Latest / The Kulturecast / An Unknown Compelling Force (2021) — "I think these theories are weird."

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An Unknown Compelling Force (2021) — "I think these theories are weird." · The Kulturecast

0:04
Speaker 1: Weird way.
0:44
Speaker 2: HM, when you look at the wounds that were on
0:48
Speaker 2: the hikers, I'm just not buying the accidental thing. Why
0:52
Speaker 2: how came? Why would they die? I think all these
0:56
Speaker 2: theories are pretty weird.
1:05
Speaker 3: In nineteen fifty nine, nine Russian students were found frozen
1:09
Speaker 3: to death in the Ural Mountains in an event now
1:13
Speaker 3: known as the Diatlov Pass incident, found a mile from
1:18
Speaker 3: their tent without their winter clothes or boots, each one
1:22
Speaker 3: suffering inexplicable injuries. Despite the clues and evidence of violence,
1:28
Speaker 3: the official cause of death was stated as hypothermia. This
1:33
Speaker 3: only fueled conspiracy theories from alien visitors to Russian yetties.
1:40
Speaker 3: Just what were the hikers fleeing from? Every diary entry
1:48
Speaker 3: in every photo seems to hide a clue.
1:51
Speaker 2: There were rumors that they just killed each other. I
1:54
Speaker 2: don't believe that in any way, it could just be
1:56
Speaker 2: an accident.
1:57
Speaker 3: With so many conflicting stories, I've come to rush up
2:00
Speaker 3: to ask the question, what is the true story of
2:04
Speaker 3: the Diacle of Pass?
2:21
Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to the Culture Cast. I am
2:23
Speaker 1: your host, Christasue, and I'm joined by well, someone who's
2:26
Speaker 1: never been on the show before. She is a physicist
2:29
Speaker 1: with mountain experience. As she put it, Doctor Kate Mullen.
2:33
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me, Chris.
2:35
Speaker 1: And she came at the suggestion of someone who has
2:38
Speaker 1: been on the show before, and this film was his idea.
2:41
Speaker 1: He posed it to me. So returning once again is
2:44
Speaker 1: my friend and yours all the way from Texas Tech,
2:46
Speaker 1: where he's a professor of Media and Communications. He likes
2:49
Speaker 1: to be referred to as hair professor. I don't know why,
2:52
Speaker 1: for the life of me, he doesn't have a lick
2:55
Speaker 1: of hair on his head. Your friend of mine, Doctor David.
2:58
Speaker 4: Pearlmutter, Thank you, Chris. Always good to be here.
3:00
Speaker 1: I guess I misunderstood what hair meant. That's German, not it. Yeah,
3:04
Speaker 1: I'm joking. I'm purely kidding. If you clicked on this
3:07
Speaker 1: episode and you have no idea what we're talking about.
3:10
Speaker 1: On this episode, we're going to be talking about a
3:12
Speaker 1: film from twenty twenty one called an Unknown Compelling Force.
3:15
Speaker 1: It is a documentary about the Dyatlov Past incident as
3:19
Speaker 1: it is known now because one of the people who
3:22
Speaker 1: died in that incident is why it is named for
3:25
Speaker 1: that person. So we're gonna be talking about the documentary
3:28
Speaker 1: we'll be talking probably more about the incident itself less
3:31
Speaker 1: the documentary, given that the documentary is just an opportunity
3:34
Speaker 1: to talk about the event as it were. But we'll
3:36
Speaker 1: also talk about the film and kind of the way
3:38
Speaker 1: it does what it does. But before we talk about specifics, Kate,
3:44
Speaker 1: I think it's important for my audience to understand what
3:47
Speaker 1: does mountain experience mean and how does that translate into
3:51
Speaker 1: knowledge about this incident? And I guess more importantly, what
3:57
Speaker 1: is it that makes you so knowledgeable about the mountain
4:00
Speaker 1: and have mountain experience? What does that mean?
4:01
Speaker 2: So I currently reside in California and spend a good
4:05
Speaker 2: deal of time in the Sierra Nevada here, but I've
4:07
Speaker 2: also climbed around the world in Chemony and in other
4:10
Speaker 2: places that are glaciated or you know, have a significant snowpack.
4:14
Speaker 2: And what it means to have mountain experience in this
4:17
Speaker 2: case is that I'm familiar with the danger of avalanches,
4:21
Speaker 2: and I'm also familiar with some of the kind of
4:23
Speaker 2: you know, not full mountain slides, but like a wind
4:27
Speaker 2: slab letting loose when you dig a tent platform, which
4:32
Speaker 2: is unfortunately what the students did in the wrong place.
4:36
Speaker 2: So I mean, I think that this podcast would be
4:40
Speaker 2: helped by some visuals. But I want everyone to think
4:42
Speaker 2: about a slope maybe thirty degrees, and how would you
4:46
Speaker 2: set up a tent on that slope? Okay, well, what
4:48
Speaker 2: you would want to do is cut a level platform
4:51
Speaker 2: for the tent, and when you do so, you're going
4:54
Speaker 2: to have the upslope side of the mountain kind of exposed,
4:58
Speaker 2: a horizontal aspect of that mountain side exposed. And because you're,
5:03
Speaker 2: you know, tired, and the snow is heavy, you're not
5:05
Speaker 2: going to dig a huge platform. The tent is going
5:07
Speaker 2: to be almost against this horizontal I'm sorry I'm saying horizontal,
5:12
Speaker 2: but I mean vertical, this vertical aspect of you know,
5:15
Speaker 2: where you dug out the side of the mountain. And
5:18
Speaker 2: I think that if you read some of the literature,
5:22
Speaker 2: peer reviewed literature about what could have happened in this incident,
5:26
Speaker 2: there is a probable case to be made that there
5:30
Speaker 2: was a slab avalanche that filled in the tent platform
5:34
Speaker 2: hole and hurt the students. So I don't know if
5:38
Speaker 2: anybody listening doesn't know what happened, but nine people were
5:42
Speaker 2: killed in a disaster in the mountains and this disaster
5:47
Speaker 2: has been the subject of a lot of speculation and
5:49
Speaker 2: a lot of conspiracy theories. And my background both as
5:54
Speaker 2: a mountaineer and as a physicist who's somewhat familiar with,
5:57
Speaker 2: you know, friction and force, is that gravity brings to
6:02
Speaker 2: bear on snow. I look at this and I see
6:06
Speaker 2: something that can be explained with completely natural causes, and
6:10
Speaker 2: we can get into the exact hypothesis that I think
6:13
Speaker 2: has been credibly put forth about what happened. But I
6:17
Speaker 2: just bring to bear basically a lot of time in
6:20
Speaker 2: the mountains, avalanches kill people every year. I live, you know,
6:24
Speaker 2: in Los Angeles, but that's close to Mammoth Mountain, where
6:27
Speaker 2: a bunch of people have died this year on engroomed
6:31
Speaker 2: ski trails. So you know, avalanches kill all the time.
6:34
Speaker 2: And I think it's a very likely hypothesis that an
6:37
Speaker 2: avalanche was involved a slab avalanche filling in this tent platform,
6:41
Speaker 2: so a small you know, slide of snow, right. Yeah,
6:46
Speaker 2: And so that's what I'd like to talk about today.
6:49
Speaker 1: And what's crazy is, you know how uninteresting it would
6:53
Speaker 1: be for anyone to just accept that as the theory
6:55
Speaker 1: and move forward, because I means as David knows as
6:58
Speaker 1: the person who had pitched the pitch the film, like,
7:01
Speaker 1: we don't with this film, we don't start there, we
7:05
Speaker 1: don't start at that moment. And I think, what's really
7:08
Speaker 1: exciting for this episode of the show and for what
7:10
Speaker 1: you just did, is you more or less say, right
7:12
Speaker 1: up at the front here, what what you perceived to
7:16
Speaker 1: be what happened? And for someone like myself who used
7:19
Speaker 1: to spend a lot of time on paranormal, supernatural, true
7:23
Speaker 1: crime stuff like that, for a couple of years I
7:25
Speaker 1: did a show about that, like this is that kind
7:28
Speaker 1: of case For a lot of people, it's like this
7:29
Speaker 1: is aliens Bigfoot, and it's like, you know what, that's
7:34
Speaker 1: fine at all, But but why is it always have
7:37
Speaker 1: to be that? That's what I always ask, because you know,
7:40
Speaker 1: it's it's great that there's all these weird idiosyncrasies about
7:42
Speaker 1: the case, and there are all these weird things and
7:44
Speaker 1: all they're in the ural mountains where there were Russian yetties,
7:47
Speaker 1: or it could be the indigenous people. But it's always
7:49
Speaker 1: way less exciting for it to just be something easily
7:52
Speaker 1: explained by a natural occurrence, because nature doesn't care. Right,
7:58
Speaker 1: As someone who spent a amount of time in Boy
8:01
Speaker 1: Scouts with over one hundred nights of camping under my belt. Yeah,
8:05
Speaker 1: I don't like camping intents in snow because it's very
8:09
Speaker 1: especially when it's just like what you're talking about, just snow.
8:14
Speaker 2: Well, a small mistake can snowball, and I mean the
8:17
Speaker 2: margins for error are extremely low in the conditions the
8:20
Speaker 2: students were in, which is very very cold temperatures. So yeah,
8:23
Speaker 2: I mean, you can let me know if you want
8:26
Speaker 2: to go through what I think is the most likely story.
8:29
Speaker 2: But once they I mean, so I think that they
8:32
Speaker 2: thought a slab avalanche was happening, and that they didn't
8:36
Speaker 2: know the extent of the avalanche, and I think it
8:38
Speaker 2: just slid onto the platform that they had carved. It
8:41
Speaker 2: wasn't a mountain wide avalanche, right, But they were trained.
8:44
Speaker 2: These were members of the Explorers Club at their university.
8:47
Speaker 2: They were alpinists who had some knowledge of the dangers
8:50
Speaker 2: of avalanches, and their training would have told them, you know,
8:54
Speaker 2: get to the side of it, the slide is going
8:56
Speaker 2: to continue. Once they did that in the night, you know,
8:59
Speaker 2: it was very difficult for them to find their way
9:01
Speaker 2: back to the tent and the.
9:03
Speaker 1: Tents would have been gone right.
9:05
Speaker 2: Well, the tent was I believe partially buried when it
9:07
Speaker 2: was discovered. But you know this snow wind pack. Snow
9:11
Speaker 2: can be one thousand pounds per square meter, so when
9:15
Speaker 2: this slides onto the tent, even partially, it causes a panic.
9:18
Speaker 2: And even digging themselves out of the tent was I
9:21
Speaker 2: believe physically very hard. And you know they probably had
9:25
Speaker 2: some degree of injuries just from that aspect of, you know,
9:29
Speaker 2: the tragedy.
9:30
Speaker 1: So I'm going to pose it to David first and
9:33
Speaker 1: then U Kate, David, what did you think of the movie?
9:35
Speaker 4: So?
9:36
Speaker 5: Yeah, So Chris, we've talked before that we live in
9:39
Speaker 5: an era where you go on YouTube and especially sensational
9:44
Speaker 5: popular mysteries, and I'll put that in what my children
9:49
Speaker 5: call sarcastic finger bunnies.
9:50
Speaker 4: You know, air quotes are covered and recovered over and
9:55
Speaker 4: over again. So if you go to YouTube and you
9:57
Speaker 4: enter a diathlov Pass or dead Mountain or one of
10:00
Speaker 4: the many monikers for this case, I think you're going
10:04
Speaker 4: to find thousands of videos. And I think there's at
10:08
Speaker 4: least twenty books in English, in Russian or translated from Russian,
10:12
Speaker 4: maybe some other languages to a lot has been talked about.
10:15
Speaker 4: I think I first heard about this case. I grew
10:17
Speaker 4: up in a certain central European country that's famous for
10:21
Speaker 4: its mountains and its avalanches and it's cheese. And I
10:24
Speaker 4: think I heard about this case when I was like
10:26
Speaker 4: six or seven. And the facts that at that time
10:30
Speaker 4: were that this was this stupid, amazing mystery, right, that
10:35
Speaker 4: there was something super mysterious, that there was no explanation
10:39
Speaker 4: that covered all the observable fact I think even at
10:44
Speaker 4: that young age, I was hearing that there was probably
10:46
Speaker 4: some This was I believe it or not. I was
10:48
Speaker 4: still alive during the Cold War. Yes, I know that's
10:52
Speaker 4: very old.
