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What's going on, everybody?
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Welcome back to another episode of Get Weird with me,
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your host, Brittany Barbieri. Folks, this story and this case
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is going to change lives.
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This is a.
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Wonderful moment in time. Happened in May of 1953 in
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a very cold morning. Two individuals, two men stood on
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the top of a really high ridge and changed human
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history forever. One was from New Zealand. The other was
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a Sherpa who had attempted this many, many times. And
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where it gets weird, folks, is that one of those
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men would spend years afterwards basically answering the question over
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and over again, did you see anything up there? So
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the exciting news that I'm talking about, folks, is the
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new film coming out called Tenzing. It is an incredible story.
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And honestly, it is one that has, I'm actually very
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excited about it. I'm very excited about this. I'm fired
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up about it. I mean, if you just look at
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the title, guess what? It doesn't say Hillary. It says Tenzing.
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And for decades, this story kind of got told only
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one way, to be honest. It was told about the
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brave Western explorer who conquers the mountain and the Sherpa,
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who carried the loads and broke the trail and knew
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the mountain like the back of his hand, ended up
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as footnotes in his own history, which is insane to me.
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So this film flips the lens. It follows a man
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who had given everything to that mountain and and who
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didn't just see Everest as something to conquer at all.
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You know, you have to understand that for Tenzing growing
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up in this region, there was a lot to it.
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The film's own framing about Tenzing reveres Everest. There was a,
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there's a certain name to the Tibetan mountain. Oh gosh, Cholamonga,
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Cholamonga or something like that. I know I'm butchering it.
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I apologize, my dear, sweet audience, bear with me. But
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in Tibetan Everest, was actually, it meant sacred mother goddess.
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Now remember that because I'm going to bring this back
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up in just a little bit. So let's give Tenzing
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his due before we do anything else. Because in 1953,
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he was one of the most experienced high altitude climbers alive.
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And he had already made six earlier attempts on Everest, folks, six. Okay,
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think about that for just one second and how much
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that takes out of you. You walk into the most
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punishment or punishing environments on earth. You fail, you go home,
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but then you prepare and you go back again and
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again and again, six times, six times. And this was
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because it wasn't a hobby for Tenzing. For the Sherpa people,
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those mountains are home and they're also very sacred. And
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so it wasn't necessarily about a conquest kind of narrative.
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It was more about the relationship of it. And then
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comes 1953, the British expedition. Both Tenzing and Hillary were,
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in a sense, in this particular expedition, outsiders on a
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very British-run operation, to be quite honest. Tenzing, born in
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the Himalaya region and shuffled between identities by politicians, honestly,
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for the rest of his life.
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And Hillary... A New Zealand beekeeper, yeah, who didn't fit
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the old school British climbing establishment either, really.
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So you have two outsiders with this impossible goal, one
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impossible goal, really, because it was just Everest. And the
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thing that they did together really did change mountaineering forever,
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to be honest. And now these were outsiders that were
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basically told that it can't be done. And I don't
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know about you guys, but if you know me, I
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don't like when somebody tells me that something is impossible.
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You know, oh, that's impossible.
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Really?
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Have you tried it? Let me know how that goes
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for you. So let's go back and why Hillary matters. Okay,
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this is my sidebar. So because most people know Hillary
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as the first man on Everest, and almost nobody knows
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he is one of the most important figures truly in
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a history of Yeti research. I say that as someone
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who takes cryptozoology seriously as a zoological science and not
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the spooky campfire, weird, spooky stuff that they talk about today.
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So let's go back to 1951, the Eric Shipton legendary
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Yeti photographed, okay? We're going to rewind two years before
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the summit, 1951, and Hillary is a member of Eric
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Shipton's expedition to Everest, scouting the route from Nepal side
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for the very first time. And on that expedition, Shipton
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photographs a line of enormous tracks in the snow on
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the Menlung Glacier. And if you've ever seen that one
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image associated with the Yeti, it's probably just that one.
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It's a huge footprint deep in the snow with an
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ice axe laid right next to it. So you can
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kind of get a scale of the size of the track.
