Trapped on Mount Hood | Close Calls and Epic Adventures with Peter Stark | 6
46:13 Share

This episode of Against the Odds contains explicit language. Please be advised. From Wondery, I'm Mike Corey, and this is Against the Odds. This show is about survival, the human capacity to endure incredible hardship, to keep pushing in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

It's also a show about adventure. Many of the stories we tell are about people in pursuit of something. A mountain summit, a journey on the high seas, that perfect backcountry run, an opportunity for a better life. These people are searchers and explorers. Their pursuits lead them to beautiful and remote places. They get out of their comfort zone and find great meaning in doing so.

They sometimes take risks, calculated risks, that can get them into trouble. Sometimes they make mistakes and pay a price. But for them, the alternative is to live a life that isn't much of a life at all. On today's show, we're going to talk about our drive for adventure and how it can push us to the edge. Joining us is survival writer and longtime Outside Magazine contributor, Peter Stark.

His article, Frozen Alive, chronicles a man trapped in the cold as his body surrenders to hypothermia. The story inspired Peter's book, Last Breath, The Limits of Adventure. He's also the author of The Last Empty Places, a past and present journey through the blank spots on the American map. Our conversation with Peter is coming up next.

In our fast-paced, screen-filled world, it can be all too easy to lose that sense of imagination and wonder. If you're looking for new ways to ignite your creativity and open your mind to fresh perspectives, then let Audible be your guide. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, or any genre you love,

you can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, and new ways of thinking. There's more to imagine when you listen. Plus, as an Audible member, you'll get one title a month to keep from their entire catalog. If you're into mythology, then I recommend the title Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman. He's an amazing storyteller that narrates this unique version of the Norse myths.

Listen along. New members can try Audible free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash the odds or text the odds to 500-500. That's audible.com slash the odds or text the odds to 500-500. Against the Odds is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

What if comparing car insurance rates was as easy as putting on your favorite podcast? With Progressive, it is. Just visit the Progressive website to quote with all the coverages you want. You'll see Progressive's direct rate, then their tool will provide options from other companies so you can compare. All you need to do is choose the rate and coverage you'd like. Quote today at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company & Affiliates. Comparison rates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy.

Peter Stark, welcome to Against the Odds. Thanks, Mike. I'm happy to be here. As someone who writes about adventure and survival, I bet you've got a couple of good stories of your own. Any close calls come to mind? Well, yeah, I've had a number of close calls, but the one that really jumps out in my mind over this long career chasing around in the wilderness and way off in remote parts of the world was in 2002.

And I was invited to be the writer on a first descent of a, you know, mostly unmapped, mostly unpaddled river in Mozambique in Africa. And,

and it had waterfalls it had crocodiles it had hippos it had everything you can imagine that was really frightening on the water and you didn't know what was going to come around any given corner after 15 days we finally got off the river i was so relieved you know just to be like safety dry land and we end up at a very remote hunting camp way out in the bush

And one of the hunters, it was taking the photographer, Josh Paul and I, to see it where they were staking out a leopard. We were in a Land Rover, you know, the classic African Land Rover. It didn't have a top. It didn't have a windshield. It didn't have doors. And I was sitting in the next to the driver, Jamie, you know, who's this hunter, South African guy who's been out in the bush, you know, a lot of his life.

And we go through this kind of little meadow in the forest, you know, and there are no roads. They're just kind of openings in the woods. Oh, this is a pleasant little sunny meadow. And then about an hour later, after we'd kind of checked out the leopard stakeout, we came back and we're coming into that same little clearing. And now there was a big black stick poking up in the middle of the clearing. And I was sure there hadn't been a black stick poking up when we'd come through an hour earlier.

And as we get closer, all of a sudden I realize its head is moving. And it's a snake that's about five feet off the ground. The snake is so long. You know, this is like a 13 or 14 foot long snake. And...

there's no time to do anything. And I just said, oh, shit. And I just dove under the dashboard. And then there was just this like big bam. All of a sudden, all the trackers in the back started going crazy. Started saying, mamba, mamba, mamba. And it was a black mamba, which is one of the most lethal snakes in the whole world. They're extremely aggressive. And

They're known to strike vehicles. They're so territorial, basically. Whatever comes into their territory, they'll nail. And so these trackers are running along, and they pointed to the side of the Land Rover, and they pointed out these two scratches through the paint where the fangs had hit about a foot in front of my leg. And it was like...

It was really, really scary. And of course, Jamie, with that classic British-derived understated humor, says, well, well, you know, the writer almost got struck by the Black Mamba. Yeah.

