he's like gets to this island and as their camp there,
Speaker 1: a massive storm comes in and by the time the
Speaker 1: like sky is clear, he looks out and the carlak
Speaker 1: is freaking gone, and now it's blining like to thirty
Speaker 1: miles a day on the Arctic drift, just blowing the wind,
Speaker 1: blowing in the wind towards Siberia, right, So he's like,
Speaker 1: where's your ship? Um? So at that point, you know,
Speaker 1: Stephenson makes he has to wait on this island for
Speaker 1: like a week for the for the because now the
Speaker 1: storm also breaks up the ice all around the little
Speaker 1: island is on, so that he there's he's like, there's
Speaker 1: water water, he can't get across um. So he waits
Speaker 1: it out. He's kind of cool. They build like this
Speaker 1: fifteen foot driftwood observation tower where he's up there like looking, dude,
Speaker 1: wears my ship kind of situation, you know. And then
Speaker 1: he just goes to land with these um two INU
Speaker 1: hunters and the photographer and another scientist and he was
Speaker 1: just kind of right, the whole thing off bails he
Speaker 1: so he well, in fairness, he's got it. He's got
Speaker 1: this sort of dance to do because he wants to
Speaker 1: continue doing the scientific work and he knows that two
Speaker 1: of the ships are somewhere. Uh, if he can find them,
Speaker 1: he can maybe re outfit and retrofit and like do
Speaker 1: the and keep doing the science on off the coast
Speaker 1: of Alaska and the Yukon. But as far as the
Speaker 1: carlt goes, he pretty much just puts it out of
Speaker 1: his mind. Um. And then at that point, you know,
Speaker 1: the ship is moving pretty fast toward the northwest and
Speaker 1: it's it's spookily following. Uh. There's a drift that is
Speaker 1: known at that point UM a ship that was captained
Speaker 1: by DeLong And the book that um Hampton Sides wrote
Speaker 1: called In the Kingdom of Ice talks about that journey
Speaker 1: where that that ship got encased in the ice very
Speaker 1: near Wrangel Island where these guys get marooned, and it
Speaker 1: goes for like, I don't know, over a year, and
Speaker 1: and Nonsen, the Norwegian legend, had intentionally encased his ship,
Speaker 1: the Fram in ice to follow this same drift pattern
Speaker 1: to prove that that was the way the prevailing drift went.
Speaker 1: And Nonsen was clever enough. I can never figure out
Speaker 1: why these people didn't learn from Fritz Nonsen, because he
Speaker 1: he designed a boat called the Fram, and he designed
Speaker 1: the hull to be rounded so that when inevitably the
Speaker 1: ice flows encased around your ship, it lifted the boat
Speaker 1: up onto the flow, and then you've just got like
Speaker 1: a hotel, you know, and so instead of like crushing
Speaker 1: the ship. So I mean, it never never really understood
Speaker 1: why they didn't start building all of these ships that
Speaker 1: we're going to be used in this way with rounded halls.
Speaker 1: It's like, um, but they didn't. So anyway, now the
Speaker 1: story ends up being about like it toggles back and
Speaker 1: forth between what I stay with Stephenson for a while
Speaker 1: to uh follow his actions and in actions, and then
Speaker 1: the story goes to what happens to the members of
Speaker 1: the car like because they are saga is really only
Speaker 1: just beginning and Stephensons planned to go overland to the
Speaker 1: rendezvous point or was that even Yeah, well so he
Speaker 1: he did, in fact, like he girlfriends, Oh well, they're right.
Speaker 1: So there's a It turns out he had a secret
Speaker 1: wife and child like in New piet and um I
Speaker 1: theorized that that was partly what his thing was, is
Speaker 1: that he was like, I mean, either I'm probably going
Speaker 1: to be on this ship for a year maybe two. Uh,
Speaker 1: I don't. I'm like within ten miles of land, I'm
Speaker 1: freaking out of here. I mean, you know, he makes
Speaker 1: a bunch of excuses about like the caribou hunt, but
Speaker 1: there was some suggestion that the caribou were sort of
Speaker 1: out of that area by then, like and he they don't.
Speaker 1: They don't get a caribou ever, Like it's like okay.
Speaker 1: So then he ends up reuniting with this um wife
Speaker 1: named Fanny that will call her his indigenous spouse. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they had a young son named Alex, and he
Speaker 1: had left them a few years before and and then
Speaker 1: so he's gonna reunite with her and then try to
Speaker 1: cobble together the remnants of this exhibition for which he has,
Speaker 1: you know, convinced the Canadian government to give him many
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of dollars, so you know, he he
Speaker 1: had some rationale to like make this thing work. The
Speaker 1: thing is he I just find that his in action
Speaker 1: around trying to like do anything about the car look
Speaker 1: um ends up being why I view him as a
Speaker 1: little bit villainous. But not I mean, he's he becomes
Speaker 1: he does great science. But anyway, so then the story
Speaker 1: becomes about, like what the hell happens to this ship
Speaker 1: floating in a square mile of ice across the Arctic Ocean. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we can, we can leave Steven Stevens and behind. But um,
Speaker 1: leading up to it, what was interesting is he's doing
Speaker 1: media and there and he'll he says kind of like
Speaker 1: cryptic ship that the people on the crew um like
Speaker 1: he's a little fatalistic, all the things that could go wrong,
Speaker 1: you know, And people on the crew keep reading or
Speaker 1: reading like interviews from him, like this guy's out of
Speaker 1: his mind. Well he's quite comfortable with the fact that,
Speaker 1: you know, he's like we may never return well, and
Speaker 1: and he says at one point, like the scientific inquiry,
Speaker 1: everyone on the crew and scientists know that the um
Speaker 1: that the goals of the expedition and the scientific information
Speaker 1: is much more important than either the ship or the
Speaker 1: lives of its members. And they're like, wait, but I'm
Speaker 1: one of those. What's going on on? Wait, I'm gonna die,
Speaker 1: that's what you're saying. And so, yeah, they're not happy,
Speaker 1: and they have like, you know, they have big meetings.
Speaker 1: This is before they ever even leave, and you know
Speaker 1: some of them are saying like, I'm not going if
Speaker 1: that's the case, right, if that's his attitude. Well, also
Speaker 1: he makes them sign over, which was not uncommon at time,
Speaker 1: Like they're all going to keep journals and diaries and stuff,
Speaker 1: Thank goodness, or I wouldn't have these books, you know. Um.
Speaker 1: But Stephens is like, oh, by the way, while he
Speaker 1: was in up organizing this trip, he's like made all
Speaker 1: these sweet publishing deals and media deals with um, you
Speaker 1: know papers in England, the New York Times, the Globe
Speaker 1: and Mail in Toronto, and he's like secured book rights
Speaker 1: and everything, and so he's like, oh, yeah, you guys
Speaker 1: gotta hand over all your journals and stuff. Um. So
Speaker 1: he decided he's not gonna get paid. They're all getting paid.
Speaker 1: So as rationality is, look, you're getting paid. I'm not
Speaker 1: getting paid as a member of this expedition, even though
Speaker 1: I'm the expedition leader, but I'm gonna get paid on
Speaker 1: the back end on publishing rights. So he's organized this
Speaker 1: whole um empire of of publishing, and you know they're
Speaker 1: reading about this in the paper also going well, so wait,
Speaker 1: what about like what about us? And he's like, you know,
Speaker 1: you signed, you signed the contracts. What can I tell
Speaker 1: you? You You know, get on this ship, man, Let's pick
Speaker 1: it back up with the car. Look, right, so this
Speaker 1: is where the story where guy think gets really freaking good.
Speaker 1: I look at it in terms of like third or
Speaker 1: three stages of what happens. Right, So, after Stephenson goes
Speaker 1: in his carrybo hunt, you've got I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: the numbers are elusive to me, but like seventeen, no twenty,
Speaker 1: some members are still on the ship. Um, you've got
Speaker 1: like thirty sled dogs. Right, You've got a couple of
Speaker 1: these skin umiaks that are pretty cool. You've got a
Speaker 1: house cat. They got a house cat and Rock who's
Speaker 1: just awesome tough cat. Um, and they're floating really fast
Speaker 1: on this in case of ice, towards Siberia, essentially towards
Speaker 1: the north of Siberia. Now that they float for months
Speaker 1: right now, this is not uncommon, like you know, um,
Speaker 1: and the ship is set up right so they've got
Speaker 1: they're still trying to do some science right there. They
Speaker 1: got this dredging um mechanism, and they build an iglue
Speaker 1: out off the ship and they this one scientist Murray
Speaker 1: is like hauling up also to creatures and you see
Speaker 1: life that has never been seen before. They were doing
Speaker 1: legitimate science, but um, that ends up sort of falling
Speaker 1: apart because they got like that, like sextants and whatever.
Speaker 1: They know where they're at. They're taking soundings of depth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they have a general idea of where they are. Um.
Speaker 1: But but now okay, it's starting to get to be September, October, November, December,
Speaker 1: right so then in the whether you know, now the
Speaker 1: lights gone. Uh so now you've got basically Arctic night
Speaker 1: has fallen on him. They can't you know, they can't
Speaker 1: really take readings anymore. It's pretty much dark, and so
Speaker 1: they're floating along. They celebrate like Christmas on the ship
Speaker 1: they're out there. What I love too is that you
Speaker 1: know they're they're doing some really interesting things. They got
Speaker 1: this um character who's on the ship named yard Mom,
Speaker 1: and he's only twenty two and he's a Norwegian um
Speaker 1: guy who who's really into skiing. He was a ski champion.
Speaker 1: So he's like teaching all the he's teaching Captain Bartlett
Speaker 1: and all the other scientists how to ski. Right, they
Speaker 1: build jumps and stuff kind of wise because Barlett like
Speaker 1: bites it at one point and almost breaks his hip.
