Part One: The Inventor of Those 'Troubled Teen' Wilderness Camps Where They Kill Kids

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media, Welcome back to Behind the Bastard's a podcast
where you never know if I've sent Sophie the script
prior to actually starting the episode like I'm supposed to,
maybe it's caught in the tube. Sophie, you remember that,
you remember when that guy, that guy in Congress called
the Internet a series of tubes, and we all laughed
at him, and then years later we were all like, actually,

(00:24):
that's not a bad way to describe the Internet, to
be honest. Yeah, yeah, you remember that. Anyway, what I
remember is that we have a special guest today, and
that guest is the great Marrow Wilson. Mara, welcome to
the show.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Thank you so much for having me. And yeah, you're right,
it kind of is a series of tubes.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
Yeah, yeah, that's more. That's close enough, right, Yeah, yeah, Mara,
you are I mean, if you were a person listening
to this who is roughly my age, Marrow was in
I don't know about like thirty percent of the movies
that made up a huge part of your childhood. And
you have recently written a memoir Where Am I Now?

(01:07):
True Stories of Girlhood and Accidental Fame, which has been
named a best book of the month by Goodreads and
Entertainment Weekly. Mara, happy to have you on the show.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
Thank you, thank you. Yeah, yeah I do.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
I do a bit of writing and voice acting and
things like that, and I love it. I'm I'm I'm lucky.
I've been doing things that I actually really like for
a job.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
So yeah, yeah, yeah, that's always exciting.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
Yes, which yeah, which which is hasn't always been the case?

Speaker 3 (01:38):
And yeah that's nice.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
Yeah. Now, speaking of of of jobs, you know, I
got to do the thing. I'm sorry. I know this
is like the stereotypical reporter, you know, celebrity interview thing,
but I got to ask you this question. I'm sure
you get asked it all the time. If you're arming
an insurgent group to fight against a US backed military junta,
what kind of the detonators do you prefer on your

(02:02):
improvised explosives? Are you do you like like a bridge
wire cap or are you more of like a slapper
detonator type?

Speaker 2 (02:08):
You know, I think it's really whatever the situation calls for. Perhaps,
you know, I probably should know more about this kind
of thing. I come from a family of electronics engineers,
but but yeah, no, I I think I slept through
that class.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
Unfortunately, It's okay. We've got some standard literature we send
all of our guests on detonators, so we'll get that
into the mail to you.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
Or maybe like my dad gave it to me in
a really boring lecture and I just zoned out and
just thinking about, you know, I don't know whatever it
was I was thinking about at the time, like Roco's
Modern life or whatever.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
Sure, yeah, very common subjects. Roco's Modern Life. I love
that ef. Yeah. So, Mara, what do you know about
the Troubled Team wilderness rehab industry?

Speaker 2 (02:58):
Oh? Good God, I actually know more than I actually
know a great deal about it because I have several
friends who went through it and it is hell on Earth.
Yeah yeah, so yes, this is actually something I'm very
passionate about.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
So yeah, so yeah, I'm glad to hear it me too.
This is actually like back kind of ten years ago.
Much earlier in my career as a journalist, I wrote
a number of articles with sources who had been to
different troubled teen rehab facilities around the country, most of
which wound up being based in like Utah or Montana.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
Yeah yeah, they are.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
Yeah, yeah, So that's that's kind of the standard for
all particularly Utah. Like forty percent of all kids who
cross state lines to go to one of these facilities
wind up in fucking Utah. And you know today we're
going to talk about the reason why that is because
it all starts with a single guy. And he's not
just the guy who like started doing these troubled teen

(03:57):
rehab facilities because kind of versions of that had existed
for a while. He's the guy who decided, you know what,
we need to add to rehab programs for kids armed
men busting into their houses in the night and abducting them. Right, Yeah,
that's who we're talking about today. And yeah, so I

(04:17):
guess let's get into this piece of shit. His name was.

Speaker 4 (04:21):
I actually had the script though.

Speaker 1 (04:23):
I sent it to you. I so did.

Speaker 4 (04:26):
I do not the script?

Speaker 1 (04:28):
The tubes ate it. I don't know what to tell Sophie.
You could just intuit the script.

Speaker 4 (04:34):
I mean, like, sometimes my thoughts are in your voice,
but no, you.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
Know, do this with a Oija board. Okay, anyway, you
should have the script now.

Speaker 4 (04:46):
Sophie, someday perhaps Yeah, yeah, maybe not.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
I don't. That's my fault then. Oh, also my fault
forgetting that we do cold opens. Now cold open's done,
it's time for the hot open and we're back. And
I sent it to you.

Speaker 3 (05:10):
It's very sibling between the two of you.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
Did It's got to be somewhere in the tube, Sophie.
I got it. It's up to the tubes.

Speaker 4 (05:16):
Now we did it, Joe, I have the scripts.

Speaker 1 (05:18):
Thank you? Does that make you the kamala? Because I
know I'm not sure I like this. I'm not nearly
that sleepy.

Speaker 5 (05:31):
That means that the chance of thank you Joe are
no more thank you.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
I'm a lot less drugs than Joe Biden too.

Speaker 3 (05:37):
How do you feel about ice cream though?

Speaker 1 (05:39):
Coming No, Actually.

Speaker 3 (05:45):
I envy you so much.

Speaker 2 (05:46):
Every now and then I meet somebody who's not a
sweets person and I'm like, god, damn, how did I
end up?

Speaker 5 (05:51):
Now?

Speaker 2 (05:51):
I am like baked goods and ice cream all of
the way.

Speaker 1 (05:54):
Yeah, the way I do like a nice You know
what my favorite thing is. It's just like a big
slice of friend bread with fucking salted amish butter on it.
That's like, oh that's really good to It's no healthier
than anything else.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
Oh that's true. That's true. Well, sometimes I say less
than a sweet tooth, I have more of a carb tooth.

Speaker 1 (06:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
Yeah, Like give me some bread or like crackers, and
and I will go nuts.

Speaker 3 (06:16):
And it's true.

Speaker 2 (06:17):
Actually even after like I eat something sweet, I'm like
I need something else to like balance it, and I'll
eat something salty.

Speaker 3 (06:22):
But it's just still carbs.

Speaker 2 (06:24):
It's just still Yeah, it's it's bread with salted butter.

Speaker 3 (06:27):
Or it's you know, it's toast, or it's crackers. So yeah, yeah,
it just mouthes.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
Out optimized for survival. You know, our ancestors made it
through the frozen wasteland because it gets you know.

Speaker 2 (06:39):
We're Eastern European, you know, we're pale of settlement Jews
on one side, and we're you know, Irish Catholic on
the other. So so yeah, some some some people who went.

Speaker 3 (06:49):
Through a lot of shit, I guess.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, the carbs make sense. Yeah, starvation is
a relevant topic here because a lot of children wind
up get starved because of its kind of what of
his main tech and really even within the parts of
the troubled teen industry that are like respectable and accredited,
all of them use starving kids as like a tool

(07:14):
for discipline they do.

Speaker 2 (07:16):
Yes, I think, yeah, it's well. I went to so
I went to an arts boarding school. This is how,
this is how I spent my movie money. I went
to boarding school to study theater and and I.

Speaker 3 (07:31):
I, it's it's sort of like the I always say it.

Speaker 2 (07:32):
It's a bit like the Far Side cartoon of like
the kids who run away from the circus to join
corporate America. I ran away from Hollywood to do community theater.

Speaker 3 (07:41):
So like I ran away.

Speaker 2 (07:43):
To to to UH to a boarding school, and a
lot of the kids there had gone through these programs.
And because it turns out that if you're you know,
sometimes if you're like a sensitive artistic kid, you know,
people don't quite know what to do with you, so.

Speaker 1 (07:59):
You know, might smoke in a pot or a little bit,
you know.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
Exactly, So like these kids would be maybe they would
be depressed, or they would have an eating disorder, or
they would smoke weed, or they would start drinking young
and then you know, where are they sent off to. Inevitably,
they are always sent off to these places. And sometimes
it was even worse. Like I knew one girl there
who basically she didn't have a stable living environment. So

(08:23):
she ended up in one of these schools in Utah
because like like, kids who are essentially in the foster
program or don't have a stable living environment end up
in these places. It happens a lot. So tell me
about the bastard who started this, because.

Speaker 1 (08:36):
Yeah, yeah, there's a few. But it turns out everyone
who's been even tangentially involved in this industry is kind
of a monster. Like even the good guys who get
quoted when the monsters kill a kid. If you look
into the good guys, they also kind of suck. It
may just not be a thing that good people do,
is want to oper desert camps where you torture children.

(08:58):
I don't know, perhaps that's not a nice guy kind
of thing anyway, So I wanted to I wanted to
figure out I'd always you know, I've been covering this
as a journalist for years and years. I wrote stuff
it cracked, you know, on this, and I've been wondering, like,
who in the hell was the guy who did this?
And the partial answer to that question is Steve Cartazano,

(09:19):
And Steve kind of came into the public eye recently.
There's a documentary on Netflix that I think is produced
by Paris Hilton, who, as we'll talk about, is a
big voice in the hole. We should stop doing this, Kida.

Speaker 3 (09:30):
But she she really is, she's been.

Speaker 2 (09:32):
It's it's very funny to me to think about, like
the kids I know who you know, would talk about
how much they loved or hated Paris Hilton, and a
lot of them, you know, in that era when I
was meeting a lot of these kids who've been sent there.
And now she's like, yeah, she's she's completely done. She's
done something I don't know. I mean, like, like, say

(09:54):
what you will about the way that she was in
the two thousands.

