EDITOR'S LETTER

C H A N N E L M AG A Z I N E I N D I A OH, TO BE AN
Editor-in-Chief Aroon Purie
Group Chief Executive Officer Ashish Bagga
Group Synergy and Creative Officer Kalli Purie
ASTRONAUT!
Editorial Director Jamal Shaikh
Art Director Piyush Garg
Asst Art Director Rahul Sharma
Designer Kishore Rawat
Impact (Advertising)
Group Business Head Manoj Sharma
Associate Publisher (Impact) Anil Fernandes
Thinking up an idea to write
Senior General Managers Kaustav Chatterjee
this Editor’s Note, I spoke to
(East), Jitendra Lad (West), Head (North) three teenage kids about what
Subhashis Roy
General Manager Shailender Nehru (Bangalore), they wanted to be when they
General Manager Velu Balasubramaniam (Chennai) grew up. I wanted to know how
Business thought processes had changed;
Head, CRM/CMS & Senior GM Vikas Malhotra
Chief Manager, Operations GL Ravik Kumar when I was young, the most
Marketing Managers Kunal Bag, Anuradha Rana common of life’s ambitions was
“to be an astronaut.”
Production Anuj Jamdegni
News stand Sales
Chief General Manager DVS Rama Rao My first understudy, 13, said he wanted
General Manager - National Deepak Bhatt to be Steve Jobs. The second, a beautiful
Sr Manager - North Manish Shrivastava
Sr Manager - East Joydeep Roy young girl aged 16, said she wanted to be
General Manager - West Rajesh Menon “like Katy Perry.” And the third, at 18,
General Manager - Operations Rakesh Sharma
wanted to be a fashion designer.
Creative thinking shapes society
DISCOVERY NETWORKS ASIA-PACIFIC
and must be celebrated. Hence, the in an oddly upright position is one thing,
Editorial Board
President and Managing Director Arjan Hoekstra Understudy Three got my first vote and getting your body’s digestion systems
SVP Content Group Kevin Dickie applause. The other two were blinded by used to working their way upwards rather
SVP and GM, South Asia Rahul Johri
VP, Marketing, South Asia Rajiv Bakshi celebrity; they needed somebody to show than downwards is quite another. It’s
VP, Communications Charles Yap them the essence behind the lives of the highly detailed and slightly gory in parts,
VP, Programming Charmaine Kwan
VP, Marketing Magdalene Ng
personalities they idolised. but it will give you an insight that no
“To be an astronaut” was so much Sandra Bullock-George Clooney starring
Editorial (Novus Media Solutions)
Editor Luke Clark simpler. Those of you scorning my teenage blockbuster ever can.
Design Director Richard MacLean friends (and casting a shadow of doubt on Elsewhere in this issue, you’ll find
Chief Subeditor Josephine Pang
Staff Writer Daniel Seifert
my selection), please be warned: Flying fascinating pictures of Africa’s Voodoo
Photo Editor Haryati Mahmood into space was as unachievable for most as festival, a first person account of a hostage
Senior Designer Bessy Kim it is today to be a fly-by-night pop star. who fought his way to freedom, and an
The idea may have died out as we grew insight into the intriguing world of 3D that
Subscription/Customer Care
Email: care.discoverymag@intoday.com up, but let us admit, our fascination for can turn imagination into reality.
Phone: +91 120 246 9900 Space and the vastness beyond remains. Like my parting advice to my new
Mail: Discovery Channel Magazine India,
A 61, Sector 57, Noida 201 301
This month’s cover story ‘Living on a Space teenage friends, when I told them to fly
Station’ takes you into a world beyond high, this edition will show you how to soar
VOLUME 1 NUMBER 6 imagination. Defying gravity and resting higher than you can ever imagine... Enjoy!
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04
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
 ISSUE 07/14

CONTENTS DEPARTMENTS

28
FRONTIERS
ROBOTIC STARE
12
Cyborg stares get a new life as their
eye-behaviour goes through
transformation

NEWS
ENRICHED BY THE
BARD
14
Shakespeare's contribution went
further than just literature

SCIENCE
CHEMICAL
ACTION
22
20 24
What you should know about
common chemicals and elements

HISTORY
ESCOBAR AND
HIS WHIMS
24
The drug warlord's many feathers on
his much-maligned cap

ADVENTURE
QUICK RESPONSE
28
13
And we thought there was no way
out of quicksand adventure. It turns
out that this too can be managed

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE

WOW 10 THOROUGHBREDS GET
THEIR OWN OPERATION THEATRE
THE GRID 13 HEROES WHO MAKE
THEIR JOBS SEEM RIGHT-HAND
TRICKS, RESEARCH ON RAIN AND
TRIVIA ON EXPERIMENTS
NAKED WRESTLING 14 JAPANESE
PRIESTS AND THEIR POWERS OVER
THEIR MEN
PUNCHING REALITY 18 FACTS ABOUT
SCUFFLES SEEN IN THE ACTION
MOVIES WE LOVE
PREVIOUS CENTURY'S LAST YEAR
18 WHEN KASPORAV, BILL GATES,
HICHAM EL GUERROJ AND THE KING
OF BHUTAN MADE NEWS. ALSO THE
LAST SUPPER IS RE-DISPLAYED
AFTER 22 YEARS OF PAINSTAKING
RESTORATION WORK
FACE OFF 20 THE HISTORY OF
COMMONLY FOUND TYPEFACE AND
THEIR USAGE IN EVERYDAY PLACE
LEGO PHONES NEXT 22
PHONEBLOKS: THE NEW KIND OF
PHONE MADE OF DETACHABLE
INDIVIDUAL BLOCKS
VISUAL APHORISMS 24 ARTISTIC
WAYS OF EXPLAINING THE
CANTONESE PROVERBS ON A
SINGLE CANVAS. 81 OF THEM
JOSTLING FOR SPACE IN A NICE WAY
WHAT'S ON 102 JOIN THE NAKED
CASTAWAY AS HE FINDS WAYS TO
SURVIVE CERTAIN DEATH ON AN
ISLAND, TEST YOUR JUDGEMENTS IN
DEADLY DILEMMAS AND FOLLOW THE
ALASKAN GOLD DIGGERS, ALL THIS
ON DISCOVERY CHANNEL THIS JULY

06
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
 32 40 80

8
08
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
 FEATURES
ISSUE 07/14
PHOTO-ESSAY
VOODOO ENIGMA
32
It takes courage to get into the vodoo
heartland and capture, on lens, the festival
goings-on and rituals

ADVENTURE
A SPACE ODYSSEY
40
Life on board the International Space
Station is calm (as long as nobody burps).
We talk to an astronaut who's been there

54 68 PSYCHOLOGY
TAKEN CAPTIVE
54
"Tied, taped and mummified in a scalding
metal box", how did one man survive his
ordeal? How does any hostage?

SCI-TECH
3D EXPERIENCES
68
When you can simulate just about anything
you can imagine in 3D, the sky's the limit.
Will it change the world? Copy that

POLITICS
WATERGATE SCANDAL
REVISITED
80
Rebuilding the chain of events of a scandal
that rocked the US Presidency. Discovery
Channel gets all the key players, in the real
life drama and the movie that followed,
together to relive the trials

65
09
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE
JULY 2014
THERAPY
FOR
THOROUGH-
BREDS
By Dan Kitwood
A racehorse is hoisted onto
an equine operating table
ahead of its operation at
Newmarket Equine Hospital,
about 65 miles north of
London in England, which
is the birthplace and global
centre of thoroughbred
racing. It is the largest equine
hospital in Europe and the
world's leading centre for
arthroscopy and fracture
repair on horses.
The clinic was purpose-
built in 2008 and focuses on
personalised high quality
veterinary and emergency
care for horses from all
over the world. There
is a specialised 24-hour
emergency service by a
highly skilled team of senior
equine veterinary specialists,
nurses, interns and yard staff,
offering a range of services
including MRI scans, X-ray
and arthroscopic surgery.
The centre was visited
recently by a delegation from
China's Ministry of Import
Controls ahead of a proposed
agreement to export
thoroughbreds and sports
horses from Britain to China.
If the agreement goes ahead,
PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES

horse exports to China could

soon be worth 10 million
pounds (US$17 million) a
year to the British economy.

10
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
WOW

11
JULY 2014

FRONTIERS
CYBORG STARES GET A NEW LIFE
IMPROVED EYE BEHAVIOUR FOR ROBOTS
The eyes are the windows to the soul, as they say. So if you want
to make a robot look more human, best start there. Up until now,
robots have mainly been saddled with a soulless gaze that peers at
you with laser-like focus. And as anyone who’s engaged in a staring
contest will tell you, that’s not natural. Research shows that in
normal conversation, listeners look at a speaker 70 percent of the
time, while speakers hold a gaze for about 40 percent of the time
they’re talking. Hence, researchers at the University of Wisconsin
Madison have designed a ‘robot gaze shifting programme’ that
12
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
ISSUE 07/14
ILLUSTRATION: CARLO GIAMBARRESI AT ILLUSTRATIONROOM.COM.AU
mimics this behavior, alternately glancing and gazing rather than
just full-time gaping. Users found that this robot was deemed
more intentional, thoughtful, and creative. It might seem trivial,
but such tweaks will help bridge the ‘uncanny valley’ and help us all
feel more comfortable with increasingly common human-to-robot
interaction, (by which we mean, the coming cyborg war). It’s also a
reminder of how even a small miscalculation of your eye behaviour
can make you seem like a dead-eyed weirdo. Best start practicing in
the mirror.
 NEWS

THE GRID STRANGE AND SERIOUS EVENTS FROM ACROSS THE WORLD

A S I A- PAC I F I C AMERICAS EUROPE MIDDLE EAST/AFRICA

SO CLICHED Sometimes,
the old methods are the best.
Five snorkelers were saved by
a keen-eyed helicopter res-
cue crew off the northeastern
coast of Australia recently,
HEROES
BEAR AWARE A Canadian
man has been honoured with a
bravery award after rescuing a
co-worker from a bear. Daniel
Morrison received the Star of
Courage after going after it with
FIRESTARTER An Irish
teenager is being hailed for his
fearlessness after he tackled a
deranged man who was close
to setting himself and a group
of bystander children on fire.
SNIFFING OUT EXPLO-
SIVES Aged just four, Sasha
has just received a posthumous
medal for bravery. The Labra-
dor, who was trained to detect
explosives, was given the PDSA

after their boat drifted away.
Caught on a tiny sandbar, the
victims stamped the huge
letters SOS onto the ground.
The lucky survivors, three men
and two women were winched
up by basket, probably while
finishing construction of their
coconut two-way radio (a la
Gilligan’s Island).
nothing but a knife, as it charged
his female colleague. In the
same ceremony, another man
received a medal of bravery for
tackling a robber who inexpli-
cably decided to hold up a gas
station — with a Molotov cock-
tail. Canada: the place where
craziness can be averted by an
everyday hero.
The 18-year-old Paul Russell
later told press, “At the start
we thought he was going to do
a trick with fire. I don’t know if
I punched him or pushed him,
I just wanted to get him away
from the fire.” Footage of the
events, which happened out-
side Belfast City Hall, has been
published online.
Dickin medal for services to the
British army in Afghanistan.
Sasha was killed along with her
handler in a Taliban ambush in
2008. They were credited with
15 finds, detecting mortars,
mines and improvised explosive
devices. To date, 65 animals
have received the Dickin medal,
including 29 dogs and a cat.

SATELLITE SHOWERS
Together with NASA, the Japa-
nese space agency JAXA have
launched a Global Precipita-
tion Measurement (GPM) Core
Observatory satellite. The
rain-sensing satellite can X-ray
RAIN
GOT YOU COVERED The
only question is, why hasn’t it
been done before? New Yorkers
may soon be able to leave their
umbrellas at home thanks to
‘brellaBox, a brolly rental service.
Much like bike share services
FOUR-WHEEL DRY
Nissan’s European Technical
Centre is testing a car model for
people who hate taking their
auto to the car wash. The tech-
nology, dubbed Ultra-Ever Dry,
features nano-paint technology
GOODBYE GREENER
According to a recent study
published in the journal Nature,
the Congo rainforest is losing
its greenery due to years of dry
conditions. For several decades,
the average rainfall in the region

tropical cyclones and rainstorms
from space. Thanks to GPM,
scientists can now create a
visual map of how much snow
and rainfall dots the globe every
three hour. “[The] measure-
ments will look like a CAT scan,”
says Dr. Dalia Kirschbaum.
that are sweeping cities around
the world, ‘brellaBox aims to
have umbrellas in public spots
around town which can be rented
cheaply should wet weather
strike, at a cost of just US$2.50
for 12 hours. Here’s hoping the
idea spreads like the wind.
that repels mud, rain and gunk
and, it’s thought, only has to be
applied once. So far Nissan says it
“has responded well to common
use cases including rain, spray,
frost, sleet and standing water.”
Now if only they can extend that
technology to dishes and clothes.
has been declining. Surprisingly,
however, scientists say this is
not because of climate change,
but likely part of a natural cycle.
Either way, the repercussions
could be severe, turning the
lush forests into a savanna-like
environment.

FLIP THE DRIP The
world’s longest-running ex-
periment has finally reached
a climax. An 84-year-long
experiment at the University
EXPERIMENTS
BLIND TO HOBOS You’d
recognise a loved one pretty
much anywhere, right? Not if
they’re dressed as a homeless
person, shows a depressing
LUCKY NUMBER SIX
Not a fan of a long workday?
You might want to move to
Sweden, where in the city
of Gothenburg, a section of

of Queensland in Australia has
aimed to capture blobs of tar as
they drop down from their par-
ent blob. It’s been over 13 years
since it happened last, and it’s
only occurred nine times total.
The point of the experiment?
To demonstrate that solid
materials can flow like liquids.
The thrilling blob has its own
live web stream.
new experiment in New York.
When a family member of a
participant was dressed as a
street person, not a single pass-
erby recognised their mother,
brother or wife. The campaign,
called Make Them Visible,
produced an emotional video
of the experiment, which aims
to shed light on the plight of
the homeless.
public sector employees will
now work for just six hours a
day. Their performance will
be compared with a control
group who work regular hours
( just seven hours in Sweden).
Both groups will then have
their performances compared.
Gothenburg’s mayor told press
he hopes “staff members would
take fewer sick days.”

WHAT IF THE RESULTS OF EVERY EXPERIMENT EVER DONE WITH RODENTS WERE JUST A

Of Mice LITTLE BIT SKEWED? IT MAY BE THE CASE. STUDENTS AT MCGILL UNIVERSITY IN CANADA
RECENTLY REALISED THAT MALE RATS DIDN’T SEEM TO SHOW SIGNS OF PAIN WHEN

and Men HANDLED BY MALE RESEARCHERS. THIS LED TO AN EXPERIMENT WHICH REVEALED THAT
MALE MICE REACT TO A MAN’S PRESENCE BY RELEASING MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF STRESS
HORMONES. WHEN A WOMAN WAS AROUND, THIS DID NOT OCCUR.

13
JULY 2014

E.T PHONE HOME
750,000
POSSIBLE NUMBER OF OLD VID-
EOGAME CARTRIDGES FROM THE
1980S WHICH MAY BE BURIED IN A
NEW MEXICO LANDFILL IN THE US
A WORLD WITHOUT
SHAKESPEARE
The Bard’s contribution to history and
English language
Picturing world literature
without William Shakespeare
is like picturing music without
Mozart, or fast food
without McDonalds.
But as countries
around the planet
celebrate the Bard’s
450th birthday, it’s
worth pondering
how history would
have changed
without everyone’s
favourite word-slinger.
Let’s start with the obvious:
the insanely huge number of
words and phrases attributed
to him. Eyeball, fashionable,
hot-blooded, gloomy, gossip,
laughable, lonely, new-
fangled — even the humble
‘knock knock’ joke dates
back to Macbeth. “Here’s a
knocking indeed!” crows the
most famous stage Porter
ever. “Knock, knock, knock!
Where’s there, i’ th’ name of
Belzebub?”
As Michael Dobson,
Director of the Shakespeare
Institute and Professor of
Shakespeare Studies at the
University of Birmingham
affirms, without Shakey,
historians would be on
shaky ground indeed. “We’d
be missing many, many
interconnections between
cultures and between the past,
the present and the future.”
How so? He explains: “the fact
that the modern world has any
notion of ‘world literature’
at all is based on the way in
14
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
NEWS
1982
ONE WAS FOUND RECENTLY: THE
US$20,000,000
IT IS SAID THAT ATARI’S E.T. PROJECT HELPED DOOM THE
1983 VIDEO GAME TIE-IN TO THE COMPANY, WHICH PAID US$20 MILLION IN LICENSING FEES.
MOVIE E.T. STILL CONSIDERED ONE THE DESIGNER, WHO VIEWED THE GAME’S UNEARTHING, TOLD
OF THE CRUMMIEST GAMES EVER PRESS THAT HE CREATED THE GAME IN JUST FIVE WEEKS
which Shakespeare has been
translated and adopted in each
national literature in term.”
Let’s not forget the
playwright’s methods,
which changed drama
forever. Like “his habit
of perfectly juxtaposing
stories within different
social milieu, which Naked Wrestling
comment on one When the Japanese priests take their
another and collide,” powers to bizarre heights
says Dobson, referring to the
“upstairs downstairs plotting Men in loincloths participate in the Hadaka Matsuri, or Naked
of Twelfth Night”. You can Festival at Saidaiji Temple in Okayama, Japan. In this, one of
find echoes of that technique the most vibrant festivals in Japan, some 9,000 men battle to
anywhere from Dickens grab a pair of lucky sticks thrown by priests.
through to Downton Abbey
today. “And every war movie,
cross-cutting between the
infantrymen and the officers, Quote as possible named
in the Bard’s plays
five million starlings
flock into Rome. It’s
owes much to Henry V.”
So let’s say we did live in a Unquote should be present
in the USA. So
a beautiful aerial
display — which
world without Will, where if he released 60 leaves the Eternal
you said, “To be or not to be”, starlings, mentioned City covered in bird
in Henry IV Part poop. So the next
people would snort, “That “STARLINGS ARE
I into New York’s time you’re on the Via
LEAN AND MEAN. IN
is a stupid question.” Could THEINDUSTRYTHEY’RE Central Park. Today, Veneto in January,
a substitute have risen to OFTEN CALLED they are a pest — as don’t
FEATHEREDBULLETS”
take Shakespeare’s place? Michael Begier told look up
Dobson isn’t so sure. “The BBC — with about
200 million of them
2008
more you read the plays of MICHAEL In 2008 alone, the
presenting a huge
his contemporaries, the more BEGIER, US government
NATIONAL problem of bird-
odd and unique Shakespeare COORDINATOR FOR strike on airplanes.
poisoned, shot and
seems. His plays are less THE US DEPARTMENT trapped 1.7 million
In 1960 they caused
OF AGRICULTURE starlings, to no effect
definitive and less finished AIRPORTS WILDLIFE the most deadly
than those of any other writer.” HAZARDS
PROGRAMME
strike in aviation DRC-1339
This leaves us room to fill them history, killing The name of the
PHOTO: JAPANESE FESTIVAL (GETTY IMAGES)
with our imagination, he says, 62 passengers. poison that agents
Know what else They also cost US use to fell starlings,
“so that they always seem to we can thank agriculture US$1 often by sprinkling
be about us.” Quite simply, Shakespeare for? billion a year in them on their
“he underlies much of what Epic, locust-like damage to crops. favourite snack —
clouds of starlings.
we are and how we mean.” If Thanks a bunch, French fries Ellabo.
In 1890, a man William. Et magnis atem
all the world’s a stage, then named Eugene veleceperae nim
Shakespeare made it so. Schieffelin thought 5,000,000 quodige
that as many birds Every winter evening,

FIGHT CLUB
REAL ON REEL FIGHTING
For all the punches you believed to be true-life action
Here’s a sucker punch for you — real life fighting is nothing like the movies. Let’s compare celluloid
scuffles with the real thing
FISTS
A knuckle is a fragile thing. Punch
someone in the face and you’ll
likely break your hand, not their
nose. The condition is so common
it’s known as ‘boxer’s fracture’ or a
‘bar room’s fracture’. If you break
the knuckle on your little finger,
it’s a ‘brawler’s fracture’.
SHOULDER WOUNDS
The refuge of the hero — the sexy-
looking wound right? Wrong. In a
study of 16 shoulder-shot victims,
four died and another lost the
arm. Others routinely lost all
feeling. So how did McClane keep
punching terrorists?
16
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
ADVENTURE
TEETH
Here’s another term for you
— ‘fight bite’ — namely when
you try to punch someone in
the head and connect with
their sharp teeth. Hey presto,
you’ve got yourself a nice
infection to go with that nasty
cut of yours.
BOTTLES
As the MythBusters will tell
you, getting smashed over the
head with an empty or a full
beer bottle will cut your skull
to ribbons. The full beer bottle
will also likely kill you, than
simply comically stunning you.
KICKS
AND
FLICK
S Is there any children’s character
KO, NOT OK
In the movies, a knockout blow
is a plot point. In real life, it’s
a life or death emergency that
can lead to a concussion, trau-
matic brain injury or internal
hemorrhage. In real life, James
Bond would be a drooling
simpleton by now.
DEADLY WEAPONS
Travelling to Texas? Ditch the
bulletproof vest for a helmet.
The Lone Star State is famed
for guns, but a 2013 report
found that only 87 people were
killed by firearms while 101
were by “hands, fists and feet”.
Postman Pat,
Crime Lord
so harmless and beloved as
Postman Pat? He’s got a black
and white cat, a cheery smile —
and a scent of criminality about
him. At least in Japan, anyway.
If you’re wondering why, just
count his fingers. With just four
digits, he comes up short. And
when Pat was exported to Japan
in 1994, that was a big no-no.
Why? Because the Japanese
Yakuza traditionally cut off one
of their fingers as a sign of
faith and personal strength. Or
as a punishment. It’s a well-
PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES (REAL ON REEL FIGHTING); 2007 TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX (LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD)
known calling card, and not one
that Japanese TV executives
wanted mixed up with friendly
neighbourhood postmen. So
for local broadcasts, Pat got
the five-finger treatment, being
touched up so that he looked
less terrifying. In 2000, Bob the
Builder got the same treatment
for the Japanese market.
A WORLD WITHOUT HEAVY
WEAPONS?
ACTION MOVIE SHOOTOUTS
GET MORE DULL
THAT’S LITERALLY THE
ONLY DOWNSIDE
 HISTORY

ESCOBAR: THE
RUBBER BARON
Surprise! Surprise! he had more
feathers on his cap
Q: Who was the biggest
drug dealer in the world
during the Victorian era?
A: Queen Victoria. By 1836,
30,000 opium chests were
arriving in China annually from
India, Britain’s colony. China’s
attempts to stop the flow of the
illegal drug, which was creating
In the 1980s and ‘90s, an army of addicts, led to two
Colombian drug lord
Opium Wars between China and
Pablo Escobar was Britain in 1839 and 1856, which
responsible for up to 80
percent of the cocaine saw the British take control of
Hong Kong.
smuggled into the USA
The Year That Was: 1999
CHESS WIZARD GARRY KASPAROV PLAYS A MATCH AGAINST AN
ASSEMBLED FORCE OF 50,000 PEOPLE ONLINE. THOUGH HE WINS,
KASPAROV LATER ADMITS IT WAS HIS MOST CHALLENGING MATCH,
AND “THE SHEER NUMBER OF IDEAS, THE COMPLEXITY, AND THE
CONTRIBUTION IT MADE TO CHESS MAKE IT THE MOST IMPORTANT GAME
EVER PLAYED.” BILL GATES’ PERSONAL FORTUNE CLEARS THE US$100
BILLION MARK. AS OF LAST YEAR HE HAS DONATED OVER US$26 BILLION
TO CHARITY. AFTER 22 LONG YEARS OF RESTORATION, LEONARDO DA
VINCI’S THE LAST SUPPER IS RE-DISPLAYED IN MILAN. THE KING OF
BHUTAN ALLOWS TELEVISION BROADCASTS IN HIS COUNTRY FOR THE
FIRST TIME EVER, BECOMING THE LAST NATION IN THE WORLD TO DO
SO. IN BRAZIL, 345 PRISONERS ESCAPE FROM PUTIM PRISON — BY
WALKING OUT THE FRONT GATE. COLOMBIA ANNOUNCES IT WILL
INCLUDE THE ESTIMATED VALUE OF ITS ILLEGAL DRUG CROPS IN ITS
GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT, ACCOUNTING FOR UP TO FIVE PERCENT OF
ITS GDP. “KING OF THE MILE” HICHAM EL GUERROJ OF MOROCCO SETS
THE CURRENT WORLD RECORD FOR A MILE RUN AT 3:43.13 MINUTES.

