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Our Ruined Lives with World Wide Wallace - Ep 32
299 Plays5 years ago
In the episode of Our Ruined Lives, we talk with Trevor Wallace, a documentary filmmaker and Vice President of Research and Education at the Explorers Club. He tells us a harrowing story of an where he traveled to Tanzania for a project in association with Jane Goodall #TriggerWarning4David. We talk about the filmmaking process, the Explorer’s Club, Trevor’s social media content, and his passion for archaeology.
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Guest:
- Instagram: @worldwidewallace
- Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/trevor.wallace.395
- Website: www.theworldwidewallace.com
- Explorers Club Website: https://www.explorers.org/
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- Email: alifeinruinspodcast@gmail.com
- Instagram: @alifeinruinspodcast
- Facebook: @alifeinruinspodcast
- Twitter: @alifeinruinspod
- Website: www.alifeinruins.com
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Overview
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:10
Speaker
Welcome to episode 32 of a life and ruins podcast where we investigate the careers of those living life and ruins. I'm your host Carlton Gover. And I am joined by my co-host as always, David Ian Howe and Conan O'John. And tonight we are interviewing Trevor Wallace. Very excited to have him on tonight. Who is a documentary filmmaker and the vice president of research and education at the explorers club. Trevor, thank you so much for joining us tonight. How are you doing?
00:00:36
Speaker
I'm doing excellent. I've been really looking forward to this. Thanks so much for inviting me guys. And yeah, I'm really excited to share about like past expeditions and talk more.
Trevor Wallace's Filmmaking Journey
00:00:46
Speaker
We've been really stoked to have you on. One thing we really were interested about is your, like your, your film experience that seems to be your, your forte. And the three of us in, you know, grad school, we're kind of like really interested in doing like the media side of archeology, but there's no courses in that. And everyone kind of tells you just, I guess, do film school. Cause that's like theological.
00:01:10
Speaker
option that you see posted around college, but like that doesn't ever seem like a tangible thing for us. So can you tell us about how you got into that? Yeah. I mean, a lot of people ask me sort of, where's my home base and like, what is my current job? And I think that when you combine two things as unstable as archaeology and in documentary filmmaking, you kind of get like the vagabond lifestyle that I have, which is probably not all that different to when you're like a grad student on and off archaeological expeditions, but yeah.
00:01:39
Speaker
I've been able to piece it together through being a sponsored artist through the New York Foundation for the Arts. So I've kind of raised money to really focus on this project, Frozen Corpses Golden Treasures, which is this documentary miniseries. But it wasn't really quite the typical route. Like I didn't go to film school. I did study film in undergrad. And since I went to Sarah Lawrence College, where you're really kind of like choose your own adventure, I was able to make
00:02:04
Speaker
my own major in social and environmental documentary. And I was that really annoying research assistant of all my professors who took like three of their classes and I took a lot of doc classes, a lot of human geography classes, a lot of anthropology classes and just started shooting as soon as I could. And I think a lot of the old guard would tell you, you know, oh, you have to kind of build your way up working as, you know, production assistant, camera assistant.
00:02:30
Speaker
within the film world. For me, I wanted, you know, where cameras now are so accessible, where you can edit off your laptop, getting the storytelling skills is much more accessible than it ever was before. The only problem is that it's also a lot more competitive. I mean, everyone now is a content creator, whatever you want to call it. So it's really just persistence in my experience so far.
00:02:56
Speaker
I imagine that's a game changer. I didn't think about that because yeah, like everyone's camera is like 4k now and you can just get a mic and go. Yeah. I mean, and there's so many resources online. I mean, so I've been editing for, you know, the past 10 years, everything from, you know, promo videos for like,
00:03:14
Speaker
you know health tech startups to videos for the explorers club where i get to work with you know nasa footage but through all of it i've basically taught myself i mean i think in in school what i think is most useful are not actually the technical skills but
00:03:30
Speaker
the storytelling skills
The Art of Storytelling in Film
00:03:31
Speaker
of how do you build an arc? How do you develop characters? Because really we live in a world with so many fascinating subjects and you'll find a lot of documentarians who've put 10, 15 years into a subject, but it's really getting that story there, you know, finding a way that'll appeal to a broader audience, connect to a human story that's going to get that film made. And that's been my goal.
Life-Changing Tanzania Experience
00:03:53
Speaker
So how did this journey of you becoming a documentary filmmaker start?
00:03:57
Speaker
Well, it really started when I was like a weird little kid in my backyard, just sort of inventing ancient pasts, getting inspired by things like Indiana Jones and National Geographic. But it really wasn't in the cards for me to travel and see any of these places. But then my mom, single mom, who really hustled to try to create opportunities for me, found an opportunity to
00:04:23
Speaker
go to Tanzania with the Jane Goodall Foundation. And it was really an experience that changed my life. Yeah, there you go again, David. There you go, man.
00:04:40
Speaker
We all know I'm not saying that David hates Jane Goodall, but he hates Jane Goodall. So you went to Tanzania, right on this Jane Goodall fellowship or grant scholarship.
00:04:54
Speaker
Yeah, it was kind of an exchange. I worked as a volunteer in the Oakland Zoo. It was like a zoo camp thing. My camp counselor name was Rhino, and I suffered through preschoolers for a couple of weeks, and then I was able to go to East Africa. It was just an incredible experience that opened my eyes. I had a really crummy little camera. I was not
00:05:18
Speaker
making anything noteworthy, but it was the first time to be in a place where my eyes were really open. And, you know, there was a series of experiences there, one of them being held up by bandits and having my ribs broken with a club that was like a shock as well. It was a shock to my whole worldview. And I thought, wow, this is incredibly different. This is a whole side of humanity in existence that I wasn't aware of. And I wanted more of it.
