Podcast Ep199 Buddy Levy
Producer: A self promoting egomaniac known mostly for his catastrophic failures. No, no, no, not our guest today. There's definitely something for us to learn from this individual who leads the cast of characters in the realm of Ice and Sky. It's the latest historical work of author Buddy Levy, where he takes us on a gripping journey through attempts to conquer the North Pole, which, spoiler alert, was not achieved by dogsled or airplane, but by airship.
Now, why do we care? Well, this accidental historian, as Buddy describes himself, says that these historical models provide sort of a connective tissue for today's innovators and thought leaders. who will show us the way to do the things we need to do in the future to survive on this big rock. All right, time to join host Eric Weinmayer and guest Buddy Levy in the studio.
In this episode, you'll discover the traits that allowed legit North Pole adventurers guide their teams through adversity, dealing with real consequences in the most extreme locations on Earth. And what lessons we can learn from them. This is the No Barriers podcast.
Erik Weihenmayer: It's easy to talk about the successes, but what doesn't get talked about enough is the struggle. My name is Erik Weihenmayer. I've gotten the chance to ascend Mount Everest, to climb the tallest mountain in every continent, to kayak the Grand Canyon, and I happen to be blind. It's been a struggle to live what I call a No Barriers life. To define it, to push the parameters of what it means. And part of the equation is diving into the learning process and trying to illuminate the universal elements that exist along the way. And that unexplored terrain between those dark places we find ourselves in and the summit exists a map. That map, that way forward is what we call No Barriers.
Hey everybody, this is Erik Weihenmayer. Welcome to No Barriers podcast. And I have my, my Buddy Buddy Levy. Did you notice that, that play on words, Buddy? Love it.
Buddy Levy: How you doing, man?
Erik Weihenmayer: Oh, trust me, I'll get more clever than that throughout the interview. Yeah. I'm banking on it. So it's awesome to have you on the podcast for the second time, Buddy.
You and I are good friends and, we've known each other for a long time now. We, to recap, we met, in Greenland, at this adventure race that we were going across. I'm a Salek Island and you are our embedded reporter, intrepid reporter. You were so fun. You made us laugh so hard. We fell over and like, I almost suffocated.
Yeah.
Buddy Levy: Yeah. I would say that people who are sleep deprived, are an easy audience.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah. And then you started writing books and, uh, I mean, I've heard you say you wouldn't call yourself an historian, but you seem like an historian to me. I know you're a writing teacher. professor, but, come on, dude, you've written, nine books about, historical, events,and so forth, I mean, wouldn't you call yourself an historian at this point?
Buddy Levy: Yeah, I'm an accidental historian,because of my background was in creative writing, and then, with my first book, my first major New York book, on Davy Crockett, I entered the realm of, of history and I just never looked back, and so I'm not, I didn't, I'm not an academic historian, but I'm a historian by trade, I guess, and by practice.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah. And interest. Yeah. And out of your nine books, which is your favorite? This is a loaded question, Buddy.
Buddy Levy: Yeah, authors always say, my most recent one. This one, Realm of Ice and Sky, is my favorite. Dude! What?try again.No Barriers with Erik Weihenmayer.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah, we were co authors on No Barriers, that's right. Good, shameless plug, thank you. Yeah, but Realm of Ice and Sky, read it this weekend, Buddy and it's really amazing. It's a page turner. And it's super fascinating. All your books are fascinating, but this one in particular is really cool because It's this quest of all these explorers reaching the North Pole, but in my way of understanding it, it's like the turn of the century, the Industrial Revolution is happening, and people, that are trying to get to the North Pole are like, forget 50 dogs mushing to the North Pole and getting frostbite, let's use technology, let's, let's fly an airship or a fixed wing or even a snowmobile, you know what I mean?
Like, Like, let's start utilizing technology to solve these problems that seem impossible, right?
Buddy Levy: Yeah, I'm glad you pick up on that, because this is, this book really does have a lot of technology and science in it, and I love the pioneering element of these, explorers, especially the American Walter Wellman, who we'll get to, but, it's, I'm glad you bring this up because, at the beginning of this book, which is around the turn of the century, as you say,the airship and the airplane are vying for sky supremacy and it's an, it's not known yet which version of human powered flight is going to win out.
And so, you know, it's like right around the time of the Wright brothers are testing their airplanes and, the Germans and the Italians and the American Walter Wellman are starting to dabble in airships or dirigibles, what we call now blimps too, and so it's this really cool story about, all these attempts to make it to the North Pole had been done in this,traditional dog sled slog over the ice, take a ship as far north as you can go.
Get it stuck in the ice, disembark the ship, and then take dogs and your own human power and try to, you know, bull your way to the North Pole, which hadn't been working very well. No one had made it. To say the least. No one had made it. And so Wellman has this, American Walter Wellman, who was a journalist, and he was starting to, um, he had a, I guess arctic exploration was his side hustle and, he was really, he had his eye on technology and started noticing that these dirigibles were able to fly much longer distances than airplanes and had more payload.
And so it dawned on him that, Hey,and he tried a number of times to make it to the North Pole in the traditional dog sled method. And then he said, wait a minute, and he even predicted in an article many years before that airships or flight would solve the problem of the North Pole.
And yeah, it's a really key moment. Yeah, it turned out he was right. It took a great deal of,this is such a no barrier story in so many ways. it took a lot of failure, and history actually, and many historians. Sort of view Walter Wellman as a failure, but I don't. I view him as a pioneer who tried something untried and his efforts, led, just under two decades later to ultimate success.
