Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening Hunt podcast.
Speaker 1: You can't predict anything presented by first, like creating proven
Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear
Speaker 1: for every hunt first like go farther, stay longer. That's
Speaker 1: the island greeting. Okay, ready, make sure to cut out
Speaker 1: KLS singing. Joined today by very famous author Hampton Sides Listen.
Speaker 1: I don't Anthon, I don't want to reduce your I mean,
Speaker 1: you've written a lot of books, man, but I want
Speaker 1: to say this Blood and Thunder is a hell of
Speaker 1: a damn book. Agreed, God, it's a good book. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you. I just reread talking I reread the whole.
Speaker 1: I was going to like refresh. I was looking through
Speaker 1: like what I had downloaded on my phone from a
Speaker 1: way ago. I was like oh, And then I was like, man,
Speaker 1: I'm wanna get I want to see when you get
Speaker 1: that guy on the podcast. And I was like, I
Speaker 1: reread from start to finish. This is such a good book.
Speaker 1: But I mean, you know what, you probably hate talking
Speaker 1: about it because you wrote along. You've written so much
Speaker 1: stuff since then. Uh. No, authors never get tired of
Speaker 1: talking about their books. Uh it's like a little kid,
Speaker 1: one of my kids. I love talking about my kids,
Speaker 1: and especially that one, because it's really about my chosen home.
Speaker 1: I chose to live in the West. I chose to
Speaker 1: live in New Mexico, and I wrote that book to
Speaker 1: try to understand how Santa Fe and New Mexico and
Speaker 1: the Southwest got to be what it is and what
Speaker 1: an education it was for me, you know, just to
Speaker 1: to learn all the stuff and to follow. You know.
Speaker 1: It's not a biography of Carson, but it uses this
Speaker 1: guy Kick Carson as the kind of connective tissue to
Speaker 1: get me through all of this history of of how
Speaker 1: the American Western a single generation became, uh became part
Speaker 1: of the United States. Um, all the good, the bad,
Speaker 1: the ugly, all of it. Dude was like Kick Carson
Speaker 1: was like Forrest gump Man. He was there for everything.
Speaker 1: It seems like it's just amazing. Uh. Yeah, we're gonna
Speaker 1: get into that. We're gonna get into bunt your kind
Speaker 1: of whole body work. What you're doing now, which I
Speaker 1: gotta tell you a story, Please do well. You've taken
Speaker 1: an interest in Captain Cook. Yes, cal and I how
Speaker 1: many times did we go past where we're trolling for
Speaker 1: Wahu and Hawaii? I mean we must drove past where
Speaker 1: he supposed he died ten times? Oh at least yes,
Speaker 1: on the Big Island. We spear fished out in front
Speaker 1: of there out there one time. Oh you did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're like right around that corner, supposed Captain Cooke and that,
Speaker 1: and that brought us into like speculating, you know, one
Speaker 1: of those situations where no one really knows what they're
Speaker 1: talking about. We're all talking about what exactly his situation was,
Speaker 1: as if you know, the time long long ago when
Speaker 1: the Internet didn't exist, one of those conversations. And then
Speaker 1: later we we we all I think, I assume I
Speaker 1: know I did. We all went to bed and typed
Speaker 1: into Google Captain Cook. A lot of people think maybe
Speaker 1: it's Captain Captain Hook the Pirate, or maybe captain you know,
Speaker 1: Captain uh Kirk from you know, Star trek Uh. He
Speaker 1: gets mixed up with a lot of other captains, and
Speaker 1: some people think he was fictionalized, you know, there's always
Speaker 1: Captain Crunch, you know, but but he was really he's
Speaker 1: the guy that cuts the inside your mouth up every
Speaker 1: time you eat his cereal, especially sword cuts in the
Speaker 1: inside of your mouth, especially with the crunch berry. Remember
Speaker 1: conspirators of course, carcinogenic serial for bread for you know,
Speaker 1: for kids. Um. Yeah, yeah, I do think that uh
Speaker 1: Cook is one of those legendary mythic guys that a
Speaker 1: lot of people confused with, uh caricatures of of him,
Speaker 1: like where where's the real you know, you have to
Speaker 1: dig through all the layers to get down to the
Speaker 1: actual guy who was actually more interesting than all those caricatures, um,
Speaker 1: but also very controversial, especially now. I mean, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: a lot of these guys are you know, pettists there there.
Speaker 1: The statues are coming down and they're being yanked from
Speaker 1: from the history books, and uh, you know, because they
Speaker 1: are part of an era of colonialism that that is
Speaker 1: under you know, under attack right now. Understandably so from
Speaker 1: folks like from Hawaii. Native Hawaiians really hate Cook because
Speaker 1: he's sort of the beginning of the end of of
Speaker 1: that era. Um. Even though he was primarily just an
Speaker 1: expl or he was he was not a he was
Speaker 1: not an occupier, He was not a you know, he
Speaker 1: didn't lead an army. He was genuinely a great navigator
Speaker 1: and explorer. But he was the beginning. He was the
Speaker 1: beginning of modernity coming to their shores and changing everything,
Speaker 1: and you kind of pay the price for it in
Speaker 1: his own day. Well, that's what a large part of
Speaker 1: the book is going to be about, is all the
Speaker 1: events that lead up to that. You know, he's murdered
Speaker 1: and uh he you know a lot of people say
Speaker 1: he deserved it karmically or something like that. How many
Speaker 1: how many encounters with how many Polynesian people did he
Speaker 1: have before finally you know, violence escalated. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of misques, miss signals, and uh you know, a hatchet
Speaker 1: ended up between his shoulder blades, a hatchet that he
Speaker 1: had given them. Uh So note to self, don't give
Speaker 1: people a hatchet, uh that if you don't know them
Speaker 1: really well, Um, because it might he might I get
Speaker 1: returned to You might get returned in in a way
Speaker 1: you don't like. Okay, we're gonna get into uh getting
Speaker 1: all that stuff and the other books as well, um,
Speaker 1: including ah Arctic Exploration, smart things. We gotta cover off
Speaker 1: on a couple of things. You know what I'm just saying.
Speaker 1: You don't talking about like taking statues down. Listen, man,
Speaker 1: I'm telling you what I had a like a prophecy
Speaker 1: the other day. If any of us gets a statue
Speaker 1: erected about them, okay, in a hundred years, they will
Speaker 1: rip that some bit down. It'll be like they were
Speaker 1: flying in airplanes, they were burning fossil fuels. They knew
Speaker 1: what they were doing. And people would be like, but
Speaker 1: everybody was burning fossil fuels back then, and they'd be like,
Speaker 1: they all knew. And they will tear your statue down
Speaker 1: and throw in the ocean. And everything you've done that
Speaker 1: you think is great, and everything you've done it you
Speaker 1: think is good and worthwhile, no one will care about.
Speaker 1: They'll they'll reduce you to that one singular fact that
Speaker 1: you contributed to the destruction of the planet or yeah,
Speaker 1: and I don't care how nice you were, what kind
Speaker 1: of dad you were, the way in which you knew
Speaker 1: that it was wrong, But that's what you will become.
Speaker 1: That supersedes everything else. That's what you'll become. And they
Speaker 1: will tear it down and people be like, maybe should
Speaker 1: put into a museum. Think of what your statue in
Speaker 1: an ocean can contribute, Like that's that's some habitat right there.
Speaker 1: That's good. You should have a statue with a lot
Speaker 1: of fish size holes in it. Yeah, exactly, throwing off
Speaker 1: in there. Maybe put a bunch of coral polyps on there,
Speaker 1: and you know, dude, my statue is already doomed. Uh
Speaker 1: real quick, Oh brody, we gotta talk about youth deer opener.
Speaker 1: Montana has every like every state does. Now it's it's
Speaker 1: the I think it's the greatest thing in the world.
Speaker 1: Our state has a youth Dear Season. Yeah, special opener
Speaker 1: before the real opener. I if I didn't have kids,
Speaker 1: I would be against youth Dear Season. Oh I thought
Speaker 1: you were going to say you'd go find a kid
Speaker 1: to go hunt with. No, I would have been like
Speaker 1: like yeah, like you know most people on Earth. Like
Speaker 1: when I was in eighth or ninth grade, I had L.
Speaker 1: De Young Civics class, and L. De Young taught civics
Speaker 1: through the lens of them. He role played. We didn't
Speaker 1: know he's role playing, but now looking back, he was
Speaker 1: clearly joking, but he taught civics as them. He would
Speaker 1: go like, I am concerned only with what effects al
Speaker 1: de Young and he would like teach civics through the
Speaker 1: lens of an extremely selfish person like he would. He
Speaker 1: would be like, I don't I hope that you people
Speaker 1: in this room never registered to vote, because why would
Speaker 1: I dilute my vote? Yeah, so if you're if you're
Speaker 1: not a parent, you'd be like, yeah, so I would have.
Speaker 1: If I didn't have kids, I would be like, anti
Speaker 1: youth season. I bet Cal's anti youth season? Are you cal? Oh?
Speaker 1: All the ship I paid for your kids? Like the
Speaker 1: taxes and Gallatin Valley? My god, I mean, did they
Speaker 1: just suck up by going to that free school? Every
Speaker 1: person in his valley should stop me and say, hey,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for not breeding but paying for
Speaker 1: my offspring. So the sentiments like that, Uh, my god?
Speaker 1: Do I like youth deer season? So what happened with
Speaker 1: youth dear season? Um? It's this beautiful little system where
Speaker 1: like normally kids gonna take hunter safety in their twelve.
Speaker 1: Like when I was a kid, you could start bow
Speaker 1: hunting at twelve, you couldn't rifle hunt to your fourteen.
Speaker 1: You can take a hunter safety at twelve. What this
Speaker 1: does is there's a system by which if you're like,
Speaker 1: how do they describe you? Gotta be like within arms
Speaker 1: each of them. Yeah, there, there's wording in there. You
Speaker 1: can't just wander out. No, you're there. Yeah, you're their mentor. Um.
Speaker 1: They can get a regular deer license, they have to
Speaker 1: be with their mentor. It can be a parent, but
Speaker 1: a parent can also appoint a mentor who has to
Speaker 1: be I'm not sure if it's eighteen licensed, legal standing
Speaker 1: all that, and then the kid can hunt and it's
Speaker 1: a two days it's two days season, yeah, without taking
Speaker 1: Also they can do it for two years and that's
Speaker 1: not as kids, that's anyone right. Yeah, I'm staring at
Speaker 1: my hunters, my Montana Hunters ed certification right now. October
Speaker 1: four is when I went went through the program here
Speaker 1: in the state six uh and Brodie's boy got his
Speaker 1: first deer. He said, he almost teared up. How do
Speaker 1: you know when you're almost tearing up? I felt it coming,
Speaker 1: I felt it come. Did you choke it back? I
Speaker 1: choked it back? Really didn't want to come. Yeah. It
Speaker 1: was emotional though, man, it was you know, because we
Speaker 1: put our time in on that. It's a short season,
Speaker 1: but we did a day of scouting, day of hunting,
Speaker 1: day a hunting and killed one, you know, mid day,
Speaker 1: second day, when we thought it was all over, and
Speaker 1: my boy spotted the deer when I when I thought
Speaker 1: it was all over, Buck gave us a slip and
Speaker 1: then we slipped in on him. So it was fun. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And what what was the scene? You're driving down the
Speaker 1: road talking on your phone and your kids. No, man,
Speaker 1: we're high around in some public land that's only accessible
Speaker 1: by you know, hiking or boat or however you want
Speaker 1: to get in there, but you can't drive in there. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was a great. We had this a
Speaker 1: little camp set up. Yeah. I had my daughter who's
Speaker 1: not old enough. She was there. It's great. Man. She's
Speaker 1: a hiker, Yeah, she's a hike machine. Yeah. She into
Speaker 1: the hiking part of the adventure. That's what she likes most,
Speaker 1: but not real what was her connection to the hunting part.
Speaker 1: She kind of. Um, she very much likes to go,
Speaker 1: likes the hike around, but isn't that concerned with what
Speaker 1: we're doing. Uh, he's only there. He's there for the shooting.
Speaker 1: Single minded. Yeah, he's there for the shooting. He's there
Speaker 1: to be succes. He's there for the success. Like he's there,
Speaker 1: he's enduring everything that leads up to the successful part.
Speaker 1: If he didn't enjoy it as much as he did,
Speaker 1: I just call him a trigger man. He's he's tournament.
Speaker 1: He's like there to be successful. He wants that that
Speaker 1: he's happy to skip ahead to that moment. My daughter,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, is there for the experience, to
Speaker 1: the point where we could be out of halibut fishing
Speaker 1: um and be really like fighting a halibit getting the
Speaker 1: harpoon ready, you know, And I'll look and she's looking
Speaker 1: off the other direction and isn't totally aware that we're
Speaker 1: in the middle of catching one. You know, my boy,
Speaker 1: But give me the rod. Give me the rod, just
Speaker 1: like did way different. She loves it though she's taking
Speaker 1: hike and machine. She picked up a bunch of andlers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she had seven sheds. She found hike and fool man.
Speaker 1: She loves big old blisters on the back of her
Speaker 1: feet from her brother's boots. Are they all interested in
Speaker 1: uh cutting it open? And that? Oh yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: actually you know. After my boy shot at his buck,
Speaker 1: he was he said to me, I feel happy and
Speaker 1: sad at the same time. I don't know what to do.
Speaker 1: But then once like that stuff all kinds goes away
Speaker 1: when he doesn't mind. Yeah, but once the butcher and starts,
Speaker 1: he's like he's like, okay, now, yeah, my daughter likes
Speaker 1: to do the looks, cut the stomach open. But I
Speaker 1: told her, you know that's interesting on fish, but I
Speaker 1: dear it's like it's just grass. Yeah, but maybe she
Speaker 1: wants to look around knock yourself out. But I'm like,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna find like a duck in air or something,
Speaker 1: just like well, she yeah, you know, she likes to
Speaker 1: cutting up. She likes all that. Oh she's great man um,
Speaker 1: and she's excited to turn but she's got another two
Speaker 1: years because she can't do it till she's ten. No,
Speaker 1: she's gonna be listen with her hiking and endurance. Um,
Speaker 1: she could turn into just a stone cold killer. Because
Speaker 1: that's the hard part, you know, that's the hard part. Uh. Oh,
Speaker 1: this is interesting, you know, Like here's a pee Like
Speaker 1: I hesitate to even do Pete news because Peter makes news.
Speaker 1: Their formula, like People for Ethical Treatment of Animals, Like
Speaker 1: their formula is to do something that the coverage will
Speaker 1: wind up being like what will they do next? It's
Speaker 1: like a it's like a pr formula. You do something
Speaker 1: so kind of like what huh, that it gets media attention,
Speaker 1: and then here we are talking about it. We're getting
Speaker 1: bated in by their like what come again? So the
Speaker 1: new thing is special occasion though we're in the middle
Speaker 1: of the World Series. Yeah, and we have a good
Speaker 1: friend who's in MLB, not in the you know, much
Speaker 1: to his chagrin, not in the participating in the World
Speaker 1: Series right now. But so Pete's new thing. They're like, hey,
Speaker 1: why everybody's thinking about the World Series. Here's something to
Speaker 1: try on. They believe that there's time to retire the world.
Speaker 1: The word bullpen because makes you think of a bull
Speaker 1: all penned up. I thought of the fact if I
Speaker 1: was if I was in charge of Peter and someone's like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: what should be our grape of baseball? I would probably
Speaker 1: be like, while the gloves are made of leather, the
Speaker 1: balls made of leather. Everybody's shoes are made of leather.
