Behind the Bastards - Part One: Percy Fawcett: Real-Life Indiana Jones, or Deluded Psychic Racist?

Episode Date: August 25, 2026

There are a few candidates for the title "the real Indiana Jones" but Percy Fawcett is the man whose reputation most inspired our favorite fictional archaeologist. Unfortunately, he was a racist, a murderer and a weirdo occultist who led his own son to a horrific death for reasons of Magic.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the podcast where we tell you everything you don't know about the very worst people in all of history. And this week, we're going, well, we're actually going behind, in some ways we're going behind almost everybody's favorite movie protagonist, Indiana Jones, by talking about the guy who's often credited as being the real Indiana Jones, Percy Fawcett. And as a spoiler, Percy Fawcett sucked ass. But you know who doesn't suck? is our guest today, Miriam. Miriam, welcome back or welcome to the show. You are a friend of the pod in the most literal sense of the word and also a friend of Live Like the World is Dying, which is a podcast that is also the friend of our podcast. Yes, great to be here.

Yeah, that is me. I'm part of an anarchist publishing collective called Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. And we do a podcast called Live Like the World is Dying, which I am both a friend of and a podcaster of. Yay. Awesome. Listeners, you'll notice a trend where I cheat work by having my friends on a podcast so it feels less horrible to be working on a Friday. So Miriam's here and I'm very happy about it. I feel like most people work on a Friday, but you know who doesn't work on a Friday is the subject of our episodes this week, Percy Fawcett, because he's been dead for decades.

Miriam, have you ever heard of Percy Fawcett? I have not, but I have rarely heard a more villainous name. Like that is the name that I assume he had a curly mustache. He had a mustache. He had exactly, if you picture in your mind's eye, like a British explorer from the late Victorian, like, early 20th century age. He looks, he's whoever you're picturing. If you're picturing like a British explorer from like 1900, that's Percy Fawcett. Hold on.

For the Netflix. Are we talking, are we talking like Pith Helmet being carried a sedan chair by people who live the place he just discovered? Oh my God. Yeah, look at that. Look at that guy. He's got a beautiful curling mustache, like magnificent and also like a full beard. Like he just came out of the Amazon. He's wearing an explorer's p coat and some sort of weird.

I honestly don't know what's going on with his hat. The hat is a mystery. I've never seen this hat before. Dare I say he's got a Would wear the jacket though Look the whole fit's good It's not a bad fit There's a reason why he's the dude

That everybody's basing their like Indiana Jones style like adventure archaeologist characters on it's because he did look pretty cool This is an I-Heart podcast Guaranteed human Behind every night spent making the kids lunches There's a lot of suspense Will they finally eat the veggies

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No way. Listen to the latest episode of Hey Jonas on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. If your bookshelf and your for-you page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island to serve the same level of discourse. Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions. Yeah, I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. Listen to Pro Society on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Percy Fawcett, some people would you say that, because he gets credited a lot as

being the real Indiana Jones. That's not like true in the most literal, direct way. George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg have been open about the fact that the character in the movies were inspired like Star Wars by pulpy adventure serials that the two encountered in their youth, right? Like Star Wars owes a lot to Flash Gordon, and Indiana Jones is more inspired by Zorro and kind of a launch of World War II era films, particularly a series of Adventure B movies starring actors like Alan Ladd and Charlton Heston with titles like Secret of the Inca's,

And I think Heston's Secret of the Inca's is like one of the movies that most directly inspired Indiana Jones. However, if you dig around a little bit, you will find people saying that, like, well, Percy is really the guy who inspired all the characters who kind of Indiana Jones was based off of. So Indiana Jones was inspired by these fictional characters from pulp serials in the 40s and 50s. And those pulp characters were largely inspired by Percy Fawcett. And that is accurate. To give you an example of how this usually gets written out, I found an article unskilled. history that said, quote, possibly the individual most touted as an inspiration for Indiana Jones is Percy Harrison Fawcett, a British Army officer, surveyor, and daring jungle explorer. Fawcett's life

history reads like the plot of an adventure novel or action film. And that is true. His life, his biography does read like the plot of an adventure novel because he wrote it. And he wrote it trying to ape adventure novels because he was also a fan of the adventure novels that a lot of people were writing at the time. And he was deliberately kind of crafting an image for. himself. And the specific thing Fawcett dedicated his life to doing is very Indiana Jones because he spent his life and, in fact, lost his life looking for a magical lost city in the Amazon, right? Oh. Like it's a, yeah. So that might be you in on. He's not a serious archaeologist. But was he a good, was he a good writer? Like did he was, what was or like? Yeah, not bad.

What are we working with here? Yeah. Reasonably good. Yeah. And, you know, he's more to the point, it's not just that he was a good writer because he did, like, write his own life story down, and he very much themed it off of things that he'd read in adventure novels in some ways. But he was also personal friends with Arthur Conan Doyle and H. Writer Haggard, who are like the two guys who wrote some of the most influential novels in that genre in the early 1900s. So all of the movies and stuff that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg were inspired by when they made Indiana Jones were themselves inspired off of novels by guys like H. writer Haggard and Arthur Conan Doyle, and they were friends with Percy Fawcett and wrote books based on his exploits, right? So it really is pretty fair to call Percy Fawcett, if not like the real Indiana Jones, then one of the main inspirations behind Indiana Jones. Now, it's also fair to note that many modern adventure film protagonists are at least partly inspired by Percy

Fawcett. I would say Dr. Alan Grant from Jurassic Park and Nathan Drake from the Uncharted games, both have a little bit of Percy in them, or at least a little bit of like the public vision of Percy, because the public vision of Percy is not accurate to the real man, right? Percy Fawcett was a fraud. He was a murderer, and he was one of the most irresponsible fathers that we have ever talked about on this show. Like in the long list of horrible dads, he's up there.

Yeah. I just rewatched the original Jurassic Park in the last couple months, and what a great film. What a what a Laura Dern, honey. What a great film. Yeah. And Sam Neal, the recently

tragically departed Sam Neal, who could have played Percy Fawcett. I bet he could have grown a mustache of that caliber. I have that kind of faith in Sam Neal's facial hair. More than that, I believe Sam Neal could have made it look good. I know. I think he could have made it look good. I'll say it.

