"Wild Wilderness Survival"

[00:00:00] Inflation, recessions, fascism, school shootings and incels, grown adults losing their mind over tucking bathing suits at Target. Is it any wonder so many of us want to flee society, disappear into the wilderness and slowly be consumed by

[00:00:21] moss? There's just one problem with our growing collective desire to just leave it all behind. We created society because surviving the wilderness is really fcking hard and most things in the wilderness which consume humans are significantly less gentle than moss.

[00:00:44] The average Wild West cowboy was dead by age 35. Even before colonizers with guns showed up, indigenous tribes people across the USA were considered elderly at 40 and the median life expectancy for hunter-gatherers in most parts of the

[00:01:05] world prior to the 1900s was 25 to 30. The survivors of our species time at war with the elements were the folks lucky enough to have a community to work with. Early limp dickheads who failed to play nice with others were handled by our

[00:01:23] ancestors the same way overly aggressive alpha males in wild primate and big cat communities still are today, which is being shunned, left behind or simply mauled to death by the collective. That all said, humans have always possessed absolutely incredible adaptation, resiliency and survival skills. Drop them

[00:01:48] in the middle of nowhere to get pegged by nature and some of them will, against all odds and logic, emerge from the experience heavily traumatized but alive. And we, as spoiled little modern marshmallows living in climate-controlled

[00:02:06] boxes with Uber Eats at our fingertips can't get enough of their stories because maybe without even realizing it we're inspired by these tales of elemental triumph, serving as powerful metaphors for navigating and surviving the emotional wilderness of our lives. Since summer vacation, family camping

[00:02:30] trips and warm weather activities are drawing everyone back out into the great outdoors, we thought now was a great time to review some legendary tales of human resilience. Gary, throw away that Lunchable and Capri Sun and get Kimberly in here.

[00:02:49] It's time to narrate some epic shit into microphones. The following podcast contains adult themes, gritty details from true crimes and naughty language. Listener discretion is advised. There's no time now. I began five years ago in secret, working all night every night

[00:03:12] right into the dawn. A thousand experiments, a thousand failures and then at last the great wonderful day. She's alive! Alive! Hello all you spooky nerds! Welcome back to Human Fuckery, the only podcast brave enough to have a publicly polyamorous relationship with dark history, true crime

[00:03:40] and human psychology all at the same time. Spoilers, true crime is the most emotionally needy of the three. I am your host, relapsed journalist and neurodivergent oddball Kimberly, broadcasting to you from Satan's sweaty grundle, New Orleans, Louisiana. Joining me today as always is my beloved co-host

[00:04:04] that certified smarty pants of clinical psychology and mastermind behind last month's surprise Joe Exotic interview, Dr. Edward Simon! Thank you, thank you. There is no need to applaud. I was so skeptical about the Joe Exotic experience but the listeners have spoken and it turns out you were right.

[00:04:26] People did learn a few things about prison reform and letting go of moral purity tests from that last episode. Plus they like the conversation so much that we've had like a bunch of requests for part two.

[00:04:38] Those listeners should know that I am looking into making part two happen but also concerned it'll turn into you, me or both begging Joe Exotic to get off social media. Oh my god, yes. You know, I get it. It's a link to the outside world.

[00:04:57] All that good stuff. But like we got such a glimpse in the interview into what a grounded and thoughtful person Joe can be. But then he gets on Instagram and he undermines all of it. And that is the dichotomy of Joe Exotic. People contain multitudes.

[00:05:18] Yeah, it's maddening and then in the next moment you feel all this empathy and dare say sympathy for the man. I want to shake him. I want to tell him you can get the attention and support without being incendiary.

[00:05:36] Look, if we were sitting in federal prison right now, I'm pretty sure our social media activity would be wild but anything for dopamine, right? Yeah, anything for dopamine, right? Now you specifically have a wonderfully horrible habit of just roasting people

[00:05:55] like a sheet pan of vegetables on the internet. Only people who deserve it. I hear you, but neither you nor I are desperate for that kind of dopamine hit. Not like an extreme sports athlete. We'll get to that a little bit later. But whatever.

[00:06:10] Motivational psychology data has shown that people, they have to be intrinsically motivated to make lasting behavioral changes. So all we can do is wish him the kind of healing which triggers that internal drive to use one's platform carefully and kindly.

[00:06:29] Joe, if you're listening, just know that people will pay attention to you, even love you without posting wild memes on Instagram. Okay, if you are brand new to human fuckery, here's how this show works when we're not breaking format to interview the Tiger King.

[00:06:48] Edward and I draw a topic out of a dusty mercury-tainted top hat purchased from a haunted shop on Royal Street. We each get one week to dig into the archives and find the best story from history's colon we feel demonstrates the assigned theme.

[00:07:04] We get another week in the studio to record and score our submissions and then we meet here in human fuckery's fuckery dungeon to present our stories to reluctant judges and have one of us declared the winner. In the process, listeners, we hope, will learn some stuff

[00:07:22] and maybe be less shitty to other people. A reminder that our intern slash producer slash CEO, Gary the Ghoul, kidnaps the show's judges in the dead of night and forces them under threat of creative death to participate. So judges' rulings are suspect at best,

[00:07:43] nearly always coerced, and never to be trusted. Democracy. Democracy, damn it. Joining us this month for our return to format is author, military veteran, and OG subscriber to the human fuckery podcast, T.R. Hendrix. T.R., who we know as Tim and will be calling Tim

[00:08:06] in the rest of this recording, is the writer behind the fantastic thriller series, The Instructor. A former army intelligence agent with two deployments to Iraq under his belt, an experienced bodyguard, and a proud girl dad, Tim's debut novel about a traumatized former Marine

[00:08:25] drawn into a harrowing battle to survive in the remote woods has already been picked up for a sequel, which makes him the perfect guest for this episode because... The subject of today's podcast is... Wild Wilderness Survival! Kimberly, how are we provoking Tim into participating today?

[00:08:57] That's a great question. It has been a bit of a challenge to torment a man with military training who's already been subject to desert war conditions, but with some finessing. So I'm very excited to see how he came up with something truly special.

[00:09:12] Tim has been dressed in egregiously patriotic paraphernalia, an American flag thong, star-spangled adult onesie, trucker cap with a sequined recreation of Mount Rushmore on it, WWE-style flag cape, the works, and strapped to the removed Confederate monument from what used to be Lee Circle here in New Orleans.

[00:09:32] Jesus Christ. His eyes have been forced open using good ol' And for the last 19 hours, Gary has been showing him YouTube footage of dudes who own a weapons arsenal, but never actually enlisted in the military, mishandling their guns and eating MREs for absolutely no reason.

[00:09:53] He is very, very unhappy with us, and I am honestly terrified for our safety if we don't kill him at the end of the episode. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Hello, all you spooky nerds. And also normal people with, I don't know,

[00:10:10] social skills, an air fryer, whatever it is that makes normal people normal. We accept all kinds here, and we also accept all kinds over on our Patreon. Nice segue. We get it. Everyone's broke, everyone's got a Patreon,

[00:10:26] and no one wants to fill out yet another online payment form. But if you're listening to this show, then you'll actually love our Patreon. It's got all the best parts of the podcast. Weird stories from history's colon, underscoring and silly sound effects, dark psychology.

[00:10:43] And less of the other leftover stuff. Us, specifically. Less of us yammering. Every month, subscribers get either one or two, you get to pick, slickly produced, guest-free and banter-free episodes of Secret Story Time, our series covering wild stories and case studies ripped from the anals of human history.

[00:11:05] Subscribers also get long-form written stories in case you're someone who still likes to read, early and ad-free access to the usual monthly human fuckery competition show and the ability to pick what we'll write about or do new episodes on next.

[00:11:18] You can literally send us a link being like, tell this story, and we'll go, okay. It's the best way to make sure we can keep doing this show. And every subscription helps us keep Gary the Ghoul housed. It's hard to find a landlord who'll accept

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[00:11:49] of Secret Story Time, and wait till you see what we drop next month because, yeah, it's some entertaining fuckery. Wow. Yeah. I am, uh, I'm speechless. This is, this is special. Yeah. Yeah. Happy Memorial Day. Play one of the stories. Okay. All right. I am so shook.

[00:12:13] I don't even know who's supposed to go first. Who's up? Surprises. No, no one cares anyway. Fuck it. Ada Delatuck was eight years old the first time she sat with a dead body in the snow. She'd been born into cold, that Alaskan mountain chill

[00:12:40] which could freeze a fallen moose in mere hours. But nothing had prepared her for the numbness which spread through her chest as she realized he was gone. Her father had fallen horribly ill after eating soured meat, a not uncommon occurrence during Arctic winters. He'd been burning with fever

[00:12:58] and too weak to stand from days of gastrointestinal apocalypse when his breathing became short when his breathing became shallow in a way which terrified Ada. With her mother away from their little wooden home working and a petrified younger sister at her side

[00:13:14] Ada had no choice but to hitch up the dogs wrap her ashen father in parkies and blankets bind him carefully to the sled and begin the 30 mile trek to the nearest town of Nome, Alaska. But midway through the frigid journey

[00:13:32] the girls peered into the sled to find father had died. After a traumatic break to wail like abandoned wolf pups amidst the lonely trees and snowdrifts they turned the sled around and headed home to bury his body. It would not be Ada's last vigil with the dead.

[00:13:52] Spruce Creek was a sparse, bare bones assembly of weather tormented shelters erected as the California gold rush began summoning colonizers An Inuit settlement the population was under 300 people nearly all indigenous like Ada's family. She'd been born in 1898 the year the rush began

[00:14:14] as that frenzy for precious metals began peaked and then declined income to keep the settlement strong began evaporating like a shallow puddle in summer sun by the time her father passed in 1906 the village was gasping for life. Ada's mother, widowed with two young children

[00:14:34] wanted better for her offspring than a lifetime of struggle in a collapsing settlement. She'd heard that Methodist missionaries in Nome would take in Eskimo children and provide them with a grade school education sewing and cooking classes skills that her daughters could use

[00:14:53] to get a job in one of the rising white cities across Alaska and Washington state. This is how Ada found herself living at a ramshackle school built by white colonizers being taught the rules and religion of the pale-skinned men who now owned everything

[00:15:11] learning to cook white men's food and mend their clothes. As a girl, she was discouraged from learning any of the fishing, trapping or survival skills her people had mastered centuries ago. She was trained to pray to the Methodist God memorize their fables and read the Bible

[00:15:29] like a good woman should. Ada was painfully shy. Under five feet tall, with long, deep black hair her eyes were called closed windows by one friend, revealing nothing of what was happening inside her. She spoke very little, displayed deep anxiety and startled easily.

