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Our Ruined Lives with Morgan Kinney - Ep 56
313 Plays4 years ago
In this edition of Our Ruined Lives, Morgan Kinney, a graduate student at Adams State University, joins the hosts to talk about his career in cultural resources management. Morgan is pursuing an M.A. in CRM, which provided an opportunity for the hosts to discuss the differences between a CRM-based M.A. and a general Anthropology M.A.
We close the episode with a discussion on Morgan's experiences in Archaeology Sci-Comm through TikTok. Morgan's TikTok, archaeowolf, is one of the most engaged archaeology-centered accounts on the platform, and the hosts are curious about how Morgan combats against pseudo-science and how he addresses questions from the public. Also, Carlton goes on a tangent about Morgan's aircraft content.
Guest’s literature recommendations:
1) In Small Things Forgotten by James Deetz
2) JSTOR - Yup, just JSTOR
Guest Contact
Instagram: @archaeowolf
TikTok: @archaeowolf
Contact
- Email: alifeinruinspodcast@gmail.com
- Instagram: @alifeinruinspodcast
- Facebook: @alifeinruinspodcast
- Twitter: @alifeinruinspod
- Website: www.alifeinruins.com
Archaeology Podcast Network:
Affiliates
Recommended
Transcript
Life and Ruins Episode 56 Introduction
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
Guest Introduction: Morgan Kenny
00:00:14
Speaker
Welcome to episode 56 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'm joined by my co-host Connor John and David Howe. In this episode, we are chatting with Morgan Kenny, a graduate student at Adam State University, where he's pursuing a master of arts in cultural resources management. He has worked as an archeologist for the review of land management and for private sector companies conducting archeology. He also runs an Instagram page at Archeowolf Morgan. It is a pleasure having you this evening. How are you doing?
00:00:43
Speaker
I am doing well. How are you guys doing? We're doing pretty good, man.
00:00:47
Speaker
Can't complain. I couldn't really think about what kind of chair I expected to see you in, but I definitely am happy to see you were in like a pilgrim rocker. What is that? It's a slider. It's one of those really fancy, it looks like a rocking chair, but it slides like a modern comfy chair or bare bones. Lazy boy is what it is. It's just got a couple of cushions on it and then it's a wooden frame. Gotcha.
00:01:14
Speaker
Yeah, that's sick. Because like a rock and cherry kind of thing.
Rise of Archaeology TikTok
00:01:20
Speaker
Hey, I'm OK with that. I'm trying to remember. So rumor has it is you're the CEO of Archeology TikTok. I'm getting told this. I don't know who came up with that.
00:01:40
Speaker
I'm usually the last to know, but apparently I am. That's me. David's fault. David's fault, all of it. I guess I'll wear that hat. I certainly never asked for it. And I can tell you that there's others on that app, David included, who are way better than me. I'm just loud.
00:02:02
Speaker
Okay. So yeah, when I like first started TikTok, I had no idea like how it worked or anything. So on like Instagram, you can hit hashtag archaeology and look through that. I did that on TikTok and then you were just all over it. I'm like, who's this guy? And then I saw someone tag over in like one of my posts saying we should collab. So here's that collab.
00:02:23
Speaker
There it is. Did I see that suggestion? I can't remember. Possibly. I think that's how we got talking. Yeah, maybe. Maybe. Yeah, I remember yours, the Steel Axe episode is the first one I ever saw when that came up. Right. Yeah. I remember making that. I think that was my first thing that did well on TikTok. Everything else was just me doing
00:02:47
Speaker
Yeah, we started, for research of this episode, we started going through your TikTok, and like the first, when I started getting on it, it was mostly you yelling at people who didn't like your truck for a little bit, and I was like kind of sifting through until I got to the archeology, and then I landed on, then we landed, you're like, what's your favorite World War II plane? And I was like, all right, this guy's gonna either say the P-38, P-47, P-51, and you're like, nah, I like it old school, P-40N, Warhawk. And I was just like, my man, like that is, oh.
00:03:17
Speaker
Whoo, such a beautiful looking plane. And under, under dessert, under,
Aviation Archaeology Adventures
00:03:24
Speaker
underappreciated for what it did. So yeah, huge, huge props. Now I've flown in a P-51. I've flown from the back seat of a TF.
00:03:34
Speaker
the two-seater if you have you 51 yeah when I was um what was it a junior in high school I won an art contest and I got to spend two weeks in Oshkosh during air venture at like their you know high school or airplane summer camp
00:03:53
Speaker
So it was, you know, I got to have dinner with Charles McGee and Gunther Rall and Chuck Yeager, who were all at this big, this, that air venture there, because it was aviation firsts was the theme of that. Yeah, we got to get flight lessons and I flew a Piper Cub, a Bell 210, no, not 210, a 219, the jet ranger. I got to get about 20 seconds of stick time in that before I said, no, rotary rings,
00:04:23
Speaker
helicopters or witchcraft and I don't do that and then I got to fly I had a choice if I could either fly in a
00:04:30
Speaker
in an L39, one of those Soviet jet trainers that was in one of the Pierce Brosnan James Bond movies, or a TF51. And everyone was like, oh, a jet, hell yeah. And I was like, I know what a T51 is. So yeah, I'm going to pick that. And I was one of three people that got to fly in a Mustang. And it was great. Dude, that's nuts. Did you get a chance to talk with Chuck Yeager? Like the dude that broke the sound barrier for the first time?
00:04:59
Speaker
Yeah, I talked to him for about 40 seconds and it was a don't meet your heroes moment. He was, he didn't want to be there. He didn't want to deal with anybody who was younger than. Oh no. And there was this lady there who was easily 50 years younger than he was.
