Bittersweet Infamy - #57 - Follow the River

Episode Date: November 13, 2022

Season premiere! Josie tells Taylor about plane crash survivor Juliane Koepcke and her incredible rainforest odyssey. Plus: the unlikely rise of Wing, New Zealand's most unusual pop star.

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Welcome to Bitter Sweden. I'm Taylor Basso. And I'm Josie Mitchell. On this podcast, we share the stories that live on in TD. The Strange and the Familiar. The Tragic and the Comic. The Bitter. And the Sweet.

Season three, Josie. Welcome. Welcome back. Season three. Did you notice that it looks a little more three around here? A lot more three. A lot more three. Not just a little. We've got all kinds of things that typically come in threes here, such as triplets.

Triplets. Seasons of Bitter Sweden for me. Come on now, everyone. Welcome. Stories usually have a rule of threes. They do have a rule of threes. That's true. The comedic rule of threes dictates that the other two seasons have actually just been set up for this.

Really. This is the punchline, baby. And then you should probably stop. Because diminishing returns from there, right? No, but just working in sets of three. That's all. Yeah, I would say one thing that I really enjoyed about season two was I think connecting with our fans in new and meaningful ways and also the very cool support that we have received via

the wonderful free methods of like, rate, review, subscribe, etc. Share with a friend. But also via our coffee link ko-fi.com slash Bitter Sweden for me, where we have received support from such wonderful souls as my mother, mama, who says, Taylor and Josie, I have terrific chemistry. Find myself laughing out loud every podcast. The subject matter is always intriguing. The storytelling engaging.

My morning coffee tastes better with you two joining me. Love, love, love. We love you too. Oh, I know where we are. Sweet angel. And also a huge thanks to Dylan the Person and Satchel the Cat. Two years, WTF of great shows in the can. Congrats.

Your stan army continues to grow and will soon be nearly as large as mine. I love your podcast as much as Jean Wabara loved babysitting and recommend it to all of my friends who are mostly animals. Sorry if that's unhelpful. And then a less than three. Not unhelpful at all. Thank you for spreading the word to the animal kingdom of the upper peninsula. Of Michigan.

And I will say that fans of the upper peninsula of Michigan as I am should stay tuned. Not to this episode. Not to this episode. Don't stay tuned. I mean, you can stay tuned to this episode. But I'm not going to gratify you that immediately. Are you dropping hints? What did you think I meant by stay tuned?

Taylor season three. You just that was. I don't know. You're great. You're the best. Living in the moment. Absolutely. I'm living in the moment.

One sick benefit for both mama and Dylan and satchel. Those are things that came in threes. How about that? My mother Dylan and satchel. They are going to get access to the bittersweet mixtape which is dropping around Christmas as a little holiday surprise for anybody who has donated to any amount of money at any point to us via the coffee link. Or if you're the person who sent us that Starbucks gift card, please get back in touch

and send us your email. I've had two PSLs on that bad boy. Change my morning twice. Tanya, get in touch with us, please. Tanya, Tanya, Tanya, Tanya. Coffee, Tanya, get in touch, please. We want to send you this wonderful package of unreleased materials. It's going to include us talking about the highest ever painting sold at auction.

The film that we review is called The Lost Leonardo. The painting itself is called The Salvador Mundi. And it's about a painting that may or may not be by Leonardo da Vinci. And it fetches this exorbitant price at auction. And there's all of this intrigue and drama around it. We talk about Vancouver Canuck Stanley Cup riots. We're going to talk about Shelley Duvall's It's a Bird's Life on It is a Bird's Life.

The 3DO failed Sega peripheral. So we've really got all of these things we're going to be talking about at some length that just didn't make it into regular episodes. Some true nuggets. Truly. So yeah, expect that sometime around the holidays. Ramon, Lizzie D, John Mountain, anybody else who wants in, all you've got to do is kick us any amount of money.

Like don't be a dick about it. Don't give us one cent. The penny has kind of been retired. You know, kick us a cent. I'm fine with that. Kick us a cent. Yeah. And if you donate now, obviously, or at any point in the future,

you will also get that as a thank you. All right. Do you feel ready for a Minfamous? Yeah, babe. Okay, just get nice. I've got myself ready. I'm having myself up. I need any good energy.

I need good wind for this one. He's about to take flight. All right. The first Minfamous of season three tells the tale of a most rare and unusual songbird. Our story begins in the University City of Dunedin on the South Island of New Zealand, well known as a hotbed for musical innovation. The Dunedin sound with its jangly guitars would take over New Zealand pop

in the early 1980s and go on to influence the likes of R.E.M. and Cat Power. Oh, okay. Okay. So kind of jangly distorted, you know, that was what it sounded like. Gotcha. Dana, you know that R.E.M. song? Dana. All I need two notes.

So I'm there. Yeah. One of the leaders in that musical movement was a guy named Roy Colbert, who by the mid 2000s, when our story takes place, owns a beloved and influential local record shop called Records Records. In South Island, New Zealand. In Dunedin. And it's sort of our empire records community hub for artsy types.

Kind of beloved, Powell's books kind of energy, maybe, you know. And it's early 2000s, is that what you said? Yeah, it's like 2003. Okay. And one day, a few copies of a CD arrive in the mail. It's called Musical Memories of Les Miserables and the Phantom of the Opera. Okay. And it is by an artist named Wing Han Seng, or as she's better known, Wing.

So like Cher, Wing. Cute. Wing is a former nurse from Hong Kong who emigrated to Auckland, and upon her arrival, took up singing recreationally. Sort of like a childhood. She loved to go around singing, but her family didn't like it because they were sort of a more strict traditional kind of family. Nursing is a lauded profession as well.

And I bet she was a good nurse because her instinct with her singing was to go to like hospitals, nursing homes, perform there. That's really sweet. Her audiences there encouraged her to pursue a grant and create an album. And so she got a bit of money from the Manico City Council and made this her debut album. Cool.

From there, Wing didn't know how to market her EP, so she just mails copies of it to every single record store in the New Zealand Yellow Pages. OK. Yeah, why not? I love that. I don't, I didn't do that. I've never done something like that,

and I've often thought that I should. So not specifically mailing a record to, anyway. Colbert puts in the album and he is stunned. It is unlike anything he's ever heard before. Josie, you be the judge. Here is Wing with an abaclassic dancing queen. Very unique voice. So that's, that's Wing.

You can tell that she has a lot of passion. Yeah. And that she loves music. And I think she might be tone deaf. I don't, don't know, but maybe. OK. And it's pretty hard and grating to listen to. It's really cute and lovely because it's almost like

she doesn't know how bad she is. OK, so. Sorry, Wing. Love you, Wing. Sorry. So herein lies the captivating first response to Wing, because it's always like, I have a theory that the more you listen to Wing,

the more she grows on you. OK. OK. I can believe that. That's part of it. I will say, on first listen to her voice, it's clear that she has like a storied voice. There is a lot more that is happening

than just what you're hearing. There's a story here. That's exactly what Roy Colbert thought too. Here we have a middle-aged woman, an immigrant, singing joyfully and passionately, love and life seemingly without an abundance of formal training or background in music. Probably not so uncommon to find a person like that.

Maybe a bit rarer that they would get a grant, make an album, and post it on Solicited to every record store in the phone book. Right. The grant is, yeah. OK. And so Colbert is gripped. To quote the man himself,

I loved these CDs to death and played them to everyone. I also ordered a dozen for the shop, and they sold out cakes that were hotter than hot. Oh, hotter than hot cakes? What? Because you hear Wing, and even if you think she sounds silly, or you think that she's not a good singer, or you think whatever you think about her,

I feel like there's something there that you want to know more. There's a little bit of a pull. Whence cometh this lady singing, dancing Queen, right? Yes, yes. I will also maybe point out early 2000s, the height of irony, loving the irony of life. Yeah. That may perhaps that influence.

I don't know about New Zealand, I don't know. This is a sort of irony-slash-snark-laden story that takes place in the earliest days of the, like, social media is more decentralized when this story takes place, and it's a lot of, like, content via snarky blogs, you know what I mean? So you can imagine how something like this

would play out in an environment like that. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Okay. Wing is flattered if a little mystified that her collateral is moving so well in this one record store in Dunedin, so she flies down from Auckland to meet Records Records owner Roy Colbert.

