0:00

So, I was bouncing around YouTube the other

0:02

day just kinda killing time and actually, let

0:04

me ask you a question. And

0:07

feel free to answer this to yourself in a

0:09

room alone or to email me at

0:11

eric at jeffsboss.com. Your response, I'm

0:14

asking because I'm genuinely curious. How

0:16

do you kill time? Not like,

0:18

oh, I'm gonna sit down, I'm bored, I'm gonna

0:21

sit down and watch a movie or play a

0:23

video game or read this book that I've been

0:25

meaning to read or I'm just gonna

0:27

play an album that I know I love. I mean, like,

0:29

you're bored. The

0:31

TV show you're watching doesn't sound good to you.

0:34

You're between books. You're

0:36

sick of all your music. And you just

0:38

wanna like idly thumb

0:40

through shit. I imagine most

0:42

people, like I know my fiance, she

0:45

used to spend a ton of time on Instagram, but

0:47

now TikTok, I think has replaced a lot of that.

0:50

So I'd say it's probably mostly TikTok, but then Instagram

0:52

for her. There was a time

0:54

when I spent a lot of time on

0:56

Twitter and social media, but I've, you know,

0:59

kind of gotten over it, I guess at this point. Anyway,

1:02

I have noticed that I am browsing

1:06

YouTube listlessly in

1:08

ways that I never used to like

1:12

whereas my aforementioned fiance will pick up TikTok and

1:14

spend 30 or 45 minutes or

1:16

seven hours. But I've

1:18

been finding myself gravitating more towards YouTube, which

1:20

I never did in the past. And

1:24

I think that's stupid, because I have

1:26

helped run a business that uses YouTube

1:28

as a distribution platform, a major distribution

1:31

platform. And it's clearly very

1:33

important to not only our business, but to a lot

1:35

of businesses and to a lot of people around the

1:37

world. I mean, I don't know if this is

1:39

still accurate. But I remember reading one time that YouTube counted

1:42

as like the number three search engine

1:44

in the world, believe it or

1:46

not. So you know what,

1:48

let's believe it or not. Let's look that up. Is

1:51

YouTube the biggest search engine?

1:53

Let's say, okay, well, I'm

1:56

getting a lot of reports here that YouTube is the

1:58

second largest search engine in the world.

2:00

the world as of right now. Here's one from, they're

2:02

all old articles. I guess people don't give

2:04

enough of the shit to write these kinds of stories anymore.

2:06

Here's something from 2017. This is,

2:08

oh, clearly a trusted source. This is a

2:11

website called searchenginejournal.com.

2:14

And according to them in 2017, number one

2:16

Google search was Google. Number

2:20

one online search was Google. Number

2:22

two, I forgot that that'd become a fuckin' verb. Number

2:27

two's YouTube, yeah, okay. So there

2:29

you go. That gives you an idea of how big

2:31

and important and integral YouTube is to

2:34

the fabric of the internet at this point. But

2:37

because I made hours and

2:39

hours and hours and hours of footage and

2:41

content for YouTube every week, I didn't spend

2:43

a lot of time there hanging out, watching

2:45

it when I got home. And

2:47

it's only been lately that through, actually,

2:50

during the pandemic I started, I

2:52

don't know about y'all, but I felt, well, I

2:54

think I have a good idea that you all also

2:56

felt pretty isolated during the pandemic. I don't think I'm

2:59

out over my skis here in generalizing that.

3:01

And one of the ways that I kind

3:03

of killed the monotony and also had

3:05

some escapism is I started watching

3:07

drone tours of cities, like

3:10

people that will just kind of

3:12

like tour New York City or boroughs or parts

3:14

of New York City or other major cities around

3:16

the world in drones. And then it kind of

3:18

became like a whole new

3:20

thing around the pandemic because a lot of cities

3:22

were empty. And so people were flying drones around

3:25

mostly empty cities, which gave it this really

3:28

apocalyptic kind of, I

3:31

don't know, last night on Earth feel to it.

3:33

It was really interesting. And I

3:35

guess I just kind of built up on that because it

3:37

was through that that I eventually found Sloppy Joe's, the

3:40

livestream for the bar in Key

3:42

West that has become a whole

3:45

lot of content and now even

3:47

merchandise for the F*** Face podcast.

