Speaker 1: Also media, Welcome back to Behind the Bastard's a podcast
Speaker 1: where you never know if I've sent Sophie the script
Speaker 1: prior to actually starting the episode like I'm supposed to,
Speaker 1: maybe it's caught in the tube. Sophie, you remember that,
Speaker 1: you remember when that guy, that guy in Congress called
Speaker 1: the Internet a series of tubes, and we all laughed
Speaker 1: at him, and then years later we were all like, actually,
Speaker 1: that's not a bad way to describe the Internet, to
Speaker 1: be honest. Yeah, yeah, you remember that. Anyway, what I
Speaker 1: remember is that we have a special guest today, and
Speaker 1: that guest is the great Marrow Wilson. Mara, welcome to
Speaker 1: the show.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me. And yeah, you're right,
Speaker 2: it kind of is a series of tubes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's more. That's close enough, right, Yeah, yeah, Mara,
Speaker 1: you are I mean, if you were a person listening
Speaker 1: to this who is roughly my age, Marrow was in
Speaker 1: I don't know about like thirty percent of the movies
Speaker 1: that made up a huge part of your childhood. And
Speaker 1: you have recently written a memoir Where Am I Now?
Speaker 1: True Stories of Girlhood and Accidental Fame, which has been
Speaker 1: named a best book of the month by Goodreads and
Speaker 1: Entertainment Weekly. Mara, happy to have you on the show.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you. Yeah, yeah I do.
Speaker 2: I do a bit of writing and voice acting and
Speaker 2: things like that, and I love it. I'm I'm I'm lucky.
Speaker 2: I've been doing things that I actually really like for
Speaker 2: a job.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, yeah, that's always exciting.
Speaker 2: Yes, which yeah, which which is hasn't always been the case?
Speaker 3: And yeah that's nice.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, speaking of of of jobs, you know, I
Speaker 1: got to do the thing. I'm sorry. I know this
Speaker 1: is like the stereotypical reporter, you know, celebrity interview thing,
Speaker 1: but I got to ask you this question. I'm sure
Speaker 1: you get asked it all the time. If you're arming
Speaker 1: an insurgent group to fight against a US backed military junta,
Speaker 1: what kind of the detonators do you prefer on your
Speaker 1: improvised explosives? Are you do you like like a bridge
Speaker 1: wire cap or are you more of like a slapper
Speaker 1: detonator type?
Speaker 2: You know, I think it's really whatever the situation calls for. Perhaps,
Speaker 2: you know, I probably should know more about this kind
Speaker 2: of thing. I come from a family of electronics engineers,
Speaker 2: but but yeah, no, I I think I slept through
Speaker 2: that class.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, It's okay. We've got some standard literature we send
Speaker 1: all of our guests on detonators, so we'll get that
Speaker 1: into the mail to you.
Speaker 2: Or maybe like my dad gave it to me in
Speaker 2: a really boring lecture and I just zoned out and
Speaker 2: just thinking about, you know, I don't know whatever it
Speaker 2: was I was thinking about at the time, like Roco's
Speaker 2: Modern life or whatever.
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, very common subjects. Roco's Modern Life. I love
Speaker 1: that ef. Yeah. So, Mara, what do you know about
Speaker 1: the Troubled Team wilderness rehab industry?
Speaker 2: Oh? Good God, I actually know more than I actually
Speaker 2: know a great deal about it because I have several
Speaker 2: friends who went through it and it is hell on Earth.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, so yes, this is actually something I'm very
Speaker 2: passionate about.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so yeah, I'm glad to hear it me too.
Speaker 1: This is actually like back kind of ten years ago.
Speaker 1: Much earlier in my career as a journalist, I wrote
Speaker 1: a number of articles with sources who had been to
Speaker 1: different troubled teen rehab facilities around the country, most of
Speaker 1: which wound up being based in like Utah or Montana.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, they are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, So that's that's kind of the standard for
Speaker 1: all particularly Utah. Like forty percent of all kids who
Speaker 1: cross state lines to go to one of these facilities
Speaker 1: wind up in fucking Utah. And you know today we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about the reason why that is because
Speaker 1: it all starts with a single guy. And he's not
Speaker 1: just the guy who like started doing these troubled teen
Speaker 1: rehab facilities because kind of versions of that had existed
Speaker 1: for a while. He's the guy who decided, you know what,
Speaker 1: we need to add to rehab programs for kids armed
Speaker 1: men busting into their houses in the night and abducting them. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's who we're talking about today. And yeah, so I
Speaker 1: guess let's get into this piece of shit. His name was.
Speaker 4: I actually had the script though.
Speaker 1: I sent it to you. I so did.
Speaker 4: I do not the script?
Speaker 1: The tubes ate it. I don't know what to tell Sophie.
Speaker 1: You could just intuit the script.
Speaker 4: I mean, like, sometimes my thoughts are in your voice,
Speaker 4: but no, you.
Speaker 1: Know, do this with a Oija board. Okay, anyway, you
Speaker 1: should have the script now.
Speaker 4: Sophie, someday perhaps Yeah, yeah, maybe not.
Speaker 1: I don't. That's my fault then. Oh, also my fault
Speaker 1: forgetting that we do cold opens. Now cold open's done,
Speaker 1: it's time for the hot open and we're back. And
Speaker 1: I sent it to you.
Speaker 3: It's very sibling between the two of you.
Speaker 1: Did It's got to be somewhere in the tube, Sophie.
Speaker 1: I got it. It's up to the tubes.
Speaker 4: Now we did it, Joe, I have the scripts.
Speaker 1: Thank you? Does that make you the kamala? Because I
Speaker 1: know I'm not sure I like this. I'm not nearly
Speaker 1: that sleepy.
Speaker 5: That means that the chance of thank you Joe are
Speaker 5: no more thank you.
Speaker 1: I'm a lot less drugs than Joe Biden too.
Speaker 3: How do you feel about ice cream though?
Speaker 1: Coming No, Actually.
Speaker 3: I envy you so much.
Speaker 2: Every now and then I meet somebody who's not a
Speaker 2: sweets person and I'm like, god, damn, how did I
Speaker 2: end up?
Speaker 5: Now?
Speaker 2: I am like baked goods and ice cream all of
Speaker 2: the way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the way I do like a nice You know
Speaker 1: what my favorite thing is. It's just like a big
Speaker 1: slice of friend bread with fucking salted amish butter on it.
Speaker 1: That's like, oh that's really good to It's no healthier
Speaker 1: than anything else.
Speaker 2: Oh that's true. That's true. Well, sometimes I say less
Speaker 2: than a sweet tooth, I have more of a carb tooth.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like give me some bread or like crackers, and
Speaker 2: and I will go nuts.
Speaker 3: And it's true.
Speaker 2: Actually even after like I eat something sweet, I'm like
Speaker 2: I need something else to like balance it, and I'll
Speaker 2: eat something salty.
Speaker 3: But it's just still carbs.
Speaker 2: It's just still Yeah, it's it's bread with salted butter.
Speaker 3: Or it's you know, it's toast, or it's crackers. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: it just mouthes.
Speaker 1: Out optimized for survival. You know, our ancestors made it
Speaker 1: through the frozen wasteland because it gets you know.
Speaker 2: We're Eastern European, you know, we're pale of settlement Jews
Speaker 2: on one side, and we're you know, Irish Catholic on
Speaker 2: the other. So so yeah, some some some people who went.
Speaker 3: Through a lot of shit, I guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, the carbs make sense. Yeah, starvation is
Speaker 1: a relevant topic here because a lot of children wind
Speaker 1: up get starved because of its kind of what of
Speaker 1: his main tech and really even within the parts of
Speaker 1: the troubled teen industry that are like respectable and accredited,
Speaker 1: all of them use starving kids as like a tool
Speaker 1: for discipline they do.
Speaker 2: Yes, I think, yeah, it's well. I went to so
Speaker 2: I went to an arts boarding school. This is how,
Speaker 2: this is how I spent my movie money. I went
Speaker 2: to boarding school to study theater and and I.
Speaker 3: I, it's it's sort of like the I always say it.
Speaker 2: It's a bit like the Far Side cartoon of like
Speaker 2: the kids who run away from the circus to join
Speaker 2: corporate America. I ran away from Hollywood to do community theater.
Speaker 3: So like I ran away.
Speaker 2: To to to UH to a boarding school, and a
Speaker 2: lot of the kids there had gone through these programs.
Speaker 2: And because it turns out that if you're you know,
Speaker 2: sometimes if you're like a sensitive artistic kid, you know,
Speaker 2: people don't quite know what to do with you, so.
Speaker 1: You know, might smoke in a pot or a little bit,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Exactly, So like these kids would be maybe they would
Speaker 2: be depressed, or they would have an eating disorder, or
Speaker 2: they would smoke weed, or they would start drinking young
Speaker 2: and then you know, where are they sent off to. Inevitably,
Speaker 2: they are always sent off to these places. And sometimes
Speaker 2: it was even worse. Like I knew one girl there
Speaker 2: who basically she didn't have a stable living environment. So
Speaker 2: she ended up in one of these schools in Utah
Speaker 2: because like like, kids who are essentially in the foster
Speaker 2: program or don't have a stable living environment end up
Speaker 2: in these places. It happens a lot. So tell me
Speaker 2: about the bastard who started this, because.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, there's a few. But it turns out everyone
Speaker 1: who's been even tangentially involved in this industry is kind
Speaker 1: of a monster. Like even the good guys who get
Speaker 1: quoted when the monsters kill a kid. If you look
Speaker 1: into the good guys, they also kind of suck. It
Speaker 1: may just not be a thing that good people do,
Speaker 1: is want to oper desert camps where you torture children.
Speaker 1: I don't know, perhaps that's not a nice guy kind
Speaker 1: of thing anyway, So I wanted to I wanted to
Speaker 1: figure out I'd always you know, I've been covering this
Speaker 1: as a journalist for years and years. I wrote stuff
Speaker 1: it cracked, you know, on this, and I've been wondering, like,
Speaker 1: who in the hell was the guy who did this?
Speaker 1: And the partial answer to that question is Steve Cartazano,
Speaker 1: And Steve kind of came into the public eye recently.
Speaker 1: There's a documentary on Netflix that I think is produced
Speaker 1: by Paris Hilton, who, as we'll talk about, is a
Speaker 1: big voice in the hole. We should stop doing this, Kida.
Speaker 3: But she she really is, she's been.
Speaker 2: It's it's very funny to me to think about, like
Speaker 2: the kids I know who you know, would talk about
Speaker 2: how much they loved or hated Paris Hilton, and a
Speaker 2: lot of them, you know, in that era when I
Speaker 2: was meeting a lot of these kids who've been sent there.
Speaker 2: And now she's like, yeah, she's she's completely done. She's
Speaker 2: done something I don't know. I mean, like, like, say
Speaker 2: what you will about the way that she was in
Speaker 2: the two thousands.