10:53
Speaker 1: Hey a doctor indeed.
10:54
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, there was an assumption that anything that happened
10:58
Speaker 4: to the Soviet Union there was something suspicious and something
11:02
Speaker 4: connected with the government doing covering up. By the way,
11:06
Speaker 4: that's really important. You mentioned true crime. You can have
11:09
Speaker 4: a cover up without a mystery like government, especially the
11:14
Speaker 4: Soviet government at that time, had this instinct to cover
11:17
Speaker 4: up anything that they felt might make the Soviet Union
11:20
Speaker 4: look bad. If you've ever watched the Chernobyl movie, there's
11:23
Speaker 4: lots to talk about there to the charitable TV series
11:25
Speaker 4: which was terrific. But so the Soviet Union probably did
11:29
Speaker 4: actually cover up aspects of this case. But that doesn't
11:33
Speaker 4: mean that there really isn't a mystery there, or that
11:36
Speaker 4: the mystery has probably been solved. But it's one of
11:39
Speaker 4: those things that his box office right, like you put
11:42
Speaker 4: the athlet pass, and especially if you say solved, and
11:46
Speaker 4: a lot of the YouTube videos are solved. So one
11:49
Speaker 4: of the reasons that attracted me to this movie was
11:52
Speaker 4: that I had heard from a friend who had watched
11:54
Speaker 4: it that they thought that it did a pretty good
11:56
Speaker 4: job of not first going towards ridiculous sensationalism. So let
12:01
Speaker 4: me just give one example. First, you and I Christen
12:06
Speaker 4: I know K two appreciate good technical filmmaking, Like I
12:11
Speaker 4: have shown scenes from this film in a class where
12:14
Speaker 4: we talked about audio, Like they get good audio in
12:18
Speaker 4: the middle of the urals in fifty mile per hour
12:22
Speaker 4: wind where they have really clear audio where somebody is
12:25
Speaker 4: in a snowsuit of a snowcoat with their mouth covered
12:28
Speaker 4: is still talking very clearly. So like the technical part
12:31
Speaker 4: of this film, I would put a plus for documentary filmmaking.
12:35
Speaker 4: It is a beautiful film. They use drones they use
12:40
Speaker 4: different effects with still pictures. So just just watching this film,
12:44
Speaker 4: I personally enjoyed it watching from beginning to end. Technically,
12:49
Speaker 4: I also appreciated that they took some of the more
12:53
Speaker 4: sensational theories because they had to fill up two hours.
12:56
Speaker 4: They took some of the more sensational theories and did
12:59
Speaker 4: I think reasonable debunk them. And let me give two examples.
13:02
Speaker 4: One was that if you go online and you enter
13:05
Speaker 4: radiation and the outlov past, you're going to hear over
13:08
Speaker 4: and over again that one of the mysteries is that
13:11
Speaker 4: one plus more of the hikers that the investigators found
13:17
Speaker 4: that they had high radiation levels. I mean, you will
13:20
Speaker 4: find entire videos about like does this mean that uf
13:22
Speaker 4: All abducted them, or like there was a secret Soviet
13:25
Speaker 4: nuclear test and they were And the filmmakers did something
13:28
Speaker 4: which I thought was like good journalism, which is they
13:31
Speaker 4: found that one of the hikers, at least one had
13:34
Speaker 4: worked at a Soviet nuclear plant for years. So that
13:38
Speaker 4: is a much more plausible explanation for why he might
13:41
Speaker 4: have high radiation levels higher than the normal person because
13:45
Speaker 4: he worked at a nuclear plant and before he went hiking,
13:48
Speaker 4: it wasn't anything to do with the hiking is there,
13:50
Speaker 4: so I sort of I liked that part. And then
13:53
Speaker 4: the other part that I approved of journalistically was that
13:57
Speaker 4: one of the theories, which I I won't put I
14:01
Speaker 4: like to say non zero. Everything is non zero, right,
14:04
Speaker 4: like magic pixies are non zero, you know, alien UFOs
14:08
Speaker 4: are non zero. Like it's possible, but it's just not
14:11
Speaker 4: probable or plausible. One of the theories was that there was
14:14
Speaker 4: foul play, right, that they were murdered or you know,
14:17
Speaker 4: and different individuals from Soviet soldiers to one of two
14:22
Speaker 4: native peoples were blamed. I like that the show went
14:25
Speaker 4: out of their way, although they did, I mean, you
14:28
Speaker 4: could argue back and forth. They did raise the theory
14:30
Speaker 4: which is not very substantiated, of their possibility of foul play,
14:34
Speaker 4: but they really went out of their way to do
14:36
Speaker 4: something which a lot of first world documentary filmmakers don't do,
14:39
Speaker 4: which is to bring up the long history of blaming
14:43
Speaker 4: local native people for violent that occurred. And they'd say, like,
14:47
Speaker 4: you know, let's not do that there. So you could say, well,
14:50
Speaker 4: they did bring it up, but then they they did
14:52
Speaker 4: go ahead and say, like, you know, unless you really
14:55
Speaker 4: have evidence, you shouldn't shouldn't blame them. So I appreciated
14:59
Speaker 4: this film and like, if I were telling people here,
15:01
Speaker 4: here's how you technically like sound audio, you know, cinematography,
15:07
Speaker 4: how to use a remote drone for photography, planning that
15:12
Speaker 4: went into this you as a filmmaker in terms of
15:15
Speaker 4: like production values, like, I appreciated all that, and then
15:18
Speaker 4: I liked some of the things that were done in
15:21
Speaker 4: the movie, and we can talk about that later. So
15:23
Speaker 4: I liked it as filmmaking with some caveats, but it
15:28
Speaker 4: is so much better than the average YouTube, you know,
15:31
Speaker 4: Alien abduction, d'appo class video that I had to give
15:36
Speaker 4: it some points because it's so much better than what
15:39
Speaker 4: you normally see about DATO class.
15:41
Speaker 2: What about you, Kate, Well, I hate to be contrarian,
15:44
Speaker 2: and I respect Professor Pulmutter, of course, and I think
15:48
Speaker 2: he brings up some good points that you know, the
15:50
Speaker 2: film was beautiful. It's visually showing the ural mountains, which
15:54
Speaker 2: I'm not so familiar with, so, you know, as a
15:56
Speaker 2: virtual tourist, that was nice. But I would recommend it
16:00
Speaker 2: anyone who it's really interested in what happened in this
16:02
Speaker 2: incident to just forget the film. Okay, take that hour
16:07
Speaker 2: and forty three minutes out of your life and follow
16:10
Speaker 2: me to the following recommendation. Go to your library or
16:13
Speaker 2: look it up online or whatever. Maybe you might subscribe
16:17
Speaker 2: and find the New Yorker from May twenty twenty one
16:21
Speaker 2: and read that piece. That piece, I think is a
16:23
Speaker 2: really sober breakdown of not only the conspiracy theories that
16:28
Speaker 2: the YouTube documentary does consider in some detail, but the
16:32
Speaker 2: more naturalistic explanation that I find very convincing, and it
16:36
Speaker 2: gives credit to the Russian prosecutor. So this incident, as
16:41
Speaker 2: you guys have already mentioned, has been a It's been
16:45
Speaker 2: the theme of swirling conspiracy theories ever since it happened
16:48
Speaker 2: in the fifties. So the families were never happy. And
16:53
Speaker 2: Russian government finally opened up a new investigation in twenty nineteen.
16:58
Speaker 2: And I am not a proponent of the Russian government
17:02
Speaker 2: in any way, but they happened to have a prosecutor
17:05
Speaker 2: named Kiryakov, who I think did an admirable job at
17:09
Speaker 2: soberly analyzing this situation, and he discarded from the outset
17:14
Speaker 2: the conspiracy theories regarding aliens and missile tests and radioactivity.
17:20
Speaker 2: He just said all of that isn't plausible. Let's talk
17:22
Speaker 2: about what really happened, and he, as the article discusses,
17:27
Speaker 2: has a naturalistic explanation that doesn't involve murder. It doesn't
17:33
Speaker 2: involve you know, anything that there's no evidence for, and
17:37
Speaker 2: he really ties up all of the facts of the case.
17:40
Speaker 2: And I'm happy to take you through that right now,
17:43
Speaker 2: or maybe we want to talk about something else. But
17:46
Speaker 2: I really I thought that, yes, Professor Pulmutter is correct.
17:49
Speaker 2: The film was visually striking. But I don't watch a
17:52
Speaker 2: lot of YouTube content. Maybe I'm just biased against you know, documentaries,
17:59
Speaker 2: and I prefer to read a scholarly analysis. But the
18:02
Speaker 2: New Yorker article wasn't overly boring or anything, and it
18:05
Speaker 2: really touched I think the actual points better. Whereas the
18:09
Speaker 2: YouTube documentary spends a ton of time on these experts
18:13
Speaker 2: who think that there was a murder or that there
18:16
Speaker 2: was some sort of other wild situation, and just in
18:20
Speaker 2: terms of the avalanche theory and the rest, he doesn't
18:22
Speaker 2: spend any time. And maybe that's partially bad timing because
18:26
Speaker 2: I don't think that you know that certain articles had
18:29
Speaker 2: already appeared, but he really gives short shrift, in my view,
18:33
Speaker 2: to the most likely explanation and spends like an hour
18:36
Speaker 2: and a half of the viewer's time on things that
18:40
Speaker 2: are sensational.
18:41
Speaker 1: And so I kind of actually I split the difference,
18:44
Speaker 1: like I'm I agree with with you, doctor Pearl matter
18:47
Speaker 1: obviously like it's a well made film. I read a
18:50
Speaker 1: review that said I wish to have seen what Worder
18:54
Speaker 1: Herzog could have done with the subject material, which one
18:58
Speaker 1: hundred percent like a Grizzy Man level kind of analysis,
19:04
Speaker 1: where it's less analyzing the event but more analyzing how,
19:08
Speaker 1: you know, how is the world so obsessed with something
19:11
Speaker 1: or doing whatever Werner Herzog would have done, which would
19:13
Speaker 1: be taking a step to the side of it and
19:16
Speaker 1: it being less about Diatlov itself and more about some
19:19
Speaker 1: social aspect of it, because that's what Grizzly Man was about.
19:22
Speaker 1: Grizzly Man was really not about the man at the
19:24
Speaker 1: middle of it. But how did you know whatever? If
19:27
Speaker 1: you've seen it, you know what I'm getting in. If
19:28
Speaker 1: you've seen Herzog, you know what his appeal is. His
19:31
Speaker 1: appeal is his kind of unique take on things. I
19:34
Speaker 1: would prefer that to this because to your point, doctor Mellan,
19:37
Speaker 1: I think it is a little. It does fall a
19:40
Speaker 1: little flat for me because at times I felt like, oh, well,
19:44
Speaker 1: we're not gonna We're not going to even have an
19:47
Speaker 1: opinion on this at the end of it, which I
19:49
Speaker 1: had a real hard time walking away from this movie
19:51
Speaker 1: going well, I'm not even gonna come down on what
19:54
Speaker 1: I think. Like, you've presented plenty of theories, now why
19:57
Speaker 1: don't you pick one. I feel I find that a
19:59
Speaker 1: little unfair because as someone who sits here and has
20:02
Speaker 1: to have an opinion about things, that's part of your
20:04
Speaker 1: job as a filmmaker, at least as a documentarian in
20:06
Speaker 1: some respects, is to present what you think and at
20:10
Speaker 1: the end of it to go, oh, I don't know either.
20:12
Speaker 1: I mean, I appreciate that. I mean there, I respect
20:15
Speaker 1: that in some capacity to say it's too it's too
20:18
Speaker 1: deep and complex of a case for me to even
20:21
Speaker 1: understand or comprehend. But doctor Mellon, I think you would
20:23
Speaker 1: agree in doctor Permutter or some extent, I don't think
20:25
Speaker 1: that this is that, Like, I don't think that this
20:28
Speaker 1: case is that. I think, to doctor Permutter's point, there's
20:31
Speaker 1: a lot of fluff surrounding this that can be cut
20:33
Speaker 1: through very easily if you know where to look. I
20:36
Speaker 1: just think that getting caught in the fluff is very
20:39
Speaker 1: easy in any kind of thing, especially a true crime thing.