Speaker 1: Let's go after the leather. Those guys probably consume a
Speaker 1: lot of protein. But no that like, I got it, man,
Speaker 1: We're gonna hit him where it counts. In use of
Speaker 1: the term bullpen, uh, Pete Alonso mets first basement and
Speaker 1: Uh two times. He's the only guy he's been on
Speaker 1: the show. He's been the only guy to hit to
Speaker 1: win the old UH home run Derby twice. He says
Speaker 1: he likes to call it the bullpen um. Well, first,
Speaker 1: let me tell you what Peter says about it. There's
Speaker 1: he's confusing because we've got Pete and Peter, so you
Speaker 1: gotta he was gonna say. This would have been a
Speaker 1: good Halloween costume idea. Peter Alonzo, you don't even this guy. Listen,
Speaker 1: this guy is very good at sub sentence ship, dumb
Speaker 1: word plays, and dumb word plays. So you can like
Speaker 1: a baseball player wearing like birken stocks. You got like
Speaker 1: a hemp, like a purse or something. I got a baseball.
Speaker 1: That dude feels so good at ship like that. Peter
Speaker 1: says that words matter, and baseball bullpens de value. They're
Speaker 1: kind of playing. They're playing to the strength of the
Speaker 1: ball players. To begin again, quote words matter, and baseball
Speaker 1: bullpens d value talented players and mock the misery of
Speaker 1: sensitive animals. Peter encourages major League Baseball coaches, announcers, players
Speaker 1: and fans to change up their language and embrace the
Speaker 1: term arm barn instead, which seems kind of a bunch
Speaker 1: of severed arms in a bar like like it's disturbing him.
Speaker 1: And here's what petalso says. He says they should keep
Speaker 1: calling it the bullpen. How I see, it's when a
Speaker 1: new guy comes in. He's fresh meat anyways, he's there
Speaker 1: to smash that pictures earned run average, and that's how
Speaker 1: he views him as fresh meat. So he likes calling
Speaker 1: the bullpen. Moving on, that's a cal term. Oh, Kriant,
Speaker 1: tell us about your all your wild and all your
Speaker 1: wild food adventures. When you went to Ruby, Yeah, did
Speaker 1: you guys sing that song? A lot na? Didn't? But
Speaker 1: take it a waste, that's about all. Uh. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: went to Aruba for a for a vacation, but then
Speaker 1: kind of did it a little bit the meat either way.
Speaker 1: Went fishing, and there are quite a number of things
Speaker 1: that I learned about um. On one of the days
Speaker 1: that I went fishing, caught a couple of different species,
Speaker 1: but one was a pretty small parrot fish. And when
Speaker 1: it came uh, when we reeled it in the the
Speaker 1: guide said that it was a protected species, and so
Speaker 1: we returned it and an opportunistic seagull. God those he
Speaker 1: was God, they were just that that poor little fish
Speaker 1: just could not get down fast enough. Did you get
Speaker 1: the feeling that the seagull was like on your situation,
Speaker 1: Like he's like, these people will produce food if I stayed,
Speaker 1: if I fly around here. There were times where there
Speaker 1: were no birds around the boat, and then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, they're going to be like a flock hanging out.
Speaker 1: And we tried to put the fish return it to
Speaker 1: a spot where yeah, exactly, we tried to do it surreptitiously,
Speaker 1: but this one was just just went in there and
Speaker 1: grabbed it. Um. But you know, we we we hope
Speaker 1: to get it back into the water safely. But um, anyway,
Speaker 1: so you killed a lot of fish. We killed a
Speaker 1: couple and killed a couple of fish. Um. But I
Speaker 1: was looking at it's its mouth and it is like
Speaker 1: a little it's like a it's like someone who just
Speaker 1: had their braces taken off, and it's got like really straight,
Speaker 1: a really straight top and bottom row of these just yeah,
Speaker 1: they're not like little sharp teeth. It's just kind of
Speaker 1: like a retainer. Um. Thankfully I did not experience that. Um.
Speaker 1: But I would imagine because they use that little beak
Speaker 1: type mouth teeth situation too. They eat algae, and they
Speaker 1: eat algae off rocks and coral. Uh, and then they
Speaker 1: poop out sand and you'll just see it coming off them.
Speaker 1: So they make their peaches. Yeah, yeah, so I I
Speaker 1: found that fascinating. Um. When h Kimmy Warner, we're we're
Speaker 1: spear fishing for parrot fish, Kenny Warrener. One of her
Speaker 1: strategies is when she dives down, she takes a rock
Speaker 1: and scrapes the rock on the coral to mimic the
Speaker 1: sound of feeding parrot fish. So she goes down and
Speaker 1: she's like and does it that like the rhythm they
Speaker 1: use when they're doing that to to try to like
Speaker 1: replicate the sound of a feeding one. You had to
Speaker 1: put them to put him at ease. How clever. She'll
Speaker 1: take two rocks and put them in her hands and
Speaker 1: just rub them together like that. Did you eat them
Speaker 1: when you got? Oh? Yeah, they're very popular. Like they're
Speaker 1: like they're like a high grade fish in Hawaii, and
Speaker 1: often they're protected and people say they're protected because they
Speaker 1: make sand, but they're protected because they're like they're they're
Speaker 1: a favorite of the scuba diving world. Yes, big, bright,
Speaker 1: beautiful at times, pretty easy to kill. And so it's
Speaker 1: one of those ones that in some areas it's just
Speaker 1: even like in places where it's like in Mexico you can,
Speaker 1: but it was explained to me in a lot of
Speaker 1: areas it's like, hey, you can, but we kind of
Speaker 1: don't because they're so popular with divers, these big blue,
Speaker 1: crazy as fish, you know, and people like you can
Speaker 1: shoot them. They're good to eat, but we generally don't
Speaker 1: because they're they hold a lot of value as a
Speaker 1: as a fish to behold, you know. And they do
Speaker 1: have like that sexual transition to right, so they're all
Speaker 1: female and then hermaphrod did it and switch over to male.
Speaker 1: And there's a worry of like the harvest, how the
Speaker 1: harvest is going to impact that dynamic for reading, which
Speaker 1: is another argument, Like in these places where it is
Speaker 1: a really good food fish, I mean we ate several
Speaker 1: really um and uh and and then you have a
Speaker 1: lot of us right land of any uses type of
Speaker 1: situation where you got divers and fisher mountain and people
Speaker 1: that just want to eat. And then there her when
Speaker 1: they they're hermaphrodites, and when they turned their their coloration.
Speaker 1: I can't remember what way it goes. Can you explained it?
Speaker 1: I think the blues are the males. Does that happen
Speaker 1: at a certain stage because the one I caught was
Speaker 1: pretty small like the big dogs? Or when they turned
Speaker 1: to a female or is it their way around to
Speaker 1: look at that Catl's gonna look it up on the internet. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I did get a really good opportunity to. We were
Speaker 1: talking dinosaurs with my buddy's kid the other day and
Speaker 1: he was explaining me how the females t rexes are
Speaker 1: always smaller than the male t rexes. I said, you know,
Speaker 1: it's called sexual dimorphism, and he was like, anyway, t
Speaker 1: rex Oh man, do we gotta you should bring that
Speaker 1: kid down. We got a guy coming up that kid
Speaker 1: would be extremely I don't want to say, who bring
Speaker 1: that kid down? At him sitting the lazy boy back there,
Speaker 1: I'll let his dad. No, he is like probably in
Speaker 1: between your two oldest boys. Mhmm, yeah, he takes uh. Well,
Speaker 1: he's looking it up and talk about the little the
Speaker 1: little going ads you were eating. Oh yeah. Um. So
Speaker 1: the other thing I did was I the first day
Speaker 1: uh of snorkeling. I spotted a number of sea urchin around,
Speaker 1: so then before I wanted to make sure that I
Speaker 1: was allowed to attempt to harvest one or two. Found
Speaker 1: out that it was not an issue, and um, I
Speaker 1: harvested one white sea urchin and one black sea arch
Speaker 1: and I was told that the white ones you could
Speaker 1: pick up without being stung. But I was kind of
Speaker 1: just very nervous about I was out there by myself,
Speaker 1: so I didn't want to miss step. So I was like,
Speaker 1: I used my scuba fin and I used like a
Speaker 1: mesh bag to try to figure out how to get
Speaker 1: it without really touching it. So that was successful for
Speaker 1: these two critters, and I was very excited to try
Speaker 1: to replicate like a great restaurant experience with these like
Speaker 1: plump you know, pieces of ny. Unfortunately that was not
Speaker 1: what happened. Um, boney is going ad. So the row well,
Speaker 1: I'm no, it's a going add. It is a gonad
Speaker 1: well going adds not a row like going add. How's
Speaker 1: that not a testicle? You know about this handine, you
Speaker 1: write a book, I do not stuff. We're getting pretty deep.
Speaker 1: So okay, this is from Science Daily. The general gland
Speaker 1: of a sea arch in. The so called gonad is
Speaker 1: found inside the urchin. The organ stores nutrients and contains
Speaker 1: milt and row during the spawning season, and you can
Speaker 1: eat both males and females um. And I, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't know what season we were in for spawning
Speaker 1: and not. And I know that there are a couple
Speaker 1: of After reading, I found out there are a couple
Speaker 1: of factors that would influence how plump the row would be. So,
Speaker 1: uh my, my little urchins had just kind of a
Speaker 1: tiny bit of slime and they're not particularly orange, not
Speaker 1: particularly plump. I no, really, I kind of you know,
Speaker 1: I you you there's a lot of gooey guts stuff
Speaker 1: inside the urchin. You kind of wash that out, and
Speaker 1: the gonads are um kind of right at the back
Speaker 1: of the inside of the shell, and you can kind
Speaker 1: of scrape those out with your fingers. It's pretty easy
Speaker 1: to do that. And I just had like a little
Speaker 1: a little yellow film um, not particularly good. So I
Speaker 1: was disappointed, but the experience was was fun anyway, and
Speaker 1: just kind of cutting them open and seeing their parts
Speaker 1: and and yeah, so you try again next time. You're
Speaker 1: in the right area at the right time. Absolutely, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: up at our up at my fish check. There's commercial
Speaker 1: guys come through in the winter. Oh really, and they're
Speaker 1: even up even they do. Yeah, they come through every
Speaker 1: winter for the cucumbers and the urchins urge and row. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would try again any day. I love finding things
Speaker 1: like that. How's it come col Should we just move on?
Speaker 1: Are you gonna report? Oh, I'm I'm gonna report. So yeah,
Speaker 1: blue blues are mail. According there's there's all sorts of
Speaker 1: parrot fish, as you know, but the ones that we
Speaker 1: were hunting specifically, UM, Hawaii considers them the blues male,
Speaker 1: and the males kind of tend to a harem of females.
Speaker 1: And when the big blue male is shot, as per
Speaker 1: our discussion, uh, the alpha female then transitions to a
Speaker 1: mail that is wild. It's I think she's just addressing
Speaker 1: a need huh. Oh man. Yeah, And so he's so interesting.
Speaker 1: You know, when I was diving down California, we talked
Speaker 1: a lot about sheep head down there, and that is
Speaker 1: a species that's like highly targeted for like the restaurant
Speaker 1: aquarium side of things. Um. And the argument down there
Speaker 1: is because they reproduce in the same way a male
Speaker 1: tends an area develops a harem of females or congregates
Speaker 1: a harem of females, and then when the male is
Speaker 1: caught or killed or removed from the scenario, a female
Speaker 1: then transitions to mail. Well, um, that population, they've seen
Speaker 1: it reduce in average size, Like the average size of
Speaker 1: the take is getting smaller and smaller and smaller because
Speaker 1: the um the population is forcing smaller fish to turn mail.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a big part of the argument here,
Speaker 1: because I know on the Big Island of Hawaii you
Speaker 1: can take male parrot fish, but on Maui you are
Speaker 1: not allowed any male parrot fish take. Can't can't kill
Speaker 1: the blue ones because they don't want you prematurely triggering
Speaker 1: younger ones into their sexual transition. I think would be
Speaker 1: the biology cole argument stuff. Speaking of sheep's had fish,
Speaker 1: I just looked up at picture of that that is gnarly.
Speaker 1: There's a good jillions yeah, good teeth, Oh yeah, the
Speaker 1: one I pulled up has like teeth look human. And
Speaker 1: then it's just like got these rows of flat like
Speaker 1: cut chewing muller looking things. Cal hit us with this
Speaker 1: deal you checked out on this poblo escobar deal. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this recent development is new, but I feel very comfortable
Speaker 1: with the folks at the table. We can cover it
Speaker 1: just fine. So, uh, drug kingpan Pablo Escobar got into
Speaker 1: hippos and released hippos. Those hippos make a um in
Speaker 1: um narcos. Oh, they're making appearance. The hippos have like
Speaker 1: a what do you call it, like a cameo nice
Speaker 1: hips in arcs. Yeah, they're big, big stars. Um. So
Speaker 1: there was a point in the world, a point in
Speaker 1: time rather where people have the idea of transporting wildlife
Speaker 1: all over the place. Um. You know, you can probably
Speaker 1: get more eccentric than a big drug kingpin. But they
Speaker 1: do what they want. And and this guy Pablo got
Speaker 1: some hippos in as probably like an oddity. And then
Speaker 1: there was there's all these stories about like also for defense,
Speaker 1: you know, nobody can come in through his hippo defense whatever.
Speaker 1: So um, from an ecological standpoint, we know that they
Speaker 1: are they consume a niche where they're um, they're deforesters.
Speaker 1: They really they're they're huge animal and they reconstruct waterways
Speaker 1: and the world I was surprised to see is the
Speaker 1: world's largest invasive species, which makes sense to me, like
Speaker 1: a couple of thousand pounds. Oh yeah, over two and pounds.
Speaker 1: Yeah and UM, and they're they're very dangerous, they're very
Speaker 1: territorial all the things. UM. Interesting side note this, this
Speaker 1: was actually proposed in the state Louisiana to bring hippos
Speaker 1: in as a possible commercial enterprise UM for meat production,
Speaker 1: for meat production. UM. You can fast forward to see
Speaker 1: how well Louisiana did with neutria. I'm glad, we're probably
Speaker 1: glad they started small. Uh. If this works, then we
Speaker 1: go to hippos. Uh. So the interesting thing is, uh,
Speaker 1: somebody here in the US decided to get ahead of
Speaker 1: the hippo curve and have has somehow won some court
Speaker 1: case to bestow upon hippo's um some some human rights.
Speaker 1: And this has absolutely nothing to do with the very
Speaker 1: catchy headline of uh CO cane hippos as they're often called. UM.
Speaker 1: But it is interesting to say, like, here is this
Speaker 1: species that if something were to happen with one in
Speaker 1: the US, it would be protected under an extra level
Speaker 1: of protection, somewhat human, you could say, m hm. And
Speaker 1: but there's it's not doing anything to protect the hippos
Speaker 1: in Colombia because it's an American. Correct. Yeah, yeah, again,
Speaker 1: it's just like borrowing the headline. But you can see
Speaker 1: this as like an animal rights type of wind and um,
Speaker 1: depending on on if you want to take sides. I
Speaker 1: hate saying that we have to take sides, but it's like,
Speaker 1: is this a wind for animals or is it I'm
Speaker 1: leaning more towards the barn arm thing with this one.
Speaker 1: No man to see home this dude real quick. This
Speaker 1: dude is they're talking about cooling the hippos in Colombia.