Speaker 3: She does seem to be passionate about this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, look, you know what she's she's done the right
Speaker 1: thing here. And I don't think any of us should
Speaker 1: be judged by what we did in the two thousands.
Speaker 1: We need to just let's just let's just shovel that
Speaker 1: decade off into the sea and pretend none of us,
Speaker 1: none of us were making choices back then.
Speaker 2: No, the gen Z and jen Aalfa, people who want
Speaker 2: to bring it back, I'm like, no, it was shit,
Speaker 2: it was don't It's like how I thought the eighties
Speaker 2: were cool when I was you know when I was then,
Speaker 2: and then I was like, oh no, this was the worst,
Speaker 2: do you know.
Speaker 6: To was.
Speaker 2: Like, I'm very glad that I don't remember most of
Speaker 2: the eighties.
Speaker 1: There's never been a good decade.
Speaker 2: There hasn't been. There hasn't been.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So Steve Cartesano is the guy we're going to
Speaker 1: mostly be talking about these episodes, but as I noted earlier,
Speaker 1: the whole troubled teen Wilderness Camp industrial complex is bigger
Speaker 1: than him, and so before we start talking about him,
Speaker 1: we've got to start a couple of decades earlier with
Speaker 1: the childhood of a man named Larry Dean Olsen Larry,
Speaker 1: and Larry is one of the guys who gets like
Speaker 1: quoted as a good guy in this He was an
Speaker 1: expert on running children's rehab facilities, and whenever one of
Speaker 1: the bad facilities would kill a kid, the news would
Speaker 1: talk to Larry, and so he's always depicted in those
Speaker 1: articles as like, well, he's the responsible kind of guy
Speaker 1: who does this. You know, this is a man who
Speaker 1: really understands how to take care of children. As we'll
Speaker 1: talk about, that's not really totally accurate to who Larry was.
Speaker 1: But he was born in Wendell, Idaho, on January twenty third,
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine, to Dean and Lola Olson. In most
Speaker 1: casual bios of his life, he is described as a
Speaker 1: farm boy who got admitted to Brigham Young University and
Speaker 1: found primitive survival education programs there, which set him off
Speaker 1: on his path in life, and that leaves out some
Speaker 1: key details, like the fact that Larry was illiterate for
Speaker 1: most of his early childhood. I found this quote in
Speaker 1: an article in the Salt Lake City Tribune. Quote Olsen
Speaker 1: traces his own wilderness transformation to the childhood day he
Speaker 1: found an arrowhead while cleaning out his uncle's irrigation ditch.
Speaker 1: The somewhat defiant youth who had refuse to learn to read,
Speaker 1: was struck by the stone. It changed my life. I
Speaker 1: took it to school, and my teacher gave me a
Speaker 1: book about the Indians who made that arrowhead. I took
Speaker 1: that book home and taught myself to read. And I
Speaker 1: don't know how much I believe that it's possible, given
Speaker 1: what else he does in his life, that this is
Speaker 1: like literally what happens to him. I do think we're
Speaker 1: missing some details about his childhood. The whole I was
Speaker 1: refusing to read as a child thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's I mean, they didn't really they didn't understand
Speaker 2: things like you know, dyslexia or ADHD or even just
Speaker 2: kids who learned differently, not necessarily like schools were very
Speaker 2: much about conformity, and so yeah, so it does feel
Speaker 2: a little bit like refusing to learn to read.
Speaker 3: I think, is that is an interesting thing?
Speaker 1: Yeah, now we're gonna and again I also think he's
Speaker 1: probably smushing some stuff together here because it's too clean,
Speaker 1: a story that's into marketable, a story like I saw
Speaker 1: this arrowhead and I read this book about Native Americans
Speaker 1: and that created my whole life passion and everything. Real
Speaker 1: life is rarely quite that smooth.
Speaker 2: There's also this sort of like it's I don't know
Speaker 2: what the term is for it exactly, but there is
Speaker 2: this fetishization I think of Native Americans that you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's like like orientalism, but for the sort of
Speaker 2: like noble savage idea that's big. Probably around the time
Speaker 2: that he's talking about these things. Yes, so especially I
Speaker 2: think probably in Utah too, because they consider, yeah, they
Speaker 2: think that they're connected to the Native Americans.
Speaker 1: Well, they rejuice is a big part of this, or
Speaker 1: a lot of them are Mormon, the fact that they
Speaker 1: and like, yeah, Native American appropriation is huge. Like later
Speaker 1: in life, Larry is going to co own a camp
Speaker 1: that's like named after the Anasazi, and I think it's
Speaker 1: the kind of thing where like he brings in a
Speaker 1: guy who is Indigenous as his like co owner largely
Speaker 1: so he can say like, look, we're authentic, you know,
Speaker 1: like that happens a lot. Now that was a lot
Speaker 1: more common. We're mostly talking like these seventies, eighties, nineties,
Speaker 1: so he's not like an outside of the cultural mate.
Speaker 1: Like the Boy Scouts are doing shit like that just
Speaker 1: as much, right, I mean.
Speaker 2: My public high school before I went off to my
Speaker 2: arts boarding school. Yeah, our mascot was the Indians until
Speaker 2: I think twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: We did some shit in the Boy Scouts when I
Speaker 1: was like fourteen years old that would not pass mustard today.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you that.
Speaker 3: No, it was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of stuff where it's just like
Speaker 2: Jesus CHRISTO. Yeah, yeah, it wouldn't. Yeah, and it was
Speaker 2: not that long ago.
Speaker 1: No, no, No, It's like it's like watching like an
Speaker 1: eighties movie that's like set in Cowboy Times and being like, well,
Speaker 1: all of these people playing in Native Americans are very
Speaker 1: clearly Italian.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, So whatever the truth about Olsen's childhood, we
Speaker 7: don't get a whole lot of good details on him
Speaker 7: until nineteen sixty six, when in his like kind of
Speaker 7: late twenties, he winds up at BYU.
Speaker 1: Now, if you are aware, BYU was Utah's premier university,
Speaker 1: and it is run and owned by the Church of
Speaker 1: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, and the
Speaker 1: elders at the school are concerned at this point that
Speaker 1: a number of students are having trouble maintaining their academics,
Speaker 1: so they're like looking for a program they can use
Speaker 1: on kids who are having trouble and at risk of
Speaker 1: kind of like failing out of the school. Now, at
Speaker 1: the time, there's no real industry for like taking kids
Speaker 1: out into the woods, like particularly young adults, and like
Speaker 1: giving them wilderness therapy. You've got like the boy Scouts.
Speaker 1: But outside of that, kind of the closest thing to
Speaker 1: the modern industry is this company called Outward Bound, which
Speaker 1: had been started back in the UK by this Welsh
Speaker 1: guy back during World War Two. Author John Krackauur notes
Speaker 1: that this was done to quote help stiffen the sagging
Speaker 1: spine of the British Empire, based on the logic that like,
Speaker 1: we're just not hiking enough. That's why all these countries
Speaker 1: keep leaving. Hike faster, or India is trying to go.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty two, Outward Bound had moved to the
Speaker 1: United States, where it offered a twenty six day course
Speaker 1: that included multi day hikes, rock climbing, and other high
Speaker 1: adventure stuff. And one of the things that strikes me
Speaker 1: about all these I like the outdoors. I like hiking
Speaker 1: and camping. Twenty six days is much longer than I
Speaker 1: want to spend on any kind of course. Yeah, I remember.
Speaker 2: Reading about them when I was a kid and I
Speaker 2: was I was like a pretty we were like a
Speaker 2: pretty outdoorsy family.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 2: We went camping all the time. I loved it, but
Speaker 2: we were but we were out Like if you grow
Speaker 2: up I think on the west coast of like the
Speaker 2: US and probably Canada and possibly Mexico too, you kind
Speaker 2: of like probably anywhere in North America on the West coast,
Speaker 2: you get very into like let's go into the woods,
Speaker 2: let's go into the desert. Let's do this, But.
Speaker 1: Then I had to do it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I remember reading about that and hearing like, you're like fourteen,
Speaker 2: you have to spend the night alone in the forest
Speaker 2: by yourself, and yeah, you go for weeks at a time.
Speaker 2: And I was just like, for a second, I was like, Oh,
Speaker 2: that would be so cool to do, and then I
Speaker 2: was like, no, actually that.
Speaker 1: Would be miserable, like a little log.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like to shower after a few days, you know,
Speaker 2: I'd like, that's that's a bit. You know, you don't
Speaker 2: even have doctor Browner's with you. That's that's too much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think all of the like in twenty six days.
Speaker 1: By the way, it's like very short for these courses,
Speaker 1: Like they're all just going to get longer to the
Speaker 1: extent because like I mean, we'll get to that. But
Speaker 1: a big part of the point is like keeping your
Speaker 1: kids away from you for as long as possible. Now,
Speaker 1: it's a big thing in.
Speaker 2: The British That's a big thing in British history too.
Speaker 1: The thing British people are least interested in during the
Speaker 1: Imperial period is raising their children.
Speaker 2: Queen Victoria, she hated kids. She loves sex the way. Yeah,
Speaker 2: she loved sex with with with Albert.
Speaker 3: And she hated kids.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and and add outward Bound. Those are their two.
Speaker 1: There are two primary guiding principles is sex with Prince
Speaker 1: Albert and uh not having kids near their parents. Yes,
Speaker 1: so it's important I note that outward Bound is not
Speaker 1: the place, not the They are not like these the
Speaker 1: facilities that we started the episode talking about. They're not
Speaker 1: kidnapping kids, they don't torture children. They're pretty much just
Speaker 1: like summer camp type programs, right, and they prove to
Speaker 1: be very in demand. And it's kind of like looking
Speaker 1: at outward Bound and a couple of like copycat camps,
Speaker 1: some of the people running BYU start talking like, maybe
Speaker 1: we should have a program like this, And that's where
Speaker 1: Larry Olsen comes into the picture. Olsen had only gotten
Speaker 1: more interested in primitive skills as an adolescent and a
Speaker 1: young man, and by the time he's in college, he's
Speaker 1: teaching survival courses like on the weekends and stuff to
Speaker 1: local hunters around Salt Lake City to pay his way
Speaker 1: through college. So people at the administration find this out
Speaker 1: and they're like, hey, you seem like a perfect person
Speaker 1: to like figure out how to do this program for us.
Speaker 1: So he starts off just kind of taking students into
Speaker 1: the desert for a few days at a time and
Speaker 1: teaching them survival skills like how to build shelters and
Speaker 1: start fires. And when these classes prove popular, BYU offers
Speaker 1: to pay him ninety dollars to take seventy kids out
Speaker 1: into the bush for like days at a time, which
Speaker 1: is not enough money to do that.
Speaker 3: Like it would even cover I mean even with.
Speaker 1: For the food.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, okay, but still, but still, I worked with
Speaker 2: teenagers for you know, I work with teenagers, and yeah,
Speaker 2: you nobody has paid enough to work with teenage I
Speaker 2: love working with teenagers, but but yeah, nobody has paid
Speaker 2: enough to work with teenagers.
