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Why Are So Many Disembodied Feet Washing Ashore In British Columbia? · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know fromhouse stuff works
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: There's Charles to Be, Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: And there are six feet in this studio right now,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: and all of them are exactly where they're supposed to
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: be attached to their lowered legs. Yeah, below the calf, Yeah, yep,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: above the floor, facing forward to you, right. Yeah, that's
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: a big one too, because if it's facing backwards, you've
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: got problems or you're just going the wrong way all
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: day long, maybe some Um do you know where they're
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: not supposed to be Chuck feet? Uh, well, they're not
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: supposed to be on the armrest of the seat in
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: front of you on an airplane, yes, or a movie
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: theater yes, But I know you're not talking about common courtesies.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: That bug me. No, but I agree with you wholeheartedly.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: That is so wrong. And um, I meant to tell you,
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: I'm on, I've come over to your side about taking
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: shoes off on the plane. It's okay if I do it,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: but um, you mean and I were flying somewhere and
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: this dude behind his head, nasty stinky feet, and he
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: had his shoes off, and like we're facing forward and
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: we could smell his feet but low our seats behind us.
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  Speaker 1: And I kept turning around giving him the dirtiest looks,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: and he was like, you had no idea what I
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  Speaker 1: was doing. Did you look at his feet and then
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: and he still didn't get it? Did you look at
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: his feet his face and then clamp your head. I
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: think that still didn't work. I threw up a little
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: bit onto him. He just thought it was Yeah. I know.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: People disagree with me. People wrote in We're like, what's
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: it to you? I thought it was to eat your
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: own to eat your own chuck. Yeah, yeah, all right,
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: So I'll tell you a place where feet aren't supposed
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: to be. They're not supposed to be off on their own,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: on a beach somewhere, not attached to a body exactly. No, No,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: that's not something that you see every day, No, unless
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: you're in Vancouver, and then it happens like almost every day.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: It seems like not quite, but sure, there's something very
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: weird going on in Vancouver. You say there's no mystery.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: I said, there's still a bit of a mystery to it.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: But well, well, we'll start at the beginning. Okay, August
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: two thousand seven. It's kind of a cool and drizzly
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: day at a place called Jedediah Island Provincial Park up
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: in British Columbia, right near Vancouver, right lovely. Sure, of course,
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: that's why you would want to say, like go park
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: or camp at this park with your family, which is
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: what a twelve year old girl was you. And I I
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: couldn't find this girl's name to save my life, probably
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: because she's twelve. She wouldn't be good to say it. Anyway,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: she was sure. She was walking along the beach with
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: her dad, and um, there was a bunch of like
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: flots them, you know, that's the term for stuff that
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: washes up from the sea, that the sea spits up
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: onto the shores. And um, she saw a shoe and
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: she picked it up, and she untied it and turned
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: it upside down and out fell a sock, and inside
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: the sock was a human foot yep, and she was
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: pretty surprised, size twelve. Yeah, it was a campus brand shoe,
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: which h ended up being not neither here nor there,
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: but it is manufactured in India, mostly sold in India. Um,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: and we'll just park that right there for now. Yeah.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: So the families like this is unusual. Sure. Uh. They
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: borrowed a radio from somebody else and they alerted the authorities,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: and in very short order, the Mounties showed up, the
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: coroner showed up, the coast guards showed up. I bet
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: the Mounties were all over that foot. Um. So yeah,
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: they said, you know what, well, we're gonna take that
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: foot is if that's okay little girl, And she, through
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: her sobbing tears, said sure, but just give me a
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: little money, okay. Uh. And they said we're gonna send
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: it off for DNA examination, and um that did that
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  Speaker 1: return nothing the DNA as far as I know, Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: there was no there's no match. So that wasn't like
