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Bradley Garrett: Inside the Places You're Never Meant to See · The BEYOND Podcast

• 0:00
  Unknown: [MUSIC]
• 0:02
  You coming at life from a different angle?
• 0:04
  My primary M_O_ is you know, exploration.
• 0:08
  What makes you brave enough?
• 0:11
  My whole life has been just this rabbit hole where I'm like chasing the thing that excites me 'cause we only have so many years and I'm not gonna spend them working on somebody else's project.
• 0:30
  Off limits world to expose what's hidden in the shadows.
• 0:40
  We walked for three days sleeping in abandoned buildings to make it to Pripyat uh the city that had half a million people in it and is now completely empty.
• 0:49
  Were you not scared of the radioactive dust and things?
• 0:52
  You know there's always a possibility that you kick up a gamma particle and swallow it and that's the end of the year.
• 1:00
  The sewers of London used to be rivers. They were covered over in the eighteen fifties, so essentially what you're walking through are are the hidden rivers of London. You'd have to kind of crawl through them. There would be kind of like muck hanging from the ceilings and there would be like toilet paper and tampons and all sorts of stuff kind of wrapped up in it.
• 1:28
  You made headlines for climbing the Shard. It's one of the tallest buildings in the world, like it's tall.
• 1:34
  It was the tallest building in Europe. The shard turned into a bit of a a spectacle. The shard was under construction. So the group of explorers that I was working with were trying to coordinate the right time to tackle the shard 'cause they're gonna increase security. So we went in, it was it was a really cold night and we climbed we climbed up this scaffolding where we could see the security guards. So then we crawled under the window, passed the security guard and then ran into the middle of the building. The views were absolutely spectacular. We got these
• 2:04
  amazing photos and they were the first photos ever taken from the top of the shard so when we posted them it just turned into this total media frenzy. You got into trouble. British transport police they're like Dr. Garrett you're coming with us, they handcuffed me, I'm totally freaking out, it was so over the top I'm like really for sneaking into buildings you're gonna you're gonna arrest gonna be kidding me.
• 2:31
  Hi Brad welcome, to be on the boardroom super, excited to have you on. You were on Joe Rogan. I mean so yeah ho how long was that conversation with Joe?
• 2:41
  That that's crazy.
• 3:03
  Oh my God. Cool so for people that don't know you I don't even know where to begin to introduce you. I'm gonna let you introduce yourself because the things you do are wild and people are gonna love hearing about what it is that you've done. Very cool stuff.
• 3:17
  Uh problem, yeah. So my name's Bradley Garrett. I'm I'm forty four and on my fourth career I think at this point I had a skateboard shop in my twenties. I became an archaeologist and then I became an academic. I got my P_H_D_ in geography and just recently I went freelance. So it's been it's been a wild ride. But generally as a geographer I'm I'm interested in subterranean things which, you know, stems from my background in archaeology. So I spent a lot of time exploring spaces underground and trying to tell stories
• 3:47
  about the cultures of the underground, which often people don't much know much about.
• 3:52
  I think I think it's also fair to say that you explore forbidden places.
• 3:59
  Yeah well a lot of places yeah a lot of places underground you're you're you're not supposed to be in um uh they're you know access is barred or they're just they're really difficult or tricky to get into and so you know I ask permission where I can but i if I'm if I'm determined to get access to something, I'm absolutely just going anyway.
• 4:18
  So when you're determined to gain access to these places you're going anyway but really your mind, your your the thing that you crave, the thing that you wanna explore is the unexplored really.
• 4:29
  Yeah I I I'm a photographer so I've I love getting into these places and taking photographs that sort of shatter people's perception about you know what's possible and what exists 'cause you know most of our lives are lived on the surface. We cruise from you know work to school to the coffee shop and we don't think much about what's below us but you know there's a whole network of things going on under our feet that that make modern life possible and when you when
• 4:59
  you show people photos of those places and you explain to them well look you you know like a contemporary city just couldn't exist without all of these tunnel networks that are that are moving around water and waste and energy and people you know when you show people those photos it it I I think it causes them to pause and and to think about where they are in a different in a different light and and that's that's what I do I. bring I bring dark places into the light.
• 5:26
  Yeah. There's something about your background as well, your childhood and where you grew up 'cause I correct me if I'm wrong but you grew up near a desert and you would wanna go to this desert, drive there and then explore these abandoned mines and things, these f abandoned camps. Is that is that right that that's sort of triggered that interest in you to to go where you shouldn't in a way.
• 5:48
  Absolutely yeah, yeah I I I grew up on the edge of the Mojave Desert and I actually live here now I. always it was always my it was always my dream to to buy land out here um I'm sitting in the in the middle of the Mojave right now in a massive rainstorm and every there's like flash flooding outside of my window.
• 6:06
  That's crazy That's. not normal is it?
• 6:18
  I was driving into the desert primarily to look for petroglyphs and archaeological sites. Like a b uh I I was just fascinated to find uh you know these remnants of people who had been here thousands of years ago and to imagine what their lives were like. You know ho how did they survive out here in the middle of the desert and n not just survive but having a free time to be you know decorating massive rock panels with petroglyphs. So that you know that kind of was the
• 6:48
  Mm-hmm.
• 7:01
  Yeah.
• 7:03
  And so I just yeah it's that's that's the thing really that that drives me is finding these places that people don't usually get to see.
• 7:09
  And you went to London, which people do see although not in the way that you've seen it. Why London?