You have 45 minutes to live and the serum is an hour and 15 minutes away. Just doing that math for a second, realizing it's not a good result. When you started telling that story and you said there was this stick and you realized it was a snake, I knew in that moment, because there's only really one snake species in the world that will chase you, that can rear its head up and look you in the eyes, and that's a mamba. And yeah, it's a kill you in like an hour or two kind of snake.

And the funny thing is I have my own mamba story as well, which is similar. So I do a lot of adventuring and traveling myself and I'm fond of these remote lost places as you are too. We'll get to that later in the interview.

But I was in Congo in the DRC, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and we were going through the jungle with a tribe of pygmies and we were in the river and they were hunting. They were hunting anything they could catch. It was like little squirrels. It was bugs, caterpillars, whatever they could find. It was basically on the menu.

And we were going and all of a sudden the guys freak out and they run and they give me a push. There's this thing moving in the water. I had no idea what it was, but it was like a lightning bolt. And the guy has a machete. He swings at it once, hits it, and the thing takes off into the woods again.

It was a green mamba that just bum-rushed us right out of the river. First of all, when you travel, you don't see that many snakes. Seeing snakes is rare. And when you do see a snake, generally they're reclusive. They don't want any trouble. Those freaking snakes, man, they want trouble. They cause trouble. Wow. It was great that they saw it coming and knocked you out of the way. Well, the funny thing was they diced it up, and then we took it back and we ate it. Ha ha ha!

And it really drew the hard line between the difference between venomous and poisonous because you can eat a venomous snake. It's not poisonous. There's a difference there. But I think the difference is if it's venomous, it bites you when you're dead. If it's poisonous, you bite it and you're dead. I think that's how you discern. Anyway, I want to add one more thing, though. When you have these experiences, as you've had a few yourself, does it change your life at all? Does it change how you see the world?

Oh, I think so. I mean, I think just getting out there on its own changes how you see the world because in those places you feel so exposed.

And that sense of that you're really at the kind of mercy of the environment and the people you're with, especially if you're with local guides, who I usually find are great. That's who you want to be with for sure. But there's this sense of so many things could happen that you have no control over. And so I found that's a life-changing experience. Trying to live with uncertainty is kind of the name of the game.

And in a way, that's a metaphor for life in general. How do you live with uncertainty? And it can be, you know, in anybody's life, the uncertainty can be, am I going to lose my job? Is my child going to get sick? All these things that are, you know, frightening and undercutting and, you know, nothing is ever certain. When you're in those wilderness situations, that sense of uncertainty is just heightened so dramatically. Right.

And it takes some doing to learn how to live with it. And it also, I think, teaches you to really calculate risk and calculate odds. And look at life in this sense that it's this kind of gift we have. And yes, I want to retain this gift. And at times, it might look like that might not happen. And can you come to terms with that?

I'm curious, Peter, how did you first get started in adventure writing? That's kind of an epic saga with many parts. You know, a lot of it was that I grew up in a very adventurous family in Wisconsin. And we lived kind of out in the woods in a cabin. And there were no friends nearby, but I spent, you know, almost every day after school out in the woods on some little expedition of my own to find a new little valley I'd never seen before, to go over some little hill that I didn't know what was on the other side. And I was

And so that was really kind of the metaphor for what came for the next however many 60 years, that sense of always poking around and wanting to know what was over there and discovering stuff. Initially, I wanted to pursue writing, maybe fiction. And then it became clear that I had no idea what I was doing about writing fiction. And so I decided to go to journalism school.

And I started thinking, okay, I'm a freelance writer for a magazine. What am I going to write about? You know, it's like the whole world is open to me. And then I just said, well, I mean, why don't you write about what you know and love? And that's like doing these outdoor adventures.

At that point, I got connected through a friend with Outside Magazine, which had just started. It was only about a couple of years old at that point. I got in touch with an editor and I said, hey, I have this crazy idea. I want to go up to the upper peninsula of Michigan and learn how to ski jump with all these old Norwegian dudes who ski jump the traditional way.

And the editor, Mark Bryan, whom I still work with today, said, oh, yeah, yeah, that sounds good. Why don't you do it? So finally, I just went up to the upper peninsula of Michigan and launched myself off of Ski Jump, crashed a bunch of times and wrote a story about it for Outside. And that sort of literally launched my career, you know, headfirst off the Ski Jump. And another one you wrote for Outside, which I came across first, was Frozen Alive, which

And for myself, someone who absolutely loves science and adventure and how things work, going through this story, which basically chronicled with great detail what it's like to succumb to hypothermia, was really interesting. How did that come about? So in this case, what happened, I came up with a sort of crazy idea that I called driving to Greenland.

