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Speaker 1: This is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear. Listening past, you can’t predict anything brought to you by first Light. When I’m hunting, I need gear that won’t quit. First Light builds, no compromise, gear that keeps me in the field longer, no shortcuts, just gear that works. Check it out at first light dot com.
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Speaker 2: That’s f I R S T L I T E dot com.
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Speaker 1: Hot damn. We’re joined today by big time writer to Thalia Holt, one of the most credentialed writers we’ve had on No, that’s not true among the most I mean like like a like a writer writer.
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Speaker 3: I think David grand is going to have some words about that. I’m not sure that’s true.
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Speaker 1: But more among the big time, the big like writer writers.
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Speaker 3: Oh, that’s very.
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Speaker 1: Among the big time writer you know what I mean. You know, here’s what I’m trying to say. We’ve had now that I think about, We’ve had a number of esteemed generalists, but you’re a generalist nonfiction writer.
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Speaker 3: Well, I’ve got the PhD, so I think that gives me a little credibility in there. But yeah, you’ve had some big writers on this show, and I’m pretty excited to be part of it.
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Speaker 1: On the lower rung of the top numb joke, yeah, bottomshell yeah. Among our prestigious writers that we’ve had on the show are generalist nonfiction writers that we’ve had on the show. Nathalia Holt is here in her new book is The Beast in the Clouds, and get this. This is what we’re going to talk about today. It’s I had no idea up until the nineteen thirties, this is the story we’re going to tell. Up until the nineteen thirties, it was debated whether there was actually like in the Western world, there was an active debate is there such a thing as a panda bear?
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Speaker 3: That’s right, this is the last nine unknown to science. Up until the nineteen thirties, up until the Roosevelts did this expedition, there was serious debate in the scientific community about whether pandas were real.
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Speaker 1: People would say like, hey, there’s this big white and black bear up in the mountains, and peo’ld be like pull shit right.
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Speaker 3: Well, at that point, you have all of the bears that are known to science, and they have been known for a long time. So polar bears had been known for thousands of years. They had been kept in early zoos. Black bears, grizzly bears were all known. Pandas were not. And it started in eighteen sixty nine with a French missionary who was in China, and he asked the hunters there to just go find him interesting animals and they brought him and bring me on. Yeah, bring me all the interesting animals you can find. I want to see. It’s not fat.
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Speaker 1: Unter season AMI’s guy like, but is it interesting?
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Speaker 3: He got a lot of interesting animals. Yeah, it worked, and one of them was a small black and white cub and so he is wondering what this could be. There’s no animal quite like it. He sends the skin of it to scientists in Paris, and the hide is missing part of the head. It’s not a very good specimen. And of course he has not seen the animal himself alive. He’s only ever seen this dead skin, so it’s very hard for him to describe it. And so he is describing to the scientists what a panda looks like. Just from the descriptions that he’s heard. You can imagine what a scientist might think. It’s almost as if I’m describing to you a unicorn, what does a unicorn look like? And then you’re trying to make a picture, and you could probably make a pretty good picture, but it doesn’t mean that it’s a real animal. And so from that point scientists were very interested to find out if this was real. There was actually a black and white bear in China. And so fast forward to nineteen sixteen and you have a group of German hunters who then came into China also began looking for interesting animals, found local hunters and asked them, go find us a panda. We’re looking for a black and white bear. And they bring back pandas. They bring back a live cub, as well as skins of several pandas, but they’re unable to keep the cub alive. However, they are the first Westerners to have finally seen a live panda. But they don’t bring back any of this evidence to the West, and so scientists in the West are still maybe this is true, maybe this isn’t. It’s a lot of hearsay at this point. Then in nineteen nineteen, an American missionary named Joseph Milner sends a specimen that he found in a marketplace in China to the American Museum of Natural History and it’s finally we have the skin of a panda. And so the Museum of Natural History and now is that they’re very excited. They call it a rare beast from eastern Tibet, and they say, we don’t really know much about this animal. We don’t know where it lives, we don’t know where it eats, what it eats. Because Joseph Milner had never seen the animal, he knew very little about it. But we really think this is real. Now there are pandas out there, and so you can imagine immediately all of these expeditions form. This is prime time for expeditions, right, this is the time explorers are going out in the world. They’re looking for interesting things, and so you have all these expeditions that go out to China desperate to find the panda, and they all return empty handed. Ten years pass, and at this point scientists are really in conflict because it seems as if, yes, this panda is real, but at this point, why haven’t they found it yet? Why hasn’t there been a specimen brought to the museum that can actually be studied scientifically? That can be compared to other animals, and so when the Roosevelts leave for their expedition in nineteen twenty eight, the panda is considered the most challenging trophy animal in the world. It is really considered the epitome of a bear to find, and it’s also thought to be a dangerous animal. So little was known about the panda that they expected it to be this cross between polar bears and black bears. They thought they were going to find one of the most aggressive predators on earth as they search out.
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Speaker 1: Like a polar bear that can climb trees.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, Yeah, And I mean really, when the Roosevelts go out, you can imagine these are the two eldest sons of President Roosevelt, and of course the challenge of getting the most prized trophy animal in the world. That is something that is going to speak to them. But really very little is expected from their expedition because they are a small group, much smaller than the expeditions that had traveled previously, and it’s not a group that is particularly impressive. You’ve got the two eldest Roosevelts. These are not accomplished scientists, although they obviously have a lot of experience as hunters, and they’re going with a ragtag group. So as they’re leaving, as they’re going on this expedition, few think that they are the ones that are going to be able to discover the panda.
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Speaker 1: So you mentioned having a PhD. What did you What did you study? I have a.
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Speaker 3: PhD in molecular biology, and I’ve done field work in a lot of really interesting places in Alaska, in redwood trees, in South Africa. So I’m able to bring some of that experience of doing science in the field to this book and it does help. It helps kind of give me some of that background.
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Speaker 1: And you are Nathaliahole, PhD. You’re a New York Times bestselling author, So Beast in the Clouds. What you’re here to talk about today? Past books, Wise Gals, Rise of the Rocket Girls, The Queens of Animation, and the book Keered. You’ve written for New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, Slate, Pop Either Science, PBS, and Time and a former fellow at the Reagan What is that?
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Speaker 3: It’s Reagan Institute, So it’s this it’s a science group that’s a part of Harvard MDH and m I T in Boston.
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Speaker 1: Okay, she is a former fellow at the I would read that Reagon because we know how Reagan spelled.
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Speaker 3: I know, I understand.
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Speaker 1: It’s one of the things we learned from Reagan. I was spelled Reagan the Reagan Institute of mg.
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Speaker 3: H, which is the Massachusetts General Hospital.
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Speaker 1: Oh, okay, MI T the alma mater of Ted Kazinski. Here’s a teacher there in Harvard University. And you live in Pacific Grove, California.
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Speaker 3: I do.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, So we’re going to pick up this story. And I got my first question coming out of this when we picked the story back up, is we gotta go back up because I need to know what, like, what kind of a dad was Roosevelt? So the stew one at a minute, Yeah, before we before we embark them on this journey of trying to shoot them or collect a panda bear against all odds, I need to know, was Roosevelt like an absentee father that that stew unadam innute? But first, we have our Christmas tour coming up, the twenty tour, the twenty twenty five live tour. We’re calling it the Christmas tour. We were it’s all in the South, it’s all in the South, and it’s a Christmas tour. So my first idea is that we would make a poster where it’s like the old Spaghetti Western posters, like good, the Bad, and the Ugly, but it’d be Santa Clauses and elves with bandoliers and pistols like the like the Spaghetti Westerns. That was my first vision. Then Randall and I got sidetracked talking about an idea where we were dressed as Yankee soldiers and it was the North’s coming again.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, or.
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Speaker 1: Randall wanted to do the tour. He wanted to do the tour of the South along the path of Sherman’s March.
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Speaker 2: And I said that to you in confidence, and.
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Speaker 1: It’s like it’s gonna be then the Yankees, the tour posters gonna be the Yankees are coming again. But we checked with a couple of Southerners, well, Hunter Spencer. We called Hunter Spencer’s first player call I made. I was like, Hunter, if we brand this as like the Yankees are coming again? He thought it’s a little too soon. He thinks it’s a little too soon. So maybe in a hundred years what’s in a hundred years, the twenty the two one, two five, if this is the twenty yeah, the twenty one twenty.
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Speaker 2: They’re just doing holograms of us tour.
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Speaker 3: No, we’ll just need to bring Steve back like the Dire Wolves.
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Speaker 1: And the twenty century. Maybe we’ll do the the Yankees are coming. But instead we’re just branding at more of something that everyone can get on board with. Well, well that most people can get on board with, which is the Christmas Tour. But I do want you to know, you know, I don’t want any people, you know, I don’t want to discourage people of other faiths. But we’re calling it the Christmas Tour. The Christmas Tour is coming, not the Yankees. It’s in the South. It’s in the South, but it’s not like a bunch of Yankees from up north though. You know we’re bringing Clay.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, Clay will be there.
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Speaker 1: He’s from Arkansas.
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Speaker 2: Huh. It’ll be a little twang southish, Yeah.
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Speaker 1: Selfish, he’s coming. We could have done it like that, since Clays from the South and and uh Brents from the South, we could have had it be like the Reconciliation Tour and the poster would be.
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Speaker 2: Yankees and could look like the paintings of appomatics.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, or Yankees and Confederates with our arms around each other, and we called the Reconciliation Tour, and it’d be that Yankees in Arkansas, people are coming to your town.
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Speaker 3: What are you gonna wear?
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Speaker 1: The hats, Santa Claus.
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Speaker 2: It’s just like we’re putting the You know, when I heard about this, my first thought was last year I had to make do with a pretty not movie quality Santa Claus costume for all the office high jinks. And so I thought, if if we’re doing a live Christmas tour, maybe it’s time that we invested, because.
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Speaker 1: I believe ye have a serious tape.
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Speaker 2: I went to the sites and I saw the I went to all the websites of real high quality Santa gear, just because it seems like something that you know, you buy once and you’re good for fifteen years.
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Speaker 1: Like a dude that has a job at them all. Yeah, yeah, he’s wearing a legit.
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Speaker 4: Like.
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Speaker 2: I looked into the different styles of belts. You know, a lot of them are actually overalls underneath the jacket. The different trim styles.
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Speaker 1: Uh.
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Speaker 2: And then to say nothing of the wigs.
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Speaker 1: And beards.