20:42
Speaker 1: And it's very easy to get bogged down in the
20:45
Speaker 1: well there was a a radioactive shirt, or they took
20:47
Speaker 1: a picture on their phone where they're their camera and
20:49
Speaker 1: it looked like an ali And it's like man looking
20:52
Speaker 1: at you can look at one piece of evidence over
20:54
Speaker 1: and over again. Like the guy in Dealey Plaza with
20:56
Speaker 1: the umbrella. He was just a guy with an umbrella.
20:59
Speaker 1: That's it. That's it. They interviewed him, and he was
21:01
Speaker 1: just a guy with an umbrella of Aerol interviewed him
21:04
Speaker 1: in a short documentary. He's just a dude with an umbrella.
21:07
Speaker 4: That's it.
21:08
Speaker 1: That's it.
21:08
Speaker 4: Yeah, Chris, that's a really great example. In fact, I
21:11
Speaker 4: think you're referring to The New York Times did a
21:14
Speaker 4: short documentary on umbrella man like and just yeah, sometimes
21:18
Speaker 4: I do feel like we need to not everybody is
21:21
Speaker 4: like an expert on this case or like knows about
21:24
Speaker 4: the John F. Kennedy assassination, but like one of the
21:27
Speaker 4: and again I put my sarcastic fingerbodies, my air quotes,
21:30
Speaker 4: mysteries of that has been talked about in six thousand
21:34
Speaker 4: YouTube videos and ten five hundred books of John F.
21:38
Speaker 4: Kennedy is there was a man at dely Plositave there
21:41
Speaker 4: as the motorcade went by, who opened an umbrella, right.
21:44
Speaker 4: And so you if you go on YouTube today or
21:47
Speaker 4: really any other social media, you will see a lot
21:49
Speaker 4: of people saying like, well, why did he do that?
21:51
Speaker 4: It must have been a signal or something like that.
21:53
Speaker 4: Then New York Times actually did a little mini documentary,
21:55
Speaker 4: and what was funny was that the moment they interviewed him,
21:59
Speaker 4: I suddenly understood a cultural reference which I'm old enough
22:03
Speaker 4: to remember, in that it was one generation before me.
22:06
Speaker 4: But then I realized that nobody who was growing up
22:10
Speaker 4: later than that would have understood that cultural reference. He
22:13
Speaker 4: was making a cultural reference to Neville Chamberlain and Neville
22:17
Speaker 4: Chamberlain's appeasement of Nazi Germany. Neville Chamberlain the Prime Minister
22:22
Speaker 4: of England who famously, I mean, I like to think
22:25
Speaker 4: of myself with historians. So there's like a whole other
22:27
Speaker 4: three hour discussion. But Nevill Chamberlain was the prime minister
22:31
Speaker 4: who allowed Hitler to take over Czechoslovakia and was the
22:35
Speaker 4: architect of what has been come to know through history
22:38
Speaker 4: as appeasement. There's a lot of discussion there. I'm not
22:41
Speaker 4: saying an opinion, but he famously always carried around or
22:45
Speaker 4: was visible with an umbrella. So this man was making
22:48
Speaker 4: a statement that he thought John F. Kennedy was appeasing
22:52
Speaker 4: the Soviet Union. But that explanation is so pedantic, you know,
22:59
Speaker 4: or or so buried within like historical references that that
23:04
Speaker 4: it got. So it was funny how it's become something else,
23:09
Speaker 4: But when you look it up, it has a perfectly
23:11
Speaker 4: rational explanation. So that but that's that's an important point
23:14
Speaker 4: about whenever we see an image, and we have examples
23:18
Speaker 4: every day. I just spent a seminar where there was
23:21
Speaker 4: a there was an image there is there is a massacre,
23:25
Speaker 4: horrible human tragedy going on in the Sudan right now,
23:29
Speaker 4: where like thousands, hundreds of thousands of people are being killed. Well,
23:32
Speaker 4: there was a picture that was posted like three months
23:35
Speaker 4: ago that purportedly was from Google Ears showing lots of
23:39
Speaker 4: dead bodies, and it was it was everywhere you can
23:42
Speaker 4: find five hundred thousand iterations Google Earth shows massacre victim.
23:47
Speaker 4: It wasn't I mean Yale Laboratories did a study. New
23:51
Speaker 4: York Times did a study. It was actually cows lined
23:54
Speaker 4: up at a solar powered watering station. That was, you know,
23:59
Speaker 4: and so well, here's the problem. When people make a
24:02
Speaker 4: claim that like, oh, this is evidence of genocide and
24:05
Speaker 4: and the evidence turns out to be no, it's not
24:07
Speaker 4: evans at all. People begin to dealt the very facticity
24:11
Speaker 4: of pictures. And that's why, you know, when I when
24:13
Speaker 4: I'm teaching, I'm telling students be careful to get the
24:16
Speaker 4: facts right right. So, like, if you think somebody's opening
24:19
Speaker 4: an umbrella at the signal assassins, how about you go
24:21
Speaker 4: find the person and interview them before you make that claim.
24:24
Speaker 4: So that's a great example, Chris, that.
24:26
Speaker 1: Is that that that umbrella opening. Man made it all
24:29
Speaker 1: the way to the X Files. I mean that was
24:31
Speaker 1: in the episode. I mean like that's and it's to
24:33
Speaker 1: that point where I mean, you know, like with the
24:36
Speaker 1: with the with the explanation and again you know, doctor Mullen,
24:40
Speaker 1: I watched the documentary like you did. I also read
24:43
Speaker 1: several years back the Donnie Eiker book, which I don't
24:46
Speaker 1: know again good bad it. I want to say it
24:49
Speaker 1: walks away with the wind being the explanation that they
24:53
Speaker 1: had some sort of wind event that was happening that
24:56
Speaker 1: caused Yeah.
24:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I've read a little bit about that. And
25:03
Speaker 2: Professor Pearlmutter was raising it to me because I was saying, look,
25:08
Speaker 2: let's just listen to peer reviewed scientists who say that
25:11
Speaker 2: this slab, you know, avalanche is completely plausible and they've
25:15
Speaker 2: done a careful study. And Professor Peerlmutter said, well, you know,
25:19
Speaker 2: there's also this paper about common vortex effects, and so
25:23
Speaker 2: a common vortex effect is a turbulent flow. You know that.
25:28
Speaker 2: I guess a couple of scientists hypothesized, I haven't read
25:31
Speaker 2: the paper, I must have it hypothesized could have emerged
25:34
Speaker 2: from windflow around the mountains and agitated the inner ear
25:40
Speaker 2: of the nine victims and driven them crazy, and that
25:45
Speaker 2: could have been the instigation for them to flee the
25:49
Speaker 2: tent site and you know, then subsequently freeze to death.
25:52
Speaker 2: So I have to say I will draw on my
25:56
Speaker 2: mountain experience. I'm not saying it's bullshit. I'm not saying
25:59
Speaker 2: it's completely bullshit. I'm saying it's ninety nine point nine
26:04
Speaker 2: nine percent bullshit.
26:06
Speaker 1: It sounds like bullsh well, I don't know.
26:08
Speaker 2: I mean, look, every single year and every single mountain,
26:11
Speaker 2: you know area, people die of hypothermia, they die of avalanche.
26:16
Speaker 2: I've never heard of anyone driven crazy by a vortex
26:19
Speaker 2: in the wind. I just don't know.
26:21
Speaker 1: That's well, that's the problem is like like you, like
26:24
Speaker 1: you just alluded to there, It's it's not like these
26:28
Speaker 1: nine people were in a room talking to one another
26:32
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden the room combusted, and
26:34
Speaker 1: and where did the fire come from? They were in
26:38
Speaker 1: the mountains, in the middle of winter, in where like
26:42
Speaker 1: you've already alluded to, things can go very wrong, very quickly,
26:46
Speaker 1: at a moment's notice, based on something that you did
26:50
Speaker 1: not take into account. And sometimes, I'm sure you will
26:53
Speaker 1: tell me could not have even taken into account. All
26:55
Speaker 1: the planning in the world can't take everything into account
26:58
Speaker 1: when you're out in nature. And I haven't been in
27:00
Speaker 1: as highest stakes as nature as I'm sure you have,
27:02
Speaker 1: but I've been in high stakes nature enough to know
27:04
Speaker 1: that when you hear a bear jumping at the bear
27:06
Speaker 1: bag out hung up on the tree fifteen feet from
27:09
Speaker 1: your tent, you don't move and you just stay calm,
27:13
Speaker 1: you know, like.
27:14
Speaker 2: You're in a situation where a small, you know, a
27:18
Speaker 2: small deviation from safety can really snowball, and I believe
27:21
Speaker 2: that that's what happened once their tent was buried.
27:24
Speaker 4: So so I want a really important point. I guess
27:28
Speaker 4: I've watched too many of these lost hiker videos, and
27:31
Speaker 4: there's some really good people, like like their Mountain Guides,
27:34
Speaker 4: and they do videos about cases in the United States.
27:38
Speaker 4: I think the part of the argument I'm making is that,
27:42
Speaker 4: and this is because I spend every semester with two
27:45
Speaker 4: hundred to four hundred eighteen year olds, so I sort
27:48
Speaker 4: of find out what's current in popular culture, you know,
27:51
Speaker 4: what they've been watching, as opposed to maybe scientists, you know,
27:56
Speaker 4: who've gone through peer review or people. First, I learn
28:01
Speaker 4: a lot from my students because they're discovering things that
28:04
Speaker 4: I just haven't heard of before, because they're on social
28:07
Speaker 4: media much more than I am scoring corners. But I
28:10
Speaker 4: also sort of hear what they have come to believe
28:13
Speaker 4: because of what the evidence they've been shown. And typically
28:17
Speaker 4: when I was growing up, my parents watched the CBS
28:20
Speaker 4: Evening News with Walter Cronkite, and they were relatively they
28:23
Speaker 4: were both university professors. They subscribed to five newspapers and
28:27
Speaker 4: four magazines, so like for nineteen eighty five, we were
28:31
Speaker 4: pretty well informed about current events and things like that.
28:34
Speaker 4: But of course today none of my students are watching
28:38
Speaker 4: the evening news, even if I could completely trust the
28:41
Speaker 4: National Evening News, which I as a journals and professor,
28:43
Speaker 4: have some questions about that. But they're getting their sources
28:47
Speaker 4: of information from TikTok, videos from Instagram, from five minutes
28:51
Speaker 4: shorts on YouTube, and so I'm willing to give a
28:55
Speaker 4: lot more points to somebody who is better than the
28:59
Speaker 4: average in sort of educating people on how to ask
29:03
Speaker 4: questions correctly and look things up. And so that's why
29:07
Speaker 4: I guess I'm more fond of this documentary because it's
29:10
Speaker 4: better than the average, and I think it's a model
29:13
Speaker 4: for what a direction you could go as opposed to
29:17
Speaker 4: the average. The word the scientific category you used doctor
29:22
Speaker 4: Mullen twice to categorize videos of that, we're just full
29:27
Speaker 4: of errors. So I just documentary is very difficult because
29:31
Speaker 4: you're suppos I mean fiction films you can say based
29:34
Speaker 4: on a true story, but Chris, you know, based on
29:36
Speaker 4: a true story you can make everything up.
29:38
Speaker 1: Still, we got to have some drama and there for
29:41
Speaker 1: dramatic effect. I mean, you know, life has to be
29:43
Speaker 1: there's got to be some drama to it. And that's
29:45
Speaker 1: the thing. I mean, I think we would all agree. Look,
29:48
Speaker 1: this makes a good story regardless of the explanation. You
29:51
Speaker 1: have nine hikers, they all go out together, and they
29:54
Speaker 1: all die and it's all very sad. I guess for me,
29:57
Speaker 1: I don't understand why that's not enough, Like, why is
30:00
Speaker 1: that not enough? Like nine people lost their lives in
30:04
Speaker 1: a hiking acts. Why does it have to be aliens?
30:07
Speaker 1: Why does it have to be Bigfoot? Why any of that?
