July 15, 2017 • 28 mins
In this week's SYSK Select episode, famed aviator Amelia Earhart's disappearance in 1937 is a mystery that endures to this day. Why don't we know what happened to her? In this episode, Josh and Chuck examine the facts and evidence behind the famous case.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
M Hey everybody, it's me Josh, and for this week's
s Y s K Selects, I chose our episode Why
Can't We Find Amelia Earhart, which first aired in December
of two thousand. Recently, a photo has been making the
rounds that purports to show Amelia and her navigator, Poor
Fred Noonan after they disappeared, which supposedly gives credence to
(00:22):
the theory that the Japanese captured them. So I thought
it was a good reason and a good time to
revisit our episode on it. I hope you enjoy. Welcome
to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
(00:46):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, Chuck Tryan. Jerry's in the other room with
a golf putter that she's going to come in here
and swing in us any second now, which makes this
stuff you should not. I think we're on our last
nerve today. Yes, well it's Friday. It's the last Friday
in October. It's like three o'clock and we're going to
(01:08):
get out of here after this. Yeah, Plus we were
we've been gone a week and then we just get
carried in here by our minions on our thrones, and
we were plopped down and we just told Jerry to
like make it so And yeah, wh wasn't that standing
ovation from everyone we work with? Um? Just amazing. Yeah. Yeah,
I'm kind of used to him by now, Chuck. Yes,
do you ever get any Time Life books? No, I've
(01:29):
never gotten them, but I used to love those when
I was a kid. The commercials. Yeah, there's some cool ones,
the Old West ones especially. I like the ones that
we're just kind of like out there, like what the
heck is going on? Like I first heard of Trepi
Nation thanks to the Time Life Ancient brain Surgery from
What the heck is going On series? Yes, exactly, very underrated.
(01:50):
There's one, um, the Wild West once huh. Oh yeah,
the once killed a man just for snore and too loud. Huh.
That had a big impact on me. Yeah, I don't
snore my dad like my dad like the World War
two ones. Yeah, but he liked any think it's Old
War two for a while and now he's kind of
out of it really. Yeah, he's like kind of, um, well,
(02:13):
there was a there is a book. It's still in
print as far as I can tell it's called, uh,
it's life, not Time Life, because I think Time went
on with Warner in A O L. Which, by the way,
someone at Time Life their time Warner said that their
acquisition of A O L was one of the worst
mistakes in the history of business recently. That's not nice.
(02:35):
But there is a life book called, uh, the Greatest
Mysteries of All Time, and it's like a top fifty,
and it's things like, um, was Anastasia a live princess? Anastasia?
Did she escaped the Bolshevik Revolution? Who? That's not really
a mystery? How do they figure that one out? Yeah?
(02:55):
Oh no, I'm in Atlantis? Okay? Yeah. I was like,
you know, they they've got that one licked. We can
go there, actually, if you'll pay for the plane tickets. Um,
there's Jack, the ripper of our phase. Uh. And among them,
as she should be in all lists of the greatest
sunse Solved mysteries, is Amelia Earhart right. Um. In two
(03:17):
thousand seven, we saw the seventieth anniversary of her disappearance.
She just kind of flew into history. Uh. And I
wrote an article about it last summer. UM, and I
was really shocked to find that there is a lot
of pieces in place that if one thing would change,
we'd know for sure what happened to her. But still
(03:39):
this mystery endures, um, and it drives people crazy and
makes them want to go like. People spend tons of
money and time and effort, sure uh to try to
figure out what happened to her, And some people have
come up with some theories that are interesting. Um. One
was that she was actually captured by the Japanese. This
is right before World Wars prison they were kind of adversarial.
(04:02):
Of what they leave out is that the Japanese actually
helped with her search, So that's not true what But
that is a theory that's still going on, that she
was captured by the Japanese, either executed or forced into
servitude to become Tokyo Rose, who was a group of
English speaking women who basically said, g I, your girlfriend
back home is having sex with um Captain America and Superman. Yeah. Um,
(04:28):
it's true. They said things along those lines. It's just
that's good. Um. Another one is that there was an
alien abduction. That's what I'm signing with. Have you heard
of Irene Craig mile Bolum. Yeah, that was the Apparently,
there was one theory that Amelia Earhart just assumed the
life of a New Jersey housewife by that name, a
(04:49):
successful banker who retired to become a New Jersey housewife.
She's a very worldly woman. She had her pilot's license
in the thirties. There was a lot of stuff that. Um.
She actually had a mutual end with Amelia Earhart. Um.
They kind of ran in the same circles. Um. And
not much as known of her life before World War Two.
She kind of appears out of nowhere. Supposedly, so alleged
(05:11):
this guy who was about to release a biography in
nineteen seventies saying this lady is Amelia Earhart, and the
woman sued won one point five million dollars in the
book was never published, I believe. Interesting. Yeah, but the
guy was relentless after she died. Um, he asked to
be able to photograph and fingerprint her body, and the
(05:31):
family was like no, but he's taking it, Like exactly,
why would you not let me do that? You know,
because excuming your body isn't I think it was before
she was buried. He was trying to get her. Still.
I have a theory, Josh I'd like to have a
theory that if you asked one thousand people who Fred
Noonon was, that nine of them would have no idea
(05:53):
who you we're talking. Yeah, I had no idea who
he was until I researched this. Fred Noonan was in
the plane in the Lockheed Electra as the navigator that
went down um on July supposedly when you might not
have seen him. There's a picture of him in their
heart and he is the quintessential old timey navigator. His
(06:14):
button down shirts buttoned all the way up to apple.
He's got like some um papers in this front shirt pocket.
His his his pants are pulled up to just below
his um his nipples, uh, and he just looks like
he's like all business. That's who I would hired a definitely.
And he was a good guy apparently, um there was
(06:35):
before before they went off on their um equatorial trip
around the world. Yeah, explained to people. Because some people
might not even know the back story, we assume everyone knows.
But what they were trying to do was circumnavigate the
globe along the equator, along the as long as you
could possibly take to get around the right. Obviously not
on when shot. They did this in installments, but they
(06:57):
were definitely not doing it in installments of four to
pop no. And by this time, we should also say,
this is nineteen thirty seven when they undertook this um trip.
