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

There are a few candidates for the title "the real Indiana Jones" but Percy Fawcett is the man whose reputation most inspired our favorite fictional archaeologist. Unfortunately, he was a racist, a murderer and a weirdo occultist who led his own son to a horrific death for reasons of Magic. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Robert Evans?

  Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the podcast where we tell you everything you don't know about the very worst people in all of history. And this week, we're going, well, we're actually going behind, in some ways, we're going behind almost everybody's favorite movie protagonist, Indiana Jones, by talking about the guy who's often credited as being the real Indiana Jones, Percy Fawcett. And as a spoiler, Percy Fawcett sucked ass. But you know who doesn't suck is our guest today, Miriam. Miriam, welcome back, or welcome to the show. You are a friend of the pod in the most literal sense of the word, and also a friend of Live Like the World is Dying, which is a podcast that is also the friend of our podcast.

• 0:48Speaker 01

  Yes, great to be here. Yeah, that is me. I'm part of an anarchist publishing collective called Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, and we do a podcast called Live Like the World is Dying, which I am both a friend of and a podcaster of.

• 1:03Speaker 02

  Yay.

• 1:04Robert Evans?

  Awesome.

• 1:05Speaker 02

  Listeners, you'll notice a trend where I cheat work by having my friends on podcasts so it feels less horrible to be working on a Friday. So Miriam's here, and I'm very happy about it.

• 1:20Robert Evans?

  I feel like most people work on a Friday, but you know who doesn't work on a Friday is the subject of our episodes this week, Percy Fawcett, because he's been dead for decades. Miriam, have you ever heard of Percy Fawcett?

• 1:32Speaker 01

  I have not, but I have rarely heard a more villainous name. Like, that is a name that I assume he had a curly mustache.

• 1:41Robert Evans?

  He had a mustache. He had exactly, if you picture in your mind's eye, like a British explorer from the late Victorian, like, early 20th century age, and he looks, he's whoever you're picturing. If you're picturing like, a British explorer from like 1900, that's Percy Fawcett.

• 1:57Speaker 02

  Hold on, for the Netflix.

• 1:59Speaker 01

  Are we talking, are we talking like pith helmet, being carried a sedan chair by people who live the place he just discovered?

• 2:07Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 2:09Robert Evans?

  Yeah, look at that. That's quite, he's got a beautiful curling mustache, like magnificent, and also like a full beard, like he just came out of the Amazon. He's wearing an explorer's pea coat and some sort of weird, I honestly don't know what's going on with his hat.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  The hat is a mystery. I've never seen this hat before.

• 2:27Speaker 02

  Dare I say.

• 2:27Robert Evans?

  It looks like he's got a.

• 2:28Speaker 02

  Would wear the jacket, though.

• 2:30Robert Evans?

  Would wear, look, the whole fit's good. It's not a bad fit. There's a reason why he's the dude that everybody's basing their like Indiana Jones style, like adventure archaeologist characters on. It's because he did look pretty cool.

• 2:45Speaker 03

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.

• 2:54Robert Evans?

  So Percy Fawcett, some people would say that, because he gets credited a lot as being the real Indiana Jones. That's not like true in the most literal, direct way. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg have been open about the fact that the character in the movies were inspired, like Star Wars, by pulpy adventure serials that the two encountered in their youth, right? Like, Star Wars owes a lot to Flash Gordon, and Indiana Jones is more inspired by Zorro and kind of a collage of World War II era films, particularly a series of adventure B-movies starring actors like Alan Ladd and Charlton Heston, with titles like Secret of the Incas. And I think Heston's Secret of the Incas is like one of the movies that most directly inspired Indiana Jones. However, if you dig around a little bit, you will find people saying that like, well Percy is really the guy who

• 3:39Robert Evans?

  inspired all the characters who kind of Indiana Jones was based off of. So Indiana Jones was inspired by these fictional characters from pulp serials in the 40s and 50s, and those pulp characters were largely inspired by Percy Fawcett. And that is accurate. To give you an example of how this usually gets written out, I found an article on Sky History that said, quote, "Possibly the individual most touted as an inspiration for Indiana Jones is Percy Harrison Fawcett. A British Army officer, surveyor, and daring jungle explorer, Fawcett's life history reads like the plot of an adventure novel or action film." And that is true. His life, his biography does read like the plot of an adventure novel because he wrote it. And he wrote it trying to ape adventure novels because he

• 4:21Robert Evans?

  was also a fan of the adventure novels that a lot of people were writing at the time. And he was deliberately kind of crafting an image for himself. And the specific thing Fawcett dedicated his life to doing is very Indiana Jones, because he spent his life and in fact, lost his life looking for a magical lost city in the Amazon, right?

• 4:40Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 4:41Robert Evans?

  It's a, yeah. So that might be you in on, he's not a serious archaeologist.

• 4:48Speaker 02

  But was he a good, was he a good writer? Like, did he, was, or like?

• 4:54Robert Evans?

  Yeah, not bad.

• 4:55Speaker 02

  What are we working with here?

• 4:56Robert Evans?

  Yeah, reasonably good. Yeah. And, you know, he's, more to the point, it's not just that he was a good writer, because he did like write his own life story down, and he very much themed it off of things that he'd read in adventure novels in some ways. But he was also personal friends with Arthur Conan Doyle and H. Ryder Haggard, who are like the two guys who wrote some of the most influential novels in that genre in the early 1900s. So all of the movies and stuff that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg were inspired by when they made Indiana Jones were themselves inspired off of novels by guys like H. Ryder Haggard and Arthur Conan Doyle, and they were friends with Percy Fawcett and wrote books based on his exploits, right? So it really is pretty fair to call Percy

• 5:39Robert Evans?

  Fawcett, if not like the real Indiana Jones, than one of the main inspirations behind Indiana Jones. Now, it's also fair to note that many modern adventure film protagonists are at least partly inspired by Percy Fawcett. I would say Dr. Alan Grant from Jurassic Park and Nathan Drake from The Uncharted Games both have a little bit of Percy in them, or at least a little bit of like, the public vision of Percy. Because the public vision of Percy is not accurate to the real man, right? Percy Fawcett was a fraud. He was a murderer, and he was one of the most irresponsible fathers that we have ever talked about on this show. Like, in the long list of horrible dads, he's up there.

• 6:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I just rewatched the original Jurassic Park in the last couple of months, and what a, what a great film. What a, what a wonderful, Laura Dern, honey. What a great film. Yeah.

• 6:31Robert Evans?

  And Sam Neill, the recently tragically departed Sam Neill, who could have played Percy Fawcett. I bet he could have grown a mustache of that caliber. I have that kind of faith in Sam Neill's facial hair.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  I, more than that, I believe Sam Neill could have made it look good.

• 6:46Robert Evans?

  I know. I think he could have made it look good. I'll say, I think he could have found a lost city in the Amazon if he'd really wanted to. But he didn't. He mostly wanted to hang out with his ducks.

• 6:54Speaker 02

  Oh, pure soul.

• 6:56Robert Evans?

