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00:01:36
Own the dream. Hello and welcome to My Favorite Murder. That's Georgia Hartstark.
00:02:02
Thanks. That's Karen Kilgariff, who does now a lovely flourish with her hand, not just the pull
00:02:07
straight down, our hand gestures when we start. You know what it is? I watched on, I can't remember what channel it was, but I watched a fancy ballet show
00:02:17
that's almost like ballet euphoria. You know what I mean? And it's like New York City, ballet dancers, but living on the edge.
00:02:27
Some are strippers. Some are on drugs. Some are competitive. You mean Rent? You watched Rent?
00:02:36
And I just noticed that because I always love to watch shows like that and go, did they go to?
00:02:41
And with ballet, I think you have to because it's very difficult to fake if you don't have ballet training.
00:02:47
It's so specific. Oh, I'm great at air ballet. I can fake it. Just fake it. But I kind of can't fake it with the, because it's the same hands as religious statues, which I've been staring at all my life.
00:02:58
So you always do like a, do something extra with your middle finger, you know, just kind of fan them out.
00:03:04
Right. But this ballet show was very, everyone was so good at ballet that I was like, oh, now, now just everybody's good at show business.
00:03:14
Like we've all learned, especially the youngsters have learned. Yeah. They've been watching screens their whole life.
00:03:21
If they go into ballet, it's like, well, would you like to also star in a series?
00:03:25
It's like, sure. If I can do ballet, I can act. It's not exclusive to ballet companies.
00:03:30
You can do your ballet on TikTok or whatever they do and be incredible at it and have a TikTok ballet career.
00:03:38
It's not like there's one choice of exclusive ballet or choreography in general or art.
00:03:45
It's like you don't have to be renowned and like plucked out by the important people who say that this is good and this is bad.
00:03:55
You can fucking do it yourself, which is so awesome. Very true. You can kind of get to a spot, at least a fakeable spot from TikTok.
00:04:04
Although, yeah, I think that your number would come up pretty quick if you were faking it or if you were kind of like great on TikTok, but then that got you to Juilliard.
00:04:13
Right. Right. Right. But now that the 30 seconds have passed. Yeah. Can you stay on your toes?
00:04:19
Well, they don't need you. We can all get up on those toes. Well, or we can all Photoshop us ourselves on those toes.
00:04:25
That's true. But this show is actually, there's a British actor in it, Ben. I never, every week we do this podcast and every week I haven't written down last names.
00:04:37
Okay. What's it called? I'm going to look it up. It's called Flesh and Bone, I believe.
00:04:40
Oh, yeah. Yeah. And there's a girl who's bent all the way over at the waist. Like, oh, yeah, she's putting her forehead on her knees, which is like my lifelong dream.
00:04:49
I don't know. I think I'm going to go. What? I think I'm going to settle set that as my.
00:04:53
That's your dream. To be that bendable. When you have big boobs, you let go of folding in half like a piece of paper.
00:05:01
Yeah. The way tiny girls do. You have to let that go in like seventh grade. Yoga is not the same when you have boobs.
00:05:09
It's really not. twisting is hard like twisting's okay it's kind of like folding or any kind of like bending or
00:05:19
like when you lay on your stomach and you're like supposed to lay your head down to one side and
00:05:23
it's like well you have the like in yoga i mean yeah or like child's pose where it's just like
00:05:27
this is just i'm just a weird lump right now but god bless because it also maybe and i'm sure
00:05:33
there's plenty of people with big boobs who can do it just fine and are like yeah why don't you
00:05:37
just try. But let me argue this, people who aren't arguing with me. There's also the, if you never do
00:05:44
it, you get the tension in the back of your legs that keeps you. You know what I mean? That kind of
00:05:50
like heel to butt level Oh my God Tension like yoga I just I jealous I maybe you should be a Tik TOK yoga yogi and you don even have to fucking go to yoga school and become a yoga professional You just do it on tick tock
00:06:06
and you're like, boom. I'm just like, okay, look, I am sitting on a chair in front of a computer,
00:06:12
but you should be. I just tell everybody what they should be doing. Yeah. Well, you know,
00:06:17
I did go to this yoga class at the YMCA in Hollywood years ago. I don't know if the dude
00:06:23
is still there but he was my favorite one of my favorite yoga instructors i've ever had he looked
00:06:29
like dan harman he just exactly like dan harman okay it's just you know got the pot belly and in
00:06:35
no fucking way it looks like a yogi at all and he wouldn't do yoga at the front of the room the room
00:06:41
was packed it was like at least 50 something people is a very popular class and he just
00:06:44
fucking played heavy metal the whole time and walk around the room telling everyone what to do
00:06:50
didn't didn't show it in the front didn't fucking just was so good it was so good was the good part
00:06:59
the the guiding and leading you verbally yes he was a master like he said it with such intentional
00:07:08
force and now you breathe you know like he was really involved and into it he just wasn't
00:07:15
doing it that may have been an acting class i learned a lot i learned a lot and it was like
00:07:21
led doing fucking yoga to led zeppelin and like acdc is like so powerful i'm sure the yogis are
00:07:27
like that's not how you're supposed to do this but i like that though as a kind of crossfit combo
00:07:34
idea where you're you're moving your body in a very specific way but you're also getting pumped
00:07:41
and jacked. You felt powerful. You felt like a jock and it was jock jams and you were having
00:07:47
some jock jams in yoga. That's me. You know, I'm the jock jam influencer. Can we just for one
00:07:52
second say that today is the Monday after the Sunday of the Oscars? Yeah. Will Smith hit Chris
00:07:58
Rock in the face during the Oscars. Yeah. It's almost just like we're dropping the Google map
00:08:02
pin here. Yeah. To say that happened yesterday. It's definitely like a before and after.
00:08:08
in our life. Where were you? Because I bet you were watching it with a group. Like you are into
00:08:12
the Oscars and stuff. No, you weren't. I can't watch awards. I don't like award shows. I love
00:08:19
the outfits. I always, I follow lots of people on Twitter that talk about outfits or do outfits.
00:08:25
Yeah. Um, and I love that part, but I can't watch the actual show because I have leftover
00:08:32
anxiety and stress from writing on award shows and watching hosts go out with stuff you help them
00:08:38
write and either eat it or win everything get all the accolades of your joke it's something i'll
00:08:46
never get over because the first time it happened when i wrote a thing and somebody walked out i
00:08:52
truly laid on my couch i'll never forget it was my old apartment and i just laid on this brand new
00:08:57
couch that I bought that was green, like green velvet. Cause it was 2003 or whatever. I just
00:09:04
laid on this couch, like stiff as a board. And I couldn't like, look, I had it on, but I couldn't
00:09:09
look at the TV. And I was like, so stressed out. Cause it was like, well, this, this is it. This
00:09:14
is where they find out you're a fraud. This is where they find out they shouldn't have been
00:09:17
listening to you this whole time. But no, it's not like it says at the very bottom, like
00:09:21
this joke written by Karen Kilgareff and you'll be fucking roasted in Hollywood.
00:09:26
But in the movie of my life, it is. Okay. It also, equally freaky news, it rained so hard today in Los Angeles that the Los Angeles
00:09:36
River made it a grand return, as it does every couple times a season. Yeah. And then a dog had to get rescued out of it.
00:09:45
Did you see this? No. But listen, so there's a dog down there and it's like Whitewater Rapids crazy.
00:09:52
Yeah. So apparently a lady had the dog down there. The lady got rescued. The dog did not get rescued.
00:09:59
So then a guy jumped the fence and tried to rescue the dog himself. And he got caught.
00:10:04
He had the dog. And then the dog bit him because the dog was so scared. And it was a big old dog.
00:10:10
It was a big old dog. It was a big old dog. And the guy had him anyway and was holding him.
00:10:15
But he was holding this like one tiny rope. And then the dog just kind of slipped out of his arms.
00:10:20
Then the helicopter had to come. and get the guy and then they finally cut back to the dog and everyone's like oh my god is this dog
00:10:28
gonna drown and the dog is literally looks like it's walking like this directly it's the funniest
00:10:35
thing dog is like can i have a fucking moment to party in this pool please and they actually
00:10:40
they think that the dog got freaked out because the news helicopters were getting so close that
00:10:46
he was just like don't like helicopters that's like no i no not in that scenario where they're
00:10:52
having like kind of a they're being washed downstream did you watch dog the movie dog
00:10:58
no dog it's with the you know what's his face that everyone what's his name janning tatum yeah
00:11:04
yeah oh no i haven't seen that it's cute okay you'll cry you'll cry he kind of sucks his
00:11:10
character kind of sucks i'll say janning tatum's like he's such a jock like a you know he's such a
00:11:18
but that's that's our channing now it is but he could talk about dance he can he can do all that
00:11:25
ballet he could be on flesh and bone yesterday if you wanted to instead it's meg ryan right and
00:11:32
dennis quaid wait no no am i looking at something else what are you looking at james conn oh it's a
00:11:41
1993 romance movie shush tv series what you know the new the new dennis quaid mc ryan series who
00:11:52
are divorced and probably don like each other that much so sorry okay i see it all right no no it called flesh and bone oh it is okay but 2022 the newest who cares just watch it everyone this is the gritty reboot if you like
00:12:06
ballet and all the trappings i just i also just love watching people do some plies where it's just
00:12:13
like i should do that you should plie more karen everyone's always said that about you
00:12:19
everyone says i'm stiff uh i have a corrections corner apparently msu which i mentioned on my last
00:12:27
last week's story about carrie swenson i said her dad worked at msu which i called michigan
00:12:33
state university look i sometimes there's colleges in places that aren't there like in the place that
00:12:40
they say they are when you said it i thought her dad commuted and i didn't think it was that big of a
00:12:45
I blame COVID. I don't have it, but I blame it. Were all the fighting Timberwolves of whatever college that got offended coming at you?
00:12:57
No, I think people think it's funny at this point when we get something so obviously wrong.
00:13:02
I said they moved to Missouri and her dad got a job at Michigan State. Got a job there. They moved there so her dad could get a job there at Michigan State University, you know, in Missouri.