00:05:19
Speaker
And I don't know if she was the girlfriend, the wife, the publicist, whatever, but she was like, you can say hello and shake his hand and then you can't talk to him anymore. I mean, I've never been to a sci-fi convention, but it kind of had that vibe of if it's a famous person who doesn't want to be there and he's fulfilling part of the contract. That's how I kind of get the vibe was. But I got to meet Charles McGee, the Tuskegee Airmen,
00:05:46
Speaker
And I met Tex Hill as well when I was there at that event. And they were cool. And I had read about them. I was like, oh, wow. It was kind of one of those, what's he saying, Kung Fu Panda. I've only seen a painting of that painting. I've read about these guys when they were really young and suddenly here they are staying in front of me and they're not young anymore, but they're still just larger in life. It was pretty cool to meet them when I was there.
00:06:13
Speaker
Right. And I was just a high school kid from Montana, so my mind was completely blown. But that was that was a really cool experience. And and then, of course, I've never been back to Oshkosh because money. So have you always kind of been interested in like history and all that stuff growing up? Oh, yeah. When when I was growing up, you know, in Florence and Hall, Montana, you know, before the age of the Internet, it was go outside
00:06:42
Speaker
or sit quietly with no cable TV and no game consoles and nothing like that and read books. So either I was outside going on wild adventures or I was reading these books. And if I was at my grandparents house, all I could do is read books. I wasn't even allowed to turn on the television at my grandparents house.
00:07:01
Speaker
and they didn't have kids books. And of course we never thought of, oh hey, bring some books for the kids to read. So I ended up reading, you know, at eight, nine, 10.
00:07:13
Speaker
the big time life series books like the one that starts with, you know, the ancient Egypt and then ancient Mesopotamia and then ancient Rome and they're, you know, they're an inch thick. All the information in it is
00:07:31
Speaker
The most recent stuff is like 1955. Howard Carter is still recent archaeology in some of these things. So it's all at a date, but that's what I had in front of me. And I read those things front to back a thousand times out of boredom and it never went away.
00:07:52
Speaker
You know, the fascination with World War II airplanes came from a set of four little books that were like spotter books from the Second World War. Here's the three way or the four way shadow view. Here's the specifications of what we know. And this is how you identify them if you're an anti-aircraft counter on the coast kind of thing. My grandfather had a bunch of those. And that's what I was I was reading and, you know, started falling in love with the old airplanes.
00:08:19
Speaker
A lot of coast in Montana. Yeah, right. Yeah, a lot. There's actually more coastline or shoreline in Oklahoma than there is around the rest of the United States.
00:08:32
Speaker
Well, I guess you grew up reading all these books and I think we all kind of have a similar story to that, like, you know, reading a time life kind of book or encyclopedia that kind of just like enamored us with archaeology. You know, so how did you go from reading books to, you know, having a huge TikTok following? Because it's kind of a, you know, juxtaposition there. I have no idea. You know, when I was a kid, I always liked finding old things and old buildings and stuff.
00:08:59
Speaker
And the first time I did remotely anything archeological was we were living in a hall and I think I was about 10 and I found, and now that I look back on it, I can like, I can, I look at it as an archeologist so I can tell you exactly what the layout of the property was and, you know, what this deposit was and question and everything like that. Eroding out of this, this piece of ground between the house and the driveway was a bunch of
00:09:27
Speaker
a broken piece as a plate and ceramic and stuff. And it was just, I didn't notice it, didn't care. There was some glass in there. And my mom was like, don't cut yourself. Well, one of the things that I was probably playing with toy trucks or something, or a little back hose and digging in the dirt. And I came across a Hummel. If you're familiar with what a Hummel is, they're essentially like a cracker jack toy for grownups. Like a German like little trinket toy.
00:09:56
Speaker
Well, yeah, but like the one that I found stands about four and a half, five inches tall and it's a brooch, but it's a pewter or tin stamping of a little boy with big elf shoes on, you know, a little mischievous looking boy and he's holding an umbrella. And my mother, I brought it to my mom. She thought it was great and cool.
00:10:19
Speaker
And she ended up looking it up years and years later. And it turns out that it was like a crackerjack toy for housewives that came in a box of soap flakes in 1925. And the house we were living in at the time was just a double wide pre-manufactured home. But it had been set on a lot that the original farmhouse, which had been built in 1911, had burned down sometime in the 60s.
00:10:49
Speaker
So this was actually the trash dump out the back door of the house.
00:10:56
Speaker
And eventually, you know, we, that got dug up and there was more, you know, bits of canned and all that historic archeology stuff that people roll their eyes at. And the only thing that cool came out of there was that Hummel. And, you know, it was, but my mom still has it. In fact, I was going to go get it for the show. And then that just didn't happen today. Cause
Early Influences and Finds
00:11:17
Speaker
I was running around trying to get a bunch of stuff done and she lives 30 miles away. So it was like, well, another day.
00:11:24
Speaker
But i just i mean i got i got more and more into wanting to be an underwater archaeologist despite the fact i'm from montana and can't swim so it was like oh well hey let's let's look at doing that one of those books that my grandfather had at the house was
00:11:43
Speaker
was a National Geographic compilation of articles and stories from like the 20s to the early 70s or mid 60s or something like that. And in there was the Capriaut ship that Jacques Cousteau found that was a big deal in the 50s and 60s when they excavated it and the Titanic.
00:12:06
Speaker
Oh boy, I was just enthralled with the Titanic for a while and I wanted to be an underwater archaeologist. And then as much as everybody in our field loved Indiana Jones as a kid, I never considered Indiana Jones archaeology. I thought he was an action hero and that was about it.
