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SYSK Selects: Why can't we find Amelia Earhart? · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: M Hey everybody, it's me Josh, and for this week's
0:04
Speaker 1: s Y s K Selects, I chose our episode Why
0:07
Speaker 1: Can't We Find Amelia Earhart, which first aired in December
0:11
Speaker 1: of two thousand. Recently, a photo has been making the
0:14
Speaker 1: rounds that purports to show Amelia and her navigator, Poor
0:18
Speaker 1: Fred Noonan after they disappeared, which supposedly gives credence to
0:22
Speaker 1: the theory that the Japanese captured them. So I thought
0:25
Speaker 1: it was a good reason and a good time to
0:26
Speaker 1: revisit our episode on it. I hope you enjoy. Welcome
0:36
Speaker 1: to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
0:46
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W.
0:50
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, Chuck Tryan. Jerry's in the other room with
0:53
Speaker 1: a golf putter that she's going to come in here
0:56
Speaker 1: and swing in us any second now, which makes this
0:59
Speaker 1: stuff you should not. I think we're on our last
1:01
Speaker 1: nerve today. Yes, well it's Friday. It's the last Friday
1:04
Speaker 1: in October. It's like three o'clock and we're going to
1:08
Speaker 1: get out of here after this. Yeah, Plus we were
1:10
Speaker 1: we've been gone a week and then we just get
1:11
Speaker 1: carried in here by our minions on our thrones, and
1:14
Speaker 1: we were plopped down and we just told Jerry to
1:16
Speaker 1: like make it so And yeah, wh wasn't that standing
1:19
Speaker 1: ovation from everyone we work with? Um? Just amazing. Yeah. Yeah,
1:23
Speaker 1: I'm kind of used to him by now, Chuck. Yes,
1:26
Speaker 1: do you ever get any Time Life books? No, I've
1:29
Speaker 1: never gotten them, but I used to love those when
1:31
Speaker 1: I was a kid. The commercials. Yeah, there's some cool ones,
1:34
Speaker 1: the Old West ones especially. I like the ones that
1:37
Speaker 1: we're just kind of like out there, like what the
1:40
Speaker 1: heck is going on? Like I first heard of Trepi
1:42
Speaker 1: Nation thanks to the Time Life Ancient brain Surgery from
1:46
Speaker 1: What the heck is going On series? Yes, exactly, very underrated.
1:50
Speaker 1: There's one, um, the Wild West once huh. Oh yeah,
1:53
Speaker 1: the once killed a man just for snore and too loud. Huh.
1:56
Speaker 1: That had a big impact on me. Yeah, I don't
1:59
Speaker 1: snore my dad like my dad like the World War
2:03
Speaker 1: two ones. Yeah, but he liked any think it's Old
2:05
Speaker 1: War two for a while and now he's kind of
2:07
Speaker 1: out of it really. Yeah, he's like kind of, um, well,
2:13
Speaker 1: there was a there is a book. It's still in
2:15
Speaker 1: print as far as I can tell it's called, uh,
2:17
Speaker 1: it's life, not Time Life, because I think Time went
2:20
Speaker 1: on with Warner in A O L. Which, by the way,
2:23
Speaker 1: someone at Time Life their time Warner said that their
2:27
Speaker 1: acquisition of A O L was one of the worst
2:30
Speaker 1: mistakes in the history of business recently. That's not nice.
2:35
Speaker 1: But there is a life book called, uh, the Greatest
2:39
Speaker 1: Mysteries of All Time, and it's like a top fifty,
2:43
Speaker 1: and it's things like, um, was Anastasia a live princess? Anastasia?
2:47
Speaker 1: Did she escaped the Bolshevik Revolution? Who? That's not really
2:52
Speaker 1: a mystery? How do they figure that one out? Yeah?
2:55
Speaker 1: Oh no, I'm in Atlantis? Okay? Yeah. I was like,
2:58
Speaker 1: you know, they they've got that one licked. We can
3:01
Speaker 1: go there, actually, if you'll pay for the plane tickets. Um,
3:05
Speaker 1: there's Jack, the ripper of our phase. Uh. And among them,
3:09
Speaker 1: as she should be in all lists of the greatest
3:12
Speaker 1: sunse Solved mysteries, is Amelia Earhart right. Um. In two
3:17
Speaker 1: thousand seven, we saw the seventieth anniversary of her disappearance.