Oh, okay. He smells a story, as we've said, so he publishes a gushing article, irony drenched, I'm sure. I couldn't actually locate this article, so if anyone in New Zealand has access to an archive of the listener, hit us up. But he publishes an article in his Listen to This column

in the New Zealand listener in 2003, and this is the world's introduction to Wing. This is her, or New Zealand's introduction to Wing, let's say. This is her coming out party. Okay. Quoting Colbert, our son built her a website with samples of her music,

and almost within hours, the link had been sent around to every office building in the world as workers suspended important travail to spread the word. Radio stations in Australia and San Francisco demanded interviews. She turned up on Graham Norton's television show, started playing gigs all over New Zealand,

and before you ask the question, is she real? Her website had one million hits. Whoa. So it's like dancing baby and Wing. Just like... Ugochaka. She never did hooked on a feeling, but should have.

Yes. There have been mimetic singers before. The kind haters would call bad, and lovers would call outsider art. Flamboyant acts like Florence Foster Jenkins, Mrs. Miller, and the Shags. Right. But Wing was perhaps the first of these performers

to exist in the internet age, albeit one that predates our current more condensed social media churn. Well put. This story takes place in the era of Hot or Not, and PHP, BB web forums, and live journals, and Neopets and IRC,

and other primitive decentralized forms of social media, and even then, Wing manages to infiltrate all of these individual niche communities, your something-offals, and your game facts and whatever. Your Furby. She's in your Furby.

Wing was in your Furby singing SOS to you. This is how 2003 was. So she finds an audience, albeit one that can't quite seem to admit it enjoys her. The comments section of many a Wing video is reliably populated with decade old commentary that covers the wide range of reactions to Wing.

Disparaging remarks about her voice, her accent, her talent, or lack thereof. Irony drenched compliments from hipsters who treasure Wing for her so bad it's good appeal, or at least like busting on her in the comments section. Compliments of a protective and slightly patronizing nature

encouraging Wing on the way one might a child. And then praise of a more effusive, and I would, it is my perhaps hopeful observation that this type seems to outnumber the rest of the commentary. Praise of a more effusive variety for Wing's contagious joy and free spirit,

with commenters frequently claiming that Wing's magic voice is the ultimate mood lightener and cure-all, which I am down with. Yeah. I am somebody who is kind of in that camp where Wing has like a very deep discography as I'm about to reveal to you.

And I was like, I spent the prep time for this ensconced in Wing, and Christ just, oh, it made me happy. I was dancing around the house, listening to Wing in just a lovely time. Yeah, no, I get it. I totally get it.

And inevitably also in these comments sections, you find the same question Roy Colbert posed. Is she real? Is she in on it? Is she delusional? Is she doing this on purpose? Does she know she's being made fun of? Does she care?

Who is the real Wing? These are the questions that would follow her through her 20 or so ensuing albums, LPs, singles, and compilations, including Wing sings the Carpenters, Wing sings Elvis, Dancing Queen, Beatles Classics, Everybody Sings Carols with Wing, Beat It, in which Wing covers the Michael Jackson classic

and appears on the cover of the single Holding a Baseball Bat menacingly, Wing sings ACDC, Wing sings more ACDC, and Wing sings for all the single ladies and raps for all the safe parties. So you can find snippets, 30-second snippets of all of these on the website,

Deezer.com, which I've never heard of, but it's the only place that this treasure trove of Wing samples seems to... You can find full-length tracks on YouTube on Spotify and Apple Music, but there's a limited selection. The deep cuts are on Deezer, but they're all mixed in with other artists named Wing,

but it is very clear which ones are Wing and which ones are other Wing. Once you start listening to the album. Once you look at the album, because Wing is an adorable middle-aged lady in a silk dress, and she's just smiling beatifully from her covers.

Several of those ideas for those albums, by the way, like ABBA and The Carpenters, came directly from Roy Colbert, who Wing is religiously phoning for career advice, sometimes several times a day. He dissuades her, for example, from trying to have Wing music vending machines installed in music stores,

because he thinks it would... You know, it cut the store in his profits. They wouldn't like it. Yeah. I personally disagree. I think that, like, we could have saved Brick and Mortar music if there had been Wing vending machines,

but, you know, Potato Potato. Yeah. He clarifies also that the ACDC albums weren't his idea. Those apparently came from an American radio station. He seems less impressed with Wing's later meanier content, and I broadly agree.

I think she shines during the standards. That was just me. Okay. Okay. And indeed, by the mid and late 2000s, Wing has blown up internationally. She plays South by Southwest, the BBC One Big Weekend Festival. She performs at the world-famous Birdland Jazz Club

in New York City, which is where, like, all the greats have played, the Castro Theater in San Francisco, always to rapturous audiences that are, like, singing along and having the best fucking time. But perhaps her biggest pop cultural moment and the one that bore out these other opportunities

by introducing her to a televised audience was her 2005 guest appearance as herself in season nine, episode three of South Park, which was entitled Wing. Okay. Okay. Hey. Ponk Show, are you listening? My brother loved South Park.

So, apparently, so Wing is in this, and the other big part of the comments section is people making, you know, South Park references of questionable taste, and also being like, oh, my God, I can't believe Wing is real. I thought she was just a character on South Park. Yeah, it seems like a Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is that their names? So, before I get started to recap in this episode, it's probably worth mentioning, South Park, by its nature, trades in offensive comedy. Its humor is knowingly crude, racist, homophobic, though notionally in a satirical way. I'm not a huge South Park fan in the present tense

because it sends the humors a bit edgier than mine, and I can find the show politically a bit of its own ass, but I liked it back when I was a baby edgelord for sure, and I'm also not here to play comedy, please. In any case, be warned, that's what's coming down the pipe. Yes, fair. The major exception to this, by the way, I really like how South Park depicts Canadians

with like flapping heads. Oh, yeah. I think that's very endearing. So, okay, so in this episode, the boys act as talent agents for their friend Token, who's a singer, but he gets poached by another talent agency, so they need a new client. Enter Wing, who is the wife of the local Chinese restaurant owner

who is played by South Park creator Trey Parker doing a very stereotypical Chinese accent. Cringe, cringe, cringe. Cringe culture is live and well, and it's got a message from you from 2005. In this universe, Wing, whose guest appearance consists entirely of clips of her music, has paid the Chinese mafia to illegally bring her to America

where she hopes to launch an entertainment career. This is all a racket, and the Chinese mafia is actually pursuing her, intending to traffic her into slavery. But neither she nor the boys know this, so off they go to LA, so Wing can audition for American Idol. Possibly a callback to William Hung,

another Hong Kong immigrant who is famous or infamous around the same time, for singing She Bangs by Ricky Martin on American Idol and being met with a similar mix of incredulities, scorn, racism, and ironic and genuine love. Real mixed bag, yeah. I remember that. Unfortunately, when we get to the American Idol auditions,

the boys don't have enough clout to get Wing in the door. Too early in their agency career, right? And so luckily, they overhear that there's a spot available on another reality show. They sign Wing up before realizing it's Sylvester Stallone's boxing reality show, The Contender. They beat her up, okay? Wing, unfortunately, takes a little bit of a shit kicking

on The Contender. Wing did sign off on this. She, I think, signed off on the appearance of her character and she later wrote them a thank you letter because it got her a sales boost. So there's that. The South Park bump, yeah. I hear you.

From there. So while Wing takes a pretty gnarly beatdown on The Contender, unfortunately, she does catch Sylvester Stallone's eye and he invites her to sing at his son's wedding. The boys are excited, but they can't find Wing and they discover that she's been kidnapped by the Chinese mafia,

who they mistakenly believe to be a rival talent agent poaching their talent again. They go to the mafia headquarters where a massive shootout ensues. Wing is being held at gunpoint by the mob boss when, finally, Stan steps in and points out that Wing isn't a thing to be fought over. She's a human being.

And the mafia agrees and sees the error of their ways. The boys quit the talent industry. The mafia members quit the mafia industry and free all their slaves. And the episode ends with everyone happily dining together at Sylvester Stallone's son's wedding while Wing performs Sing by the Carpenters. Okay, cute.

All right, happy ending. An end card appears with a picture of the real Wing encouraging fans to visit her website. Oh, cool. Okay, I can see why she wrote a thank you letter then. Yeah. Wing has been very vocal about how her career has let her achieve her dream

of performing in world famous venues in front of rapturous audiences who fought over her. Yeah. Which was influential, I think, to me in picking this subject because I am conscious that a lot of her career has consisted of white people making fun of her on the internet and on South Park.

And I didn't super want to pitch in on that. I want to underscore I think she's like, super clever and the world needs a million more of her. I think she's like a great character. I think she seems like a lovely human being. Yeah. Wing goes for the note every fucking time. Hits it strong, hits it long, hits it hard.

