In short
A conversation between Matt (host) and historian/author Buddy Levy about writing narrative history through brutal encounters in the Age of Conquest, plus Levy’s field expeditions in the Amazon and the Arctic. They discuss Spanish expeditions’ logistics (food, slavery, terror), how historical sources are sifted and sometimes politically padded, and Levy’s personal experiences with rainforest dangers and Arctic survival.
Guest backgrounds
Buddy Levy is a creative-writing–trained historian and author who published his first story at 14. He grew up in Ketchum, Idaho, in the shadow of Ernest Hemingway. He researches by reading primary texts and doing immersive expeditions (e.g., hiking the Andes, canoeing the Amazon, camping in Svalbard).
Key claims
Conquistador campaigns relied on large numbers of enslaved people and local alliances; “porters” and “tortilla makers” were often enslaved. Historical accounts are dynamic and may be shaped by political motives. In the Arctic, early explorers often misjudged conditions (e.g., expecting warmer seas) and suffered extreme survival outcomes.
Notable examples
Aztec temple “ritual” imagery (eating humans); Cortez recruiting ancillary villages; claims about smallpox arriving with a conquistador; Amazon vampire bat anticoagulant saliva; ayahuasca trip with a pink dolphin vision; piranha fishing with hot dogs; polar bear–killed campground fence installer in Svalbard; early 1900s North Pole blimp/airship attempts; ice floe breakups threatening igloos.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOExploring Historical Narratives
0:45 to 6:10
Discussion revolves around Buddy's writing style and historical storytelling.
“But, you know, once I saw my byline for the first time, I was, you know, because I grew up in this in the shadow of Ernest Hemingway in Ketchum, Idaho.”
The Dark Side of Conquistadors
6:10 to 9:50
The hosts discuss the brutal realities of food scarcity and slavery during the conquest.
“You are trying to get the story, but at every turn, it is completely, like you were saying, you're rolling around with, you know, quote, unquote, three women who make tortillas for 600 guys.”
Research and Expeditions
9:50 to 13:00
Buddy shares his research process and experiences during expeditions related to his books.
“tournaments and if they're going to win it all i don't know i'm liking duke i'll be honest i'm liking Duke.”
Adventures in the Amazon
13:19 to 14:04
Buddy describes his thrilling experiences in the Amazon rainforest.
Ayahuasca Experience and Animal Encounters
14:04 to 18:36
Discover the host's ayahuasca trip and encounters with Amazonian wildlife.
“No, this guy, my guide, Jose Xingongwu, cool dude, man.”
Adventures in the Amazon Rainforest
18:36 to 21:30
Learn about the unique experiences of fishing for piranhas and swimming in the jungle.
“And, you know, there are all sorts of things like in the Amazon, for instance, the sounds, you know, in the evening.”
Journey to the Arctic and Survival Stories
21:30 to 25:38
Explore the host's journey to the Arctic and survival tales of early explorers.
“again, well, you know, there's so, so many elements to it.”
Life in Svalbard and Polar Bear Encounters
25:38 to 28:00
Understand daily life in Svalbard and the dangers posed by polar bears.
“So they cruise around on dog sled and with snow machines in the winter.”
Adventurous Encounters in Greenland
28:00 to 29:22
Learn about extreme adventures and the harsh realities of Greenland's waters.
The Craft of Seal Skin Kayaks
29:22 to 30:48
Discover the construction and importance of seal skin kayaks in Arctic culture.
“So they are expert in paddling these things, you know.”
Show all 24 chapters
Historical Arctic Expeditions
30:48 to 33:03
Explore the misconceptions and challenges faced by early Arctic explorers.
“And, you know, they're the ones who invented the whole, the older kayaks actually look pretty much, the designs have stayed similar.”
Life and Survival in Extreme Conditions
33:03 to 35:07
Understand the experiences of explorers and indigenous peoples in the Arctic.
“And I mean, there's like whales and beluga and, you know, they're hardy.”
North Pole Myths and Realities
35:07 to 36:08
Uncover myths about the North Pole and its actual characteristics.
“So they'll, they'll, I'll tell them I'm writing about the Arctic and they say, um, the only thing they know is Shackleton, which is one of the most famous explorers.”
Upcoming Shows and Rumors
42:00 to 42:30
The hosts discuss upcoming shows and potential secret performances.
“Both of them are one of them's definitely sold out.”
Amazonian Warriors Myth
42:30 to 43:45
A conversation about the legend of Amazonian women warriors and its historical context.
“Did you ever get to meet the Amazonians?”
Uncontacted Tribes and Myths
43:45 to 46:05
Exploration of uncontacted tribes and the persistence of myths about female warriors.
“That was kind of what I was thinking about just yesterday.”
Cannibalism in History
46:05 to 48:50
Discussion on cannibalism among explorers and its historical implications.
“So he was like huge, like Andre the Giant.”
Expedition Tales and Survival
48:50 to 51:15
Personal stories from expeditions highlight survival challenges and moral dilemmas.
“You know, like they didn't want to name it what it really was.”
Henry's Fate on the Expedition
51:15 to 56:00
A shocking tale about an expedition member's fate due to survival choices.
Adventures in Borneo
56:00 to 56:48
Hear about intense experiences during a multi-sport adventure race in Borneo.
“This was, I think I mentioned to you, I had followed these crazy multi-sport adventure racers around the world for about seven years.”
Encountering Wildlife and Dangers
56:48 to 1:01:12
The host shares stories of sleepovers with snakes and close encounters with monitor lizards.
“And so I was doing some research and I was a journalist then writing about these sports.”
Crawling Through Bat Caves
1:01:12 to 1:03:10
Discussing the challenges faced in bat caves during the race, including health risks.
“and then there's these bat caves that actually are the The local population they harvest these birds.”
The Franklin Expedition
1:03:10 to 1:06:34
Learn about the Franklin Expedition and its historical significance concerning the Arctic.
“Well, I'm doing a fourth Arctic book because I am the master of the Arctic.”
Challenges of Exploration
1:06:34 to 1:09:02
Exploration challenges and humorous anecdotes from historical voyages are discussed.
“I mean, even in the case of Oriana and River of Darkness, like he thought like what he learned going down the river would have helped.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:01Shane Gillis:All right, we're live. We're live. Buddy Levy, thank you for coming. It's Levy or Levy? It's Levy. Levy. Hell yeah, I got it right. Thank you for coming. Hey, my pleasure, Matt. I've been using your books to fuel the Patreon and, well, thank you for that. I appreciate it, man. Dude, it's been, I mean, I guess we do have a symbiosis going here, but it's really, dude, they're, first of all, I thought, like, you know, I read the books and I'm like, man, this historian really is a good writer. I would like read and I'm like, this guy can really kind of really turn a good sentence. And then I learned you studied as a creative writer.
0:36Shane Gillis:Yeah, that's true. I actually published my first story when I was 14 years old. And it was a it was a bird hunting story about me, you know, killing a chucker partridge, which no one knows about. But, you know, once I saw my byline for the first time, I was, you know, because I grew up in this in the shadow of Ernest Hemingway in Ketchum, Idaho. and I was like, I just like telling stories, you know? And it was, so I wasn't ever good at anything else. I ended up being an English major. So I just followed that path, you know, from the time I was a kid. Well, that's why I really liked the books. And I was talking to you before we came in here.
1:13Shane Gillis:I was like, how did I, I don't know how I heard about the book. I was like, maybe it was from someone I follow. It might've just been like a random search. I genuinely don't remember. I do think it's from the Josh Reads books thing, but I forget. That was Conquistador. but that was the thing i was reading it and i'm like man this this history book is like it's just focused on the narrative itself rather than just like it's just i get drowned in facts reading history where i'm like dude just tell me the story tell me the story and then and then what you do is what's nice is you give the occasional historical zinger where it's like actually this thing was that and it's like okay it's kind of cool to know yeah i gotta say it was i gotta i gotta tip the hat first and foremost it was the books are great well and i've really enjoyed listening to you guys make things like human ritual sacrifice and smallpox funny.
