00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is Me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten in my case underwear listening podcast. You Can't Predict Anything presented by on X. Hunt creators are the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google play store. Nor where you stand with on x Uh. Yeah, honestly did you know that? Did you see how the bear that mauld our past podcast guest Amber Cornac is dead? Is dead or relocated dead? Just fresh dead? It was so I think, but just recently. Also we we got a thing about it. He relocated. Yeah, it can't It wasn't able to keep itself out of trouble. So some dude just outside of Libby, Montana had a elk he 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, like pretty much almost killed. Someone got a much trouble, got relocated, got a much more trouble. It's dead. I should be asking Amber about this, not you, because she didn't want nothing to happen to it. I guess the hold that thing was twenty five years old. Fifty pounds. He gained a hundred pounds from when he got when from when he got caught in October two when he got killed in November, he gained a hundred pounds. Really. Yeah, he went from four or fifty to five fifty 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 fifty pound pig, so I'm glad to have that frame of reference. I think that a bare how much beans? So you can imagine you can imagine 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 mulled by the grizzly bears. Oh it's horrific. Yeah we should go back. Uh yeah, yeah, you look it up. What was that called? Oh it's horrific, man, No it's not. She's a grizzy 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 cent and used barbed wire or whatever around it, and the bear goes in here to get it and loses fur on the barbs. 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 and she knew what was gonna happen. And he bit her and 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 Mallinger and held it over her shoulder quick thinking yeah, and just point blanked it into its face and it dropped her and took off work. Yeah, everybody's like, oh, pepper spirit doesn't work all the time. It's like nothing, So I've heard something recently. Nothing works all the time. I'll give that a listen Episode one sixties seven and you you can't forget the title mauled by a grizzly We just got right to it on that title. We'll have to in the next week or two call Amber and ask her she's bummed the bear that maulder and nearly killed her is dead because she didn't want anything bad to happen to it, which is the thing that's like a thing that happens with people to get mauled by grizzlies. A lot of times people that get malled by grizzlies don't want them hurt. And I if one got me, I would like to know it was still out there. Yeah, but I got it. If I got it, it was getting up there in age. Anyways, how is it going to get as pragmatic as she was? You'd call her a pragmatic person, wouldn't you. 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 gonna get alston Yeah, especially a repeat offender. I mean the fact that you can maul someone in pertinent or kill him 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. If I went off to Yanni Malden real bad and then the nis I put don want anything bad to happen to him, they still give me a talking to. 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 have an English Masters DeGrace. I'm not trained as a historian, but I learned on the fly, Buddy Levy, Buddy Levy, I was gonna ask you that before the thing and I had screwed it up and I forgot to ask ye. Author, give people a range of some of the things you've written about. Wow, So I've written about trucker hunting, uh, Davy Crockett, the conquest of the Aztecs, the first Europeans had just send the entire length of the Amazon. Geronimo Um a blin mind adventurer who summited in Mount Everest, and Kayak the Grand Canyon who is currently on the peak of Alma Blam in Nepal today. And then let's see labyrinth device, the Greely expedition. So in addition to UM, I covered adventure racing as a journalist for about seven years following these wild UM outdoor they're called Multi Sport and Durance competitions UM. And then I was on Brad Meltzer's Decoded, a History Channel show trying to not solve historical conundrums. Uh. Well, we tried to solve them, but mostly we didn't solve them, and we got all the ship for that too. It's like, you know, are you ever gonna you know, did d W. Cooper? Like did he get away or not? You know, We're like, no, well it looks like he did though. Um. But anyway, so yeah, I'm a comedian. Do you think Dave Cooper got away? Absolutely? Almost tell people who d Cooper is real quick. So yeah, there was no Phil you know DV. Cooper is. Yeah, he jumped out of the plane kind of where I grew up, So I know where he is who he is? I mean, yeah, because Phillis and you don't. So you're from like Seattle, Portland area in between there yet? Okay, So yeah, so this this guy who signed into the s dB, Cooper and he bought in an airplane in Portland heading to Seattle, and when he when he got on the air he landed in Seattle, and then he he asked for while he was flying, he told him he told the FBI that he wanted parachutes and two d and fifty thou dollars and or he would blow up the plane. And he had what looked like it 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. Uh. And he got up to ten thousand feet heading back over the mountains in Washington, and he deployed the rear aft stairwell of this airplane, or he asked the steward iss 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. And so the ever p well, no, so that if you if you, uh, if you research it, you realize that there are a number of possible suspects. Right, So historically FBI, it's it's actually unsolved still, but actually was right. Well, we think it was this guy named um Kenneth Christiansen, 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 the airplane. And there's a whole bunch of reasons that we think it's him. But um, it was really fun. Now, why do you think that he lived? Because I thought they did. They like the found a sac of rotten money and stuff own money in the in the stream and they found, um, 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 five thousand dollars and then there were other things this guy and he really right after he um, right after this all happened, this guy, Kenny christians And bought a brand new house. Uh. And there's another guy who we interviewed named Bernie Geistman who gave us the indication that it was probably you know, he was an accomplice. But you know, he Bernie Eastman went wouldn't go so far as to like obviously admit it, because I mean even the statute of limitations. Probably don't know if he could even get arrested for it now, but um, he didn't want to be, you know, admit that he had been an accomplice to this, you know, the only unsolved hijacking in American history, American aviation history. Pretty badass though, So you never found the body remains? No no, And we went to Minnesota and interviewed this guy that it was Kenny Christiansen's brother, and he gave us some pretty compelling evidence that, Um, you know, there was a deathbed confession that he that he told his brother that it was him. Um, of course it's hard to really corroborate that, and I think his brother's dead now. We filmed this back in Um, like, yeah, I guess I ever thought about that if he was dead, to be a dead guy laying there. They did find what people do, But how do the people? I think we're getting way sidetrack one a while to talk about, but we're not around the subject. I got two things I want to ask you about before we talked about what we're supposed to talk about. Uh, let's say I was the perspective. Let's say I was a guy that I 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 individuals say to explain the absence of a body? Right? So there? Yeah, but like why you're saying, why didn't they ever find a body? No, it's not what I'm saying. What are you saying? Okay, I'll just try it again. Imagine that. I imagine that you're engaging with a person who believes he's dead, but the believes he died jumping out of the plane. Okay, and this person is well informed, and you say to them, does this person where's the dead body? Then what would the person throw out there as an explanation for why there's nobody? Right? Well, uh, he got away? How about that? Or oh yeah, okay, he could have been eaten by wolf wolves in the area. Back then, that's what people who were semi informed would say, Um, there are other animals that could I mean, they're coyotes. How about so that his body was scavenged animals, and that would be a thing you could say, pecked down to bone. But but 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 already leave the money laying out in the woods. Well he might not, so he some of the money was not properly tethered, so he you know. Yeah, anyway, it's it's fun because this is the real story, the reason that we you know, people have been trying to argue about this for like, you know whatever since the seventies. Yeah, And it's funny because it comes it comes back up all the time because people like in America, we just like rehash every ten years, like oh god, having to DV Cooper right two yo doesn't seem like enough to try to pull that stunt up back then though, Yeah, adjusted for inflation, was a million retire on two K. Couldn't you here in Montana? Sure, moved down to Miles City. We're still wants to move Greatest hunting fishing in the world. Yeah maybe maybe, But and justin for inflation, it was probably four times that exactly. So, yeah, you can jump off a plane for a million bucks a little dventure. Yeah. Yeah, And and we talked to a number of people who, um, but there were copycats afterwards, and we talked to you know, um 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 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. Um, it was fun cruising around kind of slew thing historical mystery. Yeah, hey, how many um, how many books have you written all together? I think seven? Yeah you know you want you want a hot two? Yeah? I do? You know what you ought to do? We'll talk a big time bestseller. We got my next book for me, big time best seller. Claude Dallas. I like, 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 escape from prison, got caught, like when like got out, he's back out now. No one knows where he is. I'm jotting it down. So I was Claude No no, so real quick crash course. Claude Dallas was uh a trapper cell styled mountain man, but a fur trapper back good for a price era A lot of bobcats are very valuable. And he was trapping, I believe, around like the border of like Idaho. You yeah, out in the desert there the io. There's a name for it, like the io n Idaho, Oregon Desert. I was a teenager and catch Amida when when this happened. So he was trapping out in the desert. And what he was doing is one state the season was open, in 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 casts. He's like, oh yeah, I got all these casts. But they're like, yeah, but we feel like you're catching him across the border where you now it's supposed to. But the two game wardens come in to rate his camp, and he's also got a dead mule deer hanging there because he's living off deer meat. He's got a dead mule deer hanging in camp, gets into a skirmish with the game wardens. Different his like he's the only guy who lives to tell about it. But he says the game wardens were harassing him and tried to get the drop on him. They have a shootout. He wounds the two game wardens. But then what seals his fate because he takes the twenty two caliber pistol and goes and and kills both game wardens, and cold Blood shoots him in the head. I didn't do it generally. Then uh heads off into the desert. There's a big man hunt. 