She, if she falls behind the music, she catches up and just keeps fucking going. She mailed her shit out to everyone in New Zealand. Yeah. She's singing in her second language. I think Wing is cool as hell. Yeah. It also feels worth noting, by the way,

that Wing at the height of her musical career is putting in three to four hours a day of voice practice. So she's taken this seriously, even if not everyone's taking her seriously. Yeah. Wing cheerfully expands into novelty fame in the early 2010s, including collaborating with various nerdcore and meme

rappers, e.g. Rappie McRapperson, and choosing more outre musical fare like ACDC, Justin Bieber, as well as original track like Stop the Nonsense, parentheses, Stop Smoking Crack. Oh, you should. Yeah. You definitely should.

Wing also had like a little songs for safe parties. Like she was really pushing people to party safely, which I think is nice. Oh, that's really nice. Like hydrate. If the nicest lady in the world, Wing, sang to you that you should have a safe party, I would be like a glass of water,

bed by 730. I know, that's nice. She makes a little cottage industry out of charging people of $13 U.S. to sing happy birthday over the phone. So a queen invented cameo. Oh my God, Wing. Wing back in the day was like,

if you send me 13 U.S.D., 15, whatever, NZ, I will sing happy birthday whoever you want. Apparently she sang it to like a member of parliament over the phone once. A Marilyn Monroe vibe. The Marilyn Monroe of New Zealand. On June 30th, 2015, a simple announcement is posted on Wing's website,

declaring her retirement from music and thanking her many fans for their support. She has since, as far as I can tell, retreated to privacy. Could speculate all day on the reasons. A previous update from February indicates that Wing was taking a medical leave of some kind. It's my fervent hope that Wing retired simply

because she had her fun and made her money and is just now pursuing something else, the way she switched midlife from a nurse in Hong Kong to an internationally known meme singer in New Zealand. It feels appropriate that Wing left us one last enigma on the way out. A queen does not explain herself. As to the question of whether Wing was in on her own joke,

I think more than anything she understood the unlikely power of her voice in breaking down people's barriers and bringing them unexpected joy. When asked about her greatest artistic ambition on a New Zealand morning talk show, The Good Morning Show in 2009, Wing said, I hope that I can get power in music

so that people, when you feel very sad, you can choose the song which can make you happy, make you change your mind to become optimistic, to get back on your feet. That is my goal. Which I think she does admirably because listening to Wing makes me very happy and it makes me feel very,

makes me wanna just dance and sing along. You pose the question is Wing in on it and I think the answer is yes and then some. She's just like, this is joy and this is happiness and take it if you want it. I think that it calls into question to you the entire notion of what is a good voice? Are there good voices?

We all only have the voice that we were born with, right? And we're often made to feel, depending on who you are and the way you speak, you can often be made to feel a lot of shame for your voice. And so I think that to sing courageously and loudly and happily with defiant joy is such a wonderful way to use your voice. And I think that if you're listening to this

and if anyone has ever told you that there's something that you shouldn't do or you're not good enough at, go do it, man. Like, do it for Wing. Do it for Wing. Wing, fucking, kick that shit in for you. I got a little emotional talking about Wing. I know, I think I can, I feel the same.

I feel the same. Roy Colbert seems to have gradually ghosted Wing, quote. Quote, the pressure of the relentless phone calls and the feeling that my work was done ended the Wing experience. Besides, I was getting a kidney transplant and if she rang during that, I was finished. Unfortunately, he passed away in 2017

after having had health issues for some time to much mourning from New Zealand's artistic community. R.I.P. In 2021, a new official compilation of Wing's recordings from the beginning appeared on streaming services, including Apple Music, YouTube, Spotify, and of course, Deezer.com. While this isn't new material,

it's hopeful that someone is paying attention to Wing and her legacy. It would be a shame if such a rare and beautiful songbird went extinct. Oh, that songbook got wings. Or a wing. Just one. I'm on it.

Just one, just wing. If your wing is Wing, do you need more than one? It's pretty amazing that you brought a story about a woman who has risen above, has flown above nearly all expectation and is such an optimist and such an inspiration. I have a similar person to bring. Okay. We're doing plucky underdogs in our season premiere.

We're trying, we're trying. We're certainly trying. It's funny too that Wing is this beautiful songbird who can fly across continents and connect cultures and bring joy wherever. Because this story is about a woman who did not have as much luck with flying. But from this experience, she has found an optimism

in a way to be in the world. Taylor, have you heard the story of Julianne Kopke? Or Julianne Kopke? Maybe, maybe. Runner by me. She was a 17-year-old Peruvian-German girl. Yeah, I know her. She's about to have a hard time.

Oh no. Okay, go ahead. So are you, oh no, oh porisita. Okay. What do you mean? Why? Oh, she's just about to have a really bad flight. More the landing than the flight, really.

Not a great flight, honestly. Not a great flight. To be fair, the landing was pretty, pretty good actually considering. All things, all things considered. Yeah, that could have gone worse. I'm going to say Julianne because I think that's what she goes by. I don't know. She probably goes by the German iteration and a Spanish iteration.

So maybe I'll just say Julianne. What if you just speak imperfectly and we just sit in the knowledge that we're all humans doing our best? Yeah, I guess that works too. No, that won't do. That won't do, huh? Okay, let's just pick one. Not for season three.

So Julianne Kopke, born in Peru, two German parents, and she was the sole survivor of a plane crash in the Peruvian rainforest. She fell about two miles out of the sky and survived this fall in the uninhabited rainforests of eastern Peru for 11 days all by herself until she hiked through the jungle and found unlikely help. Oh, I'm sure we'll have time to go over all of it. But what a, what a, what a, um, what a Hail Mary Jesus. We talk about snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.

That's a, that is a competent human. Yes, yes. I think that's, that's kind of my takeaway too. Damn, what a competent human. I don't know that I could be that together. 11 days you say, wow, okay. 11, yes, yes. Or I should say she found help on the 11th.

So some of the accounts are like, it's 10 days, but 11. I'm only going to give her the full 11. Like I feel like it's uncharitable, the nitpick on, on, you know, it's actually 0.5. Like, fuck off. I'm going to round this up to two weeks. She was there, she was there for like a month and a half as far as I'm concerned. Real time, that was, you know, when you look at your phone and it's like, oh, it's, it's 69, but it feels like 74.

She was in there for like fucking 10.5 days, felt like 90 was the worst. Julian Kopke, she's born 1954 in Lima, Peru. And like I said, her parents are German, but they are German scientists who are specifically in Peru to study the primary rainforest that is an Eastern Peru. It's the Western edge of the Amazon before it gets cut off by the Andes. Right. Her father is Hans Wilhelm Kopke, very German, who was a zoologist, ornithologist, and hermitologist.

So animals, birds, and reptiles. I think so. Baby, one, one stopped shopping. I know. And her mom, Maria Kopke, was a German ornithologist. And she's actually widely known for her work with neotropical bird species. Okay. So very niche.

She did a lot of research that became foundational for ornithology in South America. So they came to Peru shortly after World War II. Her father and mother met at the University of Kiel, where they were both doctorate students, studying zoology and, you know, all the crazy scientific stuff they were. But it was really hard for either of them to find a job in post-war Germany being zoologists. So her father, Hans Wilhelm, sent a letter to a university in Lima asking if they had any positions for a newly minted doctor of zoology. And about a year later, he got a letter back from the Natural History Museum of Lima.

So I guess the letter had been, you know, forwarded to all the concerning parties. CC to anyone who might need a zoologist. So the museum gets back to him about a year later and says, yeah, sure, we have a position. Do you just got to get over here? He's thrilled. So is his not-yet-wife-but-soon-to-be-wife, Maria. But they have to get there.

So Hans is going to go first, but it's post-war Germany and things are incredibly chaotic. Example, German citizens do not have passports to travel. That's a hiccup. He sneaks in. He legally enters Italy. Did he do the old fake handball team? Jack. He probably wishes he had that.

No. He tried to climb over a border fence and fell and then was hospitalized. Oh, my friend. And then once he recovered, he went back and crawled under said fence, and then was able to be in Rome. But Rome was overrun with German citizens trying to find passage to South America. And so he went, I think he went to the south of Italy and tried to get on a steamer, but the steamer had just left and no one knew when another one would come.

Jesus, that's hardcore. For a short time, he was imprisoned. He got out. It was a lot. There's a lot. He landed in South America, but then he had to make his way to Lima. And so by walking on foot and hitchhiking and, you know, a series of these two, he finally made his way to Lima and started his job at the National Hitch Museum.