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That photograph went viral, okay, for that time. It went
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around the world. And that was then known as the
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Yeti image of the 20th century. Now, Hillary was a
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part of that expedition right there in the middle of it.
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He was not there when that photograph was taken, but
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Hillary was a part of that expedition and they talked
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about it. So that specific moment did stay with him.
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You can't be a young explorer in the most remote
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mountains on the planet and have the world suddenly argue
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about what left those marks and have it not stay
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with you, right? So now we move back into 1953.
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We're fast forwarding to the summit year. Hillary and Tenzing
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are the two men who will stand on top of
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the world and they're talking. And as climbers do, you
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guessed it, they talked about Yeti. Tenzing grew up, obviously,
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grew up with all of this stuff. And in Sherpa culture,
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the Yeti isn't a joke. It's part of culture, part
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of life. It's a, part of the living landscape. Tenzing's
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own circle had stories of encounters, and he personally took
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them very seriously. And according to some of the accounts
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that have been published afterwards, the two men reported seeing
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odd footprints in the snow during the Everest climb. So
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now I want to be careful here because this is
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what separates field science from clickbait. Snow tracks are notoriously deceptive.
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We all are aware of this. Hillary was also very
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aware of this. And when sunlight melts the edges, a
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small animal's track turns into something enormous. And like I mentioned,
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Hillary knows this. Tenzing is very aware of this being
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in the snow and in the mountains. But the point is,
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is that these two men, the most credible mountaineers on
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earth at that moment in time, treated this question as
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worthy asking, right? So this is the part that I
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loved the most. Hillary doesn't just wonder about it. He
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organizes an expedition. So in 1960 to 1961, He leads
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a major scientific expedition deep into the Himalayas, really wintering
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out high altitudes and with the Yeti as one of
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the main goals. And so he brings real researchers, including
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Marlon Perkins. He was a zoo director and wildlife broadcaster,
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I believe, at the time. And this is not you know,
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a vibes-based trip. You know what I'm saying? It's an
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actual field program. They're really trying to break this down.
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And one of the big moments really was in the
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village when they saw the Yeti scalp, you know, the
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relic kept in the monastery there. And they did borrow
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it and took it out of the region for analysis.
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And the verdict did come back that it was probably
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made from one of the goat antelopes native to the
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Himalayas at the time. The results were inconclusive at best,
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and Hillary's own judgment was no proof of the creature.
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So why is this the good part? Some people say,
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why is this good? Why does this matter? Why does
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this matter to you? Well, Hillary came home a skeptic.
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And I'm telling you this because that's not exactly why
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his role matters. He didn't fake a photo. You know
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what I mean? He didn't oversell a result for clickbait.
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He didn't mock the people who believed in the Yeti.
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He went and he looked and he tested the evidence
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and he reported honestly what he found. This is the standard.
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That's what returning cryptozoology to its academic roots truly looks like.
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And you ask that question rigorously. And you're willing to
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hear no or not yet, if that makes sense. And
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he honored the Sherpa people. You know, the other thing
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Hillary did, and this might be the most important part
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of the legacy, is he respected the people who lived there.
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You know, he was very well respected there. He respected them.
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He spent the rest of his life working with the
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Sherpa community, you know, building schools and hospitals there. He
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understood that the people of Nepal and the Himalayas, you know,
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hold this deep knowledge about.
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The landscape and that their.
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You know, their love and their respect for the Yeti
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wasn't ignorance. It's culture, it's ecology, it's a spirituality, you know,
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kind of all braiding together in this beautiful braid.
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This marriage, as we would say.
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And in ethnozoology, I mean, that's all what it is
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in a nutshell, understanding animals through the people who have
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lived alongside them for generations. You know, the local knowledge
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isn't the thing to be debunked before you arrive. It's
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where the science really, really, really, really begins.
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You know?
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And so for me, that's what made this so powerful
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and Edmund Hillary's work in trying to figure out if
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Yeti was real, not real, you know, kind of inconclusive
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in that matter. And And also, when we think about
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the name Yeti, you know, this was actually accidental, by
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the way. So in the 1921 British expedition, Charles Howard Burry,
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I think his last name was Burry, Charles Howard Burley,
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came across large tracks at that time in the mountains.