Speaker 1: You know, he's like, probably don't need the Captain, you know,
Speaker 1: doing Nordic ski jumping here, right, Like what the hell?
Speaker 1: And but you know they're living, They've got enough food.
Speaker 1: They you know, they're the living quarters are fine. They
Speaker 1: shooting polar bears. They shoot a couple of polar bears
Speaker 1: and rout um. They go duck hunting. One of the
Speaker 1: scenes I really love is that they had these Peterborough
Speaker 1: canoes that were on the ship that they were going
Speaker 1: to be using. They were going to sort those out
Speaker 1: at Harold Island and they were gonna use them on
Speaker 1: the Mackenzie River Delta. But so they take these out
Speaker 1: in some of them, they start noticing a lot of
Speaker 1: ducks out there, right, So the couple of the Inuit
Speaker 1: members who they had hired on at Barraw Point Barrow
Speaker 1: are doing a lot of seal hunting and Bartlett and
Speaker 1: one of the couple of the scientists are are like, well,
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of ducks out there, and they did
Speaker 1: have some shotguns. So they end up taking these Peterborough
Speaker 1: canoes out in the in the open leads and it's
Speaker 1: pretty cool, like they set behind these ice humms as
Speaker 1: a blind and then they go flush up a bunch
Speaker 1: of ducks. And you know, these these guys were not
Speaker 1: practicing uh, you know, game sportsmanship. They're like water sluicing knucks.
Speaker 1: You know, they won't need them for food. So they
Speaker 1: get a bunch of ducks and and um, they're shooting.
Speaker 1: They shoot a few polar bears. Um. I was surprised
Speaker 1: too that they're eating those bears raw. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean avoid the liver though, Um but yeah, yea you
Speaker 1: explain that, well, well, so they can kill you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The bears eat high uh portion of seals, right, and
Speaker 1: so they end up having um large quantities of vitamin
Speaker 1: A in their livers. It turns out, and if you eat,
Speaker 1: if you eat a bunch of this it'll kill you.
Speaker 1: It's it's kind of cool because the the inuite members
Speaker 1: of the expedition seem to know this, right. I Like
Speaker 1: there was a um there are stories that were like
Speaker 1: of the what the heck the name of that expedition,
Speaker 1: but of the the Dutch expedition that went in seven
Speaker 1: But they these guys Barrens, William Barrens, like they didn't know, right.
Speaker 1: So they're they're eating, they're eating barrel livers and m
Speaker 1: getting super sick and dying. Um. So yeah, they you know,
Speaker 1: at this point there Bartlett has decided like, okay, our goal.
Speaker 1: Now they know generally from the logs of DeLong the
Speaker 1: trip that like had to go ten months more in
Speaker 1: case and ice, it blew by Wrangle Island and never
Speaker 1: was in striking distance of it, so they missed it.
Speaker 1: Barlton knows that Wrangel Island is really the only hope
Speaker 1: if they're going to make it to land. Once they
Speaker 1: start moving thirty to sixty miles a day in the
Speaker 1: in the drift and current, and as it happens, they
Speaker 1: they reach a certain point where they're probably within a
Speaker 1: d it and they they're able to see it. Okay,
Speaker 1: at a certain point. But but the problem is now
Speaker 1: larger flows are starting to encroach around the flow that
Speaker 1: they're on, and there's there they're gonna get pinched there.
Speaker 1: They know they're gonna get probably crushed. Right, So Bartlett
Speaker 1: has the good sense to begin offloading a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of gear, food sleds, they build kennels for the dogs,
Speaker 1: you know, very organized, and he's getting ready to take
Speaker 1: a walk. He's getting ready if this thing, if the
Speaker 1: boat ship gets crushed, we're gonna have to live on
Speaker 1: the ice for a while, right, And so, um it
Speaker 1: takes a little while, right, So there's some false alarms
Speaker 1: that these fang like you know, teeth of ice crushed
Speaker 1: into the side. But then they're pumping. They're able to
Speaker 1: pump it out for a while. They actually are able
Speaker 1: at one point to um unload a bunch of the
Speaker 1: stuff and the and the car look rises up so
Speaker 1: it's not as imperiled. And that sort of the picture
Speaker 1: on the covers is when it was a little bit
Speaker 1: up higher and they've got ice blocks of stuff shoring
Speaker 1: it up. Eventually that's all, you know, the ice is
Speaker 1: way too powerful and the ship gets crushed and by
Speaker 1: that time though Bartlett has had the great forethought to
Speaker 1: have you know, year's worth of food and gear, and
Speaker 1: they've built some iglue shelters and they with a lot
Speaker 1: of the crates and stuff. They have one it's called
Speaker 1: the Box House. So they have manufactured sleds. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: manufactured some Peri style sleds while still on the car. Look,
Speaker 1: and they've got dogs. So Bartlett's thinking is, okay, if
Speaker 1: I can if the ship gets crushed. When the ship
Speaker 1: gets crushed, we're gonna have to live on the ice
Speaker 1: until March when the light gets good enough to travel again. Right,
Speaker 1: And so invariably the ship does get crushed. Um, it's
Speaker 1: a great scene though. I love the scene where Bartlett's
Speaker 1: got a flair for the dramatic. Right, So he's he's
Speaker 1: in the he's in the galley. Now everyone's off on
Speaker 1: the at the box House and the ice House. They're
Speaker 1: they've taken everything off there. They've got their um beds,
Speaker 1: you know, sleeping situations set up. And Bartlett's like stays
Speaker 1: in the galley and he's got like a phonograph and
Speaker 1: he's playing record after record and then theatrically kind of
Speaker 1: throwing them into the fire. You know, and he saves
Speaker 1: He saves Chopin's Funeral March for the last one. And
Speaker 1: you know, I would love to see this in a
Speaker 1: film like Great, because he's like puts it on, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's got this like dirge thing you could death
Speaker 1: is coming like, and he goes out onto the rail.
Speaker 1: The scene in the movie you would think this is
Speaker 1: because what are you doing? I mean, and he stands
Speaker 1: on the rail and then you know, right as Funeral
Speaker 1: March is playing, the notes are drifting off into the
Speaker 1: Arctic wind. I milk this pretty hard, by the way,
Speaker 1: and then you know he steps off and the car.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's kind of bizarre, like to think you're
Speaker 1: sitting there the ship you've been on for a few months.
Speaker 1: There it is, and like when it goes down, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like they've raised the flag to full mass and
Speaker 1: then it's like it goes down. The flag goes down,
Speaker 1: everybody's watching, and then the steam spout is like you
Speaker 1: just see and then all of a sudden, your ship's
Speaker 1: gone and you're on the ice going okay, now what right?
Speaker 1: The story becomes about To me, I think that one
Speaker 1: of the coolest elements is that Bartlett's driven. He understands
Speaker 1: kind of the situation, which is, I've got to get
Speaker 1: these people to land now. Stephenson later argues, and I
Speaker 1: think incorrectly that they should have probably bolted like he
Speaker 1: did way earlier, um across the ice. But Stephenson was
Speaker 1: already a very skilled uh ice traveler, and he had
Speaker 1: lived with, you know, the Inuit, and he he knew
Speaker 1: how to do it in small teams. You know, you've
Speaker 1: got like fifty and seventeen people, only a few of
Speaker 1: them had any experience on ice. Bartlett and this guy
Speaker 1: named John Hadley that they had picked up in Barrow
Speaker 1: also um and other than that, you know, these are
Speaker 1: not experienced Arctic travelers except the Inuit that they were
Speaker 1: with that they had brought, who basically save all their lives.
Speaker 1: But so Barlet knows, Okay, at some point, I'm going
Speaker 1: to have to get all these people to Wrangle Island
Speaker 1: if we get close enough to it, and then I'm
Speaker 1: gonna probably have to go myself with maybe one of
Speaker 1: the two um Inuits curral Luck and Ktectovic, and take
Speaker 1: them across the long straight south to Siberia and then
Speaker 1: go somehow get word to the larger world that there
Speaker 1: were marooned on Wrangle Island or their maroon on Wrangle Island,
Speaker 1: because he reasons that not going on moss with twenty
Speaker 1: some people is not going to work. Yeah, and only
Speaker 1: one as far as they know, only one white guy
Speaker 1: has ever been there. Yeah, like mirror right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean John Muir, the naturalists you know, had like
Speaker 1: written the only real first descriptions of the place. Right.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting that they know too that that Wrangel
Speaker 1: Island has driftwood, right, and another island doesn't have driftwood. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Harold Island doesn't have driftwood, and it's small and uninhabitable,
Speaker 1: but it's really close. It's like within thirty miles of
Speaker 1: Wrangel Island, and then Rangel Island is I mean, it
Speaker 1: has populations of polar bear, it has populations of walrus.
Speaker 1: It ends up having a lot, a lot of wildlife. Um.
