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

0:00Cool, so media. Welcome back to Behind the Basterds of Podcasts by the very worst people in all of history. Where I just thought I was about to sneeze, but I didn't. And so we're really able to start now as opposed to like three seconds later. Muzzle talk, Robert. And once I sneeze in like a second, there's no way to know. There's no way to know. It's really dusty out there right now. Well with all the fire. It is. Everything's on fire. Yeah. You know who's not on fire in like a bad way. But in a good way they are. Being on fire can mean a confusingly wide variety of things. Hello, Maryam. How are you? I'm doing good. I'm not on fire in any way that I'm aware of. Okay. Okay. Neither in a good nor a bad way. Yeah, I don't think so. Again, yeah. Like you said, it can mean a lot of things. So, you know, I don't want to foreclose on every possibility. But yeah, that makes that makes sense. You know, so whether or not you're on fire, I hope you're ready to listen to the next part of our series on the life of Percy Fawcett, the guy who was probably the most direct

1:04inspiration for Indiana Jones slash, just like the archetype of like the gentleman adventurer, you know, and who also as we're about to discuss is going to go increasingly crazy over the course of this episode. This is an I Heart podcast guaranteed human. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering the ride on his motorcycle. I choose option B. I'm Julie Pinero and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita trading the pity for possibility. Listen to Solita on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I survived nine months in captivity and I've spent my life exploring how other people

2:07survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are the survivor files. Every week I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the survivor files with Elizabeth Smart on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're a bookshelf and you're a for you page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. Pro society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and love island deserve the same level of discourse. Each week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators and plenty of over thought opinions. Yeah, I'm just so obsessed. Listen to pro society on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're seeking to try to understand the forensic science behind these cases that we hear

3:09about in the news, body bags is where you need to turn. There's no fluff. We do a deep dive into the forensics. Listen to body bags with Joseph Scott Moran on America's number one podcast network. I Heart open your free I Heart app and search body bags with Joseph Scott Moran and start listening. So when we left him off, he had first listened to his mom and broken up with his fiance and then years later, gotten back together with her. He's converted to Buddhism. He's become a theosophist and he's gotten really into the occult and after being trained up as an adventurer and working briefly as a spy, he's finally wound up back in Salon in 1903, which he really likes because it's this place. It's filled with all these Buddhist temples. It's filled with what he sees as like these people who are seekers of the truth. There's a lot of not just like local Buddhists, but a lot of like white people who are really

4:10into the occult are in Salon and moving because it's really hip to travel to the east and travel to these parts of the world where there's people who are like Buddhists and Hindus because a lot of these Victorian age and slightly post-Victorian age white people are really into co-opting little bits of different Eastern religions and sort of like tacking them on to these pieces of like theosophia and other spiritualist belief systems that are starting to be cobbled together as like a hobby. This is like a hobby for a lot of people, right? It stays fashionable for a while. It stays fashionable and Percy's kind of using his military career as a way to also further his hobby in this way. Like, he's really happy to be stationed here with his wife and Nina seems to be as well. She was born there. So many descriptions of Percy Foss's life start like depict the beginning of his career as a boundary surveyor as if it suddenly ignites a desire for exploration. In Grans book chapter eight into the Amazon goes straight from Percy returning to England in 1902 to him then being in Bolivia like six or seven years later, which is like where

5:15the first adventure from the movie The Lost City of Z starts to and that leaves out years of his life where he was like getting increasingly into Buddhism and theosophie and Seilon. And it's kind of important because that sets the stage for what's going to happen next. So from what I can tell, despite Percy's aptitude for surveying, he doesn't seem to have been particularly drawn to it as a career at this point. In 1903, his chief interest was a different sort of exploration. The search for lost treasures and esoteric truths via meditation and other forms of spiritual exercise. And because Percy is talking a lot about finding lost treasure, I think people draw this too much to like archaeology and think that he's often literally seeking like lost cities of gold. That's not the truth as much as he's speaking more metaphorically about these kind of spiritual treasures that he wants to uncover by finding places that are supposedly lost. So like the real treasure was in fact within you all the time. Yeah, but also the real treasure is going to make you and your son gods.

6:19He's not so bliss in where he thinks this is going to bring him. Right? It's still crazy, but it is different. Yeah. In the movie, Percy's depicted as an ambitious man weighed down by his father's reputation who's just like ready for any chance to become like a military hero. And the real faucet is exhausted by military life of military life by 1903. He's so good at cricket. He's so good at cricket. But he's made a vow not to kill anybody and cricket's only good for killing. Right. Right. Yeah. AJ Lee, who read through Percy's many letters during this time, describes faucet is still captivated by Salon and his understanding of Buddhism. In fact, he may have returned there for what we would today call therapeutic purposes. Lee describes him as quote being captivated by the island's magic and mysticism. And with the help of Fakir's and Holymen, he began to extricate himself from the manacles of his unhappy childhood. So in this account too, it's not just that he wants to learn magic to become a powerful

7:22wizard, which is definitely part of it. But it's that he wants he's working through some shit. And like these Buddhist Holymen and these other sort of like mystics that are all kind of clustered in Salon are at least giving him an opportunity to like talk about his childhood. And that's not really a thing. Min of his statue get to do back in England. Then we'll literally go across the world to hunt for gold before going to therapy. And then he's going to go into going to therapy because the real gold is within you all the time. Right. That's sort of what Percy's doing. That'll go this figuring out that your mom was kind of the worst. Your mom was kind of the worst. Yeah. So Percy and Nina both grow obsessed with Eastern mysticism during this time. She's also really into this stuff. They're legitimately good match. She gets pregnant in Salon and Percy would later claim that before they announce to anybody that she's pregnant, quote, a deputation of soothsayers and Buddhists somehow found out. You're supposed to believe that they like it was magic or something that they found out

8:26that his wife was going to have a baby. And they all show up to demand an audience with him because they've made predictions. There's a prophecy around this baby. And I'm going to quote from AJ Lee's book here. After the usual. Yeah. I don't believe this really happened either. But I'm going to read you what Percy says happened. After the usual formalities, I was informed I was about to become the father of a son whose appearance was minutely described. I suggested that it was obvious that something of this sort might reasonably be anticipated, but that a daughter would upset the prophecy. No, I was to have a son. He was the re-incarnation of a very advanced spirit. And my wife and I had been specially selected, etc, etc. I mean, that's Percy writes in the etc, etc. Bro, Mary's married couple predicted to have child in early 1900. We're what 19 1903 at this point. Yeah, like you're really not, you're really not doing that Jack has perfectly.

9:28So so I'm sorry, but they described the mole. That means he's a re-incarnation of a powerful crazy thing that people have a mole. Wow. Yeah, it's super funny. Only baby with a mole actually. Yeah, never happened before. Their first son, Jack was born in 1903 and was probably. Yeah, Tom Holland and was probably named after Helena Blavatsky because Blavatsky's preferred nickname was also Jack, which is kind of why I think they name their son Jack. The false is make a big deal out of the fact that Jack is born on the anniversary of Buddha's birth, although Percy then explains that like, well, Buddha's birth was over. There's a range of days that they all celebrate because they don't know exactly what one it is. And he was born on the one that everyone says is the most likely of the days. He was actually okay. This first special baby was born on all those days. Yeah, he was born on every one of Buddha's birthdays. The mystical mole baby. The mystical mole baby. However many he's got. And say, La, I don't know. I don't believe this either.

10:28Percy would later write that until he went to school, he was intermittently clairvoyant, Jack, right, that like his son was clairvoyant as a child until the school beat it out of him basically. And he went on to add, and this is from a letter that Percy wrote to a magazine called the theosophist in 1913. Both parents are psychic. He's like, right about his son. He's like, yeah, he was intermittently clairvoyant. By the way, both me and his mom are psychic. Like that does not come up enough in the Percy faucet literature that he desperately believed he was psychic and wrote about it constantly. Yeah, no, that should have to, you should have to like, that should be one of the first things you learn about a person, I think. People really should learn that. You should also have to read the like three paragraphs or something of him explaining how because his son, Jack was born in Asia, he has slanted eyes. Oh, that's Percy. That's Percy. Look, it's pretty rough. So from this point on, Nina and Percy would both refer to Jack as the special one. I'm sorry, I don't want to be distracted by this little, little resist.