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, gets out. He wanted his privacy and they let him loose, and he just vanished into the ether. Now no one knows where I thought they got him. They did. They got him twice. It sounds like you should they got him the first time, they got him the second time. Then he served his time, and people like I cannot believe you're gonna let out of jail a man who killed him. But here's the thing people like, like when I was a kid, like hell Billies, Like I hesitate to say this, but like a lot of like total hell Billies looked up to Claude Dallas. Right, He's a cult hero, which is disgusting really because I was even guilty of as a little kid because Trapper and Predator color magan Is would do articles about Claude Dallas and they'd be like, you know, he really shouldn't kill game wardens, but you know there's something to be said for living out in the desert trap 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 that rather than let him out of jail, I think they should have snuck a twenty two selling behind his ear right. And you know, that's 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. Um, he gets off a little bit because he let them, didn't hurt people, let the passengers ago, but he's still I mean, you know, it's funny how Yeah, we gravitate towards characters even or figures, historical figures, even when they're you know, immoral, but if they Claude Dallas is like inexcusable man, Right, But yeah, we grew up like when we were little kids and that was all going on. We thought he was a badass, which is kind of disgusting. So well, I won't write that one then, right about that, right about that would be like the end. You know how in the end of your Crockett book you step back and look at the mythos of Crockett, right, like, how how Davy Crockett kind of became remembered. And you've been talking about Davy Crockett generated like adjusted for inflation, back to that subject, Davy Crockett generated more revenue in the nineteen fifties than uh G, I Joe right, Superman, Batman, Bigger Business. I think I forget the numbers, but it was. I wrote it down right here because I know I don't want to get in trouble because you wrote the book a long time ago. Uh in today's dollars three billion in nineteen I think it was like in nineteen fifty five and today's dollars who have been three billion dollars and Davy Crockett paraphernalia, fake coonskin caps. Mainly every kid in America wrote his bike around with a fake coon skin cap on, a little lunch pails and um, you know, like rifles and stuff like the ship that comes out like when you when you go to McDonald's and you like 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, yeah, licensed licensed Crockett merge. Right. In fact, you're talking about swinging back around. I mean it's probably get bad to call DA. Do you think you're gonna write the book or not? I don't read that book so faster to make your I know you and about well, I don't know the market. Um, it's come up in my in my research before that. You know, I like, um, I like figures that are sort of controversial. You know, people still think he's badass. Yeah, if I ran into I don't want to shirt or something, you know, you might be a good way to get your ask Kire. It depends on where you are. Uh, okay, you were to say about Crockett. I'm not ready to talk about crock You we might to throw it out there now that well, And I was gonna say how I got to Crockett. So how I got how? I because I didn't Um. I mean, I grew up in California for you know, a short period. My dad was from Louisiana and he moved to California, doctor um and uh he was a general practitioner, um and catch him Idaho after after we left California. But I was I was in there in the sixties during the Crockett craze, so I could see it was were you guys in catch him? When Hemingway killed himself and catch him? That was like sixty three later later. Yeah, I grew up with the Hemingways and Jack Hemingway. Hemingway's eldest son was my French teacher actually, and um, his daughter Mary l was a classmate of mine and um private school that I went to. But before we have you seen uh no, what's that movie? Was Dwight Yoakum John Prine not Dwight Yoakum, John Prime, Muriel Hemingway and and uh John Mellencamp Falling from Grace I haven't seen it. I better Yeah, we're good. Go on. Um anyway, week, so we we moved. Um, 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, twenty minutes from Disneyland and it was all happening. And then my dad moved us to Idaho, um in nineteen seventy, and you know, I was like, you sort of left that part behind. But much later, Um, when I started, I had written this chucker book. So my you know, I learned, I learned hunting and fishing from my dad and um, and I decided to write this book about chucker hunting. And as it turned out, you know, it was like a pretty niche you know, is there a not a lot of Um, it's not 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 asked someone like, what are you into and they say chuckers? Yeah, Like what's a chucker? Anyway? You know, it was five thou Yeah. Yeah. So but anyway, I wanted to I had a lot of my first story I ever wrote. I was thirteen years old and it was about bird hunting and it had a chucker in it. So I was my dad was a big time chucker hunter. So I end up writting this book like you were in the trap, where it felt to you like very foundational, right, because this one thing everybody knows about chuckers. And you know, I'm not kidding you. He's he knew a lot about shuckers, and he knew a lot of but he he was a great and he's still he's out hunting. And my nold man is in uh deal in Montana hunting ducks today. I was telling your honest, he'll be eighty eight on Monday, and he's just hunts, I mean, every single day if you can. But so we end up I end up writing this book about chucker hunting, and so I'm thinking, well, I needed, you know, when we get do with that. So I was trying to get an agent at the time, and uh so I sent it to this agent in New York named Scott Waxman, who was a friend of friends. Yeah, and so he he calls me up after he read book and he calls me and he's like, and there's a you know, like in two thousand or something to that, when I, 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 certainly enamored with the romance of the Western idea, you know. So he's like, I did you write this great book about chucker hunting and you're out pheasant hunting and seemed pretty into hunting, and and I'm like, yeah, you know, I'm I just pull your kind of cramping in 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. There was a somebody had written a book about Boone. I think it's Robert Morgan's name, 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 fifty years, like a biography, right, So I called him back and I said, how about Crockett, you know, and he's like done, Yeah. I mean Crockett was more talk about hunting, you know, um politician hunter. But you know, Crockett created the mystique of I mean listen, we're still talking about him today and uh so, but it worked out great. So but Chrucker Hunting book led to a book about one of the great frontiersmen in American history. I was really happy with that. You know, hey, your new book coming out. Okay, here this I'm gonna leave this up to you. This is gonna be like chef's choice, author's choice. I want to I want to talk. I want to do crash course on Crockett. And here's why. Um, 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 Crockett ignorant. And what started me down needing to know about Crockett was that I would talk about what sort of a ship talk er Crockett was and Texans get so mad. Real man, my friend Jesse Griffith's it's like he turns kind of red if you say something bad about 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 wanna talk about DV Cooper? 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 and surrendered? Well? Right, and those your Texas friends do not want to hear anything about it. They're getting away, you know. So I needed to know more about Uh. That led me to want to know more about Crockett. And it's also the connection is connecting to people's heads. Is even like the organization, the conservation organization Boone and Crockett, 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 they're separated by a few decades anyway. Um, yeah, like the height of Boone's adventures were around We're around the Revolutionary War. Yeah, well before I mean Crockett died at the Alamo in you know, eighteen with thirty six, um, and you know, I think that but as far I love that question, you know, about whether or not what actually happened um at the Alamo, because they're so much tied to you know, 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 at history, how well is that really what happened? Um. You know a lot of the it's unfortunate, but a lot of the research suggests that, um, you know, he may well have just surrendered and been executed, 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, you know. And you know, when they did the film The Alamo was ten years ago with Billy Bob Billy Bob Thornton, it winds up being that the only man stand his Crockett, and it wasn't so much like he's surrendered. He just got captured, right and so you and then he's very defiant. Oh yeah, ship talks Santa Anna. Yeah yeah. They killed him with they kill him with bayonets. Yeah. I mean I had to make sure, actually was very careful that 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 that this is who, even though he was a great Crockett, but like I'm sitting there trying to you know, I thought he did a great job. Me too, but 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, um, Carl Schilders and Sling Blight or something, you know, with biscuits and mustard. I didn't want that at all. So I was like, so I watched it. After I watched it, after um 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 out numbered, you know, fifty to one or whatever. It is maybe more than that. Yeah, and so, um, a lot of the North part of the album, I didn't realize the amount of being drunk and being sick. Oh yeah, those god, I mean you're yeah, these guys are just like they're either drunk or mortally ill. Right, They've got dysentery and yeah, I mean it's horrible. Right. So all right, I was gonna ask you if you wanted to talk about the Greeley Expedition, which, dude, it's given me nightmares, man, it should. Yeah, So let's talk about Crocker first, all right, 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 three. Um, and it's I'm really thrilled. Um, it's it was an tremendous project, unbelievable story. It has basically everything that I don't think it should come out in December because to read about being this cold when it's cold out, it's disturbing. It should be like a summer read. Yeah, look at my thumb. I frols my thumb. Oh you're wow. Yeah, there's a ton of frostbite in this book. Yeah, it frols my thumb and now the skin is coming off of it. 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. That's just like the horrible stuff. And then 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 yeah, we'll talk about we'll talk about. But here's the thing you always hear about. Here's like Arctic like Arctic explores and Antarctic explores. Like if you don't really you always hear like, oh, you know, they go there and they die, like oh of course, you know. But to really understand this, 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 like like not understanding the climate well and not understanding like what's normal in the Arctic and abnormal in the Arctic, and it's let's talk serious of unfortunate events. Feel you want a job, you never have nothing to do? It depends what's that? That was a double negative? Gonna send me to the Arctic? No one? You didn't turn your clock on? Thank you to uh you gotta let us know when we need to switch to still have time to talk about Labyrinth of Ice after you talk more about Crockett. Okay, Okay, I'm mostly because you wrote You read the book a long time ago. You wrote the book a long time ago, so you're a little bit of a disadvantage. But I was gonna ask you about some things about Crockett. Right you said, we'll see how well you hold up. Okay, I'm I'm game because of 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 I'm well, I'm a little bitter, but but I want to work around it. I actually was primed slightly because a couple of years ago, I was I was a talking head on a History Channel show that um actually there was was well that this one was exactly I was on the other side of I was the person being interviewed. I was a Crockett guy on a show called The Frontiersman, the Man who Built America. That I was one of the boon guys. Yeah, okay, well that's where 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 at the same what you're talking about. I mean, I had written this book in you oh one or between oh one and oh three, and then it came out and oh five, and then here I'm being you know, you're the Crockett guy, so let's hear about it. And I'm thinking, got it. You know, I should probably um go read my book, but anyway, I'm game. Yeah, I'll make it up. If I don't remember Okay, I'll tell you something that struck me about Crockett's biography that learned about your book. The fact that his old man, the PA I got the people in general were in the practice back then in the early eight hundreds of hiring their children out as indentured servants to settle debts, like like you bought you borrow some money from a guy to buy some cows. The cows all drowning, the rivers say, and the guys that 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 ship in your field, and then we'll call it even. And that's how this guy spent his childhood, I know. And the one that blew me away was so his his old man is always in debt, and Crockett was basically always