Matt Breen | Behind The Scenes With The Creator Of The Explorers Podcast

✍︎: https://curiousworldview.beehiiv.com/subscribe

🎙️: https://atlasgeographica.com/explorers-podcast/

#157 - Matt Breen is host of the Explorers Podcast, which  focuses on the great explorers and adventurers of history.

I think I’m right in asserting that this is unlike you will have heard Matt before. He hasn’t done a dedicated long form podcast elsewhere, and so this exploration into the history of the show and how his worldview has been shaped by the explorers he studies is all new material. 

And so we go behind the scenes of The Explorers Podcast, the early days, how it started, the podcast growth, the business of content, to even the possibility of one of matt’s stories going to Hollywood. 

We then lean into some of the Explorers Matt loves and take a couple tangents in that direction to then finally rounding out with the traditional question on serendipity.

• 00:00 – Introduction
• 01:37 –  The Elon Musk Tweet
• 07:37 – Matt’s Journey Into Podcasting
• 15:57 – Process Of Creating An Explorers Episode & Storytelling
• 30:07 – How Long Before You Started Gaining Momentum?
• 34:35 – The Business & Economics Behind The Show
• 43:07 – Hollywood Taking On Explorers Podcast
• 49:43 – Matt Loves Australia
• 1:02:57 – Which Explorers Does Matt Love Most?
• 1:08:58 – Blind Traveller James Holman & Histories Great Forgotten Explorers
• 1:22:38 – What Would Be The Most Fascinating Time Period To Be An Explorer In?
• 1:29:22 – Is There Any More Room For Exploration?
• 1:37:14 – Conversation Between Any Two People Of History Dead Or Alive
• 1:49:22 – The Role Of Serendipity In Matt Breen’s Life

Curious Things Mentioned During The Episode

• Bryan Bashin – James Holman The Blind Traveller
• Charlie Walker – One Of The Great Modern Adventurers
• Scott Rank – The Great Explorers Of History

🍻☕: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/ryanhogg

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ryanfhogg/

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Matt Breen is the host of the Explorers Podcast, which focuses on the great explorers and adventurers of history. Matt goes deep down into multi-episode series One Great Explorer at a time. My personal favourite is the story of the great Scottish Australian Dan McDouell. But he's covered them all. And if you like hardcore history and Dan Carlin, then there is a lot you'll like about the Explorers podcast. Even Elon Musk recently gave Matt a direct shout-out on X, and having just checked now, that tweet has almost 200 million impressions. And I think I'm right in asserting that this podcast here is unlike you will have heard Matt before. He hasn't done a dedicated long-form podcast elsewhere. And so this exploration into the history of the show and how his worldview has been shaped by the explorers he studies is all new material. And so we go behind the scenes on the Explorers podcast, the early days, the crafting of an episode, the podcast growth, the business of content, to even the possibility of one of Matt's stories going to Hollywood. We then lean into some of the explorers Matt loves and take a couple of tangents in that direction, finally rounding out with the traditional question on serendipity. This one was a special one to record. Thank you to you, Matt, for being such a legend, so generous with your time and so generous with your responses. Please consider leaving a five-star review on Spotify or Apple. It helps the show tremendously. And also consider my newsletter, which is the top link in this episode's description. And now, with absolutely no further ado, here is the host and creator of the Explorers Podcast, Matt Breen. In Walter Isaacson's biography of Elon Musk, he notes that Elon and Grimes would listen to history podcasts late into the night together. Elon then goes on to tweet about your show, saying how amazing it is. And so the natural question arises how does it feel that your podcast has served as foreplay for Musk and Grimes?

SPEAKER_00 1:58

Wow, I have never thought of it that way. Um and it's kind of disturbing. But I guess if it helps, if it helps them, that's okay. Um it's uh it was uh I mean obviously the Elon Musk tweet was uh um it was welcome without question uh because it puts a lot of uh a lot of eyeballs or I guess ears on my show, which is is great, and the show has grown because of that. But it was weird. It was uh it was one of those things I uh I've talked about um there's uh I think podcasters all and any creator says thinks about like what happens if something big come happens, you know, like what if you know I'm my show gets featured in the New York Times or unwired, and you're like suddenly everything is people are coming, and and and it's just like I've been doing this for seven years, and um I've just kind of was like, Yeah, that's never gonna happen, you know. That you know, the that my show is just this little podcast history podcast of where how is that gonna happen, you know, and and if it does, it'll be something small, you know, where oh I get a little boost here and there. But it was just weird because uh you don't expect it. And when it happens, you're just kind of like deer in the headlights for a bit, but then you have to meet ultimately just keep doing everything because podcasting, as you know, is a slog. It's just um it's it's writing, it's researching, it's editing, it's all that stuff. And you just have to keep doing it. But it's still it was weird because you're like, again, you think, what if this happened? And and it did. And it was very strange that way. But uh and I I it's still even today when people ask me about it, I kind of just go, it was weird, but it really didn't change the world that much for me in that I just have to keep doing work and keep doing the show, and just in fact, yeah, you have to make it better, just as good, so you don't disappoint people who show up. Totally.

SPEAKER_02 4:08

What a phenomenal moment. Uh do you where were you when you read that?

SPEAKER_00 4:13

Um I was actually I had been up late the night before. I had just published an episode, and so I didn't get to bed until about 1 a.m. And uh I usually I got up then probably a little before eight uh central time here in the United States, and I got up, and one of the first things I usually do after I publish an episode, if I did it the night before, is just to check my email because there have been weird things happen where you know someone will, you know, uh file is bad or whatever and something is wrong with the the um and so while that doesn't happen often, it's just something I check. So I check my email and someone's first email is like, congratulations on the Elon tweet, and I'm like What the hell? And uh so you know I went online, found the tweet, and my immediate thing was like, is it real? Is this just you know someone polling something? But then I saw all the traffic and then I saw that, and uh it was uh oh my gosh, you know.

SPEAKER_02 5:15

So how much did it move the needle?

SPEAKER_00 5:19

Um I think that uh uh it's a good question. And in in in the initial, I would say um, you know, sixty days afterwards, um and it's been um about three months now, in that uh 30, 60 days, I would say it basically doubled my traffic. Um I think that there that's receded a bit uh since then. I know it has, and some of that I expected because, you know, some people were literally like sending me messages. Elon told me to listen to you, you know. Um and that's great, you know, but ultimately the show isn't you know, every show is not for a show the show is not for everyone. And so um I'm sure they listened to it a couple times and some people loved it, and I've got some wonderful people who have told me they heard it from the Elon tweet, and now they're like one guy within like two weeks had listened to the entire catalog. It was nuts. Wow, what a legend. Yeah. Or nuts. But uh but um uh I expected some receding, but I mean I was getting growth through other ways too because of that. Just it was the show was showing up in the I mean I was the I think on the Apple Podcast charts, I was number like 15. And that wasn't just in history, that was the world. And that's so I'm just like, you know, I'm getting exposure in different ways. So I was like, okay, I'll pick people up and and and everything like that. Um and I think that's receded somewhat. Um part of that I think there was a uh Apple uh a month or month and a half ago did some updates on how they calculate downloads and things, and that has uh eaten into some of uh the stuff. But I bet I mean I'm still at the worst, I'm gonna be like 50, 75 percent growth, which is incredible, you know.

SPEAKER_02 7:15

So Yeah, if podcasts grow by word of mouth, then that really is the ultimate word of mouth uh exposure.

SPEAKER_00 7:23

Yeah. I was I was hoping to grow about you know 20 percent this year, and I'm I've already obviously topped that. But uh, you know, so I'm really happy.

SPEAKER_02 7:36

Nice. Well, like you alluded to, you're seven years into it. Your first podcast was published in 2016 on Magellan. But I want to ask you to go back even before you recorded your first episode. Were you an avid podcast consumer?

SPEAKER_00 7:52

Um no, not not a lot. I listened to a few things here and there. Um I got into podcasting. Um I remember my wife would listen to uh uh um serial was one of the first big ones, and she listened to that, and that was interesting. And I just did some searching after we listened to that for my own sake, and I found The History of Rome by Mike Duncan, which uh which made me love podcasting, and I have a very similar approach to it. It's it's minimalistic. I don't it's like music, talk, and that's it, uh, pretty much. And I I loved how Mike Duncan does things. And um the other person I found then that I loved was uh Dan Carlin. Very different podcasting style, but still very immersive and and uh you know they're they're still two of my favorite podcasters. Um potentially the goats. Yeah, yeah, they are. And uh and that's and to be honest, I've listened to things on and off, but once the show became bigger, to be honest, I'm on headphones and diving into stuff. At times I just like I don't want to put my headphones on and listen to the another podcast. And I still do it for for the people that I really like and for, you know, um like we're traveling and my wife and I we found some podcasts and we just listened to some things, you know, more you know, fluffy celebrities talking kind of things, because it's gotta be for both of us. But uh I was not a huge podcaster, but it was uh it intrigued me, and um and uh I loved the concept of of the barrier of entry. And one of the beauties of podcasting and the curse is there is a very low barrier of entry. You just need to be able to record and upload a file. And so that got me thinking, I've always been someone who enjoyed writing and uh telling stories and things like that. And so I uh started thinking about the show, and that's where I ended up.

SPEAKER_02 10:00

So what gave you the confidence to think you could um produce something yourself?