Speaker 3 (09:57):
She does seem to be passionate about this.

Speaker 1 (09:59):
Yeah, look, you know what she's she's done the right
thing here. And I don't think any of us should
be judged by what we did in the two thousands.
We need to just let's just let's just shovel that
decade off into the sea and pretend none of us,
none of us were making choices back then.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
No, the gen Z and jen Aalfa, people who want
to bring it back, I'm like, no, it was shit,
it was don't It's like how I thought the eighties
were cool when I was you know when I was then,
and then I was like, oh no, this was the worst,
do you know.

Speaker 6 (10:26):
To was.

Speaker 2 (10:29):
Like, I'm very glad that I don't remember most of
the eighties.

Speaker 1 (10:32):
There's never been a good decade.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
There hasn't been. There hasn't been.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
Yeah, So Steve Cartesano is the guy we're going to
mostly be talking about these episodes, but as I noted earlier,
the whole troubled teen Wilderness Camp industrial complex is bigger
than him, and so before we start talking about him,
we've got to start a couple of decades earlier with
the childhood of a man named Larry Dean Olsen Larry,
and Larry is one of the guys who gets like

(10:59):
quoted as a good guy in this He was an
expert on running children's rehab facilities, and whenever one of
the bad facilities would kill a kid, the news would
talk to Larry, and so he's always depicted in those
articles as like, well, he's the responsible kind of guy
who does this. You know, this is a man who
really understands how to take care of children. As we'll
talk about, that's not really totally accurate to who Larry was.

(11:21):
But he was born in Wendell, Idaho, on January twenty third,
nineteen thirty nine, to Dean and Lola Olson. In most
casual bios of his life, he is described as a
farm boy who got admitted to Brigham Young University and
found primitive survival education programs there, which set him off
on his path in life, and that leaves out some
key details, like the fact that Larry was illiterate for

(11:42):
most of his early childhood. I found this quote in
an article in the Salt Lake City Tribune. Quote Olsen
traces his own wilderness transformation to the childhood day he
found an arrowhead while cleaning out his uncle's irrigation ditch.
The somewhat defiant youth who had refuse to learn to read,
was struck by the stone. It changed my life. I
took it to school, and my teacher gave me a
book about the Indians who made that arrowhead. I took

(12:04):
that book home and taught myself to read. And I
don't know how much I believe that it's possible, given
what else he does in his life, that this is
like literally what happens to him. I do think we're
missing some details about his childhood. The whole I was
refusing to read as a child thing.

Speaker 2 (12:22):
Yeah, it's I mean, they didn't really they didn't understand
things like you know, dyslexia or ADHD or even just
kids who learned differently, not necessarily like schools were very
much about conformity, and so yeah, so it does feel
a little bit like refusing to learn to read.

Speaker 3 (12:41):
I think, is that is an interesting thing?

Speaker 1 (12:45):
Yeah, now we're gonna and again I also think he's
probably smushing some stuff together here because it's too clean,
a story that's into marketable, a story like I saw
this arrowhead and I read this book about Native Americans
and that created my whole life passion and everything. Real
life is rarely quite that smooth.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
There's also this sort of like it's I don't know
what the term is for it exactly, but there is
this fetishization I think of Native Americans that you know,
it's it's like like orientalism, but for the sort of
like noble savage idea that's big. Probably around the time
that he's talking about these things. Yes, so especially I
think probably in Utah too, because they consider, yeah, they

(13:27):
think that they're connected to the Native Americans.

Speaker 1 (13:29):
Well, they rejuice is a big part of this, or
a lot of them are Mormon, the fact that they
and like, yeah, Native American appropriation is huge. Like later
in life, Larry is going to co own a camp
that's like named after the Anasazi, and I think it's
the kind of thing where like he brings in a
guy who is Indigenous as his like co owner largely

(13:50):
so he can say like, look, we're authentic, you know,
like that happens a lot. Now that was a lot
more common. We're mostly talking like these seventies, eighties, nineties,
so he's not like an outside of the cultural mate.
Like the Boy Scouts are doing shit like that just
as much, right, I mean.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
My public high school before I went off to my
arts boarding school. Yeah, our mascot was the Indians until
I think twenty twenty.

Speaker 1 (14:15):
We did some shit in the Boy Scouts when I
was like fourteen years old that would not pass mustard today.
Let me tell you that.

Speaker 3 (14:23):
No, it was.

Speaker 2 (14:24):
Yeah, there's a lot of stuff where it's just like
Jesus CHRISTO. Yeah, yeah, it wouldn't. Yeah, and it was
not that long ago.

Speaker 1 (14:33):
No, no, No, It's like it's like watching like an
eighties movie that's like set in Cowboy Times and being like, well,
all of these people playing in Native Americans are very
clearly Italian.

Speaker 7 (14:42):
Yeah, yeah, So whatever the truth about Olsen's childhood, we
don't get a whole lot of good details on him
until nineteen sixty six, when in his like kind of
late twenties, he winds up at BYU.

Speaker 1 (14:57):
Now, if you are aware, BYU was Utah's premier university,
and it is run and owned by the Church of
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, and the
elders at the school are concerned at this point that
a number of students are having trouble maintaining their academics,
so they're like looking for a program they can use
on kids who are having trouble and at risk of
kind of like failing out of the school. Now, at

(15:19):
the time, there's no real industry for like taking kids
out into the woods, like particularly young adults, and like
giving them wilderness therapy. You've got like the boy Scouts.
But outside of that, kind of the closest thing to
the modern industry is this company called Outward Bound, which
had been started back in the UK by this Welsh
guy back during World War Two. Author John Krackauur notes

(15:41):
that this was done to quote help stiffen the sagging
spine of the British Empire, based on the logic that like,
we're just not hiking enough. That's why all these countries
keep leaving. Hike faster, or India is trying to go.
In nineteen sixty two, Outward Bound had moved to the
United States, where it offered a twenty six day course

(16:03):
that included multi day hikes, rock climbing, and other high
adventure stuff. And one of the things that strikes me
about all these I like the outdoors. I like hiking
and camping. Twenty six days is much longer than I
want to spend on any kind of course. Yeah, I remember.

Speaker 2 (16:16):
Reading about them when I was a kid and I
was I was like a pretty we were like a
pretty outdoorsy family.

Speaker 7 (16:22):
You know.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
We went camping all the time. I loved it, but
we were but we were out Like if you grow
up I think on the west coast of like the
US and probably Canada and possibly Mexico too, you kind
of like probably anywhere in North America on the West coast,
you get very into like let's go into the woods,
let's go into the desert. Let's do this, But.

Speaker 1 (16:43):
Then I had to do it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:44):
I remember reading about that and hearing like, you're like fourteen,
you have to spend the night alone in the forest
by yourself, and yeah, you go for weeks at a time.
And I was just like, for a second, I was like, Oh,
that would be so cool to do, and then I
was like, no, actually that.

Speaker 1 (17:00):
Would be miserable, like a little log.

Speaker 2 (17:02):
Yeah, I like to shower after a few days, you know,
I'd like, that's that's a bit. You know, you don't
even have doctor Browner's with you. That's that's too much.

Speaker 1 (17:12):
Yeah, I think all of the like in twenty six days.
By the way, it's like very short for these courses,
Like they're all just going to get longer to the
extent because like I mean, we'll get to that. But
a big part of the point is like keeping your
kids away from you for as long as possible. Now,
it's a big thing in.

Speaker 2 (17:28):
The British That's a big thing in British history too.

Speaker 1 (17:31):
The thing British people are least interested in during the
Imperial period is raising their children.

Speaker 2 (17:37):
Queen Victoria, she hated kids. She loves sex the way. Yeah,
she loved sex with with with Albert.

Speaker 3 (17:44):
And she hated kids.

Speaker 1 (17:45):
Yeah, and and add outward Bound. Those are their two.
There are two primary guiding principles is sex with Prince
Albert and uh not having kids near their parents. Yes,
so it's important I note that outward Bound is not
the place, not the They are not like these the
facilities that we started the episode talking about. They're not
kidnapping kids, they don't torture children. They're pretty much just

(18:07):
like summer camp type programs, right, and they prove to
be very in demand. And it's kind of like looking
at outward Bound and a couple of like copycat camps,
some of the people running BYU start talking like, maybe
we should have a program like this, And that's where
Larry Olsen comes into the picture. Olsen had only gotten
more interested in primitive skills as an adolescent and a

(18:29):
young man, and by the time he's in college, he's
teaching survival courses like on the weekends and stuff to
local hunters around Salt Lake City to pay his way
through college. So people at the administration find this out
and they're like, hey, you seem like a perfect person
to like figure out how to do this program for us.
So he starts off just kind of taking students into

(18:49):
the desert for a few days at a time and
teaching them survival skills like how to build shelters and
start fires. And when these classes prove popular, BYU offers
to pay him ninety dollars to take seventy kids out
into the bush for like days at a time, which
is not enough money to do that.

Speaker 3 (19:06):
Like it would even cover I mean even with.

Speaker 1 (19:09):
For the food.

Speaker 2 (19:10):
Yeah, okay, okay, but still, but still, I worked with
teenagers for you know, I work with teenagers, and yeah,
you nobody has paid enough to work with teenage I
love working with teenagers, but but yeah, nobody has paid
enough to work with teenagers.

Speaker 1 (19:27):
I would need ninety dollars an hour in nineteen seventies
money to take care of seventy kids in the woods.

Speaker 2 (19:32):
Yeah yeah, I've worked with Yeah no's that's not in
the woods now.