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Speaker 2: I did a lot of research, so I’m when we have our budgeting meeting for the tour, I’m gonna I have a presentation with a tailored suit, yeah, like a real Santa suit. And then are you actually doing full on boots or are you doing boot covers? Because most of the cheap ones have boot covers, who assume that a real Santa would have the actual boots, but in fact quite a few of the real high end Santa costumes they’re still using boot covers.
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Speaker 1: I do like that one bit.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, well we can talk about it.
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Speaker 1: Uh, you’re gonna bring the suit, Well that’s yeah. So here’s the deal for people, for Southerners out there, you know who you are. If for Christmas, right mm hmm, you’d be like, hey, what I want is tickets to the Christmas tour.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, Uncle Eddie will be in town, you know.
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Speaker 1: Ye, so that’s what you should. So if you’re listening, tell your spouse or your boyfriend or your girlfriend that what you want is tickets to the Christmas tour and Randall’s gonna be there in a suit. There’ll be carols and like, listen, don’t be afraid to bring your grandpas We’re not going to bring up the war between the States. I don’t want you think we’re going to enter into a big controversy. It’s just pure Christmas tour. Yeah, we’re gonna send carols, We’re gonna do like a normal met Eater live show. There’ll be contests and whatnot, and people be winning all kinds of stuff, but it’ll have a Christmas overlay to it. Nothing to do with the nothing to do with the you know, I’m not gonna say it anymore. Yeah, here’s where we’re going. Six stops. Birmingham, Alabama. Well, I got a great Birmingham story, I know, telling that at one time drove I took a Greyhound across. I was just told it. Good gracious. Uh. Birmingham, Alabama, Nashville, Tennessee, Memphis, Tennessee, Fayetteville, Arkansas, Fayetteville, Fayetteville, I was joking, Fayetteville, Arkansas.
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Speaker 2: Uh.
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Speaker 1: I just talked to Evan Felker. He’s gonna come to the from Turnpike Trubid Doors. He’s gonna come to the show and him and Clay are gonna do the bird Hunters Live at the start of the show. Wow, isn’t that cool?
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Speaker 2: Maybe he could carol for us a bit.
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Speaker 1: Too, Dallas, Texas, where we’ve been before. In Austin, Texas, where I don’t think we’ve done a show. If you want to go to the meat eater dot com you can sign up for a thing we got for a pre sale. Ho ho ho and revel yell yell coming to the South. Good gracious. I was gonna tell a big story about having a hard hat, because Randall’s like, I’m not gonna tell that. Trbably get back into Pan of Bears. But yeah, Randall’s under pressure to get all your things from growing up out of your mos house. And she wondered if you still wanted your hard hat. Yeah, that and a crossbow in a cave, our knife, yeah, but never mind that. What kind of dad was Roosevelt? Do you mean? But like he couldn’t have been around much.
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Speaker 3: You’re you’re wrong about that. Actually, he was an incredibly carrying, affectionate father. He was the kind of dad who got down on the floor played with his kids. He even when he was gone, and he was gone for long stretches of time, he would write his kids these long letters. He would tell them how much he loved them. He would draw little pictures for them in his letters, and he loved to play just crazy, rowdy games with his kids when he was home. They would chase around the house. I talk in the book about a game they played called bear Hunt, where they would chase after their dad, looking for him all around the house, and when they found him, it was all tickles and giggles and kisses and all that kind of stuff. But the other side of that is that he did put a lot of pressure on his kids, and you can imagine that for the sons of any famous man. This is a lot.
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Speaker 1: Right.
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Speaker 3: There are advantages, but they’re also disadvantages.
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Speaker 1: That’s what I’d be curious about. When I was reading, I didn’t know that they did crazy expeditions like they’re all man did. So I was picturing two driving like I was picturing two scenarios. Scenario one, they have a great relationship with their dad. The stuff he does is cool. He introduced them to doing cool stuff, and they just want to continue along because they admire that lifestyle. Or Scenario two is they never got his love, and the one way that they could try to get his attention is to mirror his adventurous activities and go have a big discovery and finally get dad to be like, hey, good job, Kermit.
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Speaker 3: It’s you know, it’s a little bit of both, because obviously he loved his kids very passionately. He was very affectionate with them, but he put a lot of pressure on them. So ted the eldest son, had a nervous breakdown when he was ten years old, and the doctor told Teddy Roosevelt, this is because of the pressure you’re putting on him. It’s too much.
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Speaker 1: At what age ten that looks like a ten year old nervous breakdown.
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Speaker 3: I mean you can imagine that. It’s not easy to be the son. At Teddy Roosevelt, this is a larger than life figure, and he is very concerned about his son’s being so strong. He says repeatedly in letters that he’s worried that Kermit is going to be a weakling and his bodies. Yeah. He says it to family members and to friends, and he talks about this with Kermit as well, and he and Kermit obviously have a close relationship. They go on several expeditions together. So they go in nineteen oh nine, they go to Africa, where Kermit is able to hunt an elephant, he’s able to get a calf that’s right now in the American Museum of Natural History. And then after Teddy Roosevelt loses the election in nineteen twelve, they go on a River of Doubt expedition, and of course that one is told so beautifully in Candice Millard’s book River of Doubt, where it is a perilous expedition. It’s one that Teddy Roosevelt almost dies in. And so you see how close their relationship was and how important it was to the two eldest sons to really carry on in their father’s footstep up. And it wasn’t easy for them to do that in other aspects of their life. So ted for example, wanted to be a politician like his father. That was his goal, that was his dream. And before this expedition happens where they go for the panda, those dreams are completely scattered. There’s no way he’s going to be able to do that.
00:20:18
Speaker 1: Because of his own limitations or because of his popularity.
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Speaker 3: So, because he was involved in the teapot dome scandal, so he was assistant Secretary of the Navy, which is a position that his father had held as well before becoming president, and during that time it was found out that the government was giving oil leases preferentially by taking bribes.
00:20:43
Speaker 1: I’ve heard of this, but I have no idea what it is. Yeah, the teapot dome scandals, Like in the way back of my head, there’s like a I feel like you’ve heard of that a few years ago.
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Speaker 3: You know, it’s been a while teapot dome scandal. Yes, And so after that, even though Ted was not convicted of any crime, he was implicated in this and canceled. And yeah, he got canceled. In fact, you even have Eleanor Roosevelt campaigning against him in a giant teapot costume. What it’s brutal. I mean, that’s your family got to fight family. Yeah, so that’s you know FDR and Eleanor where there was a feud between them, so they’re distant cousins.
00:21:25
Speaker 1: And is it true that the one side? Is it true that the one side was that Theodore’s clan was Roosevelt and that the Franklin clan was Roosevelt. Have you ever heard this before?
00:21:41
Speaker 3: I have?
00:21:42
Speaker 1: Is that not true?
00:21:43
Speaker 3: I don’t think so. I think it’s just the way that people from different areas pronounced the.
00:21:48
Speaker 1: Names, so it was like Roosevelt across the board. Yeah, okay, got it?
00:21:51
Speaker 3: Yeah and so and.
00:21:52
Speaker 1: Then which in this story you’re telling which one is, just so people are kind of ware this is like foreshadowing which of his two boys ends up killing himself. That’s Kermit, Okay, he ends up killing himself, and he’s the one rolled up in teapot dome.
00:22:07
Speaker 3: No, that’s actually the eldest brother God that is rolled up in that. And it’s interesting to me because what we see is that Teddy Roosevelt often went on expeditions during difficult points in his life. So when he lost the election and he went to the River of Doubt, when he lost his mother and his wife, he went to the Dakotas, and you really see his sons following in those footsteps, deciding to go on this expedition during a difficult time for them. So ted had just was politically obliterated, is the way his wife put it. And Kermit was having many issues. He was just not a successful businessman. He was having a lot of difficulties. He was having problems with his family too, So both of them were at a point in their lives where they were ready to escape, They’re ready to go do something different, and going into the woods, going on hunting expeditions was always a big part of their lives.
00:23:01
Speaker 1: So how like, how did they get they got their finger on the pulse of the world, I guess when it comes to exploration and wildlife discoveries, but does how does the panda mystery or the panda controversy, Like how does it land in their lab? Like how do they become the recipients of this and be like, hey, we’ll be the ones that go find it.
00:23:26
Speaker 3: You know, it’s luck, honestly, because at that point you have ten years of expeditions that have gone out and have not been able to find the panda. The Roosevelts are able to get funding from the Field Museum and because of that they’re able to go do this expedition, and honestly, the museum is not expecting them to come back with the panda, but they’re thinking they’ll find other animals, and they do. They find many other animals besides the panda on this expedition, and.
00:23:53
Speaker 1: At this point time, how many pandas are alive?
00:23:56
Speaker 3: It’s hard to say, So the best estimate we have is somewhere in the two thousand range. There’s not a lot of pandas.
00:24:03
Speaker 1: At that point, there’s only two thousand pandas.
00:24:06
Speaker 3: Yes, pandas have always been fairly rare, and they’re only found in a few very small parts of China. So even in China, the panda was not well known. And it makes sense when you think about how divided China was at that point too, because this is a country that is very territorial, so you have many different cultures, many independent kingdoms, and in the places where the panda lived, it’s remote mountains, and people there did not have a lot of roads and did not have a lot of contact with the Chinese, and they themselves did not consider themselves Chinese.
00:24:47
Speaker 1: This is like deep, I won’t judge if you don’t know the answer to this. Let’s say you go back. Let’s say we went back ten thousand years or whatever the hell was it? Like? Was it at a time was there a million pandas? Do I mean, let’s say you went back to whatever mark or does it seem like they were being forced into some kind of bottleneck at this point or was it just that somehow they managed to exist as an always very limited animal.
00:25:19
Speaker 3: So the panda went through some big evolutionary changes, and so at one point we think the panda was found in other continents, even in Europe. There’s evidence of early pandas, but they look so different than we think of them today. And then the panda change it adapted to its environment. They are one of only a few species in Carnivora that are herbivores, and so they developed a unique thumb that’s perfect for grasping bamboo. Their teeth changed, so they went to this herbivore diet, and all of those changes led them to being very linked to these mountainous bamboo forests that are only found in certain parts of the world.
00:26:04
Speaker 1: So if you if you laid out a hunk of I don’t know, man, like you lay out like a hunk of meat hanging there, is he gonna I’ll eat that. Here’s just gonna not eat it.
00:26:17
Speaker 3: Panda’s not gonna eat a hunk it. No, Yeah, it’s not gonna work. But if you looked at earlier ancestors to the panda, you have omnivores that were eating meat at that time. But that’s that’s way.