I think he could have found a lost city in the Amazon if he'd really wanted to. But he didn't. He mostly wanted to hang out with his ducks. Oh, pure soul. Yeah, he was a nice man. So historians and experts in Amazonian exploration tend to hate Percy Fawcett because he was a fraud and a huge asshole, right? And these guys will often be like, well, there's other people who we should, who more deserve to be credited as being like the real life Indiana Jones. If you listen to like credible folks who are experts in jungle exploration, they will tend to say that a better pick would have been a guy like Hiram Bingham.

Hiram Bingham was a Yale professor and a groundbreaking archaeologist and World War I veteran. It was one of the people who's often credited with rediscovering Machu Picchu, right? So that's like certainly seems more like the Indiana Jones like we want to believe would have existed, right? An actual heroic soldier who was also a really good archaeologist. But if you care about who most deserve to be memorialized by Harrison Ford at his absolute sexiest, I think we have to look at which of these, quote unquote, real Indiana Joneses actually looked more like the guy. And Sophie's going to show you a picture of Hiram Bingham. And he looks, like, fine, but he does not look cool, right?

Like, look at this man. He's like, he's completely clean-shaven for one thing, which is not cool looking in the jungle. He does kind of have an Indiana Jonesy hat on, but everything about him is just, like, so clean and well-kempt. Like, again, great scientist. But Sophie's next going to show you another photo of Percy Fawcett looking a lot like Indiana Jones, actually. Like he's got the hat. He's got the little like cravat down around his neck. He looks like he's just been living completely outdoors for years at a time.

He really does look like an explorer. Yeah, but none of us, look how hot Harrison Ford looks there. None of them look as hot as Harrison Ford. None of them look as hot as Harrison Ford. A very high standard. Harrison Ford. Unfortunately, Percy Fawcett does look quite cool there. He looks cool.

I mean, not, he doesn't look well. Like, he looks like he's living on. In the jungle. He looks like he is dysentery, like 90% dysentery. But the hat is working for him. I get the vibe. He doesn't look like, like, you know, Harrison Ford hat looks like a guy that could crash a plane. Yeah.

But. Well, and Harrison Ford looks like a guy who's been getting like a surplus of calories and protein and thus has muscle mass, which nobody who's living in the jungle in 1905 does. But there's some great hats here as somebody who loves a hat. These are all good hats. I mean, three really solid hats in a row between the pictures of Percy Hiram and just a screenshot of Indiana Jones. Wow. Yeah.

On the other hand, Percy Fawcett looks like if he tried to punch a Nazi, his arm would break in half. It would shatter. It would shatter immediately. Because he hasn't had any iron in his diet in more than a year. So if you've heard of Percy Fawcett, you've probably heard about him in the context of his search for the lost city that he called Z. And this became famous in around 2009 when author David Grant published a book, The Lost City of Z about Percy Fawcett. And his goal, Fawcett went missing, searching for this lost city that he told everybody was definitely in the Amazon. and then pretty much died.

He died somewhere out in the jungle, right? It's a spoiler for where this goes. And people went searching for him for years to see if they could find Percy. There were rumors that he was still hiding in the jungle. He wasn't. He just died. And then Grant in 2009 publishes this book that's kind of a reappraisal of Percy's legacy because we have found in the interim decade since Percy went missing

that there were large inhabited sections of the Amazon, not in the way that Percy thought there were, but in a way that has caused people. to kind of reappraise his legacy and be like, well, he was kind of right about the fact that there were like large urban society or semi-large urban like societies in the Amazon prior to European contact, right? And that book was popular enough that in 2016, there was a movie made based on the book starring a guy who looks kind of like Brad Pitt as Percy Fawcett and Robert Pattinson as his friend Henry Coston. A guy who kind of looked. That guy is so famous. You're talking about

Charlie Hunnam, the guy who is Jack from sons of Anarchy, like that guy's wildly famous. They're looking a little like Brad Pitt. It looks a little bit like Brad Pitt without like, you know, being like an abuse. Look, he's fine in the movie. Robert Patton's a lot of fun. Brad Pitt sucks, guys. I'm sorry. Yeah.

I have also never heard of Charlie Hunnam. Thank you. Thank you, Miriam. I have because handsome. that's fair. Yeah. Again, he looks kind of like Brad Pitt. Hanson.

Robert Pattinson is way better in the movie. Way better. Also, handsome. But the movie is completely inaccurate. And the book, I should also say, David Grant's book, The Lost City of Z, is completely inaccurate. And this is going to disappoint some of you, those of you who read it. It disappointed me because I read Grant's book in like 2009 or 10, and I liked it.

He's a very good writer. If you've heard of his name or you think you've heard of his name, it's probably because he wrote the book, Killers of the Flower Moon, which was turned into a white. celebrated film. But Grant's book about Percy, while enjoyable, is completely fucking wrong about every important detail pretty much about the man's life, right? To the point where actual experts on the Amazon and the history of exploration in the Amazon are livid at Gran and his book in the movie that was made based out of it. One of Grant's major sources, a guy he thinks profusely in his book

and say, I couldn't have written this book without the book this Amazon historian and explore wrote is an explorer named John Henning. And John Henning's review of Grant's book is succinct and brutal. Quote, it is a pity that a writer as good as Grand chose to study this unimportant, disagreeable, and ultimately pathetic man. It is an even greater pity

that he decided to inflate and distort so much of this sad story. Holy shit. It's really pretty brutal. Like, Grand did not do a good job with the Percy Fawzett story. I'm sorry. I love man-on-man crime.

That was so cool. Henning, we're going to hear a lot from him in this, and he has, he does not spare the rod on this book. It's beautiful stuff. I was surprised that when you were saying the book was really bad, and I have not read Lost City of David. It's not bad. It's inaccurate. It's an accurate.

Killers of the Flower Moon. And I was, okay. So a good writer telling lies is what we're talking about here. Yeah. I mean, I'm not an expert on this. But the experts say that he willingly and knowingly distorted the truth in his book to a massive degree, right? That's the allegation that a lot of experts have made about Grant's book. I'm going to try not to distort the story. We'll see how well I do. Percy Fawcett's tale begins,

as many bad things do, at the height of the Victorian age. Percy Harrison Fawcett was born on August 18, 1867. We've even got a Harrison Ford connection. He's got a Harrison in there. Exactly. Maybe they're related. That's not how names work, but it could be. He was born August 18th, 1867 in Torquay near Devon, which is in like the southwest tip of England. His mother had been born Myra McDougall and his father's family were old and aristocratic members of the Yorkshire gentry. His family, the Fossets, had owned Scalaby Castle and probably got Rich's shipping magnates in the East Indies.

