The Grey NATO – 231 – David Concannon On Visiting the Titanic, Recovering Apollo Rockets, And His Love Of Rolex

Published on Wed, 15 Mar 2023 14:00:00 -0400

Synopsis

The podcast episode features an extensive interview with David Concanon, an experienced explorer, lawyer, and watch enthusiast. David shares fascinating stories about his expeditions to the Titanic wreck site, his involvement in the recovery of Apollo mission F1 engines, and his work as a lawyer specializing in diving accidents and equipment cases. He also discusses his passion for watches, particularly Rolex and Omega, and their connections to exploration and adventure.

Transcript

Speaker
Jason Heaton Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Graynado. It's a loose discussion of travel, adventure, diving, driving gear, and most certainly watches. This is episode 231, and it's proudly brought to you by the ever-growing TGN supporter crew. We thank you all so much for your continued support. And if you'd like to support the show, please visit thegraynado.com for more details. Jason, how are we doing? Feeling any better this week?
James Stacey Much better. Yeah. I'm out the other end of COVID, uh, that second round by a bit of a rebound. And, uh, yeah, I've, I've been skiing a couple of times and got on the rowing machine. It's, um, it's a bit like starting over with fitness, but I'm definitely, uh, definitely on the up and up. So appreciate everybody's well wishes that we got over Slack and social media, et cetera.
Jason Heaton That's great. It's good to have that as the update, uh, this week that you're feeling better and I'm sure you'll be back in terms of the fitness thing in no time. Yeah. Other updates we have include the Slack Q&A from last week was very successful, so expect to see more of those when we need kind of a last-minute episode. And a huge thank you to everybody who chipped in questions for that. So if you missed last week's, it was a really fun episode. I highly recommend you check it out. Kind of a different form of a Q&A for us called a crew and A. Yeah, that was probably my best achievement from that episode was figuring out that title. I was quite proud of it if I'm honest. That was good. And then the other big update is we are going to be at Windup Chicago. So we were there last year and had an absolute blast. It was probably the high point for the TGN world last year. And this year, the dates are July 14th to the 16th. It's a weekend, of course, in Chicago. And we'll be there. We're not entirely sure of the capacity. It'll certainly be a little bit different than last year. But the idea is to be there to hang out and do some some stuff like that rather than try and move merch and that sort of thing. So, you know, keep your ears peeled on the show for details in the future. But if you're planning and you want to make plans for your summer to be in Chicago, July 14th, 15th or 16th, we'll be there too. And we'd love to see you there at wind up. It's always a good time.
James Stacey Yeah, definitely. And you're closing in on Watches and Wonders. What is that, two weeks out or next week?
Jason Heaton Yeah, just about two weeks. So we're recording this on a Tuesday and everything will kick off essentially two Mondays from now. So a little bit less than two weeks. I go a little bit early to Geneva to hang out with Tudor for a couple of days to see their manufacture. So I'm down to, I think Flighty told me today I've got eight days to get everything figured out. I'm at least four days behind. I took a bit of a long weekend, and took yesterday off and then just getting back into the swing now. So yeah, I can't say that I've, I've been doing much other than, you know, trying to get everything in order. It's a new sort of task for me. Uh, and I'm just, I'm, you know, trying to keep up at this point.
James Stacey Yeah. It's a sure sign of spring when, uh, when everybody starts speculating about what Rolex is going to do and you start to see all the mock-ups of, uh, people's conjectures and things like that. So, um, Exciting. And I'm sure a little daunting for you to head back and have to kind of wade into that, that melee again.
Jason Heaton Yeah. I'm pretty stressed about the next, you know, eight or nine days, uh, less so the actual show, the, you know, having done the show so many times.
James Stacey It's like what, uh, Laurent Ballesta told me a couple of weeks ago about, um, the hardest part of an expedition is, is all happens at home when you're planning it all. And then once you're face to face with the shark underwater, it's, uh, that's where he wants to be. I'm sure it's the same with the show like watches and wonders. Speaking of Tudor, are you still in honeymoon phase with the Pelagos 39?
Jason Heaton Yeah, if we jump into wrist check, I can be real quick. I'm still wearing the Pelagos, haven't taken it off. How are you wearing it? I've got it on the Ericas. I'll put it back on the bracelet to go to Switzerland next week. Yeah. But right now, I've got it on the Ericas and it's basically perfect. I'm still at the point where at least once a day, I reach down to make sure it's still there. It just doesn't weigh anything in the air because it's so comfortable. Yeah. And yeah, just getting a ton of wear out of it. It's keeping great time. Maybe negative one second a day right now, ish. That'll work. I haven't bothered to put it on the timer because it is so close. I think, you know, with DST, I went and reset it and it was 10 seconds behind and I bet you I've been wearing it for more than 10 days on that wind without setting it. So, you know, we have a pretty incredible guest on today's episode. What sort of watch did you pick? Because I figure you probably pick something for our guest.
James Stacey I did. Uh, you know, David Concanon, our guest is a huge Rolex fan and has done a lot with his Rolexes. And so I dusted off my Submariner 140 60 M, uh, from that I got back on my 40th birthday many years ago now. Yeah. I've been wearing it for the past few days and you know, it's like a rediscovering an old friend and it's great watch, um, as comfortable as it ever was. And I'd forgotten when I put it on that I had finally had the local Rolex shop put Uh, the click spring back on the bezel. If you remember my old story about losing the bezel on a sail in a sailboat race and then, and then just popping it back on without the click spring, I kept it that way for a long time. And, and at some point, I don't know, a couple of years ago, I decided that I'd, I'd just have them put one back on. Cause I enjoy clicking a bezel. And, uh, and so it's kind of, uh, it's kind of nice to reach down and do that, but it's, uh, yeah, it's, it's old faithful, still, still keeping good time and still comfortable as ever. And it seemed like a fitting choice for today's show.
Jason Heaton Absolutely. And we ended up, well, we actually just finished recording with David. I was almost like starstruck throughout the whole thing. I'm not even sure how we, how you, how you summarize in an intro a guy like David can cannon. I'll leave that to you. But, but please, if you're listening and you don't know David's name, don't let that slow you down. This, I think this could end up being 10 episodes of TGN over the next while I feel like he has an endless number of stories and he talks about the most TGN people and events that you could possibly imagine. And he was so much sweeter and more convivial than I expected somebody to be, you know, not knowing me and just jumping on a zoom. He was just immediately, it was like an old friend sort of scenario. So I, I had an absolute blast with this and I hope people really enjoy it. Why don't you give people some background before we get into what's the better part of an hour long convo?