00:12:26
Speaker
But you know what really got me wanting to be an archaeologist, especially growing up in a country town where if you didn't play football, there was something mentally wrong with you, was I started watching Stargate. And Daniel Jackson's blowing stuff up. And I'm like, this is awesome. Nice. Oh, yeah. And that was interesting. And there seemed to be a lot more of alone.
00:12:49
Speaker
by a lot more I mean an iota more detail and respect archaeology and stargate than there was ever in indiana jones so i was actually like hey this is interesting this is great and you know this is right this is you know the last couple years before high school i was reading
00:13:06
Speaker
the ancient aliens books, you know, Atlantis, the myths about all sorts of things that could be true. And then I got into high school and I grew up and left all of that ancient alien chicanery behind because it just, you know, you get into high school, you start critically thinking a little bit more and it just didn't add up. So, all right, cool. And then I went through high school.
00:13:33
Speaker
Graduated high school, went into college, and then for some reason did not know you could actually be an archaeologist. I was going to be a journalist or when I was going to do my undergrad, I was like, I'm going to go into journalism. I'm going to be like a combat journalist or something like that. I struggled for a couple of years doing that until a friend of mine was like, you're really good at archaeology and history and stuff. Why don't you go into the anthropology program? And I'm like, what? That's real?
00:13:59
Speaker
They kind of look at me funny and I'm like, yeah, so I went to the social sciences building there at the University of Montana and found out that yes, there is an anthropology program and yes, I can grow up to be an archaeologist and that was just the end of that conversation. I jumped in both feet, both hands, head first, everything.
00:14:18
Speaker
work through school, dealt with difficulties with my own learning issues and everything, graduated, and then didn't work in archaeology for the first year after graduating, and then moved to Arizona and got onto my first project down there. And eventually, I wound up here as the CEO of archaeology, which still doesn't make any money.
00:14:48
Speaker
Excellent. Well, neither does this podcast. And so with that, we're going to go ahead and segment one of Life and Ruins, where we'll be right back with segment two of episode 56. Here in a minute.
00:14:58
Speaker
Welcome back to episode 56 of a Life in Ruins podcast. We are starting segment two. We're talking here with Morgan Kinney, the CEO of Archeology TikTok and general awesome dude. So we ended the last segment kind of talking about, yeah, we ended the last segment kind of talking about like your undergrad and your first project. What ultimately kind of led you to want to get a graduate degree in archeology?
00:15:26
Speaker
The simple fact that I was about 25 to 30 years too young to start in the field without a degree and get a permanent position, you know, it kind of came to the, you have to have an MA to get a permanent position or you have to have years and years and years worth of experience, which, you know, in this day and age, you know, the joke is I need five years of experience.
00:15:52
Speaker
before I can get experience kind of thing. So, you know, I worked with a bunch of people down in Arizona who, I mean, one of them didn't even graduate high school, but they're some of the best archaeologists I've ever met. They've also been doing this job out in the field for 35 years. So that's where they got their know-how is by going in when there wasn't really a requirement for your education or there was a minimal requirement. Do you have a pulse and can you drive a shovel?
00:16:21
Speaker
1983, that's what was a requirement to be a field archaeologist doing CRM. And then after that, you have to have a degree, you have to at least have a partial, you're working towards a degree. And then everybody I know and met down there who had a permanent position with any of these firms had an MA.
00:16:46
Speaker
And it was like, okay, well, I eventually want to go further with it. So yes, I decided to get a master's. I probably should have gone in sooner instead of having a three or four year separation between graduation and starting school again. But at the same time, I gained a lot of valuable experience in that time when I wasn't in school.
00:17:09
Speaker
But yeah, in 2015, I was like, well, I need to do an MA. And I run the archaeology podcast network. I can't remember which podcast I was listening to. But somebody was at a conference and the Adam State program was like debuted at this conference of, hey, we're going to offer fall or fall of 2014. We're going to start offering at an MA.
00:17:38
Speaker
through Adam State in Alamos, Colorado and I saw that and I was like great I can work during the day I can do school at night I can work around the fact because I had a brand new baby at the time my wife and I just got married actually we got married the end of spring semester of 2015 so you know I have all of this life stuff I can't go sit in a classroom for eight hours a day and
00:18:06
Speaker
So it was like, oh, the online program will work. Right. And I'm still working on it.
00:18:12
Speaker
So, so the Adam state program is actually, is actually focused like an actual degree in cultural resources management. It's actually focused specifically like in there, at least tailored towards that. Yeah. So I don't want to bad mouth the program. It's had teeming troubles because I was, I was in the second semester. I started the second semester. It was even going.
00:18:40
Speaker
And in the time that I've been in the program, and granted I've been in the program longer than everybody else that was in my starting class for reasons, life happens.
00:18:50
Speaker
They've changed faculty like three times from top to bottom and the program went up and the program went down and What are we doing? You know, I think it might be focused towards CRM a little bit more than an online masters in anthropology Because it's it's kind of a stripped-down program the the general Ed's requirements that you would have
00:19:17
Speaker
in getting an MA in anthropology are not there. Here's the bare minimum. This is what you're doing in the field. These are the skills you're going to need for working in the field sort of classes. And then you still have to do a thesis.
Graduate Studies Challenges
00:19:30
Speaker
And that was kind of like, yes, I'll do that. And then I'll get established in the field somewhere and then work on my PhD or another MA, which actually has more of an academic lean to it. We'll see if that happens though.
