Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, if you've been sitting around thinking, man, I'd
Speaker 1: love to see Josh and Chuck in person. Maybe late
Speaker 1: January would be great. Well, then we have wonderful news
Speaker 1: for you.
Speaker 2: That's right. We're doing our annual Pacific Northwest and Northern
Speaker 2: California tour. We are in Seattle on January twenty fourth
Speaker 2: in Seattle. We're counting on you, guys. We stepped it
Speaker 2: up to the paramount this year, so please help us
Speaker 2: fill that beautiful theater. We are at our home away
Speaker 2: from home at Revolution Hall in Portland on the twenty fifth,
Speaker 2: and then as always, back at San Francisco's Sketch Fest
Speaker 2: on January twenty sixth at the Sydney Goldstein.
Speaker 1: So here comes the info for links and tickets and
Speaker 1: all that stuff. Go to linktree slash sysk and that
Speaker 1: will take you where you need to go to find
Speaker 1: a great seat. Or you can visit our website Stuff
Speaker 1: youshould Know dot com that will also take you where
Speaker 1: you need to go to find a great seat, and
Speaker 1: we will see you in your great seats in January.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 1: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we're just sailing along.
Speaker 1: Hopefully we're not going to stop abruptly for this episode
Speaker 1: of stuff you should know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, we were actually developing a robust suite
Speaker 2: of maritime disasters.
Speaker 1: Well, there's plenty to talk about, for sure, So this
Speaker 1: is I mean, we're probably mid suite at best.
Speaker 2: I mean, depending on which ones you cover, we could
Speaker 2: be no pun intended. Just the tip of the iceberg.
Speaker 1: Oh that was pretty good though. And it's funny you
Speaker 1: bring up the iceberg, which everybody knows is associated with
Speaker 1: the Titanic, because I have seen, according to maritime lore
Speaker 1: that I found on the internet written by maritime lawyers,
Speaker 1: that this shipwreck essentially that we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: is a new touchstone for the next like one hundred years,
Speaker 1: just like the titan was for one hundred or so
Speaker 1: years after it. It was just that much of a cluster.
Speaker 1: Luckily not anywhere near as many people died, but it's
Speaker 1: as not maybe not as interesting a story, but it's
Speaker 1: a pretty gosh star and twotin interesting story if you
Speaker 1: ask me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think the main thing that stood
Speaker 2: out to me about the wreck of the Costa Concordia.
Speaker 2: Is that And you know when you see little documentary
Speaker 2: footage and stuff like that of interviews with people, many
Speaker 2: of the passengers are remarking like, you know, we just
Speaker 2: couldn't believe, like something like this is happening in twenty twelve, right,
Speaker 2: like the fact that it's a modern disaster, a llah
Speaker 2: the Titanic, like that kind of thing shouldn't be happening
Speaker 2: these days.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I saw somebody who compared the two described
Speaker 1: it as where the Titanic was kind of like an
Speaker 1: ironic twist of fate brought on by hubris. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: was just brought on by incompetence. That's what it really
Speaker 1: boils down to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's how something like this can happen
Speaker 2: in a modern age where everything is there to prevent
Speaker 2: something like this from happening, exactly, But you can never
Speaker 2: count out human incompetence.
Speaker 1: No, no, And you said modern age, and it was
Speaker 1: pretty modern. So on the night of Friday, the thirteenth
Speaker 1: January in twenty twelve, not that long ago, just over
Speaker 1: a decade, that ship, the Costa Concordia, was sailing around
Speaker 1: the Mediterranean, which it normally did. I think. It was
Speaker 1: launched in two thousand and five. Yeah, by the Costa
Speaker 1: Crouchierre also known as Costa Cruz's line, and at the
Speaker 1: time it was the largest ship in the Mediterranean. It
Speaker 1: boasted the nicest spa, took up two full decks, and
Speaker 1: it was just nice. It looks if you look at
Speaker 1: the pictures of what it looked like when it was launched,
Speaker 1: it looks like nineteen ninety eight Vegas came along and
Speaker 1: threw up in it and just shipped it out to sea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not like the super classy ones these.
Speaker 1: Days, right, but this one struck me as I mean
Speaker 1: definitely along that same line. I mean, a cruise ship
Speaker 1: has a certain look to it no matter what they
Speaker 1: try to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's going to be brass this one.
Speaker 1: This one really like pulled out all the stops, as
Speaker 1: our organ playing friends sometimes.
Speaker 2: Say, yeah, absolutely, I mean, this was sort of the
Speaker 2: pride of Italy. It was their largest cruise ship at
Speaker 2: nine hundred and fifty plus feet long and held almost
Speaker 2: thirty eight hundred passengers along with just over one thousand
Speaker 2: crew members for a total on this day or on
Speaker 2: this launch, at least two hundred and twenty nine total people,
Speaker 2: captained by Francesco Skatino, who had been He was a veteran,
Speaker 2: he had been working just for this cruise company for
Speaker 2: eleven years.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think he was fairly new to the Concordia,
Speaker 1: but like their ships were similar enough that this was
Speaker 1: not I mean, yeah, he was totally able and capable
Speaker 1: to captain a ship. You'd think. Yeah, So three hours
Speaker 1: after the Concordia set sail for its seven day cruise
Speaker 1: around the Mediterranean, which was that's just what it did.
Speaker 1: It stopped in the same places. Yeah, three hour tour.
Speaker 1: It was passing by an island off of Tuscany called Gilio,
Speaker 1: which you can't help but just think of that Ben
Speaker 1: Affleck movie.
Speaker 2: That's what I thought of.
Speaker 1: And Captain Skatino did something that in retrospect people are like, wait,
Speaker 1: what did you do? But once you start to dig
Speaker 1: into it, you're like, apparently that's a thing like cruise
Speaker 1: ships sometimes do this. It's called the sail by. He
Speaker 1: decided to do a sail by of the island of Giglio,
Speaker 1: and Gilio is a seafaring fishing island of like hardy
Speaker 1: see people. And then very wealthy people who like to
Speaker 1: hang out around hardy see people.
Speaker 2: And any though no fifteen hundred people total right.
Speaker 1: Around the whole island, multiple towns. The whole population the
Speaker 1: island was fifteen hundred. So Captain Scatino decided to do
Speaker 1: a sail by of Gilio. And a sail by is
Speaker 1: where you sail like preposterously close to land to do
Speaker 1: a couple of things. It thrills the passengers on board,
Speaker 1: but it also thrills the people wherever you're passing by.
