Speaker 1: I thought I'm gonna die here, And the thought I
Speaker 1: couldn't get out of my head was I'm going to
Speaker 1: die here. I'll never get to see Avatar too.
Speaker 2: You are a strange person, you know.
Speaker 1: Wow, I just couldn't get that out of my head.
Speaker 3: Now, really, really, really hello, and welcome to really know
Speaker 3: really with Jason, Alexander and Peter Tilden, who want you
Speaker 3: to know that there is no danger in subscribing to
Speaker 3: our show. But today's episode is about the incredible rise
Speaker 3: in extreme travel, or as it's often called, danger tourism,
Speaker 3: diving down to crushing depths to view the Titanic, sight
Speaker 3: seeing in a hostile dictatorships, shopping sprees, and active war zones.
Speaker 3: People are actually going to these treacherous places for vacation. Really, no, really,
Speaker 3: People like mild mannered super traveler Mike Reese, the Emmy
Speaker 3: Award winning writer producer of The Simpsons who, compelled by
Speaker 3: his wife, has visited one hundred and thirty six countries,
Speaker 3: including Iran, Syria, and North Korea. And considering that Jason
Speaker 3: and Peter think that single ply toilet paper in the
Speaker 3: bathroom is extreme tourism, this should be interesting.
Speaker 4: Here's Jason and Peter.
Speaker 5: Well, Peter this episode, this episode, we're living on the edge.
Speaker 2: We're out there. We're hanging it out there, baby, hanging
Speaker 2: it out there.
Speaker 6: I can't I don't understand. I know what the genetics
Speaker 6: are here, what the personality type, I don't.
Speaker 5: Understand it all. So let's tell everybody what we're talking about.
Speaker 5: So there is a phenomena that we've come across. Some
Speaker 5: people call it adventure tourism. I think that's under selling
Speaker 5: and it's really extreme tourism. And this is things like
Speaker 5: you know, going on the Titan Submerciful, or you go
Speaker 5: to the most dangerous places in the world.
Speaker 2: They have to try the story right exactly. I'll just
Speaker 2: give you a stupid example.
Speaker 5: There was a guy, Miles Rutledge from Britain, right, and
Speaker 5: he decided the holiday in Afghanistan. As the country fell
Speaker 5: to the Taliban. He was of course subducted. He was
Speaker 5: later freed.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 5: He became a YouTube sensation since then. He uh he
Speaker 5: went back to Afghanistan where he was taking prisoner by
Speaker 5: the Taliban.
Speaker 2: The second top. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 5: So people are just they're they're going to the craziest
Speaker 5: places and we wanted to talk more about this, so
Speaker 5: we I gotta tell you we got the face, the
Speaker 5: face of extreme tourism.
Speaker 2: This is the guy you.
Speaker 5: Go to the source you get, you get, you get
Speaker 5: the well spring. If you know the name Mike Raeese
Speaker 5: as well as I do, you probably know him as
Speaker 5: the four time Emmy award winning and screw him and
Speaker 5: Pea by the award winning a head writer for The Simpsons,
Speaker 5: but he's done many other things. He's a contributing writer
Speaker 5: to two dozen animated films, including favors like all four
Speaker 5: of the Ice Ages, the Two Despicable Mes, The Lorex,
Speaker 5: Kung Fu Panda, the Simpsons movie of course.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 5: He's a former president of the Harvard Lampoon. My son
Speaker 5: went to Yale, so I don't I'm Harvard.
Speaker 2: I'm in Harvard. They on my own campus.
Speaker 5: But yeah, I understand nineteen children's books, including the best
Speaker 5: selling How Murray Saved Christmas, which became an award winning
Speaker 5: animated film starring starring someone you know who. There you go,
Speaker 5: and he's got a fantastic podcast.
Speaker 2: What am I doing here? Have you heard the podcast?
Speaker 2: And I I've heard I got doing it? Ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 2: Mike Rays, how are you, sir?
Speaker 1: What a pleasure, what a plug? That's so beautiful. You
Speaker 1: saved me the trouble of shaming myself.
Speaker 2: Right, you don't have to shamelessly promote anymore.
Speaker 6: And the first thing, and we'll start back in your childhood,
Speaker 6: because it didn't look like you were going to be
Speaker 6: an adventure or extreme tourist, because I think I read
Speaker 6: that you said it was something big travel and leaving
Speaker 6: the house with something to be dreaded in your family.
Speaker 1: That's it. Yeah, I come from a big family. There
Speaker 1: are five kids, and uh we'd all pile in the
Speaker 1: car and my dad would drive us the Civil War site.
Speaker 2: With the actors. Did they have the re enactors?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: No, oh, just a field.
Speaker 1: We drive to Pennful, Vania. Here's a field and you know,
Speaker 1: and he wouldn't even tell us what happened, which is there?
