Mark Synnott: Mystery, Obsession and Death on Mount Everest, An Interview with NY Times Bestselling Author About His New Book

Episode Transcript
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Thom Pollard (00:00):
This is the happiness quotient.
Welcome. Before we get started,have you checked out a course in
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follow roadmap provides gentlepositive suggestions that for

(00:23):
1000s of years have been taughtby the Masters on how to stop
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to life's big questions. Itoffers some guideposts to
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(00:43):
free pdf download of a course inhappiness.

Oliver Wood (00:48):
All of my wisdom came from all of my toughest
days, I never learned a thingbein' happy.

I'm Thom Pollard.
This is an episode about grit,about life, about death, about
the extremes of human endeavor,how far a human being can
possibly go when they put 100%of themselves into something.
It's about heart. It's alsoabout friendship. This episode
is set within the backdrop ofthe greatest mountain on the

(01:21):
planet, Mount Everest, traumallama Goddess Mother of the
world. Today's episode welcomesback my ever talented friend and
expedition partner Mark Senatein anticipation of the release
of his highly anticipated bookabout our 2019 Everest
expedition to find the body oflong lost mountain here, Sandy

(01:44):
urban. Some of you may recall myfirst interview with Mark for
Episode Number 42 called the dayEverest broke, and the genesis
of our expedition, which hassince been chronicled in a one
hour film by National Geographicand Disney called last on
Everest, produced by ourexpedition partner and Uber

(02:06):
talented filmmaker and climberrun on AWS Turk. Mark's book is
called the third pole mystery,obsession and death on Mount
Everest. It's been a long timecoming like waiting for a baby
to be born. But given that thetrue genesis for our 2019
expedition took place in Octoberof 2017 at my Everest

(02:29):
presentation in Fryeburg, Mainecalled lessons learned in
pursuit of Everest, which youcan hear in Episode Number 75 of
The HQ marks book is nearly fouryears in the making. That's a
long gestation period twice aslong as the African elephant,
the rhinoceros. From the looksof it, Mark's book appears to be

(02:53):
doing well, even today on theeve of its release. There are so
many positive reviews comingout. I've read it so I know
what's good and well as acentral character in the book.
How can I not like that? Applebooks recently listed it as one
of the best books of April andfrom Amazon. The third poll has

(03:14):
been named one of Amazon's bestbooks of April in the history
category. The esteemed KirkusReviews, book magazine says of
the third poll, quote, a hairraising mountaineering history
of fine tale of adventure andexploration sure to please any
fan of climbing Everest lore.

(03:39):
Susan Casey, author of nationalbestsellers the wave and voices
in the ocean, former editor inchief of Oh the Oprah Magazine
wrote, The third pole is anelegy of extremes a white
knuckle tail of obsession andsurvival from the archives of
London's Royal GeographicalSociety to attend battered by

(04:01):
howling winds on the edge of thedeath zone. Mark senate puts it
all on the line in his quest tosolve Mount Everest most
enduring mystery. And lastly,Mark Adams, author of the
critically acclaimed tip of theiceberg and New York Times
bestseller turn right at MachuPicchu says 100 year old

(04:24):
detective story with a newtwist, a high altitude
adventure. The best Everest bookI've read since into thin air.
Senate's climbing skills takeyou places few will ever dare to
tread. But it's his writing thatwill keep you turning pages well
past bedtime. Before I get toour interview on April 15, I

(04:48):
want to mention that NationalGeographic we'll be doing a
Facebook Live event with Markabout the book guest host is the
Uber talented Peter Gwynn ofNational Geographics. overheard
podcast. It's going to be aninteractive conversation that
will focus on Mark's story ofclimbing Mount Everest topics

(05:08):
from the book that crossesgeographic, economic, social and
political lines, with a team ofdreamers highly trained
professional athletes andagents, working to keep some of
Africa's secrets concealedforever.
Well, here it is. Mark is backon the HQ. And instead of

(05:31):
sipping martinis by the firepit, which we did as a backdrop
for our interview, which isfeatured in Episode Number 42,
we join mark and his wifeHampton for an evening of
martinis. Regrettably, the nightbefore our morning interview in
his home office. When I showedup at marks house that following

(05:54):
morning, we were both bit foggyeyed, but we came right to life
when I hit record. We talked indepth about Mark's book and some
of the elements within it, Ithink you will be truly
fascinated. Here it is my April1 2021 interview with climber,
New York Times bestsellingauthor and good friend Mark

(06:14):
Sennett about his book, you mustbe pretty excited to actually
see this in print. It's been along time coming since the idea
was hatched to an actual, solidhardcover book imprint. So tell
me about that. You must bestoked.

Mark Synnott (06:36):
Well, the book is called the third pole, mystery,
obsession and death on MountEverest. I hope that doesn't
seem too dramatic, but justseemed to be a very accurate
description, you know, we wereplaying around with with
subtitles, and it actually, itwasn't even my idea. It was

(06:58):
someone else and editor whosaid, Well, you know, that's
what it's actually about. And Ithink the obsession being the
key word there of the three, butit does. It does feel very

(07:18):
satisfying and rewarding to besitting here holding the the
hardcover after, you know, twoand a half years, or I guess,
since the germination of thisidea at your talk at Freiburg

(07:39):
Academy, two and a half years.

I think that was October 20...17. Yeah. Wow.

17

It was a long time.

Oh, sorry. Sorry, three and a half years.

Yeah.

Yeah, three and a half years. So that's a long
time. But it's not that long. Imean, Wade Davis put way more
effort than that into, into thesilence. So I don't mean that to
sound like the most significantthing ever. But, but it's a
chunk of your life. And whilethis has been going on, it's
been all consuming. And it was ayear of preparation, a year of

(08:24):
intensively, writing the bookthat started by the way, up on
the screen porch, with zerowords on zero pages, and I will
never forget that moment of howawful that was. To start with
nothing. So demoralized. I'm notgood at that. I'm getting

(08:48):
started. And then a year ofrewriting, editing, crafting.
And then, you know, however manymonths of finalizing the photos
and working on the maps and theillustrations with clay wadman

(09:09):
and fact checking and working onthe essentially the bibliography
and now, the final push in theselast two weeks, to to get this
thing out into the world thatthe into the whole point of

(09:30):
doing this is to share a greatstory with the world with with
people who are interested. Andthat's why I think it's cool
that we're talking about itbecause i i don't i don't want
to work in a vacuum as a writer.
I want people to, to know aboutmy stories. And I want them to

(09:51):
read them and and I want them toappreciate that Yeah, I want I
like people who like, my storiesand my writing. Don't like it,
you know, then whatever. Well,they can go jump in a lake.

