The Ryen Russillo Podcast - Stories From the 1969 Finals With Leigh Montville. Plus, 'Astoria' and the First American Settlement in the Pacific Northwest With Peter Stark.

Episode Date: August 12, 2021

Ryen continues author week on the show by chatting with legendary sportswriter and author Leigh Montville about his book 'Tall Men, Short Shorts' about the Celtics-Lakers 1969 NBA Finals (00:33). Then, he chats with author Peter Stark about his book 'Astoria' on the wild expedition to establish the first American settlement in the Pacific Northwest (31:54). Finally, he closes it out by reacting to some listener-submitted Life Advice questions (1:06:19). Host: Ryen Russillo Guests: Leigh Montville and Peter Stark Producers: Steve Ceruti, Kyle Crichton, and Stefan Anderson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is a continuation of our author series here in August. We're going to start with Lee Montville, legendary Boston sports writer, and also for Sports Illustrated, covering the 1969 NBA Finals for the Celtics and Lakers. And we'll talk with Peter Stark, who wrote Astoria, finals with the Celtics and Lakers. And we'll talk with Peter Stark, who wrote Astoria, a quest to set up a trading post in the Pacific Northwest, and some life advice. This is a really cool sit down here with Lee Montville, who's a legendary writer, not only out of Boston, but Sports Illustrated, Tall Man Short Shorts.

That is the book, the 1969 NBA finals, Celtics and Lakers. And he was nice enough to let me take a look at it and give a little blurb on the back cover. So it's a big deal for my family, Lee. So I appreciate it. Thanks for joining us today. How are you doing? Well, it's a big blurb. It sold thousands of books already. It was shorter than everybody else's. So I was like, oh no, did I mail it in? But I was just getting to the point. So let's start this interview that way. Okay, for those that don't understand, help us understand who the Celtics were in the hierarchy of the city of Boston and also nationally where the NBA is because a lot of this information is pretty shocking

how much they were sort of a back page feature, if not even that, really. Pretty shocking how much they were sort of a back page feature, if not, not even that, really. Yeah, I mean, it's so, so long ago that the Celtics had four people in their front office. They had general manager Red Auerbach, his secretary, Mary Whalen, publicity guy, Howie McHugh, and a guy, Jeff Cohen, who was 25 years old. And he asked Red if he could be called the assistant general manager. And Red said, sure, but you still have to go get coffee and donuts every morning, you know. And that was it. You know, if you wanted to get a season ticket, you came to the Celtics office and Red himself would take you up into the arena and show you the different choices you had, you know, how close you could be. And, and it,

the Celtics at that time were a look at the NBA's past kind, kind of the barnstorming carnival-like kind of thing where they used to play in Fort Wayne, Indiana and Rochester, New York. And, and they would play double headersers in New Haven, Connecticut, and all these different places. And the Lakers were sort of a look to the forward because they had the forum, the fabulous forum, which had just been set up, and a millionaire, Jack Kent Cooke, who was kind of pushing the envelope. So it was kind of a transitional meeting here, really, between the past and the future. I remember interviewing Red, and I made the mistake of saying, you know, don't you think, though, because of more teams and free agency and all the rules that it's harder now than it was back then? And he looked at me, and, you know, he doesn't suffer anyone.

He was like, what are you talking about? It was much he goes i was i remember he told me a story they had a mini basketball promotion where they were giving away for the first however many came to the turnstiles and he was giving them out before the game making sure people were keeping count so he's like i had to go coach but before the game i was worried about whether or not we were going to get screwed over on the basketball giveaway. So you're right to understand how streamlined this operation was. But then let's go to the other end of it.

The Lakers had put together one of the first versions of a super team. Now, granted, the Celtics were stacked for years, but the way they did it, but they went out and what, paid 250 grand for Wilt. So what was that story like at the time? Yeah, I mean, there was no movement in basketball. You know, you were consigned to a team and they had your rights and they did everything. But Wilt was just so outlandishly talented and just larger than life that he kind of called his own shots. just larger than life that he kind of called his own shots.

And he'd worn out his welcome a little bit with the Philadelphia 76ers. And they made a deal. They made a deal with the Lakers. It foreshadowed, you know, LeBron James doing what he's doing, kind of picking where you wanted to go, go to the West Coast, become a Hollywood guy, go live in the Hollywood Hills and start working on that 20,000 women figure, you know? Yeah. As you point out in the book, we didn't keep stats. We didn't keep track of blocks and that stat as well for Will. No, he kept track, I guess, himself.

I guess he did. Did you like Will? Yeah. I mean, I didn't have a lot of dealings with him. But he was a very personable guy. I think he would have been a coach's nightmare. You know, every coach that had him said that he he didn't like to practice. And when he did practice, he disrupted the practice. And he kind of just went his own way. He kind of chose what he was going to do every night. He had like the cartoon light bulb over your head when you have an idea. And the idea would be tonight I'm going to score and he'd score 100 points, you know, or tonight I'm going to rebound. And he'd get 55 rebounds, which is still the NBA record.

Or maybe I'll do assists. And he led the league in assists one year. He had no idea what he was going to do from day to day, night to night. I think that was the crazy thing. Whereas Russell was kind of a cerebral guy and figured everything out and worked around a team concept. So if you had had Russell's head on Wilt's body, you would have had an unbelievable kind of Marvel Comics sort of basketball player. I also want to include your part of this because you write this in a little different way because this is you. This is you starting your career in a way where I know you've been working before. But can you take us and the listeners back to what this experience was like for you? you're 25 and you end up kind of on the Celtics beat because it wasn't a priority is what it felt like. And then you, you know, learning about this,

we're like having access to this thing that is kind of your dream coming true at a young age. Yeah, no, I'm, I'm 25 years old and, um, you know, I'd never been to California. I'd never seen a palm tree, never seen the Pacific ocean. I'd never been to California. I'd never seen a palm tree, never seen the Pacific Ocean. I'd never been on a plane before where they had an in-flight movie. So I was kind of raw. But I had that mixture of 25 years old of self-confidence, masking a lot of dread at the bottom, you know. And I was one of those guys, when you're 25, you're always like, let's get rid of the deadwood, you know. I'm the future, right?

I'm the future of journalism. Get these old guys out of here. And so this is my 77-year-old self looking at my 25-year-old self and being kind of bemused at the way, the way it all worked. You know, the Celtics had won, had won, already won 10 championships. And that had started when I was like in, I don't know, grammar school, junior high school. So like those guys had been a working concern and I'm here at the tag end and I'm covering it for the Boston Globe and I'm dealing with Bill Russell every day. He's 35 and famous and has kids and a Lamborghini and all that stuff. And I'm, you know, I'm 25 and engaged and, you know, living in a room and house kind of thing, you know, that it was just, it was a big culture jump between bill and myself

i could probably talk to you about bill russell for an hour so i'll try to get to the best stuff here um what was the beginning of that relationship like because you you as you mentioned the book like you had to make sure he called in the bill russell column so you had to deal with him probably a little bit more than you ever would have so what what was that like in the beginning for you? Yeah, no, I, you know, as I said, I was, I was this 25 year old, um, inconvenience for him. I think, you know, um, I don't know if he ever really even knew my name. Um, and, and going to practice, you would go to practice then. And there would be three different Boston papers, but sometimes the other two guys wouldn't show up and there was no radio there. There was no television. So you might be the only guy watching practice. And then you go to the locker room afterwards and you talk with different guys. because Bill, in talking about the small employee roster of the Celtics, is the coach and the player.

So you have to talk with him, and he would be very perfunctory most of the time. It would be an imposition. But every once in a while, you'd catch Bill, and you'd be the only two people there, and maybe you would throw some question at him where he would talk for a while, you'd catch Bill and you'd be the only two people there. And maybe you would throw some question at him where he would talk for a while. And you'd say, well, Bill and I are friends now. We get along. But then the next day you'd say, hello, Bill. And Bill would walk just right by you. And it was a strange relationship with him. But we got him to write a column during these playoffs for the Boston Globe. He would have to phone in at the end of the game.

He was getting 200 bucks a column, I think. And he would have to phone in his thoughts to a dictaphone machine, this blue plastic record. And some kid from Northeastern University would type it up and put it in the paper. It was, it was sort of like those halftime interviews they do on television now, you know, just the star kind of star coach mumbling a little bit and sending it into the paper. Bill is one of my favorite athletes ever. Maybe it's because I always felt like that's genuinely who he was. I got to interview him once. It's still one of my all-time favorites. And I was really, really young. It was some guy had some access to him. And if we did him the favor, he would let Bill talk to us for 10 minutes. And it's still one of my favorite deals. That's the only piece of memorabilia that I own. And then being from, you know, look, I'm not a Boston, Boston guy. I did live there.