SPEAKER_00 10:07

Um I I guess listening to things out there, first of all, they're not that good. And um and the things I liked, I basically said to myself, I wanted to do something that I would like. And for me, it was about telling stories. And I love I've always loved telling stories. And um I just thought, oh heck, I can try this. And it wasn't a, you know, like I decide today and then have a podcast ready next week. I took months just slowly figuring out what I wanted. I mean, I didn't know what topic I wanted to do, I didn't know what uh um sort of style I wanted to have. And so I j I just gradually sort of started doing stuff. And that was um writing short scripts, recording short snippets, listening to it, and over time, over a few months, uh I basically came down with what I have now. And uh, you know, my my my my son, who was in high school at the time, was basically my only like sounding board. I'd be like, How does this sound? You know, and he'd go, Dad, that doesn't sound like you. That uh you sound too soft or too, you know, not animated enough. And and uh and and so I kind of came up with what I wanted ultimately finding my topic, that was a big thing, and then finding my style. And you know, like I said, I loved like Dan Carlin, but I cannot talk like Dan Carlin, uh, although I don't anyone can talk like Dan Carlin other than Dan. But you know, I'm not the guy that's gonna yell. I'm not gonna the guy that's gonna tell weird I can't tell a story like Quentin Tarantino, where you can jump around and eight different times in the course of it. I'm very I'm a very linear story type guy. And so I practiced and set up my format, and uh ultimately what you hear in the first episode is not that much different than what I do now. So I was I'm very proud of that, that what I hit on. Um and it's just treating the audience well. None of this crappy banter, none of the mindless I you don't need to know about my dog, um, you don't need to know, you know, I don't need those kinds of things. And it's just I want to just tell a good story and underst understanding the concept of storytelling is also was, I think, was a big thing for me while I felt I understood that and I knew what what I wanted to do.

SPEAKER_02 12:44

And how did you settle on explores being the theme?

SPEAKER_00 12:50

That's uh that was part of it that was very calculated in the sense that at first I was I was thinking I don't want to just tell the same stuff. I in a sense, you know, like if I picked, you know, the Civil War or the American Revolution or something like that, I'm gonna be talking about that for ten years or five years or whatever it takes. And that's not bad. But do I want to be telling the same the same subject matter over and over? And so I said to myself, okay, let's not do that. And I started coming up with all sorts of topics and things. And ultimately I came down to the fact that you do have to have some sort of uh credibility or some sort of you know um you you have for to get to appeal, someone's gotta say, yes, I have I want to listen to that. And why are they gonna listen to me when they can click on the BBC or you know the Smithsonian Institute podcast or you know, Professor this or Professor That, you know, people who have much more credibility using the air quotes there than I ever would and hear me talk about all these different subjects of history. And I think I would have been fine with doing that. The the problem comes is that where do you break in in there? But as I put together a list of of topics, some v explorers popped up on there. I was like, oh, I can tell the story of Magellan. And that was really one of the first ones I came up with. And then I thought, oh, and I and I've always loved these the topics, always loved adventure, explorers, things like that. I'm a history nerd. And um and so then I was just like, you know, uh click, click, click, get online, type on no one really does an explorer show. I mean, there's a few ones out there, but there's no one the the the ones that were dedicated to explorers were not that good. Or um if they were there and they were good, it was tended to be a part of a larger series. So it's like, you know, Dan Carlin did a store story on Magellan, and it's like, but he's that's all. He's not doing anything else. So I was like, okay, that subject is underserved. It's something I think is really cool. And the joy of switching around subjects, because again, I you know, while there's l things that are related with when you're talking about uh, you know, explorers, they're very different. You know, Christopher Columbus is very different from, you know, Ernest Shackleton, you know, so it's it's kind of a new it's a new thing every time you start a new subject, which appealed to me a lot.

SPEAKER_02 15:34

Maybe you could um take us into the creative process for producing one of these shows. How much source material are you relying on? How much of it is scripted? How do you think about the actual um building blocks of storytelling? Because obviously you listen to a finished product and you can appreciate, well, that was enjoyable or it wasn't. Um, but if you could see how the sausage was made, I think you just have so much more appreciation for it. So I'd love to, with as much detail as you're willing to share, hear about your process in say putting together the seven-part Ibn Batuta series.

SPEAKER_00 16:11

Alrighty. Um the process is uh it's never exactly the same as you as you know, if anything. But what it is is um I'm always going online and just like clicking on list of explorers, you know, and just looking at people. Who is this person? What do they do? But what I what I tend to do is I find uh a subject that is interesting, do a basic review on them and go like, okay, that would be a good story. Um and then at that point you look at source material. And I love to find at least one or two good modern biographies or um or just you know tellings of whatever the story is. Uh if I have uh old source material, that's awesome. It's uh uh it's not always good, it's not always great just because reading uh a document from the 15th century, even if it's in English, is not always helpful just because of the of the fac of how they were writing and so forth. Um but it it can be. So the uh so you look at the source material and then uh and then you but even before that, I guess I should say, even before you you look at all that source material, you kind of can see that the life of the person or see the story and start blocking it out and going like, okay, this is four episodes. I can see here's this, here's that, um, here's how I would break things up. And um then you dive into your source material. I do say I do like to have new stuff, more recent biographies and things, and that's because a lot of original source material is just unreliable. Um, if you read Ernest Shackleton's stories of of his stuff, there's a lot of great stuff in there. But there's a lot of it that's just lies, there's a lot of stuff that he's just ignoring, you know. Let's skip the part where, you know, I perhaps had my men threaten to shoot someone, you know, which they did. You know, they perhaps did. Because, you know, it just wasn't proper. You didn't do stuff like that. Uh and more modern books will will be more uh um honest about things. And um and there's certainly you know just things have changed since you know a book that was written a hundred or two hundred years ago where uh you know we just know a lot more than than what that person did. So I do want to have something modern. And um if I have a couple of them, even better. And usually I'll just I'll find a I'll just go online and just look at reviews of books, see which ones you know look like uh are going to be my best guideposts, and read a couple of books if I can, look at source material that goes with it. And at that point you just start writing. And you when you write, and I script everything. It's 100% 100% scripted.

SPEAKER_02 19:24

No ad-libbing.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

Um there is some ad-libbing here and there because um when you when you write a script, you need to read it out loud. If you don't read it out loud, you're gonna find all sorts of mistakes. And I do that. So I sit there and read out loud, but even when I read it out loud, sometimes I still glaze over things or go over fast and realize I'm saying something that's a long run-on sentence that just kind of makes myself makes my I can't say it right, so I have to stop and kind of chop it up. Or you realize, you know, I've used the word expedition four times in the last two sentences, and it just sounds stupid, so you just stop and you just quickly scrawl in. Or, you know, anything can happen where you just realize something and and you just need to change it. Um But it's 99 percent what you hear is 99 percent of a script. And um and that is writing, and that's uh a challenge in of itself. It's writing as you speak. Uh because frankly, some people write in a very academic or even it doesn't even have to be academic, it can be like a novelistic way. And if it's not read right and it isn't written in a way, it can just come across as someone reading a book. And that doesn't that's that's not what a podcast is. At least it's not what mine is. Mine's more of a I think of it as a combination of a conversation and telling a story. And um that's sort of what I do. And uh but then what you what you have to do when you when you start with your show, and this is the storytelling part, is you you identify all the all the players, you identify the plots, you identify things like what stakes, what is at stake here? What happens if you fail? What happens if you succeed? Um, you know, who are who are the I don't want to say villains, but there are times where you do have villains and you you do have challenges. What are the challenges? Because I know I had a an author tell me once, he goes, you know, conflict is drama and uh you know, and challenges are drama. And so those are the things that make people go, oh, what's next? And uh um and you you have to recognize the the the powerful moments that occur in a story and and treat them as such. And uh, you know, I think uh I had someone someone is either on Twitter or or message me and she uh she was read she was uh listening to the The climbing of Mount Everest with uh Hillary and Tenzig Norga. And she said she uh she was like ready to cheer when they c clo got to the top of the mountain. And you know, I wrote it that way. It's like I thought it was a really dramatic moment as a as a writing it and then reading it, and that someone took it that way was great. Um but those are those are important things to hit those notes to make people understand what is at stake for and what's going on here. And uh uh and I think that's the the big thing. That's about that's what I say about storytelling. It's understanding the classic sort of uh you know challenges that people have in front of them, the ramifications of failure, um, the ramifications of victory, that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_02 22:50

And how many sessions in the studio might you put in? Are you often recording and then throwing it away and saying, I'm not on today, I need to come back and try it again?

SPEAKER_00 22:59

Aaron Ross Powell Very, very rarely. Very rarely. I do have a pretty calm and even delivery style. So I don't uh um so I don't think I get like, I'm not in it today. You know, uh the only time I think I ever get that is if you know I have a cold or something like that, or a cough would be the other thing if you get like a bad cough and and you just can't read very well. But for the most part, with it scripted, I understand how I need to read it. And it's just me. So I'm not I'm not I'm not having to worry about other people, which was, by the way, something reason I another reason I did what I do with this solo historical narrative thing was I wanted to do it by myself. I didn't want to rely on other people. I didn't want to have to compromise what I wanted to do. I didn't want to think someone else couldn't wasn't doing as much as I was doing or whatever. It was like, okay, I'll I'll succeed or fail on my own merits, and that's one of the things I did. But um but for the most part I go in and if I have a half an hour episode, uh it can take me a couple hours, you know, like a 30-minute end result episode. It can take me a couple hours to record that. Um, and I have to stop frequently and and hydrate and just catch my voice just because again, it's just me talking and it's never, never simple. Like I I don't have a page and read a page and only make one or two mistakes. I do every sentence, every two sentences, I'm stopping and things. So there's a lot of editing involved of stitching together my reads.

SPEAKER_02 24:38

As a source of inspiration, who do you think is a phenomenal storyteller?

SPEAKER_00 24:44

Um You know, this is not a podcaster. I um I was always, always really impressed with um Stephen King as a writer. He even if his books don't work, you know, and they don't all work, he is such a good storyteller. And um I love I love that. Um when I was uh I'm always been a sucker for mysteries and things like that. So um those those kinds of things, you know, when you can grip this grip what's going on in like I think of the Dan Brown's Da Vinci coat was on a hokey-esque thing, but it's just hell of fun. You know, it's a hell of a lot of fun. Yeah. Um and I always go back, I I have a I have a history degree, but I also have a at the same time a double major was in in communications in radio, TV, and film. And I I l I worked at a video store back in the 1980s. I'm 59 years old for your listeners so they understand I'm I'm old. Um I worked at a video store and I always had it, my dad always loved movies, I always loved movies growing up. And uh the one thing I always appreciated and really loved was um John Ford, Howard Hawkes, these guys who just told they told beautiful stories, and it wasn't about them. A lot of times you you get fancy directing and things like that. That's all good, and sometimes that can be really, really effective. You know, Scorsese is a perfect person for that. But I just when you when you don't notice the storytelling is happening, that to me is someone who's doing a really good job. And uh and I think that when I heard, you know, like Mike Duncan doing the history of Rome and then revolutions, that was the kind of thing where I just went, you know, that's what I like. That's what I think is really good. Um, that understatedness and just quality of just telling a good story in a way that's very conversational. And um that's that's that's probably the best I can give you for an answer.