Speaker 1: I would need ninety dollars an hour in nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: money to take care of seventy kids in the woods.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I've worked with Yeah no's that's not in
Speaker 2: the woods now.
Speaker 1: So they eventually expand to paying him like two hundred
Speaker 1: bucks each course to teach like a month long course
Speaker 1: to one hundred something kids. And they these are all students,
Speaker 1: these are so these are all like young adults really
Speaker 1: eighteen nineteen years old, who are having trouble in college,
Speaker 1: and they noticed that, like, the program seems to really help.
Speaker 1: According to a two thousand and eight article for the
Speaker 1: Salt Lake Tribune by Brian Mathley, quote Olson soon was
Speaker 1: leading outings that lasted several days, and BYU deans began
Speaker 1: noticing changes in the students who went unexplained improvement in
Speaker 1: school performance and better manners at home please the student's parents.
Speaker 1: So university officials hatched a plan with Olson, who was
Speaker 1: still in his twenties and struggling to support a growing
Speaker 1: family that would eventually include ten children, that developed a
Speaker 1: course that offered failing BYU students a shot at readmission
Speaker 1: if they learned survival skills and went on a month
Speaker 1: long backpacking trip through the Utah Desert. So that's what happens,
Speaker 1: and he does this for a couple of years. And
Speaker 1: the reason why he gets treated as a heroic figure
Speaker 1: by folks in the industry who want to separate themselves
Speaker 1: from the bad programs that like get kids killed is
Speaker 1: they think, fundamentally, there's got to be something to this
Speaker 1: idea of if kids are troubled, you send them out
Speaker 1: into the wilderness for several weeks and they'll come back better.
Speaker 2: And I feel like people always kind of get the
Speaker 2: wrong idea, like they always look at the like I
Speaker 2: feel like this happens a lot where they'll be they'll
Speaker 2: be like one thing and people will be like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: it's this specific part of it, and it's like, well,
Speaker 2: maybe a lot of these kids felt kind of overwhelmed
Speaker 2: and out of control, and maybe you taught them some
Speaker 2: skills that made them feel confident, you know, or more
Speaker 2: in control, or maybe they were with a group and
Speaker 2: they bonded, like things like isolation and feeling out of
Speaker 2: control and feeling lonely, like these are things that college
Speaker 2: kids go through that make them that where they struggle
Speaker 2: a lot, like probably they would have been just as well,
Speaker 2: Like it didn't necessarily have to mean they were going
Speaker 2: out to the desert.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: You could have taught them like backgammon or something and
Speaker 2: they would have been like, oh awesome, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's part. Yeah, I think that's true.
Speaker 1: I also think like there's nothing like there's a lot
Speaker 1: of benefit potentially, and like wilderness skills and like being
Speaker 1: out in the woods, like there can be a therapy.
Speaker 2: No, it's true, Yeah, that is that is true. I
Speaker 2: do think like for me personally, like I feel like
Speaker 2: much calmer when I like take a walk and there's
Speaker 2: lots of trees and you know, go to the park
Speaker 2: or you know, go camping, Like I definitely feel so
Speaker 2: there definitely is something to that. But yeah, I know
Speaker 2: they're going to take this and they're going to make
Speaker 2: it much worse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, they're going to so you know, b yu,
Speaker 1: I think actually does because we're going to be there's
Speaker 1: a lot to criticize the Mormon aspect of this whole industry,
Speaker 1: but I think initially it comes from a pretty good place.
Speaker 1: And initially it's not a punishment. It's more of a hey,
Speaker 1: we've noticed you're struggling. We can like we will basically
Speaker 1: give you a kind of school credit if you do
Speaker 1: this program. It's helped a lot of other people. And
Speaker 1: like these are also adults, right, So these are people
Speaker 1: who are like able to make a decision do I
Speaker 1: want to spend thirty days in the wilderness doing this thing?
Speaker 3: So wobably some of them are married.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and some of them presumably are married. This be
Speaker 1: this right is like Olsen's in his twenties and has
Speaker 1: multiple children, children. Yeah, yeah, and he gets he gets
Speaker 1: treated again as a heroic figure in this industry who
Speaker 1: talk about this as like, well, he had this beautiful
Speaker 1: dream and it started from a really good place. And
Speaker 1: all of those recitations of events tend to ignore why
Speaker 1: Larry had to leave. BYU at John Krackour and his
Speaker 1: reporting for Outside magazine claims that he left quote following
Speaker 1: allegations of this mismanagement and sexual impropriety, and then sites
Speaker 1: of BYU colleague saying Larry liked the girls a little
Speaker 1: too much. Now, I don't know, does that mean the
Speaker 1: girls that he was taking out into the woods alone
Speaker 1: for weeks at a time, because, as a spoiler, that
Speaker 1: happens in every single one of these programs.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, more in the abusive side than what I would
Speaker 1: call impropriety. But it's not clear to me that what
Speaker 1: Larry did was not on the abusive side, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the girls, especially the girls. The girls
Speaker 2: is very Yeah, that is a very telling phrase.
Speaker 1: Mean I don't like your use of that word here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's girls. Girls is definitely one of those words
Speaker 1: that's a totally different world word depending on like inflection,
Speaker 1: like if you're talking about like I'm going out to
Speaker 1: the bar with the girls.
Speaker 2: Girls. Yeah, that's very different the.
Speaker 1: Girls than this. The girls.
Speaker 2: I feel like i'd even hear people say like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: he liked the.
Speaker 1: Ladies, like like the ladies. Sure that feels say you say.
Speaker 2: About these ladies, but that is you know, like, Okay,
Speaker 2: that guy's sleazy, but he is not, you know, a monster.
Speaker 1: He's not a pedophile. Right, Yeah, yeah, you're open. You're
Speaker 1: leaving that door open when you're described it this way. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now I should note that sexual impropriety, and again this
Speaker 1: is a married man with multiple children. Sexual impropriety is
Speaker 1: not the only reason Larry has to leave BYU. In
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four, at a program he established for Idaho
Speaker 1: State University, a twelve year old boy died of dehydration
Speaker 1: because the staff Larry had were not trained and didn't
Speaker 1: know how to recognize the warning signs of dehydration. In
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five, the next year, a woman in one
Speaker 1: of Olsen's BYU classes died on a hike, again from dehydration.
Speaker 1: As a spoiler, basically, everyone who dies in these programs
Speaker 1: dies from dehydration.
Speaker 4: If you're going on.
Speaker 2: Into the desert. One of the first things you want
Speaker 2: to do is like, note the signs of dehydration. Yes,
Speaker 2: And if you're teaching wilderness skills, yeah, if you're teaching
Speaker 2: wilderness skills, you one of the first Yeah, that's one
Speaker 2: of the first things I would think. Yeah, how do
Speaker 2: you not that? How do you not know that?
Speaker 1: So there's this big belief and some of this does
Speaker 1: come from the Mormon aspect of it all. There's this
Speaker 1: this big belief in like that the value of this
Speaker 1: program is not just that you're learning wilderness skills and
Speaker 1: that you're spending time in nature. It's that you are
Speaker 1: away completely from society for weeks at a time. So
Speaker 1: there's this real, real They don't want to sen they
Speaker 1: don't want to call it early, they don't want to
Speaker 1: take anyone back. So they they push people, right, they
Speaker 1: do it either in a nice way or a mean way,
Speaker 1: but they always push people. And they don't have like
Speaker 1: Larry's I'm sure great at starting fires and like whittling
Speaker 1: arrowheads or whatever, but Larry does not have functional medical
Speaker 1: training and does not clearly because a lady dies in
Speaker 1: his class, doesn't know how to deal with dehydration.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, Mormonism kind of started out as like
Speaker 2: a this all hiking Yeah, well, yes, very it was
Speaker 2: this sort of like anti establishment religion for a long time,
Speaker 2: you know, they were very Yeah, fighting against the US
Speaker 2: governments are like kind of in there. Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 2: a big part of their history.
Speaker 1: You could say Larry is carrying out in the best
Speaker 1: traditions of the Mormon Church. Hiking and having sexual improprieties
Speaker 1: with very young women. Is definitely doing a Joe Smith.
Speaker 2: Well Brigham young, Brigham young and pretty violent things too. Yeah,
Speaker 2: although there's let's be real, there's lots and lots of
Speaker 2: colleges in the United States named after people who did that,
Speaker 2: you know, mass murder of people.
Speaker 1: So that's right, I for one, and I've always been
Speaker 1: supportive of just renaming UCLA after the Green River Strangler.
Speaker 1: I think we might as well lean into it, you know,
Speaker 1: why not. It'll be great for the new podcast class
Speaker 1: that they're that they're doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, yeah.
Speaker 1: Anyway, it was a true crime bit folks. So yeah,
Speaker 1: he gets some people killed, Larry does, and byus like,
Speaker 1: maybe we don't want you running our wilderness survival program anymore.
Speaker 1: You kind of failed the survival thing. Right, at this point,
Speaker 1: two people have died, so Larry Larry bounces, but he's
Speaker 1: able to escape any sort of blame for his role
Speaker 1: in these deaths. And I think part of this is
Speaker 1: just the media environment at the time. There's not like
Speaker 1: a lot of attention to the people who die in
Speaker 1: his programs. It doesn't they don't become big stories. They're
Speaker 1: kind of just framed as like, well, you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: when people are out in the wilderness, bad things happen, right,
Speaker 1: So he doesn't get kind of tarred by the same
Speaker 1: brush as the people who come later are going to.
Speaker 1: And he establishes several wilderness therapy programs elsewhere in the
Speaker 1: United States, charging like five hundred bucks for a thirty
Speaker 1: day outing in most cases, so not a crazy amount
Speaker 1: of money, not cheap, but like you're not looking at
Speaker 1: like someone mortgaging their house for these programs, which is
Speaker 1: where things are going to end up some yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so they're kind.
Speaker 2: Of like expensive summer camps.
Speaker 1: Very expensive summer camp as much as like a nice
Speaker 1: used car, right, yeah, maybe maybe a really nice used car.
Speaker 1: That kind of depends on your definition of a nice
Speaker 1: used car. A nice used car, speaking of used cars.
Speaker 1: You know, who will sell you a car? Maybe our sponsors.
Speaker 1: There's no way to know, not not on our end.
Speaker 1: I hope, I hope it's a car. And we're back, Mara.
Speaker 1: So we left off. Larry has has bounced and he
Speaker 1: is kind of seeding the country. He's becoming the Johnny
Speaker 1: apple Seed of doing his survival programs for teenagers, right.
Speaker 1: And you know he also he writes a popular survival book.
Speaker 1: And if you've seen the movie Jeremiah Johnson, he's the
Speaker 1: expert survival consultant for that movie.
Speaker 2: Which is that the movie that with The Gift, right
Speaker 2: of the.