Yeah, yeah. But you're always gonna have
detractors. But the Theinteresting thing about Everest
actually, is that basically,every human being or every of
the 8 billion human beings onthe planet basically know what
Mount Everest is. It and so itbecause it's the highest

(10:35):
mountain in the world, it's likepeople have this there's some it
their opinion of it representssomehow some this moral purity
in in a lot of people and sopeople are really critical of
Everest climbers or any or meanwhat let's put it this way you

(11:00):
started with zero words on zeroon a blank piece of paper, and
how many books have been writtenabout Mount Everest? And so how
do you like, what's the firstword the or when you know?
Right? So actually, what is thevery first word

We're holding it here. I'm gonna flip to the end.
So that that thatwas a heavy lift. And let's see,
first big book, if you will youdid up your guidebook..
we have the possible climb herein my before, okay, this is

(11:49):
403 Wow. So pretty similar. Theyfeel about the same look at this
is definitely this, this was amuch more ambitious undertaking.
And this was the biggest projectof my life to date. Hmm. And,

(12:12):
and this, this book has a lot ofhistory. And so I, I'm not a
historian, by trade, but I hadto become one yeah, to, to write
this book. And I learned a lot.
And, and I think, in the finalanalysis, I think it's a better

(12:32):
story. I think it's a betterpiece of work than the
impossible climb. And that wasmy goal, like a very simple
goal. And it's something that Ifollowed my whole life which is
to be progressing, and to be onan upward trajectory, if

(12:55):
possible, just because I feellike that is kind of a basic
mandate that we all have ashuman beings to evolve. Yeah,
become better at what we do. Imean, if you if you if you can't
improve with the passage oftime, then you probably aren't
trying that hard.

That's absolutely spot on. For sure. And, and, and
when you think that you've putin the most effort of your life
and done your best work, theminute that book, there it is
on, you know, the arm of thecouch. Now it's in the past. You

(13:40):
You are so you poured yourselfinto this. so deeply. I remember
getting well I still have theentire text thread on my phone.
Heaven helped me if I ever losethis phone. I'm taking
screenshots going back years,picked from you being an England

(14:03):
holding artifacts from theMallory and Ervin expedition.
And you're like Pollard, you'renever gonna believe what I'm
holding in my hand. Like that'slike, so you weren't satisfied
with just reading something asfact, you had to go and hold it,
touch it be there. That's goingthat that says a lot for what

(14:27):
this book is. It's verythorough, what Tell me a little
bit about going to England andsome of the things that you saw
there because that's prettycool. This is stuff people would
only dream about being able todo.

Well, well, the book has this whole preamble
leading up to us getting to themountain. And that preamble is
you and you know how youinspired me to become obsessed

(14:59):
with The story in the same waythat you were, you know,

I corrupted you, is what you're saying

it's a contagious thing. And I, and I caught it
from from you. looking here atthe table of contents, there's a
prologue. And then the book isbroken into three parts. Part
one is called paths toobsession. And it's five
chapters. And that's the, that'sthe preamble. And that's the

(15:30):
genesis of, of, of the story,and at least my involvement and
immersion in it. But also, thewhole detective story, because
ultimately, we were trying tosolve a mystery. And, and so
that's, that's what the firstthird of the book is about. It's

(15:51):
about the research that I wasdoing. All the digging, and all
of that being preparation forbeing on the mountain and doing
the best job that we could forthis, not to just be, you know,
kind of an academic exercise,but a real thing that could

(16:14):
possibly, you know, have

changed history, yeah, change the written history
of something

a positive outcome, you know, and, and so
the historical narrative startsin the UK. And I've always loved
the type of storytelling wherethe writer immerses themselves
into the story. And, and there'sno better way to do that, than

(16:47):
to just go personally, to thelocation of the most primary
sources. And believe it or not,with all my travels, you know,
and I've been obsessed withexploring the world and going as
many places as I possibly could,I had never been to the UK. And

(17:09):
I guess one thing that I'lladmit, that should be obvious to
everyone is that everything thatI do is just an excuse for me to
go and do cool shit.

Oh, I'm gonna have to go to England for this? Okay,
see you, hasta luego kids!

guys. I loved it.
I love that place. I didn't evenknow how much I loved it. And my
family is from England, you

and you discovered that quite happenstance. When
know,you were there that you had some
roots...

Yeah, I knew I knew it, you know, beforehand.
But the place resonated in mysoul. You because I have a
personal connection there. So Iwent to the Royal Geographical
Society to a place called thefoil Reading Room where they

(18:01):
have all the archives from theearly British Everest
expeditions. I mean, they haveeverything they have all the
Antarctic stuff, everything ifyou're you know, historian and
you want to be writing aboutearly exploration of the world,
then the foil Reading Room isthe place that you would go they
have something like a millionmaps, maybe it's 2 million maps,

(18:23):
like actual, like old hardcovercopy, you know, original
editions of maps, you know, thatthe British made all over the
world. And then I also went toOh, and by the way, they have
all the artifacts. Yeah, thatyou guys found in 1999. And the
amazing thing is you can go in,you just walk in off the street,

(18:46):
you have to pay 10 pounds, andsay like, I want to see
Mallory's boot and then there'sgonna be some eye rolling like,
really like you Why? I want towear it seriously. Yeah, buddy.
You got to see this shit. Yeah.
Like Yes, I do.

So they go get George Mallory's boot, they go
out and put it in your hands?

they go out the back door. And Craig come back a
little bit later push in alittle cart. They wear these
special little white gloves kindof like the stuff that Michael
Jackson used to wear. And so youdon't mess it up. Cotton lily
white cotton gloves. Amazing.
And then they sort ofceremoniously open these special
cardboard boxes that say, youknow, fragile, do not disturb

(19:31):
kind of on the on the lid. Andthen they pull. They pull this
stuff out and you are notallowed to touch it.

Got it. But

I asked the guy I'm like, Can I can I touch it?
And he just looked at me he hasthe gloves and he he didn't say
anything but he's like what partof this picture? Are you not
noticing? See, I'm special. Ihave training. I have white
gloves. You Are some randomAmerican guy? Yeah, yeah, he
just showed up here. So no,you're not trying it, you're not

(20:08):
trying it on. The very firstthing I noticed about Mallory's
boot was that it looked to beexactly my size. And that it was
in amazingly good shape. I mean,you were there, you saw it, when
it was actually on his bullets.
And I actually took the book,you took the boat, so so that.
So that's actually really cool,too, because you, you inspired
the story. You know, you youplanted the seed inside of me,

(20:33):
and, and, you know, you werethere. When this discovery was
made, when Conrad found thebody, you know, a very important
moment in the history ofmountaineering, very important
in this story. Yeah. And thenthe ongoing saga of this

(20:54):
mystery. And pretty cool thatthat booth then eventually made
its way all the way from 26,700feet on the north face of
Everest, to this littlecardboard box. And then as a
result of the fact that Idecided not to blow off your

(21:15):
talk, as I was looking for anexcuse, and you and you know
what i heavily bagging blown offa lot of stuff. And one thing
that people don't know about meprobably, is that my favorite
thing is to sit at home bymyself.