11:30I'm letting out. Did other people, sort of two questions here. Did other people also think that the son looked like he might have, for example, had one Asian parent? And are we sure that I haven't heard that? It's not impossible. But I don't think that's the case. That would be very funny. I mean, I think it's probably just bad pictures of Jack. There's pictures of Jack. I think this was him saying as a baby, his eyes were slanted, you could tell that he had the spirit of a great Tibetan mystic or whoever, whatever kind of mystic. I don't know which country he thought the spirit came from. But I think it was the spirit of a great Eastern mystic. But Jack's white, that's also important, that jacket, that you were aware Jack is white. Yeah, right. I'm looking at this image that I've quickly Googled. No. Percy's racial politics are fascinating. Yeah. We don't make them like this anymore. No, it would take, it would take a while to unpack all of it because he was born in

12:33Asia. Yeah. There's a lot going on here. He and Nina would both refer to their first sun Jack as the special one or the great one. And like you get the feeling because his youngest son wrote about being kind of like Jack wasn't great. Like first off, let me just say he was kind of a dick. He wasn't even as funny as people think. Like his youngest brother seems to have been kind of pissed by this. Yeah, I mean, I can see how that would happen. Yeah. The special one and the other one. The special one. Yeah. Look, we love all our children, but we only think one of you was the magical reincarnated spirit of a wizard, you know, or a mystic or whatever. I love all my children equally, the special one and the other ones also. Percy is seeing like a Buddhist mystic is indistinguishable from Merlin. Like let's be honest. Like that's, I'm not saying that's accurate to the Buddhist mysticism, but that's what Percy thinks about these people. In 1906, Percy is called up for duty by the new president of the Royal Geographic Society,

13:35a known on-sense military man named Sir George Talbman Goldie. In the lost city of Z, this is how grand describes him. Famous for his keen intelligence and volatile temper, he had an almost single-handedly imposed the British Empire's control over Niger in the 1880s and 1890s. He had shocked Victorian society by running off to Paris with a governess and was an unrepentant atheist who championed Darwin's theory of evolution. Goldie has said, Goldie is, by the fact about this, guys, he apparently always kept poison on his person so that he could kill himself if he were rendered handicapped immediately. Like that's the kind of dude that this man is. So just shockingly weird men are only the only people who reach high levels in the RGS. Like all of the maps were made by crazy people. So not carrying poison because he was like behind enemy lines and like if he was not in torture, just like if he fell down and broke his hip real bad. If I have to be in a wheelchair, I want to be out immediately. It's got to be on site for Goldie. He will not handle being taken care of.

14:35No one is caring for Goldie. There was an episode of Star Trek the next generation. We're worth tried to do this. He does have more stuff to do. Yes, that's true. He tries to get his son to stab him to death when he falls on it. But if you want to imagine, if you want to imagine Sir George Talbman Goldie calling in Percy for this meeting as Michael Dorn. I won't stop you and you won't be entirely wrong. That's the direction I'm going with this. Yeah. Alright. So Michael Dorn calls Percy and asks if he's ever been to Bolivia. Goldie shows him a map and he says it's full of blank spaces and explains that Bolivia, Brazil and Peru are all up in arms over the precise extent of their borders. Now we just did episodes on the dictator of Paraguay from Cisco Salano Lopez and the war of the triple alliance that occurs not far from here. And it's a border dispute. It helps lead to it. In Grans book, the lost city of Z. Grann wrongly writes the boundary issues between Paraguay and its neighbors caused the war.

15:36That's not true. There were boundary issues that were inherent to conflicts between those countries previously. But the war was caused because Francisco Salano Lopez was a fucking maniac who wanted to get involved in Uruguay and politics and then invaded Brazil, Argentina and tried to invade Uruguay. It was not caused by a boundary dispute. Anyway, I had to correct Grann on that as well. And the boundary dispute usually means more than like, oh, we thought the line was over here and you thought it was a half mile this way. It's usually more like, we want more of your stuff. Yeah. We really want these minds, generally. And that's what's happening here, right? It's minds and rubber is generally what's at like the root of these. But also when the boundaries were set up, people couldn't make good maps. We didn't have the ability to really make high quality maps. And so the boundaries were also not fixed. It very much is a problem that was going to need to be solved. The first thing Percy does here is good. Like it was necessary for some motherfucker to get out and map some of these rivers.

16:40And when I say he was mapping them for the first time, the way that's depicted in the movie is he's going into a place like no one's ever been back from. That's nonsense. There were stations all up and down the river. People knew how to sail it. That doesn't mean there were maps of it. Right. That you could like set boundary lines on. Those are two different kinds of things. It's very possible to live somewhere for hundreds and thousands of years and right now the coordinates of it. Right. Exactly. That's what needs to be done. If someone needs to go through and do that pain in the ass work and actually lay out where the boundaries are, right? And so the British part of why the RGS is getting involved here, even though none of these are British territory is that there's a lot of like money involved in particularly the rubber trade at this point. And the British are worried there's going to be a war over some of these boundary disputes as there are periodically. And they're like, well, maybe if we can get this all mapped out, we can settle that ahead of time. And both countries are willing to have the British do it because they're seen as like a neutral party, right? So in Graham's book, he describes the area that Percy is going to map as several hundred

17:45miles of nearly impassable terrain. And he continues with language that is going to do that like this is very clearly written expecting there to be a movie made of your book, The Lost City of Z quote, the expedition would take up to two years. And there was no guarantee that its members would survive. Disease was rampant in the region in the Indians who had been attacked mercilessly by rubber trappers murdered interlopers. And this is how the movie depicts things to like as soon as Percy and his small team, including Robert Pattinson set off on like this primitive rickety raft down the river. They're ambushed by Indians with bows. One man is wounded and he falls into the water and he gets tangled in a fishing net and the piranha eat him alive. Oh shit. And that's a fantasy. That's a complete fantasy. Both depictions of this voyage are complete fantasies. Both David Granz depiction in his book and the depiction of the movie made off of his book. Now, some of that is because Percy Fawcett lied about his own adventures. He was a huge fan of adventure novels and he couldn't resist making claims. Not in his actual like the paperwork he submitted to the RGS was always really good.

18:49Most people seem to agree. But he would give public speeches and he would like write articles where he would make lavish claims like that he had shot an attacking anaconda 49 feet long in the spine with his 44 10 feet below its wicked head and killed it right before it could murder them all. And like first off, it's I mean, it's theoretically possible for an anaconda to get that big. They haven't like on record been quite as big as the one he was claiming. And also they don't act that way. I found a critique of Fawcett by Hugh Thompson, another veteran that Thompson is like a real explorer like today who's led I think it's Peru is where he's done a shitload of expeditions but he's led a lot of expeditions into the jungle. And he writes quote those who've traveled on the Amazon know that it is in reality mundane so before it and almost dream like very little happens slowly. It is perfectly possible to travel for days without seeing any wildlife let alone an anaconda which would slither away at the sound of oncoming canoes. It's just a fantasy like and there are crazy ass animals in the Amazon, but you don't

19:53see them because they don't want to be near you. They're scared of people usually right. You have to kind of go out of your way and they're not generally going to attack you unless you're a huge fucking asshole. The thing that's going to kill you is the same thing is going to kill you in most places of the world where people die from the environment. It's little bugs that give you diseases. Yeah. Or like you're going to get a good stir on your foot and die of gang and it gets infected because of the water and your foot rots off. One thing every actual jungle explorer I have ever read from will point out is that if you're narrative of an Amazon exploration has stories about being constantly attacked by deadly fauna it's a lie because that doesn't really happen very often. Fossett's first real life trip was mapping the upper Heath River. The movie shows him wrapping the real Verde first. He doesn't do that until years later. Here's how an actual world renowned expert on the region John Henning described Fossett's first trip mapping the Heath.

