Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways. I don't know. You never know stories of
Speaker 1: things we simply don't know the answer too. Well, Hey everybody,
Speaker 1: and welcome again to another episode of Thinking Sideways the podcast.
Speaker 1: I am Steve, of course, I am joined by Devin
Speaker 1: and Joe, and once again we got a mystery. We
Speaker 1: managed to fish another one out. We did, we got one.
Speaker 1: There's still a couple left in the world, only a
Speaker 1: few fish in a barrel. Well. Anyway, so today we
Speaker 1: are going to talk about another historical mystery, because I'm
Speaker 1: evidently on a historical mystery bank. Some of us are, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like we did the room Stone, Yeah, that was mine even, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we really have That was a scary one. We're gonna
Speaker 1: we're gonna deal some killing soon. Yeah. Yeah. From my
Speaker 1: from my most my last one that we just did,
Speaker 1: I was I was like, you know, knife edge, do
Speaker 1: I do it? Disappearance to a murder? I was, And
Speaker 1: I was leading heavily towards towards murder knife Edge. So
Speaker 1: the next one, I think it's gonna be a real bloody,
Speaker 1: disgusting murder. Sweet, Well, let's talk about this non bloody,
Speaker 1: non murder story. The mystery. We're going to talk about
Speaker 1: today is did Frederick Cook make it to the North
Speaker 1: Pole to be the first man in recorded history to
Speaker 1: make it there? Um, Now, before we get into story,
Speaker 1: of course, as normal, we got this from one of
Speaker 1: our listeners, because you guys suggest so many great stories. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: thanks listeners. We got this one from Dawn. Thanks. I
Speaker 1: can't remember if done was on Facebook or email, but
Speaker 1: thank you, don regardless of how you sent it into us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that the other weird thing about trying to reach
Speaker 1: be the first person to reach the North Pole is
Speaker 1: how do you prove it? You know, you can't plan
Speaker 1: a flag there, you can't. And yeah, we're gonna go
Speaker 1: into some of that. But but part of what makes
Speaker 1: this mystery so weird is that Frederick Cook, when he
Speaker 1: came back, he shortly thereafter discovered that he wasn't the
Speaker 1: only one claiming to have reached the North Pole at
Speaker 1: the same time. Basically, there's a guide. I know, Devan's
Speaker 1: gonna laugh because she's been laughing all day. But according
Speaker 1: to the history books, the man to reach the North
Speaker 1: Pole first was Rear Admiral Robert Perry. I don't think
Speaker 1: he did. Yeah, it's I've got my opinions. But I'm
Speaker 1: gonna hold that till we get through all of this.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about Mr Cook. Captain Cook, not Captain Cook.
Speaker 1: Frederick Cook was born in New York in eighteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: and he grew up. He became a surgeon. He almost
Speaker 1: immediately started exploring. He kind of had the bug. Initially,
Speaker 1: he wasn't really big on the idea, but his wife
Speaker 1: and child they died in childbirth and he wanted to
Speaker 1: get away and it was a great excuse, and so
Speaker 1: he started going on expeditions. Initially he was serving as
Speaker 1: the surgeon of the team that he would go with,
Speaker 1: and then after several years started making his or getting
Speaker 1: his own expeditions set up and then finding people to
Speaker 1: finance it, and he'd go out in the world. And
Speaker 1: his first expedition was with Robert Perry. It was with
Speaker 1: Robert Perry. They were actually on better terms once upon
Speaker 1: a time. Yes, they were um and and you know
Speaker 1: that's the thing is it was the two Arctic expedition
Speaker 1: is the one that he went on with Perry. But
Speaker 1: and yeah, there was no bad blood between him. Actually,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure that if I remember correctly, Cook saved
Speaker 1: his life. He did because he broke because Perry broke
Speaker 1: his legs so badly. Yeah, well there was that time,
Speaker 1: and also the time that Perry was kind of lost
Speaker 1: or around up there, and oh yeah, and he when
Speaker 1: he went hunted him down, hutting him down and treated
Speaker 1: him for sickness and brought him back. So he really
Speaker 1: saved his bacon twice. Yeah. So, yeah, these guys got along.
Speaker 1: You know, they didn't have any animosity, at least in
Speaker 1: the beginning. Though. I will say that from everything that
Speaker 1: I've read, Cook was a bit different than Perry and
Speaker 1: most of the explorers who were operating at the end
Speaker 1: of the nineteenth in the beginning of the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: right in that nine hundred time frame. Most guys they
Speaker 1: go to an area, they'd hire on a local crew,
Speaker 1: and then they would tell them what to do and
Speaker 1: ignore them. That was kind of the status quo. Cook
Speaker 1: wasn't like that. He learned the language, he got to
Speaker 1: know the people, and he was sometimes he's more interested
Speaker 1: in the locals, or as much interested in the locals
Speaker 1: as what he was there to find, which like being
Speaker 1: a good guy or whatever. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I think Cook actually wasn't a decent guy despite all
Speaker 1: the bad things have been said about him. I would
Speaker 1: agree with that absolutely. The first record that Cook wanted
Speaker 1: to set or tried to set, was in nineteen o
Speaker 1: six when he tried to be and said that he
Speaker 1: successfully was the first man to climb to the peak
Speaker 1: of Mount McKinley. You might or you might not be
Speaker 1: familiar with the name McKinley because today, officially the name
Speaker 1: is not McKinley. I believe it's Denali. Isn't but the
Speaker 1: traditional indigenous name for it, Yes, but most most folks
Speaker 1: in the would know it as McKinley. And we're going
Speaker 1: to keep using that name because anytime you do the reading,
Speaker 1: it's always referred to that. So just to keep it
Speaker 1: because it was it was at the time. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: reason that he wanted to climb it is if you
Speaker 1: don't know McKinley, it's in the basically the middle of Alaska.
Speaker 1: It's in the is it the Denali Range? Yeah, aston
Speaker 1: it's like a national park. Yeah, but it's like and
Speaker 1: it's it's a huge mountain. It's absolutely huge. It is here.
Speaker 1: Let me grab the number eighteen thousand feet from base
Speaker 1: to peak and The peak itself is just over twenty
Speaker 1: feet above sea level, so it's really freaking high up
Speaker 1: there mountain, and a lot of people had tried to
Speaker 1: to make it to the peak, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people would climb the lower reaches of it and then stop.
Speaker 1: I believe I think most people would go to what's
Speaker 1: called the gateway. That was the farthest they would go.
Speaker 1: But what happens. Cook says I'm going to climb this.