Speaker 1: Ya of the guy like nodding and smiling.
Speaker 2: Okay, I haven't seen it.
Speaker 1: It's a great movie, and he was good at the
Speaker 1: skills part because that movie gets it all pretty right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I haven't. I haven't seen that movie. I've only
Speaker 2: seen The Gift. But I know, like, this is the seventies, right,
Speaker 2: I know there was a movie around that time called
Speaker 2: Buffalo Rider, which was a true story about a guy
Speaker 2: who went riding along on a buffalo. There was I
Speaker 2: think I feel like there was a lot of movies
Speaker 2: like that. Yeah, the seventies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, probably not disconnected to this. Actually, like this kind
Speaker 1: of moment in the culture may have a lot to
Speaker 1: these things may be somewhat interconnected.
Speaker 2: It's kind of the there was this thing, and this
Speaker 2: is something that you know, doesn't gets me gets me
Speaker 2: to sleep at night. Oh sorry, cat just jumped on
Speaker 2: the keyboard. But everything's still good. It's it's kind of
Speaker 2: like one thing that helps me sleep at night is
Speaker 2: knowing that a lot of the like you know, return
Speaker 2: shit is like a lot of stuff that we saw
Speaker 2: in like the seventies and early eighties.
Speaker 1: Like it's just.
Speaker 3: It's just like you know, the Jesus Freaks, people who like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Jesus Freaks, the Mythopoetic Men's movement, you know, yes,
Speaker 1: and the ras yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: The Unification Church, like a lot of that, you know.
Speaker 2: So so I remind myself like, Okay, we got through
Speaker 2: you know, we got through it then, you know, for
Speaker 2: getting through it now.
Speaker 1: James on our staff is having like a Twitter fight
Speaker 1: with this want to be influencer who's tried to do
Speaker 1: like back to the land home steading, like you need
Speaker 1: to be using nonpowered tools in order to make sure
Speaker 1: you're really you know, self reliant and he he films
Speaker 1: these like shots of him shirtless using like rusted old tools,
Speaker 1: like the wrong way, like the wood isn't positioned right
Speaker 1: in the saw horse, and like he just butchered a
Speaker 1: goat by cutting its head off with an axe, which
Speaker 1: is not how you butcher ails. It is not how
Speaker 1: you but unless it's like a chicken, but like you
Speaker 1: don't even then yeah, it's it's yeah, you don't cut
Speaker 1: their head off with an axe.
Speaker 2: So much of a play, you know. So So anyway
Speaker 2: he was, he was He worked on Jeremiah Johnson as
Speaker 2: like as like a.
Speaker 1: He's their consultant on like how to do all the
Speaker 1: ship that Jeremiah Johnson's doing. Okay, yeah, and then he
Speaker 1: launches his own nonprofit, the Anasazi Foundation, which is where
Speaker 1: he continues teaching survival skills to struggling children. Now, I
Speaker 1: will say again, because we're going to talk about the
Speaker 1: much more violent sort of descendants of his courses. Every
Speaker 1: source I found agrees the Anasazi Foundation is like pretty tame.
Speaker 1: I've even found a number of kids on Reddit who
Speaker 1: went talking about it as a positive experience. So I
Speaker 1: don't want to well, we got to be critical of
Speaker 1: Olsen because of the kids he got killed. I don't
Speaker 1: want to like make it look like these are in
Speaker 1: the same basket as everything we're talking about today. They're
Speaker 1: just kind of in a line of dissent to each other.
Speaker 1: And a big part of why these kids I think
Speaker 1: these kids are like in their teens, like you know,
Speaker 1: twelve to eighteen generally.
Speaker 3: Okay, so younger than the BYU kids.
Speaker 1: But younger than the BYU kids. We've gone down a
Speaker 1: step in age. But Olsen still he's not one of
Speaker 1: these like you yell at the kids. He's His belief
Speaker 1: is that you present them with choices and tools and
Speaker 1: education and you let them like make their own decisions
Speaker 1: to build confidence and self reliance. So anyway, that's his program.
Speaker 1: Now come to nineteen eighties. Larry's method of pedagogy is
Speaker 1: going to be replaced by a very different set of
Speaker 1: tactics that will come to dominate the industry that springs
Speaker 1: up afterwards. And that brings us back to Steve Cardasano.
Speaker 1: Stephen Anthony Cartersana was born on Monday. Monday, I guess August.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I put the day in there.
Speaker 4: I usually don't do that.
Speaker 1: In August fifteenth, nineteen fifty five in Modesto, California. A.
Speaker 1: I have found several variants of his obituary, and they
Speaker 1: all want the reader to know he was quote born
Speaker 1: to a Cherokee mother and Italian American father. Who can
Speaker 1: give who gave him chiseled features and piercing eyes on
Speaker 1: a Monday, On a Monday. Garfield would hate this.
Speaker 2: Many more obituaries, Yeah, more obituaries should be like, you know,
Speaker 2: by the way, he was super exotically fucking hot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just four paragraphs on his cum gutters. By the way,
Speaker 1: here's your fucking way kiss. So I will also note
Speaker 1: here because I don't know. I'm not going to get
Speaker 1: into the hole like litigating are people indigenous or not,
Speaker 1: because that is a whole messy can of worms. I
Speaker 1: will note generally, with everything he says about his childhood,
Speaker 1: take everything this guy says with a grain of salt,
Speaker 1: because he's a professional fabuloust and liar, right, And I
Speaker 1: mean that about every aspect of his child including what
Speaker 1: I am about to quote next from his obituary. His
Speaker 1: childhood in Modesto, California, he has reported was not happy.
Speaker 1: One parent was addicted to heroin the other beat him.
Speaker 1: He said his tormented youth motivated him to make a
Speaker 1: career of helping troubled teens. And again I don't know
Speaker 1: if that's true or not, it certainly has been some
Speaker 1: people's life experiences. A Times article I read noted that
Speaker 1: his mother, who was the one who was addicted to heroin,
Speaker 1: died in a car accident when he was seventeen. Was
Speaker 1: pretty consistent about saying that his home life with his
Speaker 1: dad was not nice. And in nineteen seventy four he
Speaker 1: decides to enlist in the Air Force. He becomes a
Speaker 1: parachutist with the one hundred and twenty ninth Aerospace Rescue
Speaker 1: and Recovery Group. And this isn't like technically a special
Speaker 1: Forces job, but it's one of those gigs that, like,
Speaker 1: very very few people qualify for. You're doing incredibly difficult,
Speaker 1: physically and mentally demanding stuff. It's not easy to be
Speaker 1: in this.
Speaker 3: And there's proof that he actually was in it.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, he did this. He did this very much
Speaker 1: for real, and he was one of a very small
Speaker 1: number of people who were qualified to do this kind
Speaker 1: of job. Multiple sources I have found note that Steve
Speaker 1: was quote one of the best trained survivalists in the military.
Speaker 1: Although the providence of such sources I found that one
Speaker 1: in the Brian County Patriot makes me suspect that this
Speaker 1: quote may have come directly from Steve himself, So I
Speaker 1: don't know if he was actually one of the best
Speaker 1: survivalists in the military.
Speaker 2: So I actually went, Okay, this is a weird fact
Speaker 2: about me. So I went to something called Aviation Challenge
Speaker 2: when I was ten or eleven because my whole family
Speaker 2: they're big into aviation. They love planes. I oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: and my dad. My dad has a pilot's license and
Speaker 2: wasn't a commercial pilot or anything that could fly a plane.
Speaker 2: And my grandfather did too, and and like, aviation is
Speaker 2: a big thing in our family. So I thought this
Speaker 2: was going to be kind of like space camp but
Speaker 2: with airplanes. But it was very, very, very very military based.
Speaker 2: So we were on we were on like an old
Speaker 2: Air Force base, and we got a lot of propaganda
Speaker 2: and I was but my favorite part of it by
Speaker 2: far were the survivalist parts. Yeah, and so I can
Speaker 2: still remember some of it. I still know, like which
Speaker 2: berries to eat if you know you're out in the woods. Now,
Speaker 2: I wonder if like maybe this that's kind or not.
Speaker 6: Well.
Speaker 2: Also, I wonder, like, did this guy also like have
Speaker 2: a hand in this, because it wasn't that far from
Speaker 2: an host California.
Speaker 1: He very well may have because he winds up during
Speaker 1: his time in the military, he spends a period of
Speaker 1: time as the instructor and instructor at the fair Child
Speaker 1: Air Force Base survival school.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I wonder if maybe he like helped develop
Speaker 2: their curriculum.
Speaker 1: There's a good chance he did. Survival stuff is interesting
Speaker 1: because you have two kinds of people who teach survival class.
Speaker 1: You have the people who really know their ship and
Speaker 1: you have the people who are convinced they know their
Speaker 1: ship and don't. And you, as the student, until you've
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time in the woods, really can't
Speaker 1: know which they are. My little brother because he grew
Speaker 1: up on a military base in Okinawa, did a survival
Speaker 1: course that was like taught by the Marines on base
Speaker 1: and at one point they, I don't know why you
Speaker 1: keep coming back to goats, but they like slaughter a
Speaker 1: goat to like walk you through had a butcher and animal,
Speaker 1: and they like fuck up killing it and traumatiz all
Speaker 1: these kids because they just again as somebody who's who
Speaker 1: slaughters and butcher's animals, Like, I don't know how you
Speaker 1: fuck that up as a marine. What are you guys doing?
Speaker 2: Oh my god, yeah, definitely like yeah, trauma, Yeah, we
Speaker 2: to traumatize everything budget children.
Speaker 1: I know, they they got the experience right one way
Speaker 1: or the other. They're learning about survival.
Speaker 2: They learned what not to do by watching, you know,
Speaker 2: horrific animal abuse.
Speaker 1: The lesson today was don't trust a man about survival
Speaker 1: just because he's a marine. Yeah, uh man uh childhood
Speaker 1: so speak. I guess this all kind of goes to
Speaker 1: buttress the point that these guys, there's cool people who
Speaker 1: teach kids survival, but there's always going to be a
Speaker 1: high ratio of like maniacs in that profession too, which
Speaker 1: I think all of my friends who teach primitive skills
Speaker 1: would agree with that statement. So yeah, he goes to anyway,
Speaker 1: we're talking about Steve Cartesano. So he gets out of
Speaker 1: the Air Force after possibly setting up the program that
Speaker 1: Mara Wilson will use years later, and he makes friends
Speaker 1: with another airman who's a Mormon and converts him to
Speaker 1: the Mormon church. So he is a Mormon convert and
Speaker 1: he moves to Utah to attend BYU. Now he is
Speaker 1: not a good student. This is not a guy who
Speaker 1: was made for classrooms and drops out a couple of
Speaker 1: years in. But before he drops out, like every maniac
Speaker 1: we cover, he tries his hand breaking into Hollywood. Crackowes
Speaker 1: he studied film and wrote a screenplay about the exploits
Speaker 1: of a crack Air Force rescue squad whose hero was
Speaker 1: a part Italian, part Cherokee Mormon adventurer named Steve Montana.