in debt too. Um just the bad, bad decisions and bad luck, you know. And so his old man says, say, you know what you're talking about. He's like, I know this guy, it's a bunch of money. So what if I send a little davy um on a like a cattle drive for four hundred miles. That's gonna last months? Right, and Crocketts, this little kid, you know, fourteen or think he was twelve, and so he's like hoofing along, you know, prod and cattle, um, and staying in in like roadhouses and like watching men drinking and horrorn and Crocketts, you know, just sitting there as a little kid. You're right, I mean he was. He was gone for months at a time, and um, he gave me some ideas about like some stuff I should have probably done better with my son. You know, he's not you could have made a lot like but no, you're right, I mean, it wasn't. It was such an amazing time where you would just do whatever you had to do, and it was not uncommon two you know, sort of sholl out your kid for I think one point. He was gone for two years. Yeah, that's I was gonna mention that that he like he he got in a bunch of troll he like smart. I can't remember what he did. He pissed his dad off, and his dad kicked his ass. Yeah, well, so he kept he was playing hooky, right, So he was playing hooky. Oh yeah, he said they're paying for him to go to school, but he wasn't going to school to school. He would go off it. He would head off to school and then just not go to school. And 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 uh, he let out for a little while there. Yeah, and this is like when he was coming into he's coming of age. Yeah, stay has gone so long. This is where it's like almost like a fake story. So here he'd done all this like indentured service, you would, just to satisfy his dad's As his dad kicks his ass, he takes off for years ages works odd jobs like working on mule trains and wagon things, and almost got on a boat and sailed, you know, tried to go to Europe, try to go to Europe, but his other boss wouldnt let him off the hood. Unbelievable. All this crazy stuff happens. But it's like it's out of like Homer's Odyssey. It's kind of like a stick. It's like the products like the Prodigal Sun deal a little bit where Crockett goes back and he's 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, right, And he's sitting in a in a like a but they would call it. It wouldn't be a cafe, but like a you know, like a roadhouse, and his sister recognized him. It 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 is very funny. But he makes some comment about how like, yeah, I think it had been gone long enough that my old man's ire was probably down by now, you know, but you still remember the caning, so you know, he's like still looking over his shoulder a little bit. And then went off sells a bunch more debts. And then another thing that like just kind of walking through like how this guy's life went is um the degree to which when he sets out like in those days from we should established like he's like a frontier character. These are all like like like Boone's family, These are like transient people's absolutely explain how they're always living somewhere and getting displaced and living somewhere and getting displaced. Right. So you know Crocket's life and many of the Um 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 what 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 gristmill, right, so they're gonna 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, a flood right takes out the grist Right, So now Crockett's gotta go on, like okay, now he already borrowed all the money to build the thing, right, right, so now he's like dead 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 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. 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 don't guys have people who are poor and yearning to like make their way right, like sort of capitalism at work, and they'd always be moving to a place they kind of weren't supposed to be in Boone's area, was like because the British had said the British had a lot of Indian allies west of the Appalachians, and the British said, we don't want any of our American columnists 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 I'll 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 Crocketts are people like sort of jump on 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, and they're just already like people just immediately start moving into these places, being like it'll work out. Yeah, let's send Lewis and Clark and to see how much we actually have. Yeah, and people people are like, well, dude, already moved there, so right. Well, in in Crockett's case, it gets complicated too by the you know the fact that there were Indian people's already living there, right, so you know, not even supposed to be there from that perspective to 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 you know, he used to put it that way, like hunting up Indians. Yeah, they used the term like he got sent down to Florida in the Creek War, kill up kill up some Engines Indians. Yeah, and so but you know, even within that, I think he had a lot of reverence for UM. The fact that you know, he lived off the land. They lived off the land he was for you know, so I had firsthand knowledge of and learned from tribes of the encountered. And you know, he he was the only UM delegate, I believe, yeah, in the that voted against the Indian Removal ACTUM from Tennessee. So like he had a huge political price, right, and so you know, he got he got that struggle and he understood that because he had spent his whole life, you know, in hard scrabble existence just trying to eke out something UM. And you know, so that's one of the things that I really found UM. I connected with that element of him, you know, persona uh. And 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 healthcare being like Obama's thing, right, Obamacare, that was his thing. Crockett's thing as a congressman was to basically legitimize squatters, right, because he was the cheap 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 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 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. Um And you're right, I mean he never really he didn't. He was He failed to pass basically any um any bills. He was always out hunting, you know, he preferred um, he preferred hunting uh to politicking. But he ended up being very good at politicking, right, So he he was he was able to create this kind of mystique and persona. And 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 use the term you talked about. That's why I feel it was interesting to look at his political career and then uh, look at Trump's political career. Can you talk about the Crockett was the first American to be famous for being famous, right. I mean people knew people liked him because they just knew that he was famous, right. And I mean we're talking about, you know, at a time when um in newspaper was moved very slowly across the frontier, right, and information the passage of information was done you know, on horseback and through on riverboats. Right. And so you've got a guy who was it's profound. He was able to create such um, a frenzy and a mystique about himself. I mean plays were written about him during his lifetime. He went he went to a play watching a guy playing him, you know, and he's in the audience and he's like, um, I, you know, I am nobody. There was not the term celebrity at the time, but um, 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 he like reach out to try to touch him as he went by, you know, and then he would be fetted and he would be you know, given all sorts of uh, you know, honorary awards and he hadn't really ever done anything. You know, I do you have anyone? No? Yeah. I want to back up a little bit to talk about when he kind of comes of age and 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. There's a quote you have in the book that I've been using all the times, 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 cat, help the cow to catch the cap. So like he's like pragmatic transactional relationships that would happen within frontier communities where it's like I have a daughter, Um, 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 gotta do sure, like to get my hands on your daughter. And it's like it's like you're it's like you're buying cat. Yeah, And I mean that term you use pragmatic is so appropriate, and it's true. It's like, um, you know, what do you got? What am I gonna give you for it? Um? You know? And uh yeah, he was really the whole salt the cow to catch the calf was funny because Crockett understood that if the mother, if he sweep talked the mom, right, he was flirting with them. He was flirting with the mom. You know, he was working the mom and and then you know he had to win her over, uh you know, assault to get the calf to get his bride. You know, I was a real mis you had. In the book. There's sex lives. Were they promiscuous? That's does anyone talk like is there any way to know like when they're courting and and sneaking around in the woods and having like little chats, but plotting and figuring are they having sex or not? I'm guessing they're having sex. Yeah, So you think there was there was promiscuity on the frontier, Yeah, almost certainly. Listening they don't Lewis and Clark. There was a lot of promise that expedition. Crockett, you know, 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 and he and he was like he really funny. He's like I wanted to be over two hundred pages. That was If it was two hund pages, it was worthwhile. It's like pretty random, but I don't know that was the measure of a good book to oh to becoming in on. So Crockett was like crafted this um 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 yeah, like like yeah, Lewis and Clark, Yeah, they don't know how they phrase it. They don't intimate. But then you later learn children they like siren kids and and those things like you could there's like sort of this nineteen fifties version of what frontiers people were like, right, I mean they're doing it in the woods of course, yeah, yes, ma'am, no, ma'am. But he read this progress like, man, these people are greasy, double dealing. Yeah, not like not patriotic, not necessarily because like the idea of the US is still taking shape, right, yeah, kind of like what country man, sure, Americans, I don't know. I mean they got land. Don't you think it's just because survival trumped all that other stuff? Yeah, just like there was yeah, like drunkenness, Yeah, probably, Yeah. 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 and I tried at times, tried at times to become more fightful, struggled with his lack struggled with his own lack of faith. Yeah, well don't don't some of us people do. Yeah, I mean he's honest about that too, Um, because you know, I think at that at that time, you know, it was very important too. 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 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 were there were rumors that he was a flanderer, and rumors that he was a drunk. Yeah yeah, and rumors that he was like, you know, the greatest shot in the West. But 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 and it 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 that they come home leading the cow. Hefer, you know, and it's like, uh, okay that I mean that that's currency. Yeah. He did get involved in some really horrific Indian wars. Yeah, Like his life really changed after that. What's that Fort Sims? Yeahs. 