Speaker 1: He takes his party, they get most of the way up,
Speaker 1: then he takes one other man with him and he
Speaker 1: climbs to what he says is the top, takes pictures,
Speaker 1: comes back and says I made it to the top,
Speaker 1: and everybody would okay, cool, great, okay, well congrats, we'll
Speaker 1: put your name in this little book we have right
Speaker 1: here of people who did things first. Yeah, but there
Speaker 1: was obviously some dispute about that later right there. That
Speaker 1: will Yeah, we're talking about this now because it does
Speaker 1: come up later. Oh and because this is going to
Speaker 1: be important. Remember I said he took one person with
Speaker 1: him to the top of McKinley. That guy's name is
Speaker 1: Ed Barill, So remember that name because it will come
Speaker 1: up in a bit so the climb on McKinley was
Speaker 1: in nineteen o six. Did he plant a flag or
Speaker 1: anything like that when he went up there? He went
Speaker 1: up there. I've seen a photo that is him holding
Speaker 1: a flag, but he's on the tippy top peaky bit,
Speaker 1: you know, like there's not a whole lot at the
Speaker 1: actual peak top. So I don't know that he planted
Speaker 1: the flag. There's a picture of him holding it, but
Speaker 1: I don't. I never saw anything that said he specifically
Speaker 1: planted it, but he did that nineteen o six. Then
Speaker 1: he went home and he began planning his next Arctic expedition,
Speaker 1: and the nine seven he went to Greenland, and while
Speaker 1: he was in Greenland he then announced that what he
Speaker 1: was gonna do was try to reach the North Pole.
Speaker 1: And I think he made the announcement. I want to
Speaker 1: say it was in August of seven. He couldn't actually leave,
Speaker 1: I believe until February because that was when, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he had to, So the timing of it was very
Speaker 1: very specific. The thing that you need to know about
Speaker 1: where he left is he left from a place and
Speaker 1: I hope I get this right. A Noah talk, I believe,
Speaker 1: is how you pronounced the name of the village. It's
Speaker 1: an Inuit village in Greenland. It's on the northwest tip
Speaker 1: of Greenland, so it's really pretty far up there. Okay. Well,
Speaker 1: the trip from that village to the actual where they
Speaker 1: say the North Pole is going to be is seven
Speaker 1: hundred miles. So it's a seven hundred mile overland journey
Speaker 1: in ice and snow and basically terrible conditions. Is what
Speaker 1: he's gonna do, Glad. I think get out For the
Speaker 1: first part of it. I think there was still like
Speaker 1: caribou or things like that were wandering around them. There
Speaker 1: there were animals around and out on the so you
Speaker 1: could actually they were actually able to hunt. Yes they were,
Speaker 1: They weren't for part of the beginning, and it wasn't
Speaker 1: as if he took for the final bit of his
Speaker 1: race to the North Pole. He took two local Inuit
Speaker 1: with him, but he didn't just start out with those
Speaker 1: two guys. I think he left, if I remember correctly,
Speaker 1: he left as part of a bigger party, and then
Speaker 1: he and that party split ways. They were going to
Speaker 1: do something else, and then he made his run for
Speaker 1: the North Pole. The trip wasn't expected to take but
Speaker 1: a month or two. Everybody figured Cook was gone. When
Speaker 1: a year had gone by, they figured that everybody had died.
Speaker 1: He and his companion showed back up at the village
Speaker 1: fourteen months later, looking a little worse. Yeah, absolutely worse
Speaker 1: from where. What happened is they made the run for
Speaker 1: the North Pole. They got there. According to Cook, they
Speaker 1: made it to the north Pole, and they didn't take
Speaker 1: into consideration the movement of the ice flows. They didn't
Speaker 1: think that, I guess that they were gonna be a problem,
Speaker 1: but they totally were. They ended up hitting open water.
Speaker 1: They had to make all these detours, and they ended
Speaker 1: up south west of where they wanted to be by
Speaker 1: two or three hundred miles. Yeah, I think they were.
Speaker 1: He wasn't expecting the ice to move eastward and wind
Speaker 1: up moving westwards. And yes, that's yeah, it was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's exactly. It went the opposite direction. So he's like, well,
Speaker 1: I'll just keep going straight south and it will always
Speaker 1: be okay. But everything's moving under your feet. That doesn't work.
Speaker 1: Here is the I guess the data bits that the
Speaker 1: data points it will use here for his actual trip
Speaker 1: from when they split off of that larger party, they traveled,
Speaker 1: according to Cook, three hundred and sixty miles, and they
Speaker 1: did that in twenty four days. That comes out to
Speaker 1: an average of about fifteen miles a day, which is
Speaker 1: pretty pretty good space in the Arctic when you consider
Speaker 1: it's not smooth ice, it's gonna be ice floes that
Speaker 1: are gonna heave, it's craggy, it's nasty. I went, you know,
Speaker 1: I decided I'd go ahead and take a look and
Speaker 1: pull a Joe. I'd go on Google Earth and Google
Speaker 1: Maps and take a look at the North Pole. Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out you can't because there's nothing there. There's
Speaker 1: no streets. And here's the problem. Unlike the South Pole,
Speaker 1: there is no land mass at the North Pole, so
Speaker 1: it's not a actual fixable point. You can't, as you said,
Speaker 1: with the top of the mountain, plant the flag. You can,
Speaker 1: but it's not gonna stay in the same thing that's
Speaker 1: to move off. Very very supposedly planted a flag. He know,
Speaker 1: well he did, and he didn't. He planted ceremonially a
Speaker 1: flag and then pulled it down, left a bit of
Speaker 1: it in a tube and a crevasse. But he didn't
Speaker 1: actually even bother to try to leave the flag there,
Speaker 1: because that just wasn't going to do any good. That
Speaker 1: doesn't mean anything. But the point is it's constantly It's
Speaker 1: like it's a moving target. As I said, though you know,
Speaker 1: of course they missed the mark when they were coming home.
Speaker 1: I found the number here. It was four hundred miles
Speaker 1: because they ended up living in a cave on what
Speaker 1: is known as Devon Island. So it's your Islandah, not
Speaker 1: according to the Internet. That's true. App it's Steve and
Speaker 1: Joe Islands anywhere nearby, No, there isn't. But they ended
Speaker 1: up living in a cave. They barely survived off of
Speaker 1: local animals that I mean they were killing. They were
Speaker 1: hunting when they ran out of Ammo. They were hunting
Speaker 1: with spears, which is pretty hardcore with used me in
Speaker 1: the Arctic. Yeah, they managed to get back to the village.
Speaker 1: They arrived in the spring of nineteen o nine, So
Speaker 1: they left February of oh eight and arrived back fourteen
Speaker 1: months later in oh nine. So that's a heck of
Speaker 1: a long trip, Yeah, it is. Cook would eventually make
Speaker 1: the a initial announcement that he had made it to
Speaker 1: the North Pole. That would be uh, the date that
Speaker 1: he said he got there would be the twenty second
Speaker 1: of April nineteen o eight, which means that you know,
Speaker 1: he made it there in about two months for when
Speaker 1: he initially left, which is pretty good time. Mad I
Speaker 1: think Joe was that said, they were looking a little
Speaker 1: worse for wear, for living cough of just whatever animal
Speaker 1: they could kill, hiking and freezing conditions. Yeah, I probably
Speaker 1: at least to some degree, but they when they got
Speaker 1: back to the village. Of course, Cook wasn't just going
Speaker 1: to turn around and head home. He hung out for
Speaker 1: a while to recuperate. While he was in the village,
Speaker 1: he met a man named Harry Whitney, and they became
Speaker 1: kind of buds. They were both English speakers. I'm sure
Speaker 1: that helped in a village where you know, it's it's Inuits,
Speaker 1: and he could speak the local language. Both of them could,
Speaker 1: but it's always nice to be able to use your
Speaker 1: native tongue. I'm sure that was something to bond over.