  Yeah, he was a nice man. So historians and experts in Amazonian exploration tend to hate Percy Fawcett because he was a fraud and a huge asshole, right? And these guys will often be like, well, there's other people who we should, who more deserve to be credited as being like the real life Indiana Jones. If you, if you listen to like credible folks who are experts in jungle exploration, they will tend to say that a better pick would have been a guy like Hiram Bingham. Hiram Bingham was a Yale professor and a groundbreaking archaeologist and World War I veteran. And he was one of the people who's often discredited with rediscovering Machu Picchu, right? So that's like, certainly seems more like the Indiana Jones like we want to believe would have existed, right? An actual like

• 7:40Robert Evans?

  heroic soldier who was also a really good archaeologist. But if you care about who most deserved to be memorialized by Harrison Ford at his absolute sexiest, I think we have to look at, like, which of these quote unquote real Indiana Joneses actually looked more like the guy. And Sophie's gonna show you a picture of Hiram Bingham, and he looks like, fine, but he does not look cool, right? Like, look at this man. He's like, he's completely clean shaven for one thing, which is not cool looking in the jungle. He does kind of have an Indiana Jones-y hat on, but everything about him is just like so clean and well kempt. Like, again, great scientist, but Sophie's next gonna show you another photo

• 8:22Robert Evans?

  of Percy Fawcett, looking a lot like Indiana Jones, actually. Like, he's, he's got the hat, he's got the little like cravat down around his neck, he's, he's, looks like he's just been living completely outdoors for years at a time. Like, he really does look like an explorer.

• 8:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, but none of, look how hot Harrison Ford looks there.

• 8:42Robert Evans?

  None of them look as hot as Harrison Ford. None of them look as hot as Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  A very high standard. But unfortunately, Percy Fawcett does look quite cool there.

• 8:52Speaker 02

  He looks cool.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  I mean, not, he doesn't look well. Like, he looks like he's.

• 8:56Robert Evans?

  He looks like he's dying in the jungle.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  He looks like he is dysentery, like 90% dysentery, but, but the hat is working for him.

• 9:07Speaker 02

  I get the vibe. He doesn't look like, like, you know, Harrison Ford looks like a guy that could crash a plane. Um, but.

• 9:15Robert Evans?

  Well, and Harrison Ford looks like a guy who's been getting like a surplus of calories and protein and thus has muscle mass, which nobody who's living in the jungle in 1905 does.

• 9:26Speaker 02

  But there's some great hats here, as somebody who loves a hat. Oh.

• 9:30Robert Evans?

  These, these are all good hats. I mean, three really solid hats in a row, between the pictures of Percy Hiram and just a screenshot of Indiana Jones.

• 9:39Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 9:40Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  On the other hand, Percy Fawcett looks like if he tried to punch a Nazi, his arm would break in half.

• 9:46Robert Evans?

  It would shatter. It would shatter immediately. Because he hasn't had any iron in his diet in more than a year. Um, so if you've heard of Percy Fawcett, you've probably heard about him in context of his search for the lost city that he called Z. And this became famous in around, around 2009, when author David Grand published a book, The Lost City of Z, about Percy Fawcett. And his, his goal, Fawcett went missing, searching for this lost city that he told everybody was definitely in the Amazon. And then pretty much died. He died somewhere out in the jungle, right? As a spoiler for where this goes. And people went searching for him for years to see if they could find Percy. There were rumors that he was still

• 10:27Robert Evans?

  hiding in the jungle. He wasn't, he just died. And then Grand in 2009 publishes this book that's kind of a reappraisal of Percy's legacy, because we have found in the interim decades since Percy went missing, that there were large inhabited sections of the Amazon, not in the way that Percy thought there were, but in a way that has caused people to kind of reappraise his legacy and be like, well, he was kind of right about the fact that there were like, large urban society, or semi-large urban, like societies in the Amazon prior to European contact, right? Um, and that book was popular enough that in 2016, there was a movie made based on the book, starring a guy who looks kind of like Brad Pitt as Percy Fawcett and Robert Pattinson as his friend Henry, Henry Costin.

• 11:11Speaker 02

  A guy who kind of looked, that guy's so famous. You're talking about Charlie Hunnam, the guy who was-

• 11:19Robert Evans?

  Yeah, whatever. He looks kinda like Brad Pitt.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  Sons of Anarchy, like, that guy's wildly famous. Um, and-

• 11:27Robert Evans?

  They're looking a little like Brad Pitt.

• 11:29Speaker 02

  It looks a little bit like Brad Pitt without like, you know, being like an abusive-

• 11:33Robert Evans?

  Look, he's fine in the movie. Robert Pattinson's a lot more fun.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  Of Brad Pitt. Brad Pitt sucks, guys. I'm sorry.

• 11:38Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  I have also never heard of Charlie Hunnam.

• 11:42Robert Evans?

  Thank you. Thank you, Miriam.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  I have, cuz handsome.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  That's fair.

• 11:47Robert Evans?

  Yeah. I, I, again, he looks kinda like Brad Pitt. Um, Robert Pattinson is way better in the movie, way better.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  Also-

• 11:53Robert Evans?

  But the movie is completely inaccurate. And the book, I should also say, David Grand's book, The Lost City of Z, is completely inaccurate. And this, this is gonna disappoint some of you, those of you who read it. It disappointed me, because I read Grand's book in like, 2009 or 10, and I liked it. He's a very good writer. If you've heard of his name, or you think you've heard of his name, it's probably because he wrote the book Killers of the Flower Moon, which was turned into a widely celebrated film. But Grand's book about Percy, while enjoyable, is completely fucking wrong about every important detail pretty much about the man's life, right? To the point where actual experts on the Amazon and the history of exploration in the Amazon are livid at Grand and his book and the movie that was made based out of it. One of Grand's major sources, a guy he thanks profusely

• 12:37Robert Evans?

  in his book and say, I couldn't have written this book without the book this Amazon historian and explorer wrote, is an explorer named John Henning. And John Henning's review of Grand's book is succinct and brutal. Quote, "It is a pity that a writer as good as Grand chose to study this unimportant, disagreeable, and ultimately pathetic man. It is an even greater pity that he decided to inflate and distort so much of this sad story."

• 12:59Speaker 02

  Holy shit.

• 13:01Robert Evans?

  It's really pretty brutal. Like, Grand did not do a good job with the Percy Fawcett story. I'm sorry.

• 13:07Speaker 02

  I love man on man crime. That was so cool.

• 13:10Robert Evans?

  Henning, we're gonna hear a lot from him in this, and he has, he does not spare the rod on this book. It's beautiful stuff.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  I was surprised that when you were saying the book was really bad, and I have not read Lost City of Z, but I have read Killers of the Flower Moon, and I was, okay, so a good writer telling lies is, is what we're talking about here.

• 13:34Robert Evans?

  Yeah. I mean, I'm not an expert on this, but the experts say that he willingly and knowingly distorted the truth in his book to a massive degree, right? That's the allegation that a lot of experts have made about Grand's book. Um, I'm gonna try not to distort the story. We'll see how well I do. Uh, Percy Fawcett's tale begins, as many bad things do, at the height of the Victorian Age. Percy Harrison Fawcett was born on August 18th, 1867.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Harrison?

• 14:00Robert Evans?

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  We've even got a Harrison Ford connection.

• 14:03Robert Evans?

  Harrison in there. Exactly. Who, maybe they're related. That's not how names work, but it could be. Um, he was born August 18th, 1867, in Torquay, near Devon, um, which is in like, the southwest tip of England. His mother had been born Myra MacDougall, and his father's family were old and aristocratic members of the Yorkshire Gentry. Um, his family, the Fawcettes, had owned Scalaby Castle, and probably got riches shipping magnates in the East Indies. That's generally where people say most of their money came from. His father was Captain, hmm?

• 14:37Speaker 01

  So their money is in castles and slavery?

• 14:40Robert Evans?