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, um because he so they they're retaliating for a massacre that had happened. Um. Crockett's in this small band of um you know, so called Indian fighters. Yeah. But yeah, but I was I can't remember, I wish I had it from the name of the someone's got looked this up. Forms the four Mims was were the Creeks came into massacred the whites, and in the whites retaliated the This is like total warfare, no kidding, Yeah, And Crocett was on this um small squad that came in for retaliation, and they they had been told that there were a bunch of Creek Indians at this actually they had the Creek Indians had overtaken before and we're still there. And so there were women and children, and um Crockett in 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 things, Yeah, talking 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 Greek they ended up eating the potatoes, and he describes that the grease from these humans that has um basically melted from the fires, ripped down and sort of season these spaces buds. It's freaking brutal, man, there's some all those masakers you get like now like in the wars we have now with the the rules of engagement, you know, and we talk about how horrific war is now. I think 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 frontiers, I mean, northern Florida is part of the American Frontier at this time. For the last people to talk about, Oh, politicians are so crooked now or we're so violent now, dude, Oh man, the crookedness and atrocities that people would commit in those times to like just go into a village of people not like not like, not like it's something would get prosecuted for war crimes to be celebrated. You'd go into a village and do total warfare, meaning to 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, and then go to the next town. Right. And but I will say that crockett Um 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 think of it as just you could move on, you know. But we now know that you know, what with with soldiers coming back from 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, your job in the army, Um, it's going to leave a mark. There's two contemporary westerns they come out recently, Um, The Sisters Brothers, which is Joaquin Phoenix and John c Riley, which I think is a fun nominal Western, and then the Christian Bale One West, Douicy Hostiles, Student Duty. Uh, both of those movies. It's like every every like Westerns always due for us, Like every generation gets thrown Western hopefu. Okay, So you may like, like, you know, like in the seventies, a Western in the seventies felt like the seventies, right. I was like, Oh, but you guys, Sunday as a 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 westerns. 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 it's like but it's a revelatory of course they did. You look at like the things that and Crockett wasn't even like a hard driving like he was hired into the military to be a hunter 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 burn, like piling up dead women and children and piles and torturing the piles of them, and it's just like, yeah, I mean, like no ship like you hadn't been a mess or there were I mean maybe certain people have the ability to compartmentalize it, 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 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 putting about going about your business. Ne's a dead Person zero. I've seen a handful, um just freakently. I was at a old lady's birthday party once in the cater 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 thirty four years old and not see dead people. But these guys, I'm surprised they can get around with all the dead people laying. Everybody's dead and die and and at much younger age. Your wife, My wife died, she was having a baby and she's dead, and hauled her out back and like, yeah, the kids die. You could say that they are inured to it in some way, you know. Death. Yeah, it was. It was all over the place, and um, 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. Watched Sisters Brothers. I'm psyched. Yeah, I'm sorry. I mean, I just I'm like the last person in the world to have just finished Deadwood. You know, I heard there's the 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 Western's a ride again. Yeah, let's let's keep moving along. Crocott had bad malaria, Yeah, well, but didn't everybody didn't know what malaria was, right, So a lot of times that's why when you were is funny we're talking about earlier, how everybody was, you know, just lying around either drunk or sick, and partly drunk and sick or drink trying to drink through your sickness. Um, but you know everybody had malaria, not everybody, but you know, there wasn't really um a remedy for malaria at the time. Um in the fact that look that up when you know, when did uh malaria medicine when they called the billious Billius fevers the billiest fever you know, and so people are just, um, he's out there trying to do his businesses, 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 her food and you know. Yeah, it's funny too because like he had been down in Florida, but he's also in Tennessee. So's he's got he's got malaria. Then at times he's almost freezing to death, but having about of malaria, right then they can you know, still got it and he's right think of it. You think of it as tropical, right, right, Yeah, I mean it's my god, some of those stories where he's like really sick and he's out in the woods, um, and he breaks through the ice and he gets you know completely Um. Basically he's walking around hypothermic and in order to he's hypothermic and it's got malarial and from fevers. But then he punch right yeah, and so to stay warm. I love this one sequence when he oh, shimmy is 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 weren't punish his body by the friction of sliding down the freaking tree. Yeah, he's 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 It's a good trick man. Yeah. I mean you might try it on one of your next hunch if you get frostbitten. His uh, he had a lot. He had something like interesting hunting things that The thing that surprised me too, is uh you talked about this? Is it his uncle? I think his mom's brother was out hunting once and see something moving in the grapes and see something moving, it thinks it's a bear picking grapes, shoots it and it's his neighbor. And Crockett says, how his dad put a silk handkerchief. How 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 whole out with a silk handkerchief. The guy lives, and no one quite knows what I happened doing, but he got better and went away. Yeah. I love that at that scene, And but you want to think, like when someone shoot, 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. So a person and now their gut shot. Uh. Yeah. Crockett was always great at the at the detail. I mean, you know the image of that handkerchief passing through this, the whole through this awesome. Uh he uh. He like 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 gone, but he'd always kind of resort to going He'd like, we go hunting, market hunting. Yeah. It was like he's that's what he liked to do. And so everything to go to ship you take off and go hunt. Everything goes. It takes off, go hunting. He talks about he found out 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? And grubbing out the field. The guess 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 salt in it, and they go off that day and they kill four bears. They hunt for another week and they kill seventeen more bears, and as payment for the week's bear hunting labor, Crockett sends the man home with one thousand pounds of bear meat, which the man and his family then eight for a year. At one point, crock and his hunting partners go out in the fall kill fifty eight bears. The bears hibernate, they come out in the spring, they go back out and kill forty seven. So that year he killed a hundred and five 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 had had a hell of a year that year. Yeah, Banner, hundred and five black bears. What's the most that they've ever been taken in the state of Montana in one year. That's gotta that's a great question. Yeah, well, I mean I guess, I mean if there was, Yeah, he would have put a big dent in. So they put a big dent in the contemporary Annual Harvest Tennessee. Yeah, And I always wondered, you know, to what extent. Obviously Crockett was, um a teller of tall tales now but boom boom bags that up, boon kill. They'd kill a hunter bears a year. I mean there were a lot of bears running around, and he said, who talking about killing thirteen in a day once with humb but yeah, you guys his hunting with hounds, Yeah yeah, and uh like large packs of hounds. Yeah, I mean very effective. The Crockett also claims to kill a bear with his knife. Um you know that that is um, well, he he shoots it and then he has it cornered, prettiable, his version of his pretty believable. 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 were talking about the the how he was rooting out those stumps. He always had these these phrases that are kind of memorable, but you never know what the hell he's exactly talking about like they're rubbing, rubbing out of field. But then he said, yeah, you got a rut hogger die, Like okay, I don't, Yes you do. That's good in life advice. I'm starry telling people got a root hogger die. Son gotta salted cow if you want to cutch the calf soun root hagger die. So the guy gets Crocket eventually gets into politics right accidentally, like people to 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 hell billy. He's a cane. He's from the canes, gentleman from the cane. Yeah, like the cane breaks of the like the frontier. He's like a bear hunter. And he had to play that up right with his constituency, like because he's campaigning on the frontier and people wanted to see like this frontier sensibility that's like, this's like great hunter and it kind of more cared about, Like 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 him 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 listened to whatever. One time, he just let the other guy go first, and then he like basically recited his whole speech back again. And then but and then during that time, he was um handing out plugs of tobacco, chewing tobacco and whiskey, and you know that he was saying, like, here, vote for me. He was, 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 added, 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 he would elaborate, and I'm sure that he was exaggerating some of the time, but he also understood but 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 tried, But it was an interesting You talk about how it's hard to get around in 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 too, then get up in the morning, have breakfast together, go tear each other a new one in front of an audience, and then move on to the next town. And there's like, and you're talking about Crockett, he always liked to go second because he was memorable and funny and he just wanted to leave people more. Yeah, it was tough about it. One time he's traveled with this guy and he always goes sacking. So he listens to him and eventually he has to go first, and he gets nervous. So what he does, he'd hurt his opponent's speech. So many times 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, doesn't have a backup speech, you know that he can just go to and he talks to Like. The thing that Crockett was kind of funny is he's campaigning, he's campaigning against and traveling with a guy who's lost a leg, and the guy has a wooden peg and they got and they're staying in the guy's house and Crockett takes a wooden chair and at night mimics the sound of the wooden The guy with the would like mimics the sound of him walking around own and goes and bangs on the daughter the farmer's daughter's bedroom door. She gets upset and starts yelling, and he makes them 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 his daughter. Yeah, it's Crockett was diabolical like that, you know. Yeah, we talked about how you know, cutthroat politics are now. I mean, these guys were just they were 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 like hated the rich. Yeah, he's so badly wanted to be rich. He wanted to be rich bad Yeah. I mean, which is like everybody that most people are in that situation, right like when you're poor, you're like a rich people. But like so if I like, so you're telling me right now, if I like, was it like you know what, dude, here here a few million bucks, You're like, I don't want it. I hate the rich, dude, you'd take it so fast right now. Yeah, But I mean I think he was Crockett 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 to, 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 um persona was, he would you know. He was a chameleon. He was just good at being what people wanted to see. Um. Yeah, but uh, I think he did want I don't know that he wanted like finery, you know, because he's the happiest, you know, he didn't want to. When you get when you gave Hi an opportunity to do what he really wanted to do. He vanished in the woods and go hunt and he's like, get my gun and my dogs, I'm going out. You know. It's kind of a sad part of his political career as he get to Washington and they turn his uh, they turn his hillbilly stuff against him. Like he's had some formal dinner and a waiter goes to clear his plate and he like did or didn't. It's think that the waiter was trying to steal his food. And they had finger bowls back then, and he got thirsty. He was drinking everyway out of the finger bowl and he's like, yeah, don't jack my meal, and the guys just trying to, you know, take his plate away and he's like, give me that back, man, I have a 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 you don't have good manners, you know. But then they were brutal too because they were just write about it 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's like totally ruins your your image. And he was all about like building image, and it made you less effective in doing the job of like trying to pass laws. She never figured out, no terrible politician. I had a thing happened to me. I was in a I was in Manhattan, and I was with my wife and we went to a restaurant. We're in a big fight. I can't remember. We're fighting about she's super mad at me. And I went and it was like there was a bathroom you could member, but she'd know the name of this restaurant. There's a bathroom where there's a uh big circular sink. The right. It's like a fountain, right right, and the fountain is communal, it's co ed fountain. But off the fountain is the men's room. In the woman's room. But I was a little drunk, and I mean I'm drunk 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 a fountain. Your name. So a woman comes in and they're aghast. And I had white I had a sweater on, 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 gonna get found out. So I had a sweater on and a T shirt, and I took my sweater off so I looked. 