[00:15:53] All signs we now know signal PTSD but it would be decades before anyone in the USA strung those letters together. By 16, she was married to and pregnant with the son of an abusive sled driver named Jack Blackjack. By age 19, she had born alcoholic

[00:16:11] Jack three children, only one of whom survived infancy. By age 22, having been deserted without so much as a goodbye for another woman Ada was walking her only surviving cub a sweet but tubercular little boy named Bennett through 40 miles of snow into Nome

[00:16:32] to try and find pediatric medical treatment. Despite best efforts to use those Methodist skills to generate income, helping crabby minors Ada couldn't manage the cost of tuberculosis She ended up having to place Bennett in the Jesse Lee Home for Children a sort of halfway house-cum-orphanage

[00:16:54] for poor and sick kids. Ada, who kept her ex-husband's last name promised her son this would be temporary She prayed nightly for a good job that would allow her to save up, then buy them the life they deserved And so, when a windswept white man

[00:17:12] approached her about being a cook and seamstress for the Wrangel Island expedition paying an unheard of $50 a month Ada said, sure Wrangel Island is, unless you're a seal or mammoth a frozen hellscape Roughly the size of Crete, the jutting rocky landmass sits around 200 miles north

[00:17:36] of Siberia, surrounded by Arctic Ocean Prone to cyclonic winds fun, and dense murky fog it's somewhere between an ice age hangover and Dante's ninth circle of hell Today, with global warming rapidly melting everything, its stony shores are less often buried under snow. But in the early

[00:18:00] 1900s, the island's combination of frigid coast, treeless landscape, miles of jagged seasonal pack ice, and months of sunless, wintry night were so merciless that even the cold-adapted indigenous tribes of the area were like, fuck that place Piles of ancient volcanic rock formed dangerous cliffs at its edges

[00:18:24] And in warmer months, mammoth bones and whale vertebrae punctuated the ground like spooky art installations Even Russia, which legally owned the land, wanted basically nothing to do with it But Canadian explorer, Wilhelm Steffensen was, to put it mildly an attention-seeking asshat

[00:18:45] And so, around the start of the 1920s he decided claiming Wrangel for Britain even though it was already Russia's and he wasn't a British citizen, was a fucking great plan Especially if he didn't have to spend any time doing the hard part himself An Arctic ethnologist from Manitoba

[00:19:06] Steffensen was a Harvard-educated researcher obsessed with mapping frozen territories He especially loved the public appearances part of his job. Also, press junkets And saying things like, The North Pole is as hospitable and easy a place to live as Hawaii. Which is, as the rest of this story

[00:19:27] will make clear, fucking nonsense Calling the Wrangel Island expedition a bad idea would be one of the understatements of the 20th century We don't have time in this episode to unpack all the whys, but understand that sending four inexperienced dudes under the age of

[00:19:45] 30, two from warm southern states like Texas, off the coast of Siberia to live for a year is an objectively shit plan Steffensen was determined to prove the quote, friendly North's hospitality actual phrase used, by having his team live mostly off wild game and plant

[00:20:06] life obtained on Wrangel Island But then he intentionally cut their preserved food supply, tinned biscuits, sugar, dried meats that stuff, to levels so low it made the multiple indigenous hunters hired to help the expedition quit before the ship even left

[00:20:25] Ada, who'd already been told by a local shaman the gig was doomed, stood to make more money per month than she did in a year if she just grit her teeth and went along Seeing as it was the only way to reunite with her sick son

[00:20:40] she did not follow when the other Inuit contractors walked away. Alan Crawford a boy just 20 years old, was put in command of the remaining Wrangel Island team Lorne Knight, a gruff and outspoken 28 year old from Oregon, acted as first lieutenant Fred Moorer, also 28, Milton Gall

[00:21:01] age 19, and Ada completed the quintet Their posse was rounded out by Vic the expedition cat named for the British Queen And if you're wondering why anyone would torture a house cat by dragging it to an icy island north of Siberia the answer is superstition, and they eat rats

[00:21:19] Things were rocky from the jump. Stormy high seas from Nome to Wrangel meant most of the group puked their brains out or had to hide in bed for the first two weeks of travel. The small fishing boat they'd brought for catching food fell overboard into the sea

[00:21:37] Russian authorities stopped the vessel and were like Are you foreigners going to do something stupid claiming our island for your country? And the team was like, no we would never while hiding a flag behind their backs Which is not a great diplomatic strategy Nevertheless, on September 15th, 1921

[00:21:58] the team finally reached and was left standing on the stony shores of Wrangel watching the boat which delivered them disappear over the horizon. The plan was for the settlers One year later, with a fresh inventory of both supplies and settlers, who would continue to build out

[00:22:16] whatever bare bones foundation Crawford Knight, and the rest left? A flag was planted, as was the style at the time And proclamation to no one made that Wrangel Island was now the property of Canada and the British Queen Keeping in mind that Stephenson never

[00:22:34] actually asked the Crown for permission to do this The island very much belonged to Russia A shelter and supply shed were constructed Rocks and plant samples were collected for study Traps were laid, and the men began the work of hunting for fresh game. As it was still summer

[00:22:52] at the time, food was, initially, pretty easy to come by Though it turned out none of the expedition had proper experience preserving food for the absolutely savage winter which was only weeks away from And so they ate well in the beginning throwing leftovers away, lured into a

[00:23:10] false sense of security, while failing to plan for what would happen once winter blew in Ada had been promised at the time of her hiring that she would not be the only Indigenous person on the island. White men, especially loud and rough ones like Lorne Knight, terrified her

[00:23:28] She had often been labeled, erroneously A prostitute by colonists around Nome because she was a single mom, and she feared what her young co-workers might do with her once boredom set in. The men she was living with, with the exception of 19-year-old

[00:23:46] Milton Gall, who seemed to be a sweet kid, called her a fool, the woman, and the Eskimo and made no effort to make her feel safe or respected. They wrote in their expedition diaries about how stupid and lazy she was, and

[00:24:02] mocked her openly for being quiet and afraid Ada was also unprepared for what being the only woman in a dangerous locale, an ocean away from her only surviving child would do to her mental health. She began suffering from Adjustment Disorder, a not uncommon psychological response to traumatic changes

[00:24:23] to one's daily routine. Deployed soldiers Hospital patients and refugees frequently are afflicted with a disorder which locks the brain and body into fight or flight for months Patients suffer crippling anxiety, disordered behavior, inability to sleep, lack of appetite, social withdrawal, suicidal thoughts, and sometimes disassociate entirely. Ada experienced

[00:24:47] all of these. One day, she wandered away from camp with a bottle of liniment to poison She tried to kill herself to death, but the thought of Bennett at home in the orphanage stopped her The men on Wrangel Island handled Ada's issues like monsters, which

[00:25:05] isn't entirely their fault 20-something year old dudes aren't known for their empathy to begin with, and it was genuinely difficult to have a cook who couldn't stop crying long enough to cook. But rather than comfort Ada, positively reinforce when she did complete necessary

[00:25:23] tasks, which is the way to handle a person with Adjustment Disorder, they verbally berated and isolated her further. Lorne Knight ordered her tied to a pole in the cold overnight until she would quote, learn to follow orders. She was also made to walk in the

[00:25:41] snow alone rather than ride the dog-drawn sled everyone else got to use for transportation Cool. Things finally started to change once the winter's 24-hour darkness fell and Ada was brought into the main living quarters to sleep and coexist with the others to save on

[00:25:59] wood for fires. Once the men cleared the very, very low bar of not raping her and started to experience snowbound depression themselves, Ada snapped out of her traumatized shell and began working in earnest. She was not, in actuality, lazy. Just human and in need of basic human decency.

[00:26:23] As 1921 transitioned into 1922, it became clear Wrangel Island was uninhabited for a fucking reason Yeah, wild game and plants had been plentiful in the summer. But as soon as the ocean froze over and plants disappeared under feet of frost and snow, so did the animals

[00:26:44] Except for the polar bears, which would saunter into camp and steal their food rations or attempt to murder the whole expedition bloodily By the time the summer thaw came, the whole party was desperate to get home and in the early stages of malnutrition Unfortunately, expedition

[00:27:05] organizer Steffensen was so busy doing celebrity press tours to promote himself and causing an international incident once the Russians found out a Canadian dickhead claimed their land for Britain He didn't manage to get the relief ship dispatched early enough. Pack ice moved in

[00:27:23] extra early that year and by the 1st of September 1922, no ship could get to Wrangel nor could any letter reach the team stranded there to let them know The Voyager's families began to panic begging for a rescue team to please be assembled But Steffensen assured them, the US

[00:27:44] government and the Canadians that the North was a bountiful land capable of keeping his posse well fed and happy until the following summer. In actuality circumstances on Wrangel Island were spiraling into crisis. Lorne Knight was succumbing to scurvy, a nightmarishly painful vitamin C deficiency which melts your

[00:28:09] connective tissue until your heart gives out Having not preserved enough food to last two years in part because they thought they were going home in August the rest of the team knew they'd all be next if action wasn't taken. Temperatures were consistently around negative 50 degrees

[00:28:27] Fahrenheit and supplies for maintaining fires uncomfortably low. And so on January 28th, 1923 Ada was left alone with a bed bound night while the other three men hitched their few remaining underfed dogs and set out to cross the frozen Chukchi Sea into Siberia for help. A 90 mile

[00:28:51] trek across unstable sea ice the trip would have been perilous even under the best circumstances. But the day after the trio sledded out, one of the worst blizzards of the entire Wrangel Island disaster smashed the area. Pummeling Ada and Lorne's shelter with howling winds, snow drifts past

[00:29:12] the door and ice shards like shrapnel Crawford, Gall and Maurer were never seen again. Neither their bodies nor the dogs and sled were ever found. Ada now a 24 year old girl weighing roughly 100 pounds was snow bound alone on Nightmare Island

[00:29:33] with only a dying man who once tied her to a fucking pole and their house cat. Despite the way night had treated her, Ada felt a deep responsibility for the feeble shell he'd become. She was terrified of guns but the only chance either of them had was her

[00:29:51] finding fresh meat. Once the squall passed she dug out a shelter, grabbed the rifle and set up target practice. Rigging up cloth padding to soften the weapons violent kickback into her shoulder when she fired. Within a week she was able to kill the few small snowbirds

[00:30:09] which sometimes perched on the outskirts of camp Recalling only vaguely the Spruce Creek hunters she set successful fox traps and also learned to crawl on her belly to hunt seal She boiled the majority of the meat killed for night despite her own obvious malnutrition

[00:30:27] hoping the nutrients would keep him alive until help finally came. He berated her in return criticizing her efforts and blaming his scurvy on her despite having contracted it while he was in charge of acquiring food She kept changing his bedpan making pillows out of oatmeal for him

[00:30:48] and washing his ass when he soiled himself anyway Quote, he never stop and think how much it's hard for woman to take four man's place. To woodwork and hunt for something to eat for him and to do waiting on his bed and take the shit out

[00:31:06] for him. She wrote in the expedition log Fair Ada. On June 23 Six months after the disappearance of Crawford, Marr and Gaul, Lorne Knight died in his sleeping bag. Ada was now completely alone. Emotionally devastated by the loss of her last human companion

[00:31:27] even if he was a prick, Ada mourned Knight. She was mentally unable to bring herself to bury him and instead moved herself and Vic the cat into the supply tent Driven by a need to reunite with Bennett she returned to hunting game and collected

[00:31:46] driftwood to fortify the supply tent from the wind and predators. She continued to maintain the expedition diary in case she too died, leaving notes for how her earnings should be distributed between her sister, mother and son She caught seal and turned their hides into

[00:32:04] boots, trapped fox and taught herself and stretched the hides for sale, made an elevated platform to help her spot bear before they came too close to camp and even constructed a functioning canoe like the one she'd seen built as a child to aid in fishing

[00:32:22] Ada also took some of the earliest destination selfies ever. Using Crawford's camera and pieces of wood to take portraits of herself standing alone in the snow I will stay alive, she wrote to herself as a regular affirmation. On August 20th 1923, the crew of

[00:32:46] relief ship number two, the Donaldson spotted a tiny black dot on the shore of Wrangel Island. Twelve Inuit men and one American, a colleague of Steffenson named Harold Noyce, watched as they came inland and discovered the black dot was Ada Blackjack holding Vic the cat

[00:33:07] All were horrified to learn that Ada and Vic were the only survivors Ada was similarly wrecked when she learned the ship had not been sent by Crawford, Gall and Marr By the time the Wrangel Island debacle finally ended, Ada Blackjack had spent 703 days on the island

[00:33:28] 57 of them totally alone with no rations. In keeping with great American tradition, the media handled the entire story with catastrophic irresponsibility and sensationalism First, newspapers and magazines hailed her as the female Robinson Caruso painting her as an Eskimo superhero with magical powers, rather than

[00:34:02] a terrified girl denied the chance to learn her own Then, when the Eskimo superhero angle got boring to readers and didn't sell as many papers, she was reframed as a villain Headlines screamed that Lorne Knight had died of starvation while Ada was found

[00:34:20] plump and happy, sitting next to his emaciated dead body. Ada was one third the size of Lorne Knight, and still down to 90 pounds of vitamin deficient exhaustion at the time of her rescue. But this didn't stop editors and Harold Noyce from going full TMZ on the poor survivor

[00:34:41] To the point Lorne Knight's own family had to intervene and go on record that the expedition journals in their son's fucking handwriting showed Ada was a benevolent badass But more on that fuckery in a future Secret Story Time Ada Blackjack never fully recovered mentally

[00:34:59] from what happened to her. But just as she did on Wrangel Island, she did the best she could with the hand she was dealt. Because William Steffensen was a shitheel, Ada never received full payment for her two years in hell. She took what

[00:35:14] she was given and got Bennett life-saving medical treatment. She also married, then divorced again giving birth to a second son named Billy Eventually, she eked out a poverty line Bennett lived into his late 50s despite his medical condition, passing in 1972 Ada lived until age 85

[00:35:35] and was buried next to him in 1983 Billy spent much of his life campaigning for the Alaskan legislature to properly honor his mother, which finally happened only after her death. She was a very good mother, and she was which finally happened only after her death

[00:35:57] Until her dying day, Ada stayed quiet and humble, declining interviews and accolades. Brave? I don't know that I'm that, but I would never give up hope while I was alive, she said in her one and only sit-down interview with newspapers Her headstone at Anchorage Memorial Park Cemetery reads

[00:36:24] Wow! Ada Moffo Blackjack Incredible story My worst nightmare, by far The thing about freezing my taint off in the Arctic You're too Cuban for that, for either, either pole It's not a good scene I would just drown myself What did you think of Ada?

