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Speaker 1: If this is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,

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Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast, you

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Speaker 1: can't predict anything presented by First Light, creating proven versatile

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Speaker 1: hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear. For

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Speaker 1: every hunt, First Light, Go farther, Stay longer. I want

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Speaker 1: to start this show out by saying this me Eater's

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Speaker 1: American history, The Long Hunters seventeen sixty one to seventeen

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Speaker 1: seventy five is out.

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Speaker 2: Now.

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Speaker 1: When you get to the end of this episode, you're

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Speaker 1: gonna hear a long I don't wanna call it long.

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Speaker 1: You're gonna hear a very good explanation of what this

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Speaker 1: project is and why you want to buy it. Just

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Speaker 1: be prepared for that, Like when you get to the

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Speaker 1: end of the episode, get your credit card out and

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Speaker 1: go to wherever you buy your audiobooks, because you're gonna

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Speaker 1: be like, damn, I'm buying that. So get to the

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Speaker 1: end and I'm gonna tell you a lot about it.

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna just convince you just how good it is.

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Speaker 1: It's really good. We've been talking about it a long time.

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Speaker 1: This is narrated by me Steven Arnello and Clay Nukem

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Speaker 1: from the Bear Grease podcast, and it is a audio original.

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Speaker 1: It's like an audiobook that you listen to, okay, and

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Speaker 1: it's called Meat Eater's American History The Long Hunters seventeen

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Speaker 1: sixty one to seventeen seventy five. It tells one of

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Speaker 1: the most bloody, hair raising stories of hunting in American history.

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Speaker 1: It's out now, but listen to the show. Enjoy the show,

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Speaker 1: but know that at the end of the show that

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Speaker 1: you're about to listen to, I'm gonna give you the

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Speaker 1: sales pitch to end all sales pitches, so you can

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Speaker 1: if you're not convinced, you can listen and be convinced,

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Speaker 1: or you can just know that you'll be convinced and

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Speaker 1: buy it now. I don't really care. I just want

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Speaker 1: you to get it and start listening because this is

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Speaker 1: one of the things that I've made that I'm most

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Speaker 1: proud of. Meet Eater's American History The Long Hunters, available

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Speaker 1: now and explained in greater detail at the end of

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Speaker 1: the show. Is to stay tuned, everybody. I'm very, very

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Speaker 1: excited to announce that I am seated here with the

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Speaker 1: writer and film director Werner Herzog, who's made over sixty

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Speaker 1: films and documentaries, including many I'm sure you heard of,

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Speaker 1: and a bunch of them that you better have seen.

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Speaker 1: Little Deader Needs to Fly Rescue Dawn, the famous in

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Speaker 1: my circle of people, Grizzly Man, Happy People, cav of

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Speaker 1: Forgotten Dreams, which I believe is your only film that

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Speaker 1: I managed to catch when it released in a theater

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Speaker 1: in New York Cava Forgotten Dreams. His films deal with extremes,

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Speaker 1: with struggle, with absurdity, with madness, with happiness, and many

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Speaker 1: are fused, in my opinion, with a very unique perspective

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Speaker 1: on nature in the natural world. If you read about Herzog,

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Speaker 1: you'll often find writers describing it his work as man

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Speaker 1: against man, against nature, man versus nature. We'll find out

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Speaker 1: if he describes it that way. I'm guessing he doesn't,

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Speaker 1: as I believe that description would imply that nature is

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Speaker 1: aware of man as an adversary. Mister Herzige, a couple

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Speaker 1: of your own quotes, the universe is monstrously indifferent to

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Speaker 1: the presence of man. You also once said, I believe

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Speaker 1: the common denominator of the universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility,

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Speaker 1: and murder. Now, many documentarians who deal with the natural

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Speaker 1: world I find personally seem to reflect the relationship with

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Speaker 1: nature sometimes feels to me as though it's as though

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Speaker 1: it's taught, as though it's something they picked up or

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Speaker 1: learned from their peers. It's oftentimes political. But our guest

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Speaker 1: here today, I feel that the things he has to

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Speaker 1: say about the natural world and the way that the

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Speaker 1: natural world plays into his movies is wholly original influence

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Speaker 1: me immensely, not just as a writer or TV person,

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Speaker 1: but as a human. I'd say, for me on par

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Speaker 1: with Cormick McCarthy, because both have these immense bodies of

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Speaker 1: work that interplay together as something that is not schizophrenic,

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Speaker 1: meaning they carry this sort of intellectual trademark. And the

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Speaker 1: last little bit of introduction I'll saying this is a

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Speaker 1: very inside joke. When I'm arguing with production people, which

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Speaker 1: I do in my line of work, I've a lot

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Speaker 1: of times dealt with camera guys producers that want to

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Speaker 1: catch the entirety of a process, and if they can't

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Speaker 1: catch the entirety of a process, they don't want to

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Speaker 1: use it. And I will say to them in shorthand.

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Speaker 1: I will take a line from Happy People and I

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Speaker 1: will say the nets were set the night before, because

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Speaker 1: there's a scene in Happy People which chronicles the lives

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Speaker 1: of Siberian fur travers and subsistence hunters, and there's a

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Speaker 1: scene that opens where they're just checking a net, and

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Speaker 1: my camera guys would have been like, well, we can't

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Speaker 1: use that. We never saw you set the net, to

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Speaker 1: which I will refer them to Happy People, and I

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Speaker 1: will say to them, the nets were set the night before.

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Speaker 1: And that's it. Go on with your movie. Go on

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Speaker 1: with your movie. I want to start our conversation talk

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Speaker 1: a little bit about your your childhood, which I was like, like,

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Speaker 1: I said, my avenue to you and your work. It's

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Speaker 1: just been your movies. I've been a fan of your

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Speaker 1: movies for such a long time, and it wasn't I

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Speaker 1: read your new book, which I haven't finished yet. It

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Speaker 1: started a new book. It's every Man for Himself and

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Speaker 1: God against all your life. Yeah, I didn't realize the

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Speaker 1: extent of the poverty that you grew up in.

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Speaker 2: Well, it's easy to imagine when you grew up at

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Speaker 2: the end of the Second World War and then mostly

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Speaker 2: post war time and you have to imagine a scenario

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Speaker 2: where everybody here in the country, in the United States

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Speaker 2: is very well aware how Ground zero looked at ninety eleven.

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Speaker 2: After nine eleven, complete devastation, but very limited, a very

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Speaker 2: limited area on the island of Manhattan. But you have

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Speaker 2: to imagine a whole country Germany, where seven hundred twenty

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Speaker 2: or so cities were wiped out, the entire cities, some

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Speaker 2: of them not as completely. For example, Munich, where I

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Speaker 2: was born, was only eighty eighty five percent flattened and destroyed.

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Speaker 2: And it was one of these Allied bombing raids, carpet

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Speaker 2: bombings that hit our neighborhood and everything around destroyed. And

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Speaker 2: I was only two weeks old, fourteen days old, and

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Speaker 2: where we lived was partially destroyed, and my mother picks

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Speaker 2: me up from my cradle, which was covered with about

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Speaker 2: a foot high shards of glass and bricks and debris.

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Speaker 2: But I was unhurt, And of course you get when

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Speaker 2: your mother, you're naturally are scared. And she fled with

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Speaker 2: my older brother and me into the remotest mountain valley

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Speaker 2: in the Alps in Bavaria.

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Speaker 1: And your dad had split out on you guys, Your

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Speaker 1: dad wasn't in the picture at this time.

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Speaker 2: He wasn't in the picture. Well, he was in the

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Speaker 2: war when I was born. I was born nineteen forty two.

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Speaker 2: The war was over nineteen forty five, and when he

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Speaker 2: came back very soon divorced, and my mother was a

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Speaker 2: singing a singing mother and had to raise Then she

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Speaker 2: had another boy, my younger brother, so she had to

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Speaker 2: raise three children, and there was never enough to eat.

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Speaker 2: What I remember very well is starving.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you tell a story of a lesson you learned

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Speaker 1: about nagging your mother, You and your brother nagging your

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Speaker 1: mother about how hungry you were, and her saying, if

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Speaker 1: I could take it from my ribs, I would take

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Speaker 1: it from my ribs.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, but I can't. But I can't, And you shut

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Speaker 2: up boys in me. Of course that that was a

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Speaker 2: serious moment, and it's engraved in my memories. So and

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Speaker 2: and of course it was not only food. We had

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Speaker 2: literally nothing. For example, we don't have didn't have mattresses.

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Speaker 2: My mother stuffed burlap sacks with hay that she made

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Speaker 2: from fern. But when you cut the stem of a fern,

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Speaker 2: it hardens when it dries, it hardens like the tip

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Speaker 2: of a shark. Yes, she cut it with a side

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Speaker 2: and it you would feel it at night when you

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Speaker 2: shifted around, all of a sudden you were on two

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Speaker 2: pencils that were stings stinging you. And and fern also hardens.

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Speaker 2: It's not like hay more fluffy. It becomes almost like cementing.

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Speaker 2: You have this little dents and I had to navigate

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Speaker 2: the dents in my mattress. So my entire childhood, I

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Speaker 2: never had a flat surface on which I slept. And

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Speaker 2: we had no running water. You had to go to

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Speaker 2: the well with a bucket and bring in the water

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Speaker 2: in no sewage system, no heating, no toy, no real

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Speaker 2: I mean a toilet, but an outhouse which was adjacent

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Speaker 2: to this little to this little house where we grew up.

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Speaker 1: And you talk about eating a someone killing a crow

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Speaker 1: or a raven. Yes, yes, and you're being surprised by

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Speaker 1: the the seeing fat, yeah, fat on a soup broth

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Speaker 1: and being surprised but fat.

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Speaker 2: I never had seen anything like this until today. This

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Speaker 2: means wealth. For example, the first time I ate a

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Speaker 2: fried egg, what an ache in my life. I must

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Speaker 2: have been about ten or eleven, and it was like

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Speaker 2: an incredible feast. Never ate a chicken for me. Even

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Speaker 2: I see, and even you see, even when you drive

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Speaker 2: by the fast food Kentucky right chicken finger licking good,

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Speaker 2: and it makes an impression on me because chicken means

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Speaker 2: the definitive feast.

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Speaker 1: You mentioned another detail of your mother getting a loaf

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Speaker 1: of bread with food coupons or I describe them, but

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Speaker 1: then scoring the bread right in seven segments for each

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Speaker 1: day so that she would part she would partition the

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Speaker 1: breadh as the week's ration of bread. And in that

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Speaker 1: passage you mentioned you don't elaborate on it, and I

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Speaker 1: was looking for you to elaborate on it that you

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Speaker 1: said that you have no tolerance for the culture of complaint.

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Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, yeah, I get it, But explain that to me. Well,

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Speaker 3: I cannot make it the norm. How I grew up,

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Speaker 3: it was an unusual, unusual childhood because it was in

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Speaker 3: the aftermath of a catastrophic war that Germany actually had started,

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Speaker 3: and the catastrophe came from our own people, from our society,

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Speaker 3: from our.

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Speaker 2: Leader adult Fitland. It was it was really so bad

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Speaker 2: that we knew now what we got. We got, and

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Speaker 2: each one of us had a thin slice of bread

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Speaker 2: per day, and the kind of grooves that my mother

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Speaker 2: carved into the loaf of bread. We knew this was

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Speaker 2: the only thing we have, and of course she would

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Speaker 2: also make some food from dandelion leaves and from syrup

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Speaker 2: from some trees and replacing sugar which we didn't have.

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Speaker 2: So when I see in our kind of society's western

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Speaker 2: highly technical societies where a lot of food is being

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Speaker 2: thrown away in the United States, I think more than

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Speaker 2: forty percent of food, and I find it outrageous. And

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Speaker 2: I never say anything because it was my experience and

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Speaker 2: I know the value of food. I now there's something

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Speaker 2: which has to be honored, and it in a way,

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Speaker 2: it pains me when I see so much food being

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Speaker 2: thrown away. Because of my experience, it was unusual, but

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Speaker 2: I never I never speak out loud.

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Speaker 1: But you.

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Speaker 2: Know, for God's sake, I would be the last one.

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Speaker 2: That's not in my nature. Because you have to determine

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Speaker 2: how you live and whether you live a life of

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Speaker 2: consumerism or whether you are more cautious with wasting resources

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Speaker 2: that we have. And I think when you are in

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Speaker 2: other societies hunters and gatherers, they are more careful and cautious.

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Speaker 2: There's no doubt in my heart, because that's how we've

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Speaker 2: organized as biological creatures. And so how can I say.

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Speaker 2: I see people in the restaurant complaining to the waiter

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Speaker 2: that this wasn't any good and give it back to

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Speaker 2: the kitchen, and so I don't like this complaint. And

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Speaker 2: it's not only about food, it's about whatever. Our lives

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Speaker 2: are so difficult, and gasoline has become so expensive, into

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Speaker 2: all these things. Yes, deal with it, deal with it

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Speaker 2: in the right way, but don't complain too much.

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Speaker 1: There was a I got two questions stacked up in

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Speaker 1: my head and when I was going to ask you,

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Speaker 1: and when I thought about asking you and decided not to.

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Speaker 1: But now I'm going to ask you because you alluded

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Speaker 1: to it.

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Speaker 2: Uh.

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Speaker 1: My father fought in World War Two serving the European

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Speaker 1: Theater and maintained, I don't want to say we we

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Speaker 1: joke about it now, but maintained a deep suspicion of

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Speaker 1: Germany through to the end. Rightly, So zero for Japan,

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Speaker 1: didn't zero for Japan. Father? Well, no, no, no, I'm not

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Speaker 1: gonna that. But what was the It's kind of like,

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Speaker 1: outside of a subject matter, I'm like anything, but or

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Speaker 1: that I'm an expert on but what was the How

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Speaker 1: did you perceive when you're thrust in at a young age,

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Speaker 1: when you're thrust into such like this, this devastating situation,

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Speaker 1: and so many of your countrymen are being killed, your

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Speaker 1: cities are being destroyed, You're starving. What is your perception

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Speaker 1: of Germany? Is it gone?

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Speaker 2: No? No, of course not. I'm still a German citizen.

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Speaker 1: No, no, I'm saying at that time, how are people

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Speaker 1: feeling about?

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Speaker 2: You know?