3:22
Speaker 1: She just kind of flew into history. Uh. And I
3:24
Speaker 1: wrote an article about it last summer. UM, and I
3:29
Speaker 1: was really shocked to find that there is a lot
3:32
Speaker 1: of pieces in place that if one thing would change,
3:36
Speaker 1: we'd know for sure what happened to her. But still
3:39
Speaker 1: this mystery endures, um, and it drives people crazy and
3:44
Speaker 1: makes them want to go like. People spend tons of
3:46
Speaker 1: money and time and effort, sure uh to try to
3:50
Speaker 1: figure out what happened to her, And some people have
3:52
Speaker 1: come up with some theories that are interesting. Um. One
3:56
Speaker 1: was that she was actually captured by the Japanese. This
3:58
Speaker 1: is right before World Wars prison they were kind of adversarial.
4:02
Speaker 1: Of what they leave out is that the Japanese actually
4:04
Speaker 1: helped with her search, So that's not true what But
4:08
Speaker 1: that is a theory that's still going on, that she
4:10
Speaker 1: was captured by the Japanese, either executed or forced into
4:14
Speaker 1: servitude to become Tokyo Rose, who was a group of
4:17
Speaker 1: English speaking women who basically said, g I, your girlfriend
4:22
Speaker 1: back home is having sex with um Captain America and Superman. Yeah. Um,
4:28
Speaker 1: it's true. They said things along those lines. It's just
4:31
Speaker 1: that's good. Um. Another one is that there was an
4:34
Speaker 1: alien abduction. That's what I'm signing with. Have you heard
4:38
Speaker 1: of Irene Craig mile Bolum. Yeah, that was the Apparently,
4:42
Speaker 1: there was one theory that Amelia Earhart just assumed the
4:45
Speaker 1: life of a New Jersey housewife by that name, a
4:49
Speaker 1: successful banker who retired to become a New Jersey housewife.
4:52
Speaker 1: She's a very worldly woman. She had her pilot's license
4:55
Speaker 1: in the thirties. There was a lot of stuff that. Um.
4:58
Speaker 1: She actually had a mutual end with Amelia Earhart. Um.
5:02
Speaker 1: They kind of ran in the same circles. Um. And
5:05
Speaker 1: not much as known of her life before World War Two.
5:08
Speaker 1: She kind of appears out of nowhere. Supposedly, so alleged
5:11
Speaker 1: this guy who was about to release a biography in
5:14
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies saying this lady is Amelia Earhart, and the
5:17
Speaker 1: woman sued won one point five million dollars in the
5:21
Speaker 1: book was never published, I believe. Interesting. Yeah, but the
5:23
Speaker 1: guy was relentless after she died. Um, he asked to
5:28
Speaker 1: be able to photograph and fingerprint her body, and the
5:31
Speaker 1: family was like no, but he's taking it, Like exactly,
5:36
Speaker 1: why would you not let me do that? You know,
5:38
Speaker 1: because excuming your body isn't I think it was before
5:41
Speaker 1: she was buried. He was trying to get her. Still.
5:45
Speaker 1: I have a theory, Josh I'd like to have a
5:47
Speaker 1: theory that if you asked one thousand people who Fred
5:50
Speaker 1: Noonon was, that nine of them would have no idea
5:53
Speaker 1: who you we're talking. Yeah, I had no idea who
5:55
Speaker 1: he was until I researched this. Fred Noonan was in
5:58
Speaker 1: the plane in the Lockheed Electra as the navigator that
6:03
Speaker 1: went down um on July supposedly when you might not
6:07
Speaker 1: have seen him. There's a picture of him in their
6:09
Speaker 1: heart and he is the quintessential old timey navigator. His
6:14
Speaker 1: button down shirts buttoned all the way up to apple.
6:16
Speaker 1: He's got like some um papers in this front shirt pocket.
6:21
Speaker 1: His his his pants are pulled up to just below
6:25
Speaker 1: his um his nipples, uh, and he just looks like
6:29
Speaker 1: he's like all business. That's who I would hired a definitely.
6:33
Speaker 1: And he was a good guy apparently, um there was
6:35
Speaker 1: before before they went off on their um equatorial trip
6:39
Speaker 1: around the world. Yeah, explained to people. Because some people
6:42
Speaker 1: might not even know the back story, we assume everyone knows.
6:44
Speaker 1: But what they were trying to do was circumnavigate the
6:48
Speaker 1: globe along the equator, along the as long as you
6:51
Speaker 1: could possibly take to get around the right. Obviously not
6:53
Speaker 1: on when shot. They did this in installments, but they
6:57
Speaker 1: were definitely not doing it in installments of four to
7:00
Speaker 1: pop no. And by this time, we should also say,
7:02
Speaker 1: this is nineteen thirty seven when they undertook this um trip.