Speaker 1: But let me hit you with another quick stuff and
Speaker 1: something from my life with the Eskimo when he's up
Speaker 1: in the High Arctic, he's on he's with hunters who
Speaker 1: have never seen a tree, but they have driftwood. Their
Speaker 1: explanation of what driftwood is. They think it's a plant
Speaker 1: that grows under the water. It seems reasonable. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: he's like, it's ship, it's probably he speculates that it's
Speaker 1: trees washing out Mackenzie Delta going into the Arctic Ocean
Speaker 1: landing on these islands. And then you just like, I
Speaker 1: don't know where that ship came from. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a seaweed. Yeah, that's really cool. You've never seen a tree. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it just by the way, there are no there are
Speaker 1: no trees on Wrangl Islands. So the driftwood, you know,
Speaker 1: has has come from other places, right, and you know,
Speaker 1: luckily they know that from these these law us that
Speaker 1: they had and um, and so that you know, Barlett
Speaker 1: understands that basically, if I can get them all to
Speaker 1: Wrangle Island, I gotta go then for help, right, and
Speaker 1: then that's a whole other ordeal. So the book essentially
Speaker 1: toggles between I mean, get first of all, getting to
Speaker 1: Wrangle Island from after they take all the stuff off
Speaker 1: the ship. That place is called they name it shipwreck camp.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like makes sense. And so they're like
Speaker 1: that they've got a complicated problem, which is that they've
Speaker 1: got a year's worth of food. We can't move. We
Speaker 1: can't move it like you can move some of it
Speaker 1: and fuel. Right, So there's an odyssey of getting from
Speaker 1: shipwreck camp to Wrangle Island and then the other odyssey
Speaker 1: of Barlett trying to go get help. Well real quick,
Speaker 1: hit those dudes that that try the other guys that
Speaker 1: pieced out right, So um is really while they're drifting
Speaker 1: along Stephenson's left and you know, during the dark night,
Speaker 1: things are starting to get you know, as they do
Speaker 1: on a ship, like some people are getting freaking cabin
Speaker 1: fever and some people are like you know, uh, we're
Speaker 1: in close proximity. There's arguments and the scientists, uh three
Speaker 1: of them. One is named Murray, one is named Mackay um,
Speaker 1: and this other Frenchman named Rich and that those three
Speaker 1: guys um. The two guys um Forbes, Mackay and Murray
Speaker 1: had been with Shackleton on the nineteen o nine expedition.
Speaker 1: So in the in those expeditions, they didn't use dogs.
Speaker 1: They're like man hauled, right, so harnesses on you and
Speaker 1: you're pulling lighter loads, right, and so for a number
Speaker 1: of reasons that aren't fully explained, like why they're so
Speaker 1: adamant Um. These three guys decide we want to leave
Speaker 1: the car. Look, go it alone. We want to go
Speaker 1: it alone. And Bartlett is in a tough spot because,
Speaker 1: you know, in if if this were a military situation,
Speaker 1: he would be able to say, like, you, you you can't
Speaker 1: leave the ship. I'm in command of you and the ship.
Speaker 1: But because they were scientists hired by Stephenson, it was
Speaker 1: sort of a gray area. And Bartlett um decides that
Speaker 1: he's going to support them in their decision. I mean,
Speaker 1: there were some murmurings of mutiny and stuff at a
Speaker 1: certain point. But and actually the three guys asked this
Speaker 1: other Norwegian guy, um if he will go with them,
Speaker 1: and he's really become close to Bartlin, He's devoted to him.
Speaker 1: He's like, basically, if you asked me again, we're going
Speaker 1: to have a problem, you know, like I'm not going
Speaker 1: with you, and um, you could could ask me about it.
Speaker 1: But so they end up um striking off on their
Speaker 1: own and before Bartlett and the rest of them head
Speaker 1: for Wrangel Island. Now what's kind of cool is that
Speaker 1: they have built a series of in knowing that they
Speaker 1: have to transport all this gear and food in the
Speaker 1: direction of Wrangle Island. They built a bunch of of
Speaker 1: like a relay system of igloos, maybe ten miles apart.
Speaker 1: It's kind of cool, really smart, because you know, if
Speaker 1: you keep going back and forth and bringing some stuff,
Speaker 1: setting up cash is, coming back to shipwreck camp, and
Speaker 1: then going forward again and moving to and building another igloo,
Speaker 1: you're also creating a kind of trail. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of wind blown activity and so and so.
Speaker 1: It doesn't stay completely there, but they mark these igloos
Speaker 1: with flattened Pemmican tins so that they can hopefully see them. Um,
Speaker 1: but these three guys decided to go it alone, and um,
Speaker 1: they don't take dogs, even though Bartlett offers them dogs
Speaker 1: because they had were used to the man hauling technique
Speaker 1: that they used with Bartlett makes a sign of things
Speaker 1: saying a waiver. It makes a sign of things saying
Speaker 1: we've decided to take off. Yeah, but it's not my fault.
Speaker 1: Are they gonna do the same thing the rest of
Speaker 1: the crew is gonna do? Are they just they got
Speaker 1: a different plan. They got different plan, and they said, well,
Speaker 1: we think going to use some of the igloos on
Speaker 1: our way. But their plan is to is to head
Speaker 1: south either. They were kind of clueless because they didn't
Speaker 1: at this point, they didn't exactly know, you know, to
Speaker 1: the spot where they are. They have a general notion
Speaker 1: that they're like, you know, one hundred miles west of
Speaker 1: Wrangle Island, but I mean it's a pretty big space
Speaker 1: out there, so they end up going on their own.
Speaker 1: There's a really really grim scene in which um Barlett
Speaker 1: continues to uh send out his own small teams that
Speaker 1: are going to try to make it over in in
Speaker 1: like relays to Wrangle Island, and they come across these
Speaker 1: guys after like a week or ten days on one
Speaker 1: of their forays. And I mean it's a really grim scene.
Speaker 1: You know, like two guys are sitting there. Uh. One
Speaker 1: guy's hand is out of its glove. Um and this
Speaker 1: is Murray, you know, and he has himself with a
Speaker 1: Pemmican tin and he's got like infected hand, right, it's
Speaker 1: all swollen up, and um, they're they're barely moving, They're
Speaker 1: all you can tell. Their faces are all frost bitten.
Speaker 1: They don't really know what direction they're going. And the
Speaker 1: other guys from Varlett's teams are you know, they're on
Speaker 1: dog sleds and they're they're like, you guys need help, right,
Speaker 1: and they say, well we we decided to do it alone.
Speaker 1: The mile behind them is this French guy, Henri Bouschot,
Speaker 1: who um is just in a dire situation. They and
Speaker 1: there's all this strewn gear like they've been lightning their loads.
Speaker 1: So it's like you know, a yard sale. And you said,
Speaker 1: you said they had only been out there like a
Speaker 1: week at that, yeah, a week to ten days and
Speaker 1: and and there you know, but they're frozen like they
Speaker 1: haven't been, um taking good care of themselves. Like what
Speaker 1: you need to do is each night, get to an
Speaker 1: igloo or build an igloo, set up a primus stove,
Speaker 1: eat food, stay warm, stay dry if you can, and
Speaker 1: hope that, of course, that the ice doesn't crack underneath
Speaker 1: your igloo, which it often did, you know. Um. And
Speaker 1: then so they've come across like the strewn gear and
Speaker 1: everything pemmican, and they come across this Henre boshock guy
Speaker 1: and he's he's just his feet are halfway out of
Speaker 1: his mucklucks, his his gloves are mittens are off, you know,
Speaker 1: his hands are like black and necrotic and pustules and
Speaker 1: he's like them, they're like, we need to take you
Speaker 1: back to shipwreck camp. Get on the sled and he says,
Speaker 1: you know, let me die, and like I'm done. Um,
Speaker 1: and you you know, then they just like cluck the
Speaker 1: dogs on and head out. It's kind of and those
Speaker 1: dudes never seen again. It's just like never seen again,
Speaker 1: you know. In fairness, Bartlett sort of makes token efforts
Speaker 1: to look for him a couple of times. But um,
Speaker 1: four other guys get stranded on um on Harold Island,
Speaker 1: which they came to accidentally, you know, they were trying
Speaker 1: to reach Wrangle Island and they ended up on Harrold
Speaker 1: is Harold Island, which is that really small, inhospitable, no
Speaker 1: drift wouold, no food place, and they're those guys, um
Speaker 1: are screwed. You know. Yeah, when did someone find their bodies?
Speaker 1: It's like nineteen twenty six, I'm thinking lands on the islands. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they this they were US, um, the US expedition
Speaker 1: and they um, I believe they were. They had the
Speaker 1: notion of finding out if they were still there. They
Speaker 1: were aware of them, They were aware of them, and
Speaker 1: you know, so it's like, but what's What's interesting is
Speaker 1: that that so for four members, Barlett's trying to get
Speaker 1: everybody over to Wrangle Island. But during the during these
Speaker 1: relay halls, UM, at one point Mom and Yard, Mom
Speaker 1: and the Norwegian member of the team. Um, he gets
Speaker 1: disoriented and he ends up like within two miles of
Speaker 1: Harold Island. And at this point everyone's in mom and
Speaker 1: is in pretty bad condition, you know, he's like dislocated
Speaker 1: his knee and there they don't have that much food left.
Speaker 1: He realizes he's at the wrong island. So he decides, uh,
Speaker 1: after consultation with the other members of that little advanced team,
Speaker 1: that he's going to go back to shipwreck Camp and
Speaker 1: these guys can stay there within like two miles of
Speaker 1: this island. But um, there's there's open leads of water
Speaker 1: between it and the island at the moment. So it
Speaker 1: has to make a hard decision, right. He's kind of,
Speaker 1: um the leader of this little team, and he says,
Speaker 1: I'm going back to shipwright Camp. You guys make it here,
Speaker 1: And then they write letters to Barlett saying, Okay, here's
Speaker 1: what we're gonna do. Stay here as long as I can,
Speaker 1: as long as we can come try to get us.