  This is, I think mostly post-slavery, cuz we're talking like, post-1830 is when they make their fortune. I'm not saying, that doesn't mean that it wasn't sketchy, but I think it was post, post-slavery is when they make most of their money. Um, I did look into that, cuz once I heard shipping, I was like, okay, what era, what, what year were they shipping stuff? Cuz there was a certain age it was that would have been people. But I think they were mostly too late for that to have been where they got their fortune. Um, his father was Captain Edward Boyd Fawcett, who Grand's book describes as "a Victorian aristocrat and member of the Prince of Wales's inner circle." And that does seem to have been accurate. He was also a famously good cricket player. Alas, Edward Fawcett loved to drink, and by the time Percy was born, he'd acquired the nickname "Bulb" for what

• 15:23Robert Evans?

  years of alcoholism had done to his nose, right? So, he's, again, you have to be quite the drinker for people in like, the 1870s and 80s to be like, wow, you're kinda drinking a little too hard, aren't you? Like, you're going a little bit off the wagon there, my man. Um, like, that, that means you've got a serious problem. Um, so Edward was almost the platonic ideal of the rich, young, failson fuck-up from an aristocratic British family. He cheated on his wife constantly, and he pissed away the family fortune gambling and getting drunk. One of his kinsmen described him as "a good man gone wrong." But the things this person cites as evidence that Fawcett was ever a good man had nothing to do with morality. He described him as "a ballywold scholar and fine athlete, yachtsman, charmer

• 16:07Robert Evans?

  and wit, equerry to the Prince of Wales." And again, none of those are things that make me think he was a good man. Like, okay, like, he, he was well-connected, and he was charming and funny. That doesn't mean he wasn't drinking it an asshole, right?

• 16:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, could sail a yacht real good is not like-

• 16:24Robert Evans?

  Yeah, could sail a yacht real well. I think bad people can sail yachts. Like Mark Zuckerberg, for example. Um, but yeah, this does reveal kind of something important about the culture Percy and his Fawcett were born to help expand and lead. For members of the upper class in the British Empire, being good at sports was proof that you were a good person. And not just a good person, but a perfect living embodiment of colonial values, right? When, when Percy's dad's friends say he was a good man cuz he used to be a great athlete, that's not, they, they don't think that's weird, because they, like, the purpose of sports in the height of the British Empire is to make soldiers for the British Empire. Cricket, which is the sport that Percy and his dad are both known for being best at, originated

• 17:09Robert Evans?

  around the 7th century CE, and by the 1600s, it had become popular among the nobility. As much as anything, playing sports meant that you were rich enough to have time for something that wasn't hard labor or worship. Cricket spread through Britain's early colonies, and the first cricket club came to India in 1792. It soon became a passionate thing for soldiers to engage in, per an article in The Collector by Greg Bayer. "For the most part, cricket was an obsession of the military, and there were even complaints of British officers taking up valuable logistics space by bringing their cricket gear on military campaigns. One such complaint was received before the Battle of Isla and Wanda, where the British suffered their biggest ever defeat to indigenous forces." So, is it possible that the British lost to the Zulus there because they were too

• 17:52Robert Evans?

  obsessed with playing cricket? Unlikely, but not impossible.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I can picture some, like, Victorian era British officer, like, leaving behind the guns to bring a couple extra crates of cricket whites, or whatever they've got.

• 18:07Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Just like, I can kinda picture, like, US soldiers maybe fucking off on patrol duty and getting ambushed because they're paying attention to who's winning the Super Bowl or something, right? Like, they're turning into a radio or some shit. Easy, easy. Um, so the fact that Edward Fawcett, Percy's dad, was considered one of the best cricket players of his generation means that, prior to his fall into disrepute, he would have been one of the more lauded military officers of his era, because being good at cricket was about as good as being good in actual warfare in this period of time. Um, "By the time Percy himself was born, cricket was valued not just as a game in and of itself, but as a way to induct young men into imperialist values and make them better soldiers." This

• 18:47Robert Evans?

  is very directly stated in educator Peter Crowhurst's website, British Empire, 1815 to 1914. Quote, "As public schools began to turn out English Christian gentlemen, the British government came to see these schools as providing the training character needed by Britain's colonial servants working in far-flung parts of the Empire. By the last quarter of the century, when Britain justified imperial expansion by claiming Britain had a mission to civilize the undeveloped parts of the world, it was the values transmitted by cricket that helped to tie the colonies and its peoples to Britain." And that maybe sounds weird-

• 19:18Speaker 01

  I would love to know what the values, uh, included in cricket are.

• 19:22Robert Evans?

  Great. I'm glad you asked that question, Miriam. So those values are, supposedly, a competitive spirit and a selfless dedication to the team, right? And they see that as transferring, like, pretty directly to making you a selfless soldier who's willing to sacrifice for their comrades in the empire. This is why Lord Wellington is said to have mused that the Battle of Waterloo had been first, quote, "fought on the playing fields of Eton," right? Wellington was claiming that the reason why he beat Napoleon at Waterloo is that his officers learned the values that made them great soldiers through playing sports, that that's what made them able to, like, beat Napoleon and his officers, right? This is like, something Wellington said. So maybe we should, like, take it seriously,

• 20:05Robert Evans?

  not necessarily as a literal evidence of how well cricket worked at making soldiers, but as the, as a sign of the place that cricket held in, like, English culture in this period of time. Probably no single piece of media better embodies this than a poem by Sir Henry Newbold, himself born in 1862, titled "Play Up, Play Up, and Play the Game." This is a poem about how sports is supposed to make boys into great imperial soldiers. I'm gonna read you the first couple stanzas of it. There's a breathless hush in the close tonight, tin to make and the match to win, a bumping pitch in a blinding light, an hour to play and the last man in, and it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat or the selfish hope of a season's fame, but his captain's hand on his shoulder smote, "Play up, play

• 20:50Robert Evans?

  up and play the game." The sand of the desert is sodden red, red with the wreck of the square that broke, the Gatlings jammed and the Colonel dead and the regiment blind with dust and smoke. The river of death has brimmed its banks and England's far and honor a name, but the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks, "Play up, play up and play the game." You see what they're saying there, right?

• 21:11Speaker 01

  Holy shit.

• 21:13Robert Evans?

  Yeah. First off, pretty good poem, technically, right?

• 21:20Speaker 01

  Just really like affirms the decision to cut gym class.

• 21:25Robert Evans?

  Right, yes, we need to stop kids from playing sports. Keep them inside on the computer. Get these boys in front of a screen or they're gonna conquer India.

• 21:36Robert Evans?

  I don't know, look, we have not invaded Afghanistan since creating TikTok. That's all I'm gonna say.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  That's a really good point.

• 21:44Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah. These are the values that young Percy is going to grow up absolutely doused in, right? And the fact, like, when he's being praised as being a great cricketer, he's being praised as like, "You're going to be a very good soldier for the British Empire," right? And at the same time as he's growing up and he's getting, you know, going to school and getting into sports, he's watching his father completely collapse as a human being. Over the course of Percy's childhood, he's going to squander two fortunes and basically abandon his family until he dies of consumption at age 45. Percy doesn't really know his dad very well. He mostly just knows that his dad let the entire family down. His mother, Myra, is obviously a victim here, but she's going to take her frustrations with life and her husband out on her kids.

• 22:29Robert Evans?

  Gran's book quotes a family member as saying, "Her unhappy married life caused her much frustration and embitterment, inclining her to capricious injustice, particularly to her children." And Gran adds, "Percy later confided to Arthur Conan Doyle that his mother was all but hateful. In his pseudobiography, Exploration Fawcett, Percy wrote diplomatically, 'Perhaps it was all for the best that my childhood was so devoid of parental affection that it turned me upon myself,'" right? And that's basically, that's Percy's claim about himself is that, well, his dad's basically gone and his mom is really mean, and so he just kind of focuses on himself, right? As opposed to, like, his family or anything else, like, it turns him inward and it makes

• 23:08Robert Evans?

  him a very, um, it's going to make him like a quiet and kind of, um, he's obsessive, but about like things that other kids don't really understand and aren't really interested in, right? He's going to be like searching for gold as a little kid repeatedly. This is something he's really interested in and I, I get the feeling he just kind of falls into these fictional and non-fictional stories of like exploration and these like great, you know, lost treasures and whatnot, because it's, it's a fantasy life and any fantasy life is better than his, like, life at home, right?

