History does not live in books or archives — it lives in the people, their memory, and their culture, and the Mongolian landscape itself.

Weatherford describes how traveling to the actual locations of Genghis Khan's life in Mongolia — and talking to the nomads who still live there — gave him insights no text could provide, such as determining the season of Börte's kidnapping by asking a local herder about ground vibrations. ✦ AI generated

Jack Weatherford · Lex Fridman · 2025-08-01 · original ↗

And it's so important, I think, because history does not live in books. History does not live in archives or even libraries as much as I need them for my work. But history lives in the people. History lives in the memory of the people and the culture. And for example, the episode with the kidnapping of Berchta. So I went to that place and I didn't know when it happened, what season it happened. It was very important for figuring out the births that came afterwards and other events that were being correlated, very important to me. And so I'm just talking to the people who live in that valley, the nomads there. They said, Oh, it's clear it was the winter. I said, Oh, where did you read that? I said, No, Granny Coaxin was on the ground and she could feel the vibrations. She said, Look, this is summertime now. You're not gonna feel any vibrations. The ground here is so soft. Suddenly, a whole important piece that I've been searching for just came together from some nomad sitting there next to his horse. And he was absolutely right. It could only happen in the winter. And that also correlates with the time that reading was done. So it correlates with other historic factors. But then that gave me the time basis for figuring out a lot of other things. History lives in the people.

verbatim transcript · starts at 115:14