2:00You know, that's, you know, because when I'm writing it, I'm thinking, you know, this isn't really comedy, but you guys crush it.
2:08Shane Gillis:There is something very funny about, you know, we're talking obviously about the Aztec, the conquistador thing, but there is something just that I thought was funny about never meeting a certain type of people before. Because the way they like brought them into their temples like yo, this is cool. Check this out And it would just be like a dead dog with his skull Crushed in and like a dead kid they're eating and you'd be like what the fuck what is this? They're like well, you don't think this is cool like we think this is cool and they're like no No, that's the worst thing you can do like no, this is like the coolest thing you can do and then the civilizations clashed Right, it is funny to be like yeah.
2:45Shane Gillis:I want to show you something very important to me. We were eating teenagers and you're like No, yeah Yeah. Yeah. And when I write these books too, it's always like people are like, you know, why do you focus so much on this, this darkness, all this stuff, you know? And I'm like, well, I just, I like to see, as you say, you know, different cultures coming together and also what happens to people when they're on the edge of survival. Like how are they going to contend with this new world or this new place? And it really intrigues me to see what, you know, to what degree people, especially back then, you know, like we're able to figure it out and just and move on, you know.
3:26Shane Gillis:Yeah, it's pretty it is pretty wild because it's like especially the food thing and all that, like in Conquistador and all those books, like these guys are going on these missions and like, yeah, you only have so much food and they run out. Now it's like we got to drum up food in a place we've never been to. Right. So that I kind of just like you have to every time you want to eat, you have to raid basically a village or just be like try to be cool. right yeah that's the thing um or or have slaves it's yeah you know very helpful that that also blew my mind in terms of the uh conquistador hey nate don't fucking laugh we're talking about a different time period and they were handy you can't deny having 2 000 slaves would be handy to get food nate we're talking history all right i don't agree with it personally but well i needed food and i had either zero or two thousand i'd like i can get food whatever anyway And by the way, I used to sugarcoat it.
4:20You know, when I was writing it, I would be like, they had 2 ,000 porters and women who were making tortillas. And my friend, this writer friend, she goes, yeah, those are called sex slaves. And I'm like, well, no, they were like bearers and porters. She's like, those were slaves. They took them. She's right.
4:38Shane Gillis:That was the sheer volume. This is what shocked me. Because it would be like, you know, I think Cortez landed with what, like 600 guys? and like 2 ,000 slaves. Was that true? Well, he didn't come with very many slaves. He did bring one that had smallpox, which was useful for him. That guy, yeah. Yeah. For some reason, I thought Cortez had a start out with a lot. Maybe I'm thinking of someone else. Yeah, well, what he ended up doing, Cortez ended up like recruiting these ancillary villages, like the Totonics and the Talascans. And he then did deals and said, can I use your guys to go get this major leader, who you call Mocteshoma, right?
5:18Shane Gillis:Wait, so I could have sworn Cortez rolled up. They had their porters. Yeah, but they got those from the villages that they subsumed. Yeah, yeah. First arrived. So he didn't roll. It was then, I'm thinking of the Pizarro's. Yeah, yeah. That guy set out the party with like 2 ,000 slaves. Yeah, but at any rate, they couldn't have done it. alone and even then they were often outnumbered significantly you know yeah but they just um figured out ways to manipulate terrorize yeah well there was that story from the and i'm gonna actually talk about this later today but there was a story from the um gonzalo's last stand or when he's like fighting that spanish civil war he's fighting another spaniard and it was actually hit gonzalo's slave who ran out and chopped the guy's head off nice and just carried it around downtown like yeah we got it and he had to be like bro why don't do that to a fellow spaniard the hell are you doing he was dancing in the end zone on the guy he was but yeah it's just very yeah it was like the war was to stop slavery in south america and the dude slave cut the guy's head off who was trying to stop slavery yeah it's pretty he was like nah fuck that dude gonzalo's anyway but yeah it was definitely a complicated time for sure complicated time but That is, it is so brutal.
6:41Shane Gillis:You are trying to get the story, but at every turn, it is completely, like you were saying, you're rolling around with, you know, quote, unquote, three women who make tortillas for 600 guys. They're obviously sex slaves. The guys, some of the fucking guys were probably sex slaves. You know what I mean? It's got to be somewhat prison rules. Well, it gets lonely out on the trail. You know? but but yeah i i just got to say the uh the books are they're nice because it is just it's the story it's like the thing that happened based on all the historical record which how how like is that boring researching that like how how do you get through that because i feel like i would kind of go crazy that's a great question um no you know when i i love the research part of it um and i it's like two components to it for me there's the actual sitting there and reading everything that's ever been written or to the extent that I can, everything that's ever been written about the particular subject so that then I know the story and then I start writing.
7:45But then I also, you know, I always go to the place that I'm going to write about and do an expedition of my own so I can make it as real and seem like, even though I'm casting myself back maybe 500 years, to try to be on the ground and in the environment that I'm writing about so that I can feel the sense of the place and the, see the flora and fauna. And we can maybe talk about some of those, um, expeditions that I've done, but you know, it's, for me, it's fun to immerse in that it's kind of like doing like a mini, uh, a master's degree or a PhD for every book, you know, and it actually leaves a fricking mark, you know, I mean, I'm on my 10th book and, um, every time it's a huge divot out of my brain, you know, because I log in for, you know, maybe six or eight months of just reading.
8:35And then I'll go on my expedition where I'm going to go. And then I sit my ass down and spend maybe six months to a year, depending, just writing the book. And so, but I always find the reading part, the research part really inspiring because, you know, I'm going back to these original texts and they've got, you know, scribes that were there just to record the events. And then, so you get these first, and letters that they're writing back home. And so you really get transported to these places and to the minds of the people who were there. And then, of course, you have to balance out to what extent, like, they're lying.
9:19Yeah, yeah. Or padding the story for different political reasons. And so you're doing a bunch of sifting and deciding on which you believe. and you know history to me is pretty uh dynamic and malleable it's not like this set thing it depends on you know they say history was written by the victors yeah but i love it i love that part
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10:58Shane Gillis:Price picks. It's good to be right. So, yeah. And then in terms of the expeditions, is that like, I get it. You do it for, to like get a sense of the place. But like, is that also just to kind of get your own adventure thing going where you're like, you know, because that's kind of, because you've done now, you've done the Amazon. Yep. Did you climb the hills and everything? Well, I hiked over the Andes. Dang. So that goes up to what? So, yeah, I started in, I try to, for, For a river of darkness and conquistador, I try to follow the route of the conquistadors as precisely as possible, you know, using maps.
11:30Now, in modern day context, it's a little different because, you know, there's more people there now. But, you know, for the Amazon, yeah, I started in Quito, did some, went on partly on horseback, partly on a bus. And then I trekked down to the headwaters of the Coca River and then went for like three weeks in a dugout canoe with two guides and just me and two other people and floated down the river in a dugout canoe sleeping in the rainforest in hammocks. It was it was one of the coolest
12:07Shane Gillis:adventures. Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that. What was it? I do want to go there one time. What was it like being there? And you know, oh, my God, it's quite remarkable. I mean, to put it in context, I spent like, I think two to three weeks, um, including the Andy's part. And by the time I finished, which was in a Quito's Peru, um, that's just where the Marathon meets the Amazon. And so there's 20, I went 400 miles and there's 2300 miles more to go to the Atlantic, you know? And, and that, you know, to give context, I had to look this up. That is like driving from New York city all the way to basically, I think like Idaho.
12:45It's so far.