• 23:40Speaker 01

  I don't get the sense that that's much of an outlier in like the parenting style of the British aristocracy of the 19th century. Like, I think even if you had a, like, living, healthy father, um, who was at home, like, the, the style in that class at the time was like, pay somebody else to beat your children far away from you, was, was like how they parented.

• 24:02Robert Evans?

  And, yeah, and to that extent, probably the biggest impact his parents had on him is that his dad is a failure, right? As opposed to his dad being like distant and non-affectionate and a drunk, but also a success, right? That would have made for a different kind of childhood somewhat, because he does seem to have some degree of like shame over his dad, especially as a younger kid and man. He has an older brother named Edward, uh, and he loves his older brother. Edward's athletic, but also very bookish. And so Percy's going to like take after his older brother, um, and when his older brother gets into like weird esoteric spiritual stuff, Percy's gonna follow him there too. Like most kids of the upper class, Percy is sent to expensive public schools. And when we talk about public schools in this period of time, we're talking about

• 24:46Robert Evans?

  private schools, actually, like, that's how we would describe them today, but they'll usually call them public schools back then. Now, the system that kind of governs life and the, the schools that Percy's going to, these boarding academies, we've talked about it before on this show, it's called the prefect fagging system, right? And yes, this is where the slur comes from, right? But this predates that also, like, they don't mean it as that specific slur, but that is like one of the origin points of the slur. And the prefect fagging system was a way of organizing kids in boarding schools and training them and letting them kind of like train each other through abuse that was common in the most prestigious institutions of learning in the British Empire. To talk about that a little bit, I want to quote from an article in the History of Education

• 25:30Robert Evans?

  Quarterly by Paul Nash. "Under the prefect fagging system, senior boys are given a major role in governing the school, wielding discipline and carrying responsibility. They are called variously prefects, monitors, or preposterous. Chosen according to many criteria, including physical and intellectual prowess, the principal consideration in their selection, apart from seniority, has traditionally been character. Usually the prefects are members of the sixth form, and while some, in some schools, all members of the sixth are granted privileged status, the two bodies are not customarily identical. At the other end of the scale, new boys entering the school begin by serving as fags for senior boys. Their duties consist of almost anything the fag master cares to impose, from cooking and running errands, to blacking shoes and kindling fires."

• 26:12Robert Evans?

  And that is kind of a tame, look at how the system works. This is built on physical and psychological abuse and encouraging physical and psychological abuse of boys. Sexual abuse is so common to have been almost universal, at least in some periods of time. You'll hear some differences, but the number of boys who experience some degree of sexual abuse under this system is like most of them, one way or the other. Like, it's a deeply abusive and messed up system. The most we get-

• 26:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's basically like just institutionalized, unimaginably bad bullying.

• 26:47Robert Evans?

  Yes, and this is, by the way, what the house system and everything in Harry Potter's based on. She doesn't call it the prefect fagging system, but she uses the term prefects and like head boys and stuff, right? That's what it's all based on.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  The, the exposure that I've had to this also is, um, did you ever read the, uh, the book Boy by Roald Dahl? It was like an early autobiography. He describes acting, uh, you know, in, in this role, and I, I just, I mean, it's been like literal decades since I've read it, but I remember one of the things he was required to do, um, for, like, the boy he was assigned to, was go into the, like, outdoor privy, um, before him and sit on the toilet seat to melt the ice on it and warm it up. And being complimented on having like a nice warm bottom by the, the boy for whom he is doing this.

• 27:35Robert Evans?

  Oh, boy.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  I hate that.

• 27:39Speaker 01

  I'm just gonna let that sit there, because I don't feel like I'm gonna like analyze that, but-

• 27:42Robert Evans?

  And that's one of the tamer stories, yeah, that you're gonna get out of this system.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, that is like, that is the G-rated version of what must have been going on.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:51Robert Evans?

  To make, to make the boys who make the British Empire, you gotta do some fucked up stuff. Now, speaking of things that are inherently abuse, mm.

• 28:00Speaker 01

  No.

• 28:00Robert Evans?

  Anyway, here's some ads.

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• 28:36Speaker 05

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• 30:40Speaker 04

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• 30:46Robert Evans?

  And we're back. So the most we get about his experiences under this, this pretty brutal schooling system from Percy is an insistence that being caned regularly, quote, "did nothing to alter my outlook." In other words, all that abuse didn't change me. Like, don't worry. It didn't, it didn't affect me at all. In the book Brazil That Never Was, A.J. Lee's, who extensively studied Fawcett's life, writes that, "By all accounts, he was a sensitive and rather solitary child, who during school holidays would go hunting for treasure near his home." Which is a very cute thing for a kid who's enduring all this shit to want to do. Like, you have to have some sympathy for him in this era, just like desperately wanting anything but the life that he's got.

• 31:32Robert Evans?

  Hard to, hard not to sympathize with that.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  Very expensive abuse is still abuse.

• 31:39Robert Evans?

  Very expensive abuse, yeah. And while there is some suggestion, some evidence, that the heavy expectations and demand placed on the young men of his station chafed him, he also excelled as a student and in sports. First as a cricket player. As Grant writes in his book, "Spectators noticed an almost maniacal determination about his style of play." One observer said that Fawcett invariably showed the bowlers it takes something more than ordinary to dislodge him once set. He, he gets a reputation for physical toughness. He's really, he's almost immune to physical discomfort. That's how people will always talk about Percy, his entire life. He's just incredibly tough. Like, he does not mind being in horrible pain and discomfort, and he's willing to, he's willing to endure that longer than most people can.

• 32:22Robert Evans?

  And this is going to be his, really his superpower his entire life. The only way he's able to do the things he does is because he just doesn't mind being in horrible agony for years at a time.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  I bet that works out great for everybody who goes along with him.

• 32:36Robert Evans?

  It makes him a safe guy to be friends with, that's what it makes him.

• 32:41Robert Evans?

  One of the stories they tell about him is when he's, he's playing a rugby game once, and he keeps playing after losing both of his front teeth. Like, it doesn't slow him down at all. It's just been smashed in. Cool stuff. "After Percy graduates the British equivalent of high school, he gains admission to the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich." Now, in spite of his education, this is not what Percy wants for himself. He does not want to be a soldier. But his mom wants to see him in uniform, and probably one imagines she wants to see her son succeed where her husband had failed. And his older brother doesn't do this. His older brother, I think, is just like, you know, I've got, I've got other plans, and bounces to go write about magic. As a spoiler for, for what, we'll be talking about him a little later.

• 33:23Robert Evans?

  So Percy goes to the Military Academy, and it sucks. The Military Academy is also an incredibly abusive place for boys. Percy is hazed relentlessly, as all the rest of his peers. One common game, and they always call them games, even though these are some of the most psychotically violent things you can hear about, is to have young cadets burn their skin on a hot poker. That's one fun game. It's like, how long can you burn your skin with this branding iron? Another fun game is-

• 33:50Speaker 01

  Classic.

• 33:50Robert Evans?

  Yeah, classic, classic game. Another great game is they have kids stand on a table, and then they kick the legs out from underneath the table. And see, like, can you not flinch and just, like, fall down straight with the table? Or do you jump like a coward, right? Now, I can't say exactly how this influenced him. Throughout his life, Fawcett is going to be very critical of British culture, right? Not in a way that rejects wholly its racism or even imperialist values, but he will see himself his whole life as a kind of social dissident. And one does suspect that the brutality of his education may have influenced that, right? He is a, he is a loyal soldier of the empire, and he's also very critical of, like, the mainstream culture within the empire.