20:54This survey was the best thing Fossett did, but he described it as boring because the new frontier was all along rivers. This was the height of the great Amazon rubber boom. So he and his team cruise from one comfortable rubber baroque to the next taking their regular measurements. Again, the movie shows them like fighting off death at every single turn. In reality, they're going down to different places that all have food and like a pretty comfortable raft. There's people all around. All they're doing is just some math basically. And Percy's work here does make history, but in the rather pedestrian sense of like, oh, well, we finally have a map for this area that we didn't have a map before. And then like, wow, this bold adventure, a carved a path through the howling wilderness to make this great discovery. And in the movie, at the end of this first voyage, he finds a bunch of pottery shards and ruins in the jungle, which is what leads, convinces him that there's this lost city in the Amazon. That's not what happens. In reality, Fossett does once he comes back to England, he gets famous for doing this, because it was good work and no one had before. And he was also good at like self-mophologizing, right?

21:55Once he gets back to England, he's not just telling people about the actual mapping he did. He's like, he's judging it up a little bit. He's making it a better story than it really was. Anaconda. At least. Anaconda isn't shit. He gives at least one lecture prior to the outbreak of World War I in which he discusses seeing what might have been ancient ruins in the rainforest. Now we now know there are ruins in the area, Fossett said that there were ruins, but they're not stone ruins, which is what he always described and was looking for. They're like earthworks. And now that we have light art, we can see where some of them would have been, right? So we do know that there was large-scale habitation in this part of the Amazon, previously the cut like European contact. And that is kind of what Fossett was saying. And he's so he's sort of right. But again, as I'm going to talk about everything he believed about that habitation was wrong. Now one thing the movie does get right is that once Percy gets a taste of the jungle, he starts going back, right? He leaves his family for like a year or so to do this first mission and he keeps going

22:58back and he just abandons them for years at a time to hang out in the jungle, mostly with a bunch of dying men. And that is accurate. That's what Percy does from like the next eight, most of the next eight years leading up to World War I, is he just keeps heading back to the jungle to do different like surveying and exploration missions. Like, he cannot abandon his family often enough or long enough for his taste. There is no amount of being with his family that he will not immediately get the fuck out of England to go back to the Amazon for you cannot make this man race his kids. He won't do it. So he did learn something from his own father after all. Yeah, he picked that up from his dear old dad. Incredible. For his dad, it was gambling and alcoholism and for Percy. It's exploring the Amazon. Grand describes Fossett's next several years as exploring thousands of square miles of Amazon and helping to redraw the map of South America, painstakingly working his way inwards over years of voyages, cataloging exotic species, until he had explored as much of the region as anyone. That's how Grand describes Percy and its nonsense.

24:01He is spending a lot of time in that part of the world, but Percy only surveyed about 300 kilometers of Bolivian rivers. And as Hening writes, Fossett's own writings reveal no special interest in Flora or Fauna, let alone his collecting or cataloging rare species. So he's just not doing a lot of the stuff, Grand is. He's doing a pretty pedestrian job or he's getting up to complete nonsense looking for ruins that absolutely aren't there, right? There's kind of two things that Percy is into. One of them is semi-useful and one of them is getting everyone killed for no reason at all. I don't know how he's failing to find these ruins when, as we know, he's a powerful psychic. That's right. His psychic powers have not led him. He just leading people in circles and the jungle until they die or star. Crazy stuff. Come on, man. Yeah. One of the things that's very silly about Grand's book is that he describes basically that while Fossett's continuing to try to get deeper and deeper into the jungle to explore more, he's opened up the jungle to other explorers.

25:02And so now he's got to compete with these less skilled but better financed amateurs. You don't know the jungle like he does. And they're tramping around and ruining things. It best, right? And this is, I want to read you one paragraph of Grand's book describing some of these other explorers who are only able to get into the Amazon because Percy Fossett opens it up. There was the Brazilian colonel and part Indian orphan Candido Mariana de Silva Rondon who had helped lay telegraph lines across the jungle, lost a toe to piranhas and started the Indian protection service. And again, he describes this as a guy who's able to do all these good things because Percy helps to open up the Amazon. That's really fucked up because Rondon, like Candido Mariana de Silva Rondon is like almost inarguably the greatest explorer in Brazilian history. By the time Fossett got famous, Rondon had already spent 17 years straight exploring Southwest Brazil. And in fact, discovered so much of Southwest Brazil that the state of Rondonia is named after him. Hitting the scroll. He said he lost a toe to piranha.

26:04Like that lost a toe to the legit. He actually got attacked by a piranha. Not in the movie. Like actually not in the movie. Like for realsies, Henning describes Rondon's expeditions as having made Fossets look like a jaunt up the temps. It's just just some beautiful British shades right there. So at least Grand does correctly credit Rondon with founding the Indian protection service whose noble motto was, die if you must but never kill. Right? The Indian protection service. The Fossett of fiction would have agreed with this. His belief in the city of Z is depicted as being fueled by a belief that indigenous Amazonians were more intelligent and capable than white Europeans gave them credit for being. And it is true that Percy was less racist against Indians than most British explorers of his station in era. That's probably fair. But Grand turns this into some great history of like enlightened first contact and credits him with, quote, discovery of so many previously unknown Indians who taught him their languages,

27:08their herbal medicines and their hunting methods. In reality, Fossett never learned a single native tongue. He never wrote about learning native hunting or farming methods. And he also murdered a native guy and covered it up. Here's Henning again. Quote, Fossett's attitudes towards indigenous peoples were contradictory. He deployed the rubberman's cruelty to Indians, whom they pressed into forced labor. He admired the three tribes whose villages he entered. And he could also lapse into extreme racism, talking about dangerous repulsive cannibals, degenerate indigenies or villainous savages, scarcely evolved beyond the level of beasts, whereas others were robust and fair people of civilized origin. David Grand is as perplexed as anyone by such contradictions. He feels that Fossett was impressed by the eugenic movement of the early 20th century, but struggled to reconcile what he observed with everything he had been taught and could not rid himself of the pernicious disease of race. Grand does not quote the worst of Fossett's racism. When he described Meryoxi warriors as hairy men with sloping skulls and long arms of Neanderthals, unlike any indigenous people, Fossett allowed his team to fire into the

28:09air to frighten off these great ape-like brutes. But when Grand discovered the journal of companion Henry Coston, this revealed that one shot had been aimed at a mehrecoxy and hit him in the stomach. Fossett therefore doctored his official report to the RGS and concealed the truth his entire life. Wow. That's real. So he sucks. So basically Fossett first off lied about this group, the group of Meryoxi warriors who described them as looking like ape men, basically when like, well, we just know that they aren't because there's those people exist. Yeah, they look like people. They're just people out in the jungle. And also, and Grand describes him as like shooting up into the air, Fossett describes himself shooting up into the air, but his companion Henry Coston played by Robert Pattinson, the movie is like, no, he fucking murdered it. Dude, he murdered it. He's all lie about it. He's like, we didn't want to say shit. It seems like his, you know, this sort of combination of like, oh, there are these enlightened people in the jungle at some point in ancient times.

29:11And now there's just all of these people, I will say, racist things about. It does not feel unconnected to the spiritualism, Blavotsky stuff where there's like super connected. Where it's like where you can romanticize and idealize a completely fucking made up group that you might sort of have like a, that might like be located somewhere in real geography and like link to real stuff, but not actually like you're not allowing them to like self-represent or you're making them up entirely. And it doesn't actually lead to you treating well the people who are currently living there. Yeah, like the reality of Fossett isn't that he was like had an enlightened view of what like ancient indigenous people were capable of is that well, he believed that a certain number of them were basically descended from white people who had made a civilization here before that had collapsed for some reason or that they had ascended into some sort of spiritual realm because he thought there was a portal in the jungle that he was looking for. This is what we're all building towards in the Percy Fossett story, but it can sound

30:12on this surface when he's talking about like the great achievements of these Indians, like he's actually like woke and he is for sure not. He's just a little tick, guys. I mean calling them apes and murdering them and covering it up is a man to gut for nothing. Yeah. Well, and the thing where he claimed to have learned stuff from indigenous people, but never actually like bothered to study them in any meaningful way, it's like he is somebody who thinks that the idea of being like taught secrets by indigenous people sounds very cool and he would like to be the kind of person who people assume has been taught secrets by indigenous people, but like he's actually interested in what any indigenous person has to say. He's not going to talk to them. They have weird foreheads or something. They would if he say slope like, you know, he doesn't like the shape of their skulls. Like no. In reality, all of the ancient mysticism that he attributes to them came from like a Russian lady and his brother. Yes. Like sure would be cool to talk to them. I bet they think all the same things as that Russian liar. But I'm not going to talk to them because again, these guys believed do not like the shape

31:17of their skulls. Oh man. Anyway, you know whose skulls I like, the skulls of these advertisers bring them to me. Wait. Yeah. Yeah. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and health captive for nine months. I survived and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are the survivor files. I just remember this low taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who lived through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.