Speaker 1: Whitney was there on I wouldn't call it a safari,
Speaker 1: but he was on kind of a sportsman's trip. So
Speaker 1: he had been dropped off by a ship. It was
Speaker 1: set to come back for him several months later, and
Speaker 1: he was just kind of having a good time, and
Speaker 1: he told um. He told Cook, hey, you know, I
Speaker 1: got the ship coming. If you want, you could just
Speaker 1: hook a ride with me and I'll take you back
Speaker 1: down to New York and you can go home. Should
Speaker 1: have done huh? Well, I think he probably should have
Speaker 1: yes and no because of the way things turned out.
Speaker 1: But but Cook didn't want to wait that long, so
Speaker 1: instead he decided to book or plan out another overland journey.
Speaker 1: Need to head down the coast of Greenland by sled
Speaker 1: and go all the way to go home, or as
Speaker 1: far south as he could till he could catch a
Speaker 1: boat at one of the major lanes. What ended up happening, though,
Speaker 1: is he had two guys set up to go with him.
Speaker 1: The day before he's gonna leave, one of them got
Speaker 1: sick and so it was just gonna be Cook and
Speaker 1: one other Inuit. And that really put him in a
Speaker 1: bind because he couldn't take all of his stuff with him,
Speaker 1: because one sled down means one sleds worth of stuff
Speaker 1: you can't pack, and you're gonna have to bring other
Speaker 1: stuff like food. He's got to bring food. So Whitney,
Speaker 1: being a good guy, said, hey, you know, if you
Speaker 1: want to leave that stuff with me. When my ship
Speaker 1: gets here, I'll totally bring it to you. No big deal.
Speaker 1: So he left all the heavy stuff that he didn't need,
Speaker 1: so his navigational tools, like a sex stant, all of
Speaker 1: his records except for his own personal diary or his journal.
Speaker 1: I guess it wouldn't be a diary. His journal was
Speaker 1: his journal. They call it his journal. It's manly if
Speaker 1: it's a journal. You know, just because he had stars
Speaker 1: and it was pink doesn't count it. That dear diary
Speaker 1: at every jury. Doesn't mean it was a diary. But
Speaker 1: he left all that stuff with him because it was
Speaker 1: heavy and he didn't he didn't need any navigational equipment
Speaker 1: because he was just heading down the coastline. It's pretty
Speaker 1: easy to follow the coastline. So he goes ahead, he
Speaker 1: heads south. He eventually gets home. He makes the announcement
Speaker 1: that he had done it and great. On the first September,
Speaker 1: the world learns that Frederick Cook was the first man
Speaker 1: to make it to the North Pole. He didn't just
Speaker 1: tweet it out. He didn't tweet it out. He didn't
Speaker 1: have service there. Yeah, way up there. Can't just do
Speaker 1: that and t'll cover you up there. No, I've never
Speaker 1: tested it. It'll cover me in my house. That's where
Speaker 1: I'm going to leave cook story for the moment. But
Speaker 1: we're talking about Cook, we are, But there's another, a
Speaker 1: big player, and we need to switch gears. And we've
Speaker 1: talked about him a little bit already, and that's Robert Perry. Perry,
Speaker 1: as we had talked about before, he had made a
Speaker 1: bunch of Arctic expeditions. You know, he'd gone with Cook,
Speaker 1: or Cook had been with him a couple of times.
Speaker 1: Perry had made if I remember the number, it's something
Speaker 1: like eight or nine attempts to get to the North Pole. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then that eight or nine failed attempts before his
Speaker 1: last attempt, which he will learn he says was successful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that the reason Cook did stopped going along with
Speaker 1: him in these expeditions. Did you hear about that? He? Uh,
Speaker 1: he wanted to sign up. But then Perry put down
Speaker 1: the requirement that nobody was allowed to write their memoirs
Speaker 1: at the expedition before he published his Yes, which is
Speaker 1: a financial reason, because of course everybody sold their story.
Speaker 1: So that means that, oh, great, I'll pay you whatever
Speaker 1: I pay you, but you can't make any actual bonus money.
Speaker 1: Until it's you know, your story is worthless pretty much.
Speaker 1: And one of the things I think Cook was writing
Speaker 1: more about things like the locals and that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: which wasn't even gonna step on on Perry's toes, but
Speaker 1: that you're right, that is the reason that they they
Speaker 1: did part ways. On the first of March nineteen o nine,
Speaker 1: Perry left for the North Pole. He he went ahead,
Speaker 1: he was already in the Arctic. He says, I'm gonna go.
Speaker 1: He gets his big party together, and he and this
Speaker 1: large party that he has, they had two hundred eighty
Speaker 1: miles north heading towards the North Pole. And they didn't
Speaker 1: leave from Greenland. They left from a different location that
Speaker 1: actually longitudely put them closer to the North Pole. But
Speaker 1: he was still kind of in that same region because
Speaker 1: that evidently is where you start from the Arctic Circle. Yes. Yes.
Speaker 1: On the first of April of nineteen o nine, Perry
Speaker 1: split off from the main big group that he had
Speaker 1: with him. He took five other guys with him and
Speaker 1: they then would make the final dash for the North Pole.
Speaker 1: They did that in six days. This was a year
Speaker 1: after Cook that he had, right, this is when Cook
Speaker 1: is still presumed missing. So, yeah, I just wanted to
Speaker 1: make sure you know. So this it is weird when
Speaker 1: you read it because yeah, technically Cook found it a
Speaker 1: year prior the before Perry ever got there. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so he's missing. So Cook, you know, Perry's like, well,
Speaker 1: nobody's got it yet, I'm going for it because that
Speaker 1: evidently was his white whale at that point, he was
Speaker 1: everybody's white whale to do it. Um. So so he
Speaker 1: goes with these guys and they go to what Robert
Speaker 1: Perry says is the North Pole. He says, we've got
Speaker 1: the North Pole. He plants his ceremonial flag. He then,
Speaker 1: like I said, tore a strip of it, put it
Speaker 1: in a little jar and buried in gravoss and they
Speaker 1: beat feet back out of the circle. And when he
Speaker 1: got back to the party, then they go back to
Speaker 1: their launch point. Everything's hunky dory, um, except that at
Speaker 1: that point he kind of just starts a lolligag around
Speaker 1: the areas. You know, they're steaming from place to place,
Speaker 1: they're going on a little hunting trips. They're just kind
Speaker 1: of having a good old time. He's in no hurry
Speaker 1: to get back to the civilized world. And announced that
Speaker 1: he made it to the North Pole. I would too,
Speaker 1: but maybe it was I'm basking in the fact that
Speaker 1: I finally did it, I finally achieved what I'm after
Speaker 1: all this time. I mean, I'm sorry, did you just
Speaker 1: did you say earlier that he said they were at
Speaker 1: the North Pole? Can you clarify that? Yeah, Perry is
Speaker 1: was the only one of the six because he had
Speaker 1: the five other men with him who had the ability
Speaker 1: to navigate, that could use a sextant right right now,
Speaker 1: And and you got to remember is that and this
Speaker 1: is I'm Joe might have to help me out on
Speaker 1: this how you would navigate. But you know, you use
Speaker 1: a sextant to find to fixed points and figure out
Speaker 1: the distance between them, and as they change, you use
Speaker 1: that figure out your longitude. Is that correct, Joe? Um?