00:19:43
Speaker
I don't know if I want to do any more reading right now. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. No one really wants to do that. They don't have to, but yeah, it's kind of nice that like there's programs out there that are more of like a, you know, practical focused program though. Cause a lot of times it's all theoretical based and you know, you just learn in class and then you get out and you're like, well, what do I do now? So yeah, it's good to have that I think, but.
00:20:08
Speaker
And I've worked with some really nice people who, you know, they have all of the letters after their name and they get out in the field and they're like, okay, what do I do? And it's like, well, here's a show, here's a screen, here's a trowel. This is where we're working. And they go, you know, they look at it as, you know, it's not already laid out. No, we got a panel of mistakes in the ground. We have to put the dust netting up. You know, we actually have to do all the site prep before we even start digging.
00:20:37
Speaker
And it's great, you know, they end up learning quite a lot, but it's like book smart versus street smart is an analogy I would use for it. So, but yeah, I think it's fun. Yeah, excellent. So what are you writing your thesis on? It is archaeology. So I have an admission to make. I actually last week had a complete mental break and I may have thrown my thesis away and started over.
00:21:07
Speaker
Oh no. The thesis that I stopped doing, I started in, in spring of 2017. I got it all cleared with, with the professor, the first professor, ironically, to leave the program. Everything was cleared with him. My proposal was good and everything. And then we had a family tragedy. Both of my wife's parents passed away that summer. So I shelved everything for a year.
00:21:36
Speaker
And then when I came back to it, I was like, okay, now I have to reread everything I've already read. And it just, it turned into trench warfare. It was not going to move anywhere. And finally, I sat down and I was like, okay, do I even want to continue with this topic? No. First, first answer come to my head. No. It's like, okay, cool.
00:22:02
Speaker
field school officially during my undergrad, because again, I couldn't afford to, but I did an independent study. So the independent study I did was on aviation archaeology. I did a history of it. I essentially wrote a small thesis, and then I did an excavation plan for the wreck of a B-17 that is located about 60 miles from my house here.
00:22:28
Speaker
And there were a couple loopholes. It crashed in 1979, so it technically is not historic. So I could go up there and not anger the Forest Service by measuring it and, you know, clearing some of the brush way to take pictures. You know, I went down in the basement, here it is sitting on a shelf, and it's 196 pages of history, methodology. And I'm like, okay, this I can turn into
00:22:56
Speaker
a thesis. I can bring it up to stuff and because I love old airplanes and I love crashed things and I've actually gotten more work done in the last two weeks since I made that decision in getting it brought up to speed and going through sources again than I had gotten done on the other one easily in a year. Just hit the wall immediately with it and it's just been going great.
00:23:22
Speaker
But it's looking at the idea that aviation is such a groundbreaking event in human history. It's modern gunpowder. It's the animal domestication and the taming of fire on that levels of how it altered the way we interact with the planet. But the only half of it, which could be considered historic, which is now 1970 and back,
00:23:54
Speaker
If you say, hey, this site's from the 1920s, most old school archaeologists look at you and then they'll throw tomatoes at you and get you off the stage because they don't want it. That's just chicanery to them. It's not old enough to be archaeology. That joke of historic archaeology is not an archaeology thing. But because of its significance, should that be, in respect to this, be a little bit changed?
00:24:23
Speaker
the significance of it. Before these things go away, you know, the plane crashes that you see people going in, going under the glacier and getting the Glacier Girl, the P-38, went down there, dismantled it, hauled it up. Did they do any survey on it? No, they just went and they got it. You know, the plane racks that are in the Philippines and popping to Guinea, Swamp Ghost, which is the one in Hawaii, the B-17,
00:24:49
Speaker
They went in, they picked him up, they dismantled him into the big sections, picked him up with a helicopter and hauled him out of there. Air Pirates. You know, there's a book I have called Air Pirates and it's all of that airplane recovery in like the 70s and 80s where it was kind of cavalier. You're flying around an old Soviet helicopter that's held together with duct tape and you're stealing old warplanes from, you know, the Nighian government, you know.
00:25:16
Speaker
But nobody's looking at them as an archaeological site. And then the question is, is it an airplane? Is it an artifact? Or is it an archaeological site? Depends, I guess, on how many pieces it's in. But you can look at it and you can see in aviation archaeology, at least in the Second World War and back, you can see survival archaeology.
00:25:40
Speaker
like you would shipwreck survivors, or like the Donner party, survival situations, because these aircrew belly land out on the tundra out there and they have to survive until they're rescued. There's the, you know, archaeology of recovery of missing service, service personnel, Amelia Earhart. That's the first thing that comes up when you say aviation archaeology is Amelia Earhart.
00:26:07
Speaker
So that's what I'm trying to turn it into is does aviation archaeology as it looks at as it is now have a place within what we consider modern archaeological practice and does it fall under the protections of ARPA and stuff like that even though it is so recent and it's you know
00:26:32
Speaker
An F-105 crashed in Southern California. There's a hundred of them in museums. Do we really need to worry about that one crash site? That's an interesting question because I was listening to NPR the other day, as a liberal does. They were talking about a B-29 that was in Lake Mead. It was after World War II. They were doing some sort of scientific test. They had a bunch of equipment on board. Pilots were hot dogging.
00:26:59
Speaker
Rotor, they hit the surface of the lake, they got out, B-29 submerges. And for a long time, you had to be a proficient scuba diver to get to the bottom of it. So the park service was like, fine, it's okay. But as Lake Mead has been decreasing in level, it's become easier and easier for people to access.