• 7:14
  well I got I got a scholarship to do my P_H_D_ there and at uh Royal Holloway University of London and originally my project so one of the things that that kind of bothered me as an archaeologist was that was that you know I was the expert who was w you know it was my job to interpret other people's existence and and I always felt like there's gotta be a way to sort of you know give that voice back to the people that I'm working with and so I pitched this project for
• 7:44
  P_H_D_ that was on alternative archaeologies. So I wanted to spend time with uh these druids that were taking over Stonehenge every year and claiming that it was their their ancestral right to to use the site in a ceremonial way. I found that really interesting and then um and then with people who were looking at ley lines you know these kind of like power psychic power lines that are kind of connecting things across the landscape I thought that was an interesting you know c sort of folksy
• 8:14
  interpretation of archaeology. And then the third group were these urban explorers and they were sneaking into uh mostly abandoned buildings and telling these incredible stories about their adventures going in there but also telling the histories of those places. And often these are places that are you know were totally overlooked you, know they, don't you don't you don't find them in history books. So I saw the the urban explorers as kind of I don't know amateur,
• 8:44
  or amateur archaeologists but uh the work they were doing was incredibly valuable in my mind and at some point I don't know only maybe three months into my P_H_D_ ha I had gone out with these urban explorers to sneak into some abandoned buildings and my super my supervisor Tim Crestwell he said look this, is the that's the P_H_D_ just, keep just keep going with them wherever they end up going and ended up turning into quite a story.
• 9:11
  Yeah yeah, we're gonna go into the story. But basically you met these guys and they're doing this urban exploring and that's like the perfect thing for you you're from your childhood and that it's just opened up that side of you and you think yeah, I'm gonna join these guys. So you join them. What was your first mission wh and and how addictive did that become?
• 9:32
  The first mission so around London there used to be the the Victorians built these asylums and when you know people would become physically or mentally ill they would sort of say well you need to leave the city and go to the country to one of these asylums where you can you know
• 9:58
  Right.
• 10:00
  you know, be beautiful Victorian spaces. During the eighties the Thatcher government shut down most of these hospitals and sort of put the burden of care on families and and it was a very rapid transition. I mean some of these hospitals were shut down kind of overnight and so um you know they wanted to sneak into those hospitals to see what was left behind and we would find uh I the the first one we went into you know it's got this beautiful aesthetic of
• 10:30
  decay. You know there's sort of rain coming through the roof and trees growing in the hallways. Yeah ju yeah, beautiful beautiful spaces. And but then we would we would start opening up filing cabinets and there would be patient records and X_ rays and and we w yeah we would sit there for hours kind of like piecing this stuff together and soon we were able to to write these very long blog posts that w that that were not only documenting the the deterioration of those spaces because at like every season they would they would fall
• 11:00
  part more and more And. it felt like they were kind of being absorbed by the earth. But also we were able to tell those stories of the patients that were that were living in those places.
• 11:18
  Mm-hmm.
• 11:21
  Isn't it crazy that th but we talk so much about data privacy today and it's like it's all it makes it record, you know. Yeah.
• 11:30
  opening I mean you're literally opening up these filing cabinets and you're finding the whole like medical history what sort of w whether they had like a bipolar thing going on or you know whatever, y you've got the full view of all these these people and I mean that's that's spooky though, isn't it? You're in this abandoned place. And these are like these are like ghost stories going on here How. were you scared? I mean
• 11:53
  Uh yeah, they they were they were incredibly eerie. I think that's part that's part of the that's part of the joy. Uh that's part of the fun. They're also patrolled by security. And so we had to kind of evade the security guard, you know, get get in through a window, sort of hide out somewhere, make sure that they'd and then and then move through the corridors very carefully, sometimes sort of like belly-crawling, you know, from from room to room so that we weren't caught. But at the same time, yeah, it did it they did feel haunted in a way. And and that was kind of that was part
• 12:23
  of the fun for sure. It's gonna be a mm-hmm.
• 12:43
  Yeah. Or they're like rats and things and rats running around.
• 12:48
  Oh yeah. And you could definitely feel, you know, you could feel the presence. There is a there is a kind of weight there of uh you know, uh I don't know. It's it's hard to describe. It's kind of a it's a kind of affect. It's something you feel in the body, you know, that that eeriness and
• 13:08
  Mm-hmm.
• 13:16
  Uh-huh.
• 13:18
  of the classrooms, then all the dust on it and and and the town and all broken swings and it's super super spooky. It's
• 13:28
  You'd be in there to stop it right now. No.
• 13:33
  seventeen before the war and there's there's a group of urban explorers there called stalkers and they they come straight out of I don't know if you've seen the movie Stalker from the seventies, the Tarkovsky film. It's an absu yeah no it's an it's an absolutely beautiful film and I'll tell you there here's another very eerie thing to think about that that the book that that was based on was written long before the nuclear disaster and if you if you watch the film the end of it they end up
• 14:03
  room number four, and it was reactor number four in this movie. It's a no, so the book is like comp it's totally prescient. I mean it's it's it's really bizarre. But in any case uh so then it gets weirder because uh it uh no, it gets weirder because in in the book the people who take you and in the film the people who take you into this space they're called stalkers. So now the s the stalkers are real people. You p you p you pay them and they will figure out how to get you past the
• 14:33
  security patrols and get into the exclusion zone, the the zone of alienation. And and we walked for three days sleeping in abandoned buildings to make it to Pripyat, uh the city that had half a million people in it and is now completely empty. And we went through it floor by floor, tower by tower, it was amazing. And they were building the new sarcophagus over reactor number four at the time. And we went up there with some some snacks and some beers one night and
• 15:03
  there was a lightning storm and we were watching lightning bolts strike the sarcophagus on reactor number four, and it was the most amazing thing. I'll yeah, I'll send you a photo of it. It's quite incredible. Yeah. Oh yeah. Absolutely.
• 15:28
  situations. I mean were you not scared of the radioactive dust and things and and did you wear a mask?
• 15:34
  No, the the stalker that we were with, he'd been in there a hundred times and he h he had a a bosemmeter. So we were keeping an eye on radiation levels. But you know, there's always a possibility that you kick up a gamma particle and swallow it and that's the end of you. And uh again, that's par that's part of the thrill, I guess. Um but ch but check this out. So we we there was a there was a giant nuclear bunker. It was sort of deep in the exclusion zone. And uh we went in to explore this thing as we were passing
• 16:04
  through and there was a smoldering fire inside. So someone else had been there and and the the stalker that we were with he said he said you know this is really sad I. said well what's going on? He said all of that wood is totally radioactive and and they were breathing in all night and the campfire he's like those they're all dead, you know, whatever that was.
• 16:27
  It's it's so wild, but also what's what's wild literally is the animals that are there that seem to thrive. You've got all these wolves and owls and g all these animals, huge fish in the river. They all completely they they're fine. You know they've adapted.