That's generally where people say most of their money came from. His father was captain. Hmm? So their money is in castles and slavery. This is, I think, mostly post-slavery, because we're talking like post-1830 is when they make their fortune. I'm not saying, that doesn't mean that it wasn't sketchy, but I think it was post-postslavery is when they make most of their money. I did look into that because once I heard shipping, I was like, okay, what year were they shipping stuff? It's suspicious.

Because there was a certain age that would have been people. But I think they were mostly too late for that to have been where they got their fortune. His father was Captain Edward Boyd Fawcett, who Grant's book describes as a Victorian aristocrat and member of the Prince of Wales's inner circle. And that does seem to have been accurate. He was also a famously good cricket player. Alas, Edward Fawcett loved to drink. And by the time Percy was born, he'd acquired the nickname Bulb for what years of alcoholism had done to his nose. Right?

So, again, you have to be quite the drinker for people in like the 1870s and 80s to be like, wow, you're kind of drinking a little too hard, aren't you? Like, you're going a little bit off the wagon there, my man. Like, that means you've got a serious problem. So Edward was almost the platonic ideal of the rich young fail-son fuck-up from an aristocratic British family. He cheated on his wife constantly, and he pissed away the family fortune gambling and getting drunk.

One of his kinsmen described him as, a good man gone wrong. But the things this person cites as evidence that Fawcett was ever a good man had nothing to do with morality. He described him as a Ballyol scholar and fine athlete, yachtsman, charmor and wit, equery to the Prince of Wales. And again, none of those are things that make me think he was a good man. Like, okay, like he was well connected and he was charming and funny. That doesn't mean he wasn't drinking in an asshole, right? Could sail a yacht real good, is not like...

Yeah, could sail a yacht real well? I think bad people can sail a yachts, like Mark Zuckerberg, for example. But yeah, this does reveal kind of something important about the culture Percy and his faucet were born to help expand and lead. For members of the upper class in the British Empire, being good at sports was proof that you were a good person and not just a good person, but a perfect living embodiment of colonial values, right? When Percy's dad's friends say he was a good man because he used to be a great athlete, that's not, they don't think that's weird because they are like the purpose of sports in the height of the British. Empire is to make soldiers for the British Empire. Cricket, which is the sport that Percy and his dad, are both known for being best at, originated around the 7th century CE, and by the 1600s, it had become popular among the nobility. As much as anything, playing sports meant that you were

rich enough to have time for something that wasn't hard labor or worship. Cricket spread through Britain's early colonies, and the first cricket club came to India in 1792. It soon became a passionate thing for soldiers to engage in. Per an article, in the collector by Greg Bayer. For the most part, cricket was an obsession of the military, and there were even complaints of British officers taking up valuable logistics base by bringing their cricket gear on military campaigns.

One such complaint was received before the Battle of Islanda, where the British suffered their biggest ever defeat to indigenous forces. So, is it possible that the British lost to the Zulus there because they were too obsessed with playing cricket? Unlikely, but not impossible. Yeah, I can picture some, like, Victorian-era British officer like leaving behind the guns to bring a couple extra crates of cricket whites or whatever they've got. Just like I can kind of picture like U.S. soldiers maybe fucking off on patrol duty and getting ambushed because they're paying attention to who's winning the Super Bowl or something, right?

Like they're turning into a radio or some shit. Easy. So the fact that Edward Fawcett, Percy's dad, was considered one of the best cricket players of his generation, means that prior to his fall into disrepute, he would have been one of the more lauded. military officers of his era because being good at cricket was about as good as being good in actual warfare in this period of time. By the time Percy himself was born, Cricket was valued not just as a game in and of itself, but as a way to induct young men into imperialist values and make them better soldiers. This is very directly stated in educator Peter Crowhurst's website British Empire 1815 to 1914. Quote, as public schools began to turn out English Christian gentlemen, the British government came to see these schools as providing the training

character needed by Britain's colonial servants working in far-flung parts of the empire. By the last quarter of the century, when Britain justified imperial expansion by claiming Britain had a mission to civilize the undeveloped parts of the world, it was the values transmitted by cricket that helped to tie the colonies and its peoples to Britain. And that may be sounds weird. I would love to know what the values included in cricket are. Great. I'm glad you asked that question, Miriam. So those values are, suppose.

a competitive spirit and a selfless dedication to the team, right? And they see that as transferring, like, pretty directly to making you a selfless soldier who's willing to sacrifice for their comrades in the empire. This is why Lord Wellington is said to have mused that the Battle of Waterloo had been first, quote, fought on the playing fields of Eaton, right? Wellington was claiming that the reason why he beat Napoleon at Waterloo is that his officers learned the values that made them great soldiers through playing sports, that that's what made them able to, like, beat Napoleon and his officers, right?

This is, like, something Wellington said. So maybe we should, like, take it seriously, not necessarily as a literal evidence of how well cricket worked at making soldiers, but as a sign of the place that cricket held in, like, English culture in this period of time. Probably no single piece of media better embodies this than a poem by Sir Henry Newbolt, himself born in 1862, titled, Play Up, Play Up, and Play The Play, and Play The World. the game. This is a poem about how sports is supposed to make boys into great imperial soldiers. I'm going to read you the first couple stanzas of it. There's a breathless hush in the close tonight, tin to make in the match to win, a bumping pitch in a blinding light, an hour to play

in the last man in, and it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat or the selfish hope of a season's fame, but his captain's hand on his shoulder smote, play up, play up and play the game. The sand of the desert is sodden red, red with the wreck of the square that broke, the Gatlings jammed and the colonel dead and the regiment blind with dust and smoke. The river of death has brimmed its banks and England's far and honor a name. But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks. Play up, play up and play the game. You see what they're saying there, right?

Holy shit. Yeah. First off, pretty good poem technically, right? But second. This really like affirms the decision to cut gym class. Right. We need to stop kids from playing sports. Keep them inside on the computer.

Get these boys in front of a screen or they're going to conquer India. I don't know. Look, we have not invaded Afghanistan since creating TikTok. That's all I'm going to say. So a really good point. Yeah, yeah. These are the values that young Percy is going to grow up absolutely doused in, right? And the fact, like, when he's being praised as being a great cricketeer, he's being praised

just like you're going to be a very good soldier for the British Empire, right? And at the same time as he's growing up and he's getting, you know, going to school and getting into sports, he's watching his father completely collapses a human being. Over the course of Percy's childhood, he's going to squander two fortunes and basically abandon his family until he dies of consumption at age 45. Percy doesn't really know his dad very well. He mostly just knows that his dad let the entire family down. his mother, Myra, is obviously a victim here, but she's going to take her frustrations with life and her husband out on her kids.

