The Beast in the Clouds - A Book Report with Jeff

In a bid to make a name for themselves and make a contribution to the world of science, two of Teddy Roosevelt's sons set out to China to find the mythical giant panda. Jeff gives a wonderful little book report about their experiences! He read and references heavily Nathalia Holt's book "The Beast in the Clouds: The Roosevelt Brothers' Deadly Quest to Find the Mythical Giant Panda" for this episode. Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/8-PPZA78eew ~ LMNT - Get a free 8-count Sample Pack of LMNT's most popular drink mix flavors with any purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/tooth Nutrafol - Get $10 off your first month's subscription and free shipping at https://nutrafol.com with promo code TOOTH Rocket Money - Let Rocket Money help you find and cancel unwanted subscriptions, monitor your spending, and lower your bills—join at https://rocketmoney.com/CLAW. Remi - Prioritize your teeth this month and go to shopremi.com/TOOTH and use code TOOTH at checkout for 50% off with Remi Club. onX Backcountry - Click here (use hyperlink https://www.onxmaps.com/purchase/backcountry/membership?promo=tooth&utm_source=tooth_and_claw&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=bc_comm_nosoc_%5Btooth_and_claw%5D) and use promo code TOOTH to get 30% off a premium or Elite membership to onX Backcountry Fi - Get up to 30% off and free shipping on Fi smart GPS and health trackers for dogs and cats at https://fitracking.com with promo code TOOTH. ~ To advertise on the show, contact us! Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/c/toothandclawpodcast ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social: Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:38Speaker 00

  Hey everyone, don't skip this because I have two very quick, important announcements. First of all, you may know that our first episode we ever recorded, we polled and we polled it for a really good reason, but we've always wanted to re-release it and we finally have a really good excuse to do it. Our six year anniversary is coming up this week and we're going to re-release that episode on vinyl. It's a collaboration with Born Losers Records. We're really excited about it. That's coming out September 30th. So look for that link. We're going to be posting it on our social media. We're going to be sending it out everywhere. We're really excited. The link itself is going to be tooth and claw vinyl.com.

• 2:19Speaker 00

  It's going to go live on the 30th and there's only going to be 750 of those. So once they're sold out, they're gone forever. Uh, they're really cool looking vinyl records. You're going to get a link to an MP3 as well. If you don't want to listen on vinyl, uh, there's a really fun commemorative T-shirt you can buy if you want. We're just excited to get that episode back out there with the whole explanation of why we pulled it, some really important corrections. I'm super excited about it. So that happens on September 30th. Mark your calendar, cause there is just a limited number. Speaking of limited number, we're doing merch a new way too. Uh, we have a new merch provider and we're really excited about that as well. But our merch offerings now are going to be extremely limited.

• 3:03Speaker 00

  They're only going to run for about a week and we're only going to sell a few items at a time. So starting October 6th, we're going to have three brand new tooth and claw merch items up for sale. That's going to be at tooth and claw dot shop. There's going to be three brand new pieces of merch. They're really cool. They're only going to be available for a very limited time. And there's only a limited number of them as well. So that merch sale starts on October 6th. So again, two important dates to remember. September 30th, our first ever episode goes live on vinyl, tooth and claw vinyl.com. And then on October 6th, we're going to have three brand new pieces of merch for sale for a very limited time, tooth and claw dot shop. All right, that is it. I hope you guys enjoy this episode that Jeff prepared.

• 4:01Jeff Larson?

  Hello everyone, welcome back to Tooth and Claw Podcast. Uh, we have our wildlife biologist, Wes Larson with us. And then we have Mike Smith, who's just our friend.

• 4:12Speaker 00

  What's up, big dogs?

• 4:13Jeff Larson?

  And I'm

• 4:14Speaker 00

  What up?

• 4:14Jeff Larson?

  I'm Jeff Larson. I'm a, I'm as close to a wildlife biologist as you can get without being one.

• 4:22Speaker 00

  Hmm. I don't think I'd agree with that either. But you know, you've, you've definitely dipped your toes a few times, which is great.

• 4:32Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 4:33Speaker 00

  Dipping them in what? Dipped them in, in rotten meat.

• 4:36Jeff Larson?

  Biology.

• 4:37Speaker 00

  That's what we used for

• 4:38Jeff Larson?

  Yuck.

• 4:39Speaker 00

  For catching bears.

• 4:40Jeff Larson?

  Watch out Quentin Tarantino, his feet are gross.

• 4:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:46Speaker 00

  Uh, I lost a duck last night.

• 4:49Jeff Larson?

  Oh man, I hope you find him.

• 4:51Speaker 00

  I, it was my fault too. And those are Jesse's favorite birds. And I left the coop open and the duck decided to go on a little walk at like midnight. And guess what? A fox got it and it's pretty sad. So

• 5:04Jeff Larson?

  Oh no.

• 5:05Speaker 00

  I'm in, I'm in the doghouse.

• 5:07Jeff Larson?

  Wow, Mike seemed sad.

• 5:09Speaker 00

  I like ducks. I really, our ducks are our favorite birds and this was the, it was the big one for her. That was the bird she liked the most. So it was a hard night.

• 5:19Jeff Larson?

  Shoot. What was, which one was it?

• 5:22Speaker 00

  Uh, our oldest bird and it was the, it was the oldest duck.

• 5:26Jeff Larson?

  So have a name?

• 5:27Speaker 00

  Uh, we don't name any of the birds really. There's only one of our birds right now that has a name.

• 5:31Jeff Larson?

  How much can you really love one of these animals if you don't even bother to name it?

• 5:35Speaker 00

  You know what, Mike? Uh, that's a whole question.

• 5:39Jeff Larson?

  I take back my sorrow. I'm, I'm not sad. I'm not sorry.

• 5:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:43Jeff Larson?

  Does the fox have a name?

• 5:45Speaker 00

  The fox isn't named, no. And yeah, it's a good question, but we do have a lot of foxes, so.

• 5:53Jeff Larson?

  Well, I have an episode for us today.

• 5:58Speaker 00

  Good.

• 5:58Jeff Larson?

  I did my new year's resolution. I read a book.

• 6:02Speaker 00

  Alright.

• 6:04Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, so I finished it.

• 6:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:06Jeff Larson?

  Before the end of the year and kind of read a book and a half because I finished a book that I had started a previous year before I read this book. But

• 6:17Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 6:17Jeff Larson?

  I read the book called The Beast in the Clouds. And so I just kind of wanted to, um, well, if I'm going to read a book, I'm going to talk about it as much as possible. So I figured I'd do an episode on the book I read. So, chapter one, the happy valley. A trail once traced in an ancient path across the largest continent on earth. It started on the coast of the Indian Ocean before edging into the damp rainforest of Minar. It followed the fast flowing river, its banks teeming with life. Or I guess, I'll just tell you kind of what happens.

• 6:58Speaker 00

  That would be a lot better.

• 6:59Jeff Larson?

  That's better.

• 7:00Speaker 00

  In my opinion.

• 7:02Jeff Larson?

  All right. I was recently chatting with a friend. Okay. And she's like a bit more conservative, but has kind of fallen off of that a bit, but I don't know. Anyways, we had some overlapping discussion in like various different conspiracy theories. So we were still like bonding over our ideas for a few different things. Anyway, one way or another, I brought up that I was reading the book, The Beast in the Clouds, and that is about searching for giant pandas, right? To which she responded, yeah, China invented pandas, right? And I was taken aback.

• 7:45Jeff Larson?

  To be honest, it had been a while since I'd heard something so stupid from someone who I like somewhat respected their opinions, right?

• 7:54Speaker 00

  I've heard that conspiracy before.

• 7:56Jeff Larson?

  And it made me question if that's how I come off talking to some NASA person about the moon landing or something, you know? Because like, I know, I know enough about wildlife to know that's just a stupid idea to have, that pandas were just created. Yeah. But I look into this conspiracy theory a little more. Wes, you've heard it?

• 8:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, just that like no old art in China has pandas in it.

• 8:26Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 8:27Speaker 00

  And there's

• 8:28Jeff Larson?

  So yeah, there's a group of chronically online people who are questioning if pandas are real animals or were created in like a Chinese lab. And like Wes was saying, there's not too much art that shows pandas before the 1900s. And I'll just let Tucker Carlson's guest explain it better. Okay? So this is Owen Benjamin on Tucker Carlson.

• 8:53Speaker 02

  I know about a lot. I don't think pandas are real as described. I'm sorry? Panda bears. Like I know about a lot of lies. Uh, like I think they're like Shih Tzu dogs. Like I think they're, they were never wild.

• 9:05Jeff Larson?

  Really?

• 9:06Speaker 02

  They ovulate three days a year. They can't survive. All they do is eat bamboo and they cannot make them procreate. Guess what a group of pandas is called?

• 9:14Jeff Larson?

  What?

• 9:15Speaker 02

  An embarrassment of pandas.

• 9:18Jeff Larson?

  Very good joke.

• 9:19Speaker 02

  The more you look into that, the more, China owns all of them, which only happens if you have a patent, right? And, and the first time they were never in Chinese literature or art until the end of the 19th century, because bamboo is super hard to get rid of. And all they do is eat bamboo and they're like, and they roll down hills and they can't have sex.

• 9:36Jeff Larson?

  They weren't in Chinese art or literature?

• 9:39Speaker 02

  Never, not until the end of the 1800s.

• 9:41Jeff Larson?

  Okay, so that, that proves it right there. Cause like, how could you not paint a panda?

• 9:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then people were like, oh, so you think they're robots? I'm like, have you ever seen a sheet? You think there were wild Shih Tzus? So like, I'm aware of a lot of deception in the world.

• 9:55Jeff Larson?

  So compelling. Interesting points, Wes.

• 9:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, very interesting.

• 10:02Mike Smith?

  So that guy was supposing that they were invented to curtail the bamboo population? There was too much bamboo.

• 10:11Speaker 00

  Like his hypothesis was.

• 10:14Mike Smith?

  And that was the easiest way China could come up with to get rid of it.

• 10:17Speaker 00

  Creating a whole new animal. Yeah.

• 10:19Mike Smith?

  That's amazing.

• 10:20Speaker 00

  A bear.

• 10:20Jeff Larson?

  I think.

• 10:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:22Jeff Larson?

  Part of it's just like that China only is like the only country that owns pandas. So people get like weird about that. And like, there really isn't very much art of pandas, which is surprising, like comparative to most cultures and art with their wildlife. But I mean, as we're going to get into with this book, they're just extremely rare, even like back then. So it wasn't like most of the big Chinese cities had never seen a panda.

• 10:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, saying that they're the only country that owns them too, is kind of a weird way of putting it. And I know for pandas, it makes more sense because China leases them to zoos and stuff. But like, that just means they're endemic to China. And like, we have animals like that in the US, like American alligators are only found in the US, you know? So yeah, like his point there is very, it's kind of like, there's a lot of animals that only live in one country.

• 11:24Jeff Larson?

  Sure, but not too many as like rare and iconic as a panda.

• 11:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, but that's just because of human preference that we've made them that iconic. It's because they're like so cute.

• 11:35Jeff Larson?

  They're pretty unique and like.

• 11:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, but so are American alligators, you know?

• 11:40Jeff Larson?

  And like, there's like a million of those.