7:07
Speaker 1: But by this time a Melia he was already like
7:10
Speaker 1: this worldwide, internationally famous figure. She was a well known pacifist,
7:14
Speaker 1: which is pretty cool. Um. She was a women's right
7:17
Speaker 1: to advocate, like women can do anything that guys can
7:21
Speaker 1: do kind of thing. Um. She was a study in
7:23
Speaker 1: contrast though apparently like um, she had one of her
7:27
Speaker 1: friends had given her at fifty chance of surviving this trip,
7:31
Speaker 1: and she actually agreed with it. Um. And she had
7:33
Speaker 1: said that she wasn't worried for herself because she maintained
7:36
Speaker 1: this um uh this uh what she called a feminine
7:41
Speaker 1: um conceit that she was afraid of aging. So she
7:46
Speaker 1: wasn't really worried about dying. But she was worried about
7:48
Speaker 1: Fred because he was like this nice guy with the family.
7:52
Speaker 1: And she was right to worry because on July second,
7:56
Speaker 1: ninety seven, they disappeared off the face of the earth.
7:59
Speaker 1: So what you're saying is she guts of steel steel.
8:02
Speaker 1: She had already been awarded the Flying Cross UM by Congress.
8:05
Speaker 1: She received the National Geographic Award from President of Herbert
8:09
Speaker 1: Hoover UM. She was the first woman to cross the Atlantic,
8:12
Speaker 1: uh ten years before she'd broken in altitude record. UM.
8:16
Speaker 1: She was the first woman to fly around the world.
8:20
Speaker 1: So all of this in in about a ten or
8:22
Speaker 1: twelve year career. She's done all this stuff. So when
8:26
Speaker 1: she disappeared, the whole world knew. Oh yeah, it was big,
8:29
Speaker 1: big news and uh she Well, we'll talk about where
8:33
Speaker 1: she disappeared, UM broadly because they still don't know for sure,
8:36
Speaker 1: which is one of the problems. She departed in her
8:40
Speaker 1: Lockkeeed Electra, which is to me one of the coolest
8:42
Speaker 1: looking planes ever built, shiny silver, just really cool looking. Plain.
8:48
Speaker 1: And she departed lie Papua New Guinea, Yes, Papua New Guinea,
8:54
Speaker 1: to probably escape a key outbreak. Oh really, I don't know.
8:58
Speaker 1: That's the only place that that is found. Well, they
9:01
Speaker 1: departed lie to UM for one of the longest stretches
9:08
Speaker 1: of this of this flight, and they were um setting
9:11
Speaker 1: out for Howland Island, which was about miles away from
9:15
Speaker 1: when they were going. Right, So consider this chuck. They
9:17
Speaker 1: had already flown most of the way around the world,
9:19
Speaker 1: they had seven thousand miles short, yeah, and then this
9:22
Speaker 1: was the longest stretch and it was also um it
9:26
Speaker 1: was going to eat up a lot of that last
9:27
Speaker 1: seven thousand miles from Papua New Guinea to Howland Island.
9:32
Speaker 1: And Howland Island itself was pretty small, yeah, a mile
9:35
Speaker 1: and a half by a half mile, yes, tiny little
9:39
Speaker 1: and it only rose twenty ft out of the Pacific Ocean. Um.
9:43
Speaker 1: And basically these are tolls out there in the Pacific,
9:47
Speaker 1: just basically columns coming out of the ocean floor and
9:51
Speaker 1: that's it. So there's like no shelf on either side.
9:54
Speaker 1: I'm trying to land on a postage stamp, I would think, right.
9:57
Speaker 1: And it was very apparent to everybody in eating noon
10:00
Speaker 1: In and Earhart and the US Coast Guard and government
10:04
Speaker 1: that this is a very dangerous This is probably the
10:07
Speaker 1: most dangerous leg of the journey. Um. So they had
10:10
Speaker 1: a coast Guard cutter, the Itasca, who was tasked with
10:14
Speaker 1: tracking them. It was it Tascad. Yeah, and they also
10:17
Speaker 1: had two additional ships um for markers to help her along.
10:21
Speaker 1: So she wasn't just completely out there alone. They were
10:23
Speaker 1: they were trying to keep up with her because every
10:25
Speaker 1: you know, clearly everyone had added a stake in her
10:28
Speaker 1: being successful. And I say her and Fred, Poor Fred,
10:32
Speaker 1: he just he never gets any accolades. You know, no
10:36
Speaker 1: one even knows who he is. No one knows who
10:37
Speaker 1: he is. So Fred was trying to use um celestial navigation,
10:41
Speaker 1: but it was really overcast, so we couldn't do that. Uh.