Speaker 1: If we don't hear from you will eventually make it
Speaker 1: over to Wrangle Island ourselves. How are they all kind
Speaker 1: of getting split up? And I mean it's really what's
Speaker 1: interesting about that is like, you know, if you think
Speaker 1: about polar ce a lot of times you imagine it
Speaker 1: being flat, you know. And what is so remarkable about
Speaker 1: this landscape seascape is how ruptured and undulating and uh,
Speaker 1: you know difficulty, Yeah you so. And also you know
Speaker 1: the light. There's a really great question though. You know
Speaker 1: there are there are also um experiencing a lot of
Speaker 1: um Arctic mirages, right there are these um like uh,
Speaker 1: celestial conditions make it so that um, something out there
Speaker 1: will appear to be a land mass and it's like uh,
Speaker 1: you know water sky that has come up over open
Speaker 1: water and you know it sort of looks like a
Speaker 1: land mass and it's like an optical illusion. So that's
Speaker 1: part of it. Um. The conditions of trying to navigate
Speaker 1: are really hard because the ice is continually breaking up,
Speaker 1: and so you can't go in a straight line. You
Speaker 1: have to follow leads till they narrow and then cross
Speaker 1: there um and so they end up getting quite disoriented. Uh,
Speaker 1: in a number of instances. But once they have this
Speaker 1: start hit with another stuff and until your guy Stephenson
Speaker 1: talked about one time stalking a grizzly bear that wand
Speaker 1: up being a ground squirrel. We're talking about he talking
Speaker 1: about how deceptive, Oh, the Arctic light is. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: there's another guy that was like, I can't remember which
Speaker 1: way it was, like they think they're looking at island
Speaker 1: and it has two glaciers. It's a walrus head sticking
Speaker 1: out of the water. That's how in terms of like
Speaker 1: just distances and mirage. Yeah, and then and then when
Speaker 1: the light comes, all the snow blindness, snowblindness, and and
Speaker 1: everything's blowing. So yeah, it's and also you're not the
Speaker 1: conditions of such there not able to take really accurate
Speaker 1: readings right and then and then not to mention the
Speaker 1: ice that you're on is moving, you know, sometimes great
Speaker 1: distances like so, so that all contributes to, um, the difficulty. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and you know, I'm glad you brought up the
Speaker 1: pressure ridges because one of the most badass things they
Speaker 1: do in this book is that once they decide, okay,
Speaker 1: we're making a break for a wrangle island. Um, they
Speaker 1: encounter when the shore ice. When when when this floating
Speaker 1: sea ice gets within proximity of maybe thirty miles of
Speaker 1: Wrangel Island, it starts bumping up against these extended spits, right,
Speaker 1: and so the ice that's hitting it's kind of like
Speaker 1: a wave, a frozen wave. So the ice is is
Speaker 1: hitting the shoreline far out off shore, buckling and then growing, growing,
Speaker 1: and like some of them are not up to a
Speaker 1: hundred feet high. And there's some really cool pictures in
Speaker 1: the book of like them standing on these things, and
Speaker 1: you realize, oh my god. So they have to now
Speaker 1: get sledge and everything over these things. And Bartlett when
Speaker 1: he encounters them, a couple of the other guys had
Speaker 1: gone like maybe one or two miles each direction, and
Speaker 1: the thing extends for ten or twenty miles, this long
Speaker 1: ridge of ice, and he's like, well, we're gonna have
Speaker 1: to cut our way through it. That's it, right. So
Speaker 1: then they take to take some like four days to
Speaker 1: hack a trail, and with the dogs and ice axes
Speaker 1: and shovels, h hack a trail through the series of ridges.
Speaker 1: And they do some clever things, like they tie a
Speaker 1: rope between two sleds and then they'll get one of
Speaker 1: the sleds up the top of these ridges are really
Speaker 1: terrifying and precipitous, like if you fall down you could
Speaker 1: well be dead or battered at the bottom. So they
Speaker 1: take these sleds and they get one to the top,
Speaker 1: and then they using men and dogs, they push it over,
Speaker 1: and then it pulls the other sled behind it. The
Speaker 1: weight of that sled pulls the other sled up, and
Speaker 1: then they disentangle that one or on time and then
Speaker 1: do it again and makes some you know, weeks weeks
Speaker 1: to get from shipwreck camp to Wrangle Island, and at
Speaker 1: that point, you know, all ideas of them all making
Speaker 1: it across the long straight to Siberia are out the
Speaker 1: window because they're in quite bad shape. He makes an
Speaker 1: interesting call here, and this is where I'm at in
Speaker 1: the book, So from here on out, I'm I'm you're
Speaker 1: You're on your own. But he makes an interesting call
Speaker 1: at Wrangle Island where he wants everyone to break up
Speaker 1: into really small groups and spread out all over the place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well the theory it seems so weird to me. Well,
Speaker 1: his rationale is uh. Bob Barlett decides very quickly when
Speaker 1: he lands on Wrangle Island. So, so first of all
Speaker 1: they find driftwood. So, and they've got some um. They
Speaker 1: have brought with them some tents right from the ship
Speaker 1: they brought these bell tents are kind of like yurts, right,
Speaker 1: big ones though big big yards um and some other
Speaker 1: canvas tents. But at first they it's more conducive to
Speaker 1: its march when they land March March twelfth. And at
Speaker 1: first that they decide like, we'll build you glues right
Speaker 1: because the um they're efficient. Um. So Barlett determines, Okay,
Speaker 1: there's driftwood there, um is some game. They have been
Speaker 1: encountering seals, but the seals are quite offshore. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then some Arctic foxes and some bears that they have
Speaker 1: encountered in Usually the bear situation was like they're not
Speaker 1: hunting bears. The bears are kind of hunting camp man.
Speaker 1: You know, the bears have been following them, or the
Speaker 1: bears will be duking it out with the dogs, right,
Speaker 1: and the bears like bear while he's duking it out
Speaker 1: with the dog. There's really close encounters though, like where
Speaker 1: one guy Hadley has to snag his rifle, like while
Speaker 1: the bear is trying to get to the dogs and
Speaker 1: he's on the other side of the sled, you know,
Speaker 1: and he's like grabbing his rifle within feet of a
Speaker 1: freaking ten foot polar bear. You know when they when
Speaker 1: they gourmet butcher polar bear, they like the back legs,
Speaker 1: the backs drafts, and the heart. Oh yeah, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: there's no human presence on Wrangle Island. And by the way,
Speaker 1: visited at all um from you know, that's the last
Speaker 1: known place that had wooly mammoth. Yeah, and that cool.
Speaker 1: So also there's like a very yes some people most
Speaker 1: people say four somewhere like a dwarf wooly mammoth. But
Speaker 1: so that's a really good question. Um, at that time,
Speaker 1: there's no residents on Wrangle Island and even to this day, um,
Speaker 1: there there's like a couple of so it's it's Russians
Speaker 1: own it. But um they're they have like one full
Speaker 1: time resident, one or two full time residents. And then
Speaker 1: I was really bumb man. I had almost went to
Speaker 1: Wrangle Island twice. First time my trip got scuttled. So
Speaker 1: there's a couple of expedition companies that take you, um
Speaker 1: in you like a fifty person um, you know, ship
Speaker 1: and then you get off on zodiacs and you can
Speaker 1: go camp for a few days on Wrangle Island with
Speaker 1: these nature um naturalists and rangers be really cool. Had
Speaker 1: it set up, uh pandemic scuttled that, and then I
Speaker 1: was going to go the next summer, and the Putin
Speaker 1: invaded uh crying, and then like it's they weren't going,
Speaker 1: called that Russia. Yeah, we can't go to Russia. So
Speaker 1: that was kind of a bummer. But so then Barlett,
Speaker 1: you're right, he made the call that like these people,
Speaker 1: so in getting across the pressure ridges and getting over
Speaker 1: from ship at camp to Wrangle Island, UM, some of
Speaker 1: the members are in pretty bad condition. Now, I will
Speaker 1: say the Inuit members Kurl Luck, his wife Kirak, who
Speaker 1: nicknamed Auntie, and the two kids, Helen and mug Pe
Speaker 1: are like nothing. It's like nothing has happened to them.
Speaker 1: They're in absolutely great I love they got little kids.
Speaker 1: The little kids are always playing. The little kids are playing,
Speaker 1: and they got the cat. You know, everybody else's like
Speaker 1: the kids. They're like, I don't see problem, eat seal
Speaker 1: blubber and have really nice arctic clothing, you know. But
Speaker 1: you could blame Stephenson in part for this because he
Speaker 1: brought Antie along Kiuk to so Arctic clothing and then
Speaker 1: but he bought a bunch of the skins pretty late
Speaker 1: in the game. So like she's sewing and teaching the
Speaker 1: members to sew while they're still floating along, and they
Speaker 1: didn't like they weren't fully kidded out all the members anyway,
Speaker 1: Barlette makes the call that like, these people are two tired,
Speaker 1: frost bitten uh and to make and inexperienced to make
Speaker 1: it across. It's about a hundred miles from the southern
Speaker 1: coastline of Wrangel Island to Russian UH Northeastern disease, So
Speaker 1: that's yeah, it's interesting that there they start coming down.
Speaker 1: Within days after Bartlett leaving with Kateactobic, they start coming
Speaker 1: down with this swelling sickness. So their limbs are getting
Speaker 1: really um. Their limbs are some of their hands and
Speaker 1: feet are swelling to like twice their normal side eyes
Speaker 1: and the there's two theories. One is that the pemmican
Speaker 1: that they had was somehow flawed in the ratio of
Speaker 1: fat to protein was wrong, I mean, not not good enough,
Speaker 1: so that they begin to get um. What's called nephritis
Speaker 1: or it's like an inflammation of the kidneys um and imbalance.
Speaker 1: You know, they've got like a dietic dietetic imbalance. But
Speaker 1: it's freaking everybody out because it's not scurvy because they're
Speaker 1: getting some meat you know here and there with Arctic foxes,
Speaker 1: the seals and the polar bears. Um. But then you know,
Speaker 1: they start to So that's the other thing. Stephenson doesn't
Speaker 1: know that, Like he's like, well, they should have all
Speaker 1: gone with Bartlett. Bartlett just leaves with one Inuit guy, Karactobac.
Speaker 1: The problem is, you know, it'd be like taking all
Speaker 1: your buddies and there there's in terrible shape and they
Speaker 1: can't go, like you know, they're they're no longer fit
Speaker 1: for this track across the ice that's going to be
Speaker 1: dangerous itself. To go fetch a boat, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: in a very roundabout way, go fetch a boat. Yeah.