But by this time a Melia he was already like
this worldwide, internationally famous figure. She was a well known pacifist,
which is pretty cool. Um. She was a women's right
(07:17):
to advocate, like women can do anything that guys can
do kind of thing. Um. She was a study in
contrast though apparently like um, she had one of her
friends had given her at fifty chance of surviving this trip,
and she actually agreed with it. Um. And she had
said that she wasn't worried for herself because she maintained
this um uh this uh what she called a feminine
(07:41):
um conceit that she was afraid of aging. So she
wasn't really worried about dying. But she was worried about
Fred because he was like this nice guy with the family.
And she was right to worry because on July second,
ninety seven, they disappeared off the face of the earth.
So what you're saying is she guts of steel steel.
(08:02):
She had already been awarded the Flying Cross UM by Congress.
She received the National Geographic Award from President of Herbert
Hoover UM. She was the first woman to cross the Atlantic,
uh ten years before she'd broken in altitude record. UM.
She was the first woman to fly around the world.
So all of this in in about a ten or
(08:22):
twelve year career. She's done all this stuff. So when
she disappeared, the whole world knew. Oh yeah, it was big,
big news and uh she Well, we'll talk about where
she disappeared, UM broadly because they still don't know for sure,
which is one of the problems. She departed in her
Lockkeeed Electra, which is to me one of the coolest
looking planes ever built, shiny silver, just really cool looking. Plain.
(08:48):
And she departed lie Papua New Guinea, Yes, Papua New Guinea,
to probably escape a key outbreak. Oh really, I don't know.
That's the only place that that is found. Well, they
departed lie to UM for one of the longest stretches
of this of this flight, and they were um setting
(09:11):
out for Howland Island, which was about miles away from
when they were going. Right, So consider this chuck. They
had already flown most of the way around the world,
they had seven thousand miles short, yeah, and then this
was the longest stretch and it was also um it
was going to eat up a lot of that last
seven thousand miles from Papua New Guinea to Howland Island.
(09:32):
And Howland Island itself was pretty small, yeah, a mile
and a half by a half mile, yes, tiny little
and it only rose twenty ft out of the Pacific Ocean. Um.
And basically these are tolls out there in the Pacific,
just basically columns coming out of the ocean floor and
that's it. So there's like no shelf on either side.
(09:54):
I'm trying to land on a postage stamp, I would think, right.
And it was very apparent to everybody in eating noon
In and Earhart and the US Coast Guard and government
that this is a very dangerous This is probably the
most dangerous leg of the journey. Um. So they had
a coast Guard cutter, the Itasca, who was tasked with
tracking them. It was it Tascad. Yeah, and they also
(10:17):
had two additional ships um for markers to help her along.
So she wasn't just completely out there alone. They were
they were trying to keep up with her because every
you know, clearly everyone had added a stake in her
being successful. And I say her and Fred, Poor Fred,
he just he never gets any accolades. You know, no
one even knows who he is. No one knows who
he is. So Fred was trying to use um celestial navigation,
(10:41):
but it was really overcast, so we couldn't do that. Uh.
They fell out of radio contact and at dawned the
it Taska picked up a transmission where she said that
noon in kind of figured that they were should be
just over where they were the boat, which was right
off of the shore of how all In Island, right,
but apparently they didn't see her and uh them the
(11:05):
lock keyed Electra and they they didn't hear. There was
no trace of it. They hadn't pretty sure that they
were way off, and about an hour after that they
knew the fuel was running low. And about an hour
after that they got the final transmission from her, which
basically um just said, we are running north to south.
Those were her last words that anyone ever heard. Very
sad so about that time, UM the news got back
(11:31):
that they never showed up to Holland Island. UM and
President Roosevelt, who was a friend of hers. He also
was a great admirer of hers as well. Um ordered
a massive search by the Navy, and remember we said
the Japanese helped as well. So it was a multinational
search and rescue UM mission that covered a quarter of
(11:53):
a million square miles. Yeah, that is a huge, huge area. Yeah,
Texas is um a little less than two hundred and
seventy thousand, so it's it's just slightly less than the
state of Texas. Right, And it was open water that
they're searching, right, Um, they and and and you know
the old joke is look at all that water, and
(12:14):
the reply is yeah, and that's just the top of it. Right,
that's one of the problems. Yeah, exactly, you're scanning area
the size of Texas and what possibly lies beneath all that, right,
And um, but you're hoping that if, if, if the
thing broke up, you would find some wreckage, some sign
of license. They found nothing, no, nothing that they could
(12:36):
link to air Heart or noon and like they just disappeared. Um.
And actually FDR took a lot of flak, we should say,
because he spent four million bucks in the middle of
the Great Depression just to search for this one person
or well these two people see poor Fred noon in Um,
but he always stood by that as far as I know. Um. Again, though,
(12:56):
is a fruitless search. And they turned up thing right.
I think they'd be a great band name. I know
I say that, but poor Fred Noonan that's a good one.
I have to remember that in case l cheap over
breaks up. Uh. After the navy search, they basically discontinued
their search and said, you know what, we can't find
her and Fred and um, we're going to send a
(13:18):
destroyer out to Gardner Island. It was called Gardener Island
back then and now it's uh nick umar roo nick
kumar ro nikumaroo. And uh they did this because radio
transmissions on her frequency we're being broadcast in that area
there were, which is pretty substantial. Yes, this is an
uninhabited area. And um, this is still an unexplained aspect
(13:44):
of this mystery. There were sporadic bursts of radio transmissions um,
and no one still can say why they were. They
were from some guy named Fred noon and so they
didn't pay exactly. They're like, who's that he's seen? Ali,
I guess he's a swimmer. Um. So They basically sent
a couple of dispatch planes um to that island, found
(14:04):
nothing and said, all right, we're calling off this area.