Grant's book quotes a family member is saying, Her unhappy married life caused her much frustration and embitterment, inclining her to capriced injustice, particularly to her children. And Grant adds, Percy later confided to Arthur Conan Doyle that his mother was all but hateful in his pseudobiography, Exploration Fawcett, Percy wrote diplomatically, perhaps it was all for the best that my childhood was so devoid of parental affection that it turned me upon myself, right? And that's basically, that's Percy's claim about himself, is that his dad's basically gone and his mom is really mean. And so he just kind of focuses on himself, right, as opposed to, like, his family or

anything else. Like, it turns him inward and it makes him a very, it's going to make him like a quiet and kind of, he's obsessive, but about like things that other kids don't really understand and aren't really interested in, right? He's going to be like searching for gold as a little kid repeatedly. This is something he's really interested in. And I get the feeling he just kind of falls into these fictional and non-fictional stories of like exploration and these like great, you know, lost treasures and whatnot because it's it's a fantasy life. And any fantasy life is better than his like life at home, right?

I don't get the sense that that's much of an outlier in like the parenting style of the British aristocracy of the 19th century. Like, I think even if you had a living healthy father who was at home, like, the style in that class at the time was like, pay somebody else to beat your children far away from you was like how they parented. And yeah, and to that extent, probably the biggest impact his parents out of him is that his dad is a failure, right? As opposed to his dad being like distant and non-affectionate and a drunk, but also a success, right? that would have made for a different kind of childhood somewhat. Because he does seem to have some degree of like shame over his dad, especially as a younger kid and man. He has an older brother named Edward, and he loves his older brother.

Edward's athletic, but also very bookish. And so Percy's going to like take after his older brother. And when his older brother gets into like weird esoteric spiritual stuff, Percy's going to follow him there too. Like most kids of the upper class, Percy is sent to expensive public schools. And when we talk about public schools in this period of time, we're talking about private schools, actually. Like that's how we would describe them today, but they'll usually call them public schools back then. Now, the system that kind of governs life in the schools that Percy's going to, these boarding academies,

we've talked about it before in this show. It's called the prefect fagging system, right? And yes, this is where the slur comes from, right? But this predates that also. Like, they don't mean it as that specific slur, but that is, like, one of the origin points of the slur. and the prefect fagging system was a way of organizing kids in boarding schools and training them and letting them kind of like train each other through abuse that was common in the most prestigious institutions of learning in the British Empire. To talk about that a little bit, I want to quote from an article in the history of education quarterly by Paul Nash. Under the prefect fagging system, senior boys are given a major role in governing the school, wielding discipline and carrying responsibility.

They are called variously, prefects, monitors, or preposteres, chosen a quarter of, according to many criteria, including physical and intellectual prowess, the principal consideration in their selection, apart from seniority, has traditionally been character. Usually the prefects are members of the sixth form, and while in some schools, all members of the sixth are granted privileged status, the two bodies are not customarily identical. At the other end of the scale, new boys entering the school begin by serving as fags for senior boys.

Their duties consist of almost anything the fagmaster cares to impose, from cooking and running errands to blacking shoes and kindling fires. And that is kind of a tame. Look at how the system works. This is built on physical and psychological abuse and encouraging physical and psychological abuse of boys. Sexual abuse is so common to have been almost universal, at least in some periods of time. You'll hear some differences.

But the number of boys who experience some degree of sexual abuse under this system is like most of them one way or the other. Like it's a deeply abusive and messed up system. Yeah, it's basically like just institutionalized, unimaginably bad bullying. Yes, and this is, by the way, what the house system and everything in Harry Potter's based on. She doesn't call it the prefect fagging system, but she uses the term prefects and like headboys and stuff, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what it's all based on. The exposure that I've had to this also is, did you ever read the book Boy by Roald Dahl?

It was like an early autobiography. He describes acting, you know, in this role. And I just, I mean, it's been like literal decades since I've read it. But I remember one of the things he was required to do for like the boy he was assigned to was going to the like outdoor privy before him and sit on the toilet seat to melt the ice on it and warm it up. And being complimented on having like a nice warm bottom by the boy for whom he is doing this. Oh boy. I hate that. I'm just going to let that sit there because I don't feel like I'm going to like analyze that.

And that's one of the tamer stories, yeah, that you're going to get out of this system. Yeah, that is like, that is the G-rated version of what must have been going on. Yeah. To make, to make the boys who make the British Empire, you've got to do some fucked up stuff. Now, speaking of things that are inherently abused, hmm. No. Anyway, here's some ads. Behind every night spent making the kids lunches, there's a lot of suspense.

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When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the survivor files. I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.

They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. There's stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your for-you page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsesives, and anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and love island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.

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And we're back. So the most we get about his experiences under this pretty brutal schooling system from Percy is an insistence that being caned regularly, quote, did nothing to alter my outlook. In other words, all that abuse didn't change me. Like, don't worry. It didn't affect me at all. In the book, Brazil that never was, A.J. Lees, who extensively studied Fawcett's life, writes that by all accounts he was a sensitive and rather solitary child, who during school

holidays would go hunting for treasure near his home, which is a very cute thing for a kid who's enduring all this shit to want to do. Like, you have to have some sympathy for him in this area, just like desperately wanting anything but the life that he's got. Hard to, hard not to sympathize with that. Very expensive abuse is still abuse. Very expensive abuse. Yeah. And while there is some suggestion, some evidence that the heavy expectations in demand placed on the young men of his station chafed him, he also excelled as a student and in sports. First is a cricket player. As Grant writes in his book, spectators noticed an almost maniacal determination about his style of play. One observer said that Fawcett invariably showed the bowlers it takes something more than ordinary to dislodge him once set. He gets a reputation for physical toughness. He's almost immune to physical discomfort. That's how people will always talk about,

Percy, his entire life. He's just incredibly tough. Like, he does not mind being in a horrible pain and discomfort, and he's willing to, he's willing to endure that longer than most people can. And this is going to be his, really his superpower, his entire life. The only way he's able to do the things he does is because he just doesn't mind being in horrible agony for years at a time. I bet that works out great for everybody who goes along with him. Yeah, it makes him a safe guy to be friends with. That's what it makes him. One of the stories that tell about him is when he's playing a rugby game once, and he keeps playing after losing both of his front teeth,

like it doesn't slow him down at all. They've just been smashed in. Cool stuff. After Percy graduates the British equivalent of high school, he gains admission to the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. Now, in spite of his education, this is not what Percy wants for himself. He does not want to be a soldier.