3:50

Wouldn't know anything about that if I hadn't been

3:52

just idly browsing YouTube. Anyway, the point being is

3:54

I'm surprised at how much I use YouTube these

3:56

days when I just don't know what to do.

3:58

I don't want to. I don't want to sit

4:00

down and play gyms of war. I don't want to

4:03

read my dash hand that book. I don't want to

4:05

listen to my playlist. And I certainly don't want to

4:07

watch the new episode of Love Island. I just want

4:09

to find something that's not those things, right? Not the

4:11

things that I'm currently staring at

4:13

constantly. And so the other day I was

4:15

browsing around and I found a documentary that

4:18

I'm still serious about the email thing. Email me

4:20

and let me know how you spend that time.

4:22

Because I'm just curious about what everybody's methods are

4:25

for that specific kind of idle

4:27

time wasting, I guess would be how I would describe it.

4:30

Found this documentary about these

4:32

two kids and I say kids, I

4:34

apologize. Anybody who's under 40 to

4:36

me as a kid, I think

4:38

they're in their early to mid 20s, they're

4:40

adults. But these two kids from

4:42

the UK who had been, at least

4:45

one of them had been inspired by a

4:49

great British explorer of

4:52

the past, I think from the 40s or the 50s, whose name escapes

4:56

me at this moment, but I feel like I need

4:59

to tell you, so I'm going to look it up

5:01

right now. And his

5:03

name is Wilford Thessiger. He lived from

5:05

1910 to 2003. He

5:09

was one of

5:11

many British explorers who

5:13

would go set off into uncharted

5:16

territories, in hospitable environments, whether they

5:18

be jungles like the Amazon and

5:20

Fawcett who did it, or the

5:24

people who explored the Arctic and the North

5:26

Pole, or the explorers who tried to open

5:30

up trade routes. You know what? Honestly,

5:33

I feel like the Brits over

5:36

index in explorers and

5:38

adventures. I don't know what it is about

5:40

them, not being a Brit myself. I'm

5:43

not in on the secret, but it does really seem, because I've been

5:45

doing a lot of reading and I've been doing a lot of researching

5:48

on forgotten and

5:51

mysterious places. And usually

5:54

within like five or 10 minutes of

5:56

starting to peel back the layers of

5:58

whatever onion I'm on. looking

6:00

into, there is at least two,

6:03

maybe three British explorers who like one discovered a

6:05

place and or set out to find a thing

6:07

and then disappeared and then another one tried to

6:09

retrace his steps and came back and then a

6:11

third one tried to outdo him and then he

6:13

disappeared and then there was a search party and

6:15

then now nobody knows what happened to him. But

6:19

there are so many of those

6:21

people in the history of the last 200

6:23

years. They really seem,

6:26

I'm sure there are adventurers and explorers from all

6:28

walks of life and from all cultures, it just

6:30

seems to me that the Brits really over indexed

6:32

on it. They also, I guess, over

6:35

indexed on colonization which is less

6:37

cool and probably, I

6:39

guess, similar. I guess the explorers were just,

6:42

they just didn't want to colonize the stuff they found. They

6:44

just wanted to find stuff, plan a flag, so they did

6:46

it and move on. Curious

6:49

people, I guess. Curious, curious

6:51

people. Anyway, these kids,

6:53

they were inspired by this Thessiger

6:55

dude, Wilford Thessiger, who

6:59

circumnavigated a place called

7:01

the Empty Quarter and

7:03

this documentary about them that I watched

7:05

is in fact called Into

7:08

the Empty Quarter. Let me read the synopsis

7:10

from IMDb about this documentary, which by the

7:12

way I watched on YouTube. It was freely

7:14

available about, I don't know, maybe,

7:17

I don't know how long it was, but it was meaty.

7:19

It was at least 45 minutes probably. Wilford

7:21

Thessiger was one of Britain's great explorers

7:23

and writers, blah blah, I already said

7:25

that. His greatest journeys were

7:27

through the world's largest sand desert,

7:29

the Empty Quarter of the Arabian

7:31

Peninsula. Inspired by their hero, adventurer's

7:33

Alistair Humphreys, which by the

7:35

way is a hell of an adventurer name.