• 34:32Robert Evans?

  "In 1886, Percy is commissioned as an artillery officer. As John Henning wrote in a critical summary of the man's life for The Spectator, 'The next 20 years involved garrison duty in Ceylon and postings in Malta and England. The only significant events were getting married and becoming a devotee, like many others, of the charlatan psychic Madame Blavatsky.'" And we've had, we've done several episodes on Helena Blavatsky. She's a, she's a hoot. This is the lady who invents theosophy. And theosophy is, a few generations on, some of the people who, like, are ideological descendants of hers become the Nazis, right? Or become the original occult weirdos that were in the Nazis, right? That's like, one of the things you can tie to Blavatsky, kind of, although she herself was not. Not that she wasn't racist.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, she did come up with the whole, the root races.

• 35:21Robert Evans?

  The root races and all this kind of stuff, too, right? Yes. So like, a lot of Aryan theory has its roots in Blavatsky. Now, that description by Henning also leaves out some important facts. As he stated, Percy's going to be stationed in Ceylon, which is part of modern day Sri Lanka. And he's there actually as like, an 18 or 19-year-old. And before he turns 20, so when he's still a teenager, he finds himself first drawn to Buddhist mysticism. And this is, like, he's, he's stationed in a Buddhist country, and he, he see, there's all these, you know, very old temples that have been around forever, and he's just immediately drawn to, like, old things? And he finds himself much more intrigued by Buddhism than he is by Christianity. He grows obsessed with Gala Pitagala, which is a famous rock formation in Ceylon,

• 36:04Robert Evans?

  that he seems to have believed had hid some sort of treasure. He thinks that this rock formation, that's a natural rock formation, there were probably, like, was a king buried nearby. And the way he came upon this belief is telling. He's just sort of like, talking to people, and he finds a local man who describes himself as a descendant of the Kandian kings, and assures him that there's a king's horde buried somewhere near the rocks. We have no evidence this is anything but a local grifter, right? He's like, hanging out in a tourist trap, and a guy's like, "Yeah, I'm descended from the old kings, and I'll tell you where gold is for a price." Right? That's, that's the feeling I get from here. I don't think Percy's stumbled upon anything other than a guy who's telling him what he wants to hear. But Fawcett decides to carry out his first expedition, based on this information.

• 36:48Robert Evans?

  And he digs around the area. All he finds are some pottery shards, and, and, you know, he doesn't document those in any useful way, so we don't know if those were, like, recent, or if he actually found something old. He doesn't find any gold, so he doesn't really care, right?

• 37:03Robert Evans?

  But this failure's not going to do anything to discourage him, right? This is sort of his, like, gateway drug of exploring for, like, lost antiquities.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  Well, it's so, it's so frustrating and, and interesting. Like, you, you said he got intrigued by Buddhism. But like, when you, when you are in a Buddhist country intrigued by Buddhism, like, you have the opportunity to, like, go and study Buddhism with Buddhists.

• 37:25Robert Evans?

  I'll do that, too.

• 37:26Speaker 01

  You know, and like, go and learn about the religion and how it's practiced, and like, what ideas people are kicking around in there. And instead, he, like, found some dude who was like, there's gold there, maybe. And like, that's what he find, like, that's the part he latches on to. And like, I don't know, I know some Buddhists, they're not, they're not big repositories of secret gold.

• 37:47Robert Evans?

  I don't think Buddha really encouraged searching for gold.

• 37:51Robert Evans?

  I think desire's bad, actually.

• 37:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's such a, it's just such a, like, disappointing way to, to take that, that interest.

• 37:59Robert Evans?

  It's, it's, it, because he is, he is gonna get really, he's going to become a Buddhist. Although, I don't know that most Buddhists would recognize what Percy thinks Buddhism is, as, as Buddhism. Because his Buddhism is also wrapped up deeply in a lot of these weird, kind of, spiritualist beliefs that are circulating through, like, the hip chunks of European culture at the time. So it's, it's very much like, it's more, it's more accurate to say that he is intrigued by a mix of Buddhism and what, like, white people are writing about Buddhism that's largely a fantasy, you know?

• 38:32Speaker 01

  Right. Like, Blavatsky's, like, conversations with Buddhist ghosts or whatever.

• 38:36Robert Evans?

  Exactly. Stuff like that is as much of an influence on him as, like, anything that we would call actual, like, Buddhist theology.

• 38:44Robert Evans?

  So not long after he fails to find this king's ransom, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand visits Ceylon, and there's a huge party thrown to celebrate. Percy attends, but as Grant notes, he did not meet Ferdinand, which is sad, because this probably was going to be one of the last chances he would have gotten to meet the guy. But he spots a more alluring figure, a girl who seemed no more than 17 or 18. Her name was Nina Agnes Patterson, and she was the daughter of a colonial magistrate. So he sees this, this teenage girl, and he's like, 20 or 21 at this point, right? So we're, we're not talking about, this would not, no one would have noticed this is a weird age gap at the time. She's 17 or 18, he's 20 or 21. That's not even all that really weird today, right? And they kind of are making eyes with each other,

• 39:27Robert Evans?

  and he, he can't talk to her directly, because it's Britain in the fucking 1890s or whatever. So he manages to set up a meeting, and they find out they have some, some similar interests. Particularly, they both like ancient archaeology, and they both think Buddhism is really cool. Now, in addition to that, Nina is an early women's rights activist, and Percy's pretty tolerant on that issue for the day. I'm not going to call him, like-

• 39:52Speaker 01

  Woke?

• 39:53Robert Evans?

  Committed necessarily. Comparatively so. I think he actually is pretty much okay with women voting, which is like, reasonably good at the time, I guess you have to say.

• 40:03Speaker 01

  We'll take what we can get.

• 40:05Speaker 02

  I do wish that, like, in terms of things we could bring back, I think my friends should have to meet anybody who wants to date me before I meet that person.

• 40:13Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that's, that's not quite how it worked back then.

• 40:16Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 40:19Speaker 01

  They should just have to run the gauntlet of your friends.

• 40:22Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 40:22Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 40:23Robert Evans?

  Someone should make an app for that.

• 40:24Speaker 02

  I don't know if that will work out well for me.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  We'd have fun.

• 40:29Robert Evans?

  Yeah, just like a pinball game, where you just have to bounce off all of this, whoever you want to flirt with's, like, close friends and relatives until you meet approval. Yeah. If we want to really drop birth rates, that's how to do it.

• 40:40Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh.

• 40:42Robert Evans?

  Percy and Nina fall madly in love, as A.J. Lee summarizes in his book. After a courtship that lasted two years, Cheeky, as Fawcett nicknamed Nina because she always had to have the last word, and Puggy, as Nina called him because of his bulldog tenacity, were engaged to be married. They called each other Cheeky and Puggy. This is one of the things that the movie gets right, and it does sound as insufferable as you imagine it would be to be next to these two. Cheeky, come over here.

• 41:08Speaker 02

  Who plays her?

• 41:08Robert Evans?

  Yeah, Puggy.

• 41:09Speaker 02

  Who plays her in the movie?

• 41:10Speaker 01

  I hope they didn't call each other that in public. I would, I would die.

• 41:13Robert Evans?

  They sure did. They sure did.

• 41:16Speaker 02

  Who played her in the movie, Robert?

• 41:18Robert Evans?

  Oh, I don't know. I didn't even know the name of the guy who looks like the other guy whose name I can't remember right now. Sophie, I don't remember her name.

• 41:26Speaker 02

  Fair enough.

• 41:26Robert Evans?

