Part Two: Percy Fawcett: Real-Life Indiana Jones, or Deluded Psychic Racist?

cool zone media welcome back to behind the bastards a podcast about the very worst people in all of history where i just thought i was about to sneeze but i didn't and so we're able to start now as opposed to like three seconds later mazel tov robert unless i sneeze in like a second there's no way to know there's no way to know it's really dusty out there right now what with all the fire everything's on fire yeah you know who's not on fire in like a bad way but in a good way they are being on fire can mean a confusingly wide variety of things hello miriam how are you i'm doing good i'm not on fire um in any way that i'm aware of okay okay neither in a good nor a bad way yeah i don't think so um again yeah like you said it can mean a lot of things so you know i don't want to foreclose on every possibility but yeah that makes that makes sense you know so whether or not you're on fire i hope you're ready to listen to the next part of our series on the life of percy faucet the guy who was probably the most direct inspiration for indiana jones slash just like the archetype of like the gentleman adventurer you know um and who also as we're about to discuss is going to go increasingly crazy uh over the course of this the king is the lord from focus features and the acclaimed director of jason born the king says work harder you work harder starring andrew garfield in a land of kings one man will defy an empire there will be no peace until we are free and ignite a revolution 10 000 rebels converge on london based on the true story behind the legend of robin hood we rule ourselves now the uprising rated r under 17 90 minute without parent only in theater september 10th discovered adobe cinema thinking about selling your car get a real offer worth real money from carmax then take seven days to think it over that's it no haggling no hassles no pressure get all the details and a real offer today at carmax.com want to drive carmax bite into a stacked sandwich made with hero bread and the only thing you'll think is delicious you won't think it has up to 19 grams protein 11 to 32 grams of fiber or just zero to five grams net carbs but it does hero bread no compromises just loaves buns tortillas bagels and noodles packed with flavor right now get 10 off at hero.co with code iheart that's hero.co code iheart all figures per serving of hero bread see nutrition facts on hero.co i need to get across town quickly maybe i should just take a car well what is a ride gonna cost me and that ride might be more expensive than a full grocery run oh wait let me check lyft too real quick before i book a ride this lesson i thought i guess those savings can help me splurge a bit so when you need to get somewhere and don't want to break the bank taking a few seconds to check lyft when you book your next ride could save you money save the money check lyft so when we left him off he had first listened to his mom and broken up with his fiance and then years later gotten back together with her he's converted to buddhism he's become a theosophist and he's gotten really into the occult and after being trained up as an adventurer and working briefly as a spy he's finally wound up back in ceylon in 1903 which he really likes because it's it's this place it's filled with all these buddhist temples it's filled with what he sees as like these people who are seekers of the truth there's a lot of not just like local buddhists but a lot of like white people who are really into the occult are in ceylon and moving because it's really hip to travel to the east and travel to these parts of the world where there's people who are like buddhists and hindus because because a lot of these victorian age and like slightly post-victorian age white people are really into like co-opting little bits of of different eastern religions and sort of like tacking them on to these pieces of like theosophy and other spiritualist like belief systems that are starting to be cobbled together as like a hobby this is like a hobby for a lot of people right it stays fashionable for a while it stays fashionable and percy's kind of using his military career as a way to also further his hobby in this way like he's really happy to be stationed here with his wife and nina seems to be as well she was born there so many descriptions of percy fawcett's life start uh like depict the beginning of his career as a boundary surveyor as if it suddenly ignites a desire for exploration in grand's book chapter 8 into the amazon goes straight from percy returning to england in 1902 to him then being in bolivia like six or seven years later which is like where the first adventure from the movie the lost city of z starts too and that leaves out years of his life where he was like getting increasingly into buddhism and theosophy in ceylon and it's kind of important because that sets the stage for what's going to happen next so from what i can tell despite percy's aptitude for surveying he doesn't seem to have been particularly drawn to it as a career at this point in 1903 his chief interest was a different sort of exploration the search for lost treasures and esoteric truths via meditation and the search for lost treasures and esoteric truths and other forms of spiritual exercise and because percy's talking a lot about finding lost treasure i think people draw this too much to like archaeology and think that he's often literally seeking like lost cities of gold that's not the truth as much as he's speaking more metaphorically about these kind of spiritual treasures that he wants to uncover by finding places that are supposedly lost so like the the real treasure was in fact within you all the time yeah but but also the real treasure is going to make you and your son gods he's not selfless in where he thinks this is going to bring him right it's still crazy but it is different yeah um in the movie percy's depicted as an ambitious man weighed down by his father's reputation who's just like wet ready for any chance to become like a military hero and the real faucet is exhausted by military life of military life by 1903 but he was so good at cricket he's so good at cricket um but he's made a vow not to kill anybody and cricket's only good for killing right right yeah a.j lee who read through percy's many letters uh during this time describes faucet is still captivated by ceylon and his understanding of buddhism in fact he may have returned there for what we would today call therapeutic purposes lee describes him as quote being captivated by the island's magic and mysticism and with the help of fakirs and holy men he began to extricate himself from the manacles of his life and he began to extricate himself from the manacles of his life and happy childhood so in this account too it's not just that he wants to learn magic to become a powerful wizard which is definitely part of it um but it's that he wants he's he's working through some shit and like these these buddhist holy men and these other sort of like mystics that are all kind of clustered in ceylon are at least giving him an opportunity to like talk about his childhood and that's not really a thing men of his stature get to do back in england men will literally go across the world to hunt for gold before going to therapy and then trick themselves into going to therapy into going to therapy because the real gold is within you all the time right that's sort of what percy's doing the real gold is figuring out that your mom was kind of the worst your mom was kind of the worst yeah so percy and nina both grow obsessed with eastern mysticism during this time she's also really into this stuff they're a legitimately good match she gets pregnant in ceylon and percy would later claim that before they announced to anyone that she was pregnant she was pregnant that she's pregnant quote a deputation of soothsayers and buddhists somehow found out you're you're supposed to believe that they like it was magic or something that they found out that he was going they that his wife was going to have a baby and they all show up to demand an audience with him because they've made predictions there's a prophecy around this baby and i'm going to quote from that didn't happen uh aj lee's book yeah that didn't after the usual yeah yeah i don't believe this really happened either but okay i'm gonna read you what percy says happened after the usual formalities i was informed i was about to become the father of a son whose appearance was minutely described i suggested that it was obvious that something of this sort might reasonably be anticipated but that a daughter would upset the prophecy no i was to have a son he was the reincarnation of a very advanced spirit and my wife and i had been specially selected etc etc i mean that's percy writes in the etc etc bro married married couple predicted to have children child in early 1900s we're we're at what 19 1903 at this point yeah yeah like you're really not you're really they describe a mole that jack has perfectly so sophie i'm sorry but they describe the mole that means he's a reincarnation of a powerful crazy thing that people have a mole wow yeah it's super funny only baby with a mole actually yeah actually never happened before uh their first son jack was born in 1903 and he was probably yeah tom holland and was probably named after helena blavatsky because blavatsky's preferred nickname was also jack which is kind of why i think they named their son jack uh the faucets make a big deal out of the fact that jack is born on the anniversary of buddha's birth although percy then explorings that like well buddha's birth is like was over there's a range of days that they all celebrate because they don't know exactly what one it is and he was born on the one that everyone says is the most likely of the days and i'm like okay okay okay okay okay okay this very special baby was born on all those days yeah he was born on every one of buddha's birthdays However many he's got in Ceylon, I don't know. I don't believe this either. Percy would later write that until he went to school, he was intermittently clairvoyant. Jack, right? That like his son was clairvoyant as a child until the school beat it out of him, basically. And he went on to add, and this is from a letter that Percy wrote to a magazine called The Theosophist in 1913. Both parents are psychic. He's like writing about his son. He's like, yeah, he was intermittently clairvoyant. By the way, both me and his mom are psychic. Like, that does not come up enough in the Percy Fawcett literature that he desperately believed he was psychic and wrote about it constantly. Yeah, no, that should have to, we should have to like, that should be one of the first things you learn about a person, I think. People really should learn that. You should also have to read the like three paragraphs or something of him explaining how because his son Jack was born in Asia, he has slanted eyes. Oh, no. That's Percy. That's Percy. Look, it's pretty rough. So from this point on, Nina and Percy would both refer to Jack as the special one. I'm sorry. I don't want to be distracted by this little racist thing. Let it out. Yeah. Did other people, sort of two questions here. Did other people also think that the son looked