[00:36:56] I think she was a very impressive individual Cultivating, you know, resource within herself Finding the courage to truly step out of who she was at the time and become someone new because of this critical, critical environment that she had just been thrust into

[00:37:17] in these circumstances that all went to shit almost immediately, she was forced to become someone new She was forced to become an entirely different person compared to the person she was when she got on the boat Oh yeah, how about the whole

[00:37:33] we're going to send you to Methodist school and you're not going to learn any of this stuff because this Eskimo, what are you going to do with it and then she ends up literally saving her life with it and the rest of her career was essentially

[00:37:48] survival skills, indigenous survival skills like trapping reindeer, stuff like that I was thinking to myself if she had been better prepared maybe she would have fucked it up somehow That's fair The fact that she had to create alchemy that she had to transform in this environment

[00:38:12] and develop the ingenuity or at least tap into her inherent ingenuity and figure this shit out right there and that's what mattered most with no training whatsoever maybe that was the magic maybe that was the ticket because in life so many of us we never start anything

[00:38:36] because we're always preparing we get to that point of paralysis via analysis we always think when do I start you just start, you make mistakes, you fail I'm not going to go into resilience because going from I'm terrified of guns

[00:38:54] and I won't even pick up the expedition gun to I'm hunting seal on my belly like a little Ewok It's possible her lack of information actually provided a space for her to not have so much of a complex about it That's interesting Who knows

[00:39:18] I do think that also this might be magical thinking I have to believe if people come from a long line of being able to do certain things even if you didn't learn them the magical thinking part of me wants to believe that some things are passed into you

[00:39:42] That might be dumb Carl Jung I would say for the most part he was very tapped into the esoteric to some extent but he was also relatively opposed to magical thinking He referred to a lot of people who thought magically as primitive but he is the one that

[00:40:09] He really built a framework around the idea of the collective unconscious that there's something embedded in each of us that goes back generations that there's a little piece of everyone that came before us inside of us I don't think you're necessarily far off

[00:40:30] He can in the same breath refer to one person who is just blindly attributed to some deity as a relatively primitive person while also acknowledging that there are mysteries to the universe How do you feel about Ada's snow selfies? They are fucking adorable

[00:40:54] Adorable is the first thing that came to mind but also good for her I love it The first snow selfies I might have provided the first dick pic Anything at that moment in time to just say, God damn it, I lived I was here

[00:41:18] You all dropped me out here in the wilderness to die and all these assholes died Here's my dick That's fair Feeling kind of angry about all of this today Here's my dick Here's King Dong I'll get into it more in a secret story time

[00:41:43] The fuckery that I need to tell you all about what happened after this The guy who rescued her held the journal the expedition log, all the paperwork hostage Fascinating They went and colonized an island that wasn't theirs Harold Noyce showed up and said

[00:42:04] This is a disaster. I can make a lot of money off of this I'm colonizing the colonizers All this is mine now The asshat who organized the thing was like, dude you work for me Noyce was like, not anymore He ended up getting thrown out

[00:42:25] A bunch of explorers were like I don't want to do some gang shit You have to release these dead victims and help us sort through what happened You can't get rich off it anymore If you don't give these people their stuff and help them get closure

[00:42:46] with their dead kids, we're going to beat you up and throw you out of the explorers club Sounds like a bunch of fucking nerds who try to find Carmen Sandiego That's basically what it was but they also did some very impressive shit and some very problematic colonizers shit

[00:43:07] I can't wait to hear it What's your story? It's about to wreck your ass The Sahara desert is hot as balls Unshaven, sticking to your thigh old man balls With an area of 3,600,000 square miles this sandy bitch consumes much of North Africa

[00:43:40] and is the largest hot desert in the world There is sparse vegetation a near total absence of clouds and has more than 3,600 hours of bright sunshine per year That is a lot in case you were curious This allows for unhindered thermal radiation

[00:44:01] making the Sahara not only drier than Chapdick with virtually non-existent rainfall but also the hottest place on earth during its summer months So why in the deep fried cock sandwich would anyone run an ultra marathon in this environment? Stupendous question but that's exactly what folks do

[00:44:28] during the Marathon des Sables Started in 1986 The Marathon of the Sands often regarded as one of the toughest foot races on earth has been held each year in Morocco 160 miles of what the fuck That equates to running an entire marathon each day for just under a week

[00:44:59] If this sounds dangerous, it is In 2021, a French runner actually died of cardiac arrest during the event So what gives? Why would anyone subject themselves to this? The reasons can be a bit different for everyone There are prevailing themes that emerge

[00:45:23] in the psychology of extreme sportsmen and women but this doesn't necessarily mean their motivations are always in exact alignment For some individuals, extreme sports is a matter of neurochemistry as their bodies struggle to regulate dopamine For others, it's a matter of self-expression a low tolerance of boredom

[00:45:47] or an effort to generate beneficial stress in what they otherwise experience as a tensionless society But whatever their motivations might be even the most uncommon amongst uncommon people still have limits to what they can tolerate For example, nearly half the runners

[00:46:08] As they are participating in the Sahara Marathon they drop out before reaching the end unable to endure the physical and mental challenges that abound For those who do manage to stumble across that coveted finish line their bodies are wrecked, blistered dehydrated and sometimes plagued by hallucinations

[00:46:29] But they can proudly claim to have completed one of the most endurance races on the planet Yet only one man can recount a tale that surpasses all others A tale of losing his way during a fierce sandstorm veering off course by nearly 186 miles and emerging a week later

[00:46:56] as a living testament of survival In the annals and anals of the Marathon of the Sands he earned a new nickname The Robinson Caruso of the Sahara In recent years, as many as 1,200 individuals partake in the Marathon of the Sands each equipped with GPS beacons

[00:47:20] while the race is meticulously monitored by two helicopters supported by 45 medical personnel The race is a race of 1,200 and 20,000 liters of drinking water at checkpoints along the arduous route However, back in 1994 which I guess at this point might as well have been the fucking dark ages

[00:47:47] the landscape was vastly different and the race unfolded with fewer safeguards or resources in place The organizers should send his body in the event of his demise Back to his wife in Sicily, of course As he shared with her his interest in competing in this weird-ass fucking race

[00:48:11] he assured her that the worst possible outcome he anticipated was just minor sunburn A close friend had recently told him about this desert marathon It was an exceedingly challenging endeavor Now, Mauro, as someone who thrived on challenges, this... Music to his ears He submitted his entry form

[00:48:39] A police officer and Italian Olympian at the time, Prosperi was among a mere 80 participants in the relatively obscure race He embarked on intense training Slowly and gradually reducing his water intake to acclimate to dehydration He was rarely at home But come race time, he felt prepared

[00:49:03] Now once the race began Prosperi successfully traversed 60 miles of treacherous sand dunes, salt beds and rocky terrain over the course of three days But by the fourth and most grueling day He held seventh place and he began entertaining the possibility of winning However, unbeknownst to him

[00:49:30] a formidable adversary was approaching It was akin to a storm of needles Prosperi vividly described powerful winds swept across the desert and vibrating sand whipped through the air The winds, at times towering up to 50 feet high bore down on him with speeds reaching up to 25 miles per hour

[00:49:54] The swirl of particles darkened the sky The tempest howled like a soul in agony The sand mercilessly ripped at Prosperi's skin, eyes and throat I was engulfed by a yellow wall of sand blinded and struggling to breathe Fearful of being buried beneath the suffocating storm

[00:50:18] and determined to maintain his race position Morrow pressed forward Now this decision defied the guidance of race organizers who had instructed participants caught in a sandstorm to seek shelter in their sleeping bag Instead, he endured eight harrowing hours of a blistering wind

[00:50:42] And then, as if by divine intervention Prosperi suddenly found himself palpably alone in the tranquil Sahara Desert night Realizing he was lost he sought refuge amidst the dunes intending to navigate to a checkpoint using his compass and map when the morning arrived The sandstorm had transformed the landscape

[00:51:09] into an unrecognizable terrain After running for approximately four hours I ascended a dune and still saw nothing he recounted That was the moment I realized I was facing a monumental problem Realizing Prosperi had failed to arrive at a checkpoint by morning the organizers of the marathon faced

[00:51:34] a completely different race against time They had until midday to locate Prosperi Otherwise, he would be stranded in the scorching heat surrounded by endless sand and scant water They scoured the dunes via land rovers They dispatched a helicopter to search from above The Moroccan military and trackers

[00:51:55] joined the extensive effort But still, they came up with nothing It was as if the Italian runner had simply vanished into the storm But many, many miles away there he was Sitting alone atop a tall sand dune A backpack filled with dehydrated food

[00:52:20] A compass, a knife, a sleeping bag and a near-empty water bottle Moro stared out over miles of desert Entirely uncertain as to which direction to head A labyrinth constructed of endless shifting walls But on his second day of solitude finally, there was hope

[00:52:45] Moro heard a faint hum droning from above It was a helicopter In a mad scramble, he reached for a flare and fired it into the vacant sky I flew so close that I could see the pilot's helmet But he didn't see me He flew right past He recalled

[00:53:06] That night, Prosperi urinated into his water bottle and saved it He ate a power bar and amongst the dunes allowed his exhausted body to drift off to sleep once more Prosperi awoke to the sight of two vultures circling above him

[00:53:26] It seemed they thought he would make for a delicious meal As he wandered through the desert Prosperi searched desperately for anything that could aid his survival And then, in the far distance he spotted a peculiar shimmering structure He questioned if it were merely a hallucination

[00:53:46] But as he grew closer he could see that it was an ancient shrine It likely served as the tomb of an Islamic holy figure He sought refuge in its shade found three bird's eggs in the tower and noted a colony of bats He also found a wooden pole

[00:54:07] and used it to hoist an Italian flag hoping it would catch the attention of any passing aircraft During that period he consumed parts of his food supplies by preparing them with fresh urine on his portable stove To stay hydrated he relied on wet wipes from his backpack

[00:54:26] licked dew from rocks in the morning and continued to guzzle hot piss But despite the respite of securing shelter the days would continue to pass And much like his hope his provisions dwindled That's when he resorted to some real survivalist shit Well beyond drinking piss

[00:54:48] He gazed up at the bats hanging from the eaves above the tomb I decided to consume them raw because cooking them on my portable stove would only dehydrate them And I knew that moisture was what I needed most So I wrung their necks and sucked their blood

[00:55:06] It was a repulsive act but hunger had driven me to madness By the next day Prosperi heard a plane flying overhead In an attempt to attract attention he set his backpack on fire and inscribed SOS in massive letters in the sand However, once again

[00:55:26] those aboard failed to spot him and the aircraft vanished beyond the horizon When the plane flew away from me I thought to myself There goes my life He recalled Now with no water no food and no hope Prosperi decided that discovering this tomb was no coincidence

[00:55:47] Rather than die of thirst in an effort to find his way back the ancient shrine would become his final resting place He etched a message on the shrine's wall imploring his wife's forgiveness I was very depressed I was convinced I was going to die

[00:56:06] and that it was going to be a long, agonizing death So I wanted to accelerate it I thought if I died out in the desert no one would find me and my wife wouldn't get the police pension In Italy if someone goes missing you have to wait 10 years

[00:56:25] before they can be declared dead At least if I died in the Muslim shrine they would find my body and my wife would have an income Using his pocket knife he carved into his wrists laid down and awaited an overnight death However by morning

[00:56:44] Prosperi awoke to minimal bleeding Due to his high level of dehydration the blood within his veins had clotted ensuring his survival This seemed to help him regain his senses I realized that the marathon was moving forward and I couldn't depend on the race officials to save me

[00:57:04] I decided I must confront the desert on my own Determined to survive Prosperi adapted to the desert He licked dew from rocks squeezed moisture from plants hunted for scarab beetles and snakes and slept partially buried in the sand to retain warmth during the nights As he persisted

[00:57:26] he eventually came upon a small puddle He struggled to swallow but through small sips he slowly replenished his hydration and continued on Finally After days of wandering through nearly barren wilderness he encountered the first signs of life Goat shit followed by human footprints Shortly thereafter