Speaker 1: I think that's how it works. Okay, I don't. I
Speaker 1: have I don't use the sex and I don't either.
Speaker 1: But the point is is that you use it to
Speaker 1: fix on this point. And so he would have to
Speaker 1: take readings and when nothing is north of you, everything
Speaker 1: is south, that means youre at the North Pole. But
Speaker 1: he's the only one who could do it, so he's
Speaker 1: the one doing all of the readings. So he's the
Speaker 1: one that has done all of that. I'll call it
Speaker 1: the hard math. Figure it out, isn't it? Recall something
Speaker 1: in the story around that one of his assistants was
Speaker 1: it was a black guy remember his name now, And
Speaker 1: they're just at this place and one day this this
Speaker 1: this assistant says, you know, this place has kind of
Speaker 1: a north Pole feeling to it, don't you think admiral
Speaker 1: something like? And he says, and he says, basically, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you're I think you're out of something there,
Speaker 1: and he pulls out the flag. Yeah that that is
Speaker 1: that what that guy says, Yeah, you're absolutely right. Um,
Speaker 1: that's not the version I know that you will read
Speaker 1: from Perry himself. He's not gonna put it that way. Well,
Speaker 1: I think in retrospect, if I were either one of
Speaker 1: these guys, cook Er Perry, I would have made sure
Speaker 1: I had several people in my party and that every
Speaker 1: single one of them knew how to navigate. Actually, you know,
Speaker 1: the funny point is what we're getting into here is
Speaker 1: that if you haven't already figured it out from what
Speaker 1: we're leading up to, there becomes dual claim for being
Speaker 1: the first person to go to the North Pole, between
Speaker 1: Perry and Cook, the guy who ended up being the
Speaker 1: first man to reach the South Pole because of every
Speaker 1: and I think he did it in nineteen eleven, but
Speaker 1: everything that went on between these two, which it turns
Speaker 1: into a giant public battle, this guy made sure to
Speaker 1: double triple check all kinds of things and leave all
Speaker 1: kinds of signs and all kinds of markers, like he
Speaker 1: dotted every T or he lost every T and dotted
Speaker 1: every eye that backwards that was Was that Amondson or something? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was his first name, And I don't I'm not
Speaker 1: positive on the pronunciation. I listened to it a couple
Speaker 1: of times and I'm still not sure. But the point
Speaker 1: is that's why he went to such extremes. Smart movies.
Speaker 1: So Perry finally makes it to Greenland. He gets to Greenland,
Speaker 1: and when he gets there, he starts hearing rumors that
Speaker 1: Cook is Clay is back, the Cook wasn't dead, and
Speaker 1: then he's back and that hey, he's also claiming that
Speaker 1: he made it to the North Pole the year before
Speaker 1: you did. And he's like, wait a minute, that's not possible.
Speaker 1: And he ends up getting to the same village where
Speaker 1: where Whitney and Cook where it had been. And of
Speaker 1: course Whitney is still there because he's just having his
Speaker 1: his little sportsman vacation. And Perry talks to him and says, well,
Speaker 1: what do you know about this Cook and Whitne? He
Speaker 1: had talked and Cook had told him, he said, listen,
Speaker 1: don't tell anybody until I've made my official announcement. Don't
Speaker 1: tell anybody, and so he plays dumb. He's like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, he he said he went
Speaker 1: north and had some expedition, but I'm not really sure.
Speaker 1: Perry then goes on and tracks down the two Inuit
Speaker 1: that went with Cook, and he he interviews them and
Speaker 1: he basically interrogates them, and he takes away from it
Speaker 1: and he will later learn he makes all these statements
Speaker 1: about how they disagreed with what what Cook is claiming.
Speaker 1: But what you need to know is that natives of
Speaker 1: the area at that time, they didn't have an understanding
Speaker 1: of latitude and longitude. They knew distances in days. Took
Speaker 1: me a day to get there, so we walked north
Speaker 1: for X number of days. That's all they knew. And
Speaker 1: it was Perry Perry didn't speak the language. He didn't
Speaker 1: speak the language. So there, you know, when he he's
Speaker 1: shown them maps and they're just kind of drawing on it. Whitney,
Speaker 1: who does know the language, talks to them after the fact,
Speaker 1: and he has he went on record and said they
Speaker 1: they said they didn't know what the angry white man
Speaker 1: was asking them, and what the pieces of paper that
Speaker 1: he kept pointing at meant. They didn't They just they
Speaker 1: didn't understand. But Perry didn't care um. So once he
Speaker 1: once he figures that out, well dead lights a fire
Speaker 1: underneath him to get back to back to the main
Speaker 1: land and uh and stop all this. Here's the other
Speaker 1: thing that really really really bites cook in the rear,
Speaker 1: and that is the fact that Whitney, remember he had
Speaker 1: a ship charter to to come back and pick him up.
Speaker 1: His ship never showed up, so that meant he'd have
Speaker 1: to wait there at the tip of Greenland for another
Speaker 1: six months before another ship would come to take him home.
Speaker 1: And he really wasn't keen on that idea. Well, being
Speaker 1: such a nice guy, Perry says, hey, we'll give you
Speaker 1: a ride home, no big deal, except when he brings
Speaker 1: all of his stuff down to the ship to load
Speaker 1: it up. Harry specifically stops him and says, hey, is
Speaker 1: any of that stuff Cooks And he has to admit, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's these trunks here that belonged to him, and he says,
Speaker 1: I don't want any of that on my ship. Total
Speaker 1: jerk move, uh And I actually I do. Some of
Speaker 1: the things that go on in this story make me
Speaker 1: think that he did that very intentionally, knowing that it
Speaker 1: was gonna screw Cook over. So poor Whitney, what's he doing?
Speaker 1: He goes over to some rocks, he digs a big
Speaker 1: hole and he buries them, so at least they're sort
Speaker 1: of secure and Cook come back for him. I mean,
Speaker 1: has anybody actually gone out looking for these things? But
Speaker 1: they've never shown up, which makes me feel that probably
Speaker 1: if anybody found him after a couple of years, they
Speaker 1: were probably destroyed any you know, I mean, they probably
Speaker 1: they would have been buried in permour frost, which is okay,
Speaker 1: but still their their trunks, not like they're totally waterproof.