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And the local reporters... reportedly described the tracks using a
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Tibetan phrase along the lines of, I know that I
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am butchering this up and I apologize, but it means
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manned bear to a snowman or snow dweller, okay? So
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that description made its way to a journalist, Henry Newman,
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and who wrote it up for the press, and somewhere
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between the Sherpas, the translation, and the newspaper, it all
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got turned into the wrong phrase. It got turned into
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the abominable snowman. A loose, you know, kind of, I
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guess dramatic, and honestly, pretty clumsy English version, and it
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just kind of stuck. So meanwhile, the word Sherpa people
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use is yeti, okay? The word that the Sherpa people use,
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is Yeti from Yeti. It's spelled Y-E-H-T-E-H, and I never
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pronounce it correctly. It's beautifully spoken, by the way. It's
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often explained as a creature from the rocky places, not abominable, right?
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Not a monster, just this being of extreme strength, intelligence
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that lives way up and belongs in the mountains. So
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when we say abominable snowman today, we're really using a
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tabloid mistranslation, let's say, instead of the name the people
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who live there actually gave it. And that's a worthy
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fix that maybe we should be working on fixing. I'm
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just saying. Just saying. So that's why on this show,
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we're just calling it Yeti. It's just the Yeti. So
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let's bring it back home for a second because That's
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the sidebar that I wanted, you know, well, that actually,
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that little tidbit there about the Yeti, I just kind
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of wanted to talk about that. That's a different sidebar
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that wasn't actually part of the detour tonight, but it's
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all a part of the same story. But remember that
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line about Tenzing revering, I told you about the sacred
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mother goddess. So that's the worldview Hillary respected. Even though
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he came to the mountain from a very different place,
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Westerners came to Everest to summit it, correct? You know,
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that's what they would say. And the people of the
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Himalayas lived with it. Does this make sense to you?
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You know, the Yeti sits inside the same understanding of
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that land. And so a film that put Tenzing, that puts,
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excuse me, Tenzing at the center is a film that
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is saying the people of that place are really the
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true part of their story. Does that make sense? I
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think that's the overdue. And I think it matters beyond mountaineering.
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It matters for wildlife science, for cryptozoology, and for anyone
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who's ever walked into someone else's home turf with a
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clipboard and a camera. And a note on the casting.
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Tom Hiddleston is playing Hillary. Playing Hillary is going to
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bring a lot of eyes to this story. but I'm
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hoping those eyes really stay on Tenzing. And I really
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hope that that happens for this man because his story
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is truly remarkable and I do not want to take
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away from that. So you might be asking, why does
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this film matter to me? Why is it so personal? Well,
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it's because I'm a field researcher and I'm an explorer.
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And I live in the space between the thing the
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world says is possible And the thing you can only find,
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you know, if you go out looking for it. I
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hate to say the long pause, but really that's just
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the simplest way to say it, right? Hillary is the
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character I'm watching most closely, of course, because he's the
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guy who is or who was brave enough to attempt
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the impossible and honest enough to say, I didn't find it,
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both at the same time. That's the whole job, right?
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And Tenzing is the reminder of who you owe it to,
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the people who know that place, the ones who have
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been telling you the truth about it all along, right?
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This story has stuck with me forever.
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And the fact that they would talk about Yeti and
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Hillary really admired Tenzing and had such a good rapport,
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had such a good relationship. The story, the people, and
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that culture means.
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Something to me beyond limits. You know, taking risks, pushing
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the boundaries, and doing the thing that everyone says is impossible.
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You know, that's not recklessness, folks. When you do it
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with humility and respect, that alone is exploration. So, Here's
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my challenge to you since you had to listen to
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me ramble this long.
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Go see Tenzing.
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Go see it in theaters. I think select theaters on
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October 9th. If you got to wait till Apple TV, fine, whatever.
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But watch it for the climb and then watch it
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again for the mountain's other story, right? And then ask
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yourself what your own mountain is. And if you loved
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this one, you can share it with your fellow weirdos.
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You can tag me.
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You can reach out to me on my social pages.
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And as I always say, my dear friends, until next time,
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stay curious, stay respectful, and keep it weird.