[00:57:52] while looking like an extra from The Walking Dead Mauro encountered a young girl She screamed of course because he looked like a fucking skeleton draped in spandex shuffling towards her She looked at me aghast Screaming in terror I beseeched her to stop but she disappeared over a dune

[00:58:12] I must be a hideous sight, I thought I took out my signal mirror and turned it toward my face I was appalled I was a skeleton My eyes had sunk so far back into my skull I couldn't see them But like a scene from a Spielberg film

[00:58:29] this was Providence And the young girl was a member of a nomadic tribe and quickly called for others to come to Prosperi's aid They provided him with goat milk and mint tea which is just barely a step up from piss He tried to eat but threw up

[00:58:46] That said after ten days of suffering drifting nearly two hundred miles off course and unknowingly crossing into Algeria he was finally saved Prosperi would eventually make his way to an Algerian hospital He weighed a mere ninety-seven pounds His liver teetered on the edge of failure

[00:59:07] and it required sixteen liters of intravenous fluids to bring him back from the brink of death He would be forced to liquefy his food for months thereafter And following a week of recuperation Prosperi made his way back to Rome Upon his return he joyfully reunited with his family

[00:59:26] and was warmly welcomed home His remarkable story attracted considerable attention as he was interviewed for newspaper articles and captured in photographs alongside Italian dignitaries But while hailed as a hero in Italy some doubted the veracity of Prosperi's account His story is a fabrication He wants people to believe

[00:59:49] he is Superman declared Patrick Bauer the founder of the Marathon des Sables It is physiologically impossible for a man to travel more than 200 kilometers into the desert without water This is a supernatural act It's possible that he got genuinely lost for a few days But all the rest

[01:00:11] rings false We believe that early on he was picked up by someone He thought he could make a killing out of this if he prolonged his ordeal He thought he could sell his story to the tabloids He aspired to be the star of his own movie Of course

[01:00:27] Prosperi vehemently denied Bauer's allegations In 1995 a documentary crew revisited the shrine where Prosperi sought refuge and discovered remnants of his belongings along with the skeletons of bats A doctor specializing in the effects of harsh environments on the human body supported Prosperi's account Mauro didn't fabricate his story

[01:00:51] said Dr. Kenneth Kandler His body serves as compelling evidence of the kind of damage the desert can inflict and simultaneously demonstrates what the human body can endure when pushed to its limits And despite the terror that he felt while lost in the Sahara somehow

[01:01:09] Prosperi also fell in love with its stark beauty I am drawn back to the desert every year to embrace it to experience it He expressed Those ten days were akin to being in the womb of the desert And from there I was reborn Two years after his ordeal

[01:01:29] Prosperi felt well enough to return to his passion endurance running Determined to complete what he had started he participated in the Marathon of the Sands He has since completed the race six times achieving 13th place in 2001 In May 2020 Prosperi published his book written in Italian alongside

[01:01:54] his former wife and co-author titled Those Ten Days Beyond Life Alright, Malrell what do you think? First of all Your turns of phrase You were on fire this episode I don't know what was going on in your life the day that you wrote this script

[01:02:23] but you were on fire I was fucking howling at the beginning of each story like you were spicy Believe it or not these are clinical phrases Yeah? They're in the DSM 7 You only learn how to articulate in this matter Oh, you have to be a doctor?

[01:02:37] After you get your doctorate of clinical psychology Yeah, well thing one was just you did a great job with this story I award three, possibly even four of the little chilly emojis like you were very spicy it was very funny I this was so harrowing but there was

[01:02:58] a lot of but the thing that disturbed me the most was the raw bats actually the idea of him just being like I'm gonna handle this like a capri sun like let's just go I'm horrified I hear you horrified it's not dumb though you know it's not dumb

[01:03:18] there were a couple I read a few years ago there were a couple of fellows that were stranded at sea and they were just in a boat and just far out from any shore drinking seawater they were out there for days and days and days

[01:03:34] I think it was about 30 days and they survived by drinking the blood of sea turtles oh poor turtle I know I hate that totally tragic yeah look I understand we have to do what we gotta do but like fuck man if you you had a fire

[01:03:52] you burned your backpack cooked a fucking bat you know he had a little hot plate I was just like look I guess he just felt like I need every last drop of moisture this creature has in its body and I guess if you're thinking

[01:04:08] like I'm gonna fucking die like I'm probably gonna die anyway he didn't have provisions no I just mean if your mindset is like I'm probably gonna die anyway fuck it right like you just but to me like what a fantastic way to get horribly ill and die

[01:04:22] like in an even more excruciating way like I don't know I would have definitely been able to handle it if I watched a plane ignore my flare gun oh yeah so that was the helicopter oh yes you're right the helicopter the plane ignored the burning backpack

[01:04:41] and the giant SOS like just who did the Keystone cops fucking organize the rescue like who was doing and I get it the desert's big and it's vast and you're just like a grain of sand on it I'm sure it was very hard like I shouldn't judge

[01:04:55] but I was like yeah and you can go blind looking into snow too Ada had snow blindness for a period of time wow yeah so like just ultra marathon runners fascinating group of people this guy clearly went into this with some resilience but yeah and there's like

[01:05:14] thousands of people that do this in Death Valley every year too yes incredible I've listened to interviews with some of them and they're so casual about it too like she you know they're like yeah you know towards the end I'm just kind of shitting myself

[01:05:32] and like throwing up but like you know you just and you're like what so yeah I clearly don't have that survivor mindset like that I'm glad I don't need dopamine that bad but it is inspiring you know absolutely inspiring I thought it was really interesting that both

[01:05:51] of them had to deal with fucking idiots who weren't even there and I was like I'm gonna add up that kind of it reminded like it felt so now like her story and his story even though his was like what 20, 30 years ago but this is something

[01:06:07] that you personally experienced as well how many people after reading your story on the internet were like you weren't sick oh my god you weren't really sick so many fucking assholes were like she was faking it literally never there guys I was there I was I'm telling you

[01:06:23] she was skin and bones it happened it all happened but you're totally right though like people hear amazing stories of survival and it's so hard for us to process that we just kind of reactively go to the most been faking it and like that's that's yeah there's some

[01:06:41] weird thing where I guess like first and foremost on mine goes to the idea of like you're getting attention that I want and so I'm assuming or at least just positioning this idea that I'm doing this for the attention that I want right or even if you're not

[01:06:57] I want to discredit you so you no longer get the attention that I want meanwhile if you have actually been through like a real oh my god like I almost died survival thing like the first thing you will tell anyone is I would love to have not had

[01:07:12] that experience yeah and leave me alone right yeah one eat shit if you're not donating to my GoFundMe so I can try to live like just I'm not doing anything but like I know Ada Blackjack would have been a much happier person had she not had that experience

[01:07:28] I know that that man would have absolutely loved to not have to drink a bat like a Capri Sun in 130 degree heat apparently he was doing it to snakes as well like it just that sort of makes sense yeah kind of like a fun dip or like a

[01:07:44] like a push pop like a I'm not seeing it no though no I'm very impressed with his ability to make the most of absolutely nothing and stay alive yeah good for him I have thoughts about the whole suicide thing but I want to wait until we talk

[01:08:02] to our guest which is actually that's should we bring our guest into the conversation yeah I think so okay Gary oh he's got sparklers he's he's fucking I love Gary little Roman candles he looks great he's ready for fourth of July it's a memorial day it's coming up

[01:08:24] Mr. Hendrix how are you? thank you for being here how's your ass cracking thank you for having me it's it's you know this is kind of my typical Friday night wearing that attire so you know it's gotten used to the you know no chafing the touch

[01:08:41] the feel of cotton as I like to say you know oh that's polyester honey we can't we can't afford that stuff right yeah low rent shop well anyway thank you for joining us you have been listening to this show since pretty much it began right like where

[01:08:59] you're like an OG like early like when we only had like 15 listeners no for sure I was proudly one of the 15 yeah absolutely thank you for sticking with us thank you for sticking with us being here but more exciting is that you went from listening

[01:09:15] to us tell stories to writing a pretty incredible story of your own and not only putting it into the world but having it get picked up and then sequel things happening so sequels I don't know about that I want to hear about that later so Tim

[01:09:29] why don't you tell us what you did with your storytelling skills during the pandemic and what's happened since sure well I've been working on this iteration of this particular book which is called The Story of a Man and I'm going to be talking about how I came to

[01:09:42] come to come to come to come to come to come to book this manuscript since I want to say 2018 and so it was like a four or five year process that led from the initial draft of the instructor all the way through publication into April 2023 so

[01:10:02] when the book came out so you know a part of that is where I kind of like overlapped from the creative process into the editing process at the same time at the same time where I was in the creative process of writing the sequel,

[01:10:23] cause I was signed to a two book deal, which was outstanding. Phenomenal. The dream. So yeah, you know, the dream that doubles as a nightmare when you're on deadline and, you know, as I was doing right before we hit record, cranking away on some edits. Yes.

[01:10:46] There's nothing worse than creating. Yeah, but yeah, the book got picked up and so then I went into the revision process yet again. So for people who don't know, what is the instructor about? Give us the version of the, what's your elevator pitch? What's your-

[01:11:03] Yeah, my elevator pitch is about a retired Marine Force Recon Special Operations Intelligence Officer who is now trying to make ends meet working and running his own wilderness survival school in just on the outskirts of New York City, like the Rockland Putnam County kind of area.

[01:11:26] When he is approached by one of his students after his most recent class to teach a private group upstate, way upstate by the Canadian border. And lo and behold, because of circumstances, Derek takes the job only to slowly suspect that his most recent class

[01:11:51] is actually a domestic terrorist cell in the midst of plotting their first attack. Incredible. It's so good. And then, as I like to say, the hijinks then ensue. Yes, well, I read the book. I read an early draft of it

[01:12:12] and then I read the version of it that's out in the world. And I am telling people listening to go out and get The Instructor. It is the perfect summer read. And I love your book because it's got like all of the elements of the Tom Clancy

[01:12:31] and the Jack Reacher and that whole world, but you have done such an artful job of talking about PTSD and portraying a character that has PTSD with nuance. So we see a lot of characters and conversations about PTSD, but they're either violent and they're dissociating

[01:12:55] or they're dissociating and they're depressed. And we kind of don't really get anything else. And you kind of did this really beautiful work in the book talking about how it feels in the character's body, how it affects his family, how it influences certain decisions

[01:13:13] that he makes in pivotal moments. So why did you choose to integrate so much about PTSD in this story? Well, first, let me thank you for the compliment of those comparison authors right there. That is some high praise. And everybody who listens to this show

[01:13:33] knows that I don't really give a lot of praise. So I am not buttering you up. Like it's that good. I mean, Clancy and Reacher from your lips to the higher power's ears. But there's the old kind of cliche adage in the writing world and the publishing world,

[01:13:55] write what you know. And as a disabled veteran from Operation Iraqi Freedom with a 70% PTSD diagnosis, it came from a very real place of my own experience and my own struggles with that spectrum. And I really, to your point about they're either angry or they're sad,

[01:14:30] it's a full on spectrum of mental, physical, emotional trauma and symptoms that goes on there. And early on in my therapeutic journey, because I've been in counseling with the VA for well over a decade now, it became apparent to me that I was always a good writer,

[01:14:54] but it came apparent to me that when I would write about the things I was experiencing, most notably nightmares, I was having these horrible, horrible nightmares early on. It was the first and most prevalent symptom that arose and very visceral detailed things.

[01:15:11] And they would leave me so rattled and so disturbed that like I couldn't even get out of bed, or I'd be having breakdowns at work. And it was just like, it was interfering with life. It was really bad.

[01:15:25] And I found as I was starting to go to the VA and go to counseling, I couldn't bring myself to actually verbalize them because it was too disturbing for me. So I started writing them down and that began a very like cathartic process for me,

[01:15:47] whereby the experience of the nightmare could be almost purged in a way where if I get the words on paper, I can shove the paper into a drawer in my mind and shut the drawer and it's done. I can forget about it for the day.