James Stacey Yeah. I mean on paper, David Concanon is he's a top lawyer specifically in kind of the Uh, adventure, recreation, sports, diving space. Um, but other than that, I mean, he's, he's a long time explorers club member. I met him years ago. We just exchanged, I believe emails, uh, about watches. Um, he's a, he's a real watch nerd, um, of, of the deepest sort, um, in many respects of the word. Um, but more significantly, I mean, he's led expeditions to Titanic. He, um, was part of, and actually organized the four and a half year mission that was, uh, sort of underwritten and conceived of by Jeff Bezos to, to find the Apollo F1 engines, um, from the Apollo 11 mission, uh, at the bottom of the ocean. He's, uh, he's led expeditions to Britannic. Um, he was a kind of a early member of, of kind of the East coast wreck diving scene with, with Chatterton and Rich, Richie Kohler. I mean, he, he's just done so much. And, um, and so it, it feels like it's been a long time coming to have him on TGN. And, and just some of the names you hear him casually dropping, and I don't think he was doing it to name drop. I mean, he's, he's been friendly with, and even been on dive trips with people like Scott Carpenter, Buzz Aldrin, uh, you know, Bezos and Don Walsh and people like this. And he's just a, he's just a master storyteller. Uh, and then his, his work in the law field is, is equally fascinating. So we, you know, we tried to cram as much of this into about an hour's discussion as we could, but it's clear where we might have to have him on. again in the, uh, in the future. So, um, you know, without further ado, I say we just jump right in and, and let David take over here and see where it goes. All right. Well, David Concanon, uh, this feels like a long time coming. Thanks so much for joining us on the gray NATO. Welcome from snowy Idaho.
David Concanon Good morning, Jason. Good morning, James.
James Stacey What, uh, you, you, you showed us the snow outside your window there. What, uh, I guess just by way of introduction, tell us how you got to, Well, how you got to Idaho for one thing, where are you from?
David Concanon I'm from Philadelphia and I was imported here about 10 years ago by the pretty girl who talked to me when I was a kid. It didn't matter where she was. I was going to be there too when she started talking to me more. All right.
James Stacey Well, uh, I guess, I guess you'll have to wait till, till June to, uh, to get your motorcycle out, but we can talk about that a little bit later. Um, Well, I mean, there's so much to talk about to get ready for the show. You sent us, uh, some extensive notes about your background and your work and, and your exploits. And it's, it's all just so fascinating. So let's, let's dive right in. I mean, I, for one thing, you're, you're an explorer, you're a longtime explorers club member. Um, you've done some amazing stuff. Your legal work is also equally, I think, fascinating and our listeners will love that. And then you're a big watch guy. So let's pardon the pun. Let's dive in with, with the exploration stuff. First of all, we've, we've got to talk about, Well, there are two big things I want to hear about, but let's talk about Titanic. Sure. You've, you've laid eyes on Titanic, which is something that many people have done. Tell us a little about that, how that got started and how many times you've been there.
David Concanon It's, it's, it's a good story. I've been out to the Titanic five times. I've made four dives. I've explored five square miles of the wreck site, two and a half miles deep. Um, it started about 25 years ago with, uh, sitting at a board of directors meeting at the Explorers Club. I was a young guy and I was general counsel and, and, The man sitting next to me, Don Walsh, former pilot of the Trieste, had a brown envelope and he had received some papers in the mail. And he said, could you help me with this? And I said, well, what is it? And he gave it to me. I said, Don, this is a motion for a preliminary injunction to prevent you from leading an expedition to the Titanic. Were you thinking about going to the Titanic? And he was. And it turned out that the company with the salvage rights was trying to keep all the world off of the Titanic and the precedent that would have been set by that would have applied to historic shipwrecks all around the world and specifically it would have prohibited filming and exploration. So I represented Don and Fred McLaren and Ralph White and later the Explorers Club in the litigation to initially be lost in the district court and then we won in the appellate court and won in the U.S. Supreme Court. But it would have created this precedent, this legal precedent that would have shut down exploration, because as you probably know, exploration is paid for by intellectual property rights for photography and filming. So during the course of that two-year case, I got to know everyone associated with exploration of the Titanic, Bob Ballard, Jim Cameron, P.H. Nardgele, and many of them became my friends, if not all of them, And so the constant invitations to go to the Titanic resulted from that. I went out there twice as an advisor. I mean, it's, it's, it's all based on an, I got a guy, I got a guy.
Jason Heaton The constant invitations to go to the Titanic.
David Concanon It's pretty true. And I have a sixth invitation to go in May and I may not be able to do it because of scheduling conflicts. And it's a shame because my dives got weathered out the last, I was there last year and the year before and I got weathered out. So this year I'm guaranteed to dive. And it would be nice to see it again. And it's nicer to see it than stay, sit on the surface for 10 days and not see it. Yeah. That's just, that's, I don't need that to make my life complete. So what year was your first dive? 2000. I was this, the co I didn't lead that, but the leader of that expedition was doing more showing up for the photo op than leading. So this is three of us that were doing a lot of the work. And then I led, I went back as an advisor to the U S government for Jim and Mike McDowell, uh, for the private sector in 2003. And then I went back again in 2005 and led an expedition for a network to take their talent down to the wreck and make a terrible television show out of it. And I took a break really bad, really docudrama based on expedition.
James Stacey Oh, we won't even say the name.
David Concanon No, but people look it up though. So I took a break and I was doing other things at the same time. I was general counsel of the X price foundation for the first private space flights. Um, I was on the board of directors of the explorers club by that time. And I was in the C space symposium by that time when I took a break. And then Jeff Bezos in 2010 reached out to me and asked me to do the Apollo project. And I did that. And then, You know, that was over in 2004, 2000, no, not 2004, 2015, 14, 15 and ocean gate asked me to help them with their Titanic stuff. And I got back into that. I do other things, but there's the story short.
James Stacey So I want to loop around to the Apollo project after we're done with Titanic, but describe, well, a couple of things, the process of visiting Titanic. I'm guessing this was on the mirror submersibles in the early days, right? And then early days. Describe the size of this submersible, what the experience was like, and what was it like to see Titanic for the very first time with your eyes?
David Concanon So 23 years ago, when we first started to go there, it was extremely difficult to put together an expedition to the Titanic because there were no assets, there were no submersibles anywhere. that were commercially available to go there. The U.S. didn't have the capability. The French didn't have the capability. Only the Russians had the capability. And you had to be able to charter the ship and the submersibles from the Russian Academy of Sciences. And to do that, you had to know them and they had to respect you. And it was a kabuki dance. Logistically, that was difficult. I put that together and charted the ships and the submersibles, all that, and then went out for two months. I ended up leaving in the middle for, for, uh, professional reasons, but I made the first dive of the expedition. It turned out to be the first dive of this century, mere one day, one dive one with Anatoly Sagalovich who designed the mirrors and Ralph White, who filmed the expedition. He filmed Bob Ballard's reaction to discovering the Titanic. Ballard wasn't on duty at the time and Emery Christoph and Ralph White were. So anyway, here I am, I'm in the mirror submersible. It is six feet in diameter. Give there's three people, a foot thick titanium sphere, no heat, no bathroom, and about to dive two and a half miles deep. The mirrors hadn't been there in a long time. I didn't know it at the time, but the batteries were beyond their useful life and the ship and the sub had not been used in a while. And first dive, they joked later on that they put the lawyer in the sub on the first dive, because that was the test time to see if the sub would implode and if I was expendable. Oh, no. No. I mean, look, it's a good joke. I hope it's a joke. But so it's when you see the Titanic and it was interesting because Ralph had not been there since he filmed IMAX, the Titanic movie in 91 that nobody been there since Cameron had been there in 95. And so here I am a mere one day, one dive, one with the the legends, the giants. And I'm just the term is Jaffa, just a F-ing observer. So I'm the Jaffa, but they teach you how to operate the sub and how to get back and where the getting switches don't hit it. You know, the out getting switch and going to see the Titanic is like a 12 hour long blind date. You will experience all this emotion at various times, either elation, boredom, fear, get me out of here. I want to stay. It's not actually, this is kind of interesting after all, et cetera. And it's a two, it's a three hour drop. And because the currents are layer cakes, you don't just drop straight. You have to basically time it with the current and then maneuver. And so you always try to, you end up dropping North of the bow. And that's a perfect drop because then you can navigate into the currents, which run South to North at a slower rate of speed. And it, it slows you down so that you can spend more time on the on the wreck itself. The wreck is divided into two sections, the bow and the stern. They're half mile apart, about 440 feet of the bow, 400 and some feet of the stern, and it's all destroyed in the area around the stern. We'd spent months preparing and looking at photos and videos so that you could navigate anywhere on the wreck. If I drop anywhere and I see a teacup, I know I'm in Hell's Kitchen, which is south east or east-southeast of the stern. So that if I am there, I look at the compass and I use my watch to time my trajectory across the bottom so I can find what I'm looking for. Back at that time, Jim Cameron had never seen the stern. He'd only been on the bow. The French that had recovered had only been on the stern really. They had done a little bit of work on the bow. So anyway, you're navigating and you want to hit the prow, the peak of the bow.