00:27:18
Speaker
And so they're worried about that and they got those really bad zebra mussels. So before when you could just see this beautiful B 29 at the bottom of the surface through this clear Lake, now it's just covered in mussels and people are able to free dive down easily without much training. And the park service has been struggling with that because I think it is a historic site that's registered, but they're having problems trying to preserve it because of invasive species coming in and climate change.
00:27:47
Speaker
Yep. And then people taking stuff as souvenir hunters do. There's one on the list that I wrote down up there, a B23 dragon, of which there's like two at Loom Lake in Idaho.
00:28:03
Speaker
And it's a 13 mile walk to get to it and it's on the shores of the lake there. And you can put your hand through the holes in the airplane that people have cut with 22s. They've shot the crap out of it, they've scrawled their names in it. And there's a sign right there that says this is a protected site.
00:28:24
Speaker
you know, please leave alone, take pictures, not stuff. And this airplane is just disappearing bit by bit. And there's nothing there's nothing really of use to take. Like they're taking pieces of aluminum because, oh, hey, this is this will remind me somewhere when I see it in 30 years of where I got it. All the good stuff had been salvaged by the army and during the war, you know, the one of the engines and all the instruments and stuff. But yeah, it's just getting taken pieces because
00:28:54
Speaker
souvenir hunters and it's far enough out there where Rangers don't get out there every day.
00:29:00
Speaker
It's just so easy to see. They're obviously easier to find and recognize as planes. I think prehistoric sites, you can get away with having some flakes on the surface and not really recognizing it. But these, they're obvious what they are. And you can see them on Google Earth or anything like that. So it just becomes like, it seems like it's this resource that is kind of set up to be taken and not looted, essentially.
00:29:29
Speaker
I'm looking at a picture of that B23 Dragon at the crash site now, and it looks just like a pick through carcass at this point. Like there's barely even a fuselage left. Yep. Yeah. There's a Ford trimotor at the big prayer strip in Montana. And in the mid nineties, somebody flew in.
00:29:53
Speaker
It's a big prayer airstrip in the middle of the Bob Marshall wilderness, landed his airplane and he cut with a hacksaw or wood saw or something, cut the Johnson flying service, you know, winged buffalo skull out of the side of the airplane and then took all the bell cranks for the ailerons and the rudder and everything and he turned the bell cranks into drink stirrers and he sold them
00:30:18
Speaker
You know, he hammered out the one end and made him into, like, martini spoons. And then he got in a lot of trouble because he landed an airplane in wilderness area. Not because he damaged an archaeological site and looted an archaeological site. He landed a Cessna where there's a bunch of elk who are sensitive to hearing airplanes. And that was what he got in trouble for. And it's like, are you kidding? So, yeah. And I'm kind of looking at it like,
00:30:47
Speaker
These are akin to shipwrecks. People who dive on shipwrecks, you're not allowed to take stuff from them, but people take stuff from them. The wrecks get degraded accordingly at the time, but they also degrade because people are breaking pieces off them. Pretty soon there won't be any shipwreck to go dive on because it's just going to go away.
00:31:13
Speaker
Yeah. And on that note, um, we're going to land this plane and, uh, this podcast wilderness and, uh, catch you in the third segment of episode 56. Okay. Welcome back to segment three of episode 56 of a life and earns podcast. We're here with Morgan Kinney, archea wolf on tick talk. You know, we haven't really talked to a, a tick talk influencer yet on the show. So like, I guess what got you started? Why archea wolf and like, what do you do with it?
00:31:41
Speaker
Being referred to as an influencer. I don't know about that, but all right again more titles You know, I got started like every single other person in the last year It was something to do while you're you know quarantine from the rest of the world People were able to hang out and be near each other during quarantine my work schedule had me working when all of my friends were I
00:32:09
Speaker
not working. So I was doubly, doubly bored and doubly, you know, needing something to do. And I downloaded TikTok, I think, I think like November of 2019, because I, I was following a car builder on Instagram. And they're like, look, you know, they had TikTok, so they're, they're rally cross racing and stuff. And I was like, I actually want to see this.
00:32:35
Speaker
and it just became something of you know you fall down the rabbit hole scrolling through and and there's there's weird dances and you know people doing ridiculous stuff and comedians and it's like oh this is actually kind of entertaining i've heard people refer to it as vine here i'm new to party what the hell is vine other than a plant you know so i i was it was kind of a
00:33:02
Speaker
is the only app of its type anyway at the time. And I just kind of was like, OK, this is fun. And I had a couple of videos in my phone that I was like, oh, I could do something. And I never in my life expected anything to come of it. A couple of people followed me. Great. It got to 500 people following me. And I'm like, what's wrong with all these individuals? And then there's nearly 300,000 people following me as of today.
00:33:32
Speaker
It's not even real. Like, okay, okay, sure. And then, I mean, I got people sending me questions and asking me about merch and all this stuff. And I'm sitting there like, I don't know. This is this is so weird to me. But it became a thing where I started telling stories early on, you know, archaeology stories, hey, I'm in the field and I found this.
00:33:56
Speaker
And when I was up at Garnet Ghost Town, which is one of the stations that I've worked at as an interpretive archaeologist and park ranger through the Missoula Field Office here.
00:34:10
Speaker
You know, I shared a couple stories about historic buildings and amethyst glass, you know, how the clear glass turns amethyst color because of the magnesium as it degrades. And just real, real educational lessons. And people really started getting into it. And it started to grow slowly. And I'm like, all right, this is cool. And then somebody asked me that awful question. But one of the three terrible questions that we as archaeologists fear, the
00:34:39
Speaker
What do you think of ancient aliens? What do you think of Oak Island? Or do you dig up dinosaurs? And I got asked an ancient aliens question. So I responded. I was like, yeah, no. And I got the people who were like, oh, thank God, someone's finally saying something. And then I got the crazies who continue to argue with me.