That's probably why we get along so well. It's
like, somebody invites you to aparty. And if it's like a month
out, you're like, Oh, yeah,yeah. And then like the day of
it, that you're like, ah, Idon't know if I'm gonna, I
can't. And then the next youjust hope.

Yeah, it's not something I'm really proud of.
Because what I said, You know, Iwouldn't I don't want other
people to be that way. And whenI do rally, and I go out, I'm
very thankful that I did. Yeah,yeah. But I've been immersed in
mountaineering Lord now for mywhole life. So yeah, it's not my
favorite subject anymore.
Really. I'm more interestedpersonally, in, in sailing, and,

(22:13):
you know, sort of other types ofexploration. But anyway, if I if
I hadn't rallied, actually, ifyou hadn't, sort of kicked me in
the ass a little bit

I kept pinging you on it.

Yeah. One of the things you said was, you'll be a
guest of honor. And I was like,what does that mean? I'm like I
have. I'm like, Huh. And andthen part of it. Was that my It
was my night to hang out with mydaughter, Leila. That's right.
And so I thought, well, thiswill be this will be a cool
outing on your daughter outing.
Go over, pick her up at hermom's house. Yeah, I mean, I

(22:55):
don't think she was thrilled atthe prospect of what we're going
to do. But she put on a braveface and, and we went and did
it. And anyways, now I'm off ona tangent. Yeah, yeah. If it
weren't for that. Yeah. The seedYeah, for telling the story
would never have been planted inme. And I never would have gone

(23:17):
to the Royal GeographicalSociety, and seen that boot and
seen the rope and seen Mallory'spocketknife and all kinds of
other artifacts. Yeah, thelittle like, 10 of lozenges, or
whatever it was me. lozenges,and all that stuff was all in
the box, and I saw it all. Andas you know, as someone who was

(23:42):
there when Mallory wasdiscovered, yeah, it has weight
in it. It's one thing to look atthe picture in a book, but to
see the boot with your own eyes.
You it's like you feel the wayof, of George Mallory and also

(24:04):
about what happened to him. Ican only imagine what it must
have been like to actually seethe body and you did in part
that you know, in in your talk,and that by the way was kind of
R rated for an 11 year old girl.
Sort of like oh well. But allchildren under 15 Close your

(24:27):
eyes because you're going to seeif you can take it cuz she's on
Twitch and talk and yeah, kidsare pretty Scott knows what
they're seeing. You know, so sheshe kind of shrugged it off.
Yeah, it's still the I have acouple of photos in there that
are there. They're there. Theyhit you kind of in the gut. You
know?

What, I'm just you know, this is the interesting
thing that I always Well, I'mnot sure if I did that night but
but You know, you even said inthe title of your book is, you
know, the word death is in thetitle of your book. And, and you
kind of almost get squeamishabout that. It's like, do we

(25:12):
have to kind of glorify, glorifyit or, or be, you know, kind of?
I mean, isn't that a word justused to kind of sell books or
something like that. But butit's, it's the truth of it. And
so when I show a picture ofGeorge Mallory, a lot of people
are like, are you just trying toglorify your experience of
seeing this dead guy? But thetruth is, is this human, I felt

(25:34):
the power of this human beingwho died who had three children
at home, who and I met one ofthem, you know, after the
expedition who was 79 years old,and I said, Do you have any
memories of your dad? And hesaid, I think I remember having
a snowball fight with him when Iwas a kid. And I was thinking,

(25:55):
like, I felt that when I sawMallory, like, this is a guy.
It's not just George Mallory,this figure it's a human being
and people mourned his loss. Andto me, that's your it's a
tribute to that. Because heinspired us to go and we made an

(26:19):
agreement that we were going topay our own way. No matter what
to do this trip. And we weponied up big money and wired it
to China to make sure we werethere. Yes. And we fortunately
got back that when NationalGeographic signed on, but

yeah, we were committed. And, you know, we we
called that a blood pact. Wedid. I don't know if that's
politically correct. Nowadays,

there was no blood swapped. Let's just...

just there was there was no other there was
there was no blood swapped.
Yeah. I remember, the realmoment of the blood pact was
after we went and visitedHolzel. Well, after we had the
biggest night ever, with Holzel.
Like, who knew that he was goingto bring out this wine infused

(27:13):
with a hallucinogenic herb atlike one o'clock in the morning,
and be like, Oh, why don't wefinish ourselves off with this?
And, of course, we were game.
Anybody, you know, who had drankas much as we had by that point
would be like, okay, yeah.

And he's like, 80 something at the time.

Then you started talking about how you were going
to channel the spirits ofMallory Irvine and to find the
bodies?

Yeah, I did.

And I and I, I mean, we can all laugh but you
believe in that.

I totally.

And, and I did too, at that point. Yeah. And
then you also talked about howif we found the camera, that you
were gonna smuggle it out ofChina in your ass?

LAUGHING Those damn hallucinogens, we'll do it
every time, like, okay,

you know, I mean, someone's got to do it. And if
you're volunteering, I mean, thethings not small.

I didn't want to train for that. That was, you
know, how do you actually tryingto get one of those things in
you?, so

but that solved the problem, because we were, we
were definitely worried abouthow we would.

Why is the metal detector going off? It's my
titanium knee. It is not acamera...LAUGHING

Yeah.

Dude I couldn't even smuggle into China. A
bottle of booze. Remember, mybottles smashed at the border
and, and my bag was just infusedwith bourbon or whiskey or
whatever.

Are you allowed to swear on podcast?

You can say whatever you can.

Yeah. Okay. So we're, we're going through,
we're going through customs.
We're going into China. It's arather intimidating thing fair.
The building they like say,well, it's Gothic. It's made out
of marble. The ceilings are like40 feet tall. There's cameras
everywhere. We're walkingthrough the Plexiglas you're,
you know, standing in front ofme in line with your like, fancy

(29:16):
leather bag. And I look down andthere's just this brown liquid
pouring out of it onto thesegleaming polished marble floors.
I'm like, Tom, like you got asituation going on. And you zip
open your bag. And and thenyou're like, fuck, fuck. All my

(29:37):
alcohol is gone. That by theway, was the ultimate junior
varsity move. It was here we aregoing on this expedition to
Everest and you have blown it.
Your fancy whatever it was thatyou had bought at the liquor

(29:59):
store. You're in Katmandu. Soit's pouring out. So not only do
you not get to drink it, but nowyou have all these Chinese
customs, people who are likewhat is going on over here?
Let's pay special attention tothis team

and everybody backs away from me. And they're
like, he's an alcoholic!