00:13:13
was montana involved at all montana god i meant montana which one montana i meant montana look
00:13:21
how am i supposed to keep track of so many m states why are there are so many m states
00:13:27
not my why when we pitch this bit to sell to the oscars they didn't buy it it's so hilarious
00:13:33
can we talk about our friend wanda sykes fucking killing it and what oh my god i mean they were
00:13:38
all three were that's the thing it was actually very entertaining yeah they should have been more
00:13:44
they were in the beginning then they had a couple bits and then nothing yeah and it was a bummer
00:13:49
because i actually didn't i didn't watch it i do it this same way every year which is i watch
00:13:53
something else and then i just look at twitter to see what's going on yeah this is the first year i
00:13:57
watched it and i saw it all live and i was like vince look up from your phone so you saw it happen
00:14:04
live. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I do have actually, I just remembered a show I started watching and I don't
00:14:12
think I've brought it up. Maybe I did. Have you been watching Our Flag is Death, the Reese Darby
00:14:17
pirate show on HBO Max? No. Okay. Reese Darby plays like a rich British lord who wants to be
00:14:27
a pirate. That's all he wants. So he makes this really fancy pirate ship, hires a crew and then
00:14:33
goes out to be a pirate but he doesn't know what he's doing what year is it like is it old-timey
00:14:37
pirate timey yeah 1700s i guess and then is eventually taika watiti comes along oh beautiful
00:14:45
he is a pirate and i won't spoil anything else but it's truly a delightful you i just
00:14:52
reese starby is just the most delightful performer and personality absolutely for a situation like that it's just so it's so funny what's it called again our flag
00:15:04
means death okay um should we do exactly right corner sure hey as you guys know we have a
00:15:11
podcast network it's called exactly right media and man there's some good shows on there
00:15:17
one of which is the film podcast i saw what you did and and this week's episode hosts danielle
00:15:24
and Millie cover a double feature as they always do. But this time it's the movie Psycho from 1960
00:15:30
and Psycho from 1998. Yes. Vince Vaughn version. Vince Vaughn. Gotta hear their take on them.
00:15:39
I will absolutely be listening to that one. Also over on the True Beauty Brooklyn podcast,
00:15:43
Alex and Elizabeth are discussing lasers, hair removal, and skincare this week. I have so many questions. I'm excited. Yeah. Also, episode four of the new season of Tenfold More Wicked is out now. It's called Blood Feud. I mean, Kate Winkler Dawson is a pro and, you know, she's a true crime legend.
00:16:04
And I believe in about a month, season six is starting to take place. The woman doesn't stop.
00:16:11
She doesn't stop. Every time we have like a, you know, a roundup of like what's going on with the new season of this and that.
00:16:17
And it's like, well, Kate Winther Dawson is 80 episodes ahead. Like we're chasing down someone for the like the episode this week, a.k.a. us.
00:16:25
And then Kate Winther Dawson's like, I've already finished season 26 of this show.
00:16:29
Now I'm going to go to my lecture because I'm a professor. Yes, I'm literally a professor.
00:16:36
And we're like, we don't want to record this week. Yeah, exactly. I don't want to.
00:16:39
It rained. Why do I have to record? It's cold. Also, in the MFM store, we're starting them young.
00:16:46
There are several designs of onesies and toddler tees available right now. So if you are one of those murderino parents that's pulling your children into your disgusting pastime,
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well, then get some merch. so that everyone knows that that's what you're doing.
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If you're the cool aunt or uncle, like this is your time to shine and make your siblings question your sanity.
00:17:09
That's right. So you know how we have the MFM black and white logo pin and all proceeds from that
00:17:16
always go to a really good cause and a charity. And the most recent one since September
00:17:20
has been for the Whole Woman's Health, which believes that everyone must be at the center of their own healthcare decisions
00:17:26
and are committed to destigmatizing abortion, and creating safe spaces for all people.
00:17:31
You guys have raised with this logo pin alone, 20 grand for Whole Women's Health.
00:17:36
Amazing job. Whole Women's Health, making sure that abortion access is there for people who need it
00:17:43
and also that there's support online. And now that we have raised that money and we're gonna give that money to Whole Women's Health,
00:17:50
which is you guys raised that money actually and you giving that money to Whole Women Health but we do it for you We do the errand Don worry about it We going to now switch the charity And we decided that going forward all proceeds from the logo pin are going to go to the American Civil Liberties Union the ACLU as you know it
00:18:08
The ACLU works to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to all of the people of this country, including trans people's right to live freely, people's right to vote and abortion care for all.
00:18:22
We were so tired of suggesting to each other different charities to give for all these crazy things that seem to be going on politically right now and the extreme laws that are being passed in the middle of the night and these very scary extremes that are happening.
00:18:37
So we decided we're going to take all that energy and all of that need to give and we're going to center it at a place that's actually going to help stop and fight a lot of these very unjust laws.
00:18:49
So it's the ACLU. If you haven't gotten an MFM logo pin and you would like to give, buy one now and all of the proceeds go to the ACLU.
00:18:57
That's right. This pin is $10. If you've been wanting to give money to ACLU, you don't have a ton.
00:19:03
You just want to give it a little something. You get this pin. And if your friend has a birthday and you don't like them as much, you don't like $20 worth.
00:19:11
I'm saying you don't like them $20 worth. Go ahead and slap them a $10 worth. And then be like, but I gave money to the ACLU for you.
00:19:19
But we're turning this country around together, you and I. And then they'll be like, oh, she likes me fine.
00:19:24
It's fine. And then you're like free to ghost their party after that. Right. But don't forget to go through their drawers first.
00:19:32
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Drink their wine and go through their drawers. Okay. This is Kristen Davis from Are You a Charlotte?
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00:21:38
Hey everyone, it's Cal Penn. I'm the host of Ear Say, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.
00:21:45
This week on the podcast, I am sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's audiobook Project Hail Mary,
00:21:54
massive sci-fi adventure about survival and science and what happens when you wake up alone very far from Earth.
00:22:02
I really had to make a decision because I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and starting to get teary as I'm narrating some of these sections.
00:22:09
And it's like, OK, yo, yo, yo, is this indulgent? And I really thought about it. I was like, no, at this point, it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have in telling this story if I don't go through it.
00:22:22
But there's places in this book that deeply emotionally affected me. And I left it on the mic.
00:22:28
That's great. Because it served the story. People will say like, oh, my God, I cried at the end.
00:22:33
It's like, yeah, dude, me too. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:22:41
Here's a terrible one for you that I saw recently. There's a BBC documentary about it and I was just horrified.
00:22:50
So today I'm going to talk about Stephen Port, known as the grinder killer and the police failures and systemic homophobia that allowed him to become a serial killer.
00:23:02
So the sources I use today are a heavily used in-depth BBC article written by Daniel DeSimone, that BBC doc called The Grindr Killer, an ITV News staff article, a My London News article by Ella Bennett, a Belfast Telegraph article by Ryan Hooper, an A&E article written by Indrani Basu, some other BBC articles, a Guardian staff article, and of course, Wikipedia.
00:23:29
So on June 19, 2014, at 4.18am, a man calls authorities to report that he found a young man
00:23:39
outside his apartment building on Cook Street, which is in a working class neighborhood of East London called Barking.
00:23:47
He tells the operator, quote, there's a young boy, he looks like he's collapsed outside,
00:23:52
he could have had a seizure or something, or just drunk. When authorities He's arrived, the collar's no longer there, but they do find the young man.
00:24:00
He is propped up against the wall and he's already dead. He's identified as 23-year-old Anthony Walgate.
00:24:08
This kid, he's a bright, you know, charming young man. He's described by his mom as, quote, the life and soul of the party.
00:24:17
He's an openly gay fashion design student at the University of Middlesex. He has these grand plans to become a famous fashion designer.
00:24:25
and no one in his life doubted that because he has this enormous passion for both his career path
00:24:32
and life in general. You see all these photos of him in the documentary and he's just this
00:24:36
smiling, happy person, kind face, had so much potential. Basically, authorities determined
00:24:43
that he had died of a drug overdose, a GHB overdose, which is also known as the date rape
00:24:51
drug. So Anthony's friends and family are baffled by this and are adamant that he wouldn't have died
00:24:57
of a drug overdose. That's he doesn't, you know, use drugs. In fact, the police constable who was
00:25:03
in charge of the scene found it suspicious right off the bat as he saw bruising and blood on
00:25:08
Anthony's torso and noticed that his shirt had been hiked up as if someone had dragged him to
00:25:13
that spot. Not that he had died, you know, sat down and died of that drug overdose. Also, his phone
00:25:19
is missing, but authorities tell his mother that it's too expensive to bother tracking the phone.
00:25:26
And they end up concluding that his death isn't suspicious. And it's just he overdosed on drugs
00:25:32
he had used and they refuse to look into it at all. How is it too expensive to track a phone when
00:25:37
that's literally a one line of collecting evidence in police work? Also, in England, and especially
00:25:45
London, there are CCTV footage everywhere. I can't imagine that also tracking a phone or
00:25:51
pinging your phone is that complicated. Or I don't know, like, you know, take a percentage out of
00:25:57
some other thing and do the thing that actually solves a crime. Right. But they don't think it's
00:26:02
a crime. So they don't bother. Oh, because it's an OD. So it's like it's almost like saying
00:26:07
everything else is too hard. And we've already made our decision. Yeah. Like there's nothing
00:26:11
suspicious here why would we bother right except for the detective thinks it's suspicious yeah yeah
00:26:18
that should count right and then one of his friends comes forward and tells authorities
00:26:22
that anthony had actually gone to baking to meet up with an escort client named stephen port who
00:26:29
just so happened to be the caller who had notified authorities of anthony's body the one who said
00:26:35
hey, there's someone outside of my flat, whatever. And it turned out that it was his apartment
00:26:41
building, the guy that Anthony had gone to see. So let me tell you a little about Stephen Port.