• 16:43
  Yeah. Well we imagine we imagine you know we're so anthropocentric we imagine that the post-apocalyptic world without us in it is going to somehow fall apart or there there would be noth there would be nothing there. That's absolutely not the case. Everything everything thrives when you take humans out of the equation.
• 17:02
  Yeah. So you're in this asylum, you're finding out all this stuff about these people and that's slurring you even more even more even more. So from then what do you wha what's you've you've gotta throw like that what's next? What do you do?
• 17:18
  Well the next thing the explorers wanted to start getting into was infrastructure in the city. So they wanted to see the sewers, the power tunnels, the abandoned metro stations
• 17:32
  Okay so I'll t I'll tell you though most people don't understand this but as you're walking through London there's you're walking over manholes all day long and you can you can literally buy a manhole key on Amazon for like five quid and go open these things up and get inside the sewers and the sewers of London used to be rivers. Uh so they were they were covered over in the eighteen fifties and so essentially what you're walking through are are the hidden rivers of London you can walk through the the fleet the fleet
• 18:02
  the Tibern the, Wandel and and the the really amazing thing about these sewers is that they the the way they built them is they sort of it's called c uh cut and cover so they would they cut a trench in the ground and then they would lay bricks inside and then cover it up and that's how they b how they built the sewer system. And there are three hundred and eighteen million hand laid bricks in the system and when you get to these junctions where there's multiple multiple rivers coming together, there's some of the most
• 18:32
  Mm-hmm.
• 18:32
  places you can imagine and I yeah yeah and the explorers were telling me this they were like no the sewers are gorgeous so I was like okay well let's get yeah.
• 18:52
  that most people rely on and don't know is there. We were also able to cross the city, so we could kind of like pop in at Blackfriars and walk the fleet up to King's Cross and pop out of an another manhole and it felt like magic, right? 'Cause it's like we we crossed the city without seeing another human being and it felt very much like like exploring the wilderness, but it was under the city, you know, and you're you're backpacking on a trail and you're alone, you don't encounter anyone else, you know. We kind of had that experience in the city.
• 19:23
  Oh but just just so I just so I get my head around it, when you go underground like everyone knows the land well most people will know the land at underground, you go down the stairs and you're on the underground and you've got like different levels of underground, so like the circle and the metropolitan line and those guys district, they hire up and then you sort of go lower down and then the northern line and those guys go deeper and deeper and deeper. So w in f in terms of layers where are we talking? Where is it?
• 19:50
  as an archaeologist when I was excavating a site, you expect that the oldest material is is deeper, right? So you're like digging th you're digging through time into the past. But but in a city it's the opposite. So as you say, all of the new stuff has to keep going below what's already there. And so the sewers are the first thing that that's the first layer under the city. And and below that you have sort of gas, water, fiber optics, telecommunications, all these kind of
• 20:20
  utility tunnels. Below that you have the tube. The tube connects to bunkers, some of which were built during World War II and some during the Cold War. And then and then below all of that you have all the new stuff, the super sewer, the cross rail c cross rail at cross rail is a new name now doesn't, it?
• 20:43
  Yeah.
• 20:47
  Yeah, you can so uh I lived in Clapham London and yeah, so clap Clapham south, Clapham north and Clapham common have extensive bunker systems attached to the northern line there. I would say there's probably eight miles of empty tunnels Um. actually actually actually actually not completely empty because Clapham common was the last one we did and we we abseiled down a ventilation shaft and
• 21:17
  Mm-hmm.
• 21:25
  Okay.
• 21:27
  Wow.
• 21:30
  Wow.
• 21:31
  found yeah we found we found old uh a a box of old B_B_C_ cartoons on tapes that we'd no one knew what the tapes were. It was like an obsolete form of media. I mean there r there was really cool stuff in there.
• 21:44
  So so so no one's going into these places really They're. kind of just
• 21:46
  No.
• 21:47
  down abandoned and but but it's good to know for anyone living around Clapham you've got your little you got your little safe space to go down. But but yeah, you'd have to know to go down there. You'd need to have the key and then you'd have to know how to navigate. But uh isn't it dangerous down there So? what happens like, dunno, when it rains and things and
• 22:04
  The o the only place it's not safe to be when it rains is the sewer system obviously, because it's a it's a combined system. So storm water, s sewage, rain run off, it's all going in the same place and
• 22:16
  the the riverp thing that you were talking about, the whole connection of all that, that must be yeah.
• 22:24
  I mean when you go underground you're dis you're totally disconnected from the surface, you know, your phone your phone doesn't work, you're not getting you're not getting weather reports or weather alerts and so you you really need to think about it before you go down and make sure that that there's not gonna be uh an unexpected rainstorm and that did happen to us once. I was I was with musician Cosmos Schaldrake and he wanted to make a music video in the fleet. Yeah and I mean we wi and I yeah no and we went down there and had you know uh video
• 22:54
  and sound mixing equipment, all this stuff. And then I'm standing in the tunnel and I suddenly this there's these smaller side tunnels. It's kind of like arteries and veins, you know. But like the v the v the veins start pumping in water. And I said I think we should probably pack up now. And but the problem is we had we had come we had come in the manhole sort of upstream, so going upstream pretty quickly was not an option anymore. So
• 23:24
  we so we basically had to go down to the Thames and just hope that the manhole opened And. uh yeah. Yeah yeah yeah. But we got down there and I I climbed up the ladder and I was like everyone cross your fingers and the manhole opened and we we all clamor clamor down there and gave it a hooker.
• 23:53
  Like that's dangerous living. But so is Chernobyl. So
• 23:56
  check check this out. Here's another weird story. The camera the cameraman that was shooting that music video, uh Reuben de Reuben de Champs, he he was not very happy about what had happened, you know, like bad planning on my part. And I was yeah, and I'm and I Rob MacFarlane's new film Underland, Rob Pettit directed it, but it's based on Robert MacFarlane's book, Underland. Um and I'm one of I'm one of the characters in the film. And when the film crew showed up in Las Vegas to go into the storm drains, guess who the cameraman was?