Speaker 1: It's pretty neat, like it's just so close, and the
Speaker 1: ship's always lit up, very pretty and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: It's just something to see. But if you stop and
Speaker 1: think about it, it's incredibly reckless. I mean, to do
Speaker 1: this sail by, he had to deviate from his course
Speaker 1: so much that he had to turn off like the
Speaker 1: tracking software, like just turn it off so that he
Speaker 1: could maneuver the ship by hand off course that drastically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know what, I'm gonna go ahead and say,
Speaker 2: I mean, this is like a fly by that airplanes
Speaker 2: might do, and those have resulted in accidents here and there.
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna go ahead and throw it out there
Speaker 2: that no more sail buys or fly bys. Just keep
Speaker 2: all of the dangerous heavy machinery and vehiculars. Vehiculars, sure, sure,
Speaker 2: well away from everything.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It's always like, oh, the people love it. This would
Speaker 2: be impressive, until there's an accident and it's like, oh
Speaker 2: wait a minute, well, people can die doing this, so
Speaker 2: let's just stop with this stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and no more car surfing like they didn't teen
Speaker 1: wool for Footloose, none of that stuff either.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but the one thing, the game of Chicken and footloose,
Speaker 2: just full steam ahead with that. That's a pretty great
Speaker 2: thing to do.
Speaker 1: Okay, so the sail buy again. This is an enormous ship,
Speaker 1: a thousand feet long, basically one hundred and fourteen thousand puns.
Speaker 1: This is a ginorm a ship and it's passing by
Speaker 1: this tiny little island, and it was doing it for
Speaker 1: a couple of reasons. One of the reasons why Giglio
Speaker 1: used to get sail bys fairly frequently, apparently they'd done
Speaker 1: it just a week before, was that there was a
Speaker 1: retired captain from the Costa Cruise Line. I guess he'd
Speaker 1: been there for like ever and it'd retire and now
Speaker 1: lived on Gilio, so they would do sail bys and
Speaker 1: like in part and to salute him.
Speaker 2: That was one swing to the horn.
Speaker 1: Basically, there was also a Matredi on board named Antonello Tievely.
Speaker 1: He was from Giglio and he had family there. So
Speaker 1: apparently the captain was doing this as a favor or
Speaker 1: an honor to the matred And then thirdly, the passengers
Speaker 1: love that kind of thing too. They're just dazzled by
Speaker 1: how close the land is, like you could just reach
Speaker 1: out and touch it kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is later in court what Skatino would say,
Speaker 2: like these were the three reasons there was And you know,
Speaker 2: I don't super remember this for some reason, or I
Speaker 2: didn't at least until we got to this point, which
Speaker 2: was there was an affair going on between Captain Scatino
Speaker 2: and a woman named Dominica. And how do you pronounce
Speaker 2: her last name?
Speaker 1: I'd say Simmerton.
Speaker 2: Simmartan or something like that ce M O R t
Speaker 2: A N. Yes, she was Moldovan who had worked on
Speaker 2: the ship the month before, like a short term thing.
Speaker 2: Evidently had met Captain Scatino they started this affair. She
Speaker 2: was on board, she was twenty six years old and
Speaker 2: was on board for this cruise as a passengers, an
Speaker 2: unpaid passenger, kind of like, you know, come on as
Speaker 2: my guest type of deal, because we're having an affair.
Speaker 2: And so prosecutors would say, hey, you wanted to impress
Speaker 2: your your girlfriend that you were having an affair with,
Speaker 2: so that's why you did it. And this is when
Speaker 2: it all kind of clicked. I kind of remembered all
Speaker 2: of a sudden that became a big deal in the trial,
Speaker 2: and the news was the kind of public outing of
Speaker 2: this relationship. And you know, cruise ship crashes because captain's
Speaker 2: trying to impress his young girlfriend.
Speaker 1: Yes, and she was on the bridge at the time
Speaker 1: during this incident. And like I said, they had done
Speaker 1: a sail by the week before of Gilio, Captain Scatino
Speaker 1: did again to honor Antonello Tevily the Maitre d And
Speaker 1: after that last one he had set some some crew
Speaker 1: members to the task of figuring out an even closer
Speaker 1: sail by route. Yeah, this was the one they were
Speaker 1: testing out. So they had sail by Gilio before, but
Speaker 1: apparently this is a brand new, even closer route, and
Speaker 1: I guess they had gotten that retired Sea captain on
Speaker 1: the phone to tell him about the sale by they
Speaker 1: were doing, and found out that he wasn't even on
Speaker 1: the island. He was back on the mainland at his
Speaker 1: winter house. And as they were two reasons right exactly.
Speaker 1: And as they're on the phone, Captain Scatino is like, say,
Speaker 1: let me ask you a little bit about the rocks
Speaker 1: around Julio that we're driving past right now. And I
Speaker 1: guess the captain didn't even get any kind of reply
Speaker 1: out before the line went dead. And they think that
Speaker 1: at that moment the line hadn't actually gone dead, but
Speaker 1: that Captain Scatino had hung up because he realized that
Speaker 1: they were about to hit a rock on their port side.
Speaker 1: Port is left. The easiest way to remember that is
Speaker 1: left has four letters and port has four letters, and
Speaker 1: they both the t two great ways to remember that
Speaker 1: starboard right, you know, port left.
Speaker 2: It's just two things to remember. Though.
Speaker 1: It's not that U so I always have trouble with it.
Speaker 2: Do you really?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Okay, So they're driving by Julio and they're they're
Speaker 1: keeping away from these rocks on their starboard side on
Speaker 1: the right side. What they didn't realize is that they're
Speaker 1: actually driving through two outcroppings of rocks and the one
Speaker 1: on the left side of the port side got them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these are called these skull rocks se ol e,
Speaker 2: and you know they're all over the place and you
Speaker 2: can't necesssarily see them all sticking out of the water.
Speaker 2: And you know, the last moment, basically he orders a
Speaker 2: course correction, Skatino does. The helmsman at the time was
Speaker 2: an Indonesian man named Jacob rus leie Binn and went
Speaker 2: the wrong way because there was a language issue. Put
Speaker 2: a pin in that because that'll come back up later
Speaker 2: in court. And the stern collided at nine forty five
Speaker 2: and the timeline's pretty important here, So nine forty five
Speaker 2: PM is when they first make contact and tear a
Speaker 2: one hundred and seventy four foot gash in the port
Speaker 2: side of that ship. Later on, as we'll see in court,
Speaker 2: there were experts that basically said, hey, listen, there was
Speaker 2: no course correction at that point that would have mattered.