But his mom wants to see him in uniform and probably one imagines she wants to see her son succeed where her husband had failed. And his older brother doesn't do this. His older brother, I think, is just like, I've got other plants and bounces to go right about magic. As a spoiler, for what we'll be talking about him a little later. So Percy goes to the military academy, and it sucks. The military academy is also an incredibly abusive place for boys.

Percy is hazed relentlessly, as all the rest of his peers. One common game, and they always call them games, even though these are some of the most psychotically violent things you can hear about, is to have young cadets burn their skin on a hot poker. That's one fun game. It's like, how long can you burn your skin with this branding iron? Classic. Yeah, classic game.

Another great game is they have kids stand on a table and then they kick the legs out from underneath the table and see, like, can you not flinch and just like fall down straight with the table or do you jump like a coward? Right? Now, I can't say exactly how this influenced him. Throughout his life, Fawcett is going to be very critical of British culture, right? Not in a way that rejects wholly its racism or even imperialist values, but he will see himself his whole life as a kind of social dissident. And one does suspect that the brutality of his education may have influenced that, right?

He is a loyal soldier of the empire, and he's also very critical of, like, the mainstream culture within the empire. In 1886, Percy is commissioned as an artillery officer. As John Henning wrote in a critical site, summary of the man's life for the spectator. The next 20 years involved garrison duty in Ceylon and postings in Malta and England. The only significant events were getting married and becoming a devotee like many others of the charlatan psychic, Madame Blavatsky.

And we've done several episodes on Helena Blavatsky. She's a hoot. This is the lady who invents Theosophy. And Theosophy is a few generations on some of the people who, like, our ideological descendants of her has become the Nazis, right? or become the original occult weirdos that were in the Nazis, right? That's like one of the things you can tie to Blavatsky, kind of, although she herself was not. Not that she wasn't racist.

Yeah, she did come up with the whole, the root races. The root races and all this kind of stuff too, right? Yes. So like a lot of Aryan theory has its roots in Blavatsky. Now, that description by Henning also leaves out some important facts. As he stated, Percy's going to be stationed in Ceylon, which is part of modern-day Sri Lanka. and he's there actually as like an 18 or 19 year old.

And before he turns 20, so when he's still a teenager, he finds himself first drawn to Buddhist mysticism. And this is like he's stationed in a Buddhist country, and there's all these very old temples that have been around forever, and he's just immediately drawn to like old things. And he finds himself much more intrigued by Buddhism than he is by Christianity. He grows obsessed with Gala Pita Gala, which is a famous rock formation in Ceylon,

that he seems to have believed had hid some sort of treasure. He thinks that this rock formation, that's a natural rock formation, there were probably, like, was a king buried nearby. And the way he came upon this belief is telling. He's just sort of like talking to people, and he finds a local man who describes himself as a descendant of the Kandian kings and assures him that there's a king's hoard

buried somewhere near the rocks. We have no evidence this is anything but a local grifter, right? He's like, hang out in a tourist trap, and a guy's like, yeah, I'm descended from the old kings, and I'll tell you where gold is for a price, right? That's the feeling I get from here. I don't think Percy's stumbled upon anything other than a guy who's telling him what he wants to hear, but Fawcett decides to carry out his first expedition based on this information.

And he digs around the area. All he finds are some pottery shirts, and, you know, he doesn't document those in any useful way. So we don't know if those were, like, recent or if he actually found something old. He doesn't find any gold, so he doesn't really care, right? But this failure's not going to do anything to discourage him, right? This is sort of his like gateway drug of exploring for like lost antiquities. Well, it's so, it's so frustrating and interesting. Like you said he got intrigued by Buddhism.

But like when you, when you are in a Buddhist country intrigued by Buddhism, like you have the opportunity to like go and study Buddhism with Buddhists. You know, and like go and learn about the religion and how it's practiced and like what ideas people are kicking around in there. And instead he like found some dude who was like there's gold there maybe. And like that's what he finds like that's the part he latches onto. And like I don't know. I know some Buddhists. They're not they're not big repositories of secret gold. I don't think Buddha really encouraged searching for gold. I think desire is bad actually. Yeah. It's such a it's just such a like disappointing way to take that that interest.

It's it because he is he is going to get really, he's going to become a Buddhist, although I don't know that most Buddhists would recognize what Percy thinks Buddhism is as Buddhism. Because his Buddhism is also wrapped up deeply in a lot of these weird kind of spiritualist beliefs that are circulating through like the hip chunks of European culture at the time. So it's it's very much like, it's more, it's more accurate to say that he is intrigued by a mix of Buddhism and what like white people are writing about Buddhism. that's largely a fantasy, you know? Right. Like Blavatsky's like conversations with Buddhist ghosts or whatever. Exactly. Stuff like that is as much of an influence on him as like anything that we would call actual like Buddhist theology.

So not long after he fails to find this king's ransom, the Archduke friends Ferdinand visit Ceylon. And there's a huge party thrown to celebrate. Percy attends, but as grand notes, he did not meet Ferdinand, which is sad because this probably was going to be one of the last chances he would have gotten to meet the guy. But he spots a more alluring figure, a girl who seemed no more than 17 or 18. Her name was Nina Agnes Patterson, and she was the daughter of a colonial magistrate. So he sees this teenage girl, and he's like 20 or 21 at this point, right? So we're not talking about, this would not,

no one would notice this is a weird age gap at the time. She's 17 or 18, he's 20 or 21. That's not even all that really weird today, right? And they kind of are making eyes with each other, and he can't talk to her directly because it's Britain in the fucking 1890s or whatever. So he manages to set up a meeting and they find out they have some similar interests, particularly they both like ancient archaeology and they both think Buddhism is really cool. Now, in addition to that, Nina is an early women's rights activist and Percy's pretty tolerant on that issue for the day. I'm not going to call him like, woke, committed necessarily.

Comparatively so. I think he actually is pretty much okay with women voting, which is like a reasonably good at the time, I guess you have to say. We'll take what we can get. I do wish that like in terms of things we could bring back, I think my friends should have to meet anybody who wants to date me before I meet that person.