Speaker 1 (19:38):
So they eventually expand to paying him like two hundred
bucks each course to teach like a month long course
to one hundred something kids. And they these are all students,
these are so these are all like young adults really
eighteen nineteen years old, who are having trouble in college,
and they noticed that, like, the program seems to really help.
According to a two thousand and eight article for the

(19:59):
Salt Lake Tribune by Brian Mathley, quote Olson soon was
leading outings that lasted several days, and BYU deans began
noticing changes in the students who went unexplained improvement in
school performance and better manners at home please the student's parents.
So university officials hatched a plan with Olson, who was
still in his twenties and struggling to support a growing
family that would eventually include ten children, that developed a

(20:21):
course that offered failing BYU students a shot at readmission
if they learned survival skills and went on a month
long backpacking trip through the Utah Desert. So that's what happens,
and he does this for a couple of years. And
the reason why he gets treated as a heroic figure
by folks in the industry who want to separate themselves
from the bad programs that like get kids killed is

(20:42):
they think, fundamentally, there's got to be something to this
idea of if kids are troubled, you send them out
into the wilderness for several weeks and they'll come back better.

Speaker 2 (20:52):
And I feel like people always kind of get the
wrong idea, like they always look at the like I
feel like this happens a lot where they'll be they'll
be like one thing and people will be like, oh, well,
it's this specific part of it, and it's like, well,
maybe a lot of these kids felt kind of overwhelmed
and out of control, and maybe you taught them some
skills that made them feel confident, you know, or more

(21:14):
in control, or maybe they were with a group and
they bonded, like things like isolation and feeling out of
control and feeling lonely, like these are things that college
kids go through that make them that where they struggle
a lot, like probably they would have been just as well,
Like it didn't necessarily have to mean they were going
out to the desert.

Speaker 1 (21:35):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (21:36):
You could have taught them like backgammon or something and
they would have been like, oh awesome, you know.

Speaker 1 (21:40):
Yeah, I think that's part. Yeah, I think that's true.
I also think like there's nothing like there's a lot
of benefit potentially, and like wilderness skills and like being
out in the woods, like there can be a therapy.

Speaker 2 (21:52):
No, it's true, Yeah, that is that is true. I
do think like for me personally, like I feel like
much calmer when I like take a walk and there's
lots of trees and you know, go to the park
or you know, go camping, Like I definitely feel so
there definitely is something to that. But yeah, I know
they're going to take this and they're going to make
it much worse.

Speaker 1 (22:10):
Yeah, yeah, they're going to so you know, b yu,
I think actually does because we're going to be there's
a lot to criticize the Mormon aspect of this whole industry,
but I think initially it comes from a pretty good place.
And initially it's not a punishment. It's more of a hey,
we've noticed you're struggling. We can like we will basically
give you a kind of school credit if you do

(22:30):
this program. It's helped a lot of other people. And
like these are also adults, right, So these are people
who are like able to make a decision do I
want to spend thirty days in the wilderness doing this thing?

Speaker 3 (22:40):
So wobably some of them are married.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
Yeah, and some of them presumably are married. This be
this right is like Olsen's in his twenties and has
multiple children, children. Yeah, yeah, and he gets he gets
treated again as a heroic figure in this industry who
talk about this as like, well, he had this beautiful
dream and it started from a really good place. And
all of those recitations of events tend to ignore why

(23:03):
Larry had to leave. BYU at John Krackour and his
reporting for Outside magazine claims that he left quote following
allegations of this mismanagement and sexual impropriety, and then sites
of BYU colleague saying Larry liked the girls a little
too much. Now, I don't know, does that mean the
girls that he was taking out into the woods alone

(23:24):
for weeks at a time, because, as a spoiler, that
happens in every single one of these programs.

Speaker 2 (23:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:29):
Yeah, more in the abusive side than what I would
call impropriety. But it's not clear to me that what
Larry did was not on the abusive side, right.

Speaker 2 (23:38):
Yeah, I mean the girls, especially the girls. The girls
is very Yeah, that is a very telling phrase.

Speaker 1 (23:45):
Mean I don't like your use of that word here.

Speaker 2 (23:48):
Yeah, absolutely not.

Speaker 1 (23:50):
Yeah, there's girls. Girls is definitely one of those words
that's a totally different world word depending on like inflection,
like if you're talking about like I'm going out to
the bar with the girls.

Speaker 2 (23:59):
Girls. Yeah, that's very different the.

Speaker 1 (24:01):
Girls than this. The girls.

Speaker 2 (24:03):
I feel like i'd even hear people say like, oh, yeah,
he liked the.

Speaker 1 (24:05):
Ladies, like like the ladies. Sure that feels say you say.

Speaker 2 (24:09):
About these ladies, but that is you know, like, Okay,
that guy's sleazy, but he is not, you know, a monster.

Speaker 1 (24:16):
He's not a pedophile. Right, Yeah, yeah, you're open. You're
leaving that door open when you're described it this way. Yeah.
Now I should note that sexual impropriety, and again this
is a married man with multiple children. Sexual impropriety is
not the only reason Larry has to leave BYU. In
nineteen seventy four, at a program he established for Idaho

(24:39):
State University, a twelve year old boy died of dehydration
because the staff Larry had were not trained and didn't
know how to recognize the warning signs of dehydration. In
nineteen seventy five, the next year, a woman in one
of Olsen's BYU classes died on a hike, again from dehydration.
As a spoiler, basically, everyone who dies in these programs

(25:01):
dies from dehydration.

Speaker 4 (25:03):
If you're going on.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
Into the desert. One of the first things you want
to do is like, note the signs of dehydration. Yes,
And if you're teaching wilderness skills, yeah, if you're teaching
wilderness skills, you one of the first Yeah, that's one
of the first things I would think. Yeah, how do
you not that? How do you not know that?

Speaker 1 (25:21):
So there's this big belief and some of this does
come from the Mormon aspect of it all. There's this
this big belief in like that the value of this
program is not just that you're learning wilderness skills and
that you're spending time in nature. It's that you are
away completely from society for weeks at a time. So
there's this real, real They don't want to sen they

(25:42):
don't want to call it early, they don't want to
take anyone back. So they they push people, right, they
do it either in a nice way or a mean way,
but they always push people. And they don't have like
Larry's I'm sure great at starting fires and like whittling
arrowheads or whatever, but Larry does not have functional medical
training and does not clearly because a lady dies in

(26:05):
his class, doesn't know how to deal with dehydration.

Speaker 2 (26:08):
Yeah, I mean, Mormonism kind of started out as like
a this all hiking Yeah, well, yes, very it was
this sort of like anti establishment religion for a long time,
you know, they were very Yeah, fighting against the US
governments are like kind of in there. Yeah, that's that's
a big part of their history.

Speaker 1 (26:29):
You could say Larry is carrying out in the best
traditions of the Mormon Church. Hiking and having sexual improprieties
with very young women. Is definitely doing a Joe Smith.

Speaker 2 (26:42):
Well Brigham young, Brigham young and pretty violent things too. Yeah,
although there's let's be real, there's lots and lots of
colleges in the United States named after people who did that,
you know, mass murder of people.

Speaker 1 (26:54):
So that's right, I for one, and I've always been
supportive of just renaming UCLA after the Green River Strangler.
I think we might as well lean into it, you know,
why not. It'll be great for the new podcast class
that they're that they're doing.

Speaker 2 (27:09):
Yeah, I mean, yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:11):
Anyway, it was a true crime bit folks. So yeah,
he gets some people killed, Larry does, and byus like,
maybe we don't want you running our wilderness survival program anymore.
You kind of failed the survival thing. Right, at this point,
two people have died, so Larry Larry bounces, but he's

(27:31):
able to escape any sort of blame for his role
in these deaths. And I think part of this is
just the media environment at the time. There's not like
a lot of attention to the people who die in
his programs. It doesn't they don't become big stories. They're
kind of just framed as like, well, you know, sometimes
when people are out in the wilderness, bad things happen, right,
So he doesn't get kind of tarred by the same

(27:53):
brush as the people who come later are going to.
And he establishes several wilderness therapy programs elsewhere in the
United States, charging like five hundred bucks for a thirty
day outing in most cases, so not a crazy amount
of money, not cheap, but like you're not looking at
like someone mortgaging their house for these programs, which is

(28:14):
where things are going to end up some yeah. Yeah,
And so they're kind.

Speaker 2 (28:19):
Of like expensive summer camps.

Speaker 1 (28:21):
Very expensive summer camp as much as like a nice
used car, right, yeah, maybe maybe a really nice used car.
That kind of depends on your definition of a nice
used car. A nice used car, speaking of used cars.
You know, who will sell you a car? Maybe our sponsors.
There's no way to know, not not on our end.

(28:42):
I hope, I hope it's a car. And we're back, Mara.
So we left off. Larry has has bounced and he
is kind of seeding the country. He's becoming the Johnny
apple Seed of doing his survival programs for teenagers, right.

(29:03):
And you know he also he writes a popular survival book.
And if you've seen the movie Jeremiah Johnson, he's the
expert survival consultant for that movie.

Speaker 2 (29:13):
Which is that the movie that with The Gift, right
of the.

Speaker 1 (29:17):
Ya of the guy like nodding and smiling.

Speaker 2 (29:20):
Okay, I haven't seen it.

Speaker 1 (29:21):
It's a great movie, and he was good at the
skills part because that movie gets it all pretty right.

Speaker 2 (29:29):
Yeah, I haven't. I haven't seen that movie. I've only
seen The Gift. But I know, like, this is the seventies, right,
I know there was a movie around that time called
Buffalo Rider, which was a true story about a guy
who went riding along on a buffalo. There was I
think I feel like there was a lot of movies
like that. Yeah, the seventies.

