Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 760: Teddy Roosevelt's Kids and Their Insane Quest To Kill a Giant Panda

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Ep. 760: Teddy Roosevelt's Kids and Their Insane Quest To Kill a Giant Panda · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
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  Speaker 2: That's f I R S T L I T E
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: dot com.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Hot damn. We're joined today by big time writer to
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Thalia Holt, one of the most credentialed writers we've had
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: on No, that's not true among the most I mean
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: like like a like a writer writer.
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: I think David grand is going to have some words
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: about that. I'm not sure that's true.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: But more among the big time, the big like writer writers.
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: Oh, that's very.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Among the big time writer you know what I mean.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: You know, here's what I'm trying to say. We've had
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: now that I think about, We've had a number of
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: esteemed generalists, but you're a generalist nonfiction writer.
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: Well, I've got the PhD, so I think that gives
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: me a little credibility in there. But yeah, you've had
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: some big writers on this show, and I'm pretty excited
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: to be part of it.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: On the lower rung of the top numb joke, yeah,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: bottomshell yeah. Among our prestigious writers that we've had on
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: the show are generalist nonfiction writers that we've had on
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: the show. Nathalia Holt is here in her new book
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: is The Beast in the Clouds, and get this. This
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: is what we're going to talk about today. It's I
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: had no idea up until the nineteen thirties, this is
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: the story we're going to tell. Up until the nineteen thirties,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: it was debated whether there was actually like in the
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Western world, there was an active debate is there such
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: a thing as a panda bear?
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: That's right, this is the last nine unknown to science.
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: Up until the nineteen thirties, up until the Roosevelts did
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: this expedition, there was serious debate in the scientific community
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: about whether pandas were real.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: People would say like, hey, there's this big white and
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: black bear up in the mountains, and peo'ld be like
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: pull shit right.
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: Well, at that point, you have all of the bears
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: that are known to science, and they have been known
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: for a long time. So polar bears had been known
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: for thousands of years. They had been kept in early zoos.
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: Black bears, grizzly bears were all known. Pandas were not.
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: And it started in eighteen sixty nine with a French
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: missionary who was in China, and he asked the hunters
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: there to just go find him interesting animals and they
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: brought him and bring me on. Yeah, bring me all
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: the interesting animals you can find. I want to see.
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: It's not fat.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Unter season AMI's guy like, but is it interesting?
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: He got a lot of interesting animals. Yeah, it worked,
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: and one of them was a small black and white
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: cub and so he is wondering what this could be.
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: There's no animal quite like it. He sends the skin
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: of it to scientists in Paris, and the hide is
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: missing part of the head. It's not a very good specimen.
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: And of course he has not seen the animal himself alive.
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: He's only ever seen this dead skin, so it's very
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: hard for him to describe it. And so he is
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: describing to the scientists what a panda looks like. Just
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: from the descriptions that he's heard. You can imagine what
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: a scientist might think. It's almost as if I'm describing
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: to you a unicorn, what does a unicorn look like?
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: And then you're trying to make a picture, and you
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: could probably make a pretty good picture, but it doesn't
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: mean that it's a real animal. And so from that
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: point scientists were very interested to find out if this
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: was real. There was actually a black and white bear
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: in China. And so fast forward to nineteen sixteen and
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: you have a group of German hunters who then came
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: into China also began looking for interesting animals, found local
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: hunters and asked them, go find us a panda. We're
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: looking for a black and white bear. And they bring
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: back pandas. They bring back a live cub, as well
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: as skins of several pandas, but they're unable to keep
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: the cub alive. However, they are the first Westerners to
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: have finally seen a live panda. But they don't bring
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: back any of this evidence to the West, and so
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: scientists in the West are still maybe this is true,
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  Speaker 3: maybe this isn't. It's a lot of hearsay at this point.
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  Speaker 3: Then in nineteen nineteen, an American missionary named Joseph Milner
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  Speaker 3: sends a specimen that he found in a marketplace in
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  Speaker 3: China to the American Museum of Natural History and it's
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: finally we have the skin of a panda. And so
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: the Museum of Natural History and now is that they're
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: very excited. They call it a rare beast from eastern Tibet,
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: and they say, we don't really know much about this animal.
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: We don't know where it lives, we don't know where
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: it eats, what it eats. Because Joseph Milner had never
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: seen the animal, he knew very little about it. But
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: we really think this is real. Now there are pandas
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: out there, and so you can imagine immediately all of
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: these expeditions form. This is prime time for expeditions, right,
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: this is the time explorers are going out in the world.
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: They're looking for interesting things, and so you have all
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: these expeditions that go out to China desperate to find
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: the panda, and they all return empty handed. Ten years pass,
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: and at this point scientists are really in conflict because
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: it seems as if, yes, this panda is real, but
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: at this point, why haven't they found it yet? Why
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: hasn't there been a specimen brought to the museum that
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: can actually be studied scientifically? That can be compared to
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  Speaker 3: other animals, and so when the Roosevelts leave for their
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: expedition in nineteen twenty eight, the panda is considered the
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: most challenging trophy animal in the world. It is really
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: considered the epitome of a bear to find, and it's
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: also thought to be a dangerous animal. So little was
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: known about the panda that they expected it to be
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: this cross between polar bears and black bears. They thought
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: they were going to find one of the most aggressive
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: predators on earth as they search out.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Like a polar bear that can climb trees.
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, Yeah, And I mean really, when the Roosevelts
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: go out, you can imagine these are the two eldest
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: sons of President Roosevelt, and of course the challenge of
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: getting the most prized trophy animal in the world. That
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: is something that is going to speak to them. But
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: really very little is expected from their expedition because they
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: are a small group, much smaller than the expeditions that
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: had traveled previously, and it's not a group that is
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: particularly impressive. You've got the two eldest Roosevelts. These are
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: not accomplished scientists, although they obviously have a lot of
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: experience as hunters, and they're going with a ragtag group.
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  Speaker 3: So as they're leaving, as they're going on this expedition,
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: few think that they are the ones that are going
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: to be able to discover the panda.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: So you mentioned having a PhD. What did you What
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: did you study? I have a.
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: PhD in molecular biology, and I've done field work in
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: a lot of really interesting places in Alaska, in redwood trees,
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: in South Africa. So I'm able to bring some of
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: that experience of doing science in the field to this
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: book and it does help. It helps kind of give
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: me some of that background.
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  Speaker 1: And you are Nathaliahole, PhD. You're a New York Times
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: bestselling author, So Beast in the Clouds. What you're here
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: to talk about today? Past books, Wise Gals, Rise of
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: the Rocket Girls, The Queens of Animation, and the book Keered.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: You've written for New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: Angeles Times, The Atlantic, Slate, Pop Either Science, PBS, and
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: Time and a former fellow at the Reagan What is that?
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: It's Reagan Institute, So it's this it's a science group
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: that's a part of Harvard MDH and m I T
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: in Boston.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: Okay, she is a former fellow at the I would
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: read that Reagon because we know how Reagan spelled.
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: I know, I understand.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: It's one of the things we learned from Reagan. I
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: was spelled Reagan the Reagan Institute of mg.
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: H, which is the Massachusetts General Hospital.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: Oh, okay, MI T the alma mater of Ted Kazinski. Here's
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: a teacher there in Harvard University. And you live in
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: Pacific Grove, California.
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: I do.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, So we're going to pick up this story.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: And I got my first question coming out of this
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: when we picked the story back up, is we gotta
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: go back up because I need to know what, like,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: what kind of a dad was Roosevelt? So the stew
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: one at a minute, Yeah, before we before we embark
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: them on this journey of trying to shoot them or
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: collect a panda bear against all odds, I need to know,
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: was Roosevelt like an absentee father that that stew unadam innute?
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: But first, we have our Christmas tour coming up, the
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: twenty tour, the twenty twenty five live tour. We're calling
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: it the Christmas tour. We were it's all in the South,
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: it's all in the South, and it's a Christmas tour.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: So my first idea is that we would make a
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: poster where it's like the old Spaghetti Western posters, like good,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: the Bad, and the Ugly, but it'd be Santa Clauses
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: and elves with bandoliers and pistols like the like the
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: Spaghetti Westerns. That was my first vision. Then Randall and
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: I got sidetracked talking about an idea where we were
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: dressed as Yankee soldiers and it was the North's coming again.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, or.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: Randall wanted to do the tour. He wanted to do
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: the tour of the South along the path of Sherman's March.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: And I said that to you in confidence, and.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: It's like it's gonna be then the Yankees, the tour
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: posters gonna be the Yankees are coming again. But we
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: checked with a couple of Southerners, well, Hunter Spencer. We
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: called Hunter Spencer's first player call I made. I was like, Hunter,
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: if we brand this as like the Yankees are coming again?
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: He thought it's a little too soon. He thinks it's
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: a little too soon. So maybe in a hundred years
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: what's in a hundred years, the twenty the two one,
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: two five, if this is the twenty yeah, the twenty
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: one twenty.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: They're just doing holograms of us tour.
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: No, we'll just need to bring Steve back like the
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: Dire Wolves.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: And the twenty century. Maybe we'll do the the Yankees
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: are coming. But instead we're just branding at more of
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: something that everyone can get on board with. Well, well
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: that most people can get on board with, which is
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: the Christmas Tour. But I do want you to know,
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: you know, I don't want any people, you know, I
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: don't want to discourage people of other faiths. But we're
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: calling it the Christmas Tour. The Christmas Tour is coming,
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: not the Yankees. It's in the South. It's in the South,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: but it's not like a bunch of Yankees from up
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: north though. You know we're bringing Clay.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Clay will be there.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: He's from Arkansas.
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: Huh. It'll be a little twang southish, Yeah.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: Selfish, he's coming. We could have done it like that,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: since Clays from the South and and uh Brents from
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: the South, we could have had it be like the
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Reconciliation Tour and the poster would be.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: Yankees and could look like the paintings of appomatics.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, or Yankees and Confederates with our arms around each other,
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: and we called the Reconciliation Tour, and it'd be that
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: Yankees in Arkansas, people are coming to your town.
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: What are you gonna wear?
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: The hats, Santa Claus.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: It's just like we're putting the You know, when I
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: heard about this, my first thought was last year I
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: had to make do with a pretty not movie quality
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: Santa Claus costume for all the office high jinks. And
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: so I thought, if if we're doing a live Christmas tour,
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: maybe it's time that we invested, because.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: I believe ye have a serious tape.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: I went to the sites and I saw the I
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: went to all the websites of real high quality Santa gear,
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: just because it seems like something that you know, you
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: buy once and you're good for fifteen years.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: Like a dude that has a job at them all. Yeah, yeah,
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: he's wearing a legit.