Erik Weihenmayer: It's just incredible ambition, to actually try to make this thing happen when it was so uncertain and for the, you know, there's an incredibly high percentage that it's just gonna wind up in absolute disaster, injury, death, suffering. it's mind boggling when I read your books. I think we are such wimps today, Buddy compared to these folks back then.
I mean, we're just like the wimpiest people in the world compared to these explorers. Right? And by the way, you and I have had our fair share of adversity and so forth, but, you seem to specialize in these people that have just fought through massive obstacles. and have endured incredible adversity.
These stories that you write about are very no barriers.
Buddy Levy: Yeah, I'm really drawn to people at the, at the far edges of survival, for one thing, and then,problem solving how they managed to get out of it. But also just the ambitious, element of what these guys were attempting.
I say guys, because at the time they were mostly guys, almost exclusively men. But yeah, it's, I really am drawn to stories where, people are just at the fringes of everything, whether it is what has been done before, or, once things go wrong and they invariably go wrong in Arctic travel.
What are you going to do about it now? You know, and that's really important. It's because a lot of my stories, are, they center on historical survival tales. and I think they're actually applicable today too, for people who are, whatever they're trying to do, summit Everest or,just attempt things that haven't been attempted before, fly to space or whatever.
Erik Weihenmayer: These expeditions never go well. They, even the successful ones, which are few and far between, there's still epics like happening, nothing runs as as you think or you hope, right? And so why there's just so much disaster and so much failure. Why is disaster and failure so compelling to read about?
I mean, because in real life, like climbing mountains, I want boring. I want methodical. I do not want any of this shit that you write about.
Buddy Levy: Well, you know, what's interesting is that the most successful story in, polar history is about the Endurance and there's plenty of suffering in that story, but ultimately no one dies.
And so when people ask me,they always say, Hey, you're, you write about the Arctic, right? Even though Shackleton was in the Antarctic and they say, you know, um, is yours like the endurance? And I say, yeah, except in his story, in the story of the Endurance and tackling, everybody lives. In my stories most people die. and so I guess I'm interested in, um, you know, people having to deal not only with the adversity and frostbite and broken limbs, but also their mortality. And, you know, there's just something really, human about these stories and also leadership almost always surfaces in ways that you maybe wouldn't expect... where it really matters.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah, yeah, people just like leadership is the diff is one of the big differentiators between life and death in these expeditions.
Buddy Levy: Yeah, and success and failure of the expedition and choices that are having to be made on the fly in subzero temperatures and 50 to 60 mile an hour winds on a floating iceberg, and you've got real consequences.
And I really love how, in a lot of these stories that these people, sometimes it's unexpected who it is, and sometimes it's expedition leaders, but they rise to a level that is required, for everyone, for whoever is going to survive. And also,they, there's a selflessness among these leaders in many cases where they're willing to, sacrifice their own lives for their men.
And I find that stuff really, really moving and, yeah, I guess just really, there's a passion, and then there's that self sacrifice that moves me.
Erik Weihenmayer: But it's really interesting because there seems like this, almost like a contradiction between the fact that they are so selfless and they take care of their people.
But at the same time, there's this kind of ambition, there's this kind of feeling of being a self promoter, right?like Wellman, the way you, and the way you still, make a life as an adventurer, you gotta be a self promoter, you gotta, like, write about this stuff, and go on the lecture tour, and write books, and get newspapers to sponsor you, and some people we're critical, right?
They're like, Oh, these self promoters, right?
Buddy Levy: Yeah, that's a great point. Because as you know, um, mounting expeditions, whether it was then or now requires sponsorship backers, a great deal of money, to travel to these far flung places. And yeah, it's a really interesting dynamic where you have, you know, this, my book, realm of ice and sky, this new one, uh, involves kind of three central figures, Walter Wellman, the great American and then the great Norwegian, Roald Amundsen and then this Italian airship designer and military man,Umberto Nobile. And all of them, would, had to get, had to gain backing. these
Erik Weihenmayer: hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Buddy Levy: Right. Right. Right. And so you're talking about,Wellman had backing from, Theodore Roosevelt and Alexander Graham Bell and the fledgling National Geographic Society and his new, you know, we're also at the era of the great, newspaper backed expeditions.
And so, you know, they're, they're trying to cover these things in real time because, succeed or fail, you're going to go home if you make it home. And then like you say, to recoup some of this money, you're going to have to go on lecture tours, write books, write... Wellman, Walter Wellman wrote hundreds of articles, a very prolific writer.
But yeah, it required a kind of, dual personality where one you're explorer and the other you're,like you said, a promoter and,a lot of these guys got criticized, Perry, Robert Perry, the American,for being self promoters, but I look at it as they really had no other choice if they wanted these things to happen.
Erik Weihenmayer: Oh, and I got all kinds of questions about Perry and Cook, so yeah. Yeah, those guys are fascinating. So, when I was reading this, I was thinking, you give real respect to these explorers, And as I was reading, it was hard not to think about our modern day,just affluent people that, you know, like Fosse, didn't he die trying to balloon around the world?
Is that right? Or, or like Musk, you know, rocketing,to Mars, hopefully one day, Or,the Amazon guy, right? Like it's easy to not like these people, but I think at least the way I understood it, you're making an argument that like these people pave the way. They're incredible, incredible ways, all that disaster and suffering and failure paved the way for things that we take for granted today.
So they're not just shameless self promoters. They weredoing something like incredible where they just have to believe and they have to have incredible logistics and luck, Like nobody, there's a lot easier ways to get famous, I guess I'd say.