Speaker 8: Steve Montana very soon himself with a fucking Indiana Jones
Speaker 8: ass name. Oh man, it would be better if you'd
Speaker 8: pick Montana. Steve Monta Steve, Yeah, yeah, Montana. Steve sounds
Speaker 8: like a guy who's going to teach me where to
Speaker 8: find water in the desert.
Speaker 1: Steve. Steve Montana is going to sell me bills at
Speaker 1: a truck stop.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. There's there's a difference between the two of them.
Speaker 2: One of them seems like he might actually be fun, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: have some crazy stories, you know.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. The other you'll hear some shit from Montana. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Steve Montana. Other people will tell you.
Speaker 3: Of Tony Montana.
Speaker 1: Like that.
Speaker 2: You know, that's where my mind goes.
Speaker 1: Tony Montana's like discount Kirkland brand brother. Yes, exactly, He's
Speaker 1: not into coke, but he's got a big pil So
Speaker 1: Steve leaves the Air Force in eighty four, and this
Speaker 1: is a time when the United States is kind of
Speaker 1: sailing through one of our semi regular We've talked about
Speaker 1: all of the different things that are just kind of
Speaker 1: current waves in American culture. Well, this is when we're
Speaker 1: really hitting a big stride in our moral panic about
Speaker 1: drugs and youth delinquency. Now, from what I can tell,
Speaker 1: Steve was a conservative guy. He converts to the Mormon Church,
Speaker 1: and he is a believer in the idea that this
Speaker 1: country is headed to Hell in a handbasket because children
Speaker 1: aren't disciplined properly. So, while attending BYU, he had become
Speaker 1: aware of the legacy of Larry Elsen, who left not
Speaker 1: that far before to start the Anastazi Foundation. Steve started
Speaker 1: studying his program, Outward Bound and other similar wilderness schools
Speaker 1: that existed in the Salt Lake area, and he concluded
Speaker 1: they all had a massive problem. None of them abused children.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty eight, Steve launched the Challenger Foundation, a
Speaker 1: wilderness school with an educational syllabus patterned directly off of
Speaker 1: what Steve could remember from his own experiences at boot camp.
Speaker 1: The goal, in his words, was to wear kids down
Speaker 1: quote until they're good again.
Speaker 6: Jesus.
Speaker 2: So this is something too, is these people never have
Speaker 2: any experience.
Speaker 1: With child development here.
Speaker 2: No, it's it's it's like, yeah, there's nothing, there's no
Speaker 2: child development, there's no yeah, there's none of these things.
Speaker 2: It's wearing them down because because that's what's going to
Speaker 2: stop the crack epidemic is wearing children down.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Day five of the Air Force Rescue training does
Speaker 1: not like break in order to teach you how children's
Speaker 1: minds work.
Speaker 2: And it's nice, it's it's yeah, it's it's very it
Speaker 2: is very strong. I mean, I was gonna say, it's
Speaker 2: very strange when people think that you can become an
Speaker 2: expert on just by But then I was like, well,
Speaker 2: I probably shouldn't talk because I'm a fucking forward child
Speaker 2: actor with a BFA and drama and I'm talking like
Speaker 2: I'm an expert on shit, and you know I'm not.
Speaker 2: But at least I'm not trying to break children down.
Speaker 1: I think you don't have to be an expert to
Speaker 1: be like, well, if you're taking children into the desert
Speaker 1: for weeks at a time, you should probably know something
Speaker 1: number one about children and number two about wilderness medicine.
Speaker 1: Those two things should probably be something you have a
Speaker 1: formal skill in, as opposed to just kind of winging
Speaker 1: it well.
Speaker 2: Also, if you work with kids, you learn very quickly
Speaker 2: that the ones who are acting out, You learn very
Speaker 2: quickly that there are different reasons why kids act out. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and I mean I think that that it should be
Speaker 2: common sense, but it's not like I worked with kids
Speaker 2: and I knew very quickly. Who are the kids who
Speaker 2: were spoiled and entitled and expected, you know, the world
Speaker 2: zoo bend to their will? Who are the kids who
Speaker 2: are going through a lot of difficulties at home. Who
Speaker 2: are the kids who maybe just learned a little bit differently.
Speaker 2: Who are the kids who you know just were trying
Speaker 2: to make everybody laugh. Who are the kids who you
Speaker 2: know didn't like doing their own work but liked helping
Speaker 2: other people. Like the different reasons that kids are quote
Speaker 2: bad are, you know, their myriad and you can't just
Speaker 2: break them all down because what works with disciplining.
Speaker 3: One kid is not going to discipline the other.
Speaker 1: No, but that's very much the that's very much the
Speaker 1: attitude that this program is going to have, which is
Speaker 1: like all kids who are bad need the same thing,
Speaker 1: and that thing is to be screamed at in the
Speaker 1: desert by a man who could get literally no other
Speaker 1: job than screaming at children in the desert. Right, I'm
Speaker 1: not really exaggerating there. Here's how John Krakauer described his
Speaker 1: educational tactics in an article for Outside. Cardisato applied what
Speaker 1: he liked to call street smarts to problem kids, strip searches,
Speaker 1: and military haircuts. He adopted a drill sergeant style of speech,
Speaker 1: which required yes sir answers. Rules were strict and heavily enforced.
Speaker 1: A girl caught saying I'm sorry instead of I apologize
Speaker 1: would be punished by carrying a football sized chunk of
Speaker 1: kalmanure all day in her backpack. A boy caught eating
Speaker 1: raw oatmeal instead of cooking it would have his oatmeal
Speaker 1: ration taken away. Good behavior for challenger students was rewarded
Speaker 1: with canned peaches, raisin, or cinnamon.
Speaker 2: It's just like the specificity of it. I apologize, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I apologize instead of I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: Like, what's the what's what's the difference here?
Speaker 2: It's just it's just standardization of yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I hate the whole to the like, no, don't
Speaker 1: say you're sorry, say you apologize, and like, here's my
Speaker 1: fucking witty reason for why you shouldn't say sorry, Like
Speaker 1: I don't give a shit, man, you know what the
Speaker 1: kid meant? Yeah, exactly, the complicate communication. It's hard enough
Speaker 1: as it is.
Speaker 6: Kids.
Speaker 2: If there's one man the famously you know, famously eloquent teenagers,
Speaker 2: you know, that's the thing. Teenagers are very they are
Speaker 2: having they literally have trouble expressing themselves. Now I'm having
Speaker 2: trouble expressing myself because thinking about this, expressing myselves, well,
Speaker 2: expressing myself, because this piss me off.
Speaker 1: Why don't we take a break and let our advertisers
Speaker 1: express themselves.
Speaker 3: Let's do it.
Speaker 1: Ah, my goodness. They really had a lot to say,
Speaker 1: mostly about why you should buy a Chevy. You know, Chevy.
Speaker 1: Are you drunk enough for a Chevy? Anyway, we're back,
Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about boot camps.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 1: Thanks to cultural touchstones like the film Full Metal Jacket,
Speaker 1: the term boot camp has kind of a magic effect
Speaker 1: on the minds of a certain type of American. There's
Speaker 1: this this tacit understanding, this widespread belief that, like, if
Speaker 1: children are misbehaving and traditional methods won't work, forcing them
Speaker 1: into something that mimics military discipline will fix their bad behavior.
Speaker 1: I had a cousin who got sent to like a
Speaker 1: military boot camp style school, and as a spoiler, it
Speaker 1: did not stop them from doing the things that got
Speaker 1: them sent there. These programs don't actually tend to work
Speaker 1: very well, but there's this like magical belief that, like,
Speaker 1: because it's a boot camp, that's that's what. If it
Speaker 1: works for the army, it's got to work for small children.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 2: The thing is, the army has a I mean, I
Speaker 2: guess in some ways, the army has a purpose or
Speaker 2: a goal. Like there are people there who I mean
Speaker 2: are either they're all adults, they're adults. Well, I mean,
Speaker 2: it hasn't always been that they joined voluntarily, but people
Speaker 2: a lot of the people there are there because they
Speaker 2: want you to make money.
Speaker 1: Yes, or now at least today, they're generally making a choice.
Speaker 1: They get misinformed about aspects of that, like recruiters lie
Speaker 1: a lot, but like generally an informed choice, or at
Speaker 1: least semi semi informed.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The other thing about it is that, like, boot camps
Speaker 1: don't work for the military quite the way conservatives often
Speaker 1: think they do. First off, when it comes to how
Speaker 1: these programs work in general, I found a two thousand
Speaker 1: and five analysis of several studies on the efficacy of
Speaker 1: boot camp style programs that noted no significant differences and
Speaker 1: recidivism from students subjected to mock military programs. There is
Speaker 1: zero rigorous data showing that hiring a bunch of x
Speaker 1: cons and former addicts and having them pretend to be
Speaker 1: ari ermy and like beat up a bunch of captive
Speaker 1: children helps those kids in any way, right, doing a
Speaker 1: one thing. If you watch Full Metal Jacket, the movie
Speaker 1: does not end with that program working out great. Like
Speaker 1: the point of that is not, Wow, this is a
Speaker 1: great way to help us struggle with your child.
Speaker 2: Yeah, give your child that thousand yard stare.
Speaker 1: That's what happens to the drill instructor guys. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: it's also this kind of movie image that again a
Speaker 1: lot of conservatives latch onto a boot camp where like
Speaker 1: people are being thrown in the mud and like, you know,
Speaker 1: shaken and screamed at and insulted in creative ways by
Speaker 1: these like incredibly harsh and utterly humorless men like It
Speaker 1: is debatable as to whether or not that works very
Speaker 1: well for soldiers. Over the years, there have been repeated
Speaker 1: incidents where brutal training methods, always justified by the need
Speaker 1: to ensure discipline for units going into combat, has instead
Speaker 1: gotten trainees killed. The best known of these was the
Speaker 1: Ribbon Creek incident from nineteen fifty six, in which a
Speaker 1: staff sergeant, trying to punish a poorly behaved platoon, marched
Speaker 1: them into a swamp, where six of them drowned.
Speaker 7: Oh my god, you're not very combat ready if you're dead, guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's that's this is yeah, I mean that
Speaker 2: how do you even it? Just how do you justify that?
Speaker 2: It's just like, what was this that was just wanted to?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a major question that was asked because
Speaker 1: there was a lot of people who defended this within
Speaker 1: the military as like, well, this is the only way
Speaker 1: to do it, and a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: thankfully a lot arge number of people who are like, well, no,
Speaker 1: clearly we have made a mistake. If we have drowned
Speaker 1: six marines by making them walk into a swamp, this
Speaker 1: is not good training. And this does that disaster leads
Speaker 1: to the first big visual professionalization of the process of
Speaker 1: like training marines. This is where they start like the
Speaker 1: modern drill instructor system right. And this is also there
Speaker 1: starts to be more of an emphasis on utilizing psychology
Speaker 1: and leadership dynamics as opposed to pure physical coercion. This
Speaker 1: is not an evenly successful effort, but this is kind
Speaker 1: of when you start getting a lot of people in
Speaker 1: the military being like, actually, maybe if we try to
Speaker 1: understand our recruits and the ways in which they're different
Speaker 1: and like the ways in which people respond to leadership
Speaker 1: rather than just like beating them, will train better soldiers.