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: a clue the d NA. No, but it was the
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: first thing they tried the DNA. They also looked at
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: it to see what was going on with the foot
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  Speaker 1: if if there was any kind of signs of what
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: the deal was. Yeah, they held it up to their
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: ear and pretended like it was a telephone. And one
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: of the other mount he said, that's not funny. But
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: they're like, oh, it is kind of funny, and they
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: said sorry. So um, they didn't. They just kind of
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: filed it away. It actually didn't make much of a
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  Speaker 1: stir outside of the area. It was worth talking about.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: It got a little bit in because it was just
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: so weird. But they put the foot away and at
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: the coroner's office and everybody went about their lives, right,
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: I would assume so. And then six days later, other
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: foot showed up in the area, not the same place,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: but in the same in the same general area, another
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  Speaker 1: right foot, which means it wasn't for the person's other foot.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: Now that'd be weird. So there's two people missing feet. Now. Yes,
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: this is a men's Reebok size eleven, I think. And
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: the people who found it said that when they saw it,
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: they immediately knew that there was a foot in there
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: because it looked full. It looks pretty how they is
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: how they put it full of foot? Yeah, And they
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: picked it up and smelled it and they're like, yeah,
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: it's a foot, that's right. And the mountains came in
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: again and they got off their horses and uh, Corporal
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: Gary Cox said, you know, it is a little weird
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: to find two feet, especially within six days of one another. Yeah,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: in the same area. It was Um, he described it
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: as a million to one odds. I don't think he
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: did the science on that, but it's just something you say.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: But he said too is pretty crazy, Yeah, and I
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: agree with him. Yeah. So the first foot was in
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: on Jedediah Island. The second ones on Gabriela Island, which
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: is I couldn't find exactly how far away it was
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: across the water, but it's it's not that far. They're close,
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: but they're separated by some water. Um, and they're now
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, there's two feet that were found
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: within six days. The media starts to catch drift of
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: this one. Right, there's feet uh shoe defeat washing up
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: on the shores in Vancouver. And at the time, at
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: that very time, UM, Robert Picton was on trial in
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: Vancouver for um murdering as many as forty nine women.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: You've heard to him, right, I think so. He was
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: the notorious pig farmer who would like butcher women and
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: feed them to his pigs, and then butcher's pigs and
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: feed pigs to his guests. Yeah. One of the only
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: probably Canadian serial killers, right, Yeah, and one of the
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: worst of all serial killers. He was a horrible horrible
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: person because he wasn't crazy, you know what I mean,
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: he was just a just a horrible person. Um. And
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: so he's on trial at that time, got I think
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: twenty five years, which is like the maximum sentence you
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: can get in Canada, what come on Canada years for
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: for up to forty nine horrible murders. Um. So he
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: was on trial. There are also a lot of like
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: really high profile missing people in the area too, that
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  Speaker 1: it just vanished without a trace in the four years
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: leading up to that. Yeah, and you point out because
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: you wrote this, I did, But actually I was pointing
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: out that Christopher Solomon pointed something. Okay, well the point is, uh,
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  Speaker 1: and this is a little strange, but maybe not. I
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: don't know. I was trying to make sense of it.
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  Speaker 1: British Columbia apparently just has a higher than normal rate
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: of missing persons than other parts of the world, which
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: is weird. Yeah, but I mean like a lot more, yeah,
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: more than people over a fifty nine year period. And uh.
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  Speaker 1: Solomon compared that to Kentucky, which is about the same
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  Speaker 1: size and population or same size population, they only had
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: five and fifteen people missing over that fifty nine years.