00:26:30
Speaker 1: So even if they can get it, that my question was more like, like, is it just that they’re that they were confined to a certain area and so in that area what they had to eat that was bamboo or was it that they were that was what they they were specialists, like, that’s what they considered.
00:26:47
Speaker 3: They are highly adapted to consume bamboo. They’re not you know, they’re not scavengers like black bears. They’re very different than other members of the bear family. And I think, you know, when you really think about it, they are pretty special. They’re very rare for being a bear. So perhaps it’s not crazy that the Roosevelts weren’t expecting them to be like that. They really thought they would be predators, And it sort of makes sense when you think about all the other members of the bear family in comparison.
00:27:15
Speaker 1: No, man, that blows my mind. Just two thousand of them.
00:27:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it’s not many, and it’s not many today either.
00:27:24
Speaker 1: What I was.
00:27:26
Speaker 2: Struck by reading this book is as they’re going through, you know, like when you think about outsiders coming into a place in Asia or Africa looking for something, oftentimes like what they find to be very unique or rare. They get there and the people are like, oh, yeah, I know what that is, but they keep going into these villages and it’s like maybe someone has seen one, but there’s like not a not It’s not like they arrive on the scene and there’s a knowledge of panda Bear’s when they arrive, like it’s almost as much a mystery to the people that are sort of helping them as it is to the Roosevelts.
00:28:07
Speaker 3: That’s true. Yeah, So they have this group of guides they’re working with who are kind of like the Sherpa people of Nepal. They are the ones who are breaking the trail ahead of them. They’re making the camp sites, they’re helping them communicate, and all of these villages they’re going through, nobody knows about the panda, and they travel a huge distance. All in all, they travel almost two thousand miles over the course of six months. This is a long track. So they are going first through rainforests in me and Mar and then into very high fourteen thousand peaks and the Himalayas, and then down through the Tibetan Plateau. I mean, they cover an incredible range as they’re searching for the panda, and they end up having to go to this one part of China that they’ve been warned not to go to They’ve been told that the people that live there are savages, that this is not a place that’s safe, and they make that choice really out of desperation because at this point, what they went through on the trail, it is just extreme, how close they came to dying multiple times.
00:29:10
Speaker 1: What was almost killing them. Well, first off, like lay out a little bit about how they organized it and sort of what the planned route was and where they thought their highest likelihood of finding one would be.
00:29:24
Speaker 3: So they thought their highest likelihood would be to go where Joseph Milner lived, which was in western China, and they believed it because he had been able to buy a skin from a marketplace there. They would be able to if they hunted in the countryside, sure find the panda. And you know, I think what’s really interesting, and you know what I just want to go back to for a minute, is that science and hunting is very linked at this point in history. Scientists are hunters. You see that with Darwin, You see that with all the great scientists of the era, they had to be. And so the Roosevelts, although you may not think think of them so much as scientists, they really are bridging that gap. They have that ability to hunt, but then they also have the ability to learn about these animals, and so they’ve spent a lot of time at the Field Museum in Chicago really learning about how to prepare these specimens and how to describe them in a way that’s useful for scientists. And so they’re traveling with an interesting group. They’re traveling with a man named Tai Jack Young, who is an NYU student. He was born in Hawaii. His parents are from San Francisco and from China, so he grew up in China. And he’s hired as a translator for the trip, but he ends up being sent to the Field Museum and gets all of the training there. And I was fortunate I was able to get his unpublished autobiography as well as interviews that were done with him in the nineteen nineties, and it’s just fascinating to he became very close friends with the Roosevelts.
00:30:58
Speaker 1: He was alive in the nineteen nineties.
00:31:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, he’s only eighteen at the time of this expedition, and so he was friends with the Roosevelts for years. They were very close friends. And so to be able to get his account was so interesting, and so he’s one of the members of this expedition, as well as a man named Sudham Cutting, who’s a naturalist from New York who is not particularly well experienced, but is the kind of man who’ll just happy to do anything, happy to go out hunt whatever you need. He’s there. And then they have Herbert Stevens, who is this British naturalist who’s really the real biologist of the group. He has the training and he has had terrible luck, this poor guy, all of these expeditions he’s gone on. He’s had such a difficult time bringing specimens back because he has a boat crash or there’s other problems in transportation, and he’s just not very well respected by the scientific community because of that. So he’s pretty desperate to show that he’s real, that he do this.
00:32:01
Speaker 2: I got the sense in there, like, especially with him, that in this era of expeditions, it was it was almost like like we think of athletes today, where it’s like you’ve got a few good years and you end up on the wrong team and like your whole legacy is in question. And so there’s some guys that are just desperate to get out there for one last chance at like a big discovery, and it’s there’s almost like a sort of gamesmanship to it, and like some guys just sort of luck into a good expedition, but other guys are just sort of desperately hanging on trying to get on an expedition that that will make their name for them.
00:32:41
Speaker 3: It’s so true because this was really a time and history when you could make your name as an explorer, you could really gain fame from doing so. And Herbert Stevens is not necessarily someone that you would ever think of as being famous. Certainly, most of the explorers that did these trips then animals would not be named after them. But this expedition is special because you have the Roosevelts. And yeah, I loved writing about Herbert Stevens, especially because he’s he’s kind of funny on the trail. He tends to delay the group. The Roosevelts get very annoyed with him. He gets lost the first day on the trail.
00:33:17
Speaker 2: He’s the one they leave behind, right, Yeah, Yeah, he’s too slow.
00:33:21
Speaker 1: You know, in terms of hitting the right expedition. Just an interesting thing about that is in our podcast The American West with the historian Dan Flores, he talks about that, you know, like Jefferson launched two expeditions. He had a northern one, the corp of discoverer Lewis and Clark expedition, and he had a Southern one which gets going and they get intercepted by the Spanish and sent home. So if you’re thinking like who got lucky, who didn’t get lucky? No one’s even hurt of the one in the South.
00:33:51
Speaker 3: So true.
00:33:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, it’s just like you could have been like, what’s you know what one’s going to be a greater chance of boosting my career and you wound up being like Lewis and Clark or the dude I can’t think of, or the dude I can’t think of who is supposed to do the same thing in the South Freeman and Custus. Yeah, yeah, lost to time, dude, Like no one cares, No one’s heard of the guy, you know.
00:34:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, certainly nobody would have put money on the Roosevelts for this expedition. In fact, they didn’t even tell their close friends that they were going after the panda.
00:34:22
Speaker 1: And how long were they fixing the go for They.
00:34:25
Speaker 3: Were planning to go for six months that was there, get done. I mean they had hoped to do the first leg in six months and then spend another six months going through Vietnam and going through Laos and collecting more species there.
00:34:36
Speaker 1: Got it. And just to be clear their intent, they want to observe them, watch them, but then they’re intents to shoot some.
00:34:44
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and it’s it’s very specific how they need to collect the panda so that it’s useful for science.
00:34:50
Speaker 1: Come. So they take off from where.
00:34:52
Speaker 3: So they take off from well, technically the trip starts, of course in New York, but they end up going through me and mar into the western side of China into Union, and so they’re going through a trail that where this is on foot. This is on foot. So they have mules that carry a lot of their supplies, and there’s a lot of problems with mules throughout the book, unfortunately. But yeah, they’re going on foot. So these are all places where there are no roads for cars. It’s just trails.
00:35:23
Speaker 1: Huh. So even like I just can’t, I wish I understood it better that I would picture at that point in time. I mean, we’re into the twentieth century. I would picture at that point in time like you’d get trains and you’d kind of get within striking distance of your objective.
00:35:40
Speaker 3: It’s just too remote this area they’re going to. They’re sort of straddling this border between Tibet and China. A lot of times they don’t even know which country they’re in. Yeah, there’s also a civil war going on that’s kind of a problem for them throughout the book. So in nineteen twenty seven, you have the civil war that started in China between the Nationalists government and the Communist Party, and so that’s raging around them at the same time too, and.
00:36:04
Speaker 1: That probably cuts off certain avenues of approach.
00:36:07
Speaker 3: It does, although the parts they’re going to there there simply are not roads. And so it’s interesting throughout the book because as they describe the trail and by the way, it was so much fun just to go through the Roosevelt’s Field journals and how they describe things. And they took pictures and videos on the trail as well, which is pretty cool. And some of those pictures are of the other people traveling the trail, and a lot of them are moving these giant, giant packs of tea. Because there are no roads, there’s no other way to bring goods to this part of China, except on the backs of people.
00:36:46
Speaker 1: Okay, I wish I had a I wish I had a map of the planet Earth. Can you put up a picture of me and Mar in China.
00:36:58
Speaker 3: There is a little mask in the book too, if you want to, If that helps. It’s kind of right in the front.
00:37:03
Speaker 1: There, me and Mar. What was me and me and Ba?
00:37:13
Speaker 2: So east of if you’re picturing like the Indian Ocean, it’s east of India sort.
00:37:21
Speaker 1: Of tucked up there.
00:37:22
Speaker 2: Yes, that’s right northwest southeast Asia.
00:37:26
Speaker 3: Yes, that’s a good way to put it. In northwest southeast Age.
00:37:31
Speaker 1: You need it super detailed. Do you want in context like the surrounding, in context with everything else? Okay, like that little square dude I went to high school with lives in Me and Mar maybe his little spottle shoulder. Okay, all right, let me just get my I get my head straight here. So they’re crossing me and Mar.
00:37:55
Speaker 3: Yes, So they’re they’re going from there’s kind of this is called the Bama Route through Burma, and then they’re going into Union and they call it sort of the back door into China. Yeah, and then from there they’re moving north up through Sichuan and then more into central China, and then they eventually end up coming back around through Vietnam.
00:38:18
Speaker 1: Yeah. So if people are picturing there’s like a large peninsula that contains Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, they’re kind of crossing the top of that peninsula to get into the into the mountains of western China.
00:38:36
Speaker 3: That’s right.
00:38:38
Speaker 1: I would never picture that. That’s how you would need to do that at that point in time. I mean, I don’t know, I don’t know anything about that area. So what kind of like what kind of happens to them along that route then? So I mean they may not be having adventures left and right.