Yeah, that's not quite how it worked back then. No, no, no, basically. They should just have to run the gauntlet of your friends. Yeah. Oh, man. Someone should make an app for that. I don't know if that would work out well for me. We'd have fun.

Yeah, just like a pinball game where you just have to bounce off all of this, whoever you want to flirt with, like, close friends and relatives until you meet approval. Yeah, if we want to really drop birth rates, that's how to do it. Oh, my gosh. Percy and Nina fall madly in love, as A.J. Lee summarizes in his book. After a courtship that lasted two years, cheeky, as Fawcett named Nina, because she always had to have the last word. And Puggy, as Nina called him, because of his bulldog tenacity. were engaged to be married.

They called each other Cheeky and Puggy. This is one of the things that the movie gets right, and it does sound as insufferable as you imagine it would be to be next to these two. Cheeky, come over here. Who plays it? Who plays her in the movie? I hope they didn't call each other that in public. I would die. They sure did.

They sure did. Who played her in the movie, Robert? Oh, I don't know. I didn't even know the name of the guy who looks like the other guy whose name I can't remember right now. Sophie, I don't remember her name. Fair enough. But Robert Pattinson's in the movie, and he's pretty good. He's going to be here.

Everybody knows Robert Pattinson's name. Mm-hmm. So this is where the problem start, right? They're courting for two years. They're finally engaged to be married, but they run into an issue because Nina and Percy had selfishly only bothered to ask themselves if they wanted to be married. And they hadn't consulted the most important authority on that question, Percy's mom. And Myra does not want Percy to get married. Now, we don't really know why she doesn't like this match,

but she starts spreading rumors first that her own son is a sleaze bag who sleeps around constantly. So she first tries to just convince Nina that Percy's cheating on her. And that doesn't work. I think because Percy's kind of visibly frightened by the idea of sex. If you know Percy, it's just kind of obvious he's not cheating on anybody. Look at this man. He's scared of his own dick. He's certainly not sleeping around.

Your mom's spreading rumors that you're a scumbag. It's so funny. And they're not believable. Nobody buys it. Incredible. Every single dynamic in this family is so fucked. I looked at it up. Nina Fawcett was played by Sienna Miller.

Also, you didn't Tom Hollins in this movie as a faucet? Yeah, Tom Hulls in it. This is, I, he's the boy. He's, he's Percy's son who dies. Oh, sensational. What a, what an odd. It's a fun movie. totally inaccurate.

Totally inaccurate. Totally inaccurate. And it's from 2016, which feels very 2016. It's a very 2016 movie. It's a great Robert Pattinson performance, though. As they all are. Because Myra's plan to convince Nina that Percy's cheating on her does not work. Flander.

Yeah, Myra pivots to spreading rumors that Nina is no longer a virgin. Why is she such a bitch? She sucks really bad. I wish I knew more about why Myra sucks this bad, but Myra suck. Well, anybody who's like in the public paying attention to these rumors is just going to be like, okay, these two sluts seem to be into each other. Sounds great. These two horn dogs are made for each other. God.

Per the book, Brazil that never was, P.H.F. Percy Harrison Fosset felt he had no alternative but to break off their engagement, informing Nita in a letter, you are not the pure young girl I thought you to be. So this absolutely. for this after his mom doesn't because he's a dipshit he falls for everything anyone who tells him there's treasure he'll spend years looking for it he's an idiot apparently wow what a dumb ass so this is devastating to nina obviously and she leaves salon it's fucked up percy continues being deployed to modern day sri lanka and he establishes a reputation for himself as intelligent and reliable but also kind of a narcissistic who's in love with his own voice. His commandant at the time more or less describes him that way. For his part, Percy does not seem to have been fulfilled

with the life of a colonial officer. This isn't what he wants for himself. He's much more in love with the path his brother Edward has taken. Rather than getting into the military and becoming an officer, Edward becomes a writer and a mountaineer and gets deeply into theosophism,

the new religion created by Helena Blavatsky. Now, Blavatsky is this major figure in the spiritualist movement of the late 18 in the early 1900s, and Edward is one of her most gifted followers and collaborators. An article for occult world by Lux Fair notes that a key aspect of Blavatsky's belief system was the idea of, quote, a brotherhood of advanced souls who form the hidden government of the world and direct the course of human knowledge. And while her most common term for this organization was the Great White Lodge or Great White Brotherhood, and while Blavatsky's success, like, so that's what she tends to call this. and the white in there really gets emphasized by some people. Blavatsky's successors are going to alter and add to this concept over time,

but historian K. Paul Johnson argues that, quote, the actual Great White Lodge of Blavatsky's time was a network of Hindu spiritual and political leaders who worked with her during her time in India to oppose the British colonial government and the activities of Christian missionaries. These conclusions have been sharply attacked by modern theosophists, but Johnson offers substantial evidence for his case, and it cannot be dismissed out of hand. Now, as noted, that's an interpretation worthy of debate, the idea that these great white masters

with this network of, like, Hindu spiritual and nationalist leaders who were kind of fighting against the British, like, imperial possession of their land. But Graham argues and cites some support for this argument, too, right? His attitude is that Percy is drawn to theosophy because it's a countercultural movement that rejects aspects of British imperial dogma. And in his book, he quotes historian Janet Oppenheim, who wrote a story. a biography of Blavatsky, and argued that Blavatsky's philosophy had particular appeal, quote, for those who wanted to rebel dramatically against the constraints of the Victorian ethos, however they perceive that elusive entity.

And I do think that describes Percy, and I think that describes Edward, too. These are guys who want to rebel from aspects of the culture they're born into, and that's what draws them to theosophy. Edward Fawcett became one of a number of theosophists who converted to Buddhism and threw his support behind nationalist religious figures in Southeast Asia who opposed imperial rule. And Edward was close enough to Blavatsky that he helped her research and write her 1893 book The Secret Doctrine. Percy's brother helps Helena Blavatsky write the secret doctrine. And in 1890, he travels to Ceylon and takes the Ponceil, or the five precepts of Buddhism.