I did live in Massachusetts for a long time. And when I see the way the city is described, sometimes I think it's fair and sometimes I think it's unfair. And at times it can be held to a standard where I'm like, well, what's going on in some of these other cities? But then when I am reminded of the Bill Russell part of this, can you share with us again that you have in the book, the stuff Bill Russell dealt with, you know, being a guy in Boston at that time and also kind of setting the tone for his personality towards the city. Cause as soon as he was done with it, he was done with it. And honestly, no one can blame him when you go through the history that he had with that city. Yeah. I mean, he was a tough guy, as I said, to deal with, you know, I mean, as I said, to deal with, you know, I mean, other guys, other guys like Sam Jones and Tom Sanders and Mal Graham,

they dealt with the city just fine. Red Auerbach would always preach the philosophy of the bad apple. If a guy said something, you know, racist to one of his players, he would say that guy's a bad apple. You know, but Bill Russell kind of collected the bad apples and got the most of them. He did a big interview in the Saturday Evening Post early in his career where he said, you know, I don't play for the city of Boston. I play for the Celtics.

I play for myself. I play for my teammates. And that kind of set him off on a different course, too. And he had various racial incidents and his house was broken into and stuff was put on the walls and everything. I grew up in Connecticut, too. And I grew up in New Haven, Connecticut. And there wasn't much racism at all. I mean, I grew up in a very diverse population. And when I came to Boston, I found it strange that everything was so set up by neighborhoods. neighborhoods you know there there was the ghetto there was the italian section there was the irish section and and the language was a whole lot different and um there's an incident in the book where where there was an older guy who was one of the sports writers and and and a guy who was 35 who would come from new york who was very um i don't know, socially relevant or whatever. And the older guy, we were in Madison Square Garden, and the older guy started just saying the bad word and screaming it at black people.

And it was just strange. I couldn't figure out the whole thing and sad at the same time. Right. And you talk about that in the book because at 25, you're like, oh, I regret not saying anything. Yeah. I came back. Should I tell my boss?

Should I, you know, who should I tell? And I wound up taking the easy road and telling nobody. The Lakers add Will. The Celts aren't even supposed to be in there. They're the fourth seed. They, you know, the last even supposed to be in there. They're the four seed. They, you know, the last team in to make the playoffs and the Lakers are chasing these

ghosts and they find them. So there's one other thing I wanted to add to Wilt. Cause I kept thinking about this, that you wrote about. He retired after his third season in the NBA. His first season. After his first season. Okay,

go ahead. He was going to call it quits, you know, because they were punching him, you know. And actually, I played golf the other day with this kid that sat right behind,

right at courtside because the local team was in the high school tournament and he was down there. And the kid's big memory still talks about it. He says, Jim Luskatov just punched Wilt Chamberlain in the stomach for the entire game. Just every time the referee turned his back, Jim Luskatov just punched him. And that's why Wilt left.

The game before, the game that I saw as a 16-year-old high school kid, Wilt had hit Tommy Heinsohn in the head, you know, and hurt his hand. Did nothing to Heinsohn's head, but hurt his head. It was a physical, tough world that he inhabited, and he didn't like it. So that's why he announced he was going to retire. But money talked, I guess.

That's right. So he makes it another decade plus. But in 1969, this was billed as Russell Chamberlain. But when you go through the box, I think Will has four points in the second game of the series. The Lakers get the first two. You're like, all right, look, the Lakers are the better team. Jerry West is in his prime. Elgin Baylor, although a little bit older, is still really terrific. Johnny Egan, who has a New england background and everything has some big games um can you help us understand that didn't get to watch it live and live in the moment

because i remember like i'll share the story that my father when i was a little kid bought me a wilt chamberlain vhs it was this weird deal and it was him being interviewed at some city playground he was in this slick track suit. He looked great. And the interviewer asked him about Bill Russell. And Wilt is so dismissive of Bill Russell. He's like, he had the better teams. He always had the better teams, which is true.

But, you know, he goes, compared like man to man, he's like, there's no comparison. There's none. There's none whatsoever. But people always looked at Wilt as kind of, if we had a modern day version of Wilt, it would have been whoever is the number one option, maybe obviously a future Hall of Famer, but you just never trust in the playoffs. And that's kind of who Wilt was. So how did that Russell-Wilt thing play out? Because physically, the talents, I think anybody would still say it was Wilt, but Russell's argument was always, there was a mental part of it that he did not have that I had where I could always exploit him and it wasn't just about my teammates.

That's how it's always been described to me. That's how I've always read it. But what was it like actually watching it? Yeah, I mean, Russell, well, first of all, on Will, I mean, the truest thing I say in the whole book is in the little afterward about what happened to guys after. Since Wilt played, there's been no player that's really been compared where they said, this is another Wilt Chamberlain. There's been no player that's come along. Shaquille a little bit, but Wilt was a far more polished, all-around kind of player and had far more control of his body than Shaquille did. So Wilt was just overpowering.

But Russell just out-thought him and out-worked him. And I don't know. You would say that Wilt should have just overpowered him every time. But Wilt would just disappear. I mean, they win the first two games, and the Celtics, you know, kind of eke out the second, the third game, and then the fourth game comes down to a shot at the end, and all of a sudden, it's best two out of three, and the spotlight's on Wilt again, you know how how good is he gonna be and he he was good in the in in the next game the fifth game but then kind of disappeared um for the last two games

did you sense it could you feel it being in the locker rooms you know going in because i want to ask you about game seven obviously here but this whole moment you know jerry west lost five times in the finals here to the celtics the lakers can't get him you know, Jerry West lost five times in the finals here to the Celtics. The Lakers can't get them, you know, they, they can't get them of all their championships are out of Minneapolis. So this Lakers thing that yes, it's a franchise that moved. Like I know what it's like to have been a Red Sox fan when I was a kid and just expecting doom when it was the Yankees and Aaron Boone in 2003, I was like this shit again, you know, like I'm sitting at home watching that in my apartment on ComAv, and I wasn't

surprised by the end. Like I knew it was going to happen because that's all I had ever learned. And it feels like that's what this was like for that Lakers team. Could you sense that even though they were the better basketball team? Well, Jerry West was just an interesting study. I mean, he just kind of wore his heart on his sleeve, so to speak, you know, he, he was just out there and, and, and he talked about his frustration. He'd, he'd lost five finals to these guys and, uh,

and they'd broken his heart. He was Mr. Clutch, you know, um, that, that, that was his, uh, that was his name on the radio and Mr. Clutch. And he was Mr. Clutch, except when he played the Celtics in these final games. And he was like Sir Galahad or some kind of knight out there defending the city. But it all fell apart in the end. And when they won the first two games, he was like overjoyed. You could just sense that, but he was scared at the same time because things had always turned out badly.

West is an open book and he mentions how miserable of a person he was in his own book. And he said, game day, he would yell at his wife, you know, he just was miserable, just a miserable human being to be around. And he, he admits all this stuff, but he was even more revealing in some of the stuff that you had in there after the games, like, you know, they're headed to game seven and, and West, I don't know if it's after game seven or if it's after game six, or he's just like, I'm maybe I'm a loser. You know, maybe I'm a loser. Like I can't fathom any modern athlete, certainly in the NBA, being that down on himself. And by the way, he won finals MVP on the losing

side because he was that spectacular. I mean, this is somebody who, I think he's fourth all time in playoff scoring. He averaged almost 30 a game for his career in the playoffs. And he's sitting there after another Celtics loss telling you guys that are around him that he's a loser. Yeah, I mean, and when he pulled his hamstring at the end of the fifth game, it was like part of the whole tragic thing. You know, they go up three to two and they should be rejoicing. But Chick Hearn is on the radio,

the broadcaster for the Lakers, and he sounds like he's at a funeral, you know. And it was just a trial for these guys. And when you got to that seventh game and the whole thing about the balloons and the sailing and the Southern Cal band was going to come marching in and all those plans kind of printed out by Jack Kent Cook before the game even started. You can just see Jerry West starting to throw up before the game even starts. Okay, so game seven. What's your biggest memory from the Celtics pulling off another one?