00:38:55
Speaker 3: They do. Yeah, So they are able to collect an incredible amount of animals on this First of all, they are able to collect five thousand bird skins, two thousand small mammals, forty large mammals. I mean that’s a that’s a damn good hunting trip, right, Yeah. And so they are collecting all of these interesting species. They find nineteen new species on the trail. But they’re also interacting with a plethora of cultures and that was fun part of the book too. So they go into these areas that are autonomous regions that are mostly Tibetans that live there and they’re ruled by Tibetan lamas. And so I talk in the book quite a bit about this, the section of Tibetan Buddhism. And at that time you had all of these Lama sarries that were along the route, and there were men and women who were lamas who were brought there when their children and then they grow up in the Lama sarries.
00:39:52
Speaker 1: Just to connect that the people today, like you’re like, you know, just regular old Americans going to hear of the dolli lama when you say lamas, yes, and stems from that same.
00:40:03
Speaker 2: And Alamas Sri is like a monastery with alama exactly.
00:40:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, it sounds funny when you put it that way, right, right.
00:40:12
Speaker 1: And that’s like the that’s the governing system it is.
00:40:15
Speaker 3: And so you have Lama rulers of these regions and so one of the places they go to is called the Kingdom of Mulai. And at that time it was kind of this mythologized place that had been in national geographic and so people knew somewhat about it. And so the Roosevelts go there and they stay with this man who is kind of the eastern ruler of this region, and they stay in his house and it’s called the house of the Prince because his son is going to be a lama and will one day be the king of Mulai. But because lamas do not marry, they do not have children. It’s always passed down through the family.
00:40:56
Speaker 1: These guys aren’t like warlords either, some of them are.
00:41:00
Speaker 3: They are, yeah, So there certainly was fighting. Many of these autonomous regions were fighting the Chinese for their independence, and so Tibet at that time the Dalai Lama head proclaimed independence for the country. I believe it’s in nineteen twelve, And so certainly many of these regions were very fiercely independent and very keen to protect their lands.
00:41:23
Speaker 1: Got it. But they’re able to, like they’re not at risk of they’re not at risk of like having an interaction that goes wrong.
00:41:32
Speaker 3: Oh, they absolutely are, they are, yes, And so they bring with them all of these interesting gifts to kind of introduce themselves. So when they go into the Kingdom of Mulai, they have a turquoise bowler hat, they have knives, they have rifles, they have all kinds of interesting things to present because they’re just not sure what people are going to like. They don’t know how they’re going to present themselves. And so they explain to this ruler of Mulai that they are the sons of President Theodore Roosevelt. And he said, as who’s that, He has no idea.
00:42:04
Speaker 4: How about a bowler hat.
00:42:08
Speaker 1: Where you could pick one of the other the bowler head of the rifle.
00:42:11
Speaker 3: But what I learned when I was reading Ted and Kermit’s journals was that this was actually a very freeing experience for them. I mean, imagine that they have found a part of the world where they are not known only by their relation to their father, and they actually become close friends. They enjoy each other’s company, They show pictures of their families, They have the next King of Mulai, who was at that time just a toddler running around, and it’s it’s it’s really interesting to see how those interactions went along and how they got along with people.
00:42:43
Speaker 1: And along the way, like here they are on the right continent, kind of the right general neck of the woods. But as Randall’s saying, like along the way, they’re be like, hey, y’all seen any pandas and people are like, oh, what you know, but it’s kind of surprising. But you can almost think you can think of analogs from here that you let’s say you were different bear. Let’s say you’re very curious about you were very curious about grizzly bears. I mean, you could hit Saint Louis right, a place that people’s perception would be at that time, the gateway to the West, and you could say, hey, I’m here for the grizzly bears, and you’d find people in Saint Louis that are like, what, yeah, that’s it’d be earlier, it’d be fifty years earlier, but like, of course they’d be like, I don’t know.
00:43:29
Speaker 3: And then you would describe it. You would try to say, hey, this is what they look like, and.
00:43:32
Speaker 1: People, yeah, yeah, they’d be like yeah, it kind of rings a bell, but I don’t know, you know whatever. You just you could picture that, or or you make it into interior Alaska and you’re like, I’m curious about the polar bears. Yeah, and in the interior they’re like, I have no idea you’re talking about. You’re close, but you’re not exactly.
00:43:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it’s a lot.
00:43:52
Speaker 1: In that way. It’s sort of easy to imagine, but it also seemed like it’s like a big white and black super yeah bear, it lives around here.
00:44:04
Speaker 2: It is more like describing a unicorn than a grizzly bear.
00:44:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, So where do they get, Like, at what point do they start to get some assurance, you know, like some sense that we’re on the right track here.
00:44:18
Speaker 3: Oh, it just takes forever, and there are a lot of struggles on that path. So you know, at some point they get robbed by bandits. At another point, they’re in the Himalayas and all of their mules just disappear in the night. That actually happens twice, and so they lose all of their foods stolen. No, it’s just so cold that the mules decide that they have to leave. Yeah. And then another point they suffer from horrible altitude sickness. They are trying to hike at night and they’re caught in this blizzard, and that is the night that they describe as the very worst of their lives, where they came incredibly close to death. It’s very lucky that they start from exposure, and so it’s just one struggle after a next in this book, and so it’s really not until very far along on the expedition where they say, Okay, we’re going to go to this one area that’s called the Land of the Eye or the people call it Lolo Land. And everyone has told them that this is where the savages are, this is where they’re going to be attacked, they’re going to be killed. They should not go to this one part of China, but they decide it’s worth the risk. They want to try to find the pandemic.
00:45:29
Speaker 1: And they don’t have any idea. Yeah. I mentioned like Lewis and Clark expedition, right, they have an idea where they’re able to defend themselves. Yeah right, I mean they’re armed, they’re military personnel. Like they have an idea that it might come down to a fight and will fight. But these guys that can’t be in their back pocket, right, like the idea if they get in trouble, they’re just in trouble. Like they’re not holding out hope that they’re going to like engage militarily.
00:45:55
Speaker 3: No, that is absolutely not their hope. And there’s some interesting parts along the trail where things do get pretty dicey. There’s one great moment with Jack where the expedition has to divide for a while and he sees that there’s a group of bandits ahead on the trail, and he ends up just being really casual walking by pretending as if nothing is wrong and gets away with it. Is the crazy part. So there are some really kind of interesting moments like that where they’re sort of able to bluff their way through, and other moments where you have a group of guides who are Another interesting part of this is that half of the guides on the trip were women. There were a number of women who served in this role. It was certainly one that paid well, it was one that gave a lot of independence, and so you can imagine that it was very prized for both men and women. And so there’s one point where you have guides that are women that are head on the trail that end up scaring away some bandits as well. So they certainly were able to have some backup from their guides. But what we see is that even when they’re in positions where the Roosevelts are really in danger and where they should feel more threatened, they end up always taking the calm route, always trying to give the bowler hats, give the knives, give the gifts, and make friends. And I’m sure that those are skills they learn from their dad.
00:47:20
Speaker 1: So these guys that people tell them, that warn them against, what is their their final act to go to this area? How do these people live? Like kind of like sketch out what their sort of lifestyle is.
00:47:33
Speaker 3: So these are the people, and they live in these remote villages in the mountainous regions of central China. They have a lot of animosity towards the Chinese, and they pretty much tend to keep to themselves. And so first when they meet the Roosevelts, they’re very suspicious because the Roosevelts have these long beards and they’re kind of scraggly looking. They don’t really look like important men at all. And they’re worried that the Roosevelts are Catholic priests that are come to be missionaries, and so they’re very upset. Yes, and so it sort of takes some convincing. No, they’re not here to proselytize.
00:48:16
Speaker 1: It’s not what you think.
00:48:18
Speaker 3: But what happens is that the people do not hunt panda, so they know about the panda. They finally found a group of people that know about the panda, but they do not hunt them, and they try to explain to the Roosevelts, these are gentle creatures. We don’t hunt them, and they are hunters. But they are hunters absolutely.
00:48:37
Speaker 1: And they’ve made like even though they’ve come to some kind of cultural taboo system or whatever where like here it is it would be good to eat. They’re available, but we just like we don’t.
00:48:51
Speaker 3: Yes, And the results are pretty skeptical because they think, why wouldn’t you These skins are so rare you can find them. Absolutely no, you would make so much money if you sold them, And so they don’t really understand it. And I think it’s one of those things where if you know what a panda is like, then it makes a little bit more sense, right, But they don’t know. It’s hard for them to even comprehend the panda as a gentle creature. And so after a lot of convincing, the people agree to bring the Roosevelts on a hunt with them. And the reason for this is that they really don’t think they’re going to find a panda because even for them, it’s difficult to find one. Oh, I see, it’s very rare. For them to even encounter them. I mean, they can count on one hand how many times they have seen them, and they you know, they have hunted them previously, but it’s always been when a panda has you know, been in a village or sort of gone after an aviary or something like that where it was or apiary, sorry, not aviary where the panda was, you know, at some point threatening them, and that was has only happened twice before, is what they told the Roosevelts. So this is certainly a very rare thing thing. And so they figure, Okay, well it’s about to be rainy season, we’re not going to be able to be gone long. We’ll take them out, we’ll find nothing, we’ll get some money for efforts, and then this will be done.
00:50:12
Speaker 1: Can we hit a couple of biometrics on pandas sure? What are we talking about? How many pounds is the pana bear?
00:50:20
Speaker 3: Man? I know that, and I just it’s lost my brain. I can’t remember.
00:50:29
Speaker 2: You say five hundred pounds?
00:50:31
Speaker 1: No, I don’t know.
00:50:32
Speaker 5: We’ll go two to three, okay, I can’t remember the National Zoo weighing up to two hundred and fifty pounds. That sounds about right, rarely reach two ndred.
00:50:47
Speaker 1: Without actually saying two to fifty. I said from two to three.
00:50:50
Speaker 2: I think, I guess I’m just thinking of all the hair.
00:50:52
Speaker 3: You know, they’re very fluffy.
00:50:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, And then they don’t den or do they den?
00:50:59
Speaker 3: They don’t hybrid, so they it’s you know, even as the results are out there there, they are really questioning whether the panda are a bear because they can tell as they’re kind of tracking them through the woods that these are not animals that would hibernate.
00:51:13
Speaker 1: Okay, and then what’s their sort of Do they spend a lot of time with their cubs like a normal like other bear species.
00:51:19
Speaker 3: They do. They spend a long time with their cubs, but after that they’re very solitary animals, so they do not spend time with each other. They kind of have their own territories, and they end up communicating with each other through through scratches on the bamboo and then through rubbing their glands on these patches, and so a female will learn of a male that she’s going to possibly mate with through that smell. It’s really a main way that they communicate with each other. And when you think about it, they don’t really have a lot of other ways to communicate because they don’t have a lot of expression in their faces like other bears, and they are so isolated that really it’s only through that those scratches, through that rubbing.
