🎬 CUTTING ROOM FLOOR: Is Mount Everest Getting Too Crowded? (Podcast Exclusive)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
My Heart podcasts here, more Gold one on one point
seven podcasts.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Playlists, and listen live on the free iHeart app.

Speaker 3 (00:19):
Yeah yeah yeah it's John.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
Yeah yeah, it's Johniana Man Yeah yeah yeah on the
cutting room floor. Have you ever wanted to scale Mount Everest?

Speaker 1 (00:37):
No, I've done a story for beyond two thousand, a
series of stories in the Himalias, I like to say,
in the Himalayas. But I flew in via helicopter. I
didn't do any trekking. Even walking up to my room
at the end of the evening, helicopter was out of breath.
I have no interest. So in climbing Everest.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
With the helicopters, where did you go? You didn't go
to the top of Mount Everest?

Speaker 1 (01:00):
No, no, No, we didn't go to that. No, I'm saying.
We flew into the Himalayas and we did some stories
with some people and some echo stuff we were doing there.
But no, I didn't go to the top of Everest.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:11):
It's a story that's come out right now people, and
it's sort of eco tourism, people climbing Mount Everest, and
twenty twenty five has been the biggest ever year for
people scaling Mount Everest.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
And the big thing is the Nepalese. They make a
lot of money out of this. But other people are
saying it's time to respect the mountain.

Speaker 3 (01:29):
And when you look at those pictures of queues of
three hundred people waiting to summit, but I kind of
have empathy for those people, whoever they might be.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
They've all tried to get up there.

Speaker 3 (01:40):
And you'll like imagine two hundred ninety eight in the
queue of three hundred and all of a sudden the
weather closes came so close to getting to Everest.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
Well, it's a shirpa who has posted these pictures saying,
come on, this only serves short term pride. You're putting
immense pressure on our sacred mountain. This is a shirpa
saying it's time to reflect. We must pause and reconsider
how we approach Everest, not just for ourselves, but for
the mountain's future. But you're right when you look at
that when someone has a photo taken at the top

(02:07):
of the mountain, it's them and those incredible mountain peaks
behind them. It looks like you're the only person in
the world. But from this angle, you see two hundred
and fifty people snaking up that mountain in the freezing cold,
waiting their turn. And as you say, they're all looking
at the weather closing in, or looking at the day
closing in, the darkness coming.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
They're thinking, my.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
God, I've come all this way and I may not
get my photo, I.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
May not get my phote out. But what do people
expect a gift shop up the top there.

Speaker 1 (02:34):
It's a little bit like a rite of passage. And
I think I'm right in saying that more men do
this than women. It's like Kakoda, this is the midlife
test yourself.

Speaker 3 (02:44):
Yeah, well, what about that guy that his wife wanted
to do it? They both went up there, they got
to near the summit, she died and he had to.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Leave her up there. Cripes. He didn't even want to
go on this thing.

Speaker 3 (02:56):
What about Meg in the prod pod that's the producer's pod, Meg,
who had no interest in scaling Everest and her dad
wanted to go to base camp as a bit of
a bucket list thing.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
So he's the one that's doing all the training.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
Get trained with him.

Speaker 3 (03:10):
Meg vapes on the quarter hour. Yeah, and as it
turns out, Dad ends up getting altitude sickness has to
go to a police hospital. Meg ends up at base
camp by yourself doing selfie fingers.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
That's a cruel mystery.

Speaker 1 (03:27):
You have a feeling that you need to test yourself.

Speaker 3 (03:30):
No, now, I test myself every day by riding a
motorcycle into work. That's the length of testing that I need.
And I'm not a fan of the Third World. To
be frank, I don't need to travel to the Third World.
I can see pictures of it. You want to get
enlightened with a beer, yeah, I want to go to
places like Greece is as about Third World as I
will go.

Speaker 1 (03:49):
You want a flushing toilet, yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
Well Greece.

Speaker 3 (03:51):
In Greece, if you don't know this, when you do
a pooh, you've got to put your toilet paper in
a bin next to the toilet because they're plumbing system.
They didn't you know, they might have come up with philosophy,
but they didn't come up with plumbing like the Romans did.
Don't point that out to them. They get a bit
upset about it.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
But nonetheless, philosophy or do you want plumbing? I have both.
I want to flush my toilet paper, I want.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
To rip out the works of Plato and flush them
down the toilet.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
So that's that's the extent of my travels.

Speaker 3 (04:18):
I know that you want to go and eat some
seeds sitting cross legged by some Buddhist talks to you.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
I'm not interested.

Speaker 1 (04:25):
I'm not interested in that. You know, my fantasy is
about living in a Tuscan, in a Tuscan village and
taking cooking classes and slicing tomatoes and serving food on
enormous platters. That's what I'd like.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
You know, when you say you've sliced.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
Italians, I said that to shock here what you did.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
I was shocked. I'm not wearing the dormy a grin anymore. Okay, kids,
that's it for today.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
Come back tomorrow for more.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
Johnsy and Amanda's Cutting Room for