Speaker 1: Why are we in the field here? And uh in Virginia,
Speaker 1: here's another field And I just hated it. And uh
Speaker 1: so that was a vacation with something I really hated.
Speaker 1: And it was it was an hour kick with all
Speaker 1: these kids in the car, the dad who was always mad.
Speaker 2: So so let's take a leap.
Speaker 6: You meet this woman, you fall in love, and did
Speaker 6: you have any sense that this was somebody who for
Speaker 6: the next thirty plus years is going to drag you
Speaker 6: to hell holes all over the world where you risk
Speaker 6: your life and you would glad well, not gladly, but
Speaker 6: you would go and say yes.
Speaker 1: The answer is no, I have no idea. If we
Speaker 1: dated for two years and never left her apartment, we
Speaker 1: just go to her apartment and watch TV all weekend.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, and I thought I have found my
Speaker 1: dream girl. And it was it was just such a
Speaker 1: classic day and switch. And then we're getting married and
Speaker 1: we're trying to figure out where to take a honeymoon
Speaker 1: and I suggest that Disneyland or Disney World, and she
Speaker 1: said I was thinking of Yemen or Siberia, and I
Speaker 1: said those are places people want to get out of,
Speaker 1: right right, And that that was it she did. She
Speaker 1: waited right to the honeymoon to lower the boom on
Speaker 1: me that we weren't going to be sitting around the
Speaker 1: house anymore.
Speaker 2: At that point, you've been to how many countries.
Speaker 1: Now, one hundred and thirty six.
Speaker 2: How many of them are They do not go to
Speaker 2: lists currently.
Speaker 1: Uh gee, I don't know. It changes a lot day
Speaker 1: to day, A lot of them. I mean I've been
Speaker 1: I've been to every Muslim country, so I know a
Speaker 1: lot of those are.
Speaker 2: And it says are are e. I s s an
Speaker 2: your passport it's sure, you know you.
Speaker 1: Don't even need them the name yet my passport photo
Speaker 1: looks like uh, looks like anti Semitic propaganda. I look
Speaker 1: like the face on hate that.
Speaker 5: So before we get into every place that she's dragged you,
Speaker 5: what does she have on you?
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 5: I know it's it's it's the source of slightly rewarding sex.
Speaker 2: But other than that, what does she have on you
Speaker 2: that you why.
Speaker 5: When she proposes going to a place that you know
Speaker 5: is going to be difficult?
Speaker 2: Why do you say yes? Is it just love?
Speaker 4: It is?
Speaker 1: Well, yes, it is love and just sort of general
Speaker 1: married to civity. I think you know, I made a
Speaker 1: list once of everything that husbands do for their wives,
Speaker 1: and I don't think the wives understand that at all.
Speaker 1: They think the husbands are going men would never buy
Speaker 1: a house starting with that, no house would ever be sold.
Speaker 1: If a wife didn't make a husband would wear pants,
Speaker 1: they'd never go I know it's your special love, Jason.
Speaker 1: But no man would ever go to a Broadway musical.
Speaker 1: You walk, you walk into a Broadway theater. There's four
Speaker 1: hundred men there who don't want to be there, and
Speaker 1: they're want to just think I wasn't that nice?
Speaker 2: Oh my go. So your wife not only possesses the
Speaker 2: danger Jeen, she possesses the persuasion gene because she's gotta
Speaker 2: because she's gotten you to go to Let's let's just
Speaker 2: give us hot panduras. You were duck.
Speaker 1: We got kidnapped in it's it's one hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: six countries and the big ones are you know, I
Speaker 1: ran and Iraq and Liby. But it's all worked out
Speaker 1: a story. I hope I get to tell us about
Speaker 1: going to North Korea. We went to North Korea, Dalla.
Speaker 1: It was one morning. I woke up and there was
Speaker 1: an email from Harvard Travel saying do you want to
Speaker 1: go to North Korea? And I said, no, I do not,
Speaker 1: And I deleted the email and then went through the
Speaker 1: trash and delee did it again before my wife woke up.
Speaker 1: But of course she went to Harvard too, and they
Speaker 1: sent her the same email and she, of course we
Speaker 1: want to go to We want to go to North Korea.
Speaker 1: And the big scar on top of what scares everyone
Speaker 1: about North Korea is the idea that they kidnapped visiting filmmakers.
Speaker 1: Kim Jong Ill, when he was in charge back then,
Speaker 1: was an expert on film. He had a collection of
Speaker 1: forty thousand DVDs, and so he would throw these film
Speaker 1: festivals in North Korea and if an actor, if a director,
Speaker 1: if a writer showed up that he liked, he would
Speaker 1: kidnap him and force him to make movies for the
Speaker 1: regime for twenty years. So this was real danger for
Speaker 1: me to go to North Korea. And I got advice
Speaker 1: on what to put on the application. I was supposed
Speaker 1: to say I was a publicist, not a rite. And
Speaker 1: we get to North Korea and they greet me and
Speaker 1: they say, mister Reese, we know who you are, and
Speaker 1: you have nothing to worry about. I realized, we've read
Speaker 1: we don't need this guy.