60,000 victims

According to Human Rights
Watch, violence between the
Mexican government and local
drug cartels saw 60,000 people
killed between 2006 and 2012.
60,000 words
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote
At the height of his his masterpiece, The Strange
power he was named Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
the seventh-richest
thanks to a rather epic cocaine
man in the world on the
Forbes rich list, with binge. “That an invalid in my
Quote
The world famous Olympic African-American track
Unquote and field star recounts his unlikely friendship at
the 1936 Berlin Olympics with Nazi rival Luz Long,
who gave Owens advice to help him qualify for
the long jump. A popular misconception, however,
is that Hitler snubbed Owen, when in fact the
dictator sent the athlete a signed photo of himself,
so impressed was he by the sprinter’s gold medal
win. Owens even later confirmed: “Hitler didn’t
snub me — it was FDR [President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt] who snubbed me. The president didn’t
even send me a telegram.” He added, “I came back

ICONS: TONY MICHIELS (MONEY); LUIS PRADO (DONKEY) FROM THE NOUN PROJECT
to my native country and I couldn’t ride in the front

IMAGES: WWW.NARRENHAND.DE (PABLO ESCOBAR); GETTY IMAGES (JESSE OWENS)

a net worth of US$30 husband’s condition should JESSE OWENS of the bus.”
billion have been able to perform the Gold-medal
manual labour alone of putting winning Olympian
60,000 words to paper in six
TALES FROM THE GAMES OF THE XI OLYMPIAD
days, seems almost incredible,”
his wife later said.
"YOU CAN MELT
DOWN ALL THE
I  Oreos MEDALS AND
A 2013 study by American CUPS I HAVE, AND
THEY WOULDN'T
neuroscientists found that rats BE A PLATING ON
150,000 people In 2013, one Other Olympic
reportedly of Owens’s events in 1936
find Oreos as addictive as cocaine, THE 24-CARAT
watched the four Olympic saw medals
FRIENDSHIP I FELT
as they stimulate the brain in the 1936 Olympics medals sold for awarded for
At one point he was FOR LUZ LONG AT
reportedly spending same way. The rats also eat ‘em THAT MOMENT. on TV, which US$1.4 million, architecture,
were the first the highest literature,
US$2,500 per month on just like you do — by breaking the
HITLER MUST
HAVE GONE games ever to price ever paid music, painting
rubber bands to hold his cookies apart and snarfing the CRAZY WATCHING be televised for Olympic and sculpture
bricks of cash together cream first. US EMBRACE." memorabilia

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 75
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MASS

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PRODUCED

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TYPEFACE TRIVIA

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Meet six fonts with backstories that will make you ditch "ARIEL" for good

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1 2 3

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BLACKLETTER 8-BIT GAMING EDUCATION

10
Thanks to its gravitas, Blackletter is Ahh, nostalgia in a can. The only font Artist Marcus Reed turns the humdrum
found not just in the Gutenberg Bible, that can make you feel like you’re ‘A is for Apple’ on its head with his

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PHOTO: DISCOVERY CHANNEL COMMUNICATIONS, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED (GAME OF STONES) TYPEFACE: MARCUS REED (ANIMAL ALPHABET)
the book that spawned the age of the a hacker from 1981. For body text, gorgeous project Animal Alphabet.
printed book in the West, but in newspaper designers recommend a minimum of 14 Good thing he wasn’t working with the

nameplates, Corona beer labels and metal
head album covers. It's also known as
Gothic script or Old English.
25
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pixel font, or legibility is shot and your 33-letter Russian Cryllic alphabet, which
eyes will probably explode. A good font includes the letter “ ” or “yu” (which
to use if you’re after an ‘80s retro vibe. denotes a goldfish?).

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4 5 6

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BRAILLE BURLINGAME SIGN WRITING

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Eat your heart out, Dakar Rally. The Eurostile, the font used on most car The great thing about hand-painted
Mayfair Blindman Car Rally in India dashboards, may cause crashes, say the signs is that they seem more amenable

25
sees sighted drivers directed by a designers of Burlingame. Eurostile is “so to levity, like the restaurant closed sign

blind navigator using a map wholly in
Braille — for a 45 kilometer journey.
The ultimate trust test. And there you
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not legible”, says one designer. In one that read “Shut happens”. Elsewhere,
study, alternate fonts such as Burlingame Signs for the Homeless is a charity
offered a 13 percent improvement in the project that even jazzes up homeless
25
10

thought that reading on bumpy roads participants’ overall response time. person’s cardboard signs.
was hard.
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Alphabet Soup
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THE FIRST KNOWN USE OF THE FAMOUS PHRASE “THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG" WAS
IN 1885. THE PHRASE FIRST APPEARED IN THE MICHIGAN SCHOOL MODERATOR, AND IS A CLASSIC EXAMPLE OF
25

A PANGRAM OR HOLOALPHABETIC SENTENCE, WHICH CONTAINS ALL 26 LETTERS. OTHERS INCLUDE “SPHINX OF
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BLACK QUARTZ, JUDGE MY VOW,” WHICH SOUNDS LIKE YOU’RE JOINING A CULT, AND “PACK MY BOX WITH FIVE
DOZEN LIQUOR JUGS,” WHICH SOUNDS LIKE YOU’RE BUYING DRINKS FOR AN ENTIRE CULT.
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10

WWW.THESECRETTOAHAPPYMARRIAGE.COM
1 IN 3
A STUDY OF AMERICAN COUPLES
FROM 2005 TO 2012 FOUND THAT
MORE THAN A THIRD OF MARRIED
COUPLES MET ONLINE
FLUSH THE iPhone, Bye-phone
WORLD AWAY Lego phones in the making
Your life depends on it
The flush toilet is seen
as the touchstone of
modern civilisation, a
convenience most of us
could not live without.
But your toilet may
actually be bad for your
health. It’s certainly bad
for the planet’s.
For ages, humans
have squatted to poop.
Proponents of squat
defecation say this is
far healthier than the
position we adopt on a
modern loo, where we
lean forward, blocking
the faeces from coming
out. Although not many
clinical studies have
been done, proponents
of the squat position
say it reduces the risk
of hemorrhoids, colon
Social Media Saving Lives
Suicide watch
In 2009, actress
Demi Moore
retweeted a
follower’s post prefixed
with “Hope you are joking”.
The original post said,
“Getting a knife, a big
one that is sharp. Going
to cut down the whole
arm so it doesn’t waste
time.” Moore’s followers
mobilised to find the
woman, who was brought
in for treatment.
Sharp-eyed nurse
Clicking through
Facebook photos
of her friend’s new
baby, an English nurse
saw something strange.
22
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
92%
OF THE COUPLES STAYED TOGETH-
ER, A DIVORCE RATE OF UNDER
EIGHT PERCENT (THE NATIONAL
RATE IS UP TO 50 PERCENT)
disease, pelvic floor
issues, and even heart
attacks — which is
why Peter Codling, a
postgraduate student
of Innovation Design
Engineering at the
Royal College of Art in
London, in the United
Kingdom, this year
created Le Penseur, or
“The Thinker”. This
squat toilet, he explains,
leaves the puborectalis
muscle relaxed,
allowing
quick and
complete
expulsion
of waste.
Instead of the usual
red-eye effect, one of the
baby’s eyes was white — a
sign of possible eye cancer.
The baby was quickly
rushed to hospital, where
doctors found two tumours
and treated them.
Carjack
freedom
Hijacked
and forced into the
boot of his car, a South
African man texted
his girlfriend, who
tweeted his license plate
number to her followers.
Within two hours, K9
Law Enforcement had
tracked him using his
mobile phone.
TECHNOLOGY
7,000
ONE ANALYSIS OF 7,000 PHOTOS ON OK-
CUPID.COM, CONDUCTED IN 2010, FOUND
THAT MEN WERE MORE SUCCESSFUL IF
THEY DID NOT SMILE, AND WERE LOOKING
AWAY FROM THE CAMERA. WOMEN WERE
MORE SUCCESSFUL IF THEY MADE A FLIRTY
FACE AND LOOKED AT THE CAMERA
Fed up with buying a new
smartphone, TV, computer or
music player every few years?
Blame planned obsolescence. It
is a business strategy whereby
manufacturers plan for their
product to be out-of-date, broken
or unfashionable within a period
of time. This forces consumers to
buy another model. Hey presto —
guaranteed profits. Giles Slade opens — whatever you want to upgrade — as
his book Made to Break: Technology and when. DCM loves your idea of “a
and Obsolescence in America with phone worth keeping”, Hakkens. May
sharp words for this strategy. “If your brain never become obsolete.
human history reserves a privileged
place for the Egyptians because of
MORE OBSOLETE-PROOF
their rich conception of the afterlife,”
he asks, “what place will it reserve STUFF, PLEASE
for a people who, in their seeming
CLOTHES
worship of convenience and greed, Keep ‘em long enough and everything
leave behind mountains of electronic
becomes retro-cool anyway
debris?” Luckily, there’s an (as yet
theoretical) obsolescence-busting IPODS
device by designer Dave Hakkens. In Curse you, un-replaceable battery!
his own words, Phonebloks is “a new
kind of phone made of detachable DAIRY PRODUCTS
blocks all connected to a base. We’re tired of buying new yoghurt
And the base connects everything every month just because the expired
together”. So you can swap out a new stuff has started moving around in
GPS, camera, Bluetooth, processor the fridge
Quote
Unquote “THE COST OF ONE
MODERN HEAVY BOMBER
time in battle made him
see that “every gun that
IS THIS: A MODERN is made, every warship
BRICK SCHOOL IN MORE launched signifies… a ILLUSTRATIONS: BEN MOUNSEY, ICON: THE NOUN PROJECT, SIMON CHILD (GUN)
THAN 30 CITIES. IT IS theft from those who
TWO ELECTRIC POWER hunger and are not
PLANTS, EACH SERVING fed.” Things haven’t
A TOWN OF 60,000 changed for the better
POPULATION. IT IS TWO
since Eisenhower made
FINE, FULLY EQUIPPED
HOSPITALS”
his “Chance for Peace”
speech in April 1953.
The cost of a B-2 stealth
The words of the 34th bomber could build
DWIGHT D. United States President over 4,500 homes. In
EISENHOWER, may seem surprising, 2012, world military
34TH PRESIDENT given that Eisenhower spending reached
OF THE UNITED served as the Supreme roughly US$1.75 trillion.
STATES Commander of the Meanwhile, spending
Allied Forces in World on foreign aid was
War II. But perhaps US$126 billion.
 HISTORY

HOW WELL DO
YOU SPELL?

ILLUSTRATION: AH TO/PASSION TIMES (CANTONESE PROVERBS) PHOTO: LONDON SCIENCE MUSEUM (STROMUHR)
Children spelling some of the
toughest words on the planet
On May 29 Sriram Hathwar and Ansun Sujoe won
the 87th Scripps National Spelling Bee held in
the United States. Think you can ace all of the
winning words of past events? Some of them
are rather easy (“interning”, really?) in DCM’s
opinion, but most of the words after ‘94 give us an
instant migraine.

1950 Meticulosity 1987 Staphylococci

1951 Insouciant 1988 Elegiacal
1952 Vignette 1989 Spoliator
1953 Soubrette 1990 Fibranne
1954 Transept
1955 Crustaceology
1956 Condominium
1991 Antipyretic
1992 Lyceum
1993 Kamikaze
Proverbial Illustration
1957 Schappe 1994 Antediluvian
The challenge of depicting 81 aphorisms on a single canvas
1958 Syllepsis 1995 Xanthosis HONG KONG GRAPHIC DESIGNER AH TO HAS BEEN GARNERING SOME
1959 Catamaran 1996 Vivisepulture “AHHS!” HIMSELF. THAT’S THANKS TO HIS ILLUSTRATION OF NO LESS THAN
81 CANTONESE PROVERBS, ALL JOSTLING FOR SPACE IN ONE JAW-DROPPING
1960 Eudaemonic 1997 Euonym IMAGE. AS THE LOCALS MIGHT SAY, AH TO IS NO OLD CAT WHO BURNS ITS
1961 Smaragdine 1998 Chiaroscurist WHISKERS (MEANING AN EXPERT WHO MAKES A CARELESS MISTAKE IN
1962 Esquamulose 1999 Logorrhea HIS OWN EXPERTISE). HIS PAINTING IS ITSELF BASED ON A 1559 PIECE BY
1963 Equipage 2000 Demarche PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER, ENTITLED NETHERLANDISH PROVERBS, WHICH
1964 Sycophant 2001 Succedaneum FEATURES SOME SAYINGS WE STILL USE TODAY, INCLUDING “TO BE ARMED
TO THE TEETH” (MEANING TO BE HEAVILY ARMED)
1965 Eczema 2002 Prospicience
1966 Ratoon 2003 Pococurante
1967 Chihuahua 2004 Autochthonous
1968 Abalone 2005 Appoggiatura
V1 TERROR II, the Germans peppered
1969 Interlocutory 2006 Ursprache London with the V1 flying
There’s a scene in the
1970 Croissant 2007 Serrefine action novel Scarecrow bomb, one of which could
1971 Shalloon 2008 Guerdon by Matthew Reilly that kill thousands of civilians.
1972 Macerate 2009 Laodicean some readers consider How could the British
1973 Vouchsafe 2010 Stromuhr so ludicrous it defies Armed Forces possibly
1974 Hyrdophyte 2011 Cymotrichous belief. A nuclear missile combat this scourge?
launched by a madman Pilots of the British
1975 Incisor 2012 Guetapens Royal Air Force proposed
is speeding towards
1976 Narcolepsy 2013 Knaidel its target. The lantern- a crazy, daring plan:
1977 Cambist jawed hero has to sliding their wingtips to
1978 Deification within 15 centimeters Q: WHICH WAS
disarm it: but he has to
of the V1’s wings while THE FIRST NATION
1979 Maculature be within 18 metres for
INTO SPACE?
1980 Elucubrate the computer program the missile was in flight,
A: Nazi Germany.
STROMUHR to link to the warhead. disrupting the airflow
1981 Sarcophagus According to some sources,
A rheometer So he steals a fighter jet to tip the bombs out of
1982 Psoriasis designed to control. Surprisingly, this
the V1’s successor, the faster
and disarms the bomb V2 bomb, was the first man-
1983 Purim measure the whilst flying alongside. risky manoeuvre worked,
amount and made object to reach an
1984 Luge And yet, real life is downing dozens of the altitude of 80 kilometers, and
speed of blood
1985 Milieu flow through sometimes stranger than flying bombs before they a speed of 5,300 kilometers
1986 Odontalgia an artery fiction. During World War reached their targets. per hour, in 1942.

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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

CHEMISTRY
T H E M AT C H U P : C H E M I C A L S A N D E L E M E N T S
LIQUIDS
MORONIC ACID
Only a cretin could forget the
name. But its silly moniker belies
its serious use: moronic acid is
being investigated for its anti-
HIV properties. It is also known
as 3-oxoolean-18-en-28-oic acid.
SOLID
S
SODIUM
Many of the foods we love would A world without carbon is a world
be inedible without salt, notes
Michael Moss, author of Salt Sugar
Fat: How The Food Giants Hooked dioxide); Formula One cars (which
Us. He says that all cereals, “with- usually have a carbon-fibre chas-
out salt, tasted like metal”. sis); and fossil fuels, among others.
GASES
HYDROGEN
The most abundant element,
making up 90 percent of the uni-
verse by weight. Without hydro-
gen, we have no water. But pure
hydrogen is also flammable and
has sparked several disasters.
TOP
THREE
WINNERS
SODIUM
Too much is bad for you,
but a total lack of salt would
make us recite Professor Farn-
sworth’s famous line from the
cartoon Futurama: “I don’t want
to live on this planet anymore.”
26
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
SCIENCE
HYDROQUINONE
Bombardier beetles mix this
with hydrogen peroxide, wa-
ter and certain enzymes, to
produce a 100-degree-Celsius,
defensive spray that stings
enemies with a “pop!”
CARBON
without humans; diamonds;
plants (which take in carbon
NITROGEN
Love crunching on crisps?
Thank nitrogen! This relatively
inert gas is pumped into crisp
packets to protect them in tran-
sit, and stop oxygen getting in,
which would make them soggy.
SMYLEX
A poll of 150 countries last year Liquid breathing, people! If mice
asked thousands, “Did you smile
or laugh a lot yesterday?” Singa- als aren't far away, turning James
pore, Lithuania, Georgia and Rus-
sia ranked bottom of the list. Time (which saw a rat submerged in
to pop a (non-deadly) Smylex pill.
PERFLUOROCARBONS
Breathing in liquids and surviv-
ing — that’s the stuff of sci-fi,
surely. Nope! Mice have survived
being submerged for an hour in
a jar of perfluorocarbons, which
have a high solubility of oxygen.
THALLIUM
A gram of this odourless,
colourless metal is toxic enough
to kill you, and it is banned in
most places. In the 1960s, the CIA
hatched a plot to use thallium to
make Fidel Castro’s beard fall out.
SMYLEX
This fictional gas is one of the
Joker’s weapons, allowing the
villain to induce a rictus grin and
helpless laughter in his victims.
Deadly stuff — but maybe a dose
of diluted Smylex wouldn’t hurt?
PERFLUOROCARBONS
can do it, then surely human tri-
Cameron’s 1989 film The Abyss
fluorocarbons) into reality.
Quote
Unquote
"DO EXCUSE ME,
I HAVE TO GO
NOW… I THINK
I’VE WON THE
NOBEL PRIZE"
Sir Paul Nurse
Geneticist
Each year, the Nobel Prize
committee informs the
winners of this honour by
phone — which can make for
some miscommunications.
In 2001, geneticist Sir Paul
Nurse was at a meeting when
he received a note from his
secretary: “Turn on your
phone.” He did so, to hear a
voice message from someone
with a heavy Swedish accent,
informing him that he had
won the Nobel Prize for
Physiology/Medicine. Dazed,
Nurse told his fellow scientist
to excuse him from the
meeting. His companion was
James Watson, who curiously
had also won a Nobel for his
research into the structure of
DNA in 1962.
FANCY A NOBEL PRIZE?
IT HELPS IF YOU'RE AN
OLD AMERICAN MAN
AVERAGE AGE OF
WINNER: 59
807 WINNERS HAVE BEEN
MEN, AND ONLY 44 WOMEN
30 PERCENT OF
WINNERS COME FROM THE
UNITED STATES
 ADVENTURE

HUNGRY EARTH

SLOWNESS OF QUICKSAND Fear no

Let not the soil beneath your feet devour you. Here’s how... More!
sand. Having said that, Get over it.
drowning in quicksand 1 FEAR OF AXE
is near-impossible MURDERS
because the sand TIME TO GET OVER IT
particles will provide PEOPLE SUFFERING
some flotation. Keep MENTAL ILLNESSES ARE
UP TO 10 TIMES MORE
this in mind while you LIKELY TO BE THE VICTIMS
remove any OF CRIME THAN THE
heavy items like a GENERAL POPULATION
backpack, so you’re
freer to move. 2 FEAR OF CREEPY-
CRAWLIES
Float on your back and HOW COMMON IS IT? A
grapple for the edge of 2006 CENSUS OF BRITISH
the pit, before pulling DRIVERS FOUND THAT
yourself free. You can 650,000 PEOPLE HAD BEEN
IN AN AUTO ACCIDENT
even sort of swim to BECAUSE THEY WERE
shore — slowly. DISTRACTED BY AN INSECT
Know what’s more TIME TO GET OVER IT:
dangerous than a IN A 2007 STUDY,
RESEARCHERS AT
patch of quicksand? A THE UNIVERSITY OF
bog. These are wetland SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL,
marshes that appear REPORTEDLY CURED
solid, but are actually 92 PER CENT OF
a tricky carpet of soil, PARTICIPANTS OF
ARACHNOPHOBIA —
decomposed matter SIMPLY BY GETTING THEM
and water. Many TO STARE AT “SPIDER-
people get lost or LIKE” OBJECTS. THESE
drown in bogs around INCLUDED A TRIPOD, A
CAROUSEL AND A PERSON
the world every year. WITH DREADLOCKS
The only consolation
is that peat bogs will 3 FEAR OF CLOWNS
preserve your body for (COULROPHOBIA)
thousands of years, as HOW COMMON IS IT?
A BRITISH HOSPITAL
It’s your worst coast, the particles of to waist-height the high acidity and SURVEYED 250 CHILDREN
nightmare: Tramping sand are lubricated by there’s a lack of oxygen AGED BETWEEN FOUR
through the Marshy a source of water from chance prevents AND 16 ON WHETHER THEY
Marsh of Deadly below. This lessens the you’ll bacteria LIKED CLOWNS AS PART
OF HOSPITAL DÉCOR. ALL
Death, you sink into friction between the dehydrate from 250 SAID “NO” (POSSIBLY
a devious pool of particles, so they’re or get decaying “PLEASE, NOOOO!”)
quicksand, which unable to support mauled by the TIME TO GET OVER IT
sucks you into weight from above. an animal. remains. YOU KNOW WHAT? DON’T
oblivion. Luckily, quicksand So you’d Pictured GET OVER IT. CLOWNS
ARE TERRIFYING. THERE’S
pits are only at better get out here (above A BRITISH PERFORMER
That’s in the their most quick then! left) is Tollund CALLED DOMINIC DEVILLE
movies, dangerous Here’s how. Man, a Danish bog WHO HIRES HIMSELF
anyway. if they body found in 1950. OUT AS AN EVIL CLOWN.
FOR A FEE, HE WILL
But how are deep Don't panic, for Although over 2,000 STALK YOUR CHILD AND
dangerous enough, the love of all that years old, he was POST THEM NOTES THAT
is quicksand and it’s is good! Sorry to mistaken for a recent
COMPILED BY DANIEL SEIFERT