Unknown Yeah.
David Concanon And that's, that's the money shot. And that's, that's exactly what we did. And what's cool is as you're coming toward the bow, the first man-made feature you see is the, is the lid that was on the first class baggage area. It's in the debris field. That's not, it's not in the debris fields all by itself. And there's a marker. So you hit that first and you see a piece of the Titanic. And this is after a three hour drop, which is you're nervous. You're, you're, you're getting colder because the temperature's dropping. You're kind of bored. You don't really know what's happening. Uh, there's this white noise that's going on the whole time that gets annoying. If you're me and you're trying to block it out, I would take your plugs or music on subsequent dives. And then suddenly you see it on sonar and there it is. out the window, out the porthole. And it's, it's an interesting thing because it's all inspiring. It is, it takes your breath away, but it's very, very, very difficult to see because the portholes in the mirror are very small. They're, they're facing down and they're oriented center is center left is peripheral vision to the left. Uh, starboard is peripheral vision to starboard. So Jeff on the starboard side, you can see peripheral vision, on the starboard side. Yeah. You can't see dead ahead. And to do that, you know, just three of you crammed into this six foot sphere. You have to kind of look over somebody's shoulder. You don't realize the limitations and what you can see until you're actually on it. And then you're frustrated. So the first thing is this sense of awe. The second thing is how can I get a better view? And then immediately the third thing is what am I looking at and could this trap me here? Because It's very, very dangerous. There are a lot of things that can catch on the skids of the sub or the light bars or things and keep you there. Yeah. That's happened to me twice. So you immediately start looking to orient yourself and then you want to know what, where are the dangers. There's the crow, the crane on the bow, which overhangs so you can come up and get caught underneath it. There's cables from the funnels that are all over the deck. Uh, there's capstans and things. And so you're constantly aware of the dangers as you, the mirrors are great because they are not elevators that are overweighted to drop. And then they take the weights off and they go up. They have a water ballast system that pumps out and you can fly like a helicopter over the rack. And if you're going into the current, it slows your speed across the bottom to about one knot or less. And you can really get a slow expansive view of the ship. And it's wow. And I got that on my first dive. Ironically, we had a problem with the ROV getting fouled in the props of the second ship and the whole thing was going to come down on our heads, cable and all. So we only, I only had about 12 minutes on the bow until that happened. And then I've never been back. So if you think about it, it's kind of, I talked to Buzz Aldrin about what it's like to walk on the moon. basically says, you know, it only lasted a couple of hours.
Unknown Yeah.
David Concanon We're there less than a full day and we were busy. Yeah. And that's, that's generally what a dive is like. You nowadays, when you go with ocean gate, you're just an observer and you, we were working, we were looking for things to recover on my first dives. And so you're completely task loaded and task oriented. Uh, nowadays you're not now, now you can go and you can You just say, what am I looking at? What can trap me here? But the sub has more maneuverability. Uh, you've got better camera systems, better lights, better everything. You're not looking at it through a porthole with a flashlight, you know, peripheral vision. So the first dive, we covered the whole wreck site and we went to the stern and we went into the debris field and then we found a new debris field that we followed for two kilometers, like a cat's tail. Wow. And followed that, never been investigated before. And we followed that to see where it led and what it was and what it told us about the ship and the people. And we found a large field of shoes about a kilometer south-southwest. And that's spooky. You rarely see shoes. Shoes are emotionally attached as a person. Yeah. That is something Dr. Ballard has, has promoted. You rarely see shoes. When you do see shoes, you often see them next to a bag of luggage, which is tipped out. You almost never see a pair of shoes. You see one, but nevertheless, you know, it's, you're associated, your mind goes to where that shoe was. Was it on a person's foot? If it was, they went into the water and lost it, which means they had a very slim chance of survival. And when you see a cluster of them, you realize, okay, this is where a group of people went into the water, probably when the stern sank and people jumped and they lost their shoes. I doubt very seriously that all those bodies came down two and a half miles and landed there, but they at least lost their shoes. So you have this personal connection. And My grandparents both emigrated from Ireland around 1911. So it's hard not to have this personal connection to the most likely immigrants that went into the water. Yeah. And that's, and you see there, see what nobody's seen since they did that.
James Stacey Amazing. And I'm sure that in subsequent years now, I mean, wrecks are increasingly, you know, they're organic once they're on the ocean floor, they're deteriorating actively. I'm sure if you go back, you'll notice quite a difference in the condition of the wreck 23 years ago.
David Concanon You, you really do. It's it's the, the Titanic is losing a half a ton of iron or every single day, every day. Wow. And it's melting like a candle from the top down because the finish steel is on the top. And so you, you see major differences to the, the ceilings on like the Marconi room and the Captain Smith's, the wall next to his cabin has collapsed. And at the bow mast has collapsed. It had help, but it collapsed. It's less, it's on the bow. And Jim and I had this conversation once about Cameron and I, about, I asked him, why did you only go to the bow when you filmed the movie? He said, well, the story of the ship is in the bow. I said, yeah, but the story of the sinking is in the stern. So And that's really true. The stern looks a lot like the world trade center on September 12th, 2001. It's, it's completely destroyed. And I'm not a rivet counter as, as the certain type of people refer to. I don't, I can't look at a porthole and tell you that that's Molly Smith's or Molly Brown's cabin. I don't actually care. I'm more tuned into the people stories and, and as we call it, the, the important stories of the unimportant people. Yeah. My grandfather, my grandmother, um, less so the Wideners or the Astors, you know, that story has been told a thousand times. That doesn't interest me. I'd rather, um, know the story of Giuseppe from Florence or somebody from Jordan or Armenia or Ireland. That's why, that's why I keep going back.