• 11:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, sure. But that, that doesn't change my point at all. Like that doesn't, I think saying they own them is still like a weird way of saying that, like they're endemic to that country.

• 11:53Jeff Larson?

  More just makes pandas still kind of seem a little mythical that like they're, you know?

• 11:59Speaker 00

  Like ringtailed lemurs are beautiful, cute animals. We don't say Madagascar owns ringtailed lemurs, you know? It's just kind of.

• 12:07Mike Smith?

  Maybe we should get Tucker on the show and ask him some of these questions.

• 12:10Jeff Larson?

  I'll pass. I have that later on, but like how it works with the zoo system, but it is unique. I mean, I, I hear what you're saying, but also like, there's no other animal that countries have to pay millions of dollars to keep them each year, you know?

• 12:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:28Jeff Larson?

  But it kind of turns out that we're just in the matrix times a flat circle. Because much as I'm trying to do right now, in 1928, two of former President Theodore Roosevelt's sons named Ted and Kermit sailed to an unmapped section of China and Nepal to try to confirm the existence of pandas to the world. And on this episode, I'm also trying to confirm that existence to some of these. What's that guy's name? Owen Wilson?

• 13:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, who knows? I've found it already.

• 13:08Mike Smith?

  Owen Wilson. Wow. Pandas, huh?

• 13:13Jeff Larson?

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• 13:57Jeff Larson?

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• 14:38Jeff Larson?

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• 14:47Jeff Larson?

  So Ted and Kermit, they traveled to China in 1929. There it's April of 1929, they're separated from their original group. They've almost froze to death multiple times after greatly underestimating the terrain of the Himalayas. They've been saved by several different unexpected villages and had given up complete hope of finding a panda. The two brothers raised their rifles in unison and fired. But let's back up. What's something you guys know about Ted and Kermit's dad, Theodore Roosevelt?

• 15:27Speaker 00

  Oh, Teddy?

• 15:29Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 15:29Speaker 00

  He, he's a boisterous man. He loves hunting, but he also loves conservation. He, he wasn't one to take no guff from anyone.

• 15:41Mike Smith?

  He wore those, people say John Lennon popularized those little circular glasses. I think it was Teddy. He always has those tiny little glasses on.

• 15:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:50Jeff Larson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 15:51Speaker 00

  He rode a moose.

• 15:52Jeff Larson?

  Rode a moose. That's a good one. Did you guys know that he kind of invented the way we have American football now?

• 16:01Speaker 00

  No.

• 16:02Mike Smith?

  Oh, really?

• 16:03Jeff Larson?

  He, he applied the forward pass into the game because the game almost like football almost got canceled in the 1920s or no, before the 1920s, when he was president. Because it was so dangerous, like 18 people would die a year, college kids from playing football. And the way it worked was like a five yard gain was a first down. But there's no passing, so they would just like beat the shit out of each other and try to move the ball five yards.

• 16:38Mike Smith?

  Establish the run game, the whole game.

• 16:40Jeff Larson?

  There's one year with like Yale and Harvard where seven students died. So they banned it for two years and then Teddy Roosevelt loved football. So he brought it back and like had his son Ted play in the game. And Ted got like a broken nose and a gashed open cheek right away because the other team was like, this is the president's son. Let's kick his ass. And Ted's like, then the next year, 18 kids died and Ted's like, hey, we gotta fix this thing.

• 17:14Speaker 00

  He's, he's our most interesting president, in my opinion, like of all the presidents. He, when I read his book about exploring the Amazon, I was just like, this was an interesting dude.

• 17:24Jeff Larson?

  Yeah. And like, maybe part of Ted and Kermit's fascination with finding a new type of bear stemmed from their father's legacy and his like legendary story of the teddy bear. So do you guys know teddy bears after Teddy Roosevelt?

• 17:44Jeff Larson?

  So in 1902, President Roosevelt went on a bear hunting trip in Mississippi at the invitation of the governor, Andrew Longino. And he had this guide named Holier. He was a formerly enslaved man who became the most prolific bear hunter in the nation and had killed over 3,000 bears. So he used to be a slave, then he got freed and he's just like, I'm just going to kill bears now. That's my new thing. So yeah, kind of you're rooting for him and tell that, right?

• 18:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:21Jeff Larson?

  He also served as a Confederate cavalry scout during the Civil War. So he has kind of a complicated history.

• 18:29Speaker 00

  Interesting.

• 18:30Jeff Larson?

  But they hunt for several days and Roosevelt hadn't seen a bear the whole time. So Holt gets ahead of him, finds a bear, he like clubs it and beats it and ties it to a tree. And calls Teddy over to come shoot it. Teddy refuses and says it's unsportsmanlike. And the legend has him, there's like a cartoonist who drew a really cute bear tied to a tree and Teddy being all heroic and saving the bear. And it became like a whole thing. They created toys, they created like teddy bears, started selling them. Now everyone still has teddy bears.

• 19:11Jeff Larson?

  But in reality, he just had someone else kill the bear because it was already suffering a lot. But still good on him for refusing to kill it and saying like, this isn't good sport. Also, to all you parent listeners out there, be careful what games you play with your children because it might stick with them the rest of their life.

• 19:36Mike Smith?

  Don't play any like jigsaw games with them.

• 19:38Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, right. Teddy had a game called Bear Hunt and it was like the bear game and his kids would beg him to play it. And he would act like a bear growling and lumbering after his kids as they shrieked and ran. And he'd tackle and wrestle them and just was like, like Wes was saying, was a big energetic man. But that was like the game that his kids liked to play the most with him is bear hunt. But yeah, I think conservation is probably his biggest lasting legacy. He placed roughly 230 million acres of American land under federal protection, which is more than any president had before him.

• 20:24Jeff Larson?

  He made 150 national forests, 51 federal bird reserves, starting with Pelican Island in Florida in 1903. And that was the beginning of today's National Wildlife Refuge System. So like plume hunters were wiping out a lot of birds for women hat feathers when he did that.

• 20:50Jeff Larson?

  I could go either way on that.

• 20:52Mike Smith?

  Those are pretty cool.

• 20:58Jeff Larson?

  He made four national game preserves, five national parks, but only three of which are still there today. Crater Lake, Wind Cave, and Mesa Verde. And then he did like a really cool one where like, people were catching on to how much land he was protecting, like all these super rich, private owners. So like, as they were catching on, he just really went for it and protected a ton of land right before they could stop him. And it seems like he really cared. So I respect him for that. He like famously would camp in Yosemite with John Muir and just like had a lot of really good influences in his life.

• 21:40Jeff Larson?

  And like, seems like a lot of what he wanted to do was protect what makes America so great, which is our wildlife and forests. And he created the Forest Service as well.

• 21:51Speaker 00

  Yeah. He's really adamant about people putting controls on like the presidency and like the government and stuff. He, he like, I, I really, the last few years, I've read a lot of quotes from him, just about how he had a forward looking vision on how America shouldn't be. You know, I, I don't know, I'm not saying this the right way, but he was just like a very forward looking person.

• 22:15Jeff Larson?

  But like, he kinda could see what was coming and tried to protect.

• 22:19Mike Smith?

  He probably removed his rear view mirror in his car, you think?

• 22:23Speaker 00

  Only looking forward all the time.

• 22:27Jeff Larson?

  Were they driving cars in the, like, nineteen oh five?

• 22:31Speaker 00

  Uh, not quite, I don't think.

• 22:33Mike Smith?

  I have no idea. I think that's a half measure, though. You gotta remove your side view mirrors too, to go like all the way. You never hear about people doing that.

• 22:42Speaker 00

  That's true.

• 22:42Jeff Larson?

  Hmm.

• 22:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:45Jeff Larson?

  The thing I was referencing was called the Midnight Forest. And in nineteen oh seven, Western members of Congress passed a measure to stop him from creating more national forests in several states. Before signing it, Roosevelt and um, his Forest Service guy, Pinchot, rushed to designate about sixteen million acres of new forest and signed the bill.

• 23:10Speaker 00

  That's amazing.

• 23:11Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 23:12Speaker 00

  You really, you gotta wonder like what it worth we would be if it wasn't for him, like with our conservation.

• 23:18Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, capitalism's not very great for conservation.

• 23:22Speaker 00

  No.

• 23:23Jeff Larson?

  Um, he died January sixth, nineteen nineteen, in his sleep at Sage Mar Hill in Oyster Bay, New York. And he was sixty. Uh, blood clot got into his lungs.

• 23:36Speaker 00

  They'll do that.

• 23:37Jeff Larson?

  And like, a lot of that was from, he got really sick in a expedition in like the Brazilian Amazon after being president.

• 23:45Speaker 00

  That's the book I read, River of Doubt.

• 23:47Jeff Larson?

  He almost died of malaria out there.

• 23:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:50Jeff Larson?

  Also, he was like, super sad because the year before, his son had been shot down as a pilot in World War One.

• 23:58Speaker 00

  That will make you sad when that happens.

• 24:00Jeff Larson?

  I think, he probably didn't have rear view mirror.

• 24:04Mike Smith?

  No shot.

• 24:06Jeff Larson?

  Yeah. My baby should have, maybe it would have saved him. So that, I mean, that's just devil's advocate there, Mike.

• 24:14Mike Smith?

  No, he could have seen that bullet coming. If he got shot from behind, maybe he could have dodged.

• 24:19Jeff Larson?

  Um, and Vice President Thomas Marshall summed up his death by saying, "Death had to take Roosevelt sleeping because if he had been awake, there would have been a fight." Which is a cool quote.

• 24:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's pretty sweet.

• 24:35Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 24:35Speaker 00

  No one's gonna say that about any of us. They're gonna say, of course he was asleep.

• 24:45Jeff Larson?

  In his life, he took Ted and Kermit around the world to do several different hunts, but also just to like see the world. And the boys carried this bond and love for the outdoors with them the rest of their lives. So eventually pandas became the main focus of where they put all this energy from their dad. Um, I know it's kind of a controversial thing nowadays to say like, discovered pandas. Because like, there were people in China who lived with pandas. It's not like humans discovering pandas. But I do still think it's like-

• 25:20Speaker 00

  Described is a better word.

• 25:22Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, I do still think though, like it deserves a lot of credit to have like, a world known documentation of animals.

• 25:30Speaker 00

  Yes, that's why I think described is a better word for it.

• 25:33Jeff Larson?

  Okay, yeah, so like, Western world discovery or describing this animal, but it, there was like, especially in these big museums, a big push. And I'm gonna use the word discover because that's what they were using. And it was a discovery for this group of people, this like information system at the time, right?

• 25:55Speaker 00

  True.

• 25:55Jeff Larson?

  Honestly, though, what they're trying to do is document it and like confirm that it's an actual animal, which is an important thing. Like, it's good that we have museums. It's good that we have worldwide information. And this really started gathering information of like, all these animals that exist in the eighteen hundreds. And they wanted like a worldwide database of like, what animals exist, right?

• 26:21Speaker 00

  Descriptions.

• 26:21Jeff Larson?

  So the first panda specimens were sent to Paris in eighteen sixty-nine. And they're sent by Pierre Armand David, who is a French missionary and naturalist. And um, he was on a mission in Muping. He saw his panda skin in a local home. And he hired some hunters to like, get him some specimens. So within a few weeks, they brought him a young panda and an adult. They were both killed. He prepared the skins and bones, shipped them to Paris. And the Paris Museum got, it, it's called the Musée National de Histoire Nationale in Paris.