like he might have, for example, had one Asian parent? And are we sure that- I haven't heard that. It's not impossible, but I don't think that's the case. That would be very funny. I mean, I think it's probably just bad scientific racism. There's pictures of Jack. I've looked at pictures of Jack. I think this was him saying, as a baby, his eyes were slanted, so you could tell that he had the spirit of a great Tibetan mystic or whoever, whatever kind of mystic. I don't know which country he thought the spirit came from, but I think it was the spirit of a great Eastern mystic. But Jack's white. That's also important, that you are aware Jack is white. I'm looking at this image that I've quickly Googled. No. Percy's racial politics are fascinating. Yeah. We don't make them like this anymore. No. It would take a while to unpack all of the, because he was born in Asia. Yeah. Wow. There's a lot going on here. He and Nina would both refer to their first son, Jack, as the special one or the great one. And you get the feeling, because his youngest son wrote about being kind of, like, Jack wasn't great. Like, first off, let me just say, he was kind of a dick. He wasn't even as funny as people think. Like, his youngest brother seems to have been kind of pissed by this. Yeah. I mean, I can see how that would happen. Yeah. The special one and the other one. The special one. Yeah. Look, we love all our children, but we only think one of you was the magical reincarnated spirit of a wizard, you know, or a mystic or whatever. I love all my children equally. The special one and the other ones. Also, Percy is seeing, like, a Buddhist mystic is indistinguishable from Merlin. Like, let's be honest. Like, that's, I'm not saying that's accurate to the Buddhist mysticism, but that's what Percy thinks about these people. Um, in 1906, Percy is called up for duty by the new president of the Royal Geographic Society, a no-nonsense military man named Sir George Taubman Goldie. In the lost city of Z, this is how Grand describes him. Famous for his keen intelligence and volatile temper, he had an almost single-handedly imposed the British Empire's control over no-nonsense people. He was an unrepentant atheist who championed Darwin's theory of evolution. Goldie is my favorite fact about this guy is he apparently always kept poison on his person so that he could kill himself if he were rendered handicapped immediately. Like, that's the kind of dude that this man is. So just shockingly weird men are only the only people who reach high levels in the RGS. Like, all of the maps were made by crazy people. So not carrying poison because he was, like, behind enemy lines and, like, if he was caught and tortured, but just, like, if he fell down and broke his hip real bad. If I have to be in a wheelchair, I want to be out immediately. Okay, got it. It's got to be on site for Goldie. He will not handle being taken care of. No one is caring for Goldie. There was an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation where Worf tried to do this. He does have Worf's attitude. Yes, that's right. Worf tries to get his son to stab him to death. He falls when a box falls on him. If you want to imagine Sir George Taubman Goldie calling in Percy for this meeting as Michael Dorn, I won't stop you. And you won't be entirely wrong. That's the direction I'm going with this. Yeah, yeah. All right. So Michael Dorn calls Percy in and asks if he's ever been to Bolivia. Goldie shows him a map and he says it's full of blank spaces and explains that Bolivia, Brazil, and Peru are all up in arms over the precise extent of their borders. Now, we just did episodes on the dictator of Paraguay, Francisco Solano Lopez, and the war of the Triple Alliance that occurs not far from here. And it's a border dispute. It helps lead to it. In Gran's book, The Lost City of Z, Gran wrongly writes the boundary issues between Paraguay and its neighbors caused the war. That's that's not true. There were boundary issues that were inherent to conflicts between those countries previously, but the war was caused because Francisco Solano Lopez was a fucking maniac who wanted to get involved in Uruguay. In politics and then invaded Brazil, Argentina and tried to invade Uruguay. It was not caused by a boundary dispute. Anyway, I just, I had to correct Gran on that as well. Well, a boundary dispute usually means more than like, oh, we thought the line was over here and you thought it was a half mile this way. Like it's usually more like we want more of your stuff. Yeah, we, we really want these mines is generally, and that's what's happening here, right? It's mines and rubber is generally what's, what's at, like the root of these, but also when the boundaries were set up, people couldn't make good maps. Like we didn't, we didn't have the ability to really make high quality maps. And so the boundaries were also not fixed. Like it very much is a problem that was going to need to be solved. The first thing Percy does here is good. Like it was necessary for some motherfucker to get out to and map some of these rivers that it been. When I say he was mapping them for the first time with that, the way that's depicted in the movie is he's going into a place, like, no one's ever been back from that's nonsense. There were stations all up and down the river. People knew how to sail it. That doesn't mean there were maps of it, right? That you could like set boundary lines on. Those are two different kinds of things. It's very possible to live somewhere for hundreds and thousands of years and not know the coordinates of it. Right, exactly. That's what needs to be done. If someone needs to go through and do that pain in the ass work and actually lay out where the boundaries are. Right. Um, and so the British part of, why the RGS is getting involved here, even though none of these are British territory, is that there's a lot of like money involved in particularly the rubber trade at this point. And the British are worried there's going to be a war over some of these boundary disputes as there are periodically. And they're like, well, maybe if we can get this all mapped out, we can settle that ahead of time. And both countries are willing to have the British do it because they're seen as like a neutral party. Right. Um, so in Grant's book, he describes the area that, uh, Percy is going to map as several hundred miles of nearly impassable terrain. And he continues with language that is going to do like this is very clearly written expecting there to be a movie made of your book, the lost city of Z quote, the expedition would take up to two years and there was no guarantee that its members would survive. Disease was rampant in the region and the Indians who had been attacked mercilessly by rubber trappers murdered interlopers. And this is how the movie depicts things to like, as soon as Percy and his small team, including, including Robert Pattinson set off on like this primitive rickety raft down the river. There, they're ambushed by Indians with bows. One man is wounded and he falls into the water and he gets tangled in a fishing net and the piranha eat him alive. Oh shit. That's a fantasy. That's a complete fantasy. Both depictions of this voyage are complete fantasies. Both David Grand's depiction in his book and the depiction of the movie made off of his book. Now, some of that is because Percy Fawcett lied about his own adventures. He was a huge fan of adventure novels and he couldn't resist making claims, not in his, his actual, like the paperwork. He, like submitted to the RGS was always really good. Most people seem to agree, but he would give public speeches and he would like write articles where he would make lavish claims like that. He had shot an attacking Anaconda 49 feet long and the spine with his 44, 10 feet below its wicked head and killed it right before it could murder them all. And like, first off it's, I mean, it's theoretically possible for an Anaconda to get that big, but they haven't like on record been quite as big as the one he was claiming. And also they don't act that way. I found a critique of Fawcett by Hugh Thompson, another veteran. Thompson is like a real explorer like today. Who's led, I think it's Peru is where he's done a shitload of expeditions, but he's led a lot of expeditions into the jungle. And he writes, quote, those who've traveled on the Amazon know that it is in reality mundane, so before it, and almost a dreamlike very little happens slowly. It is perfectly possible to travel for days without seeing any wildlife, let alone an Anaconda, which would slither away at the sound of oncoming canoes. Like it's just a fantasy like, and there are crazy ass animals in the Amazon, but you don't see them because they don't want to be near you. They're scared of people usually, right? You have to kind of go out of your way and they're not generally going to attack you unless you're a huge fucking asshole. The thing that's going to kill you is the same thing that's going to kill you in most places of the world where people die from the environment. It's little bugs that give you diseases. Yeah. Or like you're not going to get murdered on your foot and die of gang. And it, and it gets infected because of the water and your foot rots off. Yeah. One thing every actual jungle explorer I have ever read from will point out is that if your narrative of an Amazon exploration has stories about being constantly attacked by deadly fauna, it's a lie because that doesn't really happen very often. Fawcett's first real-life trip was mapping the Upper Heath River. The movie shows him mapping the Rio Verde first. He doesn't do that until years later. Here's how an actual world-renowned expert on the region, John Henning, described Fawcett's first trip mapping the Heath. This survey was the best thing Fawcett did, but he described it as boring because the new frontier was all along rivers. This was the height of the great Amazon rubber boom, so he and his team cruised from one comfortable rubber baraka to the next, taking their regular measurements. Again, the movie shows them, like, fighting off death at every single turn. In reality, they're going down to different places that all have food and, like, a pretty comfortable raft. There's people all around. All right. All they're doing is just some math, basically, right? And Percy's work here does make history, but in the rather pedestrian sense of, like, oh, well, we finally have a map for this area that we didn't have a map before, rather than, like, well, this bold adventurer carved a path through the howling wilderness to make this great discovery. And in the movie, at the end of this first voyage, he finds a bunch of pottery shards and ruins in the jungle, which is what leads—convinces him that there's this lost city in the Amazon. That's not what happens. In reality, Fawcett— In reality, Fawcett does, once he comes back to England, he gets famous for doing this because it was good work and no one had before. And he was also good at, like, self-mythologizing, right? Once he gets back to England, he's not just telling people about the actual mapping he did. He's, like, he's judging it up a little bit. He's making it a better story than it really was. Anacondas. Anacondas and shit. He gives at least one lecture prior