• 24:26
  And he was like you have to be kidding me. He was like are we you're taking me into now we're in another country, whatever, four years, five years later and you're taking me into a sewer again, storm trade, you know. It was absolutely hilarious. And then while we were there he was nominated for an Emmy. So cool. So cool. But but it's yeah there's there's these kind of you know there's characters in my life that I've obviously I've met through exploring your goals and
• 24:56
  Yeah. The best.
• 24:58
  people. But but they they tend they tend to like pop up again in other places, you know. So I'll be underground in some other part of the world and it's like oh look, it's some somebody I know in the Paris catacombs randomly, you know. It's pretty fun.
• 25:11
  mad like how you you're going around like your brain wants to go into all these places and then it is dangerous. It's l it's literally very very very dangerous. And we're gonna talk about talk about those dangers because they continue and it's not just underground, is it?
• 25:28
  No. No no no.
• 25:45
  were being built. And you know the arch the archaeologist said to me was like look, I really don't care about a construction site. I don't wanna go in here. And then one of the explorers said to me Brad, it's just like it's like archaeology in reverse. Like we're building the thing that's gonna fall apart later. So you can just enjoy it in that way. So yeah, that totally makes sense. So so yeah, we started we started getting into construction sites and then and then climbing the sort of core of skyscrapers before they were built.
• 26:15
  encouraging people here. Don't get the key for the manhole and do not try and do this. But you did. It's a it's how do you how do you do it? Because there's scaffolding but there's not there they've got these cranes and they've got
• 26:26
  There's it's it's complicated. There's there's sca there's scaffolding, there's barbed wire, there are security patrols. Sometimes they have la laser sensors in the stairs. Absolutely never take the lift under any circumstances because you don't know if you know like they li they leave the site and they shut they shut the shut the power off and you get stuck in there whatever. Also the security patrols can probably see a little lift being used so, so yeah we would take the stairs or sometimes climb scaffolding and then sort of get in
• 26:56
  a window and they get to the stairs and it's as you're as you're so the c there there's usually like a like a concrete core to a building and then they kind of build around it. And so that core is usually where the the the lift and the stairs are and that's the first thing that they do. Yeah. The spine it's the spine of the building exactly, yeah. So you can kind of climb the spine and then and then sometimes pop out of a a hatch on the top and then you're you're on top of this thing with all the construction
• 27:26
  cranes and then you can climb the cranes and you get oh oh it's so much fun. You get out on the gantry and you can kind of poke your head over the side and you're like fifty sixty stories up and you looking down at the city and you can't hear anything. It's comple it's completely silent. Uh if it's windy I w yeah we'd probably pick another night. Yeah.
• 27:54
  no. I I feel like uh I understand people's fear of heights absolutely, but y you know I just think this is somebody's work site. You know there's there are construction workers who are up here every day walking on the Gantrain climbing the cranes and I think if if it's safe for them it's safe for us. So I just keep remi I just keep reminding myself that you know as long as you have kind of you know three points of contact make, sure you've got two hands and a foot on something at all times, you know the likelihood of falling off is
• 28:24
  low. That being said there are a lot of explorers that do stupid things, people doing you know pull-ups on cranes and doing flips on things.
• 28:31
  Yeah there are there are the ones for the photo and lots of that lots of it goes wrong. I mean so ho how much hel like safety stuff do you think about when going into this thing? Like do you do you c consider some of the dangers and do you plan for them at all?
• 28:51
  like I said with the sewers you wanna you know you you absolutely have to look at the weather, you have to know what's happening with the weather before you go down there. In the power tunnels you've gotta be careful not to touch certain things, you'll get electrocuted. Obviously exploring exploring the tube is extremely dangerous so we had we had engineering track maps and we knew when the train went by and yeah. So we were we were extremely careful about when we went down and uh yeah you you put you have to think about these things a lot and and the most important thing always
• 29:21
  is to make sure that you know where the exit is and that you have one 'Cause. that is the worst possible scenario is you get you get stuck underground somewhere and you can't get out. And then you c and you can't call you can't yeah and you can't call anyone. So you'd I mean you just you would just eventually starve down there. I don't know. It'd be awful.
• 29:49
  It's just of I mean it's different world here. It's a bit claustrophobic, you know, and you sort of think where's the exit, but you can't really get out 'cause you're in this little tin thing and it's all a bit so but yeah but you're you're less yeah you don't get scared that easily I think. Yeah.
• 30:04
  No and and as you as you as you say it's like if you know what the dangers are, you know, don't touch the third rail make, sure you know where there's an alcove that you can get in if a train happens to come through. Um yeah, that kind of stuff. You know, it's it it all exploration is a risk-reward ratio and they're there's stuff that I've walked away from because I'm like you know and it's and it's it's risky and it's not worth it.
• 30:33
  For example.
• 30:34
  Well I g so a couple of a couple of the sewer sewers that we went into you, know we, would we would pop the manhole and get down there and they would be like not standing height. So you'd have to kind of crawl through them.
• 30:47
  No. No way.
• 30:51
  often there would be kind of
• 30:54
  this is nasty but the you know there would be kind of like muck hanging from the ceilings and there would be like toilet paper and tampons and all sorts of stuff kind of wrapped up in it and you know every you know we would look down those tunnels and it's like realistically like what yeah what's what's the possibility we're gonna find something really cool if we crawl a mile through this you know and then and then you back you back out. Other times like there are a couple of places in the Paris catacombs which are amazing there's like a hundred and six
• 31:24
  miles of tunnels underneath Paris. They go they go on and on. But there's a couple of places that we got into where the roof was cracked and you just ima you just imagine like not stone coming down on you, but like the city coming down on you, you know. And and and you know so you back out, you back out. We're not we're not doing that, yeah. When anoth another time, I'll give you one more. So I've been exploring uh abandoned mine data lately. Me and my buddies went into an abandoned mine and there was a there was a gate
• 31:54
  deep down in the mind, you know, five stories deep. And my buddy picked the lock on the gate backwards with a phone, so he put it on selfie mode and he picked the lock backwards, it was really cool. And we po we popped the gate open and we're like let's see what's in here, it's gotta be something good, right? And uh it was explosives, there were boxes of di boxes of dynamite and they were sweat they they were they were sweating, you could see the nitroglycerin kind of like sweating through the wood and that that was another moment where we were like we're
• 32:24
  Just. we're leaving the an we're leaving the entire mine. Yeah Not. not worth it Not. worth it.