• 27:05Jeff Larson?

  But the whole world's like, oh wow, there's another type of bear. And this is like the last bear to be documented worldwide, right? But actually, at the time, so Pierre thought it was a bear. But they get there, it has like this extra kinda thumb like thing. It's like a bone that protrudes out of the hand. And it seems a lot more to some naturalists like a red panda. Cause they also like, show, it eats bamboo. They're like, this is a red panda. That's why it gets the name Giant Panda, is red pandas had already been documented. And they got the name from like the word bamboo eater in the Tibetan language.

• 27:49Jeff Larson?

  So then like, they think this is a larger version of red pandas, so they call it a giant panda.

• 27:55Mike Smith?

  That's so, I would have totally guessed the other way around that.

• 27:59Jeff Larson?

  Right.

• 27:59Mike Smith?

  Like giant pandas were, yeah, cause they're like the main panda in my brain. But that's so strange.

• 28:05Speaker 00

  For newer listeners, are red pandas bears?

• 28:09Jeff Larson?

  No.

• 28:10Speaker 00

  No.

• 28:11Jeff Larson?

  They're pretty unique.

• 28:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:13Jeff Larson?

  They're not really raccoons either, they're kind of their own thing.

• 28:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:17Jeff Larson?

  But eventually, we get like DNA tests on them that settles for sure that like, this is a bear, right? But that's a long ways away. And museums are peaking in popularity in the early nineteen hundreds. So like, there's this panda that got turned in, in close to, or is it what, nineteen sixty-nine? But like, it's been about fifty years now and no one's ever seen a panda bear in the wild.

• 28:45Speaker 00

  You said nineteen sixty-nine.

• 28:47Jeff Larson?

  Sorry. It's been fifty years now. No one's ever seen a panda in the wild from the Western world, right? From like, where information is passed from country to country. No one's ever seen one in the wild. And like, there becomes some debate. Is there actually this ate the bear? Does it even exist? Did these locals just like sew two animal pelts together and create a panda? Cause it's like a ridiculous thought, but it's also kind of a crazy thought that there's just a bear that no one's ever seen in the world.

• 29:21Speaker 00

  There's so, obviously people debating that today, which is crazy.

• 29:26Jeff Larson?

  Right.

• 29:27Mike Smith?

  It's a human dressed in a bear costume. We've seen China do that before, right?

• 29:32Jeff Larson?

  No. Or those dogs that they painted like pandas.

• 29:36Speaker 00

  Yes, that they did too.

• 29:38Mike Smith?

  They're all, they're up to bear shenanigans over there. Maybe he's on to something.

• 29:43Jeff Larson?

  So Ted and Kermit use their famous last name Roosevelt. And they start to like, get funds to be able to do an expedition out to China. There's an unmapped section of China that is just super appealing to them as explorers. It's like one of the last unmapped sections of the entire explored world at that point. So they're like, it'd be so cool to go map this, to go like, see what's out there. And to like, take good notes and like, make a legacy for ourselves because we've been in our dad's shadow, like Bronny James this entire time.

• 30:21Mike Smith?

  He casts a large shadow. It's a big guy.

• 30:24Jeff Larson?

  Oh, I guess they wouldn't know about Bronny yet.

• 30:27Speaker 00

  They, yeah, not yet. They were looking forward, maybe.

• 30:31Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 30:31Jeff Larson?

  A little side tangent, because I started, I started just like looking into how each bear was, I, I say discovered for lack of better word, documented in these museums is what I should say, right?

• 30:46Speaker 00

  Described.

• 30:46Jeff Larson?

  Um, documented's fine.

• 30:49Speaker 00

  I'm just giving you the best word, like the word that most people use.

• 30:52Mike Smith?

  Describe is like, scientifically, that is the most appropriate word you would say.

• 30:57Speaker 00

  Okay, yeah.

• 30:58Jeff Larson?

  Okay, so the sun bears' formal scientific description came in eighteen twenty-one. And it is Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, a British colonial administrator, best known for founding modern Singapore today. And he was out there, um, he found sun bears when he was out there, right? So he kept a young sun bear as a pet.

• 31:24Speaker 00

  Do you think he kidnapped any girls in Singapore?

• 31:28Mike Smith?

  Only one.

• 31:30Speaker 00

  When we got to Singapore, our, our taxi driver was just like, hey, don't kidnap any girls.

• 31:39Mike Smith?

  Not even one.

• 31:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, and then he's like, and if you do, go to South Singapore. All right, man, it's not in our plan.

• 31:49Jeff Larson?

  It's like, dude, you're, you're putting thoughts in my mind that weren't there.

• 31:55Jeff Larson?

  So he described sun bears back to Britain, you know, in these museums. And he keeps one as a pet, which he described as gentle and playful. Wrote that it was raised with his children and allowed to eat at his table. And it was like quite the different picture at this time. Because like, people were more familiar with brown bears, black bears, and even like some interaction with polar bears. So bears were just deemed as like monsters, kind of. They're like, wait, this guy's eating dinner with his kids in a bear?

• 32:31Mike Smith?

  He like loves fruit and has a super long tongue.

• 32:34Jeff Larson?

  That probably where they came up with Paddington, honestly.

• 32:37Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 32:38Jeff Larson?

  But like, basically, that's kind of what Ted and Kermit are going for here, right? They wanna make a name for themselves like Pierre or Thomas Raffles did. So they start forming a crew, like MacGruber, Dominic Toretto, Schwarzenegger and Predator. They form their crew, okay? They need someone who can speak Chinese. So they get in contact with a nineteen year old Chinese American interpreter, an NYU student named Jack Young. He was born in Hawaii, but lived in China part of his childhood.

• 33:16Jeff Larson?

  One of the brothers is riding on a train and just like happens to meet up with an old college friend named Sudam.

• 33:24Mike Smith?

  Uh oh.

• 33:27Jeff Larson?

  It's S U Y D A M. So I hope I'm saying that right.

• 33:32Mike Smith?

  I think we're safe then. Yeah, I don't know. That doesn't sound like Sudan to me. Yeah, yeah.

• 33:38Jeff Larson?

  It's either a hard A or a soft A. So I don't know. Sudam, Sudan.

• 33:42Mike Smith?

  Yeah, never use the hard.

• 33:43Jeff Larson?

  They start like talking on the train forever and he's telling him about, yeah, we're going to China soon. It's gonna be so awesome. And Sudam's just like, oh, man, that's awesome. Like, that sounds so fun. You're gonna have so much fun out there. And they're like, you should come. And he's like, alright.

• 34:03Jeff Larson?

  All these other like, people who are way more qualified are just like, why are you bringing this guy? And he's like an amateur scientist and all this stuff, but he's just good vibes. So they invited him along. And there's also a British scientist who's like a really good note taker documenting things named Herbert, who's gonna go on the trip. So the group's Ted, who's forty one, Kermit, who's thirty nine. Those are both Roosevelt's sons, Herbert, who's fifty one, Jack, who's nineteen, and Sudam, who's thirty nine. They make plans also to meet up with their friend Russell Handy if they ever found a panda.

• 34:46Jeff Larson?

  So put a pin in that and Wes, don't forget Russell Handy.

• 34:51Mike Smith?

  Russell Handy, got it. Wes is always thinking about Handys, so.

• 34:55Speaker 00

  I am, yeah, that's easy.

• 34:57Mike Smith?

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• 35:40Mike Smith?

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• 36:24Mike Smith?

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• 37:05Mike Smith?

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• 37:45Mike Smith?

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• 37:56Jeff Larson?

  I have a few little just side notes that I didn't really know how to fit into my version of the story that I'm just gonna throw in every once in a while. But one of them that I liked is the two brothers, they traveled a lot and they always brought three books with them. And I just don't think you guys would ever guess the three books. So they would bring Pride and Prejudice.

• 38:20Mike Smith?

  Hell yeah, my guys.

• 38:22Jeff Larson?

  Sense and Sensibility.

• 38:24Mike Smith?

  Two Jane Austens.

• 38:26Jeff Larson?

  And Jane Eyre.

• 38:28Mike Smith?

  Jane Eyre, okay, yeah.

• 38:30Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, so that's like the three go to books and they just reread them out in the mountains, wherever they were in the world. Kind of like comfort books. Yeah, I was wondering like what three books I would bring. Maybe Beast in the Clouds, since it's like one of the three books I've ever read.

• 38:49Mike Smith?

  That's a terrible choice. You gotta bring, that's crazy. Well, I don't know, cause like everyone, when you talk about like, what's your five desert island albums? Maybe bring ones you haven't heard before. So it's like a new experience.

• 39:02Jeff Larson?

  Well, I read it.

• 39:04Mike Smith?

  I know, I don't, well, okay, yeah, you just got me thinking, you know? We all pick like stuff we've already experienced before.

• 39:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, maybe pick like four that you love and then one that you like save, kind of like cast away where you didn't open that one package.

• 39:17Jeff Larson?

  Bring a dictionary just to like learn words, just be like extra, you know?

• 39:24Mike Smith?

  That's crazy, dude. If you read the dictionary, like, it's like every book at once. You just have to read it in the right order.

• 39:35Mike Smith?

  That's such a good idea, Jeff. You're a genius. How'd you come up with that?

• 39:40Jeff Larson?

  Just like the way you read it, you could read any book.

• 39:43Mike Smith?

  Right.

• 39:50Jeff Larson?

  So they like sail to China, they get there and pretty early on, everyone's amazed at how different everything is. It's still kind of untouched from modernization and it's like industrial revolutionary era wo- world where things are just getting destroyed for capitalism, right? But all the plants are different, animals are different. And it's just like a part of the, a section of the world's still separated from human encroachment. Like, there's humans there, but it's like, they're living with the natural world. So they're there for like a week and they start already getting annoyed with a member of the group.

• 40:32Jeff Larson?

  Herbert, because he's like fifty one years old, so I think he was like the only one who wasn't completely listening to Ted and Kermit. Like Jack, Jack was like awesome because he's just felt so lucky to have been included. And like Sudam also just was like, kind of not even supposed to be there. So he's just happy. But Herbert's like an actual, he's like an actual scientist. He's older than everyone in the group. And he's going incredibly slow. Like every new butterfly they would find, he would like take out his journal, take really detailed notes and like draw it perfectly in his journal.

• 41:17Jeff Larson?

  Which is really important because a lot of these species honestly end up getting wiped out from the world. And his notes are like part of their lasting legacy. So it's like really important that he's doing this, but they're like, hey dude, we're here to see pandas and we're never gonna get there at this pace, right? So they're getting mad at Herbert pretty early on. And he even like is going so slow, they like kind of go ahead of him a little bit and he gets completely lost from the group. And it's way too early on, it's a bad sign, but miraculously, a local fisherman who like doesn't know any English just picks him up on a boat and they're like able to meet back up with him.

• 42:01Jeff Larson?

  And they continue their expedition and they find their first large mammal of the trip, which was a very unexpected animal. So first, before I tell you about the animal, they get to their first like big village in the wilderness of China. And they're supposed to, like, they had plans, this one's close enough to where other Westerners are traveling that they're able to make plans with the locals. They're supposed to meet the king of the village and they get there and they meet his brother Feng. And his brother's like, yeah, my brother is just completely addicted to opium

• 42:44Jeff Larson?

  and pretty much not even a real person anymore. Like can't really even function. Starts telling him about the state of China. His mom had like recently been taken by soldiers in a cage.