7:38

If you're gonna adventure, if you're gonna strike

7:40

off on your own, which is you and

7:42

a buddy or like you and a

7:44

pack mule, Alistair Humphreys is probably the

7:46

dude you want to follow, right? Or that's the

7:48

name you want to take into the jungle. Alistair

7:51

Humphreys and then Leon McCarran, which

7:53

is a fine name too, but

7:55

it doesn't sound very adventurous to me. They attempt

7:57

a journey on their own into the image of

7:59

the world. quarter their trip is hastily

8:01

planned and low-budget unable to afford camels

8:05

and on and as an aside they

8:07

mentioned this in the movie they were like not in the documentary not only

8:09

couldn't they afford them they wouldn't know what to do with them if they

8:11

had them they don't know how to take care of a camel so

8:14

this was completely off

8:17

the table for them instead they

8:19

hope to drag a homemade steel cart

8:21

filled with 300 kilograms of supplies see

8:23

I'm American I don't know how

8:25

much 300 kilograms is and

8:27

if you're American you probably

8:29

don't either so let's

8:31

find out together well

8:35

that's meaty 300 kilograms is

8:37

about 661 pounds so

8:41

yeah about the equivalent of three or four

8:43

people there anyway they

8:45

hope to drag a 600 pound

8:47

homemade steel cart which was dubiously

8:50

designed I gotta be honest the second I

8:52

think the first like 10 minutes is them

8:54

having this cart made to the specifications that

8:56

they think they need and you can immediately

8:58

tell that it is not it is not

9:01

desert worthy I don't yeah

9:03

it becomes a part of this it becomes a character

9:05

in the documentary in itself so I don't want to

9:07

spoil anything anyway they drag their

9:09

home or attempt to drag their homemade

9:11

steel cart through the ferocious desert heat

9:13

this film is their story I

9:15

had never heard of the empty quarter before

9:18

in my life until I read that title

9:20

of that documentary so I decided to watch

9:22

it and found it

9:24

to be a pretty fun quick interesting little documentary

9:27

not the greatest documentary in the world but

9:29

it had a lot of charm and a lot of

9:31

heart to it and it's a it's kind of a

9:34

positive message you know there you're along with them through

9:36

the isolation and the desolation and the heat and the

9:38

wind and all of

9:40

the crazy vastness of the empty

9:42

quarter which is like I said

9:45

this desert that I had never heard about in

9:48

my life and I'll get into the specifics of it

9:50

after after this but anyway

9:52

it's it's basically just them dragging

9:54

this thing through the empty quarter

9:56

the empty quarter is it's a

9:59

it's a desert that's very,

10:01

very, very large. I think it's the largest

10:03

continuous sand desert in the world. It's larger

10:06

than the country of France. I'll probably have

10:08

some facts about this a little later in

10:10

the episode, but it borders four

10:13

countries. A lot of it is in

10:15

Saudi Arabia, then to the right of

10:17

that is the UAE and Dubai, and

10:19

then below, directly below, on the

10:22

left is Yemen and on the right is Oman. And

10:25

they couldn't get permission to go through, even though the

10:27

meat of it is in Saudi Arabia,

10:29

they couldn't get permission to go through Saudi Arabia,

10:31

so they kind of skirted around. I wouldn't even say the

10:33

outskirts, it's so big, but they skirted to Oman

10:37

north into the desert. So

10:39

anyway, the goal is to walk, oh

10:41

gosh, I don't even remember how much it is, 900 miles, I

10:44

think, through the desert. And by the way,

10:46

this desert is much, much, much larger, and I think they

10:48

would have liked to have taken a larger walk through it,

10:50

but they couldn't get permission to go

10:52

through Saudi Arabia, like I said, so they're kind of

10:55

doing it around this way. And the documentary is just

10:57

kind of them spending

10:59

a couple of months just

11:02

walking and pulling this cart and dealing

11:04

with the inadequacy of the cart, and

11:06

then upgrading and

11:08

repairing and

11:10

really learning to appreciate the kindness of

11:13

strangers. I think that, I

11:15

mean, I can't speak for them, but I

11:17

can speak to the insights that they expressed

11:19

in the movie. And

11:22

it's kind of funny, they

11:24

talked about how the simplicity of life was really