Speaker 2: They were just too close. So it wasn't the fact
Speaker 2: that this guy went the wrong way. It's not like
Speaker 2: all Jacob Bin's fault, So that would come out later.
Speaker 2: But immediately one hundred and seventy four foot tear in
Speaker 2: the side of the show is an immediate disaster as
Speaker 2: far as how much water this thing is taking on
Speaker 2: very very fast.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean, just to put it in sports terms,
Speaker 1: that's like half the length of a soccer pitch or
Speaker 1: an American football field. Like, that's a really long tear,
Speaker 1: and it was really deep, and it ran so hard
Speaker 1: into the rocks. Chuck an eighty ton boulder became embedded
Speaker 1: in that tear in the ship and was there forever permanently.
Speaker 1: Apparently they later on removed it and are using it
Speaker 1: as part of a memorial. But it was this huge
Speaker 1: bowlers a huge, huge tear, and it also was in
Speaker 1: a terrible place. It hit some water tight compartments tore
Speaker 1: clean into them. So now these water tight compartments are
Speaker 1: starting to take on water, not good for any ship.
Speaker 1: But one of those compartments was also the engine room,
Speaker 1: and in very short order, the engine room started to
Speaker 1: flood and they lost power very very quickly. It was
Speaker 1: very clear right at the outset that they had a
Speaker 1: huge problem going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and when you say lost power, like they lost electricity,
Speaker 2: but they also lost you know, engine power. The engine
Speaker 2: was off, the rudder wasn't operable. All the lights went out,
Speaker 2: so now they're in the dark. They can't do anything
Speaker 2: engine wise to try and you know, pry themself off
Speaker 2: or anything like that. Skatino did it seem like I
Speaker 2: do a fairly decent job steering it, I guess, gliding
Speaker 2: it in, just steering it on inertia or whatever, toward
Speaker 2: the port side to at least get a little closer,
Speaker 2: which they say might have helped save some lives, but
Speaker 2: it caused the ship to tip even more. And that
Speaker 2: was a big, big factor in how many people ended
Speaker 2: up dying, was the fact that this boat started it
Speaker 2: turned on its side, basically not completely on its side.
Speaker 2: What was the degree in the end seventy degrees, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean that's pretty close to ninety.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean zero degree upright, ninety degrees is completely
Speaker 1: on its side. This ended up listening to seventy degrees.
Speaker 1: So yeah, for all intents and purposes, if you were
Speaker 1: on that ship, it was basically on its side, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the idea that Skatino managed to navigate the ship
Speaker 1: so the ship was still it was still moving, they
Speaker 1: just didn't have any power. It was moving under momentum
Speaker 1: when the power went out, and it was the scary
Speaker 1: thing was chuck. It was starting to head out to
Speaker 1: sea with one hundred and seventy four foot gash in
Speaker 1: the side, taking on water, and it had it kept
Speaker 1: going out to sea, it would have sunk and possibly
Speaker 1: a lot more people died.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: The bone of contention is whether Skatino did anything or not.
Speaker 1: Some maritime experts later on said he didn't do a thing.
Speaker 1: That rudder got stuck in the perfect position and managed
Speaker 1: to do it. Yes, it did one hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: degree turn thanks to the wind and the rudder and
Speaker 1: miraculously turned around and came back to land rather than
Speaker 1: deep water where it kind of wedged it self against
Speaker 1: the rocks. He probably didn't have anything to do with it,
Speaker 1: although he tried to claim that because they're like that
Speaker 1: probably saved lives.
Speaker 2: Well, I will say this, if Skatino said it was
Speaker 2: me that did it, then I'm immediately inclined to not
Speaker 2: believe it.
Speaker 1: That is a good rule of thumb with this guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, shall we take a break? Yeah we should, all right,
Speaker 2: that's a good setup. This cruise ship is taking on water,
Speaker 2: it's listing with everyone on board, and we're gonna come
Speaker 2: back and tell you what happened right after this.
Speaker 3: Stuff you should know, Josh, and shock stuff you should know,
Speaker 3: all right.
Speaker 2: So remember I said to pay attention to the timeline.
Speaker 2: This thing again hits those rocks ninetive pm. What I
Speaker 2: would do if I was a captain and I know
Speaker 2: nothing about captaining a cruise ship or anything larger than
Speaker 2: upontoon boat, you don't, no, I would have immediately called
Speaker 2: for help. But that didn't happen. Skatino did not call
Speaker 2: for help immediately. I think he knew that he had
Speaker 2: really screwed up. Yeah, and I'm not sure if he
Speaker 2: immediately knew just how bad things were. I would say
Speaker 2: that the listing of the boat would have been a
Speaker 2: real key indicator that it's much worse than like anyone
Speaker 2: could have imagined.
Speaker 1: He also got word almost immediately that the engine room
Speaker 1: was flooding.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he knew how bad it was pretty quickly.
Speaker 2: The reason that the authorities on land, you know, and
Speaker 2: even knew this was happening is because you know, they're
Speaker 2: right there off the shore. So people on the ship
Speaker 2: are calling to shore, and people on land like see
Speaker 2: this happening, and they're like, hey, this cruise ship is
Speaker 2: They're only fifteen hundred people, but it was it was
Speaker 2: a big thing, and I imagine it made tons of noise.
Speaker 2: They talk talked about the sound of the scraping, like
Speaker 2: how loud it was and how like scary sounding it was.
Speaker 2: So the long and short of it is, Search and
Speaker 2: Rescue called them at ten pm, fifteen minutes later, and
Speaker 2: Skatino kind of downplayed it a little bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, at first he was probably like, letter ring, just
Speaker 1: letter ring, They'll go right.
Speaker 2: However, because this is modern times, and one of the
Speaker 2: great things about something like this happening in modern times
Speaker 2: is you have recordings of phone calls and stuff that
Speaker 2: you can go to. You can't just you know. It's
Speaker 2: not like the Titanic days when you could lie about
Speaker 2: something and maybe get away with it, you know. So
Speaker 2: they recorded this call between crisis coordinator Roberto Ferroerini from
Speaker 2: Coasta Cruises and Scatino where he finally admits I've made
Speaker 2: a mess and practically the whole ship is flooding. Yet
Speaker 2: still at ten ten, this is almost thirty minutes later,
Speaker 2: the Coastguard is calling again and they find learned that
Speaker 2: it's taking on water almost a half hour later.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because the guy he admitted it to, like you
Speaker 1: said it was, he worked for Costa Cruises. He's like
Speaker 1: the guy you call when when everything has just hit
Speaker 1: the fan, and so he he didn't like the first call.