00:05:45
Speaker
And I wanted to bring the story to other people, sort of these vivid realities. And I had a lot of kind of idealistic goals early on about how film could transform our perspective on the world and kind of make the world a better place. And I still kind of hold...
00:06:05
Speaker
parts of that close to me. And I think that film can be a vehicle for change. But I think, you know, more and more it's been trying to tell stories that just, you know, probe people to ask more questions about, you know, and now I'm looking more into ancient cultures. And what I think is you find so often these tropes about, you know, the ancient world and saying, oh, there really weren't that different from us.
00:06:28
Speaker
But for me, that's boring and actually not true. Like what I find fascinating is how different ancient cultures were and how history is not linear and how societies collapse and rebuild and dissipate and how actually the difference is what's more interesting and being able to value difference, different opinions, different perspectives, different whole ways of life that happened for thousands of years. That's worth telling stories about rather than
00:06:56
Speaker
We are all one kind of truism. Yeah. I see Carlton has his hand raised. I think he wants to unpack the same thing you just said.
00:07:06
Speaker
I want to definitely start off by saying like that answer to your intrigue in human history and really exploring that, but we kind of glossed over very serious. Well, I mean, for our listeners, this isn't the first time we've talked to Trevor, but you were like 14, 15 years old when he did that trip to Tanzania.
00:07:27
Speaker
Yeah, I was a scared little acne ridden braces wearing pipsqueak. You know, wanted to experience Africa and I had all these preconceived notions and yeah, getting held up by gunpoint and my ribs broken with a club was a was a wake up call in more ways than one. And that club was yours, wasn't it?
00:07:48
Speaker
It wasn't mine, it was somebody in our groups and I should laugh, but it's just kind of, you know, these people were desperate and they had come with guns in the middle of the night and we were staying under Mt. Kilimanjaro and we heard, you know, bangs and, you know, actually, funnily enough, I was in a
00:08:06
Speaker
there were some girls in our camp and I was trying to, you know, do my best at talking them up. I was in their hotel rooms when we were attacked and they had been going sort of bungalow to bungalow and were taking everything they could, including people's shoes. And one of the things they took with someone else was a Maasai club that we had got at one of our visits to a Maasai Boma the week before. And yeah, they just, they,
00:08:32
Speaker
They banged on our door and we thought, oh, maybe they were going to explain the noises we heard earlier, which were like shotgun shots. We were like, oh, maybe it was a door slam. It's very naive. And then we opened the door and four guys with guns and clubs and machetes ran in and they dragged our guide in and they had hit him in the shins and he was bleeding and tied up in his underwear. And yeah, they started yelling for
00:08:56
Speaker
Money and cameras and one of the one of the girls in the room was turned arguing with him for her memory card out of her camera
00:09:04
Speaker
and he just smacked her. And I wasn't gonna do anything, but I just, my gut reaction was to stand up from the bed I was sitting on. And then I just got thrown back down. And I almost don't even really remember being hit because I got hit and then this gun was pressed against my head. And they were like, you know, just speaking in Swahili deciding what they were gonna do. And then eventually just,
00:09:28
Speaker
Thankfully bailed and we untied our guide and you know, eventually the police came but yeah, it was a made me kind of value a lot more in life and it was definitely a turning point for me. Geez. Yeah, that's that's super intense. So your mom, you know, works hard to get you this extra opportunity and then you come home with some broken ribs. How did she kind of react to that situation?
00:09:54
Speaker
You went on to like a Jane Goodall fellowship and had almost a Diane Fosse experience. Yeah, ironic that. She was definitely freaked out. And I think especially the aftermath after we got robbed, the, the, the guides, you know, and they were in our, their twenties at that point.
00:10:09
Speaker
just sort of like didn't really know what to do we got relocated to a ymca we're able to call our parents and my mom said just you know be safe are you okay don't go to the hospital whatever you do just come straight back home if you can handle it i said you know my my ribs hurt and i can't
00:10:27
Speaker
Difficult to breathe, but I think I can make it but then they ended up bringing me to the hospital anyways because I was they brought me to the police station because I'd drawn a lot of the when the police came and questioned us I ended up drawing a lot of the guys that I could have remembered and One of their girls in our group insisted on being brought to the hospital So they brought us both out because it was kind of like a two-stop trip So I got to see a hospital which was shocking you know bloody gurneys and just
00:10:57
Speaker
Really intense stuff, you know massive lines, you know people with sick kids and there was that whole experience then after that they took me to the police station and they separated me from the group leader who You know was essentially saying didn't we don't want to?
00:11:12
Speaker
the group leader to influence him and then took me down this hallway, which at that point it was just surreal. I hadn't slept at all. And there were like guys trying to grab me out of bars and the police chief was hitting their arms away with a stick. And then there was just a dirt courtyard with 12 guys lined up. And I had thought it would be like a two way mirror, but they were just standing right there. And I remember I walked in front of them and I saw one of the guys
00:11:40
Speaker
And I guess they had just picked him up in the market cause they had one, they tried to immediately flip one of the cameras that they had stolen and he fit the description of one of my drawings. I just remember he was this young kid, like not much older than me and terrified. And you know, it was haunting to me, but it was also a big reality check of, you know, somebody living a parallel life that just didn't have the luck that I did. That's super, super intense. And I know you had kind of mentioned this before.
00:12:09
Speaker
And I, and when we talked before, you said you kind of wanted to bring in these, these raw elements of life that you don't really see. Is that kind of how this, this ultimately like affected your career? Is that you like wanted to film these things as you saw them when you were super young?