[01:16:06] I can get on with my life. And that became like a coping mechanism. And then I have pages and pages of those nightmares, which I refuse to read again because some of them still are roaming around up there. But as I started doing the creative writing

[01:16:26] and really exploring that side of things, more and more of it seeped out into the fiction that I was doing. And it started incorporating more and more and then certainly the choice to write about a 22 year elite combatant US military veteran in contemporary timeframe with the operational tempo

[01:16:54] that you experience in the war on terror, as it were. He's more than likely going to have experienced those things, you know? So it felt disingenuous not to incorporate that in certain ways. And then the flip side of it is too,

[01:17:14] you know, I came from the early, early era of the military of just starting to kind of banish the stigma that is associated with a PTSD diagnosis. You know, like the whole hangover of the World War II Korea Vietnam vets

[01:17:34] of we don't talk about what we did over there. You know, you did your job, you come home and tamp it down, you know, and express yourselves through violent outbursts and raging drinking habits, you know? Like that's how we do things.

[01:17:51] And like, no, that's not the healthiest feeling, you know? Yeah, my grandfather has a silver star and also is a shining example of what happens when you don't talk about the things. That's why we don't have a relationship at all.

[01:18:07] So I'm very proud of the things that grandpa did for his country and absolutely horrified at the things that it made it do to his family. Yeah, sure. And so Edward, how exciting is it for you to have somebody on the show who is a grown ass man

[01:18:23] who's like, I'm in therapy. I went and asked for help. I write characters that ask for help. I mean, I think it's wonderful. It is substantially more challenging at times to encourage men into therapy just because of, you know, as Tim mentioned to some extent,

[01:18:41] there being stigmas around it being weak, but also feeling a sense of responsibility or obligation that you have to get certain things done. You've got to take care of your family. You've got to protect your family. You've got to make money and do all these things

[01:18:56] and stuff it down, just kind of put it someplace. And it ultimately doesn't really translate to being that effective as far as being a psychologically present father and husband. And so the fact that we're talking about this today, I think is excellent.

[01:19:14] It's amazing, especially as it pertains to the military, me being a veteran, this is important to me. So many veterans come back from combat situations and find themselves damaged substantially, emotionally, mentally, psychologically, and eventually find themselves on the streets or with drug problems

[01:19:36] or it translating into physical ailments that follow them for the rest of their lives, even if they didn't sustain them in combat. And then you look at other percentages, which I think is very, very interesting. We have a problem with military personnel committing suicide

[01:19:53] and a lot of folks, they'll look at that in their instinct is to say, oh, that's someone like say Tim, for example, who went to war and couldn't cope with what they experienced where the truth of the matter is the majority of military personnel that commit suicide

[01:20:12] are the ones that get left behind. Yes. Everyone can relate to abandonment. Everyone can relate to maybe not feeling like they belong someplace or maybe that they've joined something like the military, hoping for a sense of belonging and not finding it.

[01:20:31] And so again, even if you've never served in the military, these are human issues that we're discussing. And I think it's important for people to pay attention to this, not as kind of like a casual voyeur, but look for yourself in the things that we're talking about

[01:20:49] because you might actually discover something about you, which I think is valuable. Yeah. 100%, like the things that I picked up on that come to mind after listening to Edward so eloquently state what he just did is, you're quite welcome, is trauma is trauma,

[01:21:08] and you don't have to be a military veteran who went overseas or a law enforcement officer and EMT. Like there's a lot of bad shit that happens to a lot of good people and bad people too. But differentiating one versus the other

[01:21:28] or the apples to oranges, or, oh, he got shot at more than I did. I didn't have it that bad. Like, no, like it's all part of the same thing. And then the other piece of it is that series of responsibilities that you just listed off

[01:21:45] of like, well, I can't go to therapy because I've got a job and I've got to have mortgage and I've got to take care of this. The law needs to be mowed. It all ends up in my opinion now, hindsight being 2020,

[01:21:59] it's all excuses because the other big takeaway that I've had in my journey is if you're not taking care of yourself, how can you take care of others? Absolutely. Right, like, and you nailed it with, I might've been bringing home a paycheck but was I truly present?

[01:22:21] No, my marriage fell apart because of it. It wasn't solely on my end, but it was, I definitely own my contribution to doing that, to not getting the help that I needed sooner or letting these things negatively affect me or not prioritizing it enough.

[01:22:44] And really like the big, big wake up call was when I saw the danger in losing that relationship with my daughters, like things between my ex and I, we're still amicable to this day. We still love each other to this day. We're just not good together

[01:23:04] because of the things that we went through. But when I saw that my shit was potentially leading me down a road where I was going to lose the two most precious things in my life which is my two girls, that's when it was really like,

[01:23:23] okay, I need to take care of this. I need to stop treating the symptoms, get down to the actual causation, do that deep dive stuff that I've been just kind of tap dancing around for these last seven, eight years.

[01:23:41] And like, let's finally look this bastard in the eye and wrestle him to the ground and give him a nice triangle choke there. That one's pretty fun. Yeah, well, I hope that people listening, this is some heavy stuff for the front of a podcast

[01:23:58] about survival, but we are talking, this is how people survive now. They've already listened to some pretty horrible stuff. It's a different kind of survival. And it's kind of survival related. Right, well, what I was gonna say

[01:24:08] is this all ties together, but just for the sake of levity, like I have diagnosed PTSD. I have been in treatment for a bunch of years. I never served. My PTSD came from medical trauma and sexual assault. And so, you don't like Tim and Edward have said,

[01:24:27] we don't play trauma Olympics. It's not productive to play trauma Olympics. Just because you didn't get blown up or shot at doesn't mean that the terrible things that happened to you that affected you aren't valid and don't need help.

[01:24:38] And the good news is if you actually go to therapy and you actually submit the beast and look it in the eye the way Tim's talking about, like life gets radically better. Like all of those bad days, they don't magically go away,

[01:24:51] but the severity of the bad day suddenly goes from a 10 to a five. And some of the stuff in your body that you're like, oh my God, I am only 30 or I'm only 40 or I'm only 60 and I shouldn't feel this way. It just goes away.

[01:25:04] And suddenly you're like, oh, there's my energy. There's my cognitive function. There's that. So when you're doing that thing that Tim's talking about where you just kind of skim along the surface because you're like, I got this to do and I got this to do

[01:25:14] and I'm making this excuse and this feels too overwhelming. And look, sometimes the resources are just not right in front of you and it can feel really overwhelming to have to go and ask for help. But if you get deeper into the monster that Tim's talking about,

[01:25:32] it's actually kind of easy to submit this thing. It's way harder to skim on the surface with the monster for 20 years than it is to actually get in there and start. Because you find that it's pretty easy to dismantle. That's not to say that therapy is easy.

[01:25:46] That's not to say that recovery is easy, but it's easier than skimming along the surface and using alcohol and dysregulated behavior and yelling and weird relationships that are not good for either of you. All of that stuff is actually much harder to do

[01:26:01] than just going to fucking therapy and getting into the world and writing down your nightmares and then turning them into a successful book that then gets a sequel. There's some really hard mishap that can happen. Not the best recipe, but you know.

[01:26:15] And that's why discussing PTSD on an episode like this, that's about survival. Something that whether we all are aware of it or not, we're all familiar with. We've been fighting for our survival from the day that we were born. But tying into that,

[01:26:34] it also kind of circles around a very specific issue, which from my perspective, from a psychological perspective is the counterpoint of trauma. And I think the intuitive thing for most people is when you look at a person's life, well, the opposite of trauma

[01:26:49] is essentially to not have trauma or the absence of trauma. And that's not true. When we look at trauma and dealing with trauma and as it pertains to a lifespan development, the counterpoint of trauma is resilience. And what we describe as post-traumatic growth, it's something very, very different

[01:27:14] that's necessary for people. It's like Kim saying, your trauma goes from a 10 to a five. That's not just, oh, time heals all wounds. That's going and working and engendering resilience. And that's why some people react to traumatic situations or survival situations differently than others.

[01:27:36] It's not necessarily because one person is quote unquote stronger or more of a man, they've engendered more resilience throughout their lives. It's only through traumatic circumstance, painful circumstance, difficult circumstance can resilience be engendered. And wow, is it a fucking nightmare being an adult with no resiliency skills?

[01:27:59] True, you go to pieces. We all know people who don't have resilience. You would be what we refer to as an adapted adolescent. You're an adult child. Right, and those people tend to blow other people's lives up. If you don't engender resilience,

[01:28:19] once you're triggered, you go back to the age where you experienced primal wounds. So you go back to childhood. You're not necessarily going back to that hard experience you had in your 20s. You go back to when you're like four, five, six, 12.

[01:28:35] Like, yeah, it's not a good scene. Where you get like the Starbucks tantrums over. I was just thinking that. It's like enough. Those weird Instagram videos you see of people yelling at each other in parking lots and grocery stores. When you're trying to make sense of that,

[01:28:55] like that's what's happening. And it's every person listening has that one relationship where they still are like, I can't fucking believe I said that. Like, I cannot believe I said that. I'll never forgive myself for saying it. I'm still thinking about saying it. That comes from this place.

[01:29:16] And the only way to not have that happen again is to deal with this shit. Otherwise, you will just keep saying shit like that to people and then you will not sleep. Also, so people can handle themselves a little bit more gently.

[01:29:29] Your parents will almost always trigger you until the day you die. As a percent. Just for the record. Just for the record. Anyone listening who's just like, oh God, I can't believe that. Oh, that thing with mom or dad or whatever. It's like-

[01:29:44] What did Dr. Foose used to say that quote about? I think there was a quote from Ram Dass. Oh, I think you're right. The moment that you think that you're enlightened and you go home, spend a weekend with your parents. Like it's, yeah.

[01:29:58] Like when you think you've reached nirvana and you have it all figured out, no matter how much work you've done in therapy, mom and dad can always set off an H-bomb. Every time. So be gentle with yourselves. Yeah. Well, so bringing it back to the survival

[01:30:15] part of the conversation, since this is why we're gathered here today. Tim, how much survival training did you receive as part of, hey, I'm going to be shipped off to war. How do you feel like your survival skills are now? I am not a survival expert,

[01:30:32] but I am a, I like to think, a excellent researcher. So that on top of just being profoundly like mesmerized by the subject matter of, and constantly consuming every survival show there is and reading the field manuals and the books and whatnot, interviewing actual survival instructors.

[01:30:57] I would like to think that my survival skills are higher than they were because I've learned so much. However, there is a vast, vast difference between the academic knowledge of a thing and the practical application of it. You know, having a ferro rod,

[01:31:18] which is basically like a Flint and steel that showers insanely 3000 degree hot sparks onto dry leaves and brush and whatnot. Yeah, your Tinder bundle, you would think that's, oh, I just scrape it once and boom, I've got a fire. And I shit you not,

[01:31:38] I failed for like three hours trying to build my first fire. And then my daughter, I taught her a trick from a friend where you actually dip cotton balls into Vaseline because it's petroleum jelly and very flammable. And she one stroke and had her first bonfire.

[01:32:05] Yeah, a little Viking. Eight at the time or something. So I'm sitting there taking my fucking thing doesn't work and throwing it in the neighbor's yard. My kid comes out, look daddy, I made a fire. Futurist female y'all. That's great. Oh yeah, 100%.

[01:32:21] So that's where I would put my level of is a very healthy academic knowledge. Okay. Lacking the actual field applications of such. Because I live on Long Island and our houses are 60 by 100 plots and I don't get out much. So yeah. Yeah, that whole having a job thing

[01:32:45] kind of like gets in the way. Well, that too. Yeah, right. Edward, how would you say your survival skills are? We drop you into the middle of the swamp. How are you gonna do? Oh boy. I would say less than average. Less than average.

[01:33:03] Again, they'll teach you this in the military. It's like human beings don't rise to the occasion. We sink to the level of our training. And unless that you're being thrust in these environments on the reg, like you're gonna fuck up. So yeah, I don't anticipate.

[01:33:24] I'd just pull it off without a hit. I'd be like, yes, I'm in the swamps, crushed it. I got this all figured out. No, I would struggle. I would struggle, but I feel as though I am resourceful and I'm resilient

[01:33:36] and I would at least survive unless an alligator got me. Like it snuck up on me and just ate my ass. I mean, that's a dinosaur. It's fine, that's some Jurassic Park shit. That's not you. Or a snake, that would probably be what gets me.

[01:33:48] I was gonna say you get caught in that Python alligator duel. Yeah. So the three of us get dropped in the middle of fucking nowhere. We have to survive. Tim, what do you bring to the table? It sounds like you can make us fire.

[01:34:02] You mean like equipment or skills? Like skills. How are you gonna help us not die? Well, I think the knowledge is there in terms of like setting up. So you're a mannish. Well, set up what our priorities are. Great. Shelter, water, fire, food.