Speaker 1: In Colombia. Yes, so some dude inspired by that threat
Speaker 1: try to make a is trying to make a thing
Speaker 1: in the US. But a legal analyst is saying that
Speaker 1: you can do all you want in the US. It
Speaker 1: has no like enforcement. Correct. So it's like it's just
Speaker 1: doing it for fun. Yes, but then it's like crusading
Speaker 1: against the bullpen. It's like you're just doing You're just
Speaker 1: throwing stuff out there. And then you know, let's say
Speaker 1: we have a situation where all of a sudden, somebody
Speaker 1: managed to get a bunch of Louisiana hippo started way
Speaker 1: off and some parish and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: now you have the legal president, you have this legal
Speaker 1: thing hanging out there is like you know, kids in
Speaker 1: their p rogues get sucked under by territorial hippos, right,
Speaker 1: and it's like, well those hippos have rights. Well, now's
Speaker 1: the time to get a hippo thing going down there
Speaker 1: if you worry about their long term deal. Brody real
Speaker 1: quickly dig into this, um, dig into this, this, this,
Speaker 1: this kind of crazy journey by this great wolf, and
Speaker 1: then we're gonna get into our esteemed author here. Sure,
Speaker 1: I feel like these wolf take a long walk stories
Speaker 1: are getting a little passe, But this one, dude, listen man, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, like any story about any animal that goes
Speaker 1: along ways for mysterious reasons, this one's is interesting because
Speaker 1: of where it ended up. UM. A gray wolf named
Speaker 1: O R. Nine from Oregon UH took a one thousand
Speaker 1: mile southward journey from northern Oregon to southern California. Thousand miles.
Speaker 1: It never gets old to me, crossed UH two major
Speaker 1: highways and the five um southernmost sighting of the species
Speaker 1: in the Golden State and nearly a century. And as
Speaker 1: it's typical, it's a two year old male that broke
Speaker 1: off of its wolf river pack and decided to go
Speaker 1: for a long walk, covering sixteen miles a day before
Speaker 1: his collar failed. You know what, but I'll just call
Speaker 1: it when I got something with a collar, they call
Speaker 1: it keeping it on air. But we kept that thing
Speaker 1: on air five years. Like that traveled through sixteen counties.
Speaker 1: There's a great quote in the end where he uh,
Speaker 1: now they're warning if the wolf is in Ventura County
Speaker 1: right yep, yea near Santa Barbara. There's a quote where
Speaker 1: is that. Oh, there's a quote from a guy who says, Um,
Speaker 1: it's very rural. It's not like he's at the beach
Speaker 1: with a whole bunch of people or anything like that.
Speaker 1: Stealing potato chips from someone's like towel off the beach.
Speaker 1: That's from Uh, that's what a from a spokesperson from
Speaker 1: California Department of Fishing Game. Um, that was his quote.
Speaker 1: It's not like he's at the beach with a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of people or anything like that. But when I
Speaker 1: read this one, you know how, there's a certain, uh,
Speaker 1: certain segment of people who are both anti wolf and
Speaker 1: anti uh left wing city people. They're like, well, we
Speaker 1: should turn those wolves loosen. Boulder, Colorado, list. It's just
Speaker 1: you know he's there. You got your dream though. Yeah. Wait,
Speaker 1: there's a wolf in Santa Barbro. Yeah I might be
Speaker 1: there now. Just speaking with a family that runs a
Speaker 1: mix like goat sheep operation to knock down um you know,
Speaker 1: like nasty They do like thinning operations around California primarily
Speaker 1: to um get rid of fuel build up, fire fuel
Speaker 1: build up and some noxious weed control and stuff. But
Speaker 1: so they run a ton of a ton of boor
Speaker 1: goats and a and a ton of a type of
Speaker 1: hair sheep that I can't remember what it is. But um,
Speaker 1: we're talking about um predators in the way of the
Speaker 1: state of California runs their their predator stuff and and
Speaker 1: according to these folks at Start Creek Land Stewards, UM,
Speaker 1: they do participate on like a wolf board in the
Speaker 1: state of California. Um it's to talk about like how
Speaker 1: we are going to manage wolves, Like, so California is
Speaker 1: like being progressive and in the fact that they are
Speaker 1: going to have wolves in their near future, well they
Speaker 1: have an established pack, they're already Yeah. Yeah, what did
Speaker 1: they do with this wolf? Did they? Did they know?
Speaker 1: I think he's good to go wherever he wants as
Speaker 1: long as he doesn't get in trouble killing a cow
Speaker 1: or something. I would assume in this guy, he was
Speaker 1: he made a bunch of headlines last year. But then
Speaker 1: when like off radar, right, yeah, yeah, they lost to
Speaker 1: signal and he just turned up. Um, he's probably a
Speaker 1: dead end. I mean unless he he either comes back,
Speaker 1: he's probably a dead end. He's got to run into
Speaker 1: a female. That's the weird thing about when when when
Speaker 1: you see these large predators that take off, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's so often like juvenile man, and so I
Speaker 1: see what they're going for. He's like, you know, he's
Speaker 1: gonna find like the shangri La. But you would have
Speaker 1: going is you're like a you're like a um genetic
Speaker 1: that end, Yeah, because you're just not gonna turn up.
Speaker 1: What he's doing makes sense. He's just not going to
Speaker 1: find what he's looking for. The shangral on this situation
Speaker 1: would be unattended. Females, yeah, ladies and no competition. But
Speaker 1: cal going back to what you were saying, like, I
Speaker 1: don't I don't ever see California getting to the point
Speaker 1: where Montana, Wyoming, Idaho is with wolves Like no matter
Speaker 1: how many they have no, they'll never cut a wolf
Speaker 1: season in California. Holy ship, man, people have a heart attack.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, man, can you imagine? But you know California
Speaker 1: does a lot of culling of predators because they big
Speaker 1: private landowners, because they don't have enough bear hunters or
Speaker 1: lots of agriculture get it done. Yeah, they yeah, they
Speaker 1: like to. They like to let the government do it,
Speaker 1: not not paying Sportsman's Hampton. Remind anybody what your books are.
Speaker 1: I got him here. If you can't remember, well I
Speaker 1: can remember them, um, although I wish, you know, they
Speaker 1: take me a long time to do. It take me
Speaker 1: like five years to actually get them done. So they're
Speaker 1: not as many as I would like, um, but they
Speaker 1: all count. So Ghost Soldiers, which is about the Baton
Speaker 1: Death March in World War Two and the Philippines and
Speaker 1: the prison war camps there um and a rescue that
Speaker 1: took place late in the war to rescue the last
Speaker 1: survivors of the death March. Um. That was my first book,
Speaker 1: my first history, and uh um moved on from there
Speaker 1: to Blood and Thunder, which you mentioned we mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: which is about the opening of the American West in
Speaker 1: the eighteen forties. Fifties and sixties. Uh, and sort of
Speaker 1: follows loosely the the life of Kit Carson, this controversial
Speaker 1: frontiersman who did a little bit of everything and was
Speaker 1: kind of like, as you say that, kind of a
Speaker 1: Forrest Gump of the American West, um pinged and pond
Speaker 1: off of every every historical event and um was everywhere
Speaker 1: and mountain man, check, cattleman, check, rancher in general, scout courier,
Speaker 1: indian agent check. Uh And and of course in his
Speaker 1: last kind of act of his career, he uh did
Speaker 1: the roundup and the of the Novajo people that the Denay,
Speaker 1: and uh that's what he's known for now, um, not
Speaker 1: all those other things that he did. But after that,
Speaker 1: I wrote a book called um Hellhound on his Trail,
Speaker 1: which is about the assassination of Martin Luther King in Memphis,
Speaker 1: which is where I grew up, born and raised in Memphis,
Speaker 1: and always kind of wanted to deconstruct and try to
Speaker 1: understand this seismic event in my city's history. And uh,
Speaker 1: I decided that James Earl Ray was in fact the killer,
Speaker 1: and it ends up being a psychological file of of
Speaker 1: him and how the FBI finally caught him, um after
Speaker 1: one of the largest man hunts in American history where
Speaker 1: he's from southern Illinois. He was kind of a redneck,
Speaker 1: came from came from just terrible, terrible poverty. Um lots
Speaker 1: of I mean, I don't know how much time we
Speaker 1: have to go into him, but he he was a
Speaker 1: piece of work, a real piece of work. Uh. And
Speaker 1: the book follows him in the months just prior to
Speaker 1: the assassination. He begins to kind of stalk King and
Speaker 1: he moves to Atlanta, and he uh is trying to
Speaker 1: find his moment where he can he buy his rifle,
Speaker 1: He buys scope, buys the ammunition, buy but you know,
Speaker 1: buys a binoculars uh and and literally stalks him, you know,
Speaker 1: hunts m um. Uh. So after that book, Uh, that's
Speaker 1: when I moved to this Arctic story. It's called in
Speaker 1: the Kingdom of Ice, and it's about the first American,
Speaker 1: the first official American attempt on the North Pole. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's a story that almost no one's heard of. Uh.
Speaker 1: The U S S. Jannette, which happened in eighteen seventy nine.
Speaker 1: Eight Uh one. They went up through the Bearing straight
Speaker 1: uh of Alaska, and I got stuck in the ice,
Speaker 1: drifted in the ice for two years until the ship
Speaker 1: was crushed by the by the ice pack. And these
Speaker 1: men thirty three men and forty dogs and three small
Speaker 1: boats out on the ice pack, a thousand miles from
Speaker 1: the nearest land mass, which is the central coast of Siberia.
Speaker 1: And it's it's really a story about how they made
Speaker 1: it home. Some made it home, some didn't. But it's
Speaker 1: almost half through, so okay, I won't tell you killing
Speaker 1: no spoiler alert, except that you know, I think you
Speaker 1: can tell that it's not gonna go well for everyone,
Speaker 1: including the dogs. Almost the dog, sorry Peter, Peter probably won't.
Speaker 1: You know, it doesn't like my book that they won't
Speaker 1: have a problem with the I have a problem with
Speaker 1: those people. Oh yeah, yeah that that. That's one of
Speaker 1: the what I'm appreciating the most is just how I
Speaker 1: haven't heard any any of this, and um, how how
Speaker 1: much of a story it was in its day and
Speaker 1: not have not even a anything. That's why I wrote it.
Speaker 1: That's why I wrote it. I was like, why haven't
Speaker 1: I heard of this? Why haven't we all heard this?
Speaker 1: This is the American Shackleton story. You know, It's like greatest,
Speaker 1: one of the greatest survival stories of all time, I
Speaker 1: truly believe. And yet um, I had never heard of
Speaker 1: it until I, you know, just kind of found out
Speaker 1: about it by chance. Um. And it was in its
Speaker 1: day the story that everybody knew these guys. Everybody followed
Speaker 1: their fate and wanted to know what was going to
Speaker 1: happen to them, and uh, you know, it was like
Speaker 1: we had sent men to the moon uh uh and
Speaker 1: or the dark side of the moon really because they
Speaker 1: were gone for three years and no news from these
Speaker 1: guys come man. Um. So it's a you know, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a classic uh survival story, a little bit
Speaker 1: of scurvy, you know, a little bit of cannibalism. Okay,
Speaker 1: Now there's not actually cannibalism, um, but it seems like
Speaker 1: these Arctic stories always have that kind of that kind
Speaker 1: of ethos. So there's cannibalism, scurvy, Oh, mutiny, that's the
Speaker 1: other one. Good times um uh. But also a football
Speaker 1: like it's a very regimented okay, like to keep all active. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the captain's got a very regimented daily routine and and
Speaker 1: the um executive officer and it involves you know, like
Speaker 1: mentally and physically keeping people engaged because it's it's like
Speaker 1: us in this room are in a space not all
Speaker 1: that much bigger than this room for two years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: kel's dogs laying here and we'd probably want up eating it. Uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, how much of the year is darkness? About
Speaker 1: half of it? And and there's this one guy who
Speaker 1: is his name is Collins, and he is a word
Speaker 1: play guy. Um, you know, kind of kind of like you. Uh,
Speaker 1: he's you know, he's a he's a punster and and
Speaker 1: he does limericks and he's this jolly guy that you know,
Speaker 1: you know, we all know people like that, and they're
Speaker 1: wonderful to be with for about you know, an hour.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm sorry that that checks out. But Phil
Speaker 1: hasn't gone into limericks yet. If he were to go
Speaker 1: into limericks, he might be that would be the job.
Speaker 1: One hour would be enough for most of these guys.
Speaker 1: But they were with this dude for two years and
Speaker 1: they all wanted to wring his neck. I mean, they
Speaker 1: wanted to kill him. They did. Um so yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 1: A lot of the book is of study of of
Speaker 1: how people survive um close proximity and claustrophobia and darkness
Speaker 1: for half the year and arctic conditions. And one of
Speaker 1: the things they do is, apart from playing football out
Speaker 1: on the ice is UM they do a lot of
Speaker 1: hunting UM. And they hunt polar bear and walrus and
Speaker 1: seal UM and they get to be pretty good at it.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the reasons they don't get scurvy,
Speaker 1: as they're constantly eating fresh food UH and and greens
Speaker 1: that they find around the edges of the Arctic. So
Speaker 1: it's a it's you know, it's it's a cooking and
Speaker 1: hunting UH book a lot of ways kind of fits
Speaker 1: in with what you guys talk about UM and UH.
Speaker 1: They finally get to open water after a thousand miles
Speaker 1: on the ice, and they put in their boats and
Speaker 1: they start sailing for Siberia UH. And they encounter a
Speaker 1: gale the next day, a very bad storm, and the
Speaker 1: three boats are scattered from each other, and UH the
Speaker 1: story becomes, you know, really just follows these three boats
Speaker 1: as they make their way towards UH. Uh a river delta,
Speaker 1: the Lana the Lana Delta, which is uh one of
Speaker 1: the hugest deltas on Earth, and it's a labyrinth of
Speaker 1: thousands of islands and you know switchbacks and cold to sacs,
Speaker 1: and it's it's it's where the story, the rest of
Speaker 1: the story takes place. I won't tell you anything like
Speaker 1: a psychological false summit story where like as soon as
Speaker 1: I get on top there like keep keeps going. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the misery just keeps It's like misery porn, you know,
Speaker 1: it just keeps going. Hey, you know when you're mentioning
Speaker 1: there's certain I don't want to call them tropes, but
Speaker 1: certain things that Arctic exploration stories involved, Like you're always
Speaker 1: like looking ahead of the cannibalism part, the mutiny part.