30:10
Speaker 1: Because again, like I feel, part of it is also
30:12
Speaker 1: a societal kind of expectation and a societal way of
30:16
Speaker 1: thinking that like, by deflecting to a conspiracy theory, it
30:20
Speaker 1: doesn't really force us to, uh, look at it as
30:23
Speaker 1: just like seven people when or nine people went out
30:26
Speaker 1: there and died because they weren't necessarily doing everything that
30:30
Speaker 1: they should have been doing in terms of keeping track
30:32
Speaker 1: of the elements and things, and like that's harder to
30:35
Speaker 1: accept than there was a nuclear test and they were
30:39
Speaker 1: irradiated and they were killed by the Soviets. Like I mean,
30:43
Speaker 1: it's a fun story, makes for a good script, but
30:46
Speaker 1: that's all it is. It makes for a fun story.
30:48
Speaker 1: But in reality, you know, it's not anything other than
30:52
Speaker 1: just like you said, doctor Mullen, there's a reasonable explanation,
30:56
Speaker 1: and people die from avalanches in the mountains all the time.
30:59
Speaker 1: Why is that not enough? Why is that even not enough?
31:02
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it's I think it's a very
31:04
Speaker 2: sad answer, and that's that the government in the Soviet
31:08
Speaker 2: Union was lying to its citizens for so long. And
31:11
Speaker 2: I mean I also think that maybe it's important to
31:14
Speaker 2: acknowledge that, you know, twenty years before this accident happened,
31:19
Speaker 2: Stalin and his goons were shoveling Jews, intellectuals, and anyone
31:24
Speaker 2: who they perceived to be an enemy of the state
31:27
Speaker 2: into the gulag. Okay, so eighteen million people were imprisoned
31:31
Speaker 2: in Russia. The Russian people were not trusting their government.
31:36
Speaker 2: Even after Stalin's death, you know, but which was a
31:39
Speaker 2: few years before this accident happened, there was still a
31:43
Speaker 2: system of secret police. People were informing on each other.
31:46
Speaker 2: Everyone trusted no one, okay, for very good reason. And
31:51
Speaker 2: so the sad background to these wild stories is that
31:55
Speaker 2: the Russian people were, you know, willing to believe anything
32:00
Speaker 2: and everything because they were in this atmosphere of untruth.
32:03
Speaker 2: Like Hannah arent once said, the philosopher, the German philosopher,
32:07
Speaker 2: you know, you bring people to believe that there is
32:10
Speaker 2: no truth, that truth and false are just non categories
32:14
Speaker 2: because nobody knows anything. Evidence is always manipulatable, somebody's always
32:19
Speaker 2: trying to lie to you. And I mean, that's a
32:22
Speaker 2: terrible background if anyone is interested. I also read a
32:26
Speaker 2: twenty twenty Atlantic article, So the Atlantic is a magazine
32:30
Speaker 2: that I thought was very interesting. It was by Russian
32:34
Speaker 2: or a journalist in Russia at the time who just said,
32:37
Speaker 2: you know what, a majority of people in Russia don't
32:40
Speaker 2: believe that the Apollo moon landing happened. Okay, this is
32:44
Speaker 2: a citizen's tree that is completely over, you know, over truth.
32:49
Speaker 2: They have no idea, they have no bearing in the world.
32:51
Speaker 2: They'll believe any fantastic story because really truth has been
32:55
Speaker 2: undermined by their own government for so long.
32:58
Speaker 1: What's funny is I used to say that we as
33:00
Speaker 1: Americans are living in a post truth society, and I
33:04
Speaker 1: think we are only now living in it. In the
33:06
Speaker 1: last like five to ten years, maybe fifteen twenty and
33:09
Speaker 1: depending on how far back you want to go, because
33:12
Speaker 1: I only have frame of reference for my own life.
33:14
Speaker 1: But then I again, like doctor Prometter said, I am
33:16
Speaker 1: a student of history as well. Like the Russian people
33:20
Speaker 1: have been living in the world that they've been living
33:22
Speaker 1: in for so long. They're like post post truth. They're
33:27
Speaker 1: in a world that I think few societies would ever
33:30
Speaker 1: want to be in, which is, like you said, doctor
33:32
Speaker 1: mollen Wort's like, what do we believe at this Well,
33:35
Speaker 1: whatever we whatever we want is a bad way of
33:38
Speaker 1: putting it. But it's almost like whatever you can stomach
33:41
Speaker 1: or whatever seems within your scope and scheme of worldview
33:45
Speaker 1: that doesn't upset your worldview too much. I mean, again,
33:48
Speaker 1: there were people in Russia. You know, I've talked about
33:51
Speaker 1: my family history on this podcast before my dad's dad
33:54
Speaker 1: came over from Ukraine. He wrote on the back, he
33:56
Speaker 1: wrote on the back of Nazi tanks to escape the Russians.
33:59
Speaker 3: So, oh my.
33:59
Speaker 2: God, what a family history for you to be doing
34:02
Speaker 2: this podcast.
34:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, doctor Probutter is just like, hey, let's
34:06
Speaker 1: talk about Russia, everybody. I'm just kidding. It doesn't bother
34:09
Speaker 1: me one bit. But I think people fail to forget.
34:12
Speaker 1: And now it's been like obviously, I think in the
34:14
Speaker 1: last like five years or four years, three years, now
34:18
Speaker 1: more people are aware of the Russian treatment of people
34:21
Speaker 1: in Europe and the surrounding country and Ukraine being one
34:24
Speaker 1: of them. And I think people in this country really
34:27
Speaker 1: fail to understand how bad people in Russia truly have it,
34:31
Speaker 1: because there are people in Russia that truly believe that
34:34
Speaker 1: the invasion of Ukraine was acceptable, believable and understandable because
34:38
Speaker 1: there were Nazis in Ukraine, apparently according to.
34:41
Speaker 2: The Russian president.
34:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, right, makes sense to me anyways. But yeah,
34:48
Speaker 1: like I think our people in our country for a
34:50
Speaker 1: long time were desensitized to Russia and what Russia means
34:54
Speaker 1: as a country and what the Russian government as a
34:57
Speaker 1: body of people has done to its own people. But yeah,
35:01
Speaker 1: they are living in post post truth at this point,
35:03
Speaker 1: because I mean, yeah, if you're willing to believe Bigfoot
35:07
Speaker 1: killed nine hikers, I mean yeah, I guess they're willing
35:09
Speaker 1: to believe damn near anything.
35:11
Speaker 4: Yeah, And part of it is the phenomenon that like
35:14
Speaker 4: I mean, psychologies observe this for one hundred years, is
35:17
Speaker 4: that human beings form beliefs, and then new data is
35:21
Speaker 4: incorporated to support those beliefs. So like we like to
35:25
Speaker 4: say seeing is believing, but actually what I argue to
35:28
Speaker 4: my students is that for most people, believing is seen.
35:31
Speaker 4: That is, if you present them with anything, they will
35:34
Speaker 4: reinterpret it to fit into especially if they have a
35:36
Speaker 4: very hard held belief like it might be a belief
35:40
Speaker 4: that they need to just they've grown up with. And
35:42
Speaker 4: so prejudices are that way that if you hate people
35:46
Speaker 4: from some kind of religion or some kind of country,
35:50
Speaker 4: no matter what evidence you get about those people will
35:54
Speaker 4: reinterpret it into your hatred. It's very, very hard to
35:59
Speaker 4: move people from a position of hardcore belief in whatever
36:04
Speaker 4: it is, no matter how ridiculous it might appear to others.
36:07
Speaker 4: And then you're also and really interesting to be getting
36:10
Speaker 4: you two together because you do have very different backgrounds
36:14
Speaker 4: in your professions, but you're agreeing. I think all three
36:16
Speaker 4: of us agree on a very important point, which is
36:19
Speaker 4: that I mean I used to I would say, maybe
36:23
Speaker 4: twenty years ago, I used to study conspiracy theories in
36:27
Speaker 4: the media, and I was a little bit of a
36:30
Speaker 4: scoff tick as the majority of goes in the sense
36:34
Speaker 4: that I would just go like, how could anybody believe that?
36:36
Speaker 4: But then, after twenty years of seeing the general incompetence
36:40
Speaker 4: of institutions, government corporations in dealing with complex information and
36:47
Speaker 4: explaining it, I sort of understand now why people don't
36:51
Speaker 4: trust necessarily big anything, you know, big farming, big farm
36:55
Speaker 4: out whatever. I mean. Just I was on another true
37:00
Speaker 4: crime podcast recently. We were talking about the Mit Brown
37:03
Speaker 4: shooting case, where a number of the officials came out
37:08
Speaker 4: real early and said there's no connection between the two cases. Now,
37:12
Speaker 4: as somebody who wrote a book on police and the
37:14
Speaker 4: media and somebody who teaches at a college where we
37:17
Speaker 4: teach chrisis communication, I would highly advise people in authority
37:21
Speaker 4: never to say there is no connection between two things
37:25
Speaker 4: unless you've one hundred percent proved to exhaustion. Don't say
37:29
Speaker 4: it to one day and to the incident, especially because
37:32
Speaker 4: what happens then is a lot of people online go aha,
37:35
Speaker 4: you see, the police are lying to us. The government
37:38
Speaker 4: is lying to us because and and by the way,
37:41
Speaker 4: in those cases, I don't think they were intentionally lined.
37:43
Speaker 4: They were just and all authorities try to do this.
37:46
Speaker 4: They want to reassure the public, but in the methods
37:49
Speaker 4: they used to reassure the public, they create more confusion
37:53
Speaker 4: and less trust in the public. So the Soviet Union,
37:58
Speaker 4: as both of you have pointed out, this was true exponentially,
38:02
Speaker 4: and so yeah, you raised several generations of people through
38:05
Speaker 4: the present day. I mean, Russia had a free press.
38:09
Speaker 4: For about three months in nineteen seventeen. They had a
38:14
Speaker 4: press that was unfettered. I mean it was party located,
38:17
Speaker 4: you know, I mean the sense that, like you know,
38:18
Speaker 4: it would probably speak for certain interests, but like you
38:22
Speaker 4: could hear, you could go in Saint Petersburg for about
38:24
Speaker 4: three months in nineteen seventeen you could go buy newspapers
38:27
Speaker 4: that disagreed with each other. That's the only time in
38:30
Speaker 4: the history of Russia that you could get different points
38:33
Speaker 4: of view. Right now, Russia just closed access to the
38:37
Speaker 4: telegram channel, which is very interesting because that used to
38:40
Speaker 4: be and still is like a lot of pro put
38:43
Speaker 4: in pro Russian government channels were there, but they still
38:47
Speaker 4: closed access to it. That's how restrictive they've gotten about
38:50
Speaker 4: people getting information. So it just this case, this documentary
38:54
Speaker 4: of this case is just a good example of I
38:57
Speaker 4: can understand why people go to crazy the explanations because
39:01
Speaker 4: they've been lied to so often that maybe they just
39:03
Speaker 4: don't trust the system, the scientific system, the government system,
39:07
Speaker 4: the press system anymore, even though I do trust parts
39:11
Speaker 4: of those.
39:12
Speaker 1: And I think when you introduce those kind of fantastical
39:16
Speaker 1: I think theories into it, because again I'm and I'm
39:19
Speaker 1: not one to not believe in those things, like I
39:22
Speaker 1: believe in Bigfoot and ghosts and aliens, like I believe
39:25
Speaker 1: in them with the best of them. I really do, genuinely,
39:27
Speaker 1: Hand to God I do or yahweih whoever you believe.
39:31
Speaker 1: I believe in all that stuff. It's just you can't
39:34
Speaker 1: apply it. And this is the thing that always bugs me.
39:36
Speaker 1: You can't apply it to every single thing every single time.
39:41
Speaker 1: Anytime there's a weird thing that happens to people in
39:44
Speaker 1: the woods, it just sounds like a bunch of people
39:47
Speaker 1: who have never been out into the woods saying, well,
39:50
Speaker 1: they're out in the woods and weird things happen. Have
39:53
Speaker 1: you been out in the woods? Weird things happen? All
39:55
Speaker 1: that's like, go sit in a tent out in the
39:58
Speaker 1: dark at night. Any noise it's made outside of your tent,
40:01
Speaker 1: you can ascribe to anything. And I don't know why
40:04
Speaker 1: it needs to be any scarier than that. If you're
40:07
Speaker 1: walking down a trail and your flashlight goes out and
40:09
Speaker 1: there's no lights around you and you're nowhere near your camp,
40:12
Speaker 1: why does there need to be anything scarier than that?