That she's not out here, there's no evidence of life. Right,
and that would have been that that was seven right,
and the planes went back to the destroyer their aircraft
carrier and left. Uh and that that that wouldn't that
probably would have been the end of the association between
(14:25):
Gardener Island or or Nika and Nick umar ro Ro
and Amelia Earhart had it not been colonized by the
British and ight hadn't not been for their pin shot
for colonization. Yes, period. If British imperialism didn't exist, this
probably these these artifacts Nember would have turned up. But
there um there how they like to colonize things. They
(14:48):
colonize this remote outpost actually gathered up some other islanders
nearby and said, hey, you're gonna live here now. Um.
And when these islanders went on the island, they found
evidence that a castaway had been there recently. They found
some pretty jarring stuff, right Chuck, Yeah, And I mean
most certainly a castaway, because they found a woman shoe,
(15:09):
a man shoe, liquor bottle, well, yeah, and a container
for a sextant, which is one of those you know,
those are the cool looking navigational device that you hold
up and it looks like something at a League of
Extraordinary Gentlemen or something, which Fred Nowtan had on the
plane with them, of course he did, you know Fred. Uh.
And then they also found um, certainly not the least
(15:32):
of which would be human skull and bones. Yeah. Here's
here's where this thing would be just done, probably in
my opinion, or where they just say this is them. Yeah, yeah, um,
they found one set of human remains. Um. The the
islanders took this to the governor of the island. His
name was, uh, Gerald, I can't remember, Gerald Gallagher, Thanks buddy.
(15:58):
They took it to Gerald gallaghery Gallagher says, I suspect
I know who this is. Let's get a physician looking
at this. The physician examines it, and the bones are
promptly lost forever. No one has any idea what happened
to him. Luckily, this physician took pretty methodical notes and
wrote descriptions and drew drawings with the bones, and so
in the nineties some forensic anthropologists got their hands on
(16:19):
these notes and they said pretty much unequivocally that these
bones were the bones of a woman of Northern European
ancestry who was about five ft seven and Amelia her
heart was five eight. Well, you would think they're off
by an inch. It wasn't her exactly, But in this
(16:40):
day and age, you have to have DNA evidence to controvertibly. Right. Sure,
so the bones go missing, we can't get a DNA match.
But consider that on an uninhabited island, right where they
think that Amelia Earhart might have gone down, the remains
of a woman of Northern European ancestry who was pretty
much the same high his Amelia heart were found a
(17:02):
few years after disappearance. I say score, I say scores, game,
set match. But they also found some other cool stuff. Um,
and the area of the island was called seven Site,
and that was the little encampment that they believe, you know,
was used by them. And they found some other cool
stuff like clamshell fragments that basically they were smashed open
(17:24):
by somebody right and exposed to fire, which you know,
unless they were struck by lightning, that's pretty much definitive
evidence of human use. Well, yeah, and they also found
bones of fish and birds and turtles that had been
exposed to fire. So in other words, somebody was cooking
up something to eat. Uh. What else did they found?
They found, Um, they found pieces of bottle that show
(17:45):
signs of use is cutting and sawing tools. Yeah. UM.
They also found a little piece of a knife, UM,
which they managed. I don't know how they did this,
because you sent me this link. There's a picture of
just the knife blade. And they went back and managed
to identify it as a type of jack knife that
was produced within this time period by this company Rhode Island,
(18:08):
so it was it was produced from ninety ninety two
or something like that. And then they went back this year.
This group called the UM we should say their name
the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery or TIGAR. Yeah,
they've been I think three or four different times over
the years to this island. They went this summer as
I was writing this, they were preparing the expedition and
(18:30):
they found the rest of the knife. UM. And this
is where they hoped to get DNA evidence from. Well yeah,
and not the reason that the knife discovery is important
or the rest of the knife. They originally found the
blades only, and then they found the knife this summer,
and it showed that the knife blades had been forcibly
removed from the knife, indicating that maybe that they took
(18:53):
out each blade too. Maybe and of course you're speculating,
but maybe to attach it to an end of a
spear or something like that for fish fishing. Anyone was
seeing castaway knows what that's all about. I saw that
the other day again by the way um there. They
also found Gardner Island, by the way, became uninhabited in
nineteen sixty three. There was a prolonged drought and the
British government, we're just like, just forgive it, everybody, just
(19:16):
leave Um and the group Tighar when they went to
excavate around there, they found in this abandoned village folk
art made of aluminum aircraft metal right, which they can't
definitively prove came from her plane. Obviously, there's a lot
(19:36):
of circumstantial evidence of female castaway handicrafts or maybe Tom
he was the big crafty guy, but there Um, I
don't think Tom made it. I think Amelia Earhart made it.
I think Tom was maybe kill an impact or drowned
and Amelia made it to the island and died there alone,
quite possibly, and she may have even eaten him. Now
(20:00):
that's a that's that's a new theory. I think you'd launched.
I don't know that goes in with your disappearance of
the Neanderthals. That's right, they melted, Um, you you were.
The reason we're talking about these objects that they've recently recovered, though,
is because they're trying to get some DNA called touch
DNA off of a few of these items. They submitted
(20:22):
ten I believe out of a hundred. It's one of
the reasons why finding that knife was very important. Is
huge because I believe they submitted the blades, and then
they found some glass from what looked like a cosmetics
star and a couple of buttons, and they submitted these
things to a place in Canada. And I think as
of today, I still don't think they have the results
(20:43):
of that DNA testing done. That I see that they
had it done yet so guarded, but they wouldn't be
such enormous news that we would have known. That's what
I think, um Chuck. There's a lot of people out
there who also think that her plane sur survived intact
and is at the bottom of the Pacific. That's awesome,
(21:03):
And people still I think tig are included um undertake
sonar searches of the ocean bottom. Uh. And there's a
good chance that the plane did make it. Um. They
were flying supposedly at about a thousand feet, which is
extremely low, and they were doing about a hundred miles
an hour, which is pretty slow for a plane, especially
(21:25):
a Lockheed Electra, so conceivably didn't necessarily bust into a
million pieces. Yeah, so it's possible it's still out there
at the bottom of the ocean. Well, I I am
totally sold. And I know I said like every single
Jack the Ripper killer we brought up. Yeah, he sounds
like the guy. But I'm completely convinced that this is
where she spent her last days like you, and that
(21:46):
she ate Fred noon In. I don't know that Fred
or Fred. Uh. We should also mention too that UM
they use a new well new to them at least
ground penetrating radar g PR for the first time on
this last trip to summer, and that is when you
can actually look beneath the surface for anything that was buried.