Speaker 1: They were like, no, just tell him it's a blackout,
Speaker 1: and that's what they told the coast guard. It wasn't
Speaker 1: for till that second call where they're like, yeah, we're
Speaker 1: taking it on water, why don't you send us a tugboat?
Speaker 1: One tugboat, that's all they requested. Luckily, people on shore
Speaker 1: had gotten word that there was something weird going on
Speaker 1: and they started to move down. So yeah, basically they
Speaker 1: started to move down toward the wreck and it became
Speaker 1: immediately clear that there was a huge problem. The ship
Speaker 1: was starting to tilt. It was way closer to land
Speaker 1: than it should be. Apparently it came to rest one
Speaker 1: thousand feet from land. That's how close it was.
Speaker 2: It looked even closer it does. You see the wreck
Speaker 2: footage for.
Speaker 1: Sure, like it's really really close to land, and that
Speaker 1: there were plenty of people on board. So they started
Speaker 1: rushing to the accident scene in boats and eventually by
Speaker 1: helicopters and calling in the people they needed. And again
Speaker 1: the ship is not asking for this stuff. Other people
Speaker 1: are being like, you guys need this stuff, We're coming,
Speaker 1: because Skatino was trying to downplay it to save his
Speaker 1: reputation and the crisis coordinator was trying to save the
Speaker 1: company's reputation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So rescue boats finally arrive at ten forty. This
Speaker 2: is almost is fifty five minutes later, almost an hour
Speaker 2: after this thing hits these rocks, you finally get rescue boats,
Speaker 2: and Skatino finally gives the order to abandoned ship. Some
Speaker 2: people had already taken upon themselves to get the lifeboats
Speaker 2: going because you know, the writing was on the wall.
Speaker 2: And then something happened that is really hard to believe
Speaker 2: that A he did it and b he thought he
Speaker 2: could get away with it. Yeah, but at eleven twenty
Speaker 2: Skatino abandoned ship. That captain of the ship, the captain
Speaker 2: is the oath. Well, I don't know if they take
Speaker 2: an oath, but they probably do. Let's just say it's
Speaker 2: at least figurative. The captain is supposed to go down
Speaker 2: with the ship and be like the last person off
Speaker 2: you know, they're in charge. They're the ones that are
Speaker 2: supposed to make sure everything is as least chaotic as
Speaker 2: it can be. And Skatino's skidaddles at eleven twenty and
Speaker 2: in court later he basically got laughed at. Said that
Speaker 2: he had fallen off the ship and landed in a lifeboat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they're like, well, why didn't you get back off?
Speaker 1: He's like, I don't know, I didn't want to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm in there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. They remark that when he made it to land
Speaker 1: that he wasn't even wet, but just to get across.
Speaker 1: Like how badly he abandoned the ship. He said, abandoned
Speaker 1: ship at eleven and was off within twenty minutes himself.
Speaker 1: The local authorities didn't mark the evacuation as until about
Speaker 1: five am. Yeah, that's how he abandoned. Almost everybody on
Speaker 1: that ship just left. And what's crazy is his crew,
Speaker 1: like the higher up crew left with them. They didn't
Speaker 1: leave anyone in charge. There was a total power vacuum.
Speaker 1: And there was a really big problem too that they
Speaker 1: had so at the time, under maritime law, if you
Speaker 1: had a cruise ship within twenty four hours of departing,
Speaker 1: you had to run through your emergency evacuation drill with
Speaker 1: the passengers and the crew. Have you ever been on
Speaker 1: a cruise ship.
Speaker 2: I've been on one cruise and it's a total buzzkill.
Speaker 2: But the very first thing you do is they gather
Speaker 2: everyone in this huge room and go over all that stuff. Yes,
Speaker 2: it's a pass mustard.
Speaker 1: It's the last thing you want to do when you
Speaker 1: first get on a cruise ship. But before I guess
Speaker 1: they kind of acknowledged that and said just sometime within
Speaker 1: the first twenty four hours after the Costa Concordia, They're like,
Speaker 1: you have to do that before you even set sail now, but.
Speaker 2: They'll have you have your first rum punch.
Speaker 1: They hadn't even done that yet. So not only did
Speaker 1: the passengers not know what was going on, not only
Speaker 1: was there literally no one in charge, but much of
Speaker 1: the crew was reported to have basically been throwing elbows
Speaker 1: to get on lifeboats themselves. Ones that word stepping up
Speaker 1: and trying to lower lifeboats clearly didn't know how to
Speaker 1: do it. Apparently, there was a retired sailor who was
Speaker 1: on board as a passenger who basically shoved one of
Speaker 1: the crew members out of the way to lower the
Speaker 1: lifeboat himself because the crew member was so incompetent at it.
Speaker 1: So from top to bottom, from captain to passenger, no
Speaker 1: one essentially knew what to do. They just knew that
Speaker 1: the ship was tilting at some really scary angles and
Speaker 1: water was starting to come up. And all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: what used to be the walls were now the floor.
Speaker 1: What used to be the other walls now the ceiling,
Speaker 1: and what used to be the floor and the ceiling
Speaker 1: are now walls. That's how much the ship tilted. I
Speaker 1: can keep going. I could tell you, like the carpeting
Speaker 1: went from the floor to the wall.
Speaker 2: If you keep going, this ship's going to be upright again.
Speaker 2: So they need they needed you there just to explain.
Speaker 1: That that brass the railing you used as a handrail,
Speaker 1: you could dangle from it. It's at the ceiling exactly.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and the other the other really scary thing
Speaker 1: about it, aside from that that you're lucky if you're
Speaker 1: in a deck that's just like that. There's also corridors
Speaker 1: that go from one side of the ship to the other.
Speaker 1: Those are no vertical shafts. I saw it put. There's
Speaker 1: a really great shaft. Yeah, essentially that you could fall
Speaker 1: into and all of a sudden, you're falling to the
Speaker 1: other side of the ship. It was like the beside
Speaker 1: an Adventure halfway.
Speaker 2: It's like whatever TV show you were watching, all of
Speaker 2: a sudden was almost upside down.
Speaker 1: You would have to dangle from the floor which is
Speaker 1: now the ceiling to watch the TV appropriately.