32:18Their story is about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the survivor files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I choose option B. I'm Julie Beniero and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people and they were like, you smiled at us, not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip,

33:22I hope you listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're bookshelf and you're for you page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Pro's Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives and anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and love island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. So obsessed. I'm bestselling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments. Nothing is off the table. So like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters and that is a Trojan horse, whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.

34:23Listen to Pro's Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin unfiltered podcast. Here's what you missed. And the argument is, do you want to win? If you don't win, you have no power. It's real. Those are the very people who I always say vote against their own economic interests and they complained about the very thing they were seeing. It's wrong. I knew that the issue of transgender athletes was not going well with a lot of black men. Roland Martin unfiltered. I went off. I said, this is exactly what I'm talking about. You're going to scream at Chanel, but you don't want to see a black luxury company in the same bag. Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the black information network. 12 seats. Those are moving south. So if you Democrats, you don't wait to 23. You better be hitting the ground going hard in the south now.

35:25And download Roland Martin unfiltered on the iHot Radio app, Apple Podcast. Or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. So the reality of faucets, journeys and competence have been greatly exaggerated. Not just by David Graham. I think this has established that like, Graham left out a lot of important stuff and also just added a lot of stuff that faucet himself didn't even put in the narrative. For his part, faucet bragged about his own toughness constantly, claiming to feel none the worst for wear after losing 53 pounds in a disastrous expedition. And that's often like, you'll see that fact mentioned as like, evidence of how hardcore this guy was like, this was a real man. You know, he could, he could really take punishment. That's what it took to be a great explorer. No, it's not. He's, he lost 53 pounds because he was a fucking idiot who got a bunch of people killed for no reason, planning an expedition really badly. And now we're going to talk about. So in the movie, it shows his first expedition as being, which was like, his first actual

36:30expedition was up the Heath River. And as we've discussed, it was not at all that interesting or harrowing. The journey that most of that first journey in the movie is based on is a 1908 trip. That's the only true expedition that Percy faucet ever planned. It was a five week trip to survey the river Verde for the state of Brazil. This is the only time that he actually like planned an expedition into an area that had not been mapped or charted and tried to map or chart something. As Hening wrote in an article for spectator, the preparations were appalling. Focet took minimal supplies since he was accustomed to being fed by rubber stations. This was the end of the dry season with the river edits lowest. So they soon had to abandon their boat and continue on foot. There only a week all food was exhausted and they were really starving. Focet casually remarked that five out of his six pions died from the effects of this five week disaster. This is the only expedition he led into unexplored territory. In the movie, in like his second or third expedition, he goes back with this famous explorer

37:32that he actually did go on an exploration with this guy who had been an Arctic explorer and they actually did have a big falling apart. And the movie shows this guy is like destroying and wasting all of their rations. And I just love that in Focet's actual worst expedition, he just didn't think to bring them. I think you said he lost like 53 pounds or whatever. If you're losing 53 pounds on a five week trip, you fucked that crazy. You really bad at planning, man. Like I'm not a great backpacker, but I think I do better than that. My God. And he's just and like the people working for him who he like doesn't seem to be talking about a lot. I'm sure carrying all this shit and maybe him sometimes are just dying and he's like, eh, what can you do? Just drop in like flights. What can you do? I didn't bring food. I thought there'd be people to hand me food. It just proves how hardcore I am that all of my people I'm responsible for are dying. Just shows how good it is I am actually. Oh, so much of his reputation for Toffness came comes from the fact that he survived starving

38:33to death because he himself did not bring enough food repeatedly. Like, it's very funny. Fosat kept going back to the Amazon though, even after this disastrous trip, he would not stop going and he would not stop writing breathless articles and giving speeches about his harrowing journeys with nightmare encounters of deadly insects and creatures and Indians that he'd survived. Hugh Thompson describes Fosat's public image pre-war this way. Fosat self-mathologized presenting jungle journeys as if they were Homeric autosies. He was inspired in his descriptions by adventure novels such as Jules Verne's Le Jaganda and the works of H. Rider Haggard. All featured trusty companions, unreliable natives, and clues given by some ancient chronicle. The relationship between Edwardian writers and explorers was a symbiotic one. In other words, Fosat's framing of his own life and the things he's trying to do in the jungle are inspired by fiction. He's not a scientist most of the time, really ever, best those first couple of journeys. He's a hank.

39:33I think he's in a novel. He's kind of larping. He's larping. Yeah. Haying people to come along and pretend with him that they are doing an adventure, except those people are getting out. People are being quarantined. Yeah, I'm not a real guy. Get a real deal to do it. Not a real man. Percy was in Central Bolivia in September of 1914 when word came through that his old buddy, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, hadn't made it through his last trip, and there was going to be a World War I thing starting up soon. He probably better get home. World War I one thing. Yeah, everybody knows. Gotta get home for World War I. Don't want to miss that. Don't want to miss World War II. That would have been a good time to stay in the jungle to be honest. That was World War I thing. I got to write back. I don't even care if there's food better than the front. Oh my goodness. I would take starving in the jungle over the trenches. Yeah, no, for sure. Yeah. You can even lie about how hard it was.

40:35You can even lie about it later. In one of the few passages where he is far too kind to faucet, Henning writes this about Percy's time at war. He'd hurried home and by January 1915 was back in the artillery. In his late 40s, he was too old for frontline service, but he fought a good war ending as a lieutenant colonel. This is Henning trying to be nice to Percy faucet because actually Henning knows that this isn't true. I think he was just trying to be polite. Um, fought a good war is such a late. He did not. He fought it. He did not. It sounds like, you know, when the kid strikes out in a baseball game, you're like, no, you did good. Like, yeah, yeah, that's for accurate. Fought a good war is such a. Yeah, that's how that's usually what people describe. It's like, well, he did, he did find, you know, in World War I. The movie goes kind of crazy. It shows him leading a charge across No Man's Land during the Battle of the Psalm. And again, he was an artillery man. He stayed behind the lines. He was not charging into the fucking No Man's Land.

41:36He wasn't running it German machine gunness, guys. He actually shot in German anaconda. Yeah, he's in the German. And I got to ride the belly. Yeah. As Henning stated, he stayed behind the lines, but he did not do what anyone would call fighting a good war. During research for the book, Brazil that never was author AJ Lee's happened by chance on a copy of a book titled Tommy, the British soldier on the Western Front. And as he's just doing research on Fos, he's thumbing through this completely unrelated book. And he sees Fos its name listed in the index. And he's like, well, I should probably look into that. Yeah. Right. If I'm going to be right in a book about the guy, here's a quote from his book. I leafed through to the relevant page, dealing with the problems encountered by the British artillery and quelling the German heavy guns and red. Most of the most notorious problem came in sixth core in late 1916 when the Amazon Explorer Colonel Percy Fosette arrived to take up the new post of core counter-battery kernel. He immediately declared that he was not in the least bit interested in the innovative work being done on the detection of German guns by flash spotting and sound ranging.