Well, one memory is that the press press seats were terrible they were like way at the top of the place and and all the action i saw everybody was like about three inches tall you know and they'll say what a guy like you say what's your main memory well all those three inch guys running back and forth and stuff you know uh uh So the game itself, and they didn't have that video component where you just kind of look at your little receiver and see the replay and all of that. So you're kind of squinting and saying, what happened? But at the end of the game, the end of the game was just,

I'm 25 years old and 8,000 things are going through my head you know that the best story is going to be the lakers because the lakers have lost it again and jerry west is heartbroken and it was controversial about wilt took himself out yeah can you can you give us that can you tell the wilt story and then we'll finish up with that yeah the lakers were down by 17 points and and looked like they were going to be just totally embarrassed and then they kind of started coming back in the fourth period and they'd gotten it back to nine and wilt hurt his knee and so he he kind of limped off the court and sat down and mel counts came back to replace will came out to came onto the court to replace will and mel Counts came back to replace Wilt, came out to, came onto the court

to replace Wilt. And Mel Counts was, was a seven footer, could hit a jump shot and could run a bit, which was a different thing from what Wilt did. Wilt kind of slowed down their offense and Butch von Bredekopf, the Lakers coach, had been at odds with Wilt the whole year about Wilt should play up high at the foul line. He shouldn't play underneath where he liked. And so it was a constant argument, and von Bredekopf was sick of Wilt. And so the Lakers got closer and closer, and Wilt said from the end of the bench, I'm okay. Put me back in. And von Brandecoff in a decision of decisions, you know, one of those decisions, if it works, you're going to be a

certified basketball genius forever. And if it doesn't work, you're going to be filling out your unemployment form by Thursday. And he said, sit down to Wilt. And so Wilt sat down and as it played out, the Celtics won the game. Don Nelson hit a shot, one of those shots that hit the rim and went high in the air. And with every telling over the years, it's gone higher and higher. It's like seven miles now before it comes down and comes down through the hoop and the Celtics win the game. So there was just all of that stuff going on. Where were we? What was the original question? Well, the original question was your memory from that. I had to interrupt because that Wilt thing is so important.

But you wanted to write the Lakers story. This is the tragic story. It was the better story, but that's just not what the job was, right? No. I mean, they always say the best story is in the loser's locker room, but that wasn't my job. And so then the second best story was the balloons on the ceiling that Jack Kent Cook had put up there, and they could never be released. But the memo that had come out, one of the other sports writers from the Boston Globe, Will McDonough had gotten that memo and he was kind of like, well, this is my exclusive. This is my scoop, you know?

And so you really couldn't tread on that. So I was kind of fighting that. And then Bill Russell kept the locker room door closed for about 40 minutes. The Lakers opened up and everybody's out there and things were going on. And McDonough came up to me on the side and said, do me a favor. Wait till everybody's gone and go over and say to Russell, are you going to retire now? to Russell, are you going to retire now? And he says, I've heard that Russell might retire. And I said, well, why don't you go over and say, and he said, no, no, Bill Russell hates me. He said, you got to do this. So I got all these things going on in my head and Warren Beatty is moving past me and there's people are pushing and it was just crazy. Before I get to the Russell retirement thing, because that's probably, I mean, there's people are pushing and it was just crazy. You know, before I get to the Russell retirement thing, cause that's probably,

I mean, there's a, there's a bunch of highlights from the book. Were you friendly with McDonough? Did you resent McDonough? Were you jealous of McDonough? Because, you know,

for those that know, Will basically was as wired as anyone in the city for decades. And he would let you know too, on top of everything else. So what was your relationship like with him on that? No, we were okay. We were good. You know, I liked him. Okay. I liked him fine, but you know, he had been there for a while before I got there and he,

we kind of operated different ways. You know, he, he, he was always the scoop guy and And he always said, I can, I can write better than anyone who can write faster and I can write faster than anyone who can write better. And so I, I always saw him as the faster guy and me as the better guy. And he saw it that way too. I'll say that. So we kind of got along that way. So he was okay.

But, I mean, he was a powerful kind of guy. He had a presence to him, you know. And if he said, this is the way it is, you'd say, okay, that's the way it is. Okay, so that's a good setup. Because if he's asking you, like, hey, ask Russell if he's retiring. But you're like, okay, then is it my story if you can't ask him? See, I didn't know that. No, no, I know. But if he says, like, how are we going to – because I'd have to imagine you're thinking, okay, well, what if he says yes?

Then what? Then who's writing what? Like, am I just doing this? Do I go back and I tell it to Will and he writes it? Or do I write it? Or what? I don't know. It's – it was just you know when you

see cnbc and there's that ticker tape that goes along at the bottom of the screen that's how that's how thoughts were going through my head as we were going to go into this locker room you know there was just one thought after another there was a big stream of stuff okay so take us into the locker room you decide you're going to ask Bill Russell moments after he just won another NBA championship in game seven. Um, if he's going to retire. Well, it, it, it's not moments because, because, uh, I, I want to wait till nobody else is around to, so no one else will get this story. So I check him and he's got a lot to do because he's the coach and he's explained. So I go to other players's got a lot to do because he's the coach and he's explained.

So I go to other players. I go to the Lakers locker room to write a secondary story about the Lakers in defeat. I come back and it's clearing out and Russell is almost all the way dressed now. And Jim Brown, the football player, is sitting at the bench next to Russell's locker and they're talking. And so it's Jim Brown and Bill Russell. And at the time, they were probably, you know, the two, I don't know, foremost African-American spokesmen, you know, for racial equality and injustice and all of that stuff, against injustice. And so I have to go over 25 years old, red hair, freckles, and say, Bill, you're going to retire. And as I tell the story through the years, my voice is a little bit high and I always get into a falsetto and I go, oh, Bill, do you think you're going to retire now? And there's like silence. And Jim Brown, who's wearing a dashiki or whatever, he kind of looks up at me and he says, retire? The man just won a world championship. Retire. And I said, oh, OK.

And then I said, and Bill, don't forget to call the Globe, you know. And I went off into the corner and tried to make sense out of all this stuff I had. It was ridiculous. Was Jim Brown playful as he answered the call? Oh, wow. He was from the Dirty Dozen, you know. Retire. He wasn't playful at all.

At least I didn't read playful. Maybe he was playful in his own head. I don't imagine it was playful. I imagine it was like, wait, is this fucking guy over here asking us? Retire? Right. But then, of course, about three months later,

he retires and sells the story to Sports Illustrated for 10 grand, which is exactly what he should have done. He didn't have to tell me that he was going to retire. I know. A man ahead of his time on that one. As we finish up here, you didn't just write the story of the 1969 NBA Finals. You wrote the story in a way where you were kind of writing it about yourself. the story in a way where you were kind of writing it about yourself not and i don't want anyone to think that like this was some memoir of lee montville and it gets in the way of all the other stuff but there was clearly an exercise to this were you happy with the bright young man's work

were you happy going back and reading this yeah i i kind of wanted it to be evocative of the time. You know, when you get to be 77 and you describe stuff that happened in the past and people look at you, it's like you're saying, story that people today kind of don't know. And from a world that people today don't know. I mean, people who are like, you know, under 40, say, you know. And my grandson, who's 15, was playing, what is it, NBA 2K19, the video game. And he said to me, Papa, he said, Wilt Chamberlain here, he's picking his teams. He said, Wilt Chamberlain, was he any good? And that was part of what was in my mind, you know?

Wilt Chamberlain, is he any good? Is he any good? He's really good, you know? And so I just wanted to put, it's about sports writing too good you know and uh so i i just wanted to put it's about sports writing too you know how that that has changed and and and and the media landscape certainly has changed yeah that's what i enjoyed and lee includes old columns old game summaries in there and it's it's not just about the 69 finals although that in in itself was terrific. But, you know, Will Russell and the 25-year-old reporter, Lee Montville. Thanks, man.

Thank you. See ya. We started with some world history in the middle of the 1900s, but let's go back even further to American history, early 1800s, where one investor wanted to open up his own network of fur trading, the Pacific Northwest, was called Astoria. And Peter Stark is the author. The credit starts with the DM, believe it or not, because we're big on books on this podcast. And somebody's like, hey, if you like these books, you've got to check out Astoria, Peter Stark.

Peter Stark joins us now, author, adventurer. And this guy's got an incredible story. He's done a lot of really cool stuff. And so I read it. I don't know who I'm supposed to give credit to because I know the guy was upset about it or something. But the deal is, it was great, Peter. So I really appreciate the time you put into researching this book. It's a story that I think kind of gets lost in American history because you're like, wait, what happened?

So I think that's a great way to start. Give us the timeline of events here and who Jacob Astor was and what the plan was for Astoria, a Northwest trading post that didn't exist. Yeah, it is. I mean, it's this amazing story that's just been so overlooked. And it's a really significant story. And I think it's been so overlooked because Lewis and Clark are the big heroes of that era. It's right around 1800. And we have to remember that in 1800, you know, the U.S. was not at all what it is today. You know, it barely extended over the Appalachian Mountains. It was barely farther than the 13 colonies. So no one knew what was going to happen out to the West. And John Jacob Astor came up with this huge scheme to establish the first American colony on the West Coast at the mouth of the

Columbia River at what's now called Astoria, Oregon. And Thomas Jefferson had sent Lewis and Clark there in 1804-06 to find a route across the continent. And they came back and said, well, there's not much of a route, but, you know, you really want to like look at this place at the mouth of the Columbia. And then this Burr Barron, young Burr Barron from New York, a German immigrant who'd made a lot of money, showed up at the White House in Washington with Thomas Jefferson and said, hey, you know, President Jefferson, I have a plan to establish this global trade emporium on the West Coast.