Outside was always open to crazy ideas. And so the idea was that my, I guess we were just married, Amy and I, would get into the car in Missoula, Montana, right near where our apartment, and get on Highway 93 and start driving north as far as we could go. It's cold up there. Until we couldn't go any farther. And ended up spending time going out on the sea ice with the hunters, the Inuit hunters.

who were hunting narwhal and seals with harpoons. And these hunters would have just like a bare windbreaker on and barely gloves, and they'd just be fine out on the sea ice, you know? And Amy and I would be sitting on a dog sled with our full winter gear, freezing our butts off. And yet these Inuit hunters would just be, you know, no hat, barely gloves, just a light windbreaker, no problem.

I just got really interested in the physiology of cold as a result of that trip and how these guys could withstand cold in a way that we couldn't.

And so I started thinking, okay, how about an essay in which I'd explore the physiology of cold? And so I said, okay, what I'll do is I'm going to wait for the coldest day of the winter. And I'm going to go to the coldest spot in the lower 48 states, which is Rogers Pass, Montana, which holds the record 69 degrees below zero. And I'm going to camp out there on the top of Rogers Pass on the coldest day of the year.

And I'm going to see how that feels. And then I'm going to use that as the kind of the plot line to write a story about the physiology of cold. Finally, the National Weather Service says, OK, here it comes. Here's the 800 pound gorilla of cold fronts coming down. This is your you know, this is your weekend. And, you know, then I hear on the weather, it's going to be 50 below zero with a 50 mile an hour wind.

And, you know, that's like, if you're out in that, you're dead really fast. And, you know, we had a little two-year-old girl at home and, you know, the nice fire going in the fireplace. And I'm thinking, I really don't want to do this. So I called up my editor, Mark Bryan, said, you know, Mark, I really don't want to do this. I think it's, you know, it's too dangerous. And he said, okay, well, here's what you do. Why don't you invent a guy who goes out in the cold and gets into trouble and

And gets really cold and traced the physiology of cold that way. And as soon as he said that, I said, cool, I know I can do that. And then he said, you know, you might even use the second person, you know, the you voice, because it's as if the story takes the reader inside the victim's mind and decision and body.

I think that's why I liked it so much. Can you give our listeners a summary of the story? The you character is kind of an every man, every woman character who has plans to meet some friends at a mountain cabin for dinner. And he's driving his car, his four-wheel car, up this mountain road to meet them. And it's like it's a 20 below zero night. But en route, his vehicle spins off the road and plows into a snowbank.

But he doesn't want to give up the idea of going to this dinner. You know, he has visions of the warm cabin and the firelight and whatnot and the company and the wine and the good food. And so he says, well, I've got some, you know, cross-country skis in the back of the car. So I'll just put those on and I'll just ski up, you know, just a mile or two away. And so he sets off on this really cold moonlit night and... Things go south. Yeah.

One little mistake after another. And, you know, he overheats, which is very easy to do. And then his ski binding breaks. And so he loses a part in the snow. And so he has to dig around to find the part. And his hands get really cold. So it's just one little thing after another like that. And it's like a cascading series of events that end in disaster for this you dude. And what I loved, loved, loved is as this story's progressing and these little moments

mistakes are happening and there's a countdown of the body temperature, 97 degrees, 96 degrees. And then you tell all the physiology of what happens with hypothermia. But again, the way it's told, it makes it very chilling. I guess, pardon the pun. But it makes you really feel immersed that it is you.

I'm hoping, if you don't mind, could you read a passage of it so our listeners could kind of get what we're talking about? Yeah, let's see. I have it right here. The process begins even before you leave the car when you remove your gloves to squeeze a loose bail back onto one of your ski bindings. The freezing metal bites your flesh. Your skin temperature drops. Within a few seconds, the palms of your hands are a chilly, painful 60 degrees.

Instinctively, the web of surface capillaries on your hands constrict, sending blood coursing away from your skin and deeper into your torso. Your body is allowing your fingers to chill in order to keep its vital organs warm. You replace your gloves, noticing only that your fingers have numbed slightly. Then you kick boots into bindings and start up the road.

I think why it hit so home for me and maybe so many others is because, honestly, I'm from Atlantic Canada, so right above Maine. It gets pretty cold up here. Just a few New Year's ago, I went to drive my car and I had to park. I had to snowshoe in about an hour to meet my friends as the sun was setting.

And the story itself is a very similar scenario where everything should be fine, but all of a sudden you find yourself in the middle of a situation.