Shortly after he starts his work, Maria joins him. She also has her doctorate. She doesn't have a job, but she's like, you know what? This is the guy I want to be with. This is the work I want to do. Part of their attraction was that they wanted to do the same work. They wanted to devote themselves to this research. And she got there and they were married in a Catholic church in Lima.

But neither of them spoke Spanish. So through the whole ceremony, they had no idea it was going. She had to be prompted to say yes. Like, do you take this man to be your lovely wedded husband? And then someone has, like, nudger in the ribs kind of thing. I'm really the priest. Maria and Hans are happily wedded and even happier to have a baby daughter. And they name her Julianne Julianne, which means the happy one, the one who's joyous.

Which will serve her in good stead as her life goes forward, just being able to keep the dream alive. Yeah, silver linings. Her dad is working at the museum and together Maria and Hans started an initiative called the Humboldt House, or Casa de Humboldt. And it's a large, multi-roomed house that's available for visiting scientists to stay in when they visit Peru. So they're meant to encourage kind of an international community effort

in documenting and researching the Peruvian rainforests. And this becomes a hub for all of that. And this is where Julianne grows up. She's meeting scientists daily and they're all cool and friendly and telling her stories. And her parents are researching, like, mad and very, you know, invested in their work and very invested in their family. And it's a beautiful, idyllic situation until 1967 when...

Sex revolution. Everything changing. The house is closed down, but her parents, ever-optimists, establish a research station in eastern Peru in a primary rainforest that is called Panguana, which is named after a bird that is endemic to that area. These people are just the wild thornberries, aren't they? It's the wild, yeah. It's German wild thornberries, pretty much.

Yeah, yeah. Through grants and through, you know, all the connections they've made in the scientific communities, they've been able to secure the swath of land that's like a few acres. And they start a biological research station there. And she grows up in those formative years, homeschooled. She's Lindsay Lohan and Mean Girls a bit. No, exactly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. That's it. She knows everything about, like, the flora, the fauna, the birds. Around this time, they do make a trip back to Germany, and she meets some of her relatives and her cousins and stuff. And they see some ravens, and Julianne is like, Mom, look, they have tiny vultures here.

And her cousins are like, you're fucking weird. I don't know. Oh, muffin. So it's like the perfect mix of homeschooled, international student. You know what I mean? In a remote part of the world, she's probably talking to a lot of birds and shit more than anything. Oh, she's got a pet, too.

No, totally. That's not a lie. I didn't know that she doesn't have a pet. No, perfect. I love that bird. The dream. What a dream. She lives there, but the Peruvian government does require

that she have some type of formalized schooling in the way of exams. So she needs to travel to Lima every once in a while to complete these exams to finish off her last few years of high school. So she is set to graduate from high school after she's taken her last exam in Lima. And the graduation includes a trip throughout Peru. And so with her classmates, she goes on a few different flights, and they kind of travel around.

They go to Machu Picchu, and it's a whole little tourist escapade to celebrate their final year of high school. She's very excited to be there. It culminates in Lima, where she has a prom that she's meant to go to. Okay. And originally, her and her mother, who is in Lima with her, they were going to leave Lima before the prom so that they could meet with her father,

who is up in Eastern Peru in Panguana. He's at the research station. So they were going to make their way there and celebrate Christmas altogether. But Julianne is like, I really want to go to this prom. Please, can I just go to the prom and then we'll leave the day after? The prom is December 23rd. So then they would be flying on the 24th of December. And this is 1971.

And so her mom is like, you know what? It's a rite of passage. Put on a pretty dress. Let's go. But don't put on a pretty dress to wear onto the plane, surely? Well, the next day, when they get to the airport, things are chaotic and crazy because there's been a few cancellations. It's December 24th.

A lot of people are trying to get home for the Christmas holiday to celebrate the actual day. And there's very few flights going to where they need to go in Eastern Peru. And so finally, when they learn that they can get last minute on this flight that is run by Lanza, a air carrier out of Peru, they are ecstatic that they can get on. They're like, yes, we can spend Christmas with dad. This is going to be great.

I got to go to prom and we'll do Christmas. Let's go. Her mother hates to fly. Well, absolutely hates it. She was right. She's an ornithologist and she's like, this metal bird is not a natural bird. The ship should not take flight.

These fake birds, these fucking fake birds. But at that time, the trip from Lima to where they needed to go would take them like five days by vehicle. So they thought, you know what? Let's get on the flight. Let's do it. We have a spot on this flight. This is fantastic.

Lanza, this air carrier has a horrible reputation. In fact, it's so horrible that Hans, her father, has told both of them, do not get on Lanza's flight. There's been crashes dozens in this past year. But please do not. This is not a safe airline to take. But it's cheap and it's the only one that's running out of Lima. So they book their tickets and they get on the flight.

No. I know, right? The flight itself is very short. It's only like an hour flight up and back down. So that's about 20 minutes into the flight and they are served, you know, this is 1971. So they actually get food on the flight. They get a nice little sandwich and a little juice.

About 10 minutes after that, the flight attendants are cleaning up the food service. Juliane and her mother are seated in like the second to back row. Juliane is in the window seat because she always likes to look out and her mother is in the middle seat sitting next to her. And then there's a Peruvian man who's sitting in the aisle who immediately falls asleep, doesn't even get a sandwich. He's out.

Are you a window person or an aisle person? I'm a total window person. I love the window. I think there's way more headspace. There's just more space for you to like lean up against the... You're a slumper, you sleep slumps, space sleep slump. I'm a slumper sleeper. Yeah, that makes sense.

I like the aisle because I pee a lot. So I like to be able to like get up and go to the bathroom unencumbered. It doesn't really matter and it's all rearranging deck chairs on the fucking Titanic here, isn't it? Well, it may have mattered and we'll get into that. So they're flying in the middle of the day. It's like around...

Their flight's like 11 to noon and there's bright sunshine coming in through the windows and then all of a sudden Julian remembers it just goes dark. Like night has fallen immediately. She has her little gold watch that her grandmother gave her as a confirmation gift. She looks at it, nope, it's still noon, it's not night. What is happening?

It's a huge storm that has risen up from the base of the Andes, which you can imagine any mountains create a lot of turbulence and that turbulence is like storms and weather and that's what's happened. There's a really big strong storm that has kind of come up from nowhere. And instead of trying to fly around it or do an emergency landing, the pilots go straight in. Fuck it, let's go. Let's cloud cowboys.

Later, it's determined that they were probably already in their descent to their destination. So maybe they thought, you know what, we're already on our way down, like let's just get down and try and get under it. Didn't really happen. There is about 10 minutes of severe turbulence, like just like... People banging against the chairs and hurting themselves and bruising themselves and breaking ribs and shit.

It's Christmas. So there's like Christmas presents falling out of the overhead bins. There's like a traditional Christmas cake and Peru that comes from like an Italian panna cotta tradition. And those are like in boxes flying around, flower bouquets, luggage. Like it's like really terrifying. People are screaming. It's not fun.

And it's quite a long time when that is happening. 10 minutes is a very long time for that. It's a very long time for that to be happening. And then Julianne remembers seeing out of the corner of her eye a huge bright light. The wing is struck by this bright light. No good. She remembers her mother sitting beside her.

You know, there's like people screaming and the sound of the wind and the rain. And she remembers her mom very clearly saying, this is the end. You don't want to hear your mom say it. No, no, mom. We're gonna need to figure out a way out of this. Yeah.

Can't be calling her early. Got some surviving to do, mom. Buck up. Then the plane starts a vertical drop. I hate it so much. Falls out of the sky. Julianne can't really remember how her seat has been removed from the plane. But she does remember falling out of the sky spiraling face down towards the rainforest.

There's a point in there where she can see the tops of the rainforest canopy. And it's so dense and dark in that cloud cover that it looks to her like ahead of broccoli. Dense, that's how she describes it. And at some point in her free fall, she remembers the seatbelt being around her stomach and pressing so hard that she can't breathe anymore. And then she blacks out. She doesn't remember. When she wakes up, she is still in her seat.

And she's actually in the entire bank of seats in her, what was a window seat, but is now. It's all a window seat now. Yeah. Oh, God. And she's on the forest floor. The bank of seats is her, mama, and Theo, right? Not Theo, not literal Theo, but the older man who has fallen asleep at the end of the road. Senor Theo.

Yeah. But it's only her in the bank of seats. Her mom isn't there and the proving gentleman is not there. She wakes up and she looks up and sees where she is. And she starts to clue things together like, okay, there was a plane crash. I fell out of the plane. Now I'm in the rainforest. And everything is very fuzzy to her.

