Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio. Hello, welcome back to the show. My
Speaker 1: name is Matt, my name is Noman. They called me Ben.
Speaker 1: We're joined as always with our superproduced Paul mission controlled decond.
Speaker 1: Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that
Speaker 1: makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Now, folks,
Speaker 1: in the interest of full disclosure, we all three of us,
Speaker 1: we three conspiracy realists right now, have a soundtrack in
Speaker 1: our heads from a television show. And Matt, you were
Speaker 1: doing a lovely rendition of this right before we went
Speaker 1: to air, and I hereby refused to do it because
Speaker 1: boo boo boo boboo. Sorry, I'm done. It's pretty close, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's good. Well, that's the show you're talking about, In
Speaker 1: Search of the first time I ever heard it was
Speaker 1: in a Tenacious D song about Sasquatch, and they say
Speaker 1: in Search of Sasquatch. That was a kick ass in
Speaker 1: Search of with Leonard Nimoy kicking out the jams. I
Speaker 1: didn't know at the time that that was a show.
Speaker 1: I just thought it was just like, this is a
Speaker 1: really awesome in search of, like searching for, you know,
Speaker 1: stream of consciousness. Yeah, and then what's Leonard Nimoy got
Speaker 1: to do with anything? Like you Today's You Guys are Weird? Yeah? Uh?
Speaker 1: In Search Of is a television program that ran. It's
Speaker 1: it's kind of a similar genre to things that came
Speaker 1: later that that you might recognize, like what was the one,
Speaker 1: Oh the guy who plays Walter on Fringe, Um, he did,
Speaker 1: he did a series where he's investigating stuff. It's it's
Speaker 1: got like this unsolved mystery in history channel format has
Speaker 1: been tried and true. You know that. Now there's what's
Speaker 1: it called with with William Shatner following in Leonard's footsteps
Speaker 1: that was called The Unexplained with as Explained? And then
Speaker 1: Riiker did one? Uh who is a real person as
Speaker 1: a real name that is not space affiliated anyway? Uh,
Speaker 1: We're we like you love mysteries, folks, and one of
Speaker 1: the most surprising things for any enthusiast of mysteries is
Speaker 1: how many remain unsolved, and they come up cyclically sometimes. Right,
Speaker 1: there's some big mysteries that seem to hit the national
Speaker 1: consciousness at regular intervals, right, there will always be a
Speaker 1: think piece about JFK Right or nine to eleven or
Speaker 1: the Titanic, etcetera, etcetera, Area fifty one and so on.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is about a mystery that remains unsolved. In
Speaker 1: this it's unsolved. You may it's you may have heard
Speaker 1: of it, quite possibly, but it's one that was sadly
Speaker 1: mischaracterized pretty often in its time, and now as we
Speaker 1: record today, it's become the subject of numerous documentaries. It's
Speaker 1: inspired works of art. There's an off Broadway play that
Speaker 1: was made about this. There's rock songs, you know. Leonard
Speaker 1: Nimoy put it on in search of So that's kind
Speaker 1: of a gold standard. It's twenty twenty three. Yes, we're
Speaker 1: recording and the world is still asking what happened to
Speaker 1: Michael Rockefeller. Yeah, one of those Rockefellers, the Rockefeller Rockefellers.
Speaker 1: Here are the facts, yeah, not those off brand Rockefellers.
Speaker 1: Not we have Rockefellers at home. Rockefeller ones the center
Speaker 1: is named after, Yes, yeah, and there are no records here.
Speaker 1: Re Re is not a part of this episode worth it,
Speaker 1: And there there's also you know, you have. This is
Speaker 1: one of the things where if you are living in
Speaker 1: the United States or you spend any time in that country,
Speaker 1: you have encountered the work of the Rockefellers in some
Speaker 1: degree and likely across generations. Despite how it may be
Speaker 1: portrayed on paper, the US does very much have an aristocracy,
Speaker 1: and the Rockefellers, I would argue, are members of that aristocracy,
Speaker 1: which doesn't necessarily make them bad. But it's like, you
Speaker 1: need to know. Now, our subject for today, Michael, Let's
Speaker 1: learn a little bit about him. Michael Clark Rockefeller. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was born May eighteenth, nineteen thirty eight. His father
Speaker 1: was Nelson Rockefeller. This man is very interesting and honestly,
Speaker 1: gotta say everybody came into this episode a little biased.
Speaker 1: I would say anti Rockefeller a little bit, just because
Speaker 1: you know, it's easy target for like, there's probably something
Speaker 1: bad going on there because there's all the fat cattle money,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, but I learned a lot about his
Speaker 1: father and Nelson Rockefeller, and I would recommend you everyone
Speaker 1: out there just take a look at Nelson Rockefeller. The
Speaker 1: he's described as a progressive, liberal Republican, really interesting stuff.
Speaker 1: We maybe when that was a thing. Yeah, maybe we
Speaker 1: could all learn a little something about that. He also
Speaker 1: served as VP under Gerald Ford as vice president, and hey,
Speaker 1: guess who the Secretary of State was during that time, guys,
Speaker 1: Leonard Nimoy Henry Kissinger. It was Henry Kissinger. Okay, that
Speaker 1: would have been my second guess. Yeah, I would I
Speaker 1: would have preferred a Nimoy led State Department, but I
Speaker 1: wasn't on good enough terms for us to talk that out.