• 32:43
  you need to go yeah yeah yeah I've been down them I've been down them and uh you you as you go down and you go down such a long time and it's this rich t well it was in the in those days and yeah you just get hotter and hotter and hotter and you sort of feel you really do feel you like you're g on your way to the core of the earth and then you get down there and it's just rocks and heat but yeah there's gold there's gold in the rocks so when you're standing in these tunnels you just see little bits of gold, pure gold. It's w it's
• 33:13
  Wow.
• 33:13
  I do recommend it but yeah.
• 33:16
  human beings do this, like that's what blows me away, they eat these incredible feats of engineering underground and you you wouldn't see them, you wouldn't know about them unless you'd unless you made a conscious effort to be like I'm gonna go try and understand that and I'm never disappointed when I when I go into these subterranean spaces and then you know imagining the amount of of sweat and toil and labour and and death you know inside these spaces you know and and it just it it uh that's part of what makes
• 33:46
  the mirrory to be in, you know knowing, that people sacrifice so much to extract this stuff and we just we don't even think about it.
• 33:56
  I mean the things have developed along the way I know especially in South Africa for mining safety and the equipment that you wear and the tech technologies moved on so things are definitely in prayer but yeah it's I mean it remains awful and and dangerous and but we're moving out of the undergrounds we're back there we're climbing that corner we're going up and and what what's next what what do you what's the experience and how is it different from underground for you?
• 34:20
  The expi the experience of being um on on top of a skyscraper by your say, it gives you a really good sense of where you are in the city, you know, because you're not looking through a window. Usually in a building it's like you can see out of one side or the other, right. But if you're at you're at the top of this core on a crane, you have this three hundred and sixty degree view of the city. Um so it gives you it gives you a really good sense of place. But then uh but then also as I as I mentioned, you can't hear anything. You're so high up that
• 34:50
  there's no noise. So you look yeah you look down at this yeah you look down at the city and it kind of looks like a circuit board you, know. Like there's there's all these little kind of nodes and things connecting it and you can see all all the lights of the city and sometimes you can see things moving around but it's totally silent and yeah that that those moments definitely make it worth it. Especially when you've climbed like you know sixty, seventy stories on stairs. It's you're pretty tired by the time you get up there. So that's that's the reward.
• 35:20
  Yeah, how similar this is to those guys climbing Everest, although when you're stuck in a in a tourist queue, that's probably that that takes some of the magic away. But there was a guy who did it out of season recently and then he it was a Polish guy and he think he he walked up like quickly 'cause he was quite light, but then he skied down and he it was only him and the guide and I think that probably made it nicer. But yeah, you probably get to the top there as well and it's got that perspective of you know yeah, it's it's I think it's probably s a bit spiritual. Did you feel a bit c connected
• 35:50
  to grey the things. I don't know. Like what what emotion did it bring out of you?
• 35:56
  Yeah, it does it does give you the sense of just utter privilege.
• 36:02
  Mm.
• 36:02
  like I feel so lucky that I'm able to have this experience that so few human beings are able to have and it is very peaceful and then you have the kind of you know the adrenaline rush of getting away with it as you say it would be completely d it would be completely different if someone took you up there right, and it was this kind of guided tour like you know I lived in Sydney for a long time and people climb the harbour bridge on these tours and it's like you know you're clipped in and you're with ten people
• 36:32
  I mean yes, it's an experience, but it's a very different experience than going in the middle of the night and climbing up there by yourself, you know, without anyone telling you what to do or how to do it. It there there is a spiritual aspect to it and the, you know, the adrenaline is sort of going the whole time that you're in there because because you still have to get out of the building too. So there's always a fear that someone sees you on the crane and then they call they call the police and then, you know, the police surround the building and then you've got a problem.
• 37:02
  So you know as you're coming down and you've got this memory card full of photos and uh b you know and your your head is is you know you're feeling that euphoria of having had this amazing experience then you have to sort of you know like run run from the core to the fence again and jump over and get out into the street and kind of blend like blend in with the crowd and then and then you have the release and that is the best feeling when you're like oh we did it. No no one knows we
• 37:32
  there. No one knows we were there. Uh I mean it's like and and then you come home and you look at these photos and and you know that when you when you post these photos online there's gonna be a reaction. People are gonna be like how did you get there? How did you get these photos Who? let you in right, And? it's such an amazing feeling to to know uh n no one let me in I. got I did that al all on my own back. So yeah.
• 37:57
  you made headlines for it didn't, you for for climbing the shard, right?
• 38:03
  Yeah, yeah the shard turned into a bit of a a spectacle.
• 38:06
  Tell tell us tell us what the spectacle what was the spectacle.
• 38:10
  The the shard the shard was under construction at the time and they had finished the core and so the group of explorers in London that I was working with were all kind of you know trying to co-ordinate you know what's the what's the right time to tackle the shard?
• 38:27
  Yeah.
• 38:27
  once once we get in there and we take the photos and we put the photos online, it's gonna b it's gonna blow up the site right, They're. gonna they're gonna increase security.
• 38:36
  Yeah, just for people that don't know. I mean the the shard is one of the tallest buildings right, in the world. Like it's tall.
• 38:44
  Yeah, it was at at the ti at the ti at the time it was built it was the tallest building in Europe for sure. But yeah, it's massive. I mean I don't know. Maybe it's
• 38:53
  challenge, but you guys decide timing, trying to work it out and then you got you you do it.
• 39:00
  So we yeah so we went in it was it was a really cold night I remember and we we we climbed we climbed up to scaffolding where we could see the security guards and w we were laying there shivering, you know like, waiting for me. It's like thi it's like two it's like two in the morning November. Yeah, super cold and was like kind of drizzling. But anyway so we're like we're shivering and freezing and we're watching the sec security like do their patrols around the site.