00:26:46
He's born in 1975 in Essex. Growing up, he's quiet. He's a loner. All that stuff we've heard
00:26:52
a million times. He's bullied. He's described by his friends as having strange childlike qualities,
00:26:58
like he collects toys. He watches children's cartoon. There's just something a little odd
00:27:02
about him. In his mid-20s, he comes out as gay and his mom wasn't comfortable with it. According to
00:27:08
his sister, the reason was that she wanted grandchildren, which doesn't add up, you know.
00:27:14
But at 31 years old, he works at West Ham Bus Depot, where he cooks for drivers and staff. He's
00:27:22
a cook there. He moves out of his parents' East London home and into a small apartment in Barking.
00:27:29
And now that he no longer lives under his parents' roof, he's kind of free to do whatever he wants.
00:27:34
And he parties. He's able to have partners stay the night for the first time. But he also works as an escort and eventually a pimp for other young men that he's dating.
00:27:45
I was trying to figure out how to describe what he looks like. And then I looked it up and there is a BBC TV show called Four Lives.
00:27:53
That's a fictional show. And Stephen Merchant plays him. oh okay and it's like spot on wow yeah i might watch that yeah or lives so stephen port eventually
00:28:07
develops a habit for the drug ghb which as we know is referred to as the date rape drug it's
00:28:14
a lot of times when it is used as the date rape drug is put into people's drinks because it's
00:28:18
tasteless powder and you know it can lead to euphoria but if you take too much it can very
00:28:25
quickly cause unconsciousness and death. Well, I mean, this is not, I'm just interested in like
00:28:31
the use of personal GHB because I've only ever heard it in date rape drug stories. So that idea
00:28:39
where it's like, oh, I'm just going to do a little toot and go out to dinner. I mean, like, is that,
00:28:44
I don't know. A club drug? Is it just as. It doesn't sound like, I like, I understand Molly,
00:28:51
you take it and you're still like understanding what's going on around you, but it doesn't seem
00:28:55
like ghb is the way to go with that i'm gonna have to ask some of my drug contacts do you mind if i
00:29:02
make several calls would you make a text to your sketchy friends real quick i'm gonna text a friend
00:29:09
and say have you ever done ghb yeah purposely done it what's it like yes just send this real quick
00:29:15
listen we're doing we're boots on the street what do they call it boots on the ground. We're investigative journalists. We're trying to find the real
00:29:24
stories and to deliver it to you. I mean, this is just my journalistic side. I have to get down.
00:29:31
Okay. I'll let you know if there's an answer. Thank you. Sorry. I already got a yes. You did
00:29:36
not. Oh my God. Whoever that is has been waiting by their phone for decades because they did it in
00:29:44
the 90s waiting for that someone to ask that question yes why the cops are here the cops are here and they want me to give them some names Yes why Are you doing GHB Girl
00:30:01
Are you doing it? He wrote, girl, slow down. Oh, my God. Slow down. I wrote, what's it like recreationally?
00:30:13
And he wrote, yes. All right. so these two middle-aged white ladies now know what it's like the answer is yes to do ghb oh he
00:30:25
said people used to do it in clubs and they would fall out okay so it's basically like you know it's
00:30:31
what it's like a club drug to basically be high out of your mind all right i'm gonna okay i have
00:30:37
to write okay we're recording i'll have to call you later okay so when social media networks start
00:30:44
becoming popular, Stephen goes out less so he can stay online. He's got multiple profiles.
00:30:50
You know, he's fucking sketchy. He makes up fake profiles. He has real ones. He uses fake pictures.
00:30:55
He makes up fake stories about himself to like draw people in. And then he starts using dating
00:31:01
websites and he seeks out slim men in their early teens or twenties that look really young,
00:31:07
often referred to as twinks, which they mentioned in the BBC documentary. Also during this time,
00:31:13
he starts regularly searching for quote drug rape porn he's open about his fetish online one time
00:31:21
telling someone that the last quote young guy he had sex with was high on ghb so having sex with
00:31:28
him was like quote a rag doll as he was so out of it and that's what he's into and he looks up all
00:31:33
kinds of porn like that and he eventually moves on to drugging the young men that he takes back
00:31:39
to his apartment. And the neighbor of his did see a huge amount of GHB or like some powder drug,
00:31:46
like too much for personal use and was very concerned about it. So Stephen eventually moves
00:31:51
on to drugging the young men he takes back to his apartment, which leads us back to the beginning of
00:31:57
the story to June 13th, when Stephen goes to an escort website and views the profile of 23-year-old
00:32:04
fashion design student, Anthony Walgate. So on June 14, Stephen messages Anthony and asks if he's
00:32:11
available to come to his place for a quote overnight. And he says there's 800 pounds in it
00:32:17
for him, which is more than $1,000 in the US here. Anthony agrees. But he you know, he's afraid the
00:32:24
booking isn't legit. And also he's, you know, tries to be safe about these things. So he tells
00:32:30
his friend the details and where he's going. And then he says, in case I get killed to his friend.
00:32:40
So on the night of June 17th, Anthony rides to the train embarking, meets up with Stephen.
00:32:45
It's unclear what happens over the next 30 hours. But on June 19th at 418 a.m., that call comes in
00:32:52
about the unconscious young man outside this flat. So once those things are put together that he was
00:32:59
the caller and who he was going to see. Stephen Port's brought in for questioning.
00:33:04
He sticks with his story at first, but then eventually admits to hiring Anthony.
00:33:08
And he says they went back to his place and that Anthony took all the drugs on his own.
00:33:14
He had nothing to do with it. Eventually, you know, they had sex and eventually Port found that Anthony had overdosed.
00:33:22
And so afraid that he would get, you know, arrested for his murder, he just brought him
00:33:28
outside and called authorities. and the police believe him. So he's released on bail. Authorities are trying to figure out if he
00:33:36
can be charged with perverting the course of justice because he lied about it initially.
00:33:40
And of course, the fact that he's just let go and none of his stuff is searched really upsets
00:33:46
Anthony's friends and families. They're adamant that he wouldn't have died of an overdose,
00:33:50
especially self-inflicted. They ask officers to search Stephen's laptop, which they had
00:33:55
confiscated, but the police ignore all of this. But had they searched his laptop, they would have
00:34:02
found all the internet searches that Stephen Port had done for rape porn, along with other
00:34:07
suspicious searches. And it's more than likely that Stephen wouldn't have been able to go on to
00:34:12
kill any more victims had they just done some basic background checks. Unfortunately, that didn't
00:34:18
to happen. So on August 23rd of that year, Gabriel Kovari, a 22 year old Slovakian man, he moved to
00:34:26
London in hopes of becoming a translator. And he moves in with Stephen and he just has this, he
00:34:32
looks so young and sweet and just, you know, like he needs to be caretaken in a way. He's just looks
00:34:39
so sweet and young. Gabriel thinks he's going to be Stephen's roommate. But when he gets there,
00:34:46
he realizes that Stephen has other ideas that he wants him to sleep with him in his bed and be his
00:34:51
boyfriend. And Gabriel's a little creeped out by him. And so Gabriel stays on the couch and is not
00:34:57
interested. But within a couple days of moving in, Stephen tells a friend that Gabriel had already
00:35:03
left to go stay with another man. And then on the morning of the 28th, like less than 500 yards from
00:35:10
Stevens apartment. A woman named Barbara Denham is walking her dog near the graveyard on the
00:35:16
grounds of the Church of St. Margaret of Antioch. So she's an older woman. She likes to go, you know,
00:35:22
this lovely old cemetery, walks her dog every day there. And she finds Gabriel's dead body
00:35:29
sitting against a wall in an upright position. And she can't believe it. She's interviewed in
00:35:33
this BBC documentary. He's disheveled and there are two bags next to him full of his possessions,
00:35:39
although his phone is missing. And even this, you know, civilian is like, this looks suspicious.
00:35:46
This isn't right. And just like the first victim, Anthony Walgate, Gabriel shirt is pulled up showing his midriff like he been dragged there Again officers consider Gabriel death to be a GHB overdose Like Anthony Gabriel loved ones have a hard time believing this conclusion
00:36:03
and they start doing their own research when authorities won't help at all. And before the month of August is over, Stephen starts messaging a 21-year-old named Daniel Whitworth,
00:36:14
who's a young, hardworking chef who lived in Kent with his long-term boyfriend. and on September 3rd, Stephen sends Daniel a message to see if they can get a drink before
00:36:24
they had planned to have dinner. He says, you know, to come over to his apartment for a drink,
00:36:30
quote, just so you can get to know me a bit so you know I'm not some psycho. On September 18th, Daniel leaves work after telling his co-workers he's going to meet friends
00:36:40
and barking. And then after never making it home to his place that he shared with his boyfriend,
00:36:45
and Ricky Daniel is reported missing. So on September 20th, okay, again, Barbara Dunham, this woman,
00:36:55
takes her dog again for a walk. Same woman. Uh-huh. Same older British, you know, classic lady that you'd meet in a pub or something,
00:37:05
walking her dog through the fucking cemetery, and she finds another body. No. she finds daniel sitting in the same position and the same spot as gabriel can you fuck and she
00:37:18
she's interviewed at this and she's just like i i didn't believe my eyes i did not believe what i
00:37:24
was seeing yeah you would think you were having like a triggered reaction from the first time
00:37:29
ptsd of seeing a dead body and that you were hallucinating that's what i would right or
00:37:34
Or someone's playing a trick on you or some... God, that's awful. I know. He's sitting against the graveyard wall on top of a blue bed sheet.
00:37:44
His shirt is pulled up, revealing his midriff. His phone is missing. A small brown bottle is found with his body, found to be containing GHB.
00:37:54
Okay, but here's the thing. They find with Daniel a handwritten note that's alleged to be a suicide note.