And it could capture most of the trade and the wealth of the Western North American continent and the Pacific and funnel it through our own hands. And Jefferson said, wow, that sounds kind of what I'm thinking about. Cool idea. And, you know, and he said, the U.S. government doesn't really have the resources to start a big colony out there, but, you know, private enterprise could do it. And so Astor put together this massive expedition. And both these guys, I have to emphasize, were visionaries. I mean, they were really looking over the horizon. And Astor put together this massive expedition, 140 guys in the first wave. And about half were going around Cape Horn by sea to the west coast,

to the northwest. And about half were going overland following the Lewis and Clark route. And this was such an enormous undertaking that went so wrong and so bad. And yet it succeeded in many ways, ultimately. It really did establish America's first colony on the West Coast and claims to the West Coast. But along the way, out of those 140 guys, at least half of them died in various violent ways. So it was this incredible survival story, and yet very significant historically. And I always say that, you know, people, we think of Lewis and Clark as the big heroes. And they had 30 guys on their expedition. They lost one to, and that was not violent. That was to appendicitis.

And so they succeeded in this kind of heroic way. But as someone pointed out to me, an historian on the West Coast, he said, well, you know, really Lewis and Clark were only tourists. The historians were here to stay. And that was a different problem. Okay. So let's define the two different strategies here. So there's the land strategy that's basically, I think I actually want to start with the Marine strategy because you've got to recruit all these people and Jacob Astor decides, okay, I'm going to put a captain in charge. But the captain is in charge of the ship part of it. But he's not really in charge of the project. Let's talk about some of those challenges, specifically about some of the guys just deciding like the captain in this deal of the ship.

Like it goes down exactly how you kind of expect it to. But he was not an easy guy to get along with. He was not an easy guy to get along with. He was not an easy guy to get along with. And it's really, it's really an interesting class of cultures on the ship that Astor put together. And, and he,

you know, essentially he was like, you know, the Bill Gates or Steve jobs of his era. I mean, he had unlimited resources to do this. And he, you know,

got the best ship. He hired the best people he could possibly find. So for the ship, they're called the Tonkin, based out of New York, it was a state-of-the-art ship and he hired a guy named Captain Jonathan Thorne, who was about a 30-year-old naval captain who'd become a big hero in the war

against the Barbary pirates by sailing straight into the face of enemy fire. So he was very much a, a by the book, military naval guy and Astor called him my gunpowder man, my gunpowder fellow, because there was, you know, there was a question of whether British ships might attack or French ships might attack this enterprise of Aster. And Aster was confident that Captain Thorne would blow them all out of the water if it came to that.

However, Captain Thorne was only really the captain, the driver of the ship in some ways. um and aboard this ship were the the best fur traders in in north america whom aster had hired out of canada a bunch of scottish guys who veteran you know wilderness fur traders and it sounds it sounded like a scene like out of the star the first star wars bar where they're trying to find like the han solos of fur trading where there's these like you i started researching some of these places along the great lakes like there was just these outposts of rowdiness that guys would go in and be like do you want to jump a ship and start a whole new world on the other side of the country are you in and they'd be like yeah i guess so i mean that's what it felt like in the book exactly i mean that i love and i love that you know that that star wars bar scene it's exactly like that it's just

this crazy gathering of people and some are way up and, you know, on Mackinac Island and the flakes. Mackinac was the place, right? It was just like Vegas for, for the 1800s. That's just a little tiny Island, you know, 1500 miles from the nearest city. And so, so I asked to recruit these guys and these, these, these, you know, really woodsy Scottish fur traders and then the French Canadian voyagers. And, you know, I call them like the woods hippies of their era. You know, they're these happy go lucky. Good time guys are really hardy, really tough.

And, you know, they just like to smoke their pipe and have their dog and get home. And, you know, they like to drink. They like to, you know, womanize. They they they they're just like good time guys and so with on this ship the tonkin all these guys get loaded up together on this 100 foot long ship that's built to hold like 30 and they've got like 60 shoved on there and these wise ass clerks who are these educated guys out of Montreal who are Canadian and French, but they're all keeping journals and they're like 20-somethings and they're like really wise-ass. And so you can see how things go south here from the first moment, which is when Captain Thorne

puts out to sea from New York Harbor to make this 25,000 miles, nine-month journey around Cape Horn to the Pacific coast. The first night, the very first night, he said, okay, eight o'clock, lights out. And this is naval discipline and all these Scottish fur traders are hanging out on the deck, sitting around smoking their pipes and telling stories. are hanging out on the deck, sitting around, smoking their pipes and telling stories. And, you know, the French Canadians are singing and hanging out. And, you know, the Scottish clerks are, you know,

yabbering among themselves. And he said, everybody, you know, lights out, time to bed. And they said, no, we're not, you know, like, we're not doing that. And he said, yes, my ship, naval discipline, they're going to bed. And they said, no way. And Thorne suddenly pulls out his pistol, puts it to a guy's head and says, the first man to disobey my orders on my ship, I'll blow his brains out. And relations went downhill from there. Shockingly.

And these Scottish fur traders are saying, Hey dude, you know, you may be captain, but we are partners. We are investors in this enterprise. So we actually own part of the ship. So it was right off the bat. It was this clash of cultures and, and, um, kind of conceptions of of a world view i should say okay so let's go back to the land group um yeah and correct anything i i could have off in my notes but it's it's it sounds a bit like the starting point is st louis and then it's you know working west from there with a bunch of different plans like maybe putting the group

together in st louis and then moving westward. Yeah, more or less. They put it together along the way, but in Montreal, Mackinac Island, St. Louis, and then went from St. Louis. It was kind of like once you were in St. Louis, like, here we go. Here we go.

Jumping off point. So I don't want to minimize it, but it felt like the plan was, all right, just grab your shit. We're going left. Is that safe to say that that felt like about as much planning as they did it was it was actually more planned out initially because so what but it it came to that moment let's say we're turning left what happened was that um asters instructions to the overland Party, which is led by this, like, I don't even think he's 30, 29-year-old guy who's a New Jersey merchant named Wilson Price Hunt.

And he'd been a trader, you know, like he'd sold merchandise in the town of St. Louis, but he'd never been up the river, you know, to the West. He'd never been in the wilderness. But Astor wanted him to run this Overland Party because he would be, you know, consensus-based guy who knew how business worked. And he was also a very mild-mannered guy. So Astor told these guys in Hunt and his party, you just follow the Lewis and Clark route straight up the river. And, you know, you go where Lewis and Clark went. So they set off, and we're talking thousands of miles, and they're dragging their boats upriver, and they've got 60 people, and they're voyageurs, and there's an Indian woman with two small sons who's the wife of the Indian

interpreter, and a couple of wacko British scientists, botanists, another old Star Wars collection of characters. And they get way up the river, about a thousand miles up. And they see this canoe coming down on the other side. And the historians are having breakfast on the shore. They signal this canoe over. It paddles over. And there are three guys in it, three white guys. And they haven't seen any white guys for more than 1,000 miles.

And the three white guys are three Kentuckians. And they have just come down from way at the headwaters of the Missouri River up in what's now Montana, where I am. And one of them is wearing a bandana around his head. And he takes off his bandana, and it turns out he's been scalped. And he's survived. And basically, these three guys say, well, we're not really sure you want to go up that way. It's not very friendly. Because the Blackfeet have,

are very angry at white, at whites after Lewis and Clark have come through and shot a couple of their guys. And so there, any white, white trader coming through the upper Missouri, they'll kill. And so Hunt gets this, you know, idea that maybe this isn't such a good idea. And these three Kentuckians who were on an earlier Ford trading venture say, well, we actually know a better way to go. You can kind of take a shortcut. And they say, and actually, now you tell us about Aster's big venture,

which sounds really cool. Even though we just about died, we'll join you. And so they literally cut their canoe loose and let it float down the river. And that's where they hang a left. The whole expedition just hangs a left where these guys say, okay, instead of going up the river, we're going to walk over land over the Rocky Mountains, over to the first big river that we get, which will take us down to the Pacific Ocean. And you can imagine, things don't go all that well on that route either. No, I mean, they're walking up mountains

and they would see like, I remember there's a part in the book where they get to the Tetons and I'm like, where are they right now? Like compared to where they're supposed to be. And you have the maps in there where the blackfeet territory is just you know everybody's scared to death of it it's a massive amount of area of it's not even all the way to the pacific northwest it kind of feels like where you're at now montana and then into canada and south of that

as well um by the way the scalp guy there's a picture of him in the book. I don't think I'm off base here. Is that where the Revenant got some of its inspiration on the book side to that? It was possible, as it turns out. These days, they don't think about it, but it's possible to survive a scalping. I did a bunch of research and talked to ER docs about how this could happen. And so it is possible to survive a scalping. Great news. yard docs about how this could happen. And so it is possible to survive a scalping. And so that, so the guy, you know, the guy in the Revenant did the guy in the, in, in the, in the historians did