Speaker 6: By the way, just in case, did you think if
Speaker 6: I get abducted, there are two things I would love
Speaker 6: to get made.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know there's a guy. There's a guy who
Speaker 1: was kidnapped by the regime. He was a Japanese filmmaker,
Speaker 1: and first they put him in a concentration camp for
Speaker 1: five years, and then they let him out and let
Speaker 1: him make whatever he wanted. And if you're a fan
Speaker 1: of these things, there's a movie called Plasari, which you
Speaker 1: can see in its entirety on YouTube, and it's North
Speaker 1: Korea's Godzilla movie and it's free. He got to make
Speaker 1: this terrific Godzilla movie. And then he finally escaped North
Speaker 1: Korea and he went to Hollywood, and you know, suddenly
Speaker 1: he's in Hollywood as a sixty year old director, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's going, Gee, we're a little better and.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, I'm guessing he never got notes. He didn't
Speaker 6: get profit profit participation either, so that that already would
Speaker 6: put me off. But let's talk about the submersible, because
Speaker 6: I think I reached out to you when that happened,
Speaker 6: as did almost every news organization in America, because they
Speaker 6: found out you were kind of a notable guy having
Speaker 6: gone in the submersible, not once, not twice, but how
Speaker 6: many times, Mike, having gone in the submersible, not once,
Speaker 6: not twice, but how many times.
Speaker 5: Mike, Well, I have four times, and just just a
Speaker 5: classic this is the exact same company where the disaster happened,
Speaker 5: right where it imploded.
Speaker 1: This is the now I'll clarify it. Everyone gets it wrong.
Speaker 1: I took three dives with this company, with the famous
Speaker 1: Stockton Rush who built the sub and then died in
Speaker 1: the sub. I took three dives off of Satn Island
Speaker 1: with it. So that's three in the four. That's how
Speaker 1: we got involved with him and kind of caught his dream.
Speaker 1: But it was just, you know, we liked it. It
Speaker 1: was local. And we took this dive down to what's
Speaker 1: called Hudson Canyon. There's the canyon under the Hudson River
Speaker 1: that is bigger than the Grand Canyon.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: And we went down. It was beautiful experience. And then
Speaker 1: we came up and it was only when we're getting
Speaker 1: out he goes, you know, you're the first people ever
Speaker 1: to do that, and was like, what, you know, I
Speaker 1: wish I don't want to be the first. I don't
Speaker 1: want to be Neil Armstrong. I want to be Harrison Schmidt.
Speaker 1: I want to be the asked man on the moon
Speaker 1: right after they got all the blugs out. And so
Speaker 1: we took those three dives with him, and then two
Speaker 1: years later he said, well, I built a new sub
Speaker 1: to go to the Titanic, and that's the titan and
Speaker 1: we we rode that with him, and again I didn't
Speaker 1: want to go. I didn't, and this is crazy, this
Speaker 1: is is I didn't. A friend of us are called
Speaker 1: this up. Hey, here's they're taking these dives now to
Speaker 1: the Titanic. And my first words were, well, that sounds
Speaker 1: like a fun way to die. So and so I
Speaker 1: had no illusions going into this. But I would never
Speaker 1: have done it in a million years except it fell
Speaker 1: on my wife's birthday.
Speaker 2: And that was it.
Speaker 1: That's my motivation comes out. I don't want to go.
Speaker 6: To ask you question here because you're a really smart guy.
Speaker 2: You're a brilliant writer. You're obviously well traveled.
Speaker 6: I saw pictures of what that saying looked like inside
Speaker 6: on a good day. It's like somebody saying.
Speaker 2: A good day is when it doesn't fold in on.
Speaker 4: You go.
Speaker 6: You're basically sitting in water in a like a metal
Speaker 6: barrel with a couple other people, with your legs folded,
Speaker 6: and the guy's using a game controller that looks like
Speaker 6: he staw from his son's PlayStation.
Speaker 1: It is definitely literally an Xbox game controller.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 6: So if I looked into that, if I got to
Speaker 6: the point where I put the money down and then
Speaker 6: saw inside that for the first time, weren't you deterred
Speaker 6: by what it looked like? You're going to be sitting
Speaker 6: in to go to the Titanic?
Speaker 1: No? No, no, you know what can I say? I
Speaker 1: have no children, I'm an aging Hollywood rider, I have
Speaker 1: nothing to live for. I had nothing to fear about it.
Speaker 1: There was every I knew completely that I could die
Speaker 1: in that.