10:44
Speaker 1: They fell out of radio contact and at dawned the
10:48
Speaker 1: it Taska picked up a transmission where she said that
10:51
Speaker 1: noon in kind of figured that they were should be
10:54
Speaker 1: just over where they were the boat, which was right
10:58
Speaker 1: off of the shore of how all In Island, right,
11:01
Speaker 1: but apparently they didn't see her and uh them the
11:05
Speaker 1: lock keyed Electra and they they didn't hear. There was
11:08
Speaker 1: no trace of it. They hadn't pretty sure that they
11:10
Speaker 1: were way off, and about an hour after that they
11:12
Speaker 1: knew the fuel was running low. And about an hour
11:14
Speaker 1: after that they got the final transmission from her, which
11:16
Speaker 1: basically um just said, we are running north to south.
11:19
Speaker 1: Those were her last words that anyone ever heard. Very
11:23
Speaker 1: sad so about that time, UM the news got back
11:31
Speaker 1: that they never showed up to Holland Island. UM and
11:34
Speaker 1: President Roosevelt, who was a friend of hers. He also
11:39
Speaker 1: was a great admirer of hers as well. Um ordered
11:42
Speaker 1: a massive search by the Navy, and remember we said
11:46
Speaker 1: the Japanese helped as well. So it was a multinational
11:48
Speaker 1: search and rescue UM mission that covered a quarter of
11:53
Speaker 1: a million square miles. Yeah, that is a huge, huge area. Yeah,
11:58
Speaker 1: Texas is um a little less than two hundred and
12:02
Speaker 1: seventy thousand, so it's it's just slightly less than the
12:05
Speaker 1: state of Texas. Right, And it was open water that
12:08
Speaker 1: they're searching, right, Um, they and and and you know
12:12
Speaker 1: the old joke is look at all that water, and
12:14
Speaker 1: the reply is yeah, and that's just the top of it. Right,
12:17
Speaker 1: that's one of the problems. Yeah, exactly, you're scanning area
12:20
Speaker 1: the size of Texas and what possibly lies beneath all that, right,
12:24
Speaker 1: And um, but you're hoping that if, if, if the
12:27
Speaker 1: thing broke up, you would find some wreckage, some sign
12:30
Speaker 1: of license. They found nothing, no, nothing that they could
12:36
Speaker 1: link to air Heart or noon and like they just disappeared. Um.
12:39
Speaker 1: And actually FDR took a lot of flak, we should say,
12:42
Speaker 1: because he spent four million bucks in the middle of
12:45
Speaker 1: the Great Depression just to search for this one person
12:48
Speaker 1: or well these two people see poor Fred noon in Um,
12:51
Speaker 1: but he always stood by that as far as I know. Um. Again, though,
12:56
Speaker 1: is a fruitless search. And they turned up thing right.
13:00
Speaker 1: I think they'd be a great band name. I know
13:02
Speaker 1: I say that, but poor Fred Noonan that's a good one.
13:05
Speaker 1: I have to remember that in case l cheap over
13:07
Speaker 1: breaks up. Uh. After the navy search, they basically discontinued
13:12
Speaker 1: their search and said, you know what, we can't find
13:14
Speaker 1: her and Fred and um, we're going to send a
13:18
Speaker 1: destroyer out to Gardner Island. It was called Gardener Island
13:22
Speaker 1: back then and now it's uh nick umar roo nick
13:25
Speaker 1: kumar ro nikumaroo. And uh they did this because radio
13:30
Speaker 1: transmissions on her frequency we're being broadcast in that area
13:34
Speaker 1: there were, which is pretty substantial. Yes, this is an
13:37
Speaker 1: uninhabited area. And um, this is still an unexplained aspect
13:44
Speaker 1: of this mystery. There were sporadic bursts of radio transmissions um,
13:49
Speaker 1: and no one still can say why they were. They
13:52
Speaker 1: were from some guy named Fred noon and so they
13:54
Speaker 1: didn't pay exactly. They're like, who's that he's seen? Ali,
13:58
Speaker 1: I guess he's a swimmer. Um. So They basically sent
14:01
Speaker 1: a couple of dispatch planes um to that island, found
14:04
Speaker 1: nothing and said, all right, we're calling off this area.