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Speaker 1: I mean, is this all happening to them? Is it

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Speaker 1: a thing they created? That was your mom's perception?

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Speaker 2: It's a different response some of them. You still until

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Speaker 2: today you have denious You even have Holocaust denials, which

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Speaker 2: is the most absurd of all, because it's one hundred

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Speaker 2: thousands of times documented survivors are there, the bodies were found,

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Speaker 2: I mean, and and a crime of proportions that the

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Speaker 2: world has never seen in any country throughout the entire

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Speaker 2: history of the human race. Nothing like that has ever happened.

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Speaker 2: So you, of course, you have to ask yourself what

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Speaker 2: went wrong? What made Germany lapse into a culture from

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Speaker 2: a very solid culture of philosophy, mathematics, writers compose us,

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Speaker 2: you just name it. How does it lapse into a

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Speaker 2: culture of barbarism within very few years. So of course

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Speaker 2: that gave me to think, and of course it has

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Speaker 2: importance always rest something is resonating from from that in

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Speaker 2: my entire existence.

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Speaker 1: But where the pot? What was your sense of or

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Speaker 1: perhaps this would be a question that you'd have to

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Speaker 1: answer on your mother's behalf. Where what was the sense

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Speaker 1: of blame? There was the blame the wise was the

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Speaker 1: blame on England the US for doing this?

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Speaker 2: No, I think the overwhelming, the overwhelming part of the

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Speaker 2: population knew it was self inflicted. And you have to

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Speaker 2: also see one strange thing when you speak about Germany.

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Speaker 2: As a child, and even when I was six and

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Speaker 2: eight years old, I didn't know that Germany existed, that

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Speaker 2: there was such a thing like Germany. For me, this

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Speaker 2: valley in the mountains that was the world. And beyond that, yes,

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Speaker 2: there was Austria because a border was close, and some

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Speaker 2: young men, that bold young men would secretly smug goods

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Speaker 2: from Austria into Germany, and some of them were my

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Speaker 2: childhood heroes. But I did not notice. I had no

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Speaker 2: concent except that there were countries, I mean Austria, tiar role. Yes,

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Speaker 2: our valley and something beyond it. And my very first

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Speaker 2: memory that I have about I was must have been

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Speaker 2: two and a half years Allied bombers hit the city

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Speaker 2: of Rosenheim, and my mother took us out of bed,

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Speaker 2: and it was in middle of the night ice colt

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Speaker 2: must have been March or April. Still snow out there

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Speaker 2: and very fine. The distance at the end of the

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Speaker 2: valley you could see the entire sky, not burning, not flickering,

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Speaker 2: so a very slow pulsing of red and orange. And

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Speaker 2: she said, boys, the city of Rosenheim is burning. But

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Speaker 2: the city of Rosenheim is forty miles away that far,

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Speaker 2: an entire city burning, And for me it was a

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Speaker 2: very essential moment because I apparently started to understand there's

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Speaker 2: a world. There's a world out there, not our valley

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Speaker 2: alone and not the waterfall in the ravine behind the home,

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Speaker 2: that there was something out there that was different and

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Speaker 2: dangerous and burning, and there was such a thing like

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Speaker 2: a war. Of course, we saw American soldiers coming in,

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Speaker 2: but they were very genial with kids and befriended the kids.

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Speaker 2: And for the first time I saw an African American

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Speaker 2: and I was completely enthralled. A huge, big, big guy

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Speaker 2: with a big, resonant voice. A little bit. I could

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Speaker 2: always compare him to Shaquille O'Neill, a very very big

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Speaker 2: man with a very big heart and a wonderful voice,

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Speaker 2: a soft, wonderful voice. That was that was for us.

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Speaker 2: We only knew it from fairy tales. The moors, oh

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Speaker 2: the more and there was a more and that was

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Speaker 2: completely completely fascinated and I knew, yes, it's true that

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Speaker 2: some foreign countries like Africa and you have the moors,

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Speaker 2: and there are moors in America. How about that.

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Speaker 1: That particular city that burned that the story you're telling

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Speaker 1: your book demonstrates a little bit of the of a

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Speaker 1: different perspective on collateral damage then you see in warfare today,

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Speaker 1: where in warfare today there's so much public emphasis on

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Speaker 1: not you know, targetings of billions where you're hitting, and

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Speaker 1: you're telling that story that Allied bombers are actually trying

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Speaker 1: to get to a different place entirely, yes, and they

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Speaker 1: can't get over the mountains because of the weather, and they

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Speaker 1: just find a town.

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Speaker 2: Ye sure, and they they want to return to the

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Speaker 2: base empty. And it was probably the reason why the

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Speaker 2: city of Rosenheim was destroyed in a gigantic contralt contra flagration.

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Speaker 2: So but only later let me add up one thing

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Speaker 2: with a sky in the distance pulsing in flames. It

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Speaker 2: made me curious, and I knew there was something out

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Speaker 2: I wanted to to understand. I wanted to learn so

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Speaker 2: and that's why I moved out, and that's why I

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Speaker 2: have been so much around. And it's very strange because

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Speaker 2: people ask me, why can you say that you are

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Speaker 2: a writer. And I have always maintained that my writing

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Speaker 2: will live longer, my prose, my poetry will probably live

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Speaker 2: longer than my films. How do you somehow compare that

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Speaker 2: why it is a conflict between filmmaking. No, it is not.

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Speaker 2: And I have a simple almost like a formula, films

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Speaker 2: on my voyage and writing is home.

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Speaker 1: Oh that's your Your films are your forays out into

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Speaker 1: the world.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, writing is home.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. That brings

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Speaker 1: it to a question that I was hoping to share

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Speaker 1: with you, to ask about, Like I said, I had,

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Speaker 1: I was unfamiliar with the level of poverty that you

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Speaker 1: that you grew up in.

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Speaker 2: Oh it doesn't it doesn't matter.

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Speaker 1: No, no, no, this is no no, no, no.

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Speaker 2: I don't want to be commiserated for children. It was

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Speaker 2: a wonderfully incredible time and we had to take responsibility.

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Speaker 2: We had to go out foraging. We were the ones

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Speaker 2: who would catch trout in the creek, but since we

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Speaker 2: had no fishing gear, we caught them by hand. You

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Speaker 2: can catch trout slow movement, and they flee under under stones,

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Speaker 2: They take refuge under under tufts of grass overhanging into

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Speaker 2: into the creek, into the water, and you know where

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Speaker 2: they're hiding, and you have to be very very patient

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Speaker 2: and cautious, and you actually can catch them with their

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Speaker 2: own hands. People think I'm making it. You have probably

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Speaker 2: done it yourself.

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Speaker 1: When so considering that that that childhood, it made me

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Speaker 1: rethink you're film Happy People. Yes, And within the last

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Speaker 1: day or two, maybe it was even our producer Krinn

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Speaker 1: or Phil the engineer here, I mentioned happy People and

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Speaker 1: he said, you mean that I remember who he said.

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Speaker 1: They said, you mean the people that seem miserable but

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Speaker 1: they're happy. And I wondered about that or some joke

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Speaker 1: like that, meaning I just remember watching Happy People, which

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Speaker 1: is about Siberian hunter gatherers and fur trappers, and just

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Speaker 1: seeing someone carpeted into mosquitos. I mean it was like

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Speaker 1: they had apparel, like they're apparel was made of mosquitos,

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Speaker 1: you know, but just working away and uh, without complaint, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: without complaint. And that's what I thought about, because because

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Speaker 1: in Happy People, there's no no person meditates on the

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Speaker 1: meaning of happiness. No person says, well, you know, in

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Speaker 1: spite of appearances, I'm quite happy. There's no matter. It's

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Speaker 1: just the title, it's Happy People. But then it's this

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Speaker 1: portrait of people. And and no, a viewer would not

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Speaker 1: watch Happy People and someone said, what did you watch

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Speaker 1: a movie about, they wouldn't say, I watched the movie

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Speaker 1: about these very happy people.

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Speaker 2: Yes, and not only happy, they are dignified. They lead

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Speaker 2: a life full of dignity, of awe, of wonder, of nature,

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Speaker 2: of being out there, a life that takes a lot

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Speaker 2: of deep meaning. I envy them. And when I see

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Speaker 2: them in on a on a screen, there's only one wish,

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Speaker 2: old man, I would like to join them.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I can see that.

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Speaker 2: And the fact that they do not have let's say,

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Speaker 2: electricity and air condition and mosquito repelling and you just

380
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Speaker 2: name it. Just their dogs, insane intelligence and rifleent and

381
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Speaker 2: fishing gear. And they live an incredible life, so fulfilled,

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Speaker 2: so wonderful. And whoever whoever sees this, and I believe

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Speaker 2: those who who actually have ever hunted, they will immediately

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Speaker 2: understand instantly. Yeah I envy them.

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Speaker 1: Yeah you when you made Grill, I had watched your films,

386
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Speaker 1: but became interested in your thinking about nature. And you're

387
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Speaker 1: thinking about animals like I had seen a Geary Wrath

388
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Speaker 1: of God. I'd seen fitz Crawl though, which are great stories,

389
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Speaker 1: really enjoyable films, and and and and it sparked a

390
00:27:48,920 --> 00:27:53,760
Speaker 1: curiosity in me about how you view things. But then

391
00:27:53,800 --> 00:27:57,439
Speaker 1: it then the Timothy Treadwell incident happened. So just to

392
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Speaker 1: give listeners a quick run through Timothy Treadwell, I think

393
00:28:00,240 --> 00:28:02,200
Speaker 1: he's born in the late fifties, if I'm not mistaken.

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Speaker 1: He had been a he was wanted to be an actor.

395
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Speaker 1: He had actually was in competition with Woody Harrelson.

396
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Speaker 2: Well, that's what he claims.

397
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Speaker 1: We do not know excectly.

398
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Speaker 2: We can look at him and say he was a failed.

399
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Speaker 1: Actor, failed actor.

400
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Speaker 2: And then and then deeply, deeply into alcohol and drugs.

401
00:28:26,280 --> 00:28:30,080
Speaker 2: So he was struggling, struggling to get out of addiction,

402
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Speaker 2: and in a way that brought him to Alaska because

403
00:28:35,240 --> 00:28:40,640
Speaker 2: out there in nature and with a task too that

404
00:28:40,720 --> 00:28:44,440
Speaker 2: he put on his own shoulders to protect the bears

405
00:28:44,960 --> 00:28:49,280
Speaker 2: against the bad guys, the poachers. Poaches hardly existed all

406
00:28:49,360 --> 00:28:53,360
Speaker 2: but that was his his fiction under which he lived,

407
00:28:54,080 --> 00:28:59,280
Speaker 2: and he got himself straightened out in a way. And

408
00:28:59,320 --> 00:29:02,080
Speaker 2: when you look at Team, of course he has moments

409
00:29:02,160 --> 00:29:06,520
Speaker 2: where he unravels and where he's completely falling apart, but

410
00:29:06,840 --> 00:29:12,120
Speaker 2: moments of deep insight, moments of poetry, moments of beauty,

411
00:29:12,200 --> 00:29:15,800
Speaker 2: what he's doing, what he's seeing, how he describes it,

412
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Speaker 2: how he depicts things, a wonderful, wonderful kind of life

413
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Speaker 2: out there in the wilderness.

414
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Speaker 1: In my world at that time, there was this what

415
00:29:29,200 --> 00:29:31,479
Speaker 1: was getting at about when I became interested in your

416
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Speaker 1: in how you view these because in my world at

417
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Speaker 1: that timing, you know, fairly serious outdoorsman, strong Alaska connections.

418
00:29:42,560 --> 00:29:47,440
Speaker 1: There was just people reveled in his death and it

419
00:29:47,600 --> 00:29:53,000
Speaker 1: was just how stupid he should have known. What a nutjob.

420
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Speaker 1: And I would find myself before you did your film,

421
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Speaker 1: I would find myself joking like that man would out

422
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Speaker 1: camp any person I know, and I would say, I

423
00:30:03,160 --> 00:30:09,080
Speaker 1: would love to see you go spend yeah, thirteen summers, Yes,

424
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Speaker 1: in an alder thicket on the Alaska Peninsula.

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Speaker 2: Population.

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Speaker 1: Ye, go do that and then come tell me how

427
00:30:19,880 --> 00:30:21,760
Speaker 1: stupid the guy was. You might not agree with what

428
00:30:21,800 --> 00:30:23,960
Speaker 1: he stood for, you might not agree with his practice,

429
00:30:24,000 --> 00:30:28,320
Speaker 1: but like there was a tenacity and a sort of

430
00:30:28,400 --> 00:30:31,080
Speaker 1: outdoor expertise. And then your film came out and it's

431
00:30:31,120 --> 00:30:34,040
Speaker 1: like I had joked about it and commented on it,

432
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Speaker 1: but your film came out and was so it was

433
00:30:38,400 --> 00:30:45,720
Speaker 1: so like open hearted and fair. Yeah, but the proper condemnation,

434
00:30:45,960 --> 00:30:50,000
Speaker 1: the proper respect, which just painted a wholly different picture

435
00:30:50,040 --> 00:30:52,520
Speaker 1: than what you got from the media, which was just

436
00:30:52,840 --> 00:30:53,880
Speaker 1: nothing but a nut job.

437
00:30:54,080 --> 00:30:57,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that was a small part of the media.

438
00:30:58,120 --> 00:31:03,480
Speaker 2: But of course it's also unusual that the filmmaker has

439
00:31:03,520 --> 00:31:08,920
Speaker 2: an ongoing argument with his protagonist who was already killed

440
00:31:08,960 --> 00:31:10,720
Speaker 2: by a bear ten months before.

441
00:31:12,040 --> 00:31:13,680
Speaker 1: Ten months when you're working on that, you got to

442
00:31:13,760 --> 00:31:14,320
Speaker 1: it right away.