12:46Shane Gillis:It's so far. And, you know, but it's cool because once you get out there, it's still, I mean, I floated through this Yasuni National Park and there's so, you know, it's like one of the most biodiverse places in the world. And then you're just like, you get into this river rhythm where, you know, you float for hours and everything starts to look the same because, you know, you're shrouded on each side by these giant seba trees. and you know you have to wear like knee-high rubber boots because there's ant colonies I mean there's so many critters yeah can you know mess you up vampire bats and that did you see any vampire bats I did and I saw you know the thing is I don't know if you remember in river of darkness the vampire bats are pretty intense they they come onto you at night and and um they have these like canine incisor teeth and they so they they pierce the skin and then they have this anticoagulant enzyme in their saliva so it is lick at the wound uh all all night and just drink blood yeah you just keep bleeding um but i was i was cheating a little because i had a um i had a hammock that uh had mosquito netting uh so you know the other my guides were just like sleeping in hammocks just out there but you know there's so many there's like spiders the size of your fist and what were some of the craziest things you saw in terms of animals oh my god well so i did this is kind of bizarre you know i wanted to uh when when you're in the when in rome i guess i went in the amazon i decided to to go on an ayahuasca trip you know so i didn't decide to do it oh did you do it classically did you have it boofed remember that remember they say they're like siphoned it up their butts back in the day i did not go for the animal style but That's kind of sick they did that, though.
14:33I know. Well, I mean, it gets there. It's mainlining ayahuasca. Yeah. No, this guy, my guide, Jose Xingongwu, cool dude, man. He was like, I'm going to go get the bark and do you want to try ayahuasca? And I was like, sure.
14:45Shane Gillis:Oh, he was just your river? He was my guide. He knew all the birds. And he was like, you know, when you're here, you know, if you guys, whoever wants to try it, you know. And there were only these three people and the two guides. And so I said, yeah, I'll give it a shot. I mean, I grew up dabbling a little in some of these hallucinogens. And so I had read about and I thought like I was hoping for this amazing spiritual journey. And supposedly if it really takes right, you're going to have this vision quest and meet your spirit animal. Yeah. So as we had been going through the Yesuni National Park, I had seen a pink dolphin, which is a freshwater dolphin.
15:29They're like a little four foot long, really cute. So I'm, the ayahuasca is coming on and I'm having these hallucinations and I keep seeing this pink dolphin and I'm like, wait a minute. So my wife's spirit animal is a dolphin. And I'm like, I was expecting like a sea wolf, you know, these giant wolves with like web paws or a fricking kraken or something. And I get a pink dolphin from my spirit animal. Yeah. Like four foot animal. animal you know i mean it was not it wasn't what i had hoped for frankly you didn't drink enough
16:02Shane Gillis:you should have drank like give me four more cups so so yeah how was that was it like did you have a super strong dose or did you feel like it was like a mild dose i wished i had wished for i was wishing for more yeah actually just to transform that dolphin into something useful you know like that can kill yeah i mean but i have also read i'm glad actually that it didn't take fully because I've seen some stuff and heard that, you know, people come out of that changed. Yeah, yeah. It's like, from what I've heard, I've never done it, but I've heard like the full dose is like you're puking. Yeah.
16:38Shane Gillis:Shitting. I felt, I just hurled a little early on. I saw the dolphin. Yeah. But, you know, the other thing we did, which was kind of insane, I mean, really, because that, you know, I was like, they took us out. We were on this one big lake that was like off. I mean, the whole thing is so massive that it was actually part of the river, but it was slow moving. It seemed like late. And he's like, you want to go catch, my guy said, you want to go catch piranhas? And I'm like, sure, I'm an angler. Yeah, yeah. You know, fishing. And I go, what do you use? And he's like, hot dogs. And so we go out there, we got a little stick and we're dangling for piranha, right?
17:13And then he said afterwards, he's like, do you want to go swimming? And I'm like, well, they're carnivores, man. Like, are we going to, so we swam with, in the same vicinity of these piranhas, you know, and it was like, you're just sketched a bit. Cause like alone, they're not, they're like, I mean, their jaws are serious, but they're not big, but you get a couple hundred piranhas and you're bleeding and then, you know, you're, it's just like the movies. Yeah.
17:40Shane Gillis:They can, they can munch you pretty quick. But they jumped in first and showed me and I was like, okay, I'm not going to whip out here. You know, I'm going to. Yeah. Yeah, I'd be so, every time I hear about people swimming in the Amazon, I'm like, it's terrifying. Because there's like manatees in there. Yeah, well, the manatee, you know, they're chill. Sure. I mean, I could have seen the manatee as my spirit animal, too. Yeah, something, yeah. Just the sea cow is what they're called. They're just like, go on the bottom and graze grass. They're just like sluggish. So anyway. That's awesome. Yeah, it was really informative.
18:14And, you know, what I'm usually trying to do when I'm going on these journeys is I bring all the primary texts that I can carry. And so I'm reading about the expedition that I'm writing about. And then I'm kind of living my own one and sort of putting it together, like what this place would have been like. And, you know, there are all sorts of things like in the Amazon, for instance, the sounds, you know, in the evening. there's like thousands of different um insects and weird like night insects where the freaking you know their head pops up and it goes around like with iridescent blinking lights and it's just wild you know and there's um you know there's there's panthers and the thing that's got me a little nervy is um i'm not scared of snakes but um you know the amazon has the largest just the anaconda, right?
19:09So, you know, even if you're in a four feet up in a tree in a hammock, you're thinking for a 30 foot anaconda, it's not a really big reach for them to, you know. Yeah, they can slither up a tree. Come constrict you to death. So like. What do you do? I guess you got to yell and they cut it off or whatever. Yeah, I mean, you know, you don't really want to be running into an anaconda, but there's a guy named Paul Rizzoli who lives in the rainforest and that dude is badass. and so he he like intentionally goes out and finds them and catches them and wrestles with them and stuff you know so if you know what you're doing uh which i didn't i mean i was just trusting my guy yeah i mean what do you how do you what what like skill can you have to like wrestle what do you got to know to do you need like the croc hunter mentality you know
19:57Shane Gillis:i know if it's like quicksand if you like i know if you like lay on your belly in quicksand it's better for you spread out yeah i think i don't know if i guess anaconda i would try to poke its eyes yeah and there's all sorts of poisonous um animals creatures you know um the weirdest thing is that there are these like you know um well and also kaiman you know which are not as gnarly as like an australian saltwater croc but we we went out uh evening spotlighting for kaiman they're like an alligator yeah yeah and um or they are an alligator they're smaller they're how big are they yeah they can get pretty big uh but these the ones we were messing with were just like four feet but even then it's dark and you're like i don't do you not in my normal course of life to be grabbing alligators yeah i'm messing with them even though i was born in new orleans i should be more true burly about gators well they can can't they jump like out of the water yeah yeah they kind of leap up and say yeah yeah so uh that was um and you know it's just like the stuff that it's the unknown to me so you're you're like sleeping in this hammock and then you hear all the stuff like the howler monkeys who make this really wild lion-like husky roar sound um and you know just being out in that environment is so intoxicating for me yeah i don't know why so and you and you recently went to the arctic right i did that was surprising like what the i've never that's one place i've never even thought to go yeah i went from the jungle to the great north the ice you know yeah um and i've actually now i'm on my fourth arctic book and so you like I really do.
21:29I like the, um, again, well, you know, there's so, so many elements to it. Like, um, but I was going to say that I, on my most recent book, I wrote about the first people who tried to fly blimps to the North pole, like back in, uh, the early 1900s. And when I first read that, I'm like, huh, we're going to, we're going to take a, uh, 200 foot balloon, inflate it with like 270 ,000 cubic feet of flammable hydrogen, stick a freaking, you know, Johnson 40 outboard motor on it, what could possibly go wrong? You know, the thing's going to blow up. How'd they make out? Well, there's some really great stories of, and that's just my third Arctic book.
