The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 197: Eating Folks in the Arctic

Episode Date: December 2, 2019

Steven Rinella talks with Buddy Levy and Janis Putelis.Topics discussed: Jumping out of planes with sacks of cash; the outlaw Claude Dallas as both an asshole and a good book subject; a crash course on David Crockett; the Labryinth of Ice; promiscuity on the frontier; eating spuds basted in human fat; flossing out a bullet hole with a silk handkerchief; that time when Steve mistook a communal sink for a urinal; bumpkin pride; Jani eating dehydrated placenta pills; and more. Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google Play Store. Know where you stand with Onyx. Giannis, did you know that did you see how the bear that mauled our past podcast guest, Amber Kornak, is dead?

Is dead or relocated? Dead. Just fresh dead. So i think i but just recently also we i we got a thing about it being relocated yeah it can't it wasn't able to keep itself out of trouble oh so some dude just outside of libby montana had a elk he'd killed in his garage and the bear busted into his garage to get the elk and it was like kind of like a three strikes you're out right like pretty much almost killed someone got a bunch of trouble got relocated got a bunch more trouble it's dead i should be asking amber about this not you because she didn't want nothing to happen to it. No. Guess how old that thing was?

25 years old. Mm-hmm. 550 pounds. He gained 100 pounds from when he got caught in October to when he got killed in November. He gained 100 pounds. Really? Yeah. Yep.

He went from 450 to 550 between October and November. That's amazing. That's a lot of eating. Yeah. I haven't been able to do that in my entire life. No. And you know, we just recently killed a 550

pound pig. So I'm glad to have that frame of reference. I think that a bear looks... Oh, is that how much beans weighed? That's right. So I'm glad to have that frame of reference. I think that a bear looks... Oh, is that how much beans weighed? That's right. Huh. Yeah. That's interesting.

You can imagine... Because beans wasn't that intimidating. Yeah, but he also doesn't have fur. Making him puffy. Yeah. He's not quite as muscular either. I'm still back wondering about Amber and getting mauled by the grizzly bear.

Oh, it's horrific yeah you should go back and listen what was that uh yeah Johnny look it up what was that called oh it's horrific man no it's not the same she's a grizzly bear she's a grizzly bear researcher but she had just started being a researcher and she was out collecting hair samples they're doing like a genetic study and she's out collecting hair samples from wire traps like basically you put out a scent and they use barbed wire or whatever around it and the bear goes in there to get it and loses fur on the barbs right and she was out checking hair traps and got mauled horribly came in from behind her it was an interesting conversation we had with her

she all of a sudden stumbles into it and it was just like right there and she just knew like he started coming she knew what was going to happen and he bit her in the back of the head real bad um and she grabbed her pepper spray and couldn't even see the bear at the time it was mauling her and held it over her shoulder quick thinking yeah and just point blanked it into its face and it dropped her and took off it works yeah and everybody's like oh pepper spray doesn't work all the time it's like nothing yeah so i've heard someone recently nothing works all the time i'll give that a listen yeah episode 167 and you'll you can't forget the title mauled by a grizzly we just got right to it on that title yeah we'll have to in the next week or two call amber and ask her if she's bummed the bear that mauled her and nearly killed her is dead because

she didn't want anything bad to happen to it. Mm-hmm. Well, she's a conservationist. Which is a thing. That's like a thing that happens with people that get mauled by grizzlies. A lot of times people that get mauled by grizzlies don't want them hurt. And if one got me, I would like to know it was still out there.

Yeah. Unless I got it. If I got it, that'd be cool. It was getting up there in age anyways. I mean, how old is it going to get? As pragmatic as she was, you'd call her a pragmatic person, wouldn't you? Yeah. I feel that she sort of knows that that happens to bears,

and then it's just like unlucky that it happened to the one that messed with her. But that's just the times that we live in, that when bears and people have conflicts, the bears are going to get ousted. Yeah, especially a repeat offender. I mean, the fact that you can maul someone and pertinently kill them and then still get to be alive says a lot about human restraint.

That's right. Yeah, we're not allowed to do that. Generally speaking. No. If I went up to Yanni, mauled him. Mauled him real bad. And then Yanni's like, but I don't want anything bad to happen to him. They'd still give me a talking to oh yeah uh our special guest today historian what do you like to go by author historian historian and author author is better because i like that better too yeah i'm not uh i have an

english master's degree so i'm not trained as a historian but i learned on the fly uh-huh buddy levy buddy levy i was gonna ask you that before the thing and i screwed it up and i forgot degree, so I'm not trained as a historian, but I learned on the fly. Buddy Levy. Buddy Levy. I was going to ask you that before the thing, and I screwed it up, and I forgot to ask. No worries. Buddy Levy. Levy, you go by. Yeah. Author.

Give people a range of some of the things you've written about. Wow. So I've written about trucker hunting, Davy Crockett, the conquest of the Aztecs, the first Europeans to descend the entire length of the Amazon. Geronimo. Geronimo, um, a blind adventurer who summited Mount Everest and kayaked the Grand Canyon, who's currently on the peak of Amadablam in Nepal today. And then let's see, Labyrinth of Ice, the Greeley Expedition. So, in addition to, I covered adventure racing as a journalist for about seven years following these wild outdoor, they're called multi-sport endurance competitions. Yeah.

And then I was on Brad Meltzer's Decoded, a History Channel show, trying to not solve historical conundrums. Well, we tried to solve them, but mostly we didn't solve them. And we got a lot of shit for that, too. People wanted it solved. Are you ever going to – did D.B. Cooper – did he get away or not? No way. No way. Looks like he did, though. But anyway, so yeah, I'm a chameleon.

So you think D.B. Cooper got away? Absolutely. Can you tell people who D.V. Cooper is real quick? So yeah, there was 25% of people know. No. Phil, you know who D.V. Cooper is? I don't. Yeah, he jumped out of the plane kind of where I grew up, so I know where he is. Or who he is, I mean. So 50% because Phil knows and Yanni don't. So you're from Seattle, Portland area? In between there, yeah. Okay. So yeah.

So this guy who signed into the S.D.B. Cooper and he boarded an airplane in Portland heading to Seattle. And when he got on the air, he landed in Seattle. And then he asked for, while he was flying, he told the FBI that he wanted parachutes and $250,000, or he would blow up the plane. And he had what looked like, turns out to be a fake bomb. So the FBI accommodated him. They gave him, they brought the money onto the airplane and they brought parachutes. And he let everybody off the plane, except for like a flight attendant and the pilot, of course. And he got up to 10,000 feet heading back over the mountains in Washington.

And he deployed the rear aft stairwell of this airplane or he asked the stewardess, flight attendant, to deploy it. At which point he had already put on the parachute and he freaking got, he jumped out of the airplane with all the money. Oh yeah, man. And so the whole- But they don't think he'd ever parachuted before. Well, no.

So if you research it, you realize that there are a number of possible suspects, right? So historically, FBI, it's actually unsolved still. But who the hell the guy actually was? Right. Well, we think it was this guy named Kenneth Christensen, who was a flight attendant himself and had done, like, he was a paratrooper in the military. So he knew everything about how to jump out of that airplane.

And there's a whole bunch of reasons that we think it's him, but it was really fun. Now, why do you think that he lived? Because I thought they, didn't they like- So they found a whole sack of rotten money and stuff around? They found money in the stream and they found money hidden at this house in Bonnie Lake, Washington. And we went to the house during the filming of this episode and, you know, right behind this house, there was buried like $5,000. And then there were other things. This guy,

he really, right after he, right after this all happened, this guy, Kenny Christensen, bought a brand new house. And there's another guy who we interviewed named Bernie Geistman, who gave us the indication that it was probably – he was an accomplice. Uh-huh. But Bernie Geistman wouldn't go so far as to like obviously admit it because – I mean even the statute of limitations probably. I don't know if he could even get arrested for it now. But he didn't want to be – admit that he had been an accomplice you know, the only unsolved hijacking in American history, American aviation history. Pretty badass, though.

So you, like, if you right now. They never found the body remains. No, no. And we went to Minnesota and interviewed this guy that was Kenny Christensen's brother. And he gave us some pretty compelling evidence that there was a deathbed confession that he told his brother that it was him. Of course, it's hard to really corroborate that. And I think his brother's dead now.

We filmed this back in like 2010. Yeah, I guess I never thought about that. If he was dead, there'd be a dead guy laying there. Well, right, right never thought about that. If he was dead, there'd be a dead guy laying there. There was never a body. They did find a parachute, too. But how do the people... We're getting way sidetracked from what I want to talk about, but we're not around the subject.

I got two things I want to ask you about before we talk about what we're supposed to talk about. Let's say I was the perspective. Let's say I was a guy that thought he was dead. Like I was a minute ago before we started talking about it. Yeah. You know,

I'm not, but I was, but let's say you were an informed person who thought he was dead. And one said to this informed individual, why is his body not laying there? What would that informed individual say to explain the absence of a body? Right. So there are a number.

You following my question? Yeah. But like why you're saying, why didn't they ever find a body? No. That's not what I'm saying. What are you saying? Okay. I'll just try it again.

Imagine that you're engaging with a person who believes he's dead, believes he died jumping out of the plane. And this person's well-informed. And you say to them, to this person, where's the dead body then? What would the person throw out there as an explanation for why there's no body? Right, well, he got away.

How about that? Or he was eaten by a bear. Oh, he got away. How about that? No. He was eaten by a bear. Oh, yeah. Okay. He could have been eaten by wolves. People think he got eaten by a bear? Eaten by wolves. There were no wolves in that area back then.

That's what people who were semi-informed would say. There are other animals that could, I mean, they're coyotes. How about- Okay. So his body was scavenged by wild animals. And that would be a thing you could say. Pecked down to bone. But they literally, I mean, they did find a parachute and they found money. So it looks pretty much like the guy got away. Why does that make you think he got away? Well, because.

Why would he leave the money laying out in the woods? Well, he might not. So he, some of the money was not properly tethered to him. So he couldn't chase it all down. Anyway, it's fun because this is the reason that people have been trying to argue about this for whatever since the 70s. Oh, yeah. It's funny because it comes back up all the time. Yeah.

Because in America, we just rehash every 10 years. Oh, God. Whatever happened to D.B. Cooper? Right. Yeah. $250,000 doesn't seem like enough to try to pull that stunt off. Back then, though. Yeah, but you adjusted for inflation.

What was it, a million bucks? You could retire on $250,000, couldn't you? Here in Montana? Sure. Move down to Miles City where Steve wants to move. Greatest hunting, fishing in the world. Yeah. Yeah.

Maybe. Maybe. But adjusted for inflation, it was probably four times that. Exactly. So, yeah. You can jump off a plane for a million bucks, a little adventure. Yeah. Yeah.

And we talked to a number of people who, well, there were copycats afterwards and we talked to, you know, parachute instructors who were like, oh yeah, he could definitely make the jump. That's not a problem. You know, they've jumped out of, they were jumping out of airplanes all the time. So. Yeah. Anyway, that was only one of, you know, there's like, I don't want to talk about Decoded forever, but it was a really fun, it was fun cruising around kind of sleuthing historical mystery. For sure. Yeah. Hey, how many books have you written altogether? I think seven. Yeah.

You want a hot tip? Yeah, I do. You know what you ought to do? We're talking big time bestseller right here. You got my next book for me. Big time bestseller. Let's go. Claude Dallas.

I like Claude. No one's touched it since Jack Olsen or whatever his name was he wrote give a boy a gun right but a lot happened after that so like Claude Dallas escaped from prison got caught like went like got out he's back out now no one knows where he is I'm jotting it down so I was a teenager right He's a fugitive right now? Claude, no. No.

So real quick crash course. Claude Dallas was a trapper. Self-styled mountain man, but a fur trapper back in the good fur price era. A lot of bobcats are very valuable. And he was trapping, I believe, around the border of Idaho, Utah. Yeah. Out in the desert there. There's a name for it, like the ION, Idaho, Utah. Yeah. Out in the desert there. There's a name for it, like the ION, Idaho, Oregon.

Right. Desert. I was a teenager in Ketchum, Idaho when this happened, I believe. Yeah. So he was traveling out in the desert, and what he was doing is one state the season was open and one state the season was closed, and they had a feeling that he was trapping in the

closed state but camped in the open state and so he was he was having cats he's like oh yeah i got all these cats but they're like yeah but we feel like you're catching them across the border where you're not supposed to but the two game wardens come in to raid his camp and he's also got a dead mule deer hanging there because he's living off deer meat yeah he's got a dead mule deer hanging in camp. Gets into a skirmish with the game wardens. He's the only guy that lives to tell about it. But he says the game wardens were harassing him and trying to get the drop on him. They have a shootout. He wounds the two game wardens.

But then what seals his fate is he takes a.22 caliber pistol and goes and kills both the game wardens in cold blood, shoots them in the head. That'll do it, generally. Then heads off into the desert. There's a big manhunt. He finally gets caught, goes to jail, escapes. It's a great story. Years go by. He gets caught dumpster diving somewhere, goes back to jail, escapes. It's a great story. Years go by.

He gets caught dumpster diving somewhere, goes back to jail, gets out. He wanted his privacy, and they let him loose, and he just vanished into the ether. Now no one knows where he is. This is true. I thought they got him. They did. They got him twice. Sounds like you should write this.

They got him the first time. They got him the second time. Then he the second time then he served his time and people are like i cannot believe you're gonna let out of jail a man who killed a murderer but here's the thing people like like when i was a kid like hellbillies like i hesitate to say this but like a lot of like total hellbillies looked up to claude dallas Right. He's a cult hero, which is disgusting. It really is. I was even guilty of as a little kid,

because Trapper and Predator Caller Magazine would do articles about Claude Dallas. And it'd be like, you know, you really shouldn't kill game wardens, but you know, there's something to be said for living out in the desert, trapping bobcats.

And it was like, and people acted like that. There was like sort of like up in the air, whether or not this guy was a good guy. I think rather than let him out of jail, I think they should have snuck a.22 shell in behind his ear. Right. And, you know, that's a similar thing with D.B. Cooper where he's got cult hero status and people seem to forget the fact that he, you know, pretended that he was going to blow up an aircraft. He gets off a little bit because he let the passengers go, but he still, I mean, it's funny how we gravitate toward characters or historical figures even when they're immoral.