Philosophy and Techniques in Documentary Filmmaking
00:12:30
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think like it was a wake up call in a lot of ways. And I think it just made me want to experience something different. I think, you know,
00:12:38
Speaker
Growing up in the US you kind of see the same things on TV and you kind of have this number one culture and you know that this kind of view of historical development that we're at the pinnacle of all of this and you know and more and more now you see all these sort of ideas of America first and whatnot and it just
00:12:56
Speaker
It made me want to search for truth, what really was, because that was the moment where everything that I had grown up with seemed like it was only telling half the story. And so that's what really drew me to the documentary, was searching for a truth. And I think that there's a lot of truths to be found in the past, in the ancient past especially. And I think that 90% of human history more was prehistory.
00:13:24
Speaker
So to understand who we are, the truth of who we are, looking into the past is so important. I think it's safe to say Jane Goodall set you up, man. Jesus Christ. I mean, you really got it in for, you can't, uh, you know, I see where you're going with that, Dave. Real, real Carole Baskin. She's a wonderful woman and we will not bring it up again, will we guys?
00:13:51
Speaker
No, we absolutely will. No doubt about that. But you had this experience when you were a teenager and you're building upon your resume for college. I'm trying to think. You went to undergraduate. I forget the location off the top of my head. But was it your master's or your undergrad that was in educational filmmaking?
00:14:14
Speaker
So I did my undergrad at Sarah Lawrence, which was in New York. And one of the reasons I wanted to go there was because I could kind of do this like mix match of my studies. Like it's based on the Oxford tutorial system. So I was taking all different types of classes during our core requirements. And then I ended up doing my master's in education. When I was a teacher, I did the program Teach for America.
00:14:37
Speaker
Which is actually it was more of a detour in my life in a lot of ways like I had gotten into Columbia journalism school and their specific documentary program But then my mom actually got sick So my backup plan was to be as close to her as I possibly could
00:14:52
Speaker
and actually become a teacher. And I could teach right near the assisted living spot where she was at. And it ended up being an amazing way to really hone my storytelling. I was teaching seventh and eighth graders who are pretty much the hardest audience you'll ever get.
00:15:08
Speaker
like 13, 14 year olds and you know I was teaching history. I taught geography, world history. I ended up teaching art my second year but integrating social sciences into that and then I taught you know I integrated video into that as well and then after that just last year I did teach a semester class in documentary for St. Lawrence College which is where I did undergrad.
00:15:30
Speaker
But yeah, education has always been a big piece of what I do. And I think of my films as, you know, the audience is a broader classroom. And I wanted to bridge a gap between academia, between the research world and the public and young people especially.
00:15:46
Speaker
We super appreciate you doing that. And I think, you know, because we've done so much, all of us together collectively have done so much school and watched these anthropology, archaeology documentaries, and they're just so, they're so hit or miss these days. You either have like these super exciting kind of
00:16:07
Speaker
anthropological documentaries that are documenting people's lives, or you have these super dry, not really entertaining archaeology videos about the past where even I, who was super interested in archaeology, was like snoozing off. So I'm glad that there's people who are trying to approach that like you are doing.
00:16:29
Speaker
And, you know, I don't have the perfect formula for that yet, but that is definitely the goal because anyone who's been on an archaeological dig, you know, or have done ethnographic fieldwork in the field, you know how exciting it is, you know, these moments. But it takes a long time to achieve and capture those moments and to tell that story. And that's why I think a lot of the networks sometimes struggle with it is because, you know, when you parachute in with the crew after a big discovery has been made and you ask the researcher
00:16:59
Speaker
or the PI like, Oh, what happened here? And then, Oh, we, you know, we uncovered the sarcophagus and they try to recreate that moment. It's just fake. And then to get around that, you have a lot of different networks, whether it be history or others that, you know, they'll, they'll cook up red herrings, you know, they'll, they'll go for the easy, the easy route, which, you know, is the quick and dirty way of dropping some alien references or,
00:17:24
Speaker
cryptoids you know bigfoot maybe giants all the common suspects which I really try to avoid like the plague because I've tried to build a rapport with archaeologists over years so they trust to show me things that they would never show a crew so I've seen and been able to participate in things that you know that the networks or other production companies just don't get access to.
00:17:47
Speaker
And on that note, this segment, like the history channel, should be history. We'll catch you in segment two, and we're going to talk about what is the Explorers Club, and we'll continue that conversation with Trevor Wallace.
Role and Mission of the Explorers Club
00:18:00
Speaker
Welcome back to episode 32 of a Life in Ruins podcast. We are interviewing Trevor Wallace, who is a documentary filmmaker and vice president of research and education at the Explorers Club.
00:18:10
Speaker
And because I just mentioned that if you don't mind talking about and explaining to us what the explorers club is. Yeah. So at no point when I first stepped into the explorers club headquarters when I was 18, but I think, you know, I would become a vice president of this organization. Like I remember I first had gotten a scholarship to go to Antarctica with this amazing program called students on ice.
00:18:38
Speaker
which has nothing to do with ice skating. It's a cool program that brings youth from all around the world to the polar regions to learn about climate change. And the founder of that, Jeff Green, is an Explorers Club member and he saw a little film I made and then he brought me to Explorers Club headquarters to show it.
00:19:01
Speaker
And it's on the Upper East Side of New York City, and it's this Jacobian mansion of six and a half floors just full of exploration history. So you have the globe that Thor Heyerdahl planned his Kon-Tiki expedition on. You have dog sleds that were first to the North Pole. You have Explorers Club flags that were on every Apollo mission.
00:19:25
Speaker
And you really are just, you know, you have this whole history and legacy of exploration, but also 3,500 active members who are scientists doing, you know, breaking research all around the world. So I thought, you know, one of my main goals is to try to become a part of this club. And, you know, going into college, a lot of the things, you know, research projects, grants that I was applying to were insights of trying to join this club.