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What's going on, everybody?
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Welcome back to another episode of Get Weird with me,
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your host, Brittany Barbieri. Folks, this story and this case
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is going to change lives.
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This is a.
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Wonderful moment in time. Happened in May of 1953 in
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a very cold morning. Two individuals, two men stood on
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the top of a really high ridge and changed human
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history forever. One was from New Zealand. The other was
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a Sherpa who had attempted this many, many times. And
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where it gets weird, folks, is that one of those
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men would spend years afterwards basically answering the question over
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and over again, did you see anything up there? So
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the exciting news that I'm talking about, folks, is the
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new film coming out called Tenzing. It is an incredible story.
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And honestly, it is one that has, I'm actually very
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excited about it. I'm very excited about this. I'm fired
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up about it. I mean, if you just look at
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the title, guess what? It doesn't say Hillary. It says Tenzing.
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And for decades, this story kind of got told only
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one way, to be honest. It was told about the
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brave Western explorer who conquers the mountain and the Sherpa,
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who carried the loads and broke the trail and knew
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the mountain like the back of his hand, ended up
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as footnotes in his own history, which is insane to me.
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So this film flips the lens. It follows a man
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who had given everything to that mountain and and who
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didn't just see Everest as something to conquer at all.
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You know, you have to understand that for Tenzing growing
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up in this region, there was a lot to it.
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The film's own framing about Tenzing reveres Everest. There was a,
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there's a certain name to the Tibetan mountain. Oh gosh, Cholamonga,
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Cholamonga or something like that. I know I'm butchering it.
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I apologize, my dear, sweet audience, bear with me. But
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in Tibetan Everest, was actually, it meant sacred mother goddess.
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Now remember that because I'm going to bring this back
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up in just a little bit. So let's give Tenzing
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his due before we do anything else. Because in 1953,
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he was one of the most experienced high altitude climbers alive.
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And he had already made six earlier attempts on Everest, folks, six. Okay,
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think about that for just one second and how much
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that takes out of you. You walk into the most
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punishment or punishing environments on earth. You fail, you go home,
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but then you prepare and you go back again and
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again and again, six times, six times. And this was
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because it wasn't a hobby for Tenzing. For the Sherpa people,
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those mountains are home and they're also very sacred. And
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so it wasn't necessarily about a conquest kind of narrative.
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It was more about the relationship of it. And then
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comes 1953, the British expedition. Both Tenzing and Hillary were,
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in a sense, in this particular expedition, outsiders on a
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very British-run operation, to be quite honest. Tenzing, born in
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the Himalaya region and shuffled between identities by politicians, honestly,
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for the rest of his life.
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And Hillary... A New Zealand beekeeper, yeah, who didn't fit
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the old school British climbing establishment either, really.
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So you have two outsiders with this impossible goal, one
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impossible goal, really, because it was just Everest. And the
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thing that they did together really did change mountaineering forever,
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to be honest. And now these were outsiders that were
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basically told that it can't be done. And I don't
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know about you guys, but if you know me, I
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don't like when somebody tells me that something is impossible.
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You know, oh, that's impossible.
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Really?
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Have you tried it? Let me know how that goes
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for you. So let's go back and why Hillary matters. Okay,
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this is my sidebar. So because most people know Hillary
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as the first man on Everest, and almost nobody knows
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he is one of the most important figures truly in
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a history of Yeti research. I say that as someone
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who takes cryptozoology seriously as a zoological science and not
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the spooky campfire, weird, spooky stuff that they talk about today.
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So let's go back to 1951, the Eric Shipton legendary
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Yeti photographed, okay? We're going to rewind two years before
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the summit, 1951, and Hillary is a member of Eric
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Shipton's expedition to Everest, scouting the route from Nepal side
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for the very first time. And on that expedition, Shipton
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photographs a line of enormous tracks in the snow on
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the Menlung Glacier. And if you've ever seen that one
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image associated with the Yeti, it's probably just that one.
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It's a huge footprint deep in the snow with an
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ice axe laid right next to it. So you can
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kind of get a scale of the size of the track.