Speaker 1: On March second, nineteen eighty eight, nineteen year old Lee
Speaker 1: Mareki was engaged in a training exercise for the Rescue
Speaker 1: Swimmer School program. This is part of the US Navy.
Speaker 1: This is a difficult test to pass. Only about half
Speaker 1: of the student sudents did. Mareki failed the test the
Speaker 1: first time, re entered the training area the next day,
Speaker 1: and failed again, at which point his instructors forced him
Speaker 1: back into the water to try again and held him
Speaker 1: down while his fellow recruits were ordered to turn around
Speaker 1: and sing the national anthem. Mareki drowned, and his death
Speaker 1: created another legal nightmare for the Navy, which again instituted
Speaker 1: changing to their training methods in order to prevent the
Speaker 1: same thing from happening again. Now, I bring these incidents
Speaker 1: up because it's worth seeing that these are two military
Speaker 1: boot camp incidents in which the brutality of training leads
Speaker 1: to people dying, and they both lead to both and
Speaker 1: immediate severe backlashes and changes to the way that training
Speaker 1: is done. Because number one, the military has a degree
Speaker 1: of accountability both to like civilian leadership, and you've got
Speaker 1: officers and people who are overseeing these programs. And in
Speaker 1: the military, when you see we're killing people with our training,
Speaker 1: there are responsible people who are generally like, well, we
Speaker 1: should make some alterations to.
Speaker 2: It, right, Well, these are public, these are public institutions.
Speaker 1: Right right. It also it becomes a media nightmare for them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so you have to have some sort of like
Speaker 1: public example of how we've altered the program. All of
Speaker 1: that's going to be absent from these wilderness rehab facilities.
Speaker 1: They are my point is not. The military does such
Speaker 1: a great job of not of like fixing, you know,
Speaker 1: problems in boot camp. My point is that the military
Speaker 1: does something when shit like this happens, and there's going
Speaker 1: to be significantly less oversight for these programs that only
Speaker 1: children are parts of, right, which is also the.
Speaker 2: American idea of if it's a private you know, well
Speaker 2: it's it's anything that's private, you know, sure, let them,
Speaker 2: you know, discriminate against these people. Sure, let them do
Speaker 2: these These are private groups, you know, business they want,
Speaker 2: private businesses can do whatever they want.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Yeah, When we privatize the army, finally, finally,
Speaker 1: military contractors will be free to march recruits into the
Speaker 1: swamp again. That's when we'll be a free country.
Speaker 2: When a free country makes dreamed up make Americans march
Speaker 2: into swamps again. Exactly.
Speaker 1: Just Thomas Jefferson's sketching pictures of drowning marines as a
Speaker 1: tear rolls down his cheek. I mean.
Speaker 3: There was a lot of swamp land in that area
Speaker 3: at that time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So when he starts Challenger, I think it's technically called
Speaker 1: Challenger too, but fuck it, we're gonna call it Challenger.
Speaker 1: Steve's first major innovation was the idea that the entire process.
Speaker 2: So call it something challenger like a like.
Speaker 1: Not a great names. Yeah yeah, that's why you put
Speaker 1: the two on.
Speaker 2: There, right, like, yeah, that's that's that's a this is
Speaker 2: a big thing, it's not. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Steve's first innovation when he starts this is you've
Speaker 1: got to be really hostile to these kids. Now, this
Speaker 1: starts before the course eventually begins, because he's the one
Speaker 1: who comes up with the idea of and basically he
Speaker 1: starts as an upsell. Hey, parents, you've decided you're going
Speaker 1: to send your troubled kid this wilderness rehab program. They're
Speaker 1: going to spend months alone in the desert where they
Speaker 1: will be miserable. They're not going to want to go.
Speaker 1: You don't want to just like break this to them
Speaker 1: at dinner days ahead of time. They're going to be angry,
Speaker 1: they might run away from home, they might flip out.
Speaker 1: You don't want to have to drive them to it
Speaker 1: because they'll be pissed at you the whole time. It'll
Speaker 1: be a miserable drive. What if you let what if
Speaker 1: you pay me and I have some big armed men
Speaker 1: kidnap your children.
Speaker 4: He's the guys the guy who invented this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he is the guy who invented this, specifically his innovation.
Speaker 6: Huh.
Speaker 2: I remember I.
Speaker 3: Thought I heard that Synanon used to do this too.
Speaker 1: Well, Synanon did this to like members of the coult
Speaker 1: But you're not going and.
Speaker 2: You can not actual children.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not that I am aware of actual children.
Speaker 4: So he's the bastard that invented this ship.
Speaker 1: He's the master that invented the ship for these camps.
Speaker 1: Right where you are kidnapping a kid to take them
Speaker 1: to a wilderness rehab facility.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's usually in the middle of the night.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, this.
Speaker 4: I'm like sitting silently during this episode. This happened to
Speaker 4: my child, her best friend, and I didn't know, and
Speaker 4: I didn't know where she was. I did not know
Speaker 4: where she was. Her parents would not answer any of
Speaker 4: my messages. It took almost a year before I figured
Speaker 4: out that that's what had happened to her. And she
Speaker 4: was my closest friend when I was a teenager, and
Speaker 4: I have no idea where she was, and I it's
Speaker 4: like six months ago. I went back and looked at
Speaker 4: our old Facebook messages and it's just me being like
Speaker 4: where are you, where did you go?
Speaker 2: Why did you leave?
Speaker 4: So fuck this guy?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, this.
Speaker 2: Guy is also personally responsible for destroying the teenage yeers
Speaker 2: of people I know as well. So seriously, fuck this guy.
Speaker 1: He specifically had a devastating impact on like southern California,
Speaker 1: which is where a lot.
Speaker 4: Of it, which is where I grew up think you
Speaker 4: say me too, me too?
Speaker 3: So yeah, a lot of people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as we'll talk about We'll talk about some of
Speaker 1: this in part too, but it's a big part of it.
Speaker 1: Why Southern California particularly is California has fairly strict laws
Speaker 1: on what you, as a parent can do to your
Speaker 1: kid and what kind of programs you can put them in,
Speaker 1: what kind of discipline you can subject them in through
Speaker 1: like a program, right, Like there are there's a strict
Speaker 1: limitations on like what sort of facilities you can send
Speaker 1: your kid to against their will in California. Those laws
Speaker 1: don't exist in Utah, So you get the kid out,
Speaker 1: and you know, that's why all of this For one thing,
Speaker 1: that's why all of this happens in Utah. But that's
Speaker 1: why there's a lot of like Californians because California has
Speaker 1: like stricter laws that kind of limit parents more.
Speaker 4: It was the exact scenario.
Speaker 1: That's the laboratory of the States working as intended, the
Speaker 1: laboratory of democracy working as intended. Yeah again, our beautiful
Speaker 1: founding fathers dreamed all of this up. So Steve's plan
Speaker 1: is we cut out, you know the problem of parents
Speaker 1: having to confront their kids about what they're doing to
Speaker 1: them by allowing and again when I say these are
Speaker 1: armed men. The particular guy he had do a lot
Speaker 1: of this was nicknamed Horsehair and always carried like a
Speaker 1: fourteen inch bowie knife on his belt and looked like
Speaker 1: a character from Jeremiah Johnson. And to give you an
Speaker 1: idea of like how this kind of went down, I
Speaker 1: want to first play you an account from a modern
Speaker 1: attendee of one of these schools. This is from the
Speaker 1: TikTok account of the Misfit Heroes podcast, which is where
Speaker 1: I found this, And this is just someone who went
Speaker 1: to one of these schools, obviously after Steve Cartazano's era,
Speaker 1: but it gives you an idea of how these kind
Speaker 1: of this kind of add on program worked.
Speaker 10: I was woken up at about two oh seven am
Speaker 10: to my dad turning on my light and telling me
Speaker 10: that it was time to leave. I remember rolling over
Speaker 10: and looking at him and immediately thinking that he was
Speaker 10: trying to get me up for school, and like starting
Speaker 10: to come up with excuses why I should be allowed
Speaker 10: to stay home. There was a woman on the side
Speaker 10: of my bed who pulled me up and told me
Speaker 10: that it was time to get dressed and put on
Speaker 10: my shoes and go. They basically dressed me, and each
Speaker 10: one grabbed one of my arms and started walking me
Speaker 10: out my door and up the stairs toward our back door,
Speaker 10: and time I couldn't see my dad again, and I
Speaker 10: was yelling for him, and one of them told me,
Speaker 10: your dad isn't going to respond to you anymore. And
Speaker 10: I asked why and why this was happening, and they
Speaker 10: said that they were taking me because I didn't deserve
Speaker 10: to be with.
Speaker 4: My family anymore.
Speaker 10: And as I was being dragged out the door, I
Speaker 10: remember looking over my shoulder and seeing my dad standing
Speaker 10: at our kitchen sink with his back to me, just
Speaker 10: staring out the window, completely ignoring me.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's I exactly what happened to my friend.
Speaker 3: Yep, yeah, it's I can't imagine. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I do think that a lot of parents are kind
Speaker 2: of brainwashed in this too. They don't necessarily and I
Speaker 2: mean some of them, I think just don't give a shit.
Speaker 2: And some of them, I think, do honestly believe that
Speaker 2: this is the best thing for their child. But like
Speaker 2: I can't imagine like letting somebody like man handle like
Speaker 2: I don't even have children, But if somebody were man
Speaker 2: handling like a child that I care about, like a
Speaker 2: friend's kid or my nieces and nephews, like I would
Speaker 2: want to fucking murder them.
Speaker 4: Also, the trauma, like most of the time it happens
Speaker 4: when they're in the middle of the night, when you're
Speaker 4: step Yeah, how does that help? How does that help?
Speaker 1: You're disoriented, you're not able to fight back?
Speaker 5: Is no, no, no, I understand how it helps them,
Speaker 5: But how does that help a child who's going on
Speaker 5: That's not the point up any sense of calm or
Speaker 5: peace that they might have.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, no. The point the last concern of
Speaker 1: everyone involved in this is what's best for the kids. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's pretty vile stuff. I do think a
Speaker 1: lot because my mom was certainly not against physical punishment, right,
Speaker 1: Like she was a spanker for sure, And uh, I
Speaker 1: don't know if she would have done something like this
Speaker 1: for I think the only reason I know that she
Speaker 1: wouldn't have is just because of the expense. We never
Speaker 1: would have had the money for these programs. But like,
Speaker 1: had she had the money, I don't know that if
Speaker 1: this is something she would have ruled out. I think
Speaker 1: because she did fun the mentally believe if kids are misbehaving,
Speaker 1: the best thing to do is like put them through
Speaker 1: boot camp.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that.