00:19:53
Speaker
And it's really a club that's dedicated to scientific exploration. So it does have a reflexive and introspective look on what it means to be an explorer. Obviously that has a lot of colonial baggage to it when you think about people like, you know, say Magellan or Columbus or, you know, kind of
00:20:12
Speaker
dictionary explorers, so to speak. But in the identity of the Explorers Club, and, you know, different members will have different views, but in my opinion, you know, the first explorers were the, you know, Polynesian wayfinders. They were the paleo-inuit that crossed through the polar regions. They were the people who used their curiosity to push to new places and to adapt and understand and create new knowledge. And so really in the 21st century,
00:20:40
Speaker
Like, yeah, and it's, you know, everyone, you might ask other Explorers Club members, and there's a, you know, average age in the 60s, so you have a lot of people from different generations. But there's, you know, most new members are female. You know, I'm part of a diversity, equity and inclusion committee that has been looking into the history of some of our members and trying to, you know, reconcile a lot of the things that
00:21:04
Speaker
For example, Teddy Roosevelt was one of our members, and it's a complex history. Without Teddy Roosevelt, we wouldn't have a lot of national parks. We wouldn't have national parks with his 1908 antiquities act, but in the same vein, he was shooting some of these endangered rhinos and stuff and other things. So it's a legacy that each member is dealing with.
00:21:29
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's super interesting, especially in this day and age that you're like really cognizant of that. You know, like definitely, especially with Roosevelt, he's got a definitely a colorful, colorful history or yet colorful to say the least. Yeah. I'd say color. He's an interesting man in many, many regards and you know, time and or history as
00:21:51
Speaker
looked at them in a multitude of perspectives. But Trevor, do you think the three of us are Explorers Club material?
00:21:59
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people, absolutely, like without hesitation, I think that all of you have been doing field work, you're contributing knowledge. So a lot of people think, oh yeah, because the Explorers Club has these famous firsts, like first to the top of Mount Everest that you need to be some kind of mountaineer or extreme endurance athlete. That's not really the case. More so your scientific credentials mean the most, which I think is cool. There's not a lot of clubs or organizations where like,
00:22:28
Speaker
the people we're most looked up to are the people who are scientists. But it's about knowledge. There are some aspects that separate us from, say, NSF, which are purely science and a lot of lab work. With Explorers Club Expedition, usually most of it is out in the field and doing adventurous things. But all of it is in the pursuit of knowledge, which is not necessarily the introspective knowledge you get from
00:22:55
Speaker
you know, paddling a boat around the world, but sort of contributing to our knowledge and understanding of the world around us. And that includes conservation, that includes new kind of pillars of our mission, which is, you know, going beyond what have been some of the goals of members in the past.
00:23:11
Speaker
Yeah. You've been able to meet a few astronauts through your membership, correct? Yeah, it was really cool. So, Gino Kaspari and I, Dr. Kaspari, I should say, got the new Explore of the Year award in 2018 when we had first documented Tunuk-1, which is this Scythian Korgon in southern Siberia. And one of the other awardees was Captain Jim Lovell, who was on Apollo 13. So, that was pretty incredible.
00:23:41
Speaker
gravity in the situation when you met him. I did not. I was almost tempted to say to ask him if like Houston, we have a problem, but uh, slow hanging weight. You gotta go for it. Some flashbacks for him.
00:23:58
Speaker
Yeah, he's, you know, out of all the astronauts, astronauts are actually a lot of the guys who've done the most impressive things, you know, you know, women, all of these explorers that you meet, you know, I've met Sylvia Earle, you know, Jane Goodall's also a member, she mentioned.
00:24:16
Speaker
David wants out. He does a lot of part of it. Yeah, he's done. But the people have done the most are the most humble. And even Jim Lovell, he shared that he had failed his physical multiple times. He was not some specimen in terms of
00:24:36
Speaker
the best of the best astronauts. He said that it was really his persistence that put him above. And in that whole situation where he saved his crew members' lives, it was really his mental fortitude. And he was a really cool guy to meet.
00:24:49
Speaker
Um, I really love that there's these kind of, as you had mentioned, there's these two sources of fun, these two big sources of funding. You kind of see, you know, you got this NSF really science based stuff, but you also have this explorers club thing, which is super cool because you need, you need both of those things to take science and any sort of discipline further. You know, you, you need the people who are doing all the lab work and,
00:25:17
Speaker
you know, putting in all this scientific, you know, lots of data crunching stuff like that. But you also need people who are willing to push the envelope and take those next steps. And I love that you guys are supplying that stuff and kind of building off of that. Do you guys have any specific like bases or locations that you guys kind of operate out of at this point?
00:25:40
Speaker
Yeah, so the headquarters is in New York City, as I mentioned, the Upper East Side, but there are 35 chapters worldwide. There are 13 international chapters, I believe, and some are more active than other ones. And then you have them all over the US. There's a really active Southern California chapter. The DC chapter is really involved. There's a lot of overlap with NASA, as well as National Geographic. But more and more, the club is also becoming a virtual space.
00:26:09
Speaker
So in my position as vice president of research and education, one of the things that I've been doing is connecting explorers to classrooms and trying to provide opportunities for people who are doing field research to talk to K through eight kids to high schools around the country. And then a lot of my job is providing these grant opportunities. So we have seven different grant programs.
Explorers Club Initiatives and Opportunities
00:26:35
Speaker
that we support over 100 explorers every year actually going out into the field. And just recently, we announced a partnership with Discovery Channel, which is offering us a million dollars a year for grants. And I put together the application, I put together a really solid committee, mostly a PhDs from various field disciplines.
00:26:56
Speaker
to take in applications. And it's been really amazing. We just greenlit five projects amounting to $250,000. Some really cool stuff. But I really hope that anyone listening to this podcast will go to explorers.org, check out the pre-application, feel free to reach out to me. Because, you know, I think that there are more amazing projects to come. And I think that the flexibility of Explorers Club funding and the openness to storytelling is something that makes this program pretty unique.