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That photograph went viral, okay, for that time. It went
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around the world. And that was then known as the
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Yeti image of the 20th century. Now, Hillary was a
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part of that expedition right there in the middle of it.
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He was not there when that photograph was taken, but
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Hillary was a part of that expedition and they talked
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about it. So that specific moment did stay with him.
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You can't be a young explorer in the most remote
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mountains on the planet and have the world suddenly argue
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about what left those marks and have it not stay
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with you, right? So now we move back into 1953.
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We're fast forwarding to the summit year. Hillary and Tenzing
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are the two men who will stand on top of
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the world and they're talking. And as climbers do, you
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guessed it, they talked about Yeti. Tenzing grew up, obviously,
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grew up with all of this stuff. And in Sherpa culture,
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the Yeti isn't a joke. It's part of culture, part
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of life. It's a, part of the living landscape. Tenzing's
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own circle had stories of encounters, and he personally took
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them very seriously. And according to some of the accounts
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that have been published afterwards, the two men reported seeing
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odd footprints in the snow during the Everest climb. So
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now I want to be careful here because this is
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what separates field science from clickbait. Snow tracks are notoriously deceptive.
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We all are aware of this. Hillary was also very
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aware of this. And when sunlight melts the edges, a
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small animal's track turns into something enormous. And like I mentioned,
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Hillary knows this. Tenzing is very aware of this being
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in the snow and in the mountains. But the point is,
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is that these two men, the most credible mountaineers on
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earth at that moment in time, treated this question as
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worthy asking, right? So this is the part that I
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loved the most. Hillary doesn't just wonder about it. He
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organizes an expedition. So in 1960 to 1961, He leads
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a major scientific expedition deep into the Himalayas, really wintering
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out high altitudes and with the Yeti as one of
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the main goals. And so he brings real researchers, including
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Marlon Perkins. He was a zoo director and wildlife broadcaster,
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I believe, at the time. And this is not you know,
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a vibes-based trip. You know what I'm saying? It's an
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actual field program. They're really trying to break this down.
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And one of the big moments really was in the
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village when they saw the Yeti scalp, you know, the
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relic kept in the monastery there. And they did borrow
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it and took it out of the region for analysis.
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And the verdict did come back that it was probably
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made from one of the goat antelopes native to the
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Himalayas at the time. The results were inconclusive at best,
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and Hillary's own judgment was no proof of the creature.
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So why is this the good part? Some people say,
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why is this good? Why does this matter? Why does
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this matter to you? Well, Hillary came home a skeptic.
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And I'm telling you this because that's not exactly why
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his role matters. He didn't fake a photo. You know
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what I mean? He didn't oversell a result for clickbait.
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He didn't mock the people who believed in the Yeti.
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He went and he looked and he tested the evidence
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and he reported honestly what he found. This is the standard.
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That's what returning cryptozoology to its academic roots truly looks like.
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And you ask that question rigorously. And you're willing to
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hear no or not yet, if that makes sense. And
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he honored the Sherpa people. You know, the other thing
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Hillary did, and this might be the most important part
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of the legacy, is he respected the people who lived there.
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You know, he was very well respected there. He respected them.
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He spent the rest of his life working with the
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Sherpa community, you know, building schools and hospitals there. He
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understood that the people of Nepal and the Himalayas, you know,
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hold this deep knowledge about.
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The landscape and that their.
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You know, their love and their respect for the Yeti
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wasn't ignorance. It's culture, it's ecology, it's a spirituality, you know,
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kind of all braiding together in this beautiful braid.
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This marriage, as we would say.
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And in ethnozoology, I mean, that's all what it is
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in a nutshell, understanding animals through the people who have
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lived alongside them for generations. You know, the local knowledge
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isn't the thing to be debunked before you arrive. It's
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where the science really, really, really, really begins.
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You know?
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And so for me, that's what made this so powerful
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and Edmund Hillary's work in trying to figure out if
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Yeti was real, not real, you know, kind of inconclusive
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in that matter. And And also, when we think about
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the name Yeti, you know, this was actually accidental, by
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the way. So in the 1921 British expedition, Charles Howard Burry,
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I think his last name was Burry, Charles Howard Burley,
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came across large tracks at that time in the mountains.