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  Speaker 1: That seemed really low to med eight people a year
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: missing in the whole state like that remained missing, Okay,
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: unsolved forever, yes, because in Kentucky they'll just be like
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: he was Uncle Billy's on the road for a week,
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  Speaker 1: right exactly. So like the the the idea is that
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  Speaker 1: BC has almost five times the number of unsolved missing
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  Speaker 1: persons cases over this fifty nine period compared to Kentucky,
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  Speaker 1: which has about the same size population. It's a lot more. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: And I mean Solomon might have gone in and selected like, oh,
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: Kentucky's got the lowest of the same size population, so
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: that will really point it out. But it does seem
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: that BC has a large amount of missing persons now, uh,
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: I bet it has something to do with the terrain
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: and the wildlife, probably the abundance of water. Probably that too.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: It's not a good good thing. A lot of heroin, yeah,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: you know, sadly and probably go missing, you know. In
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: addition to the serial killer theory, one of them was
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: that these were like people who would either run a
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: foul of the local organized crime syndicates or um ran
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: a foul of like a fellow heroin organized crime exactly disorganized.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: Remember that movie what movie Disorganized Crime? Was that a
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: movie with Who's the the Dude the Blonde Dude from
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: l A. Law Corton Burnson. Yes, it's actually a good movie. Really,
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: I haven't seen Mark in a couple of decades. Hey,
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: Summer School is one of the all time greats. Man,
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: it sounds like that kind of movie Disorganized Crime, like
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: a bunch of bumbling at criminals. Definitely, But I think
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: like or Fred Gwynn was in it, Herman Munster, one
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: of his last roles. All right, so you talked about theories.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: One of the other theories, remember we mentioned India manufactured
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: that first shoe. Some people said, you know what, this is,
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: sadly just feat of tsunami survivors from the Indian Ocean
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: disaster December two thousand four, and they just years later
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: these like body parts are washing up on shore, which
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: is sort of plausible. It is. I mean, two fifty
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: people died in that tsunami, A lot, if not most
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: of them were never found. Yeah. Also we had people
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: point out remember when we said that modern disaster flicks
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: are bad. Uh, we had a bunch of people right
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: in say The Impossible it was a great movie. That's
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: the one about Yeah, and it was great, it was awesome.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: But I think that's different because that was a uh
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: factual Uh, it's about a factual event. But and I
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: categorize it as a disaster now. See, I don't categorize
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: it as that because it was a real thing that happened.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: Like disaster flicks to me are when you know, when
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: you invent some crazy disaster. Well okay, well let me
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: ask you this. If it were totally fictionalized but the
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: exact same movie, would you then can considered as a
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: disaster flick? Yes, okay, so it's like on that scale
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: and everything too. I had the impression it was much
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: more just like a human interest. Well it became that.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: But they sho film the tsunami like it's it's not
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: amazing how realistic. It is. Very very tough movie, very
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: hard to watch. Have you seen Twelve Years of Slave yet?
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: I still cannot bring myself to watch that. It's pretty rough.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: It's just staring at me on my DVR every night.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: I'm gona it'll be soon. I'll let you know. Okay,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: I'll just come into work crying. Okay, what did I do? Alright?
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: So the tsunami disaster they said, um, might have been
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: one of the reasons. But um, I think other people said,
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: you know, maybe that's not the best explanation. Other people said, well,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: a lot of people just go missing from other things,
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: like planes go down in the Salish Sea, which is
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: the body of water between I think Vancouver Island and
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: mainland British columb to you, which is where most of
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: these were found? Is it Sailish? I think so, But
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: we'll hear from Canadians one way or the other. You
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: say Sailish, I say Salish. Who's right? Really? You know?