[01:34:23] So I know kind of that stuff, the rule of threes and everything. What's the rule of threes for people listening? Three minutes without air, three hours without shelter, three days without water, three weeks without food. So that kind of like fits into your priority again,

[01:34:43] your survival priority and everything. But yeah, I'd like to think some basic survival fire making, some maybe a little bit of improvised trapping and hunting. Blood lab. Love to eat, I think that's great. Yeah, yeah. And then I think a little bit of,

[01:35:06] well, I was never the strongest Lieutenant with a compass. As they like to say. I appreciate your candor. Yeah. Thanks for being honest. It is. There's the famous saying, you can't spell gloss without LT. So, but while my skills might be a little rusty now,

[01:35:29] I did become, because I was so weak at it early on, I did become a pretty good navigator at the height of my military career. So I think I could help with that a little bit. Okay, all right, great. Edward, what do you bring in the table?

[01:35:42] How are you helping us out? I can make sure everybody has an outlet for talking about their feelings. It is valuable. You know what, I'm laughing, but I'm pretty sure we're gonna need that. Gotta keep that positive attitude. If I get to bring any of what I've got,

[01:35:57] I've got a fully stocked bug out bag and I'm a near expert with a nine millimeter and I'm really strong. All of those things I make a pretty good. Sign me up. Yeah, no, I'm not unhappy about it. That's great.

[01:36:10] And he does have a pretty great bug out bag. Full disclosure, I spent a lot of money during the pandemic building my bug out bag. For anyone who doesn't know what a bug out bag is, it's a bag full of survival gear

[01:36:23] in case you need to get the hell out of town very quickly in the event of a disaster or the apocalypse, zombie apocalypse, et cetera. Yeah, in Louisiana, you should have one. Everyone should have one. Everyone should have a bug out bag.

[01:36:37] I definitely spent part of the pandemic disassociating and handling my anxiety by building an absolutely irrational bug out bag. And look, I'm not upset that I have it, but every now and then I walk by it and I was like, what the fuck is wrong with you?

[01:36:55] Hey, little tip with the bug out bags. It's a lot of fun building them and collecting the stuff and putting the gear in. Practice carrying them around? Practice carrying it around because my bug out bag reached like 89 pounds at a certain point.

[01:37:11] You know, like almost half my body weight. I couldn't lift that fucker off the floor. Yeah, yeah. Go, go, go, guys. Go, Ruck. You will burn twice the calories of walking without a bug out bag that weighs 89 pounds. And you will prevent osteoporosis.

[01:37:29] Rucking is a great way to improve bone density and core strength. There you go. Whatever you're gonna spend on a weight vest, put it to your bug out bag. Yeah, do it to your bug out bag. Tell lots of my hips and knees, Kim.

[01:37:41] Well, you guys should know that I am not super strong. I am the size of a large child. I'm about to turn 40. So I'm not gonna be super helpful with the heavy burdens. I have absolutely no hunting experience whatsoever. However, I have excellent triage skills.

[01:38:05] I'm getting much better at this plant is medicinal and this plant is poisonous. Definitely don't eat this. I am really, really good at cooking shit if you actually kill it for me because I just don't have that skill. I would like to learn that skill.

[01:38:22] I feel like that's an important one to have, but for now I can cook the things. But yeah, I fear that I might be more of a liability than a help. I don't think so. I think the three of us combined are quite a formidable survival team.

[01:38:41] Don't undersell your skills there. In a wild animal. Like don't eat this mushroom because you're gonna go on a psychedelic trip and then your heart's gonna stop. Usually just shit yourself and then you live or fail. In a relatively like stable apocalypse

[01:38:57] like we had down here during Hurricane Katrina, not that that looked stable, but where zombies aren't attacking you or you're not dropped in the middle. Kim has a very impressive pharmacy that she's building. Oh, I did. That is true. That's true.

[01:39:11] She'll be able to treat the shit out of people. Yeah, don't tell people where I live, but I have been putting together. Not at all, I wouldn't anyway. Yes, that was another thing I did during the pandemic was just in case these pharmacies continue to fail

[01:39:24] and these drug shortages continue, I'm gonna make sure me and mine have everything we need for like baseline crisis stuff. So yeah. You know what does what and that's valuable knowledge. I do, I do. Another great bug out bag tip is make sure you've got duplicate medications

[01:39:41] because people don't think about that. And like pet food, if you plan on taking Fido with you, you know, have that. And put your fucking medications in waterproof containers so that if it gets wet, all those pills you bought from that Turkish pharmacy

[01:39:54] ships illegally to the United States. Yeah, and fringe benefit of having a fully stocked pharmacy in your bug out bag is using that stuff to barter with. Oh, I absolutely, I have things in the bug out bag pharmacy that are just for bartering.

[01:40:15] That's how traumatized I am as a person that I purchased items that we don't need because I thought I could barter these. Yeah, but look how well that's gonna serve you later on. I really hope it doesn't Tim.

[01:40:27] I really, I would like to be dead long before any of this is necessary if I had a choice. Everybody who's like, oh, I wish the zombie apocalypse would happen. It's so much fun. It's like no. No, no. I have- You say that now and then after 12 hours

[01:40:42] of not having your caramel latte, you're- I've said it once on this show. I will say it again as someone who has actually almost starved to death. Starving is fucking miserable. You're angry, it hurts, your brain doesn't work. And as you may have learned from my story,

[01:40:59] which we're about to discuss, if you get scurvy, I'm not kidding, you melt from the inside horribly for months until eventually you die. So yeah, I can't stress enough. The apocalypse is not fun unless you're in one of those billionaire bunkers where you're underground and they're like,

[01:41:16] they've got hydroponic weed farms and cattle. All right. So about these stories. Seamless transition. Nice segue. Another seamless segue. I absolutely just, oh God. Weed and cows. Give us all of the awards. Let's talk about Ada Blackjack. Yes, it's a great name.

[01:41:38] I know, it was a great name. Tim, what did you, what were your initial impressions in the story of Ada Blackjack? Who funds an expedition to a deserted island owned by another country to claim it for a different country that you don't belong to? Dickheads. Independently Dickheads.

[01:42:00] Independently Dickheads. But like who is sitting there, is Rockefeller sitting there saying, this sounds like a good investment? Whoever the Elon Musk of that time was, that's who did it. Actually, this is part of that answer. Around that time, exploration was like a big thing

[01:42:19] and that whole manifest destiny thing was happening. And so Steffenson, the asshat, he spent a lot of his time after he got out of Harvard going around to rich boy clubs and being like, give me your money.

[01:42:35] I'll make sure that your money is part of this great legacy of manifest destiny. And we'll name you and when we plant flags and make maps and do things, your name will be on it and you'll be part of the great expansion of us just taking shit.

[01:42:48] Anyway, as you- That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, so rich dickheads is generally the answer to that. Okay. Now in terms of Ada herself, the thing that really, well, a couple things, but the thing that really stood out to me was the inner strength of this woman

[01:43:16] when the outward appearance and even as it was articulated, by her own display of emotions and her own admissions of just outwardly perceived weakness. And yet when tested like we all are, you can find an inner reserve of strength that you didn't know was there.

[01:43:45] So I found that very telling and poignant from her story. The other thing that really stood out to me is kind of also a sign of the times in particular with indigenous peoples was like the whitewashing of her culture. Where the tribal legacy that she came from,

[01:44:12] like hunting, trapping, fishing was like just your everyday way of life. That was generational knowledge passed on since the dawn of man. And to think of if she had been allowed to actually partake in her own tribal culture growing up,

[01:44:38] how much easier her survival story would have been. It would have been like these, hey, I got these four white guys that are in their 20s that don't know shit, but I can go out there and kill a seal

[01:44:52] and do all these things and not have to like overcome that or learn it on the fly. It would just be inherent. So I found that incredibly telling, being a history major and everything from a historical perspective, again like of the times,

[01:45:08] the exploration as you just talked about Kim, but the way it was like, we have to bring these wild people into the light of Catholicism and teach them how to- Even worse, they brought her in a Methodistism. Yeah, yeah.

[01:45:25] It's like, we're gonna teach you how to make change. This will be a really important skill. It's gonna change your life. You're gonna learn how to cook shrimp scampi. And it's like, how does that help? Now, the one thing I will say that probably wasn't intended,

[01:45:39] but the skill of mending people's clothes, that is probably one of the few from her whitewashing- Super valuable. Useful skills, because you might need to stitch something up. So that was the one that I thought, but those on the surface were like the two big things

[01:46:00] that came out after listening to the story. Now, as someone who's, if you're in the military, you tend to learn that you have to work in groups and sort through personalities and everything. Even when you don't want to. Even when you don't want to.

[01:46:16] How good is it for morale and people when you isolate them and tie them to poles and berate them and shit? Does that- Excellent. Yeah. That's how you become resilient. Right, well, I'm kidding. No, but in a way, I was just about to say,

[01:46:35] the resiliency of this woman comes from overcoming those traumatic things, all the way back to the opening where, again, I forget, it's not ringing a bell how old she was in the opening of the story. Eight years old. Eight years old.

[01:46:55] Eight years old, she's packing up her dad into a dog sled to drive the guy 50 miles or whatever it was to try and save his life. Not only is that incredibly traumatic, but can you imagine an eight year old today doing anything like that?

[01:47:13] My daughter's just turned nine and I love her to death but I don't see her harnessing a pack of snow dogs which are just a few instances removed from wild wolves. You know? So, very early on, there's a lot of trauma

[01:47:34] these indications of these vastly traumatic periods for her but her rising to the occasion and overcoming them and building that resiliency. Certainly, to your point, I don't think it's very good to say, oh, that Eskimo over there, she's a fool, she's worthless, she always cries.

[01:47:56] You know what, take her out back and tie her to the pole. Probably not the best way, especially when you're relying on this woman to cook for you. I mean, if she wasn't a good hearted person, she could have easily poisoned your ass.

[01:48:09] So, not the best cohesiveness to say the least but for her, for Ada on her side, just another notch on the resiliency belt for sure. Yeah, Ada kind of crushed it as far as quietly showing everybody up. And the cat, Victor was his name?

[01:48:33] Vic, it was a girl, she was Victoria. Ah, Vic, that's right. The name for the British queen. The Queen. Yes, the Victoria. But yeah, they sent four dudes and a lady and a lady cat and everybody who wasn't female died. So, I'm just, you know, and look,

[01:48:53] that expedition was fucked. Like, I am gonna get into it. I'm gonna get into it exactly how fucked it was and the abject fuckery, like the human fuckery part of the story really kind of comes in the mishandling of everything afterwards.

[01:49:08] That will be a separate secret story time because the story would have been two hours long if I actually told the whole story. But yeah, the karma of all of that, like they roasted her and they made her feel terrible and they tied her at the pole

[01:49:24] and they were doing all this shit and like Lorne Knight, bless him, you know, it seems like he came from a good family. His family stepped in and actually became friends with Ada Blackjack afterwards and she brought his Bible back to his parents.

[01:49:40] Even though he was horrible to her, she still, in her journal, she kind of wrote, yes, she really hated how awful he was to her and he genuinely scared her. But towards the end, she was like, this guy's starving and he's an organ failure

[01:49:55] and he's being an ass because he's dying. Even though she didn't have that formal medical knowledge, she had the intrinsic knowledge of humans that you do that you're like, this person's out of his mind. He's being an asshole but he doesn't mean this.

[01:50:14] I feel like Lorne got a really unfortunate lesson in karma. If he had just been a little kinder and roasted her a little less, things might've been different. Also, part of the reason that Lorne starved as bad as he did

[01:50:29] is because he was like a meat and potatoes boy who wanted to eat his biscuits fried and wanted to eat his meat well done. And so even when Ada was like, hey, this is not the best way for us to get vitamin C in your system.

[01:50:42] You should really be eating this raw. He was like, this is how I like my biscuits, bitch. And so he just, it was a fascinating story. Vegetables are just gay. Yeah, I guess, yeah, vegetables are, that's how you become a drag queen is fighting vegetables.

[01:50:58] Phytoestrogen, that's how it happens. Yeah, soy boy, that's where it comes from. Yeah, it's best that we not trigger me with that discussion because I'm gonna lose my mind. That's a whole other type of survival. That's a whole other type of, that's the modern survival.

[01:51:14] That's what we're doing right now, just surviving other people. That's America 2023 survival. What other notes or thoughts did you have about the Ada Blackjack story? Any questions, anything that jumped out to you? Yeah, so I went into this kind of taking that research perspective that I had used

[01:51:36] when writing the instructor of like, again, that academic, what are the lessons that I've learned in terms of if you're thrown out into the wilderness, what should you be doing? What shouldn't you be doing? How should you be prioritizing things and whatnot?