Speaker 1: You know, God Bock is just so calm and collected
Speaker 1: and diplomatic. I mean, he seems like he'd be great
Speaker 1: in government. I don't know whether the State Department of
Speaker 1: that time would have vibed with Vulcan philosophy, you know,
Speaker 1: that needs of the many kind of stuff that sounds
Speaker 1: a lot like communism. Uh right. I feel like data
Speaker 1: would have been a better choice. Or that's probably what's
Speaker 1: going to happen in the next couple of you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: present way, and just as we do every time that
Speaker 1: he comes up, let's give a real quick check. We
Speaker 1: might have to build a sound cue for this at
Speaker 1: some point. Let's give a real quick check and confirm,
Speaker 1: drum roll please, hinz Alfred Kissinger is still alive and
Speaker 1: His next birthday is May twenty seventh, right, which is
Speaker 1: is what birthday? It's gonna be a big one, man,
Speaker 1: he is going to be one years old. Wow, what
Speaker 1: is that called? A septagenarian? Centenarian? Centenarian? I'm good at math.
Speaker 1: I mean those are fun words to whip out, right.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine the thing about being a centenarian is
Speaker 1: by the time you get there, do you really brag
Speaker 1: about it? Or do you just want, you know, like
Speaker 1: juice and a nap. You know, I'm thirty nine and
Speaker 1: I want juice and a nap, right now? I mean
Speaker 1: who could say no to juice and a nap, or
Speaker 1: at least juice? Nice? And you've got a Garfield mug
Speaker 1: that says I'm kind of a big deal. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: you've got it for me. Nice. And we're talking about families, right,
Speaker 1: You can't really talk about Michael Rockefeller without talking about
Speaker 1: the Rockefellers and Nelson Rockefellers. You said, Matt is a
Speaker 1: fascinating character, and some would argue fairly anomalous, especially if
Speaker 1: you look at history through a narrative of social and
Speaker 1: financial class. Right, a socioeconomic lens would tell you that
Speaker 1: a Nelson Rockefeller doesn't happen super often, but by the
Speaker 1: time Michael is born, you know, he's like the baby
Speaker 1: of a family. This is a januine American dynasty. His father,
Speaker 1: Nelson Rockefeller, had already done some big things. He was established,
Speaker 1: and Nelson came from John D. Rockefeller Junior. JD. Yep,
Speaker 1: j D big big deal financier, right, financier. We say
Speaker 1: so it sounds classier, okay, So just to get the
Speaker 1: lineage correctly, a game of throne style in terms of
Speaker 1: the first or second or third of his name. They
Speaker 1: all had different first names, but he was the grandson
Speaker 1: of John D. Rockefeller, of the Rockefeller Rockefeller's junior and
Speaker 1: the great grandson of the John D. Rockefeller, so that
Speaker 1: that would be first of his name. Junior would be
Speaker 1: second of his name. And John D. Senior was the
Speaker 1: founder of Standard Oil, which you may have heard of.
Speaker 1: That's it's not called that anymore, but what did it become.
Speaker 1: It's definitely some iteration of it still very much around.
Speaker 1: And this is also an example of kind of being
Speaker 1: first to market on the ground floor, if you will,
Speaker 1: something like oil. You know, back when you could just
Speaker 1: name it standard, you know, you know the one. It
Speaker 1: reminds me of that we don't have to impress you
Speaker 1: so much. Right, there's oil. That's what you need to know, folks.
Speaker 1: It's kind of it still reminds me of weird naming conventions,
Speaker 1: like how there was this restaurant in Atlanta called Legal Seafood. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's I think that's actually a chain. Um it's so
Speaker 1: many Boston or something. But if you've seen the film,
Speaker 1: there will be blood. Standard oil is mentioned a lot.
Speaker 1: It's sort of the main competition to Daniel day Lewis's
Speaker 1: character Daniel Plainview. Well. Yeah, it was around for several
Speaker 1: years in the eighteen eighteen seventy I think is when
Speaker 1: it started. But then guess what the government came through
Speaker 1: and said, uh, this is a monopoly and it got
Speaker 1: broken up into a bunch of different companies. I think
Speaker 1: so forty something companies. Oh geez, yeah, it did. Must
Speaker 1: have been quite a monopoly. The people, the tycoons and
Speaker 1: titans of Indi Stry who owned companies that got broken
Speaker 1: up for their monopolies, said hey, you know what we
Speaker 1: should do. We should get into government. And then a
Speaker 1: few generations later their families totally did so so that's
Speaker 1: a story for a different time maybe. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: like we said, Michael is the youngest kid. He has
Speaker 1: a twin sister. There are a lot of other kids
Speaker 1: who come before him, but being a Rockefeller and a
Speaker 1: smart dude, he still gets a top notch silverspoon type
Speaker 1: education the Buckley School, Phillips Exeiter goes to Harvard, where
Speaker 1: he graduated coom laude. But one of the there's an
Speaker 1: author we're going to talk about a lot, a guy
Speaker 1: named Carl Hoffman, and Hoffman writes beautifully about Rockefeller, about
Speaker 1: this story in particular, and Hoffman seems to argue that
Speaker 1: Rockefeller has another education. Another moment that really speaks to
Speaker 1: him shapes his destiny, and that's when he goes to
Speaker 1: his family's museum, because you know, his family has a museum.
Speaker 1: How cool would that be? I want to go to
Speaker 1: your family's museums. And my first thought was, like, is
Speaker 1: this a museum of the history of the Rockefellers, because
Speaker 1: even at this point it's kind of a thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're an important part of culture. But no, it was.
Speaker 1: In fact, Rockefellers were fans of modern art and also
Speaker 1: a bit of a loaded term primitive art that is
Speaker 1: not guys, isn't this MoMA? Yeah, but they don't call
Speaker 1: it the Museum of Primitive Art anymore at the moment, Yeah, right, right.
Speaker 1: The Museum of Primitive Art inside the MoMA eventually gets
Speaker 1: closed down, but at the time it's opening. Our buddy Michael,
Speaker 1: he's eighteen years old. He's he's hanging with the swells.
Speaker 1: It's a black tie, private reception event before the Museum
Speaker 1: a Primitive Art opens, and his father gives this speech.