443
00:31:14,400 --> 00:31:18,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, well I never met him. Of course, he was

444
00:31:18,040 --> 00:31:21,480
Speaker 2: dead when I heard about and his girlfriend was also

445
00:31:21,640 --> 00:31:26,840
Speaker 2: killed and eaten by the same bear. So it doesn't

446
00:31:26,840 --> 00:31:30,320
Speaker 2: matter that I'm that I differ from him, and I

447
00:31:30,480 --> 00:31:35,960
Speaker 2: differ from him in some basic I said, with caught

448
00:31:36,080 --> 00:31:40,800
Speaker 2: caution in quotes basic philosophy. He was more a little

449
00:31:40,840 --> 00:31:46,320
Speaker 2: bit towards New Age, which I can't stand, this pseudo

450
00:31:46,360 --> 00:31:51,480
Speaker 2: philosophical babble. But behind this new agey aspect of wild

451
00:31:51,600 --> 00:31:56,920
Speaker 2: nature there's something which I call the disneyization of wild nature.

452
00:31:57,480 --> 00:32:03,840
Speaker 2: For Treadwill, the bears were wonderful, big hearted, fluffy creatures,

453
00:32:03,960 --> 00:32:07,080
Speaker 2: and you had to approach them and if possibly even

454
00:32:07,240 --> 00:32:10,520
Speaker 2: hug them and sing a song to them, and tell

455
00:32:10,560 --> 00:32:14,400
Speaker 2: them how much you love them. And one of the

456
00:32:14,520 --> 00:32:20,880
Speaker 2: native Alutic people on Kodiak Island, he says on camera,

457
00:32:21,520 --> 00:32:25,120
Speaker 2: there was something wrong. You do not love the bear.

458
00:32:25,320 --> 00:32:29,640
Speaker 2: You should You should rather respect the bear and respect

459
00:32:29,680 --> 00:32:37,400
Speaker 2: the territory, keep your distance, allow the bear, it's territory,

460
00:32:38,440 --> 00:32:41,120
Speaker 2: but you do not need to love it. You do

461
00:32:41,160 --> 00:32:45,480
Speaker 2: not love the bear, respect it. And that this kind

462
00:32:45,520 --> 00:32:54,480
Speaker 2: of philosophy that went awry into Walt Disney fluffiness somehow, unfortunately,

463
00:32:54,800 --> 00:32:59,520
Speaker 2: unfortunately cost him his life and the life of his girlfriend,

464
00:32:59,640 --> 00:33:03,080
Speaker 2: and a life of two grizzly bears who were shot

465
00:33:03,600 --> 00:33:07,760
Speaker 2: by park rangers who found them still feasting on the bodies.

466
00:33:09,320 --> 00:33:12,680
Speaker 1: How when you heard how did you first hear that

467
00:33:12,880 --> 00:33:17,480
Speaker 1: story and jump into that project.

468
00:33:18,840 --> 00:33:22,440
Speaker 2: Well, it was unusual, because I do things that come

469
00:33:22,520 --> 00:33:25,080
Speaker 2: with vehemence at me, and it was one of those

470
00:33:25,640 --> 00:33:29,760
Speaker 2: cases where something stumbles in me into me. I was

471
00:33:29,800 --> 00:33:35,640
Speaker 2: at a producer's place down in the valley, a few

472
00:33:35,680 --> 00:33:39,520
Speaker 2: miles away from here only where I'm sitting, and he

473
00:33:39,640 --> 00:33:44,920
Speaker 2: had helped me very generously with finding partners for a film,

474
00:33:45,640 --> 00:33:49,520
Speaker 2: and I paid him a visit just to thank him.

475
00:33:49,560 --> 00:33:52,760
Speaker 2: And at the end we were sitting at a glass

476
00:33:52,800 --> 00:33:57,840
Speaker 2: table full of messy papers and fedexis and half eaten

477
00:33:57,960 --> 00:34:01,480
Speaker 2: lunch salad. And so when I got up, I got

478
00:34:01,600 --> 00:34:05,760
Speaker 2: up and I had miss I couldn't find my car keys.

479
00:34:06,240 --> 00:34:09,880
Speaker 2: I swear to God, I was searching for my car keys,

480
00:34:10,200 --> 00:34:13,680
Speaker 2: not for a movie, and I had placed it on

481
00:34:13,719 --> 00:34:21,560
Speaker 2: the table and I look at the car key, and

482
00:34:21,640 --> 00:34:25,920
Speaker 2: he sees it and thinks I spotted some paper and

483
00:34:25,960 --> 00:34:28,319
Speaker 2: shoves an article to me. It was one of the

484
00:34:28,360 --> 00:34:33,080
Speaker 2: first magazine articles about Timothy Treadwill, and he says, read this,

485
00:34:33,239 --> 00:34:37,200
Speaker 2: we are doing a very interesting project. So I took

486
00:34:37,239 --> 00:34:40,320
Speaker 2: it and my keys went home. And I was sitting

487
00:34:40,400 --> 00:34:44,960
Speaker 2: literally here, just at this table next behind you. I

488
00:34:45,080 --> 00:34:48,000
Speaker 2: was sitting there, and normally I don't read these things.

489
00:34:48,000 --> 00:34:51,279
Speaker 2: I read it, and you know what, I was instantly

490
00:34:51,320 --> 00:34:53,720
Speaker 2: back in my car and I rushed down and I said,

491
00:34:54,200 --> 00:34:57,600
Speaker 2: this is this is big, This is so big I

492
00:34:57,640 --> 00:35:00,440
Speaker 2: cannot believe it. And I said, how far are you

493
00:35:00,520 --> 00:35:04,040
Speaker 2: in preparations? We have to start in eight days at

494
00:35:04,040 --> 00:35:08,120
Speaker 2: the latest. There's hardly any time left. We have to travel.

495
00:35:08,160 --> 00:35:11,239
Speaker 2: And then I asked who is directing the film and

496
00:35:11,280 --> 00:35:15,479
Speaker 2: he said, listen, very very carefully, he said, I'm kind

497
00:35:15,520 --> 00:35:20,920
Speaker 2: of directing the film, kind of directing these film. So

498
00:35:20,960 --> 00:35:26,840
Speaker 2: I sensed he didn't know exactly what I was, what

499
00:35:27,000 --> 00:35:30,200
Speaker 2: he was doing, or how to tack it is. And

500
00:35:30,239 --> 00:35:33,680
Speaker 2: I looked at him and I said, no, I will

501
00:35:33,719 --> 00:35:37,719
Speaker 2: direct this movie now. And was kind of surprised and

502
00:35:38,760 --> 00:35:40,960
Speaker 2: shook my hand and said it would be an honor.

503
00:35:41,880 --> 00:35:46,000
Speaker 2: And I made the film in that movie, but it

504
00:35:46,040 --> 00:35:49,960
Speaker 2: was you see, what was clear, this is big. And

505
00:35:50,000 --> 00:35:54,200
Speaker 2: there's a storyteller as somebody who makes movies and also

506
00:35:54,239 --> 00:35:56,759
Speaker 2: a writer. I know this is big.

507
00:35:58,080 --> 00:36:03,479
Speaker 1: In that there's the famous scene where you I believe

508
00:36:03,480 --> 00:36:06,040
Speaker 1: you're at a kitchen table and you put on the

509
00:36:06,080 --> 00:36:11,120
Speaker 1: headphones and you're able to hear the recording. There was

510
00:36:11,160 --> 00:36:14,000
Speaker 1: a camera rolling for six months during the attack, and

511
00:36:14,080 --> 00:36:20,520
Speaker 1: you hear the recording, and your comment does your comment

512
00:36:20,600 --> 00:36:24,440
Speaker 1: does more to convey the horror of what you're hearing

513
00:36:24,480 --> 00:36:26,640
Speaker 1: than perhaps hearing it.

514
00:36:27,120 --> 00:36:29,520
Speaker 2: Because I say comment, I barely comment.

515
00:36:29,560 --> 00:36:32,400
Speaker 1: But you say no one, You say no one should

516
00:36:32,400 --> 00:36:35,040
Speaker 1: listen to this, Yes, and never let anyone listen to this.

517
00:36:35,160 --> 00:36:38,600
Speaker 2: And my comment is even stronger because her camera is

518
00:36:38,680 --> 00:36:41,960
Speaker 2: over my shoulder. You see only the back on the

519
00:36:42,040 --> 00:36:44,880
Speaker 2: side of my head, and the camera is on the

520
00:36:44,920 --> 00:36:48,280
Speaker 2: woman who owns the tape, who has worked with treadwell

521
00:36:48,400 --> 00:36:52,640
Speaker 2: for long, long years, and she tries to read from

522
00:36:52,760 --> 00:36:57,279
Speaker 2: my face, but I'm hearing how horribleiss it is, and

523
00:36:57,360 --> 00:37:00,840
Speaker 2: she starts to cry. She can tell from my face

524
00:37:01,560 --> 00:37:06,319
Speaker 2: that there's something terrible that I'm hearing. No, And I

525
00:37:06,360 --> 00:37:09,719
Speaker 2: said to her, please don't ever listen to it. And

526
00:37:09,760 --> 00:37:12,320
Speaker 2: I said to her something very stupid. Please you should

527
00:37:12,400 --> 00:37:16,120
Speaker 2: rather destroy it, which she didn't do. She was smart

528
00:37:16,280 --> 00:37:19,440
Speaker 2: enough not to do it. But she separated her from

529
00:37:19,480 --> 00:37:22,560
Speaker 2: the tape and put it in a bank vault, so

530
00:37:22,680 --> 00:37:27,160
Speaker 2: it's locked away from her. And you see, as a filmmaker,

531
00:37:27,200 --> 00:37:31,399
Speaker 2: you do not have to to put everything out, even

532
00:37:31,480 --> 00:37:35,560
Speaker 2: though it was say and it would have sensationalized the film.

533
00:37:35,840 --> 00:37:40,000
Speaker 2: Everybody wanted me to include it into the film. The distributor,

534
00:37:40,080 --> 00:37:45,200
Speaker 2: the TV network, the production company, everyone said, And I said,

535
00:37:45,280 --> 00:37:49,520
Speaker 2: I will address the tape because it is known. It's

536
00:37:49,560 --> 00:37:53,520
Speaker 2: out there, but I will make the decision. And after

537
00:37:53,600 --> 00:37:56,080
Speaker 2: I had heard it, I said, it's not going to

538
00:37:56,160 --> 00:37:59,280
Speaker 2: be in my film. You have to take me out,

539
00:38:00,120 --> 00:38:03,399
Speaker 2: but I will resist to be taken out. I'm a

540
00:38:03,440 --> 00:38:08,799
Speaker 2: formidable opponent. Be careful, i will fight. And this is

541
00:38:08,840 --> 00:38:11,839
Speaker 2: not going to be in my film because there's such

542
00:38:11,840 --> 00:38:15,960
Speaker 2: a thing as a dignity and the privacy of an

543
00:38:16,000 --> 00:38:21,800
Speaker 2: individual's death, and you do not you do not publicize

544
00:38:21,800 --> 00:38:28,680
Speaker 2: it and sensationalize it. Period. So and I understood. And

545
00:38:28,719 --> 00:38:32,080
Speaker 2: another example, because I saw the film two days ago

546
00:38:33,120 --> 00:38:35,840
Speaker 2: for the first time in many years, The White Diamond.

547
00:38:35,960 --> 00:38:41,920
Speaker 2: It's about a jungle airship some sort of that maneuvers

548
00:38:42,760 --> 00:38:48,479
Speaker 2: in the canopies of trees and nearby in in Guyana. Yeah,

549
00:38:48,520 --> 00:38:52,560
Speaker 2: and there's a waterfall that kaye to a waterfall three

550
00:38:52,640 --> 00:38:56,520
Speaker 2: times the height of Niagara Fall, not as much volume

551
00:38:56,560 --> 00:38:58,920
Speaker 2: of water, but a formidable waterfall.

552
00:38:59,400 --> 00:39:01,440
Speaker 1: I've been waterfall, you have been.

553
00:39:01,719 --> 00:39:05,520
Speaker 2: Wow, h and you have seen the swifts. There are

554
00:39:05,520 --> 00:39:12,440
Speaker 2: swifts that come down. They come down from from the sky.

555
00:39:12,520 --> 00:39:16,920
Speaker 2: They form VORTI sees a vortex and then they shoot

556
00:39:16,960 --> 00:39:21,960
Speaker 2: down and with his speed that is higher than free fall,

557
00:39:22,640 --> 00:39:27,680
Speaker 2: they swish behind the waterfall, behind this massive curtain. There's

558
00:39:27,719 --> 00:39:30,640
Speaker 2: a gap, and they have a million and a half

559
00:39:31,160 --> 00:39:35,000
Speaker 2: a million nests behind there. And I was curious, and

560
00:39:35,080 --> 00:39:39,960
Speaker 2: we lowered a strong guy in the team, actually also

561
00:39:39,960 --> 00:39:43,400
Speaker 2: a mountain climber, lowered him on a rope with a

562
00:39:43,480 --> 00:39:46,960
Speaker 2: camera and he filmed it. And a few days later,

563
00:39:47,360 --> 00:39:53,440
Speaker 2: a local tribal leader tells us, Ah, you filmed that here.

564
00:39:53,440 --> 00:39:58,400
Speaker 2: But you know, for us, in our culture, there's a secret,

565
00:39:58,560 --> 00:40:02,600
Speaker 2: because they are gigantic snakes and that keep the secrets

566
00:40:02,640 --> 00:40:06,400
Speaker 2: of our people, that keep the treasures of our hearts,

567
00:40:07,080 --> 00:40:12,400
Speaker 2: and nobody of us would ever look behind the waterfalls.

568
00:40:12,920 --> 00:40:16,799
Speaker 2: And very politely he says, could it maybe? Could it

569
00:40:16,920 --> 00:40:21,040
Speaker 2: be that you just saw it, but you don't publish it.

570
00:40:22,040 --> 00:40:25,319
Speaker 2: And that very moment I said, it's not going to

571
00:40:25,360 --> 00:40:26,000
Speaker 2: be published.

572
00:40:26,600 --> 00:40:30,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, that little bit of h Yeah, but I guess

573
00:40:30,680 --> 00:40:35,080
Speaker 1: there's something. There's something bigger, that bigger than filmmaker. There's

574
00:40:35,080 --> 00:40:37,279
Speaker 1: something bigger that you have to live with than the

575
00:40:37,320 --> 00:40:39,400
Speaker 1: films put out for people to enjoy.

576
00:40:39,320 --> 00:40:42,200
Speaker 2: They're bigger things. And filmmaking, let's face it.