11:27

growing on them because they knew they went to

11:29

bed at night, and then they

11:31

got up in the morning and all they had to do was walk. At

11:34

some point they would eat, they would drink when they could, and then

11:36

just walk, and then go to bed and go to

11:39

sleep and get up and do it again the next

11:41

day over and over and over again, which seems daunting

11:44

and boring and depressing, but they really

11:46

got into it. I think that they

11:48

described a rhythm that they were into

11:51

it where they really started to appreciate

11:53

just how simple life

11:55

was. Like everything is, you're just following

11:57

a path. And I

11:59

kind of like that. That idea I have to admit and there

12:01

were moments where they would just see lights

12:04

in the dark That's another thing too They're in

12:06

the middle of this desert and it seems so

12:08

far away from everything they talked about how it's

12:10

one of the most remote places in the world

12:12

and that the the empty quarter is one of

12:14

the hottest and driest places on earth and almost

12:17

no One lives there or can live there, but

12:19

you're still constantly seeing lights off in the distance

12:22

They're doing their own cinematography through the whole film

12:24

So like when one of them walks the other

12:26

one films and vice versa and they'll do set

12:28

up shots Where we just have to do this

12:30

kind of stuff in film like when we're filming ourselves

12:33

to you Like you go off on a hill and

12:35

you set up a shot and then you run down

12:37

and you walk across it So you get like the

12:39

cool, you know Grand vista and give an idea the

12:41

vastness of the place and stuff that even in those

12:43

shots You'll sometimes see just cars driving through the desert

12:46

in the background So I know that they were far

12:48

more alone than maybe some of the shots made it

12:50

seem And they talk a lot

12:52

about the isolation and how glad they were to have each

12:54

other and how lonely it would be without anybody And

12:57

that even was something that came up a lot in the

12:59

book that they that they read by that Fessinger

13:01

dude he talked I think he said

13:03

that without local people the journey would

13:05

have been a meaningless penance and he

13:08

really learned to as well to

13:11

just love the the humanity of strangers

13:13

and the kindness of The

13:15

people that live there the the Bedouins Who

13:17

live out in and among the desert and

13:20

that was kind of a fun thing to watch because

13:22

they they would keep like cars Would pull up when

13:24

they're walking on there's there's times when they have to

13:27

walk up down like desert roads and a car would

13:29

Pull up and there would be a language barrier But

13:31

they would sit around and the and the person from

13:33

the car would share lunch with them He'd have a

13:35

date so they'd bring them ice cream or Pepsi's these

13:38

guys one of these dudes Man

13:40

after my own heart loved Pepsi and talked about a

13:42

whole hot anytime He talked about something he wanted that

13:44

he couldn't have in the desert It seemed to be

13:46

a Pepsi and I completely and totally agree with

13:49

that And I I wonder it makes me wonder if I was

13:51

out in the desert for two or three or four months What

13:53

would be the thing I would create? What would you crave? would

13:56

it be something as simple

13:59

as a Diet Pepsi? Would it be a

14:01

big steak dinner? Would it be a bag of Doritos?

14:03

I don't even know. I

14:05

kinda hope I don't ever have to find out if I'm being

14:07

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16:02

The other kind of interesting thing about the documentary was

16:04

how the desert kind

16:07

of surreptitiously provided for them

16:09

along the way. There's one point early

16:11

on when they just spot off in

16:13

the desert a little bit some

16:16

potato chips, like a bag of potato chips, crisps as

16:18

they call them, of course, and they

16:20

go over there and it's a ton. I guess a truck

16:22

drove, they determined a truck drove by down the road and

16:24

it just dumped a bunch of potato chips out of the

16:26

back of it. I don't think intentionally, I think they just

16:29

flew out. And so they were a part

16:31

of the desert that was littered with tomato

16:34

flavored pretzel sticks or whatever the fuck it was.