22:15You know, there were crashes on the ice and people having to survive for months on end on floating sea ice, big bergs um and you know matt incredible well this that book is called realm of ice and sky and it set off the largest arctic rescue in history um but the cool the funny part about going to those places is so i went went to this place called svalbard which is 600 miles north of northern norway it's still in norway but it's halfway between the northern the norwegian north coast and the North Pole. So it's like, wait, it's the most northern inhabited place on earth. And I had, I had met, I'd previously met this woman in Greenland and which is actually before we owned it and had a golf course there, but you know, what are you going to do?
23:08This was 20 years ago. And she got me really turned on to the Arctic and Arctic explorers and stuff. And so I ended up meeting up with Ingrid, my friend, and went to Svalbard. Bizarre thing, before I left to go to Svalbard, I read this story and I was like, because I wanted to camp and I wanted to get the feeling of what, at least to a degree of what it was like for these people to sleep in the cold and on the ice. And it turns out that there's only one campground that you can stay in Svalbard. And it's like during COVID, a guy, this Dutch man, whose job was to put an electric fence around this campground.
23:52He was there with all this is like one of the great tragic ironies, man. He was there. All the fencing equipment was lying there at the campsite camp area. And the day before he was going to install the fence, he got mauled to death by a polar bear. So in Svalbard, the polar bear is protected. There's signs all over the outskirts of the town that just have a picture of a polar bear. And then it says, like, beyond this, you know, you're kind of on your own. Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, you can imagine the first few nights sleeping there. Electric fence or no. If you've ever watched videos of polar bears, like, they're to step right over that thing or break through it.
24:31You know, they're incredibly savage.
24:32Shane Gillis:For some reason, I thought they were – I think I've only ever seen them in, like, Coca-Cola commercials. So I, like, didn't even know they – I didn't know they ate people. I thought they were pretty chill. Oh, Lord. They're pretty vicious. They are. I mean, I, you know. Well, there you go. Learn something every day. I thought they were honestly like chill bears. I swear to God. You said they ate them. I was like, that sounds unlike polar bears. Yes. So there were some fitful nights in the campsite. Wait, so they never finished the electric fence after the guy got munched? They did. But man, the thing is this high.
24:59Like, it just wasn't going to do it. But, you know, after a few nights, you're like, I mean, you know, you hear the tent flaps rustling and stuff. And you're like all sketched out. Plus, at that far north in the summer, which is when I was there, the midnight sun is, there's no darkness. So, you know, you're kind of not sleeping anyway. And then, you know, you hear anything.
25:19Shane Gillis:And you're like. What are the people like who live there? I always wonder those places where like it's light 24 hours a day. Do they get like the total darkness too? Oh, yeah. So what are the people like there? Are they like completely weird or like. I feel like you'd be really weird if you like didn't have a natural day. They're hardy folk, man. I bet, yeah. Half the year, it's nearly dark. Yeah. But there's northern lights. There's the aurora borealis and stuff. So they cruise around on dog sled and with snow machines in the winter. And in the summer, it has like a three-day growing season. Yeah, they do some quick harvesting.
25:55But no, it's just so it's never really that warm. I was there in June, and it snowed. It's a harsh. I really, you end up appreciating the kind of people who are carving out a life there. I mean, Svalbard itself is very organized. It has a lot of tourism, you know, big tour ships come in. But also you can go on guided expeditions and go sea kayaking among the icebergs and the glaciers, which I did. Really? It's so, so rad. I love that place.
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26:27Shane Gillis:Really? Yeah. I've never, I gotta think about that. Every time I hear about like North Pole, all that Arctic exploration, I'm like, count me out, man. I don't know why. I just, is it, isn't it just like snow as far as you can see or like? Well, there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of mountains too. And having grown up in the mountains, I'm drawn to that. So, you know, huge. And it comes from sea level. So you've got these massive peaks jutting up and fjords. It's kind of like you picture Norway, but farther north and, and stays icy and cold and windswept for more of the year. So here's the question, because it's like if you're on an expedition, would you prefer dying the death of someone dying in the Amazon or in the Arctic?
27:08Yeah, that's a good one. You know, I've read and written about both kinds of death, right? There's something appealing in a way about like the cold. If you were just going to get hypothermia and freeze to death, that would be OK. because you just sort of like go to sleep and, you know, lie there and let it happen. Yeah. As they say.
27:35But, you know, if you go the other route, you know, in the jungle, you get like dengue fever or something, which would not be fun. Or, you know, you're bitten by some snake that gives you paralysis first. So, yeah, I'm going to take the north. The north. Except I will say that when I was in Greenland, we went out on a boat with a, I was actually writing about a blind adventurer named Eric Weinmayer, who was the first blind man to summit Mount Everest and kayak down the entire length of the Grand Canyon. How the hell did he do that? Well, he had help. Gotcha. He had a guide. But amazing. I mean, he's a transformative human.
28:14Yeah, that's crazy. But I was following him in Greenland on this adventure race and where it's just like a week of different really hard sports and part of it included like boating for Like a day or two or all around this southern Greenland and I we were following him in this boat and I get it I get in the boat with this seal fisherman dude or seal hunter I guess and you know, I said when we got in the boat I said like where are the life jackets you know and he he looked at me he kind of smiled at greenlandic inuit dude and he's like um we don't have them and i go well why because i mean i'm gonna get off and he goes no no uh if we fall in the water we don't want it to take that long to die oh and i'm like that makes a lot of sense because it's so cold basically if you're just like floating along you know then it will take 10 minutes whereas if you just bob and then how cold is this water oh frick man because salt water can keep it yeah below free you know it's like bergs are floating around the top i mean it's literally three minutes you without a dry suit you'd die you would die so you're going in this boat hoping like everything goes well you know like i don't really trust the dude but yeah so he was basically if you fall in we're dead anyway right so it seems like you don't really size craft you guys on well this boat was like a 20 foot outboard okay but we were following the people who were actually kayaking in rubber rafts you know so they they were more imperiled than we were yeah so but they had the wetsuits
29:48Shane Gillis:which i guess they won't even preserve you for not that a while the good really good dry suits you'd stay alive for until somebody came and if they came and got yeah but you know of course that made me realize again i'm thinking i'm trying to think about the stories that i'm telling and the people i'm writing about and like they had none of that you know no gore text no dry suits and And they're out there in like native, in the north, you know, like the Scandinavians and some of these northern peoples are the ones who invented like skin, seal skin kayaks, right? So they are expert in paddling these things, you know.
30:23Shane Gillis:What is a seal skin kayak? It's basically if you see, you know, the plastic kayaks that you see out on the river here, but they build them with like wooden frames and sometimes bone because in a lot of these places in the far north, there's no trees. Yeah. And then they put the outsides are like stretched seal skin or sometimes walrus. And so they are really, they're watertight. And, you know, they're the ones who invented the whole, the older kayaks actually look pretty much, the designs have stayed similar. You know, where there's a little cockpit and you're sitting down, but you're so low on the water, you know.
30:59It's, in any wind and waves and shit, it's just terrifying. Like, I don't want to be in there. That's crazy, dude.
31:05Shane Gillis:well it's funny too the guys who explored that place because like you know again going back to the amazon it's like okay check it out like here's like a kind of a useful place but like the thing for the north pole it's like you get there you're like yeah it's a ton of snow it's like okay it's an open polar sea like there's nothing there but what was really intriguing to me was that you know they didn't um they they didn't know um like so where the people that i was writing about up until, uh, and even including the dirigible airship journeys, um, in like the 1880s, uh, there was just a giant blank white spot on the map.