Speaker 2: I do think that there are a lot of parents
Speaker 2: who genuinely think like I, that genuinely think this is
Speaker 2: the best thing for their kids. But but yeah, but
Speaker 2: I just feel like I I yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I just I just don't. I feel like, how can
Speaker 3: you see that and not think this is fucked up?
Speaker 1: It's because they all hip and I know people who
Speaker 1: who can honestly say, if I hadn't joined the military,
Speaker 1: I would have like killed myself, right but with like
Speaker 1: drugs and that, like I was, I was on a
Speaker 1: bad road and like I got my life in order
Speaker 1: as a result of that. The thing is, I also
Speaker 1: I think because I've known a lot more soldiers than
Speaker 1: most people I know, just as many people who committed
Speaker 1: suicide during train in some cases during training, and in
Speaker 1: some cases as just as a result of their service,
Speaker 1: right right, So I certainly wouldn't say the military is
Speaker 1: a great way to get your life in order. It's
Speaker 1: just like, yes, some number of people the discipline is helpful,
Speaker 1: But when you're looking at the kind of roulette wheel
Speaker 1: that is putting someone through that and how it winds
Speaker 1: up for them, the uh, it's certainly not something I
Speaker 1: would want to like spin on a bunch of children. Right.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there are some kids who this got them
Speaker 1: out of a bad loop, but I don't think that
Speaker 1: number of kids is higher than the number who died
Speaker 1: and were traumatized forever. Right, And I.
Speaker 3: Was sure we'll get to I'm sure we'll get to
Speaker 3: this later.
Speaker 2: But like the rate of people who've attempted suicide after
Speaker 2: going through these programs is just anecdotally, you know it
Speaker 2: from people I've known, it's you know, it's it's incredibly high.
Speaker 2: And it is a lifelong trauma.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, like it is.
Speaker 2: It stays with.
Speaker 1: You, yeah yeah, and it's cool and good. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to show you guys next kind of what
Speaker 1: the kidnapping process is, like, how they kind of when
Speaker 1: these programs kind of make like their their media ploy
Speaker 1: to parents, like this is how they depict the parents.
Speaker 1: I want you to keep in mind what that kid
Speaker 1: just said about the experience of being kidnapp And then
Speaker 1: I'm going to have Sophie play you a segment from
Speaker 1: the Doctor Phil Show. Until a bunch of kids died
Speaker 1: and their parents sued these facilities. Doctor Phil loved sending
Speaker 1: children to these wilderness camps. He was a major public
Speaker 1: advocate for how well these worked, and he did a
Speaker 1: lot of He had a lot of segments where he
Speaker 1: would send kids to these camps. And so they have
Speaker 1: one where they film like this kidnapping And I want
Speaker 1: to be clear here I played the kid's experience of this,
Speaker 1: which I think was pretty ugly first, because that's the
Speaker 1: reality of the experience. What you're seeing here is how
Speaker 1: they dress up the kidnapping for Doctor Phil's audience. Right,
Speaker 1: So keep in mind this is an advertisement, right, This
Speaker 1: is not as clean as the real process was.
Speaker 6: Just after three thirty in the morning, we're down the
Speaker 6: street from the family home. We've been texting with April
Speaker 6: and she's ready for us to come. It's a big
Speaker 6: day for Anna Lisa. She's on her way to the
Speaker 6: Doctor Phil show.
Speaker 4: That I love you, decided to get you some help
Speaker 4: and we're.
Speaker 2: Going to the Doctor Phil.
Speaker 6: My name is Mike and this is Laura, And let
Speaker 6: me explain your situation. You've actually got a trip planned
Speaker 6: to Hollywood. We'll go into Doctor Phil today. Your family
Speaker 6: has decided that away and screaming actually isn't going to
Speaker 6: help this one.
Speaker 1: So you see what they're You see what they're doing here, right,
Speaker 1: They're they're portraying this is like you've got like the
Speaker 1: calmest guy you can in here, and he's trying to
Speaker 1: have a conversation. Like they're really playing up, like how
Speaker 1: out of control this girl is? She really needs, you know,
Speaker 1: Doctor Phil. And then this intervention that Phil's going to
Speaker 1: send her to.
Speaker 5: Right, if a man came into my bedroom in the
Speaker 5: middle of the night and I was trying to become
Speaker 5: a conversation a lot, a lot louder than this gird saying.
Speaker 1: Is very one like one like second of that guy's
Speaker 1: voice and I come up shooting. That's how I'm responding.
Speaker 5: Whatever I can grab man, you're going down.
Speaker 2: This is like we were like the kids, like like
Speaker 2: like we're probably like like Robert, I think we're about
Speaker 2: the same age, Like we we were the children who
Speaker 2: were taught stranger danger. Yes, right, you know like the
Speaker 2: first thing, a strange man. Yeah, don't go with a
Speaker 2: stranger A strange man comes into your bedrooms.
Speaker 1: Mixed signals from the boomers.
Speaker 2: I was like, no, this is like the nightmares I
Speaker 2: had about like the Polyclause kidnapping case, Like this is
Speaker 2: the yeah, this is the kind of exactly so. But yeah,
Speaker 2: you see they're being they're being very quiet, and like
Speaker 2: you know, yes.
Speaker 1: This is the sanitized version of what really happens. And
Speaker 1: I want to end by showing you video of what
Speaker 1: these camps were really like. And we are talking about challengers.
Speaker 1: So this is actually Steve Cartizano's camp. This is a
Speaker 1: video filmed in nineteen eighty nine for a local media
Speaker 1: segment called The Reporters. I don't know what fucking network
Speaker 1: it was through, but you can find it's like fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes long. You can find this footage on YouTube.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 1: A link will be in our show notes along with
Speaker 1: all of other sources. But yeah, here's here is a
Speaker 1: bunch of kids arriving at the boot camp in the wilderness.
Speaker 1: This is what it looked.
Speaker 9: Like come midnight. They are driven over thirty miles into
Speaker 9: the wilderness to disorient them so they won't be able
Speaker 9: to find their way back out. A raging bonfire is
Speaker 9: blocking the road. The vans stop and two apparitions come
Speaker 9: galloping out of the darkness. They are screaming and pounding
Speaker 9: the windows like maddening.
Speaker 2: No, no, yah, a problem movement.
Speaker 8: You're now so woo.
Speaker 2: Dazed.
Speaker 9: They gather around the bonfire and soon learn to show
Speaker 9: respect to those who will teach them how to survive here.
Speaker 4: Why, of course there next sixty three days, you'll be
Speaker 4: out of my care, my saft hair.
Speaker 1: You understand, I can't.
Speaker 9: The so called counselors are not trained child therapists.
Speaker 3: They are survival.
Speaker 1: They're not Look at this guy.
Speaker 2: Look at this man.
Speaker 1: He's not trained in childcare.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a guy with a with a ponytail and a.
Speaker 1: Ponytail and a boonie knife. Oh man, that's funny.
Speaker 2: I know that these places used would also, I mean
Speaker 2: they used a lot of horrible things. I know they
Speaker 2: also used to humiliate, humiliation.
Speaker 1: Yes, oh yeah, like major weapon. We'll talk about all
Speaker 1: of that, don't you worry. So, yeah, I do want
Speaker 1: to chat a little bit about horse hair. You know
Speaker 1: your you know, your rehab facilities quality place. When the
Speaker 1: guy gets led by a man named horse hair, his
Speaker 1: real name was Lance Paul Jagger, and he is the
Speaker 1: guy who Steve Steve does not want to do any
Speaker 1: real teaching of children for some reason.
Speaker 4: His first name being a Lance just really really old Jagger.
Speaker 2: Is that's a pretty cool name.
Speaker 1: I mean you you know what horse hair?
Speaker 7: Yeah, Lance Jaggers.
Speaker 1: Actually, yeah, that's that's what you name the protagonist in
Speaker 1: your dog shit spec script about a fucking Air Force
Speaker 1: rescue unit. Lance Jagger is a cool name.
Speaker 2: Also, horse hair can mean something that's like very coarse,
Speaker 2: but it could also mean, I mean, that guy did
Speaker 2: have kind of a pony like ponytail.
Speaker 1: Literally, is your whole nickname just for the ponytail? Is
Speaker 1: that your identity? Horse hair?
Speaker 2: You're more than their samson?
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you know, Steve starts teaching these courses like when
Speaker 1: he does the first few runs, but again they're spending
Speaker 1: sixty three days at a time out there with these kids.
Speaker 1: He doesn't. He doesn't want to, especially once this makes
Speaker 1: a lot of money, because in short order, in the
Speaker 1: first like year or two, he's made a couple million
Speaker 1: dollars doing this. He doesn't want because he's trying araging
Speaker 1: fifteen grand per session, like, he has no fucking desire
Speaker 1: to spend all of his time out there. He wants
Speaker 1: to spend the money that he's making, so he has
Speaker 1: Horsehair do the actual training along with a couple of
Speaker 1: other guys, usually former military, usually dudes who like weren't
Speaker 1: really employable anywhere else but fancied themselves as survivalists. Although
Speaker 1: none of these guys have relevant wilderness medical training, there
Speaker 1: is and was at this point, there is like an
Speaker 1: actual professional certification you can get for wilderness first responder
Speaker 1: right as a wilderness first responder that teaches you how
Speaker 1: to deal with stuff like keatstroke and dehydration. None of
Speaker 1: these guys have those qualifications. So Horsehair and another adult leader,
Speaker 1: Bill Henry, who'd gotten his start in scouting, handled the
Speaker 1: actual wilderness instruction while Steve used his new gotten wealth
Speaker 1: to buy a manner in Provo that had once been
Speaker 1: owned by a famous golfer. He focused his time marketing
Speaker 1: Challenger to wealthy parents with problem children. One of his
Speaker 1: chief ways of doing this because he would like meet
Speaker 1: in person with again it's like fifteen grand kid often
Speaker 1: more because you're sometimes they're running through the program twice.
Speaker 1: There's add ons that can make it more like twenty grand.
Speaker 1: He's like meeting individually sometimes with parents to convince them
Speaker 1: because these are rich parents. Like, part of his like
Speaker 1: program is he spends two thousand dollars a day renting
Speaker 1: a Lamborghini in order that's what he's spending his fucking
Speaker 1: money on.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: Obviously, parents are going to bulk at a price like
Speaker 1: this when, especially in nineteen eighty nine money, you know,
Speaker 1: fifteen grand twenty grand is an insane amount of money.