SPEAKER_02 27:01

I had on the Thomas Erickson, who wrote the book Surrounded by Idiots. Um it's like been at the airport for 15 years now. It's a phenomenal bestseller. Insane. And um he is the biggest Stephen King fanboy of all time, and as well uh was just regaling similarly how good Stephen King is at constructing a story. And even if you read his autobiography on writing, I mean he's had got a good source material for a great life, but still, I mean, it's so captivating, it's so easy to read.

SPEAKER_00 27:37

It's just like um, I I will say that that I recommend people people say, what is a they'll say, like, how do you write, you know, how do you tell stories, how do you do your job in podcasting? And I say, it's not about podcasting, it's just about storytelling, which you know, every medium is different, but there are more similarities than differences than when you talk about novels and and uh films and and things like that. But they're still all the same things. And that's why I always say, people, I say, read um on writing. I think it's one of the like Stephen King's on writing, it's one of the best books about being a writer, about you know, the mindset, because people will be like, well, how do I do this? And it's like you have to take that mind. And he he one of the things I've I've seen in interviews, Stephen King always talks about, if you want to be a writer, you have to write. And when you want to consider yourself a writer, um you have to s have you have to spend this much time a day in that task. And the more you write, the better you get. And that's something I have definitely found, but it's still not easy. But I love his approach to I almost think in some ways that people just don't have with literally any job in this world, if you don't have the discipline to do what that job requires, and in this case what I do, it's writing. Um but as Stephen King talks about book writing, it's like you're not gonna succeed because if you're just gonna, you know, spend a few hours a week write a novel over a year and think that your life has changed, it's not gonna happen. Um you need to be a writer if you really want that to happen. And I mean I'm not sounding very uh maybe this isn't making a lot of sense, but I'm j what I'm just saying is you have to put in the time, you have to put in the effort, you have to be dedicated to it and understand uh and make yourself a better writer every day. Because, you know, it's just but again, he is a fabulous storyteller and his I I love how he can bring out so many things as a storyteller, like not just plot, but imagination, first of all, but also just everything from dialogue to the the little things in between the the conversations, everything he's just really good at it. And so that's why I bring him up.

SPEAKER_02 30:02

Aaron Ross Powell Okay, Matt. So 2016 you started. How long was it before you started to notice a little bit of momentum in um say daily downloads?

SPEAKER_00 30:16

Um I let me think about this for a second. So I think the first thing I did was I published a few episodes and then it was like, well, what do I do? Uh well now that I've got those. And I hopped on to I ultimately got onto Reddit and found a subreddit that uh of history podcasts, and they let you post your episodes. And that was the very first thing I ever really did to start getting some people to show up. And from there, it was a very steady growth. It was um I think I think that I doubled my my traffic every year for about five years. And so in that first year, I probably I think within a year I was getting close to I was up to like a thousand downloads uh for an episode. And um and it was like, oh, this is it's growing and it's it was slowly growing. And I I unfortunately don't have all those old stats because I moved my host after about a year and a half. But I think the thing that really got me uh growing was in about a year, year and a half, um, I had a little over a year after I had started, I was approached by a network, a new network of history people. They were organizing a history show and they were like, Would you want to be part of this? And they liked it because they like they said you have a really quality show, which was you know, nice to hear. And um they uh and so I got put on a network, so I got a part of this network, and they they paid for my hosting, so that was the biggest thing at the time. It's like, hey, I'm actually not paying money to make a podcast, you know. Um so that was cool. And after a few months, after six months, I started getting, you know, like every month I'd get like a check for $30 or something like that. And so it steadily grew from at that point, I think that year and a half mark. And you know, it became exponential when you think about it, because if I went if I did, you know, a couple thousand downloads a month after a year, I was doing 4,000. Then the next year I was doing the six. And it was even more that better than that. And um being on the network was helpful also, just that it introduced me to other people and I did start networking a little bit, and we supported each other. Someone organized ad swaps, things like that. And uh and I also got onto social media a little more than set up Twitter and uh Facebook pages. And I think Twitter was the best thing at the time for me, um, where I just started following other shows, other people of interest, and then I would share and they would share my stuff. And I think that was the the biggest thing that helped me.

SPEAKER_02 33:16

Okay. So it's been pretty steady then the entire journey. Just a nice slow uh trajectory to the right.

SPEAKER_00 33:24

Yeah. Yeah. I think it it uh the biggest uh last year I I think I started like, oh, I'm starting the plateau. So I went from 900,000 downloads in the year to 1.5. So it's like, well, I didn't quite double like I did the last couple years. And I was thinking this year I was hoping to, you know, just go up to 2 million downloads in a year. Well, I've already done that, so mission accomplished. Thank you, Elon. Absolutely. But uh yeah, it's been it was slow. And so at this point, it's uh you know, I was like, uh, you know, if I if I grow, you know, like I said, you know 25 percent, 20 percent, I I would have been happy with that, but I did that. So now it comes next year, which is going to be tough.

SPEAKER_02 34:11

Amazing, Matt. You know, I mean, two million downloads in a year puts you right at the tail end of the most consumed shows on the planet.

SPEAKER_00 34:20

It's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 34:22

Yeah. Yes. It is crazy. Congratulations, mate. That's phenomenal.

SPEAKER_00 34:25

Thank you. And it's it's like I say, it's one of those things I just go, that's weird. You know.

SPEAKER_02 34:30

All right. So where are you at now with the show? Can it support your life or do you still keep a regular job?

SPEAKER_00 34:36

Um I have uh for about I have always had since I started it uh a regular job uh doing freelance work in uh internet development and maintenance and content management. Um but for about uh for about two years ago, I gradually started trimming those, my clients, off off the uh off the table. I'm to the point this year where I was only down, I'm down to just a couple and I don't do that much for them. And I was definitely looking as 2024 as this is my life, and that that podcasting is is my my job. And uh in basically that's been just pushed up a little bit. So now I can definitely um say that podcasting is my primary thing in the world, and that's what it is going forward. Yeah, and but it's not like I'm making, you know, $100,000 or anything like that. It's not like I make, you know, $10,000 a month or anything. It's like I I'm I I would be I'm thrilled with what I get. And I'm lucky that I my wife um has been very successful at what she does, and we're happy and we're successful. So um I'm lucky there. But uh yeah, it is it is a job, and it is um it would be even if I was on my own and so forth, live in an apartment, it would be my job going, especially since the Elon thing hit, it's uh given me definitely a boost in uh ad revenues.

SPEAKER_02 36:13

And is uh all the revenue you rating ads?

SPEAKER_00 36:17

No, it's very little is me reading ad ads. So it's just plugins from other ads. Yeah, it's most of programmable ads. They just uh I have a as a as a uh history show focused um a lot on Western civilization type stuff, it's not it's it's very male-oriented, a little older. Um it's not the ideal thing for advertisers, you know. Um so I'm getting a lot of uh just generic uh programmable ads. I still get some stuff, you know, like once a month I might have a uh a read for someone, but it's my my uh my niche is just not that uh attractive for advertisers.

SPEAKER_02 37:02

Okay. Well, what do you make of the other content creators um who have similarly sized audiences to you, bigger audiences than you, but who are really building um great businesses off the back of the content that they produced? Do you look at these guys and see any inspiration for something to do yourself?

SPEAKER_00 37:23

Do you have any examples of who you're you're thinking about?

SPEAKER_02 37:27

Yeah, totally. So there's a YouTuber called Ryan Hall, Ryan something. Um he's got three, four million subscribers, and he basically sells maps. Uh so he's got like a history/slash geopolitics channel, and uh he um has partnered with someone and they make custom maps for people. And I don't know how well that business is doing for him, but that's just one that stands out. There are other great examples, Chris Williamson, James Smith, who are more um just regular interview type podcasters, they just launch their own drink. Um, you know, these are very like high-end examples, but I'm just imagining with yourself, uh, is there a product? Is there someone who's approached you and said, you know, we're gonna do actually, you know what? One that would stand out to me would just be like um uh a high-end luxury adventure company. You know, I could totally see them partnering with you because uh presumably your audience is gonna be falling into their niche. Um, they've have a bit of fernva in them, they have this lust for exploration. So um, yeah, that's my own projection and the examples that came to mind.