Speaker 1: There's also um the encounters with Askimo or Intuit hunters
Speaker 1: who and you want it with this like really stark juxtaposition,
Speaker 1: because here's these people who are thriving, they're like raising
Speaker 1: children and they show up and it's often that they
Speaker 1: don't want to get too close. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: what are these people doing here? And you see like
Speaker 1: these two just like vastly different ways that people sort
Speaker 1: of comprehend the Arctic landscape and can live on the
Speaker 1: Arctic landscape. You know, it's like the thing that's killing
Speaker 1: all you people. Meanwhile, there are individuals who are raising
Speaker 1: children here by choice. Yeah. It's like and you kind
Speaker 1: of like because it brings up these all these things
Speaker 1: you're talking about, like resilience and ingenuity, but like that juxtaposition,
Speaker 1: they're raising families here and we're all dying. Yeah. In
Speaker 1: this story, they end up in a place in Siberia
Speaker 1: that I went to. Uh, and the Yakut people are
Speaker 1: still thriving, still living there. Uh And and they play
Speaker 1: a big role and rescuing these guys um and sharing
Speaker 1: what they have. They're great hunters and and they live
Speaker 1: off the land and they understand the nuances of ice
Speaker 1: and window fish and went to hunt and went to
Speaker 1: retreat uh to the south. And you know, Uh, it's
Speaker 1: a fascinating part of the story. Actually there is the
Speaker 1: people who actually live in this place that that seems
Speaker 1: to be killing uh these uh these white dudes, mostly
Speaker 1: white tings. But there are two um Alaska Inuit hunters
Speaker 1: who are part of this expedition from the beginning. And
Speaker 1: uh they play a big role. Uh they're great hunters
Speaker 1: and uh they keep this thing going. They keep these
Speaker 1: men alive. Uh. Their knowledge of of of of of
Speaker 1: how to hunt this kind of landscape, this sort of
Speaker 1: perma frost um landscape, and um, you know they're hunting
Speaker 1: reindeer mainly, but also polar bear and walrus. And I
Speaker 1: was thinking the mental side of things, right, it's like
Speaker 1: they I think they brought on a hundred dogs at
Speaker 1: the very beginning. No, not that many, about fifty that much.
Speaker 1: But um, the dogs are important, and UM, don't worry
Speaker 1: if they don't. They aren't eaten until maybe the very
Speaker 1: very very very bitter end because they're they're working, they're
Speaker 1: part of the team. They are part of the team,
Speaker 1: and they're beloved. And uh, there's one favorite dog named Snoozer.
Speaker 1: Things do not go well for Snoozer and the an
Speaker 1: I'm afraid, but we want Lesten not go there. It's
Speaker 1: too sad. But if you're on that boat too, it's
Speaker 1: like these these two, Oh I ask him, are there
Speaker 1: to take care of the dogs too? And man, if
Speaker 1: you're not a dog person, you have fifty of them
Speaker 1: that you're living with, their piano and pooping on staff.
Speaker 1: Walk everybody through your latest on desperate ground. On desperate
Speaker 1: ground is um a battle story. It's the story of
Speaker 1: the most the most epic Battle of the Korean War,
Speaker 1: and it's it's the Battle of Chosen Reservoir. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: I've I've always kind of been curious about the Korean
Speaker 1: War because, as you know, it's kind of an also
Speaker 1: ran in our in our history, Like we don't talk
Speaker 1: about it that much in school. It's not studied as much.
Speaker 1: Some people don't even think it was a real war
Speaker 1: because it's been called a U. N. Police action, or
Speaker 1: it's been called, you know, perhaps a civil a civil
Speaker 1: war that that the world kind of glommed onto. Um.
Speaker 1: But they killed far far more Americans than the Global
Speaker 1: War on Terror. Have absolutely and more more people uh
Speaker 1: per per year than the Vietnam War. Um. And I
Speaker 1: don't know it was more in a more efficient killer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was. It was it was kind of a
Speaker 1: world war. It was like a world war crammed down
Speaker 1: into this one peninsula, the Chinese, the Russians, uh, and
Speaker 1: the North Koreans versus the U N. Led by of
Speaker 1: course the United States. But uh, it's also I kind
Speaker 1: of wanted to do this because it's sort of my
Speaker 1: my parents war, my parents generation war. Uh, my my
Speaker 1: stepfather fought. They're uh, my father in law had Korean
Speaker 1: War orders and made it as far as Japan. Um.
Speaker 1: So you know, I just kind of want to understand
Speaker 1: what they this was their conflict of and I unfortunately
Speaker 1: was saying goodbye to some of my uh that generation
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of like I lost my
Speaker 1: stepfather and lost my father in law a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago. So um, that was kind of my personal motivation,
Speaker 1: just want to understand what what was this thing? Um?
Speaker 1: And and you know, I think the Korean War is
Speaker 1: a very tough narrative to get your arms around, so
Speaker 1: I decided to reduce it down to something more understandable,
Speaker 1: which is one battle you know, that has a clear beginning,
Speaker 1: middle end, And the Battle of Chosen Reservoir is that battle.
Speaker 1: It's um, you know, it's it's kind of like a classic.
Speaker 1: It's like something out of through Cydites or you know,
Speaker 1: Herodotus or something. It's like this. You know, this army
Speaker 1: marches up into this wilderness on the shores of a
Speaker 1: frozen lake where they are completely surrounded by tend to
Speaker 1: one by this force that had secretly entered the war.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the Chinese Red Army, and uh, this
Speaker 1: is the first marine Division of the United States is uh,
Speaker 1: you know, seemingly going to be wiped out, and it's
Speaker 1: it's really how they fought their way out of this
Speaker 1: trap and how they fought their way back to the sea.
Speaker 1: You could say it's a retreat. It's a story about
Speaker 1: a retreat, but the Marines, of course, do not allow
Speaker 1: you to use the word retreat. And there's a lot
Speaker 1: of euphemisms for retreat. Uh, retrograde maneuver is one I
Speaker 1: like another one is advanced to the rear. But uh,
Speaker 1: this is one of the you know, this is a
Speaker 1: fighting withdrawal. This is they fought every step of the
Speaker 1: way to get there, to get out of this call loss.
Speaker 1: Will you know, it's a series of blunders that led
Speaker 1: to this, Uh, mainly by blunders committed by a guy
Speaker 1: named General Douglas MacArthur. You've heard of him, and and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the Marines just can't stand MacArthur. They just
Speaker 1: to this day they hate him with such a passion.
Speaker 1: But so the first half of the book looks at
Speaker 1: all those blunders and kind of how it all happened
Speaker 1: that they were trapped and how they didn't know how
Speaker 1: could they not know that the three hundred thousand Chinese
Speaker 1: had across the border from North Korea, I mean from Manchuria. Um,
Speaker 1: And how how they got kind of put in this position?
Speaker 1: And then the rest is of the book is about
Speaker 1: how they how they fought their way out. Uh. How
Speaker 1: do you of all the basilions of ideas that flow
Speaker 1: through your head, how do you um narrowed down? I mean,
Speaker 1: is it is it like eventually it's like a throw
Speaker 1: in a dart at a wall and be like I'll
Speaker 1: pick that thing. Or does it become clear to you
Speaker 1: what you need to do when you're when you're doing
Speaker 1: book projects, You're like, I've been five years on when
Speaker 1: you said the five years, that's what I'm like, are
Speaker 1: you procrastinating for four? And what is the thing? Well,
Speaker 1: some people have said that I picked my books based
Speaker 1: on interesting travel that would be required. That's why I
Speaker 1: was going to ask about travel, because I was wondering
Speaker 1: how much you if it's always places you want to go,
Speaker 1: or if you ever like all that sucks, I gotta
Speaker 1: go there. Now that's not completely um untrue? You know
Speaker 1: I do. I do love to travel, and I do
Speaker 1: want to pick stories that require interesting far flung travel. Um.
Speaker 1: So that's true. Um, but it's also uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's a whole combination of things. I think. I
Speaker 1: always say that it's like there's two sets of criteria.
Speaker 1: Are two ledgers that I use, Like one is one
Speaker 1: is the kind of rational ledger? You know, it's like
Speaker 1: is this a good story? Check? Is is there enough material? Check?
Speaker 1: Has it been written about? Not you know too much?
Speaker 1: Or not enough? Check? And you know, you check all
Speaker 1: the obvious boxes for what is will this make a
Speaker 1: good story? But then there's sort of the irrational side
Speaker 1: of it, which is does the hair on the back
Speaker 1: of your neck stand up when you think about this story?
Speaker 1: Does it grab you? Is it exciting? Is it? Is it? Uh?
Speaker 1: You know that kind of tingling in your gut feeling
Speaker 1: that I can I can live with this thing for
Speaker 1: five years and um, it'll sustain me. And you gotta
Speaker 1: have both of those. You've gotta have the rational side
Speaker 1: and the irrational side. Um. And I guess I guess
Speaker 1: timing also has something to do with it. I mean
Speaker 1: this Korean War book I thought about doing twenty years
Speaker 1: ago or fifteen years ago, uh, and kind of filed
Speaker 1: it away. How did it first? Like how did the
Speaker 1: how do how do you pronounce the chosen, chosen res chosen?
Speaker 1: I kdn't realize that. Yeah, how do you remember? How
Speaker 1: did the chosen reservoir? Or take kick Carson or the janette? Like,
Speaker 1: do you remember the first time entered your head? Yeah? Well,
Speaker 1: because I've never heard of it before. H And I
Speaker 1: was signing books, my first book, Ghost Soldiers, which is
Speaker 1: about some really tough dudes, the veterans of the Baton
Speaker 1: Death March. You don't you can't imagine people tougher than
Speaker 1: Baton Death March guys. But as I'm signing this book,
Speaker 1: this gentleman comes up who was a Korean War vet
Speaker 1: and he says like, yeah, he's Baton guys are a
Speaker 1: bunch of wuzzy's. You know, you should do a book
Speaker 1: on the on the reservoir. And I'm like, what, what's
Speaker 1: the reservoir? Tell me more? And he's like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: here's my card and he put his card down and
Speaker 1: it said the Chosen Few. It's the name of their
Speaker 1: organization called themselves the Chosen Few. And I like that
Speaker 1: little play on words. Yeah, and uh, Phil would like that.
Speaker 1: And he I noticed that he was missing his fingertips,
Speaker 1: and it turned out that he had lost his fingertips
Speaker 1: in the battle. Uh. I forgot to mention that this
Speaker 1: battle was fought in thirty five below zero weather, and
Speaker 1: uh that it was the third combatant. Really, you know,
Speaker 1: it's the Chinese, the Americans, and old Man Winter. It
Speaker 1: was fought in late November early December of n and
Speaker 1: uh it made an impression on me, you know, I
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, tell me more. And I took his
Speaker 1: card and I filed it away and began to read
Speaker 1: about it. But I think it took me about fifteen
Speaker 1: years before I started really deciding this is the time
Speaker 1: to write that book. But in the meantime, you're just
Speaker 1: you're probably reading books and you know, let me let
Speaker 1: me ask this question another way at this moment, sitting
Speaker 1: here right now, UM, how many contenders are floating around
Speaker 1: in your head? I don't know. I I got a list,
Speaker 1: uh four, maybe ten or ten or twenty book ideas
Speaker 1: that I might and you're not going to get to
Speaker 1: them all. Oh, I'm not gonna You're like, it's a
Speaker 1: race against the clock at a point, right, it's a
Speaker 1: right right against the clock. It's also race against Um,
Speaker 1: I mean I don't know about the future of publishing,
Speaker 1: you know, like I don't know if people are gonna
Speaker 1: be reading twenty years from now, at least not in
Speaker 1: the way that we think of of ink and glue
Speaker 1: and paper and you know, the old fashioned books that
Speaker 1: you know, I love to just read a good book
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, now it's it's a different kind
Speaker 1: of reading public. But but the you see, I'm getting
Speaker 1: back to I gotta ask you this, and I gotta
Speaker 1: go back to in their question. But the economics if
Speaker 1: people are reading on their phone, like that doesn't affect
Speaker 1: your economics, right, I mean too terribly. No, it's not.
Speaker 1: It's not too terrible. But do you mean they want
Speaker 1: to sit down and live with live with fies y, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's part of it. I mean I have kids, as
Speaker 1: do you, and my kids, you know, attention span sometimes
Speaker 1: is lacking. You know. They like things quick, like movies quicker,
Speaker 1: they like they like you know, just uh you know,
Speaker 1: they want action, you know, and some of these books
Speaker 1: take a long time to set up, and you know,
Speaker 1: I mean they're long books, and you know, I just
Speaker 1: I don't know. Generational the generational reading reading habits is
Speaker 1: when one factor in all this, most of the people
Speaker 1: read my books are a little bit older. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: they're like people in their sixties, like, you know, start
Speaker 1: to really like history. I think it seems like that
Speaker 1: seems to be the turning point because you have to
Speaker 1: keep that in mind and you're writing. I kind of
Speaker 1: do you have to remember you're writing for Yeah, my
Speaker 1: wife was never worried when I went on book to her.
Speaker 1: You know, she's like because most a lot of my
Speaker 1: readers are like you can hear them coming before you
Speaker 1: see them. And uh, you know it depends generation. Um,
Speaker 1: but uh look, I love my readers and whatever age
Speaker 1: they are, and uh I do, I do have younger
Speaker 1: readers as too, but uh, I just do worry that.
Speaker 1: I guess this is just getting off on a tangent.
Speaker 1: But you know what is happening in publish ng and
Speaker 1: how as we're moving into the digital the digital age. Um.
Speaker 1: I also you know, audio books are are going going
Speaker 1: gangbusters and it's it's an edge. I read one of
Speaker 1: my books, um for an audio book, I don't know,
Speaker 1: did you read your like American Buffalo? Did you read
Speaker 1: after ten years? I did? Yeah, Well it was one
Speaker 1: of the hardest things I've ever done sitting in a studio.
Speaker 1: I I, um, I thought this. This producer said, it's
Speaker 1: gonna be really hard because, uh, you know, your mouth
Speaker 1: and your throat and your tongue, and you know, it's
Speaker 1: like sitting in a studio for eight, nine, ten hours
Speaker 1: a day reading. He said, it's gonna be like digging
Speaker 1: a six foot hole in the ground with your mouth.
Speaker 1: And that's the way it felt. That's the way it felt.
Speaker 1: But also I wanted to I wanted to change the book. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean, I kept saying, who wrote this crap? I
Speaker 1: I you know, I wanted to edit my own stuff
Speaker 1: for for a for a to be read aloud. Uh,
Speaker 1: And they say, you contractually, you cannot change a word
Speaker 1: of your own book. So you know, just have to
Speaker 1: read exactly what this clown wrote. But it was interesting.
Speaker 1: So audio books are going great though, I mean, they're
Speaker 1: selling and they're a bigger and bigger portion of the
Speaker 1: overall sales. Yeah, we just did a thing that went
Speaker 1: direct to audio and won't have a print life. That's
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, but it's not. It's different the book. No, No,
Speaker 1: because it's it's um, it's a it's a collection of
Speaker 1: a bunch of people telling stories about Close Calls. But
Speaker 1: there's sort of like a there's a narrator component to
Speaker 1: it that comes in. But yeah, it was like I mean,
Speaker 1: you would experienced it very much like a book, but
Speaker 1: it just was built. You know you're talking about that
Speaker 1: you wrote it, if you were if you knew you
Speaker 1: were going to read it, you might have did some
Speaker 1: things differently just to have it worked that way. This
Speaker 1: is kind of like this project, which is called Close Calls,
Speaker 1: is just leaning into an adopt and adapting the project
Speaker 1: to be suitable to audio rather than having to be
Speaker 1: let's take a thing that was like built for print
Speaker 1: and make it audio like, just make it for audio, like,
Speaker 1: make it perfect for that format. Um. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: think that that a little that a little bit ties
Speaker 1: into what you're saying about just trying to understand the future. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know, but you've probably learned to live with
Speaker 1: all that kind of fear because you were a magazine
Speaker 1: writer and you had to be nervous about how can
Speaker 1: I continue to pay the bills as a magazine writer,
Speaker 1: which is daunting. You've got to evolve and you know,
Speaker 1: we're living through I think one of the most consequential uh,
Speaker 1: periods of of change and transition in terms of information.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's like the Guttenberg Bible or whatever.