14:08
Speaker 1: That she's not out here, there's no evidence of life. Right,
14:12
Speaker 1: and that would have been that that was seven right,
14:15
Speaker 1: and the planes went back to the destroyer their aircraft
14:19
Speaker 1: carrier and left. Uh and that that that wouldn't that
14:23
Speaker 1: probably would have been the end of the association between
14:25
Speaker 1: Gardener Island or or Nika and Nick umar ro Ro
14:29
Speaker 1: and Amelia Earhart had it not been colonized by the
14:32
Speaker 1: British and ight hadn't not been for their pin shot
14:35
Speaker 1: for colonization. Yes, period. If British imperialism didn't exist, this
14:40
Speaker 1: probably these these artifacts Nember would have turned up. But
14:43
Speaker 1: there um there how they like to colonize things. They
14:48
Speaker 1: colonize this remote outpost actually gathered up some other islanders
14:52
Speaker 1: nearby and said, hey, you're gonna live here now. Um.
14:56
Speaker 1: And when these islanders went on the island, they found
14:57
Speaker 1: evidence that a castaway had been there recently. They found
15:02
Speaker 1: some pretty jarring stuff, right Chuck, Yeah, And I mean
15:06
Speaker 1: most certainly a castaway, because they found a woman shoe,
15:09
Speaker 1: a man shoe, liquor bottle, well, yeah, and a container
15:14
Speaker 1: for a sextant, which is one of those you know,
15:16
Speaker 1: those are the cool looking navigational device that you hold
15:19
Speaker 1: up and it looks like something at a League of
15:21
Speaker 1: Extraordinary Gentlemen or something, which Fred Nowtan had on the
15:24
Speaker 1: plane with them, of course he did, you know Fred. Uh.
15:28
Speaker 1: And then they also found um, certainly not the least
15:32
Speaker 1: of which would be human skull and bones. Yeah. Here's
15:35
Speaker 1: here's where this thing would be just done, probably in
15:39
Speaker 1: my opinion, or where they just say this is them. Yeah, yeah, um,
15:42
Speaker 1: they found one set of human remains. Um. The the
15:47
Speaker 1: islanders took this to the governor of the island. His
15:52
Speaker 1: name was, uh, Gerald, I can't remember, Gerald Gallagher, Thanks buddy.
15:58
Speaker 1: They took it to Gerald gallaghery Gallagher says, I suspect
16:02
Speaker 1: I know who this is. Let's get a physician looking
16:04
Speaker 1: at this. The physician examines it, and the bones are
16:06
Speaker 1: promptly lost forever. No one has any idea what happened
16:09
Speaker 1: to him. Luckily, this physician took pretty methodical notes and
16:14
Speaker 1: wrote descriptions and drew drawings with the bones, and so
16:17
Speaker 1: in the nineties some forensic anthropologists got their hands on
16:19
Speaker 1: these notes and they said pretty much unequivocally that these
16:24
Speaker 1: bones were the bones of a woman of Northern European
16:28
Speaker 1: ancestry who was about five ft seven and Amelia her
16:33
Speaker 1: heart was five eight. Well, you would think they're off
16:36
Speaker 1: by an inch. It wasn't her exactly, But in this
16:40
Speaker 1: day and age, you have to have DNA evidence to controvertibly. Right. Sure,
16:44
Speaker 1: so the bones go missing, we can't get a DNA match.
16:47
Speaker 1: But consider that on an uninhabited island, right where they
16:52
Speaker 1: think that Amelia Earhart might have gone down, the remains
16:55
Speaker 1: of a woman of Northern European ancestry who was pretty
16:59
Speaker 1: much the same high his Amelia heart were found a
17:02
Speaker 1: few years after disappearance. I say score, I say scores, game,
17:07
Speaker 1: set match. But they also found some other cool stuff. Um,
17:10
Speaker 1: and the area of the island was called seven Site,
17:12
Speaker 1: and that was the little encampment that they believe, you know,
17:15
Speaker 1: was used by them. And they found some other cool
17:18
Speaker 1: stuff like clamshell fragments that basically they were smashed open
17:24
Speaker 1: by somebody right and exposed to fire, which you know,
17:27
Speaker 1: unless they were struck by lightning, that's pretty much definitive
17:31
Speaker 1: evidence of human use. Well, yeah, and they also found
17:34
Speaker 1: bones of fish and birds and turtles that had been
17:36
Speaker 1: exposed to fire. So in other words, somebody was cooking
17:39
Speaker 1: up something to eat. Uh. What else did they found?
17:42
Speaker 1: They found, Um, they found pieces of bottle that show
17:45
Speaker 1: signs of use is cutting and sawing tools. Yeah. UM.
17:49
Speaker 1: They also found a little piece of a knife, UM,
17:52
Speaker 1: which they managed. I don't know how they did this,
17:55
Speaker 1: because you sent me this link. There's a picture of
17:58
Speaker 1: just the knife blade. And they went back and managed
18:01
Speaker 1: to identify it as a type of jack knife that
18:05
Speaker 1: was produced within this time period by this company Rhode Island,
18:08
Speaker 1: so it was it was produced from ninety ninety two
18:12
Speaker 1: or something like that. And then they went back this year.