Speaker 1: There is going to be some moisture and that's going
Speaker 1: to just destroy paperworking tools in no time flat. But
Speaker 1: so we move forward. Perry now gets to work on
Speaker 1: destroying Cook's claim. He meets up with some of his supporters.
Speaker 1: What what are these guys called? They are the Yes
Speaker 1: the Periarctic Club, which is a bunch of well off
Speaker 1: dudes who's who financially back his expeditions, and they get
Speaker 1: together and they start doing some kind of devious stuff.
Speaker 1: First off, what Perry does is he tells everybody, of
Speaker 1: course that hey, I got there, and Cook is totally
Speaker 1: full of it. He communicates that a week after Cook
Speaker 1: has said he got there, Perry's information comes through and says, hey, hey,
Speaker 1: I totally got there and be Cook's a liar and
Speaker 1: I've got the evidence to prove it. Then when he
Speaker 1: gets back to the world, everybody says, well, great, let's
Speaker 1: see your your documents, and he says, no, I will
Speaker 1: go ahead and put out my full I will give
Speaker 1: you my fully authorized version as soon as Cook gives
Speaker 1: you his. A bit of a game of I'll show
Speaker 1: you mine if you show me yours, knowing full well
Speaker 1: that Cook can't because he made made Whitney bury it
Speaker 1: all in the Arctic um. And I gotta say I
Speaker 1: think that between this two, not to give it away
Speaker 1: or anything, I think Cook behaved with a lot more class,
Speaker 1: and this he did. Cook ended up for the rest
Speaker 1: of his life getting the short stick. He absolutely got
Speaker 1: the short stick, though in a way it seems to
Speaker 1: have given him peace. But he really got hosed a
Speaker 1: bunch after this. Oh that was where I was headed though,
Speaker 1: was the periarctic? What the McCall it? What were they?
Speaker 1: The club? Thank you? Yeah, his his fan club. They did.
Speaker 1: What was so common at that time and so despicable
Speaker 1: is if you remember we talked about how Cook had
Speaker 1: been the first to go all the way to the
Speaker 1: top of Mount McKinley, and he took the other gentleman,
Speaker 1: Berrill with him. Well, for years Brill had been going
Speaker 1: around publicly saying we made it the top, it's so awesome,
Speaker 1: telling everybody about it, until suddenly on the fourth of
Speaker 1: October nine nine and AffA David from him that his
Speaker 1: sign comes out saying that they faked the whole thing
Speaker 1: and it's a total lie. What would make somebody do that.
Speaker 1: It's somewhere between five and ten thousand dollars at the time,
Speaker 1: so they totally blatantly paid him off. They made no
Speaker 1: claim that they hadn't done it, or Burrill never ever
Speaker 1: even pretended that he hadn't been paid off. Uh that's
Speaker 1: it's equivalent to like a hundred and five grand US today,
Speaker 1: So that's a huge chunk of change. I could see
Speaker 1: why he would turn on him for the money. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's kind of despicable, what I understand. But then he
Speaker 1: bye bye, pretty much acknowledging that he was bribed to
Speaker 1: sign that after David he did. Yeah, then you know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't that provide a little ammunation to Cook. It
Speaker 1: should have, Yeah, it should have. And I never I
Speaker 1: never could get a good clear understanding of what why
Speaker 1: Cook went about doing things the way he did. He
Speaker 1: had his journal and so he could provide that, and
Speaker 1: in the beginning the public believed him, but because of
Speaker 1: all the underhanded moves that he was pulling, they started
Speaker 1: not believing him. And I think he just he realized
Speaker 1: he was defeated and he stopped fighting. I think that's
Speaker 1: probably what happened. For the most, probably spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time, like you know, on McKinley thing, Probably spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time just really really wishing that he
Speaker 1: had buried something at the top of the mountain. Yeah. Probably. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: after after that affidavit shows up that of course, this
Speaker 1: is where Perry comes out with his account of what
Speaker 1: cooks Inuits Inuit h what would they wouldn't be companions?
Speaker 1: I was, I couldn't think of the right word from
Speaker 1: his companions quote unquote said about him and what the
Speaker 1: route that they took um. I won't go into detail,
Speaker 1: but basically they, according to him, sketched out this completely
Speaker 1: different route, meaning that Cook just took him kind of
Speaker 1: in a circle and in a completely the wrong direction intentionally.
Speaker 1: It's what this is making it out to be. Did
Speaker 1: Whitney ever show his head again? No? No, oh not really.
Speaker 1: I mean Whitney came out and said, hey, I had
Speaker 1: to do this. He publicly said I had to do this.
Speaker 1: This is what Perry made me do. Stuff behind, leaving
Speaker 1: the stuff behind. And he you know, he said that
Speaker 1: Cook had told him that he had made it to
Speaker 1: the North Pole. But it's second hand information. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: don't know, but that's but but he had overheard the
Speaker 1: conversation when Perry was interrogating the two Anuits, right, correct?
Speaker 1: And so did he ever show up and say, hey,
Speaker 1: no that the Innuits did not say this to Perry.
Speaker 1: He's lying we we know that there are written accounts
Speaker 1: of it. I I get, I don't. I don't know
Speaker 1: the exact interaction of did he show up as some
Speaker 1: legal proceeding or something, because it really was only one
Speaker 1: legal proceeding and by that time that happened, it was
Speaker 1: way too late and so it may have been wasted breath.
Speaker 1: Or maybe he was on SARI again again. Yeah, probably,
Speaker 1: I think probably. The nail that really kind of sealed
Speaker 1: the coffin for Cook, though, was the National Geographic Society,
Speaker 1: because they had they were a big backer of Perry.
Speaker 1: They loved him, they were, you know, totally supported him,
Speaker 1: always published his stuff. He was he drew in people
Speaker 1: for them. They went ahead and they immediately said that
Speaker 1: Perry was right and Cook was wrong. And then later
Speaker 1: on they set up a committee to go ahead and
Speaker 1: investigate the whole thing, which, of course, because there was
Speaker 1: no papers from Cook, that was easy. They went ahead
Speaker 1: and checked out Perry's story. They didn't matter of three days,
Speaker 1: that's all it took for them to go ahead and
Speaker 1: figure ferry story. This committee was like mostly his friends. Yes,
Speaker 1: two of the people he knew extremely well, and one
Speaker 1: of them said that I think he came out and
Speaker 1: said that he was the skeptic. He was a total skeptic.
Speaker 1: But I get the feeling. He also knew Perry as
Speaker 1: well personally. They all knew him personally, so it was
Speaker 1: totally inside job. And that really was the end of it.