Speaker 1: You know, these these moments in history that are so
Speaker 1: important to publishing or two how information is spread around
Speaker 1: the world. Well, we're living through one of those moments
Speaker 1: now and that's you know, the digital age and everything
Speaker 1: that has come with it with the Internet. Um so everyone,
Speaker 1: all writers are having to evolve with it, trying to
Speaker 1: figure out how to make a living doing this and
Speaker 1: how to make their impact, you know, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's interesting. It's an interesting time. I think we have
Speaker 1: to look at it that way. It's interesting. Otherwise it's
Speaker 1: just kind of scary because the writers who aren't involving
Speaker 1: are are suffering. Now. I think there's either there's two
Speaker 1: paths you can take. You can take the path of
Speaker 1: resentment and fear, or you can take the path of
Speaker 1: there's a set of things that I want to talk about,
Speaker 1: and I'll continue to talk about those things. I don't
Speaker 1: give a ship what happens. It's like, and you'll find it.
Speaker 1: Take your choice, yeah, and you'll you'll find your own
Speaker 1: area almost yeah, you know, you know, when you were
Speaker 1: mentioned um interesting term for the cold Um during the
Speaker 1: creat there in the battle, the chosen chose what I was.
Speaker 1: I was like like, like chosen, Well, it's it's chose
Speaker 1: sin as is how you how as they say it.
Speaker 1: But and it's a complicated thing because that's a Japanese
Speaker 1: word even though it's set in Korea. But go ahead.
Speaker 1: You had an interesting term you used, which would be
Speaker 1: a third combatant for the cold Um. And there's things
Speaker 1: that I felt really stupid not even knowing that this happened.
Speaker 1: But to refer back to blood and thunder, Um, I
Speaker 1: didn't know that. During the Mexican American War, I didn't
Speaker 1: realize that we actually invaded that the U. S. Army
Speaker 1: invaded Mexico and made it all way to Mexico City.
Speaker 1: But remember you talk about like part of the strategy
Speaker 1: when someone invades Mexico is you just wait until yellow
Speaker 1: fever hits him or malaria, I can't remember what, and
Speaker 1: like let let disease take its toll, then we'll respond. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that happened. Uh, there was this huge amphibious invasion of
Speaker 1: Vera Cruz, Mexico, and then they marched all the way
Speaker 1: to uh, to Mexico City and held Mexico City for
Speaker 1: over a year. Uh um, occupied it. It's kind of
Speaker 1: a may. I don't think we teach that very much.
Speaker 1: I was. I remember, like, how like, how do I
Speaker 1: not know that we actually did that? Yeah? Yeah, we
Speaker 1: invaded their borders, you know, before they and you know
Speaker 1: there's so much news now about of course crossing the borders,
Speaker 1: and you know it's like it's it's a murky, messy
Speaker 1: history for sure. But but Carson kid, Carson Um and
Speaker 1: Blood and thunder, you know, is so mixed up in
Speaker 1: it all because he's married to a Mexican woman, a
Speaker 1: New Mexican woman, uh from Taos, New Mexico. And uh,
Speaker 1: he sort of sees all sides of it. And that's
Speaker 1: why he's such an interesting cat, is that you know,
Speaker 1: he's conflicted. He's his first wife was a rapp Yes,
Speaker 1: I had a child, they had two children, actually died.
Speaker 1: He like brought his his child to be raised elsewhere. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like the and you think these people like like this
Speaker 1: like American figure, but most of the people around him
Speaker 1: in his life wouldn't have self identified as Americans. I
Speaker 1: mean that that idea hadn't really taken shape where he was,
Speaker 1: including him. I mean, he was a runaway. He tried
Speaker 1: to get away from America. He ran away on the
Speaker 1: Santa Fe Trail from Uh, from Missouri, and UH kind
Speaker 1: of never looked back. You know. He fell in love
Speaker 1: with the West. And as you mentioned, his first wife
Speaker 1: was a Rappaho and he lived with her tribe and
Speaker 1: spoke her language, and we always talked about it as
Speaker 1: being his favorite The favorite part of his life was
Speaker 1: was those years living with the Rappaho and being a
Speaker 1: mountain man. And but you know, eventually he after she died,
Speaker 1: he married a young woman from Taos, and then he
Speaker 1: started a different life. He converted to Catholicism, and he
Speaker 1: spoke Spanish and in the house and raised their kids
Speaker 1: speaking Spanish, and you know, he lived that life. He
Speaker 1: is like you know, as you say, Forrest Gump, but
Speaker 1: you know, he just keeps He has a cat with
Speaker 1: nine lives. He just organically morphs into the next guy,
Speaker 1: and then the next guy and the next guy. And
Speaker 1: by following his the trajectory of his life, you can
Speaker 1: begin to really understand all the different forces that shaped
Speaker 1: the American West. And that's that's really why I wrote it.
Speaker 1: There are two things in there that that that really
Speaker 1: strikes me in a way of just like understanding American
Speaker 1: history is I talked about the the idea of like
Speaker 1: being American being kind of a flimsy notion for a
Speaker 1: lot of the UM a lot of people who are
Speaker 1: in the Southwest, Like it wasn't like clearly defined, right.
Speaker 1: It was kind of like, you know, there's this government
Speaker 1: that's far away in Mexico and they exert some level
Speaker 1: of influence on this portion. And then also there's this governor,
Speaker 1: there's this government in Washington and they're exerting some level
Speaker 1: of influence. But it all seems very abstract to try
Speaker 1: to understand, like you know who to be with. But
Speaker 1: you can talk about when like the U. S. Army
Speaker 1: had people who had recently emigrated to America from Europe
Speaker 1: and they're leader they're in the U. S. Army, and
Speaker 1: their allegiance as Americans is also like fairly flimsy, and
Speaker 1: it's not a big part of the book. You make
Speaker 1: a mention of a group of um Irish Catholics who
Speaker 1: are in the U. S. Army waging war in Mexico
Speaker 1: and they feel conflicted between being a US citizen, but
Speaker 1: fighting against Catholics, that's right. And they leave the U. S.
Speaker 1: Army because they feel like they have like more of
Speaker 1: a sort of religious obligation. Two Roman Catholics, and then
Speaker 1: they leave to fight against the U. S. Army, And
Speaker 1: then the U. S. Army catches some of them in
Speaker 1: hangs fifty of them at once. They didn't tell you
Speaker 1: about that in history. Yeah, Like there's a painting of
Speaker 1: it in the in the Book of that Day when
Speaker 1: they hung those fifty people like man m hmm, just
Speaker 1: like just just I don't know, a sort of ruthlessness
Speaker 1: that existed then. Yeah, Yeah, it was a different obviously,
Speaker 1: a very different time, and I think the notion of
Speaker 1: what is an American was evolving then, you know, very
Speaker 1: very much. All of a sudden, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: there was this western third of the continent that was
Speaker 1: kind of up for grabs. Uh. You know, I kind
Speaker 1: of described it as one of the largest land grabs
Speaker 1: in in in history. You know, like all of that
Speaker 1: terrain about the size of continental Europe was was taken
Speaker 1: uh in in one generation really in a four year
Speaker 1: period um in the eighteen forties. Uh. You just well,
Speaker 1: we'll take that we wanted all people in the time
Speaker 1: that we're involved in even acknowledging that they were in
Speaker 1: a moral they're a little bit of shaky ground, yes,
Speaker 1: and and that's why you know, people like Kid Carson,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, it's like they needed folk heroes
Speaker 1: back east to sort of begin to justify this land grab.
Speaker 1: They needed great stories of plucky guys who were already
Speaker 1: there out west. And uh, there was all these books
Speaker 1: that came out um that were kind of the proto Western's,
Speaker 1: early westerns that were called Blood and Thunders. That's where
Speaker 1: the title of my book comes from. Blood Thunders were
Speaker 1: these pulp westerns, and they always had some kind of
Speaker 1: hero who often was Kit carson Um. Kind of now
Speaker 1: we're getting into the fictional Kit carson Um. They said
Speaker 1: he was a you know, six foot eight and arian
Speaker 1: and blue eyed and he got all the ladies and
Speaker 1: win the day. And you know, uh, that wasn't what
Speaker 1: Kick Carson was really like at all. He was like
Speaker 1: five ft four, five ft five, awkward voice, I don't
Speaker 1: know about that, but a little twinkle in his eye.
Speaker 1: He was mischievous, but he was just to not you know,
Speaker 1: he spoke seven Indian languages. He was a lifelong, devoted
Speaker 1: friend to many Indian tribes. Don't go be wrong. He
Speaker 1: had an amazing life. But he wasn't this pulp hero
Speaker 1: that seemingly people back East writers back East needed to
Speaker 1: uh to celebrate. You know. He was this uh kind
Speaker 1: of ordinary guy who was extremely loyal. Uh. I mean
Speaker 1: it'd be great if you could have interviewed him on
Speaker 1: your show here, because I mean he was the ultimate
Speaker 1: meat eater, you know, like he he knew how to
Speaker 1: he knew how to hunt, and he knew how to fish,
Speaker 1: and he knew he knew how to butcher an animal
Speaker 1: and set up a camp and strike a camp, and
Speaker 1: he knew win to fight and win to bluff and
Speaker 1: you know, he just had all this sort of panoply
Speaker 1: of skills um that you know got him through a
Speaker 1: whole life living out here. And uh but he but
Speaker 1: he wasn't that that that sort of um cape crusader
Speaker 1: mythic hero that was that was the protagonist of these
Speaker 1: Blood and thunderbooks. Back East did a lot of running
Speaker 1: away for that to be true, right right right? You
Speaker 1: know what when when to fight and went out to fight?
Speaker 1: Yeah he he, uh he did. I mean, and that
Speaker 1: was one of his great skills, was, you know, sensing
Speaker 1: the situation. There was one particular battle in the Panhandle
Speaker 1: of Texas at a place called Adobe Walls where he
Speaker 1: was completely surrounded by Comanches and uh he in a
Speaker 1: small army and mostly an army of other Native American tribes. Actually, um,
Speaker 1: but he realized he fought with the youths a lot.
Speaker 1: He fought with the youths a lot, like you'd bring up.
Speaker 1: They traveled with them, they did, and they were his scouts.
Speaker 1: But um, he in that particular situation just figured out
Speaker 1: a way to get extricate, extricate himself from it. Add
Speaker 1: it was, it was another retreat story. I guess I'm
Speaker 1: kind of attracted to them. But he lived to fight
Speaker 1: another day. He figured out that, you know, this could
Speaker 1: have been Custard Custer times ten, you know, but he
Speaker 1: he was smart enough and uh cool under pressure enough too,
Speaker 1: to remove himself from that particular situation. Are you familiar
Speaker 1: with that. There's the first Battle of Adobe Walls and
Speaker 1: the second battle there too. He was involved in the
Speaker 1: first one. Yeah. Did you did you visit that site? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I haven't been there. Yeah. Yeah. The second one was
Speaker 1: a much minor deal, was Buffalo hunters like hide hunters
Speaker 1: versus I think But I believe the commanche in Kiowa again, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so in that same setup. How how do
Speaker 1: you approach, um, coming to a conclusion? UM? In your job,
Speaker 1: you gotta suss through all these sources, many of which
Speaker 1: are not around today, certainly when you're talking about kid
Speaker 1: Carson uh. Um, but you can very well come to
Speaker 1: a conclusion that can be refuted, uh even the next year. Right,
Speaker 1: Like we always talk about advances and technology and new
Speaker 1: findings and going back and looking at that thing in
Speaker 1: the drawer with the new technology that we have to
Speaker 1: have today. It happens, go through tons of stories like
Speaker 1: that all the time. UM. But you kind of brought
Speaker 1: it up in your UM when we're talking about James
Speaker 1: Earl Ray right, like you decided that that he did
Speaker 1: it right, because there's a whole bunch of other folks
Speaker 1: out there that think that conspiracy, big conspiracy, and a
Speaker 1: bunch of other things. So I guess I'm kind of
Speaker 1: interested in in UM, if you have a certain approach
Speaker 1: to coming to a conclusion with either a historical figure
Speaker 1: or a battle, and UM if now that you you
Speaker 1: have such a deep, um, you know, library of books
Speaker 1: that you've written, if if you've come across people who
Speaker 1: are supportive or not supportive, if you if you're working
Speaker 1: on the next story because you they don't like the
Speaker 1: conclusion that you came to. Well, absolutely, I mean, you
Speaker 1: know you're making a million little judgment calls all the
Speaker 1: time when you write a piece of narrative history. You know,
Speaker 1: you are you you have to unfortunately and and uh,
Speaker 1: you make mistakes sometimes and I think you know it's
Speaker 1: certainly um uh it's an art, very muddy, messy art,
Speaker 1: not a science. UM. And you have to be open
Speaker 1: minded like that maybe you were wrong. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe you have to revisit a subject sometime down the
Speaker 1: line and say I got that wrong. But in the
Speaker 1: end you just gotta be it's fair and as meticulous
Speaker 1: and as uh you know, try as hard as you
Speaker 1: can to put yourself in those times and not judge
Speaker 1: them by you know, today's standards of of UM politics
Speaker 1: or you know, sensibilities that we have today. UM. And
Speaker 1: uh read as many things as you can read, and
Speaker 1: you know, try to understand the times and give as
Speaker 1: much context as possible. UM. James were way. Interestingly, you know,
Speaker 1: I did not reckon with the the ferocity of this
Speaker 1: of the conspiracy people UM when I wrote that book. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know they're there. There's a small but very vocal
Speaker 1: group of people who who live just you know, live
Speaker 1: their life around conspiracies. And and it's a conspiracy. Well
Speaker 1: that one, but often it's that one is often tied
Speaker 1: to JFK and RFK at least at least those three. Um.
Speaker 1: But you know, like I knew they were out there,
Speaker 1: and I knew they wouldn't like my book because I
Speaker 1: happened to have decided independently that Ray pulled the trigger.
Speaker 1: But you know, wow, they are they hate eat me,
Speaker 1: they hate my book. They I am the enemy. You know.
Speaker 1: They actually have said things like Hampton Sides is obviously
Speaker 1: a name that was invented by the CIA UM and uh,
Speaker 1: you know he's obviously your previous works were all part
Speaker 1: of the same scheme. Like what they'll do is they'll
Speaker 1: establish him as a prominent author. I was groomed from
Speaker 1: an early will he then I was groomed from an
Speaker 1: early age to write this book. And uh, or it's
Speaker 1: just a made up name. I'm not even it's not
Speaker 1: even really me. It was written by some committee or something. Um. Oh,
Speaker 1: I mean I'm always approached by these people who at
Speaker 1: my talks about about that book. Uh that usually these
Speaker 1: are they almost always have two pays um or you know,
Speaker 1: really bad Dan Dreffer. You know, just something about them
Speaker 1: is off. And you can tell, oh, here he comes here,
Speaker 1: he's gonna he's coming at me now with you're not
Speaker 1: even done talking, you know, the that's going to be
Speaker 1: the guy that Yeah, and so you know, it's like
Speaker 1: they didn't It's not about whether they liked my book
Speaker 1: or the way I wrote it or or or where
Speaker 1: the uh you know, did I use nice metaphors or something.
Speaker 1: It's that they hate my guts because I came to
Speaker 1: a conclusion they don't agree with. And so conspiracy people
Speaker 1: are And I actually went to one of their I
Speaker 1: went kind of undercover one time and went to one
Speaker 1: of their gatherings, uh research, Yes, yeah, I just kind
Speaker 1: of want to understand who these folks are. And you know,
Speaker 1: everything is a conspiracy. Everything is connected. Everything you know,
Speaker 1: it's connected back to j Edgar Hoover and and uh
Speaker 1: the world you know, world order, you know, whatever the
Speaker 1: black helicopters, you know, Um and uh, nine eleven didn't
Speaker 1: really happen the way we thought it did because you
Speaker 1: know Bush ordered it all and you know he knew
Speaker 1: about it from the start, and you know it's like whoa,
Speaker 1: you just take some deep dives into into this alternative history.