Speaker 1: Nelson Rockefeller gives this speech about how important it is
Speaker 1: to understand art. You know this speech, Just to be clear,
Speaker 1: it doesn't age super well, as you can tell by
Speaker 1: the word primitive thrown around kind of Lucy goosey. But
Speaker 1: this rocks Michael's world, Feller, sorry, Rockefeller's his world. Yes,
Speaker 1: the rocks fellas left and right, and his perspective is
Speaker 1: skewed in a very important, very profound way for him
Speaker 1: because he's seeing this entire world, right, he seemed physical,
Speaker 1: tangible artifacts of this entire world that he's only heard about,
Speaker 1: he's only read about, and he's thinking there's something outside
Speaker 1: of this cage of privilege, right, because fame, wealth, the
Speaker 1: things people think they want. They can often be a cage,
Speaker 1: you know, and we get the feeling, at least the
Speaker 1: way Hoffman tells it, that Michael Rockefeller at this young
Speaker 1: age is going through something like that. Yeah, and he
Speaker 1: acts on those feelings, joins the army, spends some time
Speaker 1: as a private and in the early sixties he goes
Speaker 1: on an expedition of self discovery and also you know,
Speaker 1: the external discovery to study the Donni tribe of New
Speaker 1: Guinea for Harvard's Peebody Museum. Okay, folks from that part
Speaker 1: of the world that I said it, right, of archaeology
Speaker 1: and ethnology. Yeah, and you know, this is a guy
Speaker 1: who he's got all the stuff. Right. If he needs
Speaker 1: some stuff, he can get it, right, doesn't matter what
Speaker 1: the stuff is, he could get it if he wants it.
Speaker 1: He like stabs his fingers and someone shows up with
Speaker 1: a diet coke and a lego set. You know, if
Speaker 1: that's what he wants. Oh yeah, unlimited legos, I guess.
Speaker 1: But but but here's the thing. He doesn't go. He
Speaker 1: doesn't travel to this part of the world as that person, right,
Speaker 1: he doesn't have his huge entourage. He's not there, you know,
Speaker 1: no one's watching over him hand and foot in that way.
Speaker 1: He's actually I don't know, Bennick. I don't want to
Speaker 1: put anything on you, but it reminds me of the
Speaker 1: way you'll travel, like just immerse yourself into a place
Speaker 1: and kind of become one. Does that make sense? I
Speaker 1: like to think that, especially oh man, we're so excited
Speaker 1: to get back on the road as a group. But
Speaker 1: I think especially when we're traveling as a crew as
Speaker 1: a unit, we do the same thing, you know, we
Speaker 1: we often. We were just talking about this. We were
Speaker 1: in Texas a while back and the three of us
Speaker 1: were just on a night walk and there was a
Speaker 1: moment where we got we got clocked right, somebody made us.
Speaker 1: We got it, guys, we got Nadi. That was fun. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: I think we all are fans of like full immersion travel.
Speaker 1: I mean, it really is the only way to fly. Um,
Speaker 1: it's just kind of having not really a schedule, but
Speaker 1: like you know, just really feeling like you just kind
Speaker 1: of discover things as they present themselves to Yeah, and
Speaker 1: we've run into some really cool and some very strange
Speaker 1: situations as a result. What I love about your point,
Speaker 1: Matt is that, Yeah, this guy could have traveled with
Speaker 1: an entourage, you know, and and said bring me the people.
Speaker 1: You know, I want diet cokes and Lego sets and artifacts,
Speaker 1: and I will bring them to my father. But he didn't, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I and I need two bodyguards at all times
Speaker 1: while I'm traveling in this other country, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: which would be almost standard if you're in that level
Speaker 1: right of having money. But he didn't heard like like
Speaker 1: the oil. Yeah, it's true. Tiny little aside. It reminds me.
Speaker 1: It's it's a little bit of a sad analogy. But
Speaker 1: I just saw this thing where at one point Michael
Speaker 1: Jackson m paid or like his people like basely rented
Speaker 1: out a grocery store for a day and then like
Speaker 1: members of his entourage posted as regular shoppers so that
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson could feel what it felt like to grocery shop. Yeah,
Speaker 1: apparently that's a true story. Was video of it. He's
Speaker 1: like he's gliding around on the on the cart like Superman.
Speaker 1: It's like, because that's what you do when you grocery shop.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're not if you're taking a cart
Speaker 1: through a parking lot and you don't write it a
Speaker 1: little bit, Yeah, are you just surviving or are you living? Dude? Uh?
Speaker 1: And I've gotten some looks before. Actually, I recently raced
Speaker 1: a total stranger on a cart and a parking lot.
Speaker 1: It was a very amicable race. Did you say we
Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't. I should have expected. We just
Speaker 1: both did the bro nod when we got It was
Speaker 1: almost not a race. I guess. We're just riding together
Speaker 1: in a publics as you pelt him with red shells,
Speaker 1: you gotta get that boost on the beep beep, you
Speaker 1: gotta hit that hit that accelerate right then then you
Speaker 1: get a little boost. Think, y'all, that's great. I think uh,
Speaker 1: I think we did. We had that moment where you know,
Speaker 1: we're licking each other and we're realizing, oh, this is
Speaker 1: the highlight of both our Saturday nights and we're both
Speaker 1: probably too old to be doing this. No such thing.