Yeah. So Nice job.
Nice job on that. The otherstory and this isn't in the
book, Jamie, very organized.
Perfect. Himalayan guide Kiwi.

Yeah, Jamie McGuiness

experienced lots of ever summit, tons and tons of
Himalayan travel, like perhapsmore than anyone. He's dedicated
his entire life to exploring theHimalaya. He goes through the
customs, he's in front of me, weget out, we're sitting in this
little like waiting room, hejust gets up and walks away and
leaves his iPhone sitting.
Whatever it was his smartphone,he leaves it sitting on the

(30:56):
table table. So of course I pickit up. I slip it into my pocket.
I don't say anything.

Oh, right.

We go out, we get in the van. We're driving down
the road. We're kind of likewaiting, waiting. Finally, he's
like, oh, I'll take a picture.

LAUGHING

should check something. And he's like this,
you see him. I starts freakingout on it. Oh, my phone's gone.
And I let it go for a whilereally just to make it hurt. And
he's like, we got to go back.
And, and then, of course, you'relike, Ah, so another couple of
junior varsity moves

very JV, we got them out of the way. So that the
whole both of these events tookplace at the border. And maybe
that would be kind of a coolthing to ask you about. And it
was started, you know, wholesalecould not underscore enough. The
absolute necessity for keepingour mission under wraps for

(31:58):
secrecy of this mission. And,you know, he was big. He goes,
don't tell anyone and you lie,constantly lie. And then you
just ask for forgiveness later.
But But he felt as though if wemade our mission public, the
that we've never would havegotten our permits won about we

(32:19):
certainly would have beenallowed up the mountain.

It it's part of the story that and I think it's
a fairly well established andaccepted fact that the Chinese
Jamie calls them the Chineseofficials. Yeah. Don't want

(32:46):
people meddling in the Malloryand erven mystery. I mean, this
is long and complicated story.
And yeah, give us the bridge, Idid an interview, you know, with
with the telegraph recently, inthe UK. And they, they they, the
writer who's like putting thestory together was, you know,

(33:10):
asking me some questions andcoming back after for more info.
And essentially what I said is,you know, this is this is this
is a tricky, complicated story,a tiny bit of a minefield, what
I want to say about this is inthe book, I carefully

(33:31):
constructed that story. And it'snot just Okay, here it is. It's
a thread that's woven throughthe entire book. Right? Right.
It's, it's, it's, it's tied into the geopolitics of of
Everest.

Yeah.

I would say that it's tied into now I'm drawing a
blank, but I guess they call itthe 100 year plan, which is for
China to supplant the US as theworld's dominant superpower. 100
years from the date of thefounding of the People's

(34:12):
Republic of China, which was in1949. So that'll be in 2049. By
that point, they tend to theytheir intention is to kick our
ass. And it's interesting thatthat Everest ties into that,

yeah, it right

ties in to the New Silk Road, what they call the
VRI, the Belton Road initiative,which is this massive in like
multi trillion dollarinfrastructure project, which is
going on in China, and Everestis being connected into this

(34:53):
whole transportation networks.
Yes, high speed rail, going fromBeijing to Lhasa amid it's gonna
be high speed. rail going fromLhasa to should God say where
they've built thismountaineering Center, which we
didn't get to see because wedidn't go through there. But
apparently it's the size of fiveWalmart super centers.

Wow. Oh my gosh.

He really rode right into base camp. Last
season when Everest was closedto foreigners, there was a
Chinese expedition there. Iheard that they were cleaning
bodies off the roof to kind of,you know, homogenize it a bit.
And I also heard that they putin a 5g tower on the rongbuk,

(35:38):
glacier 5g. Wow, we don't evenhave that here. They have it now
in Everest. So might be, youknow, watching YouTube videos
and literally base camp. Yep.
And there's rumor. And it's justrumor that, that the Chinese
have always wanted to put a likecable car up to the North Pole.

(36:01):
Oh, my God, obviously, you know,none of us want that. But it's
all. Actually, it's all. It'sall part of the story. And for
the Chinese. Well, I mean,unless you're sort of a student

(36:21):
of Everest, you might not knowthat the Mallory in erven route
wasn't officially climbed until1960. by the Chinese. Yeah.
Right. Malin Ervin may have doneit. We don't know. That's what
this is all about, obviously.

(36:44):
But we do know that. Officially,it was climbed by the Chinese in
1960. It's, it's a little bitcontroversial. Because they
didn't get a photo when theywere on the summit. But I
dissect all that, in the book, Ican say, right here right now

(37:04):
Personally, I pretty much haveno doubt based on my research
that they did do it. Yeah, theydeserve the credit for what they
did in 1960. And I've been toldby sources in China, that the

(37:25):
the first ascent of the northface of Everest by the Chinese
represents to them the same aswhat the moon landing does. For
us here. It's that significant?

Wow. Yeah. Right.

It's a huge thing for them, culturally, and
nationalistic Lee and all ofthat, if Malin urban actually
did it in 1924, you would haveto at least put an asterisk next
to that first ascent, and say,okay, yes, you're getting

(38:06):
credit, because you're the firstones to do it and live. But
somebody else had stood on thesummit before you. I mean, if
that could ever be proven? Yeah.
And the same thing for theofficial first ascent of the
mountain. Yeah. 1953, right. ByTenzing Norgay and Edmund
Hillary, you'd have to put anasterisk, and people, especially
people who are in the know,like, you know, real

(38:29):
mountaineers will quickly tellyou that it doesn't count if you
don't make it down. Yeah, I'veYeah. And I believe that, that
is an idea that has merit. Yeah.
But you can't say that itdoesn't count for anything.
Because if somebody else stoodup there before you, you weren't
actually the first to stand onthe top. So it matters. And I, I

(38:55):
believe that, that the Chinesedon't want people messing with
that. Oh, Zell told us that whenwe first met with him, and that
became kind of, you know, aguiding sort of principle in
terms of the way that we wentabout this expedition. But since
I've dug a lot more deeply intothat, and, and I, I can say, you

(39:21):
know, without a doubt thatthat's true.

And they don't want a group of guys from the
United States, no less go inthere and and proving something
that that changes their courseof history. So there don't take
kindly to someone trying tosolve that Mallory nerve and
mystery.