00:52:03
Speaker 1: They do they have any vocalizations.
00:52:05
Speaker 5: I’m sorry, just when you say the scratching, is that a visual thing, it’s like they leave a sign and then well.
00:52:12
Speaker 3: It’s mostly how they rub their glands on the scratches. But yeah, it’s it’s absolutely that’s amazing if they’re like, oh, look the sign.
00:52:22
Speaker 1: Of But I would surprise that because bears use scratch trees like prominent like prominent trees or trees like you know, like whatever two canyons come together, prominent travel ways they’ll mark, they’ll physically markin trees and they rub it too, you know. And then any kind of calls they make, they don’t.
00:52:42
Speaker 3: They don’t make. They’re very quiet.
00:52:46
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, No, even if they did vocalize, it probably wouldn’t sound and be like man, something really.
00:52:55
Speaker 1: Now, it’s as chill as they are. As chill as they are. Do the males, well, the male throw down like over a female.
00:53:03
Speaker 3: It has not been observed in the wild.
00:53:06
Speaker 1: Always chill, very chill, like they’re doped up.
00:53:12
Speaker 2: Like that. Yeah.
00:53:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that the Roosevelts end up describing them as a gentleman. That’s how they put it. They’re gentlemanly.
00:53:21
Speaker 1: But do they Okay, if you roll up on a panda, Okay, it’s isolated. And what elevation are we talking about? Like where are they at in the Himalaya? How high?
00:53:32
Speaker 3: So they had been at these very high peaks, but now they’ve come down. They’ve come down below the Tibetan plateau. So we’re no longer at these like snowy high people.
00:53:40
Speaker 1: Okay, So that was that was they were up there because if they needed to travel through the area, they weren’t. They weren’t searching.
00:53:47
Speaker 3: I mean they were still searching because they weren’t sure where the panda was.
00:53:50
Speaker 2: I mean, they have like no idea where to look. That’s That’s what I thought was really fascinating about the whole arc of the journey is the journeys never really going anywhere. I mean, and they’re they’re they’re just sort of clueless the whole time.
00:54:03
Speaker 1: I know guys like that, I know guys hunt like that.
00:54:05
Speaker 2: I Mean, I’ve been guilty of it myself, but you never like get the sense like Okay, now we’re on the trail. Now we’re getting warm, Now we’re getting warmer. It’s like they just all of a sudden, these guys take them out, and it’s like it’s like, yeah, yeah, okay.
00:54:20
Speaker 3: There’s so much desperation and desire in this hunt. You can really feel it when you read through their journals. They want it so much, and the clock is ticking, and the clock is absolutely ticking.
00:54:29
Speaker 1: And where they are is so obviously it’s a bunch. It’s a bamboo forest, but it’s like rugged steep country. It is mountainous.
00:54:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it’s mountainous, so it’s not high Himalaya’s peaks, but it is it’s very difficult to hike through yep.
00:54:43
Speaker 1: And so when these guys take them out to look, they take them to like some spots they run into them, but there’s not like herds of.
00:54:49
Speaker 3: Pandas, No, there are no Yeah, so we can imagine that at the moment when they finally see a bear print in the snow, it’s in the snow. Yeah, it’s very exciting when that happens, and it’s a it’s a really big moment in the book, and it’s a big moment for them because they are so excited. The Roosevelts are finally we’re doing this, We’re going to get this panda, and all of the hunters around them are like, oh no, I don’t want to go. I’m not doing this. We can’t keep going, and they have to because it winds because they don’t want to kill a pan they.
00:55:23
Speaker 2: Didn’t think they’d find one.
00:55:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, Randall, how are you contradicting the author?
00:55:31
Speaker 2: Yes, no, no, this is what you’re saying earlier, like the the the.
00:55:36
Speaker 1: Tell you what I put my.
00:55:39
Speaker 2: I mean, I saw this. I saw this book whenever it was announced in January or December, and I pre ordered it because it has everything that I enjoy, just expeditions, Roosevelts, UH mountains and UH pairs and yeah, I’m a big zoo guy, so pandas are objects of incredible fast station form.
00:56:00
Speaker 1: You’re a big zoo guy.
00:56:01
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, we talked about this.
00:56:04
Speaker 1: I know your biggest states guys really into a state sales.
00:56:07
Speaker 2: Sorry, I’ve got a yeah gotta. I’m very I’m a renaissance man.
00:56:16
Speaker 1: I knew about the estate sales, but I didn’t know about the pandas well.
00:56:18
Speaker 3: You never know what trinkets you’re gonna find.
00:56:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I was at a zoo this weekend.
00:56:22
Speaker 1: It’s great.
00:56:24
Speaker 3: There’s a lot of.
00:56:26
Speaker 1: So they hit a track. I like this that it’s in the snow, But where a panda lives? What’s the deepest snow A pan that could deal with? I mean, are they sometimes in serious snow or is it? Yes?
00:56:40
Speaker 3: Absolutely, yeah, they can get so. At this point, you know, we’re getting into spring, so it’s sort of it’s rain and snow. At this point, it happens to be snow, which is very lucky because they’re able to find the tracks, and in fact, the whole time they’re following these tracks, the sun starts coming out and they’re very anxious that the trail is just going to disappear.
00:57:00
Speaker 1: Gotcha. So, uh, but in peak winter, a panda is not hibernating, but it’s hanging out in potentially serious snow.
00:57:10
Speaker 3: Isn’t that interesting constantly eating?
00:57:14
Speaker 1: Okay, now to get back to my question, and maybe you’re both I’ll stay out of it. No, No, I want to hear your take. Maybe you’re both right. They see the track, but then some of their guides start getting they’re conflicted or they get reluctant. Yes, Randall says it’s because they what what did he say? They want to go home?
00:57:33
Speaker 2: They I mean, my understanding is that they agreed to take the Roosevelts out thinking that they would not actually have to go through with the thing. They’re like, we’ll just march these guys around for a couple of days, collect our paychecks, and then these guys will go because like there’s no chance we’re actually going to hit a track. So when they hit a track, they’re.
00:57:55
Speaker 4: Like, oh all right, Yeah, they’re like they’re like, really know whether we shouldn’t have taken them to where they actually are.
00:58:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, it’s a lot of regret and so not all of that.
00:58:06
Speaker 1: It’s a weird call because they could have just totally bisdom. Yeah, you know, like the Coronado expedition, they get these guides who deliberately they’re trying to find these Native American settlements and they get these guides who are like, I’m not taking you there, and then they’ll just tell them some total horseshit and take them somewhere else because they’re trying to protect other Native Americans. Yes, so like oh, you want to go to where the main settlement is. It’s over that way. You know. They’ll go for days. One of these guys they actually kill him once they realize he’s leading them on. So it’s surprising that these guides, as conflicted as they are, they actually go to the spot.
00:58:43
Speaker 3: It is surprising, but I think that just goes to show how rare pandas are that they did not think they would find one even looking at.
00:58:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they cut a track, yes, and they trail it.
00:58:59
Speaker 3: Yeah, they start following it and they start seeing bits of broken bamboo as they go, so they know they’re in the right place. Immediately, some hunting dogs begin to howl, and the Roosevelts are very upset. Hunting dogs are something that they have never liked to use. They’ve never even allowed it for most of this expedition. They did it this one day just to kind of keep people happy, and they’re just beside themselves. They end up dividing where Ted goes on one trail and Kermit goes on another, and so Kermit is now the dog issue.
00:59:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, what don’t they like about it? They feel it’s counterproductive.
00:59:36
Speaker 3: Yes, they believe that it’s just going to scare away the game. They’re trash. Yeah, and it’s been a problem throughout the expedition. And you know, it’s really interesting because for a lot of these scientific expeditions, the hunters that got the game were not the scientists. They were local hunters that were used to get these animals. But the Roosevelts do not believe in that. They believe that they’re the ones that should be getting these animals. And I mean that really makes sense. They’re the ones that yeah, okay, yeah, they’re the ones that will really want to do the work. And so hunting dogs have been this issue. But they wanted to keep these hunters happy because they know they don’t even really want to be there, and they kind of had to convince them to keep going, even through pretty bad conditions. And so they were letting these dogs go so that they could hunt some pigs for food.
01:00:22
Speaker 1: Like ah, so they got dogs out for different reasons. Yeah, Also that makes more sense. Okay, So they’re like, hey, they’re here, they want to hunt, they want pigs, they want to eat. Yeah, so they’re going to cut their dogs loose and then these dogs are raising hell in the pandas the.
01:00:36
Speaker 3: Worst timing ever, Yeah, it could not be worse understood. Finally Kurmit gets through the bamboo and they get to this magnificent dragon spruce tree, dark green needles. It’s just beautiful. And Kurmit sees the panda stick its head out.
01:00:54
Speaker 1: Of the tree and it’s it’s up in the tree.
01:00:57
Speaker 3: It’s up in the tree. Yes, it’s in a hole in the tree. It’s not too far off the ground, and it’s kind of looks sleepy. And he immediately says, go get my brother, because they have made this plan from the beginning that when they see a panda, they’re going to shoot it simultaneously so they both get the credit. Oh my god, really, I know, it’s very it’s kind of ridiculous, and.
01:01:20
Speaker 1: Many people kids around.
01:01:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, it kind of is, and I think part of this is that good lord, but it’s kind of adorable.
01:01:38
Speaker 1: I want to favorite you always have to shoot everything, you.
01:01:49
Speaker 2: Sho That’s like it could be like a firing squad where one.
01:01:51
Speaker 4: Of them is a blank and one of them as if you had told me, if you had told me that that neither of them, uh wanted to have the guilt of killing the panda, And so they had a plan, like you’re saying, where there’s a blank and a live round, you know, and so they never really know who killed the panda, but that they both want to be.
01:02:13
Speaker 1: Shot.
01:02:14
Speaker 3: No, there’s no guilt at this point because they don’t know what the panda’s like. They think they’re going to shoot at this panda and it’s going to attack them.
01:02:23
Speaker 1: Okay, that reason they.
01:02:25
Speaker 2: Got to get two bullets in it.
01:02:26
Speaker 1: They’re like, they’re so afraid. They want to make sure it goes down. They want to make sure that it’s a human. There’s a hundred ways they could have spun this, but to spin it that they wanted to both be able to say they got it. It’s just it’s kind of pathetic. Well.