42:39The only counter-battery shots which he would allow were those against targets clearly visible from British lines or those he had personally detected on his Ouija board. Fuck yes. Oh my god. He's using these lovely Ouija board parts. Dip shits whose serve under Percy Fosette are like, oh my god. Colonel, we found that when the gun fires, if you count how much time happens between seeing the flash and hearing the explosion and then it landing, you can determine the distance and use that to directly determine the position of the German guns and thus shoot at them with our own guns and take them out. And Percy says, you're a fucking idiot, I've got a Ouija board. Like that's literally what he's doing. Percy's incredible. He's so fucking funny. Fuck your math. I've got a boring game I can use to talk to ghosts. Trying to spot the German guns and count how far they are away. No, we'll talk to ghosts about it. They told me we're a city and the jungle is. It's hard to hear the Ouija board sometimes over the sounds of all of the men I've led

43:41to death in the jungle. But I think he's saying there's a gun over there. Incredible. So I got to say, when I found, when I came across this fact, that's what made me decide to do an episode on Percy Fosette. The fact that he's there at the front in the fucking 1916, trying to spot German cannons with a Ouija board. Beautiful stuff. And then that is happening as an actual technique for this exists is amazing. Like in historians wrote about it. It's not like you're out at sea before they have radar and you're like trying to guess where other enemy ships are. It's like, no, we have a way to do this. You're fucking around with a Ouija board. You can actually triangulate the distance of artillery in a number of ways. But we're just doing nonsense. All right. And Lee's when he finds this fact in this book, he writes to John Henning. And Henning, who had written, like, well, Percy fought a good war. And under this questioning, Henning kind of breaks down and admits, like, so actually my dad served under Fosette in World War One.

44:43And maybe I have a couple of reasons to be annoyed by the guy other than Grant's book. And so Henning's father served under Fosette with another officer named Bragg. And the two quote, disparate when they learned that the mad psychic faucet had added non-existent German gun emplacements to their highly accurate positions. In other words, Henning's dad and this other guy were trying to use, like, math to find out where the German guns were. And Fosette just kept sticking more pins in and being like, the ghosts have revealed another gun emplacements to me. But you cool guy. How did this guy not get shot in the back by his own men? He really was like the prime target for getting shot in the back by his own men. No officer ever deserved to be fracked more by his own guys. Unbelievable. Like, like, really amazing. He made it out without that happening. Yeah. It's astonishing. Yeah. So after the war, Percy only grows more obsessed with his lost city. He'd given exactly one lecture to the RGS before the war in which he discussed the possibility of ancient ruins in the Amazon.

45:45As Jason Colovito summarizes, faucets public proclamations on the lost city of Z were fairly sober. He spoke of the possibility of a monumental city akin to those of Mesoamerica or the Inca. And that might seem like kind of plausible because there are these big stone cities that are really fucking cool and crazy looking in other jungles, right? Why couldn't there be something like that in the Amazon? So like that makes sense to people. And Percy has another piece of evidence that he's able to pull up. He's found by this point a report from 1753 published by a Portuguese explorer who had run into what he described as a city in the jungle deep in the Amazon. Percy had found it found this on like this document, like in some like government files in Rio de Janeiro. And he brought it forward and he would put this forward as like evidence that no, no, there are credible accounts from white explorers that they found something in the jungle that resembles this city I've been talking about. And this account talks about this large opulent city made out of stone, who's an entrance gate with these three huge arches and it's all it's covered in high reglyphics of this

46:48indecisurable alphabet. Nearly all of the faucet myth today centers on this 1753 report, which faucet learns about after the war. This is a real report. It does exist. Other people have seen it like it's been basically everyone who writes a book about him like goes to the library where it's stored and looks at this fucking thing is if it's going to bring them more details. And this is the an account by a Portuguese fortune hunter who goes searching in the Brazilian jungle for rumored lost gold mines. The party allegedly spent like 10 years in the jungle and never found anything. And one might argue their reports of a fantastical lost city that they brought back no evidence of might just have been an attempt to save face like well, we always starving in the jungle for fucking years. But yeah, there's some stone stuff there. Sure. Did he maybe write this while he was trying to secure funding for the next expedition? Yeah, maybe he wanted to get some money out of someone. Yeah. Whatever the truth, the fantastic city described in this paper is unlike anything Percy faucet or anyone else has ever uncovered in the Amazon.

47:49Jason Colovito who wrote an article titled Percy Foset, Victim of a Theosophical Obsession provides a translation in a summary of the sites of this purported city. A black stone column of extraordinary greatness and a top at the statue of an ordinary man with one hand on his left hip and the right arm extended pointing the index finger to the north pole. Another statue depicted a beardless youth crowned with laurel. A great temple was a work of such amazing artistry that the writer was left in awe. Beyond the city was a river leading to a field of great tombs all covered in writing. Much later Barry fell would declare the writing based on hand drawn copies in the manuscript. Patolomeic Egyptian and the city therefore classical. Right. This report of like this Egyptian almost looking city with high reglifix that are clearly of Western origin. Yeah. A youth crowned with laurel sounds a little. Yeah. Okay. Doesn't sound like anything in the Amazon, but sure. As heading noted in two articles of his own, anyone with experience in the Amazon knowns a just finding a city of this description there would be impossible. The first thing that probably stands out to most of us is these claims of high reglific

48:52writing and his article Jason Colovito accuses gran of misleading his readers in a description of the report. Quote, he edits the manuscript to remove all elements of the fantastic listing only stone archways, a statue, roads and a temple. He makes the city seem plausible by removing the improbable. And in a separate critique for the time's literary supplement, Henning accuses gran of Warsaw obfuscation than this. To bolster the notion that there might be a lost stone city in the Amazon forests, gran quotes from one of my books, a German-led expedition in the 16th century that saw a large town that contained golden objects. What he does not make clear is that this was Philip Bon Hutton's expedition of 1543 in the northern andes of Columbia, and that the town was of the usual fetch and the gold was musica. When Grant himself visited the upper Zingu River, he met the Amazon anthropologist Michael Heckenberger, who was excavating causeways and concentric ramparts around the current Kukki Ruvilich. Heckenberger explained to him why ruins of a stone city will never be found in lowland Amazonia, stone is rare in a rainforest, whereas timber and thatch are super abundant, but are perishable to termites and decay.

49:55We know there were cities that they did earthworks, and that makes sense, whereas quarrying stone in the Amazon would be pretty hard, I imagine. It's just not going to happen really, and the extent you need for a massive stone city. And Grant leaves out a lot of details that would make this seem less plausible and make it clear that Foset isn't looking for a real place. He is looking for a fantasy. Grant does ultimately conclude that Foset's vision of Z was heavily influenced by his spiritual beliefs and not reality, but the fact is that Foset's entire conception of this lost city and the people who made it was from the jump based on a theosophic fantasy. In other words, he believed there was a lost city in the Amazon because of the occult tradition he followed, and because it talked of fallen cities and advanced elder races. He saw that 1753 report, not as confirmation of evidence he'd actually found in the jungle, but as confirmation of his religious beliefs that he took with him into the jungle.

50:55And yeah, that's the core of kind of what's happening here. Yeah, so he's genuinely looking for these like theosophical ideals that are not a real thing. And he's sort of pended on this thing written by somebody whose motives we don't know in the 17th century. Right. Cool. And that and that grand is kind of taking this to make Foset look like more of a man searching for more of a man outside of his time, you know, who believes in something that was eventually proven true. Because we know there were some larger, you know, there were some much more habitation in the Amazon than like certainly Europeans thought there was in that day. We do know that's true, but Foset's not thinking about that. Foset believes there's like a magical city of wizards that he can access through a portal. And it's like, like Foset believes in some lovecraft shit. And that's what Percy Foset's really looking for in the jungle. He thinks fucking cthulhu's in there. He thinks he's gonna run into a temple to fucking as a thaw.

51:56There's something like that, right? Like he is not thinking, like this is all fucking novels and fantasy shit. Yeah, he's not a man out of time because sitting around and doing drugs had fully been invented by then. And like that's how you play people meditation and doing drugs. Yeah. What would be fair, one thing Graham does point out is that Foset's dreams of the city of Z had a lot in common with fiction stories that writers like H. Rider Haggard who were his friends wrote, right? And that is a good point, but I don't think he carries it through to his conclusion, which is that like Percy just didn't know fantasy from reality. Right. Like I really do think that's what's going on here. Like if you're sitting around writing books about this idea or like talking about how cool that would be, like that's one thing, but you are like getting real actual people, real people looking for this. Yeah, just like you probably got real people killed trying to hunt down German artillery with a Ouija board. Who knows who you shot?