And it's life or death. It's dire. And in the case of hypothermia, that can happen quite quickly. And unwittingly. I mean, that you don't really realize it. And I've been with friends who suddenly start slurring their speech out in the woods. And they don't know what's going on. They've just been cold. But suddenly it starts kind of tipping over the edge a little bit. And it's scary to see it when it happens. Yeah.

The story itself tells all kinds of strange things that happen to the human body. And one of which, which maybe some people don't know, is in the last moments of hypothermia, people take off their clothes. Can you tell us why? Yeah, well, nobody really knows why, but they're beyond the point of being rational. Their body temperature, I think it's probably, you know, somewhere in the 80s or

Somehow they feel that their skin is really hot and they feel like they're overheating, they're feverish, they're kind of on fire. And so they literally take off their layers of clothes, their jackets or whatever. And the name of it actually really reflects the strangeness of the phenomenon. It's called paradoxical undressing.

Ever heard of the Pomodoro Technique? It's got nothing to do with Italian tomatoes, but instead, it's a way to be more productive by rewarding yourself. You choose a task, set a timer for 25 minutes, work on the task until the timer rings, then take 5 minutes to reward yourself. These short goals and small rewards use neuroscience to get more done and feel good doing it. But what should your reward be?

Only the best, as in Best Fiends. Best Fiends is a free-to-download mobile puzzle game with thousands of exciting levels for new adventures and challenges every time you play. There are dozens of unique fiends to collect, so you can customize your team of fiends to defeat the menacing slugs. Power up your favorite fiends to new levels for even more powerful skills and watch them transform as they get stronger. And with offline play, you'll never be stranded without fun, even if you lose your internet connection.

Brand new events and challenges pop up all the time, so you've always got a chance to earn exclusive in-game items, characters, and rewards. And you've earned those rewards, even every 25 minutes. Go to the App Store or Google Play to download Best Fiends for free. Plus, earn even more with $5 worth of in-game rewards when you reach level 5. That's friends without the R. Best Fiends. Fitness is a journey.

you might reach a personal milestone and then encounter a setback, which is why Peloton's world-class instructors work hard to make you feel comfortable, whatever your fitness level. I use the Peloton app when I'm traveling. It's right on my phone, which makes it incredibly easy to fit in a workout, no matter where I am. And I know that no matter how I'm feeling or how much energy I have on a given day, I'm going to find a great workout that feels just the right amount of challenging.

From strength training to yoga and running and almost everything in between, it's there on the Peloton app. They also make every workout fun, because if it's not fun, why even do it? Experiment with new types of movement judgment-free at a level and pace that feels good for you. Maybe you're looking for a 10-minute upper body stretch between calls or a 40-minute run before bed. Whether you have 5 minutes or an hour, there's something there for you.

And right now is the perfect time to try out Peloton. The Peloton Bike Plus is now $500 less, its best price yet, including free delivery and setup. And there are more game-changing prices available on the original Peloton Bike and Peloton Tread. Visit onepeloton.com to learn more. In the story, the character, you, doesn't die. They live. Why did you choose to give it a happy ending?

Because we need happy endings, right? Well, we need happy endings. We do, we do, though. Yeah, we do. You make me pause to think, was there a rationale? Honestly, when I was reading it, because it's in your perspective, I'm like, oh my God, I'm going to die. And then I didn't, and I was happy. Yeah, it seemed kind of too cruel and too final. And on one level, and on another level, that I wanted to explore the physiology, and I

There's this whole other set of amazing physiology that occurs when the human body is warmed up from hypothermia. And it's really, the warming up is as fascinating as the cooling down. It really is because there was, in the story it told, like an example of, I think, some skiers or somebody, they were given hot soup or hot coffee or something and it killed them because they were cold. And it just shocks the system so much. It shocks the system. And that, I mean, that does happen. We call it rewarming shock. Yeah.

The last story we told on Against the Odds was the story of Mount Hood, where unfortunately some people perished of hypothermia on the mountain, but also some didn't. And I got to throw back a little bit. You mentioned when you were up north with Inuit that there was a variance between people and some people can survive and others don't. Was that mystery ever solved for you? One thing that makes a huge difference is body type.

Essentially, a short squat, heavier person is more resilient to cold because there's less body surface exposed per unit of metabolism compared to a tall, skinny person with long limbs. And people who have more body fat withstand cold better. It's literally insulation.