Speaker 2: That's right. So after midnight, the Coastguard captain there, Gregorio
Speaker 2: de Falco, called Skatino and again these are recorded phone calls,
Speaker 2: which is great. And at that point Skatino is in
Speaker 2: that lifeboat and there was a very dramatic conversation that
Speaker 2: they had which was played later on, where DeFalco says,
Speaker 2: you got to return to that vessel. Pal you're the
Speaker 2: captain and you oversee this evacuation. It's chaos and you
Speaker 2: should be up there in charge. And he became sort
Speaker 2: of a local folk hero in Italy. And there was
Speaker 2: a line that he had which Olivia helped us with
Speaker 2: this so she puts it kind of nicely. PG translation
Speaker 2: is get back on the board, damn it. And this
Speaker 2: was printed on T shirts and it was sold in Italy.
Speaker 2: It became a very big part of the trial Skatino
Speaker 2: didn't do it. He was like, nope, not going back on.
Speaker 2: By twelve forty, so this is almost three hours later,
Speaker 2: there were twenty five patrol boats, fourteen merchant vessels, and
Speaker 2: those helicopters on the scene, and I think by you know,
Speaker 2: by this time, the ship was listed so severely that
Speaker 2: they'd lost like all of the port side lifeboats. They
Speaker 2: couldn't even launch those, So you're dealing now with half
Speaker 2: the lifeboats as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the floors now walls. But the reason why you
Speaker 1: couldn't do the lifeboats took is because on the port side,
Speaker 1: rather than being the side of the ship that was
Speaker 1: now skyward, that was like the top of the ship.
Speaker 1: How are you going to lower a lifeboat like that?
Speaker 1: You can't do it. Luckily, they got apparently twenty three
Speaker 1: of the twenty six lifeboats launched before it just became
Speaker 1: impossible to launch the last three.
Speaker 2: But it should be enough for all the people, right, it.
Speaker 1: Should have been, and I think it was. But the
Speaker 1: whole thing was done so disorderly. People were shuffled from
Speaker 1: one place to another. Yeah, and thirty two people ended
Speaker 1: up dying, and most of them, I should say most
Speaker 1: of the drowning deaths apparently occurred around the set moment,
Speaker 1: and that is so the ship was listed at twenty degrees.
Speaker 1: You can work with that, but your dishes are sliding
Speaker 1: off of your tables and stuff like that. Nothing you
Speaker 1: want to really deal with, but you can manage. And
Speaker 1: it started to made it to about fifty degrees. Now
Speaker 1: it's a real problem, I think about them. They couldn't
Speaker 1: launch any of the boats. But then from fifty degrees
Speaker 1: it started to list to seventy degrees, that where it's
Speaker 1: almost completely on its side, and that happened quickly enough
Speaker 1: that people who had been on the starboard side and
Speaker 1: said nope, lifeboats full, go to the port side were
Speaker 1: actually caught in between the two inside interior rooms. And
Speaker 1: now all of a sudden, water's coming up from the
Speaker 1: walls and the floor, and you're trapped inside a room
Speaker 1: that you can't swim out of. And I guess I
Speaker 1: think like eleven or sixteen people died that way, just
Speaker 1: getting caught when the ship listed and the water started
Speaker 1: to come up, and it happened almost all at once,
Speaker 1: So you can make a really good case that had
Speaker 1: they not delayed this rescue, had they initially called for
Speaker 1: help immediately. They probably would have gotten everybody off of
Speaker 1: that ship before it listed to seventy degrees, and all
Speaker 1: those people who drowned in the in the center of
Speaker 1: the ship almost certainly would have lived.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely. You know, we talked about all of the
Speaker 2: upper tier crew getting off on the lifeboats with a
Speaker 2: captain that left, and Olivia helped us with this, and
Speaker 2: she found some pretty great examples of heroes of this
Speaker 2: situation that left, and some of them actually did rescue
Speaker 2: people that left. Musicians and waiters and bartenders to help.
Speaker 2: These are not crew members that are trained, you know,
Speaker 2: to run the cruise ship. These are people serving you
Speaker 2: food and drinks or playing the drums. That was a drummer,
Speaker 2: Giuseppe Girolamo. He is thirty years old. He had a
Speaker 2: spot on that last lifeboat, but he gave it up
Speaker 2: for a family with two kids. He perished. A bartender
Speaker 2: named Erica Fani Soria Molina gave up her life jacket
Speaker 2: to an elderly man and perished. You know, once this
Speaker 2: thing is moving around, and like the currents around something
Speaker 2: like this, you know before it's stationary, are are vast
Speaker 2: and I imagine once it isn't even is stationary, just
Speaker 2: all the transfer of air and a vacuum of water
Speaker 2: being sucked in, like it's very perilous water that you're
Speaker 2: getting into. So a lot of these people died by
Speaker 2: you know, jumping in the water to try to swim
Speaker 2: to shore, but they were just kind of sucked under
Speaker 2: and kept there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they may have made it had they kept
Speaker 1: their life jackets, but for one reason or another, they
Speaker 1: gave their life jackets a way to save other people.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that was extraordinarily sad, and there was a
Speaker 1: lot of valiant efforts, including from people who survive too.
Speaker 1: One of the heroes of the story was the deputy
Speaker 1: mayor of Gilio Porto, I think the main pack on it.
Speaker 1: He Yeah, he was the one who basically filled that
Speaker 1: power vacuum. He went and was working side by side
Speaker 1: with the i think the chief navigator, a guy named Simoneknesse,
Speaker 1: who was the one who was ordered to lie to
Speaker 1: the coastguard when they first called. Those two worked to
Speaker 1: get like a couple hundred people off of the ship
Speaker 1: that were stuck on it when it listed to seventy degrees,
Speaker 1: and they were doing things like they found an aluminum ladder, chuck,
Speaker 1: and you basically had to climbate to get to the
Speaker 1: railing of one of the decks because again it's at
Speaker 1: seventy degrees and don't get me started about what's wall
Speaker 1: and what's the floor. But they were basically using this
Speaker 1: ladder in the exact opposite direction that you normally would
Speaker 1: and when you would get up to the top of layer,
Speaker 1: you had to climb over the deck railing and now
Speaker 1: you're on the port side hull of the ship and
Speaker 1: you had to scoot down tens and tens of feet
Speaker 1: using a rope ladder and then jumped the last three
Speaker 1: to five feet onto a waiting rescue boat. And like
Speaker 1: one hundred and ten people managed to survive by using
Speaker 1: this exit that Canesse and the deputy mayor managed to organize.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean to drive it home. This deputy mayor,
Speaker 2: who was you know, probably just easing in for a
Speaker 2: late dinner on his cozy island. As Skatino is bailing
Speaker 2: off this ship. This guy is getting aboard the ship.