00:35:00
Speaker
And they call it just bullheaded, that bullheaded Scottish DNA in my system. I couldn't let that go. So I started responding to those and kind of putting those things to sleep. But if you've noticed, I've kind of gone tangents about stuff.
00:35:18
Speaker
You know, megafauna, did a little bit of megafauna stuff because there's, you know, I've come across that in field work and such.
TikTok Popularity During Quarantine
00:35:26
Speaker
And I know a lot about it. It's one of those history things that I spent a lot of time reading about when I was younger. So, okay, I can tell a story about the, about prehistoric camels, you know, and then that weird story about in 1875, a hunter was flying $300, his rifle and his watch because he shot a camel thinking it was an elk.
00:35:49
Speaker
And no one really knows why this other miner brought camels to Montana in 1875. And it was in the newspaper. And it was a funny little story, you know. And people argued with me about the camels. And they argued with me about the horses. And I've got, I've had people say, well, this is proof the Egyptians got here because there's signs of horses in the Americas before the Spanish. I'm like, well, they were here for like 100,000 years.
00:36:16
Speaker
And then they died off for 10. And then they came back. OK, there you go. That's how you explain horses here. Oh, no. And it just got into the more views I got and the more people. I just kind of, I guess, fell in the hole of, OK, this is interesting. This is fun. No real goal on where it was going to go. And at some point, I was going to get bored of it. I was going to just, it was just going to be like everything else that it's not paying me.
00:36:46
Speaker
And it's not that huge part of my life. I'll get bored of it when field work comes around or I'll get bored of it when I dig my bow out of storage. Well, I debunked that unicorn video, not even seriously, in February. And I had 150,000 followers, which was pretty crazy. And I was still kind of in shock. And I went from 150,000 followers to 239,000 followers in like three days.
00:37:16
Speaker
I was like, I might debunk that unicorn video, and it was like, well, yeah, that dirt, you don't see dirt like that on an archaeological site unless it's already been dug or it's fake. You know, that's not how that works, and that bone would disintegrate if he pulled it out of the ground like that. And there, I mean, 100 and something, or 1.3 million views on that.
00:37:40
Speaker
you know, 3,000 comments, half of which are extreme to the right, Flat Earth Christians going, unicorns are in the Bible. And then the other half is people arguing with them, which of course is just making it show up on more and more people's 4U pages. And I just kind of got lost in this, well, it's now become a thing. And now I have a title. I'm apparently the CEO of Archaeology TikTok and nobody asked me to do that, but okay.
00:38:10
Speaker
And it's just snowballed into this thing where I'm amazed that it's gotten where it is. And like I said at the beginning, David, I think your stuff is way better than mine. The presentation is amazing and it's far more informative and you're very level-headed, not getting mad at people. And I'm kind of... No, I get mad, but on the inside.
00:38:36
Speaker
You know it Last September after I kind of started getting traction one of these outfits that produces a
00:38:57
Speaker
history channel Ridiculous Shows reached out and said we want to do an interview with you because you got a great personality and you know you know we'd like to have you on a show and of course my first response was as the as the scientific correct bad guy that's gonna say that tell the treasure hunters they're wrong because that's what I am and I'm not gonna you know perjure myself by saying yes I believe in these things which is why David I asked you about the
00:39:24
Speaker
You know, your thing, because I heard your, your horror story either via the podcast, or I think you might've told me on Instagram about how they made you, made you agree with what's his face. Yeah. Two days of filming. And then like, all they did was nod my head to like a crazy shit. So yeah, it was great. But yeah, they'll find you. And it's been one of those, you know, unfortunately I'm a seasonal.
00:39:50
Speaker
So I'm off from November to May, and in order to go out and do field work, I have to travel. The moment snow falls in Montana, you can't see anything on the ground, which is difficult to do with having a family. So I'm not doing anything for six months, or I'm doing stuff that's not archaeology. This could actually be a thing that could supplement the income I get while I'm working.
00:40:19
Speaker
So yeah, I guess I'm going to start a merch line whenever I get around to it. And it's just going to keep on going. I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing, which is now answering pseudoscience questions and shooting them down, which, you know, to go with my love of old airplanes, I'm OK with shooting stuff down. The ridiculousness. Adjections in the back can seem to be the big one at the moment.
Debunking Pseudoscience on TikTok
00:40:44
Speaker
I woke up this morning. I got tagged 40 something times. And there's a there's a tick tock where
00:40:49
Speaker
Some kid, dressed as a centurion, is going about how the Romans got to Oak Island. People are like, please shut this down because I want to see you do it. And I'm like, okay, I guess that's what it is. I miss that one.
00:41:09
Speaker
Yeah, it just came out and I kind of wanted to make it where it's just freeze frames of the Roman, the Roman John Cleese and what's his name from a life of Brian when they're, when they're doing the, the, the, the joke about, uh, biggest tickets and mimic their voices talking about how it's a, it's a crap idea and a crap theory that never, what never happened.
00:41:35
Speaker
We'll see. I'm so not good at technology. That's difficult for me. The webcam we're on right now, first webcam I've ever owned. This is the first time I have two monitors. I always text stuff that people are like, oh, this is old hat to me. I'm like, I'm now no longer in first grade. So I'm getting further up on the technology and the presentation, which will turn into
00:42:05
Speaker
a ring light at some point. Yeah.