Speaker 1: It's really it's fascinating and I think ultimately kind of pathetic.
Speaker 1: But um, these these people live and breathe. It's it's
Speaker 1: part of their is a big part of their identity.
Speaker 1: You know. Earlier I said there was two this is
Speaker 1: my last question about Kick Carson. But um, I said,
Speaker 1: there's two things that really stood out to me, and
Speaker 1: there uh one of them being I brought up the
Speaker 1: one about the sort of um developing sense of like
Speaker 1: American nous, you know, like people understand what that meant,
Speaker 1: and um that that it wasn't as sort of it
Speaker 1: wasn't like is as clean as we now imagine it,
Speaker 1: like how you identify your your national identity in those areas.
Speaker 1: But the second thing was how overt you mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: he was he wasn't responsible for um bringing the Navajo
Speaker 1: into reservation confinement and there had been a vaccine problem
Speaker 1: for hundreds of years, like the the war with New
Speaker 1: Mexicans in the Navajo, and then they finally put the task,
Speaker 1: they got serious about it and put the task to
Speaker 1: kick carson Um. Can can you talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about just like that the way he engaged and I
Speaker 1: think he used the term like total warfare, scorched earth policy.
Speaker 1: Can can you real quick walk through like what exactly
Speaker 1: that guy did to accomplish that task? Yeah? So so
Speaker 1: like for hundreds of years there had been this kind
Speaker 1: of low grade war between the New Mexicans and the
Speaker 1: DNA that Navajo where they were stealing each other's women
Speaker 1: and children and cattle and sheep and uh, it was
Speaker 1: just horrible. It was a horrible existence on both sides,
Speaker 1: like a slave trade slave between the two of them,
Speaker 1: And and you couldn't leave your house along the Rio
Speaker 1: Grand without fear of being kidnapped and vice versa. These
Speaker 1: these Denay would be doing their thing in places like
Speaker 1: Kenyan de Shay and suddenly a slave raid would come
Speaker 1: from you, a Spanish slave raid would come and take
Speaker 1: take women and children, and it was it was a
Speaker 1: horrible existence for everyone, I think. And so when the
Speaker 1: Americans showed up during the Mexican War and took over. Um.
Speaker 1: They looked at this problem and began to figure out,
Speaker 1: you know, how do we solve it, how do we
Speaker 1: stop this back and forth stealing of each other's people
Speaker 1: and cattle, um. And you know, they zeroed in on
Speaker 1: the didn't A because they were very successful raiders. They
Speaker 1: were they were a thriving, huge culture to the west
Speaker 1: of the Rio Grand Uh. They were. They were expert raiders.
Speaker 1: And they decided, this is the first group we're really
Speaker 1: gonna have to go after. You know. Of course the
Speaker 1: Comanches were also raiders, and so were the Apache um
Speaker 1: and so so there was this general General uh Henry Carlton,
Speaker 1: who James Henry Carlton, who decided once and for all
Speaker 1: that we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna really
Speaker 1: go after the Nova and we're gonna move them to
Speaker 1: the Pacos River, and we're gonna rewire their whole society
Speaker 1: and make them stop roaming around and teach him the
Speaker 1: big Christian farmers living in like apartment buildings and and
Speaker 1: and and dense areas, uh and you know, make them
Speaker 1: more like us basically. Uh. And and he decided this guy,
Speaker 1: General Carlton that kick. Carson had to had to lead
Speaker 1: the fight because it was going to be the culminating
Speaker 1: act of his career. And Carson very much did not
Speaker 1: want to do this. At first. He he rejected overtures.
Speaker 1: He actually resigned from the army at one point. Uh,
Speaker 1: but in the end he was convinced to do it.
Speaker 1: And how he did it, you know, it's like a
Speaker 1: couple of years before Sherman's famous scorched earth campaign against
Speaker 1: the South, Carson lead a scorched earth campaign against the
Speaker 1: novel that was every bit as brutal. Um the way
Speaker 1: he did it. He realized he couldn't fight the novel hoo,
Speaker 1: because they didn't fight in that any kind of traditional
Speaker 1: way with lines of with with you know, um, you know,
Speaker 1: basically they scattered, you know, and they not The who
Speaker 1: country is so conducive to scattering. You know, there's just
Speaker 1: endless canyons and caves and um. It's so Carson was
Speaker 1: frustrated he couldn't fight them, so he decided to fight
Speaker 1: their land. He you know, he killed every horse and
Speaker 1: every cow and every sheep, and he burned every cornfield
Speaker 1: and every peach tree, and uh, it was a war
Speaker 1: on the land. And um, I remember you're talking about
Speaker 1: like chopping down thought of orchard trees. Yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: famous part of the campaign in into Canyon Kenyon D. Shay.
Speaker 1: He also like had his men guard the water sources
Speaker 1: and the salt sources, and you know, it was just
Speaker 1: the systematic thing. And so you have this guy who
Speaker 1: very very much didn't want to do this. It was
Speaker 1: very reluctant, but somehow once he began, he turned out
Speaker 1: to be really good at this kind of warfare. Um
Speaker 1: and and it kind of went against so many of
Speaker 1: his instincts, and yet he led this campaign. He understood
Speaker 1: the landscape like no one did though, you know, and
Speaker 1: it worked, I mean and within a within a year,
Speaker 1: it took about a year. They began to starve, and
Speaker 1: they began to surrender in ones and twos and then
Speaker 1: dozens and then scores than hundreds and hundreds and thousands.
Speaker 1: This was one of the largest tribes in the North America.
Speaker 1: And he brought them to their knees and in the end,
Speaker 1: it was like they came to him, and they came
Speaker 1: to him. I'd be like if you took a town,
Speaker 1: like if you imagine today, you took a town and
Speaker 1: you came in and said like, okay, you destroy the
Speaker 1: highway coming into the town on either end, blow up
Speaker 1: all the gas stations, burn all the grocery stores. Right
Speaker 1: then you sit back and be like, give it a minute, boys,
Speaker 1: they'll be out. And eventually, you know, it's just like
Speaker 1: and then they were marched on this kind of thing
Speaker 1: that's often compared to the Trail of Tears of the Cherokee.
Speaker 1: But they were marched to this place on the Picos,
Speaker 1: and they tried to make it work, but it was
Speaker 1: so alien. It was such an alien environment to the Navajo,
Speaker 1: you know, just just in terms of geography, but also
Speaker 1: in terms of you know, it's like there was just
Speaker 1: nothing recognizable out there. It was like Mesquite and you know,
Speaker 1: just this kind of semi arid desert without all of
Speaker 1: those amazing rock formations that the not that that that DNA.
Speaker 1: You know, we we think of the Dnay Country and
Speaker 1: we think ship Rock and Monument Valley and all these
Speaker 1: amazing places. That this was just this flat, boring swatch
Speaker 1: a land on the Pacos. And and it turned out
Speaker 1: there wasn't enough firewood to keep them warm. There wasn't
Speaker 1: enough clean water for them to drink and UH, and
Speaker 1: they didn't want to be congested in a tight little area. UM.
Speaker 1: And they just it was like they suffered. The tribe
Speaker 1: suffered a psychological breakdown. You know, It's like they wouldn't plant,
Speaker 1: they gave up. They were morose and UH, diseases took
Speaker 1: over and a third of the Navajo died and in
Speaker 1: a few short years, and Carson understood this wasn't working. Um.
Speaker 1: General Carlton refused to admit that. UH. And finally it
Speaker 1: took General Sherman after the Civil War. General Sherman came
Speaker 1: out all the way to the Pacos and saw what
Speaker 1: was going on and realized that this huge experiment had failed.
Speaker 1: And he eventually sent them back to Navajo country. And
Speaker 1: it's one of the very few examples where people were
Speaker 1: you know, tribe was removed from its homeland but then
Speaker 1: returned to their homeland. UH. Somewhat bitter sweet, um, somewhat
Speaker 1: happy ending for the Nava Navajo after all this tragedy,
Speaker 1: that they were actually allowed to go home. When you're
Speaker 1: looking at your book subjects and thinking about what you're
Speaker 1: gonna do, uh, you were talking about things having things
Speaker 1: that you need to check, you know, sort of the
Speaker 1: I don't know, I can't remember what term you used,
Speaker 1: but there's sort of a yeah. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it's got to have good characters, just have good plot,
Speaker 1: good structure, you know, all the things that a good
Speaker 1: story needs to have. Do you, um, is death like
Speaker 1: death's big part of like misery and death? Are you
Speaker 1: are are you aware of that component or is that
Speaker 1: just sort of like uh that just happened. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean do you go like it has to have
Speaker 1: it has the about life and death? I suppose. I mean,
Speaker 1: I I don't think that I'm you know, uh, gratuitously
Speaker 1: depressed or looking for depressed subjects just just for the
Speaker 1: sake of of of making you know, making people um,
Speaker 1: you know down, you know. But I do think that
Speaker 1: you do have to have highs and lows, and a
Speaker 1: good narrative needs to have high stakes and it needs
Speaker 1: to you know, you need to care about there the
Speaker 1: character's fate, whether they're gonna live or die, whether they're
Speaker 1: going to survive uh and um uh yeah, I think
Speaker 1: a good narrative has history, has to has to have
Speaker 1: that component. Um, your felt, Little Santa Fean Corman McCarthy
Speaker 1: talks about you know this is I'm paraphrasing, but something
Speaker 1: to the effect of that. You know, if it's not
Speaker 1: about death, it's not important. It's about how you how
Speaker 1: people face death, and how they get through an ordeal
Speaker 1: and how they you know, all the combination of traits
Speaker 1: that they summoned to to survive, uh, an extreme situation.
Speaker 1: I guess that's a theme that runs through almost all
Speaker 1: my books. Um, for some reason, it just is a
Speaker 1: theme I keep returning to. And the truth is, you know,
Speaker 1: like a story and where in which everybody is happy
Speaker 1: and everything goes well and there is no adversity and
Speaker 1: and no one dies is rarely a good story. I'm sorry, Um,
Speaker 1: Sometimes what's the number one best seller? That everybody had
Speaker 1: everything they needed and lived happily every after and we
Speaker 1: started at a spot where they were still happy. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of stories that don't involve a
Speaker 1: lot of death. I guess like a political writer is
Speaker 1: writing about, right, I don't know, if you're reporting on
Speaker 1: a campaign, Yeah, they just stopped before they get there.
Speaker 1: We know this will eventually have this implication. Imagine these
Speaker 1: people all be dead, you know, tell us about tell
Speaker 1: us about how you got on, um, how you got
Speaker 1: on a Captain Cook? Like what like, how did that
Speaker 1: wind up grabbing you? Well? Um, I uh, I've been
Speaker 1: thinking about him for a long time because of that
Speaker 1: in the Kingdom of Ice story, which is you know,
Speaker 1: set in Alaska and in Siberia, and the only other
Speaker 1: person really tried to do what the Jeanette did was
Speaker 1: Captain Cook. Um. Captain Cook charted the entire coast of
Speaker 1: Alaska and on his third voyage, and you know, he's
Speaker 1: mostly associated with the South Seas, but Captain Cook was
Speaker 1: all over Alaska. Like we had our little thing where
Speaker 1: we kept going past where he died fish in a
Speaker 1: WAYI yeah, So then I got to read that night,
Speaker 1: we'd get done fish and I'd go read about Captain
Speaker 1: Cook a little bit. But um almost seems like almost
Speaker 1: like casually moving between like he'd go to Alaska then
Speaker 1: wind up out in the south the back to Alaska, right, which,
Speaker 1: interestingly enough, is what a ton of people in Alaska
Speaker 1: and it was such a strong connection between those two places.
Speaker 1: That's one of my brother. My brother lives in Alaska,
Speaker 1: and he's like, you know how it was because we
Speaker 1: grew up in Michigan, because you know how it is
Speaker 1: with Michigan people in Florida. He goes in Alaska. That's why. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know, part somewhat facetiously, My wife said that, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like you do all these books, like
Speaker 1: you did this book that's set in Siberia, and you
Speaker 1: did books setting the kind of remote part of the Philippines,
Speaker 1: and you know, why don't you pick a book that
Speaker 1: involves travel to places I would like to go to?
Speaker 1: Uh and we go together. And she was kind of kidding,
Speaker 1: but she was not really kidding. And I said, well,
Speaker 1: I've kind of fished out the old notes from previous
Speaker 1: book ideas and I said, well, how about Captain Cook? Um? Uh.
Speaker 1: She's like, well, where did that involve going to? And
Speaker 1: I said, well, you know, um, Tahiti, French Polynesia, you know, uh, Donga,
Speaker 1: New Zealand, Alaska, lots of other places. She's like, okay, bingo,
Speaker 1: that's it. That's the one. But but you know, I
Speaker 1: started looking at Kit Carson and I realized, I mean
Speaker 1: Captain Cook's story. Um, Captain Cook is a very controversial cat,
Speaker 1: just like Kid Carson. And you know, in terms of
Speaker 1: we were talking earlier of statues coming down and people
Speaker 1: um uh reassessing his legacy or something like that, And
Speaker 1: to me, that made him more interesting. Like whenever, whenever
Speaker 1: a historical subject has a pulse and has a controversy
Speaker 1: surrounding it, all the much better. Better. You know, like
Speaker 1: you're like, you're aware of whatever if you if you
Speaker 1: humanize him, you're where that you will be criticized. Ye,
Speaker 1: and then you know, but that's what also will bring
Speaker 1: people to the book. I think, you know, give it
Speaker 1: a pulse, you know, does that like does it change
Speaker 1: the lens you're looking him at? Like? Are you looking
Speaker 1: at him? You know through a lens you would have
Speaker 1: looked at him twenty years ago? Are you like I
Speaker 1: ought to be thinking about what he did right here
Speaker 1: a different way. Yeah. I don't think a historian can
Speaker 1: help you know that filter. You know, you have to
Speaker 1: be aware of your time. And I'm sure that like
Speaker 1: for example, Blood and Thunder, if I were writing Blood
Speaker 1: and Thunder today, I would write it differently. I can't
Speaker 1: help it. Times, I don't think I think you allowed
Speaker 1: a lot of people in that book. You allowed a
Speaker 1: lot of people their humanity, and you mostly when in
Speaker 1: that book, when you condemn someone for being inept, it's
Speaker 1: mostly that they were regarded as inept by their peers
Speaker 1: in their own time. You're not, you don't, Like, I'm
Speaker 1: sure you do, Like you can't not look at it
Speaker 1: from now, but um, the people that were assholes did
Speaker 1: things that were often recognized as asshole ish and incompetent
Speaker 1: by their own people. Yeah, like you really do it?
Speaker 1: Like in that project that a very good job of
Speaker 1: helping people understand what was happening at a time. Well,
Speaker 1: I think, and I think that's like I don't know
Speaker 1: how And I would guess if you if you take
Speaker 1: on a Cook and be like, okay, listen, at the time,
Speaker 1: this is ship that was going on, right, you know,
Speaker 1: and and let's just talk about what happened at the
Speaker 1: time and what people felt at the time, and then
Speaker 1: you can now go and interpret that. But like, at
Speaker 1: the moment, this is what the world looked like, right.