• 42:58Jeff Larson?

  And Ted and Kermit are like, hey, make him say that again, because that can't be right. And Jack kind of like had lived there a little bit, so he knows everything going on. And he believes it and tells him again. But Feng is like a great host. He gives them this huge welcome dinner and they get again, a little frustrated and irritated with Herbert, because he can't use chopsticks at all. And they're all like, come on, dude, like, you're embarrassing us here.

• 43:29Jeff Larson?

  But then he like introduces him to his one year old baby, who's most likely going to become like a prince or a king. And Feng's like, hey, what's a good name for this thing? They're like, what? He's like, yeah, what's like a Western name for my baby? Maybe something that starts with a W. And they like talk with themselves and they're like, how about Walter? And he's like, all right, his name's Walter. What? He names his kid Walter on the spot, which was kind of a funny thing.

• 44:00Speaker 00

  I like how he did have a W. He's like, I know I want it to be a double.

• 44:06Jeff Larson?

  But basically, like, starting in the eighteen, eighteen thirty nine, there was like a British opium war in China, where like British were obsessed with Chinese tea. And they, for whatever reason, get China just completely addicted to opium, where one in four Chinese people had a strong addiction to the drug. It's one of the worst cases of over-drug uses in the entire history of the human race. So throughout their whole travels, they're seeing people addicted to opium. But anyways, back to this mammal, right? So they leave this village and they start trekking back through the Chinese landscape.

• 44:49Jeff Larson?

  And they see some really murky waters of the Mekong River. And there's rumors of a legendary beast that lives in this river, right? So they dismiss the rumors and just kind of are like walking on as they look at the water and they see a giant gray flash. And like multiple of them see it. So they're like, okay, maybe there is a legendary mythical animal in here. So they stop and like, for the first time, they're kind of like on the same pace as Herbert. They're like, all right, yeah, we can stop and wait and look for a while. And the animal eventually resurfaces.

• 45:31Jeff Larson?

  Herbert immediately begins sketching a fin and a round head. Kermit blinks in amazement as he watches a dolphin, five hundred miles from the ocean, play in the water.

• 45:43Speaker 00

  Whoa.

• 45:44Jeff Larson?

  So it is a Irawaddy dolphin. And it was brackish water, so there was some salt in it. But it's like, they were not expecting to see dolphins. Soon after that, they're traveling and they see a bunch of Sarus cranes. Do you know any facts about Sarus cranes at West?

• 46:03Speaker 00

  I don't, no.

• 46:05Jeff Larson?

  So I, the book said this and I Googled it. And apparently they're the largest flying birds in the world.

• 46:13Speaker 00

  Huh, how do you spell it?

• 46:15Jeff Larson?

  S A R U S.

• 46:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, tall, no tallest flying bird in the world.

• 46:21Jeff Larson?

  Tallis.

• 46:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, okay.

• 46:24Jeff Larson?

  Like Wimby.

• 46:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:25Mike Smith?

  Still impressive.

• 46:26Speaker 00

  The largest I want to say is uh Andean condor, but I'm not sure. Let's see.

• 46:34Mike Smith?

  What's the widest?

• 46:35Speaker 00

  Wondering albatross is the largest wingspan. Heaviest is Andean condor, tallest is the Sarus crane.

• 46:43Mike Smith?

  Hmm, what's the silliest?

• 46:46Speaker 00

  Sillyest? I don't know.

• 46:48Jeff Larson?

  It'd have to be like a.

• 46:50Mike Smith?

  A parrot that swears.

• 46:52Jeff Larson?

  Parrot that you taught swear word, yeah.

• 46:54Mike Smith?

  Yeah, right?

• 46:55Jeff Larson?

  See all these cranes and again, to kind of show you this dynamic, Kermit and Ted immediately raise their guns, like, we gotta get a sample of these huge birds. And Herbert's like, no, lower your rifles. And they sneak up on the cranes and get really close. And he documents them in his journal. And there's a whole bunch of them and they start flying away. And it's just like, it feels like Jurassic Park, you know? Here's the tallest birds in the world. We didn't know these existed. And now we're like watching a huge group of them fly around.

• 47:28Mike Smith?

  That's cool.

• 47:28Jeff Larson?

  Herbert took notes and was the first person to ever be able to identify them as an indicator species, which says the environment's getting bad and this bird's gonna start like doing worse. But like you guys can imagine how otherworldly this must feel for them. They're still at the start of the trip. They've seen dolphins five hundred miles from the ocean. And now they're seeing the large, the tallest flying birds in the world.

• 47:54Speaker 00

  Yeah. Sometimes when I think like, if I could go back to any time, I think I'd want to go back to the early nineteen hundreds and be like an explorer, just to see stuff for the first time. And as a, you know, describe it to science for the first time, like, you would feel like you're just in a whole new world. But then you're also not, like, going back further seems like it'd be really dangerous and hard. But the nineteen hundreds, I don't know.

• 48:17Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 48:18Speaker 00

  Just seems like the sweet spot.

• 48:19Jeff Larson?

  Well, and it's like weird too, like, I don't know, when were our grandparents born? Somewhere in like the nineteen twenties, I think, right?

• 48:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:28Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 48:28Jeff Larson?

  It's like, they're still trying to figure out if pandas are real. When like grandpa was born, that's crazy, you know?

• 48:36Speaker 00

  Weird. Yeah, this wasn't that long ago.

• 48:39Jeff Larson?

  Yeah. Anyways, they get to another village and it kind of sets a darker tone on the trip. And it's called the Naga people. They had a ton of like human skulls, like a pyramid of human skulls. And they ask a hunter about it. And uh, the hunter says that his most prized skull is actually baby skulls. Because uh.

• 49:01Speaker 00

  Human baby?

• 49:02Jeff Larson?

  Those are the hardest to, yeah, those are the hardest to get. Because you like have to take out everyone, like they're in the middle and you have to take out everyone before you can get there.

• 49:13Speaker 00

  Geez.

• 49:13Jeff Larson?

  So that sets them up, like that kind of brings the tone down a little. And right after that, they're like, hey, Herbert, we're leaving you behind. You're too slow.

• 49:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, cut from the scene.

• 49:25Jeff Larson?

  Like, you're too slow. We're not gonna be able to find the panda at this pace. Herbert's shocked by this and they leave a few guides with them. And they're just like, we'll see you in half a year. So Herbert's gone.

• 49:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:40Jeff Larson?

  Ted, Kermit, Jack and Sudan and about fourteen guides, men and female, continue their journey towards the intimidating Himalayas ahead. Probably kind of felt like the end of the Fellowship of the Ring, when Frodo and Sam are just looking out at all those mountains ahead of them that they know they have to climb.

• 50:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:02Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 50:02Jeff Larson?

  And.

• 50:03Mike Smith?

  Probably took turns carrying each other.

• 50:06Jeff Larson?

  As they're getting closer to the mountains, it starts snowing and it starts snowing really, really hard. They had no idea that the Himalaya crossing would be as intense as it was.

• 50:17Mike Smith?

  Do you think Teddy was like, do you remember berries? Cream to his brother?

• 50:26Speaker 00

  Do you think one of them kept being like, this is the furthest I've ever been?

• 50:29Mike Smith?

  Yeah. Every single step. It's like, yes, established. Thank you.

• 50:37Jeff Larson?

  They get to the mountains, they separate and Kermit's off on his own. And he sees what he thinks is a local deer. But then he looks a little harder and sees it silhouetted against the rocks. It wasn't a deer, but it was a sero, which is a goat antelope species. And Kermit knew about the animal because of Roy Chapman Andrews in nineteen sixteen, who was a famous naturalist and had killed one and given it to the museum. So like, a lot of these mammals they're finding, it's like, yeah, we've heard of one person who saw this.

• 51:14Speaker 00

  I've seen this once.

• 51:15Jeff Larson?

  Sent it to a museum, right?

• 51:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:17Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, so it's like really like exciting. He's able to shoot it, but here's the side story of Roy Andrews real quick. So his wife, Yvette Burrup Andrews, had also photographed this animal. And Roy Chapman Andrews was dismissive of his, of her work. Following their nineteen thirty one divorce, he was quoted saying, physically and intellectually, women may be equals of men for the work of exploration. But temperamentally, they are not. They do not stand up under the little daily annoyances that loom large in the trying work involved in an expedition, the trivialities which men can ignore completely disturb them

• 52:02Jeff Larson?

  and prevent them from settling down to hard and contentious work. And his wife pretty, she is just like, she's mad. We got.

• 52:11Mike Smith?

  Interesting.

• 52:12Jeff Larson?

  She's like, she's like, I wasn't that bad. And then like, the reason I think the author, um, who I should shout out, Nathalia Holt is the author of the book, right? And I think the reason she points this out is to kind of illustrate that Ted and Kermit were both like, for that time period, they're kind of feminist almost, right?

• 52:38Jeff Larson?

  Maybe not completely feminist, but their dad, their dad was like, women should be able to vote. They should be paid equally to men for the same work at, when he was president. And like, they kind of had a similar mindset, right? So they had different philosophy than them. They even like paid all their female guides the same as the men, which wasn't very common at that time. And by all accounts from them, their women guides were just awesome. Early on the trip, they ran into a large group of bandits and they had like a lot of money, a lot of guns. So it was like really scary. And the woman just

• 53:21Jeff Larson?

  like charged at these guys like right away, just like charged at them like headbutt style and scared them all off. Kind of unique at this time period in China too. A lot of the women had triangle shaped feet. There's a practice where they would like fold their toes in.

• 53:40Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 53:41Jeff Larson?

  Yeah. Because there's like one Chinese princess who did it. And then they were all like, oh, that's hot. We should all do that to our daughters. But anyways, back to the main. So Kermit finds this sarrow, right? And he shoots it, but he's like freezing cold. And then he has to hike up to where it's at. And he gets there and he's just like so exhausted, he can't do a single thing. And he's like, I have to cut this thing open and like properly skin it right now, or it's going to freeze overnight and be so much harder. And he just falls asleep. So then it freezes and it's like rock solid in the morning and it takes him like 10 times longer to prepare it and like get

• 54:25Jeff Larson?

  the sample ready. And he's just like meets back up with his brother and Jack and they're like freezing, suffering altitude sickness. They're starting to think they might actually freeze to death when they find a stone house that they didn't really even know was in that area, middle the Himalayas. They're just like, nothing's gonna be here. So they get to this house, they approach the front door and there's a monkey chained to the entrance. They write that is a miserable monkey and it lunged and bit Ted on the leg.

• 55:00Mike Smith?

  Oh, wow.

• 55:01Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 55:02Mike Smith?

  Teach us that to call miserable.

• 55:04Jeff Larson?

  And well, like it was miserably like treated.

• 55:07Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 55:08Jeff Larson?

  Uh, so they like get saved by this house and then they go into a town that's called the Lama Village. And they kind of have a great time. Kermit just loves buying stuff from like local markets. So he's able to buy some art. He gets like his favorite possession ever, which was like this painting in a temple that was just like super nice. And it was so nice. He knew he couldn't ask for it. But then he just kept staring at it and they're like, hey, you want this? And he's like, yeah.

• 55:38Mike Smith?