Speaker 1: When would they have been like considered missing or how
Speaker 1: long would have been? So Stephenson makes land in like
Speaker 1: October or late September, early October of and eventually he
Speaker 1: does he sends word to the Canadian government that uh, oh,
Speaker 1: I've lost my ship but no, he has no idea
Speaker 1: where it is. I have I have no idea where
Speaker 1: my ship is. But it will probably be fine because
Speaker 1: they have these umiaks, which are skin boats. And you know,
Speaker 1: Stephenson's thinking more like what he would do, and but
Speaker 1: he would only do this alone or with a really
Speaker 1: small with him and two into a un He's not
Speaker 1: going to do it with like a bunch of inexperienced people.
Speaker 1: So he reports to the Canadian government that like the
Speaker 1: flagship Carlaic has gone, it will it will either be rushed.
Speaker 1: Most likely it will be crushed or it's going to
Speaker 1: like bypass wrangle Island and end up like somewhere else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's this, there's this. I forgot about that when he's
Speaker 1: talking about the like in some number of years, when
Speaker 1: you're all dead, it'll spit you out like in Greenland. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he says. I love his line. He says he'll go
Speaker 1: around the Arctic and it'll like spit you out. But
Speaker 1: it takes a few years. Yeah, it says, either either
Speaker 1: them or their wreckage. And great. So there they were
Speaker 1: going west, but watch to the east. Are they are
Speaker 1: coming back? Are the other two ships? Meanwhile, just like
Speaker 1: they've gotten where they were supposed to go, and they're
Speaker 1: just hanging out waiting. Right. So when Stephenson arrives back
Speaker 1: on mainland Alaska, he he's cruising along the coast and
Speaker 1: he runs into some of the people that actually that
Speaker 1: he had known from the previous expedition he was on,
Speaker 1: and they have you know, they're hearing stories like there's reports. Okay,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, the Alaska and the Mary Sachs have been
Speaker 1: seen and they're actually winnering over in this bay before
Speaker 1: Harold Island. But they're safe. So he learns that those
Speaker 1: two ships are safe. So at that point Stephenson decides, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna reoutfit what's called the New Northern Party and
Speaker 1: that other one that's the Old Northern Party and they're
Speaker 1: screws like Europe. It's like, well, there's still your people.
Speaker 1: But anyway, he's like, I got this. I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do what I said I was gonna do. He's
Speaker 1: also really clever because he knows from where he is
Speaker 1: how long it takes mail to get to the Canadian government.
Speaker 1: It has to go by like dog sled, and it's
Speaker 1: he knows that it's going to leave like by December
Speaker 1: one or something, and then it's gonna take a couple
Speaker 1: of months to get to the Canadian government. So by
Speaker 1: the time he knows that, by the time they get
Speaker 1: the report that the car looks gone and I'm reoutfitting,
Speaker 1: he will already have done it, Like he'll already be
Speaker 1: out on the ice doing his thing, and they can't
Speaker 1: really say don't do that, right, And he he does
Speaker 1: some pretty m debout things like he's gotta he's got
Speaker 1: an open checkbook, right. So he arrives at one of
Speaker 1: these trading posts and it turns out the guy is
Speaker 1: basically leaving because he's been there too long and he
Speaker 1: can't stand the winners anymore. And he's like selling everything
Speaker 1: sevens and like buys it all, and he goes to
Speaker 1: another guy and he's like, he finds the guy has
Speaker 1: a really cool schooner, so he's like, hey, can I
Speaker 1: buy that schooner? And he writes of a check for
Speaker 1: like thirteen grand right on top of the two ships
Speaker 1: that he's already bought. Um. Yeah, the numbers are astronomical
Speaker 1: what he ends up spending, right, But so Stephenson quickly
Speaker 1: um regroups and he he has like he has it
Speaker 1: out with UM, the the expedition leader of the Southern Party,
Speaker 1: this guy Dr Anderson, UM, and you know, Dr Anderson
Speaker 1: sees that Stephenson. First of all, he's like, where's your ship?
Speaker 1: Why you know? And why aren't you going to do
Speaker 1: anything to go find them. Stephenson's like, I can't do anything.
Speaker 1: Nobody can go there until summer. Right that part of
Speaker 1: the world, You've got like a six week maybe window
Speaker 1: where there's going to be open water, and some of
Speaker 1: these places are accessible. But at this point I don't
Speaker 1: even know where the car Look is. So Stephenson is
Speaker 1: right to say, like, there's nothing I can do about
Speaker 1: it personally right now, except to say we should be
Speaker 1: organizing rescue missions for next summer. Right anyway, He goes
Speaker 1: off onto the ice re outfits, grabs a couple Norwegian
Speaker 1: dudes and goes off and Um continues to do you know,
Speaker 1: ethnological and um scientific study and sort of bid bids
Speaker 1: goodbye to the car Look. And by the time he
Speaker 1: ultimately gets back, oh, by the way, he abandons his
Speaker 1: wife and child again after being with that for a
Speaker 1: little while. UM. This is a touching scene of good farewell.
Speaker 1: UM anyway, so Stephenson is doing that, and then and
Speaker 1: then the the book takes off onto where it really
Speaker 1: picks up. I think momentum is after Bartlett leaves with
Speaker 1: this cateactobic guy. Yes, let me let an ordeal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's let's just Yeah. So they get to Wrangle Island.
Speaker 1: He leaves everybody most people people Wrangle Island, gives them
Speaker 1: instructions written instructions, do you use that and the other
Speaker 1: thing I'm gonna split, watch for me and such such
Speaker 1: and such harbor July August, watched for me to come
Speaker 1: back with a boat, right, and I should answer your
Speaker 1: pbous questions. So when they got to Wrangle Island, Bartlett's
Speaker 1: um rationale was, if we set up there there on
Speaker 1: the northern the northeastern tip of Wrangel Island, it's only
Speaker 1: like ninety miles wide, and you know, fifty or sixty
Speaker 1: miles um top to bottom um. So Bartlett's rationale is
Speaker 1: that there, if we spread out and have some people
Speaker 1: at icy Spit, which is where they land, there's another
Speaker 1: place called Cape Wearing it's about midway, and then there's
Speaker 1: Rogers Harbor, which is the southern h western point of
Speaker 1: the island. He figures that if we distribute people in
Speaker 1: different teams, they can have better luck hunting in smaller
Speaker 1: groups and and taking care of themselves rather than having
Speaker 1: to have, you know, cook for fifteen people every day.
Speaker 1: So smaller groups, and also it will um, it will
Speaker 1: distribute the hunting um landscape a little more spread out.
Speaker 1: That's his rationality. Now then, so right that he ends
Speaker 1: up like on a rate, the book becomes like a
Speaker 1: race against time because Barlin needs to get across the
Speaker 1: Long Straight to Siberia and then somehow get all the
Speaker 1: way over to the east and fight a shipped across
Speaker 1: the Bearing Strait and get back to Alaska where he
Speaker 1: can send a telegram to tell them they're on Wrangle Island. Right,
Speaker 1: so their lives like at every moment are kind of
Speaker 1: dependent on whether Bartlett makes it. And so I cut
Speaker 1: back and forth. It's like if Bartlett and his Intuit hunter,
Speaker 1: like you know, you got all these people dying and
Speaker 1: stuff happened, like if they had just gone off ten
Speaker 1: miles and fell into a lead and died. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: reasonable soon no one on no one on Wrangle Island's
Speaker 1: gonna survive. I think maybe that the Inuits would happen
Speaker 1: because there's a at anecdote I'll get to because they
Speaker 1: could have been they could have been there anyway, right right.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know it's not ideal because um of
Speaker 1: how remote it is, but um yeah, so Bartlett yea,
Speaker 1: you know, there's it becomes it's sort of this race
Speaker 1: against time where Bartlett is trying to get to mainland
Speaker 1: Siberia and then to get word to the world that
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of stranded people from the car look
Speaker 1: on Wrangel Island and you cut back and forth to
Speaker 1: what's happening with them on Wrangel Island and things begin
Speaker 1: to so they you know, they don't have a finite
Speaker 1: amount of um or they do have a finite amount
Speaker 1: of food um that they've been able to bring. And
Speaker 1: they make a couple of um gnarly treks back to
Speaker 1: shipwreck camping to get more uh some really some really
Speaker 1: dangerous treks where the leads break open, they get guys
Speaker 1: get so I don't want to ruin it for you,
Speaker 1: guys get separated from each other and from there and
Speaker 1: the dog has to like lead them back, you know.
Speaker 1: So things are starting to deteriorate on Wrangel Island in
Speaker 1: that um their physical condition is poor and they're not
Speaker 1: they're hunting constantly, but they're not able to procure enough food.
Speaker 1: They can just barely stay ahead, you know. The woman
Speaker 1: and the kids, Like I'd run an essay rolled about
Speaker 1: this where the woman and the children want to be
Speaker 1: in some of the primary procures. Yeah, of game. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so it's really cool. Curl look, uh is the
Speaker 1: husband and father of the two children, and so he's
Speaker 1: really good hunter. I mean he's you know, he's what
Speaker 1: he's getting seals. Um seals start to go off shore,
Speaker 1: so it gets harder to get seals, and as things
Speaker 1: become um more dire and they're running out of food,
Speaker 1: Auntie is really industrious, Like she figures out how first
Speaker 1: of all, Curl look, you know, fashion some um bows
Speaker 1: and arrows because they're going to run out of ammunition too.
Speaker 1: So he starts to figure like, if we can if
Speaker 1: we can shoot um arctic foxes and birds with arrows,
Speaker 1: that'll save us ammo because we're gonna need the bullets
Speaker 1: for walrus, bears, seals, bigger things and so. But Auntie
Speaker 1: is really really clever, so she figures out how to
Speaker 1: um jig for cod She takes a sewing needle and
Speaker 1: bends it and then hooks it up to some sinew
Speaker 1: twine and then they stand over this little title crack
Speaker 1: and like snagging. Um these like twelve inch tom god there, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: can they get a bunch of those? Um, She's the
Speaker 1: kids do some really clever stuff. One of the girls, Helen,
Speaker 1: the eleven year old, figures out how to put a
Speaker 1: piece of seal blubber onto a feather quill where you
Speaker 1: pull it out right, and then she has that attached
Speaker 1: to a piece of string and chucks the blubber over
Speaker 1: there and kind of hides and seagull come up and
Speaker 1: eat the blubber. The quill gets stuck in their throat
Speaker 1: and then she drags it over and wrings its neck.