But if they did something cool- Claude Dallas is inexcusable, man. Right. But yeah, we grew up, when we were little kids and that was all going on, we thought he was badass, which is kind of disgusting, man. Yeah, so I won't write that one then. No, write about that. Write about, that'd be like the end. You know how on the end of your Crockett book, you step back and look at the mythos of Crockett?

Yes. Right? Like how Davy Crockett kind of became remembered. And you even talk about Davy Crockett generated, like adjusted for inflation, back to that subject. Davy Crockett generated more revenue in the 1950s than G.I. Joe, Superman, Batman, bigger business. I forget the numbers, but it was massive. No, I wrote it down right here because I know I don't want to get you in trouble because you wrote the book a long time ago. Sorry. In today's dollars, three billion in 19,

I think it was like in 1955. In today's dollars would have been three billion dollars. Like his name? Davy Crockett paraphernalia, fake

coonskin caps. Mainly. Every kid in America rode his bike around with a fake coonskin cap on. And little lunch pails and, you know, like

rifles and stuff. Yeah, like the shit that comes out, like when you go to McDonald's and there's like a Happy Meal offering and they're like in cahoots with a movie that came out. Like that kind of garbage. Yeah, we call it merch these days. Yeah, licensed merch. Crockett merch.

Right. In fact, you're talking about swinging back around. I mean, it's probably time to... Well, let's get back to Claude Dallas. Do you think you're going to write the book or not? I will read that book so fast it'll your head i know you and and uh about it well i don't know the market um i it's come up in my in my research before you know i like um i like figures that are sort of controversial you know yeah um people still think he's badass yeah if i ran into him i don't want well i don't want to say i want to wear a cloth dallas shirt or something you know no you might be a good way to get your ass kicked

depends on where you are yeah uh okay what you were gonna say about crockett i'm not ready to talk about crock yet but we might just throw it out there now well i was gonna say how i got to crockett oh yeah because i didn't um i mean i, I mean, I grew up in California for a short period. My dad was from Louisiana and he moved to California to be a doctor. What kind of doctor? He was a general practitioner in Ketchum, Idaho after we left California. But I was there in the 60s during the Crockett craze. Were you guys in Ketchum when Hemingway killed himself in Ketchum?

That was like 63, right? Later. Later. Yeah, I grew up with the Hemingways. And Jack, Hemingway's eldest son, was my French teacher, actually. And his daughter, Marielle, was a classmate of mine in a private school that I went to. But before we got there- Yeah, have you seen-

Manhattan. No, what's that movie? It was Dwight Yoakam, John Prine. Not Dwight Yoakam, John Prine, Muriel Hemingway, and John Mellencamp, Falling from Grace. I haven't seen it. I better. Is it good? Yeah, it's really good. Go on. Anyway, so we moved. I was around the Crockett craze as a kid and I just sort of, you know, you couldn't escape it. I mean, we lived, we lived, you know, 20 minutes from Disneyland and it was all happening. And then my dad moved us to Idaho, um, in 1970. And, you know, I was like, you sort of left that part behind, but much later, um, when

I started, um, I, I had written this chucker book. So I learned hunting and fishing from my dad, and I decided to write this book about chucker hunting. And as it turned out, it was like a pretty niche. It's in a great market for a book on chucker hunting. No, there's not a lot of – I mean, if you added up how many people self, when you ask someone like, what are you into? And they say chukars. Yeah. Like what's a chukar anyway?

You know? It was a 5,000. I don't know. Yeah. I can picture that being limiting. Yeah. So, but anyway, I wanted to, I had a lot of, my first story I ever wrote, I was 13 years old and it was about bird hunting and it had a chukar in it.

So I was all, my dad was a big time chukar hunter. So I ended up writing this book. Like you were in the trap where it felt to you like very foundational. Right, exactly. There's one thing everybody knows about is chukars. And you know, I'm not kidding you.

He knew a lot about chukars and he knew a lot about, he was a great, I mean, he's still, he's out hunting and my old man's in Dillon, Montana hunting ducks today. I was telling you honestly, he'll be 88 on Monday and he just hunts, I mean, every single day if he can. Yeah, that's great. and dealing with Montana hunting ducks today. I was telling Giannis, he'll be 88 on Monday and he just hunts, I mean, every single day if he can. Yeah, that's great.

But so we end up, I end up writing this book about chukar hunting. And so I'm thinking, well, I need to, you know, what am I going to do with that? So I was trying to get an agent at the time. And so I sent it to this agent in New York named Scott Waxman, who was a friend of friend. Yeah, I know that guy.

Yeah. And so he calls me up after he read the book and he calls me and he's like, and this is, you know, like in 2000 or something, 2001, I've, you know, got a flip phone and I pull over and he's like, what are you doing? And I said, well, I just pull over, got cell coverage here. I'm out, I'm out pheasant hunting. And he's like, he was, you know, he's a New Yorker. He's so enamored with the romance of the Western idea, you know?

So he's like, God, you wrote this great book about chucker hunting and you're out pheasant hunting. And she's like, you seem pretty into hunting. And I, and I'm like, yeah, you know, I'm, I just pull, you're kind of cramping my hunt right now, frankly. And, but you know, he said, listen, who's the greatest hunter in American history? And I was like, well, it's gotta either be Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett, you know? And he said, well, why don't you go look and see if there's been a book recently about either of those guys?

So there was somebody had written a book about Boone. I think it was Robert Morgan's name. Yeah. Had written a book about Boone, you know, kind of recently. And then I look and there hadn't been anything on Crockett in like 50 years, like a biography, right? Huh. So I called him back and I said, how about Crockett? You know?

And he's like, done. Yeah. Boone's a way better hunter than Crockett. Yeah. I mean, Crockett was more talk about hunting, you know, politician hunter. But, you know, Crockett created the mystique of, I mean, listen, we're still talking about him today. And so, but it worked out great. So a trucker hunting book led to a book about one of the great frontiersmen in American

history. I was really happy with that. Yeah. Okay. Your new book coming out. Okay. I'm going to leave this up to you. This is going to be like chef's choice, author's choice.

I want to, I want to talk, I want to do crash course on, on Crockett. And here's why. I've read everything there is to read about Boone oh yeah right down like the Draper manuscripts all that kind of stuff right I was uh Crockett ignorant and what started me down needing to know about Crockett was that I would talk about what sort of a shit talker Crockett was. And Texans get so mad. Real mad. My friend Jesse Griffiths, it's like he turns kind of red if you say something bad about it, with anger. If you say something bad about Crockett.

So that led me to think, he's a reasonable dude. That led me to think that I needed to go read up on Crockett. Because I also knew that there was like a little bit of a mystery. Talk about a mystery. You want to talk about DV Cooper? Right. Did he die at the Alamo? At the Alamo.

What did Crockett like go down in a hail of bullets fighting? Or as some people now think was Crockett captured and, and, and surrendered. Well, right. And those, your Texas friends do not want to hear anything about him surrendering.

That's what pisses those guys off. Or getting away. So I needed to know more about, that led me to wanting to know more about Crockett. And there's also the connection, it's connected in people's heads, it's even like the organization, the conservation organization, Boone and Crockett. Right. Right.

Which kind of bundles them together in a way that they don't, they shouldn't, they have no business being bundled together. I agree with that. I mean, they were only, I think, I mean, they're separated by a few decades anyway. Yeah. Like the height of Boone's adventures were around, were around the revolutionary war.

Yeah. Well before, I mean, Crockett died at the Alamo in 1836. And I think, but as far, I love that question, about whether or not what actually happened at the Alamo, because there's so much tied to, Texans tie so much to that going down in a blaze of glory mythology that is, it's almost, it's really interesting when you look that, um, you know, he may well have just surrendered and been executed or, you know, and then they, you know, they were at that point, um, they were, the Mexicans were piling them up and making funeral pyres out of them, you know?

And so nobody really wants to remember Crockett that way. Yeah. And you know, when they did the film, The Alamo, that was 10 years ago now. With Billy Bob. Billy Bob Thornton. It winds up being that the only man standing is Crockett. And it wasn't so much like he surrendered. He just got captured. Right.

And so, you know. And then he's very defiant. Oh, yeah. Shit talk, Santa Ana. Yeah, yeah. They kill him with bayonets. Yeah. I mean, I had to make sure. I actually, Santa Ana. Yeah, yeah. They kill him with bayonets. Yeah. I mean, I had to make sure.

I actually was very careful. That movie came out while I was in the finishing stages of the manuscript. And I made sure not to watch. I mean, I didn't want Billy Bob in my head as like, this is who, even though he's a great Crockett. But I'm sitting there trying to- I thought he did a great job. Me too. The movie's not a great movie, but he did a great job.

He did a great, he steals the show as he always does. But I didn't want to have like my Crockett that was in my brain be overtaken by, you know, Carl Childers and Sling Blade or something, you know, with hot biscuits and mustard. I didn't want that at all. So I was like, so I watched it after, I watched it after I had finished the manuscript. And then I was like, okay, you know, damn, he kind of nails it. But as far as what actually happens there, you know, I think it's hard not to get swept up with the mythos, right? Because it's a better ending, you know, if he goes down firing at you know they're outnumbered you know 50 to 1 or whatever it is maybe a whole lot more than that yeah and so um all the a lot

of uh another part of the alamo i didn't realize is the amount of uh being drunk and being sick oh yeah to win in those days yeah god i mean, yeah. These guys are just in a pool of their own shit. They're either drunk or mortally ill. Right. They've got dysentery and malaria. Yeah. I mean, it's horrible. Right.

So, all right. I was going to ask you if you wanted to talk about the Greeley Expedition, which, dude, it's giving me nightmares, man. It should. Yeah. So, let's talk about Crockett first. All right, go. Then we'll talk about the Greeley Expedition, which is your new, man. It should. Yeah. So let's talk about Crocodile first. All right, go. Then we'll talk about the Greeley Expedition.

Which is your new, this is your forthcoming book. Right. So Labyrinth of Ice, the triumphant and tragic Greeley Polar Expedition is coming out on December 3rd. Oh. And it's, I'm really thrilled. It was a tremendous project. Unbelievable story. It has basically everything that I want.

I don't think it should come out in December. I know because to read about being this cold when it's cold out is it's disturbing. It should be like a summer read. Really? Yeah. You know, look at my thumb. I froze my thumb. Oh, wow.

Yeah. There's a ton of frostbite in this book. Yeah, I froze my thumb and now the skin's coming off of it. Yeah, well. And reading about these dudes, these dudes' foot, he freezes his feet so bad. Oh, my God. He can't look and eventually his foot falls off. They don't even tell him and he's still talking about how his foot tingles.

Oh, that's just like horrible stuff in this book. And then they, they, they like tether a fork to this guy's hand so that he can eat like by himself. They've been feeding him, you know, it's like, I don't want to laugh.

Yeah, we'll talk about, we'll talk about Labyrinth Ice, but here's the thing. You always hear about, here's the thing, Arctic,

like Arctic explorers and Antarctica explorers. Like, if you don't read it, you always hear like, oh, you know, they go there and they die.

Like, oh, of course, you know know but to really understand this book that such a good job of explaining like step by step by step day by day by day like what exactly goes wrong and it's what goes wrong is complex very complex and it's not just like oh you went somewhere real cold and died it's like governmental failures upon governmental failures and not understanding the climate well and not understanding what's normal in the Arctic and abnormal in the Arctic. Oh, it's terrible. Yeah, it's a series of unfortunate events. Phil, you want a job?

You never have nothing to do. It depends. What's that? That was a double negative. Are you going to send me to the Arctic? No. Okay, good. One, that? That was a double negative. Are you going to send me to the Arctic? No. Okay, good. One, you didn't turn your clock on.

Thank you. Two, you got to let us know when we need to switch to still have time to talk about Labyrinth of Ice after we talk more about Crockett. Okay. Okay. I'm mostly, because you read the book a long time ago. You wrote the book a long time ago. So you had a little bit of a disadvantage. But I was going to ask you about some things about Crockett. Okay. Okay. I'm mostly, cause you wrote, you read the book a long time ago or you wrote the

book a long time ago. So you're at a little bit of a disadvantage, but I'm just going to ask you about some things about Crockett. Right. Yeah. We'll see how well you hold up. Okay. I'm game because as a writer, if I wanted to do an interview and some guy wanted to talk about something I wrote a million years ago, I'd be pissed. I know I'm, well, I'm a little bitter, but I'm going to work around it. I actually was primed slightly because a couple of years ago, I was a talking head on a History Channel show that actually was- Another one? Well, this one was exact. I was on the other side of, I was the person being interviewed.

I was the Crockett guy on a show called The Frontiersman, The Man Who Built America. Yeah, I did that. I was one of the Boone guys. Yeah, okay. Well, that's what I thought. And so I was a Crockett guy, but you know, it was one of those things where I was, I was freaked out because the same, what you're talking about. I mean, I had written this book in, in 01 or between 01 and 03, and then it came out in 05. And then here I'm being, you know, you're like Crockett guy. So let's hear about it. And I'm

thinking, God, you know, I should, I should probably go read my book. Is that what I said? Yeah. Is that what happened? But anyway, I'm game. Yeah. I'll make it up if I don't remember. Okay.

I'll tell you some things that struck me about Crockett's biography that I learned about in general were in the practice back then in the early 1800s of hiring their children out as indentured servants to settle debts. Like you borrow some money from a guy to buy some cows. The cows all drown in a river, say. And the guy's like, I need my money back. How about my boy comes and lives on your place for a year? Exactly. And roots out old stumps and shit in your field, and then we'll call it even. Right.

And that's how this guy spent his childhood. I know. And the one that blew me away was so his old man is always in debt. And Crockett was basically always in debt, too. Just the bad decisions and bad luck. And so his old man says, what you're talking about, he's like, I owe this guy a bunch of money. So what if I send a little Davey on a, like a cattle drive for 400 miles that's going

to last months, right? And Crockett's this little kid, you know, 14, I think he was 12. No, he's he was 12. No, he wasn't even a teenager. And so he's like hoofing along, you know, prodding cattle and staying in like roadhouses and like watching men drinking and whoring and Crockett's, you know, just sitting there as a little kid. You're right.