THEY’RE BEING WATCHED.

in real life? rare they shout, but seriously, murder victim. “MOST KIDS ABSOLUTELY
And what is it? will actually don’t struggle — your Not surprising, LOVE BEING SCARED
SENSELESS,” HE TOLD
Think of quicksand submerge an thrashing will only considering they could PRESS. BUT HE WOULD
as a beach — but adult human. True, mire you deeper, into still make out his SAY THAT...BEING AN
instead of water on the if you do get stuck the embrace of the fingerprints. EVIL CLOWN

28
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
 FEATURES
40 54

30
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
PAGE 32 THE MANY MYTHS PAGE 68 LIVING THE
ABOUT VOODOO FOLKLORE ADVENTURE DREAMS VIA 3D
PAGE 40 EVERYDAY LIFE ON PAGE 80 ALL THE PRESIDENT'S
A SPACE STATION MEN DECLASSIFIED
PAGE 54 HELL AND BACK OF
BEING HELD HOSTAGE

68

80

32

31
JULY 2014
 THE EGUNGUN ARE
MASQUERADED DANCERS
WHO REPRESENT THE
ANCESTRAL SPIRITS OF
THE YORUBA, A NIGERIAN
ETHNIC GROUP, AND ARE
BELIEVED TO VISIT EARTH
TO, POSSESS AND GIVE
GUIDANCE TO THE LIVING

OPPOSITE A MAN IN
TRANCE DANCES DURING
A VOODOO CEREMONY IN
OUIDAH, BENIN

PHOTOS: DAN KITWOOD/GETTY IMAGES

32
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
 VOODOO
FESTIVAL

MEET
ME
AT THE
VOODOO
FESTIVAL
Weird, wonderful, surreal and sublime; photographer
Daniel Kitwood uses all these words in the same breath as
he describes his experiences at the annual Voodoo Festival,
on the streets of Ouidah, Benin. Kitwood, who has covered
everything from tropical typhoons to urban riots, tells
Daniel Seifert why this West African town turned out to be
the hardest location he'd ever shot

33
JULY 2014
IT ALL STARTED
WITH A PROBLEM
OF GETTING THE
RIGHT IMAGE
OF VOODOO.
EXPERIENCED
BRITISH
PHOTOGRAPHER
KNEW WELL
ENOUGH THAT THE
WORD "VOODOO"
RELATES TO
MULTIPLE BELIEFS
AND HENCE THE
IMAGERIES. SO IF
HE WANTED A SET
OF PERTINENT
IMAGES WHAT
BETTER PLACE
TO EXPERIENCE IT
THAN IN OUIDAH,
A SMALL COASTAL
TOWN OF BENIN
WHERE THE
RELIGION WAS
BORN?
HERE, SOME 17
PERCENT OF THE
POPULATION STILL
PRACTICE VODUN
(OR VOUDON), THE
LOCAL WORD FOR
VOODOO.

What were your own

preconceptions of voodoo,
and how did they change ABOVE AN EGUNGUN
PERFORMS DURING A
after your shoot? I went VOODOO CEREMONY
with an open mind, and was
prepared to be surprised. I LEFT SOMETIMES, ANIMAL
PHOTOS: DAN KITWOOD/GETTY IMAGES

SACRIFICES ARE REQUIRED

really wanted to understand
what was going on here,
though I probably came away
even more confused. Voodoo
certainly didn’t follow the
usual religious conventions.
That said, I realised the
IN VOODOO RITUALS, AS
OFFERINGS TO THE GODS.
BIRDS SUCH AS PIGEONS
(PICTURED) ARE OFTEN
USED FOR THIS PURPOSE
OPPOSITE MANY VOODOO
RITUALS INVOLVE PEOPLE
GOING INTO TRANCE

34
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
 VOODOO
FESTIVAL

BENIN,
WEST AFRICA

POPULATION
10 MILLION
(AS OF 2012)

LIFE EXPECTANCY
59 YEARS
(AS OF 2011)

NEIGHBOURING
COUNTRIES
NIGER, TOGO, BURKINA
FASO, NIGERIA

HISTORY
PREVIOUSLY KNOWN
AS DAHOMEY, BENIN
WAS A COLONY OF
FRANCE FROM 1894
TO 1960. ALTHOUGH
NOT THE CAPITAL, THE
TOWN OF OUIDAH
IS PERHAPS BENIN’S
MOST HISTORICALLY
SIGNIFICANT TOWN. FOR
MORE THAN 200 YEARS,
THIS PORT WAS ONE OF
THE WORLD’S BUSIEST
SLAVERY HUBS, WHERE
MEN AND WOMEN FROM
AS FAR AWAY AS ETHIOPIA
WOULD BE SHIPPED OFF
TO THE AMERICAS.
DR LESLIE A MONUMENT THAT
DESMANGLES STANDS TO THIS
DAY IS THE “TREE OF
WHAT IS VOODOO? FORGETFULNESS”.
MEN WERE FORCED TO
“The use of the term ‘voudon’ WALK AROUND IT NINE
… refers to a whole assortment TIMES, AND WOMEN AND
of cultural elements: personal CHILDREN, SEVEN. THIS
WAS SAID TO ERASE
creeds and practices, including an ANY THOUGHTS AND
elaborate system of folk medical MEMORIES OF THEIR LIVES
practices; a system of ethics PRIOR TO ENSLAVEMENT.
transmitted across generations GIVEN THAT IT WAS
TRANSPLANTED FROM
[including] proverbs, stories,
ITS AFRICAN ORIGINS TO
songs, and folklore... voudon is PLACES SUCH AS HAITI, IT
more than belief; it is a way of life.” SEEMS THE RITUAL HAD
IN THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF THE PARANORMAL LITTLE EFFECT

35
JULY 2014
 way it's represented in
movies is far from reality.
Dolls however, do play an
important role — and are
often carried as fetishes,
which are meant to hold
divine powers.

Did you have a fixer with

you to give you some
background? I worked with
a local guy, and we drove
around on a motorbike,
looking for things to shoot.
There was no way of knowing
when and where something
would be happening. It was
a case of asking people, and
keeping your eyes peeled. I
didn’t shoot too much at the
festival itself — as it was a bit
contrived for visitors. What
interested me more were the
activities around the fringes
of the festival and town.
One of the more
fascinating sights were the
Egungun, the costumed
masqueraders who shuffled
around town in a hypnotic
trance, imparting their
"wisdom" to anyone who
dared cross their path. They
are meant to represent spirits
of dead members of the
Nigerian Yoruba tribes, and
are treated with the utmost
respect. My driver found
himself backed into a corner
by one of them, and fell to
the floor. The Egungun bent
down and spoke into his ear in
a quiet squeaky voice — as its It was incredibly bizarre, and didn’t want me around, a lot
minder held it at arm's length a little unsettling, if I am to of the time. To shoot many
with a stick. There was a real be perfectly honest. He cast ceremonies, I first had to
sense of theatre drama and stones and went into a trance- meet with the priest or an
intrigue, and I realised that like state. I wasn't to shoot elder, who would then discuss
the people genuinely believed any pictures of this, but the it with other elders. Only
in what was happening, even memory will stick with me for when they were happy was I
if I was still slightly sceptical. some time. I do feel incredibly allowed to shoot. This didn't
privileged to have witnessed always happen, and a lot of
It seems like it was easy to something that very few the time I chose to leave,
fall under the spell of the foreigners will ever get to see. rather than upset people. It
festival. Can you describe was incredibly frustrating,
the effect that the heady How did people react to but in some ways it made
atmosphere had on you? I you wandering around with me confident that what I
was taken to a voodoo priest your camera? I have to be was witnessing was real, and
one day, and he conducted a perfectly honest, this was the not put on for the tourists,
ceremony for me in order to hardest place I've ever shot of which I don’t think there
give me blessing for my trip. pictures. The people really were that many.

36
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
 VOODOO
FESTIVAL

KNOW YOUR
VOODOO

LEGBA
A LEGBA IS A SMALL CLAY
STATUE. THESE ARE FE-
TISHES, REPRESENTATIONS
OF VOODOO SPIRITS OFTEN
ADORNED WITH STRAW
HAIR OR SKIRTS. THEY
SERVE AS PROTECTION

ZANGBETO
KNOWN AS THE GUARD-
IANS OF THE NIGHT, ZANG-
BETO ARE THE WATCHMEN
OF VILLAGES. DURING FES-
TIVALS, VOODOO PRIESTS
WILL OFTEN LIFT PART
PHOTOS: DAN KITWOOD/GETTY IMAGES
OF THE HAYSTACK-LIKE
COSTUMES TO CONVINCE
ONLOOKERS THAT THERE
IS NOBODY INSIDE. AFTER
PRAYERS, THE COSTUME’S
MOVEMENT IS SEEN AS
AN INDICATION THAT THE
GUARDIAN SPIRIT HAS
ENTERED IT

DANGBE
THE PYTHON GOD, FA-
VOURED IN OUIDAH. A TRAV-
ELLER IN THE 1800S NOTED,
“A NATIVE OF OUIDAH WHO
MEETS A PYTHON IN THE
PATH PROSTRATES HIMSELF
BEFORE IT, RUBS HIS FORE-
TOP PRACTITIONERS OFTEN USE HEAD ON THE EARTH, AND
DOLLS AS SYMBOLS FOR THE LOA, COVERS HIMSELF WITH DUST,
THE SPIRITS THAT MAKE UP THE A TOKEN OF HUMILIATION.
VOODOO PANTHEON
‘YOU ARE MY MASTER,’ HE
BELOW THE EGUNGUN BENDS CRIES, ‘YOU ARE MY FATHER,
DOWN AND SPEAKS INTO YOU ARE MY MOTHER; MY
KITWORD'S DRIVER'S EAR IN A HEAD BELONGS TO YOU; BE
QUIET SQUEAKY VOICE PROPITIOUS TO ME’”

37
JULY 2014
 AN EGUNGUN
PERFORMING A DANCE.
THE EGUNGUN USUALLY
SPEAK QUICKLY IN
SQUEAKY VOICES

38
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

I mostly like to work
quietly around subjects, and
try to stay out of the way. I
occasionally look at shooting
a set of portraits, and in the
case of the Egungun, that's
what I wanted to do. This
was a bit tricky though, as
they were supposed to be in
a state of trance, so I couldn't
really ask. We worked out
that the best way of doing it
was to figure out which way
they were walking, and find
PHOTOS: DAN KITWOOD/GETTY IMAGES
an appropriate spot on their
route. We would then wait
for them to walk into the
space, and try and get their
attention. This worked out
perfectly well and we got
some extraordinary shots.
What's the story behind
the gorgeous shot of the
three revellers? (left page)
The shot of the young woman
with two men behind her
came at the end of my first
day in Ouidah. On arrival, I
couldn't track down my fixer,
but heard there was going
to be a ceremony just out
of town. I grabbed the first
person I could with a bike,
and off we went to track it
down. Luckily, we found it
just as it was to begin. The
priest was more than happy
for me to be there, but it was a
real baptism of fire for me.
Women sat around the
fire, cutting up a cow and
beginning to cook it as part of
THE REGIONAL KING
OF ALLADA BLESSES
PEOPLE AND ASKS FOR
THE PROTECTION OF GOD
DURING A CEREMONY IN
OUIDAH, BENIN
the celebration. Drums started
to beat, and the shaman began
to work. Whistles were blown,
to draw out the demons from
the gathered people. Several
people began to fall into a
trance and throw themselves
on the floor, before rising
again and dancing to the beat
of the drums. I had to be quick
on my feet, so as not to get
caught between them as they
flitted between the crowd. I
had no idea what was going
on really, but I was definitely
in voodoo heartland, and was
looking forward to the rest
of the trip. This was weird
and wonderful, surreal and
sublime. A real attack on all
the senses.
VOODOO
FESTIVAL
DO YOU VOODOO?
HAITI
ALTHOUGH THE
MAJORITY OF HAITIANS
DESCRIBE THEMSELVES
AS CATHOLIC, SOME
SOURCES SAY AROUND 70
PERCENT ALSO BELIEVE
IN VOODOO. A COMMON
LOCAL SAYING STATES
THAT HAITI IS “70 PERCENT
CATHOLIC, 30 PERCENT
PROTESTANT AND 100
PERCENT VOODOO”
NEW ORLEANS,
USA
ESTIMATES OF VOODOO
PRACTITIONERS IN THIS
CITY RANGE FROM TWO
PERCENT TO 15 PERCENT
OF THE POPULATION
TOGO
BENIN’S NEIGHBOUR HAS
A 52 PERCENT RATE OF
VOODOO PRACTITIONERS,
ACCORDING TO A 2012
LOCAL NEWS ARTICLE
BURKINA FASO
A 2007 ARTICLE IN
THE GERMAN SPIEGEL
NEWSPAPER NOTED
THAT 40 PERCENT OF
PEOPLE WHO LIVE HERE
STILL PRACTICE ANIMIST
RELIGIONS SUCH AS
VOODOO
39
JULY 2014
LIVING
ON A
SPACE
STATION
HOW CRAZY IS IT TO GET ON WITH THE
MUNDANE CHORES OF DAY-TO-DAY LIFE
ON A SPACE STATION? CHRIS HADFIELD
OF CANADIAN SPACE AGENCY SPENT FIVE
MONTHS ABOARD ISS AND SPENT ALMOST AS
MUCH TIME GETTING BACK TO LIFE ON EARTH.
RACHEL SULLIVAN GETS US A FIRST
HAND ACCOUNT

40
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
 LIFE IN SPACE

THE INTERNATIONAL
SPACE STATION IS THE
LARGEST HUMAN-MADE
OBJECT EVER TO ORBIT
THE EARTH. ASTRONAUT
CHRIS HADFIELD
PHOTO: STS-116 SHUTTLE CREW/ NASA

LIVED ABOARD THIS FOR

FIVE MONTHS

41
JULY 2014
Every movement is controlled and
precise, a zero gravity version of
tai chi. A small hatch opens very
slowly as a single figure, Chris
Hadfield, eases himself out in
measured movement from the
round aperture. Leaving the hatch,
and holding onto the space station
by a single hand, all movement
ceases, except that of Earth,
spinning past the spaceman at
eight kilometres per second, 250
kilometres below.
“It is an incredible and
inexpressible feeling,” he says,
describing his first spacewalk
from the International Space
Station (ISS), in 2013. “To
be suspended between our
world and the universe alone
— a phenomenally humbling
experience that is also utterly
magnificent. Everything pales
compared with floating weightless
in the universe,” he recalls.

FLIGHT ENGINEER CHRIS

HADFIELD OF THE CANADIAN
SPACE AGENCY CONDUCTS A
"FIT CHECK" DRESS REHEARSAL
PHOTO: NASA

INSIDE THE SOYUZ TMA-07M

SPACECRAFT IN 2012

42
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

ecently retired, Hadfield
is one of the most famous
astronauts in the world
right now. A member of the
Canadian Space Agency
(CSA), he was commander
of the International Space
Station (ISS) in 2013, the
highlight of a long and
illustrious career as an
astronaut, which came at a
time when interest in the
space station had never
been higher.
Until recently, what has
happened in space, has tended
to stay in space. But this time
was different. While onboard
the ISS, Hadfield found fame
thanks to an engaging series
of YouTube video clips, which
helped to demonstrate how,
when released from the
confines of gravity, even the
most everyday tasks soon
becomes compelling viewing.
Among dozens of other
insights into daily life in space,
millions of viewers watched
Hadfield cut his nails (over
an air vent to stop the stray
clippings being later inhaled),
and demonstrated that water
wrung out of a towel clings
to the user’s hands. And,
memorably, he helped prove
that in space, tears don’t fall —
they pool in an ever expanding
jellyfish-like blob.
For the space worker, these
were the geeky intrigues of
LIFE IN SPACE
life in space that just needed
sharing. “I just thought if
I found those things really
neat, others might too,”
he tells Discovery Channel
Magazine over the phone
from his home in Canada.
Hadfield’s compelling
online commentary about
life in space then reached its
crescendo, with his charming
rendition of David Bowie’s
astro-inspired song, Space
Oddity. It was appropriately
filmed, as Bowie famously
observed in the song, while
Hadfield was still “floating in a
most peculiar way”, suspended
high above our mortal coil,
strumming his beloved
Yamaha FG 18 guitar, the same
instrument he had in tow
while hitch-hiking through
Europe as a 17-year-old.
The clip was released
on YouTube the evening
before he was due to part
ways with the ISS, in May
2013. By the time his Soyuz
craft had touched down in
Kazakhstan a few hours later,
the song, featuring Hadfield’s
distinctively non rock and
roll voice, had already been
downloaded seven million
times — a figure that has
since tripled and is close to
quadrupling. Not only did it
help make a classic space-
inspired song relevant again
to a new generation, but
43
JULY 2014
A WALK THROUGH
THE SPACE STATION
ISS CONFIGURATION

RUSSIA CANADA EUROPEAN AMERICA JAPANESE MODULES BRAZIL MODULES

1 ZVEDA SERVICE MODULE 5 CANADAARM2 MOBILE MODULES (ESA) 6 UNITY MODULE t KIBO RESEARCH MODULE u EXPRESS PALLET
2 MULTIPURPOSE SERVICING MODULE w TRANQUILITY MODULE 7 DESTINY LABORATORY y KIBO OUTER RESEARCH
LABORATORY MODULE e CUPOLA 8 HARMONY NODE PLATFORM
3 ZARYA CONTROL MODULE r COLOMBUS LABORATORY 9 STRUCTURE
4 DOCKING PORT q SOLAR PANELS

9 q

2
1

3 5
6

7
8 y

u
THE DIFFERENT ZONES
t

LIVING QUARTERS

4 r
w e SCIENCE LABORATORIES

ROBOTICS
ZVEDA SERVICE MODULE 7

8
6 q
1 INTEGRATED CONTROL PANEL
2 LIGHTING CONTROL PANEL
4
3 VONZDUKH CONTROL PANEL
4 SOLID FUEL OXYGEN 9
GENERATORS (SFOG) 3 5
5 GALLEY TABLE
6 CREW SLEEP COMPARTMENT 2
7 CAMERA
1
8 AIRFLOW VENT w
9 WASTE MANAGEMENT COMPARTMENT
q SOYUZ AND PROGRESS DOCKING PORT a e
w TREADMILL AND VIBRATION p
ISOLATION SYSTEM
e VELA ERGOMETRE
r BODY MASS MEASUREMENT
t CAUTION AND WARNING PANEL, r
CLOCK AND MONITORS o
y NADIR DOCKING PORT t
i
u FORWARD DOCKING PORT
i ZENITH DOCKING PORT
o VENTILATION SCREEN
p COMMUNICATIONS PANEL
u
a TORU RENDEZVOUS CONTROL STATION

ISS TRANSPORTATION VEHICLES P CREW C CARGO

PC P C C C C C
SPACE SHUTTLE SOYUZ PROGRESS AUTOMATED H-II TRANSFER DRAGON CYGNUS
Lifetime: Lifetime: Lifetime: TRANSFER VEHICLE VEHICLE (HTV) Lifetime: Lifetime:
133 successful launches; Up to six months Unmanned resupply (ATV) Lifetime: First commercially built Unmanned resupply
two failed launches docked to station; freighter with 3 or 4 flights Lifetime: Unmanned cargo spacecraft, aka and operated spacecraft; can spacecraft; can last up to
Status: Status: per year Carries both bulk liquids and Kounotori, the "White Stork" be manned or robot-operated one week to two years
Retired; July 21, 2011 In service, one is onboard Status: relatively fragile freight Status: Status: Status:
First Orbital Launch: the ISS at all times In service Status: In service In service In service
Columbia; First Manned Launch: First Launch: In service, but closing in 2015 First Launch: First Launch: First Launch:
LIFE IN SPACE

April 12, 1981 April 23, 1967 January 20, 1978 First Launch: September 10, 2009 December 8, 2010 September 18, 2013
March 9, 2008
 BUGGING OUT
It's an arachnophobe's
delight in space — there are
the whirlwind of media that no creepy crawlies. “On the ISS
followed him also created you see little particles of dust that
global interest, not just in your mind automatically identifies as
Hadfield, but in the space insects,” Hadfield says. “But there are
programme too. zero insects which is a really strange feel-
ing, because insects like ants are perfect-
HOT ROCKETS ly designed for life without gravity.” There
By any measure, space has
are some insect experiments planned
been big news in recent
in the near future. “Small animals that
times. As the Curiosity Rover
reproduce quickly allow scientists to
continues to beam back
measure how balance and other
intriguing images from its
things are affected in multiple
ongoing search for signs of
generations. It’s a good place
life on Mars, plans are being
to predict the effect on
fast-tracked to establish a
humans.”
human settlement on the
Red Planet. Despite the risks,
there have been no shortage
of people eager to follow
in Curiosity’s tracks: when
private organisation Mars One
called for volunteers to make
the one-way trip to the colony
that it plans to establish in
2023, more than 200,000
people applied. While NASA

MOISTURE’S
STRANGE
BEHAVIOUR IN
THE ABSENCE
OF SURFACE
TENSION
MEANS THAT
BACTERIAL
AND MOULD
GROWTH
BECOMES A
CONSTANT
ISSUE.
has publicly said little so far
about the Mars One venture,
the space agency also has its
own plans to send astronauts
to Mars within the next
20 years. In the meantime,
the ISS has a lot more to teach "FAR ABOVE THE WORLD,
PLANET EARTH IS BLUE" SANG
people about the challenges DAVIE BOWIE IN HIS 1969 HIT
of living in space. SPACE ODDITY. OVER 44 YEARS
Arguably humankind’s LATER, ASTRONAUT CHRIS
HADFIELD'S YOUTUBE VIDEO
greatest technical achievement, VERSION (RIGHT) OF THE SONG
the US $100 billion outpost HAS GARNERED
has been operational for OVER 22 MILLION HITS