16:36

And that was just like free food they had. And then at

16:38

one point early on, they suffered

16:41

a huge blow when they

16:43

realized that their, I guess

16:45

like their foam mattress that they sleep on on the

16:48

ground blew off their cart at some

16:50

point throughout the day. And man, that motherfucker

16:52

is gone. There's no way they're getting

16:54

that back, right? And so they just had to sleep on

16:56

the ground. And then at least through the

16:58

edit, who knows how long it was in the actual process,

17:01

but in the edit,

17:03

the next day they find a rug, like an

17:05

old prayer rug that's just folded up, not even

17:08

folded up, just like bunched up on the ground,

17:10

half covered in dirt. And it's gross

17:12

and old and disgusting and covered in

17:14

who knows what, but it's

17:17

something for them to lay on. And it

17:19

literally, it really, they don't even talk about it,

17:21

but it's just something you kind of pick up,

17:23

at least I picked up as I was watching

17:25

it. It just really did seem like when they

17:27

really needed something, the desert gave it to them

17:29

in some small or like I said, inconspicuous or

17:31

surreptitious way. I thought that

17:34

was pretty fascinating. Anyway, eventually they make it

17:36

through the first place they

17:38

stop is actually a

17:40

museum dev, gorgeous,

17:43

very modern, very fancy museum dedicated

17:45

to that guy, Thessiger and

17:47

his journey because he was one of the first people to

17:49

do the journey. I thought he was the first, but then

17:52

I read about somebody who did it before him. So

17:54

anyway, he was one of the most profound

17:56

and prolific explorers of that era

17:58

and there's a huge, really gorgeous

18:01

museum on the outskirts of, I guess,

18:04

whatever town. I think they

18:06

actually built it at some trade route or something

18:08

that he discovered or found near

18:11

Dubai. That's

18:13

where the story actually, it leaves

18:17

the empty quarter behind and takes on the last

18:19

few minutes. I think it's some

18:21

of the most interesting. They've been in the desert for months

18:23

and months and months just alone with each other. I'm

18:26

not sure exactly how long, but a couple months alone with

18:28

each other. With the

18:30

exception of a trucker who will stop and share a little

18:32

bit of food with them or even

18:35

just somebody who they'll run into a bed

18:37

of women and strike up a conversation and

18:40

just have some human interaction with. Then

18:43

the last bit of their journey, they

18:45

want to end at the Burj Khalifa,

18:47

which is the tallest building in the world, which I

18:49

think is an interesting juxtaposition.

18:53

They're traveling through this

18:56

desolate wasteland that

18:59

may or may not have contained

19:01

living and thriving societies

19:03

in the past. That's

19:05

where this episode's going, I guess, ultimately.

19:07

They go through this wasteland of nothing

19:09

and then they end it in, I

19:11

guess, one of the most, if

19:13

not the most impressive feats of

19:16

human engineering, the tallest building

19:18

in the world, which is 2,700.

19:22

Well, actually, I'll get specific. It is 828 meters or 2,716.5 feet, 160 plus

19:24

stories. I

19:32

don't understand why they say that. It says more than 160 stories. So

19:34

is it 161 stories? If it's

19:36

163, why not just say it's 163? 160

19:40

seems like such an arbitrary number. It's

19:43

probably the same. No, it's three

19:45

digit number. The actual answer is a

19:47

three digit number. So just give me the three digit

19:49

numbers. Fucking same thing. Anyway,

19:52

the thing that they struggle with as they're making

19:54

their way back into society and then into

19:57

humanity, into a thriving city. and

20:00

then into eventually the museum

20:02

where they're headed to then go on to

20:04

the Burj Khalifa. They realize that this cart

20:07

is a nightmare. They don't know what to do with

20:09

it. It eventually got them through the desert with the

20:11

modifications they made to it. But

20:14

now they have this big clunky cart that is

20:16

in no way suited, even though

20:19

it's made out of like bicycle tires and

20:21

welded aluminum, it is in no way suited

20:23

to be carted around

20:25

a busy city with

20:27

millions of people in cars and trucks. They're afraid

20:29

they're going to get fucking killed trying to cart

20:31

this thing around. So they end up trying

20:33

to and ultimately being able to donate it

20:35

to this museum, which seems very apropos. And

20:39

then the documentary is essentially over with

20:41

them learning that they learn what they're

20:43

capable of. And they

20:45

had a lot of really positive stuff

20:47

to say about how they appreciated the

20:50

technology and how thriving most

20:53

of the Middle East is in the

20:55

current day and just how cool it was to see the

20:57

juxtaposition of people living out

20:59

in the desert, camel

21:02

farming, and essentially being nomadic.