Because she fell out of a fucking plane. Because she fell out of a plane, yeah. And she most likely suffered a very severe concussion. So in those first few hours of being on the forest floor, she's kind of in and out of consciousness. And from what she can remember, she curls up under the bank of seats and just falls asleep for what she thinks was probably like a day and a half. Yeah, rest that one off. Try not to die while you're asleep.

Yeah, yes. Because you don't actually want to be taking those long traumatic brain injury naps, if you can help it. But I don't think she could help it. Right, yeah. So there's, in retrospect, there's probably three explanations for how she landed at least softly enough that she could survive the falling. So there's three possible explanations and it's probably a combination of the three

in some different levels and variations. So the first is that it was a thunderstorm. And in thunderstorms, there's all these really strong updrafts that can happen. So she may have been caught in an updraft. So it kind of pushed her against gravity's falling so she wasn't falling as quickly. There is likely, because of her placement in the bank of seats and how much she weighed compared to that, she weighted down one end of the bank and so that it caused it to spiral.

I see. Which made it slow down. She actually likens it to how a maple seed falls. I was thinking of that just now, actually, funny enough. I was trying to think of something else that, well, I was trying to think of something else that counterweights in that way and I thought of a maple seed. Yeah, no, that's really interesting. It's so arbitrary what does and doesn't save our lives.

It is fucking wild. And the third thing is that where she pierced the canopy of the rainforest was very, very thickly entwined with vines and the treetops. Just dense as hell. Dense as hell. So she fell into that and it kind of caught her fall and then she fell to the ground. Like a terrible trampoline park. And luckily somehow, someway, the chair fell butt down.

Because if she had fallen head first, there's no way. Yeah, that's not great that you die from that. Jesus. Mm-hmm. Even having survived all this, she's now concussed and passed out under a bank of chairs in the middle of an incredibly dense and remote part of the rainforest and nobody else is around. So that's, we still got a ways to go here before we can consider this one a win. Oh yeah, most totally.

At one point during this, she wakes up and she is a little bit more conscious so she can stay awake and she starts to assess possible injuries to herself. And she realizes that she has most likely broken her collar bone. So that clavicle right there. It's broken, but it wasn't such a severe break that it broke the skin. Well, I'm sure she'll have plenty of time to get bedrassed and drink some nice hot soup coming out. Mm-hmm. Takes a little minute, but yeah.

So she has broken her collar bone. She has a gash in her lower leg and calf. Which you don't want in a rainforest situation because anything that's open and easily infected, that'll fucking kill you quick. She also has a very deep wound kind of in the back of her arm and her upper arm. So it's where it's a little hard to see naturally, but if you have a broken collar bone, it's also extremely hard to see. Well, besides the severe headache

that she has, she's feeling relatively okay. She's not in unbearable pain. She's in pain, but she's in manageable pain. It could be worse. It could be worse. I mean, I think she sees that from the outset. Oh my god, I fell out of a plane and I am still alive. It could be worse.

Yes. Unluckily though, she has lost her glasses and she's severely short-sighted. That's so unfair. She has a minus two in dexterity because her glasses are broken. Well, and then maybe subtract a few more because her left eye is swollen shut. That's tough. Yeah. She also, you mentioned what she might have been wearing on this flight.

She was wearing a mini dress and a pair of sandals. Oh no. The same cute little white sandals that she wore to her graduation. No, not formal wear. One of which is lost. She cannot find whatever she only has one. That's worse than none. Well, at a certain point, I'm sure she finds some way to make that one sandal of great Easter.

But in the moment, one sandal, like sorry, but it's true enough. So in this moment where she's kind of getting her bearings, realizing that she can sit up, that she can stand up, she immediately thinks, where's mom? Where's my mother? And so starts calling for people. She yells out and yells out. And there's probably a good few hours where she's yelling out for people and there is no response. And so she at least knows that there is nobody in close vicinity to her. All she can hear is the sound of frogs, because it's the rainy season.

And as her severe concussion in her head, it kind of goes in and out, she begins to realize that she's hearing a trickle of water, the sound of water moving. Good, good. Find it. Yes. Like we were talking earlier, she grew up at this research station in a remote primary rainforest of Peru. She's a wild thornberry.

She's a wild thornberry. She kind of knows what's going on. In fact, she remembers distinctly a scenario where a team had set out from the research station to go and study a population of some animal up in a mountainous area. And there was a leader of the group who accidentally shot himself in the leg. It's tough. Really tough. Put your safety on, folks.

Exactly. So they send a young teen, he's a teenager, out to go get help. And immediately the teen is like, I think I know where I'm going. Wait, no, I'm utterly fucking lost in this rainforest. Until he hears the sound of running water. He follows a spring to a small tributary to a larger river. He follows that river back to the research station. And Julien can remember distinctively this teenage boy standing in the river

raving his hands yelling for help. Her parents had said how smart this boy was to have followed the water. That's exactly what you need to do. So this is her slumdog millionaire moment. Yes, exactly. She had like the three cloud dots leading up to the bigger cloud. And she remembered this moment. So she starts thinking, okay, I need to follow this source of water.

And this is going to lead me out. That becomes her the next few days. But this moment always kind of gets me because if I were her, I'd be like, I'm fucking staying here. Like there's got to be a search team that's coming after. Or there's another survivor. No way. I'm staying here until I'm like really faced with the decision to go or not.

She's smarter than me, obviously. So she heads out. And I should say too, in those first few days, she can hear the sound of planes. She can hear the sound of engines above her. And she assumes that it's the search parties looking for the wreckage and looking for any survivors. But looking for it in a broccoli. Exactly. The covering is much too dense to even see her.

And so she knows too. She's like, I have to get up to a bigger source of water so that the canopy of trees can be separated by the water source. And then someone can see me. Before she leaves, she does find a bag of sweets, a bag of candy. Okay. That she takes with her. This is Harrison finding a floating bottle of Coke at the bottom of the,

you know what I mean, same vibe. Yes. Okay, I get, at least I get an inventory item here. Sick, I can cope. She does also find one of those Christmas cakes. Oh good. Remember this is fucking like Christmas day that she is waking up. But it is, it's been raining and so it's completely soaked through and it's filled

with mud and she takes a bite and she's like, oh no, dirt cake. Which in retrospect, she's like, that was pretty dumb of me. I should have just taken it because it would have tasted better than anything else I had to eat, which was nothing. So dude, in that moment, I might be like, okay, this cake is soaked through with dirt. It is spoiled. It's not edible. Yeah.

Yeah. This could be dangerous. I get that. Yeah. Her water source was rain. It was the rainy season. So she was able to kind of like drink from leaves and like leaves and stuff like that. She apparently was not all that hungry the whole, the whole time.

She was always, even as a small kid, just not a big eater. There were accounts of her being fed lunch and then it would be dinner time and her plate would still be filled with lunch. I feel that. She wasn't a big eater. She could get by on very little. I'm sure this is something that has been said about her many times and I don't mean it disrespectfully.

And I hope that when Julianne, when you listen to this, that you take this, the spirit in which it's intended. She's the absolute right person for this situation, isn't she? You don't wish this on anybody, but she seems like, as far as like 17 year olds go to be put in this situation, she's got to be the top 1%. Yeah. But she's like a, like a pro. She's like a ringer.

Where she crash landed was 30 miles. How the crow flies. So it's very different. 30 miles from Tanguana, from the research station where she grew up. Okay. This is, I mean, I'm sure that there's a lot of biological variants from place to place in the rainforest, but broadly speaking, this is her neck of the woods. This is where she grew up.

Yeah. This is the forest she knows. And she, she was using that knowledge, not knowing where she was, but she could recognize like, okay, well, I know this particular leaf and I know what this is and I know. I recognize that, that bird's call. Yes. Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah. In fact, a crescent, I think it's called a crescent chicken that she hears. It's a particular bird that is in that area. I know, right? I don't think she even sees it. She just hears it, but they're attracted to bodies of water. And so when she hears it, she, so she can, she can not only identify the bird, but is able to like,

mine that for context about what her next steps should be. She's like MacGyver. She's so cool. It's so cool. Well, and here's a small insight too into how she came into this knowledge, but also this resilience. So she tells a story in her memoir called When I Fell from the Sky, Julianne Kopke. Great title earned.

Totally. So she tells a story of being out in the field with her mother who was, you know, ornithologist. We were in the jungle and observed a sun bittern in its nests while countless mosquitoes swarmed around us. I wanted to swipe at them, the mosquitoes. But then that so rare and shy bird would surely have flown away. My mother whispered to me very softly, you must not move now, even if you get stung.