to the outbreak of World War I in which he discusses seeing what might have been ancient ruins in the rainforest. Now, we now know there are— There are ruins in the area Fawcett said that there were ruins. But they're not stone ruins, which is what he always described and was looking for. They're like earthworks. And now that we have LIDAR, we can see where some of them would have been, right? So we do know that there was large-scale habitation in this part of the Amazon previously that caught, like, European contact. And that is kind of what Fawcett was saying. And he's—so he's sort of right. But again, as I'm going to talk about everything he believed about that habitation. Now, one thing the movie does get right is that once Percy gets a taste of the jungle, he starts going back, right? He leaves his family for, like, a year or so to do, you know, this first mission. And he keeps going back. And he just abandons them for years at a time to hang out in the jungle, mostly with a bunch of dying men. And that is accurate. That's what Percy does from, like, the next eight—most of the next eight years leading up to World War I is he just keeps heading back to the jungle to do different, like, surveying and explorational missions. Like, he cannot— He cannot abandon his family often enough or long enough for his taste. Like, there is no amount of being with his family that he will not immediately get the fuck out of England to go back to the Amazon for. You cannot make this man raise his kids. He won't do it. So he did learn something from his own father after all. Yeah. He picked that up from his dear old dad. Incredible. For his dad, it was gambling and alcoholism. And for Percy, it's exploring the Amazon. Square miles of Amazon and helping to redraw the map of South America, painstakingly working his way inwards over years of voyages, cataloging exotic species until he had explored as much of the region as anyone. That's how grand describes Percy and its nonsense. He is spending a lot of time in that part of the world, but Percy only surveyed about 300 kilometers of Bolivian rivers. And as Henning writes, Fawcett's own writings reveal no special interest in flora or fauna, let alone his collecting or cataloging rare species. So he's just not doing a lot of the stuff Grant is. He's doing a pretty pedestrian job, or he's getting up to complete nonsense looking for ruins that absolutely aren't there, right? There's kind of two things that Percy is into. One of them is semi-useful, and one of them is getting everyone killed for no reason at all. I don't know how he's failing to find these ruins when, as we know, he's a powerful psychic. That's right. His psychic powers have not let him keep just leading people in circles in the jungle until they die. You're starved. Crazy stuff. Come on, man. Yeah. And one of the things that's very silly about Grant's book is that he describes basically that, like, while Fawcett's continuing to try to get deeper and deeper into the jungle to explore more, he's opened up the jungle to other explorers. And so now he's got to compete with these, like, less skilled but better financed amateurs who don't know the jungle like he does. And they're tramping around and ruining things, you know, at best, right? And this is—I want to read you one paragraph of Grant. I want to read you one paragraph of Grant's book describing some of these other explorers, right, who are only able to get into the Amazon because Percy Fawcett opens it up. There was the Brazilian colonel and part Indian orphan Candido Mariana da Silva Rondon who had helped lay telegraph lines across the jungle, lost a toe to piranhas, and started the Indian protection service. And, again, he describes this as a guy who's able to, like, do all these good things because Percy helps to open up the Amazon. That's really fucked up because Rondon, like, Candido Mariana da Silva Rondon is, like, almost— He's inarguably the greatest explorer in Brazilian history. By the time Fawcett got famous, Rondon had already spent 17 years straight exploring southwest Brazil and, in fact, discovered so much of southwest Brazil that the state of Rondonia is named after him. He said he lost a toe to a piranha. Like, that's pretty legit. He actually got attacked by a piranha. Like, not in the movie. Like, actually. Not in the movie. Like, for realsies. Henning describes— Henning describes Rondon's expeditions as having made Fawcett's look like a jaunt up the Thames. Just some beautiful British shade right there. So, at least Grand does correctly credit Rondon with founding the Indian protection service, whose noble motto was, die if you must, but never kill. Right? That's the motto of the Indian protection service. The Fawcett of fiction would have agreed with this. His belief in the city of Z is depicted as being fueled by a belief that indigenous Amazonians were more intelligent. And it is true that Percy was less racist against Indians than most British explorers of his station and era. That's probably fair. But Grand turns this into some great history of, like, enlightened first contact and credits him with, quote, discovery of so many previously unknown Indians who taught him their languages, their herbal medicines, and their hunting methods. In reality, Fawcett never learned a single native tongue. He never wrote about learning native hunting. He never learned about hunting or farming methods. And he also murdered a native guy and covered it up. Here's Henning again. Quote, Fawcett's attitudes towards indigenous peoples were contradictory. He deplored the rubber men's cruelty to Indians, whom they pressed into forced labor. He admired the three tribes whose villages he entered. But he could also lapse into extreme racism, talking about dangerous, repulsive cannibals, degenerate indigenees, or villainous savages, scarcely evolved beyond the level of beasts, whereas others were robust and fair people of civilized origin. David Grand, is as perplexed as anyone by such contradictions. He feels that Fawcett was impressed by the eugenic movement of the early 20th century, but struggled to reconcile what he observed with everything he had been taught and could not rid himself of the pernicious disease of race. Grand does not quote the worst of Fawcett's racism. When he described Mariaxi warriors as hairy men with sloping skulls and long arms of Neanderthals, unlike any indigenous people, Fawcett allowed his team to fire into the air to frighten off these great ape-like brutes. But when Grand discovered the journal of companion Henry Costin, this revealed that one shot had been aimed at a Maracoxi and hit him in the stomach. Fawcett, therefore, doctored his official report to the RGS and concealed the truth his entire life. Wow. Jesus. That's real. So he sucks. So basically, Fawcett, first off, lied about this group, these group of Maracoxi warriors, and described them as looking like ape men, basically, when like, well, we just know that they aren't because those people exist and we know what they look like, right? They're just people out in the jungle. And also, and Grand describes him as like shooting up into the air. Fawcett describes himself shooting up into the air. But his companion, Henry Costin, played by Robert Pattinson in the movie, is like, no, he fucking murdered a dude. He murdered a dude and he made us all lie about it. Yeah, he sucks. But we didn't want to say shit. It seems like his, you know, this sort of combination of like, oh, there are these enlightened people in the jungle at some point in ancient times, and now there's just all of these people I will say racist things about. It does not feel unconnected to the spiritualism Blavatsky stuff where there's like. Super connected. Where it's like, where you can romanticize and idealize a completely fucking made up group that you might sort of have like a, that might like be located somewhere in real geography and like link to real stuff, but not actually like. Exactly. You're not allowing them to like self represent or you're making them up entirely. And it doesn't actually lead to. To you treating well the people who are currently living there. Yeah, like the reality of Fawcett isn't that he was like, had an enlightened view of what like ancient indigenous people were capable of. It's that, well, he believed that a certain number of them were basically descended from white people who had made a civilization here before that had collapsed for some reason, or that they had ascended into some sort of spiritual realm because he thought there was a portal hidden in the jungle that he was looking for. This is what we're all building towards in the Percy Fawcett story. But it can sound on the surface when he's talking about like the great. The great achievements of these Indians, like he's actually like woke and he is for sure not. He's just a lunatic, guys. I mean, calling them apes. and murdering them and covering it up is not. Just shot a man in the gut for nothing. Yeah. And the thing where he claimed to have learned stuff from indigenous people but never actually bothered to study them in any meaningful way, it's like he is somebody who thinks that the idea of being taught secrets by indigenous people sounds very cool, and he would like to be the kind of person who people assume has been taught secrets by indigenous people, but he's not actually interested in what any indigenous person has to say. He's not going to talk to them. They have weird foreheads or something. What did he say? Slope? He doesn't like the shape of their skulls. No. In reality, all of the ancient mysticism that he attributes to them came from a Russian lady and his brother. Yes. He's like, yeah, it sure would be cool to talk to them. I bet they think all the same things as that Russian liar, but I'm not going to talk to them because, again, do not like the shape of their skulls. Oh, man. Anyway, you know whose skulls I like? The skulls of these advertisers. Bring them to me. Wait. Yeah. Yeah. This ad is brought to you by Veeve Healthcare, the makers of Devato Dolutegravir Lamivudine. If you're living with HIV, do learn about Devato. Devato is a complete HIV treatment by prescription only for some people 12 and older. Your doctor will determine if Devato is right for you. Most HIV pills contain three or four medicines. Devato is as effective. No other complete HIV pill contains fewer medicines than Devato. It is unknown if Devato is safe and effective if you have HIV and hepatitis B. If you have hep B, don't stop Devato without talking to your doctor, as it may get worse or harder to treat. Don't take Devato if you're allergic to its ingredients or taking dofetilide due to serious or life-threatening side effects. If you have a rash or allergic reaction symptoms, stop Devato and get medical help right away. Other serious or life-threatening side effects include severe liver problems and lactic acid bacteria. If you're female or obese, you may be more at risk. Tell your doctor about your medicines or supplements, medical conditions, liver or kidney problems, pregnancy, breastfeeding, or planned pregnancy. Do ask your doctor about fewer medicines. Visit devato.com or call 1-877-844-8872. The king is the lord. From Focus Features and the acclaimed director of Jason Bourne. The king says work harder, you work harder. Starring Andrew Garfield. We've given you head off! In a land of kings, one man will defy an empire. There will be no peace until we are free. And ignite a revolution. 