00:38:02
like he had purposely overdosed and killed himself. In part, it says, quote, I'm sorry to everyone,
00:38:08
mainly my family, but I can't go on anymore. I took the life of my friend Gabriel. The guy had
00:38:15
been found in the same place right before him. We was just having some fun at a mate's place,
00:38:19
and I got carried away and gave him another shot of G. I didn't notice while we were having sex
00:38:25
that he had stopped breathing. Basically, he goes on to say in this note, allegedly, that he blames
00:38:30
himself for Gabriel's death. So he doesn't want to go to prison. So he's overdosing on purpose
00:38:36
because of the guilt he feels about it. I'm sorry, I must interrupt you to say that's the
00:38:40
most suspicious bullshit I've ever heard. The idea that someone would sit there and list out
00:38:46
the technical, like, beat by beat events and reasons is so bullshit and so fake.
00:38:55
okay that is not the most suspicious thing you've ever heard here's the last part of the fucking
00:39:01
oh my excuse me please continue get ready for this okay btw this is how it ends btw
00:39:08
please do not blame the guy i was with last night no he only had sex then i left he knows nothing
00:39:16
of what i have done love always daniel i'm sorry the letters btw are actually on that note yeah
00:39:25
and then says don't blame that guy that you're gonna see on fucking cct footage with me just
00:39:31
forget about him forget about him don't blame that guy oh yeah that's very irritated right now
00:39:38
guess guess who looked into it at the uh at the met police nobody nobody not even this one
00:39:46
not even this one not even this one and there's just we're gonna get into the clearly homophobic
00:39:54
reasons why they just didn't give a shit and didn't look into any of it. But partly it's that
00:39:59
they had this preconceived notion that, yeah, these gay men like to party and do a lot of drugs and
00:40:05
have sex with each other. And so this is all normal day to day stuff. Why would we look into
00:40:11
it? Right. You know? Right. Well, and also if it's the same thing that happens to sex workers,
00:40:16
which is if the some cops standing there kind of projecting all of his shit onto the scenario and
00:40:23
going well if this is the life you so choose then you deserve it i am right judge jury and
00:40:29
executioner you deserve it right that high risk lifestyle that to some people just means that
00:40:36
you don't deserve a actual you know to be treated like a fucking human essentially which is also
00:40:42
just if we could turn around and get the chemical analysis from everyone's bloodstream who would be
00:40:49
in the group surrounding it would just be like who isn't on drugs who amongst us isn't coping
00:40:57
in this day-to-day nightmare life without some pharmaceuticals here and there whether they be
00:41:04
recreational or prescribed like holy shit well no wonder it's like a shamed thing in our society
00:41:12
that like yeah i've uh you know i've done very fucked up narcotics in my life i've had anonymous
00:41:18
sex before. I've had one night stands or whatever it is that people have that are just like normal
00:41:23
parts of the human experience. And it doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean you deserve what
00:41:29
what's coming to you. And also hazard to say that for straight men, it's not just a normal part of
00:41:35
life. It's an absolute celebration. It's a high five party. It's congratulations to you. Another
00:41:41
notch in your bedpost, but God forbid some young gay guy do it. And then it's like, well,
00:41:47
Well well you asked for it What did you expect What did you expect Fuck you Yeah it a very big fuck you Yeah it all about shame and shame based and keeping it that way so it could be us versus them it gonna get worse right now karen ready
00:42:01
yeah it always does but wait um yeah i was just say four bodies total four lives total
00:42:08
okay so there's just one more yeah okay so an autopsy shows that daniel has sleeping pills in
00:42:15
his system and then he died from a ghb overdose which they're just looking for confirmation you
00:42:20
know what i mean like he did die from the thing he said in the alleged suicide note but that's as
00:42:27
far as they went to look into it sorry no one in a suicide note's gonna put btw like they take the
00:42:33
time if these are your last words you'd write the words out and don't blame the guy i was with
00:42:38
just really and then there was another thing i didn't read about him being like oh i lost my
00:42:44
phone. It should be back there in the grass. I mean, okay. He mentions the missing phone. Yeah.
00:42:50
That all the other men also had. He's covering all them bases. He just put it all in that note.
00:42:57
And it's the idea we've said this multiple times people, when people add in 1000 details,
00:43:03
that's when you know, they're lying. Right, right. It's just that's the unnecessary details
00:43:09
that have nothing to do with it. It's me when I'm 20 minutes late. And it's like,
00:43:12
oh my god i was at the gas station and the craziest thing happened you're not gonna believe
00:43:16
what happened to me just now people are just like karen just just admit it just say sorry
00:43:21
that's all you have to do say you're blow drying your hair and it wasn't working just say you once
00:43:25
again hypnotize yourself blow drying your hair i do it so often relaxing um okay but the pathologist
00:43:34
tells police that they quote there was bruising below both arms in the armpit region which is
00:43:40
unlikely to have been caused accidentally and may have resulted from manual handling of the
00:43:45
deceased most likely prior to death so another example of someone being dragged like the a
00:43:50
fucking amount of things that were in common in these murders which weren't hard to find the
00:43:57
families of all these young men are putting it together on paper and thank god for these families
00:44:02
or i don't think he would have ever been brought to justice oops spoiler alert okay
00:44:06
but i get the police don't investigate daniel's death as anything more than an overdose they never
00:44:12
look into what daniel had been doing leading up to his death or try to identify the man
00:44:16
spent the night with they don't even test the sheet he was found on or the bottle of ghb for
00:44:22
any dna and his family refuses to believe that he had used drugs to begin with let alone taken
00:44:29
someone else's life you know right it's not the person they knew meanwhile the news of another
00:44:35
body found in the same place as Gabriel Kavari is shocking to his friends and family. They're
00:44:41
still doing their own research. They're putting everything together very easily. It's like page
00:44:46
one of Google. If you look of like the cemetery in that area and suspicious death, it comes up.
00:44:52
Gabriel's loved ones continue pressuring the police to investigate the deaths as more than
00:44:56
overdoses, also as related. And they're like unwilling to even accept that they're related,
00:45:02
the authorities. In January of 2015, Stephen is charged with perverting the course of justice for
00:45:08
lying to the police about Anthony Walgate's death. He's not charged with murder because, quote,
00:45:14
there is no suggestion that Stephen bore any criminal responsibility for the death of a young
00:45:18
man. He's sentenced to eight months in prison. So in June of 2015, Stephen's released after serving
00:45:25
half his sentence. There is some good news. The coroner is about to hold an inquest into the
00:45:30
deaths of Gabriel and Daniel. She has some concerns around the investigation and the handling of their
00:45:36
deaths. Unfortunately, it doesn't bring an end to Port's killing spree. And in the early morning
00:45:42
hours of September 13th, 25-year-old Jack Taylor, who's a forklift driver, leaves the club and heads
00:45:50
home where he lives with his parents. And at around 2 a.m., Jack is contacted on Grindr by
00:45:57
Stephen Court. And so he meets Stephen at 3am at the train station in Barking. And 36 hours later,
00:46:07
a trash collector finds Jack dead on the other side of the graveyard wall where Gabriel and
00:46:13
Daniel had been found. Oh my god. So three bodies in this little area and less than 500 yards away,
00:46:20
another body, you know, supposedly overdosed outside left against a wall. He's propped up
00:46:29
against the wall, his shirt's pulled up over his midriff. He has no phone on him. And in his pockets
00:46:35
are syringes and GHB. Police conclude that they have another overdose on their hands.
00:46:41
Jack's family knows that he's not a drug user and they start their own investigation.
00:46:46
they figure out about the other two young men who had died in the exact same area and jack's sister
00:46:53
donna later tells the bbc that jack was not a drug user and that she knows he wouldn't have gone to
00:46:58
this like you know kind of run down cemetery sat down and like shot up and she's like what are the
00:47:06
chances that the other two men had done the same thing it's just unbelievable yeah just civilians
00:47:11
It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous and offensive. So Jack's sister starts doing all this research. They're like, you know, putting these graphs together of all the similar points of all these deaths. They keep trying to get the police to pay attention to it and they won't. They're just like, they're not connected, even though it's just so obvious.
00:47:30
They meet with the police and Jack's family is told that they found CCTV footage of Jack walking
00:47:37
down the street with a tall blonde man hours before his death. And the Taylor family insists
00:47:45
that they put the picture of this man he was walking with up in the newspaper to see if anyone could identify him.
00:47:52
And after the police realize, that they had misidentified another man walking off on his own as Jack.
00:47:59
They realized their mistake, thankfully, and put the picture in the newspaper on October 13th.
00:48:04
And they almost immediately receive a tip from a barking police officer who's like,
00:48:09
that's Stephen Port. Like, he is connected to all of these. He realizes it, thank God.
00:48:15
On October 15th, Stephen is finally arrested on suspicion of killing all four men.
00:48:20
He's charged with four counts of murder. it's a very complex trial but there's all this evidence against him including dna the fact that
00:48:28
the blue sheet that daniel had been found on is from port's own bed yeah an old cell phone steven
00:48:34
had is found to have 83 homemade sex videos some showing steven raping unconscious men
00:48:40
on his bed i mean it's it's very very dark and then eight other men because of the media
00:48:47
coverage come forward and say they'd been drugged and raped by steven as well They have the same story.
00:48:53
They met Stephen online and after meeting in person, he spiked their drinks or injected
00:48:57
them with a small syringe. They lose consciousness and wake up with Stephen raping them.
00:49:02
At Stephen's fall 2016 trial, the prosecutor paints Stephen as a, quote, voracious sex
00:49:07
predator who appears to have been fixated with surreptitiously drugging young, often
00:49:13
vulnerable men for the exclusive purpose of rape and that he's a highly devious, manipulative
00:49:19
and self-obsessed individual. So 41-year-old Stephen Port is found guilty of all four murders and numerous offenses involving seven of the eight rape victims who came forward.
00:49:30
He's later sentenced to a, quote, whole life order, which means he'll never be released.
00:49:35
And in December 2021, there's all this press coverage about how the last three victims could have been saved had the investigators done any fucking basic research into these murders, you know?
00:49:49
Yeah. So in December 2021, a jury rules that police failings, quote, probably contributed to Gabriel, Daniel and Jack's death. Probably.
00:49:59
Yeah. Had they investigated Anthony's death, they may have found Stephen killed him. An inquiry into how homophobia in the Met Police played a part in the investigations found that the jury had been told by the coroner, Susan Monroe, like to not even consider homophobia and discrimination as a contributing factor.
