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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast am on

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Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori

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Speaker 1: with you. Let me tell you a little bit about

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Speaker 1: our guest. Don Wildman has spent decades on television addressing

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Speaker 1: the eternal question what happened here? And impassioned history enthusiast adventurer,

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Speaker 1: He's developed his on camera investigations that have carried him

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Speaker 1: far and wide to mankind's greatest legends and lore. He

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Speaker 1: has traveled around the globe to history's hardest places, where

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Speaker 1: visceral tales are set against ancient backdrops and human intrigue

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Speaker 1: is carved into walls. He began with the Travel Channel

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Speaker 1: hosting the producing program Off Limits if you remember then

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Speaker 1: Mysteries at the Museum that featured spinoffs like the Monumental

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Speaker 1: Mysteries and Greatest Mysteries, And prior to the Travel Channel,

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Speaker 1: Wildman appeared on the History Channel and the Groundbreaking Cities

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Speaker 1: of the Underworld. Don welcome to the program. Good to

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Speaker 1: have you. It's really nice to be here. Thanks for

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Speaker 1: having me. You love these travels, Yes I do. I

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Speaker 1: have really been fortunate to get a ticket around the

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Speaker 1: world doing really cool stuff, telling stories in unusual places,

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Speaker 1: and it's a it's been an honor, it's been a privilege,

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Speaker 1: and I feel, you know, it's incumbent upon me to

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Speaker 1: to sort of tell the human story from an everyman perspective,

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Speaker 1: because I'm not an expert of anything. Now. You had

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Speaker 1: your series premier just a few days ago, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Buried Worlds came on Monday. It's a Monday's at nine

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Speaker 1: o'clock and it just started with the episode about vampire

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Speaker 1: hunting in Bulgaria, which was quite an adventure, and uh,

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Speaker 1: and we go on from there. We basically started this

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Speaker 1: kind of global paranormal tour that started as we shot

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Speaker 1: out of the sequence that it's showing in. We started

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Speaker 1: in Peru and then we went to Haiti, finally ended

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Speaker 1: up in Bulgaria for the show that just showed, and

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Speaker 1: we headed over to Germany, England, Ireland and then back

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Speaker 1: to hunt US and America. It's been an extraordinary That

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Speaker 1: was an extraordinary six months, which ended just pre virus,

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Speaker 1: you know, was about the I was going to say,

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Speaker 1: it sounds like you beat COVID because Hollywood's been shut

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Speaker 1: down ever since, asn't it. Actually, Yeah, it was just

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Speaker 1: before all that. In fact, we spoke among ourselves that

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Speaker 1: we worried that we might have had something to do

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Speaker 1: with that. It was addressing every curse in the world

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Speaker 1: and you know, pulling strange things out of the woodwork

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Speaker 1: all over the world. So anyway, it was. It was

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Speaker 1: a great experience historically, culturally, and paranormally, which was a

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Speaker 1: brand new experience for me. I don't come from that background.

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Speaker 1: I'm a history guy, you know, and so I was interested,

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Speaker 1: you know, to be honest. What happened was we were

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Speaker 1: talking last year about me doing a show based on

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Speaker 1: Cities of the Underworld, which has been a very popular

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Speaker 1: show back in the day. We're talking about two thousand

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Speaker 1: and six, seven and eight back then, and that was

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Speaker 1: a show that kind of dug underneath things and went

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Speaker 1: into the kind of the under girding of society, you know,

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Speaker 1: physically and metaphorically speaking, and it was really cool. But

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Speaker 1: we only got so far with it, and so we

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Speaker 1: wanted to do it again, and so we talked about

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Speaker 1: doing that from a straight historical perspective, and then travel

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Speaker 1: Channel became a paranormal channel, you know, during those discussions.

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Speaker 1: So I said, well, I'll do paranormal, but let's do

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Speaker 1: the history of it, because otherwise nobody's gonna buy me whatever.

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Speaker 1: You know, I'm not a ghost guy. And so we

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Speaker 1: proceeded to do that because there's just so many stories

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Speaker 1: when you look at the world and world history from

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Speaker 1: that perspective, especially the prescience world legends and curses and

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Speaker 1: myths and so forth, and it's pretty fun. And there's

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Speaker 1: a lot of people obviously in the world who are

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Speaker 1: practicing these things even today, and so it was a

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Speaker 1: neat way of a neat lens to look at places

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Speaker 1: in the world in global history and still practice things

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Speaker 1: in the present, which was an unusual aspect of that world.