46
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

15 years and continuously
populated since November
2000. Hurtling through
space at more than 28,000
kilometres per hour, it is
maintained by a rotating
crew of six astronauts and
cosmonauts from the US,
Russia, Europe, Canada and
Japan. Four times the size of
the now-defunct Soviet and
Russian space station Mir,
which operated from 1986 to
2001, the ISS — at 109 metres
in length — is the largest
space lab ever built, and
although almost weightless in
space, its mass is impressive,
at around 420 tons.
Yet despite the cutting
edge technology that has
gone into its creation, life “on
station” constantly throws
up curious new challenges.
Moisture’s strange behaviour
in the absence of surface
tension means that bacterial
and mould growth becomes
a constant issue. Flames
burn spherically. And then
there is ‘stiction’, a term
that astronauts have coined
to describe the way fragile
PHOTOS: USGS EROS DATA CENTER (RICHAT STRUCTURE); NASA (CHRIS HADFIELD)
materials stick together when
there is no gravity to pull
them apart.
Dust, skin and other
detritus shed by astronauts
doesn’t simply fall to the floor
– instead it floats around until
being sucked into an air filter,
or inhaled. Needless to say,
space station residents devote
considerable time each day to
mundane cleaning chores, and
a considerable amount of time
to tracking down wayward
objects. Different nationalities
come up with different living
solutions. “The Russians
wallpaper the walls with
Velcro,” Hadfield notes. “In the
US section, they’re concerned
about the flammability of
having too much cloth around,
so there’s a limited amount of
Velcro. But it’s still incredibly
useful for keeping things
under control.”
BEST TRIP AROUND
While the trip to the ISS
can be made in less than six
hours — faster than flying via
aeroplane from New York
to London — for astronauts
like Hadfield getting onto
the Space Station is the
journey of a lifetime. After
blitzing test pilot training
in the 1980s, Hadfield was
selected by the CSA in 1992.
Based at NASA, he oversaw 25
Shuttle launches and directed
operations of Russia’s Star
City. He was also chief of
robotics at NASA and chief
of International Space
Station operations prior to his
mission as Commander of
the ISS.
In between roles, he
commanded NEEMO 14, a
NASA undersea mission to
simulate exploration missions
to the surface of asteroids,
moons and Mars in order to
gain a better understanding of
how astronaut crews interact
with equipment including
advanced spacesuits, a lander,
a rover and robotic arms.
In Canada’s Pavilion
Lake, he was also part of a
team to study microbialites,
structures formed by aquatic
micro-organisms that were
very common for about two
billion years of Earth's early
history. The Pavilion Lake
microbialites provide insight
into the biogeochemical
processes that were active
on our young planet, and
potentially on other planets
such as Mars.
While undersea missions
LIFE IN SPACE
GRAVITY FACT CHECK
Moviegoers held their
breath when medical
engineer Ryan Stone
(Sandra Bullock) made
her maiden voyage
to space with veteran
astronaut Matt Kowalsky
(George Clooney) in
the 2013 sci-fi hit film
Gravity. Disaster strikes
when they are hit by
debris from an exploding
satellite, with no way
home, and oxygen
running out rapidly. The film has been praised for
its accurate portrayal of life in space, winning seven
Oscars including Best Cinematography and Best
Visual Effects. But even so, the filmmakers had to
take some artistic licence.
While being hit by debris is certainly a risk
for the space station or for any astronaut on
a spacewalk, the debris field depicted in the
film would be highly unlikely to take out a
communication satellite.
According to former astronaut Garrett Reisman
there is no way to go hopping from one spacecraft
or space station to another so easily. The Hubble
Space Telescope, the International Space Station
and China’s Tiangong-1 are also far too distant
from one another to travel between them and are
in different orbits and at different altitudes.
If you want to go somewhere in space, simply
pointing your vessel in the right direction isn’t
enough – it takes careful planning and a lot
of energy to get there, and a fire extinguisher
and landing jets wouldn’t provide enough
firepower for the job. Also in space, an object’s
speed depends on its altitude, with objects
orbiting faster at lower altitudes because of
the gravitational pull of the earth. This makes
travel between objects very difficult because any
change in speed causes a change in altitude from
that of the object you’re trying to reach.
Bodies don’t freeze instantly when exposed to
space, although their fate may actually be worse.
Space is a vacuum with its low pressure forcing
air out of the lungs with nothing to breathe in
again causing unconsciousness within 12 seconds
and then suffocation.
Finally, at the speed George Clooney tumbled
past Sandra Bullock’s character, she would have
been unable to catch him, but once caught, she
could have simply pulled him back to the space
station by his tether because he was weightless,
not requiring any heroic self sacrifice.
47
JULY 2014
 may seem a long way
from space, Hadfield says
that astronauts never stop
training and expanding their
skillset in a raft of new areas,
which will in turn help them
in their future work in space.
“We think it would be more
practical to train astronauts
in geological techniques than
to ask geologists to become
astronauts,” he comments.
“You travel all around the
world together, and training
can take place at the bottom
of the ocean or on an arctic
survival mission.”
ONE THING
THAT TAKES
SOME GETTING
USED TO IS
DIGESTION.
“IF YOU BURP
IN SPACE YOU
THROW UP
INSTEAD.”
WANT TO
KNOW HOW IT
FEELS? “TRY TO
BURP WHILE
STANDING ON
YOUR HEAD”.
A crew is selected a long
time before they fly, and
selection is based upon a
detailed set of characteristics,
he explains. “First, the right
people are chosen by the
lengthy astronaut selection
process, and then a subset
of those is chosen. They are
not random people flung
together.” Then once a
specific mission has been
decided upon, the astronauts
move into a high gear
towards their date with space
— mastering and adapting to
the demands of the tasks that
they will need to complete
while onboard.
One of the main
considerations is obviously
48
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
preparing to work in an
entirely different physical
state to the one we live in
on Earth. “Weightlessness
can’t be simulated accurately,
so once the tasks for a
mission have been decided,
astronauts spend hundreds
of hours practicing tasks in
the pool,” he says.
This further ensures that
they are ready to float into
action as soon as they arrive
on station. “When I arrived,
the place felt very familiar,”
Hadfield remembers. “I knew
the people, understood the
work, and it all felt familiar,”
which he says was a tribute
to the accuracy of the
simulations he’d worked with
back home on Earth.
Despite the sense of
familiarity, any journey still
involves adjustments. On
board the Space Station, the
sun rises and sets 16 times a
day, meaning that astronauts
experience a different cycle of
day and night. Hadfield says
while this was an odd feeling,
it is probably easier to deal
with than for people living
in polar regions of the globe,
who experience prolonged
days or nights, depending on
the season. However, those
onboard do take steps to
create a sense of normalcy to
daily life on station.
“At bedtime, we turn
the lights off, and all goes
quiet,” he says. “We also have
regular rituals such as having
breakfast and lunch together.
Even so, time passes so
quickly that it always seems
to be Monday or Friday,” he
laughs. “Five months went by
very quickly.”
One thing that takes some
getting used to is digestion.
“The initial transition is
hard,” Hadfield recalls. “You
can’t burp without gravity;
if you burp in space, you
throw up instead.” If you
want to know how it feels,
he suggests, try to burp
while standing on your head.
Relieving yourself also takes
practice. “Cues to relieving
yourself on Earth are driven
by weight, for example,
the weight of urine in the
bladder. But in space, it’s
more about pressure. And it
takes a week or two to adjust.
PAINS OF RETURNING
Long-duration spaceflight
has a considerable impact on
astronauts’ bodies. Space-
related wear and tear can
include bone and muscle loss,
blurred vision, stuffy sinuses,
decreased cardiovascular
function and sensory motor
performance. The lack of
downward force on their
bodies means they can also
grow up to three percent
taller while on station. To
minimise these effects, and
to reduce their recovery time
on Earth (which takes at least
a day for every day spent in
orbit), astronauts need to
do hours of load-bearing
exercises each day, in order
to maintain muscle tone and
bone density.
According to his book, An
Astronaut’s Guide to Life on
Earth, after five months on
the ISS, readjusting to life on
Earth proved surprisingly
hard for Hadfield. “After
five months in space, my
body hadn’t just adapted
to zero gravity, it had
developed a whole new set
of habits.” Walking on feet
grown unaccustomed to
bearing weight was almost
like walking on hot coals,
while sitting was little
better. His elongated spine
recompressed, causing
constant lower back pain,
while his heart struggled to TOP IF THE ISS WERE A SCHOOL,
pump blood to his head when THIS SCENE IN THE UNITY NODE
he stood up, causing ongoing WOULD BE OF THE TEACHERS'
LOUNGE. SIX EXPEDITION 35
vertigo, nausea and fatigue. CREW MEMBERS, INCLUDING
While Hadfield is philo- HADFIELD (FAR RIGHT) TAKE A
BRIEF MOMENT TO "LOUNGE"
sophical about such relative
suffering, NASA and the ABOVE ANOTHER WAY TO
Russian space agency CREATE NORMALCY IN SPACE IS
TO KEEP EATING; BUT BEWARE,
Roscosmos are eager to learn DIGESTION CAN TAKE SOME
more about the effects of TIME TO MASTER PROPERLY

long duration space flight on
human bodies, announcing
in February 2014 that they
will be sending two crew
members to the space station
on a one-year mission
starting in late 2015. The
data that they collect will
help the next generation of
space exploration.
“This will build on the rich
experience of long-duration
flights, including four flights
of a year or more conducted
by our Russian colleagues
on the Mir station,” explains
Dr Michael Barratt, program
manager for NASA's Human
Research Program. “We have
progressed considerably in
our understanding of the
human physiology in space
PHOTOS: NASA
and in countermeasures to
preserve bone, muscle and
fitness since then.”
MORE THAN A TIN CAN
Along with regularly having
to unblock the toilet and
perform other maintenance
activities, each day’s work
for ISS astronauts involves
acting as human guinea
pigs — conducting scientific
experiments for a range
of government agencies,
businesses and non-profits.
The results of their efforts
have in turn made a very real
difference to people’s lives
back on Earth.
Due to the fact that
virulence and antibiotic
resistance of microbial life
forms increases in space
(because microgravity
appears to alter the way
genes are expressed), the ISS
is the perfect place to trial
new approaches to creating
vaccines. New treatments
LIFE IN SPACE
SPACE BY NUMBERS
US$100 BILLION
AT A COST OF ROUGHLY US$100 BILLION, THE
ISS IS THE MOST EXPENSIVE SINGLE OBJECT
EVER BUILT. FOR REFERENCE, THE LARGE
HADRON COLLIDER COST SLIGHTLY MORE
THAN US$6 BILLION
16X
OVER 16 TIMES AS MANY PEOPLE HAVE
SUMMITED MOUNT EVEREST THAN HAVE
BEEN TO THE ISS (3,500 PEOPLE COMPARED
TO SOME 211)
3 GREAT SONGS
RATHER THAN AN ALARM CLOCK, THE CREW
IS WOKEN BY A DIFFERENT SONG EACH
MORNING, OFTEN CHOSEN BY A LOVED ONE
DOWN ON EARTH. SONGS HAVE INCLUDED
MACHO MAN BY THE VILLAGE PEOPLE, THE
THEME TUNE FROM WALLACE AND GROMIT,
AND MUSE’S SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE.
10,000:1
IT COSTS US$10,000 FOR EVERY POUND OF
PAYLOAD SENT INTO ORBIT
45 MINUTES
TIME IT TAKES JUST TO PUT ON THE SPACESUIT
THAT ALLOWS AN ASTRONAUT TO EXIT
THE ISS AND PERFORM A SPACEWALK
OUTSIDE THE CRAFT, ALSO KNOWN AS EVA
(EXTRAVEHICULAR ACTIVITY). TO ADAPT TO
THE LOWER PRESSURE MAINTAINED IN THE
SUIT, AN ASTRONAUT MUST ALSO SPEND OVER
AN HOUR BREATHING PURE OXYGEN. WANT
TO TALK LIKE ONE OF THE PROS? PUTTING
THE SUIT ON IS CALLED “DONNING”, WHILE
REMOVING IT IS CALLED “DOFFING”.
8:56
THE RECORD FOR LONGEST EVA WAS
SNAGGED IN 2001, BY NASA ASTRONAUTS
SUSAN J. HELMS AND JAMES S. VOSS, WHO
TODDLED AROUND SPACE FOR EIGHT HOURS
AND 56 MINUTES.
1969
A STUDY FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF BERKLEY
CALLED “INTESTINAL HYDROGEN AND
METHANE OF MEN FED SPACE DIET" WAS
RELEASED IN '69. DURING NASA’S GEMINI
PROGRAMME, ASTRONAUTS WHO ATE FOOD
PREPARED FOR THAT MISSION PASSED FAR
MORE GAS THAN THOSE WHO ATE BLAND
FOOD. THE FEAR WAS THAT METHANE, A
FLAMMABLE GAS THAT MAKES UP FARTS,
MIGHT BUILD UP IN THE CONTROLLED
ENVIRONMENT AND HEIGHTEN THE RISK OF
FIRE. SILENT BUT DEADLY, INDEED.
49
JULY 2014
50
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
 LIFE IN SPACE

THE DOCKED KOUNOTORI2

H-II TRANSFER VEHICLE
(HTV-2) AND PART OF THE
INTERNATIONAL SPACE
STATION, ARE CAPTURED
BY AN ONBOARD CREW
MEMBER AS THEY ORBIT
PHOTO: NASA

ABOVE EASTERN CANADA

51
JULY 2014
 for prostate cancer
use microencapsulation
technology tested on the
station; while ISS-grown, high
quality protein crystals have
been demonstrated to combat
diseases such as muscular
dystrophy. Climate change,
disaster monitoring and urban
growth on Earth are also
monitored from the station,
which performs a lap of our
planet every 90 minutes.
Balance studies done on
astronauts are being used
to help predict the risk of
falls in the elderly, while
the technology behind the
Canadian robotic arm,
known as Canadarm, that
first helped assemble and
now services and maintains
the station is being used to
perform robotic surgery with
pinpoint accuracy.
“LIFE ON THE
ISS HAS A MIS-
REPRESENTED
AIR OF
TRANQUILLITY,”
SAYS HADFIELD.
“WITH 200
ONGOING
EXPERIMENTS
AND SIX
MISSION
CONTROLS
IN CONSTANT
CONTACT, IT’S
A BUSY PLACE”.
Put simply, while life
may appear calm and
carefree, it is definitely
busy up there. “Life on the
ISS has a misrepresented
air of tranquillity,” says
Hadfield. “With 200 ongoing
experiments and six mission
controls in constant contact,
it’s a busy place.”
It is also about to
become the coldest place
in the universe. An ‘atomic
52
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
refrigerator’ which is set for
launch in 2016 will cool an
area of the ISS to one ten
billionth of a degree above
absolute zero. All the thermal
activity of atoms theoretically
stops, while our concepts of
solid, liquid and gas become
irrelevant. Researchers
hope that the super-chilled
experiment will deliver us
new insights into quantum
theory, amongst others.
Another planned addition
to the ISS program is a
Lightning Imaging Sensor
(LIS), which will detect and
locate lightning above the
tropics. Scheduled to launch
in February 2016, the LIS
hardware will look farther
towards Earth's poles than
existing sensors, and supply ISS,
real-time information over EXPUNGE
data-sparse regions, such The manifold successes and
as oceans, to support insights provided by the ISS pro-
weather forecasting and gram have resulted in several exten-
warning systems.
sions to its life, which has now been
extended until 2024. However, like the
EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED rubbish that is regularly jettisoned from
While Hadfield is one of the
lucky few human beings to
the station to burn up spectacularly on
have spent time in space,
re-entry to the Earth’s atmosphere, even-
tually the ISS will outlive its usefulness
he emphasises that he was and come to a fiery end. The parts that
just one part of a very large
team of equally committed
are too big to burn up will most likely
colleagues, both in space
splash down somewhere in the
South Pacific, marking the most
and on the ground; people expensive act of deliberate
who work, train, travel and
socialise together for years.
destruction in human
The ongoing bonding process
history.
also means that when the
unexpected occurs, everyone
comes together as one to deal
with any problems.
“It’s really important,
because when dealing with
something as complex and
uncertain as leaving Earth,
you don’t want there to be
any mistakes,” he says.
Even during incidents
such as Italian astronaut
Luca Parmitano’s helmet
flooding during a space walk
in July 2013, nearly drowning
him, the response of other
astronauts — and the support
team at Mission Control —
was not one of shock, but
 LIFE IN SPACE

rather, how could this be

fixed and made right. NASA
has since decided to equip its
helmets with snorkels, should
a similar cooling system
malfunction occur again.

EXPERIMENTS
SUCH AS
ISS-GROWN
HIGH QUALITY
PROTEIN
CRYSTALS
HAVE BEEN
DEMONSTRATED
TO COMBAT
DISEASES SUCH
AS MUSCULAR
DYSTROPHY.
“You don’t want a shocked
astronaut onboard,” Hadfield
laughs. The astronaut feels
that the Oscar-winning film
Gravity, starring Sandra
Bullock and George Clooney,
strayed most into fiction
in the moments when the
astronauts were portrayed as
being overwhelmed by their
situation, compounding the
disaster that befell them.
Instead, space training
teaches you to stay in the
zone, despite the obstacles.
“I’ve been on three flights,
with three different crews,
and there has never been
an emotional blowup,” he
says. “Plenty of debate and
discussion, yes, but all based
on rational content and
developing solutions.”
Travelling off the planet
with other people also leaves
ABOVE "FOR ME, EVERYTHING you with a new understanding
PALES COMPARED WITH
of teamwork, he says. “The
PHOTOS: NASA; SPL/CLICK PHOTOS (TARDIGRADE)

FLOATING WEIGHTLESS
IN THE UNIVERSE” SAYS key to a successful team is for
HADFIELD. each member to have a deep
RIGHT LIFE ON THE ISS DOES reserve of capability,” says
TAKE SOME GETTING USED Hadfield. “And to be able to
TO, FOR EXAMPLE THE LACK
OF INSECTS ROAMING FREE put others’ concerns ahead
of your own.” It is advice,
LEFT THE INCREDIBLE VIEWS learned while floating in
AT ALL TIMES OF THE DAY
AND NIGHT, SUCH AS SOUTH space, that he feels applies
KOREA ALL LIT UP equally to life on Earth.

53
JULY 2014
 THE
HOSTAGE
ORDEAL
HOW DOES A HOSTAGE KEEP HOPE ALIVE
AND COPE WITH CAPTIVITY WHICH IS
ACCOMPANIED BY VIOLENCE? AND IF AND
WHEN HE WALKS FREE, WHAT DOES LIFE
SEEM LIKE?
CHRIS WRIGHT MEETS ONE SUCH HERO,
JOHN MCCARTHY, AND RECOUNTS THE
TALES OF OTHERS
PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES

54
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
 TAKEN HOSTAGE

JOHN MCCARTHY
BRITISH JOURNALIST
TAKEN HOSTAGE IN
LEBANONIN 1986

55
JULY 2014
 Discovery Channel Magazine
in a café in Teddington, just
outside London. “And I was
looking across this valley and
thinking, how weird that some
When John McCarthy was of those cows are big, but some
are really small. I wonder what
released from five and a half special breed of cows they’ve
got to make them really small?
years of captivity as a hostage “And then something in my
brain went: no, no, no, they’re
in Lebanon; most of it spent just further away! They’re not
all on this cliff in front of you.
chained to a wall, there was Some are 300 yards away and

a problem: he no longer
some are half a mile away.”
This is what happens to

had any depth perception.

your mind when you never see
anything that is more than six

When he was driven through feet away for half a decade. And
as he understood this, he came

the Bekka Valley, the cliffs to another realisation. “Christ!

I’ve been driving a f…ing car!”

on either side of the car, to TURNING INWARDS

him, seemed to be going Hostages face misery on an
unimaginable scale. The
thousands of feet straight up location might vary: McCarthy
and his fellow Lebanon
in the air. hostages in anonymous cells
and rooms, Colombia FARC
hostages like Ingrid Betancourt
in jungle cages living in fear
of anacondas, famed ship
t started as he was handed over captain Richard Phillips in a
PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES (TOP LEFT); CORBIS (OPPOSITE)

by his kidnappers to Syrian pitching lifeboat off the Somali

military intelligence and was
driven to Damascus through
Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley in
August 1991. To him, the cliffs
on either side of the car seemed
to be going thousands of feet
straight up in the air. “Then two
or three weeks later, I was with
some friends in Wales,” he tells
coast. But what they have in
common is the fact that they
have committed no crime,
and have absolutely no idea
of when their ordeal might
end — or if they will survive it.
Ultimately, all have to deal with
that same sense of injustice and
incredible uncertainty.