and the guy in the photo did. Wow. Okay. All right. So let's discuss the fur trade, uh, on its own, because when you start running the numbers, it just was absurd, the markup. So how did that work out where people felt like basically a $1 asset was worth a hundred times more once they made it over to Asia? Yeah. I mean, there's a really interesting history there, but I won't go into all of it, but it started with Captain Cook's original expeditions to the Pacific in the 1770s and early 80s. And some of his guys discovered that you could buy a sea otter fur, which is, and sea otters, it's very luxurious health. It's like a million hairs per square inch. I mean, it's just the most

luxurious fur in the world. But you could buy a sea otter fur from the Indians on Vancouver Island for like a dollar worth of trinkets, beads, and knives and things, and take it to Hong Kong across the Pacific and sell it to Chinese mandarins for a hundred bucks, the equivalent of which they'd used to trim their robes. It was official trimming for his Mandarin robes. And so that's how Astor, he wasn't the first, but he put it into the, into the, into the, uh, huge scheme, came up with this idea to establish this huge trade emporium on, on the West coast. And he would, he was his, it was so massive, his scheme, he was so visionary. He would have a fleet of ships continuously circling the world, and they'd be making stops at several ports around the world and picking up trade goods

and then selling them at the next port for huge markups along the way. So he would take from London and New York, he would take manufactured iron goods, like, you know, iron pots and knives and things, load them up on the ship like this Tonkin, take them around Cape Horn up to the Northwest, up to Astoria, where he had his trade emporium, trade them to the Indians for sea otter furs, get a ton of, you know, lots of sea otter furs,

take those sea otter furs to China, take those sea otterfurs to China, trade the sea otterfurs to China, huge markups, get tea and silks and porcelain in China, sail those ships around the rest of the way around the world to London, sell the tea and silks and porcelain in London for huge markups, and then bring that money back and buy trade goods and send the ships around again. So it was this mammoth scheme. It was really global trading on a way that had never been envisioned before. Great plan. Great plan. But now we've got guys lost in the woods and we get back to Thorne's ship. I love the Hawaii element in this story because it makes all the sense in the world.

So how challenging was stopping in Hawaii for not the guys on the ship, but for the captain to make sure everybody came back on? Well, in the book, I compare the ship to, I'm trying to think exactly the metaphor, but it's something like, I'm trying to think exactly the metaphor, but it's something like, you know, it's as if you've been sitting in an airplane cabin with the same people for six months Horn, and the way the winds and currents flow, it actually kind of makes sense to sail to Hawaii, but there's also, you know, fresh fruit and fresh water. And Hawaii had been, you know, barely touched by white sailing ships at that point. Captain Cook had just been there 20 years earlier or so. And so Captain Thorne puts his ship in at Hawaii to restock with water and fresh food and also to take on young Hawaiians who are known as, they call them boatmen. They're superior people with boats and swimming and they can surf. I mean, they're incredible water guys.

swimming and they can surf. I mean, they're incredible water guys. And so they want to take on a bunch of Hawaiian young men to help with the enterprise. And of course, the boat anchors off Hawaii and instantly all the historians who have been cooped up on this little hundred foot long ship for six months go fleeing into the Hawaiian villages and take up with the Hawaiian girls who are quite welcoming. And they really don't want to come back to Captain Thorne's ship. And so Captain Thorne has a hell of a time dragging these guys out of their kind of luxury digs and back on his little ship. And he ends up, you know, really just beating some of them in order to get them aboard ship and, um, not pretty. All right. So now we're back to the land, uh, excursion here. I, one of my favorite parts of the book was finding the kid in the woods from Western Mass who apparently had just been walking around

hiding from Blackfeet for, I mean, obviously you wrote it because then it became a phrase, like this guy's name became a phrase for kind of losing your mind. And I shared that with my friends. I'm like, imagine being 18 or 19 and being by yourself and being in the woods for like a year by yourself, just trying to stay alive. And then clearly he had gone down. Oh, it's an incredible story. And it's, it's just an incredible story. Um, and you know, there's just, there's, you know, there are sketchy bits and pieces of it. I mean, just parts of it, but the basic is a part is that he, he ran away from a farm in New England when I think he was like 17 or something. And he came West in some fashion and he went up river apparently with one of these early

fur trading expeditions and got, you know, which was decimated by the Blackfeet or the Sioux. And he ended up wandering around for the next couple of years as a teenager in the West. And there were probably some Indians who had befriended him, but there were others he had to really avoid. And the historians, Mr. Hunt's party, the Overland Party, just happened to run into him somewhere out in the middle of the Rocky Mountain wilderness. to run into him somewhere out in the middle of the Rocky Mountain wilderness.

But this guy had lost it mentally because he'd been so traumatized by what he'd been through. And so when he eventually did get with the historians to the West Coast, I believe it was the Klatsop Indians who had a kind of trade language. This guy's name, and now I'm spacing out what it was became the clatsop trade word for crazy his name because he was it wendell i don't know i oh i have to look it up i'm sorry yeah yeah it's it's some it's some funny name and but that was it meant crazy in their language yeah i came to mean that or it came into the trading language i mean because the serious part of it is as you point out it was like the first version of well maybe not the first version because clearly people have been fighting a long time.

But like when you think of it in today's sensibilities of PTSD, and then that's what this guy had gone through. So certainly not the first. All right. So we're, despite the land challenges and guys feeling like it's never going to work out, they make it sort of. work out they they make it sort of um and i think the best part to kind of because i only have a couple more minutes with you but the moment where thorn is actually at the columbia like it feels like okay this is going to be a success it's going to work out and then it doesn't seem to go that way when when he lands at the columbia with well when he tries because i mean his stubbornness once again you're reading the book and you're so frustrated with his stubbornness when everyone

else on the boat is telling him like we have to do this the right way because this is a really challenging area to navigate exactly yeah and and so yeah thorn i mean he's like this the epitome of a stubborn severe rigid character who can't adjust to the circumstances. And so when the boat comes to the, the Tonkin comes to the West coast, finally, after sailing from Hawaii, now loaded with Hawaiian boat men and plus a hundred pigs, they, um, there's a huge sandbar across the mouth of the Columbia river where it flows into the Pacific. And there's just a tremendous, still to this day, dangerous, smashing, swirling, wild surf there. And there's just one little channel through that bar, the Columbia Bar, it's famous. And Thorne arrives there on a stormy May or March

day, really big winds and huge waves. And he just says to his guys, okay, get in that rowboat and go find a way across the bar, go find the channel. And they say, we're going to die. You know, we're going to die. He said, what are you afraid of water, Mr. Fox? You should have stayed in Boston. And he sends them into this, into this boat, you know, rowing boat and it disappears and never seen again. And then he sends another one, the same thing happens. He does. So he does that two times, I think even three before he finally says, okay, I'll sail across myself. And by that time the weather's calmed a bit and he does sail the ship across himself.

But by that time, he's lost like eight guys just trying to cross this Columbia bar. But as it turns out, the karma comes around for Captain Thorne in the end when he disregards the advice of his fur traders and starts dealing with the Indians directly on Vancouver Island, who happened to have a lot of grudges against some previous white trader. And Thorne's ship, in the course of having a trade mission, a lot of Indians aboard his ship, at one point they all pull out war clubs, smash every white guy on ship over the head and kill him, including Captain Thorne. And then one guy, white guy, is still left in the powder magazine down below. And he blows up the whole ship and himself. And that's the end of Captain Thorne's Tonkin.

It came to this incredible, dramatic end. And believe it or not, and I'm going to stop you there because I don't want to give away everything. The story keeps going. The story keeps going. I mean, that's not the end of the book, not even close. And then it's also a great education on how information doesn't travel back then. And you're like, okay, where's the ship? You're like, I don't know. Nobody knows where it is. Then it's like some bits and pieces of information are coming in. They're like, something went bad and could be like, what? No, that's not true. And it just goes on and on. You get Jacob Astor back in the Northeast going, what the hell is going on with my ship? Where are

the people in the woods? Where's the ship? And believe it or not, through all of this, they still kind of set up Astoria. All right. So two things that I... I just want to mention about Astoria, the other thing I was going to mention earlier that a veteran, very good Hollywood screenwriter, Tab Murphy, has just written a pilot for a miniseries based on Astoria and on the book. And he's just a wonderful writer.