Speaker 2: He was the first one from that island to get
Speaker 2: out there and say I'm getting on board that ship
Speaker 2: to help people. As the captain has bailed in a lifeboat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a really unbelievable point out for sure. They
Speaker 1: may have even passed one another.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you said one hundred and fifty, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: Thirty two people died, one hundred and fifty people were injured,
Speaker 2: sixty five very seriously injured. We're talking partial paralysis. There
Speaker 2: was one case of blindness, amputations, obviously a lot of
Speaker 2: people that suffered from PTSD. Afterward, it took to six
Speaker 2: am the next morning for everybody everyone to be evacuated
Speaker 2: that was still alive. As we'll see, there were very
Speaker 2: sadly some bodies that they would find in the months
Speaker 2: as far as like recovery of the dead goes during
Speaker 2: the operation to save this or not save the ship,
Speaker 2: but to save the environment from this ship.
Speaker 1: Basically, Yeah, that was a huge thing. So they went
Speaker 1: from rescuing people to recovering remains to preventing a maritime
Speaker 1: environmental catastrophe of unparalleled proportions from happening. Because this ship
Speaker 1: had twenty six hundred I think tons of fuel and
Speaker 1: oil and hydraulic lubricants and all sorts of stuff that
Speaker 1: would just give back in the water. Yeah, on board,
Speaker 1: and it was just waiting. All that ship had to
Speaker 1: do was start to crack up, and it was laying
Speaker 1: against some rocks at a seventy degree angle. No one
Speaker 1: knew how much pressure it was having exerted in the middle.
Speaker 1: Was it going to break in half at the rock,
Speaker 1: like the rock's going to be a full crumb. They
Speaker 1: had no idea. They just knew that they needed to
Speaker 1: get that oil out of that ship as fast as possible.
Speaker 1: So that was also one of the one things they
Speaker 1: were doing while they were simultaneously searching for remains.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so not only the fuel. And we should point
Speaker 2: out that this is Gilio's inside the Pelagos Sanctuary, the
Speaker 2: largest marine wildlife park in the Mediterranean, just an amazing place.
Speaker 2: And you've got this oil, and then you have everything
Speaker 2: on the ship, all kinds of plastics, all kinds of chemicals,
Speaker 2: all kinds of nasty stuff, all kinds of food. Apparently
Speaker 2: the food spoilage like they were right in the middle
Speaker 2: of dinner service. So not only all the food that
Speaker 2: they were serving for dinner, which you know, for a
Speaker 2: cruise ship, if you've ever been to a dinner service,
Speaker 2: it's just more food than you can ever imagine. Basically,
Speaker 2: but all the food, you know, the freezers are bursting,
Speaker 2: all the food that's on the ship. It's at the
Speaker 2: very beginning of this crew, so it's fully stocked. And
Speaker 2: so that was an environmental disaster attracting all kinds of
Speaker 2: sea life making. You know, the runoff effect of that
Speaker 2: is you have people who make their living fishing on
Speaker 2: this tiny island, like many many people do that, and
Speaker 2: all of a sudden their industry is wrecked for a
Speaker 2: while because this ship, you know, to make a long
Speaker 2: story short, ended up laying there for about two and
Speaker 2: a half years. Yeah, and it was a environmental disaster.
Speaker 2: And that Nova documentary sent me Nova did it. It's
Speaker 2: fifty three minutes long and it's what was it called
Speaker 2: Sunken Sunken Ship Rescue. It is if you have a
Speaker 2: PBS subscription, it is worth your time to watch the
Speaker 2: documentary on the salvage operation on this thing, because it
Speaker 2: is unbelievable what humans can think of the ingenuity of
Speaker 2: humans to take an unprecedented situation like this and figure
Speaker 2: out how to safely get that boat out of there
Speaker 2: was just I'd never seen anything like it.
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about a couple more things before the salvage.
Speaker 1: We'll take a break and then come back and talk
Speaker 1: some salvage. How about that, let's do it. So in
Speaker 1: addition to the food that they're having to float past
Speaker 1: the divers who are looking for remains, and apparently also
Speaker 1: they found three people alive who were trapped after the
Speaker 1: evacuation was complete. One was the ship's purser who had
Speaker 1: fallen into a restaurant because it was sideways and he
Speaker 1: was trapped there for thirty six hours. And then another
Speaker 1: was a Korean couple who were on their honeymoon who
Speaker 1: got trapped in their cabin. So there was like, wow,
Speaker 1: we found some live people. It really made them redouble
Speaker 1: their diving efforts. And it was really dangerous diving through
Speaker 1: this stuff. Like there's bed sheets that you could get
Speaker 1: wrapped up in as a dive. There were knives floating
Speaker 1: around coming towards you, just tons of debris, chandeliers like
Speaker 1: hanging over you that could just drop at any minute.
Speaker 1: It was a bad jam as far as diving goes.
Speaker 1: And there's some really amazing footage of divers swimming through
Speaker 1: the wreckage that the Italian police posted that you can
Speaker 1: go see. I would strongly recommend going to check that out.
Speaker 1: But as they're doing all this, they finally I think
Speaker 1: cleared everybody but two people. There were two bodies that
Speaker 1: they just were like, we can't find them right now,
Speaker 1: we need to get this salvage operation underway, and they
Speaker 1: started to do that.
Speaker 2: All right, you want to take the break now, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I feel like, yeah, yeah, we'll be right back. Everybody.
Speaker 3: Stuff you should know, show stuff should know, so chuck in.
Speaker 1: I think September twenty thirteen, almost Jesus is January twenty twelve,
Speaker 1: so more than a year, almost two years after the wreck.
Speaker 1: The boat's just been laying there on its side in
Speaker 1: the water. Five hundred people came together to get this
Speaker 1: thing upright again. And that was like just a crazy
Speaker 1: idea because other people are like, no, we're gonna have
Speaker 1: to just like demolish this thing in the water with explosives.
Speaker 1: There's nothing we can do. And some people are like, no,
Speaker 1: we can float it again, and they did. They managed
Speaker 1: to figure out a way. I'm using a technique called
Speaker 1: turnbuckling that got the ship back upright.
Speaker 2: Parbuckling.