577
00:40:51,960 --> 00:40:58,520
Speaker 1: You've done a number, You've done two, You've done three

578
00:40:58,520 --> 00:41:05,319
Speaker 1: films about people. You've done three films about people who

579
00:41:05,360 --> 00:41:10,239
Speaker 1: were shot down or survived air crashes. Yeah, and land

580
00:41:10,280 --> 00:41:12,960
Speaker 1: in the jungle. So you did one about a woman

581
00:41:13,040 --> 00:41:16,040
Speaker 1: the soul survivor from an air crash.

582
00:41:16,400 --> 00:41:19,040
Speaker 2: Yes, and Peru was this the jungle of.

583
00:41:19,320 --> 00:41:22,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, a plane was struck by lightning. She was buckled

584
00:41:22,920 --> 00:41:26,560
Speaker 1: into a row of seats, yes, which maybe acted as

585
00:41:26,600 --> 00:41:29,279
Speaker 1: a parachute. It's just inexplicable. But she and a number

586
00:41:29,360 --> 00:41:32,719
Speaker 1: of other people's, a number of other passengers fell ten

587
00:41:32,719 --> 00:41:35,200
Speaker 1: thousand feet hit the forest.

588
00:41:34,880 --> 00:41:39,200
Speaker 2: Cannopy ten thousand. I think it came down, but we

589
00:41:39,239 --> 00:41:44,000
Speaker 2: can only estimate from five thousand meters altitude fifteen sixteen

590
00:41:44,040 --> 00:41:49,400
Speaker 2: thousand feet. And she survived it. And probably it's mysterious.

591
00:41:49,440 --> 00:41:53,640
Speaker 2: I mean, there was a violent thunderstorm at the eastern

592
00:41:53,680 --> 00:41:57,520
Speaker 2: slopes of the Andes and this updraft may even take

593
00:41:57,560 --> 00:42:01,520
Speaker 2: you high up into the sky. It could happen. And

594
00:42:01,760 --> 00:42:05,360
Speaker 2: she was on a window seat on the three seats

595
00:42:05,960 --> 00:42:10,200
Speaker 2: her mother in the middle seat, an obese Peruvian man

596
00:42:10,320 --> 00:42:16,080
Speaker 2: immediately falling asleep snoring on the aisle seat, and she

597
00:42:16,480 --> 00:42:21,400
Speaker 2: has fragments of memory that she sailed on strapped to

598
00:42:21,560 --> 00:42:26,040
Speaker 2: the row of seats, and she complained, she said, people

599
00:42:26,120 --> 00:42:28,880
Speaker 2: say I left the plane. Now the plane left me,

600
00:42:29,560 --> 00:42:33,239
Speaker 2: she says. And you know, I was always fascinated by

601
00:42:33,280 --> 00:42:35,960
Speaker 2: her story because I was booked on that very flight

602
00:42:37,040 --> 00:42:41,040
Speaker 2: and a huge chain of coincidences took me out of this.

603
00:42:41,960 --> 00:42:47,239
Speaker 2: And also something as he was had the seat, the

604
00:42:47,320 --> 00:42:51,520
Speaker 2: empty seats next to her. It's what we call the

605
00:42:51,520 --> 00:42:55,240
Speaker 2: maple seat effect. If you have the seed of a maple,

606
00:42:55,880 --> 00:42:58,959
Speaker 2: you have the seat, and then something like a wing

607
00:42:59,480 --> 00:43:03,440
Speaker 2: and it's virals. It keeps spiraling down to the ground.

608
00:43:03,520 --> 00:43:08,920
Speaker 2: So that may have saved There were actually other, probably

609
00:43:08,960 --> 00:43:15,800
Speaker 2: other survivors, because some people were found sitting and leaning

610
00:43:15,840 --> 00:43:19,920
Speaker 2: against a tree, so they must have crawled there. And

611
00:43:21,400 --> 00:43:26,200
Speaker 2: it was a very eerie scene. When the first rescue

612
00:43:26,200 --> 00:43:30,120
Speaker 2: people arrived, they had actually given up the search after

613
00:43:30,239 --> 00:43:33,920
Speaker 2: ten days or eleven days. It was hopeless because the

614
00:43:34,040 --> 00:43:39,160
Speaker 2: plane had disintegrated in thousands of fragments and rained down,

615
00:43:40,320 --> 00:43:43,640
Speaker 2: so there was no impact site that it could spot

616
00:43:43,680 --> 00:43:49,520
Speaker 2: from the air and suitcases had opened in mid air

617
00:43:49,760 --> 00:43:54,840
Speaker 2: because it was Christmas eve Day and there were presents

618
00:43:55,400 --> 00:44:02,480
Speaker 2: dangling in the jungle trees and also human intestines is decoration.

619
00:44:02,680 --> 00:44:06,719
Speaker 2: I mean, it's an eerie must have been a very

620
00:44:07,040 --> 00:44:08,879
Speaker 2: very surreal sight.

621
00:44:09,680 --> 00:44:11,799
Speaker 1: But she survives.

622
00:44:12,120 --> 00:44:16,160
Speaker 2: She survived because she knew about the junkie. She had

623
00:44:16,200 --> 00:44:19,319
Speaker 2: grown up with her she had grown up with her

624
00:44:19,360 --> 00:44:25,320
Speaker 2: parents at an ecological station, biological station in the jungie.

625
00:44:25,640 --> 00:44:28,560
Speaker 2: And then you understood what was going on around.

626
00:44:28,680 --> 00:44:31,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then you did two films about You did

627
00:44:31,880 --> 00:44:36,560
Speaker 1: a fictional film and a documentary about an individual a

628
00:44:36,760 --> 00:44:39,320
Speaker 1: US airman I think a Navy pilot and he was

629
00:44:39,320 --> 00:44:43,759
Speaker 1: shot down over Laos during the Vietnam War. Survives all

630
00:44:43,800 --> 00:44:48,480
Speaker 1: these just horrific conditions. When he finally gets rescued, they

631
00:44:48,520 --> 00:44:50,839
Speaker 1: can't the guys at the helicopter pilots that rescue him

632
00:44:50,880 --> 00:44:53,440
Speaker 1: came tell what he is. They don't know who he is.

633
00:44:53,719 --> 00:44:56,799
Speaker 1: They find a half eaten snake and his backpack and

634
00:44:56,840 --> 00:44:59,600
Speaker 1: it's this airman that had been missing for I don't

635
00:44:59,600 --> 00:45:00,480
Speaker 1: know how many half.

636
00:45:00,480 --> 00:45:02,200
Speaker 2: Half yeah, yes, uh.

637
00:45:03,440 --> 00:45:06,920
Speaker 1: And thinking about those and then thinking about when you

638
00:45:06,960 --> 00:45:10,399
Speaker 1: were doing the may when there's there's a documentary made

639
00:45:10,440 --> 00:45:15,440
Speaker 1: about you, making Fitzgrawal though I remember you saying some

640
00:45:15,560 --> 00:45:18,160
Speaker 1: of the birds in the jungle and you said the

641
00:45:18,880 --> 00:45:23,280
Speaker 1: birds here I'm paraphrasing you said, the birds here don't sing,

642
00:45:24,000 --> 00:45:27,960
Speaker 1: They scream in agony. What what? But you've spent a

643
00:45:27,960 --> 00:45:30,279
Speaker 1: lot of time in the jungle, yes, I mean, do

644
00:45:30,320 --> 00:45:32,880
Speaker 1: you what is your how do you feel about the jungle?

645
00:45:33,960 --> 00:45:34,680
Speaker 1: Where jungle?

646
00:45:35,120 --> 00:45:38,960
Speaker 2: I say it also in in some written texts in

647
00:45:39,000 --> 00:45:45,680
Speaker 2: my book Conquest of the Useless, and at some point

648
00:45:45,760 --> 00:45:50,719
Speaker 2: I'm saying I love the Chungie yet against my better knowledge.

649
00:45:51,480 --> 00:45:55,799
Speaker 2: But you see, you cannot take it completely out of context.

650
00:45:55,840 --> 00:46:00,319
Speaker 2: When Les Blank was filming me, it was right after

651
00:46:00,400 --> 00:46:05,000
Speaker 2: we had two plane crashes, two small aircraft that brought

652
00:46:05,040 --> 00:46:11,839
Speaker 2: provisions and extras to us. We have just had our

653
00:46:12,000 --> 00:46:14,960
Speaker 2: camp for eight hundred people in the jungle burned down.

654
00:46:16,000 --> 00:46:19,520
Speaker 2: We ran into a border war between Peru and Ecuador,

655
00:46:20,520 --> 00:46:26,319
Speaker 2: and my leading character was became so ill that we

656
00:46:26,400 --> 00:46:29,600
Speaker 2: had to fly him back out to the United States,

657
00:46:29,640 --> 00:46:33,680
Speaker 2: and his doctors wouldn't allow him to return. Then there

658
00:46:33,719 --> 00:46:37,680
Speaker 2: was an attack of the tribal group far far up

659
00:46:37,719 --> 00:46:43,560
Speaker 2: in the mountains that had suffered from the drought. There

660
00:46:43,640 --> 00:46:48,200
Speaker 2: was a dry stry season in recorded history in memory.

661
00:46:48,760 --> 00:46:52,719
Speaker 2: And they had wandered down with a drying river in

662
00:46:52,800 --> 00:46:57,560
Speaker 2: search apparently of turtle eggs. And they clashed through two

663
00:46:57,920 --> 00:47:05,160
Speaker 2: three people, local people, much againer, native tribal people who

664
00:47:05,160 --> 00:47:07,920
Speaker 2: had been fishing for us and looking for turtle eggs.

665
00:47:08,400 --> 00:47:10,719
Speaker 2: And they shot them in the dark of the night.

666
00:47:10,800 --> 00:47:15,359
Speaker 2: And the man was shot through his throat and had

667
00:47:15,400 --> 00:47:19,480
Speaker 2: an also deflected arrow at his shin, and a woman

668
00:47:20,120 --> 00:47:23,279
Speaker 2: shot by three arrows into her body very close, a

669
00:47:23,280 --> 00:47:29,279
Speaker 2: cluster of three arrows, and so, and we had to

670
00:47:29,320 --> 00:47:31,760
Speaker 2: operate them on the kitchen table. They would have died

671
00:47:32,239 --> 00:47:35,120
Speaker 2: if he had tried to transport them. And I was

672
00:47:35,640 --> 00:47:40,120
Speaker 2: with mosquito repellent spraying away the cloud of mosquitoes, and

673
00:47:40,400 --> 00:47:46,680
Speaker 2: with the other hand a torchlight illuminating the operation. And

674
00:47:47,600 --> 00:47:52,000
Speaker 2: all this happens on a daily basis. And then Les

675
00:47:52,000 --> 00:47:54,720
Speaker 2: Blank says, let's speak about the jungle.

676
00:47:56,080 --> 00:47:59,360
Speaker 1: So in a way that was the frame of mind,

677
00:47:59,520 --> 00:48:01,319
Speaker 1: was usual in.

678
00:48:01,320 --> 00:48:07,680
Speaker 2: The frame of mind, should be mentioned at least, otherwise

679
00:48:07,760 --> 00:48:11,399
Speaker 2: it sounds like a crazy statement. It was a very

680
00:48:11,520 --> 00:48:12,560
Speaker 2: natural statement.

681
00:48:12,840 --> 00:48:16,120
Speaker 1: When I describe that movie to people, I describe it

682
00:48:16,120 --> 00:48:18,480
Speaker 1: probly the way many people do. Where it's the story

683
00:48:18,560 --> 00:48:21,640
Speaker 1: of a of a rubber baron trying to move a

684
00:48:21,680 --> 00:48:23,960
Speaker 1: boat from one drainage to the next, and it's just

685
00:48:23,960 --> 00:48:24,839
Speaker 1: as impossible.

686
00:48:24,880 --> 00:48:27,240
Speaker 2: That's a huge steam boat over a mountain.

687
00:48:27,400 --> 00:48:30,239
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so what you do in the movie, which

688
00:48:30,239 --> 00:48:33,800
Speaker 1: sounds funny in this age of special effects and cgi

689
00:48:34,120 --> 00:48:38,799
Speaker 1: what the movie does the exact and the making of

690
00:48:38,840 --> 00:48:43,400
Speaker 1: the movie does the exact insane thing that is portrayed

691
00:48:43,480 --> 00:48:45,760
Speaker 1: as an insane thing in the movie.

692
00:48:46,280 --> 00:48:51,200
Speaker 2: No, I do not agree insane. Okay, it is number one.

693
00:48:51,280 --> 00:48:54,480
Speaker 2: I knew it was doable, and I did it. And

694
00:48:54,680 --> 00:48:59,360
Speaker 2: it is not insane because it's a big metaphor somehow

695
00:48:59,440 --> 00:49:05,960
Speaker 2: dormant in us, so big, like let's say don Quixote

696
00:49:06,320 --> 00:49:12,279
Speaker 2: tackling with his lands the windmills. It's something described, of

697
00:49:12,320 --> 00:49:15,280
Speaker 2: course by Sevantes and we know, a yeah, that's somehow

698
00:49:15,360 --> 00:49:19,400
Speaker 2: in us. It's a metaphor or Mobby Dick the Hunt

699
00:49:19,440 --> 00:49:24,359
Speaker 2: for the White Whale, things like that. And I knew

700
00:49:24,400 --> 00:49:30,080
Speaker 2: a ship pulled over a mountain by force of human

701
00:49:30,320 --> 00:49:35,359
Speaker 2: strength and turnstiles and coiling up ropes, and I would

702
00:49:35,440 --> 00:49:38,759
Speaker 2: move it over a mountain. It's a big metaphor, not insanity,

703
00:49:39,560 --> 00:49:44,200
Speaker 2: because it's deep inside of us and it has something

704
00:49:44,320 --> 00:49:51,000
Speaker 2: that I could articulate and others couldn't. But since I articulated,

705
00:49:51,560 --> 00:49:55,200
Speaker 2: we have a metaphor, one more of the metaphors that

706
00:49:55,280 --> 00:50:01,279
Speaker 2: are probably dormant in many of us. Absolutely not insanity,

707
00:50:02,280 --> 00:50:04,959
Speaker 2: clinically sane, so to speak.

708
00:50:05,120 --> 00:50:06,800
Speaker 1: But I did stay in corrected.

709
00:50:07,800 --> 00:50:10,920
Speaker 2: And at the time, of course, there was no digital effect.