Speaker 2: Wow, but there's so many ways you could die in it.
Speaker 5: I mean, I don't want to I don't want to
Speaker 5: speak lightly about a tragedy. But but at least with
Speaker 5: what happened on the titan in this case, was you know,
Speaker 5: an implosion that happened so fast that you have to
Speaker 5: assume hopefully they had no idea that it was just
Speaker 5: no instant death.
Speaker 2: But what about a leak and the leak is faster
Speaker 2: than we can go up?
Speaker 5: You know, there there's all kinds of things that can happen,
Speaker 5: especially if you're talking about fairly untested technology.
Speaker 2: Here, I just.
Speaker 1: True and in fact, having taken the other dives with
Speaker 1: the guy when we first heard the titan was missing.
Speaker 1: I thought, oh, they're trapped at the bottom of the ocean.
Speaker 1: My wife immediately thought it had imploded as soon as
Speaker 1: we heard the news, and they spent you know, four
Speaker 1: days looking for it. She goes, it imploded, and I thought, no,
Speaker 1: it's solow tech. How you that whole sub works. I'll
Speaker 1: tell make it through it real quick because you climb
Speaker 1: in there. Something else I didn't know was they bolt
Speaker 1: you in from the outside. Yeah. I thought there was
Speaker 1: a way out. Wow. Yeah, But they bolt you in
Speaker 1: and they push it in the water and then it
Speaker 1: just drops like a stone. It just drops for two
Speaker 1: and a half hours, two and a half It goes
Speaker 1: two and a half miles down. But that's all there
Speaker 1: is to it. It just drops like a stone. And
Speaker 1: I fell asleep. That's how unscared I was. I fell
Speaker 1: asleep on the way down. It was boring, and I
Speaker 1: woke up when we hit bottom, and it's it's I
Speaker 1: wish this on nobody. The thought that you're sleeping and
Speaker 1: you think you're home in bed, and you wake up
Speaker 1: and go, oh, no, I'm two and a half miles
Speaker 1: under the water. And so we hit bottom, and you know,
Speaker 1: they pull out the Xbox game controller that steers the ship,
Speaker 1: and we knew for some reason, we knew we were
Speaker 1: five hundred yards from the Titanic, but we couldn't see it.
Speaker 1: Here it is the biggest thing man had ever built,
Speaker 1: and we were right by it and couldn't find the thing.
Speaker 1: And we look at the compass and the compass is
Speaker 1: just spinning in circles. That was no help. So we
Speaker 1: were just sort of bumming around the bottom of the
Speaker 1: ocean looking for the Titanic, and everybody's springing into action,
Speaker 1: you know, both the crew and the paying customers, and
Speaker 1: I'm not doing anything. I'm just ballast. I you know,
Speaker 1: I don't even drive. What do you think I can
Speaker 1: help you on this? So I'm just sitting there. And
Speaker 1: so with twenty minutes to go, we found the Titanic,
Speaker 1: and we just had enough time to get all the
Speaker 1: glory shots. Wet I got photos of the anchor and
Speaker 1: the bow of the ship and the side where it
Speaker 1: says Titanic, and then we had to go.
Speaker 6: Back up a release that had death in there quite
Speaker 6: a few times, right that said you could die quite
Speaker 6: a few times, I mean right or from.
Speaker 1: You sign a waiver that mentions death three times on
Speaker 1: page one and you just page through it. And they
Speaker 1: thought of every way you can die on this thing.
Speaker 1: So anybody, you know, again, this is the news developed
Speaker 1: the narrative, which was totally unfair, and you know, like
Speaker 1: people had done what they were getting into. They everyone
Speaker 1: knew exactly what they were getting into.
Speaker 5: M Let me go into some of your other troubles
Speaker 5: just to ask this question. Has there ever been a
Speaker 5: situation in a series where where you go, oh, we're
Speaker 5: we're really in trouble. Then we have a big problem.
Speaker 2: What would that? What was that?
Speaker 1: It was just about a year ago. It was New
Speaker 1: Year's Eve in Namidia, and this is something we didn't
Speaker 1: even think would be dangerous. But my wife said, oh,
Speaker 1: let's hire a car and a driver and watch the
Speaker 1: last sunset of the year from the Namibian desert on
Speaker 1: top of the sand dune. So we go, all right,
Speaker 1: and of course I say yes because that's the only
Speaker 1: word I know. And so we booked this and it's
Speaker 1: very romantic and we're watching the sunset and then my
Speaker 1: wife looks over at the car and she goes, why
Speaker 1: are the lights on? And I said, honey, the man
Speaker 1: knows what he's doing, which, of course you're always famous
Speaker 1: last word. So the sun goes down, we pile back
Speaker 1: in the car. The guy tries to start the car
Speaker 1: and it's dead.
Speaker 2: It's dead.