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Speaker 1: And the Travel Channel really seems to be into these

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Speaker 1: kinds of programs now big time. Well, for years and

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Speaker 1: years Zach Began's and His and His Ghost of Adventures.

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Speaker 1: I think is this show was the most successful show

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Speaker 1: on Travel I mean, by far right, I kind of

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Speaker 1: pulled up the in second place for all those years

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Speaker 1: with Mysteries at the Museum, which was on for years

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Speaker 1: and u and it was always recognized that Zach was

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Speaker 1: killing it on Fridays or Saturdays, and so finally they

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Speaker 1: when Discovery took over Travel Channel. There's a big sale

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Speaker 1: of all the script networks to Discovery. They just looked

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Speaker 1: at the numbers and said, well, that's a no brainer.

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Speaker 1: Let's make this all paranormal. So those of us who

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Speaker 1: are already on that contract, you know, sort of went

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Speaker 1: okay and and sort of adapted, and so here we are.

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Speaker 1: I bind ancient aliens a lot on the History Channel.

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Speaker 1: Same thing with them. I mean, this thing's been going

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Speaker 1: on for years now. They're happy with the results. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: people are really fascinated. Uh, It's it's a lot of

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Speaker 1: fun to look at the world that way. It's it's

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Speaker 1: a very addictive television when you watch it doesn't matter

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Speaker 1: if you're a believer not. It's a fascinating world to

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Speaker 1: sort of delve into. But I can say from meeting

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Speaker 1: people and from really studying this stuff, which you do

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Speaker 1: when you go and do TV shows about these places,

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Speaker 1: that there's a rich it's a treasure trove of information

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Speaker 1: to understand. There's a lot of research. That's that's what

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Speaker 1: I like. I kind of get off on that aspect

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Speaker 1: of my job. I like to read up on stuff

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Speaker 1: before I go to these places and sort of you know,

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Speaker 1: become full of information so that when I have these

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Speaker 1: conversations and interviews and experiences with these people, that I

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Speaker 1: have some kind of level of expertise that I can offer.

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Speaker 1: And when you start delving into these worlds, which we'll

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Speaker 1: talk about, it's extraordinary how many books are written about

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Speaker 1: these things. Never mind Wikipedia, you know, you can just

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Speaker 1: keep on going down a rabbit hole with these things.

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Speaker 1: And that's what I think people find interesting is that

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Speaker 1: there's so many different ways and fascests to look at stuff.

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Speaker 1: Absolutely and buried world. It's a seven episode program, and

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Speaker 1: then you've got a two hour finale, right, Yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: a yeah, it's a big It was a I guess

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Speaker 1: a three week experience that we had down there in

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Speaker 1: honduras Um that was always out there on the on

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Speaker 1: the horizon of our experiences whether we were going to

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Speaker 1: be able to do it and then if we would

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Speaker 1: live through it. There are extraordinary dangers doing what we did,

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Speaker 1: and I, for one, we had some pretty serious meetings

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Speaker 1: about whether we really wanted to do this or not.

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Speaker 1: It boiled down to the fact that when you go

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Speaker 1: into this part of the rainforest of honduras Uh, there's

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Speaker 1: some big time dangers and you can get into a

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Speaker 1: lot of trouble. So um, we were being very careful

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Speaker 1: and we didn't Obviously, you have to being assured and

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Speaker 1: everything else for these TV shows, so we couldn't just

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Speaker 1: jump in naively. And what's more, Honduras won't let you.

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Speaker 1: You have to have permission from the president himself. It's

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Speaker 1: that realid Yeah, I mean it's a it's a very

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Speaker 1: cool story, which I will tell you in detail in

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Speaker 1: a moment, but it's a it was always there as

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Speaker 1: the kind of finish line for this extraordinary, you know,

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Speaker 1: half a year adventure that we were on. Wherever you went,

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Speaker 1: would they government people follow you or anything like that?

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Speaker 1: Not so much. I mean that was true in Honduras. Well,

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Speaker 1: here's the story with Honduras. So years ago, meaning twenty fifteen,

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Speaker 1: a guy named Steve Elkins, who is a terrific TV

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Speaker 1: production guy actually cameraman, was passionate about finding the White City.