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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
 TAKEN HOSTAGE

A COMBATANT OF THE
LEBANESE FRONT CLOSE TO THE
GREEN LINE IN BEIRUT DURING
THE LEBANESE CIVIL WAR

OPPOSITE DURING JOURNALIST

JOHN MCCARTHY'S FIVE AND A
HALF YEAR IMPRISONMENT IN
LEBANON, A CANDLE BURNS IN
THE HOPE OF HIS RELEASE 57
JULY 2014
 Yet those who survive these
ordeals tend to come out with
a profound sense of their
own ability to survive and
overcome. Hostage literature
is a canon in its own right, and
it includes some of the most
extraordinary writing you are
ever likely to read, because
those who have written it have
had to confront demons within
themselves that most of us will
mercifully never have
to acknowledge.
“I am still and always will
be amazed at the qualities
men find in themselves when
they have only themselves
in which to find a source of
life,” writes Brian Keenan, a
Lebanon hostage who spent
much of his incarceration
sharing a cell with McCarthy,
in his quite incredible book LEBANESE
An Evil Cradling. “I had seen CIVIL WAR
John McCarthy turn from In April 1975, a group
someone who was frightened, of Phalangist gunmen —
as we all were, into someone retaliating over an assassination
who was unafraid and totally attempt on their leader — ambushed
committed to life. In that long a bus in the Ayn-al-Rummanah district
time of captivity, I had also of Lebanon's capital, Beirut, killing 27 of
come to know all the many its mainly Palestinian passengers. This
people that were in me.” triggered the start of a 16-year bloody
Or consider this, by Ingrid civil war in the multisectarian country,
Betancourt, who had been resulting in over 100,000 deaths
preparing to contest an and an equal number of displaced
election in Colombia when people. Against this backdrop,
she was taken by FARC, a 96 foreign hostages from
revolutionary group believed 21 nations were taken
to have kidnapped almost hostage.
7,000 people over a 10-year
period, in February 2002.
Having just failed in an
attempt to escape and knowing resignation, far from it, nor was them deal with it in different
she will now be punished, she it a headlong flight. I observed ways, but all of them come out
writes: “I understood that I myself from within, measuring certainly changed.
had gone beyond fear, and I my strength and resistance not
murmured, ‘There are things according to my ability to fight LIFE IN CHAINS
that are more important back but rather to submit to John McCarthy was a journ- ABOVE WHILE THE LEBANESE
than life.’ My rage had left those blows, like a ship that is alist, a producer for WTN, who CIVIL WAR RAGED FROM 1975
me, giving way to an extreme battered by the tides yet will had spent a month in Beirut TO 1991 — AND HOSTAGES
CONTINUED TO BE TAKEN
coldness. The alchemy taking not sink.” when he was ordered by his — ITS CAPITAL BEIRUT, WAS
place inside me, imperceptible Taken as bargaining chips, employers to fly home for his ESSENTIALLY DIVIDED INTO
from the outside, substituted dehumanised and isolated, own safety. He was on his way TWO CAMPS: THE MUSLIM WEST
PART AND THE CHRISTIAN EAST
the rigidity of my muscles with deprived of communication to the airport to do exactly that PART. MUCH OF THE CITY WAS
a bodily strength that would and of basic decency and when he was taken in April DEVASTATED BY THE CONSTANT
BOMBING, FORCING MANY
prepare me to ward off the liberty, the hostage has to 1986, a fresh-faced 29-year- INHABITANTS TO FLEE, SOME
blow of adversity. This was not adapt to a reduced life. All of old with a lot to enjoy in life: PERMANENTLY

58
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

a beautiful girlfriend, Jill
Morrell, whom he had planned
to marry, and the beginnings of
a successful career.
Neither he nor Jill could
ever have imagined the
duration and depth of his
suffering. He would spend
five and a half years in chains,
denied any communication
with the outside world, even
when his mother was dying in
PHOTO: CORBIS
cruel unawareness of her son’s
fate. He had to find that out
more than a year later when he
was transferred to share a cell
with American hostages, who
had had access to a radio. He
was beaten, and transferred
between cells in truly hellish
circumstances, tied and taped
and mummified in a scalding
airless metal box beneath a
truck for hours at a time. He
had a gun held to his head, was
threatened frequently with
execution, and was given false
hope of release time and again.
During his captivity, thanks
to the tireless work of Jill
Morrell and, subsequently,
Brian Keenan’s description of
their ordeal when Keenan was
released before him in 1990,
McCarthy became a celebrity
in the UK despite the fact that
almost nobody had ever heard
of him when he was taken. The
Friends of John McCarthy, as
his lobby group became known,
numbered tens of thousands
of people fighting for someone
they had never met and didn’t
even know for sure to be alive.
The prospect of a fairytale
TAKEN HOSTAGE
ending between McCarthy
and Morrell gave the story
particular momentum in the
tabloid press, and the media
hounded them when McCarthy
finally got out. The fairytale
never happened: they became
a couple again, but separated
in 1994. He subsequently
married and had a daughter,
but Morrell never settled nor
had children.
“TAKEN AS
BARGAINING
CHIPS,
DEHUMANISED
AND ISOLATED,
DEPRIVED OF
COMMUNICATION
AND BASIC
DECENCY,
HOSTAGES
HAVE TO
ADAPT TO A
REDUCED LIFE.
ALL OF THEM
DEAL WITH IT
IN DIFFERENT
WAYS, BUT THEY
ALL COME OUT
CHANGED”.
What did the idea of
freedom mean to him during
his captivity?“I suppose the
obvious thought of freedom
was the ability to stand up and
walk out of a room,” he says. He
never had this in his five and a
half years, not once. No prison
yard for daily exercise, nor any
of the other relative luxuries
afforded to western prisoners,
not least a trial or even a crime
to warrant having one in the
first place. “But in terms of what
I was going to do, the main thing
was getting back to my life, and
hoping I could pick it up.
“I had no idea what
had happened to my then-
59
JULY 2014
 girlfriend Jill Morrell. And
what about going back to work?
In the last year of captivity
we had a radio, and I heard
about the internet. Particularly
in our world as journalists,
communications and satellite
television had moved into a
totally different orbit. And I
thought: I’m going to be so far
behind I won’t be able to catch
up, and they won’t be able to
employ me.” That concerned
him, but his chief ambition was
nothing more than normality.
“The main thing was to ignore
the last five years and pick up
where I left off: doing quite
well at work, engaged to a
beautiful woman, everything
happy, lovely mum and dad and
brother at home.”
“I HAD
OBVIOUSLY
CHANGED. I HAD
EXPERIENCED
THE TERROR OF
BEING CAPTIVE,
CHAINED-
UP, KEPT
UNDERGROUND
IN VARIOUS
PLACES
AND BEING
PHYSICALLY
ABUSED, BUT
ALL OF THAT
PROBABLY
CHANGED
ME FOR THE
BETTER”
From his own perspective,
he felt he was weathering his
captivity quite well, and could
even perceive advantages in
it. “I had obviously changed,
because I had experienced
the terror of being captive
and chained up and kept
underground in various places
60
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
and being physically abused,
but that had probably changed
me for the good in terms of
being a journalist,” he says. “I
had experienced rather more
than I had as a happy middle
class boy from the Home
Counties. I had suddenly seen
how other people live. Or those
in Lebanon, and Palestinians
in refugee camps because of a
month reporting on the ground
before his kidnapping; suddenly
it made sense. It meant I could
approach what their life was
like rather than just thinking:
that looks terrible. I felt an
empathy with them.”
So the big question was
how the rest of the world
would receive him. And
when freedom did come, how
realistic was it for him to pick
up where he had left off?
BACK TO REALITY
“When I came out, I thought,
right: I’ve dealt with the
hostage thing. And, to a large
degree, I suppose I had. I had
become, not used to it, but able
to cope with it, and in a strange
sense there was an advantage
to being held longer, because
one had to fight one’s battles
with oneself, and also with
the people holding us. Having
found the strength from within,
and with in particular Brian
Keenan the strength to stand
up to the guards — occasionally
going on hunger strike, those
sorts of things — put one in a
different realm of experience. I
could still be terrified in those
experiences, but I felt I had
dealt with it: dealt with myself,
dealt with the environment and
all the people in it," he says.
“But coming out…. It
obviously wasn’t that simple.”
This is something we perhaps
don’t appreciate for freed
hostages: that being dropped
back into the real world can
be just as terrifying as the
captivity that preceded it.
Betancourt, for example, a
woman whose six-year jungle
ordeal involved a personal
reduction so extreme that she
was eventually told to answer
not to her own name but to a
number, came back to a world
in which her beloved father
had died. She had found this
out from a scrap of newspaper
that came into the camp
wrapped around a cabbage. Her
children had grown up and her
husband’s first words to her
were: “Can I still live in your
apartment?” She and fellow
former hostages still compare
notes on their near-identical
nightmares: being trapped in a
building, having to fight their
way out, or finding themselves
panicked by being on a packed
train carriage.
Paul and Rachel Chandler,
a couple who were sailing in
the Seychelles before being
kidnapped by Somali pirates
and held hostage in Somalia
for a year while their captors
tried to extort millions of
dollars they simply didn’t have
from their family, also found
freedom daunting and strange.
Rachel’s diary says: “I’m sad
when reminded that our lives
will never be the same again.
What has happened to us is
so momentous we will always
be ‘Paul and Rachel Chandler,
ex-hostages’.” Yet they found
themselves bonded to anyone
who had suffered any sort of
captivity. They were glued to
the news when the Chilean
miners emerged from their
coal-mine tomb in 2010.
And Judith Tebbutt, another
Somali hostage, who saw her
husband David shot dead
when gunmen stormed their
bungalow in Kenya in 2011 and
then spent 192 days of near-
starvation in Somalia while
her family were extorted for a
ransom, wrote this upon her
freedom: “To the pirates I had
been one sort of commodity.
Now, my life seemed to be
tending towards a kind of public
relations narrative. I felt on
show, and I didn’t want to be.”
On her flight home to England
she fell asleep and woke in a
panic, “absolutely sure that
my creaky bedframe was being
kicked in order to rouse me
for one more move, to another
pirate compound.” In fact the
plane had just hit turbulence.
“But I was shaken, feeling that
I had been served an unsettling
notice of how the mental
vestiges of captivity might dog
my life for a while to come.”
THE NEW NORMAL
For McCarthy, his return home
brought more than just his
depth perception handicap.
He had bigger problems —
newfound fame and press
attention. In this, he was helped
enormously by Keenan, who had
spent a year dealing with exactly
the same thing and had begun
to learn to accept it. McCarthy
asked him: what is it, who do
people think I am? Keenan told
BRIAN KEENAN
him: “We have been somewhere
nobody could imagine:
terrifying, chained up by Middle
East terrorists, in this alien
environment, terrified, abused
PHOTOS: CORBIS (TOP LEFT); GETTY IMAGES (OPPOSITE)
physically. Nobody knows what
that’s like. But we’re normal
blokes. Ordinary little blokes.
And we’ve survived. So people
look at us and think: that’s my
mate. That’s my boyfriend,
or my son, or my uncle, or my
colleague. So we’re everyman,
which we are, because we are
ordinary people."
 TAKEN
COVER HOSTAGE
WRESTLING
STORY

WALKING
STRAIGHT
When John McCarthy met
the daughter of still-imprisoned
Terry Anderson, Sulome, just after
his release, he tried to take her for
a walk across a paddock to see some
horses while they chatted. It meant
crossing a patch of slightly uneven
ground.“I was suddenly thinking: this
isn’t flat. What’s all this about? All I had
done was walk on concrete. That's all
I'd been used to, and now I’m wearing
shoes, which I also hadn’t done for
five years, and I was terrified
I was going to fall over. It
was like walking on
the moon."

HEZBOLLAH'S AUTOMATIC WEAPONS

REST IN FRONT OF A MURAL OF THE
IRANIAN FLAG IN A BUILDING ACROSS
THE GREEN LINE WHICH DIVIDED
EAST AND WEST BEIRUT DURING THE
LEBANESE CIVIL WAR

LEFT NORTHERN IRELAND-BORN BRIAN

KEENAN, WHO SPENT FOUR YEARS IN
CAPTIVITY AS A HOSTAGE IN BEIRUT IN
THE 1980S ALONGSIDE JOHN MCCARTHY

61
JULY 2014

MAN WITHOUT A GUN
GIANDOMENICO
PICCO
If you read Some Other Rainbow, the book
McCarthy wrote with Jill Morrell after his
release, you will find no mention of an
Italian called Gi andomenico Picco, who was
undersecretary general at the United Nations
during McCarthy’s captivity. Today, McCarthy
considers this “a tragic, criminal omission,
because I didn’t realise he brokered the deal that
put everything in place so that we did come out.”
Picco’s UN life, lived largely behind the scenes
less as a diplomat than as a commando, was
extraordinary. He is credited with broker-ing the
peace that ended the Iran-Iraq war, and from that
experience decided that the key to the release of
the hostages was to start in Tehran. He shuttled
between there, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Washington,
London, Damascus, Beirut and countless other
places besides, attempting to bring the great
many interested parties to some sort of common
ground. This was tortuous.
“But what I didn’t realise was the day I was
handed over, the day I was looking at those cliffs
PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES (TOP LEFT); CORBIS (RIGHT)
in the Bekaa Valley, he was walking out at night
onto the streets of West Beirut. He walked out
of the Iranian embassy, turned left, and turned
right, as per prior agreement — to be kidnapped.
The gang that had held me picked him up and
took him and quizzed him.”
He would do this every time a hostage was
released, in order to discuss with them the next
steps. Right, McCarthy’s out, what’s the next
thing? “And every time, he was completely alone.
He never saw them. Sometimes they’d make
62
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
“It’s sort of like they’re
looking at you and they think
they know you, and they think:
we could have got through that.
I can understand that.”
As for the pressure on him
and Morrell, he says: “For
me, it felt like I was being
hunted again. There were
photographers everywhere and
I felt uncomfortable about it.
Not a sense of being in danger,
just somewhat vulnerable.”
But he doesn’t blame this
intrusion for the fact that their
relationship didn’t last. “We
lived together for another two
or three years and then ended
it amicably, but that became
normal, because we were back
in the real world, rather than
as a celebrity couple,” he says.
“Whether it’s because of what
happened or because, like lots
of relationships, they just don’t
work out over the years, I don’t
know," he says.
COMPLEX PSYCHOLOGY
What’s particularly striking
about McCarthy’s ordeal is that,
once freed, he turned what he’d
learned from it into his life’s
direction. Now a successful
broadcaster in his own right,
rather than “the ex-hostage”,
he spends the bulk of his time
covering the Middle East. In
2012 he wrote a new book, his
fifth, called You Can’t Hide the
Sun. This book tells the story
of the Palestinians in Israel.
That is, not the Palestinians
in the West Bank or Gaza but
the Arabic people who have
always lived within what today
is Israel. In it, he very much
takes their side. McCarthy was
imprisoned and often beaten by
Arabs, who worked for Iran-
backed Hezbollah but who
likely included a number of
Palestinians and who certainly
in some measure justified
their hostage-taking through
the treatment of Palestinians.
Surely nobody would have
been more justified in hating
 TAKEN HOSTAGE

MAN WITHOUT A GUN

him wear a blindfold, or they would wear ski
masks, or sit behind a screen. He put himself
at enormous risk, again and again.” He did it
nine times, achieving the release of 11 western
hostages and dozens of Lebanese who had been
detained by Israelis in southern Lebanon. And he
had a young boy at home, and knew that if any of
these meetings ended in captivity his son would
suffer just as much as he would, maybe more.
Picco’s book on this time, Man Without a Gun, is
exhausting enough to read, so the idea of actually
living his life is unthinkable. It depicts an endless
morass of flights, no sleep, negotiations going
round in circles, intractable positions, blindfolds, of
being shoved face-first into the floors of speeding
cars, of top diplomacy and day-trips to Libya
and midnight rendezvous with Israeli agents at
checkpoints in the Golan Heights. It was a life
rendered bearable by the moments when the
hostages realised they were going to be set free.
The last of the Americans, Terry Anderson, told
him: “My God, I really want to kiss you.” Picco
clearly got a buzz from his high-wire work, and
would miss it later. “Life usually goes in one
direction after such an emotional climax,”
he said, “and that’s downhill.”
McCarthy later met Picco while filming
a documentary on hostage negotiators, and
learned a great deal more about him. The two
men came to share a view that most parties in
even the most apparently atrocious behaviour
are, at heart, human. Picco told him about the
last time he was driven around Beirut, and put
his hand on the arm of the man next to him,
who he believed (he couldn’t see) was Imad
Mughniyeh, the military mastermind of Hezbollah
who would later die in a 2008 car bomb (and
was also believed to be one of the hijackers
on the TWA flight mentioned in the main story).
“He said the guy was shaking like a leaf. He said
he recognised this guy’s actions were deplorable,
but he wasn’t doing them for personal gain. He
was — Giandomenico had a great expression for
it — ‘a misguided patriot’. This guy wasn’t really
full of bravado; he thought he was doing the right
thing and this was the
way to do it.”
This chimed with McCarthy. “I was really
struck by that. It so echoed the thing I had about
these guys: terrible, terrible stuff, but within the
context of the world they had grown up in, this
is what they thought. Nobody was good in this,
inside or outside.”

LEFT A BILLBOARD DRAWS ATTENTION TO

THE PLIGHT OF THE BRITISH HOSTAGE JOHN
MCCARTHY, HELD CAPTIVE IN BEIRUT, AFTER
BEING KIDNAPPED BY ISLAMIC JIHAD, THE
LEBANESE TERRORIST GROUP

63
JULY 2014
 Palestinians, and Arabs more
broadly. But that’s just not how
McCarthy has come out.
“Although the situation
of being held hostage was
extremely abusive — total
denial of my human rights, total
illegitimate removal of me,
removal from my loved ones
of their real freedom because
I was banged up — I did come
to realise that things were not
straightforward," he says. "I
was very lucky to be held with
Brian Keenan in particular:
TERRY
ANDERSON
he had interesting insights,
having grown up in Northern
Ireland, particularly Belfast,
during The Troubles as a very
politically minded young man,
and a sensitive, intellectual
guy. So we came to realise that
whilst we hated one or two of
these guards because they were
vicious bastards, it was only one
or two. And while they were
all responsible for putting a
chain on me, for putting a gun
to my head, for making us wear
blindfolds when they were in
the cell, let’s step back from
that. I’m interested that most of
these guys are not abusing us.”
Given almost infinite time to
consider their position, the two
hostages came to try to think
of the guards’ perspective and
motivations, particularly those
who were, within the absurd
parameters of the situation,
behaving with a moderate
amount of humanity. They
realised that most of their
guards were around 20 years
old, so had spent most of their
64
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
childhoods amid a civil war.
“So since they’ve been 10,
their experience has been
chaos, horrible chaos, brutal,
brutal lunacy, civil war that you
and I will never understand,
where suddenly two dads will
shoot each other because of
political reasons or because
your dad’s a Christian and his
dad’s a Muslim. Most people
would think of [the guards] as
monsters, and certainly the
outside world would depict
them as Islamic terrorists.
But we would think: that’s not
really true, is it? They’re just
young men who bizarrely seem
to have, for the most part, some
sense of human decency.”
This seems an exceptionally
generous appraisal of people
who served his food on the
floor, caused him to have to
defecate on a bit of newspaper
in front of another man, tuned
a radio to static and hung it
outside his cell door on full
volume for weeks at a time, and
countless other unnecessary
torments. But even so, the
recollection of some remaining
humanity in his captors
informed his career choices
ever after. Coming back to
the region later, he would find
himself drawn to telling their
story in more detail.
This led to some remarkable
instances. He went back to
Lebanon in 2004, partly for a
sense of moving on, partly for
an assignment on Shia Muslims.
While there, he interviewed
Hassan Nasrallah, the leader
of Hezbollah. Nasrallah was
probably, ultimately, the man
responsible for McCarthy’s own
kidnapping. “He always denies
responsibility,” McCarthy
says. “But when I interviewed
Nasrallah, I asked him: what
about the hostage situation?
He said: ‘Hezbollah was always
working very hard to ensure
the release’.” He laughs wryly.
“It was very clever wording.
He didn’t say we did do it,
but he didn’t say we didn’t do
it. It’s like saying: of course
a kidnapper also wants to
negotiate the release of
hostages, that’s why they took
them in the first place.”
During the same trip,
McCarthy was with a local
journalist in Baalbek, a Shia-
dominated town famed for
its Roman ruins in the Bekaa
Valley, where McCarthy was
very likely held for at least a
part of his captivity. While
there, he was walking around
a pretty park in the centre of
town, and noticed a fleet of
cars going around them at the
edge of the park: three jeeps, a
couple of Mercedes. He asked
the journalist: what are those
cars doing? And he said: “It’s
your friends. They have come
to take a look at you.”
The inference appeared to
be that it was his old guards. He
felt safe, he said, knowing that
his meetings with Hezbollah
had been approved to the very
highest level, and was assured
by his fixer that the people in
the cars would not try anything,
nor even risk attempting to
speak with him. Emboldened,
and seeing one car had a
window down, McCarthy bent
down as they passed and gave a
cheery wave. “And the convoy
raced off.”
WALKING TO FREEDOM
McCarthy’s ability to move on
in this way is admirable, yet not
so uncommon. Terry Anderson,
who was held longer than any
other hostage in Lebanon, for
over seven years, has publicly
forgiven his captors, and even
once shook hands with one, an
image that was actually used
against him when he stood for a
seat in the Ohio Senate in 2003.
Norman Kember, who was
imprisoned for four months in
Iraq in 2005, not only forgave
his captors but put in a plea for
mercy on their behalf when they
faced the death penalty at trial.
But moving on is not
necessarily the same as
forgiveness. Asked if he has
forgiven, McCarthy thinks for a
while. “I still remain angry that
they never let my mother know
about me,” he says. “All they
had to do was come in, click,
and release a statement from
me with a photograph holding
the Daily Star [a Lebanese
paper] with a date on it. Then
she could have died knowing
I was alive. And I don’t know
why they didn’t do that. I don’t
think they were monstrous, so
I cannot understand. I would
like to ask that question. Why
would somebody not do that? It
was a completely unnecessary
cruelty on top of the fact that
they had taken her son away.”
“AND WHILE
THEY
WERE ALL
RESPONSIBLE
FOR PUTTING A
CHAIN ON ME,
FOR PUTTING
A GUN TO
MY HEAD,
FOR MAKING
US WEAR
BLINDFOLDS
WHEN THEY
WERE IN THE
CELL, THEY
WERE NOT
ABUSIVE.”
“But in terms of forgiving
them? Forgiveness is an
PHOTOS: CORBIS (TERRY ANDERSON); AFP (OPPOSITE)
important part of many
people’s faiths, and the
Christian tradition I grew up
with, but I don’t feel I have a
need to forgive. People used
to say: don’t you feel terribly
bitter? I said I feel angry, yes,
but the world has changed
for me and I’ve been lucky
with the way it panned out.
 TAKEN HOSTAGE
AFTER FIVE AND
A HALF YEARS IN
CAPTIVITY, A 34-YEAR-
OLD JOHN MCCARTHY,
ACCOMPANIED BY HIS
FATHER PAT, WALKS
FREE ON TO HOME
SOIL IN AUGUST 1991

OPPOSITE TERRY
ANDERSON WAS THE
ASSOCIATED PRESS'
BEIRUT BUREAU
CHIEF WHEN HE WAS
KIDNAPPED IN 1985
AND HELD CAPTIVE
FOR NEARLY SEVEN
LONG YEARS

65
JULY 2014
 AFTER CAPTIVITY, MANY
HOSTAGES DOCUMENT THEIR
EXPERIENCES IN PRINT. JOHN
MCCARTHY IS THE AUTHOR
OF FOUR BOOKS, INCLUDING
SOME OTHER RAINBOW AND
YOU CAN'T HIDE THE SUN. EX-
HOSTAGE INGRID BETANCOURT
(RIGHT), WHO SPENT SIX YEARS
AS A PRISONER OF COLOMBIAN
REBELS, PENNED THE TOME,
EVEN SILENCE HAS AN END