18:15
Speaker 1: This group called the UM we should say their name
18:17
Speaker 1: the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery or TIGAR. Yeah,
18:22
Speaker 1: they've been I think three or four different times over
18:25
Speaker 1: the years to this island. They went this summer as
18:27
Speaker 1: I was writing this, they were preparing the expedition and
18:30
Speaker 1: they found the rest of the knife. UM. And this
18:33
Speaker 1: is where they hoped to get DNA evidence from. Well yeah,
18:36
Speaker 1: and not the reason that the knife discovery is important
18:39
Speaker 1: or the rest of the knife. They originally found the
18:41
Speaker 1: blades only, and then they found the knife this summer,
18:44
Speaker 1: and it showed that the knife blades had been forcibly
18:48
Speaker 1: removed from the knife, indicating that maybe that they took
18:53
Speaker 1: out each blade too. Maybe and of course you're speculating,
18:56
Speaker 1: but maybe to attach it to an end of a
18:58
Speaker 1: spear or something like that for fish fishing. Anyone was
19:01
Speaker 1: seeing castaway knows what that's all about. I saw that
19:03
Speaker 1: the other day again by the way um there. They
19:06
Speaker 1: also found Gardner Island, by the way, became uninhabited in
19:10
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three. There was a prolonged drought and the
19:12
Speaker 1: British government, we're just like, just forgive it, everybody, just
19:16
Speaker 1: leave Um and the group Tighar when they went to
19:23
Speaker 1: excavate around there, they found in this abandoned village folk
19:27
Speaker 1: art made of aluminum aircraft metal right, which they can't
19:32
Speaker 1: definitively prove came from her plane. Obviously, there's a lot
19:36
Speaker 1: of circumstantial evidence of female castaway handicrafts or maybe Tom
19:40
Speaker 1: he was the big crafty guy, but there Um, I
19:43
Speaker 1: don't think Tom made it. I think Amelia Earhart made it.
19:47
Speaker 1: I think Tom was maybe kill an impact or drowned
19:50
Speaker 1: and Amelia made it to the island and died there alone,
19:56
Speaker 1: quite possibly, and she may have even eaten him. Now
20:00
Speaker 1: that's a that's that's a new theory. I think you'd launched.
20:04
Speaker 1: I don't know that goes in with your disappearance of
20:07
Speaker 1: the Neanderthals. That's right, they melted, Um, you you were.
20:12
Speaker 1: The reason we're talking about these objects that they've recently recovered, though,
20:15
Speaker 1: is because they're trying to get some DNA called touch
20:19
Speaker 1: DNA off of a few of these items. They submitted
20:22
Speaker 1: ten I believe out of a hundred. It's one of
20:24
Speaker 1: the reasons why finding that knife was very important. Is
20:27
Speaker 1: huge because I believe they submitted the blades, and then
20:29
Speaker 1: they found some glass from what looked like a cosmetics
20:33
Speaker 1: star and a couple of buttons, and they submitted these
20:36
Speaker 1: things to a place in Canada. And I think as
20:39
Speaker 1: of today, I still don't think they have the results
20:43
Speaker 1: of that DNA testing done. That I see that they
20:46
Speaker 1: had it done yet so guarded, but they wouldn't be
20:48
Speaker 1: such enormous news that we would have known. That's what
20:51
Speaker 1: I think, um Chuck. There's a lot of people out
20:55
Speaker 1: there who also think that her plane sur survived intact
21:00
Speaker 1: and is at the bottom of the Pacific. That's awesome,
21:03
Speaker 1: And people still I think tig are included um undertake
21:08
Speaker 1: sonar searches of the ocean bottom. Uh. And there's a
21:12
Speaker 1: good chance that the plane did make it. Um. They
21:15
Speaker 1: were flying supposedly at about a thousand feet, which is
21:18
Speaker 1: extremely low, and they were doing about a hundred miles
21:21
Speaker 1: an hour, which is pretty slow for a plane, especially
21:25
Speaker 1: a Lockheed Electra, so conceivably didn't necessarily bust into a
21:28
Speaker 1: million pieces. Yeah, so it's possible it's still out there
21:32
Speaker 1: at the bottom of the ocean. Well, I I am
21:35
Speaker 1: totally sold. And I know I said like every single
21:38
Speaker 1: Jack the Ripper killer we brought up. Yeah, he sounds
21:41
Speaker 1: like the guy. But I'm completely convinced that this is
21:44
Speaker 1: where she spent her last days like you, and that
21:46
Speaker 1: she ate Fred noon In. I don't know that Fred
21:50
Speaker 1: or Fred. Uh. We should also mention too that UM
21:53
Speaker 1: they use a new well new to them at least
21:56
Speaker 1: ground penetrating radar g PR for the first time on
21:59
Speaker 1: this last trip to summer, and that is when you
22:02
Speaker 1: can actually look beneath the surface for anything that was buried.