31:43Shane Gillis:I was about to say, what did they think was up there? Was there any like tales of what they thought might be there? Yeah. And some really confused tales that actually ended up like not helping people because they, they, there was this theory that there was a ring of ice around this kind of, um, warm temperate zone. So they thought that it was like open sea there. And so a lot of times when the, the Brits and some of the other, I mean, the, the, the Nordic, the Norwegians went there or tried to go there, like the theory was, okay, we're going to break through this ice barrier. And then it's like warm.
32:22I don't know why they believe that exactly.
32:24Shane Gillis:Could we, did you ever get into hollow earth theory? There are people who think at the top of the North Pole like it hollows out and kind of go in. Yeah, just jump in. Right through. Teleport right to China. Sea at the bottom. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where it's also ice and frozen. Yeah, so they found out there was not the fabled oasis in the middle of all the earth. Right, and a lot of times the early expeditions went with not enough gear and warm clothes because they thought they were going to end up in these more temperate places. And they should have figured it out by noting what the indigenous people were wearing.
33:00Yeah, true. You know, they're like totally bundled up with freaking caribou.
33:04Shane Gillis:How high up do indigenous people go? Are they on the North Pole? Well, nobody lives at the North Pole, but they live, Salvard's the most northern place, but on the northern coast of Greenland, there are still Etow native populations, people who are still carving out a life up there and living in a traditional way with, you know, seal hunting. And I mean, there's like whales and beluga and, you know, they're hardy. I would imagine. I think, whatchamacallit, the Iglooser, I read about, I was in like a kid's museum with my kids and apparently they like retain heat, like insane, like snow retains heat.
33:42Shane Gillis:Oh man. Unbelievably so. Yeah. One of the things that's in writing about these expeditions, you know, I marvel at the endurance of these, you know, the explorers, because, uh, in many, in some cases they were smart enough to take along, uh, indigenous guides and hunters. And, you know, they, they would slog for like 12 hours across the snow and ice, get to the end of the day, build an igloo, uh, in like 45 minutes. And then you have like a seal blubber lantern at one end and you're tucked into this igloo. And there's, and these guys are, you know, taking, um, not only writing down where they've gone, what the coordinates were, um, writing letters home, you know, and recording in their journals and diaries, everything that's happened, including what the weather was like.
34:32Um, but you know, they're doing that after, after just trekking for a day or something. And the other thing that most people don't realize is that they're the, especially in the North, it's not, not the case in the South pole. Um, but these, they're giant, um, flows of ice that's breaking up and they move, uh, tremendously. So you could be in your igloo and all of a sudden you hear this crashing, you know, heaving sounds and shattering. And now the ice is breaking up underneath your igloo. and so they like you kind of need to sleep with your boots on or your
35:10Shane Gillis:oh that's what you're saying it's just a frozen sea right and then and so it'll shatter and then you have to get out of there and like regroup somewhere over here and you know you're yelling at each other in the darkness and it's just gnarly oh that sounds awful it really does sound terrible that's uh it's not you're not pitching me on the north pole what's up with the south pole yeah well the south pole is different it's more of a landmass that has frozen sea too Um, but what I've always found funny is that, you know, cause not, not a lot of people know about the Arctic and the Antarctic. So they'll, they'll, I'll tell them I'm writing about the Arctic and they say, um, the only thing they know is Shackleton, which is one of the most famous explorers.
35:51Right. And, uh, they're like, oh, so like Shackleton. Right. And I said, well, yeah, it's like Shackleton, except on his journey, everyone lived. And I only write about stories where half the people died at least.
36:04Shane Gillis:And Shackleton was Antarctic. Yeah. Yeah. It's an amazing story. Personally, if I was talking Arctic and someone came at me with Antarctic, I probably wouldn't even respond. I'd be like, yeah, okay, dude. I know what you mean. But I haven't been there. That's the one on my bucket list of, I've been on every continent except Antarctica. And so that's, that's next. So in North Pole, like the North Pole, is that like a military base or like what is there? No, it's just, it's just a spot on the map. What? Still. So what they did discover was that there had been a theory that there was another continental landmass there.
36:41So, you know, maybe there's reserves of something oil. Maybe we can, you know, and it was contested by a number of countries. So what they did figure out in the book that I wrote, Realm of Ice and Sky, they fly over it in a blimp and are able to take pictures and confirm that there's no landmass there, that it's just a giant expanse of moving ice.
37:06Shane Gillis:Okay. And then I'm trying to like picture it. So if you fly to the North Pole and then just keep going straight. Well, these guys ended up in. What is it? They crash landed in Teller, Alaska. Well, it depends on what direction you go. But like the cool thing is once you go, once you pass the North Pole, every direction leads south. You know, it's like no matter if you turned around or which in one case they did. They turned around and then went back to Svalbard. That didn't work. They crashed. Dang. But yeah, it's yeah. These stories I love because, you know, once they're out there, then something usually invariably terrible happens.
37:49Shane Gillis:Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's really it is. I do like that when you're reading all of a sudden it's like they're about to die. They're like literally on the verge of death the entire time. Right. How are we not going to die? Yeah, I was bugging out on the poison. It's a different thing, but the poison arrows in River Darkness was like, I couldn't stop thinking about them. Just one little scratch from a poison arrow, and it's just like a 24-hour shivering, horrible death. And your arm turns black and falls off, right? And it's like, yeah, duck and stay under those manatee shields, you know? Dude, that shit sucks.
38:22Shane Gillis:Guys, this episode is brought to you by Onnit. Ever feel like your brain is on but nobody's home? Hmm. spend 10 to 15 seconds sharing a quick relatable and funny story from your own life about a time how about this guys i'll be honest i uh i do dumb stuff all the time this is for alpha brain by the way i they sent it to me so i've been taking it i fucking like it i swear to god i figured i would like let me just try it out let me see you know let me see what's up what it's all about i like it dude it feels like it's a nice uh it's caffeine free first of all that's why i never took it because i'm like i don't need any god darn caffeine um but yeah i don't know i think it i looked it up it i don't i don't know if i if it's like you can say what it does but apparently just like boost your dopamine or like pushes dopamine into your brain give it a try give it a try i i like it and um yeah it gets it gets me charged man i take it it's a very here's the thing too i'm very uh i'm very prone to just taking stuff and being like oh i think it's working but i gave it to my brother i guinea pig my brother swim who's no stranger to chemicals and chemical compounds who has a hardier constitution than me and he even was like bro this stuff's got me kind of it's got me moving and grooving so hey look we did that science right there did a fucking study on myself and my brother and spud and we were all were like damn this shit fucking rips so get it yourself try it out try it out all right alpha brain is a daily supplement with science-backed ingredients like l-theanine designed to support memory and focus so you can lock in tune out distractions and stay sharp.
39:49Shane Gillis:Visit Onnit.com and shop AlphaBrain to unlock your next level. That's O-N-N-I-T.com. And yeah, I literally take it every day now. I like it. Go ahead, Sean. You have to plug a show. Yeah, thank you. Of course. Hello. It's what we do it for. Hello, everybody. This is Sean. I just want to let you know one last time that I'll be in Salt lake city this weekend friday and saturday with nate marshall march 27th and 28th tickets are at sean gardini.com please come there are plenty of tickets available to these shows so many tickets and we'll be at the houston riot fest the week after that april 3rd and 4 and then noctis is after that at the creek in the cave so please come tickets at sean gardini.com or lamaralee.fun and and you get shane m gillis.com too sell out the link thank you guys thank you man of course guys um oh man this leg of the tour is winding down on april 10th i'll be inst paul minnesota at the fitzgerald theater home it's all good what you guys need i was just my red light was on when you were reading it oh you're fine ain't no big thing just getting the audio out to the people sorry um also 4 11 the next day after I leave Minnesota, I'm going to Des Moines, Iowa, Hoyt Sherman Place, whatever.