00:50:20
So like you're not even allowed to say that, obviously, to save your own asses. The Met say the failure to catch Port Sooner wasn't because of homophobia, but a lack of, quote, personal curiosity by the officers.
00:50:33
So it had nothing to do with homophobia. Yeah, but if it's your job to be personally curious about the crimes that happen in like on your watch and on your beat, you don't get the option of not being curious.
00:50:47
It just shouldn't come into play. It's not then quit the job. It's so obviously bullshit that it wasn't about curiosity and being bored at their job or whatever.
00:50:56
It's like there's four murders that are so like every family member has put it together and you can't put it together.
00:51:04
That is purely bias. Yeah. So Helen Ball, the head of the Metropolitan Police's Professional Standards, says, quote, we don't see institutional homophobia.
00:51:15
We don't see homophobia on the part of the officers. We do see all sorts of errors in the investigation, which came together in a truly dreadful way.
00:51:25
So like won't even cough to the idea that there was homophobia involved. If they don't see it, maybe they shouldn't have their job since it's blatantly obvious and everyone else can see it.
00:51:37
That's a great point. You still don't see it? Oh, you still don't see it? Well, you got to go to them.
00:51:44
Yeah, because it's right fucking there. It's right fucking there. So following Stephen Port's convictions, an inquiry into the original investigations is ordered and 17 police officers are investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
00:51:57
As of this recording, it doesn't appear that any of the 17 officers involved in the Stephen Port investigation have been held accountable for their actions.
00:52:06
And it doesn't seem like they will. Hmm. The family and friends of four young men murdered by Port are relieved he won't hurt anyone else. And my God, these people are so strong and so they were so determined to get action taken.
00:52:22
But of course, they're all left with questions about who would have been saved had the police done their job from the beginning.
00:52:29
And that's a big part of this case. And more so if the systemic homophobia that's rampant in the police force hadn't been a factor.
00:52:37
It's obvious that Gabriel, Daniel and Jack would still be alive today. And that is the murders of Anthony Walgate, Gabriel Kavari, Daniel Whitworth and Jack Taylor.
00:52:48
that's just so uh frustrating also because it's like stephen port didn't just murder them but then
00:52:58
was trying to like defame their name yeah after the fact like the idea of accusing one of the
00:53:06
victims of being the murderer himself just as this really cynical way and really clunky lame way
00:53:15
to get out of it. It's just like, it was clunky. He wasn't smart. He didn't do a great job. He
00:53:21
didn't have to. He didn't have to. Right. Which is the worst. It's awful. I hope I did that story
00:53:26
justice because it really is just like, it sounds like a story from the 1990s of how the LGBTQ
00:53:33
community was treated, but it's from 2016. Well, also, you know what it sounds exactly like. It's
00:53:39
a British Ed Buck. This made me think of it because this Jasmine Kanik, who is the reporter,
00:53:45
when I did the Ed Buck story most of the research was her journalism and her basically chasing the story when no one else would touch it because ed buck is a rich white man and he was basically luring gay black men to his apartment
00:54:01
to like quote unquote party and he had the exact same thing that this guy had and he was into
00:54:07
basically drugging and raping and murdering these men and and it yeah it took so many of these men
00:54:15
to die before anyone would even like turn an eye to it. It's horrifying. God, these poor families
00:54:21
and what they're put through constantly because these megalomaniacs won't just fuck off. I don't
00:54:28
know. Yeah. It's really rough. It's an important story to tell though. I think you did a great job.
00:54:33
I think you did a great job with it because also I think I've heard bits of that story,
00:54:38
but to hear it all together and the fact that it was so recently is you're right. It's really
00:54:42
disturbing it's not 1979 right and he's a serial killer like i had heard bits of it too and didn't
00:54:49
put all the people together who he had killed he's a serial killer that's dumping bodies like
00:54:54
100 feet from his own goddamn apartment that's in front of his apartment and then admitting he
00:55:00
put him there yeah it's awful awful awful um great job thank you thank you Hello, beautiful. I'm Amy Eric, founder of Madison Reed, a hair color company I named after my
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That's K-N-I-X dot com. Code FLOW15. Hey everyone, it's Cal Penn. I'm the host of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.
00:56:44
This week on the podcast, I'm sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's audiobook Project Hail Mary.
00:56:53
Massive sci-fi adventure about survival and science and what happens when you wake up alone very far from Earth.
00:57:01
I really had to make a decision because I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and starting to get teary as I'm narrating some of these sections.
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And it's like, OK, yo, yo, yo, is this indulgent? And I really thought about it.
00:57:11
I was like, no, at this point, it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have in telling this story if I don't go through it.
00:57:20
But there's places in this book that deeply emotionally affected me. And I left it on the mic.
00:57:27
That's great. Because it served the story. People will say like, oh, my God, I cried at the end.
00:57:31
It's like, yeah, dude, me too. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:57:40
So I'm going to tell you a story that you've probably already seen a documentary about, Touching the Void.
00:57:49
Have you seen that documentary? Don't remember anything. Oh, you know that. From this afternoon back.
00:57:55
So this is a story of two guys trying to climb the Peruvian Andes and getting themselves into a bunch of trouble.
00:58:03
trouble that it seems like there would be no coming back from. And yet it is a survival story.
00:58:10
So let's do it. Right. Okay. So classic Karen Kilgariff classic, classic, and really a true
00:58:19
Karen Kilgariff classic in that I'm taking what somebody has already put in all the hard work and
00:58:24
dedication into making. And I'm just going to retell you like a 28 minute version of the thing
00:58:31
that's already been executed perfectly that you could just go directly and watch.
00:58:36
But have we? We haven't. And we give them all the accolades. So it's OK. Maybe I'll be the stepping stone for you to finally go watch this if I tell you a partial
00:58:45
version. And then when you watch it with your significant other or your roommate who doesn't listen
00:58:50
to this podcast for some reason, you can say, oh, my friend Karen said this part's exciting.
00:58:55
Oh, my friend Karen right here said this. Yeah. I mean, I would love to be folded into more couples conversations.
00:59:01
because there's nothing better than to be brought up by the girlfriend to the boyfriend.
00:59:07
They love it. Boyfriends love it. Let them know you have a friend, at least one friend.
00:59:12
How many times have you met a guy where he comes up to you and goes, hey, are you from My Favorite Murder?
00:59:17
And you're just like, uh-huh, where's your girlfriend? Where's your girlfriend that didn't want to come over and say hi, that you're doing it for?
00:59:24
The one hiding in the corner. It's like, hi. And then you're like, get the fuck over here.
00:59:28
So the sources for this are, of course, the Touching the Void, the documentary, which you can watch on Amazon Prime and should.
00:59:35
There's a Wikipedia page about Joe Simpson, the Mountaineer. There is an article by Oscar Gorgosa from the El Pais.
00:59:46
I don't know. I actually don know but it a newspaper There a Washington Post article by Desan Thompson There is a Rich Roberts L Times article There an Elaine Williams article from the TES newspaper via TES Connect
01:00:01
And there's an L.A. Times article by Kenneth Turan talking about the documentary.
01:00:08
So it's 1985. And there are two British climbers slash mountaineers. Their names, Joe Simpson, Joe's 25 and Simon Yates.
01:00:20
And Simon is 22. And they have set out to make the first ever ascent of the West face of the Suila Grande.
01:00:30
There's no way I said that right. There's no way. It sounded good though. Thank you.
01:00:34
Go with it. It's a mountain in the Peruvian Andes. Okay. So it's as yet unclimbed.
01:00:39
We know a lot about the Andes because that's where our alive plane crash took place.
01:00:44
Another great retelling of a film that I did for a survival story. I won't ever stop.
01:00:51
Okay. So both Simon and Joe are fairly experienced climbers for their ages, but the nearly 21,000
01:00:58
foot first ascent, especially given the frigid conditions towards the top of the mountain
01:01:02
and the fact that they're doing it alpine style, which means they're doing it all in
01:01:07
a single go with most of the belongings on their back, right? So they're doing it old fashioned basically.
01:01:12
Yeah. It is a huge, dangerous undertaking for even the most experienced climbers.
01:01:17
Joe and Simon, however, welcome and crave the challenge. So they're like, no one's done it.
01:01:22
This is really hard. We're up for it. We're young and we're strong and we're British.
01:01:27
Oh, if only. Right. If only I could bend at the waist. After a two day walk from the nearest road, the guys get to the foot of the icy mountain.
01:01:39
and there they meet a camper named Richard Hawking who agrees to look after their tents
01:01:43
as they set out for their climb. So Richard's like, yeah, I'm down here. I'm not going to go
01:01:48
do the thing you guys are about to do, but I'll watch your shit for you. Okay, cool. I mean,
01:01:53
that's an important job. All right. Watching someone shit. As the girl who will absolutely
01:01:58
sit with all purses while my friends dance. Or ski. Or ski or whatever. It's just like,
01:02:05
There needs to be people that are willing to hold down the fort. And it's me and it's Richard Hawkins.
01:02:10
And it's a thing of cocoa and some whiskey in it. And I don't need, I don't need to prove myself.
01:02:15
I can prove myself over here with it. Socializing with a bartender. You go do your thing and try to prove to your dad that he should have paid more attention to you.
01:02:25
God bless. Oh, okay. Knowing that their stuff is all secure. They set out for the climb early in the morning.
01:02:33
They've got ice picks. They've got spike shoes, the whole outfit. Sure, sure. But they find the climb is even more intense than they'd anticipated, although they're making good time and they're having fun doing it.
01:02:48
Jay, this is one of Jay's last pieces of research for me. And he left in, they're making good time and they're having fun doing it.
01:02:57
And it made me laugh so hard. I dated a guy once that used to come home from the gym every day and do a character like a trainer character that he goes.
01:03:07
He had to tell me every day about different parts of his body that he worked out.
01:03:11
So he'd be like, Karen, today I did my delts and I did my glutes and I had fun doing it.