I mean, he was gone for months at a time. And he gave me some ideas about like some stuff I should have probably done better with my son. Yeah, man. You could have made a lot more money off that kid. Right. But no, you're right. I mean, it was such an amazing time where you would just do whatever you had to do.

And it was not uncommon to, you know, sort of sell out your kid for, I think at one point he was gone for two years. Yeah. I was going to mention that. He got in a bunch of trouble. He's smart. I can't remember what he did. He pissed his dad off, and his dad kicked his ass.

Yeah. Well, so he was playing hooky, right? So he was playing hooky. Oh, yeah. They said they were paying for him to go to school, but he wasn't going to school. He wasn't going to school. He would head off to school and then just not go to school but his old man at one point um caught wind of this uh and he was like waiting for him on the on the road back to the house and his dad like whooped up on him

with a cane stick you know and then crockett he he uh he let out for a little while there yeah and this is like when he's coming into he. Yeah, yeah. Stay is gone so long. This is where it's almost like a fake story. So here he done all this indentured servitude just to satisfy his dad's debts. His dad kicks his ass. He takes off for years, goes works odd jobs, like working on mule trains and wagon things. He almost got on a boat and sailed across the Atlantic. Tried to go to Europe. Yeah, tried to go to Europe.

But his other boss wouldn't let him off the hook. Unbelievable. All this crazy stuff happens. But it's out of Homer's Odyssey. It's kind of like the Prodigal Son deal a little bit where Crockett goes back and he's been gone so long that he's able to go back and go into his family and not tell anyone who he is. Right, and they actually get away with it for a minute.

Right. And he's sitting in a, in a, um, like a, but they would call it a, it wouldn't be a cafe, but like a, you know, like a roadhouse and his sister recognized him, recognized him. And then they're like, oh my God, it's David, you know? And at that point he makes, he's really funny, you know, Crockett's very funny, but he makes some comment about how like, uh, yeah, I think I'd been gone long enough that my old man's ire was probably down by now. But he still remembered the caning, so he's still looking over his shoulder a little bit. And then went off, sells a bunch more debts. Another thing that, just kind of walking through how this guy's life went, is the degree to which when he sets out, like in those days, we should establish, he's like a frontier character.

Right. These are all like early 1800s. Like Boone's family. These are like transient peoples. Absolutely. Explain how they're always living somewhere and getting displaced and living somewhere and getting displaced. Right. So, you know, Crockett's life and many of the frontier lifestyle, you know, we look at it sort of romantically. But in many cases, that was always about land.

I mean, it still is. But, you know, it was always about land and then trying to make a go of it. Right. And a lot of times things didn't work out, you know, in many cases, Crockett's, um, family, uh, he would, he would do, he would start in on a project, like they would build a grist mill, right. So they're going to grind flour and live on, on the river and, you know, have a small plot and, you know, stake your claim and make a go of it. But the elements would just always mess with them. So they would have like a, you know, stake your claim and make a go of it. But the elements would just always mess with them. So they would have like a, you know, a flood, right? Takes out the gristmill, right? So now

Crockett's got to go on like, okay, now what? And he already borrowed all the money to build the thing. Right, right. So now he's like in debt again. So they would move, you know, just up and go and then move on to the next thing. And it just became this perpetual, um, westward movement. In fact, I mean, his, his entire life was a westward move. And that's one of the things that, you know, I, I found interesting about like how he finally goes to the Alamo because he was ultimately just still looking for more land. He was looking for a new start. Yeah. It was his whole life is about finding, making a new start his old man too and that was the thing i kind of got because i knew that was with like you know several decades earlier

with boone where they'd always be going like on the american frontier you'd always have people who were poor and yearning to like make their way right yeah like sort of capitalism at work and they'd always be moving to a place they kind of weren't supposed to be and boone's era was like because the british had said uh the british had a lot of indian allies west of the appellations and the british said we don't want any of our american colonists like don't go over there and what is the first thing that they do is they're like well i'm gonna go over there so i'll go there and live and then they'll sort it out and they'll eventually sort it out in the end and there's always like people um and then it continues in crockett's there people like

sort of jump in the gun like the louisiana purchase happens and they haven't like we did the purchase but weren't really clear on what we bought right and they're just already like people just immediately start moving into these places being like yeah it'll work out yeah let's send lewis and clark and see how much we actually have. Yeah, and people are like, well, dude, I already moved there, so. Yeah, right. Well, and in Crockett's case, it gets complicated, too, by the, you know, the fact that there were Indian peoples already living there. Oh, yeah, man.

That's why I say, like, not even supposed to be there from that perspective, too. Right. And one of the things I really found endearing about Crockett, um, is his, you know, he, he was a complicated figure, but so he was very sensitive to, um, even though he had spent some time, you know, under Andrew Jackson, like going off hunting up, he used to put it that way, like hunting up Indians. Yeah. They use the term, like he got sent down to Florida during the Creek war to kill up, Indians. Kill up rogue Indians. Yeah. And so, but even within that, I think he had a lot of reverence for the fact that he lived off the land.

They lived off the land. He had firsthand knowledge of and learned from tribes that he encountered. And he was the only delegate, I believe, yeah, that voted against the Indian Removal Act from Tennessee. And he paid a huge political price. Right. And so, you know, he got that struggle. I mean, he understood that because he had spent his whole life, you know, in hardscrabble existence just trying to eke out something. And, you know, so that's one of the things that I really found I connected with that element of him, you know, his persona.

I want to talk about his political career a little bit, but a thing about his political career is like kind of his sort of his foundational thing. Like if you imagine like universal health care being like Obama's thing, right? Yeah. The Obamacare. That was his thing crockett's thing as a congressman was to basically legitimize squatters right because he was the chief squatter like to legitimize all those people that headed off in the wilderness and weren't really like clear where they were who owned what and they like built a cabin right to like give them the land

and that was sort of his thing. That was like his thing. And he could never drive it across the finish line. He could never hold it off. And, you know, what I found really interesting about that is that through all that process, I mean, he was basically kind of representing the common man. You know, he was, he was a representative of the common man. And you're right. I mean, he never really, he didn't, he was, he failed to pass basically any, any bills. He was always out hunting. You know, he preferred, he preferred hunting to politicking, but he ended up being very good at politicking. Right. So he, he was, he, he was able to create this kind of mystique and persona.

And I, I mean, I call him like the first celebrity. I mean, you can maybe say that Benjamin Franklin was the first celebrity. Yeah, but you use a term. That's why I feel it was interesting to look at his political career and then look at Trump's political career. Can you talk about that Crockett was the first American to be famous for being famous? Right. I mean, people liked him because they just knew that he was famous. Right.

And I mean, we're talking about at a time when newspapers moved very slowly across the frontier, right? And the passage of information was done on horseback and on riverboats, right? And so you've got a guy who was, it's profound. He was able to create such a frenzy and a mystique about himself. I mean, plays were written about him during his lifetime. He went to them. He went to a play watching a guy playing him, you know, and he's in the audience. And he's like, I, you know, I am, nobody, there was not the term celebrity at the time,

but I don't believe. But, you know, he was able to become such a commodity that people would line the streets when they heard he was coming. And, you know, like reach out to try to touch him as he went by, you know, and then he would be feted and he would be, you sorts of honorary awards and he hadn't really ever done anything. You know, I want to back up a little bit to talk about when he kind of comes of age, he's a young man and he sets out very deliberately to find a wife and it's a it's a really good way of like thinking about how frontier cultures worked and like frontier situations worked where people were so pragmatic yeah there's a quote you have in the book that i've been using all the time it's my new favorite quote no one knows what the hell it means but it's um you gotta salt the cow if you want to catch the calf salt the cow to catch the calf. Salt the cow to catch the calf.

So these like pragmatic transactional relationships that would happen within frontier communities. Where it's like, I have a daughter. This could probably fetch me a good, if I play my cards right, I should be able to wrangle this daughter into a helpful son-in-law. And he's like, I'm a helpful man. I got to do something. I'd sure like to get my hands on your daughter. And it's like you're buying cattle. Yeah.

And I mean, that term you use, pragmatic, is so appropriate. And it's true. It's like, what do you got? What am I going to give you for it? And yeah, he was really, the whole salt the cow to catch the calf was funny because Crockett understood that if the mother, if he sweet talked the mom, right? He was flirting with the mom. He was flirting with the mom. You know, he was working the mom.

And then, you know, he had to win her over, you know, salt the cow to get the cat, to get his bride. A real miss you had in the book. Great. What were their sex lives? Were they promiscuous? That's an interesting question. Does anyone talk, like, is there any way to know? Like, when they're courting and sneaking around in the woods and having, like, little chats,

plotting and figuring, are they having sex or not uh i'm guessing they're having sex yeah so you think there was promiscuity on the frontier yeah yeah almost certainly you listen they don't crockett lewis and clark there was a lot of promiscuity on that expedition crockett you know um was very careful in crafting his own image. So he wrote his, his own, um, autobiography like during his lifetime, knowing that it was going, I mean, and he was like, he really, it's funny. He's like, wanted it to be over 200 pages. That was his, if it was 200 pages, it was worthwhile. It's like pretty random, but, uh, I know that was the measure of a good book. Yep, 202, becoming in on. So Crockett is like, crafted this very carefully. And so, you know, he, when he talks about like courtship and he's a little coy about

that stuff. And I think there was a kind of propriety. Oh, they always are. Yeah, they're like, yeah, Lewis and Clark, yeah, they don't, it's just how they phrase it. They don't intimate. Right. But then you later learn.

Children are happening. Yeah, children are like siren kids and and that's things like you could there's like sort of this 1950s version of what frontiers people were like right i mean they're doing it in the woods of course oh yeah and they're all that all like yes ma'am no ma'am but then you read this progress like man these people are some greasy oh double dealing yeah and like just in thedealing, not patriotic, not necessarily. Because the idea of the U.S. is still taking shape. Right. They're kind of like, what country am I in?

Sure. American? I don't know. I mean, they got land? We'll take it. Don't you think it's just because survival trumped all that other stuff? Yeah. Just like there was, yeah.

But like drunkenness yeah probably yeah i mean i don't think there was a lot of time to ponder patriotism when you're trying to figure out like how you're gonna eat that night you know yeah or if you're gonna you know if you're gonna be able to have shelter um it was tough and he was kind of, I was surprised too, is he was sort of on the fence about religion. Had a hard time with it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I tried at times to become more faithful. Struggled with his own lack of faith.

Yeah, well, don't some of us. Yeah, people do. Yeah, I mean, he's honest about that too. Because, you know, I think at that time, you know, it was very important to, I mean, faith was such an anchoring part of one's life on the frontier. I mean, you had that, you know, you had family, faith. But yeah, he struggled with it. He didn't really talk too much about it, as a matter of fact. I mean, in terms of his own, he's sort of ambivalent.

Yeah. But there's, there were rumors that he was a flanderer and rumors that he was a drunk. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and rumors that he was like, you know, the greatest shot in the West, but, uh, it's like, or, you know, what they called the West at the time. Uh, he, and he did win, um, you know, he won some shooting competitions. That was a big badge of

honor back then you know you would you'd go to a shooting competition and like win a cow you know you come home leading the cow a heifer you know and it's like uh okay that i mean that that's currency you know yeah hey folks exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And, boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada.

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He did get involved in some really horrific Indian wars. Yeah. Like, his life really changed after that. What's that? Fort Sims? Fort Sims. Yeah. Fort Mims.

Mims. Fort Mims. Theims. Fort Mims. The Fort Mims Massacre. Oh, man. There's a scene, I don't know if you read that scene, when there's a section that I almost can't read anymore when he recalls what happened there. Because he, so they, they're retaliating

for a massacre that had happened. Crockett's in this small band of, you know, so-called Indian fighters. Yeah, but I can't remember. I wish I had it in front of me. The name of the – someone's got to look this up. Fort Mims. The Fort Mims is where the Creeks came in and massacred the Whites. Right.

And then the Whites retaliated. This is like total warfare no kidding yeah and crockett was uh on this um small squad that came in for retaliation yeah and they they had been told that there were a bunch of creek indians at this actually they had the creek indians had overtaken a fort and were still there yeah Yeah. And so there were women and children and, um, Crockett and a bunch of men came in and he says, you know, we shot them like dogs. And he, there's a really sort of horrific image that I can never shake. Um.

The potato thing? Yeah. Yeah. Talk about the potato thing. So there's like a potato cellar and these, uh, they light, they shoot all the Indians and then they light

these buildings on fire. And Crockett describes the, the, the grease, they ended up eating the potatoes and he describes that the, the grease from these humans that has, um,

basically melted from the fires, dripped down and sort of seasoned these spuds. Based as the spuds. It's fricking brutal, man. There's some, all those massacres. You get like now, in the wars we have now with the rules of engagement, you know,

and we talk about how horrific war is now. I think, well, here's the point I'm trying to get at. When you read about the American frontier, and it moved, right? At this point, the American frontier is, I mean, northern Florida is part of the American frontier at this time. People love to talk about,

oh, politicians are so crooked now. Or we're so violent now. Dude. The crookedness and atrocities that people would commit in those times to just go into a village of people. Not like it's something that would get prosecuted for war crimes. It'd be celebrated. You'd go into a village and do total warfare.

Meaning you kill every man, woman, and child you can get your hands on and then burn every piece of evidence that they ever existed. And eat the spuds. Eat the spuds. Yeah. And then go to the next town. Right. But I will say that Crockett, he seemed to authentically feel guilt about that and shaken. you know, and, and, and, you know,

I mean, who wouldn't be, but like in those days, yeah. I mean, we would, you, you think of it as just, you could be move on, you know, but we now know that, you know, with, with soldiers coming back from a war and PTSD and, um, that, you know, any human who perpetrates that kind of violation on another human, no matter how you're going to justify it in your mind as being, you know, any human who perpetrates that kind of violation on another human, no matter how you're going to justify it in your mind as being, you know, your job in the army, it's going to leave a mark. There's two contemporary Westerns that come out recently. The Sisters Brothers, which is Joaquin Phoenix and John C. Reilly,

which I think is a phenomenal Western. And then the Christian Bale one. Hostiles. West Ducey. Hostiles. West Studi. West Studi. Both of those movies, it's like,

Westerns are always due for us. Every generation gets their own Western. Hopefully. Okay. So you may like, like, you know, like in the seventies,

a Western in the seventies felt like the seventies. Right. Right. It was like, Oh, butch guy, Sundance kid.