40:14
Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden we introduced bigfoot all
40:17
Speaker 1: sorts of Again, it gets to a point where it's
40:20
Speaker 1: like we've already alluded to, like where do we stop here,
40:23
Speaker 1: because at some point we just have to say, look,
40:25
Speaker 1: it was this or this or this, and that's what
40:27
Speaker 1: it is. We need to take a rational explanation and
40:30
Speaker 1: go with that, not ignore what the people who are
40:32
Speaker 1: trying to do their due diligence we're doing now. To
40:34
Speaker 1: doctor Pearl Mutter's point and your point, doctor Mellen, they
40:37
Speaker 1: weren't doing that then, So that's hard to really accept
40:41
Speaker 1: because the Russian government wasn't doing it. If they had been,
40:44
Speaker 1: maybe this would be different and people wouldn't be talking
40:46
Speaker 1: about it in twenty twenty six. But I feel like
40:48
Speaker 1: that we'd still be having this conversation now because I
40:51
Speaker 1: think nine people dying in the middle of the Ural
40:55
Speaker 1: Mountains in the time that they died is always going
40:58
Speaker 1: to make for a good story, just like took Goos
41:00
Speaker 1: always makes for a good story. Like That's the other
41:03
Speaker 1: thing I think of when I think of diatlov As,
41:05
Speaker 1: I think of to Gusco, which also seemingly may have
41:08
Speaker 1: a rather innocuous explanation as well.
41:11
Speaker 2: I would also say that, you know, people are pushed
41:14
Speaker 2: out of windows in Russia every day practically, and I mean,
41:18
Speaker 2: it's not convenient for the government for people to focus
41:21
Speaker 2: on that, and so there's an aspect of this. It's
41:25
Speaker 2: kind of like it's a harmless thing to focus on
41:27
Speaker 2: because the government won't, you know, be threatened by us
41:31
Speaker 2: asking questions. And I don't know if it's timely, but
41:35
Speaker 2: I could just run through what I think is the
41:37
Speaker 2: most naturalistic explanation.
41:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, please, I would like. I am so very curious
41:41
Speaker 1: because I came into this believing it was aliens. I'm
41:45
Speaker 1: just kidding. I am just kidding. I'm so disappointed. In
41:48
Speaker 1: the documentary someone did not say the aliens dropped them
41:52
Speaker 1: from high up, and that's why it looks like they
41:54
Speaker 1: were hurt as much as they were. I was hoping
41:56
Speaker 1: we're going in.
41:57
Speaker 2: That direction with that light theory, Okay.
41:59
Speaker 1: I was waiting and I was like, they're gonna say
42:01
Speaker 1: they were dropped from alien spaceships. Here we go, like
42:03
Speaker 1: I'm waiting for it.
42:04
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, anyway, these these nine people were taking this
42:09
Speaker 2: massive cross country ski voyage and they were on the
42:13
Speaker 2: side of a mountain after several days out and cut,
42:17
Speaker 2: as I said before, a platform for their tent, and
42:20
Speaker 2: they cut it on a slope that you know, was
42:23
Speaker 2: somewhere in the vicinity of thirty degrees, which snow scientists
42:27
Speaker 2: have published pey reviewed papers studying whether or not this
42:30
Speaker 2: could happen on the given terrain where the tent platform was,
42:34
Speaker 2: and they've concluded that it could. So basically, they dug
42:37
Speaker 2: a platform, they put their tent there, and nine hours later,
42:41
Speaker 2: after you know, the snow had settled, it let rip. Okay,
42:46
Speaker 2: So basically that little pocket where they had dug out
42:49
Speaker 2: partially buried them and they were forced and so they
42:53
Speaker 2: had stripped down for the night. They had no more parkas,
42:55
Speaker 2: and they had their boots off. They were a sleep
42:58
Speaker 2: and so all of this.
43:00
Speaker 4: Hey, I'm sorry to interrupt, but there's a really important
43:03
Speaker 4: point you just made there, which people who are not
43:05
Speaker 4: familiar with the case, is that the temperature was like
43:07
Speaker 4: fifty for thirty five fifty sixty. We don't know exactly,
43:11
Speaker 4: but like, well, it just unbelievable cold, like un American cold.
43:16
Speaker 2: Yes, these were tough students. They were top of the NNLS.
43:20
Speaker 4: They were in a tent and the tent was but
43:22
Speaker 4: the tent was heated. That's that's that's right, Like there
43:25
Speaker 4: was a stove.
43:26
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if they had in this tent move.
43:29
Speaker 4: Because I wasn't clear on like how they you said
43:33
Speaker 4: they stripped down like most people would imagine, like, oh gosh,
43:36
Speaker 4: she's if it's minus fifty outside, how are they keeping warm?
43:40
Speaker 4: And did that have anything? Because does this comes the
43:42
Speaker 4: reason I interrupt you because this comes up a lot
43:45
Speaker 4: about injuries in the tent before they got out. Sorry,
43:48
Speaker 4: but just I'm not.
43:49
Speaker 2: Sure about the technicalities of their of their winter kit,
43:53
Speaker 2: like whether or not they had sleeping bags or exactly
43:55
Speaker 2: how they were outfitted. But I mean, people I'm in
43:58
Speaker 2: the same period period of time were making Himalayan expeditions,
44:01
Speaker 2: so it's not like they couldn't stay warm without a stove.
44:06
Speaker 2: I don't know if there was a stove in the tent,
44:08
Speaker 2: but nine people packed together, you know, under reasonable blankets
44:13
Speaker 2: and with some thermal underwear. Isn't you know, necessarily requiring
44:17
Speaker 2: a stove even in deep winter. But in any case,
44:21
Speaker 2: I believe that as a slab let loose onto their tent,
44:26
Speaker 2: and this caused them great panic. They believed, I think
44:29
Speaker 2: that the entire slope was going to let loose at
44:33
Speaker 2: any moment, and so this caused them to flee without
44:36
Speaker 2: digging out their boots and their other winter gear. So
44:40
Speaker 2: they fled like one hundred and fifty feet or something
44:43
Speaker 2: to the side of their tent in pitch black darkness.
44:45
Speaker 2: And you know, after they made that move, it was
44:48
Speaker 2: very hard for them to find the tent again. And
44:51
Speaker 2: what they ended up doing is all nine of them
44:54
Speaker 2: went together about a little less than a mile away
44:57
Speaker 2: to the forest, to the edge of the forest were
45:00
Speaker 2: there was a cedar tree. Then they climbed the cedar
45:03
Speaker 2: tree and got down branches. This is known because the
45:08
Speaker 2: branches were broken, but there were also bits of human
45:10
Speaker 2: skin on the tree. So they basically had none of
45:14
Speaker 2: their winter gear, no boots. I mean, they were basically
45:18
Speaker 2: dead at that point, but they valiantly tried to, you know,
45:22
Speaker 2: save themselves. They built a fire and two of them
45:25
Speaker 2: died right then and there. So the ones who were
45:28
Speaker 2: you know, probably less well dressed, died. The others took
45:32
Speaker 2: their clothes off, cut the clothes off the body or whatever,
45:35
Speaker 2: just put the dead people's clothes on in a desperate
45:38
Speaker 2: attempt to save themselves. Now there were only seven left,
45:41
Speaker 2: and three of the seven made a desperate attempt to
45:45
Speaker 2: find the tent again in order to They realized that
45:48
Speaker 2: they were going to die without their warm gear. So
45:51
Speaker 2: those three were eventually found frozen to death, you know,
45:55
Speaker 2: facing uphill. The other four decided, okay, guys, we're going
45:59
Speaker 2: to get through this building a snow cave, I mean,
46:01
Speaker 2: which is, you know, normally that's how like you know,
46:04
Speaker 2: huskies spend the night. They dig a little hollow in
46:07
Speaker 2: the snow, and I mean a snow cave would under
46:09
Speaker 2: normal circumstances possibly have saved them, but it was simply
46:12
Speaker 2: too cold. So they basically went into a ravine where
46:16
Speaker 2: the snow was deeper, and they started to excavate. Unfortunately,
46:21
Speaker 2: in the bottom of the ravine was a running stream
46:25
Speaker 2: and at some point with an icy shell over the
46:29
Speaker 2: running water. At some point they're digging disturbed that icy shell,
46:34
Speaker 2: they broke through. They had catastrophic injuries, as you know,
46:38
Speaker 2: they fell into this stream bed, and eventually this entire
46:41
Speaker 2: area became completely covered in snow, so that when four
46:45
Speaker 2: months or something later they were found they I think
46:49
Speaker 2: actually they weren't found until the spring, until the snow melted,
46:52
Speaker 2: but when that happened, their bodies were in terrible condition
46:55
Speaker 2: and largely decomposed. So anyway, I think that that explanation
47:00
Speaker 2: has basically no outlandish bits to it. Unfortunately, they they
47:07
Speaker 2: you know, after they left their tent, they were sitting
47:09
Speaker 2: ducks in this cold weather. And I think that the
47:13
Speaker 2: tragedy is that you know, these nine lost their lives,
47:16
Speaker 2: and that there's been such speculation around it since. But
47:20
Speaker 2: I do find that this explanation really ties up all
47:23
Speaker 2: of the evidence that's known to to the you know,
47:26
Speaker 2: to as far as I am aware.
47:28
Speaker 1: So I want to I want to ask you then,
47:29
Speaker 1: because you you you're you're telling is h it's very
47:34
Speaker 1: sad obviously, Uh, you know, there's nothing about it that's
47:37
Speaker 1: remotely fun. If you've been like you have clearly, and
47:41
Speaker 1: doctor pro Mutter, I don't want to assume if you've
47:43
Speaker 1: gone out and camped at all but I would assume
47:46
Speaker 1: at some point in your life you may have gone
47:47
Speaker 1: out and camped, like having gone out and been places
47:50
Speaker 1: where you're far enough away where you know, if something
47:54
Speaker 1: goes wrong, you're in deep trouble. They were like to
47:57
Speaker 1: the furthest extent beyond that, Like they were beyond that
48:00
Speaker 1: in a way that like, if something bad happened, this
48:03
Speaker 1: is exactly what would happen in your mind, as someone
48:06
Speaker 1: who has been out in the in mountains, not these mountains,
48:10
Speaker 1: not the Urals, but other mountains, what would have saved
48:14
Speaker 1: them in that moment? Or was there I mean obviously
48:17
Speaker 1: or was there anything they could have done? Did they
48:19
Speaker 1: doom themselves by by cutting that tent platform out? And
48:23
Speaker 1: was that already you know, too late by that point.
48:25
Speaker 2: I mean, obviously in retrospect, they could have camped in
48:28
Speaker 2: the forest instead of on the exposed slope where this
48:31
Speaker 2: was likely to happen. But I think that in retrospect
48:35
Speaker 2: the New Yorker article pointed out, and I agree that
48:39
Speaker 2: their experience in the mountains might have doomed them because
48:42
Speaker 2: they had been trained in avalanche safety, and when you know,
48:47
Speaker 2: when this slab avalanche buried their tent platform, they immediately evacuated,
48:53
Speaker 2: whereas less experienced mountaineers would have just stayed there and
48:57
Speaker 2: dug out their winter kit. And you know, it was
48:59
Speaker 2: buried on a lot of snow that that wouldn't have
49:01
Speaker 2: been easy by any means, and they could have still
49:04
Speaker 2: all died. So I'm not going to say that I
49:06
Speaker 2: know that it would make a difference, right, or that
49:08
Speaker 2: they could have saved themselves given the really harsh winter conditions.
49:11
Speaker 2: But I think, you know, given everything, to separate themselves
49:16
Speaker 2: from their warm clothes and boots was a death sentence.
49:21
Speaker 4: You've reached a really interesting point. I want to circle back,
49:23
Speaker 4: I guess cinematically, and this is a hypothesis that like
49:28
Speaker 4: you both to address about a sort of wider issue. Again.