01:02:42
Speaker 3: Interestingly, though, Teddy Roosevelt would often take turns on his expedition and he would get annoyed if people didn’t take turns shooting animals because he felt it was only fair. Everyone should get a fair chance at taking these shots. Okay, so it might be part of that.
01:02:58
Speaker 1: So it’s dend up in a tree, Yeah, and then is it deaded up in the tree because the dogs have baded it up. No, Okay, so they track it just they happen to just find it. They happen to find it, and there it is, all doped up in a tree. Yes, they feel that it’s lethargic. Well, because they’re not knowing that, they’re like expecting frocity.
01:03:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, they’re expecting Frosty, absolutely, and so Ted comes. They get out their Smithfield rifles and.
01:03:21
Speaker 1: They’ve got to be excited as hell.
01:03:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, Oh, they’re very excited. They’ve been waiting for this moment for months. They’ve tracked very long to get there, and so finally Ted gets there. They get their rifles, and they’ve selected these Smithfield rifles because they’re light, they’re easy to carry, and it’s one that Kermit used in Africa when he was hunting elephants. And so they fire at the bear and they are very fortunate in that it’s coming out of the tree and so they’re able to get a shot on it, and then then then they trail it and then finally able to track it down and kill the panda. But it’s not at all what they expect. This is not a bear that immediately turns on them and is trying to attack. It is clear right from the beginning that the hunters they were going with, are right, this is a gentle animal. This is not a polar bear, This is not a grizzly bear. This is something very different. And pretty soon after we see they begin to show regret. In their journals they talk about how this bear is a gentleman, that this is not an animal that should become a trophy animal. But that’s exactly what happens.
01:04:30
Speaker 1: And what’s also is there any conflict with them to be that, I guess in this collection era, there’s no sort of on one hand, we should observe it, on the other hand, we should collect it. Like in their mind, like collection is paramount.
01:04:47
Speaker 3: Collection is paramount because there is no objective full specimen in a museum, So they need to do both. And at this point they’ve been able to collect some information about the panda, and they’re going to get more after they hunt it. But certainly getting the specimen is the most important thing for the museum.
01:05:05
Speaker 1: And do the guys do the what does the guides when they kill it? What? Like what is the guide’s attitude? Do the guides are like, hey, let’s cook it up? Or like what is their sort of demeanor about the whole thing?
01:05:17
Speaker 3: At first, they do not even want to let the panda back into the village because they feel like this is such a horrible thing that’s happened. They don’t want it to take to the village. And it’s only when they realize that Kermit and Ted will have to prepare the animal and the mud and the snow that they let it come into the village at all. And this is the only animal of the many many they hunted on the trail that Ted and Kermit do not eat. I’m sorry. Kind of a tough thing for this podcast, isn’t it. The Yeah, they felt bad about it, and.
01:05:50
Speaker 1: The guides so their taboo system too, like the guides are not going to.
01:05:54
Speaker 3: Partake they do not know, And in fact, the leader of the village ends up buying a goat for everyone to feast with that night. But you can imagine how it must have felt for Tend and Kermit to be preparing this animal with an audience of people around them that just are absolutely horrified by what they do. I mean, they really see tedd and Kermit as the savages in this situation, because here they are having to go through skinning this animal. They’re making diagrams of every muscle, every bone, and then of course the preparation for the hide. It’s pretty intense for anyone to watch, but you can imagine how the people must have felt watching this happen to an animal that they felt was sacred and gentle that they didn’t hunt.
01:06:41
Speaker 1: Trying to think of a parallel, I don’t know for us. Yeah, I’d be like if nowadays, Like if nowadays someone’s like, I need to get a bald eagle, yeah, something that would just be like the people like, man, I don’t even be nothing to do with this man.
01:07:01
Speaker 3: Yeah.
01:07:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, It’s hard to think of a parallel.
01:07:05
Speaker 2: I’m sure or some I think people have I think a dog maybe, Yeah, I don’t know. Yeah, I mean you just don’t want I don’t even want to see it.
01:07:12
Speaker 3: I mean, you can’t imagine anyone doing this to a panda today, right, Nobody would do this. But immediately after the Roosevelt expedition, as soon as people learn that they have been successful and where the pandas are, suddenly this is the hunting trophy to get all of these expeditions among big game hunters in the US.
01:07:35
Speaker 1: I didn’t know that you can’t.
01:07:36
Speaker 5: See that happening.
01:07:40
Speaker 1: I could see it happening if they came if they had come back with a different approach, but if they came back like no, no, it’s like, uh, it’s like it eats bamboo, it’s bill chill. The local people think you’re horrible if you mess with it, you’re not a he It’s not like there’s no like sort of like hero function.
01:07:58
Speaker 3: But nobody’s listening.
01:08:00
Speaker 1: Are glad, Yeah, you know the herders are like celebrating that you’ve gotten rid of this thing that gives them pain.
01:08:07
Speaker 3: It’s like rare animal.
01:08:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, it’s just like, yeah, it’s a little surprising.
01:08:11
Speaker 3: It’s been so many decades of trying to find this animal, of trying to show that it’s real that as soon as there’s evidence, yes it’s real and this is where you can find it, it’s immediate hunters want to go and get this animal. And in addition, you have a number of Americans that want to go and capture live pandas for zoos.
01:08:31
Speaker 1: But I’m curious what the ye people think of this trend. But let’s back up a minute. So they get their specimen, do they go on to have more interactions? Are they able to find more animals different demographics or is it kind of a one and done.
01:08:49
Speaker 3: They’re only able to find that one animal, Okay, that’s it. But they are able to spend some time in the area and sort of document exactly what diet the panda as, what its territory is, and then of course they spend a long time being able to prepare the hide, take the bones, they need every part.
01:09:09
Speaker 1: They don’t lay eyes on another one. They do not just the one, believe man, Huh, that’s it.
01:09:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, there you go.
01:09:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it’s just hard to think of other things that you’d go that are other, like at other species, that you’d go and like really find one and then spend time in the area and have it not be that you got into like a pocket of them.
01:09:36
Speaker 3: Yeah right, I mean, no, that’s it.
01:09:39
Speaker 1: If you went and found a grille, you’re going to find a troop, you know or whatever. But yeah, just you’d come get one, hang around and just that was it. Just some loaner, that was it.
01:09:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it makes sense when we understand pandobiology today because they are so isolated, and of course Ted and Kermit received many offers to go back and hunt panda again.
01:10:00
Speaker 1: I mean with recreational holders.
01:10:02
Speaker 3: Yes, with recreational holders, and even with museums, because you know, Chicago isn’t going to be the only one. Every museum wanted to have their own group of pandas to show, but they refused. They would not go back, they would not hunt panda again, and in fact, their lives took a very different turn after the panda hunt.
01:10:23
Speaker 1: I want to I want you to tell that because I want to get to how the one of them kills himself. The other guy died young too, he did.
01:10:29
Speaker 3: Yeah.
01:10:29
Speaker 1: But with with the the Ye people you spoke about, do they this court, this habitat area, this area they’re at, is it sort of like uncontested that that is their homeland, that they are the governing like the Ye people? Is it Is it like that they are the governing body there?
01:10:51
Speaker 3: Absolutely at that time.
01:10:52
Speaker 1: Yes. So if when they come back and all of a sudden it creates kind of a gold rush where people want to go collect this, you know, like a like a hunter collector who’s not affiliated with a museum wants one for his personal collection. Is it is it even possible that you would do it outside of outside of the authority of these people, Do you. I mean, like like that you could just kind of go to this area and hang out and shoot this thing. They don’t want to get shot and not need to worry about what they’re how they’re going to react to that.
01:11:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, it’s a good question, because there is a lot of angst even when the Roosevelts are there about what they’re doing.
01:11:31
Speaker 1: Yeah.
01:11:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, but there are no laws, and so you can imagine that it’s not that difficult for these hunters and for people who are looking to collect pandas to come in with the right bribes, be able to find people that will help I got it.
01:11:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, like some outcasts or whatever. It’s like, yeah, I’ll do it. Yeah, I’ll do it for the right amount of money. Yes, I see how many? How many can can you even take a guess, like, in the next couple decades or whatever, how many pandas enter private collections in the US or private collections anywhere.
01:12:03
Speaker 3: It’s hard for me to assess exactly what that number is. Certainly for museum collections, we know that there are dozens that came back for museums, and that museums were really intent on getting as many animals of as many different ages as they could, and part of that is because the exhibits themselves were popular, but also because they wanted to do comparative biology to be able to really look at what the history of the panda was and how it fit in with other bears. And certainly the track record for bringing live animals to zoos in the United States is just atrocious. During that era, you have all of these cubs that were brought back, and none of them survived very long because people just didn’t know how to take care of them.
01:12:47
Speaker 1: Presumably the way to get the cubs is they’d go and just shoot a female and take the cubs.
01:12:51
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, which then provided the benefit of also getting a skin that you could bring back. And they needed the cubs because that’s really the only way you could smuggle it back to the US. They were, you know, bringing this through the Chinese government, but not declaring that they actually had pandas.
01:13:10
Speaker 1: Okay, so they’re even though they’re in Tibet and there’s like hostilities between the Tibetans in China, the kind of flow winds up being through, Yes, the flow winds up being a like a Chinese market.
01:13:24
Speaker 3: Yes, because they have to as they take a boat back home. They have to do so through China.
01:13:30
Speaker 1: And what is the if there’s like a little bit of a taboo with the people that live there, if you get down into mainland, if you get down that mainland, if you get down into like places where there’s Chinese authority, what is the attitude there to the panda? Because now it’s funny that it’s funny that our perception is that it’s this symbol of China, you know, like like you get up to like Nixon and he like negotiates right, right, and they bring this panda for the thing. It’s like a symbol of China. But at that time it would have been a symbol of Tibet.
01:14:07
Speaker 3: At the time, it was just this brand new animal that had been described for many people.
01:14:12
Speaker 1: A symbol of no one or whatever. Yeah, I gotcha. It wasn’t like a national it wasn’t like a like a point of national pride.
01:14:18
Speaker 3: It was not yet. So it’s it’s interesting how that came to be. I mean, it’s weird to think of the Roosevelts as being part of creating that, isn’t it. But certainly China had some regulations about what animals you could take, and while there weren’t any laws about panda cubs. Yet the people that were smuggling the panda cubs out were declaring them as dogs that they were taking home.