Speaker 1 (29:46):
Yeah, probably not disconnected to this. Actually, like this kind
of moment in the culture may have a lot to
these things may be somewhat interconnected.

Speaker 2 (29:55):
It's kind of the there was this thing, and this
is something that you know, doesn't gets me gets me
to sleep at night. Oh sorry, cat just jumped on
the keyboard. But everything's still good. It's it's kind of
like one thing that helps me sleep at night is
knowing that a lot of the like you know, return
shit is like a lot of stuff that we saw
in like the seventies and early eighties.

Speaker 1 (30:18):
Like it's just.

Speaker 3 (30:19):
It's just like you know, the Jesus Freaks, people who like.

Speaker 1 (30:23):
Yeah, the Jesus Freaks, the Mythopoetic Men's movement, you know, yes,
and the ras yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:29):
The Unification Church, like a lot of that, you know.
So so I remind myself like, Okay, we got through
you know, we got through it then, you know, for
getting through it now.

Speaker 1 (30:38):
James on our staff is having like a Twitter fight
with this want to be influencer who's tried to do
like back to the land home steading, like you need
to be using nonpowered tools in order to make sure
you're really you know, self reliant and he he films
these like shots of him shirtless using like rusted old tools,
like the wrong way, like the wood isn't positioned right

(30:59):
in the saw horse, and like he just butchered a
goat by cutting its head off with an axe, which
is not how you butcher ails. It is not how
you but unless it's like a chicken, but like you
don't even then yeah, it's it's yeah, you don't cut
their head off with an axe.

Speaker 2 (31:17):
So much of a play, you know. So So anyway
he was, he was He worked on Jeremiah Johnson as
like as like a.

Speaker 1 (31:25):
He's their consultant on like how to do all the
ship that Jeremiah Johnson's doing. Okay, yeah, and then he
launches his own nonprofit, the Anasazi Foundation, which is where
he continues teaching survival skills to struggling children. Now, I
will say again, because we're going to talk about the
much more violent sort of descendants of his courses. Every

(31:47):
source I found agrees the Anasazi Foundation is like pretty tame.
I've even found a number of kids on Reddit who
went talking about it as a positive experience. So I
don't want to well, we got to be critical of
Olsen because of the kids he got killed. I don't
want to like make it look like these are in
the same basket as everything we're talking about today. They're
just kind of in a line of dissent to each other.

(32:08):
And a big part of why these kids I think
these kids are like in their teens, like you know,
twelve to eighteen generally.

Speaker 3 (32:15):
Okay, so younger than the BYU kids.

Speaker 1 (32:17):
But younger than the BYU kids. We've gone down a
step in age. But Olsen still he's not one of
these like you yell at the kids. He's His belief
is that you present them with choices and tools and
education and you let them like make their own decisions
to build confidence and self reliance. So anyway, that's his program.
Now come to nineteen eighties. Larry's method of pedagogy is

(32:38):
going to be replaced by a very different set of
tactics that will come to dominate the industry that springs
up afterwards. And that brings us back to Steve Cardasano.
Stephen Anthony Cartersana was born on Monday. Monday, I guess August.
I don't know why I put the day in there.

Speaker 4 (32:54):
I usually don't do that.

Speaker 1 (32:55):
In August fifteenth, nineteen fifty five in Modesto, California. A.
I have found several variants of his obituary, and they
all want the reader to know he was quote born
to a Cherokee mother and Italian American father. Who can
give who gave him chiseled features and piercing eyes on
a Monday, On a Monday. Garfield would hate this.

Speaker 2 (33:19):
Many more obituaries, Yeah, more obituaries should be like, you know,
by the way, he was super exotically fucking hot.

Speaker 1 (33:29):
Yeah, just four paragraphs on his cum gutters. By the way,
here's your fucking way kiss. So I will also note
here because I don't know. I'm not going to get
into the hole like litigating are people indigenous or not,
because that is a whole messy can of worms. I
will note generally, with everything he says about his childhood,

(33:51):
take everything this guy says with a grain of salt,
because he's a professional fabuloust and liar, right, And I
mean that about every aspect of his child including what
I am about to quote next from his obituary. His
childhood in Modesto, California, he has reported was not happy.
One parent was addicted to heroin the other beat him.
He said his tormented youth motivated him to make a

(34:13):
career of helping troubled teens. And again I don't know
if that's true or not, it certainly has been some
people's life experiences. A Times article I read noted that
his mother, who was the one who was addicted to heroin,
died in a car accident when he was seventeen. Was
pretty consistent about saying that his home life with his

(34:35):
dad was not nice. And in nineteen seventy four he
decides to enlist in the Air Force. He becomes a
parachutist with the one hundred and twenty ninth Aerospace Rescue
and Recovery Group. And this isn't like technically a special
Forces job, but it's one of those gigs that, like,
very very few people qualify for. You're doing incredibly difficult,

(34:55):
physically and mentally demanding stuff. It's not easy to be
in this.

Speaker 3 (35:00):
And there's proof that he actually was in it.

Speaker 1 (35:02):
Yes, yes, he did this. He did this very much
for real, and he was one of a very small
number of people who were qualified to do this kind
of job. Multiple sources I have found note that Steve
was quote one of the best trained survivalists in the military.
Although the providence of such sources I found that one
in the Brian County Patriot makes me suspect that this

(35:24):
quote may have come directly from Steve himself, So I
don't know if he was actually one of the best
survivalists in the military.

Speaker 2 (35:31):
So I actually went, Okay, this is a weird fact
about me. So I went to something called Aviation Challenge
when I was ten or eleven because my whole family
they're big into aviation. They love planes. I oh, yeah,
and my dad. My dad has a pilot's license and

(35:53):
wasn't a commercial pilot or anything that could fly a plane.
And my grandfather did too, and and like, aviation is
a big thing in our family. So I thought this
was going to be kind of like space camp but
with airplanes. But it was very, very, very very military based.
So we were on we were on like an old

(36:13):
Air Force base, and we got a lot of propaganda
and I was but my favorite part of it by
far were the survivalist parts. Yeah, and so I can
still remember some of it. I still know, like which
berries to eat if you know you're out in the woods. Now,
I wonder if like maybe this that's kind or not.

Speaker 6 (36:34):
Well.

Speaker 2 (36:34):
Also, I wonder, like, did this guy also like have
a hand in this, because it wasn't that far from
an host California.

Speaker 1 (36:39):
He very well may have because he winds up during
his time in the military, he spends a period of
time as the instructor and instructor at the fair Child
Air Force Base survival school.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
Yeah, so I wonder if maybe he like helped develop
their curriculum.

Speaker 1 (36:54):
There's a good chance he did. Survival stuff is interesting
because you have two kinds of people who teach survival class.
You have the people who really know their ship and
you have the people who are convinced they know their
ship and don't. And you, as the student, until you've
spent a lot of time in the woods, really can't
know which they are. My little brother because he grew
up on a military base in Okinawa, did a survival

(37:16):
course that was like taught by the Marines on base
and at one point they, I don't know why you
keep coming back to goats, but they like slaughter a
goat to like walk you through had a butcher and animal,
and they like fuck up killing it and traumatiz all
these kids because they just again as somebody who's who
slaughters and butcher's animals, Like, I don't know how you

(37:37):
fuck that up as a marine. What are you guys doing?

Speaker 2 (37:42):
Oh my god, yeah, definitely like yeah, trauma, Yeah, we
to traumatize everything budget children.

Speaker 1 (37:48):
I know, they they got the experience right one way
or the other. They're learning about survival.

Speaker 2 (37:54):
They learned what not to do by watching, you know,
horrific animal abuse.

Speaker 1 (37:58):
The lesson today was don't trust a man about survival
just because he's a marine. Yeah, uh man uh childhood
so speak. I guess this all kind of goes to
buttress the point that these guys, there's cool people who

(38:19):
teach kids survival, but there's always going to be a
high ratio of like maniacs in that profession too, which
I think all of my friends who teach primitive skills
would agree with that statement. So yeah, he goes to anyway,
we're talking about Steve Cartesano. So he gets out of
the Air Force after possibly setting up the program that

(38:41):
Mara Wilson will use years later, and he makes friends
with another airman who's a Mormon and converts him to
the Mormon church. So he is a Mormon convert and
he moves to Utah to attend BYU. Now he is
not a good student. This is not a guy who
was made for classrooms and drops out a couple of
years in. But before he drops out, like every maniac

(39:05):
we cover, he tries his hand breaking into Hollywood. Crackowes
he studied film and wrote a screenplay about the exploits
of a crack Air Force rescue squad whose hero was
a part Italian, part Cherokee Mormon adventurer named Steve Montana.

Speaker 8 (39:25):
Steve Montana very soon himself with a fucking Indiana Jones
ass name. Oh man, it would be better if you'd
pick Montana. Steve Monta Steve, Yeah, yeah, Montana. Steve sounds

(39:46):
like a guy who's going to teach me where to
find water in the desert.

Speaker 1 (39:50):
Steve. Steve Montana is going to sell me bills at
a truck stop.

Speaker 2 (39:54):
Yes, exactly. There's there's a difference between the two of them.
One of them seems like he might actually be fun, like, yeah,
have some crazy stories, you know.

Speaker 1 (40:02):
Oh yeah. The other you'll hear some shit from Montana. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Steve Montana. Other people will tell you.

Speaker 3 (40:12):
Of Tony Montana.

Speaker 1 (40:13):
Like that.

Speaker 2 (40:14):
You know, that's where my mind goes.