Buddy Levy: Yeah. that's true. And, what I always look at in these stories is that in many cases, they're attempting something that's a first. And if you look at trying to fly an airship to the North pole, you know...Fill a balloon essentially with, flammable hydrogen gas. stick a motor on it, and then before anyone has ever tried it, jump in and, head north and see what happens.
Yeah. And, it's so I have a great deal of respect. I look at these, airship pilots and navigators as, early astronauts, it's really similar because, the chances of something going wrong are really high. And, and it takes this incredible leap of faith to, to believe that this is your plans, all of these plans you've made on the ground.
If everything goes perfectly. you're going to succeed and, of course there, there will be potential, fame, immortality and, and riches, but,it's not guaranteed. Same thing with flying to, the moon or mars or anything,
Erik Weihenmayer: For sure, flying to the moon is like way safer than what these guys were doing.
I feel like, I think probably. Yeah.
Hey, everybody, this is Eric, and I want to take a little break from our interview to tell you about No Barriers. Obviously, we're interviewing these amazing No Barriers pioneers, but behind this podcast is an organization called No Barriers, predicated on the idea that what's within us is stronger than what's in our way.
Our mission at No Barriers is to help people with disabilities, to break through barriers, to tap into the light of the human spirit, and to reclaim their lives, sometimes to reclaim their potential. In the business of shifting mindsets, and it's proud work, and I hope you'll get involved. Learn more about us. Check out our newsletter, NoBarriersUSA. org, NoBarriersPodcast. com
Um, so I have a couple technical questions. So I'm a dummy and I thought like an airship, a hydrogen airship, I almost thought I guess I never thought about it too much. I always thought like they were using hydrogen as the fuel. The hydrogen is just the gas that's lighter than air that keeps the ship afloat and these ships, like, um, Walter Wellman's airship,it's like 6, 000 pounds of gasoline, of fuel, and like, probably other thousands of pounds of gear and equipment and human weight, right? So there's got to be a ton of hydrogen to lift these things off the ground.
And then the motor's got to be strong enough to fight 100 mile an hour Arctic winds. So it doesn't seem, when you first think about it, that feasible.
Buddy Levy: Well, right. Yeah. And as it turned out, it took a good deal of trial and error. But yeah, what's, what that fascinated me to, you, you inflate, this, I mean, these airships, Wellman's, Walter Wellman's was about 185 feet.
The later ones to 17 to 20 years later were nearly the size of a, the size of a football field, right? So you inflate this envelope, the outside of the airship is called the envelope, and that thing is inflated with, I've got a stat here, 274, 000 cubic feet of hydrogen. Now, hydrogen is like 93 percent more buoyant than atmospheric air.
When you fill something this big, it just lifts. And so that's what creates this incredible lifting power and payload possibility. Now, you're right that once it starts lofting above the earth, then you've got all sorts of other technical problems, which is how to maneuver it and navigate it.
And so how to get it back down to, ah, yes. And so you have to deflate some of the hydrogen. And so these things, the, the balloon or the envelope is also filled, with these balloons inside called ballonets. And those things, help in a couple of ways. They help maintain the form of the envelope, but they also, allow the possibility of altering the lifting gas and so that you can rise and descend. I mean, this is all theoretical. It's gotten so much better. Now, at the time, Wellman, he had really no idea what would happen, especially if he ended up, rate rising too high into the atmosphere, in which case you've got an imbalance between the hydrogen filled envelope and the airship.
The air atmospheric pressure, which can result in an explosion. so everyone remembers the Hindenburg. In fact, that was the death of the airship until now. It's, it's back. but yeah, and so the other thing is that,you have attached to this giant envelope,seriously small motor, like 75 to 80 horsepower.
And you're like, this motor
Erik Weihenmayer: was way too wimpy. It was
Buddy Levy: right. But it's kind of what they had at the time. And also you're dealing with weight issues. even though the Wellman's motor was like 75 horsepower, it weighed something like 750 pounds. And you've got to deal with that.
And, but once the airship is aloft, and, you're trying to time it so that you have a tailwind. that's the goal. But you're right. trying to buck these Arctic winds becomes, a huge problem, not only for Walter Wellman, but for the, subsequent attempts, particularly one by Umberto Nobile, which ends in catastrophic failure.
Erik Weihenmayer: So, so you also have this, just one more little technical piece, these like rudders, like these. the only way I could. I understand it is like a giant rope, equilibrate, equilibrators, They're like a rudder, right? and they hang these things and they put like gear and stuff in them and they drag the ground.
What? that seems like a big mistake.
Buddy Levy: Well, yeah. And so it's interesting if it had, Wellman was borrowing, from the most advanced technology before him were hot air balloons. So there was a Swede named Solomon Andre, who had attempted to drift to the North Pole some years earlier, and at that time, they were using this technique of a drag line, which Wellman modified into this thing called an equilibrator, and he filled it, as you say, with hundreds of pounds of gear and food, actually, so that they could pull it up sometimes, and then if they ended up... part of the plan was if they crashed, They've got their food in this, it's like a giant snake,and the thing had grappling hooks on its end.
And so the plan was, it was hundreds of feet long. And so the plan was to be able to tether themselves to the ice. And there's another interesting feature here, which is that, we think of a lot of times people think of the ice at, at these high latitudes as being smooth, right? Yeah. No. Wellman kind of knew that it wasn't because he'd been out there in, on dog sleds before.
It's all broken up with pressure ridges and big gnarly chunks of massive ice. But so the idea was that this, this big cable, snake hanging from the dirigible would grab hold of the ice and keep them at a certain prescribed uh, elevation so that they didn't get too far off the surface of the earth and they could also see a bit more where they were going.