And so we remained in the cloud of mosquitoes without making a sound for a quarter of an hour. My mother always said, if you want to be a biologist, you have to learn to sacrifice. But first of all, what a motto. Listen, listen. If I can impart anything on you before I go, it's that if you want to be a biologist, you need to leave that shit outside, sweetheart. None of this crying about, oh mommy, I want my Lunchables, this cloud of gnats. We've been here for 15 minutes.

Shut up. That is a sun bittern. You little and great. Can you imagine like walking into bio class and your teacher is like, you got to sacrifice if you want to be in bio. It's like, I'm out, I'm done. I never liked science anyway. But again, it would end up being the exact right lesson for the moment when you

need somebody's words echoing in your head about stoicism in the face of incredible hardship, right? No, exactly. I mean, you think about how long it took her father to get to Peru in the first place. The people that she knew best and the world that she grew up with was people who could persevere. And 17-year-old Julianne was like, okay, cool, cool, tight, tight. I'm on it. One sandal, though. That's hard.

With one white sandal, too. That's one shitty sandal. One shitty sandal appropriate for wear at a semi-formal high school dance. Exactly. Just the worst. Well, apparently she wore that one sandal because she couldn't see so well. So she would all, her first step would always be with the sandaled foot. So that whatever she stepped on.

Oh, so she wouldn't step on top of it. She wouldn't step on snakes. She wouldn't, you know, like she could kind of like... Clever girl. ...cap the ground with her sandaled foot and then move forward. Clever girl. And then move forward. Yeah.

Very, very wise. And because too, she found this spring and she followed the water, you know, as it was running down. And so it got to a bigger stream. And so eventually she was walking in stream beds. And so she had to be very mindful of where she stepped because she couldn't really see it. The worst. Algie getting all up in your wounded toes and shit. Nasty.

You what else is in the Amazonian riverbeds? My dude. Piranhas, cocodrilos. Todo, todo. And? Eels. Not eels. Sting rays.

Oh, I didn't even know they had those. Amazon sting rays. Motherfucking sting rays. Are we in the Amazon? We are in the eastern edge of the Amazon. I don't think it's formally the Amazon. But it's Amazon-esque, Amazonian-ish. It's Amazon-esque.

Yeah, motherfucking sting rays, which apparently are the most poisonous thing out there. Very intense. She had a walking stick with her. So she would, they live in the sandy banks of the river. So she would poke at the banks before she walked there so that they would scatter. Ew. Piranhas not much of an issue in running water, which was very interesting. And she knew that.

Yeah, you're right. I've never seen, whenever you see piranhas doing their feeding frenzy thing, it's always in still water. It's true. Wow. Like that movie Piranhas. Yeah, like. Yeah, like that movie Piranhas. Like you said, she has all of this knowledge.

And it's like first-hand real-world knowledge. It's not like she watched the movie Piranhas. No, or Anaconda or something like that. She's just has like, she happens to have internalized this survival guide her entire life. And this is the final exam, apparently. I hope. I hope there's not another one. Yeah.

When it comes to the crocodiles, there were instances where she would be walking through river banks or if the water was enough to kind of float her, she would float down the river often. And there were times when she would see crocodiles on the banks and they would dive into the water. It's pretty clear what I would do, which is stand up, run the fuck far away from the water as far as I could into the jungle and get lost again and die. And, you know, no one would find my remains. They'd find a skeleton with one white sandal.

Beautiful. It's a poem. But she knew that crocodiles, when they are scared, will enter the water and they will hide underneath the surface of the water. So when those crocodiles moved into the water, there were times when they would be coming right at her and then at the last minute dive under her. I hate that. She obviously didn't have a lot of extra energy to expel.

So there may have just been like floating in the river like, well, fuck me. Yeah, well, I hope this crocodile doesn't eat me. Oh, God. But there was her background knowledge, again, coming in major handy to keep her anxiety down. That's right. That's what crocodiles do. Knowledge is power. It's a few days into her journeying when she finds that the wound on her, the back of her arm,

has become an issue. Sapsis, sapsis, sapsis. No, some flesh flies have laid their eggs. Yo. It's teeming with half inch long maggots. Hate when that happens. So, and it's also, it's a very deep wound. And the thing is filled up with maggots.

This, according to her, is when she starts to get a little scared. Yeah. Good. I mean, I mean, you know what, she's finally sweating. She's like, oh, you know what? This is, she finally got to the question on the test that she didn't know the answer to. They didn't cover it. She didn't read the part about the flesh flies back over before she got on the plane.

Jesus, this poor girl. Oh my God. So she's fearful of blood poisoning and losing her arm. No shit. I know. It's, but there's not much she can do because she can't reach it and she has no supplies to treat it. Right, yeah. So this is just like, I got to find somebody.

I got to find people. I got to get there. She's floating down the river. It's her 10th day. I know. She's been like chopping on the little candies, but those have long been gone. She's floating down the river and she kind of pulls to the side, laying on the bank there. And she's in a semi-conscious state.

She says that for a lot of that time, she was kind of coming in and out. And things were registering, but not registering. Like the bare minimum was registering of what she needed to do to survive. And in front of her, like nearly immediately in front of her, all of a sudden she sees a boat. And at first she's like, I'm hallucinating. Cool, cool, cool. Tight, tight, tight. And then she goes to touch the boat and it's real.

And she's like, okay, here we go. Hand hallucination. This is great. Mmm, no, it was a boat. Oh my God. Well, you showed me. Keep going. She looks around if there's anybody, if there's nobody there, of course they would have seen her,

if there had been. But she does start to notice that there's a small path that goes up the embankment and probably goes to whoever owns this boat or some type of residence, right? She goes to climb up the path. It's a small hill, an embankment off of the river, and takes her a few hours to mount the small hill. Because she just does not have any energy. She finally goes up the path and finds a small shelter, kind of a hut situation. She finds that there's nobody there.

But there are some supplies. She's not able to eat. Like she can't get it together to eat. But she does find that there is a can of gasoline. And she knows from her experience at the research station that- Of course. I know, right? The best way to treat a wound that is infected by flesh flies is to pour gasoline on it.

She knows this because they had a dog who had a wound that was filled with maggots and her dad poured gasoline on it. And the maggots can't survive in that, so they try and get away. She pours it on her wound, extremely painful. It's a very deep wound, a lot of maggots, and some of the maggots go deeper into her wound. Yeah. Most likely she passes out from the pain, wakes up in the morning. Okay.

The next day. And the next day, there are about five men who have returned back to what is their hut. They work in the lumber industry, cutting wood. They find her and she can hear their voices before they come in. And she is quoted by saying, it was as if an angel had come unto me. I bet, I fucking bet it is. Oh, wow. When they found her, they were extremely alarmed.

Well. She was probably looking pretty rough. Yeah. Also, young white girl in a mini dress and one white sandal. Yeah, I was gonna say, really rough looking white girl crawling out of the forest. Something's weird going on. She thinks that they may have considered her a spirit or there's a water goddess in this part of the world that's a figure from local lore.

And it's a hybrid of the freshwater dolphins that live in these rivers and a blonde light-skinned woman. Like that's the figure. And she was probably looking so swollen and gross that she probably looked like a dolphin. I'm so fucked up. I look like a dolphin. Yeah. Oh, no. Oh, no.

Oh, no. My love. Oh, you poor thing. So they immediately tend to her wounds. They try their best. They're still in a remote hut. All that she's found is people. She hasn't found like a hospital, right?

So they get to her late enough in the day that they decide they need to stay one more night there and get up early in the morning and then move because they are still far away from any type of civilization. They transport her in the boat that they came in and it is an 11 hour journey. And nothing ever came easy to this poor soul, did it? No, uh-uh. I hope that she's, have they at least, do they have anything to knock her out? Medicinal, anything?

I don't think so. I don't think there's even a lot of that in like the local hospitals. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So she gets to a village and they bring a stretcher out for her and apparently she's like, I can walk. I can walk. Which is like, girl. Just take the stretcher.

You're twins. So I'll be in a hero. I got this. I got this. Leaving one fucking sandal print in the dirt as she walks. Sit down, my love. I mean, to be fair, if you are in like survival mode for 11 days straight and you're just like, gotta keep walking, gotta live, gotta live, gotta live, you might kind of just be like,

I just, this is what I know how to do. So I'm going to keep doing it because this is what I know how to do in my life. So I'm just going to keep doing it. Very true. When they moved her through the village to a local doctor, apparently her eyes were so bloodshot that the locals thought that she was a forest demon. She really came out of this forest looking really fucked up. But like, beauty is not the priority.