52:56My God, man. There's no good way to die in World War One, but like dying because you're commanding officer is using a Ouija board. It's like a particularly bad rock and a battery fire. My God. So Foset spends his postwar years trying to hunt down this fanciful place in 1920 for some reason. He's an expedition and he follows the route of a German anthropologist nowhere close to where he thought Z should have been. He was forced to abort the mission and try again in 1921 further down the Atlantic coast. He interviewed a bunch of local miners who knew nothing about a lost city. And this is kind of accidentally one of the funny things about the movie is that it'll show Percy periodically just stumbling up to some man in the jungle and being like, have you heard of a city? And they'll be like, yeah, I don't know, maybe man. And then they'll just wander back into the jungle. And I think that is kind of what he's doing for some portion of this is like, have you heard rumors of a city? Yeah. Okay. And then off he goes back into the fucking jungle. Right. Like he's he's trying to like live out that scene in the book or the movie of an explorer

53:59where they like hear from some guy in some bar that like all the cities that like he's trying to make that scene happen for him in real life. And is instead just like interrupting some dude doing like his like going about day day. Yeah. You heard any weird stories and you don't know. I don't know. Sure. Sure, man. Yeah. Over there. Why don't you go back into the jungle? Yeah. All the stories I've heard are about how you should get away from me. You should be far away from my home. You look like you're riddled with disease, Percy. And he was. He often was. None of these voyages panned out and Percy Fawcett ran out of money after going broke. He again, he can't like give up this dream. So he embarks in a series of get rich quick schemes that all fail. And at least one instance, he seems to have it both been conned and possibly robbed. He moves his family to California and they like lose everything. And I think like an oil scam. There's a brain. Yeah.

55:00He just said it's pretty funny. He couldn't. He probably did. He did edit coming a little bit. Yeah. You know who else has it coming? The products and their sponsors of the show. Yeah. Yeah. They have your money coming to them. I hope. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and health captive for nine months. I survived. And I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart. And these are the survivor files. I just remember this low taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up. Don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who lived through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled and nearly silenced.

56:01But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. Their story is about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the survivor files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I choose option B. I'm Julie Piñero and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people and they were like, you smiled at us, not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind or wake up to a new version

57:03of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're a bookshelf and you're for you page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Pro's Society. A weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives and anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and love island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. So obsessed. From bestselling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. Like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters and that is of Trojan horse, whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations or

58:04a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to Pro's Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin unfiltered podcast. Here's what you missed. And the argument is, do you want to win? If you don't win, you have no power. It's real. Those are the very people who I always say vote against their own economic interests and they complained about the very thing they were seeing. It's wrong. I knew that the issue of transgender athletes was not going well with a lot of black men. Roland Martin unfiltered. I went off. I said, this is exactly what I'm talking about. We all go scream at Chanel, but you don't want to see a black luxury company in the same bank. Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the black information network. 12 seats. Those are moving south.

59:04So if you Democrats, you don't wait to 2030, you better be hitting the ground going to heart in the south now. And download Roland Martin unfiltered on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts. Wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. So by this point, the early 20s, his son, Jack, is a young man. And both Nina and Percy, while Percy didn't really raise him, but Nina had raised him to believe that he was holy, a great spirit destined for some fine cosmic purpose. Jack tried to live up to this. He seems to have taken very seriously the fact that he was like the special golden boy. So he's trained constantly as a young man and expectation of the fact that one day, Dad's going to get enough money for the final big expedition that will take us to the lost city of Z. And I've got to go with him because my destiny is there. He and Mama both told me my whole life, my destiny is there. Oh, this kid's going to die in a jungle. So fucking doomed. Yeah.

1:00:04He's going to die in the jungle so bad. I mean, for parental expectations are hard at the best of times. But like, I think what most people deal with is the like, you know, your father and mother and I worked very hard to send you to school and you better become a doctor. And like that, you're rough. But like you are a higher spiritual being is your father has your father has to find enough money to lead an expedition into the jungle so that you can ascend through a portal. Wow. That's what they're teaching this boy. Tell me about this portal. You've mentioned the portal a couple of times. I have. I have. So by this point, if if Fossess view of Z had ever been a belief in a real physical city that someone could do archaeology on, it had more fun. He left into a theosophic belief and to a sort of portal that might lead you to a place or at least like a place where the veil of reality is thinner and one can commune with the secret masters of the world, right? That's the that's what he's looking for. Yeah, you got to get away from the thick veil we got over here.

1:01:05Right. You got to get to where the to where the shimmer starts or whatever. Jack became a devoted spiritual practitioner. One friend described his slight aesthetic restraint as rim decent of one of the nights of the grail. He's he is like living like like a like a monk almost in order to prepare himself for his great purpose. Now I've mentioned H writer Haggard several times. He's a he's he's a he's the creator of Alan Quartermain, right? He was played by Sean Connery and Sean Connery's last movie, which was not very good. The League of extraordinary gentlemen. Not a good movie. A better graphic movie. A better graphic. Better graphic. Yeah, you're a pretty good guy now. Yeah. Um, he answered Arthur Conan Doyle became close friends with Percy. Not just because they love stories of adventure, but because they were all spiritualists who are into the same weird occult shit. Doyle based his novel, The Lost World on some of Percy Fossett's absolutely falsified accounts of his adventures. And that's why I say that you can kind of say Alan Grant is inspired by Percy too because The Lost World is one of the things that helped inspire Michael Crite and to write Jurassic

1:02:06Park and its sequel The Lost World. There's somewhat different very different books in a lot of ways, obviously, but it's in this tradition and Percy Fossett is a part of this tradition. He helps inspire these. You can draw a line from him to Jurassic Park in some ways as well as to Indiana Jones. So which just means he could have he could have stuck to writing novels like we could have a whole series of trashy novels by this guy that people would probably be able to say. Yeah, they could have made me tell you. They probably be a yeah, raise this kids. All kinds of stuff he could have done. Got in fewer people killed. Yeah, certainly would have gotten a few where people killed. Now for his part, Haggard helped set Fossett's doom into motion by bringing Percy. One day this novelist comes to his friend's house with a small stone idol that he received from a fan in Brazil who claimed Indian somewhere in the interior had made it. And we have an illustration of this idol that H. Rider Haggard has gets given by this fan. So so if you'll show it to you now, it looks like an Egyptian idol. It's like a statue of a guy and he's holding like a tablet with either high regolithics

1:03:09or quenaeiforms or whatever on it, right? Yeah, it does look kind of very Egyptian. It certainly seems like something you'd see in an adventure movie or even like a lovecraft thing, right? If you make that face a little fissure, that could work as like a lovecraft sort of idol, right? There's something like this at the start of the call, the short story of the call of Gathulu. Yeah, it looks like a good muguffin. It looks like you started a great with somebody finding this. Absolutely. You got a movie. Yeah, you got a movie. This is all you need to start your journey of exploration. Nicholas Cage could could could vamp on this statue for 90 minutes at least. He could do that with anything. Yeah. Yeah. Foset became instantly convinced that this statue at came from one of the lost cities. So now there's more than one that Percy's convinced up. Oh, cool. Now, unfortunately, one of the lost cities. One of the lost cities. One of the lost cities. My guy. All right. You've got to find the least one before you can start talking about there being more than one, I think. God. Now, unfortunately, this is great. Either of these guys, if you want to like see how much do these men really know about ancient

1:04:13artifacts, I found an article by the archaeological institute of America, which analyzed the illustration at least we have of the statue at and noted, however, and wherever Haggard got the thing, it's a fake. The figures cost him and riding on par with something from the prop department of Hercules Conkers Atlantis and have no parallels in real artifacts. Foset took it to the British Museum where he noted experts were unable to tell me anything about the idol's origin. If not a fake, I was told it's quite beyond our experience, which is a polite way of them to say to this respected explorer, this is clearly a fake. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the polite British version of like bullshit to me. You're fucking idiot, dude. That's bullshit. That's nothing. I'm sorry, man. But Foset just listens to the it's quite beyond our experience part. To get you can't be kind to these people. They're crazy. You have to be direct to them. Otherwise they're going to take their son and his friend to die in the jungle. Now Undaunted Foset sought to learn the secret of the stone image.