10,000 rebels converge on London. Based on the true story behind the legend of Robin Hood. We rule ourselves now. The Uprising. Rated R. Under $17.90 without parent. Only in theaters September 10th. Discovered at Dolby Cinema. Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills. But it turns out, that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes. May slow when network is busy. See terms. This is Jenny Garth from I Choose Me with Jenny Garth. We spend a lot of time talking about our health. But sexual health should be part of that conversation too. I know because I've experienced low libido myself. And it can lead. It can leave you feeling frustrated and wondering what happened to that part of me. That's why I started taking Addi. Non-hormonal Addi is the only FDA-approved treatment for both pre- and post-menopausal women under 65. Clinically proven to increase sexual desire. Addi helped me reconnect with my desire. And Addi is as little as $20 per month with commercial insurance coverage. Addi, flibanserin, is a prescription medicine for women under 65 with low sexual desire that is distressing to them. Addi is for low desire that happens in all situations and is not caused by a medical condition, relationship issue, or medicines. Addi is not for men or to enhance sexual performance. Addi can cause severe low blood pressure and fainting. Your risk is higher if you drink alcohol close to your dose. Don't take Addi if you have liver problems, take certain medicines, or are allergic to any of its ingredients. Before taking Addi, tell your doctor about all the medicines you take, if you have had any mental health conditions, are pregnant, planning pregnancy, or breastfeeding. Side effects may include dizziness, nausea, tiredness, trouble sleeping, and dry mouth. Coverage for Addi. Is for eligible patients only. Restrictions apply. See terms and conditions. Visit Addi.com. That's A-D-D-Y-I dot com to learn more, including important warnings. And we're back. Ah, so the reality of Fawcett's journeys and competence have been greatly exaggerated, not just by David Gran. I think this has established that like Gran left out a lot of important stuff and also just added a lot of stuff that. Fawcett himself didn't even put in the narrative. For his part, Fawcett bragged about his own toughness constantly, claiming to feel none the worse for wear after losing 53 pounds in a disastrous expedition. And that's often, like, you'll see that fact mentioned as like evidence of how hardcore this guy was. Like, this was a real man. You know, he could really take punishment. That's what it took to be a great explorer. No, it's not. He lost 53 pounds because he was a fucking idiot who got a bunch of people killed for no reason. He was planning an expedition really badly. And now we're going to talk about. So in the movie, it shows his first expedition as being, which was like, his first actual expedition was up the Heath River. And as we've discussed, it was not at all that interesting or harrowing. The journey that most of that first journey in the movie is based on is a 1908 trip. That's the only true expedition that Percy Fawcett ever planned. And it was a five-week trip to survey the River Verde for the state of Brazil. This is the only. This is the only time that he actually, like, planned an expedition into an area that had not been mapped or charted and tried to map or chart something. As Henning wrote in an article for Spectator, the preparations were appalling. Fawcett took minimal supplies since he was accustomed to being fed by rubber stations. This was the end of the dry season with the river at its lowest, so they soon had to abandon their boat and continue on foot. After only a week, all food was exhausted and they were really starving. Fawcett casually remarked that five out of his six peons died from the effects of this five-week disaster. This was the only expedition he led into unexplored territory. And in the movie, in, like, his second or third expedition, he goes back with this famous explorer that he actually did go on an exploration with, this guy who had been an Arctic explorer, and they actually did have a big falling apart. And the movie shows this guy is, like, destroying and wasting all of their rations. And I just love that in Fawcett's actual worst expedition, he just didn't think to bring them. I. Like, you said he lost. He lost, like, 53 pounds or whatever. If you're losing 53 pounds on a five-week trip, you fucked that trip up. That's crazy. You're really bad at planning, man. Like, I'm not a great backpacker, but I think I'd do better than that. My God. And he's just. And, like, the people working for him, who he, like, doesn't seem to be talking about a lot. I'm sure carrying all his shit and maybe him sometimes are just dying. And he's like, eh, what can you do? Just dropping like flies. What can you do? I didn't bring food. I thought there'd be people to. Hand me food. It just proves how hardcore I am, that all of my people I'm responsible for are dying. It just shows how good at this I am, actually. Oh, so much of his reputation for toughness comes from the fact that he survived starving to death because he himself did not bring enough food repeatedly. Like, it's very funny. Fawcett kept going back to the Amazon, though. Even after this disastrous trip, he would not stop going and he would not stop writing breathless articles and giving speeches about his harrowing journeys with nightmare encounters of deadly insects and creatures and Indians that he'd survived. Hugh Thompson describes Fawcett's public image pre-war this way. Fawcett self-mythologized, presenting jungle journeys as if they were Homeric odysseys. He was inspired in his descriptions by adventure novels such as Jules Verne's La Giganta and the works of H. Ryder Haggard. All featured trusty companions, unreliable natives, and clues given by some ancient chronicle. The relationship between Edwardian writers and explorers was a symbiotic one. In other words, Fawcett's framing of. Fawcett's framing of his own life and the things he's trying to do in the jungle are inspired by fiction. He's not a scientist most of the time, really ever past those first couple of journeys. He's a crank who thinks he's in a novel. He's kind of LARPing. He's LARPing, yeah. Paying people to, like, come along and pretend with him that they are doing an adventure, except those people are getting killed. He wants to be Alan Quartermain. Yeah, he keeps getting people killed to do it. Not a real man. Percy was in central Bolivia in September of 1914 when word came through that his old buddy, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, hadn't made it through his last trip and there was going to be a World War I thing starting up soon, so he probably better get home. A World War I thing. Yeah, yeah. Everybody knows. Got to get home for World War I. Don't want to miss that. Don't want to miss World. That would have been a good time to stay in the jungle, to be honest. That World War I thing. Got to go right back. I don't even care if there's food. Better than the front. Oh, my goodness. I would take starving in the jungle over the trenches. Yeah, no, for sure. Yeah, easily. You can even lie about how hard it was. You can even lie about it later. In one of the few passages where he is far too kind to Fawcett, Henning writes this about Percy's time at war. He'd hurried home and by January 1915 was back in the artillery. In his late 40s, he was too old. for frontline service, but he fought a good war, ending as a lieutenant colonel. This is Henning trying to be nice to Percy Fawcett because actually Henning knows that this isn't true. I think he was just trying to be polite. Fought a good war is such a like. He did not. He fought. He did not. It sounds like it sounds like, you know, when when the kid like strikes out in a baseball game, you're like, no, you did. You did good. Like, yeah, try. Yeah. Try. More accurate. Fought a good war is such. Yeah, that's how that's usually what people describe is like, well, he did his he did fine, you know, in World War One. The movie goes kind of crazy. It shows him leading a charge across no man's land during the Battle of the Somme. And again, he was an artillery man. He stayed behind the lines. He was not charging into the fucking no man's land. He wasn't running at German machine gun nests, guys. He actually shot a German anaconda. Yeah, he shot a German anaconda right in the belly. Yeah. As Henning stated, he stayed behind the lines, but he did not do what anyone would call fighting a good war. During research for the book. Zill that never was author A.J. Lee's happened by chance on a copy of a book titled Tommy, the British soldier on the Western Front. And as he's just doing research on Fawcett, he's thumbing through this completely unrelated book and he sees Fawcett's name listed in the index. And he's like, well, I should probably look into that, right? If I'm going to be writing a book about the guy. Here's a quote from his book. I leafed through to the relevant page dealing with the problems encountered by the British artillery and quelling the German heavy guns and read. Perhaps the most notorious problem. It came in sixth core in late 1916 when the Amazon explorer Colonel Percy Fawcett arrived to take up the new post of core counter battery colonel. He immediately declared that he was not in the least bit interested in the innovative work being done on the detection of German guns by flash spotting and sound ranging. The only counter battery shots which he would allow were those against targets clearly visible from British lines or those he had personally detected on his Ouija board. Fuck yes. Oh, my God. He's using these fucking idiots, these dipshits who serve under Percy Fawcett are like, oh, Colonel, we found that when the gun fires, if you count how much time happens between seeing the flash and hearing the explosion and then it landing, you can determine the distance and use that to directly determine the position of the German guns and thus shoot at them with our own guns and take them out. And Percy says, you're a fucking idiot. I've got a Ouija board. Like, that's literally what he's doing. Percy's incredible. It's so fucking funny. Fuck your math. I've got a board game I can use to talk to ghosts. Trying to spot the German guns and count how far they are away? No, we'll talk to ghosts about it. They told me where a city in the jungle is. It's hard to hear the Ouija board sometimes over the sounds of all the men I've led to death in the jungle. But I think he's saying there's a gun over there. Incredible. So I got to say, when I found when I came across this fact, that's what made me decide to do an episode. On Percy Fawcett. The fact that he's there at the front in the fucking 1916, trying to spot German cannons with a Ouija board. Beautiful stuff. And that it's happening as an actual technique for this exists is amazing. And historians wrote about it. It's not like you're out at sea before they have radar and you're like trying to guess where other where enemy ships