Speaker 1: He ran the battery down, and we get on our
Speaker 1: cell phones and there's no phone reception from the Namibian desert,
Speaker 1: so we're stuck there, right and the desert when the
Speaker 1: sun goes down, goes from eighty degrees to forty degrees,
Speaker 1: so it's really cold. My wife is in a bathing suit.
Speaker 1: We are not prepared for this. And then this is
Speaker 1: where the car driver did something that wouldn't even go
Speaker 1: in a Wily Wily coyote cartoon. He had such a
Speaker 1: stupid plant where we get out of the car and
Speaker 1: he starts pushing it to the edge of the sand dune.
Speaker 1: And his idea is it'll roll down the sand dune
Speaker 1: and start up, and it's like, yeah, but we're not
Speaker 1: in the car. It's just gonna take off the sand,
Speaker 1: the car will be saved and we're going to freeze
Speaker 1: it out in the desert. But instead, instead he pushed
Speaker 1: it half off the sand dune, so it's teetering over
Speaker 1: the precipice, like if you remember the original Italian.
Speaker 2: Jont just like that.
Speaker 1: That classic ending was now my life where it's teetering there.
Speaker 1: So now we can't even get in the car for
Speaker 1: warm it's too dangerous. So we're just gonna have to
Speaker 1: sit there and freeze the death in the desert. And
Speaker 1: that that's the close point. I thought, I'm going to
Speaker 1: die here. And the thought I couldn't get out of
Speaker 1: my head was I'm going to die here. I'll never
Speaker 1: I'll never get to see Avatar too.
Speaker 2: You're a strange person, you know that?
Speaker 1: And wow that I just couldn't get that out of
Speaker 1: my head. And then like a miracle, the driver's phone rang,
Speaker 1: like we couldn't make calls out, the calls could still
Speaker 1: come in, and it was his boss going where the
Speaker 1: hell is the car? And he told him and he
Speaker 1: rescued us, and we got home right around midnight for
Speaker 1: New Year's Eve, and I went home and saw Avatar too,
Speaker 1: where I go What the what was that? That was terrible?
Speaker 6: Which I died in the desert. So moving moving on
Speaker 6: to a couple of other observations you made. You said
Speaker 6: that the Cuban flag I should have a broken toilet
Speaker 6: on it because there's not one workable toilet in all
Speaker 6: of Tuba.
Speaker 1: There is not one everywhere. When there's no working toilet,
Speaker 1: they're all broken. And one day we were outside of
Speaker 1: a restaurant and we see just sitting in front where
Speaker 1: the customers coming, the brokennest toilet in the world. It's
Speaker 1: just in shards and pieces and scattered all over. And
Speaker 1: she said, maybe they're bringing it in.
Speaker 2: That's the restaurant.
Speaker 6: Do you bring anything to a ensure your health, be
Speaker 6: to nail yourself in, Like, where's papa to the.
Speaker 2: Room so you can get in? You bring nails and wood?
Speaker 6: What precautionary stuff do you take that could be tips
Speaker 6: to our audience?
Speaker 1: You know what, I just have a lot of your
Speaker 1: basic medicines. I don't bring anything special, I gotta say.
Speaker 1: And sometimes I get sick. Maybe once a year I
Speaker 1: get sick. We were in Syria, okay, this I take
Speaker 1: my vacations in Syria and I loved it. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is the thing. This is right before her trouble
Speaker 1: broke out, and this is the story. Who wants to
Speaker 1: go to Syria? It's it was the loveliest place on
Speaker 1: earth with the finest people on Earth. I feel very
Speaker 1: bad that, you know what they've been going through. But
Speaker 1: I go into a restaurant. I just sit down with
Speaker 1: a bunch of mary Syrians and I reached the poor
Speaker 1: picture of water and they're all going, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: don't do it. And I drank a whole picture of
Speaker 1: water on the mistaken notion that these people are so friendly,
Speaker 1: how bad could their microbes be? And the answer is
Speaker 1: just terrible. And the next day I was in the
Speaker 1: UNESCO World Heritage Site, some world class ruin, and I
Speaker 1: had to behind a column. Behind some column had been
Speaker 1: there for four thousand years.
Speaker 2: And I don't.
Speaker 6: Ever been a place where you Has there ever been
Speaker 6: a place Mike where you you said, I got to
Speaker 6: I can't, we can't take the whole seven days and
Speaker 6: we got to get out of here.
Speaker 1: You know, it just happened, and not you know, not
Speaker 1: a scary, undeveloped place. We were in Taiwan, not too long.
Speaker 1: And again it's my wife's idea, which is pretty savvy,
Speaker 1: because anywhere we go falls apart the next year, and
Speaker 1: including Syria. So we were passing, we were in the
Speaker 1: area of Taiwan. She said, let's go to Taiwan because
Speaker 1: who knows when we'll get the chance again. And I
Speaker 1: just hated it there. I just you know, and mostly
Speaker 1: it's an island. There's not a ton of things to
Speaker 1: do there, and it's super hot or it's raining all
Speaker 1: the time. So that was one. I'm just begging my
Speaker 1: wife take me home. I want to go home.