Jason Heaton You know, you've had this experience. The first time was 23 years ago, and your most recent dive would have been, I mean, theoretically, I guess you attempted twice recently, but what was the most recent dive on the Titanic? July of 2022, about eight months ago. And how has the experience changed in 22 years, essentially, like between the equipment that's used or the amount of time, the effort is most of it the same, or has it has kind of all of it aged up in some way?
David Concanon It's a lot easier to go there today. And there are more ships that can go there, more ships of opportunity. There's two submersibles that are privately owned. When I went with Ocean Gate in 2021, I went on the Let's Break Things expedition, the pre, before clients came out. There were a couple of clients, but our mission observers, as they refer to them as, but they're participants. But we went specifically to break things so that we could break them and learn from the experience and not break them later. We broke a lot of things, but that's the point. However, you know, I've watched the number of people that have, I saw a figure yesterday that I think maybe 13,000 people have summited Everest since it was first climbed in 1953, 13,700 or thereabouts. The number of people that have seen the Titanic underwater is around 150 and it was around 120 two years ago. And then we've, you know, exponentially increased that because ocean gate did two successful years of expeditions, about six rotations per and each time they bring out three new people. Plus it's new for them as well. So I'd say ocean gates added a 20 to 25 to that total in just two years. And that's a really, really significant number. When I went, it was 109, 106. And. If you think about it, it's a lot, there are more people will summit Mount Everest in a single day. Yeah. This year than I've ever seen the Titanic underwater. Yeah. And that's pretty special. That's a, that's kind of a rare club. It's, it's getting larger, which is okay, but it still will be small. And I like being involved as an advisor because I like sharing it. Look, I'm a lawyer. I'm not a Marine biologist. I'm not a, uh, a Navy sea captain. There would have been zero opportunities for me to do this if I wasn't sitting next to Don Walsh and somebody hadn't sued him to try and keep him from going.
Unknown Yeah.
James Stacey I just parlayed that. That's an interesting connection or way to get there. And I want to segue to another one of your, your fascinating expeditions, the, the Apollo F1 engine, um, search and recovery and that sort of thing. But the segue I want to make is, you know, you talk about the people that have the few people that have visited Titanic. And I can't help but think that, you know, space tourism is kind of a hot topic these days and trips to Mars and this like this. And I think to myself, we know so little about the ocean floor and so few people have gone there, have done like gone to Titanic or things like this. They just found endurance, et cetera. And I mean, you're, you, I mean, you and I have talked to your space buff like I am, but I can't help but think like the ocean is underserved or under appreciated. What do you, how do you kind of reconcile the two?
David Concanon It is. And I think that's because of bad marketing. Yeah. It's interesting. I don't tell this story very often, but I've been told it more lately when I was a boy, when I was the day I was born, my father didn't come to the hospital because the Philadelphia Eagles were playing an exhibition game and his, Cousin Jack was the quarterback. And so Jackson Cannon's first game as a Philadelphia Eagle is more important. He's already got one son. He's not going to come for the second son. So anyway, I grew up. Athletes were not like, that's a true Eagles fan. It's totally absolutely. And then he got traded to Chicago for Mike. I mean, and on and on and on. But so athletes were not my heroes as I was growing up. Astronauts were my heroes. Yeah. Jacques Cousteau was my hero, all this stuff. And then when I was in high school, the last, well, a moonwalker came to my high school and he must have been in a bad mood because he looked at the, I was like over the moon with excitement. This is, this is my hero. But he came and he said, he looked, he swept his hand over the audience. He said, none of you will do anything significant in your lives. None of you do what I did. Yeah. The great age of exploration is past. Wow. I didn't appreciate that. That soured me on, on astronauts for a time. And I didn't like lump them all together. I was pretty particular with him, but it pushed me toward the ocean space. But you're right. You know, the Titanic is the Mount Everest of, it's like going to the moon or it's like climbing Mount Everest. If you're an underwater exploration, it's the pinnacle. And I've been there multiple times. And I'm friends with the people that have also been there multiple times, or just one time. We talk about this topic a lot. And I'm a member of the Sea Space Symposium, which is leaders in aerospace space and ocean exploration. And we talk about it there. And the reality is that the oceans have, have not caught on with the public's imagination in the way that space has. And It's getting better, but here's this vast unexplored unknown area that has all this to teach us. And it's right there, right outside your door. And it surrounds all of us everywhere in the world, but it's still not being explored. Now it's being done privately, right? Previously there was, there had to be a military reason to do it or, or it didn't happen. That's changed. So people like Victor Vescovo or, or Stockton Rush or others who are putting their money up and bringing along scientists. You know, now it's not just one dive to the Marianas Trench every 50 years. It's every other day when Victor's out there or he's, he's sold it on to Gabe, but these guys have the ability to recycle and charge the batteries and go back. They did it Tuesday. They'll go back on Thursday and then they'll go back on Saturday. And so the numbers increase exponentially and I'm ecstatic to see that. Yeah. And the same has happened with private space, but private space I think is actually falling behind a little bit and then it is in the ocean space.
James Stacey Now you've, you've worked with, with Bezos on, on the Apollo engine recovery stuff. Um, but he's also obviously equally interested if not more so in, in space exploration or space travel. as the ocean stuff. I mean, how about you personally? Do you have high ambitions to go to space? Is that in your plans or are you kind of happier kind of going to type?
David Concanon I would love to go to space. I would be thrilled to go to space and I would, I'll talk to Jeff about it, but I don't know. I'm not high on the list of friends and family discounters, but I, it's, it would, it's something that I would do and I think it's something that's that will be achievable for all of us. I don't know that it's cost the same to go to the Titanic as it does to go to blue origin, but that gap is getting smaller and smaller. I mean, I was the general counsel of the XPRIZE Foundation, which put up the $10 million cash prize for the first private space flights. And I was at the first flight of a spaceship one. And this was the dawn of private space and the audience, which was invitationally, but it was up at, up at Mojave at the airfield. And there were a lot of people from NASA there. And there were a lot of people from JPL. And they could not have been more like the guy that talked to me in my high school. They were looking down their nose at the folks as, you know, like, this is your build your back, your dragster, but you're not going to be us. Now, 20 years later, all their resumes are on the slush pile at blue origin and SpaceX and everybody else affiliated with private space.
Unknown Yeah.
David Concanon Uh, you know, so, and I tell, I talked to kids, I talked like thousands and thousands of kids every year. I'm not the guy that talked to me. I'm the opposite of that. And like, literally if, if this guy from Pennsylvania is a lawyer can do it, you can do it. It doesn't. Yeah. And I tell them you're, you're at this new age of exploration. You're right there and you can do these things and you can go to space and you can be involved. You can design spacesuits, you can design rocket ships, you can design Deep diving submersibles. You know, there's a need for people to develop lighting systems that can withstand the pressures underwater, which will also be usable in space. And you will fill that need in a few years. I mean, you all in this classroom at LA County schools or, or someplace in Idaho or someplace anywhere in the world have the ability to, to be that person that fills that need. Yeah. And I think that's really, really exciting. And I have four kids, so I, you know, I try to tell them that I can't shut up, but it really resonates. So anyway, that's that's I didn't answer your question, Jason, but it said. From where I sit, having, you know, feet in both camps, I do see it changing and I do see us becoming more interested in the oceans. I do see us becoming more interested in what we throw into the ocean and how that relates to what we breathe, what we eat, what we drink. I do see that awareness happening probably because of the devil's device, the phone, and we have access to information. Every kid can look at the Red Sea on their iPhone or, you know, they'll learn about these things that you and I had to get from National Geographic. Or if there was this lag time in the media between when a story was, you know, experienced to when it was told. And it was, there was this delay and so that's gone.