It's like, Oh, they're smart talkers. They're like, they're, you know, detached like the party. Right.

Right. That's what a Western is like. And now these two contemporary Westerns, what they're mostly about is the fact that everybody on the frontier had PTSD. Yeah, they're all just walking around like zombies. It's like, but it's revelatory. Yeah. Of course they did.

You look, like, the things that, and Crockett wasn't even like a hard driving, like, he was hired into the military to be a hunter. Right. To shoot meat for the army. But he still had exposure to things that just like things that no person sees. Right. It's, you know, like Bert, like piling up dead women and children in piles and torturing the piles of them. And it's just like, yeah, I mean, like no shit.

Like you had to have been a mess. Or there were, I mean mean maybe certain people have the ability to compartmentalize shit you know in ways that um it's harder to do anymore i don't know but do you like it has to be that there had like violence okay here's the way you're looking at it and i this is the point i brought before phil how many dead people have you seen? A lot? Three? But, you know, they've all been made up and put in a casket. I was talking about going about your business

and there's a dead person. Zero. Okay. I've seen a handful. Just freakishly. I was at an old lady's birthday party once and the caterer fell dead i watched my dad die some car crash victims airplane crash victims but i feel like i've run into a lot of it a lot of people you can go to you can live to be 30 40 years old and not see

dead people but these guys i'm surprised they can get around with all the dead people laying everywhere all the time. You're stepping over them. Like, everybody's dead and dying. And much younger age. Oh, your wife? Oh, my wife died. She was having a baby, and she's dead, and haul her out back.

Like, yeah, it's true. Two of the kids die. You could say that they are inured to it in some way, you know, maybe. The death. Yeah, it was all over the place, and that's what a in some way, you know, maybe. The death. Yeah, it was all over the place. And that's what a lot of the, you know, I think Westerns don't sort of focus on really.

It's like the, you know, the impact of that kind of thing. Yeah, watch Sisters Brothers. I'm psyched. Yeah, I'm a psych. I mean, I just, I'm like the last person in the world to have just finished Deadwood, right? No, I heard there's a movies coming out so I was like I better catch up and watch the show Sisters Brothers is phenomenal but it didn't do

well and people are like oh it's the death of the western I don't know I think westerns are right again yeah yeah let's let's keep moving along uh Crockett had bad malaria yeah well they didn't know what the hell malaria was right so a lot of lot of times, that's why when you were, it's funny you were talking about earlier how everybody was, you know, just lying around either drunk or sick. And partly, you know. Or drunk and sick. Drunk and sick or trying to drink through your sickness. But, you know, everybody had malaria. Not everybody, but, you know, there wasn't really a remedy for malaria at the time.

In fact, look that up. When did malaria medicine, when was it? They called it the bilious. Bilious fevers. Yeah. The bilious fever. And so people are just, he's out there trying to do his business. He's out there trying to hunt, out there trying to get food, trying to build cabins.

And they're shaking feverishly and not able to do his business. He's out there trying to hunt, out there trying to get food, trying to build cabins. And, you know, they're like shaking feverishly and not able to hold their food. And, you know. Yeah. And it's funny too, because like he had been down in Florida, but he's also in Tennessee. So he's got malaria. Then at times he's almost freezing to death. Right. But having a bout of malaria.

Right. And he's out there. And, you know, still got it. And he's out there. Two feet of snow. Right. Yeah. It's funny.

You think of it as tropical, right? Right. Yeah. I mean, it's, oh my God, some of those stories where he's like really sick and he's out in the woods and he breaks through the ice and he gets, you know, completely, basically he's walking around hypothermic and in order to, he's hypothermic and he's got malaria. And suffered from malaria. Fever.

But then he. Like the old one, two punch, right? Yeah. And so to stay warm, I love this one sequence when he. This is in my notes. Oh, shimmies up this tree like multiple times. And then he will shimmy up to the top of the tree, which doesn't have a lot of branches on it. And then he slides down it to create warmth on his body by the friction of sliding down this freaking tree yeah he stuck out in the woods overnight and he says that he a hundred

times climbed it and shimmied it to warm the inside of his legs arms and belly with the friction to not die he's like becomes that's a good trick man yeah i mean you might try it on one of your next hunts if you get frostbitten his uh he had a lot he had some like interesting hunting things the thing that surprised me too is uh you talk about this is that his uncle like his mom's brother was out hunting once and see something moving in the grapes see something moving it thinks it's a bear picking grapes shoots it and it's his neighbor there's a great and crockett says how his dad put a silk handkerchief how this came up i don't know put a silk handkerchief into one side of him and drew it out the other side of him everyone thought the guy would die it's like yeah flosses

like flosses the hole out with a silk handkerchief. The guy lives and no one quite knows what happened to him, but he got better and went away. Yeah, I love that scene. But you want to think, when a hunter shoots a person thinking it's game, I'm always like, not only did you think it was a deer, you thought it was a buck, and you thought you were aiming at its lungs. But lo and behold, it was a person. And now they're gut shot. Yeah, Crockett was always great at the detail. I mean, you know, the image of that handkerchief passing through this, the hole through this guy's abdomen.

It's so disturbing, man. It's like, awesome. He did kill a hell of a lot of bears. The numbers of black bears are pretty staggering. And it's like at various times in his life he'd try to get businesses going but he'd always kind of resort to going he like would go hunting market hunting yeah it was like he just that's what he liked to do and so everything would go to shit he'd take off and go hunting everything go shit take it off go hunting but he talks about he found that what you do yeah uh he finds a guy who crockett one of his hunting expeditions finds a guy who has hired on with a landowner to dig stumps and roots to grub out a field and he's like why are you doing

this work of grubbing out the field the guy says i don't have any money i can't buy any meat for my family so crockett talks the dude into working for him, packing bear meat and salting it. And they go off that day and they kill four bears. They hunt for another week and they kill 17 more bears. And as payment for the week's bear hunting labor, Crockett sends the man home with 1,000 pounds of bear meat, which the man and his family then ate for a year. At one point, Crockett and his hunting partners go out in the fall, kill 58 bears.

The bears hibernate. They come out in the spring. They go back out and kill 47. So that year he killed 105 black bears and you point out as much as like crockett was prone to a little bullshit you say that it was confirmed by a host of his contemporaries that they'd had a hell of a year that year yeah banner bear year 105 black bears what's the most that have ever been taken in the state of Montana in one year? That's got to be a great question.

Well, I mean, I guess. But, I mean, if there was. Yeah, he would have put a big dent in them. So, yeah. He would have put a big dent in the contemporary annual harvest of Tennessee. Yeah. And I always wondered, you know, to what extent, obviously, Crockett was a teller of tall tales. No, but Boone backs that up. Boone killed, they'd kill a hundred bears a year.

I mean, there were a lot of bears running around. Yeah, Boone talks about killing 13 in a day once. But you gotta remember, these guys hunted with hounds. Yeah, yeah. Like large packs of hounds. Yeah, I mean, very effective. Crockett also claims to kill a bear with his knife. You know, that is, well, I think he shoots it and then he has it cornered.

Yeah, it's pretty believable. Like his version of it's pretty believable. Yeah. He gets in, it cripples it up and it gets into a hole and he turns into a skirmish. But he, it's funny you're talking about the, how he was rooting out those stumps. He always had these phrases that are kind of memorable, but you never know what the hell he's exactly talking about. Rubbing out a field?

Rubbing out a field. But then he said, yeah, you got to root hog or die. Like, okay. Yes, you do. That's good life advice. I'm going to start telling people, you got to root hog or die. Got to salt the cow if you want to catch the calf. Son, root hog or die.

So the guy gets it. Crockett eventually gets into politics. Accidentally. People float his name kind of as a joke. He runs with it. And it brings up this weird thing where people like Crockett because he's a hellbilly. He's a cane.

He's from the canes. Gentleman from the cane. Yeah, like the cane breaks of the frontier. He's like a bear hunter. And he had to play that up with his constituency. Because he's campaigning on the frontier. And people wanted to see this frontier sensibility, this great hunter. And he kind of more cared about, he would buy votes by buying jugs of whiskey. Oh, I love that.

One of his great techniques was to, you know, he would go, you know, did they call them stump speeches? They actually stood on stumps, you know, and, and, and talk to whoever would listen to him. And, uh, yeah, he would, he would always let the other person go first. Um, and then he'd listen to whatever one, one time he just let the other guy go first. And then he like basically recited his whole speech back again. And then during that time, he was handing out plugs of tobacco, chewing tobacco and whiskey. And, you know- Basically saying like, here, vote for me. He was buying votes. I'll give you this and you vote for me.

Yes. It sounds like quid pro quo, but, you know, he was good at it. He got it. He understood people and they liked him, you know, like he was at it. He got it. He understood people and they liked him, you know, like he was a likable guy and he was a hilarious storyteller and he, you know, he would build on the, um, he would elaborate and I'm sure that he was exaggerating some of the time, but he also understood human nature and then they wanted to be told a story. They didn't want to be told, I don't know, what he was going to do for him exactly. I don't think he knew what he was going to do for him exactly. And did nothing.

He didn't. Tried. Right. But it was interesting. You talk about how it was hard to get around on the frontier back then. And so when two people, two opponents are campaigning, like they're campaigning for a congressional seat, it made sense they had to travel and room together together so it's like hillary clinton and donald trump traveling together and rooming together at night and arranging campaign speeches to then get up in the morning have breakfast together go right tear each other a new one in front of an audience and then move on

to the next town right and there's like and you talk about Crockett, he always liked to go second because he was memorable and funny, and he just wanted to leave people with the impression. We wanted more. Yeah, and it was talking about that one time he's traveling with this guy, and he always goes second, so he listens to him, and eventually he has to go first. And he gets nervous, so what he does,

he'd heard his opponent's speech so many times. Yep. He just gives the opponent's speech and leaves the guy with nothing to say because it's like his recited stump speech and Crockett had already given it. Right. He doesn't have a backup speech, you know, that he can just go to. And he talks to, like, the thing that Crockett did that was kind of funny is he's campaigning against and traveling with a guy who's lost a leg

and the guy has a wooden peg and they go and they're staying in the guy's house it's brutal and crockett takes a wooden chair and at night mimics the sound of the wooden the guy with the wooden leg mimics the sound of him walking around and goes and bangs on the the daughter the farmer's daughter's bedroom door she gets upset and starts yelling and he makes it with his wooden chair back to his room to create the impression in the farmer's mind that the man who was missing a leg had tried to sneak into his daughter's bedroom. And stoop his daughter. Yeah. Crockett was diabolical like that.

The craziest stuff. Yeah. We talk about how cutthroat politics are now. I mean, these guys were just, they were terrible. They were terrible. Yeah. He had to play the bumpkin. Right.

But then like everybody who, he played the bumpkin and railed against, hated the rich. Yet he so badly wanted to be rich. He wanted to be rich bad. Yeah. Which is like everybody, most people are in that situation, right? When you're poor, you're like, ah, it's rich people. But like, so if I like, so you're telling me right now, if I was like, you know what, dude, here's a few million bucks. You'd be like, I don't want it.

I hate the rich. Oh, dude, you'd take it so fast. Right now. Yeah. But I mean, I think he was, Krakow was probably torn by that a lot because, you know, he, I think what he wanted more was to just be, to have the freedom to not always be behind, you know? I think that's what a lot of people want. Just to not be in debt. To not be in debt, just, you know, all the time and have that chasing you, you know?

And so he did what he could, you know? And if that meant like reshaping the way his persona was, he would, you know, he was a chameleon. He was just good at being what people wanted to see. Yeah, but I think he did want, I don't know that he wanted like finery, you know, because he seemed happiest. You know, he didn't want to wear expensive clothes. That's true, because when you gave him an opportunity to do what he really wanted to do, he'd vanish in the woods and go hunting. He's like, get my gun and my dog, so I'm going out, you know. It's kind of a sad part of his political career is he gets to Washington and they turn his, they turn his hillbilly stuff against him.

Like he's at some formal dinner and a waiter goes to clear his plate. And he like did or didn't think that the waiter was trying to steal his food. And they had finger bowls back then. Right. And he got thirsty and was drinking. Out of the finger bowl and he's like yeah don't jack my meal and the guy's just trying to you know take his plate away and he's like give me that back man i haven't eaten yeah steal my food right and so they really turned

it against him and that he was like in the finer circles it was like he was a buffoon and it hurt his feelings man yeah i mean you could see that if you, if you, you know, nobody wants to be, um, made to look like you're not appropriate or that you're not, um, you don't have the right clothes or that you're, you don't have, um, good manners, you know, but then they were brutal too, because they would just write about it in, in the papers and say, you know, the bumpkin buffoon Crockett who tried to drink out of the finger bowl, you know, and then it like totally ruins your image. Yeah. And he was all about like building image. And it made you less effective.

Right. In doing the job of like trying to pass laws, which he never figured out. No, terrible politician. I had a thing happen to me. I was in Manhattan and I was with my wife and we went to a restaurant. We were in a big fight. I can't remember what we were fighting about. She was super mad at me.

And I went and it was like a bath. There was a bathroom. I wish I could remember. She, she'd know the name of this restaurant. It was a bathroom where there's a, a big circular sink. The right.

It's like a fountain. Right. And the fountain is communal. It's co-ed fountain. But off the fountain is communal. It's co-ed fountain. But off the fountain is the men's room and the women's room. But I was a little drunk. And I'm drunk and in a fight with my wife. And I come down and I think that I'm in the men's room.

You're not. I'm at the fountain. Oh, man, you're urinating in the fountain. Urinating in the fountain. So a woman comes in and they're aghast. And I had a sweater on and a t-shirt. And so she comes in, and she's got like, oh, my God, what's going on? And scurries into the woman's room.

And then I'm like, I'm going to get found out. So I had a sweater on and a t-shirt and I took my sweater off. So she's like, he's got a green sweater. They wouldn't have me pegged. But my wife's so mad at me, I get back to the table and I can't be like, you'll never guess what happened.