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: All right, well, let's we're getting all excited here with
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: these theories. But there were more feet to come, and
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: we'll get back to those feet right after this, So chuck.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: The When those first two feet were found within six days,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: made the rounds, people talked about it, and then it
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: just kind of drifted out of the news, right like
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: a foot in the ocean exactly. Um. And then a
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: third foot was found, and it came roaring back because
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: this is yet another foot, a totally different one. This
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: is a woman's foot actually a new balance size seven
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: I think, and Kirkland Island, same general area right right,
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: the same forty mile stretch along that coastal area. And
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: this is within ten months now five ft four people. Yeah, so, um,
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: the the other new balanced sneaker was found. That was
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: the fifth foot found. And then in between the Yeah,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: they matched the foot to the you know, I don't
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: know if that's good or bad, but they found the
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: guy's other foot, right, the the woman that was the
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: woman that they they found her two ft yes, so
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: her feet were number three and number five to turn up.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: And then in between an entirely different person's foot turned up,
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: men's like size eleven Nike, I think so. Yeah, within
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: within a ten month period, there were five feet belonging
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: to four different people that turned up on this little stretch.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: That's right, that's significant. Then there was a six foot
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: the next August. This was in actually in Washington, so
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: I guess it had its h hey as in order
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: and made its way to the States. And so, like
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: you said, if you're following the story at home as
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: it's going on, you're starting to think, like, if I
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: go to the beach, I'm going to see a foot today.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: And a lot of people did do that. A lot
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: of people around British Columbias started looking for disembodied feet.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: They were turning up so frequently and I misspoke, you
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: were right. So the seventh foot to turn up was
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: the woman's other foot. That's hard to keep track, it
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: really is. So how many feet in total, sir? I
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: think the last two were found February of this year. Yeah,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: and they actually belonged to the same person. But they
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: were found a week or two or so apart. And
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: I say last, I mean most recent. I'm sure more
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: feet will come. It seems that way because between so
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: the first foot was found in August two thousand and seven,
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: these most recent feet were found in February two thousand sixteen.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: That total seventeen disembodied feet found within a hundred and
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: fifty miles stretch between Tacoma, Washington and British Columbia. That's unusual,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: it seems like it, and there's a lot of theories,
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: but no one can say definitively here's what's going on,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: right uh, And I know we're making a lot of jokes.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: I realized these feet belonged to people who are no
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: longer with us. I just want to throw that out
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: there that we do a lot of comedy on this show,
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: so we did a coma episode that had jokes. I mean,
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: come on, I just wanted to see away there. Uh.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: So from the beginning, the cops and the Mounties were
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: basically like, I don't you know, this seems really fishy. Uh,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: but it's not. We don't think it's murder. We don't
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: think there's someone out there killing people and chopping their
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: feet off, which is what a lot of people thought. Yeah.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: But and notably because their feet weren't cut off, and
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: you can tell right they were, They said that they
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: were naturally disarticulated, right, that's right. Um. So that first
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: foot that that girl found on Jedediah Island was identified
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: pretty quickly because the cops released a pick sure of
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: the shoe to the media. And remember it was a
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: Campus brand which has made in India, sold mostly in India.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: And so the guy whose foot it was, his family
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: saw it on the news and identified him as somebody
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: who he was a longtime suffer of depression and he
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: was in a depressed state when his family last saw him.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: So the cops came to the logical conclusion that he
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: had killed himself. So foot number one has been matched
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: to a missing person case. Clothes right, that's right. Uh.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: So then the new balance shoes turned up on separate islands. Uh,
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: this is the woman and she was identified as a
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: lady who also was suffering from depression and jumped off
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: a bridge. I think they knew this for sure. Yes,
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: that's where the woman was last seen, was jumping off
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: a bridge. Yeah, this has been four years previous. So
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: now they're starting to get a pattern here where all right,
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: there was another man to the one on Valdi's Island
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: feet three and five. Uh, they determined either suicide or accident.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: And then another couple of people who were accidentally killed.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: And so they see this pattern now, all right, these