James Stacey I, in the interest of time, I want to move because I want to move to, um, to your work because you know, you, you've brought up a few times your, your work as general counsel, um, and as a lawyer and you have this niche specialization, I guess, in, in the type of law you practice, how did that come about? And, and recently you and I have kind of gone back and forth about some of these diving accidents, lawsuits against, dive manufacturers. Um, tell us a little bit about your work in, in this field and I don't know, just any interesting cases or how you got into this, uh, this specific area.
David Concanon Well, as I said, I, I was, I didn't have an easy childhood and I would, I didn't, not from wealthy family. I first person in my family go to college, I paid for it myself. But the one good thing my mother did was she got my brother and I into a boys camp in New Hampshire and we were on scholarship and was at this boys camp where I found that I was capable of doing a lot more than I thought I was and certainly a lot more than I was told I was by Mr. Moonwalker. But we climbed mountains and I did my first scuba dives at this summer camp. I found my first shipwreck underwater at this summer camp and I spent a lot of time in the outdoors and I found that this was my place and these were my people. And I have always gravitated towards that. You know, I'm not, I didn't plan to go to law school. I have a finance degree. The stock market crashed. I had to do something. I'm not a country club lawyer. I don't play golf. I don't play tennis. I represent golf and tennis manufacturers, but I don't partake. I was a mountain climber and I was always out in the, in the field. I spent at least a month, a year out. As I mentioned, I studied law in Africa specifically to learn environmental law from a third world perspective, but I could not stand, although I had to do it being in a suit, being in an office, being surrounded by marble, being surrounded by people who just want to talk about playing golf and tennis and lawyers. I don't, I don't hang out with lawyers. I, I have very few friends who were lawyers. I don't want to watch legal movies or television shows or anything. I it's shop talk and I can't stand it. So I used to dive a lot. And I used to teach scuba diving. And then I lived in Philadelphia and dove in New Jersey. And at that time, a lot of people were getting hurt and a lot of people were getting killed. And some of them were friends of mine. Everything in my experience and exploration is based on the, I got a guy network. I got a guy that can do that, that I trust, or I got a woman, but at this time when shadow divers was written and, you know, John and Richie, I knew very, very well, uh, Danny Crowell and Bill Nagel and all those guys that you read about in the book. Those are my dive buddies. Those are my peers and my contemporaries, but they were getting killed. The Rouse's when they died, which is in the book, shadow divers and in Bernie's book. And so a lawyer was needed. Well, let's ask Dave. And that's how I got pulled into the diving realm. Okay.
Unknown Yeah.
David Concanon You know, these were my friends and these were, these were the people that I was engaged in social activities with and recreational activities with. So that's how I got pulled into the diving side of things. And it helped to have a lawyer handling diving that new diving. Yeah. And I became friends with Peter Hess. When I was a law clerk to the chief federal judge in Philadelphia, we got sent to San Francisco to help with cases there. And I had two cases. One was the first case in history to enjoin logging on private land under the endangered species act. And another was, shipwreck case, California versus Deep Sea Research, which was the I wrote the decision that was affirmed unanimously by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and then United States Supreme Court. And I read every single published case involving a shipwreck in the history of American jurisprudence. And that somehow made me the expert in cases involving shipwrecks. So, okay, that and $4 will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks, but it also makes you the guy that people go to when they need a guy to help out with the Atocha. So I represent the Fisher family in Key West and I represent, and I have, and that's how I got involved. It's kind of in the Titanic. And then the Carl Allen and Allen exploration in the Bahamas and we're recovering the Maravillas or what we think is the Maravillas, the Spanish galleon. There's only two lawyers that know that me and my partner, Matt, or there's a guy that represents Spain who was knighted for his victories. And, and, but it's really just a matter of being, having no competition.
James Stacey Yeah. Yeah. Find your niche. Yeah.
David Concanon You know, if I did employment law, there'd be 20,000 others to go to your, um, there's, there's the shipwreck law stuff, which is interesting.
James Stacey And then there's this, the, I think I find that the work that you're doing with dive equipment manufacturers is, Probably controversial, probably divisive. If you can talk about the case with Wes Skiles particularly, because you know, this guy was a hero to many, a good friend, a very talented diver and filmmaker. Maybe you can just summarize that case for people and kind of your involvement.
David Concanon Yeah. Wes Skiles was a National Geographic photographer for those people that don't know, very highly regarded, loved. I knew him. I was supposed to go on a motorcycle ride with him the year he died. And he died on the day that he made the cover of National Geographic. His photograph, his imagery was on the cover that day. He never saw it. But he died while filming a television show for National Geographic using a rebreather, a closed circuit rebreather, which is a device that recirculates your gas. And diving on a rebreather is different from diving on regular scuba gear because with regular scuba gear, you put it in your mouth, you breathe, You don't have to pay attention. You just have to know how much area of left and how deep you are. But on a rebreather, it's far more complicated and you're adjusting what you're breathing and it allows you to stay down for a lot longer and it allows you to get into trouble. Wes was not trained on how to use a rebreather. He borrowed the rebreather and he had never been deep with a rebreather below 14 feet. And the reason that's important is that When you're coming up from underwater and you're ascending and the pressure is going off, the gas that you have in your equipment expands. And when the gas expands, you start to rise faster. And when you're using a rebreather, when that pressure is dropping, the volume of oxygen you're breathing also drops. And if you're not monitoring the oxygen, you can lose consciousness because of lack of oxygen or hypoxia. So what's happening on a rebreather is the gas is expanding. And the rebreather is adding oxygen also at the same time. And you can go up very rapidly. Not at 14 feet, but at 30, 50, 60, that's what happens. And that's exactly what happened to Wes. Wes was holding a camera in one hand, a light in the other. He was not going up on a rope. And when he hit this 30 foot mark, he started to go up very, very rapidly. And he couldn't do anything about it because he didn't have three hands. This was really obscured. in the litigation over how he died, but ultimately I won that case and it was one of the top. I represented the rebreather manufacturer. They were sued saying, you know, there was some wonky theory that the plaintiff's attorney had about sticky water and stupid stuff. But the reality was I had to show the jury how he died. And this was a very simple thing for a guy who'd spent thousands of hours underwater. It was as simple as not knowing that this phenomenon was going to happen at this depth And not being able to do anything about it. And so his lungs tore. He had a pneumothorax. That's how Wes died. And it's very, very unfortunate. The other thing that's unfortunate is, and this was not well known, is that Wes would ingest substances that are not necessarily appropriate for diving or driving or operating heavy equipment. And he had ingested those and he had taken Ambien on the morning of the dive, four hours before the dive. And Ambien doesn't help you. It doesn't help your mental acuity. The effects are magnified underwater. So the poor guy was in this situation where something was happening and he couldn't react fast enough. And he tore his lungs as a result and he died. And it, and as a result, we lost somebody who was a phenomenal photographer, deeply into conservation, well-loved. And sadly, even though I knew him and, and I knew the family and he was friends with a lot of my friends, I had to be the guy to bring out the truth of how he passed away. And it was, People didn't like that. And I, and I do that in all of my cases. I have another one about another photographer that died using a rebreather which goes to trial this fall. And what the public has been told is not true. And it's my job to bring out the truth. And, and because I understand how the equipment works and what the norms are and things, I, I, I have that base knowledge and there's no learning curve, but then I have to be able to explain it. And I haven't lost a trial in 28 years, but I've only lost one. My first one, I was a newbie and I was the third chair, the young kid on the team. But you know, you have to be able to explain these things to a jury of 12 who know nothing about the subject and not only make them understand it, but get them to agree that you're right. And that's what I've done, particularly in the diving realm. I've never lost a diving case, but I think people.