00:27:25
Speaker
Speaking of storytelling, uh, that's an amazing segue. Continue, David. Sorry. I was like, cool. Uh, so yeah, speaking of storytelling, uh, most of our audience is familiar with our ramblings of how archeology operates. So in your experience, like how does production operate? So I've been a PA before on a set.
00:27:53
Speaker
It was like a commercial for the Blu-ray release of Jumanji 2, real riveting. But like, how does it work in an archaeological setting? Like, I'm sure it's way different. Yeah. I mean, I think that for the first part, a lot of, and this is when I taught this semester-long course at Sarah Lawrence College, when you're documenting filmmaker, a lot
00:28:16
Speaker
has to do with the work you do without a camera. And I think that with kind of unlimited memory cards and filling up hard drives, there's a real risk of overshooting, of running around with a camera, putting a camera in people's face all the time without really an idea of what you want to do. And I think it's strange for people as well when they hear that my starting point is a lot of research and then writing a treatment.
00:28:43
Speaker
Like I kind of envision the story arc ahead of time, you know, oftentimes with three acts with people as characters. But then the interesting thing about documentary is that you have to be flexible and you have to keep your eyes open. And as things turn and change, that's where you have to be mutable to the subject matter. So archaeological storytelling is very different because it's in some ways, it's almost like wildlife filmmaking. It's a lot of sit and wait.
00:29:11
Speaker
And you don't know when something interesting is going to be found. You don't know exactly what a lot of things are when you're looking at them at first. I mean, in our field site in Siberia, like, you know, even just the soil layers, incredibly difficult to read because of this sole flexion of like the freezing and thawing of the
00:29:31
Speaker
the soil makes it kind of ripple so like what we're even looking at when we find an artifact what time period is it coming from you know asking people questions I mean a lot of time it's like just having the archaeologists be my friends so like they feel comfortable with me asking them questions as things are happening you know and then also like I dug a quite a bit as well because one I was out there for five months you know each each field campaign since 2017 and
00:29:59
Speaker
And so I'm not just going to stand around with a camera like they oftentimes I do like Tachka or like a wheelbarrow work because I could keep my head up and see if there were finds being made on other parts of the site. But I think really actually understanding how it's working helped me start to build these narrative arcs and try to see where there are opportunities of storytelling there.
00:30:22
Speaker
So it seems like there's a lot of uncertainty on how this final product is going to come out. How do casting agencies or people who you pitch this idea to, how do they kind of handle that?
00:30:36
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, producers are tough. You need to find one that you really trust. And it took me years to bring on the executive producer, Macario Sarsoso, who's worked for Science Channel and Discovery and Nat Geo.
00:30:53
Speaker
And speaking with them, it was more like me interviewing them than feeling like the other way around. And I think for archaeologists and researchers, I think that should be your attitude as well. A lot of people sometimes are taken aback when a producer approaches them, they feel like very flattered. But at the end of the day, producers are a dime a dozen.
00:31:16
Speaker
And I hope I'm not hurting anyone's feelings out there. There's people who do their job very well. But researchers who are compelling on camera and can speak well to camera, can explain what they're doing and making it relevant to a broad audience are much more rare than people who can put together a line budget, a production schedule, and do all these things.
00:31:38
Speaker
So it's important to protect yourself as a researcher and know your value and not, you know, oftentimes they do these things like recorded skype's, which I've had many, you know, opportunities to do these things. People see you and they say, Oh, would you be on camera too? And I've learned a lot through doing them, but, you know,
00:31:57
Speaker
They do it in a bit of a shady way that I would never do with the people that I work with. And I hesitate sometimes. I would never call these people my subjects when, in a way, they are. But it's like they just kind of put it in a black box. You do these recorded skipes. You don't really know how they go. They don't know how they edit it. And it goes off to a network to get greenlit.
00:32:18
Speaker
And with my sponsorship through New York Foundation for the Arts, it kind of cut me loose from a lot of those typical steps that you have to take. But in working with a lot of different explorers who've had shows, when they learn over time, you want to be helping writing this stuff. You want to get producer credits. You want to take control of the narrative too, and not just be quote unquote talent, because it can really make you feel burned. And I think that maybe you can get a show
00:32:47
Speaker
in the short term where you can do something and their production schedules are super quick like when you know i'm talking with networks now when they're going to development on a show it's two three weeks max like that's a long shoot. Where you know i'm talking about five months and they laugh but for me it's like. What are you gonna that's why they end up having to make the stuff up because they don't have the money the time of the patients for the ability a lot of ways it's like they're not intentions aren't always bad.
00:33:16
Speaker
usually not at all. But they just don't have the time to be there when real discoveries are made, when real things are actually happening, so they have to make them up. And you guys know that from watching shows. You know what that looks like and sounds like. Yeah.
00:33:30
Speaker
Yeah, I struggle every time I like, if I need, this is going to sound bad. When I haven't totally prepped for a class, I need some filler stuff. And I immediately look, start looking for documentaries to teach my kids in my stead. And I struggle a lot of times trying to find something that, that accurately represents the science rather than just kind of the flashy business and some of those imaginative interpretations of what's going on at a site.
00:33:55
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think in a lot of ways, like imagination is good, creativity is good, especially when you're talking about prehistory.
Authenticity in Archaeological Storytelling
00:34:04
Speaker
A lot of it is imagining what could have happened, but you have to be honest with what is conjecture. You know, like I believe in science and I believe in the scientific method and in the way that people are trying to make real discoveries.
00:34:19
Speaker
And I think in a lot of ways, the truth is a lot cooler than the stuff that they make up to sell these shows. But it's like it's a constant struggle because this is not the typical route that you take. I mean, for archaeologists listening, I think it's valuable to have representation. I think it's valuable to have an agent if you can. It's valuable to get practice.