I would say that.
That's at some point in time.
That was true. Whether it's trueright now. I don't know. Because
there is. There's more to thestory in regards to the Chinese,
maybe That could be just sort ofa teaser without unpacking it

(40:05):
all here. Yeah. Because it'skind of the ending. to, to my
book, and I guess, in you, youknow, all this, but I think we
can say that we've learned somethings that, that people don't
really know about this.

Okay. So that this this would be and I do have I
want to ask you like, two morethings. But without disclosing
it, would you say that therethat the need to go back in
search like is that we, if youwill, in essence, kind of close
the chapter not that therewouldn't be things one might be

(40:44):
able to discover, but in termsof the Sandy erven deal, do you
think that we kind of closed thebook or the chapter on that? Is
that not where we that it'sover? Would you say generally so

I would say? Or specifically speaking myself?
Yeah. jacc in him lab? Who isthe world's leading authority on
this story? So even then, Jose,Jose del U. Jake Norton, yep.
Another of the mostknowledgeable people,

Jamie,

Jamie, and all of us believe that there is no
further need to look for Urban'sbody in the yellow band. Could
it be somewhere else? Is there?
Is there? Is there more to this?

(41:45):
Yes. It's still a mystery. Yes,right. Are there people that
want to dig into this further?
At this very moment? Oh, yeah.
One of them is sitting threefeet away from me. At this
moment, y'all can him lab is notdone. He's not either me

(42:05):
personally. Yeah. I mean, younever never say never. Yeah.
But, uh, but it's a big world.
And there's a lot of cool stuffin it. You know, for me,
personally, I think that I'mdone. One thing that, you know,
that we could say here, that Idid not include in the book for

(42:30):
a lot of complicated reasons.
But I did find a bone. I found ajust a bare white bone that
looked like it was an elbowjoint. And it was right below

(42:52):
camp three. So I probably foundit around 27,000 feet in, and it
was just the bone with thecartilage.

So how big was it like, explain, like, give me a
descriptive of

it was probably, it was probably an elbow joint.
And it was

like complete, like from joint to joint or

broken. The two bone the two pieces of bone were
probably, you know, three incheslong. You know, just alabaster
white. arm bone.

So show me on your arm read the joy

know from like, here to here. Okay, this little
pieces of bone on either side ofwhat looked like a john album.
You know, I'm not an anatomist.
But I would say, yeah, it couldhave been an elbow. And, and the
thing that's interesting. Imean, the location doesn't
really match up with the cluesin this mystery. But nor does it
match up with, you know, peoplewho have died. And just the

(43:49):
simple fact that all the bodiesthat you see on on the mountain,
even Mallory's, which you saw,they, they're not totally broken
up, and they're in the clothingthat they died in, and people
are remarkably well preserved.
And so, you know, we saw quite afew bodies when we were a pis

(44:12):
I'm sure you did when you werethere. And none of them were in
this condition. And so that initself suggested that maybe,
maybe this is something and wegot to camp three. I took the
bone off the pack, I stuck it inthe mesh pocket inside this
abandoned tent that I stayed in.
Wow. Went to the summit. Camedown. I mean, you're you are

(44:37):
what? Oh, yeah. You are walkedafter summit day. I mean,
everybody was, and I laid in thetent. And everybody was packing
up because we were hiking downthe rest of the way. I tried to
get to the north pole oradvanced base camp. Yeah. And
everybody left. And I thinkJamie, you know, was the last
one and then Renan and I waslaying in there. I was just

(44:58):
trying to like Marshal myresources and get as much rest
as I could. I mean, I was doingokay. And it was beautiful,
beautiful weather. It wastotally okay. And finally,
Jamie's like, we'll see youlater. And then Renan's like,
well, I'm leaving to. I shovedas much stuff as I possibly
could into my pack. Yeah. And Iforgot to grab the bone. Amazed

(45:20):
so I didn't bring it down. Andit's just too much of a can of
worms. Really? Yeah, story. Idon't know what it is. It could
be nothing. I also, you know, Idon't know if it's, you know,
might be considered by peopledisrespectful that I picked the
bone up. And then I didn't justleave it there. I saw a little

(45:40):
white thing sticking out of theground. And I went over and I
dug it out with my ski pole.
Well, anyway, that bone issitting in that tent still, that
bone is sitting there. And I'lljust say that your skin is
interested. Yeah. Aren't you areinterested? Yeah, there's I
know.

Yeah. You know, I've done well that this is an
interview for you with you. ButI after my little Tia kind of
event, I don't know if I'll evergo up high again, to be honest.
And but But that said, when whentents are abandoned up at those
high camps, it looked like a youknow a breeze like this is just

(46:21):
tragic. Look at all the garbageup there. The Chinese go up and
clean those camps like that,that that tents gone.

I don't believe that you believe that that bone
would still be there. All thetents that I saw were old were
just matted down. And I mean,where our tent. So we stayed in
an abandoned tent, and there wasat least a dozen of them. And
then you saw the mash down thatyou were fighting the season
before just building someplaces. They're building right

(46:49):
on top of the old ones. So Imean, we were the last ones
down. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Chinesewere up there. Last see last
year. So anyway, okay. It's partof the mystery. From
conversations that I've had withthe Aachen, he has told me that

(47:11):
there is no DNA from Sandyurban. So so we wouldn't
necessarily know but i, butthere, I think there are other
relatives from his family. Andyeah, I think people who are
related maybe have similar DNA.
Right. So I think it's possible,man. And he has some ideas. I
know you've talked to him.

(47:35):
Yarkon has also sent me an emailabout some artifacts that the
Chinese have that he recentlylearned about. I don't know if
he's shared that with you. ButBut there's more there. And so
this is a great mystery. Andit's just one of those those

(47:57):
stories where the deeper you diginto it, the more befuddling it
become, yeah, and in a way, Ithink that's fitting, and I
think it's right, that themystery endures. Because that's,
you know, I think, why all of usare so enthralled with this and

(48:23):
why it's so enduring is becausewe just don't know and human
beings and, you know, peoplelike you and I tend to be pretty
curious people. Yeah. And, andwe all love the challenge, you
know, yeah, of thinking aboutthings that, you know, people

(48:45):
haven't been able to figure outyet.