SPEAKER_00 38:38

Yeah, and um I I personally when people are able to do that, I'm like thrilled for them. You know, I think that um one of the things uh about podcasting is it's not a silo of something and I'm a podcaster and that's it. Um for a lot of people, uh podcasting is one avenue of marketing a brand or marketing a product. And a lot of people who create product podcasts are creating it based upon uh something else and to supplement what they've done. You know, I think of a lot of you know, you have a lot of like uh business entrepreneur type people and they like have they started with newsletters and a blog and they might do tours and things like that, and now they do a podcast. That's fabulous. As for myself, um I the the the only things I could see that would really work. Now you mentioned like the adventure travel or something like that. The the only thing I could see that would really fall in would be more partnerships with organizations. Uh and example would be like the Explorers Club or one of some of these other uh large and you know, National Geographic, you know, Smithsonian, whatever. The problem is is they already have their own stuff. Might not be very good, but uh one of the one of the issues that comes up is I do have a a topic that anyone can do if they really want. Uh so uh and they do do it in some ways, but uh they they want to a lot of the bigger organizations want to control their their intellectual property, so they don't want to necessarily bring in someone else to to to partner with in that respect. But I could see if someone offered some sort of opportunities uh doing that, I don't necessarily see products or anything. I'm just not sure how viable I am of as a flagship brand or whatever you want to call it. Um and uh you know it's not like uh, oh I'm gonna sell coffee. I don't even drink coffee, but um, you know, it it it's history. And um the one thing that could that would seem to dovetail would probably be more of like writing a book. And and while I really I I admire, I would love to be able to be an author and write a book, but I don't know if I I've never I haven't tried it in this field, and I don't know if I would ever do it. It just it's a lot of work. And you know, and there are people like Mike Duncan, I guess, is you know example of a person who has been very successful in both areas of that now. But the amount of work that he puts into that, I just don't know if I want to do that. It's like I'm 59, I'm old, I don't want to do that much work. And uh I people will say, Do you think of yourself as a historian? And I say, no, I take all the great work that historians have done and tell their stories, you know, in in my own way. So I'm not sure if I I could ever do that. It's not something I necessarily would have. I have had people approach me about different things, you know, but it's it's you know, like, oh, you should go on tour. And you know, it's like, yeah, no, that's it's not gonna happen. I'm not that I'm not that important. Um, and that's one thing is I I just tell people I'm not that important. And I don't have other outlets that have made me that important. Like, like I said, you know, you could have the person who's been 10 years been doing entrepreneurial, you know, how to build your business uh in many ways, and they have dedicated hardcore fans and they paid for, you know, and they're willing to pay for that kind of stuff, but it's I don't think I just don't see my my niche as as being that that sort of thing. Although, you know, if someone contacted me and they had an idea, I'd be like, well, okay, I'll think about it. But um uh I've had I've the only thing I've really had was I had some interest I had an interest in a uh Hollywood producer who who who has pitched some ideas to some people, but uh the biggest problem is just you know mostly white Western men stories like these aren't real um aren't real popular in in in entertainment circles right now in that regard. Just because a lot of those stories have been told and people want to have Hollywood wants to have like a a more uh um which is cool. They want to have a more diverse look at the world and and that's fine. But it doesn't mean something couldn't happen, but go to Ibn Battuta.

SPEAKER_02 43:23

Yeah, I mean that would be one of the most epic peer piece movies ever.

SPEAKER_00 43:28

Yeah, yeah. My my my biggest thing with Ibn Battuta is uh is uh and the same with like Marco Polo, and I guess you know and uh Netflix did a series a while ago on that, is there isn't an ultimate payoff in a in an endgame story. Uh one of the great things of like Magellan, you know, the very first person I ever covered is you finish up and you go around the world and it's like that's like awesome, you know, th where you have this like Well, he didn't make it. He dies in the waters off the Philippines. But, you know, there is a a a definite kind of like beginning and end sort of thing to it. Sometimes when you have successful people like that, there isn't a quote-unquote beginning and end. And, you know, and you certainly can take a sliver of a person's life. Richard Francis Burton is one of my favorite all-time travelers, explorers, but he doesn't he ends up, you know, just dying at age 69 or whatever it was, you know, in old age. And you know, he went through all sorts of weird things, but w there as a as a story, his big thing is, you know, the Africa stuff, uh his af African explorations. And they did make a a book and a movie about that that sliver of his life. And so um so that would probably be more like uh the kinds of things that uh uh explorers would uh um would cover. But but Ibn Battuta, as you said, it was just an incredible story over like you know, 30 years of of time, over how many tens of thousands of miles. It's just just astounding. It's just astounding. And you know, of course, you know, told 700 years ago. So that's the amazing thing too, that it happened in, you know, and I I compare it to Marco Polo in is in certain ways, and his is the same way, just you know, over 30 years and 25 years that these people did this stuff and the things, the places they went and the things they did was just wow. It's just amazing.

SPEAKER_02 45:39

Yeah. It's great in the true uh sense of that word. But isn't that interesting that like a a story, even though it could be filled with the most drama and adventure, it sort of requires that that closed circle at the end to be appealing to people. That's that's a super interesting thing I'd never sort of realized.

SPEAKER_00 46:06

I look at it, I tell this uh about about a lot of great explorers, a lot of people who've done amazing things. One of the difficult things is if you don't I call it I talk about this actually with author Julian Sancton in my last in one of the more recent episodes when I wrapped up the Belgique expedition. And um for people to remember what you did and for people to recognize what you did, it's gotta be easily understood by the audience. So if I say Ibn Battuta traveled 70,000 miles through Africa, Asia, Middle East, um, India, blah, blah, blah, that sounds interesting. Okay, that's cool. But then you say Ferdinand Jellin sailed around the world, first person ever. People's eyes will go, well, that sounds interesting. And you know, because you can't you can't put I I call it I said it's it's what you can put on your business card, you know, or you can put as as your your achievements on your resume. You know, Ferdinand Magellan survives, let's say, and he he makes a resume for his next job, the first thing he can put is first person to sail around the world. And that grabs a person's attention and that grabs the public's attention. And so when people don't have what I call like a signature thing, you know, Christopher Columbus discovered the new world. Lewis and Clark crossed the first first major expedition across the the Americas. That sort of a thing is very easy to translate in an understandable way to the layperson to and they understand that. And it also means you can, you know, I tell you the I said earlier on about establishing ramifications of of uh uh of what you're doing. It's like going around the world, it's very easy. If you fail, you die. If you succeed, you have opened up the world in a way that no one in the history of the world has ever done. So when you have those that ability to sort of hone in on uh that signature moment or that signature event in in a in a person's life, it does make it easier to sell, as opposed to say, a body of work like an Ibn Battuta, like a Richard Francis Burton. People who did extraordinary stuff, and in some ways, by by not screwing up, they they were able to they they they were able to get back. And it kind of flies under the radar sometimes, because sometimes the uh amazing story is the failure. You know, people think Shackleton and they think, oh, endurance. And it's like, well, you know, you realize he probably shouldn't have gotten stuck in the ice in the first place, and in which case then we could have just skipped the rest of the story and he could have just died trying to cross Antarctica. Um so it's a very different story sometimes, just depending on what those things are are understandable by the average person. And and like I say, it's I guess it's a it's a PR marketing thing, even if it was done a thousand years ago or five hundred years ago. But uh, you know, those guys were all trying to raise money to do stuff. And so to say that they were mar weren't marketing is wrong. Those guys are definitely shilling themselves out at the courts of uh Spain or France or wherever to try to make to try to get some coin to go do, make to make more money for themselves.

SPEAKER_02 49:51

One of the great Australian oh, sorry, one of the great explorers, um, another person who was the first to do something, James McDouell. What did you learn about Australia in researching this story?

SPEAKER_00 50:03

Um Well the uh I I love Australia, first of all. I first got um I first got involved with it when I did the Burke and Wills expedition uh a few years ago, which is one of the greatest examples of how not to conduct an expedition in in history. It is epically awesome. Uh people dying by stupidity and and tragedy. Um it's also, I mean, uh men attempting to do incredibly difficult things. I mean, very incredibly brave people, but also just foolish and and unwise. It's also very well documented, which is nice in the sense that uh um we have very deep very good details about the expedition. Um and I I always tell people, listen to Lewis and Clark and then listen to the Burke and Wills, and you will get uh two very similar things, but uh, you know, two very different results. And um uh I I loved I I never knew I guess I will say I never knew that much about Australia until I did that. And I certainly did not know much about the Australian interior um than what I when I did the Birkin Wills expedition. And that was what introduced me to John McDouell Stewart. I love the guy. He was just this whiskey swilling, cranky weirdo. And he was just brilliant at what he did, though. When he when he got out in the field, he would stop drinking. I mean, he was this horrible alcoholic, yet he would get out in the field and he was straight and narrow, kept everyone in line, never lost people, that sort of thing. It was it was amazing what he did. Um and I I learned one thing about the Australian people is they're the I get I do very well in Australia. They love me. Uh they love the show. They they came, I don't think anyone has come out of the woodwork more than to make fun of my my pronunciations than the Australians. And um and uh they're all good natured about it. Well, one guy was a was a was a jerk, but all of them are just and they can't contradict each other because they'll be like, that's how those people will say it. It's the way it should be this. And and uh you know, but uh uh they're all very good natured. And I think they just appreciate that people are looking at some of these great stories that a lot of people just have never heard of.

SPEAKER_02 52:40

We were just stoked to get a mention on the world stage.

SPEAKER_00 52:44

It it that can be, but I I think it was just uh um it Australia, they don't realize what a uh a Wild West type situation it was. You know, people think of the exploration of of America, of North America in particular, as the West, you know, with the Lewis and Clark and stuff like that. And yet that exact stuff takes place in Australia in probably even more uh uh inhospitable and uh and crazy. Yeah, and um and so forth. So that is that was the stuff that was just really wild to understand. And like I say, if you tell someone, do you know about the California Gold Rush? And people will be like, sure, 1849, Sutter's Creek, and blah, blah, blah. And if you talk about the Australian gold rush, and their eyes will glaze over. I don't know. Yet the the Australian, you know, kind of gold rushes, and there's kind of a different waves of them, were just as good, if not bigger, than than you had in in California, if I'm correct. And it's just the stories are just amazing. And um, and so those those are just great stuff. That's just really fun stuff to learn. Um on the the McDouell Stewart story, um I also I I loved, I learned a ton about the native Aboriginal people. That was wild. I had kind of delved into it a bit with um with the Burk and Wills expedition, but I I was someone emailed me a gentleman from I think the University of Newcastle, and he uh he knew all this stuff about it, and he told me he wrote me back all these stories about what was going on, and that was incredible. And that was really fun to give a little bit of a of a perspective from uh the native perspective, not just Australia, but anywhere, is often lacking. And um and that was really cool to understand some of those things. Uh that's super cool. So I I learned a ton doing that. And uh and um and I just with the with the Australians, it's just I love the people, they just love it. I love that they get so excited and they people would email me and you know, message me, oh you know, I love John McDowell Stewart, and or I love the Burke and Wills is actually that's a great story, or you should know this person and that person, and of course, and uh uh but I I I'll tell you this story, uh best one of the best stories I ever had. Um four gentlemen, uh late 60s, uh after they heard the Burke and Wills expedition uh story, they went on a car ride and recreated the Burke and Wills expedition uh uh in their car and drove across Australia and back. And uh but but the funny part was they and they listened to they said they listened to the show and um they they said they they they mocked me the whole way because I I called Meninde Menindee or in and the whole time for like the first three episodes. And so they they mocked me by saying, We're going to Menindee instead of Menindee. And uh and uh so they had a good they had a good nose. But they emailed me and and I uh I actually recorded this little like minute segment introducing the their show, uh their their trip, and they put it to a piece of of of uh of like clips. It was for one of the gentlemen who was unfortunately had some health issues and they wanted to do a party for him for his 70th birthday, but it was really sweet, and they sent me back. They all got on camera and thanked me and all that kind of thing, and and uh um and and they all had the everyone they always loved to yell Land Ho, you know, because of the beginning of the show. But it was it was cute. It was really fun that it inspired someone. And like I just the Australian people were just so nice and they they were so excited about it, and that was that was just a great story.