01:03:15
He would do like a whole speech and it always ended with and I had fun doing it.
01:03:18
Oh, I love it. And so that just kind of made me laugh. Okay, so workout guys working out in the snow.
01:03:25
so they have a successful first day climbing that night they set up camp on the mountain
01:03:32
they melt snowed for drinking water right sure classic it's the classic snow climbers classic
01:03:38
water i mean here's the thing you and i georgia as i look at her on zoom right now is sitting in
01:03:44
a lazy boy recliner yeah i'm wearing the same like this right and she can lift one leg slightly
01:03:50
above her head which is yeah i've been wearing the same set of pajamas or at least the same
01:03:57
looks like the same pajamas for three years in a row the idea of climbing to a place to then get
01:04:05
into thin air freezing temperatures to to melt snow to drink it for water is just like words
01:04:14
fail me like you know there's water in your sink right like you don't have to go up a fucking
01:04:21
mountain look i get it people like hiking people like outdoorsy shit you and i are particularly like
01:04:26
not outdoorsy no whatever whatever but like i guess pushing yourself is a thing i'll yes that's
01:04:33
what it is there's challenges and then there's like i want to go be as uncomfortable as i can
01:04:39
And also in the way I just, I really don't like being cold. Oh my God, it's the worst.
01:04:45
You know what it is? Death defying. If those words are involved, I'll hide Griffith Park all day long.
01:04:50
Yes. Right? Right. I will. I actually won't at all. But not at all. Let's say I would.
01:04:55
Death defying though. That's where I, that's hard to stop. It's kind of agreeing to a thing casually, looking at a person like we should totally
01:05:02
do this. And in your minds, you know, one false move and you're going to tumble to an icy death.
01:05:08
I mean, that's just like, it's real brave. Okay. That's the word. Okay, go on. But they're having fun doing it.
01:05:18
But they're having fun doing it. So the next day they start climbing again. So here's an important detail.
01:05:24
Joe and Simon, as they climb, are tied together by ropes. So Simon would later say, the rope can be something that rather than save your life,
01:05:34
kills you. If you're going to do that climb at some point, you're going to have to rely solely on your partner.
01:05:39
So the surface that they're climbing is so slippery. The snow is covering huge holes and cliffs and like they think they walking on a straight path because it all snow But actually it just like one false step and everything beneath them falls away
01:05:57
I mean, that's just like how it is in this part of the mountains. It's why no one climbed it before.
01:06:03
It's why you're the first. Yeah. So as they get closer to the summit, the weather, of course, what happens to the weather?
01:06:10
Does it get better, Georgia? No, not in the mountains. There's no better weather in the mountains.
01:06:15
No, it's snowing really hard. The men are freezing. Of course, their visibility is limited.
01:06:21
Yeah. The winds are blowing at high speeds. It's making it both colder and harder to move quickly.
01:06:27
So also they can't like sit around, right? So they can't like- Right. So you have to keep moving.
01:06:33
Right. Yeah. You have to keep moving. You have to keep going upward. But the more you do, the harsher the environment gets.
01:06:40
Yeah. That's a mountain. That's what a mountain does. That's mountains, baby. Like, let's get real.
01:06:45
That's like a mountain's job. That's what mountains do to you. So it basically, it took them five to six hours just to climb 200 feet.
01:06:56
So like almost the day, basically. So as darkness sets in, they call it a night.
01:07:02
They dig themselves a cover in the snow and they go to sleep. In the snow. In the snow.
01:07:08
So they wake up the next morning for the third day of climbing. The snow has let up a little bit, but the fresh snow has completely changed the landscape.
01:07:16
So they thought they kind of thought they knew where they're going and what it looked like and everything like that.
01:07:21
And now it's all just one big white patch. So, yeah, it's snow. They don't know if they'll be able to grab onto steady holds for the rest of the journey.
01:07:32
This is also that like, you know, you've seen Alex Honnold, the guy that like free climbs half dome, like with his hands and feet.
01:07:41
No, but I picture it. He's like got the thing there and the thing. Just getting little.
01:07:46
So, no, those guys do it with their hands. These guys do it with like ice picks and spiky boots and stuff.
01:07:52
But they still have to find those same pieces of rock and whatever to hold on to to get upward.
01:08:00
it's in the snow with ice damn it okay sorry god no i'm i'm just re-explaining alpine
01:08:07
climbing i can picture it right it sounds terrible well anyway they don't know if they
01:08:14
can find their handholds but what do they do they press on anyway because that's of course they do
01:08:18
because they're 22 and 25 never give up never surrender i've always played brian adams as loud
01:08:25
as you can. So by 2 p.m. on day three, they actually reach the summit and they're the first
01:08:31
mountaineers ever to scale this climb. So they stand there, they take in the sights, they're like,
01:08:37
it's us, we did it. And then they get ready for their descent. So they're both nervous about this
01:08:44
because 80% of all climbing accidents happen on the way down. So the descent is the dangerous part
01:08:51
of a climb like this. They've mapped a route down from the north ridge of the mountain,
01:08:57
which they believe should be easier than the way it was coming up. But as they begin walking along
01:09:03
this ridge, they find the journey is much more difficult than they anticipated, given these extra
01:09:09
layers of snow. It only takes around an hour and a half before the guys get so lost in a whiteout
01:09:16
from the blowing snow and the cloudy skies that they just have to wait for a break in the clouds,
01:09:22
essentially. So Simon is leading the way at this point, and he sees what he believes to be the
01:09:29
ridge. So he heads for it. And he's right. He is heading toward the ridge. But as he moves forward
01:09:34
over a patch of ice, that ice just gives way underneath him. And he nearly falls off the side
01:09:40
of the mountain. He doesn't. But now Simon and Joe have to like stop and collect themselves
01:09:45
and continue along this ridge path that they realize the ground can just fall out from under them anytime.
01:09:52
Cool. Ice sinkhole. Yeah. That's not right. Exactly. So it's very slow going. And by the time they pack it in for the night, they're still 20,000 feet up the mountain.
01:10:03
So they haven't really descended very far at all. Yeah. So on day two of the descent, which is day four total,
01:10:09
Joe looks back at the path that they took the day before and figures that they have already passed the worst part of the journey downward.
01:10:18
He thinks they're going to be able to finish the descent by the end of that day until they come to a surprise vertical wall in their path.
01:10:27
Yeah. So suddenly they're completely blocked. Joe heads down the wall first. So they have to basically use their pickaxes and their spiky boots, repel down this wall or scale down the wall.
01:10:39
Yeah. Things start off smoothly. But as Joe moves one axe with one hand, the ice holding the other axe breaks and sends him crashing downward. So he has a nasty fall. Now here's a trigger warning for what happens to him in terms of his injury. That's kind of a bummer. It's a bone break. And it's a bummer one. So if you don't like stuff like that, we don't want to upset anybody.
01:11:04
but joe crashes on the ledge below and breaks his tibia your tibia is the big bone in your it's like
01:11:13
your shin bone the big bone in your lower leg it's driven up through his knee joint yeah i knew
01:11:21
it was coming out somewhere i don't i knew it i knew it yeah it's bad it's bad so up on the mountain
01:11:31
on the icy stormy mountain now he's fallen and it's bad it's bad yeah you're fucked oh dude so
01:11:41
in normally when this happens a climber this high up on a mountain with a broken leg this bad is as
01:11:51
and Joe knows it. Oh, yeah. He looks up to Simon with terror and tells him his leg is broken.
01:11:57
Simon throws Joe some painkillers and he silently weighs his options. So essentially, he can save himself and leave his friend.
01:12:07
Yeah. Or he can try to help Joe out and risk both their lives. And imagine being in that position.
01:12:14
That's one of the many things you've been rolling the dice with, not just with your own life,
01:12:18
but then with this almost like a horrible moral situation to try to figure out what to do totally
01:12:25
i'm thinking about it right now i'm like hey vince you stay behind here i'm out like i would never
01:12:31
be like well here we go hold my hand if you were the person with the bone break you'd be like don't
01:12:37
you dare fucking leave me down here and then if you were the one and i when i say you i mean all
01:12:42
of us and then if you're the one at the top looking down you'd be like man that's rough for
01:12:46
you oh well no you wouldn't good luck okay no you wouldn't and actually simon simon takes a moment
01:12:56
he like calms down he stops panicking and he's like of course i have to help my friend out of
01:13:02
there yeah yeah so they come up with a plan they basically they've got their two ropes and each of
01:13:07
their ropes are 150 feet long which means 300 feet all together so they tied the ropes together
01:13:12
and there's a knot in the middle so the entire length obviously is 300 feet. Simon can anchor
01:13:19
himself into the mountainside and then use this rope to lower Joe down 300 feet at a time.
01:13:26
But because of the knot every 150 feet Joe has to stand on his good leg and give Simon enough slack
01:13:33
to unclip and then reclip the rope around the knot. So then once they reach the end of the 300
01:13:40
foot rope, Simon scales down by himself to join Joe. And then they repeat this process again. So
01:13:46
it's essentially figuring out the way to get a man with a fully horribly broken leg, like down this
01:13:53
mountain and out of this situation. And it actually works. It goes, it's really slow going, but their
01:13:58
plan is working. But then another storm kicks in. Now they don't have time to stop. They've run out
01:14:05
of gas to melt snow for water or heat their food like they basically can't stay there anymore they
01:14:12
have to keep going down the mountain because there's no there's no living on this mountain
01:14:18
or surviving on this mountain so joe reaches a particularly steep part of the mountain he yells
01:14:25
to simon to slow down but simon can't hear him because the storm joe slips and falls over a hidden
01:14:32
ledge. And when he finally comes to a stop, he's hanging above a crevasse in the mountainside.
01:14:39
And that's not the last time I'm going to say the word crevasse. I'm going to say it about
01:14:43
25 more times. You have to get comfortable with it now. I am. I am. Okay. So Simon,
01:14:50
meanwhile, is up above and has no idea what has happened, right? He doesn't know that he's fallen.