• 13:18
  Speaker 4: Like.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: I looked into the different styles of belts. You know,
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: a lot of them are actually overalls underneath the jacket.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: The different trim styles.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: Uh.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: And then to say nothing of the wigs.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: And beards.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: I did a lot of research, so I'm when we
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: have our budgeting meeting for the tour, I'm gonna I
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: have a presentation with a tailored suit, yeah, like a
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: real Santa suit. And then are you actually doing full
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: on boots or are you doing boot covers? Because most
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: of the cheap ones have boot covers, who assume that
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: a real Santa would have the actual boots, but in
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: fact quite a few of the real high end Santa
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: costumes they're still using boot covers.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: I do like that one bit.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well we can talk about it.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: Uh, you're gonna bring the suit, Well that's yeah. So
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: here's the deal for people, for Southerners out there, you
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: know who you are. If for Christmas, right mm hmm,
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: you'd be like, hey, what I want is tickets to
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: the Christmas tour.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Uncle Eddie will be in town, you know.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: Ye, so that's what you should. So if you're listening,
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: tell your spouse or your boyfriend or your girlfriend that
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: what you want is tickets to the Christmas tour and
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: Randall's gonna be there in a suit. There'll be carols
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: and like, listen, don't be afraid to bring your grandpas
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: We're not going to bring up the war between the States.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: I don't want you think we're going to enter into
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: a big controversy. It's just pure Christmas tour. Yeah, we're
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: gonna send carols, We're gonna do like a normal met
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: Eater live show. There'll be contests and whatnot, and people
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: be winning all kinds of stuff, but it'll have a
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: Christmas overlay to it. Nothing to do with the nothing
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: to do with the you know, I'm not gonna say
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: it anymore. Yeah, here's where we're going. Six stops. Birmingham, Alabama. Well,
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: I got a great Birmingham story, I know, telling that
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: at one time drove I took a Greyhound across. I
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: was just told it. Good gracious. Uh. Birmingham, Alabama, Nashville, Tennessee, Memphis, Tennessee, Fayetteville, Arkansas, Fayetteville, Fayetteville,
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: I was joking, Fayetteville, Arkansas.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: Uh.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: I just talked to Evan Felker. He's gonna come to
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: the from Turnpike Trubid Doors. He's gonna come to the
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: show and him and Clay are gonna do the bird
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: Hunters Live at the start of the show. Wow, isn't
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: that cool?
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: Maybe he could carol for us a bit.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: Too, Dallas, Texas, where we've been before. In Austin, Texas,
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: where I don't think we've done a show. If you
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: want to go to the meat eater dot com you
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: can sign up for a thing we got for a
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: pre sale. Ho ho ho and revel yell yell coming
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: to the South. Good gracious. I was gonna tell a
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: big story about having a hard hat, because Randall's like,
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna tell that. Trbably get back into Pan
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: of Bears. But yeah, Randall's under pressure to get all
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: your things from growing up out of your mos house.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: And she wondered if you still wanted your hard hat. Yeah,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: that and a crossbow in a cave, our knife, yeah,
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: but never mind that. What kind of dad was Roosevelt?
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: Do you mean? But like he couldn't have been around much.
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: You're you're wrong about that. Actually, he was an incredibly carrying,
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: affectionate father. He was the kind of dad who got
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: down on the floor played with his kids. He even
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: when he was gone, and he was gone for long
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: stretches of time, he would write his kids these long letters.
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: He would tell them how much he loved them. He
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: would draw little pictures for them in his letters, and
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: he loved to play just crazy, rowdy games with his
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: kids when he was home. They would chase around the house.
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: I talk in the book about a game they played
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: called bear Hunt, where they would chase after their dad,
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: looking for him all around the house, and when they
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: found him, it was all tickles and giggles and kisses
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: and all that kind of stuff. But the other side
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: of that is that he did put a lot of
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: pressure on his kids, and you can imagine that for
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: the sons of any famous man. This is a lot.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: There are advantages, but they're also disadvantages.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: That's what I'd be curious about. When I was reading,
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: I didn't know that they did crazy expeditions like they're
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: all man did. So I was picturing two driving like
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: I was picturing two scenarios. Scenario one, they have a
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: great relationship with their dad. The stuff he does is cool.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: He introduced them to doing cool stuff, and they just
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: want to continue along because they admire that lifestyle. Or
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: Scenario two is they never got his love, and the
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: one way that they could try to get his attention
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: is to mirror his adventurous activities and go have a
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: big discovery and finally get dad to be like, hey,
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: good job, Kermit.
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: It's you know, it's a little bit of both, because
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: obviously he loved his kids very passionately. He was very
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: affectionate with them, but he put a lot of pressure
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: on them. So ted the eldest son, had a nervous
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: breakdown when he was ten years old, and the doctor
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: told Teddy Roosevelt, this is because of the pressure you're
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: putting on him. It's too much.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: At what age ten that looks like a ten year
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: old nervous breakdown.
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: I mean you can imagine that. It's not easy to
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: be the son. At Teddy Roosevelt, this is a larger
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: than life figure, and he is very concerned about his
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: son's being so strong. He says repeatedly in letters that
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: he's worried that Kermit is going to be a weakling
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: and his bodies. Yeah. He says it to family members
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: and to friends, and he talks about this with Kermit
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: as well, and he and Kermit obviously have a close relationship.
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: They go on several expeditions together. So they go in
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: nineteen oh nine, they go to Africa, where Kermit is
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: able to hunt an elephant, he's able to get a
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: calf that's right now in the American Museum of Natural History.
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: And then after Teddy Roosevelt loses the election in nineteen twelve,
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: they go on a River of Doubt expedition, and of
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: course that one is told so beautifully in Candice Millard's
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: book River of Doubt, where it is a perilous expedition.
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: It's one that Teddy Roosevelt almost dies in. And so
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: you see how close their relationship was and how important
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: it was to the two eldest sons to really carry
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: on in their father's footstep up. And it wasn't easy
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: for them to do that in other aspects of their life.
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: So ted for example, wanted to be a politician like
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: his father. That was his goal, that was his dream.
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: And before this expedition happens where they go for the panda,
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: those dreams are completely scattered. There's no way he's going
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: to be able to do that.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: Because of his own limitations or because of his popularity.
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: So, because he was involved in the teapot dome scandal,
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: so he was assistant Secretary of the Navy, which is
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: a position that his father had held as well before
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: becoming president, and during that time it was found out
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: that the government was giving oil leases preferentially by taking bribes.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: I've heard of this, but I have no idea what
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: it is. Yeah, the teapot dome scandals, Like in the
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: way back of my head, there's like a I feel
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: like you've heard of that a few years ago.
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: You know, it's been a while teapot dome scandal. Yes,
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: And so after that, even though Ted was not convicted
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: of any crime, he was implicated in this and canceled.
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: And yeah, he got canceled. In fact, you even have
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: Eleanor Roosevelt campaigning against him in a giant teapot costume.
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: What it's brutal. I mean, that's your family got to
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: fight family. Yeah, so that's you know FDR and Eleanor
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: where there was a feud between them, so they're distant cousins.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: And is it true that the one side? Is it
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: true that the one side was that Theodore's clan was
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: Roosevelt and that the Franklin clan was Roosevelt. Have you
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: ever heard this before?
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: I have?
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: Is that not true?
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: I don't think so. I think it's just the way
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: that people from different areas pronounced the.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: Names, so it was like Roosevelt across the board. Yeah, okay,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: got it?
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah and so and.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: Then which in this story you're telling which one is,
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: just so people are kind of ware this is like
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: foreshadowing which of his two boys ends up killing himself.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: That's Kermit, Okay, he ends up killing himself, and he's
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: the one rolled up in teapot dome.
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: No, that's actually the eldest brother God that is rolled
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: up in that. And it's interesting to me because what
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: we see is that Teddy Roosevelt often went on expeditions
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: during difficult points in his life. So when he lost
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: the election and he went to the River of Doubt,
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: when he lost his mother and his wife, he went
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: to the Dakotas, and you really see his sons following
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: in those footsteps, deciding to go on this expedition during
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: a difficult time for them. So ted had just was
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: politically obliterated, is the way his wife put it. And
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: Kermit was having many issues. He was just not a
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: successful businessman. He was having a lot of difficulties. He
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: was having problems with his family too, So both of
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: them were at a point in their lives where they
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: were ready to escape, They're ready to go do something different,
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: and going into the woods, going on hunting expeditions was
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: always a big part of their lives.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: So how like, how did they get they got their
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: finger on the pulse of the world, I guess when
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: it comes to exploration and wildlife discoveries, but does how
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: does the panda mystery or the panda controversy, Like how
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: does it land in their lab? Like how do they
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: become the recipients of this and be like, hey, we'll
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: be the ones that go find it.
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: You know, it's luck, honestly, because at that point you
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: have ten years of expeditions that have gone out and
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: have not been able to find the panda. The Roosevelts
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: are able to get funding from the Field Museum and
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: because of that they're able to go do this expedition,
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: and honestly, the museum is not expecting them to come
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: back with the panda, but they're thinking they'll find other animals,
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: and they do. They find many other animals besides the
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: panda on this expedition, and.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: At this point time, how many pandas are alive?
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: It's hard to say, So the best estimate we have
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: is somewhere in the two thousand range. There's not a
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: lot of pandas.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: At that point, there's only two thousand pandas.
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: Yes, pandas have always been fairly rare, and they're only
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: found in a few very small parts of China. So
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: even in China, the panda was not well known. And
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: it makes sense when you think about how divided China
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: was at that point too, because this is a country
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: that is very territorial, so you have many different cultures,
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: many independent kingdoms, and in the places where the panda lived,
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: it's remote mountains, and people there did not have a
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: lot of roads and did not have a lot of
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: contact with the Chinese, and they themselves did not consider
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: themselves Chinese.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: This is like deep, I won't judge if you don't
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: know the answer to this. Let's say you go back.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: Let's say we went back ten thousand years or whatever
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: the hell was it? Like? Was it at a time
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: was there a million pandas? Do I mean, let's say
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: you went back to whatever mark or does it seem
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: like they were being forced into some kind of bottleneck
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: at this point or was it just that somehow they
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: managed to exist as an always very limited animal.
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: So the panda went through some big evolutionary changes, and
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: so at one point we think the panda was found
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: in other continents, even in Europe. There's evidence of early pandas,
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: but they look so different than we think of them today.
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: And then the panda change it adapted to its environment.