Like Fred, it's magic and um. They they didn't find
(22:09):
anything though, because not because there was anything there necessarily,
but there were lots of roots and air pockets underneath
the thing. And I get the feeling that this looks
since you're looking for something buried, looked for pockets of air,
and so that it was completely in conclusive. They threw
in the ocean. She may have also pulverized his bones
to cover up her abomination. Yeah, I wonder it's I
(22:33):
think this is what happened. I wonder how long they
survived though. I wonder if it was weeks or months
or what. Well consider it. I mean, if her plane
went down in ninety seven and they started colonizing at
ninety eight, she lasted less than a year. But can
you imagine if she like just gave up and then
like a week later the British come to colonized Gardener Island. Yeah,
(22:55):
I mean, how horrible would that be? So she she
made it less than a year, if she made it
to Gardner Islander, Nicol mro ro what I'm surprised about,
And maybe she tried to do this and Fred tried
to do this. I'm surprised she didn't leave something behind,
like instead of doing a handicraft. Maybe try and scratch
the name Amelia into the aluminum and bury that or something,
(23:18):
or maybe it's something is there and they just haven't
found it yet. Yeah, there's a tree that says crow
with towing on it because she was a history buff,
Amelia was here. Well that's uh, that's it as it
stands so far. Huh. You think we'll ever do an
update if they find her. We always say we will,
and we never do, and we never do. So the
answer to that question is no. If you want to
(23:39):
learn more about Amelia Earhart and see a picture of
how cute Fred Noonan is and it's little old timey
aviator get up, you should type air heart into the
search bar at how stuff works dot com. It's e
A R H A r T and that should bring
it up. I would think unless we have articles on
other air hearts, think so. I guess it's time then
(24:02):
for a listener man. All right, Yeah, I got one here.
I asked for rehab experiences quite a while ago, and
I've got one that I meant to read earlier, and
here it is, and I'm gonna jump around here. It's
kind of along. Uh. This is from Scott and in
two thousand five, he had pretty much worked himself into
a rehab hospital. He was working three different jobs, hit
(24:25):
a wall, couldn't decide to walk this way or that way,
or even pick up a pencil, so he went to
the er. After a fifteen minute interview with a psychiatrist
who he said was quite attractive. I'm not sure why
he told me that, he said. She left and a
guard came to stand outside the room and she said,
you know you're not just gonna take a break. She said,
you need to be checked in. And this is how
I learned of the seventy two hour hold, where a
(24:47):
doctor decides you're at risk. So that's what happened to
him initially. Next I wound up in an ambulance for
a trip to a cyclocked downward called Station two. It
sounds like the beginning of a very bad movie, like
a horror film exactly. They dropped me off behind two
heavily locked doors, and the next thing you knew, I
was relieved of my laces and belt. Now I should
(25:09):
say I was not suicidal. I was just really out
of ideas. I don't I don't know what that means,
out of ideas like he was. He had he was indecisive,
he couldn't know. I think he means he was just
burned out, was having a nervous breakdown, out of options,
out of ideas. Yeah, it sounds like it. I spent
eight days in Station twenty two and saw some interesting things,
and here are a few. A meth addict was admitted.
(25:30):
She looked like she should weigh about a hundred and
ten to a hundred twenty pounds, but she weighed more
like eighty. She took one drink of orange juice promptly
dropped to the floor like a sack of bones. And
this is what I learned. What a code red was
the crash cart, the e er in the whole parade.
After leaving Station twenty two, I transferred to a place
in the suburbs for a twenty eight day program. It
was pretty cool. I met a very well known author
(25:51):
and many other fascinating people. I saw the girl sneaking
out of the guy's room. The whole thing had to
bear the A A rhymes and sayings, and I totally
understand Sandra Bullock. In twenty eight days, now the big
news was the guy who wrote a million little pieces
I was coming the next week because he had stayed
there before when he was writing the book, and the
Oprah people came on site to work out camera locations
(26:13):
in blocking and uh, two days before they were to
descend the I made it up scandal occurred, so I
never showed clearly. Um, and here just a few other
little tips. People in rehab are insane about sweets. I
think there's a definite link between sugar and addiction. Everyone
seemed to want to hook up with something sweet. Um.
(26:33):
I have seen that heroin sickness looks worse than dying
in a fire. Wow, that's pretty bad. That's pretty bad.
And a surprising number of people were repeats I'm talking like, yeah,
this is my seventh time here. And I also saw
a lot of people who snuck off for a drink
and got kicked out. So Scott is doing much better now.
He is back on track, living a great Lifett and
(26:54):
he says, I love what you guys do and how
you do it. I now give Takiva and co Ed
and pretty much pace the halls into your next episode. Awesome,
Thank you very much, Scott. I'm very glad you're feeling better. Right,
took as long as you're not pacing the halls of
Station twenty two. Buddy. Um, keep in touch with this
on Facebook and Twitter? Yeah, yeah, you know quickly? Can
(27:17):
I say that? If you have written listener mail, we
don't answer all those anymore because there's just too many.
Facebook is a great place to submit questions and get
answers quicker or at all. That's uh Facebook, Yeah. Dot
com slash stuff you should know, but we still read
the listener mails. Twitter is uh s y s K podcast.
(27:39):
We also have that Kiva team k I v A
dot org slash team slash stuff you should know. Coed's
website is c O E d U C dot org. Um,
and you can always email us. Like Chuck said, we
don't always respond. I do sometimes, do you still? Yeah? Okay, um,
send us an email to let us know what you
do and what you think you would do, or what
(28:01):
you should do when you run out of ideas, wrap
it up, send it to us at stuff podcast at
how stuff works dot com For more on this and
thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast
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(28:22):
How Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it today
on iTunes.