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. 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 she's like, normally i'd come up and be like, you'll never guess what happened, But because we're in a fight, I couldn't really bring it up. And then also and and and also we're at the thing one time, and uh, we're we're having They had finger bowls, but they also add these like little things you dip crab in the butter. In my mind, I was drinking the butter, right, my wife still she still holds to this day. And I was drinking the contents of the finger bowl. 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 sound was drinking the finger bowl. So when I got into the finger bowl about Crockett, it really like it hit a personal in my bet. So you're you're bumpkin too, what a personal note. I want to move on to oh quick thing. Uh we don't really talk about too much, but it's interested to like how conflicted Crockett was, like like Jackson Um Jackson wanted to get all this money. He wanted dollars because he wanted to relocate Cherokee, Chocks, all these people he wanted to relocate him out west. Everyone was listening support of it on the frontier and Crockett took a massive political hit and thought it was immoral to move him. Yeah he had slaves, man, Yeah he had Yeah, like someone gave his family some slaves. Right, But so you think that's a you call it a contradiction and 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 then engage people's You don't never get anywhere with that stuff, right, But I mean it's just surprising. Yeah, it is surprising. And it goes back though to his Um. I think, you know, maybe some guilt about Um, the Indian city he had previously killed, having firsthand experienced with the way that Um 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 freaking hated Jackson, man, he didn't like that guy. And you know here so he was he was kind of Jackson. Jackson snubbed him during the Creek War, right, and you know, Karaket 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 nicknames for him and all them old Hickory and well yeah yeah, he would spins on it. Yeah yeah, but so Croc and I think just you know, wanted to be contrary. Also at that point, he's like, you know, if this is what he's going for, I'm gonna But but I think he authentically saw the um that moving people from their homes and displacing them, you know, the hundreds of miles away um 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, um, exactly I would cast that vote. It was basically like vote your conscience, you know, like the old Ross Pero vote your conscience. Yeah. So he he wins a congressional term. Uh, then winds up losing a congressional term. And when he campaigned here's another thing about how like how he'd stick to his word when he was campaigned, and 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 bodies, and he's famous, and he starts riding to Texas. And every time he comes to they know he's coming and they're hooting and hollering, and he winds up like thinking it's gonna be the Promised Land in Texas and very quickly winds about a little old place called the ALBUMO. Yeah, he he bumbles into the album. I mean, the guy was not like seeking, uh, seeking battle or seeking. He was seeking. He wanted, like good hunting, a bunch of lands right right, And so you know, it was one of those really bad um He's bad timing for Crockett. It maybe great timing for his um legacy, you know, immortality, but it was bad timing in terms of like being able to get it, you know, forty 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 realized until I read your book, Um 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 had always done, because the earlier brought 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 always almost always already there, yeah, and someone's always like, yeah, you really shouldn't go over there, and you're like, yeah, you know, I figured out. Like the brants are like, we don't watch you over there, and then tribes like you know that we conceded, like we made 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 like stake acclaim, but you never really file it. And then later you know, some guys like, but I stick, I did it too, and you have a big fight and one of your moves and it goes on and on and on, and so it wasn't like it probably didn't feel that weird to him to be going to Texas when he's 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, um 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, you know, he just he's been the wrong place at the wrong time, um, or you believe you can convince you 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 you know, American dream. And it's like it wasn't even really the American dream yet, no, we but we we like to call it the American dream, right, it was like 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, um, 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 it was a lot of It was just kind of like what they wanted, right, like land, land and land, and then uh, yeah, they all died. The animal Santa Ana comes in. He says, this is an interesting too about the death is after it doesn't take long. In general, Santa Anna, the 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 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 still and you think about being inside the Alamo and looking out, you know, through through the logs and slats and you see, you know, maybe three thousand 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, 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, um, you know, with muskets and bayonets and just impaling them. You know, it's brutal. It's brutal. And then Sam Houston destroy Santa Ana's army in nineteen minutes. Well was it was the era of retaliation, right, So then okay, watch this transition. Fifty years goes by and we're trying to settle. Fifty years goes by, and our 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, um, let's say, you know, eighteen fifties and you know Franklin and nobody really say, some 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 Leavy's brand new book. Thank you. Uh yeah, so what I found really pelling and I've I've been drawn to Arctic stories, um 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, And yeah, I like that. I've never been in I've never been into the organized explorations. Yeah, like I'm not even a big Lewis and Clark guy, like the Freewheeland individuals. Yeah. Well, um, in this case, what was so interesting is that no one knew so that my book is set, this book lebyrinthis is set in one and at that time, no one had been to the North Pole. No one even knew. There was a belief that the North Pole was a ring of ice circumnavigating the pole, and with once you broke through this layer of ice, that the cs were actually tropical. That's how confused people were. That's what they thought, what happened, that's what well, that's what they thought that that's what they thought was up there. Um. I mean now listen and uh. So the British had been going up and Franklin, you know, trying to make the Northwest passage much earlier. But essentially, you know, there was so much unknown um that the you know, higher northern latitudes were speculated about what actually existed up there. Now they had been um, 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 him, right. So it's really a strange group of people in a way because they Greeley had been running the signal, the Army's signal Corps. Uh. And he so he was a guy who had put up telegraph lines all across the American southwest. But he had a fascination with um the Arctic, and he'd read all about um, you know, previous Arctic expeditions. He'd read about Franklin, He'd read about um Kine and Beaumont and these people who these Brits who had been up north and come back and Um survived and written diaries in accounts and journals. He had all those, so he ends up going up to the UM. He was part of this thing called the International Polar Year, and so there was this scientific element to it. So they sent twenty five American soldiers from the basically from the Signal Corp. They were plucked out of the American Southwest. Many of them had spent hard winners in the Southwest, but they've never been to know. None of these men had ever been to the Arctic. Yea, and these guys have been like a little bit involved in the punitive expeditions after the Custer massacre. Yeah. In fact, Brainerd one of those guys had had been UM under UM Miles Nelson, Miles, Miles, Nelson, Nelson Miles, And so they mean they were tough, hardened men who were good at living in the outdoors, but they had no idea what they were getting into. UM. 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 um create the farthest north weather station in the world, and there were it was in concert with like fourteen other countries. This Austrian guy created this thing called the first International Polar Year. So they're gonna go up there and build a UM basically a weather station, a longhouse. They they brought all the wood for it. And then they were also going to try to find um what had happened to this ship called the Jeannette, which Hampton Sides writes about in UM in the Kingdom of ice Um. So it had two years ago, two years before the Jeannette had gone missing, never to be heard of. Right, So Greely 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 to 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, then you wind up up between Ellesmere Island and Green and uh, yeah, the top of the top of Greenland. So it's incredible if you know, the journey up there um is harrowing it. You know what ends up happening is they set up a long house sixty five ft long house. We don't explain something because this is like part of like how everything goes bad. I think it's important to point out. They get dropped off, right, and it's an unseasonably warm summer, and they sail up and drop him off way the hell up and they're like, hey, we'll come back next summer. Right, Well, the plant is so they get dropped off with all his freaking lumber and thousands and thousands and thousands of hounds of food, and they're 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. Uh. And if we don't come back next summer, we'll we'll definitely come the next summer after that, we promised. But what's so weird is that, like you're right, So it's like the warmest, the clear, the clearest, there's all this channel that goes up through you know, it goes through the Lincoln Uh pardon me. It goes through like the Smith Sound, the Cane basin the Lincolns or the lincolnsy is above Melville Melville Bay and you get up and where it narrows in the Smith Sound and then it opens up into the Kennedy Channel, and they're in this little um spit, this little inlet called Lady Franklin Bay. And right, so the plan is that they're gonna build this longhouse, do a bunch of science, take you know, hundreds of readings a day, umat seals and seals and bears and uh and musk oxen and very good musk oxen hunting up there by the way. Then um, they do pretty well. Yeah, yeah. And then well, let's see when the weather is good, because it's gonna be dark for like a hundred and thirty consecutive days. When the weather gets better, we'll go and try to break the record of farther north, or even go to the North Pole if we can pull that off. Um, and surely they'll come and re supply 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 to like they spend Thanksgiving and Christmas right and it's you know, they've got the Aurora Aurora borealis is going on. It's just like fireworks every night right and there. They've got tons and tons of food and Christmas parties, elaborate meals, are doing shooting competitions out on the ice. They're smoking cigars, they're just living large. Man. They're eating a lobster. They brought all the ship right and um, and you realize, like, so then everything looks good. You know, they're they're going on expeditions normal the out farther farther north, the back that sucker, they got fartherest west. And then he sends a couple of guys and they go way west and Ellesmere Island and to 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 in there. 