66
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

Work is good, I’ve moved
on, I’m married with a little
girl, and I’m not going to say
my life was ruined by it. It was
blighted, for a little while, and
perhaps towards the end my
mother’s life was ruined by it,
but everyone else has come
through it all right. If I’m bitter,
I’m still a hostage to them.”
“I’VE MOVED
ON, AND I’M
NOT GOING TO
SAY MY LIFE
WAS RUINED
BY IT. IT WAS
BLIGHTED,
FOR A LITTLE
WHILE, AND
PERHAPS
TOWARDS
THE END MY
MOTHER’S LIFE
WAS RUINED
BY IT, BUT
EVERYONE
ELSE HAS COME
THROUGH IT
ALL RIGHT.
IF I’M BITTER,
I’M STILL A
HOSTAGE, TO
THEM”
HEROES AND VILLAINS
Other hostage ordeals are
shorter, but with a greater
confrontation of violence. In
June 1985, the Trans World
Airlines flight TWA 847, was
PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES (OPPOSITE); AFP (ABOVE)
hijacked by Shiite Hezbollah
terrorists shortly after leaving
Athens en route to Rome.
Diverted backwards and
forwards between Beirut and
Algiers over several days, the
flight is chiefly remembered for
the murder of US Navy diver
Robert Dean Stethem.
But perhaps the most stoic
behaviour under pressure came
from the chief flight attendant,
Uli Derickson, who had the
only language in common with
the hijackers, German, and so
was the translator and liaison
for most of the hijacking. She
is widely credited with calming
the hijackers at extremely
tense moments, most notably
in Algiers when airport officials
were refusing to refuel the
plane without payment, even
when the hijackers threatened
to start killing hostages if they
continued to refuse. Derickson
calmly got out her credit card
and paid $5,500 for 6,000
gallons of jet fuel (she was
reimbursed in the end). More
heroically still, she was ordered
by the hijackers to go through
all of the passports and look
for Jewish names among them.
She found plenty — and, in
turn, hid the lot.
But hostages held together
don’t always find common
ground. Betancourt has said
that the one scenario she never
imagined in captivity was the
one that played out: hostages
turning upon one another.
She and her closest fellow
captive, her assistant Clara
Rojas who was kidnapped with
her, are no longer believed to
be in touch, and several other
former hostages have spoken
disparagingly of Betancourt
since release. McCarthy is
the most pleasant and genial
man imaginable, and remains
very close to Keenan and
Anderson in particular, but he
lost touch with fellow hostage
Thomas Sutherland quickly
following their release after
Sutherland went against the
other hostages’ wishes in
participating in a film about the
hostage crisis.
And in any multiple seizure,
there is of course the thorny
matter of the order of release:
in the Sipadan kidnapping
(a dive resort in southern
Philippines) in 2000, there
appears to have been some
tension around the behaviour
of a German woman whose
apparent illness, diagnosed by a
Philippine government doctor
as hypertension, secured her
release sooner than some
other hostages. And after all
the foreigners had been freed
in September 2000, everyone
seemed to forget that there was
one man left behind: Filipino
dive instructor Roland Ullah,
who would not see freedom for
another three years.
A modern example of
hostage disagreement, and also
of a short but violent ordeal,
is Captain Richard Phillips,
whose ordeal on the Maersk
Alabama off Somalia in 2009 is
now a Tom Hanks blockbuster
movie bearing his name.
The movie depicts Phillips as
sacrificing himself into captivity
to save his crew, whereupon
he was stuck on a pitching
lifeboat with three pirates at
gunpoint until US Navy Seals,
in a truly extraordinary feat of
marksmanship, shot all three
pirates simultaneously from a
nearby warship. But once the
film came out, fellow members
of the crew, challenged this
version of events.
Mike Perry, the chief
engineer, who captured one
of the hijackers and whose
behaviour was definitely heroic,
accused the ship's captain of
deception and of steering the
ship into dangerous waters
despite receiving seven
warnings from a security
agency not to go there.
In fairness, the central
claim, that Phillips bargained to
give himself up as a hostage in
order to free his crew, appears
nowhere in Phillips’ own
autobiography, and appears to
be an invention for Hollywood.
Phillips doesn’t portray his
own decisions as flawless, and
actually speaks very highly
of Perry. Perhaps this tells us
TAKEN HOSTAGE
something else — that movies
of hostage situations rarely do
much for the equanimity of the
former hostages themselves.
PERSPECTIVE
Hostages tend to take on an
odd, defining level of fame
and to be absorbed into their
cultures. Take McCarthy: the
Northern Irish punk rock band
Stiff Little Fingers wrote a song
about him. Linus Roache played
him in one film, Colin Firth in
another. The Hull University
student union bar is named
after him. And he is mentioned
in two of the greatest comedies
INGRID
BETANCOURT
of all time, The Office (in which
David Brent, wanting to be on
the TV show Parkinson, says:
“He had that guy in Lebanon
who spent years chained to
a radiator? What did he do?
Nothing! He was chained to a
radiator!) and Father Ted, in
which the priests name their
pet hamsters Keenan and
McCarthy. “That’s brilliant!”
McCarthy says, with what looks
like real delight. “Forever, we
are a real footnote.”
They are, it’s true. And
though the shadow of being an
ex-hostage is difficult to escape,
it is some measure of the
depths these people found in
themselves that many of them
can say they were enriched by
the experience. “Ultimately,”
McCarthy says, “I think I found
a better perspective because
of that experience than if I had
caught that plane home from
Beirut in the spring of 1986.”
67
JULY 2014
ARE YOU EX
PHOTO: DASSAULT SYSTÈMES

68
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
 INTERACTIVE 3D

PERIENCED?
DO YOU HAVE A WORLD SHIFTING
IDEA? IF SO, THEN THIS MAY BE THE
TIME TO MAKE IT HAPPEN. NOT ONLY
CAN YOU BREATH LIFE INTO THE IDEA
VIA THE VIRTUAL ROUTE BUT ALSO
GET THE OPPORTUNITY TO ROAM,
EXPLORE AND EVEN CRASH-TEST THE
LIMITS OF YOUR BRAVE NEW WORLD.
LUKE CLARK TELLS US HOW

69
JULY 2014
FANCY USING ICEBERGS
TO FACILITATE DRINKING
WATER IN AFRICA, OR
TO TRAVEL BACK 3000
YEARS INTO THE EGYPT
OF YORE? WELL, ITS
NOT AS FICTITIOUS AS IT
MAY APPEAR. PHILIPPE
FORESTIER, ONE OF
THE TEN FOUNDERS OF
DASSAULT SYSTÈMES
WANTS TO CHANGE
THE WORLD THROUGH
HIS EXPERIENTIAL
TECHNOLOGY. ADMITTEDLY,
WHEN YOU SIT WITH
FORESTIER FOR AN
HOUR, YOU START TO
BECOME INTOXICATED
WITH THE EXCITEMENT
OF POSSIBILITIES BY
STRETCHING THE REALM
OF 3D SIMULATION.

IN 1350, THE BLACK DEATH HAD

JUST SWEPT ACROSS EUROPE,
KILLING ABOUT HALF OF THE
PARIS POPULATION IN TWO
PHOTO: DASSAULT SYSTÈMES

YEARS. IN THIS 3D BIRD’S EYE

VIEW OF THE CITY AT THAT TIME,
THE NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS
CAN ALREADY BE SEEN AS A
MAGNIFICENT STRUCTURE
STANDING TALL AND GLORIOUS
AMONG THE CITY’S BUILDINGS

70
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

or the executive VP of global
affairs and communities for
Dassault Systèmes, based at the
company’s global headquarters
in Paris, France (in the über-
techno sounding DS Campus),
the 3D journey has been a busy
one. Forestier was originally
one of the 10 founding
members of Dassault Systèmes,
a company that now numbers
over 12,000 and is rated by
Forbes as being among the most
innovative companies in the
world today.
Having initially cut its
teeth on producing simulation
technologies for companies
in areas including aerospace,
engineering and energy,
Dassault Systèmes is now
eyeing a new frontier that its
leaders feel is in need of their
breed of 3D experiences —
namely the field of education.
At a time when many
INTERACTIVE 3D
parents in the world worry
that their children are more
excited by games like Minecraft
than by physics or history
lessons, companies like
Dassault Systèmes argue that
increasingly, the challenge
should not be for children to
catch up on their studies — but
for education to start keeping
up with our kids.
“Boys and girls are very
sensitive to 3D experiences,”
71
JULY 2014
 says Forestier. “And we have
many initiatives in the domain
of education.” Increasingly
he says, today’s technology-
soaked children take to even
the company’s most complex
applications almost intuitively.
“it is very curious to see the
way that they approach the
most complex technologies,
like robotics technologies or
system engineering technology,
which are normally used by
very senior engineers. So we can
have boys and girls of 14
and 15 years old, access
complex technologies.”
“WE ARE
APPROACHED
BY PASSIONATE
PEOPLE,
THAT HAVE
BIG DREAMS.
WE THEN
SET ABOUT
TRANSFORMING
THEIR DREAMS
INTO REALITY,
THANKS TO 3D”
He describes an initiative
that the company has helped
launch in several countries
which sees students designing
real-world racing cars, taking
them through several stages.
“We help them design it
and manufacture it with
3D printing. So it’s not only
designing the product, they
need to do the branding, the
marketing, the business case —
and then we race the car on new
tracks. And there’s a winner at
both the local school level, and
national level,” he notes.
“Of course, for young boys
and girls, this kind of activity
is very attractive. And they
learn a lot too — they learn
PHOTOS: DASSAULT SYSTÈMES
engineering, manufacturing,
business and marketing,
all at once.” He echoes the
fear among many that our
classrooms have not kept pace
72
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
with many other sectors of our
society. “Yes, because when we
look at the way engineering and
manufacturing has changed
in one century, it has evolved
dramatically. But the classroom
is still the same. It’s a class in
silos of education. I think we
need to transform that.”
Lack of talent in key
industries could over time
have serious repercussions,
he warns. “Our customers are
starving because of a lack of
talents.” Much of the solution,
he feels, lies in injecting
excitement back into the
classroom. “In North America,
we have a lot of activity in order
to generate more interest for
science and technology in
young boys and girls, because
many are not attracted
necessarily by science and
technology” he observes. “This
can help education. Because 3D
is like a kind of serious game.
We can improve the education
curriculums, for them to be
more multi-disciplined, project
oriented and visual,” he notes.
“Imagine a young boy or
girl with heads in the stars,
because up to ten years old,
they went with Mum and Dad PARIS 3D PROVIDES VIEWERS A
to museums, saw lots of great VIRTUAL REALITY EXPERIENCE
things, and were attracted by OF PARIS, TO RELIVE MOMENTS
LIKE THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
the world,” he describes. “Then AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF
they go into classes, learning THE EIFFEL TOWER. EACH
mathematics, physics, science. DETAIL IN THIS 3D UNIVERSE IS
VERIFIED AND VALIDATED WITH
It’s not attractive — they are HISTORY EXPERTS
getting bored very quickly.”
The company is well versed
at helping make learning
into an event. In 2012, Paris
citizens got to enjoy the first 3D
portrayal of the city’s history,
in front of an audience of more
than 15,000 citizens. Launching
the first stage of a multi-faceted
3D program, viewers at Paris’
City Hall (l’Hôtel de Ville)
enjoyed the story on nine giant
3D displays. The two-year
project, known as Paris 3D Saga,
showed a portrayal of Paris
throughout the ages, travelling
back to medieval times. For the
first time, the city’s residents
could travel back to the
 INTERACTIVE 3D

moments when the Eiffel Tower

was being built, and even fly
around its construction.
Dassault Systèmes created
an interactive 3D experience
which could be accessed across
different devices and platforms,
including a website, iPad
application, 3D-powered films,
3D educational documentaries,
and 3D touch terminals used
by museums, educational and
cultural institutions. For the
company, Paris 3D Saga is part
of a wider program dubbed
‘Passion for Innovation’,
aimed at enabling its cutting-
edge technology to be used
by historians, archaeologists,
researchers and inventors.
“We realise that art is at
the cornerstone of science and
technology,” says Forrestier.
“And we are approached by
passionate people that have big
dreams. So we then set about
transforming their dreams
into reality, thanks to 3D.”
As he explains, the process
of transforming a theory
into a visual expression that
somebody could actually dance
about in, can be an extremely
powerful tool.
“These people have a lot of
things in their heads that they
have imagined, but they want
to demonstrate,” he notes.
“The first example we did was
with a guy who has studied the
Egyptian pyramids for 25 years
of his life. And he had an idea:
‘I think I know the way that
these pyramids were built’.
But he could not prove it — so
we helped him to demonstrate
his theory.” As he explains,
Dassault Systèmes was able to
help him to experiment with
LEFTDASSAULT SYSTÈMES engineering technologies of
COLLABORATED WITH THE 3,000 years ago.
MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS
IN BOSTON AND HARVARD “How did people put
UNIVERSITY TO DEVELOP A 3D together these big blocks
RECREATION OF THE ANCIENT of 60-70 tonnes? We were
GIZA PLATEAU
developing the theory in order
RIGHT IN MR & MRS DREAM, to reconstruct the pyramids,”
WITH THE PIETRAGALLA- he outlines. In order to really
DEROUAULT COMPANY, A LIVE
PERFORMANCE WAS CREATED test the hypothesis developed,
WHERE VIRTUAL REALITY AND he says, the next step would be
SIMULATION TECHNOLOGY WERE
USED TO CREATE A WHOLE NEW real tests inside the pyramids.
SCENIC LANGUAGE
73
JULY 2014
 “This theory, we feel, is very
accurate. But the exciting
mystery around Egypt is
maintained by the Egyptian
authorities.”
Another client came seeking
a potential answer to global
shortages of fresh drinking
water, using icebergs. “He said
to himself, how can I drag one
to countries that need water?
Like Africa, for example,” he
says. “We solved the technical
challenges virtually, and now if
a country is interested in doing
this, we know how to do it.”

“IF YOU CREATE

A MOVIE AS
AN ASSEMBLY
OF IMAGES,
YOU CANNOT
INTEGRATE
AN IMAGE
WITHOUT
COMPLETELY
REFORMATTING
THE MOVIE.
THEREIN
LIES THE
DIFFERENCE”
“Each time, we have a
passionate person with a
technological challenge, and
then we create a story.” Clients
of the past have included
famous creators such as
architect Frank Gehry and film
director Luc Besson. Yet as he
explains, the 3D experience
goes beyond just viewing
something multi-dimensional.
“There’s a big difference
between a movie, which is an
assembly of images, and an
experience. If you visualise a
scene, a 3D experience scene,
you can modify it. We can
visualise sitting here, and put
PHOTO: DASSAULT SYSTÈMES

an additional chair in it, or an

extra person.”
“If you create a movie, as an
assembly of images, you cannot
integrate an image without

74
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
 INTERACTIVE 3D

ARCHAEOLOGY AND HISTORY

STUDENTS ENJOY AN
IMMERSIVE, INTERACTIVE 3D
EXPERIENCE USING DASSAULT
SYSTÈMES’ VIRTUAL REALITY
TECHNOLOGY. THEY DIVE INTO
MEDIEVAL PARIS, FOR A 360
DEGREE VIEW OF WHAT THEY
LEARN IN TEXT BOOKS

75
JULY 2014
 completely reformatting the
movie. So there’s a difference:
we are creating experiences.”
The company also provided
a solution to help Harvard
University teach Egyptology.
“They have a program,
Giza 3D, where they teach
Egyptology with a 3D case:
they can immerse the students
in an environment where the
Egyptians were 3,000 years ago.
Because 3D is ubiquity in time
and space.”

“YOU CAN
SIMULATE
THE CARBON
FOOTPRINT
OF A CITY, OR
VISUALISE
THE TRAFFIC
FLOWS.
SIMULATION IN
LIFE SCIENCES
CAN HELP
WITH CANCER
AND OTHER
MOLECULAR
RESEARCH”
Of course, while you can
move around and view different
aspect, just how much of a real-
life experience you will actually
get in this 3D world remains
limited by current technology.
Forestier notes that future movie was asking one of the
advances will increasingly allow boys and girls in the theatre,
users more interaction and ‘Hey you, little boy with the
deeper immersion. red shirt, what’s your name?’
“We have prototypes where So there was an interaction.
we are trying to make sure that Of course, this was driven by
the 3D virtual reality, which someone piloting behind the
is in some way still a video, scenes. So it’s still prototyping.
can add new dimensions to But it’s the first way to create
the movie — so you can really this interaction between the
interact directly with the scene world of experiences.”
you are producing,” he outlines. For Forestier, it is in
“We worked with [film director] the areas of improving
Luc Besson and with people our wider knowledge and
in motion capture. We were solving problems, where the
showing a movie to young boys possibilities begin to get really
and girls, and at some point in exciting. “We are not only in the
time one of the people in the simulation of vehicles, to help

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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
 THIS AERIAL VIEW OF THE GIZA INTERACTIVE 3D
PLATEAU SHOWS THE POSITION
OF EACH OF THE COMPLEXES,
TEMPLES AND TOMBS.
VISITORS CAN IMMERSE
THEMSELVES INTO A VIRTUAL
REALITY TOUR (BELOW) AND PRINT YOUR OWN
EXPERIENCE THE SPLENDOURS FRIDGE DOOR
OF ANCIENT
EGYPTIAN MYSTERIES.

Philippe Forestier is also excited by the

potential in his industry for 3D printing. “This
technology is very interesting for us. We have our
own internal lab, in order to have people coming
in and designing whatever they want — then
printing them,” he says. “You can take a picture
of yourself, and print your face out in 3D. So yes,
3D printing is certainly transforming the world of
the making.”
“It is also used for industry. In aerospace, we
design complex parts as one single part, and not
in different parts assembled together. It will also
be used with transplants.”
Forestier sees potential for the technology
in terms of transforming the world of the
fixing.“When you break the door of your
refrigerator at home, instead of buying the part,
you just recreate it yourself and you print it. I
think this has multiple benefits, and we are very
engaged in this transformation of the world of
manufacturing.”
Of course, 3D experience creators don’t
come out of school ready-made. Has it been a
challenge to find them? “It’s still a challenge,”
he says. “It was a challenge to find the designers
that could use 3D technology — just as it was a
challenge to eliminate the physical prototype in
manufacturing,” he says
PHOTOS: DASSAULT SYSTÈMES

“Everyone at some point likes to stay in their

comfort zone. Often for us, it means that we have
to convince at the highest level of the company,
and of the industry, in order to have those new
technologies accepted — then to transform the
way things are done.”

77
JULY 2014
 BMW or Toyota built better
cars, or Airbus or Boeing to
build better planes. But we are
also in the simulation of nature,
and in the simulation of life.”
“Life science for us is
extremely critical — for
example, we have a significant
acquisition, in its finalisation
process, of a company in San
Diego, to simulate molecules,”
he notes. “Through propagation
of some diseases in cells, we
hope to help doctors cure some
forms of cancers. Simulation
can be a be a big tool for that.”

“THE AIM OF
SIMULATION IS
TO INCREASE
EFFICIENCIES
AND CUT
COSTS BESIDES
FUELLING
IMAGINATION
FOR RADICAL
INNOVATION,
WHICH IS A
PRESSING
NEED OF 21ST
CENTURY”
The technology can also
be used in complex systems
like cities. “We provided a 3D
experience platform, to allow
all the people working, whether
you’re in charge of urbanism,
architects, planners, developers,
and the citizens themselves, to
work together.”
To test a crisis situation in a
heavily populated area, real-
life trials on different courses
of action may be near
impossible, not to mention
dangerous. In such cases, FRENCH ENGINEER GEORGES
simulation can be crucial. MOUGIN HAD A DREAM TO
CONVERT ICEBERGS INTO
“When you take a decision, DRINKING WATER. WITH THE
you had better understand SOLUTION DEVELOPED (THIS
the impact of your decision AND RIGHT), HE TESTED THE
SCENARIOS INVOLVED AND
on those outside,” he explains. PROVED HIS PROJECT WAS
“You can ask, what will be the TECHNICALLY VIABLE
impact of flooding on certain
areas, then make it very visible.
You could simulate the carbon

78
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

footprint of the city, or visualise
its traffic flows. You can
completely design the system,
then see the impact of whatever
inputs you want.”
Forestier says that from a
production point of view, the
aim of simulation technology
is to increase efficiencies and
decrease costs. “We work with
‘leapfrogging’ the way that
companies do business,” he
explains. “A car manufacturer
now is capable of producing a
car in one year — 20 or 30 years
ago, it would take four or five
years. This change cannot be
achieved without the support of
these technologies.”
A major aspect is also
reducing the carbon footprint
of physical trials. “When we
worked with BMW and other
car manufacturers, and you
wanted to crash a car in front
of a wall to design the airbags
— why crash a real car with a
real mannequin in front of a
wall? Especially if we can do
that in a computer, with a level
of accuracy that is perfect,” he
says. “In the mining industry,
we work with people drilling
in the ground to find minerals.
We have a simulation on the
ground, which helps them
minimise the drilling they have
to do. Virtual technology allows
you to do things right the first
time — so that we can protect
the environment.”
As companies like Dassault
Systèmes try to help clients
streamline their processes and
clean up their act at the same
time, Forestier is also aware
that though innovation may be
improving exponentially, so are
the problems that we have to
contend with. Not least of these
challenges is climate change.
He believes that in the face of all
PHOTOS: DASSAULT SYSTÈMES
these global obstacles, we will
in turn see an unprecedented
wave of innovation happening
within the next 85 years or so.
In essence, the challenge
may be for society and industry
to invent its way out of trouble.
“When we look at all the
key challenges of humanity,
there may need to be more
inventions in the 21st century
than there were innovations
and inventions in the history of
humanity,” he says Forestier.
“What are the new ways of
producing energy — what are
the new ways of improving
global health? What are the
ways we can improve food
supply, or disease? We want to
provide solutions to the people
in charge.”
When he eventually travels
back to France after speaking
with DCM, there will very likely
be other interesting characters
knocking at his door with a new
problem to solve. We asked
Forestier what the process was
like, when a famous architect,
for instance, comes calling.
Initially he says, the process
is one of understanding the
unique vision of each artist in
question. “It’s a new dimension
to their art that we’re providing.
For Frank Gehry, I think he
could not do his buildings
without the support of a
solution,” he notes. “And he is
not an IT guy, he’s not a guy in
love with computers. But we
use our technology in order to
quickly produce a simulation of
his dreams.”
What does Forestier say
to those who feel that 3D
experiences may limit our
INTERACTIVE 3D
capacity to imagine? He
counters the notion, citing as
an example, the Coriolis effect,
whereby when you’re on Earth’s
north pole, water goes down a
drain in the one direction, while
in the south, it is the other. “If
you show the mathematical
equation to your children,
they can’t understand it unless
they’re good at mathematics.
If you show- it visually in 3D
they’ll understand much more
easily,” he insists. “It’s not
something that will limit their
imagination — it will boost
it, and increase the way they
can create and invent new
things. If you look at the recent
Nobel Prize in Chemistry
winners, they could not have
won without the support of
experience technology.”
Some clients have ideas
that stretch to the stars. “I’m
working with a woman right
now, who has a dream. She’s
an artist, doing sculpture in
metal — she’s used to making
big metal sculptures, tens of
metres high.” Her dreamed-
about project is something far
different. “She’s coming to us
and saying, ‘I would like to do a
metallic sculpture to go on the
moon. How do I do that?’” He
laughs. “It’s a key challenge —
and we’ve solved the challenge.
Now we just need to find the
rockets, that’s all.”
79
JULY 2014
HOUSE OF
CARDS
THE REPORTERS
WHO TOOK ON
A PRESIDENT
WHILE PEOPLE IN WASHINGTON MIGHT HAVE
KNOWN WATERGATE AS THE NAME OF A HOTEL,
THE WORLD OVER IT WAS THE NAME OF THE
BIGGEST POLITICAL SCANDAL THAT BROUGHT
DOWN PRESIDENT NIXON.
CHRIS WRIGHT RECONSTRUCTS THE CHAIN OF
EVENTS THAT BEGAN WITH A SMALL WEEKEND
NEWS EVENT — AND WENT ON TO CHANGE THE
COURSE OF WESTERN HISTORY