Speaker 1: You can translate a lot through a bro nod, you know. Anyway,
Speaker 1: if you're hearing this, I wish you luck. My friend
Speaker 1: made the cards be ever in your favor, and I
Speaker 1: love you nor Well that was for you guys, and
Speaker 1: so so uh yeah, okay, this is the thing. He
Speaker 1: doesn't do any of that stuff we're describing. He is
Speaker 1: the sound guy for this documentary, and no no shade
Speaker 1: on sound guys, but it is sort of considered a
Speaker 1: bit of a grunt job. You know, you have to
Speaker 1: keep your levels right and get good sound, but you're
Speaker 1: basically holding up a boom mic the whole time and
Speaker 1: toting around like at this point it would have been
Speaker 1: like a Nagra tape, you know, recorder, like a portable
Speaker 1: real to real many real to real. So those things
Speaker 1: are heavy. So he kind of relegated himself when he
Speaker 1: could have insisted on being the director. You know, he
Speaker 1: had the clout to make that happen. You know, you
Speaker 1: want some financing, I'm the director, or at the very
Speaker 1: least been pushy, but he wasn't. I really it speaks
Speaker 1: volumes to the guy's whole attitude. I think it's cool
Speaker 1: and it's hard. It's a hard job. That's especially trapesing
Speaker 1: around the wilderness, you know well. And he also it's
Speaker 1: he didn't just have audio equipment, which you're as you're saying,
Speaker 1: is correct there. It's very heavy stuff. He's also got
Speaker 1: a big camera, a big heavy camera back in the day,
Speaker 1: and all the equipment you need to make that camera
Speaker 1: run and all you know, all the film you have
Speaker 1: to carry and all that stuff. Dude, it's still camera
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, yeah, but still but still yeah, it's a lot.
Speaker 1: And the lenses are big and heavy and bulky. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know he's moving in a group. This is
Speaker 1: a this is a proper expedition, as they would call
Speaker 1: it in that time. But I think we all have
Speaker 1: immense respect for him, the the four of us on
Speaker 1: the show today, including including Paul, we have been in
Speaker 1: those situations, even with much more sophisticated, newer equipment, where
Speaker 1: we're going around and we're just hoping whatever we had
Speaker 1: to improvise two minutes ago works, you know, racing batteries,
Speaker 1: all that crap. Even nowadays with you know, cameras and stuff,
Speaker 1: you still have to It's it's a process to get
Speaker 1: usable content, you know, whether you're recording audio with another phone,
Speaker 1: you know, and then you sync it up later, and
Speaker 1: just being aware in that way and observing through that lens,
Speaker 1: it really is you know, a mental strain as well.
Speaker 1: You know. So just like imagine this is all going
Speaker 1: on right Michael's out there in the wilderness. They're shooting
Speaker 1: a documentary that I believe you can. There isn't there
Speaker 1: footage of this that you can actually find right now?
Speaker 1: Ben Uh yeah, it's a you can see and hear
Speaker 1: his expeditions work in a documentary called Dead Birds. Sounds
Speaker 1: like a bummer. Yeah, full disclosure. I haven't watched the
Speaker 1: entirety of this, but you can. You can easily find clips.
Speaker 1: I don't want to say anything other than go through
Speaker 1: the official channels. Okay, yeah, right, okay. So during this
Speaker 1: time he is finding other things he's always like in
Speaker 1: letters to his family, we know that he is having
Speaker 1: one of the most exciting periods of his life, and
Speaker 1: he's wondering what's next, what's over the horizon, because this
Speaker 1: is a place where a lot of what he thinks
Speaker 1: of as civilization or Western civilisation has not traveled. So
Speaker 1: he briefly leaves this expedition to study a different group
Speaker 1: that we should probably talk about a little bit, the
Speaker 1: Asthmat tribe or Asthmat tribe Asmat. They're on the southwestern
Speaker 1: coast of Dutch Colonial Guinea or New Guinea, and he
Speaker 1: feels like he is connected. He's back in that moment
Speaker 1: at the museum where he heard his dad's awesome speech,
Speaker 1: because you know, if you're that level of politician, you're
Speaker 1: probably good at speeches. And so he's recalling this, and
Speaker 1: we actually we have his correspondence or part of it
Speaker 1: from this time. Yeah, he says, I am having a
Speaker 1: thoroughly exhausting but most exciting time here. The Asthmat is
Speaker 1: like a huge puzzle with the variations and ceremony and
Speaker 1: art style forming the pieces. My trips are enabling me
Speaker 1: to comprehend, if only in a superficial, rudimentary manner, the
Speaker 1: nature of this puzzle. That was from a letter from
Speaker 1: Michael on November thirteenth, nineteen sixty one. So he's talking
Speaker 1: about pieces and art style that was sort of a
Speaker 1: hallmark of this group, correct, Yeah, the Asthmat people in particular,
Speaker 1: He found their art fascinating. They would have these incredibly
Speaker 1: sophisticated and do have these incredibly sophisticated wood carvings that
Speaker 1: were made to honor ancestors. And you can see pictures
Speaker 1: of this very easily. Actually some of it is in
Speaker 1: the moment today, I believe. And this just rocks his
Speaker 1: world and he wants to be the person he wants
Speaker 1: to be Promethean. He wants to bring this back to
Speaker 1: New York because, yeah, I remember this time, this was
Speaker 1: this was like a discovery, not essentially, I mean, this
Speaker 1: style of art, this kind of work wasn't something that
Speaker 1: folks in Western art circles would have been aware of
Speaker 1: it at all. This is like something new. Yeah, not
Speaker 1: many people would have been aware of it in kind
Speaker 1: of the the upper echelons of the art circles at
Speaker 1: the time. And so their lifestyle also seems very I
Speaker 1: don't want to say alien or foreign, but it's very
Speaker 1: different to what he's experienced up to this point. And
Speaker 1: this also enthralls him, and so he goes this one
Speaker 1: time and then he says, I want to travel back
Speaker 1: a second time. And when I travel back, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: barter and I'm gonna collect enough material to make this
Speaker 1: world class exhibit when I come back, you know, to
Speaker 1: to the blue blood region of my homeland. Do you
Speaker 1: think he was being equitable with these barters? Like I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, because you think about art and artifacts like
Speaker 1: this often being like stolen or at the very least
Speaker 1: kind of swindled, you know, out of folks that maybe
Speaker 1: you know, we're not up on these kinds of tactics,
Speaker 1: but Michael strikes me as a little bit better than that.