Speaker 1 (40:16):
Tony Montana's like discount Kirkland brand brother. Yes, exactly, He's
not into coke, but he's got a big pil So
Steve leaves the Air Force in eighty four, and this
is a time when the United States is kind of
sailing through one of our semi regular We've talked about

(40:39):
all of the different things that are just kind of
current waves in American culture. Well, this is when we're
really hitting a big stride in our moral panic about
drugs and youth delinquency. Now, from what I can tell,
Steve was a conservative guy. He converts to the Mormon Church,
and he is a believer in the idea that this
country is headed to Hell in a handbasket because children

(40:59):
aren't disciplined properly. So, while attending BYU, he had become
aware of the legacy of Larry Elsen, who left not
that far before to start the Anastazi Foundation. Steve started
studying his program, Outward Bound and other similar wilderness schools
that existed in the Salt Lake area, and he concluded
they all had a massive problem. None of them abused children.

(41:21):
In nineteen eighty eight, Steve launched the Challenger Foundation, a
wilderness school with an educational syllabus patterned directly off of
what Steve could remember from his own experiences at boot camp.
The goal, in his words, was to wear kids down
quote until they're good again.

Speaker 6 (41:39):
Jesus.

Speaker 2 (41:40):
So this is something too, is these people never have
any experience.

Speaker 1 (41:44):
With child development here.

Speaker 2 (41:47):
No, it's it's it's like, yeah, there's nothing, there's no
child development, there's no yeah, there's none of these things.
It's wearing them down because because that's what's going to
stop the crack epidemic is wearing children down.

Speaker 1 (42:00):
Yeah. Day five of the Air Force Rescue training does
not like break in order to teach you how children's
minds work.

Speaker 2 (42:07):
And it's nice, it's it's yeah, it's it's very it
is very strong. I mean, I was gonna say, it's
very strange when people think that you can become an
expert on just by But then I was like, well,
I probably shouldn't talk because I'm a fucking forward child
actor with a BFA and drama and I'm talking like
I'm an expert on shit, and you know I'm not.
But at least I'm not trying to break children down.

Speaker 1 (42:30):
I think you don't have to be an expert to
be like, well, if you're taking children into the desert
for weeks at a time, you should probably know something
number one about children and number two about wilderness medicine.
Those two things should probably be something you have a
formal skill in, as opposed to just kind of winging
it well.

Speaker 2 (42:48):
Also, if you work with kids, you learn very quickly
that the ones who are acting out, You learn very
quickly that there are different reasons why kids act out. Yeah,
and I mean I think that that it should be
common sense, but it's not like I worked with kids
and I knew very quickly. Who are the kids who
were spoiled and entitled and expected, you know, the world
zoo bend to their will? Who are the kids who

(43:09):
are going through a lot of difficulties at home. Who
are the kids who maybe just learned a little bit differently.
Who are the kids who you know just were trying
to make everybody laugh. Who are the kids who you
know didn't like doing their own work but liked helping
other people. Like the different reasons that kids are quote
bad are, you know, their myriad and you can't just
break them all down because what works with disciplining.

Speaker 3 (43:31):
One kid is not going to discipline the other.

Speaker 1 (43:33):
No, but that's very much the that's very much the
attitude that this program is going to have, which is
like all kids who are bad need the same thing,
and that thing is to be screamed at in the
desert by a man who could get literally no other
job than screaming at children in the desert. Right, I'm
not really exaggerating there. Here's how John Krakauer described his

(43:54):
educational tactics in an article for Outside. Cardisato applied what
he liked to call street smarts to problem kids, strip searches,
and military haircuts. He adopted a drill sergeant style of speech,
which required yes sir answers. Rules were strict and heavily enforced.
A girl caught saying I'm sorry instead of I apologize
would be punished by carrying a football sized chunk of

(44:14):
kalmanure all day in her backpack. A boy caught eating
raw oatmeal instead of cooking it would have his oatmeal
ration taken away. Good behavior for challenger students was rewarded
with canned peaches, raisin, or cinnamon.

Speaker 2 (44:28):
It's just like the specificity of it. I apologize, Yeah,
I apologize instead of I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 (44:34):
Like, what's the what's what's the difference here?

Speaker 2 (44:38):
It's just it's just standardization of yeah.

Speaker 1 (44:41):
Yeah. I hate the whole to the like, no, don't
say you're sorry, say you apologize, and like, here's my
fucking witty reason for why you shouldn't say sorry, Like
I don't give a shit, man, you know what the
kid meant? Yeah, exactly, the complicate communication. It's hard enough
as it is.

Speaker 6 (44:56):
Kids.

Speaker 2 (44:57):
If there's one man the famously you know, famously eloquent teenagers,
you know, that's the thing. Teenagers are very they are
having they literally have trouble expressing themselves. Now I'm having
trouble expressing myself because thinking about this, expressing myselves, well,
expressing myself, because this piss me off.

Speaker 1 (45:15):
Why don't we take a break and let our advertisers
express themselves.

Speaker 3 (45:20):
Let's do it.

Speaker 1 (45:25):
Ah, my goodness. They really had a lot to say,
mostly about why you should buy a Chevy. You know, Chevy.
Are you drunk enough for a Chevy? Anyway, we're back,
So let's talk a little bit about boot camps.

Speaker 9 (45:39):
Right.

Speaker 1 (45:40):
Thanks to cultural touchstones like the film Full Metal Jacket,
the term boot camp has kind of a magic effect
on the minds of a certain type of American. There's
this this tacit understanding, this widespread belief that, like, if
children are misbehaving and traditional methods won't work, forcing them
into something that mimics military discipline will fix their bad behavior.

(46:00):
I had a cousin who got sent to like a
military boot camp style school, and as a spoiler, it
did not stop them from doing the things that got
them sent there. These programs don't actually tend to work
very well, but there's this like magical belief that, like,
because it's a boot camp, that's that's what. If it
works for the army, it's got to work for small children.

Speaker 7 (46:20):
Right.

Speaker 2 (46:20):
The thing is, the army has a I mean, I
guess in some ways, the army has a purpose or
a goal. Like there are people there who I mean
are either they're all adults, they're adults. Well, I mean,
it hasn't always been that they joined voluntarily, but people
a lot of the people there are there because they
want you to make money.

Speaker 1 (46:41):
Yes, or now at least today, they're generally making a choice.
They get misinformed about aspects of that, like recruiters lie
a lot, but like generally an informed choice, or at
least semi semi informed.

Speaker 2 (46:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (46:55):
The other thing about it is that, like, boot camps
don't work for the military quite the way conservatives often
think they do. First off, when it comes to how
these programs work in general, I found a two thousand
and five analysis of several studies on the efficacy of
boot camp style programs that noted no significant differences and
recidivism from students subjected to mock military programs. There is

(47:17):
zero rigorous data showing that hiring a bunch of x
cons and former addicts and having them pretend to be
ari ermy and like beat up a bunch of captive
children helps those kids in any way, right, doing a
one thing. If you watch Full Metal Jacket, the movie
does not end with that program working out great. Like
the point of that is not, Wow, this is a

(47:39):
great way to help us struggle with your child.

Speaker 2 (47:41):
Yeah, give your child that thousand yard stare.

Speaker 1 (47:43):
That's what happens to the drill instructor guys. Yeah, that's
it's also this kind of movie image that again a
lot of conservatives latch onto a boot camp where like
people are being thrown in the mud and like, you know,
shaken and screamed at and insulted in creative ways by
these like incredibly harsh and utterly humorless men like It

(48:06):
is debatable as to whether or not that works very
well for soldiers. Over the years, there have been repeated
incidents where brutal training methods, always justified by the need
to ensure discipline for units going into combat, has instead
gotten trainees killed. The best known of these was the
Ribbon Creek incident from nineteen fifty six, in which a
staff sergeant, trying to punish a poorly behaved platoon, marched

(48:30):
them into a swamp, where six of them drowned.

Speaker 7 (48:34):
Oh my god, you're not very combat ready if you're dead, guys.

Speaker 2 (48:37):
Yeah, yeah, that's that's this is yeah, I mean that
how do you even it? Just how do you justify that?
It's just like, what was this that was just wanted to?

Speaker 1 (48:50):
Yeah, that was a major question that was asked because
there was a lot of people who defended this within
the military as like, well, this is the only way
to do it, and a lot of a lot of
thankfully a lot arge number of people who are like, well, no,
clearly we have made a mistake. If we have drowned
six marines by making them walk into a swamp, this
is not good training. And this does that disaster leads

(49:11):
to the first big visual professionalization of the process of
like training marines. This is where they start like the
modern drill instructor system right. And this is also there
starts to be more of an emphasis on utilizing psychology
and leadership dynamics as opposed to pure physical coercion. This
is not an evenly successful effort, but this is kind
of when you start getting a lot of people in

(49:33):
the military being like, actually, maybe if we try to
understand our recruits and the ways in which they're different
and like the ways in which people respond to leadership
rather than just like beating them, will train better soldiers.
On March second, nineteen eighty eight, nineteen year old Lee
Mareki was engaged in a training exercise for the Rescue

(49:53):
Swimmer School program. This is part of the US Navy.
This is a difficult test to pass. Only about half
of the student sudents did. Mareki failed the test the
first time, re entered the training area the next day,
and failed again, at which point his instructors forced him
back into the water to try again and held him
down while his fellow recruits were ordered to turn around
and sing the national anthem. Mareki drowned, and his death

(50:17):
created another legal nightmare for the Navy, which again instituted
changing to their training methods in order to prevent the
same thing from happening again. Now, I bring these incidents
up because it's worth seeing that these are two military
boot camp incidents in which the brutality of training leads
to people dying, and they both lead to both and
immediate severe backlashes and changes to the way that training

(50:40):
is done. Because number one, the military has a degree
of accountability both to like civilian leadership, and you've got
officers and people who are overseeing these programs. And in
the military, when you see we're killing people with our training,
there are responsible people who are generally like, well, we
should make some alterations to.