00:34:41
Speaker
But at the end of the day, what I'm trying to do is kind of break the mold with what is being done. And we'll see. It's been a good run so far. We had an article in NetGeo published yesterday that had some of my photos, which was cool. Hold on. What article was that? It was a cool one. It was about the trauma. So they've been analyzing the skeletons. There have been 87 skeletons that were excavated. Title of the article is Ancient Empire Collapse Seen in Violent Injuries in Nomad Graveyard.
00:35:10
Speaker
So, in our site, in the southern periphery, we had this big Scythian corygon, this big burial mound. In 2018, we found that it actually had all these secondary structures that dated to different time periods. It was another 100 meters south, so the main corygon is over 110 meters diameter.
00:35:34
Speaker
And then there was a southern burial field that we're just pulling out all these skeletons, various different artifacts, but they were clearly later, second to fourth century AD. And we just found widespread violence, like, you know, the anthropologists and Dr. Kaspar will tell you better, but
00:35:52
Speaker
they can say it was, you know, upwards of 30% of the people had these perimortum traumas. So chop marks, puncture wounds, a lot of these little slices, you know, evidence of scalpings, really strange stuff as well. Like a lot of the heads were put back. So we had the cervical vertebrae that was cut, but then the skull was like in situ back where. So, you know, it was just sort of strange things. We're just beginning to understand now.
00:36:20
Speaker
And the first paper came out from the Journal of American Anthropology. And then, yeah, Nat Geo picked it up, did some interviews, and had some photos published, which was cool. So we're going to put our heads back together after you just blew our minds. And we'll catch you on the third segment of our interview with episode 32 of A Life from a Podcast with Trevor Wallace.
Science Communication and Live Drawing Sessions
00:36:45
Speaker
That was a struggle. Welcome back to Life and Ruins podcast episode 32. We're still here with our boy Trevor Wallace. Trevor, you're not just documenting some of these archaeological excavations, but you also have participated in a couple of yourself. And could you please tell our listeners about those experiences real briefly?
00:37:03
Speaker
Oh, yeah, I have participated. I'll do whatever they say. Not usually doing anything too technical. Move this rock, you know, take this wheelbarrow there, but I'm happy to do it. And I'm such a nerd for all this stuff. I enjoy it immensely. I've been on a couple surveys, been able to take some drone photos of new sites, things that look like
00:37:23
Speaker
you know, maybe Bronze Age burials on these mountain tops and learned a little bit about photogrammetry, how the 3D models are made. And it really helps me. It helps me with documenting what's going on. I love being in the anthropology field lab.
00:37:40
Speaker
and seeing the bones being sorted, helping take some of those photos as well. I've taken a lot of photos with the artifacts and some of the ones that were published and some of the ones that are just for reports with the scale and all that. So I've really enjoyed it. I have nothing to compare it to, but I've heard that our site is pretty difficult because of the groundwater, the mosquitoes. It's living in a tent for four plus months at a time.
00:38:08
Speaker
It's not similar to some of the friends I have who've excavated in like Roman villas and stuff and have, you know, nice Piedmont day wines and spaghetti dinners. I was going to say the excavations there are overrated, but the food part does sound pretty nice at night.
00:38:24
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, but I think I will say that like I really enjoyed, you know, just the community of people involved in archaeology and the Russians especially has just been what sustained me over these years. You make really, really strong friendships and everyone's working towards these hard goals. And I mean, last fall we dug into October and it was pretty brutal.
00:38:47
Speaker
You know, we all moved into one tent. It was sub-zero temperatures. It was breaking through ice. It was at that point for some people that had been on site for like six months and it was hard. But I feel like that's what, that's like the thirst for adventure, that feeling of being out there and really going for it that makes it feel worthy of the legacy of, you know, the Explorers Club and what we're really trying to do. I'm proud. I'm going back. They can't keep me away.
00:39:16
Speaker
That's gnarly dude. That's absolutely gnarly. So we've kind of talked to through the course, this entire podcast that you have this like deep desire in science communication and accurately and through precision representing kind of the nature of scientific inquiry. How is that like translated towards your social media? Cause you're pretty prominent on Instagram especially. And I kind of just wanted to talk a little bit more succinctly about
00:39:44
Speaker
your efforts in science communication in general and just public outreach. Yeah, I mean, I think Instagram is a good way. It's been a useful tool in reaching a broad audience of people who want to know what these questions are. I mean, I think empowering people to know what the debates are and to feel like, oh, I actually know what scientists are talking about, because unfortunately,
00:40:08
Speaker
Every day person, you know, might not be able to access that JSTOR article and like a lot of the guards guardrails that are around this knowledge are not that easy to access so it's a lot simpler to read Graham Hancock or something like that than it is to
00:40:23
Speaker
read a peer-reviewed journal but i've had a lot of really cool experiences you know i post a lot of the photos and stills and videos from siberia but wherever i go i try to delve into the history a little bit and and try to take time to make sure it's accurate and i do these live drawing sessions which i started during lockdowns which is just a way to kind of express
00:40:48
Speaker
creativity at the same time as an interest with the past. So using the themes of my archaeological work, of, you know, different archaeological cultures relevant to that, other ones in the places that I might be at that time, to do drawings. And I used to be an art teacher, so I teach a couple, you know, I do my archaeo Bob Ross thing, similar to some of
00:41:11
Speaker
David's, uh, you know, paleo Bob, uh, cave paintings, which I love. So I channel that, but I mean, I get like, there was a little girl from South Africa who like, yo, yeah, we should, I'm taking you up on it. Uh, I'll have to up my costume game, but, um, yeah, I mean, like,
00:41:35
Speaker
But yeah, there was this little girl from South Africa who sent me these messages saying how much she enjoyed the drawing sessions. I mean, of course, everyone, she showed me this rock. What is this rock? I'm sure you guys have gotten photos of people online. What is this stone?