1:05:14That's what it is words. By having a medium hold the figure in complete darkness and write down any impressions. The psychometrist saw a large continent between Africa and South America long prior to the rise of Egypt. There are elaborate temples with beautifully carved columns and processions of what look like priests, including a high priest or leader wearing a breastplate similar to the one in the figure. Then disaster struck volcanoes and violent eruption flaming lava pouring down their sides. The whole island shakes with a mighty rumbling sound. The sea rises as if in a hurricane and a huge portion of land on both east and west sides disappears under the water. Is it a land. It's an Atlantis. It's an Atlantis. Yeah, he thinks he's going after Atlantis and it's in the Amazon. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, he's going to get his kid killed doing this. It's really funny though. And again, he thinks it's from Atlantis because he doesn't say Atlantis, but that's Atlantis. He doesn't say Atlantis in the dark. Yeah. Well, he went his first, he went, he did try to get a first, his first opinion from an

1:06:18actual, you know, reputable expert. Sure. And when they didn't know anything, he went to a, yeah, he went to a psychic and she said it was from Atlantis. Great. Fosette, who published a number of articles in the quote review magazine, believed in the existence of Atlantis and was convinced that he could find a remnant of its advanced population. After all, the psychometrist saw the high priest take the very idle faucet, possessed, and hand it to another priest with instructions to retain it carefully. And in due course, deliver it to an appointed one who in turn must pass it on at length until it comes into the possession of a reincarnation of the personage it portrays. When numerous forgotten things will through its influence be elucidated. In other words, this medium says like, oh, I'm seeing is the city falls. They're handing this idle off and say, pass it on until you find the man who can deliver it to the reincarnation of our great priest. And we've already set up that he thinks his son is a re-internation. He thinks it's his son. Yeah. Oh, no. He thinks they tried her haggard's giving him a little statue of his boy in the past.

1:07:22It's really funny. Well, this will end well. Yeah, this is going to end great. In his own book, based on extensive letters between Nina and Percy discussing this, AJ Lee's has come to believe that Percy grew so obsessed with the lost city of Z because it thought it would lead him to an underground great white lodge where he could execute what he and Nina had taken to calling the great scheme and they capitalized each of the first letters. Oh, no. Oh, I don't want any great white lodges executing any great schemes. Oh, no. Thank you. This is a great scheme. You're going to love this game. He would send word to Nina after finding it the city where upon she along with other sympathizers rejoined the three men and form a community on the Brazilian plateau broadly modeled on the one Harold large had created now. I got to stop you there. Harold large was a wizard and a friend of the faucets from New Zealand. And in 1907, large had founded an experimental magical community named the havelock work in New Zealand. This was a free love and also art and like woofocus place where everyone could like fuck and make art and do sex magic.

1:08:23I think is the mix of idea behind this. Come you. I mean, that honestly, that sounds fine. If people wanted to do that to do in New Zealand, like not the middle of the Amazon with just you and your son and his friend. I mean, I would even venture to say maybe go back to England and do it there. Go back to anywhere. But yeah, I mean, a relative, you know, it's fine. People are going to be wizards. I don't know much about this free love wizard community. But I will say that his largest focus was that like the modern world is destroying us. It's this tyrannical place that is like destroying the human soul. And so we have to create these communities so that like enlightened beings can gain the actual psychic power that they're supposed to have or something like that. I think is the basic idea behind the havelock work. And so the faucets are so inspired by what their friend large is doing that they kind of work this into their vision of what's going to happen when Percy finds this mystical city. That he'll sin for his wife and all of their friends and they'll all move to this like

1:09:26place where the veil of reality is thin in the Amazon and they'll live forever as like free love wizards. I guess I think that's the basic idea. And it's important that you know that Percy is bringing his son to this place, but the communism going to have a place for Jack, which I guess is good because that would be kind of weird because his parents are both going to be I guess fucking all their friends there. I'm going to continue for Lee's book. I wish there was a responsible adult taking over for this. I don't think they're going to find him in the wizard commune, frankly, they have not how old is the police book at the point he's like 19 or 20 or something right now he's a young adult. Right. No, no, no, he's got to be older than that. He's got to be in his early 20s by a but because he was born in like 1903, right? Yeah, early 20s. So these rights, Jack Foss, it would be handed over to the earth guardians and his physical body would be taken over by an ancient other. He would then depart Brazil and set up a new lodge near Trinkomale in Salon. There a new colony of evolved beedings would rest control from national governments and

1:10:28become the masters of the universe, getting the human race back to a new beginning. So that's the best explanation I've seen is what Percy thought he was really doing out in the fucking jungle. I got to give my son up to these these spirits so that he can take over governing Salon and then me and my wife will get to fucking the jungle with our friends forever. I think that's kind of the idea as far as I can tell. He's signing over his son's actual body to a spirit guardians to the earth guardians. Yeah, we're going to give his body to another. Don't know what happens to Jack spirit. That's actually kind of unclear. Yeah, I hope I hope it gets a break from all this. This kid never had a chance. No, it's about to. So as evidence that the yeah, Jack was fucked from the jump. As evidence that the faucets really believed this stuff, Lee's includes in his book a letter that Jack wrote to their to large, the guy with that communist New Zealand in 1924. And this is Jack. I begin to look upon Salon as my own private property now and feel quite annoyed to think

1:11:29there are thousands of strangers laying down the laws there. You seem to think we shall soon go and that always cheers us up where Claire Boyance failed. We always say, well, HL did not say that or HL says we must go and he knows. So this guy Henry large definitely gets them killed too. Right. He sees for sure part of this. He's hugely to blame. I begin to look on Salon as my private property. Look how could this not go to your head and that you get a bit of that from his younger brother who writes the book like who edits his dad's notes into the book expedition faucet because he's like Jack was in a great spirit. He was kind of a dick sometimes. I think he probably was a nassol. I mean, again, this is a little bit too much cultic believe for like one shot like this kid is going to be messed up. I could both say he was probably pretty annoying to be around because he thought he was a god, but also that's what else could have happened here. Yeah. Yeah. If he made it into into his like mid to late 20s and got away from his parents, I would

1:12:31it would be his responsibility to figure things out and become a better person, but I'm guessing he doesn't get that chance. He doesn't and even then like it's not just his parents as is that letter shows guys like large or like famous and like rich and very like well regarded keep coming up to him and saying, yep, you're definitely just a great spirit in there. Yep. Yep. You're going to become a god and rule over say a lot one day of my boy like it's not just his parents like he's really getting this reinforced by a lot of adults who should know better. And who are like using him to play out like just their sort of fantasies just like stuff they think would be cool. No, and their piss because World War One happened and it kind of proved that like the world isn't just like getting better even though you thought it was like things are really bad actually and they're about to get worse and all these people just want to like break away and go fuck somewhere pretty and do magic. You know, who's the one get it? You can do that without like sacrificing all of you like for example, you could have written some books Percy and like bought a house done that.

1:13:34It's an option. It's just a lovely on here man. Yeah. Sounds great. I'm not doing an episode on H writer Haggard. You know, I mean, maybe I should actually because he enlarges definitely two of the people sides Percy were most to blame for what happened next in 1925 broken aging faucet put together one last Hail Mary of an expedition. It included Jack and his son Jack's best friend Raleigh Rimmel. Before going, Percy visited a psychic named Helen Berry. She claimed who've been born into a mysterious mystical order dedicated to preparing human beings from important spiritual tasks and she basically tells him, oh yes, this statue Percy is a statue of yourself as a priest in a past life and you must take it into the jungle. Also, and this is something Lee's writes in his book, other mediums that faucet contacted around this time provided him with advice on the exact location of the South American lodge and answered some of his other uncertainties such as whether humans can have sexual relations with elementals. I'm so glad you cleared that up.