22:05
Speaker 1: Like Fred, it's magic and um. They they didn't find
22:09
Speaker 1: anything though, because not because there was anything there necessarily,
22:12
Speaker 1: but there were lots of roots and air pockets underneath
22:15
Speaker 1: the thing. And I get the feeling that this looks
22:18
Speaker 1: since you're looking for something buried, looked for pockets of air,
22:20
Speaker 1: and so that it was completely in conclusive. They threw
22:23
Speaker 1: in the ocean. She may have also pulverized his bones
22:27
Speaker 1: to cover up her abomination. Yeah, I wonder it's I
22:33
Speaker 1: think this is what happened. I wonder how long they
22:34
Speaker 1: survived though. I wonder if it was weeks or months
22:38
Speaker 1: or what. Well consider it. I mean, if her plane
22:41
Speaker 1: went down in ninety seven and they started colonizing at
22:45
Speaker 1: ninety eight, she lasted less than a year. But can
22:48
Speaker 1: you imagine if she like just gave up and then
22:51
Speaker 1: like a week later the British come to colonized Gardener Island. Yeah,
22:55
Speaker 1: I mean, how horrible would that be? So she she
22:57
Speaker 1: made it less than a year, if she made it
22:59
Speaker 1: to Gardner Islander, Nicol mro ro what I'm surprised about,
23:03
Speaker 1: And maybe she tried to do this and Fred tried
23:05
Speaker 1: to do this. I'm surprised she didn't leave something behind,
23:10
Speaker 1: like instead of doing a handicraft. Maybe try and scratch
23:13
Speaker 1: the name Amelia into the aluminum and bury that or something,
23:18
Speaker 1: or maybe it's something is there and they just haven't
23:20
Speaker 1: found it yet. Yeah, there's a tree that says crow
23:23
Speaker 1: with towing on it because she was a history buff,
23:26
Speaker 1: Amelia was here. Well that's uh, that's it as it
23:29
Speaker 1: stands so far. Huh. You think we'll ever do an
23:32
Speaker 1: update if they find her. We always say we will,
23:34
Speaker 1: and we never do, and we never do. So the
23:36
Speaker 1: answer to that question is no. If you want to
23:39
Speaker 1: learn more about Amelia Earhart and see a picture of
23:43
Speaker 1: how cute Fred Noonan is and it's little old timey
23:46
Speaker 1: aviator get up, you should type air heart into the
23:49
Speaker 1: search bar at how stuff works dot com. It's e
23:51
Speaker 1: A R H A r T and that should bring
23:54
Speaker 1: it up. I would think unless we have articles on
23:58
Speaker 1: other air hearts, think so. I guess it's time then
24:02
Speaker 1: for a listener man. All right, Yeah, I got one here.
24:08
Speaker 1: I asked for rehab experiences quite a while ago, and
24:11
Speaker 1: I've got one that I meant to read earlier, and
24:13
Speaker 1: here it is, and I'm gonna jump around here. It's
24:16
Speaker 1: kind of along. Uh. This is from Scott and in
24:18
Speaker 1: two thousand five, he had pretty much worked himself into
24:21
Speaker 1: a rehab hospital. He was working three different jobs, hit
24:25
Speaker 1: a wall, couldn't decide to walk this way or that way,
24:27
Speaker 1: or even pick up a pencil, so he went to
24:28
Speaker 1: the er. After a fifteen minute interview with a psychiatrist
24:33
Speaker 1: who he said was quite attractive. I'm not sure why
24:34
Speaker 1: he told me that, he said. She left and a
24:37
Speaker 1: guard came to stand outside the room and she said,
24:40
Speaker 1: you know you're not just gonna take a break. She said,
24:42
Speaker 1: you need to be checked in. And this is how
24:45
Speaker 1: I learned of the seventy two hour hold, where a
24:47
Speaker 1: doctor decides you're at risk. So that's what happened to
24:51
Speaker 1: him initially. Next I wound up in an ambulance for
24:54
Speaker 1: a trip to a cyclocked downward called Station two. It
24:58
Speaker 1: sounds like the beginning of a very bad movie, like
25:00
Speaker 1: a horror film exactly. They dropped me off behind two
25:05
Speaker 1: heavily locked doors, and the next thing you knew, I
25:06
Speaker 1: was relieved of my laces and belt. Now I should
25:09
Speaker 1: say I was not suicidal. I was just really out
25:11
Speaker 1: of ideas. I don't I don't know what that means,
25:15
Speaker 1: out of ideas like he was. He had he was indecisive,
25:18
Speaker 1: he couldn't know. I think he means he was just
25:20
Speaker 1: burned out, was having a nervous breakdown, out of options,
25:22
Speaker 1: out of ideas. Yeah, it sounds like it. I spent
25:25
Speaker 1: eight days in Station twenty two and saw some interesting things,
25:28
Speaker 1: and here are a few. A meth addict was admitted.