And then, you know, and then there are people who learn to control their physiology. Tibetan monks who, through the course of meditation, can actually control their physiology in a way that they can, you know, warm or cool their body. Australian Aborigines traditionally would sleep, you know, very lightly clothed in cold desert conditions, and they'd

lapse into kind of a state of semi-hypothermia. Their body knew how to do it and how to get out of it. And then in the case of the Inuit, I think one of the most interesting adaptations was called the hunter's response. And your body will learn to develop this adaptation if you're in the cold enough.

Your body will keep the warm blood in its core. That's what everybody does when they get cold. But if you're out in the cold a lot and you are hunting, for instance, or if you're probably working on an Alaska pipeline, your body will send spurts of blood to your fingertips to loosen them up. So they're not just literally frozen stiff. So they're maneuverable.

And that's one of these just amazing human bits of physiology that I just find so fascinating. One of the reasons I loved researching and writing that book is how it so brought home to me both what a delicate and what a resilient species the humans are. I mean, literally, the human body was evolved in equatorial climates where you didn't really need clothes.

And yet through adaptations and through technological innovations, humans were able to range into much colder environments. But still, the body is still really fundamentally adapted to the equatorial region. So if we don't have all our little technological gigas, like clothes, like a furnace, like whatever...

We're pretty much dead. So after writing Frozen Alive, you went on to write your next book, which was called Last Breath.

And with that, you took this style that was a massive hit for a lot of people in outside and you put it forward to other scenarios that adventurers could find themselves in like heat stroke, altitude sickness, drowning, dehydration, the bends when scuba diving. And for myself, I dove so deep into that book because I'm a guy who loves science and

who loves nature, who loves understanding how the world works. And I think as an adventurer, you want to understand how the world works. And anyway, I got obsessed with that book. And I'd love for you to talk a bit more about some of the stories in it. Well, that kind of brought that idea to another level of how one gets in trouble in the outdoors and what it means both physiologically, but then I also tried to explore it

what its ramifications might be psychologically or emotionally and spiritually. And so as part of that book, The Last Breath, I researched attitudes kind of around the world and in our own society towards death and dying. And I tried to weave in different ways of looking at death, the way different cultures look at death.

One thing that was really striking as I was researching that and thinking about this more and more is how modern American society, and I think it's true of most of Western countries, has tried to distance itself from death so much and so rigorously and just put it out of sight.

And so as a result, I think it becomes a scarier thing than it might be otherwise. I 100% agree with you. 100%. And the introduction of the book, it was called Ars Moriendo. Tell us what that means. Well, that means in Latin, I believe, it means the art of dying.

Mm-hmm, which is heavy, again, but why does that feel so heavy for us? I think because you're right. We take death in our culture, our Western culture, and we hide it away, and we never want to talk about it. But the real thing is, man, it's always there. Life's a yin-yang. Life and death, you can't have one without the other. You can hide, but you can't run in the case of death. That's right. You can try to hide, but you can't run from it. 150 years ago, 200 years ago, I believe all cultures everywhere—

Kids would grow up with a grandparent in the house and the grandparent would die. And, you know, the child would understand that.

And it's not something to be scared about or scared of that, you know, there's the dead body of a grandparent. It's just part of the whole natural progression of things. It's never easy. I mean, in any culture, death to dealing with it. But there are, you know, rituals and ways to accept it and ways to think about it that we very thoroughly managed to push out of the picture in our society.

So that was one of the reasons that drew me to the research of that book was to try to re-engage with what does death mean and how do we deal with it? And as you know, in the outdoor adventure kind of edgy world, it's something that floats around. It's a presence in many situations. You're right. I mean, your goldfish dies, it gets flushed and it goes to the ocean and

And your dog dies and it goes to the farm, right? We even shelter the deaths of pets. And if you don't mind, I'm going to tell you a quick story. Yeah, do it, please. When I was reading the book, that really struck a chord for me because a few years ago, I had a grandparent die. And it was quite traumatic for my family and I.

And I didn't like how I felt. Of course, there was grieving, but it was an unhealthy. It just wasn't. I felt like I didn't understand what was happening in my head. And I didn't understand death and how our culture viewed it. And I knew there was other ways to see it. And so I went to this place called Toraya.

Tanah Toraya in Sulawesi, Indonesia, middle of the country, because they have some of the most elaborate death rituals in the world. And there, when someone dies in the family, they don't get put in the ground. They get brought into the house and they're kept in the house while dead. They call them sick for years. And during that time,

family and friends can come and they can offer prayers and they still consider this person alive and they'll ask them questions and this person will respond in the wind or the trees or the birds or in their dreams. And then later they'll have this big funeral, then they'll put the bodies in a cliff grave for a couple decades, then they'll take the bodies out again and they'll change Grampy's clothes, they'll change his sunglasses and it becomes a party. It's like a family reunion again, but you know, Grampy's now a skeleton basically.