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: are people that just happened to die or die by
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: their own hand, um near enough to the water where
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: their feet were there. Yes, I'm just being vague for now, right, Yeah.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: But the weird thing is is now, all of a sudden,
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: in a very short period of time, relatively short period
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: of time. Um, I mean because one of these guys
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: whose feet turned up was last seen after his boat
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: turned over. So in a very short period of time,
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: all these people who died at very different periods of time,
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: suddenly their feet were starting to turn up in this
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: area around the stylish sailorsh Sea. Yes, um and the
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: cops had a I guess, kind of a pretty good
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: idea from the outset. But to understand what was going on,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: or at least what the cops say was going on,
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: you have to understand what happened to a UM. A
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: person who dies in the water. You think that people float,
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: you know, yeah, you kind of think that because in
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: movies that you know, if you're trying to get rid
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: of a body in the water, you always you know,
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: ty cement blocks to a submit shoes is the old joke.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: You know, somebody turned up like that in New York recently,
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: like with submit shoes, not too many movies. But the
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: idea is that you have to weight the body down.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: And I suppose if you were going to get rid
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: of a body that I'd probably do the same thing,
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: just out of you know, just cover my basis, just
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: to be sure. Well, the thing is, if you do
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: you cebment shoes on a person, you should never do that,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: you know. But if you did, um, what you're doing
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: is you're not ensuring that they sink, right, then you're
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: ensuring that they don't come back up because that's what happens.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: That's right, body that has gone unconscious or has drowned
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: and died, Um sinks pretty quickly. And it it usually
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: sinks so quick that if you are looking for a
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: drowning victim, you you should look on the bottom pretty
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: close to where they were last seen on the surface.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: They sink that fast. Man. So a body sinks, um,
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: and it will sink faster and fresh water than saltwater
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: because saltwaters makes humans a little more buoyant. Um. I
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: guess overweight people, people with a lot of fat on
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: their bodies sink uh more slowly than people who are leaner. Um.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: And then depending on the water temperature as well, um,
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: and how deep the water is, they'll sink faster and
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: faster as they get to the bottom. Yea. And depending
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: on what you're wearing, yeah, like a code or shoes
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: or something like that, or a backpack. It's it's definitely
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: gonna pull you down. But the point is once you
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: go under, once you submerge and you're dead or you're dying, Um,
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: you're gonna sink pretty quick. Yeah, there's more pressure to
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: the deeper you get in the body of water. Uh.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: You mentioned the temperature was lower, but there's also more pressure.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: That compressed is the air in your body, and that's
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: gonna make you less floaty as well. So the thing
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: the cool air or the cool temperature does down there
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: is it uh kind of preserves you for a little while,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: longer than ordinarily because um, the bacteria that will eventually
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: consume your body or just gonna be slower do so
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: they just move more slowly. But that bacteria is eventually
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: gonna overcome the sinking of the body because your body
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: is an enclosed system generally roughly, I mean, you've got
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: a mouth and all that, you know, But as they're eating,
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: they're putting out as a waste product, um, gases like
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: methane and stuff like that. UM, and your body traps
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: that stuff and it begins to bloat. And I'm everyone
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: knows that once you bloat, you float. That's right, that's
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: the forensics bumper sticker. Yeah, eventually you're going to rise
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: to the top like a dirigible because those gases that
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: are trapped in your body or like like a submarine.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: I guess do you mean they keep going into the
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: air like you float off and then your foot will
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: be found on the moon later. Uh, yeah, you're gonna float.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: And that's why whenever they people discover like a dead
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: body in a lake much later, it's you know, it's
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: not a pretty thing. They're they're bloated and and puffed
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: out and decomposed. It's not pretty. But if you are UM,
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: if you're trapped, say like in a vehicle or something
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: like that, and all of this takes place, UM, eventually
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: your your body is going to be prevented from floating
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: away and it will eventually rupture. And once the rupture happens,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: all that gas and the um, the buoyancy that's created
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: by it is all released, and you're staying there. You're
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: staying there. And I read this article about UM. Did