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 you know, and then they so the boat doesn't come the first summer, and then they're like, well that's you know, we got a ship done. It will make it even better when it comes next time. 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 green Landic um their drivers interesting man, green Landic eskimos, right, so they Eskimo Fred and u Yen's Christiansen. They're really cool and they these guys, those guys tear it up. Oh my god, they're badass. Yeah yeah, and so what you know, they when they had gone up, they picked up. Um. Greeley knew that they needed um dogs and green Landic drivers who could handle them. And so he he negotiates to pay these guys and he enlist them into the army and uh, and then so they go on. They're they're waiting for those want to be kind of like heroes. Oh my god, So I mean, I you know, I get sad for Eskimo Fred when I think about him, UM. I don't want to really sort of spoiler, you know, well UM, so ask about Fred and Yen's Christiansen are also are there. They're not only good dog drivers, they're good shots and they're really good in kayaks. Right, so you know the green Landic people's the Inuit and the Etad. These guys are from, like they're called eta um like a blue wood these in the days, like a blue eyed eskimo or something like that in the old days. I'm not going to say that, I'm saying in those days. I mean yeah, because I mean, you know, when you think about UM interaction with UM, you know Europeans um, you know. But no, I haven't heard the expression actually because I thought Stephenson, you know, the Arctic, but I thought he was always trying to and I think that we'll say that for ext bring them next, UM. But so you know, they've got they've got these green land um 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 they go on these expeditions and they're they're burly man. They're like going out for sixty days in you know, minus average minus fifty degree temperatures UM carrying, and they have got these elaborate sort of UM stoves 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 and fuels and souls and ship and so then they will be like go out, you know and come back maybe two months later. Right, So me two guys, Brainerd and Lockwood. These are two of the main expedition are guys. And then and then Eskim my friend and YenS. YenS are Gen's you tell me ends Christian funels. But so you know, this is why it's called the triumph, the triumphant and tragic because the first part of this UM there's a ton of triumph to me, you know, UM in what humans are able to achieve in terms of um teamwork and being out you know for days and days on end. The things that you guys do, you know, like but it's not even comparable. Man that he had gone for years pregor Tex you know, um, and they're you know and greely like they're actually testing out all sorts of because really preferred wool and oil skin to seal skin because he got really he tried to wear what Native peoples were wearing, but he found it really um 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 that on the outside. Right. Um, because sleeping bags real quick, oh my sah. 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 eighty one. Yeah, it was interesting because the last sort of like the last big organized slaughter of Buffalo, yeah, was in Miles City named after General Miles. Was in Miles City in the winter. Was the last big commercial slaughter. And it was funny that these guys are gone and they got all this, They got all these coats and sleeping bags and stuff made out of these hides, and they're gone and probably unbeknown to them. The animals are like they're sleeping and 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, that idea that they have no idea that you know, while we're out here. Um, the communication was so you know, there's nothing. They build cairns and and uh leave notes and huge rock carrens. But yeah, so the sleeping bags were awesome because these guys they wo have three man 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 hide 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 twenty 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 four thousand, five thousand ft four thousand feet. So these guys are just like, you know, moving along It's incredible the kind of um deprivation they could endure. How are they carrying that gear? Sucking heavy? And so they have they have like these really cool sledges. We haven't established why they need to split. Oh, so talk about why they need to split, and then how they move so far they haven't moved. Oh oh yeah, but I'm talking so well Greeley. But before the okay, so let's just back it up for a second. So first winter, Uh, they have a great time party, Uh, go farthest north everything school. Uh. Then the summer, your rescue or resupply doesn't happen. Greeley still keeps sending out, um, you know, 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 the ice is breakable, and a lot of piggybacking. Yeah, I mean they do a lot like humping. We're going on a long trip. Drag a bunch of ship unloaded, dragged the sledge back, put a bunch more ship on it, drag it up to their unloaded go back sleep, moving another mile, Go back at the ship and move it brural doubling back man. And so after the uh 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 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 eight U and it says we're going right. So they they hammer Fort Conger's shut, dump a bunch of the um, you know, food and um for the dogs, leave all the ship for the dogs. Oh that's kind of sad too, Like they leave all these damn dogs and they take off in boats. Donald lead and one of the dogs swims out after him, and they keep thinking he'll turn around, he'll turn around, and there's a hair, there's a haunting line, we say, like eventually his head goes underwater like a seal. Right, and Schneider, one of the guys who's been taking care of the dogs, just uh like is staring at this dog and then he just turns away and he's gone. Um. But so that the decide, the decision to retreat is I want I had to start thing in there. Yeah, that you spent a lot of detailed a lot of time on is the blunders and mishaps that plague the resupply ships. Like one of the resupply ships just simply gets stuck in the ice and the boat gets crushed and then there sinks and there's all this off and then those guys have this like harrowing like riding on ice floes and this harrowing journey, and somehow they don't all wind up dead right the rescue. So, yeah, the Neptune, like the first ship, they're supposed to come get them. What's kind of fun in the 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 retreat, and just even before, while they're out watching to see if the ship's gonna 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 they are all sorts of blenders where people don't do what they were supposed to that they don't leave, they don't leave the food, and then you know, the ship gets crushed, and so like you said, then these guys are all like clambering around the ice and they have to get like, you know, rescued by there's 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 the Proteus ends up with That's 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. Is they're standing there on ice watching it go, watching its masts just plummet into all the food, with all the freaking food. It's so brutal. And then you you know, you you're like, okay, well, so what's gonna happen to them? And then then these guys on the Proteus are in a um race for survival themselves. You know, they're in little whale boats that are you know, ore boats, and they're trying to trying to figure out how to get out of there, while Greeley's moving down through these heinous like you you mentioned leads there the the like the pathways of water through giant icebergs and huge ice flows, and he's on you know, they've got uh twenty eight ft steamship steam launch. It's called um dubbed the lady Greeley and you know, it's like a ten pound vessel. And then they've got like a small flotilla of ore boats. Um, and so all their crap is in these boats and they're they're like tethered together at first, and they're trying to make it south through gy 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 and did some kayaking around and it's I mean, it's terrifying. Right. Um, We're we're in Greenland and this Uh. I got in this boat and the guy is gonna 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 they look like like dinosaur like Stegasaurus backs, you know. And I'm like, hey, why aren't there in this green Land at seal hunter? Guy? I'm like, why aren't there any life I gets 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 gonna be maybe you're gone. Right. So anyways, had a guy in the I had a guy in the coast Guard in southeast Alaska talk about just how sick you got of the accidents. Oh my god, He's like, you know what. Then I had a couple they're both sinks. They make it to shore, we find them dead on the beach spring frozen to death. Yeah, I mean, and so what's once they set Once they Greely 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, their army men. They weren't meant to do this. They weren't supposed to. It wasn't really in the plan. I mean they I guess they thought they could go overland 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 as icebergs and these things called flows. There's all you know. They're flatter like big, big like rafts of ice. Some of them are miles long. They spend one day looking at at a iceberg go by or a flow and it's like fifteen 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. It was icebergs there six high, yeah, and then it's much more of it below and then old ice yeah. And then like ice ale, the boat will get pinched between two pieces of ice and it pops that boat like a pimple, just shoots it up out and then the boash is on the ice and everybody camps on the ice for days and a new crack forms. They shoved their boat back into the crack. It's so brutal. And so they're constantly like 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 they're on this berg for like 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 like in their exposed I mean they can sleep sometimes some of them. They have a big tepee um. And then they also have tarps that go over the boats that they're yarding up onto the iceberg every day. But the the exhaustion when you think about of like of taking all this equipment and getting it up onto a an iceberg, maybe tethering the lady Greeley to the side with these ice anchors, and then hours later you're getting hammered and you have to You're gonna get crushed, so you have to put all that crapt back in the water. I Meanwhile, you're looking at your food stores. And Greeley was you know, he had men that were their job was to exactly how many actually weighing it out with a scale, right, and you're going and he's going, we have, you know, forty days rations left, and by about October, 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 were like, oh my god, oh they'll have left ten thousand rations and then it gets there and there's like forty rations. Well they must all be the next spot. And they get down the next spot that there's some lemon. There's a lemon. Yeah, there's I mean, there's so many heartbreaking moments where you think, Okay, they're gonna they're gonna pull this off, right, you know, they 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, well our ship sunk and we didn't leave them. And so they're like what you're like? And then you know, Greeley is 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 they're like there's mutiny that goes on. You know, there's theft of food, like once they're all once they make it the capes of me and they've got like a certain amount of food and they're trying to parse this out like, okay, if we can survive the winner, it's gonna last us maybe till March, you know. And then they've got there like dispatch two guys to be out hunting seals every day. You've got ends and ask them about Fred out in the kayak trying to shoot some seals. Bears are, you know? And then there's all sorts of shore birds and at a certain point, I mean they keep stick and walrus is what they lose them. Oh my god, it's so brutal because a walrus could would would be their salvation, you know. But they shoot the walrus and then it like slithers off of the iceberg and they will be like this blood slick and then just trying to you know. 