  But Robert Pattinson's in the movie, and he's pretty good. He's got a beard.

• 41:29Speaker 02

  Everybody knows Robert Pattinson's name.

• 41:33Robert Evans?

  So this is where the problems start, right? They're courting for two years. They're finally engaged to be married, but they run into an issue because Nina and Percy had selfishly only bothered to ask themselves if they wanted to be married, and they hadn't consulted the most important authority on that question, Percy's mom. And Myra does not want Percy to get married. Now, we don't really know why she doesn't like this match, but she starts spreading rumors first that her own son is a sleazebag who sleeps around constantly. So she first tries to just convince Nina that Percy's cheating on her, and that doesn't work. I think because Percy's kind of visibly frightened by the idea of sex. If you know Percy, it's just kind of obvious he's not cheating on anybody. Look at this

• 42:18Robert Evans?

  man. He's scared of his own dick. He's certainly not sleeping around.

• 42:23Speaker 01

  Your mom spreading rumors that you're a scumbag is so...

• 42:27Robert Evans?

  It's so funny. And they're not believable. Nobody buys it.

• 42:31Speaker 02

  Incredible. Every single dynamic in this family is so fucked. I looked it up. Nina Fawcett was played by Sienna Miller. Also, Tom Holland's in this movie as a Fawcett?

• 42:42Robert Evans?

  Yeah, Tom Hall's in it.

• 42:43Speaker 02

  This is...

• 42:43Robert Evans?

  Yeah, he's the boy. He's Percy's son who dies.

• 42:47Speaker 02

  Oh, sensational. What an odd...

• 42:50Robert Evans?

  It's a fun movie, totally inaccurate.

• 42:53Speaker 02

  Totally inaccurate?

• 42:54Robert Evans?

  Totally inaccurate.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  But like, and it's from 2016, which feels very 2016.

• 42:59Robert Evans?

  It's a very 2016 movie. It's a great Robert Pattinson performance, though.

• 43:04Speaker 02

  As they all are.

• 43:06Robert Evans?

  Because Myra's plan to convince Nina that Percy's cheating on her does not work.

• 43:10Speaker 02

  A philanderer.

• 43:11Robert Evans?

  Yeah, Myra pivots to spreading rumors that Nina is no longer a virgin. Per the book, Brazil that...

• 43:17Speaker 02

  Why is she such a bitch?

• 43:19Robert Evans?

  She sucks really bad. I wish I knew more about why Myra sucks this bad, but Myra sucked.

• 43:25Speaker 01

  Well, anybody who's like in the public paying attention to these rumors is just gonna be like, okay, these two sluts seem to be into each other. Sounds great.

• 43:32Robert Evans?

  Seems like these two horn dogs are made for each other.

• 43:36Speaker 02

  God.

• 43:38Robert Evans?

  Per the book, Brazil That Never Was, P.H.F., Percy Harrison Fawcett, felt he had no alternative but to break off their engagement, informing Nina in a letter, "You are not the pure young girl I thought you to be." So this absolutely devastates Nina.

• 43:51Speaker 02

  How does he fall for this after his mom does it?

• 43:53Robert Evans?

  Cause he's a dipshit. He falls for everything. Anyone who tells him there's treasure, he'll spend years looking for it. He's an idiot.

• 43:59Speaker 02

  Apparently. Wow. What a dumbass.

• 44:05Robert Evans?

  So this is devastating to Nina, obviously, and she leaves Ceylon. It's fucked up. Percy continues being deployed to modern day Sri Lanka, and he establishes a reputation for himself as intelligent and reliable, but also kind of a narcissist who's in love with his own voice. His commandant at the time more or less describes him that way. For his part, Percy does not seem to have been fulfilled with the life of a colonial officer. He does not, this isn't what he wants for himself. He's much more in love with the path his brother Edward has taken. Rather than getting into the military and becoming an officer, Edward becomes a writer and a mountaineer and gets deeply into theosophism, the new religion created by Helena Blavatsky. Now, Blavatsky is this major figure in the

• 44:49Robert Evans?

  spiritualist movement of the late 1800s and early 1900s, and Edward is one of her most gifted followers and collaborators. An article for Occult World by Lux Fair notes that a key aspect of Blavatsky's belief system was the idea of, quote, "A brotherhood of advanced souls who form the hidden government of the world and direct the course of human knowledge." And while her most common term for this organization was the Great White Lodge or Great White Brotherhood, and while Blavatsky's, so that's what she tends to call this, and the white in there really gets emphasized by some people. Blavatsky's successors are going to alter and add to this concept over time, but historian K. Paul Johnson argues that, quote, "The actual Great White Lodge of Blavatsky's time was

• 45:33Robert Evans?

  a network of Hindu spiritual and political leaders who worked with her during her time in India to oppose the British colonial government and the activities of Christian missionaries." These conclusions have been sharply attacked by modern theosophists, but Johnson offers substantial evidence for his case, and it cannot be dismissed out of hand. Now, as noted, that's an interpretation worthy of debate, the idea that these Great White Masters with this network of like Hindu spiritual and nationalist leaders who were kind of fighting against the British, like imperial possession of their land. But Graham argues and cites some support for this argument, too, right? His attitude is that Percy is drawn to theosophy because it's a countercultural movement that rejects aspects of British imperial

• 46:15Robert Evans?

  dogma. And in his book, he quotes historian Janet Oppenheimer, who wrote a biography of Blavatsky, and argued that Blavatsky's philosophy had particular appeal, quote, "For those who wanted to rebel dramatically against the constraints of the Victorian ethos, however they perceived that elusive entity." And I do think that describes Percy, and I think that describes Edward, too. These are guys who want to rebel from aspects of the culture they're born into, and that's what draws them to theosophy. Edward Fawcett became one of a number of theosophists who converted to Buddhism and threw his support behind nationalist religious figures in Southeast Asia who opposed imperial rule. And Edward was close enough to Blavatsky that he helped her research and write her 1893 book, The

• 46:57Robert Evans?

  Secret Doctrine. Percy's brother helps Helena Blavatsky write The Secret Doctrine. And in 1890, he travels to Ceylon and takes the Ponseel, or the Five Precepts of Buddhism. So in 1890, before Percy shows up there, Percy's brother goes to Ceylon and becomes a Buddhist. And when you, when you take these five precepts and agree to them, it means, among other things, that you're vowing not to drink, not to murder, and not to commit adultery. And Edward's conversion to Buddhism is so noteworthy that local newspapers report on it at the time. You can find press clippings from like these local Ceylon papers talking about how incredible it is that this British member, this, the oldest son of a famous

• 47:38Robert Evans?

  family in the empire, has converted to Buddhism. It's kind of a big deal. And Percy, who kind of worships his older brother at this point, follows him not long after and takes the Ponseel himself and converts to Buddhism. This is something he does publicly, and this is something that there's like press about. So it's a pretty big deal that both of the Fawcett brothers have done this. And one thing I do think Graham gets correct is that, or Grant gets correct, is that this is an act of political protest, right? The Fawcett brothers converting to Buddhism is not an apolitical act. And it's particularly a big deal that Percy does this because he is an agent of the colonial military of the British Empire and is converting to the faith of a colonized people and promising, "I won't

• 48:21Robert Evans?

  kill anybody." And there's a way you could even see that as kind of potentially treasonous, right? If you're a member of the British military that is supposed to keep this possession locked down, and you're both converting to the possessed people's religion and saying, "I refuse to kill," you're kind of saying, "I won't fight for Great Britain." You kind of are, right?

• 48:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:42Robert Evans?

  So he is a dissident in some ways.

• 48:44Speaker 02

  You are certainly saying that. Does he stop occupying anywhere?

• 48:49Robert Evans?