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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
 WATERGATE
FACTS

THE WATERGATE SCANDAL

ROCKED THE WORLD.
RICHARD NIXON, 37TH
PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED

STATES, RESIGNED IN 1974
UNDER A LOOMING THREAT
OF IMPEACHMENT

81
JULY 2014
 rom the moment Richard
Milhous Nixon took office as
President of the United States
in 1969, he put a premium
on knowing all about the
opposition. “Information and
money,” writes Fred Emery
in Watergate: The Corruption
of American Politics
and the Fall of Richard
Nixon, one of the principle
sources for this article.
“These two indispensible
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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
political commodities were
immediately pinpointed by
Richard Nixon as cardinal
to his re-election four
years later.”
Even before his
inauguration in 1969,
Emery writes, Nixon wrote
clear instructions to Bob
Haldeman, his chief of staff,
instructing him to build up
funds, including “a private
fund for secret political
purposes. The Nixon men
were to run up huge amounts
by methods close to extortion.
This approach contributed
greatly to Watergate and to
the abuses associated with its
initial cover-up.”
Emery also notes
how Nixon — who would
contest five elections in
total, including two as vice-
president, and who in 1960
lost to John F Kennedy by a

mere 113,000 votes — seemed
driven by a fear of losing,
perhaps because when he
took office both houses of
Congress were controlled by
the opposition. “Nixon never
seemed to have accepted
that he had finally won. From
the outset of his presidency,
Nixon seemed obsessed by
the fear of being a one-term
president,” Emery writes.
“FROM THE
OUTSET OF HIS
PRESIDENCY,
NIXON SEEMED
OBSESSED
BY THE FEAR
OF BEING A
ONE-TERM
PRESIDENT”
In his memoirs, Nixon
writes, “I decided that we
must begin immediately
keeping track of everything
the leading Democrats did.
Information would be our first
line of defence.”
Nixon and bugging were
bedfellows well before
Watergate. In early 1969,
he was enraged by leaks
about the secret bombing of
Cambodia and approached
the director of the Federal
Bureau of Investigation
(FBI), J Edgar Hoover, who
said wiretaps were the most
effective answer.
They placed taps on 13
ABOVE NIXON AT CAMP
US officials at the White
PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES (MAIN); CORBIS (HOWARD HUNT, GORDON LIDDY)
DAVID SOON AFTER HE
HAD BEEN RE-ELECTED. House, State and Defense
AT THIS POINT, THE
departments, and several
WATERGATE BURGLARS
HAD NOT YET BEEN PUT reporters. But crucially,
TO TRIAL Nixon’s administration then
even sidestepped the FBI
itself, conducting wiretaps
and, ultimately, break-ins
on its own.
The seeds of Watergate
and its cast of characters
were sown in 1971, and three
moments in particular were
pivotal. Early that year a new
campaign organisation was
WATERGATE
FACTS
set up called the Committee
to Re-Elect the President, or
COMMITTEE TO
RE-ELECT THE
PRESIDENT
CRP, which the world would
come to know as “CREEP”.
It was separate from the
G GORDON
Republican Party itself and LIDDY
was set up in offices across the Member of the
street from the White House; White House
CRP would eventually be "plumbers"
chaired by John Mitchell,
who resigned from his role as
US Attorney General in order
to run it.
Also in 1971, Nixon’s
paranoia and use of
surveillance intensified JOHN
with the leak of the so- EHRLICHMAN
Nixon's Chief
called Pentagon Papers, a
highly detailed account of
Domestic
American involvement in
Advisor
Vietnam which was leaked
to the New York Times and
later other newspapers by a
RICHARD
man called Daniel Ellsberg.
MILHOUS Nixon’s attempts to punish
NIXON Ellsberg were wide-ranging, JOHN
37th President and included attempts to find DEAN
of the United dirt on him, for which a man White House
States Counsel
called E Howard Hunt was
hired. Hunt was a spy of many
decades’ service.
The efforts to get Ellsberg
were the genesis of the
formation of a White House
special investigations unit,
BOB which would come to be CHARLES
HALDEMAN COLSON
known as “the plumbers” Nixon's Special
Nixon's Chief
of Staff (since their main role was to Counsel
plug leaks). An early recruit
was G Gordon Liddy. One of
the first acts of this group
was to try to get psychiatric
records for Ellsberg, and
when his psychiatrist refused
to hand them over, they JAMES
JOHN
decided to go and steal them. McCORD
MITCHELL
There’s a memo about this Security
Chairman
coordinator
of CRP operation that appears to
of CRP
have been approved by John
Ehrlichman, Nixon’s right-
hand man; one could call
this the beginning of the
activity that would culminate
in Watergate.
E HOWARD Hunt, who had been JEB
HUNT involved in the Bay of Pigs MAGRUDER
Member of the fiasco in the early 1960s, Deputy
White House recruited a number of Cuban director
"plumbers" of CRP
exiles who broke in on
September 3, 1971, only for
83
JULY 2014
 the break-in to go wrong and
yield no sign of Ellsberg’s files.
When that failed, Liddy briefly
pitched an idea of putting LSD
into Ellsberg’s soup at a public
dinner to discredit him (this,
mercifully, did not get far).
“They had acquired a
taste for corruption and
convinced themselves that it
was what the boss wanted,”
writes Emery. “The next, still
more dangerous, moves were
increasingly inevitable.”
WILD IDEAS
TO SNOOP
AND
TRACK THE
DEMOCRATS
CAME AND
WENT. ONE
WAS TO
FIREBOMB THE
DEMOCRATIC
BROOKINGS
INSTITUTION
AND GET
SECRET
DOCUMENTS
FROM INSIDE
THE OFFICE.
There was a third
momentous decision in 1971.
Having ordered a taping
mechanism that existed
before he took office to
be ripped out, Nixon now
ordered that almost all
his conversations be tape-
recorded. From February
1971, they were.
By early 1972 most of the
cast of Watergate was in place.
In addition to Ehrlichman,
Haldeman and Mitchell,
other key lieutenants to
Nixon included John Dean,
White House Counsel, and
Charles Colson, an absolute
bruiser who had served in the
US Marines and had a motto
written on his wall: “If you’ve
got ‘em by the balls, the hearts
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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
and minds will follow.” At
the CRP, retired CIA officer
James McCord became a
full-time member on January
1, around the time Liddy was
put in charge of intelligence
gathering for the organisation.
Another key man was Jeb
Magruder, the deputy director
of the CRP.
Wild ideas came and
went. One was to firebomb
the Democratic Brookings
Institution and get secret
documents from within it; 3
Hunt and Liddy developed a
plan to buy a fire engine, dress
a load of Cubans in fireproof
gear, and make sure they were
the first responders so as to 2
get in and raid the vault.
While that didn’t happen,
Liddy did pitch a bizarre
plan to Dean, Mitchell and
Magruder in January 1972.
His operation was code-
named Gemstone, and
among its salient proposals
were: kidnap demonstration
leaders before the Republican
convention, drug them
and spirit them to Mexico;
assign a chase plane to
pursue the Democratic
nominee’s aircraft to bug its
data communications; lure
Democrats to prostitutes and
eavesdrop on their pillow
talk; sabotage the Democratic
convention’s air conditioning;
and plant bugs. Mitchell
would later say, “I should
have thrown Liddy out of
the window.”
But he didn’t, and though
most of Liddy’s wild plans
were down scaled, they did
lead to the Watergate
break-ins.
There’s one other useful
bit of context: none of this
was remotely necessary. In
any case Nixon had a huge
lead in the polls. He couldn’t
have lost the 1972 election
even if he'd tried. Had he only
believed this and focused
on government functioning,
none of all that what followed
would have happened.
 WATERGATE
FACTS

SUNDAY
MAY 28, 1972
Richard Nixon is in Moscow.
It is a landmark moment: he
is taking part in the first ever
summit between American
5 and Soviet presidents to be
held in the Russian capital.
4 He addresses the Soviet
people in a televised speech.
“Time and again people
have vanquished the source
of one fear only to fall prey
to another,” he tells them.
“Let our goal now be a world
without fear.”
It is Nixon at his best: high
2A policy, thawing dangerously
bad relations with the Soviet
Union just as he also sought
to do, with some success,
with China. By now he has
also begun to end American
involvement in Vietnam.
And this Moscow trip will
produce the first Strategic
1 Arms Limitations Talks, or
SALT, treaty, to reduce the
pace of the nuclear arms race.
But half a world away,
IN EARLY 1973, THE we are also seeing Nixon
WATERGATE TRIALS at his worst. On this same
BEGAN. COURTROOM
EVIDENCE INCLUDED day, a group of people
PHOTOS OF THE break in to the Democratic
WATERGATE
COMPLEX IN National Committee
WASHINGTON (DNC) headquarters in
(ABOVE) AND THE the Watergate complex in
FLOOR PLAN OF THE
DNC HEADQUARTERS Washington DC. This is, in
IN THE WATERGATE
COMPLEX (LEFT)
fact, their third attempt in
three days, having lacked
sufficient competence to
get in on the Friday and
1 WATERGATE WEST Saturday. Even this time,
one of them manages to get
PHOTOS: AFP (MAIN); GETTY IMAGES (ROOM PLAN); CORBIS (JACK ANDERSON)
TUESDAY
JUNE 6, 1972
Senator George McGovern
wins the California primary in
the Democrats’ presidential
nomination process,
effectively winning the
contest. He will face Nixon in
the election.
By now, it has become clear
that the bugs planted the
previous week aren’t working.
One appears useless, and the
other not used by the man
they wanted to tap. Plans are
made to go back in, this time
with more of an emphasis on
photographing material.
FRIDAY
JUNE 16, 1972
Several burglars of Cuban
origin arrive at Washington
National Airport and
promptly bump into one
of Washington’s leading
columnists, Jack Anderson,
who recognises one of them.
They drive to the Watergate
Hotel and check in under
aliases. Liddy, on his way
GEORGE
McGOVERN there, jumps a traffic light and
US Senator, is pulled over, but gets away
opposed
with a verbal warning.
Nixon in 1972
presidential
election
SATURDAY
JUNE 17, 1972
In the early hours of the
morning, a lookout confirms
that the DNC is dark, and the
operation begins. The plan
is to go through a door that

2 WATERGATE HOTEL AND OFFICE
BUILDING (HOTEL PORTION)
2A WATERGATE HOTEL AND OFFICE
BUILDING (OFFICE PORTION)
3 WATERGATE EAST
4 WATERGATE SOUTH
5 WATERGATE OFFICE BUILDING
THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL
COMMITTEE'S (DNC) HEADQUARTERS
WERE LOCATED ON THE SIXTH FLOOR
caught, but is simply told
to leave and is not arrested;
the rest of them photograph
documents and plant
listening devices inside
the phones.
There are eight men in the
group. Two are employees
of Nixon’s campaign
organisation, the CRP, which
is in full swing trying to
ensure Nixon does not lose
this November’s election.
And the other six are paid for
with CRP funds.
JACK McCord had earlier taped
ANDERSON
One of open at garage level, but the
Washington's team finds it closed; they
leading break in, and, oddly, tape the
columnists lock open again.
The security guard who
discovered the tape the first
time makes an inspection and
finds the second one, deciding
to call the police. Crucially,
an unmarked car responds,
so the burglars’ lookout does
not notify them. The police
find the burglars in the DNC
offices. The burglars have

85
JULY 2014
 keys to their hotels across
the street with them, and
when the police search those
rooms, they find a haul of
incriminating material.
The key embarrassment
for the government is that
one of the men arrested is
McCord, who is on the CRP
staff and whose fingerprints
are on file with the FBI.
“THIS WAS
NOT JUST
HARD-NOSED
POLITICS, THIS
WAS A CRIME
THAT COULD
DESTROY
US ALL. THE
COVER-UP,
THUS, WAS
IMMEDIATE AND
AUTOMATIC”
On Saturday morning, the
various players act differently:
Liddy and Hunt, not arrested
but up to their necks in
trouble, sleep (though by this
time, they have already fled
the Watergate Hotel). The
FBI, having been summoned
by local police puzzled by the
surveillance equipment they
have found, prepare warrants
for rooms 214 and 314 of the
Watergate Hotel, where the
men had been staying. Liddy,
once awake, begins shredding
files at the CRP offices. Then,
he goes to the White House
in order to find a secure
line to call his superiors,
Mitchell and Magruder, who
are in California; he reaches
Magruder at a up-scale
Beverly Hills hotel.
Accounts vary about what
happened next, but someone
then calls the US Attorney
General, Richard Kleindienst,
to try to get McCord released
before anyone figures out who
he is. Liddy tracks Kleindienst
down at the Burning Tree
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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
Golf and Country Club, and
tells him the whole story.
Kleindeinst, angry, refuses
help, but also doesn’t tell the
police or FBI.
Having obtained the
necessary warrants, the police
and FBI search the Watergate
hotel rooms and find a stash
of hundred-dollar bills with
sequential serial numbers,
as well as a briefcase
BOB
WOODWARD
Washington
containing the burglars’ true
identification documents, two
Post reporter address books, and several
things incriminating Hunt —
mortally embarrassing, since
Hunt had been on the White
House payroll.
Nixon, meanwhile, is in
the Bahamas, having a lovely
day of fresh air and exercise.
CARL
BERNSTEIN Haldeman is on a Key
Washington
Post reporter
Biscayne beach when he spots
press secretary Ron Ziegler
running along in a pair of
trunks carrying a roll of news
agency copy reporting the
break-in.
At 9am this same day, Bob
Woodward’s phone rings:
it is the city editor of the
Washington Post asking him
to come to work to help
with the paper’s coverage of
the burglary.
He gets to the office and
sees another reporter is on
the story: Carl Bernstein.
“Oh God, not Bernstein,”
Woodward thinks, as he
recalls several office tales
about Bernstein’s ability
to push his way into a good
story and get his byline on
it. Bernstein is no more
enthralled to see Woodward.
“Bob Woodward was a
prima donna who played
heavily at office politics,”
he thinks, noting that, “One
office rumour had it that
English was not Woodward’s
first language.”
The two will later write
in the 1974 book All The
President’s Men: “Bernstein
looked like one of those
counterculture journalists
that Woodward despised.
Bernstein thought that
Woodward’s rapid rise at the
Post had less to do with his
ability than his Establishment
credentials.”
At the Post, the tip about
the break-in goes not to
Woodward or Bernstein but
to police reporter Alfred
Lewis, considered at the Post
to be “half cop, half reporter,”
they write. His name will be
on the first Post story about
the break-in, on its Sunday
front page. But two other
people were also involved
in filing for the story that
day: Bob Woodward and
Carl Bernstein.
Woodward attends the
courtroom where bail is
set: US$30,000 for McCord,
US$50,000 apiece for the
other four men. Asked their
occupations, one answers,
“anti-communist”.
Woodward overhears
McCord tell the judge he is
retired from the CIA.
Over in California, the
various senior government
figures with knowledge of the
Watergate incident meet for
a discussion in Mitchell’s LA
suite that evening.
Magruder will later write:
“At some point that Saturday
I realised that this was not
just hard-nosed politics, this
was a crime that could destroy
us all. The cover-up, thus, was
immediate and automatic;
no one ever considered that
there would not be a
cover-up.”
BOB WOODWARD (PICTURED LEFT) AND
CARL BERNSTEIN, THE WASHINGTON POST
JOURNALISTS WHOSE NAMES ARE INEXTRICABLY
LINKED TO WATERGATE. ALTHOUGH NIXON WAS
RE-ELECTED IN 1972, WHEN INCRIMINATING
EVIDENCE EVENTUALLY CAME TO LIGHT, HE
RESIGNED FROM OFFICE — BECOMING THE FIRST
US PRESIDENT TO DO SO
 PHOTOS: CORBIS (MAIN, BOTTOM RIGHT)

FACTS
WATERGATE

JULY 2014
87
SUNDAY
JUNE 18, 1972
The first Washington Post
article appears. Its headline
reads, “5 Held in Plot to
Bug Democrats’ Office
Here”. Associated Press
has something more: it has
noticed that McCord is the
security coordinator of
the CRP.
Nixon flies back to the US
mainland to his residence in
Key Biscayne. He claims the
first he hears of Watergate is
a story in the Miami Herald
when he lands: “Miamians
Held in DC try to Bug Demo
Headquarters”. He writes,
“It sounded preposterous;
Cubans in surgical gloves
bugging the DNC! I dismissed
it as some sort of prank.”
Mitchell, now the
president’s campaign
manager, issues a statement
saying: “This man and the
other people involved were
not operating on either our
behalf or with our consent.”
Not convinced, DNC
chairman Lawrence F
O’Brien says the break-in has
“raised the ugliest question
about the integrity of the
political process that I have
encountered in a quarter
century of political activity”.
Today, Woodward and
Bernstein are the only
reporters assigned to
following up the story, like that, who knew McCord.
and their activity gives an So the journalists find a
indication of just how much telephone directory and call
grunt work will be involved every single person they can
in the investigation. There find with a name that sounds
is no answer at McCord’s like Westall. Eventually they
consulting agency, nor his find Harlan A Westrell. This
home, but they know the call leads to other names, then
address of his business is others, the vast majority of
a large office building in them dead ends.
Rockville, Maryland. They It is not glamorous. It is
find a directory listing the miserable head-pounding
building’s tenants — so they monotony. But it is this work
split the names between them ethic that will eventually
and begin calling every single bring down the president.
one at home. One person
dimly remembers somebody
called Westall, or something

88
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

ABOVE A LARGE ANTI-WAR
RALLY OPPOSED TO THE
VIETNAM WAR HEADS TOWARDS
THE CAPITOL BUILDING IN 1971,
DURING NIXON'S FIRST TERM
LEFT THIS PARKING GARAGE
WAS THE MAIN PLACE
WHERE WOODWARD AND THE
SECRETIVE "DEEP THROAT"
WOULD MEET
MONDAY
JUNE 19, 1972
The first of many landmark
front pages in the Washington
Post appears under the byline
Woodward and Bernstein:
“GOP Security Aide Among
Five Arrested in Bugging
Affair.” The man in question
is McCord.
In the early hours of the
morning Woodward had been
called by a colleague saying
he'd heard that Hunt's name
was in two address books
of people arrested at the
break-in. Later, Woodward
tracks Hunt down at a public
relations firm called Mullen.
Why, he asks Hunt, is his name
and number in those address
books? “Good God!” says
Hunt. He offers no comment
and hangs up. Woodward later
learns that Hunt is ex-CIA.
WOODSTEINS'
WORK
WAS NOT
GLAMOROUS.
IT WAS
MISERABLE
MONOTONY.
BUT IT WAS
THE WORK
ETHIC THAT
BROUGHT
DOWN THE
PRESIDENT
It is believed that this
incident is the first in which
Woodward speaks to the
man who will become one
of the most famous sources
in the history of journalism,
known for over 30 years as
Deep Throat — before being
unmasked in 2005 as FBI
associate director Mark Felt.
The methods of
approaching the source
will become increasingly
clandestine as the stakes
rise. Woodward would signal
he wanted a meeting by
WATERGATE
FACTS
placing a flowerpot with a
red flag on the balcony of his
apartment; when Deep Throat
wanted a meeting he would
make a mark on page 20 of
Woodward’s New York Times,
circling the page number
and drawing clock hands to
indicate the time.
Nixon claims it is only
today that he first hears that
someone on the CRP payroll
was involved in the break-
in. Other sources reckon it
must have been Sunday; he is
believed to have called Colson
twice that day and smashed an
ashtray in anger. Either way,
by today, he is plotting how to
keep the scandal covered up
and planning attacks against
the Democrats.
Also today, Dean meets
Liddy, and swiftly begins
arranging hush money
payments to keep the
burglars quiet. Several people,
including Magruder, spend the
evening burning documents;
McCord, from jail, calls his
wife to do the same. She burns
so much that the sitting room
has to be repainted.
TUESDAY
JUNE 20, 1972
MARK FELT
(ALSO
As Woodward’s story on
Hunt runs, the players are
KNOWN AS
"DEEP all back in town. And, as
THROAT")
Emery puts it, “the more
FBI associate
director structured phase of the
cover-up began”. The first top
Watergate meeting happens
at 9am in Ehrlichman’s
office, Haldeman, Mitchell,
Kleindienst and Dean.
Afterwards, Dean receives
the contents of Hunt’s safe
in the White House, which
include McCord’s leftover
bugs, a folder with material
on Ellsberg, and other things.
LAWRENCE
Most of it ends up in Dean’s
F O’BRIEN safe, and is later handed to L
Democratic Patrick Gray, the new head
National of the FBI; Gray keeps most
Committee of these documents for six
chairman
months then burns them,
which will cost him his job.
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Today Ehrlichman and
Haldeman talk to Nixon
about Watergate, though
we will never know what
they discuss because there
are 18 and a half minutes
missing from the tape of this
conversation. This gap will
erode Nixon’s credibility
beyond repair. However, a
tape survives of a meeting
later that day in which Nixon
asks, “You got anything more
on the Mitchell operation?”
This appears to suggest he
knew even then everything
about Watergate.
Also today, the DNC files
a US$1 million civil damage
suit against the CRP and
chairman O’Brien says the
facts are “developing a clear
line to the White House.” He
is more right than probably
even he suspected.
WEDNESDAY
JUNE 21, 1972
By now the president’s men
have a strategy: paint Liddy
as having acted completely
alone. Under this plan
Liddy will confess, and the
Nixon campaign will ask
for compassion for “a poor
misguided kid who read
too many comic books,” as
Haldeman puts it on the
tapes. The idea is to imply
guilt at a low level, far below
the president. Nixon says,
that day, “The main concern
BERNARD is to keep the White House
BARKER
One of the out of it.”
Watergate The problem is explaining
burglars where Liddy’s money came
from. This same day, they try
to get the FBI on board.
PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES (MAIN); CORBIS (BERNARD BARKER)
THURSDAY
JUNE 22, 1972
Watergate is already slipping
out of the news. There
is a press conference, in
which Nixon says, “The
White House has had no
involvement in this particular
incident.” There is not a
single follow-up question.
Decades later, a tape from
today between Nixon and
Haldeman will be released.
Haldeman says, “The great
thing about it is that the
whole thing is so totally f....d
up, so badly done that
nobody believes…”
Nixon continues, “that we
could have done it.”
Haldeman says,
“That’s right. It’s beyond
comprehension.”
Later that day the FBI begins
interviewing high officials,
starting with Colson. By
now, the FBI has found that
US$114,000 of cheques had
passed through burglar
Bernard Barker’s account:
these will turn out to be
Nixon campaign contribution
cheques that Liddy had
laundered the previous year.
If these illegal donations
become public and are linked
to the CRP and the burglars,
it will be impossible to claim
Liddy was acting alone
FRIDAY
JUNE 23, 1972
If there is a smoking gun in
Watergate, it is the recorded
conversation Haldeman and
Nixon have this morning.
In it, Haldeman clearly
explains what has happened,
and Nixon asks if the money
is traceable to the CRP. He is
told that it is. The discussion
lasts an hour and a half.
It will be more than two
years before a transcript of
this conversation is made
public, but when it is, as
Emery writes, it will “undo all
Nixon’s avowals of innocence
and ignorance”.
By the end of the day Nixon
MAURICE appears to have managed to
STANS get both the CIA and the FBI
Finance on his side. He later writes in
chairman
his memoirs, “As far as I was
of CRP
concerned, this was the end of
our worries about Watergate.”
McCord, released on bail,
goes home and is amazed to
WATERGATE
FACTS
find all his bugging equipment
in his van. He begins to get
rid of it.
Today, a secret hearing of
testimony begins in a new
criminal case: the break-in
and bugging at the Watergate.
FRIDAY
JUNE 30, 1972
By now things appear to
have quieted down in the
media, but Nixon is still
talking about it. Today he is
caught on tape discussing
presidential pardons for the
burglars. Specifically, he says,
“I’ll pardon the bastards.”
They also talk about hush
payments for the burglars.
The money was from
secret campaign donations,
which were plentiful. As
Emery says, “It helped that
the Nixon campaign coffers
were so overflowing with
dirty funds that there was
hush money in abundance.
Pay-offs would eventually
reach nearly half a million
dollars.”
Herbert Kalmbach — Nixon’s
personal lawyer and a fund-
raiser — calls Maurice Stans,
finance chairman of the CRP,
who promptly brings round
a package of US$75,100 in
hundred-dollar bills with no
receipts. The hush money
operation is underway.
SATURDAY
JULY 1, 1972
Mitchell resigns from the
CRP, “for family reasons”. Or
as Emery concludes, “Nixon
and Haldeman realised
Mitchell would most likely
become the target of both the
investigation and the media.
Mitchell was too close to
Nixon for comfort.”
THURSDAY
JULY 6, 1972
Another glamorous day for
the star journalists. They
91
JULY 2014
 spend the entire afternoon
in the Library of Congress
sorting through every single
request for a book from the
White House since July 1971,
just to try to prove that Hunt
got a book out about Kennedy.