M Hey everybody, it's me Josh, and for this week's
s Y s K Selects, I chose our episode Why
Can't We Find Amelia Earhart, which first aired in December
of two thousand. Recently, a photo has been making the
rounds that purports to show Amelia and her navigator, Poor
Fred Noonan after they disappeared, which supposedly gives credence to
(00:22):
the theory that the Japanese captured them. So I thought
it was a good reason and a good time to
revisit our episode on it. I hope you enjoy. Welcome
to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
(00:46):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, Chuck Tryan. Jerry's in the other room with
a golf putter that she's going to come in here
and swing in us any second now, which makes this
stuff you should not. I think we're on our last
nerve today. Yes, well it's Friday. It's the last Friday
in October. It's like three o'clock and we're going to
(01:08):
get out of here after this. Yeah, Plus we were
we've been gone a week and then we just get
carried in here by our minions on our thrones, and
we were plopped down and we just told Jerry to
like make it so And yeah, wh wasn't that standing
ovation from everyone we work with? Um? Just amazing. Yeah. Yeah,
I'm kind of used to him by now, Chuck. Yes,
do you ever get any Time Life books? No, I've
(01:29):
never gotten them, but I used to love those when
I was a kid. The commercials. Yeah, there's some cool ones,
the Old West ones especially. I like the ones that
we're just kind of like out there, like what the
heck is going on? Like I first heard of Trepi
Nation thanks to the Time Life Ancient brain Surgery from
What the heck is going On series? Yes, exactly, very underrated.
(01:50):
There's one, um, the Wild West once huh. Oh yeah,
the once killed a man just for snore and too loud. Huh.
That had a big impact on me. Yeah, I don't
snore my dad like my dad like the World War
two ones. Yeah, but he liked any think it's Old
War two for a while and now he's kind of
out of it really. Yeah, he's like kind of, um, well,
(02:13):
there was a there is a book. It's still in
print as far as I can tell it's called, uh,
it's life, not Time Life, because I think Time went
on with Warner in A O L. Which, by the way,
someone at Time Life their time Warner said that their
acquisition of A O L was one of the worst
mistakes in the history of business recently. That's not nice.
(02:35):
But there is a life book called, uh, the Greatest
Mysteries of All Time, and it's like a top fifty,
and it's things like, um, was Anastasia a live princess? Anastasia?
Did she escaped the Bolshevik Revolution? Who? That's not really
a mystery? How do they figure that one out? Yeah?
(02:55):
Oh no, I'm in Atlantis? Okay? Yeah. I was like,
you know, they they've got that one licked. We can
go there, actually, if you'll pay for the plane tickets. Um,
there's Jack, the ripper of our phase. Uh. And among them,
as she should be in all lists of the greatest
sunse Solved mysteries, is Amelia Earhart right. Um. In two
(03:17):
thousand seven, we saw the seventieth anniversary of her disappearance.
She just kind of flew into history. Uh. And I
wrote an article about it last summer. UM, and I
was really shocked to find that there is a lot
of pieces in place that if one thing would change,
we'd know for sure what happened to her. But still
(03:39):
this mystery endures, um, and it drives people crazy and
makes them want to go like. People spend tons of
money and time and effort, sure uh to try to
figure out what happened to her, And some people have
come up with some theories that are interesting. Um. One
was that she was actually captured by the Japanese. This
is right before World Wars prison they were kind of adversarial.
(04:02):
Of what they leave out is that the Japanese actually
helped with her search, So that's not true what But
that is a theory that's still going on, that she
was captured by the Japanese, either executed or forced into
servitude to become Tokyo Rose, who was a group of
English speaking women who basically said, g I, your girlfriend
back home is having sex with um Captain America and Superman. Yeah. Um,
(04:28):
it's true. They said things along those lines. It's just
that's good. Um. Another one is that there was an
alien abduction. That's what I'm signing with. Have you heard
of Irene Craig mile Bolum. Yeah, that was the Apparently,
there was one theory that Amelia Earhart just assumed the
life of a New Jersey housewife by that name, a
(04:49):
successful banker who retired to become a New Jersey housewife.
She's a very worldly woman. She had her pilot's license
in the thirties. There was a lot of stuff that. Um.
She actually had a mutual end with Amelia Earhart. Um.
They kind of ran in the same circles. Um. And
not much as known of her life before World War Two.
She kind of appears out of nowhere. Supposedly, so alleged
(05:11):
this guy who was about to release a biography in
nineteen seventies saying this lady is Amelia Earhart, and the
woman sued won one point five million dollars in the
book was never published, I believe. Interesting. Yeah, but the
guy was relentless after she died. Um, he asked to
be able to photograph and fingerprint her body, and the
(05:31):
family was like no, but he's taking it, Like exactly,
why would you not let me do that? You know,
because excuming your body isn't I think it was before
she was buried. He was trying to get her. Still.
I have a theory, Josh I'd like to have a
theory that if you asked one thousand people who Fred
Noonon was, that nine of them would have no idea
(05:53):
who you we're talking. Yeah, I had no idea who
he was until I researched this. Fred Noonan was in
the plane in the Lockheed Electra as the navigator that
went down um on July supposedly when you might not
have seen him. There's a picture of him in their
heart and he is the quintessential old timey navigator. His
(06:14):
button down shirts buttoned all the way up to apple.
He's got like some um papers in this front shirt pocket.
His his his pants are pulled up to just below
his um his nipples, uh, and he just looks like
he's like all business. That's who I would hired a definitely.
And he was a good guy apparently, um there was
(06:35):
before before they went off on their um equatorial trip
around the world. Yeah, explained to people. Because some people
might not even know the back story, we assume everyone knows.
But what they were trying to do was circumnavigate the
globe along the equator, along the as long as you
could possibly take to get around the right. Obviously not
on when shot. They did this in installments, but they
(06:57):
were definitely not doing it in installments of four to
pop no. And by this time, we should also say,
this is nineteen thirty seven when they undertook this um trip.