No, you want to tell her. And so I'm sitting there in my t-shirt waiting at any minute to someone come up and strangle me for having like, you know. What have you done? Yeah, for having exposed myself. And it's like, normally I come up and be like, you'll never guess what happened,

but because we were in a fight, I couldn't really bring it up. And then also, and also, we were at a thing one time and we were having, they had finger bowls, but they also had these like little things you dip crab into butter. Right.

Ramekins, those are called. In my mind, I was drinking the butter. Right. My wife still, she still holds to this day that I was drinking the contents of the finger bowl. Oh, you're right. But I was like, no, I was drinking the other little container, which was the butter container. And sure, you shouldn't drink the butter, but I was drinking the butter.

Don't say I was drinking the finger bowl. So when I got into the finger bowl about Crockett, it really hit a personal note. I bet. So you're a bumpkin too. Hit a personal note. Yeah. I want to move on to, oh, quick thing. We don't need to really talk about it too much, but it's interesting too,

like how conflicted Crockett was. Like Jackson wanted to get all this money. He wanted $500,000 because he wanted to relocate Cherokee, Chauxall, all these people. He wanted to relocate them out west. Everyone was in support of it on the frontier, and Crockett took a massive political hit and thought it was immoral to move them. Yeah, he had slaves, man.

Yeah, he had slaves, man. Yeah. He had slaves earlier. Yeah, like someone gave his family some slaves or something. But so you think that's a, you would call it a contradiction? Not a contradiction. Listen, man, I really try not to like do the thing that everyone does these days, which is take like contemporary notions and engage people's, it's a mess. You don't ever get anywhere with that stuff. Right.

But I mean, it's just mess. You don't ever get anywhere with that stuff. Right. But I mean, I think. It's just surprising. Yeah, it is surprising. And it goes back though to his, I think, you know, maybe some guilt about the Indians that he had previously killed, having firsthand experience with the way that the Indians lived and he was trying to live basically off the land too. And then, you know, you've got this guy who it was also about, he, he freaking hated Jackson, man.

He didn't like that guy. And, you know, here, so he, he was kind of contract. Jackson snubbed him during the Creek War. Right. And even though Crockett wasn't able to rise up through the ranks. And then they also, they were just contentious

like in, in the halls of Congress, they were contentious all the time. Crockett like made nicknames for him and called him old hickory and well, a for him and called him Old Hickory. And well, a lot of people called him Old Hickory. Yeah, yeah. But he would like tough spins on it. Yeah, yeah.

But so Crockett, I think just, you know, wanted to be contrary also at that point. He's like, you know, hundreds of miles away was wrong. And he doubled down on it. Yeah. Like he, you know. That was the end though. Yeah, politically, like ends his political career. And then later he's like, I would do the same thing today.

Yeah. Yeah. And I don't care who brought it up. Yeah. He says, you know, exactly. I would cast that vote. It was basically like vote your conscience, you know, like the old Ross Perot, vote your conscience. Yeah.

So he wins a congressional term, then winds up losing a congressional term. And when he campaigned, here's another thing about how he'd stick to his word. When he was campaigning, he said, if I don't win, I'm going to Texas. Yeah. I'm done. He says, y'all can go to hell and I'm going to Texas. And he loses. And what does he do?

He just strikes out for Texas. Rounds up a bunch of his buddies and he's famous. Right. And he starts riding to Texas. And every town he comes to, they know he's coming. And they're hooting and hollering. And he winds up like thinking it's going to be the promised land in Texas. And very quickly winds up at a little old place called the Alamo.

Yeah, he bumbles into the Alamo. Bumbles into it. I mean, the guy was not, like, seeking battle or seeking— He was seeking—he wanted, like, good hunting and a bunch of land. Right, right. And so, you know, it was one of those really bad—it was bad timing for Crockett. It may be great timing for his, um, legacy, you know, uh, immortality, but it was bad timing, um, terms of like being able to get it, you know, 40 acres.

A connection I saw between the establishment of the Republic of Texas and the Alamo and everything, what, what brought, and I read a lot of books about the frontier, but a connection I didn't realize until I read your book was the settlement practices. That in going to Texas and getting in trouble with the Mexicans and the Mexican army really wasn't like that different than what his parents had done and what he'd always done. Because earlier I brought up this idea that like you're always trying to find the free ground. Right. And so you're always moving to places where it's not like you're sorting the details out later. Right.

And somebody is almost always already there. Yeah. And someone's always like, yeah, you really shouldn't go over there. Right. And you're like, yeah, you know, I'll figure it out. Like the Brits are like, we don't want you over there. And then tribes are like, you know, we conceded, like we a deal, and this is our land, and you can't come here. And you're like, I'll go figure it out.

And then you stake a claim, but you never really file it. And then later, some guy's like, but I did it too. And you have a big fight, and one of you moves. And it goes on and on and on. And so it probably didn't feel that weird to him to be going to Texas when you're sort of like aware of the idea that there is a government that's saying this is my ground. Right. And you're like, I'll sort it out later. Right.

And we'll figure it out when we get there. And we may or may not – there may not even be boundaries. There may not be – ownership is sort of questionable, right? Let's just figure it out. Though, you know, so when he ends up at the Alamo, that's the point where you have to decide, like, how you feel about Crockett, right? I mean, we started there. But that, I think, you know, you either think, here's a guy who bumbled into a skirmish that he had no knowledge of really. He's in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Or you believe you can convince yourself to believe. He went there to die for an ideal. Many people have convinced themselves that that's what happened, that he went there to die for an ideal for the American dream. It wasn't even really the American dream yet. No, but we like to call it the American dream, right? It was like. Land, opportunity.

Yeah, but you read about a lot of those guys were kind of in like America, sure, but they wanted like Texas. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, they were also wanting to, you know, be sort of separate from everybody else, right? They weren't like, by God, we're taking the American flag. It was a little bit of that, but a lot of it was just kind of like what they wanted. Right. Like land, land, and land. And then, yeah, they all died of the animal.

Santa Ana comes in. He says, this is interesting, too, about the death is after it doesn't take long. And General Santa Ana, leading the Mexican army, says they try to be like, well, let's talk. He's like, at this point, there is no talking. You will all die. And by the way, it's tomorrow morning. Yeah. And we're coming.

And there's not like, there is no chat. Right. And they put up a flag that says you all die. And then they all died. Well, right. And there's some really haunting moments, you know, when you slow it down and you think about being inside the Alamo and looking out, you know, through 3000 Mexican troops, well-armed on horseback and you're, you know, a couple hundred guys in this, um, enclosure going and you know, you're basically it's over. I mean, there's no, like you said, there's no more discussion they're coming and it,

it happens so fast, you know, like it's, it's over in, I mean, maybe an hour. Yeah. You know, and then it's just like they're swarmed upon these images I always had where like of them throwing those ladders up and just coming wave after wave after wave, you know, with muskets and bayonets and just impaling them, you know, it's brutal. It's brutal. And then Sam Houston destroys Santa Ana's

army in 19 minutes. Well, it was, it was the era of retaliation. Right. So then, okay. Watch this transition. 50 years goes by and we're trying to settle. 50 years goes by and our young country is like, hey man, we should see what's going on in the Arctic. Let's head north.

Yeah. Explain the quest for farthest north. Well, so it's really interesting. People, I mean, at the time, let's say, you know, 1850s and, you know, Franklin and nobody really- Let me say something to people who are a little slow to the punch. All right. We've moved on to Labyrinth of Ice, the triumphant and tragic, greely polar expedition, which is Buddy Levy's brand new book.

Thank you. Yeah. So what I found really compelling, and I've been drawn to Arctic stories for a while. I mean, you know, ever since probably, I mean, Great North stories. I mean, you probably grew up reading Jack London, too. Yeah, I like that. I've never been into the organized explorations. Yeah.

Like, I'm not even a big Lewis and Clark guy. I like the freewheeling individuals better. Yeah. Well, in this case, what was so interesting is that no one knew. So my book is set, this book, Labyrinth of Ice, is set in 1881. And at that time, no one had been to the North Pole. No one even knew. There was belief that the North Pole was a ring of ice, uh, circumnavigating the pole. And with, and once you

broke through this layer of ice, that the seas were actually tropical. That's how confused people were. That's what they thought happened. That's what, well, that's what they thought that that's what they thought was up there. Um, I mean, now listen, um, so the British had been going up and Franklin, you know, was trying to make the Northwest Passage much earlier. But essentially, you know, there was so much unknown that the, you know, higher northern latitudes were speculated about what actually existed up there. Now, they had been, you know, there was, for some reason, people always want to go farther higher, right? So this farthest North Holy Grail became something that was a big patriotic badge of honor. You know, you were the, you'd gone farther North than any other humans had ever been. But Greeley and his guys go up to the Arctic.

Him and 25 guys. Right. So it's really a strange group of people in a way because Greeley had been running the Army Signal Corps. And so he was a guy who had put up telegraph lines all across the American Southwest, but he had a fascination with the Arctic. And he'd read all about previous Arctic expeditions.

He'd read about Franklin. He'd read about Kane and Beaumont and these people, these Brits who had been up North and come back and survived and written diaries and accounts and journals. He had all those. So he ends up going up to the, he was part of this thing called the International Polar Year. And so there was this scientific element to it. So they send 25 American soldiers from the, basically from the Signal Corps. They were plucked out of the American Southwest. Many of them had spent hard winters in the Southwest, but they'd never been to, no, none of these men had ever been to the Arctic. Yeah, and these guys had been like a little bit involved in the punitive expeditions.

Yeah. After the Custer Massacre. Right. The Nez Perce War. Cleaning up a little bit. Yeah. In fact, Brainerd, one of those guys, had been under Miles Nelson. Yeah, Nelson Miles.

I can't remember Miles Nelson. Nelson Miles. And so, I mean, they were tough, hardened men who were good at living in the outdoors, but they had no idea what they were getting into. A couple of things separate this expedition from others like it. And one is that they, so they were part of this, there was a three-pronged reason that they went there. One was to create the farthest North weather station in the world.

And there were, it was in concert with like 14 other countries. Uh, this Austrian guy created this thing called the first international polar year. So they're going to go up there and build a, um, a, basically a weather station, a long house. They, they brought all the wood for it. And then they were also going to try to find what had happened to this ship called the Jeanette, which Hampton Sides writes about in the Kingdom of Ice. So it had two years ago, two years before, the Jeanette had gone missing, never to be heard of, right? So Greeley is going up north to set up a weather station, try to see if there's anything going

on with this, um, Jeanette and DeLong, the captain whom he knew, and then to try to break the record of farthest north. That was like his secret goal. He didn't really talk about it much, but in his diaries he does. Yeah. And they basically like going out of New York and take a left. Right. I mean, and you wind up up between Ellesmere Island and Greenland.

And yeah. The top of Greenland. The top of Greenland. So it's incredible if, you know, the journey up there is harrowing. It, you know, what ends up happening is they set up a long house, 65 foot long house, you know, 25 feet wide. We got to explain something because this is like part of like how everything goes bad. I think it's important to point out. Yeah.

They get dropped off. Right. And it's an unseasonably warm summer and they sail up and drop them off way the hell up. And they're like, hey, we'll come back next summer. Right. Well, the plan is, so they get dropped off with all this freaking lumber and thousands and thousands and thousands of pounds of food. And they're taken up in a,

in a steamship called the Proteus. Right. And so then they're dropped off and the plan is, okay, we'll come, we'll resupply you next summer. And if we don't come back next summer, we'll, we'll definitely come the next summer after that. We've promised. But what's so weird is that like, you're right. So it's like the warmest, the clean, the clearest, there's all this channel that goes up through, you know, it goes through the Lincoln or pardon me. It goes through like the Smith Sound, the Cane Basin, the Lincoln or the Lincoln Seas above.

Melville Bay. Melville Bay. And you get up where it narrows in the Smith Sound and then it opens up into the Kennedy Channel. And they're in this little spit, this little inlet called Lady Franklin Bay. And right, so the plan is that they're going to build this longhouse, do a bunch of science, take hundreds of readings a day. Eat seals and polar bears. Eat seals and bears and musk oxen.

And very good musk oxen hunting up there, by the way, then. Yeah, they do pretty well. Yeah, yeah. And then, well, let's see, when the weather's good, because it's going to be dark for like 130 consecutive days, when the weather gets better, we'll go and try to break the record of Farthest North or even go to the North Pole, if we can pull that off.

And surely they'll come and resupply us. And, you know, that's when, what I love about this story is that there's this incredible dichotomy between the, you know, the first two, like they spend Thanksgiving and Christmas, right? And it's, you know, they've got the Aurora Borealis is going on. It's just like fireworks every night, right?

And they've got tons and tons of food. And Christmas parties, Thanksgiving parties. Elaborate meals. They're doing shooting competitions out on the ice. They're smoking cigars. They're just living large, man. They're eating lobster. They brought all this shit, right? And you realize, so then everything looks good. They're going on expeditions. They're breaking farthest north. They got farthest north. They got farthest north. They bag that sucker. They got farthest west.

Yeah, and then he sends a couple guys and they go way west. All the west. They map out Ellesmere Island and make some discoveries. They're waving the flag. They're like, you know what? We're crushing this. And then the ice starts to form in the Kennedy Channel, right? And I love the fact that they spend a great deal of time

like looking out at the ice because every day they send someone to climb the hill to look for the boat, climb up there and it's like, is the boat coming? And then they, so the boat doesn't come the first summer and then they're like, ooh, well, that's, we got a shit ton of food. It'll make it even better when it comes next time. Yeah, we'll be really psyched and write letters home, honey.

But, you know, then it starts to get kind of grim. And Greeley, of course, what I love about him is he's not idle. So he's like, okay, well, let's keep foraying and let's try to even go farther north. And he sends, you know, he's got these two Greenlandic, they're dog drivers. Yeah, those guys are interesting, man, like Greenlandic Eskimos. Right. So they picked them up. Eskimo Fred and Jens dog drivers. Yeah, those guys are interesting, man. Like Greenlandic Eskimos. Right. So they picked them up. Eskimo Fred and Jens Christensen.