SPEAKER_02 56:53

Oh, that's brilliant, mate. And I'm stoked uh that I've uncovered this deep admiration you have from Australia. I had no idea. Um you said something really interesting there as well, making the comparison between America's Wild West and Australia's Wild West. What is your explanation for why that's not more better documented through various bits of media, movies, TV shows, books, etc.? Because I I mean I grew up in a trail I know I really don't know any um interesting or fun details about it, yet I mean it must have been completely lawless.

SPEAKER_00 57:31

Um I think you know there are some stories, of course, you know, like as I think it's like Ned Kelly and some of these uh Wild West type people. But you know, the simple fact is Australia was uh and is not nearly as populo as as obviously as the United States. And you know people talk about themselves, and it's just easy to ignore, you know, all those other things. I can probably say that you could probably say what you're exactly what you're saying with regards to Canada. You know, there are these incredible stories of of Canadian in the Canada in Canada, and most Americans don't necessarily know that much about them. And uh you know, there there was a strong romantization, romanticization of the American West. Part of that probably is Hollywood. And um, if you did any if you've ever looked at any sort of film history, American Westerns were crazy, crazy popular in Europe, in Italy, in France, England. They were hugely popular. And so um that's where the money was. I think that you know, people get on the bandwagon, okay, we're gonna make one show about American West, we'll do that. And certainly you have the talent and you have the the people there to make it happen, as opposed to Australia, which might be a little bit more spread out and just not have as much financing. But um i it's a hard one. But you know, I can look at, you know, some of the like Australian shows. Um, like I said, I've always been a sucker for mysteries, and my wife loves things like Brit box and and you know, these uh these British oriented things. But we get things like um um Miss Fisher mysteries and things like that. And these and they're wonderful. They're just wonderful good old school mysteries. And so that stuff is there. I think it's just probably um I think there's a reluctance uh stop a second and just say I think there's a reluctance to try and sell stuff that might have obstacles to the listener, to the viewers, so or the listeners. So if I'm doing something in Australia and if someone's doing if someone's doing something in Australia and they bring it to an American producer or whoever, and they'll be like, well, my audience won't understand that um because of the dialogue, because of whatever. I can just go get a Western from Hollywood and it's easier. There's the old school there's the old saying about like, will it play in Peoria? And Peoria is in Illinois, in the middle of the Midwest, not far, you know, just a few hours from where I live. And the idea being was if it can't play in like the basist place in the United States, they don't want to mess with it because it's just it's not worth it to them. So right or wrong.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:47

What is a great Australian story that maybe you came across or a great individual that deserves their own explorer's uh deep dive?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:00

Um I think the first person I want I definitely wanted to do and that I was messing with as opposed to McDougal Stewart, I loved uh Ludwig uh Leichhart or I can't remember. German guy, he was one of the first explorers of the um of the interior of of Australia. He did a I think he went from probably Brisbane or something like that, and he went across the northern part of Australia, and um I can't remember all the rivers that uh at the time now, but he and he's he succeeded and he it was brilliant. And he went back for a second time and no one's ever found him. So there's a great mystery there. Um he they found like his belt buckle like like 30 years later or 50 years later. He was he was great. Um and oh, it's killing me now the names. But there are several other guys who did expeditions that literally trying to cross from east to west, that was just nuts. You know, and they did they ran into the same stuff that all these guys run into, scurvy, things like that. Um but uh um yeah, I don't have any specific uh Matthew Flinders, I think, did a lot of stuff in the in the north, but uh Ludwig, I'm sorry, I don't know, can't pronounce it. He's a he's a German, which is funny because no one is actually Australian in these first 50 years such a funny detail. John McDuell, sir, Scottish and you know, and uh you know, things like that. Aaron Ross Powell Yeah. When do they become Australian, I guess? Yeah. But uh uh yeah, a lot of them aren't. And a lot of them show up there, hang out a while, and then they go back to England when they make their money.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:51

So of all the people you've covered, who's closest to your heart?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:00

Oh, that's a tough one. Um I have uh I've always I've I said it uh earlier in the show, in the in our conversation here. Um I've always had this huge soft spot for Richard Francis Burton. Um Richard Francis Burton spoke twenty-nine languages. He was crazy. He sabotaged his career every chance he could get because he couldn't handle conventions of society. He was uh uh considered one of the finest swordsmen in Europe. He was um he tr he was not afraid to to venture into taboo stuff. He was a poet. He translated uh Asian script like the Kama Sutra, you know, things that you weren't supposed to be, that was considered against the law, actually, in a lot of places. Um and he was an explorer and he was a soldier, and he was uh a ferociously amazing man. Um he was also had these horrible, at times terribly racist type views of things, but also very liberal views. It was really weird, um, where he would um uh you know be like, you know, stupid, dumbass British people, which was himself. Yet he would also then claim that mantle of being like the civilized British guy. But I always loved he took a spear through his face, literally from one side of his face to the other in a fight, and and within a few months was signing up to go fight in Crimea. And um and then he and he kept coming back. Um I always loved him because of he had a big just middle finger towards anyone that he thought was inferior or stupid, which was most people. And I just I I ensured I appreciate people like that in these stories just because they're fun. And I read he was one of the first people I ever read about that made me just want to like know about explorers. So when I did cover him, it was great. I learned a lot, you know, the the not so fun stuff about him, but I also learned the really wacky stuff that just made me enjoy him. So that was really, really a good one. I also have a I have a soft spot for people who do things right, even if they maybe aren't my favorite people or the favorite stories. I I always, you know, like I I appreciate, for instance, when Lewis and Clark go on this epic three, whatever, four-year journey, and they do so much right. And they get back. You know, they lost one guy who was an appendix burst, so it wasn't really their fault. And that they could go off with like thirty people or whatever it was and come back several years later and have and do what they did, I I I admired that. That tremendously. Especially when you consider things like Birk and Wills and people who don't do things right. Um I um, you know, another person I'll just mention, and it's very, very easy to mention, Ernest Shackleton. Um the thing about Shackleton is that he was not that great of an explorer. I say this. He did some great things. You know, he's doing some really cool stuff as an explorer. But he I don't know if there's anyone who's more inspiring with what he did. You know, I mean, when he sails across the ocean to get to South Georgia Island in this 22-foot boat, it's just beyond it's unimaginable that he made it. And that he even got to that point. You know, as the ship got crushed and they sailed, you know, spent months and months and over a year like stuck on the ice, that he got to that point where he could even try it. And then he gets there and he has to, him and two other guys have to cross a mountain. They have to go on top of a mountain which has n which had never been crossed before. If you look at the map of the time, it's like it's like South Georgia Island. It's like here's the little s the the the towns and villages, and then there's just a big blank in the middle. They just, it's just mountains, you know, no one knows how tall they no one knows any passes. And they and he did that. And that was just amazing. So I I love that story. Shacklet himself was a fascinating guy. In some ways, I appreciate him, even if he was a kind of a scummy womanizing type alcoholic. But, you know, I also have a appreciation for, you know, you know, like these misfits that find their their their way in life uh in some way. So I do appreciate that. Um I think that uh one of my early favorite episodes I ever did was on Mungo Park, who was a Scottish explorer, went down, was the first European to reach the um the Niger River. And I think one of the things I found out from him was you don't need to have a lot to be a good explorer. You just need to have smarts. Um in fact, sometimes going small and like that um leads you to success. And he did two expeditions. One with it was just him and a and another guy, and then he did it again with a big group and no one ever saw him again. Um but uh I love I I found out, and like I say, I think I I find a lot of stories like that where you just admire um people who are resourceful and innovative um and they're able to survive in in odd situations because they they use their they use their smarts. Um and uh it's not always just about you know, like, hey, you go around the corner and shoot someone and keep going. And uh so I do appreciate that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:55

On the subject of admiring people that do it right, um are very resourceful and um uh you know to just go around the corner shooting people in their way, but rather actually become a part of whatever communities they're traveling through. Are you familiar with James Holman?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:12

James Holman, he is the the blind traveler, is that what he was called? The blind traveler. Yes, yes. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:19

Um Did you read the biography written about him?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:24

No, I have not. Um I know it's on my list. In fact, uh uh I was uh uh Baker, I think is the guy who wrote it. But yeah, he in I've read um uh it it's fascinating stuff. And he he it's what I find so I guess uh what I say what I was so fascinating was I've I've read Holman's some of Holman's own books, which is I find fascinating because he writes them and you don't know he's blind when he writes them. You know, he doesn't reference you think he's gonna be like, I smell this and I touch this, and he's like, no, it's none of that. And that's what I was so amazed about. But I have not read his book. And and he'll get on there someday. He's a fascinating man, I mean, circumnavigating the world um by himself, you know, and it's like and and I think one of the things that happens is that is because you're you're not a you're not you're not a uh a threat to anyone when you're uh a blind man on your own going around the world. So I think a lot of in a lot of cultures, you know, you just like help the guy along to the next stage. And I think it's one of the things that happened, and that's happened with Mungo Park. He was by himself and he made friends and people helped him along to the next stage. And because he was just a guy by himself, and um, I guess the only ones who didn't let him were the Russians who uh had thought he was faking being blind and was a spy. But uh uh, you know, it's it's an amazing story. Amazing story.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:01