• 39:29
  And then eventually he went into uh this little shack and we could see him on his phone. We could see we could see him on inside there and we were like this is it. So yeah we yeah so we climbed down the scaffolding very quietly. You know you have to go sort of you know hand over foot very quietly and make sure that it do it doesn't shake or rattle. And where it drops down it's right in front of the security hut. So then we crawled under the window like Scooby-Doo, you know past the the security guard and then and then
• 39:59
  And into the middle of the building. Um anyway yeah the f the views were absolutely spectacular. So we could say um
• 40:07
  How long how long did it take you to get to the top 'cause you're not using elevators, so you've got a that that's quite a whee I mean your muscles must get really sore.
• 40:13
  Oh yeah, you're completely exhausted by the time you get to the top of the thing. I think it took about forty five minutes to get to the top of the building. And then once you're there, then you're on then you're on ladders, you know, going up the cranes. So yeah, spectacular. But we got these we got these f amazing photos and they they were the photo first photos ever taken from the top of the shard. So when we posted them, it yeah, it just turned into this like total media frenzy and then suddenly and and
• 40:43
  the w the weird thing is a lot of the a lot of the explorers are they use pseudonyms, they operate anonymously, they you know, they have jobs, like they don't necessarily want their employee and their employer to know that they're doing this on the weekend or whatever. And but I was a researcher studying them and so there was no way to hide my identity. I mean people can just like fi find me on uh University of London's website and be like that you know, that's the guy in the pictures and obviously he was there.
• 41:13
  So so so well, so my phone started ringing off the hook and you know I've got I've got uh every news organisation wanting to do an interview and I talk to the I talk to the guys about it and they're like well you know like it's your P_H_D_ you know you're the one writing I mean it's we all we all kind of agreed that this stuff was gonna be published eventually anyway so go for it if you wanna do it. So ended up on like you know morning talk shows and whatever like things I'd never done.
• 41:43
  I found it as part of the research I found loads loads of information about this honestly. Yeah. It was it was it was pretty crazy it was pretty crazy as a P_H_D_ student I'd never I'd never had that kind of medi media exposure and it was a little tricky for the university because on the one hand they're like wow this is such a successful P_H_D_ like obviously it's engaging the public you know it's potentially bringing in new students because now this geography programme looks super cool.
• 42:13
  Yeah.
• 42:14
  And so you know but then also you know the media's calling the university it's a little overwhelming for them and eventually we came to find out that the police were also starting to get involved in the background. So yeah. That's kind of like that's kind of like the next the next chapter of this thing after all of the after all of the win.
• 42:35
  Mm-hmm.
• 42:40
  Mm-hmm.
• 42:44
  And you're about to land in Heathrow. Everything's good at this point. So talk us through through that. You have to put your seat belts on ladies, and gentlemen this, airplane's about to land. Please put your seat belts on. The airplane then lands. What happens?
• 43:04
  So they taxi in, you know, that little ding goes off and everyone unbuggles their seat belts and then they get on the intercom and they say, can everyone please get back in your in your seat with police or more than one plane. And you know, in the back of my head I was like could that be for me? I'm like no. There's no there you know there's gotta be something else going on. And British transport police get on the plane and they're like forty two K_ forty two
• 43:34
  Dr. Garrett? I'm like oh shit it's me. And they said you're coming with us and they got me out of my seat. Yeah yeah they got me out of my seat, they hand-cuffed me on the plane. They they
• 43:45
  They hand-cuffed you on the plane and everyone's looking at you and you're lit and you're thinking what?
• 43:49
  No and everyone's like oh wow he's a terrorist or he's smuggling jobs or something terrible you know of course. And they take me to baggage claim and they're like point out your bags and then the police take my bags and then they took me through passport control and of course you know what happened then I had a U_S_ passport so they yanked they took my passport and um yeah and uh then um it took
• 44:14
  Are you freaking out at this point? Like what's going on?
• 44:15
  Yeah I'm totally freaking out. Um it it's not it's not that I didn't expect it to happen at some point, I just didn't expect it to be that dramatic. It w it was so over the top. I'm like really? For sneaking into buildings you're gonna you're gonna arrest me on the plane, you're gonna be kidding me. Um so
• 44:42
  the craziest part of the whole thing is they had no evidence that we had damaged anything. So they couldn't charge us with criminal damage. Uh it turns it turns out by the way that when they arrested me they arrested twelve other explorers at the same time. It was like a coordinated raid across the city. So they charged us all with conspiracy to commit criminal damage, which is a thought crime essentially.
• 45:12
  Like coordinated and communicated with each other to go into these places and then we were reckless as to whether damage could be caused in the course in in the course of these explorations. And so we were guilty of the conspiracy. And the conspiracy carries a longer charge than than criminal damage. You know so they were like they were really going for it. And uh yeah. So so when the plane landed I was supposed to meet this uh this journalist Matthew Power who's, an
• 45:42
  guy who was writing an article for G_Q_ about the explorers because of the shard. So we had all this media exposure and then the kind of newspapers turned into magazines and anyway so I was uh I was supposed to meet this journalist who had flown there from New York at the airport. Obviously I didn't show up and yeah and he's like he's like waiting you know and I I never arrive and eventually get to cab to my flat in Clapham and the front door had been taken down with a battering ram and he's like
• 46:12
  things happening. Meanwhile I was in jail. Uh they kept me for I don't know like yeah they kept me for a couple days or whatever and when they finally when they finally took me back to my flat and threw me the keys to the padlocks on my my busted up door, the journalist was there Matthew, Power was there and he was like dude, I can just go home right now. Like I've got the whole story I'm really like I you know this is amazing and th but th but then but then it got better because I had finished my P_H_D_ at this
• 46:42
  point and when I unlocked the door and I opened it up I had a I had a job contract from Oxford University sitting in like the rubble of my flat and and he was just like this is so bizarre and I was like yeah I need to sign this and send it back like right now before it b you know bef before it ends up in the media that I've been arrested. Um yeah it was it was a really crazy time and and we were on bail for two years awaiting a court date and one of the bail conditions was it was that we couldn't speak to each other.