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: They are one of only a few species in Carnivora
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: that are herbivores, and so they developed a unique thumb
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: that's perfect for grasping bamboo. Their teeth changed, so they
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: went to this herbivore diet, and all of those changes
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: led them to being very linked to these mountainous bamboo
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: forests that are only found in certain parts of the world.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: So if you if you laid out a hunk of
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: I don't know, man, like you lay out like a
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: hunk of meat hanging there, is he gonna I'll eat that.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: Here's just gonna not eat it.
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: Panda's not gonna eat a hunk it. No, Yeah, it's
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: not gonna work. But if you looked at earlier ancestors
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: to the panda, you have omnivores that were eating meat
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: at that time. But that's that's way.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: So even if they can get it, that my question
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: was more like, like, is it just that they're that
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: they were confined to a certain area and so in
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: that area what they had to eat that was bamboo
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: or was it that they were that was what they
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: they were specialists, like, that's what they considered.
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: They are highly adapted to consume bamboo. They're not you know,
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: they're not scavengers like black bears. They're very different than
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: other members of the bear family. And I think, you know,
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: when you really think about it, they are pretty special.
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: They're very rare for being a bear. So perhaps it's
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: not crazy that the Roosevelts weren't expecting them to be
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: like that. They really thought they would be predators, And
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: it sort of makes sense when you think about all
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: the other members of the bear family in comparison.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: No, man, that blows my mind. Just two thousand of them.
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's not many, and it's not many today either.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: What I was.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: Struck by reading this book is as they're going through,
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: you know, like when you think about outsiders coming into
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: a place in Asia or Africa looking for something, oftentimes
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: like what they find to be very unique or rare.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: They get there and the people are like, oh, yeah,
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: I know what that is, but they keep going into
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: these villages and it's like maybe someone has seen one,
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: but there's like not a not It's not like they
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: arrive on the scene and there's a knowledge of panda
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: Bear's when they arrive, like it's almost as much a
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: mystery to the people that are sort of helping them
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: as it is to the Roosevelts.
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: That's true. Yeah, So they have this group of guides
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: they're working with who are kind of like the Sherpa
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: people of Nepal. They are the ones who are breaking
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: the trail ahead of them. They're making the camp sites,
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: they're helping them communicate, and all of these villages they're
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: going through, nobody knows about the panda, and they travel
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: a huge distance. All in all, they travel almost two
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: thousand miles over the course of six months. This is
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: a long track. So they are going first through rainforests
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: in me and Mar and then into very high fourteen
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: thousand peaks and the Himalayas, and then down through the
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: Tibetan Plateau. I mean, they cover an incredible range as
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: they're searching for the panda, and they end up having
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: to go to this one part of China that they've
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: been warned not to go to They've been told that
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: the people that live there are savages, that this is
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: not a place that's safe, and they make that choice
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: really out of desperation because at this point, what they
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: went through on the trail, it is just extreme, how
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: close they came to dying multiple times.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: What was almost killing them. Well, first off, like lay
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: out a little bit about how they organized it and
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: sort of what the planned route was and where they
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: thought their highest likelihood of finding one would be.
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: So they thought their highest likelihood would be to go
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: where Joseph Milner lived, which was in western China, and
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: they believed it because he had been able to buy
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: a skin from a marketplace there. They would be able
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: to if they hunted in the countryside, sure find the panda.
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: And you know, I think what's really interesting, and you
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: know what I just want to go back to for
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: a minute, is that science and hunting is very linked
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: at this point in history. Scientists are hunters. You see
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: that with Darwin, You see that with all the great
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: scientists of the era, they had to be. And so
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: the Roosevelts, although you may not think think of them
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: so much as scientists, they really are bridging that gap.
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: They have that ability to hunt, but then they also
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: have the ability to learn about these animals, and so
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: they've spent a lot of time at the Field Museum
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: in Chicago really learning about how to prepare these specimens
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: and how to describe them in a way that's useful
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: for scientists. And so they're traveling with an interesting group.
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: They're traveling with a man named Tai Jack Young, who
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: is an NYU student. He was born in Hawaii. His
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: parents are from San Francisco and from China, so he
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: grew up in China. And he's hired as a translator
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: for the trip, but he ends up being sent to
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: the Field Museum and gets all of the training there.
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: And I was fortunate I was able to get his
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: unpublished autobiography as well as interviews that were done with
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: him in the nineteen nineties, and it's just fascinating to
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: he became very close friends with the Roosevelts.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: He was alive in the nineteen nineties.
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he's only eighteen at the time of this expedition,
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: and so he was friends with the Roosevelts for years.
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: They were very close friends. And so to be able
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: to get his account was so interesting, and so he's
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: one of the members of this expedition, as well as
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: a man named Sudham Cutting, who's a naturalist from New
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: York who is not particularly well experienced, but is the
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: kind of man who'll just happy to do anything, happy
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: to go out hunt whatever you need. He's there. And
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: then they have Herbert Stevens, who is this British naturalist
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: who's really the real biologist of the group. He has
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: the training and he has had terrible luck, this poor guy,
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: all of these expeditions he's gone on. He's had such
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: a difficult time bringing specimens back because he has a
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: boat crash or there's other problems in transportation, and he's
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: just not very well respected by the scientific community because
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: of that. So he's pretty desperate to show that he's real,
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: that he do this.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: I got the sense in there, like, especially with him,
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: that in this era of expeditions, it was it was
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: almost like like we think of athletes today, where it's
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: like you've got a few good years and you end
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: up on the wrong team and like your whole legacy
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: is in question. And so there's some guys that are
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: just desperate to get out there for one last chance
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: at like a big discovery, and it's there's almost like
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: a sort of gamesmanship to it, and like some guys
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: just sort of luck into a good expedition, but other
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: guys are just sort of desperately hanging on trying to
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: get on an expedition that that will make their name
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: for them.
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: It's so true because this was really a time and
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: history when you could make your name as an explorer,
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: you could really gain fame from doing so. And Herbert
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: Stevens is not necessarily someone that you would ever think
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: of as being famous. Certainly, most of the explorers that
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: did these trips then animals would not be named after them.
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: But this expedition is special because you have the Roosevelts.
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: And yeah, I loved writing about Herbert Stevens, especially because
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: he's he's kind of funny on the trail. He tends
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: to delay the group. The Roosevelts get very annoyed with him.
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: He gets lost the first day on the trail.
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: He's the one they leave behind, right, Yeah, Yeah, he's
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: too slow.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: You know, in terms of hitting the right expedition. Just
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: an interesting thing about that is in our podcast The
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: American West with the historian Dan Flores, he talks about that,
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: you know, like Jefferson launched two expeditions. He had a
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: northern one, the corp of discoverer Lewis and Clark expedition,
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: and he had a Southern one which gets going and
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: they get intercepted by the Spanish and sent home. So
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: if you're thinking like who got lucky, who didn't get lucky?
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: No one's even hurt of the one in the South.
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: So true.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just like you could have been like, what's
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: you know what one's going to be a greater chance
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: of boosting my career and you wound up being like
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: Lewis and Clark or the dude I can't think of,
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: or the dude I can't think of who is supposed
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: to do the same thing in the South Freeman and Custus. Yeah, yeah,
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: lost to time, dude, Like no one cares, No one's
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: heard of the guy, you know.
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, certainly nobody would have put money on the Roosevelts
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: for this expedition. In fact, they didn't even tell their
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: close friends that they were going after the panda.
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: And how long were they fixing the go for They.
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: Were planning to go for six months that was there,
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: get done. I mean they had hoped to do the
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: first leg in six months and then spend another six
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: months going through Vietnam and going through Laos and collecting
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: more species there.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: Got it. And just to be clear their intent, they
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: want to observe them, watch them, but then they're intents
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: to shoot some.
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, and it's it's very specific how they need to
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: collect the panda so that it's useful for science.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: Come. So they take off from where.
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: So they take off from well, technically the trip starts,
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: of course in New York, but they end up going
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: through me and mar into the western side of China
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: into Union, and so they're going through a trail that
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: where this is on foot. This is on foot. So
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: they have mules that carry a lot of their supplies,
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: and there's a lot of problems with mules throughout the book, unfortunately.
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: But yeah, they're going on foot. So these are all
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: places where there are no roads for cars. It's just trails.
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: Huh. So even like I just can't, I wish I
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: understood it better that I would picture at that point
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: in time. I mean, we're into the twentieth century. I
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: would picture at that point in time like you'd get
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: trains and you'd kind of get within striking distance of
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: your objective.
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: It's just too remote this area they're going to. They're
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: sort of straddling this border between Tibet and China. A
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: lot of times they don't even know which country they're in. Yeah,
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: there's also a civil war going on that's kind of
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: a problem for them throughout the book. So in nineteen
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: twenty seven, you have the civil war that started in
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: China between the Nationalists government and the Communist Party, and
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: so that's raging around them at the same time too, and.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: That probably cuts off certain avenues of approach.
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: It does, although the parts they're going to there there
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: simply are not roads. And so it's interesting throughout the
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: book because as they describe the trail and by the way,
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: it was so much fun just to go through the
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: Roosevelt's Field journals and how they describe things. And they
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: took pictures and videos on the trail as well, which
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: is pretty cool. And some of those pictures are of
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: the other people traveling the trail, and a lot of
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: them are moving these giant, giant packs of tea. Because
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: there are no roads, there's no other way to bring
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: goods to this part of China, except on the backs
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: of people.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: Okay, I wish I had a I wish I had
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: a map of the planet Earth. Can you put up
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: a picture of me and Mar in China.
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: There is a little mask in the book too, if
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: you want to, If that helps. It's kind of right
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: in the front.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: There, me and Mar. What was me and me and Ba?
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: So east of if you're picturing like the Indian Ocean,
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: it's east of India sort.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: Of tucked up there.
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: Yes, that's right northwest southeast Asia.
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: Yes, that's a good way to put it. In northwest
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: southeast Age.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: You need it super detailed. Do you want in context
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: like the surrounding, in context with everything else? Okay, like
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: that little square dude I went to high school with
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: lives in Me and Mar maybe his little spottle shoulder. Okay,
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: all right, let me just get my I get my
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: head straight here. So they're crossing me and Mar.
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: Yes, So they're they're going from there's kind of this
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: is called the Bama Route through Burma, and then they're
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: going into Union and they call it sort of the
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: back door into China. Yeah, and then from there they're
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: moving north up through Sichuan and then more into central China,
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: and then they eventually end up coming back around through Vietnam.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So if people are picturing there's like a large
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: peninsula that contains Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, they're kind of
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: crossing the top of that peninsula to get into the
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: into the mountains of western China.
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: I would never picture that. That's how you would need
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: to do that at that point in time. I mean,
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know anything about that area.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: So what kind of like what kind of happens to
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: them along that route then? So I mean they may
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: not be having adventures left and right.