49:33
Speaker 4: You go on YouTube and you see videos, some really
49:36
Speaker 4: well done about like a missing hiker was found dead
49:40
Speaker 4: and like three yards from the trail. You know, and
49:46
Speaker 4: I have I don't have the experience of either of you.
49:48
Speaker 4: I skied hit Switzerland when I was in my single digits,
49:52
Speaker 4: and that was pretty scary. Back then, they didn't have
49:55
Speaker 4: any bunny slopes, you know, every slope was a black
49:57
Speaker 4: head slope or something like that. But at whiskey gear
50:01
Speaker 4: of the time. But human beings like to imagine that
50:06
Speaker 4: we're in control, right, and we also, most of us,
50:11
Speaker 4: especially in the First world, even in so called wilderness.
50:15
Speaker 4: And I think ecologists argue about whether there's anything on
50:19
Speaker 4: planet Earth that is still true wilderness, that everything has
50:22
Speaker 4: been shaped by man's humans presence, either indirectly or directly.
50:27
Speaker 4: You know, It's like North America, we see trees which
50:30
Speaker 4: are all post colonial trees and so on. So is
50:34
Speaker 4: there an issue here that the expertise of these hikers
50:39
Speaker 4: added to the mystery because we keep thinking like, oh,
50:42
Speaker 4: they were so experienced, you know, I understand that they
50:45
Speaker 4: were going for their certification, like there was a top
50:48
Speaker 4: level of certified like wilderness hiker, a mountain climber in
50:51
Speaker 4: the Soviet Union that you get there. Some of them
50:55
Speaker 4: much less experienced than others, but there were definitely people
50:57
Speaker 4: who had been in those situations before. And there's an
51:01
Speaker 4: essential resistance we have as humans to think that nature
51:05
Speaker 4: can overpower our technology, our preparedness, and our expertise, and
51:10
Speaker 4: so we tend to impose mysteries on things that maybe
51:15
Speaker 4: you know, the margin, as you said, doctor Mouln, the
51:17
Speaker 4: margin of error was really low when it's fifty degrees
51:21
Speaker 4: in pitch dark, right, and I have been I'm sure
51:25
Speaker 4: a lot of people. Like I was hiking in Colorado
51:28
Speaker 4: and I went off the trail. This is a trail
51:30
Speaker 4: where I swear there was like fifty people behind me
51:33
Speaker 4: and fifty people in front of me. I went off
51:35
Speaker 4: the trail because I saw a bird, and I immediately
51:38
Speaker 4: stopped and looked back and realized I could not see
51:41
Speaker 4: the trail. But because I'd seen all these YouTube videos
51:44
Speaker 4: of people who had gotten lost, like one minute from
51:47
Speaker 4: the trail, I immediately I recognized the rock and I
51:50
Speaker 4: got back on the trail. But if I'd followed that
51:53
Speaker 4: bird in this park where there were thousands of people,
51:56
Speaker 4: I would have been lost. Now, I probably I would
51:58
Speaker 4: have found my way back. I think, isn't there a
52:01
Speaker 4: resistance to the idea that human technology and human expertise
52:05
Speaker 4: can be defeated by this thing called nature?
52:08
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think that that's absolutely right. And I really
52:10
Speaker 2: think that anyone who goes into the mountains needs to
52:12
Speaker 2: assume the risk and that there are certain unmitigatable risks.
52:16
Speaker 2: And what you raised made me think about how when
52:21
Speaker 2: there's a mountain accident, like unfortunately, a friend I knew
52:24
Speaker 2: when I was in high school just died in Colorado
52:27
Speaker 2: this past year. And he was a very experienced climber
52:32
Speaker 2: on steep terrain and was going to pick up like
52:36
Speaker 2: a water bottle, that's not a water bottle, but like
52:39
Speaker 2: a discarded piece of litter, like a can or something
52:42
Speaker 2: that somebody had littered on the trail. And he did
52:45
Speaker 2: that and lost his footing and unfortunately fell, cracked his
52:49
Speaker 2: skull open, and died. And I think in that example
52:53
Speaker 2: there's a lot of people who look at what happened
52:56
Speaker 2: and try to say, well, that couldn't have been me.
52:59
Speaker 2: I would have not made such a silly mistake, and
53:02
Speaker 2: to always think that things are somewhat under our control
53:05
Speaker 2: if only we do X and Y Wright, Whereas the
53:08
Speaker 2: truth is that probabilities add up, and at any given moment,
53:12
Speaker 2: when you're in an unforgiving terrain, you know things could
53:15
Speaker 2: happen that are basically out of your control, and that
53:18
Speaker 2: when you put yourself in those environments and these beautiful
53:21
Speaker 2: natural places, there is some unmitigatable risk that you just
53:26
Speaker 2: must accept that it won't be your fault if something happens,
53:30
Speaker 2: but you know, the rocks underneath your feet could give way,
53:32
Speaker 2: or lots of unforseeeable things could happen. And when we're
53:37
Speaker 2: backseat or you know, when we're looking in the rear
53:39
Speaker 2: view mirror of an accident, I would urge people to
53:42
Speaker 2: really don't always blame the victim. Sometimes you're just in
53:45
Speaker 2: an unforgiving atmosphere and you know, somebody acting reasonably could
53:51
Speaker 2: simply die for chance.
53:53
Speaker 1: Or I was gonna say, first off, obviously that's horrible
53:56
Speaker 1: about your friend. Sorry to hear that. That's awful, and
53:59
Speaker 1: you said it yourself, like the idea that it's like, well,
54:01
Speaker 1: I would never make that mistake. Well, it's with hindsight,
54:04
Speaker 1: it's always easy to say that. And also, like you said,
54:08
Speaker 1: like I have as I'm sure plenty of people have
54:11
Speaker 1: gone to do something and something else happens that you
54:13
Speaker 1: could not have anticipated. And it's like, you know what,
54:16
Speaker 1: even in those minor instances, and like you said, even
54:19
Speaker 1: in this instance where the environment is already statistically working
54:25
Speaker 1: against you, because it feels like you're rolling a dice
54:28
Speaker 1: that's maybe not loaded per se, but only half of
54:32
Speaker 1: the time, like there's only half of the faces are
54:34
Speaker 1: gonna come up on that dice and you're hoping it's
54:36
Speaker 1: not one of the three because it can't be any
54:39
Speaker 1: of the other ones. That just can't. In this scenario,
54:42
Speaker 1: half of the fucking dice is just blurred out because
54:45
Speaker 1: you on a mountain side on a normal time. It's
54:48
Speaker 1: a problem. Let alone with snow, the negative degrees, the
54:53
Speaker 1: isolated nature of where they were. It's like, how much
54:55
Speaker 1: more risk does one need to take to prove control
54:59
Speaker 1: over oneself, control over nature. They were probably not even
55:02
Speaker 1: concerned with any of that. They were just there to
55:05
Speaker 1: go do what they did best, which was go hike,
55:07
Speaker 1: and things happen. Like you said, people go climb Everest
55:10
Speaker 1: all the time. Successfully, people die on Everest all the
55:13
Speaker 1: time too, all the time, and we're living in twenty
55:15
Speaker 1: twenty six and people still die on Everest. You know why,
55:18
Speaker 1: because it's Mount Everest and it's nature, and it's the
55:21
Speaker 1: most short of going underwater in a carbon fiber tube
55:26
Speaker 1: to the Titanic, there's nothing you can do above ground
55:30
Speaker 1: that's as dangerous.
55:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, the inherent risk of the activity is simply I
55:35
Speaker 2: believe that one should accept it or not go into
55:37
Speaker 2: these places. And by the way, there's an inherent risk
55:40
Speaker 2: of sitting on your couch and never doing anything either.
55:43
Speaker 2: We're all not getting out of this alive, right right.
55:45
Speaker 1: Well, and that's the other thing I always tell my mom. This,
55:48
Speaker 1: my mom who's criminally afraid of a lot of things.
55:51
Speaker 1: Like you get in your car every day, you turn
55:53
Speaker 1: it on and.
55:53
Speaker 4: You drive around.
55:55
Speaker 1: That is unfathomable to many people outside of this country,
56:00
Speaker 1: let alone plenty of people in this country who do
56:01
Speaker 1: not drive. But getting behind the wheel of an automobile
56:04
Speaker 1: is much more dangerous than sitting and watching a movie
56:07
Speaker 1: on TV. That may cause a level of fear within me.
56:09
Speaker 1: But I mean my parents go and do all kinds
56:12
Speaker 1: of genuinely dangerous things, like traveling and doing dangerous things.
56:16
Speaker 1: And it always surprises me that my mother is willing
56:18
Speaker 1: to go in pet whales in Baja California but can't
56:21
Speaker 1: watch a horror movie. It's that. But there's that disconnect
56:24
Speaker 1: with people because again, I mean, people think that they
56:26
Speaker 1: can just go out into the woods and they'll be fine.
56:28
Speaker 1: And like you said, David, you can go into a
56:30
Speaker 1: relatively crowded place and disappear. You can disappear in Yellowstone
56:34
Speaker 1: that is a national park in the contiguous United States.
56:38
Speaker 1: You know, the d'atlav pass is scary in a way,
56:42
Speaker 1: but the thing that always scares me more. And doctor Mullen,
56:46
Speaker 1: I don't know if you have heard of this Missing
56:48
Speaker 1: four one one, a series of books all about hikers
56:51
Speaker 1: and people that have just gone missing in our national parks.
56:54
Speaker 1: That's much scarier than the Dyatlav because, like, these people
56:58
Speaker 1: are literally just disappearing, And to doctor Pearlmudder's point, it's
57:01
Speaker 1: probably some level of accidental complacency in one's own disappearance,
57:06
Speaker 1: but some of it is also someone was in front
57:08
Speaker 1: of me on a trail, walked around to bend and
57:10
Speaker 1: they were gone. So that's much scarier than you know,
57:13
Speaker 1: people in the Diatlov past. It's very sad what happened
57:16
Speaker 1: to people Diallov. That's for me to take away, Like
57:19
Speaker 1: you with the story you were telling, your explanation, like
57:21
Speaker 1: that's just sad. A bunch of people freezing to death
57:24
Speaker 1: in the woods is just sad, really really sad, because
57:28
Speaker 1: it's not like the Donner Party where it's like, well
57:30
Speaker 1: they made a choice to do the unthinkable, Like nope,
57:33
Speaker 1: these people just knew because, like you have said, doctor Pearl, mutter.
57:37
Speaker 1: They knew they were gonna die. That's actually way worse,
57:40
Speaker 1: Like if it was someone who doesn't understand the ramifications
57:43
Speaker 1: of that temperature and how quickly you'll die out there,
57:47
Speaker 1: they're just essentially ignorant to their own death. These people
57:50
Speaker 1: knew that they were gonna die within a couple hours
57:52
Speaker 1: out in that cold. That's why they tried to build
57:54
Speaker 1: a fire. That's right, they tried to build snow den.
57:56
Speaker 1: Like these things are just overwhelmingly sad and depressing, which
57:59
Speaker 1: I think think it's more a society unwilling to confront
58:02
Speaker 1: the sad, horrifying truth of you go into the woods
58:05
Speaker 1: with your friends sometimes sometimes nobody comes back, Like it's
58:08
Speaker 1: not gonna happen very often, but it does happen.
58:10
Speaker 4: I do one is I'm sorry. I just want to say,
58:14
Speaker 4: going back to the film for a moment, that I
58:16
Speaker 4: do give the film points for actually expressing what you
58:20
Speaker 4: both have said. Like there's a scene in the film
58:22
Speaker 4: where the filmmakers are out in because they went to
58:26
Speaker 4: the location right they went. They tried to go to
58:29
Speaker 4: the exact spot where this occurred, and it was in
58:33
Speaker 4: relatively good weather conditions. It was sunny, and things like that,
58:37
Speaker 4: and I think at some point the filmmaker says, oh
58:38
Speaker 4: my god, it's so cold, it's so miserable here, and like,
58:43
Speaker 4: I have no interest in going and investigating the location myself.
58:47
Speaker 4: Chris and Kate, you go there and you know, report
58:50
Speaker 4: back what you find. I'll watch from my living room.