And I went to go see this. And it was the craziest thing I'd seen in my entire life because their views on death were completely different. And I remember seeing them when they were bringing some of these bodies out of the cliff graves. And everyone was excited. Oh, my God, look, it's Grampy. We haven't seen Grampy in 30 years. And I look over at my guy. I'm like, dude, this is crazy. This is messed up. And he got mad at me. And he's like, what do you mean it's messed up?

You, back home in North America, you just throw your bodies in the ground after three days. What if somebody can't see them? What if they still have things to teach you? That's not a way to treat someone you love. Here, we respect people. We want to see them again. We love them. How could you not want to do that too?

And I didn't have an answer, right? And why was I so scared? Because I had never really seen it before or experienced it. And I was taking this thought of death and just burying it in my dark closet of my mind, avoiding it like it didn't exist. But it's coming. You know what I mean? It's coming. And I so agree with you that I'm totally fascinated by

In seeing those, that there's a kind of a commonality in many of them that are not our culture at this point, it becomes kind of a celebration at the same time as a grieving. In a way, it doesn't end with the death. It's just the beginning with the death. And it's a way, the death is a way to continue to connect in a deep way with your ancestor.

And with your loved one. And it could be such a reassuring and solidifying experience for the living too. The book is about death, but in some ways it's about life. Like we're speaking about the two are inseparable.

Do you think that understanding more about death and the process helps you open your life up in new ways? Yes, I definitely do. I think that the familiarity, the understanding of the closeness of death is a way to heighten the experience of living. And I'm just looking out the window and hear all these beautiful, tender, green leaves kind of coming out of their buds.

And it's all the more meaningful and emotionally engaging because we've just come through this long winter where the wind was blowing through those bare branches. And it's the contrast between the two that gives it extra meaning when the leaves come out in the spring. So that's, in a way, a kind of a metaphor for being understanding that death is always with us and being willing to accept that fact.

that I think it makes us engage more deeply with life. When you're hiring, time is of the essence. That's why more than 3.5 million businesses worldwide use Indeed to find exceptional talent fast. Indeed's powerful matching engine works quickly, so quickly that according to Indeed data worldwide, every minute 23 hires are made on Indeed.

But it doesn't stop there, because Indeed also helps you hire better. 93% of employers agree Indeed delivers the highest quality matches compared to other job sites, according to a recent Indeed survey. That's because their matching engine is always learning from your preference. So the more you use Indeed, the better it gets.

So let Indeed be your go-to for making great hires quickly and easily. And listeners of the show, get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash the odds. Just go to Indeed.com slash the odds right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash the odds. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed.

Speaking a lot about death here and the avoidance of it and its presence in our life, there are some who choose to head out their front door and tread the line sometimes.

adventurers, explorers. I find myself asking where that comes from because I find myself in those shoes walking out that front door myself sometimes. I'd love to hear your thoughts. So where does this drive come from to go out there and walk the line? I think it's really hardwired in the human mind, body, spirit, whatever genes, that there's a searching component. And it doesn't necessarily have to be geographical.

That's a big one. That's a big part of it. But it also, there's a, you know, a curiosity about just, I mean, say technological stuff. It's a kind of venturing into the unknown. Hey, what if we tried it this way? You know, emotional exploration. There's all sorts of stuff. I mean, but one big component is,

which I think has been absolutely necessary for the survival of the human species is this geographical desire to explore. I mean, I can, I can look at maps for ever and ever. And, you know, I'm always looking for the blank spots on the map and, you know, never trust someone who doesn't fall in love with the map. Oh my God.

In any given community of humans, any given tribe, any given family, any given band, there had to be someone or some few who were looking for new terrain, who were looking for better food resources, who were looking out for where a potential enemy would be or where potential friends might be.

So you've got to have someone who's going out there. Definitely. I think there's the explorer spirit deep down in our DNA because those original, I mean, we're nomads, right? We came from Africa and now we're on basically every single part of this planet because we want to always, I think you and I and many of our listeners always, what's around the next bend? Just a little bit farther, you know, and it's a bit of an addiction I find sometimes. Oh, I've definitely found that. Yeah.

I guess, do you think that when the risk is greater, it's a greater adventure? Oh, wow. That's a very, that's an intriguing question. When the risk is greater, is it a greater adventure? I don't think necessarily. When the risk is huge...