00:42:08
Speaker
I think that's your charm though, man. Like you got, you have this like old Western aesthetic, you're a level-headed dude, you're very articulate and articulate. There you go. Yeah, David's not. So like, I think that attracts people and I know you got like some thirsty like boomers in your comments too. I've looked at that, which is my favorite part.
00:42:37
Speaker
Oh yeah. Which thirsty ones? Are the ridiculous thirsty ones? I guess they're both. I've just seen people be like, you're so kind. Like, we love your personality, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, oh, what? Yeah. But I mean, I agree with them. Like you're. Well, when I, when I debunked the go back to one that the girl did, I had so many comments that were like, you can educate without being condescending. And I'm like,
00:43:16
Speaker
There are a lot of them that pop up on my feed that I'm like, okay, I can't say anything. Do not say anything. Just take the high road. And then hers, she literally said, guys, I don't know if you saw this one, but it was like, go back. Please tell me this, go back. Please tell me that hunter gatherers built it. Everything we know about the past is wrong. And I,
00:43:34
Speaker
I like commented and I like normally don't do this, especially if it's a female, you know, like a woman's page, cause I don't want to like denigrate, but I was just like, you're wrong and you don't know what you're talking about. And then I got like 500 like likes and replies to that. And, uh, Joe would be crazy. It seems like you have to, for some of these communities, some of these groups, you really have to take that strong stance and really just not
00:43:57
Speaker
hold any punches because that's not, they're so entrenched in this stuff that you have to really, you have to take that almost not, not like completely aggressive, but you have to be like strict about it. Otherwise it just perpetuates. Oh yeah. One of my videos got removed for quote unquote hate speech and it got reinstated because I sent tick tock a nasty message. But what it was, what it said was,
00:44:23
Speaker
These theories, like the Afrocentric theories saying that it was people from Africa who gave inspiration to all the peoples in South America to make the Olmec heads in all their giant cities. And then the ancient Egyptians get into the Grand Canyon. And all of these things that just are incredibly detrimental to the actual
00:44:49
Speaker
reality and the fact that there's indigenous creators and indigenous people going, we're still here. And people are telling them to shut up and they're wrong. I find out said, this is just proof that humans are awful to humans and you don't have to be a certain color to be awful to somebody.
00:45:15
Speaker
And I got removed for hate speech. And I was like, no. And I fought it and got it back. But yeah, people will report them because of I say an uncomfortable truth, which is humans are pretty wicked to each other. Or you can't judge someone 100 years ago by the standards of today. Yeah.
00:45:37
Speaker
It is really ridiculous. And I try to be fun. I try to make it entertaining because I also know that there's a lot of people who are not familiar with what we do. And the reason why Ancient Aliens appeals to them is not because it's Ancient Aliens. It's because it's wrapped up in shiny paper and the presentation is good. And it's why rednecks like shiny things. Why do bass boats have a glitter finish, you know?
00:46:05
Speaker
It's, it's what they see and it's what it's, it's confusing. It's the truth.
Educational and Entertaining TikToks
00:46:16
Speaker
I've never heard that. I've never heard that. I've never heard that. I've never heard that. I've never heard that. I've never heard that. I've never heard that. I've never heard that. I've never heard that. I've never heard that. I've never heard that. I've never heard that. I've never heard that. I've never heard that. I've never heard that. I've never heard that. I've never heard that. I've never heard that. I've never heard that. I've never heard that. I've never heard that. I've never heard that. I've never heard that. I've never heard that. I've never heard that. I've never heard that. I've never heard that. I've never heard that. I've never heard that. I've never heard that. I've never heard that. I've never heard that. I've never heard that. I've
00:46:36
Speaker
You know, I'm like, okay, well then I have to get a lesson on the definitions of words. Get off your extinct Pleistocene horse. Well, provenance is used in museum studies. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, they don't know what, what, yeah. Yeah. But it's, you know, the people who are saying, oh, this is the definition of it. They're not in museum studies. They're, they're.
00:47:02
Speaker
is or what their educational background is, but when you look at their page and they've got seven followers and their only video is them playing Call of Duty, it's like, you know, you just want to kind of pat them on the head and say, here's a Snickers bar, go out and play on the jungle gym and let the adults talk. I try not to be that kind of dismissive, but sometimes you just can't help it.
00:47:28
Speaker
you know, the angry guy who was all about his entire page was hating on archaeologists, saw 27 of his videos. David, I think you saw him. Great. Big Corn Fed or whatever was his name. Oh, that bald guy. I don't remember. Yeah, Marine haircut. But it's, you know, he's like, I know all this stuff. And he, of course, is I read Graham Hancock's book. So now I'm an expert.
00:47:52
Speaker
That was his entire mentality. And I responded along the lines of, you know, he says he's a Marine. Okay, good. And just to kind of snarl at him in his own language, I was like, I've read lots of books, including the Marine Corps Handbook. I wouldn't call myself a Marine because I'm not that disrespectful to people. And oh, I got a huge amount of people who were like, that's amazing. You're so, you're so confident. And I got a bunch of Marines going like, there's no former Marines. He was discharged dishonorably. And I'm like,
00:48:33
Speaker
I recently had one dude reach out to me on Instagram. He was like, Hey, do you know about rock art? And I was like, I don't know about much. I have some UK rock art I like to share with you. I was like, yeah, I'd love to see it. You know, like thinking like rock art, like, you know, archeological rock art. This dude sends me pictures of pebbles in his hand that he calls art and uses the term very literally as art rocks that are
00:48:47
Speaker
Well, I'll take the Marine Corps guy, expert...