[01:51:51] So I went through both your stories, kind of evaluating it on those merits there. So my good friend Rob, who was kind of a blueprint, an early blueprint for Derek, just in terms of like his military service and his kind of resume and whatnot, is a survival instructor.

[01:52:19] And the line actually made it into the book, but he told me, he's like, you could have all the skills in the world, but if you don't have a positive mental attitude, you're going to succumb. Sure, right. You're going, like you have to have those things

[01:52:39] that you can quantify and turn into small victories and whatnot. They talk about the, if you're an enemy, not an enemy, if you're a prisoner of war, very much like the pilots in Vietnam that were in the Hanoi Hilton, in isolation for years.

[01:53:02] How do you get through that isolation, the torture and all of that comes with that. You have to keep the goal of, no, I got to get home. I've got to accomplish these small victories. I did a hundred pushups yesterday. I'm going to do 101 today.

[01:53:23] Really remarkable type things like that. And I saw that in Ada, in both stories, but certainly in there. And when you started looking at kind of the ingenuity that she was coming up with, when the stakes really were bad, when it's like,

[01:53:43] oh, hey, you're going to be here a full year more than normal without any food. And oh, by the way, three of your four compatriots are now lost in a blizzard, never to be seen again. And your other buddy is melting from the inside out.

[01:54:01] So it's all on you. And as we said earlier, you don't have that skillset because it got drummed out of you in finishing school or whatever that shit was. So you start seeing her ingenuity come through, which is a vastly, I think, underrated survival skill.

[01:54:26] I love the movie Cast Away with Tom Hanks, not because of the crying of the Wilson scene with the volleyball floating away. It's dramatic. I didn't cry. I cried so hard. But like, here's a guy who's just this flabby FedEx like efficiency manager or whatever,

[01:54:53] but he has such ingenuity with what he uses those contents of those packages for in order to sustain himself. And you start seeing that in Ada's story where I'm gonna go set up a target and I'm gonna start shooting, but the recoil is too much for me.

[01:55:14] So I'm gonna pad the buttstock. Oh my God, that blew my mind. Like I was like this little, like barely five foot tall and she was absolutely terrified of guns, terrified. Like couldn't be around them. To do that like blew my mind.

[01:55:30] Right, and then let's take the modern innovation of firearms out of it and realize that this is a giant stick of steel and solid wood that is unforgiving as fuck with large caliber bullets, I'm of no doubt. This isn't a little survival 22.

[01:55:55] No, they were hunting walrus with this fucking gun. Probably shooting like a 308 or something. So that is like a painful caliber to be absorbing when you don't have a synthetic bump stock or anything like that. But then she's like the little bit of the evolution

[01:56:13] where it's like, okay, I'm just gonna shoot some birds, but then she's successful with that. So it builds the confidence and okay, I'm gonna go try and get me a seal now because there's more meat on them Oh, but they're getting scared away.

[01:56:30] So let me do a low crawl and stalk this bastard and put a bullet in them. And you just see like the confidence building in conjunction with that positive mental reinforcement of I have to survive because my son is waiting for me. I can't give up.

[01:56:56] There was some suicidal ideation early on in the expedition, but I didn't evaluate that as a result of her, the conditions she was presented with to surviving. That was more from the adjustment disorder. Yeah, 100%. And the abuse that she was receiving from her colleagues on the expedition.

[01:57:22] I didn't, she didn't try to tap out of the survival situation and give up. She just kept saying, no, I have to keep doing this. There's a guy who's dying who needs me to keep him alive. And I don't discount the fact that a lot of her drive

[01:57:43] to keep him alive as long as she did was because she was deathly afraid of being alone. Right. Even if you have a absolute dick, it's still another living, breathing human being that is there with you, that is sharing in the experience. There's a comfort there.

[01:58:07] So I think when they were talking about she's feeding him more than herself, it was because no, I can't do this on my own. I gotta at least have somebody here with me. The cat isn't cutting it. On the mistake level, I didn't find much,

[01:58:29] but there was a couple that I like, one, I would have eaten that fucking cat right away. Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, before that thing gets lean. No, I mean, you gotta, there's not a lot of meat on cats to begin with. Shut it down, Gary.

[01:58:45] Gary, leave Tim up there. I'm eating the cat, I'm sorry. Whiskers and everything, I'm eating them. All right, you would have eaten the cat? All right, what else, what else? Yeah, I would have eaten the cat. And then there's like the,

[01:58:59] at some points you saw the emotional toll taking precedent over the logical toll or the logical mindset that needed to be more to the forefront. And there's like a guilty kind of Monday morning quarterback situation I'm feeling here. Like, I'm saying all the things

[01:59:22] that these two individuals did wrong while I sit on a Gatorade in my dining room table. I just had a bean burrito an hour ago. Oh yeah, she should have eaten the cat. Take it with a grain of salt, but like just again from the research perspective

[01:59:42] that I've done of like, this is what the experts say you should be doing. She let the emotions of when, was it Lorne? Lorne, when he finally passed, she was like, I can't bring myself to bury him and not only can I not bury him,

[02:00:04] but I'm gonna leave the shelter and go into the tent. And I'm gonna put logs and stuff around. And like that is again, giving into the emotional state that you're in versus the practical state of the shelter that was built

[02:00:24] to house the five of you is gonna be better than any kind of logs and brush that you can stack up around the tent. So you're handicapping yourself with that. You know. Move Lorne into the tent, you keep the shelter. I would have gone even further

[02:00:43] and I would have started shredding Lorne apart too. And you know, had some good buttock meat there. I mean. I think Lorne was pretty sick. I would have stopped you. I think Lorne was a little too sick to eat by the time he died.

[02:00:58] You know, maybe you don't eat his liver, but you know, just the thing of like, again, you have to look at all the resources that are available to you. Sure. Which if I go back to my castaway analogy of like when he buries that pilot,

[02:01:16] I'm like, oh, that's stuff. Like, why didn't you take his clothes off? I had the same reaction. I'm like, no, but I guess because the character was so new to it and like that's just the norm. Hoping you're gonna be rescued and like, this is him.

[02:01:28] You know, you'd be like, oh, I've only been here a day. Why would I strip this guy naked? But you know, that's kind of thing. So, you know, overall, absolutely compelling and amazing job to just be ingenious and work through these things

[02:01:46] and just become inventive and recall things that she only saw as a child. Or I'm just gonna, you know, you know what I'm gonna do today? I'm gonna hollow out a canoe and go ice fishing. Like, okay. Okay, like, yeah. Yeah, her boat worked.

[02:02:03] Like she fished from her boat. Like she made it by herself in the fucking Arctic while she had malnutrition. Like, Ada Blackjack, total fucking badass. Definitely. Yeah. Like, yeah, let's build a platform in an evergreen so I can see the polar bears coming

[02:02:19] so they stop eating my food. And oh, by the way, I have this rifle that I've become pretty good with. So maybe I can get myself a nice polar bear skin, you know? And then she's tanning hides. I mean, she's just, it was just really-

[02:02:31] You've given yourself to tan hides based on memory from like 20 years ago. Like, it is very impressive stuff. It's just really remarkable in such a desolate, desolate environment with that seasonality coming and going. You know, granted there's probably more, not probably,

[02:02:53] there was definitely more of a abundance of resources naturally occurring in your location than Edwards. Yes. But- So much more water. But seasonal, right? Like, cause whenever it's, when it's frozen, it might as well be a desert. Right, right. Yes, it's a different type of desert.

[02:03:12] But well, so that's a good way to segue. Let's move over to the ultra marathon gone horribly wrong. Yeah. Mr. Prosperi. What'd you think of this story, Tim? Well, I had to rewind it a couple of times because I could not stop laughing at the introductory terms of

[02:03:35] drier than chapstick. Cocksail bitch. And yeah, deep fried cocksail bitch. For any of you ladies who don't know what I'm talking about, it's brutal. Yeah, it is. It's brutal. Yeah, Jesus Christ. Yeah, but Mr. Prosperi certainly had, so you have like this weird thing where it's like,

[02:03:55] okay, they're both subjected to extreme environments. One of extreme cold, one of extreme heat. And the lack of resources is one versus the naturally occurring resources. Not only naturally occurring, but you know, they came there with an expedition worth

[02:04:12] of food, even though the rations had been cut back. Yeah, they expected to be out there for a while. Right, right. You know, where this guy's like, oh, I'm just running a race. And every half mile there's a water station with power bars.

[02:04:26] So what I actually physically carry on my person is minimal, you know? But what I found really interesting about his survival story was just kind of the mentality of the endurance athlete. You know, again, Edward, you talk like through the multiple factors, not all of them necessarily

[02:04:55] healthy ones as to why people subject themselves to these type of extreme sports and extreme endurance things. And I found that very, very interesting where I wanted to know more because like he was an Olympian but he's also a police officer.

[02:05:18] And as we know, police officers see some traumatic stuff, you know, so like in my mind, I'm like, what is he running away from? You know, what is driving him? What is in his backstory that has pushed him to this place

[02:05:38] where I have to run, you know, seven marathons in seven days through the most horrible, you know, environment imaginable. But there was certainly, you know, that mindset to go through those things where you're just running 25 miles a day just to train for in preparation

[02:06:05] where going into things, I'm gonna venture a guess, he was probably from a physical standpoint, more capable than Ada was, you know, going into her. You know, he's probably at the pinnacle of at the time, you know, the nutrition and science and, you know, elite athleticism and everything.

[02:06:28] So his physical limitations were exceptional to what he could actually go through. And what was really interesting was to see kind of the fragmentation of the mental endurance as the chips really started to fall and things are getting worse and worse.

[02:06:54] It's like, on the one hand, I can push myself through anything because I'm running marathons through a desert. On the other hand, like, wait a second, I don't wanna die of thirst with, you know, vultures pecking my eyes out, right? You know, this is a horrible existence.

[02:07:11] I'm gonna tap out, you know? So that was a real interesting dichotomy to see going on as he progressed through his 10 days or it was 10 days, right? Yeah. Now here's the thing. Would you have eaten the bats raw? No. I did make a note of that.

[02:07:34] It's hard to say. So you would say, merc vic, but you wouldn't eat the bats raw. Oh no, I didn't say I wouldn't eat them. I just said I wouldn't eat them raw. But knowing that you needed the hydration.

[02:07:47] Well, that's where I'm getting at is why not eat them raw? I mean, I don't know. I mean, I don't know. I don't know. But what I'm getting at is why not suck all the blood out for the hydration purposes and then cook the meat and eat it

[02:08:06] even though it might be counterintuitive, the potential for parasites or something bad is gonna get into your gut, you know, eating raw bat. I was like, raw bat is, I mean, look, zoonotic illnesses, look. Animals, period. Like it doesn't matter what they are.

[02:08:28] Like your favorite, that husky downstairs that we love so much has gotten worms before. Like it is totally, sorry, he has. Like it's just, we're in Louisiana. He's gotten worms. I've seen him drag his ass all across the floor. Like he's doing the electric slide.

[02:08:44] Okay, like yeah, it happens. But like, I was just like, oh, raw? Oh no. I mean, and look, I get it. Again, it's really unfair for me as I sip a strawberry stevia and hang out here in my pajamas in this nice studio

[02:09:01] that's climate controlled to be like, yeah, I don't really think you fucked up with the bats. Like who the fuck am I? But generally speaking, I would really encourage people to, have you ever watched Show Alone, the survival show Alone? I live on Alone.

[02:09:16] Yeah, I watch that over and over again. How many people have you seen puke on camera and be like, yeah, you know what we don't do? Eat muskrats raw. No, we just, we cook these things well and we get some of that charcoal in our system

[02:09:31] because charcoal combined to some of the things that make you sick so that you shit it out instead of get sick from it. Anyway, just generally speaking guys, cook your wild animals if you're gonna eat them to stay alive unless they're eggs and you have scurvy

[02:09:45] and you're specifically a Lorne Knight and you're trying not to die, in which case you should just eat that egg raw. That's how you should have done that, but okay. If you had to pick environments, Tim, hot or cold, which, who are you? I am a cold guy.

[02:10:04] You're a cold guy. Yeah, and I might be biased having spent two summers in 130 degree weather in my life. I hear you. While wearing like 80 pounds of gear too, but the rationale that I've always had hot versus cold

[02:10:24] is when you're cold, you can always put on more clothing or increase your activity level or certain things to save that off and warm yourself up. There's only so much you can do when it's hot as fuck. Yeah, you just cook.