Speaker 6: But but you've been to worst places where you've had
Speaker 6: to I mean, where stuff is broken down and you've
Speaker 6: in mud, you're hunkered down.
Speaker 2: That doesn't bother have.
Speaker 1: You really does?
Speaker 2: Wow? So you are different. It's do you also do like?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 5: I know you go to dangerous places and I know
Speaker 5: you've you've climbed, you know, some some heights and you've
Speaker 5: done the summary. But do you regularly do dangerous things?
Speaker 5: Do you zipline? Do you hang glide? Do you do
Speaker 5: all that stuff?
Speaker 1: No? No, I mean that's a weird thing. Is I
Speaker 1: will go to these places again. I'm just baggage for
Speaker 1: my wife. I'm just I'm just I'm luggage that pays
Speaker 1: for the trip.
Speaker 5: Wait before you go out, Why do these places call
Speaker 5: to her?
Speaker 2: What is it about them that makes her so excited?
Speaker 1: She just all when she was a kid, and she
Speaker 1: didn't grow up wealthy at all. But those were the
Speaker 1: days of Europe on five dollars a day, and I
Speaker 1: think and her mom, who just had a very adventurous spirit,
Speaker 1: took her around the world twice. And I mean she
Speaker 1: had been to Iran and Afghanistan and all these places.
Speaker 1: And we got married and I hadn't been anywhere. I
Speaker 1: hadn't been to Europe. And so I keep thinking, you know,
Speaker 1: we're getting old. I keep thinking it's going to slow down,
Speaker 1: and doesn't she doesn't slow down.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, is it also space?
Speaker 6: I mean, are you ready to do the Jeff Bezos
Speaker 6: thing with her and go up into space?
Speaker 1: Here's here's here's the truth of that, which is, in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, Mars was closer to the Earth than it
Speaker 1: will ever be again. And my wife volunteered us. She volunteered.
Speaker 1: And they want a child in this middle aged couple
Speaker 1: because if they die, who cares? That's really the thing.
Speaker 1: And we volunteered, and I know, we made it past
Speaker 1: the first mountain. When you done, got Neil deGrasse Tyson
Speaker 1: to recommend us, and we made it past the first cut,
Speaker 1: and then the whole thing just fell apart.
Speaker 4: Would you have done it?
Speaker 1: I would have done it. You know, I've lived in
Speaker 1: the New York apartments space.
Speaker 5: What would you say no to? If you're willing to
Speaker 5: go to Mars? What has anything been put on the table?
Speaker 5: You go, Okay, seriously, I'm not doing that.
Speaker 1: It was during the really the height of the Afghanistan lore.
Speaker 1: My wife gets another brochure come to Afghanistan and I
Speaker 1: said no, and she looked baffled. She literally had never
Speaker 1: heard that word from me in thirty five years of average.
Speaker 1: I said no, and she speaks five languages and still
Speaker 1: didn't recognize the word. So I said no, anywhere but Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: and she goes, okay, Pakistan. So we went to.
Speaker 6: So just trading a different stand Wow, good lord, right,
Speaker 6: he's either so terrified of her or so in love
Speaker 6: or so delusional.
Speaker 2: Listen, we we. If you want to hear more of these.
Speaker 5: Stories, please go check out Mike's podcast What Am I
Speaker 5: Doing here? And also he's got that fat was Buck
Speaker 5: that has a very similar.
Speaker 2: Title, which is very fun laugh out loud funny.
Speaker 5: I was sitting and reading and laughing out Mike, Thank
Speaker 5: you very much.
Speaker 1: Make you You guys are an absolute Joe, this is
Speaker 1: too much.
Speaker 2: So the man is insane. That's that's it's not even insane.
Speaker 2: I don't know he is insane. He's insane. I'll tell
Speaker 2: you why he is insane.
Speaker 5: The minute she said, hey, I know where we should honeymoon,
Speaker 5: I would have been how much isn't?
Speaker 2: Then I would go?
Speaker 6: But but one thing, they've been together a long time.
Speaker 6: What is that called when you're abductor you get sympathy
Speaker 6: with your abductors.
Speaker 2: There's a little bit that's right.
Speaker 1: But she doesn't want to go to Stockholm.
Speaker 2: And this is what this is like.
Speaker 6: Is when you're in the middle of a bad haircut.
Speaker 6: You never stopped the guy. You're watching the guy continue
Speaker 6: to cut your hair, and you never go stop stop.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 6: Why do you think more and more people are doing
Speaker 6: this extreme stuff?