I think it can turn from an adventure into something else that's really nightmarish. And how do you define adventure? I mean, I like the idea of an adventure being this kind of venture out into something that's unknown relatively in some capacity and then...

coming back with this new knowledge. So how risky does that have to be? I think it all depends on the kind of level of adventure you want to have. I've told people, yeah, I mean, you can have a great adventure like in the park right across the street. You take a five-year-old kid into the park across the street, they can have the best adventure ever.

It depends on the circumstance and the individual. So I don't think that those two necessarily have to go hand in hand. I think they kind of do. Okay, let's talk about that. I don't know. I feel like it isn't an adventure without some kind of risk. An adventure can be had in your backyard for sure, but there has to be a little bit of discomfort. You have to be treading your comfort zone a little bit more.

and by nature that means there's a little bit of risk. Is that risk death or is it, you know, breaking a pinky finger or hitting your thumb with a hammer? I don't know what that is, but there is a scale there that I do think adventure does have some inherent risk to it. And I think with that, that's what I'm trying to do.

That's where the good stories are made. I'm not saying I'm right either. I'm just trying to figure out in my own head. I'll jump in here with it. Do you have kids? I don't have kids. Because that's something that really brought home this concept of risk and adventure to me in a really visceral way. Because it's not just about you anymore. And if you have a five-year-old kid,

who's climbing a tree or wants to do these things that a lot of kids like to do that are risky. And you as a parent are the one who is trying to determine what's the appropriate level of risk here. Every parent makes a different choice. There's not like one right answer.

And so our answer finally, you know, kind of worked out after our kids are both very physical and they love to climb. And so we were dealing with this all the time.

It was, you know, you could take a risk or climb that tree or whatever to the point where if something went really wrong and you fell, you might break an arm. We're not going to the point where if something went really wrong and you fell and you, you know, paralyze yourself or die. I think you can, you can extrapolate that to the kind of globe trotting adventures that you take and then that I used to take. And it's like, okay, what's the level of risk that makes for the experience that I'm seeking? And, and,

Some people are happy to take the risk, you know, push it right to the very edge that if I make a mistake here, I die. Risk and danger, I feel, are mostly just a lack of information. Yes. And that's why I liked your book so much too is because it gave me more information about things I can think of. And it's not like I'm expecting bad things to happen on a day-to-day basis or on adventures, but it's just nice to know everything so then you can properly prepare yourself.

for things really. I have a rule of thumb about that. What I realized finally was that you can hear stories about how terrible a place is. You know, if you're 5,000 miles away and you're hearing that story, Oh, don't go there. Don't go there. You know, you listen to it, but maybe a little skeptically and then, you know, get to within a thousand miles of it. Oh, don't go there. Don't go there. Okay. Well, still a little skeptical. The closer you get, if the story start getting worse, uh,

Then you turn them around. If the stories start getting better, then you can go forward. And, but it's, it's like, you've got to get the local knowledge. That's the whole point. You got to get the local knowledge. I agree with you completely. I never thought about it that way, but that's, that's so true. And I always compare it to this. Like people say, uh,

don't go to so-and-so, don't go to Mauritania, don't go to Kazakhstan. It's dangerous there because this thing happened five years ago. But if you look at a map, like the distance between, you know, one bad thing that happened to where you're going to be is like the entirety of America. It's like if there was, if there's a kidnapping in Miami, would you still go to Seattle? And yeah, of course, they're so far apart. But for some reason, our minds don't think about it that way. You know, we hear like a country and we blank it.

statement, all of that. Yeah, we kind of mush it all together. Well, from one fan of remote places to another fan of remote places, you wrote an entire book called The Last Empty Places, Visiting the Most Remote and Unpopulated Places in the USA. And I got to ask you, how did you find these places? Do you just look at a blank spot in a map and go or what was the process?

So in that case, I came up with this idea of wanting to go to the least populated areas of the lower 48 states. And I was trying to figure out how to do that. And I have a friend who's a professional satellite geographer. He said, OK, here's what you do.