• 47:12
  And that was really traumatising for everyone, which I think was I think was the point. I think they actually never had a reasonable expectation that the conviction would stick. I think the bail conditions were actually the point because it prevented us from exploring together. So
• 47:36
  by one people were kicked out of the conspiracy and then it was down to just two of us and I said w you know, what if I just plead guilty to criminal damage? That's what that's what you want, right? So yeah, I mean they don't really do plea deals in the U_K_ but that's essentially what it ended up being. And so I've I plead guilty to four counts of criminal damage which included taking a screw out of a board with a drill and then putting it back when we left.
• 48:06
  Mm-hmm.
• 48:08
  Yeah.
• 48:09
  Right. Another one of them was aiding and abetting someone by opening a window. I climbed up a drain pipe and I opened a window and then let let people in through a fire exit. And so they said I w I was I was aiding and abetting. I I'd I was I mean it was some uh it was the charges were absurd and the judge I think felt the same way and could have given me jail time but she she offered me a conditional discharge which just meant that it it kind of you know it went away. Um
• 48:39
  Really? That is a relief.
• 48:42
  But then I had to go try to get my pa get my passport back, which was really interesting. So yeah, the police still had my passport and I got it back and then the Festival of Dangerous Ideas in Sydney was flying me out to talk about all of this and it was like perfect timing, you know, the court case was over I. was gonna go to Australia, super excited to get out of I'd been, you know, stuck in the U_K_ for two years, not knowing if I was if I was going to jail or not. So I was like yes, put me on a plane to
• 49:12
  And I went to the airport with my passport that I just got back from the from the police and they swiped the passport and it was like beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep
• 49:42
  contaminated. It's a contaminated passport yeah, He. said hang it hang it hang out for a couple hours and we'll we'll get you a new one. But essentially he told me later that there were there were like codes on there related to terrorism.
• 50:04
  Yeah.
• 50:05
  Saying that I w I was like uh uh uh a terror risk because I was exposing state secrets basically.
• 50:12
  Wow.
• 50:14
  So I I should I should I should give you a little bit of context here that you know we were sneaking into um a band in metro uh a band in tube stations and um and then we got into the mail rail is now like a tourist attraction a ride. Totally we looked when we got in there is derelict for without permission. And then and then we got into uh the B_T_ deep level tunnels where like the the trunk of all of the telecommunications and fibre opera
• 50:43
  Right.
• 50:44
  and yeah all of that stuff was was definitely rubbing uh B_T_P_ the wrong way. Because you know people spend so yeah yeah, yeah. But 'cause they spend so much money on on public transport and a lot of that money is going to security. And so and we we had just you know completely embarrassed them. So I think you know that that's why they came down. So even though they never caught us in the act and I'm very I'm very proud of that.
• 51:14
  the police you know the law came after you and you know there was a case and in the end you know i it it turned out you know as well as it could have I think you know the considering the situation. I just wanna move away from that now to to another area that you're exploring.
• 51:34
  So what can you just explain and ta take us all into this world and this mindset and fascination with this whole bunker story? Like just just paint it for us so we we get it here.
• 51:50
  For sure yeah, One of the places that I went with the Urban Explorers was an abandoned bunker in in Wiltshire and it was amazing. There were like sixty miles of roads inside this bunker. Um there was a telephone exchange, B_B_C_ broadcasting facilities, a giant reservoir with drinking water, you know industrial, industrial kitchens. It was like the place that they would take the government in the event of a nuclear attack. So there like three thousand people could live in this bunker for like f like three three months. It was one of the coolest things that
• 52:20
  deep.
• 52:21
  Yeah, I'd say probably sixty metres under the ground. Yeah, and so so I was total like I was blown away by this this place and I became sort of obsessed with these bunkers 'cause obviously they were next to my house in Clapham, the World War II bunkers and then then we started finding these Cold War bunkers everywhere and they're just like you know these huge cavernous spaces that you can imagine doing a like having uh like the best party in the world inside these things you know Yeah. yeah, completely
• 52:50
  Yeah.
• 52:51
  Yeah, completely out of the sight of anyone. And and then a couple years later after I wrote Explore Everything, my first book, the the bunker that we had explored in Wiltshire went up for sale. And I was looking at the real estate listing, I was like who would buy this? What would you do with it? So you know, uh I'm thinking data centre, mushroom farm, I mean you know, maybe secure file storage. But the the one of the potential bidders was a doomsday prepper, this guy Robert Vasino who is from
• 53:21
  not far from where I live. And his proposal was that he was going to like sub-let the bunker to other doomsday preppers and they would build an underground community that was completely private, right. So you had you had to pay to get access to the bunker and that and then if there if there were to be a terrible disaster, everyone wou you know the p the paying customers would sort of flee into the bunker and close the blast door.
• 53:49
  Mm-hmm.
• 53:51
  protected and I'm sure they've got their own their own place. So this would be like for the regular people that have bought a little their little part of this.
• 53:59
  Yep. So so I started thinking, you know obviously, how ma how many of these are there? You know I wanna see all these private bunkers and I wanna yeah and I and I wanna I wanna know who who's building them and why and who's moving into them. You know it just seemed like such a cool story. So I th I spent the next five years of my life travelling around the world to live in people's bunkers essentially Yeah. Yeah. and I I yeah.
• 54:29
  Yeah.
• 54:29
  of the places that I've seen are just uh mind-blowing. There's one in in Kansas called the survival condo. And it's it used to be in Atlas F missiles like sixty sixty meters deep. There was a nuclear missile inside this thing. At the end of the Cold War they removed the the missile and the the warhead. And so it's just this empty tube. And so this doomsday prepper bought it, Larry Hall, and he spent ten million dollars turning this into uh a luxury subterranean
• 54:59
  condominium complex. There there's a r there's a rock climbing wall in there, a dog park, a swimming pool, a shooting range cinema, like full c cinema stadium seating, every movie you could ever imagine on a hard drive disconnected from the internet underground. So like yeah, amazing stuff. And they're s they're selling um you can get a half floor condo. So you imagine there's circles, right? So you can get like half half of the circle for one point five million or a full
• 55:29
  Mm-hmm.
• 55:34
  He's sold out.