are. It's like, no, no, we have a way to do this. You're fucking around with a Ouija board. You can actually. You can actually triangulate the distance of artillery in a number of ways. But OK, we're just doing nonsense. All right. And Lee's when he finds this fact in this book, he writes to John Henning and Henning, who had written like, well, Percy fought a good war. And under this questioning, Henning kind of breaks down and admits like, so actually, my dad served under Fawcett in World War One. And maybe I have a couple of reasons to be annoyed by the guy other than Grant's book. And so Henning's father served under Fawcett and another. With another officer named Bragg and the two, quote, despaired when they learned that the mad psychic Fawcett had added non-existent German gun emplacements to their highly accurate positions. In other words, Henning's dad and this other guy were trying to use like math to find out where the German guns were. And Fawcett just kept sticking more pins in and being like, the ghosts have revealed another gun emplacement to me. Such a cool guy. I love it. How did this guy not get shot in the back by his own men? He really was like the like the prime target for getting shot in the back. By his own men. No officer ever deserved to be fragged more by his own guys. Unbelievable. Like, like, really amazing. He made it out. Yeah, it's astonishing. So after the war, Percy only grows more obsessed with his lost city. He'd given exactly one less lecture to the RGS before the war in which he discussed the possibility of ancient ruins in the Amazon. As Jason Colavito summarizes, Fawcett's public proclamations on the lost city of Z were fairly sober. He spoke of the possibility of. A monumental city akin to those of Mesoamerica or the Inca. And that might seem like kind of plausible because there are these big stone cities that are really fucking cool and crazy looking and other jungles. Right. Why couldn't there be something like that in the Amazon? And so like that makes sense to people. And Percy has another piece of evidence that he's able to pull up. He's found by this point a report from 1753 published by a Portuguese explorer who had run into what he described as a city in the jungle deep in. The Amazon. Percy had found it found this on like this document like in in some like government files in Rio de Janeiro and he brought it forward and he would put this forward as like evidence that no, no, there are credible accounts from white explorers that they found something in the jungle that resembles this city I've been talking about. And this account talks about this large opulent city made out of stone. There's an entrance gate with these three huge arches and it's all it's covered in hieroglyphics of this indecipherable alphabet nearly all. Of the Fawcett myth today centers on this 1753 report, which Fawcett learns about after the war. This is a real report. It does exist. Other people have seen it. Like it's been basically everyone who writes a book about him, like goes to the library where it's stored and looks at this fucking thing as if it's going to bring them more details. And this is the an account by a Portuguese fortune hunter who goes searching in the Brazilian jungle for rumored lost gold mines. The party allegedly spent like 10 years in the jungle and never found anything. And one might argue. Their reports of a fantastical lost city that they brought back no evidence of might just have been an attempt to save face. Like, well, we all were starving in the jungle for fucking years. But yeah, there's a there's some stone stuff there. Sure. Did he maybe write this while he was trying to secure funding for the next expedition? Maybe he wanted to get some money out of someone. Yeah, whatever the truth, the fantastic city described in this paper is unlike anything Percy Fawcett or anyone else has ever uncovered in the Amazon. Jason Colavito, who wrote an article. Percy Fawcett, victim of a theosophical obsession, provides a translation in a summary of the sights of this purported city. Quote, A black stone column of extraordinary greatness and atop it the statue of an ordinary man with one hand on his left hip and the right arm extended, pointing the index finger to the north pole. Another statue depicted a beardless youth crowned with laurel. A great temple was a work of such amazing artistry that the writer was left in awe. Beyond the city was a river leading to a field of great tombs, all covered in writing. Much later, Barry Fell would declare the writing. Based on hand-drawn copies in the manuscript, Ptolemaic Egyptian, and the city therefore classical. Right? So that's this report of, like, this Egyptian-almost-looking city with hieroglyphics that are clearly of Western origin, you know? Yeah. A youth crowned with laurel sounds a little. Yeah. Okay. Doesn't sound like anything in the Amazon, but sure. Yeah. As Henning noted in two articles of his own, anyone with experience in the Amazon finding a city of this description there would be impossible. The first thing that probably stands out to most. Most of us is these claims of hieroglyphic writing. In his article, Jason Colavito accuses Grant of misleading his readers in a description of the report. Quote, He edits the manuscript to remove all elements of the fantastic, listing only stone archways, a statue, roads, and a temple. He makes the city seem plausible by removing the improbable. And in a separate critique for the Times Literary Supplement, Henning accuses Grant of worse obfuscation than this. To bolster the notion that there might be a lost stone city in the Amazon forests, Grant quotes from one of my books, a German-led exhibition. A German-led exhibition in the 16th century that saw a large town that contained golden objects. What he does not make clear is that this was Philip von Hutten's expedition of 1543 in the northern Andes of Colombia, and that the town was of the usual thatch and the gold was musica. When Grant himself visited the upper Zingu River, he met the Amazon anthropologist Michael Heckenberger, who was excavating causeways and concentric ramparts around the current Kukiru village. Heckenberger explained to him why ruins of a stone city will never be found in lowland Amazonia. Stone is rare in a rainforest, whereas timber and. Thatcher's superabundant, but are perishable to termites and to decay, right? Right, I mean, you mentioned. We know there were cities. That they did earthworks, because. Exactly. And that makes sense, whereas quarrying stone in the Amazon would be pretty hard, I imagine. It's just not going to happen, really, in the extent you need for a massive stone city. And Grant leaves out a lot of details that would make this seem less plausible, and make it clear that Fawcett isn't looking for a real place. He is looking for a fantasy, right? Right. Now, Grant does ultimately conclude that Fawcett's vision of Z was heavily influenced by his spiritual beliefs and not reality. But the fact is that Fawcett's entire conception of this lost city and the people who made it was from the jump, based on a theosophic fantasy. In other words, he believed there was a lost city in the Amazon because of the occult tradition he followed, and because it talked of fallen cities and advanced elder races. He saw that 1753 report not as confirmation of evidence he'd actually found in the jungle, but as confirmation of his religious beliefs that he took with him into the jungle and yeah like that's that's the core of kind of what's happening here yeah so he's genuinely looking for for these like um theosophical ideals that don't that are not a real thing um and he's and he's sort of pinned it on this thing written by somebody who whose motives we don't know in the 17th century right cool yeah and and that and that grant is kind of taking this to make faucet look like more of a a man searching for more of a man outside of his time you know who believes in something that was eventually proven true because we know there were some larger you know there were some much more habitation in the amazon than like certainly europeans thought there was in that day um we do know that's true but faucet's not thinking about that faucet believes there's like a magical city of wizards that he can access through a portal and it like faucet believes in some lovecraft shit that's what percy faucet's really looking for in the jungle he thinks fucking cthulhu's in there he thinks he's gonna he's gonna run into a temple the fucking azathoth or something like that right like he is not thinking like this is this is all fucking novels and fantasy shit yeah he's not a man out of time because uh sitting around and doing drugs had fully been invented by then and like that's how you like both meditation and doing drugs yeah yeah and and to be fair one thing grant does point out is that faucet's dreams of the city of z had a lot of in common with fiction stories that writers like h writer haggard who were his friends wrote right and that is a good point but i i don't think he carries it through to his conclusion which is that like percy just didn't know fantasy from reality right i really do think that's what's going on here like if you're sitting around writing books about this idea or like talking about how cool that would be like that's one thing but you are like getting real actual people looking for this yeah just like you probably got real people killed trying to hunt down german artillery with a ouija board who knows who you shot my god there's no good way to die in world war one but like dying because your commanding officer is using a ouija board it's like particularly bad counter battery fire my god so faucet spends his post-war years trying to hunt down this fanciful place in 1920 for some reason he leads an expedition and he follows the route of a german anthropologist nowhere close to where he thought z should have been he was forced to abort the mission and try again in 1921 further down the atlantic coast he interviewed a bunch of local miners who knew nothing about a lost city and this is kind of accidentally one of the funny things about the movie is that it'll show percy periodically just stumbling up to some man in the jungle and being like have you heard of a city and they'll be like yeah i don't know maybe man and then he'll just wander back into the jungle and i think that is kind of what he's doing for for some portion of this is like have you heard rumors of a city yeah okay and then off off he goes back into the fucking jungle right like he's he's trying to like live out that scene in the book or the movie of an explorer where they like hear from some guy in some bar that like oh the city's out like he's trying to make that scene happen for him in real life and is instead just like interrupting some dude doing like his going about his day yeah have you heard any weird stories and he's like i don't know sure sure man yeah over there why don't you go back into the jungle uh yeah all the stories i've heard are about how you should get away from me um you should be far away from my home you look like you're riddled with disease percy and he was he often was um none of these voyages panned out and percy fawcett ran out of money after going broke again he can't like give up this dream so he