Yeah. They're really cool. And these guys- Those guys tear it up. Oh my God. On the hunt? They're badass. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And so when they had gone up, they picked up, really knew that they needed dogs and Greenlandic drivers who could handle them. And so he negotiates to pay these guys and he enlists them into the army. And then,

so they go on, they're waiting for Those guys want to be kind of like heroes. Oh my God, I was so, I mean, I, you know, I get sad for Eskimo Fred when I think about him. I don't want to really sort of spoiler. No, just go ahead. You know, well, Eskimo Fred and Jens Christensen are not only good dog drivers, they're good shots, and they're really good in kayaks, right?

So the Greenlandic peoples, or the Inuit and the Ita, these guys are from like, they're called Ita. Like a blue-eyed, they used to in the old days. Didn't they call it like a blue-eyed Eskimo or something like to in the old days. Didn't they call it a blue-eyed Eskimo or something like that in the old days? I'm not going to say that. No, I'm saying in those days, wasn't that like a thing? I mean, yeah, because I mean, you know,

when you think about interaction with, you know, Europeans, you know, but no, I haven't heard the expression, actually. Because I thought Stephenson, nevermind. Yeah, yeah. You know the Arctic Explorer, Stephenson?

Yeah, but. I thought he was always trying to, and we'll save that for a Stephenson expert. Nevermind, go on. Bring them next. But so, you know, they've got these Greenland sled dog drivers and, you know, really keeps sending out forays. That's part of the story that I really loved is how, you know, really keeps sending out, um, forays. That's part of the story that I really loved is how, you know, they go on these expeditions and they're, they're burly, man.

They're like going out for 60 days in, you know, minus average, minus 50 degree temperatures, um, carrying, and they, they've got these elaborate sort of, um, stoves that burn, um, you know, these fuels that they're able to like in severe winds, they're able to like strike a fire in these like funnel stoves and then, you know, heat up like frozen stew meat that they've got brought along. Yeah, burn like fuel and steel oil and souls. Yeah, and shit. And so then they'll be like go out, you know, and come back maybe two months later, right? So it'd be two guys, Brainerd and Lockwood. These are two of the main expeditionary guys.

And then Eskimo Fred and Jens. Jens or Jens, you tell me. Yeah, I don't know. Jens Christensen. Janus, Janus, who knows? But so, you know, this is why it's called the triumph, the triumphant and tragic, because the first part of this, there's a ton of triumph to me, you know, in what humans are able to achieve in terms of teamwork and being out, you know, for days and days on end. Look at the things that you guys do, you know? Yeah, but it's not even comparable, man.

These guys have gone for years. It things that you guys do, you know? Yeah, but it's not even comparable, man. These guys have gone for years. Pre-Gortex, you know? And they're, you know, and Greeley, like they're actually testing out all sorts of, because Greeley preferred wool and oil skin to seal skin because he got really, I mean, he tried to wear what the native peoples were wearing, but he found it really clammy. I mean, they didn't, he didn't breathe.

So he was using, he would use thick, like boiled wool and then oil skin, kind of like drover coats on the outside. Right. Can I talk about their sleeping bags real quick? Oh my God. They slept in- Buffalo hide sleeping bags? Yeah.

They had Buffalo hide sleeping bags and dog hair sleep. They would make sleeping bags out of dogs. And it was, what's funny is because I know a little bit of that world well, and they were gone. So they went up in 81. It was interesting because the last big organized slaughter of buffalo was in Miles City, named after General Miles, was in Miles City in the winter of 81-82,

was the last big commercial slaughter. And it was funny that these guys are gone, and they got all these coats and sleeping bags and stuff made out of these hides, and they're gone, and probably unbeknownst to them, the animals are, like, they're sleeping in sleeping bags made from an animal that is simultaneously tiptoeing precariously close to extinction. Unbelievable. And the president dies. Right.

Oh, my God. So that's what, yeah, there's a lot going on. I love that idea that they have no idea that, you know, while we're out here, the communication was so, you know, there's nothing, they build cairns and, and, uh, leave notes in huge rock cairns. But yeah, so the sleeping bags were, were awesome because these guys, they would have three man, uh, sleeping bags. So they, it was so cold that if you weren't like nut to butt with your bro, you're probably going to freeze to death. So they have three man Buffalo Heights sleeping bags and they all climb in and just snuggle, you know, at night for months on end, you know, um, and then get out of them and, you know, like go on track for 20 miles over the ice

broken ground. I mean, you know, it's not flat there either. I mean, it's very, there's mountains around there that are up to 4,000, 5,000 feet, 4,000 feet. So these guys are just like, you know, it's not flat there either. I mean, there's mountains around there that are up to 4,000, 5,000 feet, 4,000 feet. So these guys are just like, you know, moving along. It's incredible the kind of deprivation they could endure. Yeah. How are they carrying that gear? Because buffalo hides are heavy. Fucking heavy.

And so they have like these really cool sledges. Well, we haven't established why they need to split. Oh. The co-hides are heavy. Fucking heavy. And so they have these really cool sledges. Well, we haven't established why they need to split. Oh. So talk about why they need to split and then how they move. Because so far they haven't moved. Oh, yeah. But I'm talking, so while Greeley, before the, okay, so let's just back it up for a second. So first winter, they have a great time, party, go back farthest north, everything's cool.

Then summer, your rescue or resupply doesn't happen. Greeley still keeps sending out forays to try to go, they'll discover new lands in Greenland, which he does. And they're going off at this point on these sledges with like two men driving the sledge or one man driving the sledge. And then they're carrying a whole bunch of their gear on these sledges and the dogs are hauling it. But there's a lot of time in the drag ropes too, because they get stuck and their ice is breakable. And a lot of piggybacking. Yeah.

I mean, they do a hell of a lot of like humping. We're going on a long trip, drag a bunch of shit, unload it, drag the sledge back, put a bunch more shit on it, drag it up to there, unload it, drag the sledge back, put a bunch more shit on it, drag it up to there, unload it, go back, sleep, move another mile, go back, get the shit and move it. They do tons of stuff like that. Brutal doubling back, man.

And so after the second, so Greeley had made a determination that if by the second summer, the resupply did not come, there was a contingency plan in place that was written in army military orders that they would retreat to this place a couple hundred miles South called Cape Sabine on the Ellesmere Island side. And the ships that were to have resupplied them, if they couldn't make it there, were bound by written order to drop off supplies there so that if Greeley and his men could arrive there and survive. So there's a lot of controversy over Greeley's decision to leave the Fort Conger longhouse because they had another year's supply of food and they had shelter and there was game. But Greeley was a deeply devoted military man and an order was an order and, you know, he was going to leave and he sets that date. I think it's August 8th, 1883.

And it says we're going right. So they, they conger shut dump a bunch of the um you know food and um for the dogs leave all the shit for the dogs oh that's kind of sad too like they leave all these damn dogs and they take off in boats down a lead and one of the dogs swims out after him and they keep thinking he'll turn around he'll around. He'll turn around and there's a, there's a haunting line where you say like, eventually his head goes underwater

like a seal. Right. And Schneider, the guy who's been, one of the guys who's been taking care of the dogs just like is staring

at this dog and then he just turns away and he's, he's gone. But so that, the, the decision, the decision to retreat

is controversial. Hold on one is controversial i want to add this other thing in there yeah that you spent a lot of detail a lot of time on is the blunders and mishaps that plague the resupply ships like oh one of the resupply ships just simply gets stuck in the ice and the boat gets crushed right and then they're in sinks. And there's all this stuff. And then those guys have this harrowing, like riding on ice flows and this harrowing journey, and somehow they don't all wind up dead. Right. And they get rescued.

So yeah, the Neptune, like the first ship that's supposed to come get them, what's kind of fun in the writing of the story is that so I was able to cut back and forth between what's happening with Greeley and as they begin to, uh, retreat and just even before, while they're out watching to see if the ship's going to come, I'm, I cut to what the ships are actually doing, which is getting stuck in the ice on the

way up. And so there are all sorts of blunders where people don't do what they were supposed to do and they don't leave the stuff, leave the food. And then, you know, the ship gets crushed. And so, like you say, then these guys are all, like, clambering around the ice, and they have to get, like, you know, rescued by – there was a lot of whaling ships in the area at that time. And so, you know, they get rescued, and one of them just turns around and bags it and goes back because it can't make it through the ice. And then Herodias ends up, that's like a huge debacle where, um, you've

got two emergencies going on simultaneously. You know, Greeley and his men are fighting for their lives, trying to get to Cape Sabine and the men on the Proteus are, the Proteus gets crushed in the ice and sinks right before their eyes as they're standing there on ice, watching it go, watching its masts just plummet into the depths. With all the food. With all the freaking food. It's so brutal. And then, you know, you're like, okay, well, so what's going to happen to them? And then these guys on the Proteus are in a race for survival themselves. You know, they're in little whale boats that are, uh, you know, or boats and they're trying

to, trying to figure out how to, um, get out of there while Greeley's moving down through these heinous, like you, you mentioned leads. They're the, the, like the pathways of water through giant icebergs and huge ice flows. And he's on, you know, they've got a 28 foot steamship, steam launch, it's called, dubbed the Lady Greeley. And, you know, it's like a 10,000 pound vessel. And then they've got like a small flotilla

of ore boats. And so all their crap is in these boats and they're like tethered together at first. And they're trying to make it South through giant, have you ever been into the, up in the Arctic? No, not like what you're talking about. I mean, I was in Greenland and did some

kayaking around and it's, I mean, it's terrifying. Right. Um, we were, we were in Greenland and this, uh, I got in this boat and the guy's going to go shoot some seals. And I said, um, I noticed there's no life jackets on the boat. And I'm like, we're about to go through these

massive icebergs and it's, you know, they're, they're hauntingly beautiful. And I mean, they look like, like dinosaur, like stegosaurus backs, you know? And I'm like, Hey, why aren't there in this Greenlandic seal hunter guy? And I'm like, why aren't there any, um, life jackets on the boat?

And he goes, if we fall in, we don't want it to take that long to die i'm like i get it man i mean because you're not unless you had a dry suit you're it's going to be maybe you're gone right so anyway i had a guy in the i had a guy in the coast guard in southeast alaska talk about just how sick he got of the accidents. Oh my god. And he's like, you know what? Then I had a couple. Their boat sinks. They make it to shore. We find them dead on the beach.

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onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. I mean, once they set, once they, Greeley and his men set out in these craft to move south, things get really, really

gnarly because, first of all, they're not nautical men. They're army men. They weren't meant to do this. They weren't supposed to. It wasn't really in the plan. I mean, I guess they thought they could go over land potentially, but that's not viable. So they're moving through these leads and they're constantly having to take all their crap. Like as icebergs and these things called flows, there's flatter like big big, like rafts of ice. Some of them are miles long.

They spend one day looking at an iceberg go by or a flow, and it's like 15 miles long. It takes nine hours to pass them. Crypto-paleolithic? I mean, there's all sorts of, you get into the, all sorts of names for the icebergs. I have a footnote on there. There's icebergs that are 60 feet high.

Yeah, and then there's much more of it below. Old ice, yeah. And then the boat will get pinched between two pieces of ice, and it pops that boat like a pimple. It just shoots it up out, and then the boat's just on the ice, and everybody camps on the ice for days. Then a new crack forms. They shove their boat back into the crack. It's so brutal. And so they're constantly going on and off of these icebergs and trying to avoid being crushed to death by them. And, you know, at one point,

one of the most harrowing, harrowing parts of the story is when they, they get at a certain point, they are on an iceberg and it gets, um, cleaved in half by another iceberg that's coming from the north, and it hammers them. And then they're on this berg for weeks, weeks. And they're just floating along just helplessly in the middle of this body of water, being buffeted and hammered. And they're exposed. They can sleep. Some of them, they have a big teepee.

And then they also have tarps that go over the boats that they're yarding up onto the iceberg every day. But the exhaustion when you think about of taking all this equipment and getting it up onto an iceberg, maybe tethering the Lady Greeley to the side with these ice anchors. And then hours later, you're getting hammered and you're going to get crushed. So you have to put all that crap back in theors. And then hours later, you're getting hammered and you have to, you're going to get crushed. So you have to put all that crap back in the water. And meanwhile, you're looking at your food

stores and Greeley was, you know, he had men that were, their job was to know exactly how many rations. Yeah, the commissary. Yeah. Actually weighing it out with a scale. Right. And you're going, he's going, we have, you

know, 40 days rations left. And by about October 15th, it's going to be dark for the next four months. And they had all these, like, they had all these assumptions about all these points and markers where like, oh, they'll have left 10,000 rations. And then they get there and there's like 40 rations. Oh, they must all be down at the next spot. And they get down at the next spot. Yeah.

There's some lemon. There's a lemon. Yeah. I mean, there's so many heartbreaking moments where you think, okay, they're going to pull this off, right? You know, by some miracle, they like end up landing not that far from Cape Sabine ultimately, or they're able to get there, you know? And then just like you say that then they go to a cairn and it says, oh, by the way, all those rations that we were supposed to leave, uh, well, our ship sunk and we didn't leave them. And so they're like, what? You're like, and then, you know, Greeley's always

very just like, what's the next thing that you have to do to keep this all together, you know? And so there's also what I love about the story is that there's mutiny that goes on, you know, there's theft of food and they're trying to parse this out. Like, okay, if we can survive the winter, it's going to last us maybe until March, you know? And then they, you've got, they're like dispatched two guys to be out hunting seals every day. You got Jens and Eskimo Fred out in the kayak trying to shoot some seals. Bears are, you know, and then there's all sorts

of shorebirds. And at a certain point- And they keep sticking walruses, but they lose them. Oh my God. it's so brutal. Because a walrus would be their salvation. But they shoot the walrus and then it slithers off of the iceberg and they'll be like this blood slick and then just-

They're always trying to deviate. You know what I'm thinking that you didn't spend a lot of time on that really struck me is at one of the points on the way down, they land at a place they dub Eskimo point because it's full of artifacts and a whale carcass. Yeah. And pieces of like equipment made from ivory and structures. And then you think like, here's these like 25 military trained individuals with firearms and modern equipment and they're like quote stuck and dying and starving to death in a place where for three or four thousand years

you had these marine-based mammal hunters right who were thriving and raising babies. Right. And so without any of the things. Right. Without the weather equipment and the guns and the man-made materials. Yeah. And they were just like, how, like the dichotomy of the skill sets. Right. Yes. You can see that these.