Speaker 1: I'm just wondering what you think. I don't know. You know,
Speaker 1: we've never we haven't met the guy. It's possible that
Speaker 1: we might. It's not probable, but it's possible. We've we've
Speaker 1: never met the guy, and it is I don't know.
Speaker 1: It becomes a matter of conjecture because even if you're
Speaker 1: going into a place like that, doing something like that
Speaker 1: with the best of intentions, you might be romanticizing people right,
Speaker 1: exoticizing them, you know, when the when the reality is
Speaker 1: they're just people living their lives as best they can.
Speaker 1: I wonder if we can just quickly talk about the
Speaker 1: people because within that In search of episode learn Nimoy,
Speaker 1: he pronounced it as osmat and I wrote down I
Speaker 1: wrote down the name wagh incorrectly before I looked it up,
Speaker 1: like how to actually spell it, because it's spelled asmat,
Speaker 1: which roughly translates to treat people. If you look up
Speaker 1: the ritualization of the simple task of cutting down a
Speaker 1: tree and then using that tree for you know, the tribe,
Speaker 1: it is beautiful and fascinating and awesome, And I think
Speaker 1: that's exactly why Michael became so interested. It reminds me
Speaker 1: of the some restaurants and the philosophy behind making food
Speaker 1: that's really popular right now, where you use food, well,
Speaker 1: you use every part of the animal, right it's you
Speaker 1: translate that to using every part of the tree in
Speaker 1: this case. But I know, it's just it really interested
Speaker 1: me personally, and like, you know it. Maybe a modern
Speaker 1: equivalent might be something like chainsaw sculptures. But again, they
Speaker 1: didn't have chainsaws, they didn't have any kind of power tools.
Speaker 1: This was all done in the most you know, bespoke,
Speaker 1: handcrafted way possible. No, no shade on chainsaw sculptures. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but but imagine using every piece of the bark, every
Speaker 1: piece that gets cut off. It becomes a part of
Speaker 1: the village itself in everyday Life's can be used in
Speaker 1: medicines as well, and things, I mean, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: they were, you know, the roots and certain aspects like
Speaker 1: that could be used to make tea or whatever. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a bunch of things you can use
Speaker 1: a tree for, just like an animal. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: did he find this beautiful? Yes, undoubtedly. To the earlier question,
Speaker 1: did he was he doing his best to be equitable
Speaker 1: in his bartering to not take advantage of right people. Right,
Speaker 1: Probably he was. He was probably not trying to take advantage.
Speaker 1: He was probably trying to say, here are things that
Speaker 1: are of value to you, and let's trade. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to take this from you. And I also want
Speaker 1: to tell your story. I want to share your voice
Speaker 1: with the world, you know. So he wasn't setting out
Speaker 1: thinking I'm going to get over on a bunch of
Speaker 1: rooms or anything like that. Not to romanticize, you know him,
Speaker 1: but I think that's pretty cool, you know, I mean comparatively,
Speaker 1: that's a vision he's like. At this time. This is
Speaker 1: a Dutch colonial possession and colonialism has a bad name
Speaker 1: for a reason. So he also, of course being a
Speaker 1: big deal being one of the VIPs of the world
Speaker 1: at the time, whether or not he likes that, he
Speaker 1: is assigned a government anthropologist named Renee Wassing, and Wassing
Speaker 1: is on these expeditions with him. Washing is sort of
Speaker 1: like a fixer, sort of a minder, sort of a sidekick,
Speaker 1: the guy who knows the lay of the land to
Speaker 1: the other guy. Yes, yeah, Livingston to his other guy,
Speaker 1: and so Washing and Rockefeller and these two local teenage guides.
Speaker 1: They set off and in this next trip, operating out
Speaker 1: of kind of their home base. This next trip, they
Speaker 1: spend three weeks visiting thirteen different villages in the region.
Speaker 1: They're collecting everything that they can barter for, and they're
Speaker 1: also trying maybe just as or more importantly, they're trying
Speaker 1: to make connections which will be important to some theories later.
Speaker 1: And they get back to their home base, you know,
Speaker 1: offload what they got, get some more supplies, some more
Speaker 1: goods to barter for, provisions and so on. They set
Speaker 1: off again and on November seventeenth, nineteen sixty one, things
Speaker 1: go wrong. They're going to head down to Southern Osmat
Speaker 1: or Asmat or however you want to say it. And
Speaker 1: they're very excited about this because again in his mind,
Speaker 1: in Michael Rockefeller's mind, this is unknown country. And you
Speaker 1: can see in his letters he talks about how frontiers
Speaker 1: in general are disappearing and he wants to see the wild.
Speaker 1: So Ozmat is the name of the region as well
Speaker 1: as the name of the tribe. That's a great question.
Speaker 1: Ozmat Is, I should say Southern Osmat territory, so Osmat
Speaker 1: ethnic group that is in what would now be modern Indonesia,
Speaker 1: modern day Indonesia, South Papua. It's on like if you
Speaker 1: look at the island, it's on the southwestern coast, and
Speaker 1: it's bordering a place called the Arafura Sea, which is
Speaker 1: also important because it's you know, it's one of those
Speaker 1: places where you can think you're on a river and
Speaker 1: if you don't know what you're doing, you can find
Speaker 1: yourself in a around and find out situation. And that's
Speaker 1: how that would have been traveling right by sea, Yeah,
Speaker 1: by sea. And this place is so unknown to the
Speaker 1: west that Rockefeller and actually the entirety of the Dutch
Speaker 1: colonial government, they know one white guy who is like aware,
Speaker 1: like cool, knows his way around the place, has earned
Speaker 1: the trust of the people who live there. His name
Speaker 1: Cornelius van Cassel. And so Rockefeller and his crew say, Okay,
Speaker 1: we've reached out, we've made some contacts. We're going to
Speaker 1: meet up with Van Kessel when we get to this
Speaker 1: remote area, and he's going to help us kind of.