But of course, in all of these early attempts, the best laid plans.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah, can I give away that an equilibrator just like rips off one point? Yeah, it's such an awesome scene. Like the whole thing is just gone.
Buddy Levy: They look out the, they look out the side of the, and they're like, here this giant clunk, and then the airship starts to go up ah,a couple a hundred feet per minute, and they look down and they're like, oh, whoops, .
Erik Weihenmayer: And by the way, when the airship goes up too much, the hydrogen expands and blows the ship up. Right? It can, I mean, it doesn't, and it, yeah, it could potentially.
Buddy Levy: And so they're, and so there's this frantic scrambling where they're going, okay, how do we get to saying, and not only that, they're being blown toward, in Svalbard where they're taking off from, there's these big fjords and then it's flat near the surface, near the Fjord shoreline.
And then. Around there, there's 4, 000 foot peaks. So they're being blown toward these peaks with this airship out of control. And it's really harrowing. They start spinning in circles like three or four times. They're doing 360s. And, there's only three men on the airship at this point, just hollering at each other, trying to get the airship at this point back down to Earth and not blow up.
Erik Weihenmayer: They're clearing mountains by, like, feet, right? And things like, like, just insanity. It's so gnarly. The first time they crash, on a glacier, right? And, like, Are inches from like a huge gaping crevasse,
Buddy Levy: Yeah, it's wild. they come to rest, at the, on the edge of this crevasse, it's 150 feet deep and they hop out. And, one of the guys is making coffee on the warm engine. These are so casual about it. a couple more feet, we would have plunged to our deaths in a fiery blaze, let's just have coffee and wait for rescue.
Erik Weihenmayer: And then they gotta hump all that stuff down off the glacier into a ship, and then try again. I mean, just the logistics are crazy. Now, so you mentioned Svalbard. That's a, that's like the big island, in the, north of Norway. it is Norway, right? And that's where a lot of these things embarked, right? A lot of these adventures would start at that point, right? And you visited Svalbard, didn't it? Wasn't it called Svalbard? Yeah, Svalbard. Spitsbergen. Svalbard. Thank you.
Buddy Levy: Yeah, they used to call it Spitsbergen. Spitsbergen. But yeah, so it's a Archipelago, archipelago, you choose, about 600 miles north of mainland Norway. And it's an incredible place. It, I visited there two summers ago doing research and was there for like 21 days.
Um, and, I went to the place where these airships, disembarked from. Nielsen is the name of the place. And it is, it's one of, it's the most remote, um, the northernmost inhabited place on earth and, Wellman and then subsequently Amundsen and Nobile, they knew that it was a great starting point because it's essentially halfway between, mainland Norway, halfway to the North Pole, right?
So if you could start there, you've got a headstart. But even today, it's incredibly remote, you know, there's polar bears are roaming everywhere and it's like really striking and it's one of the coolest places I've ever been.
Erik Weihenmayer: And Wellman builds this giant camp, he builds this huge hangar to, to keep the airship in and of course, like he comes back in the spring and it's like completely destroyed.
Everything's destroyed, right? So you just, you never can get on top of this stuff, right?
Buddy Levy: Yeah, the winds up there are so intense and you know, they were always battling,yeah, that Camp Wellman was quite an engineering feat. They get there by ship and then they bring all of this lumber and everything.
They build this massive hangar, as you say. And Wellman, he was like running late on time. And so he skipped the first time on the number of arches that needed to be used. And then he comes back and the thing is completely blown to the ground. And then the few people who had been stationed there to wait out the winter or just Oh my god, you, this place is destroyed. And then they rebuild and try again.that was on a previous trip when Wellman was trying on the, on the, traditional attempt.
Erik Weihenmayer: Okay, so Wellman says, forget, mushing dogs to the, North Pole because,this has got to be the answer, right?
This, this idea of technology. But, do you have the passage where it, talks about that attempt where he is doing it in the traditional way, and what happens to him?
Buddy Levy: Yeah, sure. he had tried, One time before and then he goes back and so I'm gonna just read a passage from the it's called the chapter is called the Ice King Wins, which I loved it was the headline that wellman used when he returned to civilization and he was writing for the Chicago Record Herald and the caption was the Ice King Wins.
Anyway, this passage is his second trip. And so this is a number of years before he tries in an airship. His second trip to Franz Josef Land, a vast archipelago northeast of Spitsbergen above Russia, in 1998 was even more harrowing than the first. After chartering the ice steamer Fritthof and sailing from Tromsø, Norway, Wellman, along with three other Americans and four Norwegians, set up a base camp at Cape Tegethof on Hull Island, and an advanced base camp 40 miles farther north, dubbed Fort McKinley after the U. S. President and Wellman's supporter. Of the two men left to winter there in near total darkness in a crude stone walled hut, one died of unknown causes and the other barely survived with his sanity after sleeping in the hut with his dead companion for nearly two months. When Wellman and his small team arrived at Fort McKinley in the spring of 1899 for his polar bid, he found the survivor, Paul Bjorvig, despondent, soot covered, and shaking with fear.
Wellman discovered the frozen body of Bert Benson inside the hut. Shocked, he asked Bjorvig why he hadn't buried him. Bjorvig says, Because I promised him I wouldn't, so the bears and foxes wouldn't get him. Wellman and the others gave Benson a proper burial in a shallow grave and heaped stones over the body like a cairn, and Bjorvig made a cross out of the scavenged boat thwarts, marking the date of his death.
