You know what adventure is? Adventure is disaster. Narrowly averted. That is the title of this episode. It's episode 317 of the way I heard it. And that's a quote Chuck from my old buddy Greg STEM who is not our guest today.

He's not. He is quoted by Jason Williams who is my guest. We got to it. Yes. It's such a good quote. It's now the title. Adventure is disaster. Narrowly averted. What do you think of Jason?

Jason is a lot of fun. He is quite, quite British, I believe. And terribly British. He's got a wonderful accent. You can spend a yard. You know, he can tell a story. And he's been around the world and done some really crazy things from, you know, under the ocean to the deserts of Iraq.

He's been everywhere. Yeah. He's done a lot of docs. His wife actually hired me many years ago to narrate some program for animal planet about tigers. And then she must have liked me because she recommended me to her husband Jason Williams who you're about to meet. And he hired me to narrate a series on treasure hunting specifically a series around a recovery vessel called the Odyssey. And a guy named Greg STEM who is a professional.

Treasure hunter Jason Williams our guest as a professional documentarian as we may have pointed out. Anyhow, I narrate these three episodes and they do really well for discovery. And so Jason reaches out after that to say, look, we have the rights. Odyssey Marine has the rights to dive on what he called America's Titanic.

And I'm like, what do you mean America's Titanic? And it was Jason who first told me the story of the SS Central America, which is a gold ship that was coming back from the gold fields in California by way of the Panama Canal and stopped in Cuba. And about a hundred miles off the coast of South Carolina ran into a hurricane in 1857 and sunk nearly 500 people died.

This is a full on tragedy. But what makes it so unforgettable is not just the tragic nature of the disaster itself, but the fact that somewhere between 20 and 22 tons of gold went down with the ship.

This is gold pulled out of the gold fields in California, smelted down into bars and coins gold that was sewn into people's jackets and stored on the ship. It was just it was a ship of gold.

In fact, Gary Kinder, he wrote the book called ship of gold in the deep blue sea. And so this is a conversation about what happened when I went down to Charleston years ago and then went down to the warehouse to see the gold and went aboard the Odyssey to meet the guys who found it.

What happened when the US marshals showed up? There are a couple things you just need to be mindful of when we jump into this because it moves pretty quick in Jason, you know, he talks like this, you know, but this is the story of the incredible sizzle reel that we put together that I was never allowed to share because of all the lawyers.

And this morning I learned that National Geographic and the BBC are going to do the project just not with me and Jason.

Not yet, at least not yet. So I don't know what's going to become of this conversation, but I wanted you to hear it because it speaks to the way the sausage gets made or not made sometimes.

But mostly it's just a great tale of treasure hunting. And what happens to a man named Tommy Thompson who gets a line on nearly a billion dollars in gold finds out where it is 7200 feet in the Atlantic and starts to bring it up.

This guy what he went through after he brought up 50 million dollars got him on the FBI's most wanted list. It got me to Charleston onto the Odyssey where I was allowed to bear witness to the recovery and help transport the gold to an undisclosed location in South Florida where I was allowed to hold it in my two hands.

And I was just looking forward to making but never got made. So things are in motion, things are happening. And I just thought, well, we got a podcast to do so let's see if old Jason Williams is out there to tell us some treasure hunting stories and remind me of why this thing really is the best documentary never made somebody else made a version of a bit not like we were going to because adventure really is disaster narrowly.

Niroly averted to episode 317 you're going to love Jason Williams a modern day pirate with a little bit of treasure hunter thrown in right after this.

Leonardo da Vinci didn't have a last name or if he did we don't know what it was.

Vinci was the name of the town Leonardo was born in on April 15th 1452 but his first name is the only name we have for one of the most influential humans to have ever walked the earth.

And the story of his life is the latest topic that I've been digging into on one dream. Never mind his painting of the last supper or the Mona Lisa or his countless other contributions to fine art.

Leonardo da Vinci impacted science and medicine and engineering like nobody else before or since.

I love one dream not just because they have thousands of topics and subjects that I can explore I love it because I can dive as deep as I want into any topic that I can think of.

Just the overview of Leonardo da Vinci for instance is terrific all by itself and enough to make me feel instantly more enlightened but if I want more there are 36 additional lectures only in

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