1:14:36I love that. First off, that should tell you what Percy's really thinking about with this journey is like the sex magic is a big part of this for him. I think I don't think that gets enough credit in any of the books about this. Which again, it's so many people do sex magic without getting anyone killed. Exactly. Very rarely do they get people killed. This is not anti-sex magic. This is an anti-whatever the hell Percy faucets doing podcast. Whatever you're into, but like, it's amazing how many psychic ceasemes to find who tell him what he wants to hear. Yeah, that's different things. You'll note that that psychic's telling him a little bit different thing from the last one. Right? And he interprets them all a little differently. But it never, the fact that no one's ever saying exactly the same things never really dissuades Percy. And maybe these gay people are all just kind of making shit up separately. So as for why this 1925 expedition winds up being Percy's last, here's John Heningen.

1:15:37The old surveyor, Percy, made two suicidal pronouncements. One was that the trio should travel light with nothing more than small packs. Everyone in Amazonia knew that you could not cut trails and keep your team fed with fewer than eight men. I can confirm this having done months of such cutting and carrying. But faucets sent their pack animals and porters back and continued with his only his two novices. His other dictum was that Indians would look after them. This was equally dangerous. The Zingu tribes pried themselves on generosity, but they expect visitors to reciprocate. All expeditions in the past four decades had brought plenty of presence, such as machetes, knives, and beads, faucet had none. And this is a thing that when people have talked to the actual indigenous folks who were alive at the time as a number of expeditions did, they'd all be like, well, he kept asking for food and didn't like have anything like he wasn't doing the thing you're supposed to do, which is where you like give us a gift. And like sometimes they stole shit. Sometimes they were rude. You hear different stories. Some of them are true. Some of them probably aren't. But like the one thing that comes through is that they were seen as rude and they were

1:16:40seen as rude in part because they didn't bring anything with them. And it is, it's actually kind of rude to like stumble into a place you've never been and don't understand starving to death because you didn't bring enough shit. And they'd be like, hey guys, can I have your food? Can I have my butt? My kids have your food? Sorry, can we have like all of it? We are starving. And it's not like a dick move. If that happens because like wow, you know, something really bad happened to you. You're both right. Whatever course will help you out. Shit happens. It's the jungle. Yeah. You on purpose didn't bring the stuff you had the resources to bring because you had this idea. Based on your refusal to study and learn from the indigenous people. You're a white man. We know the shit white people have access to. You should be bringing stuff with you first off. We've seen others. And also we know you per se by this point. You kind of have a reputation for being a cheap skate. But the psychic said he was entitled to it. So that's right. He goes. He had to take over say Lawn.

1:17:41So you know what? It's nice that just once the white male entitlement will get this guy what he deserves. Yeah. And his son and his son's buddy who all die. I feel less good about that. I feel less good about that. They all die probably horrifically. These are probably not good deaths. They are never heard from again. They sent a couple of letters early in their expedition and then they just disappear. And we have no idea what happened to them unless you take the highly credible accounts of local tribesmen who say they were murdered. They're being dicks or going into place they shouldn't have gone or a combination of the two. Right. Now there are some other plausible theories. Maybe they got lost and sick because they didn't bring enough stuff. Maybe there's even one account that they were mercy killed because some locals are like oh you guys are going to get yourselves murdered. And we know the people you're going to get murdered by are really fucked up. So we're actually going to kill you now at a kindness because we can't stop you. You're clearly deranged. But we don't want you to suffer. That is one of the accounts. Damn. I mean, is it also possible that they found a portal that led them to Atlantis and their

1:18:46kings there now? Maybe they found a portal. Has anyone been to Sri Lanka ever? I don't know. I've never heard of a person from Sri Lanka. Possible? No way to know. Other than by briefly researching if there's things and oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Turns out whole country. Wow. Is it governed by the ghost of white boy? Nope. Nope. It's not. Not that. I'm sorry guys. I did a little bit of research there. Turns out not. That was my bad. That was my bad. That's where this Wingshabort says they totally made it. Wow. Oh, okay. Well, two sources, different things. You know, that means it's in dispute if we're the New York Times. I'm not interested in litigating like what exactly happened to Fossett and his kid and his kid's friend because it's not really a mystery. They did a stupid thing in a dangerous place and they died. That's what happened to them. Large and Nina corresponded for years after Percy went missing and there's some really upsetting passages and their letters in the book Brazil that never was where Nina is clearly

1:19:49really worried about her son and her husband and large is like, don't worry. I know they're going to be fine. They're going to come out of the jungle. Percy will be out of the jungle any day now. Don't you worry. And he, she really gets drunk along for a while there. It's kind of a bummer. That's a bummer. Yeah. Yeah. And then the storyography has proven Fossett's theory about a lost city. Sort of right. If you squint, we do know that the Amazon was much more densely people, private to the arrival of white people in disease. I think one of the one of the one theory is that during roughly the medieval period, what we'd call the medieval period, there would have been a population of between 1.5 and as much as like two to two and a half, maybe even three million people living in the Amazon, which is much more densely people than certainly the Europeans knew it to be after contact. And they did have, we have also found evidence using light, our scans of what very likely were semi-large urban communities around where Percy expected to find Z. These were not cyclopian stone cities or modern metropolis, but we're talking, you know, populations of

1:20:50in the thousands, you know, five or six thousand, not millions, right? These are not like vast, you know, things. But these were fairly advanced sites created by fairly advanced cultures. And one very, you know, prominent theory suggests that a lot of the Amazon was crafted intentionally over a long span of time is basically a giant living grocery store, a food forest, right? And so we should look at the Amazon, not like as like this, this right, this prime evil unspoiled wilderness that people never advanced in. But as a thing that people shaped and changed and engineered to a significant extent in order to better suit their own needs and provide them with a more comfortable lifestyle. And then they all got second died. A lot of them, not all, a lot of them got second died. And so a lot of the larger communities that had existed were gone by the time Europeans were fucking around there. And they were just like, it's complete wilderness, which is not really the case probably, right? We don't know for sure. These are theories, you know? And none of those people were ancient Greeks or ancient Egyptians. We know that. They definitely were ancient Greeks in Egyptians.

1:21:51Yeah. That's 100% confirmed. Yes. Wow. Yeah. I do want to quote once more from an article by Hugh Thompson, who's that, he's that Peruvian scientist and adventure who led numerous expeditions. And he wrote this a faucet for the Washington Post. As grand acknowledges in his book, again, you will find nothing of it in the film. Fosset was deeply conflicted about his suspicion that there might have been an earlier advanced civilization in the Amazon, a suspicion that for all the wrong reasons he was right about, although he himself never found anything to prove it. He could not reconcile this with his poor opinion of the Indian tribes. So he postulated the existence of white Indians who had somehow traveled across the Atlantic from Europe and brought civilization with them, right? And that's all you deserve to remember, Percy Fosset asked. He was a crank who got his kid killed. Well, and if he'd been less racist and paid attention to what people there said and how they lived, then he probably wouldn't have died. So like, congratulations, white man dies of racism. That's actually kind of cool. Yep. Two races to live.

1:22:52Yep. Wow. Yep. Well, Maryam, you got anything you want to plug? Yeah, there's this secret law city in the jungle, actually. No. So I would like to plug my podcast, which I do with members of my anarchist publishing collective that I'm in, which is called Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. Your friend Margaret Killjoy is also in that collective. So she is also on the podcast a lot. The podcast is live like the world is dying. And it is a podcast for people who feel like it's getting pretty fucked up. And we'd like to talk about what to do about it. And also we're not trying to hide in a bunker with beans, but build community and skills. And also beans are good, you know, but we're just. Beans are good. We're mostly anti-bunker, I would say. But yeah, we got we got stuff going on over there. Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness on some various social media platforms and check us out.

1:23:59Sweet. Yeah, check it out and check out the Amazon. You know what? I'm going to go on an expedition down there and find a commune or a place for commune and then some ghosts. And I don't know. I think one of us will wind up ruling in Ireland in Southeast Asia. Pretty good chance. If you just go to the jungle, just buy a plane ticket to Brazil or anywhere with a jungle. Just fly there and start walking. Just walk out. You'll find me. Go into the jungle and just move. My Ouija board just told me if you do that, you'll die. Well, I don't believe you're Ouija board. It wasn't right about the artillery stuff. Good night, everybody. Behind the bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com. Or check us out on the IHurt Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Full video episodes of Behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit remind me on Netflix so you don't miss an episode. For clips and our older episode catalog, continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel, youtube.com

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