Absolutely. And Alright, as we kind of start to
wrap this up. One important itto me, it's really important to
talk about it, but because of wewe went and we had this team, we
won we had a team that as ourgroup of guys, our film team,

(49:11):
you said, you know, it wasfilled with soul, there was like
a lot of really, really gooddynamics on it. And truly, for
me, probably the most positiveexpedition team experience I've
ever had. And, and I from theoutside people looking in, and I
want to reference real brieflyrun ons, and the kind of side

(49:33):
film project that goes above.
There's a scene in that book,when we told the Sherpa of the
plan to go and search for Sandyirvan and it's a 20 something
minute film, you can only tellso much of the story in there.
People it just like everybodyhas an opinion about Everest and

(49:55):
they all like pointing theirtheir little moral kind of up on
their soapbox going, you guys,all you do is exploit and you
should be ashamed yourselves.
And I don't, that's not thecase.

Well, I, I talked about this in the book and, and
I thought a lot about it. Andwhen when I got to that moment
where it was time to leave theropes, if I was going to do this
and I was going to go to thewholesale spot, I essentially

(50:31):
had to defy lock. And Lhakpa wastelling me, don't do it. And I
think that's what these peopleare on.

Hold on. Yeah, I want to talk about that. But I
was actually meaning when wewere in advanced base camp, and
we told them the story. Andthey're like, if we don't go to
the sun, forget it. It'sexpedition over that, but but
the but leaving the rope alittle bit too.

But the what is the question?

The questionis more, I want to talk about
leaving the rope and what youwhat you experienced after you
did that, but I meant more. Soas a team, they're like, how
could you guys not have toldthem your plan? And then you
told them right before you leaveadvanced base camp to go up the
mountain?

Yeah, that part.
And and it? And I mean, that'snot the whole story. And it's,
it's, it's really, again,tricky, and it's just Yeah, and
it's sensitive. But we did tellthem about the plan. Jamie
swears that he did. Jamie's anupright guy, there's no way that

(51:39):
he would say that he did. If hedidn't. We were all everybody
was in on it. And we wereplaying a little bit of a game
in that there had to be certainappearances made to the Chinese.
And that had a lot to do withwhy people who did know, you

(52:03):
know, didn't know. Yeah,officially,

right.

What, you know, what was what was going on?

I'm gonna jump in here because Mark and I were
talking about when he left thefixed ropes. This was during his
descent from the summit of MountEverest on May 31. When he left
those roads to go look for SandyIrvine's body at the precise
location of the GPS coordinates.
Mark's Sherpa was named Lhakpa.

(52:40):
He was the climbing leader ofthe Sherpa team, therefore,
ultimately, our climbing leader,one of the most respected and
talented of the Sherpa that I'veever met, and that's who mark is
speaking about when respondingto the outside criticism of him
going off the rope against thewishes of lock bow, which you
can see in the film lost onEverest and read about in the

(53:04):
book, back to the interview.

There's you got to be really careful with this
stuff.

Yeah, I'm gonna

because there's, there's, there's parts of this
story that they're just they're,they're, they're, they're
tricky, and they're hard totell. I mean, I think the thing
that I would that I would liketo say about people that I would
like to say to people about thisis that when I sat down with
Lhakpa, at the end of theexpedition, he came and we

(53:35):
talked for hours in the hotel,and we debriefed everything. In
particular, we debriefed thatwhole scene

of you unclipping and going to the search area,

and people should know that there was kind of a
tacit agreement between Lhakpaand I that he was officially
telling me not to do it, andthen he's covered. He's covered
with the Chinese.

Exactly,

then we talked about it afterwards. I mean, we
talked about all kinds of stuff.
And in you know, in it, I'msaying the Lhakpa Hey, dude, are
we good? Yeah, and we're doingthe GI Joe grip handshake. Yep,
we're good. He's saying no harmno foul. Everybody's covered.

(54:26):
Lhakpa and I are friends.

So yeah, yeah,

they're this this is all in the book. But there's,
there's elements and littledetails to the story, that that
didn't go into the film that,you know, there's nuances to it.

There's only so much you can do in a one hour

people don't understand. I mean, that's the
great thing about a book is it'smuch easier to, to sort of
reveal things in a more Or in amore delicate way. And, and I do
that in the book. I'm not gonnasay lock, but I are like Best
Buddies or anything like that.
But he and I, you're good,you're good. The reason I know
we're good is because we satdown and talked about it all for

(55:13):
several hours wasn't I was justlike, hey, see you dude have a
good life. Now I remember youwere that was one of the most
important and so do we, we did.
We did a we did a very thoroughdebrief. And, and we agreed that

(55:34):
everything is good. That's cool.
Yeah. And you know, the Chinese.
In the end, they kneweverything. They knew the whole
deal. And I remember, you know,sitting in the end, the end of
the expedition with D Chen someof the other guys in camp and
kind of wondering like, like,okay, is my next move to sort of

(55:57):
head out on to like a Chineselike chain gang kind of
situation, right. And D Chen wasjust all high fives and hugs and
Congrats.

I really liked that guy

And so it's very much sort of no harm, no foul
kind of thing going on here. Youknow, I think it's interesting,
too, is that, you know, for, formy wife, Hampton. You know, I
mean, obviously, she hadconcerns, you know about

(56:29):
everything that was going onwith the sharper, but she was
more concerned with just theidea of Wow, like that, that.
That seems like it might havebeen a really selfish thing that
you did. Because you took a lotof risk. And you're a father, I
had a three year old at home, Ihave three other kids. And

(56:52):
ultimately, it comes down to thesame thing that you were dealing
with, when you were trying todecide if you were still going
to go or not. I think youultimately decided, I think part
of you want it to go. You justsay Screw it. But there was
another part of you. The dadpart. Yeah, that said, I can't
do it. Yeah. And, and so youknow, I had that same moral

(57:16):
dilemma up there, when it wastime to leave the ropes. Because
if you slip when you'reconnected to the rope, it's just
not a big deal. But if youaren't connected to the rope,
and you slip, and you could,because you're, you know, you're
way up there and and you'retired, and, you know, and
spacey. And then and then, youknow, I mean, I had to do some,

(57:40):
some real climbing, you know,some technical climbing, at
least in one part where Iclimbed down to this to
different places where I climbedthrough little rock bands where
it was easy, but it was rockclimbing with no

upfront points and room for error.

Yeah, and what I've said to what I've said to
Hampton, and what I've said toother people, is that Yeah, I I
wouldn't have done it if Ididn't know for sure that I
could do it, right. I mean,nothing's 100% but I was at 99
point, whatever. Yeah, with someother decimal points in there.

(58:19):
And and it was in it, you know,it was it was close to the edge,
but I didn't go over the edge.
And, and climbers do stuff likethat sometimes. And that's what
our whole trip was about.