James Stacey want to believe that, you know, in a case like that, this, this well-liked guy, this talented guy died, the evil person or the evil entity here is the, is the manufacturer. But from what I've gathered, you are very much in, in a, in a quest for fairness, obviously, but also very wary of litigation against manufacturers that don't take into account personal responsibility or training and that sort of thing. Right. I mean, you're a real advocate for that, right?
David Concanon That's, that's not accurate, Jason. One thing I've learned being a peer, I look like, look, I didn't think I was qualified to join the Explorers Club when I was one of the youngest people in the world, but I know I'm qualified now. And I count Sredman, Hillary, Jim Cameron, Buzz Aldrin. Uh, these were friends of mine. Uh, you know, Scott Carpenter, adore him. And what you realize when you are friends with your heroes is that they're just like you. And they're not perfect. They're, they're completely fallible. And sometimes the, as Sir Edmund Hillary said, the weather was bad for the guy the day before, and it was okay for you. And you made it to the summit of Mount Everest. Sometimes you're the guy in bad weather. Sometimes you're the guy with poor equipment. Sometimes you're the guy that doesn't know exactly how to use something in an adverse situation. I'm the guy to tell the truth. I have, I spent, so I've done about, 35 fatality investigations in the last three years. I've done hundreds. I've never counted them until the last three years because there was a spike during COVID, a huge, huge spike. And I got involved in all these fatality investigations. But I was talking to the Consumer Product Safety Commission yesterday about a product recall that a manufacturer is initiating because they found a problem with a product that needs to be taken off the market and they're doing it. I'm always about finding out what happened so that we don't repeat mistakes. Jeff Bezos and I had a good conversation about he doesn't mind people making mistakes. He, he doesn't like people repeating mistakes. It's really simple advice that we don't employ. I don't like this work. I hate it. I despise getting another call, which could have happened while we were on the phone, you know, doing this about a dead diver and or, or a dead climber or a dead pilot. But I happen to know this area well, so I get called. I'm all about finding out what happens so that it doesn't happen to other people. And if there's a lawsuit, which is only about one in 10 of these incidents will be a lawsuit explaining exactly what happened, whether I represent the plaintiff or the defendant, it's not about not having liability. It's about explaining what happened. And 99% of the time, There's two major causes of fatalities in the, in the, at least in diving and pretty much recreationally 60% of them are cardiac events. Six, 0%. Wow.
Unknown Yeah.
David Concanon Three out of five are cardiac related health related issues. The rest are a mix of poor training, lack of supervision, and just a series of bad events. But it's in deciphering that series of bad events that you have to, figure out what happened. And there's often a lot of links in the causal chain. And that's all I do. It's problem solving. It's analytical. It's figuring out what the links in the causal chain are. And then if I have to, if there's a case that results, explain that eventually to a jury. And I don't like these fatalities. I don't like losing friends. I don't like losing, you know, seeing the impact on family members. So I have consistently said in the diving realm, put me out of a job. I would rather do dog bite and divorce cases than dead diver cases and fatality cases. So I've been an advocate for safety for a long time. And I have been in the rebreather realm, which we talked about, you know, you're new to rebreathers, but I've worked with the manufacturers of rebreathers for about 15 years, actually 20 some for some of them. They have a common interest in promoting safety. They have a common interest in not having customers die. And they have common ways in which they can prevent that. So I've been the general counsel of their trade association for over a decade, and we work toward promoting safety. And the number of rebreather fatalities has dropped dramatically. And the number of serious incidents have dropped dramatically. Now the number one reason why people die on a rebreather is that they don't change the oxygen sensors, which go bad after about 12 months and don't read the oxygen that you're breathing. So people skimp and they don't change the sensors and they don't know what they're actually breathing. And now when I get a fatality with a rebreather, the first thing we do is check the date codes on the sensors and nine times out of 10, they're out of date. So that diver didn't have the information they needed to keep them alive. I rarely see rebreather fatalities anymore. And if I do their international or something, cause I get all the files to just understand exactly what happened. And the numbers are so low. very, very, you know, single digits now per year. And they were not single digits when I started this initiative with the manufacturers, when we started it out, you know, and that, that satisfies me. That's a good use of my, my training and experience. And it means that I don't have as much money and it means that, you know, I find other ways to put my kids through college, but that's great. I'm fine.
James Stacey Well, speaking of the, speaking of uses of money and earning money, um, let's, uh, let's make a very awkward segue into, uh, talking about watches, which is a terrible segue to talk about Rolex. First of all, I guess, what are you wearing? We always do a risk check on our episode. I've got my Rolex sub on here today. What are you wearing? I see some gold on screen here.
David Concanon I went big. I, I, I have this gold Paul Newman, Daytona that I recently acquired, you know, like two weeks ago and, I've started over a couple of times personally in life and it symbolizes to me coming back and rebuilding my personal situation. And so I bought two gold Rolexes in the last month. One is a yellow gold sub and the other is this, this Daytona. Otherwise, you know, that's far and above what I was able to afford. And I don't like putting money in the stock market. And I don't like putting money into banks. And if I could buy a Submariner for four grand, if I had it, I would do that. Some people buy motorcycles and now I do that. Some people buy cars. Now I do that. But what you can put your money into, if I like to, I like to see it and it, and I hate talking about it from a financial perspective because I, I'm not, I don't flip them. I buy them and keep them. But if I'm able to have a little extra money, they either go into guitars or watches.
James Stacey And your watches have had some significance because you've worn them on various expeditions.