Speaker 1: And for years and years and years, everybody learned that
Speaker 1: Robert Perry went ahead and made it to the North Pole,
Speaker 1: and he was the first one. And nobody really knows
Speaker 1: who Cook is. He's not really in any of the
Speaker 1: history books. He's just one little footnote because of this
Speaker 1: schmear campaign, the campaign absolute mud flinging contest. Yeah, was
Speaker 1: not a classic guy. But that is That is the
Speaker 1: end of our story, which means we are now into
Speaker 1: the theory section. So this is really it's it's three
Speaker 1: simple theories. There's the only three headings here, and the
Speaker 1: first one is, of course that Cook made it there
Speaker 1: before Perry. We don't have any documents to back this up,
Speaker 1: but he was one of the first or he was
Speaker 1: the first person to ever describe the frozen polar ce
Speaker 1: uh you know, as being in continuous motion um and
Speaker 1: at eighty eight degrees north. The fact that it was
Speaker 1: he basically encountered a giant, flat topped, as he described it,
Speaker 1: ice island that was higher and thicker than the sea
Speaker 1: ice surround it. Yeah, and that was something that was
Speaker 1: backed up by later explorers into the area. They found
Speaker 1: the same thing. Yeah, Perry never ever that I know of,
Speaker 1: makes any mention of that. Of course, if you want
Speaker 1: a different route, he could have missed it. And absolutely true.
Speaker 1: Perry or Cook excused me, also seemed to be pretty
Speaker 1: good at his navigation. I mean, he knew how to
Speaker 1: use the sex, and he had been guiding himself for
Speaker 1: a while on these kind of Arctic things or expeditions
Speaker 1: things expeditions. I don't know why I said things stream
Speaker 1: of consciousness here and he'd stopped. But overall, as you said,
Speaker 1: he's Joe, he seemed to be a pretty honest guy,
Speaker 1: and he didn't seem to be the kind of guy
Speaker 1: that would just to to grab glory say that he
Speaker 1: did something. Yeah. That's my personal impression. Yeah, And it's
Speaker 1: my impression too, is that Cook had a much deeper
Speaker 1: sense of honor than Harry had, and that he wouldn't
Speaker 1: have deliberately faked a gentleman's own. There was, Yeah, there was,
Speaker 1: I think there was some question that he was making
Speaker 1: mistakes in his navigation, which is entirely possible, entirely, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is entirely possible and quite possibly probably true even
Speaker 1: but if they were honest mistakes, so he might have
Speaker 1: honestly thought that he was at the North Pole. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I gotta tell you, there's an easier way than
Speaker 1: using a sextant. He just laying the ground looking straight up,
Speaker 1: and when the when the north Star is right over
Speaker 1: you there with the North Pole nothing to it. Not easy, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's easy. Yeah, yeah, dude, if only they had known that,
Speaker 1: this whole thing would have been solved day. On my
Speaker 1: back the north Star was directly above me. There you go,
Speaker 1: I felt really north North Pole. Yeah yeah, Okay, we're
Speaker 1: gonna let that go. Our next our next theory is,
Speaker 1: of course, that Frederick Cooke faked the entire thing. The
Speaker 1: quote unquote loss of all of his data, well that
Speaker 1: means that we can't confirm that he really did it,
Speaker 1: And it could be that if we had gotten his records,
Speaker 1: we didn't figured out quite easily that he was full
Speaker 1: of it and that he didn't know what he was doing.
Speaker 1: So there is that absolute possibility I mean, you also
Speaker 1: got to think about the fact this guy was lost
Speaker 1: for a year in the Arctic, and when he got
Speaker 1: back to his starting point, he could have said, you
Speaker 1: know what, I survived, that I deserve something for going
Speaker 1: through all that crap. I'm going to say that I
Speaker 1: got there because I've earned it, or you know, for
Speaker 1: all I know, we got there. Yeah, and intentionally, you know,
Speaker 1: directly knowing that he was pretty sure that he didn't
Speaker 1: actually doing Yeah, that's completely plausible. Um. One thing, and
Speaker 1: again this is this my lack of understanding of the sextant.
Speaker 1: Though I've read about it so many times, it's still
Speaker 1: just doesn't sink in. One of the things that his
Speaker 1: detractors will point out is the fact that trying to
Speaker 1: use a sextant at that time of the year is
Speaker 1: gonna be not exactly reliable because you a lot of
Speaker 1: times you use the sun as a reference point, but
Speaker 1: the sun was so low in the horizon all the
Speaker 1: time that it's basically a useless point to to fix two.
Speaker 1: But the UH and I have no idea how often
Speaker 1: they had clear days. You could also use stars. That's
Speaker 1: a good point. And and I haven't seen any data.
Speaker 1: I mean none of us have actually that says was
Speaker 1: it cloudy or was it clear when they were making
Speaker 1: that final drive. If it was clear, it totally makes sense.
Speaker 1: But this information gives me the impression that it wasn't
Speaker 1: clear days and so he was fixing his position based
Speaker 1: on the sun. Yeah, it would be h it would
Speaker 1: be hard if it was cloudy and the sun the horizon. Well, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not. You know, I mean you've we've all seen
Speaker 1: the sun go down and it's on the horizon and
Speaker 1: it's kind of it's not exactly a fix. It's not
Speaker 1: because of the atmosphere. It's not going to look or
Speaker 1: be where it actually is. It's going to have the
Speaker 1: distortion issue. Final theory, they both either intentionally or not
Speaker 1: faked it. Both Perry and Cook didn't get to the
Speaker 1: North Pole, and both of them probably knew it. That's
Speaker 1: that's what this theory is getting at. Okay, well, we've
Speaker 1: we've already talked about Cook, So I think probably we
Speaker 1: need to talk about the second half of this, which
Speaker 1: is Perry turns out there's problems with the writings that
Speaker 1: he left behind his data from the trip. Now, if
Speaker 1: you remember I said that he wouldn't release anything, or
Speaker 1: hardly anything, just very basic details. Eventually that his papers
Speaker 1: would get released about a decade and a half ago,
Speaker 1: that's how long they were under wraps before almost a
Speaker 1: hundred years now. The National Geographic Society had them and
Speaker 1: they had looked at them, but they didn't release them.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't until about ten or fifteen years ago
Speaker 1: that they finally were put out and people could really
Speaker 1: really analyze them. And well, it turns out that his
Speaker 1: numbers didn't exactly work. People have tried to trace the
Speaker 1: route based on what he had and it doesn't work.
Speaker 1: So he was probably about a hundred miles south of
Speaker 1: the North Pole. Yeah, and that's interesting that they wouldn't
Speaker 1: release him. But he had a lot of buddies in
Speaker 1: the NGS. Didn't he he did. He did, That's why
Speaker 1: they didn't release him. He is the other really hinky thing.
Speaker 1: And I don't know why this this flu but we
Speaker 1: in the beginning, Devon was laughing at Rear Admiral because
Speaker 1: that was the status that was bestowed upon him by
Speaker 1: the U S House of Representatives. They gave him the title.
Speaker 1: There was well, there was an act that was passed
Speaker 1: through that and then Congress that gave an act how
Speaker 1: do you become a rear admiral that it's it's an
Speaker 1: it's an honorific okay, So it's like it's it's an
Speaker 1: honorary title. So he was never like, you know, he
Speaker 1: never he didn't work his way up to the rank.