  Oh, nice.

• 55:39Jeff Larson?

  By all accounts, just like all these villages were the most hospitable, like excited to see them people in the world, right? So they kind of are able to like recoup their strength and they're really enjoying their time because they've been in a shadow cast by their father, who's larger than life. And now they're in a spot in the world where like, people didn't really care about their dad being Teddy Roosevelt. And like, they're getting judged off their own actions, which they appreciated. So they leave the Lama Village and they have to climb their biggest peak yet. They're freezing. And this peak, they actually think might be the biggest peak in

• 56:23Jeff Larson?

  the world, because they didn't really have Everest mapped out at this point. So they're like, man, we might have to climb over the biggest mountain in the world right now. Like, they were wrong, but like, that's where their heads at, you know? Half their donkeys run away, which are like carrying their meals.

• 56:42Mike Smith?

  And their paintings.

• 56:43Jeff Larson?

  So they're getting like, super, yeah. And then like half their guides have to go chase them. So they're getting just super tired, low on energy and they hire more guides just to walk ahead of them and pack the snow down extra so that they can get through because like all these guides are more used to the altitude and they're just sick and miserable, right? So they're like punching through the snow and they're getting pretty impatient. It just starts feeling like more of a mountain climbing expedition than like being able to find a panda. And this is where, you know, famous quote your own movie, but it felt as if they were hunting the beast in the clouds is what they say here. You know, say the name of your movie and the movie

• 57:28Jeff Larson?

  chases off. Law-abiding citizen.

• 57:33Mike Smith?

  Lion King.

• 57:36Mike Smith?

  I don't think that one happens. The Taking of Pelham, one, two, three.

• 57:42Jeff Larson?

  So one night they're hiking through a snowstorm. They have severe altitude sickness and the guides are even getting sick. And they get to a point where like, none of them can walk any further. And they just like, don't even pitch a camp. They just like roll out their mats and go to sleep. And they wake up to see the sun shining on a frozen waterfall that they had camped under and they had no idea was there. But it's like really amazing because it's like, you know how ice is when the sun hits it. So it's like waking up to almost a diamond waterfall, you know?

• 58:18Mike Smith?

  That's cool. Yeah, that's really beautiful.

• 58:20Jeff Larson?

  So then they make it over, they get to a mountain village called the Forge of Arrows and they're just blown away by how like rich these villages seem because they're out in the middle of the mountains and then everything's like really high functioning, really nice, really clean, like beautiful materials used on the buildings. And they had it prepared there to like stay with a Christian missionary family that was living in this town. But they get there and this guy's like, kind of doesn't like the locals because none of them want to believe his message. And he's just complaining about them the whole time. So they prefer just staying with everyone else in the village and start like staying with all these Chinese families. And

• 59:05Jeff Larson?

  also they report saying is just the most attractive people ever. Like everyone's over six feet tall. They're all really good looking and they're like kind of surprised by that too.

• 59:16Mike Smith?

  Yeah, I wouldn't expect them to be that tall. Huh. But that's interesting. Huh. Altitude thing, maybe. Less gravity. They get stretched out a little bit all the way up there.

• 59:25Jeff Larson?

  Start getting like really discouraged and start feeling hopeless because they show everyone they see pictures of a panda from the Pierre guy who like sent in the samples. They show the pelt picture to all these different people and no one's even heard of them or seen them or anything. They're just like, yeah, I don't know what you're talking about. So they start even probably they're like, this thing even real, you know? But as they're in this town, Sudan finds some fresh bear tracks in the snow.

• 59:58Mike Smith?

  Hmm.

• 59:59Jeff Larson?

  And this is like their first bear in the whole trip. And at first he's like, oh, I got a panda. But then he looks at it a little closer and it's like, these are brown bear tracks. And they didn't really realize that brown bears lived in this area of the world. So it's still really exciting, but they're a little let down because they found bear tracks and it's not even the right bear. But yeah, it was kind of the first time that anyone had described Drizly's in the Himalayas.

• 1:00:27Mike Smith?

  Yeah, Himalayan brown bears. That's cool. How'd they come up with that name?

• 1:00:36Mike Smith?

  I mean.

• 1:00:36Jeff Larson?

  They get, they get a little bit more out of the mountains and they're walking like more through forest and they happen upon a large group of golden snub nose monkeys, which are really cool monkeys. They get really excited and they start just shooting. That's like their instinct all the time, right? And they get a little crazy with it and they end up shooting 12 monkeys.

• 1:01:01Mike Smith?

  Oh, that's a good movie.

• 1:01:02Jeff Larson?

  And there's like a newborn baby monkey that's just like left alone now. And it's just crying. And they instantly go from like excitement to like sincere regret and just feel evil. They wish they hadn't killed so many. The baby cries through the night and then dies in the morning. And its cries haunt them the rest of the trip. Like, what are we doing here? Just killing these animals, right?

• 1:01:30Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:31Jeff Larson?

  I think Herbert kind of put that into him too, when he was just like, hey, don't just shoot these birds. This is cool, you know?

• 1:01:39Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:39Jeff Larson?

  So like Ted actually kind of reprimanded their guides too, because their guides weren't supposed to be shooting stuff and their guides pulled out guns and started shooting at the monkeys too. And I kind of think maybe gaslighting is invented right there with Ted because it's like, dude, you just shot so many monkeys, you can't get mad at them for that, you know?

• 1:02:00Mike Smith?

  No, I think it was gaslighting was happening. Remember when Pontius Pilate was like, I washed my hands, so it wasn't my fault. That was you guys.

• 1:02:08Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, you're right.

• 1:02:10Mike Smith?

  Cain and Abel, gaslighting probably. Yeah, that's true.

• 1:02:15Jeff Larson?

  Adam and Eve, a little bit. Adam eats the apple and is like, well, she did, so I had to.

• 1:02:20Mike Smith?

  Right.

• 1:02:24Jeff Larson?

  So a few days later, they shoot two blue sheep and they were like, felt good about that because they they're starting to feel like this expedition might end up being considered a failure and that the museum won't fund anything else for them. So they're like, at least we can give them like these blue sheep, these cerros that we shot, but they're kind of like trying to get whatever they can, right? Jack starts collecting a lot more smaller specimens. He's kind of thinking of Herbert, who they left behind, and he's just trying to fill that void. He's trying to make himself as useful as possible. So he actually does a really good job like collecting different

• 1:03:03Jeff Larson?

  like butterflies and insects and like documenting them. But they're getting disappointed that they haven't really even been close to a panda and might not get another chance. So they're contemplating moving towards a different unmapped area of China that had a reputation for people who wanted to kill and eat travelers. And this is the people of Yi. And they're warned by like various different missionaries and even locals like, hey, don't mess with these people of Yi. These guys are bad, bad news, but they're like, I don't know where else to look for a panda. You know, we looked everywhere else. So they split off from Sudan

• 1:03:45Jeff Larson?

  and Jack and tell them to like lead the caravan to a different town and we'll meet up with you. And they're traveling and one of their guides comes running up to him excitedly. And this is like one of those stories almost reminds me of your tiger story where the guy's telling him about the tiger in the village. He like can't catch his breath, but he's like trying to tell him something really important. They're like, what? And he's just like can't catch his breath. But he eventually tells him there's a hunter in a sketchy town who claims to have seen a panda. So they get really excited. They go meet him and they show him the picture. And he's like, yeah, I have one of those. And they're like, no

• 1:04:28Jeff Larson?

  way. And he, they like meet up with him by his house and he brings this old panda skin and they can't believe it. And they're like super excited, but he didn't do a very expert job skinning the panda. It's not in very good condition. So they're like, we still got to get our own panda.

• 1:04:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:48Jeff Larson?

  But at least like this is their first time even being remotely close to like seeing one, right? So at this point, they've documented 5,000 birds, or they've described 5,000 birds, 2,000 small mammals, 40 big mammals, and 19 new species, but still no panda.

• 1:05:10Speaker 00

  Birds?

• 1:05:11Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:12Speaker 00

  Huh.

• 1:05:13Jeff Larson?

  I think Herbert, I think they're counting Herbert's.

• 1:05:15Speaker 00

  Okay, yeah.

• 1:05:16Jeff Larson?

  I, I looked at that different sources too.

• 1:05:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, okay, yeah.

• 1:05:22Jeff Larson?

  So at this point, even though they've been warned, they feel like they have no other choice but to just like go into this town of the people Yi and see what's up, see if they know about pandas, right? So they go there and most of the locals and never, it ends up being kind of chill, honestly, like the people are just normal. So they didn't really deserve that reputation. Yeah. But they're, most all the villagers were like, yeah, I know someone who saw one once type of thing. Like, it's not like a regular animal that they see. It's pretty rare in that area. But Ted and Kermit are like, hey, we're gonna

• 1:06:03Jeff Larson?

  pay all you guys to come help us find one. And they're all stoked. They're like, yeah, let's do it. We're not gonna find one anyways. And they're kind of deep down hoping they don't find one because it's a sacred animal to them. And they don't really want to just go kill one. But like, it's an easy payday. They're all like, yeah, let's do this. We'll go walk around in the woods for a while with these two dorks, right? But to the villagers' surprise, they go to a bamboo forest and they find some panda scat. And they're like, oh shit, we might actually find one. And like Ted and Kermit are surprised because just everything they know about bears is like bears like mountains and valleys. It's

• 1:06:45Jeff Larson?

  like, why would the bear like like bamboo? And but they find the scat and they start tracing some actual panda tracks with like that third little thumbprint. So they're like, oh, this is a panda. And not third, I don't know why I said third, but that extra little thumbprint, um, fifth, or maybe sixth. I think it's a six looking digit, but it's they, because bears have five fingers, right?

• 1:07:10Speaker 00

  Uh, yeah, they have five. Yeah.

• 1:07:12Jeff Larson?

  Yeah. So then pandas have like an extra bone that is used to grip bamboo.

• 1:07:17Speaker 00

  Yeah. And just so you know.

• 1:07:19Jeff Larson?

  Kind of a six thing.

• 1:07:21Speaker 00

  China's home to 1,500 species of birds. Um, so I don't know why they're saying that, but they're definitely.

• 1:07:29Jeff Larson?

  I think they're saying they collected 5,000 birds, like actual birds.

• 1:07:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:35Mike Smith?

  Like a lot of them were the same species, maybe?

• 1:07:37Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:07:38Mike Smith?

  Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:07:39Jeff Larson?

  That is what it's saying. So, thank you for clarifying that. And with the 2,000 small mammals, like 12 snub nose monkeys, there's like a bunch of like.

• 1:07:49Speaker 00

  Repeats.

• 1:07:50Jeff Larson?

  Um, yeah. But anyways, so they, they start seeing scratches on the bamboo and they're like, oh my gosh, we're actually like close to a panda. I can't believe this, right? And like the Yi people are a little dismayed. They're like, oh, shoot. I hope they don't actually like kill a panda and curse our village, you know? But they're also like kind of excited. They half want to see one and half don't want to see one, right? So they start getting close and it starts to snow. And like Ted and Kermit start cursing it because they're like, normally snow is good for tracking animals, but they already had the tracks and the snow might cover it up.

• 1:08:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:08:31Jeff Larson?

