Harry Turner And The Wildcat
There are episodes we make because they're fun. There are episodes we make because they're timely. And then, every so often, there's an episode we make because it asks something of us, of our host, of our team, and of you, the listener. This is one of those.
For most of this show, our host sits across from the people who build worlds: the writers, the directors, the actors who slip into someone else's skin for a living. The conversations are warm, curious, a little playful. This one is different, and our host will be the first to tell you so. As he put it himself, after hundreds of interviews this was the most nervous he has ever been walking in, because this time there was no role, no character, no safe remove. There was just Harry, and his life, laid bare.
Harry Turner enlisted at eighteen. A tour in Afghanistan left him carrying PTSD and a depression that nearly took everything. What followed was not a tidy redemption arc but a real one: a one-way ticket to the Peruvian Amazon, a fishing boat at sunset on the fourteenth day, and the slow, stubborn discovery that his life might be worth living after all. The documentary Wildcat tells the rest. An unlikely bond with an orphaned ocelot named Keanu, eighteen months in a remote jungle compound, and the daily, unglamorous work of raising a wild animal back toward the wild, while learning to do something not unlike that for himself.
What makes the film extraordinary, and what made this interview so hard to do, is that Harry didn't just live it. He filmed it. Roughly a third of Wildcat was shot by Harry alone, camera in hand through the night walks, the illness, the burns, the bot flies, the heartbreak, over a thousand hours of footage backed up drive after drive, eventually pared to an hour and forty-five minutes. He turned the lens on the most fragile moments of his own life, then agreed to sit down and talk us through every one of them again. That kind of generosity is rare. It's also costly, and we don't take it lightly.
In this conversation, Harry walks us through how the film found its filmmakers, why the jungle's most dangerous creature is the one holding a flashlight, what fourteen days in nature did for a mind that had run out of reasons to stay, and why he no longer watches the film all the way through. He also shares what comes next: Emerald Arch, his new nonprofit building a place in the Ecuadorian Amazon where veterans can walk the road he walked. His measure of success, in his own words, is simple. If it helps one person, it worked.
We're proud of this one. Proud of Harry, for his courage in making it and his grace in revisiting it. And proud of our host, for stepping outside the comfort of fiction to hold space for a story this real. We hope it starts a conversation. We hope the conversation doesn't stop.
Note: this episode discusses PTSD, depression, and suicide. If any of it lands close to home, please be kind to yourself, and know there are people and resources ready to help, for you and for anyone you love.
WILDCAT is out NOW on Amazon Prime Video! Check it out and please share your thoughts with us on IG! www.instagram.com/thesmithsocietypod
WILDCAT
Featuring: Harry Turner, Samantha Zwicker
Directors: Melissa Lesh, Trevor Beck Frost
Producers: Alysa Nahmias, Joshua Altman
Emerald Arch:
Emerald Arch is a US based Nonprofit focusing on global conservation efforts with a speciality in human-wildlife conflict, education for future generations & the protection of land in the Amazon.
The Smith Society Podcast: This is the Smith Society, a podcast about storytellers and storytelling.
Host: Duane Fernandez
instagram.com/duane.h.fernandez/
The Smith Society theme song by: Steady Cadence
Steady Cadence is a brilliant father daughter duo out of North Carolina. There is an episode later this season about the theme song, their unique sound which blends together analog and digital, their inspiration, creative approach and how Cadence, who was in middle school when this was created, has so much soul.
The Smith Society logo: Designer, Chris Scott
Edited by: Marshall Baker
Follow your dreams, no matter where they take you.
See Privacy Policy at art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info