Sky here with another episode of the History and Plug podcast.

In the late 1920s, Theodore Roosevelt Jr. and his younger brother, Kermit, sons of President

Theodore Roosevelt, wanted Dame and Glory apart from the family spotlight.

They were seeking the empty spots on the map, the areas that had yet to be explored and

described by Westerners.

From these remote places, they hoped to bring back exotic animals to aid the scientific community's understanding of taxonomy, biological diversity, and its relatively recent theories of evolution.

The animal they most wanted was an elusive black and white bear that at the time was more legend than scientific fact.

They were looking for the panda. This expedition took them deep into China's Himalayan wilderness,

where a team of naturalists, photographers, orders, and others had to deal with bandit attacks,

inclement weather, avalanches, and seek aid from remote monasteries in order to not starve to

death during their multi-month expedition to see if they

could find this creature. The brothers were also seeking personal redemption. Theodore Roosevelt

Jr. was implicated in the teapot dome scandal during the Hardy administration, and Kermit

was a failed businessman and alcoholic who was trained to escape his father's shadow. To look at the

story that inadvertently led to the modern conservation movement, we're joined by today's guest, Nathalia Holt, author of Beast in the Clouds, but Roosevelt Brothers' deadly quest to find the mythical giant panda.

Hope you enjoy this discussion.

And one more thing before we get started with this episode, a quick break for a word from our sponsors.

I don't think I've covered any person on the show as much as Teddy Roosevelt. There are

endless anecdotes from his life. He's so interesting that it's impossible not to. But something

I've never considered is how difficult it would be to have him as your father.

He had extremely high expectations for those around him because he had extremely high expectations

for himself.

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