41:15Shane Gillis:I'll be there at 411. So Iowa, Minnesota, I have shows there. Let's go. Let's finish this out strong, guys. What do you say? And then also motherfucking Phoenix, man. Celebrity theater. Guys, come on. It's in the round. It's a cool place. Don't embarrass me. Oh, yeah. Gardenian will be there. Fucking it's going to be a blast. And by the way, I come alive in the round. If I'm being honest, I have done the round with Shane. I love it. So please, guys, please, please, please. Otherwise, I'll literally I'll just pay to get feet seat fillers and I'll I don't fucking care. I'm going to have a good show in the round one way or the other guy and I'll pay them to laugh at me, too.
41:52Shane Gillis:That's for 17 guys for 18. I'll be in Tucson, Arizona. And let's let's get it going. Also, I'll be in Toronto. We have two shows in Toronto. Both of them are one of them's definitely sold out. The second one's dang near sold out. So might add a third. I don't know. Riviera Theater, Chicago. Let's go get that. I think that's going to sell out, guys. That's in April. There's been a rumor about adding a possible, if that sells out, an 11 o 'clock show at Zany's. Secret show. We'll see. I don't know. I don't know. We'll see. We'll see. We'll see. Ian's going to see the other show. Oh, nice. Fuck yeah.
42:24Shane Gillis:But yeah, guys, go to Mammacusker.com. That took way too long. Just six shows left before I chill for the summer. Thank you. Good question. Did you ever get to meet the Amazonians? Oh, this is a good question. Oh, yeah. Okay. We're bringing up the fabled Amazon warriors. Oh, the women. The women. Oh, I thought, because everybody who lives there is considered an Amazonian now. True. There's different tribes. So, yeah, the Amazon women, that's an interesting and perplexing myth and story. I didn't meet any. I was looking for them. The warriors. You're talking about the warriors. Amazon women warriors, yeah.
43:03Shane Gillis:But they had their breasts in the jungle, whereas the Greek, the Greek, that's where the term comes from, right? They're Greek women who would, would they like strap their breasts down? Down, yeah. Tie them down so they could shoot the arrow. But what I loved about that story in the Black Sea is that they, and this persists too in the Amazon basin, is that they would take men, mate with them. Yeah, I know. And then like tell them to fuck off. And then they just have the women on the island that were like, We're using you as, you know, you're just procreators. It's fantasy. It's a collective male fantasy.
43:37Shane Gillis:Get out of here. We're done with you. Go do shit in the jungle with your friends. I have no use for you right now. Go hunt. Well, that was the question. That was kind of what I was thinking about just yesterday. I was reading it. And so you have the, you know, because the conquistadors had the fabled myth of El Dorado, you know, the kingdom of gold and all this stuff. And that was kind of the myth. that was like a myth that was driving them but like why would i think you might just answer the question but why would these amazonian people all make up a myth of like powerful female warriors right obviously i mean there's the sexual thing of them like abducting you from your village and taking you to have sex with you whatever drop you back off but it's like it is just a weird collective myth to have all these people in the jungle form of like powerful women warriors yes especially back then now i'd be like yeah i get it my people would do that but like Back then in the fucking 1500s, like why would they all do that?
44:29Shane Gillis:And like all agree that was a thing. Well, and also, you know, since it has persisted for hundreds of years, I mean, I love the fact that this is where mythology becomes, you kind of wonder, like, is there a kernel of truth to this? Because, you know, with modern technology, wouldn't we have found them? But I have to say in the Amazon, I mean, when I did my journey and came out, and landed in Iquitos, Peru, there was an article in the paper or, you know, online, and it had images of, you may have seen them, like they're uncontacted tribes still, and they're like painted orange and, you know, helicopters or whatever, small planes are flying over to check them out.
45:13And they're just standing there with spears going, you know, land, please do. We'll fuck you up. You know, see how that goes, Navy. seal. But, but, uh, you know, they, I mean, I think they would do all right with their guns
45:28Shane Gillis:and shit. But for me, the point was like, well, okay, if there are, if there remain uncontacted tribes, um, even in, you know, I was down there in 2008, um, they're still today are uncontacted tribes. Um, and so it's so vast and of course, you know, it's being imperiled by logging and farming and all this stuff but there's still it's so vast that there's if there are pockets of people that have lived the same way for thousands of years and and then there's myths about these particular female tribes that are warriors and don't want to be messed with to me there's a i have to believe that it's possible yeah well the guy in the book saw them he fought them so it was like they were they were paler they were like lighter skinned tall women that had a bunch of like short guys they're bossing around oh yeah i love that and if you don't and if you if you puss out you're dead fucking killing you yeah that holds that still holds to this day yeah how do i tell you about you better keep fighting him yep i might have an amazonian in my house that's the last amazonian why don't you pick up your shirt off the floor don't back down no that uh yeah it was and it's just such a funny thing because you hear you know they're like while they're floating around the river it's like there's these tales of amazon women warriors and you're like you know you're like okay it's just like a fable then they actually battle them and you're like what the fuck was that all about and killed a couple yeah yeah they killed almost all of them that was shocking you didn't take one of them prisoner i know it was silly you know because if you look back to what cortez did and you know there's also um there's albinos that come into camp one time yeah that was a weird one too tall albino these tall albino dudes um you know they may have been pituitary giants or something which um what is a pituitary what is that well like you grow really fast and uh and you're usually they're marked by having a really big head actually i played rugby for seven years and one of our um or one of our best players in the scrum was a a pituitary giant.
47:32So he was like huge, like Andre the Giant. Yes, yeah, yeah. So your glands just produced.
47:38Shane Gillis:Good to have on your rugby team. I would imagine, yeah, a giant. I mean, that was like medieval battle and everything. It's fucking awesome. And he had, he was like, oh, he talked like that. I'd be pissed if he didn't, honestly. If I had a giant with a soft voice, I'd be like, it's bullshit. Howdy. but Cortez had the wherewithal to like snag some of these um you know specimens uh and take them home to England or pardon me to Spain yeah and he would be like I want to show the king what is here and so there were like dwarfs and albinos and some of them he you know absconded with put them on a ship and sent them with the you know with the royal fifth of uh gold that they were required to send back and was like check them out like this place is rad you know it's crazy to just send up just a bunch of treasure then like essentially like an old freak show he's just hit him with like he's like you open a chest and like dudes may just pop out you're like whoa the hell's this but in fairness to oriana he didn't have like you know he was just trying not to die and get down the river so he didn't have the capacity to for sure put him in the boat i mean he was trying to feed his own men yeah true cortez was like okay we're gonna put these guys on ships and send them back and show what i'm taking over the worst story of all i think from river of darkness is when they landed in that village and it was just women there and they took over the village and just all just slept with these ladies raped them obviously let's be let's not let's be frank about it and but then the guys then they're all their husbands came home from a trip to just see these like people they've never seen before all with their wives and their huts and it was just like dude that's the most insane thing you could possibly imagine i know everyone goes out to work you come home and everyone's wife is now being detained by like a strange being you've never spend my whole day at the turtle farm and come home to this you know i know you've been farming turtles all day
49:43it's so funny i was chuck i was chuckling too at when you guys were talking about how they named everything you know and the one place they're at that you call you know you read it in the part three or whatever and it's like um it was like um place of the of the burn people and i was thinking I mean, you should have been called the place where we burned people. You know, like they didn't want to name it what it really was.