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 dubbed Eskimo Point because it's full of artifacts and a whale carcass and pieces of like equipment made from ivory and structures. And then you think like here's these like 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 have these marine based mammal hunters who were thriving and raising babies, right and and well and so you thinking any of the things without the weather equipment and the guns and the man made materials and yeah, and they were just like how like the dichotomy of of the skill sets, right, yes, you can see that these are like raising children there and right across the way like still you know, the entire villages. Um, yeah, I mean I think Greeley, these guys were certainly not as well suited to the environment as the people had had been their way 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. They built these some of them scrimping nets, right, you know, and they were shooting lots of birds and so you know, but at a certain point, a lot of Arctic fox. They had 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 um. But the uh, 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 leaping 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 sacks of frage and all the plants. They're just like putting it in their mouths. It's so it's sort of ghoulish. Do you feel that it gives too much a way to talk about I don't want to call it rescues, a little dramatic to talk about. Not for the film version, no, not for the hand like for the well it says this in the back of the book. I know I was seven people live. Yeah yeah, so well yeah, and what I want to talk about, are you protable talking about the whether or not? Oh me, 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 at his name. Where later when people realize that after the whaleship Essex trategy, there had tragedy, there had been some cannibalism, and someone's asked like, hey, did you know Fred Jones he was on Essex And he says, no, him, I had him. Yeah, so, uh, Greeley didn't want to own up to the cannibalism. Yeah. I mean so in the end, you don't like talking about this. Oh, I know, I really want to talk about this. I mean it shows meat eater right, um, meat to meat. Yeah. And I've eaten folk, yeah, because I had a Yeah I have right now, I have a cadaver. I have a cadaver's bone crammed up in my tooth. And yeah, a lot of that comes loose. I've eaten folks, and I've taken to nibble n in little bits. How is it. I don't mind it. That doesn't count. Yeah, he's not the same as like your friend is frozen over there. No, but Yanni's eating Uh, he's drank human breast milk and he's eating human meat because he's eating placenta. Oh oh you did it? You did that? Yeah kind of. I want to say it counts either, Really, what does it take. It's like throwing on the barbecue and if you eat it raw to make it count it raw? Well, yeah, no you can. We we had the placentis shipped off and it was dehydrated and came back and pills. Wow, how do you feel good? Strong? Like bull just like just like I take my vitamins every day. I like to think him as a canibal. Anyways, so you know, there's okay, there's no question, like get into the whole like like they they they exhumed bodies later and butchered. Right, So here's the thing you got. Why don't you You're not being just lay it out all right, listen, cheer me out. People are going to not buy your book because they heard about the end. No, no, the journey. Listen. Everybody knows that that there's cannibalistic party. Let's check this out. Hey, Phil are you were you like, oh, dude, I'm gonna buy this book. But then you're like, oh, they eat everybody in the end. Never mind, I'm not buying it. No, Honestly, as I've been listening to this conversation, I've been thinking about going to Karen, our producer, and saying, if she has a copy that I can read, he's not gonna he's gonna buy it, but he's gonna look, he's gonna go look for a free copy. I'll spread the word. But yeah, so La device buddy Levy, Phil is gonna go see if he can't get himself a free one. It's it's so it's a funny thing connected to that in the in the research. So, um, I have a first reader. He's the guy I dedicated the book to my friend John Larkin, And uh, you know, so I got the sources in the original version. Now, so I know how all my sourcing is going. In one of the major books about it. It's It's title is six came Back. And John's reading along and like chapter three and he's like, huh, I wonder how this is gonna work out? You know it's came Back. It's like, yeah, that's a great point, man. Yeah, so no, I'm not worry. What's interesting about it was called and then they shoot this dog, poor old Yether would be different. Um, you know what I want to do? Uh we always asked this that I can remember. What's it called when you put a quote in the beginning of a book. Oh, the epigraphy, Graham, that's a gramatic. 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. Free that guy, by the way, nonsen Uh, he broke Greeley's farthest north record thirteen years later. So they held it for only short time. Let's get back to the cannibal eating folks and get and then how they eventually some of them lived. Well, you don't, It doesn't matter. Yeah, I mean, so these guys are in a dire situation and they begin, um, they begin to die of starvation, right, And so what ends up happening? Um. One of the most maccabb elements of it is so they're somebody died, the first guy dies, uh, and they have to get together and muster the strength to um like carry them up on this place they dubbed cemetery Hill. Cemetery Hill, we'll call it. Um, you've got another option, and you know, so they put they start burying these guys. And at first they have the strength to dig you know, a sort of fifteen inch deep. Great, yeah, but even still they're kind of covering them with snow and right, I mean it's like a screet it's like hard ass froze and screen slope. Right. And so they begin to um, they begin to starve, and you know, there's all sorts of um attempts to go get 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 point people 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 title crack. So they're near the shore and you know what, you don't you don't hear about the the cannibalism until the rescue. Um. So there's this rather amazing um effort by the navy to go get them, and it's all spearheaded by Greeley's wife, Henrietta. And so they finally arrived there and these guys are into it. Well, this is the third year, so they've been on they've been at capes of beIN for like eight but there's no but you know what they find, Well, here's 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 cash and that turns out the lemons are wrapped in newspaper, and they start taking these scraps and newspaper and reading them, and they're reading about themselves, right, and they're reading about that the president was shot and died that like, and they're starting to get like little torn torn bits of what's going on. One of them learns that in his absence, he's been promoted Lieutenant Lockwood. And so that they come back from these cash is right, and they I love that scene where they're like they'll hold them up by candle light. And and so the lemons, which you know, they've been sent along to help work scurvy. So the lemons are wrapped in all this paper and so they're they're reading them. And once once Lockwood uh learns that he's been promoted. I love that because he then he any 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 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. Yeah, And so the Lockwood his first act, as uh, you know, of the first lieutenant, is to go place this cairn and this pendulum that they've brought along 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 there, and they're not the negatives what do you call them? Yeah, he has to plate the photographic plates. Yeah, he sticks in because like, if we all die, there's a better chance they'll find it down there right and in in the cairn, and that pendulum end up figuring in in uh 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 and grubs and all this crap. Right, So you got guys that are frozen next to you. Hey man, I'm not down. I would have done the same thing. That's that's my question. So, like, I mean, would you eat do you think you'd eat? Would you eat another person? Before I died? Yeah, I was like Phil died and I'm like, well, I would die too, And let's say Phil, Hell, yeah, Phil, I would I would have I would have my dying words to 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 fro. I mean, they're like they're in the freezer. You know, they're in cold storage. Right, So when they 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 gonna kind of put them in preserving baths, right fluid yeah, So like um, 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 that paybe um likely uh was one of the perpetrators because the cuts are precise, uh. And he's the only surgeon on the expedition, right, And so then there's others that are you know, slightly dismembered, and um, you know, Chunk's 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 Ellison, 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 rescue ships, but he dies. Um and Root. So of the six they make a pack that they'll they'll never tell who eight 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. Um, you know, I think he's protecting the memory of his man. He's protecting the families. I would do that, Like if we ate philed, would you picture on it 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? I probably wouldn't tell anybody who ate. It's like because because when you weren't around, when you weren't around, I'd be like, yeah, I ate him. Those kids don't want to know that he got eaten. Who's the guy Albert Packer right, Um, the guy who ate Oh yeah, blunding him at him. I've been to Um, I've been to one of the caves that packers supposedly hit out in Yeah it was it was it cool in Wyoming? Yeah, yeah, slept in there. I'm not joking. We did it freaking out a little bit, a little bit, you know. So I think the question is like, why are we still um what is it about cannibalism that still carries this um taboo stigma? Are you asking me? I'm I'm posing it as a 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 whatever is old, uh, that thing that makes us not want to eat each other? Yeah, I think that like the like the incests taboo, the cannibalism taboo. I mean, these are like things that had to have occurred and been pretty forceful at a very early time and human development. Right if you do just generally see like why, I 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. Um so but you know we're we're ractional enough now to know that, like, okay, if if we're out there together, if if one of us dies, all right, you know, it's cool, Like, go ahead, I'm already dead, you know, I'm I don't need it. But you know this is we have to do place place, um, a little bit of ourselves in the time where a period where where which was not okay? Um, so I picture like this. Say you're in a horrible situation today and you want to 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, 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 body. Yeah, it's gonna color. It's gonna color Like they might accept it and get it and all that, it's gonna 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 gonna 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're let's put cannibalism on the cover, and I'm like, you know what, Okay, that's a great idea for marketing. Um, you know, but you know it's true. I mean, everybody triumphant and tragic and cannibalistic, greely polar expedition, laborate device. Yeah that sounds good. But I mean, look, we all remember the dinner party. Um, that's what That's the one thing you can tell you about the dinner party. That's those guys they're somewhere, they at each other, right, and all the other stuff. That's you know, sort of heroic about what they were, how they were able to spride, but in the colors an expedition. But I try not to, Um, you know, I try to handle the cannibalism in a way that doesn't make it Um, I don't know, scious, I guess, Yeah, you treat respectfully. Yeah, it's important to treat cannibalism with some respect. And I'm only bringing it up because it comes up now and then. Um, it's the thing that we muse on and are curious about. So I'm not trying to over I'm not trying to overdo it. No, I get it. I'm going for the salacious details where the you know, I mean, I asked you about sex on the frontier and I asked about canibalism. Both happen frequently. Uh it turns out I don't want to talk about it. Uh man, how are we doing? We got it? We've been going for three minutes? How long we been going for films? Yeah? Perfect? I have a question though before we go. No, you get a closing thought in a minute. But I want the books, okay, 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. I'm not saying you should skip history class, but you go to history class, you're like, Okay, boys and girls, this happening, that happening, this is happening, that happened, and here we are today. Um. 