Speaker 1: You know. Um, that's like one seagull at a time.
Speaker 1: But the biggest hunting, um, I mean kind of the
Speaker 1: most hunting that they do. That's effective. Um oh also
Speaker 1: curl look. Uh. He creates snare tracks for snare traps
Speaker 1: for Arctic foxes. Um. And he builds two things. One
Speaker 1: he builds a kayak um, which is really cool. I
Speaker 1: mean there's there's a there's an image of him working
Speaker 1: with the Scotsman and William McKinley that they had a camera,
Speaker 1: you know, like they have a picture of building. It's
Speaker 1: crazy that they're gonna like and then I know, like
Speaker 1: and so he takes a couple of weeks and he
Speaker 1: it's really funny because he's hedging, like they're they're starting
Speaker 1: to run out of food, and they're like they hear
Speaker 1: walrus in the bay and they're like, if we can
Speaker 1: get a Walruss or two, we're set. Like, you know,
Speaker 1: now it's getting to be August. They're thinking, if Winner
Speaker 1: hits again, we're screwed. We're gonna die here. Um. So
Speaker 1: he he builds a kayak and Auntie is awesome, like
Speaker 1: has has gotten all these skins from the bearded seal
Speaker 1: the brook and um, you know, he he uses an
Speaker 1: ads and you know, he uses a hatchet as an
Speaker 1: ads and he has like you know, a skinning knife
Speaker 1: and some snow knives and they he's able to fashion
Speaker 1: you know, find driftwood planks and stuff and fashions out
Speaker 1: the frame and then they bring it inside the one
Speaker 1: of the wall tents and uh Anti like completely fabricates
Speaker 1: the skin outside of this kayak. But Carola has been
Speaker 1: like hedging because he doesn't want he's the only one
Speaker 1: who knows how to run uh and he and he
Speaker 1: builds a really nice two handled paddle, you know, but
Speaker 1: he he has no interest in being solo in the
Speaker 1: water with the pound walrus, right, so he's here to
Speaker 1: like telling him I don't really want to do it,
Speaker 1: and they're finally like, you gotta go get the walrus.
Speaker 1: Work we can't do it, you know. He ends up
Speaker 1: he ends up getting a walrus. Uh and you know,
Speaker 1: but it's a small one and it doesn't last that long.
Speaker 1: So by by the time, um it's starting to get
Speaker 1: near late August, you know, they're into some uh rough rations.
Speaker 1: They're eating scurvy grass. You know, it's like um coke hilaria.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a little arctic grass that has actually
Speaker 1: named scruby grass because yeah. And then Auntie is starting
Speaker 1: to make the stuff that one of the members names
Speaker 1: salad oil. So she takes like chunks of blubber and
Speaker 1: puts them in a skin poke or a little bag
Speaker 1: and puts the chunks of blubber in there and leaves
Speaker 1: them out to ferment. And then when that stuff gets
Speaker 1: all congealed and fermented. They open up the bag and
Speaker 1: dip other chunks of seal meat and blubber into it,
Speaker 1: like you know, and and the and the you know what.
Speaker 1: People are like, we're good and uh, but like the
Speaker 1: other guys are like, do you know we really need
Speaker 1: something bigger? Um. So anyway, they start to plan, Like
Speaker 1: they realized that the window for ship getting there. Bartlett
Speaker 1: had told them that in mid July someone needs to
Speaker 1: be at Rogers Harbor on the southern point, and that's
Speaker 1: where if a ship is going to come, that's where
Speaker 1: it will will meet. You. Um, but you know, things
Speaker 1: are getting really sparse in terms of food. They know
Speaker 1: that the window is closing, and so they start planning,
Speaker 1: um to to go inland, follow this stream, go inland,
Speaker 1: build a cabinet and try to make their stand for
Speaker 1: winter on Wrangel Island, which is a really um daunting prospect,
Speaker 1: you know. And at that point, you know, without giving
Speaker 1: away too much, um, Bartlett has uh conspired to send
Speaker 1: a rescue our mata of ships. And then so these
Speaker 1: people are dying on Wrangel Island essentially, or are going
Speaker 1: to die, and unless Bartlett gets these ships to them
Speaker 1: in a really tight window. Uh, it's probably not known,
Speaker 1: But what why don't the when things get real bad?
Speaker 1: Why don't the into it? Just like what's preventing them
Speaker 1: from just taken off? You know? That's like they have
Speaker 1: the skill set to take like they can make boats.
Speaker 1: They know what they're doing. Yeah, I mean I think
Speaker 1: that there's a there's a a kind of ethical standard,
Speaker 1: like they were hired, you know, they were hired to
Speaker 1: do a job, because it's like pulling the weight for
Speaker 1: all these people. You think at a point you'd be like,
Speaker 1: I don't know that you I don't know what you
Speaker 1: guys do this for me? Right? Okay? Yeah. So the
Speaker 1: other thing I forgot to tell you though, is that
Speaker 1: like so so curl look um, you know, they they
Speaker 1: stay and they you know, they probably do realize like
Speaker 1: I'm we're doing most of this. But though Hadley is
Speaker 1: a pretty good hunter, McKinley is a good hunter. This guy,
Speaker 1: Ernest Chafe, he's young, he's he was the mess room
Speaker 1: boy on this car. Look, he's like nineteen, and he
Speaker 1: brought with him his shooting medals from competitions that he
Speaker 1: had won. He's sort of badass, and so he ends
Speaker 1: up being pretty good. But what one of the things
Speaker 1: that wearing keep wearing. Um. There's all these cliffs and
Speaker 1: they're filled with thousands of they name them crow bills,
Speaker 1: but their ox or meewers um. So they're on these
Speaker 1: cliffy you know, they're like little kind of penguiny looking birds,
Speaker 1: but they you know, great diving duck um diving meewer
Speaker 1: and and so they're up there and they realize, Okay,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of meat there. We can get it
Speaker 1: if we can get it. So they they use driftwood
Speaker 1: and and rope and they build this ladder. That McKinley,
Speaker 1: who's this little they call him a we mack. He's
Speaker 1: only weighs like a buck thirty. It's a little dude.
Speaker 1: But he's spry, and so he's gonna climb up these
Speaker 1: ladders and get you know, they don't have shotguns another
Speaker 1: thing they blew, but they have rifles. So they get
Speaker 1: up to where these crow bills ox are nesting and
Speaker 1: they're in the thousands. So and they they're still they're
Speaker 1: getting the eggs and they're shooting as many as they
Speaker 1: possibly can. Right one time, McKinley like falls off the
Speaker 1: ladder and goes battering down onto the snow and ice,
Speaker 1: and he's luckily and nothing breaks, but he's all bruised.
Speaker 1: And then they build this other thing like a Boson's chair.
Speaker 1: The plan is they're gonna lower him, hike around and
Speaker 1: then lower him down, you know, because I don't know
Speaker 1: about this gig, you know. Um. But so they're able
Speaker 1: to like subsist and they also um curl. Luck figures
Speaker 1: out that they have the buried under snow. They had
Speaker 1: this net from the car look, and so the they
Speaker 1: noticed that ducks are starting to um, you know, pool
Speaker 1: up in some of the larger leads. So they go
Speaker 1: out there, sneak up on the edge of a lead
Speaker 1: and they take in unison, like three of guys will
Speaker 1: throw this net and scoop up a bunch of birds.
Speaker 1: But you know, the birds are not big enough where
Speaker 1: that's going to um. You know. That's like a couple
Speaker 1: of days. It gets you through. So that all that's
Speaker 1: happening while Bartlett is on his odyssey. Now at this point,
Speaker 1: we're the only three people who died, Like the three
Speaker 1: that took off, those are the only people that had
Speaker 1: died up to this point. Well, those three we know
Speaker 1: the other guys that went to the wrong Old island
Speaker 1: and then probably they're probably dead by that. No, so
Speaker 1: there's some other carnage. I don't want to give anything away.
Speaker 1: I mean it's uh, it's really sad man because so
Speaker 1: in the split up Icy spit wearing point in the
Speaker 1: middle and then the other place Roger's Harbor. So some
Speaker 1: yarn mom and the Norwegian guy Templeman to cook, uh,
Speaker 1: and this other guy George Malloch who is one of
Speaker 1: the scientists there. They end up at Roger's Harbor and
Speaker 1: the hunting is not not good there. They get some
Speaker 1: Arctic foxes, but they they're and they're also in really
Speaker 1: bad shape. So um, that scene at Rogers Harbor becomes
Speaker 1: um like really dires almost like the Greeley and that's
Speaker 1: going and so a couple of times it's really sad.
Speaker 1: Like McKinley goes down there and you know, he realizes
Speaker 1: one of the guys from that's been at mid Island.
Speaker 1: He gets down to them to check on how they're doing,
Speaker 1: and it's like not well, you know, they're like hallucinating
Speaker 1: and they're they're malnourished, and so McKinley tries to make
Speaker 1: this you know, noble herculean track back to get different
Speaker 1: pemmican for mom and who can't eat this stuff anymore?
Speaker 1: And find some more and bring them, bring them food.
Speaker 1: And there's some really touching scenes where like McKinley has
Speaker 1: brought him like a can of condensed milk, you know,
Speaker 1: and he's like giving it to him like he's a
Speaker 1: little baby, you know, and you're just like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: is this guy gonna make it or not? You know,
Speaker 1: I got all Arctic explore stuff that that was one
Speaker 1: of the things I kept wanderings, Uh, was there during
Speaker 1: this period? Were there any of these trips were everything
Speaker 1: just went like name for me, one just went great.