It was it

in your moment when you planted the seed in
Fryeburg Academy, to hose out togoing to England to going to
that NASA test facility to seeif the drones are going to work
at altitude, flying them insidehyperbaric chambers amid the the

(58:56):
altitude tent that I slept inthe whole preparation,
everything the climb the dayEverest broke where we witnessed
all the chaos and the drama thathappened on May 22 23rd. I mean,
there was a lot of a lot ofstuff that led up to that

(59:17):
moment. And and the whole tripsort of kind of came down to it
so so i don't i don't secondguess myself there and I think
if I if someone asked me thisrecently and I actually said you
know what, I think if I wentback and search more thoroughly

Yeah, right that I that I did. I hear you so can
you like without divulgingeverything or without you know,
giving more away than you wantto for the book and you look
what what did we were we werebasically going to find to look
for a clue that Tom wholesalehad given us with the GPS

(59:56):
coordinates that that kind ofcurb did with this slash in the
side of the mountain that wastaken on a photograph by Brad
Washburn some decades before.
And you in essence, you're goingback to that slash, Jamie had a
distinct understanding of wherethat is, because I think he had
been in that vicinity before.

(01:00:21):
When you broke off that rope, Iremember the the footage of you
looking at your GPS coordinates.
And as far as I'm concerned, youwent to where you wanted to go.
So can you tell us a little bitabout, you know, you know, what
happened? Would you rather leavethat for the, for the readers to

(01:00:41):
find out, and maybe we can do anoff the record and put it just
for the history books orsomething?

Mark Synnott (01:00:49):
Well, you know, part of the whole, you
know, we were talking about thepreamble to the story, and sort
of like the detective work thatwe did leading up to it. You
know, a lot of it was alreadydone by Holzel. Well, he worked
on it for 40 years. Yeah, yeah.
40 years, trying to figure itout. And, and he, he came up

(01:01:11):
with who I think what you and Ibelieve to be a very credible
theory for where the body ofSandy erven might be located on
the mountain. And then he went astep further, and he got GPS
coordinates crazy. The GPScoordinates, by the way, turned
out to be wrong. Oh, yeah. Idon't know if you remember that.

(01:01:33):
But yeah, they turned out to bewrong. But without those GPS
coordinates, I don't know if youand I would have gone for that.
But that turned it into thisconcrete thing. This where,
where I think we, you know, wedecided and we made the blood
pact. And we said, you know,we've got enough here. We've got
a credible theory. We, we wethink Holzel is reliable. And

(01:01:59):
that's one thing about thatvisit to him in Litchfield,
Connecticut. I mean, we we likewent way out into outer space by
the end of the night. But ButHolzel Well, yeah, I mean, he
never missed a beat. I mean,even with the Woodruff Yeah, he
was lucid, and articulate. Andit was all just super tight. And

(01:02:25):
I was looking for the crack.

Thom Pollard (01:02:27):
Yeah, right.

I never found one.
Yeah, no, he's like, yeah,anybody is or shadow that maybe
wants to kind of poke into it abad or say, I don't know, like,
this is pretty far fetched. goand visit Jose. Well, let him
lay it out for you.

Try some Woodruff.

I was skeptical.
But I left feeling like it wasit was a real thing. And I think
we based the whole trip on that.
I remember we called Renan onour way home weekend. We just
said, Dude, it's on. (Yeah),like, we've got something here.

(01:03:07):
And, and so that was that waswhat it was all about. The The
interesting thing was that theGPS coordinates were slightly
off. And the reason why isbecause the Brad Washburn map is
perfect. Yeah, but where the mapwhere? Yeah, the the, you know,

(01:03:28):
the the coordinates of, of, ofthat map where they were dropped
into the actual like, map datumsof the time, you know, you build
a map for Everest, ultimately,that map has to sit within a
bigger map of the world. Andwhen it got positioned in there,
it was a little bit off. And Ithink the the datums for the two

(01:03:52):
maps didn't match up reallyperfectly. And the thing that's
really just read the book, but Ithink that's really interesting
about that is that it it ties into the the the whole kind of
story behind why the Britishwanted to climb Everest in the

(01:04:15):
1920s and how it was discoveredduring the Great trigonometrical
survey. And I write about thisin quite a bit of detail in the
book, and I spent a lot of timedissecting it and trying to
understand it. But the the, oneof the main purposes of the
great trigonometrical survey wasto understand that the true

(01:04:40):
shape of the earth, and therewas a theory, and I guess it was
postulated originally by IsaacNewton, that the earth is not a
perfect sphere. latitude andlongitude at the time was based
on the idea that it was Yeah,but if it's not perfectly round,
And then, and what what, whatNewton said was that the, that

(01:05:06):
the earth is wider at theequator than it is at the, at
the poles holes, right, and thatthere's like kind of this
squishing, yeah. And and untilthey could figure out the exact
degree of that deflection, theycouldn't really have accurate

(01:05:28):
maps of the world. Wow. And soand so so. So that's all just
really fascinating stuff. And Iworked hard to explain all of
that in a coherent way. But italso ultimately ties in to a
modern day Everest map, and ourGPS coordinates being slightly

(01:05:53):
off. And I worked with one ofthe cartographers at National
Geographic to fix the little bitof distortion there to get the
coordinates, right, moreaccurate. And, and it was on my
GPS, it's still on my GPS, thatGPS is sitting on my boat

(01:06:15):
currently, but I have thecoordinates. And, you know,
nobody else has to go there.
Because I did. And, and, and so.
So I, you know, I think that,you know, there's, there's,
there's other places now, and Ithink, future expeditions, if

(01:06:38):
there are going to be any,should potentially be going up
the main rongbuk Glacier, andlooking, looking into those
gigantic classes at the base,maybe flying drones up around in
that zone, and with globalwarming and the ice melting? I
think that, you know, the timingis right, you know, your maybe

(01:07:03):
some potential discoveries to bemade there, you know, in the
area at the base where, wherethings, you know, might have
gotten flushed down off themountain. And so I kind of, I
think maybe, I mean, ifanybody's, I think, you know,
this mystery and doors, andother people are going to pick

(01:07:26):
this up. I don't think any of ushave any doubt about that. Yeah.
And if someone forced me to goback and do it again, that's
what that's what I like, that'swhere you go, that's what I
would do.

Yeah, Bradford Washburn always used to say, if
you want to find Sandy urban,you go to the base of the
mountain up the wrong book,directly up the wrong book, and
he swore by that,

but it's all it's all part of the mystery. And it
is, like I said, the more youtry to peel it back, the more
layers that you find, and thatthat's why people like you, and
me, you know, three somethingyears now, but I think I'm gonna
let it go. Yeah.

There's other fish to fry.

there's other people, you know, who just
become obsessed with?

Well, this blue?