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And the local reporters... reportedly described the tracks using a
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Tibetan phrase along the lines of, I know that I
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am butchering this up and I apologize, but it means
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manned bear to a snowman or snow dweller, okay? So
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that description made its way to a journalist, Henry Newman,
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and who wrote it up for the press, and somewhere
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between the Sherpas, the translation, and the newspaper, it all
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got turned into the wrong phrase. It got turned into
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the abominable snowman. A loose, you know, kind of, I
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guess dramatic, and honestly, pretty clumsy English version, and it
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just kind of stuck. So meanwhile, the word Sherpa people
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use is yeti, okay? The word that the Sherpa people use,
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is Yeti from Yeti. It's spelled Y-E-H-T-E-H, and I never
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pronounce it correctly. It's beautifully spoken, by the way. It's
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often explained as a creature from the rocky places, not abominable, right?
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Not a monster, just this being of extreme strength, intelligence
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that lives way up and belongs in the mountains. So
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when we say abominable snowman today, we're really using a
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tabloid mistranslation, let's say, instead of the name the people
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who live there actually gave it. And that's a worthy
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fix that maybe we should be working on fixing. I'm
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just saying. Just saying. So that's why on this show,
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we're just calling it Yeti. It's just the Yeti. So
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let's bring it back home for a second because That's
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the sidebar that I wanted, you know, well, that actually,
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that little tidbit there about the Yeti, I just kind
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of wanted to talk about that. That's a different sidebar
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that wasn't actually part of the detour tonight, but it's
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all a part of the same story. But remember that
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line about Tenzing revering, I told you about the sacred
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mother goddess. So that's the worldview Hillary respected. Even though
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he came to the mountain from a very different place,
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Westerners came to Everest to summit it, correct? You know,
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that's what they would say. And the people of the
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Himalayas lived with it. Does this make sense to you?
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You know, the Yeti sits inside the same understanding of
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that land. And so a film that put Tenzing, that puts,
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excuse me, Tenzing at the center is a film that
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is saying the people of that place are really the
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true part of their story. Does that make sense? I
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think that's the overdue. And I think it matters beyond mountaineering.
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It matters for wildlife science, for cryptozoology, and for anyone
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who's ever walked into someone else's home turf with a
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clipboard and a camera. And a note on the casting.
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Tom Hiddleston is playing Hillary. Playing Hillary is going to
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bring a lot of eyes to this story. but I'm
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hoping those eyes really stay on Tenzing. And I really
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hope that that happens for this man because his story
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is truly remarkable and I do not want to take
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away from that. So you might be asking, why does
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this film matter to me? Why is it so personal? Well,
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it's because I'm a field researcher and I'm an explorer.
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And I live in the space between the thing the
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world says is possible And the thing you can only find,
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you know, if you go out looking for it. I
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hate to say the long pause, but really that's just
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the simplest way to say it, right? Hillary is the
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character I'm watching most closely, of course, because he's the
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guy who is or who was brave enough to attempt
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the impossible and honest enough to say, I didn't find it,
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both at the same time. That's the whole job, right?
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And Tenzing is the reminder of who you owe it to,
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the people who know that place, the ones who have
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been telling you the truth about it all along, right?
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This story has stuck with me forever.
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And the fact that they would talk about Yeti and
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Hillary really admired Tenzing and had such a good rapport,
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had such a good relationship. The story, the people, and
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that culture means.
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Something to me beyond limits. You know, taking risks, pushing
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the boundaries, and doing the thing that everyone says is impossible.
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You know, that's not recklessness, folks. When you do it
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with humility and respect, that alone is exploration. So, Here's
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my challenge to you since you had to listen to
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me ramble this long.
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Go see Tenzing.
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Go see it in theaters. I think select theaters on
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October 9th. If you got to wait till Apple TV, fine, whatever.
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But watch it for the climb and then watch it
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again for the mountain's other story, right? And then ask
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yourself what your own mountain is. And if you loved
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this one, you can share it with your fellow weirdos.
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You can tag me.
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You can reach out to me on my social pages.
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And as I always say, my dear friends, until next time,
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stay curious, stay respectful, and keep it weird.