  So they're like, oh, I can't believe our luck. We're finally on a panda and it's starting to snow. We're gonna lose it. And they start getting close, but then they start hearing a strange clicking chirp. And they're like, what is that? And one of the Yi hunters moves silently through the bamboo and he's 40 yards ahead and he signals enthusiastically for Kermit to follow. They had separated Ted and Kermit at this point. So Kermit silently approaches and um, he starts staring at this beautiful like picturesque landscape of a dragon spruce tree with blue pine needles surrounded by bamboo on both sides, right?

• 1:09:15Jeff Larson?

  And he's just staring at this. And it's like a beautiful setting. And then he's shocked when he sees a white head with black eyes pop out of a hole at the bottom of this tree. So at the bottom of this trunk was the cutest little white head with black eyes staring at them. And they had finally found it.

• 1:09:37Speaker 00

  From the book.

• 1:09:38Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:41Jeff Larson?

  Listening to all these scary stories can cause some serious teeth clenching at night, especially if you're like me and sometimes you take ADHD medication. You might be seriously grinding your teeth at night. And it's September, so everyone's getting ready for winter. Everyone's enjoying the last bits of warrant and life's too busy to be thinking about ourselves all the time. It's hard to go to the dentist's office. That's why I trust Remy to protect my teeth using their custom night guard along with half a million other Americans. Remy Night Guards are the only FDA cleared clinically tested at home and impression kit night guards on the market. Not only do they help prevent teeth damage from grinding, they also reduce jaw tension and facial muscle strain and improve your sleep quality. You'll get the

• 1:10:26Jeff Larson?

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• 1:11:08Speaker 00

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• 1:11:52Speaker 00

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• 1:12:33Speaker 00

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• 1:13:18Jeff Larson?

  Kermit doesn't want to do anything without his brother Ted there. He feels like they've both earned this. So he's thinking of his dad as his inspiration as he impatiently waits for Ted to meet up with them. And he's getting worried this, he's going to lose this panda and the bamboo because it leaves its hole. And he's like slowly following it. Ted eventually, minutes later gets there, but probably felt like hours to Kermit, you know? And he's watching it in like kind of a detached reality. He said, it seemed very large and like an animal of a dream. So after thousands of miles, five months of searching, it seemed impossible that this bear was in front of him.

• 1:14:01Jeff Larson?

  And like moving through the jungle just thirty feet away. Ted catches up to him and they both raise their rifles simultaneously. At the outline of this disappearing panda into the bamboo and fire. A lot of this is verbatim from the book right now too, because I thought it was a really good description. But the poor animal is still waking up, now wounded. Turned towards the Roosevelts and the brothers looked at the object of their biggest desires directly in the eyes. For a moment, they saw themselves reflected in its dimming gaze. Then the bear floundered in the snow, surprising the brothers by showing no sign of aggression or challenge.

• 1:14:43Jeff Larson?

  They'd been told multiple times that the panda wasn't an animal to be feared, but they still didn't completely believe it. Kermit explained, we use caution in following the trail. But however, no special care was needed. The hunters were in no danger whatsoever. It was only here at the end that the brothers realized they had been wrong. And that the bear wasn't wild, or wasn't the wild angry predator that they had expected. It was like a peaceful animal that just wanted to mind its own business.

• 1:15:19Jeff Larson?

  But they get up close to it, shoot again, and end up killing the panda, which is like very exciting for them, but also they're kind of like, man.

• 1:15:30Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:31Jeff Larson?

  I like this part of the book. Kermit was quoted saying, we knew it was ours. And then the author goes on to say, but he wasn't. He belonged to China, to the bamboo forest and to the people who revered him. He was not a prize to be won or a dream to be fulfilled, but the most peaceful creature in the forest was in mortal peril. And his pursuers followed him mercilessly. So I thought that was a good quote.

• 1:15:56Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:57Jeff Larson?

  For months, the brothers had pursued the panda across thousands of miles of ice, snow, jungle, wind, beaten rock of the Tibetan plateau. Yet when they finally accomplished their goal, tracking and killing the bear, they turned despondent. Is the sensation of getting everything you wanted, then suddenly being unsure if it's what you truly desired in the first place? Which is like a real thing, you know, like a lot of times you have these goals that like, oh yeah, if I can just get this, I'll be happy. And I feel like a lot of sports fans kind of get this. When it's like, I just want to win the Super Bowl so bad. And then their team wins and they're like, I guess I don't care.

• 1:16:40Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:43Mike Smith?

  Yeah. I'd like to see for myself if that's true.

• 1:16:48Mike Smith?

  Confirm that if it ever happens for me.

• 1:16:50Speaker 00

  Like when they first saw it and his guide was like excitingly, excitedly telling him to come over. I could feel that, like that feeling when you're like on a safari or something and you see your guide get really excited. You know, you're about to see something really cool. And it just, I know like there, they had, they felt like they had to get a specimen to take home. But like, it does feel like a big vibe drop when they shoot it and then.

• 1:17:17Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:17Speaker 00

  You know?

• 1:17:18Jeff Larson?

  For sure. And like, to their credit, this is kind of how their dad was too, but they did at least. Part of the reason they did this entire thing was they did want to observe it in its natural habitat before killing it. Because it felt like that added more of a description to the animal that like, they felt like the world needed, you know? But it's still just like, just don't kill it, you know?

• 1:17:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:17:44Jeff Larson?

  But at that time, that's just kind of how you prove things.

• 1:17:47Speaker 00

  It's not like they had like a camera or something to take a photo of it.

• 1:17:51Jeff Larson?

  Well, they had camera. They had a photo after they killed it.

• 1:17:54Speaker 00

  They did. Oh, after they killed it, but they probably couldn't get one like in the field.

• 1:17:58Jeff Larson?

  Ted and the person of.

• 1:18:01Mike Smith?

  Just tell the panda to sit there for 10 minutes while they do the little like flash box thing. It's like, I guess.

• 1:18:08Jeff Larson?

  It's kind of a cool picture.

• 1:18:09Mike Smith?

  Oh, wow. Huh. There we go.

• 1:18:11Jeff Larson?

  So yeah, uh, they end up killing it and like, like I said, it's kind of like, this is what our life is for. And then when they kill it, they're kind of like, now what? Like I've, I've felt that even a little bit with our travels. Like I still love it, but it's like, I always wanted to see jaguars in the wild. And once I did, it's like, well, now what do I do? You know?

• 1:18:34Speaker 00

  It makes the world feel smaller for sure.

• 1:18:36Jeff Larson?

  So I thought Kermit had a funny, well, so Kermit had hunted lions and elephants in Africa with his dad. And he kind of had an idea that like, someday he'll go back there. But after killing this panda, that part of him like completely died within him. He just no longer had any interest in killing exotic animals of the world, right? He kind of became, he kind of just stopped becoming a game hunter for that time. Or like a exotic animal hunter at that time. And he had a really hard time describing his feeling of killing the panda in his field journal. But he ended up just saying simply, he's a gentleman.

• 1:19:23Mike Smith?

  Interesting.

• 1:19:24Speaker 00

  That's what he settled on.

• 1:19:28Mike Smith?

  Solid obituary. If that's said about me after I die, I'm like, you know, I'll take it.

• 1:19:33Jeff Larson?

  I think what he's saying is just like, he feels like he killed almost like a person, like a nice person, maybe.

• 1:19:39Mike Smith?

  Oh, sure. Yeah.

• 1:19:41Jeff Larson?

  So they had accustomed with all their bigger kills to eat the meat from the animals with like their guides and the villagers. But no one wanted anything to do with this panda meat. They're all like, no, we're not touching that. This is like bad. And Ted and Kermit felt the same actually. So the village wanted to sacrifice a sheep. So Ted and Kermit paid to sacrifice a sheep instead. And they like do all these prayers and stuff to like cleanse the village. And like cleanse the area where they took the pel off the panda and everything.

• 1:20:16Speaker 00

  Pretty bad deal for that sheep.

• 1:20:18Jeff Larson?

  And it probably felt pretty cursed to the villagers because I think pretty soon after mainland China kind of took over everything. And they resisted that for a while.

• 1:20:29Mike Smith?

  What did Ted say about the sheep?

• 1:20:33Speaker 00

  Not a gentleman.

• 1:20:37Mike Smith?

  Surprisingly ungentlemanly.

• 1:20:39Jeff Larson?

  But the purpose of their trip has been accomplished. They start making preparations to head home. Heroes, they need to like go meet up with Herbert, who's just been doing god knows what for the last five months. Like out in the Chinese jungle and uh, but like they're also just excited to get home and like confirm to the world that pandas exist. Before they left too, like Ted had kind of a failing marriage and Kermit had a failing business. And one of them had like a failing political career as well. They wanted to try to be president and it's just like, everyone was like, nah. You're not going to be, your dad did too much. Conservation, you know?

• 1:21:23Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:23Jeff Larson?

  So uh, Kermit gets, finally gets like word from home. And it's like, oh no, your business is way worse than you expected. Like you're about to be bankrupt. So he's like, I gotta go home right away. He heads home earlier, which I didn't really understand why like they both just don't go home. Right. Because it's like, if you can go home, go home. You did it. But I think Ted's like, I gotta regroup with everyone. So he like pretty immediately starts missing his brother. Kermit's a little bit more confident of the outdoorsman of the two of them. So he starts feeling more lonely and gets really sick right after Kermit leaves.

• 1:22:06Jeff Larson?

  But he has to like meet up with his friends and Wes. You remember the guy's name?

• 1:22:13Speaker 00

  Uh, yeah, Russell Handy.

• 1:22:15Jeff Larson?

  Yep, Russell Handy. Let's unpin it.

• 1:22:17Speaker 00

  Handy. Oh, it's handy. Okay. Oh.

• 1:22:20Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:21Mike Smith?

  Okay. I misheard.

• 1:22:22Jeff Larson?

  I might've misspelt it one of the two times because I do think I said handy before.

• 1:22:27Speaker 00

  Freudian slip.

• 1:22:28Jeff Larson?

  Anyways, so Russell left his newlywed wife to go meet up with his friends. And he's super excited, like, oh my, I can't believe they got one, you know? And he gets there, he's like floating a overflowing river right away to like get to this village. And they almost capsize and he's just like, oh, this is more than I expected. This is crazy out here. And then he's just getting like feasted along, alive by mosquitoes, right? And he stops swatting them after relentlessly trying to. And one day he feels good, the next day he has malaria.

• 1:23:07Jeff Larson?

  So he's taken to a hospital in the beautiful city of Vientiane. I don't know how to say it, but while he's there, he gets incredibly ill and he's in a ton of agony. So he looks out from like several stories up of his hospital window. And he's looking at all these golden temples and he decides to jump out of the window and fall to his death.

• 1:23:36Jeff Larson?

  So there you go, Wes.

• 1:23:38Mike Smith?

  Bad story. Glad we unpinned him.

• 1:23:42Jeff Larson?

  Well, Wes always wants my stories to have someone die, so.

• 1:23:45Mike Smith?

  Yeah. Good call, but yeah.

• 1:23:50Jeff Larson?

  So eventually Ted makes it home, Jack makes it home, Saddam makes it home. And they're all kind of legends back home now. But Ted and Kermit's relationship really doesn't hold up very well. Ted wanted to be president, but then Franklin Delano Roosevelt kind of uses the Roosevelt name instead of Ted and like becomes president. And Kermit uses that power to like gain influence. And Ted really holds it against him like you betrayed me, like he betrayed me, you betrayed me type of thing.