Speaker 1: And when they would, he would say, well, this is
Speaker 1: the only thing that could save your kid. Right, if
Speaker 1: they're already smoking pot, they are on a road that
Speaker 1: will inevitably lead to their death. Every kid who smokes
Speaker 1: pot winds up dying of a heroin overdose. That's just
Speaker 1: how things work in nineteen eighty nine, right, cool, So
Speaker 1: if those are the stakes, isn't it worth re mortgaging
Speaker 1: your house to make sure your kid gets the care
Speaker 1: they need, you know, in order to reach as many
Speaker 1: clients as possible, Steve leveraged his one celebrity connection into
Speaker 1: a series of daytime TV appearances. And when I found
Speaker 1: out who the celebrity connection to this guy was, like
Speaker 1: how he got into daytime TV, I had a beautiful reaction.
Speaker 1: This makes so much sense. I'm gonna quote from John
Speaker 1: Krakauer's article in Outside Magazine. Here, Cardisano persuaded his good
Speaker 1: friend Oliver North to put in an appearance during Variety
Speaker 1: who booked a month?
Speaker 4: Like, like, NRA, how the fuck.
Speaker 1: Does all in North run wind up?
Speaker 2: Here? I was thinking like Stephen Segal or Chuck Norris,
Speaker 2: like I was thinking celebrities.
Speaker 1: This is right after around Contra too. Has not been
Speaker 1: a lot of distance. You know, we're not talking like
Speaker 1: warst stories with Oliver North on Fox, Ollie. We're talking
Speaker 1: like just committed trees and Oliver North. Odd, God, that's funny.
Speaker 1: I see.
Speaker 2: I think that, Like if I saw somebody driving a
Speaker 2: Lamborghini and hanging out with with Oliver North, like I
Speaker 2: would probably be like, I don't know, I think I
Speaker 2: would be suspicious if like, if somebody makes too much like.
Speaker 7: You know, to drink my kid.
Speaker 2: Well, yes, like you look at look at what cars
Speaker 2: teachers drive, you know, and it's like it's like the shittiest. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's like the shittiest, like like like maybe they have like,
Speaker 2: you know, a volvough fu. You know.
Speaker 1: Fucking Steve Montana rolls up in a Lamborghini with all
Speaker 1: Leigh North and says, hey, let me take your kids
Speaker 1: for sixty three days. Grand I'd be like.
Speaker 2: I'd be like, okay, no, Like fucking drug dealers drive,
Speaker 2: you know, Lamborghini is like not not people, Yeah, not right.
Speaker 1: Dealers hang out with all of her.
Speaker 2: I remember that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, get your kid into some good business.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So he does appearances on all of the big daytime
Speaker 1: shows of the era. Sally Jesse, Raphael Roaldo, Donahue, Cardasana
Speaker 1: would later say they loved me. I'd go on TV
Speaker 1: with kids who had been through the program. These beautiful
Speaker 1: fourteen to fifteen year old girls. Don't say that. Don't
Speaker 1: call them who talk about how they'd been out on
Speaker 1: the streets stealing and doing drugs and turning tricks until
Speaker 1: Challenger changed their ways. Boy, I don't trust the way
Speaker 1: he described them.
Speaker 5: Again, the name Challenger, Like I WinCE every time you
Speaker 5: say it, because it's like.
Speaker 1: There's a lot to WinCE about here.
Speaker 4: So yeah, that's fair.
Speaker 2: It's just like you're not gonna name like like something well,
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess people could do sometimes name things
Speaker 2: like a nine to eleven memorial this or that, but
Speaker 2: like that, wouldn't that be just kind of like calling
Speaker 2: something like, you know, here's good good you know, take
Speaker 2: your children.
Speaker 3: To nine to eleven schools the Challenger.
Speaker 1: Okay, now, now, Mara, I operate the nine to eleven school,
Speaker 1: which is a sixty three day summer program for children.
Speaker 1: We don't get them off of drugs, but we do
Speaker 1: get them on the new drugs. They are in the
Speaker 1: desert for a lot time.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: We don't talk about that, Robert.
Speaker 1: I mean, we have to, Sophie, if we're going to
Speaker 1: keep enrollment up, I'm gonna need to start. I need
Speaker 1: to get on like Oprah or something.
Speaker 2: You gotta pay for that Lamborghini. Yeah, we don't talk.
Speaker 4: We don't talk about that. I would never let you
Speaker 4: get anywhere near Oprah.
Speaker 1: Winfrey almost certainly for the best. I think I give
Speaker 1: you a lot of damage on Oprah's With Oprah's platform,
Speaker 1: so speaking of a lot of damage, Steve is doing
Speaker 1: a lot of damage to a lot of children thanks
Speaker 1: to daytime television. He is like, basically, he comes on
Speaker 1: and he's kind of leaning into the fear of drugs
Speaker 1: and delinquency that are super common. And these are these
Speaker 1: shows are all every week they'll have a segment where like,
Speaker 1: here's a kid who's out of control. They're on drugs,
Speaker 1: you know, they overdosed or something like that. So Steve
Speaker 1: is like going into a programs that exist to scare
Speaker 1: mothers particularly, and then offering them a solution, and it
Speaker 1: works really fucking well, right. One of his former employees
Speaker 1: described the scene to Crack Hour. As the phones were
Speaker 1: ringing off the hook, parents begged him to take their kids.
Speaker 1: An incredible amount of money started rolling in. Now there
Speaker 1: was a problem with Steve's brilliant business plan, which had
Speaker 1: worked up to this point. And the problem is that
Speaker 1: these are mostly rich kids and rich parents. You have
Speaker 1: some middle class kids who's like, parents are really sacrificing
Speaker 1: for this, but these are mostly well off people's children, right,
Speaker 1: And the folks he's hiring to take care of these
Speaker 1: kids don't know what they're doing and tend to be
Speaker 1: violent and abusive. This means you have rich kids that
Speaker 1: are getting abused. And when rich kids get abused, the
Speaker 1: cops at some point are going to get called, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: people are going to get you get sued. Right yes.
Speaker 1: In an interview Without Side magazine, former Kine County Sheriff
Speaker 1: Max Jackson, who was the law enforcement officer who got
Speaker 1: called because the camp is in his county, claimed quote,
Speaker 1: we pulled one kid from the program who was so
Speaker 1: bruised and scarred he looked like he'd been at Auschwitz.
Speaker 1: When another kid tried to run away, Cardsano got in
Speaker 1: a helicopter, found him, flew him up to the top
Speaker 1: of a mesa and slugged him in the gut a
Speaker 1: couple times.
Speaker 2: Steve, Yeah, I mean being chased down by a helicopter
Speaker 2: is fucking terrifying enough.
Speaker 1: But ye, yeah, then being beaten up on top of
Speaker 1: a mountain by Steve Martana.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's like. And and yes, slugging in this
Speaker 2: like becking cause organ dam Yes, like this is yeah, And.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things. Very rarely are the comparisons
Speaker 1: to like concentration camp and mates valid. But you have
Speaker 1: children starved to death in these programs, right, Like these
Speaker 1: are like kids who are when they when their bodies
Speaker 1: come back from the coroner, like are so skited, like
Speaker 1: thin you can see like their hip bones, you know,
Speaker 1: like the children are getting emaciated to a terminal degree
Speaker 1: in these programs. So like, I don't know how appropriate
Speaker 1: you want to call the comparison, but we are not
Speaker 1: talking about like just slightly hoping.
Speaker 3: They are prison camps.
Speaker 2: You know, they are prison camps. Yeah, people, the kids
Speaker 2: are treated there as badly, you know, in many cases
Speaker 2: as people in prisons.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yeah, that's I think a much better comparison.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 1: Steve at this point had a wife and four children.
Speaker 1: In the documentary Hell Camp, his ex wife claims that
Speaker 1: he told them the money he made from the business
Speaker 1: was all being reinvested into it, and so the money
Speaker 1: lived on a tight but the family lived on a
Speaker 1: tight budget while Steve was doing shit like renting Lamborghinis.
Speaker 1: He was also cheating constantly, which got tied up into
Speaker 1: the business because at one point he started cheating on
Speaker 1: his wife with the parent of one of his students.
Speaker 1: He then talked this parent into loaning him a visa
Speaker 1: gold card and charging sixty five thousand dollars to it
Speaker 1: before she realized what was happening. Z Steve Montana. Baby,
Speaker 1: it's a classic Steve Montana caper.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean this is such a I don't know,
Speaker 2: like he's so he lives, he lives in a mansion
Speaker 2: and is renting Lamborghini's but is telling his children, we don't.
Speaker 1: Have to have money for you. Yeah, it's got all
Speaker 1: go back into the business. Now, excuse me while I
Speaker 1: start a secret family with this lady's credit card. Steve Montana.
Speaker 1: Well that's all for part one. How are you feeling, Marra?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I I I want to slug this guy.
Speaker 3: I mean he's dead, but I still want to slug him.
Speaker 1: I want to slug Steve Montana again. I would like
Speaker 1: to hang out with Montana. Steve Montana.
Speaker 3: Steve Montana.
Speaker 2: Steve seems like he would, you know, he'd have that
Speaker 2: sort of like like Sam Elliott voice.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely, that's that's who I'm casting to
Speaker 1: play Montana Steve when my specscript.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would either Sam, Sam Elliott, maybe Jeff Bridges
Speaker 2: if you can get one of those long beards going again.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, so yeah, I I uh.
Speaker 1: Jerse j already doing some show. Oh and it's a
Speaker 1: show that's actually involves a very sketchy writer. So yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is great. We could just could just
Speaker 1: move him right over to my program.
Speaker 3: So where is Steve? What is what is Steve Steve
Speaker 3: Montana's actual real name.
Speaker 1: Uh, it's Steve Carano.
Speaker 2: Steve Cartasana. Okay, where is this guy buried? I'm not
Speaker 2: going to do anything, you know, just.
Speaker 1: Figure that out for part two, Mara, when we come back,
Speaker 1: I will let you know where Steve Cartersano's grave is located. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure it's Oklahoma. So is that worth the vengeance?
Speaker 3: I mean yeah, it's a bit out of the way.
Speaker 1: So so out of the way of everything. That's the
Speaker 1: Oklahoma state motto.
Speaker 4: Is there anything.
Speaker 2: Let's see I I've been I've been right. Some articles
Speaker 2: for The Guardian recently about psychology. I wrote one recently
Speaker 2: about why we find people annoying. I'm both an annoyed
Speaker 2: and annoying person, so that was very fun for me
Speaker 2: to write.
Speaker 3: I'm also working a lot in the audiobook world.
Speaker 2: These days, and if you go to libro dot fm
Speaker 2: and look at my name, you can find a lot
Speaker 2: of really awesome books that I have narrated awesome.
Speaker 1: So go to Libra dot com. Look up Mara, look
Speaker 1: up Libram Wonderful, Libra dot f f Jesus Christ. I
Speaker 1: almost fucked it up, look up maris excellent book Where
Speaker 1: Am I Now? True stories of girlhood and accidental fame,
Speaker 1: and most importantly, slash all of the tires in the
Speaker 1: parking lot. You know, have a good day. Everybody.
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