Speaker 1: That's a really good question, like when you signed up,
Speaker 1: like when they so at this point, they've been at
Speaker 1: it for a while, Like you're in the in the teens,
Speaker 1: nineteen teens, people been up there dying for a long time.
Speaker 1: You getting anyone to fund him? What are they looking
Speaker 1: at as the sort of like way it could go right? Well,
Speaker 1: So that's a really great question. Um. I mean, ironically,
Speaker 1: and I don't really want to say this because you know,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm kind of anti Stephenson on this whole thing.
Speaker 1: But so yeah, they're like, well he did it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he was able to. I mean he had he
Speaker 1: went with this guy Rudolph Anderson who ends up being
Speaker 1: on this the Southern Party. Uh, and Stephenson had brought
Speaker 1: back like artifacts and it was for the American Museum
Speaker 1: of Natural History. So the things that that Stephenson was
Speaker 1: bringing back in the findings that they were making about
Speaker 1: like maybe you know, underscoring all of this is like
Speaker 1: a desire to find potentially new land and claim it
Speaker 1: for Canada. So that you know, I think people's ability
Speaker 1: to um fundraise and to be really um convincing and persuasive.
Speaker 1: I mean Perry was very good at it. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: some of some of the expeditions had worked. I mean Perry,
Speaker 1: even though it's contested now um had in nine made
Speaker 1: it to the North Pole. So you've got like, he
Speaker 1: didn't lose a bunch of guys. No, no, and you
Speaker 1: know they he did it better though. I mean he
Speaker 1: brought out steel holed icebreaker, the SS Roosevelt, right, so
Speaker 1: he you know, um, so people could look at that
Speaker 1: and you could be like, you know, he did he
Speaker 1: did it. But also there's there's a bit of a difference. UM.
Speaker 1: I think in all of the in many of the
Speaker 1: expeditions leading up to this, like first were what they
Speaker 1: were about, or discovery of new lands, being the first
Speaker 1: to the north Pole, the first to farthest north, the
Speaker 1: first to go through the Northwest Passage. UM, this was
Speaker 1: one of the early like purely it's going to be
Speaker 1: scientific in nature, and so it was worth it for
Speaker 1: the Canadian and also the Canadian government had sort of
Speaker 1: designs on UM. If we can expand our holdings our
Speaker 1: land mass, that's good, you know, in terms of UM
Speaker 1: dominion over the north right. But so I think Stephenson's
Speaker 1: ability to persuade the Canadian government that this thing was
Speaker 1: going to be an unprecedented scientific UM success. And in
Speaker 1: many ways it was because the work that he ends
Speaker 1: up doing, which I don't I cover it briefly in
Speaker 1: the book, because my interest was more about the car
Speaker 1: look and that story. But I mean, so Stephenson ends
Speaker 1: up continuing on. I mean he conveniently, like so World
Speaker 1: War One breaks out like right as Um Bartlett and everybody,
Speaker 1: you know, right right as the regular island fiasco is
Speaker 1: going on, and Stephenson conveniently, uh, like goes onto the
Speaker 1: ice in like nineteen fourteen and conveniently sort of re
Speaker 1: surfaces to the world right right as World War One end.
Speaker 1: It's like good timing. You know what happened? Yea, give
Speaker 1: me a paper the Great War? What? Right? And so
Speaker 1: you know a number of the other members like have
Speaker 1: to go serve and stuff. You know, So how did uh? Um?
Speaker 1: I never looked this up. How does Steffan's gonna end up? Like?
Speaker 1: How long does he live? Well? He lives forever? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, uh sixty two. He dies of I don't
Speaker 1: think it's anything like cataclysmic, like cancer or anything. No, no,
Speaker 1: But the funny thing is, and I have to add
Speaker 1: this because it has to do with your question about whether, um,
Speaker 1: you know, Curl look and his family could probably have
Speaker 1: survived or walked a hundred miles. Um. So this is
Speaker 1: bizarre Stephenson. You gotta hand it to him. So he resurfaces, okay,
Speaker 1: And now he's he is, His books are selling, he's rights,
Speaker 1: he's written My Life with the Eskimo, and he also
Speaker 1: writes The Friendly Arctic, which is a great title for
Speaker 1: a book in which most people vacation. And that's him
Speaker 1: kind of laying out how you go about it, right,
Speaker 1: He's like, what's you do is you take off as
Speaker 1: soon as things look bad with the Inuit who will
Speaker 1: keep you alive? And by the way, Amandsen, you know
Speaker 1: the famous uh Norwegian bowler explorer, he he contests the
Speaker 1: friendly Arctic big time. He's like, this is actually irresponsible
Speaker 1: because you're you're making it sound like any ea, who
Speaker 1: can just go with a rifle and live off the ice.
Speaker 1: And it's like most of the people that dry that
Speaker 1: are going to die, you know, because but Stephenson, in
Speaker 1: fairness to him, he developed a great deal of skill
Speaker 1: in living in this way. But so he does the
Speaker 1: most man. No, there's like, no, whatever you're saying about
Speaker 1: his like allegiances and in his his cavalier attitude about
Speaker 1: human life, you cannot deny. I mean the guy could
Speaker 1: do insane ship. Oh yeah, yeah, and he teached he
Speaker 1: knew how to pick his company, that's what. But he
Speaker 1: could go and just go right. What he couldn't do was,
Speaker 1: you know, put together an expedition of this magnitude. Right,
Speaker 1: but you give him in a couple of hundreds and
Speaker 1: they would do some crazy ship. Yes, So I was
Speaker 1: gonna kind of follow up on that, Like there's so
Speaker 1: many variables and there's no way of knowing obviously, But
Speaker 1: in your opinion, does this trip go a different way
Speaker 1: of Stephenson doesn't leave from the get go, or at
Speaker 1: least when he sees the ship has floated away, turns
Speaker 1: around and tries to find it. Maybe yeah, because I
Speaker 1: mean I think it's Stephenson. UM might well have been
Speaker 1: able to get more of them to land. Um, he
Speaker 1: still would have been challenged by the fact that most
Speaker 1: of the scientists and the crew members did not have
Speaker 1: um arctic ice skill, you know. So the thing I
Speaker 1: was gonna say though, that UM that he does that's
Speaker 1: really a head scratcher. Um Is that so one? You know?
Speaker 1: Like some years after this expedition, Um, he decides he's
Speaker 1: going to organize another expedition to Wrangle Island, right, Um,
Speaker 1: And one of the survivors, this guy's name is Fred Mauer, Uh,
Speaker 1: decides that he wants to go back to Wrangle Island
Speaker 1: because he had so much fun there the first time,
Speaker 1: and Stephenson convinces him to do it. So he gets
Speaker 1: like four part of the rationale. And Stephenson wasn't really
Speaker 1: wrong about this was that there He's already envisioning. I mean,
Speaker 1: Stephenson thought about some things, like he predicted polar flight
Speaker 1: to across the Arctic. Um, he predicted submarine travel in
Speaker 1: that region. I was kind of I was gonna ask,
Speaker 1: was was this expedition kind of the end of an era? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: they call at the end of the dog Sled Adventurer,
Speaker 1: you know, because things, you know, things began to change
Speaker 1: in terms of technology. But so Stephenson organizes this other trip.
Speaker 1: Now the Canadian government wants no part of it, even
Speaker 1: though he was going to originally try to claim Wrangle
Speaker 1: Island for Canada. Um. So he's become a Canadian citizen
Speaker 1: by this time, and he's like, well, um, we can
Speaker 1: plant the flag. It was kind of contested, so he,
Speaker 1: I mean, nobody will pay. So he self finances this
Speaker 1: thing from like his book proceeds and he uh, he
Speaker 1: sends Fred Mauer, one of the guys from the car. Look,
Speaker 1: these two other members and a woman also seemed just
Speaker 1: her name is Ada Blackjack. This is you might want
Speaker 1: to read this book. It's freaking cool. Read Empire biss
Speaker 1: at first. But yeah, so, um they go to Wrangle Island.
Speaker 1: It's things go south there, you know, as they do,
Speaker 1: and they realize they're not gonna they're not gonna make it.
Speaker 1: And so I think when things go south and the
Speaker 1: north might be exactly so anyway from our or the
Speaker 1: guy from the car look and this other guy decided
Speaker 1: there they know, well Bartlett did it with Karactobic. We're
Speaker 1: gonna strike across the long straight to go. They're they're
Speaker 1: running out of food and it's just not gonna work
Speaker 1: either of this. They leave Aida black Jack with the
Speaker 1: one other member. These two guys strike for Siberia and
Speaker 1: die out on the ice, and Aida Blackjack nurses this
Speaker 1: guy who has scurvy for a while until he dies
Speaker 1: in her arms. She lives on Wrangel Island by herself
Speaker 1: for a year, like figuring out Ada black Jack. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean she is tough, she's industrious, she knows how
Speaker 1: to um use bow and arrow, and she eventually get
Speaker 1: picked up, She gets she gets recovered. It's a good name.
Speaker 1: He already got a great name. I'll take her name,
Speaker 1: Stevie black Jack. Oh wow, I can lead an expedition
Speaker 1: at that name. Well, um, we didn't give it too
Speaker 1: much away, did we. Okay, good. You know what's the
Speaker 1: book about a black jack? It's called Ada Blackjack. It
Speaker 1: sounds a good name. Yeah. Uh and it was written
Speaker 1: by a woman named Jennifer Niven, who who wrote the
Speaker 1: last book about this, um but like twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: Um and uh this this woman is is a really
Speaker 1: great writer and has transitioned into like young adult um writing.