They're like raising children there. And right across the way, like still, you know, entire villages. Yeah. I mean, I think really these guys were certainly not as well suited to the environment as the people had been there before. Way different expectations. Yeah. And, you know, bringing your food with you versus having to, to, um, gather or procure it yourself, you know? And I think given that the circumstances Greeley and his men were managed very well, uh, they were quite industrious, you know?

Mm-hmm. Um, they built these shrimp. Some of them, yeah. Shrimping nets, right? You know? And they, they were shooting, uh, lots of birds. And so, you know, right? You know, and they were shooting lots of birds. And so, you know, but at a certain point. Ate a lot of Arctic fox.

They ate a lot of Arctic fox and they ate, and I don't want to tell the story about the bear because that's a great story. I want you to read the story about the bear. But the, you know, at a certain point, their culinary situation is down to a gelatinous gruel of shrimp and like the snipped off top of a buffalo hide sleeping bag and the soles of your boots. You know, I mean, they're seriously eating.

There's some images in there that are just, they haunt me, you know, like crawling around your hands and knees, plucking caterpillars off the ground and just plucking in your mouth. And also, you know, eating just, eating lichens and saxifrage and all the like plants they're just like putting in their mouths. It's so, it's sort of ghoulish. Do you feel that it gives too much away to talk about, I don't want to call it, rescue is a little dramatic, to talk about. Not for the film version. No, not for the hand, like for the, it says this in the back of the book. I know.

I was bitter about that. Seven people live yeah yeah so well yeah and what i want to talk about are you comfortable talking about the whether or not oh there's a great there's a great line there's a great line from in the heart of the sea i love that book nathaniel philbrook is that his name yep where later when people realized that after the whalealeship Essex tragedy, there had been some cannibalism. Right. And someone's asked like, hey, did you know Fred Jones? He was on Essex. And he says, no, I had him.

Yeah. So Greeley didn't want to own up to the cannibalism. Yeah. So, uh, Greeley didn't want to own up to the cannibalism. Yeah. I mean, so in the end, uh. You don't like talking about this? Oh, I know. I, I really want to talk about this. I mean, this show's a meat eater, right?

Hmm. Um, meat's meat. Yeah. And I've eaten folk. Yeah. Cause I had a, yeah, I have a, right now I have a cadaver. Oh man. I have a cadaver's, uh, bone crammed up in my tooth hole.

And a lot of that comes loose. I've eaten folk. And I've taken to nibbling on little bits. How is it? I don't mind it. That doesn't count. Yeah, it's not the same as like your friend is frozen over there. No, but Yanni's eaten, he's drank human breast milk.

And he's eaten human meat. Oh. Because he's eaten placenta. Oh, you did it. You did that. Yeah. Kind of. I wouldn't say it counts either.

Really? What does it take? It's like throwing on the barbecue. You're supposed to eat it raw, aren't you? To make it count, you're supposed to eat it raw? aren't you? To make it count, you're supposed to eat it raw? Well, yeah. No, you can.

We had the placenta shipped off and it was dehydrated and came back in pills. Wow. Did you feel good? Strong like bull? Just like I take my vitamins every day. I like to think I'm as a cannibal. Anyways. Yeah.

So, you know, there's, okay, there's no question. Like, get into the whole, like, they exhumed bodies later and they've been butchered. Right. So, here's the thing. You've got. Why don't you, you're not being, just lay it out. All right. Listen, cheer me out.

People aren't going to not buy your book. Because they heard about the end. No, no, no. It's the journey. Listen, everybody knows that there's cannibalism.

Let's check this out. Hey, Phil, are you, were you like, oh dude, I'm going to buy this book. But then you're like,

oh, they eat everybody in the end. Nevermind. I'm not buying it. No, honestly, as I've been listening to this conversation, I've been thinking about going to Corinne, our producer and seeing if she has a copy that I can read. He's not going to buy it. No, honestly, as I've been listening to this conversation, I've been thinking about going to Corinne, our producer, and seeing if she has a copy that I can read. He's not going to buy

it, but he's going to go look for a free copy. I'll spread the word. Labyrinth device. Labyrinth device, Buddy Levy. Phil's going to go see if he can't get himself a free one. So it's a funny thing connected to that in the research. So I have a first reader. He's the guy I dedicated the book to, my friend John Larkin. And so I got the sources in the original version now, so I know how all my sourcing is going. And one of the major books about it, it's title is Six Came Back. And John's reading along in like chapter three

and he's like, huh, I wonder how this is going to work out. You know, it's Six Came Back. It's like, yeah, it was rough. That's a great point, man. Yeah. So no, I'm not worried. What's interesting about it-

Like it'd be like if Old Yeller was called, in the end, they shoot this dog. Poor Old Yeller. Yeah, it'd be different. Oh, you know what I want to do? We always ask this, and I can never remember the name. What's it called when you put a quote in the beginning of a book? Oh, the epigraph?

Yeah, that's right. Or epigram. Epigrammatic. I'm trying to find this one. Here it is. It's tight. It's tight. By many paths and by many means, mankind has endeavored to penetrate this kingdom of death.

Fritjof Nansen. That guy, by the way, Nansen, he broke Greeley's Farthest North record 13 years later. And they held it for only a short time. Let's get back to the cannibalism. Eating folks and then how they eventually, some of them lived. Well, right. Because you don't want to give it away. Anybody can find this out.

No, it doesn't matter. Yeah, I mean, so these guys are in a dire situation and they begin to die of starvation, right? And so what ends up happening, one of the most macabre elements of it is, so they're, somebody dies, first guy dies, and they have to get together and muster the strength to, um, like carry them up on this place. They dub cemetery hill.

I love the creativity. Cemetery hill, we'll call it. Um, you got another option. And then, you know, but so they, they put, they start burying these guys. And at first they have the strength to dig a sort of 15-inch deep grave. Yeah, but even still they're kind of covering them with snow and gravel. Right. I mean, it's like a scree. It's like hard-ass frozen scree slope, right? And so they begin to starve and you know it there's all sorts of um attempts to go get to these herculean

attempts to go get more of the english cash of food that's like somewhere out there that's been left by another expedition years before but anyway so as they begin to die they they're like it gets harder and harder to bury them and at a certain are, you know, sort of just being left up on Cemetery Hill, but like, or frozen, they throw some of them down in this thing they call the tidal crack. So they're near the shore. And you know, what you don't, you don't hear about the cannibalism until the rescue. So there's this rather amazing effort by the Navy to go get them. And it's all spearheaded by Greeley's wife,

Henrietta. And so they, they finally arrived there and these guys are in dire. How many years into it? Well, this is the third year. So they've been on,

they've been at Cape Sabine for like eight months. But there's been no communication. No. But you know what they find? Well, here's the crazy thing. It's fucking bizarre.

They find like the boat that goes up. One of the boats that goes up that's supposed to do the rescue. Everything goes bad, but they wind up, and here and there, they leave some stuff. And these guys find some lemons that are left in a cache. And it turns out the lemons are wrapped in newspaper. And they start taking these scraps of newspaper and reading them, and they're reading about themselves. Right.

And they're reading about that the president was shot and died. And they're starting to get little torn bits of what's going on. One of them learns that in his absence he's been promoted. Right. Lieutenant Lockwood. So they them learns that in his absence, he's been promoted. Right. Lieutenant Lockwood. And so they come back from these caches, right? And I love that scene where they'll hold them up by candlelight. And so the lemons, which they've been sent along to help thwart scurvy.

So the lemons are wrapped in all this paper. And so they're reading them. And once Lockwood learns that he's been promoted, and once, once Lockwood, uh, learns that he's been promoted, I love that. Cause he, then he, then he,

uh, you know, one of his first missions is to go. And by this time, these guys are freaking scrawny and dying, you know? And so he, he wants to go put the,

the pendulum up, build this cairn. There's a spot on the coastline that Greeley says, even if we perish, I don't want our records to perish. Oh, there's a spot on the coastline that greely says even if we perish i don't want our records to perish oh that's a sad part yeah and so the lockwood his first uh act as uh you know of the first lieutenant is to go place this cairn and this pendulum that they've brought along um up on this promontory so that if the boats get there, they'll see it because they're kind of tucked away in this little cove.

And he has a lot of their records and their, not the negatives, what do you call them? Yeah, the plate, the photographic plates. Yeah. He sticks them there because he's like, if we all die, there's a better chance they'll find it down there. Right. And the cairn and that pendulum end up figuring in the rescue. But so here's the deal.

These guys are, you know, they're doing everything they can. They're eating pounds and pounds of shrimp and grubs and all this crap, right? So you got guys that are frozen next to you. Hey, man, I'm not down on a breed. I would have done the same thing. That's my question. So, like, I mean, would you eat, do you think you'd eat to live? Would you eat another person? Of course. Before I died?

Yeah. Yeah. If I was like Phil and Phil died and I'm like, well, I would die too unless I eat Phil. Hell yeah. Phil, I would have, my dying words would be, Phil, eat my flesh. Don't feel bad. Right. And so what's kind of... Mine too. Sort of, there's some,

you know, so there's this French guy, Octave Pavy, right? That one of the things that's sort of freaky about when they, when they find, so you got these guys that are flying on the ground and, you know, sometimes pretty close to the hut they're in, because they're, they're too exhausted to carry them very far by this time. And, you know, they're preserved and they're, they're kind of frozen. I mean, they're like, they're in the freezer, you know, they're in cold storage, right. So when the, when the rescue comes, they, they're very deliberate about taking each body and labeling it and drawing diagrams about who

was where. And then once they get them on the ships, because there's a military operation, they begin to, um, undress them and they're going to kind of put them in preserving baths, right? Oh, fluid. Yeah. So like, yeah, they have these holds on the ship

where they can, you know, put these bodies and preserve them. And that's when they discover that a number of the bodies have. Missing a little meat. Like, and some of it is so surgically sliced that looks like it was done by a surgeon. And so that suggests that Peavy likely was one of the perpetrators because the cuts are precise.

And he's the only surgeon on the expedition, right? Yeah. And so then there's others that are, you know, slightly dismembered and, um, you know, chunks gone. Right. So what ends up happening is that they have to, you know, Greeley and the others make a pact that they will, you know, Greeley and some of his men, the remaining six, one guy, Allison dies on the, um, he's the guy with the stumps and the, he's, he's lost both of his legs and most of his hands from frostbite. And so he lives and makes it onto the, the rescue ships, but he dies en route. So of the six, they make a pact that they'll,

they'll never tell who ate whom. Right. And, you know, it's one of those codes of honor. They're just like Greeley says, if, if cannibalism occurred,

I know nothing of it. Right. Yeah. That's a cop out. You know, I think he's protecting the memory of his men. He's protecting the families. I would do that.

Like if we ate Phil, would you picture, Yanni, that we would be like, let's not tell anyone we ate Phil, or would you go back and be like, we ate Phil? Yeah, probably wouldn't tell anybody. Really? Who we ate. It's like, and when you weren't around, I'd be like, yeah, I ate him.

Phil's kids don't want to know that he got eaten. Who's the guy? Albert Packer, right? The guy who ate them. Oh, yeah, yeah. Bludgeoned them and ate them. I've been to one of the caves that Packer supposedly hid out in. Yeah.

Was it cool? In Wyoming? Yeah. Yeah, slept in there. I'm not joking. Did it freak you out a little bit? A little bit. You know, so I think the question is like, why are we still, what is it about cannibalism that still carries this taboo stigma?

Are you asking me? Oh, I'm posing it as a question. I'm asking myself because I asked myself a number of times, like, what would I do in the situation that these guys agree to never do? Whatever it is is old. That thing that makes us not want to eat each other. Yeah. I think that like the incest taboo, the cannibalism taboo. I mean, these are like things that had to have occurred and been pretty forceful at a very early time in human development.

Right. If you do this. And you can just generally see like why, like how these things would come about. Yeah. I mean. We tend to do better not eating each other. It creates a kind of anarchy, right? Yeah.

So, but you know, we're, we're rational enough now to know that like, okay, if we're out there together, if one of us dies, all right, you know, it's cool. Like, go ahead. I'm already dead, you know. Yeah. I don't need it. But, you know, this is, we have to do place a little bit of ourselves in the time period where we're, which was not okay. So, I understand. Picture like this. Say you're, which was not okay. Um, so I picture like picture like this, say you're in a horrible situation today and you

wound up having to eat somebody, you eat your body, you get rescued, you come home and you're laying in bed with your wife at night. Right. Right. And then your wife is like, oh, I love him. So glad he's home. But like in the back of her head is like, he ate his buddy.

Yeah. It's going to color. It's going to color. Like they might accept it and get it and all that. It's going to color the way they view you. Forever. Right. Yeah.

I mean, you're, you're done. You're done for. It's just, people are going to treat you different. Right. And so that's one of the things that I was, I like, I hedged a little bit, you know, part of me when they're like, well, let's put, we were, let's put cannibalism on the cover. And I'm like, you know what? Okay. That's a great idea for marketing. You know, but you know, it's true. I mean, everybody. The triumphant and tragic and cannibalistic

Greeley Polar Expedition. Labyrinth of Ice. Yeah, that sounds good. But I mean, look, we all remember the Donner Party. That's the one thing everybody can tell you about the Donner Party. Yeah, right. All those guys, they're somewhere. Right. They ate each other. Right. And all the other stuff that's sort of heroic about how they were able to survive.

Yeah, but so in this case- It really colors an expedition. It does. But I try not to, you know, I try to handle the cannibalism in a way that doesn't make it, I don't know, salacious, I guess. Yeah, you treat it

respectfully. Yeah. Sure. It's important to treat cannibalism with some respect. Yeah, and I'm only bringing it up

just because it comes up now and then. It's a thing that we muse on and are curious about. So I'm not trying to overdo it. No, I get it.

I'm not going for the salacious details. Or the, you know, I mean. I asked you about sex on the frontier and I asked you about cannibalism. Right. Both happen frequently. Turns out. We don't want to talk about it.

Yeah. Man, how are we doing? We got it. We've been going for three minutes no how long we've been going for phil two hours pretty much on the nose yeah perfect uh i have a question though before we go no you get a closing thought in a minute but i'll plug the books oh okay go okay so if you are interested in learning about uh like the best way to take on American history, in my mind, is not to go to history class.