710
00:50:11,000 --> 00:50:12,719
Speaker 2: It was done in nineteen eighty one.

711
00:50:12,880 --> 00:50:17,160
Speaker 1: You had to do it when you had no not.

712
00:50:16,840 --> 00:50:21,160
Speaker 2: Not necessarily because twentieth Century Fox at the time wanted

713
00:50:21,200 --> 00:50:28,480
Speaker 2: to produce the film, however, only with a miniature plastic

714
00:50:28,600 --> 00:50:33,640
Speaker 2: replica and what they called in a good Jungle, and

715
00:50:33,680 --> 00:50:37,799
Speaker 2: they meant the botanic garden in San Diego. And I

716
00:50:37,840 --> 00:50:41,600
Speaker 2: asked them, gentlemen, what's the bad jungle then? And that

717
00:50:41,760 --> 00:50:44,920
Speaker 2: it became frosty and I knew I was alone and

718
00:50:44,960 --> 00:50:46,960
Speaker 2: I had to do it alone. I was also the

719
00:50:47,000 --> 00:50:54,520
Speaker 2: producer of the film, and so I don't want to

720
00:50:54,600 --> 00:50:56,000
Speaker 2: miss this work.

721
00:50:57,719 --> 00:51:02,640
Speaker 1: What a how do you look at with all the

722
00:51:02,680 --> 00:51:05,920
Speaker 1: movies you made, sixty over sixty movies and how many

723
00:51:05,920 --> 00:51:07,400
Speaker 1: books you don know.

724
00:51:07,480 --> 00:51:09,800
Speaker 2: It's probably eighty movies by now.

725
00:51:09,960 --> 00:51:11,480
Speaker 1: And a dozen books or so.

726
00:51:11,680 --> 00:51:15,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, in poetry, and I just finished yet another book.

727
00:51:16,239 --> 00:51:21,319
Speaker 2: You have to take it seriously that that I am

728
00:51:21,440 --> 00:51:28,080
Speaker 2: deeply inside convinced that the written stuff, the pros, the poetry,

729
00:51:29,080 --> 00:51:34,239
Speaker 2: has somewhat direct impact something. And it's not the events

730
00:51:34,360 --> 00:51:36,879
Speaker 2: you see if you're in my memoirs, if you look

731
00:51:37,120 --> 00:51:41,400
Speaker 2: after event, event event, Yes, of course a wild events.

732
00:51:41,440 --> 00:51:45,360
Speaker 2: But it's a style, it's a prose. That's what makes

733
00:51:45,760 --> 00:51:47,479
Speaker 2: the book on.

734
00:51:47,640 --> 00:51:52,080
Speaker 1: I mean, you're a I mean like from me to

735
00:51:52,080 --> 00:51:53,680
Speaker 1: feel the need to tell you this, but I mean,

736
00:51:53,719 --> 00:51:56,880
Speaker 1: you're a phenomenal writer. And reading your book, I had

737
00:51:56,960 --> 00:51:59,879
Speaker 1: said Karen, our producer, I had said, I had kind

738
00:51:59,920 --> 00:52:11,200
Speaker 1: of given up on literary memoirs in exchange for memoirs

739
00:52:11,280 --> 00:52:18,360
Speaker 1: autobiographies of people who have a you know, a story

740
00:52:18,400 --> 00:52:22,719
Speaker 1: to tell, right, and this book but this book is.

741
00:52:24,719 --> 00:52:26,560
Speaker 1: But this book is a combination of those two things.

742
00:52:26,840 --> 00:52:30,120
Speaker 1: I mean, this book is. This book is of a

743
00:52:30,239 --> 00:52:33,600
Speaker 1: high literary merit, like like you know, as a writer,

744
00:52:33,760 --> 00:52:35,680
Speaker 1: as a person who loves the language, it's of high

745
00:52:35,680 --> 00:52:39,440
Speaker 1: literary merit, but also does that heavy lifting of telling

746
00:52:39,440 --> 00:52:42,319
Speaker 1: a story that really ought to be told, which is

747
00:52:42,360 --> 00:52:46,239
Speaker 1: how you came to view the world the way you

748
00:52:46,280 --> 00:52:49,520
Speaker 1: do and produce the work that you did. But I

749
00:52:49,560 --> 00:52:55,000
Speaker 1: have two last questions. With all that work, how do

750
00:52:55,040 --> 00:52:58,160
Speaker 1: you gauge which How do you gauge which are the

751
00:52:58,480 --> 00:53:01,120
Speaker 1: your favorites? Like which are the ones you shouldn't have done?

752
00:53:01,480 --> 00:53:02,600
Speaker 1: What are you going to do?

753
00:53:02,920 --> 00:53:06,200
Speaker 2: You can stop right away. I love them all, I

754
00:53:06,239 --> 00:53:10,400
Speaker 2: truly love them all, and they're all good. They're all good.

755
00:53:10,719 --> 00:53:12,279
Speaker 1: There's no one you wish you could put ba in

756
00:53:12,280 --> 00:53:12,720
Speaker 1: the box.

757
00:53:12,920 --> 00:53:16,840
Speaker 2: No, for God's sake, never only over made that body.

758
00:53:17,160 --> 00:53:19,640
Speaker 2: I would allow you to put it away and put

759
00:53:19,680 --> 00:53:24,840
Speaker 2: it back, but you have to be aware that. Of course,

760
00:53:24,880 --> 00:53:28,600
Speaker 2: I'm critical as well, and I see mistakes. Yes, I

761
00:53:28,680 --> 00:53:31,879
Speaker 2: do see mistakes, and I see how I evolved as

762
00:53:31,880 --> 00:53:35,640
Speaker 2: a kid who made films because I made my first

763
00:53:35,719 --> 00:53:37,320
Speaker 2: film at the age of nineteen.

764
00:53:39,960 --> 00:53:42,560
Speaker 1: I know you made your first phone call at seventeen.

765
00:53:42,760 --> 00:53:48,920
Speaker 2: That's true. Yes, nobody, Yes, nobody nowadays believes it. Everybody

766
00:53:48,920 --> 00:53:53,239
Speaker 2: with a cell phones and applications. So I literally made

767
00:53:53,320 --> 00:53:58,760
Speaker 2: my first phone call it age seventeen. Yes, all these films,

768
00:53:59,080 --> 00:54:03,920
Speaker 2: I see mistakes, mistake here, mistake there, but I accept them.

769
00:54:03,960 --> 00:54:06,960
Speaker 2: I can live with it. And it's the same way

770
00:54:07,120 --> 00:54:09,600
Speaker 2: like with a mother. You do not ask the mother

771
00:54:10,200 --> 00:54:13,719
Speaker 2: your five children here, which is your favorite? And you

772
00:54:13,800 --> 00:54:17,440
Speaker 2: know who the favorites are. My favorites are all the

773
00:54:17,560 --> 00:54:22,680
Speaker 2: children that have the worst defects, the child that has

774
00:54:22,760 --> 00:54:28,440
Speaker 2: squint eyes, the child that has a stutter, the child

775
00:54:28,480 --> 00:54:32,200
Speaker 2: that has a limp. And I would be as a

776
00:54:32,280 --> 00:54:39,000
Speaker 2: mother the lioness to help them, defend them, make them proud,

777
00:54:40,080 --> 00:54:44,479
Speaker 2: shine as great and wonderful as they can shine.

778
00:54:45,480 --> 00:54:48,960
Speaker 1: You mentioned a minute ago you said, over my dead body, Uh,

779
00:54:49,800 --> 00:54:52,680
Speaker 1: let's move on to your dead body for me? What

780
00:54:54,960 --> 00:54:58,160
Speaker 1: I have no idea? What you'd say to this? What?

781
00:54:58,160 --> 00:55:01,640
Speaker 1: What do you what do you hope and fear about?

782
00:55:01,680 --> 00:55:06,080
Speaker 1: What's going to happen to you when you die? Like?

783
00:55:06,080 --> 00:55:08,400
Speaker 1: What do you are? Do you entertain an idea?

784
00:55:08,640 --> 00:55:12,400
Speaker 2: No, I won't be around anymore. I always said, posterity

785
00:55:14,320 --> 00:55:17,280
Speaker 2: doesn't interest me because I won't be around there anyway.

786
00:55:18,120 --> 00:55:20,480
Speaker 1: However, But like what what I mean? Do you do

787
00:55:20,520 --> 00:55:23,919
Speaker 1: you picture? What is your idea? I don't know, get

788
00:55:23,920 --> 00:55:25,400
Speaker 1: like I don't want to get like terribly personal in

789
00:55:25,360 --> 00:55:26,960
Speaker 1: a way, it's on card. But what is your idea

790
00:55:26,960 --> 00:55:27,960
Speaker 1: of an afterlife?

791
00:55:30,239 --> 00:55:33,720
Speaker 2: I think it's highly likely that there's no afterlife.

792
00:55:34,400 --> 00:55:37,480
Speaker 1: So your posterity like you don't care about that, and

793
00:55:37,520 --> 00:55:38,040
Speaker 1: then it's.

794
00:55:38,040 --> 00:55:43,120
Speaker 2: I won't be around here. However, I did something which

795
00:55:43,280 --> 00:55:47,319
Speaker 2: was not in my catalog of behavior and thinking, and

796
00:55:47,440 --> 00:55:51,640
Speaker 2: my brothers and my wife Lynna convinced me there are

797
00:55:51,640 --> 00:55:58,560
Speaker 2: ad films, negatives, mixes, tens of thousands of photos, manuscripts,

798
00:55:59,840 --> 00:56:06,520
Speaker 2: you just name it, documents. It should be somehow preserved.

799
00:56:06,600 --> 00:56:13,040
Speaker 2: And I started a non profit foundation which is has

800
00:56:13,080 --> 00:56:16,560
Speaker 2: the oversight of the state of Bavaria, where all the

801
00:56:16,680 --> 00:56:20,879
Speaker 2: rights of all my films, of everything I've created went

802
00:56:20,960 --> 00:56:27,880
Speaker 2: in Bavaria. Well, because because my culture is Bavarian.

803
00:56:28,600 --> 00:56:29,880
Speaker 1: I feel like you owe that. I feel like you

804
00:56:29,920 --> 00:56:30,960
Speaker 1: owe that to the America.

805
00:56:32,360 --> 00:56:37,800
Speaker 2: No, because you you do not see where I come from.

806
00:56:37,880 --> 00:56:42,239
Speaker 2: English was only my fourth or fifth language. I mean,

807
00:56:42,640 --> 00:56:47,480
Speaker 2: but that's the language. It doesn't matter. It's I would

808
00:56:47,480 --> 00:56:51,719
Speaker 2: not write a novel like The Twilight World in English.

809
00:56:52,040 --> 00:56:54,800
Speaker 2: I write it in German and it's translated.

810
00:56:55,400 --> 00:56:58,759
Speaker 1: And your your new book was translated.

811
00:56:58,840 --> 00:57:04,000
Speaker 2: Sure, yes, very well. The best translator arguably from Germany

812
00:57:04,040 --> 00:57:09,160
Speaker 2: into English has done it. Michael Hoffmann. It's in German prose.

813
00:57:09,360 --> 00:57:12,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you but you have zero problem communicating in English?

814
00:57:13,120 --> 00:57:16,200
Speaker 2: Yes, but I do not write poetry in English. You

815
00:57:16,480 --> 00:57:19,760
Speaker 2: can only do it in your in your mother tongue.

816
00:57:20,200 --> 00:57:24,680
Speaker 2: But let me go back to the to the after life. Yes,

817
00:57:24,800 --> 00:57:29,360
Speaker 2: my my work will have after life because it's owned

818
00:57:29,440 --> 00:57:34,360
Speaker 2: now by a foundation, a nonprofit foundation. In other words,

819
00:57:34,400 --> 00:57:39,640
Speaker 2: if I become impoverished tomorrow, I cannot sell the catalog

820
00:57:39,840 --> 00:57:43,560
Speaker 2: of my films to Time Turner Classics or you just

821
00:57:43,680 --> 00:57:46,080
Speaker 2: name it, because I do not own them anymore.

822
00:57:46,160 --> 00:57:47,840
Speaker 1: You're protecting yourself and yourself.

823
00:57:48,760 --> 00:57:52,760
Speaker 2: No, I don't need protection against myself. I understand that.

824
00:57:53,120 --> 00:57:58,000
Speaker 2: And I was clearly told, sat down at a table

825
00:57:59,160 --> 00:58:02,080
Speaker 2: by my wife in She said to me, you think

826
00:58:02,680 --> 00:58:06,000
Speaker 2: your films are your property? Yes, many of them that

827
00:58:06,120 --> 00:58:12,040
Speaker 2: I produced and wrote and directed technically legally, they are

828
00:58:12,080 --> 00:58:16,480
Speaker 2: my property. But you know what, you really do not

829
00:58:16,640 --> 00:58:20,560
Speaker 2: own them. The people own it. The people, the audiences

830
00:58:20,600 --> 00:58:24,320
Speaker 2: out there, they own it. They owned the books, they

831
00:58:24,360 --> 00:58:30,200
Speaker 2: own your pros, they own your poetry, they own your memoirs.

832
00:58:30,920 --> 00:58:36,800
Speaker 2: So and I'm completely at ease with that and let

833
00:58:40,080 --> 00:58:44,640
Speaker 2: let life go on. I won't be around And that's

834
00:58:45,000 --> 00:58:50,120
Speaker 2: totally absolutely fine, because we are made into all biological

835
00:58:50,480 --> 00:58:56,400
Speaker 2: life is made like that. I'm totally at ease, I likes.

836
00:58:56,440 --> 00:58:59,240
Speaker 1: I got one last question for you, Okay, I haven't

837
00:58:59,240 --> 00:59:01,480
Speaker 1: gotten to the end of of every Man for Himself

838
00:59:01,480 --> 00:59:05,400
Speaker 1: and God Against All your new memoir. Do you this

839
00:59:05,720 --> 00:59:09,720
Speaker 1: one's for from my kids? Do you in the end

840
00:59:09,760 --> 00:59:14,960
Speaker 1: of that book get into acting in the Mandalorian or

841
00:59:15,040 --> 00:59:17,480
Speaker 1: is not address in the memoir?