Speaker 2 (50:59):
It, right, Well, these are public, these are public institutions.

Speaker 1 (51:03):
Right right. It also it becomes a media nightmare for them. Yeah,
and so you have to have some sort of like
public example of how we've altered the program. All of
that's going to be absent from these wilderness rehab facilities.
They are my point is not. The military does such
a great job of not of like fixing, you know,
problems in boot camp. My point is that the military

(51:23):
does something when shit like this happens, and there's going
to be significantly less oversight for these programs that only
children are parts of, right, which is also the.

Speaker 2 (51:33):
American idea of if it's a private you know, well
it's it's anything that's private, you know, sure, let them,
you know, discriminate against these people. Sure, let them do
these These are private groups, you know, business they want,
private businesses can do whatever they want.

Speaker 1 (51:47):
Yeah, yeah, Yeah, When we privatize the army, finally, finally,
military contractors will be free to march recruits into the
swamp again. That's when we'll be a free country.

Speaker 2 (51:58):
When a free country makes dreamed up make Americans march
into swamps again. Exactly.

Speaker 1 (52:05):
Just Thomas Jefferson's sketching pictures of drowning marines as a
tear rolls down his cheek. I mean.

Speaker 3 (52:12):
There was a lot of swamp land in that area
at that time. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:18):
So when he starts Challenger, I think it's technically called
Challenger too, but fuck it, we're gonna call it Challenger.
Steve's first major innovation was the idea that the entire process.

Speaker 2 (52:27):
So call it something challenger like a like.

Speaker 1 (52:30):
Not a great names. Yeah yeah, that's why you put
the two on.

Speaker 2 (52:36):
There, right, like, yeah, that's that's that's a this is
a big thing, it's not. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:43):
So Steve's first innovation when he starts this is you've
got to be really hostile to these kids. Now, this
starts before the course eventually begins, because he's the one
who comes up with the idea of and basically he
starts as an upsell. Hey, parents, you've decided you're going
to send your troubled kid this wilderness rehab program. They're
going to spend months alone in the desert where they

(53:04):
will be miserable. They're not going to want to go.
You don't want to just like break this to them
at dinner days ahead of time. They're going to be angry,
they might run away from home, they might flip out.
You don't want to have to drive them to it
because they'll be pissed at you the whole time. It'll
be a miserable drive. What if you let what if
you pay me and I have some big armed men
kidnap your children.

Speaker 4 (53:24):
He's the guys the guy who invented this.

Speaker 1 (53:27):
Yeah, he is the guy who invented this, specifically his innovation.

Speaker 6 (53:31):
Huh.

Speaker 2 (53:31):
I remember I.

Speaker 3 (53:32):
Thought I heard that Synanon used to do this too.

Speaker 1 (53:34):
Well, Synanon did this to like members of the coult
But you're not going and.

Speaker 2 (53:38):
You can not actual children.

Speaker 1 (53:41):
Yeah, not that I am aware of actual children.

Speaker 4 (53:44):
So he's the bastard that invented this ship.

Speaker 1 (53:46):
He's the master that invented the ship for these camps.
Right where you are kidnapping a kid to take them
to a wilderness rehab facility.

Speaker 2 (53:52):
Yeah, that's usually in the middle of the night.

Speaker 5 (53:55):
Yeah, no, this.

Speaker 4 (53:57):
I'm like sitting silently during this episode. This happened to
my child, her best friend, and I didn't know, and
I didn't know where she was. I did not know
where she was. Her parents would not answer any of
my messages. It took almost a year before I figured
out that that's what had happened to her. And she
was my closest friend when I was a teenager, and
I have no idea where she was, and I it's
like six months ago. I went back and looked at

(54:18):
our old Facebook messages and it's just me being like
where are you, where did you go?

Speaker 2 (54:23):
Why did you leave?

Speaker 4 (54:25):
So fuck this guy?

Speaker 1 (54:26):
Oh yeah, yeah, this.

Speaker 2 (54:29):
Guy is also personally responsible for destroying the teenage yeers
of people I know as well. So seriously, fuck this guy.

Speaker 1 (54:37):
He specifically had a devastating impact on like southern California,
which is where a lot.

Speaker 4 (54:42):
Of it, which is where I grew up think you
say me too, me too?

Speaker 3 (54:46):
So yeah, a lot of people.

Speaker 1 (54:48):
Yeah, as we'll talk about We'll talk about some of
this in part too, but it's a big part of it.
Why Southern California particularly is California has fairly strict laws
on what you, as a parent can do to your
kid and what kind of programs you can put them in,
what kind of discipline you can subject them in through
like a program, right, Like there are there's a strict

(55:09):
limitations on like what sort of facilities you can send
your kid to against their will in California. Those laws
don't exist in Utah, So you get the kid out,
and you know, that's why all of this For one thing,
that's why all of this happens in Utah. But that's
why there's a lot of like Californians because California has
like stricter laws that kind of limit parents more.

Speaker 4 (55:32):
It was the exact scenario.

Speaker 1 (55:34):
That's the laboratory of the States working as intended, the
laboratory of democracy working as intended. Yeah again, our beautiful
founding fathers dreamed all of this up. So Steve's plan
is we cut out, you know the problem of parents
having to confront their kids about what they're doing to
them by allowing and again when I say these are
armed men. The particular guy he had do a lot

(55:56):
of this was nicknamed Horsehair and always carried like a
fourteen inch bowie knife on his belt and looked like
a character from Jeremiah Johnson. And to give you an
idea of like how this kind of went down, I
want to first play you an account from a modern
attendee of one of these schools. This is from the
TikTok account of the Misfit Heroes podcast, which is where

(56:16):
I found this, And this is just someone who went
to one of these schools, obviously after Steve Cartazano's era,
but it gives you an idea of how these kind
of this kind of add on program worked.

Speaker 10 (56:28):
I was woken up at about two oh seven am
to my dad turning on my light and telling me
that it was time to leave. I remember rolling over
and looking at him and immediately thinking that he was
trying to get me up for school, and like starting
to come up with excuses why I should be allowed
to stay home. There was a woman on the side
of my bed who pulled me up and told me
that it was time to get dressed and put on

(56:49):
my shoes and go. They basically dressed me, and each
one grabbed one of my arms and started walking me
out my door and up the stairs toward our back door,
and time I couldn't see my dad again, and I
was yelling for him, and one of them told me,
your dad isn't going to respond to you anymore. And
I asked why and why this was happening, and they

(57:10):
said that they were taking me because I didn't deserve
to be with.

Speaker 4 (57:15):
My family anymore.

Speaker 10 (57:16):
And as I was being dragged out the door, I
remember looking over my shoulder and seeing my dad standing
at our kitchen sink with his back to me, just
staring out the window, completely ignoring me.

Speaker 5 (57:28):
Yeah, that's I exactly what happened to my friend.

Speaker 3 (57:32):
Yep, yeah, it's I can't imagine. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (57:37):
I do think that a lot of parents are kind
of brainwashed in this too. They don't necessarily and I
mean some of them, I think just don't give a shit.
And some of them, I think, do honestly believe that
this is the best thing for their child. But like
I can't imagine like letting somebody like man handle like
I don't even have children, But if somebody were man

(57:59):
handling like a child that I care about, like a
friend's kid or my nieces and nephews, like I would
want to fucking murder them.

Speaker 4 (58:05):
Also, the trauma, like most of the time it happens
when they're in the middle of the night, when you're
step Yeah, how does that help? How does that help?

Speaker 1 (58:14):
You're disoriented, you're not able to fight back?

Speaker 5 (58:16):
Is no, no, no, I understand how it helps them,
But how does that help a child who's going on
That's not the point up any sense of calm or
peace that they might have.

Speaker 1 (58:26):
Yeah, yeah, no, no. The point the last concern of
everyone involved in this is what's best for the kids. Yeah,
it's it's it's pretty vile stuff. I do think a
lot because my mom was certainly not against physical punishment, right,
Like she was a spanker for sure, And uh, I

(58:46):
don't know if she would have done something like this
for I think the only reason I know that she
wouldn't have is just because of the expense. We never
would have had the money for these programs. But like,
had she had the money, I don't know that if
this is something she would have ruled out. I think
because she did fun the mentally believe if kids are misbehaving,
the best thing to do is like put them through
boot camp.

Speaker 3 (59:05):
Yeah, I think that.

Speaker 2 (59:06):
I do think that there are a lot of parents
who genuinely think like I, that genuinely think this is
the best thing for their kids. But but yeah, but
I just feel like I I yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (59:19):
I just I just don't. I feel like, how can
you see that and not think this is fucked up?

Speaker 1 (59:24):
It's because they all hip and I know people who
who can honestly say, if I hadn't joined the military,
I would have like killed myself, right but with like
drugs and that, like I was, I was on a
bad road and like I got my life in order
as a result of that. The thing is, I also
I think because I've known a lot more soldiers than
most people I know, just as many people who committed
suicide during train in some cases during training, and in

(59:47):
some cases as just as a result of their service,
right right, So I certainly wouldn't say the military is
a great way to get your life in order. It's
just like, yes, some number of people the discipline is helpful,
But when you're looking at the kind of roulette wheel
that is putting someone through that and how it winds
up for them, the uh, it's certainly not something I
would want to like spin on a bunch of children. Right.