25:30
Speaker 1: She looked like she should weigh about a hundred and
25:32
Speaker 1: ten to a hundred twenty pounds, but she weighed more
25:34
Speaker 1: like eighty. She took one drink of orange juice promptly
25:37
Speaker 1: dropped to the floor like a sack of bones. And
25:39
Speaker 1: this is what I learned. What a code red was
25:41
Speaker 1: the crash cart, the e er in the whole parade.
25:44
Speaker 1: After leaving Station twenty two, I transferred to a place
25:47
Speaker 1: in the suburbs for a twenty eight day program. It
25:49
Speaker 1: was pretty cool. I met a very well known author
25:51
Speaker 1: and many other fascinating people. I saw the girl sneaking
25:55
Speaker 1: out of the guy's room. The whole thing had to
25:57
Speaker 1: bear the A A rhymes and sayings, and I totally
26:00
Speaker 1: understand Sandra Bullock. In twenty eight days, now the big
26:03
Speaker 1: news was the guy who wrote a million little pieces
26:06
Speaker 1: I was coming the next week because he had stayed
26:08
Speaker 1: there before when he was writing the book, and the
26:10
Speaker 1: Oprah people came on site to work out camera locations
26:13
Speaker 1: in blocking and uh, two days before they were to
26:16
Speaker 1: descend the I made it up scandal occurred, so I
26:19
Speaker 1: never showed clearly. Um, and here just a few other
26:23
Speaker 1: little tips. People in rehab are insane about sweets. I
26:27
Speaker 1: think there's a definite link between sugar and addiction. Everyone
26:30
Speaker 1: seemed to want to hook up with something sweet. Um.
26:33
Speaker 1: I have seen that heroin sickness looks worse than dying
26:36
Speaker 1: in a fire. Wow, that's pretty bad. That's pretty bad.
26:40
Speaker 1: And a surprising number of people were repeats I'm talking like, yeah,
26:43
Speaker 1: this is my seventh time here. And I also saw
26:46
Speaker 1: a lot of people who snuck off for a drink
26:47
Speaker 1: and got kicked out. So Scott is doing much better now.
26:51
Speaker 1: He is back on track, living a great Lifett and
26:54
Speaker 1: he says, I love what you guys do and how
26:56
Speaker 1: you do it. I now give Takiva and co Ed
26:59
Speaker 1: and pretty much pace the halls into your next episode. Awesome,
27:03
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Scott. I'm very glad you're feeling better. Right,
27:07
Speaker 1: took as long as you're not pacing the halls of
27:09
Speaker 1: Station twenty two. Buddy. Um, keep in touch with this
27:12
Speaker 1: on Facebook and Twitter? Yeah, yeah, you know quickly? Can
27:17
Speaker 1: I say that? If you have written listener mail, we
27:21
Speaker 1: don't answer all those anymore because there's just too many.
27:23
Speaker 1: Facebook is a great place to submit questions and get
27:27
Speaker 1: answers quicker or at all. That's uh Facebook, Yeah. Dot
27:32
Speaker 1: com slash stuff you should know, but we still read
27:34
Speaker 1: the listener mails. Twitter is uh s y s K podcast.
27:39
Speaker 1: We also have that Kiva team k I v A
27:42
Speaker 1: dot org slash team slash stuff you should know. Coed's
27:45
Speaker 1: website is c O E d U C dot org. Um,
27:50
Speaker 1: and you can always email us. Like Chuck said, we
27:52
Speaker 1: don't always respond. I do sometimes, do you still? Yeah? Okay, um,
27:56
Speaker 1: send us an email to let us know what you
27:58
Speaker 1: do and what you think you would do, or what
28:01
Speaker 1: you should do when you run out of ideas, wrap
28:04
Speaker 1: it up, send it to us at stuff podcast at
28:07
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com For more on this and
28:13
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
28:16
Speaker 1: To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast
28:19
Speaker 1: icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The
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Speaker 1: How Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it today
28:25
Speaker 1: on iTunes.