Speaker 1: Parbuckling. It's like turned by but for giant ships.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think initially, I mean, the reason
Speaker 2: it took almost two years is they were coming up
Speaker 2: with a plan to do this, so, like when they
Speaker 2: hit the ground running in September twenty thirteen. Initially they
Speaker 2: were going to try and cut it into pieces, which
Speaker 2: is a method that's been used before. But they were like,
Speaker 2: there's no way we can do that without causing more
Speaker 2: environmental mess. And that's the kind of thing when something
Speaker 2: like this happens these days, the environment is takes precedent
Speaker 2: and you have to do it in such a way that,
Speaker 2: like you said, you don't blow it up and you
Speaker 2: don't cut it into pieces and wreck the local environment.
Speaker 2: So they had to figure it out and they I mean,
Speaker 2: I suggest watching that documentary, it's amazing. They ended up
Speaker 2: building these huge platforms underwater that the boat would sit
Speaker 2: on once they rolled it back upright. But the whole
Speaker 2: rolling it upright process was fraught with peril of the
Speaker 2: boat breaking apart. No one knew what exerting that kind
Speaker 2: of pressure to kind of pull this thing back over
Speaker 2: these huge steel cables would take. So it was it's amazing.
Speaker 2: There were a lot of very tense moments, but they
Speaker 2: did manage to get this thing upright and floating and
Speaker 2: towed it away with tugboats.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was an engineering marvel. Apparently, they had lasers
Speaker 1: and microphones and everything on all over the ship to
Speaker 1: make sure it wasn't settling or moving at any point.
Speaker 2: Still, it had become part of the rock over that
Speaker 2: time too, which was a very tense moment in the
Speaker 2: Nova Special because when it was go time, that's when
Speaker 2: they realized it was like it is now attached to
Speaker 2: the seabed in places, and they were like, we don't
Speaker 2: know what's going to happen, and it dislodged and it
Speaker 2: actually worked out, but it was very very tenuous there
Speaker 2: for a little while.
Speaker 1: So they got it upright and after that apparently it
Speaker 1: opened up parts of the ship to exploration that hadn't
Speaker 1: been available before it was just too dangerous. And they
Speaker 1: found the remains of the second to last missing victim,
Speaker 1: Maria Grasia trick car Trick Riichi. She was celebrating her
Speaker 1: fiftieth birthday with a friend and her daughter when she died.
Speaker 1: She and her friend died, her daughter survived, and there
Speaker 1: was just one last person to be found after that,
Speaker 1: and they didn't find him. His name was Russell Rebello.
Speaker 1: He was another hero who gave away his life jacket
Speaker 1: to save someone else.
Speaker 2: And he's a I think right.
Speaker 1: He was a waiter and he was organizing people to
Speaker 1: get out of there. He's helping people get off of
Speaker 1: the ship and died as a result. And once they
Speaker 1: floated the ship and towed it back to Genoa for recycling,
Speaker 1: they were just turning it into scrap, one hundred and
Speaker 1: forty four thousand tons of scrap. The people doing that
Speaker 1: project found the remains of Russell Rebello in a cabin
Speaker 1: behind some furniture on the eighth deck. He had just
Speaker 1: been trapped there the whole time that the boat was underwater,
Speaker 1: and they found him after it was in the ship
Speaker 1: jarden dry dock.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Obviously, the legal fallout from this was pretty broad.
Speaker 2: Skatino was dubbed Captain Coward by the media in Italy.
Speaker 2: And on January fifteenth, actually two days after the prosecutor
Speaker 2: came forward confirming the events as we have detailed. Two
Speaker 2: days after that they placed Skatino under house arrest. Obviously,
Speaker 2: that audio with DeFalco was released very damning evidence. And
Speaker 2: then July twenty thirteen, that crisis coordinator Ferrorini, who was
Speaker 2: on the phone with Skatino. Four members of the crew
Speaker 2: pled guilty. They took a plea bargain basically where they
Speaker 2: pled guilty to manslaughter got sentences from one and a
Speaker 2: half years to close to three years, including Jacob rus
Speaker 2: Lee Benn, who was the helmsman who steered the wrong way.
Speaker 2: And Skatino says, oh, this plea deal sounds like a
Speaker 2: pretty good thing. I'd like to get in on that,
Speaker 2: and they're like, oh no, no, there's no plea deal
Speaker 2: for you. You're going to go to full trial on
Speaker 2: a manslaughter charge causing the wreck and abandoning ship. And
Speaker 2: they opened it up into a one thousand seat court
Speaker 2: theater basically in Tuscany so people could go and watch
Speaker 2: this play out in person.
Speaker 1: It was a huge, huge international spectacle. The trial almost.
Speaker 2: Two years, basically nineteen months.
Speaker 1: Like it's it's pretty rare that somebody who's like roundly
Speaker 1: vilified isn't in some way like being unfairly villified. But
Speaker 1: Skatino is one of those rare people where he totally
Speaker 1: deserved every bit of scorn and disdain that that was
Speaker 1: heaped upon him. And it was still heaped upon him.
Speaker 1: He was a national embarrassment for Italy but just a
Speaker 1: just an international snake as far as everybody else was concerned.
Speaker 1: And from what I can tell, I'm like, surely there's
Speaker 1: something this guy did that was like, oh, actually he
Speaker 1: did this. Nope, it does not exist, which is you
Speaker 1: just don't run into that very often.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was sentenced to sixteen years. He appealed, that
Speaker 2: appeal was uphild in May twenty seventeen, and he is
Speaker 2: currently serving that sentence. There are people, and I'm glad
Speaker 2: Livia pointed this out. I don't think anyone, like you said,
Speaker 2: is defending Skatino. But there was more scorn heaped upon
Speaker 2: Coasta Cruises as a whole because they pointed out things like,
Speaker 2: you know, I said, put a pin in the fact
Speaker 2: that there was a language barrier between the helmsmen about
Speaker 2: which way to steer. Like they're like, that shouldn't happen.
Speaker 2: There shouldn't be a language barrier between who's steering the
Speaker 2: ship and the captain of the ship. You got to
Speaker 2: work that out. There were safety and evacuation procedures that
Speaker 2: were basically either not known or ignored, right, And that's
Speaker 2: you know, that falls on the company to some degree
Speaker 2: for sure. And then there were technical things. There were
Speaker 2: some I believe watertight doors that were left open. It
Speaker 2: was they were either malfunctioning or the crew just didn't
Speaker 2: shut them because it reduced like the amount of work
Speaker 2: to like unseal those doors, and you know, made their
Speaker 2: workflow easier. So you know, there were a few things
Speaker 2: that popped up. The fact that they the company even
Speaker 2: said like sail buys are fine, like we do it.