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Speaker 1: The White City was a legendary place, kind of an

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Speaker 1: Eldorado type of story, you know, where the conquistadors were

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Speaker 1: trying to find it and all kinds of legends were

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Speaker 1: surrounded this sort of mysterious area in the middle of

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Speaker 1: the rainforest in Honduras to this day, in the middle

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Speaker 1: needless to say, back in conquistadors it was, they couldn't

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Speaker 1: find it. So it was supposed to be streets paved

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Speaker 1: with gold, the whole story. But no one could ever

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Speaker 1: discover where it was. And I mean there's many big,

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Speaker 1: famous stories about a guy in the thirties who goes

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Speaker 1: in and people dying trying to find this place. It

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Speaker 1: was never discovered. And so the reason, of course is

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Speaker 1: that it's in such a canopy of trees that you

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Speaker 1: could just not fly over it. You couldn't find anything.

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Speaker 1: So Steve, who I interviewed for the show and became

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Speaker 1: very fond of, used lidar technology. He had heard that

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Speaker 1: there was a plane up in Canada that had this technology,

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Speaker 1: which is basically kind of an airborne sonar. You know.

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Speaker 1: It shoots waves down at the sort of radar the

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Speaker 1: shapes of things on the earth, and they can find

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Speaker 1: hidden structures underneath the trees. Through this technology, it sort

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Speaker 1: of bounces a wave back to the back to the machine.

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Speaker 1: So sure enough he took a group down there to

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Speaker 1: Roatan and they based themselves there in Honduras and they

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Speaker 1: flew over this place. Everybody kind of thought that it

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Speaker 1: was in this certain area where there were logical reasons

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Speaker 1: to find it there. And sure enough they found you know,

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Speaker 1: hard edged right angles. If you find right angles in

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Speaker 1: ldar in the jungle, that's man made structure, absolutely, And

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Speaker 1: that was a big break through. That's a big story.

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Speaker 1: This was nat GEO, and everybody was very excited about

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Speaker 1: it because it had been so sought after for so long.

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Speaker 1: So then Steve and his team of you know, highly

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Speaker 1: qualified archaeologists and so forth, and herprutologists and so forth

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Speaker 1: went into this place, took a got dropped in and

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Speaker 1: spent two weeks investigating this site, and they hit the jackpot.

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Speaker 1: It was a remarkable find. But they immediately understood the

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Speaker 1: value and danger of losing this place because it had

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Speaker 1: been because the rainforest is so diminishing so quickly, and

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Speaker 1: so the government set up a military base there, a

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Speaker 1: modest operation, I can tell you. It's a six or

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Speaker 1: seven soldiers who are sort of living in the middle

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Speaker 1: of the jungle there to protect this area because they

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Speaker 1: found so many artifacts. They found hundreds and hundreds of

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Speaker 1: artifacts just sort of spread across the forest floor in

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Speaker 1: the middle of what we're mounds of dirt, basically overgrown

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Speaker 1: mounds of dirt that we're hiding the structures that had

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Speaker 1: been lost hundreds of years ago. And so it was

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Speaker 1: really incredible and it kind of blew people's minds how

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Speaker 1: big this place was. It was a vast settlement and

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Speaker 1: probably part of several different settlements they haven't even yet found.

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Speaker 1: So in order to get permission to get into this,

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Speaker 1: as I mentioned, you have to go directly to the top,

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Speaker 1: and the president himself, who's sort of oversees this k

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Speaker 1: taken ownership of this operation, has to personally endorse you

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Speaker 1: to go in there. The military has to give you

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Speaker 1: a helicopter to go in. It's got to be overseen

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Speaker 1: by the military, basically, and all this has got to

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Speaker 1: be done prior to even getting down there. Right, Oh

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Speaker 1: my god, that's what I mean. So we were spending

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Speaker 1: all these months in all these other places, making these plans,

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Speaker 1: hoping we would get in. The big problem healthwise is leishmaniasis,

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Speaker 1: which I ever even heard the word that flesh eating bacteria.