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: you read the article about the Oklahoma guy? Huh? Yeah,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: it was really weird. Is so like the guy? There
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: was a guy who was um, whose brother went missing
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: in his Camaro and I think like nineteen seventy and
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: he um, he just never knew what happened to him,
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: and he used this boat ramp on this place called
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: Fosse Lake, and he found out later when the cops
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: accidentally discovered the car that his brother had been submerged in.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: Just twelve feet of water for forty years. All those
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: times he was back in his boat into False Lake.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: His brother was right below him, and they found him accidentally.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: And then they found another car that had gone missing
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: I think the year before, just a few feet away.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: And the moral of the story is that False Lake
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: is really murky. I mean twelve ft of water, two
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: different cars, Camaro, Camaro, and I think like a packer
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: or something like that, or buick Man. Unbelievable. Uh all right,
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: well let's take another little break here and we'll talk
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: a little bit more about what can happen to a
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: body under water and uh, what's the deal with all
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: these feet? All right? Uh, just this year there was
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: a study there's some criminologists at Simon Fraser, you outside
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: of Vancouver, and there have been a bunch of studies
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: like this over the years where they we've talked to,
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: you know, in our Body Farm episode, where criminologists and
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: forensics experts try to see what happens to bodies under
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: various conditions, including being sunk underwater. Uh So they took
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: a pig carcass in this case, not a human cadaver,
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: and they sunk it kind of nearer where uh in
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: the sailors Sea where these feet had been appearing, and um,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: this these pigs carcasses were um, they were bones in
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: a matter of days. It was really really fast. Yeah,
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: they were really surprised, surprisingly fast because you know, conventional
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: wisdom is that this took weeks months maybe even and
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: the other studies have shown that right, and these things,
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: these pigs were like just bones in a few days. Um.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: They think it's possible that the sailor c is um
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: an anomaly because this was an almost a thousand feet
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: of water, but it's really highly oxygenated, so there's a
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: lot of life down there, um, a lot more things
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: to eat a body exactly, Whereas if you took it
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: to another body of water and a thousand feet there,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: there might not be as much oxygen, so it might
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: take longer. But for the sailors c, it's possible for
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: something to be reduced to bones in a few days. Yeah.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: Here was my one problem with the way they did
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: this study. Maybe I overthought it, but they trapped it
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: under fencing, um, which presumably means that that was just
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: you know, kind of in one place the whole time.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: I would have like, if you're going to stimulate a
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: hum and body, I would have uh maybe shackled a
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: leg and and put a long leader a hundred so
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: it could move around and see what the Yeah, because
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: a body can move on the bottom a little because
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: there's currents, you know. But yeah, have you seen did
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: you see the video of it? The time elapse video.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: It's really something. It's gross. I don't need it. So
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: um there was another study that I found that really
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: kind of um ties all this together. It was from
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: and it was carried out by the corner of King's County,
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: which is where Seattle is, and um, he or she
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: I think it was he. Um looked at bodies that
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: have been pulled from the water, and he took the
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: amount of time they've been in the water submerged, and
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: then uh, the amount of body parts that were left
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: or exactly what body parts are left, and basically went
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: act and reverse engineered the process by which a body
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: comes apart when it submerged underwater. That's valuable information, it
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: really is, you know. And so what they what they
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: came up with was that the the skin, the thinnest
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: areas of skin typically cover like joints like your wrist
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: and ankles does get eaten away first, which exposes that
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: soft tissue beneath that holds your hand to your arm
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: or your foot to your leg, and then that gets
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: attacked by scavengers and all the other stuff that's eating it.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: And so between the things eating that soft tissue holding
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: the bone together and the wave action of the currents
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: at the bottom of the body of water, the hands
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: and then the feet work loose, they disarticulate, so they
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: naturally will fall off the body as the body is decomposing,
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: submerged underwater, and they are among the first parts to go.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: That's right. And if you're just a foot and you're
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: not wearing a shoe, um, then chances are that foot