[02:10:44] You can strip down naked and be lying in the shade and that's it, you're just cooking. There's no alleviation from that unless you have the modern conveniences of air conditioning and ice makers like we do. Taken as a whole, I would go cold over hot,

[02:11:05] although they both really suck. My second tour, I went from lying prone in like six feet of snow on the rifle range during night qualification because you had to qualify on your rifle before they would allow you to get on the plane to go overseas.

[02:11:27] So I was in Kansas lying in the snow and it was like negative 30. And then 24 hours later, I stepped off a plane in Baghdad and it was already like 110. I hate that. That's fucking horrible. I'm so sorry. Thank you for your service.

[02:11:47] Right, they both suck is my point. Yeah, neither is great. What do you do if you try and kill yourself and you wake up and you realize I'm still here and I'm so dehydrated that my blood hasn't clotted? What goes through your head? Speaking of building resilience,

[02:12:11] I think my brain would explode. Right, yeah. Well, the funny thing is that I think in both cases with the suicidal ideation and actually with Mauro's attempt, it gave them a resurgence of a will to live after the fact. You're right. They didn't wake up and say,

[02:12:39] Let me try again. I screwed that up. I better stand myself in the carotid this time. They were like, Oh, okay. It's not my time. I was brought to the brink and this is something that I relate to. But like I was brought to the brink.

[02:12:52] I was looking over the edge for whatever reason I'm still here. And now I'm not gonna give up. Now I'm gonna keep going. I'm gonna move forward. The problem that I have with both of them is again, forgetting that positive mental attitude

[02:13:12] that you're supposed to keep as your number one priority. Again, Monday morning quarterback, it's very easy to say like, Oh, well he shouldn't have given in to the depression of his situation. But when you factor in, he's probably not in his right mindset already because of the dehydration

[02:13:33] and the lack of food and rest and everything else. He's seeing a horrific, horrific death in this extreme heat, dying of dehydration. But what was kind of heartwarming was I need to be dead in order for my wife to get my pension.

[02:13:58] So even in the realm of, Oh, you don't tap out, you keep a positive mental attitude, you persevere through everything. And I was like, no, I don't wanna suffer and I don't want my wife to suffer. And there's some justification there a little bit.

[02:14:15] I don't wanna say you're justified in killing yourself. God, no, that's the last thing I want anybody to take away is what I'm saying. But you can recognize the nobility of being able to think about other people.

[02:14:30] You just have to take it in the entirety of the context of where he was, what he had already endured to that point, what he was facing, the mindset that he had. Can you blame the guy? That's kind of the idea there.

[02:14:48] But yeah, I liked in both instances how they came back from the brink and said, no, I'm gonna make it home to my son. I'm gonna make it home to my wife and pushed on. They've been given a threshold now. Yeah.

[02:15:06] Like they've reached the limit that they thought they had and then saw that they could go even beyond that, go further. There's a line in the instructor where Derek is talking to the group and saying like, you may hate me for what I've done to you

[02:15:28] and for the hell I've put you through this past week, but you guys don't realize it. I've given you a new threshold. Right. It's the same thing that happened with like Navy SEALs. This sucks, being frozen and starving and sleep deprived and everything.

[02:15:46] But when you're on the other side of the world and you're in some really harsh conditions and situations and it's the two-way firing range, like you're gonna be able to hearken back to this moment and say, no, I know what my threshold is

[02:16:02] and I can push myself not only from there, but even further and beyond it. So yeah, that was pretty telling too. And bringing it back around at the beginning of this conversation, I think I should make clear that both stories,

[02:16:19] even though we didn't have time to get into it, there were serious PTSD ramifications for both of these individuals. They were absolutely tormented by armchair quarterbacks almost immediately and for years after. They both had significant trauma that clearly affected their relationships. Ada struggled to have healthy partnerships

[02:16:40] for the rest of her life outside of her. Her children adored her, but like she couldn't keep a marriage together. She really struggled to communicate with people. She never opened up and he got a divorce, right? Am I remembering that correctly?

[02:16:54] He got a divorce, but also what's telling, I mean, the organizer of the race, I don't know the man. Obviously he was very upset that it seemed like his race was being discredited, saying that this didn't really happen.

[02:17:08] Morrow just wanted to be the hero of his own movie. This man didn't write his autobiography until three years ago. This happened in 1994. He had quite a few opportunities in the meantime to try and capitalize on this experience. Right, right. Yeah, so stories of resilience are great,

[02:17:32] but also behind every resilient person is somebody who needs a fucking hug and a little love. So let's absolutely celebrate resilient people and stories, but also like provide them resources and give them more than like a good Anya or an Atta boy

[02:17:47] because like everybody who's resilient is resilient for a reason and they're tired. They're tired. I'm so tired. Very tired. Absolutely. So fucking tired. Yeah, yeah. It's not about us. It's not about us. We certainly heal a lot faster when we have support. So go to therapy guys.

[02:18:03] Yeah, so it's gonna be that time, right Edward? It's that time. All right, Tim, this is the big moment. It's the only way to get into a nice proper cotton thong like you wear on your Friday nights so this cheap polyester one we gave you.

[02:18:16] Is it the tale- It's waiting for me. Are we picking the tale of brutal harrowing Arctic survival or the tale of brutal harrowing Sahara desert survival? I will provide you with my justification afterwards, but I have to choose the Arctic survival story for this iteration. Damn you.

[02:18:44] Yes. Damn you. Yeah. Don't buy Tim's book everyone. No, I'm kidding. Wait, wait, wait, Tarik. It was gonna be okay no matter what. I'm joking. All right, what's your justification? Explain yourself. Prosperi's survival story has a little bit more of a tinge of putting himself in that situation

[02:19:10] in a negative way. You can argue that Ada did the same thing, but she was doing it to get her son tuberculosis treatment. And so that's why she put herself in that situation. It was stated in the story that Prosperi ignored race official guidance

[02:19:31] and a key survival component of if you get lost in the wilderness, sit the fuck down. Don't keep wandering because you could be two miles off the path. But if you keep wandering, you could then end up 20 miles. Especially when you're facing a sandstorm,

[02:19:49] which makes it impossible to navigate. Right. Don't keep running for eight hours. Just get in the sleep bag. Don't run for eight hours, period. Fuck running for eight hours. So he placed the pride and the accolades of potentially seeing, hey, if I'm the only one that runs

[02:20:09] through the sandstorm while everybody else is hunkered down, I could come in first. Versus, hey, if I run through the sandstorm, I may fucking die. Right. Traumatize everybody and myself. He put the pride ahead of the logical side of things. The accolades, of course, to that.

[02:20:29] And then when again, when I evaluated through the pros and cons of what they both did, he made a few more mistakes than I thought Ada did. He did great things, believe it or not, and I can't believe I'm gonna say this,

[02:20:50] but he had the presence of mind to bottle his own urine and keep recycling that, and cook his food in that and everything. That was actually really ingenious. That's delicious. You can distill your own urine and create fresh water out of it, believe it or not.

[02:21:06] So there's that aspect of it, but it seemed like for every one of those, there was something else he did that was bad. Right, points deducted. Yeah, writing SOS in the sand, in giant letters as a plane flies by. That's really, really good. You should do that.

[02:21:29] Setting fire to your own backpack, probably not the best thing because your resources that you have, and he had a pretty decent survival kit in terms of the stuff that he had with him, but now you can't carry all that stuff. Why are you gonna burn your bags?

[02:21:48] You're just hindering yourself, and again, taking in consideration that you might not have been in the right mindset, hallucinating in the middle of a desert, but just stuff like that. The one that really got me was at the end, with the helicopter, so he had a flare gun.

[02:22:10] He shoots off a flare and they didn't see. Okay, great, and now this plane comes around, and I couldn't help myself but laugh, but instead of burning your backpack, why don't you use that signal mirror that you were checking your reflection out in?

[02:22:28] I mean, the number one survival item, at least going back to the 1980s, 1990s military field manuals is a signal mirror because it's like that is going to get you the help above all else. That's what's gonna get you the help from the search and rescue people,

[02:22:55] and so he's like, oh, I had this mirror in my pocket and I used to check myself out after I freaked out the goat girl. So I fired my flare, the helicopter didn't see it. Okay, great, here comes a plane, two options.

[02:23:11] Use a signal mirror, set fire to your backpack. Like, it just- Okay, when you say it like that, it does sound, I didn't even think of that. All right, I'm learning a lot. And then ultimately taken as a whole, probably if I had to give one story

[02:23:32] the harsher environment, it would definitely be Edwards, the Sahara. But he was there 10 days and Ada lived for 703- 703 days. And she lived for 57 in complete isolation, which is, I'm no mathematician, but almost six times longer than he experienced for his entire ordeal.

[02:24:01] So when you start comparing the resiliency aspect that they came through, the mental positivity, the resourcefulness, I came to the conclusion that Kim's story was the winner based on those criteria. All right. Well, I really appreciate that. And I just appreciate winning because after I heard the phrase,

[02:24:27] deep fried cock sandwich, I was like, I'm losing this episode. This doesn't matter, this is fucking hilarious. I mean, if we were judging on comedy, you know. Yeah, you're right, you're right. So Edward- The references to hot piss were just- It's artfully done.

[02:24:43] Tim, you have been a wonderful, fantastic guest. Please tell people where they can get the instructor and where they can see when you're doing cool author things. Sure. So the instructor is available through all of your major booksellers, you know, your Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books A Million,

[02:25:06] all those guys have it. It's even available, it's available online through Target and Walmart, but I haven't seen it in the stores yet. I think you have to reach like a certain number of copies. And there's an audio book of this as well too,

[02:25:19] if you're interested in like- Yeah, I was just about to say there, yep, there is hardcover and audio book and ebook available versions of it. You can find me at trhendricksauthor.com where you learn a little bit more about me and my insanity.

[02:25:38] There is, you can find me on my socials, I'm on Twitter, Instagram, and yes, even TikTok where my daughters horse me on it. It's actually really good for the publishing industry. Yeah, it is. But I don't lip sync or do weird dances or anything like that. Yet, yet.

[02:25:59] Yet. You're not doing it yet. I did do the tortilla challenge, which was a lot of fun. Hitting my daughters upside the head with some fajita sized tortillas. So that was good. I saw you take a blow from a tortilla. So it was mutual. But I digress.

[02:26:16] So on Twitter, I'm at trhendricks and both Instagram and TikTok on at read trhendricks. I would say out of the three, I'm probably the most prevalent on Twitter, but in terms of like book signing events and stuff, probably better on Instagram

[02:26:39] because I'm actually posting like graphics and whatnot versus just what I think are my little witticisms on Twitter. And it would be remiss of me not to say that while the book is available in all the major retailers, it's also available at your independent bookstores.

[02:26:58] And I highly encourage people to support local as much as you support the big guys because there's just this vast network of really awesome independent booksellers still out there and they're trying to make a living as well. So buy two copies, give one to your dad,

[02:27:18] the books dedicated to my dad. So makes a great Father's Day present for those of you in the market. And buy one from an independent bookseller for yourself. There you go. I love that. Perfect. Well, thank you so much. Thank you, Tim.

[02:27:36] And we will see you in the comment section of the things that we post. Yes, you will. Really soon. You guys keep up the good work over there. Thank you so much. Always enjoyable and anything I can do to help support human fuckery, the podcast, not the action.

[02:27:56] Please let me know. And I hope we get to come back and do this again for the sequel. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, buddy. All right. All right, honey, bye. And that's our show for this month. If you like what you've heard

[02:28:14] and want to make sure we can keep producing this show, please start subscribing over on www.patreon.com slash human fuckery. You can also follow us on Instagram at humanfuckerypodcast for free stories, goofy memes and the ability to vote in any episodes where we need a tiebreaker.

[02:28:37] Twitter is at humanfuckerypod, but honestly we don't post much there anymore since Napoleon Bonapartite bought the site and started platforming fascists. So yeah, don't vote for Ron DeSantis. Oh God. And please do leave us a five-star review for the show

[02:28:56] anywhere you're listening to this if you haven't already. We apparently really need those if we ever want to get health insurance. Adulthood is going great. If you hated the show, as always, my name is Ben Shapiro and you can leave that shitty review anywhere podcast stream

[02:29:11] until next month, stay safe, keep it kind and please stay weird.