David Concanon I really appreciate history and I really appreciate, I appreciate Rolex as a brand and Omega Second because of their history with the things I like, which are exploration. And Rolex has a legitimate history and exploration, And they've been on many, many, many, many expeditions. So I tend to pair my watches. Either I acquire them or I have them and I, and I pair them for an expedition. So Submariner for Titanic, Sea-Dweller for Titanic. I did wear a Daytona on my last Titanic dive, but there was a purpose behind it. We had to time mission elapsed time for navigation purposes. And, you know, you know, time and distance is how you navigate because GPS doesn't work underwater. If you Look, if you went to summer camp and you figured out how to navigate in the wilderness, that's how you do it. Right. If you just use a phone kind of screwed, but I don't want to be screwed two and a half miles deep. So yeah. So Pepsi GMT master or the Apollo recovery expeditions as an homage to, in my opinion, to the guys that didn't get to the moon, um, Apollo 13, I wore a, this GMT master and this Ed White Speedy, which I bought for like $1,200 on eBay before it had a name. I won this in a raffle, the GMT master at the Explorers Club annual dinner. But, you know, Ed White didn't get to the moon and Gus Grissom didn't get to the moon. And this 65 Speedy represents them. And then Apollo 13 didn't get to the moon and Jack Swigert was wearing this. And I led the expedition that found eight Apollo missions. And then Jeff wanted us to recover the engines from Apollo 11, not 12, not 13, but 11. But we had a really hard time finding, we, we found the engines from Apollo 11 in the first hour of the first day. And they were right where we, we said they were, but we couldn't positively identify them as being from 11. So we went all over the ocean where other missions had, had come to rest. And we recovered engines from Apollo 13, 16, 12, and 12 kept showing up like a bad penny and, and two from 11. But there was somebody from Seattle, but these inspirational posters up all over the ship, you know, and this one said, bring Apollo 11 home. And we defaced it across that 11, 12, 10, cross it out, cross that, cross that and bring, bring all Apollo home. And I saved that as my memento from the expedition. But one of the things you realize when you're looking at these engines and these parts from all these Apollo missions is that every single person who flew on an Apollo mission took the same risks, did the same training, their family made the same sacrifice, and only a few got glory. So I, knowing this, wanted to pair the watches that related to not only the Apollo missions, but to everyone. And if you look at the The mission patch for Apollo 11, and I actually have one from Mark, from Neil's personal collection, but all the mission patches on all the Apollo missions have the names of the three astronauts on them, except for Apollo 11. And that's because the commander of Apollo 11 didn't want the three astronauts to get the credit. He wanted the credit to go to everybody associated with the achievement. And I'm a really strong believer in that. I mean, I turned down an award from the Explorers Club That was the same award that went to Bob Ballard for finding the Titanic. And I said, no, I wouldn't accept it because I wasn't out there in a canoe, but I supported it going to the team. And we were the first team to be awarded that, that award since the U S American team to summit Mount Everest in 1963, the first time in 50 years, that felt good to me.
Jason Heaton I'm curious, you you've mentioned mostly Rolex and Omega. What is it? I think it's a little bit obvious due to your, like the stuff you've explained for the last hour. But to ask a somewhat obvious question, what is it about Rolex that feels like the right thing to you? Because I'm sure your first watch wasn't a Sub or something. I'm going to assume you came to that a little later.
David Concanon My first watch was a Seiko and it flooded underwater, which made me unhappy. And the moment I got my first job, I bought a Submariner, which I had been attracted to since I was a boy because of James Bond. So as soon as I got my first real job, I bought a Sub. And I took it to Titanic and I took it on all these expeditions and I eventually gave it to my son. But it's Rolex in particular has a legitimate connection to exploration and they build tool watches. And we talked about equipment failure. I know that when I'm wearing a Submariner, it's not going to fail for what I can put it through. And I've been, you know, I put things through pretty hard stuff, but I don't want to worry about that. I want to look at my wrist and know what time it is or navigate with it or understand this piece of information that I need. And I don't want to worry about it not working. So Seiko's out for me forever. And I gravitated to Rolex because they last, they don't outlast me. And they are different functions that I care about. I travel constantly. So having a 24 hour hand is helpful for me because I'll keep it on home time. And then I can always know what time it is when I need to communicate with my wife or my office. Having a GMT master is really helpful because I don't like sitting on airplanes. I'll time my flights. I'll often, I'll have to know the time in where the client is, where I am and home. So it's helpful for that reason. Uh, the waterproof, this is essential for me because if it's waterproof for diving, it's waterproof for being on a motorcycle, I do these long distance motorcycle rides or I can wash the dishes with it. Or again, I don't have to worry about it. Is it overkill to have a sea dweller to wash the dishes? Definitely. Will I wear the sea dweller on a dive to Britannic? Yeah, I have. And will I use it when I dive in the Galapagos? Yes. Or New Jersey? Yes. Will I beat the hell out of it and drop it and, and clang it on things? Definitely. You know, the Sea-Dweller has been on great white shark dives and it's been to Britannic and it's been to Titanic and it's, that's what it's for. So, but I'm not really attracted to other brands, particularly if I sniff out that their marketing is more than their achievements. For example, not very interested in the achievements of the Italian Navy during World War II. It doesn't float my boat. So I'm not attracted to something with that lineage. Right. I have a Fliegler watch, a pilot watch from a Stova, which is kind of a knock-around watch, which is kind of cool. And I wear that in places where I don't want to wear Rolex. And I like the lume on it. So it's all about the practicality. But for me, the history and being able to associate it Ironically, with either an achievement that I admired when I was growing up and wanted to emulate, or with something a friend of mine did. You know, when you can, when you're friends with, with the guy that developed the Sea-Dweller and you talk about it, it's, it's, it's exciting to me. And I talked to Buzz about what watch did he wear on the moon? And I called Chuck Maddox because nobody ever asked Buzz. So I said, Hey Chuck, I asked Buzz. And this is what he said. or had a long talk with Scott Carpenter once on a dive trip about watches, ours. And it was phenomenal because we talked about the development of the Sea-Dweller. We talked about his Breitling Cosmonaut, which they had to take the name Cosmonaut off of. We talked about his affinity. He was a real watch guy. He's a real gear guy. Uh, and we talked about cars and guns and other things that we had in common, but you know, he had a glint in his eye when he told me he had a Shelby Cobra and not a Corvette like those other. And, and truly this is, this is, and you know, you kind of like I've been lucky and, and my, my friends are my heroes and I associate them with achievements. And then when it comes to a watch, I associate that watch with that achievement. For sure. That's, that's, that's how you figure out Dave's interest in watches. It's really simple.
James Stacey Yeah. I feel like. We've barely scratched the surface. I'm looking at the notes you sent and there, there's so much. And I, I think I'm eager to get our listeners feedback on this. And I know everyone's going to be thrilled and it just goes to show we're probably going to have to have you back, but we're, we're over an hour here. So we probably need to, to pull the plug, so to speak.
Jason Heaton This has been incredible, David. I would love, I would love to, yeah, make it really clear. We would love to have you back on and dig into maybe things at a less general level. You know, I feel like you've got a podcast series. Uh, just waiting, uh, in the wings there, but, uh, this has been fascinating. I have a million questions and maybe we'll get to them someday.
James Stacey And David, thanks so much for, for coming on. I just don't know what to say. It's been, it's been such a long time coming and we really appreciate you coming on the gray NATO and, uh, can't wait to, to introduce you to our listeners. So thanks a lot for taking the time.
David Concanon Jason James is a real pleasure and thank you for having me. And thanks for giving me something interesting to talk about today.