So in 1890, before Percy shows up there, Percy's brother goes to Ceylon and becomes a Buddhist. And when you take these five precepts and agree to them, it means, among other things that you're vowing not to drink, not to murder, and not to commit adultery. And Edward's conversion to Buddhism is so noteworthy that local newspapers report on it at the time. You can find press clippings from like these local Ceylon papers talking about how incredible it is, that this British member, the oldest son of a famous family in the empire has converted to Buddhism. It's kind of a big deal. And Percy, who kind of worships his older brother at this point, follows him not long after and takes the Ponceil,

himself and converts to Buddhism. This is something he does publicly, and this is something that there's, like, press about. So it's a pretty big deal that both of the Fawcett brothers have done this. And one thing I do think Graham gets correct is that, or Grand gets correct, is that this is an act of political protest, right? The Fawcett Brothers converting to Buddhism is not an apolitical act. And it's particularly a big deal that Percy does this, because he is an agent of the colonial military of the British Empire and is converting to the faith of a

colonized people and promising, I won't kill anybody. And there's a way you could even see that as kind of potentially treasonous, right? If you're a member of the British military that is supposed to keep this possession locked down and you're both converting to the possessed people's religion and saying, I refuse to kill, you're kind of saying, I won't fight for Great Britain. You kind of are, right? Yeah, he is a dissident in some ways. You are certainly saying that.

Does he stop occupying anywhere? He's going to kill at least one person. He's going to kill at least one person. Yeah. Wow. You know who else has killed at least one person? At least one. At least one.

At least one before breakfast most days. My God. Anyway, maybe you'll be next. Robert. Jesus Christ. There's no way to know with our supervisor. Sponsors, advertisers. What am I talking about? But you don't got to threaten the audience.

It's not a threat. It's just kind of a promise. If you hang out around our sponsors long enough, people die around them. There's no way to know. It's just statistics, really. Allegedly, allegedly, allegedly. Behind every night spent making the kids' lunches, there's a lot of suspense. Will they finally eat the veggies?

Will the pastos survive the first bite? Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all? And will you finish episode 8 before you're done slicing the cucumbers? Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Craved Netflix and Disney Plus from 94. $4 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the survivor files. I just remember this low, taunting voice next to me. my ear saying shut up, don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.

There's stories about what it takes to me. Make it out alive. Listen to the Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story.

I'm obsessed. From bestselling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community. of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to Pro Society on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport.

And Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook on the Big Money Players Network. Our show is extremely accessible to first-time listeners. Each week, we talk to someone in show business, aka The Biz, and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us. Everyone has a good time and no one gets mad at their publicists for letting them do our show. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman, not that great. Actually, can you help me shape this?

How about we flip it on his head, right? How about we flip this room? What is the surprise woman? Actually, you think is the straight man is actually the one who's acting weird. Adam Scott. This entire time, you've been expecting Adam Sandler to come to the, visit the show. I would never expect.

I would never set expectations for something like that to happen. If the universe allows for something like that to happen, I'm open to it. I'm always going to accept. You know, Danny McBride, fine. Yeah, it's all this fragile masculinity. Exuding. I could smell it walking on the hallway,

to be honest with you. I was like, is that weed? Nope, it's fragile masculinity. Ben Stiller, no. Because a lot of times out of context, people don't get it or even know what a circle is. You know what I mean? They're like, oh, what's a state? Everyone's so dumb.

And fake. Right. Fake and also not interested or just like, oh, I've got my life. I don't care about your life. And a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. Oh, and by the way, Will Ferrell told us personally he loves the show and he wants to be a guest on every episode, but he's just so busy. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back.

So in 1896, Percy is transferred from Ceylon back home to attend a course in gunnery. He gets stationed with a volunteer unit, I think, in Ireland at this point, and life goes on for a few more years. In 1898, Nina Patterson marries an army captain named Herbert Pritchard, right? So it takes her a few years to deal with the shame and shock of Percy's mom breaking off the engagement. Because his mom lied about her. A liar. But she marries this other guy, Herbert Pritchard. And he's like 14 or 15 years older than her.

It is not going to be a long partnership. Like right after they get hitched, they move to Alexandria. And he almost immediately dies of anthrax exposure. Oh shit. Like three months, four months after their wedding. Something like that. And I don't know how true this is, but any book about Fawcett that you're going to read will cite what were apparently this guy's last words to Nina. I do wish you and Fawcett will come together again.

To me, you have been a perfect wife, and I have thanked God and my prayers for having given you to me, but I feel sure you are meant for Fawcett, and I am just an interloper. I don't know how much I believe that, because they were together for like four months. That doesn't seem real. That doesn't seem real. That's not real. That's big. If I were a lady who had been publicly shamed and slut shamed, and my first, and I was

about to become a wealthy widow, I would. definitely go around telling people that his last words to me had been. I really hope you get back together with your ex-boyfriend. That would be great for me. Yeah. I really love it if you were to fuck the guy who broke up with you because his mom accused you of infidelity. That's my greatest hope for you, my wife. Jesus. Fuck. Okay. Now that you really aren't a version anymore, I hope that you do this. I don't know. That's weird. But maybe, maybe it's true. Probably not. given that he died of anthrax exposure, my guess is that his last words were more like, oh, God, the anthrax, it hurts so bad.

Something along those slides, perhaps. I think his last words are probably, ah. Yeah, yeah, that seems more credible. There's a lot of liars in this story, and they're making lying into an art form, and I appreciate that. They love it. They love it. Now, what everyone does seem to agree on is that by the time Nina's first husband dies,

everyone seems to have learned that Myra lied about Nina not being a virgin, right? Like Percy learns that at some point before her husband dies, that he was tricked by his mom. And this really fucks him up for a while. And once he learns that she's single again, he finds her and he gets down on his knees and he begs for her forgiveness. And Nina forgives him. The two are married on January of 1901. This causes a permanent breach between Percy and most of the rest of the Fawcett family. That does not seem to have concerned him too much.

I don't know how much you don't hear a lot about him and the rest of his family after this point. I don't know if he was like bummed about them not being close or if this was kind of a good ridden sort of situation. Do we know why his family didn't like this lady? She seems like the only thing we've heard about her is lies that the mom just sucks. I think his mom sucked. She is one thing I can imagine. She is an outspoken suffragettes. They didn't call them suffragettes in England, I don't think, but she's an outspoken advocate for women's rights.

And that may have pissed off Percy's family. None of the sources I found specify why, though. So I just, I honestly don't know. That would be kind of my theory, maybe. She's too outspoken about women's rights, but I actually genuinely don't know. So next Percy is going to leap towards a great change in the next kind of stage of his life because the military bores him, right? He doesn't want to stay an officer forever. He doesn't want to keep getting shipped around the empire.