842
00:59:17,560 --> 00:59:22,040
Speaker 2: I believe I am addressing it, but briefly. But the

843
00:59:22,160 --> 00:59:25,120
Speaker 2: end it has a very very strange end that he

844
00:59:25,160 --> 00:59:31,480
Speaker 2: will never see anywhere in world literature. And it has

845
00:59:31,520 --> 00:59:36,640
Speaker 2: to do with something the Japanese soldier hero Onoda, who

846
00:59:37,800 --> 00:59:43,000
Speaker 2: fought the Second World War twenty nine years still after

847
00:59:43,040 --> 00:59:46,880
Speaker 2: the end of the war in the Jungling in the Philippines,

848
00:59:47,560 --> 00:59:51,760
Speaker 2: and he had survived one hundred and eleven ambushes and

849
00:59:51,880 --> 00:59:55,640
Speaker 2: being fired at. And he says to me, because we

850
00:59:55,640 --> 01:00:02,280
Speaker 2: were discussing time, does present time existent? Is there only

851
01:00:02,720 --> 01:00:06,280
Speaker 2: past in future? And present time is a fiction? Which

852
01:00:06,320 --> 01:00:09,960
Speaker 2: actually is And he says, but sometimes you can see

853
01:00:10,000 --> 01:00:14,960
Speaker 2: the future, because one day a bullet was fired at him,

854
01:00:15,280 --> 01:00:17,720
Speaker 2: and the sun very low, and he sees a bullet

855
01:00:17,760 --> 01:00:23,120
Speaker 2: coming right at him, and with the sun it has

856
01:00:23,200 --> 01:00:28,080
Speaker 2: this orange copper kind of glow, and he knows it

857
01:00:28,720 --> 01:00:32,880
Speaker 2: will kill him, and he only had time to rotate

858
01:00:33,000 --> 01:00:36,720
Speaker 2: his body to the side and whist it whizzed by

859
01:00:37,680 --> 01:00:42,160
Speaker 2: his body. And I was writing on my last chapter.

860
01:00:42,240 --> 01:00:44,080
Speaker 2: I knew it was going to be the last chapter,

861
01:00:44,160 --> 01:00:49,480
Speaker 2: the absence of images, the absence of the human race

862
01:00:49,640 --> 01:00:54,000
Speaker 2: on this planet, maybe two hundred thousand years in the future.

863
01:00:54,920 --> 01:01:00,280
Speaker 2: And I was typing at a window was out there,

864
01:01:00,800 --> 01:01:03,080
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden, I have this sensation a

865
01:01:03,120 --> 01:01:07,720
Speaker 2: bullet is coming at me, because I saw in somehow

866
01:01:07,800 --> 01:01:17,720
Speaker 2: I sense something golden and greenish iridescent came shooting towards me.

867
01:01:18,320 --> 01:01:20,760
Speaker 2: And I look up, but it was not a bullet.

868
01:01:20,840 --> 01:01:25,120
Speaker 2: It was a hummingbird. Sometimes they shoot straight like that.

869
01:01:26,280 --> 01:01:31,040
Speaker 2: And I looked at my text. In the moment I

870
01:01:31,120 --> 01:01:35,800
Speaker 2: had reached I thought, I don't I shouldn't write any

871
01:01:35,880 --> 01:01:41,560
Speaker 2: more word. And the text stops in mid sentence. The book,

872
01:01:41,720 --> 01:01:44,760
Speaker 2: the entire book stops in mid sentence.

873
01:01:45,920 --> 01:01:46,480
Speaker 1: And that's it.

874
01:01:46,840 --> 01:01:47,320
Speaker 2: That's it.

875
01:01:48,360 --> 01:01:50,160
Speaker 1: Did you get a lot of pushback from an editor?

876
01:01:50,400 --> 01:01:53,720
Speaker 2: Now they loved it in audiences those who read it.

877
01:01:53,800 --> 01:01:58,240
Speaker 2: You will see when you finish reading the memoirs, you

878
01:01:58,280 --> 01:01:59,400
Speaker 2: will like it, I guess.

879
01:02:00,480 --> 01:02:06,120
Speaker 1: So thank you very much for joining us. Check out patience. Well,

880
01:02:06,240 --> 01:02:09,880
Speaker 1: check out all of his movies, and especially check out

881
01:02:09,960 --> 01:02:15,040
Speaker 1: every Man for Himself and God Against All by Werner Herzog,

882
01:02:15,120 --> 01:02:17,680
Speaker 1: and then do yourself a favor and watch Happy People.

883
01:02:18,080 --> 01:02:20,080
Speaker 2: Yes, they're highly advisibly.

884
01:02:20,640 --> 01:02:30,880
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Picture. We've talked about it a lot.

885
01:02:30,960 --> 01:02:34,120
Speaker 1: We've talked about it, we've promoted it, we've pimped it.

886
01:02:34,120 --> 01:02:36,480
Speaker 1: It's here, it's finally ready. You can go right now

887
01:02:36,520 --> 01:02:39,280
Speaker 1: and get it. You can go right now, go to

888
01:02:39,320 --> 01:02:41,360
Speaker 1: where you buy your audio books, go to where you

889
01:02:41,360 --> 01:02:45,520
Speaker 1: buy your audio originals, right now, and you can get it.

890
01:02:45,520 --> 01:02:48,520
Speaker 1: It's done. You can get it right now, beating the

891
01:02:48,640 --> 01:02:51,680
Speaker 1: table because you can get it. What can you get?

892
01:02:51,720 --> 01:02:55,080
Speaker 1: You can get me Eater's American History The Long Hunters

893
01:02:55,440 --> 01:02:59,440
Speaker 1: seventeen sixty one to seventeen seventy five. This is the

894
01:02:59,520 --> 01:03:01,960
Speaker 1: beginning of a big project, and this is just the

895
01:03:02,000 --> 01:03:05,240
Speaker 1: first one. We're doing the first installment of meat Eaters

896
01:03:05,280 --> 01:03:10,880
Speaker 1: of American History, where we explain in great fun, lively, bloody detail,

897
01:03:11,840 --> 01:03:15,440
Speaker 1: chunks of American history. The one we're starting with is

898
01:03:15,480 --> 01:03:18,520
Speaker 1: the Long Hunters. If you wonder what a long hunter is,

899
01:03:18,720 --> 01:03:21,400
Speaker 1: Daniel Boone was a long hunter. Everybody knows Daniel Boone, like, oh,

900
01:03:21,400 --> 01:03:24,280
Speaker 1: he's some kind of pioneer or explorer. Well he was,

901
01:03:24,760 --> 01:03:27,600
Speaker 1: but he was a long hunter. He was a white

902
01:03:27,600 --> 01:03:30,440
Speaker 1: tail deer skin hunter. That was his business, that was

903
01:03:30,440 --> 01:03:33,560
Speaker 1: his craft, that was his trade. The peak of the

904
01:03:33,600 --> 01:03:35,760
Speaker 1: long hunter era, mean the peak of the white tail

905
01:03:35,840 --> 01:03:38,880
Speaker 1: deer hide business, as we're going to explain in this thing,

906
01:03:39,480 --> 01:03:42,360
Speaker 1: runs from about seventeen sixty one to seventeen seventy five.

907
01:03:42,400 --> 01:03:45,360
Speaker 1: If seventeen seventy five sticks in your head as some

908
01:03:45,480 --> 01:03:49,640
Speaker 1: a year something happened, that's because it's right before seventeen

909
01:03:49,720 --> 01:03:53,040
Speaker 1: seventy six. And if you're any kind of American, you

910
01:03:53,080 --> 01:03:58,000
Speaker 1: know seventeen seventy six Declaration of Independence, the Revolutionary War. Okay,

911
01:03:58,080 --> 01:04:01,760
Speaker 1: there's a reason that this era ends then, and this

912
01:04:01,840 --> 01:04:04,480
Speaker 1: you will learn this reason and be fascinated by this,

913
01:04:05,200 --> 01:04:07,360
Speaker 1: Like why would the long hunters who are hunting white

914
01:04:07,360 --> 01:04:10,240
Speaker 1: tailed deer skins, having all kinds of adventures and getting

915
01:04:10,320 --> 01:04:13,160
Speaker 1: killed like flies, why would that all of a sudden

916
01:04:13,360 --> 01:04:15,920
Speaker 1: end with the American Revolution? You will learn when you

917
01:04:15,960 --> 01:04:19,760
Speaker 1: get meters American History, Long Hunters seventeen sixty one to

918
01:04:19,800 --> 01:04:24,360
Speaker 1: seventeen seventy five. It's an audio original. You can't read this,

919
01:04:24,440 --> 01:04:26,520
Speaker 1: you can only listen to it. It's narrated by me,

920
01:04:26,920 --> 01:04:33,080
Speaker 1: Steven Ronella, my friend Klay Nukeom and exhaustively researched by

921
01:04:33,320 --> 01:04:36,520
Speaker 1: me Eater Trivia thirty time champion, whatever the hell he is,

922
01:04:37,000 --> 01:04:41,120
Speaker 1: Doctor Randall Williams. It's out now now. This is the

923
01:04:41,160 --> 01:04:45,400
Speaker 1: definitive telling of the story of the long hunters. It's

924
01:04:45,440 --> 01:04:48,280
Speaker 1: perfect for you if you are a person who understands

925
01:04:48,360 --> 01:04:53,520
Speaker 1: or wants to understand how backwoods hunting actually happened in

926
01:04:53,560 --> 01:04:57,200
Speaker 1: the years before the American Revolution, and how market hunters,

927
01:04:57,240 --> 01:04:59,280
Speaker 1: these are people who hunt for a living, how they

928
01:04:59,320 --> 01:05:02,880
Speaker 1: actually went ab out their business of killing, skinning, selling

929
01:05:03,440 --> 01:05:07,280
Speaker 1: scores or hundreds of deer per season, which if they

930
01:05:07,280 --> 01:05:11,600
Speaker 1: were successful, could be more lucrative than farming. Really being

931
01:05:11,600 --> 01:05:14,120
Speaker 1: a long hunter, if you got lucky and lived, and

932
01:05:14,200 --> 01:05:15,720
Speaker 1: you got lucky and had a good hunt, you got

933
01:05:15,800 --> 01:05:18,760
Speaker 1: lucky and all your stuff didn't get stolen by Native Americans,

934
01:05:19,200 --> 01:05:21,040
Speaker 1: or they wouldn't view it as stolen. They would view

935
01:05:21,080 --> 01:05:23,120
Speaker 1: it as taking their stuff back from you, which you

936
01:05:23,160 --> 01:05:26,320
Speaker 1: stole from them. Was more lucrative than farming, is more

937
01:05:26,400 --> 01:05:29,040
Speaker 1: lucrative than being a builder, more lucrative than all that.

938
01:05:30,080 --> 01:05:33,720
Speaker 1: In this we start out that there's a phenomenal opening

939
01:05:33,720 --> 01:05:35,240
Speaker 1: to the book which is going to hook you like

940
01:05:35,280 --> 01:05:38,120
Speaker 1: a circle hook. But we quickly get into this question

941
01:05:38,520 --> 01:05:41,160
Speaker 1: what is a long hunter? Now? Like I said, you know,

942
01:05:41,200 --> 01:05:43,640
Speaker 1: the most famous one of all Daniel Boone, But he

943
01:05:43,720 --> 01:05:47,920
Speaker 1: was only one of a generation of backwoodsmen who were

944
01:05:48,000 --> 01:05:50,720
Speaker 1: hunting white tailed deer for the commercial high market. I

945
01:05:51,480 --> 01:05:54,200
Speaker 1: was tempted to say one of a generation of Americans.

946
01:05:54,240 --> 01:05:57,720
Speaker 1: But as we'll get into, the idea of America hadn't

947
01:05:57,720 --> 01:06:00,680
Speaker 1: taken shape, and the long hunters did not identify as Americans.

948
01:06:01,280 --> 01:06:03,360
Speaker 1: We talk about that about some of these long hunters

949
01:06:03,360 --> 01:06:06,520
Speaker 1: like Daniel Boone becoming these sort of honorary founding fathers,

950
01:06:06,560 --> 01:06:10,160
Speaker 1: but they were anything but founding fathers of America. These

951
01:06:10,200 --> 01:06:14,560
Speaker 1: guys participated in hunting expeditions beyond the line of British

952
01:06:14,600 --> 01:06:20,280
Speaker 1: colonial settlement to supply a booming as will explain, global

953
01:06:20,760 --> 01:06:25,080
Speaker 1: marketplace for white tailed deer skins you might expect from

954
01:06:25,120 --> 01:06:27,560
Speaker 1: the name. They were gone a long time, months or

955
01:06:27,600 --> 01:06:31,600
Speaker 1: even years at a time on hunting trips, killing hundreds

956
01:06:31,640 --> 01:06:35,720
Speaker 1: of deer, killing thousands of deer. These adventures include some

957
01:06:35,760 --> 01:06:38,160
Speaker 1: of the most hair raising and jaw dropping stories of

958
01:06:38,160 --> 01:06:42,480
Speaker 1: wilderness living and deer hunting known to man. In this

959
01:06:42,560 --> 01:06:45,760
Speaker 1: audio original, you're going to hear about buffalo stampedes, bear attacks,

960
01:06:45,800 --> 01:06:49,720
Speaker 1: people get lost, bodies getting found, long journeys, close calls,

961
01:06:49,960 --> 01:06:53,280
Speaker 1: in the rise and fall of a forgotten trade, and

962
01:06:53,360 --> 01:06:56,280
Speaker 1: the skin of a creature that remains America's favorite big

963
01:06:56,320 --> 01:06:59,400
Speaker 1: game animal. We've always had market hunters. We continue to

964
01:06:59,400 --> 01:07:02,120
Speaker 1: have market hunters. Okay, keep this in mind as you

965
01:07:02,120 --> 01:07:04,240
Speaker 1: as you go about getting into this story. We explain

966
01:07:04,320 --> 01:07:09,200
Speaker 1: all this. You've got market hunters who hunt for whale oil. Okay,

967
01:07:09,280 --> 01:07:12,080
Speaker 1: if you've read Moby Dick, you've read about whale oil

968
01:07:12,640 --> 01:07:16,080
Speaker 1: market hunters. You've got market hunters who hunted for beaver pelts.