I'll uh I'll send this to you when we stop recording, but I'll also just point the audience towards um episode number 83. I had on a guy called Brian Bashin, who's the CEO of the Lighthouse Foundation. It's this very, very large um um foundation for the blind in America. Brian Bashin himself is a blind man, and he was actually going to set out to do this biography on James Holman because he's just the most inspirational sort of person that blind people learn about. He's a guy before the internet, before technology, circumnavigated the world, went to all these different countries, navigated different languages, navigated different climates, and the man couldn't see a thing. So it's just and um Brian um gives Yeah, so the reason I bring that up is just because Brian is potentially like the world expert, the world authority on uh this fella James Holman, and he was just giving these fantastic anecdotes about this man who went blind in his uh twenties. James Holman went blind in his 20s.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:03

You know, so he'd been in a he'd been uh uh in the Navy, I think.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:07

Yes. And so um all the way until the end of his days, he could still navigate his way around a ship, no problem at all. Apparently still climb the mast, all types of you know, impressive things like this. Uh yeah. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:21

To climb a mast. I mean, I couldn't do that now. It's I couldn't do that 40 years ago when I was, you know, 19. I would be like, no, that's someone else's job.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:32

What about these explorers who aren't documented in history? What's your sense for it? Um say for instance, like the ancient Egyptian who made his way to Sweden, you know, or the Native American who made his way down to the Incas. Like what little tidbits have you picked up in your research um of whispers of these types of characters?

SPEAKER_00 1:13:00

Um there's there's lots of those little tidbits. Um and and they're fascinating. Uh the toughest part is uh trying to form an episode around them is uh is hard. It might be the kind of thing where someday I'll be like, you know, like weird stories and I'll just put like a collection of of of the little anecdotes together. But uh some of them are so cool. And sometimes what we get from them are it's amazing how much you can get out of some of these things. And I have done a few episodes where like Hanno the Navigator, a Carthaginian guy, sailed down the African coast, the the West African coast. We literally have a thing called a peripolis, which is like like a a stone uh a stone listing of what he did that was on a temple in like you know 500 BC. And we have a translation of that like a thousand years later. So we don't even have the original, you know, and we have it's it's been probably copied from a copy from a copy from a copy. Yet from that we can we can tell a story about what this guy did, and it and it's pretty amazing. Um so things like that, or of uh Pythias. Pythias is Pythias was a Greek uh in Marseille in uh third century BCE, I think. But anyways, he sailed around, supposedly around England. He took a boat around or went up, I can't remember if he sailed around Spain, but anyways, yes, he did. And then he went up to England and he was the first person to supposedly circumnavigate the the British Isles. Uh but we have like three sentences about this, or four sentences. I can't remember how many it is. And one of the primary ones, and and these are hundreds of years later. These are like from I don't know if it's Pliny or whoever, but anyways, one of them is mocking the supposed tale of this guy. Um, like he doesn't really exist, and he said he did this, this, and this. Yet he also then is mentioned in other things, so it's we we also think he did exist. So we have to use this one guy's mocking sentences to help fill in the blanks of what he did. So um so that was that's really cool. Now, the thing is for me, one of the the biggest and most difficult things with these stories is it's literally like we have a front and an endpoint. This guy from here traveled all the way to here, and we don't know anything in between. Because, you know, so we have that sentence, and uh like with the thing of like Pythias, there's some descriptions of some of the things he supposedly visited. And uh Hanno, same thing. He has some descriptions of the peoples and the stuff like that along the way. Uh so those things are really difficult to write more than a few paragraphs about. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:14

Because the richness you want is their interactions and how people responded to them, yeah. The clash of cultures.

unknown 1:16:20

Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:20

Yeah, but like the the Egyptian stories are fascinating. I mean, there's a story of a whole Egyptian army going, I think, south, you know, like 50,000 guys and end up going into the desert and get lost, you know. And it's like, what the hell? That that would be a great story, but I don't I can't go any of them are so fascinating sounding, but again, you just don't have anything. One of them, one of the thing the stories I love was um uh Mansa Musa. There's a there's in uh uh uh the Kingdom of Mali around the 13th, 14th century around, and there was a guy named Mansa Musa. Uh Mansa is king, so king Musa. He uh at one point traveled from uh from uh the kingdom of Mali, went through and then went up to Cairo and on into uh Saudi Arabia on his Hajj. He was in Islam, uh he was a Muslim. And along the he's famous because he brought so much stuff. He brought like just like gold that like whacked the system, the economic system for for the Middle East for like a decade. He, you know, he had thousands, tens of thousands of uh people in his retinue, and it was just this unbelievable thing. Well, a writer or a scribe in, I think it was Cairo, talked to the king and he asked, How did you become king? And he says, he tell told the story of his predecessor who had heard about a land. Now he's on the west coast of Africa, Banzamusa. His predecessor had heard of a land across the ocean, and everyone said you couldn't reach it. So he got together 200 ships of men and 100 ships of men and 100 ships of supplies and sent them out, or 200, whatever it was, sent them out, and they came and only one came back. And they told the story of finding a big river, and the men went down the river, and the ships went down the river, and none of them came back, so they came back. Well, the king then went, like, well, we're gonna go find this. So he got 2,000 ships, a thousand ships for men and a thousand ships for supplies, and he went with it this time, never came back. And then at Montsomusa goes, and that's how I became king. And it's just like, wait, you just told this incredible story, and that's all I get. I don't even get the name of the guy. Because and and there's like disputes on who the the the king was that did that, but you know, that's like a story that if we had like a little more information, that would be fascinating, just fascinating. But I think that what we can do and what we will find, two different things. One, I think we will find more of these stories, especially with some Asian um Asian explorers, that we probably literally just do not know about at this point. Because there are places because a lot of this requires a culture that has uh a written language and surviving texts. And there are places in, you know, like that like the Buddhist monks and things like that have have had these uh documents for hundreds, if not thousands of years. And I bet at some point we're gonna be pulling out some stories. And like, here's the story of, you know, blah, blah, blah, who did this. And it's like, oh my God, we'd never heard that story. And and if you would think like, well, that's not never gonna happen. That is the exact story of if we talked about Ibn Battuta. You know, Ibn Battuta was really not known throughout the world until the early 1900s. And his story was basically sitting on some shelves in a few libraries in the Middle East, got found in early 1800s, 1890, 1820s, and finally parts of it got published, and then by it took another hundred years until this whole story really became known. So that would that there are some of these stories out there, like I say, in these monasteries in in Asia, I wouldn't be surprised. And then I I hope we can find them someday, because those are the kind of things where there's just stuff sitting on the shelf, probably telling these great stories. So that's the kind of thing I hope we find in the future. The thing that I think we can tell now that sort of gets into this thing is um maybe more of exploration uh movements and specifically uh the thing that I I want to do at some point, and people have asked me about this a lot, and that is like the Polynesians. Um, the Polynesians, you know, if people look at where the Polynesians went, they can trace all the way from Easter Island to Hawaii to New Zealand. Um I mean, this is huge. It's huge. And to understand what happened, um we we we can't we don't have I mean they had no written language, they only had oral traditions, if I'm I'm gonna. So they did not have uh a written language, so we don't have any documentation have documentation about it. We have some stories and things like that, but for the most part, it's archaeological evidence about where they went, um, you know, at what times they arrived at different places. And I think that that's a good story at some point about the Polynesian uh explorers, but we don't have a person, we won't have years, we won't have uh that sort of information. But we probably can tell a good story and understand uh how the Polynesian culture spread throughout the the Pacific, uh, which like I say is is a great story. And there's probably other things like that that are available, but it's you know it's a matter of me kind of like finding those stories and taking the time. You know, and it is, it ultimately is. It's just you know, me figuring out a story that sounds interesting and going with it. I hope you make that episode.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:33

Uh the weird episode. Yeah. Um what about if you could project yourself back into any time period? What do you think would be the most fascinating for exploration?