He's desperate for some new field of endeavor where he can prove himself. And his father had once been a member of the Royal Geographical Society. And the RGS, we hadn't known how to make good maps for very long. Because in order to make like a really quality modern map, you need to be able to get both latitude and longitude. And I always forget which of them. I think it's longitude. You need like access to a good clock of some sort. Like you need to be able to tell the time in order to get the information you need to make.

a good map. And so until people could carry like watches that worked around with them, it was kind of hard to do very good mapping, right? There are other things that had to be invented too. But it's, the point is that by the time Percy's born, the Royal Geographical Society has spent the last like several decades finally mapping all of these parts of the world that had never had what we would consider to be like a modern map, right? Most places, even that doesn't mean people didn't know what was there. It means that there was not like a modern map in the, made to the standards of like modern map reading. And so the RGS has kind of made it its mission in life in the 1800s and early 1900s

to cover all of these blank spaces of the map, right? And so that's a very intriguing thing. It's a very sexy thing to be doing. Like if you're a Victorian gentleman, one of the coolest hobbies you can have is geography, is going out and helping to make maps, right? And so the RGS is a really hip thing to be a part of. So Percy and Nina get to work making a child. And Fawcett starts training to use the tools of a geographical surveyor.

He goes to, he takes classes with the RGS. The RGS has like a course that you can take to become an explorer. Like they'll teach you how to make maps and also how to like introduce yourself to native populations and try to communicate with them. There's like actual instruction on all these different things that's varying degrees of effective and problematic, right? Yeah, I bet that, I bet that class on how to introduce yourself to native people was really, something. Yeah, yeah. You start by shooting. No, they weren't quite that bad, usually. So, his instructor noted, quote, he was extremely quick at learning anything new. And although he'd never used a sextant or an artificial horizon before, he caught on to using both tools with remarkable

speed. He's noted by his instructors, like the things that it took people years to get good at, he very quickly became good at. When it comes to the actual technical tools of using surveying equipment, he's excellent. At least he seems to be, right? I don't know to do any of this stuff, so I can't judge it. I have to go by what this guy says. Unfortunately, his education in being an explorer included more than just technical instruction. One of his course books was written by Sir Francis Galton and was titled Hints to Travelers. And you've probably heard of Galton.

He was a famous mathematical genius who contributed to many fields, most notably early genetic science. He was also a gigantic racist and is the guy most often credited with creating eugenics. Sir Francis Galton is the father of eugenics. And his interests extended to mapmaking and exploration. He was an explorer as a younger man. And in his guide to adventurers, he described foreign peoples as the lower civilized nations or savages and insisted, some races are inferior to others in volume and complexity of brain. So he's not, Percy's not just getting taught how to use map tools. You know, there's some other shit in that class.

Yeah. It's important for your navigation lessons to come with just a dollup of racism. You can't navigate properly unless you're a bigot. You know, everybody knows that. That's, that's, I don't even, I don't have a bit to make about that, actually. So Fawcett graduates. He does well enough in his map and racism class that he gets sent off on a mission, well, not a mission of discovery.

He actually gets sent off as a spy. Because one thing that the British government has realized is that if we have the RGS sending people around the world to make maps, folks are used to the idea that there might just be some nerdy scientists around making maps. And if we, instead of nerdy scientists and spies disguised as nerdy scientists, they can do a lot of like spy work for the empire without necessarily getting caught. And that's what Percy gets sort of inducted to do. Per the book Brazil that never was, he was sent by the foreign office to Morocco to investigate Sir Henry McLean, a British officer considered to be the power behind the sultanate and to report back on the threat post by France and Germany. So he's given a spy mission.

It's not really that evil a spy mission, to be honest. Like he's spying on another British officer for the most part. And he's kind of looking at like, what are the French and the British doing in Morocco? He does this competently. He seems to have done a reasonably good job. He does not seem to have been discomfited by the fact that his government wanted him working as a spy instead of an explorer. But he's also not, you know, I think it's that he was good enough at this that he probably could have got more spy work from the government. I don't think he really likes this.

He's interested in exploration. and he's not interested in spying for the government very much. He's going to do the best job he can. But once this is finished, he doesn't seem interested in continuing to follow down that road. And instead, he gets back into the military and he's stationed in Ireland for a time after his return. And then to Malta and then to Hong Kong. And then finally, in 1903, back to Ceylon. And Ceylon is where he's going to have his first son, Jack.

And it's where he's going to start going really crazy. Yeah, Tom Holland. This is when he gives birth to baby. Tom Holland or his wife does. I don't think Percy does. That would be, that would be odd. But he, yes, this is where Tom Holland comes into the picture, Sophie. You're very correct. We'll talk about Tom Holland in part two of the Percy Fawcett story, the Tom Holland story. I'm just so glad Tom Holland got to play a dying Victorian child, which it sounds like the role he was born to play, especially back 10 years ago.

The moment you meet Tom Holland's character in that movie, you're waiting for him to die. Like you're like, all right, how are they going to kill you? You look like the kind of boy who needs to die. Cool. Miriam, you have anything you want to plug at the end here of part one? Sure. I'm so excited to find out how this guy ends up lost in the jungle and dead. But, yes, I am a host of Live Like the World is Dying, a podcast for what feels like the

end times, aka these times. And it's like if you, you know, want to learn about disaster preparedness but are not somebody who wants to like hide in a bunker with all of your beans, you know, instead maybe you can like learn about how you can acquire skills and build community and, you know, also hear about other people who are doing cool stuff like that. It's a lot of fun. Check us out. The podcast is a project of strangers in a tangled wilderness, which is the publishing collective that I'm a part of. And we have books and zines. And if you suppose, support us on Patreon. We'll send you zines in the mail, and that's cool. People like getting zines in the mail. They like getting zines, perhaps even a map to a lost city that you can go with your young son and lead him to his death in, you know? We haven't published so many maps to lost cities to get people killed, but, you know,

who knows what the future may hold. There's time. There's nothing stopping you. It's apparently legal as far as I'm aware. Boy, howdy. We'll be back for part two. Yeah, but between part one and part two, go die in the jungle, you know? Don't.

If that's what you want for yourself, you know? Don't do that. Don't do that. Why not? A lot of people are saying it's a great thing to do. Just one person. Percy said that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, don't do that.

Bye. Anyway, see you tomorrow. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Coolzone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Full video episodes with Behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit Remind me on Netflix so you don't miss an episode. For clips in our older episode catalog, continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel, YouTube.com slash at Behind the Bastards.

We love about 40% of you, statistically speaking. I survived nine months in captivity, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are the Survivor Files. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Did you hear the new episode of the Hey Jonas Podcast? We are at D23.

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