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: They do. Yeah, So they are able to collect an
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: incredible amount of animals on this First of all, they
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: are able to collect five thousand bird skins, two thousand
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: small mammals, forty large mammals. I mean that's a that's
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: a damn good hunting trip, right, Yeah. And so they
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: are collecting all of these interesting species. They find nineteen
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: new species on the trail. But they're also interacting with
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: a plethora of cultures and that was fun part of
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: the book too. So they go into these areas that
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: are autonomous regions that are mostly Tibetans that live there
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: and they're ruled by Tibetan lamas. And so I talk
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: in the book quite a bit about this, the section
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: of Tibetan Buddhism. And at that time you had all
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: of these Lama sarries that were along the route, and
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: there were men and women who were lamas who were
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: brought there when their children and then they grow up
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: in the Lama sarries.
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: Just to connect that the people today, like you're like,
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: you know, just regular old Americans going to hear of
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: the dolli lama when you say lamas, yes, and stems
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: from that same.
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: And Alamas Sri is like a monastery with alama exactly.
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, it sounds funny when you put it that way, right, right.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: And that's like the that's the governing system it is.
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: And so you have Lama rulers of these regions and
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: so one of the places they go to is called
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: the Kingdom of Mulai. And at that time it was
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: kind of this mythologized place that had been in national
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: geographic and so people knew somewhat about it. And so
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: the Roosevelts go there and they stay with this man
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: who is kind of the eastern ruler of this region,
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: and they stay in his house and it's called the
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: house of the Prince because his son is going to
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: be a lama and will one day be the king
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: of Mulai. But because lamas do not marry, they do
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: not have children. It's always passed down through the family.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: These guys aren't like warlords either, some of them are.
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: They are, yeah, So there certainly was fighting. Many of
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: these autonomous regions were fighting the Chinese for their independence,
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: and so Tibet at that time the Dalai Lama head
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: proclaimed independence for the country. I believe it's in nineteen twelve,
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: And so certainly many of these regions were very fiercely
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: independent and very keen to protect their lands.
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: Got it. But they're able to, like they're not at
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: risk of they're not at risk of like having an
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: interaction that goes wrong.
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: Oh, they absolutely are, they are, yes, And so they
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: bring with them all of these interesting gifts to kind
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: of introduce themselves. So when they go into the Kingdom
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: of Mulai, they have a turquoise bowler hat, they have knives,
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: they have rifles, they have all kinds of interesting things
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: to present because they're just not sure what people are
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: going to like. They don't know how they're going to
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: present themselves. And so they explain to this ruler of
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: Mulai that they are the sons of President Theodore Roosevelt.
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: And he said, as who's that, He has no idea.
• 42:04
  Speaker 4: How about a bowler hat.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: Where you could pick one of the other the bowler
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: head of the rifle.
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: But what I learned when I was reading Ted and
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: Kermit's journals was that this was actually a very freeing
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: experience for them. I mean, imagine that they have found
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: a part of the world where they are not known
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: only by their relation to their father, and they actually
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: become close friends. They enjoy each other's company, They show
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: pictures of their families, They have the next King of Mulai,
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: who was at that time just a toddler running around,
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: and it's it's it's really interesting to see how those
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: interactions went along and how they got along with people.
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: And along the way, like here they are on the
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: right continent, kind of the right general neck of the woods.
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: But as Randall's saying, like along the way, they're be like, hey,
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: y'all seen any pandas and people are like, oh, what
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: you know, but it's kind of surprising. But you can
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: almost think you can think of analogs from here that
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: you let's say you were different bear. Let's say you're
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: very curious about you were very curious about grizzly bears.
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: I mean, you could hit Saint Louis right, a place
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: that people's perception would be at that time, the gateway
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: to the West, and you could say, hey, I'm here
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: for the grizzly bears, and you'd find people in Saint
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: Louis that are like, what, yeah, that's it'd be earlier,
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: it'd be fifty years earlier, but like, of course they'd
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: be like, I don't know.
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: And then you would describe it. You would try to say, hey,
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: this is what they look like, and.
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: People, yeah, yeah, they'd be like yeah, it kind of
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: rings a bell, but I don't know, you know whatever.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: You just you could picture that, or or you make
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: it into interior Alaska and you're like, I'm curious about
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: the polar bears. Yeah, and in the interior they're like,
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: I have no idea you're talking about. You're close, but
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: you're not exactly.
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's a lot.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: In that way. It's sort of easy to imagine, but
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: it also seemed like it's like a big white and
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: black super yeah bear, it lives around here.
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: It is more like describing a unicorn than a grizzly bear.
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So where do they get, Like, at what point
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: do they start to get some assurance, you know, like
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: some sense that we're on the right track here.
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: Oh, it just takes forever, and there are a lot
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: of struggles on that path. So you know, at some
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: point they get robbed by bandits. At another point, they're
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: in the Himalayas and all of their mules just disappear
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: in the night. That actually happens twice, and so they
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: lose all of their foods stolen. No, it's just so
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: cold that the mules decide that they have to leave. Yeah.
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: And then another point they suffer from horrible altitude sickness.
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: They are trying to hike at night and they're caught
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: in this blizzard, and that is the night that they
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: describe as the very worst of their lives, where they
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: came incredibly close to death. It's very lucky that they
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: start from exposure, and so it's just one struggle after
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: a next in this book, and so it's really not
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: until very far along on the expedition where they say, Okay,
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: we're going to go to this one area that's called
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: the Land of the Eye or the people call it
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: Lolo Land. And everyone has told them that this is
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: where the savages are, this is where they're going to
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: be attacked, they're going to be killed. They should not
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: go to this one part of China, but they decide
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: it's worth the risk. They want to try to find
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: the pandemic.
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: And they don't have any idea. Yeah. I mentioned like
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: Lewis and Clark expedition, right, they have an idea where
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: they're able to defend themselves. Yeah right, I mean they're armed,
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: they're military personnel. Like they have an idea that it
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: might come down to a fight and will fight. But
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: these guys that can't be in their back pocket, right,
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: like the idea if they get in trouble, they're just
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: in trouble. Like they're not holding out hope that they're
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: going to like engage militarily.
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: No, that is absolutely not their hope. And there's some
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: interesting parts along the trail where things do get pretty dicey.
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: There's one great moment with Jack where the expedition has
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: to divide for a while and he sees that there's
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: a group of bandits ahead on the trail, and he
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: ends up just being really casual walking by pretending as
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: if nothing is wrong and gets away with it. Is
• 46:18
  Speaker 3: the crazy part. So there are some really kind of
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: interesting moments like that where they're sort of able to
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: bluff their way through, and other moments where you have
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: a group of guides who are Another interesting part of
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: this is that half of the guides on the trip
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: were women. There were a number of women who served
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: in this role. It was certainly one that paid well,
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: it was one that gave a lot of independence, and
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: so you can imagine that it was very prized for
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: both men and women. And so there's one point where
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: you have guides that are women that are head on
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: the trail that end up scaring away some bandits as well.
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: So they certainly were able to have some backup from
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: their guides. But what we see is that even when
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: they're in positions where the Roosevelts are really in danger
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: and where they should feel more threatened, they end up
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: always taking the calm route, always trying to give the
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: bowler hats, give the knives, give the gifts, and make friends.
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: And I'm sure that those are skills they learn from
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: their dad.
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: So these guys that people tell them, that warn them against,
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: what is their their final act to go to this area?
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: How do these people live? Like kind of like sketch
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: out what their sort of lifestyle is.
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: So these are the people, and they live in these
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: remote villages in the mountainous regions of central China. They
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: have a lot of animosity towards the Chinese, and they
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: pretty much tend to keep to themselves. And so first
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: when they meet the Roosevelts, they're very suspicious because the
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: Roosevelts have these long beards and they're kind of scraggly looking.
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: They don't really look like important men at all. And
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: they're worried that the Roosevelts are Catholic priests that are
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: come to be missionaries, and so they're very upset. Yes,
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: and so it sort of takes some convincing. No, they're
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: not here to proselytize.
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: It's not what you think.
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: But what happens is that the people do not hunt panda,
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: so they know about the panda. They finally found a
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: group of people that know about the panda, but they
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: do not hunt them, and they try to explain to
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: the Roosevelts, these are gentle creatures. We don't hunt them,
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: and they are hunters. But they are hunters absolutely.
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: And they've made like even though they've come to some
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: kind of cultural taboo system or whatever where like here
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: it is it would be good to eat. They're available,
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: but we just like we don't.
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: Yes, And the results are pretty skeptical because they think,
• 48:55
  Speaker 3: why wouldn't you These skins are so rare you can
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: find them. Absolutely no, you would make so much money
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: if you sold them, And so they don't really understand it.
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: And I think it's one of those things where if
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: you know what a panda is like, then it makes
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: a little bit more sense, right, But they don't know.
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: It's hard for them to even comprehend the panda as
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: a gentle creature. And so after a lot of convincing,
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: the people agree to bring the Roosevelts on a hunt
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: with them. And the reason for this is that they
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: really don't think they're going to find a panda because
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: even for them, it's difficult to find one. Oh, I see,
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: it's very rare. For them to even encounter them. I mean,
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: they can count on one hand how many times they
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: have seen them, and they you know, they have hunted
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: them previously, but it's always been when a panda has
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: you know, been in a village or sort of gone
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: after an aviary or something like that where it was
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: or apiary, sorry, not aviary where the panda was, you know,
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: at some point threatening them, and that was has only
• 49:55
  Speaker 3: happened twice before, is what they told the Roosevelts. So
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: this is certainly a very rare thing thing. And so
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: they figure, Okay, well it's about to be rainy season,
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: we're not going to be able to be gone long.
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: We'll take them out, we'll find nothing, we'll get some
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: money for efforts, and then this will be done.
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: Can we hit a couple of biometrics on pandas sure?
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: What are we talking about? How many pounds is the
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: pana bear?
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: Man? I know that, and I just it's lost my brain.
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: I can't remember.
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: You say five hundred pounds?
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: No, I don't know.
• 50:32
  Speaker 5: We'll go two to three, okay, I can't remember the
• 50:36
  Speaker 5: National Zoo weighing up to two hundred and fifty pounds.
• 50:42
  Speaker 5: That sounds about right, rarely reach two ndred.
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: Without actually saying two to fifty. I said from two
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: to three.
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: I think, I guess I'm just thinking of all the hair.
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: You know, they're very fluffy.
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, And then they don't den or do they den?
• 50:59
  Speaker 3: They don't hybrid, so they it's you know, even as
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: the results are out there there, they are really questioning
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: whether the panda are a bear because they can tell
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: as they're kind of tracking them through the woods that
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: these are not animals that would hibernate.