969
01:07:16,120 --> 01:07:19,440
Speaker 1: So if you're familiar with the exploits of say Jim Bridger,

970
01:07:20,040 --> 01:07:23,640
Speaker 1: he was a market hunter. After beaver pelts, you have

971
01:07:23,720 --> 01:07:26,320
Speaker 1: market hunters who hunted for buffalo hides and buffalo meat.

972
01:07:27,160 --> 01:07:30,320
Speaker 1: Buffalo Bill Cody you probably heard of, he was a

973
01:07:30,360 --> 01:07:36,200
Speaker 1: buffalo meat market hunter. Davy Crockett market hunter, generally black

974
01:07:36,240 --> 01:07:40,600
Speaker 1: bear meat market hunter. But these guys were from the

975
01:07:40,640 --> 01:07:43,080
Speaker 1: era when the thing that the market hunters were after,

976
01:07:43,200 --> 01:07:47,560
Speaker 1: the money to be made was in deer skins, But

977
01:07:47,640 --> 01:07:49,200
Speaker 1: our story is not. It's the story of the rise

978
01:07:49,240 --> 01:07:52,640
Speaker 1: and fall of trade in this particular animal. These guys

979
01:07:52,640 --> 01:07:58,240
Speaker 1: were engaged in a risky business, and this chapter of history,

980
01:07:58,280 --> 01:08:02,600
Speaker 1: this broad story that we telling, this includes no shortage

981
01:08:02,600 --> 01:08:07,439
Speaker 1: of life or death adventures. As you'll see, Daniel Boone

982
01:08:07,520 --> 01:08:11,760
Speaker 1: is one example. He in this area that we describe

983
01:08:11,760 --> 01:08:13,960
Speaker 1: and we described as the first Far West. We'll explain

984
01:08:14,000 --> 01:08:16,880
Speaker 1: why we call it the first far West, And as

985
01:08:16,880 --> 01:08:19,080
Speaker 1: you'll learn, the second Far West is the one you

986
01:08:19,120 --> 01:08:20,720
Speaker 1: think of when you think of far West. When you

987
01:08:20,760 --> 01:08:23,679
Speaker 1: hear far West, you probably think the American Great Plains,

988
01:08:23,720 --> 01:08:26,400
Speaker 1: the Rocky Mountains. As we'll explain, that's the second Far West.

989
01:08:27,080 --> 01:08:28,760
Speaker 1: This is the first Far West, and it was just

990
01:08:28,880 --> 01:08:33,080
Speaker 1: as harrowing Boone, Daniel Boone, you heard the name. He

991
01:08:33,120 --> 01:08:38,040
Speaker 1: probably don't know. He lost two sons, He lost his brother,

992
01:08:38,720 --> 01:08:42,479
Speaker 1: he lost his brother in law, all in the first

993
01:08:42,520 --> 01:08:46,439
Speaker 1: Far West. And those are some heart wrenching stories. But

994
01:08:47,439 --> 01:08:50,200
Speaker 1: even these father son tragedies were not limited to the Boons.

995
01:08:51,120 --> 01:08:53,920
Speaker 1: Here's a snippet of a story we tell about long

996
01:08:54,000 --> 01:08:57,960
Speaker 1: hunter named Henry Skaggs, who witnessed his own son's death

997
01:08:58,360 --> 01:09:01,639
Speaker 1: as well. This happened in the late seventeen seventies when

998
01:09:01,760 --> 01:09:05,800
Speaker 1: Skaggs was hunting with about twenty long hunters and what

999
01:09:05,960 --> 01:09:10,040
Speaker 1: is now Kentucky along the Green River. They're out, they

1000
01:09:10,040 --> 01:09:12,759
Speaker 1: get attacked by Indians. They lose a bunch of their horses.

1001
01:09:13,800 --> 01:09:16,920
Speaker 1: Most of the guys that are with Skags turntail and run.

1002
01:09:16,960 --> 01:09:19,960
Speaker 1: They want to head back to the settlements, but three

1003
01:09:20,000 --> 01:09:22,960
Speaker 1: of them stick it out. It's Henry Skaggs, his son

1004
01:09:23,080 --> 01:09:28,160
Speaker 1: John In a hunter named Alexander Sinclair. They go over

1005
01:09:28,200 --> 01:09:30,720
Speaker 1: the Cumberland Gap, and if you've heard of the Cumberland Gap,

1006
01:09:30,760 --> 01:09:33,880
Speaker 1: you're gonna at the end of this, when you buy this, listen,

1007
01:09:33,920 --> 01:09:35,799
Speaker 1: you're gonna know more about the Cumberland Gap than anybody

1008
01:09:35,800 --> 01:09:39,040
Speaker 1: you've ever met. They go over to Cumberland Gap and

1009
01:09:39,120 --> 01:09:41,080
Speaker 1: begin their hunt, but it's one of the worst winners

1010
01:09:41,120 --> 01:09:45,680
Speaker 1: on record. Hunters that winter were reporting large numbers of

1011
01:09:45,720 --> 01:09:49,640
Speaker 1: deer simply frozen to death near Salt Licks. And if

1012
01:09:49,640 --> 01:09:51,479
Speaker 1: you're thinking, what the hell's is salt Lick, you will

1013
01:09:51,520 --> 01:09:54,160
Speaker 1: know more about Salt Licks than anybody you've ever met.

1014
01:09:54,680 --> 01:09:58,320
Speaker 1: When you finish listen to this. So Skaggs keeps hunting

1015
01:09:58,400 --> 01:10:00,240
Speaker 1: out right, all his friends take off and sk Eggs

1016
01:10:00,280 --> 01:10:02,640
Speaker 1: hunts it out and we tell this whole story. His

1017
01:10:02,760 --> 01:10:06,920
Speaker 1: son gets sick soon after that guy Sinclair, who's with him,

1018
01:10:07,000 --> 01:10:09,160
Speaker 1: heads off to run his trap line, never to be

1019
01:10:09,160 --> 01:10:13,160
Speaker 1: seen him again. Henry Skaggs leaves his sick child and

1020
01:10:13,200 --> 01:10:14,720
Speaker 1: goes to try to find the guy. All he can

1021
01:10:14,760 --> 01:10:17,800
Speaker 1: finds a hole in the ice, and he deduces that

1022
01:10:17,840 --> 01:10:21,120
Speaker 1: the guy must have just fallen through the frozen surface

1023
01:10:21,160 --> 01:10:25,639
Speaker 1: of the Green River drowned. Apparently, the river freezes back

1024
01:10:25,760 --> 01:10:30,960
Speaker 1: up shortly after that, Skags his boy dies, but the

1025
01:10:30,960 --> 01:10:34,200
Speaker 1: ground's so frozen he can't dig a grave, so he

1026
01:10:34,439 --> 01:10:37,960
Speaker 1: stuffs his boy's body into a hollow log and stoppers

1027
01:10:38,040 --> 01:10:42,280
Speaker 1: up the ends. He then returns to a station camp.

1028
01:10:42,600 --> 01:10:44,120
Speaker 1: If you're like, what in the hell's a station camp,

1029
01:10:44,200 --> 01:10:46,920
Speaker 1: you will learn very well what a station camp is.

1030
01:10:47,840 --> 01:10:51,080
Speaker 1: And then Skags alone now, after losing his partner and

1031
01:10:51,120 --> 01:10:54,280
Speaker 1: his son, spends his whole winter under an overhanging rock

1032
01:10:54,600 --> 01:10:58,360
Speaker 1: near a salt lick and kills whatever animals he can

1033
01:10:58,400 --> 01:11:01,439
Speaker 1: find that approach the lick, and then in the spring

1034
01:11:01,520 --> 01:11:04,320
Speaker 1: makes his way back to the settlements. This is like

1035
01:11:04,400 --> 01:11:07,760
Speaker 1: nothing compared to other hardships you'll encounter in this story.

1036
01:11:07,960 --> 01:11:09,840
Speaker 1: Some of these stories blow away anything you'll hear of

1037
01:11:09,880 --> 01:11:13,679
Speaker 1: the Rocky Mountains and the mountain men. Here's another one

1038
01:11:14,000 --> 01:11:16,680
Speaker 1: in May seventeen seventy one. This is a story we

1039
01:11:16,720 --> 01:11:20,639
Speaker 1: tell in great detail. Daniel and his brother Squire Boone,

1040
01:11:20,680 --> 01:11:23,439
Speaker 1: are headed back to the settlements after a long hunt,

1041
01:11:23,680 --> 01:11:25,400
Speaker 1: and they need to stop to shoot some game for

1042
01:11:25,479 --> 01:11:27,679
Speaker 1: meat that they're gonna bring home with them. They set

1043
01:11:27,760 --> 01:11:30,639
Speaker 1: up camp and Squire is just heading out to hunt

1044
01:11:31,120 --> 01:11:33,439
Speaker 1: when he sees a lone figure coming in the distance.

1045
01:11:34,120 --> 01:11:36,280
Speaker 1: He's cautious about it. He doesn't know who it is,

1046
01:11:36,960 --> 01:11:39,320
Speaker 1: but it winds up being a guy named Alexander Neely,

1047
01:11:39,439 --> 01:11:41,800
Speaker 1: who they'd been hunting with and had vanished on a

1048
01:11:42,000 --> 01:11:46,080
Speaker 1: previous long hunt. The guy's all messed up, his clothing's torn,

1049
01:11:46,520 --> 01:11:49,240
Speaker 1: he's starving to death. His arms and legs are all

1050
01:11:49,280 --> 01:11:54,800
Speaker 1: cut up. Neely explains that he had got separated from

1051
01:11:54,840 --> 01:11:57,960
Speaker 1: a group of hunters and tried to shoot his gun

1052
01:11:58,080 --> 01:12:00,200
Speaker 1: fire off his gun so they could hear him, but

1053
01:12:00,240 --> 01:12:03,040
Speaker 1: he burned up all of his gunpowder, so he had

1054
01:12:03,080 --> 01:12:05,920
Speaker 1: no way of shooting his gun anymore, and never found

1055
01:12:05,960 --> 01:12:09,040
Speaker 1: his hunting partners. Tried to make his way back to

1056
01:12:09,040 --> 01:12:11,400
Speaker 1: the settlement with no gun, so he's got no way

1057
01:12:11,400 --> 01:12:15,280
Speaker 1: of obtaining meat, gets hopelessly lost, and then one day

1058
01:12:15,400 --> 01:12:18,800
Speaker 1: he's resting against a downtree and a dog shows up.

1059
01:12:19,520 --> 01:12:22,080
Speaker 1: This dog probably belonged to an Indian hunter, and it

1060
01:12:22,160 --> 01:12:26,000
Speaker 1: runs up to greet him, but Neely strangles the dog

1061
01:12:26,560 --> 01:12:29,680
Speaker 1: and roasts it and makes jerky out of it and

1062
01:12:29,800 --> 01:12:32,760
Speaker 1: stores that jerky in a sack made out of the

1063
01:12:32,840 --> 01:12:36,800
Speaker 1: dog's skin. When Squire Boone finds him, he still got

1064
01:12:36,840 --> 01:12:39,559
Speaker 1: some of this dog jerky in the dog skin bag,

1065
01:12:39,720 --> 01:12:44,440
Speaker 1: and Squire Boone comments how it was quite alive with maggots.

1066
01:12:45,560 --> 01:12:47,280
Speaker 1: This is all stuff you're going to hear about. It's

1067
01:12:47,320 --> 01:12:50,680
Speaker 1: just it's stuff that blows your mind. And I had

1068
01:12:50,720 --> 01:12:52,880
Speaker 1: been my whole life, I've read about the long hunters,

1069
01:12:53,520 --> 01:12:55,839
Speaker 1: and these are all like so many of these stories

1070
01:12:55,840 --> 01:12:57,800
Speaker 1: like that one, for instance, are stories that I had

1071
01:12:57,880 --> 01:13:01,240
Speaker 1: never known until he got into this project. Like this

1072
01:13:01,280 --> 01:13:04,439
Speaker 1: is the level of detail stuff that we drug out

1073
01:13:04,479 --> 01:13:07,880
Speaker 1: through research to bring out in this project. And there's

1074
01:13:07,920 --> 01:13:09,479
Speaker 1: other stuff that's going to really blow your mind. Because

1075
01:13:09,479 --> 01:13:11,880
Speaker 1: you might have heard a lot about Daniel Boone or

1076
01:13:11,920 --> 01:13:14,800
Speaker 1: heard the term long hunters even but there's stuff you

1077
01:13:14,840 --> 01:13:17,719
Speaker 1: might not know, like even just the intricacy of game

1078
01:13:17,840 --> 01:13:22,080
Speaker 1: laws back then in the first Far West, meaning there

1079
01:13:22,120 --> 01:13:26,280
Speaker 1: was restrictions on the kind of hunting that these backwoods

1080
01:13:26,360 --> 01:13:29,519
Speaker 1: frontiersmen were supposed to do, whether or not people listened

1081
01:13:29,520 --> 01:13:32,440
Speaker 1: to him or not. There were restrictions passed by lawmakers

1082
01:13:33,320 --> 01:13:39,040
Speaker 1: to try to discourage these colonial backwoodsmen from engaging in

1083
01:13:39,160 --> 01:13:42,320
Speaker 1: the deer skin trade. So this is an era when

1084
01:13:42,720 --> 01:13:46,160
Speaker 1: Daniel Boone these other Euro American hunters are literally having

1085
01:13:46,200 --> 01:13:49,360
Speaker 1: like running gun battles with Native Americans over access to

1086
01:13:49,400 --> 01:13:53,080
Speaker 1: deer herds. Meanwhile there's people trying to impose game laws

1087
01:13:53,479 --> 01:13:57,040
Speaker 1: on them. There was a law meant to prevent these

1088
01:13:57,040 --> 01:14:01,759
Speaker 1: so called quote disorderly persons from hunting deer quote merely

1089
01:14:01,840 --> 01:14:05,840
Speaker 1: for the sake of skins, which lawmakers pointed out were

1090
01:14:05,880 --> 01:14:10,000
Speaker 1: clandestinely carried out of the colony in order that the

1091
01:14:10,120 --> 01:14:15,120
Speaker 1: hunters could avoid paying taxes, or that legislators in some

1092
01:14:15,200 --> 01:14:19,559
Speaker 1: areas had explicitly banned the practice of shooting or killing

1093
01:14:19,640 --> 01:14:24,000
Speaker 1: any deer just for the skin. You could not kill

1094
01:14:24,040 --> 01:14:26,960
Speaker 1: a deer for the skin while leaving the flesh in

1095
01:14:27,000 --> 01:14:29,839
Speaker 1: the woods to rot. If you did, you were subject

1096
01:14:29,880 --> 01:14:33,160
Speaker 1: to a fine. And in this project, as you're listening

1097
01:14:33,160 --> 01:14:35,160
Speaker 1: to this, you'll learn like how that could be reconciled

1098
01:14:35,200 --> 01:14:38,120
Speaker 1: with this history of people who are killing hundreds or

1099
01:14:38,240 --> 01:14:41,920
Speaker 1: thousands of deer for the skins. Likewise, to try to

1100
01:14:41,920 --> 01:14:46,439
Speaker 1: discourage over harvest by market hunters. In North Carolina, check

1101
01:14:46,479 --> 01:14:49,040
Speaker 1: this out, they had a law that prohibited you from

1102
01:14:49,080 --> 01:14:52,439
Speaker 1: hunting deer if you didn't have a settled habitation in

1103
01:14:52,479 --> 01:14:56,000
Speaker 1: the colony. So nowadays, when you hear people complaining about

1104
01:14:56,000 --> 01:14:59,479
Speaker 1: out of state hunters, there were rules like that in

1105
01:14:59,520 --> 01:15:02,320
Speaker 1: place them and we lay these out. I think the

1106
01:15:02,360 --> 01:15:04,760
Speaker 1: reason most stories miss this stuff is because they have

1107
01:15:04,800 --> 01:15:07,040
Speaker 1: an audience that isn't going to understand or they fear

1108
01:15:07,080 --> 01:15:10,439
Speaker 1: they won't understand it anyways. But our audience understands this,

1109
01:15:10,560 --> 01:15:13,400
Speaker 1: and you're gonna be like delighted in these kind of intricacies.