Speaker 1: He's gonna liaise, right, and he will help us learn
Speaker 1: more about this culture, learn more about their practices, and
Speaker 1: come away with stuff from my art show. And right
Speaker 1: around this time is when something goes horribly wrong. And
Speaker 1: we'll continue this story right after a word from our
Speaker 1: sponsor and we've returned. Okay, so we're on our second
Speaker 1: leg of the journey here with our protagonist Michael, with
Speaker 1: Renee Wassing, who is by the way from the Dutch
Speaker 1: New Guinea Department of Native Affairs. Doesn't that just sound
Speaker 1: lovely coming off the top, he said sarcastically, But that's
Speaker 1: what he was called. And they're also with their two guides.
Speaker 1: They're two younger guides, and they are traveling by boat,
Speaker 1: headed back out. So let's get back to them in
Speaker 1: the boat. Oh yeah, this is where we go to
Speaker 1: Karl Hoffman. We're pulling directly from some of his riding,
Speaker 1: he says. As they began to cross the mouth of
Speaker 1: the Bets River, conflicting tides and winds whipped up waves
Speaker 1: and cross currents. Water that had been gentle one minute
Speaker 1: was heaving the next. A wave drowned their outboard and
Speaker 1: the catamaran began to drift. Then the waves capsized it.
Speaker 1: We should also mentioned this is a homemade catamaran. This
Speaker 1: is not like really fancy, this is just a boat
Speaker 1: that floats. Yes, like Jerry cans. It looks like it's
Speaker 1: from far cry. It's that kind of thing. No, maybe
Speaker 1: I would probably be all of them. But the outboard
Speaker 1: is the motor that's they're talking about. And of course
Speaker 1: capsize just means it flipped over. And so these guides teenage,
Speaker 1: I mean, they're kids, they're familiar with the area. They
Speaker 1: know that things are going wrong. We're gonna go get help.
Speaker 1: They jump in. The river is a big river. Sometimes
Speaker 1: if you haven't grown up around big rivers, you might think, well,
Speaker 1: how hard could it be? This women across the river.
Speaker 1: It's very difficult because this is again right on the
Speaker 1: coast of a sea. So they successfully make it to shore,
Speaker 1: but the shore is so far away that that washing
Speaker 1: and Rockefeller don't know they made it. And these kids
Speaker 1: heroically trudge through miles and miles a very not cool terrain.
Speaker 1: They make it back to the home base where they left,
Speaker 1: and it's the evening. It's late in the evening, and
Speaker 1: they say, we need to send help. Those other two
Speaker 1: dudes are still on the river somewhere. And again, what
Speaker 1: this happened for every person who went missing, probably not,
Speaker 1: but the Dutch colonial power structure there knows what a
Speaker 1: Rockefeller is. So they they send ships, they send helicopters,
Speaker 1: they send planes for this search. The entire time this
Speaker 1: search is happening, those two guys are clinging to the
Speaker 1: remnants of their of their boat, and they realize they're
Speaker 1: getting closer and closer and closer to the open ocean,
Speaker 1: which is exactly what you don't want to happen. And
Speaker 1: it's my understanding that twenty four hours passed like from
Speaker 1: the capsizing to what the thing we're about to talk
Speaker 1: to you next. At the very least, it was a
Speaker 1: long night. They were not. It's arduous, right, clinging clinging
Speaker 1: to flots of in water might sound easy, you know,
Speaker 1: whomever that lady was in the Titanic might have made
Speaker 1: it look easy to lay out a door, but it's exhausting.
Speaker 1: Did you see that. James Cameron recently did an experiment
Speaker 1: that proved that there was room for Jack on that door. Yes,
Speaker 1: he acknowledged it. I guess kudos to him for that.
Speaker 1: Jerry Can, by the way, that's like a gas can,
Speaker 1: like a large gas can. Ooh yeah, I mean you
Speaker 1: could kind of yes, yeah, exactly. And so they're they're
Speaker 1: floating they're exhausted, and they've got to do something because
Speaker 1: it's just going to get worse if they get out
Speaker 1: to the ocean, because the ocean will eat things. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: So Michael, being a man of action, decided to do
Speaker 1: something about it. He stripped down to his under rush
Speaker 1: and he attached two of the empty gas can jerry
Speaker 1: can things to his belt to it like as a
Speaker 1: personal like improvised flotation device, and he tried desperately to
Speaker 1: get to the show or which would have been around
Speaker 1: between somewhere between three and up to ten miles away.
Speaker 1: Presumably there's current. So he's, you know, and he's waved
Speaker 1: down by these cans. So that's a lot. That's an
Speaker 1: arduous swim right there. Yeah, and you know, according to
Speaker 1: the stories, Renee told him not to do it, like,
Speaker 1: don't do this, man, you don't have it in you.
Speaker 1: But Michael appeared to be determined to just go and try. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he said, look, from my estimation, this shore has
Speaker 1: to be somewhere between three to ten miles away or right,
Speaker 1: it's a heck of a swim. But I've got these
Speaker 1: flutation devices, right, so I won't have to be working
Speaker 1: the entirety of the time, and it's not like the
Speaker 1: dolicators or snakes or sharks. Yeah, we don't know whether
Speaker 1: he was correct, and we probably never will. And the
Speaker 1: reason we don't know this is because this and was
Speaker 1: never seen again still hasn't been seen by anybody. It
Speaker 1: SISMID officially confirmed. Right. The Rockefeller family has stayed mum
Speaker 1: on this. We will see some speculation, but right now,
Speaker 1: no physical evidence nor physical remains of Michael Rockefeller have
Speaker 1: been found. The teenage guides were okay, they made it,
Speaker 1: and I believe Renee Wassing was all right as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the big search and rescue mission was successful and they
Speaker 1: did locate the remains of that boat and they found
Speaker 1: Renee Wassing on there and alive. Yep. And the only
Speaker 1: reason we know these details about what Michael did right
Speaker 1: before he disappeared is because Renee was able to recount
Speaker 1: that stuff. It sounds like Michael should have taken Renee's
Speaker 1: advice and stuck with him, clinging to that debris. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if your law, the best thing to do is stay
Speaker 1: where you are unless you have to go. And Michael
Speaker 1: felt like he had to go, and Renee felt like
Speaker 1: he you know, also has every enthusiast of dungeons and
Speaker 1: dragons nose. You don't split up the party. Things go wrong.