Wellman and his contingent, which now included the shattered Bjorvig, set out on a proposed 700 mile trek for the North Pole, but while sledging, Wellman had fractured his leg in an ice crevasse. He kept plodding north, but then, while camped on the ice, a violent storm struck shattering the ice floe they were on.
In the tumult of rolling ice, they lost many of their dogs and provisions and were forced to retreat. Wellman's leg was so badly injured that he had to be carried on a sled. And after many weeks of arduous slogging across the ice, they straggled into the camp. When they cut Wellman's frozen trousers off, his leg was frostbitten and gangrenous.
There was talk of amputation, but Wellman wouldn't hear of it. For the next four months, he remained recovering in the house, immobilized, tormented with the most agonizing, itching, weak, feverish, despondent sleeplessness. The last part is, despite these trials and near death experiences, Wellman remained, as he put it, quote, under the influence of the Arctic spell.
Its glamour was in our eyes, its fever in our blood. He vowed to return, only this time, he would employ the most advanced technological means humanly possible. He had already made the bold prediction in a newspaper article titled Walter Wellman on the Future Modes of Travel, that within 25 years, aerial navigation will solve the mystery of the North Pole and the frozen ocean.
His harrowing experiences with traditional means had solidified that belief.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah, I would solidify my belief in never trying that again. And so he was essentially. He couldn't have tried it again because back then you would have called him a cripple, right? Like he was walking with a cane.
Buddy Levy: He had a cane for the rest of his life. And there's images of him like, uh, back at Dane's Island, like on his cane boarding an airship. This guy was intense.
Erik Weihenmayer: Um, and all of them suffered physical injury, like Piri, who was the other big explorer at the time, he lost, like, eight toes, trying to get to the North Pole, right?
From frostbite. Yeah.
Buddy Levy: Yeah, and I'm glad you bring him up, because there's this, one thing about this story that really intrigued me, and I did not know this at the time, I'd learned so much about Piri and, Cook and, you know, these attempts to, and Richard Bird, the pilot, is that there is like this confluence of explorers, and it's all happening at the same time, and the North Pole has not been, officially bagged, as they say, yet.
And so you've got Piri and Cook trying, in the traditional method, you've got Walter Wellman, and later Roald Amundsen and, Umberto Nobile trying, with more advanced airships. And you've got airplanes too, which Richard Byrd and this other pilot from Australia, Wilkins, who are like, it's a race.
It's essentially a race for the North Pole.
Erik Weihenmayer: Right. But, but Wellman, so after he hurts his leg and he's now committed to. some kind of airship. He tries a fixed swing and that's a disaster to the first one.
Buddy Levy: Well, well, the Wellman doesn't try a fixed wing, but
Erik Weihenmayer: What's the one where he crashes again onto the glacier and he, like he hits a, he lands in a lagoon and he almost, the, ah, the plane almost smashes into an ice wall.
That one ship, that one, whatever is unsalvageable, and so they have to, get to an, the other plane. Oh my god. Yeah, tell me about that story. When was that?
Buddy Levy: so what happens is, this book is basically three parts. You've got Wellman and his attempts. And then you flash forward to, Amundsen and this guy named Lincoln Ellsworth, an American who's amazing.
Oh, yeah. And then later. So what happens is that's their trip. Yeah.
Wellman ends up, it's a really dramatic moment. After one of his failures, he's going to regroup in Paris and rebuild his airship and he gets to Tromsø, Norway and some kid comes up on the rail of the ship and hands him a telegram and it says.
Piri or Cook has made the poll and then he learns that Piri also claims to have made it earlier But his word has just come out. So Wellman says that's it You know, the North Pole is out like it's been bagged now It ends up that both Piri and Cook have falsified their records, but no one knows that at the time.
Yeah, so after Wellman,gives up on the North Pole, he actually then decides to try to fly across the Atlantic, which no one had done. And he ends up flying about a thousand miles, amazing, farthest anyone had ever flown in an airship.
Erik Weihenmayer: But then the book Another epic that you'll have to read about, that people have to read about.
Right, yeah.
Buddy Levy: But the, but what Erik's referencing though is that the, you flash forward 17 years and who I believe is the GOAT of all exploring, in the world is Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian. And so he has already, been to the South Pole, made the Northwest Passage. And so he's like, well, maybe this Wellman guy hat was onto something.
I think I'll try flying. First he tries in fixed wing airplanes. And he and this guy,he and a couple of other Norwegians, and they end up flying fixed wing airplanes from Svalbard, and they crash on the ice, like you say, and they're stuck for like three weeks. They have to dig their own, they have to make their own airfield on the ice with like rudimentary tools.
and like you say,
Erik Weihenmayer: they're on half rations, and they're all, one, doesn't one guy slide off the ice and smash all his teeth out of his mouth. you're like,
Buddy Levy: Oh, my God, they almost drowned. Yeah, they almost drowned. And then they have to abandon one of the airplanes. And then they,scratch out this airship or pardon me, this airfield on the ice, and then they all have to climb in the one remaining airplane.
Uh, and then hopefully take off and like clear this ice wall, which they manage, and then, so Amundsen's okay, that didn't work. So maybe I'm going to try it in an airship. And he ends up buying one from, this Italian designer Umberto Nobile, with the backing of an American named Lincoln Ellsworth, who's a really great, he's a great American adventurer guy.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah, it's so amazing. Okay, so Roald Amundsen is the real deal, but, and I guess Perry and Cook were the real deal as well, but, Cook in particular, what a freaking weasel.you
Buddy Levy: know
Erik Weihenmayer: what?