• 1:24:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, classic brother stuff when one of them wants to be president and the other one.

• 1:24:34Mike Smith?

  You gotta take him out on a little rowboat on a lake, Fredo style.

• 1:24:39Jeff Larson?

  Just six years later, the second panda enters American consciousness. And in a very real way, so Ruth Harkness smuggled a panda from China to America.

• 1:24:54Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:24:55Jeff Larson?

  And yeah, just six years after the adventure. So it's like nineteen thirty six. So her husband, Bill Harkness, was like, he was an explorer and he got all this funding, but then he died. So Ruth didn't really have exploration experience, but decided just to go. And she actually went with Jack's younger brother, Quentin. And they get there and they were able to get a panda. I think she got to the panda. I think once they were able to like identify where pandas are at.

• 1:25:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:25:29Jeff Larson?

  It became a bit easier.

• 1:25:31Mike Smith?

  They're not tromping around in the Himalayas anymore.

• 1:25:33Jeff Larson?

  Right. But yeah, so she sold it to the Chicago Zoo for nine thousand dollars. And before giving it to the zoo, she asked Ted and Kermit if they would come see the panda. So Ted went and like cradled the panda and is holding it. And he just, he felt a lot of emotion from that because he felt bad still about the panda that they had killed. And one of the visitors lightheartedly asked Ted if he thought the cub would one day join the Roosevelt's trophies in the Field Museum, like if Ted would kill it. And Ted said irritably, I just assumed think of mounting my own son as this baby.

• 1:26:17Mike Smith?

  Phrasing Ted. Yeah, but we get it.

• 1:26:21Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:21Mike Smith?

  Yeah. Like the sentiment at least.

• 1:26:24Jeff Larson?

  The panda died pretty quick. It only lived, it went to like the San Francisco Zoo in nineteen thirty six. There's like this huge media frenzy wherever it went, but they just didn't know how to take care of pandas. Pandas are notoriously kind of difficult animals to keep in captivity. So it died pretty quickly. Um, and then several different zoos and explorers tried to replicate the success that Harkness had with her panda. So there's a few different like people smuggling pandas. Um, Ruth actually went back and got a second cub named Me Me in nineteen thirty eight.

• 1:27:08Jeff Larson?

  But these, these pandas keep dying and then World War Two kind of cut off access to China. So they stopped doing it for a little while. Then after the war, they start up a first sec. And then like nineteen forty nine to nineteen seventy, there's the Cold War freeze where China is just like, we're done sending pandas. And actually Kermit kind of helped influence that as well. He reached out to China as like, we got, you gotta do better conservation for these animals, which is a little hypocritical, but also like good on him for doing that. And that didn't change until nineteen seventy two, when President Nixon went to China

• 1:27:53Jeff Larson?

  as like a goodwill gesture. And they were like, hey, here's two pandas you can have. So they gave them Ling Ling, Ling Ling and Sing Sing, who went to the National Zoo in Washington DC and became like the most popular things in, yeah, America, pretty much, you know? And that's where pandas really started to gain fame again. And like nineteen eighties to nineteen nineties, China started giving out pandas as kind of like goodwill loans to different countries that they wanted to like build relationships with. Nowadays, there's kind of a loan model that they have to follow where it's like

• 1:28:35Jeff Larson?

  ten year loans of pandas with annual fees around a million dollars for zoos to have them even. China famously took away pandas at the start of Trump's presidency. And then like they've kind of to ease tensions, given a couple pandas back. So DC, Atlanta and San Diego, I think currently do have pandas.

• 1:29:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:29:00Jeff Larson?

  And that is why it does feel like more ownership than most any other animal. There was a few pandas like in Mexico that were breeded successfully before any of these like laws were put into place by China. So like those pandas actually were some of the only ones that didn't belong to China.

• 1:29:24Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:29:24Jeff Larson?

  For a little period, but I think that lineage has died out. So now every panda essentially by law belongs to China. But that's just because of the way they do their loans when they give them out to zoos. And any baby pandas born, even if it is in America, China claims like that belongs to us. And there were like panda fossils found in a few different countries. But um, like Vietnam and a few others, but it's like, they just, they weren't well described. So it's hard to know like when they died out from those countries or not.

• 1:30:05Jeff Larson?

  But essentially from when things were really like officially documented for the whole world, China was the only place that had them. Um, so a little bit of the aftermath here after the trip, right? So Saddam and Jack continued to go back to like China and on other trips. And all these other expeditions were like hiring them to go because they knew where to go and what to do. So they're like pretty successful. Ted and Kermit don't want anything to do with it. They're like, that kind of made me feel bad, so I don't want to go back. And uh, but Jack and Saddam are able to make a real living off of it.

• 1:30:50Jeff Larson?

  So World War Two comes around. Well, okay, and before that too, the book, I looked it up. I'm not, I think they give him a little too much credit, but the book gives Kermit credit for saving the Galapagos tortoise after the adventure too. Him and Saddam did go to the Galapagos and they're seeing like all these ships, which we've talked about on Tooth and Claw before, go to these islands and take tortoises as like food for their journeys, right? And the tortoises are getting taken out. So Kermit and Saddam reach out to like these museums, these like zoos. And they're like, hey, we gotta save these tortoises.

• 1:31:35Jeff Larson?

  So they get all these Galapagos tortoises and like start breeding them in New York. And then once like the tortoise population gets really, really depleted in Galapagos, they actually have breeding tortoises in New York that they're able to bring back, which like really helped save some of the population. Which is kind of cool, like good for Kermit. He, he's able to like make a name for himself as a conservationist after the trip, which I think is really cool of him. Uh, but yeah, World War Two starts, they all end up fighting in the war. Jack actually fights for China and for the United States.

• 1:32:18Mike Smith?

  Um, it's kind of crazy because they're probably in their like fifties by then, you know?

• 1:32:23Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, they are.

• 1:32:23Mike Smith?

  Fighting in the war, yeah. More like Jack old, right?

• 1:32:29Jeff Larson?

  And then really cool was Ted. Ted was like, he had like all these heart conditions. He had a cane and he was on the beach at Normandy. And he like stormed Utah Beach and like led troops and was just like really inspiring to everyone.

• 1:32:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:32:46Jeff Larson?

  So he like did the beach at Normandy and then like died in a truck five days later of a heart attack.

• 1:32:53Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:32:54Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, because like he shouldn't have been there, but he just refused not to be. Kermit became like a really bad alcoholic. So he wanted to join the war, but was unfit. And he even like used the connection to Winston Churchill to get reinstated. And then he like failed again because he's drinking too much. So they just put him on a base in Alaska and he took his own life there. Um, yeah, of all of them, Jack was the most decorated just because he was able to speak Chinese and like make a lot of connections for the army there.

• 1:33:31Mike Smith?

  Fifteen years younger too. He was fighting for two different armies. That's a pretty good way to get hella medals and stuff.

• 1:33:38Speaker 00

  It's true.

• 1:33:39Mike Smith?

  He's racking up his stats.

• 1:33:41Jeff Larson?

  I did have a few panda facts. We've mentioned it before, but they have like a real narrow fertility window. So it's like twenty four to seventy two hours a year in the spring. And women get really vocal during, when they're like

• 1:34:00Mike Smith?

  The females.

• 1:34:01Jeff Larson?

  Ready to go because it's like, hey, get on this right now because it's just a few hours a year that I'm ready, you know? And they can do the delayed implantation, which we've talked about before, but it's just like they can wait until they're healthy to have their babies. Twins are common, but normally just one of the twins survive. And the newborns are really, really astonishingly small relative to their mothers. About one nine hundredth of the mother's body weight when they're born.

• 1:34:34Speaker 00

  Which is pretty typical in bears, yeah.

• 1:34:37Jeff Larson?

  And there, that's a lot of why it took so long for them to kind of figure out zoo breeding. For pandas, I think they have gotten a lot better at it now, but it makes sense why it's so hard to breed them and why they died in captivity.

• 1:34:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:34:54Jeff Larson?

  And then just evolutionarily, just because there are people out there now that think they're created. But they split off from other bears around nineteen to twenty-two million years ago, making them one of the earliest diverging branches of bear lineage is still alive today. They have that false thumb, which is just a bone that they use to like, help them grip bamboo stalks. They still have a carnivore digestive system, which is really interesting. So it's kind of more like an animal that choo- choo- a carnivore animal that chose to like, do a vegetarian diet, but still has like the system that could eat meat.

• 1:35:37Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:35:38Jeff Larson?

  But, uh, yeah, there, it makes them actually pretty inefficient at digesting bamboo. Um, and that's why they have to eat twenty to forty pounds of it a day.

• 1:35:49Speaker 00

  Yeah. And why they poop like twenty times a day, too.

• 1:35:51Jeff Larson?

  But yeah, they still have the meat gene, sort of. So like, they just kind of lost the gene for tasting sweetness relevant to like some meats that like drives them to seek meat.

• 1:36:04Speaker 00

  Hmm. Interesting that the Chinese scientists invented them to be that way.

• 1:36:09Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:09Speaker 00

  And. What were the scientists thinking?

• 1:36:12Jeff Larson?

  Kind of like sloths, they have a really slow metabolism, which kind of helps them to be able to survive on bamboo. And I just wanted to close by saying just how they are today. So there's probably going to be a new study here soon, but as of like two thousand fifteen, there was just under two thousand wild pandas. And they are like trying to grow that population, but habitat losses made it hard to get too much higher than two thousand. And most of them are like in nature preserves and like conservation areas, which we get to go see one of those, which will be pretty awesome.

• 1:36:57Jeff Larson?

  But, um, about two thousand wild pandas today, and they all live in high altitude bamboo forests.

• 1:37:05Speaker 00

  Cool. Yeah. If we get really, really lucky, we'll see a wild one, but not likely. Yeah.

• 1:37:12Jeff Larson?

  All right. Any questions for me?

• 1:37:15Speaker 00

  No, sir.

• 1:37:16Jeff Larson?

  Cool. Well, should we get to categories?

• 1:37:18Speaker 00

  Let's do it.

• 1:37:20Jeff Larson?

  Okay. All right. So I think because Ted and Kermit were kind of nepo babies, but made, made a name for themselves. Let's just do rapid fire some nepo babies that you like.

• 1:37:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, I like, um, Jack Quaid.

• 1:37:36Jeff Larson?

  That was my first one list, too. I like him.

• 1:37:38Speaker 00

  I like him quite a bit. Dom Hall Gleason. Uh, he's like the bad guy in the new Star Wars movies. He's Brendan Gleeson's son. Jared Harris. Richard Harris's son. Incredible actor.

• 1:37:51Jeff Larson?

  Good.

• 1:37:52Speaker 00

  Uh, Fiona Dorif. Brad Dorif's daughter.

• 1:37:57Jeff Larson?

  In the pit.

• 1:37:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, she's in.

• 1:37:58Jeff Larson?

  Doing good work.

• 1:37:59Speaker 00

  And I like Wyatt Russell, uh, Kurt Russell's son. Even though I don't think he's a great actor, I, I enjoy seeing him in movies. So.

• 1:38:07Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:08Speaker 00

  He's always a Bob, some, somehow he gets typecast as Bob. I really, I really liked him and everybody wants some and, um, and that one movie, uh, Overlord, do you guys remember Overlord?