But by this time a Melia he was already like
this worldwide, internationally famous figure. She was a well known pacifist,
which is pretty cool. Um. She was a women's right
(07:17):
to advocate, like women can do anything that guys can
do kind of thing. Um. She was a study in
contrast though apparently like um, she had one of her
friends had given her at fifty chance of surviving this trip,
and she actually agreed with it. Um. And she had
said that she wasn't worried for herself because she maintained
this um uh this uh what she called a feminine
(07:41):
um conceit that she was afraid of aging. So she
wasn't really worried about dying. But she was worried about
Fred because he was like this nice guy with the family.
And she was right to worry because on July second,
ninety seven, they disappeared off the face of the earth.
So what you're saying is she guts of steel steel.
(08:02):
She had already been awarded the Flying Cross UM by Congress.
She received the National Geographic Award from President of Herbert
Hoover UM. She was the first woman to cross the Atlantic,
uh ten years before she'd broken in altitude record. UM.
She was the first woman to fly around the world.
So all of this in in about a ten or
(08:22):
twelve year career. She's done all this stuff. So when
she disappeared, the whole world knew. Oh yeah, it was big,
big news and uh she Well, we'll talk about where
she disappeared, UM broadly because they still don't know for sure,
which is one of the problems. She departed in her
Lockkeeed Electra, which is to me one of the coolest
looking planes ever built, shiny silver, just really cool looking. Plain.
(08:48):
And she departed lie Papua New Guinea, Yes, Papua New Guinea,
to probably escape a key outbreak. Oh really, I don't know.
That's the only place that that is found. Well, they
departed lie to UM for one of the longest stretches
of this of this flight, and they were um setting
(09:11):
out for Howland Island, which was about miles away from
when they were going. Right, So consider this chuck. They
had already flown most of the way around the world,
they had seven thousand miles short, yeah, and then this
was the longest stretch and it was also um it
was going to eat up a lot of that last
seven thousand miles from Papua New Guinea to Howland Island.
(09:32):
And Howland Island itself was pretty small, yeah, a mile
and a half by a half mile, yes, tiny little
and it only rose twenty ft out of the Pacific Ocean. Um.
And basically these are tolls out there in the Pacific,
just basically columns coming out of the ocean floor and
that's it. So there's like no shelf on either side.
(09:54):
I'm trying to land on a postage stamp, I would think, right.
And it was very apparent to everybody in eating noon
In and Earhart and the US Coast Guard and government
that this is a very dangerous This is probably the
most dangerous leg of the journey. Um. So they had
a coast Guard cutter, the Itasca, who was tasked with
tracking them. It was it Tascad. Yeah, and they also
(10:17):
had two additional ships um for markers to help her along.
So she wasn't just completely out there alone. They were
they were trying to keep up with her because every
you know, clearly everyone had added a stake in her
being successful. And I say her and Fred, Poor Fred,
he just he never gets any accolades. You know, no
one even knows who he is. No one knows who
he is. So Fred was trying to use um celestial navigation,
(10:41):
but it was really overcast, so we couldn't do that. Uh.
They fell out of radio contact and at dawned the
it Taska picked up a transmission where she said that
noon in kind of figured that they were should be
just over where they were the boat, which was right
off of the shore of how all In Island, right,
but apparently they didn't see her and uh them the
(11:05):
lock keyed Electra and they they didn't hear. There was
no trace of it. They hadn't pretty sure that they
were way off, and about an hour after that they
knew the fuel was running low. And about an hour
after that they got the final transmission from her, which
basically um just said, we are running north to south.
Those were her last words that anyone ever heard. Very
sad so about that time, UM the news got back
(11:31):
that they never showed up to Holland Island. UM and
President Roosevelt, who was a friend of hers. He also
was a great admirer of hers as well. Um ordered
a massive search by the Navy, and remember we said
the Japanese helped as well. So it was a multinational
search and rescue UM mission that covered a quarter of
(11:53):
a million square miles. Yeah, that is a huge, huge area. Yeah,
Texas is um a little less than two hundred and
seventy thousand, so it's it's just slightly less than the
state of Texas. Right, And it was open water that
they're searching, right, Um, they and and and you know
the old joke is look at all that water, and
(12:14):
the reply is yeah, and that's just the top of it. Right,
that's one of the problems. Yeah, exactly, you're scanning area
the size of Texas and what possibly lies beneath all that, right,
And um, but you're hoping that if, if, if the
thing broke up, you would find some wreckage, some sign
of license. They found nothing, no, nothing that they could
(12:36):
link to air Heart or noon and like they just disappeared. Um.
And actually FDR took a lot of flak, we should say,
because he spent four million bucks in the middle of
the Great Depression just to search for this one person
or well these two people see poor Fred noon in Um,
but he always stood by that as far as I know. Um. Again, though,
(12:56):
is a fruitless search. And they turned up thing right.
I think they'd be a great band name. I know
I say that, but poor Fred Noonan that's a good one.
I have to remember that in case l cheap over
breaks up. Uh. After the navy search, they basically discontinued
their search and said, you know what, we can't find
her and Fred and um, we're going to send a
(13:18):
destroyer out to Gardner Island. It was called Gardener Island
back then and now it's uh nick umar roo nick
kumar ro nikumaroo. And uh they did this because radio
transmissions on her frequency we're being broadcast in that area
there were, which is pretty substantial. Yes, this is an
uninhabited area. And um, this is still an unexplained aspect
(13:44):
of this mystery. There were sporadic bursts of radio transmissions um,
and no one still can say why they were. They
were from some guy named Fred noon and so they
didn't pay exactly. They're like, who's that he's seen? Ali,
I guess he's a swimmer. Um. So They basically sent
a couple of dispatch planes um to that island, found
(14:04):
nothing and said, all right, we're calling off this area.
That she's not out here, there's no evidence of life. Right,
and that would have been that that was seven right,
and the planes went back to the destroyer their aircraft
carrier and left. Uh and that that that wouldn't that
probably would have been the end of the association between
(14:25):
Gardener Island or or Nika and Nick umar ro Ro
and Amelia Earhart had it not been colonized by the
British and ight hadn't not been for their pin shot
for colonization. Yes, period. If British imperialism didn't exist, this
probably these these artifacts Nember would have turned up. But
there um there how they like to colonize things. They
(14:48):
colonize this remote outpost actually gathered up some other islanders
nearby and said, hey, you're gonna live here now. Um.