Buddy Levy: Yeah, there's
Erik Weihenmayer: I mean, he falsified everything. He was a big, fat liar.
Buddy Levy: Yeah, there's, it's so amazing, like and at the time, this all connects back to what you were saying about needing to be in the press and needing to, continue to garner support.
So there was an impetus to exaggerate your. accomplishments, right? And it was very hard to disprove your claims, but Cook made a couple of pretty major errors. For one, he claimed to have summited McKinley, Denali. Uh, and then some professional photographers sees this picture that Cook comes, he's doing lectures and he's like, yeah, I made it to the top.
And this guy's yeah, that's about 5, 000 feet. like I can see that
Erik Weihenmayer: Even his partner was like, secretly, nah, we didn't get there.
Buddy Levy: Yeah. And so then, but still people, we see this today, this information is if you keep saying it, then it's like, okay, I guess that's true.
But, importantly,Wellman weighs in again. He really assesses Cook's records and Cook was really slow bringing his records back. And Wellman's like, yeah. And the same thing with Perry. He's These, the times and the amount of travel per day, it's just not possible.
But what's interesting is that, those claims made by both Cook and then subsequently Perry, Perry's lasted much longer. his claims of making it to the North Pole were not really fully disproved until the eighties, the late eighties. And so, you know, that, that mythology around him. had survived at really long time.
Erik Weihenmayer: Do you think Piri was also a liar or an exaggerator? Do you think he just might have made an honest mistake? And I guess, because it's basically just a big pile of ice. How do you, how do they even know back then when they're at the geographical North Pole? Because there's also like a magnetic North Pole and a geographical North Pole.
How did, how would they even know? Like maybe he made an honest mistake, right?
Buddy Levy: Yeah, that could be, that was argued for a really long time, but when the, records were ultimately released to, for viewing, this one writer explorer, he actually retraced the journey and, determined, I mean, in Perry's case, there were some fudging of the records that looked clear, uh, and some missing pages in the, in his journals and everything.
And so it looks like he fudged it. But you're right. I mean, you know, it, it was pretty hard to tell beyond the miles traveled. You have to get these sextant shots and readings and the weather doesn't always cooperate, right? Because you need to be able to have clear sun shots, clear view of the sun to take these sextant readings.
And of course, having been in the mountains, like weather is a huge impediment. And so. But it is the case that it looks pretty clear that both Cook and, Peary falsified their records, which was, when Amundsen sees this, it's an opportunity because this was in 1926 when Amundsen decided to give it a go in an airship, a part of the allure was, it looks like no one has been to the North Pole.
And if I do this, I've got like the triple crown, the Northwest passage, the South Pole and the North Pole. And like you say, Amundsen Was an arrogant, egocentric, driven man and a complex guy too. But one of the things that I thought, we started off talking a little bit about leadership.
One of the things that Amundsen saw early on, and I think, this from expeditions is that, a small streamlined team makes more sense in a lot of ways than a really cumbersome giant team with many members. And so that was one of Amundsen's superpowers was understanding, at least on traditional modes of travel, that smaller teams, and everyone being super efficient and skilled were the best way to go.
Erik Weihenmayer: And a clear chain of command, right? And he was the leader, like his word, you know, was, was it right? Like you can't have a captain of the ship and then like a scientific captain and, an expedition captain, cause you're just going to, you're going to have disorganization, right?
Buddy Levy: Yeah. that was his,initial MO. He had to make some concessions when he went on the airship voyage because, he purchased this airship. And the Italians wanted, Nobile because he had designed the airship and a number of Italians, crew members. But so you're right, like that's where, the chain of command can break down when you have to start making concessions about who the actual leader is and who's.
Now, Amundsen was open to, he didn't really know that much about airships, he knew far less than Umberto Nobile. So he was willing to let Nobile navigate, but Amundsen wanted to be in charge of like where this thing goes and where it sets down. And so it was really, yeah, the first voyage is amazing because they fly completely over the North Pole, confirm that they are over the North Pole. And, one of the things that I found really, it was too bad that they never were able to do this, but like the plan was to hover over the North Pole and then, lower men down and then like actually touch foot. There'd be like a lunar landing, right?
Right. Cool. but the winds were such that they kept getting blown and Amundsen had the good sense to realize with this tailwind, this is 1926, it would be better to keep going and then to fly all the way over the polar sea to Alaska. And they end up like making this crash landing in Teller, Alaska, which is pretty dramatic.
But he decided not to turn around and try to fly back to Svalbard, which bites Umberto Nobile in the ass two years later, because he turns around and bucks the headwinds and it doesn't work very well.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah, I won't give all that away, but man,Amundsen and, Nobile'sadventure in their airship going over the North Pole to Alaska is, like, insane.
And so, yeah, I'm gonna have people just go read that, because Yeah, that, that's the windshields freezing and just people having to climb out of the ship to figure out where they are, like climbing up a ladder into a hundred mile an hour winds and, oh my gosh.
Yeah, it's incredible that
Buddy Levy: the, that harrowing flight, yeah, and that,
Erik Weihenmayer: It's amazing it worked. or maybe it didn't work.
Buddy Levy: Yeah, you're right, these things, the airship gets encased in ice at some points, and they're having to, break it off, and it's just wild.
Erik Weihenmayer: There's chunks of ice, like, you know, land, perhaps, like, falling off and destroying the propellers, and Right.
Yeah. And at one point they like float up. They think like the thing's going to blow up, right?
Buddy Levy: Yeah. that's a wild ride. Yeah. That is a wild ride.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah. It's not a, it's not flying. Um, like I'm about to fly to Austin in a few minutes. Yeah.