Stay alive. She asked the woodcutter. She was like, they seem very scared of me what's happening. And they're like, well, your eyes are a little intense. And she's like, what's wrong with my eyes? And they're like, there's a lot of blood in them. And apparently, like, you know, when your blood vessels burst and the whites of your eyes are bloodshot, apparently there was so much blood in her eyes that even her irises were red.

Like Halloween, like red contacts. She got forest demon eyes. A little, just a little bit. Okay, I don't, I'm not making fun. I think I am. This woman is 50 million times cooler than me and could beat me in any contest to be clear. Most totally, most totally. And you know, I think she's got to have a sense of humor at this point.

You'd have to. About it all. But we'll get into that. So she is taken to a local doctor and they start to dress her wounds. She's slowly starting to be able to eat some food. They give her some soup. Things are kind of, you know, coming online. But they still say, like, I think you might need another doctor.

Like this, you know, like you just fell out of a plane and then survived in the rainforest for a very long time. So there's an offer made to her to go to a nearby missionary encampment that has an MD, but she has to get there by plane. I was gonna say, she's like, great, let's get walking, but that's worse. The fastest and safest, apparently, way to get there is to go by plane. Is it by Lanza? No.

Thank God. Because she's got a case against them. Yeah, I think, yeah, yeah. It was found out that Lanza did not have the proper certification for any of their pilots, and the majority of their mechanics had never worked on planes, but had worked on motorcycles. Those aren't planes. Not planes. And even though the plane looked new and shiny and had a new paint job, that fucker was very old,

and it was a plane designed specifically for very dry climates, for desert climates. A.K. the opposite of inside of a rain cloud, it's the fucking rainforest. Those planes specifically had been decommissioned in the U.S. years prior to this. I think she'll be up to the plane ride, because she seems a capable sort, and not one to get sentimental about this one last bump in the road. You know? She seems like she's the type to just get on with it. And you're right, she got on the flight.

Apparently, she wanted to sit up for the flight, probably because she was like, well, last time I was on a flight, it was very important that I receded. Yeah, yes, absolutely. But they had her in a gurney, so she was laid out for the flight, and she couldn't convince them otherwise. So she didn't win that one, but she did make the flight safely. She made it to the encampment with missionaries. This is where her father finds her.

They're able to get him there. And apparently, when they meet, it's very German, I suppose. Apparently, he walks into the room and says, how are you? And she says, I'm fine. And then they hug for like five minutes straight. Hello, how are you? What do you say? What do you say?

You look like a forest demon. You look like a dolphin. What do you say? Where's your mother? You're worse than the tears. That's what you do. So that's a very good question. Where is your mother?

Where is her mother? In the days that she was traversing the rivers, it was probably the third day in when Julianne comes upon a bank of seats from the airplane. It's one of the first remnants of the flight. And she sees that there are bodies in the seats. She is terrified. She's only seen a body once before, and it was at a funeral. And now she's faced with it in this very scary situation.

And one of these people she thinks might be her mother. The way that the seats have fallen, they fell head first into the ground. So she can't see any faces. They're buried except for their feet that are up in the air. And again, she's in and out of consciousness and kind of in a very fuzzy space. And she's very worried that one of these people is her mother. And so she gets a stick and she moves up, but she can tell our women's feet. The other two passengers are men.

And she moves the foot up so that she can see more of it. And she sees that the nails, the toenails have been painted. They have nail polish on them. And she immediately knows that it's not her mother because her mother never painted her nails. You have to make sacrifices if you want to be a biologist. Exactly. And one of them is vanity. It's not until after that ordeal that it becomes clear to her, how could that be her mother?

Her mother was sitting next to her. That would not be her mother in another seat. I think she was just kind of overcome by the image and worried and wanting to find her mother. Of course. So the first body that she sees, she would be immediately worried that it would be the person that she wants most in the world. So as she's recovering in the hospital,

they still have not found any of the wreckage and they still have not found any of the bodies or if there's any other survivors. She is able to give descriptions of where she was and being the biologist that she is, there's a certain point when she got to a stream, a larger stream, that she recognized a plant that was growing there called Kanabrava. And it's a specific type of cane that only grows in a very specific place. And so when she gave them that detail, the local guides were like, oh, well, that's at this juncture of this waterway.

Through her descriptions of where she was, they were able to find the wreckage and they were able to retrieve bodies. 92 passengers were on the flight and they were able to recover most of the bodies, one of whom was identified as her mom. Her body was found in a state of decomposition that denoted that she had not been dead for that long. So that means she had sustained injuries but had survived for at least a few days and then had died. Julianne writes in her memoir that there's a lot of things that she can kind of steal herself to, but trying to imagine those last days of her mom's is very unbearable.

I know she is so steely through so much of this and yet humans aren't made of steel, obviously. She's in her hospital bed. She's learned that her mother has died and that she is most likely the sole survivor. So it's a very weird time. In the memoir she had collected a letter that she had written to her aunt in Germany and it's a very short note and it's a very strange note because she pretty much just says like, I'm fine, everything's fine. I feel great. I got to eat soup today and I read this cool book and everything's fine and I love you and I'll talk to you soon. I have to go write another letter and it's like, oh man, that's disturbing and how cheerful that is.

She uses the German word for find like 10 times or something in this very short note and it's like Look. Well, we're doing our best. We are all out here doing our best and sometimes we just need to repeat that we are doing fine. She's doing a real best and we are doing fine. The search for the wreckage and the bodies is the largest aerial search up to that point in the history of Peru. This thing is in all the newspapers, people are upset and angry and then they hear that there's a survivor and of course it's just like, what? Who? Huh? What is happening? And so she is inundated with letters, inundated with people trying to reach out and tell her like, oh my gosh, you're an angel from heaven. Oh, this and that. She gets a letter from somebody being

like, well, now that you're an international figure, you should learn the language Esperanto and like You've got to get your concepts into the hands of influencers. You got to send that email. Exactly. Yeah. Like, have you considered live blogging in Esperanto? She got a poem sent from Germany that includes the stanza, an angel came from heaven, ate a piece of cake and then went wandering and all was well again. Kind of cuts out the middle. In response, she says, oh, if only things were that simple. That's what I'm saying. You're not giving her much credit. That cake was full of mud. Yeah, it was nasty. In addition to the outpouring of support and love that she's getting in all these letters, there is also a lot of parasitic

press coverage. The press are absolutely horrible. They are kind of misprinting a lot of the stuff that happened, which she realizes like, that's a thing that happens. That's okay. Gets to the point that the press are hounding this even this remote hospital. And when she does get well enough to go back to the research station with her father, they are there and like, you know, flash bulbs popping in her face all the time. And she's such a press sensation that press are just around every single corner and she can barely fucking stand it. In her memoir, she writes, the way that the press follows me in a pack almost like wild carnivores is awful. Though no jaguars or other animals attacked me in the jungle, these supposedly civilized people never stopped

hunting me. That's fucked up. Imagine being so rotten that this girl who like, I know, wasn't particularly that fussed about her wound flies or the gasoline or dirt cake. No, crocodiles coming straight at her. There's no piranhas in that water. It's fine. Just goes in. Just goes on with it. But these people, she's like, those people are fucking monsters. It really goes to show. Because the press were hounding her so much, her and her father, probably about a year after her recovery, they move to Germany. She's about 18, 19 at the time. And she lives with her aunt in Germany and kind of is still recovering, maybe not physically, but certainly emotionally. And eventually she goes to university, gets a degree in animal biology with a specialization

in mammalology. She studies bats. Cool. Specifically. Her thesis was on a bat that is native to Eastern Peru. Cool. So she spent a good chunk of time in Germany. But eventually she did move back to Peru. Her father was still in charge and running Panguana program, the research station, and they had bought the land outright. And so when he passed away in the year 2000, she inherited the research station and became its director, of which she is now. She's currently still working away, documenting the rainforest with her husband, who is an entomologist. And he studies like a specific parasitic wasp that's native to that area. Sure. What a fit. Bat lady and wasp boy. That's fine. But she might be well aware that in the mid 90s,

she got a phone call from a very well known German asking if he could make a documentary about her. And he said, if you don't know me, you can look me up on the internet. And she says, Mr. Herzog, I know who you are. WrestleMania fan, Werner Herzog. It's true. That's right. That's right. He understands the grand ballet of it all anyway. Werner Herzog, a German documentary in quotes, a nonfiction filmmaker who has made a lot of different films. He was particularly interested in Julianne's story because he was in the Lima Airport, December 24, 1971. And he was trying with all of his might to get him and his crew onto that Lanza flight. Wow. What a fucking small world. He was in Peru scouting locations for a film that he had made called Aguirre