Speaker 2: It's something that we all do and it's fine. Like
Speaker 2: all these things popped up to put coast to cruises
Speaker 2: and hold their feet to the fire. So they ended
Speaker 2: up offering a payout of eleven thousand euros to anyone
Speaker 2: who was on board, plus obviously reimbursing them for the
Speaker 2: trip and any costs related to traveling for the trip,
Speaker 2: as long as you give up the right to sue.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they settled with Italy itself for a one
Speaker 1: million euro fine, which kept them out of criminal lawsuits
Speaker 1: or criminal charges as a company. They just basically shoved
Speaker 1: skete know forward and said here, everybody have at and
Speaker 1: again rightfully so, but the company didn't take the kind
Speaker 1: of responsibility that it should have, like you were describing,
Speaker 1: and they got off easy, I mean a couple million
Speaker 1: and settlements. I mean they really skin flinted the people
Speaker 1: who were affected by this. But that's not to say
Speaker 1: they got off scott free as far as finances go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the salvage operation itself cost one point two billion dollars.
Speaker 1: That's yeah, WWI is the amount of costs to build
Speaker 1: the ship in the first place.
Speaker 2: Plus they lost the half a billion dollar ship, right,
Speaker 2: so they lost You're close to two billion dollars exactly.
Speaker 1: So, so Skatino's little sale by costs that company two
Speaker 1: billion dollars. It cost the world thirty two lives and
Speaker 1: some serious injuries as a result, and of course the
Speaker 1: area around Julio Island is not probably never going to
Speaker 1: be the same again, or it won't be for a
Speaker 1: really long time. But there was an interesting little post
Speaker 1: because somebody else lost out on this deal too. You
Speaker 1: may or may not feel bad for them, but the
Speaker 1: Calabrian mafia a few years ago came out that the
Speaker 1: Italian police were recording their conversations and found out that
Speaker 1: the Calabrian mafia had had a bunch of cocaine aboard
Speaker 1: the Costa Concordia, and it's not clear if it was
Speaker 1: still there or if somebody swam aboard and got it,
Speaker 1: or what the deal was. But it was never like
Speaker 1: the salvage crew was never like we found the cocaine.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Pretty interesting. Yeah, and we should also mention too,
Speaker 2: during that the salvage operation, remarkably only one person died,
Speaker 2: considering how dangerous the work was that they were doing these
Speaker 2: industrial divers. Yeah, and one of them, there was a
Speaker 2: Spanish diver who died February first, twenty fourteen, trying to
Speaker 2: salvage the thing and help the environment out.
Speaker 1: Pretty nuts.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: There was one other quote that DeFalco had that wasn't
Speaker 1: quite as touted in the media, but I thought it
Speaker 1: was pretty ba.
Speaker 2: You ready, that's a spicy meatball, DeFalco.
Speaker 1: Said to Scatino on that famous phone call. Perhaps you
Speaker 1: saved yourself from the sea, but I'll make you pay.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's a good one.
Speaker 1: He got them too. Wow. So that's it for the
Speaker 1: Costa Concordia. And if you heard all this and you're
Speaker 1: like this is really interesting stuff, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff out there for you to go check out.
Speaker 2: Totally. That Nova Doc is well worth fifty minutes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that alone is worth it. What was it?
Speaker 1: It's a sunken ship rescue. It's a terrible title. It's
Speaker 1: really hard to get in there. Also, there's a really
Speaker 1: great Vanity Fair article called Another Night to Remember. I
Speaker 1: don't remember who wrote it, but like they described the
Speaker 1: people involved as like ruggedly handsome, receding hairline, just Vanity Fair.
Speaker 1: Kind of little interesting details to you, but it's really
Speaker 1: coherent and well written and really in depth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, it's Vanity Fair Baby. That's right, that's
Speaker 2: what they do.
Speaker 1: Yep. And since Chuck said it's Vanity Fair Baby, that
Speaker 1: means it's time for a listener mail.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna call this Hello from a grateful doc, because
Speaker 2: that's what Doc Twilling says.
Speaker 1: Docor Twilling sounds like the little house in the prairie
Speaker 1: character is.
Speaker 3: Sotal.
Speaker 2: Pop will clear that right up. Hey guys, my name
Speaker 2: is Chris. I'm a physician from Michigan who's been listening
Speaker 2: for many years. Initially, I started listening to get through
Speaker 2: medical school in those long days, and it was a
Speaker 2: relief to learn about something other than medicine. I recently
Speaker 2: started listening to the selects on pain scales, which inspired
Speaker 2: me to write in. As a physician, I'm constantly assessing
Speaker 2: pain severity to both help make diagnoses and monitor progress
Speaker 2: as the patient's heal. Most of the ideas you discuss
Speaker 2: are part of an average workday for me. However, you
Speaker 2: taught me some new ideas, including the concept that elderly
Speaker 2: patients may express their pain differently, like they may use
Speaker 2: words like soreness instead of pain to describe their discomfort.
Speaker 2: I was intrigued by this and research the idea further,
Speaker 2: and I'm happy to say I now use this approach
Speaker 2: to better treat pain in my older adult patients. I
Speaker 2: love that Doc Chris here researched further and he wouldn't
Speaker 2: just like Josh and Chuck said it. That's right, Sparrel ahead, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that means doctor Twilling. Doc Twilling is doing the right thing.
Speaker 1: He's a sharp tech That's right.
Speaker 2: You guys do a great job of taking complicated subjects
Speaker 2: and making it easier for everyone to understand. The Explanations
Speaker 2: for medical shows you give, such as on addiction, diabetes,
Speaker 2: and high blood pressure help me frame my own explanations
Speaker 2: to my patients. Communicating complicated topics in a way anyone
Speaker 2: can understand remains a challenge. But I feel in getting
Speaker 2: better every day through listening to how you both do it.
Speaker 1: Man, how about that? Yeah, we're saving lives here, Chuck,
Speaker 1: in a.
Speaker 2: Way, so Doc Twilling, Chris Twilling says, if you ever
Speaker 2: come to the Midwest, I'd love to come see you.
Speaker 2: So put this on the books, Doc Twilling, if we
Speaker 2: come through Michigan or anywhere else you can get to,
Speaker 2: you are on the guest list. Just send us an
Speaker 2: email from this very email that you sent and remind
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Speaker 1: Very nice, good good thinking, Chuck. If you want to
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Speaker 1: and let us know how we're affecting lives, saving lives,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, we'd love to hear that kind
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