Buddy Levy: Listen about the, about spoilers. I used to worry about it a lot.
And I said to my editor once, I'm like going to do this talk, and I go, I don't want to, I don't really want to give away anything. He goes, look at the cover. It says Realm of Ice and Sky, Triumph, Tragedy, and the Arctic's Greatest Historical Rescue or whatever. And it's like the covers and the title usually gives away that this is not going to go that well.
Erik Weihenmayer: These rivalries is another really fascinating part, like Wellman and Cook are just going at each other. Amundsen and Nobili are like, like their airship. It's really funny. he says he wants it to be, you know, Norwegian ship.
But the Italians like sneak their logos and things like that. So it's it's just constant pissing match. The politics of this stuff always, you know, it seems like a disaster too.
Buddy Levy: I think, yeah, the politics are one thing. there's national pride involved, right? You've got a Norwegian national pride, Italian national pride, Mussolini is the fascist leader at the time.
They all want credit, but I'm glad you brought up the rivalry because, I think that stuff. In expeditions, it can lead to disaster. I mean, if you look at, in trying to push the envelope, it happens too in climbing right where you, in trying to be first to the top of some mountain or fastest up, or pretty soon, let's just do it, without ropes,you end up with the danger factor gets higher, when, you're trying to win, as opposed to just trying to achieve a first, and so I think that all factors into the intensity of the danger of this story, because there are indeed rivalries.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah, and Amundsen seems like a class act when he's up there on Svalbard and, Richard Byrd shows up. That's pretty cool. Richard Byrd seemed like a pretty cool guy. He didn't seem like a weasel. He seemed like the real deal, right?
Buddy Levy: Yeah. that's a great,he also, he also might not
Erik Weihenmayer: have gotten there.
Buddy Levy: Yeah. I think he's an American hero, but like he, it, it appears that he did also exaggerate his flight time.
So that, but what you're talking about is really interesting because. Almanson's up there about to fly this dirigible and Richard Byrd shows up with his team in this, Josephine,air badass airplane and Almanson says, we're not in a race, the North Pole, this is in 1928, so the North Pole has already been, or no, pardon me, they believe, he believes the North Pole has already been bagged, so he's we're not in a race, we're going to try to accommodate Byrd as he lands and Almanson actually, Helps make a runway for him and it really helps extends a lot of his men to, to help him do this flight and then Bird takes off, comes back and is yeah, we made it to North Pole and everyone's raising their eyebrows and ultimately that turns out to have been probably falsified as well.
You know, it's tough. it's like fishing stories, How big was the trout?
Erik Weihenmayer: I know, but it's a, it's a little bit sad, commentary on, on human nature. You know what I mean? On ego and stuff like that. Yeah.
Buddy Levy: Yeah. It's, that's what happens when there's a lot riding on something. People tend to, uh, you know, stretch the truth.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah. okay. So everyone go out and buy Realm of Ice and Sky. Hey, um, so I'm gonna change subjects just for, our last five minutes. you've also been on a bunch of, history shows and, shows that, are about, like, different historical things that are unexplained.
You were on a cool show called Decoded, where you were, like, one of the historians that were trying to figure out things. I love some of your stories. You and I have had dinner and you've told me some cool stories about that. that show. Tell us some of the things that you were trying to solve in that TV show.
And sure. And then on top of that, tell us about talking about disasters. This wasn't like a formulaic thing. You were like sometimes like in jeopardy of getting arrested and you were, there's some crazy stuff that you guys were doing trying to figure out.
Buddy Levy: Yeah. from 2010 to 2012, I was on this show called Brad Meltzer's Decoded, and it was one of the great experiences of my,entertainment life, because we, it was pretty authentic, we traveled around and tried to, uncover and explain certain historical mysteries, including, one of my favorites is the D. B. Cooper story when he jumps out of the airplane and then, with 200, 000 of, ransom money and, whether there's still gold in Fort Knox and, who killed general Patton. but that, all those stories were really cool. One of them, which is going to be coming up, and I don't know the date yet, in a new, a show by, that's hosted by William Shatner called The Unexplained, was an attempt to get into and understand this place called the Bohemian Grove, which is in, Northern California. It's a 2, 700 acre Redwood forest that's populated and owned by these captains of industry and really well heeled business folks. And it's, there's all this sort of lore and mystery about what actually goes on there.
So at one point, on Dakota night. We tried to infiltrate the Bohemian Grove by kayaking down the Russian river and then trekking up this little creek, but we got caught and, or spent the night in the, uh, Santa Rosa adult detention facility, AKA. In the clink, I guess you say, in lockup, and it was pretty, that was pretty scary, cause you know, you get stuffed into a back of a squad car,and with the handcuffs and you're like, Oh,
Erik Weihenmayer: I guess we catch you and point guns at you and arrest you.
Buddy Levy: Uh, they didn't point guns at us, but they, they came down the creek and then. a squad car was right behind the security guard who had been surveilling us, from the trees, with cameras. That was a learning experience.
And that actually, a recap of that story is going to be on the Unexplained hosted by William Shatner, but I'm not sure of the release date, but yeah, we did a couple, there was also, I won the show.
Erik Weihenmayer: By the way, before you talk about the other show, so what is the speculation that place is?
Buddy Levy: Well, uh, I mean, there are pictures that have been snuck out of there. I mean, on one level, it is just a, an exclusive men's club, right? That's really the short version, but there are, a number of people have snuck in and there are, there have been. released photographs of, I mean, it looks pretty clear that the Manhattan project was discussed, if not hatched there.