Wrath of God about Spanish conquistadors in the jungles of Peru. So, you know, a period, a costume piece, pretty much like they were like rolling cans through this wild jungle. And he most likely was doing this not that far from where Julianne was also moving through the jungle trying to fight for her life. So, he was immediately drawn to her story. It's already a fascinating story with an incredibly resilient and likable protagonist. Even before you factor in his own personal connection to it, that kind of makes it a slam dunk. Exactly. Yeah. And even though Julianne had a horrible experience with the press, she was saying no to any type of interviews, none of that. She wanted to do her work. She wanted to live a normal life. When she got that call from Verna

Herzog, she thought about it, talked to her husband, and then decided, yeah, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it. His plan was not just to interview her and do like, you know, recreation in the jungle kind of thing. His plan was to fly her out to Peru. I hate it. Take her on that same flight. Take her to the site of the crash and film her in the rainforest that she had survived in some 40 years earlier. That's heavy. Yeah. Listen, if you want to make a great film, there must be sacrifices. I don't know if I could do that. Do you think you could do that? If it was Verna Herzog, maybe, because this isn't gonna be a, you know, it's, this isn't. Yeah, no, no, no. Like, I'll be, I'll be in the criterion collection. Like, that's cool. I'm into that. Okay. I think it's particularly

interesting that Julianne Kopke does this documentary because as we've been saying, like, she survived a grueling experience and the whole time was like, hey, I'm still alive. That's cool. I'm fine. I'm fine. Everything's fine. She writes about it explicitly, like, a very compartmentalized coping mechanism of nope, this is what I got to do to survive. And so this is okay, my mother's dead. Let's go. Okay, we're fine. Everything's fine. Eyes forward, keep moving. And fine. Yeah. Not much for looking back and languishing on the past. And especially with all of the media surrounding her too. I think she just kind of pushed a lot of that away. And so I think when Verna Herzog comes to her, and he has a very particular style, how it's like, not quite a documentary because

he scripts all of his films. So Julianne is like in the jungle reciting lines that Verna Herzog wrote for her to say. I mean, they were, they were written more or less together through interviews, but it's not exactly her words. And I think that happens in a lot of his films. They're non-fiction, but he is in control of what people are saying and doing. And what a control freak. Keep thinking about how Julianne is like, straight shooter, don't think about anything else. We're fine, we're fine. And then to have Verna Herzog come in and be like, I want you to say these lines about how you're feeling and how you're... We are needing to unpack this now, yes. But she writes explicitly in her memoir that once she decided to do it, the experience

became a type of therapy for her. She had never been to therapy before. Oh, she should be the first in line. I know, exactly. But I think she got a dose of like Verna Herzog therapy. Oh, good. He's licensed. Let's go back to the site and oh look, here's a... Yeah, let's just re-expose you to the entire trauma of like your mother's death, the maggot wound, just the works, not eating for 10 days. Let's just go through all that again. And if you watch the film, it's called Wings of Hope, she is steely. She is there and saying her lines, they like lift up the siding of the plane and she's like, wow, look, the paint job is still all there. Like, she's like lifting up carpet that has been like mucked into the forest floor and she's like,

wow, that's so interesting. She holds up the heel of a woman's shoe and she like holds it specifically for the camera. It's like, okay. She's, she's a terminator. No, there's, yeah. Yeah. I wish I had an eighth of this woman's ability to compartmentalize. I would be so much more successful. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. I think you're very successful. What are you talking about? Thank you. Wow, though, she's, she's really something this lady. Yeah, it's also been 40 years. It's been a long time. True, but there's some, I don't know. I think that like, to go back 40 years later and observe that the paint has held up, I think that would give me the fucking willies. Oh, I think when I say I don't know that I would be up to it, what I mean to say is,

I think that people by and large are far more resilient than we give ourselves credit for. I don't think that I have the same niche knowledge of the biology and ecology of the forest that would get me through the way that it got her through. That's incredibly fortunate that that was the case, but I do think that people by and large can get through a lot of shit. Yeah, they truly can. A lot of pretty crazy shit. A lot of crazy shit. She wrote in her memoir that moving through all of those things and kind of those kind of like triggering experiences, a lot of it did not affect her that deeply. She was kind of, she was even surprised by that, I think. She wasn't quite sure how she would respond, but she was like, yeah, there's the paint.

Yep, there's a shoe. Okay, whoop, there's the handle of a spoon. Interesting. Let's look at that. The things were just things. Wow. Though she did find something that did affect her deeply in the wreckage, and this is a quote from her memoir. Again, it was initially hard to recognize, even though it was gigantic in size, this piece of wreckage. It was part of the landing gear, still lying in the forest with the wheels pointed upward. Lying there like that, it reminded me terribly of the remains of a dead bird, a real living thing stranded helplessly with its feet pointing upward. Which I think back to her mom, being an ethologist, and all this knowledge of birds, and like that's the thing that gets her is this huge piece of machinery, but she can equate

it with life all of a sudden. And it also recalls that her going around picking amongst the face down people with their feet up, trying to see if they were her mother, right? Yeah. That's sad. The film came out in 98, Werner Herzog, Classico, finding the criterion channel, certainly. She says that through that process, that gave her the ability to start writing about her experience. And so about 10 years later, in 2010, she came out with her memoir when I fell from the sky, written in German and translated. And apparently, when anybody is a survivor of a plane crash, she starts getting phone calls from media and the press, because they're horrible. Somebody will crash land in the desert and they'll be like, what do you think she should do? And what

should they have done? A armchair quarterback this. And she says, as written in her memoir, in reply, I have to admit that despite my fate, I am an entirely normal person and don't feel called upon to tell complete strangers how they should now live their lives just because both of us survived a plane crash. This sort of questioning bothers me because I believe no one is entitled to give someone else sage advice. Which I love because it puts her in this space of dude, this particular place where I landed just happened to be the pocket of rainforest that I knew best that I grew up in. That I was intimately familiar with, yeah. If I had been 50 miles or 100 miles away, I would not have been able to survive. And the fact that I survived in this

place anyway is, I don't know. What is sage advice if everything has to be so particular? And I think it pulls back to her scientific way of thinking, most likely to that like, there are specific inner workings of biodiversity that are very, very fine tuned. And we cannot even begin to understand how everything in an ecosystem can build on itself and survive. We just need to study it and try and understand as best we can and preserve it, which is what she's doing with the research station now. What a saga, my gosh. She's a wild one. Truly is. And you can go to the Panguana website and learn more about the foundation. You can even donate if you want to, I know. They do a lot of conservation now and it is now the oldest biological research

station in Peru. Cool. Her and her husband, Eric Diller, they live in Munich. They, you know, spend half their time at Panguana as well. So she's flying back and forth? She's flying and long haul flights too. She's like, she's still up in the skies doing it. Probably not flying lands at this time around. I don't think so. Thank you for bringing that. That was a very good a note of hope and resilience to start season three. Wings, baby. Thanks for listening. If you want more infamy, we've got plenty more episodes at bittersweetinfamy.com. Or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to support the podcast, shoot us a few bucks via our coffee account at ko-fi.com forward slash bittersweetinfamy.

But no pressure. Bittersweetinfamy is free, baby. You can always support us by liking, rating, subscribing, leaving a review, following us on Instagram at bittersweetinfamy. Or just pass the podcast along to a friend who you think would dig it. Stay sweet. The sources that I use for this Minfamous, as well as the various clips and audio sprinkled throughout, come from The Amazing Career of Wing, my story from the Otago Daily Times online news by Roy Cuthbert, 2013. The biography of Wing from her website, which you can find at wingmusic.co.nz. The Wikipedia articles for Wing, The Dunedin Sound. South Park, season nine, episode three, Wing, which first aired March 23rd, 2005.

And we also used musical clips from Wing's performances of Dancing Queen and Sing. The sources that I used for this episode were an article on BBC.com, entitled Julianne Kopke, How I Survived a Plain Crash, written by Julianne Kopke, published March 24th, 2012. I read her memoir When I Fell from the Sky, The True Story of One Woman's Miraculous Survival, written by Julianne Kopke, in collaboration with Beate Rygerd, and translated to English by Ross Benjamin. I watched the Werner Herzog film, Wings of Hope, that came out in 1998. I read through the Panguana website, the research station that Julianne is now the director of, and I looked at the Wikipedia sites for Julianne Kopke and her parents, Hans Vilhelm Kopke

and Maria Kopke. The interstitial music was brought to you by Wing herself, and the music you are now listening to is Tea Street, by Brian Steele.