SPEAKER_00 1:22:47

Oh man, no one's ever done that to me. I in uh uh I mean I think that that there is uh just a incredible uh allure and uh maybe it's r uh romanticizing the the period and that is just the at that early stages of the age of discovery, you know, the the age of Columbus, of Magellan, of of of those sorts of things. Because when you think about it, you know, and this is approaching it from a Western viewpoint, um North America, South America, Australia, I mean, no one knew they existed, you know. And that's an amazing thing that over the next a hundred years once once Christopher Columbus lands in the New World, for Europe, it exposes, you know, half the world. And in a hundred years, these places are basically unveiled to the world. And that's an amazing, amazing time. And that would have been, I mean, I can't imagine what it would have been like to be like just a geographer, just a a m a cartographer, you know, a map maker, like every day getting new information, coming back to you. Well, we found this island here, and it's gotta update the maps. I mean, we don't have to do that nowadays, and and we did it for a long time. And that's that's amazing. Um, you know, I I was never a hu I didn't know that much about polar exploration, and it I find it fascinating as heck now. I don't necessarily would want to do that. I live in Wisconsin. It's cold here already, and I don't know what it would be like spending a year and two years slogging through ice. I I just can't imagine that. So those things don't really appeal to me that much. Um but uh I also though you know, one of the things that's really, really fun and cool is when you can walk in the steps of of certain explorers. And in the United States, um you can uh do that to a degree with, say, like, you know, Lewis and Clark. And it's fun, you know, you can you know there's a whole Lewis and Clark trail, and people have people have have written me and told me how they we listened to your show while we we f we we followed the the Lewis and Clark expedition, and uh um and I loved when uh uh when Stephen Ambrose, who wrote uh Undaunted Courage, which is one of the great books about the Lewis and Clark uh of Meriwether Lewis in this case, but of the expedition, uh, you know, he said him and his wife, they like hopped in the canoes and followed where they could, you know, followed just like Lewis and Clark did and things like that. That's cool. And uh I think I I I always tell this story. I was uh I was in Montana at Glacier National Park, and we went down to a place uh along the park, and they had a little monument, and this was uh um I can't remember the spot, but it was a spot where Lewis and Clark had camped out. And um, and you know, I sat there and I read the monument, you know, the thing, and I was just like, you know, I'm looking at something that was probably the exact same look that Lewis and Clark probably looked at, you know, um 200 years ago. And that was like that's pretty cool. Um so I think it's fun to be able to think about like that. Um maybe it's getting off the question a little bit, but I was just in Canada and was up in Quebec City and in Montreal. And there's that too, you know, to stand on top of Mount Royal and over in in in Montreal and just think, you know, like, wow, you know, guys like, you know, Champlain and stuff stood up here going like, hey, this would be a nice spot for a city, you know, or whatever. And uh um and uh in Quebec City standing up on the old walls and just uh uh you know imagining those things, that would be that's pretty cool. So I I I can't say any particular period because I do love not having scurvy and smallpox and things like that. But uh I think there's probably, like I say, if you going back, probably that age of discovery things, there's just the world changed so dramatically. And uh and I think I say it in the Columbus series, I say, I do it's probably you know, when when they discover when when Columbus reaches the new world, there is probably no more, you know, uh unbelievable moment in in human history because it changes what uh everyone knows about the world uh from everywhere. You know, the certainly the people in in the Americas did not know anything about the people in Europe and vice versa. And it opens up uh so much and the world changed so rapidly at that point and in crazy ways. So it it was just a fascinating time.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:54

Yeah, even with all the risk and disease um and total Uncertainty. Could you just imagine the sheer thrill of pulling up to a shore, seeing people who look nothing like anything you've ever seen before? Maybe these are gods, you know? Maybe they're not. It would have just been, I mean, impossibly, impossibly thrilling. But that's my own projection onto it.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:20

Yeah. And and it's for everyone. It would have it just beyond all the good and bad things, and often for a lot of people who are not. Yeah, take morality ethics away from it. Just from a pure interest kind of view. What have we just seen? I can't imagine when that those ships pulled up on shore what the Native peoples must have thought. Now I just started it. And Humboldt, when he arrives in South America, the first thing he does is he like uh sits down with a native person and just sits there and talks with them all night long just to learn stuff. And and so I love that curiosity about learning other people and meeting other people. I think that's cool. And and a lot of people don't care about that in these stories. Um, but uh some people do, and it's very important to them.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:20

Well, at the other end of the edge of exploration, I mean, right now I can zoom into a pretty decent pixel any place on the planet. Do you think there's any more room for explorers and exploration?

SPEAKER_00 1:29:35

Um Exploration I think there's a couple there's a few different places that that this can go, that exploration can go. And I think and certainly we I think we have to do it. It's it's it's part of human human nature. We just we have to go look over the hot the hill, you know, what's on that other side. It it's human nature. The first the first and and obvious uh thing that we can still do is is going to be off this planet. Now, that's obviously, you know, the moon, Mars, all those kinds of things, and those are are probably beyond my my lifetime. But there is that out there, and that'll be extraordinary. I mean, just I mean, when you they they pop on, you know, you can pop on your online and it's like, hey, there's new pictures of the Mars Rop Mars rover, and you're just like, you get all excited, you know, and just like, hey, it looks like a crappy desert, but that's cool. You know. Um and it is, it's fascinating. And um and yet you uh we are fascinated by science fiction and uh and just science in in that regard. So I think that that there's that. Um where that all goes, I don't know. I would love to have Elon Musk on my show and talk about that. It would be a great story.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:49

Yeah, you should reach out to him.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:50

Yeah, he's a fan. I tweeted I tweeted back at him and invited him on the show, but they never got back to the never. I said, You should be on the show. We can talk explore exploration. It's like we don't have to talk about any of this other crap, you know, Twitter and politics. Screw that stuff. Or X or whatever. You know, we can just have fun and talk cool stuff.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:08

Um You know his um his granddad was a great explorer.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:12

I didn't know who that. I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:14

Yeah, so you should um you should, I mean, for sure, just taking the first couple chapters of his Walter Isaacson biography, I'm pretty sure it's his grandfather, his mother's father. He was a wild man who basically like, you know, sold the family car for an aeroplane, didn't know how to fly an airplane, um, but would take the and he was convinced he was going to find some some lost city out in the South African desert, and that's what they would do on the weekends. Um his granddad was a legit adventurer. Um, and so the biography goes, Elon inherited all of that from him.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:51

Okay. Uh and and I want to read uh that book. I just you know haven't I read so much now and it's always a plate. Yeah well, and and then when you do want to read other stuff, it's like I don't want to read. Um you're tired of reading after sometimes. You say, I just want to go, you know, watch a dumb British mystery or something like that. You know. But so I think the uh another area that we could explore, but I see limited potential in regards to at least in probably in my lifetime, on how cool it will be, I guess, if we want to use that term, is is is underwater. Um I mean, I think there's you know, there's all these really fascinating stories about, you know, guys like Ballard and stuff like that. People have done that, you know, the Jacques Cousteaux. Um those are all really good, but it is hard for people to grasp grasp those things, you know. We can say like, okay, deepest trench in the world. That's cool, I get that. And but then it's it's not like we're finding other cultures, it's not like we're finding lost cities, it's not like we're, you know, finding the mouth of a great river or great rivers or anything like that. So I think there's as regards to the appeal of exploration, um, there's the limit there. Plus, like exploration, there's a massive financial block there in that you can't just, you know, sail a boat out and go looking 20,000 feet under the water. Um so there's that. I do think that there are still going to be times where we find maybe it's more archaeology, you know. I think that there's still uh room out there to to find stuff, but it's more probably more arc archaeology in regards to what we'll be finding. And that is, you know, every day, you know, a lot of it based upon because we have you know all these great uh shots from outer space where they'll like little identify um here was an old building, and they'll like hone in and they'll find ancient Roman ruins or ancient Mayan ruins, things like that. And I think that they'll you know, we'll still find some really fascinating things amongst, you know, like the the rainforests and mountains and things like that uh dead in the deserts. Um but with regards to uh um the rest of the world, I think it it becomes not as much exploration as more adventuring, and it becomes people doing things uh in different ways or special ways, um like, oh, I'm going to cross the Antarctic uh uh cap you know on a bike, or I'm going to be the first person to do it, you know, using, you know, whatever. You know, there's all it's like, you know, so-and-so became the first man to do this or this without a dog, or you know, like it becomes more uh it becomes more of um of uh I would say adventuring and and uh records and doing it faster than anyone. Those are the kind of things. Um I did one story uh on a gentleman by the name of Matt Rutherford who uh who sailed around the Americas in a in a sailboat. Um I mean he went from one side of North America, sailed up through the Northwest Passage, down through uh around Cape Horn and back up. Um 300 days in a boat by himself. It was it was a it was an amazing story. But he didn't quote unquote discover anything at at the time. And and I look at that and just he was a fascinating man uh and uh it was a great story to tell. Still an explorer, yeah. Yeah, but um but it's it's a little different than what uh what we would have think of as an explorer, you know, even um you know, 50, 60 years ago. Because I think I think the the I think the big pinnacle of uh the the final big thing of discovery was reaching the top of Everest back in in the 1950s. I mean, there were still other peaks, and there's still some that haven't been summited because they're just too dangerous. But uh in in in the eyes of I think of the world in a lot of ways, that was the last kind of place on earth that uh, you know, that people knew about, I guess. I guess maybe that's we can discover stuff that doesn't exist that we don't know exists, and it's like, hey, it's new, it's cool. But we know where all the peaks are, we know where all the south the poles are, we've been there, done that, and we know where all the places are. As you said, we can just call up Google and zoom in on pretty much any place in the world nowadays. Um it doesn't mean we won't find some cool stuff, you know, hidden in the Amazon basin or something like that someday, or or in the the Mexican or the Central American uh jungles. So, but we don't know about those things at this point. Um, you know, so makes it a little difficult to think of it as as exploring anymore. Sure, like I say, it's kind of it's an adventure. I think it's adventurers and travelers. And you can say explorers, and I think that's totally good, but uh it's a little different than what we were doing in the past.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:13

Final two questions for you, Matt. These are ones I try to ask every guest that comes through. What is the role that serendipity has played in your life?

SPEAKER_00 1:37:47

Trying to think what would be. Let me think about that one. Do you have a second question you can ask me? Yes. Then we'll come back to the come back to that one.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:00

Sure. No, I like that. Um if you could witness a conversation between any two people of history, dead or alive, no language barrier, so it's a podcast. Who are you listening to?