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: Okay, and then what's their sort of Do they spend
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: a lot of time with their cubs like a normal
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: like other bear species.
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: They do. They spend a long time with their cubs,
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: but after that they're very solitary animals, so they do
• 51:25
  Speaker 3: not spend time with each other. They kind of have
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: their own territories, and they end up communicating with each
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: other through through scratches on the bamboo and then through
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: rubbing their glands on these patches, and so a female
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: will learn of a male that she's going to possibly
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: mate with through that smell. It's really a main way
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: that they communicate with each other. And when you think
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: about it, they don't really have a lot of other
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: ways to communicate because they don't have a lot of
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: expression in their faces like other bears, and they are
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: so isolated that really it's only through that those scratches,
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: through that rubbing.
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: They do they have any vocalizations.
• 52:05
  Speaker 5: I'm sorry, just when you say the scratching, is that
• 52:07
  Speaker 5: a visual thing, it's like they leave a sign and
• 52:11
  Speaker 5: then well.
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: It's mostly how they rub their glands on the scratches.
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: But yeah, it's it's absolutely that's amazing if they're like, oh,
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: look the sign.
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: Of But I would surprise that because bears use scratch
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: trees like prominent like prominent trees or trees like you know,
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: like whatever two canyons come together, prominent travel ways they'll mark,
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: they'll physically markin trees and they rub it too, you know.
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: And then any kind of calls they make, they don't.
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: They don't make. They're very quiet.
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: Unfortunately, No, even if they did vocalize, it probably wouldn't
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: sound and be like man, something really.
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: Now, it's as chill as they are. As chill as
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: they are. Do the males, well, the male throw down
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: like over a female.
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: It has not been observed in the wild.
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: Always chill, very chill, like they're doped up.
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: Like that. Yeah.
• 53:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so that the Roosevelts end up describing them as
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: a gentleman. That's how they put it. They're gentlemanly.
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: But do they Okay, if you roll up on a panda, Okay,
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: it's isolated. And what elevation are we talking about? Like
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: where are they at in the Himalaya? How high?
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: So they had been at these very high peaks, but
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: now they've come down. They've come down below the Tibetan plateau.
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: So we're no longer at these like snowy high people.
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: Okay, So that was that was they were up there
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: because if they needed to travel through the area, they weren't.
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: They weren't searching.
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: I mean they were still searching because they weren't sure
• 53:49
  Speaker 3: where the panda was.
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: I mean, they have like no idea where to look.
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: That's That's what I thought was really fascinating about the
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: whole arc of the journey is the journeys never really
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: going anywhere. I mean, and they're they're they're just sort
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: of clueless the whole time.
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: I know guys like that, I know guys hunt like that.
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: I Mean, I've been guilty of it myself, but you
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: never like get the sense like Okay, now we're on
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: the trail. Now we're getting warm, Now we're getting warmer.
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: It's like they just all of a sudden, these guys
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: take them out, and it's like it's like, yeah, yeah, okay.
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: There's so much desperation and desire in this hunt. You
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: can really feel it when you read through their journals.
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: They want it so much, and the clock is ticking,
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: and the clock is absolutely ticking.
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: And where they are is so obviously it's a bunch.
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: It's a bamboo forest, but it's like rugged steep country.
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: It is mountainous.
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's mountainous, so it's not high Himalaya's peaks,
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: but it is it's very difficult to hike through yep.
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: And so when these guys take them out to look,
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: they take them to like some spots they run into them,
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: but there's not like herds of.
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: Pandas, No, there are no Yeah, so we can imagine
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: that at the moment when they finally see a bear
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: print in the snow, it's in the snow. Yeah, it's
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: very exciting when that happens, and it's a it's a
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: really big moment in the book, and it's a big
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: moment for them because they are so excited. The Roosevelts
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: are finally we're doing this, We're going to get this panda,
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: and all of the hunters around them are like, oh no,
• 55:17
  Speaker 3: I don't want to go. I'm not doing this. We
• 55:19
  Speaker 3: can't keep going, and they have to because it winds
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: because they don't want to kill a pan they.
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: Didn't think they'd find one.
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Randall, how are you contradicting the author?
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: Yes, no, no, this is what you're saying earlier, like
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: the the the.
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: Tell you what I put my.
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: I mean, I saw this. I saw this book whenever
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: it was announced in January or December, and I pre
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: ordered it because it has everything that I enjoy, just expeditions, Roosevelts,
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: UH mountains and UH pairs and yeah, I'm a big
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: zoo guy, so pandas are objects of incredible fast station form.
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: You're a big zoo guy.
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, we talked about this.
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: I know your biggest states guys really into a state sales.
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: Sorry, I've got a yeah gotta. I'm very I'm a
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: renaissance man.
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: I knew about the estate sales, but I didn't know
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: about the pandas well.
• 56:18
  Speaker 3: You never know what trinkets you're gonna find.
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I was at a zoo this weekend.
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: It's great.
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of.
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: So they hit a track. I like this that it's
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: in the snow, But where a panda lives? What's the
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: deepest snow A pan that could deal with? I mean,
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: are they sometimes in serious snow or is it? Yes?
• 56:40
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, yeah, they can get so. At this point, you know,
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: we're getting into spring, so it's sort of it's rain
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: and snow. At this point, it happens to be snow,
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: which is very lucky because they're able to find the tracks,
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: and in fact, the whole time they're following these tracks,
• 56:55
  Speaker 3: the sun starts coming out and they're very anxious that
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: the trail is just going to disappear.
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: Gotcha. So, uh, but in peak winter, a panda is
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: not hibernating, but it's hanging out in potentially serious snow.
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: Isn't that interesting constantly eating?
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: Okay, now to get back to my question, and maybe
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: you're both I'll stay out of it. No, No, I
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: want to hear your take. Maybe you're both right. They
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: see the track, but then some of their guides start
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: getting they're conflicted or they get reluctant. Yes, Randall says
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: it's because they what what did he say? They want
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: to go home?
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: They I mean, my understanding is that they agreed to
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: take the Roosevelts out thinking that they would not actually
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: have to go through with the thing. They're like, we'll
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: just march these guys around for a couple of days,
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: collect our paychecks, and then these guys will go because
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: like there's no chance we're actually going to hit a track.
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: So when they hit a track, they're.
• 57:55
  Speaker 4: Like, oh all right, Yeah, they're like they're like, really
• 58:01
  Speaker 4: know whether we shouldn't have taken them to where they
• 58:03
  Speaker 4: actually are.
• 58:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a lot of regret and so not all
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: of that.
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: It's a weird call because they could have just totally bisdom. Yeah,
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: you know, like the Coronado expedition, they get these guides
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: who deliberately they're trying to find these Native American settlements
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: and they get these guides who are like, I'm not
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: taking you there, and then they'll just tell them some
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: total horseshit and take them somewhere else because they're trying
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: to protect other Native Americans. Yes, so like oh, you
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: want to go to where the main settlement is. It's
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: over that way. You know. They'll go for days. One
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: of these guys they actually kill him once they realize
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: he's leading them on. So it's surprising that these guides,
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: as conflicted as they are, they actually go to the spot.
• 58:43
  Speaker 3: It is surprising, but I think that just goes to
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: show how rare pandas are that they did not think
• 58:49
  Speaker 3: they would find one even looking at.
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so they cut a track, yes, and they trail it.
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they start following it and they start seeing bits
• 59:02
  Speaker 3: of broken bamboo as they go, so they know they're
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: in the right place. Immediately, some hunting dogs begin to howl,
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: and the Roosevelts are very upset. Hunting dogs are something
• 59:12
  Speaker 3: that they have never liked to use. They've never even
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: allowed it for most of this expedition. They did it
• 59:17
  Speaker 3: this one day just to kind of keep people happy,
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: and they're just beside themselves. They end up dividing where
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: Ted goes on one trail and Kermit goes on another,
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: and so Kermit is now the dog issue.
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what don't they like about it? They feel it's counterproductive.
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: Yes, they believe that it's just going to scare away
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: the game. They're trash. Yeah, and it's been a problem
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: throughout the expedition. And you know, it's really interesting because
• 59:45
  Speaker 3: for a lot of these scientific expeditions, the hunters that
• 59:49
  Speaker 3: got the game were not the scientists. They were local
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: hunters that were used to get these animals. But the
• 59:55
  Speaker 3: Roosevelts do not believe in that. They believe that they're
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: the ones that should be getting these animals. And I
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: mean that really makes sense. They're the ones that yeah, okay, yeah,
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: they're the ones that will really want to do the work.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: And so hunting dogs have been this issue. But they
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 3: wanted to keep these hunters happy because they know they
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 3: don't even really want to be there, and they kind
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 3: of had to convince them to keep going, even through
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: pretty bad conditions. And so they were letting these dogs
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: go so that they could hunt some pigs for food.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: Like ah, so they got dogs out for different reasons. Yeah,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: Also that makes more sense. Okay, So they're like, hey,
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: they're here, they want to hunt, they want pigs, they
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: want to eat. Yeah, so they're going to cut their
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: dogs loose and then these dogs are raising hell in
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: the pandas the.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 3: Worst timing ever, Yeah, it could not be worse understood.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: Finally Kurmit gets through the bamboo and they get to
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 3: this magnificent dragon spruce tree, dark green needles. It's just beautiful.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: And Kurmit sees the panda stick its head out.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: Of the tree and it's it's up in the tree.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: It's up in the tree. Yes, it's in a hole
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: in the tree. It's not too far off the ground,
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 3: and it's kind of looks sleepy. And he immediately says,
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 3: go get my brother, because they have made this plan
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: from the beginning that when they see a panda, they're
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 3: going to shoot it simultaneously so they both get the credit.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 3: Oh my god, really, I know, it's very it's kind
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: of ridiculous, and.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: Many people kids around.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it kind of is, and I think part of
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 3: this is that good lord, but it's kind of adorable.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: I want to favorite you always have to shoot everything, you.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: Sho That's like it could be like a firing squad
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: where one.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 4: Of them is a blank and one of them as
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 4: if you had told me, if you had told me
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 4: that that neither of them, uh wanted to have the
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 4: guilt of killing the panda, And so they had a plan,
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 4: like you're saying, where there's a blank and a live round,
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 4: you know, and so they never really know who killed
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 4: the panda, but that they both want to be.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: Shot.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: No, there's no guilt at this point because they don't
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 3: know what the panda's like. They think they're going to
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 3: shoot at this panda and it's going to attack them.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: Okay, that reason they.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: Got to get two bullets in it.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: They're like, they're so afraid. They want to make sure
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: it goes down. They want to make sure that it's
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: a human. There's a hundred ways they could have spun this,
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: but to spin it that they wanted to both be
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: able to say they got it. It's just it's kind
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: of pathetic. Well.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 3: Interestingly, though, Teddy Roosevelt would often take turns on his
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 3: expedition and he would get annoyed if people didn't take
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 3: turns shooting animals because he felt it was only fair.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: Everyone should get a fair chance at taking these shots. Okay,
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 3: so it might be part of that.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: So it's dend up in a tree, Yeah, and then
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: is it deaded up in the tree because the dogs
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: have baded it up. No, Okay, so they track it
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: just they happen to just find it. They happen to
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: find it, and there it is, all doped up in
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: a tree. Yes, they feel that it's lethargic. Well, because
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: they're not knowing that, they're like expecting frocity.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they're expecting Frosty, absolutely, and so Ted comes. They
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 3: get out their Smithfield rifles and.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: They've got to be excited as hell.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Oh, they're very excited. They've been waiting for this
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 3: moment for months. They've tracked very long to get there,
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 3: and so finally Ted gets there. They get their rifles,
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: and they've selected these Smithfield rifles because they're light, they're
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 3: easy to carry, and it's one that Kermit used in
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 3: Africa when he was hunting elephants. And so they fire
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 3: at the bear and they are very fortunate in that
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 3: it's coming out of the tree and so they're able
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 3: to get a shot on it, and then then then
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 3: they trail it and then finally able to track it
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: down and kill the panda. But it's not at all
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 3: what they expect. This is not a bear that immediately
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 3: turns on them and is trying to attack. It is
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 3: clear right from the beginning that the hunters they were
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 3: going with, are right, this is a gentle animal. This
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: is not a polar bear, This is not a grizzly bear.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 3: This is something very different. And pretty soon after we
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: see they begin to show regret. In their journals they
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 3: talk about how this bear is a gentleman, that this
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 3: is not an animal that should become a trophy animal.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 3: But that's exactly what happens.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: And what's also is there any conflict with them to
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: be that, I guess in this collection era, there's no
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: sort of on one hand, we should observe it, on
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: the other hand, we should collect it. Like in their mind,
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: like collection is paramount.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 3: Collection is paramount because there is no objective full specimen
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 3: in a museum, So they need to do both. And
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 3: at this point they've been able to collect some information
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 3: about the panda, and they're going to get more after
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 3: they hunt it. But certainly getting the specimen is the
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 3: most important thing for the museum.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: And do the guys do the what does the guides
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: when they kill it? What? Like what is the guide's attitude?