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Speaker 1: Oh god. So yeah, it's a very bad thing. And

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Speaker 1: what happens is that there's these sand fleas that will

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Speaker 1: that lived in this area and you get bitten by

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Speaker 1: one of these sand fleas and the microbe goes into

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Speaker 1: you and off you go. And so they've had a

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Speaker 1: big problem with that with the soldiers that are there,

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Speaker 1: and even that first team Steve Elkas, everybody got leishmaniasis

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Speaker 1: when they went in. And so I was not interested

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Speaker 1: in getting slash eating bacteria by any stretch. And what

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Speaker 1: had happened is they figured out that if they cleared

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Speaker 1: this particular area of the landing patch of all the

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Speaker 1: vegetation that that held these sand fleas, and you only

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Speaker 1: went in during certain hours of the day, you could

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Speaker 1: avoid the sand fleas with underlying could they can't guarantee anything,

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Speaker 1: never mind sandles. Their fertilence is the most dangerous snake

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Speaker 1: in the word world that exists in this part of

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Speaker 1: Oh my god, you were they were coming at you

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Speaker 1: from all angles. Jaguar, lots of jaguar out there. It

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Speaker 1: was an extraordinary amount of things to worry about and

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Speaker 1: not tell my wife about where did you sleep today?

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Speaker 1: We just got dropped in and then taken out. And that, okay,

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Speaker 1: prevent you from getting this anymore. And when I say you,

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Speaker 1: I just mean, only a handful of people have gone

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Speaker 1: in there, so there's still just less than a hundred

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Speaker 1: people have seen this place. Because it's so far in

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Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere. You can't even find it anyway.

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Speaker 1: But you can't get transportation there. There's no roads there obviously,

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Speaker 1: and so forth, and so this is how they manage it.

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Speaker 1: Can you estimate what the population was a long time ago, Yes,

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Speaker 1: hundreds and hundreds of people. I mean, these cities down there,

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Speaker 1: and you're talking at the Maya later on, but this

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Speaker 1: was This isn't Maya. This is even older than Maya.

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Speaker 1: That's what's so fascinating about it. Uh, these are very

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Speaker 1: advanced places, real advanced cities, with extraordinary planning and execution

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Speaker 1: and architecture and so forth. You've seen the pictures. You

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Speaker 1: know what the story is. It's it's Aztec, it's my

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Speaker 1: it's all these all these civilizations were the most advanced

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Speaker 1: places on the planet. I think, I think I remember

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Speaker 1: the the reference which was the size of London. That's

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Speaker 1: huge of medieval London. Yes, was there in the in

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Speaker 1: the jungle, you know, it was that kind of major

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Speaker 1: city for the day, and uh, and probably better run

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Speaker 1: than London. Now Curse of the White City will be

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Speaker 1: your finale show, right it is. Yeah, it's an amazing

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Speaker 1: thing to see. I'm very proud of being able to

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Speaker 1: be a part of it and proud of the guys

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Speaker 1: who organized and everything else and to tell the story.

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Speaker 1: So getting to the to the meat of the matter

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Speaker 1: with this with this show, so we try to find

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Speaker 1: the paranormal angle on everything, even that story, which is

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Speaker 1: a straight ahead archeological story that blows your mind anyway.

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Speaker 1: But because of the show, we had to figure out

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Speaker 1: what that angle was with this. And it turns out

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Speaker 1: that there is a sort of ancient alien kind of

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Speaker 1: myth about this area having to do with a creature

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Speaker 1: named Wata, and he's spoken of as a legend but

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Speaker 1: almost as a fact among the people there are the

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Speaker 1: tribes that that originally come from that place, the Mosquito tribe.

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Speaker 1: This is the Mosquito Coast we're talking about from from

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Speaker 1: the days of you know, the Harrison Ford movie. All

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Speaker 1: that area down there is the Mosquito Coast because the

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Speaker 1: Mosquito tribe is that one snakes, lots of snakes, and

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Speaker 1: so these myths of what it sounds very much like

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Speaker 1: an ancient alien type of thing, and they talk about

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Speaker 1: it as if it that is what you can sort

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Speaker 1: of what it suggests is that it was more of

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Speaker 1: an immigrant story. Someone from perhaps down towards Columbia area,

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Speaker 1: that part of South America may have come up, understand,

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Speaker 1: adding that these people don't see other people from other

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Speaker 1: places very often, you know, this is the middle of nowhere,

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Speaker 1: and so somebody coming in with a lighter skin or

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Speaker 1: any number of you know, physical attributes might have looked

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Speaker 1: like someone from another world. You don't know what the

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Speaker 1: real base of that is, but they talk about it

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Speaker 1: in terms of ancient alien and that he's being pursued

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Speaker 1: by an enemy. And this conflict sits in the middle

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Speaker 1: of their legends, and this myth and the departure of

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Speaker 1: what Ka and the conflict casts curses on this land.