Jason Heaton So that was our extensive, but nowhere near extensive enough, just kind of scratching the surface jive with David Kunkan. And David, thank you so much for being on the show. That was such a blast. You have a standing invite if you'd like me to hire you in some context. We could just give you a microphone and you could chitchat and I'll turn it into episodes. I would love to listen to them. It doesn't have to be TGN. uh let's work something out but uh yeah i'd be thrilled to have david on uh many many more times and be able to dig into some of the specifics i you know i felt like every time he started a new sentence i had two more questions and then by the time he finished the story i had forgotten the first 40 questions and and that kind of thing. So yeah, that was fantastic, so much fun and what an incredible like career and you know as a guy who's been able to take his interest in his passions and make it his lifestyle. Speaking of myself, it's really blown away to see somebody do it at essentially like an olympic level to take his interest, his fascinations, his connections and being as old as he is and still be able to have all these touch points in the golden age of exploration and some very cutting edge projects, even up until the last few years. I just thought it was fascinating. So a huge, huge thank you to David. And we'll do what we can to have him on again. If you have any specific questions, be sure to let us know and we'll try and capture those for a future episode. All right. Jason, I think it's not going to be the most interesting part of the show necessarily, but you want to jump into some final notes.
James Stacey Yes, indeed. I will, uh, I'll go first here. So there's a local designer named Anthony Lane, who some of you might know from his, uh, his website, the illustrated watch. And Anthony's a really talented designer. He's done, uh, some, uh, poster art featuring sort of iconic watches, um, that I think we've talked about on a final notes in the past, but more recently he has started selling these kind of small run t-shirts that are Sort of tangentially watch related. And that's what I like about them. So I've got two of them. One of the t-shirts I have is the La Spiro Technique, which was the brand that Cousteau founded when he kind of invented the Aqualung. And then that name appeared on a number of watch kind of collaborations back in the sixties. And I also have one of his super compressor t-shirts. And what I like about these t-shirts is they use these iconic logos from the past. Um, that are related to watches, but not on the nose. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm a person who doesn't like, you know, a big watch on my, on my t-shirt or on a cap or whatever. I like kind of that, you know, wink, wink, you know, insider type of product. And that's what he does well. And, uh, and so I've got a couple of his t-shirts, um, they're just, you know, cotton t-shirts, but he does a really nice job kind of putting the logo on, on the chest or the upper upper chest. He has a Kronosport one, which is kind of relevant to the recent C quartz reissued by momentum. And then he has a cool one from a company called Mantra Mitchell Fish and Trident, which I'd never heard of, but it's it's a really neat logo. So just a plug for a good, good local guy, talented designer who's who's producing these kind of neat watch diving kind of adjacent T-shirt designs. So yeah, check it out. We'll put a link in the show notes and certainly they're they're affordable and it's just they're just fun to have.
Jason Heaton So yeah, I have one of his prints that we got last year hung in the in my office with an Explorer 2 on it. definitely support this, and these t-shirts are rad. And you're right, that one logo, the only one I didn't recognize this much were Mitchell Fish and Trident, is that's quite a logo. That's very cool. Good pick. What do you have? All right, mine this week is actually a little gadget that I started to get kind of influenced on in the Instagram world. But it goes back to something that I have been thinking about a lot, especially when it comes to something like a Watches and Wonders. where you have different phases and there's always a scenario where you might want a camera, but I just don't want to carry one all the time, especially if I'm going to a dinner or something like that, but then you go to get a wrist shot or you go to get a nice photo or something and either your phone is dead because it's the end of the day and you've been using the phone all day or the scenario, the grip on the phone, the rest of it's not the same. So I had been kind of interested because over the past year, there's been all these kind of gadgets that are essentially a button that you could attach to your phone that would give you a trigger, and sometimes they have a grip. The celebrity photographer Greg Williams has one of these as like a product that you can buy, but that requires like this little mounting tab, and then you have a button. I came across one called the Shift Cam Snap Grip, and it's for... I mean, you can use it with any phone, because it comes with a little metal disc that you can essentially give your phone MagSafe, but if you have an iPhone after the X, they're MagSafe compatible, so it's a little MagSafe thing that clips onto the back of the phone and gives you like a grip and a shutter button that actually works really nicely to give you a little bit more of a feel of a camera with the phone. Yeah. And then the other thing that this does that's different than say the Williams one or some of these other ones I've read is it has an internal battery that powers the Bluetooth, but that battery can also charge your phone. Okay. Nice. And we've talked about this plenty of times on Q and A's where people write in and ask like, what camera should I buy to go on vacation? And sometimes I say like, do you have a modern iPhone or Android phone? Like that probably has the camera that you need. You could take a wide shot of your cool landscape. You could take nice portraits of your family. Like you can do all that on your phone and then the files are just right there on your phone. Yeah. And you know, knowing that I've basically stepped back from Instagram for the last six to eight months, I put some stuff up here or there, but I've mostly stepped back. I'm hoping to reverse that for watches and wonders. I now actually have something I would like to capture and share. And so there's $70 for this, which when you factor for it being a MagSafe charger, I think the Apple one is most of that to begin with. And then you get kind of a grip that makes your phone a little bit easier to hold, a little bit more camera like, and of course a shutter button. I think it's pretty clever. And if it might apply to you, if you're in a scenario where you'd like to use your phone more and more as a camera, I think that could be valuable and I've kind of set this weird little goal for myself this year to take more great photos with my phone rather than always relying on one of my better cameras, like just to feel more comfortable using my phone to capture something that I care about. Yeah. And so I think this is gonna lean in. It looks like they're currently on sale, so maybe the $70 pricing won't last. They have a whole system that includes like lights and little stands and stuff like that, but The standard grip is the shutter button, the wireless charging, and then it can actually... It has enough weight in the grip part that it can operate as like a stand for your phone, so you can stand it up on a table, which could be handy, I guess, if you're filming or conceivably watching something. It's a gadget. I love gadgets. I come by that. Honestly, that hasn't changed since I became an adult. Um, but in some scenarios I think it could be quite useful. So I wanted to highlight this as I had done a little bit of a survey of what was available on the market. And this one seemed to offer a lot for the money, especially when it comes to being able to keep your camera going, even if you're using it more for photos or video.
James Stacey Yeah, this is really cool. And I think, you know, had this been November, this would make a great gift guide inclusion. Um, but you know, equally, uh, really nice kind of at the, at the beginning of, of kind of summer travel season. Um, you know, Gishani and I have a trip to Scotland coming up in a few weeks and I could conceivably see taking something like this along, you know, along with kind of a film camera, just sort of compliment the one for the other. I mean, this is totally, this is really cool. Yeah. I like this. And, and you know, the price is like, it's, it's kind of dead center and kind of what, what you don't mind spending on something, take a little bit of a chance on that looks really cool.
Jason Heaton Yeah. And it doesn't feel like you bought something that technically should cost $15 on Amazon. Oh, yeah. It has a nice texture to it. It feels pretty solid. The magnet is great. That's the snap grip from ShiftCam. Hit the show notes.
James Stacey Well, big episode. We have such great guests on. Asha, Laurent, David. I mean, it's just so fun to bring these fascinating guests on the show. People, you know, arguably more interesting than you and me and just really fun to have on. So thanks again to David Concanon for coming on TGN. And as always, thanks so much to everyone for listening. If you want to subscribe to the show notes, get into the comments for each episode, or consider supporting the show directly, and maybe even grab a new TGN signed NATO, please visit TheGreyNATO.com. Music throughout is, as always, Siesta by JazzArr via the free music archive.
Jason Heaton And we leave you with this quote from Mark Twain who said, the difference between a miracle and a fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and a seal.