01:14:44
Speaker 2: And it’s fascinating too to just think about. So their expedition is in nineteen twenty to twenty nine, and when you’re talking about Nixon, I mean, that’s just a couple decades later that grew it to the made nation is like this is China’s I mean, I think a lot of Americans would just assume that panda’s China’s national animal. And it’s like if you were to go back in Chinese history and see documentation of this, but it’s it’s so recent.
01:15:14
Speaker 1: It’s forty Yeah, in forty years it became that, like it became like sort of the mascot of normalizing relations with China. And they didn’t even in nineteen thirty, they didn’t know about them. And in nineteen seventy it’s like, look, China, it’s a panda. Yeah, Like it really blew up.
01:15:32
Speaker 3: It really did. As soon as the results come back and people can see this exhibit for themselves, there is this pandemonium. People get really excited.
01:15:42
Speaker 2: I wish so big panda probably came out.
01:15:48
Speaker 1: It’s kind of amazing, man.
01:15:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, people were so excited about this animal they really didn’t even know existed before, and how could you not. Pandas are very cute, and.
01:15:58
Speaker 1: It’s that little rush. Because here’s the other thing is, I know there were never many, but that little flurry of activity must have a from a conservation perspective, it must be pretty destructive pretty immediately, yes, Imia, they’re so rare anyways, and now you’re whittling away at something that’s at such low bond.
01:16:20
Speaker 3: Yeah. And that’s why Ted and Kermit became so passionate about protecting pandas afterwards, is because they knew how rare these bears really were.
01:16:28
Speaker 2: Yeah.
01:16:28
Speaker 1: If there’s only two thousand of them in like two hundred museums want one and a few hundred collectors want one, you’re talking about it. You’re like, you’re removing a significant percentage of the global population.
01:16:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so it’s for them. It became very disturbing what happened. They did not expect that it would blow up quite so big, and that you would have so many people going out to kill pandas and to steal cubs. And so that’s why they ended up making some big changes, especially with Kermit. You see him taking these roles in leadership in wildlife conservation that you know, obviously Teddy Roosevelt is such a leader in conservation and what he did, so certainly the brothers were following in his footsteps. But you see Kermit doing some interesting things. For instance, he went on an expedition to the Galopagos where instead of going out and taking animals as they had before, they now were trying to study them create a breeding program for Galopaghos tortoises. So he really changes his perspective of how he goes out and does expeditions from them then on it’s no longer the same. And in addition, he ends up becoming very passionate about creating laws to protect pandas. So he becomes vice president with the New York Zoological Society and then becomes president of the Audubon Society, where he works very closely with Chinese officials to create laws to protect pandas. And we see even ten as well becomes pretty upset with what’s happened. It’s it’s just it becomes so atrocious how many cubs are being stolen from China and that die shortly after.
01:18:12
Speaker 1: You know what you know in our world? You know what they call this spot burning? He’s a spot burner.
01:18:19
Speaker 2: Well, I sort of had the thought when they’re talking about the people coming out, it’s like your buddy wants to go hunting with you, and he really wants you to take him to one of your spots, and you go to one of the bad spots and then a big buck walks up and you’re like, it really was Now I imagine this happened.
01:18:33
Speaker 1: I should turn around us. He has the guilt. He comes in the conservation movement. But what age are these guys when they do the what age are they in nineteen thirty and how long do they live?
01:18:47
Speaker 3: The brothers, Yeah, so they are in their forties during this expedition and then they both died during World War Two. So Ted was fifty six years old when he was the old general to land with the first wave of troops on D Day in Normandy, and he’s very famous for getting up on that beach and saying we’ll start the war right from here. He was this this real hero of that moment. Many people did not think that he would survive that day, and he was hiding a heart condition, and so he ends up dying just a few days later from that.
01:19:24
Speaker 1: Well, he lands on day one D Day, Yes, yeah, the only conditioned a couple of days later at fifty.
01:19:33
Speaker 2: Something years old.
01:19:34
Speaker 3: Six, Yeah, and receives the Medal of Honor posthumously for his actions on D Day.
01:19:40
Speaker 1: Really. Yeah, Oh, shouldn’t know that.
01:19:43
Speaker 2: Yeah.
01:19:43
Speaker 3: Both brothers served in both World War One and World War Two, and both got involved in World War Two very early before the US got involved.
01:19:52
Speaker 1: Well, how okay, how is he at the time of this expedition. He’s not in the military, No.
01:19:59
Speaker 3: He’s not.
01:20:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, So he enrolls somehow in his forties, advances to a general ship.
01:20:05
Speaker 3: Well, I mean he had, you know, a few connections to get there.
01:20:09
Speaker 2: It’s a different model of military.
01:20:10
Speaker 1: But he’s a command he’s in the command position. Yeah, by nineteen forty four, Yes, he is.
01:20:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean he had also served in World War One and so he was certainly.
01:20:25
Speaker 1: This was kind of sandwich between the two experiences.
01:20:28
Speaker 3: Yes, and he was. He had a big role in Operation Torch, so he had He did have quite a few years of leadership during World War Two.
01:20:35
Speaker 1: Before he died, dies of a heart condition.
01:20:37
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, he’d been hiding it from his doctors. He didn’t want anyone to know because.
01:20:43
Speaker 1: He thought they’d pull him from service.
01:20:45
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly.
01:20:46
Speaker 1: You’d almost think that he’d been pulled from doing anything risky just from a pr standpoint, do you know what I mean? Like the’d be like a high profile right, like a high profile fatality that the army wouldn’t want. Yeah, the army might not want.
01:21:03
Speaker 3: In some way, you know, I can I can see why you would think that. But the Roosevelts were certainly very passionate about serving in the military. It was really part of their their heritage. And you know, even during World War One, you have their younger brother, Quentin, who died.
01:21:19
Speaker 1: So the one dies from the heart condition towards the end of World War Two, yes, and then and then the other brother what comes to him?
01:21:27
Speaker 3: So he had died earlier in nineteen forty three, so he was also involved in World War Two. He served in several different places in the Middle East and in Europe, but he was struggling. He had become an alcoholic and he was not receiving great treatment for that, and so they sent him to a fort in Alaska. Fort Richardson. Oh, and he ended up killing himself.
01:21:51
Speaker 1: That’s where.
01:21:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, really yeah. He was talking to a buddy of his and he he said, you know this by he was like, oh, you know, what are you doing tonight? And they were chatting a little bit and his buddy said, oh, I’m going to go to sleep, and Kermit says, I wish I could sleep.
01:22:09
Speaker 1: He killed himself in Fort Richardson, Alaska.
01:22:13
Speaker 3: Yes he did. Yeah, it’s a it’s such a sad story. You know, a gunshot.
01:22:20
Speaker 1: Do you know what kind of gone? I don’t sorry, where did he shoot himself?
01:22:26
Speaker 3: You know, I know it was in the head, son of a bitch.
01:22:31
Speaker 1: And Fort Richardson. This is like such a huge blank spot for me, man, you know, like these two the Pandas. It’s like, somehow I just have missed all this, Like, yeah, it’s.
01:22:45
Speaker 3: An interesting They haven’t been written about much. And I do feel like it’s important to give these brothers their due because they they really did they you know, they really furthered their father’s their father’s mission and of combining conservation and hunting. It was something they’re very passionate about. And the sexpedition was incredibly successful at the time, and certainly the after effects were not what they expected. The consequences are not what they thought would happen. But what you really see is both brothers who who felt passionate about protecting the panda and were always always cared about conservation.
01:23:24
Speaker 1: What year did their What year did their old man die?
01:23:27
Speaker 3: He died in nineteen nineteen.
01:23:28
Speaker 1: Okay, and they were what age then?
01:23:33
Speaker 3: So let me think about that. Yeah, they would have been, and they were both in World War One when they received a telegram that said the old Lion has died. Was how the telegram put it to let him know their.
01:23:44
Speaker 1: Dad had died, And they had to be like, that must be referring to our father. Feeling was referred to our father confirm the old lie.
01:23:56
Speaker 2: I’m trying to make a joke about that and the bear hunt game that they played.
01:24:00
Speaker 3: But.
01:24:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, like dude, are they talking about dad? Yeah, so that’s terrible.
01:24:10
Speaker 2: I didn’t realize Dad got a lion.
01:24:13
Speaker 3: They had known it was coming. He was definitely weaker ever since the River of Dowt that just weakened town. He was never the same after that expedition.
01:24:21
Speaker 2: And he must have been seventy something.
01:24:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he was kidding.
01:24:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, fifties.
01:24:27
Speaker 1: Now what did these brothers? Did these brothers have kids?
01:24:31
Speaker 3: They did? Yeah, And actually I’ve been in contact with a number of members of the family now, like one of the kids. I mean, they all have the same name. They’re all Ted, they’re all Kermit, they’re all Ellen Moore, just the same names over and over again. But it’s it’s been interesting to talk to family members today because they still have photographs and artifacts from this trip. Is that right, Yeah, it’s pretty cool.
01:24:55
Speaker 1: What a wild story. Yeah, I just can’t believe how, you know, like like Theodore Roosevelt, he’s inescapable. Yeah, do you know what I mean? All the exploits and the timelines and then just like these boys, it’s just one of those hadn’t heard about this stuff.
01:25:15
Speaker 2: One of the sort of strange things that occurred to me when I was doing my when I was in grad school because the all the Boone Crockett Club records are at the University of Montana. So I was reading a little bit about the Boone Crockett Club in the post war era, and I mean there’s like a real crisis of confidence, it seems, just when you’re reading things because all of the founding generation dies in, you know, like in the teens and twenties and thirties, and then they have these sons and there’s a lot of a lot of members of the club are sons, like Charles Sheldon, Charles Sheldon’s son, Billy Sheldon. It’s like sons carrying on their father’s legacies and also wondering how they push things forward and make names for themselves. And yeah, it’s really fascinating when you think about I feel like oftentimes we think about conservation especially as like these moments, like there’s this moment of the Boone and Crockett Club and the sort of progressive movement, this early conservation model, and then there’s this you know, like the nineteen thirties, right or the nineteen twenties, nineteen thirties when you have but there’s continuity between all those and as we know today just from people that we interact with, like in the conservation world, like it often is a family tradition.
01:26:40
Speaker 1: And yeah, like this filled in a.
01:26:42
Speaker 2: Lot of blank spots for me because like you hear about Teddy Junior and Kermit, but it’s really I’ve never had someone sort of put a face.
01:26:52
Speaker 1: On them for me.
01:26:52
Speaker 2: So it’s really that’s what I’ve done really fascinating.