FRIDAY
JULY 7, 1972
Hunt, who had not been
seen in weeks and had been
sought by 150 FBI agents,
reappears. But by now,
public interest in Watergate
appears to have died.

MONDAY
JULY 31, 1972
By now attention has turned
to the origins of US$89,000
that had gone through
Barker’s bank account
earlier that year through
four cashier cheques, a
fact that had come to light
following a comment by a
US district attorney general
at a bond hearing. Today,
Bernstein heads to Miami
to chase it up. He spends
most of the day being messed
around trying to get hold
of a local state attorney but
eventually finds records of
an additional cheque, for
US$25,000, to the order of
someone called Kenneth
Dahlberg. Watergate landmark. For the often openly,” their book says.
Later, almost on TUESDAY first time, a link is clear — and “Sometimes they battled for
deadline, Bernstein learns AUGUST 1, 1972 has now been made public — 15 minutes over a single word
that Dahlberg headed the The Washington Post prints between the Watergate break- or sentence.”
Midwestern campaign its crucial connection in and the CRP. They spend much of the
for Nixon at the previous with this opening line: “A Today Woodward asks month going through a list of
election. Woodward finds US$25,000 cashier’s check, that all Watergate stories CRP campaign officials, more
Dahlberg in Minneapolis; apparently earmarked for the carry both his and Bernstein’s than a hundred of them in
Dahlberg tells him that he campaign chest of President names. They have started all, and visiting their homes
gave that cheque to Stans, Nixon, was deposited in to trust one another. Their after hours in Woodward’s
the finance director of the April in the bank account combined byline quickly 1970 Karmann Ghia, finding
CRP (Committee to Re-Elect of Bernard L Barker, one of comes to be known internally many of them frightened and
the President). the five men arrested in the as Woodstein. unwilling to talk.
Woodward passes the break-in and alleged bugging Pretty much permanently
story to city editor Barry attempt at Democratic assigned to the story, they
Sussman right on the second National Committee keep a master list of several TUESDAY
edition deadline. He puts headquarters here June 17.” hundred names that must be AUGUST 22, 1972
down his pen and pipe. The story, under the called at least twice a week, On this day, Nixon is formally
“We’ve never had a story like headline “Bug Suspect and have filled four filing nominated for a second term
this,” he says. “Just never.” Got Campaign Funds”, is a cabinets. “The two fought, by the Republican Party.

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DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

SATURDAY
AUGUST 26, 1972
A report is released referring
to a secret slush fund of up to
US$350,000. Produced by the
US General Accounting Office,
the report revolved around
financial irregularities in the
Nixon re-election campaign.
TUESDAY
AUGUST 29, 1972
At his home in San Clemente,
California, Nixon addresses
the issue of campaign funds,
saying his staff have done
nothing wrong. Apparently
without irony, he says,
“What really hurts is if you
try to cover it up.”
FRIDAY
SEPT 15, 1972
Hunt, Liddy and the
Watergate burglars are
indicted by a federal
grand jury.
FRIDAY
SEPT 29, 1972
Another big Washington
Post splash: Mitchell, while
US Attorney General, had
controlled a secret fund
to finance intelligence-
gathering operations for
the Republicans against
the Democrats. “Mitchell
Controlled Secret GOP Fund”
is the headline.
TUESDAY
OCT 10, 1972
The Post reports that FBI
agents have established that
the Watergate break-in is
part of a huge campaign of
political spying and sabotage
on behalf of Nixon and his
re-election campaign. “FBI
Finds Nixon Aides Sabotaged
Democrats,” says the paper.
SATURDAY
NOV 11, 1972
The growing scandal has
made absolutely no difference
to Nixon’s campaign. The
result had been seen as a
foregone conclusion as early
as August. He takes more than
60 percent of the vote — and
is re-elected President of the
United States.
WATERGATE
FACTS
THE NIXON TAPES
The notorious Nixon tapes were recorded on
a system installed in February 1971. Small
microphones were placed in the Oval Office desk,
and the fireplace in that room; the Cabinet Room;
and later Nixon’s office in the Old Executive Office
Building next to the White House, in his office
telephones, in a phone in the Lincoln Sitting Room,
and eventually in the Camp David retreat as well.
The voice-activated recordings were produced on
Sony open-reel tape recorders, which ran until
Nixon ordered them turned off in July 1973. This
system would go on to record about 3,500 hours
of conversations (Emery reckons 5,000), some of
which would prove to be very interesting indeed.
Very few people knew of the taping system; it was
certainly a surprise to many of the men who were
incriminated by it. Only when a Senate Committee
interviewed White House aide Alexander Butterfield
on July 13, 1973 did its existence become public.
The court subpoenaed eight tapes, initially to
confirm the testimony of Dean. It would take a year
and a Supreme Court fight for them to be released.
When eventually they were, there was an 18 and
a half minute gap in a recording on June 20, 1972
between Nixon and Haldeman. Nixon’s secretary
Rose Mary Woods claimed the blame for this,
saying that when she was transcribing them, she
accidentally recorded over a portion of it. She was
later asked to replicate the position she was sitting
in to press the wrong button, reaching far back
over her left shoulder for a telephone while her
foot applied pressure to a pedal controlling the
transcription machine. This became known as the
Rose Mary Stretch.
The tapes also brought into the language the phrase
“expletive deleted”, which was used to replace
Nixon’s frequent swearing when the tapes were
transcribed. The transcripts dramatically rocked
Nixon’s public image. After a while, protestors
would hold up signs outside the White House
saying: “IMPEACH THE (EXPLETIVE DELETED)”.
Today the tapes sit in a climate-controlled vault of
the National Archives.
93
JULY 2014
 ALL THE
PRESIDENT'S
MEN
REVISITED
In a Discovery Channel special, key players in
the real-life Watergate drama, and the movie
that followed it, return to relive the trials and
tragic flaws of the fall of a presidency.
Luke Clark caught up with director and
producer of the two-hour special, Peter Schnall

An essential element to the worse than we thought. What

drama of All the President’s
Men Revisited is the shock of
recognition. The Discovery
Channel special marking
the 40th anniversary of the
original movie about the
Watergate investigation, turns
the drama up to maximum
right from its first minutes —
as we see iconic news anchor
Walter Cronkite directing us
to footage of those electric
moments shortly before US
President Richard Nixon’s
stunning live speech to the
PHOTO: DISCOVERY CHANNEL COMMUNICATIONS, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
happened was worse than we
thought.” Another renowned
news anchor Tom Brokaw is
before us next, his voice as
anchorman-authoritative
now as ever. “He violated the
law. He compromised the
office. And he left a deep and
wide black mark in American
presidential history.”
And in that first hour, as the
star-studded cast of our drama
emerges, it’s clear this remains
more than just another historic
event to these members of

nation, announcing that he Washington DC elite, past and

was stepping down from his
position, a landmark moment
in US and world history then,
and since.
Then one of the
orchestrators of his political
demise, journalist Carl
Bernstein, appears, showing
the gentle signs of the decades
that have passed since those
highly charged days. “This was
much worse than we thought,”
says Bernstein. “Nixon was
present — this is still,
to this day, a defining
American moment.
Most remarkable perhaps,
is that we meet not only the
protagonists in the events —
Bernstein and Washington
Post partner Bob Woodward,
their editor Ben Bradlee, and
the Hollywood actors that
played the pair, Robert Redford
and Dustin Hoffman. Even
more electric, when we realise

94
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
 WATERGATE
FACTS

DURING THE DOCUMENTARY,

ROBERT REDFORD AND
DUSTIN HOFFMAN —
WHO STARRED AS BOB
WOODWARD AND CARL
BERNSTEIN — SHARE
SEVERAL ANECDOTES ABOUT
THE MAKING OF ALL THE
PRESIDENT'S MEN

95
JULY 2014
 it, is the fact that members
of the White House staff at the
time are gathered too, adding
new complexity to their role in
these history-writing events.
We see John Dean, Nixon's
White House Counsel, whose
testimony will later begin the
real unravelling of the Nixon
presidency. And Hugh Sloan,
treasurer of the Committee to
Re-Elect the President (CRP),
is there too, telling the screen:
“I was fine with everything
up to the point I was directed
to give cash to specific
individuals.”
And then of course, the
voice of Nixon himself, caught
speaking so outrageously
candidly in his office by the
secretly recorded White
House tapes, as he delivered
his opinion on how the drama
would play out for him: “I think
the country doesn’t give much
of a [bleep] about it and most
people around the country, I
think, think that this is routine.
Everybody’s trying to bug
everybody else. It’s politics.”
It was politics, but the
president got it wrong.
America was shocked, and
remains so to this day —
including those from both
sides of the political spectrum.
Maybe not shocked that
in America. It was a time
where the American people
“IT WAS able to investigate US national
affairs in a non-partisan and
politics was a dirty game, but witnessed government AN EXTRA- thorough manner. It remains
just how dirty it had become. corruption on a level never ORDINARY to be seen.
And even more, how poorly seen before. It was a time
those in power were disguising where two Washington-based TIME, A TIME The documentary special
the fact. investigative journalists, Bob WHERE THE is given extra depth by the

The line that perfectly

captures the drama is when
Robert Redford says, "You
didn’t see anybody shot or
blown up or poisoned, but
people were out to kill each
other… And the weapons
were telephones, typewriters,
and pens." The documentary
captures an extraordinary
time in American history.
What did working on it remind
you about Watergate, and
what it means, looking back?
The events of Watergate
were an extraordinary time
Woodward and Carl Bernstein,
were able to use the power
of their medium, the written
word, to uncover political
corruption so devious that it
would lead to the downfall and
resignation of the President of
the United States.
Other than Watergate, do
you think the media has
ever played as big a direct
role in US national affairs?
Forty years after Watergate,
the power of the press and
the constant scrutiny of the
American political landscape
CITIZENS fact that it features many
Republicans too, including
WITNESSED those inside the White House
GOVERNMENT at the time, such as John
CORRUPTION Dean, Bud Krogh and Hugh
Sloan. Was it quite an exercise
AT A LEVEL assembling everyone?
NEVER SEEN One of the great challenges to
BEFORE” our documentary was how to
bring a 40-year-old story to
still resonates from the life, and make it feel alive and
reverberations of that scandal. contemporary with today's
Our two-hour Discovery ever-changing young audience
Channel documentary raises — many of whom were not
the question as to whether around when the Watergate
today's jumble of print and scandal unfolded. To do this,
online media will ever again be we invited journalists and

96
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

news reporters who had
covered the Watergate story,
as well as witnesses and voices
from Nixon's inner circle, to
bring the complex story to life.
PHOTOS: DISCOVERY CHANNEL COMMUNICATIONS, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED; GETTY IMAGES (RIGHT)
Weaving in scenes from Robert
Redford's feature film All the
President’s Men helped bring
much of that history to life.
But the real key to
unravelling the intricate yet
compelling stories behind
Watergate was inviting
contemporary journalists and
pundits to reflect on how the
events of Watergate impacted
ABOVE BACK IN THE DAY, journalism, the American
HOFFMAN AND REDFORD HUNG
OUT WITH THE JOURNALISTS presidency and the global
THEY WERE TO PLAY, SO AS political culture today.
TO PORTRAY THEM MORE
ACCURATELY What's interesting in the
documentary, given the
TOP BERNSTEIN (LEFT) AND amount of division in politics
WOODWARD (RIGHT) AS THEY
ARE TODAY, AS FEATURED IN at the time, is despite which
THE SHOW side of the political fence the
WATERGATE
FACTS
person is on, how similar the
assessments of the actions of
the Nixon White House are.
It's as if there's something
bigger at stake. Would you
agree? In the very polarised
and partisan political settings
that dominate Congress and
Washington, DC today, one
forgets that during the time
of Watergate, Democrats
and Republicans alike stood
together to challenge, change
and call for the impeachment
of one of America's most
popular presidents. Our
film purposely set out to
speak with Republicans and
Democrats from all political
spectrums. Some of the more
vocal critics of Nixon and his
antics, were former Republican
Congressmen and journalists.
I was impressed Robert
Redford and Dustin Hoffman
played such prominent
parts. As you reveal, Redford
expressed an interest in
making a film on the Post
investigation very early
on. Why was the project
so important to them, do
you think? When I was first
approached by Redford to
produce and direct this special
project, I asked him why he
wanted to revisit the events
of Watergate 40 years after
the scandal and almost four
decades after the release of his
film. He told me that he wanted
the documentary "to feel like
it was the first time you’re
hearing this story, even though
it’s one of America’s most
notorious political scandals".
Redford very much wanted to
juxtapose the reality of those
who perpetuated the crime —
and those who pursued them,
alongside those who portrayed
them in the film.
Bringing back together
the cast of witnesses and
players from both the events
of Watergate and Redford's
feature film was an important
aspect of our documentary.
The two investigative
97
JULY 2014
 WATERGATE
FACTS

TOP JOHN DEAN, NIXON'S WHITE

HOUSE COUNSEL
MIDDLE JOAN FELT, DAUGHTER OF
FORMER FBI ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR
MARK FELT. HE WAS WOODWARD'S
SOURCE "DEEP THROAT"
LEFT POLITICAL COMMENTATOR
JAMES CARVILLE, WHO SAYS NIXON
WAS A PARANOID MAN

98
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

journalists, Bob Woodward
and Carl Bernstein, were
juxtaposed from scenes with
the two actors who would play
them in the film — Robert
Redford and Dustin Hoffman
respectively. Both the actual
reporters and the actors who
had portrayed them in the
film were extremely excited
about the idea of revisiting
and discussing the events of
Watergate, 40 years down the
road. It was an event that had
changed all their lives in one
way or another.
Having Redford and
Hoffman sit down together to
discuss the making of All the
President's Men was a really
thrilling scene for all of us.
Their insightful and humorous
stories on how they had both
spent time hanging out with
Woodward and Bernstein at
the Washington Post was vital
to understanding how these
two great actors were able to
capture these two very different
personalities. Both actors also
reflected on the importance
and impact of Redford's film,
then and now, noting how it
still inspires young people to
pursue a career in journalism.
The fact the two journalists
were, as the show notes, from
PHOTOS: DISCOVERY CHANNEL COMMUNICATIONS, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED; EVERETT COLLECTION/CLICK PHOTOS
different political sides and
social backgrounds; do you
think that helped "mesh" the
team together, as Bernstein
claimed? Did they fight much,
to your knowledge? Woodward
and Bernstein were and still
(ALL THE PRESIDEN'T MEN FILM STILL AND POSTER); GETTY IMAGES (MARK FELT)
are two very distinct and
fascinating polar opposite
characters. Spending time with
both of them during the filming
of our documentary was truly
a honour for me. Both are still
as concerned about journalism
and politics as they were 40
years ago. "Woodstein", as their
former editor Ben Bradlee once
called them, are still out there
reporting and bringing to light
insightful and powerful stories
from within the Washington
Beltway. One of the exciting
100
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
scenes we filmed was when
Woodward and Bernstein,
along with Robert Redford and
Bradlee, revisited the floor of
the Washington Post
newsroom where the two
young reporters had broken the
Watergate story.
The ability to include the
moving piece on Mark Felt
adds a sense of completion
to the project. Was that
satisfying for you? One of the
most interesting and moving
interviews I had a chance to
conduct during the filming was
with Joan Felt, the daughter
of former FBI agent Mark
Felt — who later would be
revealed to be the secret source
for Woodward. Known to the
world as "Deep Throat", Mark
Felt never even come clean
about his secret identity to his
family, until his daughter Joan
finally confronted him with
her suspicions.
For over three decades
the world wondered and
repeatedly guessed wrongly
as to who was Woodward's
secret Watergate source. And
for three decades, Felt kept
the secret to himself. Joan's
moving and powerful tale of
how her father finally opened
up to her is truly an incredible
story. Felt's disclosure brought
a completion to one of the
greatest journalistic mysteries
of our time and Joan's story of
her dad's final journey added a
very personal ending to our tale
of Deep Throat.
If you could have posed one
question for the show to the
late Richard Nixon, what would
it have been, and why? The
resignation of President Nixon
would not be the final moment
for the disgraced president.
Three years after he had
resigned, Nixon would agree
to sit down with British TV
journalist David Frost, for an
unprecedented and revealing
look back at his life, presidency
and the events of Watergate.
ABOVE MARK FELT ON THE CBS
PROGRAMME, FACE THE NATION
IN 1976. HE UNMASKED HIMSELF
AS "DEEP THROAT" IN 2005
TOP, MIDDLE ALL THE
PRESIDENT'S MEN WON A SLEW
OF ACCOLADES, INCLUDING
FOUR OSCARS
WATERGATE
FACTS
In our documentary special
we sat down with Frost, and
asked him to take us through
that historical interview with
Nixon. Many forget that Nixon
was elected president with the
largest popular vote ever in the
history of any president. And
yet, despite that mandate, he
used the power of his executive
office to engage in endless
campaigns of illegal activities.
“HAVING
REDFORD AND
HOFFMAN
SIT DOWN
TO DISCUSS
THE MAKING
OF ALL THE
PRESIDENT’S
MEN AND
GETTING DEEP
THROAT’S
DAUGHTER
TO SPEAK
WAS REALLY
THRILLING”
We asked Frost, as we did
most of the people who we
interviewed — if there was one
question you could ask Nixon
now, what would that be? The
answer to that question was
almost unanimous: "Why, Mr
President, did you do what you
did?" It is a question I too think
about, having sifted through
hundreds of hours of White
House tape-recorded sessions
between the president and his
staff, and listened to the stories
of those who were on the inside
and those reporting from afar
— why did the president believe
he had the right to abuse this
executive power, to lie to the
American people, to engage in
corrupt illegal activities and
above all, believe he could get
away with it all? It is perhaps
the ultimate unanswered
question when looking back at
the events of Watergate,
40 years ago.
WHAT'S ON THIS MONTH ON DISCOVERY CHANNEL

Naked Castaway
Former British Army Captain, Ed Stafford was the
first person ever to walk the length of the Amazon,
but surviving completely alone on a desert island
is his biggest adventure yet. Can he last 60 days
on an uninhabited Fijian island with absolutely
nothing? No survival tools, no rations, no film
crew and no clothes! It’s a daunting challenge and
nobody’s ever done it before. In fierce tropical
heat he has only hours to find water before
dehydration ends his attempt before it’s started.
He must master the island – and his fears - to find
food and water, light fire, build a proper shelter
and progress from mere survival to the point
where he could live there forever.
AIRS EVERY MONDAY TO WEDNESDAY 11 PM STARTING 7 JULY

102
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WHAT'S ON

103
JULY 2014
Deadly Dilemmas
It’s the play-along science series where you start each episode
with nine lives and are challenged to hold onto them by answering
nine fascinating Dead or Alive questions. The series will be asking
viewers to ponder on seriously extreme life or death hypothetical
scenarios. They simply have to decide which course of action will
leave them dead or alive: if caught in a huge lightning strike would
taking cover in a metal caravan save you or kill you?
AIRS EVERY MONDAY TO FRIDAY 8 PM STARTING 7 JULY

The Mind
Control
Freaks
A brand new series, The Mind
Control Freaks exposes the inner
workings of the most familiar,
beguiling and interesting topic in
the world: our minds. The series
demonstrates how vulnerable we
can all be to those who know how
to manipulate us – no matter how
strong-minded we believe we are. PHOTOS: DISCOVERY CHANNEL COMMUNICATIONS, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Employing a range of psychological

techniques from hypnosis to peer
pressure, conformity and obedience
to authority – the programme
experts reveal that few of us are
ever completely in control. Most of
us are susceptible to some form of
mind control and trickery and all of
us have the power to learn how to
influence others – and even become
control freaks ourselves.
AIRS EVERY MONDAY TO FRIDAY 8 PM
STARTING 21 JULY

104
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
 WHAT'S ON

Alaska Gold Diggers

Sara Jane and her four daughters from Southern
California pool their savings and head to Alaska in an
attempt to reopen their deceased Grandfather’s gold
mines, one in Nome and another 500 miles away in
Fairbanks. Working side by side with grizzled Alaskan
mining crews, SJ and her daughters face everything
Alaska has to offer. In a race against the season-ending
winter, the women push to secure a return on their
investment, as well as a renewal of their family legacy.
AIRS EVERY MONDAY TO FRIDAY 10 PM STARTING 14 JULY

105
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