Yeah, to figure it out?

Yeah. Well, well, this book, in my opinion, I, I
had the pleasure of being ableto read it in the process of
you, you know, kind of afterthat, that major first draft
with minor revisions. And alongwith Wade Davis's book, which is
a very different kind of book,indeed, about mallery nerve and

(01:08:42):
this to me stands as a reallyabove the many Everest books
I've read, and and I think thisis going to, this is going to
fuel a lot of a lot of people,you know, to become modern
modern day sleuths to want tosolve the mystery. And so that
said, if you had to, if you hadto make a gut call on it, what

(01:09:08):
do you think Mallory and Ervinmade it one or both made it to
the summit of Everest beforedisappearing?

You know, if I, if I was a betting man, and I was
forced to wager, and someoneknew the truth, and and said you
got to you got to wager on this.
I would say that they that theydid not make it and I think
anyone who's an expert on this,would agree with that. But the
point that I want to makebecause now I've gone pretty

(01:09:38):
deep into this. I I want to saythat I don't believe that anyone
knows for sure that they didn't.
And that is another little,little kernel that is really
important, which is that theycould have done it and I think

(01:10:00):
it's sort of arrogant of ifpeople say they didn't do it,
because they don't know, I thinkthey're projecting a bit if they
think they know 100%, because noone knows for sure what
happened. And if they were, ifthey were above the second step.

(01:10:20):
And it's possible, there's waysto get around it. You know,
there's, there's a theory thatthey may have traversed on a
little ledge down below. AndI've looked at that terrain, and
it looks terrifying, but

maybe it was filled with snow, or...

is we just can't say for sure. That's not at
100%. And, and, and that's kindof inspiring. And ultimately,
you know, there's other peopleout there, you know, Mandy
Polish made me, for example, whoI think is, is much more willing
to give them the benefit of thedoubt. But that's kind of what's

(01:10:57):
cool about it is that everybodycan sort of see it the way that
they want to, because we don'tknow. And it's, it's, it's
inspiring to think about thosewhat ifs. But regardless, what

(01:11:17):
we do know is that they were upat 28,000 feet or above. And
they were still going up at thatpoint. And I mean, we're talking
a climb that was decades beforeits time, at a at a time when
they were avenged to essentiallyinventing high altitude albinism

(01:11:40):
as they went, because nobody hadever done anything like this
before. Yeah. And as you digdeeper and deeper into that, and
then you actually go to themountain and follow in their
footsteps, and you see foryourself what it's like up
there. Yeah, up there on theNortheast ridge. It's, it's a,

(01:12:01):
it's a really humbling powerfulthing to think about what those
guys were doing with theequipment that they had, and the
knowledge that they had. And theand the, and the fact that the
physiologists of the day had noidea if it was humanly possible,
with or without oxygen. Yeah,and so that that's sort of the

(01:12:24):
real essence of the story isjust the, you know, the courage
and the, and the pluck, and thegrid or whatever you want to
call it, that those guys had allof them not just Malin Irvin,
but all of those, thosepioneering climbers. And, you
know, I would say when I look,you know, there's the classic

(01:12:46):
picture of them all standing inBasecamp, I love and I love
looking at that picture, becauseyou can look into their eyes and
you, you can just kind of seetheir spirit. But now, having
gone as deeply into this story,as I have written this book, and
and actually, you know, climbedthat route. It means even more

(01:13:09):
to me, and I see more. It's likeI can feel their spirit. I call
it the spirit of adventure. And,and Mallory, Mallory called it
the spirit of adventure. Andwhen I see that, I, I feel like
connection. Hmm. And it soundscheesy, but I mean, not to man,

(01:13:29):
you got it? Yeah, I mean itright? I really do. And I feel I
feel connected to them throughthat spirit of adventure. And I
also feel connected to everyoneelse who has it, which I think
is almost everyone in thisworld. And, you know, the people

(01:13:49):
that will read this book, all myfriends that I've climbed with
over the years, basicallyeverybody that I know, and all
the people who have been tryingto climb Everest ever since the
people who were there when wewere the people who will
continue to, to, to, to try to,to climb to the highest point on

(01:14:14):
earth. And like you were sayingearly on, you know, they all
they get kind of bad known a lotof them. Yeah. And us included.
Yeah, cuz we're part of thatclub. Right. But yeah, when you
see it for yourself, when youwhen you hang out with with

(01:14:34):
these people, and you see thatspirit, you realize it's
actually a beautiful thing. And,and I'm so glad you know that,
that that spirit is so strong inside of me, and that I've really
always had it ever since I was akid because it has guided me,

(01:14:54):
you know, down this path thatI'm still on now.

As Mark and I wrapped up our conversation, he
said he left it all out on thetable on this project in that
quote, he could not have triedharder. He gave it everything he
had. And if it came up short, itwasn't for lack of effort marks
in its book. The third pollmystery obsession and death is
available beginning April 13. Goto Mark senate.com for more

(01:15:26):
information, or just googlemarks in it, the third poll and
it will come up everywhere youhappy.

The Wood Brothers (01:15:38):
(MUSIC) Happiness Jones.

Thank you to the wood brothers and their
management for the use of theirsong happiness Jones for our
theme song here on the HQ, andto their publicist Kevin Calabro
for helping make it all happen.
If you'd like a freedownloadable PDF of the
happiness quotient, a course inhappiness, visit me@patreon.com
slash the happiness quotient.

(01:16:07):
For more information about me toinquire about personal coaching
or public speaking, whether inperson or virtually, please
visit eyes open productions.comor write me anytime at Thom dot
Dharma dot pollard@gmail.com.
Remember that which we most wantto find can be discovered in the

(01:16:28):
place where we least want tolook and the deeper and darker
the well the brighter the light.
We will discover do not cursethe dark cloud the rain inside
may very well turn your gardengreen. Thank you for visiting
the happiness quotient. I willsee you all real soon.

The Wood Brothers (01:16:57):
Happy happy happy Happiness Jones And I'm
not sick, I'm not alone Well weall got it, a Happiness Jones
All of those words I wrote inthe storm that rocked my boat
All of that was stuck in mythroat when I was happy And all

(01:17:25):
of those songs I was singin',yeah while my boat was sinkin'
And next thing I'm thinking, I'mhappy I might as well change my

(01:17:54):
name To Happiness Jones, myfriend Happiness Jones Oh whoa
Happy happy happy HappinessJones Happy happy happy

(01:18:19):
Happiness Jones Happy happyhappy Happiness Jones And I'm
not sick, I'm not alone Well weall got it, a Happiness Jones

(01:18:47):
Happy happy happy happy Happyhappy happy happy Happy happy

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