  No, he's gonna kill, he's gonna kill at least one person. He's gonna kill at least one person. Yeah.

• 48:53Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 48:54Robert Evans?

  You know who else has killed at least one person?

• 48:57Speaker 02

  At least one. At least one.

• 48:58Robert Evans?

  At least one. At least one before breakfast most days. My god. Anyway, maybe you'll be next.

• 49:05Speaker 02

  Robert, Jesus Christ.

• 49:06Robert Evans?

  There's no way to know with our supervisors, sponsors, advertisers. What am I talking about?

• 49:11Speaker 02

  Stop. But you don't gotta threaten the audience.

• 49:14Robert Evans?

  It's not a threat. It's just kind of a promise.

• 49:16Speaker 02

  Well, 40% of them.

• 49:17Robert Evans?

  If you hang out around our sponsors long enough, people die around them. There's no way to know. There's no way to know.

• 49:21Speaker 02

  It's just statistics, really.

• 49:22Robert Evans?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 49:23Speaker 02

  Allegedly, allegedly, allegedly.

• 49:27Speaker 04

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• 49:55Speaker 05

  I'm Melissa Jelton, and in my new podcast, What Happened to Her, I'm bringing you new stories and conversations every week. Stories about women whose deaths were too quickly ruled a suicide.

• 50:07Speaker 06

  She was starting to get worried and get scared for her safety.

• 50:14Speaker 05

  Stories of survival. The only difference between me and her, frankly... Was a little bit in luck because by all rights, I should be dead. Cases that everyone else called closed.

• 50:25Speaker 01

  They can't convict her, right? Like, she has so much evidence.

• 50:29Speaker 05

  These stories all start in the same place, with a woman failed by a system that didn't believe her, that didn't protect her, that didn't see her.

• 50:38Speaker 06

  No child should ever experience that. And we were babies. She did all of these brave things and came out and spoke about it, and he got a year. You never know who that devil is because he's wearing a disguise. Sometimes it's a

• 50:52Speaker 05

  police uniform. Listen to What Happened to Her on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 51:00Speaker 07

  Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin Unfiltered podcast?

• 51:04Speaker 04

  Here's what you missed.

• 51:05Speaker 07

  And the argument is, do you want to win? If you don't win, you have no power. It's real. Those are the very people who I always say vote against their own economic interests, and they complain about the very thing they're receiving.

• 51:19Speaker 04

  It's raw.

• 51:20Speaker 07

  I knew that the issue of transgender athletes was not going well with a lot of black men.

• 51:28Speaker 04

  Roland Martin Unfiltered.

• 51:30Speaker 07

  I went off. I said, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Y'all gonna scream at Chanel, but you don't want to see a black luxury company in the same vein.

• 51:40Speaker 04

  Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the Black Information Network.

• 51:44Speaker 07

  12 seats. Those are moving south. So if you Democrats, you don't wait to 2030, you better be hitting the ground going hard in the South now. And download Roland Martin Unfiltered on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts.

• 51:58Speaker 04

  Or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 52:05Robert Evans?

  And we're back. So in 1896, Percy is transferred from Salem back home to attend a course in gunnery. He gets stationed with a volunteer unit, I think in Ireland at this point, and life goes on for a few more years. In 1898, Nina Patterson marries an army captain named Herbert Pritchard, right? So it takes her a few years to deal with the shame and shock of Percy breaking off the engagement because his mom lied about her.

• 52:31Speaker 02

  Fucking liar.

• 52:32Robert Evans?

  But she marries this other guy, Herbert Pritchard, and he's like 14 or 15 years older than her. It is not going to be a long partnership. Like, right after they get hitched, they move to Alexandria, and he almost immediately dies of anthrax exposure, like three months, four months after their wedding, something like that. And I don't know how true this is, but any book about Fawcett that you're going to read will cite what were apparently this guy's last words to Nina. "I do wish you and Fawcett will come together again. To me, you have been a perfect wife, and I have thanked God in my prayers for having given you to me, but I feel sure you are meant for Fawcett, and I am just an interloper." I don't know how much I believe that because they were together for like four months.

• 53:13Speaker 02

  That guy didn't say that shit. That's not real. That's fake.

• 53:18Robert Evans?

  That seems really fake. I don't know.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  If I were a lady who had been publicly shamed and slut shamed, and my first, and I was about to become a wealthy widow, I would definitely go around telling people that his last words to me had been, "I really hope you get back together with your ex-boyfriend. That would be great for me."

• 53:38Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I would really love it if you were to fuck the guy who broke up with you because his mom accused you of infidelity. That's my greatest hope for you, my wife.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  Jesus, okay.

• 53:49Robert Evans?

  Now that you really aren't a virgin anymore, I hope that you, that you do this. I don't know. That's weird. But maybe, maybe it's true. Probably not. My guess, given that he died of anthrax exposure, my guess is that his last words were more like, "Oh, God, the anthrax. It hurts so bad." Something along those lines, perhaps?

• 54:07Speaker 02

  I think his last words are probably, "Ah."

• 54:10Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, that, that seems more credible. So.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  There's a lot of liars in this story, and they're, they're making lying into an art form, and I appreciate that.

• 54:19Robert Evans?

  They love it. They love it. Now, what everyone does seem to agree on is that by the time Nina's first husband dies, everyone seems to have learned that Myra lied about Nina not being a virgin, right? Like Percy learns that at some point before her husband dies, that he was tricked by his mom, and this is really fucks him up for a while. And once he learns that she's single again, he finds her and he gets down on his knees and he begs for her forgiveness. And Nina forgives him. The two are married on January of 1901. This causes a permanent breach between Percy and most of the rest of the Fawcett family. That does not seem to have concerned him too much. I don't know how much, you don't hear a lot about him and the rest of his family after this point. I

• 55:01Robert Evans?

  don't know if he was like bummed about them not being close, or if this was kind of a good riddance sort of situation.

• 55:08Speaker 01

  Do we know why his family didn't like this lady? She seems like the only thing we've heard about her is lies that the mom said.

• 55:15Robert Evans?

  It just sucks. I think his mom sucked. So she, she is, one thing I can imagine, she is an outspoken suff, like, they didn't call him suffragettes in England, I don't think, but she's an outspoken advocate for women's rights, and that may have pissed off Percy's family. None of the sources I found specify why, though. So I just, I honestly don't know. That would be kind of my theory, maybe. She's too outspoken about women's rights, but I actually genuinely don't know. So next Percy is going to leap towards a great change in the next kind of stage of his life, because the military bores him, right? He doesn't want to stay an officer forever. He doesn't want to keep getting shipped around the empire. He's desperate for some new field of endeavor where he can

• 55:56Robert Evans?

  prove himself. And his father had once been a member of the Royal Geographical Society, and the RGS, we hadn't known how to make good maps for very long, because in order to make like a really quality, modern map, you need to be able to get both latitude and longitude. And I always forget which of them. I think it's longitude. You need like access to a good clock of some sort. Like, you need to be able to tell the time in order to get the information you need to make a good map. And so until people could carry like watches that worked around with them, it was kind of hard to do very good mapping, right? There are other things that had to be invented, too. But it's, the point is that by the time Percy's born, the Royal Geographical Society has spent the last, like,

• 56:40Robert Evans?

  several decades finally mapping all of these parts of the world that had never had what we would consider to be like a modern map, right? Most places, even, that doesn't mean people didn't know what was there. It means that there was not like a modern map in the, made to the standards of like modern map reading. And so the RGS has kind of made it its, its mission in life in the 1800s and early 1900s to cover all of these blank spaces of the map, right? And so that's a very intriguing thing. It's a very sexy thing to be doing. Like, if you're a Victorian gentleman, one of the coolest hobbies you can have is geography, is going out and helping to make maps, right? And so the RGS is a really hip thing to be a part of. So Percy and Nina get to work making a child,

• 57:23Robert Evans?

  and Fawcett starts training to use the tools of a geographical surveyor. He goes to, he takes classes with the RGS. The RGS has like a course that you can take to become an explorer. Like, they'll teach you how to make maps, and also how to like introduce yourself to native populations and try to communicate with them. There's, there's like actual instruction on all these different things. It's varying degrees of effective and problematic, right?