01:14:55
When he reaches the knot, he tugs on the rope to let Joe know he has to stand to give him some
01:15:02
slack but when he tugs on the rope nothing happens and he doesn't get any slack and that's
01:15:07
because joe's dangling above the crevasse there's nothing for him to put his good foot on there's no
01:15:12
way to get anything he's just hanging there so now joe's only chance of getting out of this situation
01:15:19
is climbing back up the rope to get to solid ground the broken leg guy has to climb back up
01:15:26
And he tries several times, but he doesn't have the strength or the energy to do it.
01:15:31
Meanwhile, Simon's in this desperate position. He's freezing cold. He's holding Joe's full weight as best he can.
01:15:38
And he does this for a full hour. And he finally comes to terms with the fact that something is terribly wrong with his friend Joe at the end of the rope.
01:15:48
He realizes he only has one choice if he's going to save himself, and that's to cut the rope.
01:15:54
So he pulls out his pen knife and he cuts the rope that connects him and Joe. And by doing so, he seals his friend's fate.
01:16:03
But for Joe, although Simon assumes this means sudden death for Joe, but he doesn't.
01:16:10
He assumes he like thinks he's already dead or something like something terrible has happened.
01:16:15
And he can't just sit there and hold on forever and hope for that. You know, it's a horrible situation.
01:16:20
But meanwhile, on the other end of the rope, Joe is not dead. And this basically is the next part of his adventure is just beginning. So let's talk about Joe Simpson for a second. He was born on April 13th, 1960, one of five kids growing up a British Army brat in Malaysia, where his dad is stationed.
01:16:42
His family moves around a lot during his childhood when he's eight years old. In 1968, he starts school at Ampleforth College, which is a prep school in North Yorkshire, England.
01:16:54
And this is where he meets his chemistry teacher, Richard Gilbert, who introduces him to the sport of rock climbing.
01:17:01
So Gilbert takes Joe and his classmates out to the mountains like Peak Scar and Whitestone Cliff to teach them how to climb.
01:17:07
And Joe stands out of the pack as a natural talent. So this spurs Joe's love of the outdoors.
01:17:13
He joins the school's Venture Scouts group, but because of his stubbornness and his disdain for authority,
01:17:18
whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, traits he attributes to his tough military dad,
01:17:23
he isn't allowed to join the student mountaineering expeditions that the school organizes.
01:17:28
He can't be tamed. Oh, good for him. Yeah, he's a rebel. So this rejection only spurs Joe to go on his own expeditions by himself.
01:17:38
Mm-hmm. Aw. because he an army brat and he actually maladjusted as we all are in 1978 joe graduates from ampleforth he goes on to study english literature and philosophy at Edinburgh University And up until Joe was 14 he was very religious He even wanted to become a priest But then he questions aspects of Catholicism finds answers he given unsatisfactory and he ends up turning away from religion and instead focusing on climbing
01:18:08
So it was going to be the church or the mountain, and he picked the mountain. He also is inspired by reading the climbing book, The White Spider by Heinrich Herrer, and he spends his summers climbing in the Alps.
01:18:23
So by the time he graduates from Edinburgh University in 1984, he's less concerned about starting a practical career, and he's more concerned about finding his next great adventure.
01:18:34
Amen. Right? So what he can't know is that one day he will find the biggest adventure and all the danger and risk that comes with it.
01:18:45
So we're back on the mountain. Okay. So Simon has just cut Joe loose. Simon's doing everything he can not to be consumed by thoughts of his dead friend.
01:18:55
He makes himself a snow shelter. He tries to get some rest for the night. It's impossible for him to get warm.
01:19:01
His thirst is so overwhelming that in Touching the Void, he actually describes it as being able to smell the water in the snow.
01:19:09
He's so thirsty. And he just is trying not to think about what he just did or had to do.
01:19:15
And that his friend is lying dead somewhere. Meanwhile, little does Simon know his companion isn't dead.
01:19:22
Joe awakens to find himself between two slanted surfaces slowly sliding downward into the darkness.
01:19:29
He's fallen about 150 feet and has somehow miraculously survived that fall. Holy shit.
01:19:37
Yes. He's fallen very far and yet didn't hit anything except for he must have hit that leg.
01:19:45
He must have hit that leg. Oh, ow. I mean, God damn it. Okay. He looks around at the narrow icy chute that he's stuck in because he's wearing his headlamp still.
01:19:55
And although the battery is dying, he can still see a little bit as he's looking around.
01:19:59
So he's able to clip himself into one of the walls of ice right before his headlamp battery dies.
01:20:07
And that keeps him from sliding any further. Joe notices that his rope is still stretching upwards towards the opening of the crevasse.
01:20:14
He's thinking Simon is still tied to the other end. And maybe Simon's dead from falling over the other side of from where he felt like that.
01:20:23
They basically both fell on either side. So thinking he might be able to use Simon's dead body as a counterweight to pull himself up out of this hole that he's in, Joe starts pulling on the rope.
01:20:35
And soon the end of the rope falls down towards him with no one on the other end.
01:20:41
Oh, how did he feel when he saw that? He saw this rope's been cut. I mean, like, and then you're just down in a weird ice chute by yourself.
01:20:51
Yeah, a luge. A real slow, scary luge. Yeah. Okay. So Joe starts to wonder if the cut rope means Simon's still alive.
01:21:05
So he starts to yell for his friend, calling his name. No one answers. All he can hear is the wind and the ice of the crevasse cracking and settling.
01:21:14
Horrifying. Of course, loneliness and fear set in. It looks like this may be the end of the 25-year-old's life.
01:21:22
so he starts crying he cries himself through the night so sorry really quick it's cold you're just
01:21:31
hanging in the middle of an ice chute your tibia is smashed up through your kneecap
01:21:37
you're thirsty your friend might be dead or cut you loose cut you loose but either way you're
01:21:45
feeling pretty goddamn rejected now sure just like when they wouldn't let you join the st martin's
01:21:51
mountaineers or whatever the hell that thing is called this is rough start cancel please no thank
01:21:57
you let's start okay so morning finally comes this is now day five okay now simon he's basically
01:22:04
gonna start his way down the mountain again from his like where he camped for the night on his way
01:22:11
down he sees the crevasse that joe must have fallen into he considers looking down into it but he's
01:22:17
afraid to see his friend's dead body and he's positive joe must be dead if he got cut from that
01:22:23
rope so he can't look and he just keeps walking well meanwhile joe wakes up in the morning and he
01:22:29
comes to the realization that if simon is descending the mountain he will pass this crevasse
01:22:36
right where he's hanging so he starts yelling simon's name and calling out for him simon can't
01:22:42
hear him of course because the wind it's like constant wind yeah i imagine that's editorializing
01:22:49
on my part it is constant whistling wind yeah screaming so joe doesn't give up instead he tries
01:22:57
to scale the ice and get out of the crevasse it would be nearly impossible for a person who had
01:23:03
two fine legs so like he's trying to basically scale upward and he can't do it but he doesn't
01:23:11
want to quit. Then he realizes he has a choice. He can sit there and wait, hoping that someone's
01:23:16
going to come and save him, which he knows is very unlikely. Or he can lower himself deeper into the
01:23:22
crevasse in the hope that maybe he can find solid ground to stand on down there and then somehow
01:23:29
find his way out. Oh my goodness. So basically he decides to plunge deeper into the abyss.
01:23:34
He steadily repels lower, relying on his good leg. The climb is impossibly long and he has no
01:23:41
way of knowing what waiting for him at the bottom So Simon meanwhile reaches a glacier along his descent So they dangerous to cross especially when you alone Normally you be roped to other people and it would be you know there be a whole
01:23:55
system to do it. He just has to walk across it by himself. The snow on top could be covering more
01:24:02
hidden crevasses, like pitfalls everywhere, but he has no choice. So Simon has to walk out across
01:24:09
the glacier alone and he ends up being able to do it. He ends up crossing without incident.
01:24:14
Fuck. So in a few hours, Simon is nearing the bottom of the mountain. And that's when he realizes, oh, my God, I have to go. And I have to explain to everybody what happened and what I did. And he starts, of course, freaking out. And so he already had, you know, this kind of like, you have to get through it. Don't think about it.
01:24:34
mentality when it first happened. But now he's like, Oh, I absolutely have to think about it.
01:24:38
And he's like, is everyone going to hate me for what I did? Is there, and then he's thinking,
01:24:44
maybe, is there another story I can make up to tell them what happened? So I don't look
01:24:48
bad or selfish or, and he's just, you know, freaking out. He's thinking, will anyone
01:24:53
understand the impossible position I was put in and the awful decision that I had to make? Because
01:24:59
in the climbing community, it is completely taboo. It's just not done to leave anyone behind.
01:25:08
That's just like rule number one. But if you think they're dead, then you can't,
01:25:12
it's like that. Remember I did the, um, the bodies of Mount Everest. And it's like,
01:25:18
if you don't leave someone behind and you stay with them, even if they're still alive and they're
01:25:22
clearly not going to come out, then you're going to die and you have to keep going.
01:25:26
Right. Exactly. So the so the self-preservation, of course, makes sense because it's like, don't everyone shouldn't just sit there and die together. But right. That doesn't keep the surviving person from being like judged and, you know, like talked about or whatever. So he's starting to realize, oh, no, I have to now I have to talk about this. So he gets to the bottom. He gets to the tents. Richard's there waiting for him.
01:25:54
um richard asks where joe is and simon tells him everything he just tells him exactly what happened
01:26:00
the complete truth and he tells him that joe is dead to his surprise richard does not judge him
01:26:06
for it doesn't say anything bad is like that's so horrible um is it's kind of best case scenario for
01:26:12
the first person that is hearing this horrible news for for simon also quick reminder simon's
01:26:19
22 years old. Jesus. 22. Child. Yeah. Child. Horrifying. So, okay, back inside the crevasse.
01:26:27
So after rappelling on one leg for a really long time, basically down an ice chute,
01:26:35
Joe reaches a part of the crevasse that opens up into a sort of dome-shaped cavern.