SPEAKER_00 1:38:10

Oh man, you're like um you're like really opening up a can of worms here, aren't you? Uh people I I I guess I'm gonna go for someone really, really obvious here. And um I would love to see uh I would love to be able to sit and and see like Abraham Lincoln and George Washington talking. I find those two are some of the most some of my favorite people in in obviously you know American history as as as um I'm an American who were in such awful moments, not awful, but challenging moments that could have went so so bad. And uh they navigated them with uh incredible grace and dignity and and uh y just you know, maybe it's uh that's more of like who do I want to meet, you know. Uh but I would love to to understand to to see what how they would, you know, approach, you know. Just to listen to them. I mean, it's just an amazing thing, you know, because uh the world could be so different if those guys were not there or if they had done different made different decisions. Um so I I'm otherwise I'm attempting to I'm attempting to just think of like there's like someone is so cool. Um as a f old film person, I there's so many like actors and stuff like that I could like, and actors and actresses and filmmakers that I would love to talk with. But uh I think if you know you get heavy and you just think about that, you know, I always retreat to Ink to Abraham Lincoln as just like the go-to guy and um in that respect. Uh I'm trying to go back and you know, you talk about you know, without barriers of language and time and place and so forth. Um Julius Caesar would just be extraordinary to understand. Um because I mean that is just he is so pivotal pivotal to what happens in not just the West but into other parts of the world that that it's just I it would just be amazing to hear, you know, his thoughts. Um I I don't know Alexander the Great that much, so I kinda I I know his basic life, so that might be one of those people that if I knew more about him I would be of interest there. Um I'm trying to think of if there's anyone anyone that uh I would really jump on as as just a great great um I guess if if you w the only the only thing I'm I'm learning this a bit more. It's something I was never really that versed in, and that was uh I learned this started more with with Meriwether Lewis and Lewis and Clark, but I'm doing it recently with Humboldt, and that is the Enlightenment. And uh it would be fascinating to have sat down in those conversations as those people, you know, Kant and Bacon and these guys are coming up with these ideas which uh in a lot of ways form Western morality and thought and things like that. And that would have been just incredible. It would have been really cool to sit down with them as a guy from the 21st century and just say, oh dude, you gotta like get away from this or that or the other thing, you know. Um so that would have been fun, you know. Because uh but there's so many uh there are so many uh amazing ideas that blossom from the Enlightenment that uh you know form Western thought and form not just Western but worldwide thought, um, I think. So not sure if that's how if that helps you there, but I hope.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:38

Oh, that's amazing. That's amazing. A couple of original answers too. We've never had a what what do people usually say for that? I think the most common are religious figures. So Buddha Jesus, Jesus, and someone else. Um but then if it's not a big religious figure, it usually is down to the person's like unique niche. The amount of like musicians I've never heard of who get mentioned, you know, two musicians talking to each other. But that makes sense. I mean, I totally get it. If you're super into a couple musicians, I'm more interested in what they have to say than pretty much anyone else, but that's a you know, it's a totally personal reason because a couple other songs mean a lot to you, or something like that. So you uh you get a lot of really, really um uh interesting answers. Uh, but I really like how you know seriously you took the question. You really thought about it, and that's perfect. Um there's a lot of good ones there.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:31

And I guess one of the things too is when I've met anyone who's had any sort of semi like whatever, like known person or whatever, it's always just like, oh, they're just normal. And so I don't I don't necessarily want I always I don't necessarily like and I I was a I'm a huge music fan, love music and film and things like that. And and so some of those people I just you know I I'll give example. I saw John Cleese just uh uh a week ago here in in Madison where I where I live, and he's 84, and I didn't expect a lot. What I wanted was just a nice chat with an old friend from grownup watching Monty Python and and things like that. And it was wonderful because that's what it was. And uh and that's all I you know, I'm not expecting, you know, the world to change with conversations and whether I can sit down with Mick Jagger or whatever, and and you know, um, if I had to pick anyone, it would be Bruce Springsteen of Musicians, by the way. That's like my my all-time favorite guy there. But uh yeah, it just people are people, and it's it's to me, it's more like I just have a beer and have fun, you know. Uh I guess what I think of people, so I don't get too so when I get the opportunity to talk to anyone, I'm like, I'm going big.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:46

Nice. No, I love it. I love it. In fact, do you do do you know who Scott Rank is, by the way? Okay, so he's uh he's a podcaster, but he also wrote a book called uh like the ten explorers of history or something like that. I can send it to you after for the exact answer, um, exact title. Um you've covered pretty much everyone in it, uh, but it's still, you know, he's maybe is a like-minded, interesting to reach out to. But I actually his answer really stood out to me. So I and maybe it didn't stick out to me so well because I don't remember either of the names, but he named a Spanish um like intellectual thought leader who was part of the church.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:27

Uh, this is in the 15th century, and then Bartolome Bartolomo de las Casas, I'm bouncing.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:33

Okay, yeah, very well could be him, and then um someone of equal repute in Latin America, and he wanted to hear them talk to each other about sort of you know the ethics of what was happening. Like, do they see this as a terribly bad thing? Do the Spanish see this as a terribly bad thing? Um and that like that that that that to have those two worldviews sort of s really hashed out, but not in a hysterical, violent manner, um, almost intellectually or just conversationally, uh, I thought, wow, now that would be worth tuning into. That would be amazing.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:19

And and I have come across um and actually quoted writings of Bartolomeo de las Casas. He was a uh I think a Jesuit priest, maybe a Dominican, I can't remember. But anyways, he was a priest. We'll just leave it at that. And he was one of the thought leaders in regards to uh the rights and the dignities of the Native peoples of the Americas. Um he was so influential he got the king of Spain at one point to um revoke all these nasty laws and stuff, which they of course just ignored and so forth. But um it it is I've I've always considered for years been thinking about doing an episode on him uh simply because it is some of the earliest understanding. And I I talked about the Enlightenment leaders, and I look at Bartolo de las Casas as kind of like a predecessor of the Enlightenment type thought. Um because a lot of people at that time literally just thought, you know, like, oh, they're savages. I mean, literally they are not worth they're they're it's just like a dog who who's a problem and we can shoot him and it's fine. Um I mean, certainly, you know, you're talking about uh certainly you're talking about you know enslavement of people and raping and killing and and things like that, that you have those attitudes that those people aren't worth it. Yet here is Bartomolo de las Casas' writing in the early 1500s. He he was with on these some of these horrible things. Uh there was a guy named Panfilo de Narvaez who in the subjugation of Cuba, I think, was you know, rounding up hundreds of people and just slaughtering them. And he's like just taunting de las Casas, what do you think of us now, father? You know, and stuff. And it was just horrible. Yet sometimes when I I I mention this when I when I talk about some of the, especially the Spanish explorers, sometimes we're like, well, that was the time, you know, they believe this and this. And to a degree, that's right. Yet there were people who did talk about this, and there were people who were putting these issues on the table. Um and uh it was incredibly brave, incredibly innovative, not innovative, it was incredibly insightful on him that he took these leaps which would not really be embraced on a wider scale until the Enlightenment. And, you know, and it's because of that, it's because of people like him in 1500 that you end up with things like, you know, uh the abolitionist movement and things like that. So yeah, it's it's fascinat he's a fascinating guy. I can I can almost guarantee you that's one of the people he was talking about. And you know, it's it's it's uh uh one of those guys people don't know much about, but he was really important to Western thought.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:10

So No, I um I'm um now you say it, I'm sure it actually was. Um But Matt, there is still the questi the question lingering of serendipity. So I wonder if nothing comes to mind now, you can always record something later and I can edit it in. Um but I just find it a really nice question because it sort of does reveal the random walk of life and it's a reminder of, you know, um yeah. So that that that's that's that's regarding that. But uh you tell me if you want to answer it now or if you want to think about it and No, I I can I can think of I can probably think of something.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:44

Um I guess uh when you talk about, you know about things Turns in life and so forth that uh you don't realize are contributing to to to your life in the long run. People ask me, um, how did you become a a a podcaster? How can you and I talk about storytelling and how did you do that? And um, and maybe it's not necessarily serendipity here, but just but I always I turned to two things. One I grew up in a I learned Dungeons and Dragons as a kid. And when I was in the mid-20s, I started someone a friend of mine started a session, he stopped playing, so I took over running things, and I've been doing this for like 35 years now. Um and then I have one son who's who's 24, and growing up, he I would sit with him at night and tell him stories. Um, you know, I we could read stories too, but then I would tell me stories, Dad. And we would for over the course of a few years, we even like built these stories up, you know, like it would change from night to night. We had to grow on it and introduce new characters and new stuff happening. And without realizing it in a lot of ways, it made me a storyteller. And that I say those those two things probably taught me how to tell a story on a dime. Because you have a three-year-old kid, four-year-old kid going, like, dad, tell me, well, what about this, Dad? And it's like, oh, okay, we forgot about that, got a twist and, you know, or playing Dungeons and Dragons, you have to like, oh, this happens. I gotta pivot and figure things out and be able to to go forward with um the story in a satisfying manner. And it you learn to, you know, without realizing it, you learn to build those stories, you learn to, you know, have the challenges and have the peaks and the valleys and and uh and have the satisfying conclusions. And um so I think that there's weird little things in life like that that you do not even realize come into play in this case in a professional setting now. Because if I had not had that chance to take over, run in Dungeons and Dragons, if I had not had a child, if I had I don't know if I would be able to tell these things that way. Um and uh so but I think that, you know, I think just it for me, it it was always a lot of everything that I talk about now, I guess as I'm older, um, I see the things that I grew up with, you know, with with my family, loving history, encouraged to read, encouraged to follow those stories and and those ideas and things like that. Those are the great things. And um, you know, I don't know if it's serendipity uh in the sense that it's not like some happy coincidence. Um, but uh maybe maybe the the the serendipitous thing is that you know I always wanted to be a storyteller or something like that. And podcasting popped up and it was just like, well, I can do this. This is easy, I can, you know, and it was. It was it was like, oh, it's nice, you know, if you because if you wanted to write, if you wanted to make a book or something, write a book or something, you know, there's a million steps to jump through, at least there were, you know, 30 years ago. Nowadays you can do the same thing. You can write a book and publish it and everything like that on your own. Um, but it was podcasting, it was like it would for me, it was a way to scratch a creative itch, just wanting to write, just wanted to tell stories. And so um maybe the that um that popped up in a way in a time where I wanted something to do, had the ability to do it, had the time to do it, um, had was in the right situation that I could spend the time doing it. Maybe that's the the most serendipitous thing that I could say happened to me. Uh and that, but that's a combination of many, many things, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:17

So that's uh it's a beautiful response and absolutely perfect. Thank you, Matt. And thank you for being so generous with your time with me this evening.

SPEAKER_00 1:54:28

I had a fine.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:30

Everyone is gonna go and listen to the Explorers Podcast now.

SPEAKER_00 1:54:33

I hope so. Explorerspodcast.com.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:37

Love it, mate. All right.

SPEAKER_00 1:54:39

All right, that's all. That's all. Thank you very much for having me, Ryan. See you later, mate. Alrighty, take care. Bye bye.