50:09Shane Gillis:Yeah, I also love what he called it. When he had like that, Gonzalo Bizarro had a bad march and it was named the worst march ever through the jungle. Literally, that was a literal term. Yeah. This was the worst march ever through the jungle. There have been a lot of bad ones. This one, worst. Worst ever. Well, it is pretty bad when he gets back and he's like literally, in you know skins and barefoot you know the fact that any of those the worst the worst is them i didn't know you could do this with a horse you cut it open drink the blood as needed and then you pack it full of mud it's just like a walking it's just like a food truck you just kind of want you would cut slivers cook a sliver of it eat it and just let it keep walking as you're eating it was like oh yeah that was grim i was listening to it a little bit on the plane and i'm like god i forgot about that you know it's just um what people will do and you know i have to say um there wasn't much cannibalism in the conquistador tales but um in if you really if you like cannibalism as you get to the as you get to the uh the arctic stuff a lot of cannibalism yeah that was the because that's the that's the funny thing too because i you know whenever i'm like i'll like organize notes for things and i'll use like you know grok or claude and they're always like by the way they didn't sustain themselves on cannibalism it was for ceremonies it's like okay dude they're still eating like don't like nice it up like it was church it's like okay but so that was arctic was like they needed to munch guys that was like sustained that was like sustaining yeah and you know you're talking about a different um like the idea was that the explorers coming from from europe and north america were like you know it was taboo um in different cultures it's less less so you know yeah um and it does beg the question i mean i've been asked that at book readings like would you eat uh human flesh it's always one guy at a book reading yeah it's like would you ever eat a person mr levy would you eat a person and then if i died your face i'm gonna i mean what do you say to that when someone asks you that i say would you um touche i mean it depends on how if it was your fucking homie you know like yeah how well do you know him true you know is it a guy or a girl right i would eat a guy personally yeah i would personally oh man unless it was a powerful warrior i would eat a powerful warrior yeah i mean i think at a certain point um i would you know yeah obviously if you get hungry enough yeah for sure you know you're delirious with hunger and it's like it's meat yeah if you were a vegan i would say no i i have a cupboard full of like cereal and all this stuff and i'll be not hungry and i don't want to eat the cereal and i'll eat the cereal if i was starving to death i would totally eat a person yeah like no not even not a question yeah sorry sorry guys i literally would eat every person everyone here i think you guys are great but if i got hungry but so it gets kind of grim i'll try it gets kind of grim because then it becomes a question of okay if they're already dead yeah like let's say they starve to death and then they're uh and they're which happens in a couple of my books where you know they're they're dead already they starved uh so bad eating you're looking around okay not a lot you know we've already gone out hunting and we haven't found anything and there's a guy yeah um starving skinny bones um are we gonna are we gonna do it and um versus you're going to, you know, kill someone to eat them, which is a different thing for me.
53:48Shane Gillis:Well, this went dark. No, that's, no, I hear what you're saying because if someone starves to death and now you've got to split up your friend with all your other friends to eat them, but it's like, there's not a lot of meat on them. Right. Next person starts lagging, like, we can just eat this guy now and get a better meal out of it. Yeah, and then in some cases, what happens is, like, they start looking around. This happens in that book, actually, or in Labyrinth Vice. So one guy, you know, everybody else is like emaciated, sort of walking dead situation on the ice. And then you've got like one guy who's like 200 pounds.
54:21It looks like he's just come from CrossFit, you know? And they're like, what the fuck is up with him? Like, why is he so, you know, burly? And they realize, well, he's been going off to the title crack where they've been throwing the dead people and like feeding at night. Feeding at the title crack. He's just jacked and ripped. That guy, it doesn't go well for him.
54:44Shane Gillis:So he kind of gave himself away by being like, man, I'm just different. I'm just built different. It's crazy. It's genetics. So he was just sneaking off at nighttime and just frying up the guys. Yes. And then, but the commander, this was an army expedition, and the commander figures it out, Adolphus Greeley, and he's like, I hate giving stuff away, but whatever. Yeah, that's so funny. He ends up going, okay, he catches him stealing food. And then he says, okay, we're going to take three guys out there and Henry, that's his name. Henry's got to go because he's eating what little food we have left.
55:20And so they do a thing where - Oh, he was munching the food reserves. After, and dead people. And the people. Yeah. And so then he's like, we'll all die if Henry keeps eating everything. so they have an execution and they just like go out there and you know i gotta say that's not very
55:37Shane Gillis:fat positive of them henry didn't know that he was hungry yeah yeah and henry was body shaming people too you know that's fair damn so he was so they executed him but you know they wanted to not know who who did it so they really put like blanks in two of the guns and then a live round in the other one and all fired they all fired on him and dang yeah then they had to report it to the if they you know they met some survived um so then they had to like write a report of like yeah we yeah took out henry made it kill him sorry that's what you get man you can't be doing that on the expedition no it's a bad form bad team player that's a terrible that's a terrible team player yeah things all about himself there's no i in team henry you know dang that's awesome so what is like so out of all the expeditions you've done what are they you've done the amazon Amazon, Arctic.
56:31Well, also, I went to Borneo. This was, I think I mentioned to you, I had followed these crazy multi-sport adventure racers around the world for about seven years. And this was run by Mark Burnett, the guy who created Survivor, The Apprentice. And so I was doing some research and I was a journalist then writing about these sports. Um, and the first, one of the ones I went to was in Borneo, which is, you know, Northern Malaysia islands. And that was super intense because, and it was actually during this race where Mark Burnett found the island that was the first survivor Island where the first competition happened, however many, like 112 seasons of survivor ago or whatever it's been.
57:17Um, and so we, this was really incredible. We were following these racers around and we were in boats, motorboats, but we would sleep on islands, right? And I had heard my friend who's trying to freak me out. He's like, yeah, well, Borneo, that's where the headhunters are, right? That's what I thought, yeah. Really? And he's like, well, they're south. They're south of where you're going to be, you know? And I'm like, oh, good. And he said, but, you know, Borneo has like some of the most toxic snakes in the world. And also, so at one point I'm on this island and we were like waiting to go to the next island and we camped out there, right?
57:56This is, couldn't have a hammock there because of no trees. And so I had heard about this sea crate, K-R-A-I-T, which is like one of the most toxic snakes in the world, right? And if it bites you, I think you have like hours to live. Really? So we're like, get to this island. It was beautiful. We're all setting up camp and this one guy, we had this MacGyver dude named Brito. He's British and his nickname was Brito, which isn't that clever, but that's just what we called him. But Brito, it turns out, was really scared of snakes, right? So we had seen a couple, they're water snakes. So it's freaky because we had to anchor out like it's shallow.
58:37We anchored like 200, 300 yards from the island. And then you couldn't get into shore because it would break, you know.
58:45Shane Gillis:Yeah, yeah. Fuck up the boat. So we're like carrying all our crap through the water, seeing occasional slithers going, God damn. And so when we got to shore, Brito was like, buddy, I'm so scared of snakes. And I'm like, okay, well, you know, just stay away from them. But we ended up like, so in the middle of the night, so I set up my tent and in the middle of the night, I feel something like next to me and the dude is spooning me, you know, and listen, I'm okay with spooning. You know, but the guy, I'm like, Brent, what the fuck are you doing? He's like, I can't take it. I can't be out there. And then I showed him.
59:23I go, well, it's not going to help you that much in here. My tent had like a little hole in the corner. And I'm like, the sea crate's going to come right. Because they look for warmth too. You know, and I'm like.
59:32Shane Gillis:But they're water snakes, right? Yeah, they're water snakes, but they can come on. They're amphibious. It's not a good thing. It's also like, don't be next to me. We're going to, you know. Right. She'll be like, I'm afraid of snakes too, bro. Back up, man. Get off the ground. Get your snake away from me. But, but, and then I went the next day, I go, I go like, I think you made it all up to get close to you. Honestly, he probably did. Help me, buddy. Yeah. So the next day I went out to take a leak and I'm like, I see the movement in the scrub, you know, and I'm like, what the is that? And it was like, it turns out it was a monitor lizard, which are next to the Komodo dragon, the monitor lizard, the second largest reptile in the world.