58:54
Speaker 4: But it gave an impression of how brave these people
58:59
Speaker 4: were because they were going there to prove themselves. You
59:03
Speaker 4: would go back to Sir Edmund Hillary. Sir Edmund Hillary
59:06
Speaker 4: and ten Sing Norgay, the Sherpa, were the two men
59:11
Speaker 4: who conquered Everet who first. I mean again, there's a
59:13
Speaker 4: theory that there were two Englishmen who disappeared going up, ever,
59:17
Speaker 4: as one of their bodies had been found, and there's
59:19
Speaker 4: a you know, non zero chance they may have made
59:21
Speaker 4: it to the top. But the people who made it
59:23
Speaker 4: to the top and got back out again. Sir Edmund Hillary,
59:27
Speaker 4: he actually said mountain climbing consisted of getting to the
59:31
Speaker 4: top of the mountain and then down again safely. It
59:34
Speaker 4: was a very famous quote about black people climbing, which
59:36
Speaker 4: I approved. Right. You know, if you go to the
59:38
Speaker 4: mountain and die at the top of the mountain, it's
59:40
Speaker 4: not a successful climb, you know. There, But these people
59:46
Speaker 4: were doing something within their margin of safety. They weren't
59:49
Speaker 4: doing something ridiculously foolish. They weren't taking some wild risk
59:55
Speaker 4: that people had warned them against. This was within there.
59:58
Speaker 4: They just had this low mo origin of aeror. And
1:00:01
Speaker 4: it goes back to you know, I mean, it's almost
1:00:04
Speaker 4: like a joke. They died doing what they loved, and
1:00:06
Speaker 4: they died horribly, and they were young people. I mean,
1:00:09
Speaker 4: I think the oldest one was a early forties or something.
1:00:12
Speaker 4: But and it's a tragedy. But you know, human beings
1:00:15
Speaker 4: have advanced, like to the moon, because we really have
1:00:18
Speaker 4: gone to the moon. We I think the three of
1:00:21
Speaker 4: us may agree on that, like humans.
1:00:22
Speaker 1: Regardless of what the Russian government says or the Russian
1:00:25
Speaker 1: people what they may believe.
1:00:27
Speaker 4: Well, then that's what's funny is that one of the
1:00:30
Speaker 4: arguments against the many arguments against the moon hoax theory,
1:00:33
Speaker 4: the idea that the United States made it up, was
1:00:36
Speaker 4: that we were in this Cold War and like if
1:00:38
Speaker 4: the Russians could have found any evidence that the Americans
1:00:41
Speaker 4: had not gone to the moon, they would have like
1:00:43
Speaker 4: got run with it. Oh wait and yeah, Instead they
1:00:46
Speaker 4: congratulate us and said, you know, good job. You know,
1:00:49
Speaker 4: we wish we'd made it there first. So it sort
1:00:52
Speaker 4: of works both ways. But the key being that, yeah,
1:00:55
Speaker 4: we just maybe there's a just like there's a control
1:00:58
Speaker 4: instinct we like to think we're control, there's a blame instinct. Yeah,
1:01:02
Speaker 4: you know, it makes us feel better if we think
1:01:05
Speaker 4: somebody died doing something that maybe we couldn't do or
1:01:10
Speaker 4: something we could do, and say, well, they it was
1:01:13
Speaker 4: their fault. But sometimes it's it's just circumstance, right, Like
1:01:17
Speaker 4: you were standing on the beach and a wave came, yeah,
1:01:22
Speaker 4: and you were the one person in the history of
1:01:24
Speaker 4: the world who's been taken away by a wave at
1:01:26
Speaker 4: that one point, right, Or our ancestors, you know, one
1:01:31
Speaker 4: of our ants, somebody who somebody whose gene x did
1:01:35
Speaker 4: not survive, was just walking along when when when a
1:01:38
Speaker 4: saber too tiger happened to be there and so their
1:01:41
Speaker 4: genes were not passed on, they were not It wasn't
1:01:44
Speaker 4: survival of the fittest, it was survival of the luckiest,
1:01:46
Speaker 4: you know, So, uh, I think that's a that's a
1:01:49
Speaker 4: takeaway lesson from the film was that, oh my god,
1:01:52
Speaker 4: how miserable and tough. The conditions were out there, and
1:01:55
Speaker 4: these people were heroic in conquering that. They just had one,
1:02:00
Speaker 4: really according to the science, one really really bad stroke
1:02:05
Speaker 4: of luck. Yeah.
1:02:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd very much agree with that. And I wanted
1:02:08
Speaker 2: to mention, just following up on Chris, what you were
1:02:11
Speaker 2: saying about this four to one one series. I've never
1:02:14
Speaker 2: heard of that one, but the the American Mountaineering Association
1:02:18
Speaker 2: puts a series every year called Accidents in North American Mountaineering,
1:02:22
Speaker 2: and it sounds very similar. It is like a case
1:02:26
Speaker 2: report of all of these things that happen and then
1:02:28
Speaker 2: they do an accident analysis. Sometimes it's just being in
1:02:31
Speaker 2: the wrong place at the wrong time, or you know,
1:02:34
Speaker 2: you're you're doing everything right.
1:02:36
Speaker 4: But yeah, the four one one series is bigfoot.
1:02:39
Speaker 1: Uh, I'm not making guys, it's I mean, but that.
1:02:42
Speaker 1: But the problem is, I mean, the problem with the
1:02:44
Speaker 1: missing four one one series is and doctor Mullen, I
1:02:46
Speaker 1: mean we've you've already alluded to this with the at
1:02:48
Speaker 1: Love Like when there is an e when there is
1:02:51
Speaker 1: no explanation that will suffice mind start to wander, and
1:02:56
Speaker 1: with some people there will be no explanation that will
1:02:58
Speaker 1: suffice and with missing four one one, there are some
1:03:02
Speaker 1: things in those cases where yeah, like doctor Promoter said,
1:03:04
Speaker 1: there sometimes they say aliens or Bigfoot and like again,
1:03:08
Speaker 1: like you know, hypothesizing is just hypothesizing. But you know again,
1:03:13
Speaker 1: when you have with some of these missing form one ones,
1:03:15
Speaker 1: they have less I mean the dat love they have
1:03:18
Speaker 1: so much with this, Like it's in my mind. It's like,
1:03:20
Speaker 1: if there's plenty of people willing to do scientifical analysis,
1:03:23
Speaker 1: which there have been plenty of studies, both contemporary and
1:03:27
Speaker 1: ones at the time that people were doing, and there's
1:03:29
Speaker 1: been answers that people like yourself learned people that are
1:03:33
Speaker 1: scientists can't agree on that. People within the mountain X
1:03:37
Speaker 1: exploring or X, you know, kind of like the people
1:03:40
Speaker 1: that are in that world can agree on. I don't
1:03:42
Speaker 1: see why the conversation needs to continue unless people like
1:03:47
Speaker 1: doctor Permutter put it, want to just keep making documentaries
1:03:51
Speaker 1: sensationalizing it. There are plenty of other things out there
1:03:54
Speaker 1: that have less evidence behind them that people could throw
1:03:57
Speaker 1: themselves at that maybe could get some ground swell behind that,
1:04:02
Speaker 1: similar to the diat love past thing could get scientists
1:04:05
Speaker 1: or people in academia to get involved with because to
1:04:07
Speaker 1: be fair, you know, the reason a lot of these
1:04:10
Speaker 1: things haven't had any sort of real, i would say
1:04:14
Speaker 1: conclusive evidence behind them is And you guys both know
1:04:17
Speaker 1: this as people in academia. People in academia have reputations
1:04:20
Speaker 1: to uphold, and they don't want to be seen as
1:04:22
Speaker 1: people that are associated with bigfoot research in a serious capacity,
1:04:27
Speaker 1: alien research and a serious capacity. And I think that's unfair,
1:04:31
Speaker 1: but I think it's also completely understood because as someone
1:04:34
Speaker 1: who's in academia and has a reputation uphold, you don't
1:04:38
Speaker 1: want it soured by things that some people think are
1:04:41
Speaker 1: unsavory or you know, fantastical in some of these cases,
1:04:45
Speaker 1: and diat love is one of those things where I
1:04:47
Speaker 1: know that's not why you're not wanting to talk about it,
1:04:50
Speaker 1: doctor Mullen, but because I know that there's a genuine,
1:04:52
Speaker 1: real explanation that I agree with you with, Like I
1:04:55
Speaker 1: think it was just an avalanche. I think the fantasticalization
1:04:59
Speaker 1: or the kind of the like turning everything that's happened
1:05:01
Speaker 1: into hyperbole is much more interesting than like, not that
1:05:04
Speaker 1: what happened. But like then talking about how is it
1:05:07
Speaker 1: bigfoot or how is it aliens? Because like it's not
1:05:09
Speaker 1: it's just not any of those things. Yes, yeah, just
1:05:12
Speaker 1: to clarify. So, David Palids, I think is his name,
1:05:16
Speaker 1: has has built quite an empire from Missing four one one.
1:05:19
Speaker 1: I think there's like dozens of books. Yeah, there's a
1:05:22
Speaker 1: lot of uh, I know how many documentaries.
1:05:24
Speaker 4: The one documentary I saw was called Missing for one
1:05:27
Speaker 4: one the hunted And as to what you both were saying,
1:05:31
Speaker 4: they had some Really I would use the word interesting
1:05:34
Speaker 4: in its actual meaning, like like, oh, that's interesting, like
1:05:37
Speaker 4: people who went missing where there was at least in
1:05:40
Speaker 4: the described circumstances. There's a great podcast out there, Skeptoid.
1:05:45
Speaker 4: Brian Dunning is the host of that, and he often
1:05:48
Speaker 4: points out, like when we hear in the sensational descriptions,
1:05:53
Speaker 4: the descriptions aren't correct, Like if you go back and
1:05:56
Speaker 4: look at the original sources, some of the things which
1:05:58
Speaker 4: are so called mysterious never happened. They were just made
1:06:01
Speaker 4: up by drillists the time or somebody at the time.
1:06:04
Speaker 4: But in the Missing four one one, the documentary which
1:06:06
Speaker 4: I recommend watching for fun, there are some cases which
1:06:10
Speaker 4: are that that's interesting. But then in the middle of
1:06:13
Speaker 4: them he has a group of people who describe how
1:06:16
Speaker 4: they go into the a secret spot to listen to bigfoot,
1:06:21
Speaker 4: big feet, bigfoot, squirrel talk to them. I mean, can
1:06:25
Speaker 4: you imagine, like there's a documentary about normal missing things
1:06:29
Speaker 4: and then just in the middle of it is a
1:06:31
Speaker 4: reference to big flippity.
1:06:32
Speaker 1: He's not being facetious, doctor Mullen.
1:06:34
Speaker 4: It is.
1:06:34
Speaker 1: It is that stark of a contrast. It's like people
1:06:37
Speaker 1: missing and here's this recording of bigfoots that we have
1:06:40
Speaker 1: in the woods. And then I think, is this the
1:06:44
Speaker 1: one with predators in the trees as well? Is this
1:06:47
Speaker 1: the one with the invisible predator in the trees? Is
1:06:49
Speaker 1: that this documentary?
1:06:50
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, that's if you.
1:06:52
Speaker 1: Doctor bull is like, I have to leave now. My
1:06:56
Speaker 1: professional credibility isn't.
1:06:59
Speaker 4: Yeah no, they like here, yeah, that that you can have.
1:07:03
Speaker 4: You can have crazy stuff that wu, as the famous
1:07:07
Speaker 4: Amazing Randy called it WU. You know, sensational probably ninety
1:07:12
Speaker 4: a million to one unlikely stuff happening adjacent to reasonable stuff.
1:07:18
Speaker 4: And it's incumbent upon people who do documentaries because I
1:07:23
Speaker 4: believe in the documentary format, even whether you're doing a
1:07:26
Speaker 4: five minute video on YouTube or this which was a
1:07:29
Speaker 4: high grade you know, Hollywood cinematic, you know, top top
1:07:33
Speaker 4: of the line professional documentary, to distinguish between the two
1:07:38
Speaker 4: and not confuse them. And I think that that's one
1:07:41
Speaker 4: of the takeaways I think for whether it's for my
1:07:43
Speaker 4: students who want to create their own videos and tell stories,
1:07:48
Speaker 4: or for us as professional you know, journalists or scientists,
1:07:51
Speaker 4: is that we have to be careful about mixing our
1:07:55
Speaker 4: sources where they don't belong mixed there. So yeah, that's
1:07:59
Speaker 4: one of my take well, and.