And when these islanders went on the island, they found
evidence that a castaway had been there recently. They found
some pretty jarring stuff, right Chuck, Yeah, And I mean
most certainly a castaway, because they found a woman shoe,
(15:09):
a man shoe, liquor bottle, well, yeah, and a container
for a sextant, which is one of those you know,
those are the cool looking navigational device that you hold
up and it looks like something at a League of
Extraordinary Gentlemen or something, which Fred Nowtan had on the
plane with them, of course he did, you know Fred. Uh.
And then they also found um, certainly not the least
(15:32):
of which would be human skull and bones. Yeah. Here's
here's where this thing would be just done, probably in
my opinion, or where they just say this is them. Yeah, yeah, um,
they found one set of human remains. Um. The the
islanders took this to the governor of the island. His
name was, uh, Gerald, I can't remember, Gerald Gallagher, Thanks buddy.
(15:58):
They took it to Gerald gallaghery Gallagher says, I suspect
I know who this is. Let's get a physician looking
at this. The physician examines it, and the bones are
promptly lost forever. No one has any idea what happened
to him. Luckily, this physician took pretty methodical notes and
wrote descriptions and drew drawings with the bones, and so
in the nineties some forensic anthropologists got their hands on
(16:19):
these notes and they said pretty much unequivocally that these
bones were the bones of a woman of Northern European
ancestry who was about five ft seven and Amelia her
heart was five eight. Well, you would think they're off
by an inch. It wasn't her exactly, But in this
(16:40):
day and age, you have to have DNA evidence to controvertibly. Right. Sure,
so the bones go missing, we can't get a DNA match.
But consider that on an uninhabited island, right where they
think that Amelia Earhart might have gone down, the remains
of a woman of Northern European ancestry who was pretty
much the same high his Amelia heart were found a
(17:02):
few years after disappearance. I say score, I say scores, game,
set match. But they also found some other cool stuff. Um,
and the area of the island was called seven Site,
and that was the little encampment that they believe, you know,
was used by them. And they found some other cool
stuff like clamshell fragments that basically they were smashed open
(17:24):
by somebody right and exposed to fire, which you know,
unless they were struck by lightning, that's pretty much definitive
evidence of human use. Well, yeah, and they also found
bones of fish and birds and turtles that had been
exposed to fire. So in other words, somebody was cooking
up something to eat. Uh. What else did they found?
They found, Um, they found pieces of bottle that show
(17:45):
signs of use is cutting and sawing tools. Yeah. UM.
They also found a little piece of a knife, UM,
which they managed. I don't know how they did this,
because you sent me this link. There's a picture of
just the knife blade. And they went back and managed
to identify it as a type of jack knife that
was produced within this time period by this company Rhode Island,
(18:08):
so it was it was produced from ninety ninety two
or something like that. And then they went back this year.
This group called the UM we should say their name
the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery or TIGAR. Yeah,
they've been I think three or four different times over
the years to this island. They went this summer as
I was writing this, they were preparing the expedition and
(18:30):
they found the rest of the knife. UM. And this
is where they hoped to get DNA evidence from. Well yeah,
and not the reason that the knife discovery is important
or the rest of the knife. They originally found the
blades only, and then they found the knife this summer,
and it showed that the knife blades had been forcibly
removed from the knife, indicating that maybe that they took
(18:53):
out each blade too. Maybe and of course you're speculating,
but maybe to attach it to an end of a
spear or something like that for fish fishing. Anyone was
seeing castaway knows what that's all about. I saw that
the other day again by the way um there. They
also found Gardner Island, by the way, became uninhabited in
nineteen sixty three. There was a prolonged drought and the
British government, we're just like, just forgive it, everybody, just
(19:16):
leave Um and the group Tighar when they went to
excavate around there, they found in this abandoned village folk
art made of aluminum aircraft metal right, which they can't
definitively prove came from her plane. Obviously, there's a lot
(19:36):
of circumstantial evidence of female castaway handicrafts or maybe Tom
he was the big crafty guy, but there Um, I
don't think Tom made it. I think Amelia Earhart made it.
I think Tom was maybe kill an impact or drowned
and Amelia made it to the island and died there alone,
quite possibly, and she may have even eaten him. Now
(20:00):
that's a that's that's a new theory. I think you'd launched.
I don't know that goes in with your disappearance of
the Neanderthals. That's right, they melted, Um, you you were.
The reason we're talking about these objects that they've recently recovered, though,
is because they're trying to get some DNA called touch
DNA off of a few of these items. They submitted
(20:22):
ten I believe out of a hundred. It's one of
the reasons why finding that knife was very important. Is
huge because I believe they submitted the blades, and then
they found some glass from what looked like a cosmetics
star and a couple of buttons, and they submitted these
things to a place in Canada. And I think as
of today, I still don't think they have the results
(20:43):
of that DNA testing done. That I see that they
had it done yet so guarded, but they wouldn't be
such enormous news that we would have known. That's what
I think, um Chuck. There's a lot of people out
there who also think that her plane sur survived intact
and is at the bottom of the Pacific. That's awesome,
(21:03):
And people still I think tig are included um undertake
sonar searches of the ocean bottom. Uh. And there's a
good chance that the plane did make it. Um. They
were flying supposedly at about a thousand feet, which is
extremely low, and they were doing about a hundred miles
an hour, which is pretty slow for a plane, especially
(21:25):
a Lockheed Electra, so conceivably didn't necessarily bust into a
million pieces. Yeah, so it's possible it's still out there
at the bottom of the ocean. Well, I I am
totally sold. And I know I said like every single
Jack the Ripper killer we brought up. Yeah, he sounds
like the guy. But I'm completely convinced that this is
where she spent her last days like you, and that
(21:46):
she ate Fred noon In. I don't know that Fred
or Fred. Uh. We should also mention too that UM
they use a new well new to them at least
ground penetrating radar g PR for the first time on
this last trip to summer, and that is when you
can actually look beneath the surface for anything that was buried.