• 57:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I bet that, I bet that class on how to introduce yourself to native people was, was really something.

• 57:54Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah. You start by shooting. No, they weren't quite that bad, usually. So his instructor noted, quote, "He was extremely quick at learning anything new, and although he'd never used a sextant or an artificial horizon before, he caught on to using both tools with remarkable speed." He's noted by his instructors, like, the things that it took people years to get good at, he very quickly became good at. He's, when it comes to the actual technical tools of using surveying equipment, he's excellent. At least he seems to be, right? I, I don't know how to do any of this stuff, so I can't judge it. I have to go by what this guy says. Unfortunately, his education in being an explorer included more than just technical instruction. One of his course books was written by Sir Francis

• 58:35Robert Evans?

  Galton and was titled Hints to Travelers. And you've probably heard of Galton. He was a famous mathematical genius who contributed to many fields, most notably early genetic science. He was also a gigantic racist and is the guy most often credited with creating eugenics. Sir Francis Galton is the father of eugenics. And his interests extended to mapmaking and exploration. He was an explorer as a younger man, and in his Guide to Adventurers, he described foreign peoples as "the lower civilized nations," or savages, and insisted, "Some races are inferior to others in volume and complexity of brain." So he's not, Percy's not just getting taught how to use map tools. You know, there's some other shit in that class.

• 59:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's, it's important for your navigation lessons to come with just a dollop of, of racism.

• 59:23Robert Evans?

  You can't navigate properly unless you're a bigot. You know, everybody knows that. That's, that's, I don't even, I don't have a bit to make about that, actually. So Fawcett graduates. He does well enough in his map and racism class that he gets sent off on a mission, well, not a mission of discovery. He actually gets sent off as a spy. Because one thing that the, the British government has realized is that if we have the RGS sending people around the world to make maps, folks are used to the idea that there might just be some nerdy scientists around making maps, and if we, instead of nerdy scientists and spies disguised as nerdy scientists, they can do a lot of like spy work for the empire without necessarily getting caught. And that's what Percy gets sort of inducted to do. Per the book Brazil That Never Was, he was sent by the Foreign Office

• 1:00:07Robert Evans?

  to Morocco to investigate Sir Henry McLean, a British officer considered to be the power behind the Sultanate, and to report back on the threat posed by France and Germany. So he's given a spy mission. It's not really that evil a spy mission, to be honest. Like, he's spying on another British officer for the most part, and he's kind of looking at, like, oh, what are the, what are the French and the British doing in Morocco? He does this competently. He seems to have done a reasonably good job. He does not seem to have been discomfited by the fact that his government wanted him working as a spy instead of an explorer. But he's also not, you know, I think it's that he was good enough at this that he probably could have got more spy work from the government. I don't think he really likes this. He's interested in exploration. He's not interested in spying

• 1:00:50Robert Evans?

  for the government very much. He's gonna do the best job he can, but once this is finished, he doesn't seem interested in continuing to follow down that road. And instead, he gets back into the military, and he's stationed in Ireland for a time after his return, and then to Malta, and then to Hong Kong, and then finally, in 1903, back to Ceylon. And Ceylon is where he's going to have his first son, Jack, and it's where he's going to start going really crazy.

• 1:01:16Speaker 02

  Tom Holland.

• 1:01:16Robert Evans?

  Yeah, Tom Holland. This is when he gives birth to baby Tom Holland, or his wife does. I don't think Percy does. That would be, that would be odd. But he, yes, this is where Tom Holland comes into the picture, Sophie. You're very correct. We'll talk about Tom Holland in part two of the Percy Fawcett story, the Tom Holland story.

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  I'm just so glad Tom Holland got to play a dying Victorian child, which it, it sounds like the role he was born to play, especially back 10 years ago.

• 1:01:43Robert Evans?

  The, the moment you meet Tom Holland's character in that movie, you're waiting for him to die. Like, you're like, all right, how are they gonna kill you? You look like the kind of boy who needs to die.

• 1:01:54Speaker 01

  Cool. Miriam, you have anything you want to plug at the end here of part one? Um, sure. I'm, I'm so excited to find out how this guy ends up lost in the jungle and dead. Um, but, um, yes, I am the host, a host of Live Like the World Is Dying, a podcast for what feels like the end times, AKA these times. And it's like, if you, you know, want to learn about disaster preparedness, but are not somebody who wants to, like, hide in a bunker with all of your beans, um, you know, instead, maybe you can, like, learn about how you can acquire skills and build community and, um, you know, also hear about other people who are doing cool stuff like that. Um, it's a lot of fun. Check us

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  out. Uh, the podcast is a project of Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, which is the publishing collective that I'm a part of. And, um, we have books and zines. And if you support us on Patreon, we'll send you zines in the mail. And that's cool. People like getting zines in the mail.

• 1:02:51Robert Evans?

  They like getting zines? Perhaps even a map to a lost city that you can go with your young son and lead him to his death end, you know?

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  We haven't published so many, um, maps to lost cities to get people killed, but, you know, who knows what the future may hold.

• 1:03:07Speaker 02

  There's time.

• 1:03:08Robert Evans?

  There's nothing stopping you. It's apparently legal, as far as I'm aware.

• 1:03:12Speaker 02

  Boy, howdy. Uh, we'll be back for part two.

• 1:03:16Robert Evans?

  Yeah, but between part one and part two, go die in the jungle, you know?

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  Don't.

• 1:03:20Robert Evans?

  If that's what you want for yourself, you know?

• 1:03:22Speaker 01

  Don't do that. Don't do that.

• 1:03:23Robert Evans?

  Why not? A lot of people are saying it's a great thing to do. Just one person. Percy said that.

• 1:03:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't do that. Bye.

• 1:03:31Robert Evans?

  Anyway, see you tomorrow.

• 1:03:35Speaker 02

  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 iHeartRadio 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 and 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.

• 1:04:10Speaker 05

  I'm Melissa Jelton, host of the What Happened to Her podcast. We're kicking off the season with the Sandra Birchmore story, a case the police wrote off as a suicide in a snowstorm. Her family never bought it, and the man they suspected wore a badge. You never know who that devil is because he's wearing a disguise. Sometimes it's a police uniform. And you can get access to all episodes 100% ad-free with an iHeart True Crime Plus subscription exclusively on Apple Podcasts, available only to iHeart True Crime Plus subscribers. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts, search for iHeart True Crime Plus, and subscribe today.

• 1:04:51Speaker 01

  If anyone wanted to commit a murder, up here would be the greatest place in the world to hide the body. But soon they'll find it. He acted friendly. He talked friendly. He sounded friendly.

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  They all knew that I did the scary boogie stuff. And they said, maybe she'll find out where this girl is. I saw him violent. Backhanded her. Pow!

• 1:05:17Speaker 02

  Listen to The Devil's Quarry, Season Two, in the Bone Valley feed, on the iHeart

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  Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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  Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin Unfiltered podcast?

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  Here's what you missed.

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  People wake up and go, oh, damn, wait, hold up. They changed all of that? Yes. It's real. This is a wholesale attack. It is targeting black people in every federal agency.

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  It's raw.

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  And download Roland Martin Unfiltered on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

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