embarks on a series of get-rich-quick schemes that all fail in at least one instance and he's like i don't know what to do with this instance he seems to have at least both been conned and possibly robbed he moves his family to california and they like lose everything i think like an oil scam um there's a break yeah he deserved it frankly he couldn't he probably did he did have it coming a little bit yeah you know who else has it coming the products and sponsors of this show yeah yeah they have your money coming to them i hope this ad is brought to you by veve healthcare the makers of if you're living with hiv do learn about devato devato is a complete hiv treatment by prescription only for some people 12 and older your doctor will determine if devato is right for you most hiv pills contain three or four medicines devato is as effective with just two no other complete hiv pill contains fewer medicines than devato it is unknown if devato is safe and effective if you have hiv and hepatitis b if you have happy don't stop devato without talking to your doctor as it may get worse or worse and worse and worse and worse and harder to treat don't take devato if you're allergic to its ingredients or taking dofetilide due to serious or life-threatening side effects if you have a rash or allergic reaction symptoms stop devato and get medical help right away other serious or life-threatening side effects include severe liver problems and lactic acid buildup if you're female or obese you may be more at risk tell your doctor about your medicines or supplements medical conditions liver or kidney problems pregnancy breastfeeding or planned pregnancy do ask your doctor about fewer medicines visit devato.com or call 1-877-844-8872 the king is the lord from focus features and the acclaimed director of jason bourne the king says work harder you work harder starring andrew garfield in a land of kings one man will defy an empire there will be no peace until we are free and ignite a revolution 10 000 rebels converge on london based on the true story behind the legend of robin hood we rule ourselves now the uprising rated r under 17 anime without parent only in theater september 10th discovered at dolby cinema bite into a stacked sandwich made with hero bread or a fully loaded bagel and the only thing you'll think is delicious you won't think it's up to 19 grams of protein but it is you wouldn't believe it has 11 to 32 grams of fiber but it does hero bread makes loaves buns tortillas bagels and noodles packed with taste but without all the net carbs we're talking zero to five grams net carbs per serving with hero bread there are no compromises just flavor there's none of the stiff baked goods you expect from better for you brands there's just the soft fluffy bread you crave plus small batch drops of indulgent favorites like the popular two gram net carb hero croissant and the three gram net carb hero pano chocolat and right now hero bread is offering 10 off your order go to hero.co and use code iheart at checkout that's code iheart at hero.co serving of hero bread see nutrition facts on hero.co this is jenny garth from 90210mg we spend a lot of time talking about our health but sexual health should be part of that conversation too i know because i've experienced low libido myself and it can leave you feeling frustrated and wondering what happened to that part of me that's why i started taking addy non-hormonal addy is the only fda approved treatment for both pre and post menopausal women under 65 clinically proven to increase sexual desire addy helped me reconnect with my desire and addy is as little as 20 per month with commercial insurance coverage addy flibanserin is a prescription medicine for women under 65 with low sexual desire that is distressing to them addy is for low desire that happens in all situations and is not caused by a medical condition relationship issue or medicines addy is not for men or to enhance sexual performance addy can cause severe low blood pressure and fainting your risk is higher if you drink alcohol close to your dose don't take addy if you're not feeling well don't take addy if you're not feeling well don't take addy if you have liver problems take certain medicines or are allergic to any of its ingredients before taking addy tell your doctor about all the medicines you take if you've had any mental health conditions are pregnant planning pregnancy or breastfeeding side effects may include dizziness nausea tiredness trouble sleeping and dry mouth visit addy.com that's addyi.com to learn more including important warnings and we're back so uh by this point his son Jack is a young man, and both Nina and Percy, while Percy didn't really raise him, but Nina had raised him to believe that he was holy, a great spirit destined for some fine cosmic purpose. Jack tried to live up to this. He seems to have taken very seriously the fact that he was like the special golden boy. So he's trained constantly as a young man in expectation of the fact that one day, Dad's going to get enough money for the final big expedition that will take us to the lost city of Z, and I've got to go with him because my destiny's there. He and Mom have both told me my whole life, my destiny's there, right? Oh, this kid's going to die in a jungle. This kid's so fucking doomed. Yeah, he's going to die in the jungle so bad. I mean, parental expectations are hard at the best of times, but I think what most people deal with is the like, you know, your father and mother and I worked very hard to send you to school, and you better become a doctor. And like, that's rough. But like, you are a higher spiritual being. And your father has. Your father has to find enough money to lead an expedition into the jungle so that you can ascend through a portal. Wow. That's what they're teaching this boy. Tell me about this portal. You've mentioned the portal a couple of times. I have. I have. So by this point, if Fawcett's view of Z had ever been a belief in a real physical city that someone could do archaeology on, it had morphed into a theosophic belief, into a sort of portal that might lead you to a place, or at least like a place where the veil of reality is. Thinner. And one can commune with the secret masters of the world, right? That's the. That's what he's looking for. You got to get away from the thick veil we got over here. Right. You got to get to where the shimmer starts or whatever. Jack became a devoted spiritual practitioner. One friend described his slight aesthetic restraint as reminiscent of one of the Knights of the Grail. So he is like living like a monk almost in order to prepare himself for his great purpose. Now, I've mentioned H. Ryder Haggard several times. I mean, he's the creator of Alan Quartermain, right? Who was played by Sean Connery in Sean Connery's last movie, which was not very good. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Not a good movie. A better graphic novel. Better graphic. Yeah. Pretty good graphic novel. Yeah. He and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle became close friends with Percy. Not just because they loved stories of adventure, but because they were all spiritualists who were into the same weird occult shit. Doyle based his novel, The Lost World, on some of Percy Fawcett's absolutely falsified accounts of his adventures. And that's why I say that you can kind of. Say Alan Grant is inspired by Percy, too, because The Lost World is one of the things that helped inspire Michael Crichton to write Jurassic Park and its sequel, The Lost World. There's somewhat different, very different books in a lot of ways, obviously. But it's, you know, it's in this tradition. And Percy Fawcett is a part of this tradition. He helps inspire these. You can draw a line from him to Jurassic Park in some ways, as well as to Indiana Jones. So it just means he could have he could have stuck to writing novels like we could have a whole series of trashy novels by this guy that people would probably. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He could have maybe fed his family. Yeah. Raised his kids. All kinds of stuff he could have done. Gotten fewer people killed. Yeah. Certainly would have gotten fewer people killed. Now, for his part, Haggard helped set Fawcett's doom into motion by bringing Percy. One day, this this novelist comes to his friend's house with a small stone idol that he'd received from a fan in Brazil who claimed Indians somewhere in the interior had made it. And we have an illustration of this idol that. Triter Haggard has gets given by this fan. So Sophie will show it to you now. It looks like an Egyptian idol. It's like a statue of a guy and he's holding like a tablet with either hieroglyphics or cuneiforms, whatever on it. Right. Yeah. It does look kind of very Egyptian. It certainly seems like something you'd see in an adventure movie or even like a Lovecraft thing. Right. If you make that face a little fishier, that could work as like a Lovecraft sort of idol. Right. There's something like this at the start of the short story, The Call of Cthulhu. Yeah. It looks like a good MacGuffin. It looks like you start out a movie with somebody finding this. Absolutely. You got a movie. Yeah. You got a movie. This is all you need to start your journey of exploration. Nicolas Cage could vamp on this statue for 90 minutes at least. Oh, he could do that with anything. Yeah. Fawcett became instantly convinced that this statuette came from one of the lost cities. So now there's more than one that Percy's convinced of. Oh, cool. Now, unfortunately for both. One of the lost cities. Come on, my guy. All right. You got to find at least one before you can start talking about there being more than one, I think. God. Men, why? Unfortunately for either of these guys. If you want to see how much do these men really know about ancient artifacts, I found an article by the Archaeological Institute of America, which analyzed the illustration, at least we have of the statuette, and noted, however and wherever Haggard got the thing, it's a fake. The figure's costume and writing are on par with something from the prop department of Hercules Conquers Atlantis, and have no parallels in real artifacts. Fawcett took it to the British Museum, where, he noted, experts were unable to tell me anything about the idol's origin. If not a fake, I was told, it's quite beyond our experience, which is a polite way of them to say to this respected explorer, this is clearly a fake. Yeah, yeah, that's the, I think that's the polite British version of, like, looks like bullshit to me. You're a fucking idiot, dude. That's bullshit. That's nothing. I'm sorry, man. But Fawcett just listened. Fawcett just listens to the it's quite beyond our experience part. Again, you can't be kind to these people. They're crazy. You have to be direct to them. Otherwise, they're going to take their son and his friend to die in the jungle. Now, on Daunted, Fawcett sought to learn the secret of the stone image, that's what his words, by having a medium hold the figure in complete darkness and write down any impressions. The psychometrist saw a large continent between Africa and South America long prior to the rise of Egypt. There are elaborate temples with beautifully carved walls. There are even carved columns and processions