1:08:00
Speaker 1: That's and for me it's again, you know, the the
1:08:03
Speaker 1: datlov past incident and all of the kind of ground
1:08:07
Speaker 1: swell and kind of discussion around it, it should be
1:08:10
Speaker 1: focused on the nine people who passed away and honestly
1:08:13
Speaker 1: doing more to inform people about how to better be
1:08:18
Speaker 1: better campers and hikers, and how to set up a
1:08:21
Speaker 1: tent better honestly and be more mindful of your surroundings
1:08:24
Speaker 1: when you're out in the woods. Just going out into
1:08:27
Speaker 1: the woods unprepared is a genuinely bad idea. Like I
1:08:32
Speaker 1: had mentioned that I was in Boy Scouts. I am
1:08:33
Speaker 1: an Eagle Scout. I had been out of Boy Scouts
1:08:36
Speaker 1: for the fifteen years. The last time I went camping,
1:08:39
Speaker 1: and I was woefully underprepared then, and I will not
1:08:42
Speaker 1: be the next time I go, and that was three
1:08:44
Speaker 1: years ago. I mean, it's one of those things where
1:08:46
Speaker 1: if you're not in a mindset and a headspace to
1:08:49
Speaker 1: relinquish all of your belongings and surroundings and go out
1:08:53
Speaker 1: into nature and be in nature for a while, it's
1:08:56
Speaker 1: not for the faint of heart. And I think as
1:08:58
Speaker 1: we kind of bring this episode to a I think
1:09:00
Speaker 1: the thing that's probably the most important is as we
1:09:02
Speaker 1: are in the times we're in now, where we're able
1:09:04
Speaker 1: to sit the three of us, none of us in
1:09:05
Speaker 1: the same state having a conversation about something that happened
1:09:08
Speaker 1: in the sixty as interconnected as we are now, to
1:09:11
Speaker 1: go out into nature is such a stark contrast from
1:09:14
Speaker 1: the world we live in now. And it didn't used
1:09:17
Speaker 1: to be. People used to go to bed at eight
1:09:19
Speaker 1: o'clock because there was no electricity and the sun was down,
1:09:22
Speaker 1: and that's it. We're not staying up doing anything. It's
1:09:24
Speaker 1: time for bed and you wake up when the sun
1:09:27
Speaker 1: comes up. That's the way things used to be before electricity. So,
1:09:30
Speaker 1: you know, us people in the last one hundred and
1:09:32
Speaker 1: fifty years, or you know, one hundred twenty years taking
1:09:34
Speaker 1: advantage of electricity and public you know, transit and toilets
1:09:38
Speaker 1: and all kinds of things. Don't appreciate what it would
1:09:40
Speaker 1: have to be like to walk outside of your house
1:09:42
Speaker 1: to go to the bathroom at night, which people didn't
1:09:45
Speaker 1: like to do. And that's what people used to have
1:09:47
Speaker 1: to do before indoor plumbing. So to go out into
1:09:50
Speaker 1: nature and remove yourself from everything is not for the
1:09:54
Speaker 1: faint of heart. And like doctor Pearlmutter said, the fact
1:09:57
Speaker 1: that the documentarian could not get to where they were
1:10:01
Speaker 1: himself is telling it and it should be telling for
1:10:04
Speaker 1: anyone watching the documentary. That and doctor Mullin, I'm sure
1:10:07
Speaker 1: you can speak more to this about having gone into
1:10:08
Speaker 1: the mountains, because I've not gone into the mountains to
1:10:10
Speaker 1: camp I was, you know, the most I ever did
1:10:13
Speaker 1: was going to film on for Boy Scouts, which is mountainous,
1:10:16
Speaker 1: but it's not it's not what you're talking about. The
1:10:19
Speaker 1: margin of error is low when you're out in nature
1:10:21
Speaker 1: as it is, but when you go to places like that,
1:10:23
Speaker 1: it's so much lower than you can even comprehend, I'm assuming.
1:10:28
Speaker 2: And he hauled himself in there using snowmobiles. So these
1:10:31
Speaker 2: students were under their own power. And you're absolutely right.
1:10:35
Speaker 2: Like today we have satellite communication SOS devices and a
1:10:39
Speaker 2: range of other things that can help. But they were
1:10:42
Speaker 2: out on a wild limb. They were very brave. They
1:10:45
Speaker 2: were you know, they were the best of Russia. They
1:10:47
Speaker 2: were really vanguards of a venture. And I respect them
1:10:52
Speaker 2: for that, and I wish they, you know, lived to
1:10:55
Speaker 2: tell the tale.
1:10:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, me too, because again I think they would be
1:10:58
Speaker 1: very sad to know that they kind of died rather ignominiously.
1:11:02
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, freezing to death in the Russian
1:11:05
Speaker 1: mountains is a pretty awful way to go, and then
1:11:08
Speaker 1: having your body found, you know, six months later in
1:11:11
Speaker 1: the springtime, it's just that's awful. I mean, but you
1:11:14
Speaker 1: hear about to go back to the twenty twenty six
1:11:16
Speaker 1: of it all. You hear about people climbing Everest and
1:11:18
Speaker 1: after a certain point on Everest, if you die, you're
1:11:20
Speaker 1: not coming back down. Your body's left on Everest. And
1:11:24
Speaker 1: that's right, Like that's it, Like they leave you, and
1:11:26
Speaker 1: what do you do? I mean, like that still happens now.
1:11:29
Speaker 1: I'm sure it happens with a lot less regularity than
1:11:31
Speaker 1: it used to, but it still happens. So you can't
1:11:34
Speaker 1: mitigate away all the risk just because and just because
1:11:37
Speaker 1: you think you can. And that's the thing like this
1:11:39
Speaker 1: documentary I think is very like should be very sobering
1:11:42
Speaker 1: for anyone wanting to go out and do anything like this,
1:11:44
Speaker 1: because even if you're well prepared, you still might not
1:11:47
Speaker 1: be able to do.
1:11:48
Speaker 2: And I will say, I mean, I have a lot
1:11:51
Speaker 2: of Eastern European friends just because I was a you know,
1:11:54
Speaker 2: a science student in the US, or a lot of
1:11:56
Speaker 2: foreign students study and my friends from the Eastern Bloc,
1:12:03
Speaker 2: they do sing the praises of the Soviet government in
1:12:06
Speaker 2: one sense, and that's it. The Soviet government did support
1:12:09
Speaker 2: a lot of mountaineering clubs, a lot of out doors clubs,
1:12:12
Speaker 2: a lot of explorers clubs. So you know, we've bashed
1:12:16
Speaker 2: the government in Russia quite a bit, but one of
1:12:18
Speaker 2: the things that they did was allow students like this
1:12:20
Speaker 2: real chances for adventure. So maybe one of the things
1:12:24
Speaker 2: that we could say that's positive about the student's sad
1:12:27
Speaker 2: end was that they did get the chance to take
1:12:29
Speaker 2: this adventure. It ended tragically, but they did have the
1:12:32
Speaker 2: chance and that was thanks to you know, government support
1:12:35
Speaker 2: of these adventure programs.
1:12:37
Speaker 1: And to your point, I think that's it's important because
1:12:40
Speaker 1: you know, like you said, you can't get into this
1:12:43
Speaker 1: kind of situation if you don't leave your house and
1:12:47
Speaker 1: you you know you if you're you know, kicking around
1:12:50
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty nine in Soviet Russia, unless the government
1:12:54
Speaker 1: is giving you some ability to do this or offering
1:12:58
Speaker 1: something to you in the opportunity of this, Like this
1:13:01
Speaker 1: is not something you can just go out and do.
1:13:02
Speaker 1: And so to your point, like, yes, it is. It
1:13:05
Speaker 1: is a positive that they're they were able to go
1:13:07
Speaker 1: out and do this. It's just yeah, it's it's sad
1:13:09
Speaker 1: and it's unfortunate, and it wasn't Bigfoot and it wasn't aliens.
1:13:13
Speaker 1: So when can we just stop? Like, look, if you
1:13:15
Speaker 1: want to tell a fictional story about that, go for it.
1:13:17
Speaker 1: There's a I think there's like even a video game
1:13:20
Speaker 1: on PC that has Sean Bean narrating it that's set
1:13:23
Speaker 1: in the dat love past. Like that's you know that
1:13:25
Speaker 1: they already want to do that. Le's just go do that.
1:13:27
Speaker 1: Don't don't have to make the real story any more
1:13:29
Speaker 1: fantastical than it needs to. We can we can keep
1:13:32
Speaker 1: that to fiction and it can be it can be
1:13:34
Speaker 1: more more fun that way.
1:13:36
Speaker 4: I counted. By the way, Chris, if you want to
1:13:39
Speaker 4: do shows on them, I counted. There are two fiction
1:13:42
Speaker 4: movies with time, one with time travel and one with
1:13:45
Speaker 4: space aliens about diaf love class, so we can move
1:13:48
Speaker 4: on to those.
1:13:49
Speaker 1: One with time travel. Boy, that's they went back in time.
1:13:53
Speaker 1: I murdered them out.
1:13:56
Speaker 4: Day. If I could describe the plot of that movie,
1:13:59
Speaker 4: I mean, everybody wow, and there's extreme violets. So it's
1:14:03
Speaker 4: the Soviet version of groundhog Day.
1:14:05
Speaker 1: But I mean it's like anything else. It's one of
1:14:07
Speaker 1: those things that's captured the public imagination, and it probably
1:14:11
Speaker 1: won't uncapture the public imagination no matter what reasonable explanation
1:14:16
Speaker 1: the scientists give us, which I think is the harder
1:14:20
Speaker 1: to confront one, but it's the reasonable one that I
1:14:23
Speaker 1: like to believe. It's sad, but it's it's sad, and
1:14:26
Speaker 1: that's all you can say. So anything else we want
1:14:28
Speaker 1: to talk about with this or the movie or anything,
1:14:32
Speaker 1: any musings or monologues anyone wants to have, Doctor Perlmutter.
1:14:35
Speaker 1: I know you prepared several monologues. I don't know if
1:14:37
Speaker 1: you've gotten to them yet or not No.
1:14:39
Speaker 4: I just want to say I appreciate being here, and
1:14:43
Speaker 4: it's good to have these discussions where we talk not
1:14:47
Speaker 4: just about like an individual piece of cultural content, which
1:14:51
Speaker 4: I think all three of us can agree, for example,
1:14:54
Speaker 4: that is very technically well done, but also the issues
1:14:58
Speaker 4: that are raised about like us as the audience. You know,
1:15:01
Speaker 4: I always tell my students you have to be an
1:15:03
Speaker 4: active audience. You can't just let anything whether it's a
1:15:07
Speaker 4: fiction television series you know, set in the Star Wars universe,
1:15:11
Speaker 4: or the evening news flow over you without asking some
1:15:15
Speaker 4: questions about how it's affecting you, what you appreciate, and
1:15:20
Speaker 4: also the truth value, either implied or directly claimed.
1:15:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree, anything else we have Nope, Okay, we'll
1:15:28
Speaker 1: get this. We'll get this out the doors. So thank
1:15:30
Speaker 1: you both so much for joining me. I had a
1:15:32
Speaker 1: great time. Doctor Mullen, thank you for joining for the
1:15:35
Speaker 1: first time. Doctor Promutter, thank you for joining me again
1:15:38
Speaker 1: and for picking the film, and for inviting doctor Ollen
1:15:42
Speaker 1: as well. It was a lot of fun. Like rate
1:15:44
Speaker 1: and review the show wherever you get it, more than
1:15:46
Speaker 1: likely on iTunes, Patreon, dot com. Slash culture cast is
1:15:49
Speaker 1: where you can go to support the show we do
1:15:51
Speaker 1: a weekly show or a monthly show about James Bond
1:15:53
Speaker 1: that's only for Patreon supporters at the five and ten
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Speaker 1: dollars level. Thank you both again so much for joining me,
1:15:59
Speaker 1: and make sure to check us out on the next episode.