I've just read the script and it was so cool. I mean, these events... That's great. They're totally alive in the script. It's so crazy. So we're looking forward to taking that out at some point. You know what's great about it is that you really do... And it will work for TV in that our attention spans are so short now is that

you're jumping back and forth to entirely different voyages you know to think so that you wouldn't be on a boat the whole time you know you're in the woods you're back in new york you're you've got the native american side of this you've got the wine side of it actually makes all the sense of the world so congrats on your initial go to china season you know though, I hate to be the TV. What's season two though? You know what I mean? There's a lot of material. That's not the problem. No. What, uh, what's it like going back and finding these journals and researching? Oh, that is so cool. It's so cool. And, um, and you know, I don't know how scholars used to do it because, you know, now some of them are online and the old books are online, which, which used to, you know,

used to have to go to some obscure library. Now you can get a lot of those online. What's really cool though, is to go to these archives and get a journal in your hand. And when you do, it's just, it sends a chill through me. I got at the, at the, at the rare books library at Yale, sends a chill through me. I got at the Rare Books Library at Yale, when I was researching Astoria, I had them bring out the Robert Stewart journal. And he was the guy, one of the Astorians who was on the Tonkin who made it to the Pacific. And then soon thereafter, he started an overland journey all the way back with taking letters back to Mr. Astor. And that just is a completely crazier story, what happened with him. But he kept a very detailed journal.

And with all these crazy incidents happening. And that journal exists at the Rare Book Library, the Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale. And I asked, I said, do you have this? And they said, sure. And they pulled it up. They produced it for me. I don't think they really realized what, how, how significant it was. And, you know, so there I was sitting at a table with this original journal from Robert Stewart that he'd survived, you know, all these Indian attacks and whatnot. And you could see it sort of battered and water stained and it, you know, it just had this kind of blood and sweat feel to it.

It was very cool. That's, that's incredible. Now I know you guys sent me young Washington. I can't wait to check that out as well. Cause I read Chernow's Washington and we, the great thing about Washington is he almost like knew how great he and special he was. So he kept all of his papers. So there's papers, except not as, not as personal ones to his wife. And the letters between Martha and George, he had Martha burn them after he died. That's right. So we kind of get the official. We get the curated, cultivated sort of PR version of Washington. We do.

We get him. Except this very early period of his life, which I wrote about in his early 20s when he hadn't learned how to cultivate his image. And he's really quite a mess out in the wilderness and getting into all sorts of trouble and inadvertently setting off the French and Indian War and in love with his best friend's wife and all this stuff that we don't associate with George Washington. No, and I can't wait because I feel like that's the gap in as great as anything Chernow does. I mean, you know, like, I mean, you could do thousands of pages. But when you read Ron Chernow's Washington, you know, there's just so much history of the starting of government and all of that, that it's like, okay, this person died, Washington inherits this piece of land. And there's that young gap that I think this book is like the perfect companion for. So I can't wait to dig into it. Well, and it's, it's about, it's not the formative years of government, but it's the formative years of Washington's personality and how he came to be and how he, he was not a great leader to start. I can tell you that,

but he, he evolved, you know, he evolved. It took him decades, but he got, he got there for sure. He got it. He became a great, great leader. Before we let you go, um, because you know, you're not just this accomplished author, you've done... When you think of yourself as an adventurer, when I read Paul Thoreau's travel stuff, you're like, he kind of brings you along for where he's at mentally too. He gets into it. He's into it deep. And it's almost like you don't even have to go to the place after you read his book. Yeah, very good, vivid writing. Right.

What's your sense of when you leave the country, do you find yourself refreshed by things that are different? Or do you find yourself, because I'll also talk to other people that travel for a job, they're like, once you come back to the States, you appreciate, in that context, I'll quote my father-in-law, who was a great traveler and, you know, had countless incredible experiences as a foreign correspondent, you know, D-Day and on and on. But he, and he traveled all his life till age 96. And he would say, you know, it's always great to leave and it's always great to come back. And which I think that's really true. And you do appreciate so much about what you have when you come back. That's inevitable. I mean, in my experience, inevitable. And then on the other hand, when you leave and you're away, you see a whole different way of doing things that you don't really imagine is out

there. You know, I'm always kind of dropping into this pessimism. Oh, all the world's the same. It's all homogenized. You know, it's, there's nothing new. Um, but you get out there and especially the farther you get out there and I've got way out there. What's the most adventurous thing? Like, what's the thing you've done that you're like, I kind of can't believe I've done that as you get older. Well, the place where I said, I'm not going any farther than this, basically I've gone as far as I'm going to go was when I was age 48 and had two small children at home and, you know, married and my wife's daughter of this father-in-law, great traveler. I got invited on a, on a small kayak expedition down an unexplored, you know, unpaddled river in Africa, 750 kilometers. No one knew what was around the next bend,

whether it was waterfalls, hippos, crocodiles. Well, after a point, there were no villages. It was just complete wilderness. And, you know, swinging around a bend and having a lead kayaker saying, you know, and this is like, imagine like a Hollywood version of a jungle river with vines hanging down and you're whipping through the forest and you come around a bend and there's the lead kayaker with his kayak kind of pushed up against a rock, big boulder in the middle of the river saying, stop, stop right here. And so I pulled my double sea kayak alongside and got out and looked over the edge. And there's this big waterfall over the side. If we hadn't stopped at that rock, and you just have no idea.

It was the feeling of having zero idea of what was coming up i mean that the unknown and it was really disconcerting um and i you know it's probably i had small children at home it's like i said okay at a certain point i said why am i doing this and and at one point i would have bailed if there were any place to bail to but there was nowhere to go you You know, what are you going to do? Walk for a month without any food and without a gun and, you know, just forest full of lions and every other thing. It was, so I said after that, well, you know, I think that's going to be the apogee of my personal adventures. And then after that, I started actually writing about historical adventures like the historians and young George Washington. I could go on all day, Peter. I really appreciate the time. Check it out, Historia. And we left enough out on purpose because I want people to check this out. And then Young Washington, which I know you guys have the TV project and the Historia thing sounds great too. So let me know.

Let's. Yeah. Well, you know, if you read one young Washington and want to talk about it, let me know. And we'll kick that. That sounds great.

Sounds like a, sounds like a date. Thanks Peter. Okay. All right. Really fun to talk to Ryan. They say money can't buy happiness. Look at the fucking smile on my face.

Ear to ear, baby. You want details? Bye. I drive a Ferrari 355 Cabriolet. What's up? I have a ridiculous house in the South Fork. I have every toy you could possibly imagine. And best of all, kids, I am liquid. So now you know what's possible. Let me tell you what's required. Okay, it's time for life advice. You know the email lifeadvicerr at gmail.com really long story here uh but i'm in major trouble with the wife stick through this email with us folks and honestly this isn't as long as some of the ones we get some of them are just so long that i don't it's not that i don't

appreciate the submissions or anything like that just sometimes i worry about the audience part of it all right so when I stop talking. Here we go. This is one of the heaviest ones we've had. But it's not going to bum you out or anything like that. I have a group of five other friends who aren't really the homies or lifelong friends like that. But guys we met through our wives.

Side note, we're all newly married. All three years or less. So we're talking about five, six guys here total. not the homies. We get this. New relationships through the wives, all three years or less. Work-wise, we're all making really good paper on our own, but we all have wives who all make significantly more than us,

so much so that this group kind of functions as the therapy group to deal with the ups and downs of having wives who out-earn us by a lot. The pandemic took a toll on all of us, our wives. So,

the wives agreed to let us go on a guy's beach trip to a country, either the Caribbean. He's like, all right, I'm not going to be too specific. So,

they went somewhere else. They went somewhere else warm. We rent a dope-ass Airbnb with 12 bedrooms, huge pool, two outdoor jacuzzis, two pool homes, two pool homes, an outdoor kitchen with two eggs.

I guess he must mean the egg grill. Yeah, green eggs. Yeah, yeah, green eggs. Good call, Kyle. Shit was funky. The trip started off pretty standard. Breakfast Smash Brothers, spades, lunch, brown liquor. I love the brown liquor inclusion here. Mario Kart, Spades, dinner, happy hour, strip club. After the second day, the dancers of the strip club informed us we could save a lot of money by coming to our rental property. Apparently, some of the guys showed the dancers the pics of our Airbnb. We agree. And after dinner and drinking the third night, we invited a dozen or so dancers back to the Airbnb. It was a great time. And from my vantage point, no one crossed the line.

You don't know that. The dancers inform us that they would like to come back the next day and they can bring a chef to cook for us. We agree. And the next day after breakfast, we hit the grocery store for food for the chef to cook. And then the liquor store as the dancers wiped out our liquor stash the night before. The next afternoon, nearly 20 dancers and a chef arrive.