00:48:54
Speaker
artsy, they're pretty looking. And he's like, you know, they only came this way because people made them. So like, these are clearly significant. And I was like, sure, dude, did not have the time to argue what rock art really was. And then it just had a handful of rocks. Yeah. No, I understand that. I've had people ask me to walk through and show them dig sites and stuff. And I'm like, I can't do that. Yeah.
00:49:19
Speaker
For the same reasons, like when I work in private sector for like Swica and Logan Simpson and stuff, you can't take pictures where you have a landmark in the background.
00:49:30
Speaker
You can't take pictures of or post them on social media. You can, you found a cool arrowhead or you found some rock art. You can take pictures of it for you, but if you share it on social media, you're gonna get in trouble. That's kind of the same reason because some of the other people that I've called out are the metal detectorists and the people who are digging up bottles in ghost towns. And when I say, hey guys, this is, unless that's private property and they have permission,
00:49:58
Speaker
You can't do that. That's bad. Oh, they tell me I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm like, I've only been education and work in the field for 15 years or more. Obviously, I don't know what I'm talking about.
00:50:13
Speaker
Well, clearly you do know what you're talking about, Morgan. We really appreciate you being on the show. And before we end the show today, what are a couple of sources, like books, articles, or videos that you would recommend for anyone listening who's interested in archaeology? You know, JSTOR is a favorite place for me to go, JSTOR.org, and just type in what you're thinking about and see what it comes up with.
00:50:34
Speaker
Yeah. There's a bunch of it that's dry. And the drier it is, I feel the better it is because, you know, information wise, because it does away with the superfluous, you know, grab your headlines, which is what the Facebook stuff does. Books and stuff. Oh, what's the one that I've got over there? In small things forgotten.
00:50:57
Speaker
Are you guys familiar with that book? I haven't heard of that one. God, I cannot remember who wrote it. The book is In Small Things Forgotten, and it talks about historic archaeology. And the guy who worked on The Donner Party, and he worked with my undergraduate advisor, James Dietz. Yeah, James Dietz, books by Barry Cunliffe. If you're familiar with him, he's great because he looks at the Celts and Celtic archaeology.
00:51:26
Speaker
from pre-Roman times in Europe. And his books are pretty clear that they're a glorified textbook. They're a fancy textbook. They're not a novel, something you can read on an airplane. It's a sit down and really kind of absorb the information.
00:51:47
Speaker
But yeah, any of the podcasts that are on the Archaeology Podcast Network, Dan Carlin's Hardcore History is great for history lessons if you're in the car with a long drive. And the thing I like about him is that he actually refers to all of his sources, which is a big thing for me when I'm combating some of the pseudoscience.
00:52:16
Speaker
he puts the sources on his website in correlation with the episode. So, you know, the 200 books he read about the Mongols and Genghis Khan, he's got on his website so people, if they're more curious, can go back and check those out. I don't know if it's specific sources, but more advice, if it's on Facebook, take it with a grain of salt and some tequila before you put all your faith in it.
00:52:45
Speaker
You know, so it's true. Absolutely. Well, and where can, where can people find you with social media wise? Well, social media wise, I'm still, you know, getting the hang of it. I'm on Instagram at Arceowolf as well as TikTok at Arceowolf. And then I do have a YouTube channel, which is Whiskey with a Wolf.
00:53:08
Speaker
on YouTube and I've got one video where I walk through Bannock Ghost Town and I'm trying to make content for that and figure out what I'm going to do for that. But those are the three platforms that I'm on right now and then if people are on my TikTok and they go to my Beacons page,
00:53:27
Speaker
I do have a blog where, mostly where I just gather sources to back up the big TikToks that I do, you know, about like the horse people and the, you know, the, the, Oh, the Aswan egg. When I debunked that, because that one pseudoscientist account was like, this says Atlantis is here. And that was a small victory. Cause he did take his post down after I did a six part series on
00:53:56
Speaker
He has one egg and the provenience and finding the report from 1910 and doing all the work. So there's that. But yeah, right now it's pretty much Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. Cool. I can, I can feel your passion for archeology and history and all this stuff. I feel like, and we always, we always ask this question to our guests. So like, would you ultimately choose to live a life in ruins if you had another opportunity to do it?
00:54:27
Speaker
The only thing I might do different is take more field schools when I'm doing school. But yeah, no, this has been such a rich experience in all the work I've done that I often say that I was born 200 years too late.
00:54:50
Speaker
because there's no adventure left. Yeah. Here I am working the only job with adventure in it. So I'm like, yeah, I wouldn't change. I wouldn't change at all. It's absolutely awesome. Excellent, man. With that, we just interviewed Morgan Kinney. You can find him on Instagram, TikTok and his own personal blog. You can find the links for that here in the episode description. And if you guys could please rate and review the podcast on iTunes and Spotify,
00:55:17
Speaker
and slide in our DMS and tell us, you know, what you think about it. That's all appreciated. And yeah, you can unfollow Carlton too, if you want. RGM, not ethnosynology DMS. Yeah. Yeah. The ruins DMS. He shares it with us, but please, it's, it's, it's more fun for all of us so we could read them as a team. But yeah, Morgan, we're glad to have had you on here and I hope to keep seeing some cool stuff and I'm glad I got a, you know, tick tock archeology friend. So yeah, thanks for having me. All right, guys. Thanks. With that, we're out.
00:55:54
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 archaeologists in from the cold and feed them beer. So, guys, what do you what do you call someone who refuses to fart in public? I don't know, Connor. A private tutor.
00:56:33
Speaker
Alright, we'll see you guys next time.
00:56:47
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV Traveling America, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Rodin. 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.