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: Do the guides are like, hey, let's cook it up?
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: Or like what is their sort of demeanor about the
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: whole thing?
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 3: At first, they do not even want to let the
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 3: panda back into the village because they feel like this
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 3: is such a horrible thing that's happened. They don't want
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 3: it to take to the village. And it's only when
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 3: they realize that Kermit and Ted will have to prepare
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: the animal and the mud and the snow that they
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 3: let it come into the village at all. And this
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 3: is the only animal of the many many they hunted
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 3: on the trail that Ted and Kermit do not eat.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 3: I'm sorry. Kind of a tough thing for this podcast,
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 3: isn't it. The Yeah, they felt bad about it, and.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: The guides so their taboo system too, like the guides
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: are not going to.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 3: Partake they do not know, And in fact, the leader
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 3: of the village ends up buying a goat for everyone
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 3: to feast with that night. But you can imagine how
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: it must have felt for Tend and Kermit to be
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 3: preparing this animal with an audience of people around them
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 3: that just are absolutely horrified by what they do. I mean,
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 3: they really see tedd and Kermit as the savages in
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 3: this situation, because here they are having to go through
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 3: skinning this animal. They're making diagrams of every muscle, every bone,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 3: and then of course the preparation for the hide. It's
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 3: pretty intense for anyone to watch, but you can imagine
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 3: how the people must have felt watching this happen to
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: an animal that they felt was sacred and gentle that
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 3: they didn't hunt.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: Trying to think of a parallel, I don't know for us. Yeah,
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: I'd be like if nowadays, Like if nowadays someone's like,
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: I need to get a bald eagle, yeah, something that
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: would just be like the people like, man, I don't
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: even be nothing to do with this man.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, It's hard to think of a parallel.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: I'm sure or some I think people have I think
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: a dog maybe, Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I mean
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: you just don't want I don't even want to see it.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 3: I mean, you can't imagine anyone doing this to a
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 3: panda today, right, Nobody would do this. But immediately after
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 3: the Roosevelt expedition, as soon as people learn that they
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 3: have been successful and where the pandas are, suddenly this
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 3: is the hunting trophy to get all of these expeditions
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 3: among big game hunters in the US.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: I didn't know that you can't.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 5: See that happening.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: I could see it happening if they came if they
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: had come back with a different approach, but if they
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: came back like no, no, it's like, uh, it's like
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: it eats bamboo, it's bill chill. The local people think
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: you're horrible if you mess with it, you're not a
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: he It's not like there's no like sort of like
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: hero function.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 3: But nobody's listening.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: Are glad, Yeah, you know the herders are like celebrating
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: that you've gotten rid of this thing that gives them pain.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 3: It's like rare animal.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just like, yeah, it's a little surprising.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 3: It's been so many decades of trying to find this animal,
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 3: of trying to show that it's real that as soon
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 3: as there's evidence, yes it's real and this is where
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 3: you can find it, it's immediate hunters want to go
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 3: and get this animal. And in addition, you have a
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 3: number of Americans that want to go and capture live
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 3: pandas for zoos.
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: But I'm curious what the ye people think of this trend.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: But let's back up a minute. So they get their specimen,
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: do they go on to have more interactions? Are they
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: able to find more animals different demographics or is it
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: kind of a one and done.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 3: They're only able to find that one animal, Okay, that's it.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 3: But they are able to spend some time in the
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 3: area and sort of document exactly what diet the panda as,
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 3: what its territory is, and then of course they spend
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 3: a long time being able to prepare the hide, take
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 3: the bones, they need every part.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: They don't lay eyes on another one. They do not
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: just the one, believe man, Huh, that's it.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there you go.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So it's just hard to think of other things
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: that you'd go that are other, like at other species,
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: that you'd go and like really find one and then
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: spend time in the area and have it not be
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: that you got into like a pocket of them.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah right, I mean, no, that's it.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: If you went and found a grille, you're going to
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: find a troop, you know or whatever. But yeah, just
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: you'd come get one, hang around and just that was it.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: Just some loaner, that was it.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And it makes sense when we understand pandobiology today
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 3: because they are so isolated, and of course Ted and
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 3: Kermit received many offers to go back and hunt panda again.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: I mean with recreational holders.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 3: Yes, with recreational holders, and even with museums, because you know,
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 3: Chicago isn't going to be the only one. Every museum
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 3: wanted to have their own group of pandas to show,
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 3: but they refused. They would not go back, they would
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: not hunt panda again, and in fact, their lives took
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 3: a very different turn after the panda hunt.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: I want to I want you to tell that because
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: I want to get to how the one of them
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: kills himself. The other guy died young too, he did.
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: But with with the the Ye people you spoke about,
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: do they this court, this habitat area, this area they're at,
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: is it sort of like uncontested that that is their homeland,
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: that they are the governing like the Ye people? Is
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: it Is it like that they are the governing body there?
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 3: Absolutely at that time.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: Yes. So if when they come back and all of
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: a sudden it creates kind of a gold rush where
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: people want to go collect this, you know, like a
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: like a hunter collector who's not affiliated with a museum
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: wants one for his personal collection. Is it is it
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: even possible that you would do it outside of outside
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: of the authority of these people, Do you. I mean,
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: like like that you could just kind of go to
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: this area and hang out and shoot this thing. They
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: don't want to get shot and not need to worry
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: about what they're how they're going to react to that.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a good question, because there is a lot
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 3: of angst even when the Roosevelts are there about what
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 3: they're doing.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but there are no laws, and so you can
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 3: imagine that it's not that difficult for these hunters and
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 3: for people who are looking to collect pandas to come
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 3: in with the right bribes, be able to find people
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 3: that will help I got it.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like some outcasts or whatever. It's like, yeah, I'll
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: do it. Yeah, I'll do it for the right amount
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: of money. Yes, I see how many? How many can
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: can you even take a guess, like, in the next
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: couple decades or whatever, how many pandas enter private collections
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: in the US or private collections anywhere.
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 3: It's hard for me to assess exactly what that number is.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 3: Certainly for museum collections, we know that there are dozens
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 3: that came back for museums, and that museums were really
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 3: intent on getting as many animals of as many different
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 3: ages as they could, and part of that is because
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 3: the exhibits themselves were popular, but also because they wanted
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 3: to do comparative biology to be able to really look
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 3: at what the history of the panda was and how
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 3: it fit in with other bears. And certainly the track
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 3: record for bringing live animals to zoos in the United
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 3: States is just atrocious. During that era, you have all
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 3: of these cubs that were brought back, and none of
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 3: them survived very long because people just didn't know how
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 3: to take care of them.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: Presumably the way to get the cubs is they'd go
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: and just shoot a female and take the cubs.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, which then provided the benefit of also getting
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 3: a skin that you could bring back. And they needed
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 3: the cubs because that's really the only way you could
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 3: smuggle it back to the US. They were, you know,
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 3: bringing this through the Chinese government, but not declaring that
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 3: they actually had pandas.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: Okay, so they're even though they're in Tibet and there's
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: like hostilities between the Tibetans in China, the kind of
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: flow winds up being through, Yes, the flow winds up
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: being a like a Chinese market.
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 3: Yes, because they have to as they take a boat
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 3: back home. They have to do so through China.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: And what is the if there's like a little bit
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: of a taboo with the people that live there, if
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: you get down into mainland, if you get down that mainland,
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: if you get down into like places where there's Chinese authority,
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: what is the attitude there to the panda? Because now
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: it's funny that it's funny that our perception is that
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: it's this symbol of China, you know, like like you
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: get up to like Nixon and he like negotiates right, right,
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: and they bring this panda for the thing. It's like
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: a symbol of China. But at that time it would
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: have been a symbol of Tibet.
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 3: At the time, it was just this brand new animal
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 3: that had been described for many people.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: A symbol of no one or whatever. Yeah, I gotcha.
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: It wasn't like a national it wasn't like a like
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: a point of national pride.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 3: It was not yet. So it's it's interesting how that
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 3: came to be. I mean, it's weird to think of
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 3: the Roosevelts as being part of creating that, isn't it.
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 3: But certainly China had some regulations about what animals you
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 3: could take, and while there weren't any laws about panda cubs.
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 3: Yet the people that were smuggling the panda cubs out
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 3: were declaring them as dogs that they were taking home.