And honestly, the next eight or so hours was a movie. Again, from my vantage point, I didn't see anyone crossing the line. But we had 20 dancers on six guys. All the ladies were in some fashion of nude, swimming, soaking, and giving very aggressive and handsy lap dances. But again again no line crossing apparently the next day in the sprinter on the way back to the airport I do a phone check as I saw all the guys

taking pics idiots they all agreed delete the pics as married men don't need these types of pics on their phone we all do a pure review to make sure all the pics and videos are deleted back in the States our group rotate dinner at each other's place every two weeks. The first dinner is my place. And as we always do

after the dinner, the fellas hit the patio for cigars, scotch, cognac. One of the guy's wife asks for his phone so she can take some pics. So the wives for Instagram, he gives it to her. Five minutes later, our wives are on my patio ready to kill us all. Apparently, this guy gave his wife

his burner phone, which apparently has a photo gallery and the WhatsApp app. He'd been in contact with some of the dancers, sending them money and offering to fly them here to the States. In his gallery, he apparently crossed the line in every way imaginable. All of our wives demand our phones and go through them every way imaginable. Most of us are mostly clean. I'm super clean except for following some random Twitter porn stars. You're still clean, buddy. You're clean, I promise.

Come on, man. I don't know what the point is. Why would you put yourself in that situation? Go ahead. My wife and the other wives are convinced we all went there to cheat and are finding articles about how our destination was a major hotbed for sex tourism while i didn't tell my wife we had strippers at our airbnb i did tell her we spent most of the time around strippers by the way i love that it says around strippers

neither she nor our therapist are going for it i've've had to take STD tests and I've had damn near forensic audit on my bank and social media accounts to prove I didn't cross the line all to no avail. Needless to say, the dinner group is done and the wives, who are best friends, are now starting to beef with each other. Question is, what is your advice to get my wife and my therapist to believe I didn't cross the line?

Postscript, the other guys and I agreed to pack out burner phone guy on site. That wasn't like a real Housewives episode where the guy just recapped the plot and then just sent us an email on it. Wouldn't know, but... I wouldn't know.

I wouldn't know. I'm not going to research it, cross-reference it. Oh, look, I don't know what your wife's deal is. I have a couple friends that I know if they ever got caught cheating on their wives, I would just tell my friend I wouldn't even want to get married. I would gladly get divorced because there's no way I'd want to live with this person who no longer trusts me. I think some people find a way to get through it. A lot of people do. I'm not saying I think as if I'm not sure. We know it happens. I think as if I'm not sure we know it happens. Sometimes it happens and sometimes it can, I mean, when it seems impossible,

you can find a way, but now you're saying you didn't do anything wrong. I mean, you guys kind of like, you can't have strippers keep coming back to the house over and over and over again. Um, and not expect that something's going to go down,

especially if they're the type that are like, cool, just a party at your house the whole time and whatever the markup would be on how much you're paying a group of six dancers to be at your house for hours on end.

You know, it was clearly worth it to them. They kept pushing it, but somebody was going to screw up. Somebody was going to screw up. You're saying you didn't. All right, so we'll take you at your word. I think the problem with this is, again, it depends on the wife.

It's like, you know how like your cell phone after a little while, like that battery health is never going to be back to 100%? It says it's 100% charged, but when you go to the health update, it's diminishing returns here. There's a really good chance forever now, for the rest of your life with your wife, that it's never going to be 100% trust. It's just not. It'd be impossible. I mean, if it were reversed, could you ever in a million years have 100% trust for her?

I couldn't. I mean, if my wife did something like this, I'd probably be on the next plane to Cabo. And I know that sounds stupid and I probably wouldn't, but you know what I mean? I'd be so upset about it that I probably wouldn't be very rational for a little while about it. So, I mean, you could keep telling her over and over and over again. The fact that they're beefing, the wives are beefing, is like 101. I remember there was the guy, baseball team,

pro baseball team, he got busted cheating. And then the fucking guy sold out like everybody else on the team to deflect from what he was going through. And then everybody on the team was pissed and went to the general manager to be like, hey, you got to trade this guy. The problem is he was a really good reliever. So the team didn't want to trade him.

But that's a move that guys will have. There's also a move where guys will go ahead and fight God for a little while, get right with God. And then I don't know why that works as well as it seems to work, but it does. But the only thing I could think of, she's not going to trust any of the other guys you know like the guys that did cross the line are they going to will your wife listen to them

and if those guys are like hey he was there but you also said that you didn't have strippers at the house you've already lied to her too I mean I was thinking hey if one of the guys kept in touch with the strippers could you get your wife in touch with one of them and be like hey can you vouch for me that I didn't do anything wrong? But again, I don't know if these dancers are going to have your back on this one.

I would not make an assumption there that all of a sudden if you could get in touch with some of the dancers, like, oh, yeah, man, your husband was actually really cool and respectful because you can't even do that. That's absurd anyway that was going to happen. But I'm just trying to think out loud for you. But you've already lied to your wife in the first place about we were around strippers. Look, they probably expected that you guys are going to go to a strip club. They probably didn't think you were going to have six strippers be roommates for the entire weekend. So the only thing you really focus on here is hammering the point over and over and over again that it was the other guys. That's it. You've got to save yourself. You've got to save your relationship.

You clearly want it to be saved. You have to say, I don't even know those guys that well. I only know them through the wives. I want to have a good time. I want to go fishing. I don't even fuck with those guys that well it's only like it's i only know them through the wives like i don't i want to have a good time i want to go fishing like i don't even fuck with those guys that way and yeah you know what like i'm not going to sell every one of them out but i'm going to tell you right now it was those guys and it wasn't me and if that's the truth then it's the truth and so you have nothing to feel bad about it isn't the truth you're probably going to do it anyway and say it wasn't me and just try to blame everybody else to save yourself because that's

what most of us try to do save ourselves so this isn't going to get better anytime soon and i think even the most forgiving wives and people do forgive and they move on they have families and the guy learns from the mistake and he never does it again and whatever whatever but uh this isn't going to go away anytime soon there's just no way there's no way it's going to go anytime soon and the idea that guy would keep There's no way it's going to go away anytime soon. And the idea that a guy would keep a burner to have the gallery of pics and all that, I hate guys that do shit like that. You're just like, what the fuck,

man? Why did you have to do this? And honestly, as you told me the start of this email, I already knew what was going to happen. There's always one guy in the group that's like the weird, horny guy who can't not screw it up and have to take pictures and document the entire thing.

So, good luck with all that. Kyle? Yikes. A, you did spend like four consecutive nights with the same strippers. I'm not sure if his wife was looking at the dates on those photos,

but he did it like four times in a row but and the other thing i would say is if you have like wildcard friends like it's kind of guilty by association been in that situation many times a couple like relationship ruiners just like a wildcard friend comes through with like you know randomly three girls and it's like why are there three girls here or like who's fucking underwear is that it's like, why are there three girls here? Or who's fucking underwear is that? I honestly don't know. I swear to God I don't know, but you're guilty by association.

So if you're hanging out with wildcard friends, they're just going to get you into some wild shit sometimes. Even though you're innocent and maybe trying to say that it wasn't you and you can feel good about saying that, those girls weren't there. Your wife wasn't there with you. She doesn't know what you know she just knows what it looks like and sometimes that's all that matters yeah you can't get busted again that's kind of what

i was talking like you've already sort of lied to her about this because you didn't want to say yeah we we didn't just go to strip clubs we let them hang out with us at the house the entire time and i'm surprised if they've looked at the phone, got like, I'm surprised there wasn't one wife that was like, all right, wait, we have pictures of the Airbnb. Like, let's see what happened.

Okay. So now the photos are matching up with the Airbnb listing. And now we know that these pictures are all taken at the house. And like, you're right, Kyle timestamps alone. If they really dug through all the pictures to be able to say like, wait,

this, how many days in a row did this go on? And Hey, that's the same girl. Like that's just a different, she hit crimping on a Tuesday and then she was straight on Wednesday. So what the hell's going on there? Um,

yeah, I mean, you guys save yourself. The more we talk this out, I would just try to find any single way to save yourself and deflect all the blame on the other guys. Um, because you guys apologize.

I mean, he should, he should be apologizing while doing this. Like if he's just blaming his other friends, being like, it wasn't me. I swear, like I was an angel when I was there. Like you need to take some responsibility too, though. Like, I think that would go a long way.