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 towards these, appreciate it, 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 like that that that Crockett right, and what it tells you about American politics and what it tells you about American Violence, and then um, and then I keep calling the Crockett. The book is American Legend. The title is American Legend the Real Life Adventures of Davy Crockett, and then Labyrinth Device, the subtitle being The Triumphant and Tragic Greeley Polar Expedition just kind of like it's sort of it's like these like harrowing, adventurous snapshots of sort of like where we were as a people, what our priorities were, 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 of the unknown, right, because in the case of 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 for Conger, they're the highest living humans on Earth. Yeah, Like they were going farther north than than the indigenous indigenous hunters went well, right, because they're like, Okay, there's no game out there, you know, and why would I go there? You know, you might reconsider, right, but so yeah, I really like that the notion of of how history can you know, there's a narrative there, so there's always just incredible stories. And it also is a sort of a snapshot into what people were thinking, the way they behaved, Um, they were willing to do, how much they could take brutally tough, toughest people. I mean, um yeah, just the idea that you can um survive some of these things, to me makes makes going out you know, hunting, and 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 I'm excited to um, you know too to me really December three, Labyrinth Device comes out. Yeah, you probably go in order right now, right now, hold your order and stend of the book. Oh yeah yeah yeah, it's it's um available available now. Um I did. This is so funny. My son Okay, he's twenty five years old and he and his friends they are they are you know, they're grown men, and they've been arguing apparently Hunter, my son and Kyle and this kid have it up. You named your kid Hunter, named him Hunter's Moon. Uh, no, that name backfires on people. There's a per core hunter's name Hunter right, but he not a guarantee. You may still be Time's not a guarantee. But it's funny because they've been arguing this is and these are relatively intelligent men, and they've been arguing about this question of relatively highly intelligent child. But this, this just makes me wonders because I have my own position on it. So that the argument is whether a man and I don't know who? That is the question you want to ask a question. I want to ask you if there's a if there's a grown kind of grown man, 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 ways that he speculates he would do it. One uh, sometimes he talks about that he would crush its throat and there's all their favorite way that he talks about is you get a good grip on its lower jaw. Oh yeah, you get a good grip on its upper jaw, and you just hold it and tired it out the old mandibular because I can't close its mouth, and he's like he would hold it and hold it and hold it and hold it and hold it until it so tuckered out 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. They if you grab a dog's lower jaw and just hold it with your you know, as hard as you can, they they can't bite from above now. So but the question is, how do you get ahold 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've got two dogs they're locked, the 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. Yeah. Yeah, you have not field tested this though, right, No, But I it's true of a lot of things. Yeah, So you're gonna just say that your brother has a position, do you have? But do you think this is moral? When he gets to drinking and talking, When we get to talking about what would you do. He's like, oh, I'll tell what I would do. But yeah, I mean I think it's absurd. Like, 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 like you're how much you hundre pounds? So let's say I mean a huge wolf. Like everybody likes to talk about the ones that are over a hunter pounds, there's a lot that aren't. So there's a wolf, this wolf seventy five pounds and yawning him getting a skirmish. Yeah, is it possible? 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 them up. So could Yannie, Big Strap and Latvian throw down with the wolf? And when if he came back and told me he killed a wolf, I would be like, that's cool, you did it with one on one. Yeah, mano, mano, mano e par peril. If I had to deal with the pack, would be mano I lobo right, pack, That's where Yanni jaws limits. All right, I just went mess with you. He yi thinks that he might run into trouble with a large pack. Right, what what else you got, Yanni? Um? I want to go back to Crockett real quick and just figure out tell me. Can you 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, um, part alligator and my mama was a bear, my daddy was. So it's just him just talking. Yeah, So he was making up stories about himself and then that, you know, get written up in papers. And then there's this um playwright who ended up going, man, this this guy is fantastic, Like he's this guy's awesome. So let's just make a character, uh about his na like Nimrod Wildfire. Yeah, you know, it will make a character that everyone actually knows haunts bears, lives out in Tennessee. And then that play like tours around the cities. You know, it's like in Washington, India's like Broadway. Uh, and you've got this character, this flamboyant frontiersman character who's like talking like the country bumpkin. And then um, everyone knows it's based on my weight and wild cats and jump Mississippi and one big jump and people meet Crocket and be like, oh, you're the guy that You're the guy who can leave the Mississippi'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, oh wow, this guy is amazing, like he's all these things. He never um like discouraged them from believing it just snowball at that point. But I was sort of wondering that the beginning, like imagine, okay, you know how in the beginning, yeah, I mean, it was just 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 because 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 bar in the face, of a track and bowl. Let's stay down the road. 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 track pole, and people are like, did you really kill all them bears of that track and pool? And I can't say it ain't true, right, It all of a sudden, pretty soon you're just like that crazy Johnnie, that guy in his check. But you're like, my god, I'll tell you a story, you know, and it's just pretty soon you kind of create like a larger than life. And it was like in the end, you did hit a baron ahead of the track and pole. That's pretty awesome. Oh yeah, I mean that you did that, don't mess. I know, like see that power ring on his hands him? Is that Oh yeah, that'll comatch, you know, blinding blinding flash of silver. Right. But I mean I think that's a that's an excellent explanation of how it works. You know. Um, it builds from the lower and you know, you're like, you're not gonna like, right now, are you gonna argue the fact that you if somebody said, yeah, like the bar there you have bad mo phone took down a bear, you know shooks. Well nothing, um, what else you got. I've just been looking at while we've been talking about this, the spots where Greeley went Fort Conger and the map around that area. Man, looks like a bad place spent a couple of years. Well yeah, especially when um, you know, when the sun congress as farthest north. They made it no, no, they so from Fort Conger they made it to like eighty two degrees four spike camps. Yeah, I mean that's when they would go off in the sledges, right, So they made expeditionary treks out, which were really dangerous too, because there was always the danger of breaking through the ice. Um. Part of the reason that green landing dudes were so useful is that they could they could read the ice. They would know, you know, um how thin it was that they were. They they spend their lives there, whereas the army guys were learning on the fly, and these green landed guys would say like, don't go don't go there. Yeah, there's a point where they're looking at a chunk of ice want or they get across it and they see how walrus is their busting their heads up through. Oh, man, and he's like, if the warris can bust his head up through it, you can't go. Yeah, and then then they have to like retreat. But yeah, so they went considerably farther north than Fort Conger Um. You know, I think I think it was thirty days out um on the sledge to get to the farthest north and then thirty 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 laveryn device. Thank you man, Phil. Yeah, I'm excited to pay money for the book December. You know what, I'm gonna tell everyone that works here. I don't know how many copies this around the office, but I'm an account for all of them. And I'm not letting Phil go near to Sun's bitches and fills buying his own right now, Phil, gladly, yep, getting in my cart right now here we go. It's just close seal the deal. It's actually I'm just put in your cart. Let me see, send me that little order, show us that little order complete button. Yeah, you know you're you're you're saying it's that December is not a good mind today. It's actually the cold Read Amazon an Amazon top ten pick um for the month of December. Hello, I'm very psyched about that. So when you're sitting there all cold, Yeah, like you think you're cold? What I really want to be called? Uh? You tell your foot falls off and you don't know it. Don't tell me about 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. Great out of the tent. At that point, you can't really be there mentally. Oh, I mean, if your foot just fell off and you didn't know it, it's a little bad. Everything's not firing. This is the last thing about these guys. They have this like massochistic tendency to uh sit around and even right down, like even right down. If I could have anything to eat, here's what it would be. And that's an interesting list because the stuff they eat isn't like what you know, you'd like pepperoni pizza, right. These dudes are like, um, these guys are like Pete de foi gras. Some of them they think of their like lentil soup, elaborate meal they've ever had, like in or 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, right, and you sit there and go and it's you're right, it's totally massa because they can't have any of it. They're eating freaking seal blubber. You know where my mind goes where those when you go into a gas station and they got that glass display case full all that brown food. I sometimes think about if I could just get into one of those glass cases, or if our diet is 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 bridles and whatever they got. Con dogs. I'm all about beef, you know, corn dogs and pizza and like fried mac and cheese. Oh yeah yeah, if you can fry it. A way to fry up some mac and cheese, That's what I get thinking about. H Yanni gets thinking about that breast milk. Let's gonna get some lunch down. Boys. Hey, al right, it's been great. You have to come back. I appreciate it. Man, there's there's a couple other stories that I haven't even told you. Not you roll six books. We only talked about two of them. Well, he don't even have anything to do with the books or other stuff I did. But you know, I want to have you back. We're gonna just like uh, one time we had a guy on I wanted to mind again, and I just asked him how long would need to go by before we ask if you want to come back? What do you say? A year? Because he wanted to finish a book he's working on. Yeah, well, so I gotta when you get that, you get that, uh claud Dallas Man, get that Claude Dallas book wrapped up? Yeah. I actually am in the throws of trying to figure out the next move. What man, Yeah, I mean Claude has been covered though an Yeah, yeah, long time about well has he been covered? Well? No, yeah, everything's been all the low hanging fruit has 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 it's the worst thing in the world. We'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, lick, writing books is horrible. Uh, all right, Buddy Leavy Labyrinth, Device to Triumphant and Tragic, and if you're so inclined, Cannibalistic Greeley 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 bet you. And 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,