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 2: And it's fascinating too to just think about. So their
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 2: expedition is in nineteen twenty to twenty nine, and when
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 2: you're talking about Nixon, I mean, that's just a couple
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: decades later that grew it to the made nation is
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 2: like this is China's I mean, I think a lot
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 2: of Americans would just assume that panda's China's national animal.
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 2: And it's like if you were to go back in
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: Chinese history and see documentation of this, but it's it's
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 2: so recent.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: It's forty Yeah, in forty years it became that, like
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: it became like sort of the mascot of normalizing relations
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: with China. And they didn't even in nineteen thirty, they
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: didn't know about them. And in nineteen seventy it's like, look, China,
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: it's a panda. Yeah, Like it really blew up.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 3: It really did. As soon as the results come back
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 3: and people can see this exhibit for themselves, there is
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 3: this pandemonium. People get really excited.
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 2: I wish so big panda probably came out.
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: It's kind of amazing, man.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, people were so excited about this animal they really
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 3: didn't even know existed before, and how could you not.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 3: Pandas are very cute, and.
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: It's that little rush. Because here's the other thing is,
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: I know there were never many, but that little flurry
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: of activity must have a from a conservation perspective, it
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: must be pretty destructive pretty immediately, yes, Imia, they're so
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: rare anyways, and now you're whittling away at something that's
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: at such low bond.
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And that's why Ted and Kermit became so passionate
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 3: about protecting pandas afterwards, is because they knew how rare
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 3: these bears really were.
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: If there's only two thousand of them in like two
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: hundred museums want one and a few hundred collectors want one,
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: you're talking about it. You're like, you're removing a significant
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: percentage of the global population.
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so it's for them. It became very disturbing
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 3: what happened. They did not expect that it would blow
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 3: up quite so big, and that you would have so
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 3: many people going out to kill pandas and to steal cubs.
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 3: And so that's why they ended up making some big changes,
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 3: especially with Kermit. You see him taking these roles in
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 3: leadership in wildlife conservation that you know, obviously Teddy Roosevelt
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 3: is such a leader in conservation and what he did,
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 3: so certainly the brothers were following in his footsteps. But
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 3: you see Kermit doing some interesting things. For instance, he
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 3: went on an expedition to the Galopagos where instead of
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 3: going out and taking animals as they had before, they
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 3: now were trying to study them create a breeding program
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 3: for Galopaghos tortoises. So he really changes his perspective of
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 3: how he goes out and does expeditions from them then
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 3: on it's no longer the same. And in addition, he
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 3: ends up becoming very passionate about creating laws to protect pandas.
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 3: So he becomes vice president with the New York Zoological
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 3: Society and then becomes president of the Audubon Society, where
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 3: he works very closely with Chinese officials to create laws
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 3: to protect pandas. And we see even ten as well
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 3: becomes pretty upset with what's happened. It's it's just it
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 3: becomes so atrocious how many cubs are being stolen from
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 3: China and that die shortly after.
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: You know what you know in our world? You know
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: what they call this spot burning? He's a spot burner.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 2: Well, I sort of had the thought when they're talking
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 2: about the people coming out, it's like your buddy wants
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 2: to go hunting with you, and he really wants you
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 2: to take him to one of your spots, and you
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 2: go to one of the bad spots and then a
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 2: big buck walks up and you're like, it really was
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 2: Now I imagine this happened.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: I should turn around us. He has the guilt. He
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: comes in the conservation movement. But what age are these
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: guys when they do the what age are they in
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: nineteen thirty and how long do they live?
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 3: The brothers, Yeah, so they are in their forties during
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 3: this expedition and then they both died during World War Two.
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 3: So Ted was fifty six years old when he was
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 3: the old general to land with the first wave of
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 3: troops on D Day in Normandy, and he's very famous
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 3: for getting up on that beach and saying we'll start
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 3: the war right from here. He was this this real
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 3: hero of that moment. Many people did not think that
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 3: he would survive that day, and he was hiding a
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 3: heart condition, and so he ends up dying just a
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 3: few days later from that.
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: Well, he lands on day one D Day, Yes, yeah,
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: the only conditioned a couple of days later at fifty.
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 2: Something years old.
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 3: Six, Yeah, and receives the Medal of Honor posthumously for
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 3: his actions on D Day.
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: Really. Yeah, Oh, shouldn't know that.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 3: Both brothers served in both World War One and World
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 3: War Two, and both got involved in World War Two
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 3: very early before the US got involved.
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: Well, how okay, how is he at the time of
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: this expedition. He's not in the military, No.
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 3: He's not.
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So he enrolls somehow in his forties, advances to
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: a general ship.
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean he had, you know, a few connections
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 3: to get there.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 2: It's a different model of military.
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: But he's a command he's in the command position. Yeah,
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: by nineteen forty four, Yes, he is.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean he had also served in World War
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 3: One and so he was certainly.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: This was kind of sandwich between the two experiences.
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 3: Yes, and he was. He had a big role in
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 3: Operation Torch, so he had He did have quite a
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 3: few years of leadership during World War Two.
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: Before he died, dies of a heart condition.
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, he'd been hiding it from his doctors. He
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 3: didn't want anyone to know because.
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: He thought they'd pull him from service.
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 3: Yes, exactly.
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: You'd almost think that he'd been pulled from doing anything
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: risky just from a pr standpoint, do you know what
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: I mean? Like the'd be like a high profile right,
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: like a high profile fatality that the army wouldn't want. Yeah,
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: the army might not want.
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 3: In some way, you know, I can I can see
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 3: why you would think that. But the Roosevelts were certainly
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 3: very passionate about serving in the military. It was really
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 3: part of their their heritage. And you know, even during
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 3: World War One, you have their younger brother, Quentin, who died.
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: So the one dies from the heart condition towards the
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: end of World War Two, yes, and then and then
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: the other brother what comes to him?
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 3: So he had died earlier in nineteen forty three, so
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 3: he was also involved in World War Two. He served
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 3: in several different places in the Middle East and in Europe,
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 3: but he was struggling. He had become an alcoholic and
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 3: he was not receiving great treatment for that, and so
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 3: they sent him to a fort in Alaska. Fort Richardson. Oh,
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 3: and he ended up killing himself.
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: That's where.
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, really yeah. He was talking to a buddy of
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 3: his and he he said, you know this by he
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 3: was like, oh, you know, what are you doing tonight?
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 3: And they were chatting a little bit and his buddy said, oh,
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 3: I'm going to go to sleep, and Kermit says, I
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 3: wish I could sleep.
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: He killed himself in Fort Richardson, Alaska.
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 3: Yes he did. Yeah, it's a it's such a sad story.
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 3: You know, a gunshot.
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: Do you know what kind of gone? I don't sorry,
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: where did he shoot himself?
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 3: You know, I know it was in the head, son
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 3: of a bitch.
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: And Fort Richardson. This is like such a huge blank
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: spot for me, man, you know, like these two the Pandas.
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: It's like, somehow I just have missed all this, Like, yeah, it's.
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 3: An interesting They haven't been written about much. And I
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 3: do feel like it's important to give these brothers their
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 3: due because they they really did they you know, they
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 3: really furthered their father's their father's mission and of combining
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 3: conservation and hunting. It was something they're very passionate about.
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 3: And the sexpedition was incredibly successful at the time, and
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 3: certainly the after effects were not what they expected. The
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 3: consequences are not what they thought would happen. But what
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 3: you really see is both brothers who who felt passionate
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 3: about protecting the panda and were always always cared about conservation.
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: What year did their What year did their old man die?
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 3: He died in nineteen nineteen.
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: Okay, and they were what age then?
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 3: So let me think about that. Yeah, they would have been,
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 3: and they were both in World War One when they
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 3: received a telegram that said the old Lion has died.
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 3: Was how the telegram put it to let him know their.
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: Dad had died, And they had to be like, that
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: must be referring to our father. Feeling was referred to
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: our father confirm the old lie.
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 2: I'm trying to make a joke about that and the
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 2: bear hunt game that they played.
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 3: But.
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like dude, are they talking about dad? Yeah, so
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: that's terrible.
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 2: I didn't realize Dad got a lion.
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 3: They had known it was coming. He was definitely weaker
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 3: ever since the River of Dowt that just weakened town.
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 3: He was never the same after that expedition.
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 2: And he must have been seventy something.
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he was kidding.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, fifties.
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: Now what did these brothers? Did these brothers have kids?
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 3: They did? Yeah, And actually I've been in contact with
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 3: a number of members of the family now, like one
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 3: of the kids. I mean, they all have the same name.
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 3: They're all Ted, they're all Kermit, they're all Ellen Moore,
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 3: just the same names over and over again. But it's
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 3: it's been interesting to talk to family members today because
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 3: they still have photographs and artifacts from this trip. Is
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 3: that right, Yeah, it's pretty cool.
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: What a wild story. Yeah, I just can't believe how,
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: you know, like like Theodore Roosevelt, he's inescapable. Yeah, do
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean? All the exploits and the
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: timelines and then just like these boys, it's just one
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: of those hadn't heard about this stuff.
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: One of the sort of strange things that occurred to
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: me when I was doing my when I was in
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 2: grad school because the all the Boone Crockett Club records
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 2: are at the University of Montana. So I was reading
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 2: a little bit about the Boone Crockett Club in the
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 2: post war era, and I mean there's like a real
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 2: crisis of confidence, it seems, just when you're reading things
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 2: because all of the founding generation dies in, you know,
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 2: like in the teens and twenties and thirties, and then
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 2: they have these sons and there's a lot of a
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 2: lot of members of the club are sons, like Charles Sheldon,
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 2: Charles Sheldon's son, Billy Sheldon. It's like sons carrying on
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 2: their father's legacies and also wondering how they push things
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 2: forward and make names for themselves. And yeah, it's really
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 2: fascinating when you think about I feel like oftentimes we
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 2: think about conservation especially as like these moments, like there's
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 2: this moment of the Boone and Crockett Club and the
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 2: sort of progressive movement, this early conservation model, and then
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 2: there's this you know, like the nineteen thirties, right or
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 2: the nineteen twenties, nineteen thirties when you have but there's
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 2: continuity between all those and as we know today just
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 2: from people that we interact with, like in the conservation world,
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 2: like it often is a family tradition.
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: And yeah, like this filled in a.
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 2: Lot of blank spots for me because like you hear
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 2: about Teddy Junior and Kermit, but it's really I've never
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 2: had someone sort of put a face.
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: On them for me.
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 2: So it's really that's what I've done really fascinating.