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Speaker 1: And so this curse has existed for hundreds of years,

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Speaker 1: and is they attribute the deaths of conquistadors looking for it,

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Speaker 1: and people going in by themselves and so forth to

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Speaker 1: this curse, which is all the dangers and the disease

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Speaker 1: that you can get from this place comes from that curse.

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Speaker 1: It's it's fun and interesting to look at it from

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Speaker 1: that standpoint, and to talk to the tribal members about this,

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Speaker 1: the shaman and so forth, and all the different ang

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Speaker 1: those of that is what we do two hours on.

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Speaker 1: Why would the inhabitants of that era done build and

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Speaker 1: construct these edifices in the woods like that for security

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Speaker 1: and safety? Well, in those days it was just part

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Speaker 1: of there's a massive migrations through those areas. And in

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Speaker 1: the days you know, back then the extraordinary cities are amazing.

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Speaker 1: They weren't necessarily in the middle of nowhere. In those days,

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Speaker 1: you know, these were developed areas and they grew around it,

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Speaker 1: I guess, and vegetation. Yet it's a well, that's what

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Speaker 1: I want to say, is when you drop in here.

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Speaker 1: So the big unexpected experience for me was the moment

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Speaker 1: we got in there. Of course, we're thinking, you're just

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Speaker 1: you're covered in mosquito netting and every inch of your

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Speaker 1: body is covered with something so that in case, they

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Speaker 1: literally duct tape your sleeves so these fleas can't get

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Speaker 1: into your body. Oh god, but they will bite through

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Speaker 1: your skin through those clothes, so you have to be

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Speaker 1: very fast and move. Are you wearing a net on

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Speaker 1: your face? Oh? Everything? Yeah, it's all I'm completely covered,

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Speaker 1: and you're you're covered in deep you know, all this

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Speaker 1: insecticide and stuff, and so there's a great deal to

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Speaker 1: be distracted by. And so suddenly you dropped into this rainforest.

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Speaker 1: You jump off the helicopter as if it's a marine expedition,

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Speaker 1: you know, go go go kind of thing, and we're

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Speaker 1: running up a hill to get up to this area

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Speaker 1: so that we can actually shoot for a while up

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Speaker 1: there and not you know, spend too much time down

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Speaker 1: where the fleas are. And lo and behold, I get

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Speaker 1: to this rainforest with all this distraction, and it just

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Speaker 1: stops it dead in your tracks. It's the most beautiful

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Speaker 1: thing you've ever seen in your life. You know, I've

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Speaker 1: seen Grand Canyon, a big Yosemite guy. I'm I'm a

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Speaker 1: very big outdoorsy guy. This blew my socks off. It

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Speaker 1: was absolutely stunningly gorgeous. And I'd never I realized I'd

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Speaker 1: never seen pure, untouched rainforest in my life. I'd seen

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Speaker 1: it in the movies. Yes, I should be a fashion

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Speaker 1: the outskirts of places such as that, but I've never

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Speaker 1: been in really virgin rainforest. And we're talking about the

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Speaker 1: orchids and the giant trees and these just this beautiful,

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Speaker 1: beautiful landscape that suddenly takes your breath away and you

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Speaker 1: realize you've been touched primarily, you know, that's the feeling

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Speaker 1: you have of this sort of virgin territory that speaks

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Speaker 1: directly to your soul. You know you're right in it

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Speaker 1: and it gets you right away, just like any of

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Speaker 1: those great natural environments. But this is unique because it

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Speaker 1: is what it is, that that's sort of deep, thick,

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Speaker 1: ancient forest, and you realize that's sort of the magic

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Speaker 1: of the place. You know, it has its own sort

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Speaker 1: of legendary feeling to it. Listen to more Coast to

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Speaker 1: Coast AM every weeknight at one am Eastern, and go

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Speaker 1: to Coast to Coast am dot com for more