Speaker 1: So this this triggers this huge search, a cavalcade of
Speaker 1: searches really throughout decades, and in the aftermath of his disappearance.
Speaker 1: No physical evidence has been found. No living Michael Rockefeller
Speaker 1: has been found, No glasses because he was wearing spectacles
Speaker 1: have been found, no confirmation of bones or remains. And
Speaker 1: that's why so many people I've continued attempting to solve
Speaker 1: this mystery, and we welcome you to this. If you
Speaker 1: have the answer, please write to us and help us
Speaker 1: with this question what happened to Michael Rockefeller, And with
Speaker 1: that will take a break your word from our sponsors
Speaker 1: and return. Here's where it gets crazy. Some people might
Speaker 1: know if one of the theories is true. Some people
Speaker 1: might know, but right now no one knows for certain.
Speaker 1: Right outside of a very remote part of modern day Indonesia,
Speaker 1: no one knows. And that those people would only know
Speaker 1: if part of these theories are true. If there is
Speaker 1: someone in that area who knows what happened, they're not
Speaker 1: going to say much about it. Well, yeah, because we
Speaker 1: talked about the resources that the Rockefellers have. Right, imagine
Speaker 1: you are a parent, doesn't matter what kind of wealth
Speaker 1: you have. Just imagine you're a parent, and imagine your
Speaker 1: child goes on a trip and that child goes missing
Speaker 1: while on that trip. I'm assuming you would use every
Speaker 1: resource you have to try and locate your child. In
Speaker 1: this case, the Rockefellers have all the resources. So when
Speaker 1: they start at full scale search, not like the you know,
Speaker 1: the Dutch search that end up finding Renee, but this
Speaker 1: this is like just imagine on a whole other scale
Speaker 1: of searching for their son, and man, they throw everything
Speaker 1: they've got at it. It's weird though, because they charter
Speaker 1: a Boeing seven h seven and they you know, fill
Speaker 1: it with reporters and they you know, end up around
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty miles southeast of the Ozma region.
Speaker 1: But they did they not send some kind of serious
Speaker 1: search party, like into the region where he disappeared. I'm
Speaker 1: confused about that. With those resources that we're talking about,
Speaker 1: you think they'd find some kind of crazy wilderness fixer
Speaker 1: type person to take a crew out there and not
Speaker 1: just have these like kind of sad newsless press conferences. Well,
Speaker 1: it was there were there were teams out there searching, Okay,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's what was going on. The problem
Speaker 1: was and having enough people who could who could actually
Speaker 1: like translate right and and have discussions about okay, well
Speaker 1: did you see anything? What you know? What did you
Speaker 1: see and all of that. There weren't enough people to
Speaker 1: actually do that right. And aerial coverage is helpful, but
Speaker 1: it only does so much when you have when you
Speaker 1: have a dense forest area. Yeah, there were a lot
Speaker 1: of problems. And on November twenty fourth, the Dutch Minister
Speaker 1: of the Interior is speaking to the New York Times
Speaker 1: and says, quote, there is no longer any hope of
Speaker 1: finding Michael Rockefeller alive. And that's only five days after
Speaker 1: he goes missing. Yeah, yeah, and there you know again,
Speaker 1: this is also a pretty tense period geopolitically for these folks.
Speaker 1: This is also not their first rodeo losing someone. I
Speaker 1: couldn't imagine that the Rockefeller family would have been okay
Speaker 1: with a statement like that. Well, they're a little bit
Speaker 1: of a black box about some of this. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's again to the point about being a concerned parent,
Speaker 1: you sometimes want the privacy right so we don't We
Speaker 1: don't know how they may have personally felt about several
Speaker 1: of the turns in the investigation, but we do know.
Speaker 1: Nine days after we can confirm Michael Rockefeller swam away
Speaker 1: attempting to reach the shore, his father and his sister's
Speaker 1: twin sister flew home. They flew back to New York,
Speaker 1: and then if you fast forward two more weeks, the
Speaker 1: Dutch government calls off the search, and eventually Michael Rockefeller
Speaker 1: has declared legally dead, which we'll get to you, but
Speaker 1: other searches follow. Like we're saying right now, the official
Speaker 1: conclusion is Rockefeller either drowned attempting to reach the shore,
Speaker 1: or he was attacked by a predator. We weren't just
Speaker 1: doing a bit there. That's hungry water at this time,
Speaker 1: and in that part of the world, a shark could
Speaker 1: have Shark attacks are very rare, honestly, but it could
Speaker 1: have happened a saltwater crocodile. Could he could have run
Speaker 1: into that, and that that kind of attack is that's
Speaker 1: a higher likelihood, honestly. Sure. Yeah, And the swim was
Speaker 1: more like somewhere between twelve to fourteen miles, So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, that'll just wear you out, unless that's your thing,
Speaker 1: you're like some sort of Olympic level endurance swimmer. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's more than half the length of the English
Speaker 1: Channel at the narrowest point at the streets of Dover. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and again, theoretically he had those flotation devices in the
Speaker 1: oil cans, right, or the gas cans. Maybe he could
Speaker 1: have taken breaks in between. You know, a lot of exertion.