(01:00:09):
I'm sure there are some kids who this got them
out of a bad loop, but I don't think that
number of kids is higher than the number who died
and were traumatized forever. Right, And I.

Speaker 3 (01:00:18):
Was sure we'll get to I'm sure we'll get to
this later.

Speaker 2 (01:00:22):
But like the rate of people who've attempted suicide after
going through these programs is just anecdotally, you know it
from people I've known, it's you know, it's it's incredibly high.
And it is a lifelong trauma.

Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
Oh yeah, like it is.

Speaker 2 (01:00:36):
It stays with.

Speaker 1 (01:00:36):
You, yeah yeah, and it's cool and good. So yeah,
I want to show you guys next kind of what
the kidnapping process is, like, how they kind of when
these programs kind of make like their their media ploy
to parents, like this is how they depict the parents.
I want you to keep in mind what that kid

(01:00:57):
just said about the experience of being kidnapp And then
I'm going to have Sophie play you a segment from
the Doctor Phil Show. Until a bunch of kids died
and their parents sued these facilities. Doctor Phil loved sending
children to these wilderness camps. He was a major public
advocate for how well these worked, and he did a
lot of He had a lot of segments where he

(01:01:17):
would send kids to these camps. And so they have
one where they film like this kidnapping And I want
to be clear here I played the kid's experience of this,
which I think was pretty ugly first, because that's the
reality of the experience. What you're seeing here is how
they dress up the kidnapping for Doctor Phil's audience. Right,

(01:01:39):
So keep in mind this is an advertisement, right, This
is not as clean as the real process was.

Speaker 6 (01:01:45):
Just after three thirty in the morning, we're down the
street from the family home. We've been texting with April
and she's ready for us to come. It's a big
day for Anna Lisa. She's on her way to the
Doctor Phil show.

Speaker 4 (01:01:57):
That I love you, decided to get you some help
and we're.

Speaker 2 (01:02:01):
Going to the Doctor Phil.

Speaker 6 (01:02:07):
My name is Mike and this is Laura, And let
me explain your situation. You've actually got a trip planned
to Hollywood. We'll go into Doctor Phil today. Your family
has decided that away and screaming actually isn't going to

(01:02:27):
help this one.

Speaker 1 (01:02:29):
So you see what they're You see what they're doing here, right,
They're they're portraying this is like you've got like the
calmest guy you can in here, and he's trying to
have a conversation. Like they're really playing up, like how
out of control this girl is? She really needs, you know,
Doctor Phil. And then this intervention that Phil's going to
send her to.

Speaker 5 (01:02:47):
Right, if a man came into my bedroom in the
middle of the night and I was trying to become
a conversation a lot, a lot louder than this gird saying.

Speaker 1 (01:02:58):
Is very one like one like second of that guy's
voice and I come up shooting. That's how I'm responding.

Speaker 5 (01:03:06):
Whatever I can grab man, you're going down.

Speaker 2 (01:03:11):
This is like we were like the kids, like like
like we're probably like like Robert, I think we're about
the same age, Like we we were the children who
were taught stranger danger. Yes, right, you know like the
first thing, a strange man. Yeah, don't go with a
stranger A strange man comes into your bedrooms.

Speaker 1 (01:03:28):
Mixed signals from the boomers.

Speaker 2 (01:03:30):
I was like, no, this is like the nightmares I
had about like the Polyclause kidnapping case, Like this is
the yeah, this is the kind of exactly so. But yeah,
you see they're being they're being very quiet, and like
you know, yes.

Speaker 1 (01:03:43):
This is the sanitized version of what really happens. And
I want to end by showing you video of what
these camps were really like. And we are talking about challengers.
So this is actually Steve Cartizano's camp. This is a
video filmed in nineteen eighty nine for a local media
segment called The Reporters. I don't know what fucking network
it was through, but you can find it's like fifteen
minutes long. You can find this footage on YouTube.

Speaker 6 (01:04:05):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:04:06):
A link will be in our show notes along with
all of other sources. But yeah, here's here is a
bunch of kids arriving at the boot camp in the wilderness.
This is what it looked.

Speaker 9 (01:04:14):
Like come midnight. They are driven over thirty miles into
the wilderness to disorient them so they won't be able
to find their way back out. A raging bonfire is
blocking the road. The vans stop and two apparitions come
galloping out of the darkness. They are screaming and pounding
the windows like maddening.

Speaker 2 (01:04:32):
No, no, yah, a problem movement.

Speaker 8 (01:04:37):
You're now so woo.

Speaker 2 (01:04:42):
Dazed.

Speaker 9 (01:04:43):
They gather around the bonfire and soon learn to show
respect to those who will teach them how to survive here.

Speaker 4 (01:04:50):
Why, of course there next sixty three days, you'll be
out of my care, my saft hair.

Speaker 1 (01:04:57):
You understand, I can't.

Speaker 9 (01:05:01):
The so called counselors are not trained child therapists.

Speaker 3 (01:05:05):
They are survival.

Speaker 1 (01:05:06):
They're not Look at this guy.

Speaker 2 (01:05:09):
Look at this man.

Speaker 1 (01:05:12):
He's not trained in childcare.

Speaker 2 (01:05:14):
Yeah, a guy with a with a ponytail and a.

Speaker 1 (01:05:18):
Ponytail and a boonie knife. Oh man, that's funny.

Speaker 2 (01:05:23):
I know that these places used would also, I mean
they used a lot of horrible things. I know they
also used to humiliate, humiliation.

Speaker 1 (01:05:30):
Yes, oh yeah, like major weapon. We'll talk about all
of that, don't you worry. So, yeah, I do want
to chat a little bit about horse hair. You know
your you know, your rehab facilities quality place. When the
guy gets led by a man named horse hair, his
real name was Lance Paul Jagger, and he is the

(01:05:51):
guy who Steve Steve does not want to do any
real teaching of children for some reason.

Speaker 4 (01:05:56):
His first name being a Lance just really really old Jagger.

Speaker 2 (01:06:04):
Is that's a pretty cool name.

Speaker 1 (01:06:06):
I mean you you know what horse hair?

Speaker 7 (01:06:09):
Yeah, Lance Jaggers.

Speaker 1 (01:06:14):
Actually, yeah, that's that's what you name the protagonist in
your dog shit spec script about a fucking Air Force
rescue unit. Lance Jagger is a cool name.

Speaker 2 (01:06:24):
Also, horse hair can mean something that's like very coarse,
but it could also mean, I mean, that guy did
have kind of a pony like ponytail.

Speaker 1 (01:06:31):
Literally, is your whole nickname just for the ponytail? Is
that your identity? Horse hair?

Speaker 2 (01:06:37):
You're more than their samson?

Speaker 4 (01:06:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:06:41):
So you know, Steve starts teaching these courses like when
he does the first few runs, but again they're spending
sixty three days at a time out there with these kids.
He doesn't. He doesn't want to, especially once this makes
a lot of money, because in short order, in the
first like year or two, he's made a couple million
dollars doing this. He doesn't want because he's trying araging
fifteen grand per session, like, he has no fucking desire

(01:07:04):
to spend all of his time out there. He wants
to spend the money that he's making, so he has
Horsehair do the actual training along with a couple of
other guys, usually former military, usually dudes who like weren't
really employable anywhere else but fancied themselves as survivalists. Although
none of these guys have relevant wilderness medical training, there
is and was at this point, there is like an

(01:07:25):
actual professional certification you can get for wilderness first responder
right as a wilderness first responder that teaches you how
to deal with stuff like keatstroke and dehydration. None of
these guys have those qualifications. So Horsehair and another adult leader,
Bill Henry, who'd gotten his start in scouting, handled the
actual wilderness instruction while Steve used his new gotten wealth

(01:07:46):
to buy a manner in Provo that had once been
owned by a famous golfer. He focused his time marketing
Challenger to wealthy parents with problem children. One of his
chief ways of doing this because he would like meet
in person with again it's like fifteen grand kid often
more because you're sometimes they're running through the program twice.
There's add ons that can make it more like twenty grand.

(01:08:06):
He's like meeting individually sometimes with parents to convince them
because these are rich parents. Like, part of his like
program is he spends two thousand dollars a day renting
a Lamborghini in order that's what he's spending his fucking
money on.

Speaker 4 (01:08:22):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:08:22):
Obviously, parents are going to bulk at a price like
this when, especially in nineteen eighty nine money, you know,
fifteen grand twenty grand is an insane amount of money.
And when they would, he would say, well, this is
the only thing that could save your kid. Right, if
they're already smoking pot, they are on a road that
will inevitably lead to their death. Every kid who smokes
pot winds up dying of a heroin overdose. That's just

(01:08:43):
how things work in nineteen eighty nine, right, cool, So
if those are the stakes, isn't it worth re mortgaging
your house to make sure your kid gets the care
they need, you know, in order to reach as many
clients as possible, Steve leveraged his one celebrity connection into
a series of daytime TV appearances. And when I found

(01:09:05):
out who the celebrity connection to this guy was, like
how he got into daytime TV, I had a beautiful reaction.
This makes so much sense. I'm gonna quote from John
Krakauer's article in Outside Magazine. Here, Cardisano persuaded his good
friend Oliver North to put in an appearance during Variety

(01:09:27):
who booked a month?

Speaker 4 (01:09:30):
Like, like, NRA, how the fuck.

Speaker 1 (01:09:35):
Does all in North run wind up?

Speaker 2 (01:09:37):
Here? I was thinking like Stephen Segal or Chuck Norris,
like I was thinking celebrities.