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they're interesting men, and it's just fascinating to me
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 3: the friendships they continued after the expedition, and how they
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 3: supported Jack and his dreams. He wanted to become a scientist,
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 3: he wanted to do an expedition of his own, and
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 3: they both helped to fund that. And it's you know,
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 3: it's just they were very different than I expected them
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 3: to be. And that's always fun when you find a
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 3: story in history like this.
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: Have you ever personally been able to see a panda
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: on native ground in native range? I wish.
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not easy to do. You know, even if
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 3: you go to China and you go to one of
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 3: the research reserves, you're really seeing them in an artificial
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 3: environment compared to what it's like to see them in
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 3: the wild. And I spoke with several different panda researchers
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 3: for this book, and they told me the most difficult
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 3: part of doing this research is finding a panda. Even today,
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 3: even with all the technology we have, even with the
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 3: tagging we have, you know, we don't have to go
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 3: out and shoot animals as much these days. We have
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 3: other ways that I'm sure future historians and scientists will
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 3: find barbaric and you know, we use tranquilizer guns, and
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 3: I'm sure it'll be judged in decades to come. But
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 3: it's incredible to me how difficult it is even today
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 3: for these researchers to go out and find panda in
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 3: the wild.
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: How many are in the wild now.
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 3: It's interesting because today there are about two thousand, but
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 3: that is coming back from a low of one thousand
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 3: in the nineteen seventies, So there was there was a
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 3: time period where it was really difficult for pandas, and
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 3: it's it's really thanks to sort of that continuity that
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 3: you're talking about about these protections that have been given
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 3: to them to protect their habitats, which have just become
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 3: more fragmented now. And it's what's fascinating is that the
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 3: protections that have been given to pandas are also helping
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 3: other species in China.
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: I would have, like I said I said earlier, when
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: I was surprised that there was only two thousand, somehow
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: in my head I had the bottleneck being much tighter. Yeah,
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: so they went through a fifty percent decline, yeah, which
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: well it is because the pure numbers are so low. Yeah,
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: but like you normally, normally these imperiled species, the bottleneck
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: is much tighter than a fifty percent reduction. But you're
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: usually talking about like a million animals and yeah, you know, yeah,
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: but to take you only got two thousand, you whittle
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: it down to a thousand. I just want to if
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: you'd said it at one point, there's forty of them,
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: you know, out of bend like that sounds yeah, my perception,
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: my completely uneducated, ignorant idea of what happened, I would
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: have guessed it was less.
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 3: It's nice I can make up numbers here.
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 2: It's just funny to me because they're you know, it's
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 2: when you're when you're a little kid in the eighties
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 2: or early nineties and you like hear about endangered animals, right,
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 2: like the pandas one of the poster children for that.
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 2: But I've you know, spent most of my life thinking
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 2: about animal and panda is just one that's always sort
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 2: of out here, is like an other like I can't
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 2: picture them in the wild. I can't, like you don't
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 2: have you don't you don't see like footage in a
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 2: nature documentary of a panda doing things like for whatever reason,
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 2: they they're very unique, just sort of in my imagination
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 2: and like I guess in sort of the cultural imagination,
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 2: Like it's a it's a very strange animal when you
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 2: just think about what do you know about pandas, What
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 2: do you associate with pandas? Yeah, I don't know. And
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 2: then it starts to make sense when you realize how
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 2: rare they are and how recently they were discovered.
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: You want to know, the biggest problem for them from
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: a PR standpoint is if they were like bad mofos
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: and always scratching people up, Yeah, then people would know
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: about them. I think the chillness works against them for PR.
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, like like I'm kind of on a leopard
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: kick right now. I've never seen it. Well I did
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: see a leopards a leopards. Well, I'm gonna look a
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: little bit of a leopard kick. One of the things
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: that fuels a leopard kick is a leopard kick is
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: learning about just how like effortlessly they dust people off
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: when they put their mind to it. And so it
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: creates that like that ferocity is respected from far, do
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Like, like you go to
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: a lot of people like name a jellyfish. I'll be
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: like the box jelly Why is that because it kills people?
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: Do you know what I'm saying? Like the snakes, the
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: bad killing snakes are the snakes that people have a
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: high level of awareness about.
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think you might be right, because even
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 3: when it comes to breeding, they're just too chill. Yeah,
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 3: they would do so much better if there's just a
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 3: little fire in there.
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah it was. I'm not trying to advise them or anything,
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: but just like people, the word would have your perception
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: of it to be different.
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 2: There's one animal that in nineteen twenty nine could have
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 2: just taken one swipe and changed the whole trajectory of
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 2: this spiece.
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: If he'd have been like if he'd have thought, I'm
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: going to come down out of this tree and I'm
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: killing these two Roosevelt boys.
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, then you would have heard of this way sooner.
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 3: The story would not have been buried for as long.
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but they just killed like a little Teddy bear man.
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: You know the Teddy Bear story? Is that in the book.
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 3: It is in the book. Yeah, it's a hard one.
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: I tell dude, it's a hard one to tell. So
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: what's your next book going? To be about. You know, yeah, I.
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 3: Don't know yet, but I really enjoyed getting to talk
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 3: about animals and nature and expeditions like this. It's it's fun.
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: I got the hot tip for you.
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 3: Tell me.
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: I don't know if I should tell you now? What
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: if all people learn about the hot tip? Okay, tip?
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 2: How quick are you turning out a book? Not very
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 2: because a lot of people are going to hear this tip.
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: Here's a hot tip. Here's a hot tip, Bradbury. That's good. Yeah,
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: so does this botanist. Okay, And right around eighteen eleven,
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: eighteen ten, there's this botanist. He wants to go explore
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: the American West and take botany samples. He's actually a start.
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: He's like, one of his observations is about the you know,
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: honey bees aren't native, so looking at like how honey
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: bees moved across the country. But he goes out and
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: has all these crazy adventures collecting plants, and he's got
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: this assistant with them. They get to the end of
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: their expedition and Bradbury is he's going to do some
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: other little side trip, but he sends his his lackey
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: home with all the samples. He then delays his timing
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: a little bit and gets kind of rolled up in
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: the New Madrid you know, you know when the New
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: Magered earthquake, when the when the when the rivers ran backwards,
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: like the Mississippi ran backward. Okay, it was all tied
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: into like to come see. Okay, there's a huge, huge
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: isistatic rebound earthquake causes all this decimation is tied up
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: in all this crazy shit. Then he's still trying to
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: get home. In the War of eighteen twelve breaks out,
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: He's delayed to damn long. By the time he makes
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: it back to England, his assistant has like written him
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: off or whatever and has published the material, has published
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: the material on his own.
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 3: Oh that's tough.
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: But if you like expeditions and everything, there's no like
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: really good book that I'm aware of. There's no big, full,
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: like balls out book on the Bradbury Expedition and his
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: whole crazy story.
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it sounds really interesting.
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we should probably cut that out.
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, no, I mean I think it's fascinating too that.
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: So you're going to write it.
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll get on it right now.
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 2: Going back, I mean, like the age of expeditions, like
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 2: oftentimes I think about them being so long ago. But
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 2: the idea that this is taking place in the twenties
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 2: and thirties obviously, like the River of Doubt, you know,
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 2: is one thing, But then the twenties, late twenties, and
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 2: you also think about, you know, like this sort of time.
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of stuff going on in Asia at
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 2: the time with mountaineering and all that kind of stuff.
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 2: Like it's just a it's a really fascinating period in geography.
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 3: It is because at this point nobody knows what the
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 3: tallest mountain in the world is. They knows the deepest
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 3: part of the ocean. It's there's so much exploration still
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 3: to come.
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's fascinating.
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: Hm hm, congratulations, Thank you hard Right Books.
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, this was pretty fun though. I had such a
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 3: good time going through all these letters and journals and
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 3: it's just so interesting and there are just so many
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 3: weird parts too, Like the Roosevelts had such interesting reading
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 3: material on the trail. They read Jane Austen and Jane Eyre. Yeah,
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 3: kinds of interesting novels. You wouldn't necessarily expect them to
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 3: be pulling out on the snowy Himalayas.
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: How many. Uh, how long did it take you to
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: do the whole thing?
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 3: About five five years from start to finish. For this one,
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 3: it was you know, it takes a long time to
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 3: find the material, and I was fortunate with this book
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 3: because I was able to get journals from every member
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 3: of the expedition and it was great to just help compare,
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 3: really help me create these scenes in a lot of detail,
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 3: and that's important, I think in nonfiction because you want
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 3: it to feel like you're there, like you're on the
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 3: trail and all those details are part of it.
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: And you were doing magazine work during that time. Yeah.
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And I do some ghost writing too, so I
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 3: kind of for who Yeah really, yeah, it's fun. I
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 3: like ghost writing because it's you know, there's no ego involved.
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 3: You're just trying to write the best book you can,
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 3: so it's kind of a fun thing to do.
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 5: I read that you studied Chinese for a number of
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 5: years too, with some of the source material and Mandarin
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 5: that you were translating, or it was more oral with
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 5: any interviews.
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 3: Yes, no, I studied Mandarin in college, and my grandfather
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 3: lived in China for about a decade, and so I've
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 3: traveled quite a bit in China with him, and so
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 3: it was fun for me because I've always felt a
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 3: connection with the country and so to be able to
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 3: see it through a really different lens of history, a
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 3: completely different time period, into places that just they just
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 3: don't exist. Like this trail that I describe, it's not
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 3: there today. You cannot find that trail, and so to
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 3: be able to travel to really feel like you're there
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 3: during that time period was just so fascinating.
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: Well, thanks for coming on, Thank you.
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 3: I so appreciate it.
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah again, Nathalia every calls her Nat. That's me Nat Whole,
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: Nathalia Whole. The Beast in the Clouds, the Roosevelt Brothers
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: deadly quest to find the mythical giant panda. Is there
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: like a lesser panda?
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 3: Is there any there's the red Panda?
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: Oh okay, I've seen one of those. The Beasts and
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: the Clouds. Check it out and learn about all the
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: subtle details that we didn't include today.
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's plenty in there.
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: Because you really kind of like shot yourself in the
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: foot on that one, because you know you should have
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: said you got to read it to find out if
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: they get one.
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 3: I kind of gave away the endoilers, you know they
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 3: shot together.
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: How the end of your thing?
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 3: It like quick.
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: And then be like you have to read the book
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: to find out what happened.
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 3: Let's go back.
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: Another cut here, Phil, Thanks man, I appreciate you coming
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: on when you finished that Bradbury book come back. Oh yeah,
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: I got a lot of questions about that. I told
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: you everything.
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 2: I know, like some holes.
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: There's some holes in my understanding. All right, thank you,
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: thank you.
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 3: I really appreciate it.