01:26:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, they’re interesting men, and it’s just fascinating to me the friendships they continued after the expedition, and how they supported Jack and his dreams. He wanted to become a scientist, he wanted to do an expedition of his own, and they both helped to fund that. And it’s you know, it’s just they were very different than I expected them to be. And that’s always fun when you find a story in history like this.
01:27:20
Speaker 1: Have you ever personally been able to see a panda on native ground in native range? I wish.
01:27:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, it’s not easy to do. You know, even if you go to China and you go to one of the research reserves, you’re really seeing them in an artificial environment compared to what it’s like to see them in the wild. And I spoke with several different panda researchers for this book, and they told me the most difficult part of doing this research is finding a panda. Even today, even with all the technology we have, even with the tagging we have, you know, we don’t have to go out and shoot animals as much these days. We have other ways that I’m sure future historians and scientists will find barbaric and you know, we use tranquilizer guns, and I’m sure it’ll be judged in decades to come. But it’s incredible to me how difficult it is even today for these researchers to go out and find panda in the wild.
01:28:20
Speaker 1: How many are in the wild now.
01:28:23
Speaker 3: It’s interesting because today there are about two thousand, but that is coming back from a low of one thousand in the nineteen seventies, So there was there was a time period where it was really difficult for pandas, and it’s it’s really thanks to sort of that continuity that you’re talking about about these protections that have been given to them to protect their habitats, which have just become more fragmented now. And it’s what’s fascinating is that the protections that have been given to pandas are also helping other species in China.
01:28:58
Speaker 1: I would have, like I said I said earlier, when I was surprised that there was only two thousand, somehow in my head I had the bottleneck being much tighter. Yeah, so they went through a fifty percent decline, yeah, which well it is because the pure numbers are so low. Yeah, but like you normally, normally these imperiled species, the bottleneck is much tighter than a fifty percent reduction. But you’re usually talking about like a million animals and yeah, you know, yeah, but to take you only got two thousand, you whittle it down to a thousand. I just want to if you’d said it at one point, there’s forty of them, you know, out of bend like that sounds yeah, my perception, my completely uneducated, ignorant idea of what happened, I would have guessed it was less.
01:29:38
Speaker 3: It’s nice I can make up numbers here.
01:29:41
Speaker 2: It’s just funny to me because they’re you know, it’s when you’re when you’re a little kid in the eighties or early nineties and you like hear about endangered animals, right, like the pandas one of the poster children for that. But I’ve you know, spent most of my life thinking about animal and panda is just one that’s always sort of out here, is like an other like I can’t picture them in the wild. I can’t, like you don’t have you don’t you don’t see like footage in a nature documentary of a panda doing things like for whatever reason, they they’re very unique, just sort of in my imagination and like I guess in sort of the cultural imagination, Like it’s a it’s a very strange animal when you just think about what do you know about pandas, What do you associate with pandas? Yeah, I don’t know. And then it starts to make sense when you realize how rare they are and how recently they were discovered.
01:30:43
Speaker 1: You want to know, the biggest problem for them from a PR standpoint is if they were like bad mofos and always scratching people up, Yeah, then people would know about them. I think the chillness works against them for PR.
01:31:00
Speaker 2: Yeah.
01:31:01
Speaker 1: I mean, like like I’m kind of on a leopard kick right now. I’ve never seen it. Well I did see a leopards a leopards. Well, I’m gonna look a little bit of a leopard kick. One of the things that fuels a leopard kick is a leopard kick is learning about just how like effortlessly they dust people off when they put their mind to it. And so it creates that like that ferocity is respected from far, do you know what I mean? Like, like you go to a lot of people like name a jellyfish. I’ll be like the box jelly Why is that because it kills people? Do you know what I’m saying? Like the snakes, the bad killing snakes are the snakes that people have a high level of awareness about.
01:31:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think you might be right, because even when it comes to breeding, they’re just too chill. Yeah, they would do so much better if there’s just a little fire in there.
01:31:46
Speaker 1: Yeah it was. I’m not trying to advise them or anything, but just like people, the word would have your perception of it to be different.
01:31:53
Speaker 2: There’s one animal that in nineteen twenty nine could have just taken one swipe and changed the whole trajectory of this spiece.
01:32:00
Speaker 1: If he’d have been like if he’d have thought, I’m going to come down out of this tree and I’m killing these two Roosevelt boys.
01:32:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, then you would have heard of this way sooner. The story would not have been buried for as long.
01:32:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they just killed like a little Teddy bear man. You know the Teddy Bear story? Is that in the book.
01:32:17
Speaker 3: It is in the book. Yeah, it’s a hard one.
01:32:19
Speaker 1: I tell dude, it’s a hard one to tell. So what’s your next book going? To be about. You know, yeah, I.
01:32:24
Speaker 3: Don’t know yet, but I really enjoyed getting to talk about animals and nature and expeditions like this. It’s it’s fun.
01:32:31
Speaker 1: I got the hot tip for you.
01:32:33
Speaker 3: Tell me.
01:32:35
Speaker 1: I don’t know if I should tell you now? What if all people learn about the hot tip? Okay, tip?
01:32:40
Speaker 2: How quick are you turning out a book? Not very because a lot of people are going to hear this tip.
01:32:45
Speaker 1: Here’s a hot tip. Here’s a hot tip, Bradbury. That’s good. Yeah, so does this botanist. Okay, And right around eighteen eleven, eighteen ten, there’s this botanist. He wants to go explore the American West and take botany samples. He’s actually a start. He’s like, one of his observations is about the you know, honey bees aren’t native, so looking at like how honey bees moved across the country. But he goes out and has all these crazy adventures collecting plants, and he’s got this assistant with them. They get to the end of their expedition and Bradbury is he’s going to do some other little side trip, but he sends his his lackey home with all the samples. He then delays his timing a little bit and gets kind of rolled up in the New Madrid you know, you know when the New Magered earthquake, when the when the when the rivers ran backwards, like the Mississippi ran backward. Okay, it was all tied into like to come see. Okay, there’s a huge, huge isistatic rebound earthquake causes all this decimation is tied up in all this crazy shit. Then he’s still trying to get home. In the War of eighteen twelve breaks out, He’s delayed to damn long. By the time he makes it back to England, his assistant has like written him off or whatever and has published the material, has published the material on his own.
01:34:15
Speaker 3: Oh that’s tough.
01:34:17
Speaker 1: But if you like expeditions and everything, there’s no like really good book that I’m aware of. There’s no big, full, like balls out book on the Bradbury Expedition and his whole crazy story.
01:34:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, it sounds really interesting.
01:34:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, we should probably cut that out.
01:34:33
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, no, I mean I think it’s fascinating too that.
01:34:39
Speaker 1: So you’re going to write it.
01:34:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, I’ll get on it right now.
01:34:42
Speaker 2: Going back, I mean, like the age of expeditions, like oftentimes I think about them being so long ago. But the idea that this is taking place in the twenties and thirties obviously, like the River of Doubt, you know, is one thing, But then the twenties, late twenties, and you also think about, you know, like this sort of time. There’s a lot of stuff going on in Asia at the time with mountaineering and all that kind of stuff. Like it’s just a it’s a really fascinating period in geography.
01:35:13
Speaker 3: It is because at this point nobody knows what the tallest mountain in the world is. They knows the deepest part of the ocean. It’s there’s so much exploration still to come.
01:35:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, it’s fascinating.
01:35:25
Speaker 1: Hm hm, congratulations, Thank you hard Right Books.
01:35:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, this was pretty fun though. I had such a good time going through all these letters and journals and it’s just so interesting and there are just so many weird parts too, Like the Roosevelts had such interesting reading material on the trail. They read Jane Austen and Jane Eyre. Yeah, kinds of interesting novels. You wouldn’t necessarily expect them to be pulling out on the snowy Himalayas.
01:35:55
Speaker 1: How many. Uh, how long did it take you to do the whole thing?
01:35:59
Speaker 3: About five five years from start to finish. For this one, it was you know, it takes a long time to find the material, and I was fortunate with this book because I was able to get journals from every member of the expedition and it was great to just help compare, really help me create these scenes in a lot of detail, and that’s important, I think in nonfiction because you want it to feel like you’re there, like you’re on the trail and all those details are part of it.
01:36:26
Speaker 1: And you were doing magazine work during that time. Yeah.
01:36:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I do some ghost writing too, so I kind of for who Yeah really, yeah, it’s fun. I like ghost writing because it’s you know, there’s no ego involved. You’re just trying to write the best book you can, so it’s kind of a fun thing to do.
01:36:49
Speaker 5: I read that you studied Chinese for a number of years too, with some of the source material and Mandarin that you were translating, or it was more oral with any interviews.
01:36:59
Speaker 3: Yes, no, I studied Mandarin in college, and my grandfather lived in China for about a decade, and so I’ve traveled quite a bit in China with him, and so it was fun for me because I’ve always felt a connection with the country and so to be able to see it through a really different lens of history, a completely different time period, into places that just they just don’t exist. Like this trail that I describe, it’s not there today. You cannot find that trail, and so to be able to travel to really feel like you’re there during that time period was just so fascinating.
01:37:37
Speaker 1: Well, thanks for coming on, Thank you.
01:37:39
Speaker 3: I so appreciate it.
01:37:40
Speaker 1: Yeah again, Nathalia every calls her Nat. That’s me Nat Whole, Nathalia Whole. The Beast in the Clouds, the Roosevelt Brothers deadly quest to find the mythical giant panda. Is there like a lesser panda?
01:37:56
Speaker 3: Is there any there’s the red Panda?
01:37:58
Speaker 1: Oh okay, I’ve seen one of those. The Beasts and the Clouds. Check it out and learn about all the subtle details that we didn’t include today.
01:38:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, there’s plenty in there.
01:38:15
Speaker 1: Because you really kind of like shot yourself in the foot on that one, because you know you should have said you got to read it to find out if they get one.
01:38:22
Speaker 3: I kind of gave away the endoilers, you know they shot together.
01:38:26
Speaker 1: How the end of your thing?
01:38:27
Speaker 3: It like quick.
01:38:30
Speaker 1: And then be like you have to read the book to find out what happened.
01:38:34
Speaker 3: Let’s go back.
01:38:36
Speaker 1: Another cut here, Phil, Thanks man, I appreciate you coming on when you finished that Bradbury book come back. Oh yeah, I got a lot of questions about that. I told you everything.
01:38:48
Speaker 2: I know, like some holes.
01:38:50
Speaker 1: There’s some holes in my understanding. All right, thank you, thank you.
01:38:55
Speaker 3: I really appreciate it.
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