Speaker 1: They gave him an honorary title. Was he ever even
Speaker 1: in the navy. He might have, actually he might have
Speaker 1: been at one point. But the point is he was
Speaker 1: given this title. But one of the things that had
Speaker 1: to happen first was he had to go and and
Speaker 1: talk to a Naval Affairs subcommittee, and he had to
Speaker 1: give them some of his stuff to look at, and
Speaker 1: he gave them his journal that he said he had
Speaker 1: used on his entire trip to the North Pole. Here's
Speaker 1: the thing. When these guys are are up in the
Speaker 1: North Pole, it's not like they're packing, you know, kale
Speaker 1: and carrots and all these great veggies to eat. They're
Speaker 1: eating what they can. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: Arctic explorers in the day took with them is what
Speaker 1: is called pemmican. Kind of looks gross. It's a greasy
Speaker 1: mix of fat and meat all pressed together. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like jerky like you see it kind of in
Speaker 1: a ball sometimes a sort of flat cakes hockey. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you've ever picked up greasy meats and eating them
Speaker 1: by hand, you know how much of that stuff gets
Speaker 1: on your fingers. Now, then combine that with the fact
Speaker 1: that they're in the Arctic, it's not like they can
Speaker 1: wash their hands off and their stuff off. That the
Speaker 1: fingerprints of that stuff should be on every thing. His
Speaker 1: journal was pristine, to the point that the subcommittee asked
Speaker 1: him about it, and he stood by the fact of Nope,
Speaker 1: that's it. That's the one I used. It totally is
Speaker 1: and they just kind of shined it on and let
Speaker 1: it go through. So this is they actually swore because
Speaker 1: you know, if you if you were totally b essay,
Speaker 1: I think what I would have said is, you know
Speaker 1: it was it was such a disgusting mess that I
Speaker 1: just copied the whole thing over to it to a
Speaker 1: new book. Yeah, that's what's I would have told him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that, and nobody probably would have said anything
Speaker 1: if he had said, listen, the other one is kind
Speaker 1: of going. You know, it's going a little off now
Speaker 1: because all that Greece. Yeah, it's a little rancid, so
Speaker 1: I had to transfer it. They probably wouldn't have worried
Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, but the um this was way back
Speaker 1: in the day though, right, and then that and did
Speaker 1: that book? Did that journal go back to the National
Speaker 1: Geographic Society or did Perry keep it? I'm not positive
Speaker 1: Perry's papers are in more than one place, and I
Speaker 1: don't know who holds that journal. Sure somebody somewhere has
Speaker 1: got probably. There's also some issues with the speed that
Speaker 1: Perry said he traveled. Basically, he kind of set some
Speaker 1: land records. He really did. He set some land records
Speaker 1: so that he and his five companions, what is it
Speaker 1: they they traveled each day they traveled twenty five miles,
Speaker 1: twenty miles, twenty miles miles, and then forty miles final day.
Speaker 1: They traveled forty miles in that final day to make
Speaker 1: their destination. That's twenty six miles a day in the
Speaker 1: Arctic on foot bit fast, right, Oh yeah, yeah, Cook
Speaker 1: was averaging fifty miles, which is still pretty good. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you want to you want to hear my favorite detractor
Speaker 1: of of Perry. This is my absolute face favorite, and
Speaker 1: that is there is a man by the name of
Speaker 1: Marshall B. Gardner, and he wrote a book called A
Speaker 1: Journey to the Earth's Interior, which is all a hollow
Speaker 1: Earth book, all about the fact that the Earth is
Speaker 1: actually hollow, and he says that there is no way
Speaker 1: that either man actually made it to the North Pole,
Speaker 1: because as they went north, they would have discovered that
Speaker 1: the temperature was rising, the ice was melting, and it
Speaker 1: was gonna be open sea because the sun's beams are
Speaker 1: all focused at the North Pole. And of course if
Speaker 1: they had gotten on a boat, they would have gone
Speaker 1: to the North Pole and discovered the entry to the
Speaker 1: hollow Earth and then been able to explore that. So
Speaker 1: that obviously is why neither man actually made it to
Speaker 1: the North Pole. Of course that makes sense. I don't
Speaker 1: understand fast well, but uh so, I guess that's one
Speaker 1: of the reasons. Then if the National Geographics Society eventually
Speaker 1: went back and looked at his and declared that he
Speaker 1: didn't actually make it, improve it yeah, yeah, it's yeah.
Speaker 1: They they went from totally to totally did it you
Speaker 1: made it to the North Pole? Claim is unproven. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: of course I still left Cook's claim as disproven because
Speaker 1: he couldn't he didn't have anything, so they said, well,
Speaker 1: you're totally making it up. Everything support this claim, so
Speaker 1: we're just going to throw it out. If I was
Speaker 1: going to believe one of them, I would believe Cook. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: you know. And the thing is, here's the great thing
Speaker 1: about Cook his claim to Mount McKinley. Everybody was saying
Speaker 1: that his pictures were of different areas of the mountain,
Speaker 1: not pass what is called the Gateway, which is the
Speaker 1: final ascent. People have started looking at his writing and
Speaker 1: there was actually a Russian team that followed his route
Speaker 1: based on his writing, and it turns out they made
Speaker 1: it to the peak. Yeah, there's there was. People have
Speaker 1: actually duplicated his route. It's a completely unconventional or unstandard
Speaker 1: way to go to the top, and that's why most
Speaker 1: people seem to have thrown it out. But it appears
Speaker 1: that he was telling the truth on that, which is
Speaker 1: why I'm inclined to believe he probably, at least to
Speaker 1: the best of his knowledge, was telling the truth about
Speaker 1: getting to the North Pole too. Yeah. So I mean, personally, yeah,
Speaker 1: I I think he did it, you know, super close. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I don't think I think officially the first man to
Speaker 1: make it to the North Pole. It didn't happen until
Speaker 1: it's a guy on skis, and I want to say
Speaker 1: it was in the nineteen eighties that he did it,
Speaker 1: and he was supported the whole way by air drops
Speaker 1: of supplies. That's the only way that this guy managed
Speaker 1: to do it. Um And of course the air drops
Speaker 1: helped figure out if he's really But you know, so
Speaker 1: it's it wasn't an easy thing to get to. No,
Speaker 1: it's not. That's nothing. It's something I probably wouldn't even
Speaker 1: try to get to. But yeah, I mean a lot
Speaker 1: of these guys like that, they have you know, they
Speaker 1: have some pretty rough times. Like it was months ago
Speaker 1: that I read Endurance by F. A. Worsley, who was, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's about about Ernest Shackleton and his try his his
Speaker 1: attempt to get to the South Pole. And that's an
Speaker 1: amazing story. I'd highly recommend that story, by the way.