Speaker 2: I got a theory.
Speaker 5: No, we'll give yours first, because I want to hear it's dumber.
Speaker 5: Then why do I think people are doing something extreme?
Speaker 5: I'll give you one theory. And this is really off
Speaker 5: the top of my head. If somebody said, hey, do
Speaker 5: you want to see the Titanic, I'll take you down
Speaker 5: in a submarine. It's it's dangerous, but people have done it.
Speaker 5: I think the average person doesn't believe it won't I'm
Speaker 5: not going to be the one that goes wrong. People
Speaker 5: have done it. It's it plainly can be done, and
Speaker 5: wouldn't that be exciting? How many people have seen the
Speaker 5: type time and I just think the emotionality, the charge
Speaker 5: of it makes people.
Speaker 2: Go, I want to I want to do that. So
Speaker 2: that's partial of partially my thing. Pa. Social media, Instagram
Speaker 2: and the postable stuff.
Speaker 6: People are doing it, and you're getting Instagram hits and
Speaker 6: you're you're seeing that happen, so you're saying, I can
Speaker 6: do I bet I can do that.
Speaker 2: It can't be that dangerous, and it just keeps.
Speaker 6: Upping upping the thing and more and more people want
Speaker 6: that experience because they want to be in Instagram famous,
Speaker 6: and social media drives it in a big way. Michael,
Speaker 6: thank you. We now bring in David Googleheim. Hey, hey,
Speaker 6: oh well, I'm doing very well.
Speaker 7: How are you guys doing today.
Speaker 5: I want to hear what you have to say, and
Speaker 5: then I have a little quiz for everybody to play
Speaker 5: a lot ahead.
Speaker 7: Oh oh excellent. Well Jason, one quick correction.
Speaker 8: When we're talking about the Titan, you were talking about, well,
Speaker 8: what if there's a leak in the titan. It's the
Speaker 8: same thing, elak any little hole, see you later.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, yeah. So what if it's a leak and
Speaker 2: only twenty feet down?
Speaker 8: I mean you well yeah, well yeah, well there you go.
Speaker 1: Bring it up.
Speaker 8: Because we were talking about course dangerous places to visit.
Speaker 7: I wanted to look.
Speaker 8: At something a little bit closer to home that might
Speaker 8: be a little bit more dangerous than you think.
Speaker 7: And that place is actually your home.
Speaker 8: According to the National Safety Council, each year, over.
Speaker 7: One hundred and twenty thousand deaths.
Speaker 8: Occur in her home from preventable accidents. And to put
Speaker 8: that in a little bit of perspective, that dwarfs the
Speaker 8: forty thousand people who die in car accidents each year.
Speaker 8: So where do you need to be a watch out
Speaker 8: when you're in your home? Of course, I think a
Speaker 8: lot of people would say the kitchen would be the
Speaker 8: most dangerous place, but that is not correct it.
Speaker 2: I would imagine it's the bathroom.
Speaker 7: It is the bathroom. It is the bathroom, the getting
Speaker 7: in and out of the tub, in the shower with
Speaker 7: the water.
Speaker 8: But another thing, and a lot of people don't even
Speaker 8: think about this, the low toilets, getting off the toilet.
Speaker 8: If you become a senior citizen, you might want to
Speaker 8: consider getting the higher toilet. Also, of course, kitchens, the
Speaker 8: dull knives are more dangerous than the shark because that's
Speaker 8: gas stoves, stoves, sponges, sponges with the bacterian whatnot gets
Speaker 8: in there.
Speaker 7: You got the burns, you got the cleaning products. Also
Speaker 7: the stairs. The stairs. Over a million.
Speaker 8: People, mostly children and elderly, visit emergency rooms each year
Speaker 8: because of the stairs.
Speaker 2: You also have, Well, can't you just avoid them? Can't
Speaker 2: we buy a split level or no? Stevin King's the stairs.
Speaker 7: And then the one last one that you cannot get
Speaker 7: rid of is the floor.
Speaker 8: It's estimated that direct medical costs for falls in people's
Speaker 8: homes is more than thirty billion annually.
Speaker 2: So so avoid the floor. Very good advice. We'll just
Speaker 2: keep them the popular. All right, here's my quiz. You ready?
Speaker 5: Now you know me a long time, so Peter has
Speaker 5: an edge. But here's my quiz. I'm gonna name dangerous
Speaker 5: things that people do, and the question is have I
Speaker 5: done it?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 5: Ready, here we go, Have I ever skydive?
Speaker 6: I know you did a show with skydiving on it,
Speaker 6: but you didn't do it anybody else?
Speaker 2: No, I have never skydived. God help there, I would
Speaker 2: never do it. Have I ever scuba dive? Yes, yes,
Speaker 2: that you've tried. And am I scuba dot? No?
Speaker 8: No, because of the air compressed No, no.