Speaker 1: And the other problem with with uh Captain Cook is
Speaker 1: his story. You know, he had three voyages. Each one
Speaker 1: was everybod as big as the other one. There They're
Speaker 1: just all very consequential and sprawling, And I realized I
Speaker 1: couldn't I couldn't do like a big biography of Captain Cook.
Speaker 1: That's not what I wanted to do. I had decided
Speaker 1: and my wife actually was was the one who said,
Speaker 1: you gotta pick one voyage, and I decided I'm going
Speaker 1: to focus on the third voyage because for a lot
Speaker 1: of different reasons. But it has this amazing murder story
Speaker 1: in the middle of it, said in a y And
Speaker 1: not only that, but it also happens you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's the most American, and I'm an American writer. This
Speaker 1: is the most American of the three voyages because it
Speaker 1: happens in July. It starts in July seventy six. It
Speaker 1: happens during the American Revolution. Uh. He discovers or rediscovers Hawaii,
Speaker 1: he charged the coast of Alaska, and he um after
Speaker 1: he dies, the voyage uh ends up in the hands
Speaker 1: of a Virginia, Virginia born American guy named John Gore
Speaker 1: who who captains the vessels home. So it's it's an
Speaker 1: American story in a lot of ways. Um. And so
Speaker 1: that's that's one part of it. The other part of
Speaker 1: it is, Um, there's something wrong with Captain Cook on
Speaker 1: the third voyage. All his scholars and all the kind
Speaker 1: of cook nerds out there are trying to figure out
Speaker 1: what's wrong with them the psychologically, psychologically, he's cruel. He's
Speaker 1: he's using the lash. He's being very cruel to his
Speaker 1: own people. He's cruel to the indigenous people he encounters
Speaker 1: in ways that were not true. How long have you been?
Speaker 1: How long have you been at it? By this point,
Speaker 1: the three voyages were Um, you know, he'd been doing
Speaker 1: it for about twelve years, doing this kind of voyaging.
Speaker 1: But he'd been in the navy for a long time.
Speaker 1: He was late forties when the expedition started. He was tired. Uh.
Speaker 1: He speculated that he had some kind of weird parasite
Speaker 1: from eating some bizarre food. You know what I was
Speaker 1: gonna say. He had cat scratch fever, probably kind of food.
Speaker 1: You guys talk about to plasm we've been we've been
Speaker 1: exploring lately. Um, all these there's latent toxoplasmosis. It's like
Speaker 1: a parasite doesn't sound good. Well, just all these links
Speaker 1: between irrational, um reckless behavior and people who have suffered
Speaker 1: like increased entrepreneurial ship, increase auto accidents with people who
Speaker 1: suffer from toxoplasmosis. So the minute you said that he
Speaker 1: was that he was behaving erratically, that's from my mind. Well,
Speaker 1: and an interesting cook. One of his attributes everyone talks
Speaker 1: about it is that he would eat anything and he
Speaker 1: would get you know what, whatever culture he was encountering,
Speaker 1: he would he would he would break bread with them
Speaker 1: and eat whatever they're eating. And a lot of his
Speaker 1: officers will go, God, I'm not eating that thing whatever,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. Uh kind of food you guys eat routinely. Uh.
Speaker 1: He he had an iron stomach and he would eat anything.
Speaker 1: But apparently something got whatever it was, I guess we'll
Speaker 1: never know. Like it was pronounced enough that people wonder
Speaker 1: if he didn't. It's beyond a bad mood, right. No,
Speaker 1: every his officers wrote about it, you know, all the
Speaker 1: all the the serious cook scholars, you know, from the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds on wrote about it. Something was wrong on
Speaker 1: the third voyage, and the old standby of syphilis hasn't
Speaker 1: gotten probably not because you know, I mean, I'm still
Speaker 1: open minded do this, but I think, um, everyone says
Speaker 1: that he never got it on with with any of
Speaker 1: the native I mean, believe me, all his men were
Speaker 1: and that's another issue that was going on. They were
Speaker 1: spreading syphilis all over the South seas. Um, and it
Speaker 1: was it was sad, it was pitiful, it was happening.
Speaker 1: But but Cook was married and apparently was loyal to
Speaker 1: his wife and didn't partake. Um. I'm still looking for
Speaker 1: evidence to the contrary, but um apparently, um he well,
Speaker 1: I suppose he could have had syphilis, you know, prior
Speaker 1: to even being married. Um. You know, syphilis is a
Speaker 1: very weird disease and uh manifests itself in a lot
Speaker 1: of different ways. But um no, syphilis usually is not
Speaker 1: one of the ones that that is, you know, listed
Speaker 1: as one of the culprits here. But anyway, something's going
Speaker 1: on with Cook, So that makes an answer kind of
Speaker 1: creates a little bit of a mystery to the story. Uh.
Speaker 1: As he moves through his voyage and when he by
Speaker 1: the time he gets to Hawaii, um he he's not
Speaker 1: his usual prudent self who knows how to negotiate, and
Speaker 1: you know, he pisces off a lot of people on
Speaker 1: the Big Island and uh you know, ultimately it leads
Speaker 1: to this kind of passion play on the shores of
Speaker 1: the Big Island where uh you know that's been dissected
Speaker 1: by a lot of different people, including the Hawaiians. And
Speaker 1: this is the other part, a rough sketch of what
Speaker 1: happened that day. I want to know if I looked
Speaker 1: at spot Yeah, well, um, so, uh, the Hawaiians, I
Speaker 1: have to go back a little bit, because so he
Speaker 1: had been on the Big Island for a number of
Speaker 1: weeks and had been treated like a king, had been
Speaker 1: treated almost like a deity. In fact, that's that's a
Speaker 1: whole Another issue is that perhaps the Hawaiians thought he
Speaker 1: was this god named Lano. Um what is that is that?
Speaker 1: Can you can you speak about that for a second?
Speaker 1: Is that connected to the way he approached the island
Speaker 1: and then sailed around the island a couple of times.
Speaker 1: And yeah, he's sort of fulfilled a prophecy in some
Speaker 1: of the y's exactly he sailed. He sailed in a
Speaker 1: clockwise fashion around the Big Island. And uh, there was
Speaker 1: this tradition and Hawaiian culture that Lana would come and
Speaker 1: during this particular season that happened to be right when
Speaker 1: Cook arrived. Um, they they either treated him thought he
Speaker 1: was Lana or they thought he was a manifestation of Lano. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is endlessly to baited. But nonetheless he came ashore
Speaker 1: and was treated truly like a god. I mean they
Speaker 1: rolled out the red carpet and and and his men
Speaker 1: were treated so well for about a month, and it
Speaker 1: was this huge celebration going on that he was there,
Speaker 1: and he was there. But then when he came time
Speaker 1: to leave to go back to Alaska, um, to pursue
Speaker 1: pursue this. The reason that he was going to Alaska
Speaker 1: was to find a passage to the Atlantic Ocean, like
Speaker 1: a Northwest passage obviously doesn't exist or didn't exist. Um,
Speaker 1: but uh, so he's going back to Alaska. And about
Speaker 1: two days after leaving Hawaii, Uh, he encounters a storm
Speaker 1: and one of his masked snaps and he has to
Speaker 1: turn around and go back to Hawaii to find some
Speaker 1: would uh you know, replace his mast. Also, he I
Speaker 1: didn't know he went back on such a flimsy not
Speaker 1: a flimsy premise, but it was like a freak Yeah.
Speaker 1: And this time they were like, well, what are you
Speaker 1: doing here? Lano? But uh, is it plausible that he
Speaker 1: would have never gone back to Hawaii? Like yes, like
Speaker 1: his future plans like he may have never he might
Speaker 1: if that thing had snapped, he might not have been there. Ever,
Speaker 1: very plausible, and it was. The plan was to go
Speaker 1: go back to Alaska and try to find the Northwest
Speaker 1: Passage and then go home after that to England. But uh,
Speaker 1: but when he comes back, everything is different. They they're like,
Speaker 1: you can't be a god. You know, God's ships, masks
Speaker 1: don't break. What are you doing here? Maybe you're just
Speaker 1: you know, here to steal our stuff. You want our
Speaker 1: water and our wood and our women and our food,
Speaker 1: our hogs and uh they it was pronounced. It was
Speaker 1: like a totally different environment. And uh. Within a couple
Speaker 1: of days, Um, some Hawaiians stole uh one of his
Speaker 1: smaller boats, a cutter. Uh and those these cutters were
Speaker 1: very important part of their expedition. And so he was.
Speaker 1: He was angry, and he came ashore cooked did to
Speaker 1: try to find the boat, and in the course of things,
Speaker 1: he kidnapped. But he physically goes on the beach. He
Speaker 1: physically did it. Yes, just going crazy. You know, you
Speaker 1: think he would have got one of his officers or
Speaker 1: you know, one of the marines or something to go
Speaker 1: do this. He personally did it. And he kidnapped this chief,
Speaker 1: the chief of the Big Island, pretty much the highest
Speaker 1: ranking uh figure. He kidnapped him and tried to force
Speaker 1: him on back on to the ship. The idea was
Speaker 1: that they would they would hold him until they got
Speaker 1: their boat back. You know, he's going to take them
Speaker 1: and you know as hostage. Well, some of the warriors
Speaker 1: saw what was going on. They didn't like what was
Speaker 1: going on, and they started to uh uh resist and
Speaker 1: wouldn't let their chief come aboard the ship. And um,
Speaker 1: things escalated, and you know there's certainly language differences in
Speaker 1: culture differences and misques and misunderstandings. And Cook fired a
Speaker 1: shot in the air. Um, and then uh he fired
Speaker 1: a shot at a native and killed a Native Hawaiian.
Speaker 1: And then uh, very soon thereafter, a hatchet ends up
Speaker 1: between his shoulder blades and he drowns in about a
Speaker 1: foot of water at on at the bay there k
Speaker 1: l a q K bay where you were fishing apparently, um,
Speaker 1: and uh you know there's a monument there still. Um.
Speaker 1: It was actually declared when a little brief area of
Speaker 1: that around where the killing happened is still technically British soil.
Speaker 1: It's so kind of a weird thing. I don't fully
Speaker 1: understand how that's possible, but uh, it's you know a
Speaker 1: lot of people go there. It's a monument too to
Speaker 1: what happened. But also you know the British presence. You know,
Speaker 1: it used to be a British possession, the Sandwich Islands
Speaker 1: that was called um and so it's kind of you know,
Speaker 1: I've I've been reading history stuff for a long time.
Speaker 1: I never I didn't know that the Sandwich Islands or
Speaker 1: Hawaiian I only I remember like putting it together, like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's that is well. Cook named him that because the
Speaker 1: great uh, the great advocate for all of his explorations,
Speaker 1: was the first Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Sandwich, and
Speaker 1: Lord Sandwich was the inventor of the sandwich. He was
Speaker 1: real busy all the time and he didn't have time
Speaker 1: to eat, so he just took two pieces of bread
Speaker 1: and put a piece of beef between him and stuck
Speaker 1: it in his mouth and became known as the sandwich.
Speaker 1: I'm not kidding, um, but anyway, Um, that's that's the
Speaker 1: book I'm writing now, and it's about two thirds almost
Speaker 1: three quarters done, probably come out late next year. Tell
Speaker 1: me about the character is the explain what's going on
Speaker 1: with your with your story you have about the guy
Speaker 1: my okay? Is that part of that's not part of
Speaker 1: the book. It is part of the book. It's just
Speaker 1: kind of like an early excerpt from the book, but
Speaker 1: also turned into its own thing. It's it's a kind
Speaker 1: of a story that I've carved out of the book.
Speaker 1: Um and uh it's just recently been published by Scripted Originals,
Speaker 1: which is a new new thing. It's kind of an
Speaker 1: interesting long form digital deal that uh that I've just discovered.
Speaker 1: I love, I love doing this piece for them. Um.
Speaker 1: So the piece is called The Exotic and it's about
Speaker 1: this young man named my who uh came to England
Speaker 1: as part of Cook's second voyage and was the first
Speaker 1: Polynesian ever to arrive on um on English shores. He
Speaker 1: was Cook took him, Yes he was. He was a
Speaker 1: Tahitian man, a young man who became this uh cause
Speaker 1: celeb in in England. He he just took that country
Speaker 1: by storm. They loved him. And uh it's really about
Speaker 1: his two years in England and how this noble savage
Speaker 1: as they called him, um, kind of one over the
Speaker 1: nation and the leading thinkers and writers and politicians. He
Speaker 1: met the King of England. Uh, and he was vaccinated
Speaker 1: that this new thing called a vaccination of smallpox. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was at least the procedure for smallpox was. And
Speaker 1: it was still a little risky. It was still a
Speaker 1: little experimental. But um. Unfortunately, what would happen is that
Speaker 1: English would bring up to that point, it had been
Speaker 1: native Americans and Eskimos into it. They're bringing them to London.
Speaker 1: They want to show him off, prayed him around, you know,
Speaker 1: make impress upon them how powerful England was. But they
Speaker 1: were also genuinely curious about these people, um, and how
Speaker 1: they would do and how they would fare in a
Speaker 1: big city. But almost invariably they would die uh a smallpox.
Speaker 1: It was almost always smallpox. Well, when my got there,
Speaker 1: the King of England, King George the third, said we
Speaker 1: got to get this guy vaccinated, and they did and
Speaker 1: it was successful and because of that he lived for
Speaker 1: this two years. It was healthy. The ladies kind of
Speaker 1: fell in love with him. Um. He ended up being
Speaker 1: this um they like. He became a gentleman, an English gentleman.
Speaker 1: He hunted, he uh uh, learned to play chess and backgammon,
Speaker 1: and we went to all the balls and dances and
Speaker 1: the salons and you know, but people it was kind
Speaker 1: of a mixture of like they were genuinely fascinated by him,
Speaker 1: but they also were studying him, you know, like is
Speaker 1: he really the noble savage? And h He also turned
Speaker 1: out this guy my brought barbecue to England because at
Speaker 1: one point one of the estates where he had been
Speaker 1: hunting um, one of the lords said, well, why don't
Speaker 1: we hear that you cook in this special way down
Speaker 1: in Polynesia. You know, perhaps you could cook these foul
Speaker 1: that they had just shot um in the Polynesian way.
Speaker 1: And he said, well, I would love to. And he
Speaker 1: turned out to be a great cook. You know, you
Speaker 1: dig a hole in the round and you you know,
Speaker 1: you cook cook it in in Uh the Polynesian way
Speaker 1: took in many hours, uh, slow and low, you know,
Speaker 1: lots of smoke, and uh. He they just loved it.
Speaker 1: They loved it so much that everywhere he went they
Speaker 1: asked him to cook for them. He became this kind
Speaker 1: of celebrity chef. You know. But was he was he
Speaker 1: even somebody treated as an equal or was it always
Speaker 1: sort of understood that he was uh like not quite European, yeah,
Speaker 1: uh mixture. I mean, I think a lot of his
Speaker 1: mates on the ship that he had sailed with almost
Speaker 1: viewed him as an equal because he he equitted himself
Speaker 1: very well and on on the ship he was a
Speaker 1: great fisherman, he was he was a great uh just
Speaker 1: someone who understood the ocean. You know, Polynesians are just
Speaker 1: excellent navigators. And you know, I think he was treated
Speaker 1: quite equally, surprisingly so on the ship. But by the
Speaker 1: time we got to England, I think there was this
Speaker 1: mixture of like, yeah, you're fascinating, your interesting, you're a
Speaker 1: prince of some sort, but you're still you're still a
Speaker 1: person of color. You know that you can't you can't
Speaker 1: divorce yourself from the racial views of that time. Um,
Speaker 1: they you know, there was a patronizing quality to the
Speaker 1: way they treated him. There's no way to avoid saying that.