of what look like priests, including a high priest or leader wearing a breastplate similar to the one in the figure. Then, disaster struck. Volcanoes and violent eruption, flaming lava pouring down their sides. The whole island shakes with a mighty rumbling sound. The sea rises as if in a hurricane, and a huge portion of land on both east and west sides disappears under the water. Is this Atlantis? Myth. It's an Atlantis myth. Yeah, he thinks he's going after Atlantis, and it's in the Amazon. Awesome. It's so cool. He's going to get his kid killed doing this. It's really funny, though. And again, he thinks it's from Atlantis because a psychic held it in the dark. Yeah. Well, he did try to get his first opinion from an actual reputable expert. Sure. And when they didn't know anything, he went to a psychic, and she said it was from Atlantis. Great. Fawcett, who published a number of articles in the Occult Review magazine, believed in the existence of Atlantis, and was convinced that he could find a remnant of its advanced population. After all, the psychometrist saw the high priest take the very idol Fawcett possessed and hand it to another priest with instructions to retain it carefully, and in due course deliver it to an appointed one, who in turn must pass it on at length until it comes into the possession of a reincarnation of the personage it portrays, when numerous forgotten things will through its infiniteness be elucidated. In other words, this media is going to be a mess. The media says, like, oh, I'm seeing as the city falls, they're handing this idol off and say, pass it on until you find the man who can deliver it to the reincarnation of our great priest. And we've already set up that he thinks his son is a reincarnation. He thinks it's his son? Yeah! Oh, no. So he thinks H. Ryder Haggard's given him a little statue of his boy in the past? It's really funny. Well, this will end well. Yeah, this is going to end great. In his own book, based on extensive letters between Nina and Fawcett, he says, Nina and Percy discussing this, A.J. Lee has come to believe that Percy grew so obsessed with the lost city of Z because it thought it would lead him to an underground Great White Lodge where he could execute what he and Nina had taken to calling the Great Scheme. And they capitalized each of the first letters in those words. I don't want any Great White Lodges executing any great schemes. Thank you. This is a great scheme. You're going to love this scheme. He would send word to Nina after finding it, the city, whereupon she, along with other sympathizers, would join the three men and form a community on the Brazilian plateau, broadly modeled on the one Harold Large had created. Now, I've got to stop you there. Harold Large was a wizard and a friend of the Fawcetts from New Zealand. And in 1907, Large had founded an experimental magical community named the Havelock Work in New Zealand. This was a free love and also art and woo-focused place where everyone could fuck and make art and do sex magic, I think, is the basic idea behind this commune. I mean, that honestly, that sounds fine. People want to do that. To do in New Zealand. Like, not the middle of the Amazon with just you and your son and his friend. That's kind of crazy. I would even venture to say maybe go back to England and do it there. Go back to England anywhere. But, yeah, I mean, you know, it's fine. People are going to be wizards. I don't know much about this free love wizard community, but I will say that his largest focus was that, like, the modern world is destroying us. It's this tyrannical place. That is, like, destroying the human soul. And so we have to create these communities so that, like, enlightened beings can gain the actual psychic power that they're supposed to have or something like that, I think is the basic idea behind the Havelock Work. And so the Faucets are so inspired by what their friend Large is doing that they kind of work this into their vision of what's going to happen when Percy finds this mystical city, right? That he'll send for his wife and all of their friends and they'll all move to this, like, place where the veil of reality is thin in the Amazon. And they'll live forever as, like, free love wizards, I guess. I think that's the basic idea. And it's important that you note that Percy's bringing his son to this place, but the commune isn't going to have a place for Jack, which I guess is good because that would be kind of weird because his parents are both going to be, I guess, fucking all their friends there. I'm going to continue from Lee's book. I wish there was a responsible adult taking over for this kid, but I don't think they're going to find him in the wizard commune, frankly. No, they have not. But to continue from Lee's book. He's, like, 19 or 20 or something right now. He's a young adult, right? No, no, no. He's got to be older than that. He's got to be in his early 20s because he was born in, like, 1903, right? Yeah, early 20s. So Lee's writes, So that's the best explanation I've seen is what Percy thought he was really doing out in the fucking jungle. I got to give my son up to these spirits so that he can take over governing Ceylon and then me and my wife will get to fuck in the jungle with our friends forever. I think that's kind of the idea as far as I can tell. He's signing over his son's actual body to a spirit. To the Earth Guardians. Okay. Yeah. who are gonna give his body to another. what happens to jack spirit that's actually kind of unclear yeah i hope i hope it gets a a break from all this this kid never had a chance no it's about to so as evidence that the yeah jack was fucked from the jump as evidence that the faucets really believed this stuff lees includes in his book a letter that jack wrote to their to large the guy with that commune in new zealand in 1924 and this is jack i begin to look upon ceylon as my own private property now and feel quite annoyed to think there are thousands of strangers laying down the laws there you seem to think we shall soon go and that always cheers us up where clairvoyance fail we always say well hl did not say that or hl says we must go and he knows so this guy henry large definitely gets them killed too right he's for sure a part of this he's hugely to blame i begin to look on ceylon as my private property look how could this not go to your head and that you get a bit of that from his younger who writes the book like who edits his dad's notes into the book expedition faucet because he's like jack wasn't a great spirit he was kind of a dick sometimes i think he probably was an asshole i mean again it this is a little bit too much cultic belief for like one child like this kid is gonna be messed up um i could both say he was probably pretty annoying to be around because he thought he was a god but also that's he what else could have happened here like yeah if he made it into into his like mid to late 20s and got away from his parents i i would it would be you know his responsibility to figure things out and become a better person but i'm guessing he doesn't get that chance he doesn't and even then like it's not just his parents as as that letter shows guys like large who are like famous and like rich and very like well regarded keep coming up to him and saying yep you're definitely there's a great spirit in there yep yep you're gonna become a god and rule over ceylon one day my boy like it's not just his parents like he's really like he's really getting this reinforced by a lot of adults who should know better yeah and who are like using him to play out like just their sort of spiritual fantasies just like stuff they think would be cool no and they're pissed because world war one happened and it kind of proved that like the world isn't just like getting better even though you thought it was like things are really bad actually and they're about to get worse and all these people just want to like break away and go fuck somewhere pretty uh and do magic you know whom's among us but you just you can do that without like sacrificing all of you like for example you could have just written some books percy and like bought a house done that it's an option sounds great i'm not doing an episode on h writer haggard you know i mean maybe i should actually um because he enlarges definitely two of the people besides percy who are most to blame for what happened next in 1925 broken aging faucet put together one last hail mary of an expedition it included a lot of people who were in the same boat as percy who were in the same boat as included jack and his son jack's best friend raleigh rimel before going percy visited a psychic named helen berry she claimed to have been born into a mysterious mystical order dedicated to preparing human beings for important spiritual tasks and she basically tells him oh yes this statue percy is a statue of yourself as a priest in a past life and you must take it into the jungle also and this is something lee's writes in his book other mediums that faucet contacted around this time provided him with advice on the exact same thing that he had been doing for a long time i'm so glad he cleared that up i i love that first off that should tell you what percy's really thinking about with this journey is like the sex magic is a big part of this for him i think i don't think that gets enough credit in any of the books about this which again it's so many people do sex magic without getting anyone killed like exactly very rarely do they get people killed um this is not anti-sex magic this is an anti whatever the hell percy faucet's doing podcast whatever you're into you know but like yeah it's and it's amazing how many psychics he seems to find who um tell him what he wants to hear yeah weird how that works out you'll you'll note that that psychic's telling him a little bit different thing from the last one right and he interprets them all a little differently but it never the fact that no one's ever saying exactly the same things never really dissuades percy it makes it a little bit more difficult for him to say maybe these gay people are all just kind of making shit up separately right um so as for why this 1925 expedition winds up being percy's last here's john henning again the old surveyor percy made two suicidal pronouncements one was that the trio should travel light with nothing more than small packs everyone in amazonia knew that you could not cut trails and keep your team fed with fewer than eight men i can confirm this having done months of such cutting and carrying but faucet sent their pack animals and porters back and they were all dead and they were all dead and they were dead and continued with his with only his two novices his other dictum was that indians would look after them this was equally dangerous the zingu tribes pride themselves on generosity but they expect visitors to reciprocate all expeditions and in the past four decades had brought plenty of presents such as machetes knives and beads faucet had none and this is a thing that when people have talked to the actual indigenous folks who were alive at the time as a number of expeditions did they'd all be like well he kept asking for food and he didn't like have anything and he didn't like he wasn't doing the thing you're supposed to do which is