Like Fred, it's magic and um. They they didn't find
(22:09):
anything though, because not because there was anything there necessarily,
but there were lots of roots and air pockets underneath
the thing. And I get the feeling that this looks
since you're looking for something buried, looked for pockets of air,
and so that it was completely in conclusive. They threw
in the ocean. She may have also pulverized his bones
to cover up her abomination. Yeah, I wonder it's I
(22:33):
think this is what happened. I wonder how long they
survived though. I wonder if it was weeks or months
or what. Well consider it. I mean, if her plane
went down in ninety seven and they started colonizing at
ninety eight, she lasted less than a year. But can
you imagine if she like just gave up and then
like a week later the British come to colonized Gardener Island. Yeah,
(22:55):
I mean, how horrible would that be? So she she
made it less than a year, if she made it
to Gardner Islander, Nicol mro ro what I'm surprised about,
And maybe she tried to do this and Fred tried
to do this. I'm surprised she didn't leave something behind,
like instead of doing a handicraft. Maybe try and scratch
the name Amelia into the aluminum and bury that or something,
(23:18):
or maybe it's something is there and they just haven't
found it yet. Yeah, there's a tree that says crow
with towing on it because she was a history buff,
Amelia was here. Well that's uh, that's it as it
stands so far. Huh. You think we'll ever do an
update if they find her. We always say we will,
and we never do, and we never do. So the
answer to that question is no. If you want to
(23:39):
learn more about Amelia Earhart and see a picture of
how cute Fred Noonan is and it's little old timey
aviator get up, you should type air heart into the
search bar at how stuff works dot com. It's e
A R H A r T and that should bring
it up. I would think unless we have articles on
other air hearts, think so. I guess it's time then
(24:02):
for a listener man. All right, Yeah, I got one here.
I asked for rehab experiences quite a while ago, and
I've got one that I meant to read earlier, and
here it is, and I'm gonna jump around here. It's
kind of along. Uh. This is from Scott and in
two thousand five, he had pretty much worked himself into
a rehab hospital. He was working three different jobs, hit
(24:25):
a wall, couldn't decide to walk this way or that way,
or even pick up a pencil, so he went to
the er. After a fifteen minute interview with a psychiatrist
who he said was quite attractive. I'm not sure why
he told me that, he said. She left and a
guard came to stand outside the room and she said,
you know you're not just gonna take a break. She said,
you need to be checked in. And this is how
I learned of the seventy two hour hold, where a
(24:47):
doctor decides you're at risk. So that's what happened to
him initially. Next I wound up in an ambulance for
a trip to a cyclocked downward called Station two. It
sounds like the beginning of a very bad movie, like
a horror film exactly. They dropped me off behind two
heavily locked doors, and the next thing you knew, I
was relieved of my laces and belt. Now I should
(25:09):
say I was not suicidal. I was just really out
of ideas. I don't I don't know what that means,
out of ideas like he was. He had he was indecisive,
he couldn't know. I think he means he was just
burned out, was having a nervous breakdown, out of options,
out of ideas. Yeah, it sounds like it. I spent
eight days in Station twenty two and saw some interesting things,
and here are a few. A meth addict was admitted.
(25:30):
She looked like she should weigh about a hundred and
ten to a hundred twenty pounds, but she weighed more
like eighty. She took one drink of orange juice promptly
dropped to the floor like a sack of bones. And
this is what I learned. What a code red was
the crash cart, the e er in the whole parade.
After leaving Station twenty two, I transferred to a place
in the suburbs for a twenty eight day program. It
was pretty cool. I met a very well known author
(25:51):
and many other fascinating people. I saw the girl sneaking
out of the guy's room. The whole thing had to
bear the A A rhymes and sayings, and I totally
understand Sandra Bullock. In twenty eight days, now the big
news was the guy who wrote a million little pieces
I was coming the next week because he had stayed
there before when he was writing the book, and the
Oprah people came on site to work out camera locations
(26:13):
in blocking and uh, two days before they were to
descend the I made it up scandal occurred, so I
never showed clearly. Um, and here just a few other
little tips. People in rehab are insane about sweets. I
think there's a definite link between sugar and addiction. Everyone
seemed to want to hook up with something sweet. Um.
(26:33):
I have seen that heroin sickness looks worse than dying
in a fire. Wow, that's pretty bad. That's pretty bad.
And a surprising number of people were repeats I'm talking like, yeah,
this is my seventh time here. And I also saw
a lot of people who snuck off for a drink
and got kicked out. So Scott is doing much better now.
He is back on track, living a great Lifett and
(26:54):
he says, I love what you guys do and how
you do it. I now give Takiva and co Ed
and pretty much pace the halls into your next episode. Awesome,
Thank you very much, Scott. I'm very glad you're feeling better. Right,
took as long as you're not pacing the halls of
Station twenty two. Buddy. Um, keep in touch with this
on Facebook and Twitter? Yeah, yeah, you know quickly? Can
(27:17):
I say that? If you have written listener mail, we
don't answer all those anymore because there's just too many.
Facebook is a great place to submit questions and get
answers quicker or at all. That's uh Facebook, Yeah. Dot
com slash stuff you should know, but we still read
the listener mails. Twitter is uh s y s K podcast.
(27:39):
We also have that Kiva team k I v A
dot org slash team slash stuff you should know. Coed's
website is c O E d U C dot org. Um,
and you can always email us. Like Chuck said, we
don't always respond. I do sometimes, do you still? Yeah? Okay, um,
send us an email to let us know what you
do and what you think you would do, or what
(28:01):
you should do when you run out of ideas, wrap
it up, send it to us at stuff podcast at
how stuff works dot com For more on this and
thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast
icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The
(28:22):
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Decisions, Decisions
Welcome to "Decisions, Decisions," the podcast where boundaries are pushed, and conversations get candid! Join your favorite hosts, Mandii B and WeezyWTF, as they dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often-taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday, Mandii and Weezy invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, they share their personal journeys navigating their 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engaging in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that resonate with your experiences, "Decisions, Decisions" is your go-to source for open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections—tune in and join the conversation!