• 55:36
  before it was even built. Yeah. So he's now building a second one. I spent a bit of time with him underground in the first one, and then I saw the second one that was under construction pretty recently. And he says basically he's gonna keep going. These these missile silos are all over the Midwest of the United States, and he's gonna kind of turn them all into doomsday, prepper compounds and then connect them with a local area network so that they can communicate with each other in a
• 56:06
  This is so well so so so these doomsday preppers you, call them preppers that that's the name. So so this is like a genuine community of people and I'm sure some of our listeners are preppers and they please comment if if you are one or or really preparing for like just in case just in case there's this nuclear issue which is becoming more real unfortunately as time moves on.
• 56:36
  It's becoming more real.
• 56:38
  there's a lot of people uh I I mean the people who are buying into the survival condo and some of your listeners may be on this level where they're preparing for existential events. Nuclear war, civil war, um unaligned artificial intelligence that decides to to wipe us out. Asteroid ex exactly stuff. But but most most preppers are just kind of they're prepping for like low level emergencies and usually related to the climate crisis because you know the frequency and severity of of natural
• 57:08
  Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
• 57:38
  no water, you have no power, grocery stores aren't open, and the response was astounding. Thirteen point nine million Americans said they could survive for thirty days with no infrastructure. That's a lot of preppers. And th and thirty days isn't easy. If you think about what you need for thirty days, like even just thirty days of water, it's a lot of water. And yeah. Yeah.
• 58:08
  It's it's a l it's a lot harder to prep in a city, you know, space issues. Which is why I'm now on f on five acres in the middle of the desert.
• 58:36
  space, the bunker isn't really necessary. Th I mean the a a bunker is absolutely vital in the event of a nuclear attack, even if you're just in like not in the blast radius, but just in terms of fallout. You know, being able to get underground for the fallout is really important. But I think having a a remote property uh does just as good a job. So I'm I'm on five acres out like in the back of the desert, I'm backed up to federal
• 59:06
  I have very few neighbours, I know all of them. If something t terrible were to happen and we all kind of just hunkered down in our neighbourhood, we could absolutely control who's coming in and out of our road 'cause there's only, you know, there's only a handful of people living up here. So I think that does just as good a job as as having a bunker.
• 59:26
  Mm-hmm.
• 59:34
  So I am now moving on to thinking about tunnels full time. So thinking about tunnels as like the connective tissue of modern life and I'm spending time in massive construction projects talking to C_E_O_s and engineers that are building these tunnel boring machines. There's um I just spent some time at SNOI two point O_ it's a hydroelectric project sort of between Sydney and Melbourne in ca Casiozco national park and they have a fourteen kilometer tunnel boring
• 1:00:04
  that's like it's like a spaceship. Um there's a there's like like a whole there's like a whole city inside of this thing. All these workers there's like kitchens, decan he decontamination chambers because they're digging through asbestos and this thing is digging at a forty seven percent grade to connect two reservoirs and yeah that's the kind of stuff that I've been I've been looking at recently and I'm I'm gonna uh I'm gonna attempt to write for my next book a sort of two thousand year cultural history of tunnels about how tunnels have
• 1:00:34
  have defined a p you know contemporary existence.
• 1:00:38
  Yeah, I'm never gonna think of tunnels the same way now. I still can't get that horrific picture of the muck with the uh the stuff you said was yeah. But I love I love what you said about the architecture and these underground rivers and all these connections, and then you've got the power lines and everything and the all this infrastructure. It's so interesting. And then you're right, it also gets interesting above the ground when they build these skyscrapers, these really strange structures. But you know, beautiful views. It
• 1:01:08
  is it is a fascinating way it's it's such a different way to think about the world that we live in. I see I see what you're getting at. I I understand the lure, you know, to these places. I suppose my I I I wanna just finish on on uh understanding like because th this podcast it's got like a a business source, you know, at my time in The Apprentice, a lot of the people are interested in entrepreneurship, reality T_V_ and stuff, and we explore topics of mindset a lot in
• 1:01:38
  and all that sort of thing. It's about basically just empowering yourself and being being the best that you can be and I just find it fascinating it you coming at life from a different angle but what I what I really love about you uh as a person and what you do I you see the beauty in these unexplored places and you put yourself in yeah, I suppose in in difficult situations willingly in order to
• 1:02:08
  it's like you're saying that feeling that you got at the end. It's just you feel like you've have this massive sense of achievement. You've got these photos, you've got this stuff, you were able to see the beauty, you were able to overcome these challenges. I mean in a way it is very similar to entrepreneurship, but I suppose like what makes you brave enough?
• 1:02:28
  Hmm. I I I guess it it's that risk-reward ratio and you know I've I've been a business owner as well I've, resigned from multiple careers that were extremely successful and you know I'm and I see people in the corporate world taking those kind of risks and often they pay offs. It's like you know everything's a calculation and I think it really does come down to following your passion you, know. My my whole life has been just this rabbit hole
• 1:02:58
  Right? I'm like you know chasing the thing that excites me 'cause we only have so many years and I'm not gonna spend them working on somebody else's project that I don't care about you, know. I mean I'll do I'll do that I'll do that to the extent that I need to to get by, but fundamentally my primary uh M_O_ is you know exploration and and I'm I'm just I keep pushing my career I'm, just pushing I'm pushing that point pushing, that wedge as much as I can.
• 1:03:28
  it's taken a really long time to to get to the point where I can actually turn this into a freelance career and it's kind of odd now I'm you know I'm so used to telling people oh I'm I'm a geography professor and I had this kind of narrative that made sense and now people are like now people are like what do you do and I'm like whatever I want basically, you know?
• 1:03:48
  is is that w I mean you've learned from the Heathrow uh lesson as well what happened with the shard and everything is that you're also now doing it in a way that you g you're given access to these places and it's all you know it's all legit, it's all cool and you're invited there you're, a part of this whole process because of who you are, because of the way that you yeah, you're allowed to do it now basically, you're allowed to do it.
• 1:04:13
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:04:15
  And now I'm now I'm offered permission, you know, it's such a weird thing.
• 1:04:33
  I hope people love it and watch it and and take something from the really cool way in which you explore your life. Listen.
• 1:04:41
  it's an absolute pleasure and I've I've got a lot of respect for what you do so, keep keep going.