21:04

And then on the other

21:06

side of that desert is

21:08

a 2,700-foot building that those same people

21:10

made. It's pretty wild if you think

21:12

about it. It's kind of an interesting message, kind of a

21:14

fun little documentary. Although I will say there was one moment

21:16

in it that was really... Man,

21:20

I'm really bummed that they didn't further explore. But

21:24

they're just in the

21:26

middle of traveling through the desert one day. It's

21:28

just suddenly there's a shot at night and

21:30

there's animal carcasses all over the ground.

21:33

And they're like, we just walked up into this. We're just

21:35

in the middle of the desert. There were lights over here

21:37

earlier. We didn't know if they were friendly or not. We

21:39

walked over this way. We're exhausted. We

21:43

were surrounded by

21:46

hundreds, it looked like, and

21:48

hundreds of dead animals in various stages

21:50

of decomposition. Big

21:52

animals, small animals, camels, dogs,

21:55

horses, maybe. It

21:57

looked like just all kinds of animals.

22:00

and bones and carcasses and

22:02

the desert it was super

22:04

ominous that it was shot at night So it

22:06

looked like a look the Blair Witch Project and

22:09

they're kind of like yeah This is really creepy

22:11

and we don't know what the fuck this is

22:13

We can't figure out why it exists these animals

22:15

haven't been their meat hasn't been harvested really and

22:17

it doesn't appear to be like a mass Execution

22:20

site because they're varying stages of decomposition There's

22:22

old-ass bones and then there's a camel over

22:24

there That looks like it just died and

22:26

there's some sort of a wolf dog thing

22:28

over here that looks like it's been dead

22:30

for a Couple months and it just looks

22:32

like a place where they bring they bring

22:35

dead stuff Out in the middle

22:37

of nowhere and it's really really creepy and they talk about

22:39

being like freaked out and creeped out But they're too and

22:41

like probably the worst place they could hunker down for the

22:43

night But they're too tired to go on so they just

22:46

spend the night there and then it's just the next day

22:48

and they're just going Along and I don't know what I'd

22:50

they never they never circle back on that at the end

22:52

of the documentary and say oh By the way, we looked

22:54

into it and this is what all those hundreds of dead

22:57

animals were We're just kind of left to our own imagination,

22:59

which by the way, if anybody does know what they were

23:01

I would once again drop me an email I would love

23:03

to know because I thought it was really creepy and

23:05

it reminded me of a place I went to in

23:07

Kuwait When I was in the military

23:09

called the tank graveyard Where it was a bunch

23:12

of burned out and blown up tanks

23:14

and other Military vehicles that were

23:16

kind of similarly just decaying in the desert

23:18

and the sand was kind of Reclaiming

23:21

them and it had a very

23:23

similar creepy old gross dead vibes.

23:25

Yeah, it was weird Also,

23:27

I'll point out something from the documentary that

23:30

I've been fortunate enough to know since my

23:32

time in the military Which is that there

23:34

is no better sunrise and sunset on earth

23:36

than in the Middle East Yeah, those deserts

23:38

the sunrise and the sunset of those deserts

23:40

is unlike anything else I've ever experienced and

23:43

they capture it beautifully a few times in

23:45

that documentary and it is it is like

23:47

an Unreally beautiful

23:50

place. I know it seems

23:52

kind of like Plain and

23:54

desolate but man when you're in it

23:56

and you're staring at the vastness of it and you

23:58

can see so much

24:01

sky and so much land and

24:03

it's just untouched and undisturbed. It's,

24:05

it's really supremely beautiful,

24:07

I have to say. So

24:11

I thought it was a fun little documentary,

24:13

but it piqued my interest on this place, the empty

24:15

quarter, which is what I thought the documentary was about.

24:17

But it really was just about these kids just kind

24:19

of retracing steps and seeing if they were able to

24:22

and, and they were less interested

24:24

in the empty quarter itself than they were from

24:26

getting to point A to point B, I think.

24:29

And that's fine. That's totally awesome. That was their story, but

24:31

I, I just wanted to know more about the empty quarter.