01:26:41
So at the bottom of that cavern, he's relieved to finally see a snow-covered floor. He gets
01:26:47
himself down onto the solid ground for the first time since his fall. And then once he's there,
01:26:52
he sees a small slope upward that has sunlight shining on it. And he realizes there's a way out
01:26:59
of this spot that he's in. Joe crawls toward the sloped exit on his stomach. But as he does,
01:27:07
he hears a cracking sound underneath him. And he realizes he is not on solid ground.
01:27:12
he's on a cracking sheet of ice and he has to if he doesn't get to that upward slope quickly
01:27:19
the ice beneath him could break and he could fall into further down a crevasse or you know fall to
01:27:26
his death yeah he scrambles and just makes it up onto that slope scrambles think of the leg think
01:27:34
of where the leg and knee are positioned so once he's on that he starts climbing upwards he's sliding
01:27:39
on his stomach while pulling himself forward with his pickaxes. But at certain times he's forced to
01:27:45
use his legs. He just has to. So anytime he pushes off with his broken tibia leg, he's screaming in
01:27:52
pain. Slowly and painfully, he makes his way up the slope, out through the opening and onto solid,
01:27:59
sunny ground. So he somehow makes it out of that crevasse. I think that's the second to last time
01:28:07
I'm going to say that word. Okay. But now Joe's got miles and miles to go to get to base camp,
01:28:13
but it doesn't take him long to find Joe's footprints leading across the glacier. He's
01:28:18
exhausted. He has no food, no water. And he actually considers just sitting down like,
01:28:23
cause he's sitting down kind of looking around to see, Oh, this is where I go next. And then he's
01:28:28
like, I think I'm just going to stay here. Cause he's just like beat. I mean, yeah. That's what
01:28:32
your brain says to you yes after all that after all that horror you're just finally like out in
01:28:37
the sun you're like it's fine i'll stay here all right but instead he steals himself and begins to
01:28:43
make his way across the glacier and down the mountain and he does this by scooting himself
01:28:49
across the snow so he can stay off his injured leg just imagine how irritating that is like you're
01:28:56
sliding on your ass basically trying to hold up your broken leg oh my god so it's not like
01:29:02
dragging and hitting the ground is such a nightmare okay so simon stays at the base camp for the next
01:29:11
three days he's resting he's gathering his strength um and he's basically getting ready
01:29:16
to make the trek back out to the road to head home still has to walk a bunch jesus yeah yeah
01:29:24
It's so much walking. It's so much walking. And climbing. And snow. And almost dying.
01:29:30
So the night before he's about to leave, he and Richard are asleep in their tents and they wake up to the sound of someone shouting.
01:29:39
So they get up and they're like, what's this? Put their hand to the ear cartoonishly That again I lying I made that up They get up they listen closer and simon recognizes the sound of his own name he looks into the distance and he sees joe somehow still alive
01:29:56
crawling over the rocks toward him and richard in their tents oh my god it took him three full
01:30:03
days in blistering cold conditions and even though he lost simon's tracks in yet another snowstorm
01:30:09
dude joe was somehow able to find his way down the mountain and get his ass back to base camp
01:30:17
so with no water or food joe managed to survive three days on snow only richard that's not warmly melted snow with a bunsen burner that's just snow in your mouth
01:30:32
richard and simon left joe in their tent where they hunker down for the night joe immediately
01:30:38
thanks simon for trying to help him down the mountain when simon begins to apologize for
01:30:43
cutting the rope joe stops him and tells him he did the right thing so now imagine the relief of
01:30:51
that that yeah like thinking you killed your friend and now he's there and going don't even
01:30:57
i mean just such a relief when joe's finally rescued and given medical treatment doctors
01:31:03
find that he's lost a third of his body weight holy shit in like a couple days in a couple days
01:31:11
with just oh yeah you know men how they burn fat it's so easy for them it's so easy for them
01:31:20
all they have to do is almost die in a mountain oh my god he okay so joe undergoes six operations
01:31:26
on his leg over the course of two years doctors tell him he'll have trouble walking and they
01:31:31
will certainly never climb again. But of course, he starts doing physical therapy. He makes a full
01:31:38
recovery and he gets himself back into climbing shape because those guys don't know the word quit.
01:31:44
As for Simon, when he gets back to England, he's met not with a hero's welcome, but with a huge
01:31:50
amount of criticism. Because the climbing community is like never leave a partner behind.
01:31:57
no it's an unforgivable sin but joe comes forward and defends simon whenever anybody tries to
01:32:03
disparage the decision that he was forced to make yeah yes they all would have made it like they
01:32:10
of course an hour of someone hanging there that he thought was dead it's like you can stay there
01:32:15
and die too or you can try to get out and get help right if you if there's dead weight if you
01:32:21
waited a full hour it's not like in the snow immediately where he was like i can't do this
01:32:27
with you man it's like yeah he did everything he possibly could and then went okay if there's a dead
01:32:32
body hanging at the end of the rope then i have to cut this there's just no choice right yeah
01:32:38
unfair so in 1988 joe writes a book about his experience and it's called touching the void
01:32:45
and then in 2003 a documentary by the same name is made interspersing reenactments with commentary
01:32:51
from Joe Simon and Richard Hawking, the guy who watched Everyone's Purse. I'm sure that guy is like some super climber that is like, how dare you?
01:33:03
He's like, fuck you. How dare you? For sure. You couldn't even get to the parking lot of this mountain.
01:33:09
You're right, Richard. The film wins the Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film at the BAFTAs that year.
01:33:16
No one has ever tried to climb this mountain again since Joe and Simon's fateful yet successful, technically successful climb in 1985.
01:33:28
And that is the unbelievably nail-biting story of the survival of Joe Simpson and Simon Yates in the Peruvian Andes.
01:33:36
Oh, no one's ever tried to climb it again. That tells you everything right there since the 80s.
01:33:42
80s it's it much in the same way that no you know no soccer team has ever tried to crash a plane and
01:33:49
then survive for three months get out of the andes everybody no no no no it's terrible holy shit yeah
01:33:58
oh man this lazy boy is so comfortable right now right isn't it even more so yeah it's warm my
01:34:05
heater just kicked on it but truly if you haven't seen the documentary touching the void this was
01:34:10
nothing compared to these guys telling the story themselves you just have to see them and also
01:34:17
there's really amazing like the detail in which when joe simpson was basically trying to get back
01:34:23
to camp and trying to force himself to keep going there's a really funny part of it where he tells
01:34:30
the story about getting this song uh stuck in his head that was a total like early 90s song
01:34:37
you have to watch it but it's really chumbawamba kind of it was bony i want to say bony maroney
01:34:44
you know who would know is dave holmes but you have to see it you have to see it and he basically
01:34:49
just he basically gets a delight style maddening almost like you know retro disco song stuck in
01:34:57
his head as he's trying to climb which probably helped distract it like being annoyed is a good
01:35:03
fuel yes that's right doing something it's energy it gets it gets you going for sure oh that was
01:35:09
intense good job thank you i'm gonna cancel all my mountain climbing plans for the near future i
01:35:15
just did this because you wouldn't listen to me about the mountain climbing and i'm trying to give
01:35:19
you examples of what could happen to you i appreciate it you keep going to mount wilson
01:35:24
the way you insist you know what our fucking array this week should be jay elias getting a writing
01:35:31
job? Yeah. Oh, yes. Jay has worked with us on our behalf, on our behalf. And it's been very hard
01:35:41
for him to do all of those things with us for three years. I think it's more than that.
01:35:48
I think so, too. It felt like the very beginning of Exactly Right. Yes. And we would not be where we are today without him.
01:35:55
He is an incredible person. We are so lucky to know him, to have had him work with us.
01:36:01
And he changed everything with Exactly Right. And we just are so proud of him. When I first interviewed him to be an assistant,
01:36:10
he was the assistant of three Disney executives. And I knew I was like, oh, then you're fine.
01:36:15
If you can be three executive assistants at one time, then you can come and help us.
01:36:21
Well, yeah, easy for me to say, because I'm not the one that actually has to do it.
01:36:25
But Jay went from being my assistant to basically being an executive assistant to running our calendars to then becoming the development coordinator.
01:36:35
He basically just kept moving up and he did it all. He did ads for us. He did all kinds of stuff.
01:36:41
He basically did so many more jobs than his job, but all along he wanted to be a TV writer
01:36:48
and he just got his first writing job. And so Jay, we will miss you dearly. Thank you so much for everything you gave us.
01:36:56
And oh, also, sorry, by the way, he just started doing my research because he wanted to be a
01:37:01
writer and he was like it be good practice for me So and I mentioned it many many times when I done my stories but he was also my researcher He really did it all Yeah And every single person at Exactly Right is like near and dear to our heart And Jay what a beautiful person We so lucky to
01:37:16
know you and have you on our team. And God, he's off to make history. And we're so proud of him.
01:37:23
Yeah, it's very exciting. And it's really cool to see someone get something like that,
01:37:27
because it's a hard thing to achieve in this town to get a writing job. So it's very cool.
01:37:32
And he gets to do it now. And now we have to look after our own calendar. So onward, Jay.
01:37:40
And thank you so much for your loyalty and kindness. And I mean, the whole stressful thing with a beautiful smile.
01:37:47
Yeah, he was a true pro. And thank you all for being true professional podcast listeners.
01:37:53
You're good at it. Here's what I like about the way you do it. You just keep it's like once one's over, you'll listen to the next one.
01:38:00
You don't give a shit. No. professionals you'll binge or you'll listen week by week but either way you're here doing it here
01:38:08
and there that's right you're reviewing you're rating you're subscribing you're downloading
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you're being a part of the conversation we love it yeah we love it we couldn't do it without you
01:38:20
thank you obviously yeah and stay sexy and don get murdered Goodbye Goodbye Elvis do you want a cookie This has been an Exactly Right production
01:38:38
Our senior producer is Hannah Kyle Crichton. Our producer is Alejandra Keck. This episode was engineered and mixed by Stephen Ray Morris.
01:38:45
Our researchers are Jay Elias and Haley Gray. Email your hometowns and fucking hoorays to myfavoritemurder at gmail.com.
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