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: will get consumed and you will never see it again.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: Although one of these feet was a barefoot correct, which
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: seems to be a little bit of an outlier, a
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: little bit. But if you've got a shoe on that
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: thing that's tied up nice and tight, and you're disarticulated
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: at the ankle, that foot is still inside that shoe,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: gonna make it really hard for a scavenger to get
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: in there. And it's very possible that that foot will
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: not decomposed or at least decomposed very slowly. Right, And
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: not only that, will it be protected once it disarticulates.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: If it's wearing a certain kind of shoe, specifically an
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: athletic shoe that's made in the last like, uh twenty years. Uh,
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: it's gonna have air injected into the soul. And in
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: the case of like remember Nike air max Is, they
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: had actual air pockets like in the in between the
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: soul and the bottom of the shoe, and that actually
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: creates a buoyant effect that will lift a shoe, including
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: one that has a foot still inside, to the surface. Yeah.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: So they started looking all these cases and they said, well,
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: almost all of these are athletic shoes, so that makes sense.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: And it's gonna bob upside down because of that rubbery soul,
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: so it's gonna be protected even more from birds and things.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: So what we have here is a case of people
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: that just happened to die and their feet happen to
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: come away from their bodies and be well protected by
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: these awesome running shoes and eventually made their ways to shore. Um.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: But a little bit weird that they would happen in
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: this area in such a span of time, I would
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: still say, right, that's a that's to me the um
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: and and we should say that's what you just said,
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: that's the cops position. And it has been basically since
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: the outset, since the first foot was found. Basically nothing
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: to see here and there's not a lot there to
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: um to undermine it, yeah, or attack it like it's
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: a pretty sound position, but there is still a mystery
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: to it to me, and that why British Columbia like it.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: It doesn't make sense. And there's a couple of explanations.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: One is that the Sailors Sea is something like a
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: lagoon to where water flows in from the Pacific Ocean
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: from the south northward into the Sailors Sea, and once
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: stuff goes in there, it basically recirculates. It doesn't come
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: back out very often. Well that when you see the
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: sign that says sailor see it says feete flow in,
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: they don't flow out exactly right, So once you see
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: that sign, you're like, well, there's the explanation. Um. The
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: idea is that the Sailor Sea would experience higher incidents
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: of flots some of all types, including feet, which is
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: one explanation it could be right, Well, I'm sure that
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: has something to do with it. Sure. The other explanation
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: is um, one of my favorite things in the world,
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: which is a version of uh. Well, there's a couple
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: of names for it. UM. There was a guy named
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: Arnold's Wicky Uh in two thousand six and linguistics per
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: fessor at Stanford who coined the term frequency illusion UH.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: And that's one of the cognitive biases. UM. We're basically
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: if you are looking for something, you're gonna find it.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: All these people saw in the news feet washing up
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: on the shore, so like you said, they all started
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: looking for feet, and every time a foot was found,
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: it just supported the idea that yes, there's something really
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: weird going on here, which only increased the awareness and
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: the focus on this, which means that people started seeing
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: more and more feet. That's right. So frequency illusions specifically
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: is a mix of selective attention and confirmation bias. So
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: in this case, selective attention unconsciously keeping an eye out
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: for that new thing that you were just told about,
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: which is the feat uh. And the confirmation bias in
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: this case is the reassurance that it's just proof more
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: and more proof of its omnipresence more feet you could
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: see that happening here for sure. Pretty interesting. It's called
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: the bottom line Huff phenomenon too. Yeah. I didn't know
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: where that came from those ad until I looked it up.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: It was just a comment or on a on the
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: Pioneer Press of St. Paul discussion board. And he had
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: heard about the bottom mine HAFF terrorist group a couple
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: of times and one day and for the first time, yeah,
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: and just said, you know, bottom MINEHFF phenomenon, and it
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: became a meme. I thought it was more. I don't.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: I thought it was cooler than that. I thought there
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: was some cool explanation that wasn't just some dude online.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: It definitely sounds cooler than it is. It sounds way
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: cooler than it is. But it's a common thing and people, Uh,
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: you talk about eleven eleven on the clock is a