• 1:38:21Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, he was good in that.

• 1:38:24Jeff Larson?

  Oh, yeah. Huh. Yeah, I saw that before I even really know, knew who that was. Danielle really hated him in Disclosure Day.

• 1:38:31Speaker 00

  Oh, I haven't seen that still. Yeah. I don't know if I'm.

• 1:38:34Jeff Larson?

  Oh, I should shout out to, uh, my girlfriend Danielle, she recommended this book to me. So thanks Danielle.

• 1:38:41Speaker 00

  Hell yeah, Danielle. What a, what a gal. Uh, well, you gotta say Nick Cage, Wes. You gotta get Nick Cage. He's Coppola's nephew, right?

• 1:38:49Jeff Larson?

  Really? Any of the Coppolas, like Sofia, Jason Schwartzman, there's a whole bevy of them that kind of stem from that. Zoe Kravitz, Liza Minnelli. Bronny and Bryce James, Ken Griffey Jr.

• 1:39:00Speaker 00

  Michael Douglas. Oh, Robert Downey Jr. Speaking of juniors. Charlie Sheen.

• 1:39:06Jeff Larson?

  All right. Something, something that you guys discovered or described and then shared with your, uh, friend group or family, like just something that you feel like you're, you found and then shared with the world. Mine I did with Wes, but I have The Raid. And I just, we saw that movie like it's first time playing and I've been talking about it the rest of my life.

• 1:39:33Speaker 00

  Oh, you are the one that gave me The Raid. So I appreciate that. Shout out Jeff, honestly. I don't know if I've, why this is the first thing that came to mind, but mayonnaise on hot dogs. Really to varied results. Some people really don't like it. Some people were like, hey, that was not bad.

• 1:39:50Jeff Larson?

  Huh.

• 1:39:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm trying to think if I've ever had mayonnaise on a hot dog. I guess maybe I'll discover that because of you describing it to me.

• 1:39:57Jeff Larson?

  I'll describe it.

• 1:39:58Speaker 00

  I, mine, the one I thought of is our whale shark spot in Mexico.

• 1:40:03Jeff Larson?

  Oh, it's a good one.

• 1:40:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, I found it from a, a John Steinbeck book and happened to find it the same time as my friend Cass. And then I've just, a lot of our friends and, and family have gone there because of that.

• 1:40:16Jeff Larson?

  Uh, what's your father's legacy?

• 1:40:19Speaker 00

  I think, like, me and Jeff have the same dad, and I think if I were to say what his legacy was, I would probably say how helpful he is. Like everyone is constant, like there's so many people in Missoula who rely on my dad to help them with stuff, and he just will always say yes and always show up and like be a good time, too. He's not gonna like be grumpy about it or anything. And I think he's probably one of the most helpful people I've ever met in my life. So that I think is his lasting legacy.

• 1:40:50Jeff Larson?

  That's what I had, too.

• 1:40:51Speaker 00

  I'd say you guys that, his legacy is gonna be pies.

• 1:40:55Jeff Larson?

  That's what I have a pie guy, too.

• 1:40:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:40:57Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:58Speaker 00

  If people are looking through the annals of history and Gil's name pops up, it's gonna be like a pie contest or something.

• 1:41:04Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:05Speaker 00

  Instead of like, this guy helped me with my lawnmower. No, that is not the legacy. Helped is the pie.

• 1:41:11Jeff Larson?

  Someone on Twitter said like, Trump always stands like he just smells a freshly baked pie and I can't unsee it.

• 1:41:20Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's very. Yeah, kind of like when cartoon characters, they like get lifted up by the butt and like flow towards the pie. Yeah. Um, my dad will be, it'll be his, probably his collegiate swimming career. Like he was a world-class swimmer. He's pretty, like, he's like noticeably tall. He's not like so tall that it's like.

• 1:41:39Jeff Larson?

  The tallest person I've ever seen in my entire life, Mike.

• 1:41:42Speaker 00

  That's shocking to me, but, uh, I guess for Wes, that'll be his legacy.

• 1:41:48Jeff Larson?

  No, sw- yeah, he was.

• 1:41:49Speaker 00

  His collegiate swimming, huh? Yeah, he was invited to the Olympic trials a couple of times. I, I, he claims he probably almost certainly wouldn't have qualified for the team, but I like to say otherwise.

• 1:42:00Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:01Speaker 00

  He's probably the oldest guy I know that's named Chris.

• 1:42:04Jeff Larson?

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:42:05Speaker 00

  Yeah. So I'll remember for that, too.

• 1:42:07Jeff Larson?

  Christopher Columbus, that guy.

• 1:42:09Speaker 00

  Ooh, that's a good point. He's a lot older. Yeah. All right.

• 1:42:14Jeff Larson?

  The director, I mean.

• 1:42:15Speaker 00

  All right. Well, I guess I'll never remember your dad for anything but being tall.

• 1:42:19Jeff Larson?

  Crispin Glover.

• 1:42:20Speaker 00

  Not getting into the Olympics.

• 1:42:22Jeff Larson?

  Uh, favorite panda that we've never mentioned on the podcast before?

• 1:42:26Speaker 00

  I'm gonna go with, uh, in Mulan, when they dress up in the panda costume. There's a part in that movie that makes me laugh. I don't know why, but the visual image of it clambering up into the tree, it's like a couple of guys in a panda costume. It's just so funny to me. I can't remember that. I need to watch it. I can't remember what I picked in our other panda episode, which I think was a subscriber episode that Mike did, but.

• 1:42:52Jeff Larson?

  I think we did Kung Fu Panda.

• 1:42:53Speaker 00

  Probably. I'm gonna pick the World Wildlife Fund logo. Like I.

• 1:42:57Jeff Larson?

  That's why I had action.

• 1:42:58Speaker 00

  Really? I don't always, like, sometimes I have issues with them because I think they're like too big of an entity at this point. But man, that logo, it just slaps. Like, it's such a good logo.

• 1:43:09Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:10Speaker 00

  All right. We're on the same wavelength, Jeff.

• 1:43:13Jeff Larson?

  All right. Let's do something from the nineteen twenties. Just give me one other thing that happened in nineteen twenties.

• 1:43:22Speaker 00

  You guys ever hear of the straw hat riot?

• 1:43:24Jeff Larson?

  Uh, no.

• 1:43:25Speaker 00

  All right. So I learned about this because of this question from Jeff. Uh, in the nineteen twenties, there was this rule that in like the US that you weren't supposed to wear a straw hat after like September fifteenth, because they were considered like summer hats. And I'm like, they were, they're not like what you're picturing as a straw hat. Like they were nice straw hats. But you were not supposed to wear them after September fifteenth. And in nineteen twenty-two, this rule became so exaggerated that there was riots because kids started like attacking people that were wearing straw hats around September fifteenth. They actually started a couple of days early.

• 1:44:06Speaker 00

  And like, sent people to the hospital because they were wearing straw hats. And there was like a multi, like a ten day riot that ensued because of, uh, people wearing straw hats after September fifteenth. So it's the straw hat riots. Pretty weird.

• 1:44:22Jeff Larson?

  Man.

• 1:44:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:44:23Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, that's crazy.

• 1:44:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:44:25Jeff Larson?

  That's why those things still kind of last today, like the don't wear white after Labor Day.

• 1:44:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:44:32Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:33Speaker 00

  Except you won't get hospitalized if you do it.

• 1:44:37Speaker 00

  Oh, nah, if I see you, I'm putting you in the hospital if you're wearing white.

• 1:44:42Speaker 00

  What a faux pas, a fashion faux pas. Uh, I'm going with basically just like Buster Keaton's filmography, like my favorite of his movies all happened in the twenties. Sherlock Jr., The General, it's all, all bangers. Women's right to vote, I think, happened nineteen twenty.

• 1:44:58Jeff Larson?

  Supper jet.

• 1:44:59Speaker 00

  Is it the nineteenth amendment?

• 1:45:01Jeff Larson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:45:01Speaker 00

  You know, so historians will have to check me on that, but.

• 1:45:04Jeff Larson?

  I think it's the nineteenth. Yeah. I have kind of a dark one, but it's one I think we should have learned about in school. And I think I learned about it from like Andre Iguodala. The basketball player, but the Tulsa Race Massacre in nineteen twenty-one. I guess there's like a Tulsa, Oklahoma had like a whole thriving black community and is even like nicknamed Black Wall Street. And like the higher ups just were like, this can't happen and took the whole thing out. It's just like, man, we should probably learn about that.

• 1:45:36Speaker 00

  I learned about it from the Watchmen series. Like I didn't know that existed either. And then it featured like pretty prominently in that series. Yeah.

• 1:45:44Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:45Speaker 00

  I have a category for you, Jeff. If there's one player on your team with the game on the line, who are you trusting to take the big shot?

• 1:45:55Jeff Larson?

  Iguodala.

• 1:45:58Speaker 00

  Give me.

• 1:46:00Speaker 00

  Oh, man. Shout out Max. Max Kellerman, what a legend.

• 1:46:09Jeff Larson?

  Um, I wanted to ask too, uh, how much you like them?

• 1:46:14Speaker 00

  Love, love pandas. Hi.

• 1:46:16Jeff Larson?

  Ten out of ten.

• 1:46:18Speaker 00

  They're a bear. They gotta get a ten out of ten for me. I think they're maybe like the cutest animal in the world. Yeah, like as adults even, you know, they're just.

• 1:46:26Jeff Larson?

  Especially.

• 1:46:27Speaker 00

  Such a cool animal. Yeah. No, I think cubs are cuter than adults, but.

• 1:46:32Jeff Larson?

  Really?

• 1:46:32Speaker 00

  It's tough for adults.

• 1:46:33Jeff Larson?

  That's a close one. I think they just get cuter the older they get.

• 1:46:36Speaker 00

  Yeah. I'm gonna give them nine. They're my second favorite bear, but I don't know.

• 1:46:40Jeff Larson?

  What's your first favorite?

• 1:46:41Speaker 00

  Am I adding? Polar.

• 1:46:43Jeff Larson?

  Hmm. For me, it's like them, koalas and red pandas are the three animals that get cuter the older they get.

• 1:46:52Speaker 00

  Huh.

• 1:46:52Jeff Larson?

  Uh, yeah. But I'm gonna give them ten. And yeah, they're, I think they're like my eighth. Yeah, they're my eighth favorite animal.

• 1:47:01Speaker 00

  Okay. Wow, they're a top ten animal. That's cool.

• 1:47:04Jeff Larson?

  So I'm excited to see him in China and thank you everyone for listening to me talk about my book I read.

• 1:47:11Speaker 00

  Good job, Jeff.

• 1:47:12Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:13Speaker 00

  What's your, you have one more, um, resolution, right? Or do you do that? Not nuke anyone? Or was that last?

• 1:47:19Jeff Larson?

  That was last year. So I'm two for two, two years in a row.

• 1:47:23Speaker 00

  Congrats on that one, too.

• 1:47:25Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:27Speaker 00

  He's doing better than me. All right.

• 1:47:29Jeff Larson?

  All right.

• 1:47:30Speaker 00

  We'll see you guys.

• 1:47:31Jeff Larson?

  All right. Thanks, everyone. Love you.

• 1:47:33Speaker 00

  Love you too. See ya.

• 1:47:34Jeff Larson?

  Bye.