1:00:21I mean, there's like from me to these guys, you know? Damn. And it's like a Shetland pony elongated size lizard, you know? And you're like, and they're kind of gnarly too. I mean, you know, if you don't spook them or something, you're good. But like, it all just makes you nervous. It's technically a dinosaur.
1:00:39Shane Gillis:or a lizard the size of a Shetland pony. That's a dino. Yeah, and you're out there and it's Jurassic Park situation. And, you know, you're just trying to make a living. That's fucking terrible. And then how, so you're just on that island for a day? Yeah, and then we were like, went off to the next, I mean, it was like a 10 or 12 day long race. And we also had to crawl through, they had this really cool section of the race where they had to, there are these bat caves that are really famous and they're huge. You go through these like you crawl through these tunnels to get inside the big cavern and they're massive and then there's these bat caves that actually are the The local population they harvest these birds.
1:01:21They're kind of like a swallow. They're called swifts They harvest there's a they go up on these like Vine ladders to harvest the eggs from these Swift birds. It's like a medicinal aphrodisiac situation
1:01:34Shane Gillis:What yeah every every single place has their like I swear, like, give you, this is like the tree bark liquor or whatever. Yeah. Every single civilization has their own, like, boner medication. You've got to have it. You do. Hey, I turned 40 this year. You got it. I'm in the thick of it, bro. I'm like, it's finally come for me. But so, yeah, then you're crawling. It was kind of nasty. I'm not against bats or anything, but, like, when you're, and you guys, I know, Congress. Yeah, yeah. You got bats. but you had to crawl through like tunnels of bat guano like you know centuries of bats shitting there to get into the cavern place and then as part of the race the racers had to go through there and then um climb up this huge uh like a scarpment and then like rappel down the other side right so you know you're just coming out of there going did i pick the wrong gig like i'm covered in bat shit yeah you know which oh it's not good no can you get it's like it's like bird i know bird shit you can get really sick yeah you back on oh um you don't want to eat it true fair but no it has uh you can get sick well because the bird the bird shit what happens is it dries and then you hit something and it goes up in the air and then as soon as you breathe it in it because that like when it gets wet that's when it kind of messes you up like it's like whatever i think moisture activates yeah it's good it's been i was working with my dad we're doing on the thing with pigeon shit.
1:02:55Shane Gillis:He might have been making this all up. But he was just like, moisture activates the germs and bird shit. It's like the Hantu virus. Don't be snorting that. That's pretty cool, though. So what do you have cooking up? What's your next move? Well, I'm doing a fourth Arctic book because I am the master of the Arctic. You are the master of the Arctic. As it turns out. I'm claiming Antarctic. I'm going to go to the Antarctic. Yeah. I'm going to beat you to it. Well, my editor, I'm actually, This is avoidance behavior right here because I'm so I am working on a new book and it's a it's about so you may have heard of John Franklin who This Franklin expedition that went off in the two boats ships got stuck in the ice and then He never came home.
1:03:38He had 120. Well, did you know if you guys heard about the terror? It's an AMC show called the terror. That was a huge deal. But anyway These two ships got stuck in the ice and then nobody came home and so his wife uh lady jane franklin sent for like 20 years sent expeditions to go try to find them and then half of those people died um but those two ships were recently found in like 2017 and 2014 because of inuit oral history they said we we saw you know their ancestors said we saw these boats where they went down and they they ended up using submersibles to go find both those ships and it it helped solve the problem or the questions about what happened.
1:04:16And in fact, cannibalism occurred. 129 men perished. But that's not what my book's about. My book's about the first Franklin expedition. You're giving it away. What the hell? Yeah. It's about the first Franklin expedition in Northern Canada, which is an overland journey in like 5 ,000 miles on foot and canoes with Diné, Yellowknife, indigenous people. It was during the time of the Hudson Bay Company and the Northwest fur traders, right? And so it's 1819. And it's just this incredible ordeal where they're trying to figure out where the Northwest Passage is. In fact, almost all this stuff was related to finding the Northwest Passage, these Arctic, many of the Arctic tales.
1:05:01And it's just an incredible ordeal. What's the Northwest Passage? They were trying to find a sea route. Instead of having to go all the way around to Asia, You could go quicker from Europe through the circuitous, all these islands north of Canada. Yeah. But it's really hard to navigate. And half the time, it's frozen and not navigable. And so it took centuries to figure out that it's not practical. You just can't do it. Many people. I mean, with global warming, it's becoming open longer. I mean, if you believe in global warming. True. But, you know, it's still not, it's too circuitous to get through quickly, and it doesn't really solve the problem.
1:05:44But it took them a long time and many lives to come to this realization. It sucks.
1:05:49Shane Gillis:A lot of those guys, too, I've noticed whenever someone has, like, a successful voyage and they try to do the second one, it never works out. Besides, I feel like Christopher Columbus is the only guy who kind of, like, I don't even know what happened to him ultimately. He gets, like, where their journeys improve. Yeah, he just kind of just, I don't know if this is true. I was talking to somebody months ago about Christopher Columbus, who was a history teacher. And he was saying that Christopher Columbus, when he first got to, what was it, like Hispaniola or whatever, there were the people there.
1:06:19Shane Gillis:I forget the name of them. They were like, you know, he famously was like, they're super docile, blah, blah, blah. Apparently, he would just like hop on their back and make them piggyback him around the aisle, which is so disrespectful. He'd be like, I'm tired and just piggyback. You know what? They would just carry him around. You look fit. that's disrespect i thought that was crazy i mean there's obviously all of them did a lot of terrible things but that would just if a grown man was like all right come on let me hop up let hop on you real quick i'd be like it's fucking bullshit yeah i but he he made it he was the only guy i feel like he did i mean i'm sure there are others but he had like multiple successful expeditions right yes yeah he was all over the place well yeah but you're right they they tend to end poorly.
1:07:04I mean, even in the case of Oriana and River of Darkness, like he thought like what he learned going down the river would have helped. And then the return voyage was disastrous. Right. Yeah. Plus you can't figure out where you're going, you know, like because of the mouth is so wide. One of the staggering facts that I wrote it, I'm going to have to confirm this after we are done here, if it's actually true, that there's an island at the mouth that's the size of Switzerland. Yeah, yeah.
1:07:32Shane Gillis:That's insane. I don't know why you look that up. I think that is the case. It'll probably quote me. No, I swear to God, I think that's the case. Yeah, and it's so imagine Oriana arriving back there with his child bride, you know, and he did bring a child bride on the return voyage, which is crazy. And they're like, we're going back up, and we're going to mostly visit the places that were nice to us. Yeah. Marajo Island? Yeah, that's insane. I forgot about that, and he survives it and then brings a child bride honeymoons the child bride great honeymoon you'll love it crazy it just dies in front of her brazil's nice this time of year you know yeah i i do like learning about those little like um those weird like waterways like the boca de serpiente and the boca de dragon where they got to like navigate these weird rocky channels with like wetlands through where was that like the trinidadian coast yeah mangrove swamps and everything fucking sucks yeah i mean no it sucks especially just to learn where you're at like oh where the place we're in is called the mouth of the dragon i'd be like fuck fuck i wonder why they call it that well buddy this was great thank you so much um is there anything else you have or anything you'd like people to know or any of that stuff talking business no man just i really appreciate being here customer it's it's been a blast and uh i'm gonna keep writing these things until i'm um weak and infirm and need to feed on a friend there you go well thank you so much my pleasure man see you buddy take care watch new episodes of matt and shane's secret podcast on spotify do it
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yo0o. Hello everybody. We got the legend Buddy Levy at the podiums for you this week. Buddy wrote 'Conquistador' and 'River of Darkness' two books that Matt's been podding about on the patreon. His latest book is 'Realm of Ice and Sky'. Check out the books. Check out the paytch. Please enjoy. God Bless.
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