00:41:58
Speaker
I just get people who hit me up asking to help them find treasure in Colorado. Like they're just like, where do I find the gold? And I'm like, dude, if I knew I wouldn't be doing this as a career, the forest, then apparently they found that. Yeah.
00:42:13
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I mean, there's people from all over who who have tuned in, and that's what I love about it as well. It's like I don't have a massive following, but I do have people from all over the world to come together. And I hope to share things that are based in real research and to amplify the work of my collaborators, you know, the Russians from the Russian Institute of Material Culture, from the Institute of Burn and Dr. Kaspari and some of the future collaborations I plan to have.
00:42:40
Speaker
So you are currently in Hawaii right now having a real hard life living out there and you just did a live drawing session. Do you mind explaining kind of inspiration for that and what you ultimately ended up doing?
00:42:53
Speaker
Yeah. So like I said, sometimes I'll just do a drawing session that's based in the place I'm at. And, you know, I start super basic since I'm not a expert in Hawaiian history or prehistory, but I have been in lockdown. So I've read a couple books. And I think it's just really cool, especially for people from the United States to try to learn about the indigenous peoples, the people who were there before European contact and colonialism.
00:43:19
Speaker
to really understand that. And there's such a rich and fascinating history here. I did one session about Queen Liliu'ukulani, who was the last queen of the Hawaiian kingdom. Jesus, did you pull that off flawlessly? I'm impressed.
00:43:36
Speaker
I'm not a polyglot like Dr. Kaspara. He speaks like five languages, but I try. I try. Yeah, that entry point to understand that, how Hawaii became a part of the United States, you know, really, she was basically kidnapped. So anyone who has the luxury of traveling here without a passport and thinks that, oh, they joined us is mistaken.
00:43:59
Speaker
You know, before I jump into, you know, looking at prehistory here and I've actually had people online reach out, say, hey, would you be interested in doing a survey or documenting some archaeological work? I say, yeah. But first, like, you know, doing a bit of a rewind, hitting off those ones, you know, King Kamehameha is another one who unified the Hawaiian Islands. I did a drawing session on him.
00:44:20
Speaker
And yeah I just I enjoy it and I think that you know wherever you are diving the history in that place sounds super corny but uncovering new things is everywhere discovery is everywhere and yeah you don't have to go to Siberia it can be wherever you happen to be.
00:44:37
Speaker
That's advice. I tell people a lot when they message me about like, how do I get into archeology? The first thing I tell them is like, if you're not, no, yeah. Yeah. After that. Yeah. Don't, don't pursue it as a career. First off, cause like you might as well be an accountant. You'll like it more. And then for like, Jesus.
00:44:59
Speaker
You'll make more money. But secondly, like find out like where you live, find out what the indigenous culture of where you lived, what they did, how they survived there and like how their culture flourished there. Because then like you'll appreciate where you live a lot more because that like obviously people survived there and like a culture lived there before you did. So like they obviously liked it or else they would have migrated from that area.
00:45:25
Speaker
Yeah, and that can be as simple as going to like the local library or, you know, the local historic society. There's so much, at least in America, there's so much prehistory or not a ton compared to Europe, obviously, but like there's, there's stuff out there for these local communities. Like I live in Montrose, Colorado, middle of nowhere, Western Colorado, but we have a historic society here and we have an archeology society here so we can,
00:45:51
Speaker
There's avenues to study this stuff. So for you young and budding archeologists out there, do that. And also draw cool pictures on Instagram. Yeah, and stay away from Graham Hancock books. They'll lead you down a weird path. And Eric Von Dannigan, don't go there either. No, no. Ancient aliens, all of them. That was actually a show proposal, which would be like, I thought would be interesting, which would be try to disprove a lot of these guys or physically fight them.
00:46:29
Speaker
Yeah, I've become a huge fan of tiny little museums like tiny out of the way. I mean, I've spent my fair amount of time in the Met, you know, a lot of the work that I've done as well as looking at, you know, repatriation, you know, cultural heritage, like looting and the illicit artifact trade. And, you know, you have big museums that are full of that. But I love the little podunk out of the way ones where it has a very specific
00:46:44
Speaker
I'm down. If you need someone for that, let's, let's go. I'm your guy. Yeah.
00:46:54
Speaker
culture that you can learn about the whole arc of it. And, you know, this is a bigger national museum, but I was part of the, it was like basically the first foreign film crew to film in the National Museum in Kizil, where they have the Arjan II gold, which was basically the richest Scythian quartergon that was found since Peter the Great.
00:47:12
Speaker
and being able to film these objects. Aside from it being gold and 50 pounds of gold, it's just beautiful as art. And there's only so much you can really get from artwork, but it can really inspire you. It can inspire you to wonder who these people were. I mean, of course, for me personally,
00:47:34
Speaker
organic finds like an ice mummy is the ultimate goal but when you see that nomads were able to create such sophisticated complex art themselves you know out in Siberia and you know the the Iron Age it really changes your view on who these people were and you know whether they really were these you know outcast barbarians on the fringe of civilization because the objects tell a different story.
00:48:00
Speaker
That is pretty cool. Like nomadic culture. I think we talked about this on another episode that nomadic people like Clovis don't leave any art behind because they really don't need to. They don't have time to do so, or they like don't really feel the need to express it in that way, or it just doesn't preserve. But there's other cultures that just don't make art that are nomadic, but the Scythians, like obviously with those cool burials, like it's, they're pretty ornate. It's pretty sweet.
00:48:30
Speaker
Yeah, and I also want to continue on that point that exploring small museums, David and I, luckily when we're in Orlando, kind of went off the beaten path.