24:33

So like I said, I'd never heard of it. And then

24:36

it's got a really cool name and

24:38

they described it. So

24:41

interestingly, I wanted to learn a little bit

24:43

more about it. Here's what I learned. First

24:46

off, the empty quarter is the

24:48

Western name for it. Its actual name

24:50

is Rub Al Khali, which is also

24:52

a very cool name. And it is,

24:55

it is a desert that encompasses about a

24:57

third of the Southern Arabian Peninsula. It covers

25:00

250,000 square miles or about 650,000 square kilometers.

25:08

That makes it larger than the

25:10

entire country of France, which

25:13

man, that's a pretty big desert. And I

25:15

think the Sahara desert is still larger or

25:18

at least contains more sand. And

25:20

as I think I said earlier, it, it,

25:23

it's in Saudi Arabia, Oman, the UAE, and

25:25

then Yemen. And it's considered

25:27

part of the larger Arabian desert. It's

25:30

a, it's about a thousand kilometers or 600 miles

25:32

long, and then about

25:34

500 kilometers or 300 miles wide. And

25:38

it's covered in sand dunes. Like you would see in the

25:40

movies that go as high as 800 feet. And

25:43

there's also gravel and gypsum planes. And I don't

25:45

know if you've ever been in that. It's not

25:47

like in the movies, the desert. It's actually, at

25:50

least in my experience in Kuwait and the middle, in my experience

25:52

in the middle East, it was the desert

25:54

was a lot. There was a lot more going on in

25:56

the desert. There was a lot of, there was honestly a lot of trash,

25:58

but there were a lot more like rock. rocks and

26:00

just like the desert, the

26:03

pictures you see are of these sand dunes

26:06

that are just like perfectly smooth. But then

26:08

when you ride up on them, some of

26:10

those are true, but the most of the

26:12

desert is actually pretty rocky and kind of

26:15

gravelly and not nearly, kind of

26:17

like how when you're on a plane and you look down

26:19

at a forest and the trees seem so soft

26:21

or the grass seems so soft and you think

26:24

like, oh, I could just roll around on that

26:26

and then you realize it's full

26:28

of sticks and briars and pokers

26:30

and thorns and shit. It's not nearly

26:32

as soft up close as it looks from

26:34

30,000 feet. The

26:37

climate is interesting. It's called hyperarid

26:39

and they have an annual precipitation,

26:41

a rainfall of less than 50

26:44

millimeters, which is about two

26:46

inches, which means

26:49

that it is, I

26:51

think the second driest

26:53

place on earth, even

26:55

drier than the Sahara desert. It's like twice as

26:57

dry as the Sahara desert. I

26:59

think it's only, the only place drier is

27:02

the Atacama desert, which is

27:04

another fascinating place I want to read about. That

27:07

covers Argentina and Chile, the Atacama desert.

27:09

And I think that's slightly drier

27:12

than the empty quarter, but it is

27:14

listed as the driest non-polar desert in

27:16

the world and the second driest overall,

27:18

I guess. I guess a

27:20

lot of people discount the polar deserts. It's

27:25

only behind some specific spots within

27:27

the Mercurto dry valleys. What the

27:29

fuck is that? The

27:32

Mercurto dry valleys are, oh, snow-free

27:34

valleys in Antarctica. So there you

27:37

go. The driest place on earth is in Antarctica.