Speaker 1: Now she didn't right about this got their hands on
Speaker 1: not not yet, No, they didn't. Um. And Russians do. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know it's cool because today, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you guys know this, but today Wrangle Island is
Speaker 1: um a spectacular nature preserve. You can't go there without
Speaker 1: like being you know, you have to have specific paperwork
Speaker 1: sure you're not bringing Yeah. And and it's the largest
Speaker 1: uh Pacific walrusts breeding ground and the largest polar bear
Speaker 1: dead ing ground in the world to this day. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's just spectacular if you look at um, like,
Speaker 1: just look at images online of it. It's so rugged. Man,
Speaker 1: the top of it's like thirty feet um. And you
Speaker 1: know it's cool because there's you know, there's beautiful rivers
Speaker 1: running out to the sea and um, polar bears hanging
Speaker 1: out now The weird thing is that musk oxen people
Speaker 1: they go, well, why didn't they just eat all the
Speaker 1: musk oxen that are there? Because if you look at
Speaker 1: Wrangel Island, there's musk ox in there. Now they were
Speaker 1: they were there, you know, so it's like, well, they
Speaker 1: wish they'd had those muskoks And oh, well, man, you
Speaker 1: got a good New York Times review. Hey, I appreciate
Speaker 1: the shout out there. Yeah, this morning New York Times
Speaker 1: uh uh said some nice things about this book, and um,
Speaker 1: I'm pleased. We're gonna, you know, pump it up next week.
Speaker 1: December six is the drop date. You're not doing any
Speaker 1: more podcasts, are you? Let's do that? No, no competitive ones,
Speaker 1: nothing that's good. No, nothing that There's no podcasts that
Speaker 1: are that are like this, really that are Yeah, I
Speaker 1: like RBS or something. It's all structured and formal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're already working on the third book in the trilogy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks for asking that. Man. I so I do need
Speaker 1: to get off the ice eventually, because it's started my numbing,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, but I did pitch book and I'm
Speaker 1: I have I'm under contract to write a third book
Speaker 1: in the trilogy and it's called realm of ice and sky,
Speaker 1: and it's about the first uh what are called airships
Speaker 1: or blimps, um, they're actually semi rigid dirigibles. But try
Speaker 1: to say that a whole bunch of times, you know, um,
Speaker 1: semi rigid originals, that we're going to try to fly
Speaker 1: to the North Pole in nineteen o five. This American
Speaker 1: just seems like such a bad idea. I know, well
Speaker 1: in this American dude named Walter Wellman. So this is
Speaker 1: before Pierry has made it to the North Pole or
Speaker 1: Cook or whoever you did. Um, he's like trying to
Speaker 1: fly from smaal Bard, you know, Spitzberg and north of
Speaker 1: Norway in in a blimp to get to the North Pole.
Speaker 1: Right now. It doesn't go well for Wellman. He he lives,
Speaker 1: but he ends up being kind of pioneer for in
Speaker 1: in n six and then later um ammonds and ultimately
Speaker 1: goes with this guy named Umberto Noble a um he's
Speaker 1: an Italian airship designer. They make it to the North
Speaker 1: Pole and from smaal Bard and then but pass over
Speaker 1: it and continue on to No right, So it's a
Speaker 1: transcontinental flight trans Arctic trans Arctic ice continent flight of
Speaker 1: the pole. So two years later, Amondson takes a lot
Speaker 1: of credit for it, and this this Italian guy, Noble
Speaker 1: is like, man, I need to do that again, like
Speaker 1: and get and make it more about me. So he
Speaker 1: he this is a really bad idea. So he takes
Speaker 1: He has mostly an Italian crew. At this point Amandson
Speaker 1: and him are scrapping and so Noble a takes I
Speaker 1: mean these things are huge, like a four ft blimp,
Speaker 1: you know, with like the cabin underneathe right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: like exactly the led Zeppelin. Yeah, And so they take it.
Speaker 1: They make it to over the North Pole and instead
Speaker 1: of continuing on, so the plan was to like land,
Speaker 1: It's hard to land a blimp because you need these
Speaker 1: like poles that you tie to right tether to them.
Speaker 1: Though they're gonna try to like lower dudes down and
Speaker 1: do uh North Pole study right out of like repelling
Speaker 1: out of the damn ship and so that that will work.
Speaker 1: So anyway, this is the bizarre thing that happens is
Speaker 1: that they make it to the North Pole. It's really
Speaker 1: fucking windy and it's not going well for their ability
Speaker 1: to um you know, uh, nobody wants to go back
Speaker 1: right back to Spitsberg and not do the same thing
Speaker 1: that he did already, which is with continue on. So
Speaker 1: they turn it around. They can't land or land people.
Speaker 1: They throw the Italian flag out and they're like, okay,
Speaker 1: they know they're at the north Pole. They've got good
Speaker 1: readings on the way back. By the way, Noble at
Speaker 1: this point is like been awake for seventy six hours.
Speaker 1: He's all sleep deprived, and he makes some mistakes. They
Speaker 1: crashed the blimp like a hundred and fifty miles back
Speaker 1: toward UH Norway Spitzberg A's fall Bark. They crashed the
Speaker 1: blimp in this catastrophic accident. The cabin that has like
Speaker 1: most of the people in it, bunch of them, nine
Speaker 1: of them billing out onto the ice right like they're
Speaker 1: thrown onto the ice. Their legs are shattered, they're broken.
Speaker 1: And then they look up and the six of the
Speaker 1: other members UH are still in the cabin and and
Speaker 1: the blimp is sailing off into the sky and they're
Speaker 1: like hell they fly away, never to be seen again.
Speaker 1: And now you've got these guys on the ice, and
Speaker 1: it it creates the largest rescue operation in polar history,
Speaker 1: right and then in which, by the way, the famed
Speaker 1: explorer Roald Ormondson goes to go save Noble A flies
Speaker 1: off in a Fokker ship you know, seaplane and never
Speaker 1: is seen again. It's awesome. The blimp really have been seen,
Speaker 1: never been seen? And yes, how is that? I mean
Speaker 1: maybe it's still flying around big place and things get
Speaker 1: engulfed by the leads in the ice, you know, just swallowed.
Speaker 1: I kind of rather be in a boat for a year,
Speaker 1: I think. Yeah, So that one I gotta, I gotta
Speaker 1: really got it right now. Once you write that one,
Speaker 1: come back all right? You want to hear more about
Speaker 1: Noble A and there bring bring a to black Jack
Speaker 1: with thanks, man, I really appreciate you. So give the
Speaker 1: hit people once more with the name of the book.
Speaker 1: All right, this is the Empire of Ice and Stone,
Speaker 1: the disastrous and heroic Voyage of the car Look by
Speaker 1: Buddy Levy available blame where books are sold. You bet
Speaker 1: in audio too, And oh did you do the read? That?
Speaker 1: Sons of bitches, they don't let you do the read.
Speaker 1: Did you tell me what have you heard these pipes? Man? Listen, man,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't I know? They said, I'm doing another I
Speaker 1: got it. I got so, I got another book that's
Speaker 1: hitting the ten year mark, so I'm getting the audio
Speaker 1: rights back. I'm gonna do my and read it. Was
Speaker 1: just the first time, you will Nope, oh no, you
Speaker 1: did so. I had a book like okay, American when
Speaker 1: when I sold so when I sold American Buffalo, the
Speaker 1: my publisher at Random House, they sold the audio to
Speaker 1: an outside place. The outside place did had bought the
Speaker 1: audio for ten years. They hired some soap opera guy
Speaker 1: to read it and the hunt him down and kill him.
Speaker 1: Then at ten years it ran out. Random House got
Speaker 1: it back. At that point they were doing more audio.
Speaker 1: Then I went and did the read. Now the book
Speaker 1: I published after American Buffalo, my book Me Eater is
Speaker 1: the ten year thing is reverting and I'm going to the
Speaker 1: the studio and read that. Son of a bit. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I would like to if I write something
Speaker 1: more more personal memoir, I will probably read it. I'm
Speaker 1: very happy so far with McMillan. Audio. Did a good
Speaker 1: job guy as an actor professional. I listened to six
Speaker 1: voice Shish and I'm like, that guy's pretty good. Shout around.
Speaker 1: You went through a voice cattle idea, you know, voice.
Speaker 1: What do they call it um when you go up
Speaker 1: for the job, right, not yeah voice audition. I've told
Speaker 1: the story of Hunter times Man probably fifty times on
Speaker 1: the show. But the one I got my first book
Speaker 1: that a guy that a soap opera person read. I
Speaker 1: turned it on and he couldn't get two words out
Speaker 1: of his mouth and I had to race over turn
Speaker 1: it off and never it was just like, that's not
Speaker 1: what it sounds like. It was an actual soap opera line.
Speaker 1: He's probably he's probably a great family man, loves his wife,
Speaker 1: loves his children. It was like, you're gonna hut him
Speaker 1: down and kill him. I'm not. I want to take
Speaker 1: you back. My name went down. But loves his country,
Speaker 1: loves his wife, loves his children, I have no doubt.
Speaker 1: But it was like he had no business saying those words.
Speaker 1: It's too bad. I don't want to hear it now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I'll get it. I'll lend it to tell
Speaker 1: me how it is. No, this guy is great. And
Speaker 1: by the way, sometimes, man, you're glad they because some
Speaker 1: of the words are really hard to pronounce. You don't
Speaker 1: need to figure it out. Yeah, you're just like, let
Speaker 1: that guy handle it. You know, I know how to
Speaker 1: spell them out, how to say him, spell a villain
Speaker 1: or like times. Yeah, I'll leave that up to you,
Speaker 1: but it's tough. Good luck. Thank you, oh man, Well,
Speaker 1: thanks a lot. Good luck on the book and when
Speaker 1: you get the next one ready to come back. I
Speaker 1: appreciate it. Always love what you guys do. Man, Thank
Speaker 1: you very much,