You go and you get the... He had a name for it. It's like the NASA Landsat high-resolution image of the United States at night. And you look where the lights are, and then you go where they're not. And so that's how I got started on that adventure. I went... I got a big...

satellite photo and I went to the dark spots on the satellite photo. I guess that would make sense, right? No lights at all. It'd be the middle of probably good star watching out there too. It was good. Yeah. I imagine, I mean, it's probably hard to say there's very few uninhabited, fully uninhabited places on this planet. And also just when you get to those places, they're so

rural and so removed, they really have a different lifestyle. For instance, one of my blank spots was eastern Oregon, southeastern Oregon. And I ended up finding this traditional ranch of 100,000 acres

where they were doing a traditional branding, you know, the roundup or the cows and the branding irons and the ropes. And, and it was just like, God, it could, you know, it could have been 150 years ago looking at that scene. It was really interesting. I love that kind of stuff. And I, my whole life, I liked going and seeing the natural world or seeing the creatures in it. And I do these long treks and these places, but the,

What I realized just a few years ago was that what I remember most are the personal experiences, the people's faces. I remember having the old man who gives me the tea on the mountainside or the sheep herder. That's what I remember most. Yeah, it's incredibly beautiful there, but it's always the people I remember most in these places. Amy and I went hiking in Ireland a couple of years ago on the Dingle Peninsula, this beautiful peninsula of Ireland. And

And you're out there in these windstorms and rainstorms and sun. And we're just going over this little mountain pass. And it's blowing like hell. And you can hardly stand up. And there's this old dude who's standing out there with his sheep, a shepherd. And we come by, and we're barely standing up. And he just starts talking to us. Like we left off a conversation yesterday at the pub, and we were just picking it up again. And we're barely able to stand up. Imagine that in New York or something, right? No.

But it was just the most delightful experience. And it was just like, exactly. As you say, it's like I give you tea on the mountainside and that's what sticks with you. You know, they're just treasures. They're just treasures. Those encounters. I love hearing you say that because the people who, who have been fortunate to get out there and see the world, we all have the same story and it's the world is kind film with filled with kind people who will open their, their entire world for you to help you. Oh, so true. Yeah.

And, you know, it just moves my heart the amount of help we've had from people who just take you in. And I think it's a tragedy that more people don't get out, way out, and try to get out.

travel and other cultures and understand it's not this like malevolent darkness out there at all. It's this really, it's this really beautiful human experience. And of course there are plenty of exceptions where you don't want to go and where you can get in a lot of trouble, but, but people are, are, can be so kind. They can be so kind.

I couldn't have said it better myself. Before we go, I'm curious, what's your next big adventure, project, story? What's coming up next? It's funny. I told you that story about the Black Mamba and going over waterfalls and the hippos, the crocs, whatever. I said, I think this is as far as I'm going to take it, that this is kind of the apogee of my actual adventuring. I can get killed doing this stuff. And so since then, I've been writing about historical adventures.

And now I'm just finishing for Random House a book about the great Shawnee leader, Tecumseh, and his effort to unify tribes to hold the land as one nation.

and to essentially stop the push of white settlement across the Ohio Valley in the Midwest. I'm also just working on a story that's going to come out by a new online digital publishing house called Scribd. It's called The Sin of Our Founding Father, George Washington, the Native Americans, and the Decisions that Shaped America's Future.

And it becomes this huge collision of powers that still has echoes today, 230 years later. Sounds like a hell of a story. It's a really, it's a cool story. Well, Peter, I loved our conversation today. And I hope that we allowed our listeners to think a little bit about risk, adventure, what it all means. Anyway, I just loved shooting the shit with you, man. So thank you so much. And it was a pleasure speaking with you today.

It was really great speaking with you, Mike. And I hope we have more conversations in the future. It's so fun to kick around these ideas. Yeah, always, always. Thanks, man. Thank you. For more from Peter Stark, we highly recommend his books, Last Breath and The Last Empty Places.

I'm your host, Mike Corey. This episode was produced by Peter Arcuni. Our audio engineer is Sergio Enriquez. Our series producers are Matt Elmos and Emily Frost. Our managing producer is Tonja Thigpen. Our coordinating producer is Matt Gant. Our senior producer is Andy Herman. Our executive producers are Stephanie Jens and Marshall Louis for Wondery. Wondery.

Scammers are best known for living the high life until they're forced to trade it all in for handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit once they're finally caught. I'm Sachi Cole. And I'm Sarah Hagee. And we're the host of Scamfluencers, a weekly podcast from Wondery that takes you along the twists and turns of some of the most infamous scams of all time, the impact on victims, and what's left once the facade falls away.

We've covered stories like a Shark Tank certified entrepreneur who left the show with an investment but soon faced mounting bills, an active lawsuit filed by Larry King, and no real product to push. He then began to prey on vulnerable women instead, selling the idea of a future together while stealing from them behind their backs.

To the infamous scams of Real Housewives stars like Teresa Giudice, what should have proven to be a major downfall only seemed to solidify her place in the Real Housewives Hall of Fame. Follow Scamfluencers on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Scamfluencers early and ad-free right now on Wondery+.