Speaker 1 (01:09:43):
This is right after around Contra too. Has not been
a lot of distance. You know, we're not talking like
warst stories with Oliver North on Fox, Ollie. We're talking
like just committed trees and Oliver North. Odd, God, that's funny.
I see.

Speaker 2 (01:10:02):
I think that, Like if I saw somebody driving a
Lamborghini and hanging out with with Oliver North, like I
would probably be like, I don't know, I think I
would be suspicious if like, if somebody makes too much like.

Speaker 7 (01:10:15):
You know, to drink my kid.

Speaker 2 (01:10:19):
Well, yes, like you look at look at what cars
teachers drive, you know, and it's like it's like the shittiest. Yeah,
it's like the shittiest, like like like maybe they have like,
you know, a volvough fu. You know.

Speaker 1 (01:10:36):
Fucking Steve Montana rolls up in a Lamborghini with all
Leigh North and says, hey, let me take your kids
for sixty three days. Grand I'd be like.

Speaker 2 (01:10:46):
I'd be like, okay, no, Like fucking drug dealers drive,
you know, Lamborghini is like not not people, Yeah, not right.

Speaker 1 (01:10:52):
Dealers hang out with all of her.

Speaker 2 (01:10:54):
I remember that.

Speaker 3 (01:11:03):
Yeah, get your kid into some good business.

Speaker 2 (01:11:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:11:07):
So he does appearances on all of the big daytime
shows of the era. Sally Jesse, Raphael Roaldo, Donahue, Cardasana
would later say they loved me. I'd go on TV
with kids who had been through the program. These beautiful
fourteen to fifteen year old girls. Don't say that. Don't
call them who talk about how they'd been out on
the streets stealing and doing drugs and turning tricks until

(01:11:28):
Challenger changed their ways. Boy, I don't trust the way
he described them.

Speaker 5 (01:11:33):
Again, the name Challenger, Like I WinCE every time you
say it, because it's like.

Speaker 1 (01:11:38):
There's a lot to WinCE about here.

Speaker 4 (01:11:40):
So yeah, that's fair.

Speaker 2 (01:11:43):
It's just like you're not gonna name like like something well,
I mean, I guess people could do sometimes name things
like a nine to eleven memorial this or that, but
like that, wouldn't that be just kind of like calling
something like, you know, here's good good you know, take
your children.

Speaker 3 (01:11:56):
To nine to eleven schools the Challenger.

Speaker 1 (01:11:59):
Okay, now, now, Mara, I operate the nine to eleven school,
which is a sixty three day summer program for children.
We don't get them off of drugs, but we do
get them on the new drugs. They are in the
desert for a lot time.

Speaker 2 (01:12:11):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:12:12):
We don't talk about that, Robert.

Speaker 1 (01:12:15):
I mean, we have to, Sophie, if we're going to
keep enrollment up, I'm gonna need to start. I need
to get on like Oprah or something.

Speaker 2 (01:12:21):
You gotta pay for that Lamborghini. Yeah, we don't talk.

Speaker 4 (01:12:25):
We don't talk about that. I would never let you
get anywhere near Oprah.

Speaker 1 (01:12:28):
Winfrey almost certainly for the best. I think I give
you a lot of damage on Oprah's With Oprah's platform,
so speaking of a lot of damage, Steve is doing
a lot of damage to a lot of children thanks
to daytime television. He is like, basically, he comes on
and he's kind of leaning into the fear of drugs

(01:12:50):
and delinquency that are super common. And these are these
shows are all every week they'll have a segment where like,
here's a kid who's out of control. They're on drugs,
you know, they overdosed or something like that. So Steve
is like going into a programs that exist to scare
mothers particularly, and then offering them a solution, and it
works really fucking well, right. One of his former employees

(01:13:14):
described the scene to Crack Hour. As the phones were
ringing off the hook, parents begged him to take their kids.
An incredible amount of money started rolling in. Now there
was a problem with Steve's brilliant business plan, which had
worked up to this point. And the problem is that
these are mostly rich kids and rich parents. You have
some middle class kids who's like, parents are really sacrificing

(01:13:34):
for this, but these are mostly well off people's children, right,
And the folks he's hiring to take care of these
kids don't know what they're doing and tend to be
violent and abusive. This means you have rich kids that
are getting abused. And when rich kids get abused, the
cops at some point are going to get called, right, Yes,

(01:13:55):
people are going to get you get sued. Right yes.
In an interview Without Side magazine, former Kine County Sheriff
Max Jackson, who was the law enforcement officer who got
called because the camp is in his county, claimed quote,
we pulled one kid from the program who was so
bruised and scarred he looked like he'd been at Auschwitz.
When another kid tried to run away, Cardsano got in

(01:14:15):
a helicopter, found him, flew him up to the top
of a mesa and slugged him in the gut a
couple times.

Speaker 2 (01:14:23):
Steve, Yeah, I mean being chased down by a helicopter
is fucking terrifying enough.

Speaker 1 (01:14:29):
But ye, yeah, then being beaten up on top of
a mountain by Steve Martana.

Speaker 2 (01:14:35):
Yeah, that's that's like. And and yes, slugging in this
like becking cause organ dam Yes, like this is yeah, And.

Speaker 1 (01:14:43):
It's one of those things. Very rarely are the comparisons
to like concentration camp and mates valid. But you have
children starved to death in these programs, right, Like these
are like kids who are when they when their bodies
come back from the coroner, like are so skited, like
thin you can see like their hip bones, you know,
like the children are getting emaciated to a terminal degree

(01:15:06):
in these programs. So like, I don't know how appropriate
you want to call the comparison, but we are not
talking about like just slightly hoping.

Speaker 3 (01:15:13):
They are prison camps.

Speaker 2 (01:15:15):
You know, they are prison camps. Yeah, people, the kids
are treated there as badly, you know, in many cases
as people in prisons.

Speaker 1 (01:15:22):
Yes, yes, yeah, that's I think a much better comparison.

Speaker 6 (01:15:25):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:15:25):
Steve at this point had a wife and four children.
In the documentary Hell Camp, his ex wife claims that
he told them the money he made from the business
was all being reinvested into it, and so the money
lived on a tight but the family lived on a
tight budget while Steve was doing shit like renting Lamborghinis.
He was also cheating constantly, which got tied up into
the business because at one point he started cheating on

(01:15:47):
his wife with the parent of one of his students.
He then talked this parent into loaning him a visa
gold card and charging sixty five thousand dollars to it
before she realized what was happening. Z Steve Montana. Baby,
it's a classic Steve Montana caper.

Speaker 2 (01:16:03):
Yeah, I mean this is such a I don't know,
like he's so he lives, he lives in a mansion
and is renting Lamborghini's but is telling his children, we don't.

Speaker 1 (01:16:14):
Have to have money for you. Yeah, it's got all
go back into the business. Now, excuse me while I
start a secret family with this lady's credit card. Steve Montana.
Well that's all for part one. How are you feeling, Marra?

Speaker 2 (01:16:33):
Oh yeah, I I I want to slug this guy.

Speaker 3 (01:16:38):
I mean he's dead, but I still want to slug him.

Speaker 1 (01:16:41):
I want to slug Steve Montana again. I would like
to hang out with Montana. Steve Montana.

Speaker 3 (01:16:46):
Steve Montana.

Speaker 2 (01:16:47):
Steve seems like he would, you know, he'd have that
sort of like like Sam Elliott voice.

Speaker 1 (01:16:52):
Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely, that's that's who I'm casting to
play Montana Steve when my specscript.

Speaker 2 (01:16:59):
Yeah, I would either Sam, Sam Elliott, maybe Jeff Bridges
if you can get one of those long beards going again.
Yeah yeah, so yeah, I I uh.

Speaker 1 (01:17:09):
Jerse j already doing some show. Oh and it's a
show that's actually involves a very sketchy writer. So yeah,
this is this is great. We could just could just
move him right over to my program.

Speaker 3 (01:17:19):
So where is Steve? What is what is Steve Steve
Montana's actual real name.

Speaker 1 (01:17:24):
Uh, it's Steve Carano.

Speaker 2 (01:17:26):
Steve Cartasana. Okay, where is this guy buried? I'm not
going to do anything, you know, just.

Speaker 1 (01:17:31):
Figure that out for part two, Mara, when we come back,
I will let you know where Steve Cartersano's grave is located. Unfortunately,
I'm pretty sure it's Oklahoma. So is that worth the vengeance?

Speaker 3 (01:17:42):
I mean yeah, it's a bit out of the way.

Speaker 1 (01:17:45):
So so out of the way of everything. That's the
Oklahoma state motto.

Speaker 4 (01:17:52):
Is there anything.

Speaker 2 (01:17:55):
Let's see I I've been I've been right. Some articles
for The Guardian recently about psychology. I wrote one recently
about why we find people annoying. I'm both an annoyed
and annoying person, so that was very fun for me
to write.

Speaker 3 (01:18:13):
I'm also working a lot in the audiobook world.

Speaker 2 (01:18:15):
These days, and if you go to libro dot fm
and look at my name, you can find a lot
of really awesome books that I have narrated awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:18:22):
So go to Libra dot com. Look up Mara, look
up Libram Wonderful, Libra dot f f Jesus Christ. I
almost fucked it up, look up maris excellent book Where
Am I Now? True stories of girlhood and accidental fame,
and most importantly, slash all of the tires in the
parking lot. You know, have a good day. Everybody.

Speaker 4 (01:18:48):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia
dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your pot. Behind the
Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every Wednesday
and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot com slash

(01:19:09):
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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Part One: The Inventor of Those 'Troubled Teen' Wilderness Camps Where They Kill Kids