It doesn't mean you should skip history class. But you go to history class, you're like, okay, boys and girls, this happened and that happened and this happened and that happened. And here we are today. A better approach is to take the chunks. To take the chunks and take a look at the chunks. Yeah. And, um, and you have a host of books, but I picked the, I gravitated toward these.

Yeah. I appreciate it. Uh, and they're really telling chunks about where we're at, like where we were at as a people, um, in a very interesting century. Amazing place. Amazing time. Yeah. Yeah.

Like that Crockett, right? And what it tells you about American politics and what it tells you about American violence. Right. And then I keep calling it Crockett. The book is American legend. The title is American legend, the real life adventures of Davy Crockett. And then labyrinth of ice, the subtitle being the triumphant and tragic Greeley polar expedition, just kind of like sort of, it's like these like

harrowing adventurous snapshots of sort of like where we were as a people. What our priorities were. Yeah. And some of the people that we put forth. Yeah. I love that. And, you know, behind both of them, I think, is this idea of adventure and of the unknown, right? Because in the case of Crockett, you know, um, you know, it wasn't really known completely what lay beyond the frontier. And in the case of, you know, Greeley and his men,

they're going to places no other human had ever been. In fact, when they build Fort Conger, they're the highest living humans on earth. Yeah. Like they were going farther north than the indigenous hunters went. Well, right. Because they're like, okay, there's no game out there. You know, like why would I go there? Yeah, you know, you might reconsider. Right. But so, yeah, I really like that, the notion of how history can, you know, there's a narrative there.

So there's always just incredible stories. And it also is sort of a snapshot into what people were thinking, the way they behaved, what they were willing to do, how much they could take. How brutally tough. Toughest people. I mean, yeah, just the idea that you can, um, survive some of these things to me makes, makes going out, you know, hunting and I, I'm always thinking about it when I'm out like,

wow, this is hard, but it's not that hard, you know? Um, so I really appreciate talking to you about both these books and, um, I'm excited to meet you, really. December 3rd, Labyrinth of Ice comes out. Yeah. You can probably go in order right now, right? And they'll hold your order and send you the book? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It's available. Available now. I did—this is so funny. My son, okay, he's 25 years old. And he and his friends, they are, you know, they're grown men. And they've been arguing, apparently, Hunter, my son, and Kyle, and this kid, Evan. You named your kid Hunter?

I named him Hunter. That's a risky move. Is he a hunter? No, not really. That name backfires on people, man. There's some hardcore hunters named Hunter. Right, but he, you know, there may still be time. It's not a guarantee.

But it's funny because they've been arguing, and these are relatively intelligent men, and they've been arguing about this question of whether or not- So you're saying your son is relatively intelligent. He's a highly intelligent child. But this just makes me wonder because I have my own position on it. So the argument is whether a man, and I don't know who that man would be. Is this the question you wanted to ask me? Yeah, it's the question you want to ask yeah there's a question i want to ask you if there's a if there's a grown can a grown man uh and whoever that man is kill a wolf

with his bare hands and my brother matt would tell you yes and he'll tell you how to do it so i was my question is what man would this be and how would he do it my brother has two uh ways that he speculates he would do it one uh sometimes he talks about that he would uh crush its throat the old other favorite way that he talks about is you get a good grip on its lower jaw oh yeah and you get a good grip on its upper jaw and you just hold it and tire it out the old mandibular because it can't close its mouth and's like, he would hold it and hold it and hold it and hold it and hold it until it's so tuckered out. Right. And then he crushes its throat.

Now, I have to say, there's some validity to that. Because I have, I mean, I'm a dog man, right? And I have grabbed, I learned a while ago that if you grab a dog's lower jaw and just hold it with your, you know, as hard as you can, they, they're, they can't bite from above. Yeah. Now, so, but the question is, how do you get a hold of the, of the wolf's lower mandible? You can break up a dog. I think, I guess dogs hate is when you put your finger in their butt. People say, you got two dogs, they're locked, two dogs that are fighting, and they're locked in a death grip.

If you put your finger in their butt, they quit fighting. You have not. Which is probably true of people. Yeah, yeah. You have not field tested this though, right? No, but I bet you it's true of a lot of things. Yeah, yeah. So you're going to just say that your brother has a position.

Do you have a, do you think you could kill a wolf? This is more of when he gets to drinking and talking, and we get to talking about, what would you do? He's like, oh, I'll tell you what I would do. Yeah, I mean, I think it's absurd. But your kid wants to know. Well, he wants to know what you think about whether a guy could kill a wolf with bare hands. Yeah, sure.

Okay, what? How much do you weigh, Yanni? 200 pounds. Yanni's 200 pounds. So let's say, I mean, a huge wolf, like everybody likes to talk about the ones that are over 100 pounds. There's a lot that aren't. Yeah. So there's a wolf. I don't know, this wolf's 75 pounds. Yanni's 200 pounds. So let's say, I mean, a huge wolf, like everybody likes to talk about the ones that are over a hundred pounds. There's a lot that aren't.

Yeah. So there's a wolf, I don't know, this wolf's 75 pounds and Yanni and him getting a skirmish. Yeah. Is it possible? Yeah. I saw a video recently where a kangaroo has a dog and a headlock.

Right. So yeah, ponder that. Yeah. And this dog's helpless. Just totally messes him up. Yeah. So could Yanni, big strap and Latvian, throw down with a wolf and win? If he came back and told me he killed a wolf, I would be like, eh, that's cool.

You did it with brands. One-on-one, yeah. Mano y pavo. No, mano y paro. Paro. How do you say it? Mano y paro. Lupo.

If I had to deal with the pack it'd be tough it'd be mono lobo but right yeah pack that's where yanni draws limits all right i just want to mess with you he i don't know a large way yanni thinks that he might run into trouble with a large pack all right what uh what else you got yanni um i want to go back to crorockett real quick and just figure out. Tell me in a concise way exactly how. I know you guys talked about him being famous for being famous. But how did the initial famous come about?

Right. Because he would be like, I'm part alligator and my mama was a bear and my daddy was a... So it's just him. Shit talking. Yeah. So he was making up stories about himself and then get written up in papers. And then there was this playwright who ended up going, man, this guy is fantastic. Like he's, this guy's awesome.

So let's just make a character about, isn't he like Nimrod Wildfire? Yeah. You know, we'll make a character that everyone actually knows is Crockett.

Where's the coon skin cap, hunts bears, lives out in Tennessee. And then that play like tours around the cities, you know, it's like in Washington,

it's like Broadway and you've got this character, this flamboyant frontiersman character who's like talking like the country bumpkin, and then everyone knows it's based on the life of Crockett. I can whip my weight in wild cats and jump Mississippi in one big jump, and people will meet Crockett and be like, oh, you're the guy that...

You're the guy who can leap the Mississippi. He's like, well, I mean, you know, kind of. If I have a boat. Yeah. I mean, yeah. So he had, he was very shrewd about benefiting from like once the, once people all thought, oh, wow, this guy is amazing. Like he's all these things. He never like discouraged them from believing it.

Sure. It just snowballed at that point. But I was sort of wondering the beginning. Like imagine, okay, you know how, oh, in believing it. Sure. It just snowballed at that point. But I was sort of wondering the beginning. Like imagine, okay, you know how, oh, in the beginning? Yeah. I mean, it was a slow, it was kind of a slow build, right? So he, when he started running for Congress, then he like really latched onto that persona of the, of the excellent marksman and the hunter and the, you know, this guy who could win a cow in

a shooting competition. Right. So he, he just, he just rolled with it and he was more interesting than a lot of his counterparts. Right. Yeah. Cause he actually did some legit stuff. Yeah.

I mean, he was like out there living it. Um, so let's say, you know, you thwarted a bear attack by hitting a bear in the face of the track and pole. Let's say down the road, I'm telling you the trekking pole let's say down the road i'm telling you a true thing oh i was down the road uh it winds up being that uh you've done this a handful of times and maybe even killed one with a trekking pole and people are like did you really kill all them bears of that trekking pole and i can't say it ain't true right and all of a sudden pretty soon you're just like that crazy yanni that guy and his yeah you watch and you're like by god i'll tell you a story you know and it just

pretty soon you kind of create like a sure larger than life and i was like in the end you you did hit a baron ahead of the track and pole that's pretty awesome oh yeah i mean that you did hit a bear in the head with a dragon pole. That's pretty awesome. Oh, yeah. I mean, that you did that. Don't mess with Yanni, man. I know. See that power ring on his hand? Show him. Is that?

Oh, yeah. That'll come at you in a blinding flash of silver. Right. But I mean, I think that's an excellent explanation of how it works, you know? It builds from the lore. And, you know like you're not gonna be like right now are you gonna argue the fact that you if somebody said yeah like the bar there's your bad mo phone took down a bear you know nothing well

see I got I've just been looking at, while we've been talking about the spots where Greeley went, Fort Conger, and the map around that area. Man, it looks like a bad place. About a good vacation spot. Spend a couple years. Well, yeah, especially when the sun— So Fort Conger's the farthest north they made it? Uh, no, no. They, so from Fort Conger, they made it to like 82 degrees, 24.

Running little sides. Or 83. Spike camps. Right, right. Running spike camps out there. Yeah. I mean, that's when they, they would go off in the sledges, right? So they, they made expeditionary treks out, which were really dangerous too,

because there was always the danger of breaking through the ice. Part of the reason that Greenlandic dudes were so useful is that they could, they could read the ice. They would know, you know, how thin it was that they were, they spend their lives there. Whereas the army guys were learning on the fly and these Greenlandic guys

would say like, don't go, don't go there. Yeah. There was a point where they're looking at a chunk of ice, wonder if they could get across it and they see how walruses are busting their heads up through. Oh man.

And he's like, if that walrus can bust his head up through it, you can't go. Yeah. Yeah. Then, then they have to like retreat. But, uh, yeah, so they, they went considerably farther north than Fort Conger. Um, you know, I think it, I think it was 30

days out, um, on the sledge to get to the farthest north and then 30 days back. It's just unbelievable. Ladies and gentlemen, it's got hunting. It's got starving. It's got ice crossing, fox shooting, people eating, labyrinth of ice. Thank you, man. You hooked, Phil?

Yeah, I'm excited to pay money for the book on December 3rd. You know what? I'm going to tell everyone that works here. I don't know how many copies of this are around the office, but I'm going to count for all of them. And I'm not letting Phil go near the sons of bitches, and Phil's buying his own. Do it right now, Phil. Gladly, yep. Put it in my cart right now.

Here we go. Let's just close, seal the deal. It's actually- Don't just put it in your cart. Let me see. Send me that little order. Show us that little order complete button. Yeah, sure.

You know, you were saying that December's not a good month. It's actually the- It's too cold for reading books about cold people. It's an Amazon top 10 pick for the month of December. Hello. I'm very psyched about that. So when you're sitting there all cold, you'd be like, you think you're cold? You really want to be cold.

Until your foot falls off and you don't know it, don't tell me about being cold. You believe that? You have to tell the guy. They don't have the heart to tell him. Like, your foot just fell off while we were talking. Foot's looking great. I'm going to throw it out of the tent, though. At that point, you can't really be there mentally.

Oh, no. I mean, if your foot just fell off and you didn't know it. It all seems to happen. There's a little madness. Everything's not firing. This is the last thing I'm going to say about these guys. They have this masochistic tendency to sit

around and even write down if I could have anything to eat, here's what it would be. That's an interesting list because the stuff they eat isn't like what you'd... Now you'd be like, pepperoni pizza. These dudes are like... These guys are like...

Pate de foie gras. Some of them, they think of them like lentil soup. Elaborate meal they've ever had like in New York. And by the way,

have you ever been like, of course you have, but like super freaking hungry and you do start having these elaborate food fantasies. Oh, dude, yeah. And you sit there and go, and you're right,

it's totally masochistic because they can't have any of it. They're eating freaking seal blubber. You know where my mind goes? Where? When you go into a gas station and they got that glass display case full of all that brown food. Fried. I sometimes think about if I could just get into one of those glass cases.

Or if our diet's different, I'm thinking about a salad it's either i want like a great salad or i want to like bust the glass case out with a rock and eat all that deep fried burritos and whatever they got in there i lean corn dogs i'm all about beef you know no corn dogs and pizza and like fried mac and cheese oh yeah yeah if you could fry it a way to fry up some mac and cheese, that's what I get thinking about. Yanni gets thinking about that breast milk. Well, let's go get some lunch now, boys. Hey. All right.

This has been great. You have to come back. I appreciate it, man. There's a couple other stories that I haven't even told you. No, you wrote six books. We only talked about two of them. Well, these don't even have anything to do with the books. There are other stuff I did. Oh. But, you know. I'd like to like to have you back we're gonna just like uh one time we had a guy on i wanted him on again and i just asked him how long

would need to go by before we'd ask him if he wanted to come back what do you say a year because he wanted to finish a book he was working on yeah well so i gotta um when you get that you get that uh claude dallas man you get get that Claude Dallas book wrapped up. Yeah, I actually am in the throes of trying to figure out the next move. Tell me what, man. Yeah. I mean, Claude's been covered though. Hasn't he?

Yeah. Yeah. A long time. How about Well? Has he been covered well? No. Lots of- Taking under advisement.

Yeah. Everything's been, all the low hanging fruit's been plucked, man. Okay. Yeah. That's been, all the low hanging fruit's been plucked, man. Okay. Yeah. That's always the question, but you know, I'm trying to enjoy this one. Like, you know, as you know, writing books is really kind of hard and it's solitary and

you're, you know. It's the worst thing in the world. You're sitting there. And then, so I got a book coming out, you know, in December and everybody's like, well, so what's the next one? You know, I'm like, I like. Yeah.

Can we. No, I'm with you. you know, writing books is horrible. All right, buddy, leave you labyrinth of ice, the triumphant and tragic. And if you're so inclined to cannibalistic, greely polar expedition. And also we discussed at length, American legend, the real life adventures of Davy Crockett. I'm assuming all your books are available wherever books are sold. You betcha. And then to really piss off all the booksellers, I'm assuming you can get them on Amazon?

I think so. Okay. Thank you very much. Thanks a lot, man. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now the Hunt app is a fully

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