Speaker 2: That is correct.
Speaker 5: I have snooba, which is the tanks floats on the
Speaker 5: surface and you have a hose to.
Speaker 2: Go about twenty feet. I am not allowed to scuba
Speaker 2: diet because I have mild.
Speaker 6: Here you go and the compression exactly snooba says, we're
Speaker 6: medial scuba dot on the.
Speaker 2: Sign in a scuba for dummies. Have I have I
Speaker 2: ever hang glided?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 6: Oh no, oh no, yes, yes, hang glide with a
Speaker 6: hang glider where you go off with the guy and
Speaker 6: you absolutely did.
Speaker 2: No, Yes, I had. You're an idiot.
Speaker 5: Yes, I did sandom hang glide and I and I
Speaker 5: started taking hand gliding lessons and it was the hang
Speaker 5: gliding tandem.
Speaker 2: That made me go, this is cool. But I would
Speaker 2: never do this myself. How and for how long did
Speaker 2: you vet the guy you were strapped to? Don't slum me?
Speaker 2: Do you have a bungee jumping? Have I ever bungee jump. No,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, yeah, probably the kids strike convention.
Speaker 4: Dinner too high, too high.
Speaker 2: My two sons have done it, good ziplining. Have I done?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know you did.
Speaker 2: Yes, of course I did.
Speaker 6: Of course.
Speaker 2: Have I ever flown with the Blue Angels? That's the elite.
Speaker 2: I know who they are, Team of Blue Angels. No, yes, no,
Speaker 2: I've been invited, but I did not go.
Speaker 4: That was one that was a tricky Well, my.
Speaker 2: Friends, Peter, what do you want to wrap up with?
Speaker 2: What do you want to say? What's your next trick?
Speaker 4: Where do you want to go?
Speaker 2: I suggested the Madonna in and you laughing. I just
Speaker 2: want to.
Speaker 6: Say, it's it's fascinating that there are people like Mike
Speaker 6: to do that, and not Mike so much as his wife.
Speaker 6: That that he does that, he's gained for that. I'm
Speaker 6: sure I missed out on a lot. I mean, the
Speaker 6: travels I did were fine, but I like a mini
Speaker 6: bar and a hair dryer. So call me, call me crazy.
Speaker 6: So and you same thing.
Speaker 5: I'm probably somewhere between you and and Mike. I've gone
Speaker 5: to some places that were a little dicey.
Speaker 2: I've done some things that were a little questionable.
Speaker 5: They've all turned out just fine, and I did meet
Speaker 5: fascinating people the way. Thank you, good fortune, and goodbye
Speaker 5: announce So know what take us away.
Speaker 1: Really now, really.
Speaker 9: Really really, As another episode of really No Really comes
Speaker 9: to a close, I know you're wondering what are the
Speaker 9: ten most dangerous things that average people do on vacation?
Speaker 3: That answer in a moment, and I promise you've absolutely
Speaker 3: done at least one of them.
Speaker 4: But first let's thank our guest, Mike Grease.
Speaker 3: Follow Mike on x slash Twitter at Mike Grease Writer,
Speaker 3: and check out his wonderful podcast What Am I Doing
Speaker 3: here with Mike Grease.
Speaker 4: Find all pertinent links in our show.
Speaker 3: Notes, our little show hangs out on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube,
Speaker 3: and threads at Really No Really Podcast, And of course,
Speaker 3: you can share your thoughts and feedback with us online
Speaker 3: at reallynoreally dot com. If you have a really some
Speaker 3: amazing factor story that boggles your mind, share it with us,
Speaker 3: and if we use it, we will send you a
Speaker 3: little gift. Nothing life changing, obviously, but it's the thought
Speaker 3: that counts. Check out our full episodes on YouTube, hit
Speaker 3: that subscribe button and take that bell so you're updated
Speaker 3: when we release new videos and episodes, which we do
Speaker 3: each Tuesday.
Speaker 4: So listen and follow us on the iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3: App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay,
Speaker 3: what are the ten most dangerous activities average people do
Speaker 3: while on vacation. Well, according to the travel website Nomadic Yak,
Speaker 3: the top ten from bottom to top are running of
Speaker 3: the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, skydiving, yes, even tandem motorcycle racing,
Speaker 3: hiking as most people hike unprepared and unresearched mountain biking.
Speaker 3: Just watch the fail videos folks, hair gliding, horseback riding,
Speaker 3: driving because you don't know where you're going and you're
Speaker 3: probably on the wrong side of the road.
Speaker 4: Cave diving remember those tai kids.
Speaker 3: And the number one most dangerous vacation activity is mountain
Speaker 3: and rock climbing, which results in one depth for every
Speaker 3: three to twenty five climbers. Really it really is a
Speaker 3: production of iHeartRadio and Blaise Entertainment.