1110
01:15:14,280 --> 01:15:17,080
Speaker 1: You needed to have in certain places. Check this one.

1111
01:15:17,680 --> 01:15:20,479
Speaker 1: You needed to have five thousand corn hills within the

1112
01:15:20,520 --> 01:15:25,000
Speaker 1: colony in order to be illegal deer hunter, meaning they

1113
01:15:25,000 --> 01:15:26,800
Speaker 1: would at that time they would say like no, no,

1114
01:15:26,800 --> 01:15:28,720
Speaker 1: you gotta have you gotta have you can't be from

1115
01:15:28,720 --> 01:15:31,120
Speaker 1: out of town, you gotta have land. Not only you

1116
01:15:31,160 --> 01:15:34,000
Speaker 1: gotta have land, you have to have five thousand corn hills.

1117
01:15:34,080 --> 01:15:36,000
Speaker 1: And you'll learn what a corn hill was and why

1118
01:15:36,040 --> 01:15:40,559
Speaker 1: that mattered if you wanted to hunt deer. South Carolina

1119
01:15:40,600 --> 01:15:45,200
Speaker 1: at the time Boone was out being Boone, South Carolina

1120
01:15:45,320 --> 01:15:47,880
Speaker 1: passed the law that made it illegal to hunt more

1121
01:15:48,000 --> 01:15:51,920
Speaker 1: than seven miles from one's own home in an effort

1122
01:15:52,000 --> 01:15:55,479
Speaker 1: to try to restrict these commercial deer hunters who would

1123
01:15:55,479 --> 01:15:58,599
Speaker 1: come through an area and wipe out the deer to

1124
01:15:58,600 --> 01:16:03,280
Speaker 1: get the hides. There were exceptions of these rules, meaning

1125
01:16:03,360 --> 01:16:06,280
Speaker 1: they still even back then. You've heard of depredation permits now,

1126
01:16:06,320 --> 01:16:10,480
Speaker 1: even back then, pre America, okay, pre Declaration of Independence,

1127
01:16:10,880 --> 01:16:13,760
Speaker 1: there was exemptions for landowners who needed to kill deer

1128
01:16:13,800 --> 01:16:17,080
Speaker 1: to protect their crops, and there were exceptions for people

1129
01:16:17,080 --> 01:16:19,719
Speaker 1: who needed to kill deer for food what they called

1130
01:16:19,800 --> 01:16:24,679
Speaker 1: the necessary subsistence of himself or his family. But even then,

1131
01:16:24,880 --> 01:16:27,040
Speaker 1: they had provisions. Back then, if you killed a deer

1132
01:16:27,040 --> 01:16:29,599
Speaker 1: for food, you were not allowed to sell or dispose

1133
01:16:29,680 --> 01:16:32,679
Speaker 1: of the skin, because they were trying to deter these

1134
01:16:32,720 --> 01:16:38,880
Speaker 1: frontier settlers, these crazy backwoods wild men from hunting deer

1135
01:16:38,920 --> 01:16:44,280
Speaker 1: for skins. These restrictions combined with declining deer numbers are

1136
01:16:44,400 --> 01:16:47,679
Speaker 1: part of what pushed the long hunters to go further

1137
01:16:47,760 --> 01:16:51,160
Speaker 1: and further west into the farther reaches of this first

1138
01:16:51,160 --> 01:16:54,320
Speaker 1: far West. Now, what we wanted to do with this book,

1139
01:16:54,360 --> 01:16:56,280
Speaker 1: I'm just giving you a handful of examples of stuff

1140
01:16:56,280 --> 01:16:58,720
Speaker 1: you're going to learn. We're talking. This is hours of

1141
01:16:58,840 --> 01:17:03,040
Speaker 1: material that's like expert researched and very succinctly presented. This

1142
01:17:03,120 --> 01:17:05,200
Speaker 1: is just me talking about this thing. But this thing

1143
01:17:05,280 --> 01:17:09,160
Speaker 1: is different because it's it's perfect. Okay. What we wanted

1144
01:17:09,160 --> 01:17:11,559
Speaker 1: to do in the book is we wanted to dig

1145
01:17:11,760 --> 01:17:16,040
Speaker 1: into the historical sources so we could tell you who

1146
01:17:16,120 --> 01:17:20,599
Speaker 1: these guys were, like really, who they were, where they

1147
01:17:20,640 --> 01:17:23,800
Speaker 1: came from, what their backgrounds were, what their circumstances were,

1148
01:17:23,840 --> 01:17:27,960
Speaker 1: what pushed them into this this very deadly bloody trade,

1149
01:17:28,320 --> 01:17:30,880
Speaker 1: Why they engaged in the deerskin trade, which means we

1150
01:17:31,000 --> 01:17:35,960
Speaker 1: have to explain what America was then, who Americans were then,

1151
01:17:36,479 --> 01:17:41,240
Speaker 1: what the globe looked like then, what cattle ranching was, like,

1152
01:17:41,800 --> 01:17:44,960
Speaker 1: why there was a shortage of leather, And telling this

1153
01:17:45,000 --> 01:17:47,479
Speaker 1: we explained all this other stuff like why did they

1154
01:17:47,600 --> 01:17:49,240
Speaker 1: use the rifles they use When you hear of a

1155
01:17:49,320 --> 01:17:54,439
Speaker 1: Kentucky long rifle. What did that mean back then? Now

1156
01:17:54,479 --> 01:17:58,280
Speaker 1: you shoot it because it seems old and antique. They

1157
01:17:58,360 --> 01:18:01,200
Speaker 1: shot them because it was the most sophisticated weapon you

1158
01:18:01,200 --> 01:18:04,600
Speaker 1: could get your hands on. They were shooting state of

1159
01:18:04,640 --> 01:18:08,680
Speaker 1: the art equipment, cutting edge equipment. Why was that the

1160
01:18:08,720 --> 01:18:13,280
Speaker 1: way it was? How did they camp? Because I mean, remember, no,

1161
01:18:13,320 --> 01:18:16,280
Speaker 1: they didn't have flashlights, they didn't have lighters, they didn't

1162
01:18:16,320 --> 01:18:19,720
Speaker 1: have tents. But they're gone for two years killing deer

1163
01:18:19,760 --> 01:18:22,840
Speaker 1: in the woods. How did they camp? What did they eat?

1164
01:18:23,560 --> 01:18:26,200
Speaker 1: What were their interactions with native people? What were the

1165
01:18:26,280 --> 01:18:32,040
Speaker 1: long hunter's interactions with tribes the Shawnee, the Cherokee, who

1166
01:18:32,120 --> 01:18:38,200
Speaker 1: had a rightful, thousands of years old claim to these

1167
01:18:38,280 --> 01:18:41,439
Speaker 1: hunting grounds. And this becomes a really complicated thing that

1168
01:18:41,479 --> 01:18:45,360
Speaker 1: will explain. The long Hunters had this idea of this area,

1169
01:18:46,040 --> 01:18:50,800
Speaker 1: against all historical evidence outside of these things that they

1170
01:18:50,840 --> 01:18:52,400
Speaker 1: saw when they were there, they had this idea that

1171
01:18:52,439 --> 01:18:55,120
Speaker 1: it was unclaimed. And we're gonna talk we talk a

1172
01:18:55,120 --> 01:18:57,240
Speaker 1: lot about that. Why did the long hunters think there

1173
01:18:57,360 --> 01:19:00,679
Speaker 1: was on this landscape the first far West? Why did

1174
01:19:00,800 --> 01:19:04,920
Speaker 1: they think it was unclaimed? And why did the Shawnee

1175
01:19:04,920 --> 01:19:07,360
Speaker 1: and Cherokee and other tribes know that in fact, that

1176
01:19:07,439 --> 01:19:11,200
Speaker 1: was not true. It was quite claimed. They had been

1177
01:19:11,240 --> 01:19:14,320
Speaker 1: hunting it a long time and they were not going

1178
01:19:14,400 --> 01:19:17,240
Speaker 1: to stand by and watch these euro Americans come in

1179
01:19:18,040 --> 01:19:22,320
Speaker 1: and rape and pillage the landscape and deplete it of deer.

1180
01:19:22,800 --> 01:19:27,920
Speaker 1: So we explore this, just like very different perceptions of

1181
01:19:27,960 --> 01:19:31,680
Speaker 1: the American wilderness. To the long hunters, it was wilderness,

1182
01:19:32,520 --> 01:19:34,719
Speaker 1: it was the unknown, it was the dark and dangerous.

1183
01:19:34,800 --> 01:19:38,840
Speaker 1: Right to the Shawnee and Cherokee, it was home. It

1184
01:19:38,880 --> 01:19:44,120
Speaker 1: was their hunting spot. And this disagreement takes many shapes

1185
01:19:44,160 --> 01:19:47,000
Speaker 1: and forms, and we dig a lot into this so

1186
01:19:47,040 --> 01:19:54,120
Speaker 1: you can understand this interplay of America and Native America

1187
01:19:54,439 --> 01:19:57,960
Speaker 1: on the landscape. How did the long hunters like actually

1188
01:19:58,080 --> 01:20:01,600
Speaker 1: hunt deer? This is something like there are audience is

1189
01:20:01,600 --> 01:20:02,880
Speaker 1: going to want to know because you might just read

1190
01:20:02,920 --> 01:20:05,360
Speaker 1: a normal history book they hunted deer. But you know

1191
01:20:05,439 --> 01:20:09,400
Speaker 1: about hunting deer, right, You know about bait, you know

1192
01:20:09,479 --> 01:20:12,400
Speaker 1: about blinds, you know what still hunting is, you know

1193
01:20:12,439 --> 01:20:15,160
Speaker 1: what deer drives are, you know what ambush hunting is.

1194
01:20:16,040 --> 01:20:19,360
Speaker 1: We tell you how they were so effective, like how

1195
01:20:19,400 --> 01:20:22,360
Speaker 1: they hunted deer, and a normal history book might be

1196
01:20:22,360 --> 01:20:24,880
Speaker 1: like they sold the skins, they processed the skins, but

1197
01:20:24,920 --> 01:20:27,400
Speaker 1: you want to know more, we tell you, like like

1198
01:20:27,800 --> 01:20:31,960
Speaker 1: how they skinned them, what they did with those skins,

1199
01:20:31,960 --> 01:20:34,439
Speaker 1: step by step, and we're honest with you when there's

1200
01:20:34,479 --> 01:20:36,640
Speaker 1: parts of that explanation that we don't know, and we

1201
01:20:36,720 --> 01:20:39,080
Speaker 1: tell you why we don't know what we know. We

1202
01:20:39,120 --> 01:20:41,320
Speaker 1: tell you why, how we know what we know, and

1203
01:20:41,320 --> 01:20:43,479
Speaker 1: we were straight with you when we tell you what's

1204
01:20:43,520 --> 01:20:47,920
Speaker 1: not known. How the skins get the market, and then

1205
01:20:48,360 --> 01:20:52,080
Speaker 1: how did those skins travel across the Atlantic to craftsmen

1206
01:20:52,240 --> 01:20:57,920
Speaker 1: and consumers in Europe and get this? How did piracy pirates?

1207
01:20:58,240 --> 01:21:03,120
Speaker 1: How did piracy play into this whole thing. It includes

1208
01:21:03,479 --> 01:21:07,919
Speaker 1: a deep dive on the global financial circumstances, the global

1209
01:21:08,200 --> 01:21:12,320
Speaker 1: economic circumstances that drove the deerskin trade at that time,

1210
01:21:13,080 --> 01:21:15,639
Speaker 1: and all of this plays into explaining what would cause

1211
01:21:15,640 --> 01:21:19,360
Speaker 1: a person who could become some humdrum farmer to instead

1212
01:21:20,200 --> 01:21:25,679
Speaker 1: risk fairly certain death, pretty certain death, damn certain trouble

1213
01:21:26,479 --> 01:21:31,799
Speaker 1: and risk to go out and become this thing called

1214
01:21:32,080 --> 01:21:37,360
Speaker 1: a long hunter. Me Eater's American History The Long Hunters

1215
01:21:37,880 --> 01:21:42,559
Speaker 1: seventeen sixty one to seventeen seventy five, narrated by me

1216
01:21:42,840 --> 01:21:47,559
Speaker 1: Steven Ranella and Clay Newcomb available now wherever you get

1217
01:21:47,600 --> 01:22:15,000
Speaker 1: your books.