Speaker 1: But but overall I think they did about as they
Speaker 1: treated him, about as well as they could possibly do.
Speaker 1: But and one of the reasons they did it there
Speaker 1: was a kind of a colonial competitive layer to this,
Speaker 1: which is that the English really wanted to take over Tahiti,
Speaker 1: and they wanted to make sure. The French didn't and
Speaker 1: the Spanish didn't, so they wanted to treat this guy
Speaker 1: like an envoy and make him, you know, happy, so
Speaker 1: that they would return him. And that's the second part
Speaker 1: of the story. Is he goes back to Tahiti on
Speaker 1: Captain Cook's third voyage, and he has returned to Tahiti
Speaker 1: with this experience that he's had, this excellent adventure that
Speaker 1: he's been on, and he's returned with all these possessions
Speaker 1: that are so alien to the Tehitians. He's got horses,
Speaker 1: he's he's got goats, he's got sheep, he's got a
Speaker 1: suit of armor. He's got all these guns and you know, muskets,
Speaker 1: and he's got gunpowder and knives and swords and all
Speaker 1: this metal. I mean, they had never seen metal before
Speaker 1: the Europeans had arrived. And it's sets in motion this
Speaker 1: you know, all these jealousies and you know, people are
Speaker 1: trying to figure out who is this guy. My he's
Speaker 1: not actually from a chiefly class. He's actually from a
Speaker 1: kind of a uh land. Listen, He's a nobody basically,
Speaker 1: but he suddenly he thinks he's big stuff and he's
Speaker 1: got all this all these belongings more than any chief. Uh.
Speaker 1: It just drives people crazy. And it's it's really about
Speaker 1: how he returns. And I forgot to mention the whole
Speaker 1: reason got on board Cook's second voyage to go to
Speaker 1: England really the only reason because he wanted guns. He
Speaker 1: wanted to go to war against the people of Bora Bora,
Speaker 1: which was this is a long old, festering kind of
Speaker 1: hatfield and McCoy's situation back back home that he wanted
Speaker 1: he wanted guns so that he could kick ass against
Speaker 1: the horrible runs and and in the end he ultimately
Speaker 1: does that. He fights a battle against them with these
Speaker 1: new things called guns and wins the battle. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: very interesting arc to his story. And I decided to
Speaker 1: kind of carve it out of the bigger book and
Speaker 1: turn it into a uh you know, it's like it's
Speaker 1: like it's like a novella length story, but it will
Speaker 1: go back into the big book. It'll go back into
Speaker 1: the big book with slightly with some differences and changing
Speaker 1: it up a little bit. But yep, So with your work,
Speaker 1: do you always are all your stories optioned out for films?
Speaker 1: Let's see, Well, yeah, all of them have been very
Speaker 1: few of them have gotten made. Ghost Soldiers was turned
Speaker 1: into a movie called The Great Raid that was made
Speaker 1: by a really nice man named Harvey Weinstein. Uh. He
Speaker 1: bought my first book. A wonderful guy. Oh is that right?
Speaker 1: My wife used to work for Oh my gosh, nice great,
Speaker 1: She's got great Harvey story that she does. Wow. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: it was it was made um into a movie by Mirramax,
Speaker 1: and um, it wasn't great. I didn't do particularly well
Speaker 1: commercially or happy with it. I was happy with the
Speaker 1: historical accuracy of it. But it just didn't work, you know,
Speaker 1: I was there's some casting problems. I think maybe maybe
Speaker 1: they got the wrong director or something something about it
Speaker 1: wasn't quite right. It had James Franco uh, and it
Speaker 1: had actually an excellent cast. Um, but somehow on the
Speaker 1: end they it just didn't work. Uh. Did you get
Speaker 1: it way in on the historical accuracy of the actual film? Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: And I mean they actually wanted me to like it.
Speaker 1: They wanted me to vet it, and they actually flew
Speaker 1: me to the set, which unfortunately, it wasn't filmed in
Speaker 1: the Philippines, which is where it needed to be. It
Speaker 1: was filmed in Australia. So I went to Australia and
Speaker 1: I went to the set and they happened to be
Speaker 1: fighting that night. You know, it was nights night filming,
Speaker 1: and there was explosions and grenades and flares and all
Speaker 1: this stuff going on, and all of a sudden, this kangaroo,
Speaker 1: terrified hops across the camera, uh, in front of the camera,
Speaker 1: and the director has to say, you know, cut because
Speaker 1: there weren't any kangaroos in the Philippines. Um. But uh,
Speaker 1: but you know it was it was you know, like
Speaker 1: I said, I was happy with the historical accuracy. In
Speaker 1: the end, they listened to me and they tried and
Speaker 1: it was a decent uh movie. I call it the
Speaker 1: perfectly good rate, not the great rate. But went to
Speaker 1: in the Philippines that went to where where's the there's
Speaker 1: a ton memorial. I can't remember where I went, but
Speaker 1: I went to in the Philippines too. Yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: it's a huge event still memorialized, and it would have
Speaker 1: been cool to film it there, man. Yeah, it would
Speaker 1: have been. It would have been amazing. And that's that.
Speaker 1: That was one of the weaknesses I think of the
Speaker 1: film is that you can just somehow tell it's not
Speaker 1: the Philippines. You know, other stuff has been optioned. Um,
Speaker 1: the most interesting thing is Blood and Thunder. I mean
Speaker 1: there's just something about that book that people have just constantly.
Speaker 1: It's like when one group tries to make it and fails,
Speaker 1: then another group comes on board, and you know, I
Speaker 1: think it's too big and sprawling and ultimately controversial as
Speaker 1: story for people to figure out how to track it.
Speaker 1: It's like how you really can't do um, no one,
Speaker 1: like no one's really done, like Lewis and Clark expedition, right, Like,
Speaker 1: you can't. You're right, you can't. It's just I think
Speaker 1: I think it's I guarantee right now someone's working on
Speaker 1: that some bitch. Yeah, always know won't work out. Undonted
Speaker 1: Courage has probably been optioned twenty times, you know. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: I can see like how you'd have to, Yeah, you
Speaker 1: have the find for kick Cars. You have to find
Speaker 1: some like micro type event, you know. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: you have to or or make it sprawl into a series,
Speaker 1: which is the group that's doing it trying to do
Speaker 1: it now is the same people who did Game of Thrones.
Speaker 1: You can imagine that just take out the dragons and
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, turn it into it's like this
Speaker 1: story of all these kingdoms all fighting over the same
Speaker 1: you know, trying to trying to you know, survive this.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's a very similar story. Actually. Um,
Speaker 1: the group that's trying to do it now, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: But at first the first person who optioned it with Spielberg,
Speaker 1: tried to make it into a movie. Didn't work for him,
Speaker 1: and then it was Robert Redford, and then then it
Speaker 1: was Ridley Scott. Uh. Pretty cool. Every time I get
Speaker 1: very excited, and then of course it just somehow didn't
Speaker 1: work in the end. So we'll see what this new
Speaker 1: group is able to do. It'll be interesting to see.
Speaker 1: You know. The first meeting I had with anyone around
Speaker 1: like television and film and stuff, the first serious meeting
Speaker 1: I had was around like having a project in minn
Speaker 1: option And I always remember. The woman's name was Gloria.
Speaker 1: We're sitting in a room like this, a bunch of people,
Speaker 1: and she said, first off, I just want to say that, um,
Speaker 1: nothing ever gets done. It's impossible with that. Let's get started. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I couldn't figure out why when the oscars
Speaker 1: happened there, you know, and somebody wins, and they're just
Speaker 1: all this exaggerated excitement, like, oh gosh, you know, it's
Speaker 1: so exciting, and they're just freaking out on stage. I
Speaker 1: always thought it was because they were just incredibly self obsessed,
Speaker 1: narcissistic people, which they are. But the reason there that
Speaker 1: way is because it was truly a miracle that the
Speaker 1: thing got made and that it was good and then
Speaker 1: it actually won an award. I mean, it's like, there's
Speaker 1: so many reasons why films fail, especially films about, you know,
Speaker 1: complicated historical subjects. Um. I think I've mentioned this quote
Speaker 1: in the past, but who's the you know, John lockra
Speaker 1: is how he says in The Intrigue Like Espionage, he
Speaker 1: described having his books turned into movies. He described it
Speaker 1: as watching an oxen turned into a bullion cube. That's great. Uh,
Speaker 1: well they always say that, uh, And I think it
Speaker 1: was Hemmingway who said it that you're supposed to the
Speaker 1: writer of the book is supposed to drive to the
Speaker 1: California Nevada border in the middle of the night, and
Speaker 1: the Hollywood guys show up on the California side, and
Speaker 1: you go into your trunk and you hurl your manuscript
Speaker 1: over the border, and then they go to their trunk
Speaker 1: and they hurl the money at you, and then the
Speaker 1: two cars just turned around and drive away and they
Speaker 1: never never meet. That's probably the smartest way to do it,
Speaker 1: because it would be a lot less heartache and a
Speaker 1: lot less U frustration. Yeah. Uh, well, maybe he'll be
Speaker 1: a big Captain cook blockbuster. Hey, real quick, when when
Speaker 1: you're when this does happen? Um, who's gonna who should
Speaker 1: play Captain Cook? Just give us an idea? Who should
Speaker 1: play captain? Like cag to you? Who's Captain cook Man?
Speaker 1: How old was when he died? Uh? He was or fifty?
Speaker 1: I guess I should know that off the top of
Speaker 1: my head, but I don't haven't gotten to that part yet.
Speaker 1: Who should That's a very good question. Is too old?
Speaker 1: You know? He was a very tall um and very
Speaker 1: severe looking guy. Um with an intense gaze, a very
Speaker 1: large nose. Um. Rick Moran is not gonna do it?
Speaker 1: That's a very good question. I haven't thought of that.
Speaker 1: But and in fact, that's another one that has not
Speaker 1: been done. You'd think there'd be a lot of cook
Speaker 1: movies out there, there really aren't has been done. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I think it's maybe way back days. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so when could people why could people see a new
Speaker 1: book come out, the one on cook You haven't even
Speaker 1: finished it yet, but I mean it'll be a while, right,
Speaker 1: it'll be late at the very earliest, will be the
Speaker 1: end of next year, around Christmas time. And uh. The
Speaker 1: tentative title is The Resolution, which was the name of
Speaker 1: his ship, the Resolution, um man, the British knew how
Speaker 1: to name ships, you know, the endeavor, Discovery, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: and this and this one, you know, the Resolution, which
Speaker 1: has got so many layers of meaning, including the resolution
Speaker 1: of his story, his life story. That's a good point, man.
Speaker 1: So that's why read that comes out? Well maybe maybe
Speaker 1: in fte me back on here and we'll talk like
Speaker 1: those people that when the new Harry Potter book was
Speaker 1: coming out, They're like line up at the bookstore. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be out waiting to get that book because I
Speaker 1: need to find out did they at them? Did not
Speaker 1: at them? Well? We will, I mean, because I am
Speaker 1: from Memphis, and you know, we consider ourselves the barbecue
Speaker 1: capital of the world. We we we probably will have
Speaker 1: some barbecue recipes in the back, you know, like dry
Speaker 1: rub of European you know, or you know, different recipes. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's you know. The the Liyons insist that he
Speaker 1: was not actually eaten, but he was, in fact, Um,
Speaker 1: he in fact was dismembered and cooked, baked and uh
Speaker 1: and uh uh when his remains were presented to the
Speaker 1: to the English who are still waiting in that bay
Speaker 1: waiting for something, uh, they only they brought him a
Speaker 1: thigh bone and part of his hand, and uh, some
Speaker 1: of his scalp and and his hat, and so naturally,
Speaker 1: so naturally the British thought, well, may they must have
Speaker 1: eaten him? Uh, And they just said, you guys don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about that parasite anymore. Remember uh, Nathaniel
Speaker 1: Philbricks in the Heart of the Sea. So the story
Speaker 1: of the tragic the Whaleship Essex and the book, um,
Speaker 1: you know, they get to eating each other. And there's
Speaker 1: a part of the book later where I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's like apocryphal story or not, but there's a
Speaker 1: part of the book later where someone meets a survivor
Speaker 1: of the whaleship Essex and he says like, hey, did
Speaker 1: you know Bill Johnson? I suppose you the guy says
Speaker 1: no him. I had him. Oh my, Well, well thanks
Speaker 1: for coming on, man, Um, I'm looking forward to your
Speaker 1: I see, I gotta go. I gotta read your whole
Speaker 1: damn cannon man, your whole damn library. Well please do
Speaker 1: and keep talking about it on your show. Well it's
Speaker 1: like it's yeah, um, it's just such well researched, un
Speaker 1: bullshitty history that like has all like this has like
Speaker 1: the weird parts. Man, you didn't know you got like
Speaker 1: a good ear for the weird, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like and you wedge it in where it doesn't just
Speaker 1: feel like you're being um, you wedge it in where
Speaker 1: it doesn't smell like someone just trying to wedge weird
Speaker 1: stuff in. Like if it's still you find a way
Speaker 1: to like make it fit, you know. But you got
Speaker 1: an ear for the strange. Well, thank you. I I'll
Speaker 1: take that as a compliment, the highest compliment. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: just that I'm a little strange, and I do think
Speaker 1: that it's true that you know, uh, history is so
Speaker 1: much more interesting. Uh then then we were taught in school,
Speaker 1: you know, like there are these just undercurrents in these
Speaker 1: bizarre facts and little trip little trick doors and and interconnections.
Speaker 1: Uh that um, we somehow missed in history class. Um
Speaker 1: because in the class you couldn't spend an entire semester
Speaker 1: on a day. Yeah, you know, you just have to
Speaker 1: gloss over and it takes on this way that just
Speaker 1: feels not personal. True, So true. Well, good luck finishing
Speaker 1: your book, Thank you, thank you. I gotta probably I
Speaker 1: should be working on it right now. I'm a little behind.
Speaker 1: COVID has kind of slowed me down a little bit.
Speaker 1: I don't mean that I had COVID. I just mean
Speaker 1: I couldn't do a lot of the research. Have you
Speaker 1: got a lot of your travel done? Now? A lot
Speaker 1: of it. I still got a lot more to go though. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know I may not get to some of
Speaker 1: the places, which kind of just drives me nuts. But
Speaker 1: uh yeah, you just can't go to all the places
Speaker 1: where Cook went, even on just this one voyage. Lets
Speaker 1: go hang out and cook inlet in Alaska. I've been
Speaker 1: there before, but I need to I need to go back.
Speaker 1: I need to go back. So um, and you've got
Speaker 1: you You've got a connection to Alaska, don't you have?
Speaker 1: My brother has been there decades now, and you have
Speaker 1: some sort of shack up there right, Yeah, we have
Speaker 1: a place out there. Yea. He lives on cooking, let you,
Speaker 1: meaning lives an anchorage, but ars checks fars off therea.
Speaker 1: Well thanks again, we'd love to have be back on.
Speaker 1: But yeah, man, I highly just really highly recommend um
Speaker 1: like your books and the kind of the kind of
Speaker 1: history you do which is just so illuminating. Man. This
Speaker 1: helps you really understand why you know why America or
Speaker 1: you know why things look the way they look, and
Speaker 1: why we remember things the way we remember them, and
Speaker 1: and what sacrifices were made by people. Well, thank you man,
Speaker 1: it's been a pleasure. C