Speaker 1: But again, just holding onto those is exertion. But if
Speaker 1: there's occurrence and he took a break and weren't actively paddling,
Speaker 1: wouldn't you kind of lose ground head on back? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Exposure exhaustion. Oh yeah, I mean, my goodness. We should
Speaker 1: know that there is footage you can see of Michael's father, Nelson,
Speaker 1: being brought oil cans or petroleum cans that are thought
Speaker 1: to be the ones at least one I've seen. It
Speaker 1: was thought to be one that Michael was carrying, right,
Speaker 1: But again, these are generic Jerry cans. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: they're not bespoke or monogrammed or anything like that, which
Speaker 1: would be weird. I'd be a weird flex in it
Speaker 1: would But so yeah, you can also see footage of
Speaker 1: people retracing the passage of this catamaran and going to
Speaker 1: these waters themselves. Karl Hoffman does this and describes it
Speaker 1: again beautifully in his work. So some Dutch officials at
Speaker 1: the time are being optimistic. Again, as we say, it's
Speaker 1: not their first rodeo. They have lost people. They know
Speaker 1: the waters well too. And at least one guy says,
Speaker 1: you know, if Michael Rockefeller did reach the shore, he
Speaker 1: would probably be safe because here we consider the native
Speaker 1: populations pretty friendly. But how much of that is him
Speaker 1: just trying to reassure someone, trying to not be a
Speaker 1: jerk to someone who's lost a loved one, And how
Speaker 1: much of it is speaking from fact I don't know well.
Speaker 1: And there's some timing stuff there that Carl Hoffman points
Speaker 1: out that we're going to get into later, just about
Speaker 1: why a public statement from a Dutch official would probably
Speaker 1: be positive, like overall on purpose when speaking about the
Speaker 1: tribes and New Guinea. Yeah. And then also speaking of timing,
Speaker 1: we have to remember there's a social lens in which
Speaker 1: this occurs. Some groups in the area. We're still practicing headhunting,
Speaker 1: we're still practicing cannibalism. Simply the reality and the colonial
Speaker 1: government there, and I mean the West in general still
Speaker 1: had these crazy offensive ideas about people they consider primitive
Speaker 1: or savage quote I mean honestly less than is what
Speaker 1: they were thinking. They have very condescending attitudes. And it's
Speaker 1: no surprise that the public sphere began to ignore well
Speaker 1: established facts about how people can drown or die of
Speaker 1: exhaustion on the water, and instead they started a glom
Speaker 1: onto these stories that Rockefeller had been killed or have
Speaker 1: been eaten or gone full heart of darkness. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's some pretty offensive Looney Tunes cartoons that depict that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, you know, the idea of like savages,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, it really was in the zeitgeist
Speaker 1: in such a way that it was in popular culture,
Speaker 1: you know. And a complicating factor about this is that, yes,
Speaker 1: these practices are real, but are how sensationalized? Are they
Speaker 1: right to pull headlines? How? And also, you know, this
Speaker 1: is a very diverse part of the world, So how
Speaker 1: broad of a brush are these right? Would that be
Speaker 1: the question? Like I I, you know what, I'll do it.
Speaker 1: This is a problematic and dumb comparison. But if you
Speaker 1: ever go to different countries and you're from the United states.
Speaker 1: You will meet people who are surprised that you don't
Speaker 1: fit certain stereotypes. That's just like a human thing, right,
Speaker 1: you know, they say, oh, you how many guns do
Speaker 1: you own? Yeah? And I mean even today there are
Speaker 1: countries that like eat things that we consider taboo, you
Speaker 1: know over over here in the US. So and these
Speaker 1: kinds of cultural differences, well maybe not as extreme as cannibalism,
Speaker 1: they certainly still exist. Yeah, And you know, I'm just
Speaker 1: pointing out some of the stuff that Leonardieboy already pointed
Speaker 1: out and in search of when you knew hear that
Speaker 1: episode that some of the rituals that Michael was so
Speaker 1: interested in, right the mangrove tree carving, the whole ritual
Speaker 1: of that, Like as the tree is making its way
Speaker 1: to the village center, the rituals that take place after
Speaker 1: that all have to do with basically preparing for a battle,
Speaker 1: an attack to to I think what they call it,
Speaker 1: to revenge another tribe in which they're having war. So
Speaker 1: like it's it's based on violence, the thing that Michael
Speaker 1: was so interested in that the tribes created. And that's
Speaker 1: just it's a variation of ancestors too. It's it's all
Speaker 1: it's all of that. It's everything's all of that. It's
Speaker 1: like revenge for the ancestors or past injustices. There's not there.
Speaker 1: There aren't really accidents in this belief system. Is the
Speaker 1: issue if a disease occurs, that disease is an attack
Speaker 1: of some sort or retribution for something that you or
Speaker 1: your community did incorrectly. Yes, so it becomes very complicated too.
Speaker 1: So the generalization is so problematic here, But it is
Speaker 1: real violent stuff or potentially violent stuff that you're dealing with. Okay,
Speaker 1: hey on, we did it. This doesn't always happen on
Speaker 1: this show. But we've we've gone deeper than we thought
Speaker 1: into the rabbit hole. There's still so much to explore,
Speaker 1: a gentleman, I think we're looking at a two parter here.
Speaker 1: This is real. We definitely didn't record this later now
Speaker 1: it's true. We did come to a place where we
Speaker 1: realized that there was a lot to cover on this topic.
Speaker 1: And I think y'all will agree on conspiracy realism land.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, make sure you stick around for episode two
Speaker 1: because we're gonna dive deep deep into the conspiracy. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I was doing my my Mama told me thing. Thet
Speaker 1: talkness there's just so much to explore here, and we
Speaker 1: really do break apart a lot of this stuff in
Speaker 1: great detail. So stick around for episode two, don't go away,
Speaker 1: and we'll be back in just a few days. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, you can reach out to us on social
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