where you like give us a gift and like sometimes they stole shit sometimes they were rude you hear different stories some of them are true some of them probably aren't but like the one thing that comes through is that they were seen as rude and they were seen as rude in part because they didn't bring anything with them and it is it's actually kind of rude to like stumble into a place you've never been and don't understand starving to death because you didn't bring enough shit and they'd be like hey guys can i have your food can me and my butt my kids have your food sorry can we have like all of it we are starving and it's not like it's kind of a dick move if if that happens because like wow you know something really bad happened to you you're both like whatever of course we'll help you out man shit happens it's the jungle yeah you on purpose didn't bring the stuff you had the resources to bring because you had this idea based on your refusal to study and learn from the indigenous people you're you're a white man we know the shit white people have access to you should be bringing stuff with you first off we've seen others and also we know you percy by this point you kind of have a reputation for being a cheapskate you know but but the psychic said he was entitled to it so that's right that's right he had to take over ceylon so you know what i'm it's nice that just once um the the white male entitlement will oh yeah get this guy what he deserves yeah he and his son and his son's buddy uh who all die long story short they all die they all die probably horrifically these are probably not good deaths they are never heard from again they send a couple of letters early in their expedition then they just disappear and we have no idea what happened to them unless you take the highly credible accounts of local tribesmen who say they were murdered for being dicks or going in a place they shouldn't have gone or a combination of the two right now there are some other plausible theories maybe they got lost and sick because they didn't bring enough stuff maybe there's even one account that they were mercy killed because some locals are like oh you guys are going to get yourselves murdered and we know the people you're going to get murdered by are really fucked up so we're actually going to kill you now out of kindness because we can't stop you you're clearly deranged but we don't want you to suffer that is one of the accounts damn um i mean is it also possible that they found a portal that led them to atlantis and their king's there now maybe they found a portal has anyone been to sri lanka ever i don't know i've never heard of a person from sri lanka possible no way to know other than by briefly researching if there's things and oh yep oh yeah yeah turns out a whole country wow is it governed by the ghost of a white boy nope nah it's not okay so not that then so not that i'm sorry guys i i did a little bit of research there it turns out not um that was my bad that was weird this ouija board says they totally made it wow oh okay well two sources different things you know that means it's in dispute if we're the new york times i'm not interested in litigating like what exactly happened to faucet and the his kid and his kid's friend because it's not really a mystery they did a stupid thing in a dangerous place and they died right that's what happened to them um large and nina corresponded for years after percy went missing and there's some really upsetting passages in their letters in in the book brazil that never was where nina is clearly really worried about her son and her husband and large is like don't worry i know they're going to be fine they're going to come out of the jungle percy will be out of the jungle any day now don't you worry and he she really gets strung along for a while there it's kind of a bummer that's a bummer yeah that sucks yeah modern historiography has proven faucet's theory about a lost city sort of right if you squint we do know that the amazon was much more densely peopled prival to the arrival of white people and disease i think one of the one of the uh one theory is that during roughly the medieval period what we'd call the medieval period there would have been a population of between 1.5 and as much as like two to two and a half maybe even three million people living in the amazon which is much more densely peopled than certainly it the europeans knew it to be after contact and they did have we have also found evidence using lidar scans of what very likely were semi-large urban communities around where percy expected to find z these were not cyclopean stone cities or modern metropolises but we're talking you know populations of in the thousands you know five or six thousand not millions right these are not like vast you know things but these were fairly advanced sites created by fairly advanced cultures, and one very you know prominent theory suggests that a lot of the amazon was crafted intentionally over a long span of time is basically a giant living grocery store a food forest right um and so we should look at the amazon not at like as like this this right this primeval unspoiled wilderness that people never advanced in but as a thing that people shaped and changed and engineered to a significant extent in order to better suit their own needs and provide them with a more comfortable lifestyle and then they all got sick and died a lot of them not all but a lot of them got sick and died and so a lot of the the larger communities that had existed were gone by the time europeans were fucking around there and they were just like it's complete wilderness which is not really the case probably right we don't know for sure these are theories you know and none of those people were ancient greeks or ancient egyptians we know that they definitely were ancient greeks and egyptians yeah that's a hundred percent confirmed yes um wow yeah um i do want to quote once more from an article by hugh thompson who's that he's that peruvian scientist and adventurer who led numerous expeditions and he wrote this of faucet for the washington post as gran acknowledges in his book again you will find nothing of it in the film faucet was deeply conflicted about his suspicion that there might have been an earlier advanced civilization in the amazon a suspicion that for all the wrong reasons he was right about although he himself never found anything to prove it he could not reconcile this with his poor opinion of the indian tribes so he postulated the existence of white indians who had somehow traveled across the atlantic from europe and brought civilization with them right and that's all you deserve to remember percy faucet as he was a crank who got his kid killed and if he'd been less racist and paid attention to what people there said and how they lived then he probably wouldn't have died so like congratulations white man dies of racism that's actually kind of cool yep too racist to live yep wow yep cool well hmm miriam you got anything you want to plug um yeah there's this uh secret lost city in the jungle actually no so i would like to plug um my podcast which i do uh with members of my anarchist publishing collective that i'm in uh which is called strangers in a tangled wilderness uh your friend um margaret killjoy is also in that collective so she is also on the podcast a lot the podcast is live like the world is dying and it's a podcast that i've been doing for a long time it is a podcast for people who feel like shit's getting pretty fucked up and we'd like to talk about what to do about it and also we're not um trying to hide in a bunker with beans but uh build community and um skills and also beans are good you know but we're just beans are good we're mostly anti-bunker i would say um but yeah we got we got stuff going on over there um we're strangers in a tangled wilderness on some various uh social media platforms and we're and um check us out sweet yeah check it out and check out the amazon you know what i'm gonna go on an expedition down there and find a commune uh or a place for a commune and then uh some ghosts and i don't know i think one of us will wind up ruling an island in southeast asia pretty good chance if you just go to the jungle just buy a buy a plane ticket to brazil or anywhere with a jungle just fly there and start walking just walk out you'll find me you know just go into the jungle and just just told me if you do that you'll die well i don't believe you're ouija board it wasn't right about the artillery stuff good night everybody behind the bastards is a production of cool zone media for more from cool zone media visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts full video episodes of behind the bastards are now streaming on netflix dropping every tuesday and thursday hit remind me on netflix so you don't miss an episode for clips in our older episode catalog continue to subscribe to our youtube channel youtube.com slash at behind the bastards we love about 40 of you statistically speaking this is adam divine blake anderson and anders holm from this is important hey if you've been adulting too hard today this is your sign to take a break with slice slice is a full flavored soda you loved back and better for you with real fizz five grams of sugar or less plus prebiotics probiotics and postbiotics it's low sugar gut friendly and actually tastes like soda because it is a better soda so the next time adulthood gets a little too serious grab a slice real fizz real flavor real benefits so i say i heard we have ourselves a great movie audiences are going loony for coyote versus acme couldn't agree more and critics are calling it a wildly entertaining movie i'm here for the pantless modeling gig ingenious exactly chaotic comedy fun exactly a family-friendly blockbuster yeah of course and pure movie magic pretty flattering i think things like this make us look pretty good in the public eye coyote versus acme now playing only in theaters tickets on sale now rated pg this is troy millings from earn your leisure when traveling for events or festivals throughout the country every dollar matters we compare flights prices hotel rates and restaurant options so why wouldn't we compare rides personally i always check lift before booking a ride prices can change throughout the day depending on traffic weather and what's happening in the city if you're headed to a concert out to dinner or catching up with your friends on a friday night taking a few seconds to check lift could leave you with more money to enjoy the experience save money check lift we're going to take a look at the prices we're going to take a look at the prices and what we're going to talk about in just a few minutes we're going to take a look at the prices we're going to take a look at the prices we're going to take a look at the prices we're going to take a look at the prices we're going to take a look at the prices we're going to take a look at the prices we're going to take a look at prices we're going to take a look at the prices we're going to take a look at the prices we're going to take a look at the prices we're going to take a look at the prices we're going to take a look at the prices we're going to take a look at the prices we're going to take a look at the prices we're going to take a look at the