So you've got, pictures of Princeton University President, Yale University President, along with, presidents and heads of state. And they're, they have these fires, these fireside chats, which are kind of, they're supposed to be no, you know, political discussion there that the motto is, oh shoot, weaving spiders come not here.
Is this literary, but then, this actually webs of intrigue are spun there for sure. and it's hard to tell because unless you're an invited guest, you will never, it's hard to know what really goes on there.
Erik Weihenmayer: So that's you being arrested ?
Buddy Levy: Yeah. yeah. I tried to find out. Um, and it's a very bizarre place.
There's a 40 foot tall, owl, which from, which emanates the voice of Walter Cronkite, which they used to bring the summer gatherings together. And I did get to see the owl, albeit through the, fogged up window of a squad car.
Erik Weihenmayer: Awesome. Yeah. All right. cool. So that'll be on Unexplained, a recap of that. And you were about to talk about another show?
Buddy Levy: Oh, yeah. I just, I've been fortunate because I, of my historical background, I also appeared a couple of times on the show, that's hosted by Lawrence Fishburne. Yeah, called History's Greatest Mysteries and the most recent one, which I think will be dropping, maybe in early January, is about the story of Percy Fawcett and the Lost City of Z, which is just a, an amazing story.
There was a great book by, the prolific and amazing writer, David Grand called the lost city of Z. And so I'm one of the talking head experts about this,attempt to find this lost civilization, in the early 1900s. And it's just an amazing story. and again, like people, there's hubris there.
Like if you can find it, then, you're an immortal explorer, but sometimes people don't return from the Amazon rainforest.
Erik Weihenmayer: Ooh, I like how you deepened your voice there. That's scary.
Buddy Levy: Yeah. Yeah. That's a TV thing.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah, that's good. Yeah. All right. And what's that show called?
Buddy Levy: History's Greatest Mysteries.
Erik Weihenmayer: Okay, cool. All right. We'll stay tuned for that. So now that you've finished this book, Your ninth book, you going to take a break? What are you going to do? Play some pickleball?
Buddy Levy: It's dumping up here, man. I'm going to go skiing. You're going to go skiing. Yeah, I turned the book in almost a year ago, so I think I have been taking a break.
I mean, there's a lot of, as there's a lot of promotional stuff that you do and tweaking and editing. But I'm trying to find the right, the right next book. And we're circling around a few things.
Erik Weihenmayer: Haven't you exhausted death and destruction, getting to the north and south? Yeah, I mean Have you exhausted that at this point?
Buddy Levy: I kind of want to get off the ice for a minute, just because I like to go to the places that I'm writing about and, because of the way,
Erik Weihenmayer: you've written about disaster in the Amazon and,all kinds of epics. you don't just stick to ice, right? Right, yeah. You like death and destruction and jungles, too.
Buddy Levy: Yeah, I'm a full service, disaster writer, but yeah, I'd like to go, there's so many great stories, that's the thing, and the tricky part is finding, ones that either haven't been told in a while, or there's a new perspective on them, or ones that nobody knows, I was really pleased to discover Walter Wellman because, I'm I had never heard of him before.
I'd never heard of him either. You know, and it was like, wow, this guy was a pioneer.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah, he was really cool, and he was prescient, you know, he like, he predicted this stuff, and it turned out to be right, he was just a little ahead of his time, right? The technology just wasn't quite there. If he had the technology that Amundsen and Bird had, he probably would have been successful.
Buddy Levy: I think so. Yeah. you're right. prescient and visionary and we need those folks
cool to move the needle.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah. Yeah. and, hopefully we're still, we still have the spirit of that within us,
Buddy Levy: I think so. And actually I wanted to mention one thing as we go in the end of Realm of Ice and Sky, there's a an epilogue about the resurgence of the airship.
And it's really cool. I bumped into this stuff like right when I was finishing the book and I'm like, Oh my God, I didn't even know this. Sergey Brin, Google co founder, and then a number of other French, engineers. So the airship, there's a new airships that are being built, and test flown and will be in the skies in the coming year that are remarkable.
They're, non flammable helium inflated. They are run on electric motors. They're going to be used for all sorts of humanitarian aid and, also for luxury. And and these things are like over 400 feet long and can, and they're going to actually be doing some North Pole flights if everything goes well.
Erik Weihenmayer: Wow.
Buddy Levy: So it's really cool that it's come full circle and that the airship is back.
Erik Weihenmayer: Isn't that cool? That's so cool. I hope that will.as you said, big payloads, right? Be able to solve humanitarian problems like we're experiencing in the world right now.
Buddy Levy: And hover over, places where tragedy or, disaster has occurred and serve as a floating like communication cell tower.
And then also they can dump thousands and thousands of pounds of water, food, tents. So they're going to be,it's happening already.
Erik Weihenmayer: So really cool. All right. Can't wait to learn more about that. Hey, Buddy. Thank you so much. Thanks for being on No Barriers. I can't wait to read your next adventure book.
Buddy Levy: Erik, my pleasure. Always great talking and catching up. And we'll see you in the Spring.
Erik Weihenmayer: Thanks, friend.
Buddy Levy: My pleasure, buddy.
Producer: The production team behind this podcast includes myself, and audio engineer Tyler Kottman. Special thanks to the Dan Ryan Band for our intro song, Guidance. And thanks to all of you for listening. If you enjoyed this show, please subscribe, share it, and hey we'd be thrilled for a review.
Show notes can be found at NoBarriersPodcast. com. There's also a link there to shoot me an email with any suggestions or guest ideas for the show. Thanks so much, and have a great day.