27:39

The second driest is in Argentina

27:41

and Chile and then I guess the

27:44

third driest would be this place, the

27:46

empty quarter or Rubalcali. And I think

27:48

what was the most interesting to

27:50

me about it is they say it's too inhospitable

27:53

for humans to live in, for the

27:55

most part. The

27:57

temperature gets up into the 120s. And

28:00

in the daytime and it gets as low as the

28:03

50s at night, which is a Tremendous

28:06

swing 50s don't seem

28:08

that cold but if you're in a windy windy

28:10

windy s desert and it was a Over a

28:12

hundred in the daytime and then it drops to

28:14

the 50s at night. It is It's

28:17

about as cold as you're gonna be able to handle I think it

28:20

may not be super hospitable to humans,

28:23

but Spiders and scorpions

28:25

and rodents fucking love living

28:27

there. Also there used to

28:29

be cheetahs which Roamed

28:32

they call asiatic cheetahs which roamed the empty quarter

28:34

They say that they're all but regionally extinct from

28:36

the desert I guess that means that they're not

28:38

extinct from the world, but they're they're no longer

28:41

there. I Would fucking

28:43

suck to just be humping

28:45

your aluminum cart with

28:47

bicycle wheels 400

28:50

miles into a desert and then see a desert

28:52

cheetah. You're pretty boned at that point and There

28:55

is a road that runs through it from Oman

28:57

to Saudi Arabia Which

29:00

I think they built in 2021 There

29:02

are some inhabitants a

29:05

few those would be I guess nomadic

29:08

tribes There I'm really

29:10

I don't know them. I'm reading them

29:13

from a list There's the Al Marah

29:15

tribe the Bennu Yam tribe the Beni

29:17

Yast tribe and Probably

29:20

a few others. So there are people out there that are

29:22

living but not not a lot. It's

29:24

pretty inhospitable So after

29:26

some some Google searches and a little bit of reading

29:28

I wanted to find more documentaries and

29:30

that's when I discovered that for

29:33

a place that is one of the

29:35

most unlivable and remote and uninhabitable

29:37

on earth There sure are a

29:40

lot of assholes on YouTube that have been there

29:42

and made videos like I

29:44

spent three nights by myself in the empty quarter

29:46

or My best

29:48

friend and I drove across the empty quarter

29:50

in a Land Rover or I took

29:53

an adventure vacation to the empty quarter There

29:56

are probably a hundred YouTube

29:59

I guess they're I don't know,

30:01

travel vloggers or whatever that have

30:03

made videos spending time in the

30:06

empty quarter Which made it seem a lot less cool

30:08

if I'm being honest with you After

30:10

seeing all those assholes littered throughout

30:12

it and most of the videos I

30:15

found to be truly terrible I tried to watch a bunch, you

30:17

know, cuz I wanted to learn what I could about the place

30:19

and They're very a

30:22

lot of pretty vapid and far more

30:24

centered around the the person there and a

30:26

lot less about the place and the there

30:30

But I kept searching and that's when

30:32

I started to see stuff pop up like like

30:34

videos called is the empty quarter

30:36

at the Atlantis of the sands What

30:39

about a rom of the pillars? hidden

30:42

cities There's tons of

30:44

videos that are like ancient alien style

30:46

that talk about Aliens

30:48

and Giants lost civilizations So that

30:51

seemed way more interesting to me

30:54

than some asshole with a GoPro

30:56

filming themselves sliding down a

30:58

sand dune So I started to watch

31:01

those and that's what I discovered that there

31:03

really was a lot to the empty court

31:05

It was not empty. It was not empty

31:07

at all for a very long time. It

31:09

was a supposedly a thriving metropolis one

31:12

of the richest and most

31:14

prosperous places in the world at times

31:18

Oh, anyway before I go on if you did

31:20

want to go on one of those adventure tours

31:22

in the empty quarter there You

31:24

can you can go for it's like five grand for like

31:26

ten or eleven days So I'm

31:29

sure it would be about as convenient a way to see that place

31:31

as possible now that I'm looking over

31:33

my notes I realized that we have a long way

31:35

to go We haven't even scratched the

31:38

surface on what's below the surface

31:40

of the empty quarter and that's uh turns

31:42

out to be the most interesting Part

31:45

of this whole journey for me learning about

31:47

it is is its past and so I

31:49

think to do that justice We should probably

31:51

do it in another episode of

31:54

this podcast This is our

31:56

first cliffhanger our first two-parter, huh?

31:59

I hope you don't hate that So

32:07

hey everybody, it's Future Jeff here. I

32:09

wanted to give you a little context.

32:11

I originally recorded this back in July

32:13

or August of this year. It is

32:15

now November. I never got

32:18

back to the cliffhanger. I'm sorry. I

32:20

will at some point, but I don't want to give you

32:23

the idea that it's coming out next week or anything because

32:25

it turns out that story is

32:28

a lot bigger than I was able to

32:30

wrap my head around. And I

32:33

want to do it justice when I do get back to it.

32:35

So it'll be a while.