Speaker 1: And I know we're talking to the other end of
Speaker 1: the earth, but it's kind of a similar thing. And
Speaker 1: we're talking sleds and dogs and ships crushed in the
Speaker 1: ice and and you know, some tales of of incredible
Speaker 1: survival and these guys wants you an amazing set of adventures. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, over the years, there's countless people have died
Speaker 1: trying to get to those places. So it's it is,
Speaker 1: it's like it's the what I called it earlier. It's
Speaker 1: kind of the white whale is I'm going to be
Speaker 1: the one who gets it. And that could be why
Speaker 1: some of these guys say, to hell with it, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna lie, because I've tried so hard I deserve it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I still think that Cook probably thought he got there,
Speaker 1: and I think Perry knew well as a lying jerk,
Speaker 1: that he didn't get there, but couldn't. I couldn't admit
Speaker 1: that he had failed yet again, and so went on
Speaker 1: that that nasty little smear campaign that he launched. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then and by the way, when he when he
Speaker 1: went public with this whole thing about the UNU, he said,
Speaker 1: they just want put one out a few miles and
Speaker 1: then just sort of circled around and came back. Well,
Speaker 1: that's obviously a lie. They didn't circle around, but they
Speaker 1: went a totally wrong way. Yeah, but they didn't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, if they had just like sort of
Speaker 1: gone out there intending to fake it, and you know,
Speaker 1: and then decided to ask girl let's go back home. Well,
Speaker 1: why were they gone for fourteen months? Got lost? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess I cut off on the ice. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were never really lost. No, they knew what they
Speaker 1: were because this floating ice flow, and they figured it out,
Speaker 1: and he figured out where they were. That's how he
Speaker 1: knew how to navigate back to the village. Yeah. He uh,
Speaker 1: you know, that was his his big mistake though he
Speaker 1: should have taken it, should have taken a few more
Speaker 1: people with them, and he should have made sure everybody
Speaker 1: in the expedition knew how to use a secctant. Again,
Speaker 1: that's why heading to the South Pole was so well documented,
Speaker 1: to make sure that didn't happen. Smart move there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's all I've got. It sounds like year in
Speaker 1: agreement with me on it, Joe. I think that's it's
Speaker 1: quite quite likely that Perry lied. And I think it's
Speaker 1: quite likely, well, I know he lied about some stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was not an honorable guy. It was no, No,
Speaker 1: it was not. I think it's quite possible that Cook
Speaker 1: actually did make it to the North Pole or somewhere
Speaker 1: very close to where he you know, maybe through errors
Speaker 1: in navigation. You know, I felt that he was on
Speaker 1: the exact spot. I think he was pretty damn close.
Speaker 1: If he wasn't actually on the exact spot, I agree,
Speaker 1: I think yeah, I think Perry seems like a jerk.
Speaker 1: I saw you starting to use the letter A and
Speaker 1: then UM, and I think Cook, you know you really
Speaker 1: kind of He's a sympathetic character. You wanna be on
Speaker 1: his side? Yeah, And you know the hard part for Cook,
Speaker 1: Remember how I told you he kind of got He
Speaker 1: kind of got the short in the stick. For the
Speaker 1: rest of his life he got I think it was
Speaker 1: about ten years later. He he started investing in oil
Speaker 1: fields and he was sending correspondence and projecting the value
Speaker 1: of the output of his his oil field. And simple
Speaker 1: version is that somebody challenged it and then they charged
Speaker 1: him with mail fraud for fraudulent claims about the value
Speaker 1: of something, and they sent him to jail for like
Speaker 1: ten years, which was everybody couldn't believe what a harsh
Speaker 1: judgment it was. The judge apparently the prosecutor thought it
Speaker 1: was overly harsh, but the judge was, guess what a
Speaker 1: friend to Perry. And the worst part is turns out
Speaker 1: that part of Cook's oil field was on one of
Speaker 1: the giant oil reserves. Yeah, he wasn't lying at all,
Speaker 1: he was. He actually undercut the amount, he was shy
Speaker 1: the production. Yeah, for this, he gets, you know, a
Speaker 1: good long a good long stay in jail. But part
Speaker 1: of that due to Perry. Yeah. Well, and that's that's
Speaker 1: the thing is I almost wonder if it was a
Speaker 1: good thing for him, because he said that being in prison,
Speaker 1: he was a surgeon, he was a doctor in jail,
Speaker 1: in prison, and it was very peaceful for him and
Speaker 1: very calming, and he could just get away from all
Speaker 1: the crap that was going on because he can never
Speaker 1: outrun it. So it might have, in a way been
Speaker 1: the best thing that Perry could have done for him. Yeah. Yeah, Still,
Speaker 1: the poor guy really suffered. I think. Yeah, I feel bad. Okay,
Speaker 1: we settled that, my mistress. We totally well, at least
Speaker 1: settled it. You want to talk about now, Um, how
Speaker 1: about our website? Oh yeah, because we've got one of those, Yes,
Speaker 1: we do. It's at Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. Were
Speaker 1: of course, this episode and all other episodes around the
Speaker 1: website gonna have links to research on their If you're
Speaker 1: not listening to us on the website, you can always
Speaker 1: listen to us through any streaming service. We're on pretty
Speaker 1: much every one of them. Of course we're on iTunes.
Speaker 1: If you are on iTunes and you're listening to this
Speaker 1: show through there, do take the time to leave us
Speaker 1: a comment and a rating. Those do help, especially well
Speaker 1: We've always said that it helps, but I know that
Speaker 1: it helps because we've continually keep moving upwards in the
Speaker 1: rankings and we're getting really high up there, which is awesome.
Speaker 1: That I think based on downloads, so they based on ratings.
Speaker 1: It's a combination. It's I don't think Apple tells you
Speaker 1: exactly what it is. A really complex algorithm. You wouldn't understand.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I bet it would. Um Or of course
Speaker 1: on Twitter, you can find us at Thinking Sideways and
Speaker 1: we do use that. Twitter has actually been really really
Speaker 1: busy lately, which is pretty fun. We are on Facebook.
Speaker 1: You can find us at our Facebook page. You can
Speaker 1: join the Facebook group, we can have some there's lots
Speaker 1: of conversations going on there. We're getting lots of stuff
Speaker 1: all the time through that total fun, So come join
Speaker 1: us there. And if you're enjoying the podcast and you
Speaker 1: want to hear more, you can always go ahead and
Speaker 1: go to Patreon to support the show. Patreon dot com
Speaker 1: slash Thinking Sideways is where we're at. You can choose
Speaker 1: to donate however much you want per show, totally an option,
Speaker 1: but that is something we have out there. Or if
Speaker 1: you want to do something that's just a one timer,
Speaker 1: we've got the PayPal right there on the website. I'm
Speaker 1: kind of hoping Bill Gates discovers our website or our
Speaker 1: podcast and pledges a million bucks an episode. Fantastic, it's happen.
Speaker 1: The final thing I gotta tell everybody is, of course,
Speaker 1: about our email address, which is Thinking Sideways Podcast at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com. And go ahead and send us an email.
Speaker 1: If you've got a story suggestion, you've got thoughts, you've
Speaker 1: got comment, you're looking for more information. We're happy to
Speaker 1: get them all and will field everything. So I think
Speaker 1: that's everything we gotta we gotta share here, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: You're right. All right, Well, we're gonna go ahead and
Speaker 1: close it on out and we will talk to all
Speaker 1: you good people next week. Bye bye, bye, guys