You know, she's, your, your wife is going to probably decide one way or another, whether or not she wants to stay with you. And that's, that's going to be kind of on her and her personal terms. But you can't just be like, none of this was my fault. I'm innocent here. You have to take at least some blame here and say, even if i didn't cheat or do what he did i didn't take it to that extreme i did fuck up yeah maybe you copped to some lap dances but then you could even

just i mean this is kind of a soft move but you know whatever you can here you might just say like if i didn't take on lap dances the rest of the guys are going to judge me. And, you know, I hate myself for it. Maybe even a fake cry in front of the therapist. Therapist will go for it. She might not. And then, but yeah, apologizing. We probably could have gotten that a little earlier. I thought that

just sort of was par for the course on this one. I just wanted to make sure we had that out there. Right, that somebody would have to apologize. But hey, man, good luck. Good luck. Okay, this one. I just wanted to make sure we had that out there. Right, right. That somebody would have to apologize. But hey, man, good luck. Good luck. Yeah. Okay, this one's quicker. 33, 63, 200. Wife, three kids, house,

distance runner. Wow, 200. Good for you. Every year my in-laws fly my family and I... Wait a minute. Wait, okay. So every year my in-laws

fly my family and all of my wife's siblings. So that's like your wife, she's got brothers, sisters, your whole family, and then every single sibling's entire family. So it's you and then all the kids, the cousins. Good stuff. We go to the same rural beach for a week-long vacation

on the other side of the country in Georgia. It's two hours from the closest airport. They do an international trip to an interesting high-demand destination, Italy, Sweden, Vancouver, London, all expenses paid. But the unspoken rule, according to my wife, they do an international trip to an interesting high demand destination italy sweden vancouver london all expenses paid but the unspoken rule according to my wife is that we can't go on the international trip unless we go on the rural beach vacation trip because her family has done that every year of her life and it's the most important week of the year for her parents we both work semi-demanding jobs so it's very difficult to get off the same week every year let alone two

different weeks together in the summer so every year for let alone two different weeks together in the summer. So every year for the past six years, we've done the rural beach trip and not the international trip. I lightly suggest every year that we should skip the rural beach trip for the international trip, but I get the shrug,

and I don't think my wife has even raised the possibility with her parents. Should I be more forceful in trading rural, inconvenient beach in the state of Georgia for Venice or, as we said, Sweden here, Vancouver, uh, or except my lot in life. All right. So I think, um, I think these things are really cool. Like we had something like this where it was my mother's side of the family

and we would go to this Lake in Vermont and it wasn't, you know, my family's Lake was, it was the sibling, you know, type of thing. So it was always a little like, you know, that can happen where it's like, actually this is so-and-so's house't, you know, my family's lake was, it was the sibling, you know, type of thing. So it was always a little like, you know, that can happen where it's like, actually, this is so-and-so's house. So you're invited to come by because it's your kids, but it's not your house and all that kind of stuff, whatever. Uh, but those are big moments. Those are big moments for the older people here, the parents, as you're mentioning. So your in-laws, there's an incredible amount of pride. It's like the grandfather, right. As, as grandfather, as the head of this family, and then to have everybody around. Because that's the cool part of getting old and having this big family and

feeling like you're somewhat responsive for it. And hopefully most of the people have good heads on their shoulders and all that kind of stuff. That week, I can understand, as you describe it, two hours from an airport in Georgia, it wouldn't be my first choice for vacation you know shout out to the SEC but it wouldn't be and that that week if it means everything it means everything to them in a way that you probably understand but you don't right and I'm

sitting here saying I understand it but I don't like that's that's just what they do it's just what they do and that's what they they want you to be there for but if you've gone to six straight and missed out on the cool trip for six years, that doesn't sound very cool. That math just sounds terrible. So you got to start with the wife in a more forceful way of being like, hey, what's up with the cool trip? Is there any way we can do that? Because the other thing I think that people

with money do, especially older people with money, is they like to be in control of stuff in a fucked up way so that there's this qualifier that you're not eligible for the cool trip unless you go to the rural beach deal in Georgia. That's just this power play.

That's succession type shit. sometimes those people need to be challenged a little bit. But I would not go over the wife's head. I would ask the wife, but then I would get to the point where it's like, I mean, unless you don't want to go to the international trip with them, but you could, I don't understand. This is one of those deals where you're like,

why can't you just say, hey, it's been six years. I've done the beach thing. We'd love to do one of the international ones. We both have a job that will not allow us to take two weeks off at the same time separately over the course of the summer. It's just not going to happen. So are you telling me you never want me to be able to go on the international trip? Because I can't do both. I can't do both.

I've proven it. I would think the six years of the beach trip would have built up enough equity that you'd be able to pull this off. And again, I can't imagine why you wouldn't ask, but I would ask the wife, unless the wife actually loves the beach trip more than anybody else does. And she doesn't want to bring it up and doesn't want to talk to you about it because she actually prefers the beach thing and doesn't even want to do the international stuff. So that could be part of it too. It does sound like you're going to lose probably no matter what.

And I would hope if I'd had now, what, a bunch of kids with the guy's daughter and I'm a good husband and we've had this really nice life and we're still young enough that you'd hope you could have a relationship with your father-in-law to go like, hey man, here's the deal. I love this Georgia Beach deal. I want to check out Sweden. What's Vancouver all about? Sri Lanka. Let's go. I'll start Googling right now. I'll see what kind of rental cars we can get once we're boots on the ground. I'd like to think you could be able to do that, but the fact that you never even brought that up tells me maybe that you can't. So a couple of different factors here, but never forget that the people with money that call all these shots, as much as they appreciate being able to bring

everybody together for their own enjoyment and fulfillment, there can also be this weird deal where when somebody kind of has the money, they really always want it on their terms. And I had a friend, I wouldn't even call him a friend anymore, but a friend like this where he was the richest out of the entire group. And as you got a little bit older, you just started realizing he was more and more of a shithead because it was only his way. It was only going to be his way every time it was a weekend trip or, hey, would you go here? No, I won't go there. I won't go there. I won't go there, but I'll go here because like his money meant something at one of those places. And I obviously had checked out on this friendship, uh, very, very early on after college. And he didn't really like me that much anyway. Um, so it wasn't, it wasn't a tough breakup

for the both of us, but it was something that dawned on me as I got a little bit older is that never underestimate the, the guy with money thinking his preferences matter more than yours because it's kind of the way they're brought up and it's fucked. Um, and it could be a big part of this, or maybe you just ask him and then you're in Sweden. So Kyle, well,

um, I just spent the last five minutes looking at georgia beaches and that actually looks pretty nice i've never thought about georgia beaches before maybe you take a spot driftwood you guys driftwood beach jekyll island looks good it's a great sunsets um yeah i mean i wonder if it's if it's even been asked i wonder if it's just like a legend that like if you don't go to the special georgia beach trip you're not going or like maybe it has happened and like the shithead cousin once missed it and then he was like oh yeah well you're not going to um antebes or whatever but i wonder if it's been asked at all or if it's just like you

said like the wife his wife is just like it's just something that's not done and it's like never the waters haven't been tested since like one legendary time. So I wonder, I wonder, I think it'd be worth, like you said, just try to reason with her about like, come on, isn't this a little ridiculous? I think that's your best course of action. Otherwise, just do to enjoy the Georgia beach and maybe try to go to driftwood if that's not the one you've been going to. But judging from his, the way he phrased that, it seems like the only person he's asked about this is his wife. So I would say, why not ask another family member that doesn't have to be the dad just to kind of test the water out a little bit and say, hey, you know, we're kind of thinking, I was kind of thinking about this. My wife's not really sure.

Like, what do you think? And if your brother-in-law or sister-in-law is like, oh, absolutely not. You have to go to the Georgia one. Then you know that it's kind of validated and you're just, you're setting what you have to do. But if she's like, oh yeah, that'd be totally fine. Then you go back to your wife and be like, hey, I've been talking around. And some of the other people think it'd be cool if we just skip the Georgia one this year and went to the international one.

And then you have some leverage to bring to her and say, actually, this is going to be okay. So that's the first step that I would do is ask the other people involved. That's not the dad. Yeah, and that's why I brought up like that's to be the that could be the dangerous part of the deal here where it's actually her like she likes this oh the plot twist the uh the shamalan plot twist at the end she was the bad guy the whole time she was the island but guys let's be honest in one it's six years like she i like that one you can say to her though and be like hey you know in once in six years can we just do what i want to do and go to europe like it's not

i don't i feel like it's not that big of an ask for her to make even if she likes georgia we'll go back to georgia next year yeah this is not a huge like of all the problems like this isn't the biggest problem and because most people are like i hate in-laws. I don't want to go to any of this stuff. That never even came up. It never even came up. But I wonder if the guy has enough money to bring all of his kids and all of their families to these international destinations. destinations he's obviously done pretty well and you know this this thing where you got to get some abs and triple a before you get called up to the majors and you're like hey dude i've been in triple a for six years getting hits i know this is kind of stupid really when i you know as we keep talking it out it's crazy that like wait so you're telling us like if we can't go to georgia you don't want us with you in london like he's got a ledger right yeah like what are you're telling us like if we can't go to georgia you don't want us with you in london like he's got a ledger right yeah like what are you guys doing here like it's going to

be awkward anytime some of this stuff comes up we keep talking about more and more be like was this was this autumn in new york was this the plot to autumn in new york not sure we're fixing anything on this last episode but uh we appreciate you listening as always. Coming up next week, though, we're going to start part one of a two-part series on Muhammad Ali with author Jonathan Ige, Sugar Ray Leonard, and Bob Aaron. Thank you.