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: big one for a lot of people say, you know,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: I see eleven eleven all the time in the clock.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: It's because you're looking for it. Sure frequency illusion. Yeah,
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: it's not actually happening more than it ever was. You know,
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: you're just paying more attention to it now. And this
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: is a really, really unnerving suggestion, man, because it's it
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: says that feet washing up on the shore is way
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: more common then, and of us realizing that if you
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: went over and picked up an athletics shoe on a
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: beach somewhere, there's a good chance that there's going to
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: be a foot inside. We just aren't aware of this
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: as as human beings and outside of Vancouver, right, So
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: that makes Vancouver the capital of the disembodied, the disembodied
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: feat capital of the world. I don't know that that
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: necessarily holds up, though. I don't think it's being to explain, yeah,
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: because I mean, I bet, I bet you it's frequency illusion.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: I I disagree. I think it's something else. I think
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: it probably has to do with the hydrology or something
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: about Vancouver or British Columbia. There's this some database called
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: name US and it's like a catalog of unidentified remains,
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: and I did a search for disarticulated foot and out
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: of like forty thousand unidentified remains in the US, Vancouver
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: the only three were disarticulated feet, and one was found
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: in the Washington State area. So you could technically kind
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: of included in that weird Vancouver clump. One was in
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: Maryland and one was in Dallas. That was it. So
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: it does really seem like Vancouver has a higher than
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: usual incidents of this articulated feet showing up in its area.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: WOWI which is weird? Are you on the case? No?
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: Not'm just a fan. So you got anything else? No,
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: I just realized I've been like rotating my feet around
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: and making sort of Uh. If you want to know
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: more about this, um, you can. Actually, there are three
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: really good articles that I read in addition to some
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: other ones, but three stood out. One was by Winston
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: Ross of The Daily Beast, one was on Pacific Standard
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: I didn't see an author, and then Christomers Christopher Solomon's
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: outside article. Those are all pretty stand out. Uh. And
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: since I said stand out, it's time for a listener.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: Now I'm gonna call this Internet Roundup. I don't know
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: if people watch, but we have an Internet show called
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: Internet Roundup. Several people walk yeah, and it's like the
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: silliest thing we do. We sit down in this studio
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: on video and we just talked about a couple of
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: things on the Internet that we think our neat. So
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: that is a setup. Hey, guys, I was recently on
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: a Delta plight and they show these on Delta, and
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: this is not an advert Delta. I was recently on
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: adults plight from Atlanta at Austin keeping an eye out
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: for your hat, Chuck. I got very excited when I
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: remembered I could watch your Internet Roundup show on the
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: plane to pass the time. Because we began our descend
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: in Austin, sudden thunderstorms developed. It was quite bumpy, to
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: say the least. If you have never been on a
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: plane that unsuccessfully tried to land in a thunderstorm, I
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: don't recommend it. I just had listened to your How
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: to Survive a Plane Crash episode from two thousand eight
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: just that week before, and I remember thinking how grateful
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: I was that I was in the back of the plane.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: Chuck said, I had a better chance of surviving that way. Uh,
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: it's not much of a chance, but sure. I just
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: thought you would like to know that despite the horrible
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: weather going on, and never lost connection with your show. Uh,
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: watching Internet round Up and able to listen and watch
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: you guys really helped me keep calm until our pilot
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: finally gave up trying to land and diverted the plane
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: to Houston. That's even scarier. You know, I'm not gonna
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: try anymore. Well, let's go to Houston close enough. Yeah. Uh.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: In the end, everyone made it to Austin safely though,
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: So thanks for everything you guys do. And that is
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: from Lauren Sprouse. Thanks a lot, Lauren. Um. Have you
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: ever watched videos of planes that come in for a
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: landing but it's too windy so they have to like
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: immediately take back off? Now, this has never happened, like
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: they touched down and take off. If you watch those
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: waiting to get onto a plane, it's a really good
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: way to poke at your brain. Wow. Yeah, no, thank you. Uh.
• 35:55
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• 35:57
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• 36:00
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• 36:02
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• 36:06
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• 36:08
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• 36:10
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• 36:12
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• 36:20
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• 36:22
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