00:48:42
Speaker
to like this kind of super small museum and play in space. Yeah, absolutely. And it was those things, you know, they might not have as good a funding as, you know, these bigger museums, but they're, they're interesting. And they tell these really interesting and super hyper local stories. And I, I think that was one of the coolest museums I ever been to. I mean, there's
00:49:05
Speaker
There's a huge mastodon right in the beginning of it. But you know, I, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love those. I love that idea of, of exploring stuff like that. Yeah. I think, uh, you know, I'm recording this from West Virginia and I think one of my fondest memories of a small museum was, uh, Seneca rocks here is a, is a big climbing destination and they have a visitor center and to do the parking lot and the visitor center, they had to do some CRM work because it's on national forest. The whole point is that they have like a little small little archeology exhibit.
00:49:34
Speaker
And the first time I went there, I visited it, of course went to the archaeology and I was telling my parents about it. One of the rangers came up and asked how I knew so much. I told him I was an archaeologist and he got like so excited because he was like the park archaeologist and he has no one really to talk to archaeology about in, you know, middle of nowhere, West Virginia.
00:49:50
Speaker
Just brought out a bunch of yeah just we ended up like bringing us to the back bringing a bunch of artifacts out in these display cases and we ended up like garnering a Crowd around us as me and the state archaeologists were kind of bouncing back and forth about the artifacts what it meant What the area meant what it looked like and everyone was like whoa? So people that showed up that day got like in a visitor experience that they otherwise normally because people come to climb right like it Seneca rocks is this a
00:50:15
Speaker
because it's rock outcropping that's everywhere. So to do that at a small museum and to engage with somebody else who loves archeology as deep as I do, and to be able to share that to the community that wasn't expecting that, I think was, that happens at small museums, right? That doesn't happen necessarily at the big ones. I guess on that same vein, Trevor, what's probably your most surreal or favorite experience being a filmmaker?
00:50:39
Speaker
Man, there've been a couple. I mean, I think that there was some of these, the first shaman ceremony blessing of our sight was a pretty
00:50:52
Speaker
interesting experience because they don't typically let you film those. And a piece of what we wanted to do is because we have a lot of local Tuvanians on our team that take Tuvanian shamanism and a lot of the beliefs that are kind of a mix between Buddhism and animism. But it's very important for people to kind of ask permission from the ancestors and the spirits to do these archaeological projects.
00:51:16
Speaker
And I will say like amongst the two of Indians that we work with, some of them are like, yeah, it's Hocus Pocus and other people take it really seriously. So like, you know, it's not like all people from there believe it a hundred percent because oftentimes, you know, you get this kind of, uh, noble, savage characterization. That's kind of stereotypical, but I will say that a lot of people take this stuff super seriously there. And, uh, it was a really interesting thing to experience and to film.
00:51:42
Speaker
I think when you film something, you're really looking at the detailed performance of what is going on. And as a filmmaker, you look at things differently and just being able to look at this shaman's costume, being able to observe the ceremony, how we set up the fire.
00:51:59
Speaker
In Tuvanian cosmology, fire is sacred. You don't throw trash in the fire, and the whole ceremony is done around the fire with offerings to the fire. And it just, almost filming it, I felt like it almost entranced me. The way he was doing this drum dance was really incredible, and the chanting, and it went on. It felt like you're kind of lost in that moment. It went on for an hour and a half.
00:52:23
Speaker
But it you you really, you know, I didn't understand what he was saying and I had to have it translated later, but it was really powerful moment to film. Yeah. Well, Trevor, we want to start the ending of this, this podcast by saying thank you for coming on and sharing your experiences with us and giving us advice on
00:52:44
Speaker
filmmaking and kind of your journey. We wanna super thank you for that. And because this podcast is a life in ruins, we always have to ask this question and everyone's probably just groaning like, oh God, Connor's gonna ask it. But I'm gonna ask it anyway. If given the chance again, would you still choose to film a life in ruins? Absolutely, 100%, man.
00:53:08
Speaker
It's made me kind of a vagabond, transient human, almost similar to the nomads that we're researching. But yeah, I'll take it any day as opposed to, what did Dave say? Being an accountant? Yeah, screw that. Not at all. Well, absolutely, Trevor. And we thank you so much for being on. And we hope that this is the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship with you and the other members of the podcast. Where can our listeners find you on social media? And what would you like to promote?
00:53:38
Speaker
Yeah, so you can check out Worldwide Wallace on Instagram. My website is The Worldwide Wallace. If you want to check out some of my work, Frozen Corpses Golden Treasures. If you want to see the updates of our film project, you can also follow
00:53:53
Speaker
project partner, Dr. Gino Kaspari. His Instagram is just Gino Kaspari. And then for any applications to Explorers Club grants, please go to explorers.org. All over through the tab bar, you should see where to see those different grant opportunities. And don't hesitate to reach out directly, send me a direct message about a grant application, or send me an email at trevorwalls at explorers.org.
00:54:20
Speaker
And don't miss his live drawing sessions. They're actually really riveting to watch. He's a good artist. Absolutely. And well, everyone, we just interviewed Trevor Wallace, who's a documentary filmmaker and Explorers Club vice president. So with that, we are out.
00:54:42
Speaker
Thanks for listening to a life in ruins podcast. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at a life in ruins podcast. And you can also email us at a life in ruins podcast at gmail.com. And remember, make sure to bring your archeologists in from the cold and feed them beer. So it is crappy joke time. And this one is going to be explore themed. So gentlemen, what kind of pants does a cave explorer wear?
00:55:24
Speaker
Stalactites And with that we're really out good one
00:55:43
Speaker
This show is produced by the Archaeology Podcast Network, Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle in Reno, Nevada at the Reno Collective. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.